Greensboro is getting a minor-league hockey team, I guess.
The team’s primary colors consist of Gargoyle Grape, Greensboro Gold and Midnight.1 The Gargoyles’ team name and logo is portrayed as a stone monster that watches over and protects the city of Greensboro.
Totally coincidentally, I have been slowly watching the Disney show from the 90s for about a month now. Its lead character Goliath was also quite purple.
The show was pretty complex and pretty dark for Y-7 audiences. In a multi-part episode during the first season, “City of Stone,” Goliath’s former soulmate Demona used a spell to turn most of Manhattan into statues. There was a scene of her walking down a street, happily smashing petrified people into gravel. According to the show’s mythology, reversing the spell would not reassemble those pieces, so although they weren’t bloody, those were straight-up on-screen murders. 80s cartoons like He-Man had already established that smashing statues and robots was just fine, ratings-wise, but I feel like that scene was a step beyond. Maybe the censors weren’t paying attention.
After almost 30 years, its creator Greg Weisman, who also did another of my more recent favorites, Young Justice, has picked up the story again in comic book form. At first glance, that’s more exciting to me than a hockey team.
There’s also a Kickstarter reprinting a Marvel series from the 90s, which has raised almost a million dollars. I’m not a collector and don’t give a crap about variant covers and all that. But at some point I did make up FASERIP stats for the base team in the old TSR Marvel Superheroes game. I’ll see if I can find those.
Far more relevant, and urgent,
the good folks at Utopia Science Fiction have only about two weeks left to hit their Kickstarter goal of $7000 to fund the next year of their online magazine. As I am a frequent contributor to that magazine, I’m interested in seeing it continue. Throw in to their campaign, in any amount, and send me the “receipt.” I’ll comp you a paid subscription (how long depends on how much you throw in, and how generous I’m feeling that day). There might also be a die roll involved.
As a little boost to their efforts, I also include a link to The Sample, an online newsletter forwarding service.
But We Were Talking about Goblins
We left off with the PCs holing up in a half-ruined guard tower on the southern edge of the plateau outside the more fully ruined city of Arden Vul, while they wait for an attack by the criminal gang of the halfling badass Phlebotomas Plumthorn.2
Inside are 2 giant poisonous snakes
SZ L; AL N; AC 5; MV 150'; HD 4+2; HP 27, 20; #AT 1; Dmg 1-3. Special attacks: poison
Can Klimt Charm them? 19 Yes
Will Plumthorn’s gang come today? 19 Yes
Does Plumthorn send his lieutenant Roskelly or come himself? 90 Exceptional No
so himself, plus d6 → four more 1st level halfling fighters
Does Plumthorn bring Blandvegg the magic-user? Unlikely. 58 No
Do they spread out and conceal? 78 No
Cosmos and the nine goblins are spread out and concealed at locations 3-7. Cap and Laudanum are guarding the girl up on the third floor of the tower, doing overwatch.
Plumthorn seems outnumbered 9-4, plus wolves and ants.
Does he negotiate? 73 No
Are there others around back? Likely. 46 Yes
2d6 more → 6 2nd level Thieves
Are they concealed? Hide rolls all say Yes
So Plumthorn and his boys up front are the distraction.
This time I did not switch to KILLCHAIN to speed things up. I did, however, remove the time delay from the poison on the halflings’ weapons, making them more immediately deadly.
I was also unimpressed with Plumthorn’s two magic potions as written, so I hacked one of them to give him a better chance against the much-expanded player party.
Potion of Berserk: +10hp, +2 to hit, -1AC for d6+6 rounds
I added 1 attack per level per round, giving 4th level Plumthorn 4 attacks / round, which seemed thematically appropriate.
Potion of Invulnerability: -2AC, +2 to saving throws
Invulnerability in OSE just means you take no damage from a certain type of attack. I couldn’t immediately think of an interesting way to apply that, so I left this potion as written in the AV book.
FIGHT!
Halflings go first, firing poisoned arrows
As 4 hit dice monsters, the ants all save vs poison.
Before the archers can switch targets, the ants are upon them.
hf1 dead and dismembered (double damage!)
hf2 dead
hf3 missed
hf4 dead
Plumthorn drinks his potions, rolls d6+1 → 7 rounds of Berserk
4 attacks / round → 2 hits → 2 dead ants
4 attacks → 3 more hits → 2 more dead ants
Plumthorn, berserk, hits his own man
hf3 dead
Plumthorn charges the 2 snakes and fumbles, flinging his poisoned axe away
draws a dagger and misses 3 times
snake 1 hits Plumthorn; he ignores it
Plumthorn hits snake 1 → 3 + 10 from the poison on his dagger; snake saves OK
Plumthorn hits snake 1 twice; it dies
Plumthorn crits the other snake → 5 + 10 x2 = 30; snake dies
Five goblins pop up from concealment and throw spears, one hits Plumthorn for 3 points
Plumthorn charges them with a dagger
Goblins on wolfback run to stay ahead of him; he chases
Plumthorn’s potion wears off.
He has to save vs poison from the snake → 2 Fails
Plumthorn falls over, exhausted from his potion and with his leg turning purple and black from the rattlesnake-type venom of the tower snake.
Inside the Tower
6 2nd level halfling thieves enter the first level of the tower while Cap and company are up on the 3rd floor watching the battle.
Laudanum makes a Hear Noise roll and casts Darkness. With a 15-foot radius this basically fills the tower.
In OSE, halflings can not see in darkness and therefore cannot attack.
Cap and Laudanum can see just fine.
Laudanum shoots twice, Cap once with his crossbow.
The halflings run.
PCs continue to fire from the top of the tower as they flee.
Laudanum fumbles → breaks her bow string
Cap misses twice before they can get out of range.
Back Down on the Ground
Plumthorn asks to visit the cleric Estelle at the Inn of the Broken Head? 15 Yes
They tie his hands and have a wolf carry him in its mouth.
Will Estelle heal him? 19 Yes
Will Cure Poison save his leg? 17 Yes
After a parley, second-in-command Roskelly brings the locked chest from page 165 to pay for the healing, minus the books. The halflings clear out but strip the loot and smash the lab equipment.
Can Klimt reconstruct? 98 No
Laudanum talks to the chasm spiders. Reaction Roll 11 → may negotiate
They hunts us, said the spiders.
Blinds us with lights and shoots us.
Burns our webs with flame.
“Well, we know where they were getting it, at least,” said Laudanum.
“Do they know the recsssipe?” hissed Klimt. The mouthy eyeball had left its perch on Cosmos’s porcine headpiece and was floating around the room, examining the smashed lab equipment for residues of the poison’s manufacture.
“Why those spiders, specifically?” asked Cap. “Every third critter down here is venomous.”
“Morc!” hollered Cosmos, to his intangible / probably imaginary orc retainer. “Get away from that chasm! You’ll fall in! And then where will you be? At the bottom of a chasm!”
“Stop yelling,” said Laudanum. “You’ll draw some wandering monster.”
“Chasm,” said Cosmos, rolling the word around in his mouth, clearly enjoying himself.
“And stop saying ‘chasm’,” said Laudanum.
“Rhymes with ‘orgasm’!” grinned Cosmos.
“You don’t want to see an orc gasm,” said Cap. “It’s not pretty.”
Which then meant Lorak had to jump in. “You know, pollen is basically floating tree sperm.”
“Dad! Ew!” gasped Rosin.
“Yes, ew,” said Laudanum.
“What?” said Lorak, “It’s true!”
“Yes,” agreed Klimt. “Nasty stuff. Gets in your nasal passsagesss.”
Is this a clue to arcanum? 76 No
Could be that’s why these particular spiders are so deadly . . .
Can Lorak negotiate with the goblin “king” Weskie? 36 Yes
Does Lorak have another daughter? 24 Yes
how old is this one? 10
Do they find Fael Valdorsdot outside? 61 Yes
Betrothal ceremony? 05 Exceptional Yes
Is Fael willing to train Lorak’s older girl Rosin3? 91 No
Does she go home with daddy? 89 No
He has to make her go? 99 Can’t
Can Cap bribe the druid to keep her? 25 Yes
Will the smashed lab stuff be good enough for the reward? 18 Yes
Everybody gets 2000 gold each.
Lorak has to divide one share? Likely. 15 Yes
girl complains? 23 Yes
anyone care? 89 No
This one adventure took about a week of game play, 2-3 hours per day, and something like 30 pages of handwritten notes. Depending on how Mythic Con West in Asheville goes at the end of the month, I may do this again over spring break. Whether I write it up again depends on whether anyone wants to read it.
I have already ported the three main characters to a favorite old system that I never get to play called Lace & Steel, which uses a card-based combat system. It was written by Australian D&D novelist Paul Kidd (now going by Pauli, but if you want to find the old stuff from the 80s, it all uses the old name). Here’s a recent PK YouTube review of an out-of-print game of Egyptian mythology, like that 5e thing that’s all over Facebook ads right now.
Rick Barton also loves Egyptian mythology, which is a little cat-centric for my personal taste, but at least he doesn’t put wooden sailing ships in space, where they do not and will never belong.
Speaking of Unpopular Opinions and Pretend Conflicts
I also happened to meet fellow Substacker / comedian / entrepreneur / free-association addict
online last week. He lives in Asheville now, where people keep pigs as pets, and where bears roam free. We are plotting some sort of in-person meetup for that weekend.If you’re local (regional?), maybe I’ll see you at Ret-Con this weekend. I will not have a table, but I will be walking around with a bag of ParABnormal Magazine issues.
How sad is it that the first thing I think when I see that cover is, Is that AI?
From the Connective Tissue Q&A with Cincinnati’s DJ Trischler:
I realized the city was using color in this way to create social cohesion. Somehow, it doesn't matter what your religion is, it doesn't matter what your identity is. When you put on black and gold, everybody knows you’re a Pittsburgher and you respect one another and you cheer for the same teams. I find that so interesting: it's a graphic symbol through colors — two regular old colors.
Oh, but they’re not regular old colors. They’re branded colors.
On the Facebook group and elsewhere online, none of Rick’s other villains seems to provoke the hatred that people feel for this one. Is it just the ‘evil hobbits’ thing? I dunno.
Nobody voted on last week’s poll, so I went with my own first choice. Can’t complain — this is by definition solo play.
Just found this thanks to new subscriber @jonathansessions199192
https://utopiasciencefiction.substack.com/