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.)
BLACK HACK BRANCALONIA
Our current Monster of the Week game will be ending this January (when more serious professorship resumes for the GM). This means I’ll likely be back in the GM’s seat sometime early next year. So I’ve been prepping a new campaign. This one will be a Brancalonia game except I don’t actually think Brancalonia is a good fit for 5E D&D.
In a game of down and out grubby adventurers nothing should have over 50HP. The brawling rules are neat, but maybe not necessary when characters are lower powered. For now I’ve decided to use Black Sword Hack/Fleaux! as my rule set. My prep’s mostly been just making a list of backgrounds, NPCs, and random tables for the setting. The heavy lifting will reside mostly in capturing the right flavor.
The idea’s to run a Good, the Bad, the Ugly campaign. The players will learn of some great treasure in adventure one and have to cross the map to get to it. Along the way shenanigans will occur. The goal’s to have it last between 5-10 sessions. I might even allow a bit of PvP at the end, so we can have a good old fashioned 3-way stand-off.
I’ll post details as it unfolds. If folks want the prep documents, let me know and I’ll put together a free PDF to download from my itch page.
More to follow.
Auzomatic Cafeteria Temples & Cookbook
Does your roleplaying campaign need a good diner?
Do you ever wish you had a bunch of tables to generate strange sounding meals?
The Auzomatic Order is a religious order that follows the example of Auzomat the Great Worm that burrows in the crawlspace beneath the world. The order builds cheap eateries wherever the ectoflesh from the crawlspace breaks forth into our reality.
In Auzomatic Cafeteria Temples you will discover the history of the order and the layout of one of their restaurants.
In The Auzomatic Cookbook you will find everything you need to generate strange meals to amuse and confuse yourself and your players!
Atalante’s Portable Megadungeon
Here’s a write-up of the greatest magic item of all time: Atalante’s Portable Megadungeon.
Knights check in, but they don’t check out!
And yes, it’s based on the Knight Hotel from Orlando Furioso.
If you want all this in a PDF version, you can find one free here on my itch page.
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Atalante’s Portable Megadungeon is a large, roughly rectangular carved stone.
- The Stone: The stone is portable, but heavy, as large as a thick tome. It is a bulky item. When placed on the ground outdoors and the command word is spoken, the stone’s spirit instantly creates an illusory megadungeon.
- Megadungeon Appearance: The megadungeon’s exterior appears as an ancient imposing fortress. The gate is open and unguarded. The megadungeon’s interior is an endless array of rooms, corridors, halls, towers, and courtyards that unfold before its unwitting prisoners.
- Illusion of Heart’s Desire: The stone’s spirit can discern the heart’s desire of anyone within the dungeon or within sight of the gatehouse. The spirit can generate the illusion of a humanoid foe carrying whatever this desire may be deeper into the dungeon.
- Entering the Dungeon: Anyone who passes beneath the gate falls under the spirit’s spell and will not be able to find the gate again without a guide unaffected by the illusions.
- Heroes check in, but they don’t check out: At any given time there will be 2D12 prisoners already trapped within the megadungeon.
- The Megadungeon is inhabited: The spirit creates illusory foes. The creatures are unaware that they are illusions and behave as if they were real. They will have factions and regularly intrigue against each other.
- Cruel, but not Evil: The spirit has no desire to kill its prisoners or see them killed. Its job is to keep its prisoners trapped inside for as long as possible. Prisoners of the dungeon can take damage but can not be slain by an illusion while in the dungeon. The spirit will also use illusions to keep prisoners from killing each other. Food and drink can be found by those trapped inside.
- Immunity: The stone’s owner is immune to its illusions and can locate and move to any individual trapped inside in a single round. Individuals immune to illusions can recognize that the megadungeon and its inhabitants are not real. However the illusions behave as if they were real when encountered.
- Escaping the Dungeon: It is impossible to escape while under the spirit’s spell. However if one is unaffected by its illusions and can find the stone in the gatehouse and expose its arcane mark to sunlight, the spirit will take material form. If defeated in combat, duel of wits, or any sort of contest the spirit will dispell the illusion and the megadungeon vanish. All prisoners will be freed instantly with full health. The spirit can not be summoned again for a month and a day.
Enjoy!
Slugknot House and Slime Gardens
Back again to share a link to my latest Into the Odd, Troika, Planescape, Electric Bastionland mess.
This time it’s off to Skugknot House a recently renovated mansion at the center of a neighborhood decaying before an onslaught of extradimensional slime. Marvel as the slug folk unwind and relax! Consult a slime mold with a PhD in Civil Engineering! Ride above the ooze in a bathysphere at the center of a gelatinous cube!
Enjoy! As always feel free to grab a community copy for any reason.
And if you enjoy these pamphlets and would like to support their continued production please consider supporting my patreon. You get these, sneak peaks of WIPs, and a weekly-ish update of reading, watching, and thunking.
The Endless Gallery
Hello,
Here’s an adventure locale depicting an infinite art gallery space. Explore a maze of exhibition spaces, ateliers, and neglected sculpture. Flee the terrors of parasitic art-shaped objects and attempt to understand the strange jargon of the alien curators.
Designed for Into the Odd, The Endless Gallery can be adapted to most surrealistic style adventure games like Troika or even D&D of the Planescape sort (at least as I would play it.).
Enjoy!
Cemetery of the Sepulchral Monolith
I’ve uploaded a new adventure to my itch page…
Somewhere near the edge of Bastion on the borders of Deep Country a monolith stands. A pockmarked slab of a strange mineral-like material, the monolith is in fact alive and it consumes ghosts to survive!
Cemetery of the Sepulchral Monolith is a brochure adventure for Chris McDowall’s Into the Odd, but can be used for similar games. In it you will encounter a monolith that generates ghosts in order to consume them, three factions, and a number of other interesting locales.
The price tag is 3USD, but feel free to download a community copy for any reason.
And if you’d like, you can support me on patreon. You get glimpses of WIPs, early access to anything I make, and a weekly post of morbid introspection!
Doesn’t that sound fun?
Balloon Tomb of the Ancient Aeronaut
Remember all those UFO and “spy” balloon shenanigans from a month or so ago?
They got me imagining a whole upper atmosphere region populated with lost kites, desiccated corpses of early aviation pioneers, and strange creatures like in that old Arthur Conan Doyle story “The Horror of the Heights”:
“A visitor might descend upon this planet a thousand times and never see a tiger. Yet if he chanced to come down into a jungle he might be devoured. There are jungles of the upper air, and worse things than tigers inhabit them.”
Anyway…dare you enter the Balloon Tomb of the Ancient Aeronaut?
Balloon Tomb of the Ancient Aeronaut is a brochure adventure for Chris McDowall’s Into the Odd and similar games. In it you will explore an ancient airborne bouncy dungeon tomb. The price tag is 3USD, but you should feel free to download a community copy.
Find it here: https://yesterweird.itch.io/the-balloon-tomb
Some GM tips from the playtest:
- Don’t sweat the getting there. An experimental Researchery airship dropped the party off and would pick them up when they wanted to leave.
- To describe the tomb builder’s culture I said: “Imagine the ancient Egyptians except all their jewelery is made from balloons.” “Inflatable ancient Egyptian stuff” went a long way when giving descriptions.
- I didn’t require any movement checks to move inside the tomb, but I maximized the bouncing. For this I used a d8 to determine direction then rerolling if they hit something before moving the full amount. Maximize the bounce!
- The first encounter was turbulence. This bounced characters apart and split the party. I recommend throwing that at them right away. It’s likely you won’t have to contrive things to do this because if they land at the top they will definitely be tempted to investigate the pilot balloons, thereby disturbing them, and making the whole tomb veer towards turbulence.
- The monsters might or might not be tough, but the fear of falling out of the tomb was a lot stronger.
Yesterweird 