Halthrag Keep Questions and Interesting Deaths

Post your bugs and problems and questions and I'll try to address them

Also, comments and close scrapes

Messy deaths

Whatever floats your fancy, guv. Suggestions can work also

The first recorded escape from Halthrag Keep was a Fletcher, one Thad, of +Jason Vines.  Thad sailed away on the Sunless Sea on the bow of a shroom-wood galleon, praying that his knowledge of knots and wind resistance would keep him on board.  Serving for a time under the gnome Romarj on the good ship GENERATOR, he now serves the Triune Ladies and Fate.

DCC Solo Module: Achieved!

I'm very happy to report that my own personal pet project for maybe the past year is for sale on RPGNow:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/138653/HHSOLO-1--The-Hounds-of-Halthrag-Keep

What do you get for the purchase?  Well - a digital file that will bring to mind those lost days of yore when your trusty Brass Lantern kept the Grues at bay. It will remind you of Fighting Fantasy books.  It will remind you of some Lone Wolf and Choose Your Own Adventure books

Inside there is a highly-condensed version of The Dungeon Crawl Classics rules-set, which if you aren't already familiar with them will give you a taste of what you might expect from DCC. If you do know DCC already, then I expect you will be able to jump in and get your 0-level death-wish fantasy within a couple of minutes.  You may even have a satisfactory conclusion, although that's somewhat beside the point...

Playing through the adventure with a 0-level character and escaping from the Keep somehow will give you about 10XP if you burn a little Luck and have the Gods on your side.  If you really work the thing over, you'll come out of it with some cool stuff that will make for a very interesting Level 1 character of whatever class you choose - the location is chock full of weapons and monsters and some gold and enough interesting events to propel some character development before a PC is even ready for play in groups.

On the other hand, just like in a regular DCC funnel game you may find the dice go against you and you are slaughtered without fanfare or mourning.  So it goes, eh?  The good thing is there is a system in place so that you could recover some stuff from your previous character if you play your cards right.

There is bonus material provided by +Claytonian JP, as well as the meaty and dangerous part of a Patron by +Paul Wolfe from Angels and Daemons and Beings Between.

I can't even remember all the little terrible references I slipped in, but I think gamers of a certain age will know the thing before they even read it, mostly!  I admit it's a work of pastiche but I crafted it pretty lovingly over the course of a year and I hope that you check it out.

Expect a print version soon, and an old-fashioned game book format before the year's end!

On Submission and Prices and Other Weighty Matters

Ahh, the banal details of business for which I believe I am relatively unprepared to handle any ramifications whatsoever except the most rudimentary ones like maybe this will be an outbreak of financial Ebola that will finally sink me in a mire of unremitting money problems (O WAIT ALREADY HAVE THAT!)

So, the solo funnel module HHSOLO1: The Hounds of Halthrag Keep is submitted to Goodman Games, in what is likely to be (barring any OGL weirdness - man that thing is a wasp nest of legalese) the for-salable iteration

(note to self: there happens to be one or two widows NOT PEOPLE that I just noticed that grate upon me but I will address them later so as not to throw the whole thing out of whack)

When this puppy allows me to retire in leisure and just attend RPG cons across the country humbly turning down high-paying new positions in game companies all over the world, having paid off my student loans to you admirable debt collectors who may read this post LOOK AT YOU AND HOW INDUSTRIOUS YOU ARE!, I will look back on those lost hours of sleep fretting about text/style GREPs (still haven't exactly sorted them out, yet) and leading and points and Character vs Paragraph Styles etc. etc. etc. and LAUGH ALL THE WAY TO THE BANK

Some minor details:  business license and pricing of the actual thing.  At 86 pages and a million heartbeats and a cupful of salty tears to make, I honestly don't know what a digital book goes for on the streets.  I printed it out at Kinko's for something like 9 bucks total.  I know I sunk about 130 bucks into some art and 60 bucks for the software to write it and at my going hourly rate for the day gig, I guess the thing has cost something like $20,195.00 give or take a few hundred man-hours and like WHY DID I GO TO GRADUATE SCHOOL AND INCUR THIS IMMENSE DEBT if not to have the leisure to write this thing and draw it and lay it out and fuss about fonts and draw maps and cross-check entries and throw playtesting to the wind all willy-nilly?  Thank the Dark Gods That Abide Behind My Water Heater when they cast a sleeping dweomer on my wife and daughter so that I can finagle the free time and lost sleep to do this thing I love so well!

I PROMISE, O DEBT COLLECTORS, TO ONLY SPEND THIS FAT WAD OF $$$$MONEY$$$$ ON BOOZE AND A BUS or possibly cargo freight TICKET TO GENCON AND/OR NTRPGCON

Also, Hey! New Logo:  maybe I will figure out a way to stick it in the banner when I have recovered from sleep debt (non-monetary, although I am sure that one day the Feds will figure out a way to charge me for that, also).  Man, work life and money are starting to impinge upon my fantasy life in a very unacceptable way.  Off to look for consolidation that won't cost me a testicle and the souls of my child's children's children's children!  I'm not a welcher, I swear!

Eh?  Wink wink, nudge nudge?  KnowwhatImean?

Sky Bandits of The Glassine Wastes

I don't know what kind of water we all drink, but I am into it, and hip-deep and over my head.

This is a thing that I lament I will never finish, but I wanted to offer it as an example of what things flit about in the psychosphere around these parts.  I just got my copy of Perils of the Purple Planet, which if you haven't the forethought to be into DCC and also into Kickstarter and also into Swords and Lasers/Planets-type stuff, weep and gnash your teeth and cover yourself in sackcloth and ashes, O mendicant!

I began it before my daughter was born, and I guess maybe when I gave it up I was high on Carcosa and sleep deprivation and newfound body horror and really seething with something else in my brain and I felt that wrangling Carcosa and DCC together and doing it a half-justice at that point was beyond me.  Turns out +Harley Stroh and the admirable GG folks are well up to the task, and then some, and then around the corner and up your bum, if you get my drift.  I began this project in July or so, is what Word 2003 says to me, and not modified again until August 2013 when was when maybe I added the NPC listings from a playtest with +Evan Lindsey and +James Bennett and +Don Corcoran where we used many a Dungeon World resolution to add pep to the normal flow of things...  Jesus that seems like a long time ago, now.  I guess I was fueled partly by the arrival of the movie John Carter in my household, which I am proud to say was the first Disney movie my daughter Lily was exposed to, to the best of my meagre knowledge...  I am not sure if I heard whispers of what Harley and the gang were up to at this point; but if I developed this spontaneously and independently (unlikely, I admit) then it is suggestive of the kinds of shared influences that drive us.  In this case, I was was enraptured at the textual features of the Carcosa PDF and hankering to publish something, and I had about a million ideas cranking up.  I still hear the whawhawhawha of the nuclear daemon turbines on the hover skiffs when I think of this thing, and I almost shit my pants when I saw the Poag illustration of the raiders in the PPP

I haven't made it in all the way to PPP but I am happy to say it is indeed right up my alley, and the Spellburn podcast in which I sent a letter to the crew laments the lack of SnL/Weird influences in the things I was reading for OSR but I admit I have been schooled and sated for a bit and there is no more need to fret.  I haven't been this excited to receive something in the mail since I had a subscription to the X-Men in like the 10th grade.  Like a goddam secret decoder ring, Little Orphan Annie

when I read the news these days, I'm not sure tomorrow will come...

Also, I have serious remorse and regret about not getting onboard the Chained Coffin thing (damn you, +Bryan Mullins !)

Here is my basic sketch for The Sky Bandits of the Glassine Wastes, and if I can find it I'll do the Hex Map (unlabelled version) just so:

Looking back, I dig the Rumor Table and some of the monsters (still extant in my Imagination Zone)  - must have been thinking hard about my game of Keep on the Borderlands with a couple of the Camp Nerdly people.  I had plans to do a new race, a bunch of spells, and a couple of Patrons from the CAS/Lovecraft days...

Maybe I will still do this; maybe like a PP freebie or something.  Anyways, it awaits and if there is anything you particularly like in there, let me know and I'll dink it out a little farther down the line...  Jesus, I gotta finish one or two of these projects one day.

Destroy the Humanoid

Thinking about ATARI. How a relatively simple device prompted in my young braincase such wonder and joy and tension and excitement.  Adventure has prompted a series of posts in here: I am fairly certain I knew it well before any contact with Moldvay Basic or the Fiend Folio.  I think I think about RPGs to satisfy some inner Player 1 more than any other reason. My imagination zone looks like the cover of Adventure plus the cover of Warlords, mixed liberally with confusion about the Swordquest game, and a million million horror comics that I cannot fully recall.

The logic escaped my 7 year old brain.

Pitfall and Pitfall 2 are another thing: On its own, the first is a somewhat lackadaisical stroll to the East.  Monotonous.  The second one gave me fits in terms of sheer maddening difficulty. Sometimes in moments of duress I can still hear the music (switching over when I ride the balloon) and feel the urge to duck under the swooping Cave Condors. Once, I got all the way to the end where you get the rat and the cat that Yoohoos you (I know full well it does not make this sound) and I accidentally jumped over the rat and it pushed me into the always-flowing underground river and my mouth hung agape and I never again played it and I may have smashed my controller and got a stern talking-to from the folks about anger and frustration.

Berserk!  A simple, easy-to-understand premise, evoking a mildly heightened heartbeat at just the thought of it.  No wonder that guy(s) died!  A mark of pride was to maneuver my man-atar to a spot where the bolts of Berzerker-hate would pass harmlessly through the empty sprite-less neck zone of me.

To return: there is much to love about the mere idea of Berzerk, and I only recently found out that it was prompted by a rich fictional history that was well-developed by the time the 2600 and arcade games came on the scene.  Sabre-hagen something or other. Anyways, the Berzerkers are the height of life-killing machines, turned even on their own creators and marching across the galaxies in a never-ending quest for Nihil and Calm. They are filled with so much contempt that they even destroy each other upon contact!

I think they must have inspired the Necrons from 40K (a relentlessly gruesome and boring army to my mind but terribly Metal and relaxing to paint)

Aside: the wiki for 40K stuff is an exercise in dreary sameness, lacking the phun of Rogue Trader

Dave Otto: Security Guard, Music Lover, Authoritarian (actual picture!)

Return: Berzerkers!  Evil Otto!  are they machines in the customary sense?  androids? Synthetic beings?  mere bipedal gun platforms?  why does Otto smile relentlessly? (the real story of this is almost as frightening as any fiction)  Why are the walls of the never-ending maze (edit: it is possible for it to end) electrified?

Why can't the actual future/now look like this?

Herein lies stats for them for the few systems I know, as well as meagre ways to tweak them for your setting.  Also, a DCC Maze-Curse, or spell, or something.

L/L-SW-CLONES

Berserker (Based on the Clay Golem - I think a standard L/L character will be summarily trounced by this monster so exercise caution)
Hit Dice: 10 (15 hit points - brutally imposing, easy to kill!)
Armor Class: 7 [12]
Attacks: 1 electrified fist/grasp/hug (3d10) or 1 lazer bolt (1d20)
Saving Throw: 5
Special: Immune to slashing and piercing weapons, immune to mind affecting spells, double damage from lazer blasters and friendly fire
Move: 6
Alignment: (Lawful) Neutrality
Challenge Level/XP: 14/2,600

DCC

Berserker (Skeleton/Hulker Type): Init -5; Atk sizzling grasp -4 melee (1d14) or lazer blaster -2 missile fire (range 120’, 2d8+2); AC 13; HD 4d8+10; MV 20’; Act 1d20; SP faultless tracking 100’, immune to mind-altering spells, heal 2 hp per round, duoble damage from friendly fire; SV Fort +10, Ref -7, Will +10; AL N.

(Maybe I make an Evil Otto Patron Later for s'n'g's - you'd like that wouldn't ya, humanoid?)

DW

Berzerker
Tags:  Group, (Dis)organized, Dauntless, Slow, Messy (variation: sizzling), Terrifying, Construct, Mindless, Large
Blaster (d10+5 damage), Electrified Grasp (d10 damage)
6 HP, 3 Armor
Reach, Forceful
Instincts:
* DESTROY THE HUMANOID
* Move swiftly toward foes without thought of collision

Some Berserker-related moves

High Scorer
When you deftly evade a group of Berzerkers in close quarters, Roll +DEX:
On a 1 or less, SUMMON EVIL OTTO, at some distance
On a 2-7, Hesitate and the Berzerkers move into close combat range
On an 8-10, the Berzerkers stand dazed - guidance AIs must recompute
On an 11+, 1d3 Berzerkers crash into each other and are destroyed outright

That's all I got for the moment.  Cross one frozen post from March off my list!

Also: now it's posted, I think I promised more at the start than I've actually delivered, so MOAR SOON