The Chambers of Ordo Eclipticus

While I continue to noodle away at Project "Bloodlust But Good", I took a quick break to make an entry for a fun little ongoing game jam.  As a side note, I recently switched to linux, and currently not having access to better layout software, I made it in GIMP. Although I like how it came out, it took many more hours than it should have for a single spread. Never, ever again.

I plan to run this dungeon as a one-shot pretty soon, as a Noble Funnel. The hook is that a dilettante and mutual friend of the PCs (maybe even the king or prince?) has gone missing, and after finding out he got obsessed with the moon, some court fop has decided it's worth checking this place out. As written it may be a bit too bloodless for a funnel, but I'm hoping the right group of chaosmongers will manage to find ways to get their characters killed.

If you feel like it, you should definitely make a quick entry for the jam! There's still over 5 weeks before the deadline. If you want to check out mine, this is the link, and for good measure here it is in plain text:

The Chambers of Ordo Elipticus

General Features

Each chamber is a perfect, hemispheric dome of worked stone. Reliefs reflect each chamber's purpose. The occasional candle provides dim, white light.
The power of the altar in the Chamber of the Moon suffuses this entire dungeon, placing all sworn Brothers of the Ordo within under the anal-retentive thrall of Brother Eldest.

Ordo Eclipticus

A secret order of occult astronomers and astrologers. They believe the Delve is in sync with celestial powers, so they study the heavens from within. All Brothers are low-level magic-users unless otherwise specified. They are singlemindedly regular in their behavior as a result of Brother Eldest's magical domineering. They will converse cordially distractedly with polite visitors, but fly into a rage if significantly disrupted.

 

1. Chamber of Communion

The undead skeleton of an excommunicated Brother hangs from the chandelier, 60' up. It shrieks if anyone passes directly under it. Two great, parallel tables divide the room in half, creating a lane between the two archways that lead out.

 

2. Celestial Corridor

This hall rotates in accordance with the lunar cycle. Star chart reliefs can be cross-referenced by erudite characters to see which archway leads where. Otherwise, determine their movements at random.

 

3. Chamber of Toil

3d6 Brothers scribe, sew, and work the mint (2d6 x 10 sp freshly minted).

 

4. Chamber of Penance

1d6 lunatic Brothers languish here, manacled only to each other. They babble incessantly and attack non-Brothers who invade the chamber.

5. Chamber of Dreams

1d6 comatose Brothers lay in bunks; they can only be awakened by Brother Eldest via the power of the altar in the Chamber of the Moon. Any who rests in one of the empty bunks must save or fall into perpetual slumber as well.

 

6. Chamber of the Moon

A spherical altar made from a lunar meteorite dominates the chamber. Any who touches the altar must save or become a lunatic who insists on cowering for 1d6 days in the Chamber of Penance. Brothers save at +2; Brother Eldest saves at +10. 

Rotating the altar sends the moon back and forth in its cycle. Spinning it fast enough causes global tidal disaster. If the altar is destroyed, all the Brothers fall unconscious for 1d6 hours, and awake without any memory of their time in the chambers.

7. Chamber of Bygone Lore

Racks and racks of astronomical scrolls are supervised by cheery but quiet Brother Librarian. He is a connoisseur of moon-themed poetry. He will offer to lend one of two magical tomes (whichever he thinks they would enjoy more) to any who shares with him such a poem that he's never read. 

Tome of the Delve: An overview of each area of the Delve of the Dark Moon in florid, if unclear, language. Readers teleport to the first area whose entry draws their fancy.   

Tome of the Universe: A thick, terse, yet vague technical tome. Upon a full reading, your character must be re-statted using GURPS rules. You may use 1d4 sourcebooks of the GM's choice to do so.

 

8. Chamber of the Stars

Only accessible from the Celestial Corridor during a lunar eclipse. The door connected to the chamber of Brother Eldest is hidden amid complex reliefs or constellations. A massive hoard of silver pieces of the Ordo's own mint fills the entire chamber. They view the minting of "full moon coins" as a transcendent duty in  itself, and do not care to spend them.

 

9. Chamber of Brother Eldest 

Brother Eldest (a high-level magic-user) dwells here, though he makesfrequent supervisory rounds. Any man who keeps up with him for an hour or more of rigorous philosophical  debate may take the Ordo's oath and become a member (thus falling under Brother Eldest's command). Due to the Ordo's strictures, non-males are instead given access to the secret passage hidden in the wall reliefs.

Esoteric Enterprises: The Engineer Class

I wrote this for a backup character in an Esoteric Enterprises campaign in 2022, although I never got to play her. Still, I thought the class came out well, so I figured I'd touch it up a little and post it here!

ENGINEERS

In a world increasingly dominated by technology, the engineer is a useful member of any cabal. They posses both a general aptitude for tech, from bombs to computers, and specialized, obscure knowledge. Engineers have analytical minds and tend toward obsessiveness. They are compelled to tinker, to deconstruct, to master the world around them. Technology separates people from animals, they say, and likewise, engineers are a league apart from ordinary people.

Often, engineers would rather be in their workshop or coding lair than in the presence of plebeians who barely know their way around a smartphone. They are visionaries, inventors aiming to leave their mark on the world in a big way. Some are nurturing computer viruses that could someday decimate a city’s infrastructure. Others chase the pipe dream of a truly sentient AI, or experiment with superpowered prostheses. Whatever their passion, engineers work tirelessly to ply their expertise to change the world.

Improved Technology: Engineers start with a 5-in-6 chance at Technology to represent to their dominion over circuits, code, and machinery.

Modding Items: Engineers can modify (“mod”) items by tinkering for at least a day of downtime and making a save vs. machines. On a success, they can change the item in one of the following ways:

• The activity of a computer, smart phone, or other machine with access to the internet becomes undetectable. However, if used for more consecutive turns than the engineer’s level, it overheats and is rendered totally unusable.

• A machine is streamlined, becoming Light. However, it is now delicate; it gains a 1-in-6 chance of breaking whenever its owner takes damage or is significantly jostled.

• A weapon’s bonus to hit and damage increases by 1. However, it now requires a new kind of Special Ammunition (if it already required Special Ammunition, it now requires two kinds). This effect can be applied to melee weapons (eg. battery-powered, electrified swords).

• An armor item’s AC value/bonus increases by 1. However, this improvement has a weak point; if an attacker rolls a natural 20 against the wearer, that attack deals double damage and the item is destroyed.

• A piece of medical technology is automated, gaining the ability to perform one type of Trivial Medicine on its own, over the course of a day, as if it was a Doctor with a Medicine skill of 2-in-6. However, if the attempt fails, something goes Horribly Wrong, as if it was a Risky Medicine experiment.

• Other innovation pushing or breaking the boundaries of modern technologies, as long as there’s a convincing technobabble explanation, proper tools for the job, and an appropriate base item being modded.

On a failed roll, the item is destroyed, and you must roll on Table 2: Crossed Wires.

Modding also requires a Resources roll to acquire parts; especially powerful mods beyond the scope of the above list may instead require a Contacts roll for rare or contraband parts. Additionally, the engineer must have access to a workshop where they are free to generate noise and detritus for hours on end. If needed, they can find a shared engineers’ makerspace with a Contacts roll.

Engineers begin play with one modded item. They can only maintain a set number of modded items according to their level, and once at that quota, they must dismantle a modded item (destroying it) over the course of a day in order to build a new one.

 

Table 1: The Engineer

Table 2: Crossed Wires 

A Most Haunted Update

It's been a while since I posted anything here, huh?

It pains me to say it, but, as you might have guessed, Escape from All-Mart is dead, as are some of its players (dead to me, anyway). The session writeups will haunt this blog forevermore. If you're especially lucky, there might even be sightings of some unused GM notes when the moon is full and/or the stars are right. 

Quilombos & Colonizers

Still from Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), a movie that very much encapsulates the vibe I want for this project.... Whatever it ends up being.

My life has been quite tumultuous in the wake of EfAM. I've gone back to school (again), moved into a truly horrible apartment, found a safer place to move, consulted an attorney to cover my ass during this process, and started dating someone very cool. 

Amidst all this, you'd better believe I've still been working on creative projects, mostly RPG-related.  I've been slowly nurturing a historical fiction or historical fantasy project of some description set in early colonial Brazil. I spent a ton of time on research, which helped me narrow my scope to one Brazilian state (or in the parlance of the era, "captaincy"), Pernambuco, and the forty-year span during the 17th century that the Dutch managed to seize the colony and keep it from the Portuguese (for maximum factional drama).

Through my copious research, I found plenty of interesting historical figures who could serve as prominent NPCs or viewpoint characters, like the Jewish pirate captain Moses Cohen Henriques, and Zumbi dos Palmares, leader of a famous settlement of rebel slaves and capoeira martial arts user. I found two academic texts on the indigenous peoples of the region not from the colonizers' perspective, which turned out to be something of an accomplishment, since the Tupi and other local groups didn't have cities or a writing system.

So far, this project has amounted to highly interesting research and not much else. I had initially been thinking of using it as the basis of an OSR hexcrawl, but at this point I think that'd almost be a waste of what I've learned, what with having to pare everything down to work within the BX D&D rules framework or something similar. 

If I want to turn it into fiction, I would need to figure out a format, including a single plot and cast of characters (not having to do that was one of the big draws of doing this as an RPG campaign). I also feel like it would take even more research to get enough concrete, sensory details down to write this as fiction. Maybe it could be an RPG setting supplement? For now, it's on the back burner so I can give it time to breathe and gestate. It's pretty likely I post more about this on here in some form, if only to show off my research.

Looking Forward, Looking West

Since deciding to hit pause on the still-formless Pernambuco project, I've set my sights on a different OSR project for the next game I actually run, one from a storied tradition: the West Marches. West Marches campaigns are supremely open-ended and player-driven, even more than the OSR is by default. The GM sets up a campaign environment in some sort of wilderness area at the bounds of civilization, rife with ruins and monsters and treasure, and everything from there is down to the players, from scheduling sessions to deciding what to do on each expedition.

The West Marches style is an open table, so I hope and expect to have quite a few players from the get-go, with only some attending each session. I have also elected to have all my GM notes 100% in analog format - I'm busting out the 3-ring binder, baybee. Much, much work remains to be done before session 1, and admittedly the analog notes plus player-written session notes means I'm not sure how much of the campaign will end up on this blog, but there will be something, so stay tuned.

 

 

Lastly, I just tonight formulated the idea for a Halloween-y solo journaling game while talking to a friend about some recent computer hassles. I'm thinking it'll be a very short (and thus hopefully manageable by the actual holiday) project drawing heavily on the "Wretched & Alone" format. I can't promise anything on that front since the West Marches project still takes priority, but who knows.

I really don't know if anyone keeps tabs on this blog when I'm not linking the posts on the Unknown Armies fan discord or someplace like that, so this is quite possibly a bad use of my time, but hey, future me will probably get a kick out of it. Until next time, enjoy the spooky season!

The Noble Funnel

I’ve become quite interested in the Dungeon Crawl Classics funnel adventure structure. The game’s core book explains that all characters must begin at level 0, and only reach a level in an actual class after climbing to the top of a big pile of their dead fellows in an introductory adventure. Each player controls 2-4 of these sadsacks, ideally ending up with one survivor each to begin the campaign in earnest. Of course, a lot of groups just play the funnel as a standalone.

It's unusual to have multiple PCs per player, but it works well here. This is in part because the characters are dead simple: 6 stats, an average of 32 copper pieces, three items determined in part by a mundane occupation, and a measly 1d4 hit points. They feel throwaway at the outset due to their frailty, but once you’re down to your last peasant or two, you start getting attached.

It’s been pointed out that the idea of throwing a village’s worth of peasants into a deadly, terrifying ordeal to see who will survive long enough to amount to anything has some uncomfortable classist subtext. I agree with that, and while I don’t think it would necessarily stop me from playing a funnel, it did get me thinking about the inverse.

                At first, I felt like turning “the peasant funnel” into “the noble funnel” would be kind of pointless, but I had a few ideas I liked, so I figured I’d present them here. I started by looking at what goes into a funnel character: what should I change, and what was fine as is? The stat generation was fine. Besides rolling for stats being an OSR staple, weird and crappy statlines can easily be explained away by generations of inbreeding.

                Next, equipment. I dispensed with the rolled coinage; that’s beneath a rich noble. If they survive whatever their harrowing initial adventure is (more on this in a bit), they’ll be able to hire a different peasant to play therapist or confidant every day for the rest of their lives. Still, I thought it could be fun to give them some wealth to flaunt. Thus, each noble gets an heirloom to start with – the kind of thing that could just as easily be a piece of loot for other adventurers to find.

                Instead of occupations (which nobles obviously have no need for), I settled on pastimes. What do they do all day, not having to work for a living? My list includes a mix of athletics, the arts, and some slightly more uncouth interests. Each pastime has an item to go with it, like the peasant occupations. These are, for the most part, more useful than the heirlooms. If you’re wondering why a noble with 4 Dexterity practices archery, it’s because all their servants are too afraid to say anything about it. For HP, I don’t see any reason to change that. We all bleed the same.

                To add some structure, I would encourage each player to have a family name for their cadre of PCs, having them all be members of the same noble house. Bonus points if they come up with a family motto or coat of arms (seriously, let them max out their head of house’s HP or something).

                The last thing I want to address before providing my table of pastimes and heirlooms is: why would nobles go on an adventure? Typically, peasant funnels are easy to justify. If something is killing off villagers every full moon, no one else is going to do something about it. But nobles have servants for that sort of time-wasting. If a noble really felt threatened, they’d hire a few bodyguards or assassins. To remedy this, here are a couple of suggestions for frameworks:

• The nobles are attending the queen’s banquet, and it becomes apparent that neither the queen nor her servants have been seen for hours. What’s the meaning of this?

• The nobles are kidnapped one by one and all awaken in a death maze for the vengeful satisfaction of the bloodthirsty downtrodden.

• People are taking sides between the crown and the church. The PCs represent those nobles who have taken one side or another. In the midst of planning their next move, they are beset by agents of the other faction.

 

Update - February 20, 2025  

Since I'm planning to actually use this soon, I figured I'd make a new version of the item tables, because I feel like not all the entries above are equally fun. I also wanted the heirlooms to be more consistently useless outside of pawning them off. (Also it's now designed for BX D&D because that's my OSR system of choice these days).

 

 

 

Without further ado, here’s the table. Let me know what you think! (original version)