I'm going to use some of my more recent materials — by Philip Reed — to try and come up with a fun little adventure. Mostly by tossing a LOT of things at a wall and see what I feel like scraping off.
Category: Campaign Design Page 1 of 2
- The GLOW 1996: Psychic Eustace Delmont Intermission #4 - Finishing Checking in with Rules and Such
- Finishing Up the Check In
- Rereading "Need for Speed" (from Chapter 5)
- Rereading "Mission Start"
- Rereading "Great Powers" and "Neon Noir"
- Switching to One Per Week
- Credits
The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont. Intermission #4 - Finishing Checking in with Rules and Such
Finishing Up the Check In
A week or so ago — in blog time, more like 2 weeks ago in real time — I got through the first 147 pages of the Outgunned book to tighten up the rules, figure out stuff that I might need to change, and generally plot out ways to make the story feel a bit more Outgunned. Since then, Episodes 5, 6, and 7 have been played and I'm getting ready for Episode 8 which will definitely increase some pressure. Assuming Eustace doesn't score a Jackpot and take down a boss in a single roll. Which might happen.
At any rate, it's a good time for me to finish out the re-read. Especially since my general understanding of those first five chapters was already pretty close to correct but the last chapter is where I only have the vaguest notion of things. I also need to finish out the last bit of Chapter 5. Then, getting that done, I'll move on to Action Flicks and just touch base a little there. Come up with some ideas for opponents that better use the Cyber/Super vibe.
Rereading "Need for Speed" (from Chapter 5)
We had a very short chase/race that was almost for comical effect. I'm not 100% sure there will be much chance for another but I can always force one in if I want.
The basics I get. You have two general numbers: "Need" and "Speed." The Need has a story-element — where you are trying to get or what you are trying to achieve — and a numerical element — a number of Grit-esque boxes ranging from 6 to 18 [page 154] with the note that Need 6 chase might be a bit too short while Need 13+ chases are likely to be too difficult. The recommended rage on page 154 is 8 to 12. In multiplayer games, the Need can be kept a secret.
Speed is the other quality. It is more straightforwardly mechanical in that it is established by known equipment. Rides have a starting speed — Eustace's bike is up 2 as a starting speed since he rewrote it during his Soulburn berserker-y. The story element of speed is a bit abstract and is more about your ability to get out of the chase successfully. No matter where the ride starts it eventually gets up to Speed 5 or Speed 6. On page 154 (again), it notes that at Speed 5 the chase's Action Rolls become a Gamble. Presumably the Reaction Rolls remain merely dangerous [if that]. Then at Speed 6 you start taking -1 to all rolls because you are at Top Speed. There is at least one Feat to counter this but none of my characters have that Feat and it does not seem likely they will get it during this Campaign.
[page 152] At the end of the ACTION Turn, before you check Reaction, you fill a number of Need equal to your current Speed. This is after you calculate changes to your speed. If — and only if — your action would increase your Speed then you get +1 Speed for Critical successes, +2 for Extreme, and +3 for Impossible. A Jackpot means the chase is over. Characters can do other actions instead of trying to focus on increasing their Speed, or just essentially skip their Action turn. If you fail to get any successes, Speed drops by 1. If you have a 0 Speed and this happens, you actually lose a filled box on your Need.
You can choose to skip increasing your Speed [to avoid getting faster than 4, for instance].
The jazz of the chase sequences is the Reaction Turns. This is where the characters — the driver and the passengers — tend to have to do various things to avoid getting hit or tossed around or losing control. It tends to be Dangerous + Critical but can be +/- based on circumstance. On page 153 it points out that you get -1 Speed per person who fails (passengers and driver) but if the driver fails, you also lose one armor.
There are several examples given for types of roll. Here's one: You need to make a sudden turn. The driver rolls Nerves+Dexterity, the others roll Brawn+Force. I like that sort of vibe, truly.
If the ride blows up — runs out of armor and takes more damage — you lose the chase. Makes sense. On page 155 it also has other loss conditions like a minimum speed, a countdown, or having to bail out of the chase. Of course, if everyone loses Grit [possibly just the driver depending on the ride] then the chase is over.
There is the option to having hot boxes on the Need track similar to how they are in combat [page 160]. Then, for Adrenaline, you get a few fun things like "old woman cross the road" or "rush hour traffic..." I like the theme of those.
There are rules for chases on foot [page 159] — similar mechanics but no ride, no driver, and starting speed is 0. Presumably the main loss condition for that would be running out of Grit [with the countdown, minimum speed, and giving up possibly taking place in some situations]. Rules for multple rides on page 158 — if destination is the same, treat it as one chase while if not then treat it as separate chases.
With the comment that there is likely enough data and rules here for this to have likely deserved its own chapter, I think I got the general idea of how to keep chases fun.
Rereading "Mission Start"
When you’re playing Outgunned, you always have a mission to carry out. + Every mission comes with very high stakes. If you and your fellow Heroes don’t get to work, the bad guys will win, and many innocents will pay the price. Both on page 164. Early on, this was definitely a bit of a problem for the campaign. I think with the introduction of the most recent twists in the game, the campaign/arc more re-aligns with the vibe at the core of Outgunned. There is a definite badness that is a core badness. Magnus Odinson — real name not yet released —, Dave Akari, and Roger Patel are all part of an attempt to try and destabilize the Order. Does it make sense? I mean, yeah. It makes enough sense for me to have a good time.
At the beginning of a Turning Point, Heat rises and the Heroes Advance. From then on, you can set Goons aside and start bringing in Bad Guys and Bosses. [page 166] Oooooopsies. Looks like Heat went up. That won't impact too much but it is up to 6, now. Actually, no, there are seom conditions to up Heat [Page 181]: A point of no return (Showdown or Turning Point), when someone is left for dead which the characters have not done, a major defeat, a major failure, or taking too long. The latter is up for debate but since the storyline as a whole has been going for around two days and only the last twenty-four hours has really been a major impact I'd say it's ok. The initial rise was due to the attack in the mall but frankly that's the establishing shot that explains why the heat would be at 4. The Turning Point of stuff going down at the compound would be what gets it to 5.
One thing I am still slightly struggling with is the Villain. Roger Patel is a likely choice but I think more and more it will be Doctor Roman Patel. Roger is kind of a right-hand man to his dad. Roman will be the core of the secret sects and crime family power. By focusing on Roman it makes it less about a one-on-one and taking down a villain that is an older man, though still fit, who deals with everything through layers of subordinates. His daughter somewhat turned on the family — less here than in the Alabama Weird — and the plot line to rescue her is still on the books. Maybe right after the compound. Eustace has slightly forgotten about the disk but that can be soon.
Going with Roman, we get Roger as the main subordinate, and Amy is Roman's weakness. His strong spots will be Organized Crime, Cutting Edge Tech, and Secret Organization. In fact, the fight with the compound is slightly biting into Roman's control of hidden psychics.
I'll save going into the rest of the Villain stuff until we are closer to the Showdown, but the important thing for me to remember is that rolls against the Villain are at -1 until the Showdown and basically stuff like Spotlights can't be used to beat the Villain until the end.
Next significant element in this chapter is Support Characters. Right now there is basically two: Libby and Genny. Libby is help with Hacking. Genny is help with shooting. A few other people might make good ones. One of the goofier street gang members like the ShaoDra or Fractals. Julian. I like the idea of the silly little bike racers to show back up and help since Eustace deeply impressed them. We'll start with the two and I'll build them up as characters with actual stats when it is time.
There are three Plans B per campaign/arc: Bluff, Bullet, and Backup. We can say for sure that Hitomi has used up the Backup by calling in folks to help take the compound once I made the compound more complicated than initially intended. On page 183 it goes into details on the others. Bullet and Bluff are basically what they say on the tin.
And then with rest of the chapter it's a mixture of stuff that seems perfectly fine — like Advancements — and stuff that is mostly ok — like Experiences. Though the attack on the Rambler which may or may not occur is a lot like a Heist, it's not exactly how I'm playing it so I can skip it.
This wraps up the core book which takes us to Action Flicks.
Rereading "Great Powers" and "Neon Noir"
I think most of it is just flavor and feats and such. But starting with "Great Powers" the main thing I see, on page 71, is "Plan B: Blast." In most ways it is just like the Bullet — where a single bullet rewrites the scene to be more positive — only it involves your super powers. Eustace has kind of already ued this trick a couple of times but I'm not counting it because both times it was kind of just of flavor.
Then there are a few important things with "Neon Noir." Use Streetwise in the Sprawl, Style in the Top. This is on page 178. You also have a new rule about using a Gamble. You get +2 to your roll instead of +1, but you take 3 Grit per Snake Eyes. Yowza.
When you lose on the Death Roulette [page 179] you can't use a Spotlight but also can be revived for $3 at a cyberdoc. Makes sense.
There are also some specific rules for cyberwear that I am partially ignoring because Eustace has something slightly different. As the story progresses, we might think more about that.
Switching to One Per Week
At this point I also want to try switching the let's play to a slightly different format where I play throughout the week (a scene or two per mini-session) and then hit post just once a week for the actual plays [with things like intermissions being on a second day, etc]. The overhead for the Outgunned THE GLOW posts is enough that any time saved will be helpful to getting to actually play more. The idea is that I spend the same amount of time working on the playthroughs and the blog, essentially, but rather than 3-5 scenes aim for more like 5-10 scenes per week with a bit more time spent building up and actually playing each scene.
It's not necessarily a guaranteed thing that will stay. For one, it does screw up my "episode format" where there will be more shifts in the middle of each post. When I was doing 3/week then I could run a little long or cut a little short. Only stuff in real life — I have largely lost a lot of mental capacity to play on the weekends so it is much more like an hour here or there throughout the week — kept me cutting stuff shorter and shorter to get the three out. Not all game systems or campaigns require as much overhead so it can vary per campaign.
CREDITS
The GLOW 1996: Psychic Eustace Delmont is played using Two Little Mouse's Outgunned and Outgunned: Action Flicks (especially, but not limited to "Neon Noir" and "Great Powers"). It uses Larcenous Designs' Gamemaster Apprentice Deck: Cyberpunk 2E as its main oracle.
Other sources used include:
- Zach Best's Universal NPC Emulator.
- Cesar Capacle's Random Realities
- Kevin Crawford's Cities Without Number
- Matt Davis' Book of Random Tables: Cyberpunk 1, 2 and 3.
- Geist Hack Games and Paul D. Gallagher's Augmented Realities.
- The GLOW 1996: Psychic Eustace Delmont Intermission #3 - Checking in with Rules and Such
- Why Am I Checking In?
- Rereading "A Time For Action"
- Rereading "Impending Danger"
- Rereading "Gear Up"
- Rereading "Face the Enemy"
- Credits
The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont. Intermission #3 - Checking in with Rules and Such
Why Am I Checking In?
In game terms, we have just wrapped up what would be roughly equivalent to our second shot. Solo makes it a bit odder. The first shot being getting out of the mall and dealing with the Apostates + Holy Rollers. The second shot being shutting down Ouroboros and getting a job. The third shot will be dealing with the Knives and their allies. Then we should be at a turning point.
I would say generally the story is going about 70% correctly. We are introducing a few wheels within wheels. We are getting some good — but not locked down in stone — character moments. We have a few allies. A few enemies. Some intrigues but not so many the story is self-burying. Remind me to tell you the time I spent sessions trying to get back to the central intrigue in my first ever solo game. I think we have a good start. A fairly solid start.
But not really a great one. The action is a bit too Tricube Tales — and I say that with love. At this point, most of the action feels like it might have come from Cities Without Number, Cyberpunk 2020, or most other games. It has fights. It has dodges. It just does not quite have the explosive, silly oomph I was wanting.
There are some good moments. Eustace slaughtering the Patel goons before they had a chance to move was campaign establishing. Dodging over the collapsing church floor after taking several hits from the security drones worked well for me. The fight with Weird Arms. Hitomi "hacking" a sentient computer by being friendly to a relatively abused system is the kind of lore that moves worldbuilding forward. Also a lot of simple checks just to find stuff that does not really have any danger associated. Moments where simple talking is plenty. Some of that, maybe a lot of that, was the pneumonia. It is hard to think of exciting things when a set of stairs can wind you for several minutes.
The time has come though to ramp this up a bit. The fight with the Knives is a good start, partially because it challenges a central thesis of the arc: Eustace gets his powers from Soulburn. What does he do against enemies that stop it?
Before I do that, though, I want to take a moment to get a bit into a deeper dive with the rules. Go over the chapters and sections, talk about things I could do better or focus on more.
Rereading "A Time For Action"
"If something can go wrong, roll the dice." [page 60].
I think this is the primary thing I would like to tweak. Each time the dice come out I want a general break down of what actually fails when they fail.
Partially this is on me to focus on the scenes and set-pieces that have more action. Gun turrets. Three groups of smaller goons rather than just a single fight with a single big bad. Timers and explosions.
"Most rolls worthy of a Hero are Critical rolls." [page 64].
This is how I have been playing it but it is good to know. Basic should be largely just be used to do more minor rolls where some failure would be fun. Extreme should be more or less the top tier rolls. I think I got this part down ok.
"When Re-rolling, you take all dice that weren't part of a combination and roll them again." [Emphasis mine, page 68].
This I have been doing incorrectly. I even talked about, somewhere, there being an odd mini-game where sometimes you get two Basics and I wasn't sure if you were supposed to risk one of the Basics but picking up those dice and rerolling, especially in cases where you have Snake Eyes. I will, instead, consider a Basic success as "locked" even if it interferes with rerolls.
"If after making a Re-roll or Free Re-roll you got a better result, you can still choose to go All In." [page 69]
I have not used this but probably should. Eustace is very much an "all in" type of guy.
The next little bit is about extra actions from additional successes. I need to work on this a bit. Partially this, especially: "If you passed a roll with flying colors and one of your friends has failed, you can use any of your extra successes to lend them a hand." [page 73] I think I have generally treated extra successes as extra effect, not extra actions. I should tweak that.
Another tweak I need to figure out more about is Help. I think I have doing that wrong. For instance, a gun does not grant Help. It just allows you to enter into a gun fight. A laptop might grant Help to hacking since it brings your tools to the table. Eustace's blades grant help becuause a fist fight doesn't require blades. I'll pull that in a bit.
Rereading "Impending Danger"
I have a bad feeling this is the one where I am going to be handling stuff a bit wrong. For instance...
"The difference between a normal roll and a dangerous roll is that if you fail a dangerous roll, you don’t face the usual consequences for a failure. Instead, you lose a set amount of Grit depending on the difficulty of the failed roll." [page 81] Then it goes on to list the amount of grit. Basic = 1. Critical = 3. Extreme = 9! Impossible = 12. That's a huge jump from Crit to Extreme but ok. The problem is...
"A Gamble is an extremely risky action or reaction, a wager against all odds that runs the risk of backfiring on the Hero. Gamble rolls can be either Dangerous or normal, but in either case, they carry a threat for you to lose additional Grit." [page 86] And then, on the next page [page 89], "Afterwards, look at the dice: for every Snake Eye you rolled, you lose 1 Grit. When doing this, you only count the left on the table after you decided whether to Re-Roll or go All In, regardless of if they are part of a success or not."
The reason this is wrong is you have Gamble Rolls and you have Dangerous rolls and sometimes Gamble Rolls are dangerous but not always. I have pretty much played every combat as a Gamble when sometimes it would not be. It also clarifies that you do count "snake eyes" [aka, 1s] as a hit even if they are part of a success. I thought so, but wanted to double check.
Gambles broadly come from two sources: very dangerous rolls — it lists two variations of this, playing with fire and taking things too far — and going all in which is a +1 and different from the other "All In".
Healing I have been slighly overcomplicating. You essentially heal all Grit when the character (1) sleeps, (2) catches a break, or (3) the end of a shot. It's a bit more automatic and regular, once again re-inforcing the need for higher amounts of action.
Generally conditions I have been playing correctly, just haven't had much use for them overall. One thing to keep in mind is that several conditions have a kind of mini-game aspect that grants an alternate solution. For instance, "You Look Scared" can be removed by facing your fear. That can be fun to play with.
Rereading "Gear Up"
Don't think it really requires a lot that wasn't already discussed above. Equipment is in four categories: Common [just for flavor], Tools [+1 Help or "grants permission"], Guns [obvious], and Rides [also obvious].
Combat is very focused on guns which makes the Eustace vs Hitomi, Sword vs Gun divide a bit odd. Eustace get +1 Help from his swords. Hitomi does not for her gun. I think I might be slightly running combats wrong but we'll get to it.
One thing I missed was "You can lose gear...when you choose to sacrifice it to gain +1 to a roll that you think is extremely important." [page 99] That's a mechanic, like the "All In" that I haven't used. I sort of have in the storyline with Eustace giving up his jacket to steady Bee's nerves, but not really in a way that would impact the mechanics. I'll keep an eye out for opportunities.
A lot of the other bits about Rides and Cash are slightly not necessary. It looks like the stay in the motel should cost $1 [again, in Outgunned terms, it is more a logarithmic scale than anything]. I covered that by saying "there were credits" but good to know in the future. There's stuff for Black Market [page 111] where everything is $1 cheaper and a Gear Up Scene where you can have a shopping spree montage to replicate the moment in a movie where people get a lot of equipment.
On page 110: "Anyway, it’s hard for a Hero to get their hands on more than 1$ at a time, unless they are robbing a bank or some such thing." That slightly changes how I think of some economy. Probably get $1 for the information snagged from Ouroboros. The other two missions will be $2 and $1 respectively.
That being said, Eustace and Hitomi have a large crate of guns that they can borrow from, but they will have the tag of "easily traceable" which means using them will up the Heat.
Rereading "Face the Enemy"
With the "Impending Danger" reread, I'd say most of how I ran fights "wrongly" might be somewhat fixed (in that I treated Reaction Turns as both Gambles and Dangerous). There are a few other things that I need to note, though, to add some spice. The quick run down would look like...
- [page 115] Quick Action + Full Action per Action Turn. Frankly, I'll probably keep this pretty loose since it's solo play but it's the metric.
- [same page] Instead of Brawn + Fight or Nerves + Shoot you can use other combos to fight back if they make sense. These would still wear down the Grit of the enemy as long as they might "might hurt, tire, discourage, or chase away your enemies..."
- [page 116] Likewise, other skill combos can be used for Reactions as long as they make sense.
- [page 117] Fights can start either Action or Reaction, depending on circumstances. This can make surprise and awareness rolls more useful in some cases.
- [same page] If I get additional successes on Reaction, those can be used to counter attack, to do extra actions, or to block damage from others. Blocking damage requires a full additional success.
One thing I was unsure about was the Brawl vs the Fire Fight. Seems like Brawl is more than a simple "fist fight" metric though it is meant to be for less lethal fights [like bar fights or quick punch ups]. Only roll Action Turns but Actions become Dangerous. I'm not sure if that would fit a lot of fights in "Neon Noir" but stuff like the fight in the cafe could have been a nice place to use them.
For gun fights [which would also include Eustace going blade-heavy] the main two things I need to note are [page 124] if the guns fail they use up a mag and [page 125] firing at an enemy in melee — which happens a lot — it's treated as Gamble against the allies in melee. Hitomi is 100% going to end up shooting Eustace at some point.
When Enemies have a Hot Box as their last Grit then they get one last chance to spend their Adrenaline. I'm not sure if that has come up yet but just to remember.
Finally, for the final part of this re-read: Weakspots are more complicated than I have been playing them. On page 147, there are a list of possible ones on a table. Presumably I could also come up with others in a similar vein. An example of one on the table is "The Enemies aren’t really sharp. You can attack with Focus+Know +1."
That's Enough for Now
That re-read gets me up to page 147 out of roughly 190 pages of rules so most of the way. The remaining bits are stuff like Chases (which I haven't ran even once so re-reading wouldn't make much sense), some more technical campaign development, Plans B, and other elements that will likely become more prominent as we get into the Turning Point and then the main campaign arc kicks up. At the Turning Point I'll probably work a shorter version of this post and go ahead and fill out the Villain and Supporting Character info — Libby is going to get some stats!.
The next re-read I'll go over "Neon Noir" as well just to make sure I am getting that down.
CREDITS
The GLOW 1996: Psychic Eustace Delmont is played using Two Little Mouse's Outgunned and Outgunned: Action Flicks (especially, but not limited to "Neon Noir" and "Great Powers"). It uses Larcenous Designs' Gamemaster Apprentice Deck: Cyberpunk 2E as its main oracle.
Other sources used include:
- Zach Best's Universal NPC Emulator.
- Cesar Capacle's Random Realities
- Kevin Crawford's Cities Without Number
- Matt Davis' Book of Random Tables: Cyberpunk 1, 2 and 3.
- Geist Hack Games and Paul D. Gallagher's Augmented Realities.
- "Previously..." and Campaign/Arc Summary
- The GLOW 1996: Psychic Eustace Delmont Intermission #2 - Creating The "Soulburn" Art
- Creating a New Art Style
- Step One: First, a Photo
- Step Two: Second, Setting Up Layers
- Step Three: Making the Outline
- Step Four: Adding the "Soulburn"
- Step Five: Manipulating the Image
- Option: Using Masks to Create Focus Points
- Credits
Previously, on The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont
Eustace and Hitomi have started gathering up gear and resources to make their way in The GLOW. While they have a short breather, they plan to pick up a job or two. But first, let's take a look at the art I am working on to show Eustace's "Soulburn" vision.
About The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont
Eustace Delmont is a psychic on the cusp of "graduating" into a full-blow Field Psychic. He requests his right to Walk, a brief period of freedom to encourage psychics to see the other side of The GLOW. He tries to finish his long-time partner Jani Blum's final unfinished mission: to find a mini-disc and crack open the Patel crime family. He meets Hitomi Meyer, a criminal hacker. The two are now on the run between a powerful crime family and an even more powerful adversary: The Order and its plans for Eustace.
Content Warning: Occasionally very foul language, lots of smoking, quite intense violence, drinking, gambling, non-graphic sex, drugs, criminal behavior, and black magic. The GLOW is a world of spiritual torture and weird horror.
This post is in the standard Doug Alone post style. See Anatomy of a Post for more details.
Attribution for the tools and materials used—including the splash art—can be found in the Credits below along with some details.
The GLOW: 1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont. Intermission #2 - Creating The "Soulburn" Art
Creating a New Art Style
I try and give many of my arcs their own vibe when it comes to visual elements. The Bleak + The Pearl gets the harsh two-tone graphics with high contrast. The Bloody Hands got 18th and 19th century oil paintings. Eustace & Hitomi got photos [sometimes actually of the 90s] rendered in such a way to look like bad print offs of news articles. To begin with, The GLOW had a fairly unique aspect for this blog: paid stock art. It was technically the second time I bought paid stock art for the blog. There was meant to be an Ick & Humb arc kicked off last in 2024 that had Dean Spencer's art to represent some of the characters. That got cut off, though, when I was a bit overwhelmed trying to figure out how to bring the 3.5 active campaigns on the blog to a close. It will show up, maybe in an arc or two, but this means The GLOW "1996 Agent Johnny Blue" got through the gate first.
As much as 100% love and recommend Dean Spencer's artwork, and will continue to use it every few posts, I did want to come up with a method for an extended The GLOW "1996 Psychic Eustace Delmont" arc that did not end up having to reuse much art or force the campaign to change gears too much.
Playing around last week, I came up with a method I liked. And, partially to encourage myself to do more experiments, I thought I would share it more generally. It is not an advanced technique. It is just a simple way to take photos that match roughly what I see when I imagine The GLOW.
This will also help me sort one of the missing New Year's Resolutions where I had plans to try and come up with some easy links to free art and such. A step one, if you will.
Step One: First, a Photo
The first step is to find a photo that I think would work. What am I looking for? That kind of changes but generally a city scene. One with few people or where the people will fade a bit in the background. I usually have a few "keywords" in mind like warehouse or dock or nightclub. The technique I am working with seems to go better when the picture is a bit dark, with distinct lines, and has some definite splashes of light or color. I would like it to be a human-generated photo rather than one touched up heavily by either Generative AI or by extensive photo manipulation.
Good sources of open-reuse art that I use include:
There are others. A lot of these are simply user-generated content and so quality is variable. Some allow Generative AI and so I try to filter around it. A few times it can be hard to tell. I check things like the re-use. The fact that these pictures will be used to tell some fairly violent and potentially disturbing stories means that I try and not step on too many toes. This makes it weird if I am using photos of people.
If I am not sure what photo I want to use, sometimes it helps to just browse those pages and see what leaps out to me. There are several scenes where finding the photo first helps me to frame some details.
For this particular case, I want a cafe. Juan's Cafe. Near Pensacola, FL. Something a bit quirky that could be used as kind of an info spot for Hitomi but which isn't the standard cyber-punk-club style set-up. A place where lower-level operatives her might gather that has a veneer of friendliness.
Since I tend to default to Pixabay, I'll grab this off of WordPress. It has a good light source. The red poster should pop out a bit. The lines might be a bit fuzzy but we'll play with it. The first step will be trim it down to 1:1 in aspect. I like things to be either landscape or square since it tends to work best with the blog format.
 |
| A real world cafe with a nice courtyard garden. |
Step Two: Second, Setting Up Layers
The hard part is picking a photo, really. GIMP (the free-open-source image processing program I like to use though there are others) will do a lot of the work. Once I figured out the technique I liked, it is pretty easy to work through the steps in just a few minutes for me.
At this point, I will name the file to whatever it is in my game — for now Juan's Cafe — and then I will name the default/base image as that + [BASE Version] and I will keep it in the background as a fail safe if I get to a point where I need to start over.
I need at least three more layers. I make two copies of the BASE layer: LINES and MODIFIED. LINES is on top. MODIFIED is below LINES. BASE is at the bottom.
I think make a blank/transparent layer in between LINES and MODIFIED and call it SOULBURN.
This would look something like this:
Step Three: Making the Outline
The next is to use the FILTERS → ARTISTIC → PHOTOCOPY on the LINES layer. I'm looking for a good number of outlines that roughly tell the same story as the original photo but also lose some of the finer details. If the outline doesn't quite look right, I can undo it and then go and tweak some of the contrasts/curves of the LINES version of the photo [under the COLOR menu].
There's no one good set of options to choose from. Sometimes I play with some settings to bring up some details or to some some. Just keep "Preview" on and move some sliders and values around until you get something you like. For this demo, I will leave it at GIMP's default settings.
Once I get a a good blend, I think go to COLORS → POSTERIZE → and reduce it to just two colors.
At this point, I go to COLORS — COLOR TO ALPHA and I turn the white portions transparent which will make the lines largely disappear into the layers below but they are still there doing their job.
Step Four: Adding the "Soulburn"
The next step is to add the weird color splotches that represent the Soulburn. Click on the currently blank SOULBURN layer and look for FILTERS → RENDER → NOISE → PLASMA. The first seed option is fine but I usually click the "NEW SEED" button a few times to find a color that "speaks" to the mood I want the scene to have.
At this point all you will be able to see would be the PLASMA layer and the outlines we generated above.
Once you have a good color combination, we need to figure out how much Soulburn we want. The way this is achieved is basically by going back to the layer window and changing the opacity around.
For example, putting it around 2/3s (give or take a slight bit) makes it look something like this:
This is where the darker, more night-time photos can work better because the background tends to fade out a bit while the light in the foreground kicks off a bit harder. With a lot of these photos I go between 50% and 100% depending on how intense I want the Soulburn vibe to be. Around 50% it is very nearly a suggestion. At 100%, reality is just a few outlines. 2/3s to 3/4s is a good blend for a lot of photos.
Step Five: Manipulating the Image
One benefit of this technique is that I can blend and modify lines together as I need. I can cut out text, bring in outlines from other pictures for strange effects, etc.
In this case, I am just going to do two quick modifications using other GIMP filters. I pick the MODIFIED layer. First, FILTERS → ARTISTIC → CARTOON. Play with those settings a bit until I get something that feels a lot like the original picture, just a bit less real. For the demo, I'll keep it mostly the default.
Then, still on the modified layer, FILTERS → ARTISTIC → OILIFY. I often reduce the mask radius on this but for now I'll keep it default.
The overall impact of this step can be pretty minor — especially with an image as evenly lit as this one — but it helps to reinforce this vibe of the Soulburn being just a bit more real than the things it is surrounding. The overall effect is to be something a bit aesthetically pleasing at a glance but kind of off-putting if you try and bring details out of it. As the story goes on, and Eustace is more and more absorbed into the Soulburn, the manipulations will get more pronounced.
Option: Using Masks to Create Focus Points
Another option I can use and will play at with some photos is using ADD A LAYER MASK to the Soulburn layer and the GRADIENT tool to create portions that pop. In this case, I can set the GRADIENT tool options to RADIAL and then either FG-to-TRANSPARENT and use Black (#000000) or have it go from FG-to-BG and set both to various grayscales. Then, use that gradient on the Soulburn's Mask to have portions that fade away to the background but with other places more consumed by the Soulburn.
The overall effect on Juan's Cafe might look like this:
I'm not sure if it works out for this photo in particular but I'll play with it some on others.
CREDITS
The GLOW 1996: Psychic Eustace Delmont is played using Two Little Mouse's Outgunned and Outgunned: Action Flicks (especially, but not limited to "Neon Noir" and "Great Powers"). It uses Larcenous Designs' Gamemaster Apprentice Deck: Cyberpunk 2E as its main oracle.
Other sources used include:
- Zach Best's Universal NPC Emulator.
- Cesar Capacle's Random Realities
- Kevin Crawford's Cities Without Number
- Matt Davis' Book of Random Tables: Cyberpunk 1, 2 and 3.
- Geist Hack Games and Paul D. Gallagher's Augmented Realities.
ART CREDIT AND EXPLANATION
CC0 licensed photo by Anis from the WordPress Photo Directory. Apologies to Anis to turning his lovely photo of a cafe to a hacker hangout.
The GLOW 1996: Psychic Eustace Delmont - "Session 0," Arc Launch, Goals, Expectations, and Resources
The GLOW returns for its second outing. We are meeting an alternate take on Eustace Delmont and Hitomi Meyer. Rather than a chronically do-gooder nerd and the love of his life, a person finding herself far from home, we meet the much more capable psychic and hacker duo. Still entwined by fate, but facing cyberpunk adventures instead of solving cozy mysteries.
- No The Bleak + The Pearl For a Bit
- 2025 { Resolutions | Changes }
- Formal Move Towards { Worlds → Campaigns → [Mini-]Arcs } Format
- Focusing on One Arc at a Time
- Post Once (and Early), Edit at Least Twice
- Trying Out "New" Game Systems
- Trying Out "New" Game Worlds
- (Re)Trying Out "New" Oracles
- Things to Not Sweat...
- Make More Art, Design More Stuff, Focus on Game Motifs, Etc
- Build Up a List of Graphical Resources
- Credits
No The Bleak + The Pearl For a Bit
There will be no The Bleak + The Pearl this week because I spent a lot of my gaming time going through and fixing up months' worth of glitches that were holding the Eustace & Hitomi series back. Right after I finished that (within literal minutes), I { wrote | played } what I think is the longest ever session-post on the old blog: around 11k words. It took up all of my free time on Friday (Jan 3).
The week prior to that was mostly spent sorting through and updating a lot of "offline" and backend parts to my solo play kit: digital files, scripts, cloud storage folders, and other tools.
I have actually played a little of the second session for "In Search for the Harcuram Mantle", but a lot of that "play" was going back and rewriting some of my on-virtual-table notes to be more character-viewpoint focused and running through a slightly complex encounter and realizing I was rushing it. I have discussed before how rushing solo play greatly dampens my fun so it was best to take a step back, breathe a moment, and just enjoy spending an hour fiddling with a virtual map and thinking about the characters.
This trio of things — (1) fixing up and restarting a series that had stalled out, (2) reorganizing the blog and the stuff behind the blog, and (3) feeling rushed to meet a "Sunday Deadline" — helped me to realize that it was a great time instead to take a step back and think up my plans for the new year.
This means, as you read on the next couple sections of resolutions, there actually won't be any The Bleak + The Pearl for maybe a week or two. I'll explain. Give me time.
2025 { Resolutions | Changes }
Let's start with the bigger changes and then maybe move down.
Formal Move Towards { Worlds → Campaigns → Arcs } Format
I'm not 100% what you would call this but the first word that comes to my mind is a "mini-arc" format. Where mini-arcs (some not so mini) are played within a larger frame with a direction towards a few days or weeks or months instead of an indefinite time frame.
Start with a broad The World. Have one or more Campaigns set within it (each is a set of characters at a certain time), and then each of those Campaigns gets one or more Arcs (where the characters try to accomplish a goal within that Campaign, eventually leading up to finishing the Campaign as a whole). Each Arc is one or more Posts (representing a sort of traditional "session"). Where each Post is one more Sessions of actual playing | writing.
Fascinating insight into my brain that probably exposes me a librarian if you didn't know already, I know. But, my intended format for my play in 2025 might look something like this:
- The World
[Alabama Weird, The GLOW, Khel]
- The Campaign
[Eustace & Hitomi, 1996, The Bloody Hands: REBIRTH]
- The Arc ← *Focus on this as the Unit*
["and the Case of the Rambler's Inn", "Agent Johnny Blue", "The Stone Crack'd"]- The Post
["Chapter 3. Arrests and Friends, in That Order", "Chapters Two & Three", "05 - The Triptych Healed"]
- The Session
[each time I sit down and accomplish something in game: art, playing, writing, designing, etc]
- The Session
- The Post
- The Arc ← *Focus on this as the Unit*
- The Campaign
For some campaigns, like the offline campaigns, it might be less "arcs" and more "one to two pre-written adventures with some padding" but the principle is still the same.
Again, it's more a formalization than an abrupt change. It does slightly free me up mentally — which I surprisingly need — to do things like build in the kind of time jumps, thematic clusters, and conceptual shifts that I love. Even allows for things like shifts in play-style or systems.
Focusing on One Arc at a Time
This is a bigger change than above but it kind of requires the other change to make sense. I want to spend a couple of months playing differently. Rather than juggling multiple campaigns, with multiple arcs, where I have to shift into and out of various worlds and modes, I want to focus on one arc at a time.
The broad structure would be to figure what arc I want to play next — based on interest, fun ideas I have, some spark of inspiration, some challenge, or just a broad sense that it is time to revisit some old friends — and spend one "time slot" thinking up concepts, keyed scenes, lore, art motif, and goals at the arc level. Play the whole story arc through to completion, divided up into sessions (posts | sessions | etc) with potential extra content.
Keep the three-times-a-week schedule.
When I get done with arc, take a bonus "time slot" to do one of my absolute favorite activities with solo play: the self debrief and edit process. That last step wraps up the arc with some thoughts, re-packaging, final sorting. Potentially, but not necessarily, sets out some seeds for future arcs.
Then, figure out the next arc and do it again.
Right now, my plan is to finish out "Eustace & Hitomi and the Case of the Rambler's Inn" [+ bonus dog-catcher story which is somehow related], then finish up "The Bloody Hands: REBIRTH, The Stone Crack'd" after that, and then do The Bleak + The Pearl's current dungeon [the dungeon delving stuff will likely be shorter bursts in between the longer story modes] with each session being a bit shorter than current (a couple of hours at a time instead of trying for four to six hours at a time).
Around March, I will evaluate if this has improved, worsened, or not really impacted by game play and update accordingly.
Post Once (and Early), Edit at Least Twice
I need to get into a habit of playing and writing the session at least 24 hours before it is published. Edit it once immediately just to fix the no doubt several misspellings, broken sentences, and other glitches that show up from writing stuff down as I play. Schedule the post anywhere from one day to a couple of weeks later depending on the buffer. And, before it actually goes live, spend more time going back over and make sure it all makes sense with a harsher comb than that first edit. Once it is published and around the time I hit the "debrief" stage for the arc, maybe go back over it and smooth out the harsh edges but not in a way that is unfair to past-Doug.
A long variation of this discussion and my preferred method was included in the aftermath of realizing I had violated one of my own rules during playing The GLOW and I wrote a long commentary talking about how I like to do things and why it went wrong.
Trying Out "New" Game Systems
This blog basically grew up around two systems — Tricube Tales and Shadowdark — and frankly I could play those systems, backed with Mythic and Solodark, for quite some time, still. So much so that there has been a slight inertia towards bringing in something new. I could use a shake up, though, so a few systems I want to bring in (maybe two or three this year as a goal to start) include:
- Cypher
- Outgunned
- GURPS Lite+: meaning start with GURPS Lite 4th edition and add in just enough content to play whatever game I want to play.
- Ironsworn, Starforged, and/or Sundered Isles.
- At least one Call of Cthuhlu game.
- Maybe actually play one of Sine Nomine's awesome ...Without Number games instead of just using them for parts.
- Troika and Advanced Fighting Fantasy.
- Of course, a whole stack of other possibilities.
Besides these, try a few things like Thousand Year Old Vampire and other more solo-first systems (maybe as one-shots). The whole point of this is just to get me to think about other game systems and modes.
Trying Out "New" Game Worlds
I currently have a few game worlds into which the various campaigns fit: Alabama Weird (a "mostly" normal take on Alabama but one where cosmic horror and folklore are real and have influenced things), The GLOW (an even weirder version of the Alabama Weird), Barthus & Silt (the setting of The Bleak + The Pearl), Phillia (the island upon which Ick & Humb and related are played), and Khel (the continent from The Bloody Hands). What I would like to do is to add in at least one post-apocalyptic world and at least one science-fiction | space-opera world. Possibly also a kind of dreamscape type world but that one might just be technically an off-shoot of the Alabama Weird.
I figure as long as I can add one new world I should be happy.
That being said, I would rather develop new content for existing worlds rather than have a bunch of vague, unfinished places that never get revisited. I really love lore and I really love generational shifts and wide geographically-separated play.
(Re)Trying Out "New" Oracles
By "oracle" in this case I mean both the yes|no + and|but + twist generator — think Mythic — but also stacks of random tables, cards, and other tools. I am mostly good with the largish set of random generators I already use but it might be nice to bring up a few things — like Rory's Storycubes — that I have gotten out of the habit of using. I also have a whole "Like the I Ching but with dice" system I created but then left behind.
One thing I am very excited about adding is something like Dixit as well as more real world divination methods.
Also, I have enjoyed using some diegetic oracles where music and images that might be part of the game world (or represent things in a similar way as the characters would experience them) can be used as oracles in themselves. Either by using the stock art to influence elements, music to shift the mood, or materials that otherwise could, in theory, be experienced by the characters that I play to determine outcomes. I want to find more ways to use this.
Things to Not Sweat...
- Most of all, Don't sweat the Dougness.
- Don't sweat the long commentaries that only I read.
- Don't sweat the long session building.
- Don't sweat the corny jokes that only I will like.
- Don't sweat the romances or friendships or moments that only I will like.
- Don't sweat the cosmic horror, folklore, body horror that I like.
- Don't sweat the literary references or in-jokes even if no one else catches them.
- Don't sweat the stories where some young upcoming hero saves the realm a few weeks later. It's nice.
- Don't sweat the overlong explanations.
- Don't sweat the deadlines.
- Don't sweat the struggles to make sure it is fair. Make it make sense later or don't.
- Don't sweat the formatting (so much). Things can look different later on.
- Don't sweat the way I play (sort of like the first one, but this is important). I like to pre-gen ideas and stew upon some concepts (the prep is play portion) and that is fine. Do it. Then break it down (the play is prep portion). Who cares if no one else does it exactly the same way? Besides, I'm sure some do... It's ok if I figure out who the killer is early so I can work towards it. It is also ok if I change my mind and turn that all into a plot twist.
- Finally, Don't sweat the apologizing. I'm sometimes worry that I self-apologize too much on this blog. I do, but who cares. That is part of me finding out who I am and how I play.
Make More Art, Design More Stuff, Focus on Game Motifs, Etc
I like making (bad) art for my games. Bad maps. Bad character sheets. I like my campaigns (and arcs) to have their own style. I want to spend more time working on those little bits. I often avoid making my own art and own visual tools because I worry of it is good enough. It is good enough. I am the only person that has to be my own fan.
Just make sure I give lots and lots of credit as I go. A lot of people make things that help me tell the stories I like.
Build Up a List of Graphical Resources
I use a lot of stock art (most free, some paid) and a lot of illustrations and stuff to visually build up my blog. I think it might be nice to sit down and list some of those tools out in a way (probably a new page for the sidebar) so that others can find them.
It will also save me some headaches.
CREDITS
The art used to head the resolutions section is a CC0 licensed photo by Jeffrey Paul from the WordPress Photo Directory. According to the alt-text, it depicts the mysterious “O” rest stop (aka “Cerchio dello Staccioli”) outside Volterra, Italy. It summed up my feelings of looking forward fairly nicely. I have edited, as usual, using GIMP and several filters to give it a kind of video-game like feel. A motif I am thinking about adopting for an upcoming series about many tiers of reality.
Intermission #6 Contents
- Trying out a New Token Paradigm
- Re-Introducing the Blue Delve Boys and Learning Rolls
- Background for the Lighthouse 6
- Meet the Lighthouse 6
- The Potential Others
Trying Out a New Token Paradigm
In previous The Bleak + The Pearl Intermission (#5) I talked about taking the main storyline and putting it on a semi-hiatus as a way to focus on some new characters, get back to a purer dungeon delving experience, and just slightly rest up from what had been a kind of intense story building learning experience. This week's post will combine some of the progress on that as I plan to (next week) launch into the first of these new delves.
A slightly minor aspect to this hiatus and soft- | hard- relaunch is that I wanted to go back to the days where I was using a homebrew virtual table top setup to explore the dungeon mixed with hand-rolled dice and both virtual and handwritten notes. While looking over my assets for this, I found a stack of tokens I had made using John Kapsalis art originally designed for or around Advanced Fighting Fantasy and while I love JK's art and look forward to using it again in any AFF endeavors into which I might dive, I also wanted to give a good strong think about the aesthetics of this new era.
To remind you, this is what my original set up looked like.
 |
| The Blue Delve Boys face off against a berserker cultist and three zombies. (Art by John Kapsalis, Dyson Logos, and Crypto Cartographer - arranged by Doug Bolden - used here for personal use but all rights are reserved by original creators). |
Dyson Logos (or other) map, JK art, a GIMP template using some token borders I found (after digging through my files, I am 98% sure I was using "Character Token Portrait Frames for VTT" by Crypto Cartographer at least as base), and then a few other pieces here or there. Monsters were freqently "close enough" selections. Characters were "close enough" with some matching more than others. I would use text boxes to mark changes on the map and would often use a fog layer to update the map as I went to show explored areas and such. Over time, it made a nice digital artifact. You can see an example at the top of my recap for the "The Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur" dungeon.
There are a couple of problems with the set-up that are not quite actual problem. The two biggest (outside of a potential rights thing and tracking down credits for multiple sources every screenshot I might share) are that the characters/monsters never quite fit my mental vision and each token tended to involve a multistep process. I had to dig through my dozens of JK token packs, find the one I wanted. Snip it out from the whole. Import it into GIMP. Possibly trim or mask out portions of it to make it pop out better. Pick a frame fitting whatever mood or need I felt worked best. Export that out into a PNG. Upload that into my VTT. Then, when another encounter would show up, either reuse a "close enough" token or start back over.
As I have explored more and more with tools and aids that I like, one thing I have come to use a lot for some of my element is the CC-BY 3.0 tokens/icons at games-icons.net. It takes a little bit of practice to get used to what tokens are or are not there. As you get used to their selection, though, you start to get generate some ideas about how you could creatively add them in. At least I do.
This lead me to a new sort of idea. Find some broad "iconic representations" of the characters—Grusk can be represented by his axe, Bloodlust, while Tom might be lockpicks—and then use the icon customize option to add in a few colors, cut a few pieces out, and generally make icons not really meant to be precise tokens to the characters but stand-in elements that allow me to keep up my own mental map of the characters while also being clear enough that I am not confused about who is who. For monsters, a few basic icons can do heavy lifting: basic corporeal undead types, insect types, cultist types, spirit types, demon types, etc. Then when I come across a gnoll I do not have to find a gnoll token that is roughly the right shape and equipment but instead I use the mid-level humanoid beastman generic token. Save the tokens in such a way that I keep the symbol name, the artist, and the rough representation in the file type.
Here is what the above scene would look like using these more generic tokens. I'll add in a "web spell" effect and a few more enemies to demonstrate.
 |
| Three zombies attack Grusk while an enraged berserker cultist attacks Inar. Three other cultists are being trapped in Rance's Web spell. Two dead cultists are in the previous room. (Map by Dyson Logos. Icons by Delapouite, Lorc, and GamerAce135 from games-icon.net [CC-BY 3.0]) |
While the old art definitely had its charm, I really like the "board-game aesthetic" of the new art. I also like how it frees me from trying to describe a scene with my token choices and instead gives me more freedom to represent a scene and encourages a bit of creativity with colors and themes. I also like adding the spell effects and such to better track the status of things, backed up by some text.
Re-Introducing the Blue Delve Boys and Learning Rolls
In that light, here are the Blue Delve Boys and their current tokens. These might change over time depending on factors but for now, here's what they look like.
As I was making up icons and working on the "Lighthouse 8" (see below) I came across a line in the Kelsey-made Bard write-up: "Add 1d6 to your learning rolls." I realized I did not know what that meant. I found out that I had been missing a whole mechanic that is exactly the sort of reason why I like to play Shadowdark. As I said in a recent post, Shadowdark tends to allow characters to have more fiction than other OSR and OSR-adjacent games. "Learning" is precisely what I am talking about. While the Carousing rules got a fair amount of discussion during the build up to SD's release, I found that I had overlooked it's first cousin. Instead, you can have your character attempt to learn a new skill or general knowledge during downtime instead. It is described as such on Page 91: "Learning enables you to do new actions or gives you advantage on certain checks." You work out what you want to learn and can learn with the GM, then start out making a INT DC18 check. The next time you try to learn it, you reduce that by one step—i.e., DC15, DC12, DC9, etc—until you learn it or give up trying.
Over the course of these months of adventure, there have been a fair amount of downtimes. If I was playing a more traditional campaign, maybe four-ish. With the more story-heavy style campaign, maybe eight-ish. I will cut that into the middle and say six downtimes for six months of playing. Maybe high, maybe low. I don't know. It's complicated.
There were two carousing checks. This leaves four attempts to learn.
Grusk and Tom are going to want to learn Bleak navigation for sure. Then, if they pass that, then Grusk would want to learn more about delving while Tom would learn hunting. Inar will first try for first aid. After that, he will try for sneaking around. It is not really allowed for him to learn the full thief ability kit but since halflings have a natural sneak and he is prone to trying to stay a bit back to help once people get injured, I figure this is kind of a extending of what he can already do [and I have never really used his halfing invisibility properly except maybe once]. Finally, Rance will definitely start out learning the Ancient language. After that, he will work on improving his "monster lore" abilities since he seems to have that inherent based on how I play. Finally, he will being working on learning how to operate and repair automatons based on Jonias's notes.
Let's see how this goes...
Making the Rolls and the Outcomes
Grusk, learning Bleak Survival (at -1 to INT): 7 vs DC18, 6 vs DC15, 13 vs DC12. Grusk (on the third attempt) gets Bleak Survival and advantages to rolls related to navigating and surviving the Bleak, including a broad sense of what level of Bleak they at.
Grusk, learning "Delving" (at -1 to INT): 9 vs DC18. Not yet, but he will continue.
Tom, learning Bleak Survival (at -2 to INT): 13 vs DC18, 3 vs DC 15, 3 vs DC 12, 10 vs DC9. Tom (on fourth attempt) gets Bleak Survival with the same as Grusk. No time to learn Hunting just yet, but that'll be next.
Inar, learning First Aid (at +1 to INT): 19 vs DC18. He gets it on first attempt. He will get ADV to first aid rolls while trying to stabilize others. I'll also say this can be used to generally do things like identify wounds, give a rough prognosis, identify poisons/diseases he might have some experience with. Generally the kind of stuff that might be helpful in a non-magical, non-specialized way.
Inar, learning Sneaking (at +1 to INT): 13 vs DC18, 9 vs DC15, 11 vs DC12. Next time he will be against DC9.
Rance, learning Ancient Language (at +3 to INT): 15 vs DC18. 20(!) vs DC15. Rance not only learns Ancient on his second attempt but we'll say he is good at it and gets ADV to reading Ancient Text.
Rance, improving Monster Lore (at +3 to INT): 14 vs DC18. 19 vs DC15. His final learning attempt nets him ADV to identifying monsters and will allow him to make deductions about Bleak altered creatures. He will next turn to using his Ancient Language skills to translating Jonias's notes about the automatons.
Background for the Lighthouse 6
Behind the scenes, I created the initial four heroes while learning Shadowdark and only spent a somewhat short while making them. I gave them only a thin backstory—they were in The Pearl, they were orphans raised at a monastery (which got the name "The Blue Delve" from somewhere, probably some random table), and one of them had nightmarish dreams of something going on in the Bleak—that picked up elements like a snowball rolling downhill. They quickly became the reason for the campaign and so had developed a kind of necessary plot armor. If one of them died, it would sort of be weird to continue the campaign as it was going. Part of the reason for the reset is to build up some other characters, personalities, explore some extended materials, and effectively remove the plot armor a bit. Things can get more tense as it goes.
In terms of The Bleak + The Pearl's world: 300-years ago, Jonias Grunkheart enlisted the lords and ladies of the four other Grunce leading families to enact an incomplete version of a great plan. This is the Lighthouse, a rebuilt Ancient technology that takes the energy of The Bleak and uses it against itself to push it back (while generating both visible light and also The Light, the neutral energy power source of all Ancient technology).
The Grunkhearts provided the technology and planning. The Mariuses provided materials and wealth from their shipping. The Bittermolds provided magical assistance and expertise on darker truths. The Harcurams provided legal and administrative support. The Mistameres provided physical strength to build the Lighthouse and protection for the workers constructing it.
After the Lighthouse was completed, and the Monolith carved underneath (more a monolith symbolically, implying all the people of Barthus were one), the families continued to rule Grunce (the Grunkheart family estate, semantically decayed from "The Grunkhearts' Land"). Other people from all over Grunce filled the city to the brim and other great houses from other cities were not content to be left out. Various power struggles occurred while the Lighthouse went from being well known technology to something increasingly forgotten, a background artifact shining light into the distance. The Grunkhearts remain with some power but other families have virtually pushed them out. Cal Grunkheart, nephew to the current ruler of the House, has taken on the goal of fixing and expanding the Lighthouse. The Mariuses have done marginally better but have given up their seafaring ways, focusing entirely on money trading. The Mistameres lost their family land and combined as a family with the Harcurams for form House Mysturam. And the strange, weird Bittermold House retreated into the Bleak and have largely vanished besides various small manors and estates all laying claim to the name.
[Doug's Note: Mistamere is a reference to the Frank Mentzer created dungeon found in the red box Basic Dungeons & Dragons because running that adventure was the first time I ever played a tabletop RPG and I thought it might be fun to convert to Shadowdark. The name remains Mentzer's though this family is quite different. Bittermold as a family name is a reference to Cursed Scroll #1 and was created by Kelsey Dionne. Unlike Mistamere which is 99% an original creation with a naming-shout-out, the Bittermolds are more directly influenced by their source and will soon show up when that module is run.]
Meet the Lighthouse 6
As our heroes have been risking it all to support Cal Grunkheart and the Lighthouse Keepers, Cal has come up with the plan of tasking his cousin Gryffin Grunkheart (possible future Lord Grunkheart) with gathering up members of each of the other five families to begin reclaiming Grunce and protecting the future of Barthus. Possibly even pushing The Bleak back and retaking the land.
The leader of the Lighthouse 6 is Gryffin Grunkheart, the middle son of Lady Moreena Grunkheart (and technically third in line of succession, including his mother). His family protests him entering The Bleak since this precludes him from fathering heirs but he considers Cal to be the true Grunkheart lineage. Served for time as a minor captain of the city guard before aggreeing to help the Blue Delve Boys to deliver an anti-magic cloak to The Pearl. Here he met Boris Loo and decided to dedicate his life to adventure. He is a Human Ranger. His shares the Grunkheart symbol of a Lighthouse as his personal crest with Cal. He is a loyal leader and often will risk his own safety to protect his crew.
[Doug's Note: Rangers were developed by Kelsey Dionne and released along with the Bard as a special supplement. Speaking of...]
Louis Harcuram is one of the few "true Harcurams" left. His branch of the family is much poorer and he was raised a fisherman before taking up performing and traveling as a minstrel. In the Sofron Desert, he met Ronick Mistamere and enjoyed the irony of partnering with a Mistamere due to the long family association. When he and Ronick received the call to join with Gryffin, they both took the chance and headed to Grunce. He is a Human Bard and his symbol is a lyre.
Ronick Mistamere is a Dragonborn Pit Fighter. Not all Mistameres agreed with the plan to merge and settle down running warehouses and stores. Those went west into the desert where they took any chance they could to reclaim the militant might of the Mistameres of old. Ronick's branch combined themselves with desert dragons and attempted to lay claim to the desert. Beaten, they instead settled for being mercenaries and pit fighters. Ronick's great strength and fearsome appearance (with bronze and lapis lazuli scales) earned him a fierce reputation, which was enhanced by Louis acting as hype man. The two are great friends and both look forward to working with Gryffin. His symbol is the skull of one of his desert dragon kin.
[Doug's Note: "Dragonborn ancestry" in this case is derived from Unatural Selection with breath (and electricity immunity) from the desert dragon as given in Shadowdark, itself. Pit Fighters are from Cursed Scrolls #2.]
Dhelia "Del" Marius is the maybe-mad descendent of infamous Mad Del Marius. While the Marius family has officially given up the family tradition of sailing the high seas, this new Del has reclaimed it in style. Sort of. She mostly just swept up a lot of other, better, sailors’ vomit and trash. Once the chance came to prove herself, she requested a boat from her distant cousin, Lady Varren Marius, who granted it because Lady Varen had already pledged to support Cal after the return of the family spear by the Blue Delve Boys. Del is a Human Swashbuckler and has her own ship thanks to her reluctant cousin. Del's symbol, and the name of her ship, are both "The Crossbow."
[Doug's Note: The Swashbuckler class being used here is from Letters from the Dark VI: Scallywags.]
Ada Bittermold is probably an actual Bittermold. The lost family had a complicated family tree involving humans, halflings, and less savory entries. Ada looks more human than most of the current members except for the fact that she has deer antlers and deer hooves and lower legs. Whether demonic or Bleak-touched is unknown by her at this time. She tries to offset this by dressing in bright colors to show she is friendly, but the overall effect combined with her odd sense of humor and weird moods makes her look more like a poisonous tree frog than anything else. She is a ??? Witch and her symbol is a deer's head with multicolor horns and eyes.
[Doug's Note: Originaly, she was going to be a Tiefling as outlined in Unnatural Selection but after I was working out how to make Boris (below) I decided to make her a bit more unique instead. 3/day she can talk to plants or fungus (though plants are not great conservationalists and mushrooms are worse). The Witch class being from Cursed Scrolls #1.]
Boris Loo is a Teen-aged, Bleak-Touched, Ninja Chelonian. He comes from a long line of gentle chelonian fisherfolk but his parent's vessel was swept off course and shipwrecked off the shores of Barthus. Forced to travel through The Bleak to reach safety, his mother gave birth to Boris only to find her son was different. Rather than the soft curve of the sea turtle's head, he had the head of a snapping turtle. What's more, he was less concerned with gentle fishing and self-taught himself the ways of "the ninja" even as his Bleak-induced mutations made themselves more and more evident. The family tried to hide him belowdecks to act as the ship's cook. Once the Loos helped Gryffin get to The Pearl, Boris met the young Grunkheart and immediately adopted himself as Gryffin's hyperactive younger brother. His symbol is his own face, wearing his traditional green mask which match's Gryffin's cloak.
[Doug's Note: Boris started out as gentle, turtle monk NPC meant to be additional backstory to the Blue Delve but I realized the potential TMNT joke and sought to figure out how to accomplish it with Shadowdark. He is the Chelonian ancestry from Unnatural Selection and then a reskinned version of the Ras-Godai class from Cursed Scroll #2. In his case, it is not the Black Lotus that gives him his powers, but being exposed The Bleak while still an unlaid egg. There has always been the potential for more Bleak-touched characters but I have not really worked on figuring that out until now with him and Ada.]
Gryffin and Louis have already showed up, albeit somewhat briefly, in the game. Technically, Gryffin was the start of the whole Grunkheart clan and the drama with the Lighthouse and is the one who introduced everyone to Cal, but the basic structure of the Lighthouse was already created before Cal and Gryffin were created.
The Potential Others
There are already four potential other characters to fill in gaps in any of the ten existing folks die, retire, etc. I won't delve too much into them (pun!) until it's a better time to bring them up but effectively:
- A Garfolk Thief who was found by Cal in the Monolith
- A Mycellan Priest who befriended the thief and joined him on his adventures
- A Forest Elf Ovate who met and formed a relationship with Rance after a night of carousing (currently spending some time working with the city guard)
- A Salamander Slayer who has dedicated his time after meeting Grusk to learning how to fight devils and demons.
Each of these are a shout out to a previous adventure or two and are mostly a thin sketch which can be built up if the need arises.
Above is a glimpse into how this campaign started six months ago. Dyson Logos maps (or dice drop point crawls) imported as backgrounds on Google Presentations; John Kapsalis art (almost always, with some games-icon icons when nothing else made sense) made into tokens using GIMP; map adjustments and such typed directly as text fields on the map; and a few notes and details typed into a couple pages of a Google Doc file. This still persisted until the Monolith got going enough it was easier to switch the whole campaign to Theater of Mind and blog-format first.
Bonus: You can see which Kapsalis heroes and monsters I picked to represent our main four heroes. Spotted Tom was just one of the goblins that caught my eye. Rance was a contemplative blue mage (maybe an elf, don't recall) token originally used as Haig Raven in my Barston Bakersfield campaign. Inar is a silly little hafling with a staff (he wears pretty sturdy armor in the main campaign and has a crimson-red mace). And Grusk was depicted as shirtless and got his signature axe because his token had one. With the exception of Tom, the other three names were from when I tried to make the campaign in Roll20 to start and I just literally used the default random names generated. I actually kind of forgot that's what the characters looked like.
Too Long; Didn't Read Summary
In short, the campaign started as my "just dungeon, don't story" campaign and got immensely Doug-ified on the way so now requires pages of lore and while it still has some fun, usually quite short "dungeon" dives it has lost a lot of its initial anti-campaign focus (the exactly opposite of that, really). Since there are possibly months of main storyline left, using a natural break in the storyline coming up to go ahead and declare it time for a couple of months of side-quests and introduce several (at least six) new characters to make a kind of second team that will join the main one here or there in various ways. Will eventually shift back into the main storyline after everyone gets a few levels higher and we can move into the higher level, more domain-level of play.
Or, How a Campaign Changed Over Time
According to my notes, I launched this campaign, The Bleak + The Pearl, around the middle of June 2024. At the time, there were only a few basic lore truths:
- There were two vast islands that combined were a complete continent.
- The western island was "The Bleak" and was dark and foggy and grimy and full of ruins. This island was originally Barthus and for centuries had been the site of a great kingdom but now was mostly just skeletons of old buildings and smaller settlements. It was to be the setting of the more "grim" sessions.
- The eastern island was "The Pearl" which was a wild and green place with huge mountains, ancient barbarian keeps, dragons, and much more of a "large scale, mid-magic fighters-in-leathers tackling giants" kind of vibe. This was "The Silt" and was the place the ex-Barthics took refuge. This was to be the more "Frontiers of Adventure" style setting with less undead and more, you know, dinosaurs.
- The islands are separated by a five to twenty miles of ocean called "the Gray Channel". Whatever caused "The Bleak" has yet to find a way to cross it.
- The initial heroes were refugees raised in The Pearl who are now going back to The Bleak because one of them keeps having dreams about a light fading, darkness spreading, and things getting worse.
There was, effectively, two meta-truths:
- This campaign was going to be dedicated to pretty much straight dungeon delving and hex crawling with a few interrupt "city/society" scenes to act very nearly purely as dressing.
- Around half of the sessions would be played in pre-existing maps while the other half would either take Dyson Logos (etc) maps or just do a dice drop and use existing tables to find out content as I went.
It was the second (not posted to this blog) session where a drunken night turned into meeting Cal Grunkheart and deciding to help the Lighthouse Keepers which ended up becoming the meta-reason behind the campaign. This part is fine. It was initially going to be a mini-arc of sorts but over time morphed into a much bigger part of the campaign. Still fine.
As the mini-arc took over, there showed up a a mini-mega dungeon that was the cornerstone of this part of the campaign and a series of quests to the other dungeons and sites were going to be required to fix it up. This was fine. The "about 10 sessions to complete" was a lie but that's ok. We were still playing.
Prior to even starting to make the dungeon, I ran a couple of sessions in a pre-existing map, The Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur, tweaked to have elements from the campaign. Almost an entire month later, after spending way too long semi-agonizing on how to blend the more meta-elements with that initial intention we got the first entry into the Monolith.
Over the next few weeks, I entered into an era I've talked about before but it represented me dealing with the stresses of solo-play. It felt less and less like fun and more and more like a difficult puzzle to solve. On the positive side, this led me to work out my more multi-phase style that is a staple for this blog (see: The GLOW for perhaps the most elaborate variation of it). I've seen other solo players do similar things but the distinct GM-phases where I build up information and player-phases where I test and break down that information (along with lore, interjections, and other elements) is a fairly Doug-Unique style of solo-play, one that has influenced even the play I do off this blog.
However, on the more negative-or-at-least-neutral side, I essentially lost the ability to sit down and play with a couple of colorful tokens and some varied dice rolls and had to spend increasing amount of times fact checking and considering long term impact of any and every decision.
Around three weeks from the start of retooling this campaign more and more into "Save the Lighthouse, Save the World," I got to an encounter that effectively derailed and forever altered the entire The Bleak + The Pearl: The Grunkheart Golem. I had one room left off the starter/main branch of my dungeon and when I rolled the contents I got a boss monster. I suck at the sort of OSR-style play where rooms next to each other to have completely different contents/encounters so I wanted to come up with a reason a boss-level monster could be a few feet from the main entrance. The Golem was a solution to this and it changed quite a bit.
- Ancient Technology was actually some blend of high, science fiction technology with a much more refined magical system.
- After the Ancient society collapsed, there were hundreds of years before Barthus showed up and established itself in the ruins.
- Jonias had a more extensive appreciation for Ancient Tech than thought and had not died but instead went off to a lab in something called "The Everburning Forest" and not returned (I mean, he might have also died, we still don't know at this time).
These seeds grew and sprouted a bit. After one intermission where I came up with a general layout map of the forest, I had another intermission that finally sat down and figured out what the Bleak and the Pearl were. No longer just the name of two different fantasy tropes, The Bleak was a corruption of some primal energy inherit in the western island (in the Ancient tongue, it was The Becoming). Ancients had used it as part of their vast engines (along with The Pearl's "Being"). The fall of the Ancients was basically due to them using up too much energy and draining it. Now, several centuries later, it has returned and it is changing people and causing buildings and landscapes to mutate though there are "shallows" where it has little to no impact and many settlements drifted into those shallows while traveling between them is basically an invitation to body horror.
This led to a fight with a fight with an oddly mutated cyclops around two weeks later and then a full month after that I finally hit a stride with playing as the entered into the forest and encounters and mechanics were a lot more normal. Over the past couple of months they have pushed through the forest, found the old lab, and realized things are a lot weirder.
While all of these shifts and dynamics have been broadly fine it still is a much different campaign than intended. For one, there has not been a pre-built dungeon/adventure since June (6 months). For two, roughly half of the session time has been dedicated to building up the world and establishing dozens of new World Truths.
I adore the four core characters. I love Cal Grunkheart and his doomed mission that might just succeed. I like the whole trope of science-fiction world becomes high-fantasy world becomes weird body horror world.
BUT, this was meant to be the campaign where I did not have to spend quite so long building up dungeons and where I could spend a lot of time just flipping through shopping lists and throwing a few fun monsters at people while checking for random encounters. It is just very hard to swap back to that without there being the sense that I am giving up on a lore I have spent four months honing and perfecting.
To sum up some changes: A simple world to allow both "grim" and "dark" styles of fantasy play with only a vague storyline to justify it >> a "short" meta-quest that requires some more storyline >> the storyline becomes entirely about the meta-quest which starts dictating exactly which kind of adventures can be played >> dungeon delves start taking a backseat to more complex encounters >> virtually every post is as much about lore building and campaign design than any sort of proper dice rolling >> where we are now.
Taking a Hiatus from the Mainline "Jonias Grunkheart Legacy" Quest
That's why I am going to take advantage of plot developments in the world where it will take months of in-game time for Cal and his crew to move into the lab, learn the Ancient language more completely, and just get out and do some dungeon delves with pre-built or quick-built dungeons.
The "main four" will still be part of this. However, I am about to introduce a "second six." There were Five Great Families that came together to build the Lighthouse. The plan is to have a member from all five families join in. Some of the second six will be a tad weirder than the "four default" classes. A bard and a ranger. A pirate of some sort. A dragonborn pit fighter. A tiefling witch. I also have a silly idea for a turtle monk. The ranger will be second level and a character already met in the campaign. The other five will all be brand spanking new.
This allows a few things. First, I can a couple of low level adventures again and those are always good fun. Second, it gives me a chance to build up a few back-up characters just in case one of the mains gets taken out or needs to spend months crafting spells or running a kingdom, etc. Third, it gives me a chance to build up a few alternate parties and combinations since those can be fun. Fourth, it just allows me to use a lot of supplements and zines I have paid good money for and I am itching to see how other classes and races work.
Finally, it gives me a chance to go back for a bit to the OG campaign design: dungeon delves with minimal story requirements. An anti-campaign again, only this time backed with months of story that shapes some truths.
Folks show up at a dungeon entrances, they go and grab treasure and experience, and then get drunk afterward.
Being Spoiled for Choices and Return to Recap
Part of this is just because I currently have three very "talky" campaigns: The GLOW (which has at least two more mini-arcs I'd like to do, and it will likely spawn more), The Bloody Hands (the Stone Crack'd mini-arc likely has four to five more sessions at least, and a lot of world building is going down there, and I want to run another mini-arc soonish dealing with one character's hidden illness and a hidden benefactor plotline from near the start), and Eustace Delmont (which is on pause, technically, because I have no time to play). There are also a few one-shots and playtests brewing or on-going. All told, I spend between eight and twelve hours a week playing these solo campaigns. I get lots of NPC interactions and world building time.
I like the idea of taking a few maps, importing them into Google Drive, playing with some digital tokens and spreadsheets, then spending maybe half an hour a week writing up some of the fun things I did. This new arc will be back in recap style with a more OSR-style balance and less seriousness. A lot more braindead than I tend to solo-play. In balance is joy...
The "side-line quests" [I'll call it something like The Gathering of the Families and Sundry Adventures] are a way for me to play with some of my absolute favorite solo characters, add in some more funky folk that will either be fun to play or get kicked off the team, and reduce lore from multi-paragraph continuations to maybe a short passage about why an Inn is called "The Screeching Duck" or something equally silly and funny (to me). Eventually Cal will have deciphered some stuff and we'll be ready to get back into the main questline again. The Bleak is still there so hex crawls can have unexpected results, for sure.
In fact, a couple/three of the planned adventures are actually going to be from the original story bank of adventures intended to tie into the Monolith (though now low enough level I would have had to redesign them or tweak them a bit for balance and content only now I can just drop a newbie team into them and play as is). The very first one I plan to play will be a different crew going after one of the fuelstone relics. Maybe also the second. So it's less a hiatus as a bunch of side-quests presented in a different way until I feel like it is time to get back into the deep lore and two pages of conversation again.
Note: This whole post will be out-of-character and just in "Doug Notes" mode.
Leveling Up to Level 4
The four adventurers hit level four with the most recent outing so we will work on that, first.
- Grusk gets +6HP (bringing his total to 21). His Weapon Mastery will also hit 1+2 (1+1/2levels rounded down). This brings his total bonus to hit to +4 for all weapons (STR+ & Talent) and +7 for axes. He also gets +3 damage when using axes. My boy! His title rank remains Barbarian
- Inar gets +3HP (18 total). He gets an additional 2nd level Priest spell. While Smite is tempting, I'm going for Cleansing weapon (+1d4 extra damage, +1d6 vs Undead) since he tends to be the kind to cast spells on others for effect. His title remains Invoker.
- Tom gets +4HP (15 total). He gets an additional dice to his backstab (+3D in total, though that is +3d4 for his attacks). His title remains Outlaw.
- Rance gets +3HP (12 total). He gets an additional send level Wizard spell. I'm going for Misty Step since scooting back out of battle will likely be beneficial to him. His title remains Seer.
All four need 40xp to hit level 5.
Acquiring Magic Items
In the pre-written adventures, low level magic items are not super rare. I have been using random tables for around 2/3s of the campaign and have really not generated a usable magic item since the Wand of Webs. This leads us to a place where there is a single magic item (the axe, Bloodlust), a Priest who can temporarily magically enchant weapons based on a DC11/DC12 check, and a Wizard who can cast spells. The team is high enough rank now that plenty of creatures require some degree of magical damage to actually take damage. By level 4, if I was GMing for a group, everyone would likely have 1 magical item or more at this stage. I have also been very, very stingy on GP. This is putting the group behind a bit on material possessions.
To rectify this, I will not add any Gold/etc to their total but I will roll for 2 magic weapons (one for Inar, one for Tom, page 292 of the book) and then generate 2 additional magical items.
- Inar gets a +1 Mace that is studded with gemstones (ruby). It gives advantage to initiative checks but grows stupidly heavy in water and causes the wielder to make swimming checks vs DC18. It will be called The Crimson Star.
- Tom gets a +1 Short Bow. Arrows shot from it trail sparkles. The arrows can pierce through any material and once per day the bow will shoot flaming arrows (+1d4) for 5 rounds. This will, of course, interfere with any sneak attacks. The Lucifer's Breath.
- A Potion of Mind Reading (all creatures within near for 1 hour).
- A statuette of a phoenix (with actual phoenix feathers) that makes the wielder immune to cold damage.
That should be a good balance check. Tom's is a bit OP BUT it also makes him a clearer target since his arrows will sparkle as he shoots them, etc. I am not sure if cold damage will be even in this campaign but there you go.
On Being and Becoming and the Fall of the Ancients
In the language of the ancients the names of the twin islands were Artuunila and Siluutila: the place of being (siluut) and the place of becoming (artuun). There were not mere philosophical notions, but a way to describe the great immanent energy in these lands. Artuun warped and changed those exposed to it. Siluut reinforced the nature of things but in doing so made things outsized. Artuun turned a mountain into a magical plateau of strange fay magic. Siluut turned a mountain into a huge monolith beyond comprehension.
Both took time. The creatures and plants on Artuunila shifted and merged in strange ways. The creatures and plants on Siluutila grew large and strong and severe. Neither was a place for civilization, both would inherently destroy any attempt to tame the land. Until the Ancients did just that by discovering uuxa: a form of energy generated by the tension where the two forced clashed.
Uuxa is the same energy that Jonias Grunkheart later dubbed The Light. It feeds off the Being and the Becoming and repels them both, simultaneously giving the resource to fight back but also to make a safe place where the great teeth of the land can not grind those within it. Jonias suspected that the two energies were outsized here because of the Ancients who might have actually increased their output to create more uuxa, but the result was the opposite. Both energies decreased until they were barely noticeable: taking centuries to recreate the impact that a few years might have.
The twin lands became just two large landmasses with somewhat unique ecosystems. The great engines of the Ancients ceased to function.
And so the Ancients entered into millennia of decay, until the Barthic Empire rose to the west, led by the mage tyrants tapping into latent amounts of artuun as a mystical force further decreasing it.
To the east was Silt, a semantic degradation of Siluutila. Remnants of siluut meant magic struggled to take hold so the Barthic mages avoided it. Left it a wild and unexplored land.
On the Bleak and the Impact Upon Those Within
It is unknown exactly how the primal energy known as artuun became corrupted into The Bleak but the effects are known in more recent history. There is no immediate indication of your exposure to its foul energies. Buildings might decay faster. Certain fast growing life forms like molds will spread and grow new and strange spores. New growth on plants will be more gnarled, more diseased. Stranger. Darker.
New generations of life are where it is always most obvious. Offspring of two healthy parents might show some strange mutation. Deer with spider legs. Two headed serpents. Birds with odd number of wings. For the people of the Barthic Empire, rumors of strange "witchery" in the provinces gave way to panic when it was their own children. A generation later, the children of people impacted by The Bleak were even more twisted. If it was every child, every generation, the society would have collapsed before it could attempt its great failed migration.
The effects were tenuous at first. Even as they became stronger they were never automatic. A small village might find all of its newborn children born more mushroom than goblin but then the dwarf clan a few miles away would merely see a slight shift in hair color. This was the great cruelty. Because of this, people turned on each other. Those who suffered The Encroachment were blamed: a sign of the gods' disfavor, a sign of some great sin.
As wars and fleeing marches of refugees wiped out the Barthic Empire, researchers like Jonias Grunkheart realized it was already too late. The slow increase of The Encroachment meant that everyone sailing across The Gray Channel was already infected to some degree. Still, he and others fought valiantly to buy people time, to stop the flow of the strange destroying energy before it could cross.
People spending days and weeks in The Bleak may show very few symptoms. A general sense of unease. A tendency to nausea. Of not feeling well. After a few months, shifts might be minimal. Fingers slightly different in length. Joints that bend at slightly new angles.
Years in, and people will almost definitely show some changes. Different for everyone. Lifespans will decrease, even for those who manage to avoid the new dangers and monsters. New sicknesses and curses will be found.
And then, for others, the Encroachment will never begin. Others can spend decades in The Bleak and never show any changes at all.
Those that have children may see the true cost of their adventuring days because while not every child is born Bleaktouched, enough are for every person driven to expedition to understand the true cost of exploring the twice great land.
On Borders and Shores
Another element unknown about The Bleak is why there are pockets where it does not reach. Jonias believed it was like an ocean that flowed to the rhythm of a tide we could not see. Islands rose out of this ocean and there some semblance of normalcy could remain. Other places he classified as Shallows and Deeps. In the Shallows, effects would be relatively minor. Entire generations could live somewhat peacefully if they were lucky. In the Deep, people will find it nearly impossible to survive even a single generation without risking great harm and change.
As an old man, Jonias began to suspect that the material used to make the fuelstones were possibly the cause of these small regions of normalcy. He had believed them to be unique to the Everburning Forest, but grew to believe they were the leftover generators of the Ancients. People naturally gravitating to the places The Ancients had harnessed uuxa. Unfortunately, Jonias died before carrying out an expedition to study these energies. And the infighting in Grunce meant that the Keepers had to switch fulltime to keeping the Lighthouse functioning until Jonias's dream of retaking Barthus had morphed, like everything in The Bleak morphs. No longer was it a conquest, it was merely a last stand.
Others call these pocket zones of safety "The Borders" and several towns and villages and forts have grown up in them. Expeditions to raid the corpse of The Barthic Empire use them as layovers. An entire economy based on people willing to brave the miles and miles in between. Sometimes only to find that some border fort or border town had fallen in the weeks since it was last visited. Another victim in the centuries of Encroachment.
DOUG'S NOTES
The general crunch of the new academic year is not precisely over but I am getting some time to actually sit down and play things and think about playing things again so wanted to try and work out some ideas and concepts. The intention was to jump straight into the short hex crawl related to the Everburning Forest but while prepping that I decided I wanted to go back and actually answer some questions. This is one of two campaigns I am running about some non-specific dark energy force that does...something. Figured it was best to work some mechanics about what that something might mean.
Reading through Made in Abyss and thinking about the Southern Reach trilogy got me into the mindset of the broad "Stalker" genre greatly influenced by Roadside Picnic. The fictional trope of there being some place where reality and normalcy breaks down and people risk going into that place for knowledge and for fortune.
The idea of a great civilization that was built on the back of an even greater civilization means it is logical that many, many treasures are buried out in a realm infested by an unknown source. But...did I want "The Bleak" to be something more allegorical - a general decline in civilization (the rough explanation at the start of the campaign) - or something more tangible - an energy that actually does something? I have been leaning towards it as an active force more and more so I decided to dive into the latter. The Bleak is an energy that corrupts. Everything. However, at its core it is a natural, primal force of change. One that is merely accelerated. And itself corrupted. I might not ever get around to getting more specific than that. I do not really need to be.
When it started, this campaign treated "The Bleak" as basically a land where old magics had shifted reality and burned out the old cities but there was really no reason not to immediately retake it. In this new "twist," no one can stay out in The Bleak for too long.
Eventually we may get around to how The Pearl is a sister force to this, but there is no rush. It is the sword and sorcery counterpart to the grimdark fantasy of The Bleak. That is enough, for now. The "Being" and "Becoming" energy trope, by the way, is a nod to my very first RPG product from some years ago: Ghostlight. In the never completed "second edition," the notions of being and becoming were going to be more definite forces with the general world built out the energy at the center of the two.
The plan from this point on with the campaign is to lean into worldbuilding and plot development from here on out. While the campaign essentially started as a way to just dungeon dive without any real explanation, I think we are past that.
Probably was from the get go.
I'm also going to try a new style of art for this campaign using high contrast two-color art to highlight the "twin" nature of things but also to tap into the sort of dark art of the source material.