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Ptolus - In the Shadow of the Spire
IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 27B: SIGHTS OF VENOM

September 7th, 2008
The 15th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

LIGHT OF A FALSE DAWN

Tee followed a long and winding path back to the Ghostly Minstrel, eager to shed any possibility of being followed. By the time she arrived, the sun was just beginning to rise past the edge of the Spire.

In the common room, Tee saw her companions sleeping around a table. Tee’s short missive had not specified when she would be returning, and so the others had waited up for her… Or, at least, waited up for as long as their stamina could endure.

After a moment’s thought, Tee decided not to disturb them yet. Instead she made her way upstairs, changed into a fresh set of clothes, and then came back down. Stretching heartily on the stairs he yawned, “Oh! That was a wonderful night’s sleep!”

She woke the others. “What are you all doing down here?”

Agnarr instantly realized what she was doing. “Huh… I must have had too much to drink.”

The others played along as well, fostering the illusion – in case there were any eavesdroppers in the inn itself – that they had all spent the evening here.

Tee, meanwhile, was trying to figure out her next step. Reaching a resolution, she made some polite farewells and then headed for the front door.

But Dominic stopped her. “Oh! Tee! What about that book you were going to loan me? You know the one… I think it was called What Happened Last Night? It sounds really interesting, but I don’t know anything about it…”

Tee smirked and all of them made their way upstairs to Elestra’s room, where they hoped they might have a bit more privacy. Once there, Tee quickly briefed them on what had happened the night before.

Once they had been satisfied, Tee made her farewells again and left the inn.

A FRUITLESS INTERLUDE WITH TEE

Tee turned out of Delver’s Square and headed up Tavern Row towards Emerald Hill. Once there, she went straight to Iridithil’s Home and Doraedian’s office.

As she entered, Doraedian looked up with surprise in his eyes. “Tee! What are you doing here? Your lesson isn’t until tomorrow.”

“I know,” Tee said. “But there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

But now that she was here, she wasn’t sure exactly what she wanted to say. She still wasn’t sure what Doraedian would think if he knew the full scope of what she had been doing, and she couldn’t bear the thought of his harsh judgment.

So she chose her words carefully, laying out – with the slightest possible amount of detail – the discovery of the apartment building in Oldtown, the involvement of the cultists, and her suspicion that they were trying to finish what Helmut had started by assassinating the Commissar. She was particularly hoping that Doraedian would know something useful about the centaur named Dilar, but he did not.

In fact, on some level, Tee had hoped that Doraedian could tell her what to do. She was overwhelmed by the enormity of what she had gotten herself involved in. But while Doraedian promised to take her concerns to the Commissar, he wasn’t sure that anything would be done about it. “You’re not giving me much to work with, Tee.”

Feeling somewhat dejected, Tee returned to the Ghostly Minstrel. She found the others gathered in Elestra’s room.

SCOUTING ON CROSSING STREET

Tee looked at them. “I think we’re on our own with this one.”

Since it looked as if the authorities weren’t going to get involved, the conversation turned to what they were going to do about it.

“Let’s kick down the front door,” Agnarr said.

Elestra, however, pointed out that Tee knew the pass-signs for the site – they could just walk right through the front door (assuming all of the watchers were as ignorant as Tee was). And the others weren’t even sure they should get involved. Or that they would be able to accomplish anything if they did.

And so, in the end, they decided to take a gentler approach. Ranthir revealed that his arcane researches had recently yielded the perfection of a spell allowing for the remote viewing of nearby locations. If they could get close enough to the apartment complex, he would be able to – at least briefly – peek inside.

Since they didn’t know who – or what – might be keeping an eye on the apartment building, they decided that it was important to keep as low a profile as possible. And since a large group would attract more attention than a smaller one, Tee and Ranthir found themselves heading up into Oldtown while the others remained behind at the Ghostly Minstrel.

The apartment building being used by the cultists was one of several similar buildings lining Crossing Street. Since Ranthir would only be able to target two specific locations with his spells, they decided to scout out the other buildings to get a better sense of what the layout might be like inside the cult’s building.

What they discovered was that all of the buildings were owned by the Vladaam merchant house. The residents were all part of the Vladaam estate and each building was run by a separate collective. Most of the people they talked to, however, proved surly and unhelpful, and it quickly became apparent that the residents of the other buildings knew little or nothing about the building being used by the cultists.

Each building was two stories tall, with a single entrance on the front opening onto a central hall with various doors leading to a dozen or so apartments. Encouraged by these similar layouts, they decided to break into an apartment in the building directly adjacent to the “project site”.

With Tee’s skills this proved to be quite simple. Going to the window they were able to look across the narrow alley between the buildings. There was a thick curtain hanging in the window on the opposite side, but Ranthir was able to use a minor cantrip to jerk it aside – causing it to flutter as if caught in a breeze.

This revealed nothing except an empty room… except that Ranthir was left with the impression that something large had moved rapidly out of his line of sight just as the curtain started to move.

Thus convinced that there might be something more interesting to see, Ranthir used his more powerful spell of clairvoyance to peer into the room… and there, standing in the midst of wrecked furniture and miscellaneous debris, he saw two massive, insectoid creatures.

At the sight, he blanched.

Venom-Shaped Thrall - Night of Dissolution (Monte Cook Games)As he watched, one of the creatures reached out with its sharp talon and literally drilled the still-drafting curtain into the wall, pinning it in place.

Ranthir kept his arcane gaze focused there for awhile, but the strange and disturbing creatures did nothing more than scuttle back towards the center of the room and settle themselves down on the floor.

When it seemed clear the creatures weren’t going anywhere, Ranthir pulled his perception out of the spell and pondered the problem of where to place his second (and last) clairvoyance.

Using a different divination, Ranthir was able to pinpoint several magical auras within the building – all of them concentrated in a room on the second floor. That seemed potentially interesting, so Ranthir placed his second point of clairvoyance and peered through…

There were three men standing in another ruined room. He quickly noted that all of them wore the broken square rings of the cultists. Two of them wore coiled viper amulets, and they appeared to be arguing – vociferously – with the third man, who had a black palm print tattooed onto his forearm.

Unfortunately, Ranthir could only look into the room. He couldn’t hear anything.

“Can you read their lips?” Tee asked.

“Perhaps…” Ranthir looked doubtful.

“Is there any way you can let me see it, too?” Tee asked. She’d often practiced reading lips as a little elfling.

“I’m afraid not.”

Ranthir could make out little of what they said, but he was able to pick out a few key phrases here and there: “The Ebon Hand won’t stand for this—“ “—the Brothers of Venom knew—“ “Wuntad will hear of this!”

Ranthir was repeating all of this to Tee. At the mention of Wuntad, she blanched. They’d known that they were almost certainly dealing with chaos cultists, but the confirmation that Wuntad was directly involved was disconcerting nonetheless. In many ways, she was terrified of him.

The argument was clearly growing hotter. The cultists were pacing around each other, shouting with red-faced rage. It became more difficult for Ranthir to make out what they were saying. And then, just before his spell came to an end, he saw one of the serpent cultists – a Brother of Venom? – begin casting a spell. He barely had time to recognize it as an enchantment of paralysis before the final strands of the clairvoyance unraveled.

He turned to Tee. “Let’s get out of here.”

NEXT:
Running the Campaign: Improvising FloorplansCampaign Journal: Session 27C
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

Our Let’s Read of the original 1974 edition of D&D continues as we delve deeper into Volume 1: Men & Magic. Topics covered in this video include:

  • Spellcasting
  • Turning undead
  • Six levels of magic-user spells
  • Five levels of cleric spells

If you want to start watching from the beginning, you can do that here.

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Roleplay Rescue

I sat down with the folks over on Roleplay Rescue. We chatted about open tables, my current work, future plans for the Alexandrian, and all things RPGs.

I know I said that Season 10 had come to an end after 22 episodes but when opportunity strikes it’s best to grasp it with both hands. Besides, episode 23 also has a nice, mystic ring to it. My guest today is the single biggest influence on this podcast, a huge inspiration to me as a gamer and Game Master, and just about the best source of roleplaying wisdom I have come across on the internet. When he suggested he’d be open to doing an interview, well, I was thrilled. How could I say no?

You can check out the podcast here:

Roleplay Rescue @ Acast
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Ptolus (Delvers Square) - Monte Cook Games

I think we need to start with a little disambiguation. This is NOT a review of Ptolus: City by the Spire, the incredible 700-page city supplement originally designed for D&D 3rd Edition, recently adapted to both D&D 5th Edition and the Cypher System, and the basis for my own In the Shadow of the Spire campaign.

This is a review of Ptolus: City of Adventure, an anthology of three adventures each sold separately as PDFs:

(Also not to be confused for Ptolus: City By the Spire, the graphic novel by Monte Cook and Caanan White. Although the odds of that error being made are probably significantly lower.)

The adventures are designed with the expectation that you’ll be using them in conjunction with the Ptolus sourcebook, but it wouldn’t be terribly difficult to adapt them to any urban D&D setting.

They are dual-statted for use with both 5th Edition and the Cypher System. I usually find dual-statted books very awkward and frequently confusing, but Monte Cook Games cleverly uses sidebars and iconography to clearly delineate the two sets of stats. The result is easy to read and easy to use.

SPOILERS FOR THE ADVENTURES!

DOCTRINE OF GHUL

Doctrine of Ghul - Monte Cook Games

In Bruce R. Cordell’s Doctrine of Ghul, an incomplete manuscript purportedly written by Ghul the Skull-King (an evil overlord from the history of Ptolus) has surfaced and is being promulgated through the city. Those who read the manuscript, however, discover that (a) they are cursed to die unless they finish reading it and (b) it’s incomplete, so they can’t do that.

Whether it’s the PCs who get cursed by the incomplete doctrine, someone they care about, or someone who’s willing to pay them for help, they’ll have to journey into Ghul’s Labyrinth — the vast dungeons beneath Ptolus which once served as the barracks for Ghul’s legions and the laboratories for his arcanists — and visit three locations where the missing passages of the Doctrine can be found.

Truth be told, the metaphysics and background of this whole framing device is a dog’s breakfast. The “Doctrine” is actually a fake, created by a wizard named Alberek who wants to bring Ghul back from the dead. Alberek believes that each time someone finishes reading the full Doctrine there’s a chance that they’ll bring Ghul back from the dead… so, naturally, rather than just sending out full copies of the Doctrine, he’s hidden chunks of the text underground so that people have to go adventuring to read the full Doctrine. (Even though this isn’t necessary and, if you copy out the passages, you can bring them back to the surface and have people read them.) Also the Doctrine isn’t completely fake, it’s based on fragments of text which may have actually been written by Ghul. Also also, each time someone finishes reading the Doctrine and doesn’t miraculously resurrect Ghul, Alberek teleports to their location and kills them. For… reasons?

Bit of nonsense really.

But here’s the thing: This whole framing device is, ultimately, just a way to get the PCs to visit three locations within Ghul’s Labyrinth.

  • The Frozen Crypt
  • The Breeding Pits of Formless Hunger
  • The Galchutt Cyst

Each of these locations is a completely independent mini-dungeon, and they’re all quite excellent. Incredibly creepy ambience, clever encounters, and cool lore make each one a delightful gem of dungeon design.

For example, in the Breeding Pits the PCs will encounter an airborne pathogen which subverts their immune systems and uses them to begin creating a grey goo. As they expectorate or vomit forth the strange substance, it becomes animate and begins joining together to form strange servitors seeking to continue the ancient work of the researchers who once labored here.

That’s the kind of idea which elevates a simple dungeon crawl into a truly memorable experience, and each of these locations are studded with stuff like this.

So here’s the bottom line for me: Jettison the wonky framing device and you’re left with three really great mini-dungeons that you can use to flesh out any journey into or through Ghul’s Labyrinth. That’s a fantastic tool for your toolkit! And makes it more than worthwhile to grab a copy of Doctrine of Ghul.

(Just make sure you read the whole thing.)

Grade: B-

THE RUNEBLOOD BLESSING

The Runeblood Blessing - Monte Cook Games

The Runeblood Blessing by Sean K. Reynolds is a brilliant example of how to prep and run urban adventures.

The concept is that a sorcerer named Vlenn has perfected a magical ritual that will grant people a blood-red rune that gives them a magical power (like blur or invisibility or feather fall). She offers the ritual for an extremely affordable price, and empowered runeblooders begin showing up throughout the city. It’s the democratization of magic and it upsets the existing structures of power in myriad ways.

There’s just one little problem: Some of the runeblooders are dropping dead.

So many published adventures would take this incredibly cool concept and immediately fail to realize its expansive, transformative potential by locking it into some form of linear structure. Reynolds’ skips right past this potential pitfall by instead providing an adventure toybox for the GM to actively play with.

The presentation of these toys can be a little sloppy in places, but it boils down to:

  • A series of background events combined with incidental encounters that allow the runeblood blessing to become engrained into your campaign world.
  • An investigation track that the PCs might choose to proactively look into the “runeblood sickness” as it begins to emerge through the background events.
  • An investigation into various crimes being committed by runeblood-enabled gangs and cat burglars.
  • An investigation into Vlenn’s operation, culminating in a location crawl or raid at her headquarters in the Warrens.
  • An otherworldly dungeoncrawl in the Shadow of Ptolus (an evil demiplane) where the PCs explore the surreal umbral fortress from which the runeblood blessing’s power flows.
  • A set of three Ptolus “side scenes” that further flesh out the life of the city.

The important thing to recognize is that these are all independent (yet overlapping) adventure elements. What makes The Runeblood Blessing so cool is that there’s not some specific moment at which The Adventure™ begins. There’s not one specific point where somebody shows up and says, “You should go on this adventure now.”

Instead, there is this vast, ongoing event that’s happening throughout the entire city. It’s not happening specifically to the PCs. It’s happening to the city. To everyone. And it’s up to the players to decide if, how, and when they’re going to choose to interact with these events: Do they buy a runeblood blessing? Blackmail Vlenn? Investigate the criminals?

The result will add a deeply rewarding layer to your Ptolus campaign, bringing the city to life and making it feel huge to your players. That scope and vibrancy, in turn, will make the PCs feel incredibly important once they get involved.

Highly recommended not only as an adventure in its own right, but also as a nearly perfect exemplar of how to create your own urban adventures.

Grade: A-

RETURN OF THE EBON HAND

Return of the Ebon Hand - Monte Cook Games

The final adventure in the book — Return of the Ebon Hand by Monte Cook and Sean K. Reynolds — is another phenomenal example of how you can/should design adventures for your Ptolus campaign.

There are two things I love here.

First, Return of the Ebon Hand is a sequel. The adventure assumes that the PCs have already routed the Ebon Hand from their temple, which is presented as an adventure location in the core Ptolus sourcebook. Although it can’t be entirely sure how those events might have played out in your campaign, it offers several options and some guidance on how you can adapt the adventure to make it fit.

This is such a great example of how events in your campaign can/should spark additional adventures as events develop over time. (I might have a soft spot here because, in my own campaign, the PCs routed the Ebon Hand and then also had to deal with the legacy of their actions in a subsequent adventure.)

Note: I’ll also note that you don’t have to run this adventure as a sequel. The published adventure notes the possibility of assuming that NPC heroes or the City Watch had cleaned out the Temple of the Ebon Hand, and that perhaps those events could be used as background events in your campaign. But it would also be fairly easy to tweak things so that both the Temple of the Ebon Hand and the New Temple of the Ebon Hand are active at the same time. You could even put Fulton’s Journal, as described below, in the Temple of the Ebon Hand where the PCs can discover it.

The second thing I love about Return of the Ebon Hand is how it showcases using multiple scenario hooks that all point to the same scenario.

The background of the adventure sees the vestiges of the Ebon Hand flee from the destruction of their temple and eventually reorganize into a new temple built around a Pit of Insanity within Ghul’s Labyrinth. Harnessing this powerful artifact of chaos, the Ebon Hand once again begins experimenting with the human mutations which are the heart of their faith and through which they believe they will achieve transcendence.

Their use of the Pit kicks its chaotic power into high gear, and it begins manifesting strange effects in the city above and the dungeon nearby. This includes resurrecting various dead criminals in the crypts of the Prison.

As with The Runeblood Blessing, several background events are presented to integrate this background into your campaign. Then Cook and Reynolds present three scenario hooks:

  • The PCs can investigate the chaotic manifestations, eventually tracking them back to the house that the cultists are using to access their underground temple.
  • The PCs can investigate the resurrected criminals (who begin causing trouble throughout the city).
  • The PCs can be come into possession of journal written by a delver named Fulton, whose adventuring party explored the area of Ghul’s Labyrinth where the Ebon Hand has now established its temple.

The cool thing is that you can deploy all three of these scenario hooks simultaneously. (The PCs might pursue one of them or they might want to pursue all three of them.) The even cooler thing is that it’s not immediately obvious that all three clues point to the same dungeon crawl!

Each hook not only points to a different problem/opportunity (chaos manifestations, resurrected criminals, an enigmatic journal), it also points to a completely different entrance to this section of Ghul’s Labyrinth. So, for example, the PCs might explore the prison crypts, follow the tunnels back to the lair of the resurrected criminals, and then realize, “Hey! I think these tunnels match those in Fulton’s journal!” And then they might explore a bit more and discover the Ebon Hand cultists that have been making headlines in the newssheets for the past several weeks!

In short, it’s a rich, multi-dimensional adventure environment that I think you’ll find really rewarding in actual play.

There are, unfortunately, a couple of flaws here that should be noted.

First, I found the cartography a little underwhelming. There’s some very nice xandering here (including, but not limited to the multiple entrances), but there’s a lot of “square rooms joined by long hallways.” I would have liked a few more geographically distinctive set pieces and perhaps a greater sense of the purpose for which these corridors were originally made. (This should not be interpreted as a knock on the key, which is studded with lots of interesting rooms.)

Second, Fulton’s journal is a really scenario hook and could be a really cool prop. But the adventure chooses to chop the journal up and print each entry directly next to the room which it’s describing. Expect to do some extra work stitching these together, and then even more work filling in the significant lacuna that you’ll immediately discover. (If you don’t do this, your players will find it virtually impossible to get any meaningful utility out of the journal.)

But these quibbles should be understood as exactly that: Quibbles.

Return of the Ebon Hand is a very, very good adventure that’s also a perfect bookend to The Doctrine of Ghul, nicely showcasing a different facet of Ghul’s Labyrinth.

Grade: B+

Style: 5
Substance: 4

Authors: Bruce R. Cordell, Sean K. Williams, Monte Cook
Publisher: Monte Cook Games
Cost: $29.95 (Physical) / $14.97 (PDF)
Page Count: 96

Ptolus: City of Adventure - Monte Cook Games

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Dark Tower - Jennell Jaquays (Goodman Games)

Goodman Games is proud to present Original Adventures Reincarnated #7: Dark Tower, updated and expanded from the 1979 classic for both 5E and DCC rule sets! Ranked as one of the Top 30 adventure modules of all time by Dungeon Magazine, Dark Tower is considered by many to be the first published mega-dungeon. It was one of the first modules to utilize the newly released (at that time) Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks, which author Jennell Jaquays incorporated into the original design.

Two editions will be published: one using 5E rules, and one using the DCC RPG rules. Packaged in a handsome slipcase, each edition will be published as three hardcover books. Volume one is a reprint of the classic adventure, with introductory essays by gaming luminaries, including John Rateliff, Eric Mona, Justin Alexander, James Maliszewski, Jon “Taco” Hershberger, Stephen Newton, and others.. Volume two is a conversion of Dark Tower to new rules. Volume three is The Chosen Suns of Set, an all-new adventure and sourcebook expanding on concepts presented in the original 1979 adventure.

Goodman Games says that I’m a gaming luminary!

If you’d like to see a revamped version of Xandering the Dungeon which has been specially adapted for this deluxe release of the classic Dark Tower adventure… well, you’ll need to buy this deluxe release of the classic Dark Tower adventure!

You can read more about the Dark Tower on the Alexandrian over here.

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