Marlinko Easter Egg Contest

I do love my homages and in-jokes so. Whether it be a small backhills town, murderhole or weirdo nation, the Hill Cantons is sloppy with literary references, nods to current events, woots to favored creators, lampoons of dreadful real world trends, etc. And the published work is no exception, Slumbering Ursine Dunes containing a rather large (and seemingly not-caught) Big Lebowski reference, a wereshark and grotto ship hat-tip to John Eric Holmes, and a host of smaller little eggs.

Fever-Dreaming Marlinko is even worse, positively bursting at the seams with them. The inestimable Gus L even calls me out in a thoughtful review for it with the Catacombs section (and he's most likely correct about their jarring nature.)

So friends, having accidentally over-ordered some print copies of Marlinko, time for another dumb Hill Cantons contest.

Contest Goal

A very simple one this time, there are 12 literary and movie direct homages hidden in the text (there are actually 17, but five of them seem way too veiled to be anything but a chuckle-point for me and maybe the home group players). Whoever finds the most, wins! (Note: I am specifically ruling out campaign in-jokes and broader D&D homages, just sticking to books and movies.)

Contest Prize

The winner gets to choose from the following list:

1. a print copy of both Fever-Dreaming Marlinko and Slumbering Ursine Dunes.

2. a $10 gift certificate to Amazon (don't spend it all in one place, hoss).

3. a copy of a book or movie from the reference list (barring a runaway auto-pricing fiasco).

Contest Deadline

Given that you have to wade through 70-pages of my quirky-ass writing I am putting out a longer deadline than my usual contests, July 21.

To enter your submission, email me at kutalik at the gmail dot the com.

Win a Wargame Contest Results

Although I almost always say this about the design contests I run, it bears repeating as it just happens to be true once again: the entries in the Win a Wargame Contest where an absolute pain to pass judgment on. (You know due to how richly imagined and executed they were on the whole.) Fortunately, this time around I had the sense to recruit two other judges with better sense and talent then me, Jason Sholtis and Anthony Picaro, to help smash through my usual hemming and hawing.

We had 15 entries and used a reverse weighted point system to come up with the results. The top three winners (really four due to a tie) will receive a wargame from my collection (email with pics coming) and free shipping. You have truly earned the kudos.

Also with the permission of the entrants we are planning to use the entries in two ways in the final product bundle of the Slumbering Ursine Dunes:

1. Depending on space 2-4 of the top selections will be used as points on the pointcrawl in the final version of the sandbox adventure with accreditation and a freebie (though I think all the eligible winners are already backers).

2. A PDF compilation of all the entries for backers (and with accreditation) to use as optional expansion points.

Following are the winning places with some excerpted selections (naturally don't read if you plan on playing in the adventure):

First Place

Doyle Tavener with Tree of Hanging Rusalkas. 

(At night.) A large willow tree looms over a small lake or pond. A weird, disharmonious crooning can be softly heard coming from the boughs of the tree above you. (At day.)  A large willow tree looms over a small lake or pond. There is a small stone altar at the base of the tree, from which hang three moppets (small cloth puppets). There are remnants of small cakes on the altar.

A huge willow tree stands here before a small lake, which is itself obscured by a willow grove. Three Rusalkas... hang here on the boughs of the tree at night, while during the day they 'sleep' in the lake bed below the tree.

Humza K. with Vodník Pool

Coming around a curve, a large pond comes into view. Two petrified trees overhang the water, swamp moss drooping down. A half-sunken hut juts out from the middle of the pond, with occasional glints of radiance peeking out.

Zoltán the vodník...can be found here, lounging on a rock and puffing away at a long-stemmed pipe. In contrast to most of his vodník brethren, he appears in mostly human form: long moustaches, once splendid but now waterlogged coat and hat, webbed hands and flapping gills at the sides of his neck.

Second Place

Anne Hunter with Diluvian Reservoir.

A millennia-old dam complex here holds a reservoir of the last floodwaters of the Deluge. The reservoir sits in the low point of a deep ravine. The birch forest here grows thick and ancient; the eldest trees stand like watchtowers around the dam. The floodwaters contain the last undying pairs of extinct prehistoric fauna. Antediluvian treasures lie buried beneath the mud in a ruined Nephilim village. The valley can only be entered from the southwest and northeast. The paths are steeply sloped and choked with seedling birches; ascending out of the ravine takes twice as long as entering.

The dam is maintained by a family of 6 giant beaver engineers... They are an unbroken lineage from the megafauna shipwrights...

Third Place

Robert Parker with the Chaos Monastery

A grueling climb up a switchback trail leads to the top of a massive dune which gently slopes down into a secluded valley at the edge of the Persimmon Sea...In the valley are a rough circle of battered, rusting silver huts. At this distance a pit in the center of the huts can be vaguely made out...

In the valley itself is the Chaos Monastery, the secret training ground of a bizarre collection of martial arts aficionados, social misfits, and lovers of all things awesome. Unlike traditional monasteries, the Chaos Monastery is a place not of quiet contemplation and self-mastery, but rather an occasional gathering place for whooping bands of hooligans to guzzle plum brandy and to establish their pecking order through good-natured bullying and displays of “badass” skill.

Fourth Place

Fane of Grooze, the Grey God by Mike Davison

In a small, hidden vale, there lies a strange stone pillar. This pillar is home to a grey ooze, known as Grooze. He is the god of a small tribe of Feral Dwarves.

[The entry had a fantastic map and nice little mini-dungeon attached.]

Fifth Place

Obsidian by Jonathan Black

Towering spire of twisted obsidian rises up out of a narrow valley of variegated sandstone worn smooth by years of sandstorms and wind. A well-traveled path leads south towards a small oasis, ringed with shrubs and a few fig trees. At the bottom of the spire, someone has built scaffolding around the towering rock to hold it in place as they excavate the sand and stone from around the base. Hidden by  the wood and stonework supporting the spire is a dank hole in the ground, leading to fetid caverns beneath the spire.

Honorable Mentions
Varkolaks
Koshchey Bessmertny
Czernobog's Well

Contest Extension and More Brazonia

So today is the day that the Win a Wargame Contest ends. Several people have asked about an extension--and though we already have 11 rock-star entries--your pleas have not fallen on deaf ears. The contest deadline has been officially extended to Saturday 7:00 in the pm Central US time.

To be fair to those who made early entries, those of you who have already submitted can take extra time to work on your entry as long as it makes the new deadline.

Since I have you all on the hook here is a map of Brazonia that wild and wonderful northern nation nestled on the World Canal mentioned yesterday. More details later.  

Click to Embiggen. Hex Scale: 5 miles

Win a Wargame Contest

Two days back (skip the quote block if you just want to jump down to the contest) on Google Plus I wrote about almost (almost) dumping my wargame collection.

One rather prominent blogger suggested instead of selling these objects of love/hate to random strangers that I run a contest for the Slumbering Ursine Dunes and give them away to some of you the talented horde. Which really is a great idea.

Here are the particulars:

I will give away one game of your choice to the first and second place winners (maybe even third place if y'all wow me) of the following contest that will end next Thursday October 2. (Shipping is free in the US and maybe free to other parts if it doesn't bankrupt me.) ALSO winners may be featured in the actual published Dunes pointcrawl (with your credit and permission naturally).

The challenge is this simply; design a small adventure site, a point on the pointcrawl in the Slumbering Ursine Dunes. For comparison this is what one point in the manuscript looks like (it's fine if it is longer but not by much).

Bearling Holy Site. A vast amphitheater is carved here into a flattened 150-yard patch of tan sandstone. At its back sits a small deep-red marble shrine. A three-foot ruby-eyed porphyry statue of Medved or King Bear standing in roaring bear form (worth 6000 gp) can be seen inside. A well-traveled, broad trail leads to the west and a narrower, bush-choked trail runs off to the northwest.

The shrine is attended to at all times by a color guard of 14 soldier-bears [AC 4 breastplates and morions, Hp: 18, HD:2+2, Attk: 1 (weapon), polearm 1d10+1] with bardiche polearms, gilded morions and gleaming breastplates. Theft of the statue angers Medved sorely (see the Glittering Tower) forcing him to use his godling powers of Divination (AEC p. 34) to determine the culprit.

Bonus points if your point includes:

1. A vaguely Slavic/Eastern European theme or flavoring (no Baba Yaga I already have a Grandma Gaya in the world). 

2. A mini-dungeon or other explorable site. No more than really 5-6 rooms really.

3. New monsters, items or spells whatever.

4. Super extra bonus points for hooking the point contextually into something existing in the Dunes draft currently. 

Got it? Submissions can be sent to my email: kutalik at the gmail dot the com. 

Pimp Your Stronghold Contest Extension and an Annual News Round-Up

Hearing now my third plea for an extension on this contest from last week, I am officially extending the contest deadline until this Friday. So if you are furiously pimping your own dream manse you can leisurely coast into the finish line.

Also of interest to perhaps a score of you (and then again mostly players in the campaign, I have compiled a 12-page compilation document (with spiffy Ivan Bilibin cover and hex map) of my semi-regular news round ups that time to time find their way from the Hill Cantons Google Plus page to here on the blog. You can download the PDF here if you are interested.  

The Pimp-Your-Own-Stronghold Contest

Many months ago—two years and some change, sweet lord where does the time ago—it popped into (one of many) discussions about domain play that one of the greatest pleasures of that arena back in the hoary day was the pimping out of ever-wilder paper designs of your dream stronghold.

Bombasticus wrote at the time: “For our gang, the tween years--10 to 12--were the developmental 'sweet spot' for this kind of domain creation. There was something hugely appealing about the construction rules at that age and we all spent many hours outfitting hidden valleys, cloud castles, secret undersea lairs.”

Rereading the comment resonated hard with me as it jivved with both my own past attempts at personalized utopias (sideviews, top-down graph papers, free-hand sketches, etc.) and more recently with teaching fantasy worldbuilding to kids of that very age group. 

So when the ever-tangential explosions of conversation that makes up Google Plus ran straight back into discussion of that old joy--strangely around discussion of this real life medieval fortress-city of suburban paranoia, the Citadel Project, and its oddly similar 'cool features' elements like a Firearm Museum with a matching Reflecting Pool (seen here)--my brain immediately went to “it's time for another stupid-ass Hill Cantons contest.”

So here are the particulars:

1. Contest participants will design their dream “fantasy stronghold”. The medium used can vary according to the whim of the participant but should include a visual medium (side-views, floor plans, etc) with some written content of the what the hell is going on.

2. Bonus points for filtering the designs through the twisted lens of one of your player-characters.

3. Bonus brownie (again not required) points for attaching some bonafide, vaguely plausible game justifications consistent with the rules of your choice (crap like budgets for construction, labor force, or whatever).

4. The contest deadline is February 27 (that's a week from today). All entries should be emailed to me at kutalik at the gmail dot the com.

What you can win (besides the sweet accolades of me and your fellow gamers):

First place: $10 gift certificate from Amazon.

Second and Third: a book of your choice from my obsessively-growing “book rescue” collection of pulp fantasy.

Winning entries may make their appearance in a corner of my campaign world even.

Undercity Design Contest

Back from the Redneck Riveria (apparently this phrase is used Tanelorn-like throughout the Gulf beach areas) and am rearing and ready to return to the imagined sights and sounds of fantasy gaming. (Guess all that whoopin' and wavin' a giant confederate battle-flag as I drove my ATV shirtless through the dunes didn't done tucker me out as much as I thought.)

Here in the Hill Cantons returns from summer interludes are always heralded with some kind of asinine and/or pointless contest for readers. Who am I to buck the weighty hand of Tradition?

I've been trying to wrap my head around how to present undercities more robustly this past month, so what a gloriously appropriate design contest. Catch up here and here if you missed the original posts.

What do I have to do? Design a single layer of an undercity. Make it big, bad, bold and weird.

There are two steps for an entry:

1. Tell us about it in a short paragraph (2-4 sentences). Who lived there? How did it get buried? How many long years have passed since it slipped below the surface? What fell beasts live there now? What strange mysteries lurk down there?

AND either (or both if you are feeling ambitious) of the following:

2. A simple pointcrawl map (see here) with notations for use in play. Feel constrained by strange schematics? Invent your own, slacker.

Or

3. A clever mechanic for stocking structures or room complexes. It could be something like Mark Pettigrew's system for generating undercities in Tekumel or something all brilliant and original.

All submissions must be in by this Wednesday noon CST. You can email me submissions at kutalik at the gmail dot com or leave them here in the comments.

First and Second place will receive a choice of one of the following prizes (first loser picks after the winner naturally):

1. $10 gift certificate to Amazon or Powell's.

2. a copy of MAR Barker's Man of Gold (that has some fantastic undercity scenes).

But wait there's more. Your entry won't just moulder on a shelf but will be used in the actual mega-undercity that I am busy designing for the Hill Cantons campaign. Get cracking.

Hill Cantons Travel Tips Contest Winner(s)

All righty, having announced the winner of the Barker contest, it is high time to announce the winners of the HC travel tips contest. All entries—all uniformly creative and interesting--win or lose will appear in the Rough Guide to the Hill Cantons. A big hearty thank you to all who entered.

And the winner is...err...are...

Allandros (aka Ba Chim in the campaign) AND the husband and wife team of Mack (Mandamus) & Monica (Uma).

Snippet from the pen of Allandros:

A Landsknecht’s Guide to the Borderlands

Fellow landsknecht, if you find yourself near Marlankh or its environs, you have likely made some extremely questionable choices in your life. While recent conflict with the nearby Brazonians may be brewing, and you may have heard tales of the Marlankh Reavers and their glory, the Hill Cantons are not generally conducive to the large battles of maneuver that are so beloved to us condotierre. Indeed, combats here are often small in scale, brutal, quick, and soon over. At least in the more civilized segments of the cantons, your foes may engage in some amount of verbal badinage.

How, then, is a landsknecht to survive here in the hinterlands?

I shall answer this by asking another question. What makes a landsknecht?

It is not the sword. It is not the hat or the clothes. All these are necessary, but ultimately it is the reputation of the name “landsknecht.” It is the knowledge of fearless combat while the odds are reasonable, of adherence to contract and utter punctiliousness when it comes to the receipt of pay. It is the knowledge that the landsknecht is capable of dealing with both the civilized and the exotic, because of their membership in that august company.

Reputation. Your garb, the puffed sleeves, the jaunty hat, the bright colors – these mark you as a lord of war! They mark you as a being of decision, prowess, and ability. The more striking your garb, the better you can signal your ability to both honor and breach the custom and practice of the civilized lands. But in the hinterlands of Marlankh, this does not necessarily come through for the residents here. And thus, it falls to you to bring the reputation of the landsknecht forward, advancing both it and your own name.

Snippet from Mack and Monica:

The Eye of Huakuawa

The Chronicles of the Second Epoch tell us that when the Rod of Aaqa was shattered during the great Battle of Pesh, one of the fragments of this artifact fell into the Eye of Huakuawa.  While some sages speculate that the Eye lies in the face of giant or a godling, it is in fact not a visual organ, but actually a natural landmark.

The Eye of Huakuawa lies deep within the jungles of the Southlands.  This body of water is a spring-fed, oval-shaped pool in a deep valley, approachable from a narrow path down the side of the canyon.  Visitors descending the path notice, palm trees on the other side of the Eye springs up, slightly overhanging the spring like eyelashes, even as the jungle growth further back resembles an eyebrow.  The pool is surrounded by white sand, and the water itself is light blue on the edges, but the spring bubbling up in the center gives the water a darker tint, much like a pupil.

Long ago, a tribe of jungle dwellers worshiped the spirit of the Eye and served to protect it from outside intruders.  To this day, if a descendant of the Eye’s servants is poisoned or cursed, that individual will be drawn to they Eye for healing.  Someone summoned by the Eye will instinctively be drawn toward it, they will not speak to anyone and must be physically restrained to prevent them from wandering in its direction.  The pool is guarded by werejaguars who attack anyone not summoned by the Eye.  Its waters work as a healing potion or a remove curse spell, but only if consumed directly from the pool.  Any liquid taken away from the Eye functions only as normal, if clear and refreshing, springwater.

M.A.R. Barker Homage Contest Winner

With a loud boom on the gigantic tunkul gong suspended above my writing desk, I am pleased as punch to announce the winner of the Barker Homage Contest, the first of the two-headed contest from last week (the HC travel tip winner coming in a couple hours).

And the winner is...Barry Blatt with his entry for the Gétlen, an ever-lovable arachnid found on that hot, metal poor planet. Just keep that nasty f*cker away from your skull cavity. Big congrats to Barry for this excellent bit.

Gétlen – The Phase Spider

NA: 1-6
HD: 2

AC: 2
T: nil

M: 12”/18”
L: 90%: 1-12

T in L: A:75

“One must beware the glowing eyes of the Gétlen; they hang in the dark and she espies all through their pallid light. Then she shall creep by way of the eighth corner of the Nexi, reaching grél-ward with her left claw and vráz-wise with the right and thus clutch the Báletl before extracting it and delivering it unto the Demon Chegéth…”

- Anonymous document on the Underworlds, found in the Library of the Temple of Qón in Khirgár.

“May a spider f**k your brain!”

- Traditional tomb-curse used by the Temple of Grugánu.

The Gétlen is usually only found in caves and in the underworld. It is the result of the wave of mutation that followed the fluxes of trans-planar power when Tékumel was isolated. It is 50-70 cm across, with eight very long and skinny legs, though when it runs it appears to have more than this and in repose it is hard to make out all its limbs at once as some project into other dimensional spaces.

It is usually a pale dirty white color, though it can change to black or any monochrome pattern it chooses using chameleon like color cells in its skin. Its dozen or so eyes are always a beady black, and have a disconcerting habit of disappearing and reappearing as the spider espies matters in other planes than our own.

They make labyrinthine webs up to 100m across in tunnels and caves, and even along especially dark and dank forest floors. These are hung every couple of meters or so with small glowing globules of transparent slime, each with a tiny black eyeball floating inside. These provide enough light for the spider to see normally, but are dim for humans. While the spider is hanging onto certain magically enhanced strands of its web they also enable it to spy on who is passing to and fro. Its sense of touch is also exquisitely sensitive and the merest breath of a draft from a moving creature will attract its notice and it will scuttle along its web to investigate.

The spider has two innate psychic abilities. It can detect invisible creatures and attack them at no penalty. It is alleged that some Gétlen have opened nexus points to escape foes or to summon demonic assistance and that they have driven people insane using magic.

Their poison induces hallucinations, terror and then convulsions and results in 3-18 hours of unconsciousness (see below). The fate of the victim depends on how hungry the Gétlen is; may insert its transplanar mouthparts through the skull and suck out the brain via the fourth dimension, leaving the rest of the corpse for scavengers or it may lay eggs inside the skull. A corpse with a missing brain but no visible sign of head injury is a sure sign of a Gétlen attack.

The host of a clutch of Gétlen eggs may not know anything about it, waking up in a dank underworld corridor or a grimy back alley in a city thanking their lucky stars that they are uninjured. Bit by bit they will succumb to a strange disease of the Pedhétl, losing emotional affect and becoming very placid and calm while also subject to random visions of the horrors and delights of the planes beyond, which they will relate in a deadpan fashion while stumbling around cross eyed. After a few weeks they will become possessed by an irritating urge to sneeze while being unable to do so.  When they do finally snort, the roof of their nasal cavity will collapse releasing what is left of their brain and dozens of Gétlen spiderlings from their nostrils.

The symptoms may be treated with Khapá cactus berries and even a mix of ordinary stimulant like Chúmaz with Mághz powder can keep a person awake and dull the intensity of the hallucinations. Treating the egg infestation itself is more difficult. Only an expert in psychological disorders will recognise the source of the problem, and those who know the spell Seeing Other Planes may perceive the infestation quite easily. A spell of Cure Disease will kill the eggs, which will then putrefy inside the skull causing the loss of 1d20 Intelligence and 1d20 Psychic Ability, requiring a Heal Serious Wounds spell and several months to repair. The priests of Meshmúr, the aspect of Thúmis who cures internal injuries, have a specific ritual to remove these eggs and expel them into another plane, but it requires many costly sacrifices and incenses to perform. The other alternative is brain surgery, an uncertain process in an age without antispectics, sterile operating rooms and anaesthetic.

It is alleged that the priests of Grugánu have spells that enable them to control these beasts and to use their webs as spying devices, and that some Thúnru’u keep them as pets. It is also thought by some scholars that the Gétlen is not native to Tékumel but is instead a demon, with the substance of Avánthe and the essence of Hrü’ü.

Those that know their underworld lore recognize that the presence of Gétlen is an indicator of high magical energy in the vicinity, perhaps a powerful magic item or a major protective spell on a secret shrine or tomb. It would appear that Gétlen require this kind of magical aura or an area of local interplanar weakness to survive; they have certainly never been encountered in any magically barren or semi-barren areas, and those who are very knowledgeable about the beasts know that surrounding it with a Sphere of Impermeable Quiescence will kill it outright, and a successful Dispel Magic spell renders the creature blind and stuns it for a few seconds. They induce utter terror in the uninitiated, but a knowledgeable sorcerer can handle them.

A Two-fer Contest

It's been ages, darling reader, since the last dumb HC contest. Today in the interest of catch-up I present a “two-fer”, two contests with two distinct prizes:

Best M.A.R. Barker Homage. Design a single creature, culture, spell, region, or what-have-you as a tribute to our departed titan. The sky is the limit, but bonus points for making them jive mechanically with Empire of the Petal Throne.

Winner receives a very nice, crisp copy of Barker's first published novel, Man of Gold that I rescued six months back from a used bookstore. (Anyone slain in the course of this contest waives their right to shamtla.)

Radegast says "bring it."

Best Travel Tip for the Hill Cantons. Write a travel tip for the HC. It can be anything: something based on a brush with some brutish or strange; a place encountered in the Weird; a city/region back home in the Corelands; etc. Half-truths welcome.

Players in any of three iterations of the Hill Cantons (Austin, San Anto, and G+) will have obviously an edge here, but feel free to try and plop something that hasn't actually occurred in play (weight obviously going to something that “feels right” tone wise.)

Winner shall receive a copy of Jack Vance's Showboat World (a personal, picaresque fave from the man).

Both contests end Thursday 19:00 CST (I believe that's -6 GMT to you foreign barbarians). Before entering I would love dearly to secure your permission to reprint any entries in the Rough Guide to the Hill Cantons, a free (and non-commercial) compilation of setting who-ha from the campaign.

Contest entries can be left here in the comments or emailed to me directly at kutalik at the gmail dot com. 

Victory Lap for the Point of Light Winners

The judges have consulted, tough decisions made from the sick bed—and now the envelopes are ready for the Point of Light contest.

A mighty drum roll please.

Best Secret Society, Barry Blatt with the Priesthood of Bakham:

Chief among the disasters was a collapse in farming and the fertility of the soil. For centuries now the Priesthood of the Underworld god Bakham has had charge of embalming and funerals - except they have been secretly making bandaged effigies of the corpses for relatives to bury and recycling the real corpses into vitamin supplements (the Sacred Dust of Bakham to be added to bread) and fertiliser (the Seeds of Bakham without which nothing will grow). 

According to the secret sect of Priest-biochemists the long prophesied day has come, the vital minerals, amino acids and vitamins embodied in the biomass in the valley are running out and the radionuclides are becoming more concentrated. One faction says cull the already cretinous and crippled populace directly, another says let them wander, perhaps there is useable nutrient out there their natural urge to feed will locate.

Runner Up: Robert Parker with Obelisk of the Electric Brain.

Best Adventure Hook, Zzarchov with Gold Hoard for Weddings: 

What is moving people to go outward? Weddings. Specifically that a religious need to have gold bands to get married and become an adult. Thing is when they sealed themselves in the valley they didn't anticipate how big their population would grow over time. They are out of gold and have been for a generation... 

Going with the reason (gold), one old thousand year relic. A deposit receipt to a banking house, with an address. If it is still there, the gold found could make the PC's virtual kings back in the valley (able to extort concessions from "children" looking to marry.)

Runner Up: Jason Sholtis, Mineral Depletion and Barry Blatt with the Bakham hook

Best Something Out There, Robert Parker with Fecund Mounds of the Toxic Hive:

Even a vast repository of knowledge such as the Electric Brain has limits upon its imagination, and over the centuries it grew weary of the various permutations of vat-spawn it could conceive. In its insane quest for novelty, the Brain labored to shape a creature that would produce genetic marvels that would surprise even it. Hence, the Magna Mater, Chalice of the Gods, was born. 

A titanic series of interconnected mounds of ebon flesh, like a series of living hills, Magna Mater is riddled with cave-like orifices where a shocking variety of monstrosities dwell. Known as the Thousand Young, each of these unique spawn spill from the titanic womb that exists in the center of the Magna Mater's mass, loping, hopping, and squirming through the redundant series of "caverns" that comprise its internal organs until they crawl hideously into the world beyond.

Runner Up: Jason Kielbasa for the Mundaneum

Supplementary Kudos

Best Written But I Couldn’t Figure Out What The Hell Category to Put it In as a Winner, Jeremy Duncan with "A Ramble in the Ruins":

Of those that yet remain within the city, or what remains of it, I can report the following: They are a strange folk, pale and wan, inclined to thinness of hair and a certain fleshiness which, though not of such grossness as to provoke disgust, nevertheless inspires uneasiness in the lone traveler. There is a certain oily sheen to the skin, and an aspect of dulled hunger in their eyes -- as if they longed for rich fare and fine wines, but had long ago resigned themselves to stale bread and bitter dregs. The effect is disquieting enough when they are at their ease or at table, but it is alarming when, on those rare occasions when they speak directly to one another, or to strangers, to find that same ill-contented gaze meeting one's own. 

Best Sneaking in of Vagina Imagery, Robert Parker

Winners please drop me a line at kutalik at the gmail dot the com and choose a prize from our pool.

Point of Light Contest Prizes and a Request

For about two days now I have been moving the printed-out entries around and around from the victors pile to the runners-up column to to the sad "almost ran". Truly tough as there is not an entry that I wouldn't use.

My once-a-year dust-up with cold-inducing viruses (invariably sometime around the holidaze) is not helping me adjudicate matters with a clear head. So I am granting myself a reprieve and will be announcing the winners tomorrow morning instead. Whew.

But as to not waste your time with a post only about my public hand-wringing, I do have two items of business.

Firstly here is the prize pool that winners (and possibly runners up) can pick from:

1. Two very nice copies of William Hope Hodgson's classic 1912 The Night Land, a book which several commentators have mentioned (rightly) being very close in spirit to the campaign seed.

2. A nice Avon paperback copy of the Moon Pool by A. Merrit (seen to the right).

3. A laminated copy of the Darlene Greyhawk maps.

Secondly, I wasn't exaggerating about wanting to use all of the entries--and my recent fever dream of synthesizing all of them into a crazy-quilt setting. I am requesting permission from all you fine folks who threw their hats into the ring to do so, with full credits, of course. I have no idea what exactly I may do with it, but I promise that it will be used in play somewhere.

Contest Reminder and More Art Inspiration

I just printed out and (re)read all the entries from Tuesday's Point of Light contest. I have been wont to say in past contests how blown away I am by the imaginative richness of my fellow madhouse inmates, a sentiment underscored with a big hefty thick black marker this time around.

My head has been positively swimming with schemes of how I could synthesize all the entries into one crazy quilt of a setting. In other words your generousity has given me a lot of pleasant holiday rumination time.

A quick reminder that the contest officially ends tomorrow at noon Central U.S. (I believe that is -6 GMT for the rest of you). Feel free to leave new entries in the comments here or on the last post.

Also there will be prizes for the winners (even if there is a tie): a range of pulp fantasy books (A. Merrit, REH, Moorcock, and others) and a number of gaming products that I think will be of suitable interest to readers of this blog. I haven't exactly picked the ones I am going to offer, but winners will get a choice from the pool.

To keep up the "last human bastion on top of the world" mood, some more art inspiration courtesy of yet another of my favorite dead Russian painters Nicholas Roerich. (If you have some other aesthetic inspirations you'd think fit with this, share away.)

Point of Light Contest

No need for a long set-up. It’s been a good half year since the last Hill Cantons contest/challenge and near (enough) the year anniversary of the first.  The time is nigh.

I need another campaign and setting about as much as I need a hole in my head, but I have found nothing helps me survive the holidays like having something creative to ruminate on.  Why not roll around in my head a pleasant sideline creation of a new setting in this case the half-formed Point of Light idea from the other day?

And I am looking for your help with this contest.

First thing is what we know about the last bastion:

A number of cataclysms befell humanity and its allies a millennium ago.

Human civilization is clustered in a high, narrow mountain basin roughly 90 square miles in area. 

Roughly 10,000 humans live in the valley.  About a third live inside the only remaining quarter  in the ruins of a former great city. Life there, though a shadow of what came before, is highly refined with a tendency to rumination on the abstract and cerebral doctrines—and sensuous vices of the flesh. The rest of the valley is more rough and tumble, there the population holds on in semi-fortified villages dominated by wild religious rites.

Centuries of inwardness, fear, and the lasting effects of a great purge of remnant books and other intellectual artifacts have limited the bastion’s knowledge of the outside world to what can be surveyed from the surrounding peaks: jagged foothills,  vine-choked forests,  giant fungus groves, ash wastes, and the hints of a green-stoned cyclopean ruin.

Beyond the horizon lurks a vast wilderness haunted by bands of inhuman reaver bands and the truly monstrous.  

Something has shifted in the valley in the last decade, the rulers of the land have finally opened up that last safety valve to keep their control of the last bastion: permission to explore beyond the peaks. The insane, the maladjusted, and restless dregs of the citizenry answer the call.

Contest Categories:

A Secret Society, Cultural Movement or other Social Quirk that either accounts for the inwardness and decadence of the valley—or what’s motivating the new outward-looking attitude..

A Sandbox Adventure Hook. Now that someone has answered the call to adventure, what is it?

Something “Out  There”.  Some site of mystery:  a geographic  area, structure, bizarre creature, or what.

Contest Rules:
You can provide entries in any or all of the categories in the comments section. The winner for each category will receive a smallish prize TBA. Contest ends Friday at noon CST.

Asinine Adventure Contest Winners

Time to dish out economy-sized servings of kudos for the Asinine Adventure Contest. I have been a little tardy in posting the winners, as usual I will spare you the excuse laundry list.

Culling through the surprisingly large number of entries—I was expecting somewhere in the 6-9 range and got 21--was no real work at all, a side-splitting clever bit of creation that enjoyed a bit. People seemed to have a good time keeping their tongue firmly in their cheek and coming up with clever little détournements. Bravo to all for the work.

As usual too it was difficult settling on those who deserve a place in the sun for participating. But here we go...

Second-place goes to a three-way tie:

In Search of the Fane of the Forgotten Mage by Fabian (a sweet one-page island crawl with some Eastern inflections. Bonus point for gorrilla golem.)

In Search of the City of the Serpent Queen by Porky (Who wins beau coup points for the pithy subtitle “Across the Great Verdant Cavern to the Ouroboral Lair, Coiled Pocket Universe of Woe.” He manages to crowd in a healthy number of oblique jokes into a half-page, fortunately he also provided me with a peek at the backstory too for full appreciation.)

Against the Hawk Giant by Rev. Rosey (in which I work around my prejudices and recognize despite lite 4E-isms a nice little adventure package. Kudos for being a good sport and running with a tough set from the gods of chance.)

First-place winner:

Tomb of the Forgotten Toad-People (from the Planet of the Nameless Grimoire by Netherwerks. Upending the Gospels, the first shall be first. That wonderful team of Midwestern surrealists fired off an entry mere hours after posting the contest, and it just works—and rocks—all round. They even managed to work in another strange randomly-generated seeming non-sequitur, “the useful chalk scores the idiom”, into their design. Bully.

Conveniently they have a blog entry for their adventure that you can see here. 

If the winners are amenable, I may put the winning entries together as a pdf download here later today or tomorrow.  

Yet Another Asinine Adventure Contest

It's probably no surprise to long-time readers that I am inordinately fond of contests, challenges, and blood sports in general. Sneer with your comic-opera oily mustache at “crowd-sourcing” all you want, but you can't cover up the fact that real energy and creativity can be generated in the process. Curses, the masses, in fact, are not asses.

So here's to another round, this one not surprisingly springing from my tongue-in-cheek efforts yesterday to produce a cliché-driven module name generator.

Goal: Design an adventure for an older edition D&D or mash-up equivalent using said name generator.

Rules: You must use the first result from your roll on the chart—alternately contestants can use this scurrilous rip-off chart. May the Furies hound with their blood-curdling screeches and barbed whips those who roll again or fudge the results to fit their preconceived notions of creative agenda.

The one-page dungeon design template can be used (found here courtesy of our friend who rode away into the sunset on his hawg) , but is not required. Adventures can be of any length, though brevity is close to godliness.

Bonus Points: Clever inversion, subversion, and/or glorification of favored D&D trope or cliché.

Deadline: Saturday, September 24, high noon Central U.S. Time.

First Prize Award: $10 credit on Lulu.

Entries should be emailed to me at kutalik at the gmail dot com.

The much feared Mountain of the Demon Dog.

Avast Ye, We Have Winners

The coal black sea waits for me, me, me
The coal black sea waits forever
The waves hit the shore
Crying more, more, more
But the coal black sea waits forever

--Lou Reed, Ashes to Ashes

It's not uncommon to hear a polite lie attached to most contests: “it was so very hard to judge, because each of the contestants were so good...blah, blah, blah.”

In the case of the recent nautical challenge, it just happens to be true.

There weren't a huge amount of entries, but quality trumped quantity and I would be proud to use all of them in my own home campaign. In fact, they were so good that I found myself pondering--not for the first time--a whole other tangential, but provocative question: can “crowdsourcing” overtake professional game designers in range, quality, and depth of imagination in this decade?

But that is a post for later, let's have my lovely assistant bring out the envelopes in the meanwhile.

A drum roll please...

Best Weird Ship:

Trey with Moon’s Rake
“Of course, the Selenites are long dead and the lunar oceans they once sailed are dust, but ghosts of these mariners sail forth on the moonlight, down to the seas of Earth. The ghost seamen and their vessel appear only as shadows to the naked eye, but in the moonlight reflected on the water they appear as they were in life--delicate-limbed, large-eyed beings (at once reminiscent of elves and insects) in the Moon’s Rake--a vessel like a sleek catamaran as big as a sloop-of-war with eccentricities of design as fanciful as any royal pleasure barge. Sometimes they come to trade, exchanging strange tear-shaped emeralds (which fade to naught with the coming dawn) for trinkets that strike their fancy. Other times they engage in piracy. Their silvery cutlasses draw no blood but cause pain and opium-nightmares.”

Runner Up: Needles, Kelosinel- The Mirage Ones From Daggho 

Best Setting: Porky, The former Scree.

“Dread Scree, Grizzlipool, the Bearstrand - all are names for what was once a small Scraper outpost on the west-facing slopes of Stopover, a large mountainous landmass lying deep in temperate waters. The slopes are well watered and an evergreen forest runs down through mists from the high tops, undulating over rocky foothills to the water's edge, dark and silent. The streams were once alive with fish, but now trickle silted and stagnant, while the shrouded glades fester, devoid of birdsong and calls.

The town itself is located on overgrown rock debris in the shelter of a former glacial valley, overlooking a natural harbour sheltered by cliffs. Its ancient drystone dwellings stand alongside timber lodges of varying age and design, the rot and creepers suggesting generations of occupation, perhaps by more peoples than just the Scrapers; for the Scrapers follow the flocks and their guano and seem not to stay long in any one place. The square, boardwalks and quays are empty, tumbledown in appearance.

The visitors who put ashore here are most often those desperate for shelter or water, or men and creatures with something to hide - or those who have never heard the stories; they are perhaps drawn by the odd-hued smoke rising from the boulders at the feet of the northern cliffs. Many believe they will find a small trading post, market for wares and a warm bed. Others understand what the smoke represents and seek this knowingly...”

[More here]

Best Critter:

Jeremy Duncan, Spawn of Yash-Kunag the Many-Toothed

“Every year, the port town of Galbaruc holds the Feast of the Great Culling, and the town's population swells to over four times its normal size. Innkeepers, hoteliers, and any citizen with so much as a spare broom closet raise their rates to an astonishing degree, but seasoned travelers have learned by now not to haggle, grateful for even the most modest accommodation for the 12 days of the Feast. Galbaruc looks out on the Bay of Maidens, and it is in these waters that Yash-Kunag the Many-Toothed makes her annual trek to birth her young. This enormous, immeasurably ancient sea-creature, whose massive form has never been reliably set down, is worshiped as a goddess by the inhabitants of much of the surrounding coasts.

She is seen as the living embodiment of the sea, in all its bounty, danger, and pitilessness. Local artisans most commonly depict her as a humanoid female, with generously- proportioned hips, pendulous breasts over which hang garlands of seaweed and coral, with a skirt made from the lashed-together bodies of dead men, and topped with a monstrous shark's head.

In all, she will birth many thousands of young over the next ten days, though a tiny fraction of that number survive to adulthood. The larger, faster, and stronger spawn will devour their brothers and sisters in a frenzy of hunger. Others will be picked off, in turn, by other sea creatures, which are always at hand in the waters surrounding the bay to pounce on any godling foolish enough to stray out into the greater depths...] 

[More here]

Truly great stuff. All copyrights are, of course, held by the entrant.

All contestants should drop me a line at kutalik at gmail dot com to talk prizes (a choice of books).  

A Contest Begun, A Contest Extended

You can blame Porky for this.

His comment on my second round of nautical queries (yes, we like it naughty here, Kent)  earlier appealed to my democratic side (read “lazy”): “Re: ship design I'd suggest floating mortars, gondolas mounted on the backs of sea monsters, rotting hulks and paddle wheels, and maybe balloons or caravans of the air on flying creatures. You know, another way to go with this would be setting us a challenge as with the game naming. We can fill up the comments with all kinds of ideas and you can sift out the good stuff.”

Fair enough, my porcine friend.

Here's this week contest:

1. Name and describe one fantastic nautical vessel. The weirder and more wonderful the better.
2. Name and describe an exotic port of call or locale.
3. Name and describe a maritime culture/or race.

You can enter in any or all of the categories. Winners to be announced this coming weekend—provided my deserted island refuge is rigged out with a source to the ether. Bonus points for statting out an entry for classic D&D editions.

Prizes to be announced then, but most likely your choice of an appropriate nautically-themed book from my ever-expanding collection.

But wait you say, what about that Domain Game naming contest?

By executive fiat, I have decided to postpone the results until Wednesday July 20^th. If you want to get your own entry—and make your mark on the project—mosey over to this post and make an entry.  

Name that Domain Game Contest

What's in a name?

Timeshadows reminded me the other day that I still have revealed the actual title of the Domain Game. While I have had several likely candidates in mind since the beginning of the year, the real truth is that I am just not convinced I have a winner.

Here's your chance to help the project—and have your name up in lights.

Over the next three days, I will be opening the floor for any nominations for what you think the project should be called. We are looking for something punchy or evocative—something that captures the nature of the project. Preferably without an awkward acronym.

The results will be voted on by a quorum of Domain Game players, people close to the project, and myself. A winner will be announced here on Wednesday.

So what do you get if you win? Besides my undying thanks, formal credit and a free copy of both the final paper and PDF copies of the first sourcebook.