Murderhoboes of Devil's Canyon: Session 1

I got a group of people together this past weekend, we rolled up some 1st level Swords & Wizardry characters, and I sent them into Devil's Canyon.  Here's how things went down:

Dramatis Personae:

Johann Borscht, Dwarf Fighter 1

Legolas "Mohawk" Jones, Elf Magic-User 1

Manfrey the Magnificent, Human Magic-User 1

Alf the Elf, Elf Thief 1

These four, meeting aboard a caravan wagon, arrive in the boomtown of Devil's Canyon.  They find that the town consists of a single main street, lined with general stores, smithies, and the lone tavern in town, a local franchise of the popular tavern chain known as "the Chunderdome." Surrounding this main street was a tangle of alleyways lined with shacks and crude cottages rented or owned by adventurers seeking their fortune.

Sitting down in the Chunderdome with a round of beers, the four listened to the flow of conversations and picked up some news/rumors about the cave complex in the nearby limestone box canyon from which the town took its name.  

They learned that a tribe of fierce dog-men are rumored to guard the tomb of a great hero of the Hyperborean empire, a thousand years dead; that a necromancer was rumored to have made his abode in the caves; that the Astrologer Meinrad visits the caves on the nights of the new moon for unknown purposes; and that a month ago, a giant slug with cobra heads for eyestalks emerged from the canyon and almost made it to the gates of nearby Fort Thunder River before being slain.  

Discussing these rumors and debating what treasures to pursue in the caves, they decided to check in at the local temple of the Three Sisters -- the goddesses of Healing, Battle and Death, ever-present in the life of every adventurer -- for more guidance.  From the warrior-nuns here, they learned a few new rumors: that Nujah the Slayer, greatest of the Hyperborean sword-witches, died in battle in the canyon and her flying sword "Eagleclaw" was never recovered; that Violet Elves from the islands far to the west have been seen gathering poison mushrooms; and that the swamp at the far end of the canyon is infested with zombies.  

Legolas Jones also decided to buy a pig and sacrifice it to hir personal god, the ultra-chaotic entity known as "Gary Busey."  A ghostly, disembodied giant head of a human male with wild eyes, unkempt hair and oversized teeth appeared, swallowed the pig whole, and intoned, "The past - is history.  The future - is mystery.  And today's a gift - that's why it's the present.  YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHH!" before vanishing.  Legolas was not sure how to interpret this statement, but decided to take it to heart nonetheless.  

Connecting the tomb of the Hyperborean hero that's guarded by the dog-men with Nujah the Slayer, one of the greatest warriors of the Iron Empire of Hyperborea, they decided to brave the wrath of the dog-men to try and recover the mystical sword "Eagleclaw."  They also decided to try and hire some extra muscle; Manfrey the Magnificent befriended a large barroom tough named Burdo by buying him a beer after accidentally embedding a dart in his forehead, and Legolas jumped up on a table and put a call out for henchmen; from the applicants, she selected Murg, a gruff dwarven warrior, and Asheron, a fairly-intelligent (though still basically an ordinary) Rottweiler in a leather jacket and spiked helmet.  

Setting out, about a mile from the canyon they began to hear chanting and bells; rounding a bend in the road as it circled a hill, they came face to face with a band of eight human figures dressed in dark turquoise robes; one of them was waving a staff topped with a brass octopus, and the other seven rang bells.  One of them raised a hand to the adventurers, and asked, "Have you heard the good news? Dread Ktulu shall return! Repent and join us, brothers and sister - sister? - sister! Only through worship of Dread Ktulu shall ye be spared, for he shall devour us first!"

Not interested, Legolas blasted the cultists with a Sleep spell, and then walked over and casually slit all their throats.  S/he took a cultist robe for hirself, as well as taking a few for Murg and Asheron as well.  Manfrey replaced his staff with the octopus-headed staff of the cultists, and the adventurers also discovered that the cultists were carrying about 150 GP between them.  Pocketing this, they continued on to the caves.  

Having heard that the dog-men inhabited the first cave on the right at ground level, they cautiously entered the cave, Alf on point with a ten foot pole.  Suddenly they began to hear a rhythmic thumping from behind them; turning, they saw a half-dozen two-foot-tall humanoid canines, silhouetted against the morning sunlight, their large eyes glowing red.  The figures were thumping their spears against their shields menacingly as they advanced.  

Thinking quickly, Johann threw a bag of raw hamburger he'd purchased in hopes of distracting the dog-men at the humanoids.  They began yipping and yapping among themselves; fortunately, Legolas spoke Yip-Yip and was able to translate.  The dog-men, were cheering for Johann, and announcing that "the prophecy has been fulfilled!" It was at this point, as the cheering crowd of Yip-Yips surrounded him, that Johann noticed that they were all wearing belts made out of Hyperborean hacksilver, the currency of the Iron Empire.  

It turned out that the Yip-Yips had a prophecy that one day, a giant would come and deliver meat to them.  That was it; they weren't particularly imaginative with their prophecies.  Having become an honored member and demigod of the Yip-Yip tribe, Johann questioned them closely, through Legolas as translator, about the Hyperborean hero whose tomb they guarded.  Their king, the morbidly obese King Yap-Nip, showed them the gnawed remains of ancient bones and a bronze chain shirt, which Manfrey claimed, in order to upgrade Burdo's wardrobe from leather to chain.  Asking about a sword, Johann learned that the Yip-Yips' great enemy, the humans in the cave above theirs, had all sorts of swords, including a really shiny, fancy one.  These humans often raided the Yip-Yips' food stores, or shot at the Yip-Yips for target practice.  

Eager to get his hands on the shiny, fancy sword, Johann rallied the Yip-Yips, along their their menagerie of grotesque, hairless, scaly rat pets, and led them on a daring raid of the cave above.  

The assault on the cave proved to be easier than anticipated; the bandits in the cave above were mostly passed out from a heavy debauch the night before; most died without ever waking from their drunken stupor, and only a handful of Yip-Yips were slain in the process - and one of those was killed by a poisonous centipede, not by bandit retaliation.  

From objects in the cave, the adventurers deduced that the bandits were deserters from the Ninth Imperial Legion when it left the region.  Finding a damaged suit of Imperial plate-mail, a silver-and-ivory-inlaid longsword with an inscription from a wife to a husband, and three large, iron-bound and triple-padlocked walnut chests, Manfrey, Burdo and Alf returned to town to buy a mule and wagon, returning to collect the chests so that Alf could open them at his leisure.  They took the sword, not sure if it was the rumored "Eagleclaw" or not, but would investigate more fully later.  

Legolas, Johann, Murg and Asheron, meanwhile, cornered the leader of the bandits; Johann severed one of the bandit king's hands, while Legolas disabled his other hand with a thrown knife; finally, Murg conked him over the head with the flat of his axe, and they manacled the bandit king so they could interrogate him later.  They also found a chest of solid iron in the bandit's closet, unlocked.  Johann opened the chest and then collapsed, paralyzed, from a poison smeared on the edge of the lid.  Recovering a minute later, he directed Murg to open the chest; when he did so, a sudden explosion of steel send Murg stumbling backwards.  

A life-sized cobra sculpted from iron was sitting on Murg's chest, hissing and bearing hypodermic fangs; the Iron Cobra's attack dislodged Murg's beard, revealing that he was in fact a short human being wearing a big fake beard, and not a true dwarf.  Legolas tried shooting the iron cobra with hir crossbow, while Murg struggled and failed to keep the construct from biting him, though he did manage to resist its insidious poison.  Finally, Johann's hand shot out and grabbed the cobra behind the head; getting a grip with his other hand, he tore the cobra in half, killing it.  

At this point, Alf, Manfrey and Burdo returned with the mule and cart, and they maneuvered the three chests (the one which had contained the iron cobra contained no treasure - it was strictly there to punish interlopers) out of the cave, down the sloping side of the canyon, and on to the cart, heading back to town to celebrate an exceedingly successful first foray into the caves.  

Pulpfest Bound!

Well, in a couple days at any rate.  I have two more days to sweat it out at my current job at the law office, then Thursday morning Gina and I hit the road at dawn, heading deep into the wilds of Ohio.  To make matters even better, Wednesday is my *last* day at my current job; after I return from Pulpfest, Monday morning I start a new job at Rochester General Hospital -- the same building that Gina works in, in fact, which will make daily commutes that much simpler, plus my gym membership will become free since I work out at the RGH Wellness Center already anyways.

But! Thursday morning we set out, Columbus-bound, to experience the excitement of Pulpfest 2015! I've got a list of books I'm looking for in the dealer's room, but the relevant excitement for this blog is the convention's gaming track, something they've never done before but are trying out this year.  And because pulp-style gaming is something I do, I like to think very well, and they are honoring the 125th birthday of H.P. Lovecraft at this show, I'm going to be running a session of Call of Cthulhu on Friday afternoon.

The funny thing is, the game I'm running is a heavily re-written version of one of the convention modules published by Chaosium in the book "Terrors From Beyond," swapping out the locale, the names and occupations of both non-player characters and player characters alike, and the monster in the adventure.  But after I did all this work, I found out that another pulp birthday being marked at this year's pulpfest is the 100th birthday of Henry Kuttner - and the original module, before I revised it, was based directly on a Kuttner story, with a Kuttner-specific monster! D'oh! Oh well, I'm very happy with the work I've done -- I definitely feel like the wholesale rewriting of the module has put me more deeply in touch with the core of what makes the adventure work and running it will be smooth sailing.

Which is good, because since this is not a fully-dedicated gaming convention, I can't go in with any assumptions regarding the players - I can't assume they'll have dice, or know which dice are which, or have any familiarity with terms like "hit points," "sanity rating," or "skill percentage."  Chances are I will be teaching not just the game, but role-playing in general from the ground up during this adventure.

But this is not a bad thing, especially since this is my first game as a Call of Cthulhu missionary GM
for Chaosium.  I'm repping the game and the company, and one of the big requirements is I keep things beginner-friendly.  Pulpfest will be my baptism by fire, in a way.  I'm going in professional, I'm going in clean, I'm going in friendly, and I'm going in prepared - and by the Black Gods of R'lyeh, I will knock these peoples' socks off with the game I'm going to run.

Heck, I even bought a brand new Hawaiian shirt to wear while running this game to make sure I look my best.

And speaking of purchases, my reward to myself for getting the new job was to buy a new canvas-and-leather convention satchel to carry game notes, books, pencils, dice, etc. in when I'm going to and from games.  I'm not sure why olive drab canvas speaks to me so forcefully; my last gaming satchel, which was brutally murdered by Pathfinder books a couple years back, was an Air Force-surplus messenger bag in a similar color scheme.  This bag feels very sturdy and well made, has lots of zippered pockets, and has a very "Pulp" look to it.  I'm looking forward to its comfortable weight on my hip as I explore Pulpfest.

I've Officially Joined a Cult!

I'm pretty pleased to be able to announce that I'm officially registered with Chaosium, the company that produces Call of Cthulhu, as one of their "missionary" game masters in the "Cult of Chaos" program - I'll be going to gaming conventions and hopefully at some point game stores and running newbie-friendly games of Call of Cthulhu to showcase the system and bring new players into the fold.

The first show I'll be working as a member of the missionary program will be Pulpfest in Columbus, OH next month.  This is the first year they're adding a gaming track to the show, and when I saw that announcement I immediately emailed them and asked if they could use another person running games.  I actually signed up for that before the revived missionary program was announced, so I've been in the process of updating the adventure I'd planned to run to the latest edition of the rules.  I'm most comfortable with 6th edition rules (which are barely different from 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th editions) but as part of the missionary program I do need to be doing my part to promote the newest incarnation of Chaosium's flagship game.  7th edition makes some interesting updates to the rules, most of them geared towards further streamlining the system.

So I'm signed up to run one adventure at Pulpfest, and then in September I'll be making the trek back to my old stomping grounds in Buffalo, NY for this year's Queen City Conquest, where I'll be running two Call of Cthulhu sessions back to back, the second of which, "The Get of Belial," is based on an unproduced script from the show Kolchak: The Night Stalker.  The first adventure, "Nightmare on the Slopes," draws from a number of B-movies released over the course of about 20 years, from the 1950s through the 1970s.  And that's all I'll say about that, in case someone reading this winds up playing in one of those games.

While I'd initially been holding out for the dead-tree edition of the 7th edition rules, because I learn a game better when I've got a physical artifact in my hands to learn from, I went ahead and bought the PDF of the 7th Edition Keeper's handbook from Chaosium.  I won't lie to you, I did balk a little at the price - even with the sale currently going on, the PDF cost as much as a hard copy of many other RPG books.  It's a beautiful volume from what I've seen in the PDF, with full color art throughout and some of the most amazing illustrations in the bestiary I've ever seen for Mythos entities.  Some of them, like the image accompanying the Great Race of Yith, take the descriptions from Lovecraft and interpret them in an entirely new direction, unlike anything I've seen before while still being absolutely faithful to the source text.

I've got the Quick Start guide for 7th edition in both PDF and dead-tree format, and I'm hoping that will help fill in any gaps in reading the main rule book PDF until I can get a hard copy of that, hopefully this fall.

ANKHEG ATTACK!

Ankhegs are one of my favorite monsters in Dungeons & Dragons.  I mean, they're an acid-drooling bug that pops up out of the ground - what's not to like? In fact, I'd say one of the best adventures of D&D I've ever run was a session of Pathfinder in which the player characters were hired to resolve a labor dispute at a mine; the miners were striking due to unsafe working conditions and flooding tunnels, the mine's owners wanted them to get back to work.  Investigating the mines themselves, the adventurers were able to determine that the collapsing and flooded tunnels were the result of a nearby Ankheg hive - I made them eusocial, termite-like creatures for this - burrowing in and out to prey on miners and in the process undermining the mines themselves.

Gina and I are currently engaged in "No Buy July" - we cannot buy any new materials in support of our hobbies, or other luxuries, during the month of July.  It's not so much about our budgets as it is about self-discipline.  Now, granted, we spent the last few days before July on a shopping spree, loading up on (in my case) RPG books, miniatures (and in her case) high-end hand-spun yarn.  Among my purchases was a Reaper Bones Ankheg that had literally just been made available to the public a few days before; when I saw the figure in their online shop, clearly inspired by the artwork of David Trampier and Erol Otus in the Ankheg's early days, I knew it had to go in my shopping cart.  And as the largest single figure I bought on my spree (I'm not sure why I bought so many tiny, tiny kobolds to paint...), I decided it was up on the painting table first.

The color scheme I based on one of New Zealand's Tree Weta species of very large, flightless crickets, because I wanted something a little bit flashier then the drab browns I'd been seeing Ankhegs depicted in, without going too crazy.  We recently bought this nice white folding table, currently set up below our living room picture window, for Gina to work on jigsaw puzzles on (one being visible in the background of a couple of these pictures), and I have to say, it's a handy thing to photograph miniatures on as well!

No-Buy July is Coming...

As an experiment, Gina and I are forgoing any and all luxuries we have to spend money on for the month of July.  She's been very worried lately that she's becoming too materialistic, or too greedy a consumer (in large part because she's fallen in love with yarn produced by a specific indie dyer and seller, who releases each collection of vibrant, hand-dyed yarn for only a few hours, one weekend a year, with a different collection available each week).  She feels awful about sitting by her computer waiting for these sales to start up each weekend and feels guilty for spending her hard-earned money so lightly, especially when, with her current schedule, she has very little time for knitting. 

So we decided to try going a month without spending like that - if she wants to begin a new project she has to use yarn from her stash, while if I want to watch a movie, it needs to be one I already own - if I want to paint miniatures, they have to be ones I already have avaialble, and if I want to run a game I have to already own the books.  We're also cutting way back on going out to eat for the same reason. 

We bought a Scrabble set on Friday night and have been enjoying a daily game of that, which seems to help with her anxiety as well, and we also got a folding table and a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle that she intends to assemble and then frame as a gift to my parents. 

We also had a massive "pre-No-Buy July" splurge; she bought a couple hundred dollars' worth of ultra high-end hand-dyed yarn, and I bought about $90' worth of Reaper Bones figures (it dawned on me that, having the prime them by hand with gesso, Bones will be a great project for me during the winter months when I can't go outside and spray-prime, plus with my renewed interest in Dungeons & Dragons - and nice new folding table to play on when it doesn't have puzzle on it - I'd like to get out the miniatures again for that purpose) and a big stack of OSR books. 

Does it maybe defeat the purpose of No-Buy July if we have a big buying spree right before? You tell me. 

Dark Fable Egyptian Mummies (and Lady-Friends)

As promised, here are some quick snapshots of the Egyptian figures I painted this weekend:

Realizations and Working Hard at the Painting Table

In the past few weeks, as the weather's warmed up to the point where I can prime figures outside again, I've begun painting again, only to come up against a rather ugly realization.

I have lost the patience required to paint whole units of 28mm figures.  I used to be able to do big blocks of Games Workshop Orcs and Skeletons without batting an eye (granted, the skeletons were sprayed black and drybrushed ivory, but still), and now...

I went through a huge struggle just to work up the motivation to paint eight Greek Hoplites.  They're not finished.  I'm not sure they will be.  Right now they're sitting in a little plastic container, mocking me.  Sitting down and doing nigh-identical figures over and over again...I'm not sure I can do it any more.  Even working in nice stages of, "OK, armor's done, next round, cloth, then a round of leather bits" is proving deeply discouraging for me.

On the other hand, I'm having no trouble painting characterful figures, especially, um, characters!

If you'll recall back in December I posted about backing Dark Fable's Egyptians on Kickstarter.  I got my two packs a month or two back, and over the last couple days I've gotten them painted, and it was very relaxing and enjoyable to do so - I'll post some pictures as soon as I varnish them.

Having five figures at a time that have a theme, but aren't the same guy over and over again, seems to have worked very well for me.  As such, I've ordered a couple packs from Pulp Figures to keep me busy for the next couple weeks - I love Bob Murch's big, chunky, richly detailed and lively sculpts and I love 1930s Pulp...anything, really.  Most of my reading lately has been pulpish stuff, and in August Gina and I will be attending Pulpfest in Columbus, Ohio for a long weekend getaway - and hitting a couple geology museums, hiking trails and a large conservatory with attached butterfly conservatorium along the way.

Gina's actually been razzing me about my order from Pulp Figures today - I bought them in part because this weekend is Spin-Off, a twice-a-year uber-sale her local yarn and fiber store holds and in the past she's bought hundreds of dollars worth of high-end yarn and knitting supplies during Spin-Off Weekend, and whenever she gets in a consumerist mood it invariably infects me as well.  Naturally, since I preemptively ordered two packs of toy soldiers, she hasn't bought anything at Spin-Off yet, and is actually not sure if she'll get anything - she's reading a book about decluttering one's life and the value of minimizing one's possessions to just things you truly love and which bring you great joy in life, and getting herself a little freaked out that she's burying herself in a mountain of possessions that she's not in love with.

I'd mentioned to her mid-week last week that I wasn't sure about ordering from Pulp Figures, because there weren't really any packs available that I really looked at and said, "I HAVE to have that."  Instead it was a lot of packs that garnered a response of, "Well, that'd probably be fun to paint," and she used that to try and discourage me from spending the money - or spending it elsewhere on figures that I HAD to have.  But throughout the week I discovered that there were several packs that I just kept going to the website and looking at, and I finally broke down last night and ordered two of them.  So pretty soon I should be getting a pack of Canadian Mounties and a pack of American Rocketeers - I'm not sure why the Mounties resonated so strongly with me, a non-Canadian, but the Rocketeer figures are modeled on The Rocketeer, which was one of my favorite movies as a kid and I fell even more in love with the character a few years ago when the comics got reprinted.  So the opportunity for five Rocketeers...

And yeah, I know, irony of ironies - I struggle painting eight Greek soldiers but two sets of five guys in matching uniforms is okay.  Go figure.