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.)

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).

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.

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.

 

Happy 50th Birthday Dungeons and Dragons!

 

Per D&D Historian Jon Peterson, D&D was first released in late January 1974, so Jon picked Sunday, January 26, 1974 as Sunday was the day each week Gary Gygax invited folks out to his home in Lake Geneva to demonstrate the new game.

(I began playing about 4 years later, the last week of December 1977, after Dr. John PhD received the Holmes Basic Set as a Birthmas gift.)

Iconic RPG Author and Artist Jennell Jaquays Passed On Today

 
 Jennell Jaquays left us today. She wrote many Judges Guild scenarios for D&D that were used several times over during my early gaming,  most notably Dark Tower. Ha, I played a lot of paladins and always braved the tower for its Mitraic artifacts.

Later on I ran The Lost Tower for my ver. 3.5 Wilderlands campaign back in the ought's, converted Borshak's Lair for Empire of the Petal Throne, and used The Crypts of Arcadia as the underlying framework for a dungeon set in Arduin beneath the capital city of Talismonde.

In 2017 I was adapting Night of the Walking Wet to 5th edition rules when I read a post by Zak Smith that D&D was too male dominated, and a good exercise was to take that idea for a dungeon module you created and reverse all the genders, so kings become queens, dukes duchesses, lords ladies, and so on. Which is really interesting when for example an evil butchering baron who runs a keep is the evil baroness butcher.

I was working on that and having a great deal of fun, when I realized "woh" this could be seen as something mocking Jennell. I hold Jennell in such high esteem that, although probably she would never hear of my Walking Wet conversion, I wouldn't want to even throw that out in the world that this was some sort of personal satire about Jennell. So I searched for her contact information, discovering a contact form at one of her production companies, and wrote Jennell about my predicament. Offering just to scrap the whole project if she thought it was bad form.

Jennell wrote back:

Hi Matt.

Thank you for the letter. No worries about cheap stunts, etc. I jumped across the stream six years ago already. I'm surprised these days if someone HASN'T heard about it. And to answer the question that many ask, "Yes, I'm a LOT happier now."

I'll try to give your version of The Walking Wet a look over sometime soon. I ran a Swords & Wizardry version of it (with many modifications) two years ago in Texas and am currently doing a complete overhaul and expansion of it for one of my own projects. I set the events of my original adventure in the past of the one I'm working on. Lots of map expansions and revisions, new world content, some new monsters, and more. My current working draft is about 80 pages, typeset. I'm doing the same with another adventure Morkendaine Manor, that I wrote for issue 9 of the Dungeoneer as well. Unsurprisingly, a lot of my characters are female and unashamedly LGBT as well. 

 I currently have four different RPG adventure projects in the work and really need to finish one of them (I did, earlier this year, something called The Dragon's Secret for a fund raiser).

 Anyway, I hope the convention run goes well.

Folks that work in this niche hobby of ours are gracious as all get-out. I can think of only 1 single author of adventures I've enjoyed over the years who did not respond to a question or comment about their work. (Ha, and that query was really about obtaining something super rare that had been taken out of production.)

This particular response, however simple to Jennell, was poignant to me and stretched me back 3 1/2 decades to my 16-year-old self.

Thank you Jennell, you are missed. 

If folks want to help out Jennell's wife, there is a Go-Fund-Me page that was to help with refitting Jennell's home to help with her disability. This will now go to pay down medical bills and cover funeral expenses. 😢

The Dragon's Throat Submitted for DunDraCon

 

I submitted my entry for this year's DunDraCon, those of you out here on the left-coast should check this con out. Located at the Santa Clara, CA Marriott Hotel the Friday through Monday of Presidents Day weekend February 16-19, 2024.