Author: sullijo

Module Review: Seekers of the Un-K'nown

Module Review: Seekers of the Un-K’nown

Posted on by sullijo

Seekers of the Un-K’nown by Louis Hoefer is the first module in Dandyline Games’ Classics Mutated line for Mutant Crawl Classics. (Full disclosure: Hoefer is a friend and part of my regular gaming group.) The adventure takes inspiration and tropes from the classic D&D module In Search of the Unknown and reimagines them in the post-apocalyptic world of Terra AD: the hidden fortress of Quasquenton is now the ancient war bunker Quartum-Q, home of the long-dead heroes Rogo Khan & Zee L’Gar. The PCs have been sent by their tribe to discover why people have gone missing.

The module opens with a large hexcrawl across an ancient battlefield littered with unexploded ordinance, giant mutant weasels, and digital “ghosts” of artifacts of the ancient humans. The base itself is a sprawling two-level edifice filled with squatting beastmen, malfunctioning robots, and tantalizing clues about the secret history of the base’s former inhabitants. That means there’s a lot packed into the module’s 54 pages. Judges should do a thorough read-through of the adventure before running it, although Hoefer has included some helpful hints for running the adventure.

Seekers can easily encompass 3-6 game sessions when the hexcrawl is included. When I ran the module at Gen Con in 2022, I skipped over the wilderness portion and dropped the PCs at the door of the fortress. I also moved around a few rooms on the map on the fly to ensure the players discovered the most salient secrets before our four-hour session was over. That said, the adventure was a big hit with the players (even though two PCs went down in the final fight). I’d also recommend removing the holo-entertainment room if time is a factor, as PCs can easily get sucked into a redundant mini-adventure there.

The artwork by Santiago Iborra and Christopher Tupa does a good job of conveying the sights and scale of the adventure, but the maps can sometimes feel a little cramped due to all the detail in them.

While it may take a little extra prep on the part of the Judge, Seekers of the Un-K’nown is a fun addition to any post-apocalyptic campaign, offering plenty of challenges and puzzles for your party of seekers.

image by Santiago Iborra
Module Review: One Night in the Sinister Citadel

Module Review: One Night in the Sinister Citadel

Posted on by sullijo

Every year around my birthday I run an online one-shot for some old friends. It’s a way to spend time with people I love who I don’t see very often and to run modules that haven’t made it to the table before!

This year’s selection was One Night in the Sinister Citadel, a fabulous little level 2 scenario for 5e from Goodman Games. Set in a crumbling tower in the process of being renovated into an auction house by an entrepreneurial tiefling, the PCs have been hired as night guards to look after various artifacts that will be on the auction block the next day.

The adventure is a bit of a slow burn in a good way. After locking the doors of the tower the players have a chance to explore the various areas of the auction house (although my players were well behaved and stayed away from the stairwell with the “do not enter” sign on it) before the most dangerous artifacts are delivered.

Without giving too much away, the action goes from 0 to 60 very quickly as the PCs must deal with a group of thieves guild hopefuls, the former inhabitants of the tower, and the tower’s security measures all at the same time. Clever players will find ways to pit each group against the others without causing too much collateral damage before the tower’s owner returns in the morning.

The adventure has some fun role-playing opportunities with the owner of the tower and a wizard who drops off some “special items” for the auction. There are several new magical items, a new spell, and a good selection of player handouts included in the module.

With all those moving pieces DMs are well advised to give the module a thorough reading (and make some judicious notes in the margins) before running it. Despite that, One Night in the Sinister Citadel is a simple, fun one-shot that can be easily dropped into any urban setting. I give it a strong recommendation.

On the Joy of Tangible Results

On the Joy of Tangible Results

Posted on by sullijo

My day job is what, in modern parlance, is called immaterial labor. I don’t create much that takes physical form — I’m not producing material goods or growing food. I spend a lot of time sitting in meetings and typing up documents that get sent in electronic form.

One of the characteristics of this type of work is that, because it’s largely contained in emails and Word documents (and always in need of updates and revisions), it’s hard to look at what you’ve accomplished and say, “This is done.” As a result, many people in such jobs find it difficult to feel a sense of accomplishment.

That’s one of the reasons I love producing physical things in my hobbies. Holding a cutting board I crafted from wood or a printed zine I wrote allows me the pleasure of the fruits of my labor. I can say, “I made this, and it is complete.”

As our RPG hobby continues on a “digital first” path, I hope that we’ll always delight in physical books, playing in person, and the other incarnated aspects of living in a physical world. There’s a qualitatively different value to playing and creating in the real world that we would do well to never forget.

Interview on This Ol' Dungeon

Interview on This Ol’ Dungeon

Posted on by sullijo

My friend Luau Lou had me on his podcast This Ol’ Dungeon to talk about my history in gaming, designing for Dungeon Crawl Classics, and my current projects:

Give it a listen, and if you like Lou’s style be sure to subscribe to the podcast!

Join my newsletter!

Posted on by sullijo

With Twitter and other social media becoming increasingly unhelpful, I’ve decided to launch a quarterly(-ish) email newsletter! It will be filled with reviews, musings, and a new DCC spell, monster, or something else ever issue.

And, when you join, you’ll get a FREE copy of Ruined Sanctum of the Serpent Priest, a new DCC-compatible mini adventure!

The first edition will launch at the end of August; just put your email in the form below to join!

By clicking submit, you agree to share your email address with the site owner and Mailchimp to receive marketing, updates, and other emails from the site owner. Use the unsubscribe link in those emails to opt out at any time.

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Resource Review: 101 City Encounters by C. Aaron Kreader

Resource Review: 101 City Encounters by C. Aaron Kreader

Posted on by sullijo

I’m pretty picky about purchasing resources that purport to add to your game. I’ve been burned by more than a few that, when push comes to shove, I’ll never actually use at the table, either because they’re too cumbersome or because they do something I can just as easily do myself.

On the other end of that spectrum, C. Aaron Kreader’s 101 City Encounters is a book I can’t imagine running a city campaign without. Designed as a sort of mega random encounter table, the book offers a variety of interesting vignettes and situations a party might stumble across while traveling through a fantasy city. Some are relatively mundane (a funeral procession, a request for help unloading goods from a ship), while others offer tantalizing hooks that could lead to their own mini adventure (a carrier pigeon is killed and its note taken, a red devil appears and disappears leaving strange runes where it stood). Each entry includes suggestions for running the encounter and possible follow-ups.

101 City Encounters also includes a simple system for tracking a PC’s reputation in the city with a variety of groups: the Thieves’ Guild, nobles, the townsfolk, and religious temples. Higher ranks grant various benefits from each group, while lower ranks can cause problems when the party has to deal with the group in question. The system offers just enough detail to be helpful without becoming onerous to the Judge, especially with the inclusion of a custom reputation tracking sheet.

Although compatible with DCC RPG, the book is light on stats and can easily be adapted by a competent Judge to other fantasy systems.

101 City Encounters has already benefited my games and is highly recommended, especially if you’re running a DCC Lankhmar, Planescape, or similar campaign.

Back My New Adventure!

Back My New Adventure!

Posted on by sullijo

I’ve got a new project I’m involved with live on Kickstarter!

My friend Luau Lou (who wrote the camp cookie hireling) is launching an anthology of three adventures for the Dare-Luck Club, his fantastic RPG of 80s-inspired adolescent adventures!

I wrote one of the adventures in the set, in which your Dare Luckers sneak into the local amusement park after hours to play some Monsters & Magicians. But when the game gets a little too real you’ll have to survive the likes of an amusement park transformed into a fantasy landscape. Can you find your way home?

The project has already funded and you can back it right now on Kickstarter. If you’re not familiar with the Dare-Luck Club you can also add on the core rulebook at a fantastic price!

Battle with Me at War of the Cyclops Con!

Battle with Me at War of the Cyclops Con!

Posted on by sullijo

Goodman Games will be hosting another one of their fantastic online cons this May 6-7! I’ll be running two sessions on Saturday:

A Fairly Odd Tale (12n-4p Eastern Time): A band of hapless adventurers is sucked into a book of fairy tales and must use their wits and cunning to make it out alive! I’ll be kickstarting a print run of this module later this year. Come get a sneak peak!

Museum at the End of Time (7p-11p Eastern Time): The Rite of Passage is a generational custom, and the PCs’ future position and rank within their society is largely determined by the quality of artifacts brought back to the tribe! This 0-level funnel is one of my favorite adventures to run at cons!

Event tickets go on sale tomorrow, so get your badge now!

Movie Review: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Movie Review: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Posted on by sullijo

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is a fun romp whose middling story is lifted by the charm of its cast. It owes an obvious debt to the popular (and lucrative) Marvel films, even if it’s more of a Thor or Captain Marvel (movies I put in the middle of the MCU spectrum) than an Iron Man or Infinity War.

If that seems like damning with faint praise, it’s not meant to be. Chris Pine’s natural charisma is on display as the lead, Edgin Darvis, a widowed father who turns to thievery as a means of providing for his daughter. When he takes a chance to pilfer a relic that can resurrect his dead wife, he winds up imprisoned, which is where we find him at the start of the film. He and his friend, Holga, an exiled barbarian, team up to recover his daughter and the relic, both of which are in the hands of the conman who betrayed them.

They assemble a small team for the heist, including Simon, an inept sorcerer, and Doric, a druid with a talent for shapeshifting. Regé-Jean Page’s chivalrous paladin,  Xenk Yendar, is in less of the movie than I would have suspected from the trailers, but is a fun foil to Edgin. As the group’s plan unfolds they discover that the troubles in Neverwinter go deeper than they expected. At this point savvy moviegoers will no doubt be able to guess how the story will play out, but it’s an entertaining ride nonetheless.

Packed with Easter eggs for hardcore D&D fans, Honor Among Thieves is accessible enough for those who don’t know Baldur’s Gate from Ten Towns. In fact, the movie doesn’t try to overexplain the lore of the Realms (we’re told Doric is a tiefling, but not what a tiefling is), which would have been an easy trap to fall into. The filmmakers also display a love of practical effects in the realization of many fantastical creatures and characters, although I suspect the digitally-created red dragon Themberchaud will be the fan favorite.

My bottom line: if you’re looking for a fun popcorn flick to pass away an afternoon, Honor Among Thieves will fit the bill. If not, you could certainly wait for it to come to streaming. Personally, I’m hoping it does well enough to warrant a sequel; there are plenty more tales to be told — and creatures to be spotlighted — in this world.