Upcoming From Purple Duck

Silent Nightfall, the latest in the CE Series, has entered its layout, art, and playtest phase.  Please note the request for playtesters two blog posts down....could you be one of the first people to see this material?

Silent nightfall, now to bed

A rushlight to ward your way

Hush now child, cry not child

They listen to find their prey

Through forest they come

Down dark streets they glide

O my children lie silent

We are all safe inside

I am not 100% sure that this is just "placer art", because of the nature of the Campaign Element.  This may be the creepiest, and the most useful, Campaign Element yet, with four appendixes that help you maximize your usage of the material presented!


Purple Duck’s Adventure Locations are perfect for dropping into any ongoing campaign.  With some slight alteration, they can also be used as a story arc, spanning five or six adventures running from 1st to 3rd level.

Here is your chance to pick up Bone Hoard of the Dancing Horror and Sepulcher of the Mountain God (by Paul Wolfe) in print, with a short introductory section that describes how to use AL 1 to 5 as a single campaign arc.

I am also currently working on FT 1: Creeping Beauties of the Wood for Purple Duck Games, and a new Adventure Location.  So keep your eye on the Duck; there's a lot more coming!

FT 0, 1 & 2 at Casa Loma

If you live in the Toronto area, you are probably aware of Casa Loma, "Canada's Majestic Castle" created by Sir Henry Pellatt.  It includes two secret passages and an 800-foot tunnel beneath the street from the castle proper to the coachhouse.

What you may not be aware of is that you can rent rooms in Casa Loma now for various functions.

Take a look at those room rates for a minute.  They're actually pretty reasonable for the chance to run a faery-tale based game of DCC in a freaking castle!

Casa Loma closed at the end of October, and reopens in May.  The prices are reasonable.  By that time, FT 0, FT 1, FT 2....maybe even as far as FT 5 should be out.  

Now, I don't know how fast we could burn through those modules in a single game date, but it would be as cool as hell to try.

The Austin Room is $250 plus taxes, which should mean $285, and seats 8 people.  Just under $36 a head, including the judge.  If there are enough people interested by the spring to do this, I will contact Casa Loma and make the arrangements.

During breaks, or between adventures, folks could wander into the secret passages and down the tunnel, or climb up a tower.

It would be awesome!

Playtesters Wanted!

I have some upcoming materials that I need some help getting playtested.

The first up is CE 5:  Silent Nightfall, appropriate for 2nd level characters (although usable at a much wider range).  I can send you the materials now, if you can get me a list of playtesters and some feedback no later than the 11th of November.  

Next up is a Mystery Project, which I hope to have ready for playtest no later than the 6th, but which I will need feedback on by the 14th.  This is the same project which was mentioned on Spellburn.

After this, I expect FT 1:  Creeping Beauties of the Wood to require playtesting.  

And there is more coming, so if you want some playtest credits, email me at ravencrowking at hotmail dot com.

Thanks!

The Most Wonderful Day of the Year

Posted by "Loozrboy" under Creative Commons 2.0

Halloween is my favourite day of the year.  Better than my birthday (especially as I get older!).  Better than Christmas.  Better than many other days of the year where I actually get the day off.  It is not the costumes (although those are fun).  It is not even the candy.  It is that Halloween is the last holiday we have that actually builds community.

Think about it.

In the old days, every holiday was a reason to greet your neighbours and mingle with those you might not otherwise see.  Carolling and wassailing meant going door-to-door.  You might even exchange gifts.  Easter meant egg hunts in public spaces.  We still have parades, but in most communities parades are more spectator sport than interactive event.

So, feel good about throwing yourself into the holiday.  Dress up when you take your kids trick-or-treating.  Make your house spook central.  And be glad that we still have one day to build community, because most of the social forces in our current culture are more interested in tearing community down.

(Oh, and, November 1st?  Happy Birthday, Mom!)

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

I hadn’t intended to make any profit on Prince Charming, Reanimator, but Mark Gedak at Purple Duck Games has offered a share on the profits (if any) now that it has broken even.  First off, he was willing to put out a product that you can get free to help me, and to do so with a professional finish.  Secondly, he was willing to pay all the costs thereof out of pocket until he hit the break-even point with Pay What You Want (and there was no guarantee that anyone was going to pay anything!).  Third, after hitting that point, he wanted to reimburse me for making a product that I had originally made to help someone else get word about their own project out.

To Mark Gedak, Luigi Catellani, Kristian Richards, Perry Fehr, Jon Marr, and all the playtesters – You Rock Mightily!

Finally, if you are not aware of it yet, Scott Mathis’ Transylvanian Adventureshas hit RPG Now as a pdf.  Well worth checking out, and very seasonally appropriate!

Spellburn Extras

Drop by the Spellburn website to pick up two extra denizens – the Demon of the Sands and the Giant Ambush Bug.  

Jim Wampler did the excellent art on this one.

Prince Charming, Reanimator!

Call it "Charles Perrault meets H.P. Lovecraft by way of Jack Vance" and you won't be too far off the mark.

Prince Charming, Reanimator, is now available as a free pdf at RPG Now.  You can choose to Pay What You Want, which will reward Purple Duck maestro Mark Gedak for the excellent art, cartography, and the work of formatting and assembling the product.  I make nothing either way, but Mark really does deserve a lot of credit for making this so cool.  Also, he paid the artist and cartographer out of pocket!

A POD version will be coming in the not-too-distant future.

Prince Hubert Charming, son of the Baron of Westlake, and heir to Westlake Manor, is well known as a cold man, whose watery blue eyes seem to betray no emotion at all. Yet he is a great lover of beauty, as all his wives have proven. The first he found working in the cinders of a woodsman’s cottage. Some say that the girl’s jealous stepsisters threw her down a well to prevent her from becoming the young prince’s bride, but even death did not bar Prince Charming, and she enchanted everyone at the wedding. Her stepsisters were placed in spiked barrels filled with hot coals and dragged through the town until they themselves died.

Whatever process Prince Charming used to revive his bride, it did not last forever. All too soon, the Princess Ella took ill and died.

Charming then found another bride, and there was no doubt in this case that she was dead. She was entombed in a glass coffin guarded by half a dozen or so dwarves. Yet,
when Prince Charming injected his magic elixir and kissed her upon the lips, her eyelids fluttered open and she breathed again! The story was told that the new Princess had been in but a deep coma, a sham of death, until a poisoned apple was dislodged by the Prince’s kiss. But folk began to whisper in dread, and none were surprised when it was announced that Princess Snow, like Princess Ella, succumbed to a fatal illness after only a few years of marital bliss.

In all kingdoms there are tales, and in the Barony of Westlake, it is said that the Grimmswood hides the ruins of a long-lost realm. The daughter of its final king, cursed by a malevolent faerie, pricked her finger on a spindle upon her sixteenth birthday, in the blossom of her youth, and died. With her death, the kingdom went to ruin. Few now dare to go far into the Grimmswood, although the riches of the lost kingdom are said to lie unclaimed within. Fear of dark fey magic and even greater evils keep men out.

Or they did so until now. For Prince Hubert Charming of Westlake has determined that the long-dead Princess Beauty is only cursed to sleep away the aeons, and he will have her for his bride. His men rounded up a stable of “volunteers” at the beginning of one early autumn morning, and here you are, with what makeshift arms and equipment you had upon you when you were “volunteered”.

Your mission, the Prince’s Bailiff explains, is to enter the ruined castle, find the place where the “Sleeping” Beauty lies, and bring her forth for Prince Charming to restore with a kiss. Those who choose not to go upon this quest must take their chances with the Prince’s Guard, twenty men strong, and be declared outlaw. Those who choose to hazard their lives within the ruined castle may keep what they find, apart from the sleeping princess, but dare not leave without her.

How Did We Get Here

This product comes about due to the confluence of several factors.

First, I had planned to do a series of fairy tale-based adventures for the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, titled Faerie Tales from Unlit Shores. The idea was to combine classic fairy tales with one or more strong Appendix N influences, to create something that accentuated the folkloric (and often dark) fey elements of the original tale and the adventurous energy of Appendix N fiction.

Second, my good friend Raechel Henderson, who was the first person to ever pay me for a piece of writing, had a Kickstarter project that was moving slowly. I asked my readers to help spread the word about Raechel’s project, in return for which I would write a free adventure. The adventure you are now reading is that free adventure. Her project, Spellbound and Spindles, is related to fairy tales too, making this a perfect tribute to those who contributed either with dollars or links. More information on her project can be found at http://eggplantproductions.com/spellbound-and-spindles/.

Finally, Mark Gedak of Purple Duck Games not only agreed to publish the follow up series of fairy talebased adventures, but also to publish the free adventure  professionally. You will be seeing at least five more adventure in this series, creating a full arc from 0-level to level 5. If they are popular, I (or others working with Purple Duck Games) might do more.

I hope you like them.

Back from the Trinity College Book Sale!

Trinity College's annual book sale is on until October 28th.

I've just come back, after having grabbed a bunch of works by the authors mentioned in Appendix N, as well as a few other works of interest.

For my collection of Appendix N authors, I managed to pick up:

Fantasy, by Poul Anderson
Image of the Beast by Philip José Farmer

Two Hawks from Earth by Philip José Farmer

The Champion of Garathorm by Michael Moorcock
The Dragon in the Sword by Michael Moorcock
Spell of the Witch World by Andre Norton
Swords Against Darkness IV, edited by Andrew J. Offutt
John the Balladeer by Manly Wade Wellman
Roadmarks by Roger Zelazny

Although I didn't grab them (having already purchased copies), deCamp's Lest Darkness Fall and Zelazny's Jack of Shadows were both there in the fantasy and science fiction section.  The first was marked at $2, and the second was a hardcover but probably not more than $5.  If you live in the Toronto area, and  you are interested in grabbing these books, I wish you the best of luck.  I am not sure how long they will be there.

There was also a copy of Philip José Farmer's The Wind-Whales of Ishmael, which is worth grabbing if you can get it.

Not Appendix N, but interesting/useful, I picked up:

Life in the Medieval University by R. S. Rait
The Medieval Castle by M. E. Reeves
Medieval Women by Eileen Power
Njal's Saga, Penguin Classics edition
Hecate's Cauldron, edited by Susan M. Schwartz
The Stone Book by Alan Garner

Overall, I spend under $40 Canadian to obtain all of these titles, and I am pretty happy with my purchases.  If you happen to live in Toronto, again, it is well worth your time to check it out.

Some Thoughts on the DCC Campaign Length

To answer a question posed on the Goodman Games forums, I did some calculation about how long it would take a group of PCs to go from 1^st to 10^th level.  If the average encounter per adventure is 2 XP, and the average adventure has 14 encounters which the PCs engage in/get XP for, then you can assume

1 adventure (28 XP vs 10 XP needed) = level 1.

2 adventures (56 XP vs 50 XP needed) = level 2.

4 adventures (112 XP vs 110 XP needed) = level 3.

7 adventures (196 XP vs 190 XP needed) = level 4.

11 adventures (308 XP vs 290 XP needed) = level 5.

15 adventures (420 XP vs 410 XP needed) = level 6.

20 adventures (560 XP vs 550 XP needed) = level 7.

26 adventures (728 vs 710 XP needed) = level 8.

32 adventures (896 vs 890 XP needed) = level 9.

39 adventures (1092 vs 1090 XP needed) = level 10.

The foregoing assumes, though, an average rate of XP per adventure, which may not be the case, and does not take setbacks such as character death or XP-draining un-dead into account. Adjusting XP given will produce faster or slower rates of advancement. Shorter adventures may not count for a full adventure using the foregoing formula. Your Mileage May Vary.

Now, to make things even more interesting, my group averages 3-4 sessions to complete an adventure.  In this case, if we assume that some 40+ adventures is about right (as you want the PCs to have at least one adventure with their cool new 10^th level characters!), with my group one would expect 120 to 160 sessions, if all things were equal, to reach such an exalted level.  Averaging one session per week would result in a period of just over two and a half years of play.

If one instead assumes a sandbox, one cannot assume that, especially as the characters grow in power, they will be equally challenged by every encounter.  In fact, some higher-level adventures may offer a paucity of XP-earning encounters in exchange for either a shorter play time or other tangible rewards (such as the world not ending).

In my experience, though, DCC campaigns (much like AD&D campaigns in a sandbox-type setting) are not about single heroes going from Point A to Point Z with no stops in-between.  In actual play, I have found that most players prefer to have multiple characters active within the setting, each of which has his or her own agenda.  In this way, my home DCC campaign consists of characters which have reached up to 3^rd level legitimately, plus a spattering of higher-level characters initially created for playtests under the agreement that they would then be usable in the gameworld.

The result is a system robust enough to show progression, but with a progression that demonstrably slows once the characters gain a bit of oomph.  In my experience, this allows game play to recall the adventures of Appendix N characters, which are often in the same power range with regards to their own worlds – powerful enough to make a difference, but not so powerful that they cannot be hurt.  To me, this is very satisfying.