A mini, jungle village, point crawl

I've made a small point crawl set around a village on the banks of a jungle river.

 The main hook revolves around travelers getting shaken down by mysterious bandits on their way in and out of town. The village doesn't know where these outlaws are coming from or disappearing to. 

I'd originally wanted it to be a single, (or double sided), page but as I tried to connect the dots, and make the underlying relationships work it became evident that it wouldn't fit in that kind of space. I could go through a 'kill your darlings' phase and refine things down but I'd intended this to be a quick experiment after making Grotto of The Golden Gargoyle. I'm sharing it as is for anyone to play with or pull ideas from. In some ways it currently feels like a bit of a mash up of themes across the first six zines in the perils series - I'm evidently drawn to doppelgangers, swampy environments and 'infection' as concepts... 

Note: I haven't had a chance to play test this material yet. I imagine it as a bit of a sleeper adventure that could slowly emerge alongside something else the party are doing in and around the town. 

 

Also, if you're one of my players don't look at this.

 

OK here it is:

Conspiracy in Lutum  (working title) 

 

 

Grotto of the Golden Gargoyle (Perils issue #7)

Pocket Sized Perils Issue #7 is here! 

It's been a hot minute since I posted here and even longer since I put out an adventure but here it is:

Grotto of The Golden Gargoyle 

 

clicking the pic above will take you to my page on itch.io 

 

This is the 'G' entry in the Pocket Sized Perils series (there's an alternate one hidden in the recesses of my drive that may join it someday).  I've made quite a few changes to the format and general approach this time around... 

1. It's system agnostic (not 5e)
2. It's less pocket sized (a longer PDF or print on demand book, as opposed to a fold'n'cut zine) 

3. It's more heavily OSR inspired than previous entries

Why not 5e? 

Like a lot of people, 5e was my entry point into TTRPG's and I have a lot of affection for it as a system. However since first cracking open the PHB  I've discovered there's a very, VERY, big world of games and gaming styles out there. I've dabbled with a bunch of different systems and in particular find myself gravitating to simple rules that facilitate creative play. That is to say; simple characters doing unique stuff together in the fiction rather than complex characters, (mechanically speaking), doing the same stuff, most of the time, regardless of the fiction.  I'm not dogmatic about it though. Fun is fun and different ways of playing have different strengths. 

 

 Why the longer format? 

 In exploring other modules and writing connected to ttrpgs I've really enjoyed the rich world building and detail some adventures or settings offer. Consequently I wanted to build more environment focused adventures, where parties could explore more and decide how to interact with the world rather than follow something like a three act arc. 

The work of Jennell Jaquays and Justin Alexander's writing about it was a particular inspiration. 

The Grotto was designed with loops (maybe too many), secrets, factions and verticality in mind. It's still a smallish dungeon but all those elements are present in some form.  

This is my 'goblins in a cave' adventure 

 

I just wanted to do it once - 'there are many like it but this one is mine'. Much like my soft spot for 5e I have a soft spot for trad fantasy tropes. I came to table-top games pretty late, so I still have a an itch to play with elements I've seen in fantasy in other media through my childhood. I'll definitely move on to weirder stuff from here but I can't go past G and leave 'Goblins' on the table. 

As a teaser for the adventure itself here is the goblin npc generator included in it: 

A Wizard's Tower

A Wizard's Tower

 

 

 

I recently stumbled upon an image of a wizard's tower from one of my old home games. It was a fun environment for the players to navigate so I thought I'd pop it up here.

I often style my wizards as obsessively nerdy about a particular field. The wizard who built this tower is really into creating animal-human hybrids a la The Island of Dr Moreau. Continuing the Moreau theme I placed the tower on a floating island entirely populated by the wiz's bio engineered monstrosities. Even the plants were designed - as the players walked through the tangled mangroves I described the canopy of leaves turning in unison to catch the wind and steer the island on its mysterious course.

In classic mad scientist fashion the wizard has been eaten by rebellious frog people and their tower is... dormant. This set up left the players relatively free to poke around and put together the situation. 

From bottom to top here's a breakdown of the rooms. 

A Golden Barge

The Golden Barge

    The Golden Barge spools its way along a luminous thread through the humpbacked sky. 

On the prow, under the sheen of a translucent dome, tiny figures are moving…

 

I've been meaning to get into Troika by Daniel Sell for a while. The PDF has been sitting in 

my dropbox  but till now I've only rolled a few characters and enjoyed the art 

by Dirk Detweiler Leichty and Andrew Walter.

 
That changed this weekend when I set sail on a Golden Barge and dipped a toe into the system 

with a few friends. 

 

I'm pathologically unable to run a module in any system and couldn't help home brewing up a

quick one shot. Above is my attempt to map one of the Golden Barges eluded to by the rules 

(more than lightly influenced by Leichty's fantastic illustrations). I had hoped to actually make

 this post a rough outline of that adventure but I'd need to work further on my understanding of the 

system and the bones of the adventure itself for that to be worth your time. Instead, in the spirit of

Troika, I offer you this map as an invitation to your own imaginations. 

 

I'll include these two room descriptions I drafted for the session. 

The Kitchens  

 

A fury of shouts and flames, a spicy assault on the senses - a cadre of inevitable chefs are busy cooking orders. 

They have been recruited from a fanatical culinary sect that will stop at nothing to spike any ticket that comes into the kitchen. An army might march on its stomach but these chefs will  lay waste to entire spheres to serve canapes. Only once a meal is served will they return to their  regenerative cocoons until service hours resume. 

 

The Hangar

It takes a lot to traverse the spheres. The assorted craft here aren’t up to the task - being more suited to 

a quick jaunt or occasional maintenance of the barge itself. The options in each bay are as varied 

as the passengers themselves. 

 

1. A Gossamer pleasure skiff - great for being seen whilst seeing the sights.

2. A large insectoid with mouth parts like a garbage disposal. Its compound eyes seem to shift from you 

to the saddle hanging nearby. 

3. A vapor ski - perfect for enjoying the humpbacked sky at the expense of everyone else.

4. A Scorpedo Rum Runner in jailbreak blue. There is a pistolet in the glove box and a person in the trunk. 

5. A two person, pedal powered, velocipede.

6. A Gronk class sky tug - solid as a bathtub full of concrete and just as maneuverable. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Under The Dunes

 

    

 Another month another map and random table - like a serve of fish and chips or cheese and wine or... etc, etc.

There are mushrooms on this map, so here's a dual table to help you establish some fun mycology for players to mess around with. Also I'm aware a mushroom is the reproductive structure not the whole organism - it's just fun to say. 

What happens when you have a mushroom that grows dramatically when wet and an axe wielding murderbot in an adjacent cavern? I dunno - just asking the question.

 

What's That Mushroom Do?

Roll a d6 for an effect and what triggers it. 

This Mushroom...

1. Soothes body and mind.
2. Grants fantastic visions.
3. Explodes violently.
   
4. Induces sleep.
5. Grows exponentially.
   
6. Spreads Virulently.

When...

1. Exposed to fire.
2. Wet.
3. Ingested.
4. Touched.
5. Combined with another fungus. 
6. Subjected to any magic.
   

 100 Strange Forest Encounters

 

 

 

I like random tables. I also enjoy simple, one page, dungeon illustrations that give you some game-able ideas at a glance.

So I'm going to start regularly posting some tiny dungeon images with a thematically linked random table. Once a month might be a good aim but let's see how we go.

The picture above is this month's tiny dungeon. I'm not going to go into detail about what the fruit thing is or the squirrel statue or the well of pure darkness. Does this dungeon involve Fruit Goblins? I don't know. Does it involve a swarm of undead squirrels that try and stuff you full of cursed acorns? Again, I don't know. Does drinking the well water give you a free spell that has a chance of progressively mutating you every time you cast it? Stop asking! But if you have a hollow tree or a hole in the ground in your game you now have this little doodle to go with it. 

 

Now to further explore the world of woodsy weirdness here are 100 things for players to run into when in a forest.

 

Issue#6 Flaming Fandango in Faratusa

  Issue #6 Flaming Fandango in Faratusa

Well here we are - it’s the closing moments of 2020 and I’m spending my last spell slot to cast ZINE one more time.

I’m really not sure how many of the kickstarter backers out there found their way to these blog posts but if you’re one of them - thanks for taking a punt on these odd little adventures, I hope they’ve brought you and your players a lot of joy.

Let's roll up our sleeves and look at what we’re dealing with in Pocket Sized Perils Issue#6  Flaming Fandango in Faratusa.

 

Connections to other adventures

Since the hook in this issue revolves around a macguffin, (The Salt Ember Crown), the simplest way to link it to other adventures in the series is to change that macguffin. Here’s three options

1. You can this link this adventure to Issue#5 Echoes of Ebonthul, by making the macguffin a piece of ancient technology the party brought back from that adventure - something that will protect the port of Faratusa from the threat of The Fire Chain Pirates. Perhaps Sir Aroldo has somehow swindled it off them and used it to weedle his way into the Governor’s good graces?
   
   
2. If your group are interested in The Resistance’s struggle against the evil Baron touched on in Issue#1, you can make the Mcguffin a high tech weapon the Baron is trying to acquire from The Governor of Faratusa, or even a hostage NPC artificer/inventor being forced to design weapons. The masquerade ball can be reframed as a celebration of their successful deal and the The Fire Chain Pirates can be allies of/working for the Baron, (who never buys anything they can steal).
   
   
3. If your group got pulled into some other realm in the final confrontation from Issue#5, The McGuffin can become something that might allow them to travel back. This requires reflavouring Faratusa as some sort of floating island port in whatever astral void the ritual at the end of Issue#5 lead them to.(I actually did this with one of the play test groups and it provided a lot of fun).

Now let’s jump into the zine itself.

The Hook

As always, the purpose of the first page of the zine is to set up the hook and get the imagination train rolling. We’re being a bit lazy here and letting the players fill in the details for our Mcguffin, (The Salt Ember Crown), and a potential ‘antagonist’, (Sir Aroldo Tuft). I’m trying to open up more and more of the creativity in my game to my players and this approach reflects that by letting them decide ‘why’ their characters are invested in this quest rather than me supplying them with a motivation.

The Plan

Once we know what we’re seeking and why we dislike Sir Aroldo so much we jump into planning our heist.

Page two feeds us a little background on the Governor and their obsession with constructs and gives us a narrow window to concoct a plan.

Depending on your group the time for planning can really blow out. This isn’t a problem if everyone’s having fun but if you want to keep things moving consider breaking up the planning into phases. One of my favourite mechanics from John Harper’s very slick, Blades in the Dark, system is the ‘flashback’, whereby players can step out of the flow of play for a moment to retroactively insert a bit of planning they ‘prepared earlier’. We can do something in that spirit for our adventure by letting the party plan in increments from objective to objective. When the party succeeds in getting the governor’s key or getting the crown you can give them another brief huddle to decide what the next phase in the plan is (and always was).

In the interest of keeping this closer to a one shot sized adventure, I've opted to start in media res with the player characters already in the building. If you don't mind things potentially running longer you can have them plan their way in, (just put guards on the gate and front door, a look out on the tower and roll for patrols everywhere else).

The Map

The specifics of the environment are important to this sort of adventure so this map (on the back of the zine) is intended to be shareable with your players. I’m trying to put more information in their hands and cut down on the need for detailed explanations from you as the DM


There’s more rooms and areas than are likely to be interacted with in a single play through to give the group a lot of room to plan their approach and also create opportunities for the architecture to play a part in the adventure via windows, stairwells, balconies and so on.


Perhaps the most notable ‘extra’ feature is the tower containing the recharge and repair stations for the Governor’s constructs. How is this meant to impact the adventure? I don’t know! It’s a bit of idea bait for your players. Perhaps they want to try sabotaging something here to disable the Brass Servants? Or maybe they’ll attempt to dress up in spare parts and impersonate them? Whatever the party may offer here, ask them to describe what they would like the result to be, identify the skill roll, (or rolls), you feel are required and follow where the dice lead you.

The Party

Hobnobbing with nobles in D&D is fun. In my experience players really enjoy getting the better of some pretentious aristocrat and watching each other put on their best, (or worst), courtly manners. Even before I knew a lot of other details about this adventure I knew I wanted it to include the opportunity for this sort of role play.


By placing the key to the vault on the Governor’s person we make it necessary for the player characters to mingle with the party guests to get it, (although they’re welcome to attempt to open the vault some other way).

In running this part of the adventure I would expect chaos and prepare to embrace it. The random table here is meant to assist you by providing some prompts for unplanned NPC banter.

The Security

On page four we meet our security detail. In this adventure I’ve opted for constructs to fill the roll of guards & servants, whirring and clanking down the Governor’s marble halls. The reasons behind this choice are

• To add to the fantastic flavour of the adventure
• To justify having one stat block for the entire mansion staff
• The comedy element offered by role playing with -2 intelligence automatons
• To avoid the discomfort of players choosing to murder flesh and blood servants who are just doing their job.
  

The Brass Servants are CR1. You’d need to get around 10 of them before the encounter turns deadly. I don’t give their exact numbers in the zine, (much like storm troopers in The Death Star, I imagine there’s always more of them than the heroes want to deal with). Any combat with them early on should include the risk of more arriving.

If you don’t find them intimidating enough you could give them a trait similar to pack tactics, (something like ‘Clockwork precision’), and allow them advantage when they have an ally adjacent to their target. In general however, the Brass Servants are meant to be cannon fodder - there are deadlier foes further down the line.

The Score

If the party succeeds in getting the key off the governor and dealing with the guards in front of the vault then all they need to do is wind up the clockwork mouse and it will pop into a hole in the wall and unlock it.


This runs dangerously close to being a puzzle. It’s not much of a puzzle but it’s obscure enough that the players may get it twisted in which case you could use wisdom/perception and intelligence/investigation checks to try and point them in the right direction.

The Gold’lem

Cautious players will scope out the vault before entering and possibly spot the glyphs. Reckless players will not and will awaken the Gold’lem. The Gold’lem is an animated pile of treasure and is pretty much a faster and more heavily armoured version of a Gelatinous Cube with extra damage immunities. It’s around CR4 and deals a suitable amount of damage for something that a cautious group should be able to bypass entirely. It’s intended as a consequence for rushing in without looking.

The Twist

I couldn’t finish a Dungeons & Dragons kickstarter without dropping a dragon on players at least once! Nagamerah is CR6, she’s essentially a young ‘white’ dragon with better mental stats and a climbing speed instead of a burrowing one to make her more classically a D&D Red Dragon.

If Nagamerah isn’t scary enough we also have some CR1 ninja pirates, with fire whips, jumping out of the crowd, one of whom is Aroldo, (our traitorous antagonist from page one).

This is a deadly encounter and, depending on how easy a time the party has had till now, it could be bad news for them. For this reason I'd suggest that Aroldo launches his coup when the party are still in the cellar or elsewhere in the mansion. This will give the group some space to assess the situation and decide how & IF they want to engage with it.

Beating the Fire Chain Pirates in a fight isn’t what the party came here to do - they came here to steal a treasure and embarrass Sir Aroldo. Depending on the situation they could attempt to sneak away with their prize…

However if the group decides they’d like to foil Arldo’s coup d'etat there are some elements they could try and exploit.

Rather than a pitched battle in the Grand Hall they could attempt to lure the Pirates or Sir Aroldo somewhere Nagamerah would struggle to follow (being a large creature).

There’s also Nagamerah’s chains. I only vaguely hint at lore for the Fire Chain Pirates in the zine but if we imagine them as airborne raiders, riding on magically bound dragons then breaking Nagamerah’s chains may turn her from a foe to an ally? At the very least she is likely to be a little upset at her former captors. Perhaps the last moments of the session will be a conversation with a dragon rather than a fight with one?

That’s it!

And so we’ve come to the end of this kickstarter. There’s still 14 more levels for D&D characters to reach and 20 more letters of the alphabet to cover but I’m going to take a short rest and roll some hit dice before I think about how I might go about that.

I’m keen to add some more generalised entries to this blog in the near future, (perhaps a bestiary and some loot tables etc), so stay tuned for that.

I’m also going to put the zines up for sale on Drivethru RPG and possibly Itch sometime in Jan so if you’re interested in that - that will be a thing.

To all of you who backed the kickstarter, ran the zines with your friends and sent me emails saying lovely things about them - Thank you, these adventures were small but the decision to share my creativity with strangers wasn’t, the supportive community out there made me really glad I took the plunge.

It’s goodbye for now but we’ll be meeting in a tavern to map out our next adventure before you know it.

Warmest Regards,

Brendan Barnett