What dwells within the dwarf roads (GLoGtober 4 '24)

Taking on Glass Candles GLoGtober '24, challenge #4 is from a list by Shadowfray - "Infrastructure & Logistics." - with special thanks to Walfalcon for unsticking my writers block with their own post on the topic. For my contribution we return to the Dwarf Roads and the things you find down there.

Long ago, during the Membrane Wars, the dwarves retreated from the Last Star and built the under-roads in a frenzy to reconnect their scattered holdings as their previous airship-empire failed beneath the tainted light. Their alchemical-botanic mastery was turned to wringing fuels from the blood of the earth and they ground out the under-roads then fought the cult of the Last Star to a standstill in the dark.

The roads are now long abandoned, ancient defences still lurk and automata still roam but some things have made their home and some brave venturers traverse the paths once more. Few are good to meet.

Whatever else is found, there are usually dazzler walls - they make shadows leap and dance confusingly to the light of a normal flame but even unlit they are glaringly irritating to those with darkvision rapidly inducing headaches and making anything requiring vision exhausting and difficult.

Traps
1. Bulwark doors - Most renowned aspect of the Dwarf roads - known as Gnashing Doors for their fail-closed multiple redundancies
2. Darkness cascade - stinging chill showers of liquid darkness, typically matched with slopes and spiked pits
3. Lightning Arcs - discharging along dazzler walls in blinding torrents
4. Turret traps - throwing a variety of poisons, incendiaries, and caustics
5. Mellified beast release - honey-bottled monsters in arcane stasis, released. Basilisks a favourite
Hazards
6 - Maintenance golem - ever-burning elemental core heat the great rock-scrapers it has used to shore up the tunnels these past millenium
7 - Haunted train - a near intact war-borer train - too intact for the dead crew will rise to defend their charge
8 - Hypnotic archives - missing interface psychadelics might be found and information gleaned
9 - Unstable magazine - alchemical fire, night bombs, seeker swords - lethal things stored uncarefully by soldiers under pressure
10 - Breached fuel unit - dripping caustic and flamable pools, clouds of noxious gas fill the local area
Monstrous residents
11 - Weretoads - loners, often heard long before seen croaking low-wave messages along the roads
12 - Crocodile cultists - pale, trogoldyte forms, highly territorial of their glorious depths
13 - Dwarven shades - death has not released them from their dutiful defence
14 - Giant spiders - keeping the giant flies down
15 - Myconids - inheritors of the dwarves deep-botanical endowment
Intruders
16 - Humanoid raiding team - soldiers of one of the realms above, trying to outflank their foes from beneath
17 - Questing adventurers - pursuing something or someone that has fled here
18 - Blockade runners - smugglers trying to worm their way past surface hostilities and customs barriers
19 - Treasure Seekers - trying to search out some last forgotten coin
20 - Dwarven Reconquistadors - reclaiming their ancient birthright

We have visited these roads before with Small god: Lady Deephome (GLoGtober 2 '23).

Other references:
The Last Star - Bearded Devil
Jungle Dwarves of Forgotten Gorzu - Lizardman Diaries

Shiny TTRPG links #194

Short list as ill this week. For more, see the previous list found here or you can check the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Trilemma Adventures gave us An Era of Standard RPG Terminology

Tower of the Lonely GM shares Knockback rules from TOR 1st to d20 games

Slight Adjustments shared FIGHT / DEMONS

levikornelsen gives us Post-Politicized Procedure

thydungeongal hosts a discussion on tumblr on D&D is easy to learn

Kill It With Fire! gave us Check-off boxes, not HP

ars ludi writes West Marches: Finding the Dungeons

Dice Goblin gives us The Two-Tiered Reaction Roll

Widdershins Wanderings shares The Magic Tree House Spectrum of OSR Player Behavior

Personable Thoughts gives us A method for condensed worldbuilding

Don't Split the Party wrote If Your Torches Burn for only One Hour your NPCs will be More Important

Torchless gives us LOW OPINION: System Matters

Hive Kratos launches with Introduction

Death by a Thousand Claws (RPG Blog Carnival)

This months blog carnival from The Other Side has the topic of Horror and Fantasy - so I was inspired to write about implementing the dread of the onrushing doom.
Thinking through what is dreadful and horrifying to a group of typically well armed and cunning adventurers, I had a few thoughts - most of which stem from lack of knowledge.

Menace for highly experienced players are signs that point to multiple dangerous options, signs not clear enough to allow countermeasures to be chosen. Menace to newbies is anything, with the caveat that they will not recognise the threat signs more experienced players would nor understand the scale of thing they might face in some cases. The weird monster is a traditional approach - like critters from Fire on the Velvet Horizon - things operating out of a non-standard game-space where the players do not know the rules this monster is operating.

Tricks to pull this off are
- reskin monsters - the familar becomes unrecognisable
- tweak abilities - the element of an attack or the stat that is attacked

These root in the horror of doom, which requires finesse to avoid tipping into despair - you want the grim, tense silence of the narrow margin fight around the table not the glum resignation of the lost battle.

ONe thought on making this work - you want a monster which is difficult to pick off at range or en masse - very few hit points, comes in groups, glass-hammers some stat-drain then dies.

Our concept here would be the horde of little things of which any individual one is not hard to deal with, and you're unlikely to get hit by any given one, but should they manage to lay a hand on you, that is damage.

Darkling Wisp (B/X)
AC 6, HD 1-1, #AT 1, D 1+special, MV (30’), Save F 2, ML 12, No. Appearing 1d6
If a darkling wisp scores a hit, it drains a point of Constitution in addition to normal damage. This lasts for 24 hours.

In pitch darkness it has a faint violet flickering outline, somewhat ball-like with a suggestion of mephit-like wings and spindly limbs. In light it appears as a scintillating shadow of the same. They pop into existence in hordes at places where the veil between the Feywild or Shadowfell is changing, typically dawn or dusk, lunar cycles or seasons turnings. They rush in hordes for a time, snatching vitality from whatever they encounter, before flickering out of existence. Prolonged exposure to these things cause the lands where the veil is thin to have their ephemeral aspect.

Darkling Wisp (5e) Small fey, chaotic evil

Armor Class 12
Hit Points 4 (1d6)
Speed 30 ft.

STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA
6 (-2) 14 (+2) 10 (0) 6 (-2) 10 (+0) 8 (-1)
Skills Stealth +4
Damage Vulnerabilities radiant
Damage Resistances acid, cold, fire, lightning, thunder; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks
Damage Immunities necrotic, poison
Condition Immunities exhaustion, frightened, grappled, paralyzed, petrified, poisoned, prone, restrained
Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 10
Languages –
Challenge 1/4 (50 XP)

Darkling Touch: Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature. Hit: 1pt necrotic damage and the target’s Constitution score is reduced by 1d4. The target dies if this reduces its Constitution to 0. The target can recover their level worth of Constitution points when they finish a long rest.

Hidden depth of domain encounters (GLoGtober 3 '24)

Taking on Glass Candles GLoGtober '24, challenge #2 is from a list by Vivanter - "An encounter table for domain-level play."

So for this I thought of the many things that would crop up in domain play and thought I would have another go at a universal chart. For a domain level game, the problems scale up but the boons also change. For me domain level means 'so big, the king needs to send ...' either the cavalry or the tax wagons because it makes a difference on the scale of hundreds to thousands of people. The problems, if left unattended would threaten the viability of the realm itself. The type of stuff even high level adventurers would get out of bed for.

I blocked things out into a couple of groups
Catastrophes - big, rare things going very wrong in the deep wilds
Bad Times - things that hit 'civilization'
Critters - all the usual sorts of monsters but more of them or bigger.
Pesky Humans - people, either the neighbours or outlaws, being the nuisance
Civil Matters - things happening in the towns and cities
Stars Align - other peoples magical fantasy nonsense happening to you and your realm

Then blocked out a hidden depths table with the first four blocks and filled it out to a potential d30 roll with the last group.

You could run this as a chaos clock - switching 6d4 > 4d6 > 3d8 > 2d12 > d24 > d30 as things get weirder.

Score	Roll	Group	Event
2	d4d20	Stars Align	Treasure hoard uncovered
2	d4d20	Catastrophe	Major volcano
3	d4d20	Catastrophe	Fey incursion
4	d4d20	Catastrophe	Plague
5	2d12	Bad Times	Terrible Weather -
6	2d12	Bad Times	Crop Failures - peasants on the move
7	3d8	Critters	Minor monster tribe
8	3d8	Critters	Beast herds
9	3d8	Critters	Bountiful harvest
10	3d8	Critters	Insect swarms
11	4d6	Pesky Humans	Cult outbreak
12	4d6	Pesky Humans	Banditry
13	4d6	Pesky Humans	Herdbeast rustling
14	6d4	Civil Matters	Festival
15	6d4	Civil Matters	New construction
16	6d4	Civil Matters	Trade fair
17	6d4	Civil Matters	Crimewave
18	6d4	Civil Matters	Riots
19	4d6	Pesky Humans	Raiders
20	4d6	Pesky Humans	Siege
21	3d8	Critters	Big Scary Individual Monster
22	2d12	Bad Times	General Revolt
23	2d12	Bad Times	Plague
24	d4d20	Catastrophe	Divine incursion
25	d30	Stars Align	Lost secrets unearthed
26	d30	Stars Align	A mighty warrior arises
27	d30	Stars Align	Blood War Incursion
28	d30	Stars Align	A craft falls to earth
29	d30	Stars Align	Titans War breaks out (giants, dragons, etc)
30	d30	Stars Align	An archmage takes up a new goal

Shiny TTRPG links #193

Links from about the interwebs, both new and time-tested. For even more, see the previous list found here or you can check the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

The Other Side blog writes ITS OCTOBER 2024!! RPG Blog Carnival and Horror Movie Marathon

Attronarch's Athenaeum compiles RPG Blog Carnival: Wondrous Weapons and Damning Dweomers Round-Up Post

Warhammer Conference has proceedings on their Youtube channel

Direct Sun Games gives us With the Cult of Crimson Revelers

Play Material gives us Putting together the Scene Kit and boiling it waaaaay down

Trilemma Adventures shared Some Thoughts on Intrigue

Sword of Mass Destruction gave us Rethinking clerics and religion, part 1 and part 2

Personable Thoughts gives us The Freedom of Constraints: Game Jam Writing

Play Material writes Doing a TTRPG game jam changed my life

Patrons Seeking Adventurers (GLoGtober 2 '24)

Taking on Glass Candles GLoGtober '24, challenge #2 is from a list by CommonUse - "Patrons: their source of power/wealth and their goals in using the party."

Practical Patrons, their natures and what they seek from their hirelings
1. Sithulf - whiter-than-white, the clergy of Bahamut, support through the church, needs deniable catspaws but if things are done by the book, they can drop the hammer on anything proved
2. Mallory - keen long-haul traders, breathless explorer, demands good notes, provides good briefings, can find or fence anything
3. Master of University - classic wizard, wrong species, lots of weird help to hand out, bound imps, consumable magic
4. Ragnbjorl - delvers into beyond, hunters of eldritch monsters for profit, seek gutsy, ask-no-questions types, support subcontractors, tend towards wild victory parties
5. Rynskald - ancient house, guardian of hazards, dangerous deeds, well paid, good intel, operational support, bloody handed defenders of the realm, everything is expendable
6. Kalfyra - minor members of the ruling house, odd hobbyists, sketchy briefings, official support, shows appreciation through lands and titles.
7. Hentlebrock - minor lordly deeds, local political power, fixers for the common folk, often seek classic adventurers for typical quests
8. Pillars - bordermarch lords, monster expertise, local guides, often seek rescue assistance for lost travellers or cut off settlements
9. Mhysanor - glitteringly wealthy coastal lords, sleek and polished, seek spy-hunters and capables to stalk magical foes on their home terrain
10. Kordites - disorganised church, motivated, messianic, supported by living saint, temple network plus mythic overlap, has prophetic visions to be handled
11. Sellal - river-baron, trade-taxers, covert actors, connections to the seelie courts, seeks sneaks and spies
12. Crown - the realm, ultimate but distant authority, officially their writ is law, lots of support until there isn't, quests often wrong on the details
13. Mysmys - Orthodox Church of Tiamat, guided by oracles, seeks contract killers, ruin delvers and hoard plunderers
14. Alchemists Guild - makers of warforged, tomb-divers and tower-raiders, pay well, need deniable
15. Chiming Zam - smuggling boss, network everywhere, needs discrete, cunning folk to help shift cargos quietly
16. Drizero - looks like a dragon cult, is the local lord, sponsors ruin diving
17. Uncargicks - wealthy smiths guild, pays top coin, needs muscle for clearing mines, path-breaking, caravan escort
18. Thenya Palace - city rulers, the local law, lots of odds and ends the palace guard cannot deal with, mostly message runs or ruin exploration
19. Gray Wasp - sorcerers collective, continuous demand for wierd and exotic fetch errands
20. Garzidh - military stronghold, excellent equipment, henchmen support, steady mercenary work keeping supply routes open

Bonus Eldritch Patrons seen in-world
1. Queen of the Terror Birds - recently dug up after long aeons underground, gleefully seeks to restore avian dominion
2. Last Star - the Special light
3. Ezbotha - your local hag, runs a very charming bathhouse
4. Master of Tongues - gruesome plucker of the strands of fate

Dungeon Cities (GLoGtober 1 '24)

Taking on Glass Candles GLoGtober '24, challenge #1 is from a list by Walfalcon - "A city where you can dungeon crawl."

The key difference between a 'lost city' and a standard dungeon to my mind is that there are a bunch of factions/peoples present who are just living normal lives to a relatively sophisticated standard - it is just that the distance to very dangerous neighbours and deadly ruins is measured in minutes walking rather than days of hiking.

I am using 'Lost Conchordia' from my home campaign for my model here - the city of the Titans, predating giant-kind, from the time of Amman ruling supreme, before the Ordning. I had it lost beneath a glacier but this also works for buried under sand or silt, engulfed by volcanic ash or any other number of cataclysms that would fill the streets and spaces of a city with something solid.

Intent is that your standard urban location toolkit would be used, whatever that is, then layer on these tables below to capture the 'buried city' flavour.

Conchordia beneath ice.

d6 room types
1. dug out of ice
2. old room as was
3. adapted room
4. non-dwelling space but big enough to be room
5. rubble/ruin still navigable
6. bubble/crevasse or other naturally occuring gap

In Conchordia, the original inhabitants were mostly gone but for a very few remnants - automata, undead, moving statues, etc. Things of course had moved into the space over the long run of time - both beasts and people finding spaces to live within the old city. Finally there are other non-dwellers - both welcome visitors and unwelcome intruders that might happen to be there.

d20 things encountered
1-2. original inhabitant
3-8. beastie moved in
9-17. recent dweller
18-20. intruder/adventurer

My suggestion for cities where you dungeon crawl is to set the range on attitude tables as equivalent to cities, and have monsters encountered be both more savvy around humans - like urban bears, crows and coyotes - habituated to people, not man-eaters, and perhaps more of a nuisance, less of a direct threat. Going about your daily business is a little more risky however with things falling on you or out from under you and the poorly ventilated buried nature of the whole place.

d6 background hazards the locals cope with daily
1. rickety walk ways over plunges
2. low door lintels
3. bad food
4. sleep-ruining noise
5. random collapses
6. bad air
7. disease
8. getting lost and disorientation

This would also come into play during any chases.