My latest is a Mississippi-esque flatboat trip through about 2500 miles of terra incognito to a coastal city that will pay top dollar (top gold piece?) for the valuble woods the flatboats are made of.

Trouble is the forest where these valuable timbers grow is upriver of an enormous lake. So big it has seven major drainages. Only three of which come out anywhere near the city and only one, of course, goes right by it.

I'm allowing firearms in this one. And there is still a bunch of close calls and adventure.

After thirty plus years of gaming, the guys in my group have several characters who have aquired odd and powerful devices, usually through interplaner or interdimension travel. So this campaign was for the little used guy with the cool stuff.


The overall layout.

The river drainages and the destination city have only recently been liberated from the sway of a monsterous entity. Something on the scale of the thing at the end of Hellboy. Holding reign over an area about the size of the continental US for some five hundred years. But as I tell my players, that was someone else's adventure. All you guys know is that it's gone. (How would you like to be part of the first group of humans back into Moria? I can arrange it.)

At the end of every epic adventure lies a second I always say. Least ways for the normal man.

The PC's (player characters, the gamers) are in two groups. One group lives in the destination city and the other group is making the boat trip. Tonight should be the downriver groups turn. They have been hired by a Great Witch to travel upriver a day and then do what they can to make a side river "safe for gentle traffic".

The guys on the down river trip have avoided diaster through simple choice twice now. And when they realize it they always give me that look.

The first came when they were at the starting city. Its a wooden boomtown actually. Totally frontier. If the river route can be re-established it will take months of the travel time to the final end users. I got the PC's to invest their wealth in order to raise the stakes in the game, rather than merely crewing someone else's investment. Makes them possessive, what with the twenty to one return expected.

Now the first choice was either a flatboat made entirely of the rare and aromatic wood plus other cargo or a traditional vessel loaded down with pallet loads of the wood in the hold. More expensive, but more defensable and faster in open stretchs of water. Those were the selling points I was making through several imaginary hawkers.

But one of the players decided to make an Ancient History check and discovered that before the entity took over that the flat boats were the customary method of moving the cargo, so they went with it.

As it turns out...

After a full day on the river they entered Large Lake after starting out in a good sized flotilla. The PC's had hired local rivermen, who every evening would bring out five gallon bucket sized citronella candles. Seems they have mosquitoes with two foot wing spans, stylets the size of pencils and a two pint capacity. The PC's were glad they hired the rivermen as they had no clue. (besides their obvious use as "red shirts" I try to make hirelings useful. That way it hurts more when the monster gets 'em)

At first light the second day something else became clear. The adventurers started coming across debris and wreckage. Several sailing vessals that had preceded them had come to grief during the night. A pair of survivors from different ships both said that thier ships simply started coming apart in the middle of the night. One of whom is a merchant prince who appriciated the lift.

After a bit it was discovered that the lake is inhabited by enormous fiftyfoot wide jellyfish that consume normal wood in minutes. BUT the aromatic trade wood is not only repellant, it's* actually distructive to them.

The guys intentionally left the cargo hold empty guessing there would be some sort of swag to be had. Turned out to be a good idea. They spent a day recovering some 8 pallets of wood to put in their own hold.

The guy who had come the closest to renting one of the sailing ships and funding the whole shebang gave me such a look. Just because I knew ahead of time the jellies lived there, yet tried to get him to put out 32,000 gps in fine gems as sweet as you please.

Well, they finally reached the south shore and took the first river south that looked deep enough.

Yep. Orc** central. They had it industrialized to the point it eventually completely disappears, but the players didn't get quite that far. They had been using a "mystical engine" from another place to out pace the other flat boats. I gave them an arbitrary progress of twice that of an unaided flat boat on the big map. And even with two pintle mounted weapons and some rapid fire light stuff they still had to work their backsides off to save themselves.

Three different times in the fight back upriver it looked bleak for our heroes. But they not only saved themselves they rescued the crew of a another flatboat who had preceded them while they were hauling in that salvage. I, of course, then tempt them with the other flat boat. (It will only slow you down about 50% Think of the extra money! but they weren't biting.)

I'll relate more as it happens. Some of my players read my posts so I can't blab about future plans for them.

*I honestly must say that its because of Gillian and posting here that I give a hoot and check which "its" I'm supposed to be using. Though I find it funny that the contraction gets the apostrophe and not the possessive.

**There are no green orcs! Nope. Nada. They were bred out of elves. Therefore run the gamut of "human" pigmentation. And, as I explained to some little kids outside of a theatre one night, the reason a lot of orcs appear black is because they are filthy! Ever see a bunch of troops who have been in the field for weeks? You would think they were all green and black too.

The Elves don't just say that as a perjorative everytime they mention orcs. It's literally true. When one is invulnerable to all pathogens, poisons and toxins it imposes another standard of hygiene not typical to other humanoids. That's why you see all the crude surgery using screws and plumber's tape. They are not subject to infection. They also don't fatigue, though they have to sleep more often than Elves. About every three days instead of thirty. So they can keep doing what they are doing until hunger or sleep overtake them.

I've been killing them for 3 decades, so I would know.

BD.

__________________
In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales

Interesting! A few questions:
What level?
How common and advanced are firearms, and how easy is it to get reloads/powder? With pintle mounts I'm assuming it's more advanced than standard D&D pseudomedieval technology.
Aside from making the Orcs more Tolkienesque, any other nonstandard monsters/races in your gameworld?
Is the whole river wilderness, or are there some settled/"civilized" regions? (generally speaking, I know you don't want to give spoilers)

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Most are about seventh. There are two duel class players. One is a 6th level fighter/ninth level mage. She absolutely loves her .454 casull. As she is not human she is quite dainty yet possesses an 18 strength.

In my games "D&D world" is vast and disc shaped. (I started playing in '76 but as I liked Pratchett's work I didn't try to sue) Disc shaped because I wanted an edge of the world to fall off of. The Norhern hemisphere alone is 200 Earth surfaces. I wanted vast wildernesses and huge civilizations. There are twelve moons and 17 other planets.

I was later justified when the spell jammer rules came out and all bodies in D&D space have one gee of gravity when outside the radius of a larger body who's gravity then dominates. So a ship leaving a planet pulls a bubble of air with them, like water spiders.

Plus solar systems are in nie indestructable crystal spheres filled with the ether and surrounded on the outside by the highly flammable phloegeston. As a matter of fact nova are the product of somehow cracking the crystal sphere and allowing phloegeston to rush in and ignite on the primary.

Now "D&D world" itself is just full of random dimensional portal activity. And not all arrivals happen in the present so there is a lot of "speciation" of different races and animals. Think there is just one kind of griffon?

Also larger, more powerful human nations....oops my gaming group just arrived I'll talk more later.

BD

__________________
In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales

Doing my part to advance the cause of better communication is a worthy venture, I've always said. Also note that "yours," "ours," and "theirs" don't take apostrophes, either. If you can remember that, "its" makes more sense.

That sounds like a really cool campaign. I told my gaming group about it, and they agreed.

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

6th ftr/ 9th wizard? second ed?

If the wood is valued in the coastal city, that means someone there has already gotten some. So how did it get there if the only viable river route is terra incognita? Did the first ones to bring the wood downriver get hit with an amnesia spell?

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Gods! I miss those days on the campaign trail. What fun we had. Put on some heavy metal music, whip up a pitcher of daiquiris, order some pizza, and watch the Seventh Day Adventitsts. as they come up the drive way, cringe in horror when they realize what ungodly heathens we are.

MWAhahahahahha!!!!

__________________
Angel of the Abyss
-------------
"I am Ripper...Tearer...Slasher...Gouger. I am the Teeth in the Darkness, the Talons in the Night. Mine is Strength...and Lust...and Power! I AM BEOWULF!"

Circuitous overland route.

Steppe barbarians that like a taste of the goods. Cave trolls in the mountains that like the taste of caravaners. Plus flatboats smell better than camels and don't bite. It's a little harder to get pilfered, but then again the thieves that make the effort are more serious about it.

Even the guys who owned the caravans are selling their wagons to buy boats. I rolled and some of the inter-merchant murderousness is going to be cut down by the fact that the market isn't going to be easy to glut. High demand. Large market, the end oil and esters go all the way to Kara-Tur. (D&D's China)

And a guaranteed 20 to 1 return would be irresistable to a lot of people even at great personal risk. Or they hire somebody else to "great personal risk" for them. Plus they can use barter and negotiation skills if any to boost the price. Nearly ending up as an orc's bowel movement after being cooked alive will add a certain percentage to the price of the transported goods no matter what deal was made ahead of time.

__________________
In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales

Hey Korj, yes and no. By the end of the '70's I had already found it too restrictive and allowed players who qualified simply had to tell and then split his experience points. I was sort of validated later in a lot of stuff I was already doing by later rule additions.

__________________
In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales

If they have the manufacturing capacity to make advanced cartridge guns like .454 Casulls and pintle-mounted and repeating big guns, plus ammo, all affordable enough to be available to adventurers, do they have any steamboats or non-weapon mass-produced goods?

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Any reason you didnt go to 3rd ed?

Korjik I have a stack of D&D books you couldn't jump over to begin with. I didn't need anymore to have adventures. I also have a three foot tall stack of Shadowrun source books. I started at 16 and I'll be 48 at the end of the month. I'm gamed out.

Clev, not all cultures share information and technology with each other. At all. Most of the name brand firearms are aquired via interdimensional travel, often at great risk. One campaign has (had) a bunch of guys who raid post apocalyptic worlds for technologies. The last run was a second raid into a high tech world that had been over-run with Aliens. There was only one survivor, my friend Ol' Weird Bob.

After fighting his way back down the inside of a skyscraper, teleported up from ground level outside the building. Simple in and out looting raid. They had it all figured. The Aliens would all swarm up to where they were up high in the building. If they got enough swag or if it got too hairy they would teleport back down to their vehicles. The teleporting wizard was then one of the first fatalities. Cut in half from behind in a burst of panic fire. The game got really good after that.

(Fumble, critical hit nearest ally. Critical hit, body split in twain, immediate death. Failed saving throws all the way around)

Bob had made it to the parking garage, after going too far down no less, and having to fight his way back up. As he looked at the distant square of daylight, and all the darkness and overhead pipes and duct work between him and home he said something that had never been said in D&D before.

"Damn it!, I'm down just a .357!"

Cultures that can blend magic and technology often don't see firearms as all that, and a bag of chips. Not in worlds with trolls, dragons and undead.

Take an orc long bow. Launchs a 3.5 foot long solid iron arrow 300 yards. Think of a piece of rebar flung that far. Awesome penetrating power. Not done through brute force alone. The only better smiths than the orcs are the dwarves. And that says alot. Their smiths enchant everything they make as a matter of course. Its just that nothing they make is pretty or balanced to a human's viewpoint. You may have noticed its difficult if not impossible to use recovered orcish hand weapons well. That's why.

__________________
In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales

I spent a good chunk of my youth poring over Shadowrun source books and devouring the novels I'd check out from the local library. Sadly, none of my friends were interested in playing the game. Since you dig MegaMek so much, I thought you might be interested to know that there was a very good Sega Genesis Shadowrun game:

Home of the Underdogs page

You will need a Sega Genesis emulator to play this; PM me if you're interested.

How much would a 3.5 foot solid iron arrow weigh? And how fast would such an arrow be launched from said Orc long bow? I'd like to do a quick-n-dirty comparison with bullets fired from conventional firearms, based on good ol' KE = 0.5 * m * v ^2.

__________________
"It's over you head now. Time to get some professional help." - My fortune cookie from lunch

Ned Wright's Cosmology Tutorial

Usenet Physics FAQ

Let's say 3 pounds and a speed of 400 feet per second. As a wild supposition.

__________________
In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales

3 lb = 1.3608 kg, and 400 ft/s = 121.92 m/s. Plugging those into the equation, I got 10,114 Joules as the kinetic energy for one such arrow. For comparison:

Pistols
.357 Magnum: 609 to 778 Joules
.454 Casull: 2,483 to 2,607 Joules

But it's not really fair to compare a full-blown longbow to pistols, is it?

Rifles
.460 Weatherby Magnum: 9,588 to 10,174 Joules
.50 BMG: 15,482 to 20,195 Joules

As a first order approximation, it looks like the Orc longbow compares very well against all but the biggest rifles!

__________________
"It's over you head now. Time to get some professional help." - My fortune cookie from lunch

Ned Wright's Cosmology Tutorial

Usenet Physics FAQ

INCOMING!

Wow, that would stick in rock!

I do get uncomfortable when favorite players start playing arrow tag with the Orcs. Orcs poison their arrows as well, if it is available. Then there are the enchanted arrows and those of "fiendish design". (Clockwork ones that are best left undiscribed in gentle company)

You've now doomed untold dozens of players you don't even know, from the other side of the planet. We live in marvelous times. Well, this will boost the experience points for Orcs now won't it? (Not all bands of Orcs have these bows by the way. Rolled for per encounter by tribe.)

Well, they do fight Dwarves. Really angry Dwarves, en masse in full battle array. Enchanted and magically hardened armor. Though the math never works out in favor of the Dwarves due to the Orcs having a population doubling time orders of magnititude higher than that of the Dwarves. Even without using pit breeding techniques. (Not available in all locations)

About twice that of Humans and just as immortal as Elves. Dwarves, on the other hand, are on the order of 120 years or more to double their population. Only about twentyfive per cent are female. (No beards.) and die of old age at five or six hundred.

If I recall correctly in the book, the Orc and the Moria Uruk Hai who fight over Frodo's mithril shirt make reference to being at a battle that took place in the First Age.

They had some honking big battles in the First Age.

Wasn't there a battle where the main good guy city was finally taken by a quarter million Orcs, a thousand Dragons and a hundred Balrogs?

I think if you had started Operation Barbarossa with that lot, armed with those bows, all objectives may well have been reached. Especially if it was actually planned out and not just a mass "Banzai Charge".

Logistics will be easier. The Orcs will eat everybody they come across. Fresh or not. And leave none alive. The worst of it would the Balrogs. Monsterous entities. As Balrogs are corrupted divinity they have Presence. (No, not like Santa)

A Balrog "flaring" and displaying his Presence will cause all nonplayer characters of fourth level or less or creatures of four hit dice or less, to simple die. No saving throw. Out to line of sight. Player characters make 4 level or less get a saving throw against death magic or die. That's why Legolas ran away covering his face in the book. This is triple black diamond territory here folks. The bunny slopes are that-a-way. The only thing that Dragons fear is a Balrog.

As the Moria Balrog was atypical he rated 45th level fighter, (All get full hit points) 45th level magic user in all things fire based, 25th in ALL other magics.
Magic resistance: Yeah right, who are you again? I created the laws of physics in the part of the World you're standing on, dweeboid. Nice try.

More typical, but NEVER mundane, Balrogs are 25/25 and 18th in all other magics. Still with Presence. Without a lot of the fire. A lot like a giant animated black iron statue full of fire. Frightfully nimble. I've only ever lost three. The last one just recently. Besides the cliche whip and sword they are also fond of single edge cleaver-like axes for tough work.

__________________
In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales

If the Orcs reproduce so fast (twice as fast as humans?!?), and are immortal, and have all this nasty weaponry, why haven't they over-run everything yet?

__________________
"It's over you head now. Time to get some professional help." - My fortune cookie from lunch

Ned Wright's Cosmology Tutorial

Usenet Physics FAQ

Because they tend to cull themselves pretty thoroughly in their own quiet little tribal spats, especially when overcrowding becomes a factor. All the other races really have to do is keep them somewhat hemmed in and otherwise stay clear.

__________________
And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling [faces] lyin' to ye' everywhere ye' go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

Jingle Hells, Jingle Hells...

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Who says Orcs are immortal? Even Tolkien didn't come out and say that (in fact some of his essays say they are short-lived). In D&D they don't generally live beyond 50.

__________________
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

Jason, relax From BigDon's posts, it seems pretty clear that this is a gameworld of his own creation. So if he says that his Orcs are immortal, then they are.

__________________
"It's over you head now. Time to get some professional help." - My fortune cookie from lunch

Ned Wright's Cosmology Tutorial

Usenet Physics FAQ

Well, if he says they're immortal in his world, then yeah, I guess they're immortal.

__________________
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

Don, I can't stop laughing at that line. Mind if I use it in my signature?

With all those random portals, you can basically tie this gameworld to any other one, as long as you have a compatible game system, or can convert the characters to your system.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Feel free Tobin.

Clev, yes I can and have.

Code, you left out invulnerable to infection, pathogens and toxins. Hence all the bizarre surgery with the plumber's tape and screws for skull fractures.

Orc's don't like cold. They will gripe about it well before a human will, but will survive conditions that would kill a human. Heat they tolerate very well.

Jason (!) sorry for any confusion. I wasn't lecturing on Tolkien's work. Just my own gaming world. You CAN run into wimpy, short lived Orcs.

Now because I was validated by the Spell Jammer rules of (physical) interplantary travel in allowing my world to be as large as it is, I don't mind talking about it. All bodys have one gravity of gravitation if it is beyond the range of the larger body's gravity. Then the physically larger dominates. This allows open vessels to pull a bubble of air with them when they leave a world.

A galleon can keep its crew alive for about 2 months on just the air it pulls off on its initial departure. (I won't go into propulsion methods) It will pull a bubble of air twice the width of its longest axis.

So the system (Crystal Sphere) has twelve worlds, lots of moons, a smoke ring, nurmerous rocky bodes and swarms of same, interplanatary life forms similar to both planktonic and nektonic deep sea creatures, on a grander scale. Going from world to world in-system can be a lot like sailing to Hawaii in a ship an inch long. Nothing in particular says you can't make it, its just a little creepy on the way.

Now races get interesting too.

A portal from somewhere else doesn't always open into "now".

Combined with the size of the place (always called "D&D World" not "GreyHawk" or that other place that starts with the RHY something) you get a lot of isolation and speciation.

You basically try to learn the rules of the place you are adventuring in.

"D&D World" is disk shaped, (boy, I'm glad I caught that particular typo) with a surface area of 200 Earths in the Northern Hemisphere alone. (Where all the player characters live.) Disk shaped so you can have an edge of the world. Both aquatic and terrestrial. Guys who aquired a lot of gear and levels try to make the overland passage through the demon haunted deserts of Yondo to peek over the edge and gather the ledendary Black Sand from the very edge. Made of the ashes of stars. Laws of chance and physics aren't nice there. Yes, all the air molecules CAN go "over there". Wandering vacuums are on the encounter tables. Along with both extremes of temperature and variations in the length of night and day.

The Kara-Tur on my world is the largest mono-bloc of humans in the Multi-verse. With a population of 40 billion. (Elaborately rolled for I might add! It just got that way all by itself. So I ran with it.)The rulers and nobilty actually have divine blood in their lines. This allows them to wisely manage such a group.

Some places are heavily cantonized with certain "realities" hidden from the populace so they can do there jobs better. Some adventures involve "Matrix" like awakings. Or sometimes the players are goverment agents in pursuit of something fantastic trespassing into a no-weird zone. (A couple of times THEY were the trespassers)

Magic.
You don't need a special gene. It's just "hard". Learning a spell is like learning C++. You have to apply yourself. And have a good book.

Spells can be cast off the "ready rack" or on the fly. On the fly casting is usually 35% base chance plus 10% per level difference between you and the spell you're hucking. Thus a 5th level wizard can cast a 3rd level fireball with a 55% probability of success. Spells stored in the ready rack are considered already successfully cast.

The balance is I'm really stingy with my spells and experience points.

__________________
In your rush to call everyone "entrenched" or closed-minded or "limited" you fail to note that the "limit" here has a very natural boundary: that point at which the evidence stops. - JayUtah

Science fiction was never meant to be an educational tool. - Editor Amazing Tales