Return to the Furnace

Just finished a very raw, very rough draft of The Furnace, one of the scenarios that is going to be the scenario book The Tournaments of Madness and Death, for my mate and esteemed Crypt Keeper Julian Hayley who will be running it on Sunday afternoon at UK Games Expo.

Its been a hard process, taking a scenario I ran as my return to D&D a good seven years ago. Pulling out of my brain, looking at the scraps of notes and scans of maps (which I dumped entirely as too fiddly), and trying to make something that to be honest ran much better in reality due to some cracking players (Tony Murray-Clay and the Leicester Lads) than the mess that was on the paper.

I’ve no doubt Jules will makes it his own and rock it hard, and I’ve learnt a lot from writing it up, with lots of ideas about what makes a Crypts and Things scenario tick and different from all the other dungeon crawl games out there. Ideas that will make it into The Tournaments of Madness and Death which is meant to have an article about writing/running C&T adventures for one shot conventions.

Glad to get it done, but man does it need a very hard edit before I let it loose on you uncivilized savages 🙂

If you too are feeling nostligic here’s the series of posts I wrote about the Furnace when I ran it at Furnace Convention (hence the name) in 2010.

New edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay from Cubicle 7

Just announced by Cubicle 7, they shall be releasing a new edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying later this year. Scant details so far, here’s the very brief announcement:

A new edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay will be launched by Cubicle 7 Entertainment later this year. The new edition will return players to Warhammer’s grim world of perilous adventure, and takes its direction from the first and second editions of the game.

Cubicle 7 CEO Dominic McDowall said, “Like so many gamers I grew up on Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. It’s an iconic setting and I’m thrilled to be working on this new edition of the game. Our team have a huge breadth of experience with Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and I’m excited to be able to bring the Cubicle 7 approach to the Old World. We’ll be revealing more of our plans in the coming months, so subscribe to our newsletter and keep an eye on our website!

I’m chuffed to bits with this. I know that the game is in safe hands, because they have a strong track record of putting out great games with high production values and doing right by very popular licenses (Lord of the Rings, Dr Who etc).

You don’t get more British Old School than Warhammer Fantasy Rolplay.

Life and Death – Sorcerors

The presence of a villainous sorcerer is fundamental to a good  Swords and Sorcery tale.

While the setting of Life and Death, the post-magical apocalypse setting of The Shattered Lands, is very low magic in keeping with genre expectations, the bad, mad and downright dangerous to know are out in force as antagonists in the books collection of adventures.

Bilgen,  is very much your young unpleasant black magician in training. He’s very much modelled after obnoxious wanna be sorcerers I met in my real life student days. Petty smelly types who call other people “norms” or “mundanes” taking great pride in their knowledge of Magick without ever really doing much. Bilgen has a handful of spells that make him useful to the bandit chief, who also is deluded and thinks he’s a powerful Merchant Lord, and allows him to terrorise the local peasants.

Tel-Kar-Nath is the real deal.  He is a sorcerer who is fit to be the player character’s nemesis and is a worthy adversary.  He’s been a powerful court magician in a previous life whose machinations brought down reality, been imprisoned in hell for his crimes and is now back a monstrous thing with a psychotic personality.

Tel-Kar-Nath talks in a deep monotone about the joys of death. The finality of it all and the absolute power-mastery it brings. He is more than happy to demonstrate his power upon a hapless captive. However he does not attack the characters directly…

If they attack him, he uses his magic to evade and escape and his zombie followers to hold them off. He is more interested in playing the role of the enigmatic magical master than dealing with the characters, whom he believes are beneath him.

The King in Chains was once a sorcerer of immense reality blasting potential like Tel-Kar-Nath, but is now a husk of his former power. He has been brought back into being as an undead creature, by a ruthless Necromancer who uses him as a magical power source and channel for raising more Zombies. Even in this half-dead state there’s something that realises that this isn’t a good state of affairs and who knows what vengeance it will wreck if the player characters ever loosen those chains.

The Chained King by David M. Wright

The Chained King by David M. Wright

Life and Death is a collection of four adventures that make up a mini-epic tale of a struggle against the forces of Undeath in a world recovering from a magical apocalypse. It is a conversion of an existing OpenQuest adventure, for Crypts and Things and other Class/Level based Fantasy RPGs with all new art by David M.Wright (the artist who illustrated Crypts and Things in its entirety.  Its currently been worked on for a release later this month.

Previous Posts about Life and Death Zarth Edition

Life and Death Zarth Editon - cover by Jon Hodgson

Life and Death Zarth Editon – cover by Jon Hodgson

Sunday Morning Dungeons, Green Hell

When I was in my teens and running a weekly game, “Sunday Morning Dungeons” was the term I used for the couple of hours in the morning where I would happily throw together a dungeon for my game in the afternoon. Today I’ve got no game in the afternoon, only a series of adult responsibilities, but I’ve cracked open afresh notebook and started writing notes about my next OpenQuest game, Green Hell.

Green Hell cover by Jeshields

Green Hell cover by Jeshields

With Green Hell I’m firmly looking to get back to what makes OQ great for me. Fun. I’m not over thinking what I’m doing and if something looks like it would be fun to do I’m throwing it into the “Toy box” I’m creating. I’ve about 20 character illustrations by the great Jesheilds, many of which appear in the new refreshed OpenQuest rule book I’m about to release and the first port of call as always with any of my D100 games was to draw up a cast list of characters. There’s a surprising lack of humans, in fact only 2 out of the five factions that the characters fall into are human and one of those is hanging onto its humanity by a thread. Those five factions are quite diverse, a Dwarfen Expeditionary Force looking for lost relics, a Pirate Ship making its way along the rivers and coast raiding and trading as it goes, the warped woodland inhabitants of the the Wild Wood, the followers of a Water Nymph who lives in an bay, and finally the rather odd inhabitants of the Emerald Temple, which lies at the heart of the mystery that flows through the setting.

Next up was quickly outlining the Cults of the setting. Cults are one of the essential ingredients of any OpenQuest setting in that its where the player characters and their opponents get their magic and skills training. They act as an anchor in the world, supporting the characters, helping them with an off the peg world view and a set of readymade contacts. But is something that I feel I’ve been a bit muted about in previous OQ releases. Well not this time. Green Hell has about five Hero Cults, of people living or dead that you can draw magic (Battle Magic) from their legends and personal magnetism. This gives the factions some of their coherence. Take the Pirates faction, The Skull Jammers. All the ship’s crew follow the Hero Cult dedicated to the founding captain called the “Skull and Bones” (yes slightly cheesy I know but easy to remember when the players are being bombarded with names of NPCs, Locations and events in game). From him they gain Weapon Enhance since he was handy with his cutlass, Walk on Water after a legendary story where he walked on water to board an enemy ship, and Enhance Athletics so all the pirates can merrily go swinging round the rigging! There’s also a cult that despite appearances is a Sorcery cult and a Divine Cult which centres round rather lost and aimless deity, who instead of guiding and commanding piety from her worshippers just sits there staring into the distance while her followers mill about doing what they think she wants. I’ve decided as well that gone of the days of boring utility deities, such as the War God who only exists to provide Warrior PCs with magic. Firmly in the camp now that Deities are in mad, bad and dangerous to know category, with their followers being powerful and a bit unhinged from everyday life. This attitude probably comes from reading and playing Unknown Armies 2nd Edition.

Then I started contemplating rules for trekking across the Swamp, and all the nasty diseases and fierce some wildlife you can encounter, then I realised it was lunchtime so I put down my pen.

OpenQuest Refresh

I’ve learnt a lot since OpenQuest 2’s release five years ago. I realised that I wanted to make the changes to the main rule book to make it more appealing to new players and to satisfy my own needs. The refresh of the main rule book has had the knock-on effect of refreshing me on OpenQuest has encouraging me to get on and produce more material for the game.

OpenQuest cover by Jon Hodgson

OpenQuest cover by Jon Hodgson

If you’ve got OpenQuest 2 Deluxe there is absolutely no reason to buy the refreshed version, the rules are pretty much the same, bar a tweak here and there, as listed in the changes below.

The Main Rulebook

The main Rulebook, formally known as OpenQuest Deluxe is now simply known as “OpenQuest”, has had a visual refresh, new art, a tighter layout and a few text/rules tweaks here and there.

Main changes

  1. Reorganised Combat chapter.
  2. Clarified rules for Shield use and Unarmed Combat.
  3. Complete new art throughout, a new cover by Jon Hodgson and colour internals by James Shields (aka jesheilds).
  4. Shamanism, Spirit Combat and Spirits has been revised and simplified.
  5. Although Gatan is referred to in the examples the setting chapter “Empire of Gatan” + adventure “The Road Less Travelled” have been taken out of the main rule book and will be re-released in “From Darkness into the Light” a Gatan setting/adventure book (more details see below).
  6. Layout has been redone, and with the removal of the Setting + Adventures chapter, the book now comes to a slimmer182 pages.

OpenQuest Basics will stay available in pdf and print via DriveThruRpg.com. It will have the updated combat chapter.

OpenQuest SRD will be updated to include the reorganised Combat Chapter.

The book is currently going through final check and should be ready in pdf by the end of May with print following shortly after.

Refresh going forward….

Going forward, OpenQuest Releases later in 2017

Green Hell

This is a short setting/adventure for OpenQuest that I’m working on for future release….

“If you go down to the Swamps today…

Sir Rurik the Reckless, the Emperor of Gatan’s Champion, has gone missing on a perilous mission on the Far Frontier of the Empire.

As his Squires the Emperor has personally tasked you with finding out what has happened to him, in the marsh beyond the Empire’s borders known as The Green Hell.”

Green Hell cover by Jeshields

Green Hell cover by Jeshields

From Darkness into the Light

I’m separating out the setting and starter adventure from the main rulebook. Part of the reason is to get the rulebook below the 200-page mark, but also because I want to build on the barebones presentation that the setting is, and write up all the little bits of adventures I started set in Gatan. This would require a book all its own.Currently this book stands at about 80 pages of setting material + the following four adventures:

  • The Road Less Travelled (previously the introductory adventure in the main rule book)
  • The Road to Hell
  • Deep in the Hole

(These two adventures where in OpenQuest Adventures which was recently discontinued)

  • The Last Retreat – a new adventure

I’m looking at revising all the adventures that have previously been published. There will be new art by Peter Town and new maps. Content wise I’m looking at doing “What my Elder Told Me” sections for all the cultures in the book and a more in-depth Gazetteer with adventure ideas (if you’ve got Crypts & Things it will be like the “Secrets of The Continent of Terror” chapter in that book).

It should be a book around the 100 -150 page range.

From Darkness into Light cover by Jon Hodgson

The Year of the Four Emperors

This is going to be a self-contained book written by long time OpenQuest/D101 collaborator Paul Mitchener. It is going to be an expanded version of the setting/adventure he wrote for OpenQuest Adventures, set in the turmoil of the Roman world after the death of Nero. With the last of the Julio-Claudian Emperors dead and no clear successor, powerful generals make a grab for the throne.

Call for Submissions – coming soon.

I’m looking to the future (either later this year or next year) where I want a regular release schedule of OpenQuest books, that are fun and different to what we’ve released before.  After the release of the main rulebook, I’ll be putting up a call for submissions which will let interested folk know what I’m looking for.