Champions of Tibault: Session 1

This week our game took the survivors of the funnel and had the city of Tibault move into the next season, giving them time to train and grow into their level 1 classes. I use something called The Tome of Level Up, written by the creator of The Hexanomicon, in order to simulate events over the course of the PC training in their class. I've always liked it because it grants PCs some story to how they got their training in their class. I've got a version for the Hodas races which includes Ooze, Fury, Minotaur, Goblin, Featherfolk, Kobold, and Mountainborn, leaning into their niches and flavors. We also randomly generated things like mentors, a gang that the thief was in, and some other gladiators that the party is friendly with.

The players fought a lot of Moglins in this session and you might be asking, "what is a moglin?". In Hodas, Goblins are not like in most settings, they take some notes from them, they are small, communal, and inventive, but aren't evil little annoying creatures. so what fills out the roll of goblin kin and the more traditional goblins? Moglins. These are horrible little green goblins that invent things that seem to only work because they think it will, they eat anything that they can, they have massive numbers and somehow they fill up all the dark places of the world. When the Goblin Zine is released we plan on having a section talking about Goblin Kin and their roles in the world.

As for the magic items in the tale below: the returning boomerang is directly from the carnival of the damned and the Lantern of revealing is what I replaced the magic lantern in that adventure with. The lantern of revealing functions as a normal lantern with oil but when it's light is shined on a secret door or a weak illusion it consumes all the oil, snuffing itself out but revealing the secret door or dispelling the illusion.  

Session 1:

Following rumors of an easy payday the party consisting of Deranged, Talshu, Eskel, & Witherbone, heads to an abandoned minotaur clanhold nearby, expecting to plunder it of treasure. What they find is an army of moglins. The plateau that the clanhold sits on seems to be well defended as the moglins fire off artillery at the party. The party assumes the mogs will run out of their comrades to fire out of the crude device and try to bait them out. The mogs did not run out of mogs and a change of plans was needed. They rushed the base of the plateau, knowing they couldn’t be targeted after a certain angle was achieved. This was an excellent plan until moglin war chariots burst forth from hidden caves in the base of the plateau. The returning boomerang devastated a chariot before being destroyed, which was enough to break the morale of the mogs charioteers. With their path clear the party rushed forward to the stairs carved into the plateau. The lantern of revealing showed a secret tunnel on the path which was taken. Once inside the clanhold they are attacked by a mob of moglins with Derranged barely surviving the mogpile. Exploring their immediate surroundings Talshu finds the moglin “workshop” and after a brief battle with the “inventor” they recover his strange device which seems to be cobbled together garbage. They exit this area which once prepared bodies for their final resting place and decide to head down the stairs into the darkness deeper in the clanhold, seeking out the crypts.

Lore: Identify magic and obscure arcana

     The core rulebook doesn't have a lot of information on identifying magic items your PCs might find. I've seen more than a few people take a crack at this, Over on Archade's Tower there is a great system for it that ties it directly to the item in some way and I've really considered including a roll on that table in my various magic item entries.

    I like magic items to be mysterious, the players pick up a unique looking sword, how should they know it's magical and not just a decorative sword or a noble's weapon? For this I use "Omens", minor magical properties that give no benefit but tell you that there is something unusual about this thing you picked up.

     Once they see the omen and know they have something magical how do they find out exactly what they have? There are a lot of ways to do this, the above linked article is a great example. There is also trial and error. If you spend enough time fighting with the magical dagger you picked up you will eventually learn its ins and outs, given that magic weapons usually have an intelligence score this is a good way to use this, as the PC uses it, the weapon reveals more of itself to the wielder... but that's dangerous, surely there is a safer way to do this?

    The system I adopted was called "Lore". Its based on a sub system of the first Baldur's Gate game in which your character has a score based on their class and intelligence modifier called their "Lore". The game is still a computer game and can't get too into it and have a ton of nuance but basically, if your lore is high enough you automatically know what a magic item is. I changed this up a little. For my games "Lore" only means you might have some information but not all of it. This represents the character's education and scraps they have picked up in their journey. Recall the part of lord of the rings where Gandalf sees the ring, leaves, spends weeks or months traveling and reading books to figure out exactly what that ring is. Your character might begin such a process because their lore score was high enough to recognize the magic item for what it is and know where to find more information on it. I prefer it this way because it leans more into the "Quest for it" side of DCC which is my bread and butter.

How does it work?

First your character determines their Lore value, using three things: their peasant profession, their intelligence score, and their class.

Peasant profession:

    The bonuses for this section aren't huge but it does make sense that a wizard's apprentice would possibly know a little more about something obscure than a turnip farmer. This is a one time bonus to the character's Lore. There are plenty of alternative profession tables out there and while I am just using the one presented in the book you could use this as a guideline to determine which bonus to give those alternative profession tables. Many of these are sort of determined arbitrarily so please feel free to alter this part to your heart's content. As a general rule, human professions use a base of +0, dwarves and halflings use a base of +1, and elves use a base of +2.

 

The following professions gain no bonus to lore:

 Beekeeper, Blacksmith, Butcher, Cheese Maker, Cooper, Ditch Digger, Farmer, Gong Farmer, Hunter, Miller/Baker, Orphan, Ostler, Ropemaker, Slave, Trapper, Wainwrite, Weaver, Woodcutter

 

The following professions gain a +1 to lore:

Animal trainer, Armorer, Caravan Guard, Cobbler, Costermonger, Cutpurse, Dwarven Herder, Dwarven Miner, Dwarven Mushroom Farmer, Fortune Teller, Grave Digger, Halfling Chicken Butcher, Halfling Dyer, Halfling Glovemaker, Halfing Haberdasher, Halfling Vagrant, Jewler, Locksmith, Outlaw, Soldier, Tax Collector, Urchin, 

 

The following professions gain a +2 to lore:

Barber, Confidence Artist, Dwarven Blacksmith, Dwarven Chestmaker, Dwarven Rat-catcher, Elven Forester, Elven Glassblower, Gambler, Guild Beggar, Halfling Moneylender, Halfling Trader, Healer, Herbalist, Indentured Servant, Mercenary, Merchant, Smuggler, Squire, 

 

The following professions gain a +3 to lore

Astrologer, Beadle, Dwarven Stonemason, Elven Artisan, Elven Falconer, Halfling Gypsy, Halfling Mariner, Jester, Noble, Shaman, 

 

The following professions gain a +4 to lore:

Alchemist, Elven Chandler, Elven Navigator, 

 

The following professions gain a +5 to lore: 

 Dwarven Apothecarist, Elven Sage, Mendicant, Minstrel, Scribe, Wizard's Apprentice, 

 

Intelligence:

A character's intelligence score has an influence on their lore, like the peasant profession, this applies a one time bonus. shown below:

1-6: -10

7-9: -5

10-14: +0 

15: +5

16: +7

17: +10

18: +15 

 

Class

This is divided into groups of classes to make the use of alternative classes easier. most classes will fall under at least one of these, some might fall under two or more and you, as a judge, should make a good faith decision on which is most accurate and fair. 

• Fighting men: +3/level
• Includes Warriors, Barbarians, Minotaur or other extremely martially focused or typically not learned classes such as the Kobold. 
• Men of guile: +5/level
•   Includes the Thief, Halfling, Prowler, or similarly clever but not well educated class. 
• Men of faith: +7/level 
• Includes the cleric, the Mountainborn, the Dervish, or the Icon bearer, these are typically people who have had some form of formal education in a temple or something similar.
• Long lived ones: +10/level
•  includes Elves, Dwarves, Furies, and living weapons. 
• Men of knowledge: +12/level
•  includes the wizard, the Goblin or the Leech. These are people who's class represents someone who's knowledge base includes passing familiarity with obscure arcana.
• Scholars: +15/level 
• includes Bards, Balladeers and Sages. These are people who's lives have been spent collecting and learning the most obscure pieces of information

 

 Once a player knows their PC's Lore, they note it on the sheet and when they encounter obscure arcana or magic items, assign those items and information a Lore value, anyone who has a Lore Value high enough will get a few crumbs of information to follow up on and seek out more information on the item or arcana in particular. Not everything should have a Lore value, just the most obscure things or one of a kind magic items (which should be most or all of them). 

I hope this is useful, it's certainly been helpful at my table and given my players quite a bit of guidance for the directions of their quests and adventures and hopefully it will give your players some threads to pull on too!

Magic Sword: The Watcher's Thorn

 

It recently occurred to me that I’ve been posting these magic swords without really explaining what some of the parts of the entry mean or what my process actually looks like when I’m generating them.

Omen:
For me, the omen is a tell. It’s what gives away that the sword is magical, and often hints at its origin. I have a table that I roll on for this, though I’ll admit I’ve re-rolled plenty of times when I got something that didn’t click.

Attunement:
Something D&D did in 5th edition was make magic items require attunement, and I think that’s a great idea. It’s an excuse for a quest, or at least a meaningful task D&D didn’t use it that way but i do. I’ve got a table for this too, and I usually tie some extra power to a weapon if it’s attunement quest is completed, depending on how hard it is. Sometimes i just lock away some of the sword’s properties behind this quest. 

Extra Properties:
This is where stuff like Demon-Forged or the weapon’s material comes in. For that, I roll on the Knights in the North Equipment Qualities and Materials tables and see what combination sparks something interesting.

My process is pretty simple. I roll my way through the sword magic section of the DCC book, then tack on the omen, the attunement quest, and the qualities and materials. I’m not doing anything special or groundbreaking, just layering some extra charts on top of the DCC sword tables.

I try to follow the idea presented in the rulebook: a magic item should have a story. It’s not a “+1 sword”, it’s The Watcher’s Thorn, or The Glade Slayer, or The Tax Collector. It has history, and there should be at least two names attached to it: the one who made it, and the one who wielded it.

That’s really it. I roll a bunch of dice, write down what they tell me, and by the end, the story more or less writes itself.

Via: Heromachine 3

The Watcher’s Thorn

+1 Lawful demon-forged adamantin long sword

5 int, communicates via urges

Purpose: protect the weak and defend against chaos incursions

Demon-forged: Detects as chaotic at first attempt

Bane: Demons, berserker fury

Power: Detect water within 30’, if left in water, that water is considered holy.

Adamantin: Sword ignores damage resistances +1d damage, unusually heavy, 14 str to wield

Omen: When left to rest for more than 1 turn, vines and flowers grow over it.

Attunement: Save the life of a stranger and accept nothing in return

Forged in the Abyss by spiteful demons, this sword did not begin its life as a lawful weapon. Clever demons, tired and frustrated by the stronger but less clever who overshadowed them, decided that if they could not escape, no one would. They completed their creation and cast it into the mortal world, where it was found by a holy order guarding a rift to the Abyss.

The order could sense the Chaos within the weapon. Unable to destroy it, they chose instead to sanctify it, seeking to turn the blade into a symbol of good, just as the demons had intended. They entrusted it to a pious warrior of their order, sending him forth to uphold law and virtue until the sword itself became legendary.

This warrior, Germain, began the blade’s “purification” by saving a pilgrim from bandits, asking for nothing in return. He spent years fighting to bring order to the region. During these travels, each spring, he met a dryad, a woman of the woods, and fell in love. For many years he returned to her grove, guarding the surrounding lands and sharing fleeting moments with her. But she was fae, a creature of constant change, and the season came when her time to fade and regrow arrived. On their final spring together, she kissed the sword, leaving a fragment of her magic within it, a reminder of love and life enduring even as time passes.

Eventually, Germain returned to his order only to find it destroyed by a rival. He sought neither vengeance nor justice. He buried the fallen, then dipped the sword into the pool of holy water that ringed the rift, sanctifying the ruins and taking up the final vigil alone. When he passed, the Watcher’s Thorn remained: a blade born of Chaos, tempered by virtue, and forever bound to the defense of the mortal world.

Magic Staff: The Winter Heart

     One of my favorite things about generating these is looking up things that are relevant. The different views of different mythologies on cherry wood, discovering a new modern mythology that makes a claim I've never heard before. I think that is super interesting and just rolling one of these up and doing the research on them has brought something to the games, even if I never use the staff. I reference things like the first edition DMG, for gems, Volo's guide to the Sword Coast for some metals. Sometimes it leads me down a rabbit hole of reading about the Mistborn magic system. Sometimes I'll find a post about a specific number on the the numerology subreddit. It always gives me something interesting to take back to my table and I encourage others to give this a try when you next make something like a magic staff or sword. 

 

The Winter Heart 

via Heromachine 3

Primary: Cherry wood

Core: Troll blood

Binding: body embedded with gold (shards, screws, pins, or inlay)

Odd phyical features: Signs of resistance (energy type)

Cosmetic effect: 2 crystals float around it when it is used as a focus for magic length 

76 inches 

Cherry wood: tied to romance, checks to romance or seduce are rolled at +1d 

Troll Blood: fortitude, +1 on fortitude saves 

Gold Inlay: Healing, heal target or bearer for 1d4 hp once each day, renews at dawn 

Staff has rimed with frost that never melts: bearer casts cold based spells at +1

76 inches: introspection and mastering oneself, +1 to checks related to peasant profession

The staff known as “The Winter Heart” has gone by many names, “The Frozen Mercy”, “Heartbranch”, “Life Frost”, and “The Healer’s Winter”. Each of these are just a different appearance of The Winter Heart appearing in history in new hands, not different staffs with similar properties, as some scholars suggest.

Under the name “The Frozen Mercy” this staff saw a brief rise to fame in the hands of a skilled but hopelessly romantic mage by the name of Allister of Jarlrock. Allister studied the staff more than most magicians who have carried it, drawing on it as the source of inspiration for much of the magic he practiced later in life. Much of his magic focused on fortifying others and speeding up their recovery, this made him something of an odd duck to the community he lived in, magic seen as something to be feared made him remain at arms length but turning it towards healing made him a sort of last resort for the sick or injured. Unfortunately his romantic nature proved to be the end of his history with the staff when he fell for a woman passing through the town. She remained for a few weeks before he woke one morning to find his estate had been robbed and the staff was gone.

 

The Red Promise

     A few sessions ago the party fought a small time boss in the crime ridden part of a city they have long forgotten they traveled to. For them, this was just another day as an adventurer, slaying foes, getting paid, leaving before the consequences catch up to them or become readily apparent. 

    They left their foe alive after he surrendered, they expected that to be the end of it. They would leave the area and he wouldn't be able to reach them, even if he could somehow rebuild his empire. While in his darkest moment, when he swears revenge on the party, a voice comes to him from the darkest corner of the alley they left him in. It offers the power to get revenge, the cost is his soul... but if he gets his revenge? His soul is free and clear, the demon in the shadow will take the party's souls instead. To keep things interesting, and because demons just love being bastards, there are rules, no harm can come to those who aren't directly connected to the party. 

    Most people would turn away, even the angriest among us would surely value our own soul and autonomy more than revenge, right? Every now and then someone takes that deal, someone who has something darker in them than most of us. This is when a Red Promise is born.

     The way I recommend  using this monster, and the way I have, is to make the PC's past come back to haunt them in some way. They leave behind a trail of bodies and an absolute mess in the last settlement they stop by and someone is going to be left alive to blame them. PCs don't always stay in the same place, the nature of being an adventurer usually means seeking out new horizons and traveling further from home than anyone else in your village. They make enemies as they do this, leave loose ends. These are the sources of the Red Promise at my table.

 The Red Promise 

Champions of Tibault Prologue

     This post will kick off our next campaign, Champions of Tibualt.  In Hodas Tibault is a traveling city made of tents, wagons, and arenas that can be broken down and re-assembled. Fortunes are made at the edge of a blade or by incredible luck. Games and gladiators can be found everywhere and disputes are always settled in the pits.

    The adventure I borrowed heavily from for the funnel was Carnival of the Damned, flavoring the rooms of the funnel as arenas, pits, or stages that the players faced these challenges in with onlookers in bleachers above placing bets. I used the arcade as a sort of place for the players to have a sort of meet and greet with the wealthy gamblers in the city who were seeking new gladiators and champions for their stables. I ended up cutting out the final battle and mostly just using various rooms. Some of the treasure needed to be re-flavored but it's not a huge deal to change a clown nose that grants +1d to attack and damage rolls against clowns to be a mask that does the same but against other gladiators. 

Having run this adventure both as intended and chopped up, I strongly recommend buying and reading Carnival of the Damned, it is a wonderful one for getting the juices flowing. 

 

 

Session 0:

The traveling city of Tibault, passes by a village and the locals hear of the wealth to be made, should someone have the will to take it. A group of them leave their village behind and travel with the city. When the city stops, they make some money helping set up tents and prepare an area. They spend their money quickly and find themselves in deep debt, some choose slavery to pay their debt but others choose to enter a series of games. The peasant mob struggles against blind mole beastmen, a creature in a ball pit, a pie eating contest, and a collection of deadly midway games. Many friends are lost along the way but those who survive find their debts cleared and quite a bit of wealth in their pockets. Better than all that, they have some small fame and find patrons to teach them skill in arms and sorcery, emerging as champions and gladiators.

Class: Goblin

Art by Lex Cazimi

     In Hodas, one of the races who ended up on the table after Wasteland Without Epithet was goblins. They were detailed as inventive, curious, communal, and just a little destructive. When we talked about what made them different from goblins in popular fantasy we came to the conclusion that these leaned into the brighter aspects of them, their communal nature, their inventive side. We talked about their love of rain storms, their struggle to think about the long term, their use of communal workshops, and their restless creativity, their names being adjectives. They still felt like goblins but they were our goblin, Hodas goblins. 

    They ended up being one part spell caster, one part mad bomber alchemist. They get some magic but it's limited, they aren't full wizards. they get the ability to make bombs that they keep on them and throw. Their intelligent and crafty nature is reflected in their ability to pull together scraps. Their short lives and brilliant minds have left them with an impressive ability of recall. They were the first class I wrote for Hodas and said "yeah, that hits all the flavor notes and I'm happy with it.

    Keep in mind, in Hodas humans are greatly diminished in number, so race as class is much more common than in a normal DCC game, so things like The Minotaur, The Ooze, The Kobold, and The Goblin are much more commonly found and fill out their niche in a group.

    If you like free goblin class below and want a look at a more martial version of them check out the Goblin Bigheart over on our Patreon along with a long ranged version of The Minotaur called the Bullista.

 

Goblin Class 

Alternative Spellbooks

Something I love about wizards is their spell books. I think it says a lot of about the character when you see what form their spell book takes. It’s something that not a ton of attention is paid to. Most of the time we just hand wave it and move on. Some other games have rules for making them different, you might get bonuses for special materials, you might have to keep track of the number of pages used. There are spells to protect your book from harm or theft. It feels like it’s supposed to be part of the game but it’s kinda seen as a faux pa to actually target the wizard’s spell book, akin to removing the warrior’s arms. 

I think DCC handles this beautifully, its just something you have, call it what you want, don’t worry about keeping track of pages used or detailing how you protect it. You just have it. It’s as important as you make it. Because it’s so hand waved we get to talk about one of DCC’s greatest strengths, flavor. DCC thrives when you just flavor things yourself. The barbarian warlord and the shining knight are both the warrior class, just flavored and played differently. The Paladin is the cleric or the warrior, again, flavored and played differently.

So lets take this strength and apply it to the spell book. Your spell book makes a statement about you. It says a bit about how you view magic as a traveling wizard. It gives clues to your influences as a wizard. It plays into wizards being people who closely guard their secrets. It might speak to your peasant profession. One of my favorite examples of a non-book spell book comes from Mighty Deeds, a glowing geode that has broken pieces arranged into different patterns, allowing the voice in the geode to impart the knowledge into the mind of the caster. So i’d like to get the ball rolling and give a few examples of spell books that don’t fit the exact book format and hopefully you’ll see a fun flavorful way to make your wizard stand out a bit or guard their secrets in a new way. I’m gonna try to keep these mostly with adventurers in mind, the kind of thing a traveling wizard might use instead of a highly flammable collection of pages.

Quipu:

These are a record keeping device used primarily in the Inca empire in real life. They used a combination of the color of threads, the number and position of knots, and length of threads to convey information, they could have a few or a thousand cords. Your spells could be coded into this system just as easily. I like this as a spell book because it’s light weight, water proof, but still vulnerable to fire if worn openly. It says a lot about practicality and possibly paranoia that a character might use something that completely forgoes written script to put their spells to a physical medium. 

An Inca quipu, from the Larco Museum in Lima, Peru.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Metal Disks:

A large version of the picture etched with acid or carefully etched by hand tools. Maybe strung together by a chain or rope, keeping them in the correct order. Maybe they have their holes punched closer to the edge and they are kept on a ring like keys, your wizard’s keys to power… sorry for the bad joke. These would likely be very heavy compared to a normal book but they would sure be durable, just don’t drop them in deep water. These might say the wizard has lost past books to the elements or fire and decided no more. It might just say they have a background in metallurgy, certainly a fun idea for a blacksmith who took on the wizard class after the funnel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bones:

I had a player once carrying an entire cleaned and polished human skeleton. They had the bones of their wizard’s master. “In death he continues to offer wisdom” he declared. The bones themselves, had carvings and etching on them that detailed the character’s spell book. Only when the skeleton is assembled in the anatomically correct configuration will the spells be able to be understood as the script flows between bones. Carefully applied copper wires and pins are inserted to hold it together for study. Not entirely practical but when collapsed down the bones take up less space than you might think. This character wasn’t a necromancer but someone who’s magic is influenced by death and unlife might use this. Maybe a gravedigger might use this as their spell book. It could speak of love, attachment, or refusing to let go in the form of the skeleton of a loved one. It could speak to hate or a grudge in the form of the bones of an enemy. It could be more tribal if maybe you used the bones of animals instead.

Bone Snuff Box, Proantic

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shifting Puzzle:

I know that the cube from Hellraiser is probably the most iconic way I could depict it, and that absolutely rocks as a spell book, different configurations with the symbols on it show your spells, only you know how to solve the puzzle to show the correct configurations. The same could be done with any kind of shifting puzzle like the ones shown. Each space on the puzzle showing a different rune, symbol, or script and only in certain configurations does the script make sense. This could even be trapped, some configurations are specifically deadly if the spell is cast, maybe there is a blade hidden somewhere inside that ejects if the wrong configuration is put in. this is a light weight spell book that has a lot of things to say about a character. Their paranoia is certainly a factor, this thing is exceptionally hard to understand to anyone but themselves, if it’s trapped then that speaks to even more danger. Maybe they are particularly inventive and have “inverted” configurations that allow them to reverse the spells, such as growth for shrink. This character might have been a toy maker, or a clock maker before becoming an adventuring wizard, if thats the peasant background they have.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Star plates:

These are a collection of thin metal plates with holes punched in them that, when held up to the night sky in the right position, reveal a star constellation that isn’t recorded. By studying the constellations these plates reveal you gain your spells. The drawback to this is that it requires a night sky. You could say that arranging candles to match the disc could be done on a cloudy night, this might take longer to get the candles in the right positions. This would be a fun spell book option for someone who had an astrology peasant profession. It might say that your wizard sees the stars as the source of their magic, or perhaps the things between the stars, trapped in these secret constellations. 

Quilt or Afghan:

Done in patches, granny squares, or patterns, there are a lot of ways to say this is a character’s spell book. If it’s a quilt made of squares then each square might contain symbols that form the spell book. The same could be done with an afghan made of granny squares, looking back at the quipu, the color of the threads could matter, the chain spacers, the loops, the shells, all of it could play into how it’s done. Looking at the template for the granny square gives us some real interesting things to play with. Maybe using a ripple stitch you could use the pitch of the ripples, the colors of the threads, and the type of thread to mean different things. To make it even more complex you could say that you need to fold it into certain configurations in order to really gain your spells from it. This could say a lot about your character, maybe comfort and practicality are important? Maybe their peasant profession was a tailor or seamstress? Maybe your character’s magical instructor was their grandmother, who taught you magic at the fire side while showing you how to stitch the patterns that call to the fae she draws her magic from.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I wanna finish this post off by saying I don’t think there is anything wrong with saying you just have a spell book or grimoire as the book says. What I do think is that we’re leaving a lot of opportunity for flavor on the table. DCC has this incredible strength of being a game that is so open to flavoring things, this is no different. Your peasant profession and jump into being a wizard has so much room for flavoring your character. These options don’t need to come with mechanical benefits and changes, they certainly could if that's what you want to do at your table.