[Travelogue] Cauldron Con, Thursday and Friday

Thursday: Bratwürste & Brauereien

Thursday morning we left Neubiberg in a black Mercedes we christened "The Hearse". We stopped in Bamberg for lunch. We marvelled at the town's old half-timbered buildings, majestic churches, and visited Schlenkerla brewery for some sausages and smoked beer. Awesome place, I can't wait to visit it again.

Bamberg, the perfect place if you need some Oldhammer inspiration.

We arrived to  Schloss Hohenroda late afternoon. While that night's Braunstein game was tempting, Chomy and I decided to do some "networking" instead using the two and half bottles of pálinka I brought with me. We were too tired anyway to meaningfully participate.

The Hungarian OSR pope packing out from his carriage.

Friday: Corsairs & Corpses

Friday's first session was Jonathan Becker's tournament module, Children of the Sea. Our referee was Philippe, who turned out to be such an expert in AD&D1e, that in the end I just asked stuff from him instead of borrowing rulebooks - except for casting times. Our quest was to retrieve the Hand of Saint Emma from an old temple that was repurposed as a pirate base.

We assaulted the temple from above, through an opening at its roof. Our magic-users put a bunch of pirates to sleep with Sleep (duh) and we killed their pet wyvern as it ascended from below. We left one survivor to interrogate, who told us that the hand was already used by captain Rodrick to bypass a tunnel of shadows in the undertemple, but he hasn't returned yet. We found the tunnel, got ambushed by shadows from above (typical Becker), turned the shit out of them, met Rodrick, who turned into a crab-mummy hybrid by the time we arrived.

After a good start he fled south thanks to my cleric's turning. Following him we ran into three sea hags (typical Becker), who got an Ice Storm and Fireball in their faces. They resisted them all and still got pissed. That manoeuvre cost us three characters, plus Chomy's and Premier's friendship. After we fled we finally killed Rodrick in a cave, and levitated up a shithole to meet his second in command and some leftover crew. Later we learned that the shithole was literally a latrine, which explained why they were surprised to see us coming up. Anyway, after murdering them we returned to the undertemple, found the hand, looted a shitton of treasure, and escaped with the pirate ship. Good times!

Not our proudest moment.

In the afternoon we played a true classic: baexta ran Lichway from White Dwarf #9. Prince of Nothing wrote a pretty good review of it. I was becoming sleepy by the afternoon thanks to the food, beer, and snoring roommates, but after the prelude the game shook me up. We faced most of the iconic encounters of the dungeon, from the whimsy to the creepy. 

After freeing him from bandits, we became "henchmen" of a delusional guy thinking himself to be a magic-user and the husband of Odo, the sorceress who moved in to the ancient tombs. We murdered some goblins torturing a stirge, then turned the remaining two into followers of Ra - and our henchmen. Just in time so the newly joining Michael could take them over! We met some xvarts, laughing at halfling jokes while on break. We walked the mammoth halls, where over 600 corpses were sleeping only because of the eerie music of the weird wicker man-like creature whistling in the silver cage at the southern end of the dungeon.

Since we didn't have a better goal, our more zealous members thought we should hunt down Odo. After alarming some of her minions though, the tides turned, and we were basically chased out by her companions from the dungeon. While I was diving in a flooded room, looking for treasure and an exit, the party was cornered by Odo, but someone popped a Wall of Fog to keep her away while everyone escaped. I wish we had another session so we could return with a vengeance.

The original NAP champion shitposting in the middle of a Lichway run.
Iudex is trying to remember if he has the White Dwarf issue with the module.

The rest of the night was spent with more "networking". To be continued...

[Loot] All Things Dragonbane

In the chaos of packing my shit for the big journey to Cauldron Con I did not have time to appreciate last Tuesday's delivery. The postman surprised me with two thick cardboard envelopes chock full of Dragonbane goodies.

Forgot to include the dice. Believe me, they too are nice.

The thinner one was from Free League, containing Path of Glory, a remake of the classic Drakar och Demoner campaign, Ärans Väg. Like the standalone Dragonbane Rulebook and Bestiary, it's a full colour book with glossy cover, sturdy pages, and solid binding. It seems more coherent and more interesting than the smorgasbord of adventures in the core boxed set's Adventure book. There is also a neatly folded map in the back of the book.

Sneak peek from the completely rewritten chapter 3.

The chunkier package is Windheim, a third party campaign by Nordic Skalds, which funded on Kickstarter last year. The package consist two hardcovers, the adventure The Horn of the Dawn Part 1: Traces of Darkness and the supplement Windheim Companion, along with a set of icy blue dice, and a couple sturdy maps. The books have similar production values to the official Free League hardcovers, except for one thing: they have a matt cloth cover, which is superior to the glossy cover of the Dragonbane hardcovers. Covers aren't the only thing that catches the eye, the interiors are pretty too, especially the full page illustartions. What surprised me is that the authors didn't try to imitate Free League's sleek modern in-house style, but went with something that feels right out of the nineties.

High quality third party publishing reared its head
in the Dragonbane community. 

Alas, I have no clue when can I finally read them - I have a HackMaster Basic to gush about, a HarnMaster: Kethíra to read, and a Cauldron Con to write a recap for.

[Travelogue] Into the Cauldron

It was 5:30 in the morning when I got out of the bed in Neubiberger Hof. Even far from home I woke up three times during the night to listen if the kids are asleep, only to realize I'm all alone in a room and I'm an idiot for messing up my opportunity to sleep well. That's what you get for eating german food all night long.

Of course excitement didn't help either. Today our humble magyar raiding party (Chomy, Iudex, Melan, Premier, and yours truly) leaves for Schloss Hohenroda, to meet all the OSR luminaries, fans, and freaks, who attend to Cauldron Con.

It will be tons of fun. Especially if the beer is free this year too.

I lost 4 kgs just for this trip.

Early haul I got from the absolute gent Iudex
and the remains of some good homebrew pálinka.

Neubiberg by Night

[PSA] HackMaster in Bundle of Holding

How the HackMaster community will look like
when the new edition is finally announced.

HackMaster is now on sale on Bundle of Holding. It is a game near and dear to me, one that I have fond memories of, one that I yearn to run again. Alas I have to bid my time till the stars are right again, and I can sleep through the night without getting woken up 2d4p times by my daughter. You, on the other might be luckier than me. And if you are, then what better could you do with your surplus time and energy, than read, play, and run the best game ever developed by mankind?

The Player Collection costs $12.95 and gets you the following:

• The Player's Handbook, which holds the finest medium-high crunch class and level-based fantasy role-playing ruleset within its hallowed pages.
• The first two Zealot's Guides, for those who need more flavourful religions and clerical spells in their game.
• In the Realm of the Elm King and Legacy of the Elm King, two introductory adventures. They involve bugbears, who eat children, like all bugbears should.
• A bunch of resources you can download from the internet, but now neatly collected in one place.

The GameMaster Collection's threshold is at $29.31 at the moment and contains the following:

• The GameMaster's Guide, which actually contains advice and more rules for GameMasters. Shocking, isn't it?
• The Hacklopedia of Beasts, the most stunning monster book ever. It even has silhouettes, like the dinosaur books of my childhood!
• Frandor's Keep, a little sandbox on the borderlands.
• More free shit from the internet.

If you can't decide, feel free to check out HackMaster Basic, a free rulebook that contains pregens, rules, and content up to level 5, or buy HackMaster Basic Plus for a buck, which goes up to 10 and even has character creation.

And of course while we are at it, don't forget to get the best rpg's best character sheets.

I've been quite hyped for HackMaster lately. Kenzer and Jolly have been teasing a revised edition for a while now. A Kickstarter was promised for this year, then for the next year, and they have been pretty dormant since they've lost Steve Johansson, so I'm not holding my breath. But since it's become a meme that whenever I turn up on reddit I either recommend some d100 game or HackMaster, I think it's time to give the devil his due, and write some reviews for the rulebooks - starting with the now out of print, original HackMaster Basic.

Plus it's easier on the long to just link a blogpost than write it down again why people should care about the game. It's also good for the blog's traffic...