Hey kids! More Game Sex!

 

Not that I am in a salacious state of mind or anything, but after posting about male players and their D&D their character sex lives, I was thinking of some other situations in games related to females and their female characters in my games. I mean, their characters are fully capable of seeking romance, and sometimes they do. 

IMO though, there is a big difference between male and female players, and that may reflect real life to some degree.   For the guys make believe relationships aren't goal number one. It about their whatever getting their "jimmy" "copped." For female players I found that since my earliest days, it's about relationships and often marriage. 

It was usually around 95% of the time with NPC's. Sure, the were very often sort of stand out, heroic NPC's that they met, or were around for whatever reason. But I remember in a campaign around 10 years ago one of my players characters, a female fighter who grew up with lots of brothers in a military family, had met a somewhat non-descript soldier NPC in the course of the campaign and dated him briefly before heading in the Underdark for The Night Below. During the course of that, the characters found a deck of many things. A couple of them got wishes, including this female character. What happened next was baffling, humorous, and controversial among the other players (who did not learn about it till way later); she used her wish to have the NPC she fancied propose marriage when she saw him again. Awesome. Some might call this daft; some might call it great role-playing. I'm the DM so I can have no opinion. I do not judge.

It can come from some unexpected places. A few short years ago when I first moved into town I met "B and L," who wanted to do some D&D and were looking for a DM and group to get together. B had some 1st edition experience from the military, and L had zero DnD experience. Well, within a year or two they had become my besties. This younger couple pretty much adopted me. In large part because I was in a new town where I didn't know anybody, it was a godsend. 

That Xmas Day they invited me over 
for booze, food and boardgames. I otherwise 
would have been home alone on the XBOX,
or in a casino. BTW after spending a holiday
alone on video games or in a casino I like to 
have a good cry. Kind of a tradition. 

But anyway, we got this little face to face group going. "L" ran a half orc fighter, Emen. 

One of very few female half orc images
that don't just look like a full orc.

L had no RPG experience, was not a heavy role-player as far as her character, but one thing stood out fairly quick about her. She fancied an NPC and went after her.

OK, here it gets complicated. So I was using The Lichway. It was an eventual destination. But in this go around I had Dark Odo and her gang, a staple of the module, and had them in the city where they met the other characters at a party held by the PC party's rich patron. Just to relieve the fact that all these unconnected groups "just were" in The Lichway, I thought I would expand upon them. Give more gravitas and make it have some sense. So Most of the inhabitants listed in Lichway were at this party. Odo's gang, the four thieves encountered there, etc. They would all hear about Lichway, and most would go there prior to the party doing it. So there was some method to the madness therein. Just a new approach to the dungeon denizens.

One of Odo's gang in the material was Runis. A female chaotic evil fighter. I changed her up a bit. I toned down the alignment to neutral. I had her obsessed with using a variety of weapons (I think because in the Lichway she had a bunch of weapons). And I also had her be a Sandlander from the module, one of this race that once ruled the area but now exist in small villages in smaller numbers. Runis was convinced by Dark Odo that as one of the last pure blood Sandlanders she could help her become a ruler in the area. 

Anway, as she was a beach-grown person, I gave her light colored hair and a build like a pro volleyball player. The material also described Sandlanders as "Dour," so I included that in the image search. Here is what I found:

"Dour?" Check. 

Emen moved in on her, and the dice responded favorably. I found this fascinating. Not only was L not a deep role-player by any means, but I saw no indication that L herself liked the ladies in any fashion. Though it's true, I've only known her like three years now. But this, to me, was a stand out moment of role-play. That she cared enough for her character to get into a relationship with another shows that she at least cared about the "story." Anway, when the campaign ended Runis and Emen (after some tension in the Lichaway as they were in opposing groups) were living together in the big city. 

I really don't know how much of this happens in other groups. I have mostly run for private groups and don't interact with the outside gaming world much. But in the 90's when I was almost exclusively running for groups made up of people I already knew well, the potential for sex among the characters was probably easier to digest. 

Though through Roll20 I am coming across more people, strangers, than ever before, and as described in my last post things got a little hot and sexy with a male character and a female NPC. And all my players, male and female, got a kick out of some of the humor that came from that. A situation I can't wait to see more of in coming days. Most of the other characters either distrust or outright hate this NPC. Will he succumb to player-on-player meta-peer pressure? The Discord is chock full of derision for him getting with her. 

But outside of all that, and to put a cap on this, I will say that the most important thing to me is that I run an adult game for adults. I want there to be adult trappings along with all the high fantasy. So, when these adult things happen in my games, I'm always glad and consider it a good sign.

Not counting that bard player mentioned last post
who made me feel like a pimp for PC's.

YMMV.

Cheers.

Your Gameworld: Reboots and Retcons

I was very fortunate as a kid, early on in my gaming, to have started a game world and kept with it for decades. It was really just a dungeon and a tavern to go to between games. That really only lasted a couple of sessions, as supply shops and residences besides the tavern became necessary. And that's how my setting Acheron grew. As things were needed. Often locations would be created by players as backgrounds for their characters, and that added to my world. So it was a growing thing, created out of shared experiences.

I always tried to maintain a consistency in my world. If something happened, then the world was forever affected by it. The Isle of Dread visited for the first time? OK, now it was no longer virgin territory. The Caves of Chaos battled through and the evil temple destroyed? Guess I'm never using that location again. At least not the way it was. 

But I softened on that consistency in the last decade or so as I found myself wanting to reuse certain adventures that I loved. Mostly notably the old White Dwarf Magazine dungeon The Lichway. Also, I have had a lifelong love for the Runequest Glorantha town of Apple Lane, a module I also adapted for use in D&D. In the Lichway you very likely release a hoard of undead in the complex. In Apple Lane you will defend a pawnshop from an evening attack (in the Runequest material its a tribe of baboons), and eventually explore The Rainbow Mounds and fight the forces of the Dark Troll White Eye (an orc in my D&D setting). 

Apple Lane I could reuse a couple of times because the first time (and maybe second and third) I used it for Runequest. Decades ago. For D&D I changed some names; Gringle became Gengle. Apple Lane became Lemon Tree. But most details stayed the same. Lichway was sort of "one and done" because, well, hundreds of undead at large in the place. 

But there came a time when I realized the only person I was fooling with a sort of enforced purity of continuity in the world was myself. Every few years I found myself with a brand new group. In every case nobody had ever heard of Apple Lane or The Lichway. This was a fantasy world with no real value outside my games. Why was I so worried about continuity. Did it really matter? 

But in a way I have found, for me at least, a happy compromise. A location reboot. I decided that some locations might be in sort of a dimensional loop (or whatever). Perhaps a curse or will of some godling that no matter what happens it returns the location, all its inhabitants, back to a zero setting. When one group of players is out of my life, I can refresh these old favorites to use again if I so choose. The undead of The Lichway return to their crypts. Dark Odo and her followers rewind back to their old positions. The local fishing village forgets the adventurers who came that time and unleashed the undead hoards who would keep them awake at night howling within the necropolis. Apple Lane itself is also in a continuity loop. Gringle will always need brave souls to protect his pawn shop. White Eye the orc always returns to life and haunts the Rainbow Mounds. 

These are out of the way locations, so its easy to just reset and reuse.

There is a new wrinkle though. One of my old players from my home town is involved in my online Roll20 games. I want to use Apple Lane and its environs once more (maybe for the 5th time, in two worlds). But the thing is she had a character experience this 20 years ago. The entire adventure was a major point in her characters life. Back then she ended up falling in love with the pawn shop owners assistant "Hobbit John" (a duck in the Runequest version) and marrying him (yes, she was a hobbit as well, a cleric and local sheriff). So she would surely remember all this. 

But its cool. She is a trusted old player. She has played in several different groups of mine over the decades. So I can go ahead and jerk the curtain a bit in her case. Let her know what I am doing. Tell her about the reboot concept. It would be a rerun for her, but its been long enough where she won't remember every detail so it can still be fun for her. And of course there will be differences. Hobbit John is gone, having married a players character and being released from whatever curse maintains the retcon in Apple Lane. My last go at the Lichway was different as well (she was not involved in that campaign as it was face to face before the pandemic) as noted in my previous posts about The Lichway. 

So things can and should be changed up. But there is no negative side to reusing beloved modules and disrupting the continuity of your world. And modules aren't the only changes I've embraced. Hell, back in the day I let a friend run a campaign in my world where he promptly affected things on a continental level. For the longest time I just kept all his messing with the world as part of its history. But it got to the point where I said "why?" and just dismissed those things. Wiped them from the history. He certainly would never know. He died in the 90's.

Nobody really knows but me. And as I get older I just don't care any more. I'm not writing The Silmarillion here. Its just a D&D setting. When I'm gone it comes with me.  Its just about having fun and is no more serious than that. 

The Lichway - part two

 

 Part 2

 Prequeling this great old module:

The location of The Lichway is a tidal basin about (in my game world) 80 miles north of the Kingdom of Tanmoor, of which this area is officially a part of. The "Sandlands" is a wild area, for a thousand years inhabited by (as the module describes) a "dour coastal people," The Sandlanders, who as the module seems to not so subtly suggest worship undead and include undead raising rituals in their funerary rights. That was long ago actually, before colonists from the Acherian Empire to the east founded the city of Tanmoor, and interbred with the coastal first people of the area. Early on the Sandlanders were diminished, their small kingdom absorbed and their magnificent necropolis known as The Lichway abandoned and forgotten about.  The people of the Sandlands fell into a certain primitism and the once great community reduced to several small fishing villages along the wild coasts of the north, mostly beneath the notice of the Kingdom that doomed their culture. 

But the Lichway sits, patiently. The "Susurrus" awaiting release, while the interned are awaiting as well.

So as I mentioned in my last post, the module just starts you in the Korm basin, and you can float in to the covered cavern up to the old docks, or you can come in through the tunnel that leads outside. Within the complex are several more or less unrelated factions just hanging out in this desolate area, because reasons. And by that I mean no reasons. The main group is the human female Magic user Dark Odo and her group, that consists of several evil personages of various races and classes. Fighters, a cleric, a thief, etc. They have taken up residence in the part of the complex the players are unlikely to pass through first (out of the maybe 4 or 5 times I ran it they never entered that side of the place first, it requiring swimming through dubious water or secret doors).  Odo's party has a couple of captives (one of them bound and clearly a sex slave for Odo's fighters), probably previous adventurers. they more or less count as yet another faction.

There are a pair of Man-Beasts (from White Dwarf magazine just like this module) hanging out near the main halls, and near the entrance the party is likely to encounter a quartet of thieves that are rummaging about in one of the first trash strewn rooms and trying to bust down a door a magic user is hiding behind. These folk don't seem to be related in any way to Odo's group (the magic user has actually been ousted by Odo), even though the complex is not exactly vast. Why this place that has sat undisturbed for hundreds of years is suddenly having a convergence of intruders is not explained, in true old school (lazy) style. 

Well, I decided on my last go with Lichway about a year ago for a new group to change things up and come up with a fairly involved backstory for all this. 

But before I go any further I should say that the fact that I used this module several times in the same gameworld  should itself raise some questions. My land of Acheron has been my D&D jam since I was a kid. I have maintained a certain history (more often than not created by player characters over the decades) and consistency with it, but the Lichway is clearly an exception. I have only used it with completely new groups each time, so it was fairly easy to retcon each time. I mean, unleashing hundreds of howling undead that cannot leave the complex doesn't exactly change your game setting in any way. It just IS. A secluded location nobody will go to unless you need want use to it again. 

The time before last, maybe 5 years ago in my old group in Los Angeles, the only real change I made to this was to have Dark Odo be a Drow. A sort of free agent and drow empire renegade, she sought the treasure of the Lichway to fund her own power base on the surface world. There being an old abandoned drow outpost in the upper caves of the local underdark entrance, she also pondered the possibility of reestablishing her own drow powerbase in the local sub-surface areas.

There was at least a couple of other changes in NPC's I made. Runis, one of Odo's fighters, was now a local and pureblood direct descendant of the original Sandlander culture. I had Dark Odo fill her head with notions of the Sandlanders reclaiming their heritage and the local lands from Tanmoor. If she followed Odo she would become a queen of a new kingdom. All they needed was the vast treasure hidden in the Lichway. 

The rest of Odo's gang were made up of followers whom she also entranced with promises of money and power to come. The Man Beasts were an exception. Not true followers, the were paid by Odo as body guards, scouts, and extra security (In the original material the Man Beasts seemed to have no connection to Odo's gang despire close proximity). 

The four thieves near the Lichway entrance were a gang from Tanmoor who heard about the necropolis from Odo, but most of this is getting ahead of myself. 

Odo had visited the Korm basin area briefly to learn what she could of Lichway, and this is where she met and originally charmed Runis. Odo then went with Runis to Tanmoor in hopes of learning more secrets about The Lichway before taking it on. If you were to do something similar there are many ways to go about it, but I had Dark Odo come into contact with Merlo Von Tanmoor, one of the last of an old Tanmoorian family of wealth who also happened to be the youngest professor of history at the college.

Merlo was also a contact of the players in their first games, someone who could use them for important personal missions, i.e. helping obtain historical objects. Merlo, and associates of his from the Wizards Guild and other city groups actually regularly used adventuring groups/mercenaries with special skill sets to perform small quests. This was not only how Merlo met the PC's, but he also knew Dark Odo and friends. Odo had come to Tanmoor hoping to find out more details from historians about The Lichway before encountering its dangers, and in a meeting with Merlo and others she found that the info was lacking, knowing no more details than Odo's Sandlander follower Runis. But Odo found another use for Merlo; helping get others to the Lichway that she could either add to her growing gang, or victimize and rob once she planned to set up an HQ there. She counted on Merlo Von Tanmoor's curiosity for obscure historical things and Lichway was right up his alley.  

Merlo threw a seasonal party for his vast amount of college and wizards guild associates, and some of the adventurer's often used by him and others were also invited. This included the party, and also Dark Odo and some of her party members such as Runis (Runis attending in traditional Sandlander garb; lots of shore bird feathers and shells as adornment. I really liked to play up her coastal wilderness roots). Though Odo fascinated Merlo, he (a magic user who did not tend to use his abilities openly) could see she was a manipulator and did his best to avoid her wiles. Merlo did insinuate to the characters the he had been intimate with her, so they could never be sure she wasn’t truly manipulating him at least subtly. 

The player party got to know Odo a bit at the party, and player Leslie, running a female half orc fighter named Emen, had her character become attracted to the dour but ruggedly lovely Runis. This was an unexpected development that I knew I could exploit for the eventual encounter in The Lichway.

Also in attendance was the thief/mercenary party who called themselves "The Four Blades." These would eventually be the thieves encountered in The Lichway. To spice up the future encounter between the party and the thieves,  I made it so the half elf member of The Four Blades had a hatred for orcs. A tense encounter and near fight with him and Emen heated things up, and set up some tension for their later meeting again at the Lichway.

 Runis and a couple other of Dark Odo's band (including the female Man Beast) had a city adventure with the party that night. Runis and Emen, having at attraction to each other spent a couple of days in each others company after that, Runis confiding to Emin about Odo's promises of making her a ruler of a new kingdom in the Sandlands. This relationship, pursued originally by Emin, was a great way to create future drama for the Lichway encounters. I could never have predicted it, but it was only made possible by bringing the PC's and NPC's together socially. 

Dark Odo gathered up Runis and the rest of her band and left for the Sandlands, hoping to beat any that she told about The Lichway there to prepare for either recruiting or robbing them. 

A couple of weeks went by in the city before Merlo summoned the party. He told them that besides Dark Odo and her gang heading off to Lichway, some other adventuring groups, such as The Four Blades, had also eventually embarked south for The old Sandlands. Knowing Odo spread news of the place, he could only wonder about her motivations. Curios about that, and the historical value of the situation, he tapped the party to go find The Lichway, discover what Odo was up to, and bring him back any information about the place they could learn. 

That was all the set up, and as I said the Runis/Emen would have potential for drama. After the party had some encounters around the village close to Lichway, they entered and went about exploring in the manner it usually is done (finding the key to the Susurrus cage early on) outside of encountering folks they knew. The Four Blades, inspired to check out Lichway a couple weeks earlier by Odo in Tanmoor, were exploring one of the initial areas and trying to flush out the mage as indicated in the module. There was a near fight, but the thieves were convinced by the stronger party to leave the place and so they did. 

The ultimate encounter with Odo and here gang went violent fairly quickly, but as Runis was emotionally divided by Odo and Emen she was a basket case and refused to fight. The long and short of it had most of Odo's group decimated, Odo herself escaping, and Runis falling in with the player party and more or less becoming a follower for Emen. Oh, the short of it is seeing as they had a cage key things went as they often do here; the Sussurus escapes, the dead rise, and the party runs like hell. 

One characters strongly suggested they lock themselves in the cage. You can imagine how that might work out. Starving to death huddles in a cage while howling skeletons reached in at you. But stronger heads prevailed and they just high tailed it with the undead riot chasing close behind. 

So that's it. In a nutshell you can find any old way to get the player characters into encounters with Odo and the others at some point before the delve. You could have Odo's gang, and maybe the Four Thieves, frequent the same tavern and socialize with them there. Maybe they all hear about the Lichway at the same time. You'll need a way to delay the party a few days so Odo and the rest can get there ahead of them and be a bit settled in, though the Four Thieves seem to have arrived just ahead of the party as written in the module.

 There are probably a ton of ways to get the NPC;s into a social encounter with the PC's. As I did just have them at a rich persons party with an NPC in common to introduce them. 

The Lichway - "why are they here?"

 

The Lichway is a dungeon that originally appeared in issue #9 (Oct/Nov 1978) of White Dwarf magazine out of England. It was an old favorite of mine, and over the decades I've now used it probably 4 or 5 times. It would have been more than that, but my groups tended to be long lasting, years, and I could only spring it on an entirely fresh group of players. 

Many old schoolers probably are more about using Keep on the Borderlands and the Caves of Chaos multiple times (I've used them maybe twice since I was a kid). But while KotB is about as basic and vanilla as it gets (just fight endless caves of humanoids and maybe a nice-seeming cleric is a homicidal asshole), Lichway is an artifact of old indy style D&D like Arduin Grimoire and Judges Guild. The old school common dungeon elements are abundant:

The location has a gritty background (necropolis for deceased undead worshippers).

It has a shallow waterway running through it.

A deep variety of mostly offbeat monsters inhabit the area. 

There is plenty of grim mood and dungeon dressing (hundreds of open crypts, worms that will choke you in the fresh water sources, vampire statues, a long-ranging rustling sound emitted by a unique creature, a horrifying possible no-win scenario...think quick!).

But most iconic to me is the fact that several (and by several I don't mean like just 2) different groups/gangs are currently inhabiting the dungeon with for the most part no real goal or purpose other than await murder hobo's a'coming to call. I mean, there are a pair of Man Beasts (character class out of White Dwarf and another favored old school thing of mine)  just sitting around in a small enclosed hallway. Just like old school you need to inject your own motivations and reasons, whether the designers planned it like that or not (I suspect in most cases not. The style was just to give little description, because D&D was once a game about just killing monsters. Period.). 

I always injected a little of my own juice here and there since the first time I used it as a teen. It was easy just to assume the 2nd level Man Beast, a male, is training his lower level female follower, and a crypt with all kinds of creatures in it seemed like a good spot. 

I think that in all but one of the times I used it, the party manages to release the Sussurus, the ape-shaped thorn creature that emitted a windy sound that put undead in earshot to sleep. In my second to last use around four years ago back in LA the MU cast silence on it. So I've experienced that joy of playing out the party running away in chaotic "every man for himself" style through the part of the dungeon they hadn't explored yet to get away from hundreds of angry undead. Always a hoot. I think a player or two has been lost over the play through due to a bad decision or delay (describing a body being torn to bits by a howling mob of skeletons never gets old), but so far no TPK. but its come close almost every time.

So anyway, my first campaign in my new town the other year ended up geared towards Lichway. It didn't start out that way. This was an entirely new group and I was using 5th edition for the first time. To say I went into it NOT studied up on the rules in an understatement. Since all my players were newish to the edition, I used that as a way to learn. As the players learn while using their characters I would tap into that and learn along. 

And to be honest, on an old school note, I was able to wing things much more than I thought I could. Just tap into the stat base save mechanics for everything and you are good to go. Really, outside of magic use the system is pretty easy peasy. 

But since I was new to it I started slow. Running each game in sort of a simple episodic manner. At first not really looking to the future, but as time went by, the characters made contacts and friends in the way of NPC's, I had to start looking at a direction. And I knew I wanted to use an old school module, in part because I knew the players would not be familiar with anything I had from the old days. They were all a good bit younger than me. 

So first thing was to be prepared to use Lichway for 5th editon. No worries. Really nothing in there was too out of the ordinary. Man Beasts and the Susurrus were needing to be adapted. Not much else. 

But this time I decided to do something entirely different. This was a twist for me, and since it might be for you, you might want to consider it if you ever use this really excellent dungeon setting. What did I do?

Two things. First I decided to give all the groups in the dungeon an actual reason, and actual purpose, for being in the dreary place. A convergence of coincidence for good reasons.

Second, I would have the party, early on adventuring a hundred miles south of the Lichway in the big city Tanmoor prior to the Lichway delve, actually meet and interact with some of the inhabitants whom I had yet to set up shop in the Lichway. There would be a variety of things ahead of time that would set up the dynamic elements within the necropolis. And in so doing quadruple the feeling of gravitas once the location was reached. Sort of a prequel to Lichway as presented, starting  maybe a month before the actual dungeon delve.

I switched the female MU gang leader Dark Odo from a human to a young drow magic user. Highly charismatic and specializing in charm magic, the dark elf enchantress' gang was almost complete as shown in the module.. The Man Beasts were paid scouts and body guards working for Odo, hirelings more than charmed henchmen, while all the other members of the gang were recruited by Odo's considerable, manipulative charms.

Why would Odo go to the Lichway? And who where the unrelated thieves who were exploring the Lichway? Not to mention the former adventuring party that was slaughtered except for Odo's gangs captives. How did the character party get involved in all this? 

In my next post I'll lay out how I took my first 5th edition campaign towards the Lichway, and why all the NPC's are in it when the party finally shows up at the Korm Basin necropolis. 

Cheers

Kevin Mac

I Hated Stories in my Game Mags

“…Your humming has summoned up a pair of mud ghouls, Lute!”



Over at Grognardia today James mentions some pulp fantasy fiction in Dragon Magazine back in the day. I had an immediate thought I wanted to comment upon there, but rather than lay a negative on his blog, I will do it here where it belongs.

I HATED that shit in my magazines. Short stories featuring some fighter or barbarian or thief or another. The Dragon, White Dwarf, The Dungeoneer…whatever, I hated it. They could have been the greatest stories ever told for all I knew. I didn’t care, I rarely read more than a few paragraphs before turning away to look at the Anti-Paladin article or whatever for the thousandth time. I didn’t care if they were good; if I wanted to read fiction I would get a book or Argosy Magazine or something.

Tables, charts, rules clarifications, character class and alignment articles, and even comics. These were fun to read and you would read the same entries again and again, and a thousand times again. But the stories. Ugh. Who read these more than once?

I more or less stopped buying game mags by the late 80’s, but I did pick up the occasional Dungeon magazine in the late 90’s, and they seemed blissfully free of amateur fiction. I hope that is still the case today, especially if I get a hankering to buy one.