Scenario: The Road to Baffram

fictivefantasies

Here is the first scenario I've done for Old School Hack. "The Road to Baffram." The scenario features:

A summary at the beginning.
Five parts, which can be used separately to enhance other scenarios on the fly.
Maps for all the anticipated battles, with arenas marked.
Player handout maps to share so everyone can visualize the layout.
A summary page with all the names, plot points, and locations for easy reference.
A grimore with all new spells for the NPC wizard to hurl, and summoned monsters with all you need to know to run them over the characters.

The scenario is designed to have the fast, freewheeling, fun feel of an OSH game with plenty of room to insert character motive subplots, other encounters of your own design, and modifications as you see fit.

I hope you enjoy the scenario, and find it helpful running OSH games for your players. Let me know what you think!

The blog will have an entry on August 31 featuring the scenario, but you all get a sneak peek here.

http://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/old-school-hack-resources/

BrownBeard

Damn. You put some serious work into this! I'm impressed. If I were to work this into a campaign, I probably wouldn't use all of the encounters -- that would be the longest escort mission I've ever played through -- but the encounters are modular enough that I could easily skip over one or two of them to get to the plot twist or the next adventure. Bravo.

Two points of order:

1. Captain Umbrock of Baffram has two Talents or Powers that have no explanations attached to them: "Threaten" and "Classical Education." You were going to flesh those out and just overlooked them, right?

2. The Khuselb Grimoire is probably the single most powerful magic item I've seen anywhere in the OSH literature so far. Game-breakingly powerful, I would even go so far as to say. Unless I'm mistaken about how it works, any high-Charm PC who picks this up gains nigh-instant access to enough new Talents to fill another Class sheet. Even if those talents are all somewhat situational, that's still a lot of power in one bitty package.

If I were to use this sort of Grimoire in a game, I would parcel out its abilities slowly -- it takes the new owner extensive study over time to fully unlock its secrets. I do love the summoned sand and rock elementals, though -- they would make fine Retainers for the (pending?) Heroic Game.

To rephrase Barsoomcore's earlier question: Where do you find the time to write all this? Do you have a day job? If not, then here's hoping your unemployment checks keep rolling in.

fictivefantasies

1. Captain Umbrock has the "Noble" template, which is posted on my blog. The talents are there.

http://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2011/08/30/osh-noble-template-template-10/

2. The scenario does not assume that people get access to the grimore. The grimore represents a spell book that encapsulates an entire spell-casting tradition, like the one the magic users have. It represents access to talents to learn, and it only works for magic users, and if they cast from the physical object it costs 3 APs to access a talent they do not have but is in their class.

The NPC wizard is 5th level, and has all those spells--but he's a real tough guy. And he's not carrying a grimore around with him.

I'm thinking I need to gather this stuff up into a .pdf with more background, but right now I'm generating material. The organization can come later.

I design fast.

Thanks for checking this out! I appreciate hearing from you.

fictivefantasies

I appreciate a response to the "Road to Baffram" scenario. I am curious if anyone has any thoughts on the content of the adventure, leaving aside the supplemental grimore and noble template (which I will include when I update the scenario.) Any other feedback? How does this feel to people who like light-or-no prep?

Howdy, Stranger!

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