9 things I've learned from reading all these GLoGhacks

So, you have a GLoGhack. You’re pretty proud of it, and you’ve put it on the internet. But you want to level up. You’ve been seeing a bunch of other hacks, and they strike you as professional, clean, and honed. How did they get there, and how can you join their ranks?

Well let me tell you, after having read ~20 hacks for my GLoG review series and even more for the GLOGGIES, I've isolated 9 methods of GLoGhack gud. Disclaimer: I am by no means any sort of game design expert, and half of this stuff I haven’t yet done with MARROW (though you bet your boots I plan to), so take all this with a grain of salt.

1. PLAYTEST, PLAYTEST, PLAYTEST

I cannot stress enough that nothing will get your hack ready like sitting down with people and playing. No matter if your game is ballpoint pen on cocktail napkin or published physical artifact, players will make it come alive and show you where it could be improved better than any amount of theorycrafting. If you don’t have players in your area, find a group on Discord, even just to play a one-shot with! We only bite on days that end in Y. Also, playtest other people’s hacks, running and playing. Also also, play in your own hacks. Any perspective you can get from a table is invaluable, and better than any of the other drivel on this list.

2. FOCUS

This is perhaps the most important thing, hence first. What is your hack for? Is it centered around a cool mechanic? Is it built to exist in your homebrewed world? Does it emulate some genre? Get a lockdown on the aesthetics of your game, the narrower the better. A game about Dungeon Rats is great. A game about Dungeon Rat politics, with intrigue and backstabbing in the Knottail Court, is even better. Every dimension of your game should help feed into your mission as much as practically possible. Write yourself a manifesto.

3. MECHANICAL CONSOLIDATION

The second biggest problem I encounter, and one that plagues even me yet. Some hacks are no more than a curated collection of nifty mechanics and house rules bolted onto a d20 core. While that’s a great way to do things, especially for your first foray into hacking and game design, eventually you’ll want to trim the fat, step back, and look at each mechanic as it relates to the others. Is there redundancy? Inconsistency? Just too many subsystems for particular situations? Centralize as much as you can, it will help everyone.

4. FLOW

Perhaps the most nebulous, but arguably the most important. If you want anyone else to be able to run your hack well, you have to put a lot of thought into the order and manner in which you present information. Answer every question a reader has as quickly as you can muster. Present procedures in order of frequency of use, and present steps stepwise. Put similar concepts by each other. Lean on headings, page references, and repetition like a crutch.

5. VISUAL IDENTITY

Draw people in with flashy colors, fonts, and pictures. Add in a cover page. Throw in some cool headings and page borders. Establishing a strong and consistent visual identity is often the difference between a good but unremarkable GLoGhack and one that gets a lot of attention. Use this design to lean into the focus of your game. While you’re here, think about graphic design and page layout- are you using space as best you can?

6. PREFACE

At the beginning of your hack, tell us what it’s about, as well as what you’re proud of in it or what are the novel developments in the hack. After you read a bajillion, it gets harder to pick out the differences, so putting a “shopping list” up front will help it stick in people’s minds and keep the attention on your hack’s focus and unique strengths.

7. CONSISTENT DESIGN LANGUAGE

This one is really subtle, but once your brain locks into it, you can’t get out of the mindset. Keep your language consistent. Is it “making a roll”, “rolling a check”, or “testing”? Is it a “class level”, “Class level”, or “CLASS LEVEL”? Is it “Armor”, “Armor Class”, or “Defense”? It’s a subtle effect, but honing in on the language you use and creating repetitive and reliable structures not only makes your game look professional, but subliminally easier to make sense of.

8. INTERWEAVE CREATIVITY

Throw in sprinkles of humor, prose, art, or in-universe quotes. Don’t just hit us with a wall of rules that sound like they were written by a lawyer. Invite us into your world, show us what your game is supposed to be like by example. This is your chance to show off your purple prose or poetic prowess, or perhaps give those stick figures you doodled a forever home. Have fun with it.

9. STEAL LOVINGLY

If you see something you like, a graphic style, an authorial voice, a mechanic, a class, take (giving credit) first and ask questions later. We’re all in it together, and if we wanted our ideas to be stuck in our own skulls, we wouldn’t have blogs and Discords. And please feel free to reach out to your favorite creators, GLoG or otherwise. We’re all just a bunch of friendly, excited nerds who like to talk shop about our projects and help our fellow hobbyists out. If you’re polite, you can probably get into some game design deep dives with the writers you really admire with ease. Build community for yourself. Play in other’s games, and offer to run your own. Read other hacks and offer feedback and praise. Be a creative force, a building force, a guiding force, a beacon of knowledge and kindness.

I’ll stop before I get too preachy. Hope that helped. Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

The Glitter Ghoul

 Here's what I wanted to make:

1. A monster, who is

2. weak as shit,

3. poses a threat to whole regions, and

4. can and should be stopped by the PCs early, because the longer it goes unchecked the worse it gets. It should also

5. operate by a decipherable internal logic that isn't immediately obvious and

6. be super iconic and memorable.

Here's what I have:

The Glitter Ghoul

N2 HX A Blinding, Bonded Hypnotism, Shining Vitality, Spore Emitter I To colonize

Actually in no way resembles a ghoul. This creature, in its native form, looks like a shifting mass of glittering, blinding light squeezed into a multifaceted prism. It blinds anyone who looks upon it, bypassing even significant layers of protection- like looking at the open face of the sun.

They collectively reside in a demiplane known as the Shifting Gold. Planar scholars have concluded that the Shifting Gold is being eaten by a cosmic beast, and the recent incursion of Glitter Ghouls in the past century has been a result of colonization efforts. In fact, Glitter Ghouls were unheard of not but 100 years ago, making research on them rare and often incomplete or riddled with small errors.

The creature's first impulse, upon entering a new dimension, is to begin producing spawn. It lets out a hypnotic pattern of light on the first person it sees. This person becomes Bonded to the Glitter Ghoul, utterly under its control as long as it can see. The Glitter Ghoul then conceals itself as best it can, using its Bonded as a mouthpiece. The Bonded's eyes radiate pure light, so they often wear coverings over their eyes.

A Bonded can implant Glitter Ghoul spores into whatever it touches once a day. Anything that sparkles, shines, reflects, or otherwise makes a bright light can be infected with the "spores" of a Glitter Ghoul. It shines with unnatural intensity with a golden light while infected with the spores. That light brightens over the course of a tenday, slowly becoming blinding until it rips open a portal to the Shifting Gold, whereupon another Glitter Ghoul emerges to occupy their Bonded. Coins, torches, swords, mirrors, windows, and more can all play hosts to spores. The only way to destroy a spore is to make the object incapable of catching the light- corroding it, painting it, destroying it, disintegrating it, whatever.

To kill a Glitter Ghoul, plunge it into darkness and it screams itself into unmaking. It subsists on light shining on it, and often places itself in inaccessible but well-lit locales, as it can contact its Bonded from anywhere. Often, the challenge isn't spotting the Glitter Ghoul's handiwork, but locating the entity itself. Luckily, it is damn near offense-less save the blinding light. Its multifaceted carapace is invulnerable to conventional means of access.

d6 Adventure Seeds

1 A Glitter Ghoul has Bonded to a Medusa. The Glitter Ghoul has made the Medusa plea for repentance, saying that she wishes to interact with the cultures of the Kin. The heroes receive her plea- will they help her rehabilitate? After all, she does have her eyes securely under wraps, so her stone gaze won't harm anyone...

2 The Captain of the Guard reaches out to the heroes. A local crime lord has been handling a lot of currency that has the shine of the Glitter Ghoul... the heroes would be paid handsomely to raid the guild warehouse and track down the Ghoul. In reality, the crime lord is trying to collect the currency and remove the spores; the Captain is actually the Bonded one, taking out an enemy faction while taking suspicion off itself.

3 The Glitter Ghoul has bonded to a Dragon. It knows that it is advantageous to get adventurers to spread the loot in the hoard, so it spends years infecting it all with a latent spore, then bait the heroes into killing the Dragon so that they'll spread the hoard into the world. How long until the heroes catch on to the fact that portals are opening a week after their spending sprees?

4 The Glitter Ghoul finds itself incapable of Bonding due to a medical error. It sets itself up as a god deep in the Underdark. Can the players find a way to directly combat it? Especially when it asks its suppliants to start cultivating bioluminescent fungus in the nearby caves as a backup?

5 What would happen if a Glitter Ghoul Bonded to a powerful angel? The Celestial Host begins to ship out golden riches to impoverished locales, at the request of Eltheriel the Wise- the shining eyes are simply a sign of newly sparking divine inspiration.

6 What if there were an anti-Glitter Ghoul? Casting light on it banishes it and its touch, and it makes things dull and dim. What would make this monster all the more terrifying is a host of teeth and claws and rusted iron bones... it could truly prove to be a nightmare to deal with it, especially when you can't even see where it is to kite it into the light!

Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

A world, in 13 items.

1. Your mother's katana
2. A life raft that won't inflate
3. Notebook labelled "Blasphemies Yet to Pass"
4. A digital Hello Kitty watch with a shattered screen
5. A mugshot with a pentagram drawn on it
6. A lock of hair from a CEO
7. Some off-the-street experimental amphetamine
8. A "Mutant-Be-Gone" (TM) mosquito net
9. A painting of a moss-choked, half-sunken skyscraper dated 5 days from now
10. 100 dollars of unmarked cash
11. A pendant of a mutant, nine-tailed fox
12. A news clipping from before the Melt
13. The Trillionare's missing Necronomicon

now you do it

Four Types of Old Magick

    Those who call to the stars above and look to the bones of the damned do not deal with runes. No, their magic cuts closer to the lifeblood of reality itself. These are the forces they invoke, and the magicks they wield. It is wild and strange and powerful, so pursue with caution. Each description is accompanied by 3 limited-use blessings. How they are granted, and the ramifications of their effects, are entirely up to you, but be warned, they may change your games and worlds forever.

Raven: They are the cries in the woods, mimicking the beasts and children. Icy black wings flutter as they soar in the warm night, flying as one. Their magic is of the beast, and of the night, and of darkness.

    Wings of Murder. Blades of the night sprout from your back. You can fly, and become invisible in darkness. In addition, your wings are sharp, and anyone killed by them will never come back by any means. However, you have attracted the ire of the winged folk, who will always cry out upon sensing your presence, and attack you if they feel good about their chances, which is rare.

    Forest Eyes. The beasts and plants bend to your will. You can command them to do whatever you so please, and can see out of their eyes at will, but every time you do this, your lifespan grows shorter and shorter.

    Crow´s Eye. You can see five seconds into the future. If you act on what you see, the timeline can change. Be warned, some events are fixed in time, and reality will lash out against attempts to interfere.

Ash: The lightning, the thunder, the forest fire, the storm, the flood. All of nature's primal fury. It all will begin in dust, and end in dust. This is the way it has been, and the way it will be.

    Holocaust. You can touch a spot and specify a time up to a year in the future. At that time, a bolt of divine fury will strike, and a wall of fire will burn outwards until it is stopped naturally or until it consumes a creature with a pure heart. This power has been rumored to consume worlds if not carefully contained.

    From Dust. Once, touch the remains of a creature. They will return immediately at full strength, against any odds or conditions, even the will of gods. Once you do so, your strength is sapped as long as they remain alive.

    Storm´s Avatar. Your blood is the wind, and your tears are the rain. You control the weather anywhere in the world at any time. In addition, if you die from unnatural means, the world is plunged into an eternal storm until your body is ritually consecrated.

Moon: The rays of darkened light from the Observer shine on the whispers in shadows. The Observer's grace is only rivaled by her cold majesty. Those who wear her crown are her penumbra, and walk the line between day and night, life and death.

    Lunar Crown. The Observer blesses you with a headpiece of polished moon rocks. It is unconsciously recognized as a symbol of great authority by all who behold it, even if they may not know what it is. Over time, it calcifies over more of your body, making you more majestic and better armored. Eventually, however, you will be trapped in a shell of calcified moon rock.

    Meteor. Once, you can call down a meteor. Its destruction is total, and it will carry with it vestiges of the stars above. When you do so, you ascend to the stars as an act of celestial balance, lost forever wandering the constellations and planets above.

    Hard Light. You can project this nimbus of astral light. Anyone entering the light´s path must choose to either retreat or be burned by this luminous halo. You can choose to negate this effect. Alternatively, there is an alternate version of this incantation that projects an aura that bolsters willpower and vitality within the nimbus.

Glass: Fractals carved in crystal, frozen doorways to other places and other times. A shimmering liquid light, colors pouring out like fish from a transparent stream. Their magic is is the mirror and the window and the door and the blade and the hourglass.

    Turn the Clock. Once, you can travel to any point in time. Anyone near you comes with you. You get approximately to where you need to go, and your travelling companions get approximately close to where you land. More precision may be possible with much planning and ritualistic study.

    Occulus. Your eyes are replaced with multifaceted crystals that can pierce illusions, lies, and facades. Eventually, you will go blind as you being to see through even what is real.

    Door to the Desert. You can open a shimmering gateway in the air to a vast desert, littered with portals. The portals lead anywhere and anywhen, but never go to exactly where you need or want them to. Once you step into the desert, the portal closes forever.

--

Here are some strange factions to introduce these magics into your world. Not much is known about them, and all reports and documentation of them are tinged by rumormongering and xenophobia. What mysteries of their mystic lore will be plumbed, and what revelations about the universe do they quietly safeguard?

The Heretics of the Wood dwell in the endless Vipernoss, its golden leaves cloaking their rituals and prayers. They venerate the creatures of the sky, looking upwards for their wisdom. They read omens in the clouds and the stars and the flights of the birds, and their idols are twisted and mutated animals stitched from the hides of the hunted.

The Blasphemers of the Sacrosanct Peak occupy a great mountain on the Xorshed Alps. They dwell the caverns and caves that riddle the slopes of the mountain they call the Progenitor. They delve into the earth below for their blessings, and eat the gems from their mines as a form of worship. They believe that if they delve deep enough, they will find the Sun Below, and it will grant them all their heart´s desires.

The Driftwood Papacy is a shadowy organization, dwelling entirely on the Arabus Ocean. No explorer has made it to their (rumored) fortress of floating flotsam and explored the greatest temple of their waterlogged faith, but it is said that a demigod lies slumbering in the lowest chamber, their waterlogged tomb lying at the convergence of many leylines.

Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

Base Under Siege

 I'm slowly warming up to that new-fangled Mandolorian TV show. I just finished the… I think 4th episode? The eponymous character is in the fishing village under attack by bandits with an AT-ST, that one. Anyways, that inspired me to write up some tables to generate an interesting “base under siege” adventure. Have fun, and happy gaming.

BASE SIZE (feel free to round)

1 2d8 people

2 1d20+10 people

3 1d10+40 people

4 2d100 people

5 1d100 x 10 people

6 The base is the size of a city

ENEMY SIZE

1 Solitary (perhaps the most frightening of them all)

2 2d4

3 2d10

4 d10 x 10

5 The enemy is an army

6 Roll twice, these are different enemy forces (this can stack)

BASE VALUE

1 Scientific [Something important is being studied]

1 The behavior of a nearby astrological or cosmological body

2 The physiology of some remarkable creature

3 The properties of an ancient artifact

4 The relics of a bygone civilization

2 Agricultural [A vital food product is being produced]

1 The food stores for a massive area

2 The key ingredient in a valuable drug

3 A a cyclical ranch-slaughterhouse system

4 It’s actually people… peeeeeople

3 Military [A large cache of weapons and soldiers]

1 The last outpost of an anti-imperial rebellion

2 A weapon stores for a powerful military company

3 A cobbled-together mercenary base

4 An experimental weapon-testing range

4 Defense [The base is protecting something important]

1 The last of a particular species

2 A source of a rare good or lots of income

3 Some volatile and strange anomaly

1 An artifact

2 A ripped ley line

3 A temporal distortion

4 A strange new type of creature

4 A tactically or scientifically significant location

5 An anthropologically significant site

6 A portal or passage

5 Production [Something vital is being manufactured or collected here]

1 A Shatterstar mine carving into a fallen meteor

2 A weaponsmithy or munitions factory

3 A craftperson's guild or factory

4 A library collecting very specific knowledge

6 Population [There’s a lot of civilians here]

ASSET (Roll once for both base and enemy)

1 Weapon

1 Heat-seeking

2 Metal-sundering

3 Wide area

4 Instant death

5 Intelligent

6 Structure-killer

7 Virulent

8 Elemental

2 Trap

1 Pit trap

2 Meddlesome terrain

3 Hidden siege weapons

4 High walls

5 Force field

6 Magic glyphs (activate on contact)

3 Spy

1 Animal compatriots

2 Mole

3 Scrying/surveillance

4 Capable of hypnosis

4 Ally

1 Monstrous protectorate

2 Powerful mage/engineer

3 Charismatic politician

4 The real native residents

5 Movement

1 Flight

2 Climb

3 Jump

4 Burrow

6 Something truly weird

LIMITATION (Roll once for both base and enemy)

1 Poor vision

1 Only capable of detecting movement

2 Cannot see color

3 Can only perceive one target at a time

4 Can only see thermal signatures

5 Can’t see FAR or farther

6 Can’t see any farther than NEAR

2 Poor weapons

1 Easily broken

2 Only melee

3 Only ranged

4 Have a habit of exploding

3 Poor mobility

1 Moves half speed

2 Cannot jump, fly, or go vertically

3 Takes a ROUND to change direction

4 Easily tripped or knocked over

4 Poor stealth

1 Brightly colored

2 Large

3 Noisy

4 Constantly emits…

1 Smoke

2 Sparks

3 The ice cream truck jingle

4 Lights and lasers

5 Poor skill (cannot add bonuses to non-attack rolls)

6 Poor adaptation

7 Poor communication

1 Only communicates through visual signals

2 Only communicates through touch

3 Speaks different languages

4 Missing key vocabulary words

8 Uncreative

RUNNING A BASE UNDER SIEGE

Advice. Each bullet has two points that run counter to each other, yet both sound. Read them, and choose what feels right to you. Play to your strengths.

• Give the players a strong motivation to help the base. Be it money, reward, or an emotional hook, you want your players to buy into the base as fast as possible so you can get to the fun stuff. Use every dirty trick you can to get the players invested. // Distance the players. The players might wander in the side of the invaders. They might have to choose between a monetary reward or a moral high ground. They might decide the residents of the base aren’t worth saving, and want to cut their losses and run. Paint in shades of grey, and let the players’ minds wander outside of the genre.

• Lay your cards out onto the table. Reveal all the variables ASAP, in simple terms. The barracks has the laser crossbow, while the reavers at the gate can summon their Hellfire Dragon at a moment’s notice, and carry atlatls, there’s a medbay and a stocked pantry, now go forth and figure it out. // Have a trick up your sleeve. Surprise the players with a new variable or two and watch their plans get rearranged. Get the panic going as a couple well-placed reveals can shatter the hero’s ideas of what’s about to go down.

• Add twists and reversals. Keep the players on their toes by throwing a wrench into the mix every so often. A new force shows up, the enemies cleverly overcome traps laid, the mole reveals themself. Don’t let them rest on their laurels, they should be on their toes throughout the siege. // Keep it embellishable. The PCs will already bring a lot of creativity and dynamism to the mix, and often their actions alone will provide enough variables that you can take your hands off the buttons. Push the marble, but just watch it travel down the course once it’s moving- don’t change the boundary conditions.

• Make choices matter. The player’s actions should make or break the siege. The base shall fall or remain standing by their hand and theirs alone. Agency is key in every adventure, but especially here. // Embrace inevitability. How will the players face down an army when they’re backed up by a 4-strong team of academics with a rusty golem and a psychic sword made of crystal? The sheer absurdity and hopelessness has great potential to spawn novel reactions and emotions, and generate stories told for ages.

I'm gonna write up an adventure using this generator soon, look out for that in a future post. Until then, happy gaming, and thanks for reading.

d8 Inverted Fairy Tale Hooks

    Are you feeling subversive? Have you been reading a lot of fairy tales, or derivatives thereof, and want to introduce them into your games? Do you just need some inspiration for your next adventure, and want to trick your players a little bit? Roll below, and find some topsy-turvy versions of stories we all know and love.

1 Princess in the Tower. To invert this tale, the imprisoning creature (usually a dragon) is actually doing it for the safety of the kingdom. The princess was born a powerful arcanist, whose volatile emotions caused outbursts that ended in conflagration. The royals, fearing for the safety of the kingdom, conscripted a dragon to sequester her in a far corner. The princess managed to get a message out, luring the PCs under the guise of a damsel in distress... To twist the adventure further, make the dragon’s tale ambiguous. Are they telling the truth, or hoarding the princess away for themself?

2 The Evil Stepmother and Prince Charming. Prince Charming is an undead monster, a warlord slouching across the earth. He knows of a sorceresses’ child who he could infect with the touch of unlife, and add a lich-bride to his army. The sorceress must perform a ritual to put her daughter in a coma and seal her daughter on another plane, where the warlord cannot convert her, but to do so, she needs special components and herbs from the distant woods. Enter the PCs...

3 Monstrous Transformation for Love. In the classic version, someone transforms into a monster as a result of their lust for another. In this version, they morph because they wanted to repulse their partner. Unfortunately for them, it doesn’t work, and their partner wants to make it work anyways. The monster pleads the PCs to help end their relationship, and perhaps rid them of their curse.

4 The Starcrossed Lovers. Two families, feuding for ages, are finally holding a marriage for the youngest of their clan, lauded to be lovers for the ages. However, the two teenagers despise each other with a burning passion. The whole ordeal was orchestrated by the patriarchs of the families, seeking to unite for political gain (or perhaps they are in love). The PCs are hired by the patriarchs to keep the wedding going smoothly, but are bribed by the young spouses-to-be to make the wedding go awry.

5 The Lost Children and the Witch. Two children who live on the periphery of the woods leave homes each day in the morning to head to a hut in the center of the forest. Their parents are worried, and hire the PCs as witch hunters to end the enchantment luring their children before they’re eaten. The twist is the woman living in the hut also doesn’t know why the children scratch at her locked door each day. There are wendigo spirits infesting the children, and they’re actually hunting the woman.

6 A Hero Lost at Sea. The legendary warrior, after the greatest war the world has known, begins to return to his home. However, over the course of the war, his home country’s values had changed, and they sought to cleanse their history of this hero, who they now saw as a senseless butcherer. They hire the PCs to waylay this hero’s travels with trials and tribulations until they can rally a navy with which to take him down.

7 The Chosen Hero’s Blade. In the original myth, this hero is the one destined to wield the blade. In this version, they will be the one to destroy it. A great ruler wields the greatest blade of the age, but a knight clad in gold in black begins an assault on their castle. The sage advises the ruler that if the knight so much as touches the weapon, it will crumble to dust. The PCs could be allies of the knight or the ruler, or perhaps even be the ones destined to destroy the weapon...

8 The Chosen Wizard. A small child is declared to be a great wizard-to-be, whisked away by a wizard of great repute (whose name no one seems to recall) to an arcane academy in the distant mountains. This is a fey plot- the child is a mundane one, the castle is an illusion, and this is a routine scam used to whisk away children for nefarious purposes. For extra fun, the PCs might be these non-magical children investigating the “academy”, and one among them the actual chosen one.

Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

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.