9 October 2009

Today’s Tabbloid
PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net

ROGUE FEED Within a generation, the Thulian empire came to depend heavily on both
magic and Termaxians, as it spread farther across the continent and
Apotheosis tightened its grip over its subjects. Over time, the empire started to treat
OCT 08, 2009 02:11P.M. other religions as it had once treated the followers of Turms. Only those
faiths who acknowledged their gods as aspects of Turms Termax were
allowed to operate unrestricted. Those who resisted were ruthlessly
quashed.

Resentment against the Turms-worshiping Thulians grew, especially as

they grew ever more tyrannical. Rebellions across the empire eventually
tore it asunder and the Thulians — and Termaxians — were cast down, to
be replaced a welter of new, localized powers. In most regions,
Termaxianism was outlawed once again and the common folk speak in
hushed tones about its supposedly sinister “secret” doctrines. Even those
with an inkling of the truth nevertheless show little affection for Turms
and his faith has dwindled into comparative obscurity, except among
magic-users.

Turms Termax is one of the “great mysteries” of the Dwimmermount

campaign. I created the god to be a useful MacGuffin in both the
megadungeon and other adventures. As you can see, he’s an amalgam of
In my Dwimmermount game, though there are many gods, only three Hermes Trismegistus, Simon Magus, and certain of the Roman
have played much of a role in the campaign to date: Tyche, Typhon, and emperors. He gave me a good way to introduce secret societies into the
the mysterious Turms Termax. Of the three, the worship of Turms is campaign (like the Argent Twilight), employ alchemical symbolism (like
unusual in the present day, because it is closely associated with the end azoth), and open up the question about who and what they gods really
of the Thulian empire. The Thulians, you may recall, are the Roman- are. So far Turms has proven very successful in these goals and he’s one
equivalents of the Dwimmermount campaign world, but they began their of my favorite recent creations, since he gives me an excuse to indulge in
historical role as northern barbarians who overthrew the Eldritch empire esoteric whimsies of various sorts. And finally, it’s nice to be able to use a
that preceded their own. mystery cult in D&D rather than the peculiar kind of ahistorical
polytheism that most gaming tends to present.
In the early days of their rule, they were highly suspicious of non-divine
magic and its practice was highly regulated (which is the origin of the
magic-user class’s level titles). Given the misuse to which the Eld had put
magic, there were few complaints and the Thulians ruled justly, if
occasionally brutally, for several centuries. It was into this environment
that an enigmatic wizard named Turms first appeared. Along with his
female companion Sarana, he traveled the empire, seeking out forbidden
magical knowledge and teaching that such knowledge allowed Men to
reach their full potential as the true gods of the cosmos. A cult soon grew
up around him, one which encouraged the use of magical and alchemy as
a means to divinization and denouncing the gods of the empire as false.

Unsurprisingly, the Thulians didn’t take kindly too this and persecuted
the followers of Turms, eventually capturing and torturing him until,
according to legend, he ascended into godhood before their very eyes.
True or not, there’s no question that the Thulian official attitude toward
the cult changed. Termaxians (as his followers became known) were able
to practice their faith openly and the restrictions on magic were lifted.

1
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net
ROGUE FEED
A Word of Clarification
OCT 08, 2009 11:16A.M.
I try to be clear when I write my posts, but sometimes I forget to include
important bits of information that are obvious to me but might not be so
obvious to others. A good case in point is when I talk about the
“wargames” heritage of OD&D and early gaming in general. What I
typically fail to make clear is that I’m (primarily) talking about
miniatures wargaming rather than Avalon Hill-style hex-and-chit
wargaming. Gygax and Arneson were avid players of miniatures
wargames, as was M.A.R. Barker. And of course the Chainmail rules out
of which OD&D arose were “rules for medieval miniatures,” according to
its subtitle.
Miniatures games back in those days were often kit bashed affairs, with
models swiped from a variety of different sources and rules that left a lot
of leeway for interpretation. This ethos was carried over into OD&D,
along with measuring movement in inches. While I have no particular
attachment to those movement rates, I do have a fondness for the “seat
of the pants” style of refereeing that those old miniatures games
demanded and that was imported into early roleplaying games. I was
never a minis gamer myself, but I knew older guys who were into
Napoleonics (and American Revolutionary miniatures) and used to
watch with awe, not just as they assembled their meticulously painted 15
mm armies, but as they seemingly effortlessly dealt with situations their
rules didn’t explicitly cover. What I saw still sticks with me three decades
later.
Ironically, I don’t have the patience to be a good minis player. I’m not a
very good painter and I get easily distracted when it’s not my turn. I’m
also a poor strategist and tactician when it comes to things like this. In
the few games I have played in recent years, I tend to get trounced rather
unceremoniously and the fault is largely my own.
2
9 October 2009
ROGUE FEED
Dwimmermount Session 19
OCT 08, 2009 07:33A.M.
The Dwimmermount campaign has been on something of a hiatus in
recent weeks, owing to a concatenation of real world distractions on the
part of three of my regular players. In the last month, there’s only been a
single session and this dearth of actual play may continue for the next
little while at least. It’s a pity but it’s an expected consequence of running
a campaign with adults who have jobs, families, and other
responsibilities. It does make me wonder how Gary Gygax was able to
run his Greyhawk campaign multiple days each week back in the 70s.
Regardless, we did manage to squeeze in a single session recently and it
took place entirely outside of Dwimmermount. Brother Candor had long
ago promised to officiate at the marriage of former hireling Ragnar the
next time he was free to do so. By mutual agreement, the party decided
that he was free now and so headed off to a small village south of
Dwimmermount called Smerdlap’s Crossing. Conveniently, the town was
located not too far from the vale Dordagdonar wanted to scout out as a
location for his future elf-hold. Although he’s only fourth level,
Dordagdonar’s player is thinking ahead and there’s nothing in the OD&D
rules that prevents a PC from starting to expend resources on a
stronghold before ninth level.
I’d not given much thought to the nature of Smerdlap’s Crossing, beyond
assuming it to be an agricultural community under the protection of
Adamas. Thanks to an almost-rhyme, one of my players began talking
about the burlap industry of Smerdlap’s Crossing, which of course led to
the further suggestion that the local farmers grew hemp. Yes, this led
other suggestions as well and much amusement was had by all, as we
cycled through all the usual jokes and humorous associations we could
muster as they made preparations for the wedding. The party had pooled
their resources and bought some oxen and a plow for Ragnar,
immediately making him a very important person in town for reasons
other than having braved the dangers of Dwimmermount and returned
alive.
The wedding itself was a small affair, but the party that ensued afterward
was much more exciting. During the festivities, an old man expressed
surprise upon seeing Dordagdonar, explaining that elves haven’t been
seen in these parts since he was a boy. Dordagdonar asked why and the
old man added that, when he was a child, things hadn’t been going so
well with the crops and people were getting sick and disappearing. The
town elders were always suspicious of a settlement of elves to the
northeast and decided, without proof, that they had to be responsible for
Smerdlap’s Crossing’s ills.
The elders enlisted the aid of some “mercenaries,” including a number of
“dark wizards” to deal with the elves and so they did, resulting in the
slaughter of the entire settlement. Unfortunately, the problems remained
and in fact multiplied, as the wizards formerly in the employ of the town
elders set up shop on the site of the elvish settlement and began “doin’ all
sorts of nasty stuff” that resulted in even more innocent people being
Today’s Tabbloid PERSONAL NEWS FOR riorio2@rogue-games.net 9 October 2009

killed. The entire town itself would probably have suffered the same fate
as the elves if it hadn’t been for a few brave souls who set out to deal with
the mess they had made and succeeded in killing and driving off the
wizards. One of these men was Ragnar’s grandfather, which might
explain where the young man got the idea of adventuring in the first
place.
Unsurprisingly, Dordagdonar was intrigued by this story and, once the
wedding party was over, asked his comrades to investigate the site of this
former elven settlement. They readily agreed, since they intended to go
in that direction anyway and they couldn’t help feel that these events
might have some connection to what was happening in Dwimmermount.
Some of you might already have guessed that I was using this as an
opportunity to sneak in a modified version of Jim Raggi’s Death Frost
Doom into the campaign. I’m not a huge user of prepackaged modules,
but Death Frost Doom is good enough that I really wanted to import at
least some of its ideas into the Dwimmermount campaign. As I said, I’ve
changed a number of elements to better suit my own style and that of the
campaign, but the general outline remains the same.
fun reworking bits of it to suit what I’ve already established about my
setting. One of the real joys of the way I referee is that it’s very easy to
add new elements, since so little is nailed down. I’m very fond of
throwing out unexplained references, hints, and other clues that I can
pick up later or not, as the needs of the campaign require. It demands a
certain amount of mental nimbleness on my part, but I have a lot of
practice doing it. I’ll admit upfront that it doesn’t always go as smoothly
as I’d like, but, when it does, the result is far more satisfying to me than
simply using game materials as written. As a referee, I like to feel as if
I’m as much a player as those with PCs and, to do that, I need to surprise
even myself. Over the years, I’ve found the best way to do this is to let the
dice fall where they may and to avoid too much preparation and
planning. It’s all too easy for me to nudge things in the “right” direction if
I spend a lot of time preparing for sessions and so I purposefully avoid
doing so when possible.

Close to the former elven village, the PCs encountered crazy old Zeke, a
trapper formerly from Smerdlap’s Crossing, who’s taken up a solitary life
close to the site of the atrocities of decades previous. He was able to
confirm some of the information they’d learned back at the wedding and
added a few of his own, particularly that the aforementioned dark
wizards had engineered the calamities that had befallen his home town
and were using the townsfolk for their own ends. This didn’t really come
as a surprise to any of the characters, who started to ponder rationales
for everything that had happened. This led them to the conclusion they
needed to investigate the ruins of the elven settlement, something Zeke
urged them not to do.

Ignoring Zeke’s warnings, the party set out for the ruins to discover a
large collection of graves all over the area surrounding the former village.
They also found a rift in the ground that gave off a foul odor. They briefly
toyed with descending down into it but thought better of it once they
noticed a still-standing building amidst the graves and ruins. The
building appeared to be a shabby-looking cabin but there were odd
details to it — unbroken glass windows, for example — that unnerved
them. It didn’t look like anything they’d ever seen and the strange
mismatch of materials used to construct it only added to their sense that
something “wasn’t right.” They entered the cabin anyway and inside
found more oddities, such as a mechanical clock and evidence that
someone else had been inside in fairly recent times. They also found a
huge tome bound in the skin of something that was written in ancient
Thulian and was entitled “Offerings to Thule” (thank you read
languages). This confused and worried Brother Candor, since he’d
always assumed that “Thule” was merely the name of the northern island
from which the Thulians had originally come. Now he started to think
that perhaps Thule was the name of something else entirely, after which
the island may have been named.

After a bit more investigation of the odd cabin, the session ended. I was a
bit disappointed we didn’t get further into Death Frost Doom, since I’m
very interested in how my players will react to it. I’m also having a lot of