From Kuroth’s Quill

October in Greyhawk: Things that Go Bump in the Night

2025-10-16T19:03:02-04:00October 24th, 2022|

In October, thoughts naturally gravitate toward the undead and other things that go bump in the night, so I've compiled some of my house rules and other variant rules about undead for your Halloween-inspired gaming! Undead Variants - grodog's Standard House RulesAll undead gain a +3 hp bonus after their HD: i.e., ghouls are 2+3 HD, ghasts are 4+3 HD, groaning spirit is 7+3, etc. This is a natural extrapolation from the mid-tier undead like wight, wraith, mummy, specture, and vampire, and it does give them all a bit more staying power (and make them worth a bit more XP!). In my campaigns, zombies are now the lowest form of undead at 1+3 HD undead, and skeletons are promoted to the 2+3 HD undead: i.e., skeletons are tougher, faster (they get +1 on initiative!), and way cooler than zombies---as it should be, in the classic Harryhausen manner: Jason and the Argonauts (1963) - skeletons by Ray HarryhausenAll undead cause fear upon sight (with a range/radius of 1" per HD of the undead) in any creature with HD equal to or less than the undead's HD: i.e., zombies (1+3 HD in my games) cause fear in up to 1+3 HD monsters, and 0- and 1st-level PCs and NPCs.A save vs. Spells negates the fear, with Wisdom bonuses/penalties applicable. If the save is failed, duration of the fear is 1 round per HD of the undead minus the PC victim’s level (with a minimum duration of 1 round).For the past several years, I've used the DMG's Alternate Turning Matrix described in the table notes in the 1e DMG on page 76:The progression on the [clerical turning] table is ... read more!

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grodog’s Virtual Greyhawk Con 3 Report!

2025-10-16T19:03:12-04:00October 15th, 2022|

Hola folks---As usual, I had a wonderful time at Virtual Greyhawk Con again this year, the convention's third annual installment of Flan-flinging fun! I ran three games, played in two, and participated in the closing panel again, which made for a very fun, but also very full weekend (30 Sept to 2 Oct 2022). Friday Night Only, AlasI had registered to play in Jay Hafner's 5e version of the Dragon Magazine classic adventure "Citadel by the Sea" (designed by Sid Fisher, from issue #78): "Citadel by the Sea"---artwork by Roger Raupp My thought had been that it would be cool to kick the tires on 5e for the first time in a scenario I knew pretty well, with a DM I kn0w from the days of Greytalk. Unfortunately work conspired to keep me away from Jay's table on Friday morning, but my empty spot filled up quickly, so he still ran with a full table (which I'm thankful for!). Perhaps next year, Jay!Friday night, I DM'd Carlos Lising's adventure, G2 The Witch Queen's Lament, and it was quite fun. It's always a pleasure to get to play a high-level villain, and Iggwilv is certainly one of my favorites! :DWe ran through Carlos' adventure tourney-style, and while the players were not able to complete the mission, they did plumb the depths of the vile wizard's lair that Iggwilv set them upon: Your PCs are forcibly recruited by the Witch Queen of Perrenland and geased to perform a mission on her behalf. Will you succeed and find mercy as Iggwilv restores your freedom, or will you fail in your quest and and suffer eternal consequences beyond mere death? Set ... read more!

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Astral Adventures in Greyhawk

2025-10-16T19:03:19-04:00September 25th, 2022|

The players in my Castle Greyhawk campaign have spent most of the past 11 months (since 23 October 2021) romping about in the Astral Plane, and, at long last, they're likely to return home to Oerth soon, I think. Our next session (last night, on 24 September 2022) will tell! We have been playing through my (somewhat modified) version of Anthony Huso's excellent scenario, Zjelwyin Fall (also available in PDF if you prefer): Zjelwyin Fall cover art by Daniele Valeriani As part of my work to deploy Anthony's adventure into my Greyhawk campaign, I also used this as an opportunity to define some more of the planar architecture for the setting. Some of that design work went into adjusting the framework and background for the scenario to suit my current campaign situation, and some of it was general work expanding upon the options for how the Astral Planet works in my games. I'll delve into the campaign context after we wrap up the adventure in our next session, so for now, I'll share some of the rules and design work that I used to augment Anthony's scenario. The Astral Plane in AD&D The rules governing astral travel, astral encounters, and astral monsters are (perhaps unsurprisingly) scattered across a variety of sources in 1st edition AD&D. They appear in chronological order in: Monster Manual (1977) - mostly in passing, not a lot of real planar substance Players Handbook (1978) - Astral Spell, Great Wheel planar appendix, etc. Dungeon Masters Guide (1979) - various notes, Appendix C p. 180 for one page of Astral and Ethereal wandering encounters, which notably include both the Ether Cyclone (ethereal) and ... read more!

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More Mega-Dungeon Meanderings (and on a Monday!)

2025-10-16T19:03:24-04:00August 29th, 2022|

I've been hanging out in reddit a lot more over the past few years, among its OSR, AD&D, Greyhawk, mega-dungeon, miniatures, and related old-school (and Delta Green) communities. In /osr/ the user livefreebugs posted a question at https://www.reddit.com/r/osr/comments/wzugz6/what_elements_would_make_your_ideal_megadungeon/ asking (with my linebreak additions), I've been reading a lot of theory and perform advice on megadungeons and it seems like an area that there's a lot of room for awesome new adventures in. There's definitely a‍ risk some megadungeons run into of being repetitive or incoherent and having a huge quantity of locations over consistent quality. I think vibrant factions, multiple approaches, verticality, a sense of place/history that gives deep interconnections between areas of the dungeon, and a scale that allows for many sessions of return delves. I know it's not too controversial here but while not exactly "mega" depending on your definition I think the Caverns of Thracia is one of the better large dungeons ever made due to the integration of layout, history, occupants, into the whole and not feeling like a jumble of random rooms (though gonzo funhouses' can be sweet too). What would you look for in your perfect large/mega-dungeon that doesn't exist yet? My response follows. ==My favorite things to do in mega-dungeons, as a player or DM:Explore...: lots of room to wander around, get lost, find cool things no one else has found, pass through empty rooms/chambers/halls on the way to fun encounters! A mega-dungeon must also lead outward into the world(s), as well as pull the world into it's orbit from time-to-time....and Map!: I love to map while playing and mega-dungeons provide wonderful opportunities to do so :DInteract with Interesting characters: whether PCs ... read more!

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Happy Needfest and Merry New Year!

2025-10-16T19:03:43-04:00January 3rd, 2022|

While life has continued to wear me out (in particular my day job*), with the new year's turn, there's always a fresh bout of hope that seeps into my fingers and toes, so I'm dusting off the ol' blog once again.This post will summarize some news and updates, and help to kickstart the rest of the month's writing! News and UpdatesJason Zavoda - Greyhawk Fan and Friend - 1965-2021I have sad news to share that Jason Zavoda died on 22 December 2021. Jason was a long-time Greyhawk fan and member of its online communities dating back to AOL's late-2e heyday. Jason published his Hall of the Mountain King blog, wrote Greyhawk fan fiction, contributed articles to the Oerth Journal (and edited some issues during its Turmoil Between Editors phase), and, perhaps most importantly to Greyhawk fans, spearheaded his wondrous index of Greyhawk references in all published products. The index is an indispensable research tool, and began as a humble .TXT file that grew over the years, and was recently updated by Eric Johnson in the Greyhawk Resources Files on Facebook as a Microsoft Excel format to allow more filtering and sorting.Carlos Lising of casl Entertainment wrote a very nice Greyhawk-themed tribute to Jason in the Facebook Sages of Greyhawk group (you'll need to be a member of the group to access his story).Paul Stormberg (of The Collectors Trove and Legends of RolePlaying) and I have discussed putting together a compilation of Jason's many contributions to the Greyhawk fan community, to help ensure that they're preserved and available to the fans for years to come, and I've reached out to the GreyhawkOnline admin team on that front too. ... read more!

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Greyhawk (and grodog) News Miscellany

2025-10-16T19:03:50-04:00August 7th, 2021|

Some updates from or of interest to World of Greyhawk fans:Virtual Greyhawk Con 2 to be held from 1 to 3 October 2021 was announced by Jay Scott, and event submissions are already live and being accepted through 29 September 2021; Event Registration begins in one week, on 15 August 2021; badges are $5 so come check it out!:Trent Foster posted his AD&D conversion notes for Gary Gygax's magnum-opus adventure, Necropolis, and he also recounts (in the links in his blog post) playing it with Gary back in the late '80sDan Boggs recently posted a map by the Dutch cartographer Daniel Hasenbos that blends the original Blackmoor campaign setting with Darlene's classic Greyhawk map (as well as with Anna Meyer's too):Zach "Zenopus Archives" Howard recently rediscovered that the published text of Lenard Lakofka's L3 Deep Dwarven Delve adventure (the last official AD&D adventure published, in the 1999 Silver Anniversary Boxed Set) was in fact much-more accurate than he had originally thoughtAnthony Huso recently posted about a cool site that allows you to build heraldry at the elements level, and I thought it might catch folks' eye, particularly Greyhawk fans: https://worldspinner.com/heraldry/device_editor/Carlos "casl Entertainment" Lising will be a Guest of Honor at GrogCon 2 in central Florida from 15-17 October 2021; Carlos will be running a new Greyhawk scenario entitled "The Witch Queen's Lament" (a title which I suggested, in fact!---and I really need to place my catch-up order on his newer titles, too)The Oerth Journal issue numbers #35, #34, and #33 are all now available to download (for free, as always) since I last plugged the zine ;)Black Blade Publishing (which I co-founded with Jon Hershberger ... read more!

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North Texas RPGCon 2021 – grodog’s games recap

2025-10-16T19:03:55-04:00August 6th, 2021|

As usual, I had a wonderful time at the North Texas RPG Con this year (3-6 June 2021)---in particular since this was the first in-person convention that I attended since NTX in 2019!Some quick NTX info, for those who are unfamiliar with the convention:Website @ https://www.ntrpgcon.com/Facebook Group @ https://www.facebook.com/groups/310434204630TableTop Events @ https://tabletop.events/conventions/ntrpgcon-2021 Black Blade BoothThese pictures showcase our Black Blade Publishing booth this year:While it was a transitional and rebuilding year, we did well at the con, and it was great to be able to showcase so many new and cool products to the attending gamers!grodog's EventsKnights & Knaves Alehouse SocialI played in the K&KA Social on Thursday night, and had a wonderful time. It's always fun to play with a very large group (15-25 players) each year and to see what mayhem erupts! This year we were slated to play OD&D (we alternate between OD&D and AD&D each year), and Nathan "tetramorph" Jennings DM'd again. We picked up from where we left off two years ago. Here are my player maps from the 2019 session: and alas, my hapless PC---who used efreeti-granted wishes to become the Lord of the Manor last time---was laid low by those meddling kids! Rest in pieces, Lord Merrak the Perspicacious, and know that you will be avenged! (In the meanwhile, he and his efreet did kill the dragon and go down in a blaze of glory! =) Nathan posted his DM-POV event summary at K&KA at https://knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?p=281522#p281522, with some follow-up comments in the next page too. General discussion of the social begins on the page at https://knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16739&start=135 Here are a few pics of the K&KA crew in the boardroom where we ... read more!

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grodog’s post-GaryCon-XIII Repose – Part 2

2025-10-16T19:04:02-04:00May 31st, 2021|

Being as I'm about to head out to the North Texas RPG Con in a couple of days, I'd better get my GaryCon Report Part 2 concluded! ;) Continuing from my now-too-long-in-the-tooth Part 1 summary, after running my games on Thursday and Friday of GaryCon XIII, I spent most of the rest of the connvention playing in games (Sunday afternoon excepted).Saturday, 27 March 1-6pm: I played in Les "OblivionSeeker" Reno's "Death Master's Gambit: Dead Men Tell No Tales" AD&D 1e adventure---although they do blackmail with some regularity, it seems. Our PCs will seek to eliminate the blackmail at the source, somewhere in the Wild Coast....Les crafted a supremely-cool scenario in which our PCs were pulled into a rather Machiavellian plot:Your recent adventures began in Safeton. Slanarus Zaal, a prosperous merchant, gathered you together. He felt he could trust you. You’d done work for him in the past, and each of you had proven yourselves to be honorable, in your own fashion, and discreet. Almost a year ago, letters began to arrive at the man’s office under mysterious circumstances. They seemed to *materialize* on the desk or between a ledger’s pages when the man turned his back for a moment or left and locked the room. To the casual reader, the contents would seem banal—details of a journey, as recorded by a business associate; a jesting but flirtatious inquiry from one of the widower’s former lovers; requests for forbearance from some debtor or other. At first, Zaal was irritated by the intrusion and gave little thought to the texts. Then he realized that the letters were all written in the same hand. He studied them and ... read more!

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grodog’s post-GaryCon-XIII Repose – Part 1

2025-10-16T19:04:06-04:00April 2nd, 2021|

Yet-again, I had a wonderful time at GaryCon this year. Here's the first part of my post-convention recap, working off of my schedule for GaryCon XIII! Wednesday, 24 MarchIn our usual fashion, members of the Legio V gathered on Wedsnesday night for our pre-con get-together, which was a fun time as always. We didn't game this year, just hung out and caught up on life, the universe, and everything.If you're not familiar with the Legio V, here's some info:The Lake Geneva Legio V began as a handful of gamers who have attended Gary Con since its inception. We have grown over the past few years to include like-minded individuals united by a respect of Gary Gygax and his legacy. We are the dedicated attendees who love Gary Con for the camaraderie it establishes, the Game Masters who run games from across the decades, and the committed gamers who spend these four days in a fervor of dice rolling and old school good times.Although events run as LEGIO V Presents will use a variety of rule systems, our focus is on games authored by Gary and his contemporaries as well as those systems whose designers pay homage to these pioneers.Thursday and Friday mornings - grodog's Castle Greyhawk: Escape from Level 14Over Thursday and Friday I ran two sets of players through levels from my version of Castle Greyhawk. Both opted to attempt to get away from Level 14, which I first ran at the North Texas RPG Con #1 in 2009, and subsequently at GaryCons #2 (2010), with reprises at NTX and GaryCon #10 in 2018. The scenario premise is: Escape From Castle Greyhawk – Player ... read more!

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grodog’s GaryCon XIII Schedule – 25-28 March 2021

2025-10-16T19:04:11-04:00March 25th, 2021|

I'll be scarce the next several days as I'm running and playing games at GaryCon Gaming Convention XIII. It's going to be a great convention again!---good times to be discovered, dice to be rolled, monsters to be put to the sword, and treasures to be looted! =) My schedule is full of fun this year!:Thursday, 25 MarchNoon-5pm: DM for grodog's Castle Greyhawk: I'm running either my "Four Way Hub Level" or "Escape from Level 14" level, based on the players' selection. My 13 year-old son Henry will be playing in this session, which is always fun =)7pm-Midnight: Player in Rich Frank's "Lost Temple of Set" dungeon, where we seek to recover the fabled Eye of Horus:The party has traveled through a jungle to locate an ancient and forgotten Temple of the God, Set. Set has not been worshipped in any notable or public way in centuries, most of the old temples having been thrown down and replaced with temples to other Gods. However, Set, being a major God, has been able to maintain a cult of worshippers despite being forced out of the consciousness of most of the population in this world.The motivation for the characters is to find the fabled Eye of Horus, a large piece of jade in the shape of a pointed oval, with the symbol of the Eye of Horus carved into it, and inlaid with gold. Among the purported properties of the Eye is the ability to roll back time and view what happened in the area the Eye is currently placed. (More on this in the description of the Eye of Horus at the end of this document.) Indeed, the ... read more!

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grodog’s virtual GaryCon XIII events – March 2021

2025-10-16T19:04:13-04:00February 28th, 2021|

I submitted two five-hour delves into my version of Castle Greyhawk to Virtual GaryCon XIII this evening. The events will hopefully be scheduled at these times I submitted: grodog's Castle Greyhawk - Thursday, 25 March from Noon to 5pmgrodog's Castle Greyhawk - Friday, 26 March from 9am to 2pm Legends of Roleplaying Tournament: Into the City of Brass - Sunday, 28 March from 1pm to 5pm The two event descriptions are identical: Explore grodog's Castle Greyhawk levels. Choose from: 1) seek to Escape from Level 14, or 2) battle the dreaded Holaki in the Four-Way Hub Level. Bring your graph paper, dice, and a healthy dose of paranoid courage! 6th-10th level pregen PCs will be provided. Virtual session will be run in Webex, details to be provided after registration. ---The Lake Geneva Legio V began as a handful of gamers who have attended Gary Con since its inception. We have grown over the past few years to include like-minded individuals united by a respect of Gary Gygax and his legacy. We are the dedicated attendees who love Gary Con for the camaraderie it establishes, the Game Masters who run games from across the decades, and the committed gamers who spend these four days in a fervor of dice rolling and old school good times.Although events run as LEGIO V Presents will use a variety of rule systems, our focus is on games authored by Gary and his contemporaries as well as those systems whose designers pay homage to these pioneers. I'll be helping Paul Stormberg to DM his Legends of Roleplaying tourney again this year, and plan to register to play in various Greyhawk- and old-school themed events, ... read more!

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Prospects and Retrospects – 101 posts From Kuroth’s Quill

2025-10-16T19:04:21-04:00November 21st, 2020|

Due to the vagaries of real-life timing winning out over planning, my 100th post in From Kuroth's Quill arrived uncelebrated as my compiled (and still far-from-comprehensive) bibliography for Lenard Lakofka's D&D writings. Given Lenard's recent death (about which I still have a memorial post in draft), it didn't seem the right time to crow about much of anything at all, and is another hash-mark against 2020 that began back in January with my post in tribute to Rush's drummer, Neil Peart. So, this will be my semi-celebratory and semi-reflective piece about the ongoing writing of this blog. 'Tis a rainy, grey afternoon outside, which is more conducive to writing and reflection than most, so here we go!From Kuroth's Quill - grodog's Vision vs. RealityMy blog masthead proclaims,"From Kuroth’s Quill" is grodog's regular design column covering the elements of adventure design (and more-specifically dungeon design, given my interest in that topic). I will also wander through the design of spells and magic items; monsters, traps, tricks, and treasures; PC and NPC classes; planes and pantheons; and likely other topics as well. In the blog, I hope to provide practical examples that will be useful in campaign play, to show theory in action. While From Kuroth's Quill remains more sporadic than regular than I'd prefer, and while it's not always 100% focused on AD&D and/or Greyhawk, it's generally remained on-target, although I've certainly focused more overall on general dungeon design than on creating specific content for AD&D or Greyhawk. Here's a breakdown of my posts by year, as well as some high-level topical analysis for them:2020 - 25 posts YTD = 2.08 per month (counting this ... read more!

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Virtual TsunamiCon 2020 – A Resounding Success!

2025-10-16T19:04:27-04:00October 19th, 2020|

My thanks to the indefatigable Erik Carl and his cohort of admins, helpdeskers, and technical wizards for putting on TsunamiCon 2020 Virtual Con this weekend!As usual, I have a wonderful time each year at TsunamiCon, and 2020 was no exception! I played Dread for the first time under the auspices of Matt Harrop’s madcap (and sometimes just mad!) Empire-Records-meets-the-King-in-Yellow scenario for Dread, “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” with Angela K. A. Robertson and Vanessa Keeler, all three of whom had me laughing uncontrollably throughout our session together! While laughter isn’t always terribly common in a Cthulhu game, it just proves the old axiom that it’s the best medicine/remedy, since we did in fact manage to save the world, in spite of ourselves ;)I also played in Jb Wilson’s excellently-run Delta Green scenario, “Operation: Dust Bowl”—the first time I’ve played under the “new” DG RPG rules, and possibly the first time I’ve played it in general since the late ‘90s when Pagan Publishing still ruled the CoC roost! I had a good time playing alongside Brian Wiles for the first time (on the same side of the screen, that is—we met at TsunamiCon last year, in fact!), and with our fellow Cell-W agents portrayed by El Cid, Becky Hooton, and Andrew Shepard. Becky’s “Agent Wade” didn’t make it out, but the world lives to fight another day through his greatest sacrifice, which is all DG ever asks for ;)I also ran two playtest sessions of my Iounic Vaults AD&D 1e scenario, and one session of the late, great Tom Moldvay’s unpublished module CH-1 The Morandir Company. I’ll blog about those, as ... read more!

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grodog’s Castle Greyhawk – Campaign Journal 25 September 2020

2025-10-16T19:04:37-04:00September 28th, 2020|

We had an excellent Castle Greyhawk session last night, with some really fun roleplaying among the PCs and goblins in particular, which setup the rest of the session's action very nicely! After exploring into some waterway areas in Castle Greyhawk's level 1 dungeon, The PCs headed back to investigate a door under the entry stairs, discovering what may be a one-way door (the hard way). Afterward, they explored a bit off of a Y intersection, and then met some local goblins in the other Y, and got in good with them through some judicious role-playing (and a charismatic half-orc and MU able to speak goblin). It helped a lot that the PCs mentioned that they were a) a part of the Horned Society, and b) that they had recently routed a bunch of kobolds (back in March at the start of the game), which the goblins had been following up on. The goblin captain (Captain Nieder, pronounced like Needa ;) ) asked them to bring him the head of the Kobold King (who is now likely be be anagrammed from Yuri Gagarin, since "Bring me the head of Yuri Gagarin" is the title of an old Hawkwind bootleg from the Space Ritual era), which they agreed to do, at which point Captain Nieder will take them to meet the Goblin King ("down below"). Now allied with Captain Nieder and his goblins (of the Moon Flayers tribe), he still wouldn't allow them into their "Echo Base" goblin territory, but did agree to take them through blindfolded to the eiger toll keepers (eiger = ogre in Greyhawk alternate races parlance), which would then allow them back south ... read more!

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grodog’s October 2020 Convention Greyhawk Events

2025-10-16T19:04:44-04:00September 19th, 2020|

I'm running events at both Virtual GreyhawkCon and Virtual TsunamiCon in October this year!I've already written about my Virtual GreyhawkCon events, which will feature two playtest sessions for The Iounic Vaults---the concluding portion of my Iounic Caverns level from my version of Castle Greyhawk, as well as one session in Rob Kuntz's classic Bottle City level from Castle Greyhawk: My TsunamiCon 2020 Virtual Con events are submitted!At TsunamiCon (16-18 October 2020) I'll also run two AD&D 1e playtest sessions in The Iounic Vaults (the conclusion to my unpublished Iounic Caverns adventure in Castle Greyhawk), as well as one session of Tom Molday's classic, (mostly) unpublished Morandir Trilogy of adventures (#2 Seren Ironhand was published in 1986). - Iounic Vaults on Friday 6pm, Sunday 1pm- Moldvay Morandir on Saturday 1pmI also registered to play in my friend Matt Harrop's End of the World game (which uses Jenga for its success mechanics), as well as Justin Wilson's Delta Green game =) Allan.

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