I2TO - Never Tell Me the Odds!

... actually, wait, please DO tell me the odds!
  
Let me back up. Chris McDowall of Bastionland is writing a combined rules / setting book for running Into the Odd (I2TO) in his fictional city of Bastion.
  
In support of this setting, he's also written a truly excellent list of failed careers for starting characters. These are fantastic, and aside from the generally terse, evocative writing, there are two things about the list that stand out. First, they fully capture the mood of Bastion as a bureaucratic labyrinth full of petty middlemen, where there's no job too lowly or too demeaning that there's not somebody stuck doing it, probably with an overly self-important supervisor breathing down their neck the whole time. And second, these careers are decidedly failures. You're not just someone who failed at their job, you're someone whose job itself was a failure, your job that should never have existed in the first place. You would have been failing even if you'd done it perfectly, which was probably impossible, because the task you were given was probably misconceived from its very inception.
  
Seriously, go read his list of careers. I'll still be here when you get back.
  
Okay, so given a list of 100 careers, my inclination would be to roll a d% dice and just scroll down that master list. It's the DCC way!
  
But this is I2TO we're talking about, and one of its unique character generation mechanics is the way you generate your starting equipment / career based on your ability scores. Look at your highest ability score, then look at your lowest ability score, then look at a matrix of high and low scores and find your position. (There's also a neat trick where you roll d6 hp and d6 starting money, and each of those d6 rolls gives you a piece of equipment or a class feature that sets you apart from other characters with the same occupation , and creates a kind of balance by giving the best STUFF to the weakest, poorest characters... but although that's nifty, it's not really relevant to our current conversation.)
  
Chris shows off the failed career ability score matrix in a preview video for his new book, and I've reproduced the image below.
  

  
Which brings me back to my original question - what ARE the odds?
  
What I mean is, what are the chances of getting any one of those failed careers as your starting occupation? If you roll a d% dice on a 100-item table, it's easy - each occupation has a 1% chance, and you have exactly the same chances of getting any one of them as you do of getting any other.
  
But in I2TO it's not so easy. Because you're not equally likely, for example, to have a high score of 15 and a high score of 17, which means you're not equally likely to get careers from one row or column versus another. If you knew how likely you were to get each ability score as your highest or lowest, you could cross-multiply and fill in each of the hundred cells in the table. (You can do that with a d10 by d10 table representing a d% as well, it's just that every cell along the top and side has a 10% chance of appearing, and when you cross multiply 10% by 10% you get 1% every single time.) Unfortunately, it's also not so easy to figure out the chances that this or that will be your highest or lowest score  - even using AnyDice's "at least" and "at most" features.
  
It's so not easy, in fact, that I didn't figure it out. I asked for help, and Brian Ashford from the Ominosity blog stepped up to answer my question. (Edit: Brian had the same question I had, and got his friend Jamie Prentice to help solve the math. When I posed my question, Brian shared Jamie's answer with me.) I took the output he gave me and turned it into the table you see below. I can't independently verify that it's correct, (obviously) but basic sanity-testing shows that percentages add up to 100, and the careers that depend on the likeliest ability scores are themselves the most likely.
  
In the table below careers that are more likely have a light background and black text, and the lighter the background, the more likely you are to end up with that career. Careers that are less likely have dark backgrounds and white text, and the darker the background, the less likely the career. I used 1% as the cut-point, so the more likely careers are the ones that you'll get more often than if just you rolled d%, and the less likely careers are the ones that show up less often than they would on a d%.
  

You, uh, might want to enlarge that...

Looking at the diagram reveals at least one surprise (it surprised me, at least). I expected that Chris would make the most ordinary and prosaic careers the most common, while making the more unusual stuff rarer. And sure, as expected, you're less likely to play as "a dog" or "a brobdingnagian giant" or "literally two characters for the price of one". But on the other hand, if everyone at the table got the likeliest characters, you'd end up with a gonzo party where one character's a psychic, one's a muppet, your spellcaster is either a science mystic or the priest of an alien god, and the last character is actually a whole group of kids stacked up under a trenchcoat. Meanwhile, occupations like "grad student", "ex-con", "orphan" (just one this time), and "poor kid from the country who moved to the big city to make it big" are much less frequent than I would have guess (much MUCH less frequent, in the grad student's case). Although I should note that if Chris changes the order of the careers as he moves from blog post to finished book, then some of what I've said here about which careers are most common could be rendered false.
  
One final benefit of mapping out the odds like this is that any would-be designers out there who want to emulate I2TO's character generation mechanics can see how to arrange their own 94 classes to achieve whatever worldbuilding effect they're going for. As a designer, you can decide what you want to be most common, and with this information, put it in the correct location so that it actually will be.

Additional Actual Plays

In my first post about other bloggers' actual play reports, I asked my readers to nominate any play reports they knew about that I might have missed. I also put up the call on Google+ and MeWe. I've also kept my eyes open for people talking about play reports, and I've watched for new blogs posting play reports. This exercise also jogged my memory about a few that I knew about but had forgotten. The links below are in the order I received, found, or remembered them.
 
 
FM Geist recommended the sex, drug, and ultraviolence-filled urban adventures over at Last Gasp.
 

 
 
Jack Shear recommended the Blades in the Dark play reports over at Fictive Fantasies. That link should take you to a campaign overview page, where you can first find links to all the worldbuilding done in support of the campaigns, and then links to play reports from six separate campaigns set in the same world.
 
 
David Wilke recommended the session reports over on his own Anxiety Wizard blog. It looks like he's sent his players through a variety of LotFP adventures, including World of the Lost, Deep Carbon Observatory, and Red and Pleasant Land.
 
 
Michael Bacon suggested the play reports collected in the Thursdays in Thracia campaign over on the Bad Wrong Fun blog. Unsurprisingly, this is a campaign exploring Jenelle Jaquays' Caverns of Thracia megadungeon, apparently using Necrotic Gnomes' B/X Essentials rulebooks at the table.
 

   
 
Doug M recommended his own Smouldering Wizard play reports. That link goes to a master list of campaigns, each with their own set of reports: exploring the Endless Tunnels of Elandin using Holmes' Basic, visiting Larm using Labyrinth Lord, a campaign in the Ruined Hamlet of Blixter using Mutant Future, and OD&D campaign on a Quest for the Dwarven Mine, and another OD&D campaign collecting the Chronicles of Nolenor, a one-shot Witches of the Dark Moon game using Swords & Wizardry, and another Swords & Wizardry game set in Ravendale.
 

   
   
Andreas Habicher recommended Papier und Spiele, where he led a four-part play-by-poll game exploring The Spider Pit, using Maze Rats rules. Unfortunately, these posts aren't tagged, but Papier und Spiele is a new blog, so these are the only reports on there right now.
 
 
Seeing that play-by-poll campaign reminded me of some other things I'd forgotten before. I mentioned Blog of Holding last time, but I forgot to mention the Mearls campaign widget he has in his sidebar. Hereticwerks also used reader surveys as the basis of their long-running Bujili campaign. In addition, Hereticwerks has a few other actual play reports that I forgot completely when I was writing my first list.
 

 
 
John recommended his own Wandering Gamist play reports for his Adventurer Conqueror King campaign. John's reports put a statistical overview of the session right up front. These have traditional categories like XP and treasure, but also how long he spent playing the session and prepping beforehand, and exactly how much within-game time elapsed inside the dungeon. More traditional narrative summaries, anecdotes, and post-mortem thoughts follow after all this.
 
 
Bryan recommended Olde School Wizardry which ran a Dwimmermount campaign. Of special note is that many sessions in this campaign (which have their own tag!) were run with middle-schoolers as the players.
 
 
Aos has restarted his Metal Earth blog after a bit of a hiatus, and he's posted reports about session 2 and session 3 of a B/X campaign set on Mars. Currently these aren't tagged. If you like his art, you can also check out his Cosmic Tales comic. Tales of the Grotesque & Dungeonesque also has a few reports of from his time playing in Aos' Mars campaign.
 

 
 
The impending demise of Google+ has encouraged people to resume blogging after a hiatus, post more on their blogs, and even start new blogs. For the record, I think all this is great, but it probably can't take the place of a centralized location for aggregating commentary on blog posts, gaming discussion, and friendly non-gaming conversations among the small number of people who have gaming blogs and the much, much larger number of people who read them. That said, you can find a list of OSR blogs here, a list of non-OSR gaming blogs here, and Ramanan S of Save vs Total Party Kill has put together a file that you can load into an RSS reader for an instant OSR blog feed. (I don't know who started the OSR one, Jack Shear started the non-OSR list.)
 
Anyway, as a result of all this activity, I noticed or took a second look at some blogs I either didn't know about last time, or didn't realize were posting play reports.
 
 
Weird & Wonderful Worlds ran a Shieldbreaker campaign. He also has a few reports from his time as a player in Throne of Salt's Danscape games.
 
 
I don't know where I first saw everyone on this list, but I do know where I first saw Underground Adventures. Wizard Lizard was posting play reports directly into MeWe's Into the Odd community, and I suggested he should start a blog, and he did. He's using Into the Odd's rules to run his players through the Barrowmaze.
   

 
 
Tales of the Rambling Bumblers has an old Elves & Espers campaign that seems to be set in a fantasy Victorian city using Savage Worlds rules. You also have to love anyone who uses old Lego mini-figures both as miniatures and as the photo for the blog header.
 
 
Michael (who recommended "Thursday with Thracia") didn't recommend his own blog, Buildings are People, but I did notice that he's running a Formalhaut campaign using Gabor Lux's Echoes from Formalhaut zine.
 

 
 
I noticed that Fallen Empires is running a campaign that visited the Maze of the Blue Medusa and the Gardens of Ynn. (Ynn seems to be a pretty popular destination these days!) Isaak is using a list-of-accomplishments format similar to the Wandering Gamist. I'll confess it can be a little difficult for me to tell what actually happened in most of these sessions.
 
Carapace King has a couple campaigns worth of reports. Dikes Fall Everyone Dies takes place in a horrible, Hieronymus Bosch-ian Holland, while his new Ben-Dagra campaign sounds reminiscent of Yoon-Suin.
 
 
How on earth did I forget Judge James' Living 4 Crits blog? He doesn't tag his posts, but almost the entire blog is play reports, most of them using Dungeon Crawl Classics. James also does a great job linking to the previous reports in each series at the beginning of each post and to reports from other campaigns at the end of each one.
 
 
I also remembered that Superhero Necromancer a couple of campaigns in his own Rainy City setting. The Rainy City exists at the end of the world, where it's always raining because the wall separating the Prime Material Plane from the Elemental Plane of Water has sprung a leak, and so the world is slowly flooding. Literally every spell, monster, and magic item that exists is unique, and in the first campaign, the players are wizard thieves trying to get the good stuff while the getting's good. In the second campaign, the players are all parliamentarians in some kind of wizard's parliament.
 
 
Dennis Laffey from What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse both runs his own games and blogs about being a player. He's running his own campaign based on Ars Ludi's West Marches ideal. He's also played for several years in another GM's Vaults of Ur campaign (where he plays a Sleestak, no less!)
 
 
In retrospect, it should have been obvious to me why it's mostly Game Masters who post play reports online - it's because it's mostly Game Masters who keep blogs. Chris P is actually a rare counter-example (I think) because as far as I know, he only plays in online games, never runs them, but he does keep a blog where he sometimes talks about it. I've actually played alongside Chris is like three different open-table games; he's a very canny player who, to me, exemplifies what people are talking about when they write paeans to the wily players of yesteryear. In one memorable session, his character wore a treasure chest as a backpack - and eventually revealed that it was a cursed or magically trapped chest, which he opened to unleash the curse on an attacking monster. The chest had some kind of treasure in it which he had never recovered, because it was more valuable to him as a magic beam weapon. Among the play reports, you can also find a link to a lengthy Google Doc that describes his sessions exploring the Colossal Wastes of Zahar.
 
 
Chris Wilson of Journey into the Weird ran a game that ended in a (near) TPK, and wrote about it. So far this is his only play report, there could be more to come.
 
 
Roger suggested his own blog, A Life Full of Adventure. He's mostly been running Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, but appears to have recently started a 5e game.
 
 
Beloch Shrike is back! You may recall that my previous post started with me being inspired by Beloch posting some play reports. Unfortunately, almost immediately after that, the Papers & Pencils blog went away for awhile because it got hacked. Fortunately, it's back, and Beloch has continued his series of posts looking back at his old Dungeon Moon campaign. He's also written a post-mortem for his just-retired Fuck the King of Space campaign. I find his insights about what worked well and what he would do differently in the future very valuable.
 
 
Nate Treme from Highland Paranormal Society has a couple play reports and player art associated his own In the Light of a Ghost Star campaign.
 

 
 
My friend Peter posted about a game of John Stater's Tales of the Space Princess he ran for his family. So far, I think this is the only play report on his blog, but it sounds like it was fun.
 
 
Finally, and most recently, Kyrinn S Eis found the Dragon's Breakfast blog, which turns out to have play reports for a hundred-session-long nautical campaign set in his own Far Isles setting. It looks like he's also gearing up to start a Classic Traveller campaign, which certainly has enough material to go a hundred more.
 
 
I'm sure there are more blogs out there that host play reports, but I'm willing to call an end to my part in this little experiment. It was fun hearing from so many people about actual plays that they like, and interesting to rediscover parts of my own sidebar that I'd forgotten.
 
I recently had a friend start playing D&D 5e with an apparently terrible GM and she nearly quit the game after a few sessions of torture. I shared some of my favorite 5e play reports with her, some imaginative, weird, artistic games, and the next time I talked to her, she said she was quitting her GM but not quitting the game. She wants to play good D&D more than ever.
 
I'll leave off with a call-to-arms from Ben L of Mazarin's Garden (another one I forgot last time), who wants us all to remember the games we played on Google Plus and Google Hangouts:
 
"For the love of God, if you have a community on G+ for your game, even if that game ended long ago, please export the community so some record will remain of your shared play. So many worlds are about to be extinguished, and along with them the memories recorded in countless session reports, downtime threads, scheming plans, posted maps, ephemera, funeral threads celebrating dead PCs. Don’t let it just disappear into the void."

Secret Santicorn 2018

A group of D&D bloggers ran a "Secret Santicorn" this year. I didn't participate, but did notice the posts appearing in my blog's sidebar, and I'm capable of following links, so I decided to reconstruct as much of it as I could.
 
"Secret Santicorn" works like any other gift exchange - each blogger makes a request for a D&D article, and fulfills one request made by someone else. Many of this year's participants are part of what I consider the GLOG-o-sphere. I believe that the exchange was set up on Discord, so it's possible that some requests were fulfilled there. While I can tell that I don't have all of it, I can't tell how much of it I'm actually missing. It could be as few as 3 entries, or there could be longer chains that are missing.
 
(Note, because of the way the gifts are exchanged, the completed blog entry list is like a circle. I've chosen to start with Throne of Salt, but I could have begun anywhere.)
 
 
On the first day of Christmas, Throne of Salt wrote "Animal Mutation Table" for Dungeon Antology,

On the second day of Christmas, Dungeon Antology wrote "The Rift Unending" for Demogorgonia,
 
On the third day of Christmas, Demogorgonia wrote "The Hyperlight Dragon Kills You in Reverse" for Ten Foot Polemic,
 
On the fourth day of Christmas, Ten Foot Polemic wrote "The Powerglass" for Unreal Star,
 
On the fifth day of Christmas, Unreal Star wrote "Santa's Sack is Full of Guts This Year" for The Die Uncast,
 
...
 
On the seventh day of Christmas, The Whimsical Mountain wrote "Kowloon Planet, High Rise Defenses and More" for Buildings are People,
 
On the eighth day of Christmas, Buildings are People wrote "Sci-Fantasy Extraterrestrial Race" for wr3cking8a11,
 
...
 
On the tenth day of Christmas, Unlawful Games wrote "The Magician plus Bonus" for SherlockHole,
 
...
 
On the twelfth day of Christmas, Rogue's Repast wrote "The Alchemist's Basement" for The Bogeyman's Cave,
 
On the thirteenth day of Christmas, The Bogeyman's Cave wrote "Ke'Sik Locales and Encounters" for Dungeonliar,
 
On the fourteenth day of Christmas, Dungeonliar wrote "Codpiece Crafting" for Tales of Absolute Doom,
 
On the fifteenth day of Christmas, Tales of Absolute Doom wrote "Unicorn, GLOG Race-as-Class" for The Bottomless Sarcophagus,
 
On the sixteenth day of Christmas, The Bottomless Sarcophagus wrote "4d12 Supernatural Mystery Clues or Occult Sacrifice Components" for Hmmm Marquis,
 
On the seventeenth day of Christmas, Hmmm Marquis wrote "Mothership Culture Tables" for Throne of Salt,
 
... and a partridge in a pear tree!

Two Supporting Castmembers in Umberwell

Jack from Tales of the Grotesque & Dungeonesque has a new book out about his Umberwell setting (which I've played in!) Included in the book is a section for generating "supporting cast" or NPCs. Let's generate two.
 
 
First NPC - Ugly Safra
 
Race & occupation - wight stevedore
Appearance & personality trait - brutish and bold
Ideal, bond, flaw - progress, land, superstitious
Nemesis - a collector wants something she owns
 
Short and horrid, Ugly Safra looks like a mindless corpse. Her cloudy eyes never seem to focus, her lipless mouth always hangs slack-jawed, her wet rotten skin, her hair like tangled black seaweed. But Safra's ugly visage belies her lively heart. She is friendly to a fault, and assumes instant intimacy with anyone who shows her the least bit of kindness - though admittedly, those who've been kind enough to see her friendly side are few in number. And Safra's no fool, she can tell genuine kindness from the sort who would feign it in order to use her.
  
Safra is a recent victim of the Necrophagous Fever. Her life before is gone now. But unlike most who succumb to the disease, Safra kept her intellect intact. She works on the docks now, mostly night jobs unloading contraband at the shore of the rivers that run between Umberwell's island boroughs. She's still in awe of her new undead body and works unloading the most dangerous cargoes, the ones too deadly for the living. Living a life of crime, handling materials that would have killed her with a touch before - Safra loves the excitement and opportunity that the Fever brought into her life.
  
Safra's only problem is that someone's after her diary, the journal she kept as she was wasting away with Necrophagous Fever. Safra thinks of it as her "brain" and fears that if she loses it, she'll lose the spark of intelligence that separates her from the Fever's countless mindless victims. She's not sure who this collector is, but through agents, they've tried offering her cash, breaking into her room, even attacking her at work. The Knights of Ruin have offered to recruit Ugly Safra, as they offer all of Umberwell's recently undead, and so far she's refused ... but if she can't get rid of the collector who's hounding her, she might accept the protection, and the obligation, that comes with Ruin membership.
  
Using Ugly Safra in your game -

• The characters want to buy something illegal, need to learn about the underworld's shipping schedules, or meet a contact on the docks, and find puppydog-friendly Safra.

• A patron hires the characters to steal Safra's diary. Or a faction wants the characters to use Safra to infiltrate the Knights of Ruin. The characters know someone will get the job done whether they accept or reject.

• Desperate Safra approaches the characters wanting to hire them. She needs help finding out who the collector is before they simply kill her to take her book. Or she learned something from a Ruin recruiter that scares her, and her conscience demands that she tell someone before it's too late. 

     
Second NPC - Darbidian Ral
 
Race & occupation - rakshasa cultist
Appearance & personality trait - pristine and double-dealer
Ideal, bond, flaw - wealth, dead loved one, prideful
Why he came to Umberwell - seeking revenge against someone in the city
Cult devoted to - Ravsana, goddess of pleasure
 
The newest most glamorous cabaret in town is The Sinners' Home, operated by the rakshasa gangster and impresario Darbidian Ral, a recent immigrant from a sun-soaked and demon-haunted land far to the east. Ral stands shoulders above most of his clients, looking for all the world like a tiger on its hind legs wearing the most fashionably-cut and hand-tailored suits. Ral always catches eyes with his immaculate coiffure, silk ties, gemstone cufflinks, and fresh flowers tucked into his lapel. He seems to be everywhere in the club, booming voice, hearty laugh, slapping backs, shaking hands, stooping and stage-whispering confidences with his clients.
 
And oh! what clients The Sinners' Home attracts, all the highest rollers in Umberwell are here, night after night, drinking the finest imported wines, snorting the purest manufactured drugs, gambling at Ral's high-stakes tables (and every table in the Home is high-stakes), watching the intricate choreography of Ral's cabarets. Ral's dancers dress up as different incarnations of the goddess Ravsana, often several dancers in close coordination portray a single goddess with many arms, or several heads, or male and female aspects, all set to lively foreign music. Ral claims that the dances are all authentic to his homeland, but he must be lying, must have sultryed them up, unless dancers in that distant land beneath the demon sun truly end every performance by making love onstage for far longer than they initially danced. And besides, what tradition would have the goddess humiliated, made ridiculous, what tradition would rob her of all respect, song after song?
  
It's expensive going to Ral's, everyone seems to pay more than they intended, but it's worth it just to be at the best club in town. It must be worth it, because his clients come back every night, dropping more and more coins at his baccarat tables, his roulette wheels, dipping into savings, taking out loans, some working all day to afford just one more drink, one more dose, one more dance.
 
Though few realize it, Darbidian is not the first of his family to come to Umberwell. His younger brother Arvanyan Ral came first, and died here. Arvanyan's servants came back without the young man, but carrying rumors, stories, and one harrowing daguerreotype of Arvanyan with a smile on his face, surrounded by willing executioners, partaking in the pleasures that would soon consume him. Darbidian believes Arvanyan joined a pleasure cult in Umberwell, believes he gave himself, willingly, to be used, beaten, degraded, even beyond the superhuman limits of his rakshasan body. Arvanyan's body died starving, covered in sores and unhealed wounds. Dravidian blames the cult, blames the goddess Ravsana, blames the city of Umberwell, and the wealthy elite who permit deaths like Arvanyan's to take place. The Sinners' Home is Darbiddian Ral's trap, his revenge. His club is a lure to draw in the people he thinks killed his brother, his demon magic keeps them coming back, keeps them wanting to come back, even as they are ruined and brought to the brink of death themselves. Unless stopped, he will bring Umberwell to its knees.

Using Darbidian Ral in your campaign -

• The player characters first meet Arvanyan Ral and witness his self-destructive tendencies over a couple sessions, then he is gone, then The Sinners' Home appears, and Darbidian Ral makes a splash in Umberwell's demimonde.

• Someone wants to know Ral's secrets and how to stop him. It might be another cabaret, starving for business since The Sinners' Home opened. It might be a wealthy family, trying to save their fortune from total dissipation at Ral's club. It might be a true believer in Ravsana, trying to stop Ral from further besmirching her name. It might be the lover or family member of one of Ral's clients, wanting to rescue them from self-destruction, or seeking revenge on Ral for facilitating their loved one's demise.

• Ral's servants seek out the characters for help. They fear their master will destroy himself in his open-ended pursuit of revenge. They want the characters to find out who killed Arvanyan - was it the Ashram of Willing Vassalage? the Risen Temple? some other self-abnegating sect? or did Arvanyan come to Umberwell already prepared to die to fulfill his desires? Be warned, for this or any other adventure - Darbidian Ral is impossibly proud, and it will be much easier for the player characters to persuade him he's won than to convince him he's wrong.

GFA18 - Mountain Lion Magic Items

Okay, so actually the FINAL final mountain lion entry for the 2018 Gongfarmer's Almanac is a pair of mountain-lion themed magic items. I almost forgot I wrote this! My Black Powder Black Magic campaign needs a fair number of magic items, because characters can find demon ore, and trade it for magic items, which means the campaign NEEDS magic items for the characters to acquire. (Ideally, characters should have to "quest for it" rather than just trading in the ore like it's currency, and long term, I should possibly think about some kind of rule for "retiring" items that have been used long enough, but those are concerns for different posts.)
     
So the story behind both these items is that I watched the Lego Batman movie, and Catwoman has like one line in the whole movie, where she's helping a gang of villains break into a building, and we see her on the comms, and she's like "Meow-meow, we're in, meow-meow!" It's practically a throw-away line, but I loved the idea of her bookending all her sentences that way. So then I watched Black Panther, and the little sister Shuri has these cat-faced gauntlets that fire vibrating soundwaves as a weapon. And in my head, every time she fires these things, she says "meow-meow, meow-meow!" (Next time you watch Black Panther, try adding that sound-effect yourself. It's delightful!)
  
So the first item is pretty much just Shuri's gauntlets, and the second is a variation on the same idea, which arises out of the first. (It also lets you play at being Lego Catwoman, the same way the first one lets you play at being Shuri.) Plus, I don't know, in addition to the fun of getting my players to say "meow-meow" to use their magic item, I kind of like the idea that a magic item might have a command word that the players have to know and say. The presence of a "magic word" has a certain fariy-tale-ness to it that I like, and having the player say the magic word is sort of an immersive role-playing element. Outside of a situation like this, I would probably pick magic words like "abracadabra", "alakazam", "hocus pocus", and "open sesame". 
  
Danny Prescott edited this article, and the others in the series, and he was a big help in making sure that my physical descriptions evoked the right mental image and that my instructions were clear and easy to understand.
  
    
Gauntlets of the wailing mountain lion: These metal forearm-guards are made of the same vibrating material as a tuning fork or xylophone bar. The gauntlets seem to hum or purr constantly, sounding a musical note when struck against each other or used in combat. Each guard is carved to look like a mountain lion, tail wrapped around the wearer's forearms, haunches gripping the wrist, and the lion’s chin resting on the knuckles.
  
The gauntlets grant +1 AC and allow the wearer to make an unarmed punch for 1d4 damage, but prevent wielding another weapon in combat. They are ideally paired for two-weapon fighting. At least once per day the wearer can invoke the mouths to fire a soundwave at a target as a ranged attack for 1d14 damage by saying magical phrase "myow-myow," and the player has to say it out loud.
  
Spellcasters can use this power a number of times per day equal to the highest spell-level they can cast. If the wearer uses two-weapon fighting to fire two soundwaves at once, this counts as only a single use of the gauntlets.
  

  
Gloves of the were-lion thief: These coal black mouse-leather gloves have weighted knuckles. The leather on the back of the wrists and hands is worked to look like a cat preparing to pounce - tail curled above the wrist, haunches perched on the hand, chin and forepaws gripping the knuckles.
  
If worn by a non-thief these gloves allow the wearer to make an unarmed attack like a blackjack (1d3 subdual damage) with an additional +1 to hit and +1 damage, and once a day, the wearer can say the magic phrase "myow-myow" to use any one thief skill using a d24 skill die.
  
If worn by a trained thief they function as above, however the thief may instead say the magic word to roll a d24 skill die thrice per day, and if the thief uses this power while backstabbing the attack deals lethal instead of subdual damage with the automatic crit rolled on the monster crit table. When invoked, the player has to say the magic phrase out loud. Thieves who use this power more than once per day must use it for a different skill each time.

  

GFA18 - Were Cougar

The last entry in my series of mountain lion variations for the 2018 Gongfarmer's Alamanc is the were-cougar. Traditionally, the ability to shapeshift between human and feline forms is associated with the wampus cat, but I thought it was an interesting enough ability to stand alone. For roleplaying monsters, I think it may be better to have just one really stand-out ability, and for the wampus cougar, that was already the mourner's wail, and the were-cougar was born. 
   
She's the only mountain lion with a real alignment, and I thought giving her a demon's crit sort of fit well with her supernatural aspect. While I wanted her to shapeshift often so the players could see it (well, or at least imagine seeing it) I didn't want that to create any kind of confusion involving a second stat-block. So she has one stat-block, one hit-point total, and her shapeshifting is basically cosmetic, which is fine with me. I added the coin-toss to make her shifting random. I didn't want it to happen every round, but I thought it might be harder to remember instructions like "every third round."

   
The association of the word "cougar" with older women who want to date younger men led me to the idea of the lover's wail. I probably wouldn't have thought of that if I'd chosen a different cat, but I'm glad I did. It reminds me of some of the early D&D monsters who kidnapped party members by making them fall in love. That's the worst-case outcome here, but a normal failure just means that you'll spend all your downtime with your new cougar-wife, and if you're lucky, she'll actually join your party as an NPC ally. Danny Prescott edited this entire series.
 
   
Were-cougar: Init +3; Atk claw +3 melee (1d4+1) or bite +4 melee (1d6+2) or wail (special); AC 13; HD 3d10; MV 40' or climb 20'; Act 1d20; SP shapeshifter, pounce, lover's wail; SV Fort +3, Ref +3, Will +4; AL C; Crit DN/d4.
  
A were-cougar is a shapeshifter with two forms. In her human form she appears as a woman on the cusp of old age wearing simple local dress. She seems feisty and self-reliant. In her lion form, she has a slightly demonic air, pointier ears, shaggier fur, sharper claws (she uses identical statistics regardless of form).
  
A were-cougar is the implacable enemy of the nearest town, and may treat PCs as allies if they are outcasts there. She collects husbands and has a harem of 1d8 local men in her den at all times. She is not particularly jealous, and allows her men to take second wives, so long as she retains their primary loyalty. There is a 50% chance the were-cougar is first encounter her in lion form.
  
If a were-cougar makes the first attack of combat she will use her lover's wail; otherwise she attacks normally. Thereafter, she will alternate attacks between claw, bite and wail, pouncing when possible. Each round she doesn't pounce flip a coin; if heads she uses her move to shift between her human and cougar forms. A were-cougar prefers to use her claw and bite attacks against female opponents and against males who pass their Luck check against her wail. If every living male opponent has been affected by her wail she will return to her den and any new husbands will follow.
  
Shapeshifter: A were-cougar takes half damage from ordinary weapons. She counts as unholy for lawful clerics. The were-cougar can shift between her human and cougar forms as a move action.
  
Pounce: A were-cougar can pounce to gain an extra d20 attack die and attack with any two attack options, i.e. claw and bite, bite and wail, or wail and claw. The were-cougar can only pounce if she surprises its victims, attacks first due to initiative, or has taken no damage since her previous attack.
  
Lover's wail: A were-cougar sings a haunting, wordless song, like a lonely woman singing to her cat. A were-cougar's wail affects the male opponent with the highest Personality score who hasn't been affected yet today (in case of tie, she targets the opponent with the highest Luck score from among those with highest Personality). The affected target rolls a Luck check to see how he is affected.

• Half Luck score or lower - The were-cougar falls in love with the target and stops combat immediately. She will offer to marry the target and join the them as an NPC who mostly follows his instructions. She will follow him anywhere in order to live her life beside him.

• Luck score or lower - The were-cougar is the most beautiful woman the target ever saw, but he knows it is just not to be.

• Higher than Luck score - The target falls in love with the were-cougar and retires from combat while trying to talk his friends into stopping their attack. The target spends his downtime between adventures living with the were-cougar as her lover in her den. He refuses to go on journeys that would take him too far away from his lover.

• Higher than double Luck score - The target falls deeply in love with the were-cougar, and fights to the death to prevent anyone else from attacking her. The target retires from adventuring to marry the were-cougar and live with her forever in her den.

Demonic crit: A were-cougar rolls 1d4 on the demon crit table.

GFA18 - Wampus Cougar

The wampus cougar is my next-to-last mountain lion variation for the 2018 Gongfarmer's Almanac. It's physically the weakest mountain lion, but also the most deadly. The wampus cat (which originates in Cherokee myth, but was also adopted into American folklore as a fearsome critter) is supposed to have a voice that either kills or foretells death. It's also supposed to shapeshift into a woman, but I decided that for gaming purposes, it was more interesting to separate out that ability, resulting in the were-cougar. 
   
The various "wail" abilities I gave to the cactus, wampus, and were-cougars ended up being modeled on this one, which was in turn modeled on the folklore. I decided I wasn't quite willing to kill a character for failing a Luck check, but that I was totally willing to kill a character who rolled over double their Luck score. I also thought it would be fun if there was some reward for surviving really well. I initially thought about giving all the mountain lions their own wails, but ultimately decided it only fit with a few of them. Danny Prescott edited all the mountain lions, and provided art for this one.
 

Art by Danny Prescott 

 
Wampus cougar: Init +0; Atk claw +2 melee (1d4) or bite +3 melee (1d6) or wail (special); AC 10; HD 3d6; MV fly 20'; Act 1d20; SP ghostly body, pounce, mourner's wail; SV Fort +1, Ref +1, Will +3; AL N; Crit U/d8.
 
The wampus cougar is smaller than other mountain lions, with longer, silver-white fur that seems to shine in the dark. It floats rather than walks, stalking completely silently, and appears almost unreal as it moves. The sight or sound of a wampus cougar is widely believed to be an omen foretelling death.
 
If the wampus cougar makes the first attack of combat, it will use its mourner's wail; otherwise it attacks normally. Thereafter, it will alternate attacks between claw, bite, and wail, pouncing when possible.
 
Ghostly body: The wampus cougar takes half damage from ordinary weapons. It counts as unholy for neutral clerics and lives halfway between our world and the spirit realm.
 
Pounce: The wampus cougar can pounce to gain an extra d20 attack die and attack with any two different attacks, i.e. claw and bite, bite and wail, wail and claw. The wampus cougar can only pounce if it surprises its victims, attacks first due to initiative, or has taken no damage since its previous attack.
 
Mourner's wail: The wampus cat caterwauls like a mother crying for lost children. The wampus cougar's wail affects the opponent with the lowest Luck score who hasn't been affected yet today (in case of tie, it targets the opponent with the lowest hit points from among those with lowest Luck). The affected target rolls a Luck check to see how they're affected:

• Half Luck score or lower - Permanently gain 1 hit point

• Luck score or lower - The target faints and immediately comes to. Lose 1 hit point and fall prone

• Higher than Luck score - The target loses half her current hit points (rounded up) and falls prone

• Higher than double Luck score - The target drops to 0 hit points and begin bleeding out

Undead crit: A wampus cougar rolls 1d8 on the undead crit table.

GFA18 - Sabretooth Cougar

My fourth mountain lion variation for the 2018 Gongfarmer's Almanac is the sabretooth cougar. The biggest changes to my basic mountain lion template is that the sabretooth is giant, so I decided to take advantage of the DCC rules for turning it into a giant. It gets an extra Hit Dice and its die-size goes up by +1d on the dice-chain. Its claw attack goes up by +1d damage, and its bite attack goes up by +2d (because, c'mon it has sabre-teeth). Like other giants, it gets a d24 Action Dice, crits on rolls of 20 or higher, and uses the Giants' crit table. 
   
I think I'm probably espousing a general philosophy of how to treat dinosaurs and megafauna by writing this. I'm definitely advocating that other DCC authors follow my lead and add a Crit entry to the end of the standard stat-block. Most of the time, it just saves having to cross-reference your monster entry against that table of crits by monster type and HD. Sometimes though, like this, having the entry come standard makes it easier to show that a monster has an unusual crit. Danny Prescott edited the entire mountain lion series, and he provided the art for this entry.
 

Art by Danny Prescott

   
Sabretooth cougar: Init +3; Atk claw +4 melee (1d6+1) or bite +6 melee (1d10+2); AC 16; HD 4d10; MV 40' or climb 20'; Act 1d24; SP pounce, crit on 20+; SV Fort +4, Ref +3, Will +1; AL N; Crit G/d4.
 
The sabretooth cougar is megafauna from an earlier era. It stands a foot taller and a foot longer than other mountain lions with orange fur and a tawny belly. Its most notable features are its namesake foot-long fangs, which give it a vicious bite.
 
If the sabretooth cougar makes the first attack of combat it will pounce; otherwise it attacks normally. Thereafter, it will alternate attacks between claw and bite, pouncing when possible.
 
Pounce: The sabretooth cougar can pounce to gain an extra d24 attack die and attack that round with both claw and bite. The sabretooth cougar can only pounce if it surprises its victims, attacks first due to initiative, or has taken no damage since its previous attack.
 
Giant crit: The sabretooth cougar uses d24 action dice to attack, and crits on any roll of 20+. Its crits roll 1d4 on the giant crit table.

GFA18 - Mountain Lion Cougar

The third mountain lion variation in my series for the 2018 Gongfarmer's Almanac is the mountain-lion cougar, which is the baseline monster I altered to make all the other variations. It's the simplest and probably the easiest to fight.
   
Danny Prescott edited all the entries in this series. Clayton Williams provided the art for this one. Somehow the black bands on this cougar make me think of an 80s workout music video.
 

Art by Clayton Williams.

 
Mountain-lion cougar: Init +1; Atk claw +2 melee (1d4) or bite +3 melee (1d6); AC 13; HD 3d8; MV 40' or climb 20'; Act 1d20; SP pounce; SV Fort +3, Ref +3, Will +1; AL N; Crit M/d8.
 
Mountain-lion cougars look like giant house cats, standing 3' tall at the shoulder and measure 7' from nose to tail. They have short tawny fur that turns white around their mouths and down their bellies. Their ears and nose are outlined in black, as are their paws and the tips of their tails.
 
If the mountain-lion cougar makes the first attack of combat, it will pounce; otherwise it attacks normally. Thereafter, it will alternate attacks between claw and bite, pouncing when possible.
 
Pounce: The mountain-lion cougar can pounce to gain an extra d20 attack die and attack that round with both a claw and bite. The mountain-lion cougar can only pounce if it surprises its victims, attacks first due to initiative, or has taken no damage since its previous attack.

GFA18 - Cactus Cougar

My second mountain lion variation for the 2018 Gongfarmer's Almanac is the cactus cougar. Like the ball-tailed cougar, this is a semi-naturalistic take on an American folkloric creature. My idea to give these monsters pre-programmed attack strategies is a little bit easier to see in this one. If it attacks first in the first round of combat, it starts with the drunkard's wail, otherwise it starts with body slam, then bites, then wails, etc. If it gets the chance to pounce, it will just do whichever two attacks come next in the programmed order.
   
The cactus cougar is also the first example of the "wail" attack I thought of. Like a dragon's breath, "wails" hit their targets automatically, but you get some kind of defensive roll to protect yourself. Except instead of a saving throw, you get to use DCC's Luck roll mechanic, which is basically "roll under your Luck score or bad things happen to you." In this case, I wanted more outcomes, adding something like a critical success and something like a critical failure. I initially thought about having them turn up on rolls of 1 or 20, but I decided that I wanted them to occur a bit more often, and I wanted to differentiate them a bit from DCC's official "crits" and "fumbles." Note that any character with a Luck score 2 or higher can potentially get the best outcome, but ONLY characters with Luck 9 or lower can get the worst - at Luck 10 and above, it's simply not possible to roll more than twice your Luck score (unless something forces you to roll a d24 instead of a d20, I guess). 
   
Danny Prescott edited this piece and the others in this series. Again, I want to point out how invaluable his help was in making sure my instructions for pouncing would make sense to people who aren't me. Clayton Williams did the art for this one.
 

Art by Clayton Williams 

 
Cactus cougar: Init +1; Atk bodyslam +3 melee (1d6 + spikes) or bite +2 melee (1d6) or wail (special); AC 16; HD 3d8; MV 40' or 20' climb; Act 1d20; SP pounce, spikes, drunkard's wail; SV Fort +3, Ref +3, Will +1; AL N; Crit M/d8.
 
The cactus cougar has green tinged fur and six-inch quills growing at intervals across its body. Although as agile as any other mountain lion, it has a clumsy, staggering walk and a distended belly.
 
If the cactus cougar makes the first attack of combat it will use its drunkard's wail; otherwise it attacks normally. Thereafter, it will alternate attacks as follows: bodyslam, bite, and wail, pouncing when possible. If the cactus cougar puts every living opponent to sleep it will eat the sleeping target with the lowest Luck score then return to its den.
 
Pounce: The cactus cougar can pounce to gain an extra d20 attack die that round and attack with any two different options, i.e. body-slam and bite, bite and wail, or wail and body-slam. The cactus cougar can only pounce if it surprises its victims, attacks first due to initiative, or has taken no damage since its previous attack.
 
Spikes: A target hit by the cactus cougar's bodyslam, or who deals melee damage to it, is stabbed by several of its spikes. The target makes a DC 13 Fort save against poison. Upon success they take 1 damage; otherwise they take 1d4 damage and will be affected the next time the cactus cougar wails.
 
Drunkard's wail: The cactus cougar caterwauls like a drunkard singing on the walk home. Affected targets each roll Luck checks to determine how they are affected. If the cactus cougar wails during the first round of combat it affects the target who drank alcohol most recently, otherwise its wail affects all targets who failed their poison save since the last time it wailed:

• Half Luck score or lower -The water in the target’s canteen becomes very fine mescal or tequila.

• Luck score or lower - The target is drunk, and has a terrible hangover in the morning.

• Higher than Luck score - The target falls asleep, and for 1 hour cannot be woken except by taking damage.

• Higher than double Luck score - The target falls asleep, and for 8 hours cannot be woken except by magic.

GFA18 - Ball Tailed Couger

This 2018 Gongfarmer's Almanac piece is the first in a series of mountain lion variations. I started with a base monster, and then for each variation, tried to come up with a couple really basic ways that it would be different. The ball-tailed cougar, my naturalistic variation on the folkloric ball-tailed cat, is relatively simple. I decided that DCC's dwarven shield-bash mechanic would work pretty well for the tail-slap attack, so that d14 Action Die listed below is dedicated to only be use for tail-slapping.
  
Danny Prescott edited this series, and he volunteered art for this entry. He was a huge help in making sure the text related to the "pounce" ability made sense. His suggestions made my writing much clearer. I wanted to try out something where each of the mountain lions has a very predictable series of attacks, and a special ability that gives them an extra attack under certain circumstances. The predictable attacks potentially allow the players to strategize how to best to fight these things. In particular, preventing the cougar from winning initiative or going an entire round without taking damage makes it MUCH easier to defeat by denying it the chance to use its pounce ability.
  
Having a predictable order of attacks is also supposed to take some weight off the referee. I'm much more comfortable in the role of "neutral arbiter" than I am in the role of "adversary trying to kill your characters" so having pre-ordained tactics makes it easier for me to run the fight without either feeling uncomfortable about being "too hard" on my players or feeling as though I'm improperly pulling my punches. (Demanding that the claw attack be used every other round also solves a head-scratcher on many monster sheets, which is that if the judge is choosing which attacks to use, why would you ever use the claw attack when the bite attack is clearly better? In this case, you do so because the instructions say that's how this animal behaves.) Pre-programmed tactics can also potentially make different monsters FEEL different by making them do different things, even if their stats are pretty much the same. Programmed tactics might be better for animals than for intelligent opponents, although I also like the "video-game boss monster" feel that you get from knowing that your adversary is running through a set list of moves.
  

Art by Danny Prescott

  
Ball-tailed cougar: Init +1; Atk claw +2 melee (1d4) or bite +3 melee (1d6) or tail-slap +2 melee (1d6); AC 13; HD 3d8; MV 40' or climb 20'; Act 1d20 + 1d14; SP pounce, tail-slap; SV Fort +3, Ref +3, Will +1; AL N; Crit M/d8.
  
The ball-tailed cougar has a double-long tail that ends in a rounded club like an ankylosaurus or manticore.
  
If the ball-tailed cougar makes the first attack of combat, it will pounce; otherwise it attacks normally. Thereafter, it will alternate attacks between claw and tail-slap and bite and tail-slap, pouncing when possible.
  
Pounce: The ball-tailed cougar can pounce to gain an extra d20 attack die that round to attack with both its claws and bite. The ball-tailed cougar can only pounce if it surprises its victims, attacks first due to initiative, or has taken no damage since its previous attack.
  
Tail-slap: Each round, the ball-tailed cougar can make an attack with its tail using a d14 attack die.

GFA18 - Mountain Lion Varieties & Signs

My next batch of Gongfarmer's Almanac 2018 pieces are a series of related monsters for Weird West adventures in DCC. My initial inspiration for these was the Pokemon variations meme of drawing multiple versions of the same Pokemon in a way that resembles natural genetic variation. So this is my attempt to create slightly naturalistic monsters out of some famous "fearsome critters" of American folklore. Danny Prescott edited this batch of entries.
 
  
Travelers in the western half of North America know to fear the mountain lions that stalk the rocky Cordillera region from British Columbia down to Jalisco, and are even found occasionally back East. Mountain lions are solitary predators who follow their prey for some time and often surprise unwary victims. Mountain lions look like giant house cats, standing 3' tall at the shoulder and measure 7' from nose to tail. They have short tawny fur that turns white around their mouths and down their bellies. Their ears and nose are outlined in black, as are their paws and the tips of their tails.
  
If PCs encounter a mountain lion, roll 1d6 to determine the type: (1) ball-tailed cougar; (2) cactus cougar; (3) mountain-lion cougar; (4) sabretooth cougar; (5) wampus cougar; (6) were-cougar.
  
If the characters all stop attacking and throw down all their rations, kill an animal or person for the lion to eat, or allow the lion to eat someone who has already died, any mountain lion will take its meal and retreat to its den immediately.
  

 
Signs: Some characters are skilled trackers and can discover the presence of wilderness creatures before they're encountered. Judges may allow their players to encounter clues about the identity of local monsters before encountering them directly. Use the portents below if players are potentially likely to encounter a mountain lion. A character hearing a distant wail as a sign of a nearby lion will be the first character targeted by the wail during combat. I recommend playing Ratatat's "Wildcat" quietly on repeat from the time the characters encounter a sign (or roll initiative for combat) until the end of the encounter.
  
Ball-tailed cougar: The PC hears a sound like a child bouncing a ball, over and over and over.
  
Cactus cougar: The PC smells tequila in the wind and hears caterwauling like a drunkard singing on the walk home. The character who drank alcohol most recently is now drunk again and can feel the hangover coming already.
  
Mountain-lion cougar: The PC smells ammonia in the wind, and for a moment everything goes silent as the birds stop singing and insects quit their buzzing. After a short period the natural sounds resume.
  
Sabretooth cougar: The PC feels a sudden chill in the air, like breeze blowing in off a glacier, and hears what sounds like distant thunder.
  
Wampus cougar: A cloud crosses the sun and throws the PC into shadow. The PC hears a caterwaul like a mother's cry for lost children. The character with the lowest Luck and lowest hit points faints and immediately comes to after losing 1 hit point.
  
Were-cougar: The PC hears a woman singing. He can't make out the words, but it sounds like a lonely woman singing about her cat. The male character with the highest Personality and highest Luck is sure the singer is the most beautiful woman in the world.

  
   

Dungeons & Decorators as a #3BookRPG

Earlier this year, FM Geist from Ziggurat of Unknowing started a meme: Choose 3 books to act as your Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual.
 
I decided to try making a #3BookRPG for my speculative Dungeons & Decorators campaign. The point of a #3Book RPG list is emphatically not to be a full Appendix N of inspirational literature, but to identify the core that you hope to build on.

   
Player's Handbook - Heirloom Modern by Hollister & Porter Hovey

  

 
Dungeon Master's Guide - Inception by Christopher Nolan
 

  
  
Monster Manual - The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey
  

  
 
Your characters are collectors and thieves. You want the most beautiful relics of the time before, the masterpieces and artifacts with craftsmanship unmatched by anyone in the present day. Your goals are to preserve, possess, and display. Almost as much as you want to own precious things, you want to show them off in curated tableaus to impress and outdo your friends.

The treasures you seek are locked up in houses, the forgotten houses, shuttered wings, and unused rooms in the corners of great estates. The original owners are all dead or dying, grown up or moved on. These treasures aren't just objects, they're memories given form. To own them is to control their power. To steal them is to take something from the minds and hearts of the families that owned them, something that will change them even if it's never missed, even if they had long since shut the door.

These houses are all haunted. They are full of the memories of the people who used to live there, and the ghosts who follow you and your friends everywhere, waiting for you to enter the dead places where they can come back to life. The houses themselves are almost alive now. They've grown and twisted beyond their original floorplans. Their attics are like warehouses, their basements like caves, their drawing rooms are cathedrals, and there are monsters in every closet, beneath every floorboard, under every bed. There are many perils in these halls, and many ways to die.

  
Honorable Mentions - Against a Dark Background by Iain Banks, The Bohemian Manifesto by Lauren Stover, The Children's Home by Charles Lambert, The Glass Town Game by Catherynne Valente & Rebecca Green, The Gormenghast Novels by Mervyn Peake, The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal, The Heap House Trilogy by Edward Carey, House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski, Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec, Observatory Mansions by Edward Carey, The Porcelain Thief by Huan Hsu

House Rule - Signs & Encounters

Recently, I decided I want to start doing something new when write encounter tables. I want to divide my tables into signs and encounters. These are paired, so that each sign is connected to a specific encounter. Signs have odd numbers, encounters have evens.
  
(So sign 1 is paired with encounter 2, sign 3 is connected to encounter 4, etc.)
  
Encounters are typically monsters or environmental hazards. They're things that are dangerous, that could damage or kill a character. Other kinds of encounters might be possible, but this is where my process is right now. Signs are meant to create a sense of foreboding. They might be fairly direct clues about the connected encounter, or they might be ominous, ambiguous portents of forthcoming danger.
   
(If the encounter is the Demogorgon from Stranger Things, the sign might be all the lights flickering on and off. If the encounter is an Agent from The Matrix, the sign might be a black cat that keeps crossing your path.)
  

A sign ...

 
The first time I roll on the encounter table, I'm not going to distinguish between signs and encounters, I'm only looking to see which connected pair I got. The first roll always produces the sign, and the characters experience whatever warning they're going to get.
  
The second time I roll on the table, I'm not going to distinguish between pairs. I'm only looking to see whether I got sign or encounter. If I got sign, then the character experience the same sign as before. This can happen as many times as I keep rolling sign. Hopefully, he repetition increases the suspense and foreboding. You know something's coming. If I got encounter, then the characters meet whichever monster is associated with the initial sign.
  
After the characters finally experience an encounter, I start over, so the next roll always produces another sign.
  
(You could also be less forgiving than I've described here, and let the first roll give you a surprise encounter. I think that's fair. The dungeon is a mythic underworld; the wilderness howls. Sometimes the only warning of impending danger you get is the knowledge that you've entered a dangerous place. My hope though, is that the procedure I've described might produce more narrative satisfaction, by always foreshadowing encounters before they occur.)
   

... leads to an encounter.

   
I'm hoping that this approach will help create a world with an active environment, full of strange sights and noises and portents. It has already forced me to focus my encounter tables. Instead of just listing 20 vaguely-related monsters, I find myself narrowing down to 4 or 6 that really help define the feel of the region.
 
Something like this approach could also work with an overloaded encounter die. These dice typically have two entries for lights going out and magical effects ending, which are typically treated as representing torches and lanterns. You could treat the first such roll as producing a warning - torches flicker or dim, magical effects start glitching and fading. The next time the overloaded encounter die comes back to that pair, you have a 50% chance of another warning (just as the procedure I suggested gives a 50% chance of a repeated sign), and a 50% chance that the lights go out and the magic stops. Just as with my procedure, the goal would be to create narrative tension and satisfaction. The thing is foreshadowed, later the thing happens. In between those times, the thing follows you, stalks you, haunts you. When it happens, it's not a surprise, it's a grim certainty. Or anyway, that's what I'm hoping for.

Session Report - Descend into Brimstone - 2 Nov 2018

Characters
Archibald (innkeeper, 1st level Zombie)
played by American John

Nell (innkeeper, 2nd level Warrior)
played by Todd

Chaus Hussar (0th level cavalryman)
played by Peter

Detective Guillermo "the Bull" (man-at-arms)
NPC ally

Caspar, Melchior, and Abendego (magicians)
Salma and Penelope (acolytes)
NPC ... allies?
 
 
Session 7
The small pilgrimage arrived at the demon-shrine, an ancient pueblo building inside a large cave. The crowd of spectators stopped a few steps behind the adventurers, and whispered amongst themselves about the site before them. Confronted with the shrine, standing on the very doorstep of a human sacrifice, Archibald, Chaus Hussar, and Nell felt indecisive. Nell turned to the nearest Mason, Abendego, "Now, remind me again why we're doing' this sacrifice? What are we lookin' to accomplish?" Abendego explained that the architecture of the West is boring and undeveloped, Hezzemuth, as a queen of the ants, is sure to be a builder, certain to build great things, and that he and his colleagues want to be part of it. Melchior leaned over to chime in that the sisters had promised them that Hezzemuth would reward them with special demon's eyes.
 
Nell took all this in, then asked "Now, remind me again who these sisters are?" Melchior repeated the story of how they found the shrine while looking for interesting architecture in the Maw, and that in the shrine they met the two Mexican sisters who inducted them into Hezzemuth's cult. When the Illuminati sent an assassin from back east to kill them, the sisters somehow foresaw the assassin, and gave the Freemasons the advice they needed to get the drop on the assassin and capture him.
 
Nell, Archibald, and Chaus Hussar debated what to do. They settled on the idea that it would be like going to see a Vaudeville act at a music hall, and decided to go ahead and enjoy the show. Nell still felt conflicted, and called back to the crowd to explain that the Masons wouldn't be performing the sacrifice themselves, it would be the sisters ("The beautiful sisters!" chimed in Abendego) but this information did not deter the crowd.
 
The adventurers entered the shrine. They saw a giant pool of water, yellow with sulfur, and smelled brimstone in the air. They saw the giant soldier ant that'd killed Archibald, lurking at the far back of the room. The Masons led them past the pool through a doorway to the right, into a large hall with a high ceiling, held aloft by wooden pillars. At the front of the room was a stone altar with a man bound and gagged to the stone. He was flanked by two beautiful Mexican sisters and two stone sculptures of Hezzemuth, marble images that cast her as a Greek goddess holding tools like the plumb bob, the ruler, the triangle. The crowd filed in, and all eyes were on the bound man. They edged to the back of the room, trying to stay as far from the bloodshed as possible. ("Ohhh, you mean this is COLLEGE college!")
 
The Freemasons took their place at the front of the room, standing around the altar. The sisters, Salma and Penelope, addressed the crowd. "Ladies and gentlemen! Tonight, you will witness a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! The queen, Hezzemuth the Painmistress is coming to earth!" While the crowd was in awe of the sisters, Archibald, Nell, and Chaus Hussar whispered among themselves. They saw another door on the back right-hand side of the room. They crept over, sidling between the other onlookers, and pulled the door open just far enough to slip through. Chaus Hussar went ahead while Archibald and Nell stayed to guard the door.
 
Suddenly, chaos erupted in a matter of moments. One member of the crowd came forward and threw back the hood cloaking his face - it was Detective Guillermo "the bull"! "Tonight?" he yelled, "Tonight you sons of bitches are going to pay for your crimes!" He fired his handgun at the sisters, but only hit the wall behind them. In the other room, Chaus Hussar entered a dusty, disused space with another stone altar and another pair of statues, these showing Hezzemuth as a cruel smiling woman with razor teeth, licking blood from a dagger, and holding a whip, a flail, and a sword. As he stepped forward to investigate, he heard the noise from the hall ... and stepped into a bear trap. Nell heard Chaus Hussar scream in pain and ran through the door to help, shouting "Save Guillermo!" over her shoulder to Archibald. The Freemasons rushed forward to detain the detective, and Caspar stabbed him in the shoulder. Archibald lurched forward, but his new zombie body was too slow. Salma made beckoning motions with her hands, and said in a powerful voice "Come now detective, you don't want to hurt us." Guillermo stopped struggling against the Masons, his arms went limp, his eyes went blank. In a voice like talking in his sleep he said "I will come to you now. I don't want to hurt you." He walked to the front of the room with Archibald too slow behind him, and Penelope slit the detective's throat before plunging her knife into the bound man's chest.
 
There was a thunderclap and blinding flame as a demon tore through the wall of reality and into the room. The crowd panicked and tried to rush for the exit, shoving and jostling in a frightened herd, as Archibald backpedaled for the door his friends had disappeared into. Hezzemuth laughed and laughed, lashing out into the crowd again and again with her whip. Each time it cracked another onlooker was torn apart, their bodies practically exploding under the force of the demon queen's wrath. The last thing Archibald saw as he backed through the door was the Freemasons' eyes suddenly glowing with the light of hellfire. "My eyes!" they shouted, "I can truly see!"
 
In the dusty room, it took Nell and Chaus Hussar several tries to free his leg from the bear trap. They froze when they heard the commotion in the other room, and Nell drew a bead on the door as Archibald came through. She wiped her brow and holstered her pistol. "Mr Archibald!" she scolded, "I nearly shot you!" They could hear Hezzemuth's whip cracking and her horrible laughter as the remaining members of the crowd screamed in fear and agony. After getting free and wrapping a bandage around his leg, Chaus Hussar put the bear trap in his bag and moved to get a closer look at the altar and its horrid statues. Archibald noticed that the real Hezzemuth looked much more similar to these gruesome visages than she did to the neo-classical statues in the main hall.
 
Chaus Hussar tried to topple one of the statues, hoping it might somehow break Hezzemuth's power, but he had to rock it on its base to make it move, and it fell forward on him instead, pinning him to the floor. At the same time, the other statue came to life and moved toward the trapped man. Archibald touched his demon ore necklace, the one that bound his soul to his dead body, and projected his own ghost temporarily into the room. Archibald's un-dead flesh was grey, his posture poor, his movements slow and jerky - but the ghost that appeared was like an idealized version of him as he'd been in life, and his flesh fell to the floor like a discarded cloak as the ghost emerged. He tangled with the statue, distracted and passing through it as Nell worked to free Chaus Hussar. As soon as she got him out, the both set the statue back upright, and the one Archibald was fighting abruptly reverted to perfect stillness.
 
The sounds from the other room had quieted, so the three decided to make a break for it. When they re-entered the hall, they saw the soldier ant blocking the far door and a few survivors cowering against the back wall amidst a charnelscape of severed limbs and spilled blood. Archibald picked up a severed arm. The demon Hezzemuth stared at Nell. "Wouldst thou join me, Sweet Nell?" the demon's voice boomed, "Wouldst thou become my disciple?" Archibald threw the arm over the ant's head into the other room, and the great beast turned to follow the snack. Nell turned to the survivors "Get on now! This here's your chance!" They heard a splash as the ant charged into the sulfurous pool. The friends and the few survivors ran for the door, and found the entry room completely empty with no sign of the giant ant. They felt confused, but didn't stop to investigate the source of their good fortune, but rushed onward, back through the Maw, back to the elevator to the Gallows. "You know," said Archibald, "I'm getting tired of giant ants." The others nodded in agreement as they trudged.
 
It was evening as the group finally made their way to the surface. A few others must have escaped ahead of them, because everyone in town, from the elevator operator onward, seemed to be aware of what had transpired. The bartender at the Gallows offered the a round of stiff drinks. "Shoulda known that you all was the real heroes in this town," she said, commiserating with Nell. "Them Freemasons musta bamboozled us all somehow. I guess them preachers was right about that demon, tryin'a talk some sense into us." Archibald contemplated his drink. "Yes, and to think, it only took dozens of deaths to realize human sacrifice is wrong."
 
After their drinks, Chaus Hussar suggested going to rob the Freemason's hotel room, and Archibald and Nell agreed. The hotel manager said "Of course, I could never watch someone rob my customers, no matter how odious they are," then unlocked the room door and walked away. They found some spare clothes, and most importantly, the three Masons' spellbooks. One book contained a spell to save a person from falling, another a spell to help read other magical writing, and the third spell to inscribe magical runes. Chaus Hussar decided to try to learn magic, and wanted to keep two of the books. The group agreed that they could probably trade the final book to Pemberton Nimby in exchange for something made from the fossil they'd brought him. Nell mentioned she might like to get out of town for awhile, maybe stay away from the Maw and look for adventure somewhere else. She remembered a fairy tale she'd heard as a girl, the story of the Gold Soul Mine where one day all the miners vanished and all the townspeople left, and only their ghosts still worked the mines...
 
 
Gains
demon eyesight x3 (effects TBD)
stolen spellbooks x3 (Feather Fall, Read Magic, Runic Alphabet - Mortal)
 
Losses
Guillermo "the Bull" (sacrificed to demon)
unnamed sacrificial human (sacrificed to demon)
about 15 spectators from the Gallows (sacrificed BY demon)
 
XP
4 XP for participating in sacrifice/summoning
1 XP for bear trap
1 XP for living statues
1 XP for giant soldier ant
1 XP for robbing Freemasons
Total: 9 XP for Archibald and Nell, flat 5 XP for Chaus Hussar for finishing funnel
 
Running graveyard (and session of death)
Detective Guillermo "the Bull" the NPC Mexican police-captain (7), Bjornk the hunter (6), Meriwether the 1st level Cleric (5), Archibald the 1st level Thief (3), Officer Shia "the Beef" the NPC Mexian police-officer (2), Daniel the plumber (2), Officer Benicio "the Bull" the NPC Mexican police-officer (2), Luther the factory-hand (2), Jed the miner (1), Henry the huckster (1), Lilly the clerk (1), Bill the livery-stabler (1), Harry the butcher (1), Rusty the auctioneer (1)
 
 
Postmortem
My main goal going into this session was to preserve my players' ability to decide how they would interact with the human sacrifice / demon summoning scenario. I was willing to let them be spectators, participants, or opponents, but I didn't want to force them into any of those roles. By that measure, I felt like this session was a success. I think a couple of my players felt bad afterward for having take a little while to decide what they wanted their characters to do, but from my perspective, the important thing was that they weren't forced (or rushed) into doing anything they didn't want. And as I said, deciding they just wanted to watch the sacrifice and summoning was, from my perspective, a completely valid decision for them to make. 
   
I can recall a couple times as a player, including once when John was the ref, where what I really wanted to do was watch one monster fight another monster so I didn't have to fight either of them - and in retrospect, I can see that the judges were doing the same things I did here, kind of slow-rolling it and checking in often to make sure the players were still on-board with a spectator role in the scene. In fact, the one thing I wish I'd handled differently was the combat between Guillermo and the sisters (who, yes, were Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz). Again, I made decisions about what each of the NPCs was going to do, then had my players roll the dice. This was slower than me rolling the dice myself, but it didn't really constitute meaningful participation in the combat, I don't think. In retrospect, I wish I'd rolled for myself so I could have narrated a little faster, or assigned each player a faction (sisters, masons, and Guillermo) and let them control them fully. (Also, man!, that whole thing could have played out differently if Guillermo had hit someone during the surprise round, or not ended up last in the initiative order, or succeeded his saving throw against being charmed.)
   
This session felt like the end of one chapter and the start of something new for the campaign. I think my players want to branch out. The goal of the megadungeon mine is to be the default campaign activity. If you can't think of what to do, you go down into the mine, and you find something that sends you on a quest. Then you complete the quest, and unless that turned up new leads, go back into the mine for something else. In the original BPBM campaign where I was a player, finding demon ore often served as the reason for a quest, because we had to find someone who could turn it into a magic item, and then do them a favor. The other way we got embroiled in a quest was finding a letter from a hostage, which eventually led to us mounting a rescue. I think my players liked going on the quest for Nimby, and want more of that sandbox style play. And I think they want to see more of the world. This has got me thinking about the limits of a procedurally generated dungeon, how large it can be, and how much variety it needs to stay interesting. The next place they're off to is Goodberry Monthly's "Goldsoul Mine" dungeon.
   
I liked Peter's idea to go rob the Freemason's hotel room. We rolled randomly for the spells there at the table. At the end of the night, Peter also rolled to find his wizard spells, and got Color Spray, Sleep, and Spider Climb, the lucky devil. Each time my players have found a magical item, I've had to decide what it does. When they trade the spellbook to get back the fossils, I've decided that they're going to turn into a dragon!