The Shadow of Hojo Mori

There is a continent with many names. Many of them are spoken in the language of its native inhabitants, an ancient race of saurian bipeds. They are all descriptive names, if you understand that language, and many of them are contradictory.

It is indisputable that this continent exhibits certain unique properties, but there are different points of view regarding the precise nature of these qualities. As a result, what the dwindling highland empire refers to as the One True Land, some others call Exodus or the Wandering Isles, and still others call Nexus.

There are other sentient species there too, from what may or may not be other places, depending on whether other places truly exist, which the saurians consider a matter of debate. They tend to assign this place the name of their cultural concept of hell.*

There is a dense rainforest on this continent, named for the saurian who once ruled it with an iron fist, Hojo Mori, whose kingdom died with him. His descendants seem incapable of working together, and only only hold any authority within their own isolated settlements. They are feudal lords who only promise protection to those within their own city walls, and there are many dangers in the wilderness.

The place is overrun not only with dinosaurs (or rather, what the dinosaurs may have evolved into if they had escaped extinction eons ago), but also traces of the many outside cultures that Hojo Mori brought here long ago to enslave and exploit.

YES BUT WHAT SORT OF THINGS DOES THAT INCLUDE

Abandoned Mining Colony

• Emerald mine, abandoned 30 years ago when the earth into which the mine was carved was granted sentience and mobility by magical eco-terrorists. Anti-bodies formed in the shape of earth elementals and slaughtered anyone who couldn’t escape in time.
• A few of the gems are in easy-to-spot locations on the first level. The elementals, stomping around below, sound like the faint echoes of heavy industry at a distance.
• Lower levels contain more gems guarded by elemental antibodies. The elementals are incredibly loud, and have no chance of sneaking up on anyone who isn’t deaf. They exist as part of a hive mind that allows them to co-ordinate their attacks and defense, effectively adding +2 HD in combat whenever two or more elementals are present.
• The lowest level contains a hive-mind crystal. Destroying it triggers a massive earthquake that collapses the mine.

Bronze Jungle Tyrant

• Inspection of this huge, elaborate statue of the regional apex predator (basically like a t-rex but more so) reveals that it’s actually a vehicle with six seats in the head.
• The activation gem (glows a brilliant white, is the size of your head, probably being worshipped by some feral tribe of filthy humans or elves or something) is missing.

Frozen Pond

• A mace is half-buried in middle of a wide, frozen pond. The air here isn’t any colder than the surrounding rainforest, except within a foot or so of the ice itself.
• There’s the skeleton of a sea monster visible, trapped underneath the ice.
• Dislodging the mace requires a successful strength check and causes the pond to instantly melt, freeing an undead two-headed plesiosaur that attacks immediately, and dropping whoever’s standing on the surface of the pond into the water.
• Three trigger words are inscribed on the mace’s handle, in the personal cypher of a long-dead saurian artificer. When these words are muttered before striking a contiguous body of standing freshwater, the mace causes the water to change phase as appropriate. The trigger words are codes for “liquefy,” “solidify,” “vaporize,” and “condense.”
• the trigger words can also be used to cause additional elemental damage. When attacking a human, for example, the “vaporize” trigger word would cause 1d6 fire damage as the water content of their blood turned to steam, and the “solidify” would cause 1d6 cold damage as it became ice.

Bone Dog Encampment

• Semi-nomadic escaped slaves taken from a universe where canine bipeds naturally grow partial exoskeletons. Only females are present.
• PC bone dogs have hit dice and combat abilities as fighters, have advantage to wisdom tests related to scent and hearing, natural armor as chain, and a bite attack (but cannot use manufactured armor). Typical NPCs have from 1–4 HD and are usually armed with clubs or spears and bolas or slings. Their leader, Argluff, has 6 HD and wields a katana.
• Their community won’t survive past this generation on its own, as the males were all killed in a unsuccessful insurrection attempt.
• They need help to accomplish at least one of three goals: to get home or, failing that, to find some means of perpetuating their society here; either way, they also desire genocidal vengeance against their saurian ex-captors.

*The rare exceptions are usually those that have actually proven somewhat successful in this environment, such as the insectoid hive-minds, whose name for the place translates as Newhome. The individual hives have no names — the insectoids simply think of them as either This-Hive or Not-This-Hive, which are more similar conceptually to me/you than to here/there.

Glass Caves of Carcosa

This is me fucking around with layers and stuff, trying to refine a concept I was playing with a while ago (that Patrick "Maze of the Blue Medusa" "Deep Carbon Observatory" "Fire on the Velvet Horizon" Stuart riffed off of riffed off of on his blog; odds are good that you've already read that post if you're here. if you haven't you should cause it's way better than anything I would have thought of). I wasn't planning on sharing the map originally, so I didn't give the colors much thought as I was drawing it, but now it looks like it belongs under some weird sword & planet setting like Carcosa.

I might extend it in the four cardinal directions in the next few weeks. There's a slight chance I'll get ambitious about it and start illustrating individual chambers. I might never get to any of it. WHO FUCKIN KNOWS NOT ME

What a Hack

I like The Black Hack. I like it enough that it's become my go-to game, but not so much that I don't feel the need to change parts of it.

Mostly so I can throw away the piece of scrap paper I wrote this stuff down on, I present to you my house rules for The Black Hack. My personal Black Hack Hack, with short explanations of just what the fuck I'm thinking. If you haven't read TBH, these might not make any sense.

REACTION ROLLS

Rather than the d8 table in TBH, I prefer the bell curve you get from the classic 2d6 reaction table, and also would prefer charisma to be factored in. So I did the math to work (roughly) the same probabilities you get from the 2d6 into TBH’s core d20 mechanic:

Any time an NPC's reaction is in question, roll 1d20 and subtract your charisma score from that. Assign advantage or disadvantage based on particularly smart or dumb roleplaying.

-10 and lower: helpful

-9 — -5: friendly

-4 — 4: neutral

5 — 9: unfriendly

10 and higher: hostile

Notice that this makes the relevant ability score (CHA) way more important than it is in other D&D games, just like everything else you can do in this game.

LEVELING UP

I like that TBH’s “system” for advancement is more freeform than traditional XP, but it goes a little too far in that direction for me. This is my compromise:

PCs gain a level every time they complete seven distinct challenges. Challenges include any task with a legitimate chance of failure and adverse consequences. They include, but are not limited to:

• combat, when total HD of opponents is greater than or equal to character level
• obstacles and hazards negotiated
• manipulation of NPCs
• secrets discovered

This allows PCs to advance more quickly than in D&D. You could slow it down by making it every 13 or so challenges if you wanted to.

WEAPON/ARMOR RESTRICTIONS

There are none. This negates an advantage of playing a fighter (or warrior or whatever), but the next thing kinda makes up for it.

COMBAT MANEUVERS

This is any attack that puts the enemy at some mechanical disadvantage rather than doing direct hit point damage. This includes attempts to stun, push, trip, or disarm opponents, among other things.

Fighters roll with advantage when making or defending against this type of attack, unless their enemy shares this advantage and they cancel each other out. This is to make combat marginally more tactical for players who like that sort of thing, without forcing anyone who isn't interested to learn how it works.

ABILITY SCORES

I assigned abilities to specific tasks, in some cases changing the ability’s function entirely. The biggest change is reinterpreting wisdom as awareness of one’s surroundings and nothing else.

• Strength: saves vs. paralysis, melee attacks, athletics (sprinting, climbing, etc.), breaking shit
• Dexterity: ranged attacks, acrobatics (jumping, tumbling, etc.), stealth
• Constitution: saves vs. poison, death, disease, and fatigue
• Intelligence: spellcasting checks (for both arcane & divine casters), languages (which works like the skill in LotFP), tinkering
• Wisdom: saves vs. deception & illusion, reflex saves, dodging physical attacks, perception, initiative
• Charisma: saves vs. charm effects, reaction rolls

This is the biggest change really, because some of it contradicts basic assumptions that apply across editions. Suddenly your low intelligence, high wisdom cleric is an untouchable duelist but useless as a spellcaster. I kinda don't care though? My rationalization here is just that I like it better; mapping the ability scores this way makes sense to me. I guess I could let players rearrange their stat line if this was ever a source of confusion.

And that’s it for now. I might get rid of clerics and start using a different magic system at some point, but I’m leaving that stuff alone for the moment. I'm using the equipment lists from LotFP for stuff that's missing from TBH but that doesn't really count.

Forsaken in the City

Sometime way back in the 21st century, cities became entirely self-sustaining. Urban agriculture had progressed to the point where the farmlands they once relied on were no longer necessary. Those who lived outside city limits were offered the chance to integrate, but most of them chose to pass up this offer, as they came from long traditions of rejecting the highfalutin’ ways and booklearnin’ that urban centers demand of their Citizens. The Forsaken, as they and their descendants came to be known, were ignored by the Citizens and left to their own devices.

The Citizens had already begun to transcend their humanity through cybernetic enhancements by the time the domes went up. Within a couple short centuries, even they no longer recognized or referred to themselves as human, adopting the formal classification homo machina. They had come to understand magick as a scientific phenomenon, and were beginning to incorporate it into their technology.

Meanwhile, the Forsaken’s culturally motivated rejection of both large-scale hierarchy and scientific study resulted in grotesque mismanagement of natural resources. Despite the carbon footprint of the cities having essentially disappeared, the lands beyond them were becoming more barren and poisonous than they’d ever been before — a scarred desert wasteland of mutants and madmen.

I live I die I take you with me

While the Forsaken fought amongst themselves over dwindling resources, the Citizens walled themselves off from the rest of the world with nearly indestructible domes. They continued their march of progress unhindered by the vast changes outside their bubbles.

Over the next century, many Citizens took to hunting and killing the Forsaken purely for sport (“eating” was no longer a thing that Citizens did). This predictably intensified the Forsaken’s perception of them as horrible demons or even gods. They weren’t all that far off, really; the Citizens’ new abilities were terrifying and their lifespans were now around a dozen times that of the average Forsaken. Even those Citizens who didn’t participate saw no ethical dilemma in the culling of clearly inferior and obsolete (but not dangerous to the Cities, only to the ecosystem and each other) lifeforms. It simply wasn’t their hobby of choice.

Fast-forward half a millennium. The dwindling population of the Forsaken still passes down their stories of the Godhunts, but none of them have seen a Citizen in living memory. The heroes among the Forsaken didn’t know what to expect when they defied the stigma against approaching the Cities, but they certainly couldn’t have expected what they found.

Giger's Trumpets of Jericho

The machinery of the Cities themselves was still in operation, but the Citizens were nowhere to be found. This was three years ago. The philosophically inclined speculate and argue about what happened to the Citizens or where they could have gone. Had they, as a group, transcended their need for physical forms? Did they sleep in the depths of the undercities? Were they all dead somehow, or had they uploaded their minds into the circuitry of the cities themselves?

The more practical among the Forsaken have collected near the dome, forming temporary settlements bound by fragile truces, with the purpose of exploring the city and salvaging whatever tools, artifacts, and secrets they can. Many don’t come back quite the same, and many more don’t come back at all.

Those who are strong and clever enough to survive these expeditions with their sanity intact speak of mechanical nightmares, disembodied voices, and an environment that is utterly beyond their experiences in every way. The fear these tales provoke is only matched by the greed inspired by the wondrous treasures that always feature in the stories. 

Die-Drop Jungle Terrain

Wilderness exploration can be just as detailed as a dungeon crawl, if you know the terrain well enough to give it a variety of tactically useful features as the DM. Generally speaking, you’ll be interpreting symbols on a map and relating that information to your players. These symbols are general in nature; just knowing that you’re in a forest isn’t as useful or interesting as knowing that you’re on one side of a deep but narrow ravine in a forest. If there happens to be a random encounter, the ravine will probably be tactically important. Even if there isn’t one, this gives players something less abstract to think about than just making wilderness skill rolls.

If you happen to be someone who spends a lot of time out in nature, in a wide variety of climates, and thinking about how to describe what you see, then this kind of improv is easy. You could probably do pretty well faking it if you read enough of the right books, which would probably have to include both fiction and non-fiction. I can’t do it though. I need a prompt.

So I’m making die-drop tables for various terrain types that fold all that into the encounter check roll, starting with jungle because that’s what I’m running at the moment. Pretty basic layout, obviously riffing off the inside cover tables in Vornheim. Whenever the PCs enter a new hex, I roll a d6 and a d12 on this (printable download here).

sized to be cut out and stuffed in the box that a 12 pack of ramen comes in, as all
die-drop tables should be. apologies for the shitty typography. consider this a draft.

The position of the d6 determines the geological terrain (down the left edge) and vegetation (across the top). The position of the d12 determines the temperature (across the bottom) and current precipitation (down the right edge).* So far it seems to still work when I’m drunk but this aspect requires further testing.

An encounter occurs on a 1 in 6 as usual. The d12 is there because I like using d12 encounter tables. If I ever wanted to use a 2d6 or d100 table instead, I would use three different colors of dice and ignore the position of the encounter check die. Or something.

One weakness of this system is somewhat unrealistic weather that doesn’t connect precipitation to temperature shifts, but I really doubt anyone I play with is going to give any shits about that. One strength is that the weather is unrealistic in a way that's kinda crazy and fun. It tends to change, sometimes wildly, every few hours. Most weather results have mechanical effects associated with them, so they’re usually relevant to gameplay and harder to ignore.

Same thing goes for the terrain; some features can be obstacles in and of themselves, some give the players something to explore** or exploit, and others create tactical opportunities. You know that type of tactical thinking where the intrepid dungeon explorers lead the orcs into an ambush that makes use of that pit trap they found? This sort of detail lets the players do the same thing in the great outdoors.

*this layout won’t always apply; when I do one of these for deserts, it’d make more sense to do something for wind speed & direction where precipitation is on this one.

**okay so you’d still have to come up with something to be in the caves they found but that’s something I’m a lot more comfortable making up as I go along.

Rotjaws

Rotjaws are quadrupedal therapsids about the size of buffalo. They have pronounced nasal structures, powerful jaws, long limbs and short, stubby tails. These carnivores have evolved an immunity to almost all diseases. This allows them to cultivate bacteria in their mouths which they transfer through bite like how a komodo dragon actually doesn’t as it turns out.

When they hunt, their goal is not to kill their prey outright, but to infect a victim then retreat into the underbrush. As such, they are relatively slow-moving and well camouflaged with dark scales. Their powerful sense of smell is fine-tuned to detect disease at a range of one mile (weather permitting), allowing rotjaws to follow the infected creature for days if necessary. Once the illness has finally rendered the victim helpless, the rotjaw catches up and eats the creature alive, because intense fear and pain triggers the production of delicious hormones.

Sometimes, rotjaws that pick up the scent of other rotjaws’ victims are hungry and desperate enough to challenge the original hunter for the kill. Infected prey are often forced to watch, paralyzed, as two or more of these creatures do battle for the right to devour them. These contests rarely go to the death, with participants often retreating after they’ve sustained a single hit. The scars possessed by most rotjaws are a testament to the frequency of these battles.

Rotjaws build nests in caves one mouthful of mud at a time, in which they bury clutches of 4-8 eggs. The parents spend two weeks taking turns guarding the nest while the other goes hunting, then abandon it and go their separate ways once the eggs have hatched. Hatchlings start out the size of an average housecat and grow into full adults within a month; at least one or two out of every clutch usually makes it.

Rotjaw bites spread what’s known as rotjaw fever, even though it’s less a single disease than a blend of all the nasty microbes that the animal’s been able to cultivate. Rotjaw fever always drains the strength of the victim, but other symptoms can vary widely from case to case.

Rotjaw

HD: 2+14

AC: as leather

Movement: 1/2 unburdened human

Attack: bite (1d6 + disease, save to avoid)

Baseline Rotjaw Fever

Duration: 3 days

Incubation: 1 hour

Increment: 2 hours

Effect: Save or lose one point of strength. A strength of less than 3 means total paralysis. Infected creatures also emit a stench of decay that attracts rotjaws but repels most other predators. This scent also temporarily decreases the victim’s charisma to 3, an effect which lasts as long as the infection does.

Rotjaw Fever Variations

Roll 3d12 on the following table when a character catches rotjaw fever. If you roll the same number twice, don’t re-roll it; that just means this instance of the fever displays one less special quality than usual.

1 Completely unaffected by healing magic.

2 All disease related damage is permanent, even if the disease itself is cured.

3 Lose dexterity at the same rate as strength.

4 Lose two strength points every interval instead of one.

5 Periodic hallucinations (last for 1d10 minutes at every interval).

6 Constant hallucinations, unless the most recent save vs. disease succeeded.

7 Lose constitution at the same rate as strength.

8 Disadvantage to saving throws against rotjaw fever.

9 Deduct 1d4 maximum hit points every increment.

10 Full-body cramps that cause total paralysis for ten minutes every increment.

11 Increments and incubation time are half as long as usual.

12 Duration is twice as long as usual.

Dart Plants

by Anne Hufnagl from here

Dart plants are mobile plant creatures that appear in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Those who’ve stopped to dissect the dead ones claim to have found complete animal skeletons deep beneath these masses of bark and vine, suggesting a parasitic nature.

Colorful flowers grow at irregular intervals on the dart plant’s surface, in which they form tight clusters of dart-like thorns, each carrying thousands of microscopic spores. When the cluster is ready, the flower closes, forming an airtight tube that acts as a blowgun.

As the spores travel through the host creature’s bloodstream, they multiply and feed on the nutrients intended for the host’s own organs. Treat this as a disease that slowly drains the constitution of host creatures and eventually kills them, at which point the dart plants consume the corpse from the inside out.

This constitution drain occurs at a rate of one point every six hours (or one HP per HD, if it’s a monster and you’re playing an OSR game). PCs and important NPCs are entitled to a saving throw vs. poison at each interval to temporarily avoid the effect, but the infection continues.

If a creature is still alive after a week of this, its immune system naturally kills off the infection. Cure disease spells and potions remove the infection as normal, but they don’t restore the victim’s constitution score to its previous level. Survivors of dart plant infection can be identified by their unnaturally pale skin, scales, fur, or feathers.

Mature dart plants are just a little bit bigger than their host creatures were. They have the same number of hit dice (including character levels) and can move at half the original creature’s speed. Each dart plant only has so many clusters ready to fire at any given time, but they also have a slam attack that does damage dependent on the size of the dart plant. The number of readied dart clusters is also dependent on the size of the plant, and uses the same table the slam attack does.

small: 1d4

medium: 1d6

large: 2d6

huge: 3d6

gargantuan: 4d6

When the dart plant eats the brain of its victim, it also absorbs the creature’s memories and intelligence. Dart plants that grow out of sentient beings try to use this ability to gain the trust of the victims’ friends and companions. Even with less intelligent animals, this usually at least tells the dart plant where to look for more host creatures. The host creature’s personality has never been known to overpower the instincts of the plant itself.

One major limiting factor on the dart plant population is their high calorie intake. These plants’ unusually active lifestyle requires that they consume twice their own weight in animal matter per day or face starvation. Since their first dart clusters take a couple of weeks to form, many dart plants starve to death before they ever get a chance to procreate.

This meat is stored in whatever space is made reasonable by the animal’s anatomy — in most vertebrates, this would be the stomach and chest cavities. An internal root system digests the dart plant’s prey while the plant retains its ability to move around (provided that its prey is at least one size category smaller than it is). What this means to you is that if this area were to be sliced open from below, piles of bloody half-rotten body parts would come tumbling out like it was a piñata at a GWAR show.

Any flowers that still contain readied dart clusters can be distilled into a potent drug that causes intense hallucinations. The drug can be imbibed like a potion, or administered intravenously by applying it as a poison to an edged or piercing weapon. The affected individual must save vs. poison or hallucinate for two hours (if the imbiber is willing, no save is necessary), during which they are not in control of their actions. Roll 1d12 every half hour until the end of the effect to determine the nature of the hallucinations and the actions of the affected creature. After the hallucinations end, the character will feel nauseous and generally not up to adventuring, and every roll they make during the next six hours suffers from disadvantage or a -2 penalty or whatever, while attacks against the character are made with advantage or a +2 bonus.

1. You are one with the intertwining root systems below you, granting knowledge of a hidden location.

2. Everyone around you is delicious meat and you are carnivorous and hungry so so hungry.

3. You are a talking tree and will not willingly allow yourself to be moved, screaming if overpowered.

4. Decay is nutrition. You must seek and devour any decaying flesh, plant matter, or feces you can find.

5. You are a leaf on the wind. Wander aimlessly, fleeing from anything that tries to touch you.

6. The sun is life. Fight your way to the nearest direct sunlight and fight some more to stay there.

7. Everything is fractals. Stand in open-mouthed bewilderment, allow self to be led by hand.

8. You are a thistle bush and everyone is a goat. You have legs for some reason and need to get away right now.

9. Find some insects (there are always some insects and many of the ones on Exodus are dangerous) and rub them all over your genitals.

10. You are a fruit (hurr hurr shut up) that must find an animal to eat you so it can spread your seed when it shits.

11. Shit, termites. Madly clawing at yourself does 1d4 hp per turn unless you’re successfully restrained.

12. Something’s wrong with this dose. Begin the slow transformation into a dart plant as if shot by one.

The drug is incredibly dangerous and hardly ever any fun at all. However, the potential reward is legendary. Dart plant venom is commonly available in any place where adventurers gather, but usually not allowed to be taken there or anywhere other place where the recipient would pose a danger to the public. The venom’s desirability stems from tales of friends of friends who took it and experienced visions of fantastic treasures, the locations and some of the nature of which these brave fools awoke knowing.

In game terms, this means that if a player on dart plant venom rolls a 1 at any point during this horrible trip,* they must write down three elements of the location they saw. Everything else is up to you to fill in with whatever the hell you feel like, but the three statements the PC wrote down are 100% true. If a PC rolls a one more than once,** If multiple PCs are tripping together and both gain secret knowledge, they learn of different locations.

This shouldn’t exactly be a Monkey’s Paw scenario, where there’s no real benefit at all, because you want the PCs to actually try it at some point. Still, the temptation is too strong to not give in at least a little bit. Pick one statement out of every three; you still have to follow the letter of the law but it leaves out something important and dangerous. If a magic sword is demanded, you could decide that it’s cursed. If the players state that there aren’t any traps in the dungeon, you could make the entire dungeon a trap and turn escaping from it into a puzzle.

*There’s a 1/3 chance of this occurring, if you’re curious. 

**1/9 chance. There’s a 1/81 chance of someone getting to make nine demands about the same place, which is less than 2%.