We play with tropes every game session. If the adventure you run is supposed to be supernatural horror, how do engage the jaded gamer? Seriously, is Cthulhu scary anymore?
(He’s in iPhone spell check, so no, he’s not.)
Tag Archives: Death Frost Doom
Mythos Mashups 1: Norse and Medieval Christian
I’m setting up a one shot next week, as I’ve posted. As part of that, I decided it would be important to set up some background for the players.
It was watching some recent documentaries on the dark ages and this video that lead me to a mashup of the Norse and medieval catholic church as background for the Labyrinth Lord-based one-shot. The following is almost verbatim from my intro text in the section for clerics:
The only sanctioned church in Nornland is The Church of the Aesir, known simply as “the Church.” Think of this church as similar to the medieval catholic church. The All-Father is the creator, his son Thor was created to protect and save man. Freya, Tyr and even Loki are like the saints. Giants and demons are evil and Jormungandr (the serpent) is the devil (aided by Fenris and Hel). Valhalla is for fighters, but there is a realm for good laypeople as well, overseen by Freya in her realm. Your holy symbol is a silver tree, Yggdrasil, with Odin hanging from it during his great ordeal.
The second most popular religion in Nornland is the outlawed and secretive Circle of All. The All is an energy field created by all living things, and is represented in its many faces by the many gods and spirits that mankind reveres. This religion comes from lands far south of Sudland, but is viewed by the church and persecuted by the king as a deception of the Serpent. Members of this faith are directed to use law or chaos as needed to create the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Those in the Circle have certain phrases and symbols known only to fellow initiates.
Clerics may choose to be a cleric of the Church or a cleric of the All posing as a cleric of the Church (or suggest something different before we play). Either way, clerics served as chaplains and healers in the war. They have chain mail armor provided by the church and a church-issued weapon +1. This may be any blunt weapon or a spear.
Option 1) Church Clerics
Because of your experience and close alignment with the Aesir, your healing spells do an extra +1 HP healing while in Nornland. You must be lawful in alignment to stay in favor of the All-father.
Option 2) Clerics of the All
Once per adventure (or week) you may re-use any one spell you have already cast for that day. You may use any weapon, including edged weapons, but you better have a good explanation if anyone asks. You are neutral in respect to law and chaos.
More tomorrow.
Update:
Title changed for greater accuracy plus a note.
From the Management: Let me note something that should be obvious: I have not researched the eddas of the vikings, nor have I read a great deal on medieval religions. I am shamelessly borrowing this and that and mashing it up. I will be doing more research on these later, and certainly refining it if I ever use it for more than my own gaming sessions and blogging.
War Buddy PC’s
In preparing to DM for the first time in many many years, I am setting up some background for the adventure, even though it is a one-shot (Labyrinth Lord Core rules).
I made a city, a port on the north shore of a cold sea. The country further inland is a Norse-flavored kingdom that has just ended a war with its southern neighbors. The PC’s are returning veterans of that war, part of a seige unit. Think of it as the original Oceans Eleven (with the Rat Pack) delving into the dungeon.
Fighters were obviously the soldiers and archers.
Mages were there for ranged combat and magical support.
The thieves were drafted from prison and made into spies and recon men.
Dwarves set up and operate seige machinery (and of course undermine fortifications).
Clerics are chaplains and medics (and spy for their church).
Halflings are taggers on who owe a debt to the men in the unit for saving them.
Elves are uneasy allies (they are opposing the common enemy, the Melnibonean-ish elves of the Onyx City of Tnetennba) on the losing side and are seeking asylum in the north.
They are returning home to this port, which would normally mean a great deal of business for the merchants there, except that the King is broke and has paid his army and navy in paper money (the “King’s Mark”). All their spoils were confiscated and the soldiers were paid “fair value” in King’s Marks. While the King has decreed that his script must be accepted throughout the kingdom, merchants have devalued it to 1/10 its face value.
The human PC’s are mostly from the area and were able to fence some smuggled loot to relatives for real coin, but now they must find a way to make money.
Thus, they are told of a lonely mountain a day’s ride north, where fabulous riches were abandoned after a long-forgotten evil was uprooted. No one in the city would be foolish enough to go there, but our players are 4th level veterans of a war and they know how to take care of themselves…
That’s how we’ll get to Death Frost Doom.
I’ve added two religions for the clerics to choose from and decided what things they characters will have. I also took away all raising of the dead (has never been heard of). If PC’s die, they can bring in a new “war buddy” or someone else from their past in the war. This could also allow me to establish them at 3rd or 4th level without them having any experience whatsoever with actual dungeons or monsters. Perhaps most of their fighting was against men and elves. It could also lend itself to some good flashback episodes.
One of the real pleasures of these games is how they get your imagination going. I’ve already imagined far more background detail than will be needed to run this one-shot. When I have the players create their characters next week, I’m sure they will add to the background with their stories and ideas. I’m going to post some of it as I go along and post a play report afterwards.
Finding the Weird
OK, so I was catching up with all of last week’s OSR discussions and discover Zak’s fantastic post that I am sure you have all read by now. I think it’s a fantastic distillation of what I’m going for in the future. Not as aggressively as some, but nonetheless…
I don’t have a long post in me about it yet. But I will recount a situation where I felt I’d found the weird around a gaming table.
I ran Death Frost Doom last August for a bunch of old school gamers from the New York Red Box. A great bunch of guys, btw.
Without spoiling DFD, I can say that there is a place in the game where things behave very strangely but do not seem to use magic in the sense that people have come to understand it. It’s quite a shocking moment for the players, who have a lot ahead of them at that point. One of my players was convinced that he’d run into an illusion of some sort and kept trying to disbelieve and then doing things that would let me justify him disbelieving. And they had no effect.
I can’t speak for that player 100 percent, it did seem to knock them back a bit that something wasn’t behaving by the logic of AD&D/OD&D that we’d been accustomed to for quite a long time. Most of the party seemed intrigued, but they were also very cautious at that point.
I don’t think it frustrated anyone or made the game less fun–in fact it seemed to make it more fun. We are at a point where the rules have been around for so long that situations that suspend them put players into that “weird” valley.
Taking people out of their comfort zone without completely abandoning the rules might be another path to the weird.