Against Mapping

 

Many years ago the Alexandrian guy noted in his OD&D retrospective that mapping sucks. More recently the Coins and Scrolls guy noted something similar about his OD&D game. And maybe a day after that the His Majesty The Worm guy said something identical on his discord about his OSE game. After running two campaigns of Esoteric Enterprises where I enforced player mapping, then one where I didn't, I agreed with all three of them. 

 

Then a couple weeks ago, the Knight at the Opera guy posted his advice about what to do if you tried mapping and everyone hated it. I was excited to learn his fix and it turned out to be the exact thing that I had already tried, which made everyone miserable. "Balls and sticks" style mapping where you give the exits and directions out of the room, rather than the precise dimensions of every wall and corridor. 

  

A while back I wrote Against Torches. If I'm against torches, which never really did anything to me, I'm definitely Against Mapping, which is a whole lot worse.

 

Holiday in Caledonia Masterpost

The year is 410 AD. The place is a veteran colony, founded by retired legionnaires in the far north of Roman Britain.

It’s been years since anyone heard news from the nearest town, let alone from Londinium or Rome.

This year’s harvest was bad. Winter is fast approaching. Starvation is a real possibility, if the things in the wood don’t get you first.

Welcome to Caledonia.

 

Holiday in Caledonia: Music Post

Dahl

 

A lot of Judero and other overlap with Mythic Bastionland. This one was finished long before I read Mythic, but sat on the shelf until I had a chance to playtest it.

 

Unknown Armies - Holiday in Caledonia Playtest 2 Part 5

 

They had for twenty five years fought for provinces and kings and borders and most of the time had not understood or cared about any of that. They did it to defend each other and after a quarter century of doing so you'd think it would have gotten stale. Maybe it did. But here they were again. The three Veterans Valerian Tarquin and Rusticus. Rusticus' son Drusus returned from the wars in the south with his lieutenant Seaxneat and their company of hired swords. Clad in suits of chain and crossing the moor in the sun through clouds of steam disgorged by the snow as the top layer melted. The mercenaries sang a song. It wasn't one the elderly Veterans recognized but the theme was familiar.

 

Drusus rode the Colony's one horse. His own horse had been stolen by the Horned Ladies after his father Rusticus took it on a stealth operation. That horse returned. It made upset sounds and the symbols painted on its body in woad tried to communicate something. Blue handprints. Was something wrong with the horse? No, it was the other way around. Rusticus recognized that the horse was distressed because something happened to its owner.

 

They weren't marching by daylight. They stood at the foot of the mountain amid a field of boulders and old menhirs. They didn't remember how they got there, other than they walked. They didn't remember how the situation with the Saxon who fucked Drusus' sister was resolved. Who was left behind to guard the camp. The moon and a fire somewhere up the mountain illuminated the scene. Someone sang in the language of the Horned Ladies. 

 

The Colonel's Table: Session Seven

 

Three people died and twenty eight were injured in the blaze. EMS who triaged the scene assumed Jazzy was just another smoke damaged attendee. They pulled him aside and he was worried he'd been identified as one of the perpetrators. They told him he had a heart attack and was lucky to be alive. They didn't find the dimple where the adrenaline autoinjector pierced him through the thigh.

 

At the restaurant on the following night, Fonz excitedly filled Jazzy and Edgar in on what he heard at school: that paranormal investigating fat kid Byron Irons who they fed a special order that one time rescued everyone. They were locked in the ball room but he got the door open somehow and they got out before the place caught fire. He felt bad because he could have saved more people but he was a hero!

 

There was no mention, from the news or from Fonz' classmates, of what happened to the monster in the basement. Or whether the police had discovered the bodies with machete wounds. 

The Colonel's Table: Session Six

At about 9 PM, the Cadre boarded the shuttle bus for the religious retreat Edgar Vespier invited them to the night before. Mick warned them beforehand that they'd be searched, so they each ate a special order prepared by Nadia before she got off work for the night.

• Laine the elderly Fool
• Jazzy the Mad Bomber 
• Jonah Klein, a new recruit to the Colonel's operation

Like an undercover cop doing coke to fit in with hoodlums, Klein told himself that eating a mouthful of delicious fried chicken was an unpleasant but necessary step on the road to his dream of animal liberation.

 

The bus was full of people from the same rung of society as the Cadre. Drug addicts, petty criminals, night shift workers at dead end jobs. They recognized a couple of them. The fat kid who they fed a Special Order the night before. Also Jazzy's cousin Lil' Skeez, the Soundcloud mumble rapper who he rescued from the ICE raid on the trailer park.

 

Unknown Armies - Holiday in Caledonia Playtest 2 Part 4

The rest of the mercenaries arrived with Drusus the next day. There were ten of them, a mix of Latins and Britons and Saxons. The Veterans quartered them in the horreum because it was the biggest building that could be enclosed with a door and heated with a fire. The women of the colony didn't trust the strange men to sleep in the same houses as their children, even if their leader was a member of the family. That leader, Drusus, sat in council with the other Veterans in his father Rusticus' house. Together they planned the raid on the Horned Ladies. The colony didn't have enough food for everyone for the whole winter. They needed to steal some cattle.

 

The Colonel's Table: Session Five

 

Edgar woke up early to someone banging on the door of his apartment. He decided to go back to sleep but they wouldn't leave him alone. He went to see who it was and found the pair of occult detectives who pestered Thad at the register the night before. They pretended to believe he was a fellow occult detective investigating the KFC. He tried to turn them against the Church and the Court. They went along with his bullshit and encouraged him to share paranormal information. Manny, the fed with a combover, tried to hypnotize Edgar, who shook his head and snapped out of it after losing a few seconds. The guy lost his cool and started yelling, trying to intimidate him. The disgraced detective kept his mouth shut and Sebastian took over. They didn't need to know anything Edgar could tell them about alternate universe portals or giant bugs. They just needed a Special Order. Either he delivered them one, or they'd put in a tip that Ada Kallio was diverting drugs to feed her painkiller addiction. He had a day to decide, after which she'd leave the hospital in bracelets.

 

Riverboat Gambler Masterpost

Lear

 

LADIES and GENTLEMEN

For crimes INCLUDING but NOT LIMITED TO  

CANNIBALISM

SLAVE TRADING

GROSS violation of the moral law in service of a PROSCRIBED DEITY

And his FAILURE to appear before this body and give account of these accusations

The GENIUS LOCI is proud to announce

(PAID FOR by generous contributions from POTION ADDICT, the WORSHIPFUL COMPANY OF THE MATACHINS, the FRIENDS OF NATURAL JUSTICE, and the TOWER OF PAIN)

A bounty of FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND SILVER PIECES

On the outlaw ALDRICH BRISBANE

(The VILLAIN last seen absconding to HOGMAN'S PLAIN)

DEAD

OR

ALIVE

 

Unknown Armies - Holiday in Caledonia Playtest 2 Part 3

  

Martial walked through a field of gold, one leg of flesh and another of living wood. He was no longer crippled, he walked faster than the other Veterans. When he had a good lead he turned and showed them what was in his hands. One held a fistful of seeds, which he let fall to the earth. The other a bronze blade. They immediately realized what he intended and ran to stop him. He raised the knife to his own throat and the faster they ran the farther away he got. He cut his own throat and fell to the earth and bled. A crown of grain grew around the corpse as his blood watered the earth. 

The Colonel's Table: Session Four

 

Jazzy woke up to a whistling sound. Someone in the trailer park where he lived raised a hue and cry to indicate law enforcement presence. He rolled out of his hammock and peered out the window to see what was up. The porch lights of the assembled double-wides showed bulky figures in a mix of uniforms and pieced together body armor with no identifying markings. It was an ICE raid.
 

A trio of armed and armored feds, one fat one tall one short, banged on the door of his trailer. He kept his cool. He had no obligation to answer the door or allow them entry. One of his two fraternal cousins who he shared the unit with likewise kept his cool. The third guy booked it. He ran out the back door and the three DHS goons, on hearing the sound of the door slam, ran around the manufacture home to pursue him. Which signaled to Jazzy that this was a random raid, because they didn't post up behind the building before knocking like they would if they were serving a warrant. Jazzy's cousin, a soundcloud noise artist with a studio above a martial arts dojo in the city, made it across the yard before the tall and short guy tackled him. The fat guy swaggered in after them, and in the light of the streetlight on the other side of the fence he noted the strange tattoo on the back of his neck.

Jazzy didn't want to deal with this shit, but he couldn't just let his boy get arrested. The guy was a citizen, as far as he knew, but he would undoubtedly babble and say something incriminating about drugs or somesuch. Thinking quickly, the mad bomber opened his bag of tricks and threw together a crude noisemaker that would simulate the sound of gunfire with a series of bangs. He crept outside and tossed the device to the other side of the park. It landed and went off, sending the tall and short ICE hoods diving for cover. The fat guy turned imperiously and dared the unseen shooter to fire. Either tall or short fired his weapon in the direction of the bangs and the other two followed suit, lighting up an unfortunate airstream across the aisle from Jazzy's residence. The goons left Jazzy's cousin cuffed on the ground, and didn't notice when the bombmaker crept out and rescued his wayward relative.

Riverboat Gambler - Music

Dali

 

The Priestess who handed the Thresher an enormous loaf and a tureen of spiced lentils told him the thing in his heart was a gift. He said nothing to her but she saw through him into his heart. The Goddess would not take it away like she would a physical wound. It hurt but it separated him from the things that squirmed and writhed in the vaults beneath the Tower of Pain. The ones which, turned loose, would mindlessly kill and kill until driven back into the cave with holy sigils and command words.

Animals had instinctive fear of man. A sword was no different from a stinger or a claw and from the moment they could walk, they ran. Not so for children, even the children of monstermen. They associated creatures larger than themselves with smiling faces and food. They rushed toward the armored figures as they came through the door, chirping excitedly, expecting companionship and play- At what point had he himself gone from expecting companionship and play to accepting the splash of arterial blood on his face without flinching? He recalled playing with pillbugs in the straw. Imagining he rode a dragon. He recalled also how he had set a trap for the cat under the milk pail. He had tormented ants until they flew into a rage and killed their sisters. If others were cruel to him he was crueler still. Perhaps there was no transition. Was that an excuse he made to himself? Did he say he was born rotten because he couldn't accept that he had allowed it to happen? A click came from the big board. Below the image of the bread and the sword, the display ticked over. The Thresher's name appeared in the order of precedence next to his new score. The Goddess' love came freely but her approval was hard won. It filled the Thresher in an instant. Stronger than beer and the taste of buttered bread. Stronger than the bullet in his heart when he thought about what he had done to get his name there.

 

Riverboat Gambler Session Twelve

Diefenbach

On one side of the flooded room

• Roddy Applecreek
• Datura the Elf, still giant from the Potion of Growth
• Jack Fatherd
• Alice Woodfingers the Mower and her two Grain Clerics
• A reduced force of Hsigo
• A Shambling Mound made of ANFO
• Five Giant Bats and six Giant Woodpeckers to carry them 

On the other side

• Baradye the Blue Dragon
• Aldrich Deathdragon, transformed into a smaller Blue Dragon
• Poliouchos the Dwarf, Holy Slave of Quickness
• A Disciple of Zezyan
• 28 desert warriors pledged to the Disciple

 

At the heart of it all, the Star Spawn.