Review: Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch (Mörk Borg)

I just finished running this scenario for my Mörk Borg group, so I thought I'd do a review while it's fresh in my mind. 

On a purely aesthetic level, the art and layout are fantastic. I love the black and green color scheme. There are multiple full-page illustrations that look really great. The dungeon key is extremely usable. As is often the case, I think the terse keying leaves a lot to be desired conceptually, which I will get to in a bit.

SPOILERS for Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch!

The scenario takes place in the Slithering Swamp, east of Lake Onda, which is itself east of the "sad-but-gaudy" city of Schleswig. The Mörk Borg core book tells us that Schleswig is ruled by the "paranoid, fat, and increasingly mad" King Fathmu IX, who is obsessed with the basilisk Verhu's prophecies and aggressively taxes and raids the surrounding lands.

The scenario begins by describing the Sepulchre of the Swamp Witch, which contains an altar of dead roots. Legend has it that if one chants forbidden words at the altar, any wish is fulfilled. The altar can even stop the Doom foretold by Verhu.

Unfortunately, the Sepulchre is now home to the Strange Serpent Drug Cult, a psychedelic free-love sex cult formed by Ueth the Scalehunter after he was bitten by the Emerald Serpent, causing him to come under the influence of a permanent hallucinogen. Ueth returned to his village, recruited many of the villagers to the Cult, and kidnapped the rest. 

The Cult makes regular sacrifices to "the serpents" (it's not immediately clear if this is the Emerald Serpent, if there are multiple Emerald Serpents, or if these are some other serpents entirely - eventually we learn that this refers to one other Emerald Serpent as well as a bunch of mundane snakes who live in a pit) in exchange for permanent happiness after the world's end.

The party has "stumbled on" the forbidden words that they need to chant at the dead root altar "on a murdered messenger wearing mad King Fathmu IX's crest in a ditch". Was the messenger bearing the words for some reason? Were the words carved into his flesh? Who killed him? Is the ditch in the Slithering Swamp, or somewhere else? Why is the party in the swamp, or wherever they were when they found the messenger?

It's not super important. It framed the scenario by telling the players that they had passed through a nearly-deserted village and that the few remaining villagers begged them to save their children from the sex and drugs snake cult. Sprinkle in that the cult is hiding out in an old tomb with an altar that grants wishes, and even the more self-serving characters might be interested. But the scenario doesn't suggest what the players' motivation might be.

I am beginning to feel that there's something to be said of Mörk Borg's "motivation problem" - that is, in a world so awful, on the brink of Doom, why do anything? It's easy enough to run Rotblack Sludge and say, "You have to do this or you'll be executed," but it's more difficult when the players have to decide they want to do something. Why would they? 

Because we're playing a game and this is what I have prepared, of course, but that doesn't always cut it for every player. Things did not go well for my players in the first session of this scenario, and after narrowly escaping from the Sepulchre once, they asked, "Why are we doing this again?" I said, "To save the children from the sex cult. And get a wish at the altar, maybe." They said, "Well we don't even know what we would wish for. And saving the kids doesn't seem that worthwhile because the entire world is extremely messed up anyway. Something else equally bad will just happen to them as soon as we leave." And honestly, fair enough.

(I think the scenario is trying to imply that the characters are at the Sepulchre to make a wish. The scenario does not at all suggest that the cult members need saving. I added that in myself because I felt the altar motivation was extremely tenuous and I didn't think my players would want to wish for anything. In hindsight, I would recommend simply asking the players: "You've journeyed to the Sepulchre to make a wish at the altar. What is it?" Eventually, one of the players rolled an arcane catastrophe that gave them a magical STD which caused everyone they had sex with to turn into a zombie that wanted to kill them, so they decided to wish that away. That was halfway through the scenario, though.)

The adventure summary includes a d6 rumor table, which is...whatever. There's some foreshadowing about elements of the scenario, but none of the information was especially useful. I just gave all the rumors to the players. More information equals more agency. 

The tomb contains eleven areas. The main gimmick is Emerald Venom, which players can contract from the Emerald Serpent guarding the dungeon's entrance. The Emerald Venom makes the dungeon interior appear differently, gives the affected a penalty to initiative (which I don't think matters at all because presumably all of those inside the dungeon are also affected), an expanded fumble range, and most importantly, it reveals the presence of hidden passages.

Three of the four players allowed themselves to be bitten by the Serpent. The fourth wasn't too keen on that, and started a fight with the Serpent. Surprisingly, he dodged all three of the Serpent's attacks, then killed it. Hilariously, he then attempted to harvest its venom and fumbled, sticking himself with the hallucinogen anyway.

After the players retreated from the Sepulchre the first time, they rested, and the hallucinogen wore off. Then they went back, with clear heads, and noticed no passage where there had been one before. They correctly concluded that certain passages were hidden by illusions, which tipped them off that they had to search every room thoroughly for secrets. That was really neat.

One strange thing about the scenario is that the cultists don't know about the Swamp Witch or her tomb. One of the rooms, the garden, connects directly to both the tomb and altar, and the room is empty of any danger. Ueth "has heard the rumors of the Swamp Witch buried somewhere in here but hasn't gone farther than the garden, where he felt threatened and turned back." This is Rotblack Sludge's "Fletcher hates Lesdy but can't fit through the tunnel and won't send his guards to kill her for some reason" all over again. Extremely hard to believe as a GM, and not at all a conclusion I would expect the players to naturally reach.

To be fair, the garden is a little spooky, with glowing flowers, ancient symbols, and giant three-eyed toad skulls littering the floor, and Ueth is perpetually tripping, but this feels like somewhat lazy writing. The author included too much stuff in too small of a dungeon and handwaved the explanation. It's difficult to justify in-game, and I need to be able to justify it if my players start to ask questions of me or the NPCs.

Another strange element is that Ueth's lair is one of the first rooms the players can go to when they enter the tomb (if under the influence of Emerald Venom). If the party's main motivation is to kill Ueth (as it was for my players), they can try to do that pretty quickly. My players tried to do it, and got close, but were chased out of the tomb by a dozen or so cultists and had to take refuge in the swamp. Admittedly, this is something of a flaw in how I set up the scenario (with one of the two goals being "kill Ueth"), but I did that because the scenario doesn't provide what I feel is a sufficient hook. I felt the need to supplement it with additional incentive, and nearly broke the adventure as a result.

That being said, I appreciate that the majority of the cultists are friendly towards the party if they're affected by the Venom (which they are very likely to be). It allows the party to scope out the area, figure out what exactly they're up against, and then figure out a plan. (Oddly, my players did exactly this in Rotblack Sludge to resounding success, but essentially went in guns blazing in this adventure and made things so much worse for themselves. They eventually regrouped and figured it out.)

There's also the Croaking Trident, a magic weapon that eventually turns its wielder into a chaos frog warrior. That's pretty cool. I made sure the party's strongest warrior found it, and can't wait to see the results.

Eventually, we get to the Swamp Witch's tomb and she's just...floating there. You know, like an NPC in a video game who's just waiting for the player to show up? She wants the players to make a sacrifice at the altar, which is pretty interesting, but it does beg the question...why haven't the cultists found her? 

We're even told that if the Witch dies, the Emerald Serpents and Venom hallucinations disappear, suggesting she is connected to them. The Cult worships the Serpents. The Witch controls the Serpents. The Witch wants people to make sacrifices at the altar. Why don't the Serpents just tell the cultists to go to the altar and make a sacrifice?

I thought I had a good idea for how to get around this. Wishes at the altar only work if the sacrifice is unwilling. Since this is a drug-addled cult, perhaps they're too enthusiastic about being sacrificed for it to work? But no, the Cult has unwilling prisoners, and those are the people they're sacrificing. The scenario also explains that if a willing sacrifice is made, the Witch shows up and fights you with her cool sword. So, none of that works.

The only way to defeat the Witch permanently is to destroy her altar, which can only be done by making an unwilling sacrifice, making a wish, and rolling a 2 on the resulting d6 table. Otherwise, she just regenerates in her sarcophagus if the party defeats her. 

I like that it's difficult to truly defeat the Witch, but it does feel like the scenario will lack a satisfying climax 83% of the time. If the characters successfully make a wish and the altar doesn't break then they just...turn around and leave. And if they get it in their head that they need to defeat the Witch for some reason and haven't lucked into destroying the altar first, then they just fight her over and over until they die or run away.

Lastly, there's a black pit with a magical barrier behind which lurk Srolki and Yaoxl, a pair of antediluvian three-eyed humanoid toads who seek the Croaking Trident. Obviously this is a weapon of their people, but it's not clear why its especially important. After all, allowing it to stay up above will cause those who wield it to turn into chaos frog warriors, which seems like a win for the toad people. If the Witch is killed, the barrier vanishes, and more of the toad people will move into the area following that.

But of course, the scenario is not interested in suggesting what their deal is or what they might do once freed. Are the players to believe that the toad people are worse than the Cult or the Witch? Better? A lateral move? 

None of this really seems to matter. If left to their own devices, the cultists will get high and have sex and sacrifice some people who were going to live miserable, short lives in a terrible world anyway. The Witch will float in her tomb, collecting souls and granting wishes for...reasons. The toad people will stay where they are, or maybe some day be freed, at which point they won't really do anything except call their friends, who will then "appear in the area" and, presumably, do nothing.

The party can come here and make a wish at the altar, which the GM is encouraged to use to screw them over. If they wish to forestall the Doom (which is implied to be the main reason they would come here), it of course only postpones the inevitable next Misery. Obviously, Mörk Borg is something of a masochistic game for nihilists, so this fits the theme, but it could benefit from everything feeling a little less pointless.

Verdict

This is a solid dungeoncrawl with good ideas. It looks like a million bucks. The map, key, and monster stats are all highly usable. Unfortunately, I don't really see the point of it, and the scenario makes no effort to tie together its disparate pieces into any sort of coherent narrative. 

I overhauled it entirely, rethinking the factions and their relationships and motivations.

In my game, the Cult knew about the Witch and her altar, but they saw her as a goddess of love that they had to feed with the souls of the blind - those unindoctrinated into the cult. 

I decided that if someone were to make a willing sacrifice at the altar, it would break automatically, and the Witch would become weakened and vulnerable to being killed. The Witch thus ensured that the Cult only sacrificed the unwilling (either non-cult prisoners or cultists who have lost faith), and stopped anyone intending otherwise. 

The toads knew this information and would have shared it with anyone who talked to them so that they might be freed. They were bad news too, of course (they wanted to carry all of the cultists off to their underground cities and then invade the surface). The player never found the pit, so it didn't come up.

With this setup, the players have to explore and talk to different people to figure out what's going on, then decide what to do about. If they're here just to make a wish at the altar, they shouldn't have too much trouble. If they want to free the cult's prisoners, they'll have to hack through all the cultists. If they want to liberate the cultists (who are people too), they'll have to slay Ueth, the Emerald Serpents, and the Witch. And if they want to defeat the Witch, one of them will need to sacrifice themselves, or they'll need to find an enthusiastic cultist to offer themselves up. Then, they unleash the toad people, and have to decide whether to try to battle them back or surrender the Sepulchre to them.

What ended up happening is that the characters went to the Sepulchre to save the indoctrinated cultists. They tried to kill Ueth, but had to retreat back into the swamp with a bunch of cultists on their heels. One of them managed to lure several cultists out of the Sepulchre while the rest charged in at dawn. They caught Ueth sleeping, restrained him, and snuck through the tomb, killing isolated cult fanatics. The Witch got in their ear, urging them to sacrifice Ueth at the altar, and they did

I've said this before, but I run prewritten scenarios like this because I don't want to do a bunch of work to figure things out. This scenario has done the work of creating the map, stocking the dungeon, detailing the NPCs (barely), and coming up with big ideas. Unfortunately, it hasn't done the work of "figuring out" those ideas, leaving the GM holding the bag. It still beats coming up with the entire scenario on my own, but I wish it was more "ready to run" as written.

On Elemental Damage

D&D 5e has thirteen damage types. This post is concerned with the most fundamental of these damage types - the most primordial ingredients in the great soup of D&D combat. No, not bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing - the elements!

There are five damage types which are generally considered "elemental":

Acid. The corrosive spray of a black dragon's breath and the dissolving enzymes secreted by a black pudding deal acid damage.

Cold. The infernal chill radiating from an ice devil's spear and the frigid blast of a white dragon's breath deal cold damage.

Fire. Red dragons breathe fire, and many spells conjure flames to deal fire damage.

Lightning. A lightning bolt spell and a blue dragon's breath deal lightning damage.

Thunder. A concussive burst of sound, such as the effect of the thunderwave spell, deals thunder damage.

What's that you say? "But the elemental planes in D&D are air, earth, fire, and water"? Well, I'm talking about damage types, not the four elements. What's that? "The chromatic dragons, which more or less personify the elements, represent acid, cold, fire, lightning, and poison"?

Well, trust me. These are the five elemental damage types. Acid and thunder are definitely elements. And I have proof! Absorb elements is a spell which can be cast as a reaction, "which you take when you take acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder damage". The Elemental Adept feat allows the character to specialize in a damage type, choosing between acid, cold, fire, lightning, and thunder.

Moving on, there is something to be said about the fact that D&D's damage types come into play only when and if a creature is resistant, immune, or vulnerable to a type of damage. Sure, skeletons are vulnerable to bludgeoning and trolls can't regenerate if you hit them with acid or fire. Demons have a bunch of resistances that make them marginally more difficult to fight. But that's pretty much it. 

I think every damage type could use a little love - a reason to use one type over another in a given situation, besides overcoming the "challenge" of resistances. To start, though, here are my ideas for just the elemental damage types:

• Acid: Effective against pretty much anything that burns. Ineffective against oozes, water elementals, and any creature submerged in water. 
• Each instance of acid damage reduces a creature's nonmagical physical armor class by 1 (i.e., it does not affect adjustments from Dexterity or magic), to a minimum of 10. At AC 10, worn armor is destroyed. Natural armor heals at a rate of 1 AC per day. 
• A creature killed by acid damage has a part or all of its body dissolved (requiring more powerful resurrection magic to bring them back to life). Player characters reduced to 0 hit points by acid damage usually lose at least a hand or a foot, or suffer serious scars.

• Cold: Super effective against plants and creatures accustomed to warmth. Ineffective against creatures magically adapted to the cold (i.e., yetis) and against undead. 
• Freezes water and other liquids. Underwater, cold spells which originate from the caster (i.e., ray of frost, cone of cold) have half range.
• Each instance of cold damage reduces a creature's speed by 10 feet until the end of their next turn (reminder: when their speed reaches 0, flying creatures fall unless they can hover).
• A creature killed by cold damage is frozen solid for a number of days equal to the level of the spell which killed them. This preserves the body similar to a gentle repose spell. For the duration, the creature is basically petrified. Any potions, poisons, or oils the creature carried are frozen for the same duration. Quick-thawing the creature with a heat source of any kind is generally ill-advised.

• Fire: Super effective against dry, papery creatures (i.e. scarecrows, mummies, and origami golems, a tumbleweed blight but not a shambling mound) and creatures accustomed to the cold. Instantaneous effects are ineffective against water elementals and any creature submerged in water. Sustained effects, however, can boil them alive.
• Sets thing on fire. Don't cast fireball in the ancient library, obviously. Fire also doesn't care if things are worn or carried. Clothing and spellbooks are set on fire just the same as scenery. 
• Each instance of fire damage causes a flammable creature or object to take one die of damage (die size determined by the original effect, e.g., 1d6 from a fireball or 1d10 from a fire bolt) at the end of each of its turns unless it takes an action to extinguish the fire or submerges itself in water.
• A creature killed by fire damage continues to burn. Its body becomes ash in a number of turns equal to 9 minus the level of the effect (cantrips and equipment like torches and burning oil count as level 1). A player character reduced to 0 hit points due to fire damage also continues to burn (meaning they automatically fail a death saving throw every round). Creatures/player characters reduced to 0 hit points by a 9th-level fire spell/effect (an ancient red dragon's breath) are immolated instantly.

• Lightning: Super effective against wet creatures and those made of/wearing metal. Ineffective against creatures made of stone (earth elementals, gargoyles, stone golems, etc.) or rubber (rubber band golems).
• Water and metal conduct electricity. Lightning attacks made against a wet creature or a creature made of or wearing metal have advantage. Wet creatures and creatures made of or wearing metal have disadvantage on saving throws against lightning effects. When a lightning effect targets a creature in the water, all creatures in that body of water are affected. No saving throw.
• A creature that takes lightning damage loses its reaction until the start of its next turn.
• Lightning can defibrillate dead creatures. A creature with access to a lightning spell can attempt a spellcasting ability check when adjacent to creature that has been dead for less than 1 minute. The DC equals 20 + the number of rounds the creature has been dead. On a success, the creature regains 1 hit point. If the creature is a player character, a success instead cancels out one failed death saving throw, allowing the character to continue making death saving throws.

• Thunder: Super effective against creatures with keen hearing (many animals and animal people) and those made of glass (stained glass golems). Ineffective against deafened creatures or within a zone of silence.
• A creature that takes thunder damage is deafened until the end of its next turn. While deafened, a creature has disadvantage on any checks or saving throws made to maintain balance (i.e., Acrobatics, resisting the prone condition) and cannot cast spells with verbal components.
• A creature killed by thunder damage which is resurrected is permanently deafened unless magical healing which restores lost body parts is employed. A player character reduced to 0 hit points by thunder damage who does not die is instead deafened for a number of days equal to the level of the effect.

And there you have it! Is this good? I don't know, but it's something! I really like the idea of taking a more "common sense" approach to 5e next time I play it. I think D&D in general and 5e especially sings much more sweetly when you let yourself be immersed in the fiction instead of the rules. 

Hopefully, these rules take what are normally nondescript beams and blasts of different colored energies and turn them into lifelike elements that create their own varied effects.

Stocking a Sandbox with the AD&D 1e DMG (Part 1)

I thought it would be a fun exercise to try stocking a sandbox using the procedures presented in the appendices of the AD&D 1e DMG. I'll be using Hexographer to create the map.

A good chunk of this post is very thorough. My intention is not to bore, but to demonstrate how detailed the rules for AD&D can be - whether this level of detail is a strength or a weakness of the system is for the individual's judgement.

I start with a blank map:

I have the map divided into large "atlas" hexes of 19 hexes each because it breaks the map into manageable chunks. I'll only be stocking those hexes which are fully contained within an atlas hex (so none of those bordering two atlas hexes). It's a bit odd, but it's a small concession to make the work more manageable.

The map is 37 hexes by 37 hexes, at a scale of 6 miles per hex. This is my preferred scale for many reasons, but mostly because I've internalized the overland travel costs by terrain from 2e at that scale (i.e., it takes one hour to travel from the center to the edge of a plains hex, two hours in a forest hex, three hours in the hills, etc.), making it very easy for me to eyeball how long it takes to get around. 

Appendix B of the 1e DMG suggests using a 1-mile scale, but says other scales can work as well. I think a 1-mile scale using the DMG procedures would result in a play area that's way too dense, so I'm spreading everything out.

I'm going to start with a plains hex in the middle of the map because it's the most "vanilla" terrain type. The climate is temperate, again because it's "vanilla". It is a fun challenge to do this with an odd terrain or climate type like an arctic wasteland or a tropical island, of course, but a challenge is not what I'm looking for right now.

Instead of generating the map using the random terrain tables in Appendix B, I'm going to use Welsh Piper's Hex-Based Campaign Design (which I'm much more familiar with) to generate the terrain. I tried using the DMG's terrain tables and I simply don't like that much randomness/variance. Using the Welsh Piper method, my first hex looks like this:

Next, I'll roll on Appendix B's inhabitation table once for each of the 19 whole hexes in the atlas hex:

A hex is inhabited only on a roll of 16 or less, so those are the numbers I'm paying attention to. I roll (in order) a 12, 11, 13, and 5. That's three castles (!) and a thorp. 

As the above table indicates, I have to roll on a different set of tables for the castles:

I roll 92, 23, and 98, which is a large walled castle with keep, a tower, and a fortress complex. I roll again for inhabitants and get 91, 53, and 8. That means the large walled castle is inhabited by character-types, the tower is deserted with a monster lairing there, and the fortress complex is totally deserted. I'm going to record the tower and the fortress on the map as ruins.

Then I have to figure out all this stuff for the large castle:

Remember when I said this post would be thorough and detailed?

The master of the castle is a 13th-level druid - definitely not what I was expecting! The PHB says this about high-level druids:

Seems weird, then, that the castle master table includes a footnote for illusionists and monks, but not druids. In any case, it sounds like this castle is instead a "building complex" in natural surroundings. Let's just call it a fortified grove (if you've played Baldur's Gate 3, it's like that).

Then I have to roll for the druid's magic items using this table:

I got potions of fire resistance and speed, a +1 shield, a +1 dagger "(or +2) et. al" (I have no idea what this means, so +1 dagger it is), two +3 swords, +3 plate mail, a +2 shield, and a ring of spell turning. That's quite the haul! Druids can't use metal or whatever, so I would flavor these appropriately. The swords are scimitars or they're made of bone or something. The plate mail is a super hard, enchanted monster hide or insect chitin.

The druid has five henchmen. They are 8th-level according to this:

Again referring to the PHB, this checks out:

Our 13th-level druid is an Archdruid, so they should have three 8th-level druid followers attending to them. I find it really impressive that the information in the PHB lines up so nicely with that presented in the DMG's appendices. Maybe the bar is too low. I do wish the DMG mentioned that druids of a certain level have a certain number of druid followers, just so I wouldn't have to go to the PHB to find out.

These druids are not considered henchmen (I think the intention was for them not to count towards a player character's maximum number of allowed henchmen), but I'm going to consider them henchmen in this case.

To determine the other two henchmen, I roll on a different character subtable:

I got a cleric and a fighter. I'll assume they're all True Neutral since that's the necessary alignment of druids in AD&D. There might be some variance among them but I don’t want to get too into the weeds with that right now. Now, I have to roll magic items for the five 8th-level henchmen:

I rolled potions of fire resistance, healing (2), heroism (2), human control, giant strength (2), invulnerability (2), levitation, and speed, a scroll with a 1st-level and 2nd-level spell, a ring of mammal control, a +1 ring of protection, a +1 shield, 10 +1 arrows, a +2 javelin, rings of fire resistance and invisibility, a wand of illusion, three javelins of lightning, a crossbow of speed, a +2 hammer, +3 plate mail, a +2 shield, and a +4 defender sword. 

Wow! Here, I rolled for all the henchmen together, and would probably assign magic items to the most appropriate person (the scroll to the druids or the cleric, and the best weapons and armor to the fighter, for example). Another option could be to roll individually for each henchman and have them "trade" unusable items amongst themselves, but that sounds even more tedious.

Next, I have to roll to determine the grove's garrison. I rolled 12 heavy horse (splint mail and shield, lance, long sword, and mace), 12 light horse (studded leather, light crossbow, and long sword), and 28 men-at-arms (19 with scale mail, shield, spear, and hand axe, and 9 with scale mail, heavy crossbow, and morning star). 

Each unit is led by a fighter of 3rd- or 4th-level. I rolled two of each. They then each need magic items:

Fortunately, I did not roll any magic items for these fighters.

Lastly, because it is a "large castle", the grove would be armed with four ballistae scorpions, four light catapults, and eight oil cauldrons.

That took a long time! Don't worry - I just wanted to go through the process for the first "castle" as an example of how much rolling is needed when character-types are involved. I won't be going into that much detail again.

Of course, if I wanted to finish making this location ready for play, I would also have to roll stats for all of these leveled characters, record bonuses from Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, and the like, and determine HP, AC, THAC0, spells, and special abilities. And this is just one location!

In order to determine what type of monster dwells in the deserted tower, I have to roll on the corresponding outdoor encounter table (plains). I rolled giant owls. Cool! Now, I have to jump over to the Monster Manual:

(Note that if % in lair equals zero, I take that to mean that the monster does not keep a lair, in which case I will reroll.)

There are two giant owls here. There are no eggs or hatchlings (which is too bad for any mercenary adventurers that might come here hoping for a 1,000 to 6,000 gold piece payout). 

I roll for treasure using the Monster Manual appendix and learn that the owls have ten gems. I then have to go back to the DMG to determine the gems' base values:

I roll one with a base value of 10 gp, three base value 50 gp, two base value 100 gp, two base value 500 gp, and two base value 1,000 gp. Then I need to roll for variation:

I am left with the following gems: one worth 12 gp, one worth 45 gp, one worth 50 gp, one worth 65 gp, two worth 100 gp, two worth 500 gp, one worth 600 gp, and one worth 1,000 gp (2,972 gp total).

I have to decide whether the point of the tower is the giant owls, or if there's some sort of proper dungeon contained within. The owls on their own aren’t super exciting, so I’m thinking there’s a dungeon underneath the tower too.

The deserted fortress complex would definitely need to be a proper dungeon, and is probably the tentpole dungeon in the area. Realistically, this would be the most important location to detail before starting play. That's beyond the scope of this post, so I'll leave it for now.

The thorp's population is 20-80 (2d4 x 10). I roll a 6, so 60 people live there. My rule of thumb is that 1 in 100 people is a character-type, so there's a 60% chance of a character-type in this thorp (technically it's a 1% chance per inhabitant, but I'm not going to roll 60d100). I roll 31, so there is a character-type here. 

I then roll d100 to determine level, using the "tiers" from AD&D 2e. A roll of 01-65 is level 1-3, 66-85 is level 4-7, 86-95 is level 7-12, and 96+ is level 9-20. I roll 57 and then 1, so this is a 1st-level character. I go back to the character subtable in the DMG (for dungeon encounters, not stronghold rulers) and get a magic-user. A nice henchman hedge wizard for the party if they want one, and he could also provide low-level spellcasting services like identify.

This what my map looks like now:

I have some initial thoughts about this process. It's weird that inhabitation is determined irrespective of terrain. A settlement is just as likely to be on a major river next to the coast as it is to be in the middle of a dismal swamp or desert wasteland. It's also weird that I rolled three "castles" in this one small area. I do really like, however, that those castles can end up being deserted and/or inhabited by monsters. Players could potentially clear them out and then claim them as their own.

The Archdruid's grove was a delightful surprise. It is, however, a pain in the ass to determine henchmen, garrisons, magic items, and the like. At this stage of prep, I don't necessarily have to determine those things, but if I want this area to be ready for play, I will have to figure it out before the players interact with the location, which could be during the first session. It's not like the grove is "gated" within some high-level area where the players can't go. Assuming play begins in the thorp, it's just over a day's travel to the grove.

But I'm not done with this hex yet! Now that I've determined areas of habitation, I need to figure out where the monster lairs are. I'm going to check for a random encounter in each unstocked hex. If an encounter is indicated, that will become a monster's lair.

I like the terrain type to determine the chance of an encounter (for example, encounters are more likely in the forest than on the plains). As far as I can tell, AD&D 1e doesn't account for that, but 2e does, so I'll use those rules.

I ended up with two encounters on the plains (one south of the druid's grove and one south of the deserted tower) and one in the forest (southwest of the deserted fortress).

The encounter next to the grove is within half a day's travel of it, so I consider that hex inhabited/patrolled. I need to first check for a patrol from the grove (indicated by 16+ on d20), then roll for a monster encounter on the inhabited/patrolled areas table if no patrol is indicated:

No patrol was indicated, and I rolled merchants on the encounter table. Merchants have 0% in lair, so I roll again. This time I roll bandits:

Because of the note at the very bottom there, I roll d100 for the type of lair. I get an informal camp. It contains 127 bandits, plus six 3rd-level fighters, four 4th-level fighters, three 5th-level fighters, two 6th-level fighters, a 9th-level fighter leader, six 2nd-level fighter guards, a 7th-level fighter lieutenant, a 5th-level cleric, and a 3rd-level assistant cleric. Of course, I will have to determine all of their stats and magic items as I would other character-types! The bandits also have nine important prisoners and thirteen camp followers/slaves. I did another d100 roll to determine if any of those prisoners/followers/ slaves were character-types, but they were not.

I also have to determine the mix of arms and armor used by the bandits, and if any of them are psionic:

Since these bandits are on the plains, 90% of them will be horsed (which I guess means that 90% is split evenly among the three mounted categories listed above).

They have treasure type A, and end up with 1,000 copper, 26 gems, 21 pieces of jewelry, a ring of three wishes (!), a +1 shield, and a +1 mace. I'm not even going to touch all those gems and jewelry for now.

I would probably tell my players that they shouldn't even try to take on these guys unless they possessed an army of their own. They could try, but I think they would die very quickly!

Here I might normally make opposed reaction rolls to determine how the druids and bandits feel about each other, but it would seem pretty weird if they were friendly, wouldn't it? I can only imagine that the bandits are engaged in a prolonged siege against the druids, trying to storm their grove and plunder its treasures. Their "important prisoners" are probably captured soldiers or other inhabitants of the grove - maybe even awakened animals!

The druids have 52 soldiers to the bandits' 127, so they are quite outnumbered, but the druids have higher-level spellcasters and a fortified position. I could see them being evenly matched, requiring some mercenary third party of outsiders to tip the balance one way or the other. I wonder who that might be...

The other two lairs are easier. I roll on the uninhabited wilderness tables and get giant eagles in the forest (the Monster Manual entry says they are only found "in places where there are great bluffs, cliffs, mesas, or mountain crags to nest on", which doesn't describe the area, but whatever) and lions on the plains. 

First, the giant eagles:

I rolled 3 of them. The text says "If there are young (50%) or eggs [in their lair] they will attack any creature within 50'. There will be 1-4 young per nest, 1 nest per 2 giant eagles." It is not clear to me if this is saying that there's a 50% chance of there being young or eggs and if so there are 1-4 per nest or if there are always 1-4 per nest and it's 50/50 as to whether those are young or eggs. I'm going to read it as there's a 50% chance of there being young or eggs per nest, then a 50/50 chance of those being young or eggs. 

In any case, there's just one mated pair, and their nest has no eggs or young. They have no treasure. Kind of boring! But I guess they can't all be winners.

Next, the lions:

There are eight of them - three males and five females, plus six cubs. I think the implication is that 1-4 of the five lionesses stay with the cubs to protect them, rather than there being an additional 1-4 lionesses. They don't have any treasure either, so this is also something of a nothingburger lair.

Now I think the two ruined strongholds need a bit more life. Appendix A has tables for generating the layout and contents of a dungeon, but not a theme, which is all I want right now. Instead, I'll go to 5e's DMG, whose dungeon tables I've praised in the past.

I determine that the tower was created by a lich and destroyed by a natural disaster. Now that's cool. This was once the archetypal evil wizard's tower, but some disaster brought it crumbling down. Who hates unlife, is capable of magically creating natural disasters, and lives nearby? Oh right - an Archdruid!

Now I'm thinking the lich was an enemy of the druids. They wrecked his tower with an earthquake, defeated him, and sent some giant owls to make sure no one went poking around in the tower's dungeons. The lich is probably still down there - maybe as a demilich, waiting to be reawakened. 

The tower is half-sunken into a fissure in the earth, and its interior and the dungeon beneath are all jumbled up and unstable. The lions roam around the area and eat adventurers who come to the tower. The upper levels of the tower's dungeons are filled with blighted plants and zombie vermin - natural lifeforms corrupted by the lingering necrotic energy of the site - while the lower levels house what's left of the lich's magical creations - undead, constructs, conjured beings, and the like.

Next, I determine that the fortress complex was created by elves and destroyed by attacking raiders. I bet the lich had something to do with that. Perhaps this area was once more heavily forested, then the lich set up shop, starting cutting the trees down, got into a war with the elves, and destroyed them. That means the fortress complex is actually an ancient, destroyed elven ruin. That's more interesting than "deserted fortress complex".

The druids might even be the inheritors of an ancient elven tradition. The giant eagles might also be in league with the druids, protecting the ruin from plunder. The people of the nearby thorp (thorpers? thorpfolk? thorppeople?) live in the ruin's shadow, afraid to go there lest they be carried off by a huge bird or devoured by the remnants of the lich's undead army. But I bet that hedge wizard would pay some mercenary third party of outsiders to go digging around in there. I wonder who might be up for that job...

I can also begin to brainstorm random encounters:

• Druid patrol
• Bandit patrol
• Giant eagles
• Giant owls
• Undead/blights
• Lions
• Thorpers

And I can make a list of the area's important NPCs:

• Archdruid
• Bandit leader
• Lich
• Hedge wizard/whoever is in charge of the thorp

Here's what I ended up with:

There's a decent amount of adventure to be had here, and this area is only 30 miles across! There's a small home base, two dungeons which could each easily support early adventures (I'd have to decide how many levels they have, whether they start at 1st-level and go up in difficulty as the party delves deeper in the traditional style, or if they have some different difficulty progression), one of which is right outside the village, the other which includes a minor monster lair, plus two other low-to-mid-level lairs, and a truly epic power struggle in one corner of the region for the late game. There are at least four factions to get involved with - the druids, the bandits, the lich, and the thorp-dwellers.

For all the tedium of rolling up henchmen, bandit leaders, magic items, and gems, this was quite an engaging exercise. Gygax was a strange person, and while I can't necessarily recommend using this method for stocking a play area, it is quite impressive in its thoroughness and attention to detail in a way that Gygax's style often is. 

At any rate, I much prefer this to modern D&D's style of "Here are some things that might be found in a D&D game. You decide how to integrate them into an entire world for your players to enjoy!"

Perhaps I'll do more of these in the future. I had a quite a bit of fun!

It's Gold *or* XP

"Gold for XP" is a concept from older editions of D&D. Essentially, characters get 1 XP per gold piece of treasure they acquire. 

The exact implementation of this concept varies between editions, retroclones, and individual DMs. Sometimes the characters get the XP as soon as they get the treasure. Sometimes they have to bring it back to town. Sometimes they have to spend it to get the XP. That might mean carousing or buying fancy clothes. Sometimes there's a training cost involved in leveling up.

My main issue with the gold for XP approach is that often, the character is getting both the gold and the XP. Even if the character is required to spend the gold, they're still gaining the XP from spending the gold in addition to whatever they spent the gold on, whether it be equipment, jewelry, NPC contacts, or whatever. The gold/XP is a double reward.

There's also simply isn't enough to meaningfully spend gold on in D&D - there's plate armor, hirelings, spell components, strongholds, and maybe magic items (although almost every version of D&D attempts to tell DMs that they should definitely not allow the purchase and sale of magic items, they never really provide any desirable alternative use for unwanted magic items or mountains of gold). 

In a gold for XP game, the DM has to juice the treasure being awarded to ensure the characters are advancing at an engaging rate. And in versions of the game like AD&D, when XP requirements were much higher, those numbers have to be juiced quite a bit. There isn't that much to spend money on, unless the players are really enthusiastic about playing house, throwing feasts, fielding armies, and the like. I'm personally into all of that stuff, but I've barely ever encountered other players who are.

In a gold for a XP game, I want the players to have something to spend their gold on, and I want that to be a choice. I don't want to handwave it and say "You throw it all away partying." But I also don't want them to have the jewels/stronghold/magic item and the XP.

It's gold or XP. That is, players must decide to convert gold to XP on a 1-to-1 basis. This way, player characters have something to spend their gold on (XP), and they have to choose whether they want the gold or the XP. They can't have both.

To use an example, an Old School Essentials fighter comes back from the dungeon with 2,000 gold's worth of treasure - exactly enough to reach 2nd-level. However, the fighter has to convert all of their gold into XP in order to do so. They might want to spend some of it on plate mail, or they may need to recruit new hirelings. If they spend any of the gold, they can't level up. They have to make a choice.

Every single use for treasure now comes with this same drawback and becomes a choice: Would you rather bribe that NPC, buy that magic item, and build that stronghold, or put all that gold towards your next level?

A character who spends their gold on material things will have fewer levels, but will be richer in equipment, land, and connections. A character who spends their gold on XP will be inherently more powerful but lacking in material wealth. A 9th-level fighter with a stronghold and an army is more capable of affecting change in the world than a 20th-level fighter with nothing.

Gold or XP also allows for differences between players and groups to emerge. The player who chooses to kit out their character will be slightly behind the ones who focus purely on progression. And, assuming equal division of treasure, any discrepancies are the result of how the individual players choose to spend their share of gold. 

A particularly cooperative group of players could even choose to contribute shares of gold towards ensuring a certain character levels up, if it's in the group's best interest. For example, if a 9th-level character dies and a new one joins the party at 1st-level, the surviving characters might pool their resources to bring the new character closer to their own level. Or, if the cleric is just shy of reaching the level when they can cast raise dead - which the other players agree it would be in the party's best interest to have access to - they can pool their money towards getting the cleric to that level.

I'm not particularly concerned with how to rationalize this in the fiction of the game or whether it "makes sense". It is purely a game abstraction. Sometimes I'm hyper fixated on the game's fiction and what mechanics narratively represent, and sometimes I don't care.

If there must be some logic to it, one could define it vaguely as "training expenses", although I think it's difficult to justify the fighter spending 120,000 gold in order to train and gain...2 hit points. There are certain things in D&D which simply have to be accepted as abstract game elements.

If I were to go the training route, I would definitely make that something the characters must seek out and devote time to in the fiction, however. For example, a wizard who wants to attain 2nd-level could train under the 4th-level hedge wizard in the starting village, but that same wizard would have to travel to the megacity's magical academy to attain 20th-level. This also requires having access to competent NPCs who are willing to tutor the character.

As for how long training takes, it could be one week per level to be gained, or maybe one week to gain a Tier 1 level and four weeks to gain a Tier 4 level. That could lead to some cool moments where after training for five months in their distant corners of the world, the Avengers-style party gets back together for One Last Job.

If I end up playing any edition of D&D this year, I'll definitely be taking this for a spin. I would most likely do this with Old School Essentials. The official adventures give out a lot of gold, but the rules don't really present much at all to spend it on. It could also be fun with 5e, particularly because I feel I've gotten the hang of pricing magic items for sale in that edition, which is where this type of choice would really shine, but I'm trying to play other games this year.

Review: Another Bug Hunt (Mothership)

Another Bug Hunt (MRPG-M4) is the introductory adventure for Mothership 1e. It contains four scenarios which can be strung together consecutively to form a larger adventure or run as one-shots. 

The crew (how Mothership refers to the PCs/the party) is hired by the Company to investigate the Greta Base Terraforming Colony on Samsa VI. The colony has not made contact in six months. The crew needs to rendezvous with 2ndLt Kaplan, figure out what's going on, re-establish satellite communications, and get the terraformer back online. Failing that, they need to evacuate the head scientist Dr. Edem and retrieve the android Hinton's logic core. The crew is aware that the colonists have been at war with an alien species of arthropods called carcinids for about a year, and that the colonists captured a carcinid larva nine months ago.

The module has great art and layout. It has an orange, white, and green color scheme which allows for some really great blocking. The org chart, character portraits, and map of the terraforming station are my favorite illustrations. There are also a few scene illustrations which really standout. 

The orange text on white font was very difficult for me to read unless I was in bright daylight. I can read it very easily while sitting at my desk in the middle of the day, but not so much when I'm in bed or at the gaming table on a Saturday night, which is when I'm more likely to be reading it. It feels like an aesthetic choice which was made because it looks "cool" or because it looked good on the computer. It is not, in my opinion, accessible.

The module features Warden Education Support (WES), a sort of designer commentary with advice for Wardens about running the game (both Mothership in general and Another Bug Hunt specifically). It also includes advice for running each scenario as a one-shot.

I think WES is pretty great. When I read modules, I'm constantly scratching my head wondering what the designer's intent was. Is this encounter supposed to be a TPK? Is this trap supposed to be impossible to detect? WES comes right out and says it, which is something I wish more designers would do. 

I've run just one session of Mothership so far, and started with this module. In that one session, we were able to finish the first scenario, so WES's advice about running at least that one scenario as a one-shot is pretty sound.

So, what's really going on here?

SPOILERS for Another Bug Hunt incoming!

There is an alien mothership in the planet's jungle. The "nobles" of this alien race are sleeping aboard the ship. When the colonists landed on the planet, the ship started birthing carcinids to defend itself. Dr. Edem and Hinton learned that the carcinids transmit a memetic virus through their Shriek, which turns other creatures into carcinids. Hinton went rogue and converted the Shriek into a signal which could be broadcast over the radio, then used it to transform several colonists into carcinids during a birthday celebration, causing chaos. The survivors fled from Greta Base to Heron Terraforming Station and barricaded themselves inside. Hinton traveled to the mothership to awaken the carcinid nobles, hoping to become one himself.

Unfortunately, the timeline doesn't make much sense. The colony hasn't been in contact for six months, which coincides with when Hinton discovered how to transmit the Shriek over the radio. We eventually learn that Hinton actually strapped a carcinid into the controls of the radio tower in order to accomplish this. However, three months then passed before the birthday massacre. The tower is just on the other side of the dam from the terraforming base. Did no one go there for three months to investigate what was wrong with the comms?

It is important now to discuss the Shriek. Anyone who hears the carcinids' shriek must make a Sanity Save or become infected. The infection has five stages. Every 2d10 hours, the infected person must make another Sanity Save, or else the infection advances. A fully-grown carcinid emerges from the infected individual's neck, chest, or abdomen at stage five.

The average character in Mothership has a Sanity Save of 21 (2d10+10). To make a Sanity Save, the character must roll under that number on d100, meaning that the average character makes a successful Save roughly 20% of the time.

First, I find it hard to believe that an infected colonist didn't transform in the middle of Greta Base or the Terraforming Station a lot sooner, considering the colonists have been fighting the carcinids for a year. Second, the adventure is very clear that anyone who attempts to use comms is exposed to the Shriek due to Hinton's sabotage. That means that roughly 80% of the colonists should already have been infected six months ago when Hinton first executed his plan (it also means that roughly 80% of the player characters will be infected immediately upon beginning the scenario through no fault of their own, if by chance they happen to have the very reasonable idea to try talking to each other over comms).

That doesn't sound unreasonable until you do the math. A Sanity Save is made, on average, every eleven hours. On average, 80% of Sanity Saves are failed. It takes four failures to transform after initial infection. That means that an average person, after infection, can expect to pass just one save before transforming. The average infected person transforms after something like 55 hours - about two and a half days.

So, how did three months pass between Hinton's sabotage and the birthday party massacre without any other colonists transforming into carcinids? How did several colonists transform at the birthday party simultaneously if the course of infection varies slightly for everyone? How has the Shriek been broadcast over the radio for six months without the majority of colonists being transformed? Why has a month and a half passed between the birthday massacre and the siege on Heron Terraforming Station? Were Hinton and the carcinids just waiting around? 

To add to it, Greta Base ceased all communications six months ago. The Company hired the crew three months ago. This needless padding of the timeline causes all sorts of problems with the credibility of the scenario.

The reason I'm pedantic about all of this is because when I run a module I want all of this stuff figured out for me. I run modules because I've been running my own stuff and am tired of figuring stuff out all the time. I want someone else to map and key the locations, give the NPCs motivations and secrets, and figure out the logistics of timelines so that I can focus on simply adjudicating the game and accurately presenting the information to the players. In a fantasy game it's easy to handwave inconsistencies as magic, but in sci-fi the soundness of the scenario's logic is incredibly important. 

I need to understand what happened and be able to make sense of it so that I can communicate information to the players, allowing them to - maybe - also understand what happened. If I have unanswered questions, so will they, and with good play they should have a chance to answer those questions, which means I need answers to them myself. If the module doesn't provide the answers, I need to provide them. Now I'm figuring stuff out, which is what I was trying to avoid!

How I'd Run It

Lose the Shriek. The scenario is perfectly fine without it and it feels like too harsh of a middle finger to the players, who are probably playing Mothership for the first time. You could probably lose the whole infection mechanic entirely (it's just a play on a bad Reddit joke about how everything is always evolving into crabs) and the scenario as written will make a lot more sense. 

I would make it so that being injured by the carcinids is what causes someone to become infected (with a Body Save to resist instead of a Sanity Save, which doesn't make any sense to me). I would also rule that Androids can't be infected (I have no idea why they can be infected in the module as written).

I would also make the carcinids more docile by nature, so the colonists were not essentially at war with them for a year. My carcinids would be initially found only in the jungle and would act only to defend their mothership, which the colonists would not have discovered yet. I prefer it to be more mysterious that way, and it would make more sense that the colony hasn't already been overrun.

Hinton, meanwhile, would discover the mothership all on his own and keep it to himself. He would discover that the carcinids could be controlled using certain frequencies emitted by their nobles. Three months ago, he would have sabotaged the comms tower to emit a frequency that made the carcinids more aggressive, which disrupted comms. The aggressive carcinids prevented anyone from going there to investigate. The Company hired the crew immediately and they began heading to Samsa VI.

Meanwhile, the colonial marines did an admirable job fending off the carcinids at both Greta Base and Heron Terraforming Station. Unfortunately, Hinton was intentionally infecting the marines at Greta Base with carcinid larvae under the guise of administering routine medical procedures. He timed it carefully so the infected would turn all at once during the birthday massacre. The base was overrun and the survivors fled to Heron Terrforming Station.

And that's it. I think that fixes the vast majority of issues with this module. 

The Scenarios

Overall, they're nice and varied. 

In Scenario 1: Distress Signals, the crew gets to do some methodical investigation in the mostly-abandoned Greta Base. It's a good introduction to the game with just a single deadly combat encounter (with an easily-telegraphed solution that is guaranteed to make new players feel like geniuses). 

I think there is a missed opportunity here to build tension - the crew either goes in the front door and immediately enters the commissary where the birthday massacre happened, or they go in the side door and immediately encounter the monster, both of which kind of let all of the air out of the room at once. 

Scenario 2: Hive Mind is my favorite. Here there are three factions, Team Leave (led by HM3 Brookman), Study Group (led by Dr. Edem), and Hog Squad (led by Sgt Valdez). They all want different things, and the players have to choose what to prioritize (or risk splitting up). If the crew focuses on one thing, the other two tracks advance for the worse. Each faction has a good reason for wanting what they want. It's not an obvious choice.

Conveniently, the three options fit nicely into Mothership's "Survive, Solve, or Save" framework, which is outlined in the Warden's Operation Manual. Team Leave want to secure the comms tower to call for evac (Survive), Study Group wants to recover their research from the lab to find the carcinids' weakness - cue "What is the WEAKNESS" written on a whiteboard in the lab (Solve), and Hog Squad wants to rescue a missing squad of marines and stop the reactor from shutting down (Save). 

This is a brilliant and simple piece of design that reinforces the game's thesis - the players can't accomplish all three goals. It's a perfect scenario for an introductory adventure meant to teach both the Warden and players what kind of game Mothership is.

Scenario 3: Mothership is a Lovecraftian dungeoncrawl through the carcinid mothership. Lots of OSR-ish tricks, traps, and puzzles with an unknowable alien flavor. It does at times feel a bit too "alien" as in "random", i.e. just weird for weirdness's sake, and not necessarily weird in a way that makes sense for these particular aliens. The rooms don't really give the impression that the carcinids actually like, live here and use these weird devices. There is also, hilariously, a gun designed specifically to kill carcinids inside the carcinids' lair. 

Scenario 4: Metamorphosis challenges the crew to escape the planet during a monsoon and carcinid offensive. It comes with a timeline which describes hour-by-hour flooding, carcinid numbers, and evacuation possibility. It seems very unforgiving, but I guess that's Mothership. 

At the end, the carcinid mothership launches a messenger ship which flies off to alert the rest of the carcinids throughout the universe. It fights for one round before fleeing, and WES explicitly says "it is too difficult for the players to fight". This presents the players with one last choice: try to stop it and Save the day (they probably can't), or turn tail and flee (Survive).

Verdict

Overall, I like this module and think you could get around six sessions out of it. The timeline presented at the beginning is pretty much nonsensical and needs to be completely overhauled. The easiest way to do it is to change the way infection works and condense events onto a shorter timeline. 

Once you get that sorted out, you have a nice nonlinear adventure with clearly defined goals and a variety of possibilities for play. It's a good introduction to the game for both Wardens and players, and it more or less practices what the Warden's Operation Manual preaches.

My rating (F is worst and S is best): B. I like it, but it has problems that need fixing, and those are big conceptual problems that the Warden has to rationalize if the scenario's conceit is going to have any hope of holding up against scrutiny from inquisitive players. With a more casual group, this probably runs very well.

Mörk Borg Play Report and Review: Rotblack Sludge

After having owned a copy of Mörk Borg for over a year, I finally had a chance to run a game. We played most of Rotblack Sludge. Hopefully we can play again and finish the adventure.

First, a small diversion into how this game came to be. I bought a copy of Mörk Borg at PAX Unplugged last year. Since then, I've tried multiple times to get my online group to try it out during lulls in our weekly D&D games. For some reason, it never came to fruition.

This year, I went to PAX Unplugged with a few of my IRL friends, and they were intrigued by how every other indie-type RPG zine was either compatible with Mörk Borg or Mothership (and how many games were spinoffs of Mörk Borg - CY_BORG, Pirate Borg, etc.). It also helps that all the stuff looks cool. And Mörk Borg is fun to say. It stays with you.

After a month or so of talking about playing, interrupted by the holidays, we finally got together to try it out. I refreshed my memory as to the system and its introductory adventure, Rotblack Sludge, earlier that day. Simplicity is definitely one of the game's strengths.

Mörk Borg has reminded me of the power of a physical TTRPG product. I already said that Mörk Borg stuff looks cool, and that makes potential players interested in learning more about it. The look of Mörk Borg also helps to communicate its tone. I can say "This is a Swedish doom metal RPG. It's like a really simple version of D&D but the world is ending and everyone and everything sucks." Or, I can hold up the book, flip through the pages, and say, "This is the vibe." It works.

It also helps when the physical product is a little book I can hold in one hand. I've grown accustomed to running D&D using only a computer because I feel like I need a computer to run modern D&D. There are at least two - and arguably, three or more - books that I need to have at hand to play 5e, and they are big. They're also organized poorly, with multiple sections of multiple books needing to be referenced simultaneously. And the players all need to share the one, too. I'd much rather use an online tool, where the spells in the enemy wizard's statblock are linked to the spell descriptions, which are in turn linked to the descriptions of the conditions they impose.

So nowadays, if I want to play D&D in person, I'm probably bringing a laptop and a PHB for the players to share. That's the equivalent of two textbooks. Mörk Borg is one little book. I also brought along Mothership and Old School Essentials as options, and Mörk Borg occupied the least space in my backpack by far. That has value.

We started by randomly generating characters. I got a bit confused, and had the players start by rolling equipment, weapons, and armor, then asked them whether they wanted to play regular characters or characters with classes. This was a mistake, because characters with classes have different methods of determining starting equipment, weapons, and armor.

The way I presented the choice was that classes have special abilities and more specialized ability scores - some will be higher than a normal character's and some will be lower. Normal characters have more average stats but can roll for higher stats on two of them. The system could do a better job communicating what is the advantage of playing a classless character. My players all wanted to have a class because they wanted special abilities (which they all promptly forgot about).

The page describing the character creation process says that classed characters follow their own instructions for rolling equipment, but that's not really true. The Fanged Deserter starts with a unique item, as does the Wretched Royalty, and the Occult Herbmaster starts with two decoctions. Otherwise, the classes just get silver pieces and abilities. I had already made the mistake of having the players roll for equipment as normal, so I left it as is.

The character creation rules have the player roll for equipment first, then ability scores. I found this odd because quantities of certain items are determined by ability scores (i.e., "Presence + 4 torches", a "lantern with oil for Presence +6 hours", etc.). I don't see any reason why abilities can't be rolled first.

We ended up with the following characters:

• Daeru: A Gutterborn Scum in massive debt with a sneak attack ability (Coward's Job)
• Karg: An Esoteric Hermit with a drinking problem and an enchanting harp (Bard of the Undying)
• Urvarg: An Occult Herbmaster who had an illicit affair with a member of the nobility (with Fernor's Philtre and Hyphos' Enervating Snuff)
• Vresi: A Fanged Deserter nihilist with a loud mouth, a problem with authority, and a bag of Wizard Teeth

The players loved this character creation process. They were engaged from the moment they rolled for their characters' names, and were locked in once Urvarg started with four monkeys that love him but ignore him. The process took up a big chunk of our play time, but it might have been the most fun we had all night.

On to Rotblack Sludge. The characters were prisoners of the Shadow King, scheduled to be executed for their various flaws (debt, alcoholism, philandering, and sedition). Luckily for them, the Shadow King's heir was kidnapped and taken to the Accursed Den. They would be free if they found him and brought him back.

This adventure requires some massaging. For such a simple introductory scenario, I really wish the authors had done a bit more legwork to connect the disparate elements. Before play I took some mental notes as to how I'd fix some things. Some SPOILERS for Rotblack Sludge below.

First, there's no reason why the players can't just lamb it as soon as they're released from the Shadow King's dungeon. I said that the masked Seer had put a geas spell on them that would melt their brains if they neglected their duties. Simple enough. Classic plot device.

The bearded man in the Dining Hall is a fun encounter but doesn't really do anything for me. I decided that he was one of the necromancers that had taken in Fletcher as a child. He was still catatonic, but had moments of lucidity during which he could give some exposition about the dungeon, Fletcher's plans, the Gutworm, etc. I wanted to preserve the encounter's function as a trick/trap while making it feel like less of a time-waster.

The skeletons on the pillar in the Rotblack Sludge are pointless. It's interesting I guess, but it's also so odd that I knew my players would fixate on it. So, I decided that Fletcher does not yet have control of the Gutworm, and the skeletons' music is what keeps it relatively subdued. The players could, for example, attempt to tamper with the skeletons, but this would unleash the worm.

Lastly, Lesdy. She "is trying to turn the Gutworm against Fletcher". Great! How is she trying to do that? How is the worm controlled? "She seeks the tunnels and caves deep beneath Rotblack Sludge". What tunnels and caves? How does Lesdy plan to get there? The sludge burns anyone who is in it! Also, Fletcher hates her but "can't fit through the tunnel" to the Greenhouse. What? Can't he send in the guards to kill her? Well no, you see - the crooked guards in the Guard Room "follow Fletcher's every word" but "don't care about Lesdy". That's convenient! Inconvenient for Fletcher, I guess.

Also, Fletcher is using the kidnapped heir as leverage to "pressure the Shadow King into getting rid of Lesdy for good." So Fletcher and Lesdy are like, colleagues? They're agents of the Shadow King or something? And Fletcher would rather kidnap the Shadow King's son than just like, order his guards to go kill Lesdy? Like, what is meant to be going on here?

I hate to be a plot-brained idiot who can't understand anything unless its explained to me but like, I can easily come up with a disjointed scenario with a bunch of incoherent ideas myself. When I run modules it's because I don't want to have the cognitive load of figuring out how the disparate ideas of a scenario fit together. I want the author to have figured that out for me so I can focus on running the game with minimal prep!

So, here's how I made sense of all of it. Fletcher and Lesdy are villainous colleagues. They have no real affiliation with the Shadow King. They both want to control the Gutworm because if there was a giant worm and you could potentially control it, you probably would want to. Lesdy and her acolytes spend their time in the Greenhouse brewing concoctions which grant some measure of power over the worm, but the worm will only truly obey someone of noble blood. So, they kidnapped the Shadow King's heir. Both Lesdy and Fletcher are grooming the heir to obey them so that they can be the worm's true master, while secretly plotting to cut each other out.

There. That took a paragraph and could easily be inserted at the beginning of the adventure in a "what's going on?" blurb.

Without going into the nitty-gritty details of the session: the characters fought some skeletons, smooth-talked past some guards, fought some dogs, stole some gems, fled from the Gutworm, and had a tense negotiation with Lesdy.

We wrapped up the session there and "leveled up" ("Getting Better" in Mörk Borg). Normally I'd wait until after they finished the scenario, but I'm not sure if we will. They seem interested in playing again, but I wanted to finish the session by showing off the progression system. I know level-less systems are all the rage now, but I appreciate that Mörk Borg has a very simple system for character improvement.

Combat was fast and easy. I made liberal use of reaction rolls in pretty much every encounter. Karg's harp (which adds d4 to reaction rolls) felt particularly overpowered, but I probably allowed him to use it too often (or I was using reaction rolls too often).

If I were to do it again, I'd start new players off with classless characters. The classes have just one randomly determined ability each. In Karg's case, it was a character-defining ability, but everyone else forgot their ability even existed. It just added needless complexity to the character creation process with very little payoff in-game.

The system really "gets out of the way" and allows the referee freedom to riff on what's there (and what's not). Of course, I have a decade plus of DMing experience at this point so I know how to take those simple rules and apply them in a versatile way.

It's a fantastic game for players new to RPGs. My players said they really appreciated that the random character creation "took the guesswork out of making a character" and that it was cool that the rules were simple enough to learn as we went along. Which like...yes! It is so nice to just be able to make a character without having to know the rules first, then learn the rules by actually playing.

I'm optimistic that we'll be coming back to this one. Here's to möre Borg in 2025!