Direbane is an abode to share artifacts, simulacra, histories, and other items of note related to ongoing years adventuring.
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Friday, July 4, 2025

Slipping Time in Dungeons and Dragons (Another Essay Wherein It Is Good Players Do Not Read My Blog)


I have devoted lots of hours (weeks, months, years, decades) toward the Dungeons and Dragons game, right up there with jobs, and only essential compensation having been companionship with my fellows of the game. (There is also a distinct possibility based on personal and family history I am somewhere on the spectrum for autism and that D&D helped me build self-esteem and rewrite my personal narrative, ha, so there is that too.) The campaigns I run I attempt as best I can to all fit together in strange and wonderful ways into a single overarching setting. This banks time I can re-use to construct narrative background and provides great rewards forming common existential bases for the variety of adventuring party settings and events.

However, several campaigns over the past 5 years have reached a point where they have begun to approach and even wrap around an “End of Time” event where I feel the need to at least make an observational leap to what happens at the “End of Time” for my game.

The caveats are that my observations must be somewhat in harmony with how the still-developing adventuring campaigns have already “wrapped” around the end of time. And also be as best as I can manage philosophically consistent with the game Multiverse which in various magic and lore has already co-signed time travel itself as a thing. That said, I am not too much worried about specific outer plane Gygaxian metaphysics because what I imagine is a moment where time and space do, or at least seem to, cease to exist – temporal movement, the Multiverse, and all related planes are gone… or perhaps almost gone. Of necessary the event itself is beyond experience for any planar and extra-planar beings or spaces.

****NOTE: I have used in-game the apocalyptic description for the “End of Time” reckoning from Star Rovers RPG, co-written by David Hargrave, which I loosely pasted over some Judges Guild Traveller background… 

For Time has begun to run out. The Hurrakku — they who would gnaw their way through a starcluster and leave nothing in their wake — had already starswarmed. And even though they were still more than forty galaxies away, they were headed in the Empire’s direction.

But they were only the messengers of a great doom. What goaded the Hurrakku onward was the fear of impending annihilation. There loomed behind them an expanding, starless, blackness — A rift in the Space/Time fabric grown so large that it consumed the Past, the Present, and the Future. This was the Final Darkness that Would Cancel Everything!

And also the description from the 3.5 supplement Lords of Madness that Illithids existed “… at the end of time.” “Facing annihilation,” Illithids “… traveled to the past, arriving roughly 2000 years before the present in any given D&D campaign.” Mind Flayers are almost always lurking in the background of my campaigns.

Otherwise, without so far having researched in any depth folks smarter than me on the subject, either in a game sense or our own “real world” physics, I am attracted to 4 possibilities that might fit given I’ve already gamed adventuring parties whose adventures at least seem to have wrapped beyond the end of time relative to parties prior to the “End of Time” event.

Full Stop / “Dead End”: The Multiverse “births” then events unfold in a singular routine. Time travel past and forward is unable to change events because appearances in the past/future have or will have already happened or deigned to occur. This is Robert A. Heinlein’s “TheDoor Into Summer” version and how I generally structured time travel in my game without having yet added the “End of Time” epistemological considerations. But with time travel another possibility arises for perpetuating the game Multiverse...

The Loop / “Roly Poly”: The existent “wrap” in my game may indicate time folded back on itself as characters or beings head back in time before the “End of Time” event, but appear early in the generation of the Multiverse such that it only seems new. Yet ultimately, given “The Door Into Summer” the Multiverse unfolds exactly the same as a result of no change with the inputs (i.e. anything that happens in the past has already happened). A game could have new characters and delve deeper into incidents for how this or that history actually occurred – but characters would have no agency to change actual events that are “known,” either in game or meta–game. That is sort of a bummer given my sanboxxy sensitivities, which leads to my next possibility…

Re-Birth / “New Big Bang”: Something nature to the “End of Time” event, or perhaps some interruption or alteration or missing/hidden piece of the Multiverse re-births into a new multiverse, sort of a new Big Bang with new possibilities, and explains the formation of a Multiverse some ways similar to, but not exactly same or maybe very different than, the former Multiverse. There is also a possibility of entities from the old multiverse to jump through time over the “end” and “bang” events into the new Multiverse.

Of course, it could be that “The Door Into Summer” set history is not the nature of the Multiverse, leading into the 4th possibility I consider…

Temporal Branches / “Time-Stems”: This is a William Gibson-esqueinfinite multitude of potential universal timestreams where time travel does not change the source Multiverse, but rather produces an alternate branch of time. While it is not possible to physically pop over from one time-branch to another, characters would still meet beings from their origin Multiverse altered only in the sense of their contact with different branches. Potentially an infinite number of Multiverses from which, as a result of cross contamination through time travel, it would be virtually impossible to discern which is the “real” Multiverse, or even if that really matters. 

Anyhow, that is a long explanation being the good news is that I do not need to answer any of these questions quite yet. I can preserve a timeline of my campaigns to date (below) to set some parameters, then just see what direction where go the present campaigns.


I have 2 campaigns on hiatus that both are approaching near the “End of Time” event that some of the players are encouraging me to run “tournament style” and the remaining campaigns I feel are post-”End of Time” event, so possibilities 1 & 2 seem to be excluded and I am leaning into possibility 3.

CAMPAIGNS TIMELINE

The years are 1st Year 0 relative to the High Fantasy campaign (where the time stuff began to loosely cohere), 2nd the Wilderlands Balozkinar’s Corrected Commoners Calendar (“BCCC”), and 3rd Greyhawks Common Year calendar (“CY” and “BCY”). Note that many dates are approximations.

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-47,733 / -43300 / -47,158: Uttermost War comes to an end.
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-35,000 / -30567 / -34,423: During Century Wars of Domination Agent Smith arrives from early 21st Century Earth and is transformed into cybernetic unit 718552.
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-2,000 / 2433 / -423: Future Illithids arrive in past.
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-200 / 4233 / 376: Githyanki uprising, future Illithids disappear from past & Astral Plane.
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0 / 4433 / 576: High Fantasy Campaign begins in the Wilderlands, Blipping #2 Campaign begins in Sigil, Wilderlands of the Torment Nexus Campaign begins in the Wilderlands and a cursed scroll from the ancient Markab ruins in Ashenshaft and found in the library of the Wizard Korpauntarl transported the adventurers through time and dimensions in space to Cube World.
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1 / 4434 / 577: Blipping Campaign begins in Arduin. High Fantasy thermonuclear-like explosion resulting from Tharzadu'un traversing portal escaping to Arduin - Artaban/Codex of the Infinite Planes intervenese saving party; throws Blipping Campaign to be "unstuck" in the Multiverse.
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2 / 4435 / 578: Baron Uther of Blackmoor activates the “secret weapon” from City of Gods in Valley of the Ancients, unwittingly a massive terraforming device, and the planet Ghenrek IV is forcibly tilted from its axis.
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4,000 / 8433 / 4,576: Blipping Campaign #2 arrives in future Comeback Inn.
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16,345 / 20778 / 16,921: Blipping Campaign #2 arrives in late 20th Century Earth.
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16,355 / 20788 / 16,931: Blipping Campaign arrives in late 20th Century Earth.
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16,565 / 20998 / 17,141: Blipping Campaign #2 arrives in late 22nd Century Demonic Earth.
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20,000 / 24433 / 20,576: Space/Time Rift approaches Imperium, Blipping #2 Campaign arrives in future Ghenrek IV/Ghostring to discover Illithid Spelljammer which carries them to Illithid origin disc-world “Penumbra” and future Illithids depart the future to the past. New Old Weird World Campaign adventurers also end up on Penumbra after visiting future Sigil.

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Out of Time and Wrapped Campaigns
  • New Old Weird World Campaign: A flat disc planet (on the back of a turtle?) on pocket plane (post “End of Time” event) but passes through a far future Sigil to Penumbra prior to Illithids fleeing (pre-"End of Time" event)
  • Wilderlands of the Torment Nexus: Wilderlands of High Fantasy on Prime Material Plane (Pre-"End of Time" event), sent to Cube World on pocket plane (Post “End of Time” event)
  • Psychedelic Deadlands / Dreamer of Dreams Campaign: On Outlands and Prime Material Plane (Post “End of Time” event)
  • Wilderlands 5th Iteration: Wilderlands of High Fantasy on Prime Material Plane (Post "End of Time" event and pre-"End of Time" event???)

Tuesday, December 24, 2024

"Ark Against Time" Submitted for DunDraCon #48

A colorful thing seems to be made of several elongated pods
(Ark of Time)
GM: Matt Morrison
Type: RPG
System: D&D/Arduin Grimoire
Edition: 5e (2024)
Players: 7
Provided: Characters may be provided by GM
Power Level: Levels 9-12
Variations: If you bring your own PC, 2014 5th edition characters are acceptable.
Rules Knowledge: Useful
Game Content: Mainstream

The Ark of Time, a metropolis-sized object, traverses hyperspace paths coterminous with the intra-planar locations of your adventurers. Byproduct from hyper-relativistic passage of this vastly powerful deific-level being, force, or mag-tech forms a Rabbit Hole tubular rift puncturing temporal and spatial fabric of the Multiverse to emit irresistible gravitation imprisoning characters until expelled. 1993, 2142, 2266, 111 f.y., a disabled starship, stranded crew, space revenants, extraterrestrial endoparasitoids, cryptic cargo, cats, and Tech Level R enmesh as a latter cycle hammer on your high Tier 2 or low Tier 3 5th Edition character. Will our heroes survive a clash of time... or is it? Enjoy this romp through space with a time travel twist for The World's Most Popular Role-Playing Game.

This scenario for DunDraCon #48 has a connection to my Arduin campaign. However, the system is solely 5th Edition D&D using the 2024 revisions. 

I have been co-running a 5th edition game with my friend Dr. John, PhD. 

Pining for something compact from our olden games of yore to translate into the new 5e system, the old scenario "Life on the Farragut" came to mind. Created by me and Postman Bob back in 1993, there are deadly environments, killer nasties, and some neat treasure. The toughest part now is that Bob and I winged a small dungeon crawl through a disabled star-craft inside the Ark of which there are only the vague recollections...

"Ark Against Time" is my re-imagining of the older scenario spiffed up for the latest edition.

Saturday, September 21, 2024

At Last .... The Cube World

 (Ha, and why it's good none of the players read my blog.)

(Northern Continent Detail by Zak S.)

I had been intending to run Zak Smith's Cube World setting since Zak began to publish the installments back in 2020. Cube World, literally a cube-shaped world with the campaign taking place on the "near face" of the cube, is the overall campaign setting that contains Zak's major published works: Vornheim: The Complete City Kit, Red and Pleasant Land, Maze of the Blue Medusa, and Frostbitten and Mutilated. While I'd ran bits of Zak's books as pieces in my home game, I am 100% sand-box ref so prior works without the rest of the setting were just grist for the mill altered to fit whichever particular setting in play at time. The collection of Cube World installments provide refs like me the opportunity to run Cube World as the whole enchilada.

Since the earliest of our hobby my jam has been the Wilderlands of High Fantasy setting by Bob Bledsaw and published by Judges Guild. Back in 1976 Bob, along with his partner Bill Owens, came up with the idea of selling stuff they found helpful in their own game as a subscription service, releasing as installments City State of the Invincible Overlord, Thunderhold, Ready Ref Sheets, Tegel Manor, Modron, Barbarian Altanis, Valon, Thieves of Fort Badabaskor, and so forth through 1981 by when the their catalogue was all available as stand alone products.

Cube World shares many attributes with The Wilderlands: Installments, comprehensive sand box details, maps and details for multiple regions, tips and tables for refs, unique monsters and NPCs, and many individual adventure locations. Coincidentally the playable "near face" of Cube World is 800 miles by 800 miles - a close approximation of the size of regions surrounding the Mediterranean Sea here on Earth and just about the exact dimensions of the combined core Wilderlands setting (Wilderlands of High Fantasy, Wilderlands of the Fantastic Reaches, and Wilderlands of the Magic Realm).

Over the past year the D&D games I run have settled down into two groups: One is an online-only 5e D&D and the other is in-person-only using Advanced Labyrinth Lord retro-clone supplemented by my own Knights of the All Mind and set in The Wilderlands. The Wilderlands presently are very dark compared with previous treks, the darker side hinted by the evil of the Invincible Overlord, his Black Lotus secret police, the understated prejudice and collective violence against half-elves, other mixed peoples, certain religious sects, and outsiders which all reveal on a more thorough reading through the vast amount of Judges Guild published material about The Wilderlands. 

Our campaign began in the Pirates of Hagrost "Wilderness Series" module, with the adventuring party eventually looting the study of a necrophiliac wizard there (you read that correctly, right there in the scenario as written). Our Druid stumbled upon a cursed scroll intended by the necrophilimancer to teleport the scroll's audience and everyone within 30 feet to Witches Court Marshes. I'm preparing for our next session, using Night of the Spirits to get a full-on Celtic vibe but having to retro-clone Castles and Crusades to B/X-style Advanced Labyrinth Lord. I'm cracking open Frostbitten and Mutilated penciling in one of Zak's Trolls and peeling out Witchwood Goblins from the Cube World bestiary and thinking about how creepy it will be for the party all the goblins speak in unison when it hit me. I originally planned this very Wilderlands campaign to get our heroes to Cube World. Great googly moogly.

Ha, now I am in reconnaissance mode, wondering how long I can jerk around the party's chain before they figure out they aren't in Kansas anymore. The new players won't have a clue, Scott our Druid probably will sense things are a little more fantastic than he recalls, but my bro will for certain figure something is up when he tries to book some passage to City State of the Invincible Overlord or the World Emperor and folks don't know what he's talking about. Depends on how many beers though.

Myself I am super looking forward to this. The Wilderlands did grow a bit stale and Judges Guild never produced anything comparable to that of their early days after a hiatus caused by the mid-80s local hobby store crash and now having been ostracized and boycotted due to some bigotry from inheritors to the Juges Guild IP (Bob Bledsaw passed away in 2008). 

None of my players new or old have any familiarity with Cube World and Zak's tips and tables for refs I know from experience will keep the action moving. And with Cube World already statted out in the B/X retro-clone Lamentations of the Flame Princess means next to minimal conversions for me. Cube World provides a welcome fresh start. Much like the 5e game I run, Cube World is an opportunity to take my overarching story in different directions. (All my games are connected into one campaign, because of course they are.)

Tuesday, September 17, 2024

Hands On 2024 Revision Player's Handbook

 


Okay, I took the next step in my "New Edition" journey purchasing the 2024 5th Edition revisions edition of the Player's Handbook. A subset of our regular gaming group have been running straight 5th Edition since last April so I could familiarize myself with the rules, but just for the sole purpose of running the new 2024 revision version.

The new Player's Handbook is the same size, 8.5 x 11 inches, but has a quarter-inch more depth than the original 5th Ed. PBH and now runs 384 pages rather than 320. As my eyes are failing, but I still prefer not to wear my specs, the font is thicker - sort of a sub-bold - and much easier to read than the really tiny print in the earlier version. Thanks also for Wizards of the Coast making the page numbers and book section information in the footer much darker and easier to read than the prior edition.

I am just beginning to dig into the text (won't be running a game with the new book until next month) and I do find the character class sections easier to digest and especially more comfortable to find the info I need and skip over what I don't.

As to rule changes, the first obvious change is removing "Races," which as time has passed is certainly beyond its expiration date given the tragic way some folks continue to use "race" as the word to compartmentalize and maintain their biases against others.

Here in the 2024 revisions "The peoples of the D&D multiverse hail from different worlds and include many kinds of sapient life forms."

The new Player's Handbook describes ten species for player characters: Aasimar, Dragonborn, Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Goliath, Halfling, Human, Orc, and Tiefling. Interestingly, while each species provides a variety of mechanical bonuses and abilities, there are no species-related ability score modifications. All the ability score modifications come from a character's background no matter what the species-type.

There is a little conundrum I spied, in that members of different species should not be able to interbreed - literally from the dictionary definition of species is that members of the same species interbreed while members of different species cannot. This means no Half-elves or Half-orcs.

The work around if these half-species are required for your game is to use the stats from the earlier 5th Edition rules, or just merge the 2 species together as you see fit.

And that's about as far as I've gone. More to come (expecially after I actualy use the book in play).

Wednesday, April 10, 2024

Goodness Gracious, I've Gone to the Dark Side


What with the new 2024 revisions due to start being released this coming September, I am converting my online game to D&D 5th edition.

I still have to end the multiverse in an upcoming session in my ongoing chain of campaigns (the hybrid in-person/online using Advanced Labyrinth Lord), where the Illithids will be heading back in time and who with it's anybody's guess. Codex of the Infinite Planes is involved which in my book gives the game ref pretty much carte blanche to do whatever.

So I have this blend for the online game where I removed cleric-types and wanted to run sort of this post Multiverse annihilation religious-agnostic setting where the outer planes are gone, obliterated. The culture still references religious icons and rituals, but there is is nothing out there or perhaps something that the culture doesn't expect.

Then my little hamster-wheel of a brain starts turning and what if this is a wraparound setting: BOTH post annihilation of the multiverse and pre-formulation. Interesting ideas there. While religion isn't my bag, I thought well maybe this particular little campaign can play around with religion/spirituality/what lies beyond or inside or outside the scope of what's on a particular PC's character sheet.

I had been toying a lot with planes of existence for oh the past decade maybe, picking up little tomes I thought might be helpful. Unfortunately I couldn't find anything that has dealt with planes in a fresh or different way that resonated with me. However...

During my old perusals I did pick up a copy of the first book published by Wizards of the Coast from back in their pre D&D days, The Primal Order about creating pantheons. Not having read that book much, but getting hip with the concepts, I also found a copy of Chessboards: The Planes of Possibility which deals with planar construction. The copies I have are the early versions with conversion charts for AD&D and other RPGs before the inevitable cease-and-desist letters arrived.

All the while I was intending to continue using Advanced Labyrinth Lord rules hoping that I could entice a few more of a large hybrid group to join the online game. After a couple sessions it was clear I had my core group of players and there weren't more coming at present, then I learned about the new 2024 revisions to 5th edition and my interest was piqued.

Now we did run our regular group with a hybrid 5th edition rules set "Advanced Knights of the All Mind" for about 2 years pre-Covid, so we are familiar with it. And of the core group one was super adept at 5e, and 2 others were reasonably proficient (better than me) getting me to think of building up my chops on the latest version of D&D. Ha, the players will also have some new bells and whistles while I mess with them.

We are sticking with just the core 5e rules until the revisions are released in September. And for running this campaign fondly being referred to as the "Psychedelic Deadlands" campaign, I put together a 5e gig bag which is not all 5e:
  • All 3 of the core 5e books: Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual
  • The "Wilderness Kit" screen which for my purposes is better suited than the DM screen "Reincarnated"
  • The aforementioned Primal Order and Chessboard books
  • Toolbox by Alderac Entertainment Group, a bunch of useful ref's random tables which I have owned for nearly 2 decades without using it much
  • Vornheim: The Complete City Kit by Zak Smith still the best for random city construction/adventures and lots more
  • Finally, my copy of The Critonomicon, a long out of print 3rd edition splatbook by Technomancer Press of very specific and fun crits and fumbles (Cripes, someone crafted a 5e version!)
One thing I have to remember is that WotC/Hasbro is a book publishing company, and not to fall in the trap I did during the decade of the Aughts with 3rd edition lore books. DIY is where it's at.

Friday, February 16, 2024

Perrin Conventions and Cinematic Death at DunDraCon #47

(George the Gnome Barbarian.)

Mere weeks after D&D turned 50 years old, DunDraCon 47 was held (should have been #49, exception years were DunDraClone in 1981 and the Covid shutdown year 2021), showing the gaming convention's roots with the world's most popular role playing game.

Friday night has been Arduin night for me at the con. Four of the past five conventions I've run a variety of places in Dave Hargrave's world (Caliban, Green Hell, Talismonde, Dead Watch Mountain). Hargrave eventually had his own rules system published, however, the first three volumes of the Arduin Grimoires from 1977 track very closely to the original D&D's first 3 booklets + supplements I-IV

My own gaming group from the beginning used Arduin's races, classes, tables, etc. as supplements to our 1st edition AD&D game which in the earliest couple years did not have the benefit of the Dungeon Masters Guide (and this tweaked our version of D&D for decades!). As a particular conceit of my convention games I have been attempting to run the Arduin DunDraCom scenarios from the original Arduin Trilogy rules-as-written (using the Arduin Trilogy compendium book by Emperor's Choice Games).

Now, Dave Hargrave in the original trilogy does have a simple no-roll initiative system where combatants basically count down in Dexterity order, with the twist that if a person's dex is twice (or even 3x) their opponent they receive 2 (or 3) extra attacks against them.

Historically our gaming group used AD&D's 1-minute rounds and their internal 6-second segments, reducing actions to discrete numbers of segments to get a more cinematic feel for the action i.e. the dragon will breath in 2 segments, what do you do? Now that we are gaming Advanced Labyrinth Lord's B/X-style 10-second melee rounds, it seemed a natural fit segments = seconds, but I hadn't stumbled upon a satisfactory method for assigning what tasks could be done in what time... until now.

I had heard about The Perrin Conventions by Steve Perrin of Chaosium and distributed at DunDraCon #1 back in 1976. All I really knew was that they were an early attempt to make D&D combat more in the moment rather than the wargaming-style abstractions where hits and damage were not individual swings, rather they were the abstract results from a period of time (often a minute) of melee.

Steve Perrin and just about all of the early west coast D&Ders were members of the faux-medieval Society for Creative Anachronism formed out of UC Berkeley in 1966. Their experience with combat within society events didn't sit right with the OD&D rules, so Perrin endeavored to create more realistic rules in his conventions. Perrin finally published The Perrin Conventions in All the World's Monsters, Volume 2.

Low and behold, I happened to be looking through a copy of All the World's Monsters, Volume 2 for the Pirates of Hagrost game I am running, and right in the first sentence" "SEQUENCE OF PLAY - Melee Round, In a melee round, (which takes up 10 seconds)" (emphasis added) These conventions are for 10 seconds rounds, same as we are using in Labyrinth Lord.

I worked up a version for our campaign that uses still the d6 initiative roll and also my interpretation of speed factor and incorporated the conventions into our supplement for Advanced Labyrinth Lord, New Knights of the All Mind, and play tested the rules at my Friday night Arduin game at DunDraCon.

I had for the first time had a light turnout for the Arduin game, we had only 4 players when previously I had to turn a couple folks away each time. I had each player run 2 characters a piece and we had a blast.

Down at the final battle against the Hell Dragon when he was due to breath napalm breath all across the party, George the Gnome leapt on the dragon's back plunging in a 2-handed sword to divert the dragon's attention. As the dragon flew back down to dive into the magma lake and prepare another attack, our Star Powered metamorphized puma mage managed to read a scroll of part water (5 seconds) to expose only barren rock for the dragon to face-plant upon.

Alas, with 4 seconds to try and save George, there was nothing available to be done and, along with the dragon, George was smashed. (The dragon however had 6 hit points left and did return for a final blow...)

The cinematics of the scene were terrific, and with everyone running 2 characters each that they weren't too attached with, losing a character didn't mean you were out of the game. Great fun.