Black Spaghetti Hack Session 06: The Road to Testaccio
The party flees San Spotello, fearing retaliation from crime boss Don Danny, after they, the party, destroyed Don Danny’s daughter’s wedding cake. They know they need to cross the river to reach San Basel, where the treasure’s located, but aren’t sure which route to take.
To the west is the city of San Uzzano. Unfortunately, the road between Spotello and Uzzano are crawling with mercenary forces, and one of these will want to recruit the party. The party, not wanting to be recruited, decides against that.
So north or south?
It’s possible the witches in the southern marshes will have a way to get the party across the river. But, witches being witches are scary, so the party decides against this. This leaves the north route through the Butchers Wood and Paleface Mountains on a rumored smuggler’s road that’s now home to ogres.
Not great choices, but the decision gets made and it’s the north route. So, off the party goes. They encounter a farmer and buy some food from him and try to learn what they can about the road ahead. The farmer dispenses rumors:
Monte Luca is the next town on the road and supposedly some children there have been afflicted by a curse there. The farmer’s not sure, but tells a story about an ancestor of the current ruler having had congress with a snake.* And if that wasn’t bad enough, Monte Luca’s other notable feature is that it has an ancient hedge maze ruin near it.
Besides that, the party asks the farmer if the local sausage makers are actually cannibals.
This is one of those bits of information that’s stuck in the party’s attention more than I would’ve guessed. The farmer says he doesn’t think they’re cannibals, but that they may work with local crime bosses disposing of bodies.
At this point, the party realizes it’s nearly nightfall and they need to find a place to stay. Ha’des asks if the farmer will put them up for the night. The farmer agrees. Ha’Des overpays in silver, and the farmer says he’ll rent them a bath tub. They party bathes and sleeps in a barn. Nothing happens. Morning comes. The party sets off. They figure they can reach Monte Luca by nightfall if there’s no incident and fortunately for them there isn’t.
The one encounter they have is with a group of kids who tell the party about:
- Rivers of rats seen going west three nights ago.
- Bolli Bentpot was attacked by Don Danny’s goons.
- Don Danny is going to kill whoever ruined his daughter’s wedding cake and is heading to San Uzzano to find them.
The kids start asking questions back to the party. Don Hector fails to convince them that they’re just common travelers. Nico and Ha’Des start getting uncomfortable at all the interest from the kids, and just set off down the road. Don Hector follows, and the party is now moving fast. They want to get as far away as they can before anyone realizes where they’ve gone.
The next encounter isn’t until they’re almost in Monte Luca. As they near the town, the party sees a group hammering a sign into the ground saying: PLAGUE! KEEP OUT!
The party thinks this is a bluff to cover for the cursed kids story they heard from the farmer, and Nico tells the townspeople that Don Hector is a doctor. Don Hector leans into the part and the townspeople are convinced. They tell the party to find Countess Mathilda. The party reaches town and finds the streets empty and the houses shut up. Don Hector shouts “Hello!” They hear a door slam and movement in houses but no shout back. The party enters the town square.
Laid out before them in the middle of the town square is a long table heaped with food stuffs.
Adventurers go into adventurer mode: Ha’Des goes to the table. Nico sneaks across the square to the far side. Don Hector goes to the nearest door and knocks on it. A voice replies: “Get inside you idiot!” The door opens. A loud cawing comes from above the buildings.
Don Hector goes inside the building right as the sky turns black with crows. In the midst of the crows are two human bird hybrids**. They start singing over Nico’s head. Nico manages to resist their charm spell and force his way into a nearby building. Ha’Des however gets caught in the square as the crows descend. Injury ensues, but Ha’Des manages to get inside a building. Nico manages to resist another song (using his earplugs). And Don Hector gets told how the Countess’s (awful) children got cursed and brought this flock of evil crows upon the town. Ha’Des learns that at the rate the crows are eating, the town will be out of food within a few weeks.
Every one waits for the crows and monster children to eat. Once done they fly off, and the townspeople emerge to clean the filth splattered town square. Guards arrive, and they and the townspeople escort the party to the Countess, still believing Don Hector is a doctor.
* Rumors tend to be a mix of relevant and irrelevant lore. The snake story and the sausage makers are background details that never got investigated. The sausage makers might have become recurring enemies. Whether they were cannibals or not I will never tell!
** Straight-up harpies, but I made them cursed children that the party wants to avoid harming despite the harassment.
Black Spaghetti Hack Session 05: Bolli Bentpot’s Bistro
After the tollhouse battle…
The party spends the night with the mercenaries, and it’s a chance to divulge some regional lore. In this case it’s a mercenary singing a song about a witch who lives in the marshes to the south east and has a tendency to turn unpleasant trespassers into animals. Meanwhile, Toad-Faced Larry and his crew continue to give the stink-eye to the party.
Morning comes and people split up. The party joins the group heading to the nearby city of San Spotello. This includes another malebranche who tries to strike up a friendship with Ha’Des. The two get along fine, but split up when they reach San Spotello. That town is divided between Swansickle and Emperor Joe forces with a lot of brawls, but so far no battles fought in the streets. They also learn Count Chico managed to survive his house explosion, and they also start to hear tales of great rivers of rats moving across the countryside.
The party’s in town to find a chef named Bolli Bentpot who owns a bistro. They hire a tout to guide them, and before long they reach Bolli’s place. The party sits down in the dining area, but gathers that Bolli and his chefs are busy prepping for some function. Nicolo and Ha’Des distract the host and learn Bolli is prepping for the wedding feast of Don Danny’s daughter. (Don Danny being a local crime lord.) Don Hector takes a chance and heads to the back to try and find Bolli. Bolli’s easy enough to find. He’s working on a wedding cake. Don Hector starts asking where San Basel was located. Bolli’s about to tell, when there’s a commotion back in the front of the house.
One of the other customers has revealed themselves to be a former cafe owner driven out of business by Bolli and now he’s going to have his revenge. He’s gotten his hands on a fairy stone, and with this he unleashes a magic storm in this cafe. This of course makes all the plates assemble into cutlery golems and all the food in the place come alive. This includes the wedding cake Bolli’s working on.
Nicolo and Ha’Des do their best to keep the cutlery golems at bay, while Don Hector dodges evil cupcakes and the monstrous cake to grab Bolli and drag him from the bistro. The cakes and foodstuff follow, collecting more food stuffs now from surrounding houses. It grows into a giant blob and starts spewing cutlery and sausages as a breath weapon. Nicolo and Ha’Des harass the thing from the rear, but they never get too close since neither of them wants to get cake splattered and have to do laundry.
Don Hector drags Bolli to a guard tower. The guards ain’t happy to see them, but can’t do anything because soon the food golem’s in the place attacking. Don Hector and Bolli flee higher up the tower. The cake monster starts climbing the side. Don Hector and Bolli reach the top of the tower and have no where left to go. Don Hector tries to drop some rocks on the monster, but does minimal damage. The creature reaches the top of the tower. Nico and Ha’Des watch from the bottom of the tower. Don Hector looks around and sees a full water cistern in an alley below. He grabs Bolli and leaps off the tower. The creature leaps off too.
Death saves and Dex checks get made.
Don Hector and Ha’des pass. Bolli, Cake Beast, and Nico fail.
SPLAT
Ha’Des and Don Hector see if it’s possible to revive Bolli or Nico. Fortunately, both manage to recover. Bolli tells the party San Basel was located across the river to the north west. He also tells them that Don Danny won’t be happy to hear how they ruined his daughter’s wedding cake. The party decides it best to leave town, battered and filthy as they are. They grab food and clean outfits in the market but don’t even pause to change.
Night starts to fall.
Now all they need to decide is how they’re going to get across the river.
- This whole adventure was inspired by the polenta golem in illustration in the Brancalonia main book.
Black Spaghetti Hack Session 04: Tollhouse Battle
And we’re back to it…
When last we left our knaves they had just learned the whereabouts of a great treasure and fled town ahead of a nobleman’s wrath. Their plan’s to find a chef who can tell them where the village with the treasure’s located. The party has the village name, but not it’s location. They also know the village was famous for its wine, hence a chef being the one likely to recognize the name.
I gave them three options of chefs and they headed towards the middlemost one. As they set out they gossiped with some farmers and learned some current events.
- Count Chico’s house blew up with Count Chico in it. (The party figured as much.)
- There are soldiers on the road ahead.
- The soldiers could be avoided by going over a hill, but a witch lives on the hill and is not always nice to strangers. Or the party could avoid the soldiers by cutting through a marsh, but that would bring them close to a reclusive family of
possible cannibalssausage makers.
(My rule of thumb’s been to give three options at each point, and while they’re not all combat, I try to make them all interesting and eventful. But, yeah, this whole give the party three options, then detail the one they choose thing is my loop for GM prep.)
The party opted to try and bluff their way past the soldiers and continued down the road.
They find a discarded pack near a sign post and Nicolo’s ambush sense starts tingling. The party approaches the pack with caution, and it opens to reveal a marionette with a crossbow. Other crossbow bearing mercenaries appear, including Toad-Faced Larry and his crew. The party tries to bluff, but learns they won’t be able to move farther south anyways because there’s a battle brewing for a toll house a short ways to the south. The marionette recruits them to his force and away they all march with Toad-faced Larry asking why the party wanted to talk to Gwardo Iznardo so bad. The party ignores his questions.
At the tollhouse, they see the Swansickles have mustered their own force, and Nicolo notices Tall Hat among some knights on the opposite side. There’s a small stream and bridge with the toll house across the bridge. The objective of the battle is to claim and hold the toll house.
(I ratcheted up the farcical nature of Renaissance warfare and make the military battles more drunken football matches than actual warfare. At least at first, later things change… but the party doesn’t know how or why yet.)
Battlelines form. A horn blows. The battle begins!
The enemy knights charge. Arrows fly. A band of brawl monks charges the knights. The bridge gets blocked by bodies. Don Hector leaps into the ditch to ford the stream. The dice hate him and he face plants. Ha’Des and Nicolo use their flame throwing abilities to good effect. The knights are routed and flee, Tall Hat with them. Nicolo curses. Don Hector makes it across the river. Ha’Des burns more things and pins down the enemy archers. Don Hector reaches the toll house. Ha’Des sees an opening on the bridge and sprints across. Nicolo takes cover and starts prepping his sleep box. Don Hector and Ha’Des defeat the enemy troops in the house. Nicolo’s box puts a large number of combatants to sleep.
The battle ends. The party’s side has won!
The party decides to spend the night with the mercenaries in the tollhouse. The party also bathes in the river, and I think this was when we developed soap landlordism with Ha’Des (I think) renting their soap to the others.
During the night, the party keeps ignoring Toad-face Larry, but gets more intel about the region.
- An old smuggler’s road crosses the river a few days north, but the woods around it are home to a band of ogres.
- In the south, the witches seem to be having some dispute over whether they should take part in the war.
The monks and the knights hate each other because the knights took over the monks’ monastery. - All around San Uzzano the armies are skirmishing, but the party should be able to make San Spotillo (the town with the chef they’re looking for) without a problem.
So, in the morning, that’s exactly what the party decides to do.
Temple of the Rafter Wights
Check out my itch page for a new adventure, Towers of the Rafter Wights:
The Scour: a once fertile valley destroyed by the wrath of an angry god. The god’s anger was so great that even now, centuries after their ascension, their wrath remains. First, in a corrosive mist that blankets the floor of the valley. Second, in the rafter wights, the once worshiped eternal godbirds, now doomed to a cycle of death and resurrection for all eternity by their negligent creator.
Once a century, the rafter wights rise from the valley floor, reborn from the dust of the Scour’s former cities. On the days of their rebirth, the wights rise above the mist before the sunlight sets them aflame. It is a marvelous sight that attracts birdwatchers and tourists from across the Metroscape. Now the time of rebirth approaches again, and one ornithologist hopes to capture a rafter wight and return home with it… alive.
Towers of the Rafter Wights is a birdwatching wilderness adventure, featuring a toxic mist-choked valley and doomed godbirds. It is written for Into the Odd, but can be placed in any weird fantasy setting.
Download it here: https://yesterweird.itch.io/towers-of-the-rafter-wights
Black Spaghetti Hack Session 03: Goodfellows Mount
Last adventure, the party climbed up a hill. This adventure, the party climbed down a hill. In between, they had lunch.
The party reached the house at the top of the hill and after some boot-quaking, Ha’Des called out a “hello” and received a “come on in” by way of reply. So the party did, and walked right into the goodfellows playing cards before lunch.
An experiment:
To make the goodfellows (thuggish fae pixies) somewhat weird I had them be the characters from the Under Hill, By Water game we played. The goodfellows are meant to be game logic defying creatures. At least that’s the read I get on them from Brancalonia book. Since this was the same group, I thought it would be funny if the NPCs talked to the players by referencing their characters from other games. This got a chuckle, but not much else. Instead of approaching them as funhouse ride, the party viewed them as a puzzle to be solved. Don Hector noped out after a few interactions. Ha’Des played it straight. Nico tried to figure out how the magic “worked” in a mechanistic way. All that said they still kept to their mission which was to convince a goodfellow to come back to town with them.
Nico and Ha’Des did much of the negotiating. Don Hector feigned sleepiness and went to explore a backroom. After some finagling, Nico developed a rapport with the goodfellows and Ha’Des offered to make lunch for everyone. Meanwhile, Don Hector came upon a horrible icon depicting the goodfellows’ grandfather (a horrible trickster fae the players encountered in a different campaign). As he reacted to the sight, the floor swung down, sending him tumbling down the mountain along. Fortunately, he landed in a haywain at the base of the hill and not the dung heap. He then set out to climb the hill again, taking the road this time.
Back up at the top, Ha’Des is doing his best to cook with no ingredients beside water and a potato. Nico continues to chat with the goodfellows, and they start asking him questions about his time with the fae. (Nico spent his childhood working in a faerie workshop.) In particular, the goodfellows reminded him of this horrible Ice Queen figure he encountered one time when he tried to escape the faerie lands. Nico’s not happy to be reminded. Some more ingredients got found, but Ha’Des convinced the goodfellows the greatest ingredient in any soup was love. They buy this as the soup gets served.
Don Hector learned that taking the road to the top of the hill doesn’t work and found himself at the bottom again. He headed through the brambles and encountered the donkey again. This time, he tried to rob the donkey and ended up at the bottom of the hill again. So, he decided to wait to see if the others succeed.
Finally, Nico and Ha’Des managed to convince a goodfellow to come with them down the mountain. The fellow climbed in the cooking pot. At the bottom of the hill, a disgruntled Don Hector greeted them. Also, they noticed the goodfellow’s pot had begun ticking. Realizing this can’t be good, they hurried to bring the pot to Count Chico. The goodfellow appeared. Count Chico’s delighted. He pays the party and turns over Gwardo Izznardo. The party hurries out of town, but not before stocking up on soap for the road. As they’re leaving, they heard a loud explosion come from Count Chico’s manor house.
At last, Gwardo Izznardo demanded they stop for the night and reveal what they wanted with him. The party tried to keep the cup secret, but Gwardo sees through all that. He promised he won’t betray the players if they will look after him in his old age. They agreed, and Gwardo deciphered the riddle.
“Church Yard San Basle.”
“Where’s San Basle?” The party asked.
Gwardo didn’t know, except that it was on the other side of the River. He does remember there was a legendary wine with that name and maybe they should talk to a chef to learn where exactly it came from. Gwardo named three places where they might find a chef. The party discussed which might be best, opted for one, and set off.
Next adventure, on the road again!
Crypt of the Muscle Mummy: Touch the Void, You Turkeynecks!
Granted immortality in the long-distant Primeval Eons, the Muscle Mummies have returned from the depths of time. Now, by using state-of-the-art isolation technology, meditative void techniques, and body-numbing repetitive exercises, along with the traditional twin engines of guilt and shame, they offer to cultivate the void mind within anyone!
Including you!
Only by honing the body as well as the mind in the void’s furnace can anyone hope to achieve immortality. A hard task. But don’t worry, our personal trainers are here to help!
Crypt of the Muscle Mummy is an adventure location featuring undead fitness coaches. It can be placed in any metropolitan fantasy setting. You can find it here on my itch page at https://yesterweird.itch.io/crypt-of-the-muscle-mummy
Musical inspiration from the Novas.
Black Spaghetti Hack Session 02: Riddle Me Wrong
Last adventure, the party found a cup holding the key to a vast treasure. It just needed for them to solve a riddle. They failed so, this adventure started with the party waiting around a tavern for a guy named Gwardo Izznardo. They hoped he could solve the riddle that gave the location of the treasure.
While the party waited for Gwardo they gambled. For the Brancalonia fans, this was a round of poppycock. It’s a fine game to simulate an hour of game time playing cards. Nicolo won the pot, and two of the other card players began triggering his knave sense. One was dubbed Cigarello, the other Tall Hat. Cigarello seemed connected to the local hoodlum ecosystem. Tall Hat just seemed shifty. A third card player was a demi-giant (a morgant) mercenary. Nicolo filed all this information away for possible future use.*
About now some mercenaries arrived that the party recognized as louts from the same mercenary company (Toad-Faced Larry, Knuckles and Red Fredrick).
Don Hector wanted nothing to do with them and went to get a bath. Nicolo ignored them and chatted with the other card players. Ha’Des went over to the louts to see what they knew about the local area. The louts however weren’t talking.
Right then Gwardo showed up. Red Fred went to grab him. Ha’Des tripped him and grabbed Gwardo. The tripped Red Fred collides with a tavern patron and like the dew proceeds the dawn, a full scale bar room brawl erupted.
Don Hector’s away from it, but impressed by the laundry ladies being eager to scrap. Ha’Des and Toad-Faced Larry started a tug of war over Gwardo. Nicolo and the other card players watched the fight unfold. Tall Hat took the opportunity to pick Nicolo’s pocket and stole his coin purse before sneaking out the door.
A round or two later, the guards arrived and they promptly arrested Gwardo and began to put down the fight.
The guards took Gwardo away. Ha’Des followed. Don Hector headed for the back door, pausing only to attempt to steal some soap. A laundry lady spotted him and towel-whipped his hand. He fled. Nicolo waded into the fight hoping to use his magic hurdy gurdy to put people to sleep. Instead he got knocked out by a brawly monk. The guards arrested him and carted him off to jail.
Ha’Des and Don Hector reunited. Don Hector attempted to do some sneaking around the guardhouse and failed miserably.** The guards chased him away, but not before he heard screaming from inside the guardhouse.
Morning came around. Ha’Des and Don Hector went to see if they needed to bust Nicolo out of jail. Meanwhile, during the night, Nicolo also heard screams from inside the guard house.
Ha’Des and Don Hector arrived and did some shenanigans outside. The guards weren’t having it, but the captain had a proposal for Nicolo. The captain escorted Nicolo to where Gwardo and a local noble, Count Chico, were talking. Chico is angry at Gwardo for some unmentioned “destruction of property”, but he’ll gladly free Gwardo into the party’s custody if the party climbs the hill outside of town and brings back a faerie goodfellow from there***. The party agrees, but before they go the captain of the guard says he wants a word.
Turns out Count Chico had first sent the guards to bring back a goodfellow, but it ended in disaster. He brings out a very disturbed guardsman who was the source of all the screaming at night. The party questions this guard and hears an overwrought tale.
The hill is near impossible to climb unless it wants you to climb it. There’s a donkey on the hill and they must be careful about it. The guard seems particularly traumatized by the donkey and breaks down as he tells about it. The party’s now on edge, but heads for the hill.
Don Hector notices the woods are slightly magical and chats with the bushes. The bushes tell him the road is not going to get them to the top of the hill and they’ll have to climb up the overgrown side. The party does so, suffering damage but reaching the road when it curves back around. Standing on the road is a donkey. The party does not approach the donkey, even though it has saddlebags that jingle.
They follow the donkey to the top of the hill where they find a clearing, a shack built out over the ledge, and a tree hung with bodies. Don Hector realizes the tree with the bodies is an illusion. Nicolo tries to recall events from his childhood time with the fairies. All are too scared to go up and open the shack’s door.
Time goes by.
At last Ha’des gets fed-up and goes and knocks on the door. A voice answers and tells them to come in… and that’s where we ended the session.
Next session: Lunch with the Goodfellows
*These card players are proving a decent well for NPCs and people met on the road. Tall Hat in particular has become a nemesis for Nicolo, since he stole Nic’s coin purse.
** Don hector failing stealth checks has become a feature in our game. Since he’s made from wood we imagine him trying to sneak around in wooden shoes like a Dutch peasant on cobblestones.
*** This is an adventure straight from the Brancalonia book.
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.)
THE WHISPERING HOUSE
Two day ago, Scrypthouse ZLX-1197 reported receiving a strange signal. Since then the house has gone silent. You’re to escort and protect the maintenance team sent to fix whatever went wrong.
That shouldn’t be too hard.
Right?
A 16-page investigative adventure for Electric Bastionland and other weird adventure settings. Includes inspiration for making living houses and a list of lexical diseases to amuse and frustrate players.
(This is an updated version of ideas initially presented in Mysthead 3.)
Yesterweird 