Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Lunchbox D&D 2: Cavern of the Carnivorous Coffin

In session 2, I finally got to use Arnold K's Hungry Coffin monster, which I've been placing on my dungeon keys for years without any of my groups actually managing to fight one. 

Konstantin Kostadinov

Still accepting new players, for my short-session open table game:

  • Sessions are Fridays, 1 - 2pm US Eastern time. 
  • Discord for voice/video & Owlbear Rodeo for maps. 
  • True open table, no expectations that players will be able to join for all (or even most) sessions
  • If you're interested in joining, please reach out

Session 2: Cavern of the Carnivorous Coffin

Summary

The intrepid adventurers, steal necromantic texts from a library and nearly get eaten by an animate coffin. 

Thursday, February 22, 2024

Lunchbox D&D: The Zombie Juicer Caper

I have started a Friday afternoon D&D game (using my homebrew Ultra Bastard system) with 1 hour sessions. The idea is that folks who are working from home or have flexible schedules can join on their lunchbreak, explore a few rooms, and then get back to their workday. 

  • Sessions are 1 - 2pm US Eastern time. 
  • Discord for voice/video & Owlbear Rodeo for maps. 
  • True open table, no expectations that players will be able to join for all (or even most) sessions
  • If you're interested in joining, please reach out!
Art of my own making

Session 1: The Zombie Juicer

Summary:

After finding some big paintings, the players squashed a bunch of zombies and recovered two gold busts.

Friday, January 12, 2024

True Darkness



True Darkness is more than the mere absence of light. It actively opposes light rather than just removing it.

True Darkness can also be a source of revelation. Ancient texts describe Darkness emanating from sources deep with the earth and radiating from distant black stars. The chroniclers tell of powerful civilizations and vast cities, deep in the twisting caves below the roots of the mountains, that are “lit” entirely with cold fires that dim and overpower the lights of explorers.

Even in our times, mages ply the the Darkness spell and alchemists have devised Dark Candles and Dark Lanterns that project pools of this anti-light.


Light and True Darkness obscure each other. Mechanically, this means weak Darkness will obscure dim light and reduce a brightly lit area to dimness.


A simple concept, but it has big implications for the world, and opens up a lot of fun possibilities for magic, traps & tricks.


Tuesday, January 9, 2024

Cave of the Creepers

Cannibal Humanoid Underground Dwellers 

I'll be starting a new campaign with some friends in a couple weeks. A few are new to D&D so I figured this was my chance to break out B2 Keep on the Borderlands, which I've never run before. 

Inspired by Dungeoncraft's "Caves of Carnage" series, I'm re-skinning some of the more pedestrian elements of the original to be a bit creepier and re-working the maps to be a little more dynamic. 

My goals is to keep the iconic bones of the original but put some fresh paint on the blander bits.

I'm starting with the Kobold Caves and importing most of Professor Dungeon Master's upgrades.

I added a couple paths on my map. For comparison: original, re-drawn by Dyson.

I'm hoping that this little dungeon will reinforce to my new players the importance of thinking strategically about their lights. 

The Situation

The Creepers (stats as Kobold): Naked, hunched, cannibal cave-dwellers. Stunted and misshapen by generations underground, they are individually puny so even a low-level adventurer can probably take a few. The runts are light-averse, but they’ll aggressively target light-bearers with missile weapons then swarm in the dark, bearing down their prey with their numbers and shanks made of sharpened bone.

  • Lowlight Vision: Can see in light that would be too dim for a normal human to see anything.
  • Light Averse: Will avoid being brightly lit if at all possible and will attack and defend at disadvantage in bright light.
If that light goes out...

Years ago: The Creepers crawled up from the bowels of the Underdark, drawn unconsciously by the emanations of the Warpstone obelisk (in Area 4).

Last year: An imperial commander, Captain Kurtzman was sent to clear the caves. Maddened by his investigation of the obelisk, he killed the creeper chief and rather than exterminating the nest, he turned on his own men and took over as petty god-king. His men’s bones and rotted remnants of their equipment can be found in Area 2.

Real cave, real cannibals

Thursday, January 4, 2024

Ultra-Bastard D&D: Illumination

Over the Garden Wall

In Ultra-Bastard, tracking illumination is optional. Much of the time, decrementing torches and revealing the map a few squares at a time will be too administratively taxing, but often, particularly in classic dungeon-crawling, light is a major source of tension, constraint and fun. 

When tracking illumination matters:

Sunday, February 19, 2023

Beastmen: An Introduction to the Brugor

Brugor are voracious, horny and irrationally violent. The worst qualities of man and beast mashed into drunk, shrieking, manic bullies. They are a scourge on the earth.

The Brugor exemplify the bestial excesses of humanity: unrestrained appetites, poor impulse control, and vacillation between slovenly sloth and irrational aggression. A parody of toxic-masculinity. 

This is a tried and true archetype in fantasy (particularly in games) and I can't claim any originality in the basic shape of these adversaries. Like many before me, I take inspiration from Glorantha's Broo and Warhammer's beastmen. Arnold K has a particularly good rendition (here and here).

Brian Froud

What are the Brugor?

The Brugor are an all-male race of horned, hairy, cleft-hoofed, animal-headed humanoids. They breed prodigiously with domestic livestock and can reproduce at an alarming rate. Given access to a heard of cattle, they'll produce a horde in a matter of months. Their young are standing within minutes of birth, and on the hunt shortly thereafter. 

The most common varieties vary with the breeding stock available in an area but the most often seen include bovine (i.e. minotaurs), caprine (goatmen), ovine (rams) and cervine (stags) types. Often an outbreak begins with wildlife, before moving into settled areas and afflicting farm animals. 

They are carnivores. Their preferred feed is humans but they'll eagerly devour any animal they can catch that they can't impregnate.  

While clever enough to use tools, they lack the industry to make them. Any weapons they use more advanced than a sharpened stick will be plundered from humans. 

Herds form around particularly strong individuals and raid together, becoming bolder as their groups grow larger. Fortunately, they are fractious and disorganized so warbands larger than a dozen or two are rare. Occasionally, they'll be forced into the service of a non-brugor leader but it is almost never worth the effort.

Left to their own devices, brugor lack the social organization to form settlements or coordinate anything but the most haphazard raids into human territory. However, their mean little minds are perfectly suited for infection by Baphomet. 

Saturday, January 7, 2023

#dungeon23: Week 1, the Beast Cave

 I have ambitions to write a longer post about my dungeon23 goals and methods. Today, however, I'll just take a few minutes to share Week 1:

Formatted like a journal with maps and ancillary details on post-its
1.1 - Ordure Entry
Vaulted entry hall, waist deep in muck. A rickety catwalk crosses the mire between the doors. Rotten, splintering boards may collapse under a person's weight. 

  • Beneath the surface, jagged stakes & protruding nails will pierce anyone that falls in
  • Making noise in this hall will draw beastmen from other areas.
1.2 - Crossroads
In the middle of this intersection, a large object under a filthy tarp.  
  • Under the tarp, an iron cage containing a sickly, molting buzzard. If the tarp is removed, the bird will make a huge racket and draw beastmen from nearby areas