D&D 2024 Pre-Release Anticipation

So, I’ve been largely ignoring the new version of D&D, with the exception of the 50th Anniversary Celebration stamps put out by Royal Mail featuring the art of Wayne Reynolds (a personal friend). I’m too busy being obsessive about my own games and the resurgence of Chaosium with RuneQuest (of which I’m a huge fan).

Full disclosure: this is where I stand with D&D, summed up by three takes on it.

  • My D&D: Crypts and Things – which leans heavily into Grimdark Swords and Sorcery genre-wise and uses OD&D (via Swords and Wizardry) as a clean base with some comfort of life changes to make it less creaky. Runner up Beyond Dread Portals,which brings a looser post-D&D but still class/level-based game to the table.
  • My Modern D&D: Vanilla would be 13th Age, and I recently backed the second edition. I’ve played and run this more than I can remember, and every time, it has been a smooth experience that’s made everyone around the table have a good time. Setting-specific and slightly lighter, but in the same narrative ball park, and slightly post-D&D, I’d go with Paul Mitchener’s Beyond Dread Portals game.
  • My OSR D&D. Until recently, I would have said Swords and Wizardry, but Old School Essentials intrigues me greatly and, more importantly, seems to have a greater pull to the table than S&W.

I like 5th Edition. I’ve run a few games, mainly testing/pilots, but I find it lukewarm. While the players have always had a good time, it’s not the AMAZING LET’S PLAY THIS AGAIN time that 13th Age or Beyond Dread Portals is, and I’m a bit ho-hum as a GM.

I had a go at publishing material for 5th Edtion, with the Sorcerer Under the Mountain, and had a line of modules written by others lined up, which will soon see the light of day. Still, COVID really knocked the wind out of my sails on that one. Hence the huge delay and getting the stretch goals for Tales from the Sorcerer of the Mountain Kickstarter out.

But I genuinely like D&D, despite my D100 addiction (see OpenQuest/RuneQuest), so I’ve watched with fascination as Wizards of the Coast has geared up this edition.

Dropping into bullet points, some thoughts while I wait for the book to arrive today.

  • While it was harsh in the amount of upset it caused at the time, I’m actually quite thankful for the OGL Crisis. It showed that despite Corporate owners thinking otherwise, D&D is a public phenomenon that transcends them practically and creatively. It also caused a lot of publishers, including myself, to clear up their relationship with the OGL going forward (or not, as the case may be).
  • The digitalisation of D&D? Whatever, for me, it’s a physical book and friends around a gaming table. I shall be gleefully encouraging this approach but with a group down at a local club or a home family game.
  • One D&D, D&D 6th, D&D 2024? Again, what they call it transcends what the player base calls it (see MyD&D above for my definitions). As a computer software developer it amuses me that they have dropped editions from the nameing, which makes it much easier for them to roll out changes and not have to answer the whole thorny “is this a new edition, do I really need it?” (answer from my 40+ years of experience, no).
  • If D&D 5th was their chance to “unite the tribes” of D&D, perhaps D&D 2024 as well as being their 5.5 part marketing move to make more money out of it, but also a chance to make D&D 5th more its own thing.
  • As a GM I hope to really click with the new version. For the last ten years of 5th Ed has been like some party that the world and his dog have been invited to, and I’ve been strangely absent except for a bit of popping in to see what is going on. I’ll be first to admit that its my own fantastism over D100 games, where its very easy to default to D&D being an inferior game system, and being busy exploring the OSR. Perhaps its time to take the launch of the new version as a chance to run a campaign and take a real deep dive?
  • I’m going to run it. Hopefully, it will be a laid-back, once-a-month/week game, and I can publish anything new I come up with through D101.
  • Is familiarity why I keep coming back to D&D, even when I’m being obsessively nerdy about other games? It’s my wife. When she tells work colleagues what I do with D101 Games, she simply says, “It’s D&D.”
  • I’m genuinely excited about this! (not going to think to hard why).

So Happy D&D Release Day!

Under Dark Spires, the Obsidian Pyramid

I’m currently working on the last scenario of the Under Dark Spires adventure collection for Crypts and Things. It’s deliberately a crypt-based adventure (with things) that ties in several plot lines and themes into what should be an epic ending for the character’s adventures in the Dark Spires.

Here’s a peek from the Player’s Introduction.

The Obsidian Pyramid lies in the heart of the Bone Fields and can be seen for miles. Close up, the locals claim, it gives out an eerie hum that drives animals crazy. Treasure hunters periodically turn up in Fort Boneguard and declare their intent to make their fortune by robbing the crypt, which obviously holds the lost treasure of the Hu-Pi kings, who it is said built the pyramid. They party and drunkenly loaf about town. Bragging about how rich they are going to be. When they find out no one will give them a line of credit to extend their bar tab, they leave town in a sulk in the direction of the pyramid, never to be seen again.

All this gives the pyramid a fearsome reputation and a sense of unease that it’s only a half-day’s ride away from the Fort.

On a personal note its reignited my passion for writing the special blend of weird fantasy and horror that Crypts and Things brings out in me, which I don’t always find comfortable. The Obsidian Pyramid lives up to its name and is a dark place, filled with horrors unleashed by dark pacts in antiquity and maintained by insane cultists who worship the crypt’s blood-stained past. It’s a good place for even the most reluctant hero to make their stand against a madness that threatens to push the already dying world over the edge into screaming oblivion.

Under Dark Spires is Coming

This is my much delayed, 90% written, mostly illustrated (by Dan Barker, no less), adventure/setting book for Crypts and Things. I’m in the “get this damn thing done” phase of things.

This update over on the Crypts and Things Remastered Kickstarter gives the overall state ot play.

This month, I’ve taken a bit of a step back to get a climactic adventure into the line-up.

These monthly updates will continue until the book, a collection of five adventures and setting information, is finished and out the door. I’ll also post more about the book’s content as I get close to release here. So if you are looking for a mini-campaign for C&T and other OSR games, this is your book!

Here’s Dan Barker’s cover.

Final day of funding for From the Shroud Issue 3

At the time of writing, we are about to enter the last day of funding of the From the Shroud #3 which is a Crypts and Things/OSR zine, as part of Kickstarter ZineQuest 4.  The zine is now fully maxed out content-wise as a 64-page full-colour zine. It will have sixteen tales of cosmic horror, each featuring a different alien Other World, the demonic Others that live there and adventure ideas.

The campaign also funded a second twenty-three-page zine, Mancuria an fantasy version of my home-city Manchester, an OSR sandbox setting that every backer will get a copy of.

 

Weird Fantasy and Cosmic Horror?

These are two terms that are bandied around lots when it comes to the Old School Renaissance (OSR),

A quick Google looking for a definition of Cosmic Horror, sends you straight towards HP Lovecraft and his Mythos. The rather nihilistic idea of alien beings, and their incomprehensible actions being the source of alarm and anxiety, rather than blood and gore. To be fair that’s were I came in with the term, with the Games Workshop printing of Call of Cthulhu (2nd edition + Companion with all manner of new art, in a lovely hardcover instead of a bunch of pamphlets in a box which was the US Chaosium offering at the time). Actually, I was more interested in the idea of using it as a Gothic horror game, since rather than Lovecraft I had been brought up on a diet of Hammer Horror films, with a dash of the bizarre and creepy 70s/80s British TV Series Tales of the Unexpected (which sometimes went into the realms of the supernatural). I didn’t really get Cosmic Horror until I read the work of Lovecraft’s peer Clark Ashton Smith a couple of years later. CAS is the master of dry, almost sarcastic, delivery of “oppps man has wandered into an encounter with the supernatural almost outside of his comprehension, and suffers badly because of it”. I personally think he’s a much better writer, than Lovecraft, and he certainly got across the sense of how to use Cosmic Horror effectively.

Weird Fantasy? Again a quick Google brings you to a broad church of pulpy, supernatural, dark fantasy, swords and sorcery, titles and stories, that have their origins in the 1920s with the familiar circle of HP Lovecraft, CAS and Rober E. Howard.  For me as a Brit, brought up on a quaint diet of Tolkien and CS Lewis, it means anything that is genuinely strange and somewhat dangerous by its very nature. Moorcook’s Eternal Champion stories (Elric, Hawkmoon, Corum, Von Beck among others) which I drank deep off in my teens come to mind in a happy way here.

Both flavours are covered by the zines I’m offering as part of the From the Shroud ZineQuest 4 Kickstarter.

From the Shroud #3, is cosmic horror in a big way. The Tales that describe the adventures on Other Worlds and their alien inhabitants are the first proper look at the genre that has previously been heavily mentioned and referenced by some of the otherworldly fiends that are the monsters of Crypts and Things. Now I give Crypt Keepers (C&T GMs) a bucket full of ideas to inflict upon their players, whose characters now can visit the worlds beyond the Shroud.

The nearly funded second zine, Mancuria covers Weird Fantasy. It’s an alternative history take on 21st Century Manchester, with an airpunk theme, with flying airships, steam-powered weapons, and dangerous elements in the form of a zombie workforce that sometimes gets hungry, visiting barbarians on unicycles and pirates who prey on the airships.

Both zines are available on Kickstarter now until Monday 29th August.

 

 

From the Shroud #3 now live on Kickstarter

Live now on Kickstarter as part of ZineQuest for two weeks until Mon, August 29.  Fully funded within an hour, currently smashing through stretch goals, From the Shroud #3 is a zine focusing on the cosmic horror of the Other Worlds for Crypts and Things and other OSR/Fantasy games.

From the Shroud issue 3 on Kickstarter until Mon, August 29.

Also, everything that I’ve done for Crypts and Things, including previous issues of the zine, is available as an add-on, so it’s a great way to either catch up with the releases or get into the game.

Five Star Review of Crypts and Things Remastered over at Drivethrurpg.com

Although Crypts and Things has been out a good five years now, once in a while it gets a 4-5 star view over at DriveThruRpg.com. As quoted below, this one was especially useful since Patrick Y, the reviewer, had just finished a campaign.

I just concluded a six-month campaign, taking a party up through level five. Everyone had a blast and would have been happy to continue. My experiences track with the previous reviews. Crypts & Things is an excellent OSR game that captures everything I like about the Sword & Sorcery genre, without including tropes that more properly belong to high fantasy settings.

Under Dark Spires, Character Generation

And so it begins, our run through Under Dark Spires, my mini-campaign for Crypts and Things starting with 1st level characters.

It’s been a while since I’ve played C&T and an eternity since I’ve run an ongoing campaign of it. In between, I’ve been on a steady diet of D100 games (OpenQuest mainly) and new modern D&D variants like 5th Ed and 13th Age. So it was a shock at first going back to C&T’s very old school OD&D base + tweaks from 80s White Dwarf/Fighting fantasy. Any doubts that I would not enjoy this style of play anymore were quickly dispelled. The players are certainly very enthusiastic about playing it 🙂

The Crypt Keeper awaits you in the Room of Zoom!

The Crypt Keeper awaits you in the Room of Zoom!

I explained a bit about the dying world of Zarth, the demonic Others who have come to feed. We discussed that it has elements that require maturity due to themes of violence and oppression and the safety tools we would use if the game moved outside of what people were comfortable with.

The immediate set-up is that the characters are 1st Level and are many treasure hunters who have gone to a region called the Ash Plains. Where the Gods buried an Empire under volcanic debris for their hubris hundreds of years ago, hence in places, you can literally trip over the treasure that was left behind (or so they say).

We did character generation pretty much as written in the rulebook, the exception being that we used 3d6, rerolling 1s and 2s, which leads to more heroic characters. Part of me thinks I should make this the default for Crypts and Things.

The characters are:

  • Bodak Slashingspear (male fighter) played by Tony.
  • Xara (female Theif) played by Al.
  • Torsten Dagsson (Female Disciple) -played by Ginger Matt

We’ve also had another player, Jason, join us since the character generation session, and he’s currently considering a Sorcerer for his character.

I’ll post more about these characters, including starting character sheets, once I’ve got Jason’s character in a future blog post.

Under Dark Spires is currently in development. This run-through is meant as a final playtest of a set of adventures that were previously run individually as convention games. As well as making sure there aren’t any places where there are unavoidable Total Pary Kills, I’m also seeing how experience point allocation and levelling up works when the adventures are run together as a campaign.

We are playing again in just under two weeks when we get stuck into an adventure called Blood of the Dragon.

Look, it’s us rolling up characters!

Lucky Friday 13th!

Who said Friday 13th is unlucky?

Glynn Seal of Monkey Blood Design has just announced another Handy Maps Kickstarter.

Pelgrane Press has just put out a new 13th Age Quickstart rules.

Peter Regan has just started a very quick, nine-day long Kickstarter to fund a 2nd Printing of the Black Hack 2nd edition. If you missed it the first time around, or want the deluxe box sets with lots of extras, like foil-stamped covers, mugs etc, now’s your chance.

This is a fine award-winning British OSR rules set, that I personally highly recommend. I liked it so much that I used it for the base for a self-contained Crypts and Things reimagining.