The Amulet of Tha'Haar, and GLoGtober 23

 THE AMULET OF THA’HAAR

An urban Cthulhu campaign framework, intended for use with the Cthulhu ICRPG Loot, Classes, and SAN rules outlined in this post. I got into running this campaign, but I didn’t get the chance to finish, so I put it here for your use.

NEW YUGGOTH

• Districts of New Yuggoth:

• Banker’s Ward: where the rich live, doing dark deeds behind closed doors

• Buxtable’s Antiquities: If you have an occult artifact, this is where you go to identify it. He’ll even take them off your hands for cash, muttering about how ‘she will find this delicious’.

• Maid’s Quarter: The teeming working class live in the shadows of the Banker’s Ward ever-extending skyscrapers

• Whatley Park: an idyllic favorite of New Yuggoth, filled with laughing children and bursts of color. Tales of tunnels below the park and visitors disappearing are quickly suppressed.

• The Scraps: If the city has forgotten you, you go here. Gang and cult activity abound in litter-choked alleys

• The Yellow King Opera Haus: The German couple who run the establishment often host illicit activity, to the delight of the hoi polloi. Below the theatre is a strange shrine to Hastur...

• The Seaboard: the stink of fish and spray of sea follow those who make a living against the lakeside

• The Fish Markets: The bustling market, sitting directly lakeside, sees much traffic each day. Unsubstantiated rumors of half-fish corpses dredged up from the lake and chopped up for meats abound.

• The lake

• Arkham Penitentiary: Where they put the worst of the worst. Strange runes scrawled on the wall with rusty scraps line the cells of starved, maddened, and bitter inmates of all types.

THE MAJOR PLAYERS

• Thaddeus Hurstin, filthy rich synesthete artist

• He has tortured nightmare of color-vortexes and screams that smell of blood and writhing worms, and has for a year

• This is a message from Shub-Niggurath, commanding him to seek the Amulet for her own gains

• He seeks the Amulet because it can transfer his nightmares to the wider population, which he thinks will rid him of them

• This is untrue. When he secures the amulet and spreads the nightmares, they will only get worse

• Currently has hired out the Red Rose to secure the amulet for him, creating terrifying new art and hosting lavish galas and auctions to fund his pursuit

• The Red Rose: The classiest mercenaries in the city, led by Juliano Hermosa

• The art is modeled off of Hurstin’s nightmares-perhaps it can provide clues as to what’s going on?

• Charles Vrathagan, deep-spawn thrall of Dagon

• Current leader of the Euclid Network

• The Euclid Network: A congregation of cults devoted to their collective safety and interests against those who oppose their eldritch evil

• Wants to secure the Amulet to raise Dagon, his spawn-lord, from the bottom of the lake

• Owns Vrathagan Coalworks

• Many sacrifices had been disappearing from the factory floor...

• Prodigal arcanist, slippery bastard

• Jimmy “The Shrew”, leader of the Eye

• Currently VERY insane, surreptitiously skins people and wears them like a suit

• The smell in his office gets worse and worse…

• The Eye: An espionage organization, opposite the Hand, a gang

• His madness calls him to the amulet…

• ...because Shub-Niggurath wants him to give it to Erich Zann

• Zann: the Mad Musician. His music can open doorways into and out of the Drowned City

THE DROWNED CITY

• Like a mirrored reflection of New Yuggoth, but a version that has been devastated by a fungal apocalypse

• In the center of the lake rises a mammoth cluster of malignant fungus, spewing thick clouds of spores into the air

• This is Shub-Niggurath, the fungal mother

• She seeks to bring the Drowned City into our world, and the Amulet can help her do that

• Entering the City is all too easy

• Shadows, malignant fungi, and wrong turns can all result in accidental shifts into the Drowned City

• There’s a permanent window into the City in Hurstin’s study

• Leaving is significantly more difficult

• Follow Zann’s music

• Negotiate with Shub-Niggurath’s servants

• A mad boatswain knows the way, for a terrible price…

THE CENTER OF IT ALL:

• The Amulet of Tha’Haar

• Forged from nightmare itself, woven into the collective psyche

• Has the power to...

• Hypnotize

• Induce hallucinations and madness

• Create illusions and simulacra

• Bring Great Old Ones into this world

• Dagon and Shub-Niggurath are sending their minions for the amulet

• The catch: the PCs unwittingly have it in their posession

• Perhaps it could be destroyed by being fed to the monster below the docks?

ADVENTURE HOOKS

• Sent by the police to covertly investigate the disappearances from Vrathagan Coalworks

• Hired by the Shrew to check in on a contact gone missing

• Attendees of a Hurstin exhibition when a scared-looking fellow passes a parcel into their hands

MOMENTS

• Killing the shuddering mass of eyes that lives below Whatley Park and guards the gates to the Euclid Network’s tunnels

• Racing towards Zann’s music, and the doorway out of the Drowned City, before the rising tide drowns you in brackish water

• Finding the abandoned basement of Vrathagan Coalworks, and the sacrificial horrors therein

• Closing the portal to the Drowned City through which the Mi-Goh Enforcers are invading

• Meeting in Hermosa’s opulent lounge to negotiate an assassination

• Rowing out to Arkham Penn when tentacles wrap around your boat

If I did my job right, with a little planning, this situation could unfold into a dynamic, tense mini-campaign with mystery and thrills to spare. Happy gaming, and have fun trying to contain… the Amulet of Thahaar!

Mob name generator (d66):

1 Bloody Cudgels

2 [color] Guns

3 Big [body part]

4 Dark Hawks

5 Strong Cloaks

6 *none* [letter]

Also, check out Phlox’s GLoGtober entry today. It’s a depthcrawl through Hell inspired by Hadestown, a musical very close to my heart. It’s a really cool adventure I want to run at some point, so if the pitch interests you, you should check it out! As my entry for today’s prompt, HELL, here is a magic item for your players that is really just campaign prep in disguise:

HEREMANCER’S HANDBOOK: Once a day, roll contested CHA to have someone do the opposite of what they want to do. If in MARROW, this LOOT grants a Level in Heremancer.

GLoGtober 22: GM Tips

 No, YOU fell off the bandwagon you built while following unrelated creative tangents. For Day 22, “GM tips”, this is my philosophy for designing adventures for other people to run. I’ve read through and used smattering of modules, and have been writing adventures for my blog for a bit.

1. Start with a no-nonsense run down of the adventure background and the PC’s goals going into it- save the cute little “keeping the GM in the dark” to preambles and book jackets.

2. From there, put on your “new reader” brain. What would you want to know immediately after reading the introduction? Start writing that, and carry forward. In what order would you need to learn the information in the adventure to best make sense of it or look it up during play?

3. Paragraphs, and even full sentences, are overrated. Keep the cognitive load as low as possible, and present as little information as you can, so the DM is comfortable improvising and has freedom while preparing and running the game.

4. Read-aloud text is overrated. A DM should get a feel for whatever it is you’re presenting within 10 seconds of starting to read the chunk, they shouldn’t need you to tell them how to describe it.

5. There are some hot tips as to how to notate things in your adventure for maximal use.

Complicated backstories: Paragraphs, though try and chunk relevant information under headers, and try and consolidate into a timeline or bullets if you can help it

Sparse rooms/overland map: table next to map

Dense rooms: Nested bullet points

NPCs: Fit the format they’re nested in. If in a simple dungeon, pop a couple words about them on the table. If they’re in a wall of bullets, go bullet format. If they’re on their own, short 2-3 sentence paragraphs are good.

Complicated if/thens: Flowchart

Sequences of events, past or future: Timeline

Something strange: A specialized (probably visual or table-based) model

6. Whenever you can, use roll tables. Roll tables have a few benefits: it offers DMs the option to choose options beforehand or customize the table to suit their needs of the adventure, it encourages a lot of ways for the adventure to be played and replayed, and it allows a DM on a time crunch to ignore all the results until they need to generate one instead of having a paragraph to read through.

7. Keep formatting consistent. Every time you have a room, follow the same conventions in notating it. Every time you have a piece of loot, keep your descriptions and language as consistent as you can, so you can pick up on the patterns when reading it.

8. Always include d6 or so twists at the end, little tweaks that change the adventure or add an extra moment of revelation for the players. It makes the module appeal to more DMs- if your core premise isn’t interesting, one of the twists might make the adventure worth running. Plus, it’s damn fun to roll and find out how the adventure gets flipped on its head while you’re prepping.

I hope that advice helps you when you write your adventures. I always like to see more amateur adventures released, so I hope this encourages someone to take up the mantle and write a short adventure or dungeon for the internet. Thanks for reading, and happy gaming!

GLoGtober Day 11: Armor

 ARCANE ARMORER

Arcane Armorer SKILLS: Armorcraft

A-D Each level, you learn 2 Infusions. You can choose the same one twice. Spend a TURN augmenting a point of Armor to work in an Infusion or take it away.

INFUSIONS:

Absorption. When you take WOUNDS while wearing the Armor, you can choose to destroy the Armor to instead heal an equivalent amount.

All-Terrain. While wearing the Armor, your movement speed cannot be reduced, and you can climb any horizontal surface at half your walking speed.

    Augmentation. While wearing the Armor, you get  +1 to one stat of your choice.

Camouflage. While wearing the Armor, you have ADVANTAGE on rolls to blend in.

Cargo. Your Armor holds 3 STR slots.

Charge. Choose an element upon Infusion. When you take WOUNDS from that source, instead heal the equivalent amount.

Embellishments. While wearing the Armor, you are seen as a member of high society.

Goggles. While wearing the Armor, you can sense something abnormal of your choice, like heat or sadness.

Grow. While wearing the Armor, make an INT roll. If you succeed, you become the size of an elephant. Make another INT roll to return to standard size.

Haste. While wearing the Armor, your walking speed is doubled.

    Hydraulics. While wearing the Armor, your jump height is 20 feet.

Magic Dampener. While wearing the Armor, you have ADVANTAGE on rolls to resist magic and magical effects.

Plating. This Armor now grants 2 points of DEFENSE instead of 1.

Reconfigure. You can choose at any point to permanently convert the Armor to another item of your choice made of the same material.

Shrink. While wearing the Armor, make an INT roll. If you succeed, you become the size of a toy soldier. Make another INT roll to return to standard size.

Snare Protocol. While wearing the Armor, you have ADVANTAGE on rolls to grapple, pin, or restrain creatures, and can attempt to restrain a creature of any size.

Spatial Transfer. While wearing the Armor, make an INT roll to swap places with an ally you can see. On a failure, who knows where you’ll end up.

Spikes. While wearing the Armor, deal a WOUND to anyone who hits you with a melee attack.

Wide. Any allies CLOSE to you get a bonus to their DEFENSE equal to your Armor.

LOOT: Cataphract of the Spellstitcher

The Rhyme of the Gen-y-dar Clan, an Ancient and Respected Ballad speaking of Our Hero-Progenitor Gen-Y-Dar's Creation of Armor:

    A million tons of marble and stone

        Make the steeples of our church

    We worship the heart of the mountain below

       The caverns of old our chosen perch

    But the black rock called forth horrors unknown

        Before we knew red-hot iron and forge

    It slaughtered our legions on terrible claws

        And on the rotting dead did engorge

    Gen-Y-Dar stood, shudd'ring and scared,

        Looking upon the hallowed carnage

    The stone around, blood-slicked and claret,

        The flint-tipped spears cracked and tarnished

    Gen-Y-Dar saw the flint tip shattered

        As if was sundered next stone-lined flesh

    Orod whispered in his ear, then

        "Make Dwarvish skin like stone, with mesh"

    Gen-Y-Dar then took to hammer,

        Chiseling with iron stakes

    Hewing together with gut-twined cord

        He unified the Dwarvish Plates

    A legion clad in mountain's skin

        Stormed deep into the mountain's veins

    They fought the beast, with blades red-hot

        Ceaseless till t'was but remains

    And on that day, the stone-clad legion

        Traded sanguine drop for drop

    With Gen-Y-Dar's fine-crafted armor

        The beast below the mountain's reign would fin'lly stop

Dwarvish Ur-Plates, or, Gen-Y-Dar's Stoneskin

    Slabs of marble tied with gut-strings, this incredibly heavy set of plate is only capable of being used by those at the pinnacle of strength. Designed, as the ballad goes, by Gen-Y-Dar in a plot of dwarvish revenge before they had mastery over metal, this first armor was a retort to a beast that emerged from the dwarvish mountain home and killed scores of dwarves.

    This armor practically immobilizes you (5 feet) unless you are part of a war band led by a dwarf, in which case you can move at half speed. However, you have ADVANTAGE on attacks when cooperating with an ally, and ADVANTAGE when fighting something bigger than yourself. If both are true, your attacks automatically hit and deal maximum damage.

    In addition, you are nearly impervious. This plate gives you a truly ludicrous defense bonus, at the expense of filling all your remaining slots. If you are attacked by an enemy to the dwarvish people, you can choose to have the plate absorb all the damage. It can do this 2d8 times (the DM rolls in secret). If you try to do it past that, the plate shatters, and the attack hits, dealing double damage and leaving a scar.

This class and item fit will with the adventure I published a couple days ago. The Ur-Plates would work well as something the opposing armies are seeking to acquire, or destroy. Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

GLoGtober day 10: Mechanic

d6 people who can fix things and build for you:

1 A gruff dwarf named Soldur. She keeps tools in her beard, and her heart is kept going from a flaming crucible she perpetually has to pour molten metal into. She has a habit of using the old heart-metal in works of jewelry, and she likes to think if the heart-metal jewelry is given to a partner, their love will be undying. She claims the wight that always follows her in the shadows is just a coincidence.

2 A lisping elf named Symrathic Dudemis-Tanach. His wheelchair is outfitted with all sorts of interesting tools of varying uses, but his favorite to use is the tea dispensary. His obsession with formality and cordiality often makes his actual work come to the side while he gets to know customers and walks through his byzantine rituals, such as signing all the bills in animal blood.

3 A thri-kreen named Yppo who specializes in the construction of chaotic and unusual guns (time to bust out the first batch of GLoGtober entries!). They cannot speak common, and rely on a translator- a small, bald gnome named Davin Atler Burrowbicker, who talks in a calming and detached voice, very different then Yppo's frantic, enthusiastic and disjointed speech.

4 An adept psion named Olio Guurden who uses telepathic and telekinetic powers to conduct business. One of the greatest psions on the face of the planet, though compared to most other psions, displaying a relatively low margin of ability. This is because she is an autodidactic musk ox. She has a side gig as an espionage agent for the government- no one suspects the ox.

5 A lanky firbolg with vibrant yellow hair and flowers growing out of their collarbones called the Green. An ardent missionary of the nature deity who argues a unity between the natural order and civilization, a stance that gets them in very much trouble from the rest of their faith. If you can track them down on the outskirts of town, hiding from their fellow clergy, they will do tasks for barter or favors, but never coin.

6 A small kiwi bird in possession of a large toolbox. Many people swear by its service, but it seems to behave exactly like a normal kiwi, even when being spoken to. However, looking away or leaving it to a commission will result in the task being performed perfectly, unnaturally fast, and with an exact bill (relatively cheap, but not unfair) written in fresh ink.

    Thanks for reading, and happy gaming. Full adventure, with a dice-drop dungeon generation, coming down the pipe tomorrow that I've really loved writing, I hope you'll enjoy it half as much. GLoGtober is just under the third of the way done... man, time flies!

GLoGtober day 11: Space

It began as many things do, with a wizard in a tower. A star, laid low by the stellar wars above, plummeted to the earth just as the wizard was looking through her telescope. The wizard spared no time in rushing to the location of the fallen star and imprisoning it in a Fractal Prism before taking it back to her tower. A star is a source of great power, and the wizard used this to lift her tower into the air, connected to the earth in mighty chains.

As the years past, the wizard grew bitter in her isolation as the planets churned in the velvet dark above. She decided to cast off her mortal flesh with the power of the star, separating her skull and alchemically transforming it into crystal so she could live forever. But this ritual caught the attention of nearby celestial bodies- the Aurora Borealis, ever hungry, seeks to devour the fallen star, the Dark Star seeks to take it as a prisoner of war, and the Moon seeks to protect and save the young star (or does she?).

As these celestial forces collide, the PCs, mundane farmhands, are thrust into a science-fantasy, folkloric, psychedelic Neil Gaiman fever dream. Will they escape the Chained Metropolis of the Crystal Skull?

WHY ARE THE PCs GOING TO THE METROPOLIS?

1-2 They simply got lost while doing some mundane task

3 They’re seeking the star as a gift for someone else

4 They think the ground-up Fractal Prism will cure Granny of her cough

5 The moon asked them to

6 A gaggle of witches has made their home in the Metropolis

HOW DO THEY GET THERE?

1 Getting lost in their hometown

2 Entering the hollow mountain

3 Jumping onto the North Star

4 Entering the cursed cairn right outside of town on Hallow’s Eve

5 Punching through the Glass Lake

6 Bargaining with the Nebula Troll for a ride on his comet

GENERATING THE METROPOLIS

Drop a small handful of dice on a piece of paper or whiteboard. Doesn’t have to be any particular number or size. Of these dice, half should be blue, half should be red, and exactly one should be gold.

The red and blue dice are standard rooms. The gold dice is either the room where the star is kept, or, if you’re running a multi-level dungeon, the entryway to the next floor. The number on the dice dictates not only the type of room it is, but the encounter you have in that room. Once you drop the dice, draw some astronomic-looking room shapes and connections, reference the encounter in each room, write it all up and tweak to taste, and get to gaming!

ROOMS

1 Skull Node. On a rune-covered plinth, a small icon of a crystal skull sits. If three of these icons throughout the Metropolis are destroyed or removed from the plinth, the chains holding the Metropolis in place break!

2 Stellar Crucible. This heated forge, painful and blinding to behold, has the power to melt down or destroy most anything, including a Fractal Prism...

3 Atheneum. Towering stacks of books spiralling off for what may well be miles. Gravity pulls whichever way you will it, and spiraling walkways cross the intersecting tunnels of books. Pull out a book at random and it will become useful later in your life.

4 Observatory. Looking through the massive telescope sees an impossible star feld, the center of which shows a pure black star eclipsed by the moon, surrounded by the shimmering green borealis. Perhaps the massive telescope could be exploited?

5 Lunar Node. This room has french windows that look out to a lunar landscape. Breaking the doors down is near impossible, you would need a key, or perhaps a poker heated in a Stellar Crucible, to walk on the moon. Hang on, is that a city on the horizon?

6 Gauntlet. An extension of the wizard’s will. Some form of complicated puzzle or fiendish trap hinders intruders, or perhaps guards some hidden passage or treasure.

7 Labyrinth. The Metropolis twists back on itself, winding in obfuscating loops and forking impossibly, all while illusory eyes blink from the walls. Close your eyes and walk straight to leave the terrifying maze, lest you meet the Beast Below.

8 Gallery. Art and taxidermy from across cosmic history are on display. Be careful, if you steal one of the priceless artifacts, perhaps one of the taxidermied monsters isn't as dead as you might suspect!

9 Illusion Room. The strongest will in the room dictates how this room looks. In each iteration, there is a single incongruous object hidden in the simulation- destroy it, and the illusion fades.

10 Wizard’s Crypt. A massive coffin in the center of the room contains a false version of the wizard, whose deeds and titles are inscribed all over the sarcophagus. The false version is a spell-slinging, mutant, undead monster, and attacks if the coffin is opened. Perhaps there is treasure in the alcoves, or in a hidden compartment under the coffin?

11 Spiraling Tower. A narrow spiral staircase swirls around a virtually infinite fall. At the very top of the tower is a skull node (see 1). This room works best when connected to many others and escape relies on dashing up or down stairs to evade a pursuer.

12 Key Room. Every key in the known multiverse has a copy here, so long as you know where to look. The directory, infinitely large, will not give the location of the key the reader seeks unless the wizard’s name is spoken aloud- could be a massive time waster. Then again, the keys it does give usually have some utility, no matter how obscure...

13 Metropolitain Madness. The wizard is mad, and this madness is reflected in the growing architecture of the place. Walls clip at odd angles, non-euclidean geometry hinders, furniture warps through 4d space, nothing makes sense.

14 Specimen Room. All species of all shapes and sizes are represented, frozen in pickling brine for alchemical and anatomical investigation. Empty aquariums lie about… perhaps another specimen could be added to the collection!

15 Portal Network. Filled with a dizzying array of doors, many of which are sealed with chains or marked off with chalk, each of them leading to disparate places not only across Prima Materia, but across the multiverse.

16 Alchemy Lab. Stocked with every piece of equipment imaginable and with shelves of alchemical formulae. Perhaps a valuable potion needs a resource from another room?

17 Feast Hall. The massive central table is piled with absolutely delectable food. Those who begin to eat cannot willingly stop until they burst. However, if they are led out of the room and out of sight of the food, their desire to eat fades. The food self-replicates.

18 The Quartz Computer. Hooked up to a dizzying array of cables and arcanomechanical circuitry is a massive, glowing chunk of quartz. It knows the Metropolis perfectly, and will help the PCs so long as they agree not to destroy any skull nodes (see 1) or steal the star. It is a potent foe- it can lock any door or activate any trap!

19 Shrine to the Arcane Mistress. This towering mass of candles is a shrine to the goddess of magic. If honored properly, the shrine grants permanent detect magic. If stolen from or disrespected, the candles animate into a wax golem, and the coins and gems scattered about melt into puddles.

20 Wizard’s Hoard. Go crazy. What sort of strange guard or puzzle defends this massive collection of sundry artifacts and hyper-powerful magics?

RED DICE: THE DARK STAR

Red odd: Dark Star Gions, foot soldiers of the Dark Star’s stellar armies. Look like multicolored platonic solids warping and shifting through space, inverting flesh on a touch. At large enough volume, sound can banish them back to the void between stars. 

Red even: The conniving, immortal Children of the Dark Star: Meridian (the Mithril Tower, always tells the truth), Mercury (the Blade of the Dread Pits, always lies), Magisterium (the Arcing Light, always silent). How can you stop that which cannot die?

Red min: The Dark Star rises, blazing red light through all the windows. It burns and melts flesh, but all illusions are made apparent in the eerie glow.

Red max: Make up your own sinister emissary of the Dark Star!

BLUE DICE: THE AURORA BOREALIS

Blue odd: Naergandra Nettle, a witch with stars in her eyes and a voice like hissing bellows. She commands magic, even other’s, intuitively, but is weak to iron and the sun.

Blue even: Refractor Automata, walking mechanical lightbulbs with a fraction of the Borealis trapped in their bulb, powering them. Fragile, but deeply intelligent, and always found in groups of 2d6+.

Blue min: The Borealis tries to manifest itself through roaring, electric wind that dispels magic and the potential to destroy magic items

    Blue max: Make up your own villainous agent of the Aurora Borealis!

GOLD DICE: THE STAR AND THE MOON AND THE CRYSTAL SKULL

Gold odd: The Headless Wizard, a shambling body with a paralytic touch and a gaping wound that spews poison gas

Gold even: The Crystal Skull, a flying, psychic entity capable of powerful magics

Gold min: Roll for one red dice encounter and one blue dice encounter

Gold max: Make up your own climactic encounter!

NOTE: If you’re doing the multi-level variant, hold off on rolling this or choose another encounter at random.

If the rooms are too busy for your tastes (as sometimes you get the blue/red/gold encounter AND an extra monster in the room), don’t hesitate to cut, alter, or add in your own encounters. This is a framework for fast and easy prep, but it’ll take a little bit of extra elbow grease to get it to work to your tastes and specifications.

TWISTS

1 The wizard genuinely seeks what’s best for the star, and the Fractal Prism is intended as a defense, not a prism

2 The Aurora Borealis seeks to put her back into the night sky, and the star is simply a draft-dodger

3 The Moon actually wants to eat the young star to regain her youthful beauty

4 The Dark Star only wants the Fractal Prism, if the star can be safely extracted, the Dark Star has no problems with letting it fly free

5 There is no star in the Fractal Prism, the wizard was bluffing

6 The Metropolis actually exists halfway into the Plane of Dreams, and if the star is taken, it will be fully pulled into that realm, never to return

Magisterium, Mercury and Meridian stand in front of the Metropolis of the Crystal Skull

Points to whoever can name what Neil Gaiman book I'm reading now.