1 Reply by Libertad

(218 replies, posted in LotFP Gaming Forum)

I'm Libertad, I post on other message boards related to tabletop games.

Started reading Dungeons & Dragons books around 2000, got my first group together around 2004.  Played 3rd Edition immensely and still avidly consume it, played a little bit of 4th Edition.  Recently checked out 1st Edition AD&D and various old school retroclones.  Never played in or DM a game for an old school game yet.

I downloaded the lotfp rules some time ago, can't remember when, after browsing the Internet for retroclones.  I particularly enjoyed many of its new spins on traditional old-school gaming, such as thematic changes to spells, the Specialist class, and of course Summoning.

I purchased the Vornheim book after hearing many good things about it, and I got hooked on Weird Fantasy.

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2 Reply by Libertad

(5 replies, posted in LotFP Gaming Forum)

Dwarves

We do not talk of those we left outside, or of the Forlorn Path.  Ignore the moans and the wails, they won’t do harm to us as long as we maintain the barriers.  No, we can’t take up and leave, there’s not enough room in the tunnels.  Stop worrying, their closeness matters not as long as they can’t touch us!


Dwarves for the most part live underground in their massive cities.  Unlike the folk living in the world above, dwarven holds are cluttered and claustrophobic and restricted to a few key areas of interest.  New living space has to be carved out of the stone, and a cave-in on an important trade route or chokehold can literally cut people off from the rest of civilization.  Originally the dwarves had an international network or subterranean roads spanning their empire, but after it fell into decline individual cities have neither the time nor resources to reclaim it.

It is said that an apocalyptic event reduced the dwarves to their sorry state of affairs.  Historical treatises and legends claim that the gods abandoned the dwarves for their impiety.  City-states warred against each other in defiance of the imperial family, holds took up the worship of forbidden entities and practiced sorcery, and a series of devastating earthquakes buried millions under countless tons of rock and stone.  The dwarves barely survived this near-extinction, and their society never recovered.  The truth as to the empire’s decline might lie somewhere amid all these tales.

Today most dwarves toil endlessly just to survive, the walls of their holds closed off to the outside world.  Many city walls erected during the apocalypse were designed to quarantine entire neighborhoods and tunnels afflicted by strange happenings.  Soldiers in charge of maintaining these walls often speak of hearing unearthly echoes and wails of beings not of this world.  Sometimes these ghastly moans permeate the entire city, the dwarves long learned to tune these sounds out lest they go mad.  A few believe that the tall tales and ghost stories are myths and fables concocted by the nobles in order to keep their subjects afraid and inside the holds.  Sometimes dwarves seek to venture beyond the walls.  These souls are known as “the mad.”  Quite a lot are them are sane, tired of life in the holds or criminals and outcasts with nothing to lose; but a rare few do heed the calls of voices in their heads to join the entities lurking in the world below.  It’s not uncommon for a dwarven settlement to be surrounded by vast stretches of ruined city, where scavengers and monsters lurk in the darkness.

The leaders of holds are little more than well-armed associations of people, as anybody incapable of backing their position with martial power during the apocalypse fell to the hammers and axes of bandits and insurrectionists.  Many are little more than bandits and tyrants desperate on maintaining their isolationist city-states.  Due to long periods of isolation and the trauma brought about by the fall of the empire, dwarven societies and governments have a tendency to embrace various forms of extremism.  Militaristic police states, communities enslaved to dark beings who provide protection in exchange for servitude, and utterly stubborn survivors clinging to their desolate and barren ruins of homes are but a few of the more grim possibilities for dwarven holds. 

One particularly frightening example is the city of Dal’Thurok, a subterranean island surrounded by a foul-smelling fungal colony.  It is said that the smell keeps monsters at bay, but requires a diet of flesh to maintain its odor.  So the dwarves cast their unwanted, their criminals, and those who can’t or won’t work into the pit “for the good of the many,” where the fungi’s acidic secretions burn past flesh and bone.  All of Dak’Thurok’s inhabitants have their noses cut off at birth to tolerate the noisome atmosphere, and are marked by horizontal stitches where their noses should be.

One of the few things dwarves take pride and joy in is their physical appearance.  Men love their beards as a sign of health and virility, and go to great lengths to dye, decorate, and comb it into myriad colors and shapes.  The women frequently sport ink tattoos, sometimes covering their entire bodies in their later years.  This is based upon an imperial tale of Haragha the Great, a shield maiden who marked the names of her comrades and her military victories upon her skin with runic symbols.  Tattooing is a near-language: each line and shape is meant to communicate a specific ideal, achieved goal, or tale to create a life story of sorts.  The arms and face are favored locations due to their obviousness, and range the gamut from runic alphabets to pictures of various creatures and legendary beings.

There are many dwarven communities living on the surface, the descendants of refugees.  They have not adjusted well to “endless hole above,” and stick to caves, burrows, hillside houses and other such places.  They believe that the sun is the eye of a malevolent being, and cover themselves head to toe in dark blue ceremonial robes believed to ward off scrying and other forms of magical detection.  Their refusal to take it off outdoors gives dwarves a distinctive appearance among human communities.  The close-minded and ignorant (of which there are many) are all too eager to assign tall tales and fabricated stories about the “shifty short folk.”

Adventure Ideas:

The Imperial Throne: The PCs get their hands on a pre-imperial map showing the location of the dwarven capital.  This place holds a great cultural significance to the dwarves, and many holds will do everything in their power to reclaim it.  It is said that the city is blocked off from outside contact, possibly by whatever foul force was responsible for the collapse of the empire.  Riches, the respect or enmity of an entire race, political power for whoever rules it, and potentially unleashing the trapped horror within are but a few possible ramifications of reclaiming the city.

They Came From the Depths: A dwarven warlord leads a team of brigands to the surface.  Making use of underground tunnel networks and pit traps, his legion strikes at night into towns, coming up from cellars and graveyards to terrorize the populace.  They kill occupants of homes and steal their valuables before returning to the depths.  The city watch has captured a prisoner, who knows the location of a nearby tunnel.  The humans are ill-trained to venture underground; fortunately for them the PCs are experienced dungeon delvers, and they still got enough money to offer a reward to take care of the warlord once and for all!


Whelp, that's it.  Hope you enjoyed it.

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3 Reply by Libertad

(5 replies, posted in LotFP Gaming Forum)

Elves

I apologize for my deception, fellow humans, but I assure you that my intent was anything but malicious.  You gladly benefited from my magicks and advice all these years, saving your lives multiple times and the same to me.  So why do you resist my gifts now?


Many eons ago, entities from another world seeded the world with giant organic monoliths.  Our world proved intensely fascinating to their alien minds, so much so that they reshaped nature itself in the areas they claimed.  The beasts and trees of the earth served as but tools for a greater work of art, and entities both beautiful and malign sprang from their experiments.  Known as the Fair Folk, mortal interaction and resistance proved fruitless as crusading zealots and cultist worshipers alike had their minds broken and reformed to further their incomprehensible goals.

The Fair Folk vanished just as suddenly, retreating to parts unknown while leaving their handiwork behind.  The elves were one of these many creations.  Today they live within the giant seed-like monoliths, waiting, working, and studying the legacy of the fey.  They are in the dark regarding nature of their former masters, their accumulated lore consisting of tomes scribbled in insane reveries, incomprehensible art of colors and visions unseen by mortal eyes, and vague proclamations of prophecies by the sorcerous upper class whose words are filled with half-truths and carefully chosen lies.
Elves live much the same as humans and other demi-humans.  Most families have a chosen trade or profession to benefit the community and pass their skills on to apprentices and their offspring.  Their rulers are a select breed of individuals skilled in the magical arts, picked by the Fair Folk to oversee the community.  Almost all significant elf communities are based around the seed monoliths, which contain plenty of root-like passages and hollow chambers for living space and travel.  What cannot be grown or fashioned within the monoliths is created in houses outside.  From a non-elf’s perspective, elven towns appear as a circular gathering of dwellings with a giant seed-like monolith (several hundred feet tall) towering above it all.

Elves as a whole find humans and other demi-humans intensely interesting.  They view their own society as enlightened and gifted, and wish to share their fruits with the other civilizations of the world.  This is what the Fair Folk wanted, after all.  Most humans, however, are fearful and skeptical of the elves, raised upon generations of fear against heathens, magic, and the strange people who wield it.  Opportunistic humans seeking their secrets, as well as the precious few who accept elves into their communities, sometimes change in strange ways before joining the collective and becoming elves themselves.

It is not known how humans transition into elves, and the myriad folktales and eyewitness accounts provide contradictory and exaggerated information.  Some say that the elves steal human children from their cribs in the dead of night, others say that those who eat food offered by an elf are forever bound to their faerie realms.  But not all who accept an elf’s aid get transformed or feel compelled to travel to the monoliths.  This inexact and rare occurrence leads many to hate and fear the elves, but is rare enough that more than a few humans brush off the tales as silly superstition.

Elves overall have a more tolerant view of magic due to regular exposure of it.  Even the least among them can readily learn the read magic spell, so even if they can’t directly channel it they can at least understand it better.  Elves both respect and fear the power of magic in equal amounts, knowing better than any mortals the horrors it is capable of in the wrong hands.  Magic has not led to a new golden age or the downfall of civilization (yet) for the elves: it just became a new tool of oppression for the powerful.  The ruling classes of monolith settlements alternatively inspire obsequiousness (“we fear their power, we must not cross them”) and rebellion (“such an elf is not worthy or sane enough to be trusted with this power”).  The sorcerers restrict access to their tomes and artifacts to maintain their power monopoly, selecting only the worthiest (read: loyal and manipulated) of candidates into their inner circle.  Oftentimes they might not even know themselves the full extent of their magical power, and most of their items remain locked in the most secure of chambers.

Adventuring elves are usually outcasts from their society for crimes real or imagined, missionaries seeking to spread his civilization’s “gifts” to the impoverished masses, and scholars intent on discovering any clues as to the Fair Folks’ disappearance and destination.

Adventure Ideas:

They Return! One of the Fair Folk has returned to this plane and made its presence known to a monolith community.  The elves, formerly gregarious and friendly, cut themselves off from all outside contact beyond theft and raiding.  They steal nothing of great value, only esoteric things clerics and magic-users will recognize as components for a ritual spell.  Giant plant roots slowly emerge from the seed monolith, followed by oddly warped beasts of nature surely touched by magic.  If the ritual is not stopped soon, something terrible is sure to happen!

Vara Savin’s School of Magic: Some time ago, an elf traveler known as Vara Savin took orphans and unwanted children across the region into his arms with no payment expected.  His intent is clear if asked: “I will teach these young minds the secrets of magic.”  His manor sits in an isolated grove, and it’s been years since anybody last heard of them.  It’s known that Vara Savin treated his adopted children as both servants and pupils, sending them off to remote towns and dangerous regions in search of eldritch secrets.  The PCs meet one of his students in town, now a young teenager.  He needs well-armed people experienced with forbidden, blasphemous lore to save his ‘siblings’ from a dire fate.  The school is bound to hold many priceless scrolls and trinkets possessed of great power.  Do they accept?

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4 Topic by Libertad

(5 replies, posted in LotFP Gaming Forum)

So I posted some revised versions of the classic fantasy elf/dwarf/halfling trio on some other boards.  I felt that the classic presentations were ill-suited to Weird Fantasy as-is, so I redesigned their societies with a flair for the macabre.

Halflings

This is how you mend clothes, Casie.  This is how you know when the pie is ready to be taken out of the oven.  This is how you know which plants are safe to eat.  And this is how you use hemlock to poison any troublesome big folk.

Halflings are a mostly rural folk of farmers.  They have not been known to have any expansive empires, storehouses of treasure, or any other grandiose displays of power and wealth.  They do their best to keep out of sight and out of mind in the world outside their communities, discouraging contact with the ‘big folk’ beyond what is absolutely necessary.  Even the halfling merchants take pains to conceal their tracks, forging new identities and creating half-truths and stories of their kind to keep outsiders in the dark.

While they put up a front of being courteous and unassuming, the reality is that halflings are deathly afraid of the world.  They tell stories to their children of what happened to those foolish enough to venture into the dark and forlorn wilderness outside their shires, of the grisly fates of halfling communities who lived among the humans and elves.  The world is a cruel place, and the big folk are all too happy to dominate those smaller and weaker.  The specifics are lost to history, but it has happened time and time again that the halflings aren't about to give them another chance.  Open warfare is impractical, so they rely upon more subtle affairs to keep people out of their shires.

Halfling culture is very insular and collectivist.  It is taught that every person is responsible not just to their immediate family, but their community as a whole.  The society is shame-based, meaning that productive and loyal members are rewarded with love, affection, helping hands, and compliments.  Those who are lazy, rebellious, or otherwise fall outside their assigned roles have this affection withdrawn.  Compliments turn into passive-aggressive insults, nobody has time to help, and repeat offenders are shunned and ignored in almost every aspect.  Nobody talks to, listens, or helps them in any way, except to chastise and gossip about them within earshot as though they weren’t there (“I can’t imagine why Casie is being so selfish and rebellious.  I thought his parents raised him better than this!”).  The shunning ends when they redeem themselves in the community’s eyes with good work and a sincere apology.  And those who still resist are sent to ‘leave’ on an errand, or just disappear.

Almost every halfling from birth is trained in the arts of deception: how to alter their gait to evade trackers, how to conjure up new dialect and slang to confound others, how to be polite and ingratiating to outsiders without coming off as ‘too nice.’  When patrols and scouts spot outsiders heading into town, they send a message back to the community, usually the elders or a town council.  Word spreads fast, and everyone gets ready to adopt their new roles and duties to deal with the intruders.  Fellow halflings are given the benefit of the doubt, but others are potential dangers.  Bandits, refugees, travelers, it doesn’t matter: all of them are unsuitable for living in the shires, and cannot remain if their seemingly idyllic rural life is to be preserved.

‘The big folk’ are treated courteously by the halflings, who come off as more than a little fearful of their size.  Villagers within earshot casually insert ‘news of the day’ and tales relating to strange goings-on, disappearances, of wicked folk and monsters said to be lurking in the shadows of the night.  When night comes, the halflings enact a series of strange noises, costumes, and knocking over objects, not so much as to be overt but enough to make the outsiders worried.  Ideally, the outsiders will leave and not return, spreading tales of the strange hamlet as a warning to others.  Goody two shoes and would-be heroes are hailed by the community and given free food and lodging, only to be poisoned and murdered at a time most convenient.

Halfling shires, as a result, have a reputation in human lands as a rural places besieged by weirdness and monsters hidden in the dark.  Most humans feel sorry for the halflings, having to live in constant fear.  Bad things which happen to humans in halfling lands are always blamed upon the monsters.  “You knew the risks,” people always say.

Halfling adventurers are outcasts, usually those too individualistic, anti-social, or shameful to continue living in the deceptive, roundabout daily drama of shire life.  Those who do not leave of their own accord are often sent on an incredibly difficult ‘errand’ by the town (which is almost impossible to fulfill).  Even outcast halflings are loathe to reveal their people’s secrets to outsiders unless absolutely necessary.  They know that such action will almost surely lead to the oppression and destruction of his people, and much more prejudice and distrust on an individual level as a result.

Adventure Ideas:

Something’s Not Right: When PCs travel through halfling villages, emphasize the sereneness.  Farmers appear happy, food is good and plentiful, and everyone’s polite and unafraid of the heavily-armed and strange people traveling around town.  Mention something off every so often:

A child playing ball outside accidentally calls his mother by her real name and not her ‘outsider title’, and the rest of the family is taken aback before regaining their composure.

The shopkeeper just happens to have a new set of clothes on sale sized for ‘big folk.’  Down the road outside of town, a human-proportioned horse-drawn cart lies abandoned.

An Acceptable Loss: Monsters are terrible and foul, but they do have a knack for scaring people away.  A foul beast’s lair is located near a halfling shire, and the community is blessed with few outsiders as a result.  Problem is, the halflings believe that the monster feeds upon flesh, and sacrifice one of their own every year in an elaborate festival to the ‘sacred cave.’  The town holds a lottery to see who must go, and must forevermore leave the community for their new home.  The halfling chosen managed to escape, and now he’s on the run from his own friends and family.  He runs into the PCs on the road while in pursuit.

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