Rogue Games Tabbloid -- October 9, 2009 Edition

9 October 2009

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]

ROGUE FEED

Within a generation, the Thulian empire came to depend heavily on both magic and Termaxians, as it spread farther across the continent and tightened its grip over its subjects. Over time, the empire started to treat other religions as it had once treated the followers of Turms. Only those faiths who acknowledged their gods as aspects of Turms Termax were allowed to operate unrestricted. Those who resisted were ruthlessly quashed.

Apotheosis OCT 08, 2009 02:11P.M.

Resentment against the Turms-worshiping Thulians grew, especially as they grew ever more tyrannical. Rebellions across the empire eventually tore it asunder and the Thulians — and Termaxians — were cast down, to be replaced a welter of new, localized powers. In most regions, Termaxianism was outlawed once again and the common folk speak in hushed tones about its supposedly sinister “secret” doctrines. Even those with an inkling of the truth nevertheless show little affection for Turms and his faith has dwindled into comparative obscurity, except among magic-users. Turms Termax is one of the “great mysteries” of the Dwimmermount campaign. I created the god to be a useful MacGuffin in both the megadungeon and other adventures. As you can see, he’s an amalgam of Hermes Trismegistus, Simon Magus, and certain of the Roman emperors. He gave me a good way to introduce secret societies into the campaign (like the Argent Twilight), employ alchemical symbolism (like azoth), and open up the question about who and what they gods really are. So far Turms has proven very successful in these goals and he’s one of my favorite recent creations, since he gives me an excuse to indulge in esoteric whimsies of various sorts. And finally, it’s nice to be able to use a mystery cult in D&D rather than the peculiar kind of ahistorical

In my Dwimmermount game, though there are many gods, only three have played much of a role in the campaign to date: Tyche, Typhon, and the mysterious Turms Termax. Of the three, the worship of Turms is unusual in the present day, because it is closely associated with the end of the Thulian empire. The Thulians, you may recall, are the Romanequivalents of the Dwimmermount campaign world, but they began their historical role as northern barbarians who overthrew the Eldritch empire that preceded their own.

polytheism that most gaming tends to present. In the early days of their rule, they were highly suspicious of non-divine magic and its practice was highly regulated (which is the origin of the magic-user class’s level titles). Given the misuse to which the Eld had put magic, there were few complaints and the Thulians ruled justly, if occasionally brutally, for several centuries. It was into this environment that an enigmatic wizard named Turms first appeared. Along with his female companion Sarana, he traveled the empire, seeking out forbidden magical knowledge and teaching that such knowledge allowed Men to reach their full potential as the true gods of the cosmos. A cult soon grew up around him, one which encouraged the use of magical and alchemy as a means to divinization and denouncing the gods of the empire as false. Unsurprisingly, the Thulians didn’t take kindly too this and persecuted the followers of Turms, eventually capturing and torturing him until, according to legend, he ascended into godhood before their very eyes. True or not, there’s no question that the Thulian official attitude toward the cult changed. Termaxians (as his followers became known) were able to practice their faith openly and the restrictions on magic were lifted.

1

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]

9 October 2009

ROGUE FEED

ROGUE FEED

A Word of Clarification

Dwimmermount Session 19

OCT 08, 2009 11:16A.M.

OCT 08, 2009 07:33A.M. The Dwimmermount campaign has been on something of a hiatus in recent weeks, owing to a concatenation of real world distractions on the part of three of my regular players. In the last month, there’s only been a single session and this dearth of actual play may continue for the next little while at least. It’s a pity but it’s an expected consequence of running a campaign with adults who have jobs, families, and other responsibilities. It does make me wonder how Gary Gygax was able to run his Greyhawk campaign multiple days each week back in the 70s. Regardless, we did manage to squeeze in a single session recently and it took place entirely outside of Dwimmermount. Brother Candor had long ago promised to officiate at the marriage of former hireling Ragnar the next time he was free to do so. By mutual agreement, the party decided that he was free now and so headed off to a small village south of Dwimmermount called Smerdlap’s Crossing. Conveniently, the town was located not too far from the vale Dordagdonar wanted to scout out as a location for his future elf-hold. Although he’s only fourth level, Dordagdonar’s player is thinking ahead and there’s nothing in the OD&D rules that prevents a PC from starting to expend resources on a stronghold before ninth level.

I try to be clear when I write my posts, but sometimes I forget to include important bits of information that are obvious to me but might not be so obvious to others. A good case in point is when I talk about the “wargames” heritage of OD&D and early gaming in general. What I typically fail to make clear is that I’m (primarily) talking about miniatures wargaming rather than Avalon Hill-style hex-and-chit wargaming. Gygax and Arneson were avid players of miniatures wargames, as was M.A.R. Barker. And of course the Chainmail rules out of which OD&D arose were “rules for medieval miniatures,” according to its subtitle.

I’d not given much thought to the nature of Smerdlap’s Crossing, beyond assuming it to be an agricultural community under the protection of Adamas. Thanks to an almost-rhyme, one of my players began talking about the burlap industry of Smerdlap’s Crossing, which of course led to the further suggestion that the local farmers grew hemp. Yes, this led other suggestions as well and much amusement was had by all, as we cycled through all the usual jokes and humorous associations we could muster as they made preparations for the wedding. The party had pooled their resources and bought some oxen and a plow for Ragnar, immediately making him a very important person in town for reasons other than having braved the dangers of Dwimmermount and returned alive.

Miniatures games back in those days were often kit bashed affairs, with models swiped from a variety of different sources and rules that left a lot of leeway for interpretation. This ethos was carried over into OD&D, along with measuring movement in inches. While I have no particular attachment to those movement rates, I do have a fondness for the “seat of the pants” style of refereeing that those old miniatures games demanded and that was imported into early roleplaying games. I was never a minis gamer myself, but I knew older guys who were into Napoleonics (and American Revolutionary miniatures) and used to watch with awe, not just as they assembled their meticulously painted 15 mm armies, but as they seemingly effortlessly dealt with situations their rules didn’t explicitly cover. What I saw still sticks with me three decades later.

The wedding itself was a small affair, but the party that ensued afterward was much more exciting. During the festivities, an old man expressed surprise upon seeing Dordagdonar, explaining that elves haven’t been seen in these parts since he was a boy. Dordagdonar asked why and the old man added that, when he was a child, things hadn’t been going so well with the crops and people were getting sick and disappearing. The town elders were always suspicious of a settlement of elves to the northeast and decided, without proof, that they had to be responsible for Smerdlap’s Crossing’s ills.

Ironically, I don’t have the patience to be a good minis player. I’m not a very good painter and I get easily distracted when it’s not my turn. I’m also a poor strategist and tactician when it comes to things like this. In the few games I have played in recent years, I tend to get trounced rather

The elders enlisted the aid of some “mercenaries,” including a number of “dark wizards” to deal with the elves and so they did, resulting in the slaughter of the entire settlement. Unfortunately, the problems remained and in fact multiplied, as the wizards formerly in the employ of the town elders set up shop on the site of the elvish settlement and began “doin’ all sorts of nasty stuff” that resulted in even more innocent people being

unceremoniously and the fault is largely my own.

2

Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR [email protected]

9 October 2009

killed. The entire town itself would probably have suffered the same fate as the elves if it hadn’t been for a few brave souls who set out to deal with the mess they had made and succeeded in killing and driving off the wizards. One of these men was Ragnar’s grandfather, which might explain where the young man got the idea of adventuring in the first place.

fun reworking bits of it to suit what I’ve already established about my setting. One of the real joys of the way I referee is that it’s very easy to add new elements, since so little is nailed down. I’m very fond of throwing out unexplained references, hints, and other clues that I can pick up later or not, as the needs of the campaign require. It demands a certain amount of mental nimbleness on my part, but I have a lot of practice doing it. I’ll admit upfront that it doesn’t always go as smoothly as I’d like, but, when it does, the result is far more satisfying to me than simply using game materials as written. As a referee, I like to feel as if I’m as much a player as those with PCs and, to do that, I need to surprise even myself. Over the years, I’ve found the best way to do this is to let the dice fall where they may and to avoid too much preparation and planning. It’s all too easy for me to nudge things in the “right” direction if I spend a lot of time preparing for sessions and so I purposefully avoid

Unsurprisingly, Dordagdonar was intrigued by this story and, once the wedding party was over, asked his comrades to investigate the site of this former elven settlement. They readily agreed, since they intended to go in that direction anyway and they couldn’t help feel that these events might have some connection to what was happening in Dwimmermount. Some of you might already have guessed that I was using this as an opportunity to sneak in a modified version of Jim Raggi’s Death Frost Doom into the campaign. I’m not a huge user of prepackaged modules, but Death Frost Doom is good enough that I really wanted to import at least some of its ideas into the Dwimmermount campaign. As I said, I’ve changed a number of elements to better suit my own style and that of the campaign, but the general outline remains the same.

doing so when possible.

Close to the former elven village, the PCs encountered crazy old Zeke, a trapper formerly from Smerdlap’s Crossing, who’s taken up a solitary life close to the site of the atrocities of decades previous. He was able to confirm some of the information they’d learned back at the wedding and added a few of his own, particularly that the aforementioned dark wizards had engineered the calamities that had befallen his home town and were using the townsfolk for their own ends. This didn’t really come as a surprise to any of the characters, who started to ponder rationales for everything that had happened. This led them to the conclusion they needed to investigate the ruins of the elven settlement, something Zeke urged them not to do. Ignoring Zeke’s warnings, the party set out for the ruins to discover a large collection of graves all over the area surrounding the former village. They also found a rift in the ground that gave off a foul odor. They briefly toyed with descending down into it but thought better of it once they noticed a still-standing building amidst the graves and ruins. The building appeared to be a shabby-looking cabin but there were odd details to it — unbroken glass windows, for example — that unnerved them. It didn’t look like anything they’d ever seen and the strange mismatch of materials used to construct it only added to their sense that something “wasn’t right.” They entered the cabin anyway and inside found more oddities, such as a mechanical clock and evidence that someone else had been inside in fairly recent times. They also found a huge tome bound in the skin of something that was written in ancient Thulian and was entitled “Offerings to Thule” (thank you read languages). This confused and worried Brother Candor, since he’d always assumed that “Thule” was merely the name of the northern island from which the Thulians had originally come. Now he started to think that perhaps Thule was the name of something else entirely, after which the island may have been named. After a bit more investigation of the odd cabin, the session ended. I was a bit disappointed we didn’t get further into Death Frost Doom, since I’m very interested in how my players will react to it. I’m also having a lot of

3