Tag Archives: weird fiction

10.11.22
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image by me and Midjourney

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Emil Laughner had the same dream every night: he would wake to use the bathroom, and while standing over the toilet he would look out into the back yard through the window. But the back yard would not be there. Confused, he would pull up his shorts, still dribbling, and head to the back door. When he opened it, a cold wind would slap him in the face. Balls good and shrivelled, he would walk out onto the porch and see down below, far below, the fields of his property. His house was in the sky, and not just floating. It was rising. It rose higher and higher and he could see the lights of town and then more and more lights but by then he was scared and he would rush inside and stupidly grab the phone to call for help. But of course there was no dial tone, so he would run back to the bedroom and jump into bed and grab the covers and hide under them like a little kid again, crying and praying.

And then he would wake up staring at the clock. It said 3:23 every time. With not just a little trepidation, he would go to the bathroom and try and piss while peering through the window. Beyond, in the gloom, he could make out the back yard and the fields beyond. After he finally forced his bladder empty, he would go back to bed and lie there until dawn, wishing he could fall asleep but also dreading it.

One, he told Clayton about the dream. It had taken a lot of nerve to work up to it, and when he did — over their daily coffee and eggs, which Clayton always ate sunny side but Emil switched up now and again between scrambled and over easy — when he told Clayton, Clayton laughed until he coughed up brown phlegm. Emil never mentioned the dream again, to anyone.

It went on like that for weeks and Emil was sure he would eventually go crazy, so he decided to take control of matters. That was, after all, what Margaret had always expected of him. “Take control of matters,” she would always say whenever he had some trouble with money or farm hands or the law. Truthfully, more often than not it had been her that had taken control of matters. But she was gone now and he was the only one left to take control of matters.

So one night when he had worked up the nerve, he made a pot of coffee at damn near midnight and drank one cup after another. He sat on the porch, rocking in his chair against the autumn cold with a shotgun across his knees and he checked his watch every few minutes for hours.

At 3:19 he felt it.

The house began to shake. Not bad, not like an earthquake. Just a vibration, like a train going by. It shook like that for a minute or more then stopped. Emil shot up out of his rocker and headed toward the porch stairs but it was too late. The yard was already forty feet down and moving away fast. On the one hand, Emil was terrified, but on the other, he was glad to know he wasn’t mad.

Emil didn’t run to hide under his covers that night. He stood on his porch and watched the world fall away until the air got cold and thin.

His last thought was about Margaret and that maybe he would see her again soon. His next to last thought was about Clayton and how that son of a bitch wouldn’t be laughing tomorrow.

01.30.16
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Return to the Isle of Dread: Random Special Encounters

 

Source: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/history-of-geology/dinosaurs-as-kangaroos-and-t-rex-the-pop-icon/

 

When running an open sandbox game, having good random encounter charts at your disposal is a must. I tend toward finding or making terrain based charts and then having an additional chart of “special encounters”. These encounters can happen in any environment and exist primarily to reinforce the themes, mood and atmosphere of the sandbox. in the case of The Return to the Isle of Dread, the point is to remind players that the Isle is a weird nexus of worlds and not at all safe.

 

The following chart is a little bit gonzo, and that is intentional. The Isle is a little bit gonzo, blurring genre lines and serving up some wicked wonder. It will probably see a little bit of modification before TotalCon rolls around, but you can see what the intent is.

d20

01: A tribe of 4d4+4 goblins living inside an animated T-Rex skeleton led by a bugbear witch.

02: A circle of severed heads on spears babble madly as per gibbering mouther. Bodies and loot in circle.

03: Mad explorers set trap gauntlet to catch a meal: spiked log, falling stones, snare over spiked pit.

04:Human barbarian and 1d6+2 awakened apes stalk area, killing hunters/tomb robbers & aiding innocents.

05:Haunted camp. Spectral explorers replay fight over treasure nightly. One can be traced to the gold.

06:Tree grows melon sized plums. Max any HD spent when consumed during short rest. Last 1d4 days.

07:4d6+6 draconians think they’re on Krynn and await orders from Highlord in a makeshift fortress.

08:Tree looks like the one with healing plums. Those aren’t plums: they’re 2d4+2 giant spiders.

09: Village of 5d4+10 phanaton is plaguestruck and needs help. 2d4 die/day until village is gone.

10:2d6+4 slavers have of 3d6 slaves in tow. Freed slaves repay kindness with secret knowledge.

11:Goblins! 2d4+4 ride pig size triceratops. Peaceful unless provoked. Other goblins hunt them.

12:Something slithers in an ancient yuan ti shrine nearby. 1d4+1 abominations stalk the PCs.

13:Allosaur nest with 1d6+2 eggs. Mother and father return in 5d6 minutes and will attack.

14:Couatl guards a magical fountain. Drink with permission 24 hour bless; without 24 hour bane no save.

15:Waterfall hides cave with treasure inside guarded by specter of original cursed tomb raider.

16:Small ruined tower inhabited only by shadow demon still trapped in magic circle and willing to bargain.

17:Bones of a massive dinosaur 500 feet long with dire wolf den (2d4) in the skull.

18:Zombie herd (2d6+6) wanders aimlessly. On death a necrotic worm escapes brain.

19:Fungal grove. If touched emit cloud of spores. DC 10 Con save or sleep 1d4 days. Roll encounters!

20:Ancient shaft 2d4x10’ deep. DC 12 Dex save to avoid. Treasure hoard at bottom CR 1d4+1.

11.09.15
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Carnage on the Isle of Dread

This past weekend marked another successful 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons ongoing hexploration adventure at Carnage Con in Killington, Vermont. This year, given the “Lost World” theme of the Con, I chose to have the players explore the  Isle of Dread. As usual, I used new school rules to run a game with old school sensibilities and more than a dash of weirdness. This post is simply a collection of thoughts on the game and how it might change (hopefully for the better) before TotalCon.

 

Don’t worry, TotalCon attendees, I will be speaking in generalities so no worries about spoilers.

 

  1. Everyone Love Riding Dinosaurs:  As much as folks love hunting dinosaurs, killing them and making steaks of them, the truest pleasure possible for the sword and sorcery hero is to tame such a mighty beast — or at least hold on for as long as possible. One of the “side quests” I provided was a T-Rex hunt. See, the terrible lizards (see what I did there?) have a penchant for devouring herds, guides and paying customers, so the lord of Gate Town (the only purpose of which is to operate the huge Skull Island style wooden gates) offered 500 gold pieces for the head of a tyrannosaur. Of course the party took the bait. But it was not the slaying of the mighty beast (“beasts” actually, as they were a mated pair) that was the highlight, but rather the riding of the monsters by first the gnomish eldricht knight and then the bard. Pay no heed to the fact that the gnome had an advantage to getting atop the thing by being so close, clamped between its jaws and all. She certainly didn’t.
  2. When in doubt, zombies — and if that doesn’t do it, tentacles: It is a well known fact that the weird fantasy from which D&D takes much of its inspiration is closely tied to horror. And if two things speak “horror” then those are the shambling hungry dead and amorphous horrors that seek to propagate by way of infection of one’s innards. It turns out that these two things are two great tastes that go great together. If you want to recreate this most compelling adversary in your home campaign, do thus: start with a zombie and upon its death have it explode into a swarm of maggots, which in turn coalesce in to a medium sized tentacled ooze that suffocates its victims by crawling into their lungs. Now, count them by the score. It certainly worked upon the Return to the Isle of Dread.
  3. Never discard a random encounter; use it in a new way: Much of how I prepare for these long hexploration adventures amounts to finding the right random charts: names, weather, treasures and, of course, encounters. I run D&D well on my feet, responding to both the players and the dice. I have tried the other way, with all the writing and the plotting, and it simply does not work for me. So, there were many random encounters rolled during the course of the adventurers wanderings, but two really stand out in my memory. In the first, which followed fast apace a troublesome combat encounter, I rolled two revenants. I wanted to give the PCs an opportunity to avoid trouble, and it occurred during one of the late watches. I decided on a whim that the spirits were lovers (people of the antediluvian culture that once ruled the Isle) who, star crossed perhaps, decided to be together forever in death. The revenants walked through the party camp and the party chose to follow them, all through the night to a high cliff on the shore of the Dread Sea and just as dawn broke one spirit put a ring upon the finger of the other and they threw themselves off the cliff to their eternal, nightly repeated dooms. So the party set about finding the ring, which was still on the finger of the hand of one of the lovers while held in the skeletal grasp of the other. They performed the right rituals and waited the night and were able to put the revenants to rest with nary a shot fired — and for their effort they were rewarded with a magic ring. It was touching and warm and a nice break from the usual combat. In the other example, a unicorn ran swiftly by the party, chased by sprites. The ranger decided to “defend” the unicorn and fire upon a sprite. It exploded in a cloud of glitter and two gossamer wings spinning sadly earthward. Then, the rest of the party opened fire and it was glitter and doom everywhere. The unicorn returned to collect the surviving playmates and glower at the ranger. I guess not every encounter can be non-combat. On the upside, the party did not decide to find out if unicorn meat really did sparkle.
  4. Greed is the DM’s Best Friend: When in doubt, dangle something shiny in front of the party. Gauranteed, at least one of them will take a grab at it. Amazingly, I managed to get a player with the old “illusory floor” trick. Big statue. Heaps of gold. No ten foot pole. You know the story. The splat was very satisfying, but then a quick fly spell followed by revivify and my work was undone. I still count it as a kill, of course. Better was what I like to call the Test of Wizardly Greed and Instant Death. You see, The Isle of Dread is a weird place, influenced by many worlds, and in one spot a machine made for nothing but destruction — a death machine from Gamma World for those keeping score — was found in a crater. It patrolled the crater and killed anyone that touched the ground within with a ray of pure death. Those that were merely killed and not disintegrated were picked apart by circling pteranodons. Over the centuries since its appearance on the Isle, wizards in particular have been interested in discovering its secrets, perhaps even mastering it, and their bones litter the crater — along with their magic staves, rings and spellbooks. It is a vast collection of wealth, free for the taking for anyone capable of out witting the death machine. I won’t wore you with the details, but a new wizard’s corpse decorates the crater (while the paladin’s ash pile has probably blown away by now).

I was very lucky this Carnage. Of five sessions I ran, the first four were full with other folk waiting around to get a seat (I learned after last year’s TotalCon to limit my players to 8 — my last game had 13 players!). The final Sunday afternoon game was only 5, but that was okay since it tends to be a bit of a slower day (aka hangover city). I had great fun running the game — and will so again at TotalCon 2016 under the Dark Phoenix Events banner — and got to play with lots of friends, old and new. Running games is a treat for me and while I of course believe I am completely awesome at it, I would not be near so awesome without great players in the seats.

 

Some Housekeeping

 

I have been posting rarely these days, due in no small part to time constraints from school and work and family life. Now, I am working on  novel which will eat even more of my creative time and energy. But, I will endeavor to do more blogging as the year draws to a close and hopefully 2016 will see a return to form for this space. Thanks you for sticking with me.

 

 

 

05.25.15
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The Dreams of Ruin: The Review

Truthfully, this will be more of an “overview” of The Dreams of Ruin by Geoff Grabowski than a review. Being friends with Geoof and having written for him, plus being a huge fan of the out there weird fiction science fantasy that populates the spaces in Geoff’s head between gardening and economics (no, really) I am not really qualified to give you an unbiased review of the book. That said, my goal isn’t to simply sell you the book either, except by telling you what it is, for real, and if that’s a thing you want to experience (and it should be) then go out there and get it. Or, well, click here.

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 The Dreams of Ruin (DoR) is a 261 page supplement for Labyrinth Lord and Mutant future, so called Old School Renaissance games published via the Open Games License by Goblinoid Games. As such, the book is compatible with most other old school rules systems, from Swords and Wizardry to OSRIC and, with a little more work, the likes of  Basic Fantasy and Castles and Crusades. It is not a complete game, but is also more than simply a setting book or an adventure. Aimed at high level (15th or higher) play it is designed to give epic heroes a run for their money.

 

Setting and Tone

The title refers to a setting element that can best be described as an inter-dimensional infestation or infection — a world ending seepage across realities that takes the form of a terrible, primeval dark forest haunted by corrupted beats, faceless puppets and hate filled unseelie Fair Folk. It is at once the villain of the piece as well as the location in which adventures take place, and due to its pan-dimensional existence it can contain elements from worlds of fantasy, science fiction and every permutation of the two together. this is the key component of the DoR from a genre standpoint: it hearkens back to the weird fiction roots of D&D, where elephant headed alien gods entertained Cimmerian barbarians and fantastic city states of the dead sat on the ruins of a billion year old Earth. In an era of fantasy dominated by Lord of the Rings and The Song of Ice and Fire on botht eh page and the screen, it can be easily forgotten that what we call the fantasy genre started out much more diverse and stranger than it appears today.

 

If you are familiar with Geoff Grabowski’s work as line devloper of White Wolf Publishing’s Exalted RPG the fusion of epic struggle and science-fantastical elements that dominated that game are here as well, though in a much more focused manner.

 

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The art of DoR is evocative of that same weird fantasy vibe. It ranges in both polish and quality but never wavers in tone. Whether it is a horned devil encased in power armor or a Puppet of Ruin (seen in the image above) massacre, the art remind the reader that this fantasy is different than the endless stream of heroic quests that have come before it.

 

In tone, the writing of DoR is generally conversational. The author addresses readers’ (presumably Game Masters) concerns directly, anticipating questions and alternating between readable prose and bullet points. He wants you to be able to understand this stuff so that you can use it in your game, which is often forgotten by game designers and authors. This book is full of strange ideas and non-standard fantastic elements and the author endeavors to get you to understand and accept those elements before moving on to the next bit. That said, it is not “simplistic” and the book does not appear to be written for the Game Master new to the craft or new to Old School games. it is safe to say that the author expects that your campaign reached the suggested high levels through actual play and therefore the GM knows how to run the game and incorporate new ideas.

 

Nuts and Bolts

The Dreams of Ruin is more than a descriptive book. The author develops a numbner of subsystems that provide concrete guidelines on how to implement the DoR into a campaign. The two most important are the rules governing how the “dark forest” manifestation of the Dreams works in play, and the rules for actually overcoming the threat of the dreams.

 

As stated above, the DoR are an infection in the world. Not surprisingly, that means it starts out small and grows in both size and virulence. In the parlance of DoR, the Dreams go through a series of Blossomings before they consume the whole world. The author lays out in meticulous detail how each blossing occurs, including tables for the size of the Dreams as they spread. In addition, each stage of the Dreams is given its own encounter tables and associated rules. It is possible using these rules to divorce the Dreams from its world ending aspects and simply use it as a very dangerous zone in the campaign world.

 

In addition to encounter tables, there are rules for the effects the Dreams have on those that travel through the forest (hint: it isn’t good) and the various sorts of entities and hazards that fill the Dreams. These are more than quick stat blocks. there is an ecosystem of terror here, with warring factions and dangerous interlopers — because of the inter-dimensional nature of the DoR, almost any sort of terror or treasure can be found within. Make no mistake, this is a truly high level threat zone and low level characters attempting to pass through, even briefly, will very likely meet a grotesquely cruel end.

 

The other major rules component covers how the player characters can actually cleanse their world of the infection that are the DoR. This is not simple task of killing a boss monster or casting a high level spell. Instead, a detailed process of research and experimentation is laid out. There are the usual assortment of new spells and magic items, but in order to “win” the player characters will have to understand the threat their world faces and then develop a method by which to counter it. It is a long process that engages players as well as their characters and gives the GM a built in system for motivating investigation and adventure. Most of all, the process is as spectacular as one would expect to be undertaken by PCs that amount to godlings themselves.  For example, one of the prescribed methods to stem the tide of the Dreams is referred to in the book as “Massive Geomancy.”

 

Final Word

The Dreams of Ruin is unlike anything currently on the market for Old School Renaissance games. It considerably expands the horizon of that particular subgenre of adventure game fantasy, inviting the audience into a world where slaying the dragon and saving the princess are barely more  interesting than doing the dishes. It embraces the weird fiction influence of the past while being wholly original. And while I will not give it a grade due to my personal relationship with its creator, I would unhesitatingly recommend it to anyone who enjoys OSR gaming and wants to try something out of this world.

 

For a few more days as of this writing you can back the Dreams of Ruin Kickstarter here. You can even get a copy of the game here beforehand and then decide that Geoff deserves your support. If you want more information, read my interview with Geoff here.

 

Happy gaming.