My Son, the Grognard

So, a couple of weeks ago we decided to put the Greyhawk campaign on hold for a little while and explore some other RPG's. After some discussion, we decided to give 5e a try with the starter box set.

I've never played or ran 5e and Brisco had no experience with it, either. I was looking forward to running it and seeing what my son thought. While I did tell him I thought the game needed some judicious houserules, I said that all in all I thought it was decent, from what I've seen.

I didn't want my own preferences to unduly influence him. For all I knew, he might really like 5e and it could be a good game for him to run for his friends. It's the new hotness, after all. Thus far he's been running OSRIC for his high school crew. They meet about once a month or so and he runs them through a module. He hasn't started an actual campaign with them, which I think is fine. I started in a similar fashion, with my friends and I getting together, taking out our character folders and assembling a
team for whatever adventure one of us was running. Kind of a nebulous, ever shifting world that might resemble Greyhawk one week and ancient Scandinavia, the next.

I've been talking about a lot of different games during our conversations. Rolemaster, OpenQuest, Stormbringer, DCC, various super hero games and so forth. I think giving him information and opportunities to explore different games is a good thing. Hell, I'd even be willing to run 3e for him.

No one else, but I'd run it for him.

So, the 5e session went fairly well. We got past the first part. My son ran two of the pre-gens and I ran the other three as NPC's.

I think the first assault on Brisco's Old School sensibilities was the cantrips. After working an AD&D MU up to 13th level, all that "Phew-Phew" repetitiveness was a bit... dull and uninspired.

The second was the dying rules, which he found irritatingly coddling.

"We can houserule all that if you want to do an actual 5e campaign," I assured him.

The session ended and the next week, I was prepared to continue the adventure.

Alas, Brisco informed me he wasn't interested in 5e, didn't care for it at all and said, "Let's go back to the Greyhawk campaign."

"Are you sure? You know a lot of what you didn't like can be houseruled."

"No, I didn't care for it at all. I didn't like the way it played. I prefer 'To Hit' charts and the way AD&D works."

Swear to Gygax.

"Okay, I'm good with that."

Another Thrilling Episode of Conan and the Cheap DM

It's been about six years, since Conan last faced off against the Cheap DM and I think it's time for another confrontation! I'm curious to see what might have been put on the web, since last I posted one
of these.

Okay, here's the deal. You want to run a Hyborian Age campaign, 'cause who hasn't at least toyed with the idea, right? But, you don't want to shell out any money. Maybe the new Conan hotness doesn't do it for you. Maybe you've already got the system you want and fuck it, D&D Can do anything, anyway!

What you need is campaign material. Maps, maybe a gazetteer, some info on the Hyborian gods, a timeline, some inspiration, etc.

Can we find everything we need online? For free? Without resorting to piracy, mind you. That would make it too easy.

Not to worry! The Cheap DM has fought this battle before and emerged triumphant!

Some Main Resources

Let's visit Jason Vey’s Classic Edition Fantasy Resources Page. If you want to use OD&D, or something close to it, then his supplements, The Age of Conan and The Secrets of Acheron, as well as a DM screen for the set will be of use! These feature rules for running an OD&D campaign in the Hyborian Age and the main focus is on adapting the game to Howard’s setting, including overhauling the magic system. There’s not a lot of info on the milieu itself, but there's some race info and a little info on the gods. Contains an excerpt of Howard’s essay The Hyborian Age.

A good start, but we're not done yet. 

The Hyborian Age page, by Thulsa comes next. This site has gods, demons, a gazetteer and maps! Plenty of maps! Not to mention magic items, famous sorcerers and other personages. The rules are d20, but easy enough to toss, amend, or mutilate. The site also reproduces Howard’s The Hyborian Age essay It's an old site and a few of the links to elsewhere are dead, but the majority of it, including the really important stuff, are still there.

  

I still haven't gone through this site, but the Conan Wiki has a Gazetteer and more. The Age of Conan Wiki might also have some useful stuff.

If you're not a Howard purist, then the Hyborian Age Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe has all kinds inspirational material. It’s rather large and contains a ton of Marvel Pictures! 

Hyborian War is an archive of an old Play-by-Mail game, which contains Kingdom Reports and what-not, which you may find useful. The various kingdom reports have some detailed maps of the regions and are in pdf format.

Here's a direct link to a PDF titled Hyboria by Rowan Walking Wolf, which takes the most important setting info from Thulsa's site and puts it in a handy 64 page document. It says it's "for use with Saga & other fine roleplaying systems" but at a quick glance it looks to be completely system free. The gazetteer, races, personalities, gods, etc., are all here as well as a B&W map. Probably the best setting material source I've found on this particular adventure, beating out xoth.net thanks to its format and ease of use.

Maps

A google image search will turn up tons of maps and other imagery. Here's a few that caught my eye.

Here's a 25 MB map of the Hyborian Age by someone named Sapiento on Deviant Art.

Here's another map. I think it's a copy of the Mongoose one. Large.

A direct link to another map. 

Some old Marvel maps, by Crom! From The Dork Review.

This one hosted at Cap'n's Comics is pretty damn cool!

A small map of Arenjun City of Thieves at xoth.net by Matthew Finch?!?

Other Useful Conan Stuff!

The Wikipedia page for the Hyborian Age has some useful info.

Dragonsfoot # 13 has an AD&D Conversion of Thulsa’s Tower of the Elephant adventure.

Here's a Conan inspired adventure for The Black Hack - The Black Sword of Shem.

Dr. Skull's Conan Cult has campaign notes and modules from a Mongoose Conan campaign.

A few Hyborian Age houserules from the Hyborian Tales blog.

There might be something useful in the Free RPG Day offering from Modiphius. Also, their Quickstart for the game.

the venomous pao hosts several BoL Hyborian Age adventures, written by G-Man.

Here's a direct link to a PDF called Nations and Peoples of the Hyborian Age - A larp resource on the cultures and countries in Hyboria.

I'm not sure what the deal is with Revolvy, but there's a Hyborian Age page with quite a few articles that look pretty in depth. 

And if you're interested in REH scholarship, The Cimmerian is well worth perusing.

Some of REH's works are in the Public Domain. Here's many of his writings, featuring Conan, et al.

And if You Haven't Chosen a System, yet...

There's always ZeFRS – The Retro-Clone of the rules from TSR’s old Conan RPG by David Cook. You can download it for free here.

Or, the free version of Barbarians of Lemuria, might just hit that sweet spot, system-wise!

And We're Done!

There you go! Everything we need to run the Hyborian Age and then some!

For those willing to expand their means of acquisition and hunt second hand type sources, I might recommend looking for some of the old Mongoose Conan releases, which are no longer available for purchase since they lost the license. Their Road of Kings supplement is what I would probably use first and foremost if I were going to run Hyboria. That and maybe a heavily houseruled S&W. Though, Advanced Labyrinth Lord with Human Multi-Classing allowed and an edited spell list would work. Maybe LotFP? If I were willing to spend the time and energy on a blatant copyright violation, I'd do a source book. I kind of feel like Gorgonmilk has dropped the ball, here! ;)

For 3 or More Adults, Ages 10 and Up

I'm still working on Cultic Greyhawk, but in the meantime, I'm about to start another campaign. My 10 year old son will be playing, so I wanted something a little less hardcore than what I'm envisioning for Greyhawk.

We rolled up PC's today and the three players have formed a party consisting of:

A 1st lvl Fighter.
A 1st lvl Thief.
And a 1st lvl Elf.

Heh. No Cleric.

My son's playing the Fighter and immediately decided he was Lawful. "I want to be a good guy!"

I decided to go with B/X. I've never ran it, but it should be perfect for introducing my son to the game. I almost went with S&W Whitebox, but I want his first campaign to be a TSR edition of Dungeons & Dragons.

In which I play OSRIC for 30 years

So. Gearing up for a new campaign. Definitely a 1e thing, but I think I'm going to run OSRIC again.

Partly because I anticipate again having players new to old school D&D and want them to be able to download a free copy of the rules.

Also, the last OSRIC campaign I ran made me realize something.

While many folks write about their early 1e experiences as being a mash-up of B/X & AD&D, this wasn't my experience at all. No one in my gaming group, or any of the groups I knew of, played B/X. Or, even owned the boxed sets. It was 1e all the way.

We played the game pretty much by the book. I've always used segments and casting times. Weapon damage vs. L opponents. MR based on the caster being 11th level.

We didn't use weapon vs. ac or weapon speed. I imagine that probably was due to the influence of elder gamers who had disappeared into the halls of Valhalla, long before I met my initial gaming buddies. Don't really know for sure

When I look back on it, aside from houeruled individual initiative and lifting limits on single-classed demi's, the game I've played for 30 years looks a hell of a lot like OSRIC!

I Blame Michael Moorcock!

Neil Gaiman already snatched the perfect title for this Sub-Header

It's almost invariable. For almost 30 years, in almost every D&D campaign I've ever run.

The PC's end up travelling in time, or to another dimension, or plane, or another planet. Usually all of the above and on multiple occasions. Sometimes they come back. Sometimes, they never do.

I blame Michael Moorcock!

At 14 I was beginning my career as a DM, discovering Appendix N and shortly thereafter, scarfing up every Michael Moorcock novel I could find. For years, I named him my favorite author. He no longer holds quite so elevated a place in my literary pantheon, but I'll always love him for the Elric stories, the tales of Hawkmoon and most especially, The War Hound and the World's Pain. Still, while I appreciate authors whose work demands to be considered as a whole, instead of merely by its parts, I eventually tired of Mr. Moorcock. Feeling his work had become too derivative of itself, I still haven't read the last two Elric novels, The Skrayling Tree and The White Wolf's Son. I left off with The Dreamthief's Daughter.

As others have noticed,  I suspect that 14 is the perfect, or near perfect age to read Michael Moorcock. Perhaps, he's one of those authors, just subject to being outgrown.

That thought makes me a little sad.

Maybe I just have less patience for all the allegory, allusions and what-not. I've become... exhausted, when it comes to grappling with philosophical questions. Still, there's always been a belief in and hope for humanity, in Mr. Moorcock's work. I think I need to re-read him, through middle-aged eyes.

If you're going to steal ideas for your campaign, steal from the best!

All that trippy dimension-hopping and those Multiversal Conjuctions. The bizarre peoples, entities and worlds, were at the forefront of my Appendix N inner landscape. The Dark Ship and Prince Gaynor the Damned were only two of the ideas I swiped from Mr. Moorcock, for use in some campaign, or another. Foremost, I think, was the idea of frequent inter-dimensional and inter-planar travel.

It goes all the way back to my Kastmaria campaign. Around 4th level, the PC's traveled to an Ice Age world for a few hours, to rescue an absent-minded mage from his folly. They killed some cave-men and befriended a Silver Dragon, who was eager to escape its frozen hell and followed the PC's through the gate, back to their home world.

A few levels later, they accidentally ended up 150 years in the future and never went back. Then, there was the Bazaar, the city at the center of the Multi-verse (partially inspired by/swiped from Robert Asprin's Myth series as this was pre-Planescape.) They spent a lot of time off and on, there, having adventures, engaging in their war with the Magic-Users of Sorcerer's Isle. Saving the city from destruction, at one point, when a mad mage attempted to destroy the magical machinery that created the city's plane of existence.

Around 12th level, they went to an alternate Earth, where an evil Merlin released the Tarrasque on England, just to cover his tracks and rid himself of his failed attempt at creating a messiah, named King Arthur. At 14th, they took a 3 Turn trip to Avernus, to rescue that absent-minded mage again.

They went to a demi-plane to kill Merlin. King Balston was on some weird planar pocket, when he killed some weird, planar Dragon. I think Sir Alexian Balthafore was also in some weird, extra-dimensional space when he dueled with Pharj Mudast, all alone, at the end of the campaign.

Fortunately, he won! It would have sucked for Darren to end a campaign that spanned thousands of hours (Not 50, Mr. Mearls,) dying at the hand of his archenemy.

I'm sure I'm forgetting a few episodes.

"W" Interferes with my Plans

Decades later, in my long-running 3.x campaign, the PC's started on world A, quickly went to world B, ended up spending most of the campaign on world C, then, back to world B, but centuries before their first visit, for the last few sessions of the game.

Actually, its a bit more complex than that. That campaign was an amalgam of PC's from two different games, which became one campaign around 6th level, or so. All very convoluted and I'm too lazy to bother remembering exactly how that all came about, but  President George W. Bush's interference had a lot to do with it! He signed the order calling Josh back into service and shipped him off to Afghanistan for a year and a half, to fight terrorists.

I doubt that explaining to the President, that I needed Josh to fight orcs & dragons instead would have helped matters, so I didn't bother trying.

Oh, Shit! I Just Remembered!

The first branch of that campaign actually started in the Forgotten Realms! I have ran a published Campaign Setting! For about Two Sessions!!! I then, sent them elsewhere. I prefer discovering a milieu alongside my players. My psyche's intent, blazing a trail, far more fiery and personal than a published setting ever could be.

So, There's this Undead Apocalypse in The Black Mete

Well, what's gonna happen now? The PC's might have enough x.p. to make 3rd level. Might. Kinda doubt it. The civilized lands could muster about... 7,000 forces. Several Clerics. A few MU's. One Dragon would pitch in, to protect his investment. If, he absolutely has to!

Vs. 12k or so Zombies and Ghouls. That's tough. I'm thinking of breaking out Delta's Book of War. I owe him a review and wanted to make it a proper play-test.

I think a certain Lich is going to become involved. Still working out all the implications. The players want to do something. What can they do?

They need a few levels, I think. At least. Hmm...

You know...

I bet they would accept a quest, to find a way to stop all the undead madness. One giving them the opportunity to gain several levels.

Getting them out of the way for a little while, would work out pretty well. But, they need more time than that to gain some levels and prepare for what I've got brewing in the back of my mind.

Maybe the quest could take them to another world, for a while. Or, another plane. Or, backwards in time. Forwards?

My mind just wants to go there with it.

I blame Michael Moorcock!