This is a 28 page “temple-crawling adventure” written by Munkao ostensibly for Into the Odd and Cairn (but actually largely system-agnostic), and set in the South-East Asian inspired world of Kala Mandala. I don’t think transferring it into other settings should be that much of an issue, as long as one can come up with a reason why there’s a vaguely Asian-coded monastic community around to set this at. My personal setting is set around a sort of crossroads of cultures so I have absolutely no issue with that), and this might fit in great in some of the areas I haven’t worked out that much yet.
The mission as it is is not one that lends itself to the usual loot and pillage gaming: Het Thamsya is a fledgling temple school in a larger collective, dedicated to the path of Automata. The founder of this school has nearly finished a decade long meditation, but giant (belying the title) wasps have created a nest in the back of the building while everyone else was busy not disturbing the meditator. Your mission now, if you should accept it, is to carry the meditating monk out of there, without waking him.
The complications arise from the guards set by your mission objective (automata of various kinds), the wasps, and a bunch of other intruders that have entered without anyone knowing. Interestingly the wasp nest is detailed much more than you’d think, and there are things going on in there that are way more complicated than what you’d expect, as there’s some bizarre bio-horror twist lying in wait. Which makes for a fascinating chart of faction relations based on the instincts of the wasps and the commands left for the automata and how they interact with one another.
I do feel like I am missing some context for the world of Kala Mandala, as I am not quite sure what some of the things reference. On the other hand it’s easy to just plug in whatever association comes up and go with it. The scenario offers a compelling mission and plenty of complications to make for some interesting play. I think this might be interesting to play with multiple groups to see how either of them make it through.
Als ik even op X gluur wat #wilders daar allemaal tweet, dan is hij drukker met nieuwe stemmers vinden voor de volgende verkiezingen, dan met de #formatie.
De afgelopen dagen, 'de veldslag in Den Haag' onder #eritreers en de vele #oekraïners die naar Utrecht komen, dan is dat natuurlijk 'koren op zijn molen'. Want zegt hij natuurlijk: 'als ik geen premier wordt van #nl, dan blijft dit allemaal gebeuren'.
Er ontstaat een beangstigend #scenario op deze manier. (2)
Last week, the Integrated-Assessment Modeling Consortium (#IAMC) & #ICONICS released an update of basic drivers of the the "Shared Socioeconomic Pathways" (#SSPs).
They are an integral part for #scenario research on #ClimateChange#mitigation & #adaptation.
'Het lukt de conservatieve partijen niet om genoeg steun onder de bevolking te krijgen. Ze zetten rijkspresident Paul von Hindenburg onder druk om Hitler tot kanselier te benoemen. Ze hopen met de NSDAP een meerderheidskabinet te kunnen vormen. (zie #Yeşilgöz nu) (2)
Het wachten is op een #rijksdagbrand. Een ooggetuige vertelt dat Göring bij het zien van de brand riep: ‘Dit is het begin van een communistische opstand'. En Hitler brulde: ‘Vanaf nu zullen we geen genade meer kennen. Wie ons in weg staat wordt afgeslacht.’ (3)
JSON-LD, evidently: "What if… all properties may be intended? Please just ignore the ones you don't understand, it's okay, oh, and if you want to know whether it was intended or what it means you need to put it through a two+-orders-of-magnitude-slower processing algorithm"
People don’t really differentiate between authors’ voices when discussing roleplaying game scenarios. There’s a bit of it when people are really into it. They will talk about Gygaxian naturalism, or Jaquaysing Xandering dungeons [note check this Alexandrian post regarding the name change]. If it’s a Hickman scenario there’s gonna be railroads. That stuff.
Stephen Bourne is not one of those greats, but I feel like his scenarios have authorial voice dripping from their pages. He has a style. And all his adventures have similar feel that lean into it. He likes to mix heavy medievalism into his scenarios, even the clear fantasy ones, and use a limited palette of monsters for specific purposes.
When it works it’s pretty brilliant, when it doesn’t you feel like you just lost the money you spent.
I especially notice it in his early Role Aids scenarios: he tries to mix historical facts with D&D’s approach to fantasy worlds, and in some places this absolutely doesn’t fit. The Throne of Evil is the worst of the lot, being a weird mix of a political intrigue scenario in medieval England and a bog standard dungeon crawler for early D&D at the same time. A pretty horrid scenario altogether. I know it was supposed to me rules for medieval wargames, but no.
Evil Ruins is much less so, even though I am still bothered by how disjointed the setting is in places. On the one hand he establishes the setting as Castle Tintagel, which is a real world place in Cornwall, and even establishes that it has some connections to Arthurian myth. Then he proceeds to create an elaborate backstory without any obvious ties to Arthurian myth at all, but featuring Saxon kings and vikings. Fair enough.
Maybe I am just not knowledgeable enough about Arthur and his myth cycle.
But then the adventure basically is a generic AD&D scenario, and the maps don’t fit the real world location of Tintagel at all.
It would have been better if he either took care to play into the medieval fantasy situation and actually present it coherently, or just replace all the real world references with some generic fantasy terms. The way it is right now feels disjointed.
Why the hell is there a priest of Zeus in medieval England trying to establish a temple?
Why is Tintagel on the East Coast?
Sigh.
That said, that’s the setting.
I actually always have liked the rest of the scenario, even though, or maybe because… it is incredibly generic. But it is generic in a naive way you just don’t see done that often.
https://gmkeros.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/erbetrayal.pngThe backstory is too long (2pg for a 36 page scenario), but the basic situation is this: there were two brothers born to the same mother, one the son of the king, one the result of an affair with the king’s brother. The first son was supposed to inherit the throne, but when he came back from a journey his brother murdered him and took the throne. Then stuff went belly up, the usurper basically lost the kingdom and established a death cult in the castle (…as you do…), and his murdered brother came back as a wraith out for revenge. So there’s two separate evil forces in the ruins, and the struggle between both comes to a head just at the same time as a bunch of adventurers come to clear out the castle because it keeps the property values down or something.
There’s a bit of subterfuge going on. First the heroes have to travel to the castle with a guide, but he intentionally misleads them for his own goals, and they have to rescue the heart of the forest. Who is a giant spider.
I love that. There are potentially friendly natives in the forest that will gladly help the party, as long as the group doesn’t immediately murder them for just happening to be giant arachnids.
The guide also will steer them towards a different location than they want, so they take care of a lycanthrope for him (not actually a werewolf) while he steals the treasure. The idea is a bit railroady, but ok.
By the way, did you know the term black panther actually refers to two different variants of big cats of different species? I didn’t know until I read this adventure, and then only after I read the statblocks of the lycantrope and his pet leopard properly. The term black panther is never used in the text, but that’s what they both are supposed to be. The text introduces him as a were-leopard. A term that evokes different images in me than black panther would.
I assume the reason for the black panthers in here was because they got the rights for a Boris Vallejo painting for their cover and they needed something in the scenario that fit to that. Or they chose the painting because the were-leopards were in the scenario and missed what color they were supposed to be.
https://gmkeros.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/erenc.pngThen when one finally arrives at the castle one has to deal with death cultists and monsters maddened by the wraith, but it’s not necessarily clear that both are against one another from the outset.
The dungeon is a bit lackluster, but the author took care to put a sort of investigative scenario in there. One can find out the backstory for what happened when following the clues, and find out there is a second evil influence at large. If one cares to do so at least.
The castle itself is presented as a 4 level dungeon, but the 1st level is just the castle yard (also doesn’t seem to resemble the actual Castle Tintagel), and level 4 is rather short.
One interesting bit is that the short boxed text that is given seems to assume the players do indeed not know what these creatures they encounter are. So orcs are “ugly brutes”, hobgoblins are “rather large and ugly creatures” and ghouls are “terrible figures”. Which is nice in that way. It doesn’t give away what they are, one easily could play this as an actual fantastic medieval scenario in a fantasy Britain, and have them all encounter these creatures for the first time.
And that’s actually the way I would run this adventure: as a slightly longer introductory module, to get some people into the game. Maybe not necessarily really in the fantasy Britain environment the module supposes, but one easily could find at least some equivalent region in another world. Or just, you know, keep that little duchy it takes place in it’s own self-contained world.
This scenario was released by Role Aids, a line of supplements by Mayfair games that were more or less compatible with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. There were a few lawsuits involved, but they were rather cheeky about it. This module claims it is suitable for use with ADnD, and the stat blocks are roughly equivalent, but not the same. Certainly enough to run it just like that, mapping to the ADnD rules nearly 1:1.
https://gmkeros.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/erenc2.pngThe illustrations in the text were by Hannah Shapero. I don’t know if she did so much more work in RPGs, but I like the illustrations we get in here. They have a very dark quality, and manage to get over the whole feel of the place perfectly. I am not quite sure if they were actually made for this particular scenario though, or if the author just had to use some illustrations they had lying around.
The first time I came across this scenario was in the German translation. This one was published by Truant Spiele (Truant is the owner’s last name) in 1989 as Ruinen des Schreckens (Ruins of Terror). So at least the title got an improvement. I got it more than ten years after, when Truant and Welt der Spiele decided to get rid of some unsold stock by bundling them together in anthologies. Actually I got that one even later, because it took a few years for me to actually get my hands on it when that anthology ended in the bargain bin.
I find this translation interesting: unlike the original English version this is not compatible with AD&D. The scenario was translated faithfully, but a page about “Universalabenteuer” (generic adventures) was added with adaption notes. All the stats in the scenario have changed to a weird percentile system that does not seem to be directly mapped to anything. Midgard was the first German roleplaying game, and it used a percentile system (it was derived from Empire of the Petal Throne), so that might have been a reason for that. Some characters also have skills that sound very much like Das Schwarze Auge skills from that game’s 2nd edition. What it doesn’t resemble at all is Dungeons and Dragons, which at the time was barely a blip on the German roleplaying market.
Also interesting:
Tolkienesque Ologs were present in the original (as modified orcs), but were replaced with Half-orcs. Very tough Half-Orcs. I wonder why. The other half-orcs come out weaker in comparison, even the supposedly elite guards in the dungeon.
the copyright notice claims this was a translation of Mayfair Games’ Pinnacle, which was another of the scenarios in the anthology I got this from.
@MRDoubleVie ah ah, je pense que le meilleur ouvrage sur l’écriture de Bd (et super utile pour tout auteur d’ailleurs) est « L Art invisible », de Scott McCloud. C est une pure merveille - on apprend plein de chose sur notre art. Sur l écriture sous toutes ses formes - car écrire un roman ça n’est pas écrire un scénario de BD de même que écrire un scénario de BD ça n’est pas écrire un scénario de film ou une pièce de théâtre. (Quand on écrire dans un genre donné il est n’est pas idiot de voir comment on écrit dans les autres genres.)
In the mid-2000s I created a newspaper comic strip series about a sheep and a mole.
The main characters were produced as limited-edition vinyl toys and USB lamps by Crazy Label in Hong Kong, and sold in designer toy stores around the world.