Vecna Reborn

I recently read the 2nd edition AD&D module Vecna Reborn, written by Monte Cook during the end-days of TSR. Long-time Comma, Blank_ readers may recall that one of my earliest posts detailed my thoughts on another AD&D module themed around my favorite villain: Vecna Lives!. Vecna Reborn is a kind of loose sequel to Vecna Lives!, insofar as it doesn't contradict its predecessor. There's little continuity between the two, aside from the appearance of Citadel Cavitius, and Vecna himself. But, given that the last adventure ended with Vecna being pushed through a portal into another world--which turns out to be Ravenloft--it's understandable that there's not much to connect this to the previous quest. There is a third module which I haven't read yet, entitled Die Vecna, Die!, which ties these two together. I very much look forward to reading it, but that's for another day.

Vecna Reborn is only about half the length of Vecna Lives!, at 63 pages. But that's still twice the length of a standard adventure module, so there's no lack of peril to explore. And the adventure is exciting! I was so engaged I actually put down the novel I've been reading for a week. And, as with any well written module, there's a lot to be learned about game mastery by dissecting the author's work. The author of an adventure module, after all, essentially a professional game master. Who better to try and learn from? Take what works about the adventure, figure out how it was accomplished, and steal it.

The most memorable element of this adventure is the constant sense that the PCs are in danger. And not just from wandering monsters and surprise encounters. In fact there are very few of either to be found here. Vecna Reborn is set between two oppressive autocracies, one ruled by Vecna, and one ruled by Kas the Destroyer (Vecna's former lieutenant, and current mortal foe). Neither civilization requires the players to necessarily keep themselves hidden, but nor do they want the authorities to notice them. The "Daggers" of Kas' domain will arrest, interrogate, and imprison people on a whim. And the "Reavers" of Vecna's domain are undead sentinels who would sooner kill a mortal than deal with any unrest within their lord's domain. Even the relatively few times when the players will likely find themselves outside of either city, wandering patrols, invisible stalkers, virulent plagues, and a life-draining desert serve to keep the players on edge.

And that's something I've never been good at. Creating atmosphere in general terms is a struggle for me, but I think I do alright. This adventure, though, would have me actually looking over my shoulder and clasping my hands. I would love to be able to achieve that level of tension and immersion with my players, and I think Vecna Reborn comes with a good toolkit. Kas' city of Tor Gorak is ruled with a hauntingly chronic injustice, which breeds obsequiousness in its populace. People stay off the streets for fear of getting picked up by the Daggers. The boldest act of defiance in the entire town is the madhouse founded by an old man, where he keeps the insane safe from execution for being 'worthless.' There's only small handful of people there who wouldn't turn on the players instantly to save themselves from the attention of the authorities, and the players are shown early on that they don't want that kind of attention. Shortly after the players arrive in the city, they're (likely) picked up by the Daggers, and taken to their headquarters for interrogation. The players are only released when some good fortune falls into their lap, and if they do anything to warrant getting picked up again, they know they won't be so lucky.

Vecna's Citadel Cavitius is less overtly totalitarian, but is somehow even more demeaning and oppressive. Horrifying undead guard every entrance to the citadel, allowing any individual to enter, but allowing no one to leave. Vecna, the undead god, rules the city, his undead lords and ladies handle its various affairs, and undead Reavers maintain order. The unholy citizenry ignore the affairs of mortals the same way one might ignore a dog walking through the streets. So while the PCs can go about their business unmolested, their lives are less than meaningless to those around them. It's just as likely that they'll complete their quest as it is for a vampire to pick them off the streets for a gory meal.

Imminent danger can take many forms. As I mentioned above, later in the adventure there is a virulent plague killing everyone around the players, leaving them to wonder whether they might catch it themselves. And even on the road, two invisible demons follow the players and cause mischief, letting them know that an unknown danger still lurks somewhere about them. Vecna Reborn is a litany of very visible, very deadly dangers which the players can do nothing about. Their only hope is to keep their heads down and try to stop Vecna's plot to be reborn without drawing any attention.

Another element of the game which caught my attention is The Shadowed Room. During the course of the adventure, the party must travel there to learn how to thwart Vecna's plans. When they find it, they discover that the shadowed room is, in fact, a library. I. Love. Fantasy Libraries. As a bibliophile and a lover of fantasy, they're a combination of two locations which excite and comfort me. I often design such libraries just for the fun of it, and The Shadowed Room is a good one.

During the height of Vecna's empire in the realm of Oerth, he ruled over a massive city. And in one of the city's many spires, he filled a library with secret both arcane and powerful. The knowledge gathered in this room was so profound, and so remarkable, that the library left a permanent imprint on the multiverse. When the city was destroyed, millennia ago, this imprint remained, as a memory of creation itself. Vecna learned that he could access this memory, and constructed a magical portal to allow himself to access this "Shadowed Room." The knowledge which was once gathered there, knowledge which has otherwise been lost, can be read here. But nothing can be taken from the room, for it is only a shadow of something which once was.

Lastly, I want to make note of the fantastic hooks this adventure leaves you with. In my opinion, the best adventure modules leave a group wanting to do more. With the most pressing goal accomplished, a myriad of other possibilities should call to the players, giving the game master a number of avenues to pursue for further games in the same local. And that's precisely what Vecna Reborn does. Immediately upon reaching the period at the end of the last sentence, I instinctively started constructing follow up adventures in my mind. There's so much more the players could accomplish! Freeing Tor Gorak of Kas' rule could last sessions! The headquarters of the Daggers and Kas's own castle would both make excellent settings for dungeon crawls, and after the way the adventure encourages the players to engage with the town's populace, I think they'll feel enough sympathy for them to want to help. Perhaps even form a rebellion for an extended campaign against Kas.

Oh! By the way, this is the 100th RPG post on Comma, Blank_. Yay.

We Be Goblins! (You Be Food!)

"We Be Goblins!" is a charming little Pathfinder module which Paizo has made available as a free PDF through their online store. I printed out a copy a month or so ago, and thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Despite the short length of only 16 pages, there are some remarkably charming touches which make this module memorable for me. The adventure is well designed with a good mix of challenges for the players. The pregenerated characters are interesting, and developed well enough to give players a baseline to role play from without being constricting. There's a good sense of humor throughout the adventure as well, with a number of catchy songs scribbled in the margins. I must admit, I've recited a few of them to myself while driving. They are quite catchy:

We be Licktoads! We Make Raid!
Put the longshanks to the blade!
Burn them up from feet to head,
Make them hurt, then make them dead!

Cut the parents into ham,
Smush the babies into Jam,
All the rest in pot get stewed,
We be Licktoads - YOU BE FOOD!

Which brings me to one of the biggest draws to this module: playing as evil goblins. Players have never been prevented from playing as evil characters, or from playing as goblins; the Monster Manuals and Bestiaries even have racial traits for goblins which players could use if they liked. But as I've discussed in the past, while not forbidden it's certainly not encouraged. Despite that, something about Pathfinder's version of goblins has caught hold of players. As any sensible company should, Paizo is cashing in on that with a number of products. The artist who designed Pathfinder's Goblins can be thanked for that, I think. He or she somehow managed to take the most generic-of-the-generic fantasy monster, and reinvent them into something which is both classic and novel, adorable and terrifying all at once. The song above is a testament to all four seemingly contradictory traits.

On a lark last weekend, I decided I wanted to see how this adventure played at the table. What's more, I wanted to do it with enough people for all four of the pregenerated characters to be in play. So during the week I conferred with the players from two of my gaming groups. Remarkably, each of them had Saturday free. Considering how difficult it can be to get either group together for a game, I thought it might be a titanic effort to get both together at once. But everybody was open to my first suggested date and time. So this morning I got up, cleaned my apartment, and was going over my notes just in time for people to start arriving.

The opening of the adventure is somewhat wordy for my tastes. My rule of thumb is three paragraphs. If I've got more than three paragraphs to read before the players get to start taking action and making choices, then I edit down. I may pride myself on my writing, but my friends didn't make room in their busy schedules to listen to me read aloud. They came to play a game. All the same, the introduction didn't go off too poorly. The players got a good sense of who and where they were. But to be honest, if I were to run it again I think I would cut a lot of the introductory crap and jump into the bonfire as quick as I could. That's where the game really got moving.

After the goblin leader provides the PCs with their mission in the opening scene, the tribe has a bonfire celebration to, as cheif Gutwad says, "burn bad luck away from [the PCs]." Essentially it's a big rowdy goblin party in honor of the PC's upcoming quest. Here, I think, would have been a much better place for a lot of the exposition which happened at the start of the adventure. Rather than have the goblin chief tell the players to avoid the creature known as Lotslegs Eat Goblin Babies Many, the PCs could have overheard frightening stories about it from other goblins during the feast. But this is a minor nitpick at worst.

The content of the bonfire are four "dares," as the goblins call them. To test the bravery of the PCs, the tribe presents them with challenges. If they succeed, they are rewarded with the right to borrow a few pieces of magical gear. If they fail, or refuse the challenge, they are mercilessly mocked. I must admit I was somewhat worried that this was the kind of thing which sounded good on paper, but wouldn't work out in play, but I was wrong. It was during this more lighthearted, role-playing heavy activity that my players really started to get into their characters. I'm not often fortunate enough to have excited, in-character conversations going on between players. More on that later.

My players ended up succeeding at each of the four challenges without much incident. It was then that I began to realize that the pregenerated characters were extremely overpowered. I honestly cannot comprehend how the rogue managed to have a +16 to his stealth check at level 1. [Edit: Okay, I see. The Goblin size bonus, and the Goblin racial bonus, stack.] This ended up detracting from the game somewhat, as I never really felt the characters were in real danger. Though, in fairness, I did significantly reduce the difficulty of each of the challenges. Not to make things easier, but simply because I can't make it seem exciting to ask players to make a DC 15 ride check three times in a row.

In the morning, the players set off on the grand one mile (1/6th of a hex) journey to the grounded ship marked on the treasure map, and the cache of fireworks it held. They were nearly there when they were accosted by Lotslegs Eat Goblin Babies Many, a giant spider who hungered for goblin flesh! Two of my cowardly players hid from the beast, the rogue succeeding at doing so despite the bells which another player had secretly attached to her clothes. The fight was brief, with minimal damage on the part of the players. Considering that this is probably the second most difficult fight in the adventure, I was somewhat disappointed in how quickly the spider was felled.

From there, the players moved on to reach the ship. And that is where things took a turn for the awesome. One of the four goblins is a cleric named Poog. According to his character sheet, Poog is ashamed of being one of the worst animal riders in the clan. The character sheet also says Poog is brave to the point of being overconfident. So when Poog was acting as a scout into the the muddy area surrounding the ship, and was charged by a rabid horse, Poog's immediate response was:

"POOG WILL RIDE HORSE!" Complete with my player's best goblin voice.

As it turned out, Poog failed to mount the charging beast, but managed to deal it a crushing blow by bracing his javelin in the mud when the horse came around for a second charge. From there on in, the events of the game took a back seat to the hilarious role playing exchanges between the characters. The woman playing the aforementioned rogue took it upon herself to goad Poog on. She heaped insults onto him, and quickly discovered that there was nothing she couldn't get Poog to do by simply telling him that he wasn't good enough to do it. And all of this simply goaded Poog onward, culminating "POOG CAN RIDE ANYTHING!" being shouted several times. In one combat, Poog and the Rogue actually took turns mounting and pushing each other off of a very confused dog which the other two party members were desperately trying to kill.

The climax of the adventure came when the four goblins were attempting to flee the ship with their firework booty. Just as they were about to escape, they were accosted by Vorka, the goblin cannibal whose fireworks they had just stolen. She had cast Spider Climb on herself before the party reached her, so her first action in combat was to walk up the vertical mast of the ship high enough so that melee attacks couldn't reach her. Unfortunately, this prompted Poog to remember that he'd earned an Elixer of Dragon's Breath during the bonfire challenges. Before the rest of the party knew what was happening, the mast was on fire, and Vorka was quickly jumping down onto the deck to avoid the flames.

The rest of the adventure proceded entirely without incident. Vorka's rolls were so terrible that she was killed without much of a fuss. And despite my attempt to destroy the player's fireworks by having the chest catch on fire, they were all dexterous enough to get the prized explosives to safety before they were ignited.

Having now played through it, "We Be Goblins!" is an entertaining way to spend four hours. It suffers significantly from lack of challenge, though. When I run a one-shot game such as this one, my expectation is to see one or more players lose their lives. Since they're never going to play these characters again anyway, what's the point of coddling them? This failing is particularly bad since the game comes with its own pregenerated characters. If they knew how powerful the PCs would be, why couldn't they make the adventure a little tougher to give it the edge it was missing?

I must reiterate that it was fun, though. It brought my group together and gave them a situation which they had a lot of fun with. I'd be a little wary of starting up yet another campaign, but I'm pretty sure everyone agreed that it would be fun to return to those characters (and that group) again someday.

Maybe I'll run them through an edited version of The Sunless Citadel next...

Why Hex Maps Need to Come Back

Above is a selection from the wilderness map created for "The Endless Stair," a TSR module for 1st edition Dungeons and Dragons originally published in 1987. Prior to the release of third edition D&D by Wizards of the Coast, maps such as this were commonplace. With that release, for reasons unknown to me, Wizards of the Coast apparently thought it was best to completely sever the connection between D&D and the noble hexagon. As a tabletop role player who started with D&D 3.x, I spent a number of years vaguely aware that some people liked hexes, but had to context as to how they could be beneficial.

It was Trollsmyth's superb series of hex mapping posts which finally drove home for me the importance of hex maps. They are not intended as a replacement for maps constructed using squares, but rather, are intended to supplement those maps in situations where squares are less appropriate. Squares work best for dungeons and other structures, where walls and rooms and corridors often snap neatly into a square grid anyway. In fact, the module I mentioned above, The Endless Stair, contains a number of dungeon maps printed on a square grid.

What hex maps are intended for is the outdoors. Squares have no place measuring nature. If any of my readers are old enough to have played the original Dragon Warrior game for the NES, they know what I mean. The game was great fun, but the squared-off overworld map looked silly even in those days of primitive technology. And while the righteous hexagon may not necessarily be a more 'natural' shape, it certainly approximates a natural shape more efficiently than its brutish cousin the square. Through the use of its two additional sides, the hexagon is more uniform in size than the square. The the distance between the center of a hex, and the center of any adjacent hex, is equal for all six sides. Whereas the square, with its 8 adjacent spaces, allows characters to travel much greater distances when moving diagonally than when moving up, down, left, or right. The only way to compensate for this extra distance is to penalize a character somehow for moving diagonally. And while this may be a simple matter on a small scale map (each space moved diagonally is counted as 1.5 spaces.), it becomes more difficult on a larger scale.

Which brings us to the next point regarding hexes: scale. Maps of dungeons or other areas which utilize squares are generally done on a small scale. The most common measurement is that 1 square is equal to 5 square feet. It's simple, and when a room is only thirty feet square, it's effective. However, wilderness travel require a larger scale by definition. No one in their right mind would try to map a forest, a mountain range, or a continent, in five-by-five foot increments. To even attempt it would be ludicrous. The standard size for a single hex on a wilderness map is six miles across from flat side to flat side. While a GM can use any scale he or she pleases, the six mile scale has a good balance. It's small enough that overland travel can be measured in a meaningful way (with most characters being able to travel between 12 and 18 miles in a day), but large enough to allow a good sized continent to fit on a piece of 8 1/2 by 11 graph paper.

The largeness of a six mile hex comes with other benefits as well. At over 30 square miles*, it's impossible for a party to fully explore every hex. They can mark down the primary terrain, and any items which they come across, but there will always be more. This means that even a hex which has already been explored can offer new challenges for players. From wandering monsters which they didn't encounter the last time, to dungeon entrances, or perhaps an entire community or fortress which was 2 or 3 miles away from the route the party took last time they passed through. The blog "I Waste the Buddha With My Crossbow" has a great post which gives you an idea of just how large this scale is.

For all the arguments I can make demonstrating the benefits of hex maps, there's one which I keep returning to time and again. An argument which, in my mind, is irrefutable proof that the D&D community needs to re-embrace hex mapping:

We don't have anything better yet!

It baffles me why Wizards of the Coast would abandon a perfectly good system without at least attempting to provide a replacement for it. But they did nothing of the sort! Wilderness travel was downplayed significantly in 3.x, and that hasn't been remedied in Pathfinder. On the rare occasion that wilderness maps are included in adventure modules, the best they can do is indicate scale with a measuring stick. Take a look at this map from one of my favorite D&D 3.5 modules, "The Standing Stone:"


What about this map is improved by the lack of a hex overlay? Nothing! Refusing to include an overlay of mighty hexagons forces the GM to add measuring tape to the already cluttered area behind the GM screen. And while it may be argued that the map is too small in scale for six-mile hexagons to be of use, I would reply that the map is perfectly scaled for three-mile hexagons. Wizards of the Coast had better options. Options which they chose to ignore for reasons I cannot even begin to guess at.

Hex maps provide us with the metric which makes world exploration possible. Without it, completely open-ended, sandbox exploration can seem like a daunting task to players and GMs alike. I know I certainly never had the guts to provide a world exploration game to my players before I learned about Hex mapping--despite being very proud of the maps I'd created! Nor have I ever been given much choice as a traveling player. Travel is always handled by indicating where I'm going, and then fading to black as I travel there. And you know what? That's sad.

As the old saying goes: "The journey is more important than the destination." Isn't that the essence of an adventure?

*Yes, I am aware of the irony of using square miles as a measurement in a post decrying the use of squares as a unit of measure. Stop mocking me!

Vecna Lives!

As I mentioned in a recent post, I'm very interested in taking old modules and updating the mechanics to be compatible with Pathfinder. And given that I'm such a huge fan of Vecna as a villain, Vecna Lives! was at the top of my list to read. I finished reading it awhile ago, and there were a couple things about it which I felt worth pondering publicly.

The one thing which is giving me the most trouble is instant and unavoidable death. I've always known that this was something which showed up in Gygaxian D&D, but I've never seriously thought about including it in a game before. I always looked on death without a saving throw as an outdated idea, one which had a kind of oldschool, hardcore charm, but not one I'd want to subject my players to. After all, I was bred on D&D 3.5, where it is a well known unwritten rule that no matter what players must always be given a chance to survive, even if that chance is just a roll of the dice.

However, if I want to update Vecna Lives! for Pathfinder, then I'm faced with a choice. Either I can include the few examples of "instant death, no saving throw" which show up in the module, or I can deviate from my attempt to be faithful to the original experience of the game. On the face of things, the rule that players must always have a chance to survive seems like a very good rule; nobody likes a game which makes them feel as though they were not given a fair chance to win. However, a saving throw is rarely the only time a player is given the opportunity to avoid a particular fate. It is the last opportunity. Actually, opportunity is somewhat of a misnomer, a character whose life rides on the success or failure of a saving throw is Schrödinger's PC. As the die rolls the character is in a state of being both alive and dead at the same time, and if the die lands on 1, then we open the box and learn that the PC was dead the whole time. And when that happens, is it really any different from a GM simply declaring that the PC has died?

Of course, quantum physics aside, a die roll is still a chance to survive, and players are right to feel they deserve a chance to survive. But as I mentioned above, the saving throw is often the last chance to survive, not the only chance. If the party encounters a statue of a dragon with a gem clenched in its marble teeth, and an ancient language swearing death to any who would disturb the monument is scrawled around the base; then perhaps the rogue who snatches the gem before the wizard finishes deciphering the warnings deserves to die. Even if nobody could read the script, the rogue could have at least used a stick to try and knock the gem out of the dragon's maw. Not only does the rogue have the opportunity to avoid death, but some adventuring sense offers much better odds than a saving throw.

Though if your GM puts such a gem in a pile of random treasure at the end of a dungeon, and whoever gets it in their share of the loot is declared dead, then your GM is a dick.

Furthermore, denying saving throws is not an all or nothing deal. In Vecna Lives! instant death effects appear twice if I recall correctly. The first is during the opening scene, where the players take control of powerful characters which have the sole purpose of being killed by the GM within minutes, just to show that this module means business. Later, if the PC's choose to attack Vecna himself during a moment of distraction on his part, the evil god snuffs them out of existence with a thought. The former is a very special and uncommon circumstance, and the latter seems to me like a justified punishment for impossible stupidity. Attacking a god is not something a non-epic character is going to get away with.I see no need to make it more complicated than "um...you're dead."

Aside from these two specific instances, there is a potential third opportunity for the players to face (or wield!) instant death. Much of the adventure revolves around the classic D&D artifacts, the Hand and Eye of Vecna. According to the information on these artifacts at the back of the book, anyone touched by the full palm of the Hand of Vecna is killed with no saving throw. Which means that if you're fighting someone who has the hand of Vecna, you're one successful touch attack away from death. Now, the module never puts the player characters in a position where they will face an opponent who wields this deadly artifact, but I'm uncomfortable even having it exist in the game.

The question, though, is how to make it fair without neutering it. It is, after all, the severed hand of a deity. It should have a fearsome and terrible power for the players to tremble before. So how about this:

Someone with the Hand of Vecna can instantly kill anyone with 10HD or less on a successful touch attack (no saving throw). Creatures with more than 10HD are entitled to a fortitude save DC 20. On a failed save, the character dies. On a successful save, the character is reduced to 1 hit point and knocked prone. If the character with the hand also possesses the eye of Vecna, the DC to resist is raised to 25. (Saving throws based on D&D 3.5 Dungeon Master's Guide)

Using this rule, players will feel almost exactly the same way about the hand: they'll want to avoid it at all costs. But even if they can't avoid it, or don't even know that their enemy has it, then they at least have a chance at achieving a near-death experience, as opposed to dying outright.

Moving on, Vecna Lives! is also the first module I've read which has such a strong focus on mystery, detective work, and role playing. A lot of adventures include some of that, but this is a ninety five page module which downplays combat encounters, and has no dungeon crawls. The adventure goes from the players trying to learn who the bad guys are, to trying to find out where the bad guys are, to trying to figure out how to stop the bad guys. And [spoiler alert] even the final solution is essentially a matter of role playing, with the PCs summoning The Old One to duke it out with Vecna, evil god to evil god.

Games like that have always been my weakness as a GM. I love to plan them, but they never quite work out the way I hope they will. It often feels as though I'm stuck nudging the players along, giving them every hint until it feels like their presence at the table is redundant because I'm playing my own adventure. Granted, my group has admitted in the past that they don't think they're very good at looking for clues, but I still feel like they might have an easier time if I took lessons from Vecna Lives!

First off, there should be a variety of ways to reach any of the conclusions necessary to move forward in the storyline. In my games I've done things such as sending the characters catch some smugglers red handed, hoping that they would take the time to interrogate one of the smugglers. This would allow them to learn the name of the smuggler's contact within the city's criminal element, and thus allow the players to come closer to finding the den of the crime boss. The problem is that my players would never think to question the smuggler, leaving me to wonder how to move the game forward without stealing their sense of accomplishment.

Vecna Lives! readily admits that players may be dense sometimes. In fact it frequently uses language like "if they still don't get that they need to do X, you may need to slap them upside the head," or my personal favorite "you may need to give up on them." However, despite the auspicious author's candid comments about players who aren't able to detect well, he also provided many paths of investigations for the characters to follow to reach the same goal. You might say that while the example of my game which I gave above constructs detective work as a linear exercise, Vecna Lives! provides GMs with an entire web of interconnected information for the PCs to discover.

For example, in trying to determine what happened to their predecessors (the powerful characters killed by the GM which I mentioned earlier), the players have the options of inquiring with the victim's colleagues and friends, or of looking into what books those characters checked out of the city's libraries before they departed on their ill fated journey. Talking to some friends might lead to other friends, and those friends might lead to specific libraries which can be investigated, and a book found there might lead the PCs to consult an expert on the book's subject matter to learn even more.

I've already got outlines for the next few games I'll be running with all of my groups, but I'm already excited to give mystery based sessions another attempt.



As a final word, I'd like to give a nod to a nice role-playing helper the module provides.

The bulk of the adventure is meant to be played by 8 pre-generated characters detailed in the back of the book. The characters are a rag-tag group, banded together by their relationship to the more powerful characters killed off in the first few minutes of the adventure. Each character's description is understandably short, but I was very pleased that they allocated the space in each of the 8 character descriptions to write seven paragraphs about that character's relationships with the other seven PCs. Reading over those descriptions gave me a sense of how the characters will work as a group. And I noticed that more than a few characters had a relationship which could provide interesting role playing opportunities. Such as the half-elf who thought the paladin was standoffish, while the paladin was only distant because the half elf reminded him of his own son. A player playing the Half Elf might easily choose to forsake the highroad and lash out at the paladin, only to have the paladin's player choose to break down crying. As a GM who often thinks about ways to better encourage my players to role play, I found this both simple, and potentially effective.

I don't know when I'll get around to updating this 95 page monster to Pathfinder, but I'll be sure to post it when I do. Don't be surprised if years pass.

A treasure trove of classic gaming

I've been a little quieter lately than normal. There are two reasons for that, neither of which is a slow down of my ideas.

1) As much energy as I have for the kind of writing I've been doing, I'm bad at maintaining that energy after a long and draining day at work. After my last post (which I don't think reflects my best work) I decided I needed to take some time to rest and relax, so I can bring my full energy to this.

2) Is...well:

Click to enlarge and check out the awesome cover art!

I recently began delving into classic D&D modules with the intent of updating the best ones for Pathfinder. My local gaming store, Fantasium, had a ton of them! The updating process will be a pain, but it would be worth it to be able to take groups through these classic adventures. And it's certainly blog-worthy content as well.

For the curious, here are the adventure modules I've got, from top left to bottom right:

Vecna Lives! By David "Zeb" Cook, published in 1990
I've always been a huge fan of Vecna as a villain. He brings depth, and an imposing presence to both cults and to the undead. Unfortunately, since I started playing after the release of 3rd edition, most of the classic Vecna stuff was already out of print. I found a PDF of this online, and have been devouring the printout I made at work. (As it turns out, I've made a few mistakes in The Girl and the Granite Throne...I think most can be explained way though.) This is also the only second edition module I have. All the rest are serious, oldschool, first edition awesomeness.

Vault of the Drow By Gary Gygax, published in 1978
Aside from Vecna Lives!, this is the only one I got in printout. I really prefer to have the actual copy, but these things are damned difficult to find and Vault of the Drow is supposed to be the adventure which made the Drow into one of the most terrifying enemies out there...at least until The Crystal Shard made them into cool loners who doesn't afraid of anything.

Earthshaker! By David "Zeb" Cook, published in 1985
I'm not the biggest fan of juxtaposing classic sword & sorcery with technology. I've nothing against it, I just never see it done in a way which appeals to me. Then again, Final Fantasy IV had a pretty awesome giant robot in it, and this was written by the same badass who wrote Vecna Lives, so I'm more than willing to give it a try. It includes maps detailing the inside of the robot. I imagine there will be fighting in there.

Adventures in Blackmoor By Dave L. Arneson and David J Ritchie, published in 1986
I haven't had much time to look at this one. However, contrary to what I said above, that mechanized horror on the front looks awesome. Less like technology and more like advanced siege weaponry. And with Dave Arneson behind it, I'm sure it's a fantastic adventure.

The Endless Stair By Ed Greenwood, published in 1987
I bought this one a week before I got the rest, so I've had the most time to peruse it. First off, Ed Greenwood, which is awesome. The adventure follows a group of adventurers as they work to unravel the mysteries of a stairway leading up into the sky, while two rival wizards watch and wait for the party to unseal the secrets of their former teacher. I really can't wait to get this one updated and run it for my group. It's a great one-off kind of game.

The Savage Coast By Merle and Jackie Rasmussen, and Anne C. Gray, published in 1985
Haven't had time to read this much at all, but it's got knights riding on horsies on the cover. Plus, "The Savage Coast" sounds crazily awesome, doesn't it?

Five Coins For A Kingdom By Allen Varney, published in 1987
Is it just me, or is "Five Coins for a Kingdom" a fantastic title? It's really high level too. Granted, I don't know much about first edition, but 3rd ed maxes out at level 20, and this adventure is for characters of level 28-32. I don't know much about it, but it comes with five cards, each representing one of the five coins. Each coin grants a special power, and causes a certain shift in personality. I'm assuming that the module calls for five players, and each gets a coin.

The War Rafts of Kron by Bruce Nesmith, published 1984
I haven't even taken this one out of the bag yet. Nautical adventures are not my greatest strength as a GM, but who cares? It looks awesome.

Death's Ride by Garry Spiegle, published 1984
Again, no idea what this is about, but the picture on the front is awesome. I'm pretty sure I've seen it somewhere before, just can't think of where.

Legacy of Blood by Steve Perrin and Katherine Kerr, published in 1987
Also haven't had a chance to open this yet, but I did lul over the stereotypically impractically immodest garb worn by the woman on the cover.

Where Chaos Reigns by Graeme Morris, published in 1985
Two things about this one have struck me. First, there is a British flag in the corner for no reason I can determine. (Perhaps the module isn't compatible with my Region 1 D&D rulebooks.) Secondly, and maybe I'm being silly here, but the pictures of the fellows atop the mammoth seem like racist caricatures of black people.

So yeah, that's what I'm up to.

Expect normal posts to resume in the coming week.