Grim, Gritty, & Detailed

Despite what you might think, we have been able to roleplay monsters long before the advent of Vampire: the Masquerade. Indeed, roleplaying was only two years old when Flying Buffalo Games, Inc. released a variant of Tunnels & Trolls called Monsters! Monsters! in which you could roleplay the creatures that the heroes – or player characters – would normally have to defeat. Over the years there have been various supplements and games that let you play the “bad guy,” from John Wick’s Orkworld to Paul Czege’s My Life With Master, but rarely for Dungeons & Dragons, a typical example being Reverse Dungeon in which the players take the roles of dungeon denizens protecting against an incursion of those grotty adventurers into their home. The opportunity to play monsters returns to Dungeons & Dragons once again with In The Shadow of Mount Rotten, a new Old School Renaissance supplement from Faster Monkey Games.

In The Shadow of Mount Rotten is written for use with Labyrinth Lord, Goblinoid Games’ interpretation of Basic Dungeon & Dragons, though it would work just as easily with other “Edition Zero” RPGs, with some effort upon the part of the GM with Paizo Publishing’s Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. The supplement is very specific in the type of monster that can be played – Goblins, Hobgoblins, or Orcs – all known collectively as “Rotlanders,” as they are all denizens of the Rotlands, the lands that surround the lonely Mount Rotten. This cold, dry wilderness lies to the north of the adventurer’s paradise known as Lesserton and its nearby ruins of Mor (as detailed in Faster Monkey Games’ supplement, Lessterton & Mor: A Complete Guide to the Ancient Ruins of Mor and the Town of Lesserton, Adventurer’s Paradise), and is inhabited by numerous tribes humanoids that in between trying to scratch a living, war on each other, feed on each other, enslave each other, and when the circumstances are right, trade with each other. (Given all that, it is no surprise that the cover carries a warning that the supplement is not for kids).

In the default campaign for the setting, the player characters are members of a Foot Goblin tribe. In attempt to be noticed, they have risen above being a lowly tribe member and become its Warriors, who will fight for and protect the tribe from physical threats; its Shaman, who will implore the spirits to aid the tribe, protect it from malicious spirits, and when the time comes, make parley with other tribes; and its Mongers, who have the “nouse,” the memory, and the ability to count such that they can successfully trade and barter with other tribes for goods and favours. Of course, in between fighting, farting, feeding, and fornicating, a Warrior is not expected to concern himself with money, barter, or negotiation, whilst a Shaman is expected to show wisdom and never to get involved in fights, and a Monger never be a thief or lose money or favours on a deal. Each of the three major races living in the Rotlands also has its concerns and attitudes each of the three Classes. It should also be pointed out that the races have traditional and hidebound attitudes towards the place of females in the tribe, such as females not being Warriors or males being Shaman, but as the supplement suggests, this can be ignored or adjusted according to the tastes of the gaming group.

In The Shadow of Mount Rotten provides rules for creating Goblin, Hobgoblin, and Orc characters as well as each of the three new Classes. Each of these is a five level Class, this limit indicative of the cruel, harsh nature of life in the Rotlands. All are relatively simple, though. Lightly armed and armoured, Warriors learn to command less experienced Warriors and gain further weapon proficiencies, with luck these being the more durable, more effective weapons of Man. Although a spellcaster, Shaman need to invoke their spells through chants and rituals to the ancestors, rather than memorising enchantments or calling upon the divine. A Shaman can also call for a Parley with an opposing side, though they will not always listen, and later on, a Shaman can Rebuke Spirits, the Rotlands being rife with them. The spell list for the Shaman draws from the Cleric, Druid, and Magic User lists. Lastly, Mongers have “Green Hands,” so can count money, do arithmetic, trade his tribe’s excess goods, borrow and lend, and eventually set up or take control of his own merchant house. Merchant houses are usually headquartered in Rot Moot, the permanent community just inside the Rotlands inhabited by a mixed race tribe known as the Mooters. Rot Moot is also where the region’s trade caravans return to and many of its tribes come to each after the harvest for a ten day long festival of trading and bartering known as the Revel. Rot Moot is regarded as neutral territory less a tribe loses access to trade.

At first level, Rotlander Warriors, Shaman, and Mongers have little in the way of standing and with their tribe and beyond. This standing is measured by a Rotlander’s Reputation. Initially equal to a character’s Charisma, it can be earned by successfully completing missions, and acting in manner admirable in terms of both his race and his Class. Goblins as race earn Reputation by successfully carrying out pranks and laying traps; Hobgoblins for defiance in the face of danger and for killing members of intelligent races and eating them; and Orcs for beating up anyone lower than themselves. Warriors gain it for taking trophies and being victorious, but lose it for counting, negotiating, or trading; Shaman gain it for facing threats from the Spirit World and guiding the Warriors; and Mongers for carrying profitable transactions and becoming a shrewd dealer.

Reputation is important because it has effects within the game and without it also. Within the game, unless he accrues enough Reputation, a player character Rotlander cannot advance from one level to the next, so it is possible to accrue enough Experience Points, but not enough Reputation to gain a new level. Equally, when a Rotlander loses enough Reputation, he can also lose a level! In which case, his standing has gone down in the eyes of his fellow tribe members. The out of game effect is that it encourages the players to roleplay the attitudes and the culture of the Rotlanders, and this is necessary because essentially, it runs counter to the usual play style of Dungeons & Dragons, or in this case, Labyrinth Lord.

The setting of the Rotlands is described in some detail. This includes the various tribes other than the Foot Goblins, such as the Goblin Warg Riders and the Ogre Lashers, the Orc tribes that lead chained ogres into battle; its terrain types and typical settlements; its most notable locations; and the many and varied threats that the Rotlanders might encounter. A large portion of the supplement is devoted to the day-to-day survival of the player character Rotlanders and their tribe, as well as the mechanics of trade and barter. The rules for both are highly detailed, and they bring a strong resource management aspect to the game, one that will need careful application upon the part of the GM if they are not to overwhelm a campaign. Nevertheless, with this care, they should work as a spur for adventure and challenge.

For the GM there is not only a set of Encounter Tables, but also a set of table for creating events. This requires the use of a deck of cards, and by drawing a single card, the GM can determine an event that will befall the player characters’ tribe that session, perhaps a fight, or something affects the tribe’s health or wellbeing, or it could just be a random event. Besides the default campaign which has the player characters as Foot Goblins just starting out, the GM’s advice suggests several other campaigns. These include their Mooter Monkeys, staffing and protecting a Moot caravan that weaves it way across the Rotlands, or members of the Mouth Guard, the Goblin retainers who protect the shaman who stand watch in Goblin Knob, the settlement below the Hellmouth of Dristyakul, the passage that leads into the Underdeep… These are just ideas though, and perhaps some actual advice on running a Rotlanders campaign would have been useful, especially given that by its very nature it is different to the classic Dungeons & Dragons campaign of adventurers aplundering. Certainly it would have been useful had some advice been given as to how a campaign might play out.

Physically, In The Shadow of Mount Rotten comes as a 5.96 Mb, eighty-four page PDF, or as an eighty page book. Bar the imposing cover and the colour map inside – which abuts that in Lessterton & Mor: A Complete Guide to the Ancient Ruins of Mor and the Town of Lesserton, Adventurer’s Paradise – the book is done in black and white throughout. What little internal artwork there is nicely captures the scrappy nature of Rotlander life and the book’s maps are nice and clear. Overall, the book is well written and an enjoyable read.

Arguably, the level of detail here would make In The Shadow of Mount Rotten easy to adapt to other RPGs. For example, it would work well with the Savage Worlds RPG, and it would not surprise me to see it adapted so. Or indeed to any other RPG rules system.

The Old School Renaissance has often been accused of looking in only one direction and at only one style of play, and lacking innovation. Given the number of Retroclones available since the Old School Renaissance began, there is some validity in those accusations. In The Shadow of Mount Rotten flies in the face of such accusations, so although its ideas are not necessarily innovative, they are least fresh and they are given a very thorough treatment. With its wealth of detail and grim, grubby atmosphere, In The Shadow of Mount Rotten presents an impressive and entertainingly different campaign setting.

This Skull Needs Flesh

If you are of a certain age, you will recall an image from the rulebook for the version of Basic Dungeons & Dragons designed by writer, Doctor John Eric Holmes. The image showed a cross section of a dungeon consisting of seven levels with two standout features. One was that the last level of the dungeon consisted of a cave system containing a lake surrounding an island that was home to a domed city. The other, more evocative feature was the entrance to the dungeon was through “Skull Mountain.” What exactly lay behind that Skull Mountain we will never know, but now Faster Monkey Games has picked up the gauntlet to present a dungeon adventure based on that map. The result is an adventure designed for a party of four to six characters of fourth through sixth levels for use with the Retroclone, Labyrinth Lord and its supplement, the Advanced Edition Companion.

Skull Mountain comes with a setting outside of the dungeon, plots going on inside and outside of the dungeon, six levels of dungeon, plus a complex within the dungeon itself. The setting outside of the dungeon is the town of Wolford, which stands within sight of the gently smoking volcano that is Skull Mountain. The town has always been prone to banditry and robbery, but of late there have attacks and worse committed against its populace. Further, Aidan, the teenaged son of the ruling noble, has been kidnapped, and the town’s seneschal, Master Grüber, needs to ensure his safe return before his father discovers his disappearance. This sets up the reason for the presence of the player characters to be in Wolford, to rescue young Aidan, and is the adventure’s initial plot.

Yet for a plot that is meant to drive the party into investigating Skull Mountain, its set up and support are both woefully underdeveloped. Their patron, Master Grüber, has been left a blank canvas and his terms for the party’s employment have also been left blank. Two pages lay out the scenario’s extensive background, but no means of presenting or just hinting at that background is given, when all that was really needed was a traditional rumour table. This omission is at odds with the treatment of the other plots in Skull Mountain which actually encourage the player characters to return to the dungeon and explore its depths after they have rescued Aidan. What this means is that a DM will need to do a bit more work than he really should to fully flesh out the beginning of the scenario.

The dungeon itself below Skull Mountain feels quite small given the feeling of space conveyed in Holmes’ original cutaway. Most of the individual levels consist of between six and eight locations, the lowest level having three times that number in total. Getting down to the level where Aidan has been imprisoned should take no more than a couple of sessions, but there is much more to the dungeon than just that. It is expected that the party will leave once it has located Aidan, hence the need for a plot nudge that will persuade them to re-enter and explore the lower levels. The route to the adventure’s final areas is unfortunately very linear, but it does start with the dungeon’s most memorable feature, a stairway that spirals down round the outside of giant stalactite. Unfortunately, the author does not make as much of it as he could have done. Later on, the characters have to walk over a lake of lava under arrow fire while being snapped at by a salamander, yet the only problem they might face on the way down is catapult, which is easy to avoid. All the characters have to do is run around the other side of the stalactite. The location itself is exciting, but it just needs something a little extra to make it really memorable.

The finale of the adventure is plotted such that it plays out as a fitting climax to the exploration of the dungeon and revelation of its mysteries, essentially delving back into the adventure’s background that goes back over a thousand years. The player characters will find themselves facing a tough foe, but will be well rewarded for that effort. As with the set-up of the adventure, Skull Mountain also fails to deal with its aftermath. There is no discussion of what happens when Aidan is returned, how the player characters are rewarded for dealing with the threat that lies at the heart of Skull Mountain, and how the villains of the piece react to the adventurers’ efforts.

Physically, Skull Mountain is a well written, well presented thirty-six page 9.13Mb PDF. Its maps are nice and clear, but its artwork budget has been saved for a set of five illustrations that can be shown to the players. These have a pleasing Old School feel to them.

Ultimately, Skull Mountain is an excellent dungeon, but not necessarily a good adventure. The dungeon is well thought out and tied into the adventure’s detailed history with some memorable locations. There are probably three or four good sessions of play to be got out of exploring the dungeon alone. Unfortunately, neither Skull Mountain as a location or its plots are as well supported or as well developed as they should have been. For the want of six or eight pages extra support and development, and Skull Mountain would have been as good an adventure as it is a dungeon. With some effort upon the part of the DM, it still can be.

A Supplement To Treasure II?

How detailed does your fantasy game get? When playing Dungeons & Dragons or the Retroclone of your choice, does your group prefer to grab the treasure and sell it without a thought? Or does it take the time to sift through the hoard and take notice of every single item, perhaps admiring a piece or two for their beauty, while still appraising each for their value and potential provenance? If your group happens to sway towards the latter style of play, then perhaps the latest pair of supplements from Faster Monkey Games – whose scenario, Wrack & Rune I reviewed last year – might prove to be useful tools to that end. All the Treasures of the World: Gems and All the Treasures of the World: Jewels are each written as resources that can be used to add detail to your game world. Both are designed specifically for use with Labyrinth Lord, the Retroclone from Goblinoid Games, but as with so much of the scenarios and support available for the Old School Renaissance, they can be used with the “Edition 0” RPG of your choice. This time around, having reviewed the first in the series last week, All the Treasures of the World: Gems, I will review the second, All the Treasures of the World: Jewels, this week.

The first question about All the Treasures of the World: Jewels is what is the difference between gems and jewels? After all, are they not the same, and if so, why does the All the Treasures of the World series need a second supplement devoted to the subject? Well, a gem can be cut and polished and so turned into a jewel, and gems and gemstones can be worked into a setting or piece of jewellery, usually to increase its value or significance, if not both. Such items are the subject of this supplement, and while there is a means given to determine the number and value of gems of on any one piece included in its pages, the details it gives about those gems is cursory in comparison to that found in All the Treasures of the World: Gems. Thus the two supplements are designed to work together.

Since both All the Treasures of the World: Gems and All the Treasures of the World: Jewels are designed to work together, they work in a similar fashion. Where the former presented a series of tables via which a GM could determine the type and value of one gem over another, the latter provides a series of tables that will determine the type of jewel, its base material and value, and lastly, its style, and any patterns and motifs worked into it. In addition to the table devoted to gems, another details nonpareils, jewellery that has been enhanced by smaller gems, along with an explanation.

So for example, rolling on the Common Item table tells that a particular piece of jewellery is an earring. My roll on the Materials and Value table determines that it is made of gold and has a base value of 10 gp and a Décor Class of V. This table lists both precious metals and other materials, so that piece of jewellery could also be made of bone, ceramics, tin, and so on. Rolling on the Style, Patterns, and Motif table further tells me that the earring is engraved worth a further 5 gp and also patterned. That pattern is artistic and skilful, that of a beer stein. Its value is also increased eightfold. Given that its base value is 15 gp, its actual value is 120 gp, and since this is of a beer stein, it is probably of dwarven workmanship.

The supplement is rounded out with two fully worked examples. The first is of a simple piece of jewellery, while the second describes a more valuable work, one befitting a treasure hoard. In comparison with All the Treasures of the World: Gems, this supplement is much shorter, being two thirds of the length. What this means is that this supplement contains less background detail than All the Treasures of the World: Gems and is thus less informative. There is some information on coinage and heraldic jewellery, but what there is does leave you wanting more. Perhaps there is room for a further supplement that explores heraldic jewellery and its place in your gaming world.

Despite there being fewer tables in All the Treasures of the World: Jewels than All the Treasures of the World: Gems, it is a more complex affair. The results require the user to think more about the results created than All the Treasures of the World: Gems and the lack of background detail, does make this supplement more a utilitarian affair than the first in series. Not that having to think about the results of using the table is a bad thing, and whatever the outcome of the tables in All the Treasures of the World: Jewels, there is always the potential for it to be interesting, for the chance that it might add detail to the DM’s campaign, and even the possibility that it might be the basis for an adventure. Despite it not being not quite as interesting, All the Treasures of the World: Jewels is the more useful of the series to date and the one most likely to add facets to your campaign.

A Supplement To Treasure?

How detailed does your fantasy game get? When playing Dungeons & Dragons or the Retroclone of your choice, does your group prefer to grab the treasure and sell it without a thought? Or does it take the time to sift through the hoard and take notice of every single item, perhaps admiring a piece or two for their beauty, while still appraising each for their value and potential provenance? If your group happens to sway towards the latter style of play, then perhaps the latest pair of supplements from Faster Monkey Games – whose scenario, Wrack & Rune I reviewed last year – might prove to be useful tools to that end. All the Treasures of the World: Gems and All the Treasures of the World: Jewels are each written as resources that can be used to add detail to your game world. Both are designed specifically for use with Labyrinth Lord, the Retroclone from Goblinoid Games, but as with so much of the scenarios and support available for the Old School Renaissance, they can be used with the “Edition 0” RPG of your choice. This time around, I will just review the first in the All the Treasures of the World series, which is devoted to gems.

All the Treasures of the World: Gems is a short, twelve page PDF. Upon first sight, it appears to be just a series of tables devoted to its subject, and for the most part it is. From the initial table which establishes a gem’s Base Value, subsequent tables determine its type, size, and quality. For example, having rolled a Base Value of 25 gp, rolls on the other tables tell me that this is a green Tourmaline with a cat’s eye. Although slightly smaller than average, this Tourmaline is flawless, thus offsetting its smaller size and keeping its value at 25 gp. A much larger table gives me the basic information about every type of gem that appears in All the Treasures of the World: Gems. Under the entry for Tourmaline I discover that stones of this type are translucent and are polished rather than cut, usually into spheres. Noting that my Tourmaline has a cat’s eye, the author also explains that this is actually an optical effect called “chatoyancy” and is brought to best effect when by polishing the gem.

Simple rules are provided under Labyrinth Lord to allow a player character or NPC to appraise any single gem whether he wants to compare, identify, or evaluate a gem, or simply spot a fake. Jewellers, fences, and merchants all have an advantage in this, as do rogues and thieves. It is up to the GM to decide if Dwarves and Gnomes also do. The attempt to spot a fake is supported with a table of random fake gems and another of easily misidentified gems. The supplement is rounded out with a guide to buying and selling gems, including a discussion of how jewellers’ appraisal documents work, giving potential for any rogue worth a victim’s purse to run a con game of some kind. That rogue of course, being an NPC or a player character.

Given the number of tables contained in the pages of All the Treasures of the World: Gems, this supplement looks a whole lot more complex than it actually is. The GM only has to consult a few of those tables to determine the nature and value of any gem, and that only if he wants to. The contents of this supplement are designed to modular, so that he could just roll on the two tables to determine a gem’s Base Value and its type, and nothing more. The combined effect of using all of the tables and the new rules and guidelines is nothing more than one of extra added detail without overwhelming the user. To sum up with a little cliché, All the Treasures of the World: Gems is a neat little gem of a tool for your Dungeons & Dragons game.

Away From The Dungeon

I do not have a group that plays “Edition 0” at moment, though this does not stop me from wanting to leap into the Old School Renaissance and run some old fashioned, back-to-basics Dungeons & Dragons. The desire all too often means that what I look at when it comes to scenarios are all designed to played with characters of first level. Thus I have looked at, and reviewed, titles such as Death Frost Doom and The Grinding Gear, all written for low level characters, but there are of course, scenarios written for levels beyond first, so it would only be fair to look at those too. For my first, I chose Wrack & Rune, an adventure for a party of four to six characters of between fourth and sixth level.

Published by Faster Monkey Games, Wrack & Rune is ostensibly compatible with all “Edition 0” games, but has been written for use with Goblinoid Games’ Labyrinth Lord and not only makes use of that RPG’s core book, but also its Advanced Edition Companion, the supplement that makes Labyrinth Lord more like Dungeons & Dragons, First Edition. The scenario is set in Faster Monkey Games’ Eastern Valnwell campaign setting, but there is nothing to stop the Labyrinth Lord or GM from dropping it into his own campaign world. All that this requires is a civilised country with a coastal region that is prone to heavy storms.

The adventure begins in Wrack, an insular and unwelcoming fishing village on the Eel Bight, a bay known for its heavy fogs, treacherous currents, steep cliffs, and shoal waters. The party has been sent there by the wizard Meldime who wants them to look for the Lady Elaine, the ship that was due to deliver an articled stone statue from the Dwarves for his new tower at Cobble Point, but which is now overdue. The adventurers have just ten days to bring him news of the lost ship and if they can deliver the statue in good condition, the wizard has promised to reward them each a magic item.

While in Wrack, the party learns of Keyshilan, an island that appears during the heavy fogs of spring and autumn that is purported to let the fey folk travel to their undersea winter kingdom of Shiriyak. The locals say that the fey folk capture anyone who comes too close to the island, so they avoid setting to sea at these times, but ships are still lost during these fogs. Given the time restraints placed upon the adventurers by Meldime, they have little time to hang around in the village, but with some good roleplaying, the adventurers can learn that a ship recently went down in the Eel Bight. The question is, if this was the Lady Elaine, did she sail too close to Keyshilan? This is knowledge enough for the party to hire the Sea Vulture and her slightly scurvy crew commanded by Captain Morton, who together mostly make their living from salvage.

Once the party takes to the sea in search of the Lady Elaine, the adventure becomes more freeform in nature with the course of events primarily determined by the players’ actions. It also takes on a logistical aspect as not only do the heroes have to locate the wreck and verify that she is indeed the wreck of the Lady Elaine, they also have to search the sea bed for the statue and haul its various parts up onto the deck of the Sea Vulture. Wrack & Rune gives rules for handling each of these processes, as well as several means by which the characters can more easily, though not necessarily more safely, explore the sea bottom around Wrack. There is also one new magic item, a Potion of Sea Change, and two new monsters for Labyrinth Lord, the Dolphin and the Large Octopus. The players will probably have fun with the potion as it polymorphs a person into a random aquatic creature better suited to working under the sea. Which might mean a creature with fins rather than hands and of course, no voice for casting spells...

One of the secrets in Wrack & Rune is that the adventurers are not up against one deadline – that one being Meldime’s time limit before he reduces their fee, but two. This second is the imminent arrival of Keyshilan and the revelation as to the island’s true nature. Although not the only threat in Wrack & Rune, the others being the undersea environment, Captain Morton’s greed, and various aquatic predators who will take an interest in the party’s activities, but it is the major one. Much like the film Jaws, the Labyrinth Lord should keep Keyshilan and its mystery an ever present threat in background while the characters are at sea, ratcheting up the tension as the climax approaches...

Available just as 5.02 Mb, sixteen page PDF, Wrack & Rune is a cleanly presented affair. The only spot of colour is on the front cover and the map, and while only clip art is used to illustrate the adventure, all of it is well chosen. Steve Zieser’s cover illustration is nicely evocative of the threats to be faced though, depicting the wreck of the Lady Elaine. There is one last issue, and that is with the title. The “Rune” of Wrack & Rune does not refer to a rune in the sense that most gamers would think. It is not a character from an ancient script or alphabet such as that often used by the Dwarves or by wizards to inscribe magical effects, but is rather an aphorism or in the case of the scenario, a poem with mystical elements. In other words, there is poetry in this scenario.

If Wrack & Rune has flaws, they are at least minor. It is perhaps lacking in terms of staging advice and in the descriptions of the default setting of Eastern Valnwell, to an English sensibility, it does feel as if the author is trying too hard in some of the names chosen and in the personalities of the NPCs. Nevertheless, the adventure is nicely balanced between roleplaying and interaction elements at the start and the logistical, time limited elements of the dive on the wreck, and it should provide two good sessions of gaming. Overall, Wrack & Rune is a solid, well written scenario that takes the adventurers away from the dungeon and presents them with an interesting challenge.