The Raid Mirror

Here's adventure #9, The Raid Mirror.  This started out as an experiment for a June freebie, which is why it's such a different format!

It has a Dungeon World "front" style, meaning that it's a bunch of terrible badness that can happen if the PCs don't act to change the course of events.

Download it, kill your PCs, and tell me about it!

Graphic Files

As usual, everything is free for non-commercial use under CC-BY-NC-3.0.

• Blightlands map
• Stryggal
• Tirru-Stryggal, the orcnest
• An orcy dagger
• An orcy spear

Monday, I showed the art for Circle of Wolves - well, I find myself in an unusual situation in that I'm ahead of myself on maps!  This one is coming down the pike, the first two-map two-pager, following an idea that Shane King gave me.  Here's the exterior view:

I still love drawing rocks

Crossing the Page Break

With all of your support, I've reached my last milestone (at least, of the ones I've thought up!)  That means - yep - I cross the page break, and everything from now on is going to be two pages.

When I got the notice, I was halfway through a little experiment - a freebie for June that is structured like a Dungeon World "front". Rather than describing an adventure-packed location, it describes an unfolding threat large enough to eventually impact the PCs, wherever they are.

It started from a question - what would happen if a pack of orcs got hold of a mirror of scrying and teleportation? Probably not much, I'm sure they'd be content to keep on hunting from their cramped, stinking orcnest. 

The Orcnest Tirru-Stryggal

They certainly wouldn't start extorting everyone within three hundred leagues, under threat of sending in a pack of orc commandos into your bedchamber in the middle of the night.  Then the nestlord starts pounding silver nails into his head and things get really bad.

Since the art's all done for the orc adventure and I'm not always by a computer to work on layout, I've started on the art for adventure 11.

The Circle of Wolves

A large clearing in an escarpment-riven forest, a convergence of ley lines gives off magical power. Over the years it has attracted worshippers, monument builders, madmen, and once a sorcerer-king.  But all that's in the past now, and it's just a creepy stone circle off in the forest.  Except that people have started to turn up half eaten.

I seem to enjoy drawing rocks!

The Coming of Sorg

Here's the next one in the series!  This is a bad place that's going to get a whole lot worse unless the players do something about it.

Here's the link to the high-res art!  Like the adventure it's cc-by-nc.

In the spirit of the old B2 module, this is a place with enough goons to overwhelm most parties (especially in systems with flatter PC power growth) unless the players are able to cultivate some allies or sew dissent.  The 'factions' are definitely divided against one another, but it's going to take some intervention from the players to get things moving.

For tone, my mental image is of a fantasy version of WWI trench warfare. Groups of cultists are lurking everywhere, but most of them are frightened, hungry or exhausted, pinned down by the emanations and trying to muster the courage to act.  There are puddles of water, mud, bits of gore from previous kills, and every now and again a half-ethereal emanation goes screaming overhead, looking for an easy kill.  Real end of the world stuff.

This is an opportunity for you to bust out that random NPC reaction table. The PCs and any given group of the cultists might want exactly the same thing, but trust isn't easy to come by in this sort of environment. On the other hand, even the most wicked of cultists might be glad to see apparent reinforcements!

A few notes: the staircase isn't meant to be a big 'fuck you' to prepared parties! Unless your group goes for that sort of thing, be sure to raise their hackles first by describing what it's like to mount a staircase with all those broken and defaced statues looming over it.  I imagine most PCs will react pretty strongly to any wastage, so there's no need to deplete anyone.  Cultist allies, too, may warn the PCs, and a party with some experience should have no trouble making their own alternate way up through magic or climbing.

Sorg's emanations aren't invincible - they're just immune to "normal" weapons. Blessed, silver, or magical weapons will hurt them just fine.  You may wish to adjust this, depending on your system. Mid-level Burning Wheel or Torchbearer parties, for example, won't have much along these lines, while 8th-level Pathfinder PCs will be packed with it.

Also note that other than the scrolls in the archive and the possibility of a boon from Deel, there's no mention of treasure. If your system requires players to haul out a lot of treasure, by all means add some, particularly in the Ruined Archive (a little), the Brewmaster's House (a little more), and the High Temple (plenty).

How To Hook It In

A place like this is bad for the neighbours. Many of the cultists are former thieves and similar unscrupulous sorts, and the Blighted Order would have been a thorn in the side of any nearby community, much like a bandit camp.  After Sorg's arrival, a number of them would have fled outright, winding up picking pockets in taverns or - if they've cash to spare - drinking away their trauma and telling tall tales.

Nearby patrols, too, would have noticed the sudden drop in bandit activity, a welcome relief.  That's until the emanations start showing up, picking off fishermen and wood-gatherers, before finding more populous places to feed.

Hope you enjoy it! Don't forget to check out the others in the series! If you like these adventures, consider supporting the project on Patreon!

Q*Bert Topology for Isometric Maps

I mentioned this somewhere else, so I figured I'd explain.  Certain things make maps easier to draw, others make them much more time consuming.

One the best ways to slow down mapping is doing research to make sure the map is accurate relative to some pre-existing source material.  It's no accident that most of us armchair cartographers draw a map of our dungeons and then stock them - that's way easier than writing a description of a large dungeon and then trying to produce an accurate map of it.

But tied for second place in terms of taking a lot of time is fiddling around with a 3D orientation, trying to make a complex, overlapping object comprehensible.

(An astute patron pointed out that I missed map #3 in my series - Tannoch the fifth map, but it's numbered 06.  That's because map #3 fell victim to both of these problems at the same time and I couldn't get the map done. When I level up I'll tackle it again.)

Q*Bert Topology

What makes 3D maps hard is when you need to show something that's behind something else.  If you're drawing the map first, why not simply avoid this entirely?  A topology where nothing overlaps is one where everything is equidistant from the viewer, which, in an isometric map, corresponds roughly to looking down at a staircase at a 45-degree angle.  Q*Bert!

(For the young ones in the crowd, this isn't a sticker, but was once state-of-the-art arcade fun.)  As you can see, in the Q*Bert topology, nothing overlaps, so you can get a lovely sense of the map being 3D, with lots of interesting elevation changes, without the inconvenience of trying to render overlapping.

Here's my best example of this, the map from the next adventure, "The Coming of Sorg":

As you can see, this follows the Q*Bert topology very closely:

If all the maps looked like this, it would of course get very dull.  But it's a useful topology to keep in your back pocket for those Sunday afternoon noodling-around-with-graph-paper sessions!

The Task of Zeichus

A fragment of song lyrics got me thinking about barely restrained hostility, a veneer of respectability.  That, plus some super awesome isometric graph paper produced this next adventure.

Here's the link to the high-res art!  Like the adventure, it's cc-by-nc.

'Task' can be plopped pretty much anywhere in a campaign world; it's the sole surviving remnant of something much older, a baroque and decadent time capsule. When I say it might be near some ancient ruins, I mean rocks that you can barely tell were once structures. The domains of the Martoi, whatever they were, are long gone.

The halls are not obviously hostile to visitors, at least not at first.  The revelers will probably be fascinated by novelty, if the party doesn't prove to be crude vandals, and the Queen has a tradition of hospitality toward supplicants while they wait in hopes of an audience - that extends at least as far as the hostel.

The revelers aren't pushovers, however! Although fallen into decadence, they're the elite of a violent society and are familiar with brutality of every sort.  They're also well aware of the chime. If it does come to blows, they'll be more than willing to suffer an apparent setback to deliver a surprise attack an hour later!  But once the dust settles, they will be more than willing to write off fighting as a diverting pastime, as long as honor is satisfied.

The real danger is, of course, the vampire.

Don't forget to check out the others in the series!

Las Quebradas de Ur-Menig

Yop Yop is continuing his fine work with Las Quebradas de Ur-Menig.

From now on, I'll be posting all of these Spanish translations on a dedicated page, Aventuras en Castellano.

El Stellarium de Vinteralf

This tickles me to bits. Yop Yop has translated Stellarium into Spanish! What fun.

Yop's got a bunch of other adventures on his blog, so if you're into Spanish role-playing, check it out!