The Twenty Unspeakable Substances

1. Naparmian Fire, being composed of gelid flame, that it may bedevil any whom it contact.
2. Sicharum, being a mixture of alchemicals to adulterate tobacco, that it renders the user and those about them half-mortified. Intensified in the Hand of Gloree.
3. Cacheban, being the vinegar of the venom of the wyrm of the Anor, that it kills painfully as it confers amnesia and agreeable temperament, so that murder becomes an aid to fraud.
4. Ridan Steel, being an alloy unknown in Druidom, formed from azurized and folded steel, that it may leave its essence in wounds it cuts and drives men to larceny and rampancy.
5. Brimstone, being the spoor of the devil, that it may be mixed into a powder by gravediggers and pharmacists to blast beneath palaces or in ingenious tubes to propel stones at the goodly, this latter use being the pursuit for which the substance is named.
6. Ectoplasm of Curse and Grudge, being a quiescent residue that ghostes perspire, that reprisal is inflicted on others beyond the justice of natural law.
7. Hermeous Fluid, being a shining fluid that resembles burnished brass when stilled, its breath stealing the sense of common folk, that it enhances its own comprehension and thus avoid lawful destruction save by those who may pass high justice upon it.
8. Ziphos Nectar, being the ambrosia of a certain fruit forbidden to name, that those who taste of it will grow languid in preferring the sensations of a false world before that of reality.
9. Alber, being a dark matte metal, that saints, doctors and other creatures deemed holy might be repelled by its presence or harmed the more direly for the wound being inflicted by it.
10. Asbestos, being the fibers of a mineral that well shirks heat, that it may corrupt the lungs and words of those around it.
11. Lacunazon, being a verdurous fluid which stiffens and grows icy in moderate cold, that it absorbs the intention of the air to weaken the cope of Heaven above it, so that diabolicals and ludificos may break through't.
12. Fairyglass, being glass sharp-edged and fired to possess a gossamer hue, that those spies through the glass have their dissembling laid bare but seem altogether bestial, so that the love of humanity leaves the viewer.
13. Mendolwood, being the thick-ring lumber of the trees of lands we know not, that, being fashioned into the shape of dolls and puppets, become an enemy to all.
14. Orphan ectoplasm, being a quiescent residue formed by the death of children themselves bereft, so, as the scholars say, it is ontologically separated from the truth of its own creation.
15. Unicorn blood, being the bright ichor of the creature Paradoxa Monoceros, so that unworthy suppliants are empowered and impoverished by its medicorium.
16. Dark monads, being the disparate stuff which may act as though in disconcert and chaos due to a pre-established disharmony with the devil, so speeding the destruction of the world
17. Cuckold dust, being the ground cornus of the domestic cuckold, so those who may inhale it become likewise credulous and fall to mischief.
18. Linguistic ichor, being the particles of speech captured primarily by ingenious sieves, so the dosed person becomes eloquent but shallow of wit.
19. Brazil, being a crystalline growth that resembles gold.
20. Cold-rust, being the air-tapered residue of wet, unalloyed iron which has been produced at a low heat, so sickening those who handle it in proportion to the span of life they may expect.

Scaffolds for Disaster

We like fairness, don't we folks? The oldly new idea that if our PCs fall in a pit, it's because we the players failed some minor challenge, whether of preparedness or of observation of the DM's description. That's fundamental to "skill"-based play, the idea that your decisions affect the outcome for your guy. But there's some give there-- how informed does your decision have to be, and how fitting the consequence for the occasional failure?

This is a matter of feel and theme, something people shouldn't even necessarily disagree on, but modulate for different campaigns and situations. Some games can be about perfectly-telegraphed danger you build intricate solutions for, about jack-in-the-boxes with acid that kill you when you step into an empty room, about anything. As long as there's some kind of information for decision-making, and some difference of outcome, it can give the fun and achievement of being good at a game.

I like the occasional trap with telegraphed, but perverse tells, and extreme consequences, the sort of thing that will seriously punish standard party procedures. It isn't a "gotcha", where the information they gather about the trap is bad. Instead, the explanation behind the information is simply surprising but perfectly fitting.

Example:

• Standard OSR trap: The party looks into a hallway, where a drag mark in the ground abruptly stops. The party correctly guesses that a pit trap interrupted someone in the midst of dragging something, and carefully step over it.
• Gotcha trap: The party looks into a hallway, with that same drag mark. As they attempt to step over what they think is a pit trap, an invisible magic beam shoots a hole in them.
• Perverse-yet-fair trap: The party looks in the hall, sees the drag mark, and tries to step over the pit trap. Unbeknownst to them, a grue lives in the pit trap and grabs one, dragging them in to grind up into her bread.

In the initial usage of the term "scaffold for disaster", Kahva was referring to another important principle, one of game rules and the importance of using them to create a framework for negative outcomes. Many DMs find it easier to adjudicate dealing 13 damage to a PC that would die from taking 13 damage, or calling for a save vs death after being jabbed by a Scorpion, Giant's tail than they would simply informing the PC's player that they die, or suffer some other major negative outcome, without specific game rules to make the outcome indubitable.

The term has bounced around in my head for a while, and I like to apply a similar principle to adventure and location design. It's fun to bake in situations where the whole dungeon is one big perverse-yet-fair trap, where ruin is not signposted but you state all the facts that go into the conclusion. Adventure fiction is dense with sudden reversals of fortune and spikes of danger, and building in the scaffolding for more of those (in addition to the normal viccisitudes of play) has been a successful tool for adventure play to me. For inspiration, check out the classic dungeon the Lichway, where disturbing the dungeon's central feature not only angers a powerful monster but awakens hundreds of undead guardians. I wrote a smaller dungeon along the same lines, a tower that collapsed when its topmost treasure was removed.

I think the reason I enjoy scaffolds for disaster in this sense is that they offer a different kind of skill-based challenge. Players have to be careful they aren't just taking the same rote precautions as always, and when things start to go dramatically wrong they will need to improvise. They will make decisions taking less for granted, which is often the exact sort of adventure I'm going for.

d10 Scaffolds for Disaster

1. The harsh weather in the seas directly between you and your destination may abruptly blow you into the middle of the ocean.
2. The party is attacked by a frenzied warrior on their way to their destination. After arriving, they realize that warrior was the only person who knew some vital information.
3. The party is invited on an exploratory expedition by an ally who radically overestimates their own ability to plan such a journey.
4. A council of the wise asks the PCs to take a powerful evil object to the one place they believe it can be destroyed, but this actually isn't true, or it's too late for doing so to stop the evil threat they intend to stop.
5. An heir or chosen one is ill-fitting, incompetent, or outright malicious, but manages to hide it pretty well as the PCs are told this heir is their only hope.
6. A gently glowing ribbon of light runs from the dungeon's entrance in a meandering path towards its treasure vault. Opening the vault burns through the magic ribbon and seals the exit.
7. Killing the leader of an army either leads their forces to despoil and wreak havoc, or causes the defenders to strike out and commit shameless and horrific retributions.
8. A long-time rival of the PC's patron arrives with an obvious pretext to cause chaos, but after any conflict this causes is resolved their are eventually vindicated by the facts.
9. Important infrastructure, like a dam or bridge, is surprisingly easily destroyed by a common dungeon action like pulling a lever or picking up a magic item.
10. Without making a huge fuss, the weekslong ritual a mid-tier NPC has been performing summons six thousand dragons to your area.

You'll notice a lot of the more narrative scaffolds for disaster read like reversals of common story structure tropes. But a lot of those reversals are now well-known tropes as well. Try to design such situations around the tactical, information-based thinking that players can deploy rather than guessing what "kind" of story they're acting out. If you go with entry #5, the unwise heir, don't give them an evil or stupid voice to foreshadow their evilness or stupidness, just play them straight and don't contrive situations where their moral character or general incompetence is sure to come out. In an adventure dense with incident, there will be plenty of opportunities for the heir to opine, make split-second decisions, or otherwise act in a way that accords with, but does not signpost, their deepest character. And when you play them straight, you make them very susceptible to deliberate investigation by the players. You're being perverse, but fair!

For the Dead Travel Fast (Hexcrawl: Transostia)

 

John Coulthart

I have for you a hexcrawl, a Romanian/Moldavian-inspired fantasy region afflicted by the inadvisable procrastinations of the the wizard Xaximox the Prolific Sealer. It may form a good inspiration for a simple sandbox, or create a chaotic setting in which PCs race to learn about what strange horror is about to be unsealed and act in time. You can find it --> here <--, with a timeline (and google sheets calendar), encounter tables, and scribal sources the PCs may study.

This hexcrawl region was inspired in part by a fruitful discussion on my GLoG discord server. Special thanks to Semiurge of Arch Onsmar Chon and Locheil of the Nothic's Eye as well as all the other sirs, hers, and et ceterers who make it such a wonderful community.

John Coulthart

Tolkenor, the Border Isle

 It is a time of concord. It is a time of discord. Peace has finally come between the thousand warring lords of Alba, but it was not won through friendship. A warlord holds the pope for a hostage, and all the great isles hold their breath. Meanwhile, hundreds of unemployed retainers and thousands of disloyal soldiers turn to brigandry on the waves or the hardscrabble life of the wanderer, as news of wealth and horror from farther and farther lands marks a new age of conquest, expansion, and misery.

Shadow Hunters (1972)

(This regioncrawl was written to accommodate the Masters of the Strait gloghack)

Click here for the regioncrawl, or read on for some reflections on it.

rare photo of Errol Flynn playing a pirate

Reflections:

• As always, I'm glad I included the little details that make the relationship between the ruleset and the world strong-- making sure to include dogs if there's a dog language PCs can learn, exc. But I could have gone a lot harder in that, and it would have gone well I think.
• As a setting, Tolkenor has plenty of danger, wonder, and political-dramatic potential, but it lacks an overarching crisis that makes everything doubly precarious and animates all the best settings. A massive invasion, or outright domestic crisis of some sort.
• Perhaps more overt risk to the life of piracy, or the end of nobility or something. Inspiration from the source material. Why isn't a snooty bureaucrat on the brink of gathering a massive fleet to shoot every outlaw in the head with a cannon?
• Glad I have those little harbor marks on the border connections between land and ocean. That's a step over previous efforts.
• There should be way more connection between regions. PCs following each lead should feel blown around.
• There should be way more interactivity. More buttons that make regions explode, or move, or something. I've done better at that before.
• If I was about to run a Tolkenor campaign, I'd put more work into making a generator for making regions on the fly. Like Josie's stocking procedure, but with a table of elements and themes particular to the setting.
• Coming up with spirits on the fly on a per-region basis is fine, but if spirits are going to be local powers, I'd like some of them to feel as present as some of the political powers. That would give priests and religious events a feeling of actuality.

GLoGhack: Masters of the Strait 🏴‍☠️

 Because some find it hard to get excited about a ruleset, I've made a regioncrawl to go with this one.

I wanted to write out a ruleset that encompassed lesson I've learned and the ways my tastes have changed since writing and running Vain the Sword.

• From playing B/X, I got more into the quadratic, simple leveled advancement (that OG GLOG also had) where you may get to level 4 relatively quickly and advance very slowly from there, but with a complete arsenal of class tools. I became fluent in the pace of gold-for-XP and other classic systems I was only discovering a few years ago.
• From playing Traveller, I fell in love with the career character creation system and skill acquisition. I wondered if I could use a similar framework to also make a procedure of the introduction of PC families and connections to the world that I had previously attempted in slapdash ways.
• From playing Lost Fable, I solidified how I wanted to do overland travel for regioncrawls.
• Looking back on Vain the Sword, I do enjoy the 8 hp maximum and the risk that the Table of Consequences gives, which can be tweaked with a custom table for every campaign.

Just as knights are the flower of chivalry, so are settings the flower of nobility. Accordingly, I have a polished version with a setting integrated and a more generic skeleton in case I want to adapt it for another campaign. I hope you enjoy!