Well, having tried to DM Age of Worms three times, TPK every single time, I decided to try my luck as a player. Yeah, I'm like that.
So my wife is currently running Age of Worms as a d20 Modern game, using elements of Urban Arcana, Dark*Matter, and the original (non-Spycraft) Dark Inheritance rules. I thought I'd post up a journal of how we've been doing, who our players/characters are, and what the heck seems to be going on.
We've finished session 3 now, so I'll spend a little while on backstory and unfolding events.
Our characters:
Paul Mithrandir, field agent for The Hoffmann Institute.
Role: Investigator
In-game: Human Dedicated hero 4 (Titan lineage: Storm Crows- Second sight tree)
Paul was my character. I was playing him a bit like Dominic Deegan, using the d20 Modern Drawbacks and Distinctions rules (found somewhere on RPGnow, I think)- he was slightly lame (no jokes...), needing a cane to walk, and required prescription glasses to see correctly, but with great potential (-1 level adjustment, which meant I gained a level for free).
Danny Splinter, field agent for the Hoffmann Institute.
Role: Wheelman/Combat Support
In-game: Rat Moreau (overt) Fast Hero 3
Danny was being played by Rowan, one of our regulars. He was a 4ft tall rat who walked around in a long coat and sunglasses, and carried a whopping big gun in the boot of his car. He was also our driver, which was why there were bricks duct-taped to the pedals.
Count Cortez, displaced Shadowkind, field agent for the Hoffmann Institute
Role: Protector
In-game: Shadowblooded Dragonblooded human Strong Hero 2 (Titan Lineage: Storm Crows- War tree)
Cortez is played by John, our resident MinMax player. Cortez was somehow flung through the Rift in Jerusalem (see the Dark Inheritance book) and ended up in the modern world, where he was recruited by the Hoffmann Institute for his strength and knowledge of Shadowkind.
Jonas Cerin, field agent for the Hoffmann Institute
Role: Medic/Investigator
In-Game: Human Dedicated hero 3 (Titan Lineage: Crimson Lords- Vitality tree)
Mikey is one of those players who only shows up every few games, but gets a few laughs every time. This time, he was playing a character who started out as a 'cleric' until he worked out he couldn't just heal people. Then he worked out that his first power from the Vitality tree, Gift of Tommuz, 'makes the target more fertile'. At that point, he gave up on roleplaying and just touched every NPC he could lay his hands on and yelled "Pop! BABY!"
Session One
We started off doing the first 'Team Bravo' mission to try and get us into the 'Modern feel'. So we began by being assigned to investigate a violent attack in a warehouse nearby to town.
When we got there, we bluffed our way past the police guards ("Uh, Animal Control. We have reports of an animal attack here?") and started hunting around the warehouse. There were lots of bloody smears on the floor and two chalk outlines... each one of half a body. Eew.
On searching the warehouse more thoroughly, we found an animal collar with the name of a BioGenetics laboratory from just out of town, and a maddened survivor of the attack. We were able to calm him enough to get some information from him, and he babbled about a 'big lizard' that attacked his friend. We drove the poor fellow to the nearby hospital, where, we were sure, he could be properly taken care of, and bunked down for the night.
In the morning, we headed to the BioGenetics lab, and barged our way past the officious secretary, collar in hand. A scientist came out to soothe us, and took us into his lab to show us the projects. Apparently, the guy thought his name was Dr. J. Park, because he was breeding gene-spliced velociraptors, and locked us in the lab with one to try to cover up his work. While we battled the vicious beast, he fled to his car. Count Cortez smashed the reptile mightily with his maul, but Paul stabilized the creature and called the real Animal Control Organization while everyone piled into Danny's van and scorched away after the scientist.
After several hours on the freeway, he pulled over, and was a bit shocked to see the bloodied lot of us pile out, weapons at the ready (well, Danny had a gun, Cortez carried his maul, and Paul and Jonas both carried swords... maybe he hadn't paid his SCA fees in a while). He broke down and told us that he was trying to recapture the creatures, that they had evolved intelligent instead of just biological receptacles, and that we could help him catch them and have them properly put down. We agreed (some of us agreed that it would be better to pout him down, but saner voices intervened).
In the city sewers below, we hunted the creatures, following the Doctor's little GPS thing. It didn't work, and we got ambushed by three lots of them. The doctor went down hard, and though some frantic spending of Action Dice on Treat Injury checks stabilized him, none of thought that scar would ever really heal after being disinfected with raw sewage. The last of the raptors were finally put down, and we turned in the doctor to the police, telling them that an SCA meeting had got... 'out of hand' during a sewer trek, and a 'rival SCA gang' (you know, police go for that kind of explanation, it has buzzwords!) had attacked us.
The first session ended, and we agreed that while Modern was fun, that was, indeed, a silly place, and we would not go there.
Session Two: The Whispering Cairn
After a few weeks of recuperation (and many many showers) the team was sent on another mission. A man named Allustan Black, living in the tiny Irish backwater town of Diamond Loch, in the Western Highlands, had found an old cairn outside of town. While this was not unnatural, the objects and carvings he had found were, and he informed the Hoffmann Institute. Cortez had to leave his maul at home, but after watching Highlander as the in-flight movie, was inspired to pick up a combat-quality katana blade in Dublin as we passed through.
After several connecting flights, and an eight-hour journey by Land Rover (the latter half on dirt roads), we arrived in Diamond Loch to find the hamlet a rough, tough place. Cortez made friends and influenced people by blowing all his Action Dice on Fortitude saves to consume incredible amounts of alcohol (including several Irish Carbomb cocktails).
In the morning, while Cortez recovered from his Advanced Elite Dire Hangover, Paul and Danny made their way on foot to the home of the reclusive Mr. Black. There, over breakfast tea, we discovered that Allustan was a former agent for the Hoffmann Institute, and had in fact retired to Diamond Loch precisely to escape this sort of wierdity. However, knowing the kinds of dangers they might face, he had arranged for a bundle of gear to be sent to him, including a brace of hunting shotguns and archaeological gear, since we would be posing as archaeologists excavating the cairn.
Thus fortified, we drove across the fields to the ominous area known by the locals as the Whispering Cairn for its disturbing sound effects, unloaded our gear, and headed inwards.
After finding (and carefully photographing) several branches off the main corridor, including one caved-in, and one containing an odd structure like a broken mirror-frame, but of unknown origin, we came on a large chamber filled with odd-shaped spiderwebs, and were attacked by a brace of immense hunting spiders, the size of a small hatchback car. Paul, holding the digital video camera (for evidence preservation) in one hand and his loaded shotgun in the other, made the Hoffmann Institute's Xmas Party/Firearms safety video as he critically fumbled his weapon, fell backwards onto his rear, and then discharged his shotgun into Danny's back (luckily failing to wound him). The spiders were overcome without anyone getting poisoned, and we spent several hours examining the bodies for signs of what could cause creatures of such tremendous size, before heading onwards down a steep, long staircase, down which we could see a faint, flickering greenish light.
(end of session two)
Session Three: The Whispering Cairn
We headed into the cavernous eight-pointed chamber below and found an androgynous figure carved onto a central stone sarcophagus, with seven short corridors branching off in perfect compass directions, each with a lantern of unknown metal hanging from a long chain (which disappeared somewhere into the roof above). After some investigation, we decided to open the sarcophagus. While Paul luckily made his power check, and ducked back in time, the others were singed as some kind of oxygen-reactant chemical surged to life around the edge of the sarcophagus, opening to reveal- a shallow, empty hollow.
Chastened, we tried to turn the sarcophagus over, and ended up spinning it on some kind of central axis on the floor. We experimented with this for a while, until some strange kind of elevator opened up in the corridor with the indigo-coloured lantern, revealing a pile of crushed bones wrapped in some old brown rags. On further investigation (and using a stick to pry the moldy bones out of the cylinder before it retreated into the floor), we found that the bones were formerly human- and the rags were the remnants of an old S.S. brownshirt's uniform, complete with a swastika armband! This threw us all for a surprise, and made us reconsider our position. Clearly, this cairn had been opened more recently than we thought, but had they found what they had been looking for? Indeed, what were they looking for, and why were they looking in the Western Highlands of Ireland, of all places?
We turned the sarcophagus a few more times, and opened another elevator-cylinder, which we decided to venture down. In the room below, we were nearly overcome by a poisonous gas-trap issuing from vents in the floor, and retreated to find some way of dealing with the problem. (note: this was our first mistake).
We asked the townsfolk if they had heard anything about Nazis, or visitors during the War, and were directed to the oldest lady in the village, a lovable crone of about ninety. She told us that there had been some lovely young lads who visited during the war, a funny lot of blond chaps who left their jeep behind, which was very silly at the time, because petrol was being rationed, don't you know? And then only about half of them left after, she wasn't sure what had happened, but they all looked rather downhearted when they cleared out. And so I tied an onion to my belt, as was the fashion at the time.... we interrupted to ask if anyone knew where the jeep was, and she mentioned that it was nearby, in one of the sheds on her back field. We asked if we could search it, and she agreed. (note: this was our second mistake)
On searching the rust-ridden jeep, we found a secret compartment inside one of the doors, containing a box of ancient (WWII-era) stick hand grenades. We decided to use these to bypass the gas, possibly by damaging the mechanism. (note: for several characters, this was our final mistake). Cortez, clearly distrustful of the odd contraptions, waited outside with the doddering madam, while Paul and Danny decided to carefully remove the hand grenades from their sawdust packaging. We fumbled. Three times in a row. The shed erupted into tiny fragments, as did Paul (straight to -12 hp, the fastest PC fatality I have ever had). Danny, being faster to dodge, staggered out shredded, then collapsed in front of Cortez, who wisely picked him and the old lady up, and ran for the town doctor.
A week later, after Paul's funeral and Danny being flown home on medical retirement, the reserve force arrived. Having been briefed on the dangers, the Hoffmann Institute had called in one of their Danger Teams from Department 4. This involved introducing replacement characters, and a bunch of NPC minions who would be our camera-holders and light-getters.
Captain Joseph 'Joe' Montgomery, Danger Team Leader for the Hoffmann Institute
Role: Combat Leadership
In-game: Human Strong hero 3/Soldier 1
After Paul died, I was a little devastated, and so I knocked together a quick character concept based on the Special Forces captain from the Transformed movie- tough, combat-capable, but a 'good guy' through and through. He and his best friend Darunia have served on the Danger Team for four years together, and are nearly unbeatable together.
Lieutenant Darunia Gorona, Danger Team member for the Hoffmann Institute
Role: Close-Quarters Combat
In-game: Human Tough Hero 4 (Titan lineage: Wild Bloods- Wild Flesh tree)
Darunia is a mountain of a man, formerly from Uzbekistan, then Russia, where he served with the Spetznaz for two years. He is almost unstoppable in combat, his titan lineage manifesting to protect him from danger. However, he is a quiet, gentle soul, and smiles often. He likes 'hard men' like himself.
After the Danger Team arrived, there were some quick introductions, including trying to introduce Cortez to a pistol (he didn't grok), before the team mustered out and descended into the Whispering Cairn. They made a quick sweep through the upper level, then headed down into the gas-chamber. Of course, the gas-trap had long since deactivated, and they penetrated the corridor beyond easily, making their sweep forwards until they encountered a moldy brown lump the size of several mildewed mattresses, sucking the hat from their skins. After a quick discussion a chamber back, they decided to try burning a sample with Joe's lighter. The stuff swelled massively, and had to be hurled away. They then called for one of the Danger Team minions with a can of wire-cutting Liquid Nitrogen, and destroyed the brown mold with ease. The remaining chambers they quickly explored, then headed back up to the sarcophagus chamber.
(end of Session Three)
There will be more to follow, but this is a fortnightly game, run alternately with Rise of the Runelords. If anyone has any comments, questions, or otherwise, please go right ahead!
You should probably be posting this in the Campaign Journal section.
This is awesome. Right up the alley of how I have been wanting to convert the adventure paths. Do you have any conversion notes that you are using?
Salcor
This is awesome. Right up the alley of how I have been wanting to convert the adventure paths. Do you have any conversion notes that you are using?
Salcor
Hi Salcor,
I haven't been using any conversion notes, just working it out before we play the adventures (or sometimes during the game itself : ) )
So far, major changes are starting the group at 3rd level instead of first due to the lack of healers available. The archaeology guys have turned into Nazis. I've also added a lot of extra challenges that suit a modern campaign - like settling into the town and getting the peoples trust, dealing with the agency and the amusing side adventure of the grenades in the jeep.
I started the adventure in Ireland - and I don't mean this offensively to any Irish players out there - but I don't really suggest this to any one else. After I had announced the location to the players, who loved the idea, I studied up on Ireland and found that most of the wild life is relatively inoffensive, fluffy and/or cute. And I didn't really want to put in dire bunny rabbits and have Monty Python jokes for the rest of the session. So far, critters have been replaced with really big mutant spiders, nazi ghouls/zombies and I've left a couple of the original critters in just to keep the adventure in the vein of weird Urban Arcana.
Luke will probably be commenting on most of the game - I'm a little shy :) - but I'm happy to put up any conversion notes as I go along.
Due to a family funeral, we skipped our D&D session last week.
However, our group got together over the weekend, and we decided to play an extra session of Age of Worms, with another one to follow this Thursday.
I'll post up what we got up to later tonight, as I'm just on the way to work at the moment.
This is awesome, it reminds of a Hellboy RPG. Great conversion!
Okay, here's the next lot of conversion that's been completed...
Green lantern corridor ended up spilling out 2 swarms of acid beetles instead of 1 and a mad slasher. That doesn't sound difficult at first but with a room full of burly guys with guns it didn't go brilliantly.
Rooms 15 - 18 didn't change. Unfortunately I didn't catch the group with the Guardian, though I really put my mind to it at the time. Actually, I suppose the major change is that the party finds "treasure" and the Hoffman Institute takes it away from them. All magic treasure has been removed at this point. That's not to say they won't have a significant bonus at the end.
Room 19, I lost the crazy water elemental and inserted 4 d20 Past style nazi ghouls. That was awesome : )
Room 8 stayed the same (god I love that area of the game)
Room 23 had another 2 ghouls down the bottom. The kid has changed a bit. His story has changed to he was spying on the nazis when they caught him and basically used him as a trap meat shield. He still wants to be buried by his family. And he developed a really bad Irish accent.
Part Three; Tomb stories lost the owlbear and was replaced by feral boars. The house is much further out of town and the family died of potato famine. Of course I looked this up later and cursed my complete lack of Irish history knowledge and encourage others to use some other tragedy. The arm was still found but the tattoo is of some gang that frequents the town occasionally to terrorise the citizens, they've been sent from the city to help Barnabas (Balabar)on behalf of their boss.
Sorry, I'm a day (or two) late, and a dollar short, pressing 'work' business kept me. However, you do get a bonus session, since we were so bummed about missing our Rise of the Runelords session last week that we got the group together... and played AoW instead.
So, without further ado:
Session Four: The Whispering Cairn
We were joined for this session by a special investigator from the Hoffmann Institute:
Aaron al-Tothari, field agent for the Hoffmann Institute
Role: Research/Investigations
In-game: Human Smart hero 3/Mage 1 (Titan lineage: Hidden Suns- Sun tree)
My brother Michael was playing Aaron al-Tothari while he visited, a slightly paranoid Jew of Egyptian origin marooned forever from Mecca by its destruction in The Rift. He had joined the Hoffmann Institute as a way of managing his 'gifts'.
The Danger Team's forensic squad (our NPC minions) set to work on the downstairs level, which they labeled "the architect's lair", and then we tried turning the sarcophagus to face the green lantern, with disastrous results. The floor shuddered for a minute or so, then collapsed, leaving a gaping hole and a skittering noise with an acrid smell.
We fell back into fire-team positions, but didn't cope well with the geysers of shiny blue beetles that erupted from the broken shaft and swarmed us. Each of us was badly bitten and burned by some acidic secretion before we were able to scatter them with a few shotgun blasts.
We got a climbing kit together and headed down into the shaft, scouting by throwing some chemical lightsticks ahead of us. We came to another level of the ancient complex, this one filled with a bad smell. Heading left at the intersection, we came on a room built like a modern church, with rows of stone slabs laid out, and a mashed Nazi body on one of them. At the head of the room was a great big stone statue, which Gorona and Cortez teamed up to push over before it could 'animate and kill us all' (Aaron's words). Also in the room was a beetle grown to immense size, but it seemed lethargic and was easily blasted apart.
To the right branch of the intersection was a large room filled with the secretions of an entire hive of the acid beetles. We wasted no time in hurling in a quartet of Molotov Cocktails and shooting apart anything that came close to the door.
Further on, down the stairs, Gorona stripped off and dove into the black waters, trying to see if the passageway continued past the stairwell. As he returned, though, he was attacked by three sodden bodies in soaking Nazi uniforms. After a tough battle, we blasted the creatures apart, and continued on to explore the underwater room, to little avail.
Upstairs, we examined the corridor with the blue lantern, climbing slowly up the chain before reaching a small passageway set into the wall. After checking the floor carefully, we deduced that some kind of effect must have scraped something off the floor, and hastily clipped climbing-ropes to the chain and our own belts to prevent falling. Unfortunately, this was of little use against the trap set into the far end of the hallway, and we were all only saved by a lightning-quick invocation by al-Tothari, floating us to the ground lightly. He examined the lanterns and suggested that they be lit, like the mosaic earlier.
After quickly placing road-flares in each of the lanterns, the roof began to shimmer, and we tried the passageway again. It had opened! (My character was starting to feel very cranky about all of this... it just wasn't right! His friend Gorona turning into a bear... that was OK. This was.... not right.)
We came into a room with a sunken floor made up of large iron balls, with a 1m-wide plank over them leading to a blank wall. After a quick plan was made, we lowered ourselves to the floor and walked across carefully, but were ambushed by yet another pair of the Nazi ghouls. And then, we met a real-life, honest-to-God ghost, who explained that he could open the next door for us if we took his bones back to his family and had him buried. Battered, and with little other choice, we agreed.
End of Session Four
Session Five: The Whispering Cairn
We recuperated for the evening in the local pub, the 'Feral Dog', trying to keep a low profile (we were posing as archaeologists after all) and avoided a gang of toughs who were causing trouble in one corner, led by a bid scarred albino.
In the morning, we drove out to the boy's house, but found that his family had died in the Great Potato Famine. After pointing out that this happened 100 years before WW2, this was hastily amended to 'during the War', and what's worse, their graves were empty. As we investigated the rotting farmstead, we stumbled on a sounder of boars (yes, that's the term, I wiki'd it!), disturbed from eating the remains of a human arm, and they were put down after causing some grievous wounds to Cortez. When we examined the arm, we found that it bore a gang tattoo on the arm.
Confronting the gang (the Skanks) in the Feral Dog that night, we almost caused a firefight, but this was avoided by the return of our player Mikey, and his character flamboyantly used his Gush power to cause the albino's scar to re-open, terrifying the gang and all the townsfolk who watched. We were quickly able to get a name from him- Filge, a scientist who lived a couple of hours outside Dublin, who had employed them to unearth the bones for some purpose. After leaving a stack of Euro-notes to cover the 'damages', we headed back to our hotel to sleep it off (and write reports using words like "loss of deniability", "public exposure", "supernatural forces", and "swamp gas?!?!?" for some of us...). Between the public exposure and the fact that we were hunting for the bones of a little girl, dead 60 years, that some creep had had dug up, my character was getting seriously stressed. The Nazi ghouls he was just blocking out for the time being.
We reached the old observatory quickly in the morning, and after some quick climbing (to see through the windows), we ascertained that Filge seemed to be a very creepy bastard, if nothing else. Joe handed out balaclavas and we burst in the door, weapons drawn, only to discover animated skeletons firing pistols at us. Cortez was able to batter two down with a table, and Joe's rifle-butt shattered the other, and we quickly penetrated through to the dining-room, discovering a scene of horror. Though the bodies twitched slightly, none of them made a move, and we pounded our way up the stairs, hoping to preserve surprise. There, we rushed through his bedroom, and reached some kind of medical laboratory, where a man (identified as John Filge later, by checking his wallet) attacked us with some kind of magical lights, blasting through Joe's body armour. We returned fire, and he cloaked himself in invisibility, then called on some more creepy undead to attack us. We smashed our way through these, and Filge sent out a sheet of crackling flame before he was knocked cold by a rifle-butt to the head. We made sure he wouldn't be any trouble by grinding his fingers under my boot, then duct-taping his hands, feet, and mouth to take him back to the London HI branch for 'further questioning and imprisonment'.
The bones were buried in a quiet, simple ceremony by the village pastor, and after we explained that our friend Jonas had thrown a small knife ("so small, you could barely see it!") at the albino, the townsfolk seemed to accept the situation and repressed the memories.
We headed back to the Whispering Cairn and made our way up to the top level, where, true to his word, Alastair had opened the wall for us, emerging into a ring-shaped room surrounding what seemed to be a bottomless pit. In the centre, unsupported by modern architecture, was a small platform. As we approached it, two humanoid figures, seemingly clad in porcelain plate armour and wielding a pair of longswords, swirled from the air and launched an attack on us. Only desperate defense kept them from cutting Cortez to ribbons, and we finally reached the central platform, beaten and badly cut. Jonas immediately jumped into the middle, and was launched high in the air, vanishing out of sight. After some careful radio communication with 'Delta' (our team's all-purpose minion/fixit guy), we followed his example, and found ourselves in yet another tomb. This one had no body, but several mosaics depicting a battle where the person with the now-familiar glyph seemed to be disintegrated, and a trio of items- a pewter box, a pair fo long red horns, and a silver diadem. We boxed them carefully, then reported the cairn 'clean' and waited for our next mission.
Surprisingly, our immediate superior, Mister Alexander, turned up via helicopter the next day, with an unknown agent following him. We gave them the guided tour of the Cairn, and he congratulated us for a job well done before turning uss over to Miss Jessica, who greeted us with a sideways-stare and a cheery "You're all going to die!" in a lovely sweet voice. She informed us that an 'Age of Worms' was coming, and that everyone was going to die unless all of us went to Dublin the next day. We had to find out something about a cult there... it was very important.
End of Session Five
End of The Whispering Cairn
At this point, we're level 5-6, I'm not sure if the xp gain will have to slow down to keep us 'hungry', but I shall put the point to my GM.
Very well done. I'm liking this entry very much. I'm running the AoW in Eberron, myself, and like to read the parallels with how things worked out in my game. Hope to read more soon.
Unfortunately, the most recent session was our last- we ended up running around Dublin disguised (for some reason) as cricket players (I believe it was so our fighter-type could use a great whopping big two-handed club without 'attracting attention'...).
While this was fun, we actually got a little bored of it. Some parts were very difficult to adapt to modern (the whole 'three cults' thing was hard).
Although... funny story- the Tiefling warriors in the temple of Hextor (the Sons of Tyranny) were armed with handfuls of grenades and started lobbing those at us through their darkness. Our fighter-type started swinging blind with his cricket bat, rolled a 20, and knocked one straight back at them. When the darkness and the smoke grenade cleared, we heard a tremendous explosion, and emerged to find the shrapnel-laced remains of a pair of horned bikers lying on the floor. "Oh well." we said, and continued.
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Unfortunately, the most recent session was our last- we ended up running around Dublin disguised (for some reason) as cricket players (I believe it was so our fighter-type could use a great whopping big two-handed club without 'attracting attention'...).
<flashback to several Call of Cthulhu adventures>
I have the mental image of Peter Davison era Doctor Who...