Name Change

I've been pondering what a good name for the setting is. Flintlock Fantasy covers the genre, but isn't as evocative as the names of the traditional settings of D&D-past have been. Dark Sun. Spelljammer. Dragonlance. Planescape. Even Forgotten Realms.

So I wracked my mind coming up with a cool name that covers the concept. Something with gunpowder or cannons. In combination with fantasy or magic. And then it hit me. 

The Guns of Avalon. 

It implies cannons, gunpowder, warfare. And the Avalon-part implies the magic and mysticism of the Arthurian mythos. As it happens, the Pendragon rpg was a massive inspiration for this campaign in ways that will become apparant. And so - Guns of Avalon it is.

Now I need to place Avalon in my setting. As it happens, I have just the niche for it...

Mapbashing

 I've been struggling with my world map. In my mind, the map looked like a blown up and modernized version of Greyhawk's Flanaess, with two cradles of civilization east and west and a large body of water in the middle. I've been conceptualizing the campaign as "Three Musketeers except the age is the Napoleonic Wars and the theater is around the North Sea". I have a strong affinity for the North Sea and its bordering countries. Yet the tropes I want to emphasize - continental war, massive flintlock-armed forces, grand tactical operations - implied a landlocked setting.

The Napoleonic Wars were essentially a conflict between three empires, two of them landlocked (Russia and Austria), for control of a continent. I realized I had been conceptualizing this fantasy map the wrong way. Instead of putting a body of water at the center, I should put the landscape that armies cross at the forefront.

Empires or civilizations essentially cluster along major rivers or other bodies of water. The Roman Empire cradled the Mediterranean Sea. The ancient Egyptians settled on the Nile. So my fantasy civilizations should cluster around rivers or other waters also. Agreed, the North Sea does just that, but it incentivizes naval warfare whereas I am looking for continental conflicts.

So, inspired by a recent post on Spriggan's Den, I took to mapbashing. For the heart of the Celestial Empire I took the Danube, the second-longes river in Europe and central to a great empire of early modernity. For the Borgondian revolutionaries I took the Rhine basin, as it empties into the North Sea and I strongly identify the Borgondians with the Low Countries. And for the Kurgen hordes I turned to a combination of Russia and Scandinavia. And I mashed them up.

This is a work in progress, but already I can see the Hordes of Uzh marching south on the eastern shores of the Winter Sea while Orcish raiders harry the shores of Borgondia. Following the Graven River south to its source brings you to the Andunorean Watershed, and through Seraph's Gate to Aurora, the capital of the Celestial Empire with the Esther River at its heart. Imperial armies ready for battle as they strive to defend their holdings in the Black Spine Mountains.

Session #5

 When we last left the party, Marcus the Fighter and Barry the Magic-User had been petrified from the gaze of a Basilisk. Their friends, the Elves Truus and Ripper and Linn the Thief, had retreated to the base of a tower aboveground to retrieve a mirror. Returning to the underground passage, the trio find the enemy Magic-User who charmed Ripper, accompanied by a heavily-armed Elven woman. They first use the mirror to petrify the Basilisk and then open fire on the Elven woman, who turns invisible, and Magic-User. Meanwhile, Barry is slowly regaining the use of his limbs and casts a sleep spell, snaring a small, previously hidden, impish creature. The Magic-User flees into his quarters but the Elven woman - revealed to be a half-orc assassin - appears between Linn and Truus, stabbing both adventurers and poisoning Linn. With a critical shot from his musket, Ripper takes the assassin down, but Linn slumps to the ground, dying from poison. 

The party restores Linn by giving her one dose of a potion of greater healing, enabling her to recover. The group then continues into the Magic-User's chambers, discovering all manner of strange objects, including a strange, magically warded, map and a piece of parchment protected by a spell. Meanwhile, the petrifying effect on Marcus also wears off, and he wanders in the room with the rest of the party. 

The Elves detect a hidden passage, beyond which Marcus finds the laboratory of the Magic-User. But there is no sign of the fugitive, he must have fled by magical means. Various potions, boxes full of coins and an assortment of gems are taken from the chamber. Barry takes two books - one of which is cursed - from bookstands in the room and five tomes full of magic spells from a cabinet. But is is Linn the Thief that finds the prize of the expedition. In an iron box, she finds a gilded human skull, radiating with magic and unease. Touching the skull with a finger, she briefly experiences a magical sensation. Placing a hand on the skull, she is flooded with insight to pierce all lies, to perceive evil intent and the knowledge to operate the altar on the abbey's surface level. She closes the box and, gathering up the treasures from the laboratory, the party heads back to the surface, and to Burg.

Flintlock Fantasy House Rules

For the game I'm currently running, I use a heavily modified Old School Essentials crossed with Dungeon Crawl Classics. As the players are (with the exception of my wife) all first-time D&D/RPG players, a simple "old school" ruleset had my preference and I have a (Dutch!) copy of the Mentzer Basic set from the 80's. I didn't want to burden the players with choice between dozens of feats and a myriad of character races and classes, so the old school way seemed the best way.

That said, I did file some of the more "tough to explain" serial numbers from the ruleset. We use ascending AC and attack bonuses, for example. But also, we dropped the vestigial 3-18 ability score, instead only using the modifier (each player received 5 points to distribute among their various attribute modifiers).

In addition, I have taken a liking to certain embellishments and baroque elements that Dungeon Crawl Classics has added to the game. For example, Magic-Users, Elves and Clerics in my game don't lose a spell after casting. Instead, they make a spellcasting check modified by their spellcasting ability, aiming to score 10+spell level to cast. A failure means the spell isn't cast that round and a 1 means the spell is lost for the day. 

Furthermore, I like the Mighty Deeds mechanic for fighters and the corresponding Deed Die. Though Marcus the Fighter has yet to reach 4th level (and the raise in attack bonus), I have already laid out a system for adopting that mechanic. Instead of a static attack bonus increase, Fighters receive a greater bonus die to add to their attack at level 4 and every three levels thereafter. They can also, during their round in combat, state to perform a Mighty Deed such as backing the enemy into a corner, tripping their opponent or swinging from a chandelier. The Deed succeeds on a 3+ of the bonus die. 

Last but not least, I uniformed the XP progression for all classes. XP in the world of Flintlock Fantasy is gained by spending 2d6 x 100 gp a week carousing. The amount in gold spent is the XP gained that week. On average, that means 700 XP per week. I laid out a chart to see how many weeks it would be desirable to adventure before reaching level 2 and each level thereafter up to level 14. I then calculated the XP gain needed for each. 

There are various other minor changes. Flintlock weapons, for example, are the dominant form of offense and armor has had some flavor changes too. Those will get covered in an upcoming post. 

Session #4

When we last left our heroes, they had just robbed a Buckrider hideout on the grounds of the ruined Abbey and delivered two magical rings to the town of Burg's resident wizard, Wanda. Deliberating their next course of action in Burg's paramount drinking establishment, the Brewer's Inn, they opted to return to the Buckrider hideout and lay an ambush for the bandit leader. However, they decide that - not knowing the strength of their opposition - a little extra cannon fodder help would be in order. 

With five musket-bearing soldiers on loan from the town magistrate, the party makes its way to the ruined tower on the Abbey grounds. There, two guardsmen take up a vulnerable position in the center of the tower, pretending to be tied up to lure the antagonists into the building, while the rest of the guards and the party takes up strategic positions around the tower.

After a few hours, Ripper (one of the Elves, able to see in starlit darkness) spots a group of five men with five treasure-laden buck-goats led on a leash walking toward an abandoned ruin nearby, exiting after a few minutes without the goats and the sacks of treasure. Ripper the Elf identifies two mooks and three heavily armed men, one armored in curiass. The cuirass-wearing man, probably the leader, swings open the door to the tower and is immediately surprised by the two helpless looking Burg musket-men within. He orders the two mooks to investigate at which point Marcus the Fighter slams the door shut behind the bandits. Chaos ensues. Linn the Thief tries to waste one of the mooks with her crossbow but misses. Ripper blasts his musket, downing the mook and the other mook is overtaken by the not-so-helpless guardsmen. Marcus suffers a wound from one of the two bandit-lieutenants but is soon put to sleep by Barry the Magic-User, casting a sleep spell (succeeding in putting the other remaining bandits to sleep as well). 

With the bandits taken prisoner, they make their way back to Burg the following day, entering the town as heroes and being welcomed as such by Cornelis, the magistrate. He rewards the party and (in the town square, with dozens of onlookers) loudly praises their deeds and proclaims them heroes of Burg. 

But the heroes of Burg don't rest on their laurels, their work ethic compels them to delve the mysterious passageway beneath the bandit tower they uncovered last session. Making his way down the ladder, Ripper finds a finely woven Elven-wrought cloak (immediately claimed by Barry), a crossbow and nine enchanted crossbow bolts and various phials of liquid, alongside a motherlode of coin - the Buckrider's secret stash. At the bottom of the ladder, beside the treasure, is a small passageway leading northeast, underneath the Abbey ruins.

With Barry the Magic-User at the head of the column, the party makes its way down a few dozen yards of corridor, before it bends east and then south. And though both Elves' preternatural senses don't pick up any danger or sound, the party walks right into an ambush as it is faced by a terrible, lizard-like creature with a mystical gaze. Ripper the Elf, Marcus the Fighter and Barry the Magic-User immediately feel their bodies stiffen and their companions watch in horror as their skin takes on a greyish hue. Linn the Thief and Truus the Elf choose discretion as the better part of valor and remember that one of the rooms in the tower contained a mirror. Ripper actually succeeds in shaking off this paralyzed condition and runs into a door he spots. But instead of safety, he bumps into a magic user that first tries to cast a spell (which gets interrupted by Ripper's musket) but then succesfully charms the Elf. Even so, Ripper escapes yet again and makes his way to Truus and Linn who by now have found a mirror to use against the monster's gaze. And that's where we will pick up two weeks from now.

The Town of Burg

The action in the current OSE-game takes place in the town of Burg and its surrounding villages and coutryside. A small town of a few thousand inhabitants, burg sits on the road from Gravenstein on the Graven River to the southern provinces of Burgundy. The fires of the Revolution have so far passed Burg by, but it was the scene of a major battle two hundred years ago. Piecing together the history of that battle, the party has learned that a northern invasion force laid siege to the abbey south of Burg and was defeated by the Burgundian king. Now that the king has been deposed and the tyranny of feudal lordship has been abolished, adventurers and archeologists flock to Burg to seek the lost treasures of that battle.

The party has for the past three sessions explored the ruined Abbey of Bourgh but has also picked up other rumours of strange occurences:

• According to legend, the dunes west of Burg harbor a sleeping dragon! Without question, many treasures could be found beneath the sands. There's only one problem: the dunes are cursed!
• The dunes might also be connected to the myth of Aenarys, the First Sorcerer. 
• Supernatural thieves and bandits plunder and terrorize the countryside, demonic figures riding flying goats setting fire to villages, farms and cloisters.
• There are rumours of foreign men looting the Tomb of the Forgotten King, north of Burg, in search of a legendary sword.
• East of Burg, the remnants of enormous war-mammothes deployed in the Battle for Burg two centuries ago can be found. In the cavity of one of the skulls one can find an oracle with seven strangely-shaped rocks, connected to the gods according to the oracle.
• Nearby the southern lake, a large pile of rocks can be found. Travelers claim the rocks move at night.
• Also at night around the lake, misty white women form. There are rumours that these white women provide help or even healing, but also that they are ghosts that curse those that come too near.
• Falling stars are not uncommon, only recently has a star crashed in the southern forest. And though a search has been conducted for weeks, nothing has yet been found.
• Around Burg, mysterious travelers can occasionaly be seen, wearing faded cloaks and their faces shrouded except for their eyes. Stories circulate that these are robbers of bandits, but there is no proof that anyone has actually been attacked by these cloaked figures.

So there you have it! All the exciting news in the coutryside town of Burg. More will undoubtedly follow. For now, I leave you with this map.

Player's map of Burg's surroundings. Every dash represents 15 minutes of traveling. The black built-up area in the center is the Town of Burg. Other black icons represent villages. The red outlines are adventure sites.

Session Report #3: Carousing, Banditry and a Mysterious Passageway

When we last left our heroes, they had just returned from a second foray into the ruined Abbey of Bourgh, laden with gold and jewelry. In the Brewer's Inn, they sold a golden belt and necklace, art objects of the fallen Imperium of the Dawn according to the group's magic-user, to a shady group of dwarves for a hefty profit of 10,000 gp and blew their hard-earned gold on carousing.

I have always liked carousing-rules in D&D but never been able to use them. My previous campaigns (3E and 4E) always used story-based XP or combat XP. My current 5E game provides almost no XP for combat and mostly for treasure taken back to civilization (though with nifty additional sources of XP). With this game being based on OSE, I sought to explore the roots of the hobby and implemented a carousing system.

I will explain the full system in a future post. For now it is enough to know that players can spend gold to gain XP on a 1 for 1 basis, the amount of money spent being determined by a roll of 2d6 and multiplying by 100 for the gold spent in one week. Carousing mishaps happen on doubles. Both the magic-user and the thief suffered a mishap. The magic-user awoke robbed of a small amount of coin, the thief experienced a misunderstanding with the authorities and had to spend 125 gp on a fine.

The party caroused for two weeks to reach level 2 for most of the group, the magic-user and fighter partying for an additional week. They also met Burg's town magistrate who warned them of bandit attacks, and a friendly local woodchuck who warned them of nightly troll wanderings...

(Side-note: when I write troll, seasoned D&Ders should picture hairy ogres. In the lands of Flintlock Fantasy, hairy ogres are what passes for trolls. That's not all but maybe the secret of the ogre-trolls will be revealed in a future post.)

With their skills increased and their coffers running dry, the party headed back to the ruined abbey, this time to explore the surface grounds some more. They happened upon human footprints leading to a faint trail. Walking the trail, the party ran into a few dozen giant rats but managed to scare them off, before coming upon a ruined tower.

The tower proved to be inhabited by a gang of ruffians, three of whom shot crossbow bolts from the ruined second story of the tower. The magic-user quickly ensorcelled them into a deep sleep and the thief barged in the front door. Inside, four more bandits were preparing to meet the party in arms. The thief failed to effectively hide but one of the elves managed to cast entangle to pin the bandits in place. After that, they were picked off by the party (though the fighter suffered a flesh wound).

Questioning one of the sleeping bandits yielded the knowledge that they were part of the infamous "Buckrider"-gang terrorizing the countryside. Their master was away on a raid at the moment. Somehow, they are connected to the forces beneath the ruined abbey as the captured bandit claimed they were forbidden of entering the dungeons or even approaching the mysterious altar. Searching the ruined tower yielded a fresh supply of gold, a jeweled dagger, four bolts of silk and a jeweled short sword. They returned to Burg with 5 captive and 2 dead bandits and claimed a reward from the town's magistrate. He confided that the Buckrider gang has indeed been raiding the countryside. The party, resolving to strengthen their reputation for heroism, is determined to set an ambush for the Buckrider's master at nightfall...