The Library of Lanthorn: Session 3

The Halflings felt sick after waking up from their nap, like something very bad happened. The soldiers  milled around outside, along with the Librarians. Concerned that the Lock had been opened, the group descended into the Library - either to close it again or loot the place before it was destroyed.

The archive stairs led back into the basement stacks. The worms were finished eating the dead soldier and fresh worms crawled around the corpse. The altar of Oil Lamp gave off a strange hum. Delgal deployed his Unseen Servant and commanded it to start pulling books off the shelves and tossing them on a cart. Then the group descended to level 3.

Review: Book of Fuligin

My copy of Book of Fuligin came today. This is a Book of the New Sun fancomic that was crowdfunded a couple years ago. Various artists and writers contributed short comics or illustrations set in the world of the Solar Cycle - the posthistoric dying Urth created by Gene Wolfe. Submitters were prohibited from using characters from books for original stories, though some of the submissions depict the canonical events of the novels. I've had the PDF version sitting in my Gmail for months but I forgot I even backed this project until I got the email asking me to update my shipping info. I'm very glad I did.

The book is a hardcover with good cloth binding. The cover is a minimalist illustration of Severian and a tangle of thorns on a black field. There's a embossed Terminus Est with a single blood drop on the spine, which looks great. There's an illustration of Old Man Wolfe on the interior covers (front and rear) that makes him look like Doctor Robotnik. The matte black they chose for the cover and pages accumulates fingerpints like nobody's business and looks gray in good light. I wouldn't nitpick this except that the cover claims the book is "written and drawn in the darkest of inks" and I just discovered through miniature painting that you need a gloss to make black actually look black.

 

The package came with a loose page that had a cool drawing of Severian.

 

Enough about the physical product. Let's dive into the stories. This review assumes you've read the New Sun books and won't make sense if you don't. It will contain spoilers for plot details from the novels and will give away some setting or thematic elements of the stories in Book of Fuligin. If you got a copy from the Kickstarter I suggest reading it before you read this. As of this posting the publisher says there are a handful of spares they might sell after they make sure the backers are taken care of. You may yet get a chance to grab one if you haven't already.

Playtest: Barbican of the Blaster Caster

Two gangs of desperate adventurers congregated in the bar on the top of the Potion Addict outlet at the mastaba looking out over Hogman's Plain. 

• A pack of thieves, mixed humans and demihumans
• A group of deserters and junk dealers
  

They had spent all their money getting to the trading post, leaving nothing for further exploration of the realms beyond. Then a blast of red energy exploded out of the ridge above the river. A blast that indicated a magical accident and the availability of treasure. They got climbing before anyone could upstream them.

 

Minidungeon: Escape From Borgo Bridge

You wake up in a bed. The last thing you remember is a delicious meal, a glowing orb and a voice laughing. Out the window, endless mountains, shrouded in mist as the sun goes down. You need to get out of here.

The Library of Lanthorn: Session 2

Delgal Haberkorn, Roddy Applecreek, Breadrick Bravebelly and Shahid the Adjudicator took care of some housekeeping on the surface before re-entering the Library. Breadrick snuck into the soldier camp to supplement the squabs from the roof with some stolen food. As he pilfered cheese and pemmican he overheard the officer of the watch yelling at a subordinate who had found a magic item. The Halfling sent Delgal over to investigate. Private Patrick of the 11th Parliamentary Sappers had found a weird little sculpture of a fort that he thought may have supernatural powers. Delgal conned him into paying 150 silver to identify the trinket. Delgal couldn't immediately identify it and pocketed it for further analysis.

Begone, FUNNEL Draft 1

Alekseev

 

Is it fun to run a DCC style funnel in Begone FOE? Let's find out.

 

Every player starts with four randomly generated level 0 characters. They move and act as a group and go on the same initiative count in combat (use the highest SKILL value to place them in initiative order). You can break up the group and send one character to scout ahead, check for traps etc, but the default assumption is a four man blob.

This document assumes you're familiar with basic Begone FOE chargen, including derived statistics and how skills and magic work.

RPG Sanity Systems

By me

Let's clean out the drafts folder with a survey of RPG SAN systems, inspired by a discussion in the SA traditional games chat. I think essays are generally boring and reveal more about the author than they do about the topic of discussion. With that in mind I'll focus on games I've actually played and enjoyed.

Minidungeon: Barbican of the Blaster Caster

A bright red beam of energy bursts out of the rock face above Hogman's Plain. You happen to witness this from the back porch of the forlorn Potion Addict in the shadow of the ridge. Looks like a magical accident, the kind that leaves arcane treasure up for grabs.