My Stormbringer campaign

I originally read the early Elric books when I was about 13 years old, the perfect age for high fantasy featuring an wizardly albino warrior-king with a god-slaying demon in the shape of an ebony sword. A few years later, I got ahold of the Stormbringer rpg and ran some adventures for my friends. Chaosium supported the game with a couple of companion books plus quite a few adventures, and eventually multiple rules editions that expanded on the possibilities of the game. So I ran more Stormbringer in my early 20s, and again in my late 20s for a different group of players.

Chaosium also published a disappointing companion game called Hawkmoon, based on a related setting by the same writer, Michael Moorcock. It was only supported with a few adventures and some supplementary rules. Much later, they published a Hawkmoon monograph that is nearly impossible to find now, even just as a pdf file, because Mongoose acquired the rights to do a different Hawkmoon game that was more directly tied to the then-current edition of Runequest. A different company (Darcsyde) published a Corum rpg (another related Moorcock setting) that was very compatible with the later editions of Stormbringer.

So it has long been my goal to run a multiversal campaign using all three of these games, and I am aiming to start the campaign next November. My recent Call of Cthulhu players are all in, plus three players from my old Ptolus campaign, for a total of six. I plan to start this game with funnel of four introductory scenarios. Each player will create a Hawkmoon character and then we play my introductory Hawkmoon scenario. Same for Corum and Stormbringer, plus a compatible BRP game called Dragonlines. Then we will swing into a lengthy multiplanar adventure, and characters can choose each session which of their surviving intro characters they will play in that session. This will offset the expected bodycount for a game system where an average character has 10 hit points and an average opponent might be wielding a sword that does 1d8 damage. Character generation is pretty random aside from choosing which die rolls count for which attributes, but players do have a lot of control over how to allocate their skill points, constrained by their rolled occupation and nationality.

In addition, I will allow each player to make one special character, for the intro adventure of their choice. Instead of rolling everything, the player will get to pick the nationality and occupation of the character, and start with a 16 in the attribute of their choice. This will ensure that everybody gets at least one sorceror, scientist, or strong warrior.

At this stage, I am reconciling the differences between the four somewhat varying rules. I want to retain the flavor of each setting, but I want to use consistent skill names and also eliminate certain problematic or useless skills, like Ambush or Taste. After updating the skill section of each setting's character sheet, I will move on to make sure that the various magic systems are operating at comparable power levels. Then I can start prepping details for each of the intro adventures, plus create tactical maps and any tokens that I haven't already made for previous games.

Very interesting stuff, sounds like there should be a publication in there somewhere.

The first session will be this Sunday. I invited a total of 12 players, but only ended up with 6 firm commitments, plus one more from a friend who is only in town for the warm half of the year.

I have a put a lot of effort into melding these four games together. I reconciled the numerous variations in skills between the four games, eliminating some, consolidating others, and applying consistent names to the rest. This led me to create custom character sheets for each of the four games.

Next, I created nearly two dozen action cards, with one sleeved set for each player and another for my reference. A character normally gets two actions per round in combat, and I have found that a lot of table time was wasted on players coaching other players on what they should do each round. The cards break down all standard actions into long, normal, and quick actions, and are color-coded red, yellow, and green like a traffic light. Long (red) actions take up both of your action slots per round: full attack, full defense, full move, cast a spell, etc. Normal (yellow) actions take one action slot each, so you can do two yellow actions in a turn: attack, move up to half of your movement rate, etc. Quick (green) actions don't use a movement slot, but you only use each once per turn: speak (a short sentence), step one space, defend, etc. Use Skill is a card that is represented by each card color, as some skills might use the whole turn while other other skills are very quick.

At the start of each combat round, players will silently select their action cards and put them face down on the table. This will prevent a lot of the coaching that wastes so much time and also make players commit to their actions. When it is their turn, a player will flip over the top facedown card and perform that action, then flip the next card and continue. Players can freely ask me rule questions but can only communicate with one another in character during combat, and only when they play a Speak (green) card. NPCs in the fight will be able to hear whatever the players say at the table, and react accordingly.

BRP has a complex table addressing the contested die roll for every single attack. Attacker rolls weapon skill to hit, while defender rolls either weapon skill to parry or dodge skill to avoid the blow. But each character has five possible levels of success: critical success, special success, success, failure, or fumble, which effectively creates a 5x5 grid of potential results, except that BRP did a more awkward layout that takes up a lot of page space. So I created that 5x5 grid, then decided to simplify it to a 4x4 grid by stripping out the special success row and column. Then I took a dozen or so fiddly combat rules and made them menu selections for this table when either the attacker or defender gets a critical success.

The first adventure will be set in the Hawkmoon setting, a post-apocalyptic Europe that has reverted to medieval feudalism with bits of surviving technology that seems like magic to most folks. Just like the old Arthur C. Clarke quote. Unfortunately, the Hawkmoon setting is not great, because Moorcock wrote each of the Hawkmoon books in three days. So the Chaosium Hawkmoon rules are pretty thin and not very interesting. I supplemented them by importing the science-sorcery rules from the Mongoose Hawkmoon rpg, which is otherwise also somewhat disappointing. Then I took the very good GURPS Harkwood adventure and re-themed it to a scenic and real town in eastern Europe called Travnik.

The adventure portion is potentially interesting, and takes place during a medieval tourney that features jousting and a grand melee, along with various other contests of skill. I thought it would be a great starting adventure because there are numerous opportunities for non-lethal combat, especially if players have combat-oriented characters like knights or warriors. Sadly, despite broad hints on my part and a detailed introduction to the setting and adventure, my players have so far created: a scholar, a thief, another scholar, another thief, and a healer. The sixth player is currently traveling, so he will make his character some time before the second session. The adventure is one that unfolds on a timeline regardless of whether characters get involved or not, so it may just be an odd backdrop to whatever my players end up doing. By contrast, the two previous times that I ran Harkwood (for completely different groups of players), most players were enthusiastic participants in the tournament competitions, and dividing them up to fight each other in the Grand Melee was memorable and fun. Ah well.

Jeeze-louise that sounds like some cool shit right there.

Begs the question -- what would you have done if all 12 had showed up? I used to hate DMing above three and refused above six.

All in-person, right?

All in-person. I tried to play in an old friend's online D&D campaign, which started about a month or so before the pandemic lockdown happened, and it was so frustrating due to technical issues that I dropped out after two sessions. It would have been nice to have stayed with that group that first year before vaccination, but I really wasn't enjoying the interface.

Half a lifetime ago, I ran a Friday night GURPS Fantasy campaign for 11 players, and I knew none of those people a month before the campaign started. GURPS is a very crunchy set of rules that was originally inspired by observations of SCA combats, but I quickly found my groove. We could do one skirmish involving some of the players and one big fight involving the whole group and still wrap up by midnight or so. We also typically had one or two characters die in a typical session. I encouraged intrigue, so there were occasional sidebar discussions when people were doing sneaky stuff. At one point, I started out a session doing rapidfire answers to rules questions with three players simultaneously peppering me with questions. So I know that I am able to manage a large group, though I did burn out after a year. I knew that about half of the 12 players that I invited for this new campaign were not sure about playing, so I didn't worry much that they would all show up. But I did prepare a dozen sets of the combat action cards, just in case. I also sleeved each set in a different color, so that players wouldn't accidentally pick up each other's cards. Also as expected, nobody sent me a picture of their character before I swiped a page full of headshot art from the internet to print and paste onto wooden nickels, so I set out a dozen generic boardgame pawns to represent player characters in the first session. Seven of the pawns matched to color of combat card sets, and I painted the other five to match the less common card sleeve colors, like gold and teal.

The first session was decent. I was not surprised that we spent the first 90 minutes helping four of the players finish their characters, and a fifth player discovered that he didn't have the minimum dexterity to use a crossbow, would have cut his chance to hit in half. Instead, he now carries a bag of rocks to throw, because that is the only ranged attack weapon that he can wield without penalty with his Dexterity of 5.

Then we got into some preliminary role-playing. The characters explored the town of Travnik (a real place in our world) and made their way to the big inn near the tourney grounds. Of course they ended up drinking and dining in the main room of the inn, and of course there was a barroom brawl that turned out to be a cover for an attempted robbery of the inn. It was a good way to get the players used to the combat action cards, and when somebody screwed up, I would explain their error and let them retroactively change their action. For example, when the healer spotted one of the robbers pulling a knife on a barmaid, she wanted to move within point blank range and shoot the brigand with an arrow. I pointed out to her that she need to spend actions to pick up her bow and nock an arrow before she would able to shoot an arrow. So she did those things and then next round was able to move and shoot... and shot the wall near the robber.

Everybody got involved in the brawl or fighting the bandits. One of the scholars is actually a large (Size 21 on a scale of 3 to 18) humanoid bear, an Ursine Prince, from Moorcock's The Dragon in the Sword. He was intimidating people to stay out of the brawl, and grabbing combatants to pull them out. The other scholar used a science-sorcery spell to blind one of the brigands. One of the player thieves brawled with townsfolk, while the other thief killed the brigand who pulled the knife on the barmaid.

Even with their unfamiliarity with the combat cards, the fight only took about an hour of play time, because BRP is a faster, smoother system than GURPS. Not that GURPS is a bad system... it has hit locations, which also means armor by locations, hit points by location, and the ability for attackers to aim at locations. If we had been playing GURPS, the healer could have aimed for the brigand's knife hand... and probably still missed. But if she had hit, then I would have check to see if the hand was armored, then compare the damage to the hit points in his hand to see if he just dropped the knife or maybe also got a crippled hand. The version of BRP that I am using just does overall hit points and overall armor ratings per character. Only with a critical success would she have been able to declare that she hit his hand. Or if she had done enough damage, she could have inflicted a Major Wound.

Next session, they will meet some Granbretanians (of a future British dark empire) and a clockwork knight. There will be more intrigue involving the bandits and some local politics. One of the player thieves is at the tourney to assassinate someone, but he hasn't met his contact yet to get the details.

Second session was similar to the first. Two new players started, but neither of them showed up with a ready character. I had the foresight to ask them to show up an hour early so we could finish their characters, but didn't realize that one of the new players had very limited role-playing experience. More than an hour into the session, it seemed like both of their characters were ready, only to discover that she hadn't allocated any of her 250 skill points for her occupation skill right as a combat was about to start. Her knight was the only character with ready access to a horse, so she showed up for the fight several rounds before the rest of the party.

Once combat got going, things went pretty well. Players are still struggling a bit with my combat cards, but showed real progress. I even disclosed to them that one the main reasons for the combat cards was to eliminate long delays at the start of each round of combat for the sole purpose of players telling other players what they should do that round. By halfway through the combat, I had players in the habit of secretly choosing their combat cards, though I easily allowed takebacks and do-overs if they misunderstood something. For example, one of the thieves in the group prefers to use a longbow in combat, which is fine. But she didn't understand that she would need to use one of her two standard actions each turn to draw and nock an arrow before firing. That limited her ability to run around the battlefield if she wanted to fire an arrow every turn. Once she understood, she got in the habit of laying down these cards: Draw Weapon (nock arrow), Step (a free action allows her to move up to two yards), and Attack (fire arrow).

Despite the delays, the two new characters will be valuable additions to the group. The existing party consisted of two thieves, a doctor (who knows a few science-sorcery spells), a healer (sort of druid/witch type who does non-magical healing with plant-based remedies), and a scholar who is also an Ursine Prince from another plane of existence. The two new characters add some combat muscle, with a female knight (think Brienne of Tarth, with STR 16 and SIZ 17) and a mutant big game hunter who rolled all favorable mutations. The hunter has natural body armor, bone claws, and superhuman SIZ and CON. He also has a flamelance, a high-tech weapon that fires heat beams for 5d6 damage but only has 99 charges. He is overpowered for the current adventure, but suitably powerful for the main campaign that I will be running after the four intro adventures. Also, his flamelance will not function properly or at all in some of the other dimensions they will travel.

Third session went well. One player was out sick, but the other six were ready to play without any further character generation issues. However, play continues to move somewhat slowly as half the players are pretty inexperienced role-players. Play started out with a chase scene, but the party soon fell behind because most of them were riding in a horse-drawn coach while their quarry were all on horseback. They eventually tracked the brigands to a cave, and combat broke out. Late in the battle, a large mutant trapdoor spider dropped out of the ceiling and attacked. The heroes easily defeated the brigands and drove off the spider, which was satisfied with the npc that it dragged with it.

The old GURPS Harkwood adventure that I am running for this part of the campaign has a nice setup and plenty of setting details, but offers a curious choice of one of six possible evil masterminds, with the other five then used as normal NPCs. Sort of the like the Clue board game concept, I suppose, to offer replay value. While that is a neat idea, it leaves the adventure as written pretty thin on specific clues and details involving any one of the six choices. So I did a little improvising on the fly. While the characters quickly and nervously looted the bodies in the spider cave, they noticed that each of the brigands had a similar-looking pouch of silver coins. When the heroes examined the coins more carefully back in town, they noticed that the coins were shiny and new and locally minted. The barkeeper serving them idly commented, "those coins haven't been in circulation."

Then the heroes went back to the area of town that the brigands had attacked and set aflame last night, and talked to townsfolk. This gave me a chance to offer up several red herring theories. "Just brigands." "The Russians are behind it." "No, it was Muslims." I got in one more nice bit of improv and had one old lady blame it on the gypsies, and then spit on the ground. One of the heroes was offended and said, "Hey, I'm from Romania," and she spit on the ground again.

My mother had Alzheimer's for the last decade of her life, so I have been worrying ever since that I might suffer the same fate. And I have struggled with names a couple of times in recent months. Not minor stuff like remembering the name of a C-list actor in some movie, but actually struggling to remember the names of two different co-workers who I have been working with since 2019. In my defense, they are both part-timers who don't normally work directly with me on anything, but I have had many pleasant conversations with both over the years. Anyway, I mention this because I have noticing that my memory feels really sharp and accurate for a week after each rpg session that I run. Maybe it is due to a combination of factors, like the improv dialogue, the social interaction, and all the rulings I need to make, especially in combat. I have ambitious plans to run this campaign for years, but will end it sooner if players lose enthusiasm.

The tournament was a bit of a disappointment, which was not a surprise. Even though I made it crystal clear during character generation that this adventure would take place at a medieval tourney, five of the players chose to play non-warriors. Specifically, 2 thieves, 2 healers, and a scholar. Fortunately, the other two players chose to play a knight and a mutated big game hunter. To handle seven players without excessive downtime for those not participating in certain events, I made a spreadsheet and pre-rolled all the dice rolls for npcs, except where they would be directly opposing player characters. And I let certain tournament bracket results float, leaving it possible for a pc to progress but determining which npc would advance if a player didn't make it that far. I had that session meticulously planned out, except that two players (a healer and a thief) didn't show due to the flu.

The Crossbow and Longbow competitions were similar. I printed off a small copy of an archery target that had a bullseye and four rings, each in a different color. Each contestant would take their skill% and break them down into 20% increments to determine which ring of the target they hit. For example, one player had a 55% in Bow, so a roll of 01 - 11 would hit the bullseye, while a 45 - 55 would hit the outermost ring of the target. Missing the target was worth -10 points, hitting the bullseye was worth 9, and each successive ring out was worth two points less (7, 5, 3,1). To help players visualize the contest, I had players place tokens on the target to show where they hit.

Only the scholar elected to compete in the Crossbow competition, and he lacked the minimum dexterity to operate a crossbow, so all of his rolls were halved. He still managed to hit the target with two of his five shots, so his score was not a complete disgrace. He did not advance to the final round with the top 1/3 scoring contestants.

One of the thieves and one of the healers both competed in Longbow. Despite having a slightly lower Bow skill, the healer advanced to the final round, while the thief was eliminated. She continued to make some lucky rolls and managed to place third in the finals.

The Footmen's List was marred by a couple of bouts that became prolonged dice-rolling contests. Using a modified version of the BRP rules, a typical round of melee combat is pretty simple. The character with the higher DEX goes first, rolling against their skill in the weapon they are wielding. If they hit, the defender can roll to either Dodge or parry with their own weapon or shield. If the defense roll fails, the attacker rolls damage while the defender rolls for armor. For example, a warrior might hit with a longsword dealing 1d8+1 damage, and maybe +1d4 more for a strength bonus, while the defender wearing full plate and a helm might roll 1d10+2 to reduce that damage. The average of those two rolls is roughly the same, and that's after the initial attack and parry rolls that might also be similar scores. In a typical mass combat in an adventure, this is less of a problem because there is a cumulative -30% to defense rolls after the first roll each round. So players can double-team opponents at times to beat one down faster. In one-on-one combat, many rounds of combat can pass before somebody gets a critical success or does a major wound (at least half the target's hit points in a single blow).

The same thief who lost in the Longbow contest was eliminated in the third round of the Footmen's List, while battling the Clockwork Knight. The highlight of the battle was when the thief fumbled an attack an accidentally threw his sword 8 yards away. The mutated big game hunter also competed, and he made it all the way to the final round due to his superhuman size, strength, and natural armor combined with leather armor. He was defeated in the final round by Gerard d'Averoigne (a distant shadow of Gerard of Amber, for you Zelazny fans), and only because his sword eventually got broken after a long battle.

Dame Brigitte, the party's knight, competed in the Joust. She was eliminated by a squire in the first round on the second pass, when she failed to block her opponent's lance with her shield and took a hard hit. A lance only does 1d8+1 damage, but it uses the damage bonus of the horse and not the rider, with a typical warhorse having a damage bonus of +3d6. However, a tournament lance is designed to shatter if it strikes for at least 15 damage, thus limiting the damage to a maximum of 15. In a game system where a normal human typically has 10 hit points and a player character might have 12 or 13 hit points, 15 is a lethal amount of damage. However, joust contenders are generally wearing full plate and a helm, which reduces damage by 1d10+2. Dame Brigitte sustained a major wound but did not fall of her horse. Due to a successful luck roll, she avoided getting a permanent scar.

The two previous times that I ran this adventure, the Grand Melee was the highlight of the entire adventure, with at least 5 players on each side in a big battle. This time, none of the players participated in the Grand Melee. Dame Brigitte was in a lot of pain, and the two characters that were in the Footmen's List had also taken some damage.

So I moved on to the kidnapping of the Baron's daughter. The player characters joined the posse that went in pursuit of the kidnappers, despite a significant head start. Hours later, trackers in the group concluded that the kidnappers met up with a horse-drawn wagon, and then split to head in two different directions. The players eventually cornered one group of the kidnappers in a cave, and next session will start with the siege of the cave.

We skipped a session two weeks ago, because the forecast called for 4 consecutive hours of freezing rain that afternoon. Last night, we resumed with the characters attempting to rescue the baron's daughter from some mercenaries hiding out in a small cave. The mercs had the advantage of good cover and the player characters also had to charge up a slope to reach the cave. However, there were a number of large boulders strategically scattered about the hillside, so the players quickly realized that they could strategically dart from cover to cover in the approach. Two mercs with crossbows were stationed at the entrance to the gave, and they were firing nearly every round as two other mercs kept handing them reloaded crossbows. Their leader was towards the back of the small cave, pointing a crossbow at the baron's daughter.

The heroes eventually got to melee range and stormed the cave. The fight ran long because the large mutant made it difficult for everybody else to maneuver around the small cave during the fight. The baron's daughter got shot in the stomach by the merc leader, but soon received first aid to stop the bleeding and stabilize her condition. A couple of mercs were killed and the rest were injured. Interrogation of the leader led him to realize that his crew might have just been a diversion. Heading back to Travnik, the heroes split into two groups. The ursine prince, the large mutant, and Dame Brigit took the wounded Lady Aylara straight to the Baron's castle, while two rogues and the healer took their prisoners to the town constabulary. With a critical success on Spot, one of the rogues quickly noticed a wanted poster depicting the player characters, so they immediately left town again. At the castle, Dame Brigit was briefly placed in the dungeon, but the ursine prince and the mutant successfully bartered for her release in exchange for the baron's daughter. While in a cell, Brigit received a rough sketch of the dungeon area from her cellmate Dame Zagorka. She also learned that the Baron had arrested and confined most of his closest advisors, because the Baron had an alternate personality that was trying to overthrow, um, himself.

To bring this introductory Hawkmoon campaign to a speedier close, I flexed my DM powers and had the two groups of player characters encounter each other just outside of town. Using Dame Brigit's map, they broke into the dungeon and fought some mercenaries, along with the Baron and his herald Zoloman. The Baron was wearing a dusty old helmet with a significant dent in the side. The Baron took himself hostage, pointing his crossbow at the soft underside of his jaw, shouting, "Get back, or I will slay the Baron!" When the ursine prince tried to grab his crossbow, the Baron shot himself and got a critical hit (double chance to hit a point blank range), choosing the "bypass armor" option on my critical hit table. He died immediately, eyes bulging like Kash Patel, with the stiff feathers of the crossbow bolt protruding from beneath his head like a second beard. The herald cut a deal to save himself, and quickly spread the word that the baron's daughter was now the legitimate baroness. She named the ursine prince and the mutant to be honorary humans, and gave all of the heroes silver.

Days later, the party vanished while drinking at the inn. Then I passed out Corum character sheets and character generation summaries. The players were disappointed to learn that the more chaotic Corum setting meant that they would be rolling all their stats instead of using a point buy system. Modern D&D players are utterly spoiled by forgiving stat rolling rules, but my system is more harsh. 3d6 for most stats, except 2d6+6 for Intelligence and Size. Then they can more up to 3 points of stats around, and trade any number of stats on a two-for-one basis to increase their Power stat.

They also had to roll for occupation, so we have a couple of peasants, a soldier, and an amnesiac. The other players didn't roll stats yet, as they are considering the possibility of exercising the hero option instead. One of them is probably going to play a chaos sorcerer who specializes in necromancy, while the other may play a Vadhagh seer who can create Contrivances (lawful constructs). One of the peasants will probably also use chaos sorcery, as he traded a number of attributes to boost his POW to 16, the minimum for using magic.

The player who traded more than a few attribute points to raise his POW to 16 became capable of learning magic, but didn't actually learn any magic in all of his years as an illiterate peasant. But a priest of chaos verbally taught him how to summon one specific greater demon, so that he could bargain with the demon for an education. Greater demons in the Corum setting drive a hard bargain, so the player character had to murder a loved one and give the corpse to the demon in order to learn 1d8 chaos spells. We have an appointment this evening with an online die roller for this very important roll of 1d8.

www.rolldicewithfriends.com/

That kind of screams for an actual D8 roll with a black die with red numbers...possibly written in blood.

Chaos magic in the Corum setting is powerful but nasty. A chaos sorcerer can summon and blend Chaos Effects, summon greater demons to request tasks, summon chaos beasts, and create chaotic fetishes (organic magic items that physically decay over time). I am also allowing necromancy, as there is definitely some necromantic activity in some of the Corum books.

Each usage of any of the above chaotic magic adds points of allegiance to chaos to that character. In the Corum setting, an increase in chaos allegiance requires an immediate percentile roll against that allegiance. A successful roll means that the sorcerer gains a Chaos Trait, many of which reduce the character's Appearance attribute. Sometimes other stats are reduced, or there could be mental issues. Necromancy works the same way, but also provokes a sanity check (Call of Cthulhu style) in the caster and any eyewitnesses.

By contrast, the advantages of Law are safer but less exciting. One elder race creates magic tattoos that take weeks to make and give a permanent bonus to a skill based on the number of weeks spent. There are also Contrivances, which are items imbued with Lawful principles. The four Lawful principles involved are Quality, Mechanics, Plane Shift, and Combination. The main drawback of both the tattoos and the Contrivances is the lengthy creation time.

Quality delivers optimum results, so while a normal long sword does 1d8+1 damage, a Quality long sword does 9 damage every time it hits. Normal half plate armor protects for 1d8, while Quality half plate protects against 8 points of damage from each attack. Mechanics gives an item a single skill of 90%, but incorporates fragile gearwork that might be damaged in battle. For example, a mechanical sword would attack and parry for 90%, regardless of the wielder's own skill with a sword. A Mechanical hand might have 90% in lockpicking skill. Plane Shift items offer the potential to peer into nearby planes of existence, and larger Plane Shift items permit travel to other planes. However, Plane Shift usage requires users to spend Magic Points. Combination allows for the creation of Contrivances that use a combination of two or three of the other principles. So you could potentially create a Mechanical longsword of Quality that hits 90% of the time for 9 points of damage. Or a telescope that has a 90% chance to Spot things in a different plane of existence.

WadeMonnig wrote: That kind of screams for an actual D8 roll with a black die with red numbers...possibly written in blood.

Either way, there will probably be actual screaming because this player is unusually unlucky when rolling dice during character creation. His ursine prince got the following dice to roll for his stats:

STR 3d6 +10
CON 2d6 +6
SIZ 3d6 +10
INT 3d6 +4
POW 3d6 +4
DEX 3d6
APP 3d6

Bite: 15% 1d10 damage+ ½ damage bonus
Ursine Princes only have Mental or Social personality types, per step 4 of character generation process.

He rolled below average (for an ursine prince) in every stat except for size, which was moderately above average. The worst is his DEX of 5. Still, he is well above human average in STR, CON, SIZ, and INT.

The Corum intro adventure begins on Sunday, and I have recently been doubting my rough plan for the story arc. The first session was supposed to start right in the middle of a barbarian attack on the town where the characters start the campaign, on the eastern coast of their continent. The barbarians would be wheeling around in war chariots, hurling javelins at villagers and torches into windows. But I ran a similar session early in the Hawkmoon storyline, except that it was mercenaries on horseback who were starting fires and riding down townfolk.

I still like my general concept for this story arc, with players being sent on a long cross-country journey to warn people on the west coast so they have time to prepare defenses against the barbarians and potentially recruit aid from a sea-based elder race off the coast. The party can slow down to warn every small village on the way, but risk more danger from the approaching horde. Or they can focus on speed and suffer pangs of conscience for not warning the villagers.

To change things up a bit, the first encounter will be the first village on the road west, which has already been raided. The party will get a chance to explore a bit before barbarians in the area detect their presence and attack.

The Corum stories often involved extreme encounters with monsters or magical obstacles, and even journeys into adjacent planes of existence. In fact, the overall setting of the Corum stories was a collection of three sets of five planes each, with each set more chaotic than the previous one. So after some more predictable encounters in line with their mission, I plan to adapt a pair of classic Stormbringer adventures to represent excursions to other planes. Finally, the players will return to the original setting, now very close to their original destination.

As expected, most of the players did not arrive with completed Corum characters, so we spent at least 90 minutes of the 4-hour session on character generation. There was some confusion about available languages and literacy. Two characters had an unusually low stat (strength or dexterity) that severely limited their choice of weapons. The Vadhagh seer hadn't finished designing her lawful contrivance, and the chaos sorcerer needed to summon his chaos beast for the first time. So I privately decided to run this session without any combat.

The players had a pretty diverse group of characters. A veteran charioteer who suffered a crippling wound that left him too weak to use a lash on his horses. A Nhadragh necromancer/pirate. Two peasant farmers, but one of them made a dark pact with a greater demon to learn chaos sorcery. An aging barbarian warrior who left his homeland for more peaceful life on the southern continent. A Vadhagh seer who can make lawful contrivances. And a clumsy man with amnesia. The chaos sorcerer summoned a chaos beast that turned out to be an unholy hybrid of spider and lizard. It has a poisonous bite, scaly armor, climbing skill, and a strength of 35 in a setting where the average human has a strength of 10 or 11. I am not using character names here because I encouraged all of the players to come up with Welsh names for their characters to match the feel of the Corum setting, and Welsh names are challenging. I took notes, but I haven't memorized their names yet.

Play opened with a town meeting, the morning after a savage surprise attack by chariot-riding barbarians from the northern continent. At the meeting, the mayor asked for volunteers to send warning to the rest of the kingdom. I already knew from character generation that none of this group had put any points in Riding skill, so the mayor picked two groups of npc volunteers to ride fast horses to warn the capital and the other towns along on the eastern coast. The player characters got a large bison pulling a dog sled full of supplies, plus the bison's owner. They were sent to travel along the southern coast of the continent to warn the humans and hopefully make an alliance with an amphibious elder race that might help.

The first town they reached was a recently abandoned fishing village. After an extensive search, they found a diary that explained that the town's seer persuaded them to flee impending doom from "a growing shadow from the East." Then the Vadhagh seer decided to use her racial ability to peer into an adjacent planes of existence, and saw an identical village that had been burned to the ground. The next village was a farming community that was skeptical of the warning. The third village was in a forest, and featured a chapel of Law. Because I do not plan to treat Law and Chaos as direct proxies for Good and Evil in this campaign, I played the priestess of Law as a commerce-minded person who sought payment for anything the chapel might offer. Want a prayer for aid from Ilah the Lord of Law? Please make a donation. Want to sleep on the floor of the chapel tonight? Please make a donation. Need a blessing on your weapons? Donation, please.

While the party camped in the forest that night, the third guard shift heard some movement some distance from the campfire. They found child-sized tracks in the snow, and followed them to a clearing, where the tracks abruptly stopped. Although there is no lore regarding the Fae in the Corum setting, the player of the chaos sorcerer jumped to a conclusion that the clearing was caused by a toadstool ring. It was like he was reading my mind, because this was something I improvised right after the party made a successful Tracking roll. Sure enough, they dug into the snow and found a partial curve of the toadstool ring. Then I had the amnesiac make an Idea roll, and it turned out that he had some recollection of a connection between Little Folk and toadstool rings. The amnesiac's player wasn't happy with the character he rolled up and had expressed a hope to me that his character might die in the first session so he could roll up a better character, but I saw his eyes light up when he realized that his amnesiac might be from a different plane within the Fifteen Planes of the Corum setting. Uncertain of what to do, each party member left a small offering in the circle.

And there we stopped for the night. The next session is postponed due to a local game convention, so we won't play again until March 1st.