The Bandit Problem: Or What Happens When the Game Goes on WITHOUT THE DM!

Well mostly. Anyway, during the month of March of 2023, Boldvay came across some bandits, stole their loot. He then got a couple of patrons involved and they soon went to battle against the bandits. I had no involvement in this: Boldvay encountered the bandits on his own during downtime. For the battle, I told them to use the rules and keep me informed in what transpires. If I'm not mistaken, Boldvay used his wargaming rules based off of AD&D 1E/Chainmail to run this battle. And that's it! I find it more than interesting how campaign events can spontaneously happen without the aid or knowledge of the dudgeon master. With downtime, 1:1 time, and patrons, campaigns truly become living and can continue on without any input from a DM. Here's a doc written up by Boldvay on went down: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZuIh1WtKRA50-leLI06v-k6iArn6qEYEDPKoyV5rmiI/edit. Also, here's some links to a couple of sessions Boldvay ran in the Red Frontier to give you more background. In fact, you should check out his blog Fantastic Wargames Campaigns and read about the game he runs!

Happenings and Going Ons in the Red Frontier Part 2

These events took place during August thru October of 2022

While the Urgak and Wier were preparing to fight against the forces of Law, the players were busy making their own plans. Using the Eagle Eye treasure found in Cahn's treasure hoard, Boldvay cast levitation and invisibility on Mark the Thief to have him fly far into the air to spy on the forces of Chaos to the east and southeast. He managed to see a large force getting ready in some ancient city on the coast of Crystal Lake. Made up of hill giants, neanderthals, green dwarves, bugbears, iron golems, a dragon, and many others. It was more than enough to wipe out Pottsfort and the surrounding areas. And towards the east, Mark saw the burning fort of the Knights of Chic Fa'lar.

Lord Commander Roggett commanded most of the civilians to seek shelter in the Power Station with a company of his troops and some mercenaries for protection. He and most of his troops decided to stay and fend off the oncoming armies. Zappos, the eccentric wizard, decides to use the Black Eidolon for the upcoming battle. Boldvay decides to summon two efreeti to aid the forces of law. He also decides to the scroll of summon undead legion. The only problem is finding enough corpses for such a task. Zappos approaches him and tells he know of a place where he can contact a being who lords over another domain. A being who could aid him with supplying with such a force. But doing so is dangerous, and could very well cost Boldvay much. Boldvay doesn't hesitate and asks Zappos to lead him to such a place.

Zappos, using his teleportation mirror, takes Boldvay to a small secluded lake in the southwest. They arrive at night and it's cold. Boldvay can hear whispering in the back of his mind. Zappos uses words of power to summon the DM of Brovenloft, Moundshroud of the Mists. 

Anyway, Boldvay and Quirkus soon set out to the north shore of Crystal Lake before Wier's forces can get there. Quirkus, in the crab mech, casts invisible, uses the control dragon potion and takes possession of one of Wier's dragons and manages to destroy some of the Dark Lord's forces. Boldvay then meets Wier and the rest of his forces at the northern shore of Crystal Lake while Quirkus gets out of sight. The powerful mists Brovenloft emerge from the woods just north of coast. Through the mists, a large army of undead make their way to the invaders. Ghostly tendrils and envelops the beached army. In no time, it kills the remaining forces and takes their souls and Boldvay to it's fog-drenched realm.

 

Wier then returns to the ancient city and realizes that his remaining troops found an underground bunker containing a cache of ancient, future tech weaponry, including nukes and a stargate. Wier's player, who is also a patron in both in Dubzaron and Brovenloft, will surely put such weaponry to use in those campaigns! I'm sure this in no way will come back to bite me in the ass (it does)!

With Boldvay gone, the Efreeti were no longer under his control, and decide to burn down most of Pottsfort before leaving. The Lord Commander declares Boldvay a wanted man. Another thing, between making a deal to destroy an undead army, and allowing the efreeti to run destroy Pottsfort, Boldvay's alignment changed to Chaotic. 

Soon some of the players travel to Brovenloft themselves. I don't know much about those adventures as I only ran two sessions in that setting. The first the players had to drive a tank from Boldvay's fort to aid the force's of Eddie. Not much happened other than encountering some giant snakes and hippogriffs. The next session though proved to be game changing to Brovenloft itself. 

They meet up with my patron there, Reverend Hopkins. Hopkins gives them the idea to nuke the Brovenloft city of Dublin due to him thinking that the Irish there were going to become a major threat later on. Two of the players gleefully accepted the mission and managed to out maneuver angels sent by the Pope himself and ultimately kamikazed themselves by flying the nuke, which was powerful Tsar bomb originally found in the Red Frontier, into the city of potato demons. This was hilarious! I used a combination of grenade throwing rules from AD&D 1E with this website. It was a hit and proved to be devastating. Not really sure what happened afterwards but it was fun. Eventually some of the players, and Boldvay himself, managed to make it back to the Red Frontier. And that's it for now!

Frontier Bulletin 41: We're Back!

So last Friday was the first Red Frontier game in months that I ran after taking a brief hiatus. There's a lot that happened after my last post (which occurred last fall). Heck, even the player of Boldvay took over a bit to run the Red Frontier to try to connect my world with his own. But those are all for other posts. Let's dig in on what happened last Friday instead!

The Players:

Mark the Gnome level 8 Thief

Laurentius, level 7 Cleric

Mnemonic, level 1 Magic-User

Plus Mnemonic's faithful war hound

The session begins in the so far unnamed underground town that many of the survivors of Pottsfort have made. This town is located in the same area where the battle between the albino orcs and the Duran Durin took place. The surviving albino orcs were driven out by the gloom crawler and that fowl beast was destroyed by the players. Gnarly stuff! Since I didn't have much planned for this session as I was more concerned about getting back into the saddle, I had to improvise! During the months off, many more of Durin's clansmen arrived at the Power Station and two weeks before the session, a small group of dwarven scouts decided to explore the underground river that the orcs had escaped on. A day before the session started, they reemerged and told the party what they found: the orcs!

They followed the river for a few days and eventually emerged into another gargantuan chamber, even larger than the one they left in. Following the first hook of the river they found an ancient dwarven keep on it's other side. This surprised them as they and the other dwarves of the Shaggy Mountains believed that they had never travelled this far down under the Devil's Spine. They noticed two cone towers flanking the five story cubical keep, along with two smaller cone towers on it's top. And spanning over the width of the river was an ancient stone bridge. On the opposite bank, the glowing forest of giant mushrooms and ferns grew and spanned the length of the river as far as the eye could see. But the dwarves noticed an orc patrol among the bridge and being a small group decided to head back.

Back to our players. Having this information, the party decided to investigate said keep. Instead of take a boat like the dwarves did, they instead took their hovercar. They made good time and arrived at the keep the next morning without any encounters. Nearing the bank of of the river where the keep resided, the players heard a disturbing sound of tribal chanting and drumming. Along the top of the ancient keep, they saw the eldritch glow of great, green flames. The party came up with a plan. First, Laurentius cast Silence on Mark. Mark then downed a potion of Giant Strength. After that, Mark went ahead of the group to scout. Nearing what was left of a stone wall that circled the keep, Mark discovered a small patrol of orcs. He decided to surprise the orcs while charging but failed. Doesn't matter though with his giant strength, he managed to punch a large whole into a orc with his mace. The rest of party made quick work of the remaining orcs.

With Silence still in effect, Mark climbed the nearest tower. Once on top, he spied a horrid sight: across the fifteen foot gap between the tower and keep, he sees what appears a giant, black statue of a frog with bat like features behind the green flames, and an orc priest holding a hairy dwarven baby over an alter before the green fire with one hand and in another a cruel dagger while many orcs and some squirming dwarven captives. Before the vile priest could sacrifice the babe, Mark unleashed a crossbow bolt into the priest. The surprised priest was instantly killed and dropped the still alive baby amongst it's kin. The orcs stopped their evil chanting and drumming and looked around stunned, not knowing what to do. Mark then descended down the tower and met with the remaining party.

The players soon entered in the opened doors of the keep and were soon met by a few albino orc wars descending down stairs on their right. Combat was soon met and even with a few more reinforcements, the orcs proved to be no match and were put down by the party. The players soon made quick work of the remaining orc women and children and rescued the dwarf captives. The dwarves proved to have a strange appearance: more of neaderthal look along with even more hairy bodies then their above ground counterparts. While their dwarvish was a little different than what the players were used too, they soon made out that the dwarves were from a village in the southeast that was raided by the orcs. They invited the players to their village but the players politely declined. They soon explored the keep.

There wasn't much left in the keep. The entrance to the lower levels, including the vault, were blocked by giant stone blocks. That said, on the last floor leading up to the roof, they did precure a great haul. Ten 2' tall dwarven statues made of gold and having ruby eyes and each weighing fifty pounds and worth 20,000 gp, four magic scrolls, a spell book, on bag containing 3,000 gp, another with jewels worth 10,000 gp, and among the body of the orc priest, a book of black leather with the face of Tsathoggua. After this, party made their way back to the underground town. Mnemonic gained enough xp to get to level 7, but must find out a higher level M-U and take seven weeks to train. Both Mark and Laurentius gained a level but must train for a week each.

A couple of last things. By now we've switched from ACKS to AD&D 1E, which I might explain why later in another post and that I took Jeffro Johnson's advice about stealing adventure hooks from the pulps. With this adventure I took "inspiration" from both H.P. Lovecraft's "Call of Cthulhu" and especially from Robert E. Howard's chilling short story "The Black Stone." Both are highly recommended! Remember folks, Appendix N and the pulps in general are you friend!

Happenings and Going Ons in the Red Frontier Part 1

Unfortunately, I've slacked off on posting Frontier Bulletins for the Red Frontier for some time. This is due to my own laziness. Instead of writing and posting for each session after the Battle of the Vampires, I'm gonna do a recap and catch everyone up on what's been going on.

Urgag

First up, the two major patrons of of Chaos decided the time was right to attack the forces of Law in the Red Frontier. The Dark Lord Wier and his underling Urgag, the Orc Chief attempted to combine their forces to bring darkness and desolation to the frontier. They failed. But not due to a large battle between the forces of evil vs good. No, it was mostly due to the ingenuity of the players and an outside force. Their plan was to send the orcish forces towards Pottsfort Keep in hopes in drawing out the Lord Commander and his allied forces into a trap. With them away engaging with the orcs, Weir would bring his much larger force from behind to catch the Lord Commander unawares. Once done, they would soon bring their force to lay siege and capture the lone keep.

Before Urgag could make it to the keep, he was spotted by scouts from the nearby Knights of Chick Fa'lar. They soon waylaid on Urgag, but to no avail. Urgag rolled to see if his forces were surprised; they were not. He soon turned his attention upon the hapless knights. I used the same method for mass combat that I used during the battle between the dwarves and albino orcs and that of Urgag's forces when they took the first level of the Old Bastard. Number wise, Urgag's forces numbered about 268, whereas the knights only numbered less then 150. But the knights had two other disadvantages: 1) they were fighting in wooded, hilly country and 2), Wier, along with a small entourage, joined in the battle. Weir summoned a giant demonic spider (from ACKS Heroic Fantasy Handbook) that he road as a mount, and entered into the fray devouring anyone who got in his way. The knights tried to fight bravely, but were forced to withdrawal once over half of their forces fell quickly in battle. Unfortunately they were unable to, due to being forced to retreat uphill and were quickly cut down by the larger force.

While this was going on, a much smaller group of Urgag's forces that was left in the Old Bastard decided to scout around the knight's fort. They arrived around night and with a group of about 50, including about ten giant albino weasels, tunneled underneath the fort and managed to slay many of the sleeping forces. Those that were awakened and trying to scramble to get away, were soon killed. Urgag's main forces travelled to the now captured fort and set it ablaze. 

This ends Part 1.

Frontier Bulletin 24: The End of Cahn or Vampire vs Kaiju!

Players:

Laughing Fox, Shaman

Dogbreath, Fighter

Hellena Keller, Dwarf Machanist

Laurentius, Cleric

Boldvay, Magic User

Mark, Thief

Whiskey John, Explorer

Plus Boldvay's dog

After being forced to retreat twice, and at deadly costs, the players were taking no chances against the ancient vampire Cahn and his undead army. Some sessions back, the players had found the Black Eidolon and it's manual. The last session they befriended a family of storm giants, the Bunyans. With these turn of events in mind, they quickly formulated a plan. They decided to be back at the mines after sunrise, have Zappos the Wizard to summon and use the Black Eidolon to dig out the vampire horde, and finally get the Bunyans to pour down their holy water upon the hellish undead. Simple, right? Pretty much and it was executed nearly perfectly.

Flying with the giants in their castle Storm-Anvil, the players quickly arrived at the deadly mines as the sun was rising. Zappos began the hour long summoning process of the Black Eidolon. The players themselves prepared themselves. The Black Eidolon, which was just a foot tall black statue, grew into a gargantuan 300 ft tall, animated golem. With Zappos controlling the giant, eldritch weapon, it began to dig into the mine with its mighty hands. 

Soon, many of the vampires began falling from the eidolon's hands, landing into ash. The other undead, ghouls, wights, skeletons, etc., landed on the ground, crumpled and unmoving. Some of the older vampires (probably Cahn's daughters) tried to escape by flying away as giant bats, but were burned away by the sun. . While the eidolon was digging, the Bunyans let loose their pool of holy water to rain down upon the vile dark creatures and flooding the mines. Finally, a black stone coffin fell unto the ground. 

Before the party could get to it, a black, many eyed and tentacled eldricth horror from ancient times emerged from the now gaping pit: a Shoggoth! It grappled with the Black Eidolon who was forced to stop it's digging. Unfortunately for the tentacled, many eyed creature, it proved no match to the gargantuan stone giant. The shoggoth let out a high pitched, artificial sounding scream, and was soon torn apart and stomped on until it stopped moving. 

The players soon raced towards to the coffin. They pried it open to shine some light on Cahn. Clad in his black armor with red bat, he began to emerge while half burning away. Laughing Fox, in a moment of mad genius, covered his naked hand in garlic and punched Cahn in the face. Cahn flinched, but Laughing Fox was drained, again, of two levels. Sad!

Cahn soon succumbed to the rays of the sun, and now only ash lay within his black coffin. Lauerintius had the other pour some of the holy water inside the coffin, just to be sure. With the vampire menace destroyed, the party soon looted Cahn's treasure chambers. And a great haul was obtained! They found many spell scrolls (including Wish!), much coins and gems, and even some magical items, including a pair of Eagle Eyes. In Cahn's coffin, a Rod of Control Shoggoth was found. Zappos claimed this as his part of the loot, while the Bunyans took a share of the coins and gems. After all was said and done, the Bunyans bid their farewells and headed west, and players and Zappos set forth back to Pottsfort.

Frontier Bulletin 23: Stony Roosters & Dead Horses

Laughing Fox: Shaman, lvl 5

Helena Keller: Dwarf Machinist, lvl 4

Boldvay: Magic-User, lvl 4

Mark: Thief, lvl5

Whiskey: Explorer, lvl 2

The party kept their word and returned to the Power Station the next weekend. They left out on Friday but unlike their last trip, this one proved more eventful. That first night, they encountered a flock of 4 cockatrices who were flying towards the group's camp. Neither side were surprised, and fighting soon broke out. Spells were cast, including Holy Chant, Dispel Magic, Phantasmal force, and soon to follow, Spiritual Weapon. Arrows and bolts were launched as well. Mark used the opportunity to use the Horn of Blasting at the foul creatures. This, while proving very effective, scared off all the horses. Still, not long after, the party emerged victorious. Laughing Fox collected the bodies of the stony birds and the players decided to settle back in for the night and to search for the horses in the morning.

Early the next morning, a couple of the horses comes back to camp. The party soon leaves to search for the others. While most of the party stays in their wagon, Whiskey stays ahead of the group on foot, looking for tracks. They venture towards the northeast, and finally after some hours of searching, stumble upon horse tracks. They lead to a copse where they can see flying above a hippogriff with one of their horses clutched in it's claws. It soon drops the horse, and they hear a sickening wet crunch. The players then notice one of their other horses fleeing from the copse and is headed their way, with about six hippogriffs hot on it's trail. 

The players grabbed Whiskey and Laughing Fox decides to use the fleeing horse as a "snackrifice" so that the party can get away in their wagon. I ruled that each of the hippogriffs have a 33% to continue to focus on the poor horse instead of the party. Two of the hungry creatures made the roll and soon flew off with neighing horse. The horses tied to the wagon see and hear what happens to their equine companion and soon break morale and flee, taking the wagon with them. The remaining four hippogriffs soon chased after the now fleeing party in their wagon! Laughing Fox tried to cast a spell against the flying beasts, but I ruled that since the terrain was rough, he wouldn't have the focus needed to properly cast his spell. 

The wagon manages to stay ahead of the hippogriffs, but just barely. Many in the wagon use their missile weapons, which prove effective. Boldvay uses up another charge for his Staff of Wizardry and casts Fireball. This roasts and drops the pursuing bird horses. They finally reach back to their camp of the previous night, where they find two more of their horses waiting for them. Eventually, they make their way up to the Power Station where they are greeted by the welcoming dwarves. They also find that the Joe Bridger III has finished up the gunpowder. 

They stay the night and Laughing Fox, Joe, and Helena use the combine the bodies of the cockatrices with some of the gunpowder to make grenades that can explode and cause the targets to make a saving throw against petrification or be turned to stone. Nice. They head back the next day and on their way home, encounter a family of storm giants flying around in their cloud castle. I decided that these were the same storm giants that Urgag the Orc Chief (a patron player) encountered earlier in the week. He tried to recruit them but with them being Lawful, they told him to get on and leave them be. I also decided since they're lawful beings, the Bunyans (as Urgag called them) are also good Christian giants. 

They hailed the players and told them not to be afraid. They invited them to their cloud castle, Stormanvil. The giants treated the players well and took them back to Pottsfort. They even showed them their giant pool of holy water that they kept in case they ran into foul demonic or undead creatures during their travels. The players then asked them if they could help them with their vampire problem. The giants agreed, and decided to stay around Pottsfort for the following week. The rest of that story is soon to follow...

Frontier Bulletin 22: Into the Deep

The Party:

Laughing Fox (Shaman)

Helena Keller (Dwarven Machinist)

Boldvay (Magic-User)

Mark (Thief)

Laurentius (Cleric)

Whiskey John (Explorer)

Henchmen:

Dogbreath

And Boldvay's various henchmen

Some months back, my first patron met his end. Duran Durin, the leader of the dwarves who settled in the western tail end of the Devil's Spine, and who established the dwarven keep dubbed the Power Station, went into a large underground, glowing chamber with a small band of about hundred dwarves to find what had killed the lone dwarf who went scouting said chamber. They clashed in battle against a tribe of albino orcs, and the dwarven survivors never made it back up top to their brethren. Soon after, a smaller force of dwarfs went into the chamber, only to never to return. You can listen more about this battle here. 

The morale of the remaining dwarves broke and many left. A good many went and stayed at Woodshome, the emerging boom town that has built up around Pottsfort Keep. They brought with them sad tidings. The players went up to investigate, but decided to not explore the cavern. They did give their word to the remaining dwarves that they would eventually go down and find out what happened to their leader. Also, with the help of Joe Bridger III, they began the process of making gunpowder. Finally, the players made good on their word, and returned to face whatever was in the Deep.

Despite the lack of dwarven patrols, the travel up to Power Station was uneventful. After checking in with the remaining dwarven force and on the progress of their gunpowder, the party headed down into the deep. One hundred feet down later, the found themselves in an extremely large, glowing cavern. They were surrounded by a small, greenish glowing jungle of large mushrooms, ferns, and tall grass. The party soon head south, the same direction that Duran went. Tracks were found, and they soon emerged out of the underground forest and into a vast open space. They could hear water rushing far to the east, but continued to follow the tracks. 

About forty yards out of the vegetation,  the players came across a decomposing dwarven body. It was partially eaten and the rest was slowly being consumed by a fungal growth. Laurentius cast Speak to the Dead to get information out of the corpse and asked it three questions:1) what killed him, 2) where was Durin's body, and 3) were there any orcs still living. A voice came out of the rotted mouth in response: "A black tentacled creature killed me,"Durin's body is laying in a field of corpses," and "I don't know."

Laughing Fox decided to ask his ancestors three questions of his own. The first was if there were more than ten orcs alive; they replied with 'no'. The second was if the creature that killed the dwarves supernatural. They replied with another 'no.' Finally, he asked if the party had the man power to kill the creature. This time the ancestors replied with a 'yes, but use caution.' The party continued to look for the remains of the mighty dwarven leader and to avenge his death.

Travel was slow, as the party was cautious as to what might be in the cave with them. Finally, they found the remains of a large battle. There were many corpses, including that of Duran Durin himself. Clasped in his rotting hands was the magical sword Dragon's Spite that he had found. Helena took the sword to give back to Duran's clan when, or if they made it back. 

Not long after that, the party came across the orc village made of stone. While exploring the ancient village, the party fought against some wondering fire beetles; these were soon dispatched. Once done, they faced the imposing, primeval temple located in the middle of the village. It's imposing bat and toad like features that were carved into the stone permeated an eldritch and weird vibe towards those that looked upon it. Before preceding, the party gathered in their battle formation, cracked opened the 20' stone doors, and sent in Laughing Fox's totem animal, the monkey, to scout ahead. While the monkey was scouting, Laurentius cast Bless on everyone. The monkey returned and told of a tentacled, inky black creature towards the back of the temple, near the alter. With this information, the party formed a battle plan against the eldritch creature. 

The party fully opened the ancient black doors and made their way into the blood covered chamber. Inside, the party went through a 30 ft hallway that led into a 60 ft square chamber. Along the walls, they viewed primeval frescos depicting blood sacrifices and weird rituals of humans and dinosaurs to the blasphemous alien god Tsathoggua. Near the altar, right where the monkey said it would be, was the squid-like creature that had killed the surviving dwarven army and forced the orcs to flee: the gloom crawler who was asleep on partially devoured and rotting bodies. Gaining surprise on the unwary creature, the party quickly enacted their plan. Boldvay cast Phantasmal Force to make the crawler think it was trapped inside the cage; Mark quickly blew from the Horn of Blasting to severely wound it; Laughing Fox cast the shaman's equivalent to the Bless spell to further give the party an edge; and the others let loose arrows and bolts into it's hulking body. Boldvay's spell was a success, and so was Mark's use of the magical horn, unfortunately, only Dog Breath managed to hit the creature with his arrow. Still, the battle didn't last long, as the crawler wasn't able to put up much of a fight and was quickly killed. Duran was avenged. 

After the gloom crawler's death, the players began to explore the small temple. The found another large stone door behind the altar covered in runes, but were unable to open it. They found five vases and a black chest under the altar and two side passages, one going east, the other west. They used the monkey to go down the trap door they found in the room that the eastern hall led to and not long after, he came back. He told of a tunnel about 600 yards that exited to a small dock on the western bank of a river. Down the western hall, the found another small room, but nothing of worth was found. The vases contained 200 ep each, Mark tried to open the chest, but failed to notice it was trapped. The trap, being a small needle, injected with a poison and he failed. Thankfully it wasn't fatal, and he only took six damage. 

With the chest now opened, and the players took a look to see what treasures were inside: various precious gems, two spell scrolls, two potions, an ancient elven cloak, and primitive hand axe that had magical aura about it. They quickly gathered their new finds, headed out of the evil temple, and went back up to the above levels of the Power Station. The remaining dwarves decided to let Helena keep Duran's sword and the party vowed to return the next week once the gun powder was complete.