Black Spaghetti Hack: Set-up & The Fool’s Cup Session 01
THE PITCH:
A spaghetti fantasy game that mixes For Love and Gold, They Call Me Trinity, and The Good, the Bad, the Ugly.
THE SETTING:
The Republic of San Uzzano, a small republic being fought over by two opposing armies (one army is loyal to the distant Emperor Joe, the other army is loyal to an exiled family called the Swansickles). The players are lazy ne’er-do-well mercenaries, nominally on Emperor Joe’s side, trying to avoid getting killed. They discover the location of a legendary fortune in gold and that’s the quest. I pitched it as lasting about 5-10 sessions, although I think 10-15 will be more likely.
THE RULES:
The Black Sword Hack (but modded to suit the setting), Fleaux! (monsters), Brancalonia (mostly for the vibes), and Under Hill, By Water (bits of its light-hearted tone). About session 02 I added the laundry mechanic.
THE TABLE STYLE:
We play weekly online for 3 hours a session with the same players every session. They are more a narrative shenanigans group than a tactical wargame group. This is relevant in making adventures. I want to avoid TPKs and have each session feel as self-contained as a mid-80s detective show except with more forward momentum on an over-arching plot.
THE CHARACTERS
Don Hector de Madera: A noble marionette matador (is highly flammable).
Nicolo: A knavish gifted inventor (has a firelance).
Ha’Des: A foolish malebranche duelist (can breathe fire).
SESSION 1
The party were broke so they chased a pig in the hopes of catching it and then selling it elsewhere. The pig ran into an abandoned building. The PCs followed and the floor of the building gave out beneath them. They fell into a crypt. It turned out the ruined building was once a chapel. In the crypt there were two semi-recent dead bodies. The pig runs amok. Ha’Des and Don Hector search the bodies. They find a gold-plated cup and a letter from one of the army commanders. At this point swarms of rats begin spilling out of the walls. Mayhem ensues. The pig gets caught and dropped. Rats get burned by fire. Don Hector tumbles down a staircase. A door finally gets opened, and the party with the pig find their way back up to the surface again. They appraise the cup and letter.
The letter is an order that indicates the location of “The Fool’s Cup” believed to be the key that leads to the lost treasure of local folklore hero Thomas the Abbot. The cup is decorated with fools and has letters etched on the bottom. The players realize they’re holding the cup mentioned and realize it’s a puzzle.
(Player caution at this point was nearly making me scream, because this thing was the macguffin the campaign was meant to hinge on and the paranoid play style of OSR games meant the players were initially too scared to interact with the item.)
Player puzzles are a problem and in this case I wasn’t going to let them roll to solve it, but I also wasn’t going to punish them by them not being able to solve it. I told them if they solve it they’ll level up, otherwise they saw noted peripatetic sage-knave, Gwardo Izznardo, in a nearby town and he could solve the puzzle for them.
The party tried to solve the puzzle, but only managed to discover the cup’s magical properties (it transforms any liquid poured into it into a very potent alcoholic beverage). After five minutes of not getting anywhere close to the answer, they opted to seek out Gwardo. They reached town, sold the pig, and settled in the local tavern to wait for Gwardo Izznardo to arrive.
Here’s the cup and puzzle if you want to give it a shot:
“Drink And Be Merry” is written around the cup’s outer rim.
On the cup are 3 jesters standing in the rain. The leftmost stands on one leg, one hand is behind his back. His other hand is beside his head. He has two fingers pointed up to make the devil’s horns. The middle fool is upside down doing a hand stand with one hand. He waves the other hand in the air, holding up five fingers. The rightmost fool holds a platter in one hand with three goblets on it. She holds up three fingers and has a wide smile on her face. Scratched into the bottom of the cup is a rectangle of letters. A snake-like creature covered in hairs makes a border around the rectangle.
Good luck!
THE LAUNDRY MECHANIC
So I added a laundry mechanic to my Brancalonia* game. It goes like this: every player has a 4-segment clock that tracks clean to filthy. When you’re clean, everything is fine. When you’re filthy, you have disadvantage on social skill checks. Long distance traveling, failing some actions, and combat make you dirty. Taking a bath, cleaning your clothes at a river makes you clean. Every settlement has a laundry/bath house where you can clean-up for a coin or two.
Why am I doing this?
Brancalonia is in part inspired by spaghetti westerns and those had plenty of bath tub scenes. Mechanically, it’s another stat for players to worry about and spend money to maintain. For the GM, it’s a neat way of adding complications that are easy to resolve. A failed investigate roll? That’s a tick on your laundry tracker as you take a book off the shelf unleashing a cloud of dust that gets all over your clothes, but you find the letter you were searching for tucked between its pages.
I think this will work and be fun because the campaign is temporary. When I pitched the game I said it would last about 8 sessions, and my players, saints that they are, will put up with my nonsense for a time. I also think the mechanic works to reinforce the down and out in a hot dusty and dirty landscape that Brancalonia evokes. In a civilized hard scrabble region people would be simultaneously broke yet finely dressed. Adventurers in particular would straddle that line, being desperate for cash and vainglorious. It also provides new rewards. Sturdy clothes offer you 6-segments. Fine clothes only two or three, but might give advantage on a check. It grounds the game in the everyday in a discernible way. That might not be the goal with every game, but it is my goal with this one.
This isn’t without precedent.
The game Road Warden has an appearance mechanic where you need to make sure you maintain a certain level of cleanliness. It adds mechanical depth to interactions and enhances the setting.
Besides, who hasn’t gone camping for days and wanted nothing more than to get home and take a hot shower?
(*I’m not playing Brancalonia as written and am instead using a modded version of the Black Sword Hack that I’ve taken to calling the Black Spaghetti Hack.)
Yesterweird 