City of Greyhawk Box Set - Now with *searchable text* Post answers to questions nobody asked and questions you don't have answers to!( https://jumpshare.com/s/mp3IPpK7FAFd6fgJyf4u )
So - After spending some time in The Ruins and on account of Lord Robilar having disguised himself as Captain Galancz, patron of The Green Dragon Inn (who goes without gauntlets) my players have finally discovered that he is also Warduke - but not yet discovered that Warduke is a Heirarch of The Horned Society. They've been sent to White Plume Mountain to silence Bluto San Spite before he's able to reveal this - as well as Warduke/Robilar/Bilarro's inlolvement in the River of Blood Murders, a flubbed sacrifice to one of their infernal patrons.The players are likely to finally get to Bluto tomorrow so I needed to decide exactly what was going to even happen. For this, I needed to really comb through The City for connections to The Horned Society and for that I needed a copy of the box set that I could actually search. There didn't seem to be one so I just went ahead and ran the circulating one through the OCR and thought I'd share it.In getting this better resolution picture for the OP I see that there is at least a standalone GoF with searchable text but whatever I already threw my hat over the wall...
So - There really isn't any outright *adventure* for the Horned Society. They were already obliterated by 591 so the Living adventures taking place in their former lands are The Bandit Kingdoms. I'll probably still let them be wiped out but it seems like something that might be more satisfying to have my players do or contribute significantly to than just having Iuz do it entirely offscreen - I may come at it in a way that they're manipulated into being his agents at The Blood Moon Festival.But anyway, in my browsing I see that Erik Mona posited that The Unnamed Heirarch may be Erac's Cousin, bringing it all ultimately back to The Ruins (my current hub) and Fraz'Urbluu (the demon Zagig originally exploited to create the Tome of Nyx). That's more of a long term thing though.In the short term, I saw that another Heirarch of The Horned Society resides in the CoG - This guy, Andrade Mirrius who owns and operates The Pit gladiator arena (that I've noted my players noting on picrel).Not only all that but Andrade is also the leader of a cult of Nerull, which ties nicely into the "wilderness" plot of WGR1 (Nerull vs Vaprak the Trollgod) and I low key wouldn't mind exploring how Wee Jas apparently kills Nerull at some point in one possible future to become The Raven Queen.Not only ALL THAT - But lo and behold I see that the store manager of The Pit, this guy named Pietan Morvannis just happens to be a bonafide net-and-trident type gladiator and, guess, remember how I said my players are currently in White Plume? Well they've, at the cost of a couple characters, recovered Whelm (useless to them with no Dwarves in the party) but they somewhat randomly chose to head in the direction of Blackrazor (and Bluto San Spite), leaving the path to Wave effectively unsecured.So - this seems like the perfect moment for *another* party acting on *another* Horned Society Hierarch (Andrade) to come to silence San Spite.... and take Wave.
I figure Andrade will (rightly) think that Warduke is too reckless to be trusted to hire reliable adventurers to just kill San Spite without interrogating him - I even narrated Galancz/Robilar/Warduke/Bilarro very explicitly telling them to *just* kill him *DON'T talk to him* which of course means they'll definitely talk to them - if the ones of them who remember that get to him before the ones who just kill everything in combat with mindless bloodlust.Or if Pietan and his party get to him first that is. Of course, if they even see Pietan at all they'll recognize him wearing a more modern version of the same Golden Torcs they saw on the Swordwraiths they encountered guarding The War Wagon on the first floor of the War Tower which may lead them to The Pit - unless they make the mistake of actually fighting Pietan who will probably already have Wave - and they very likely will not have Blackrazor or, if they do, will be betrayed at that moment by Qesnaf the Ogre Mage who will be disguised as a halfling who just lets them grab Blackrazor from a pile of junk if they want it.In yet another fun coincidence, the immediate door to Quesnaf's room is guarded by clipped Manticores - and a clipped Manticore just happens to be one of the favorite Beasts at The Pit, named Oswald. It seems likely that these Manticores in White Plume were acquired by Keraptis at the same time Andrade was acquiring Oswald.I think this is probably enough prep for tomorrow's adventure but I do like to at least browse ahead and I needed the OCR'd CoG box in the OP to look at all the (very scattered) info on Andrade's Cult of the Shriven Sickle, which I think I'll probably assemble to complete or at least advance the Falcon series (Cult on Cult action) that my players dabbled in - and which I used to introduce Iggwilv's Simulacrum, who introduced herself to them as Tasha and who they're currently pretty positively inclined toward.Maybe not for long since Robilar/Warduke is now being kidnapped
running greyhawk but with 13th age
>>96629711I don't blame you! I'm running 5e because that's what players play but let me tell you, converting both 3e and AD&D material to 5e can be heartbreaking - but in opposite ways which kind of speaks to 5e being a decent middle ground.When I convert 3e material to 5e it "flattens" it. It's common for monsters in 3e to be heavily modified with templates attached to them, special attacks and all kinds of shit. Monster advancement isn't even a thing in 5e. Don't even get me started on what happens when we convert a classed NPC. I find myself just using Goodman's "Reincarnated" conversion philosophy of taking a statblocked NPC and pasting on the flavor. Works okay I guess.With converting AD&D material, basically the *opposite* is the case. Monsters are summarized in a couple lines of plain text and clearly meant to be overcome in combats lasting about 10 minutes (while still having high stakes). I really find myself pushing to have anything remotely approaching that kind of pace in 5e, and that pace is pretty important if you're going to get anywhere in dungeon crawls.
>>96629336Nice, thanks for the link, searchable is a big feature. >Horned SocietyOne of my favorite evil organizations from before the Greyhawk Wars. Always wished that TSR had done with them, like make them a full-fledged magical Legion of Doom with unique villain characters representing all the variations of evil alignments out there, a sort of Bizarro Circle of Eight. Which is, I think, kind of what Gygax had once intended for them but never fleshed out. Iuz wiping them out off-screen and turning all that into one giant evil empire was boring and lame. >>96629486>>96629591That's some great lore-twisting and joining. Jelly about your campaign.
>>96631658For, what, thirty years now I've wanted to do a City of Greyhawk campaign but been reluctant to on account of not being quite dedicated enough to sit down and do a full cover to cover read on multiple sourcebooks while taking notes on the specific avenues I'm thinking to tie together - only to need to do it over and over again in response to players taking agency and redirecting the story, which I dearly love and believe to be the heart of D&D *but* like I said I just don't have the time and dedication to repeatedly fully scour and notate - and I got soured on developing purely original material long ago by players shortcutting tons of my prep (which is parallel to how I would feel if they cut off countless hours of note taking)But now, in the futuristic year 2025 I can have all my books (and all the books I wanted but never picked up) in digital format and searchable (once I run them through Acrobat anyway) and it's actually *enjoyable* to me to sit down and play "Hm, I wonder how I can tie in lore and add even more complexity based on what they've recently been up to" and *it's actually enjoyable to me in and of itself*.Maybe I'm weird or an egotist or whatever but it also is much easier for me to just sort of dump out my thoughts here in a conversational way than it is to actually write notes - although I generally have these threads open in a tab behind my screen during play to reference my own thoughts after I've been distracted by the immediacy of dungeon delving.At the end of last session they just peeked into picrel, the "Inverted Ziggurat" and for whatever reason they seem less intimidated by it than by the floating stream with the kayaks - something about being carried through a solid stone wall feeling like a one-way trip. Assuming they busy themselves with *that* room, I think Pietain and his thug, the wrestling champion Rashif Iqbal (explicitly a topknot wearing eunuch) plus some redshirted gladiators will be getting San Spite
>>96632284>got soured on developing purely original material long ago by players shortcutting tons of my prepThat's just "Being a DM 101", anon. The interesting part is presenting moral choices to the players and seeing how their PCs react. For example, give some opportunity in your game for one of the members of the the Horned Society to present a PC with a choice that makes them think: "Hmm, this kinda makes sense, maybe these 'evil guys' aren't so wrong after all..." and see what happens. The Circle of Eight chose neutrality because they knew that the extremism of Good and Evil and Law and Chaos destroys world. Can your players see that?
>>96632517Oh, yeah we're pretty far past that. Although nominally being on the side of "good" is what ultimately is presumed to be the motivation behind progressing through the extant material they as a group are pretty morally dubious - which is very, very common among "modern" players. They met Warduke a LONG time ago, probably close to this time last year and he helped them fight against some giants who were thralls of Elemental Fire then investigated the Eclavdra connection they were dragging their heels on which ultimately led to him going and blowing up the first Temple of Elemental Evil just as Robilar canonically did, completely releasing Zuggtmoy and pissing off Iuz pretty good in the process.Ultimately what it boils down to is that I would like to just prevent the Greyhawk Wars from ever happening which involves low key giving the players opportunity after opportunity to alter Canon in a way that will imprison or destroy Iuz. There are a ton of places where that can happen, like "Tasha" (Iggwilv's simulacrum) fully intends to capture him and is even canonically supposed to do so briefly before the PCs free him in the process of also rescuing Robilar - but they may first discover that he's actually Bilarro, which is why he's also been masquerading as Warduke and serving as a Hierarch. This is part of why I let them meet "Tasha" and develop a personal connection with her (I even made some appealing AI art of her initially materializing in the Temple of the Falcon).Whenever I run wide open campaigns I find it useful to have "friendly rivals" for the PCs which in this campaign have come to be the LJN "evil" party, picrel. We all enjoy these iconic guys and they add a bit of a unique twist. Funnily enough Kelek is even more or less right in Expedition as an NPC in the Green Dragon - and they were already familiar with him as one of Warduke's party members. The amount of fun potential lore tie-ins is really amazing when you dive deep.
>>96632710>made some appealing AI art of her initially materializing in the Temple of the FalconHotdiggity, post it.
