What a Fiasco

I work part time at my FLGS (Friendly Local Gaming Store), which is why my posts to this blog (and my other, political blog You Wouldn't Vote For Me) have fallen off precipitously over the past three years or so. I do really enjoy working at the FLGS, I'm DM'ing one of the two weekly D&D 5e Adventurers League games plus working two other days as a sales associate, and it's let me stretch my gamemaster muscles and hone my craft. Plus I get to talk to a ton of people about games every week, and get a little extra spending cash, so that's not all bad. But this post is not about why I have not posted recently, it is about a game I dislike. I dislike it's premise, I dislike that its creator calls it a game when I (and many others) deem it to be an activity at best, I dislike the frothing-at-the-mouth fanboys of this activity that will hear no ill words about their beloved activity and its creator, and I dislike that they charge anybody money for this product when you could write a better activity in a blog post and pass it around for free. Which is what I am doing right now. I am going to stop talking about the original not-a-game activity, and give you a better one, that does not pretend it is a game and does not cost you any money. No, I will not shame said activity by giving you the name... but you can figure out which one I'm talking about.

Okay, one last thing about the not-a-game activity and I will shut up about it - I had a run-in with the creator of said activity on the internet, which prompted this post. We got into an argument over if something was a game or not, and that ended when he made up a quote from Isaac Asimov or Ray Bradbury (one of those sci-fi author luminaries from the '60s) trying to prove that all of his works were, indeed, games. I could not find the source of that quote after an hour of searching the vast reaches of the internet, and I realized he was full of shit and blocked him. And yes, we carry his activity at the FLGS I work at, but we like making money and people still want to buy it, so I bite my tongue when someone asks for it by name, and avoid mentioning it if they don't.

If you are wondering what this activity thing is that I keep talking about, and the difference between an activity and a game, think about the board game Chutes and Ladders. This is actually an activity, not a game. Why? There is no strategy to it, no decisions to be made, you merely roll dice or spin the wheel or whatever your copy has, and whoever is the luckiest, wins. It's an activity meant to teach kids how to count or what colors are if you had the edition that used color cards. This is not a game, there are no tactics to it, there is no sport, there is merely waiting to see who got luckiest and "wins". Likewise, what I am about to share is also an activity, because there is no tactics, no strategy, no competition - you will be sharing an activity with your friends and enjoying yourselves. That's it. There will be no declared "winners" or "losers", you will simply be doing a non-game something with other people. Or by yourself. See, my activity is wide ranging! You can participate in it by yourself or do it with as many people as you can stomach.

Are you a Star Wars nerd? Do you think that the original trilogy (called capital "O" Original from here on out) was pretty good, the Prequels could really have used a rewrite, and the Sequel movies are an abomination that need to be killed with fire for the obvious cash grabs they are? Then have I got an activity for you and your like-minded friends! First, let's talk about what you'll be doing - you and your friends will write brand new scripts for Episodes 1, 2, and 3 of the Star Wars franchise. Not rewrite, but write, from scratch. Second, this can be a one time party activity kind of thing, or you can go to the deep end of the pool, and form a group of friends that will meet regularly until it's done. You go as deep or as shallow into this as you want. Third, you're not making money off of this, no one wants to buy your fanfic, so don't worry about IP... unless you do manage to write something so impressively awe inspiring, in which case I suggest changing all of the names, removing all of the fan-service, self referential bits, and never, I mean NEVER, mention it is a Star Wars knockoff to anyone else or face the wrath of a brigade's worth of Disney Attack Lawyers.

BASIC ACTIVITY

First thing I suggest you do is define how deep into the pool you want to go - will you splash around in the kiddie pool, brainstorming for a couple of hours, developing characters and plot outline for one of the movies? Or will you go all the way to the 15 meter dive tank and write complete scripts for all three of the Prequel Trilogy? I suggest going shallow at first, not really putting any pressure on any of your friends and scaring them off early, and just see who is really into it and who is only lukewarm on the idea. From there, if you and some of your friends really like it, you can expand the scope and go deeper into the project. But whatever you decide to do, go for it. Have at it and have some fun with it. Remember, not a game, but an activity you share with your friends. 

Great, we have a goal, whether temporary or not, short-term or long-term, we now know a rough estimate of what we want to be doing. Now we need to make sure we have an end point for the trilogy - what details need to be present at the end of our Prequels to flow nicely into the Originals? Let's make a list:

• Luke Skywalker is unknowingly a Force adept, and was given to his Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen (possibly not related) to be kept hidden from his father.
• His father was Anakin Skywalker, a noted Force user and fighter pilot, who eventually becomes Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith.
• Anakin was friends with Obi-Wan Kenobi, another Force user and fighter pilot.
• Anakin and Obi-Wan fought together in the Clone Wars.
• The current Emperor, also a Force user and Sith Lord, brought about the fall of the Old Republic (called just The Republic at the time) to become Emperor. He is a supreme dictator and uses military might over diplomatic bargaining to get what he wants (power).
• The Jedi, a group of Force users, who Obi-Wan and supposedly Anakin belonged to, were much more prevalent in The Republic, and they were opposed by the Sith, and hunted to near extinction by the Imperial government.
• Yoda, another Force user and former member of the Jedi, is also now in hiding.

That's it for now. Right about this point, I hope you're yelling at your monitor, phone, or tablet that I've left out a TON of information, and I have, on purpose (I hope you're yelling because that means you're invested). No, I'm serious here, I have reasons for what I've included and what I haven't. This is the most barebones set of information and characters you need in place to make the Original trilogy happen. You may certainly throw in whatever other bit of trivia or fan-service that you want, but this is the most basic information we need to happen in the Prequels. Yes, I did not mention that Leia is Luke's sister and also a Force user, see below in the Advanced Activity section for more on that and other details you are probably gnashing your teeth and rending your hair over. Think about it for a second, the gap between the end of the 3rd Prequel and the 1st Original is, what? Twenty years or so? That is the gap between World War 1 and World War 2, and look how much changed in that period of time - Germany was a completely different country, Russia had become Soviet Russia, none of the big names in any army were still around, it is an entire new cast of characters, and the countries involved have completely different reasons for participating in the new war. I think this is a failing with the Prequels, too much dependence on old, fan-service characters that have no logical reason to stick around in what amounts practically to limbo for 20 years before showing back up in the Originals. So this is the list I'm providing you to start with. However, if you want to add or subtract to the list, or even toss it all and write a new one from scratch, this is your activity, do with it what you will.

Now you have your characters chosen, whether using my list or your own, time to at least generalize an outline. This could be your entire activity or just the beginning of it, but either way, it's a good idea to put down the major plot points on a piece of paper, typed into a computer document, or if you're really fancy, a great big whiteboard. (side note: I have this fantasy of putting whiteboards on every wall, like the UFC War Room where they plan all the fights, so my home office is almost wallpapered in them, but they are very expensive and I don't really have a use for them... but this would be a great use for those) If you need help about what type of plot points you should put in your Prequels, let me point to you some story/script writing tutorials - 7 Point Story Structure; Dan Harmon's Story Circle; and of course, Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey, which George Lucas used when writing the Originals. Or you can write down whatever springs to mind and sort it out later. Whatever work flow that, ahem, works for you and your friends.

As an example of how I would pursue this activity is I would go through and decide what to keep and what to completely throw out of plot, characters, and information from the Prequels. Here is my thought process:

• I think Lucas got one thing right, at least with Episodes 2 & 3, and that is the Prequels should be about Anakin, he should be the protagonist (quote Mr Plinkett with me, "pro-Tuh-Gone-ist").
• No, I'm not going to do Anakin as a very young boy, I think Anakin and Obi-Wan are much closer in age than what we are shown in Episode 1.
• I do not like the fan-service of including C-3PO or R2-D2, so they are out.
• I don't like the Gungans, they are insulting to everyone's intelligence, so goodbye JarJar.
• I do like that Luke's mom is a high ranking political figure of a planet and that's how she and Anakin meet (I'm also okay with the name Padme, we'll keep it), and thought I was against the soon to be Emperor being from the same planet as Padme, but now that I think about it more, that is a good excuse for the nigh-Emperor and Anakin to meet.
• I don't like that the Clone Wars are the Republic creating clones and using them on the Trade Federation, implying that all Stormtroopers are clones, a fact that never came up in the Originals, so I'll be changing that. Not sure how yet, but definitely changing it. The Clone Wars themself will still be the backdrop for the Prequels. "It is a time of galactic war..."

Just a small taste, I won't go thru the entire activity here for you, but just as an example. And you note that I haven't done anything that looks like a script, or what order these thoughts are in, this is just some notes that I am making as I ponder where I want to go in my script. So let's start on the outline. First, what is the broadest description of each movie, in your mind? Here's what my first Prequel looks like:

Obi-Wan and Anakin meet at the Jedi Academy. They are assigned to two older Jedi as their Padawans (it was a good enough name, I'll keep that too), and those Jedi are sent on a diplomatic mission to the Separatist Council. The Separatists are threatening the Republic Senate that they will secede as they do not want to pay the taxes levied by the Senate, and they do not want to give up their clones, who they are oppressing by making them do all the dangerous physical jobs in their sector of the Republic. The negotiations are occurring on the nearby planet of Naboo, where Senator Palpatine of Naboo and his young assistant, Padme, are hosting the negotiations. The Jedi arrive to help in the deliberations, but have to protect the Republic negotiating team as the Separatists attempt to kidnap them and hold them for ransom. Obi-Wan and Anakin perform brilliantly, but something about the whole thing seems off to the young Padawans. Palpatine takes Anakin under his wing, politically, and the Padme/Anakin romance begins. The Clone Wars officially begin as the Separatists bring overwhelming numbers of clones and capture Naboo. The movie ends with the negotiating team, plus the Naboo representatives fleeing the planet ahead of the Separatist invasion fleet.

You set up the barest bones in the description, and then expand on them further. Start adding in as many names as you can, but if you just don't have a name for a place, or a person, or an object, put a [PLACEHOLDER] down and come back to it later. This includes the names of each of the movies. Never liked that Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi suddenly became Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope, etcetera etcetera? Now you can change that shit to your heart's content. Once you feel like your description is good enough, you can stop there or you can start writing a script, whatever you or you and your friends have decided on. I won't bore you with a full tutorial on what screenplays look like, I'll let the YouTubers do that for me. And even if you decide to continue on, you don't have to write an entire screenplay, you could write/type the major scenes, whatever you or you and your friends feel like doing.

And that's it, the Basic Activity is complete and what happens next is up to you. You can call it done and never touch it again. You can pick it up at a later date and put some polish on it, or expand it. Bring in some new friends, different friends, and work on it some more, or even start from scratch and do it again. Without worrying about who won or lost or rolling unnecessary dice - I know, I'm a longtime D&D grognard, and NOT rolling dice feels like blasphemy, but if you're not playing a game, no need to roll any dice - you or you and your friends should have an enjoyable experience. If you did not get any enjoyment from my activity, my apologies, and I will send you your refund of the zero dollars you paid for this activity via carrier pigeon with haste. It's not like I held a gun to your head and forced you to do it, this is all voluntary, remember. 

ADVANCED ACTIVITY

Okay, so you've done as much of the Basic Activity as you have wanted to and are now thirsting for more. This time, instead of writing just the Prequel Trilogy, first you start off writing the 6th movie, Return of the Jedi, or as it was originally called, Revenge of the Jedi. Never liked the awkward almost-incest between Luke and Leia in Empire? Well, when they wrote that movie, the plan was there WAS going to be another Force user out there, it just wasn't going to be Leia, and Leia and Luke weren't going to be siblings. This other Force user was going to be the focus of the Sequels, but we got the movie we got at the end of the Original Trilogy, and thus the Sequels that we got, too. All of that info comes out in the final draft of Return, along with a lot of things, like where the climactic battle was going to take place and the Ewoks. That's why, of the Original Trilogy, older fans will really like the first two movies and think they are great and the third is merely passable, but the more impressionable youngsters like Return the best (and probably the original Prequels, too... feh) because of all the pretty space battles. So if you want to go the longer, more difficult route, take the Advanced path, rewrite Return/Revenge to your liking and then go write the Prequels with that information. If you like Return exactly the way it is, make sure to add to your list of facts up there that Luke and Leia are siblings, Leia is a Force user, and while Luke is given to Owen and Beru to raise, Leia is given to Bail Organa, now or future Imperial Senator from Alderaan. I would include Bail Organa as a character in my Prequels rewrite, because we never see him in the Originals, so you're not sullying anyone's image of him. But like Owen and Beru and the planet Tattoine, don't have Anakin interact with Bail very much. It makes no sense for Obi-Wan to give Anakin's kids, whether he knows they are alive or not at the end of the Prequels, to folks or places Anakin may interact with again, he is a strong Force user and will detect his kids, even from a distance.

You have battled thru some, part, or all of the above and are now looking for another activity - welcome to PHASE TWO ADVANCED! You now have your Prequels scripts, you might have a new Revenge of the Jedi (or whatever you called it), and you can probably guess where Phase 2 is going - write a new set of Sequels scripts. Do you want your Sequels to happen immediately after the Original Trilogy hit theaters, instead of the Prequels, so you can use the Original actors before they age too much? Do it! Do you think that Timothy Zahn's now non-canonical Heir to the Empire trilogy of books is the best piece of Star Wars fiction to come from the minds of anyone, and it's a crime it was never used to write a script? Write those scripts! Do you want to go in a completely new direction with new characters, new plots, just the same universe? Go for it!

DENOUEMENT

In the end, what was all this for? I could have saved myself a lot of trouble and work by telling everyone what a whiney little bastard the creator of the earlier activity is, by name, and why you should not spend your hard earned money on his "games", also dropping their names. But that part I only tangentially care about, as this exercise ties into role-playing games or more specifically, campaign story creation. Can you take apart a popular story, be it movie, book, TV show/streaming series, or comic book and manipulate it to keep the parts you like and add what you want and present it to your players so that they both enjoy it and don't realize you've committed Grand Theft Storyline? This activity is a sneaky exercise to both work on those skills AND to satisfy your inner fanfic nerd. And if you're perfectly fine with how all of the Star Wars movies have been written, pick another series that could use a polish and follow what I set out above to rewrite it. Please, dear Science, do not tell me how wrong I am about the Prequels (understandable if those movies came out when you were a kid, but for no other reason) and the Sequels (there you are just wrong as they suck) and that they are the best thing since sliced anything.

If you have made it this far and are interested in the exercise, but not a big enough fan of the Star Wars franchise to know where to begin or even what I am talking about, look around for other series that you think need a touch up.

• Disappointed that Hollywood, amongst all of the other remakes and reboots, still has not done anything with the The Last Starfighter? That one is actually a good choice if you don't want to dive into Star Wars, as there is very little lore and worldbuilding that exists for the movie, so you can go nuts to create your own expansion on what little is out there. 
• Are you saddened that they bloated The Hobbit into three live action movies, and wish they had kept it to a much slimmer two instead? Here is the encouragement you need to do an edit on the existing movies or rewrite your own!
• Are you horrified at what Michael Bay has done with the live action Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Write better stories than the folks who wrote those scripts (man, to do a live action TMNT movie that more closely followed the original Eastman & Laird comic series? that would be epic).
• You don't have to only look at movies, are there any TV shows/streaming series or seasons thereof that you wish happened differently? Did they introduce the Borg in Star Trek Enterprise way too early (my opinion was they should have just left them out entirely)? What would Falling Skies have looked like if they had just one or two more seasons to expand on the plots they had developed and were able to wrap them up? Did Brisco County, Jr. end tragically too soon (the answer is yes, yes it did)? Now that Joss Whedon is out the picture, what would you do with another couple of seasons of Firefly? 

No matter what you like, there are opportunities as a Gamemaster and as a player to borrow (outright steal) elements from those stories and use them yourself. What movie or TV show do you think you could have done a better job writing? What movie or TV show do you want to steal a plot from for your TT/VTT RPG group?

Lessons Learned - Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde 3e to 5e Conversion

Hi ho, Hearty Adventurers! All the way back in 2018, I began running a D&D 5e campaign for my friends, and being the lazy bastard innovatively efficient DM that I am, instead of coming up with my own adventure, I converted The Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde from D&D 3e (well, 3.5e) into 5th edition. While I may be a lazy bastard (fine, I admit it), I'm at least enough of a team player that I am willing to share my notes so if you want to run SGoS in 5e yourself, you don't have to work too hard at it. I mean, you have to buy your own copy of the adventure (I suggest getting the DM's Guild PDF copy instead of shelling out upwards of $50 for a physical copy), but after that, smooth sailing!

Quick review of SGoS - it's not the best adventure out there, but still a neat little story, with some interesting set pieces, and was generic enough that I plopped it into my own campaign world and the setting for the adventure (Valley of the Obelisks) became my party's "home away from home" for the next 3 years of playing this campaign. It's great for 1st level adventurers, and lasted for 4 months of almost weekly game sessions for my group, so if you're looking for something to ease your new PCs into harder adventures, this is a good choice.

My notes (we're almost to the conversion, promise!) are pretty sparse, as I wrote these for myself and not originally for public consumption, so I will try to explain my mad ramblings with new notes, which I will place in italics after every section. Where I pulled monsters from the Monster Manual, I marked those MM followed by the page number; XGtE for Xanathar's Guide to Everything; VGtM for Volo's Guide to Monsters; MToF for Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes; and I even pulled some stuff from the Dungeon Master's Guide (DMG). With no further ado, The Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde!

The Other Stuff

There is a bunch of stuff the WotC staff put into SGoS, like specific races and classes found in the Valley of the Obelisks (the physical setting of the adventure) and a bunch of 3.5e-specific prestige classes and faction-specific magic items... and I didn't use any of them. Sorry. I really liked 3/3.5 Edition prestige classes, but they really don't fit into 5e well, as the power curve is much steeper in 3e. As you'll see further down, I was still pretty new to the 5th Edition rules and was trying to jam 5e into my 3e expectations, but I didn't even bother trying to fit this section in as I didn't need them for my homebrew world I was plopping the Valley of the Obelisks into. They're pretty interesting and give you a feeling for the lands surrounding the Valley of the Obelisks, so if you're looking to add some more flair to your game world, you won't go wrong adding in what you can, flavor-wise, like new factions and groups, but I strongly warn you away from trying to copy things in stat-for-stat.

In the Beginning

-travel to Valley of Obelisks NOTE: I had other things before this, but they were boring, like "Session Zero" and "get party into Dogpack" (their Patron organization, back before Eberron and Tasha's came out and I realized what I was using was a Patron).

-the route is 10 days, danger rating of 1/3 (protected lands, have to roll three consecutive ones to experience an encounter), resources and navigation are automatic, and discovery is 1 (fairly civilized and well explored) NOTE: this is referring to a system for determining when an encounter happens during overland travel I got from The Angry GM. He does great analysis of the game, and comes up with some pretty neat systems to use in the game. This one I need to pick back up again, but as my current group is doing urban adventures in an Eberron campaign, I'm not too sure when I'll have the opportunity to use it next.

-random encounters along the way (XGtE93), forest (1-2), grassland (3-4), hill (5-6)

-arrive at the Valley (city of Sumberton starts pdf page 29)

-Master Teagallow dies of natural causes NOTE: Master Teagallow was a NPC from my homebrew world and a part of the Patron organization the party belonged to. The kingdom they were from, Toklan, was looking to annex the Valley of the Obelisks through non-military means, and had sent the party to guard the kingdom's negotiator, Master Teagallow. He was this grumpy, old, former adventuring halfling, who promptly died of natural causes when the party arrives at the Valley of the Obelisks. The party was then ordered to take over negotiations, which is why this note and several others pertain to nothing in the SGoS adventure text.

-PCs find Sending Stone (DMG199, except these are once each way per day) and talk to Prime Magistrate NOTE: more tie-in to my homebrew world, Prime Magistrate is the leader of the Patron organization.

-PCs must continue the mission to the best of their ability, replacement negotiating team is at least 2 months out

-meet with the Lord’s Council in Sumberton

-halfling leader is Vintra Marktunsel (for joining Toklan); human leader is Lord Bariss Carstellan (against joining Toklan), sons Jarrik and Thrann; dwarven leader is Harunio Quell, mine owner at Silvermont (neutral); elven leader is Anastrianna Shul Shennek, leader of Oakwood (neutral) NOTE: since I was leading the party into the main plot of the adventure from a different way than the book has you go, I needed this info up front and handy to roleplay this first scene with the party.

-get first adventure lead from Marktunsel (Slaughtergarde pg22)

The Laboratory

-travel to the lab is half a day, only one hour off the road, no foraging is required, and no encounters or discoveries will occur NOTE: this points back to that wilderness travel and encounter system I was using from The Angry GM.
-outside the Laboratory, the party will either run into or be ambushed by a light patrol of 4 goblins (MM166), 200xp NOTE: here's the important stats for this monster encounter - who/what they are, where I can find the stats, and what the total Experience Points for the encounter are, as I was not doing hallmark leveling, actually counting out the XP the party earned for overcoming enemies (they don't have to fight, just overcome and still get the XP), solving puzzles, accomplishing missions, and whatnot. I also now write all my monsters and NPCs on 3x5 index cards so I don't have to keep flipping back and forth in all the various monster books.
-the Laboratory (pdf page 82, map on pdf page 38)

-DC formula: (oldDC-10)/2+10 = newDC NOTE: this was important enough I wanted it bolded so I could reference it on the fly, but as you can see further down, I just put the adjusted DCs right into my notes. This formula doesn't work 100% of the time, but is close enough to work most of the time if you are doing your own 3e to 5e conversion.

-L2 - hobgoblins (MM186), half-plate AC+2, breastplate AC+1, 375xp NOTE: I was trying to stay true to the monster stats in SGoS, but it didn't take me too many sessions to realize that the minor changes I was making to the 5e monsters, like these noted here, really didn't affect combat all that much and I run pretty much standard monsters now for all your low level minions and non-special encounters. You'll see later, I do get pretty fancy if the encounter deserves it.

-L3 - goblins (MM166), studded leather AC+1, 225xp

-L4 - complex trap (XGtE119), spotted on a 15 DC skill check (perception or investigation)

-trigger: someone steps on any square in the room

-initiative: acts on 20 (fast)

-active element: scythes (roll 3d8 to determine which lanes, doubles and triples don’t count, nor do 8s), +3 attack bonus, dealing 1d8 slashing damage

-dynamic element: scythes reset every round

-countermeasure: can be blocked (must pile up 400lbs of solid material), or destroyed (AC 8, 5hp), or turned off (search DC 15, panel in corner in lane 1, other side from L3) 

-if PCs break off a door in this room, the hobgoblins in L6 hear it and are waiting in the room between L4 and L6

-XP is 250 for this encounter NOTE: as you have probably already guessed, I am translating the trap to the new trap system found in Xanathar's. But wait, you say, this room isn't that wide! For this campaign, I changed the scale of the map, instead of a one inch square equaling a 5 foot by 5 foot square, my squares were 3 foot by 3 foot. I felt that was a bit more "realistic", in a game with magic and talking animals and whatnot. I did not continue this into my next campaign, it was fun and gave each battlefield a different set of tactical considerations, but in the end, it was too fiddly and did not change combat drastically enough to be worth it.

-L5 - goblins (MM166), half-plate AC+4, 200xp

-L6 - hobgoblins (MM186), half-plate AC+2, 250xp

-L7 - goblins (MM166), studded leather AC+1, 225xp

-L8 - howler

Large outsider XP: 700xp

HP: 30 AC: 16 Initiative: +4 Speed: 60’ (20 squares) has darkvision 60’ Melee: bite +7 (2d8) and 1d4 quills +3 (1d6, DC12 Dex save or suffer -1 on attacks, saves, and ability checks per quill, DC15 medicine check or it deals another 1d6 damage upon removal)

Howl: free action; if heard for an hour or longer, DC 10 wisdom save or suffer 1 temporary point of Wisdom damage, check every hour NOTE: I can't remember where I got these stats, if I made them up or found someone else's conversion online, though I suspect the latter rather than the former (remember, lazy bastard), but whatever it was, my players feared it enough, because I built it up over a couple of rooms, that they went nuclear on it and I did not get to use half the cool stuff in its stat block. It happens that way, sometimes.

-L9 - giant rats (MM327), 75xp

-L10 - ankheg (MM21), 450xp

-L11 - goblins (MM166), half-plate AC+4, 200xp

-L12 - maug - if the PCs fight it, they die

-XP of 100 if they talk to the maug and don’t try to attack

-XP of 50 if they observe it destroying a goblin and decide to run and don’t talk to it NOTE: yes, I typed that ("if the PC's fight this they die") on purpose. Go look up the maug's stats in 3.5e, this is a good aligned celestial, but so far above where the party was at by this point in the game (1st, maybe 2nd level), power wise, that I didn't waste any time trying to convert the maug or find someone else's conversion, I just wrote that note. Trust me, my players may have pulled off killing this maug one time out of a hundred, and I was betting on the 99. My party did not even try, they did talk to it, and got bonus XP for sending it back to its home plane.

-L13 - giant lizard (MM326), 50xp, 100xp if they use the mushrooms to not fight it

-L14 - DC 12 dexterity check to cross

-L15 - goblin boss (MM166) 200xp, hyena (MM331) 10xp

-spellbook: burning hands, cause fear, charm person, ray of sickness, comprehend languages, longstrider, mage armor, magic weapon, protection from good and evil, ray of enfeeblement, ice knife, snare NOTE: this was just me replacing what spells the adventure mentioned that had translated over to 5e, plus some others replacing the spells that hadn't translated well.

-L16 - skeletons (MM272), count as hobgoblins, 150xp

Nambrakh Hobgoblin, cleric (3) of Magublyiet (war domain)

HP: 23 AC: 14 (chain shirt, Dex+1) Initiative: +1 Speed: 30’ (10 squares) darkvision 60’ Melee: mace +1 (attack +2, damage 1d6+2)

Spells: cantrips (3) - sacred flame, mending, 1st level (4) - shield of faith, bane, inflict wounds, 2nd level (2) - magic weapon, spiritual weapon, 3rd level (1, through icon on altar) - animate dead

XP: 700 NOTE: I was still pretty new to 5e and my last edition had been 3e, so I was still trying to give monsters class levels. I have long since learned it is just easier to give the monster what you want it to have, whether it be magic items, spells, or abilities, and worry about the CR on the fly. You don't have to stick to the same rules your players do, but you have to be willing to adjust on the fly if you made the monster too powerful. If your players ask why something is, wave "jazz hands" at them and say "MAGIC!"

-L17 - zombies (MM316), 200xp

-L18 - darkling elders (VGtM134), 900xp

-if the PCs find all the missing Chicane Guild crates (L3, L5, L15), the party is awarded 100xp for securing the primary mission

-if the PCs search deeper into why this laboratory is here (talk to the maug, study the mirrors in L11, read the books in L15, piece together the statue in L16, examine the shattered gate in L17, and read the papers in L18) award the party an additional 50xp per piece of the puzzle explored, for a total of 300xp

 

Interlude

The PCs should take their findings, including the notes they can’t decipher, back to Vintra Marktunsel, who will take a few weeks to research it. If the PCs aren’t level 3 or 4 yet, have them take care of some of the wilderness encounters (Slaughtergarde page 28) while they take care of business in Sumberton (pdf page 33)(DMG125)(XGtE130). Eventually they will be approached by the captain of Lord Carstellan’s home guard, Sir Armin Harrak, who wants help with locating the next part of the puzzle (page 22). Due to the PCs not being part of the local political landscape and them finding the evidence that leads to the Surrinak lodge (plus the recent drow surface raids in the area), the PCs are asked to go into the Temple (page 108, map pages 39-40). NOTE: the DMG and XGtE references are to the Downtime rules. If you want to do Downtime activities, which I do like, stick with the XGtE activities, they update the DMG activities and work better. I took this a step farther and picked up Pathfinder v1's Ultimate Campaign book and allowed the party to build a home base in the Valley for their Patron (a military/law-enforcement organization called the Foxes & Hounds, or colloquially the Dogpack), as well as one of the PCs saved up his gold and built a tavern in the Valley.

The Temple

Fiery demon arches - see T14 (pg127) - disabling an arch or taking damage from it passing through it the first time 700xp, disable DC is 12, up 1 for every disabled arch, damage is 2d6, plus 1d6 for every disabled arch NOTE: here are the arches, their current status, how much damage they are doing, and what the DC is to disable them; as the PCs move through the dungeon, I changed it in the document to keep track of what was going on.

T10 - on, 3d6, disable DC 13

T5/T13 - off

T14 - on, 3d6, disable DC 13 (off)

T16 - on, 3d6, disable DC 13 (off)

T23 - on, 3d6, disable DC 13 (off)

T25 - on, 3d6, disable DC 13 (off)

-T1 - drow (MM128) w/breastplate (AC 17), longsword (1d8+2), longbow (1d8+2), 200xp

-T2 - grimlock (MM175) w/greataxe (1d12+3), 200xp

-T3 - drow (MM128) w/breastplate (AC 17), longsword (1d8+2), longbow (1d8+2), 200xp

-T4 - drow (MM128) fghtr lvl2, dueling, 2nd wind (bonus action regain 1d10+2hp), action surge (gain another full attack once) w/full plate (AC 18), lance (1d12+2), longsword (1d8+2), hp30, 700xp, initiative +2, to hit +2

- lizards, AC 14, hp30, speed 39, climb 39, initiative +2, to hit +3, 2 attacks, bite (2d4+4), claw (1d3+2), 700xp NOTE: again, in 5th edition, you don't have to create monsters as if they were PCs. This drow and the lizards are a good example of this - for the drow, I could have left out the level and the fighting style (dueling) but left everything else in and he would have played exactly the same. But the lizards are just fine, I gave them the HP, AC, and attacks I wanted them to have, no wasted space, and they worked just fine. And yes, the speed the lizards have is based on 3 foot by 3 foot squares, not 5 by 5. Just raise the speeds to 40 feet and everything will be fine in your game.

-T5 - arcane guard (drow, MM128) fighter 1/wizard 1, dueling, 2nd wind (bonus action regain 1d10+2hp), adamantine chain shirt (AC 15, no crits against), flail (1d8+2), cantrips: Fire Bolt, Poison Spray, Shocking Grasp; spells: Expeditious Retreat, Ray of Sickness, Shield; hp30, 700xp, initiative +2, to hit +1 NOTE: yes, yes, way too much work. Leave out the levels and classes, the fighting style (yes, I know it has an effect, but I could just bump the Attack bonus and be done), and I would prune Expeditious Retreat, and pick two from the Cantrips list to also get rid of. These drow aren't particularly tough, so they're only getting one spell off before they go back to swinging sharpened steel at the PCs, but I still like to have some options.

- hobgoblins (MM186), 200xp

-T6 - quaggoth (MM256), 450xp

-T7 - arcane guards (drow, MM128) fighter 1/wizard 1, dueling, 2nd wind (bonus action regain 1d10+2hp), adamantine chain shirt (AC 15, no crits against), flail (1d8+2), cantrips: Fire Bolt, Poison Spray, Shocking Grasp; spells: Expeditious Retreat, Ray of Sickness, Shield; hp30, 1,400xp, initiative +2, to hit +1 NOTE: I can tell that I had not read through Salvatore's Drizz't novels anytime near to when I ran this game (I am currently reading back through all of them, up to The Thousand Orcs as I type this), as I would have done these drow so differently than what I did then. Yes, like before, leave off levels, but add in a good Stealth roll, keep the melee combat stuff, and only two spells, Faerie Fire, Globe of Darkness, and Levitate. Plus hand crossbows with a poison feature and a Blindsight. Or, maybe I wouldn't have, these are likely very low level house guards and wouldn't have all that fanciness of a scion of one of the bigger houses in the Underdark.

-T8 - gargoyle (MM140), 450xp

-T9 - zombie (MM316), 100xp

-T10 - giant bat (MM323), 100xp

-T11 - wererats (MM209), 900xp

-T12 - Garanaach, young black dragon (medium), MM page 88, 900xp (paragon) 

HP: 33 & 33 (2 hp pools) Initiative: +4 initiative on first, see below.

Paragon Fortitude:  The dragon has multiple pools of hit points, each of which is tracked separately. All damage suffered and healing gained during a round must be completely applied to only one pool. When a pool is reduced to zero, all ongoing conditions and effects affecting the dragon end. Once a pool is reduced to zero, that pool cannot receive any healing until after a long rest. If all hit of the point pools are reduced to zero, the dragon is killed.

Paragon Wing Sweep: When the first hit point pool is exhausted, occuring as a reaction immediately after the damage that reduces the pool to zero occurs, Garanaach sweeps her wings around. The effect is treated as a DC20, level 1 Thunderwave spell, any PC failing the save are also knocked prone.

Paragon Exhaustion: The dragon may take one complete turn in each round of combat for each hit point pool it has above zero and receives one reaction between each of its turns. When a pool of hit points has been reduced to zero, the dragon loses one turn each round thereafter. The dragon determines initiative normally for its first turn, though it gains advantage on the roll. Each subsequent turn is inserted immediately after any one PC’s turn in the initiative order (roll randomly to see which PC). NOTE: this is another little something I stole, er, borrowed from The Angry GM, the Paragon. Think big bad in a video game - you hit it so often, it changes form and attack pattern, repeat a couple of times, and then it dies. This is the same idea.

-T13 - yuan-ti malison (per Slaughtergarde, but refer to MM309), 1,800xp, cast Fear as a 15ft radius centered on Garanaach

-T14 - wererats (MM209), 900xp

-T15 - drow rogues (MM128), rogue 3 (assassin), cunning action (dash, disengage or hide each round as a bonus action), sneak attack 2d6, assassinate (any creature that hasn’t acted this combat you get advantage against; critical on surprised opponents), AC15 (studded leather+1), hp18, rapier+1 (+5 to hit, 1d8+4), hand crossbow (poisoned, +4 to hit, 1d6+3+1d4 poison, Con save 13), initiative+3, 900xp

-T16 - Lanthurrae (drow cleric 5, war domain)

-spell save 16, spell attack +8, AC17, hp31, make three extra attacks as a bonus action, make +10 to one attack once, turn undead, destroy undead ½ or lower, chanimail +1, whip +1 (+3 to attack, 1d4+2, double reach), spells: 3rd - Bestow Curse, Spirit Guardians; 2nd - Magic Weapon, Spiritual Weapon, Hold Person; 1st - Shield of Faith, Inflict Wounds, Divine Favor, Command; 2,300xp

grimlock (MM175) w/greataxe (1d12+3), 200xp

-T18 - drow (MM128), 6 instead of 3, 300xp

-T19 - giant spiders (MM328), 600xp

-T20 - giant spiders (MM328), 600xp

-T21 - as per pg136 of Slaughtergarde, 2,900xp

-T22 - 4 magmin (MM212), 400xp

4 magma mephit (MM216), 400xp

-T23 - stirges (MM284), 150xp

-T24 - death dogs (MM321), 800xp

-T25 - clockwork abomination (ToB59), 1,800xp

 

Armory

NOTE: SGoS is a strangely laid out book, I have no idea why the last part of the adventure is placed first in the book, and the other two dungeons are in their own section separate from the rest of the adventure info. No idea folks, just how it is. Extra note - the Fiery Gates in this section are so easily bypassed by the party searching for and finding the Slaughtergarde Medallions on the monsters they encounter, that I didn't even bother putting them into my notes to keep track of them. If the ones back in the Temple section become too onerous, just give the baddies the Medallions as well, which does make sense for them to have, and just skip it. The Fiery Gates are an interesting bit of dungeon decoration, but get old pretty quick.

-wandering patrol - Fang of Yeenoghu (MM163), 4x Flesh Gnawers (VGtM154) NOTE: for the monsters and NPCs in this and following campaigns, I was using the excellent paper standees from Rich Burlew of Order of the Stick fame. The standees are called A Monster for Every Season. The funny thing about this is that Yeenoghu is one of those copyright protected names that Wizards of the Coast owns, so Rich renamed these creatures as Fangs of You-know-who, which sounds like the commonly accepted pronunciation of Yeenoghu. Sorry, thought that was funny.

-A1 - 6x Hunters (VGtM154)

-A2 - 4x Hunters (VGtM154)

-A3 - Venom Troll (MToF245)

-A4 - Hill Giant (MM155)

-A5 - half-fiend ogre per Slaughtergarde, 2,300XP NOTE: when I originally ran the game, I honestly can't remember what I did with this, but apparently I tried to use this half-fiend ogre straight from SGoS. Looking at the stat block in SGoS, I would probably go with something from 5e that was CR 6 instead, quite likely a Vrock (MM64) and just describe it as a half-fiend ogre as described in SGoS.

-A6 - White Abishai (MToF163)

-A7 - per Slaughtergarde, 700xp NOTE: again, I can't remember exactly what I did here, but again, I wouldn't try to use the 3.5e monsters, but instead build a combat encounter that adds up to 700xp. 14 troglodytes would do it, but this room is too small and the combat would be boring. You could go the easy route and do one water weird (MM299), which fits the location pretty well. I'd probably do 2 troglodytes (MM290) and 3 giant toads (MM329), fits the location and keeps the CR correct.

-A8 - per Slaughtergarde, 2,300xp (cleric) and 1,100xp (thugs), see Lanthurae above for spell selection NOTE: again, trying to jam PC class levels onto monsters like we used to in 3.5e, for this I would reskin the conjurer (VGtM212) to look like a troglodyte as it has the spellcasting I need for this group, and then for the thugs, I'd reskin the stone defender (MToF126) to look like troglodytes. Yes, just straight up reskin, and trust me, your party won't really notice.

-A9 - per Slaughtergarde, 1,100xp NOTE: again, I'd use stone defenders (MToF126) for these troglodytes.

Tybalt - fighter 3, Str+3, Dex+2, Con+3, AC17, hp31, Great Weapon Fighting (reroll 1 or 2 on damage die), Second Wind (1/day regain 1d10+3 hp), Action Surge (1/day gain another action), Champion (Improved Crit, 19 or 20), Glaive+1 (+6 to hit, 1d10+4, heavy, reach, 2-handed) NOTE: I played this guy straight and my players completely did not trust him, immediately sent him back to town. The instant distrust helped them later in this dungeon, but oh so untrusting my players were. Not really pertinent, but I found it funny then, still do, thought I'd share.

-A10 - Chimera (MM39)

-A11 - Tieflings per Slaughtergarde, 2,100xp NOTE: you need two melee combat baddies, so two veterans (MM350), and for the spellcaster, the illusionist (VGtM214)

-A12 - Fang of Yeenoghu (MM163), Pack Lord (MM163)

-A13 - Fang of Yeenoghu (MM163), 6x Witherlings (VGtM155)

-A14 - 2x Fangs of Yeenoghu (MM163)

-A15 - Oni (MM239) NOTE: I didn't like the troll here, so I just swapped in an oni, whole cloth. It worked really well.

-A16 - 1 Derro Savant, 3x Derro (MToF158&159) NOTE: this encounter and the one before it and the following encounter, read the notes in SGoS thoroughly, and just have fun with these encounters. The oni outside the door is a tough fight and the party probably won't be able to sneak up on her, and the fight with the derro is fun with all the moving parts in the foundry, followed by a tough fight that the party is better off running away from. However, the derro yelling encouragement through the doors is hilarious, play it up and have fun with it.

-A17 - Fire Elemental (MM125)

-A18 - Succubus (MM285) NOTE: again, played this straight, played her like she was another adventurer like poor Tybalt above, trapped down in the dungeon. And really, this succubus just wants to go back to her home plane as she has had all the death and destruction from this little group of gnolls and drow as she can stand. It's been swell, but the swelling's gone down. But yet again, my players weren't buying it, yet she managed to talk her way into the next room and escaped back through the opening gate and managed to distract some of the baddies on the way out.

-A19 - Mezzoloth (MM313)

-A20 - Hezrou (MM60)

-Flind (VGtM153)

That is the end of it. Of course there are other bits to this adventure that I added in to fit better into this homebrew world I was making. Things like the party, if they successfully close down the Gates (d'uh, if they fail, they're all dead) they convince the people of the Valley to be annexed by the Kingdom the party is from/work for, and how the party's Patron (Dogpack) was stationing the party in the Valley since they did such a good job.

As you can probably guess, I am a big proponent of homebrewing but still using adventures and stats that are already available instead of working to build everything from scratch. To that end, while typing this up, I used the 5e Monster List found over on the Donjon website, just one of many handy references they have for us DMs to utilize. I also use the Adventure Lookup database, a very useful tool to find adventures with... you know, I am going to let Matt Colville explain this one, he does a much better job at describing it than I am currently capable of. I also used Google Drive - if you have a Google account, which is very likely, you have access to this, and if you don't already have one, the account is free, so why not? - to organize my notes and also set up a folder for all my players that I drop pertinent info into. I have toyed with the wiki-style repositories like Obsidian Portal, and those are definitely interesting, but it is so much easier to use Google Drive. I think if one or more of my players had been into keeping their notes in a wiki, I would have used one, but as it was, it was just easier to do the Google Drive folders. 

This is a pretty fun intro adventure, easy to use, and it shows off a lot of the basics of the game - you have combats with a bunch of different monsters, you have exploration and puzzles to solve, and some decent roleplaying opportunities scattered throughout. Is it perfect? No, but what adventure(s) would you call perfect? No, SGoS is good enough and hopefully you can learn something from this post to run it yourself, either in original rules, the newer 5e rules, or in some other rules you prefer. Hope this helps you out, fellow Dungeon Masters and Game Masters (and Referees and Storytellers and...), have fun running games for your friends.

Wiskaria

  The two prisoners were brought before the Lord, bound at the hands, and thrust to their knees before him. He looked down at the pair, the rough hewn edges of the ancient desk offsetting the understated elegance of his office. The prisoners, for their part, merely looked back at the aged figure before them.

“Karzent and Wisendon,” the Lord began. “Fomenting rebellion amongst your fellow slaves again?” Many would have quailed before this gaze, but these two, frequent visitors to this august presence, did not. “It has become apparent that the standard punishments are no impediment to the two of you, so I believe something different may be in order. We may even be able to get some use out of you.” The Lord smiled at this last.

The prisoners exchanged a look. Nothing that pleased the Lord boded well for them and their fellows.

The small band crouched at the lip of the ridge overlooking the valley. They had started on this adventure with ten, but now there were only eight, as two of their number now shared a common grave with the fell beast that had ended them. It had been distasteful to most of the band, but those in charge had decided that mere slaves deserved no better.

Karzent lowered the spyglass and handed it over to Wisendon. “I don’t see anything living, but some of the markings are fresh.” Wisendon looked through the glass, but not having the tracking skills of his partner just nodded in agreement. “I’ll go tell their Highnesses.” Wisendon snorted, but kept looking through the glass.

Karzent scrambled down the backslope, to where the horses and pack animals waited, along with Karzent’s minders. Despite her comment, the two minders were not royalty, but they were pure bloods, sent to mind their half breed slaves and make sure of their completion of mission. The slaves had not slipped blades into their backs, despite many opportunities, as the two did have their uses, and the mission was grim enough to require all the help they could get their hands on.

“We are there,” Karzent announced.

“And? Speak up, slave.”

“There’s something there, the signs are clear.” Karzent was used to being addressed as such, and had long stopped reacting to it. “Not sure how many, but it does not look like more than two or three.”

“Well, let us go see.” They deigned to dismount and climb the hill. Karzent would have demanded they keep low, approach the top below the brow and but peek over the top of it, but she was more than sure that whatever resided below had either already detected the band, or had no need of forewarning.

The castle was ancient, a legend and a nightmare. Built into the side of a now inactive volcano by the tyrants that once ruled the entire land, its current resident or residents were purported to have cast them down, long ago when the flow of lava had stopped and the fields of fire had died to ember and then to ash. Even though it had been generations, the area was still a blight in the heart of the land, for all who traveled through it were never seen again. All expeditions to find the missing never returned themselves. Eventually all of the surrounding city states learned to avoid the area entirely, counting the extra travel time spent going around a small price to pay.

Built to massive, nay gigantic proportions, the defensive works of the keep dominated the landscape. The lush greenery feeding off of the plain of volcanic residue would have overwhelmed and hidden works built by the smaller races, but here the towering giants of the forest just served to show how massive the walls and towers truly were. Even surrounded by the undisturbed vegetation of generations, it dominated the landscape.

“Should we wait until night?” asked Wisendon. They all looked to Karzent, her years of experience tracking and hunting in the wild making her a natural leader of the band.

“No point,” she answered immediately. “Whatever is down there already knows we’re here.” She turned down the hill towards the horses. “Or they don’t care.”

It was nothing more than luck that had saved them. The tyrant at the heart of the fortress had let the party come deep into his lair and played with them for most of a day, all the while killing them one at a time. Only when Karzent and Wisendon were left did he stop the games, and confront them directly. The dark giant, his skin covered in runes of power, was ancient beyond measure. The last of his tribe, they had defeated the former masters of the keep and enslaved them. They had lost control of the once great kingdom the previous masters had, but they cared not. Their slaves had served them as long as they could, but their new masters, more powerful than they had even imagined, ground their entire tribe to dust, and then themselves had succumbed to the vagaries of time. Until there was just one left.

He had gloated as he chased them, telling them of the vast expanse of history he and his tribe had been witness to. How insignificant the half-breeds were, how only because he had nothing to occupy his time and had no one else to speak to in a long while was he deigning to speak with such lower beings. One does not hold conversations with rats, one merely kills them, do they not? Karzent’s arrows and blade had bounced off the steel-like hide. Wisendon’s best magics slid off of the giant like so much water. The rest of the party, slave and master alike, their efforts had been similarly futile. He had laughed, time and again, at their impotence, and continued to hound them in and around buildings built at a scale almost beyond their comprehension.

In the end, age and luck, bad luck, had done the tyrant in. Karzent had managed to trip the tyrant and it had fallen against an aging wall, and its protective spells, weakened by time, had reacted with the monster’s own runes, bringing enough weight down to crush the tyrant. The last of the party, they had not survived without wounds of their own. Only by searching the body of the fallen giant and drinking deeply of several healing draughts they had found did they manage to survive. They both had lost parts of themselves, but they still lived and huddled in the still ruins to gather themselves.

“We won,” said Wisendon, his remaining eye closed against the pain. “But for what? So our pure blood masters can expand their control and grind us further under their heels?”

“Yes, Wis, that’s exactly why I came here, to lose half my leg and watch you hover near death just so that goblin’s dung heap of a Lord can clamp down on trade with the south even more,” Karzent said. They were tucked into a corner of a long cold hearth, many times the size of the shacks they and their fellow slaves enjoyed back home. A small fire crackled before them, the wood hacked off of a chair that had towered above them both. “Though I have to admit, watching that monster squish those two uppity bastards like so many mice under his sandal, that was almost worth all of this.” They were quiet for a little while. “What do you suggest we do, Wis? We barely made it here with ten of us, and everyone had all of their legs and hands.”

“Don’t forget eyes,” said Wisendon. “The hand was bad enough, but at least I don’t appear to need it to manipulate magic.”

“I’m sorry, Wis, I am,” said Karzent, and sat silently for a long, miserable while. “You know, we could just build a home here. If we didn’t tell anyone all the giants are dead, who’d come looking for us here? We could settle down, stop the constant moving, raise a family…”

“Karz, I’ve told you, while our people live under the lash…”

“...of pure-blood hatred and oppression, you do not have the time nor the interest in any type of relationship,” Karzent quoted at Wisendon, having heard the sentiment far too many times. “I know, but I’m on the old side of middle-aged, Wis, and a girl won’t wait for…”

“Wait,” he said, “what did you say about building a home here?”

“We could build a house here. Only we know the giants are all dead, and since everyone avoids the area out of fear, we’d get at least a couple of years alone. Just you and me and...” She stopped and looked at him intently. “What’s going on in that head of yours, Wis?”

“I think you’re right,” he said, his eye open and staring intently at the ceiling of the hearth, many feet above him. “I think we could build a home here.”

The journey back had been harrowing, but they made it, and more importantly, without running into any of their masters or their minions. They slipped into the slave slums and word spread quickly through all of the camps, for fear of their masters catching word from one of their many spies. The word was such a shock to the community that several such spies revealed themselves in trying to run to their masters, a boon to the slaves as it allowed them to eliminate those leaks and gain more time. The slower, more careful spies were too cautious, and by the time the slaves made their move, it was too late.

The slaves revolted, along with many of their former guards. Even in a land of slave and master, many of the so-called masters were treated not much better than the slaves they guarded. They escaped into the night, half of the land on fire and in chaos, Karzent and her fellow trackers obscuring the trail and misleading the pursuers in many different directions. Tens of thousands of slaves, from the old to the newborn, all vanished into the wilderness.

They could have left years ago, generations ago, but they had nowhere to go to. Bastard half breeds of two proud races, unwanted by one and enslaved by the other, they had tried going to the other races in the surrounding lands, but beyond weapons and equipment, supplied more to twist the nose of their masters than out of a sense to help them with their plight, no one was willing to open up their own lands to these unwanted children. Now, with an entire fortress, the most recent owner dead at the hands of their own with no one else the wiser, they had that somewhere to go, somewhere to call their own. And took it they did.

The fortress, built to the scale of giants three times the size of its new occupants, had been crafted by masters of stonework and magic, protective energies woven into the near seamless stonework to make it as indestructible as anything else worked by mere mortals. As such, the new inhabitants could not alter the structure, they had not the skill nor the equipment to rework the bones of the fortress, bring it down and build it back to suit their size. So they left the stone as it was, and built everything else to their scale. Hallways became two story dorms and apartment blocks. Kitchen ovens became smithies and forges. Extra steps added onto every staircase made them accessible, while the unused portions of the stairs were used for market stalls. The mighty forest that had grown up in the nutrient rich volcanic ash was quickly cleared, first to provide lumber for all of the projects, and second to provide planting area to grow crops. Used to the hard labor under the lash of their former masters, the people worked even harder to build and grow what was now theirs.

The delegation from the Lords Under the Mountain entered into the grand hall of the new nation. The hall had been built into the old inhabitant’s own great hall, but with so much extra space, much of the upper areas of it and the sides of the hall were being walled off and made into offices and apartments. The delegation was met by the council of the new city state and quickly escorted into the feast hall for a welcoming meal. The grizzled head of the delegation’s guard excused himself from the meal, and with two of his guards left the hall for one particular, newly-built apartment overlooking the hall. He knocked and stood with his hands tucked into the belt under his prodigious gut.

“Yes?” asked the face behind the door.

“I would like to talk with the Lady Karzent and the Lord Wisendon, if they are not indisposed,” the grizzled veteran said pleasantly.

“I’m sorry, they don’t live…” he tried, before the man before him snorted and gently, but inexorably, moved him and the door out of the way and walked into the cozy domicile. The man attempted to protest but stopped when a voice from the next room stopped him.

“Let them in, Lenet.”

Lenet bowed the grizzled veteran in, while he motioned for his own men to stand in the hall outside.

“Stay here, boys, I’m sure if they wished me harm, you couldn’t stop them anyway,” he smiled at his men and motioned for Lenet to accompany them. “You too, kind sir, I hold no harm in my heart for your master nor your mistress, and I assure you they will have no trouble from me, as I don’t wish to perish anymore than you do.” Lenet bowed at the grizzled man’s sincerity, and left. When Lenet had secured the door behind them, he walked into the next room to find a very pregnant Karzent reclined, with her foot and jewel-bedecked wooden leg propped up.

“Lady Karzent, I presume?”

“I’m not a Lady of anything, in this nation or the next,” she said, her eyes peeking out from under a damp cloth. “The council runs things, we did our part, igniting the revolution and bringing our people here, and they honor us by letting us work for our new country.” 

“Nor am I a Lord,” said Wisendon, coming down the staircase, “but you are, aren’t you? Not some mere guard from the Under Mountain, are you?” Wisendon stopped behind his wife and began to massage her shoulders.

“You have me there,” he said, setting his bulk down gently upon a plain, but comfortable chair. “May I? The wife and I have ten of our own, adopted more than a few, and have more grandchildren and great-grandchildren than I care to think about, and even starting to get some great-great-grandchildren.” He began to massage her remaining foot and ankle, his massive callused fingers gentle on the swollen appendage. “But you are correct, I am no mere guard. I am Hlerzod.”

“Hlerzod? One of the Five Lords Under the Mountain?”

“Aye, that I am,” he continued to massage, even though both Wisendon and Karzent had stopped and stared with intent. “Let the delegations talk and look pretty to each other, I wanted to come out here, see this new nation for myself.”

“But, your Lordship…” began Wisendon.

“Please, if you both are neither Lord nor Lady, then here, in this time, I am not Lord anything either,” he smiled, continued to knead away. “We Under the Mountain, we may live in darkness, surrounded by those who hate us, inwardly focused on our mine works and projects, but we hear things even still. You are bastard children unwanted by both of your parent races, except to be slaves to your former masters. Your leaving has crippled one of the largest and oldest countries, upset trade, and nearly started three separate wars. The whole western half of the continent is in an uproar thanks to your little revolution, which is the only reason no one has shown up to see exactly how impenetrable this ancient fortress really is.”

“We just wanted to be our own people, have our own place,” Wisendon said. “It’s been almost ten generations since any ‘slaves’ were born due to infidelity between the races. My parents, Karzent’s parents, almost every parent of the half-children in this place were half-breeds themself. We aren’t bastards, merely Master Hlerzod, we are a new race, a new people that have bred true. We are not mules, unable to reproduce, we are a people!” Wisendon’s face was suffused now, the fervor that fired the entire revolution shining through.

“It matters not whether or not you are a race, not-a-Lord Wisendon,” Hlerzod said, “that is not the question. No, the question at the heart of the matter, is whether or not you are a country and can remain a country.” He stood, slapping at his vast belly. “Can the other nations trust you, can they count on you, to keep and hold any treaties with you a generation from now? Two generations? Three generations? Three years? Three months?” He paced around the room, studying the items the pair had gathered over the years. “It’s not that we, the other countries around you, that we care not for your plight, but we have our own problems and issues and enemies, and the most any of us can do is sit back and watch.” He turned to the pair. “Well, most of the countries in the area can only watch. We Under the Mountain can possibly do more than just watch, but you can’t expect us to sacrifice our own country, own safety and stability, just to prop yours up. We can provide instructors and weapons to build up your army and defenses, markets to trade your goods for, and I think, most importantly, someone to recognize your legitimacy, confirm to the whole continent that you are indeed a nation in your own right.” He sat again and looked at the two younger leaders.

“I don’t know which promises any of us can give you, sir,” Karzent said, “all we can do is try.”

“Well, you have a better start than I did,” Hlerzod said. “What? That surprises you, that I struggled and had a start? How do you think I became one of,” and here his voice swelled, “The Five Lords Under the Mountain?” He smiled at that. “No, I certainly was not born into it, and while it seems a long time to you and yours, it has not been all that long when me and mine moved and settled a new mine away from our home shafts.”

“What now? Where do we go from here?” Wisendon asked after a few moments of silence.

“I go back to acting like a guard, for form’s sake, and once my delegation returns home, the Five Lords will decide to extend you the copper nugget of friendship.” Hlerzod stood, creaking and groaning, and slapped his ample belly. “We may not be able to keep you safe, but for nothing else, tweaking your former masters’ collective noses is worth the help we can give. And,” he continued, “we need every friend we can get. It doesn’t hurt that this will open trade with you and your very skillful craftsmen, but will also open up another trade route and byway to us. Until you two killed the tyrant in this keep, we had despaired of ever using the old lava tubes on this side of the peak.”

“Pretty quiet trip up into our deepest basement, was it?” The delegation had indeed come up into the lowest levels of the keep, as the original builders had tapped directly into a lava flow underneath their keep, possibly to use the lava in their workings, or to commune directly with fire elementals who had lived in the volcano. As both the volcano and the original builders were long dead, the current occupants did not know for sure, but the lava tubes underneath the dead volcano proved to lead almost directly to the caverns of the Under Mountain.

“Pretty quiet, aye,” Hlerzod said, rubbing his face, “and it will get quieter still the more we travel it and clean it up. There are a few chasms that we will need to fortify to keep the very deep ones from using, especially now that they don’t have the tyrant of the keep to fear.”

“That’s what my trackers told me,” said Karzent. “Do you really think we have a chance?”

“My dear lady,” Hlerzod said, smiling, “if any of us have a chance of giving our children, and their children, and their children, a better world than the one we were born into, it is you, here.” He paused, thoughtful for a moment. “By the by, what are you going to call it, this new country of yours?”

“They want to call it Wiskaria, for Wis and me, but…”

“Wiskaria, hmmm. Yes, I think you should let them give you that honor. It may just serve as a warning to not attempt to enslave your people ever again.”

WISKARIA: LAND OF BASTARDS AND HALF-BREEDS

When I originally wrote about Wiskaria, I had just grown tired of always finding that half-elves (long my favorite race, pretty much thanks to Weis and Hickman’s Tanis Half-Elven) were the bastards, the unwanted children of the world, despised by most and ignored by the rest. I wanted these half-breeds to have their own place in the wider world, and roughly at the same time that was percolating through my brain, another idea of a city built into the ruins of a castle built into the ruins of a giant’s castle was also rustling through my subconscious (too many sources to cite them all here, though Terry Pratchett - the Nomes books and the Carpet People - comes immediately to mind), and Wiskaria was born.

I kept the history above as vague as possible so that you could pick just about any half-breed race to be the base Wiskarian, any race to be their new allies Under the Mountain, and modify the rest of the background as you see fit. In my version of Wiskaria, the people are half-elves, who have recently escaped their elven slavemasters, and settled halfway between the elven lands and the human lands. The humans, of course, care little for the half-elven slaves, mostly because the half breeds have been slaves for so long, their human parents have all died out and they have been breeding true amongst themselves for several generations now. Once they are free, they settle in the now abandoned castle, former center of a fairly large fire giant kingdom that had fallen, after the volcano had gone dormant and deprived the fire giants of a lot of their power, to the depredations of a tribe of rune giants. The rune giants (yes, completely stolen from Pathfinder, you're welcome Paizo) in turn had slowly died out over the centuries, until the last one fell to Wisendon and Karzent. The Five Lords Under the Mountain are dwarves that have recently (in their terms) settled a new mine under the mountain range the castle’s cinder cone is a part of.

I'm Not THAT A-hole

I admit, I am an asshole... but I'm not THAT asshole. Not all that long ago, I talked about games that I owned and would never play, and part of that was a rant on the expanding "wokeness" of games that are being put out. Obviously, because I'm offended by the overt wokeness, I'm a horrible transphobic (I'm not) or misogynistic (again, no) or just a raging asshole. I may be that last one, I was a non-commissioned officer of the United States Army for 12 of the 15 years I served in the Army, and that is not a job that usually attracts the nicest of folks, we tend to be a bunch of hard asses. However, asshole I may be, but it's not because of any personally held phobias. So what am I complaining about, exactly, if I'm not THAT asshole? It's games and their creators rubbing their politics in our faces, the constant virtue signaling of "look at me, look how righteous and pure I am!" that is completely unnecessary. 

What brought this all about is the recent Bundle of Holding for the Powered by the Apocalypse rules, Fellowship (still on BoH for the next 20 days as I type this). Normally, I'm not really interested in PbtA rule games because too many of them are just trying to remake other RPGs that are perfectly fine the way they are, thank you very much, but Fellowship is different. Here, this is what the creators say about their game:

Fellowship is a game for 3-6 players about going on an adventure, in the same vein as Lord of the Rings or Wakfu or Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders. The system is loosely based on the Apocalypse Engine. In Fellowship, one player is the Overlord, a maniacal being who has become a Threat to the World, and everyone else forms a fellowship of heroes to stop them. The focus of Fellowship is on the journey you take and the communities you meet, and saving the day is what you're here to do.

Now that sounded interesting to me, as PbtA is not a strong combat rules system but is a great RP rules system, and this sounds like a game with tons of RP and not a lot of combat, perfect for the rules. Still I was leery of picking it up outright - many of the PbtA games are pushing their politics on folks in 60 foot blazing letters, was this going to be more of the same? I managed to sneak a peek in a certain underground RP collection, and to my surprise, they're not overtly throwing their politics around. Now, the art is of a diverse cast of folks of various body types, genders, skin tones, and even show what used to be called "alternative lifestyles" as there is one obvious cross dressing or trans person in the art. Which doesn't bother me, because they didn't waste any of their word count or page space with preaching about their inclusivity - if you want to be inclusive, be inclusive in your art like Fellowship is, but don't preach to us about how inclusive everyone playing the game should be. So, if this is the right way, what is the wrong way? Well, let me give you some examples.

The oldest example I have is from a wargame, discussing how if you want to publish anything in their world, you have to behave yourself.

Design your setting in such a way that the signature elements of feudal, authoritarian, totalitarian, communist, corporate/anarcho-capitalist, or democidal political structures that are not true, workable, or morally acceptable in the real world are equally untrue, unworkable, and unacceptable in your setting.

Because if you just believe hard enough, the bad people will just go away in a shower of pixie dust (end sarcasm). Look, this is fiction we are playing and if your fiction is too perfect, your characters are without flaw, then where is the struggle, the conflict, the personal growth to explore? I'm not saying we need to venerate or praise these government types, but to not allow them to exist at all is the height of burying your head in the sand. This is nothing more than childish demands from immature people who are no better than the religious nutbags trying to "pray away the gay". Silliness. And this was part of the Creative Commons license for doing any paid work based on their product... but let's be honest here, you're already giving away your game, do you really think anyone who is offering any kind of addition or expansion of your free game is going to get any buyers? No, again, this is just virtue signaling for the sake of feeding the egregore.

Next up is something a little more recent, an RPG that in its playtest wanted to shove their politics down your throat with both feet. I've talked about it before (and again... and again), but this is the passage they published in the final game.

Gaming Is for All

Whether you are the GM or a player, participating in a tabletop roleplaying game includes a social contract: everyone has gathered together to have fun telling a story. For many, roleplaying is a way to escape the troubles of everyday life. Be mindful of everyone at the table and what they want out of the game, so that everyone can have fun. When a group gathers for the first time, they should talk about what they hope to experience at the table, as well as any topics they want to avoid. Everyone should understand that elements might come up that make some players feel uncomfortable or even unwelcome, and everyone should agree to respect those boundaries during play. That way, everyone can enjoy the game together. {PRODUCT} is a game for everyone, regardless of their age, gender, race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or any other identities and life experiences. It is the responsibility of all of the players, not just the GM, to make sure the table is fun and welcoming to all.

This is far more restrained than what they proposed in the playtest, but let's be honest, none of this is necessary. They were doing just fine in the 1st version of their game, they alternated between male and female iconic characters, they gave people different skin tones, even made a couple of said iconic characters gay when they portrayed them in the comics. But that wasn't far enough for woke left, oh no, not these days. As an internet commenter on the liberal egregore recently typed, "Your “37 Genders” protest sign got you in the front of the line in 2016, but got you cast out in 2018 and cancelled outright in 2020. Don’t you know trans women are women now?" So you get the above, as the game makers virtue signal their asses off. It's unnecessary folks - be inclusive in your art, but don't go shoving your politics down everyone's throat.

Last example I have is from a recent RPG. It looked like it had an interesting setting and they offered a free downloadable core rulebook, and since I was curious about it, I downloaded it. But then I find the below in the intro.

In this book there are some fraught, difficult, or otherwise uncomfortable themes and content discussed. {PRODUCT} takes place in a setting recovering from millennia of cruel anthrochauvinist rule – a fascist, imperial, Earth-first ideology that had little time, space, or care to acknowledge beings or perspectives that ran counter to their didactic tyranny. We want to acknowledge that many phenomena and acts touched on in {PRODUCT} – slavery, exploitation, racism, directed hate, genocide, the stealing of indigenous land – are real phenomena, are ongoing acts of injustice and cruelty, and are not simply “fantasy" or “interesting devices” to use in a roleplaying game. Their inclusion in {PRODUCT} is by no means a flippant choice, intended to be read as endorsement, or idle thought. We think it important also to acknowledge that both {SOMEONE} and I are writing from the perspective of straight, cis, able-bodied men. When writing {PRODUCT}, we wanted to create a setting where humanity is – in the narrative present – at once in a state of utopia and working to affect it. We imagine that Union isn’t burdened by the same cultural definitions of gender that oppress and malign so many people who live under the umbrella of capitalism and empire and, as such, there is a wide spectrum of expression and identity in Union and among its constituent worlds. At the risk of enacting further violence by depicting worlds and cultures where there are regressive or discriminatory stances on gender baked-in, we have decided not to codify in the rules how players may express themselves – please do note that this absence of canonical definition is absolutely not meant to be read as exclusion, but is meant instead to avoid flattening all possible stories into one “canon” definition of what it means to be gendered, transgender, nonbinary – to have a body in {PRODUCT}. We encourage you to play your characters how you see them, and consider them to be in-canon. We hope that you create narratives and characters that stand against terrible abuses and prejudices. {PRODUCT} features no easy aliens to pass these transgressions upon, only other human beings; humanity alone are the architects of terrible cruelties, but we can also be the architects of better, more just futures – and presents. {PRODUCT} is a game that involves war, combat, and facing the terrors of the galaxy – human-made or otherwise – but this does not mean a GM should force their players to encounter scenarios or content that could be triggering or harmful. If there is any canon assumption that would cause you or your players to feel unsafe or distressed, then it does not need to be included. We recommend utilizing the X Card as a tool to establish boundaries if necessary (by {SOMEONE}, found at {WEBSITE}). We believe that ideas of liberation, of radical antifascism and anti-hate, can begin around the table with friends and end in the streets, at the ballot box, and in all of our hearts. Sometimes around the table with friends is the only place where liberation – where fighting back – can happen. This does not diminish the impact that it can have. That’s why we made {PRODUCT}: to help people fight back, if nowhere else then around the table with friends. In solidarity, {SOMEONE} and {SOMEONE}.

I read that, and I deleted the pdf, because if that is the first thing I run into in your product, I'm no longer interested in said product. Whatever interest there was in your game before reading your diatribe, your virtue signaling screed, I have lost that interest. I couldn't tell you how the rules look or even if the setting is interesting for this game, because I literally read the above, said "NOPE!" and deleted the free pdf, that's how uninterested I became with it. I don't... wait, let me fix that. NO ONE needs to know about your politics, your sexuality, gender, disabilities (or lack thereof), or listen to you apologize for the same. The only things that matter - IS YOUR GAME FUN TO PLAY? HOW DO WE PLAY IT? That's it, that is all that anyone not you, the authors of this game, this work of fiction, give a shit about when it comes to your game. You have wasted our time including it in your product instead of focusing on the important parts, which are the rules and the setting, and it's not winning you any admirers. Yes, there are uncomfortable things in EVERY RPG out there going back to D&D, if you can't handle that, then maybe you should stick to reading books. And I'm not saying that I, as a DM/GM/whatever, need to go into graphic detail about every upsetting thing that occurs in my games. Why not? Because I'm an adult and don't have to shock my players just to be cool. However, disturbing things do happen in my games - death, murder, starvation, rape, theft, kidnapping, slavery, prostitution, drug abuse, fear (which leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering and the Dark Side, or something like that) - yet I still find that I get better results if I let the players imagine the nastier details themselves. Please note that I am also not here to feed anyone's secret fetishes.

Oh, another bit of outrage porn I have run into recently - did you know the recent Super Mario Brothers movie was pushing the woke agenda? Or maybe it's secretly anti-woke? I didn't know any of that when I took the family to see the movie, because I don't pay attention to the news (yes, this is not some rando on the internet, like yours truly, this showed up in the professional news media) but caught someone ranting about it in what I thought was a movie review. When the ads for the movie came out, all I could think was that I wasn't too sure if Chris Pratt was a good choice as Mario, but didn't think too much of Princess Peach being portrayed as a badass. She's shown up as a playable character in enough of the games that her being a "strong female" is within character for her. But that upset folks on the right, and still other pundits out there are calling SMB anti-woke. Having seen the movie, all I could think about it afterwards was that Chris Pratt was fine as Mario, Seth Rogen was distracting as Donkey Kong (he only has one voice/character in his repertoire, the stoner slacker, which is just him playing himself), and if Peach was such a badass in this fantastical world before the titular Brothers showed up, why did she even bother training Mario, much less bring him along? Oh, the child-voiced blue star in the dungeon pining for the sweet release of death was the funniest part of that movie. But woke or anti-woke? I don't think it was either and everyone should STFU about the movie. Did you like it, yes or no? Good, go with that.

Anyway, I did purchase the Fellowship bundle, and no, I doubt I will ever get any play out of it, but it was too interesting to pass up. And it was less than $20, which was nice on the budget. It's an interesting concept, as you don't have a game master, instead another player who is playing the bad guy, and everyone works to play out their part of the story. Okay, admittedly, whoever is playing the Overlod is the game master analogue to the game, except you don't feel so bad when you TPK the rest of the players because you are actually trying to win as the Overlord, not just keep it tense but still fun like you have to as a GM. It does remind me a bit of Kingdom, another RPG-adjacent storytelling game, except in that one there is no set antagonist/BBEG that someone is playing from the beginning. I really doubt I'll ever get a group to play Fellowship, but hope springs eternal, may have to print out the pertinent pieces and keep it in my gaming bag in case a session doesn't happen at the last minute and we need something to pass the time.

Thinking on it some more, Fellowship may be a good intro game for my wife and daughter. My wife doesn't think she is creative enough to play an RPG correctly, which is wrong as anyone can play an RPG and have fun with it, and the kiddo has shown interest (we did have to take her to see the D&D movie, which she liked), but she is intimidated by the much older crowd of players I have in my other games. This may be the game I get a group of my daughter's friends together, possibly with their parents, and introduce them to the concept of RPGs. Yes, reading through the rules, Fellowship does appear to be more of a traditional board game or party activity, but there are some light roleplay elements in there.

There you go. I hope I don't appear to be that huge of a raging asshole, but I get so tired and frustrated when folks have to make everything they do political. I didn't try to out any of the games and their authors directly, but if you are really curious, a little investigation will reveal all of my secrets. Hopefully everyone reading this will go out and play some games with your friends in the very near future. Enjoy!