The Evolution of a Superhero setting

 

So in my earliest days of hanging out and playing as a kid at "OSR Famous" Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica, I had access to a lot of older post DND game systems. Bunnies and Burrows, Empire of the Petal Throne, Bushido, etc. But since I was a comic book collecting kid, Superhero 2044 had an instant fascination for me. I mean, the over itself was very Marvel looking, despite none of the characters being Marvel. 

Well, that may be Doctor Strange.

When I got my hands on the game, I used its setting for a brief period as described in the book. And why not? The artwork in the book was very evocative. Especially for a 70's rpg.

This image just makes you want
to do a superhero fight right now!

Anyway, I would very soon create New Haven, and it was very based on Superhero 2044's high tech futuristic Pacific Island nation Inguria. It was also called Shanter Island, and we had a hard time as kids not calling it "Shatner Island."

It was explored in the 1800's by an English sea captain, was the site of combat in WW2, and fell under American control eventually. Nuclear war ravaged the US eventually, and Inguria became its own nation, and eventually joined the European Commonwealth. The nation eventually took in Formian refugees from space, who now lived among the human population. They are described as carnivores who at times might prey on humans, but not much more is written on that. I would evolve away from a lot of the stuff, especially the Formians. I always had the setting be only 20 years in the future, as opposed to Superhero 2044's close to 70.

So in my version, the island was considered very taboo by Pacific Island and Asian people of the Pan Pacific. So though about the size of Hawaii, it was never inhabited permanently for hundreds of years. I decided this was mostly because it was a "weirdness magnet" that attracted strangeness. Gateways to other dimensions and galaxies. And lots of supernatural magic being around. This fed into my desire for a pastiche kitchen sink setting. Where comic book stuff, cyberpunk, future noir, and future supernatural stuff could go on. 

After the US took control after WW2, it became an out of the way place to build some industry, and of course secret science labs. The worker population eventually demanded a city grow out of the jungle, and New America City was born. 

So for decades I had a paper map, but for this recent stuff I did up a revised map of Haven. 

New America still contains all the neighborhoods I devised during those years of steady campaigns. Beverly and Sunrise Park, based on Beverly Hills and West Hollywood/Brentwood. City Center, based on Manhattan and Century City in Los Angeles. Chavez, a working-class part of town. Old Town and Chavez where the first inhabited areas of the city by laborers back in the day. And the Bottoms was the oldest part of town, abutting the marsh and lake areas, and very diverse from the refugee crisis after the great war decades ago. So Pacific Island, Caribbean, and various world supernatural elements might mingle. 

So since I have used Haven in the 80's, 90's, and a little mid 2000s, have retconned a bit over the years. Why not? Most comic companies more or less reboot about every 10 years. Iron Man's origin was in the Korean War I think. Later Vietnam and even later in the Middle East. So I do something similar. I still want to use some NPC's going back to my teens, and I don't want them to all be elderly. Though I have had time go by. Important long time NPC, the Japanese Irish CEO (one of the only non evil ones) who was in her late 20's in old games, will be in her 50's now. But still lovely. 

Wears a ring, but just to keep wolves at bay. 
She is married to her company.

So here is some history from the game Discord "Info Dump" text channel. It by now is only a bit inspired by the setting of Superhero 2044, but very much its own thing that has evolved or 40 years of games. 

"Konoah" was in older times a mostly uninhabited Pacific Island. a bit bigger than size of Hawaii, pacific peoples never permanently inhabited it because as far back a oral history goes, it was considered a cursed and taboo place. Where gods and demons freely visit. Legend has it that it is a place that touches on the edges of other worlds and realities. That it is a realm not always considered as part of the normal world. Such was its reputation. Even fierce nations such as Japan historically avoided it, as it was feared as a place where monsters dwell and relalities collide.. In the early 1800's it was put on many modern charts. Its first real occupation occurred during the 1930's, when The United States established a military base there

During WW2 America kept dominion over the island, though Japanese forces attacked the military fields multiple times. After the war, it was widely reported that the US atomic bomb was developed stateside, when in reality it was secretly mostly created on Konoah. At this time it was renamed by the US as Shanter Island after Samuel Shanter, the chief scientist of the secret government labs started during the war. Into the 1950's Shanter was utilized heavily for scientific and industrial work. As laboratories, office buildings, and a few high tech factories grew, a local populace that worked on these areas, as well as in the military defense fields boomed and a town slowly grew into a city. "New America Town" became "New America City" by the early 1960's. in 1965 the island was rebranded as "Haven."

The island became famous as it was a place where science and industry lived alongside tropical beauty. It became not just a place of a booming permanent populace, but also a tourism trade grew. In 1980, in this reality, Haven was designated as the 51st State of America. As the mainland's Silicone Valley became the high tech capital of the free world, Haven had its own technological breakthroughs and heavy global corporate presence. But at the same time the island local remained steeped in mystic superstition. As the new millennium approached, and the city grew with a newer image in the north districts, while the southern "Old Town" area of the city still presented the old esthetic of retro technological concerns along with the spiritual reputation of the island state. Old neighborhoods such as "Mutie Town," "Electric Avenue" in old town (in the 60's and 70's the high tech sector but now the lower end of the economic scale) and "The Bottoms" with palm tree lined old avenues, and the "Down City" area with its well lit office buildings and shopping areas surrounded by once well maintained mini lakes and canals and adorned with a landscaped portion of the shadowy southern jungle outback that always seems to be creeping into the more lighted areas.

Into the 90's New America City grew, and its northern sectors reflected its focus on science and industry that many of the more privileged people got to enjoy. Long before Hong Kong adopted a city scape of light, the Uptown of New America City lit up the Pacific with neon and laser light.

In 2001 the attack on the World Trade Towers in America began a domino affect that started World War 3. During this period besides escalating world conflicts and refugee crisis', and with anti-mutant sentiment grew across many parts of the world the use of mutant hunting Sentinel machines also grew and the combination of AI aggression in general and activities of military powers of the world in lead in January of 2005 to nuclear strikes across the world but most significantly in parts of the United States, Russia, China, India, and other pockets in the middle east. It was not full scale global nuclear war, but the civilizations were heavily impacted and the great nations of the world faced great crisis. Years of strife and governmental turmoil and and break down were suffered. The global market collapsed.

Some places, such as Japan, Hong Kong, and the newly organized Western European Commonwealth continued to survive and became the new world powers to varying degrees. Haven came out of it fairly unscathed. The newly implemented Weather Control satellites, which Haven had shared the tech with the previously mentioned countries, helped shield these places from some of the affects of short term nuclear winter and Fallout. Haven announced its status as a sovereign nation the day before new years eve 2005, a democracy still close to its American roots. Over the following decades while the once great powers of the world continued to try to recover from apocalypse, Haven leads the new world powers into an age of progress with a theme of the world arising from ashes through science and industry.

Haven announced its status as a sovereign nation the day before new years eve 2005, a democracy still close to its American roots. Over the following decades while the once great powers of the world continued to try to recover from apocalypse, Haven leads the new world powers into an age of progress with a theme of the world arising from ashes through science and industry.

Haven is a democracy, and always has 2-4 viable parties during elections periods, and sadly the Republican and Democratic parties still exist, perhaps evolved/devolved, but in the last two or three decades alternatives often win.

Science Police: originating uniquely in Haven after 2005 as an anti-nuclear/terrorist force, by the late 90's in Haven the Science Police changed into policing dangerous technology in general, and meta humans in general. Now Sci Pol exists across nations as a global force similar to United Nations, but with the aforementioned focus.

Superhero Gaming finally going Full Steam Ahead

 

Almost a full year ago, I posted about my long and fruitless efforts to find a way to run my old supers setting Haven on Roll20. You can see links there about old posts about my Supers campaigns of yore, or just search the blog for "Haven" or "Superheroes" or whatever. But in a nutshell, I ran this setting, based on the Ancient Superhero 2044 Island nation of Inguria, since I was a teen, through a variety of systems. Superhero 2044 briefly, (you can read about my somewhat unhappy experience with early Supers rpg Supergame here ) then Villains and Vigilantes, then into Champions. 

In that post last year, I mentioned that after 3 years or so of looking for a game that would be doable on Roll20, I had found out about the Marvel Mutliverse RPG. 

Though I of course overthought the rules as usual, it turned out to be not at all as complicated as I first thought. But it was supported and linked though Demiplane into your Roll20, so it seemed my best chance at getting my Haven setting going again. So first step would be to study it so I could run it effectively. Then learn to use the Demiplane connectivity (which included paying for a Demiplane subscription). Maybe be a player in some sessions. Then get my own group going for it. 

All easier said than done. Like I said I overthought the rules. But eventually I figured out that the basic task resolution was fairly simple, if not a little wonky. But the various powers and abilities weren't something I needed to memorize at all. I just needed to know the basics of how they tied into play. So much like spells in DnD, I leave it up to the players to know how it works and then tell me. Done and Done. 

I then played in some games. I played in a couple of sessions by a guy called Morganwolf, who has tons of live plays on Youtube. He runs it at conventions and such, and overall promotes the system, which I think is not exactly popular yet as far as I can tell. Morgan uses published adventures, and you have to play existing Marvel characters. He is good at it, but I am not a fan of using pregens. And I was late in signing up, so got stuck with Black Widow. But I had some fun with it. These sessions don't exactly give a lot of leeway for role-play, but the little I got to do was having Black Widow at Avengers Mansion drinking Vodka and smoking Russian cigarettes.  

Then sometime later, I found a little group through the Marvel RPG Discord. They were gaming very infrequently, and it was set in the Marvel Universe circa 1980. But we got to create our own characters, so the opportunity was there to better learn the system through character generation. My character was a version of my old gaming days Champions character Manx McCallister. He was a human cat hybrid, who got stuck in a teleporter pod his Quantum Scientist parents were working on and got spliced with his pet cat, much like Jeff Goldblum and his not pet fly. 

OK, I at first was going to use Fritz the Cat for his image, but settled on a more human version.

Manx is a Physics student in college, so has science stuff
in addition to feline agility and some knowledge of "Cat Fu"

These handful of sessions were fun, though our characters seemed to be secondary to the goings on of various existing Marvel heroes. But here I met the guys who would make up half of my group. More on that in a bit. 

So I knew the system a lot better, was now versed in character creation through Demiplane, and just needed players. So I started reaching out in the Marvel RPG discord, with less than satisfactory results. Since most advertises sessions there where for one shots with existing Marvel characters, somebody looking to do actual campaign play with original characters got a lot of attention. But honestly, a lot of the dudes (and yes, the members of the Discord were almost all dudes) raised red flags for me. 

For example, one guy seemed OK with some good ideas, but eventually told me he would have to use his phone to play, because he lived in a tent. Another guy wanted to run a Star Wars Stormtrooper who was dancing all the time. Ugh. 

My setting is sort of a kitchen sink pastiche
but this was going a bit too off the rails

 

Month in and month out, I was having trouble finding good fits for me. The guys from some of the games I played Manx in were up for it, based mostly on how much fun I think the role play of Manx was in those sessions. But I would need more. And ones who did not seem like lunatics were few and far between. But slowly it came together. Here and there I found somebody who might work. A guy who had streamed tons of his Marvel games on Youtube. And eventually a girl, who was super rare on the forums (and she has been in my Saturday DnD games for a few weeks as well and injected some new energy into that). 

So holy mother of fuck, it was off to the races. As of last week (had to be off this last Sunday), we are three sessions in. 

OK, so here is what I decided to run. In my old Champions campaigns, I would have two different groups. One was The Protectors, a government sponsored superteam that for years of play was the main situation. Supers fighting super stuff in the streets of New America City. But also as an occasional side thing I did Justice Incorporated, which was a kind of heroes for hire that was more street level. So like a cowboy, and field hacker cyberpunk, a ninja, a depowered genie called Blue Jinn. Things like that. I figured Justice Inc would be a good start. 

And I had used my Inkarnate account, which had been sitting idle (and getting paid for annually) for around four years, to recreate and update my old Haven setting map. 

Inkarnate doesn't have great futuristic
city and town tools, so I just used images

Justice Incorporated of old was a sort of side hobby of rich Japanese/Irish industrialist Patricia Elizabeth Kyono, who in my old games served as the "good" corporate CEO to counterpoint the evil ones. She was a good bit older, but still hot as hell. 

I actually may still have my mini for her 
somewhere. A female in corporate garb. 
But this one I made with AI captures her. 

So since it has been over a decade since I did anything with the Haven setting, I have had it be that there has been almost nothing in the way of supergroups or supertypes in general, things have been quiet and the world plugging away in the decades following WW3. I still have the Science Police (inspired by such from Superhero 2044) who try to handle meta human and science gone awry situations these days. 

So after a couple weeks of letting the players do up their characters, we were about set. Again, this was a long time in the coming, so I was pretty jazzed. And a little nervous about a few things. The oddball way I would start the campaign, that these would be more powerful than basic street level dudes Justice Incorporated had in the old days, etc. But I wanted them to be Rank 3, which in this system was sort of mid-level supers (Rank 4 would be heading into Thor and Iron Man territory), and just in general trying to manage expectations. 

Well, my expectations were by far exceeded. I can only say that these three sessions so far have brought me great joy, and the players are enthusiastic as I could ever hope. I have a DnD campaign going on, and its OK, but this is just bringing back old feels from the Old Haven campaigns. 

I want to talk about the actual sessions, but this would be a gigantic post, so I will save that for the next one. But for now, here are the great characters:

Igneous. He is a descendant of Titans, 
and has walked the earth for centuries. 
He has great strength and some rock powers.

Ghost is blind since birth, but has Daredevil
type sensed and almost supernatural ability to 
sense things down to almost the molecular level. 
His mentor is actually a now in this 70's Matt Murdoch.

Paladin is a descendant of an ancient order
of fighters against the supernatural going 
back to biblical days. 

Crash is a wealthy, partially cybernetic
cyberpunk who has almost mental powers
to use to tap into technology and the web

What can I say about Ra-Ta? He is a small grey alien who flies around
in a small UFO while studying earth. His players often works late, so only
shows up for the last half of some sessions. But it is pretty funny. An absurd
character that actually works with what I am doing. He comes and goes. It works 
for this character. His player is hilarious and the character cannot speak English
so he does a sort of high pitch gibberish (that Igneous can understand for some reason)

Seraph. She is a member of an ancient
winged race. She is just a loner who 
lives kind of homeless on old warehouse
rooftops. Loves fresh fish. 

Jonesing for Glorantha. An impulse buy.

 I’ve talked about my old love of Runequest  here, here and here. And, well, over the years I probably at least mention Runequest in posts a dozen times so if you want to seek them out just type in Runequest in the search bar. Oh, I talked about in one of my articles for now defunct Film Goblin (the owner of the site was a hopeless, hardly functional drunk). 

The point of this quick post though is about this impulse buy…I don't buy many physical books anymore.

Running Cthulhu of late certainly has me thinking about Runequest just due to the basic role-playing similarities. Then it quickly leads to me thinking about Glorantha,  Probably my favorite game setting of all time.

It was one of those alternatives to dungeons and dragons. I discovered early on as a kid hanging out at Aero hobbies in Santa Monica. I ran a dragonnewt for a long time there, at least in young person time. Probably for like a year. but when owner Gary and the older dudes decided to move onto another game, like Traveller or Empire of the petal throne, we younger people went along with them. How I discovered so many games early on in the hobby.

It was my older teens and onward when I’d much preferred playing with my own friends or groups rather than a hobby shop with a bunch of stinky, aging wargamers and college aged nerds. That along with playing sports, surfing and of course girls I graduated from that dusty musty place to get a short campaign or two of RQ going with friends between my late teens and early 20s, but there were just so many things I loved to run. Primarily DND but I loved champions and also Cthulhu here and there. DnD always had to take the lions share of game time, but I had other loves and in every group I put together I would unleash another genre on them. They would resist but then love it. 

Then probably something like a break from RQ that lasted decades before I ran a shortish campaign of it with my group around 10 years ago in Santa Monica. 

Well, now I’ve got this bug again and I just decided to get the main book of the latest edition just to have a read through and see if I wanna go through the player finding process for it. It’s fairly thick and heavy book. More reading than I generally like to do these days ha ha. But I’m really going to buckle down and try to get a few pages in a night.

Its a really thick jampacked book. So much information on the cults and societies and all that. Far more than I remember in the ancient second edition book. Too much really I think. In the day we had to fill in a lot of the gaps ourselves. But I also realized I should’ve maybe gotten the quick start rules. there’s just so much crunch in this book. So much background info. And the Quickstart rules come with cool maps of Glorantha and of towns and stuff. I actually didn’t get the quickstart because It didn’t seem like elves and dwarves would be in that book. But they’re not in the main book either. For that you have to get the Glorantha Bestiary.

 I may just go ahead and get the quick rules anyway. The main book is kind of intimidating. Prob still gotta get the Bestiary. 

But, damn, I just want to run some Glorantha. I have used Gringles Pawn shop and the Rainbow Mounds so much for D&D it is time to experience them with Runequest again! We'll see. But it's fun reading.

Cheers

Overdoing the DM NPC

 

I had first heard of the term a DM NPC in some forum or another around 11 or 12 years ago. A DM NPC was one of the campaigns NPC's, but usually had a more negative connotation. Not just meek shopkeeps and street sweepers/walkers. But the terms "precious" and "favored" NPC's were thrown about. 

There seemed to be a real thing about this. Many folk clearly had a bad experience with DM's about NPC usage. And I guess I can see that. I remember about 12 years ago going to a Star Wars Saga session at this guys dad's apartment, me and 3 or 4 other full grown adults sitting on the floor playing in the guys Saga game (I only went because I was to run the system and wanted to experience it). I don't remember a lot other than the black dude in his 20's running a game while me and a handful of others in our 40's sitting there on the floor smoking pot. But one thing I remember is his main NPC, a well painted jedi miniature, being all over the little model buildings set up on the floor, doing almost everything while the rest of us kind of just waited our turns. But this kid loved his NPC clearly, and just wanted his favored guy doing most of the work while we watched. An extreme case to be sure. 

I also remember back in the day in my early teens going to the local Jewish community center in Santa Monica a friend invited me to because there was an older (probably around 30) guy running D&D for anybody who wanted to play. The main thing I remember was towards the end our characters were in trouble and were going to get killed by a local gang or something. And older DM dude having our characters having heard of this NPC, clearly his own character from some other campaign, and seeking his help. I remember the NPC confidently walking down the street with us, casting haste on himself and twirling a pair of swords around as we walked. I think that NPC mostly took care of the final fight. 

So yeah, I get it. Both of those are probably extreme examples, but if anybody was in the hobby long enough they probably had similar experiences. But how guilty am I? I suppose its subjective. 

From early on in my DMing my "precious" NPC's would be present. And more often than not they started as my early characters, and I incorporated them in my fledgling game world because, well, I wanted NPC's to be around other than shopkeeps and wenches. So here are two examples of my earliest D&D characters/NPC's (started in the latter 70's).

Arcturus Grimm - A ranger. He was probably among my first couple of characters ever created. I think from the original Greyhawk supplement where ranger was introduced (or maybe an issue of Dragon). There was no 1st ed Players Handbook yet.  He was exceptional and though we used 3d6 in order, I rolled nothing lower than 14, and the stats included 3 of them 16 or higher. As I was practically a kid I probably didn't realize how rare that would be. I made him a ranger, a strong 6'5" man (maybe based on one of my older brothers who was that big, and an all city athlete in school). His name was taken from a couple of my fave comic book characters. He was raised by bears in the northern Darkwold Forest. I had Arcturus Grimm be the elvish words for "Archer Bear." He was raised in the deep woods, and was fairly naive. 

When I soon started my own world, and began rarely sitting down as a player, I just injected Arcturus into the new setting (mostly just a tavern and a dungeon.). Over those early years Arcturus was there as the world grew. I expanded his background as being the adopted son of The Woodking Armis, the leader of an ancient order or rangers in the Darkwold known as The Woodlords, which I also added to the world. An early teenage sweetheart playing the game eventually would have a character marry Arcturus (making things awkward setting-wise when we broke up). But as characters, players, and campaigns came and went over the years through the 80's and into the 90's, Arcturus was here and there.

 Not hogging glory or fighting the fights for characters, but he would be around. Cameos as PC's adventured or playing a bigger role as wars and other major world events went down. At one point in my early 20's a girlfriend ran a daughter of Arcturus. New ranger characters might have heard of the Woodlords, and maybe aspired to join at higher levels. And Arcturus would be there. I have him pop up rarely to this day, still mortal but somebody of very high level who dallied with gods and other major spiritual beings. His adopted sister, Sheenara (or Sheen) rose to a minor woods deity status. Over 120 years of game time has gone by in my games, but Arcturus is actually 3rd elf so is not all decrepit yet, but far more mature than the young man I started him as when I was very young. Of all my characters/NPC's I probably had the closest affinity for Arcturus. I lived his ups and downs in the game world along with him.  

Over the decades I used various miniatures for him. Ones older gamers like me would recognize. 

One of the few minis I still have since the early 80's. Of any mini I used for Arcturus, this one looked the least like him. I suppose it is relative from a distance, but this does not convey the sense of a 6'5" dude. Just a basic ranger figure. Like most of my minis I got it at Aero Hobbies where I played a lot (but not as Arcturus) in my early teens. Owner Gary Switzer offered to paint it, and despite my descriptions proceeded to paint him how he wanted. I already did not like that the mini had a mustache, at a time Arcturus was clean shaven. And he gave him light hair instead of dark brown. But what the hell, it was a mini.  Early on as a character Arcturus had a Pseudo Dragon familiar (we levelled up fast when we were kids), so he used epoxy to put it on his shoulder, which was a nice touch. 

But more recently for brief cameos in Roll20 games I used this image:

Also his sister Sheen has made and appearance or two in the matters of druids:

These appearances are more for me than anything else. A brief touch of nostalgia. In most cases the players have no idea of the greater history I have with them. But I have had children of his (he left many of them throughout the lands after the Woodlords disbanded) appear in more recent games, specifically the twins Frend and Frenda, who are rangers encountered working for local caravans and what not. They appeared in the last couple of campaigns but nobody knew their parentage. So another insider bit for myself. 

Montigar Silverglen - he was an elvish fighter/thief I did up to play maybe a year or so after I created Arcturus. He was a high elf raised among wood elves and was an adventurous spirit who dallied with player characters here and there. He fought primary with two swords, and yeah when he became an NPC in my world I pumped him up a bit. 

Through the 80's and 90's he popped up here and there, usually meeting new characters in new campaigns. Every time he was encountered he was into something else. He was a dualist, a privateer, a Bon Vivante, a highwayman,a monster hunter, and a hero of two kingdoms, human and elf. I somehow ran him very charismatically; no less than 3 women in my games over the years had characters romantically involved with him. A romantic triangle between him and two other player characters (neither of them were girlfriends of mine, though "T" who I often mention is still one of my players) ended in death for one of them (his former girlfriend character, a fighter, killed a mind-controlled character of T's thief (the players were actually roommates then) who was his current girlfriend. Rather than restrain her, the fighter killed her. It was wild. No ending of friendship with the players, but this was a memorable moment that just became another part of his storied history bards would eventually sing of (which actually happened in recent games. Keep reading).  

One interesting aspect of Monitigar is his father was Whirligar, a high elf illusionist who was looked upon as a deity by gnome illusionists. Just one of those weird facts you come up with as a kid. 

I had a teenage sweetheart who ran a wood elf thief named Noradama. She identified with this character the same way I did with Arcturus. She and Montigar hooked up and were a famous power couple in the mostly city games I tended to run in my later teens and early 20's. This was the first time (but not the last) I would experience personal relationship role-playing, and my GF and I spent late nights acting out these characters as if they were in an inn room. Sometimes it can be extra good being the DM. I imagine other people must have experienced this. 

Much later, after the 90's, I had Montigar be a bit of a tragic figure when he appeared, someone who had bards across the lands sing of his many adventures and misadventures. Triumphs and failures. But I thought of him as somebody who was tired of the death and violence and doomed romances. He was a lone soul who never lost a fight but always lost in love. 

The first of many times I used the old Apple Lane setting for D&D in the early 2000's, I had characters encounter him living out the song Margaritaville there, working for the weapon trainers and drinking day and night, pestered by various would-be legend killers coming to make a name by taking his life.  

As a kid I got my hands on some Ralph Bakshi LOTR minis, including Legolas. I would eventually use the Legolas mini for Montigar, adding two longswords to the mini. Though Legolas was fairly effeminate looking in the film, the mini was a bit more butch.

Yep, after many decades I still had this fucker, though with an arm missing. One of my first ever paint jobs, and it shows. But really, now much better was Gary's paint job for the Arcturus mini.

Prior to the most recent games I think characters in a couple of campaigns the last two decades ran into him living the more or less quiet life. Probably several years since the last. But recently he appeared in my current Roll20 thing. 

The characters were on their way to the dungeon just beyond the southern border of the kingdom (taking several games to do so), and when they came to Shire's End, a remote village at the southern frontier of the Halfing Shire, I was brainstorming encounters there. Three families control the place, mining families who have concerns in the mining town a couple hours south near the dungeon out in the Grass Wilderlands. As the place had not much in the way of kingdom security (army outposts), the place had its own force of volunteer halfling frontiersmen, but also I decided this would be Montigars latest hang out place, being a Regulator for the families in return for a nice tower to live in and a modest stipend.

 The characters show up to the area and are chased by a hill giant but make it into the walled village. There they eventually meet Montigar, who is happy to see other than mining material and lumber merchants and invites them up for a party in his well-appointed tower in the merchant family inner compound. Here is the image I used for later in life Montigar, with scars and all.

Montigar spent a lot of the time manning his
minibar. "One for you, one for me, one for you..."

There is an issue with a hill giant, wandered up from the grasslands, menacing folk and stealing sheep. Long and short of it Montigar will deal with it, though he does not want to kill it because he is tired of killing things in his long life. The next day the characters go out to help him (he says maybe with their help he can subdue it over killing it), and it turns out there is a female one as well that was hidden in the copses of trees. With help from the characters Montigar got the giants to submit, and he offered the big dummies the opportunity to stick around to help protect the area and be helpful to the inhabitants in return for regular offerings of sheep, pigs, and bags of potatoes. Montigar asked the characters to stick around for another night of partying. 

I added the minibar to this map!

Despite my hopes that the wood elf bard Xanthia of "T" and the wood elf ranger Myrnigan of "L" would hook up at some point, given his history I thought it would be just right for Montigar to get the Xanthia hookup. I mean, she is super-hot. Tall, built like a female volleyball player, platinum locks, and a high charisma bard. Who would not want to experience that?

Or maybe I just have a thing for a cartoons

Ultimately, she wasn't having it. That is until Montigar asked her to do a duet of a famous old love ballad from their hometown of New Denaria. Luckily there was something nice in elvish in the jukebox to play and set the mood.

It won her over, though there was no nookie for ol' Montigar. Not yet, but it was on her mind. We'll see if that hookup comes down the road. The dungeon is only two or three hours away, so...

BTW, Evador the young cleric was taken with him, and snuck up later the last night to be with him. Xanthia the bard actually followed her up to the den to see what happened, and was glad to see Montigar nicely turned the Tanmoorian teen down, said she was too drunk and so was he, and sent her back to bed. Xanthia seeing that put her in the "I like Montigar" camp even more. 

So yeah, that DM NPC appearance was fairly self-indulgent. But what the heck, "T" enjoyed seeing an NPC from the past she knew of, and B and L thought he was cool. "Like a character from a fantasy romance novel" one said. 

But this is a rare case. I'm coming up with NPC's for games all the time, some regular, some more interesting. But jeez, I've had this game world a long time. It's nice to drag out old NPC's that have been around since my youth out of mothballs now and again. Not all of them are still alive. But why not use them?

Above: any Dragonsfoot Grognard who 
might read this post

Cheers

Goddamn - it's Outdoor Survival!

 Last night was board game night at my place. I had been looking forward to it all week. Eldritch Horror, Dead of Winter, and maybe Call to Adventure were the likely favorites. But since my newest game was Formula D, that demanded a trial run. It was an immediate new favorite game. We played two full Moracco races. I didn't do so great, but that my besties loved it brings me the most joy. Playing a cool game with friends that are so close they are like family.

I was going to post about that today, but something else happened that demands attention. So my post of Formula D must wait. I simply cannot skip the headline. 

"L" has started a new hobby. She is going around yard sales and swap meets to find old/beat up board games, intact or otherwise. She has been planning other things to make out of those games. I'm not real sure what all that is, though it sounds like it could be anything from game-themes wall art to game-themed handbags. I'm not creative in that way, but it sounds pretty cool. And she has been picking games up for next to nothing. 

So they show up and  L has a pile of games she got that morning for around 3 bucks all together, and she wanted to show them to me. OK, cool. 

But when they walk in, I'm on the big screen playing GTA 5. I was actually playing tennis in the game, and this court happened to be right across the street  from the 'Vespucci Beach" canals, a loving recreation of the place I was born not long after my parents immigrated to Los Angeles. So with great pride I was able to run across the street and show them my childhood stomping grounds.

So then cool things of the night number 2. L's score of old games.

Hmm..I think I've heard of these. Especially Last Night on Earth, which I think is a zombie game with minis. That's maybe a good one. Hope its intact.

I hope this is just a zombie cosplayer
and not a homeless guy fucking with
somebodies game

Then there was Wizards, with a cover I recognized right away. I know that cover, but don't remember the game. But I feel I at least played it way back in the day. I'm having vague childhood memory flashes. Maybe Gary at Aero had it stocked.  

Then of course is the main course. I saw it and exclaimed "Goddamn! It's Outdoor Survival!!!

Poor L. Though she and hubby B have been fairly enthusiastic boardgamers prior to meeting me, L didn't play D&D until the campaign I was tapped to run for them and a few other locals. We became best friends during that campaign, while most of the other players were more or less asses in seats. But now more than two years later they are like family to me. But I guess I mention them and their importance to me since I moved to a new city where I didn't know anybody, in a lot of my posts.

Yet another well I
maybe go to too much.

But anyway, she (along with B) had no knowledge of these games. Which is even more exciting, because she is into lots of boardgames. Lots of them discovered in recent years at a local brew pub that has hundreds of games. Many abstract ones I have no interest in (I just want action along with my whimsey). But she it into it enough that she sometimes will don dollar store costuming that goes with  particular game themes, such as in King of Tokyo..

Run for your lives, 
it's Gigazuar!

But she did not know these. She was thrilled to see my reaction to this stuff, all of which she got for next to nothing. And on first glance most look like they have the minis and stuff. But I backed off. I always have after-guilt when we play something like Eldritch Horror, and some satanic force makes me start going on about things they are unaware of. I end up explaining what shit like Mi Go and Hounds of Tindalos are all about. They are usually interested in the things I suddenly geek out about though. I'm kind of their pop culture guru. But they were especially eager to learn what (little) I knew about Outdoor Survival. 

L is so clueless as to deep gaming pop culture she can't even get her terms right. Last week she referred to me in a text messge as a nerd. So I of course corrected her. I'm a "geek", dammit. Nerds are what Fonzie used to beat up.

Pictured: Fonzie, a nerd, and
whatever the hell a Chachi is.

So I began my long tale. Naw, not really. What I knew could fit in a thimble. But as I started gaming with the little OD&D books I was exposed to the couple of blurbs about some mysterious board game you added to the mix to do outdoor adventures. I certainly didn't seek it out back in the day. At first my games were primarily city based, first with City State of The Invincible Overlord (the city had dungeons, and you just had to exit the front gates to be in a wilderness so who needed a world map?) and not long after my own homebrew city of Tanmoor and environs. 

But remembering Outdoor Survival from my childhood to this day might have been possible because of a couple shortish OD&D campaigns I did over the last decade or so. The existence of the OSR and my exploring it online a little over 10 years ago is why I probably had the box cover in my mind and all this stayed in my memory banks. 

So I mostly tell them right off that it was mentioned in Original D&D and suggested that the map at least be used for wilderness stuff. And of course I later learned that many back then and even more recently used the map as their campaign map. Hell, if I had it back in the day I for sure would use it. I used maps back then from old SPI WW2 games for local terrain and stuff. Outdoor Survival's map seemed to have a wide variety of terrain, making it useful for all types of adventures. And maybe the most cool of facts about it, that outdoor enthusiast shops stocked it. That it was maybe getting a lot of play on camping trips. 

..and grab a copy of that boardgame so
we don't get lost and die of thirst

But yeah, the simple but bitchin' map is what maybe helped keep this timeless. 

So my pals got a kick out of all this. And I did to. I'm not sure which, if any, L will be cannibalizing for her projects, but I'm thinking of talking her into keeping it. Not just because it seems she could get anything from 50 to 100 and something online for it (it seems to only have a little box wear - whoever she bought them off seemed to have respected the games). But most importantly I've been trying to talk her into being a dungeon master, and the OS map would make a good campaign starting place. But all in all it was a really outstanding geek-out night thanks in part to a neat discovery. 

Oh, and we played some Formula D. Very exciting game. I'll post about that soon. 

Cheers.