Music to Game to: Abominations of Yondo - That Remote and Awful Twilight

I listen to a lot of music (over 40 days worth in 2017 according to last.fm) and I find that few things help me keep the mood of a game foregrounded in my mind like a good soundtrack. Plus, I’ve discovered that when I’m playing music to a speaker via Bluetooth, I’m less likely to be on my phone, lest my players hear any stray sounds, letting me better model engagement during a game. To that end, I want to share some of my favorite music to game to; the albums that inspire and inflame my imagination and that I’ve found work well as background music for games as well. I’ll do a mini-review and cover the basics of what mood it helps me set.

ABOMINATIONS OF YONDO – THAT REMOTE AND AWFUL TWILIGHT

Originally recommended by Warren Ellis, this is an excellent free album of eerie ambience draws inspiration from the penultimate chapter of ‘The Time Machine’ by H.G. Wells. The minimal and atmospheric soundscapes provide a fantastic backdrop for your players’ fertile imaginations to feast upon as they remain tense and slightly sinister without relying on bombast. A terrific addition to the sonic arsenal of any game master, especially one running a Cthulhu mythos inspired game.

• Vocals?...No
• Music Genre(s)… Ambient, Electronic Experimental
• Perfect for… Sci-fi and horror games where you want to add an understated, unsettling and otherworldly tension.
• If you only grab one track, make it...All of them, you’ve got no excuse not to grab this excellent FREE album.

Door Buster Boot - Weird Magic Item #17

Inspired by the incredibly excellent Weird Magic Item generator over at Donjon.bin.sh, I've been coming up with a few of my own system agnostic weird magic items to put in the many games I run, be they 13th Age or Beyond the Wall...

Eventually I want to try and put them into a randomizer, but I need to generate a few first. I'm going to try and post one every other Wednesday. Please let me know if you end up using an item I've created in your own game. You can find the entire series here...

Antagonist Relations Weird Magic Item Generator Presents...

Door Buster Boot

This magical left boot is always found alone, never as part of a pair. It will magically change its appearance to always appear as in-congruent as it can with any other footwear worn on the wearer’s other foot, appearing as a delicate glass slipper if the other footwear the owner is wearing is a muddy military boot, for example. While worn, this boot allows the wearer to kick open any wooden door, opening it and rendering it so that it must be repaired before it can be fully shut again. This effect is always loud as the woods splinters and breaks and can only be quieted by magical means, such as a silence spell. If the door is locked, any non-magical locks are broken--if barred, the bar is broken. If the door is magically locked, the boot functions like a Knock spell (or similar spell), allowing the door to be opened. Against doors made of metal, stone or other sturdier materials, the boot doubles its wearer’s ability to open the door with brute force and allows locks, bars and other means of fortification to be bypassed on a successful attempt. The boot provides no additional protection against traps on a door, magical or otherwise.

Special thanks to the players of my Roll20 Against the Cult of the Reptile God and Curse of Strahd players for inspiring this item.

Music to Game to: John Carpenter - Lost Themes

I listen to a lot of music (over 40 days worth in 2017 according to last.fm) and I find that few things help me keep the mood of a game foregrounded in my mind like a good soundtrack. Plus, I’ve discovered that when I’m playing music to a speaker via Bluetooth, I’m less likely to be on my phone, lest my players hear any stray sounds, letting me better model engagement during a game. To that end, I want to share some of my favorite music to game to; the albums that inspire and inflame my imagination and that I’ve found work well as background music for games as well. I’ll do a mini-review and cover the basics of what mood it helps me set.

JOHN CARPENTER – LOST THEMES

Again, skirting up against the edge of my “no soundtracks” rule (already broken once and certain to be broken again), I’d like recommend John Carpenter’s Lost Themes album, which as you might guess is not music from his movie soundtracks but rather original music in the style of his soundtracks. The result is thoroughly cinematic music well suited to providing suspense, propulsion and atmosphere to any game that you want to lend a Carpenter-ian flare to.

• Vocals?...Only on the bonus remix tracks on some digital versions or as the Lost Themes Remixed album.
• Music Genre(s)… Ambient, Synthwave
• Perfect for… Sci-fi, horror and adventure games with a 80’s throwback feel.
• If you only grab one track, make it... the eerily melancholy, yet still propulsive “Night”. If you get the remix album or the bonus digital tracks, I also heartily recommend the JG Thirlwell Remix of “Abyss” which sounds a lot like Jim’s excellent Xordox tracks.

Music to Game to: Myrkur M

I listen to a lot of music (over 40 days worth in 2017 according to last.fm) and I find that few things help me keep the mood of a game foregrounded in my mind like a good soundtrack. Plus, I’ve discovered that when I’m playing music to a speaker via Bluetooth, I’m less likely to be on my phone, lest my players hear any stray sounds, letting me better model engagement during a game. To that end, I want to share some of my favorite music to game to; the albums that inspire and inflame my imagination and that I’ve found work well as background music for games as well. I’ll do a mini-review and cover the basics of what mood it helps me set.

MYRKUR – M

Myrkur’s first full length album, delivers a funereal feel, with alternating wailing black metal and ethereal choral vocals. The use of Scandinavian folk instruments lends it a Norse feel and give it a bit of medieval feeling well suited to being played during a fantasy RPG setting. While the shift between the harsh screams and ghostly, beautiful melodic vocals can feel like a bit of whiplash, it will certainly help keep your players on their toes, so to speak.

• Vocals?...Yes, in Danish
• Music Genre(s)… Black Metal
• Perfect for… Dark games with a Norse flavor, where intrepid heroes battle giants in dark valleys or struggle against revenants in misty forests.
• If you only grab one track, make it... “Skaði”, which opens with thundering drums, foreboding piano and wailing vocals, before shifting midway through the song to a more operatic and epic feel and back again.

Ring of the Living Statue - Weird Magic Item #16

Inspired by the incredibly excellent Weird Magic Item generator over at Donjon.bin.sh, I've been coming up with a few of my own system agnostic weird magic items to put in the many games I run, be they 13th Age or Beyond the Wall...

Eventually I want to try and put them into a randomizer, but I need to generate a few first. I'm going to try and post one every other Wednesday. Please let me know if you end up using an item I've created in your own game. You can find the entire series here...

Antagonist Relations Weird Magic Item Generator Presents...

Ring of the Living Statue

While worn the ring gives a +5 bonus to any saves against petrification or other effects that change ones flesh into a different substance. The wearer can also use a command word to become perfectly still and to appear as a statue, the type of which is determined on the table below when the ring is created:

d12	Apparent Statuary Material
1	Sandstone
2	Sandstone
3	Limestone
4	Limestone
5	Granite
6	Granite
7	Marble
8	Marble
9	Bronze
10	Bronze
11	Jade
12	Gold

The wearer can remain still for up to twelve hours per single day, and their flesh, clothing and all held items appear to be made of the statuary material above. Though they remain perfectly still and their hair, clothing or other items are not blown by breezes or soaked by rain, they are not transmuted into a statue and will feel like flesh instead of like statuary material if someone touches them. When they move, their retain the coloration and appearance of a statue for 1d6 rounds before the effect fades. The ring is prized by assassins who use it to lurk in places where a statue would be inconspicuous while waiting for their target.

The Eternal Boundary - Review

The Eternal Boundary, the first published module for the 2nd Edition AD&D Planescape campaign setting, I was lucky enough to get a physical copy from a friend as a gift and have enjoyed running it twice. First, using 5th Edition D&D rules and some home-brew planar race and faction options and the second time this last summer using the original 2nd edition ruleset as part of my Roll20 Great Modron March campaign. I’ve touched on the Eternal Boundary module before when I discussed using Perplexities as Hooks but wanted to do a full review.

As the inaugural Planescape module, aside from two brief single page adventure prompts in the setting boxed set, the Eternal Boundary does a fantastic job introducing some of the seedier areas of Sigil as well as the kriegstanz or undeclared war between the factions and the power of belief in the setting.

Spoilers for the Eternal Boundary Follow...

Music to Game to: SUNN O))) - Black One

I listen to a lot of music (over 40 days worth in 2017 according to last.fm) and I find that few things help me keep the mood of a game foregrounded in my mind like a good soundtrack. Plus, I’ve discovered that when I’m playing music to a speaker via Bluetooth, I’m less likely to be on my phone, lest my players hear any stray sounds, letting me better model engagement during a game. To that end, I want to share some of my favorite music to game to; the albums that inspire and inflame my imagination and that I’ve found work well as background music for games as well. I’ll do a mini-review and cover the basics of what mood it helps me set.

SUNN O))) – BLACK ONE

The purveyors of sonic doom took a decidedly bleak direction with Black One, resulting in an album that drips with hopelessness, claustrophobia and terror—this, of course, makes it a fantastic album to have as the soundtrack for any number of horror RPGs. The droning riffs of base and guitar give the songs a sense of implacability… these are not tracks to play when the party faces down a ferocious dragon but rather for when they have to stay one step ahead of an immensely ancient and potent vampire who will surely slay them unless they can remain just outside his grasp until the coming of dawn. This can be unsettling and anxiety inducing music, perfect for putting your players on edge as their characters cope with terrifyingly patient adversaries.

• Vocals?...Yes, heavily distorted
• Music Genre(s)… Black Metal, Doom Metal, Drone, Experimental, Dark Ambient
• Perfect for…Dark horror games where the PCs are relentlessly pursued by implacable horrors given the shape of humans across wind blasted stony stretches or deep below the earth in forgotten caverns.
• If you only grab one track, make it... the epic subterranean “Báthory Erzsébet”. The vocals for the track were recorded inside of a casket, which sounds like a gimmick but lends the vocals a desperate, desiccated sound that underline the ominous and claustrophobic dread of the song.

Great Modron March - Introduction & Chapter 1 Review

A few years ago, I picked up a PDF of the Great Modron March from the DMs Guild and then was busy running other games. Then, early last year I opened it and was immediately dreaming of getting to run it. Since I’d been playing in a 2nd Edition AD&D al-Qadim game, I decided that I wanted to run it with the 2nd edition rules it was originally intended for. A quick poll of my local players showed that I was going to struggle to get a consistent group to run in person, so I turned to Roll20 and haven’t looked back.

I’ve now run 15 sessions of the campaign, using Great Modron March as the backbone and weaving in other classic Planescape modules as well, notably The Eternal Boundary, Harbinger House and The Well of Worlds, and I would re-run this campaign in a heartbeat. I’ll review more of Great Modron March, as well as the other modules but this post will focus on an overview of the module and its first chapter.

Introduction and Background

As a Planescape fiend (pun intended), it was hard not to get sucked in by the allure of the Great Modron March… Eleven linked adventures that span from level 1 to 10 that take the PCs around the Great Wheel of the Outer Planes? Just that sounds fantastic, and that’s before diving deeper in. One thing I’ve noticed that sets the Planescape modules apart from other 1st and 2nd edition modules I’ve read is their organization. Most of them have a DM introduction, a synopsis and other bits that just make prepping much easier, and Great Modron March definitely benefits from these things. There is a great introductory chapter, a separate story prologue and then each chapter starts with a section called “Just the Facts, Berk” that lays out the Number of PCs, Levels, PCs Preferred, Factions involved and a Synopsis. This makes each chapter easy to run with relatively minimal prep.
One thing that I noticed as I read the entire module before beginning the campaign was the numerous hooks that a canny DM could seed, and so I put together a list of hooks for the players to choose hooks for their PCs that were interesting to them. Below is an abbreviated list of the hooks I pulled from the Great Modron March.

Hooks

• Ydemi Jysson - a clerk at the Hall of Speakers in Sigil (Contact)
• Hearth’s Faith, a small town on the plane of Mount Celestia
• Sir Vaimish Crasad - a Paladin lord of the gatetown of Excelsior (Contact/Mentor)
• The Tacharim - an evil order of nomadic knights that plagues the Outlands (Antagonist)
• Lil’z Rou - Githzerai Sensate namer. (Contact)
• Xaldra Miloni - Tiefling Indep and well-lanned party girl. (Contact)
• Bachalis - Half-elf Indep Wizard – (Contact/Mentor)
• Erinos Vail - Athar Mage in Rigus – (Contact/Mentor)

Another enticing prospect was the episodic nature of the module, where each chapter is reasonably self-contained and allows for other adventures to take place between the chapters of the Modron March. This has let me easily weave the other modules in, resulting in the chronology below.

Session	- Module (Sessions are approximately 4-5 hours long)
1	Great Modron March Chapter 1
2	Eternal Boundary
3	Eternal Boundary
4	Eternal Boundary
5	Great Modron March Chapter 2
6	Great Modron March Chapter 3
7	Great Modron March Chapter 3
8	Well of Worlds Hard Time
9	Harbinger House
10	Harbinger House
11	Harbinger House
12	Harbinger House
13	Harbinger House
14	Harbinger House
15	Harbinger House
16	Great Modron March Chapter 4

More Spoilers for Great Modron March follow…

Crocodile Tears - Tomb Thoughts #2

Classic Axebeak illustration...

As previously mentioned, I'm getting the chance to play in a 5th Edition D&D campaign for the first time in a while. Thomas is being kind enough to run Tomb of Annihilation and I'm chronicling my thoughts here in "Tomb Thoughts".

We had our second session and I continued to strive towards being the over-achieving player that as a DM I want to see out in the world. Continuing from my player notes from last time, I also added an inventory spreadsheet for the group as I compiled my notes from our second session. Taking notes as a player reminds me that I really do need to set up my tablet and bluetooth keyboard and practice at typing on that as the most painful thing about taking notes has been transcribing them from a notebook to the google document.

Spoilers ahoy in the rest of my thoughts on the session, so if you don't want to take a chance of any Tomb of Annihilation spoilers, do not read past the break...

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You have been warned, spoilers follow...