Smile for the camera ... or because your lips have rotted away.

The party had never tried CoC before, so we spent a little time making characters. Erick (Lucan) made himself a career Army guy, a corporal who’d seen service all over the world. He had good weapons skills, a huge amount of healing training – and a weak heart. Fortunately* for him, this would prove to not be a hindrance to his future career. Storm (Moonstorm) came up with an educated Latino character, first-generation American and interested in ancient languages. He knew French, German, Latin and some others, all of which helped him – and the others. Blake (Ilana) had a dilettante character, a wealthy young man who had joined the Lafayette Escadrille for fun and who found himself in the infantry after the unit disbanded. While a fairly well-qualified CoC character, he rolled … poorly during the session. Meagan (Zayna) built another dilettante, a young homosexual man who had been forced into the Army by his family, who hoped it would make a man of him. Ryan (Kalfas) used one of the pre-generated characters from the scenario, playing as a young Irish tough with Mob connections.

All of them found themselves on the cold, foggy morning of October 2nd, 1918, advancing with the 308th Infantry Reg’t into the dank Argonne forest. As the advance broke down, with units getting lost in the fog and no one quite sure where they were, they realized that the entire 1st Battalion had gotten cut off and was trapped by the Germans.

The players suffered an artillery barrage that evening, and were then sent off to see if they could make contact with either B or D Companies, both of which had gotten lost. They headed out under the leadership of Lt. Wilhelm, but quickly found themselves separated from the rest of the group. Their sergeant, Sgt. Maddox, lit a match to see his compass, and was shot by a sniper, triggering an ambush from a well-prepared German position. The Germans fired off flares to illuminate the area and opened up with rifles and machine guns. The squad broke under the sudden assault. Ryan’s character ran into the woods and knocked himself cold, Blake’s man almost blew himself up with a hand grenade (critical failure on his Throw check), suffering wounds that seemed to kill him. Erick’s medic/veteran failed several SAN rolls and went insane, which would become something of a theme for him. Storm went to ground, and Meagan did as well.

Suddenly, Lt. Wilhelm and the rest of the company showed up, charging the German positions. The players rejoiced greatly that their characters were saved. However, there was a bright flash, and suddenly everyone was knocked out.

When they came to, they had no idea what time it was, other than “afternoon”. The German position was gone, destroyed by an unknown blast, a blast which had burned away everything above ground and nothing below. As the group investigated, they found that the German dugout was intact, along with some documents. The documents mentioned a strange, wasting sickness that had killed several of the men; the party found their bodies, strangely desiccated and thin. They found an odd and eerie cavern underneath the dugout, and realized that the battle site was the site of an ancient temple, a temple that was not to anything good. This resulted in more SAN losses, especially as they fought a guardian made up of ancient deformed bones and ran away from hundreds of other animate skeletons.

A must-see on your French vacation the ancient temple of the lloigor

They got out out of the temple and found a strange, lifeless village, where the only sign of life was a barricaded church. They forced their way through the doors (destroying the wards on them in the process) and found a strange priest who told them a bit of what was going on – before the weirdness began again. He gave them a book as something forced its way into the church, and was then impaled by a cross which fell from the ceiling. The party ran out as the church exploded, in the same manner as the German position earlier.

They made their way back to the American lines, through many adventures, eventually arriving with a dilemma on their hands. They had realized that the cultists planned to attack the Americans with a zombie army and open a gate for an ancient evil through the death and suffering caused by the attack, but weren’t sure how to explain this to their superiors. Cpl. Oliver (Erick’s character) tried telling them everything that had happened, and quickly found himself disarmed and under observation for shell-shock, as did Meagan’s character. The others made up a story about having discovered an imminent German attack, and were quickly sent back into the line, protecting a machine-gun position.

The zombies attacked, inflicting great loss of life on the US forces. The party was fighting back as best they could when they realized that cultists were infiltrating their position and going into a hidden cave. Realizing that the gate opening was about to take place, they quickly followed, arriving in the cavern as the cultists chanted their weird summoning spells. Joined by Cpl. Oliver and Meagan’s soldier, they unleashed a storm of fire on the cultists; Blake’s character threw a grenade with rather more success and killed most of them, although the eldritch chanting continued.

The party began a counter-chant, learned from the priest’s books. As the last of the cultists died, it appeared that the party would be successful, but a new threat appeared: a strange, deformed dragon-like creature. Moving swiftly, it devoured Cpl. Oliver whole, but was forced to flee as the counter-chant finally took effect and closed the gate. The party was safe and sound, with nothing more to worry about than guns, grenades, artillery barrages, gas attacks, trench foot, and disease.

*Of course, he didn’t see it that way.

Adventure: L1 – The Secret of Bone Hill

It's not really very secret.

BACKGROUND
The adventures in this module take place in or near
the town of Restenford, a fishing port on the Isle of
Lendore’s southernmost peninsula. The entire island
is not depicted in the maps in this module, but all
pertinent features are detailed. Lendore Isle is covered
with vegetation of all kinds and enjoys a mild climate,
varying from semi-tropical warmth in the north
(heated by the prevailing warm-water currents) to a
more temperate and seasonal south. The island, as are
all the Spindrift chain, is populated by scattered
communities of humans, demi-humans, and humanoids.

The first thing to do (no different than using a regular 4th Ed adventure) is read through the whole thing, making notes along the way. For conversion purposes, we need to make notes of encounters and treasure, particularly magic items. Both of these will be very different from their originals, especially the treasure. L1 starts with a rumors table which can be used exactly as it is. If you’d like, you could break it down into difficulty levels and make the party do a gather information check or you can leave it the way it is. I’d leave the table; since they’re supposed to be rumors, I think the table fits that pattern better.

The first possible encounter is the Dweomer Forest.

Inhabitants: At the forest edge numerous small
animals can be seen; a lone falcon, small birds of
many types (quail, thrushes, wrens, swallows, etc.),
squirrels, hares, raccoons, and foxes.
In the inner circle, animal life is quite dense. Atop the
knoll is the Church of the Big Gamble. Administering
its services are a 10th level high priest, a 9th level
high priestess, and five 4th level assistant clergy.
These individuals are detailed below.

The first encounter is clearly not intended to be a combat encounter; the clergy of the church are a) not evilly aligned and b) much higher level than the party. Nonetheless, detail out the combat abilities of the clergy, both in case the party seriously messes up, or in case one or more of the priests joins the party as an NPC. For this, I’d use the character builder; it makes it very easy to do this sort of thing. Essentially, we’ll build each of the priests as a character rather than as an opponent.

Faldelac, High Priest, cleric, (AC: 3,10th level, hp 58,#AT 1, D by weapon, AL CN; S 11, I 14, W 18, D
17, C 15, Ch 13). He wears bracers of defense (AC:
3), a ring of free action, a ring of spell turning, an
amulet of inescapable location, and carries a staff of
striking (34 charges). His spells are:
First level: bless, cure light wounds
(x 2), light, remove fear;
Second level: chant, find traps, speak
with animals, know
alignment, hold person,
silence 15′ r., augury;
Third level: animate dead, continual
light, cause blindness,
bestow curse;
Fourth level: detect lie, protection
from evil 10′ r., cure
serious wounds, neutralize
poison;
Fifth level: commune, dispel evil.
Faldelac is 45 years old, 5’8″ tall, 100 lbs., brown hair
and beard, brown eyes. Faldelac is very shorttempered
and will not tolerate an insult or obnoxious
behavior. He will quickly act to remove undesirable
adventurers from the forest, and will initiate such
action at a time when the party is most unaware.

That’s Faldelac in the original; his 4E PDF is in the box on the right.

And then Tloques had to go to sexual harassment training all over again

The end of the adventure needed a lot of updating. In the original tournament version, the party was supposed to escape from the pyramid. The amazing sense of accomplishment they were supposed to get was supposed to boil down to, “Wow, we totally didn’t die in there. Crack open a fresh waterskin, guys!”

This seemed lame to me.

So I decided that they needed to defeat Camazotz/Zotzilaha, the bat-god of the underworld, to whom the temple was dedicated. Or at least his avatar. Or child. Or something. They had fought Tloques the vampire before, so it seemed like a good idea to make the avatar/child/aspect/thingy/whatchamahowzit a vampire also. I had a trick up my sleeve as well; when they defeated the BBEG* and were patting each other on the back amidst cries of “Who art bad? Truly and forsooth, we art bad!” and “Venimus, vidimus, clunes calcitravimus!”, he would reappear in a new, tougher form. This would be good for many DM lulz, I hoped.

They first faced the Child of Zotz in this aspect, along with a few vampish minions (non-sparkly) and some vampire bats.

Child of Zotz, First Aspect

Initiative +14 Senses Perception +12
HP 300; Bloodied 150
AC 33; Fortitude 30, Reflex 29, Will 27
Saving Throws +2
Speed 7
Action Points 1

Obsidian Sword (standard, at-will) Weapon

+22 vs AC; 4d4+5 damage, and the target is marked until the start of the blessed champion’s next turn.

Bite (minor 1/round, at-will) Necrotic

+22 vs AC; 2d6+1 damage, and ongoing 5 damage (save ends).

Brutal Smash (standard; requires an obsidian sword,, recharge 4-6 ) Weapon

+22 vs AC; 4d6+8 damage, and the target is dazed (save ends).

Demonic Wrath (free, when first bloodied; encounter) Polymorph

The blessed champion takes on a hideous demonic form until the end of the encounter. Any enemy starting its turn adjacent to the blessed champion in demonic wrath form is marked by the blessed champion and takes a -2 penalty to all defenses until the start of its next turn.

Alignment Chaotic evil Languages Abyssal, Olman
Skills Athletics +18, Endurance +16
Str 23 (+13) Dex 20 (+12) Wis 20 (+12)
Con 18 (+11) Int 8 (+6) Cha 10 (+7)

The minions didn’t do much, but were a little fun, and the bats turned out to be cool, if a bit underpowered. (There was an amusing moment when the chaos mage switched places with one of the bats – who was 20′ in the air.)

After the party defeated the Child of Zotz, he reappeared. The moon turned blood-red, there was a column of red light, and a new form appeared. That’s when I ended the session. Muahahahahah.

The new aspect can be seen in the .pdf file on the right, “Child of Zotz, 2nd Aspect.” I built him as a vampiric heritage monk with the character builder …

As the party engaged him, two things became apparent:
1.) Vampiric heritage monks are extremely cool, so much so that I might have to play one when someone else starts DMing. There was one round where he attacked every member of the party in turn.
2.) As party foes, characters (even at +5 party level) are a little underpowered.

On the fly, I doubled his HP to keep him from getting wiped out in the first two rounds. Part of Scott’s DMing philosphy is that the rules are great, but shouldn’t get in the way of the story. The party needed to fight a bad guy who was tough and dangerous in order to feel a sense of accomplishment; they shouldn’t be deprived of this because I screwed up the build. (If I were doing a solo CB build to face the party now, I might very well double their level.) So Zotz’s Child got more HP and I added an attack for him too.

This evened things out a bit, and the party had some difficulty in putting down the second aspect of the Child of Zotz; however, Asha’s triumphant return from aiding the Raven Queen in various endeavors proved to be the deciding blow, and the heroes were victorious!

And by “victorious”, I mean, “standing on a decrepit pyramid/temple, in the middle of a hostile jungle, thousands of miles from home or civilization.”

Muahahahah.

*Big Bad Evil Guy

When speed dating goes wrong.

Having defeated Kalka-Kylla and his mighty crawfish minion, the party then began to explore the lower levels of the temple. Discovering that there were only two ways out of the room, they took the exit to their right and found … a dead end hallway. While exploring for a bit, they realized that plaster had sloughed off the wall, exposing a secret entrance; like all good D&D adventurers, they immediately entered the room and found the tomb of Tloques-Popolocas.

The tomb of T-P, master of the outsiders, who is like the blah dee blah blah...

Inside, they found a sepulchre filled with ancient bones and a strange axe embedded in the wall. The axe cast a shadow that looked like a withered arm, and also gave off a sense of cold when approached. It was stuck fast in the wall and could not be moved. The party members began to loot the sepulchre, causing T-P to reanimate his dead bones and attack. It was tough battle in which T-P managed to dominate a few of the party, but they managed to fight back well. At the height of the battle, he struck down Asha, who vanished in a flash of light. Despite the loss of a powerful battle caster, T-P was overcome and the party was able to take the loot they desired – including the axe, which Quambor claimed as his own. Mourning the loss of Asha and her ability to speak and read Olman, the party went on their way, seeking what they might find in the rest of the temple.

Some players have no interest in doing anything other than playing a character, for whatever reason. They like showing up to the session and playing, whether their playing is loot-, character- or tactics-driven. Many, though, at some point have thought to themselves, “You know, I could create a really EPIC adventure, if I put my mind to it.”

I’m one of those.

I started playing in the spring of 1981, and in the fall joined the lunch gamers at my school where I was in 6th grade. We were every stereotype of nerds and geeks, from AV Squad members to Geography Club Presidents, and so we didn’t really have any trouble finding a table far away from the popular row where we could set up our minis and dice and adventure for an hour every day. I started out playing a wizard (Blackstar), but pretty soon got interested in telling the story. The first adventure I made myself rather than using a prebuilt one was called “The Lonely Mountain” (Or sometimes, “The Lonley Mountain“; I wasn’t great at spelling then.) I don’t recall a lot about it other than there was a marketplace (which i mapped) that had about 60% of it devoted to stalls selling wine and beer, (clearly AA hadn’t made it to this village) and that there was a room inside the Lonely Mountain (it was a hollow mountain, duh; who wants to go adventure on a boring old plain mountain?) which contained several of each type of evil dragon. Did I mention that I thought this would be a great first adventure for the group? While it’s possible that the characters would have gotten a lot of XP by successfully not dying of alcohol poisoning or liver disease in the village of Dipsomania, it seems likely that they would have been totally wiped out. (There were also some instant-kill traps, but in my defense this was the era of Gary Gygax and The Tomb of Horrors.)

The point of DMing in our group wasn’t to make a cool experience for the players, nor was it to referee a game of wits; it was all about how totally you could crush the party. We were sixth grade boys, and we thought that was cool. If you could kill the party in an amazingly gross way, so much the better. We pretty much went along with Tycho in this comic; it was DM versus the players, and that was just fine with us.

Over time, my style has evolved. I like the creative parts of DMing: making a world, peopling it with interesting characters and giving PCs a chance to write their own stories against the background. I’m not a perfect DM by any means. I tend to have more ideas than organization, and when i get really caught up in the idea of a cool aspect of the world I’m building, that doesn’t always translate into adventures.

I’m fortunate to be playing with a group that is mostly character-driven. They play their characters well for the most part, and they seem to like the different cultures that they’ve run into. (Organized crime orcs and the kingdom of the Jaguar King, so far). They’ve been patient with me as I learn the 4th Ed system, and that’s nice.

Because at the end of the day, it’s about fun. I need to make the world fun for my players, and in turn, their enjoyment makes it fun for me. When they tell me that an encounter they had was amazingly cool, that gives me energy to go forward. I think we’re pretty well suited to each other.

But I am totally going to have mind flayers in the next room they go into.

This is everyone's mental picture of their boss.

I’ve gotten a bit better (although I still occasionally come up with a bad one) so here are my Rules for Monster Design:
1.) Have a cool idea for a monster. What scares you? What would intimidate you? If you’ve ever read Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula series, I think the Chinese elder vampire in there would be a great opponent. Ancient, incredibly wise, unstoppable. resistant to most of the things that halt a Western vampire, the Chinese elder should be portrayed as an inexorable force who will track down its target, for reasons which only it understands.
2.) Give the creature cool attacks. This is very critical in 4th Ed, where everything is tied around the daily, encounter, and other powers; make them cool. Give them some flavor text, even if you mean “He swings his sword at you and it hurts. A lot.” Here’s what my Olman Eagle Warriors can do:

“Feather Dance (Standard; daily) Spinning and leaping, the warrior attacks all close enemies. +15 vs. AC, close burst 1, 3d8+5″

If one of the attacks is particularly cool, don’t make it a daily, give it a chance to recharge. A monster that only has one dangerous attack (which it uses in the first round) will NOT be remembered by your players as an Epic Battle. At the same time, don’t give it something like

“Gagging Gas (Standard, at-will). The creature’s nether regions emit a cloud of noxious fumes. +40 vs Will, close burst 20, 6d12 +35 and target is Stunned for 5 rounds.”

The impossible to defeat creature should be used VERY sparingly, if at all. (I’m looking at you, Mr. Tarrasque.) Cool attacks can target more than just HP; a creature that affects your party’s stats, can eat health or destroy items can be very frightening.
3.) Don’t make the creature impossible to hit. I’ve done that a couple of times, and very little is more frustrating to the players than to face a creature they can only hit on a critical. Give it some interesting weaknesses. Make it vulnerable to cloudberries picked at the full moon or something; although having its weaknesses make sense is a Good Thing.
4.) Whenever possible, play off your players’ phobias and fears. This is a) fun and b) will translate directly to their characters in most places. Got someone who’s afraid of spiders? Have him/her grabbed by a spider and dragged off towards its lair, while the spider hisses at him/her what it’s going to do. (“Yeesss, little softbody will taste so sweeeet. Will ssssuck out all its juices after biting it, oh yessss. Live meat always tasstess besst.”)
5.) Keep records of all your monsters. I have Word documents of every encounter my players have had so I can go back and look at them to see what worked and what didn’t. Never, ever, wing an encounter, and when you do, use things straight from the MM books.

The bad guy is named Tloques-Popolocas, which is totally what I'm changing my name to.

In the last post I gave a quick summary of how the party found the ancient city of Lost Tamoachan. They began to explore it, and quickly found themselves in combat with a group of tasloi, small monkey-like creatures who ride giant wasps. They use the wasp venom to poison their weapons, with the result that a successful hit causes damage and stuns the victim (save ends). As the party began to realize how deadly these small creatures could be, they fled towards a large temple, when suddenly there was the rumble of an earthquake and they found themselves sliding into a pit that opened under their feet.

“Breathing heavily, you find that the world has stopped tumbling
and you now sit on cold, damp stone. The coughing and wheezing
of your companions can be heard nearby, hidden in the darkness.
To your back are rough rocks and broken earth. As you sit, the
rumble and clatter of rocks diminishes to the occasional rattle of
pebbles and the shush-shush of sliding dirt.”

Here is where we stopped the session, as I wanted to leave them at a good cliffhanger moment. There were loud cries of protest, but I just laughed. “Ha, ha” I laughed. “I know what’s coming next and you don’t.” When the players had stopped beating me, we agreed that cliffhangers are Fun Things but should be used sparingly.

By the next session, the players had forgiven me and all was better, especially when I unveiled my map of the room they were in. (C1-1a.pdf in the Box module on the right of the screen.) I made it by following this tutorial from Jonathan Roberts; it’s a bit crude, but my later ones are better. The players really liked having the custom battlemaps, and began to enjoy the adventure.

The party quickly figured out how to get out of the first room and made their way down the hallway outside until they found the great central chamber that is the lair of Kalka-Kylla.

KK proved to be a less than formidable adversary; I was still learning how to make creatures of the appropriate level at this point. If I were doing it again, I’d drop the HP and give him a couple more attacks, probably making his grab a recharging attack and giving him another attack that takes advantage of grabbing an opponent.

So ... Erol Otus did a lot of drugs, right?

It took several sessions to get the party from the lands they were in to the deep jungles that I had decided would house Tzapotlan, the land of the Jaguar King. Along the way they had several encounters with the Orcish crime family of Krishak Toothbreaker, fought a dragon in the Caprine Islands and took over command of a ship after plague laid the crew low. (They commanded it well enough, but not too well; they shipwrecked on the coast of Tzapotlan.)

The party consists of:

Lucan Wolfbane – a half-elven paladin of Bahamut. He is a good person, dedicated to helping the weak, protecting the defenceless, etc. etc. etc. He is currently in the process of “rehabilitating”

MoonStorm – a human ranger/rogue who had been imprisoned for assaulting a cleric of Bahamut; Lucan is to either reform him or kill him.

Quambor – a Tiefling warlord whose tales of his past glories never seem to end. Quambor loves to fight, and even more to direct others in how they should fight; he is quite adept at this.

Kalfas – a half-orc fighter. Kalfas is moody and quiet, utterly dedicated to freedom, both his own and others’, and hates evil with a passion. He often clashes with Lucan, who he sees as rigid and dogmatic.

Ilana – an Ela’homeni bard. Ilana is spoiled, weak and frequently difficult to get along with. She is also a talented arcane caster and one of the few members of the party with enough caution to not blindly rush into dangerous situations.

Asha – A Deva who serves the Raven Queen, a fierce caster and a valuable ally, Asha is dedicated to good. She has often proved useful, as fragments of her past lives have pointed the way to the solutions of puzzles.

Zayna – a human chaos mage. Zayna can be counted on to do random things, to always yank the rope labeled “Do Not Touch” and to take samples of everything which interests her – which at last count was everything.

This is the group that found themselves shipwrecked in the steaming jungles of Tzapotlan. While looking for food, they found a village inhabited by poor people, all women and children, who were terrified of the party. By virtue of Asha’s language ability, they were able to communicate with the villagers; they found that the village men had been forced into service by the Jaguar King. The villagers used to live in a city nearby, but had fled it after it became taken over by loathsome  undead, an event which followed the dedication of a temple to Camazotz, the bat-god of death. The party headed for the capital city to seek audience with the Jaguar King, but found themselves in combat with his knights when their papers were not in order. Forced to flee the village, they headed deeper into the jungles and found lost Tamoachan, where they are currently adventuring.