Kayleigh - Goddess of the Night

Kayleigh is the Goddess of the Night.  To those she favors, at times her glistening eyes and faint smile can be seen watching from above as her long hair blows in the breeze.  She isn't so much a goddess of the night itself, per se, but rather of those things that happen during the night: namely dreams and assignations.  Her formal symbol is a silver abstract image of woman with arms raised above her bare breasts and head, with a spiral over her womb.  Kayleigh tends towards capriciousness and wistfulness.

Her worshippers - called Kayleighanders - honor her by engaging in trysts under the stars and through lucid dreaming, wherein Kayleigh sometimes visits her faithful.  Dreaming isn't always practical, so followers of the goddess who lack their own sensitivity to the hypernatural frequently use mind-altering substances to allow them to see and feel Kayleigh's presence around them.

Kayleigh's faithful tend to congregate in a walled garden courtyard, under the open sky.  The area is filled with hallucinogenic smoke, laughter, and cries of passion.  Various couches and similar furniture are arranged around a central couch upon which lies the high priestess.  The high priestess has remained in such a state for many years, sleeping the entire while.  Other followers cluster around her to hear her mutterings from the Dreamlands, which they take as divine wisdom imparted to her by Kayleigh.  While not doing this, and sometimes even while the do so, the faithful drink opium-laced wine, smoke from the hookah, or feed their carnal appetites upon a soft mossy bed beneath the stars.  For those skilled in lucid dreaming, the high priestess awaits visitors in the City of Ravens, which is found only in the Dreamlands.  There is a vague prophecy that should the high priestess ever wake from her sleep, it will usher in an era of ill-tidings.

While prone to occasional bouts of paranoia, Kayleighanders open their rites to almost anyone who is interested in joining them.  The cult is popular, with almost everyone dabbling in it at some point during their lives, but few people remain followers for long.

[More to come as I develop it - this was all pretty much stream of consciousness and I just wanted to get it down while I was thinking about it.]

Trollszine #4

Trollszine #4 is now out.  Check out the information about it at Lone Delver and  Adventures and Shopping,  and get it at DrivethruRPG.

Purple Mountain Conversions

Purple Mountain features three new spells and several monsters, amongst lots of other stuff.  Below are some of my conversions to T&T.  As previously noted, I had intended to convert everything but it became too cumbersome.  There are a bunch of other half-finished notes - Talents based off of feats, magic items, and the like - but I won't post them here.  These meager offerings will have to do.  Note below that I use Stackpole's 8 Cs of Magick, so these schools will need some fiddling with to fit standard 7e/7.5e.

APPENDIX I – MONSTER STATISTICS

CAVE SCORPION MOUNT

MR: 50

Special Attack: 2/sting

Special Defense: 5 hits off due to chitin.

Special Abilities:  darkvision 60 ft., tremorsense 60 ft., Immune to mind-affecting effects

Cave Scorpion Venom: Slows the victim's responses for the next 3 combat rounds, with the effect that her combat adds total is reduced to 3/4 normal.

Cave Scorpions are a dark gray color and blend in well with their subterrene surroundings.  They have been trained by Scorpion Knight mites to serve as mounts.

FLASH BEETLE

MR:  30

Special Attack:  1/flash: a flash beetle can create a brilliant flash of light. All creatures within a 10 ft. area must make a LKSR at a level equal to the number of 6s rolled, or be dazzled for 1d3 rounds, attacking at ½ during that time.

HO: 4 due to natural carapace.

They are immune mind-affecting effects with low-light vision.  Being a beetle, they can fly.  A flash beetle’s glowing glands provide light in a 10-foot radius. A dead flash beetle’s luminescent glands continue to glow for 1d6 days after its death.

GIANT AMOEBA

MR:  100

Special Attack: 1/3 due to acid.

Defensive Abilities: all attack do half damage due to squishy body.

MITE GUARD

MR:  15

Special Attack: 1/1 spite; however, due to a special kindred-based hatred of dwarves and gnomes, they will direct all spite toward members of those kindred, and score double spite against them.

Mites are tiny humanoids, only about 2½ feet tall.  They can see in the dark and suffer from light sensitivity.  Mites speak Undercommon.  Mites also tend to develop an empathy for ‘vermin’, training them to obey commands and even serve as mounts.

SCORPION, RED AND BLUE

MR: 45

Special Attack: 2/sting

Special Defense: 5 hits off due to chitin.

Special Abilities:  darkvision 60 ft., tremorsense 60 ft., Immune to mind-affecting effects

Red and Blue Scorpion Venom: Slows the victim's responses for the next 3 combat rounds, with the effect that her combat adds total is reduced to 3/4 normal.

SCORPION KNIGHT

MR:  30

Special Attack: 1/1 spite; however, due to a special kindred-based hatred of dwarves and gnomes, they will direct all spite toward members of those kindred, and score double spite against them.

Scorpion Knights are mites who specialize in mounted combat.  Their mounts are, obviously, scorpions. Mites are tiny humanoids, only about 2½ feet tall.  They can see in the dark and suffer from light sensitivity.  Mites speak Undercommon.  Mites also tend to develop an empathy for ‘vermin’, training them to obey commands and even serve as mounts.

APPENDIX VI: UNCOMMON SPELLS

LEVEL 1

Muscle Spasm [Combat]

WIZ Cost: 2

Range: 25’

Duration: Instantaneous

Power Up?: Yes.  With each power up, the level of the required DEXSR is increased, or double the range.

Description:  You cause the target’s muscles to twitch and cramp for 1 round. If the target fails a First Level DEX SR, they drop any held items; if they make their save, they manage to hold on to everything.

LEVEL 2

Disfiguring Touch [Conjuration]

WIZ Cost: 3 per 1 point removed

Range: Touch

Duration: Instantaneous

Power Up?: No.

Description: With a touch, you cause the victim of this spell to suffer a painful curse that causes it to grow hideously disfigured. This spell is like Curse You, removing attribute points, except it also creates a physical appearance of deformity that is subject to the caster’s whim.  Most demon worshipers choose deformities that reflect their Hellish patron’s shape or form.

LEVEL 3

Cold Feet [Construction]

WIZ Cost: 10

Range: 25’

Duration: Instantaneous

Power Up?: Yes.  With each power up, it lets the caster increase the ice’s CON and STR SR required to escape.

Description:  Thick, heavy ice forms around the target’s feet and freezes to whatever surface he is standing on. The target cannot move, fights at ½, and can make melee attacks only against foes within reach. He can chip his way out of the ice, or an ally can hack at the ice for him; the ice has 5 hits off and CON points equal to the caster’s level X10. A successful Strength Saving Roll at the caster’s level allows the target to break completely free of the ice.

Purple Mountain Nears An End

Last week Friday we had another session in Purple Mountain, pretty much ending our play of the first level.  They gathered the loot of the fallen cult leader and his minions, explored the split-level "Swarming Zone", and killed the mighty throach - a scorpion without pincers that implants eggs into its victims.  While the PCs haven't cleared the entire Temple of the Locust Lord, the areas that are left are mostly rooms that they failed to discover due to secret doors.  I will likely allow them one last foray to see if they can locate the main treasure room and then we will wrap it up.

I will be posting some of my conversion notes in the near future.  Before actual play began I converted all of the dungeon text and about half of the monsters, spells, et cetera, in the appendices.  As I noted in a prior post, this was very time consuming and not something I am used to having to do.  If I used material from other game systems in the past I usually do so on the fly.  I wanted to formally go through that process in its entirety in this case but never completely finished the process.  Having tried it, I am reinforced with my prior philosophy, widely held in the OSR, that a minimum of preparation is the way to go.

Down Goes the Cult Leader

The party continued its exploration of the first level of Purple Mountain.  They defeated the inhabitants of the rubbish room, but didn't investigate the trash or the shaft.  They made a circuit of the octagonal corridor to get their bearings and then decided to head through the double doors.  Beyond, they traded blows and spells with the guardians of the lower level, while the cult leader lobbed spells on them from the upper level of the room.  Magic resistance saved them more than a few times.  After a long and drawn out fight, only the leader was left.  Realizing the gig was up, he discorporated into a scattering mass of worms and was gone...for now.

One of my house rules is a variant on magic resistance, a new concept in 7e T&T.  Having played 5e since way back, I gave 7e a try when it came out, but after playing with it for several years I realized I still didn't like it so we went back to a 5e base.  The better bits of 7e - Talents and the new types, for instance - were incorporated, but what to do with magic resistance?  I was torn.  I like magic to be chaotic and uncertain at times, but I also liked the point and shoot style of 5e spells.  What I finally decided on was a system based off of 5e: spells automatically work, unless the subject makes a conscious effort to resist the effects.  In this case they make a SR on WIZ at the spell's level.  Fail and the spell works as normal.  Succeed and the spell might be resisted.  The last bit, why it might be resisted, is that the effort to resist the spell burns WIZ just like casting a spell whether the resisting is successful or futile.  The subject has to spend WIZ just as if they were the caster of said spell, with appropriate reductions based on level, focus, and type.  Without sufficient WIZ, resisting fails and the spell works as normal.

Return to Purple Mountain

Now that we are back into a normal routine after the break, we were able to get back to Purple Mountain tonight.  After our previous experience, I dropped the use of the battle mats and figures for this session.  I feel that they don't match well with T&T, at least not as I prefer to play it.  We were only able to clear two more rooms in this session.  Neither room involved monsters so there was no combat.  There was a thorough search of a storage area, full of various foodstuffs and a case full of mealworms.  Then it was on to another room where there was a navigation to avoid a swinging axe trap and disable it old-school style: a super-strong dwarf (with a Talent in Brute Force) and a half-orc held a massive iron bar by its ends and stopped the axe's momentum when it crashed into the middle of the bar near the end of its arc.  It still caused a bone-jarring impact and a clang that alerted many of the dungeon's denizens.  Nevertheless, I thought it was a fairly clever idea for children to come up with, so - with successful STR SRs - I allowed it.  After forcing open the room's chest, they found the gold, wand, note, and scrolls within it.  With that we suspended play until next time.  We've almost covered half of the 1st dungeon level now.

I'm finding that while the adventure was easily converted to T&T (if time consuming), the flavor of what I expect from a T&T game isn't shining through.  Instead, as one might expect, the feel of Pathfinder manifests in the game, even when dropping that ruleset.  This may be obvious to some people, but, as I stated in prior posts, for me this is an experiment.  T&T's 'sensibilities' are masked by the feel of the original ruleset, even when everything has been reworked to use T&T rules and lingo.  I'm also finding, even though we play short sessions due to the age of the children involved, that we are only progressing though about half as many areas as I'd expect to.  I think that this is because of the mechanics involved, even converted to T&T.  In my conversion I have tried to leave the 'integrity' of the mechanics, so they tend to be more involved than a usual T&T adventure might otherwise be.

While it might appear that I am just griping and that things don't seem to be working out in this experiment, I would say that isn't the case.  By trying something new the process is helpful to show me what T&T's strengths are and what the style of play is that I enjoy.  More to come.

Arkham Horror

During the camping trip we played some Arkham Horror.  Six investigators versus Cthulhu.  We got him down to about 5 points before we were all killed and devoured.  Still, a fun game.  Once we get a few more sessions under our belts (we've only played a few times), I think we will look into some of the expansion sets.  The King in Yellow will likely be first....

Back to the Dungeon

As we are all off this week, I plan on getting in a few sessions of Purple Mountain.  We should finish the first level, I hope.  Updates as they happen, and when the level is cleared I'll post my conversion notes.

Amber Witch

Just got back from camping over the holiday weekend.  Right before we left I went to the liquor store and chanced across something I'd never seen before: Strega.  From Wikipedia:



Strega (or Liquore Strega), is an Italian herbal liqueur produced since 1860 by the S. A. Distilleria Liquore Strega in Benevento, Campania, Italy. Its yellow color comes from the presence of saffron in its recipe. Liquore Strega is 80 proof (40%) and among its approximately 70 herbal ingredients are mint and fennel. Strega is considered a digestif, meant for drinking after meals.

Strega has a similar appearance to Galliano (though less vibrantly yellow). It is slightly sweet, semi-viscous, and has a bold, complex flavor with strong minty or coniferous notes.

Strega, of course, is 'witch' in Italian, so that didn't hurt either.  Anyway, I have a new favorite drink over absinthe.  It is very good neat, and I also invented my own cocktail using it.  Try it out and let me know what you think.  I call it the Amber Witch: equal parts Strega, orange juice, and quality ginger ale, on the rocks.