Gencon Ho!

“Right. Right. Well, if you do see a flying UFO, these government men come and tell you off,” said Adam, getting back into his stride. “In a big black car. It happens all the time in America.”    The Them nodded sagely. Of this at least they had no doubt. America was, to them, the place that good people went to when they died. They were prepared to believe that just about anything could happen in America.              Good Omens.

Tickets booked. Accommodation sorted. Visa granted. Gencon/America, here I come. It'll be a first for me on two fronts because I have never been to either. I will be at the Bushido booth for most of the show, demoing rules/ talking fiction/ and discussing Rise of the Kage, ( a board-game about Ninjas, stealth, and limited time to fulfill your sneaky missions) that GCT Studios Kick-Started last year. I worked on the rules for them. So, I am hoping to fill my evenings with games and good times. What to expect? Not sure, really. I have wanted to see America since I was a lad watching Disney programs  on a Sunday night before bed. The moment I saw the logo was bittersweet because I would always think, wow, that castle is real you know...yup...it's in America. And then I'd feel sad because I realised I had school in the morning. And as for Gencon, well, I have wanted to go since I saw the advert in the back of the AD&D DM's book. Once the convention is over I have a few days to kill. In all fairness, I can't really imagine that there's a hell-of-a-lot to see in Indianapolis (hey, maybe I am wrong?) so I am thinking of missioning up to Lake Geneva to see what I can see, and then off to LA for a few days.

I have my purchase wishlist ready, and I have to be careful because of the exchange rate. As it stands, one USD gets you twelve ZAR ( South African Rand), OUCH! It hurts precious, it hurts! So I am limiting myself to a copy of the Original D&D Whitebox set, a set of DCC dice, and hopefully a copy of Outdoor Survival. Boring I know, but hey, I have wanted this stuff forever! I am sure there will be other impulse purchases ( who needs food?) along the way. So, yeah, swing on past, we can chew the fat, and hopefully roll some dice together while making funny voices.

“Do you know,” he said, “my cousin said that in America there's shops that sell thirty-nine different flavours of ice cream?”

    This even silenced Adam, briefly.

    “There aren't thirty-nine flavours of ice cream,” said Pepper. “There aren't thirty-nine flavours in the whole world.”

    “There could be, if you mixed them up,” said Wensleydale, blinking owlishly. “You know. Strawberry and chocolate. Chocolate and vanilla.” He sought for more English flavours. “Strawberry and vanilla and chocolate,” he added, lamely.        Good Omens.

d6. What’s really at the end of the rainbow?

1) A hedge of hawthorn and blackroot that stands over twenty feet tall. It is impenetrable. Dagger-like thorns that twist and turn, bar your way. There are small birds, lizards, rodents, and other wildlife, skewered on the thorns, (that upon closer inspection, have the same colour and consistency of toe-nails), it does not look accidental either, the skewering, it appears as if someone has done this on purpose. The hedge goes on for miles and miles. No spell may let you pass through it, see through it, or even fly over it. Only once the party has given up all hope of entering does a large wrought iron gate appear. It stands massively, embedded in the hedge, two stories tall, cold black iron shaped like bones, slick with dew, rust and blood. The gate is locked and embellished with snow white skulls the size of prize winning pumpkins. Through the bars, which are shaped like femurs and fibula, you see row-upon-row of headstones, sepulchres and tombs. There are silent angels, trapped forever in mourning, alongside twisted nightmare deities, all caught perfectly and immortalised in marble and bloodstone. If you decide to enter this place, Save vs. Fear, or back away. Once inside, roll for initiative, as you will immediately be set upon by the guardians of Marrowhome, (treat as Wight’s). Marrowhome is where grave diggers, grave robbers, necrophiliacs, necromancers, mummifiers, and koroners go when they die. At the rotten heart of this graveyard is the tomb of the Great Interned, the patron sinner of all who dabble with the dead. Made from the flesh of a thousand flayed bodies, the sinner speaks with a multitude of tongues from a multitude of mouths, each spitting and belching forth lies, hate, terror, fear, maggots and flies. If defeated (not an easy thing to do) the construct collapses, leaving a bone chest, that contains upward of 100 souls that are yours to do with as you please.

2) A châteaux, red-bricked, gilt edged, and simply splendid in its grandiose manner. The doors and windows are open, emitting the genteel sounds of chamber music, and the hum of children’s voices. Curtains of silk billow from every window as if a great wind were tugging them about, even though you fail to feel anything at all. A glorious red carpet flows up the marble steps through a set of open doors into the châteaux. Upon entering the air is filled with the gentle fragrance of flowers and perfumes, banishing the usual stench of sweat and adventure you accumulate on the road. Ghostly, liveried footmen and waiters will appear, offering hors-devours and tall glasses of the finest ports, wines, and brandy’s known to man. Feel free to imbibe. Nothing will happen save what would normally transpire on eating and drinking. If you decide to investigate further, each room has a theme. 1) Red. Passion and Warfare. The walls, floor, and ceiling are painted a deep glowing red. There are deep red curtains and tapestries hanging on the walls. Golden furniture and furnishings are everywhere. Paintings and portraits of dying lovers and epic battle scenes adorn the room. There is music playing here, angry, fierce, throbbing. Militant one moment, and romantic the next. There are several bookcases to be found at the back of the room, not far from a huge fireplace and some leather chaise lounges. If anyone is to fall asleep in this room, they will receive a bonus to their strength upon awaking in the morning. Also, any spell-caster utilising a spell containing fire, will find it will do double damage. These effects are good for one day only. 2) Blue. Oh I do like to be beside the seaside. The room emanates feelings of calm and relaxation. You smell the sharp briny aroma of the ocean. Rest your weary feet and stay awhile. There is definitely a nautical theme to this room, with carved statues of sea creatures and mermaids dotted everywhere. There are paintings of great ships ploughing through colossal waves, and harbours and pirates and sea-gods, both large and small. There are hammocks made from netting at the back of the room. Anyone sleeping on those will receive a bonus to their intelligence upon awaking. Any spell cast that features water as its prime manifestation, will do double damage and will last for double the duration. This gift only lasts for one day. 3) Yellow-Belly-Custard dripping from a Dead Dog’s Eye. This room is peculiar. Everything you would normally find on the floor is on the roof. Chairs, tables, rugs, carpets, everything is up there. There is even a snifter of brandy, half-full, next to a smoking pipe, all upside-down. Next to the drink and the pipe, appears to be a letter of sorts. No matter what they do, there is no way to reach the items up there, especially magically. However, if they climb on each other’s shoulders, starting youngest to oldest, they can reach the roof and retrieve what is there. Hidden in a secret drawer in the writing desk is a scroll of Walrus conjuring. The power phrase is goo-goo-gajoob. 4) Green. Down in the Jungle Room. The air is moist, cloying. Large ferns fill the room. The ground is real jungle-floor. Birds are cawing and tigers are coughing. Splendid butterflies, majestic and colourful, bob through the steamy air. Each one has a secret to give, you just need to know how to listen to them.

3) Several intricate magical wards and circles, made from bone-dust and Dead Sea salt. There are precisely four summoning circles inside one another. Between them are various glyphs of demon control and barbarity. A pair of skeletal legs protrude through the first and second one. They are attached to a torso that looks as if the owner is merely sleeping, instead of dead. One hand clutches his chest, the other lies on the ground pointing east. Obviously the power of the circle containing the upper body has stopped the decay, whereas the circles containing the legs has not. In the centre of this magical dweomering, paces a very angry and upset Demon, who bares his teeth at the players, all while thumping his chest and cursing mankind to the abyss and back. He begs to be released from the circle. All they need do is draw a straight line through all the circles and it can be free. There’s a nine percent chance that the demon is actually telling the truth, and that when freed, it will simply return to hell. But, the other ninety one percent says it will be released and attack the party. However, there is also a chance that the Demon will offer them something that the party have been searching for. This would be the ideal time to sip-in a secret, or magical item from your campaign.

4) A lush forest of deepest green. The very air is alive with the smell of summer and the chorus of birds. If they wander through the forest, they will come to a magnificent apple tree at the centre of it. Lying in the shade, at the foot of the tree are two skeletons. They have been here for a while as the grass is growing up through their rib cages, and the mice have made nests of their skulls. The apples are large, ripe and juicy and delicious to the taste, and have zero magical properties whatsoever. However, in the top branches of the tree lurks a giant snake, which is capable of spitting poison as well as injecting it through it short-sword sized fangs. It is the colour of the branches and the leaves, and is nigh impossible to detect, as it slithers stealthily and silently toward its prey. It is fearsome creature and should be an extremely difficult challenge for the players. If killed, and gutted, they will find some bones and a fleece made of gold worth at least 10.000gp.

5) A small pot of gold, and an unmoving leprechaun. From afar, it looks as if the wee fellow is doing a jig, but the closer they get, they see that this is not the case. And, when they are nearly upon it, they see that both the leprechaun and the pot-of-gold are fake. Surprise! They are standing on a trapdoor, belonging to a massive trapdoor spider. It will flip the trapdoor when everyone is on it, sending the party tumbling into the darkness, where it, and its 1d20 medium sized brood, will attack. Inside the cave of spiders are several chests containing gems and coin and a large broadsword of Arachnid Slaying.

6) There is a large wooden stage. The red curtains are closed. There are many wooden chairs set out in front of the stage. If the players sit in the seats, the curtains slide open and a play begins. It is a special edition of the Merry Widow, with what appears to be the players as the actors. This illusion will keep the party enthralled, while a group of halfling thieves pick everyone’s pockets ( saves and rolls for success apply). If they realise what is going on during the play, the stage will disappear and the thieves will attack. If not, they will be poorer than when they had arrived but culturally, richer.

WW1. Delville Wood, and things that go 'Bump' in the night.

“At five o’clock a fearful din of guns broke out and heavy shells struck with reverberating crash on Ypres and many villages rarely or never touched before; and to the nostrils of men nearer the front came the smell of devilish incense. Those nearer still to the trenches north of Ypres saw two curious wraiths of greenish-yellow fog creep forward, spread until they became one and then, moving forward, change to a blue-white mist. It hung, as it had come, over the front...” Sir Basil Liddel Hart. History of the First World War.

On Saturday we took a break from our usual AD&D game and played something else. A quick, one shot adventure, that allowed me to get a break from being the DM and being able to play. I was under the impression that it was going to be Twilight 2000 but Nick sprang something else on us entirely. He had pre-rolled all the characters, we had to roll highest to lowest to see who got what. There was a Captain in the 9^th Highland Division, a Grenadier from the South African 1st Infantry, as well as two Privates from the same regiment. The Captain was a Scot, the grenadier an English speaking South African and the two privates were both Afrikaans speaking who shared the surname of Van Tonder. Nick told us we were playing in WW1 and going to be using the GURPS Lite rules. I have never used them before and to be honest, I don’t really mind what system I play, just as long as it doesn’t choke the game play. I got the Grenadier. A sergeant called, Tom Cullen. 

Anyway, it was the evening before the third offensive on the Somme. The South Africans were tasked with the taking then holding of Delville wood on the outskirts of a German held town called Longueval. We were to go over the top that evening and make our way to a châteaux about a two miles outside the town. Once there, we were to gather any and all information on it, and make our way back to our HQ. Sounded simple enough, but hey, this is role-playing, so nothing is ever that straight forward.

We waited for true darkness before heading over the wire and down No-Mans-Land to the east of the Allied lines. There were Whizz-Bangs and machine guns going off all around us, not to mention flares and shouts from both sides, but we made it in one piece to our jump off position. We formed up and headed over a field toward our target. After about an hour we came across a small river and heard a German foot-patrol approaching. We ducked and waited as they passed us by. Van Tonder (1) and I drew our batons, and crept after them. We clubbed two of them, Van Tonder (2) inexplicably shot one of them and the Captain subdued the last one. We thought the shot would have given us away, but luckily because of the shelling etc, going on to our left, no one paid it any attention. We tied them up, took their uniforms, buried ours at our first fall back point (an old oak tree) and interrogated the youngest. We questioned him about everything else first, before casually slipping in fairly innocuous questions about the châteaux and its contents. We figured it would be used by officers as a HQ position, but we just wanted to make sure. It turns out that the châteaux was off-limits to everyone, except some Elite Division the young lad didn’t really know much about anyway. We tied them up, and headed off to the châteaux to complete the mission. It was still a few miles away, so we tabbed (ran) the distance as the clock was ticking.

 About two hundred metres in front of us it rose out of the gloom. From what we could make out in the darkness, it was a two story building flanked by two single story buildings to the east of it. One was an obvious stable so we dispatched Van Tonder (1) to have a look as he had Animal Skills and would stand less of a chance of spooking the horses. We needn’t have bothered. What was left of the horses was just so much mincemeat all over the walls, roof and floor. It was if someone had thrown a bomb in here and the horses had evaporated into a red, meaty, mist.

We scoped out the other building. It was filled with machine parts and strange bits of equipment we knew nothing about that looked to be more scientific than agrarian, so we noted what we could and headed to the main building. All the windows were boarded up so we couldn’t get a look inside. We checked the servant’s entrance at the back and found the door unlocked. Van Tonder (2) checked for obvious I.E.Ds and declared it clear, so we breached and began to clear the bottom floor. It was pitch black so we got a lantern going and began to investigate. The downstairs appeared to be normal, with a pantry, kitchen, cellar and living area in some disarray, but nothing too serious. There were bloodstains on the walls that had dried out but nothing fresh. Van Tonder (2) took this time to see if he could find any silverware and I kept an eye out for pocketable art works. In the study, the Stiff-Upper-Lipped officer found some ‘Papers’, in German. Being a toff, he of course spoke the lingo and deduced that they had been working on some sort of gas, called, ‘Dead Mind’. The player in you goes, fuck, we ALL know what that means but the characters wouldn’t have a clue.

 Anyway, we headed up the stairs to clear the second floor. At the top of the landing, I noticed a thin strip of light coming from beneath the furthest door at the end of a long hallway. I put the lantern halfway down the hall to better illuminate our surrounds. As I did this, a horrible shrill scream came from the room with the light. It got higher and higher until you could only imagine the voice box would tear itself apart. Then something started banging on the door. Because we knew that somehow gas was involved, we slipped on our gas masks and waited. The door gave way, and a German officer, frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog, came stumbling toward us.  I panicked and thought, fuck this, and lobbed a Mills Bomb down the hall before ushering everyone down the stairs and out the way. It went off and ripped the officer in two. I went back up the steps and saw through the smoke that the top half was clawing its way toward us. I shot him in the head and waited. The explosion had blown the doors open on the rest of that wing, so when nothing came out to get us, we went to investigate. There were several bedrooms, water closets, and the last room that had held the German had been converted into a laboratory of sorts.

The Captain snagged some more ‘Papers’ and notes, and two small canisters of the gas. I took one, he took the other. They went into our backpacks along with all the other intel. By reading what we found, we discovered that there was an artillery position not far from here, that was going to shell this gas onto our lines before tomorrow’s invasion. This did not bode well for anyone. The gun emplacement was one of three. The second one was in the occupied town of Longueval, with the third, west of that, a stone’s throw from the German lines. We were running out of time, both in real time and game time, so the Captain came up with a plan.

We would overrun Gun #1, turn it toward Gun #2 and fire the gas at them instead. Then, if we could, head to Gun #2 and do the same to destroy Gun #3. We all agreed, because if you’re gonna die, might as well do it with your boots on.

We were ordered to secure the ground floor while the Captain finished up in the lab. We lit more lanterns and went downstairs to the drawing room. I smoked a cigarette and snuck a wee sip of whiskey while the rest lounged around waiting for the Captain. Van Tonder (2) was rewarded by some silverware that went into his backpack, and all was well, for a second at least. The drawing room window exploded in a hail of glass, bits of wood, and frenzied frothing Germans like the one we had seen up stairs. We fought a running retreat through the downstairs section, while the front door was ripped off by these bizarre invaders. There was no way out. We got trapped in a narrow corridor and Van Tonder (1) went crazy and threw himself into their lines, swinging his entrenching tool as swiftly as he could. He killed two or three of them, while our Sharpshooter did for the rest. I threw a lantern, and when the flames didn’t work, I backed everyone up and began lobbing grenades.

We made it up the stairs to the second-floor as fire broke out down below. There was no escape out the way we had come in.

 The crazed soldiers were gnashing and chomping up the stairs toward us. We headed into a bedroom, barricaded the door, bust open the window, and began fashioning primitive ropes from bed-sheets and blankets. As the door gave in, the last of us were down the rope and running for it. The châteaux was ablaze behind us, letting every German in the world now that all was not well in their area. Luckily we were in German uniform.

We made it to Gun#1 and scoped out the situation.  There was an ammunition tent behind us with some gunners inside as well as the gas shells. Then there were three gunners and a bombardier in the gun entrenchment standing guard over the gun. Everyone was looking at the huge gout of flame on the horizon from the burning châteaux. We came up with a plan to subdue the three in the hole, and then we would take out the rest in the tent. We wanted to keep the gunplay to an absolute minimum, as we didn’t want to risk setting off any of the gas shells prematurely. We had the plan, but somehow in its execution, the fog of war crept in, and we wound up blowing it. The Captain, who had approached the emplacement, was now being dragged off for questioning instead. Screw it, we thought, and opened up. We took hits, twisted some ankles, and the Captain broke free, but not before a bullet entered his backpack and pierced the small gas canister he had inside. He got his mask on in time (we all did) and we watched in horror as scores of our attackers reverted to brain dead animals that sought to rip us limb from limb. I headed to the gun, and began adjusting the coordinates toward Gun#2. I was on my own and it was taking an age. Van Tonder (1) went to get me some of the ammo as none was stored near the gun. He made it back, but not before one of the shells was pierced by a stray round, thus bellowing white smoke everywhere. Luckily, the wind was blowing it toward their lines and not us. I only had two shells to work with. No pressure, hey? Plus there were a horde of Germans stumbling toward me. No one could help, we were all tied up surviving.

The first shell went long, the second went short, but owing to the wind, the gas was going where it was supposed to. We could hear the chaos it was causing.  But then six enemy were on me. Between intermittent rifle fire and some lucky dice, I made it out the hole. I lobbed a grenade in that took care of the enemy but unfortunately damaged the aiming sight of the gun. Dawn was rising and in the distance we heard Gun#3 open up as the whistles sounded for the Allies to go over the top.

We had dispatched our immediate threat, so we sat down, dejected, smoke a cigarette, passed the bottle around, and decided there was nothing for it but to go back, get our uniforms, and head to what may have been left of the line. It took us an hour to do so, fighting the enemy the entire way. When we made it to our side, the place was in serious disarray. I decided I was going to get myself a Vickers machine gun and some ammunition, and try and hold the line where it was in threat of being overrun by Dead Brain, Allies and Germans. 

We went at it for hours but it seemed our shells had the desired effect and sewed much chaos amongst the enemy. With shouts of ‘aim for the head’, we managed to bolster the flagging defences and win the day. Not what we had aimed for, but better than being completely routed. And that’s how it ended. Victory, was ours, and I was knee deep in a machine gun nest lighting a cigarette off the barrel of the machine gun surrounded by hordes of dead, dead things.

 Great game all round.