Sidequest: The Curse of Xanathon Part 1

As I previously mentioned, I was finally able to become a player in a Swords & Wizardry campaign adventure.  These sessions were run by Brian, one of the players in our gaming group that has been going strong since 2009!

Brian ran classic TSR adventure: X-3 Curse of Xanathon!

Like I said, I had a great time playing my thief, McDagger and we all had a lot of laughs with this adventure, as any good group of sessions should have, but the Curse of Xanathon, as an adventure module, has it's 'issues'.

This adventure was written in 1982, around the time adventure modules evolved from a sandbox environment into more of a story-based adventure. Being X-3, you can see the evolution of that through the X series of modules.

X-1, The Isle of Dread (by David Cook and Tom Moldvay) is a crazy open sandbox in a pulp fantasy lost island in the middle of the sea.  It's open ended and the players can determine their own fate by their choices.  There is no real 'plot' or linear story. Just an anything goes fantasy.  It's a classic in it's own right.

X-2, Castle Amber (by Tom Moldvay) was another open ended "fun-house" adventure with a loose plot of the D'Amberville family. It's essentially a classic mega-dungeon crawl.  This one is slightly more rail-roady in that the PCs would be 'trapped' in the castle until they figure out the way to escape.

The Curse of Xanathon (by Douglas Niles) breaks with that free-form openness and railroads the party into 5 plot-points (scenarios) that need to be hit to move the story along. It involves a curse upon the duke of the town of Rhoona and a cult worshiping a chaotic god and an 'invincible' priest and an powerful pirate working in tandem with the priest to control the Duke.  Oh, and a time limit of an invading dwarven army that the Mad Duke pissed off, all this to support the underlying concept of a civil war in the town to weaken it and allow for an invasion from the steeps.  This all sounds like the making of a great fantasy story - and it is, but as an open adventure, it doesn't work very well.

The general problem with 'story' based adventures such as this is always having the critical need for players
to hit the plot-points to move the adventure along. You can't kill the wrong NPC, or stray from the path, or  just blow-up the Duke's castle and be done with it, or what if you don't find the exact key to defeat the evil priest? or just saying, this town is fucked, lets rob the castle and get out of here.  To reveal the 'story' as the author intended, you need to do everything in the way the author needs to you to do it. And for a group that is use to open ended adventures where the stories evolve themselves this was quite rail-roady.  I mean, why should a group of traveling rogues care about this town or this Mad Duke? I guess outlawing ale would do the trick, right?

All that said, we had a good laugh at some of the forced plot points.  Many of the encounters were quite enjoyable and I really loved the dungeon/shrine. This would be a challenging module to run for even veteran DMs but Brian rolled with this adventure with his usual dry humor and twisted charm which leveled this module up from an attempted mysterious drama to a romp that involved fire-balling the barracks.

I guess you can't keep a good party down.

A brief word about the author, Douglas Niles. He was part of the early second group of TSR employees after the initial explosion of the game. He came on board in '82 as a game designer. He ended up writing Top Secret (one of my favorite non-D&D games) and the first three Forgotten Realms novels.  He also wrote the B-5 Horror on the Hill adventure, a less rail-roady adventure which I worked into our campaign way back and was pretty fun. He has some chops but Curse of Xanathon just didn't cut it.  It's obvious he had a story concept in mind that he translated into an adventure module which doesn't quite work as a stand-alone.  I suppose that if you used the town of Rhooma as a starting point for an entire campaign with level 1 characters and then you could slowly build up the story and plot points so that when the characters were powerful enough they could tackle the 'story adventure' organically with the stakes being higher, that probably could work.

More on the actual session recaps coming next.

Another, more thorough, dive into this module over at RetroReview

Adventures in Playing

Yes, your Warlock has been gone for quite a while and it may have seemed that the campaign was on indefinite hold, but lo', it was only an illusion!  We actually continued with Swords & Wizardry but with me, your wonderful warlock, as a player and the DMing duties having been passed on to our long time player Brian.

I needed a break from running sessions and Brian wanted to give DMing a try.  The timing was right for a switch.

When I first got involved in D&D waaaay back in the Holmes Blue Book days, I was the oldest of our group of friends. Being all of 10 years old, 'learning the game' and running things kind of fell to me.  Believe it or not, I rarely was ever a player in a D&D game.  I probably only played a PC no more than three times, only two of which I can truly remember. As we all got a bit older and others could take the reins, we had moved on to other games like Boot Hill, Top Secret, Champions, Traveller, and other board games.  All of that was great fun, but I really never got to experience some good old fantasy role playing.

Even these days, I had played in a very fun play by post game run through the OD&D boards almost 10 years ago now.  That was great as it was classic D&D and my dwarf had some good times. However, it was still a play by post and not a face to face table game.

When I was looking to find a face to face group, I ended up in a D&D 3.5 game.  I really enjoyed being a player but the 'on the track' railroading of the adventure was a real drag, not to mention the two hours + long combat sessions. I longed for the free-form, anything goes old-school style game that I grew up with and wanted to experience as a player.

Getting our current game group together is now history. It is here that I was able to run our classic style campaign.  And with a group of great friends this group has become, we were able to branch off into other RPGs including Savage Worlds, ICONS, White Star (Star Wars), Robotech, all of which I was able to be a player in.  All of that was great but I still never quite had that swords and sorcery fantasy player experience.... until now, when Brian ran his side campaign.

This side campaign, we agreed, was to take place within the current S&W campaign world that we were playing in. Some of the players used their current characters while others created new ones.  All of this was to help build PC to take on the final quest of the main campaign.

Finally being a player was great.  Brain ran a really fun adventure module (which needed a few tweaks, but he did right by those).  I ran a thief named McDagger.  He got himself into plenty of trouble - not at all times by choice!  Brian ran a pretty brutal campaign with a couple near TPKs which were saved by usually one lucky character.  The dungeon adventure had lots of tricks and traps and creatures that caused us all a lot of laughs and headaches. It was a blast to finally be a player in an extended campaign and I can't wait to jump in that side of things again.  I really wished I had summarized those sessions as well, but real life made that harder to do than usual.  I'll do my best to cover a brief summary in the next post or two just to keep the campaign complete.

For now, though, we have moved back to the main campaign this past Monday.  I'll get the session summary for that posted in the next week.

So, for now, thanks Brain and...

Vanguard 13: The Characters

We've played three sessions of Icons so far, our fourth scheduled for Monday.  Something that I feel was done perfectly in the game was the random character generation.  Sounds weird in a heroes game but as with classic D&D, the character is what you make of it not what you make your character to be.  I'm not saying there's anything wrong with either approach, it's just that random character gen can give the players and the sessions some really unique situations.

With Icons there is plenty of room to 'flesh' the character out after the random rolls but I feel this process pushes your creativity in coming up with interesting characters that you might not think of coming up with or even playing.  Again, you need a good group of players to 'roll' with this concept and if you've read any of this blog, you'll know we have a pretty good gaming group.

So I'd like you to meet the Vanguard 13 circa 1942!

Automaton: The Mechanical Marvel

Lord Genovasis:  The father of Meta-humans

The Sponge:  A janitor

The Scarlet Hood:  The scourge of the underworld

Prophylactica:  The woman wonder of rubber!

King Cobra

The Ads Of The Dragon Issue 55

I don't have to tell you how awesome my players are, I've mentioned that numerous times here at the Home Brew. Clay, who is now running our Savage Worlds game, picked up this little relic from his home state of Nebraska. Cover by Erol Otus no less too!

Now I'm sure we've all walked through the pages of Dragon Magazines loaded with classic treasures and anecdotes of bygone eras and this one is no different. A great little article by Gygax about his 200+ page Temple of Elemental Evil Module (release date pushed to early 1982), there's a great little Basic D&D dungeon, and dinosaurs galore. This issue falls just after that imaginary border-line of the Dragon when it began to be more of a promotion for AD&D and less about OD& D (great post about this over at Original Editions).

But what I always find more interesting in these 'vintage' magazine (comics and pulps too) are the ads. For all you sociologists out there, the ads can give you a great snapshot of the underlying culture surrounding the publication.

Let's take a look, shall we? (click to enbiggen)

Great little ad illustration by Gene Day for a Wild West RPG.

I love all of the ads for the hobby shops carrying RPG products. Truly a golden age!
And you thought Play By Post took forever!
Get you geek on with a cool dragon tee-shirt then get beat up wearing a not-so-cool Unicorn belt buckle.

I don't think I ever knew what the flip this was. It looked ugly as hell. But it was a gaming aid so it couldn't be all that bad, right?
Back cover ad for some old school computer gaming action!
(Check out James' Crush, Crumble and Chomp Epyx ad)


And finally, this beautiful ad for White Dwarf illustrated by Emmanuel, cover artist for The Fiend Folio (and new banner image for The Warlock's Home Brew).

NPCs, Red-Shirts, Meatshields - Let Your Players Give Them Life!

If my NPCs hang out with my players for more than a session I roll up their stats and throw them on a notecard. Sometimes a player ends up controlling an NPC for whatever reason (charmed or their PC is unconscious - or dead). They tend to fill out the character, draw character portraits and embellish their personality which I try to use in later sessions (if the NPC survives!). It's great letting the players flesh things out for you!

Here's two shining examples of what the players have helped create in the campaign.


Unfortunately, both Tero and Mor fell exploring the Tomb of the Iron God!

The Ultimate: "My Players Are Awesome" Post

Have I mentioned how awesome my players are? Well last night's session really was something special. As we hit our 23rd session and celebrating our one year campaigning anniversary my players sprung on me a little surprise.

Lo' and behold, they had delivered to me the grand-daddy of all minis. Direct from Otherworld Miniatures:


Yes that's right! Corey (Level 1 Gamer) worked with the rest of the guys to get this treasure delivered into my hands. Words can't describe how marvelous this is. If there's any symbol that represents the OSR and classic gaming or, hell, just fantasy gaming in general it's gotta be this guy here.

This past year of gaming has been truly, without question, the best I've ever experienced. This is one great group of guys to be throwing dice with. They've all come from various gaming backgrounds and have joined under the one banner of Swords & Wizardry. All these players have been so creative with their characters, with game situations and the table talk has to be some of the most hilarious stuff I've run into.

So hats off to these dedicated gamers as well. They've kept the sessions alive and kicking for this past year.


And this just lead into one hell of a memorable game session! And don't think this gift held me back from tossing some big nasties at these guys. Oh, on the contrary! They were stuck face to face with an un-turnable eight foot tall skeleton in plate armor wielding a two handed sword with a single boney arm, and Tibag almost got turned into green slime, and another hoard of a nest full of Crotch-Goblins which, by the end of the battle, Tibag had the nick-name of Tibag - Crotch-Gobbler!

Yes, it was a session for the ages which I will recap soon. So thanks to Corey (Level 1 Gamer), Mike (Milkman-X), Clay, Zach, Brian, Max, Tim and Christy (who participated in her 3rd consecutive session)!

Rolling Dice With The Wife

As I mentioned in my previous post, my wife Christy joined us for her first "real" table RPG session. You may recall that we had played a couple of solo sessions over a year ago and that left her a bit unsure of how the game actually worked. I guided her as much as possible but a solo session with an inexperienced player isn't really a good intro to the game.

So our last session she joined us at the table. Again, she was a bit unsure on this whole role-playing thing but over all I felt she had a more positive experience than negative. Right after the session she actually drew a portrait of her hermaphrodite dwarven fighter Maudlin (with a CHA of 5!). Whether she continues playing or not, how awesome was that?

So last night she joined us once again. In fact she got to the table early and read through her character sheet and the Home Brew house-rules before the others arrived, asking questions here and there.

This session was a better slice of your classic game session as there were some interactions with the city-folk of Caladan as well as a good creepy dungeon crawl with monsters to be slain and treasure to be had (recap to be posted shortly). The other players helped fill Christy in on some of the back stories and past encounters that had relevance to the sessions events as they popped up. There were good examples of how the players interacted together to solve problems and accomplish tasks. Overall a perfect session to really get a feel for the game with the usual laughs and table talk, of course. Cudos to my players for making her feel welcome and answering some of her questions and guiding her play a bit and congrats to Christy for giving it another go!

Afterwards she said she enjoyed the session and said that she pictured some of the events, especially with the hoard of crypt crawlers, just like scenes in a movie. Was she jumping around screaming 'Oh my god that was freaking' awesome! When do we play next?". No (I mean, come on, lets be realistic). But I think she got a good picture of what the game is about. Christy is still trying to get the hang of fitting in with game play and running Maudlin.I say only more sessions will help with that!

Here's hoping that Maudlin's adventures continue.

Level Me Up, Professor!

I've got a lot of interesting players in my group and I'll have to give you a run-down on them sometime.

One of my players, Max, has come into RPG's via video games. This is his first PnP campaign and, from what I understand, is enjoying it quite a bit, though, as with many gamers, the open-ended world of the 'sandbox' is a bit of a challenge. He is playing the character of Slick Vinny the Magic-user which is quite the challenge for a first time RPGer especially in an Swords & Wizardry old school style game, but Max has brought a lot of personality to Vinny and has presented him in some very interesting circumstances as he explores the realm of sandbox gaming.

But more to the point, Max is a graduate student exploring game-based educational technology as learning mediums for students and teacher here at the U of A. What's interesting in his recent post is his display of the student's progress report.

It's a very exciting sample of what education potential in the near future may hold. With generations growing up in the virtual environments of Video games and RPGs it would seem that the paradigm of educational level advancement would have to adapt to a technology literate generation.

This is one interesting example of that direction.

But you can't help to think how Gygax and Arneson have actually affected change in the world with their little set of rules.

Iron Rations

So we had our 10th campaign session the other day - recap coming shortly. It was a full house to be sure. Zach (who plays Skwanky Furrytoe) returned to the table as well as Max (Slick Vinny) who also had been out for a number of sessions. We welcomed a new player, Tim, to the fold as well. That's seven player characters all told. It makes for a pretty loud raucous session as you can imagine:

*The Elmer's Glue is there purely by accident.

Quote of the game from Slick Vinny: "Alright, I'm going to shotgun Teabag."

More Of "My Players Are Awesome"

This week proved to be a double header in the My Players Are Awesome department. Zach, one of my players whom I've mentioned before and will be returning to the table, dropped this off for me.



It may be hard to believe, with me being such a huge fan of the OSR, but I never owned a copy of Labyrinth Lord. I've loved the book, the layout, the rules but I found it to be so close to the basic red and expert blue that I never found it a priority to pick this one up. Well, I'm glad I have it now as it's a great little compiled set of rules (which I have always thought, btw). In fact, my house rules have been sprinkled with some of the LL Advanced Edition.

Next up, Brian surprised me with this Usagi action figure (yeah, I took it out of the package...for shame!).



For those of you who don't know of Usagi, this is Stan Sakai's Ronin Samurai rabbit. Don't be turned off by the anthropomorphic characters, Usagi Yojimbo has all the drama of a Kurosawa film. It's one of my favorite comics. It's a must read for those into feudal Japanese action.

More Of My Players Are Awesome

Those who've followed this blithering blog may remember that I've mentioned how awesome my players are. So at last night's session, one of our players, Zach, who has actually been out of play for a number of sessions due to real life commitments, bestowed upon us a grand gift.



Now, if you can't tell from my photo, this is the infamous Jones soda D&D Limited Edition 6 pack. Not only is this D&D themed soda chock-full of tasty pure cane sugar goodness, with names like "Sneak Attack", "Potion of Healing" and "Dwarven Draught" it brought a lot of spice and camaraderie to the table.

So thank you Zach, who couldn't be with us (though we expect him to return next session), your potions were quite uplifting. Experience Bonus for you, my friend!

www.myjones.com/limited/wizards