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Let's Read Neverwinter: The Red Wizards of Thay
When Szass Tam the epic lich took over the nation of Thay, he tasked the Red Wizards with building a series of fortresses over powerful sources of necromantic magic all through the Realms. These fortresses would siphon and channel magic energy to him, helping him power a major ritual that would turn him into a god.
The Dread Ring was the fortress built into the Neverwinter Wood. The Thayans’ plan here was to wake up the slumbering primordial Maegera, which would level Neverwinter completely and kill every one of its inhabitants. The power derived from these deaths would then be sent to Tam. The wizards were foiled at the last minute, yet Maegera still woke up a little and caused the eruption which almost destroyed Neverwinter.
Now the Thayans are back. There are little more than frightened whispers about their presence in the region, and no one knows they were responsible for destroying the city thirty years ago, but if left unchecked there’s a good chance they’ll finish the job, one way or another.
Goals and Strategies
The Thayan presence in the region is focused on the ruins of the Dread Ring, where living wizards and undead laborers work tirelessly to rebuild the walls of the fortress and fix its damaged magic circuits. They’re led by a lich named Valindra Shadowmantle, one of Tam’s lieutenants.
Her mission is to either restore the Ring to its old purpose, or to find a new one for it. The first goal is likely impossible - the godhood ritual does not allow for second chances and all of the other fortresses have proved unusable. Valindra has a pretty good idea of how she will reach the second goal, though.
She has discovered why this site was a suitable location for the fortress in the first place! Deep beneath its location is the incredibly ancient tomb of a great black dragon named Lorragauth. Inside rests the beast’s intact skeleton, which emits a great deal of necrotic energy. Valindra thinks it’s possible to animate the skeleton as a dracolich under her control, and she’s “conquered” a local cell of the Cult of the Dragon to aid her in this endeavor.
The Cult of the Dragon are an old Forgotten Realms standby: yet another bunch of evil maniacs intent on ruling the world, but also the only group in the setting who knows how to make dracoliches. Their ritual requires a living dragon, but Valindra is confident her pet cult can change it to work on ancient bones. And if they can’t, she’ll find someone to resurrect the dragon first and then turn it into a dracolich.
The cult, of course, is not happy about this. Its leader, Adimond Kroskas, is being forced to work for Valindra because she stole his Ring of the Dragon, which acts as his symbol of authority and is a powerful magical item in its own right. He can’t call on his own superiors for help because they’ll destroy him for losing the ring. He’s currently maintaining the loyalty of his underlings because he’s promised to get the ring back. While he figures out a way to do it, he and his cult are working to find a way to raise Lorragauth… as slowly as possible.
At the same time, Valindra is still trying to find a way to properly “refuel” the Dread Ring. One of her theories is that it might be possible to drain power directly from Maegera to feed into the fortress. That would require finding a new path to Gauntlgrym (the one they used in the novel has collapsed). If the Netherese manage to fix Xinlenal, though, she might divert her efforts to capturing it in order to use its mythalar engine as that power source.
A third goal they’re working towards is building up an undead army. They’ve begun a mass grave-robbing operation in Neverwinter’s cemetery to produce low-level undead to act as laborers and guards, and are sending the surplus back to Thay to aid in their war with Netheril as well. They’re also established an outpost in the crypts beneath Castle Never, where they are attempting to raise an old group of heroes (the Neverwinter Nine) as powerful revenants.
Player Tie-Ins
The Renegade Red Wizard is our theme that’s on a collision course with the Thayans, but others might also find themselves involved. People have started to notice the grave-robbing and might contact someone like Oghma’s Faithful or the Neverwinter Noble to help them solve this mystery.
The Uthgardt Barbarian would also be very interested in this as the Thayans are a very likely suspect in the sacking of their holy burial mound.
Conversely, Oghma’s Faithful might be approached my mysterious but generous patrons who wish to hire them to perform some important magical research…
Oh, we also get full stats for the stolen Ring of Dragons, which might make a cool magic item for the PCs if they manage to acquire it. It’s a Level 7 Rare item. Wearing it gives you the ability to speak, read, and write Draconic, and to communicate telepathically with dragons in your line of sight. It also has two active daily powers. One of them makes your location known to every evil dragon within a day’s travel, which cultists use as a way to summon allies but is likely to backfire for PCs. The other projects sustainable illusion of a dragon of up to Gargantuan size within 40 squares of you. It can make sounds and move, and generally does a convincing job of looking like you summoned an elder dragon bodyguard. However it will pop like a soap bubble if it touches anything or is hit by an attack.
Relationships
New Neverwinter has just started to look into Thayan activities in the region, and the Thayans have begun providing material support to the Sons of Alagondar to thrown them off the trail.
Valindra knows the Abolethic Sovereignity has an operation in the region, but that’s all she knows, and it makes her very angry. She’s begun sending people to investigate.
The Thayans and Netherese are at war all over the Realms, and this area is no exception. A lot of that undead manpower Valindra has been building up is being used in an ongoing battle against the local Netherese operation.
She also has some conflicts with the Many-Arrows Orcs, who occasionally encroach upon the Dread Ring and must be driven off.
And finally, you’ll notice that I did not mention the Ashmadai even once despite Valindra living in their head rent-free over in the Ashmadai entry. That’s how much she thinks of them. They are nothing more than disposable muscle to her.
Impressions
As we’ll see from the encounter table in the next post, the Thayans are clearly set up to be one of the campaign’s final bosses - possibly the final boss if they manage to animate Lorragauth. Valindra is the most powerful faction boss so far even without the dragon, and their backstory does have a nice thematic link to the event that started this whole situation in the first place.
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Let's Read Neverwinter: Ashmadai Encounters
The enemy table for the Ashmadai includes Heroic-tier devils and cambions from several books, and also several humanoid opponents that could be reskinned as cultists. We also get a few new stat blocks for cultists and devils, and for the cult’s leaders.
Seared Devil
Looking like a stinky burned corpse, this devil hurls itself at its victims, driven by envy of their uncooked state. It’s a Level 3 Soldier with 50 HP, speed 5, and Resist 10 Fire. Its basic attack is an Ashen Slam that damages and marks for a turn on a hit. Enemies that ignore the mark are hit by the Choking Ashes power, taking 5 fire damage and getting slowed for a turn.
Branded Zealot
Those who get initiated into the cult are branded with the symbol of Asmodeus. Most of them use this stat block. The typical zealot has a frightful temper and is easily goaded into fights. They’re Level 4 Brutes with 66 HP.
Zealots attack in melee with a Branding Iron that deals fire damage, and at range with a Range 3 Hellfire Chain spell that deals fire damage, pulls 2 squares, and slows for a turn on a hit.
Their special move is named Bow to Your Master, and it lets them do a Hellfire chain attack followed by a Branding Iron attack if the target is adjacent to them. It recharges when neither attack hits. If both of them do, the target falls prone.
Hellfire Warlock
A more discreet cultist, who got infernal warlock powers from deals with Asmodeus. They’re better at concealing their brands and like to infiltrate enemy centers to spy and sabotage them. They’re Level 4 Artillery with 48 HP.
The warlock’s Hellfire Affinity gives them +2 to defenses against enemies who are taking ongoing fire damage. Both of their basic attacks (a dagger for melee and a Hellfire bolt for ranged combat) damage and inflict ongoing fire damage (save ends).
Once per encounter they can release a Concussive Inferno in a Close Burst 2, targeting enemies. On a hit, this deals fire and force damage, pushes the targets 2 squares, and knocks them prone. On a miss it still deals half damage and pushes 2 squares.
If a creature within 10 squares of the warlock is taking fire damage, they can Ride the Fire as a move action (recharge 5+) and teleport to swap places with them.
Fimbrul Devil
Looks just like a seared devil, but is cold. These things hail from Nessus or Cania, and it is said that someone who survives a fight with them suffers from persistent chills for years afterwards. They’re Level 5 Controllers with 66 HP, Speed 6 with Ice Walk, and Resist 10 to both fire and cold damage.
Their Icy Claws deal cold damage; their Icy Exhalation hits a Close Blast 3, deals cold damage, and slows for a turn. Targets that were already slowed are instead immobilized. Once per encounter they can encase a creature in a Frozen Prison as a ranged attack, which deals cold damage and restrains (save ends). On a miss, the target takes half damage and is immobilized (save ends).
Mordai Vell
The pleasant face of the cult, Mordai Vell is a tiefling aristocrat descended from one of Neverwinter’s minor noble clans that was largely unaffected by the cataclysm. This doesn’t give him a claim to the throne, but does leave him with a lot of inherited wealth. His money and title make him an influent character in the city’s politics, and his public reputation is generally good because he’s almost as charismatic as he thinks he is. He sees Asmodeus not as his master, but as a means to an end.
In addition to the deals and schemes detailed above, Vell is also dealing with a duergar named Nimor Ironvoice who claims to have access to a source of hellthorn, a special metallic alloy that is very easy to enchant with infernal magic. He has people following Ironvoice around for a while now, but the duergar is careful enough to avoid revealing his sources.
When faced in combat, Vell is a Level 6 Lurker with 60 HP and Resist 10 Fire. His basic melee attack is with a rod that damages and pushes 2 squares, but his special powers are the most interesting part about him.
Fiery Corona attacks a Close Burst 2, dealing fire and force damage and inflicting ongoing fire damage. Shrouded in Fire deals 5 automatic fire damage to everyone adjacent to Mordai and lets him become invisible and teleport 5 squares. He remains invisible until he attacks or until the end of his next turn. Using one of these powers recharges the other, so he’s going to alternate them if possible.
Favria
Favria had been enslaved by a far-away band of Asmodeus-worshiping duergar since her birth. She escaped their service, but kept their faith. She made her way to Neverwinter to search for Gauntlgrym, joining up with the local cult and rising to a leadership position mostly through force and intimidation.
If Vell is the pleasant lie, Favria is the harsh reality of Asmodeus worship. Instead of lies and intrigue, she prefers to deal with problems by the direct application of violence. Still, she sees value in his way of doing things, and cooperates by keeping herself and her underlings mostly out of Neverwinter proper. They have a hideout in the ruins of the village of Thundertree.
Unlike Vell, Favria knows exactly what the unholy relic of Asmodeus held by the Thayans is capable of, which is why she is so intent on recovering it. She’s also still looking for Gauntlgrym. She is unaware that it’s currently occupied by Asmodeus-worshiping duergar, and her reaction to that discovery is unpredictable. Will she readily cooperate with her fellows in faith, or will she try to kill them to avenge her suffering at the hands of a similar group?
Favria is a Level 5 Skirmisher with 68 HP. She has Resist 5 to fire and poison, and fights using a pair of custom bladed hand crossbows that can be used in melee or at range. The melee attack deals extra damage if the target grants combat advantage, and the ranged attack fires poisoned bolts that damage and inflict ongoing poison damage (save ends). Dual Assault lets her make one of each attack once per encounter, recharging if neither hits.
Impressions
I did say I wasn’t inclined to make the Ashmadai a major thread but if I still wanted them to have a bit of staying power I’d probably tone down Mordai Vell’s personality.
As written, his demeanor is so Trump-like any players here in 2023 will immediately figure out he’s a bad guy and do their best to gank him early. That might bring some attention from the other factions, but would remove the cult itself as an effective threat.
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Let's Read Neverwinter: Ashmadai
Since before the cataclysm that destroyed the city, the Neverwinter region was being infiltrated by the Ashmadai, a particularly powerful cult of Asmodeus. There’s a lot of backstory here, which seems to tie into to a Drizz’t novel. Let’s try to go over it quickly.
So back before the Cataclysm, the Ashmadai mostly worked as flunkies for the Thayans, because the Thayan leader Szass Tam had in his possession a scepter believed to be an unholy relic of Asmodeus. They were the wizards’ muscle when they tried to destroy Neverwinter to build the Dread Ring, their super necromantic fortress.
After that plan fell through in a Drizz’t novel, the Thayans fled the area and left the Ashmadai to their own devices until recently, when this Thayan lich named Valindra came back and announced she was the unholy scepter’s new owner, demanding the cultists’ loyalty.
The cult now finds itself split into two sub-factions:
The traditionalists are older and less educated, and serve out of genuine faith in their evil god. They’re okay with going back to being Thayan flunkies because of the scepter, which they value highly. They’re led by a dwarf named Favria.
The “new guard” is less religious and a lot more pragmatic. They want to retain their independence and rule the region themselves. They’re led by a tiefling named Mordai Vell.
Goals
Those two sub-factions are actually quite friendly with each other. Their leaders meet regularly, even though their lower-ranking members have no contact. Favria will happily leave the Thayans’ service if Vell can steal the scepter from them. Vell also wants to capture Valindra’s soul vessel, which will let him extract some payback from the lich for all the abuse she has been heaping upon them.
Once they’ve attained their independence, the Ashmadai plan to move on to dominating the region. What exactly this means is up to the GM, and will inform their strategies. Do they want to rule the region openly as its new imperial masters? Do they want to establish themselves as a “legitimate” religion and rule that way? Do they want to be a power behind the throne? Do they want to harness Maegera’s power to do so?
That said, the Ashmadai are by far the weakest of the major factions from this book, so a lot of their more immediate goals revolve around fixing that and avoiding the notice of the others.
The pragmatist faction operates mostly from the shadows. Mordai Vell established a complex system of cells or “pods”, where the highest-ranking leaders report to him but don’t know each other, and this structure repeats down each leader’s hierarchy all the way down to the dumb muscle on the ground.
The traditionalist faction is more direct and violent, though they mostly keep out of town unless called upon. In areas already under their control, they paint their symbol on buildings and alleys as a way to remind the local populace who’s boss.
Like the aboleths, the Ashmadai are fond of kidnapping people. Their victims become sacrifices in a peculiar arrangement they have with their diabolic patron. For each devil they summon into the world, they must also bind a mortal to a devil’s spirit. These possessed individuals can look like mortals while using devil stats, or use their original stats with the addition of a couple of thematic powers. I guess this devil-summoning must be the Ashmadai’s primary means of increasing their firepower, but since those possessions are framed as the price of the summonings I’m guessing the possessed are not directly beholden to the cult’s hierarchy. Whether it’s possible to rescue them from this possession is up to the GM.
Player Tie-Ins
The Devil’s Pawn is on a collision course with the Ashmadai, who will make big efforts to recruit them. They will also go after people who look like they can rise to positions of power in Neverwinter, like the Noble.
Whether the cult tries to actively recruit the PCs or not, they can certainly use their services against the aboleth menace. PCs who would never accept working with diabolists might be approached by disguised agents intending to point them at their enemies.
It’s not actually stated anywhere within this entry, but other places in the book say the Ashmadai control the above-ground portion of Oghma’s temple, meaning Oghma’s Faithful is very likely to end up fighting them.
Relationships
The Ashmadai are hard at work trying to infiltrate New Neverwinter, but they haven’t managed to make any progress with Mayor Soman Galt (who, as we saw, is a pawn of the aboleths already). Mordai himself is busily trying to convert General Sabine of New Neverwinter to his cause, and has a good shot of managing this as her natural disposition is compatible with the cult’s.
The Abolethic Sovereignity is the competition, and they’re ahead. The cultists ideally want to seal the chasm leading to their base, or otherwise drive them off permanently, but they’re not even close to accomplishing this. The only reason the Ashmadai are still around is that the aboleths don’t consider them a serious threat.
As mentioned above, the Ashmadai are nominally serving the Thayans while looking for a way to break free of that servitude. They only do the minimum to prevent Valindra from suspecting them, but their rebellious plot is doomed to failure as Valindra does not have that relic scepter any more - she shipped it back to Szass Tam as soon as she was done showing it off.
The cult looks at the Netherese with much more genuine awe, though. They’ve begun holding secret talks to forge an alliance, though they’re still having to keep that hidden from the Thayans.
Impressions
As far as major factions go the Ashmadai are kinda weak. All of their major goals and strategies lead them down a path that ends in a face-first collision with one of the factions. They can’t recover the scepter because it’s not here any more. They can’t corrupt New Neverwinter entirely because the aboleths got there first. The direct approach to conquest doesn’t work because all the other would-be conquerors are stronger.
Of course, there’s a small chance that campaign events and PC actions end up giving them a leg up, if only because the PCs open a power vacuum the cult can exploit. I myself am not inclined to make them into a major threat, because it’s always refreshing to have a group of villains you can easily stomp into the ground.
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Underwater Dungeon Fantasy
Illustration by Geoffrey Ernault Underwater adventuring is one of those things that older editions of Dungeons and Dragons seemed to like more than their players did. Lots of monster books included a selection of monsters that could only be encountered under the sea, but every bit of commentary I read on those was always about how no one ever bothered to include submarine delves in their campaigns. If a sea monster couldn’t go up to the surface to attack a ship or climb on its deck, it was usually ignored by GMs.
The Dungeon Fantasy lines learned this lesson well, and don’t spend a lot of ink on support for underwater adventures. This was a big problem for me when I was GMing Hell’s Rebels to a group of friends. This particular adventure path follows the old tradition of making PCs spend a chunk of levels 5-8 underwater. When I got to that part in my GURPS conversion, I had no idea what to do and got a bit stressed out trying to figure this out on the spot.
Frantically researching rules in real time is no fun at all even when I am the only player, so for the benefit of my solo Hell’s Rebels game and any future run-throughs with actual players, I’m going to collect everything I know about fighting underwater in GURPS right here in this post.
I admit I don’t have all the officially published primary sources that discuss underwater adventuring. The ones I’m using are DF: Exploits and the simplified rules that can be found in Dungeon Fantastic, which do reference the sources I don’t have.
Underwater Fighting For Land-Lubbers
If you’re not an aquatic creature, you use these rules when fighting underwater.
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Your Move is limited to your Swimming move: Basic Speed/5, minimum 1.
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All of your skills are capped at the level of your DX-based Swimming.
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Thrusting and unarmed strikes receive no penalties.
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Some grappling techniques won’t work. Others work as normal. GM adjudicates.
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Swinging attacks with Reach 1+ weapons are impossible. This does cover pretty much every weapon listed in DF: Adventurers, as even small knives have a Reach of “C, 1” when swung.
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Shield bashes are -2 x DB to hit and do half damage. Don’t bother trying.
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Blocks are impossible but you still get your shield’s DB.
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Parries with Reach 1+ weapons are impossible. Parries with close-combat-only weapons like daggers, and unarmed parries, are allowed and suffer no penalties.
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Dodge is possible and not penalized, but you can’t Retreat.
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No thrown ranged attacks, even from Missile spells. Special underwater ranged weapons exist and use specific stats.
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Ranged attacks into our out of water have -4 to hit, 1/10 range, and do half damage.
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All through this, you’ll be holding your breath under Heavy Exertion (DF: Exploits p. 21)!
Underwater Fighting for Fish and Fish-People
Water adaptation in GURPS has two main components. One is the ability to breathe underwater. The other is the ability to move freely while submerged.
In monsters, the first is handled by traits such as Gills, some variety of Doesn’t Breathe, or the ability to hold their breath for a really long time even in combat. A combatant with one of these traits doesn’t need to worry about the standard Breath Holding rules.
The second is handled by the Amphibious or Aquatic traits. If you have one of these traits, you get a lot of advantages over land-lubbers.
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Your get to use your full Move and skills, not limited by your Swimming.
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You are exempt from most skill penalties from being underwater and from many Swimming tests.
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You can Retreat!
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Your other attacks and defenses are limited as for land-lubbers. This is important for weapon users, not so much for aquatic beasts.
From Delver to Diver
If you’re a typical delver belonging to one of DFRPG’s standard ancestries, then you fall squarely in the “land-lubber” category, and you have to solve a couple of problems before you can dive in.
Breathing
If you don’t want your underwater life expectancy to be measured in seconds, you need to find a way to breathe in there. In most typical DF settings, that means magic.
Spells
The DFRPG boxed set includes two main drowning-prevention measures: the Breathe Water and Hold Breath spells. They have different prerequisite chains but work the same, letting you ignore that part of the rules for as long as they last. Both have a base duration of 1 minute and an energy cost of 4 to cast and 2 to maintain, reduced by skill as normal. Hold Breath is a little better because it also let you survive in non-watery environments.
Their main disadvantage is that their duration is relatively short. Unless the PC casting these spells has a skill of 20 or more with them, the affected character is only going to be able to remain underwater for a few minutes at a time. That’s nowhere near enough for a full delve, and it’s an even shorter time if you need to maintain this spell for multiple PCs. If the caster does have skill 20 then things get a lot easier, but that costs a lot of points.
Items
If we expand our scope a little to look at DF supplements, then we see that Dungeon Fantasy Magic Items 1 has an alchemical Water-Breathing Amulet. You can breathe underwater as long as you wear it… but it costs an amazing $23.400. Outfitting a party of 5 with that is a very expensive proposition, unless you find them as treasure.
A reusable casting item like a wand or ring with the Breathe Water spell would cost at least $8200. This basic version would be powered by the user, so it has the same duration limits as the spell. Doubling the price would halve the energy cost, which is better but not perfect.
However, if we expand our scope even further and break out of the DFRPG bubble, we can go to GURPS Magic and find an alchemical water-breathing elixir that costs $600 in a setting with common magic and gives you the ability to breathe water for 1d hours! Even a minimal roll gives you a nice amount of time to explore, and per that book’s rules you’ll know the duration is about to expire 5 minutes in advance, which is better than nothing.
That elixir is clearly the best approach for campaigns where underwater delves are a sometimes thing. They’re a little less convenient than the amulet, but the price can’t be beat. I’m definitely including this in my campaign.
Moving
Unless your delvers are willing to spend the time and points to become better-than-Olympic swimmers, solving their underwater movement issues also means resorting to magic.
Spells
DF: Spells gives us two options here: Swim and Ethereal Body. The first makes the subject effectively Amphibious, the second makes them intangible and thus able to ignore all that water. GURPS Magic additionally gives us Walk Through Water, which makes the user intangible only to water and ice. This means you don’t enjoy 3D movement while underwater… but your maneuvers in combat are unrestricted! I think I can kinda see why this one didn’t make the cut to the DFRPG.
As with water-breathing, our biggest limitation here are spell maintenance costs, which limit our unimpeded movement to a few minutes at most. These are also harder to completely eliminate, since Ethereal Body costs 4 energy per minute to maintain and the others cost 3. Still, a caster could conceivably save these for when a fight is about to start, and only cast it on the group’s physical fighters.
Magic Items
I couldn’t find an always-on item with a Swim enchantment in the books I own. A basic casting item for Swim will cost at least $20500, almost as expensive as the always-on water breathing amulet. Lowering its casting/maintenance cost from 6/3 to 3/2 doubles the price, lowering it to 2/1 quadruples it.
We might built this as a charged item instead, with each charge giving you 2 minutes of Swim time and costing 9 energy. A non-rechargeable item would cost $1350 per charge, a rechargeable one $2700 (plus $180 per charge to reload).
If Walk Through Water is allowed in the campaign, an item with the same duration per charge would be a tad cheaper: $910/$1820/$140.
In any of these cases, the item is best used sparingly, in the same manner as the spell. You activate it when it’s time for a big fight or a crucial skill test, and rely on your Swimming lessons the rest of the time.
Optimal Strategies
Given all of the above, I think we can pretty easily arrive at an “optimal” strategy for underwater expeditions.
If your group is about to embark in a campaign centered around underwater delving, your PC party should include a caster who can use Breathe Water at Skill-20, and also someone who can use Swim at Skill-15. A druid or wizard could do both, a cleric can use Breathe Water and leave Swim to someone else. This is a hefty investment, but worth it for the amount of use they’ll get out of it. Every PC, caster or not, should also consider investing points into the Swimming skill, because it can help conserve spell energy and is pretty useful in itself. You might want to give them extra points for these purposes depending on your desired power level.
An alternative here is for you to allow players to make PCs from ancestries that have an easy time underwater. Both Sea Elves from GURPS DF 3 and Argonians from this blog have Gills and are Amphibious. Warforged are a bit less nimble but don’t need to breathe at all. Each delver who is a natural-born diver will make the rest of the party’s life that much easier. For those who aren’t, Water-Breathing Amulets make excellent treasure.
If you’re planning a standard campaign that features a one-off underwater dungeon, Water-Breathing Elixirs are the way to go, possibly supplemented by one or two rechargeable Wands of Swimming. The elixirs should definitely be easily available in a nearby town (perhaps it’s a coastal fishing village?). The wands might be for sale as well, or might be found as treasure either before or during the delve. Proper safety procedure is to carry two elixirs per PC, saving the second one for the return trip if the first one wears off.
If you only have isolated underwater encounters, we’re back to learned spells, but they don’t need to have high levels. The submerged environment becomes an additional challenge, but no one is going to spend too long inside it.
Hell’s Rebels in particular fits the second category, so I’ll be using that solution.
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Let's Play Hell's Rebels!
I started a Let’s Read of Hell’s Rebels way back when it was new, in 2017. I had gotten the campaign’s first three volumes with alongside a huge pile of other Pathfinder PDFs in one of Humble Bundle’s offerings.
I managed to publish articles about the first three of those books here, though I kinda stalled out between volumes 2 and 3. I still want to “Let’s Read” the rest one day.
This post, and the series it starts, are about something a bit different. You see, ever since I got those books I also had a desire to run this campaign, but I didn’t want to do so using Pathfinder 1e’s default system. No, I wanted, and still want, to use the Dungeon Fantasy RPG for it.
I actually did it, too! This was during the thick of the pandemic here in Brazil, so I ran it on Roll20 with a group of friends. We got through the first two adventures, but I ended up stopping that campaign because the combined workload became a bit too heavy for me. I had to convert everything, prepare battle maps and tokens for Roll20, adjudicate setting developments in response to PC actions, and do all of that on time for the next session in two weeks while juggling all the other stress sources those interesting times produced for me and my family.
I still wanted to go through the whole thing, whether as a GM or as a player. As a GM, I no longer had any confidence I could prepare everything I needed on schedule. As a player, I had that peculiar problem where the only person I knew who wanted to run that adventure in the exact way I wanted to play it was me. Clearly, there was only one solution.
Running this thing as a solo campaign
I actually decided to run Hell’s Rebels for myself as a solo campaign way back at the beginning of 2023, but it took until the start of June for me to finally find the inspiration I was lacking.
This won’t be my first “solo” campaign: I ran through the first two Zeitgeist adventures that way between 2015 and 2017, give or take a year. That attempt lost steam due to the issues I’m about to discuss, but it was pretty fun while it lasted.
My solo campaign attempts don’t have much in common with others I’ve seen online. Those games tend to be quite minimalistic, with a single protagonist run by the solo player, a setting sketched in broad strokes, and some sort of “divination engine” taking the place of the GM. There is no pre-defined plot at all - it’s entirely decided by asking questions to the engine and interpreting its answers. The protagonist might have a starting goal, but how hard that is to reach and what happens on the way are determined randomly. Note-taking seems pretty minimal, unless the player in question wants to post actual play reports online.
To be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that approach and it is in fact the one I would recommend to most people who want to do a solo game. All of the solo game products out there support it, and it is excellent at replicating the experience of being a player in a game and not knowing what will happen next.
It’s also not the approach I’m going to use for myself. I guess I’m built different.
The biggest difference between this game and one using the “best practice” approach outlined above is that I have a pre-defined module I want to run: the Hell’s Rebels Adventure Path. Not only do I want to play that, I’ve already read the first four volumes quite closely. While I find it easy to “forget” this stuff when I’m just a player, here I’m also the GM, which makes separating this knowledge impossible.
And of course, I have this weird desire to run it in a way that mirrors a standard party-based campaign with multiple players as closely as possible. I want a party of heroes, and I want to be both player and GM at the same time. I want it to be GURPS, and I want to interact with the mechanical widgets of that system because I find them fun.
And of course, I don’t want to just keep a minimal set of notes. I’m not gonna write things as a novel or anything, but I kinda want to see the game’s events rendered as a reasonably comprehensive actual play report of the sort I see in the Dungeon Fantastic blog. I’d do that even if I didn’t intend to post them publicly - it’s what I did for Zeitgeist.
How I’m doing this
My strange preferences bring two big risks to this endeavor.
The first one is the lack of an “information barrier” between player and GM. This barrier and the dramatic tension it brings do not exist when player and GM are the same person. The usual strategies for separating in-character knowledge from out-of-character information do not work here, at least for me. This gives me the strange simultaneous feeling that I’m “cheating” (as a player) and “going too easy on the PCs” (as a GM). This is obviously an obstacle to fun.
The other issue is with preparing maps and tokens. Sure, this would be much easier on me if I ran everything in the theater of the mind, but I like moving figures around on a battle map. The problem on my earlier attempts was that I would usually leave the building of those battle maps to the very last second, when I’d be in a rush to get on with the action. This also means I never took the necessary time to familiarize myself with the software I was using. So I’d stall, and procrastinate, and take two months to finish something that could have been done in a couple of days.
To solve both of these issues, I’m going to make a resolution to never wear the GM and player hats at the same time. The GM hat is for preparation. The player hat is for “actual play”.
The GM Hat
During preparation, I’m going to consider myself a mix of GM and designer and I’m going to lean on my newly-discovered feelings of Miniature Envy. You see, a lot of the online friends I’ve made in the past year and a half are very much into tabletop wargaming. They have extensive miniature collections and extremely well-organized workspaces for assembling and painting them. They often post the results of their work online and it always looks awesome.
I have neither the space, skill, nor the budget to do the same thing, but I can look at the process of building battle maps and actor tokens in GCS, TokenTool and Foundry with the same sort of perspective. Learning how to use the software and actually building the things, then, becomes a hobby in itself. And there’s no time or schedule pressure, so there’s no problem if I take a bit longer in this part.
This will also be when I actually convert enemy stats, tests, and treasure from the adventure’s original Pathfinder 1e to GURPS Dungeon Fantasy. I’ll try to make them useful to others who want to try running the adventure in a more traditional manner, but I won’t bother converting rules material for those paths my PCs never take.
I will also perform some significant “condensation” in the campaign. Like all Pathfinder adventure paths, Hell’s Rebels includes a lot of filler fights placed to give your PCs enough XP for them to hit the expected character levels at the right times. It also features lots of elements that get added only on later books but which could be relevant from the start. Neither of these things are necessary in a Dungeon Fantasy campaign where the PCs already start out powerful and advance in a completely different manner.
As soon as I have a large enough chunk of unplayed material, I’m going to take off my GM hat and become a player.
The Player Hat
To solve the information barrier issue, I’m going to just learn to stop worrying and love the cheese. When I’m wearing my player hat, it will be like I’m playing a computer game with a walkthrough open. Sure, I might know what’s coming, and I might even have a party custom-tailored to overcome those challenges, but the process of overcoming those challenges can still be quite fun. It can even still be surprising, depending on what the dice tell me.
It helps that this is the campaign whose main goal is punching fantasy Nazis. Even if I know what’s coming, the actual process of going through it can still be fun. Let us make awesome heroes tailored to the challenge and completely stomp those fascist fuckers into the fucking ground! Let’s kick their asses all the way to the Hell they came from! I want catharsis, dangit!
I will also try to pay special attention to my characters’ disadvantages and other traits, and obey the dictates of those self-control rolls. And when some kind of question appears during the “actual play” part, I’m going to use the Mythic GM Emulator to answer it.
What’s in this for you?
This effort is going to generate a lot of material for this blog! I expect readers will get some use out of my premade PCs, and out of the enemy stat blocks I generate. Everything from those stats to the “actual play” reports and design commentary is going to be published here.
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