Barking Alien Challenge day2: Your Guide + some reviews reconsidered

Do you seek adventure and treasure?

A wizened old hairless gnome in travelling clothes buys you all some beers. He says he is Ozymandius Fledermus, a peddler between the Underland and the surface world who aquires unusual objects. He likes to meet adventurers in the area who might be able to help. He is happy to answer your questions about foreign lands or cities on his maps.

He also collects and evaluates gossip and suggests he can find common magic items for trade (two +1 magic items for a +1 item he can obtain. You can trade up other stuff when when you have more money and find better loot. Gems are in high demand as currency in the land down under. These items help him find adventurers when he needs them and sometimes he turns up in a dungeon with a stall or pushcart. Sometimes he has strange armoured guards or a pet owlbear or mimic.

Besides a offering a beer he will offer some free gossip and offer to trade more. 

He will offer them one of his cheap maps so you can see how good his products are. He will give some history of the target location, usually a dungeon or ruin. He sasy you may have everything you find he just wants one item. It is usually specific and weird. It may include, magic, documents in ancient text, artworks or non magic relics like ancient crowns he can use for leverage for some people needing some new history to justify some noble claims. Nothing is ever particularly evil.

The first map is free but bring me back this one item, please as a token
The second map is 100gp or a magic item for something more special

He has anti scrying and detection magic amulets and turns invisible at will

d12 Ozymandius' Free Map Destination
1 Ruined tower on an island

2 Crypt in the ancient graveyard of a forgotten people

3 Dungeon under a ruined castle in the wilderness

4 Ruined temple of the ancients with catacombs

5 Shipwreck near the coast with an unplundered treasure

6 Caverns in a mountain with art left by prehistoric cults

7 Sinkhole under a grassy plain into a great cavern teeming with life

8 Abandoned isolated castle said to be haunted 

9 Crumbling mansion at the centre of an overgrown, creepy estate

10 Gloomy castle on storm-ravaged and fog-shrouded mountain

11 Underground complex of a lost civilisation

12 Ruins of a town or village mysteriously abandoned before modern memory

d12 Ozymandius' Fetch Quests
1 Ancient books in an unknown language wrapped in oilskin in a chest
2 Strange set of weird keys (set may be broken up)
3 Glowing glass orb with swirling, hungry, petty godling of the outer void. If broken as a shadow or wraith or other appropriate undead
4 Pipe carved from black unicorn horn that improves the duration of visions of magic drugs
5 Ornate Bronze Golem head, inactive but magic
6 Crystal sphere, like a lever from some strange magic machine

7 Rare potion in a jade bottle like black resin, dont drink it, whatever you do
8 Artwork depicting a famous location but indicating a tunnel entrance that is unknown to people of today 

9 Obsidian rod, with fine detailed images of serpent folk wizards using the rod to open a door
10 Mysterious skull with occult symbols and gem eyes

11 A silver mirror with arcane symbols in the frame

12 Black iron cauldron with the old gods depicted

Players trying to hijack these possible adventure leads dont seem to stop Ozymandias from dealing with a party. He might send them on a further mission with a relic once brought to him. Will pay in silver ingots, gems or magic items. He might appear where players are up to some breach of the deal, showing he kinda knew or wanted them to do stuff for him. As long as he gets some apparently useless mcguffin he is satisfied and may reward initiative to heroes who "find" stuff he haddnt even told them to yet.  

Besides getting objects for schemes and gathering information, he might offer more violent adventurers' bounties or hitjobs. The more pay the less questions. He might offer some rotters' rewards to tempt good adventurers like  and or a werewolf or something.

d12 Ozymandius' Bounties on Offer
1 Cyril the Boy Strangling Maniac living area and strangling 1st born sons
2 Basil the Baby Eating Bastard used to be subtle but now has got more brazen
3 Kaylarg Vortis, leader of a murderous bandit who killed several nobles

4 Katie the Cannibal Cook moves from place to place and gets caught out serving human meat

5 Mourna Klaug takes money to adopt children and then drowns them and flees

6 Rupert the Rebel, a bandit robbing tax collectors and the rich while encouraging rebellion 

7 Princess Marion, leader of the rebels and descendant of a murdered dynasty

8 Klara Ethultan, a witch who defies guilds by providing affordable medicine

9 Morbert Winkerton, traitor for money has been living as a robber baron with gang in a gruberhole

10 Bordran Dallok, a rubber barroon and demon worshiper operating from a ruined castle

11 Gillian Berherk, grave robber and necromancer, murders to keep her youth

12 Elhanna Bilgefork, murdered a nobleman she served and has evaded capture

These people have in some way crossed gnomes but these missions serve as a guide as to wht adventurers will do. Bounties usually higher if alive so they can have bloody public executions. 

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Woke up in middle of night realising id not posted in time.
Possibly I over did it.

I have been playtesting my new character class designs solo using B11 B12 & B9 (in order). I was not really into them and had on my to sell pile for years. But I found solo stuff works ok with lots of simple adventures. Im also finding solo with a party works better Lv1-4 with some followers. As book keeping gets more complex Id say a single character and some followers works better for 5th plus. I started from zero level with a Templar and a rover with a temple initiate and a young wolf. 

B11 Kings Festival
After 12 pages recapping game basics and detailed backstories for class types. Its a simple 2 Lv Dungeon we managed to beat in one run and recruited a kobold. Chameleon was bad. It helps you rescue clerics in the dungeon for healing and 2nd Lv undead. Good magic treasure - +1 dagger, mace, sheild & sword. Potions and scrolls helped us finish. The kobold impressed by his treasure share stuck around and threw rocks and dragged wounded back. Both main characters had some healing. I think the dungeon is an ok one and makes more sense than I thought before. The back story was pretty unimportany and long winded. My moron characters yawned and asked where to start killing orcs and evil clerics.

I realised the point of lots of humanoid species in D&D is to provide factions. It is built in.

I fixed a class ability for rangers from needing a spell action to as part of combat action as it proved to nerf the character quite a bit. The templar burned his resources more easily.

B12 Queens Festival
This has more episodes, less waffle, handy monster stat roster in back which I may try to emulate. You start entering a magic basement a 21 room affair. There is a +1 crossbow, 
Phase stingers were a pain but not too dangerous. The green slime is one of the worst. I miss that they dont move in modern game but dont miss their non hp based damage system and fatal first aid options. A gargoyle was a pain. The evil party was fun and had mace +1, sheild +1, detect magic wand, sword +1+2vs wizards and scroll with knock x2. So we had more magic weapons than members. A rust monster was able to be locked away.

Next we hexcrawled a few days to find a evil outpost. We hired a sorcerer so he could use some knock scrolls. This adventure is a meatgrinder of 1hd humanoids vs my now 2nd level templar and rover, their kobold, slightly bigger wolf and zero level student. The odds are you will get lots of monsters swarming the party defending a doorway. We killed leaders and bullied rest to flee a few times and got some orcs to even help. Oldschool morale helps all this. We rolled a barrel of burning oil into the gnolls room and let them flee as most gutless monsters. This could easily be a TPK and not for 1st Lv. The spell caster hireling used sleep well. There is a +1 chain, sheild, sword on one boss and ring of protection +1. The lower level was harsh too with more big monsters like an ogre and owlbear. You can trick the owlbear and lock it away. A bad guy has +1 plate, +1+2 vs lycanthropes 2-handed sword and a hunting chameleon. Got a staff of healing too. There is also a crystal ball, +2 weapons (dagger, longsword and shortsword not being used by baddies). The boss lady had +2 chaotic sword that commands 40hd of goblinoids ho are immune to sleep and charm that might have unbalanced her mind. We smashed this item. She also had plate +1 and sheild. Her cleric has a +2 staff. This was quite hard and I felt we had a silly amount of wealth and magic armour and weapons. Our kobold ended up with magic weapons even. The student with 4 hp and zero level ended up in plate +1 with magic sheild and sword. I guess villains often higher level but the party ended up with stuff id say was a bit better than 2nd Lv deserves.

Ill go through B9 next post...