Local Lore

I must apologize for a recent dearth of posts - I'm in the process of moving, and that has meant that my availability has declined. However, I recently stumbled upon a delightful thread on RPG.net that I just had to comment upon, and I felt it would do for a quick update to keep interest alive - but then, the tale grew in the telling, as they say, and I came up with a much bigger idea!

I haven't been active on RPG.net in a long while, and I have no intentions on going back in any major capacity, but sometimes it still produces gems - like this series, going through the villages of the German region of Upper Franconia circa 1600 and detailing the gaming potential of each based on its history and folklore.

Now, it's a bit after the time period I use as the basis of my setting, but as a fellow Holy Roman Empire enthusiast it couldn't help but get my attention - and reading through it has even taught me a few things about that region's history! However, what strikes me the most is that just about every populated place, in one small region of one country alone, has a story associated with it (one town has 28!). From ghosts in the woods to locals granted supernatural powers through demonic pacts, it's positively bristling with content, and it seems ripe for a sandbox or hexcrawl.

The idea of going through a particular region of the world and cataloging the history and folklore behind each place definitely seems like a worthy exercise for inspiration, and I'm almost tempted to do something like it for my home, although I'm unsure how much folklore Maine would have by comparison. What the project has shown me, however, is that not enough DMs take into account how localized and specific folklore can be.

I've always been a proponent of filling each site in a campaign world with enough detail to set it apart from others and help it stand out - whether it's with a notable geographic feature, an important building, or a special event going on at the time the PCs happen by, no place should feel like "just a town." However, with that comes the idea of every town having its own legends, too. This can help the setting feel alive and lived in and allude to a sense of history, as well as providing hooks for adventures and encounters. Of course, you don't need to have every story told about a given place be true, and it's possible to throw in a few red herrings here and there. But even if you only use them in as a story told in whispers over tankards at the local tavern, local legends can go a long way toward keeping your settlements from being just another stop on the road, and making them into something unforgettable.

The next time you design a town for your games, take a moment to think about what local legends it might have - what are they, who knows them, and how true are they, if at all? To help with inspiration, I've included a table - but of course, this is only scraping the surface of what folklore can hold. I'd be interested in hearing your own ideas in the comments!

Random Local Legends

To use this table, roll 1d4-1 times for each village and 1d6-1 times for each town for the number of local legends. Treat results of 0 as 1. Then, roll 1d20 for each legend, and roll the appropriate dice for the subtables in each entry. Depending on personal preference, these may be separate legends, or different aspects of the same legend. Feel free to adjust the results to fit your setting, if necessary.

Please note that this is a table that requires some thought put into how to implement the results. You may want to roll on it before a session so you have time to figure out the details.

1. A ghost haunts the (1d4: 1. inn; 2. streets; 3. local noble's castle; 4. nearby woods) at night, said to be the spirit of (1d4: 1. an executed criminal; 2. a former lord of the land; 3. someone who died with unfinished business; 4. a local who sold their soul but didn't go through with the deal)
2. A (1d4: 1. god; 2. saint; 3. demon; 4. fairy) once visited the village, and (1d4: 1-2. revealed themselves only to one worthy bystander; 3. was offended and inflicted a curse; 4. imparted a blessing or artifact).
3. An entrance to a vast underground cavern where hidden treasure is buried is located (1d4: 1. beneath the town well; 2. in a burial mound outside the village; 3. in the cellar of one of the buildings; 4. in the graveyard).
4. Long ago, the townspeople tricked a (1d4: 1-2. demon; 3-4. fairy) into building a (1d4: 1. bridge; 2. wall; 3. temple; 4. castle) in or near the town.
5. A local (1d4: 1. peasant; 2. noble; 3. scholar; 4. knight) made a pact with a (1d4: 1-2. demon; 3-4. fairy) in order to gain power (1d6: 1-4. many years ago; 5. recently, before disappearing; 6. recently - and they're still here!)
6. The Wild Hunt rides by the village every so often, and (1d6: 1-2. abducts those who dare to stray too close; 3-5. picks fights with anyone in their way; 6. will select a champion worthy of bearing a magical treasure if they can impress them).
7. The town is near a (1d4: 1. burial mound; 2. cave; 3. lake; 4. ruin) where an ancient king and his army (1d6: 1-4. were buried after their deaths, but whose spirits haunt their resting place to deter would-be grave robbers; 5. are lying in wait for the day they will be needed most; 6. both!).
8. A (1d6: 1. witch; 2. god; 3. demon; 4. fairy; 5. local; 6. traveler) placed a curse on the village so that a child born there (1d6: 1-2. once, long ago; 3-4. every so often; 5-6. once, recently - and they're still there!) would suffer (1d6: 1. incredibly ill fortune; 2. a fated death in battle; 3. lycanthropy; 4. vampirism; 5. madness; 6. deformity).
9. A (1d6: 1. witch; 2. god; 3. saint; 4. fairy; 5. local; 6. traveler) blessed the village so that a child born there (1d6: 1-2. once, long ago; 3-4. every so often; 5-6. once, recently - and they're still there!) would be granted (1d8: 1. incredibly good fortune; 2. the gift of prophecy; 3. the ability to see the unnatural; 4. the friendship of the fair folk; 5. superhuman strength; 6. magical aptitude; 7. the ability to understand the tongue of beasts; 8. great wealth).
10. A (1d4: 1. holy relic; 2. magic artifact; 3. powerful spellbook; 4. cursed artifact) was held at a local (1d4: 1. temple; 2. inn; 3. castle; 4. household) (1d6: 1-3. many years ago, but mysteriously vanished; 4-5. many years ago, and was buried with its owner; 6. recently - and it's still there!)
11. The village has a pact with (1d4: 1. a fairy court; 2. an elven clan; 3. a demon; 4. the beasts of the woods), and they will come to each others' defense.
12. A (1d6: 1. cave; 2. ruin; 3. lake; 4. grove; 5. stone circle; 6. fairy ring) near the village contains or acts as a gateway to (1d6: 1-3 the land of fairies; 4-5. the Land of the Dead; 6. Hell itself!).
13. Every few years, (1d8: 1-6. a site near the village; 7. the village itself, at night; 8. the village itself, in broad daylight) is the site of a Goblin Market, where the fair folk trade magical trinkets - for a price.
14. One who (1d6: 1-2. drinks from a stream near the village; 3-4. eats the fruit from an enchanted grove near the village; 5. consumes the flesh of a beast living near the village; 6. correctly answers a particular riddle) will be granted (1d6: 1. incredibly good fortune; 2. the gift of prophecy; 3. the ability to see the unnatural; 4. the ability to understand the tongue of beasts; 5. superhuman strength; 6. magical aptitude) - provided, of course, they can brave what guards it.
15. A great hero who vanquished a (1d4: 1. dragon; 2. giant; 3. demon; 4. witch) lived here (1d6: 1-3. many years ago; 4-5. recently, before disappearing; 6. recently - and they're still here!)
16. Near the town is a (1d6: 1-3. vein in a mountainside; 4-5. dwarven mine; 6. meteor) that holds ore that can be used to smith magical items.
17. A monster was sighted dwelling (1d8: 1-2. in a cave; 3-4. in a ruin; 5-6. in the woods; 7. in a lake; 8. under a bridge) near the town (1d4: 1. long ago; 2. recently; 3. recently, but was slain; 4. recently, after having thought to been slain).
18. An omen speaks that doom will befall the village when (1d6: 1. a particular creature is seen near the town; 2. something seemingly impossible occurs, like a mule foaling or the forest moving; 3. a comet appears in the sky; 4. a particular child is born; 5. a certain stone is moved from the town square; 6. someone who matches the description of one of the PCs appears).
19. Thanks to a previous local who (1d4: 1. sold their soul to a demon; 2. earned the blessing of the gods; 3. was a friend of the fair folk; 4. was a powerful wizard), a (1d4: 1. field; 2. mill; 3. fishing pond; 4. mine) in the village is supernaturally fruitful.
20. The townsfolk must partake in a particular festival each year, or else (1d4: 1. the crops will fail; 2. their souls are forfeit; 3. the town will be beseiged by orcs; 4. plague will strike)!

Example

Let's say I want to generate a local legend for a village in my campaign. I roll a 4 on the d4, so that's 3 entries from the list. Let's roll 3d20 and see what we get: 2, 12, 6.

Now, let's see what entries those correspond to:

2. A (1d4: 1. god; 2. saint; 3. demon; 4. fairy) once visited the village, and (1d4: 1-2. revealed themselves only to one worthy bystander; 3. was offended and inflicted a curse; 4. imparted a blessing or artifact).

12. A (1d6: 1. cave; 2. ruin; 3. lake; 4. grove; 5. stone circle; 6. fairy ring) near the village contains or acts as a gateway to (1d6: 1-3 the land of fairies; 4-5. the Land of the Dead; 6. Hell itself!).

6. The Wild Hunt rides by the village every so often, and (1d6: 1-2. abducts those who dare to stray too close; 3-5. picks fights with anyone in their way; 6. will select a champion worthy of bearing a magical treasure if they can impress them).

Some interesting examples here. Now we have some rolling to do on our subtables.

First, a roll of 1d4 for our first entry brings us a 1, so a god, and our second roll gives us a 4, so this god imparted a blessing or artifact.

For our second entry, we get a 4 on the d6, and a 1 on the d4. We have a nearby grove that leads to the land of the fairies.

And for our third entry, a 5. It looks like our Wild Hunt is looking for trouble.

Now comes the fun part - figuring out how all these things fit together!

Perhaps the god that once visited the village was the God of the Hunt, and visited a villager during one of his jaunts - perhaps to give them skill in the hunt, strength in battle, or a magical weapon. Maybe the god is picking fights with people because he was tricked by the townsfolk and won't let it happen again. Or perhaps it was the fairies who waylaid the god!

Or maybe it is the fair folk who are hunting, emerging from their grove to stage their expeditions into the mortal realm. Maybe the god granted the people protection against the fairies, be it a blessing, a protective talisman, or a weapon capable of defeating the fearsome champion of the Hunt!

Hopefully, this will help spark your inspiration as to how to work local legends into your campaigns. I'm curious to see what people come up with - so let me know if you've ever used such legends in your games, or what results you can get from the table!

An Interview with Lew Pulsipher

 

In researching my post from yesterday, I had the pleasure of speaking with Lew Pulsipher, a big name in the early days of White Dwarf and Dragon, as well as the creator of the original bar brawl scenario in White Dwarf issue 11. See here for my initial writings on the subject. With his permission, I've chosen to publish our discussion here.

Lunar Lands: As far as my research has led me to believe, it was you who wrote the first [bar brawl] - assuming, of course, that's the same Lew Pulsipher. I was excited to see that you still had an active presence online, and I felt like it might be of use to gaming historians like me. If it is you, and if you can recall the details, I would like to ask you a few questions on the subject, if you don't mind.

Lew Pulsipher: Yes, that was me, and as far as I know it was the first such for FRPG, though you'll notice from the article that I saw a non-FRPG version of a br brawl and went from there. I tried to turn it into a stand-alone game, but didn't get far enough to playtest it. Now how much I'm going to remember otherwise, 40+ years after, is doubtful. But ask away.

LL: It's nice to be able to hear from someone who was around in shaping the hobby in its early days. Yes, I did see in the article that you had adapted this from a Wild West scenario - which helps point, to me, that this truly is the earliest example of bar brawl scenarios being developed for fantasy RPGs. In that regard, having you as an asset is a valuable one to us historians. This is my first time hearing about you having worked on a standalone game, too! That's quite an interesting what-if. I don't suppose you remember anything about it?

LP: The game was called Troll Tavern. IIRC, Games Workshop asked me to adapt the brawl as a separate game, but they lost interest in it later. It was old-fashioned/clumsy from today’s perspective, I’d do a much better job if I tried it today. Big square grid board depicting a tavern. Like other boardgames, no GameMaster, which made it much more difficult to achieve.

I had to devise parts of a standalone RPG, in effect, to govern movement and combat in the game. Nowadays I have a very basic/minimalist RPG that I’ve tested a few times, that probably derives from all that. It may turn up in a book of reprints of my old articles, if I ever get around to finishing it (both game and book).

LL: As I've discussed, in my research I've found that these articles were published extensively in White Dwarf, and by contrast there doesn't seem to be nearly as many examples in the American gaming sphere at the time - which is why I was surprised to discover, in looking up more information on you, that you're from Detroit! What made you want to publish in White Dwarf, as opposed to The Dragon or another domestic publication? Were you living in Britain at the time, or was there greater cross-pollination across the Atlantic during the 70s?

LP: Born in Detroit but grew up in Ohio, and later in Battle Creek Michigan.

I was researching my doctoral dissertation (“Aircraft and the Royal Navy, 1908-1919”), lived in England three years, married someone I met there in a D&D game. Met Albie Fiore, wrote for Games magazine; and met the GW guys Steve and Ian. It was a natural to submit to White Dwarf.

At one point, GW had the D&D license, and I was writing a supplement for them (similar to the early D&D supplements in booklet form), but then they lost the license.

I did have many articles in Dragon, and other magazines, actually, perhaps tending to be later after I came back to the USA.

LL: Do you know how your article was received? I imagine it must have been quite popular if it spawned so many similar scenarios, and Graeme Davis cites it specifically in his retrospective on Rough Night at the Three Feathers. When subsequent bar brawl scenarios were published, did anyone reach out to you, or get your thoughts on their work? Or was this just something people did without asking any questions? Do you have any experience playing any of the other bar brawl scenarios?

LP: How was it received? Often, authors don’t know, especially when there are no online forums. Some people played some variation at conventions (that I wasn’t involved with), so that’s good. I don’t recall seeing the other versions you mention, certainly haven’t played them. No, no one reached out to me about them - not unusual. Even people who have published Britannia-like boardgames have not reached out to me, not a single one; most don’t even mention Brit in those games.

LL: When I was reading your article in White Dwarf, I was struck by how, despite using D&D rules, it seems much more reminiscent of a wargame, what with having multiple players controlling different sides and giving their orders to the DM independently on pieces of paper. The evolution of D&D from Chainmail is well-documented, but at this point in time, would you say that competitive player-vs-player scenarios like this were still fairly common? Or was this supposed to be more of a minigame built on a D&D chassis, going off of you working on your own game on the subject?

LP: My own game came later. The original D&Ders were from wargame fandom. Some people, including me, always used a square grid to govern movement in encounters. I’ve never been a “theater of the mind” guy, too loosey-goosey. And if you play it as a game, rather than as a storytelling mechanism, it naturally feels like a wargame at times.

I don’t keep track, but I cannot think of many player-vs.-player D&D or RPG scenarios, period. I think that I saw the Wild West scenario, thought it would be interesting to do similar for D&D, and did it, without thought of competitiveness. Not that it’s so much competitive as it is amusing.

LL: I feel like the separation between RPGs and wargames happened later in Britain than it did in the US - Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Fantasy Battle are at least theoretically compatible between each other, for instance, and the first edition of 40k had heavy RPG elements. I don't know if you would know or not, but would you say that there was any sort of regional divide going on? If so, why do you think that the wargaming aspects persisted so much longer in Britain?

LP: Britain has always seemed, to me, to be more interested in miniatures battles than the USA. If you say “wargame” to a Brit, often they’ll think miniatures battles. Say the same to an American, and they’ll think board game battles. The kind of books Don Featherstone wrote were rare in the USA. Perhaps because minis often involve more than two people, while board wargames involve just two, they prospered more in Britain where population density is much higher? Nah, I don’t buy that.

Perhaps because we had Avalon Hill in the USA from an early date, we became wargame oriented? It was a Baby Boomer hobby, here, and didn’t transfer to later generations. Keep in mind, Baby Boomers heard a LOT about World War II (I certainly did, though born six years after it ended).

A big thanks to Dr. Pulsipher for his help in my research on this genre! You can find his own blog here.

A Bar Brawl Addendum

A while back, I posted an article about the forgotten genre of bar brawl scenarios, once a staple feature of White Dwarf. Since then, I've done further research into the topic, and I have more to share.

For starters, a few more examples of this trend. After digging up another post on the subject from Interloper Miniatures, I have discovered that - regrettably - I've overlooked another classic entry in the canon of bar brawls! White Dwarf issue 33 featured another bar brawl scenario entitled Rumble at the Tin Inn, this one for RuneQuest. In addition to showing the breadth of tabletop content that White Dwarf once covered, this gives further indication that bar brawl scenarios were so popular they warranted support for multiple different systems and settings, at least in the British scene. Furthermore, from the scans I've found, Michael Cule, the writer of this adventure, explicitly credits Lew Pulsipher's D&D bar brawl from issue 11, which further points to that scenario being our Patient Zero.

In addition to the other examples I discussed in my previous post, Interloper gives a newer example of the genre in Bust-Up at the Moon and Parrot from Fight On! magazine's issue 11 (fittingly!). I also managed to dig up a retrospective post from Graeme Davis himself, discussing A Rough Night at the Three Feathers. In it, he does in fact cite the trend of previous White Dwarf bar brawl scenarios as inspiring his work, and helpfully names a few more recent examples he's worked on - The Last Resort in Tales of Freeport, Nastassia's Wedding in Pyramid issue 19, and The Edge of Night for third edition WFRP. The latter two use the same setup of a conflict-rife situation with multiple interesting NPCs involved, but move it to different settings by placing the action at a wedding and a ball respectively. I'd be interested in seeing what other situations could lead to a classic bar brawl setup.

If Davis's thoughts on the matter were so readily available, however, it gave me another lead. I decided to go straight to the source and track down anything I could about who wrote these scenarios. In terms of who had an online presence, I could only readily find access to Alan Merrett, one of the credits for Brewhouse Bash in White Dwarf 223, and Lew Pulsipher, the writer of the first bar brawl scenario for D&D in issue 11.

But I was lucky enough to pick their brains, which dug up many interesting details.

Furthermore, I managed to dig up a copy of White Dwarf issue 11 to see the genesis of the bar brawl genre myself. In the introduction, Pulsipher mentions that he decided to base the scenario on a (presumably unpublished) Wild West adventure he had heard of at a Games Day event. So, although we do have precedent for these kinds of games before, the one in issue 11 appears to be the first example of these scenarios in the fantasy genre - something he himself corroborated in my talks with him.

He was not, however, aware of further scenarios being written with his own as a model until I brought it up to him! At the time, it wasn't exactly common practice at White Dwarf to keep writers in the loop of how their articles were received, or to reach out to them when writing derivative works. However, Merrett made it clear that the scenario was quite popular, and that he and others around Games Workshop enjoyed playing it, leading to a proliferation of similar scenarios.

What else immediately struck me about the White Dwarf article is that it appears to play more like a wargame than a traditional RPG scenario - there are only eight NPCs, while 15(!) of the bar-goers are intended to be controlled by different players. Each of these premade characters has their own goals and agenda, some of which conflict directly with those of others, and the adventure instructs each player to write down their actions and hand them to the DM without the knowledge of others at the table. This may suggest why bar brawl scenarios tend to be so chaotic and full of opposing goals, as initially, the roles of the different participants would be taken by players competing against one another.

I find this particularly interesting, because from what I've seen of British gaming, the crossover between wargames and RPGs seemed to have persisted much longer than it did across the Atlantic - for instance, there were at least attempts to ensure cross-compatability of character stats between Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Roleplay, and Rogue Trader notoriously includes many RPG-like elements. Pulsipher's scenario, then, fits naturally into this continuum - a wargame-like scenario using D&D rules (although he emphasized that the idea behind it was more to have fun enjoying the chaos caused by having multiple players involved than to win - which I feel is an admirable goal anyway!). When I spoke to him, he speculated that this may have been a result of the prominence of Avalon Hill leading to board-based wargames becoming more popular in the US than miniatures, or the greater availability of Featherstone books in Europe, but he isn't quite sure about how this came to be himself.

As for the popularity of bar brawl scenarios? Merrett believes that they caught on as much as they did because of the cross-genre universality of a rowdy bar fight. Regardless of what setting you're playing in, there's always room for a bar brawl, and the concept is immediately recognizable. He also posited their utility for RPGs as stemming from the prominence of taverns in the popular imagination of D&D as the starting point to most adventures and as a place to meet patrons, trade, rest, and acquire new skills. To that end, he believed that it was only inevitable that someone would write an adventure centered around a bar brawl - and apparently, among the Games Workshop offices, the idea was popular enough to be recycled multiple times in various forms.

The holy grail of bar brawls?

Not all these examples made it into the pages of White Dwarf. In addition to the unused Dragon Warriors entry I discussed in the previous post, Merrett revealed that Rick Priestly designed a board game version of the concept that was sold exclusively at Games Workshop's in-house bar, Bugman's Bar - and, due to such exclusivity, it's predictably rare today. Similarly, Lew Pulsipher was working on adapting his bar brawl rules to a standalone board game called Troll Tavern, but it never saw the light of day, in part because of the difficulties in adjuciating the chaos that can happen in a bar brawl without a DM.

Regardless, though, his creation definitely cemented itself as an important piece of British gaming history, and the legacy it created is undeniable.

Tomorrow, I'll post the full interview with Lew Pulsipher for the curious. And I'm still working on a related project of my own - so watch this space!

Good Artists Borrow...

This is somewhat of a follow-up to my previous post about the role of "canon lore" as it pertains to TRPGs, and how I care for it (answer: not very much). One thing I admire about the OSR community is their commitment to the open-ended freedom of the hobby - they're not ones to concern themselves with how things "should" be, and they take pride in mixing and matching content from different sources.

You'll often see published adventures being referred to as "modules," and even though that parlance isn't in official use over at Wizards of the Coast, people still use the term to refer to their 5e adventures. This reflects a conception of the purpose of published adventures as being, well, modular - the idea is that they would be quests, encounters, and locations you could drop into an ongoing campaign so you wouldn't have to draw out a bunch of maps in advance. Over time, this gave way to adventures being entire pre-built campaigns expected to be played from start to finish, and with it, some of the do-it-yourself nature of campaign worlds has been lost. But it's definitely not lost in the OSR scene, and often you'll find DMs discussing how they work different modules into their settings.

I use the Lunar Lands to run almost all of my games. This includes campaigns I've run from modules - and I've made use of modules that originally came from a number of different settings and even systems (as Dave Hargrave put it, the numbers don't matter, only the ideas). As a result, my campaign map is a patchwork of original content and stuff taken from various writers. Yes, this does often result in me needing to tweak material to fit my setting - changing NPC names, scaling back the level of magic, and so forth - but I find that can be just as engaging as writing original material. It's like putting pieces of a puzzle together and seeing how well they can fit, and I hope to create something that's more than the sum of its parts.

To put things in perspective, here's a list of the different locations I've used from different modules, and where I placed them in the Lunar Lands. Some of these are locations I've used; others are locations I placed on the map should I need them in any of my sandbox campaigns. I should warn anyone now, this post is not safe for canon purists!

And a big shout-out to Bryce of Ten Foot Pole, who picks up the burden of reviewing more modules than you could expect one man to do so and stay sane. Without him, I wouldn't have known about some of these.

Click to enlarge

Classic Modules

• I've seen it written once that every old-school D&D setting should have the Keep on the Borderlands and the Village of Hommlett in them somewhere, and this is no exception. I placed Hommlett in the territory of Redwald, while the Keep (named Snowhall Keep) is on the border between the Vardessian imperial core and the Ukian March, across from the Caves of Chaos (now named Broken Skull Cavern).
• Although I haven't read as much of the original Clark Ashton Smith stories as I perhaps should, I do find the hex map of Averoigne included in Castle Amber to be a nifty little mini-setting inspired by medieval history and folklore, which of course I can't get enough of. It's been dropped in as the City-State of Vyonnes.
• As an avowed follower of the British Old-School, I have a special soft spot for the modules put out by TSR UK, before they were Games Workshop. I've run The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh in my setting, even before Ghosts of Saltmarsh was released, and the town of Saltmarsh is in the Vardessian province of Gundarsland. Yes, I'm aware it should be Salzsumpf, but my players still called it Saltmarsh and I got used to it.
• As part of a sandbox campaign, I had plans to throw in the Fell Pass from The Dragon issue 32 on the border between Taldameer and Golnir as an obstacle for my players to get past as part of an overland journey to Quel'Ahma. The campaign didn't last that long, unfortunately, but it's still there on the map.
• Little-known fact: during the 2e era, TSR put out a few sourcebooks on gaming in different historical eras. One of them, Charlemagne's Paladins, was based on the early Holy Roman Empire, so naturally I was going to crib from that for Vardessy. The villages of Eigenmacht and Fabelhaft come from one of the modules included - and yes, their names are different German expressions amounting to "not real." Nice try, TSR, but future generations have Google Translate on their side.
• And finally, yes, I did put the Tomb of Horrors in Quel'Ahma. Just in case.

Other Games

• It's no secret that Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay has been a big influence on my setting, and the game put out some very nice city guides and adventures, so of course I would integrate some of those in my setting. Both the town of Bogenhaufen from Shadow Over Bogenhaufen and the city of Middenheim (renamed Torvaldshaupt to fit with its new status as the center of the cult of the god Torvald) from City of Chaos are included in Vardessy. Similarly, the city of Rolanfels is an adaptation of the very good fan-made guide to Bergsburg you can find here.
• The castle of Corteaguila in Taldameer is based on an old module on Weathertop from Middle-Earth Roleplaying, and is the result of me throwing a landmark on the road for my players on the spot when I didn't have anything prepared. MERP has a number of very handy fortress modules with detailed and realistic maps, so they're helpful for this purpose.
• The city of Sirka in Kvesland is an adaptation of Dave Morris's city of Brymstone for Dragon Warriors. I owe more to Dave than I do to perhaps any other individual creator in the TRPG world, so in terms of if his creations would show up in my setting it was only a matter of "when."

Newer Stuff

• Among one of the campaigns I've run that's been most dear to my heart was a run of 5e's Curse of Strahd, moving the setting of Barovia to a backwater barony in Togarmah. No impenetrable mists here - I don't believe in trapping my players if they're truly not invested, and many stories can attest to how that's more likely to burn players out than make them want to escape, so I just made it part of the material plane. However, I would later discover that Curse of Strahd only details the northern half of the Barovia that was established in previous editions. In order to make use of those materials as well, the southern part - including Immol, Mount Sawtooth, and the village of Krofberg from the 3.5e setting guide - was made into a Vardessian-controlled subdivision of the Togarman March known as Neiderbaroven. On the border is where I set the excellent fan expansion to Curse of Strahd, The Beast of Graenseskov.
• As part of a later campaign taking advantage of the release of Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (one that was actually run by one of my players from the aforementioned campaign), a few other Domains made it into my setting, including Dementlieu being in the City-States and the valley of Tepest, including the village of Viktal, being in Halvardy. It was a great time, and I'm happy to make it canon.
• There's a funny story behind Porto Libre, the capital of Valossa. Green Ronin's Freeport: City of Adventure book(s) is one that hews closely to the old-school ethos of publications being setting-neutral and able to be dropped into any world, and I saw fit to place the city into the Lunar Lands. The only problem...I grew up in Freeport, Maine, and I am incapable of seeing it as a city of adventure. My solution was to rename it and make everything feel slightly Spanish - and, when I already had a Spain stand-in in Taldameer, it eventually evolved into being the capital of an entire fantastic Mexico analogue.
• Similarly, another setting-neutral city - Bard's Gate by Frog God Games - was adapted into the city of Pylithopon in Golnir.
• And, yes, I have something from 4e on here. Horror of horrors! Don't worry, I dislike the system as much as anyone else, but remember what I said about numbers not mattering, only ideas? Reavers of Harkenwold is an interesting module, seeing the PCs gathering allies and waging a guerilla war on a barony taken over by bandits. It's one I hope to run (in 5e) some time, so Harkenwold is here on the map, in Vardessy - the Holy Roman-inspired empire seems like the perfect place for petty coups and robber barons.

The OSR

• I'm eagerly awaiting the release of Dolmenwood - the folkloric, low-fantasy setting is the kind of stuff I want to inject directly into my veins. Naturally, the Duchy of Brackenwold is in the setting as one of the many fiefs of Vardessy. And yes, I do intend to put both Winter's Daughter and Barrowmaze in there too.
• If there's one thing I love, it's modules that present a regional sandbox with a number of areas and sidequests to explore. Curse of Strahd is one - and Dungeon Crawl Classics' The Chained Coffin is another I've had the pleasure to run. The Shudder Mountains has been placed in Vardessy under the name of the Schaderbergen, with the Appalachian influences reskinned to a more ancient Germanic vibe (and a little bit of Pennsylvania Dutch). As for the town of Dondern, that's a special case - although I was inspired by the town of Thundercrack described in The Almanac of the Shudder Mountains included in the boxed set, the description of a town built on platforms over water brought Lake-Town from The Hobbit to mind, and I have the MERP module on it saved up in case I need to represent the town.
• The ruined dwarven hold of Amudid (Thunder Rock) is an adaptation of Sanjikar from the excellent OSR module Mines, Claws, and Princesses - another one I hope to run some time.
• The island of Al-Awali off the coast of Quel'Ahma is based on Kalmatta from The Treasure Vaults of Zadabad - I had to change the name because I kept thinking of olives.
• And you'd better believe that Yoon-Suin and Qelong exist over the sea to the east.

Altogether, it's a diverse bunch - but it's brought us many hours of fun, and I like to think I make it all work. What about you? What modules have you integrated into your game worlds? I'd be interested in seeing what others have made!

Brazen Heads

If I'm going to include a magic item in a game, I want to make it interesting. To me, items that give flat bonuses to rolls are the most boring you can get. Ideally, any item should have some catch or some special condition to complicate its use - and what I like best of all are the utility items with no mechanical effects at all. With those, it's up to the players to figure out how to best use them - and this often leads to some of the most interesting stories at the table. D&D as a numbers game isn't fun - D&D as a puzzle game about logical thinking and problem solving is.

One of the items I'm most fond of using is the brazen head. This concept dates back to medieval mystic traditions, and I've used it in more than one campaign to memorable effect. They can be a fun way to drop information or point PCs in the right direction, as well as posing their own challenges to how to manage them - how is the party going to transport one, for instance, and how will they keep it from alerting hostiles to their presence? If you throw one of these into a campaign, it's sure to shake things up.

Brazen Head

Wondrous Item, Uncommon

The art of wizardry, as everyone knows, is one that requires many long hours of study and knowledge beyond the ken of the average man. One cannot simply toy with the fabric of reality without a keen understanding of how it's done. And even the most accomplished of archmages are always looking for more knowledge to refine their craft. Some wizards can't be bothered and take shortcuts to attain their knowledge. Some turn toward the summoning of demons in order to bargain with their souls for power. Others, however, prefer to take the safer path of the brazen head.

No one knows for sure when the first brazen head was constructed. Some scholars have posited an origin in the bygone Fedreline Empire, known for its magical constructions, while manuscripts detailing their creation and use are kept in some of the oldest archives of the Covered Path. Regardless, brazen heads can be found in the towers and studies of wizards all across the known world, whether as aids to their study, or merely a voice to talk to to pass the years of seclusion.

A brazen head resembles a bust of a man's head and shoulders, typically life-size but larger examples exist. In its inactive state, the head is indistinguishable from an ordinary bust. However, when addressed as though one would a partner in conversation, the bust comes to life, rising from its slumber and introducing itself. The head can then be asked any number of questions the user desires, and it will answer them truthfully (most of the time).

There is no limit to what can be asked a brazen head; it will even know of events that happened since its creation, even if it had no way to learn of them or perceive them. It cannot tell the future, however - for instance, "how do I reach the secret tunnel underneath the Luchsberg" will be answered to the best of the head's ability, but "where will Count Harkon be at precisely noon tomorrow" will not. However, the magic that animates a brazen head is of a fickle sort, and it can be frustratingly difficult to get answers from one. Every brazen head is different, and many have certain complicatons to their use - see the table below.

A brazen head can hold a conversation for as long as one wishes. Once a brazen head goes for more than five minutes or so without being engaged in active conversation, it falls back to rest. It will not wake up when spoken to until another 1d8 hours pass.

1d20 Brazen Head Complications

1. The head will only answer questions with a "yes" or a "no." It refuses to elaborate further. For instance, a brazen head with such a feature may answer "yes" if asked if a treasure hoard is buried under the standing stone on the moors, but will not answer what it contains, what guards it, or what must be done to obtain it. If asked a question that cannot be answered in such a way, it will instead say "I may only answer 'yes' or 'no.'"
2. The head will not give a straight answer. It speaks in riddles that allude to the answer, but will never directly answer the question posed to it.
3. The head only speaks a certain language. It understands any question posed to it, but will only answer in a certain tongue (for instance, a classical language used by scholars). A translator may be necessary. See also my post on languages.
4. The head only understands a specific language and will not answer questions unless they are spoken in it.
5. The head requires a specific password in order to activate; merely speaking to it will not do.
6. The head will answer any questions normally, but it speaks in a booming voice that can easily be heard by other nearby creatures.
7. The head is unusually chatty. Once it has spoken to someone, it will occasionally strike up conversations of its own, asking its owner about themselves, their life, their goals, and so on. It does so regardless of whether or not it is an opportune and safe time to do so, and it will not shut up if asked. If the head speaks on its own, it does not activate its timer between uses.
8. The head lags one question behind - that is, when spoken to, it answers the last question that was spoken to it rather than the one it was just asked. Those who stumble upon such a brazen head in the wild may be given an answer entirely without context to a question they didn't ask. If you're especially evil, you can combine this one with Number 1.
9. The head will only answer one question before falling asleep again.
10. The head has a mind of its own. It may talk back to the user, refuse to answer certain questions, or demand to be given a break, depending on its mood.
11. The head is a compulsive liar. It is under no obligation to tell the truth, and will never do so unless tricked into speaking truthfully.
12. The head is a slow thinker. It will not give its answer when addressed, but will blurt it out 1d4 minutes later regardless of what is going on around it. It will fall asleep after 10 minutes of inactivity instead of 5.
13. The head is huge (about 6 feet tall from crown to pedestal or more) and cannot easily be transported.
14. The head speaks rapidly and is difficult to hear properly.
15. The head alternates between telling the truth and lying with each question asked.
16. The head gives two answers to every question, one of which is the truth, and the other is an equally plausible lie. It may have two faces, one that speaks each answer.
17. The head is fiercely loyal to its master and will not obey anyone else, unless convinced that it was given to them willingly.
18. The head is linked to another brazen head as part of a matched pair. Any question asked to one head will be simultaneously answered by both - if one of them is held by an opposing party, the PCs will be able to listen in on their plans, but must be wary about how they utilize theirs.
19. The head answers in long, winding rants on the subject. The question it was asked will always be answered somewhere in there, but it may be lost in the details if one isn't listening closely.
20. The head will only function if an item is used to unlock its power, such as if asked a question by a user wearing a special amulet, or when a coin or gem is inserted in its mouth.