Month: June 2016

The dead stir.

Investigations at the graveyard and nearby give no reason, but the dead refuse to remain where they belong. Guards have been posted, brave souls have spent the night watching for the foul necromancer that is bringing them back… but to no avail.

The Orcus Pit

If anything, the constant paranoia about the graveyard and the local undead makes things easier for the ancient Orcus cult in the city. They gather nightly now in the basement of the Travenis Estate under the guise of a group of concerned citizens who are trying to figure out what to do about the problems – while not condoning the “horrendous and blasphemous” demands of the citizens who want all the dead to be burned instead of buried.

In the depths of the basement of the estate is the Orcus Pit, a massive shallow pit around which they conduct their rites as…

I often feel that Super Mario Bros. 2 doesn’t get the respect these days as a “proper” entry into the Mario franchise, being an altered version of another game and all. Yet we played it like crazy back in the 80s, and I have a particular fondness for it — and its music.

Talk about a chirpy, cheery, and catchy theme! Can’t stop hearing this in my head once I’ve played it.

I imagine that this music plays anytime I accomplish something awesome, which is quite frequent.

We would beg — BEG — our cousin TJ to quickly beat the game so we could hear this theme. The lullaby earworm makes me insanely happy.

I’ve been running a 5e campaign since shortly after the full rules set was available, and I admit I’ve not read the whole DMG cover to cover yet. But when I do open it up and go look something up, I often come across one of the sample maps in the volume which in turn has appeared in every odd-numbered edition of the game.

The monastery basement map has been with us since the 1e DMG, made a new appearance in the 3e DMG (and was further expanded in an issue of Dungeon Magazine to finally have a full key instead of just a few rooms detailed), and is back again in a similar-yet-different style in the 5e DMG.

Besides style issues, there is only one major difference between the three versions – in Todd Gamble’s version (in 3e), room 5 is connected to the same hallway that leads to…

In the previous installment of Tabletop for one, my solo RPG play character Jindra the female dwarf shield fighter was crouched in a thicket outside the entrance to a goblin “eating cave,” a hideout used by the Cragmaw tribe to launch ambushes along the Triboar Trail. After <barely> surviving an ambush herself, she completed her goal of delivering a wagonload of goods to Phandalin – along with a goblin prisoner – and headed back out to investigate this hideout and hopefully find and rescue Sildar Hallwinter. Sildar, a human warrior, was taken along with Jindra’s friend and patron Gundren Rockseeker. The latter was absconded with to Cragmaw Castle, a fortress many miles away. Closer at hand was this cave, and with any luck Jindra could enlist Sildar’s help in mounting a rescue operation.

In order to differentiate between the narrative retelling of the adventure experience and the insights into…

A pair of the foulest harpy sorceresses ever to fly the badlands settled into these caves and excavations about 20 years ago. The rocky mesas and shattered stones of the badlands extend for days in every direction – a mix of natural erosion, heaving land, and the warring of ancient titans creating the plains of shattered rock, gullies, and canyons.

Although not obvious from above or from the entrances to the lair, these caves were also once home to someone who took the time to fix them up and smooth floors out and generally upgrade them from shattered caves and crevasses into a functional lair with multiple areas and access points.

Habret’s Lair (with grid)

Originally, the Harpies left the structure as they found it, with the old bridges rotted out making access very difficult for non-fliers. But foul magics and the years have taken their toll on the beastly…