Ever read or run this adventure?

Went to the LA County Museum yesterday and saw the Fem Surrealist show and found out all about Remedios Varo who I previously knew nothing about, probably due to her existing in the long shadow of Frida Kahzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Oh sorry, anyway, from Wikipedia:

Remedios Varo Uranga (December 16, 1908 – October 8, 1963) was a Spanish-Mexican, para-surrealist painter and anarchist. She was born María de los Remedios Alicia Rodriga Varo y Uranga in Anglès, a small town in the province of Girona, Spain in 1908.

In 1937, she moved to Paris with Péret, sealing herself from any return to Franco's Spain since she had republican ties. She was forced into exile from Paris during the Nazi occupation of France and moved to Mexico City at the end of 1941.

In Mexico, she met native artists such as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, but her strongest ties were to other exiles and expatriates, notably the English painter Leonora Carrington and the French pilot and adventurer, Jean Nicolle. Her third, and last, important relationship was to Gary Gygax, an American who claimed to have become "unstuck from the ages" due to "hyperrandom Nystullian flux" and "rolling poorly". Using what Varo described in her diary as "a North American currency of postcontemporary date and several pieces of what I suspect is German gold" Gygax commissioned her to create illustrations for an unusual book which he called "a module" and which he admitted "will make no sense to you in the current temporal context ".

After 1949 Varo developed her mature style, which remains beautifully enigmatic and instantly recognizable. She often worked in oil on masonite panels she prepared herself. After collecting the completed illustrations, Gygax disappeared. Varo died at the height of her career from a heart-attack in Mexico City in 1963.I've seen this cover and some of the interior illustrations...

But I have no idea what it's like.

Has anybody seen this module or read it? What's in it? Is it good?

Out of Respect For The Dead

This week, when your players get to the biggest and nastiest monster in the dungeon, play this.

Carry on.

___

Fuck Yeah Noise Marines

Collected Constantcon Travel Tips

FIRST: Please do this it will be fun.

Ok, anyway...

Contstantcon is good stuff.

Have I mentioned that? Probably.

My erratic and unpredictable hours (which at the moment have me falling in with the bloodthirsty Kiwis and Ozzies of the Kanga Rat Murder Society) have prevented me from playing in all the games I'd like to while I sit at this desk scribbling ladies and monsters and have pulled me out of phase with some steady games I was playing when I was on the East Coast zone. But still: a ton of games, my friends.

Knock on effect: Google + is now the best gaming forum, hands down. Probably something to do with only people who actually want to play games showing up. Largely devoid of unresolved bullshit.

Many games get played, plans get laid, people meet, game experiments are attempted, fun is had.

Here is my collection of travel tips for some of the games I've played in since the Con started in August...

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Tekumel travel Tips:

-Bring bribe money

-Don't call it bribe money

-Treat your henchmen well. That way, when they're mysteriously incinerated and you travel to the afterlife to ask them how it happened they might actually tell you.

Jakalla Travel Tip: Don't present the heads of foreign soldiers to Tsolyani guards.

Gamma World Travel Tip: If both PCs have 18 Charisma, you can get the mob to go with you to Dracula's castle.

Travel tip for +Thad King 's megadungeon: when the wizard asks: "Do you wish to be bludgeoned more?" incoherent chiming noises will be translated as "Yes."

Calithena's Ilthar travel tip: It's nice here: I got more xp for failing my rolls, getting stabbed by the boss's wife, and being locked up with rats in Ilthar than I did kicking ass and taking names in The Border Princes, Tekumel, Greyhawk, Wessex, and Gamma World combined.

Dungeon Crawl Classics Travel Tip: It actually can get worse after the sleep-spell-gone-wrong turns you poultrycephalic.

Bone Hill Travel Tips:

-There are actually bones up there. Bring a dog.

-Vastly outnumber the bugbears.

-The Spelleton is nearsighted.

Vats of Mazarin Travel Tip:

-You might lose your hand, but you'll make enough back in stolen silverware to get it reattached.

-If attempts to siphon the poison orally are unsuccessful, you may attempt to mutate the patient.

Caves of Myrrdin Travel Tips:

-Remember what monsters you've made up and posted on your blog, Jeff may try to kill you with them.

-If you're first level, an ancient red dragon and a giant rat can make you equally dead.

-If it looks like maybe it's a vampire coffin, it is.

-Roll high when you sit on the throne.

-The vampires will attack lone pack animals.

-In Wessex, vampire hunting pays for itself. Carousing doesn't.

Neoclassical Geek Revival Travel Tips:

-+Zzarchov Kowolski 's game is really easy--until it's not. Then you die.

-NGR Kazakhstan Travel Tip: If you see Phillip The Bloody down there, he's not quite himself. Or...he is. Not sure which is worse.

Young Kingdoms Travel Tip: Bring rations--sentient baboons taste horrible.

Griffin Mountain Travel Tips:

-If you fail enough rolls they'll think you're insane and give you porridge.

-Put points in sprint.

-There's no need to abandon all the severed heads, just the one whose spirit is trying to kill you.

-If you have a spirit bear problem, call me.

Outland Travel Tip: OMG they still make piercers here.

Dwimmermount Travel Tip: Bring wood and oil.

Castle Nicodemus Travel Tip: When offered a choice between Jobs or Lava, pick Jobs.

Atomic Highway Travel Tip: All post-apocalyptic settings are really part of one big setting, therefore as long as there are still gamers, things that Kevin Siembieda invented will be trying to kill them.

New Feierland Travel Tip: Watch out bloggers, you reap what you sow.

Task Force Zero Tokyo Travel Tip: THE ROOM HAS NO ANSWERS!

Slot Full of Glamour: The Miscegenating Tokyo Travel Tip: You look terrible in that eyeshadow.

International Anklebiter Illustrator Day

As is the case with many working artists, people often ask me if I have any words of advice for young people.

I do indeed: get a job.

Our economy is deficient in many fundamental ways and should current trends continue you will be shipped overseas in a melon box to work for a Chinese person long before you reach college age.

Another thing people often ask me is: Can you draw this for me? To which I generally answer: No.

Now it doesn't take an Ivy degree to see we have a classic chocolate-and-peanut-butter situation here.

To wit: I declare and ordain May 29th as International Anklebiter Illustrator Day throughout RPGlandia.

Here is what you must do:

1. Locate a child.

2. Locate two one-dollar bills or the local equivalent.

3. Explain patiently to the child that you--a dungeon master or otherwise appointed administrator of a substantial swath of fictional space--are desirous of illustrations.

4. Explain to the child that you are contracting him or her to provide such imagery at a page rate of 1 dollar per page. (Which believe you me is a sum infinitely greater than many web and print publications currently offer for such services.)

5. Explain to the child that the deadline is May 28th, thus allowing you, the client, at least one day to scan and upload the drawing to the internet.

Note that this may require you explaining to the child the definition of the word "deadline" as well adumbrating the process by which days accumulate into months and that these accumulated months are then packaged and named for ease of public consumption. I trust that you are up to the task and that they are probably too young for any of this information to strike them as being as traumatic as it actually is.

6. After acquiring their informed consent, give them the specific assignments:

The first drawing can be anything you, the GM, want--you can take a crappy town you drew and ask the child to redraw it better, you can describe a treasure the child needs to create and detail, you can have the child make a dungeon map of their own design. It is none of my concern so long as it fulfills a need in your campaign.

The second drawing, however, must be a displacer beast. This is because I have grown jaded and strange over the long years and so have you and it will entertain both of us mightily to see children's interpretations of the catlike and inimitable displacer beast erupt all over the internet come May 29.

Tell them color is preferable and may get them an extra 25 cents to spend in any way they please. Glitter, construction paper, play-doh or digital media are also acceptable.

7. Now we all know freelancers are chronic whiners without respect for authority. If the child tries to pass substandard work off on you, print out the following drawings and shake them in the child's face menacingly, saying "ONE OF THESE CHILDREN WAS TEN AND THE OTHER WAS ELEVEN!

CHRIS AUMAN DREW THIS IN A CAVE WHEN HE WAS 12 WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!

...IT IS IMPORTANT THAT YOU BE MORE LIKE THEY ARE! PICK UP THAT SPARKLETUBE AND GET CRACKING, TOAD! YOUR DROPPED CHEERIOS ARE OF NO INTEREST TO ME, WE DO NOT DO EXCUSES HERE!"

8. Upload such work as is produced onto the internet on May 29th. Inform me of the url by the usual channels or via rapid Clown-O-Gram. No hobo clowns.

9. If, in the interim, you have seen fit to employ the child further on campaign work since the initial work order, please upload any and all projects fulfilled to date on the 29th.

10. Older children or those possessed of extraordinary skill may be employed at a higher rate if you see fit--though not too much higher. You must not create the hope in their minds that they, as freelance creatives, can expect to work under any but the most animalistic conditions. Conversely, if the child is exceptionally poor or uneducated, you may be able to get them to work for only a nickel.

11. You have my permission to republish this message on your own blog. In fact, if you intend to participate or would like others to do so, I encourage it.

If you're extremely clever, you might be able to get them to draw you a whole planet and then wrap it around a globe digitally like so.

Fast, Light, Cheap Instant RPG For Long Train Trips (STACK)

The STACK System

This is an instant megalite low-prep cinematic-style RPG. You can like play it on train trips when you have no RPG books.

You need pens, one piece of paper per player and regular playing cards. The more decks the better but just one could do you in a pinch.

-So each player turns a piece of paper sideways and writes the word STACK across the top like so:

(You can make the "s" whatever size it just came out small because of mystery reasons.)

-Anyway, then you decide what genre you're doing. This (theoretically) works well for movie-ish genres like westerns, crime stuff, horror. (I've only playtested it once but it did the job and took no prep, so yay.)

-Ok then every player takes 2 cards (except the GM, who just holds the remaining cards like a dork.).

-Now each player has to decide what to do with these cards. So, about the cards--

*Suit doesn't matter

*High card wins

*A card can be placed down on your character sheet (the piece of paper that says STACK) or held in your hand where no-one can see it.

*If it's held in your hand, it's called a Confidence Card.

*Before the game starts each player must put one and only one of the two cards down on his/her character sheet representing an attribute that is fairly obvious to anyone who sees the PC.

*Each letter on the sheet corresponds to an attribute: these are--Strength Toughness Agility Charm and Keenness (Keenness is intelligence and perceptiveness)

*So you have to put one of your cards down like so to represent one of these stats--any one you like...

*So if that card was a 6 that PC would have a Toughness of 6.

-Ok so everybody picks a stat they want to frontload and then the game starts, their other stats are open. The players each have one card down under some stat and one "confidence card" held back. PCs get names, occupations, appearances, as much as you want, really.

-The game goes like any old RPG "You're in a stage coach with a barrel of cash, trying to escape Sheriff Bludgetwort and his posse!".

-Wait, you only know one stat! That's right--like in a movie, characters' abilities are revealed via their actions. The card already down represents an ability that you know your PC has (or doesn't have, or is average in ).

-So, each time anything happens you'd roll dice for in another RPG, the tryer (or attacker or initiator of the action) says what they're doing. The GM says what stat that action corresponds to. Like if it was shooting that'd be agility blah blah blah you've played RPGs before.

-If the player has a card down for that stat, then the thing happens with that amount of effectiveness--like if you try to charm someone and your charm is Jack of Diamonds then you are pretty good at that.

-If you don't have that stat yet, you use your confidence card for it. The confidence card is then discarded into that stat--the card now represents your value in that stat.

-The GM (or the opposing player) then pulls a card blindly off the top of the deck. High card wins. If the player wins, the thing happens...

Like:

"I try to hotwire the car"

"Intelligence?"

"Ain't got it yet--I am laying down my card and...it's a 7 'Ah know a thing or two, missy, this Chevy Cavalier will be ours in two shakes of pineapples or some such colloquialism' ."

"Ok, your intelligence is revealed to be 7. The difficulty of the task is a...(pulls card)...4. Consider it hotwired. K-chuckugug--the Cavalier springs to life! 'My hero!!' quoth she with wettening crotch."

- If the GM wins, it all goes poorly. The thing does not happen. However, if you were the active party, your stat still becomes whatever card you put down.

-If you are the resisting party (like you get shot) then you get to resist with any stat you can think up some flim flam reason for: "I dodge the bullet (agility)" "I take it (toughness)" "I flash the cop a winning smile that distracts him/her/it (charm)". The GM (or opposing player) then reveals his/her card.

If you win, fine, however: if you lose the contest, you turn that stat face down. You can never again use that stat in any way. You still may have toughness, charm, intelligence etc. in a storytelling sense but for the rest of this movie, that ability Can't Save You Any More.

-If, after a contest, your stats are still not all filled up, draw a new confidence card.

-Once all your stats go face down, you're dead. Or captured or otherwise over for the session.

-Combat initiative is decided by each side drawing a card--high card's side goes first. These cards are not discarded into any ability score.

-If you are resisting in a contest and are about to lose, another PC can help you out using his/her confidence card or a stat that's down (add the resisting cards together, with royals counting like Jack =11 etc). However: the helper then turns that stat face down (and you, the original resistant, get to keep yours). S/he has sacrificed part of his/her self to save you.

-Likewise, someone can help you attack or perform an active action, but then you both lose those stats thereafter--even if you win the contest.

-Aces count as 14 (they beat everything) if played by the GM. They also count as 14 if played directly as a confidence card by a player. However, after that, whatever stat the ace is discarded into is thereafter considered a 1 (anything beats it). So using an ace represents like the one time you get lucky at something you suck at--like when the butler drops the flowerpot on the burglar's head and knocks him out.

-Ties are broken by both parties drawing fresh tiebreaker cards until the tie is broken, high card wins. Players do not add these tiebreaker cards to their stats.

-As you may have noticed, NPCs and items and stuff don't have static stats. The GM just pulls a card to represent how serious of an obstacle/threat they are at that moment in the "movie" once a contest is afoot.

-Game ends when a session-specific objective is achieved or when the players have to go eat dinner.

Tales Of I Guess The Earth

Radioactive orange turtle kaiju the color of really Americanized orange chicken and fat dragons full of sand in a land of giant machines that can be programmed to make noises and gas-filled sphere-things and strange messages on unattached paper containing holiday greetings, also there's flail snails that look all wrinkly Dark Sun like they're made of black leather and a beholder ditto that's not properly floating like they're supposed to so I guess it just rolls around in the dirt.

This campaign idea was based entirely on what's going on on the piece of furniture the TV is on in my living room. You can see it down at the bottom of the entry where it says "HERE's THAT THING" in blue.

This is a campaign idea based on what's on the shelf opposite:

Rancors and armored cave trolls dominate a landscape with albino chinese dragons and blue mecha and there's a TIE bomber and a devil dinosaur that looks like it wants to get in the bomber and a giant articulated wooden hand and lobster boys who live inside snowspheres. Also there's gargantuan plastic formations shaped kind of like the angle pieces on some furniture.

This is a campaign idea based on listening to Mandy play Mass Effect for like a million hours:

You go to all fucking planets and tell aliens They Have To Not Kill This Person Somehow Connected To Their Past Because They're Not A Murderer (or they do because fuck it) and then someone goes "Impact Shot!" and then the Apocalypse Now guy sends you on another mission because the world is backwards.

This is an idea for a Vancian civilization based on reading RPG dorks on the internet:

A whole antiHammurabian culture based on the idea that if you do one thing a citizen doesn't approve of, you must, therefore, be guilty of all other possible crimes. They pretty much believe anything that isn't them (other kingdoms, foreigners, orcs, halflings, tigers, the sun when it's too hot) are together part of a vast connected conspiracy to do everything bad all the time for incoherent conspiracy reasons the culture has, itself, made up. They live in fear of upsetting each other and so they exist in a continuous state of imaginary consensus. They wear Quintesson masks and denounce random strangers and everyone must agree, remain silent, or be convicted of choking nuns and bee rape.

This is another idea I had for another one based on reading more RPG dorks on the internet:

A whole civilization that cries about everything that happens all the time and is boring but if you point it out they metastasize and there's just more of them and they become even more boring (save vs sleep) and crying (save vs. psychedelic crying-induced nightmares) so the trap is you have to ignore them to get past them and find the treasure. I think actually these could be the soulless revenants in the Wire hack I wrote.

Oh and here's another one:

So there's this guy--let's call him Cheffy Carlo--who is just some guy who does whatever stuff (like Oh, look, I found a lady bug! Oh, look, peaches! Where's the sand I left over here?) but the entire society is like obsessed with his every movement and motion and spends so much time trying to interpret what he does they forget to actually do anything themselves ever and they just put their boners into holes they make in blocks of cheese (they are all male).

This is my friend Kyle's reaction to some people saying his comedy act was too bleak and misanthropic for the crowd he performed for at Blizzcon to relate to:

i guess if you're bleak you don't even have a fantasy land where you can go and get a dozen pixie beejers for every toad king you thwart.

HERE'S THAT THING:

This is a fairytale adventure idea based on what's on the bed:

A giant cat, rabbit, and pig have been watching you while you sleep. They can move and talk but only when you aren't looking. Are they malevolent? The rabbit looks malevolent.

It turns out they are.

___