Fear and Loathing in Greyhawk

I’m back. Back from the U.S.A and the best four days in gaming. Still trying to process it all. I have a d1000 yard stare and am feeling…otherwise. Had a great time. I write for a company called GCT Studios and was manning their booth at GenCon. They produce Bushido-the Game, ( a table-top miniature skirmish game of an Asian bent, as well as a board game called, Rise of the Kage) not to be confused with the 70’s RPG of the same name. Firstly, it’s a long way from Cape Town to Chicago. A long way indeed. Secondly, well, they say things are always bigger in America, but fuck me, you lot aren’t kidding, are you?

GenCon was mad. I won’t bang on about it, you lot know the score. Met some really great people at the booth. Met some absolute twats. Turned loads of people onto our product, pimped and pushed the GenCon specials whenever possible, and did some great business. Our miniatures on display were wildly successful and pulled hundreds of people into the booth to learn a little more. I managed to network as planned, and have filled up my writing calendar with enough paid work to keep me busy for the next twelve to fourteen months.

Because of the scarcity of RPG material in South Africa, I had a shopping list the length of an  elephant’s todger. Big thanks to the lads at DCC for my purchases, and to Games Plus for seeing me right with my collectibles. I have now plugged all the holes in my immediate collection... but I see more purchases on the horizon, regardless. I also picked up an excellent copy of Outdoor Survival for my OD&D game from the lovely people at Noble Knight.

Who ate all the pies?

Once we finished the show, it was off on a road-trip to Ground Zero. ‘Bloody hell,’ I thought, ‘this is Greyhawk…’, as we turned into the more pastoral and bucolic lands of Lake Geneva. We parked the car and went meandering around the town looking for the sites. We stopped at the Horticultural Hall to see where GenCon 1 took place, back in 1968.

GenCon then.

GenCon now

Then it was a short stroll to where it all began. It’s a modest house. White, wooden clad. I wanted to knock on the door and see what was on the inside, but I thought that would just be rude, not everyone shares my passion for D&D in all its many fashions. So I took some snaps and tried to imagine what had gone on there, all those long years ago. I’m glad I went to see the town and the little things that mean so much to me.

 I met a few people who used to game with him, and a few who referred to him as, ‘Oh, Gary What’s-his-face’.  And so it goes. We spent the night drinking the King of Beers, listening to the frogs and cicadas come up as the sun slowly went down. It was pleasant. I’ll be back next year at GenCon, just like the Pie-Man, selling his wares. I don’t think I will return to Lake Geneva until the sculpture/statue is up. Once was good enough. We headed up to Chicago and stayed in a place that looked like the Hotel from the Shining, and reminded us of the Bates Motel at its finest. Needless to say we escaped, unscathed. Then it was plane after plane, mile after mile, until the wholesome sight of Table Mountain appeared over the left-wing of the plane. A simple matter of touchdown and I was home. Knackered, but well worth it. See y'all, next year.

"Above there is no ending

For the Vodka spinning Mir

All that is is passing

And now is never here

So keep on raging

You frenzied pioneers

No time for the wringing of hands

Strange faced ambassadors, strike up the band

Bust out that Dom Perignon

Johnnie Walker Red on that fairway lawn

Remember tripping on the fourth of July?

Exploding octopuses in disguise?

They picked you up and they never let you down.

Everyone's forgiven in the land of Pleasant Living now.

Yuri Garagin sends

His kindest regards

How those Yankees doing?

Still Rock and Roll and Fancy cars?

But onto pressing matters

Such as the gluttony of the starving stars.

No time for the wringing of hands

Strange faced ambassadors, strike up the band

Bust out that Dom Perignon

Jonnie Walker Red on that fairway lawn

Remember tripping on the fourth of July?

Exploding octopuses in disguise?

They picked you up and they never let you down.

Everyone's forgiven in the land of Pleasant Living now."  - Clutch.

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.

Keep on Keepin' on...

I ran the Keep on the Borderlands on Saturday night for two of my regular players. Stalwart players, never miss a session. We rolled up some new characters using the Red Box ’83 Basic Rules. For me, this was the first D&D rule-set I ever saw.  Living in the arse-end of the world, I didn’t even know that there were any other rules that had come before this glorious creation in red.

 By the time I got into it properly in ’86, Gygax was out of TSR. Didn’t know that either. Not that it really mattered, what he left behind was better than good enough for me.

 That changed though, my understanding of the hobby, but only many years later was I able to learn about the pedigree of one of my favourite past times. I begged/borrowed/stole a bunch of modules from my cousin who lived in Johannesburg. He was moving up to AD&D and giving me all his Basic D&D stuff, and for that I am eternally grateful. I have written about the above before, last year, I was reminiscing about how I got into playing RPGs.

Anyway, I got a stack of modules, and I was going through them when I came across the Keep. It was old even then; dented, dinged, loose pages, been played to hell and back. I was curious about it, because it looked nothing like the slick stuff TSR had been producing round about then.  This had…charm, character. The cover was so-so, but I turned it over and something about that picture on the back just fekkin’ clicked for me. You know what I mean, the Otus one, with the party walking up the causeway in the blazing light toward a Keep that’s coated in the sun’s rays making it glow.

Yup, I remember staring at it for ages, just enjoying its powerful simplicity. From seeing the map I figure it’s a sunrise, and I suppose there’s a bit of symbolism there, who knows. But for me, it’s always been a sunset. A grand glorious light, so bright, that you would have to squint to see where you were going. It made the Keep feel almost unreal, as if this was the end of their adventuring days and they were coming here to rest. Put their feet up after all the rigours of the road and the dangers of the dungeons. Smoke their pipes, drink a flagon or ten, and generally just relax.  It made the Keep become almost a type of Valhalla in my mind’s eye.

 Maybe these characters were dead? Who knows? Maybe they are trudging up the road toward their final destination? That the Keep is not actually a Keep, but a place of sanctuary? Like when the Astronauts land on Mars in Ray Bradbury’s ‘Martian Chronicles’ and they see that it is identical to what they have just left behind. Familiar faces, smells, people, tastes, sight and sounds. In fact, just like home. But beneath all that nostalgia, there is a dark undertow… not so for the Keep. I imagined it filled with all the people that they might have lost along the way, populated with friends, family even.  Dare I say a sort of adventurer heaven? That’s how I feel when I look at it.

"All fled, all done, so lift me on the pyre;

The feast is over and the lamps expire."

—     Robert E Howard's suicide note.

Yeah, a great sense of nostalgia there, on that back cover. When you are young, for most of us at least, life is simple, smooth, uncomplicated. It might not feel like it at the time, but it usually is. When you get older, the road gets rockier, the pressures more pressing. Mortgages, bills, marriage, children, responsibilities all tumblin’ over one another. It can be scary. Really scary. But as life would say, ‘Hey, what you gonna do about it?’  And really, what can you do about it? Who knows, just Keep on Keepin’ on I suppose.

So, do we play stripped down RPG systems that are similar to the ones from our youth, because we have enough complications in our life at present and we just want something easy, simple and fun to run? Or, do we play stripped down systems because it reminds us of our youth and a time where things were, simple, fun, and easy to run? I don’t know. I’m not sure I know the answer to that. For each of us it will be different I suppose. All I know is that Otus did a great piece of art there... oh, and the modules not that bad either!

Loot & Scoot. Killing Is My Business, And Business Is Good. Damn Their Eyes & Pass the Brown M&M’s!

I run a monthly AD&D game for my friends, and because of this, I try and make it an occasion for my players. Those of you that have seen my table can attest to this. But our last game I thought I would do something different, something…simple. If we were a band then this session would be our unplugged album instead of our usual full-on, theatrical world tour complete with smoke, lasers, dancing Ewoks, and a stage rider FULL of brown M&M’s.

 Why the sudden change I hear the crowd, roar? Well, because I wanted that night to be just plain and simple and fun. Nothing more, nothing less.

 Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying our regular games aren’t a barrel of laughs, they are,  I swear, but that night I wanted us to be KISS… KISS without the makeup. Why? So we could just focus on the music for a change instead of the show.

 It’s partly my fault.  I tend to get caught up a few days before the game and create these fekkin’ elaborate missions and set pieces, and then I sit there trying my hardest to make sure that everyone else is having fun, that I forget to have fun myself.

So, as I said, this night was different. I bought some large bits of cardboard, colour-copied some dungeon tiles, gathered all my Hirst/Warhammer/LOTR bits-and-bobs and made a huge dungeon for them to go through. I pulled out all my Mantic/LOTR/Reaper miniatures and went to town. We had Beholders, Serpent Gods, Zombies by the score, Statues breathing fire, and Statues breathing cold, to name but a few.

The premise was simple: Seven Keys need to be collected for them to enter the Tomb of the Foreign God. Each key was around the neck of a Boss type creature that they had to slay to get the key. Every room had a monster, every corridor a trap, it was Hack and Slash in its purest form. And? It was glorious.

Everyone knew where they stood from the outset because I told them that it was going to be ‘Loot & Scoot’, nothing more complicated than that. If it moves? Beat it. If it sparkles? Take it. If it looks like a trap? It probably is. I also let them roll for their own treasure using Kelvin Green’s really cool Drop Table. My players had never seen one before so there was the added excitement of that as well. I rolled in the open too, and that really made them sit up and take notice. 

The result of that night? Well, it was carnage on both fronts. The thief got sneak-attacked by a vampire of my own creation and lost four points of intelligence. We lost a fighter/squire to a Crypt-Keeper, (a level draining Mummy type beastie) who also managed to drain two entire levels from the ranger as well as the already maimed thief. 

One of the mages went off wandering where he shouldn’t have been wandering, and woke what shouldn’t have been woken. It slithered, cast a sleep spell, and is about to eviscerate him, oh, and I almost forgot, I used my Mask Table. I rolled, and they found the Mask of the Whipping Boy. This promptly got stuck on Felonious’ face for a joke… well, let’s just say that no one’s laughing now!

In short? A great time was had by all, and I felt that I got to relieve a little steam from the pressure cooker. You couldn’t do this for every session because you’d just get bored with it, but for once in a while? I highly recommend it.

Close the door, put out the light...you know they won't be home tonight...

"Close the door, put out the light. 
You know they won't be home tonight. 
The snow falls hard and don't you know? 
The winds of Thor are blowing cold. 
They're wearing steel that's bright and true 
They carry news that must get through." Led Zeppelin

One of my favorite sections in my AD&D game (when I am the DM at least) is what the players do come nightfall. Usually the party are camping out in the wilds, and after a long-ass day of troll slaying, and gold hauling, there is nothing better than putting your feet up and shooting the breeze with your mates. Some DM’s handwave this section, going straight for the guard roster and the wandering monster chart. Not me, I like to slow it down and get the most out of it. My players do too; they do some of their best role-playing in the ‘quiet’ times.

It’s almost a bit of a ritual, one that we never tire of. Firstly the ranger will scout out a suitable place to make camp. Somewhere defensible of course, there are a whole lot of monsters who hunt at night. Then the thief will lay out some rudimentary traps or early-detection systems on the most likely direction of approach. Then, depending on who had a really crap day, and rolled the worst, they will find their character chopping wood and hauling water to make amends for their poor performance, while the rest of the guys get the tents up (if they have them) and get the fire going. Once that’s done, the Ranger (usually) will have done some hunting and will  prepare dinner. If there is nothing to roast on the fire then it’s a festive night of Iron Rations and river water.

Round about now the role-playing usually starts with the fighter taking a whetstone to his long sword to maybe take out a nick in the blade caused by a fumble roll earlier in the day. Or someone is bending a breastplate back into place or sewing up their leather armour. All those little things you do that will make them adventure effective come sunrise. The mages will usually take a look at their spell components and see what they need. The cleric might spend a bit of time in reflection, and the party store man will look to see if they have enough oil, or torches, or rope, or any number of things you need to pull off a successful Treasure Hunt. My players all have actual cards for these pieces of kit, and if they use something like a torch, then they pass it to me.

Once the admin is out the way, it’s dinner, bullshit talk about the day, what they did wrong, what they did right, how they could possibly improve, and what they plan on doing tomorrow.

I use this time to get myself ready for the next day, make sure I have the maps I need, or ensuring that I have all the treasure and monster stats ready. They then give me the guard roster for the evening and it either kicks-off into a midnight toe-to-toe with a werewolf or something cool, or they get their beauty sleep. And believe me, when one of the party has a charisma of six, is missing most of his nose and his forehead (not to mention a hunk of ear) they could use all the beauty sleep they can get.

So how do you guys play it? Do you make it an evening of pipe smoking and ale sipping? Or do you skip it almost entirely?

“A fox passing through the wood on business of his own stopped several minutes and sniffed.
'Hobbits!' he thought. 'Well, what next? I have heard of strange doings in this land, but I have seldom heard of a hobbit sleeping out of doors under a tree. Three of them! There's something mighty queer behind this.' He was quite right, but he never found out any more about it.”

-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

A Sort of Homecoming...Forward Operating Base: Borderlands.

"And you know it's time to go
Through the sleet and driving snow
Across the fields of mourning to a light that's in the distance.

And you hunger for the time
Time to heal, 'desire' time
And your earth moves beneath your own dream landscape.

On borderland we run.
I'll be there, I'll be there tonight
A high-road, a high-road out from here."  U2

FOB: Borderlands.

If those walls could talk, eh? I wonder what they would say? Literally, millions of adventurers have walked her cobbled streets... had an ale or seven in the tavern or caught up with the local scuttlebutt at the market, while trying to flog gems with the orc blood still fresh on them. Good times. 

I still love this module for it's simplicity and functionality, and that's why I will be using it for my first ever Hex Crawl. I hope to post more here  when it happens. Even though it was released December of 1979, I still have a blast rolling her out after all these years and I don't think I will ever tire of it.

  Anyone else out there still using The Keep as a springboard to adventure?