Conversion Crawl Classes 18: MERP: Moria

Moria is not the earliest example of a megadungeon in Appendix N literature. It is not even the earliest example in J.R.R. Tolkien’s work – the goblin tunnels in the Misty Mountains certainly qualifies, and the dwarven hold beneath the Lonely Mountain arguably does as well, both from The Hobbit. Nevertheless, Moria is probably the best known. When gamers think of megadungeons, the Fellowship’s days-long check through the fastness of Moria probably comes to mind.

Because good depictions of demihuman strongholds are rare, the discerning judge may well wish to use this product to reproduce the dwarven kingdom of Khazad-Dûm before its fall. However, I am going to assume that the judge is interested in Moria in its later state, ruined and deserted by dwarves…and ripe for adventure. I have already talked about converting MERP in this post, so I am going to shift focus here. As with Palace of the Silver Princess, I am going to provide a number of creature statblocks, but I am also going to look at some of the other materials which have gone into this product.

Things That Heal and Harm

In The Lord of the Rings, much is made of athelas, and with it the healing power of herbs and herb-lore in general. The writers of MERP clearly took that to heart, and expanded on it considerably. On page 8 of Moria, there is a section on growing things that might either heal or poison you to be found in the vicinity.  Since your PCs might actually have “herbalist” or “dwarven mushroom farmer” as an occupation, it might be useful to convert some of this material.

For the first example, we will look at “lothfelag”, which has both a healing and a toxic effect. Name, form/prep, and cost require little adjustment. In the case of prep, you may wish to assign a DC based on Intelligence, remembering that those with unrelated occupations roll 1d10 instead of 1d20. Failure by 5 or more indicates that the ingredients are ruined.

Looking at “Codes” we see that lothfelag is “t-U-7W”.  So, the flowers are found in temperate underground regions and is extremely hard to find (-30%). Lothfelag is found on the western part of the continent, if that matters to the judge (for example, if you are using ICE’s version of Middle Earth as a setting rather than filing the serial numbers off and presenting Moria under a different name). Because we don’t want to look anything up in the rulebook, we need to set a period for the search (say, over the course of 1 day) and a DC. If we assume a base DC of 10, we could set this at DC 16 (30 divided by 5 + base 10). The judge could also place the herb in specific locations.

Effects-wise, we have this as an herb:

Cave-flowers will preserve and protect a wounded Dwarf for up to seven months in a “Lifekept” state and will give life (as “Lifegiving”) to a Dwarf who has died within the preceding seven hours. Others who eat the enchanted flowers will immediately be relieved from any effects from concussion hits or stunning blows. Proper preparation requires removal of toxic resin (see Poisons below).

And the toxic effects are:

(Lvl 1) Victims failing by 01-50 fall into fall into an unwaking sleep for 1-10 hours. RR failure of 51+ results in a coma for 1-7 months.

Putting this together in DCC terms, we can say:

Lothfelag (Int DC 16/day to find 1d5 doses; Int DC 16 plus successful Handle Poison check to properly brew; Handle Poison check to prepare as poison); 1d20+10 rounds preparation): When a properly prepared dose I administered to a dwarf, this brew prevents ongoing damage for 1d7 months, although the dwarf has a -2 penalty to Initiative during this time. Administered to a dwarf who has died within the last seven hours allows another chance to recover the body, even if the dwarf is 0-level. All recipients (including dwarves) gain 1 HD of healing, up to ½ damage taken.

As a toxin, Fort DC 10 or fall into asleep for 1d10 hours (cannot be wakened without magic). Failure by 5 or more results in a coma for 1d7 months.

This isn’t exactly the same as the MERP version, but it is playable in DCC terms and doesn’t require looking at the MERP core rules to do the conversion.

Special Minerals

Dwarves mine, and Moria was famous for its mithral deposits. On page 34, Moria offers a table for game effects related to various substances mined here. I would largely ignore this, giving some weapons instead the ability to avoid breaking from fumbles or crits if they are made from special metals. Likewise, a sword made from tin might have a -2d penalty to attack rolls and damage, breaking on any natural “1” or “20”.

Traps

Pages 46-47 describe traps that can be found in the ruins of the dwarven city. Luckily, the DCC core rulebook offers some help in converting these traps, because the thief skills include sample DCs.

Detection Difficulty: Using the Find Trap skill, “Medium” difficulty is DC 10. “Hard” is DC 15. “Very Hard” is DC 20. “Ext. Hard” is DC 25.

Disarming Difficulty: Using the Disable Trap skill, with the same DCs. “Light” is DC 5. Remember that a natural “1” triggers the trap.

Avoidance Difficulty: This helps determine the DC for any save to avoid the effects of a trap. In the case of “Dart Traps”, it is better to make these act as attack rolls. Seven darts with +10 to hit (+75 in the text would be +15 if you are feeling cruel).

Effect: To convert these effects, you need to apply common sense. In DCC, falls do 1d6 damage per 10’ fallen, with each “6” indicating a broken bone. If there are spikes in a pit, the judge could offer a save to avoid falling on (say) 1d7-1 spikes, each of which causes 1d4 or 1d6 damage. Spike traps, as described in the text, might cause 3d6 damage with a save for half. Steam traps could cause an additional 1d6 damage, plus 1d6 per round until the PC escapes. Wheel traps can be set at 5d10 damage with a successful DC 20 Fort save, or death on a failure.

Some Statistics

I am not providing statistics for giant bats, orcs, goblins, or other creatures which could easily be extrapolated or taken directly from the DCC core rulebook. I will strongly suggest that, unless the judge’s goal is to set play in Middle Earth, they follow the advice to Make Monsters Mysterious.

Chamber Bird Swarm: Init +5; Atk swarming bite +3 melee (1d4); AC 12; HD 4d12; MV fly 40’; Act special; SP Attack all creatures in 20’ x 20’ area, swarm (½ damage from non-area attacks), echolocation; SV Fort +2, Ref +10, Will -2; AL N; Crit M/1d8. For additional thoughts on crits from swarms, see this post.

Cave Bear: Init +3; Atk claw +5 melee (1d4+5) or bite +3 melee (1d6+5); AC 18; HD 8d8+16; MV 40’; Act 2d20; SP Maul (if both claws hit the same opponent, free bite attack); SV Fort +8, Ref +2, Will +5; AL N; Crit M/1d4.

Death Shrew: Init +2; Atk bite +4 melee (disease); AC 24; HD 1 hp; MV 20’; Act 1d16; SP Disease (Blue Hand, Fort DC 10 or 1d3-1 Agility damage per day, blue skin discoloration, boils, bleeding ears and nose); SV Fort -4, Ref +10, Will +0; AL N; Crit n/a. Blue Hand doesn’t result in death, but can lead to permanent paralysis. Agility damage heals normally, but if the disease isn’t removed natural healing can only delay, not overcome, the long-term effects.

Red Jaw: Init +3; Atk bite +1 melee (1d4); AC 16; HD 2d6; MV swim 50’; Act 1d20; SP Light-producing organs make surprise virtually impossible; SV Fort +0, Ref +3, Will -2; AL C; Crit M/1d8.

The Balrog

I suppose we cannot take out leave of Moria without encountering the balrog. The Fellowship of the Ring certainly could not. And here we have to accept that MERP and DCC are very different beasts. Within the context of DCC, the balrog can be seen as a Type VI demon, which will certainly color our conversion.

Init: MERP stats include Ag: 99, which I think translates to a 17 Agility (+2 bonus). A random Type 6 demon I created at Purple Sorcerer has a +12 bonus to Initiative. Nothing in the text of The Lord of the Rings suggests to me that the balrog was superfast, so I am willing to give it a mere +8 bonus to Initiative.

Atk: The balrog attacks with a sword and a whip. MERP adds a spear and a thrown rock, but I don’t think that this is necessary. We will definitely add a claw attack if the creature is disarmed. The random stats were +21 to hit with 1d6+6 damage. I am going to raise the sword to 1d10+6 damage (in line with a two-handed sword, which the balrog uses one-handed). Claw damage can be 1d6+6, but we can reduce the attack bonus to +18 to make disarming the thing meaningful.

AC: DB 60 is presumably a Defensive Bonus equivalent to +12. Our random demon is AC 24. I will make the creature AC 24.

HD: Our random demon has 15d12 hp, which seems adequate to me, but the MERP version has 420 hits. I am therefore tempted to raise my balrog to 18d12 hit points. After all, this is a creature which strikes absolute terror into those who encounter it.

MV: The balrog is huge, and our random demon has a move of 40’, so we can use that. The balrog can also fly (we will say 60’), but has special rules to this movement which we will convert from MERP.

Act: Our random demon has 4d20, but the balrog in the novel and MERP should probably have 2d20 (one for his sword and one for his whip).

SP: In addition to standard traits for a Type VI demon, we want to include some special abilities taken from MERP’s version of the balrog:

Clumsy Flight: The balrog can only move 10’ on his first round of flight, 20’ on his second, 30’ on the third, and only reaches full flight speed on the fourth round.

Immolation: The balrog can sheath himself and his weapons in fire at will, doing +1d6 damage per attack, and doing an automatic 1d6 damage per round to any creature engaged in melee with him. Complete submersion ends and prevents further use of this ability for 3d6 hours.

Presence: Upon sighting the balrog, all creatures must succeed in a DC 20 Will save or lose their next action. If they fail by 5 or more, they are unable to act for 1d6 rounds.

We are also going to add:

Entwine: When he hits with his whip, the balrog may entwine the lashes around a foe, pulling him up to 10’ each round unless they succeed in an opposed Strength check vs. +6. An opponent may escape with a DC 20 Agility check (requiring an action) or a Mighty Deed of 6+.

In The Lord of the Rings, we never see the balrog cast a spell, but it does oppose Gandalf when he is trying to hold a door shut magically (casting ward portal in DCC terms). So we can add another power:

Counterspell: The balrog can engage in spell duels with a +15 bonus to his spell check, but is limited to casting dispel magic for this purpose, which has no effect other than cancelling an opposing spell.

We are also going to want to remove the standard projection power. Although we are using a Type VI Demon as a basis, this power makes no sense for the balrog.

SV: We can just take this from our sample demon: SV Fort +16, Ref +14, Will +17.

AL: Creatures of Morgoth, including the balrog, are Chaotic.

Crit: Following the table on page 385 of the core rulebook, we get a result of DN/1d20.

Put altogether, our balrog becomes:

Balrog (Type VI Demon of Morgoth): Init +8; Atk two-handed sword +21 melee (1d10+6) or whip +21 melee (1d6+6 plus entwine), or claw +18 melee (1d6+6); AC 24; HD 15d12; MV 40’ or fly 60’ (special); Act 2d20; SP Demon traits, entwine, presence, immolation, counterspell, clumsy flight; SV Fort +16, Ref +14, Will +17; AL C; Crit DN/1d20.

Demon Traits: Telepathy, infravision, cast darkness (+20 to spell check). Immunities (weapons of less than +4 enchantment,natural attacks from creatures of 9 HD or less, fire, cold, electricity, gas, and acid), crit range 16-20.

Entwine: When he hits with his whip, the balrog may entwine the lashes around a foe, pulling him up to 10’ each round unless they succeed in an opposed Strength check vs. +6. An opponent may escape with a DC 20 Agility check (requiring an action) or a Mighty Deed of 6+.

Presence: Upon sighting the balrog, all creatures must succeed in a DC 20 Will save or lose their next action. If they fail by 5 or more, they are unable to act for 1d6 rounds.

Immolation: The balrog can sheath himself and his weapons in fire at will, doing +1d6 damage per attack, and doing an automatic 1d6 damage per round to any creature engaged in melee with him. Complete submersion ends and prevents further use of this ability for 3d6 hours.

Counterspell: The balrog can engage in spell duels with a +15 bonus to his spell check, but is limited to casting dispel magic for this purpose, which has no effect other than cancelling an opposing spell.

Clumsy Flight: The balrog can only move 10’ on his first round of flight, 20’ on his second, 30’ on the third, and only reaches full flight speed on the fourth round.

Conclusion (With Apologies to Laura Branigan)

 

You really don't remember

Do we just turn left or right?

Wandering in eternal night, Moria

Moria, now Gandalf's fallen

If the balrog wants you

At least the orcs are stalling

You don't have to fight them

Gandalf said to fly fools fly

Oh-oh, down in Moria

 

Moria (Moria)

I think your wizard's spent now (Moria)

I think those orcs are coming (Moria)

And they have your scent now (Moria)

You really don't remember

Do we just turn left or right?

Wandering where it's always night, Moria

 

Next: The One Ring: Tales From Wilderland (1): Don't Leave the Path

Interview with Venger Satanis

Today we are sitting down with controversial rpg writer Venger Satanis about his newest release, Cha’alt and a few older releases. And yes, there is some talk about politics because our politics are pretty different and these days it has to be done. 

RCK:  So, before we talk about your latest project, there are a few things we should get out of the way. In some circles, you have a reputation for being…shall we say somewhat bombastic?

VS: Yes, I am outspoken and not shy about sharing my opinions… occasionally with dramatic flair. 

RCK: There is nothing wrong with a bit of drama. When running games, for instance, I reserve my biggest d20 for the baddest monsters. Also, nothing wrong with sharing opinions, so long as you have an open mind.

VS: I do try to have an open mind.  But I’m also at an age where no one can convince me that water isn’t wet, overly complex RPGs are more fun than simple ones, or that Socialism is worth trying one more time.

RCK: I’m in my 50s, and I am not old enough to remember FDR. Or to remember socialism in the United States, or anywhere in the world that the United States didn’t actively work against. I do know that socialist programs in the US include the military, public roads, schools, libraries, fire departments, and other things which I have benefitted from. I’ve worked for both the US Military (Legal Specialist) and the US Census Bureau (various positions, eventually the Finance department in Los Angeles). I’m not old enough not to have my mind changed, if the evidence points in a different direction. For instance, experiencing both the US and the Canadian health care systems, I know that the Canadian system is considerably better.

VS: In the United States, I’d call those social programs.  There are things that everyone in the country can use collectively, that we all have in common, such as roads and the military.  I just don’t want the government controlling companies or redistributing wealth or giving away free stuff and then taxing the middle and upper classes to the point where the rich (or their money) flee to the Cayman Islands.  I prefer freedom.

In the words of Joe Biden in the Democratic debate that just happened a couple days ago, “This is America.”  While our health care system is far from perfect, I’d rather have a procedure done here, where I know it’s going to be fast and performed by the best doctors with cutting-edge medical technology. 

Also, (I just Googled this) Canada’s population is approximately 35 million, and the population of the United States is about 290 million more than that.  Population makes a difference.

RCK: Well, you can do the research. American prices are substantially higher than in other parts of the world, and outcomes are generally worse. American exceptionalism isn’t supposed to mean that every other modern country can do it except America. And I certainly am no fan of Joe Biden!

But, ultimately, we can agree to disagree about this. I don’t expect to convince you in an interview about gaming.

I’ve seen at least one YouTube video you did where you drop the persona. You’re responding to criticism that one of your games isn’t OSR, which I’ll get to in the next question. You seem very relatable in that video, and here. I guess there is a balancing act deciding when to “put on the motley”?

VS: There isn’t that big a difference between the regular old me and Venger Satanis.  The latter can be larger than life, but so can the former.  I’m both relatable and a geeky weirdo, just depends on how far past the surface you want to go.

RCK: You are the person behind Alpha Blue as well. That, and some racy imagery in other products, contributes to a reputation as your being sort of a “soft porn” peddler. I’d like to ask you, first, how do you respond to that, and second, how prominently does sexual content feature in a game of Alpha Blue when you run it? Where do you fade to black?

VS: Ah, yes… Alpha Blue.  It’s one of the things I’m best known for and most proud of, but it also carries a stigma.  Alpha Blue triggers a lot of people.  20 years ago, it would have been the far-right that took offense to eroticism, sleaze, and soft-core porn in RPGs.  But now it’s the puritanical leftist types that condemn it because there aren’t any kid-friendly drag shows or power-bottom bear and twink action explicitly called out in examples. 

RCK: I’d just like to clarify that you are not using those terms in a derogatory manner.

VS: Correct, I wasn’t being derogatory with the gay slang I learned from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia.  But several gamers who’ve denounced Alpha Blue have done so because it’s not specifically LBGTQ+ enough.  If they actually wanted Alpha Blue to include more of that stuff, then ask me about licensing your adventure or something, don’t just pitch a fit and crap all over my game.

On the other hand, I would like to go out of my way to denounce and oppose activities that combine kids with drag queens.  I have no problem with any sexual activity between consenting adults.  But I’m totally against pedophilia, the sexualization of children, and normalizing deviant sexual behavior by exposing kids to it at an impressionable age. 

Even “normal” sexual behavior should be kept away from children.  I’m not going to sit my kids down in front of a movie that’s graphically showing missionary sex between a man and a woman.  They’re kids!

RCK: I’m not sure how old you are, but I’m old enough to remember All in the Family in a fond way. All of the characters were flawed, but we loved them all despite that. Archie Bunker gave us a window into understanding bigotry, and it also gave us a window into how Archie could change for the better.

VS: I’ll be 45 in November, born the same year as D&D.  I’ve seen a few episodes of All in the Family, and I remember watching a lot of Gilligan’s Island and Bewitched as a kid, along with all the Saturday morning shows like Dungeons & Dragons, Thundarr, Scooby Doo, He-Man, G.I. Joe, Transformers, and Land of the Lost.

RCK: Sleestaks for the win! I watched a lot of those same shows, although G.I. Joe and Transformers never really caught my interest.

I don’t know where you stand politically, apart from the issue of health care, but I am somewhat to the Left of Bernie Sanders. We now live in an area where censoring people seems to belong to the “Left”. Which is weird, if you think about it. It’s like saying book burning is a progressive ideal.  It also leads to people self-censoring in case someone thinks that a person you talk to might be toxic, or some observation might be demonized. I think this has a tendency to create an echo chamber where everyone who is not “like us” is viewed as some kind of monster.

VS: Wait, to the “left” of Bernie Sanders?  What’s more leftist than an old school communist?  Pure anarchy?

RCK: The US political system has moved very far to the Right. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Sanders is pretty moderate. From a historical perspective, Sanders is a Centrist. Most of the people who claim to be Centrists – including most modern Democrats – would have been considered Right Wing in the 70s.

VS: And 70’s Democrats would be called alt-right white supremacists by today’s standards. 

RCK: Not sure I can agree with that. Certainly racism was a lot more prevalent in the 70s than it is today.  Or, more prevalent in the mainstream.

VS: The US has always been to the right, though right and left are relative terms.  The world has a lot of problems.  Even though America isn’t perfect, I believe it’s still the greatest country in the world. 

Bernie is only calling it “Democratic Socialism” because he knows that half his base would leave if he actually went full-throttle Communist before getting elected President.  Some prominent lefties have stated that Socialism is just progress towards Communism.  Only a matter of time, slippery slope, and all that.

RCK: Hard disagreement there. There is a pretty big difference between what Sanders is talking about and what the media portrays it as.

VS: I think the vast majority are fed up with “cancel culture.”  Those types of witch hunts, demonetizing, deplatforming, online outrage, endless protests, and boycotts are toxic.  I think they’re making everything worse.  But it’s a minority of keyboard warriors perpetrating all this nonsense…  the media, Antifa, radical politicians, activists, and left-leaning twitter people following a trend.

RCK: There we can agree, at least to a degree. That kind of thinking is itself toxic. It harms our ability to understand (and thereby influence) movements in the hobby and the world. It makes us weaker as a group. And it poisons us as individuals. That’s not really “Left”. That’s fascism creeping into the Left. But anti-fascism is not itself a problem, and following Twitter trends is a problem regardless of which "side" you are on.

VS: I don’t think fascism is restricted to any political group.  Human beings are both good and bad.  Sometimes, the bad outweighs the good.  Doesn’t matter if its left or right.  Authoritarianism is destructive to a free society.  Too tight a grip and the people are strangled, too loose and there’s disarray.  I find the same philosophy goes for Game Mastering.

RCK: Which seems reasonable to me. I find the PoliticalCompass model useful, which uses a Left/Right and an Authoritarian/Libertarian axis.

VS: Under normal circumstances, I’d be in the middle.  But I feel the left has gone too far over the edge, and that has forced me further right.

RCK: Well, suffice to say that there are a lot of places where we disagree on the political front. And it is hard to escape talking politics these days.

VS: Sorry for the tangent.

RCK: Not a problem.  I tend to think we are all better off if we talk about these things, even with people we disagree with. Maybe especially when we disagree!

VS: Back to Alpha Blue… sex sells, controversy sells, and every so often good writing/design sells, too.  I love sex, exploitation movies, comedy, and sci-fi.  So, why not put them all together?  If that makes me a porn peddler, then fine by me.  About 15 years ago, I very nearly almost became a porn producer.  Like actual porn films.  Went to a weekend seminar to learn how and everything.  Thought I might get to meet Ron Jeremy, too, but unfortunately that didn’t happen.

Yes, sexual content of some kind almost always features in my Alpha Blue games.  Even if it’s a one-hour demo, I try to include something.  Maybe I’ll dangle a tantalizing cocktail waitress in front of the players or they’ll walk into an area of the space station where there’s a two-way mirror looking into the girls’ locker room.  Stuff you’d see in Porky’s, Police Academy, or Revenge of the Nerds, except it’s also science-fiction.

While I don’t detail every thrust and moan, it’s clear what’s going on.  There’s a beginning, middle, and end.  No fading to black.  Could be something like… you start rubbing WD-40 all over the sex-bot’s metallic body.  She’s getting turned on and opens her legs.  What are you doing?

Player: I want to start banging!

Ok, you penetrate her inviting soft-circuits.  You’re giving it to her good, it looks like she’s about to blow a gasket.  Eventually, you finish on her… [rolls dice]

RCK: To each his own.  I once had a player who wanted to make a “serious” D&D game about how his penis was like an elephant’s trunk. The game didn’t last that long.

VS: I can see where that might be an element of a D&D game, but the whole game?  Even something we can all agree on – like a dragon – how can the entire game be only about this dragon?  It needs other things.  I love hamburger, too, but an entire bowl of just cooked hamburger is hardly a satisfying meal.

RCK: He did, literally, want to keep bringing it up. Pun intended. It was an urban campaign, and the party couldn’t enter a bar without his describing how his dick grabbed peanuts from the bar.

VS: While I enjoy a good running gag, such things have their time and place.  Alpha Blue is that time and place, but probably not your everyday D&D campaign. 

RCK: I guess it makes a difference whether or not everyone at the table is into it.

VS: Right, we all have expectations.  That’s why there’s different games, each with their own flavor.

RCK: Last but not least – you exploded onto the scene around the same time I did, with the publication of Dungeon Crawl Classics. I can imagine that the material you were producing then didn’t hit the “family friendly” requirement for the DCC RPG logo. Can you tell us a little bit about your early experiences with the DCC community, as well as why and how you decided to go your own way?

VS: Yes, Dungeon Crawl Classics got me excited about the OSR and going back to old school gaming.  Up until then, it just seemed… kind of weird or crazy to just pick up the gaming materials we had from the early 80’s and start a campaign.

Mind you, I actually did run a Mentzer red box one-off way back in 1999 with some of my college buddies.  It was fun, but I don’t think anyone considered carrying on with it.  I guess we were playing it ironically, sort of.  But then I was a dumb-dumb in my mid-twenties and simply thought that new was always better… but it isn’t.  Progressive doesn’t equal progress. 

RCK: Not always, no.

VS: So, the OSR was a paradigm shift – a reaction to modern gaming culture ushered in by 3^rd and 4^th edition.  While DCC helped bridge the gap back to old school fundamentals, that game definitely has its own vibe.  Some stuff I like, but there are things I don’t care for.  And with hundreds of choices, plus the ability to craft your very own house-rules, I just didn’t see the need to follow DCC that closely.

RCK: Okay. That’s a lot of background out of the way! Now we can talk about Cha’alt.

I’m not certain if I am looking at something designed for use with a more typical fantasy rpg or something like Stars Without Number. There aren’t just science fiction elements in here – the setting is connected to other worlds. Where were you going with this, when you wrote it?

VS: It's supposed to be a hybrid of post-apocalyptic fantasy (like Dark Sun) and Stars Without Number, White Star, Star Wars, etc.  I re-use a lot of the same concepts when creating a new adventure or setting.  I’m never going to stop including tentacles, dark gods, evil sorcerers, crashed starships, robots, lasers, civilizations in ruin, and the like. 

If you like that about my stuff, great!  You get to see more of it in various shades, warped here and there so it’s fresh.  Another benefit is that most things connect, more or less.  You could use The Islands of Purple-Haunted Putrescence and Liberation of the Demon Slayer with Cha’alt.  Or you could include elements in Cha’alt with Gamma Turquoise: Santa Fe Starport or Dead God Excavation.  Sky’s the limit!

RCK: The pdf includes Crimson Dragon Slayer, but the writing allows for almost any system to be used.

VS: Definitely.  I personally could use Cha’alt with every version of D&D or retro-clone, and pretty much any traditional rules-light system. 

The latest incarnation of Crimson Dragon Slayer focuses on a D20 hybrid between OSR and 5^th edition, which I like to call O5R.  That’s what I use running virtual games on Roll20.  It lets us actually play a 60- or 90-minute game and get pretty far.  If I worried about character sheets and all the rules, we’d never get past the very first encounter! 

Plus, I like GMing for noobs.  They respond well to minimal, basic systems without all the fiddly bits.  Crimson Dragon Slayer D20 is a good fit for me, and that’s what counts.

RCK: Absolutely.

I have to ask you – Gamma Incel Cantina? What’s that about?

VS: Prince of Nothing, who consulted on Cha’alt, reviewed Alpha Blue and we were joking back and forth in the comments.  He said gamma incel something or other and it made me laugh.  I needed a name for the Mos Eisley cantina rip-off in Cha’alt, and decided to name it Gamma Incel Cantina. 

Personally, I think “incel” is kind of a dumb insult.  Just me sitting here in my chair at my desk, I’m rather involuntarily celibate.  If I had my way, I’d be having sex right now.  Alas, that’s not my day job.

RCK: I guess this interview isn’t as stimulating as you’d like?

VS: Well, even if I was having sex three times a day, I’d still need to take breaks.  I do enjoy a good interview, such as this one, so can’t really complain.

RCK: Good to hear. My understanding is that “incel” isn’t meant to imply that you aren’t having sex right now. It’s supposed to be both that you aren’t able to get a sexual partner, and that you are blaming the other (or same?) gender because they don’t find you attractive. A combination of self-sabotage combined with an unwillingness to recognize your own responsibility.

VS: Well, I’m married… so my options are rather limited.

RCK: It does get thrown around as an ad hominem pretty frequently when certain people encounter arguments that they aren’t ready to counter. Not unlike the idea that anyone who refused to support Clinton must be a racist or a misogynist.

VS: Yeah. 

RCK: As you said earlier, a certain type of Authoritarian/fascism isn’t limited to the Left or the Right. But the idea that a person’s inability to get a date makes actual misogyny or rape okay is clearly wrong. As you said earlier – I strongly believe that what consenting adults do is no one else’s business.

VS: Obviously, I’m against actual rape.

RCK: I didn’t mean to imply otherwise! And now I have to apologize for pulling the discussion off on a tangent again. But I think that we can both agree that, sometimes, when dealing with controversial content it is important to make things like this clear. It is all too easy to find yourself on the wrong side of people who want to declare you a sexist, racist, or whatever. Sometimes that tar is applied with a really broad brush.

VS: Those are the times we live in.  We’re almost at a tipping point, I think. 

RCK: There we agree...we just hope that things tip in different directions. Anyway, I’m looking at the layout of Cha’alt, and I think it is fantastic. Information is easy to find, and there is a great use of text boxes and callouts. That page background, though, is going to be murder on my printer!

VS: Thanks!  Gold Ennie winner Glynn Seal did the layout and cartography.  I wanted it to be both gorgeous and easy to use.

Yes, it would be murder on your printer. 

I’m hoping everyone that likes the PDF will buy the fancy hardcover (you’ll get a discount based on the amount spent on the digital version) coming in October.  I went the way of independent boutique RPG creators and ordered a print run from Friesens, who did Maze of the Blue Medusa, Silent Titans, and a few others.  Super high quality!

RCK: There’s a lot of stuff in your Adventure Writing and Game Master books that I really like. I’ve talked about that here. When I’m running games, I also like to include the occasional dramatic flourish.

VS: Gaming should be fun.  If it’s a slog for the GM, how great can it be for the players?  Little interesting elements added to the game here and there make sessions more enjoyable. 

I ran a playtest of Cha’alt at Gary Con this past March.  It was the Beneath Kra’adumek dungeon.  I decided to use that d100 table of things the PCs have done in their past.  One result rolled at character creation literally changed the entire session.  That tiny detail went from central character motivation to running joke to the thing that saved the day at the end. 

So, the moral of that story is never game without How To Game Master Like A Fucking Boss!

RCK: Care to expand on that? What happened?

VS: From memory, one of the PCs acquired a transparent cube.  He was fascinated by it and kept coming up with possible applications, like after the dungeon he’d go into business manufacturing and selling similar transparent cubes.  In one room of the Kra’adumek dungeon, there’s a way to subtly change reality.  The cube became a sphere.  There was a lot of inter-PC chatter about the sphere and what it might mean.  Eventually, it made sense that throwing the sphere into the purple demon-worm’s mouth could destroy it.

RCK: There is something magical about gaming that surprises everyone at the table, including the GM.

VS: Yes, the surprise or even possibility of surprise heightens the experience.  If I ran the exact same scenario the exact same way every time, I’d want to quit.

RCK: I could not agree more. There are some pretty off-the-wall things in Cha’alt that I imagine would be funny in play. The “fruities” in the Black Pyramid, for instance. As a father of three myself (two are now adults), I have seen enough kids’ programming to understand wanting the PCs to dice those things into little pieces!

VS: When I’m doing “gonzo work,” I try to find that balance between “normal” and totally batshit insane.  There are some dark things, fun things, off-the-wall things… a wide variety.  I dug deep, sifting and winnowing for as many references and influences as possible.  But I like to twist things around, cross-reference. 

RCK: Why should people buy Cha’alt? Give us your elevator pitch.

VS: I usually describe Cha’alt as eldritch, gonzo, science-fantasy, and post-apocalypse.  It’s both a campaign setting + megadungeon with lots in-between.  218 pages of delectable weirdness that will bludgeon your vanilla fantasy over the head like Negan, Glenn, and that barbed-wire baseball bat. 

RCK: You do Gary Con every year, I believe, but I don’t think we’ve run into each other yet. Maybe I could get in on one of your games next year?

VS: That would be awesome! 

My convention schedule is sporadic at best.  I try to hit up both Gary Con and Game Hole Con about every other year.  Five kids is no joke!  Due to a family vacation in March, I won’t be at the next Gary Con.  However, I’m planning on being there in 2021… with tentacles!

RCK: Well, 2021 then. It was a real pleasure talking to you!

VS: Thank you!  I enjoyed it.  And thanks to everyone who takes a chance on Kort’thalis Publishing.

Toronto Crawl Classics

I have started a new blog as a home for my open Dungeon Crawl Classics game that will be starting next January. This will contain rules, characters, maps....anything that players in the game should be aware of. You can find it here.

If you are in the Toronto area and feel like playing, there will be neither cost nor commitment required. Those who show up are the party that night. Either they get to a rest stop by the end of the night's gaming, or they get to roll on some tables I will be devising to determine what happens between the curtain of one gaming session and when their characters are seen next. Basically, unless otherwise arranged, one adventurous outing = one session.



What will this game entail?

• A sandbox setting (the ruins of Toronto, which effectively contains villages, dungeons, a megadungeon or two, and wilderness areas).

• Several funnel adventures to allow PCs to be readied for the game.

• A large, known, complex for the ease of play. If you have nothing better to do, you can always attempt to raid the Dark Paths. Simply exploring Ruined Toronto is hazardous...but rewarding.

• Points of familiarity for those familiar with the Greater Toronto Area.

• Hiring Board...You can take a job, go exploring, or set your own agenda.

Who can play?

Anyone who wants to. 

Players may have multiple active PCs. On any given game night (outside the funnel), each player may choose one of his or her active PCs, if that PC is available (i.e., the PC is not off on another quest, recuperating, a prisoner, etc).

Disruptive players can be banned, but let's hope that never happens. In character Player vs. Player action is fine; out of character PVP is not. 

What do you need?

Dice.

Stuff to write on.

Any DCC material you might have will come in handy, but it isn't really needed. No published materials will be used without serious modifications, so you can own every DCC adventure available if you like. It makes no difference to me.

Toronto Crawl Classics is obviously influenced by the wonderful work of the DCC community....in particular, Crawling Under a Broken Moon and Crawljammer. Buy all the issues if you want. Read them. They may help you. They may not. At least they will be entertaining.

When will this start?

I am shooting for January 2016, although the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.

What can I do to help?

I am trying to find a public venue, preferably not too far from the Annex, to run public games in. Any help here would be great!

Ghoul Friend

In the comments to the last post, Wyatt Allworthy wrote:

Something only tangentially related to undead causing plagues that I wondered if you had any experience making work as a ref. I don’t know how it’s done in DCC, but in A/D&D you had the situation of undead like Ghouls with a paralytic touch, or Wights, etc that drained levels. These creatures could be encountered even by low level characters, in confined crypt like places, where they might have no exits to evade them. A ghoul had a speed of 9” and characters loaded down plate armor, let alone equipment and loot would be limited to a speed of 6”, as the speed of the slower members. How can a party survive something that paralyzes its lead members just by a touch, which they will almost assuredly fail their saving rolls to fight it? Only a tiny number of these ghouls would overwhelm a low level party, almost assuredly, every time they were encountered.

I know that back in the day, parties had larger numbers of players and possibly lots of hirelings and henchmen, is that the way to manage it, or is there some way to make a 6-man special forces style team of adventurers competent to handle paralytic touch undead (let alone level draining undead).

Thanks for any insights on this one, it’s a puzzle for me.

First off, low-level characters are unlikely to be loaded down with plate armour in any game that I am running.  That’s simply a matter of expenditure – plate armour is expensive, and there is not enough “spare” cash for this particular expenditure.  Loaded down with loot is a lot easier – in a question of “keep your loot or keep your life”, smart players choose to drop the loot.

I like ghouls, and I do use them at low levels.  I have been throwing ghouls at 1^st level PCs ever since reading the evocative play description in the 1^st Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide.  As a player, I have encountered ghouls at 1^st level as well.  In one memorable 2^nd Edition campaign, the DM (the esteemed Jesse Donahue) lured the party into an un-dead haunted swamp, where the easiest way to survive was to run and hide, then run and hide some more.   At the same time, I was running my megadungeon, The Dungeon of Thale, in Venice Beach, California, and there were roving ghouls on the first level.  I think they got perhaps one or two characters over a long period of play.

But, then, these characters weren’t clunking around in plate.  That heavy armour affords you one sort of protection (better AC) while denying you another (making it hard to run away) is a trade-off that makes for interesting choices.  Dungeon Crawl Classics does that one better, by making heavier armour subject to more devastating fumbles as well.

An illustration I drew based on Jesse's game

Things that I have found adjust the odds against ghouls are teamwork, good use of magic, having a cleric on hand, and having an elf or two in the party.  In DCC, you should also consider burning that Luck in order to make your saving throw, especially if you are the last PC standing.   In many games that I have run, ghouls shun sunlight, and will not willingly enter it or an area of continual light.  Having some areas that the PCs can retreat to, while leaving them with a serious problem that still needs to be solved before their own food runs out, can be fun for all concerned.

I’ve run James Raggi’s Death Frost Doom to great effect, using the DCC ruleset.  How you deal with a horde of ghouls and zombies is a major part of that adventure.  At first, the players thought the answer was “you fight them”…but that is not a very viable answer in Death Frost Doom.  Sometimes, in a good adventure, fighting should not be the best option.  Sometimes, it should be a suicidal option.

If you go poking around crypts and barrows at night, you should expect to run into the un-dead.  If it is possible, save your explorations for daylight hours.  At least that way, you may be able to retreat into the sun.  As you explore, consider how you can use the areas you have already examined to your best advantage.  Mindless creatures, especially, may be lured into traps that you discovered and bypassed.  There might be choke points where a few can hold off many.   There might be places where a barricade can hold foes so that the archers can do their work.  Never underestimate the value of a spear or a pitchfork when you can hold your opponents so that they can’t reach you.

Even so, sometimes, you have to let the dead devour your fallen so that you have a chance to get away.  And sometimes the ghouls get you.  It is completely okay to have the entire party wiped out after mere minutes exploring the Barrowmaze.  Those are the risks adventurers face.