The Sword of Shannara

It was 1977. The Holmes Basic Set for D&D came out that year as well as the Monster Manual. The AD&D rules were still being worked on and would not come out until 1978 and 1979. The Sword of Shannara, a novel penned by a young Terry Brooks fresh out of college, released to great popularity, excepting many fantasy roleplayers. They said The Sword of Shannara was just a shallow copy of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and in some ways they were right. But in many other ways they were wrong.

This review covers only the first quarter of the novel and in its broad strokes, you will find it very similar to the Fellowship of the Ring. But although Sword of Shannara is very inspired by Lord of the Rings, it still goes its own way. It dispenses with Tolkien's poetry and gives us more action. You could even say that Sword of Shannara is the D&D version of Lord of the Rings.

Let's state the differences first. There are no hobbits in Shannara. Shannara is a world similar to ours after an apocalypse that made man evolve into gnomes, dwarves, and trolls. Elves were always around in our world but they now they no longer hide themselves. The Warlock Lord allies himself with gnomes and trolls and flying creatures called Skull Bearers. But the biggest difference is that there is no ring. There is a sword and, at the beginning of the story, the Warlock Lord has stolen it.

So while there is a fellowship of men, dwarves, elves, and a magic-user that forms after the two young men escape from Shady Vale, the quest is different. They have to find the sword. Then they have to figure out how to use the sword. And then defeat the Warlock Lord with the sword. Is that much of a difference? Yes. They are not hiding a ring as they travel to the land of Mordor, while the ring plays with everyone's hopes of power. They are on a mission of desperation. A mission that more resonates with D&D adventures than Tolkien.

I'll post more as I continue reading. What are your thoughts about The Sword of Shannara?

GMing off the rails

The last two sessions of my Mutant Crawl Classics campaign were improvised. I didn't have anything published I was running. The first time I had a plan. The PCs got a broadcast from up north that a military base was available to be looted and the PCs wanted part of that. They head up north, got in a fight with a road gang, and invaded the base. And they made a giant robot mad. Worked pretty well.

But the last one didn't work so well. The giant robot was chasing them so they headed off to find some robotics experts. That turned into a  herd of mutant elf trampling their car and cyborgs who took them off in a spaceship to the inside of a volcano where another giant robot was being built.

It got crazy and was less and less players making decisions about what cool things their characters were doing and more of me the GM making up crazy stuff. I went off the rails and it wasn't good.

So now I'm taking a published adventure and looking through it, seeing what I want to use, and preparing a solid structure for next session.

But the question I want to ask you all is: Do you ever go off the rails like that? How do you rein yourself in?

Mutant Crawl Classics: Home For The Holideath

This is going to be a mix of a session report and review of the adventure. If you don't want to have the adventure spoiled, here's a quick summary: We had a lot of fun with all the zany things in this adventure. It's whimsical, wacky, and wild! I recommend you give it a shot.

Now onto the section with spoilers!

So the setup for this is that the PC's tribe and another tribe have an annual gift exchange they do to maintain the peace between the tribes. The gifts have been stolen and the PCs are sent to try to retrieve the gifts in time for the exchange. I modified that a bit to make it more en media res.

My campaign has more of a "Umerican Survival Guide" setting so it's only been about 100 years since "The Great Disaster". Part of the joy of doing that is also setting the campaign where I live. So the gift exchange was between the Portland Oregon tribe and the Vancouver, Washington tribe on the remains of the I-5 bridge in the middle of the Columbia River. As the PCs (from the Vancouver tribe) were paddling their raft to the location, I had them witness the Portland tribe members flung off the bridge. Then, after the PCs climbed up to see what was going on, the thief (with a bag of Portland tribe gifts) used its rocket boosters to fly at them and take the Vancouver tribe's gifts too before flying off to Jantzen Beach.

A pure strain human used a Legendary Deed to grab the thief as it flew but then failed another deed as it tried to maneuver so fell into the bushes on shore. The others rescued the fallen human and then followed the flying thief to an old Toys R Us building. There, they found the fun things found in the adventure such as smart wrapping paper and a stingbear. But that's just the first floor! On the second floor, they found mutant rats and wooden soldiers (I changed the elves in the adventure to the rats from Nutcracker) and a crazy old toymaker along with a giant snowglobe. Then up to the final floor where they confront the A.I. named XMAS and a Christmas tree decorated with weaponized ornaments. But that's not all!

After all of that, the PCs found the thief, a matronly maid robot who attempted to spank the naughty PCs (yes, that's in the adventure!) but had its eye stabbed, which initiated a self-destruct sequence (that was my addition). The PCs escaped with the gifts, the exchange happened, and everyone was happy. Next adventure will start on the road when the Vancouver tribe sends them north in a car!

Mutant Crawl Classics campaign

I started my Mutant Crawl Classics campaign this past weekend. I made a couple of tweaks to the game:

First, I'm only using two classes. I created a Pure Strain Human class that gets a Legendary Deed die that acts like the Mighty Deed die from Dungeon Crawl Classics and also gives bonuses to artifact checks. The other class is the Mutant/Manimal/Plantient class that gives 5 random mutations and lets players pick what kind of mutant they want to be.

Second, I'm using the Umerican Survival Guide setting. Generally, that means I'm using the random occupations, equipment, and vehicle rules along with the whole zany near-future vibe of the setting.

I started things off by showing a fan-made anime video for Weird Al Yankovic's Christmas At Ground Zero to get them in the mood and then started it off at level 1 with Home For The Holideath, which I will go over in my next post.

2018 Gongfarmer's Almanac now available in print at Lulu

The Gongfarmer's Almanac is a collection of fan-submitted goodies for Dungeon Crawl Classics (and Mutant Crawl Classics). It is released in PDF for free and you can now get the consolidated PDFs in print at Lulu. It's 428 pages and the paperback is priced at-cost at $9.81

The link is here:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/the-gongfarmers-almanac-community/gongfarmers-almanac-2018/paperback/product-23782037.html

 If you search Lulu for "gongfarmer's almanac", you can also find the books for 2015, 2016, and 2017.

My first product is up on RPG Now!

It is "pay what you want" and is a list of 600 place names taken from the Bible that you can use in any RPG setting, especially ancient historical or sword & sorcery campaigns.

600 Ancient Hebrew Place Names

Let's read Mutant Crawl Classics!

Over at rpggeek.com I am reading through the new Mutant Crawl Classics RPG by posting a bit about each section and then saying what I think about it and inviting others to do the same.

Please take a look at https://rpggeek.com/thread/1994342/lets-read-mutant-crawl-classics and let me know what you think!