Review: A Trio of Card Decks

Time to take a look at a few bits of Kickstarter loot that have been knocking around in my office:

First off, Crawl Cards: Overland, from BPB Games. I pledged at the $10 level for a POD discount coupon for the physical cards plus pdf. The supplement is a deck of 50 cards, each with six hexes. Hexes are color/graphic coded for terrain, along with features associates with one or more hexes (structures, settlements, monsters, unique terrain, etc.). Each card also has a brief description on the back for one or two unique features found within the six-hex area. The cards are designed for 5e, but are generally system agnostic in their descriptions.

Let's pull one. 

Card GO-07: "Blood Soaked Vale" The six hexes include three mountainous terrain, one swamp, on grassland, and two ruins/settlements (the hexes of interest).

Ooo. A mystery and the grumpy dead. Always a good start. Since the cards are meant to be used in sandbox style adventuring, the designers recommend drawing three cards and picking one that best fits as an adjacent region or continuation of a narration. 

(Draws three...)

The cards are titled "A Darker Path," "Radical Freedom," and "Rasekuhe." Cards 2 and 3 describe dwarven anarchists and a couple of farming and ranching communities, so the themes aren't particularly consistent with the original card. 

Campaign Journal: Piracy, ho!

Another small night, with work conflicts and other miscellany. 

• Slick - thief
• Orzu - gnome
• Jax - barbarian

Not a worry, let's mess around in Morn Kolduhr and get to know the Sea Dwarves. The Wolverine was undergoing repairs from its run-in with the Chaos ship, so everyone was sitting tight, anyhow.

First of all, they were excited to get to work experimenting with making ruby glass. Orzu, as a "cousin," was enlisted to pick the best rubies from the collection pilfered by the characters. Orzu has no idea what he's doing. That said, he had Jax hold up the selected gems while focusing a light spell through them using Slick's jewelers loupe. Somehow, he was able to discern gem quality via the various kaleidoscope patterns projected onto the walls. 

Well then, he had to oversee the glass casting process, as well. Orzu was dragged off, deeper into the mountain's heart to somewhere near its volcanic core, where the special forges were located. Sweltering in oversized protective gear, he observed the dwarves mixing the rubies with optical sand and melting it down into a 1/3 scale prototype disk. Satisfied with their experiments, the dwarves led the desiccated gnome back to the main city. The PCs inventoried where lenses, either broken or intact, were located to the best of their knowledge along the Barrier strongholds, and how to contact allies to possibly retrieve them for recasting. 

Durkan Dildran, tundra nomad and Slick's current hench, was getting a bit claustrophobic in the subterranean city, and a dwarf, Thorin Duskborn, offered to guide them to one of the city's several cliffside lookouts for a bit of fresh air and sky above their heads. While en route, the dwarf noted that Slick seemed to be of an 'acquisitional' nature, as he'd been poking around during his time in the city. Slick admitted as much, and the dwarf, amused told him not to worry, and that he and his brother had an ongoing challenge of making and picking locks. His brother, of course, being the exiled Urin Duskborn. Slick pulled out the lock gifted to him by Urin, and its craftmanship was immediately recognized by Thorin. In exchange, Thorin gave Slick a very nice set of lockpicks, to aid his middling skills...

The trio watched the sea and sky, and played with the lookout's telescopes. Soon enough, Thorin's ears perked up. "Ship! Sounds like a grain hauler. Bread and ale! Wanna come along?" Dumb question.

The three hurried to the docks and grabbed Jax and Orzu along the way.

Onto a large raiding galley and off!

The ship cruised towards its prey, sails full and rowers pulling. Slick noticed that his hat was flapping and jingling a bit more than one might expect from speeds capable for a galley. Thorin smiled. "C'mon down. You don't think we can row this fast with our stubby arms, do you?" And into the hold they went, to a compartment at the stern of the ship manned (dwarved) by several nervous dwarves in protective gear handling heavy riveted and welded metal spheres that rattled and spat steam. The spheres were placed and replaced in racks, adding whatever compressed forces to mechanisms driving the ship forward. 

Like this, but dwarves

A Baker's Dozen of D66 Tables

A collection of random D66 lists originally posted on my blog (plus an extra!) for use, abuse, or inspiration at your table. Contents include: shrine locations, weird goblins, intelligent swords, apocalypses, and more!

Drivethrurpg Link

Shadowdark: Bloggah's Blog Part 6, Death by Crowdsurfing

Looking a bit down, there Bloggah - rough day out?

***

Meh. We're still in our trees, it's dark, and the dead are on the march. Oh yeah, it's snowing now, too. Definitely not giving this part of the Komor Forest a good review.

And we still don't have a cleric-type. Dremont, you are on The List.

Anyway, best we can tell, the dead are marching east. Hopefully we can just stay quiet, and they won't notice us...

Damnit, there are a few with glowing red eyes. One pauses, scans around, and starts up Elinar's tree. It's got fierce, sharp skeletal claws, making quick work of that tree. I try to see if magic is driving it, but something goes haywire, and, well, Columbo is not magical.

I hear Elinar casting something, but something goes wrong for her, too, and suddenly she's hanging from a branch, cackling like an idiot. So much for the stealthy bit. 

That skeleton homes in on her, clawing her. The boys do their best, and I zap it, but that damn thing's tough. It gets ahold of Elinar, and she tumbles into the morass of marching undead. Damn.

The Mosh Pit of Death

D66 Apocalypses

It's the end of the world as we know it, but sometimes the end is a good beginning. If there is anything left to begin again from. 

Anyway, time for another D66 list of fun and frivolity. This time, various world-ending events, whether to prevent them, accelerate their oncoming, or just go along for the ride...

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D66 Apocalypses:
11: Sun explodes
12: Snowball world – Global ice age
13: Intelligence suck – Everything gets dumb
14: Cannibal corpse – Everything eats everything
15: Undead arise – Braaaiinnnsss
16: Slime everywhere – Why does the green slime stop with just one adventurer?
21: Alien farm – We'll make great pets...
22: Green hell – Greenhouse effect, plants engulf everything, kudzu reigns.
23: Eldritch awakening – Portals from beyond
24: Spiders!
25: Floods rise
26: Waters recede
31: Warring gods – Indifferent to the mortal collateral damage
32: Ennui – Sigh....
33: Sexplosion – Too busy getting busy.
34: Out of control goblin automatons – Tinkering gone wrong
35: Nuclear winter
36: Nuclear summer - Very brief, hot.
41: Giant asteroid
42: Giant volcano
43: Giant kaiju
44: Jumbo shrimp – Not sure, just went with the running theme...
45: Octopus revolution – I, for one, welcome our cephalopod overlords
46: Corvid uprising – You know they're up to something
51: Planetary alignment – Or misalignment
52: Misdealt Deck of Many Things
53: Portable Hole/Bag of Holding mishap
54: Arcane chain reaction
55: Rampaging moose – Moose are skairy
56: Nanorobotic grey goo
61: Robot uprising
62: Black hole
63: Atmospheric collapse
64: Time travel mishap – Who stepped on the butterfly?
65: Accelerated evolution
66: Hell unleashed

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Download the list here

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Shadowdark: Bloggah's Blog Part 5, Lost and Found

Damnit, where's my tablet? Oh, there it is, under the couch. And why does it smell like sulfur?

***

...this card game on this magic book is clearly rigged...

Oh hi. 

So we left the shrine after not being attacked by undead, bears, or anything else. The forest around the hills was pretty thick. We looked at the map we had. It's pretty vague, but we figured out where we should? be... After a lot of armwaving and pointing, we decided to go north, or what we though was north. 

It wasn't north.

Fine. We found a small cave to huddle in, the day lost. At least nothing was living in it. We had Columbo sleep by the entrance so he could block it up... He said he saw some flash of light that night, but I think he was just lighting his farts.

We got back at it the next day. Travel was uneventful. Thankfully. We saw some deer, but left them alone. They're scary.

click

The ground was marshy, and we noticed some gray tendrils of fog in the trees. Best to avoid. The trees opened up and we found a grassy area with a bunch of half-buried stones. Elinar tried to read the scratchings on them, but no luck. Turns out Jer-Jom had some book-learning, too, but he skipped class that day. Columbo dug around, and found a line of stones, with their flat sides facing east. At least we have our directions figured out. It was getting late, so we retreated under the trees to camp in the drizzle. I was on watch when something moved around in the grass. 

Campaign Journal: To the Smoking Isles

Full house tonight:

Jax - Barbarian
Fulvus - Halfling
Rondel - Elf
Frederick - Thief
Orzu - Gnome
Slick - Thief 

Anyway, with Beladon the elf reportedly raging and on the hunt for those who cleaned out his vaults (and killed his mimic), it was time for a bit of a vacation of the marine kind the the Smoking Isles and the Sea Dwarves. 

A communique to Yornick, and a message back to be at the docks near the fishmonger's at midnight. The party made their silent way to the docks, to see a familiar fishing caravel, the Wolverine, and Captain Albergati. The captain welcomed them aboard, and the lightless boat sipped from the dock. The captain had ferried people and material to the sea dwarves before. It wasn't the most comfortable interaction, but he was up for it, recognizing a favor.

The journey was fortunately uneventful, but for some squalls and a few patrolling sharks. None of which were swept up in a tornado. As the boat neared shoals between a pair of great curved seamounts, Meiffo and Siti, a second ship approached and hailed the Wolverine. Fortunately, it was simply another merchantman, its captain warning of some hazardous winds and currents. Albergati shared his gratitude, and sailed on. The Wolverine dropped sails to maneuver the the shoals, and was nearly through when the watch called another ship on approach emerging from a fog bank. 

Another merchantman? Nope, the catapult stone holing the deck said otherwise. Time to cowboy up. Jax took the ship's scorpion and fired off a bolt, going wide. As the attacking ship neared, the various bowmen took shots, attempting to set sails on fire. Slick had some explosive paste from Hugo, and focused fire on the opposite's catapult, causing it some damage. The opposite ship's members began to fire at Jax and the two spellcasters, once they revealed themselves.  

Albergati and the opposite ship raced one another, sometimes pulling apart, sometimes closing. Occasionally, the party found a opposite combatant or spellcaster among them, whether by teleport, swimming, or flight. Damn mutants. Somewhere in this, Jax got webbed, putting the scorpion out of commission. Orzu handicapped the other ship with a convincing sharknado, and others caused enough fire damage to slow its pursuit.

The Stonewill Estate: Another Quick-and-Dirty Encounter

I feel like I've just been recounting and documenting my various campaign moments, and owe the world some creativity that's more than a grumpy goblin mage ranting...

So returning again to my campaign to provide a bit of content that someone may find useful for their sessions. Another Breaking and Entering, as happens in cities now and then. This one is the space developed for my "Repossessing the Possessed" session, where the party dealt with a horde of creepy dolls, but especially the one they were sent to retrieve.

I filled out the rooms with brief descriptions, and distributed the treasure that I had originally rolled up for the session. I added a few details to make the location more generic and flexible (hopefully) and fixed a couple of inconsistencies from play.

Additionally, I provided info for multiple avenues of access, whether street-level or subterranean.

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So find your way into Stonewill Estate here...

Hope you all are having an enjoyable Labor Day weekend. I was planning on running a Shadowdark one-shot, but had to cancel due to a sick dog. Family priorities.