Psychoclastic MicroHell

A Psychoclastic MicroHell is a small pocket aspect of Hell that an adventuring party can be temporarily teleported to for a variety of reasons. Going there is a bit like the classic Maze spell except you actually go there and when you do it's all fucked up.

It also addresses an issue that I think about once in a while: although names like Demogorgon, Tiamat, Cthulhu, Orcus, Khorne, etc are a vital part of the background lore in RPGs--players seldom get to actually interact with them at least unless they're very lucky/unlucky at high levels which they may never reach. The "looming villain" effect is somewhat lost. This helps with that, adding what they call foreshadowing.

So anyway Psychoclastic MicroHells--parties typically end up there because:

-There's a portal or trap that sends them to one in the middle of a dungeon.

-Some wizard casts "Banish to Psychoclastic MicroHell" on them.

-They cast it on themselves.

Why would anyone cast it on themselves? Well, there is always treasure there. Technically.

Probably the best way to introduce the usable spell into the campaign is to have it used on the party unwillingly first, then allow it to be a thing they can use on themselves if they're out of their minds. Such players exist.

It takes about a bathroom-break's worth of time to create a Psychoclastic Microhell (largely because they rely on an existing library of content you likely already have access to, like the Monster Manual) so they can be drawn up mid-session.

You can also make custom ones for specific games or dungeons--like if its an underwater dungeon you can make one with your creepy custom underwater satan.

For the record the spell is:

Banish To Psychoclastic MicroHell

Magic-User Level 1

Duration: See below

Range: 50'

Area of Effect: Maximum 1 creature per caster level

This spell sends a creature or creatures to a Psychoclastic MicroHell as described below for the length of time described below.

Ok, so to create a Psychoclastic Microhell the GM needs to:

1. Take a piece of paper.

2. Make a little flowchartish box marked "Throne" at the top ("North" edge--but it doesn't matter, you're in Hell.)

3. Make a little flowchartish box marked "Entrance" at the bottom ("South" edge.)

4. Drop all the dice in the middle. A standard array-- d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20.

5. Make a little flowchartish box around where each die landed on the paper, noting kind and position. Like for example write "D6" and the number on that D6 wherever the D6 landed.

6. Starting at the bottom with the "Entrance" box, draw 2 lines to two other nearby boxes.

7. Then go to the one of those two boxes and draw two more lines coming out of it connecting to two more nearby boxes.

8. Then go to the next box and draw to lines coming out of it.

9. And so on until you've drawn two lines from each numbered box reach the top and at least one is connecting to the Throne box.

10. Each die indicates the location of a distinct area/room in the Hell but also gives you information. The rooms/areas can be shaped like the dice themselves if you like (I like). The lines represent paths.

11. The paths between the areas are all about 60' (or at least one round's full movement) no matter how far the actual lines on the paper are. Movement here takes place in bad-trip nightmare movement so distances are abstract--the point is to show their position relative to the start and each other and to show how long movement will take, not make a precise physical map.

12. Interpret the numbers on the dice as follows:

The number on the D8 Tells You Whose Hell This Is. My chart includes the classic Monster Manual guys, plus the Warhammer guys and some of my own, so that's:

1. Geryon or Slaanesh (DM's choice on these)

2. Dispater or Akayle Ozph

3. Baalzebul or Tzeentch

4. Asmodeus or Tiamat

5. Yeenoghu or Khorne

6. Orcus or Lolth / Rangda

7. Juiblex or Nurgle

8. Demogorgon or The Great Maggot

Feel free to substitute in Cthulhu or whoever you're using in your game. The Lord of this Hell will determine the aesthetics of the experience. Juiblex is going to have a lot of ooze and goo, Slaanesh might have more of a sexy Hellraiser thing going on, whatever.

No matter what, this actual figure will be on the throne when things begin.

The D4 Is the Location of the Treasure and The Kind of Treasure:

1. Cursed Item

2. Important Knowledge

3. Major Miscellaneous Magic Item

4. Major Magic Weapon

The item can be raised on a plinth or in a little carved box or floating in a glass sphere or whatever.

The D6 Is The Danger Level:

1 is the worst, 6 is the safest.

Every area with a number equal or lower than the D6 has no encounter. (They all might--lucky you. Except Tiamat is in that one room, but whatever.)

Every area with a number higher than the d6 has an encounter.

By definition, the room/area where the d6 landed has no encounter.

Each D10 Tells You What One of Your Encounters Will Be:

1. Type I Demon (Vrock) or Malebranche

2. Type II Demon (Hezrou) or Barbed Devil

3. Type III Demon (Glabrezu) or Bone Devil

4. Type IV Demon (Nalfneshee) or Ice Devil

5. Type V Demon (Marilith) or Stag Demon (that's one of mine from the Bestiary)

6. Type VI Demon (Balor) or Pit Fiend

7. Manes or Lemure

8. Succubus or Erinyes

9. Bloodletter of Khorne or Daemonette of Slaanesh

10. Demon Fly (Chasme from Monster Manual II or ...of Nurgle) or Flamer of Tzeentch

Note that:

-These two encounters don't necessarily have to be where the D10s landed, just in any area with a number higher than the one on the d6.

-There may be none. These may be rolls indicating creatures that don't show up.

-If more than 2 encounters are called for, the extra encounters will be:

Tainted clones of any PC present (and any other creatures brought here by the spell) but each will be able to use one of the listed powers/abilities of whoever owns this Hell. They have the same hit points, appearance and AC as a PC but only this special ability to attack.

They also speak with the sovereign's voice, which you should play up as hard as you can for disturbing effect.

These clones can also be clones of the PCs' friends or relatives. 

The D12 and the D20 tell you what the environment is like.

The die that lands closest to the Entrance box shows what the environment is like at the beginning (whether that be D12 or D20). It shifts to the second environment once the party enters the area indicated by the other die.

D12 Environment:

1. A pair of fat demons appears on a featureless plane, each a different color. They attempt to swallow you whole (attack at +10)—each is merely a harmless, invulnerable portal to the next “room” (with two more demons). There is no other way out.

2. You’re clinging to a giant statue of the dimension’s sovereign in some exotic material—progress by climbing into its eyes, mouth etc. The next "room" is another statue.

3. Narrow bridge-like causeways over infinite abyss or black ocean full of demonic seathings, obscured by dark mist.

4. Platforms floating in a dark void.

5. Depressing empty shadow city.

6. Tightly-compressed vertical tiled climbing maze.

7. Rooms made of writhing and tortured flesh.

8. A complex of high-vaulted cathedral-rooms with stained glass holding back molten plasma.

9. Apparently exitless rooms, each wall of which is either an illusory wall concealing an exit or a bottomless pit.

10. A series of platforms hanging from chains over nothingness.

11.  Each room contains a large box or other geometric solid floating in the center, the only exits are by climbing into faces of this solid. 

12. A giant machine of glass and amber gears amid weird fire.

d20 Another Environment: 

1-12 (as d12 results, reroll if it’s the same)

13. Tunnels full of pools—defying gravity, on walls, floor, ceiling, etc. These are the only "doors".

14. Massive kaleidoscopic patterned carpet, progress by heading through different colored panels

15. Desert with lurid-colored sand and neon sky. Doors stand surreally upright in the sand. 

16. It is just like where you were before you were sent here but time’s stopped and creatures are intangible and there’s a weird keening in the air. If there weren't doors there are now.

17. Blacksilver Giger-like biomechanical tunnels with tarlike vertical pools and flesh orifices for 

exits.

18. Dimension of small clear glass compartments with hatches, the path ahead fairly visible to you and your foes, although reflections distort the more distant rooms somewhat.

19. M.C. Escher-esque echoing stone environment

20. Halls of distorting mirrors and thick colored glass panels.

All of the die results added together is the number of rounds you're there. After that you're teleported home.

Click to enlarge the example

Obviously the first time this happens, players will simply be freaked out and confused and not know how they're ever getting home, which is great.

If they eventually figure out how the magic works, any visit then becomes a speed-run to get to the treasure before they get killed. 

Although their creatures will, the regent of the Hell often will not attack immediately, as these incidents often amuse them, and sometimes the items taken are intentionally left in order to enact some subtle scheme against a rival power. 

Re-roll every time. The same MicroHell can never be visited twice.

Playing D&D With Porn Stars and Also The Founder of the OSR and The Head of Lamentations of the Flame Princess

 

Two very short stories from playing D&D last week:

So if you know anything about Caroline Pierce you know...

Wait, let me rephrase, if you know anything about Caroline Pierce playing D&D, you know she has terrible luck. Like: the worst. Dice you should throw away. Whole characters you should throw away.

However, last time she tried out a new set of dice someone gave her. It has always been my feeling that gift dice roll better. These seem to. They have cats on them. She is currently playing an elven ranger named Elaria who is beginning to not be a total fuckup.

Also important to know Kimberly Kane is playing a cleric of the Great Grub--usually worshipped by goblins but there's no accounting for taste.

So the job is this:

It's an investigation. A number of travellers have been found dead along the pilgrimage route to the Cathedral of the Infinite Maggot--the party is asked to investigate and solve the problem.

After a day's travel, they come upon the first corpse, dead on a high branch:

Elaria, being a ranger goes up to investigate.

"The pilgrim appears to be human, it looks like its impaled on a thick branch and then had the skin peeled off in strips on a branch.

"So it's like a giant shrike or something got them?"

"Ummm, yes, pretty much exactly like that."

There's no point in making someone roll when the player skill is just right there.

"What's a shrike?" Michelle asks.

"They do that," says Caroline, "they're birds that kill other birds by impaling them on branches and stuff. The call them butcher birds. I found one in my back yard when I was 5!"

Well that's the end of the investigation part.

"I'm just gonna show you guys the name of the adventure"

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As you may know, I also play a weekly game with Jeff Gameblog as Referee, two trans gals, a war refugee and Lamentations of the Flame Princess head honcho James Edward Raggi IV, the man who wants to bring you gritty horror solidly grounded in the real world 17th Century.

As usual, if you miss a session it just goes on without you. And I missed last session.

I log in and James looks soooooo excited.

Jeff starts talking--and James goes "Can I tell Zak what we're doing!??"

And I roll my eyes because whenever I'm not around things go real sideways real fast.

"Ok, what are we doing tonight James?"

"We have to go to the moon to mow the lawn!"

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Internationally Acclaimed Author Lydia Davis Discussing The RPG Community Specifically

Lydia Davis may be a name unfamiliar to gamers but she is no slouch. She got a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, won an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award of Merit medal and a Booker Prize.

Here is the story, in its entirety:

Fear

Nearly every morning, a certain woman in our community comes running out of her house with her face white and her overcoat flapping wildly. She cries out, “Emergency, emergency,” and one of us runs to her and holds her until her fears are calmed. We know she is making it up; nothing has really happened to her. But we understand, because there is hardly one of us who has not been moved at some time to do just what she has done, and every time, it has taken all our strength, and even the strength of our friends and families too, to quiet us.

Imagine my surprise at finding here, specifically, in short story form, writing about RPGnet, StoryGames.com, the Forge, etc. and the many other hugbox communities that caused trouble online because of their desire to comfort their local lunatic.

I have written these things many times myself, but nobody really took it to heart.

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The Theory of the Labyrinth

A good part of the magic of D&D is from a specific aesthetic effect it shares with several other types of fiction that I'm going to call The Theory of the Labyrinth.

It's this:

So theres

• The Known
• The Unknown, and
• The Labyrinth. 

The Known is like: so you go to Boston, you see a statue of a man in the town square. Who is it? George Washington. Easy to know who that is, why he has a statue here, what it means. You eventually ignore it because its so familiar and easy to understand, it's as unremarkable as a chair--despite the remarkableness of George Washington as a figure. 

The Unknown is, like, you go to the desert and see Newspaper Rock. This is the Unknown. No-one will ever be able to explain all these glyphs, painted across centuries, they are forever a mystery. Intriguing and a spur to the imagination but ultimately you know you will never understand it the way you do the George Washington. You won't access the lives of the people who made them, you won't be able to see what this meant to them--it is -unknown-and also, to a certain degree, not-knowable. It is from a time with no written records and oral traditions conflict. 

Then there's The Labyrinth:

You go to Croatia or something. You're in a tiny village. There's a statue of a man on a horse. You are with a French friend, a Spanish friend, you ask them "Who is the man on a horse?" they shrug.

Now you know this:

That guy has a name--you don't know it but he does. You can ask around and go to some archives and find out who he is, why he is important, what he did in this tiny village, this is --you know-- technically all knowable despite the fact it reaches into the distant past. 

You don't know if it'll mean anything or be relevant once you find out--you also don't know if you do the work to find out whether it'll just go in one ear and out the other. You don't know how connected it is to your current concerns (perhaps not at all, perhaps very much so) , but you know that it is both real and--to you--unknown. You -could- find out. And this weird in-the-middle space is where megadungeons live. Even for the DM--they can't take it all in just by reading it, they can't say how it'll play, it always represents more knowledge than a person can hold in their head. So it is an object of eternal fascination, even once it's explored. 

It is a Rabbit Hole. You can go down it. There is definitely -something- there.

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Although The Labyrinth effect requires reference to the past, it is (in my reading, anyway) most common in modern authors who marvel at the complexity of the past as an aesthetic effect in itself.

Labyrinth-aesthetics in literature are frequently the result of an American author's encounter with a culture that has a long(er) and less morally-legible recorded history. The author from the younger country is more capable of being dazzled by the vastness of these functionally-infinite stories.

So: Thomas Pynchon encounters Europe and the tangled international histories that lead to WW2 in his labyrinthine novel Gravity's Rainbow.

Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges encounters the world of Old Europe inside his library and explores bookishly infinite imagined pasts in his short stories.

William Burroughs, HP Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith also partake on occasion--though their fascinations often lie further east.

And, of course, Gary Gygax, Arneson and co encounter versions of European history (via fantastic fiction and realistic wargames) and turn it into D&D, a great engine of infinitely explorable, infinitely interconnected histories.

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(I don't know about Tolkien. British but mazy. He always seemed to exert a storytellerish mastery over his fiction where you got the feeling he knew what every stray reference was to. I think his references to the deep time of his setting were to give a feeling of myth rather than an unknown of tangled obscurity.)

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I am tempted to wonder if this is one of the few clear advantages D&D's fictional background has over Warhammer's--the British authors at Games Workshop were happy to detail for you what life was like for everyone and exactly who all the bad guys were and what they were about (the better to make playable, legible factions), whereas D&D always pointed to ragged edges of the unknown--a lich is what now? The rakshasa is from India? How do you get there in Greyhawk? What is the Invoked Devastation? Who is Vecna and why are we only speaking of him in whispers?

The unfinished quality of the game fiction had a tacit flipside: if you played the game long enough you'd find out.

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HP Lovecraft, Racism, and Educating James--New Video

A new webseries (?)

Zak and James attempt to discuss Lovecraft and racism, while also bringing up: Jordan Peele, Lovecraft Country, Kingdom Death, Alien, Jaws, nerdy introversion, Taxi Driver, James’ Lovecraft-movie picks, Blue Velvet, James’ fear of stuffed animals and the sea, turn-of-the-century WASP atheism, avant-garde fiction and band-aids, amateur press associations, PG Wodehouse, Bertrand Russell on romanticism and Hitler, deer are scary, a plot hole in Lost Boys, X-Men vs Dracula and more

The Demon City Hardcover Is Now Available To Everyone

You can get your copy of Demon City, the world's best horror RPG here.

Also there are currently two adventures available for 20$ each on pdf--email zakzsmith AT hawtmayle dawt calm for those.

For more info on the game, check out this tag.

Weekday Side Quest

Since I have a large game group with players who shift in and out week by week I've been experimenting a little bit with what you might call solo side-quests.

The idea is they keep players up to date when they miss a session or two, plus they deepen that players' connection to some part of the game world relevant to their PC.

For instance:

A few weeks back, Dave's cleric of the Black Grip-Olaf--lost his arm. This is a big deal as spellcasters need to be able to gesture freely and that's hard with one arm that isn't actually, like, there. He asked if there was a Temple of the Black Grip nearby that could regenerate his arm.

The standard choices would be:

-Mean DM says No

-Nice DM says Yes

-Make Dave try to convince the whole party to go on a Quest For Dave's Arm even if Dave won't be there for weeks at a time in the middle of the entire continent being invaded

Instead, one monday evening I set up some miniatures on a table and just texted Dave this:

I further texted some details on the tactical situation:

The general mechanic I'm using for this mass battle is: 2 guys square off and each roll a die, high roll wins, so big dice are good, small dice are bad.

Dave texts back:

Dave further elects to hide his D30 giant skeleton guy underneath the giant skull thing on the left of the map and have it spring out only when goblins roll up.

Further, once the fight starts, he carefully deploys some Fog Cloud spells to confuse the goblin advance and channel them into places where they're easy to take out.

We can watch the battle progress round by round, with the goblins (mostly on square white bases) coming up from the bottom:

The Grip sends the bulk of its forth to the left of the screen and a few elite units go right:

A detachment of goblins probes to the right and gets wiped out by the elite forces. A fog cloud covers the goblin left.

This channels all the goblins through the center...

And they get wiped out as undead pour in from both directions!

The Black Grip wins!

Olaf gets a new arm (but it's a skeleton arm).

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