baudot's page

I've been prepping for a Savage Tide game that refuses to get off the ground, which has given me a deal of time to think about extras for running the campaign. One that's always fun to invest some time in is music. Here's some of my favorite nautical tunes that I'll have on in the background if this group will ever get its act together:

If I Were a Blackbird by Amy White

If I were a Blackbird

I'd whistle and I'd sing
And I'd follow the vessel my true love sails in.
And in the top rigging, there I'd build my nest.

Back Home in Derry by John Close

We cursed them to hell

As our bow fought the swell
Our ship danced like a moth in the firelight
White horses rode high
As a devil passed by
Taking souls to hades by twilight
Five weeks out to sea we were now 43
We buried our comrades each morning

A Health to the Company by Owain Phyfe

Our ship lies at harbor

she's ready to dock
I wish her safe landing
without any shock

Nelson's Blood by The Seadogs

A classic sea chanty around the legend of Admiral Nelson's death in the Battle of Trafalgar. Legend has it that his body was preserved in a cask of brandy so that he could be buried at land rather than at sea. When the navy returned to shore, they found that the cask he was being kept in had been tapped by accident and they'd been drinking the Admiral's blood during the voyage home.

I've been prepping for a Savage Tide game that refuses to get off the ground, which has given me a deal of time to think about extras for running the campaign. One that's always fun to invest some time in is music. Here's some of my favorite nautical tunes that I'll have on in the background if this group will ever get its act together:

If I Were a Blackbird by Amy White
Back Home in Derry by John Close
A Health to the Company by Owain Phyfe
Nelson's Blood by The Seadogs

I'm pleased that no one in the party has any magical healing. This is going to aid tremendously in keeping the game gritty. Diseases, festering wounds, hunger, and slow healing will actually be concerns for my party.

Arg.
Doublepost.
I swear I waited to see if my first post showed up in the forum index for minutes before reposting. Grr!

It seems to me that the assorted indicies and other articles that need updating could better be served by a wiki format than the linear workings of a messageboard. I've taken the liberty of creating a Dungeon Magazine wiki at dungeonmagazine.pbwiki.com. A wiki is a set of web pages that allow readers to edit them. Using a wiki is as easy as using web based eMail, and it's a good way to collaborate. In this case, I hope that between 15 minutes of writing here and there by the community, we can build a comprehensive index of Dungeon magazine articles. It's also a ready way to collect the wisdom of threads like the Black Hole in a format that's easy to update in summary form.

I've taken the liberty of lifting Thanis Kartaleon's index of Campaign Workbook articles as a first demonstration of what you can do with a wiki. Note that each author's name is a link. For now, they all point to blank pages, save my own which I've filled in as an example. That, in turn, links to an adventure description for my one humble adventure published. See all the linky goodness? This whole thing, from creation to this stage of building, only took an hour so far.

Anyone can edit the wiki; all you need is the password. (psst... it's "dungeon".) If a half dozen people throw a couple hours at it, we could have all the indices and such migrated there by the end of the day, and I expect each author's ego will demand they fill in their own adventure summaries and bio. There may be admin tools to keep Pett and Vaughn from defacing each other's pages, but for now I'm trusting you all to be gentlepersonly and grown up about this. Don't make me turn this car around.

How many sessions do you find that it takes you to run a single Dungeon adventure? My group seems to take two or three, though our average session only lasts 3 or 4 hours, and the first hour rarely spent gaming.

Question for the editors (...but posted here as I imagine the answer is of general interest.)

I've gotten in the habit of doing NPC write-ups in excel spreadsheets as a way of having all the math visible at once and automatically tallied. Is this an acceptable format to submit the "showing the work" requirement for submissions, or should I be converting these over to Word before sending them your way?

I'm putting the finishing touches on a Critical Threat submission, and the guy I'm writing up would do better with a little map (a simple 2-room building) to show where the party is most likely to run into him. Is it kosher to have such a map with the submission? How much word count should I stick to to leave room for the map?

Just a thread to throw out some praise when someone's article impresses you.

I have to send a shout out Mr. Pett's way. "The Prince of Redhand" is the best module I've read in some time, and the feast scene including leadup is worthy of Moorcock in his better moments. Bravo, sir. Bravo.

In the vein of the encounter thread, it's time to flex your storytelling muscles with some quick NPC sketches.

The rules:
We start with a category of NPC (tavern keeper, fence, foil, etc..) and a few questions to fill in. Answer by filling in the blanks. If the thread rolls over to a new page, and no one has beaten you to it, you can set up a new NPC category/questionnaire to be filled in.

Starting NPC:
A Shrine Keeper

Answer me this:
Name?
What was her life before the priesthood?
Why did she reject her former ambitions for a life of shrine-maintenance?
How does she disagree with her order even now?

Sample answer:
Lassandra Borror, a shrine keeper of Heironeous

Life before the priesthood:
Lassandra worked alongside her brothers and sisters tilling the family farm until her entire village was razed by the Broke-Jaw orc band. The orphaned Lassandra joined a group of Irregulars amongst the refugees and fought back.

Why did she give it all up?
Lassandra came to be disgusted with the rebellion after seeing orcish village after orcish village decimated in the backlash. She now tends the shrine at the Hilltop of Cairdelan, where the decisive battle took place; the one which she believes should have been the last rather than the series of revenge-slaughters that followed. She runs her own shrine to exalt the god in the way she sees fit, rather than confronting her fellow priests.

How does she disagree with her own order today?
Lassandra has taken in more than a dozen orphans of the slaughtered orcish villages, and trained them in combat. She believes that their violent urges can be channeled for good, and has one great success to her credit: Melik (Orc, Samurai 9). Not all of her students have lived up to her ideals, however. In particular, it is her secret shame to know that she gave first training to Kulg the Slayer (Orc, Monk 8/Assassin 2) prior to his abandonment of her teachings. Kulg now travels the land seeking revenge for the death of his clan, and while other priests of Heironeous hunt him, Lassandra hopes to return him to the side of justice, and keeps secret her prior involvment as she sends Melik out to track him.