Tree Maze of the Twisted Druid

Over the holidays I had a chance to hoof it up to my mom's house. She surprised me by handing over a small cardboard box filled with most roleplaying game related things from my tween days in the early 80s.

As a grown man I am almost ashamed to admit how excited I was to get the box. The contents were mildly disappointing, heavy on coverless Dragon and stone age computing magazines. What I really wanted were my old dungeons and notes. Sadly the only things left were some random scraps in a spiral notebook, the most complete find was a first edition Gamma World base.

The best and most chuckle-producing thing I did find, though, was a single half page of a numbered key to a DIY, somewhat narcissistically-titled module, CK1: Tree Maze of the Twisted Druid, that I inflicted on my brother's and best friend's characters (and a couple of my own GM PCs) somewhere around 1981.

The matter would have just died there with that little nostalgia binge if I hadn't been tooling around the internet instead of working and found some touchingly-sweet examples of the kind of handmade modules that any number of other Gen X kids were producing at the time.

The similarities, down to the awkward attempts to replicate TSR- modules got my brain juicing on the completely stupid idea of reproducing that “dungeon” on a “more or less faithful” (cough, cough) degree and inflicting it on a stoic group of 3-7 players. A few feverish hours down, I managed to recreate a big chunk of it down to the cover and crappy hand-drawn map (I drew the line at handwriting all the interior copy)

So behold, straight from the Box from Chris's Mom's Garage (more or less)...

The Cover!

Interior Art!

A sneak peak at the Map!

(An Excerpt!)

Hooks to get your party out of their Sandbox and into the Adventure!

The party is in the hamlet of Hamlet in the Gnome Hills and the Sheriff (7th level fighter, LN) says, “bring me the head of the Twisted Druid, or I will chop off your head!” He has 5d8 hobilars in ring mail with bec de corbins and scimitars with him (40% chance of horseman's mace).

The party jumps through a red demon mouth in the Mauseluem (sic) of Terror and poof they are in the maze!

While drinking at the Prancing Pony Inn the PCs are kissed by a naked lady. Then 4d6 sailors slip knockout drugs into the beer. They steal the best item from each party member and hide them in the Maze!

The party is in the Cathedral of Elemental Naughty and a chute opens and they fall into a big cave that has the Maze in it!

Vertical Pointcrawling

Longtime readers will note that I have spent a good deal of time working out how to organize horizontal space in the kind of pointcrawl format that works for the cracked hardwiring that is my brain. I've covered the wilderness, undercities, above-ground city ruins even the vast space underworld of Planescape's Sigil.

One thing that hasn't been touched on is some of the more complicated ways I have been using related schemes to add (literally at times) new dimensions to existing points: the vertical pointcrawl.

Let me back up and give you some background. A year or two back much of the eponymous campaign revolved around the exploration of the vast undercity Kezmarok. That space is on the whole organized with two horizontal pointcrawls: one above for a ruinscrawl of the sad old portions of the city and the more frequently-used undercity pointcrawl below.

It's mostly worked quite well on my end with the party in the main exploring and clearing various points each corresponding to a single sheet of graph paper. Recently in one of my favorite organic developments in a sandbox campaigns one of the PCs, Ba Chim the wereshark-landsknecht, has had to trade a favor, recover the artifact Spinning Wheel of Mokosh, to the archwizard Frantisek for a spell to regrow his burned off left leg.

This quest is taking them back to the undercity this time to a sub-level/structure called the Hypogeum of Vibaker in the Rubicand Caverns of Oldest Lhoma (there are at least three homage, in-jokes hidden in there).

Which roundabout gets me to the point(crawl), that system of caverns has taken up some undisclosed numbers of points on the horizontal pointcrawl. Here's my rub though, I had conceived them as a somewhat complicated series of vertically-layered caverns and though my horizontal scheme allows for some vertical organization by way of the various point connectors, it didn't really robustly support the kind of visual organization you would see for instance in the old cross-section maps stretching back to the famous ones in the LBBs of OD&D.

In other words, I wanted something that could break out a point (or related points) with a vertical organizer while maintaining the same spatial integration with a horizontal pointcrawl.

Thanks to medical necessities I had a lot of time on Tuesday to rework things. Here is a veiled and greatly simplified version of what I redid. There is nothing profoundly different here mind you, just a flipping of the axis with some different reworking of the connectors and color-coding to represent vertical differences.

Basically a few things are going on here.

One you will see a key at the bottom. Squiggly lines represent long staircases. Straight lines running vertically represent shafts (stupidly and confusingly I drew them horizontally here which should just represent normal horizontal connections) and dotted lines sloping tunnels or ramps. Normal connectors will run 10-30 minutes of travel, while a dot represents a long space or difficult to travel space with four hours of travel per dot.

Secondly, the colors map to this:

Light Green = Small, relatively low-ceilinged natural caves

Dark Green = Artificially-worked areas typically 10-15 feet high (dungeon)

Orange = Large caverns with soaring ceilings.

I still feel like this missing something and that naturally bothers me. Maybe something that jumps out to you the reader?

The Value of a Damn Good Nickname

Last week I had a chance to finally play in the irrepressible Robert Parker's Krul and by play, of course, I mean die horribly by my own hand after 45 terrifying/exhilarating minutes of being lost in the dungeon and firing my stolen rifle like a maniac. Among the many colorful and nifty house rules (the downtime mechanics are a delight) is a very simple rule that I love dearly: on achieving third level the PC can choose an appropriate nickname (usually of the “X the Whatever” variety.)

This pushes all my buttons the right way, as a player I am awfully fond of the “pretty, shiny beads” types of status awards, the kind that have little to no mechanical effect other than bragging rights or peacock-like displays. But as far back as the pre-gens in my first module, B1, (“Kracki the Hooded One,” “Mohag the Wanderer” and company) I have also just happened to love the hell out of archaic nicknames.

Near my desk sits a copy of the Steel Bonnets, a narrative history of the Scot-English Border Reivers feuding and raiding, by the author of the scumbag-extraordinarie Flashman series. One chapter in particular is well-marked for inspiration, a chapter wholly devoted to the weird and wonderful nicknames earned the hard way in the period. It starts up with the somewhat pedestrian but nevertheless colorful examples based on local geography, rank or relationship: “Jock of the Side”, “Hob of the Leys,” “Sim the Laird”, or “Whitbaugh's Andy.”

From there they just get wilder, reveling in strange, offensive appellations and best of all those won in actual exploits on the field. There's the Elliot brothers going by “Buggerback” and “Dog Pyntle”. There's David “Bangtail” Armstrong riding along in history next to Archie “Fire-the-Braes”, “Ill-Drowned” Geordie, “Nebless” Clem Closer, “Fingerless” Will Nixon, “Crack Spear”, the odd “Laird-Give-Me-Little”, and the mysterious “Hen-Harrow.”

Research for Feudal Anarchy uncovered an amazing variety of similarly satisfying nicknames. Many just piled up in ecstatic proportions. I mean who could turn their back on “Catherine de' Medici Jezebel, the Barren Wife, the Black Queen, the Eclipsed Consort, the Italian Duchess Without a Duchy, the Maggot from Italy's Tomb, the Merchant's Daughter, the Monstrous Regiment of Women, the Mother of the Modern High-Heeled Shoe?”

The Hill Cantons in fact are sloppy with these kinds of constructions. My usual formula being a “one-letter off Czech, Slovak, Slovene, Archaic German, or Wholly Fantastical name” THE “in-joke, archaic occupation, lovable underused word, or bad pub.” So thus the Marlank playboy-philosopher Jarek “the Nagsman,” the addled sage Slavo “the Salacious,” the doleful bandit Libor “the Lugubrious,” the god-eating patriarch Ummas “the Unctious,” the cranky robo-dwarf Xhom “the Contumelious,” and so on down the line.

Having a nicknaming convention works fall around for me. On one hand it provides a silly, but consistent verisimilitude that helps me get in the right mood to create a NPC (I always, always start with the name). On the other it provides me with the kind of mini-game that helps me keep rejuvenated through the more humdrum operations of running a long campaign.  

News and the War-Bear Marching Song

Even the Hills have slow news day, so here are some bears!

For a city made so jaded by centuries of siege, strange, supernatural shocks continue to rule the news from Kezmarok. For two long minutes it seemed that Lower Kezmarok was delivered from its oblivion. 

Mid-morning the barely visible skyline of that half of the city flashed back into corporeal existence along with its terrified citizenry—a score of whom managed to run to the higher environs of the rock before the city ward just as abruptly jerked back into its slow fade. An excited crowd of stevedores who rescued the survivors tell of wild stories of the ward floating in a bubble inside a solid metal tower as the sounds of a great battle issued outside. The survivors have been rushed to the palace of King Ulyosalik for their own safety and comfort.

Goatherds across the Hill Cantons have been reporting a staggeringly large number of night-time mutilations of their flocks. Men of science deny that there may be a connection between this and the recent sightings of large metallic spheres floating in the night sky over the last week.

While awaiting the return of the masters of the Feral Shore, the noted war-bear Preved! has been living up to his reputation among the folk of Kingsten. Okko, the steward, has been forced to listen to countless grousing of couples who right dab in the middle of affairs amorous in nature were interrupted by the sudden, terrifying appearance of the bagpipe-wielding bearling screaming his trademark name.

Despite the disruptions, Preved has seemed to charm the camp and that old timeworn marching song of the bears has become a favorite of the after-work bonfires.


Marching Song of the War-Bears
March, March, Ye Karhus and Grizzlies
Why, my cubs, don't ye form up in order?
March, March, Ye Brerbears and Issili!
All the War-Bears are over the border.

Many a banner flutters above your head,
Many a hero that is famous in story
Count and make ready then, cubs of the forgotten dead,
Fight for your Hetbear and old Medved's glory.

Come from the hills where the black goats are grazing,
Come from the vale of the buck and hirsute law;
Come to the crag where the beacon is blazing,
Come with the glaive, the bill and the paw.

Trumpets are sounding, beornlings are bounding,
Stand to your polearms and march in order;
The kozaks shall many a day, tell of the bloody fray,
When the War-Bears came over the border. 

The War-Bear: Yet Another B/X or LL Class

But first the news...

Once again the eastern borderlands of the Overkingdom will be filled with the sight of shaggy, dejected columns of soldier-bears lumbering back to the hollow-seeming duties of garrison life. For Yambor, the great biennial pilgrimage of those furry myrmidons to the Slumbering Ursine Dunes, is over. But some younger cubs and war bears resist the melancholy by striking out on the road of vagrant adventuring scumbaggery.

Popping of up seemingly everywhere that a party may need a hired paw is one bear in particular, Preved!, who makes the same offer “for 40 shiny golds and two fish I run with you tonight.” 

 Preved!, 2nd-level Soldier Bear, Hitpoints 12, AC:6. Uses Bohemian Ear Spoon (d10+1). Has an uncomfortable tendency to pop in at an intimate moments of the humans around him shouting his name.

War Bear

Requirements: STR 13, CON 14

Prime Requisite: CON

Hit Dice: 1d10

Maximum Level: 8

The Nurian Soldier-Bear stands alongside the Ostrovan pikeman, Kozak horse-archer and Northland atlatl-man as some of the most renowned examples of soldiery in the world of Zem. Lesser known are the wayward bears who strike out on their own in the world in search of quantitatively measured experience, the proud bearers of the appellation, War Bear.

War Bears can wear no armor other than a helmet and instead have a base armor class (a DEX bonus can be added). Magical devices can be used but must be able to fit around the large-sized limbs of the War Bear.

Though outside the comforting phalanx of soldier life, the War Bear retains the deep, obsessional love of polearms, including the traditional +1 to hit and damage when employing it. Indeed a War Bear who has been parted from the sight of such a weapon for longer than a day will sicken with dejection and beyond a constant audible and dramatic sighing will lose a hit point until he grasps it yet again. In a weaponless pinch they can strike twice a round with their paws for 1d4 damage each. 

At level 6, the War Bear can invent and name a polearm of his own design at a cost of 500 gold suns and two weeks of intense concentration, such a weapon will be +2 to hit and damage only in his own paws and can even strike those creatures only harmable by magic weapons. At level 8, the War Bear has reached such fame that he can automatically attract a warband of 50 soldier-bears on the creation of a comfy underground den complex of no less than 2000 square feet (and two latrines).

War Bears save as Dwarves and fight as Fighters of the same level.

Soldier-Bear Level Progression

Experience	Level	Hit Dice (1d8)	Armor Class
0	1	1+2	6
2,300	2	2+2	6
4,600	3	3+2	5
9,200	4	4+2	4
18,400	5	5+2	4
36,800	6	6+2	4
73,600	7	7+2	3
147,200	8	8+2	3

On the Passing of Michael Shea

“Nifft the Lean is no longer among us, and I have at last confessed to myself, hereafter, he never will be...It is a bitter thing that each of must finally be blown out like a candle , and have the unique ardor of his individual flame choked off, and sucked utterly away like smoke in the dark. Do we ever accept this in our hearts, any of us?”

So Michael Shea began Nifft the Lean with a in-character, windbaggy eulogy to his eponymous

picaro. It seemed morbidly fitting to me on hearing the sad news of Shea's passing yesterday

from the irrepressible Robert Parker.

I've probably mentioned a few many times on the blog how much love I have for Jack Vance's work and how much I wanted to strike that tone in the Hill Cantons.

That particular authorial voice, cadence of dialogue and turn of words is so elusive, so personal, that I have never felt that I quite got there and I have always felt the same way about the various attempts either through games or stories to capture the feel of Dying Earth. Shea's attempt to do the second Cugel with Quest for Simbilis (often forgotten since Vance went on to knock it out of the park with his own sequel) felt very flat to me, cringe-worthy even when it hit on Cugel's internal voice.

It was lucky for me that I gave him another shake with Nifft as it is such a wonderful book and something really close with its picaresque turns and weird, richly imagined fantasy to the tone of what I wanted to do with the Hill Cantons. In fact I was moved even to do a little, direct homage (reprinting being the highest form of flattery) in my write-up on the Amazon class.

When people talk about how D&D never quite got right extra-planar adventures, I have a hard time not thinking of the two outstanding episodes of raiding Hell and the demonic underworld.(Planescape as the fierce-opinionated players in the HC bull session opined almost gets there as a setting.) The two novellas hit all the right literary notes to me and make me hunger for something that can get that kind of adventuring in strange dimensions right.

My own windbaggery aside, sad news and a not-so virtual cup will be raised in the session tonight to the man and his work. If you aren't familiar with the two Nifft books, do yourself a favor and check them out.