"Duke" Brassclaw

I've been looking for inspiring images of Goblins and Kobolds for the Blackmash work I'm doing, but the side effect is that I wind up finding more pics that make me think of +Erik Jensen's Wampus Country. So now this image won't get out of my head. So here I present to you the villan, Duke Brassclaw. I used the Wampus Country Striga Generator to give me an idea of what I wanted to know about it / him. So here's a story about the "Duke" Brassclaw...

Name: "Duke" Brassclaw
Once there was a Duke and Duchess back West, in Granddad's Country. They joined the wrong Magikcal Social Organization. The price they paid was loss of social capital and since they were mostly broke anyway they had to sell their titles and lands and head East in to Wampus Country. This was some time ago, and since they came out here they say they ain't never been heard from since. You and me, we know different though, don't we?

Origin: foul pact, foolish bargain
Being sorcerers of some skill, the two thought they knew the score. Just move West, make some ritual bargains, get rich. More's the pity, they only realized too late that Wampus Spirits can be fowler...er fouler, and blacker than any old demon.

Hates: newborn infants
Now you know that "Brassclaw" was once two people. Because they bargained away their domestic union, and their future heirs, babies and their cries only serve to remind 'em of their bitter loss.

Modus Operandi: harries travelers on "her road"
Away out in Wampus someplace, there's a road that leads to an ancient place. This is where the Duke and Duchess went to make their dark pact. It was the place they'd hoped to call their own. Now, their minions patrol the land around that road, and demand "taxes" of any who dare venture there.

Features: frightening primitive mask
There was a mask, once. A big, ol' owl-headed thing with a long nose on it and little owl legs made of bright brass just a-pokin' out the front next to some ivory tusks! It was the symbol of the pact for riches and glory between the couple and the ancient spirit in that old, old place. The thing is...they had pledged to display the mask in their great hall, ugly thing that it was, and never never were they to put that thing on. Of course, they knew the mask was the face of that ol' spirit. It was plain to them as the nose on your face is to me...they jest knew that they could cross that spirit, and make it work for them if they put that mask on...so they did.

Dress: shift woven of spider-webs
Well, I don't have to tell you that the ancient spirit not only tricked them, but cussed them good for breaking that bargain to boot! It didn't welch on the deal entire...now the two of them do have a title and lands. Though not the way they might have thought. They've got a crown, and a cape too. But the cape is made of cobwebs, and the crown is made of feathers.

Supernatural Quirks: she can remove any curse with a kiss - any curse but her own, that is
Oh, and they're still powerful, my dears, yes they are! They can break the foulest of curses with but a kiss from their long nose.

Vulnerability: mundane plant (holly-berry, potato) Obviously, baby's breath!
I heard from a Cupcake Man I met on the road once that ol' Brassclaw can be kept away by wearing a crown of Baby's Breath in your hair, and that in the Springtime they ain't seen in the meadows nor the glades.

Conveyance: chariot/coach drawn by (black steeds, skinless hounds, blinded orphans)
But sometimes in the dark of night, you can hear Brassclaw's royal-purple coach a rumblin' down a lonesome road. If you do, be sure to be clear off the road before those poor, blind, orphans pulling that thing can smell you! 'Cause if you ain't, and they ketch you...you'll have to pull that coach in their place my dears! Yes, and they'll get to go home to your folks just as reg'lar as anything, and won't nobody notice it. Only folks who'll remember will be the two of you, and of course, won't be no helpin' it 'lessen you can trick Brassclaw into kissin' you!

Implement: skull, corpse, or body-part (cat’s skull, mummified infant, fox-tail)
The Cupcake Man told me that sometimes the Feyan out in the wild get a little meanness in them and try to scare folks on the road at night by conjuring up a vision of Brassclaw and that purple carriage. I tricked him into tellin' me how to know the difference between the haint they use and the real Brassclaw too! The only way to know you're stuck in the dread presence of the real Brassclaw is the bright red Foxtail Brasclaw carries as a wand...

Minion: superior-to-the-norm specimen (lesser undead, goblinoid)
...and the whippity-clever Goblin footman wearing giant hip-boots and a wig who carries the Foxtail wand and is never far from its master.

There! Now I can get to thinking of something else! Whew! Also, if you want stats...I don't know...use Owlbear stats and have the thing cast as a 4th level Magic-User or something. "Warning DIY D&D product...never use as directed."

~IMCTT

Hex Reassignment Surgery: Deities

So, the basic tone of the re-skin is trending towards "grim" and that means I'm working against my typical inclinations. Not a problem, but a challenge. +Jack Shear's TotGaD: What I know about the gods of the World Between is the source I'm drawing from.

Really quick detour:
I have just begun my read through of +Andrew Shields ' excellent 'The World Between for Fictive Hack, and I believe if you've not seriously looked at his adaptation you're doing yourself a disservice. There are a lot of exciting ideas, and he expands The World Between in very interesting ways, and adds a beautiful map into the mix.

Okay, back to deities. Before I enumerate a buch of Jack's stuff, let me give you the outline of my idea on how these are going to be used: The source material is human-centric. The humans of the setting have a unified, organized church that is a major pillar of human culture. Elven law dictates that humans are not permitted to worship any gods other than their own, and human culture and religious practices reinforce that. The demi-humans have their own cherry-picked pantheons from Jack's lists. Not much invention, just re-mixing whats already there.

The weird, otherworldly, and capricious Nature Gods seem like a good fit for the elves in the Black-Mash. These gods should be linked to rites that make them seem primal, alien, and pagan. Blood, and sex magic as suggested by +Andrew Shields seem appropriate.

• The Crooked Moon
• The Forest Who Walks
• The Gods of the Grapes
• The Lamenting Mother

Dwarves should have some considerably "metal" deities...so I'll combine the Storm Sovereign pantheon with anything on the list that seems fitting to me. I notice a lot of female deities in the dwarven pantheon, and that's fine. I've always liked my idea of matriarchal dwarves anyway. It will make for great tales of their dalliances.

• Astariax (Goddess of Intrigue, Stratagem, and Mercantile Prosperity) – always depicted as wearing luxurious clothing and with her nose turned up in the air haughtily; like if Paris Hilton were Machiavelli
• Charlak (God of Imprisonment) – it is said that he carved out dungeons beneath the world before men ever walked the globe.
• Garm-Gorak (the Bloody Maw, God of Wolves and War) – like a Viking on an LSD-and-PCP cocktail *In Black-Mash, Dwarves are Wolf-Riders and have a special kinship with Canines. Over time, they have bred dogs for many purposes and Dwarven Dogs are a thing as much as Dwarven Weapons.
• Hulmora (Goddess of the Elements) – if Thor were a permanently pissed-off goddess who threw thunder and lightning and rain everywhere
• Merrihel (Goddess of Death and Glorious Battle) – the Morrigan via German opera and Romanticism; has Shadar-Kai Valkyries; hates Baba Yaga
• Thanalia (Goddess of forging, sailing, and cavorting) – party-time goddess *Sailing might seem contradictory, but embrace that...its a good detail.

The humans of Black-Mash have an elaborate and unified religion. Their church plays a part in nearly every aspect of human culture, and is often the connective tissue of human civilization in the wilds.

• The Lady of the White Way – a warrior-mother goddess, like Mother Mary crossed with Joan d'Arc; a monotheistic goddess—all other divine beings are considered to be false idols and demons; has a hierarchical priesthood, a pope, cathedrals, inquisitors, witch hunters, and templars; her church has four apostolic saints.
• Arianna, the Bloody Redeemer, a crusader who brought the fledgling Church of the Lady to the pagans. She is depicted as a mighty warrior in plate armor wielding a sword stained with the blood of infidels. She is especially revered by cavaliers, mercenaries, warlords, and nobles from military families.
• Bernus, the Stumbling Wayfarer, was a merchant who converted to the faith of the Lady after an encounter with an angel on the road. He is depicted as a blind-folded pilgrim leaning on a shepherd's crook. He is especially revered by travelers, traders, gypsies, and penitents.
• Calbrius, the Light Seeker, a monk who compiled the scattered theological documents said to be the holy writ of the early Church into the Book of the Lady. He is depicted as a cowled, hunchbacked scribe laboring over ancient tomes. He is especially revered by scholars, astrologers, wizards, and learned theologians
• Coraline, the Voice of Doom, was a mystic who became a prophet after wandering the wastelands of the north. She is depicted as a gaunt figure whose eyes burn with divine radiance. She is especially revered by oracles, inquisitors, templars, and witch-hunters.

I think it would be a good idea to put a kind of dark-mirror version of the Church of the Lady into play. The reverence of these gods is a kind of open secret tolerated by the Church of the Lady. These gods seem like a good fit for halfings too, since halfings somehow were once human.

• Killane of the Road (The Luck Lord, The Prince of Coins, The Keeper of the Crossroads) – revered by gamblers, pirates, bandits, and travelers; a happy-go-lucky god; definitely a trickster. *the archetypal man at the crossroads 
• Mama Lazuul (Lady of the Midnight Hour) – goddess of crimes that happen under the cover of darkness and late-night rendezvous; goddess of thieves and love
• Papa Simett (Lord of Secrets and Whispers) – it is said that anything that is whispered is heard by Papa Simett

The Beast-Gods
These primal deities are a collection of Gnoll-gods and the forgotten, elemental remnants of pre Church domination. Isolated humans may take up the worship of these gods, but it will cost them much of their humanity.

• Father Sothack (God of the Briny Depths, the Drowned King, Prince of the Kraken's Maw) – grim sea god; Neptune crossed with Dagon; his avatar looks like that Cthulhoid guy from Pirates of the Caribbean; his rites involve near-drowning baptisms
• The Golden Lion – Beast God; God of Pride, Honor, and Martial Prowess
• Hakhan (Demon Lord of Bestial Bloodshed) – depicted as a massive minotaur or broo-like creature covered in blood and girt with a belt of skulls; basically the god of death metal album covers
• Junox (The Ever-Flowing God) – a god more feared than worshiped; said to have created oozes, slimes, jellies, puddings, etc.; rules from a throne made of garbage and refuse
• Kumo-Thlis (The Snake God, The One Who Slithers) – definitely sinister; his rites involve snake-handling, speaking in tongues, rolling in the aisles
• Mong-Trall (The Capricious Monkey God) – a trickster god; his temples are defended by monkeys wielding razors
• Mother Lothack (Demon Queen of the raging sea, the Tempest Queen, Our Lady of the Sharks) – the demonic consort to Father Sothack; those who survive shark attacks are considered to be blessed by her
• The Luminous Hawk – a Beast God; barbarians believe that he drags the sun into the sky each day; he is the enemy of the undead
• The Unconquered Badger – a Beast God; he is the God of defending hearth and home; you've seen the honey badger video right? he's like Ron Swanson in honey badger form

That leaves me with Devils, Demons, and Extra-planar Menaces. This is a kind of tool-box to pull from when I might need ideas for Black-Mash later.

• The Carrion Marquis – super creepy and gross death; god of death in war; depicted as a rotting general surrounded by a cloud of black flies
• The Dismembered One – super creepy and gross death god worshiped in Mord-Stavian; depicted as horribly crippled and missing limbs
• The Flayed Maiden – super creepy and gross death god; depicted much like Julia in Hellraiser II before she gets her skin back
• Matakhan (Demon Queen of Assassins, Executions, and Poison) – purple-skinned and multi-armed; bloodthirsty; may be a female avatar of Hakhan
• Morgath (Lord of Undeath, The Corpulent Reaper) – a big fat fleshy grim reaper; fit for doom metal album covers; worshiped by liches, vampires, pennangalan
• Narlathia (Fey Goddess of Enchantment, Pain, and Plunder) – her servants are deadly red-caps and drow; revered by marauders; Lolth-y and Cenobite-y
• Skaylex (Goddess of Fungi) – more feared than worshiped; the mushroom men are her servants
• Slithian Vor (Demon Queen of Aestheticism and Carnality) – Slaanesh as designed by Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley; sends succubi as emissaries
• Sluurge (Demon Lord of Pestilence, Famine, and Gallows Humor) – always depicted as wearing a top hat; a diseased dandy
• Zzorch (Demon Lord of Mutation and Wild Magic) – like Tzeentch, but more interested in mutations and magical experiments; Victor Frankenstein would have worshiped Zzorch

Fun with Abulafia

I'm learning how to use Abulafia. HENCE: the Wampus Country Witch Generator.

I'm still learning how to make it work. Even with just a couple of entries automated...its kind of exciting for me to watch it work. I had to force myself to stop dog-piling entries into the tables. Obviously, I'm going to have to separate the generator into "Classic" and "Modified" versions or something. I immediately started wanting to make "private" pages that would help me run games...any ideas on that front would be welcome!

Here's one to come back to:
Black Betty Sumac or "Dame Sumac"
foul pact, foolish bargain

My adventures with Abulafia are all documented here:
http://www.random-generator.com/index.php?title=Category:Coded_by_Bryan_Mullins

Hex Reassignment Surgery: Humanoids, assembled!

Right now I'm still reading the Blackmarsh hex list. It's interesting to note that the material looks pretty sandbox-y to me on the surface, but actually has some story baked right in.

Today I'm looking at races and making notes on how to use them. Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque takes an approach that I think is interesting:

"Since my campaign setting is humans-only for the player characters, I tend to associate each human-like race with a fear linked to the human condition; that is, each demi-human race represents some problematic aspect of mankind that we like to pretend doesn't exist."

So, I'm making a list of things that will help me keep towards the uncanny side of demi-humans. Its intended to be a kind of quick-n-dirty reference to remind me what I'm aiming for when I use or re-skin demi-humans from the Blackmarsh source. I intend to "lump" some of these together and so they are listed together.

Dwarves: the fear of Avarice

Dwarves should always have a price. One that is high, strange, and inflexible. Dwarves should always have the most unique gear and / or services that can be crafted and bought. Dwarves will always insist on being paid in the clearest of terms. They should be blunt to the point of rudeness about what they will and won't do; do and don't want etc. Dwarves should also behave as though their greed is normal. They will expect those they interact with to have a price, and will want to know what that is. Graft and nepotism are expected...then you'd want to run their societies kind of Roman. Patrons, and favors and bribes, and obsessions. They might be kind of Hanseatic, or Mafioso...I'm not sure. The entire race should be in some sort of protracted war against another non-human race over a failure to pay a debt. These are the folk who created the idea of interest as a thing that accumulates, they may have invented money too.

Drow, Eladrin & Elves:  fear of Decadence, Alien-ness, & Chaos

My first lumped group, and one of the more problematic demi-human races for me personally. I don't really like fantasy elves of any stripe, its just a problem I have. I like that Jack has removed the color coding from his elves, so I'm keeping that and renaming them all Faeries until I come up with something better. Every Elf, Nixie, Sprite, and Mermaid in the Backmarsh source needs to be filtered as I go. That shouldn't be hard to do because one of the stories baked into the setting has to do with Elves and where they stand on the idea that they have the right to govern the other races. That can be spun in a gothic way, right?

Where you find a Faerie will tell you a lot about them. If they are rustic, they might be Elves; urbane and social, possibly Drow; aloof and hermit-like...maybe Eladrin. Fey should have a modestly knowable set of logical operators. They should keep their word (perhaps strictly), have long memories, and have a hard time relating to shorter-lived races. They should not use magic, but rather be magical. They should distribute boons and curses frequently per the TotGaD source.

My list from before applies here. Making them weird and unique will be necessary as they have a large part of the Blackmarsh back story, and I might get bored with them if I don't lean into the challenge.

Giants, Trolls, & Ogres fear of inebriation, the abject, & cannibalism

Two words for you...Troll Hunter. There is plenty of swamp in Blackmarsh and plenty of Trolls in the TotGaD Compendiums. A broad selection of Troll-ish goodness lets me have good, old-fashioned monster fun times. I like that Jack gives Trolls a kind of antipathy. Their nearness assaults the mind and drives out reason. They curdle milk, and pollute clear streams of water. They rage through the countryside and consume mass quantities. If they do talk, they talk of the greatest meals they've ever had (or the bravest people, or the most valuable item) and may be goaded and tricked easily. This includes Hags though, too so don't get too triumphant there, Finn McCool.

Gnolls: fear of Animality

Maybe it was all the He-Man and Thundercats in my early days, but Hyena / Jackal dudes are completely rad. They should attack in packs, have alphas, and be red in tooth and claw. Anytime you start to put a wolf encounter in, change it to a Gnoll encounter instead. Gnolls are often linked to slaving in D&D...who are they taking people to? They don't keep them.

Gnomes: fear of the Unheimlich

If used correctly, the players should assume the Gnome in question is a kind of representation of Satan. Maybe there's only The Gnome, and it serves some similar cosmological role as the adversary / tempter. Rows and rows of shark-like teeth is a great image to use to startle and disarm. They should offer great power at a terrible price, or seemingly easy solutions to tough problems.

Goblins & Kobolds: fear of science run amok & misrule

Basically Gremlins. They should spawn like crazy, die in droves and be mostly reptilian...keep the "dog head" for extra strangeness if you like. Should be known for eating the flesh of Humans, diabolically-trapped warrens, dangerous war machines, weird magical automatons (made of what: wood? bronze?), and unexpected explosions. Their leaders should be a major cut above, with ageless shamans and wizards maintaining enough organization to keep the Man-flesh supply steady. Goblin as a name has a lot of baggage attached to it for me, so I will probably use Kobold in its place. "Kobolds ate my baby!"

Halflings: fear of place

What happens to a Human when they have no hope? What does it look like when they succumb to the mundanity of life? Hobbits. Thats the answer. Over time, Humans can literally shrink as their spirit of independence withers and they become a caricature of the free-willed individual they were once. Halflings, are therefore mundane in every outward aspect and sinister in every interior manner. Interactions with them should be a kind of "hey this could be you, if you'd settled down and started pig farming..." or "Damn, down-and-out is really down and out..."They might be used as a kind of house-fairy analogue as well...the ones you leave little gifts for in hopes they don't ruin your life. They should certainly be a kind of gleeful parasite on human societies.

Orcs: fear of savagery

Bred for war, but by whom? Everywhere you find a Faerie who does not want to get its hands dirty, or whatever...there will be an Orc. Guards, brutes & enforcers. Orcs without masters leave the "civilized" areas and wind up with even more sinister masters. TotGaD has them listed as a created race, so there may not be any sexual dimorphism. Being created raises lots of interesting questions. How do you control them? Can they be commanded to do anything other than delight in savagery? What vile rituals and ingredients come together to create them? 

Tieflings: fear of racial degeneration

Caliban & Half-bloods. Interbreeding rarely goes well, and there are dark, corrupting forces out there everywhere. Curses, diabolic-pacts, and magical mutations are just a few ways you could wind up with a messed up humanoid. I personally don't like Tieflings (see Elves above) so I wont be using them in the strictest sense. Maybe some cultists and sorcerers have to hide their forked tongues, and file their horns down...thats fine. What I'm thinking of is more along the lines of Mike's Half-Elves. Setting aside the willfully mutated, I want some slice of half-blooded freaks to be victims, or innocents. That might be too Quasimodo...I don't know.

That's everything I have that overlaps between what I want in the game, whats in Blackmarsh, and what Jack has written. I'm resisting the urge to kitchen sink a whole bunch more monsters. Snake-men, for example, make an appearance in any game that I run (...too much V: The Final Battle for me as a kid...) My counter-argument to myself being that any more 'monsters' should be unique rather than assumed as a 'species' ... which serves my ethic of trying to fight the Vanilla Fantasy Creep.

~IMCTT

Hex Reassignment Surgery: Backmarsh, meet The World Between

Deciding where I wanted to pull my ideas from for this mash-up / re-skin was pretty easy. I've been reading +Jack Shear's Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque compendiums for a couple of weeks now. I am really enjoying them as gaming materials and academic primers on the subject of gothic literature. Reading them, and trying to understand 'how-to: Gothic' has been fun and challenging. I'm finding that in my attempts to wrap my head around the materials that I'm able to prevent some of my own, vanilla fantasy assumptions from being so automatic.

The Swords & Wizardry SRD has all the marks of a labor of love, and like its bigger cousin the Pathfinder SRD I love that its online, and easy to get to. When I saw the Blackmarsh Campaign Setting described as an example for newer GM's to follow, I decided I wanted to take the time to try and understand it. Hex-mapped campaign settings are not really in my background as a gamer; I was rarely able to afford game books growing up, and I didn't take the time to really appreciate the technical side of game books until much more recently. So, hex-mapping is pretty much "all-new" to me.

Having read most of the TotGaD companions a couple of times now, I can tell that while I'm going to aspire to be as "Gothic" as I can manage while re-skinning this, I don't think I will manage to be as faithful to the inspirational materials as I want to be. That's pretty okay with me in the context of trying it out though. I'm not writing any papers for Jack's class so I should be okay. The exciting thing for me is going to be using his material as a way to stretch my GM repertoire and try to put a clear "fingerprint" on this basic campaign setting. Due to my own personal tastes I may wind up with something more Alex Toth than Edgar Allan Poe, but I will have made an honest attempt.

I want to read Blackmarsh through a couple of more times before starting, in earnest with the re-skin and hex reassignment, but here are some of the ideas I've got forming currently on the big picture side:

Blackmarsh vocabulary changes:
We have GOT to get rid of 'Viz' as a name. I can't take it...I keep flashing back to the Coo Coo Cola Cult episode of Rescue Rangers. I'd rather call it Magicite, or Manna. Quintessence has the right sort of feel to it, but seems less "does what it says, says what it does" than Manna. Even blood stone, star metal, or ghost rock would be better. So, Viz is gone and Manna is in for now. I want to reserve Jack's 'demonstone' for later.

So, Manna is a thing in this setting. A discreet unit of magical quintessence that allows a magic user to cast a spell, but retain it in memory. This works on a 1:1 ratio of Manna to Spell Level. So, you can burn 1 Manna and keep a Level 1 spell in memory; 2 Manna for a Level 2 spell etc. Also, 1 Manna is equivalent to 100 GP for making magic items.

That's pretty cool, right? It makes Manna a fantasy-style gold-rush kind of resource. The problem now is that I'm reading that Manna (Viz) is both a discreet unit and some kind of interestingly unique snow-flake resource. The setting has some indications that it can be any number of amazing forms: "a flask of pure spring water, a newly bloomed flower, or an iridescent rock" while simultaneously, the sand-box has locations with artefacts that have places where "Viz can be inserted." So I'm going to want to clean that up. Hopefully without rules / too many rules. The questions that arise immediately for me are "where are the Manna pools?" or "how can I make that game-able?"

What I'm thinking right now is that Manna can be caught, and crystalized somehow to make it a unit. With some skill, this could tie into the gothic 'grandeur of nature' thing and maybe even cast an eye towards Reason vs Supernaturalism...I'm not sure yet.

Gothic themes and window dressing:
Feyan Folk, Elves, Eladrin, Drow and fairies of the D&D description are a bit whimsical for the inspirational material. Making Elves weird is going to be hard for me in actual play, so I'm going to want to set them up well in my head. That means narrowing the field and changing some designations and really trying to use Elves for something other than 'High Men' or whatnot. (I will not take 'Ancient Astronauts' off the table.) So I want to lump Elves, Eladrin, and Drow as concepts into something more compact. I think I want use them to highlight the fears as indicated in the Compendium...I just don't want to make a major kind of distinction between them. I think I'll have an easier time emphasizing the subtleties at the table if I keep them together in one slot in my head.

I will want to think deeply about the cultural rules that allow Men and Feyan (or whatever I'll call them eventually) to interact. In Blackmarsh, as in Tolkien, the Elves are the shepherds of civilization but on the wane...I'll want to address that in particular rather than assume it. Bake it into the setting as a feature not a bug. Keeping them weird will require some anthropological raiding for strange customs and the like.

Weird ideas about individuality, property, and modesty
roles as names "Puck" "Alder King"
bound by certain kinds of agreements
morbidly fascinated by mortality in short-lived sentients
a comment on class / colonialism
problems with intensity or exposure to human emotionality makes ruling humans complex
have a 'veiled countenance' and 'unveiled' wich is hard on other sapients

Monsters are going to get lumped a little too. I want Trolls that are Giants, and want to call them Trolls ala 'Troll Hunter' with a lot of various breeds. There are Troll tables for that. Gnolls are definitely in because of the 'Grand Guignolls' and my love of animal-dudes. There's plenty of swamp, but I don't know what kind of D&D swamp denizens I want. I do want Goblins as Gremlins, and maybe Kobolds can be my swamp guys. They eat humans and are devious so they hit some classic Degenerate Hillbilly notes with a lot less of the classist implications I see with Ogres and Voodoo Halflings. If I have Orcs, I may use them as created enforcers for the Elves...

Thats it for now. Feel free to sound off on some of this if you have the notion.

~IMCTT

Hex Reassignment Surgery: Getting Started

Okay, I want to learn something about hexes and stocking them. I've been doing the reading, and being the lazy sort that I am...I intend to re-purpose, re-skin, and borrow wholesale from wherever I can. The purpose is to learn something about what kinds of building and randomization tools I work best with. That means its time for Hex Reassignment Surgery!

Rule #1: Free is for me

If its not free, with some sort of fairly-clear intent of free use attached its not going to be used.

Rule #2: Re-skin-spiration!

There are a ton of awesome, random generators and free ideas out there...try to use them to good effect.

Rule #3: Less is more

Just a reminder to keep the representations light so more people can use them.

Basic Ingredients: 

Blackmarsh Campaign Setting @ Swords & Wizardry SRD

Labyrinth Lord by Goblinoid Games

Labyrinth Lord rules in wiki format

Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque by Jack W. Shear
The Grim, Gritty, and Strange world of Hubris by Mike Evans

Hex-Stocking Theory:

Untimately: Hex Stocking

Jeff's Gameblog: Wilderness Stocking

The Welsh Piper: Worldbuilding

The Alexandrian: Hexcrawl

Miscellaneous Inspiration & Resources:

Save vs Total Party Kill ~ awesome web apps

truculent.org ~ Labyrinth Lord Character Generator

Secret Santicore 2011

Zak's Orientation Essays

Sham's Grog n Blog: Distribution of Monsters and Treasure

Links to Wisdom ~ Preparing and Running the Game

Damn, that's a lot to contemplate! Next time, the Elevator Pitch, and some re-defining of the basic Blackmarsh lingo to suit my desire.

~IMCTT

Wampus Country Roll Call

There's a game I want to happen. Maybe you'd like to play? Its a Play by Post set in a tall-tale fantasy wilderness called Wampus Country. The setting is great, go and see. 

Here are the details. +Erik Jensen has this living, breathing, and unique land just waiting for us to kick around in. He's using Labyrinth Lord as his base rules. His house rules are on his blog. 

If you're wondering what that might look like using some version of Basic D&D as its engine, I will tell you that recently some PC's stopped a gigantic rooster from destroying a town...so yeah.

Erik says: 
"I'm projecting a "fairly casual" pace - looking at a minimum of 4 posts a week as we find our feet, and adjusting from there.  My posts will most likely be in the evening (EST) during the work-week.

Please distinguish between ic spoken, ic narrative, and ooc text by some clear means in your posts.  I don't need standardization so long as I can easily tell what's what!"

You don't need to know anything about the setting except that we're going to try and play in a game where things like The Jack Tales, the legend of Mike Fink, are mostly true. It could get a little Deadwood, or be more Wild, Wild, West or O' Brother Where art Thou? ... but one thing it won't be is boring. Particularly if you are there with me. So...consider it won't you?

If you're interest is peaked, then let Erik know. He'll provide greater details, I'm just the hawker.

Here are some things that might get you in the mood:

http://wampuscountry.blogspot.com/2012/08/booze-banjos-and-bazoul.html
http://wampuscountry.blogspot.com/p/house-rules.html
http://character.totalpartykill.ca/basic/