News on the march! Here are a handful of things of interest while yours truly wrestles with the Deadline Gods (none of which has to have anything to do with gaming, sadly, except for delaying various projects in the making).
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| Mind the Lepers |
Tuirgin has been kind enough to adapt The Nocturnal Table to Chartopia. After EOTB’s excellent Fantasy Grounds integration, this is a web-based implementation of the supplement. You can just click on the link, and roll up stuff for those nighttime adventures. It is all free, at your fingertips, and offers you most of the supplement's content.
For instance… adventurers Yakko Sarxs, Zeep Ulbem, and Mark the Marrakian learn from clandestine sources that an important meeting will take place “by the benches at the peacock mosaic… wear a rose”, and they swear to get there before the intended target!
- They head out to the market – it is daytime, and they meet 2 Drunks (LVL 1), offering them some work. Declining the offer, they start looking for a suitable rose seller.
- They encounter a “Jovial yogi selling opium, as a last-ditch gambit” (the GM gives him 1:6 to know of a rose seller, but comes up empty), followed by a “Paranoid, perverted lord selling advice, to corner the market, who miscalculates the price”. This is apparently someone who knows the market, but seeing that the characters are in need, gouges them for a hefty sum. In any event, the rose is acquired!
- The peacock mosaics are in the Thieves’ Quarter. On the way there, the GM rolls for another daytime encounter: 14 Sailors/Pirates (Fighter 2), confronting the party by trying to stop them. Not eager to blow their chance, the characters grudgingly bribe the sea scum… but note them for further retaliation. By the time the altercation is over, night falls…
- In the Thieves’ Quarter, the GM first rolls for local colour: the characters note “Stone arms (4) propped against brick wall.” Odd! An encounter from the Nocturnal Table proper follows… “(384) Wererats (2d4 (5)), carrying diseased rags in enormous bundles, and scattering them everywhere.” Hooded, hunched men and women are donating colourful rags to the local lepers and beggars – a spectacle the characters choose to avoid (the consequences will manifest in a few days anyhow…)
- Arriving near the peacock mosaics, the GM rolls again for local colour to set the scene, and a simple nighttime encounter to see what kind of passersby are to be found nearby. A “sleeping dog cradles carved bone-hilt dagger (15 gp)” near the benches, and a “Mercenary (Fighter 8)” tries to seduce one of the characters with a ballad, attempting to lure them into a nearby dive… but noticing the rose worn by Zeep Ulbem, he gestures to them to come closer, and inquires whether they have come for the Brotherhood contract. Zeep Ulbem nods curtly.
- The man leads the company to a nearby storefront, and knocks twice in rapid succession. A panel is slid open, and they are welcomed into a dimly lit store, stocked with… “miniature drums” and “ritual mummies”. The shopkeeper, who introduces himself as Invenor, reaches into his robes while the adventurers wait nervously for the next step.
This is the kind of improvised stuff you could cook up with these tables on a step-by-step basis, or you could spice up a premade adventure as well. It is all free (although you can also purchase the supplement in print and PDF), and it is all courtesy of Mr. Tuirgin. Much appreciated!
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| The good Melan is in the Lodge, and cannot leave. |
Yours truly has been interviewed on video, and a very special place it was! Having spread beyond the Black Lodge, The Red Roomis a new Youtube channel from Portugal (but broadcasting in English), featuring reviews, commentary, and interviews with various villains of the tabletop RPG scene. This conversation has followed the successful crowdfunding campaign for the Spanish edition of Helvéczia (€6700 out of €5500!), and it mainly focused on this game – its aims, sources of inspiration (including the original picaresque novels of the 17th century), historical context (and the liberties it takes with history), bestiary, why the Old Swiss Confederation is an ideal adventure setting, and how far you can take the game in various odd directions. This has been a blast – thank you for having me on! Are the owls what they seem?
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Echoes Fom Fomalhaut #09 in PDF!
The newest Echoes issue is up on DriveThruRPG, and features 60 pages of stuff, including a new setting to the northwest of the Isle of Erillion, an adventure set there, and a B/X dungeon for first-level characters… lots of first-level characters, as it turns out! Bring lots of character sheets, and a good number of followers.
The next issue will be #10, a nice number indeed. I expected it to come out this time of the year, but, again, real life has had me chained to Winword, Excel, and other unholy things for the last few months, and that has thrown a spanner between the gears. Realistically, late April or early May looks possible. I am also translating a handful of Helvéczia adventures for the Spanish edition, and once I have them in English, it makes sense to publish them as well. And of course, other projects are on the table as well: a forest adventure I am particularly fond of, as well as a guest contribution centred around an old well… The Well of Frogs!
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| Oh FU |
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