Hex 10.19 - Hills - Goblin Dig Site

Lake Danov greets you with the smell of fish and a musty breeze. Near the shoreline, you see a small group of six yellow goblins digging furiously in the sand. One of them, missing a leg and leaning on an ivory walking stick, shouts incomprehensibly between swigs from a golden canteen. Sunlight reflects off the monocle of a smaller goblin standing next to him who is (with no small amount of effort) trying to sound out the writing on a crinkled map.

• The leader is called Goldleg, and he desires treasure above all else. “Why called Goldleg? ‘Cuz no have leg, no have gold—yet!”
• The reader is nicknamed Monocle Mike and he learned to read from a very famous Poroslovak scholar (Vladislov Witwicki) who spent time studying goblins. Monocle Mike is not very sure of himself, but pretty well spoken for a goblin.
• Yellow goblins are not native to the Danov Lake region. They have come all the way from Visigothia on a treasure hunt.
• The treasure they are seeking is actually in 10.20, and any literate player will immediately be able to tell from reading the map.
• They are armed, but not immediately hostile to the players. They attempt to hide the map, and if asked, they claim that they are “burying a friend,” and one of the diggers will suddenly pretend to be dead.

No Plan for Art

via oldbookillustrations.com

The last few tabletop projects that I started working on were entered into with the idea that I could maybe someday ✨publish✨ my content. This inevitably led me to take my 2 oz. of actual content and waste hours on layout and design. I'm not going to do that anymore.

While I absolutely love the "artpunk" style of something like Mörk Borg, and I think that Johan Nohr creates the most incredible stuff, I'm just not that guy, and that's not my job. 

I ran across Luke Gearing's Wolves Upon the Coast, and every review I've seen praises the content. Something about the scale and scope of Luke's work on this project struck me, and it shook me out of the need to polish everything I'm working on before it's made. He's put everything in a Word doc, kept an updated Worldographer map with the basic icons, and run with it. He wrote on his itch.io page, 

"Unless wildly successful, the layout is likely to stay as-is. There is no plan for art."

Brilliant. I'm going to shoot for that from now on.

I also just read a post on B/X Blackrazor called The Perpetual Game, and it's becoming my DM manifesto:

"If it's something you love, you don't grow out of it. You grow into it. And it grows with you."

I want to be able to take everything I'm reading about, listening to, watching, and shape it into a game where my best friends can sit down/log in together and test out how we might make the world a better place. Or just kill some bad guys and take their stuff. And I want to be able to do that with the table in mind, not some imaginary storefront that I don't even have set up yet.

Starting this stream-of-nonsense on Blogger was a conscious decision, because there's only so much that I can polish with this most ancient of platforms. Most of what you see here is going to be in that beautiful proletariat font, Times New Roman. I'm going to stick with the most default tools I can--Dungeon Scrawl, Google Docs, public domain art. I'm going to make and share stuff that I can use on Discord with my group. And unless it's wildly successful, that's how it will stay!

The Poroslovak Culture (Sandbox Campaign)

From Movers and shakers (cam.ac.uk)

My wife and I recently went on a makeup honeymoon in Bulgaria, since our real first honeymoon became an unexpected ménage à trois with the viral spectre still haunting all of us. Anyway, our time in Sofia, Veliko Tarnovo, and Plovdiv was incredible, and that trip exposed me to a culture that I didn't really know too much about. My Biblical Studies degrees spent more time focusing on the ancient Near East and Western Europe (including Greece), so I had minimal knowledge about anything in the Balkans. It is a remarkable place. My one regret is that we didn't go far enough east to visit Varna to see the necropolis and all the really old stuff.

Besides the communist architecture and Christian churches/monasteries, the ancient history of the area was what was most fascinating to me, so when I came across an article about some Scythian kurgans the other day, it inspired some of my world building for this new sandbox campaign. Here's a pretty measured take on the headline: Did Russian Archaeologists Really Discover a New Ancient Culture? (Sidenote: Candida Moss is a top-notch scholar). This tidbit stood out the most:

Vinogradov and his team believe that the grave was likely a family tomb used over successive generations. The discolored soil that surrounds it suggests that, at some point, the tomb was sealed and set ablaze. It would then have been covered in soil to create the burial mound (known as a kurgan) typical of the region.

This is such an interested burial practice! How many generations are included in the burial? Why are they burnt? What happens if they aren't burnt?

I've since incorporated familial kurgans into one of the cultures in my sandbox, with some even more specific details about generational naming conventions. Here's an early draft of what the Poroslovak culture looks like:

• Only the souls of those buried and then burned with seven generations of their kin will enter the afterlife. Family barrows called kurgans dot the countryside. Sometimes, a family doesn’t make it to a full seven generations, and whatever members are left buried haunt their barrow. These undead families can be put to rest, but only via a very complex and expensive ritual.
• Families mark their distance from the last "passage" (kurgan burning) with a prefix on each generation’s surname: Pyri-, Ftori-, Treti-, Vurti-, Peti-, Shesti-, Sedmi-. Women keep their maiden surname, but are most often buried with their closest male relative.
• Illegitimate Children are given “eighth” as the prefix to their surname, Osmi-. Many Osmi sons and daughters work hard to “become numbered” as a full member of their father’s family–this often comes at a significant cost and can be almost impossible for some.

I chose seven because seven is the most magical number. For the generational names, I stole (and butchered) ordinal numbers from Bulgarian and Russian (forgive me--it is a fantasy world). I thought that the Osmi- idea (A pretty heavy nod to Game of Thrones) could create some really interesting social pressure and hooks for any of my players who decide to play a Poroslovak human. 

There's some larger political intrigue I'm working on for this kingdom of kurgan makers, and I might write about that later. In the meantime, I'll keep looking for archeological and anthropological headlines that pique my creativity.

7 Dungeon Survival Rhymes

My group is about to begin a sandbox campaign with a classic megadungeon crawl in the middle of the map (thank you, #Dungeon23). They're all 5e players that I'm attempting to win over with OSE Advanced. We'll see if the system sticks. I wrote up a few rhymes to use as in game artifacts, either hastily scratched onto some dungeon wall or scrawled into a sheet of parchment that the players are given.

1. If it sparks your ire, douse it with fire.

2. A well stuck spike keeps a door shut tight.

3. A bag of dirt will save you some hurt.

4. Mirror, mirror, round the corner: keep me mum from becoming a mourner.

5. A pole swung instead keeps your brains in your head.

6. North then south then east then west–look up and down before you rest.

7. Marbles and caltrops, pebbles and bearings; pour them out often, they're great for sharing!