Sa'rehir - Festival of the 5 moons, celebration of Xa'bare'ga

     “The sky pulsated in iridescent waves of color. I would have chalked it up to the ale- But that had been hours before. The liquid on the lips was a mystery, what beverage or bodily fluid was it? Mounds of flesh and fur writhed all around. What had we gotten ourselves into?” - Garrick's observations upon visiting the City of Chaos.

   Sa'rehir, or the festival of the 5 moons, is a city-wide event that transpires every six months in the City of Chaos (aka The City of Many Names). The city, on a typical day, is a primordial sea of activity. The names of locations (including the city) and laws can and will change at any moment. The festival is the only constant.

   Each moon represents one of the faces of Zeztir the god of chaos and change. Each moon is given a day to celebrate its existence. But all five days are spent partaking in the same debauchery- drinking mushroom spiked ale, wearing the guises of animals and giving in to primitive urges. Anything short of murder is allowed publicly during this period. Even then, if one wanted to murder, the effects of the spiked ale tend to subdue more violent urges, and enhance sloth and gluttony.

   The animalistic guises are made out of whatever material is at hand and can range from burlap sacks to fine silks. These are distributed randomly to citizens (most costumes do not last the length of the festival). The material does not signify social standing as there is no formal caste system in the City, save the head priestess and her handmaidens. Visitors are allowed to purchase an outfit and the price varies from festival to festival. The fee is just as likely to be affected by the color of the sunset as it is the scarcity of materials.

   The head priestess and her maidens lock themselves in the Piebald Palace to celebrate. The priestess indulges in a rare and esoteric substance that typically goes by the street name "Cosmic Coke". Through its ingestion she hopes to commune with Zeztir and gain the knowledge to harness the ebb and flow of chaos, to save the world from it's own demise.

    Cosmic Coke is actually the crystallized form of a hyper-advanced fuel. Many centuries ago a large spacecraft crashed into the planet, and had strange impacts on the land ever since. The leaking fuselage created large creamy crystals underground. Early priests harvested these stones as holy artifacts and learned to grow their own from the shards. Realizing these stones could be grounded up they were used in religious rites mixing them with beverages, food and topical creams. This typically caused temporarily and sometimes permanent insanity.

    If a player ingests any amount of this fuel (which has now been mixed with many odd and rare substances to enhance growth) they must make a saving throw. On a failure- roll on the effect table below. On a save the player is thrust in to a temporary state of euphoria and restlessness. This state usually lasts 1d4+1 hours, afterwards the player is exhausted and must rest to regain their strength.

1 - The player sees the chaotic energy that outlines existence. Whenever they close their eyes they can see the outlines of everything in front of them (including things hidden behind other objects) This is disorienting and takes times to get used to. It often causes insanity from the insomnia.

2 - The player suffers from acute paranoia and must make a save the first time they meet someone. On a failure they believe that their new associate is a spawn of chaos sent to bring their end.

3 - For 1d4 days the player gets random glimpses of the future. This can range from what they will eat the next morning to the flying moons crafts that will be common in a millennia.

4 - For 1d4 days the player bleeds a purple substance from their nose whenever they exert themselves. This substance smells sickly sweet and can be used in various potions and elixirs. Often called Brain Fuel or Thought Juice.

5 - The player enters a deep meditation that lasts 2d4 days. They cannot be woken and are in a near dead state. When they awaken their Wisdom has raised 1d3 permanently. The player will also randomly spout verses of a long lost text in Space Speak.

6 - The player passes out and sees an enormous being drifting through space towards them. This vision feels as if it lasts for years when reality it lasts 30 seconds. They now believe the end is nigh and will randomly commune with this being. The true identity of this creature is known only to the game master.

7 - Purple and green scribblings begin to rise from the players skin, creating scales. Each day the player must make a saving throw, -1 for each consecutively failed day, or more words begin to rise. On a save the mysterious texts ceases to spread but are affixed to the player's body permanently. The areas can be cut but the skin heals to reveal these words once again. These runes are from a lost language that the original "Texts of Change" were written in.

8 - The player can now translate any written text, whether they understand it or not, in to a form of long lost Deep Speech. They cannot speak the translated words, due to not having the correct vocal chords, nor do they understand what they have written.

After rolling to find the side effects for a player, that player must make another saving throw or become addicted to the substance. If a player rolls the same effect again after ingesting the fuel and roll the is same result, do not ignore the roll. Instead empower the side effects, a player may actually see chaos spawn that is trying to cause violent accidents or their Thought Juice is much more potent. This is up to the game master to decide and expand upon.

(Thank you Shane Hosea for editing and consulting)

Vanessa or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the unforseen effects of house rules

     Talking about ones role playing campaign is a strange thing. Even between groups that use the same system there are small tweaks or rule interpretations that change the foundation of how the group interacts. On top of that every group has a preferred game type or play style that can or cannot take advantage of the system they are using. When a group really likes a system or does not know of other systems that can accommodate their wants or needs house rules step in and fill those gaps.

     I do not claim to be an OSR (old school renaissance/old school role playing game) expert but I am a student of the genre (or I like to think that I am). From my research house rules have been a part of the hobby since it's inception. Original Dungeons and Dragons was perceived as such a jumbled mess everyone played the game differently and it spawned house rules, zines and games like Tunnels and Trolls to fix the inconsistencies. Apparently Mr. Gygax was not a fan of this. So when AD&D was written it was filled with so many charts it would encompass anything that ever came up in a D&D campaign, or so he thought. House rules and third party products continued through AD&D and every other edition of the game and are now practically built in to D&D.

      One of the championing arguments in favor of the OSR movement is that rules can easily be removed and house rules added. The games are so rules lite that they can be transformed without too much damage to the internal skeleton. This allows players to customize their home game and make it their own. Above when I mentioned that house rules are practically apart of D&D now I wasn't using hyperbole in defense of third party products. Wizards of the coast designed the 5th edition (the newest edition) of D&D so that dungeon masters could add or removed certain rule sets without ruining the core game. One of the more popular/distained systems in newer D&D is the feat system. At certain levels players get to pick a special ability outside of their class that further customizes them. In 3rd and 4th editions these were an intricate part of the game, in some cases building full classes around them. In 5th they are an option. Many systems, like feats, show up in the Dungeon Master guide, a book to give players tips and tricks to run a game. It is once again a tome of charts and tool boxes. Pieces we can use to flavor our game in the ways the DM and players see fit.

      Even with all of the different little official systems we can plug in to our game sometimes there is still a void or something that sounds too neat to leave out. The magic weapon creation rules by James Spahn is one of those things for me (when I am not on mobile I will paste a link in). Upon reading them I knew I had to include a system that made players feel like they were creating items of legend. What I did not for see was that magic weapons might be created in a much quicker fashion that I anticipated. As per these rules whenever a player roles a critical hit, a natural 20, their weapon gains a mythic point, upon gaining three of these points the weapon is transformed in to a magic item. Three more nets another property and again until nine points total. This creates a bond between players and their mundane fictional items.

     Knowing what I wrote above about the magical system, sometimes these systems interact with the base rules in ways I could have never imagined. What follows is mostly drab descriptions of statistics (some what) and rules. One of my players is a level 5 fighter, his character's name is Vicious Kip. As a fighter he chose the champion sub class at level 3. This gives him the improved critical ability, allowing him to hit things critically on a roll of 19 or 20. At level 5 he also gets to attack twice a round and on top of that he dual wields, meaning that for each attack he makes he attacks with the weapon in each of his hands, so he swings at enemies four times a round. So each turn he attacks four times with a 10% chance of rolling a critical hit. Those are pretty decent odds in his favor. Now Slopeye Battlehugs, his fellow adventurer, steps in and makes those odds even better. Slopeye's preferred fighting style is to grapple enemies and bludgeon them in to submission (death). When Slopeye reached fourth level he was able to choose a feat (the system I mentioned above), he chose grappler. Now when he grapples enemies he can attempt to make another grapple check to pin that enemy. An enemy that is pinned by him grants advantage on attacks against his target and himself. Advantage allows a player to roll two d20s and choose the higher roll of the two. So now when Mr. Battlehugs pins enemies Vicious now gets to attack an enemy four times rolling each of his attacks twice and taking the higher of the two rolls. This is how, in one five hour session, Vicious ended up wielding a +2 longsword named Vanessa and a +1 troll bane torch (yes a torch, he was beating trolls to death with a torch so they would not regenerate) named the vicious light. Now this all sounds like it was intentional, but it was not in the slightest. I love my players because they do not focus on the builds or abilities that make them powerful but the builds that sound fun. This was the unintentional by product of a game and a rule that was not apart of the base game.

     When Vanessa (no one is sure why that's the world's name) became a +2 weapon while fighting the second troll of the night I first felt a little uncomfortable having the 5th level fighter wielding such a blade. But then I let it go. Some people may say "put a limit on mythic points" or "stop using the system". I will not do either. The fighter is a class of legends, most hero's from history or fiction would be classified as a fighter and they have always had legendary weapons in their mitts. But going all of the way back to the OSR, one of the pieces of a game that claims to be of the OSR is the very real threat of player death. Characters die and they can die often. This is something I now hold close to my heart and my players know that death can and will happen. They can recount the very real total party kill that happened two or so months ago. Do I kill my player's on purpose, no not at all. They do get killed for making choices that would get them killed. After Vanessa was "created" but before she was a +2 weapon the group encountered a wyvern. They were marching up a mountain side without many cares and were ambushed by the mini dragon. The wyvern randomly chose Vicious as it's target (I rolled a d4 and each player is assigned a number, whatever number it lands on is who gets attacked). In a single attack Vicious was rendered unconscious. He survived because the rest of the party left one of their horses as a meal to distract the wyvern and escaped. This was a smart move on their end. What I am getting at is I made the choice to add a system that would create things I did not know would happen. This is the same as when my players made choice that got them killed. Through our experiencs at the table we learn from the mistakes we make and we grow as players. Rather than fighting the wyvern and most likely getting killed they ran. I made a choice without looking at the system closer and have now given my players more magic items, that is my mistake. Do I regret it? He'll no, I am excited to see what weapons of lore they create. Also I am super stingy with magic items so it allows for items to be created through play rather than give out as prizes.

What is a pumpkin headed bugbear anyway?

      The title "Pumpkin Headed Bugbear" evokes many visions. A bugbear is a pretty alien concept. You begin to ask yourself all of these insane questions that can become maddening. Is it a bug the size of a bear? A furry bug with claws? An atomic age creature with the body of a bear and the head of a fly? Then let's make this strange concoction even more bizarre by sticking a pumpkin on top of it all. Is the pumpkin a jack o lantern worn like a mask? Is it even a pumpkin or is it a head that looks like a pumpkin?
(Though in all honestly, if you're here you probably know what a bugbear is. If you don't know, then that paragraph was probably much more detailed than the fleeting wonderment of what a hairy goblinoid brute is.)

     I picked the name because it's an esoteric piece of history about one of my favorite D&D monsters. The bugbear is a folklore representation of the boogeyman. In my opinion the name is just as interesting as the creature it's self. As per Wikipedia...

     Its name is derived from the Middle English word "bugge" (a frightening thing), or perhaps the old Welsh word bwg (evil spirit orgoblin),[2] or old Scots bogill (goblin), and has cognates in Germanbögge or böggel-mann (goblin), and most probably also English "bogeyman" and American English "bugaboo".

      In D&D bugbears are hulking hairy goblinoids (distant cousins of goblins) that are surprisingly stealthy. Their footsteps are silent and prefer to open an engagement with ambush. They break the stereotype of the traditionally stealthy creature, they are not lithe and small. Their shadows fill entire doorways but the weight of their clubs are already cracking and breaking bones before you realize they are there (ask two of my players). I love that they are both brutish and cunning.

      So the pumpkin...where the hell does that come from? Way back in the mid-70s Gary Gygax, one of the two men that created Dungeons and Dragons was commissioning a piece of art. When he got the piece back the bugbear had the head of a pumpkin. This is what Gygax is quoted saying about the piece


"The pumpkin-headed bugbear was an artist taking literally my description of the monster as having a head like a pumpkin, i.e large, flat oval."
                                                                       

       I came across this strange illustration just a couple years ago. Wizards of the coast, the current owner of D&D released a limited edition box set of the original little white books that started an industry. I was reading through each of them when I came across a splash page image that depicted a handful of menacing monsters. Right in the middle towering over the others was the pumpkin head bugbear. I thought "What the hell is that thing? It's crazy" The description in the book said very little if anything. Before this, to me bugbears had very different portraits. This one did not look like an abusive mogwai at all. It was child like ingenuity, they took two really awesome things and mashed them together while making laser sounds. Halloween plus bugbears, how could you go wrong? You can't.

     Lastly one of the Bugbear gods looks like he'd be down to party.

How this all started.

      I have been playing with the idea of starting up a gaming blog for a long long time now. The issue being is that there are so many great ones out there and I am not sure what I can add to the conversation. Not only are there so many choices out there but preferences on game type and style are as varied as well...something that has a lot of variables. So basically we begin to create niches within niches. Is there an audience? I don't know, but I guess I'll find out.

     So who am I? I got involved in table top gaming at a very young age. My cousin introduced me to Magic the Gathering in 1994, I was 8 years old. He kind of taught me how to play and it was only after I helped him dig a pit for his fort. A fort that I was never allowed to enter, but I was let in to a completely new world that would change life.

     About a year after being introduced to Magic a small card shop opened up across the the parking lot from my mom's work. I would get picked up by her after school and then go and hang out at the salon she worked at for an hour or two before we went home. The card shop, which was actually just a glass case with singles and a small book shelf with boosters on it, was inside of a large barn structure that housed a trio of netted batting cages. It's kind of a surreal memory, barely looking over the edge of the glass case shuffling through long boxes of cards. The smell of cardboard and the damp concrete of the floor mixing. The gruff long haired man behind the counter blankly watching the practitioners, asking questions between the music of the bat connecting with the ball.
     
     Back in those days card shops were pretty common, more so than now. I lived across the street from one as a child and my dad would take me to visit at least three other in town. These card shops specialized in sports cards, a market that was booming at the time, a market that eventually popped. The first full fledged game store I went to, the barn housed counter, so aptly named The Batcave was a strange amalgamation of the soon to be extinct card shops. They were selling Magic the Gathering and offered the chance to actually hit some balls rather than looking at them on cardboard.
 
      Eventually there was an addition added to the side of the batting cage and the display case extended in to a full fledged game shop. It happened very quickly, I don't know the history of how it happened but the man that sold me the ten cent pieces of card board was gone. Two new, more professional, men took over his mantle as card board slinger. I spent many years at that shop, spending my mom and dad's money on Magic, Pokemon and Star Wars. It was during this period that I met a girl in Spanish class, I was enamored by her. She liked Dragon Ball Z and Werewolf the Apocalypse, I knew the first thing but not the second. Shyly talking to her I found out it was a role playing game, a game like Dungeons and Dragons.

      My connections with D&D were very strange and sporadic before this. My first real exposure to it was through a show that aired on Sci-fi (pre syfy age) called Dream Makers or Makers of Dreams or something a long those lines. It was an hour history of TSR and the people that created their products. It had people, that I now read about in role playing history books, talking about their contributions and the plans for the future. I honestly don't remember much about the show aside from a shot of the TSR business front and Gary Gygax. (I watched it again on youtube a couple years ago and I still don't remember a lot about it.) Mr. Gygax was an amazing sales person. After the show I was extremely amped to try this game out. (Oddly enough Gygax was long gone from TSR by the time this show aired. Do I remember him being in it when he actually wasn't? No idea...) It wasn't until many years later when I met the werewolf girl in middle school that I got the chance to roll some dice.

      One of my best friends at the time concocted a plan to get the girl to come and hang out with us so I could attempt to charm her (I didn't). He asked her, a school chum and myself to come over and play his D&D starter set. I stayed the night at his house the night before and could barely sleep. I was so excited to both play D&D and to hang out with the girl of my 12 year old dreams. I got up early, while my friend was still asleep and thumbed through his starter box. I read each character's description and studied their small blue plastic representations. I finally settled on the half-elf ranger, who I was informed years later was Tanis from the Dragonlance stories. Finally the afternoon sun shown through the bedroom window, everyone had their character sheets in front of them and my friend sat behind his screen. We got our quest and were sent to an abandoned mansion on a hill top. We explored several rooms, killed a couple kobolds and found a secret passage. I was finally trying D&D and...I hated it. Eventually my friend who was running the game realized we were all bored and so the Teletubies show up and attack us. We quit right then and there.

     About a month later (or was it before D&D? I forget, 99% sure it was after) the girl invited us all to her house to try Werewolf the Apocolypse. D&D didn't work out but maybe another game would capture my imagination. We sat around her room for hours making characters and then...we played for 15 minutes. She apologized and said she had only played online and that it was weird in person or something along those lines.

     I went back to playing card games exclusively for awhile. I tried out D&D a couple of times, still disliking it as much as I did the first time. Then a cardboard strandee showed up at the local game store. I had begun hanging out at a closer game store, becoming a regular and later in my teenage years an employee. I asked the manager what the strandee was for, it depicted a man clad in armor wielding a sword and shield (one I own now!). There were several pamphlets for the new product. The manager informed me that a new edition of D&D was coming out and they were pushing it pretty hard. The pamphlets were conversion rules for earlier editions in to the third (in reality probably closer to the fifth) iteration of the game. I shrugged it off and moved on.

     The books eventually came out and I mostly ignored the release. Then that all changed. My friend talked me in to playing a beginners session with this middle aged couple that were regulars at the shop. They wanted to introduce new players to the game and were running a mid level adventure. The adventure was one that they had ran many time before in different editions of the game and new players found satisfying. This was 15 years or so ago and I don't remember the adventure all that well. I know I played a dwarven fighter who had a magical ring of the ram. I also remember that I was the only player who survived the final encounter with a dragon. A DRAGON! A DRAGON LIKE SMAUG! I transformed from a awkward pre-teen to the hero of the table. This is was Gygax was (probably) talking about on TV and this is what I was craving.

      From batting cages, to girls, to Teletubies, cardboard men and dragons I found myself participating in a hobby that would change my life. So what makes me an authority on table top gaming? Nothing really, i'm a gamer like everyone else that's a gamer. I just hope my stories and tips are entertaining and useful to others. I mainly want to use this as a non-linear diary of sorts, publicly posting stories as I remember them.