Collaboration is good for the soul - Hirelings for blue baron part deux

Here's the thing, when I write my own stuff, I only have me to bounce ideas off of. Which is all fine and good, but it's like playing guitar by yourself (or other things) it's a whole lot more fun with more people! Pardon that stupid innuendo. The last few days I get to work, fire up google drive and see what's been happening with the blue baron project. Read something cool, and then I'm like "Alright Shane let's see what we can do this morning!" It's not that its a contest, it's just inspiration. So here's some hirelings. I hope to write a few more before the project is done. If you want to jump in on it here's the community link: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/104980520414500054316

Hirelings 

If the players find themselves with a lack of extra  muscle they can hire a few of the following peons. 

Sige The Mighty:  (Human 1st Level Fighter)  Sige isn’t actually that mighty, although he claims to be!  If met by the players he will boast about all of his previous accomplishments as a fighter.  All of which he has borrowed from legend and twisted to be all about him.  Clever players may catch on to this.  Stats:  STR 5 INT 4 WIS 12  CON 10  DEX 8 CHA 14, Long Sword, Leather Armour, Shield.   Cost:  2 SPs a day. 

Findeli Lonevris:  (Elf 1st Level  Magic User)  Findeli came to the city in search of knowledge, having exhausted the library’s from home.  He is a loyal helper and will do his best to keep any situation under control.  He is however curious, when it comes to anything ancient or puzzling.   Stats: STR 10 INT 14 WIS 9  CON 9  DEX 10 CHA 7.  Findeli is unarmoured, he carries a staff, a short bow and a pocket full of marbles.  Spells:  Magic Missile. Cost: 1 GP a day.

Riffolk Mythey:  (Human Cleric 2nd Level) Riffolk is a follower of Najin the goddess of the moons.  He is a hardy cleric, muscle bound and headstrong.  His only fault is that he never learned to speak well, and tends to drop words when talking.  Stats:  STR 16 INT 9  WIS 12  CON 8  DEX 9  CHA 3.  If the players agree to pay a tithe to Goddess (100 SPs) he will stay and help as long as he is able to. 

Heaher Leah:  (Human Thief 1st Level)  Heaher spent some time as a for hire assassin, but was kicked out for being far too brutal on her contracts.  She has since led a life of crime, just making ends meet.  She won’t think twice about stealing from her employers or running if things get bad.  Stats:  STR 10 INT 12  WIS 9  CON 8  DEX 12 CHA 13.  Cost:  3 GPs a day

Tavern Rumours: The Return of the Blue Baron

In case the players decide to hit up the bar for an ale prior to jumping into the dungeon.  Just some flavour text. 

1. I don’t know what to think?  Now with the Baron gone, do my taxes go up? Down? Around?

2. Have you seen her yet? Oh she’s delightful.  Sorry I wasn’t talking to you.

3. Couple months back I saw some shady looking dwarves go into an old building, somewhere near town square.  They were carrying pickaxes.  What did they need those for I wonder? 

4. You know if it’s not one thing it’s another, a guy can’t get ahead in this world.  And those royals are just a pain in me arse.

5. AHAHAHA, So I was totally at last year’s ball, super fun!  I ended up playing bagpipes most of the evening.

6. You ever get to thinking, that maybe this isn’t quite real? I mean I’ve been sitting here for what seems like hours, but honestly it’s only probably been like ten minutes. 

7. There I was sitting on my stoop, and all of a sudden a herd of pigs tramples my rose bushes!

8. Nhoj is just a strange cat.  I saw him here once.  The guy ordered water, I mean have you seen the colour of the water?  I wouldn’t feed that to my cat!

9. Just had a tax collector stop by.  I said “I paid you last week! Why are you coming around again?”  If this keeps up I’m moving to the countryside.  Maybe I can hide from those buggers.

10. The strange thing is that I just saw a bunch of adventurers come in here.  They were shuffling around and drinking, trying to find out the latest news.  They went towards the town square.  One guy was pretty ugly, missing some teeth.

If you would like to join in the fun of a collaborative dungeon product, head on over to the google plus community.  We still have a lot of rooms left to go! So far it's turning out amazing!

https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/104980520414500054316

It's all a learning experience

When I first started writing, I wrote ugard. Honestly it's terrible. Still is. I thought I did a not bad job with Lizardmen, got better at layout. But still learning. I felt like I did a good job of gardag (I still believe this is the best adventure I've written). Mad God's Jest had its moments, but all in all was as bad as ugard, a step back honestly. Which is why I took some time off. I got reignited working on the blue baron. Prior to that I released "troubling Events" which was a adventure culled from a few random tables, mostly a writing experiment to get myself out of a funk.

Currently I'm working on the serial dungeon and it's not really turning my crank right now. 

I just released version one of Dusty door, I will probably do an edit on it and put it out soonish. 

Eventually I keep thinking I'd like to go back and rewrite everything. Maybe figure out a way to tie all the adventures into a world. Write the world. Add some tables and things from my blog. 

Put it out as a compilation, pwyw pdf, and pod (where I make a bit). I don't want to be the guy that re sells something. So all the individual adventures would get new uploads. I would also add to the book so there's new content.

As far as layout goes, I'll have to figure a better way to present it. I dislike boxed text.... I might have to re read motbm. Although I know some people prefer older 1e looking adventures. I would rather not ape someone else's style though (in either case).

It's all a learning experience. 

I think id figure out a somewhat standard way of writing out monster stats that are compatible with most osr. More reading is required. 

You can get most of that stuff here. http://drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/6654/3-Toadstools&affiliate_id=470115

Flowchart for Serial Adventure - Level 1

Wrote up a quick flow chart for the Serial adventure.  It helps my brain figure things out.

Probably do up a actual legible one at some point.

Excellent evening of gaming!

First time playing online last night, and it was a fucking blast!  +God Emperor Leto II messaged me about possibly running my new adventure "Dusty Door" and I honestly jumped at the chance to play! After we get thru this dungeon, I'm going to do a bit of tweaking to the final adventure adding in Jeff's two cents and hopefully getting all the stats for the other players (so I can add them as pre gens!).   Obviously of course I'll be adding the names of the other players to the adventure as playtesters.

Alright onto the evening.  First off not to toot Jeff's ego, but he's a fucking amazing DM.  He's very engaging as you can see.  I am unaware how much prep work he does, or if its off the cuff but that gnomish NPC was a fucking riot.

Mechanically Blueholme is a lot of fun to play online, and OSR games for that matter.  Less fumbling with modifiers, dice rolls etc.  Specifically I think DEX based initiative makes the game run so much more smoothly.  As a DM once you write down everyone's numbers (barring any changes from terrible potions), you only really have to worrry about the monsters DEX after that.  I'm putting that little note in my head for whenever I run a game online.

I gotta say playing with the other two guys was a lot of fun.  They really know their old school games. It makes it a lot easy to play a game.  We had a really good conversation about OSR games after we were done. For probably about an hour! haha.  I also found it interesting what their backgrounds were.  Some of the guys had played 2,3,4 editions.  One in particular found old school gaming thru lotfp which is awesome! Just made me realize how much I enjoy playing old school games.

What was very weird, was that my wife was watching the live feed on youtube downstairs while we were playing.  At one point we went out for a quick smoke and she was saying that I was being a bit of a "role play hog", ie talking too much.  I think I was honestly just excited, not because it was an adventure I wrote but because of just playing.  At some point I think she would like to jump in on a game.
I should also note that using the Journeymann rules one of the players ran a flesh golem! So cool.

I have now officially caught the bug to play online! I will have to do a few upgrades around my house to be successful at it.  First off no wifi, run a line.  Secondly I'll need to get a better headset.

Here's the video from last night! 

Blacksand without Lord Azzur

What would happen to Port Blacksand without the venerable Lord Azzur?  

Everyone knows that he leaves the port once in awhile to go off pirating.  But what if he died? From doing a bit of brief reading on Lord Azzur it seems he may have made a pact with a devil to stay alive.  That in itself could be a interesting adventure.  How do you take out Azzur?  It seems that he swore allegiance to the Night Prince Zanbar Bone , who is not a villain that you can just fight straight up.   Fighting him is a matter of choices and decisions.  (as per the lore). 

So to take out Lord Azzur, one must destroy Zanbar Bone first.  Of course Azzur would probably be aware of the death of the demon and make some precautions.

This alone could be a very interesting adventure. 

But what if all of that already happened?  What would happen to the "city of thieves"?

I think it would be an all out turf war.  Not akin to a excellent mafia movie.  Intrigue and death.  It seems that most of the thieves guild is organized into one main version, which is probably ruled indirectly by Lord Azzur in some form.  Obviously like in any criminal enterprise there are people who want to move up the ladder.  The death of Azzur would probably cause the entire guild to fold, and create mass chaos in Blacksand (not that there isn't already). 

The "heroes" could be out in the trenches fighting with rebel faction of the broken thieves guild.  Assassinations would be even more common place than they already are. 

At some point, there would be a break in to the palace.  Maybe the heroes would be met with Zanbar, or the lich version of Azzur?  I'm sure there would be more than one group of thieves wanting to get into the palace.

Who would be the important figures left over in the ashes of the thieves guild to rise up and start their own versions? 

Would the pirates just skip town? Would they join in.

The whole idea would be super interesting.  A already chaotic city thrown completely into the void. 

I hate to quote star wars but blacksand is Mos Eisley!  

"You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." "You don't need to see his identification."

The fall of thieves guild quest ideas: 

1.  Meet with a former higher up in the original guild to discuss plans for a take over of the city. 

2.  Return the body of Lord Azzur to Fire Island, meet with the shade of Zanbar to bring him back from the dead.  Then take the city back! 

3.  Assassinate all rival leaders and factions. 

4.  Spend time in the streets recruiting thieves to your own guild. 

5.  Infiltrate the palace

6.  Steal Lord Azzur's boat. 

I'm sure I will come up with a few more twists and tables. 

In the original adventure for AFF, there are plans to try and take back the city.  Source

Port Blacksand is at the centre of the plot of the role-playing game Advanced Fighting Fantasy set on the world of Titan. There, the evil wizard Xortan Throg, a descendant of the rulers of Carsepolis, strives to regain the domain of his ancestors by overthrowing Lord Azzur and taking over Port Blacksand (which "replaced" Carsepolis). He stroke and alliance with the corrupt prince of the city-state of Chalice to gain enough military strength to invade the City of Thieves, but was thwarted by a group of adventurers.

However, this defeat was just a setback for Xortan Throg, who was in fact based in the ruins of Carsepolis (the sewers of Port Blacksand) and preparing his attack from within. Throg was building an army of the local Fish Men and the dead city guards, which he raised from the grave, and stroke deals with pirates under Lord Azzur's nose.


But the adventurers did not give up on defeating the wizard. They ventured in Port Blacksand and, with help from Arakor Nicodemus, pursued him into the ruins of Carsepolis. They then stroke a deal with the ghost of the evil priest Sargon and following his advices, they obtained on a Crystal of Power in the sunken temple of the Ocean God Hydana. Xortan Throg confronted the adventurers and cast a Death Spell at them, only for the Crystal of Power to reflect it back at him and put an end to his ambitions.

I found a few links on Azzur, some of them cover the same material, but its worth a read if you are interested. 

http://villains.wikia.com/wiki/Lord_Varek_Azzur

http://fightingfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Varek_Azzur

http://fightingfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Zanbar_Bone

http://fightingfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Lord_Azzur%27s_Palace

http://www.fightingfantasygamebooks.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=211&Itemid=37

So I was thinking about D&D and then ADHD kicked in.

Yesterday when I got up I started thinking about D&D (like every friggin day).  In between coffee and skyrim I started re-reading the 5e DMG.  At some point in time I may have to take a turn DMing 5e again.  I started looking thru some of the options in the back, just to see what I could do.  My guess is that it would be a one shot, however it's always good to have a backup "campaign" outline just in case.  Considering we have 4 DMs in the group, this may not be an issue for me.

Campaign Ideas: 

Wuxia style campaign with Aliens.  I was skimming the Oriental adventures book at the same time.

Western Marshes style campaign:  Read more info here.  Using Blackmarsh.

Jakandor: Would be super nifty, however since we are running around an island currently it might be a bit too similar.

If we have to stick with Faerun, running Al Quadim or the wuxia thing in whatever part of Faerun that works might be an idea.

Alternatively (and what I will probably do) is not do any actual world building other than a brief sketch.  Create a small hex map with 3 or 4 adventure locations, plant a town on the border and leave it at that.  I really don't want to do typical high fantasy bs though.  There is a bit in the DMG about campaign styles, and the last paragraph is sort of "the whole kitchen sink", that's the most appealing to me.  Samuari's, Aliens, Flying airships, barbarians.

As I've said before I wouldn't mind creating new character classes, and races and or sticking with the basic ones.  The only issue is the players.  And I know it's "My campaign" but its still gotta be fun.  If someone gets annoyed because they can't play their fav tiefling warlock/warrior hybrid, that's no fun.

Whatever the case, what I end up with is going to be deadly.  I'm throwing CR's out the window for the most part.  You goto the hext with the big ugly dragon.  Good luck.

In one of +Samwise Seven RPG videos he talks about throwing out Charisma as a stat and using the sanity rules.  This seems like a wonderful idea.  I"m in agreement with him that making deception checks are boring with a dice roll.  I'd rather RP it out.

Event Based Adventures:

This whole idea seems very railroadey and not very O5R.  I'm sure when I was younger I was writing event based adventures, and it does seem to be a good idea for Fifth edition.  I may take a crack at it for the sake of argument.

Alright so obviously this is a whole bunch of random ADHD this morning.

This week i get to play in a blueholme game with +God Emperor Leto II which is going to be FUN!

The return of the blue baron is coming along! Check it out here:

Happy Gaming!