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

D&D and the character party Foe Gauntlet

 

The "Foe Gauntlet." There is probably a better name for it, but regardless, it's a thing. 

Though I am sure it has appeared in various media in history, I think the first time I saw such a thing was in old Spider-Man comics as a kid, where in at least one instance he had to fight each of the Sinister Six enemies, such as Vulture and Doc Ock, one at a time. 

I cannot help but be offended by the derogatory
and racist word Spidey throws at Electro

Then at some point in the Bruce Lee movie Game of Death. The film has a very storied background (look it up), but it inspired the "fight your way through a series of enemies to get to the boss" in video games to be sure. 

I also believe in the Batman story where Bane breaks his spine Bats had to fight through a series of villains set up by Bane to soften him up for the final fight. 

and it went down at ComiCon so
nobody really noticed it happened

And I remember Hulk Hogan doing something similar in his earlier WCW appearances against the Dungeon of Doom (a good idea with terrible execution). 

Pre-Attitude Era wrestling was pretty crappy

One time I did such a thing in a game, that I can remember, was in a solo game I ran in the 90's for one of the players in my Champions game. It was a Bourne Identity type character. He had developed his own little Rogues Gallery of foes over a couple years of campaigns, and for a solo outing a "gauntlet" sounded like an easy thing to game master. His foes were mostly non-powered dudes, like martial artists and a trio of former pro wrestlers who were getting into the mob enforcer business. I remember the character being worn down in several fights throughout the city, ending up fighting the wrestler trio in the foamy surf at the shore in Venice Beach. Then he fought the big bad and barely won the fight. 

So the idea came to me for the DnD characters in my current Roll20 campaign. The night the party arrived with a caravan to "Lemon Tree" (my stand in for Apple Lane), Gengle (my stand in for Gringle) the pawnbroker was negotiating with the Vaishino snake people. The negotiations went bad, and the creatures took out their anger on the surrounding area which included the caravan the party was camping at. That fight went OK for them, and they got thier long rest through the night. But the next morning the long day (which including the pawnshop assault that night), that would last several games, began.

The caravan left and the party walked down the hill to the village. Therein lay the first fight. Several Vaishino warrior jumped out of tree to attack. No problem. Then the party went to the Tin Inn. Several members of the Biglaugh the Centaur gang (whose gang members in the original material were all Dragonnewts and such, but I had it be just human bandits in mine) came into the tavern for a morning eye opener, and of course got into it with the party. Not a big deadly fight, but still, the party had to use resources for. 

A couple of those bandits were immediately thrown into jail by Dronlon the Sherriff, and by early afternoon Biglaugh and company caused small fires and ruckus' around the village while the prisoners were released, and the characters had to fight them off. 

So by early afternoon the party had three conflicts, and with the pawnshop scenario coming up by night fall, they had no chance for the beloved by 5th ed player's long rest. They had to go into that shop assault fairly depleted. 

I loved the concept, but you can probably count on players NOT to love it. They like to have their resources in a fight. And for the pawnshop those resources were mostly used up. Especially healing. 

It was a harrowing building-based combat that went on for almost 3 sessions. I felt it was all pretty dramatic, and at the end a couple of players had their severely wounded characters lean up against a wall and exhale in relief. But overall it was clear, I loved the concept more than them. But that's players for you, especially the more modern ones. 

They really feel entitled to a long rest after any kind of fight. 

YMMV. Cheers. 

Gringle & The Pawnshop Baboon Assault!

I’m not one of those DM’s who obsess on taking photos of the mini’s on the table during game night, and I have at least one player who will laugh at me for doing so, but it was necessary just this one time…



We were doing a Baboon (in RQ intelligent simians) assault on that famous Pawnshop in the village know far and wide for its apple orchards. Broker and Issaries Runelord Gringle hired the young characters to protect the shop while he and his duck assistant Quackjohn are away for the night. This gave players a nice tour of one of the most secretive houses in Sartar. They had full access as they awaited the baboon attack. Indeed they finally did, eventually breaking through the roof and into one of the first story storage rooms. In the upper part of the map you can see a couple of characters and four baboons tangled in the throes of mortal combat. Down below, in the little Issaries chapel next to the the kitchen, Terry’s character Rowan observes a big centaur breaking down the door from the kitchen, as a couple of little crested Dragonnewts rush into the room with bows at the ready. Who are these strange invaders and why are they attacking the shop at the same time as the baboons (no spoilers please)?



So anyway, we had to stop just as things were getting really interesting. We’ll continue next week. As you can see, the map is kind of a mess because I only had a couple of minutes to draw it out. Fake. I actually did it a week ahead of time, and it’s still kind of sloppy (although I don’t think the players minded). I just can’t draw a straight line. Before we got cleaned up for the night, I snapped this pic to help us place the minis and take up the combat from that moment in time next week.



I don’t mind saying so, but I think we are having some fun with Runequest.

Being Creative with online session Discord Calendar Invites

  

In the face-to-face days we just used emails for our game scheduling and reminders. In the mid to late 90's we only played a couples times a month at best (though we played far longer sessions then. An entire day into the evening usually), but also saw and talked to each other since we were mostly friends outside the games. But going into the 2000's and running for groups who were just "gaming friends" emails and/or Yahoo groups or whatever helped. 

But with the advent of my Roll20 online gaming several years ago, and my use of Discord for voice and text, I got the advantage of actual dedicated calendar reminders to remind the humanoids that we had a game. 

Needed? I dunno. Since going online with my campaigns the schedule is pretty set. This year since around February have done DnD every week on Saturday nights, And for a few months now have run my "Haven" campaign with Marvel Multiverse on Friday night. Dedicated regulars. So they know full well we have weekly sessions. 

But the things is, I found out early in my Discord usage that I could be kind of creative with the calendar invites/reminders. 

I mean, it's kind of what it's all about, right? Making a little magic. So any creative element you can stick in there is important to me. And for years now in campaigns, I have done what I can with the invites.

Besides indicating which voice channel you are using and the day, time and date, you can add an image and a title for the session. That alone stirred my imagination. Originally I was digging that players could "like" the calendar invite, as it would indicate to me who was planning to attend. Not always reliable though. In the latest campaigns you can count on 3 or 4 players to like it, but not everybody always does. 

But I loved that I could use an image and a title to maybe sort of foreshadow the session. Not give it all away, but maybe sort of rile up some interest in what was going to happen. Sometimes mysterious or sometimes not. 

Some things from my generation may inspire me on this. I remember on old TV shows you would get an establishing shot, and "on tonight's episode of Mannix - lonely is the hunter" or something like that. 

I have sometimes made them as simple as an image of a country road and a title like "the road goes ever every on" for DnD travel. And sometimes I made them more meaningful. To me, anyway. Sometimes a private joke. 

Since Discord does not archive past invites, here are the couple for this week's games. In my DnD campaign, I am once again using the old Pawnshop adventure from Apple Lane for Runequest. This week we are heading into part two of the Pawnshop attack. This invite was pretty easy. Just put an image of one of the foes the party is now facing in the shop, and a "part 2" indicator.   

Nothing super creative, but it gives the players a little something to maybe pique their interest in the next session. An image of the monsters they have seen but not gotten into full steam battle with yet. They know it starts right from the jump next session. 

For the Marvel rpg sessions, things are getting a little harder to figure what will happen next. I have 5 steady players, but since it's the weekend and there are not quite as many players in the pool as my DnD, a player or two might have to miss a session. I have been sort of planning out two session arcs, but honestly, we only play for two hours or so on Friday. And the players might sandbox a bit. "Can I go patrol for a few minutes?" And I have been giving players 20 minutes or so here and there to do their own thing from time to time (against my general better judgment. I mean, we are not doing very long sessions). And as of last week I am deciding kind of last minute what might be best depending on what players we have for the night. If I plan a little couple of session encounter arc, somebody I need for it might not be able to make it that night. Or maybe last session is going to bleed into the next a bit, and I might want to wait a week or two to start that for whatever reason. 

Like last week, I decided a half hour before the session that I just wanted to have a little low-combat encounter. I dreamed up a couple of floors of an office building being set ablaze by a professional arsonist. In that half hour I found a couple of office building floors to use as maps, and went into Demiplane to whip up an arsonist dude. Found an image that worked for it. And decided this would be an architectural firm being targeted by a rival. 

I will maybe briefly touch on that in the next post, but for the following session how will I start things off? Since we had to wrap it up right after the victims were rescued and the fire put out, I figured this might be the first real interaction with the characters and emergency response, and maybe reporters as well. "hmm.." I thought. Maybe I could expand on that. What if a character took the time to answer a reporter's questions? Or maybe I could have an "on the scene" start-up streamer crew looking for cred and popularity actually ask a character if they could be their "dedicated news team" (an idea I got from a card in the King of Tokyo card game). Promise them positive coverage if they give them tips on things that might go down they can report on. Since all this was on my mind, and at the very least the first few minutes of the next session being them at least being approached by reporters and later seeing a news report on the encounter, it was enough to include it in the invite for the next session. Easy peasy. 

Just a generic reporter image (who I am going to use for an NPC) and a title "More New at 11" (just happens to be one of my favorite Public Enemy songs)

This invite was not exactly high art. None of them are. Really, if anything they are a more personal thing for me. But in the case of this invite for the Marvel game, it's kind of a mystery box. The players will have no idea what it means. And the meaning will not be deep. But it lets me tap into maybe the barest of the plot for the next session, and since I have no idea yet how the majority of the session will pan out, this at least connects to it in a minor way. And if the characters kind of go with the Dedicated News Team idea, it could have greater ramifications. 

But yeah, the invite is a minor thing, but its fun for me to decide on a title and an image at the very least. And we GM's gotta get our jollies any little way we can, eh?

Cheers

2012 - a great year of just plain gaming

With the Temple of Demogorgon 4 year anniversary just this last week, I thought it might a good time to talk about some of my gaming from the last year (as seems to be the tradition). Mostly the last year was about focusing on actually running games over blogging or kerfuffling in the OSR, and I found it both peaceful and fulfilling.

In 2012 I didn’t do much in the way of gaming outside the regular group. After a couple of shitty experiences in the previous and other years both at tabletops and online (there were some good ones too), I dedicated myself to the regular group and to new campaigns with gusto, and kept my posts here to an average of 2 or 3 a month.

Pretty much started the year jumping right into my long-daydreamed about classic Runequest game. I did a lot of research, and dreaming up of my own stuff in relation to existing data for this campaign. It was a lot of work, but I love Glorantha and could not wait to portray my version of it. Though I used a lot of the Celtic imagery and some clarifications on locations from later editions, I did my best to keep my Glorantha very basic, they way I experienced it as a kid. There was a bit of work to be done with the crunch, as I almost immediately threw out some of the Strike Rank stuff and started houseruling to make the game and all it’s combat focus go smoother. I think that went well, as I’m pretty sure I captured the groups imagination with strong tribal-clan setting, a nice break from generic medieval Europe setting of D&D. I finally got to do the classic Gringles Pawnshop and Rainbow Mounds scenario’s, and it was all good. I think I left the campaign off later in the year with the players wanting more, and that is the feather in the GM cap as far as I’m concerned. I will for sure revisit the characters later this year.


In January regular player Paul brought a copy of Arkham Horror boardgame when we were low on players, and though lengthy (as most boardgames seem to be) it was fun, and got my juices flowing to do some Call of Cthulhu. We did eventually get a few sessions in, and it was good times. I called this part of the campaign “Fangs of New York,” with a classic New York setting. Byakhees and Chinese Gangsters over Times Square on New Years Eve, Cho Cho People and Chaugner Faugh in the Jersey Pine Barrens. Really great sessions, and as in the past some players hemmed and hawed about the genre, but loved it once we played. Quite honestly, I think I do my best GMing with Cthulhu. I’m really “on” when I run it. Looking forward to getting in some more of this soon. It is a good game for when you are low on players.


Just a quick video gaming mention as an aside. Around the earlier part of last year my video game of choice ended up being Fallout 3. I hadn’t played a video game with this much enthusiasm since Resident Evil 4. Just a great and immersive game, and a big time waster in 2012. Right now, into 2013, I’m putting a bit of effort into Borderlands 1 and Bioshock (I might have mentioned in the past that I am always 2-4 years behind on my video games).

My Knights of The Old Republic campaign continued. Despite the crunch, or maybe even because of it, the group on a whole seemed to really enjoy it. I cannot compare it to AD&D as I hadn’t run that for the group in over two years, but out of everything else I have done; Mutant Future, Champions, and Call of Cthulhu, this seemed to be what the gang liked best. I ran it right up to the holidays, but have set it aside since I want to do D&D so bad. We’ll hopefully get back to it later this year, maybe summer.

In addition to this new D&D campaign we are just getting underway, I also still want to do a mini-campaign with the high level dudes left over from the Night Below campaign I ended two years ago. The players seem very attached to these characters, and it seems a shame to not do the occasional outing with them, despite my mild dislike for high level play.


So we in the group have started my new AD&D 1st edition campaign, and the characters seem like a lot of fun so far. So my gaming wish list for lucky number 2013 is to do a bunch of this AD&D campaign, a smattering of the high level AD&D, More Call of Cthulhu here and there, a continuance of KOTOR later in the year, and…heaven forbid…maybe sneak a little Champions in? That would be a damn good gaming year for me.

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. 

Another Campaign Ends

Last night we wrapped up the fairly short (maybe 8 sessions or so) Runequest campaign I popped on the group a few months ago. I had actually intended to mix in a lot more Call of Cthulhu, a sort of Chaosium mix, but we were having such a good time with the RQ that we pretty much stuck with that and breezed through the campaign.



I used the classic Apple Lane setting for this, and went through the usual progression (besides my own added bits and encounters) of the tribal initiations battle circles, Pawnshop Baboon attack all the way through finishing up Rainbow Mounds last night. Whiteeye and his trollkin defeated, and the Lizard Mother and the Lizard Spirits destroyed (the Newtlings made Terry’s character Rowan their queen – for what it was worth).



The party got to touch the adamantine column hidden behind the newt idol, gaining some spells. They also found the Issaries statue to later sell to Gringle. In a wild twist, the party forgot to search White eyes’ lair for the main treasure. They rested after the White eye fight for a night before moving on into what they though was a tunnel to another area (it was actually a small chamber with White eyes bed and the main treasure of the adventure), then later got distracted and didn’t finish searching that area! Thousands of lunars and other precious stuff left behind! Kind of a hoot.



I mean, they were told there would be a lot of items White eye and gang robbed people of, but they happily left without any of that. I waited until they were back at the village to tell them. There was the usually thrashing around for a couple of minutes trying to find the poor GM at fault, but the realization set in that they had been idiots to not realize they didn’t have what they, in part, went to the Rainbow Mounds for. Doesn’t really make up for anybody not getting killed or maimed in the campaign, but it helps.



So time to regroup, get out the Star Wars stuff, and repack my mini’s box with Sci Fi figures. We’ll be doing KOTOR for the rest of the year, with the odd Call of Cthulhu game thrown in here and there when we are short on important players.



But yeah, there ya go. Another campaign in the bag. It’s always kind of a satisfying peace that comes over you when you are at the finish line of a fun campaign.

"My favorite D&D module was a Runequest adventure” - Apple Lane

As a kid hanging out at the local game shop Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica, I played a lot of Runequest. I maybe ran a handful of games for friends outside the shop, but I never really got a campaign going. As an adventure pack, Apple Lane (by Greg Stafford, first printed in 1978) provided some outstanding encounters, NPC’s, and situations. In the sleepy orchard town of Apple Lane, Your first encounter may just be getting mugged by a Trollkin (as humorously portrayed on the cover). Trollkin haunt the area outside of town, but small raids have been made in the last few weeks on homes around the town fringes. Lead by a big Trollkin named White Eye, the little pests have been a nuisance, even going so far as to kill a little old lady. The Tin Inn is the focal center of town, and here is where you are likely to meet Gringle, a Rune Lord who has settled down to run a pawnshop in town. Gringle will hire you to guard his shop while he and his assistant, Duck John, are out of town for the night. A tribe of Baboons (who can speak in Runequest) have threatened to attack the shop, and a harrowing night fighting them off will be the first real adventure scenario in town. Included are schematics for the three levels of the shop, and entrance points for the Baboons to break in are indicated. The major adventure is to go to an area called The Rainbow Mounds and get a bounty on White Eye offered by the sheriff. In addition to the Trollkin, a once great race have devolved into The Newtlings, froglike beings who live in the waterways of the Mounds. These creatures worship an idol in their main cave, and if the party finds the missing piece of the idol (hidden amongst the warrens of the large rock lizards who also inhabit the caverns), the person who places the piece upon the idol will be crowned King of the Newtlings. This kingship comes with little in the way of power or treasure, but it is a cool way to cap off an adventure. The Rainbow Mounds is really a great dungeon setting. In addition to the main water cavern and some underground rushing rapids and waterfalls, special rooms include a classic D&D style mushroom chamber, and an alter to the Dark Gods of the Trollkin. It’s just a series of caves, but they are set-up really well, and provide multiple pathways for the players to choose. I liked the setting so much, that after getting the book I almost immediately modified things to use it for D&D. I changed some names, such as Lemon Tree instead of Apple Lane, and turned the Trollkins and Baboons into orcs, but most other things I kept the same. Gringle, however, became a high level wizard, and his assistant Duck John became Hobbit John. Over the decades I used the setting several times. White Eye having been killed several times, and the Newtling idol found and a king crowned again and again, was a bit of a stretch. But the problem got solved when I decided that the Newtlings had a curse on them that kept the idol pieces and White Eye in a constant loop. No matter what happened, an idol piece would eventually be lost and found, and no matter how many times White Eye was killed he would return to menace anyone who came to the Mounds. A group of characters are in the Rainbow Mounds right now during my current AD&D campaign (continuing tonight!), and the party includes Kayla, a hobbit who has been there before, and personally killed White Eye in that past adventure. In a game in the late 90’s she came to Lemon Tree, adventured in the Rainbow Mounds, killed the orcs, and eventually married Hobbit John. She has recently returned to find White Eye alive, the Newtlings again waiting for a new ruler, and a disturbing fact: having been to the Mounds multiple times, she risks become part of the curse cycle of the Mounds herself! So, I very much recommending getting a copy of Apple Lane and modify it for use in your D&D games. It is really a fairly simple but elegant setting, and it can be adjusted for various character levels. It actually is a great place to start new characters in, and if you poke around online you can find fan-support for it, including great alternate maps (even a 3D one) for the areas included in the module.

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

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