And they took the gifts that Nature left for them and turned those gifts to their own ends, shaping them through rites of chaos to become a teeming legion – least among their servants, but limitless in number.

This scroll describes “seething caverns of chaos, impossible in their vast expanse” and filled with “the seething terrors” that are the “least among the servitors of the Endless Sleepers”. These corrupted masses are called the Elder Brood and some are given names: Akop, tesk, marbassik spawn, tilaxic.

Attention is then paid to one of the Elder Brood in particular: “Unto the bulugon they gave the feast-lust, driving their bloated forms to obsession of corpulent excess.”

Bulugon were reptilian creatures who were gifted with an endless, insatiable appetite. This appetite fuels a limitless capacity for hate and a cruel drive for conquest. Their thick scales are stretched taut across an abdomen swelled with excess. Although bat-winged, their corpulent bodies make them clumsy fliers. (It’s actually quite remarkable that their wings can support their bulk at all.)

THE GLUTTONY

No matter how much a bulugon eats, the endless starvation in their belly continues. Their masters use their constant feeding to both grow their bloated bodies and to motivate their service, but there is no satisfaction which can be given to them.

There are many tales of lone bulugon tyrannizing isolated communities. They “enthrall those weakest of mind and will” and then seek out some isolated cave or (more blasphemously) a religious shrine. Word goes out through their newfound servitors that the devil must be fed or the community will feel its wrath. Tribute and service are demanded in the name of fear.

But its hunger cannot be satisfied. The bulugon will “feast until all the fields are bare; until all the stores are consumed; until it feeds upon starvation itself.” In just a few days, the bulugon can deplete the food reserves of the entire village. And then these malefic gluttons will turn on the locals and begin to feed on them. Horrific tales are collected here of villages reduced to grisly lotteries and bloody arenas in which desperate men and women are faced with the heinous choice of the next victim to be fed to an insatiable appetite.

THE GIFTS

Graphic depictions are given of the bulugon using their long horns to impale flying opponents, using the great bulk to send both themselves and their pinioned foe crashing to the ground.

Bulugon are also said to be able to “wreathe themselves in a mist of terror.” Although they are not very fast or agile, bulugon use this fog – and the fear which accompanies it – to disguise their approach. And then their considerable bulk – both of fat and muscle – is capable of delivering blows strong to crush plate armor.

Finally, the stomach of a bulugon possesses an acid of incredible strength. (Its enhancement is most likely the source of their appetite.) Once removed from the bulugon’s body, the acid quickly loses its strength, but the bulugon is able to spew this acid in a flesh-searing cone.

ALCHEMIC ARTS

Detailed instructions are given for extracting the acid from the belly of a recently deceased bulugon while sustaining some of its preternatural strength. With a successful DC 25 Intelligence (Alchemist’s supplies) check, an alchemist can remove 1d6+4 vials of bulugon acid. This acid deals three times the damage of normal acid (6d6 acid damage).

DESIGN NOTES

Like the akop, the bulugon were taken from Green Ronin’s The Book of Fiends to expand the ranks of the Elder Brood.

Another technique to note here is that each Book of the Elder Brood focuses on a different brood, but each volume also introduces the Elder Brood as a whole. (Since any one of these books might be the first one the PCs chance upon.) In several of them I list the names of other creatures within the Elder Brood, but notably each listing is incomplete and each listing is different-but-overlapping. This is a matryoshka techniques, with the players being able to slow correlate a list of the Elder Brood by comparing different sources of lore.

In my Mothership open table, a character named Manny Vasquez recently died. One of the other PCs, Dürmig Ableton, decided to use one of his downtime actions to arrange a memorial service for Manny — a chance for everyone who had worked with him to share their memories and commend him to the wisdom of the stars.

I loved this idea, but it was also problematic.

Sure, we could play through the memorial service with the four players who were currently at the table, but what about the other twenty players who are currently active in the campaign and their characters? In fact, even Manny’s player wasn’t at this session! (Dürmig had heard the news of Manny’s death from one of the other PCs in the session, who had been working with Manny when he died.)

What Dürmig was really proposing was a communal event that, ideally, everyone playing in the open table could choose to participate in.

The problem is that I’ve tried organizing community events like this before — where a bunch of open table players all get together — and they’re pretty antithetical to what makes an open table work: The whole point of the open table, after all, is flexible scheduling so that you’re NOT trying to coordinate everyone’s schedules. Therefore, not only have I found that events like this often never come together at all, I’ve seen the efforts to coordinate real-world and game-world schedules actually wreck the entire open table and end the campaign.

(This may be difficult to understand unless you’ve seen it in practice. Basically, characters and/or players got put on hold waiting for the communal event to happen. When the event inevitably got delayed because of the logistical issues, people went into a “holding pattern” where they were waiting for the event to happen. Attendance dropped at the other sessions, which killed the forward momentum of the table and even caused whole sessions to be canceled. This caused players’ commitment to the game to flag, which increased the attendance problems while also making it harder for everyone to come together for the now much-delayed communal event, and the whole thing slipped into a death spiral.)

So with these practical and existential problems in mind, how did we handle Manny’s memorial service?

RUNNING THE EVENT

For context, here’s a few key facts about how this open table is being run:

• We have a dedicated Discord server where events are scheduled. The players’ also have channels for chatting with each other between sessions.
• This is supplemented with an e-mail list, which I use to let people who aren’t habitually checking Discord know when new sessions have been scheduled.
• Time is synced between the real world and the game world, generally at a rate of 1 week in the real world being equal to 1 cycle in the Tempest Cluster.
• There’s a system of downtime actions which we resolve at the beginning of each session. Among other things, this allows PCs to “catch up” to the game clock.
• In my campaign status document, in addition to tracking open table headlines, I’ve also found it useful to track Major Events and the date they’re occurring. It then becomes relatively easy to see, during downtime resolution, which characters are “passing through” a major event and make sure to insert it into their narrative.

With these structures in place, I then did four things to run the memorial event.

First, as I mentioned, Dürmig spent a downtime action getting the event set up. This was during a session, so we played through this and established the broad details.

Second, I asked Dürmig’s player to make a post to the campaign Discord detailing the invent and inviting others to join and (in this case) share their memories of Manny. I also promoted the event to all of the players in the campaign via our e-mail list.

Third, I included the memorial service on my Major Events timeline. It’s very different from the other sorts of events I’ve tracked there (e.g., a major terrorist attack on the station where everyone lives), but the key thing is that it’s getting “triggered” for each PC as they pass through that moment in time. This gives us a chance to play through (and likely add to) the event, making it a living part of the campaign experience.

Fourth, I encouraged those players — if they hadn’t already — to go to the Discord and share what their character does at the memorial service. (This can be a little wobbly if you ask them to do it after the session, so you may find it most effective to take a “break” so that everyone can hop on their phones and roleplay the moment immediately.)

The result is an event that plays out multiple times over multiple weeks (or even months) of real time. It naturally results in the event being revealed/created/built in a nonlinear fashion, but with each pass through the event the group is collectively adding layers of detail and interaction to it. Meanwhile, no one is left waiting for the event to happen, nor is anyone forced to skip the event unless they want to.

FINAL THOUGHTS

To date, I’ve only used this technique to resolve what you might refer to as “low stakes” events: Attending Manny’s memorial service, for example, is a communal event, but its outcome is not going to fundamentally shift the forward trajectory of the campaign. Things might be different if there was, say, a bomb hidden in Manny’s coffin or if the big, shared event was something like the evacuation of the station.

If/when such events arise in the future, I’ll probably use similar techniques of mixing nonlinear Discord resolution, but will need to experiment with other techniques to make it work right. A few things I’ve considered include:

• Special Event Session! I’d use this if the PCs can/should be positioned to affect the outcome of the event. The goal here would not be the futile hope of getting everyone in the campaign to show up on the same day, but rather to run a specially flagged session where the PCs who show up are the ones at the tip of the spear. (Other PCs may still be able to participate in the session’s “pregame” via the event’s Discord thread.)
• Default anyone not participating in the event by such-and-such a date as having been away from the action. (In the Tempest Cluster campaign, for example, we would just assume that they took a low-paying job off-station when the event happens.)
• Alternatively, with the canonical timeline/outcome determined (by a special event session or otherwise), we can now transition the non-linear resolution techniques described above as everyone else figures out how their character was affected by what happened during the special event.
• Multiple special event sessions. This can work if the event is designed in such a way that its outcome is being affected by actions taking place in significantly different places at the same time. For example, maybe every session in March is resolving a different facet of a crisis, with the outcome from all tables being synthesized at the end of the event

As I say, these are currently just thought experiments. But they do open up some really fascinating opportunities I’m looking forward to exploring.

FURTHER READING

Open Table Manifesto
Open Table Headlines
Tempest Cluster

Originally Written June 2000

Hera & Zeus is a two-person card game designed by Richard Borg, who won the coveted Spiel des Jahres in 1993 for Bluff. The title of the game should be a highly suggestive give-away of the concept which is being put into play: Hera and Zeus are feuding, and this time things have gotten serious – hostages have been taken, and the Gods, Demigods, and Heroes have divided their loyalties between them.

Each player receives a specialized deck: One for Hera and one for Zeus. Both decks are functionally identical, although there is a degree of customization in terms of the fluff text which surrounds each card’s functionality. (For example, Hera’s player has Artemis and their Attack 6 cards, while Zeus’ player has Apollo for their Attack 6 cards.)

Play proceeds in turns, with a set of elegantly designed mechanics guiding each player as they commit their forces to a tightly defined playing field. These forces challenge each other, with each player attempting to accomplish one of two goals: Either wiping out of the other player’s forces (by clearing all of his cards off the playing field), or rescuing their designated hostage in a Stratego-esque fashion by challenging the concealed hostage card (Zeus holds Argus hostage, while Hera holds Io).

The simple-yet-dynamic basic mechanics of the game are given an added luster through the use of special Mythology Cards which possess special powers. For example, challenging a Medusa card with anything other than an Amazon or Hero causes you to defeat yourself. Borg has crafted a set of rules which allow for a number of successful strategies – which is always a sign that a game is not only enjoyable in the short term, but is possessed of an endurance which will make it enjoyable time and time again.

My only quibble with an otherwise excellent design is the decision to print the special rules for the mythology cards on two reference cards (one for each player), rather than directly on the cards themselves. On the other hand, by keeping the cards clear of all but the most basic reference text, the package is far more attractive and appealing – and the special rules are simple and few enough that you quickly assimilate them with ease.

Hera & Zeus comes highly recommended by this reviewer.

Components: Two decks of cards; two wooden counters; two reference cards; rulebook

 Grade: A-

This review was originally written for Games Unplugged, but I can’t find any record of it actually being published. So this may be the first time anyone has had the chance to read it.

Back around the time this was written, I used to play a lot of two-player board games. My ex-girlfriend and I would play them, and I had several other friends I would also get together and play with this. I remember this one being a lot of fun and it did, as I wrote in the review, have a lot of rewarding replayability. It’s been years and years now since I took it off the shelf, but that’s largely because I don’t play two-player board games any more: My wife and I spend our one-on-one time on other activities, largely because a lot of our other social time is spent playing other board games in larger groups.

And from those teeming places of shadow and virulent beds of life and seething pits of chaos, the Natharl’nacna bent the substance of the world unto their will. From the work came the least of their servants, a swarming brood of anarchy and despite.

This slim folder of supple hide, clasped shut with a length of emerald green ribbon, contains a dozen or so individual sheets of parchment. Written in an archaic – almost alien – form of the Common tongue, they tell a sad and cautionary tale.

In a time of great strife and a war, a race of high sorcerers fled the mortal world and took refuge within “a spired realm of the Dreaming.” For long years without count this race dominated their new home – they were masters of magic and builders of wonder; they lived in peace and glory.

They were called the Akop and the years of their golden age seemed without end.

But there came a time when this proud race faced a problem they could not overcome: “Although they lived within the halls of Dreaming, yet their arts had never mastered the dream-craft. They worked marvels within dreams, but were not of the Dream themselves.”

Their world was dying. And in its slow decay, it had become severed from the mortal realm from which the Akop had first come. “From the fraught-prison of their own creation, there was no flight.”

In their desperation they turned to a creature referred to in the text only as the Kindred. The Kindred had the power to free them from their self-inflicted prison, but he demanded a high price: “Through his gates they would pass, but once passed they would blood-bind their hearts to serve him for unto a generation of their race.”

Faced with obliteration, the Akop agreed. But the Kindred was treacherous: The gates which took the Akop from their world were foully enchanted. As they emerged into the “deep eurl-realms of chaos”, the Akop were transformed into insubstantial creatures of living shadow, bereft of mortal form. “Of the flesh, they could not be harmed. But nor could they breed of the flesh. There would be no passing of their generations and upon their oath the Kindred had bound them for all eternity. And so the Kindred became the Enslaver of Races.”

In their new form, the akop became members of the Elder Brood – a foul mixture of twisted races that are described as “servitors of the Kindred and the kindred of the Kindred”. There they “took their place among the essyat and gadacro; the nintha and the obaan”. Over the years that followed, the akop degenerated – losing first their magic and then their sanity.

“In their madness, the Kindred found he could not command them; could not control them; could not rule them. But yet, in madness, they ever-serve the mad-mind of the Kindred and work unto his ends.”

THE NAUGHT-FLESH OF THE AKOP

The akop are incorporeal beings of shadow. “And they loathe those luck-fated to still wear their flesh. They blood-boil to battle-lust and long to bring all those of their former kindred into their madness of the cur-kin. But in this the curse of the Kindred tightens, for with each akop who passes in the battle-fraught, their race-pride is brought one step closer to its end-utter.”

THE TOUCH OF THE AKOP: “Fear the shadow-flesh which is not, for in its touch the madness of a dying race shall seep through pore and blood into the bone and brain. Those afflicted by the touch of the akop shall be driven to their Dream of madness.”

It seems that those driven insane by the akop are thrust into dreams of apocalyptic vision. There seems to be a shared quality to these dreams (among those whose shattered minds have recovered enough to communicate), and it is believed that they are the race memories of the Realm in which the akop once lived – twisted through the memory of its destruction and their own madness.

At this point, in a separate hand, there is a report of many such visions collated from various sources. Some are not given any textual authority, but seem to have been gathered first-hand (and perhaps deliberately so). They conjure strange visions of ruptured towers of obsidian; cascades of shattered stone glittering with chaos-tossed magicks; of great forests ripping apart in silent desolation; of rivers plunging into ourobouric self-destruction.

SUMMONING THE AKOP

A final selection of papers details the particular details of the summoning ritual necessary to “summon a brood-swarm of akop to give the truest service of chaos”.

Using these notes, a summon fiend spell can be modified in one of two ways.

First, it can be cast using a 1st-level spell slot, in which case it will temporarily call forth an akop for 1 hour. Due to the madness of the akop, however, the control of the spell is not perfect. The akop is allowed to make a Wisdom saving throw when summoned. On a success, the control of the spell is broken and the akop is free to act in whatever manner their madness dictates. (When in doubt, have them act as if under the effects of a confusion spell.) On a failure, the akop is controlled normally, but may retry the Wisdom saving throw once every 10 minutes.

Second, it can be cast using a 6th-level spell slot to permanently bring a swarm of 1d6+2 akops to the caster’s location. These are not summoned creatures, but have been brought from the Elder Brood into the mortal plane. These akop, too, are difficult to control, although the rites involved in summoning them give them disadvantage on their saving throws. If these akop fail their saving throw, they can reattempt it once per day.

DESIGN NOTES

Although the elder brood are described as being teemless in their variety, only three varieties can be found in the Chaositech sourcebook. So I cracked open one of my favorite bestiaries — Green Ronin’s The Book of Fiends — and started scavenging some of those fantastic monsters, like the akop, to fill out the ranks of the elder brood. The Book of Fiends has been updated for D&D 5th Edition, so it’s quite easy to add these to your own Ptolus campaign, regardless of which edition you’re using.

Back to Chaos Lorebooks

Originally Published in Games Unplugged Webzine – May 1st, 2001

Warning: This review will contain spoilers for Into the Dragon’s Lair. Players who may end up playing in this module are encouraged to stop reading now. Proceed at your own risk.

Into the Dragon’s Lair is a 96-page module, written by Sean K. Reynolds and Steve Miller, inspired by and designed around the events detailed in the Forgotten Realms novel Death of the Dragon by Ed Greenwood and Troy Denning.

The plot goes something like this: Cormyr was laid waste and her king slain by a dragon who has an ancient blood grudge against the royal line. During the fighting which followed the dragon was killed. (That’s what happened in the novel – and it’s all summarized for the DM at the front of the module.) The PCs are asked to track down the dragon’s lair and liberate the treasure to be found there for the good of Cormyr. (I would have liked to see a few alternate adventure hooks, including the self-obvious: “We’re adventurers, we’ve heard about abandoned treasure, and we’re off to get it.”) Of course, the PCs are not alone in their hunt for the treasure – they’re in a race against time against a half dozen other adventurers and adventuring parties (although it would have been nice if the adventure had been designed so that they could actually lose the race).

The adventure basically breaks into three major sections at this point: First, the PCs need to travel cross country to the dragon’s lair. When they penetrate the lair they will discover its secret: The dragon’s orcish thralls are actually the inhabitants of a demi-plane and the dragon herself exists in a pocket dimension outside of that pocket dimension. The PCs need to work or fight their way through the demi-plane of orcs in order to find the entrance to the dragon’s pocket dimension. The dragon’s pocket dimension is inhabited by evil elves who had sworn loyalty to the dragon. Once they’ve liberated the treasure (if they can do successfully), they have to find some way to transport it back to Cormyr.

There are a couple of really nice features to this product: First, Reynolds and Miller have made sure that it remains accessible – even for those Forgotten Realms players who aren’t familiar with the novel which provides the background out of which this adventure is constructed. (Including me.) Second, the whole structure of competing with other adventuring parties for the deserted dragon’s horde is really cool – and carried out with relatively few flaws. Finally, the entire adventure has an epic quality – which is not only nice to see, but surprising given that the adventure has a novel as its basis for existence: All too often, novel-based adventures are just linear railroads where the players are forced to pantomime the actions of the original protagonists.

There are also some rather unfortunate flaws in this product: First, the map on page 26 (which shows how the PCs get to the dragon’s lair) has misplaced the location of the ambush so that it doesn’t match the description in the text. Second, there are quite a few elements in Into the Dragon’s Lair which are brought up and then never capitalized on – orcish politics, a mysterious valley of fog, some of the interactions with the other parties. In other areas, plot threads are simply left dangling without resolution or explanation. Executing on these would have made the difference between a good module and an excellent one.

If the premise of Into the Dragon’s Lair has you interested, you should definitely check it out – it delivers. If the only reason you’ve been holding back on it is because you’re (understandably) leery of novel tie-ins, then definitely check it out because they’ve avoided all the pitfalls with this one.

But there’s nothing here which is going to make this a “must-have, instant classic”. It’s a good idea, with above average execution, and its definitely worth the cover charge. Beyond that, your own judgment must reign.

Grade: B

Writers: Sean K. Reynolds and Steve Miller
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Price: $17.95
Page Count: 96
ISBN: 0-7869-1634-6
Product Code: TSR11634

This is an oft-overlooked adventure from the very earliest days of D&D 3rd Edition. If I recall correctly, it was actually the second official adventure published by Wizards of the Coast, actually predating The Forge of Fury, but no one really paid any attention to it for some reason. I only ended up reading it because I got a review copy, and I’ve just discovered that it’s actually missing from the Wikipedia article listing all official D&D adventures (although I’m sure someone will fix that shortly).

Part of the problem was likely that it was a 10th-level adventure released within just a few weeks of D&D 3rd Edition being released, so it’s unlikely anyone had a group leveled up and ready to play this when it released.

In truth, though, I also have no memory of the adventure itself at this point. I wonder if, in light of of the Race to the Prize scenario structure, I would still be impressed by its handling of the rival adventuring teams?