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Of course, they told me I was mad. Completely mad. "You cannot mix your chocolate in my peanut..." uh, sorry, wrong example.
Ever since I started to read the Age of Worms AP, I couldn't help but wonder whether or not I could run it with d20 Modern, and how much work would it take? Call me crazy. This weekend I'll get to have those questions answered.
I told people to bring a first level character made from whatever d20 sourcebook they wanted. I don't care if it's traditional D&D, Spycraft, d20 Past, Future (I even have one person making a character from the d20 RedStar campaign book). How would I make this all work? Well, one of my favorite game books is the relatively new GURPS Infinite Worlds, so in the oddest twist of all, my Age of Worms campaign will be a cross-time multi-dimension hopping epic, and the Age of Worms, as it comes to fruition, is tearing apart the threads that hold the multiverse together, meaning that in the beginning the characters "slip" together, or fall into a pocket dimension as the campaign starts.
We won't start with "Whispering Cairn" right away. My first adventure will be "Funeral Procession" in the new issue of Dungeon #135, that'll take place on a world called Purgatory 12, where the American West is still alive and well. "Ellie" Lilybrook is actually a member of the Ebon Triad, called the PanTriad, and this will give the players their first taste of what will take them, eventually, to Diamond Lake, and the events that happen there with the cult.
But not before they play through "Mad God's Key" first. After reading others' recommendations on these messageboards, I am using this adventure too, before we get to the Whispering Cairn. I have some interesting ideas for bringing that adventure into the d20 Modern world.
We start this weekend, and hope to play every other Saturday. I'll try and keep my notes posted here.
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Oh man, that is one idea!!!
First thing which came to my mind was Kyuss walking around in New York, with worms coming out of the Subway system and Dragotha flying above the skycrapers.
I am pretty sure, that AoW will work in a Modern scenario. Cults you can always adopt and you could even use the name Ebon Triad. Jungles we have in South-America and Free City are there more than enough...
If you don't mind, I would love to hear how you changed things and how it worked out.
This sounds like a lot of fun!
Such events (as depicted in the AoW) come along a lot more impressive if you think of them happening in our world!
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One more thing - working up what's happening around the pcs could make for some really good mystery sessions. A kind of X-files feeling mixed with searching old librarys (maybe the Library of Last Resort could be the Library of Alexandria).
Finding out about Kyuss and all of its history will make up for some really Indiana Jones like, modern RPG!
Wow, good luck. I would love to be one of the players in this game!
I'd be interested in reading a journal of that, if you get one online at some time let us know here. I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one!
--
Iain Norman
http://scap.teknohippy.com
Great idea, RedFinnegas! I, too, am a big fan of world and game system cross overs. Hope it works out for you. I'll be keeping an eye on your journal. Good luck. Sounds fun.
I will also chime in and say its a great idea. Inspired even.
How are you going to deal with Wealth and Reputation? Are they going to trade in on the assets and deeds of their "alternates" in each world? If, so, how do these alternates feel about this? Are the alternates even around? If they aren't, where are they? Which all assumes that there even ARE alternates....
I can see deep-sixing Reputation. It's a great idea, but it isn't that integral to the game functioning. But Wealth is all over the place in the d20Modern rules.
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I can't WAIT to read the journal entries for this one.
Here's a thought-- a lot of steampunk genre (William Gibson's The Difference Engine, as well as League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) has historical and/or classical literary personages make appearances in these alternate historical works...
F'rinstance if you used the 1930's wouldn't Howard and Lovecraft be arcane investigators from the Miskatonic University; instead of fantasists, historians?
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Good ideas, all. Lots to think about that I hadn't considered. At some point I might create another online Journal, but for now, this will be it. If I get motivated otherwise, I'll post a link to it.
Tomorrow's the day! This is not something I'm doing for my usual gaming group, but I'm doing this as a "public" game at my FLGS, so I have no idea what style or maturity of players I will get. If you're in Fort Wayne, IN, send me an email! Redfinnegas@cs.com. I'll be choosing the players that will be in the continuous core group, and I expect to run the intro scenario a few times to promote d20 Modern in the store.
I had considered dropping Reputation, because such a thing would be difficult to do when characters are hopping worlds, but bringing the idea of PC alternates into the picture would indeed throw some interesting twists in. And once the characters advance levels and become more experienced, they will build reputations among the other dimension hopping personalities and organizations that exist in the game. And historical alternates? Yeah, I'll be posting about that afterwards, but I won't reveal it quite yet.
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Hookay, anyone want to see a Dungeon adventure twisted around to fit your campaign? Here's my first session notes...
Session 1, Funeral Procession (from Dungeon 135)
[first, some time was spent creating and discussing characters]
Quinn, a teacher's assistant at MIT (Smart Hero/1), and a human of noticeable short stature, stood in the middle of a lecture hall filled with students, when he suddenly got caught in an electrical shower of sparks spewing from the projector until little sparkles of energy enveloped him.
Alex, a self-styled adventurer (Fast Hero/1) recently back from a South American safari, sat alone in his apartment nursing a hangover, when his television suffered the same electrical anomaly, intensifying and jumping from one electronic piece to another. Stereo, computer, thermostat. And then his TV blew up, the sparks engulfing him.
Andrei, an elite soldier (Strong Hero/1) of the Russian Red Star army, drove a truck full of supplies across a crater marked battlefield when a second violent earthquake in as many weeks struck, causing him to tightly grip the wheel to control the swerving vehicle. A strange electrical malady overwhelmed the controls, washing the dashboard with electrical energy.
[there will be at least one other character introduced in the second session]
In an instant, all three vanished, leaving the sharp smell of ozone to fill the void where once a person sat or stood...and all emerged in a dusty saloon. They looked curiously around at each other, wondering where they were, why they were here together, and where anyone else might happen to be. They were alone in the building. Alex and Andrei looked about downstairs in the main room while Quinn decided to go through rooms upstairs, finding clothes to fit (oddly enough for a midget) that looked better in a museum, than on him.
Gunshots sounded outside from several celebrating townsfolk, some on horseback, some on foot. The PCs would learn that somehow, someway, each of them were now in the small city of Trinity, Wyoming, circa 1770. Through a bit of information gathering they learned that Abraham Lincoln was still President, the Civil War had concluded after only 3 short months with the North thoroughly routing the South, and confederate officers being tracked and hunted down in a nation-wide witch hunt.
A funeral procession was slowly making its way down Main Street to the edge of town where a large cemetery covered a long low hill. Quinn made his way to the front of the procession where he managed to talk to Sisters Aubrey Lilybrook and her daughter Ellie Lilybrook, two nuns who had founded and currently operated an esteemed school in Trinity. One of their teachers, Malcolm Trelaine had gone on a killing spree, and now the townsfolk wanted to make sure his body was forever disposed of, by burning it on a funeral pyre, while the body of his last victim, the former constable, Lars Tannerson, was buried nearby.
Alex and Andrei were forceably pushed aside and questioned by the new constable in town, Nessa Parish, and two of her deputies. She accused them of "looking different," and indeed they had done nothing yet to blend in with the locals, as they still wore clothes from their own contemporary time. During the discussion, Nessa revealed herself as someone other than a mere constable, when the charge on her holographic disguise faltered, exposing a stark blue uniform and weaponry far beyond the technology level of 1770. She admitted that she and her cohorts were agents from "the Watch" (the Infinity Patrol from GURPS Infinite Worlds). She warned them that they were looking for a terrorist called the Lightning Mage, and that the pair of them should keep their eyes open for anything "out of the ordinary" and report back to her. She offered them clothes that would help them look more normal.
As the procession crested the hill to where the pyre had been built, screams erupted as hundreds of spiders spread out in a growing circle around the townsfolk standing around the hearse/carriages. Fearing that all the townsfolk would be driven away, Constable Parish and her deputies began passing out several torches (there to light the pyre) and using them to burn the spiders. Then a ghastly cowboy, who looked like he had jumped out of his long-occupied grave (zombie), began attacking the townsfolk. Andrei, having had quite enough of the disruptions, swept in with his shotgun, and blasted the zombie, but not before the foul undead killed one woman, and bitten another man.
Nearby, Alex spotted a large black bird watching from the top of one of the headstones, later noticing as the bird swooped in and flew away with a small bundle in its talons. Watching it, he made a mental note of the area of town the bird landed.
Throughout the excitement, Andrei had noticed an older man in his 60s dressed in dark leathers and a wide brimmed hat. Something about the man's spectacles made the Russian soldier suspicious, as the glasses looked antique, but were also slightly tinted, and modified in a way that didn't quite match the western time. Approaching from behind, Andrei quietly announced his presence, and learned that this man was the person they had been warned about, the Lightning Mage, none other than Benjamin Franklin.
Branded a "terrorist" by the Infinity Patrol for meddling with worlds in the Pan Dimensional, Franklin revealed that he was a dimensional wanderer who found himself trapped on this altered plane of existence, much as the characters had found themselves here, unexpectedly uprooted from their home worlds. He also explained that, like the petals of flower, different planes of reality overlapped each other in an infinite cosmic circle, and that something catastrophic had happened, was still happening, causing certain worlds to be "plucked," isolated from the rest of the cosmology. This world, which he called Purgatory 12, had become such an isolated plane, a "pocket" dimension, and he would need their help to find out what was causing the rifts in the multiverse, and to fix them if possible.
After lighting the pyre, burning Trelaine's body, and burying the body of Constable Tannerson, the townsfolk returned to their daily rituals, an air of relief settling on the community. Quinn, having convinced a number of people that he was a medical doctor, managed to make his way to the real Doctor in Trinity, Bernard Kendall, and persuade him that the victims of the zombie attack needed to be disposed of and burned.
Alex followed the trail of the black bird as best he could, walking to the outskirts of town where the Livery, Livestock pen, Tannery and Slaughterhouse were located. He made a cursory sweep of the area, and headed back to the High Point saloon (where the PCs first found themselves), making up his mind to come back at a later time to do further investigation.
End of Session 1.
Sounds fun. The whole "lightning mage" was very... memorable. I can't really think of why. It justs sounds cool. I like how this has nothing to do with the age of worms yet, so the PC's are still unsuspecting. Keep it up.
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Oh, forgot to mention, Ben, the Lightning Mage, replaces Allustan in the campaign. Can't remember where the inspiration for that came from. Seems I must've read it somewhere, perhaps in Keye's "Age of Unreason" series of books (which I think is excellent if you're into alternate history), or maybe I caught it in one of Ken Hite's "Suppressed Transmisssion" articles. But the idea, and the LM nickname, isn't original. I can't take credit for it.
And the adventure, although not part of the original line up of adventures in the campaign, will fit into the grand Age of Worms scheme of things. Don't worry, all will be revealed in time...
Our second session isn't scheduled for another couple of weeks. Unfortunately I only have time to run a game that often. But I'll post the summary here afterwards. Thanks for reading.
Fantastic!
I'll be watching this thread.
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Whoops! Sorry. Got so busy at work that I neglected to post the Session 2 notes...
Funeral Procession, part 2
[it was a shorter session this week because of people having to leave to go to work]
Roll Call:
Alex, Fast Hero/1, Adventurer from the Urban Arcana setting
Andrei, Strong Hero/1, Soldier of the Red Star army
Quinn, Smart Hero/1 (not present)
Brand, Fast Hero/1 (joined the game)
Brand is a thief from the future, a lawless future where mankind has taken to space, and pirates and pillaging are a means of survival. He was planning his next operation, sitting in geo-synchronous orbit around Terra Prime, in his tramp freighter, when a cascade of electrical energy swept through his ship and transported him to the dimension of Purgatory 12, in the town of Trinity, Wyoming, where the rest of the party was located.
He found himself standing on a dusty hill where the town mortician and several gravediggers were filling in the burial site of ex-constable Tannerson, and watching the last embers of Malcolm Trelaine?s funeral pyre crumble and die. A disturbing discovery was made. Malcolm?s left hand had not burned, and they found it lying amidst the ashes. It had a tattoo on the back of it, of a three-headed snake. It was a tattoo the townsfolk knew all too well, because a gunslinger had come into town several weeks ago, Johnny Maxwell, who had killed a couple of saloon patrons before Constable Tannerson buffaloed him, had him tried and hung. Supposedly the body had been shipped to Fort Laramie, by stage, where his family was going to pick it up and bury him. If this hand belonged to Johnny Maxwell, what had happened to Malcolm Trelaine?s body?
Brand, of course, was confused and surprised by the primitiveness of this world, especially intrigued by such figures as ?constable,? since his own world is largely chaotic, and without a police force, as such. He followed the group of young gravediggers into town, and stopped to question one of the theatre performers who had stepped outside to take in the latest gossip. Indeed, as word spread quickly through town that Malcolm?s body had, in fact, not been burned, many townsfolk stepped outside to discuss the matter, making it rather obvious that stress levels in town were increasing since no one knew what had happened to the body.
Deputy Aldrin pulled Brand away from his discussion with the lady, and escorted him to the Constable?s office, where he was scanned and questioned in much the same way the rest of the PCs had been last session. Brand, too, was given a set of clothes with a holographic imaging system built into them, so that he would better ?blend in? with the locals.
After Brand left the Constable?s shack, the other PC?s (who noticed yet another ?stranger? come through town) pulled Brand to the side and questioned him. Feeling comfortable enough, they took him into their confidences, and went to investigate this new problem of the missing body. They went back to the town clinic, where Quin had visited in session 1 (Quin is not with the group, now, btw) and asked to see where Trelaine?s body had been stored. Doc Kendall showed them the closet, where victims from the earlier zombie attack were being kept. After searching the tight room, a set of rosary beads were found on the floor in the back, nestled half-hidden in a crack between the wall and floor board slats. This led the group to inquire with the nuns, Mother Aubrey and Sister Ellie at the Lilybrook School.
Time was now well into the evening, and as the party approached the school, it was apparent that no one was present, though the front door was unlocked. Inside the décor was plain, spartan. A symbol of 3 pairs of stars connected by a circular line adorned one wall, and across from it a picture of someone named Saint Josiah. Another picture of Saint Josiah was found in the office, along with the accompanying star pattern. The group searched the classrooms on the first floor, while Andrei kept watch outside. Malcolm had a small bedroom off his classroom, and little was found there except a bundle with a rag doll with a ceremonial knife tied to the back of it. The knife had a hawk?s head emblem carved into the pommel.
The priest of the catholic church, across the street and down a few buildings, came outside, leaned up against the building, noticed that Andrei was watching him, and then quickly went back inside. Curious, Andrei left his post, and went to check on the padre. The structure of the Holy Blood Mission was sturdy, but unkempt. Father Ezrah explained to Andrei that the Lilybrooks, who had no connection to the catholic church that he knew of, were gaining all sorts of converts in town, all to worship some Saint Josiah, also someone he was unfamiliar with. People had stopped coming to his services, and now he was but a lowly watchman of the mission, there to attend to those with spiritual needs should they happen to drop by. He asked Andrei if he would look into matters for him, and that he knew there had to be some connection between the Lilybrooks and the Anderhoffs, aka the Sawfish boys, who owned the slaughterhouse in town. He had seen the Anderhoffs around the school a number of times.
Meanwhile the rest of the group found all the children, both boys and girls, all between the ages of 7 and 10, hiding from them upstairs. They came to an ?agreement,? persuaded by a handful of candy, not to tell the Lilybrooks they had been there; but they feared the children would tell anyway, and ransacked the office on the first floor, taking a large sum of money from the cash box, making it look like the school had been robbed.
Next the group made their way to the slaughterhouse and scouted the area. Making some artful Move Silently rolls and Hide rolls, they managed to get through the window of Vander?s office, watching him at first, then sneaking in and waylaying him as he left, ultimately tying him up under his desk with Brand?s cable. Hearing the sound of dogs somewhere nearby, the group made their way downstairs -- without much scouting about -- to the slaughter line and the sanguination room.
1100 XPS awarded. PCs advance to 2nd level.
We finished the Funeral Procession adventure yesterday, so if I don't get to posting the Session 3 notes later today, I'll do it later this week.