Apple Lane Again and Again

 

Over the years I have posted about my use of the old Runequest Apple Lane setting. Multiple times. For both its intended Glorantha setting, and my D&D homebrew world. Some names get changed up, and other details (mostly to prevent internet lookups by players), but basically present it as is. I renamed the town "Lemon Tree," for example. 

This is a location in my world that runs on Negative Continuity. In other words, different players have gone there again and again over the decades, and only minor changes will be there, usually left over from the previous campaigns. Like when a female character married a major NPC. But most things just do a soft reboot. The Pawnshop gets assaulted on the full moon again and again. Sometimes by baboons, sometimes by orcs. Or in the recent games. Vaishino, a type of serpent people introduced in Magic the Gathering. 

I was looking for something new to for the Pawnshop Scenario, and stumbled across these fierce reptilians. I imagined them easily being able to scramble up walls and across the roof of the shop.

I had designed the entire campaign to lead up to the Pawnshop scenario, followed by the Rainbow Mounds. A couple of the characters at chargen came up with an NPC, Billy, a fellow villager they grew up with. They would be going out in the world to look for him, armed with only a few clues. Intending to lead up to the Rainbow Mounds, I would put Billy in there, captured and charmed by Adorra, an Enchantress NPC who got involved with previous characters in another campaign almost 10 years ago and got magically trapped within the mounds. 

Anyway, the campaign, which I called "Trade and Turpitude", was mostly up to this point a caravan guarding series of games, leading up to the characters being dropped off in Apple Lane, uh, I mean Lemon Tree.

With the Pawshop encounter being the showpiece at this point in the campaign, I wanted to work up to it. I placed Lemon Tree in the Eastern Highands of the southern shires (in previous campaigns I was not calling the area highlands yet) and I wanted the area to have a decidedly Glorantha flavor. People almost living in a bronze age, and worshipping older gods not usually associated with the Kingdom. So Issaries, the trade god the pawship owner worships, or the Sheriffs deity Orlanth, are influential in this area. It's part of the kingdom, but no tax collector ever comes to call. 

The Pawnshop encounter went well, I think, though it took 3 sessions to finish. For reasons I think I might explore in my next post, the PC's came into the evening pretty beat up from several encounters that day. Also, the encounter also involved the NPC's Relanis and Demul who I have mentioned before. the party is very divided about these NPC's, so as always they added a little extra tension. It was a hard fight, probably the toughest I've done for the pawnshop encounter, over several games, but they won. 

I love that I can go online and find pretty decent maps of the area and the pawnshop. This was my first time doing it electronically. All the others were of course done on grease mats. That was always  a lot of work.

I added all the numbers...

"come visit relaxing Apple La...um, Lemon Tree"

Cheers

The Tragedy of The Drunken Troll

 Alright, game 2 of the new Roll20 campaign "Trade and Turpitude," taking place in the last caravan season of the year in the Southern Shires of the kingdom. 

Everybody showed up. Good sign. Though I won't usually consider it a campaign until after game three. Law of averages dictate somebody will drop out by then, but everybody seems to be having a good time and are interacting with the material in the ways I like them too. I think I come up with some interesting ideas here and there, along with lots of trope stuff. Something like 40 years of GMing will give you that. And my old experiences with "out in the weeds" stuff in the deep past; Arduin and Judges Guild and such, lets me interject some more wacky elements, but mostly keeping it D&D. I look to more modern sources for ideas, random tables and such, but usually if I think the hell out of something various angles and hooks emerge that I think will be interesting to an encounter. Hey, there is plenty to brag about when you pluck most of the ideas you integrate into play out of your own head. 

Haha, really, a DM's ideas should come from all over the place. Anyway, I was sort of having trouble coming up with some things. The first few games of this campaign will be travelling around with a small caravan of high-end merchants from the big city up north. Besides some village and town encounters already in my head, I need to come up with some incidental encounters that can occur along the way. Things to fit in here and there along the way when I need some filler. 

I look at various random tables online, road and country encounters. Most of them aren't very filling. Things like "you meet an old man who is not what he seems," or "You see a coffin up against a tree with the lid closed. Do you investigate?" OK, these are meant to be filled in, but are hardly things you can't think up with nice creamy filling on your own. I wish these examples were a little deeper. 

But if I mull on it a bit (couple refreshing adult beverages never hurt) I usually hit on something. For this game it was "..hmmm, what if the caravan comes across a troll laying across the road, passed out from drinking barrels of powerful whiskey." 

We were still in the tavern with the party meeting the caravan master, having finished the previous games encounters there. But off to the caravan grounds to meet the merchants. 

A wine merchant, a weapon seller/trainer, a music teacher and instrument seller, a bookseller, and a clothier. It was night, but the wineseller still had a few local lords tasting some wine. The party immediately noticed a heavy set, traveler shoplifting a couple bottles of expensive cabernet. "Fat Mike the Traveler," a professional thief and con man. 

Size increased to show texture.

It was an amusing little encounter, and the long and short of it was the PC's got a few gold richer by getting the wine back and extorting Fat Mike for some coin. A typical "give you my wallet? No, give me YOUR wallet" situation. 

Next day when the caravan got on the road for a couple hours, it was second encounter time. This time it was the caravan coming around the corner on a country road and almost running into a bit old troll passed out drunk and blocking the way. 

Size NOT increased to show texture. Nobody
wants to get too close a look at this. 

Clearly it as a troll who stole a cart of big whiskey barrels and he was passed out snoring in the road. Even had a nice big puddle of whiskey puke next to him. Ew. 

Turning the caravan around in the smallish area to do it would have been time consuming and noisy. Plus at least one character didn't want it on his conscious to have a hungover troll around for others to bump into. But what to do? 

Slit his throat and roll him out of the way? No way, man. He's a troll. You can cut a trolls head off and it will still be active, the head still alive and controlling the body. Trolls are very coup de gras resistant. Get some fires going? Well, everything was wet from light rain. 

Everybody, character and players, knew that they were no match for the thing if it got up and started laying into them. As they moved around trying to figure it all out, the troll seemed to almost wake up a time or two. The shadow elf ranger was a monster hunter, and he just wanted to start chopping into it. But the cooler heads gathered, torches and lanterns fetched from the wagons, and lantern oil was spread over the blacked out beast.  

With the wetness, and me not going old school napalm with the oil (I have always said; oil is for keeping lanterns lit, not for going all Apocalypse Now like so many neckbeards from times bygone like it too). But with the troll waking up, they had to go on the attack with what they had. 

In 5th edition any fire damage will keep the regeneration from working for that round. That combined with the characters getting some licks in before it could even stand up (with some advantage) helped. I mean, they were scared. My number one new player "M" sounded a little annoyed that I was hitting them with such a strong creature. But I certainly gave it disadvantage that first round. It all helps out. Because one solid blow could kill a 1st level PC. I did explain that I am old school and that characters need to be over their head now and again. At any rate, after the fact she apologized for doubting me when the encounter was won (though it's not really over even though they think it is). 

But they did alright. I mean, this was kind of a puzzle encounter, where the trick was to attack while you had as much advantages as possible. They did alright with that, and its hit points were plummeting down. "Zip" the commoner fighter made the spectacular move. There was still a full barrel on the cart. He opened it, set it aflame (I had it be strong dwarvish stuff), and the cart became an instant fireball. He turned it around and ran it right into the suffering troll. Woosh! That roll went up like an old dry Xmas tree. It was pretty cool. That took it right down, and as we were going late we had to end right there. 

This "trade roads" portion of the campaign seems to be going well, and the theme feels like it will remain even after they are off the road. But what was going to be a couple of game portion of the campaign is probably going to be more like a 5 or 6 game portion before I get them to my version of Apple Lane and Gringles Pawnshop. It's going so well and there is great character development here. 

I don't plan to post about every session. Who needs that, right? And there are other aspects to the Roll20 experience I want to write about. I'm loving it, and in all honestly it may be my format for good. Player M said she is done with the face to face group experience, and I kind of feel the same way. I don't really like having people who are not close friends in my place, and I don't always like to schlep to another persons house, especially as you cannot really control the gaming environment in that. But online I have all the control. Its awesome. 

But however I do it, it feels great having a full group. My besties B and L, my boardgame buddies I talk about all the time here, are wanting in on some Roll20 as well, so my player pool is for sure deepening. I'm so glad I took another chance on getting a group going from that sketchy Roll20 forum area. I finally lucked out! 

Cheers

Trade & Turpitude

 

GAME 2: "Roads Hold the Gold" - so, you are going to be a worker on the trade roads? Well, keep in mind, they still building the southern shire portion of The Great Tanmoorian Highway. For 20 years the queen been paving trade roads and promoting the highway. It's not all fine stone and slurry. When going south it won't be long past River Town that the paving stops and you start to see the kingdom's best road workers taking long lunches and holidays off where the pavement meets the country soil. Don't fool yourself. The Kingdom doesn't care where the pavement starts and stops. When it comes to the Southern Shires, it's profit that moves the maps..."

-Overheard from a seasoned caravan worker...

(above: campaign front page blurb for next weeks game)

So just like that I'm running a campaign again. 

After a handful of years working non-stop in health care, including a major regional hospital during the deepest parts of the pandemic, I decided to take a few months off from work. I live in a beautiful mountain area, known for plenty of outdoor activities. So I want to smell the roses, NOT have to get up early, be able to do some things during the week, and chill out. But this also makes me wish I had some extra gaming to do outside my XBOX. 

So on a lark I posted a "want to start campaign" comment in the Roll20 forums. I didn't have much hope. I have had only moderate success sourcing from the forum.  It's a place rife with Critical Role wonks and people who are looking for games where members are all into "alternative lifestyles" and require you to learn a list of ways they need to be referred to. Not that I'm biased against anybody. The first person to call me when I moved to a new city to see how I was doing was a transgender neighbor of mine. I'm good with anybody who is a good person. But the general populace of that particular forum are very particular about what they want in a game, and what they want you to refer to them as (and god help you if you get it wrong). 

I was clear about my background and how I go about DMing. Long and short of it, I eventually had 4 great sounding players wanting to be in a new campaign all within a week or two. It happed very fast. The first person I was contacted by was a gal (who I will call "M") who as it turned out was in my very same neck of the woods! Most of the rest are actually in different time zones. I rounded out the group by of course inviting my long time player and one of my best old friends, "T", to come in and play. Though not exactly a techie, T seems to enjoy the Roll20 stuff I did in the past. Once she gets up and running at game time she's loving it. 

My interactions with most of the folk in the days before the game made me hopeful. Flakes abound off of the forums. But man, everybody showed up. 

I ran Roll20 games very low rent in the past. Throw some maps up, move tokens around. Maybe a little jukebox music. But M was very helpful with some basic stuff. Helping me use scripts to set up a player welcome package which shows them the fillable character sheet right away. 

It had been awhile for both me and T in the format. The usual opening night technical issues slowing things down a bit. When T went into Roll20 she was confused to see herself still in the old campaign pages haha. 

Everybody had cool characters. Nothing too outlandish. I did expand on the material I was going to allow as far as characters (I still only own the PHB and Monster Manual. Oh, and the DMG which in 5th ed is next to useless. Summer reading material maybe). There was a shadow elf dude, a halfling druid with some dream connection thing, T ran a female dwarf, and there were two young commoners who decided they would be from the same local village. A male fighter and a female paladin. The paladin was outside the usual form you expect a paladin to take (at least in old school). Just simple townie clothing and a sword. No real deity. Just a connection to the cosmos. Maybe because she is, in part, one of those Assimer(sp) semi-angel people.

So there were no Cyborg Ninja Minotaurs, which was nice. But everybody had way more 5th ed experience than me (and also Roll20 experience, which is a little intimidating to a noob). But for their sake I had to start allowing going out in the weeds a bit with character gen.

I had this campaign idea for a long time, one where after a few games I would have the characters arrive at my D&D version of Runequest's Apple Lane, one of my favorite old modules. Get them all caught up in the pawnshop attack and eventually to The Rainbow Mounds. 

But I figured a caravan thing for the first couple of games. My style has evolved to where I like the first couple of sessions to just be "settle into our characters games," and caravan guard situation is kind of perfect for it. 

 I decided to focus on the trade season atmosphere for the entire campaign. Late fall where the last caravans of the year are getting in some last of the year travel. The towns and roads busy with profiteers. I can fit in flavor for this all over the place, in many situations. And make the characters want to earn more and more money by letting them see cool, expensive stuff to buy.

And while my urban city games might have a lot of Tarantino and action movie influences, I like to go with a David Lynchian vibe for the country. You know, everything looks nice and innocent, so the odd and terrifying things are all the more so. "Look at that lovely field of grain; oh shit, and Ankheg just popped up and ate that farmer!" 

That, and some things I was planning had me land on what I think is kind of a unique (if not clever) campaign name. "Trade and Turpitude." 

They all started in River Town, "the gateway to the southern shires." It's the next largest community after the main city, and in the decades of my game I have grown it bigger and bigger. 

The couple of commoner characters are on a quest to find a friend of theirs who ran away months ago based on dreams of a beautiful woman he felt was actually out there somewhere. So as they got to know the characters (the ones who were at the table anyway, The shadow elf lurker in a balcony nearby) they also inquired around about their friend. 

When I had the obligatory tavern fight go down, it was a table full of locals who were arguing over the towns bid to have the Queen of Tanmoor declare it a sister city to the capitol. A portrait of the queen was above the fireplace, and a single derogatory remark about her got the fight going. 

Even in campaigns where characters are never going to meet the queen, I like to get some lore in about her. Even minor mentions. This was an NPC in my game going back decades. She was around player characters since childhood (her father, the late King, tapped into player characters frequently for secret missions). Even my pal "T" has history with her. She has an old high level druid character who is Queen Libertines best friend going way back. 

Anyway, these days I like to have a tavern brawl act as one big, possibly growing creature, and I use a cartoon fight cloud to represent it. 

PC's can interact with it in various ways as it rolls around and endangers others. It will grow if others dive into the brawl, or it will shrink as parts of it are knocked out or brawlers removed from it. It always seems to get a hearty chuckle out of the players who see it for the first time. 

Caravan leader, Marge (who T's dwarf had already hooked up with) got the characters together to offer them a job. She took them to a secluded upper area to eat, drink, and makes some deals to work for her small caravan concern. 

I got my second chance to have another fight here. A mysterious figure who I won't go into in this post was at the bottom of the balcony area and started playing a spooky flute. There was a big stuffed bear up there with the characters (it just so happened the tavern map I sourced had it there!) and it very atmospherically (the wood and plater frame creaking and rubbing as a disembodied bear spirit was heard growling) animated to attack them.

 It was of course less deadly than a real full bear, but the characters were nicely freaked out by the sudden situation. Very out of place in a nice, busy inn. David Lynch, yo!

We ended the night with that crazy stuffed grizzly fight.

As I stayed on Roll20 to work on a few things, and hearing from some of the players seems to have us locked in for a second session next week. So far so good! I always figured that if you make it past a 1st session ionto a 2nd one then you know you have a campaign. If I do what I usually do, that is to try to top each previous game, it should be in the bag. 

But man. It's interesting how a group and a campaign can come out of almost nowhere in online formats. Sunday early Mary is doing some one shot thing with some of her regular players and I'm invited to join in for the day, so I'm going to get a chance to finally see Roll20 working from the players side of the screen. I feel not having done that is a major weakness in my own use of the format. The more I learn, the better I can be. 

Cheers