Method to Madness: Session 1

            I ran a bad adventure last weekend. Everyone had fun. But, now I read the reviews at tenfootpole and I no longer appreciate adventures that make me work for six hours to make them playable; I have been spoiled. The adventure was from Terrors from beyond, and the adventure itself was Method to Madness. It is not well thought of.  

Method to Madness started life as a tournament adventure and maybe it was a good tournament adventure because it demands huge buy-in and effort on the part of the players to make it worthwhile. This adventure makes it easy to differentiate between players who are there to be entertained and players who are dedicated to entertaining. I am going to hash out all the changes I made and why but my players haven’t finished it yet. I plan to write a full post mortem. What follows is a write up of the adventure so far.

As written the adventure starts with the players being awake alone in their rooms. They are unable to sleep. They hear the elevator. If they leave they are escorted back to their rooms before they can do anything. It is the worst start to an adventure I have ever seen. The players are all separated and it is impossible for their actions to matter. They are supposed to roleplay lying in be alone. Of course they could do something and you could improvise but nothing is supported by the adventure but lying still and doing nothing.

The Characters:

Colonel Butte Jamesler - Deranged veteran

Alina Dolinsky - Starlette with substance abuse issues

Waldo Hirsch - Stressed out contractor or warehouse owner or something

Mona di Frabrizio - Tortured artist

Happenings:

The adventure loosely follows the schedule of the asylum:

Breakfast:

It is announced that the main therapist for the institution has gone on sabbatical

Alina Dolinksy intimates that she thinks he was murdered.

Calisthenics:

            Butte Jamesler is asked to lead calisthenics, he gets too vigorous and pulls his groin badly.

            He is removed and sedated

The rest of the players discover disturbed brush on the outskirts of the field they are in. They wander over and then get distracted by whatever issues landed them in the asylum in the first place

Lunch:

            Butte Jamesler is back, in wheelchair, and still sedated

Another patient throws a tantrum about the lack of Tapioca; Mona joins in, rolling on the floor

            Dolinsky leaves to check for fan mail

            Another deranged patient assails her from behind in the hallway

This patient holds a knife to her throat and starts ranting about something out to get him

            Mona throws plate and hits Alina in the face for 2hp of damage.

            Butte Jamesler grabs a fork and wheels towards the assailant menacingly.

Waldo Hirsch grabs the back of the wheelchair

A Wheelchair cavalry charge commences

It is not very effective, but a good distraction.

Dolinsky says something, I can’t remember what but the effect is that the assailant collapses to the ground crying that there is no hope for him and he can’t escape.

He is dragged off to the nurse’s station (why the nurses station because there are no secure rooms on the ground floor for pacifying patients. Luckily my wife who is a nursed didn’t notice that that was weird).

Then we ended. 

While preparing for a game yesterday I stumbled upon some old notes I made to extend the dungeon beneath Zenopus's tower. And since the Zenopus Archives have recently been putting up some neat stuff related to the Holmes sample dungeon, I thought maybe people would be interested.

Many years ago I was really into the Kua-Toa, but apparently didn't know how to spell "Kua-Toa." This little subfloor is a shrine to Blibdoolpoolp, where human cultist and Kua-Toa work together to capture and eat humans and do weird fish-man interbreeding stuff.

There is a room with a well with magic water.
There is a room where humans are butchered.
There is a room where butchered human meat is stored "Ice Room"
The first room you enter has a "statue of a fish swallowing a "naked babe"
The altar room has clues on how to open the secret door: "Say fish prayer and kiss fish statue"
I think I intended for the room with the statue of Blibdoolpoolp to be filled with treasure. I never got around to writing any down. I think somewhere there was an encounter table with Kua-Toa(or probably Koa-Toa(sic) and smuggler cultists and fish-man abominations).

When you think of any sort of monster human hybrid, I think the general assumption is that the monster human hybrid is the product of rape. That was not what I was going for here. The general vibe was supposed to be that the party had stumbled upon the lair of a bunch of guys who really like fish, like "like like" them. I think H.P Lovecraft did the same thing in the Shadow over Innsmouth. I am not about to unpack Shadow over Innsmouth or the way sex/reproduction is portrayed in  Lovecraft's writings right now.

Dwarf Level Limits and Why Dungeons are so Deep

Üle Oakenballs, Ye’ lived a long enough life outside the mountain. Its ‘nigh time ye’ returned to tha’ forge.”

“Aye Turl Toffennubs, Jus’ a one more time down into tha’ depths. Thars more riches for ol’ Üle down thar”

“Oakenballs, I’ve ‘a’ seen this before; ye’ goin but ye’ ain’t comin’ back the madness has already taken ye’”

 Üle Oakenballs had already left by the time Turl Toffennubs finished his sentence. His eyes were glazed and his mouth was dry. He only thought of going deeper into depths beneath the tower...

            Dwarfs that are called to adventure in the world of men subliminally are all driven by a desire to go deep into the earth. Most dwarfs are able to satisfy this desire in their own mines but dwarfs called to adventure seek new depths. When they try to surpass their level cap they succumb to their obsession and head into the dungeon for the last time, like lemmings they seek the lowest level and begin to dig deeper, new, confused, chaotic tunnels. Their language becomes mixed with chaos and it becomes hard for them to think. Some monsters will attack them but by the time this madness takes them, they stink of chaos and most will let them be.

Thaddeus Wangshingle handled his mace, adjusting his grip reflexively, as he evaluated the strange dirty naked dwarf feverishly carving deeper into the earth below Zenopus’s Tower. His companion, Winslow Mudfish approached silently, dagger in hand, until he could hear the dwarf’s mumbling. Every once in a while Mudfish thought he could make out a word, but it was clear that this dwarf had forgotten all syntax long ago. Mudfish looked back at Wangshingle and shook his head. The two turned their eyes to their dwarf companion.

Norvin Brün, bristled at the attention “‘tis not a dwarf.  ‘tis a dvergar. They be evil. Step back Mudfish all handle this one meself.” Brün rushed forward, mighty axe held high. It took many hacks with his axe for the dvergar to stop moving and still more hacks before Brün stopped swinging. His companions looked away, pretended to search for secret doors. They headed back up to the surface in silence, returned to the inn and drank.

Dvergar are a lie told to outsiders in an attempt to hide the final fate of dwarfs who spend too long in the outside world.

My previous posts concerning demihuman level limits are here:

Nilbogs

Elves

Set This Goblin on Fire and Call it by its Name

“I seen it... But I don’t know what I seen. It was a burning beast and it brought hell upon us. My chickens is dead and my field is taaaaaaaaaantacles!”

            Some sicko on google plus asked me to expand my ideas on level limits, elves and the chaos alignment language to account for nilbogs. It is entirely possible that he was joking.Nilbogs are kind of a joke. I have never liked nilbogs. First of all the Nilbog doesn’t even get a picture in the Fiend Folio. That is maybe the worst part of the Nilbog. The second worst part of the entry is the last paragraph:

For obvious reasons, encounters with these strange creatures are dreaded and, as a result normal goblins tend to be treated with extreme caution lest they turn ot(sic) to be nilbogs. There appear to be no way of distinguishing between the two apart from the use of such spells as commune or by trial and error.  Fiend Folio, editor Turnbull, Don, p. 68 (TSR Hobbies, Inc. 1981).

The book pretty explicitly tells you that nilbogs exist just to mess with players. Nilbogs are a trap that is very “gamey.” They look completely ordinary but have special mechanics (weapons heal, healing spells hurt, you do the opposite of what you want to do (no save)). They do not feel like pulpy. They are a product of dungeons and dragons fucking itself.

They could be pulpy and evocative if they did not behave or look like regular goblins. Here is one of the best parts of the nilbog entry:  

Nilbogism (the name given to this strange disorder) appears to occur when overly heavy use of magic strains the fabric of the space-time continuum and lead to some very strange events. Ibid.

It’s not even that great; but, it does try to place nilbogs somewhere into the world’s logic. If we take my idea that goblins are elves that grew too powerful and were seduced and debased by chaos, then we can say that nilbogism is caused by chaos breaking down the spells that resided in the elf when he succumbed to chaos. It looks something like this:

Nilbog

No. Appearing 1

% In lair 0

Treasure: none

Alignment: chaos

All other stats: the same/ whatever you want

Any nilbog would love to die but cannot figure out how. If a nilbog could speak intelligibly it would ask you to kill it. Nilbogs scream. You can hear them for miles. They wander on tirelessly but exhausted until they finally dissipate into a pile of entropy.

Nilbogs are the final form for all goblins that formed from an elf that had spells memorized. Eventually the chaos that forms and poisons them will begin to work on those memorized spells, releasing the spell energy in a chaotic but predictable way. The energy completely overwhelms what faculties the goblin had left and pours out into his surroundings, damaging causality and warping physical laws. You know, typical nilbog effects (the range of these effects vary from nilbog to nilbog).

Nilbogs are surrounded by fluctuations in reality that create dramatic visual effects, warping, flames, and distortion. In the center is what appears at times to be a normal goblin and at times more demonic and at other times more elfin.

Nilbogs can be encountered anywhere and are easy to track. They leave a trail of blighted and deformed land. Stone is warped or changed into other substances, plants are killed or mutated, animals are born deformed and dead.

Most spells heal the nilbog, giving more fuel for the chaos to burn. Cleric spells may work; healing is thought to damage the nilbog.