Dragonbane: Shadow Over Gloomshire 2: Halls of the Blood King

I had such a good time running Shadow Over Gloomshire for MK-RPG that I wasn't ready to let go of it, despite the party having completed the main adventure. I'd dropped enough hints about who was behind everything that went down in the graveyard that I was pretty sure I could continue the adventure for another 8 week block.

Which became a 7 week block when damn near everyone was ill on week 1, including me.

Mazikeen's player had to drop out, and so the mighty paladin was replaced by Luna Bane, wolfkin demon hunter and massive Viktor Drakos fangirl.

Week 1: Into The Mines

There were still a lot of ill people, but I was well enough to run and two players made it to the club so off we went. I decided that most of the party were incredibly hung over after celebrating their victory with Gloomshire ale, and only Kaine was well enough to get up and enjoy a breakfast of crow bacon. So he was the first person to get to meet Luna, and watch Viktor's desperate attempts to avoid her by hiding behind Maeve.

Then came the actual mission, based on one of the many handy hooks provided in the scenario - talk to the shopkeeper Greb and try to ease his troubles. Meaning Kaine and Luna got sent out to the silver mines to recover Greb's six dead friends and bring their bodies home for proper burial.

The two made good use of knowledge skills, meaning that they arrived in the mine covered in the entrails of the stygian wolves they'd killed on the way in, meaning the thralls merely shambled slowly towards them rather than immediately charging. By the end of the session they were back in Gloomshire with a cart full of dead dwarves.

Week 2: Rescue Mission

With most of the group now recovered, it was time for the main plot to start unfolding. Councilwoman Auda Voss, now convinced of the team's skills and courage, asked them for help recovering her son from the Van Walden mansion.

At this point I knew I was going to need a map. I'd previously asked around for suggestions for OSRish vampire mansion adventures, and Halls of the Blood King by Diogo Nogueira was the name that kept showing up. Reasonably priced at £5.95 and with cartography by the ever-reliable Glynn Seal I decided to give it a shot. While written for Old School Essentials, I was confident that I could swap out the monsters for Dragonbane creations. The plot would need a little tweaking to fit in with the scenario we were playing, but I knew what needed to change and how I was going to make it work.

The party arrived at the mansion and immediately ran into my absolute favourite NPC of the entire campaign: the gate. I absolutely loved playing that gate.

"I'm going to have to bite you now."
Luna jumps rapidly backwards, away from the gate.
"Curses! Foiled again."

Week 3: There might be a vampire

Auda Voss was delighted to have her son back and handed over the offered reward. But over a meal of turnips, he revealed that he thought there might be a vampire in the mansion. So Voss offered them another mission - dealing with the Van Waldens once and for all. This time the reward was a bit more concrete: if they could clear the mansion out, they could have it.

So back they went to the mansion, with a leg of pork for the gate, who chewed it up enthusiastically. This time rather than going straight to the basement they began a sweep of the ground floor, finding servants' quarters before unexpectedly running into some guests. Two vampires, an orc and a mallard, both looking for the dining room. It was becoming clear that there might be a few more vampires here than anticipated.

They next encountered Princess Cornelia, after some unexpectedly virtuoso piano playing from Grimduck opened the secret door to her room. A friendly chat revealed that she was also a vampire, and the guests were here to celebrate her being welcomed into the Van Walden family as a replacement for Konrad the disappointment. Except she was having second thoughts.

Week 4: The lay of the land

Luna's player was unavailable, so Luna remained deep in conversation with Princess Cornelia, while the others continued their search. Notable event included finding a very unpleasant chest of drawers lined with teeth, which they nevertheless made use of to make vampire disguises for the less toothy party members. They managed to unenthrall some of the guards and sent them home after getting a comprehensive list of the vampire guests present - besides those they'd already met there were a dwarf, a halfling, a human and a frog.

The adventure includes a list of vampire guests. They don't all work exactly as written for Dragonbane, but after I'd rolled a random selection of them and assigned them all different kin based on names and descriptions, we had a great cast of weird vampires ready for future encounters.

Week 5: There really are a lot of vampires

The six golden bathtubs in the bathroom were really selling the otherwise rather unpleasant mansion, but it wasn't long before Dr Crumb had something new to occupy his enormous mind: the different death animations of different vampire kin. None of that was in the adventure, but when shortly afterwards they staked the halfling vampire and I described him deflating like a punctured balloon, which then got interpreted as him zooming around the room, this became a whole thing.

With most of the human staff either dead or rescued, it was time to brave the dining room. And there they found Liss Van Walden, in conversation with two guests - the human and the frog.

The vampires from Shadow Over Gloomshire are terrifying opponents, so I decided to use the frog kin from the bestiary for the frog vampire, and drop ferocity to 1 for the two humans. Even so it was a very close fight. I rolled for Liss's seduction attempt rather than having it auto succeed, which added some comedy when I rolled a demon and Liss was instead smitten by the intense fluffiness of Felis the cat person. Which didn't stop him almost getting bitten to death.

This did provide more data for Dr Crumb. Human vampires disintegrated into dust; frog vampires exploded, showering everyone in frog bits.

The party decided to rest after that, and having just discovered the games room (and given the games master free choice as to what she wanted to play with them), this took the form of an entire shift playing Twilight Imperium.

Week 6: Sexy people

After noping out of the library at the sight of the blood red spider webs, the party was ready to head upstairs. But not before the return of Luna, who was now convinced that Princess Cornelia was absolutely wonderful and they should do anything she wanted.

The upper floor soon brought them to a room full of very attractive people of various kin, lounging on cushions and inviting the party to join them. Fortunately some of the party passed their will rolls, found their way past the illusory wall, and dragged the others with them. So they'd done some comprehensive looting before Ernst Van Walden showed up.

Ernst was very rapidly taken down before he could bite anyone, and his guards ultimately proved more of a challenge. Once again they managed to unenthrall one of them, and then moved on to the final confrontation: Konrad Van Walden. Who turned out not to be a vampire at all, but a demon summoner, who'd summoned his own pet blood demon with the intention of demonstrating to his parents just how much of a disappointment he really was.

Which was all happening in a room full of fabulously valuable porcelain dolls, which Grimduck was frantically attempting to remove from the room before any potentially damaging fighting kicked off.

Week 7: Finale

Konrad's monologuing didn't go exactly as planned, and being a fairly weak human rather than a powerful vampire, he didn't last long. His demon proved rather tougher, but a phenomenal display of magical power from Halvelda finished it off.

Now there was just a bit of tidying to do. A planetary display turned out to have the lock fitting the key they'd found in the basement earlier, which turned off the house's evil decor, allowing them to use the stairs as normal. The orc vampire confided in them that he was working for Princess Cornelia. An earlier attempt at poisoning the blood soup with holy water had finally paid off, taking out the dwarf vampire. And the mallard was convinced to leave. But as he stepped outside, they saw the first rays of the rising sun, heard a shout of "Oh quack!", and were now in possession of a rather nice statue.

Princess Cornelia rewarded them for rescuing her beloved porcelain dolls and went on her way, reminding them about the spiders in the basement. And so they finally went back to the library, pushed the webs aside, and descended into the court of the blood spiders. The party immediately decided they didn't want to fight them, and attempted to persuade them to leave. It took a few attempts, but they were eventually convinced to relocate to the old temple in the graveyard. So under cover of darkness and some very large skirts, the blood spiders were escorted to the graveyard to meet their new friend: Bones, the gravedigger and MVP of the previous adventure.

Finally the party were able to enjoy their new property. While now largely bare boards, they did still have the six gold bathtubs. And most importantly, the gate.

Conclusions

Translating an adventure from OSE to Dragonbane had its challenges, and took more effort than running the original Shadow Over Gloomshire adventure as I had to make a number of changes to fit in with the ongoing story. That said, it's a really solidly written location with a great map, meaning I only had to worry about details like the location of the major NPCs rather than everything about the story.

If, like me, you don't care for most OSR systems but would like to try some of the adventures, give them a shot with Dragonbane. This one in particular is well worth the effort. Levels aren't much of a concern as you'll be swapping out the monsters for similar creatures from the Dragonbane Bestiary. The one important thing to change is treasure - the gold amounts in Halls of the Blood King are wildly over the top for Dragonbane so I replaced them with random draws from the treasure deck, specific treasure deck items, and rolls on the Shadow Over Gloomshire treasure table.

I'm wrapping up the campaign for now, as we've managed to tie off all the loose ends from the previous block and I'm keen to run some Pathfinder 2, but I'm not ruling out a return to Gloomshire some day. The adventure includes enough hooks to potentially introduce more adventures. I've also spotted that  Robin Fjärem has published another adventure and that looks perfect for a short block. The campaign might be over, but I'm far from done with Dragonbane.

Gift Ideas For Gamers

That time of year is approaching again, and even if you're reading this at some other time, birthdays still happen. Your gamer friend or family member is probably as susceptible to Kickstarter/Backerkit campaigns as I am so game books are a risky prospect, but here's a few ideas that might prove helpful for people trying to find a gift.

For the older gamer: large print dice

Or for that matter, anyone whose eyesight isn't the best. Save them the trouble of having to pick the d20 up after every roll to try to read it, and get them something easier to see. Roll4Initiative sell oversized dice with nice big numbers in well contrasting inks. They also have lots of pretty designs. I didn't think a pink sparkly d20 would end up being my favourite, but here we are. Now I have to resist the falling snow d6s with little snowflakes inside and a snowflake on the 6. Adorable.

(I've linked to their US site but you'll want to buy them from a local reseller to avoid massive shipping costs.)

For the travelling gamer: molle backpack

There's a bunch of specialist backpacks and bags made for RPGs and board games, and they look lovely, but they're also super pricy. Molle, or Modular Lightweight Load-Carrying Equipment is military gear designed as a durable system for carrying equipment, but the consumer version is a range of backpacks in various sizes and a range of pouches and other accessories that can be attached like water bottle holders. They're strong, easy to carry, and pleasingly square when you're trying to put a lot of books in them.

I'm currently using one of the smaller ones, which easily holds the Dragonbane core box, plus rulebook and bestiary and a few accessories. My present this year is going to be an upgrade to a large model, which should be able to hold everything I need for running Pathfinder, and quite possibly a change of clothes for a weekend away at a con as well.

For that person who never has a pencil: All Rolled Up dice roll and dice tray

Well these are just great. Nice big velcro pocket that holds lots of dice, even if you've got for the extra large ones above. Slots for holding pencils and a pocket to put a card deck in. And folding dice trays that you can roll up in the dice roll. Everything you need to take to the convention/club/friend's house all in one bundle.

For the book-using GM: cookbook stand

As a home baker I can confirm that recipe books are just as prone to inconveniently closing and losing your place as RPG manuals. There are a ton of handy book holders out there, made of everything from bamboo to cast iron. Probably want to go heavy duty on this as RPG books can be pretty weighty. Of course many of them also make good tablet stands.

For that other person who never has a pencil: stationery set

Look, I've always got plenty of pencils in my All Rolled Up, but does that mean they're sharp? Do they all have functioning eraser tips? Of course not. A set of good quality pencils that won't snap all the time, a nice pencil case, an eraser and a pencil sharpener (ideally with the attached bin for when you don't have anywhere to sharpen into) is always good to have as a gamer. Add in a notebook so they don't have to make notes on their character sheet and some fun paperclips because sometimes you just need those. Remember that we're adults and can have a Batman pencil case or dinosaur stationery if we want to.

For the regular convention GM: laminator

There comes a point in any convention GM's life when they will start feeling the need to laminate things. Help them make it happen. Throw in some laminating pouches and maybe a guillotine for when they want A5 stuff.

For accessory enthusiasts: wipeables

There are lots of handy wipe clean things gamers can use, including cards, standing signs, counters and markers and that's before we even get onto battle maps. Team them up with a set of dry erase markers and some microfibre cloths for wiping them.

For everyone it's socially appropriate to buy it for: refillable deodorant

Obviously you need to exercise caution when buying deodorant for someone, but if you're ever been to a convention, you know why deodorant is an RPG related product. Wild is very effective (as good or better than the Mitchum I used before), and comes in a range of fragrances that aren't too overpowering and include options beyond generic man. The refills are available from Tesco, although I get mine posted via a subscription.

For gamers who like atmosphere: lights

I've had a lot of fun with these mini disco lights for my disco themed game. Electric candles are great for a game of Ten Candles in places where the smoke alarms make real ones an issue, or just for a bit of atmosphere generally. The remote controls for changing the light colours are also good fun.

On the other end of the scale, this camping lantern is great for venues where the lighting isn't great. Like the Garrison cells.

Hopefully there's some useful ideas in there. Any more suggestions?

ConDensed 2024

I don't know if it was luck, or just getting the vaccine done early enough, but by the time this year's ConDensed rolled around, I still hadn't had covid. What I also didn't have was my husband, who had to drop out for childcare reasons.

This was a much smaller ConDensed than the previous year, with quite a lot of people who I'd normally expect to see unable to attend. This meant a much smaller choice of games, but not so small that I couldn't find something interesting in each slot.

Game 1: Rivers of London

I wanted to play all the games on offer for Friday, but when some space opened up in Rivers of London, I jumped in. The scenario was The Font of All Evil by Paul Baldowski. Last time I played Rivers of London I played Morgan Omans, non-binary police wizard, and with the same characters on offer for this game, I decided to play them again. We were investigating the death of Edgar Marsh, also a they, which was quite emotional for Morgan (explaining why they failed every roll at the morgue.)

Rivers of London is by far my favourite version of the BRP system, with a much shorter skill list to deal with than Call of Cthulhu, and it's a fun setting to play in. Paul did a great job with this scenario, pulling in some fun details about London and its history. (We also enjoyed the notes to Americans in the book, where the more UK specific terms are explained, which the GM shared for our entertainment.) While Liminal remains my go-to system for urban fantasy in general, I'll still sign up for this, given the chance.

Game 2: SLA Industries

I've been interested in SLA for a while, but never actually got the chance to play before. Turns out the setting is everything I hoped it would be - a dystopian alien-filled televised fever dream.

We picked characters, and I went for Hassen the Wraithen scout. A purple vaguely feline alien with a big sniper rifle and a fondness for food that's still moving. Once she'd been joined by a frother, stormer and ebonite, we were ready for violence! And immediately got sent on a PR job to promote some consumer-grade weaponry. Despite having absolutely no social skills, as the only person with a charisma above average, Hassen was elected group leader.

Nevertheless, Hassen threw herself into things with gusto, doing combat demonstrations with the crappy guns, where her skill helped balance out the inferior weapons. This didn't prevent her feeling very relieved when an actual combat job came along.

Despite SLA Industries 2nd edition being kickstarted in 2019, it has an initiative system that feels like it comes from the late 90s/early 2000s when initiative systems got a bit weird. This particular one has you act in order of initiative, but first everyone has to declare intentions in reverse order. I get the point - fast characters can react to what the slower ones are doing - and it's certainly not the worst example of the concept I've come across. All the same, it feels like a lot of bookkeeping. The dice rolls are fine, and gave me a rare opportunity to use my collection of d10s, but I do wonder if the initiative system would survive contact with my home group.

That said, it's a great setting, and I would definitely play it again.

Game 3: Kult: Divinity Lost

With the game slots at ConDensed being a lot longer than usual (6 hours with a break for meals) and with a specific request from a fellow attendee for a Kult game, I broke out Gated. Normally a two session game, I was confident I could fit it in this slot, particularly since I wasn't likely to get the full 4 player group I normally run this for. I got 3 in the end, which I've done before so I knew which character to miss out and what changes to make to allow for their absence.

And so another group arrived in Rutherford Heights to discover the many and varied horrors in store. To avoid spoilers I'll just say that they managed to conclude things with creative use of lawn flamingos.

Game 4: Shadowdark

Another game I'd heard of but not had the chance to play before. Shadowdark is a classic dungeon crawling game that's very reminiscent of the old D&D box set I have on my shelf while also incorporating a lot of modern game development knowledge into something that runs very smoothly. The gimmick is that no PCs have darkvision while all monsters do, making torches and lanterns extremely important, leading to inevitable comparisons with the video game Darkest Dungeon.

The GM put a bunch of pregens on the table. I glanced over them and remembered my standard approach: when in doubt, play a ranger. So I picked up Kixime the human ranger, and we prepared for our journey to the dungeon. Except the halfling witch managed to start a bar fight, which delayed things slightly, and there was a further hold-up in the woods on the way, but we did get there eventually and with some information as to what we might find there, including some spiders with highly flammable webs.

Shadowdark. "The bad news is that the ranger's on fire. The good news is it illuminates more of the area." I'm playing the ranger.

— Savage Spiel (@savagespiel.bsky.social) November 17, 2024 at 1:58 PM

We did roll rather a lot of 1s.

I think it's a good system and I can see why it's popular, but unfortunately it did nothing for me. The game is a reaction to D&D, but what it's reacting to isn't the part of D&D I have a problem with. The game was fun, but it was fun because I was with a good GM and a really fun group of players. My pick for dungeon crawling adventures like this remains Dragonbane.

And that was that, except for a three hour journey home, which became a five hour journey thanks to a road closure on the M25. Fortunately I had a good audiobook to keep me company. It's further than I'd normally go for a weekend convention, and I was sorry not to see a lot of the people who were there last year, but I'm glad I went. I got to try out new games, play with people I don't always get to play with because their games fill up so fast, and run one of my longer games that doesn't normally see convention play. I hope next year it'll be back to full strength.

Furnace XIX

Once again it was touch and go whether I would make it to Furnace. Two weeks earlier I'd picked up a very nasty cold, and then on the Monday before I had covid and flu vaccines which knocked me out for a couple of days. But by Friday morning I was feeling well enough to make the drive.

In theory it takes a little over two hours to drive to the Garrison. In practice it seems to be getting longer and longer. This time I allowed three hours to get me there by 6pm as planned and still ended up arriving half an hour late. Fortunately dinner was booked for quite a bit later than that. A group of seven of us went out to a nearby Italian restaurant for a bit of pre-convention socialising. By the time we got back it was 11pm and we pretty much all went straight to bed.

Saturday began with breakfast at the Garrison, and then a trip to the car to retrieve the bring and buy bag which I'd been too tired to bring in the night before. Games are heavy. I had a quick browse of other people's books and then headed to the cells for my first game.

Game 1: Star Trek Adventures

Lower Decks is amongst my favourite Star Trek, so seeing a STA game in that setting, I had to sign up. I quickly found the character based on D'Vana Tendi and claimed her as my own. Along with Marcus (engineering), Jack (medical) and Seleya (command) we began our mission: to make sure the group of diplomats visiting the ship were not alerted to any of the usual nonsense that goes on in Lower Decks.

I began by making some adjustments to the alarm system, so that in the event that an alarm went off, instead of the klaxon there would be a sudden burst of Orien space shanties. Which didn't quite happen, as I'd got the wrong data chip and when something strange happened with the transporters, we got a sudden burst of Klingon acid punk. Seleya demonstrated great diplomatic ability by convincing the diplomats that it was in fact a welcoming fanfare.

Then of course we had to find the surprise tagalongs from the transporter, involving the traditional crawl through the Jeffries tubes, an attempt to communicate with a Tamarian, and creative use of the transporter beam. I could picture every scene. Wonderful stuff.

Game 2: Liminal

After a number of attempts to get to play the scenario The Edge of Reality, I finally got lucky here (or rather used my GM pick to get in.) I picked up a rather dubious antiques dealer/werewolf and we got to work looking into a mysterious death accompanied by some suspiciously helpful horoscopes. The scenario involved a little more sci-fi than the average game of Liminal, and was a thoroughly good time.

Then it was down to the bar for dinner. The hotel had utterly confused us by actually changing the menu for the first time in years. I went for the confit chicken breast with chorizo, potatoes, wilted spinach and saffron mayonnaise, and was rather impressed. Having eaten everything to my taste on the previous menu a number of times before, it was great to have something new.

Game 3: Liminal

I was in the GM seat for the evening game, running my newest Liminal scenario, Blood, Sweat and Tears. This one started out as part of a campaign I ran, and didn't go too well as I wrote it for a crew with a necromancer and then the necromancer's player was ill and couldn't make it. I've now substantially reworked it (to the point where events happen in almost reverse order) and it now runs a lot smoother and is no longer necromancer dependent. I'd run the new version twice before, and now had it polished into a version that's close to being publishable.

One fun part of running this one is that it's set in a very small area and incorporates significant amounts of local history. To the point where I could tell the players to feel free to google any named locations - anything they found was most likely true.

I also came up with a new set of pre-gens for this one - a touring band who alternate playing gigs and solving mysteries. The players did a great job embracing the unusual crew, and by 11pm the mystery was solved and they were ready to get to the next gig.

Game 4: Cthulhu Dark

Sunday morning I was GMing again, this time with my newest Jamesian horror scenario, The Temple of Artemis. Originally written for a game season on the Raspy Raven discord, this one had also had two previous runs and is coming close to its final form. Which meant I was scribbling notes on my notes as we went, and the whole thing needs a thorough rewrite to match the game I actually run.

Once again the players did a great job embodying the characters as Miss Williams took them to visit the creepy old mansion she'd just inherited and unsurprisingly discovered supernatural goings on in between some very substantial Edwardian meals. All survived with their minds intact, although it was a close thing, particularly for Miss Renfrew, and they all had to play a lot of golf to recover their nerves.

I didn't have a game booked for slot 5, having been unlucky in the raffle, and while I did offer to run a game for gameless people, not enough were interested to make it viable. And in any case, I was still pretty tired. So I stuck around for the raffle, just in case I won anything (I didn't) and then headed home.

Another lovely weekend at the Garrison. Here's hoping none of us caught covid this time!

Dragonbane: Shadow Over Gloomshire

I pitched Shadow Over Gloomshire for a long block at MK-RPG and immediately saw an issue. This adventure supposedly lasts 3-4 sessions, and I'd pitched it for an 8 week long block. What was I going to do in the other four weeks?

As it turned out, that wasn't an issue. I'd booked a holiday for week 8, and week 3 was so incredible hot that half the group were too ill to play and we cancelled. Allowing one week for character creation, I'd only need one extra session of material.

Week 1: Character Creation

Character creation for Dragonbane isn't exactly complicated, but it does take a while. I gave people the standard kin options, plus cat people because I like them, and the standard profession options, plus paladin and demon hunter from the adventure. I suggested Mariner might not be the ideal profession here, given how little water was involved.

Rather than how it's described in the book, I had each player roll a set of stats, and then gave them the option to use any of the rolled sets of stats. This is because my husband has a tendency to roll unusually good stats. I've done this before with Pathfinder 1 games, to prevent the party from ending up as Husband and his Puny Minions. As predicted, he rolled some good stats, and while not everyone chose to use them, the party were fairly well balanced at the end.

The final party was:

• Dr Hovis Crumb, mallard scholar
• Grimduck McQuack, mallard hunter
• Lady Mazikeen (Maze), halfing paladin
• Felis Nightstabber, cat person thief
• Kaine Wolfram, wolfkin fighter
• Halvelda Greycape, human animist mage

Now I had to work out hooks. I decided the paladin could have an invitation from Minerva, and the scholar suggested a research trip. I still had to nail down some details, but I decided to go ahead with everyone meeting in a bar, with the other characters largely going along for mercenary reasons.

In keeping with the tropes of horror I decided to have a harbinger - a strange old man in the coaching inn who talked about how great Gloomshire ale was, but also how Gloomshire was a terrible place and nobody should ever go to Gloomshire. Naturally they began asking questions about exactly which coach they should not get on in order to not go to Gloomshire, and this might have continued for a while, but at this point the fire alarm went off and we had to evacuate.

Week 2: The Coach Trip

By now I'd managed to sort out a few details. Mazikeen got a handout in the shape of a letter from Minerva asking her to come to Gloomshire to help with the problem. Dr Crumb got a document from the University of Pondsburg, in which Professor Hugh Quackman was requesting research into the history of Gloomshire. With both saying not to travel alone, it made sense that they had a hunter, thief and fighter along with them, while Halvelda was there to learn about the unusual flora and fauna of the area.

We picked up at breakfast time in the smoking ruins of the coaching inn, where people were largely sitting exactly where they had been the night before. After a bit of chatter the coach arrived and they all climbed aboard.

The journey went smoothly until they had to stop due to a blockage in the road, in the form of a wrecked cart and a sobbing forest giant. Bertha the giant proved not to be hostile. She was crying because a group of harpies had stolen her pet pig, Sir Piglington.

While some of the party staged a rescue mission, others tracked down the cart driver, who was very scared and relieved to have company. He got in the coach. Meanwhile, the harpies were defeated and Sir Piglington returned to Bertha's arms. She thrust her hand in her pocket and handed over the first thing she found as a reward, which turned out to be a fabulously valuable gold bangle, and got to work clearing the road so they could continue.

They stopped off for the night at an inn, run by a halfling woman called Violeta. Maze, who despite calling herself a mightly paladin was only just old enough to be adventuring, got extremely drunk and passed out on the hearthrug. Everyone else did make it as far as the bedrooms.

They were awoken in the night by strange noises, and looked out to see a huge hairy creature standing over Mazikeen. Kaine, being something of an expert on large hairy wolf creatures, identified it straight away as a werewolf.

They elected to incapacitate the werewolf rather than killing it, realising that it was probably the landlady and that she likely had no idea that she was doing this. In the morning, once she'd changed back, Halvelda and Grimduck went out to find wolfsbane to make a cure for her, and the party continued on their way, arriving in Gloomshire that evening.

-----

None of this is in the adventure itself. These two encounters were inspired by entries in the Dragonbane bestiary. I used a battle map book from Tom Cartos that supplied the blocked road map and the inn map. This made for a simple, fairly linear session for the players to get to know their characters and the system before moving onto Gloomshire proper.

Week 3: Welcome to Gloomshire

Half the group were still unwell from heat, but we did pick up an extra person from another game that wasn't running at the club that night. They asked to observe, but I suggested they could play an NPC if they'd like to try it out properly, and brought along Victor Drakos, mallard demon hunter.

The present party members chatted with Victor, and with Maeve, a young human paladin who'd also had a letter from Minerva. She was quite relieved to meet Maze, as she'd been worried about whether she was really experienced enough for this job, but it was clearly just a mix up over their very similar names.

They headed off to visit Minerva, with Victor in tow, where they learned about the something nasty in the temple in the graveyard, but were interrupted by a dwarf running in carrying an injured elf. I'd described the travelling carnival setting up outside the gates with guards telling them not to as the party arrived, so this wasn't hugely surprising. Minerva offered to look after the two of them while the party went out to help fend off the horde of stygian wolves attacking outside.

With those dealt with, they went back to the tavern, where they learned that the missing party members had been helping out there due to the cook having turned into an undead monstrosity. The next morning they got up early and headed to the graveyard, having decided that going during the day was far more sensible than at night.

They took a cautious route around the inside edge, avoiding some of the more significant pitfalls along the way. They ran into Bones, who they took a bit of a liking to, despite his determination to sell them eyeballs. Maze bought a skeleton hand. Then on to the temple itself.

Week 4: The Temple

With Victor's player back with their regular group, and Maze's player also unavailable, I decided that the two of them were outside fighting a winged horror while the other two got inside, and then cut back to the other three party members waking up in the inn to discover that the others had gone on an adventure without them.

They had a less eventful trip through the graveyard (it was almost like four adventurers had recently passed that way and already had the encounters!) but still ran into Bones. They weren't quite as taken with him as the previous group, and also declined to buy any eyeballs.

With most of the team back together, they explored the temple. Kaine made sure to smash up all the skeletons before they could do anything annoying like come to life. They still had to fight one when it popped out of the font. A friendly chat with the one entirely non-hostile inhabitant netted them some extremely useful books which would certainly please Professor Quackman as well as providing valuable information for their search. They wanted to know why the ghostly priest's skeleton was chained to the bed, and he explained just how humiliating it was to see your own remains walking around without you. They sympathised, and agreed to his request to have his bones moved into a proper crypt - for which kindness he gave them the key they needed.

They opened up the door to the catacombs, and were immediately set upon by a skeletal snake, where they discovered that being eaten by a skeletal snake isn't exactly dangerous like being eaten by a live snake would be, but is nevertheless rather inconvenient. At some point in all this, Halvelda got a demon on a spellcasting roll, and unexpectedly aged significantly.

Week 5: Deeper Underground

With the whole party back together and not inside a skeletal snake, they descended into the catacombs. A quick stop off in the embalming room let them restock on bandages, and not long after that Halvelda spotted a concealed door. From then they explored the catacomb very much in reverse order, finding many doors that would have been locked if they'd come to them from the other side. Maze touched an obilisk and also unexpectedly aged significantly.

Some fighting later, they located Fiona, and decided to have a rest. This holy site kept the bad things out, so they could recover somewhat. Fiona also cleansed Halvelda and Maze of their unnatural aging, while apologising to Dr Crumb for not being able to reverse his entirely natural aging.

Week 6: Finale

It was time to take on the demon - after getting out of the catacombs, of course. More encountering of doors from the wrong side happened, and Dr Crumb finally found a use for the stone crow he'd been carrying around for several hours.

Suitably armed with Fiona's sword and a lot of other weaponry they'd picked up along the way, they prepared to face the demon. And face it they did! The demon was killed, the two blades were reunited, and the shadow over Gloomshire was lifted...

...For now.

Conclusions

This is an excellent adventure, with interesting new monsters, fun NPCs, a solid main quest and enough hooks that you could easily build a longer campaign around Gloomshire. The only caveat is that I had some trouble getting my head around the main plot - the big bad is encountered fairly early on in affairs, as is the demon blade, and it took me a lot of scrambling through the adventure to figure out that they couldn't just take the blade because the demon was still there. I found it in an introductory section.

I also had a bit of a struggle with the maps. This would be no issue on a VTT, but on a real table, the catacomb map is, shall we say, a little prone to colouring outside the lines? Copying the damn thing onto my Chessex Megamat was something of a challenge. And you do need a Chessex Megamat. The catacomb is huge, and filled the entire mat. The temple map is an easier draw, being largely along the grid lines. I drew that on my Ergon silicone mat, as I rapidly realised I was going to need to be swapping between maps pretty quickly.

But that aside, I had an absolute blast running this. And I realised that I'd dropped enough hints about a certain NPC's involvement in events that I could very easily run a second long block game as a sequel to this. So assuming players sign up, in a few weeks time they'll be heading off to the Van Walden mansion to find out what's really been going on in Gloomshire...

First Time Running: Pathfinder 2e Remaster Beginner Box

I've been playing Pathfinder 2e since shortly after it first released, but not felt any particular urge to run it until I got invited to play the Beginner Box adventure, Menace Under Otari, in a streamed game. After a couple of weeks of playing with some complete beginners it dawned on me that I actually know the rules of PF2 reasonably well, and between that and around 15 years of GMing experience, there was no reason I couldn't give it a go myself.

I kicked off with one of the pre-remaster Free RPG Day adventures, A Fistful Of Flowers, an adorable one-shot about a group of leshies out searching for some missing members of their community. That went OK, so I decided to dive in, pick up my own copy of the Beginner Box, and run the adventure at MK-RPG.

What's In The Box?

You get a lot for your money in the box. The two softcover rulebooks cover a lot in a small space.

The hero's handbook has all the basic rules you need for getting started, plus a guide to character creation. This is all heavily cut down from the core rules - the only classes are fighter, rogue, wizard and cleric, and only go up to level 3, while the ancestries include human, elf and dwarf. The actual character creation rules are somewhat altered. While it's possible, using the core rules, to make a character who's completely useless at their key abilities by making really stupid choices, these cut down rules ensure that you get a character with at least a +3 modifier in their class stat who's going to be generally competent at what they do.

Not that you need to use these rules, as there are also pre-made characters in the box - level 1 versions of Valeros the fighter, Merisiel the rogue, Ezren the wizard and Kyra the cleric. These custom character sheets have an additional sheet to explain what everything means, with letter codes for easy reference, have a picture of the arrow symbols PF2 uses to tell you how many actions something takes, and a colour picture of the different dice, which corresponds to the colours of the dice set that's also in the box.

Then there's the reference card. This sums up how dice rolls work, gives you a list of the most common actions like Strike and Stride with their action costs, and has a section to put action and reaction tokens for an easy way to keep track of what you've used on your turn. On the back are descriptions of some of the most common conditions. In short, a handy quick reference of the stuff you need most often without having to hand the book around.

The GM's guide has the adventure Menace Under Otari, as well as some solid advice on GMing generally and how to make your own adventures, and a selection of low level monsters and magic items suitable for level 1-3 characters. It also recommends Troubles In Otari, a set of adventures that directly follow on from Menace Under Otari and should be playable with just the beginner box rulebooks.

There's a set of punched cardboard sheets, which have the aforementioned action and reaction tokens, along with character and monster pawns (plus the little plastic stands to make them stand upright on the battle board). The four iconics are there, plus various ancestry/class combinations for people who chose to use the character creation rules instead, all the monsters you need to run Menace Under Otari and all the other monsters mentioned in the GM's guide. Where there are multiples of the same monster (such as goblins and kobolds) each one has a coloured mark so you can easily keep track of which is which in a fight.

Finally there's a flip-mat, one of Pathfinder's folding battle boards, depicting the Menace Under Otari dungeon. In short, everything I needed to run this adventure was included. I added just two things - a GM screen, and a print-out of the guide to levelling up to level 2 for each character, as we were on a time limit and wanted everyone to be able to level simultaneously and not have to pass the book around.

Running The Game

I was able to get four players for the game. One was my husband who's also experienced in PF2. The others had all played various versions of D&D before but were all new to PF2. With all the basics laid out on the character sheets and the reference cards, I didn't have much explaining to do, and we were able to dive in pretty quick.

The adventure is a fun dungeon crawl in its own right, but where it really shines is in the way it teaches the rules. The first fight is just a straight up fight - nothing special, just a chance to use those Stride, Strike and Cast A Spell actions and get the feel of how the system works. Then comes a skill challenge, where we dig a little into the actions associated with each skill and learn how using equipment can sometimes affect difficulty classes. Each new fight introduces a new concept: conditions, enemies with resistances and weaknesses, enemies who use tactics, etc. and a variety of traps, puzzles and other curios round things out nicely.

By the end of the adventure, the players had a solid grasp on how PF2 works, and I'm pretty sure 2/3 of the new players were sold on the system (the other seemed to be firmly in the 'D&D 5e is the best game ever' camp, but at least he gave it a go.) Just as importantly, the gradual introduction of new mechanics meant that I also learned as we played. The adventure spells everything out very clearly, advising on how certain monsters will use their special abilities. While it can't possibly account for everything players might do, there were only a few moments when I found myself having to think on my feet to come up with a ruling for unusually creative actions.

And by the end we were getting some really fun moments facilitated by the rules. It was great to see effective use of Demoralise to frighten a boss monster, Reposition to throw an enemy off a cliff, and much to my surprise, Deception (plus a magic item) to disguise the fighter as the dead boss monster, leading to a fight with an enemy who literally didn't see them coming.

Having completed this adventure I feel confident in my ability to run PF2, and am thoroughly looking forward to running more of it, both my own adventures and published material.

In short, job done.

Longcon 2024

Longcon is a revival of an older Garrison convention, where the premise is that rather than playing different games in five gaming slots across the weekend, you spend the full weekend playing one long game. An initial attempt to revive it in 2023 didn't work out, but with much more notice for potential players to get it onto the schedule, 2024 went ahead.

This was a very small convention, smaller than any other Garrison convention I've been to. Nevertheless I managed to meet up with a few regulars in the bar on Friday night. We talked about the games, and I explained that I knew almost nothing about the game I was about to play, except that it was based on a TV show I hadn't seen (Justified), but I was pretty sure that we were going to do crime.

Day 1

The game I'd signed up for was Copperhead County, a FITD game that the author calls "a Southern noir game about organized crime and political corruption in a fictional slice of present-day Tennessee". We kicked off with character creation. I picked the Cleaner, supposedly the brains of the operation, although once we'd done stats I was pretty much the designated face. Loretta the Cleaner was joined by Johnny Bob the Brick and Axle the Mover.

The story began with the three of us coming back into town, five years after the raid that destroyed our operation, to attend the funeral of our former boss who died in prison. Like most FITD games we'd all created a few NPCs during character creation, so Loretta's first meeting was with her old friend Milton the bartender, who'd given her a job when she first came to town, still wearing her wedding dress after ditching her fiancé at the altar. It soon became apparent that Copperhead County had become a much worse place since we'd fled the raid, and by the end of the funeral we'd decided that the three of us were going to have to do something about it.

Cut to a few weeks later. We'd managed to make ourselves unpopular with basically everyone except a local biker gang. We'd carved out a bit of space to sell weed, but what Johnny Bob really wanted was a meth lab. Which also meant we needed a meth cook, as you don't want to go messing with meth if you don't know what you're doing.

Johnny Bob had found a meth lab out in the woods run by the Mountain Mafia, and while it was pretty well guarded, we reckoned we could take it. We went in at night, but before we could start, we actually found the meth cook. He was trying to escape, but also wanted to help his sister, who was still imprisoned in the lab, and also revenge on all of them. We were happy to help in exchange for him coming to work for us instead, and in we went.

Loretta set up her sniper rifle, aiming to pick off a few guards while drawing them away from the lab while the others crept round the other side. That didn't exactly happen. Instead there was gunfire from the other side of the site, and Loretta had to go running, pursued by guards. Some of them got taken out by the explosives trap she'd set up in advance, but then it turned out whoever had shot at her had also set up a bunch of land mines.

Several explosions later, the pursuing guards were all dead but Loretta was unconscious with serious burns. Things weren't going well at the other end either, with Johnny taking serious injuries in the gunfight. Axle ended up being the one to save the day, setting two guards on fire and getting out completely unharmed.

Our next mission was a society party, where Loretta entirely failed to roll well on her social skills, Johnny ended up having a rather disturbing encounter in the bathroom, and Axle once again ended up saving the day. Quote of the weekend: "Why does she have so many sex knives?"

Trouble came looking for us after that, with Loretta's ex fiancé showing up trying to blackmail her into going back to him, plus the ongoing developments as we learned someone in the background was very determined to screw over the three of us and take over our operation. We ended with us teaming up with our biker friends for an assault on the Mountain Mafia, who were annoyed about us stealing their meth lab, aided by a rocket launcher Axle had bought off the dark web. Turns out, when all you have is a rocket launcher, every problem looks like a target.

Overall I think Copperhead County is a well put together game, doing a great job of  reworking the Blades in the Dark concept into a modern day real world setting. My character's special abilities felt fun and thematic, the actions were easy to understand and use, and the XP triggers were fun to discuss at the end of each of the three sessions. It's well worth checking out, even if, like me, you never watch this kind of TV show, as the playbook will guide you in how to make the genre work.

To me, its only issue is FITD itself. Particularly when you're a new character, your chances of rolling 6s are low, meaning the chances of things constantly getting worse are high. It's the kind of downward spiral more commonly associated with horror games like Call of Cthulhu, which can make it really difficult to think of yourself as a badass criminal when everything you do ends up blowing up in your face.

So overall I'm thoroughly impressed with Copperhead County, but do expect starting characters to struggle as much here as they do in any other FITD game.

Day 2

While the intentions was to play the same game across five slots, the GM normally only does one day of Garrison conventions and knew there was a chance he wouldn't be able to run on day 2. We'd agreed in advance that if he had to drop out, I'd take over, so on Sunday morning I pulled out the contingency plan: Starforged.

I picked Starforged partly because it requires no preparation beyond some printing, and partly because as a game with a GMless mode, I'd still get to play. So Johnny Bob became Cowboy the hotshot pilot, Axle became Cleric the battlefield medic, and Loretta became Pyro the psionicist. Based on my previous experiences with Starforged I also gave everyone +1 to one stat, and had us all pick a starship module in addition to the one extra asset you get at character creation. In a short game like this it's common for the ship modules to see very little use, which can be disappointing if that's the asset you picked. This way everyone had a path or companion, but we still had some fun stuff for the brief time we did spend on the ship.

Cowboy had picked Courier as his path so it made sense to do a courier mission. He told us we were transporting a case of DNA samples, and we randomly generated the Jovian planet Zephyr, with a toxic atmosphere and constant megastorm. The journey there was pretty quiet, but our descent into atmo rapidly became exciting when we encountered a space pufferfish with mental control powers, which initially took over the ship's AI causing it to do nothing but sing Taylor Swift songs. Its influence rapidly spread across the crew itself, and ultimately we ended up losing control and crashing onto the planet.

From then we had a journey through some caves, meeting a giant spider along the way, before making it to the settlement which rapidly turned out to be some kind of cult to Taylor Swift. We had to take the samples to a professor, but he was out on the research farm, so we asked to borrow a vehicle. They agreed, on the condition that we get it out of the shed ourselves, which first meant clearing out the infestation of acid blooded cave worms.

The journey out to the farm was pretty smooth, and we even got some help from the local wildlife, which by this point we assumed everything was about to go horribly wrong. And it was, as we arrived to realise what they were farming here was people, the case we were carrying was a ruse, and the real DNA samples we were delivering was ourselves.

We fled, fighting off the guards that pursued us, back to the settlement, with Taylor Swift playing from all the enemy vehicles. We took a few injuries, but managed to Shake It Off. We knew there'd be Bad Blood for not finishing the delivery so we threw the case out of the vehicle as we went, and then dived back into the cave systems. We got our ship repaired and took off, smashing straight through the injured space pufferfish which went off like a burst balloon, taking out all the enemy ships as we left atmo and swore never to visit that planet again. Cowboy decided to quit the courier business. But at least we got a nice hover skiff out of it.

Starforged is absolutely the game I would recommend for a situation like this when you don't know how long you're playing for, if at all, or how many players you're going to have. I did no prep and it all just worked. I'm lucky enough to have both the asset deck and the reference guide, which make things a bit smoother at the table. For each player I printed a character sheet, and a double sided page with adventure moves on one side and combat moves on the other, as those are the ones people are regularly referring to. Based on this game, I would also add a single copy of the exploration moves, as we used those quite a lot. For the rest, we passed the reference guide around.

Reflections

This was a great opportunity to play things like FITD games with downtime phases that you normally never get to do in a one-shot, to create a character and then get to stay with them for hours, to play without the pressure to wrap things up in a single session.

There are some minor downsides. With everyone being in one group all weekend you don't get to see much of the other players outside your group, not even at meal times since the games don't have set slots. I did miss some of the social aspect of conventions, and other than the people in my group and those I saw in the bar, I'm not really sure who else was there.

While for that reason I wouldn't want this as my only con, it's a fantastic addition to the usual convention offerings. I'd definitely like to add this to my annual convention schedule and I'm already starting to think about what I could potentially run next year.