When I first started digging into RuneQuest a
couple years ago, I learned that the reputation of the Pavis: Threshold to
Danger box set (and its companion, The Big Rubble – more on that tomorrow) verges
on the legendary.
Pavis is the major city in the region of Prax.
Its history starts centuries ago, when the God Learners founded the city of
Robcradle on the site. Giants living in the Rockwood Mountains far to the north
would send their infants down the Zora Fel river in cradles filled with
powerful magic, which the God Learners waylaid and plundered at Catchcradle
Island. The giants naturally took exception to this and laid waste to
Robcradle, founding their own massive city on the site. It was later re-conquered
by Pavis, who renamed it in his own honor. The original city changed hands
through war many times over the ensuing years, until it was left a ruin, now
known as the Big Rubble. Eventually, Dorasar, an exile from the kingdom of
Sartar, founded New Pavis outside the walls of the original city. When the
Lunar Empire conquered Prax, they also seized Pavis and now use the city as the
center of their civilizing influence.
This rich history, and the mix of competing
cultures and religions left in its wake, is the backdrop for the majority of
RuneQuest’s second edition and has, in some form, been included in most
subsequent editions of the game. The box features a detailed, building-by-building
guide, numerous important political figures and the classic scenario The
Cradle, in which PCs must defend the first giant cradle sent downriver in 700
years. The adventure became so big it wound up crowding out two other scenarios
listed on the back of the box. That necessitated Chaosium’s release of Big
Rubble later in 1983.
I intend to run all the classic RuneQuest
material as my next campaign and I can’t wait to get to Pavis…
Item: Cupcake Dojo. Eating one of its cupcakes grants a character ninja-like abilities for one day. Contains four chocolate (stealth), four vanilla (agility), and four strawberry (weapon proficiency).
dungeons and dragons always has great stuff. there’s a jug that you can use to create 2 gallons of mayonnaise at will, like it’s actually written in the dungeon masters guide can you believe that
things my party and i have received in the course of our campaign:
a rock of gravity detection. you hold it out and release it. if it falls, gravity is working.
a wand of magic missiles…and polymorph. i can hit anything i shoot at, but i’ll also turn into a random creature. i’ve been an alligator, an octopus, and a tiny demon so far.
a cloak of tongues. sounds like you’d learn random languages, yeah? NOPE, THINK AGAIN SUCKER. you get to taste anything for like 30 yards around. our halfling informed us we all taste gross.
2 different rings of invisibility–one makes me invisible, but only to myself. the other makes me marginally stealthier, but also makes me absolutely convinced that i’m completely invisible.
the thespian mask of duality. two personalities become mortal enemies within the wearer. the effect is permanent.
and finally, the shield of protection. when you use it in combat, it will use your body to shield itself from harm.
This is Escape from Innsmouth, by Kevin A.
Ross, the culmination of the Lovecraft Country sourcebooks detailing fictional
locales made famous in Lovecraft’s stories (the preceding volumes tackle
Arkham, Dunwich and Kingsport). Each describes a town practically house by
house – its residents of note, its landmarks, its secrets (and endless
adventure hooks). Each captures the town’s unique atmosphere – Kingsport’s
dreaminess, the isolated forelorness of Dunwich, the tension between the modern
world and the superstitious past in Arkham. As great as those books are, none
accomplish their goal as clearly as Escape from Innsmouth.
Based on Lovecrafts masterpiece “A Shadow Over
Innsmouth,” this is a fishing town in decay, largely abandoned, with half its
xenophobic residents actually half-human hybrids of the fish men – Deep Ones –
that live beneath Devil’s Reef of the coast. The deal between the two groups
was made generations ago through sorcery and lingers on as a curse of the
blood.
Because the town is so depopulated, there’s
room for a short two-part campaign that ranks among Call of Cthulhu’s very
best. The first part takes place after Lovecraft’s story and partly reenacts it
– investigators visit the town looking for a disappeared grocery clerk and wind
up having to escape when the hybrids come for them at night. The second acts
out the raid mentioned in Lovecraft’s story, where the federal government takes
military action against the town and its Deep One allies. The raid has multiple
objectives (with players shifting roles from their investigators to stock
soldiers) that occur concurrently, with the action cutting cinematically back
and forth. In terms of construction alone, it is a masterpiece.
The book’s art is fantastic as well, if
subdued. Jason Eckhardt has a special talent for drawing gloomy, abandoned
buildings. Those drawings provide much of the rich atmosphere for the first
half of the book. Meanwhile, John T. Snyder’s line work creates evocative
portraits and horrific action moments. It is one of Chaosium’s best looking
books.
One final note – if the plot of the adventure
sounds familiar, you probably played the Dark Corners of the Earth videogame,
which draws heavily on this material and is one of the best horror videogames
out there.
So apparently if you need to expand your tabletop gaming army, OrientalTrading.com where schools and libraries order chintzy plastic giveaways sells buckets of skeleton warriors, 48 for $5.99
So, I learned today that “Baptists and Bootleggers” is shorthand/slang for diametrically-opposed groups supporting the same thing for their own reasons. (Evangelical groups wanted to ban Sunday liquor sales for moral reasons, bootleggers wanted a bigger market.)
But all I could think was that “Baptists and Bootleggers” sounds like a fantastic RPG set in 1920s New Orleans.
lookashiny 