Caroline Pierce Ate A Cat

 

If you know Caroline Pierce--outside of her, ahh, work--pretty much the first thing you know is she's a cat lady. Epic scale cat lady.

But last night she ate a cat.

Ok, technically her character ate a cat, Elaria, the half-elf ranger.

In her defense, it was because she refused to eat a person, so that's a good(?) sign.

I blame Session 2 of Maze of the Blue Medusa.

It went like this:

After last session our heroines wake up in the first room there at the bottom, barricade themselves inside and hope to regain spells etc and heal up for their next sojourn into the Maze.

They are interrupted after an hour by a polite knock on the door from 6 Bondye Reparatè (humans who believe the Maze is heaven and their job is to perform maintenance on it). They would never be so impolite as to bash down the door so they slide a polite offering of two hand-rolled cigarettes beneath the door and move on.

Despite Elaria, being a ranger and all, being able to identify these as ordinary hand-rolled cigarettes, a weirdly lot of time is spent trying to figure out what the cigarettes do (nothing except give you cancer 40 years after making you look cool).

The next hour a Chronomancer (lizard wizard) and a pair of his thrall mammals (ape-morons) show up. They kill one moron and steal the pearl that allows the Chronomancer to control the other and shoot him fulla holes before he can use his time-magic to reverse the damage. The newly-cnotrolled moron thus played an important meatshield/scouting role in the rest of the session.

Also note the girls made extensive use of the wardogs in this fight as they pounced on and murdered one of the morons, though out of deference to a recently deceased real pet Kimberly Kane's was turned into a war-cat.

You might see where this is going.

So anyway after defeating the Chronomancer, the girls went past the living chess pieces (basically a wise decision), used a mirror to investigate the Jade Tiles That Freeze You and inadvertently made them freeze themselves.

(Dialogue in this room:

Michelle: "Uh, I have Trap Sense?"

Zak: "You sense this is a trap.")

 ...and then cast Dispel Magic to make thetiles mundane enough to cross. Halfway through another Lizard Wizard attacks and gets beat up.

All this time Caroline Pierce is taking notes. 

Zak: "You take a lot of notes, CP."

Caroline: "Well the thing is your dungeons are always like a puzzle, none of my other games are like that."

Zak: "I don't know whether that's a compliment or not, but you're still around after 15 years so I'll assume its a compliment."

They investigate some more rooms and pronounce them weird. They are: the room with the snail golem, the room with the light-eating roses, the room with the grape juice.

Then they go into the Gallery section.

Those of you who have played Maze of the Blue Medusa know that in the Gallery section there's a mechanic that speeds up time and spoils food. So the PCs get hungry fast and will start to lose hp if they don't eat.

There are lots of solutions to this--the Create Food and Water spell, moving in and out of the gallery from the peripheral areas around it, stashing food in other places, etc., but a common one among the adventuring classes is cannibalism.

The PCs poke around at the magical artworks, including the paintings that show all the wounds you have, then encounter some cannibal critics! They hate art and want to eat the moron! (Contary to popular belief, Patrick Stuart made these monsters up. They are jussssst this side of too whimsical for me.) The PCs make quick work of them and Michelle's halfling Jinx wastes no time slicing off one's cheek and eating it. Kimberly Kane's cleric of the Great Maggot eats the other. I remind her the Great Maggot has no compunctions about eating flesh.

Elaria, a noble half- elf, abstains.

Soon they find the pit in the middle of the reptile-eye floor mosaic and head inside, down into the Reptile Archive. After accidentally annihilating the Nyctocaust Memorial (a touch-sculpture that is destroyed by light, oops) Elaria takes the multi-lingual warning sign ("please do not use light in this room") to see if she can start to puzzle out other languages from it. Clever.

Soon they wind up in the room with the clockwork needlebirds that tattoo you. They send the moron in first. He gets tattooed to death. Then they send in the pets. The cat gets tattooed to death. Only the terrier escapes.

Elaria helicopters in with her magic morningstar (the Steel Cyclone) and kills the remainder of the birds but it's too late. And she's hungry, losing hit points. She barbecues the cat.

Jinx attached the cat's tail to her hat. "Well we are using every part of the animal".

The rest is conscientiously sliced up into pieces and packaged for later. After a short fight with a chameleon women waiting to ambush them and passing some strips of tattooed flesh and undead bees, the crew winds up in the lair of the Lampen Proletariat, a wax golem who urges revolution against the masters of the Archive.

What will they do???? Find out next time!!!!

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Return to the Maze of the Blue Medusa

Oh you all know the Maze of The Blue Medusa, right?

It's the dungeon where Andy Markham of the OSR Facebook Group said "It's definitely one of the best looking books ever published for the OSR, or for RPGs in general," (before he joined in on a giant online harassment campaign to frame me for rape.)

...and where Ben Milton from Questing Beast said "One of the biggest releases, I think, in the history of D&D publishing", (before he joined in on a giant online harassment campaign to frame me for rape.)

...and where Ken Hite of Trail of Cthulhu "Let's put it this way: it's a dungeon you actually want to read the prose in. To grown adults." (before he also joined in on a giant online harassment campaign to frame me for rape.)

...and where Tim Brannan from The Other Side blog said "After 36+ years of gaming, precious little seems 'new' to me. This feels new." (before he, too, sadly joined in on a giant online harassment campaign to frame me for rape.) 

...and where Monte Cook said "Clearly jam-packed with awesome ideas." (before he as well joined in on a giant online harassment campaign to frame me for rape.) 

I wonder if they went back to feeling that way now that I successfully sued five times about this bullshit? I recommend asking them. I recommend asking them any chance you get. Anyway, I always liked it.

So the girls were in a spot of bother

After successfully handling the giant shrikes and some adventures in the Scorned Mountains, the girls...

Caroline Pierce aka Elaria, Half-Elf Ranger

Michelle aka Jinx, Halfling thief

Kimberly Kane aka Dr Feargood, tiefling cleric

...were given an assignment by Dr Feargood's Church of the Great Maggot to clear out a fortress full of moon priestesses and werewolves.

To make a long story short, things went poorly, they lost the element of surprise and several henchmen, their pet giant turned against them and they wound up surrounded, low on hit points and in need of escape. Luckily, Jinx had a book containing a ritual that allows you to teleport away to The Maze of the Blue Medusa. They used it, the session ended.

It's been ages since any of the players were in the Maze playtests and none of these characters have been, so its fun to see how it handles after a few years...

1. In the standard Maze, you steal the painting to open a portal to this room. In this case, they were transported in an emergency by a spell so I figured the painting wasn't actually in the room. There's just a space where it use to be.

The girls decided to rest 8 hours and get back hit points, abetted by a magic lock that could lock any door. I rolled 8 hours of random encounters but the only things that could past the door was Torcul Wort, a friendly ghost, and Pellory-of-the-Walls--usually a dangerous plant monster that could've TPKd the party but luckily the ranger had read a book (The Green Opus: Leveling up with this book allows the PC to know all the stats and abilities of any plant monster on a successful Int roll of 10 or better, received as treasure in some adventure) that gave her info on plant monsters, so they made short work of Pellory.

2. After a refreshing sleep behind a barricade they came out met the artifact hoarding dragon-woman Lady Crucem Capilli.

"So she's all blue, and has like, ram-like horns on either side and..."

"Wait, is she hot?"

(The girls always ask this.)

"Yes, she's hot."

So Jinx tries to flirt the Lady into telling her where things in the Maze are but that's not The Lady's way. The party agrees to fetch her some items for some cash-as-xp because they're in need of a motivation anyway so that all works out.

They take a look through the archways:

3. The room where you can fall through shadows into a floor is always fun. The girls think to throw a lantern in their first and notice it sinks partially into the floor. They decide fuck this room.

4. They look down into the vertiginous tangle of the Escher stairs and think well probably also fuck this room.

7. Poking the floor in 7 causes Cyanoxantha, the Living Mosaic, to speak:

The first to cross these coils must dance,

The second, sing to safety reach,

The third must bleed or risk mischance,

The fourth one dies between my teeth,

The next will be the first once more,

And do not cheat, I’m keeping score.

That's an immediate 'Nope' because nothing is more fearful than poetry.

Being like "Ok, we gotta go somewhere..." they eventually pick the stairs.

4. (again) Jinx bravely sends her war terrier, Kevin, to investigate by throwing a biscuit onto the stairs. Kevin luckily rolls a Nat 20 when the stairs violently re-orient midway down which reveals their magic, and allows Kevin to avoid becoming one of the corpses at the bottom of them.

Dr Feargood (played as she is by longtime barbarian Kimberly Kane) briefly considers going back into room 2 and just beating the shit out of Lady CC before accepting that the stairs are are a problem that can basically be solved with rope. They decide the locked door's not worth the trouble and head into the dark fastness of Subfoetens and his Filomel Shell.

8. Since the girls aren't carrying much treasure, the Shell is perfectly happy to let them pass while it tries to keep Subfoetens asleep. 

Jinx tries to talk to it. It goes "Sssh!", points to the sleeping baby, and keeps singing its lullaby.

Frustratedly, she mimes uselessly for a bit, then threatens "Let us pass or else!" with sword drawn at which point I remind her the Shell is not in the way and they can just walk past to the next room and they do. 

9. On the rope bridge through the next passage, I roll a random encounter and its the Decadent Waste--a valuable mechanical hummingbird that leads you into danger.

They remember they have a net, catch it in one round, and then try to figure out how to get back to Lady Crucem C to sell it.

7. (again) They prod the living mosaic again, this time from the north end. It delivers its second spiel:

You didn't listen to my rhyme

And talked amongst yourselves like fools

You’ll pay attention more next time

Now risk your death to find my rules

It's deal with this shit or go back the way they came, so they opt to deal. Jinx tosses a dust that distorts magic onto the mosaic, making the serpent only partially able to become three-dimensional. Dr Feargood using a potion of being invisible to reptiles to sneak over and deliver a Nat 20 to it while Elaria bashes it with her magic morningstar. After getting bit twice, Jinx coup-de-graces it with a silver rock hammer she picked up somewhere.

2. Back to Capelli to get paid for the hummingbird, more flirting.

1. Back to the start. Door closed. Magic lock in place.

They try to sleep but after 15 minutes there's a pounding noise--six chameleon women start trying to machete the door open. 

Dr Feargood lives up to her reputation and Causes Fear to one of them and Elaria takes the rest--luckily these were the first Chameleon Woman encounter so they were just 1HD hatchlings. 

The girls close and lock the door again. Maybe next time they'll be lucky and no more random encounters? Maybe KK won't have a migraine? Who can say? Find out in the next episode!

Starting to think 4chan's not a reliable source of information on games

You Can Now Order Nebulith & Red & Pleasant Land

Here's a flip-thru of Nebulith, my new Far Eastern book.

The books are available here. The Nebulith seems to disappear at about a rate of one an hour so at the current rate they'll be gone long before Halloween, much less Christmas, so if you're thinking "I'm eventually gonna get one no matter what" probably sooner's better than later.

Everyone who has seen it (including at least three people who hate nerd stuff and don't know what it is) is like "God damn that's a nice book". Judging from the fate of all my previous RPG books, it would probably win some Ennies if it wasn't now against the rules for me to win one.

Red & Pleasant Land is also being reprinted now, available here, thanks to Molly Scanlon at Fierce Ponies.

Frostbitten & Mutilated, is still available here.

Also, some people do not know Maze of the Blue Medusa is still available here.

And Demon City, the best horror game ever written, is here. Here is a long review of it.

The 500-page Compendium is no longer available and never will be, unless you go to some extraordinary lengths. Email me--zakzsmith AT hawtmayle dawt clam--if you want to be assigned an epic quest.

Life here still completely sucks as a result of the ongoing smear campaign. The best thing to do to help is, instead of buying any of these books, get on the internet, go places you don't want to go, and fact-check a bunch of shitty people you don't want to talk to. But most people would rather spend money than do that, so ok.

Bye.

You Probably Want To Make Yourself One or Two Of These

A Digital DM Screen

Ok, so using Angus Warman's new toy, you can turn a page of your blog into a custom DM screen for any setting or module you happen to be running. I shall demonstrate. Right now I'm running Maze of the Blue Medusa, so...

In less than 5 years, if they're smart, every WOTC module will have one of these available on mobile designed specifically for that product (in Ravenloft? Here's an encounter table full of werewolves and pitchfork villagers and a treasure table with coffin nails on it). And in less than 12--if they're smarter--they'll have a simple template to build your own with graphics and little buttons with pictures of potions and crap on them. Until then: DIY.