Dungeons and Dragons TV Channel

So I read a few articles the last few weeks about a new Dungeons and Dragons TV channel created by Hasbro which was supposed to launch soon. I didn’t look too deep into it. The modern version of Dungeons and Dragons is not really my jam. And there’s the whole mess that Wizards of the Coast tried earlier this year. But I still would have liked it to take off into the mainstream, you know, to get a larger player pool, but I doubt I would have watched it myself.

It turns out I misread. The channel is supposed to be live already. It is supposed to be live and on an actual schedule for two weeks already. So how is it? I mean, I had doubts I could even watch it without VPN or anything because I’m in Europe, but it turns out it’s worse: nobody seems to be able to watch it.

See this little video from DnD Shorts:

So, yes, there is no promotion for the channel, and the links leading to it are broken. It cannot even be found via Google or Duckduckgo as I checked. It’s supposedly available via freevee (Amazon) and Plex, but neither know what I am looking for.

It seems Dungeons and Dragons TV Channel is… dead. Already. So sudden in fact that not even the creators were informed it basically died on the vine.

There might have been some shenanigans with Hasbro selling the division that created it off to Lionsgate. That would explain how loveless the whole thing seems to be treated by the company.

Maybe it’s running somewhere, maybe those shows are in a stream somewhere. It’s just, if they are, nobody is watching them. I’d have assumed they would maybe have a Youtube channel for them, but that doesn’t seem the case either. At most you get the trailers for the shows.

One of my contacts on Mastodon mentioned he actually found it. It was hidden behind a lot of other stuff on freevee, and only had the old Animated DnD show on repeat. That doesn’t seem all that enticing.

But the whole idea made me think: wouldn’t it actually be easy to make a channel like that? Get a few Actual Play shows on board, get some other content producers to make DnD or TTRPG content, in between stream old TV shows and movies the RPG crowd is likely to like.

The only problem would be: who of the people who’d be interested in roleplaying games still watches normal TV?

A Monday Miscellany of Links pt. X

I actually have not had much time this week for blogging, even reading my feeds was an issue. Which is sad because there was a rather juicy amount of stuff to be found in them. Here are the most interesting:

Random Tables

100 Fairy Peon Quests (Whose Measure God Could Not Take)

d100 Things I Had To Do Growing up a Dwarf (Elfmaids & Octopi)

d100 Halfling Hangups Growing Up (Elfmaids & Octopi)

100 Wonderous Trinkets (OSRVault)

100 Curses (OSRVault)

PAINT THE (VILLAGE) RED: A General Purpose Carousing Table (I cast light!)

Roll Your Own Kobold Tribe (Points of Inspiration)

Wilderness Encounter Details/Activities (Eldritch Fields)

Game Aids

Mist Rapier (Wombat’s Gaming Den of Iniquity)

What to do at High Level (What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse)

10 Fantasy curses and the ritual to break them (Dawnfist Games)

Branching Factions (Space Aces)

Advanced LaTeX features and LaTeX Images for TTRPGs (Vladar’s Blog)

A take on the Monastery of the Fire Opal, including the upper levels (Dyson’s Dodehecadron)

Thought

Gods are High Level PCs (Rise up Comus!)

Monsters

You’re Sleeping on Perytons (Tales of the Lunar Lands)

OSR: Oni (Remixes and Revelations)

RPG History

Game 497: Dragons (1978) (CRPG Addict)

No Longer a Challenge (Grognardia)

Other

Desecrated Tomb paper model (papermau)

Going off tangent: British money still is weird

Ulster Bank 50 pounds note

Sometimes Britain is really weird. I was writing a post about money in Dungeons and Dragons when I remembered something odd we encountered when visiting Northern Ireland back in the 2000s: Northern Irish Bank notes.

No, not just British paper money, actual bank notes issued by private banks in the constituent part of the United Kingdom that is Northern Ireland. Scottish ones as well.

It turns out they aren’t actually legal tender anywhere in Britain (because legal definitions can be weird), but you can just pay with them in shops. It’s a bit like the Euro gonna-catch-them-all hunt for different coins, as multiple banks have the right to issue currency and do.

Somehow nobody ever had mentioned the existence of seperate paper money in Scotland and Northern Ireland to any of us. And to be fair, it’s not supposed to be seperate. They are equivalent to the Pound Sterling, but better don’t try to pay with them in England. People seem to get really pissy about that when you try. They are supposed to take them, but some places just won’t. (They can’t give them out as change)

Bank of Scotland 20 pounds note

Conversely Scotland and Northern Ireland generally accept each other’s notes.

This is stuff that nobody ever talks about somehow, a regional quirk that flies under the radar most of the times.

Danske Bank 20 pounds

By the way, one of the banks that can issue money in Northern Ireland is Danske Bank, a Danish bank based in Copenhagen. It seems they bought Northern Bank a while ago and retained their right to issue bank notes.

Another one is Bank of Ireland, which is based in Dublin. So two institutions from the EU can issue money in UK. Isn’t that interesting?

And don’t even get me started on the Manx pound, which is issued by the government of the Isle of Man (a crown dependency) and which you might get as change in Belfast. Unlike the money from the other two this one is not supposed to be interchangeable with the British pound. The Isle of Man is as Wikipedia puts it “in a one-sided de facto currency union” with the UK, meaning the pound sterling is legal tender on the island and backing its own notes with it. Some people might accept them, others don’t.

(To be fair it appears banks and post offices anywhere in Britain take them)

The Wikipedia article for the Manx Pound still talks about what will happen when the UK finally adopts the Euro. I think nobody updated this since 2006.

A Miscellany of Links pt. IX

Eberhard Marx – Befindlichkeiten, 2010

RPG History

1983: Enterprise – Role Play Game in Star Trek (Reviews from R’Lyeh)

Game Aids

Recovered: Other Crews (Benign Brown Beast)

Bandits! Bandits! – an underrated low-level antagonist (Burn After Running)

The Frenchman’s Curse (Benign Brown Beast)

Forgotten Gems of the OSR – LL AEC Rogues Gallery (Smoldering Wizard)

Evoking Emotion in Classic Fantasy Adventure Games (Grumpy Wizard)

Weak Points in Time and Space (Remixes and Revelations)

Thought

Analog, Digital, Procedural (Roles, Rules, and Rolls)

Cargo Cult (Grognardia)

A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox (Escaping Flatland)

Monster

Golden Shrieker (Scribblings or Something)

DIY

LaTeX tables: Basics (Vladar’s Blog)

[The Dark Eye] Retrospective: B15 Im Spinnenwald (In Spiderwood, 1986)

Garhelt: Son.

Tronde: Mother?

Garhelt: we are outfitting an expedition up the river…

Tronde: Mother…

Garhelt: we need the best of our warriors, the best equipment, the best of our scholars, and we are going to discover the Orkland!

Tronde: Mother *sigh* Mother I am the hetman now.

Gerhalt *not listening*: I think we will need 4 dozen horses!

Tronde: you can get a mule.

Gerhalt: And I need the Giant’s Thumb!

Tronde: … tell you what mother, I will let Olaf put up some posters when he’s in Havena next week, deal?

Gerhalt: I knew I could put my trust in you! (exit to right)

Aide: Tronde, is that really wise?

Tronde: I don’t care. Let Olaf put some posters up. Either we get some foolhardy idiots who actually do the trip, or some scammers that are gonna turn back immediately. We can suffer the loss of a mule and some equipment if it gets me the chance to get rid of that disgusting thumb. I’ve wanted to kick it into the sea since I was a kid.

So let’s go through Das Schwarze Auge scenario B15 Im Spinnenwald (In Spiderwood), part of the 3-part campaign Die Entdeckung des Orklandes (The Discovery of Orkland) from 1986.

This should be the first we have from that year.

The Discovery series his is a small starter campaign written by Ulrich Kiesow (again…) and unlike the previous attempts at starter adventures this one wants to be a wilderness adventure.

Now when I say a wilderness adventure you might expect a hex crawl, but this is DSA and it was written for a German-speaking audience, so we instead are dealing with squares.

Kiesow did this already with B13. There already was an actual hex map in Werner Fuchs’ B8, but obviously they didn’t like that. So squares it is.

Also: considering this is supposed to be the discovery of the previously undiscovered wilderness, there are quite a lot of roads on that map.

Anyway, the heroes get hired by the former leader of the Thorwal Pirates (and mother of the current leader) Garhelt.
After finding a public notice on a wall somewhere in their hometown.

Garhelt wants to leave a collection of maps of the known world for her country, but one part is missing: the Orkland.

Which is just up the river from Thorwal. You gotta wonder why they have maps of every other part of the continent but are missing their own neighbourhood.

Ok, there’s orks, but still.

The whole expedition has a homespun pet project feel to it. Oh sure, you are working for the former leader of Thorwal. But not the current one.
So you get a mule. And a few life-saving pills.

And the thumb of a giant.

Have fun.

…

Thumb of a giant?

Yes, some ancient hero of the Thorwalians once brought home a thumb he cut off from a giant and it has been in their hoard ever since.

That sounds like Garhelt just took off with whatever nobody wanted.

Anyway, the fun thing about this thumb is this: it works.

Orcs have a justified phobia of giants, and showing them this thumb will make them run away.

That is until you meet that one village who thinks giants are just ancient superstition.

Har Har.

So we get our characters dropped off as far up the river as the dragon boats can go, and then we and the mule have to make our way to the other side of the country.

Ok, that’s not quite true, we do get whatever we want in equipment. but no ranged weapons except bows, or heavy armor. I guess that would be a bit too much for some people about to die miserably in orc territory. And as I said, only a mule. And this is a starter scenario, maybe if you pool your money you might get a second one.

Fair enough. The giant thumb actually leads to the odd feeling that despite exploring the “Ork”land, there’s not actually that many orcs to be seen. After the first few encounters with them word spreads and they leave us alone. What we have instead are lizardmen, spiders, three-headed dragons, and lots of wildlife.

Now I have to say I actually like this adventure, but despite being a squarecrawl it also is… uhm… heavily railroaded. Or maybe the word is gated. The simplest way is to follow along the roads (well, paths I guess) that already exist. If you try to cross open plains you are bound to get accosted by a bunch of narmy Lindwurms (three-headed dragons) that you have no chance in fighting.

The adventure has both random encounters and necessary encounters for woods, plains (well, the lindwurms), hills, cliffs (huh), and swamp.

Of interest is maybe the Firun priest who might counter aggressive PCs with a hail storm miracle and dies that way.

Awkward.

Also there’s a unicorn that just looks at them and then goes away (dare I say it? sequel hoooook)

Trolls are quite nice and give valuable information, but if the PCs talk too long with them they get the idea to rob them.

Swamps also have ork gadflies on basically every field, in addition to monsters, nicely keeping the PCs off those as much as possible. and the rest of the denizens (besides the lizardmen) are not much better.

And Kiesow clearly states this is exactly how it is intended: the heroes after all are supposed to reach the Spiderwood and not trot around along the river.

Sigh.

Anyway, lizardmen.
Or lizard folk. Achaz in DSA parlance. By 4th edition they ended up as playable character races (the same as orcs and goblins). But in 1st edition so far we encountered them in some of the earlier scenarios (B1 and B4) on the side of the antagonists.

You most likely read over me mentioning them and assumed that we’d be set to murder our way across a tribe of poor scaled folk living there off the land.

Nothing could be further from the truth, the lizard people are actually quite friendly.

Unless the PCs really fuck up the encounters this is a purely social challenge, with the biggest threat being one of them getting married to a (presumably very attractive) lizard princess.

Actually no, there’s also the feast they are served as guests of the Achaz. Not that their hosts intend to hurt, but their cooking is of such a quality one might gain or lose permanent hp.

It seems orkland Achaz cooking is… interesting.

Anyway, it’s not necessary that one of the PCs gets married, but king Azl Azzl is very intent on getting his daughter Tili Tiki hitched.

This is presented as a roleplaying challenge to get out of this predicament, but Kiesow does acknowledge that some players might be totally ok with getting married to a lizardgirl.

For what it’s worth Tili Tiki is deadly afraid of violence, and living in a swamp in the orkland that’s not a good condition. I guess it does make sense the king wants to get her to a place where not every day is a struggle to survive.

I don’t know if this is what was intended, but it’s quite heartwarming

After this and a bit of overland travel we need to get the heroes into the Spiderwood, so there’s two encounters to do that. Technically there are roads that lead around the forest, but to the west is a giant called Orkeater who will also branch out into eating foolhardy adventurers, to the east are the lindwurms Skyflame and Skysparkling, who refuse any attempts of characters to cross the plains. Skyflame is presented as a helicopter parent who doesn’t like humans (or other small folk).

Both encounters are of course much more powerful than the heroes, leaving the forest as the only option.

Sigh. as I said, gated

I mean of course it’s called Im Spinnenwald, so we have to go to the Spiderwood at one point. But it’s kind of pointless to start a wilderness exploration adventure and then railroad people into going where you want them to.

anyway, the main part of the scenario:

The Spiderwood.

Guess what’s all over the place?

If you were thinking “spiders” you’d be wrong. what actually is the most annoying part is a kind of plant (the so called Basilamine) that has nice red flowers and exploding seed pods which destroy equipment and give tenths of damage points and oh my god there’s a whole page of rules for these fucking things I think I need a spreadsheet to track all this garbage. DON’T GO INTO THE FLOWER FIELDS IS WHAT I’M SAYING!

Effectively every part of the forest that’s full of those flowers is impassible, coincidentally making the forest into a… you guessed it… open air dungeon.

Sigh.

There’s another encounter table here, containing mammoths and boars and wolves… and horny big bugs that fight rival bugs by bumping into them. hmm…
Also red dwarves. which are dwarves with red caps that don’t talk and might go berserk if interacted with.
huh.
These are still canon by the way. I just saw them in the 4e book about dwarves.
One might assume they are supposed to be redcaps, but they more seem to be some variation of wood-dwelling gnomes and dwarves in Germanic mythologies. But that all isn’t quite clear, and unlike everything else besides animals, these guys cannot be talked to. So we don’t really learn what they are about at all.

Considering this is in the middle of the “undiscovered orkland” this forest turns out to be much more human-inhabited than expected. there’s multiple log cabins, one of which can give you a free dog and has a magic artifact that just says “if you can read this you can read’

(it grants you the ability to read if you don’t have it yet, which is necessary later)

we also can meet an invisible human mage (ok, debatable, but the heroes can’t know her current physical form), a bunch of trolls, at least some poor ork villages, and at least one more whole abandoned human village, now full of goblins (and the question what a Nivese tribe was doing that far south to begin with, living in otherwise very standard medieval buildings).

So what about the spiders the forest is named after?

They will kidnap one of the characters at one point. So now we hopefully will try to find that character again. Lets hope the group doesn’t have issues with each other and just decides to leave the character to his fate.

As a replacement for the player who just lost their character we get Grisbart, a dwarf, who just shows up and is very greedy. That’s his character.

This is the first time the negative attributes are introduced. Grisbart is a dwarf with a Greed for Gold attribute of 8, meaning whenever he sees gold and wins an attribute check HE NEEDS IT RIGHT NOW.

I guess the idea was popular enough to become a standard for 2nd edition DSA. The later editions introduced a rather specific set of negative attributes like this, one of which always was Greed for Gold. Only 4th edition changed this and made this an optional drawback to buy in a point buy system.

He will join us rescuing the other character. well, if the heroes want to. who knows.

Anyway, how about having at least a single Orc NPC?!

I know I can just introduce some, but I might be mentioning it a bit much, this is supposed to be an expedition through a region where orcs are the predominant people.

Lets cut this short. The spiders that kidnapped the PC are not technically a bad sort: They are a colony of intelligent telepathic spiders who discovered that people reading to them gives them interesting telepathic pictures in their head. so they kidnap people, let them read, and then lose them to scurvy.

They aren’t evil, they just don’t understand that this is no way to deal with humans. After a few scenarios by Kiesow I recognize his streak of dark humor again. The spiders just don’t have a clue how humans really work, they just know that they can read to them. And they feed them and try to keep them alive, but humans just can’t survive on a diet of nothing but fish and water. So multiple people have been kidnapped (some maybe from that Nivese village, and some others), used as a reader for the female spiders (the males only know enough to know that the females like those humans for some reason), and then they died of scurvy.

There’s opportunity for some roleplaying here, or just a simple dungeon crawl. It’s not a big dungeon, and Kiesow presents it appropriately alien. In one room we find a couple of spiders post-copulation, the female trying to eat the male one. As one does I guess.

I actually like this adventure. There are some bizarre setpieces in there which I think could be fun. In fact there is a nice actual play by the current publishers of the system which is quite fun and which I enjoyed listening to. I want to play it with people. But damn does it have issues.
It is certainly full of interesting ideas and roleplaying challenges. I think outside some random encounters it doesn’t demand fights anywhere. but it also wastes the possibilities of both the exploration section and the forest section by gating like crazy. This would have to be reworked.

One certainly could introduce something about orc culture here instead of basically everything else.

It occurs to me that there is a good business reason for this particular campaign: up to now most releases have followed along with the levels that could be expected for a normal group. I.e. if you started with B1 and played maybe one official scenario a month you’d end up around the level range for the advanced line of adventures by now.
So how do you sell more? Start over again and tell people this adventure is for experienced players with new characters.

In a way this is the true end of the first phase of DSA adventures. Previous adventures were already mentioning some of the advanced classes, this is the first that places the events on the map from the advanced box. The world soon would start to get filled in with detail.

Both here in the B series and soon in the A series exploration adventures would become more common, with much more social roleplay challenges and less dungeon crawling.

This also received a French version, from what I can see only in the Schmidt trade dress though. No Gallimard version from what I can see for this one.

I might need to point it out, but this and all the other adventures I have been talking about lately recently have been reissued, so they currently can be found in shops again. During my last visit back at my parents’ place I found a whole shelf of them in the local comic store. They are generally near faithful replicas, with only the Schmidt logo replaced.

Running Tally (by quality, from best to worst):

1. A1 Die Verschwörung von Gareth
2. B13 Der Streuner soll sterben
3. B2 Wald ohne Wiederkehr
4. A2 Die Göttin der Amazonen
5. B15 Im Spinnenwald
6. B6 Unter dem Nordlicht
7. B9 Strom des Verderbens
8. B1 Im Wirtshaus zum Schwarzen Keiler
9. B8 Durch das Tor der Welten
10. B10 In den Fängen des Dämons
11. B12 Der Zug durch das Nebelmoor
12. B3 Das Schiff der Verlorenen Seelen
13. B4 Die Sieben Magischen Kelche

Art and Inspiration: Flash Gordon (Dan Schkade)

I have some nostalgic fondness for Flash Gordon. As I do for Prince Valiant, and the Phantom.

Not actually because I read so many newspaper strips when I was a kid, except the occasional collection that was on offer, but mostly because I was watching the old TV series. I think few kids even in my generation even remember that German television used to show the Flash Gordon animated series, and Defenders of the Earth, but I do. But I was that kind of kid who managed to somehow watch nearly everything genre German public TV broadcast, even at times when that should not be possible.

(I even have some memories of watching episodes of Doctor Who with the 4th Doctor on one of the small state channels, and I can’t even find evidence that ever was broadcast. So either I make it up or I managed to remember some obscure piece of programming nobody else remembers. Either would be possible)

It helped that Flash Gordon was also a movie, and despite being quite gruesome in some parts, this did not keep me from watching it.

Anyway, during the last few weeks I got interested in some of the older newspaper comics again (there’s a blog for them), and found to my astonishment that after 20 years Flash Gordon had been rebooted as a new daily strip right that moment. Well, two weeks before.

And it looks gorgeous. The art style is very much inspired by Jack Kirby, the lines are clear and the shadows stark. Just the right style for that kind of story. The artist for the new strips is Dan Schkade, whose art style turns out to be quite a change for old Flash Gordon fans. But well, who listens to “fans” anymore. Every time someone who professes themselves to be a fan seems to say something lately it’s to shit on something other people enjoy. I enjoy this strip. It’s doesn’t have many installments yet, but I like the direction it goes.

I find it curious that they actually decided to use the first strip to recount the backstory for Flash Gordon, and it would fit either the old newspaper strips or the movie, or maybe the cartoons as well. (not sure about that live action series from a few years ago, that one might have been too deviant to work). Flash is described as an athlete, not mentioning what sport he actually is playing (the old strip had him as a polo player, the movie had him play American Football).

By the way reading it is a bit weird, you can read it on Comics Kingdom, the King Features website. They allow IPs to only read a certain amount of comics per month though. King Features is the company that syndicates these comic strips and that means… you can actually read them for free on a lot of newspaper sites. E.g. the Seattle Times. Or some other newspapers that carry them. Or you could read them in the Funny Pages I guess.

Which, coming back to the beginning, is why I didn’t actually read that many of them. German newspapers did in general not have a comic strip section like Anglo-Saxon newspapers seem to have (or had). Our newspaper carried Hagar the Horrible. And so did my grandparents’. Every once in a while you found some Heathcliff or Baby Blues in places, but proper comic sections did just not exist. If we found the strips at all then in collections published by enthusiasts.

Oh, and well, there was a Flash Gordon RPG a few years ago, but unfortunately I might have missed out on that one. It was mostly in that Savage Worlds bubble that kind of passed me by. Unfortunately it might have had some issues with how well known the IP is right now. Meaning: not very. Except for the movie. But even that one is not as much a household name as I expected.

Evil Ruins (Role Aids, 1983)

People don’t really differentiate between authors’ voices when discussing roleplaying game scenarios. There’s a bit of it when people are really into it. They will talk about Gygaxian naturalism, or Jaquaysing Xandering dungeons [note check this Alexandrian post regarding the name change]. If it’s a Hickman scenario there’s gonna be railroads. That stuff.

Stephen Bourne is not one of those greats, but I feel like his scenarios have authorial voice dripping from their pages. He has a style. And all his adventures have similar feel that lean into it. He likes to mix heavy medievalism into his scenarios, even the clear fantasy ones, and use a limited palette of monsters for specific purposes.

When it works it’s pretty brilliant, when it doesn’t you feel like you just lost the money you spent.

I especially notice it in his early Role Aids scenarios: he tries to mix historical facts with D&D’s approach to fantasy worlds, and in some places this absolutely doesn’t fit. The Throne of Evil is the worst of the lot, being a weird mix of a political intrigue scenario in medieval England and a bog standard dungeon crawler for early D&D at the same time. A pretty horrid scenario altogether. I know it was supposed to me rules for medieval wargames, but no.

Evil Ruins is much less so, even though I am still bothered by how disjointed the setting is in places. On the one hand he establishes the setting as Castle Tintagel, which is a real world place in Cornwall, and even establishes that it has some connections to Arthurian myth. Then he proceeds to create an elaborate backstory without any obvious ties to Arthurian myth at all, but featuring Saxon kings and vikings. Fair enough.

View Larger Map

Maybe I am just not knowledgeable enough about Arthur and his myth cycle.
But then the adventure basically is a generic AD&D scenario, and the maps don’t fit the real world location of Tintagel at all.

It would have been better if he either took care to play into the medieval fantasy situation and actually present it coherently, or just replace all the real world references with some generic fantasy terms. The way it is right now feels disjointed.

Why the hell is there a priest of Zeus in medieval England trying to establish a temple?
Why is Tintagel on the East Coast?

Sigh.

That said, that’s the setting.

I actually always have liked the rest of the scenario, even though, or maybe because… it is incredibly generic. But it is generic in a naive way you just don’t see done that often.

The backstory is too long (2pg for a 36 page scenario), but the basic situation is this: there were two brothers born to the same mother, one the son of the king, one the result of an affair with the king’s brother. The first son was supposed to inherit the throne, but when he came back from a journey his brother murdered him and took the throne. Then stuff went belly up, the usurper basically lost the kingdom and established a death cult in the castle (…as you do…), and his murdered brother came back as a wraith out for revenge. So there’s two separate evil forces in the ruins, and the struggle between both comes to a head just at the same time as a bunch of adventurers come to clear out the castle because it keeps the property values down or something.

There’s a bit of subterfuge going on. First the heroes have to travel to the castle with a guide, but he intentionally misleads them for his own goals, and they have to rescue the heart of the forest. Who is a giant spider.

I love that. There are potentially friendly natives in the forest that will gladly help the party, as long as the group doesn’t immediately murder them for just happening to be giant arachnids.
The guide also will steer them towards a different location than they want, so they take care of a lycanthrope for him (not actually a werewolf) while he steals the treasure. The idea is a bit railroady, but ok.

By the way, did you know the term black panther actually refers to two different variants of big cats of different species? I didn’t know until I read this adventure, and then only after I read the statblocks of the lycantrope and his pet leopard properly. The term black panther is never used in the text, but that’s what they both are supposed to be. The text introduces him as a were-leopard. A term that evokes different images in me than black panther would.

I assume the reason for the black panthers in here was because they got the rights for a Boris Vallejo painting for their cover and they needed something in the scenario that fit to that. Or they chose the painting because the were-leopards were in the scenario and missed what color they were supposed to be.

Then when one finally arrives at the castle one has to deal with death cultists and monsters maddened by the wraith, but it’s not necessarily clear that both are against one another from the outset.
The dungeon is a bit lackluster, but the author took care to put a sort of investigative scenario in there. One can find out the backstory for what happened when following the clues, and find out there is a second evil influence at large. If one cares to do so at least.

The castle itself is presented as a 4 level dungeon, but the 1st level is just the castle yard (also doesn’t seem to resemble the actual Castle Tintagel), and level 4 is rather short.

One interesting bit is that the short boxed text that is given seems to assume the players do indeed not know what these creatures they encounter are. So orcs are “ugly brutes”, hobgoblins are “rather large and ugly creatures” and ghouls are “terrible figures”. Which is nice in that way. It doesn’t give away what they are, one easily could play this as an actual fantastic medieval scenario in a fantasy Britain, and have them all encounter these creatures for the first time.

And that’s actually the way I would run this adventure: as a slightly longer introductory module, to get some people into the game. Maybe not necessarily really in the fantasy Britain environment the module supposes, but one easily could find at least some equivalent region in another world. Or just, you know, keep that little duchy it takes place in it’s own self-contained world.

This scenario was released by Role Aids, a line of supplements by Mayfair games that were more or less compatible with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. There were a few lawsuits involved, but they were rather cheeky about it. This module claims it is suitable for use with ADnD, and the stat blocks are roughly equivalent, but not the same. Certainly enough to run it just like that, mapping to the ADnD rules nearly 1:1.

The illustrations in the text were by Hannah Shapero. I don’t know if she did so much more work in RPGs, but I like the illustrations we get in here. They have a very dark quality, and manage to get over the whole feel of the place perfectly. I am not quite sure if they were actually made for this particular scenario though, or if the author just had to use some illustrations they had lying around.

An aside about the German edition

The first time I came across this scenario was in the German translation. This one was published by Truant Spiele (Truant is the owner’s last name) in 1989 as Ruinen des Schreckens (Ruins of Terror). So at least the title got an improvement. I got it more than ten years after, when Truant and Welt der Spiele decided to get rid of some unsold stock by bundling them together in anthologies. Actually I got that one even later, because it took a few years for me to actually get my hands on it when that anthology ended in the bargain bin.
I find this translation interesting: unlike the original English version this is not compatible with AD&D. The scenario was translated faithfully, but a page about “Universalabenteuer” (generic adventures) was added with adaption notes. All the stats in the scenario have changed to a weird percentile system that does not seem to be directly mapped to anything. Midgard was the first German roleplaying game, and it used a percentile system (it was derived from Empire of the Petal Throne), so that might have been a reason for that. Some characters also have skills that sound very much like Das Schwarze Auge skills from that game’s 2nd edition. What it doesn’t resemble at all is Dungeons and Dragons, which at the time was barely a blip on the German roleplaying market.
Also interesting:

• Tolkienesque Ologs were present in the original (as modified orcs), but were replaced with Half-orcs. Very tough Half-Orcs. I wonder why. The other half-orcs come out weaker in comparison, even the supposedly elite guards in the dungeon.
• the copyright notice claims this was a translation of Mayfair Games’ Pinnacle, which was another of the scenarios in the anthology I got this from.

Review: UD1 The Scorching Gantlet

It turns out “Gantlet” is an archaic form of “Gauntlet”, still technically in use, but I assume most people coming across this might not recognize this. Not even native speakers.

I got this module for free as a community copy, which puts me into a bit of a bind. Can I really review it unbiased? Complaining too much about it sounds a bit like beggars being choosers (although I didn’t really beg for it). Not reviewing it feels wrong as well. Andrew certainly put work into this, even though, at points, he might have put in a bit (or a lot) more.

I know, I know, this is supposed to be one of those punky releases that do away with artificial standards, and give you the proper gonzo experience with bad formatting and art. But the art is not even that bad, besides the maps that is, and in a lot of ways proper standards of formatting are there for a reason.

Now, I actually like this scenario. It is supposed to be an OD&D one, but I don’t quite see that. I think it might be great for a one-shot, maybe a challenge scenario you give to people multiple times. It’s a bit long for a proper tournament scenario, but is anyone really doing RPG tournaments still?

It’s not all that creative one though. The players are captured by a fire giant and his hobgoblin army. Now they are being made to run the gauntlet in his dungeon, with the giant pointing and laughing every once in a while via magic. It feels like I played this before. Or seen the movie. And the Saturday morning cartoon.

It’s been done before I mean to say.

But that might be cool as well. Everyone knows what this is about. Go through the dungeon, find the key, slay the monsters. Survive or look good trying. If you add some stuff from previous attempts every time someone tries this it might be a fun recurring scenario for different people to try.

It does have an alien mantis monk and a giant mouth on legs though, so there’s that.

Is this worth the 0 dollars I paid? Yeah, it has a some good stuff in there. Is it worth the 2.50 it normally costs? I would have to think about that. But the drivethrurpg link has the whole document as a preview, so you can check out the whole thing.

Can be found on drivethrurpg and itch.io

A Miscellany of Links pt. VIII

Thought

Loose Ends from Written Modules (Seed of Worlds)

Surprising Surprise rules (Cave of the Dice Chucker)

Hobgoblin Monks the Erasers of Afterlife Identity (I cast light!)

Be a Creator, Not a Consumer (Grognardia)

Dungeon Design

Doors on 3d8 (Clerics Wear Ringmail)

A Pattern to Arnesonian Dungeons? (Wanderer Bill’s New Journal)

Random Tables

100 Mundane Settlement Encounters (OSRVault)

d100 – Tells for the Impavid Potion Taster (d4 Caltrops)

Stuff

Star Wars – TIE- Fighter Paper Model (papermau)

[The Dark Eye] Retrospective: B13 Der Streuner soll sterben

Let’s go through Das Schwarze Auge adventure B13 Der Streuner Soll Sterben (The Vagrant Shall Die)

It has the secondary title Das Blutgericht von Thalusa (The Blood Court of Thalusa) which is one of the few times when both titles are equally evocative.

Ok, let me preface this: I utterly adore this scenario, even though it has it’s problems (dare I say it? some parts are quite racist). But I would say this is where Ulrich Kiesow shows real promise.

Now at this point MOST (but not all) of the DSA scenarios were written by him, or in cooperation with him. This included A1 which I really liked, and A2 which I found at least ok. But it also included the whole rest of the scenarios which contain some bad railroads, even if their premise might be good.
But this one is one where I really see what he is going for. This is intentionally pulpy, in the way that 19th ct. adventure stories were.

Unfortunately this includes some rather unfortunate tropes that come with such stories. For one the setting is quasi-oriental. And of course it involves arranged marriages, beheadings at the drop of a stone, and an evil looking coal black executioner.

On the other there really aren’t any really bad people involved. The executioner just happens to be coal black from a magical accident and is otherwise doing his job, and the one actual antagonist is coded as German, and even he has reasons to behave like he does.

Lots of bad decisions that come with the choice of setting and NPCs. I guess for the 80s it was fair for its day, but even in the 90s I remember this module as being discussed as “the racist one”.

But anyway, the plot concerns Prince Selo of Khunchom who had the really bad idea to have just a small peek at his fiancée Shenny of Thalusa. [that name tho…]

You see it’s tradition in their culture that enfianced people are not to see each other until the marriage rites are concluded. Which is all fine for Selo, except he HAS seen her parents and now fears his future wife might take after either of them.
So he makes the plan of… sneaking into the palace of Thalusa and having a look at her.

And if it’s really bad, can a life as a vagrant on the roads of Aventuria be quite so bad?

Yes, Prince Selo is an idiot.

In any case he even is successful in sneaking in, and quite enamored with Princess Shenny.
And Princess Shenny for her side is quite enamored with that handsome stranger she just encountered.

Unfortunately while they are both very enthusiastically consenting with each other (at least that discussion we don’t have to touch), he is captured by the guards and immediately sentenced to death by his prospective father in law.

Your mission now, if you choose to accept it…

Well, you should accept it, the Prince’s father promises you riches if you manage to make it to Thalusa in time with a document of his hand that can rescue his son.
Unfortunately Thalusa is about 300km away, easily a 10 day trip over land, and the execution is set for in 14 days.

And even if you get there on time with the document (which is not a given), and hand it to the wrong person, then you are back at square one. Well, square whatever Thalusa is in.

The heroes are given the choice of going by sea, which might shorten the journey to three days, but has a problem: it’s a the stormy season right now, and it might make things worse. A single ship is willing to make the passage on the off-chance of arriving in one part at their destination to make a killing selling hard liquor.

(I realized afterwards that I am not quite sure which season it is supposed to be, the text is talking about Frühjahr being a storm season in that part, so the early year. In our world this commonly would be spring. But in Aventuria the early year is autumn. But was this already established at that point? When does this actually take place?)

Despite Kiesow’s known fondness for railroads he does not actually go for them here. With a bit luck of the dice the PCs can indeed reach the halfway point, after which the storms become no problem anymore. It’s not likely, but it’s possible.

Then they are attacked by pirates though. Which also can be circumnavigated with proper care (the scenario contains a specifically designed boardgame here), and even if they board your ship they only will steal the document.

(they are not actually real pirates)

If luck is not with them, or if they decide to go there from the beginning, they end up having to go by land. But at least they might have gained a day or two.

This would be the place where a DnD scenario would pull out the hexmap. And we saw a hexmap in B8 already. Kiesow instead decides to use squares, for a squarecrawl, basically.
There are also no permanently keyed encounters, all the encounters are on random tables.

This includes meadows which have an encounter on a roll of 7 on a d6.

Oh yes, did you see! Did you see?! He made a joke!

What’s interesting about the encounters is how… stock medieval fantasy they all are. One would assume that with a setting where he uses all kinds of orientalist tropes he would do the same for the wilderness section. Instead it seems like he just took the monster descriptions from the rulebook: wolves, trolls, boars, a tatzelwurm. The closest to the Arabian Nights scenario you might be expecting is an Earth Spirit that can give you some healing.

(I guess no budget for illustrations…)

But it’s really the city adventure part where this scenario shines.
For one: there is an actual city adventure part with an actual map of Thalusa.
For the second: you are given free reign how to actually deal with the situation.
Now you were supposed to deliver a document, but you likely lost it either on the sea journey or over land.
If you didn’t you most likely handed it to the wrong person at the palace and he lost it for you instead.

in the meantime the prince is in his prison in the middle of the market square of Thalusa and the players are left free reign in how to deal with the situation.

Springing the prince might not be easy, but can be possible. Sneaking into the palace is possible (it’s worked out), but finding the right person there is difficult. Dealing with the executioner and his tools is also another option (the tools need to be in top order according to tradition).

Here is when the bog standard fantasy scenario all of a sudden turns into a heist. most likely the heroes will have to do something to save the prince, but what and how is their own choice. The scenario gives some valid ideas, but I bet some players would have more.

You could have an infiltration/dungeon crawl through the palace, but you don’t have to.

For what it’s worth if you are breaking into the palace you might encounter a scribe you can blackmail by threatening his favorite calligraphy.

And if you break into the executioners house you might encounter a Ulmenknecht, which seems to be a treant kind of being? I don’t think this being is still canon in DSA. It’s not the proper treant equivalent (that would be a Waldschrat), more like a wood golem?

And then there is Dolguruk, the executioner of Thalusa.

Who is black.
Coal black even.

Which is the result of a rather sinister human sacrifice he and a druid wanted to perform on a magician who managed to hit back with a transformation spell. Which caused him to turn completely black.

For some reason this story is the longest of all the NPC bios, despite being otherwise a rather incidental character.
And one who doesn’t actually do anything bad as such while the PCs are around.

I think Kiesow is very much going very much for the image of Der Schwarze Mann here, a “Kinderschreckfigur” (character to scare kids with? Man, we Germans have weird concepts sometimes) that is quite widespread. I still remember playing both the associated kids game and the card game based on it.

In a wider sense it was a depiction of (black) death and/or the devil.

But here it manages to keep all the bad connotations that made this game… inappropriate in polite society.

Dolguruk is I think still an active NPC in current DSA lore, he usurped Shenny’s father at one point and became ruler of Thalusa, and being an elf he also doesn’t seem to be easy to get rid of. He also had his backstory modified to have gained his look from a pact with a demon.
Not sure if that’s better or worse.

So…what do I think about it?

I don’t think Kiesow intended for this to come across as it does, but he nevertheless managed to write some really unfortunate implications in here.

Which might explain why this adventure never got the re-releases that other adventures from him got, despite being, from a design standpoint alone, one of his best so far.
There is considerable freedom of choice both in the wilderness and the city sections, and room for player creativity, all under time pressure. I really like this and I want to play this with people. I might need to prepare people that it was written 40 years ago.

Other languages

This gets into the times when the DSA adventures were no longer translated into many languages. The only translation I can find is the French one, in both the Schmidt and Gallimard version.

Still not sure why there were two versions. According to one commenter on dice.camp one was the Schmidt version, like in German, the other was the same format as the Gallimard gamebook translations and would have been sold in bookstores instead of toy stores.

In any case they used the secondary title for that, Le Bourreau de Thalussa. Not the worst choice.

Running Tally (by quality, from best to worst):

1. A1 Die Verschwörung von Gareth
2. B13 Der Streuner soll sterben
3. B2 Wald ohne Wiederkehr
4. A2 Die Göttin der Amazonen
5. B6 Unter dem Nordlicht
6. B9 Strom des Verderbens
7. B1 Im Wirtshaus zum Schwarzen Keiler
8. B8 Durch das Tor der Welten
9. B10 In den Fängen des Dämons
10. B12 Der Zug durch das Nebelmoor
11. B3 Das Schiff der Verlorenen Seelen
12. B4 Die Sieben Magischen Kelche