One of the blogs I follow is Bloodof Prokopius, written by a gamer who , like me, started questioning aspects of his spirituality around the same time he started playing D&D. Also like me, he sees that some form of mildly oppressive and ubiquitous religion is essential to the medeival mindset, and therefore to the implied setting of AD&D.
My questioning of spirituality and study of religions led me along the path from a Catholic to a Neopagan spiritual identity. This blogger, on the other hand, went from an agnostic to an Orthodox Christian.
We do agree on many points, particularly in the depth religions bring to games. I personally favor a L. Sprague de Camp style of polytheism in my game, however there are some truly innovative ideas in his exploration of Monotheism vs Demonic cults, one of which, while specifically derived from scripture in this post lead to a description of an oppressive empire ruled by ghasts, the same idea came about independently over here, in a more secular manner, a couple years ago on the RPG Knights blog. The adventure in question, Tomb of the Ghast Queen, is a DCC funnel sort of adventure where the PC’s are competing with a couple dozen rivals to escape imprisonment by beating a dungeon that is part puzzle, part gladiator pit.
I would expect that player death would be handled by playing the other survivors, which I imagine would lead to fairly random characters loaded with the spoils (particularly healing potions) of the defeated. I can see the adventure being run for a number of systems, (it is written for 5e, where survivability is kinda high) with different results based on expected lethality of systems.
On another topic, I am preparing to run another low point DF game at Manhattan Minicon, this time for 125 point “leveled up” versions of the 75 point characters I ran through Beath the Fallen Tower at the last minicon. The builds are similar, but not identical to those of DF15, and the adventure will feature an abandoned mine overrun by hobgoblins, and some hidden treasure, and is called Shame of the DeepGuard. You can find more about the DeepGuard on this blog, although I have made some modifications to the equipment of Nether Flight, based on my perusal of common armor types worn by 14th century mercenaries on Pintrest.
In addition to various projects I am working on for Gabor Lux, John Stater just released Nod 35, which explores a Greek mythology themed area of his neverending hexcrawl, including art by me and maps by Dyson.
Additionally, Malrex and Merciless Merchants released Tar Pits of the Bone Toilers, a level 5-8 adventure for Labyrinth Lord and featuring a piece of art from one of my earliest stock art packs, currently on sale for a mere $0.75 , and they used my Xorn!
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