Midnight In The Desert (Buckets of Blood Campaign Pitch)

Art from Cosimo Galluzzi. Most art here from them, actually

You're a broke loser, and you and some other broke losers have just met up in front of some 70s muscle car.  The voice on the payphone told you that it would get you all out of debt if you could simply deliver this briefcase to an address on the other side of the United States - and PLEASE don't open it, it's really for your own good. Whether it's from New York to New Mexico or from Washington to Florida doesn't really matter, because no matter what it's gonna be a long drive.

Inside the car is:

• The keys.
  
• A loaded double-barrel shotgun, with six more shells in the glovebox.
• One thousand dollars in cash. 
• A walkie-talkie with no batteries. Your employer's preferred method of communication.
• The briefcase. Locked and covered with talismans from every religion you can recognize, and several you don't. Don't open the briefcase.

If you for some reason find yourself opening the briefcase, then inside you find an ancient book with yellowed pages, everything written in Classical Arabic. How do you understand Classical Arabic? You do now.

It is The Necronomicon.

The briefcase and the talisman's purpose is to hide its presence. Open it, and you gain the magical equivalent of a nuke, but at the cost of having every single thing that wants that nuke know your precise location. That's assuming you open it. What if you do as you're told?

Well, you drive across the U.S.. You beg, borrow, and steal more money. You enjoy classic Americana (this was Marilyn Monroe's favorite diner!). You fend off demon cults, lovecraft cults, demonic horrors, lovecraftian horrors, government men, and cryptids/aliens. You marvel at natural beauty.

His head was killing him—but he felt on the brink of something big,
 something important. He had to get out, get
away from the house and the noise.
Out into the warm evening air.

Even with the book concealed, it still attracts all sorts of weirdness. Everywhere you go, something is wrong, and woe be upon the place where you linger for more than a day or two. To put it in more gameplay-oriented terms, the main loop would be travelling while trying to maintain resources (sleep, gas, food), and dealing with spooky complications on the road and at towns. As for tone, it should be spooky and weird, but have a humorous B movie edge, even if the humor is in the excessive amounts of gore.

All this takes place in the 80s/90s, of course.

1d6 Spooky Road Events

1. While driving at night, the environment around you is suddenly bathed in darkness. Then the road stripes disappear. Then the road. 
2. You hear the patter-patter of feet on the road, then something lands BAM on the roof. If you get out and see what it was you see something running off in the distance, leaving nothing but bloody bandages and the smell of rotten meat.
3. Carrion birds circle and follow your car.
4. An engine starts behind you, and you see red and blue lights. A police motorcycle is heading for you at top speeds, with no regards for the driver's safety.
5. A man sitting in the back seat asks for a drink. He wasn't there before.
6. Blocking the road is a procession of hooded, robed people. You're gonna be here for a while.

Rolling blackouts scheduled for this evening.

1d6 Creeps and Weirdos

1. A horned person in a business suit, floating as if underwater. His/her/their face is intensely familiar. He/she/they ask if you remember him/her/them. He/she/they will make you remember.
2. WHAT THE FUCK ITS THE FUCKIN MOTHMAN! He steals some of your snacks and tells you some cryptic advice about the next encounter/danger. He's a cool dude, really, the type you can chill out and have a couple beers with.
3. Someone in a lab coat who's exploded into crushing red and yellow tentacles, their deflated body being dragged along. It constantly emits a high pitched whine, like a thousand mosquitos. The disease isn't biological, listen for too long and you might catch it too.
4. A giant bigfoot wearing a top hat. He throws ripped-off cow genitals at your windshield and laughs heartily. It's only gonna escalate from here.
5. A battered pickup truck truck filled with teenagers, power tools, and kerosene. They've listened to one too many metal songs and played one too many games of B/X, and are now on a sadistic rampage. Forget no harm to minors, it's kill or be killed and they're probably all possessed anyways.
6. An elderly middle eastern man, wearing dark glasses. He's hitchhiking, and who would deny some poor old man? In reality, he wants to revisit some of the work of his youth, and he won't let anyone get in his way.

A psychic disease buzzing like a
summer evening. Lurid. Pervasive.

1d6 Particularly Messed-Up Towns

1. There's a certain sadness to this town. The historical St. Obed's Church was the people's pride and joy, and ever since it burnt down it seems like the community have all entered a state of mourning. They're even refusing to have more children.
2. The people here all have memory problems. They struggle to remember why you're talking to them, facts about the town, what they normally do. Peoplewatching, everyone seems to just move on autopilot. At night, they all go outside to look at the lights in the sky.
3. Everything's closed down, except for the mall. Car not working? Go to the mall. Need a doctor? Go to the mall. What about a place to sleep? Go to the mall. From the outside, the mall doesn't look like it's received any changes to accommodate anything.
4. This town is surrounded by a sort of bubble. No matter what time of year, when you go through the threshold, it's a sweltering, humid summer. It's almost like an everlasting summer, bro that's pretty messed up bro.
5. There's no one here. Everything's free. Something moves in the corn, though, laughing. This town is theirs now, and it does not suffer thieves.
6. Holy shit and piss and cum they put fluoride in the drinking water.

One day, the tides went out and never came back - still he heard the waves out in the desert.

20 Minute Dungeon - Troll's Tower

 

Recently, I heard that the man behind the blog Caput Capre had gotten into a private drunken challenge with some friends. In it, they each had to design an entire dungeon within the span of only twenty minutes. This sounded fun to me, and so I decided to try it myself. The result was the Troll's Tower, a crumbling ruin home to a ravenous, stealthy troll. I did the initial challenge on paper*, and then copied down the writing onto a Google Doc for better legibility. You can find the result down below:

The idea behind this challenge is to unleash your inner designer id; no thinking, no cruft, just vomit out the idea of a dungeon onto the page. It would probably work best with some sort of prompt, selected before you start the timer. Caput Caprae had "opera", while I had mossy ruins on the mind. If even one person bandwagons off of this, I'll be happy. If no one does, then I might be a bit miffed?

Click ME for legible text

*I don't even like the idea of mapping software. I'd much rather draw it with my own two hands, even if the result looks worse.

3 WAY PICTURE PONG AT SUMMER SLAM 1997

 I have been challenged by Locheil of The Nothic's Eye and Cosmic Orrery of Cosmic Orrery to an EPIC THREE WAY PICTURE PONG. I can't say that I'll do this until I drop dead, but at least I'll try.

This is obviously one of the CLASS PROJECTS OF THE ALPHA THETA LAMBDA FRATERNITY:

After all, necromancy isn't free. You need raw material, after all, and sometimes there's no nearby villages that are practical for "recruitment". The Alpha Theta Lambda Fraternity, as part of a long term project for Wizard College, are investigating whether giant graveyards are a viable alternative. While most projects so far have mainly been using the bones in various ways, they've started to see what they can do with what flesh remains. That's what the thing above is; a bunch of rotten giant flesh stuffed inside some scavenged giant greaves, and animated with necromantic magic. It's currently being tested on some knights who think that necromancy is an "abomination", and who don't respect the sanctity of Wizard College.

As for this, I'm 99% sure that this is a PLAY PUT ON FOR THE AMUSEMENT OF FAIRIES:

Fairies think themselves superior to humans (because they mostly are), and hate when humans seem to try and upstage their luxurious lifestyle. So, when they feel especially insecure, a troupe will head over to the nearest collection of rich/influential people, and force them to prepare a play. If a person is lucky, like the lady on the right, they'll merely have to act well on pain of fairy curse. If they're unlucky, like that bureaucrat on the left, they'll have to do it in a ridiculous/impractical/uncomfortable costume, like a hollowed-out mossy rock.

As for my responses:

To the Nothic I give this image of a man going who knows where:

And to the Orrery I give this lovely group of people:

Answering Vayra's 10 Questions

To hop onto the bandwagon, and potentially get ranked, I decided to cover the 10 questions from  Vera Lynn's blog. I have no specific home setting, so this is mostly cobbled-together cool stuff that I would include in a world that I run.

Blog posts without pictures are intensely boring

1) What class knows the most martial arts? Are they real martial arts like kung fu, or made up ones like krav maga?

There's no martial art-sy classes included by default, although I'm fine if you want to play one. There's no schools or dojos of martial arts either. However, there's plenty of travelling weirdos and vagabonds, more than a few of which willing to teach you their own personal style.

2) Can I start out having already made a deal with the devil or do I have to do that in game?

In game, mostly because it's more fun to meet the weird spirit and negotiate with them than to do it in character creation. Devils are weird; some people say that angels and devils are from otherworld dimensions, while others say that they're just like earthly spirits, only from the surface of the sun and core of the earth. In any case, you can definitely make deals with any of those things.

(Side note: you can also make a deal with The Kingdom, far to the east. Just alert a Royal Emissary and they'll have the papers and some cool stuff in no time. Expect to follow some byzantine code of honor in exchange.)

3) Do you want me to write an 8-page backstory? Can I write an 8-page backstory, if I want to? If I write something down in it like I'm the timelost princess of the brass city and the daughter of the sun and I commanded legions in the Hell War but was betrayed by my father's vizier but I don't know that, or that I'm elf conan and cooler than everyone else, will that be true?

I'm fine with backstory, just don't make it too crazy. It's the backstory for a reason, all the cool things are supposed to happen while playing.

4) If I eat someone's heart, will I gain their powers? What about their brain?

Sometimes eating the heart will heal even the deadliest diseases, sometimes it's just a delicious cut of meat. Sometimes the brain grants awesome psychic powers, sometimes it grants Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Eating things generally grants power, but it depends on what you're eating and what part.

5) These classes are boring, can I be one from somewhere else? What about from a different system entirely?

As long as it's from the system (usually GLOG) and I get to look over it, I'm fine with it! I have no solid "world", so I can probably make it fit with a bit of fiddling and thinking.

6) If I make a sword, which one of us gets to name it?

The sword-spirit decides. Sometimes it decides within a minute of being quenched, other times it remains nameless for decades, until it's cracked and rusted and bloodied. People often think that they decide their sword's name themselves, but the spirit's influence is subtle when it comes to dubbing itself.

7) Am I allowed to kill the other player characters? What would I have to do to be allowed to? Do I win if I kill them all? Actually, how do I win in general?

PvP is judged on a case-by-case basis, but as long as both players are cool with it OOC, I won't pull any punches. You win by bringing peace to your pastoral little Ghibli village, or by making so many spirit deals and collecting so much magic that you ascend to something not quite human. (Yes, I associate being turned into a weird magical NPC with winning. Why wouldn't I?)

8) What language stands in for 'Common'? Or what are we all talking to each other in? Like the party, mostly, but also everyone else?

Common, mostly. Not any Earth language. I know that's a bit boring, but the idea of finding something in plain English via dimensional shenanigans and having no idea how to read it is extremely entertaining.

9) How do I learn how to talk to rocks? No not once a day just, like, normally?

You just gotta know the language. The spirits all technically speak one language, but the dialects are all so varied that they might as well be different. If you know how to speak to birds, for example, then the spirits of the river or the dead will understand you, but only barely (and vice versa). People who know many of these dialects are revered, for being the bridge between the human and spirit worlds.

10) Which kinds of wizards get to serve kings and live in towers and shit and which ones are run out of town or stoned to death in the streets? Can I be both? At the same time?

Clerics, priests, bards, witches, druids, warlocks, shamans, sorcerers, mages, magic-users, and the like are what you would typically consider "wizards" and wander the wilds or live on the edge of town, solving weird problems and speaking with spirits as previously mentioned. Royal mages are unseen, as are most elements of The Kingdom, but are responsible for many of the wonders from there that find their way out west. Wizards with a capital W are people possessed by magic? become one with it? are magic made flesh?, are walking natural disasters, and are completely inhuman and fucking terrifying.

I've realized over the course of making this that I don't know exactly what I want, only that it be points of light.

ELEVEN THREE NAMES

 Three times it wield Excalibur,

and through the air it gleamed.

Then to waters black it sank,

no more to be seen.

    No weapon quite has the same mystique as the sword, but so often they're bogged down with lame or overdramatic names. Such is not the problem with THREE WORD NAMES. 3 is an auspicious number, and such spiritual power will add much-needed weight to your weapons' blows.

Pale, Chardun, Bronte, Ossgold, and Adamant are not my creation. Look for it as you must, for I refuse to give context nor clemency to you.

FOG BEFORE SUNRISE: He is a large claymore of adamant. The blade is cracked and nicked, and whatever he tries to say is drowned out in a wordless rasp. His blade dirties water and makes wounds fester. Those who lick it contract leprosy, and can take a template in that class if they so choose. Kept in the treausure vault of a dead king.

SLOUCHES TOWARDS BIRTH: She is a light blakas of bronte. She whispers blasphemies against the g_ds, and thinks it a game, to rile up those of faith. Living things cut by her bleed far more than should be  possible. They don't bleed out any quicker, but everything nearby is left soaked and slick. Other things scratched by her slowly weep honey. Lies buried in a shallow grave.

VELOCITY DESIGN COMFORT: They are a medium shashka of bronte. Their blade is thick and has small holes in it, and the guard is wrapped with multiple strings. It can be played as a flute, and the strings can unwind and be held taught to produce harplike sounds (the bronte bonus applies when playing it). They serve as a centerpiece to the nest of a dire magpie.

DIVINITY OF TEETH: She is a +1 superlative sword of adamant. A quiet, hateful thing. Her name is carved in large, crude letters wrapping around the grip, and the "point" of the blade is flat and square. While drawn, metal within 20 feet of her twists and warps violently. Currently lodged between two rocks in the deadliest, most inhospitable part of your setting.

SEXLESS HYDROGEN CLOUD: She is a medium dao of ossgold. Her name is inscribed along the flat of her blade in tiny letters, repeating over and over. She sparks greatly when struck with a flint, and fires lit with her burn long, hot, and bright. Is pinning a squirming zombie to a tree and is very unhappy about it.

DEEP TIME BRIDGE: He is a light kris of pale. He speaks in nonsense riddles and koans, and his blade gleams with cold star-light. Whoever holds it no longer needs to breathe. This served his former owner well, on the trek up the summit for sky burial.

SEVEN SEVEN ANGELS: She is a medium paramerion of ossgold. Her hilt and blade are decorated with brass laurels. Stern and formal. The movement of her blade dampens sound; when violently waved about, the area in a 30ft radius becomes completely silent. Works as the baton for a very avant-garde conductor. 

MEDITATION PRACTICES DEATH: They are a medium makhaira of ossgold and chardun. Worked into the metal is the ashes of a priest, and the sheath is specially made to keep the sword immersed with anointing oil. Prick your tongue with the blade, and whenever it goes out of sight, you can call it back to your hand by reciting its name. Held in the hand of a statue at a monastery. 

I SOFTLY CARESS: She is a medium gladius of pale and bronte. Her blade is polished to a mirror sheen, and she is highly adverse to fighting. Spirits of all kinds can faintly sense the blade, and will become curious about it. They, even the invisible ones, can be seen in the sword's reflection. She sits on a mossy stump in a quiet forest grove.

A LIGHT GREEN: He is a medium Oakeshott XV of chardun and bronte. His pommel and rain-guard are bronze, and engraved with scenes of nobles hunting game. His touch turns water to ice, ice to steam, and steam to water. Is stuck in a lake, floating and sinking as the phases of water around it rapidly change.

BLACK BARGE SAILS: He is a medium longsword of pale and adamant. He is unadorned of any decorations. When thrust into the ground, flowers bloom around him, and any fighting within 15ft of him hurts as if you struck yourself with your blow. Gripped in the hands of a nameless soldier, on some windswept battlefield.

A GLOG In The Dark: The Whisper

 Blades In The Dark is a fun game, and has been on my mind recently. So when someone asked on the OSR discord server if there were any ghost-related GLOG classes, well, it got the gears in my brain turning.

The Whisper

Whether you were born with it, trained for it, or gained it suddenly, you have a connection with the dead. You hear their staticky voices in the night, feel the electric tingle of their presence. You are a medium, an occultist, a necromancer in the original sense of the word. You call upon the dead, and they respond. 

As a quick aside, I use spirit to refer to incorporeal undead in general

Starting Equipment: Dark clothing, a light weapon, spirit mask, 2 ghost bottles, lantern, and roll twice for or choose one other piece of equipment from the list at the end

Starting Proficiencies: Light weapons, light armor, guns

Starting Skills (roll 1d3): 1. Occultism    2. Skulduggery    3. Electrical Engineering

• A: Spirit Sight, Tongue of the Dead                                                                            
• B: Exorcist's Grit, Shadow Veil                                                                             
• C: Command                                                                                    
• D: Ghost-Tamer, Overcharge

Spirit Sight: While wearing your spirit mask, you can see into the Spirit Realm, where the souls of dead things leave their echoes. You can see the spirits of the dead around you, as well as the remains of particularly important ruins that have since fallen. The world appears hazy and indistinct, and you have trouble differentiating between the real world and the ghost one while the mask is on.

Tongue of the Dead: You can speak to ghosts while wearing your mask. Most are either cryptic, confused, or aggressive, although you're bound to get at least a few scraps of information from them.

Exorcist's Grit: Spiritual toughness is just as important as the physical kind. You cannot be magically frightened or possessed.

Shadow Veil: You can project your soul from your body, up to 10 feet away. It appears as a faint distortion of light and space. and can pass through walls. If it comes into contact with electricity, you take 2d6 damage as your soul experiences a deadly power surge.

Command: You can call upon a spirit that you see and force it to obey a single order from you. You can use this ability [template] times per day for free; after that, you take 1d6 damage each time as outside ghostly energy begins to saturate your soul.

Ghost-Tamer: When speaking to ghosts, you can force their answers to be clear and concise, dimming them to an ember in the process. Each time you do this, you must leave a offering or tribute to the extinguished ghost, or else the Spirit Realm will begin to grow hostile to you.

Overcharge: With a look, you can connect your soul, the soul of another person, and the Spirit Realm all together. in a ghostly short circuit. Roll up to 4d6; both you and one visible creature of your choice take that much damage as you are fried by electro-spiritual energy.

Starting Items:

1. Spirit Mask, usually made out of wood or metal. Allows anyone to see the faint signs of the dead, and grants you your Sight.
2. 2 Spirit Bottles, compact metal canisters with a small latched door on one side. Open the door to suck in the nearest spirit and trap it, open again to release.
3. A Swordcane. 1d6 damage, light, concealable, and classy.
4. A Rifle. 2d8 damage, range of 60ft, takes half a minute to reload, breech-loading. Ammo sold seperately.
5. Lancaster Pistol. 2d6 damage per shot, range of 30ft, holds 4 shots, takes a round to reload per cartridge. Breech-loading, ammo sold seperately.
6. Lightning Hook. A long collapsible rod with a electrified loop of heavy wire at the end. Can grab onto spirits and drag them around.
7. Occult Paraphernalia. Bones, candles, chalk, astrological charts, and various other items that one would commonly use in ritual magic, all conveniently packed into a single container.
8. Leviathan Blood. A large canister of blood, with wires and metal clamps sticking out of both sides. Basically a giant battery, highly explosive.
9. Spiritbane Charm. While worn in a visible place, spirits will refuse to interact with or get close to the wearer unless absolutely necessary. 
10. Shadow Cloak. Perfectly colored to blend into areas of dim light. Too light to work in absolute darkness.
11. Electroplasm Bullets. A set of 6 bullets that are partially in phase with the Spirit Realm. Deals full damage to spirits, but only half to corporeal beings.
12. Ghost Oil. Things with the oil poured onto it become ghostly, becoming solid to spirits and incorporeal to people. Works on living things (but make sure to cover the whole body!), lasts 10 minutes. 3 doses.
13. Powdered Silence. When dusted around, dampens any sound around it into a whisper. Less effective in open spaces, 3 doses.
14. Sludge. A ghost, "cooked down" into liquid and put into a bottle. The fumes get you incredibly high.
15. Vantablack Paint. Anything covered with it becomes perfectly black. 5 doses.
16. A Journal, one that once belonged to a now well-established witch.
17. Biolumen Liquid. An injectable bacterial cocktail that causes swollen, glowing growths. Works well on sealife, iffy on birds, moderately toxic to mammals and reptiles.
18. Inklantern. When a candle is lit inside, this lantern radiates darkness instead of light.
19. Fine Whiskey, the real expensive stuff.
20. Something weird, roll 1d6
1. NINE SWORDS REVERSED, a cinquedea of pale. The presence of this dagger instills a strong sense of anxiety and dread to anyone not holding it.
2. A Signet Ring of a prestigious noble family that still carries respect. No one needs to know that you got it via grave-robbing
3. A Copper Bell with no clapper. Rings whenever something nearby dies.
4. The True Name to a powerful demon, which would probably be pissed if you summon or command it.
5. Scrimshaw of sailors going Leviathan hunting. Sleeping near it always causes dreams of ocean depths and night skies, which frightens you awaken if danger is close.
6. A Calculation Engine, inside a carrying case. Computes numbers, time, distance, and anything else mathematical. The perfect combination of heavy and fragile.         

         

(Highly Incomplete) LIBRA Adventure

 I made an adventure for the LIBRA GLOGhack by Archon's Court to run for my players soon. It's very barebones, and is pretty much just glorified DM notes, but there's probably at least some useful stuff in there. I've never been much for revising anyways

Ever since 2011, McNeil Island in the Puget Sound has been known as the home of around 200 of Washington's worst rapists, pedophiles, and sex offenders. Or at least, that's what the government says. In reality, the island has become a base of the government agency OSIRIS, as a testing ground for inducing psychic powers. As test subjects, you are glorified prisoners, being experimented on with strange chemicals. But, one day, a GRU-P bioweapon escapes on-site testing, giving you an opportunity to escape. Can you take it?

Click HERE to access it