2018 Antagonist Relations Recap

Image: Twenty Sided Dice set to 20 19

Antagonist Relations, Inc is back from holiday break, which was not particularly a break since I’ve run 6 game sessions and prepped a 10 part Cypher Game campaign since my last post in addition to all the normal family hoopla around the holidays.

Blog Business

It was a good year for blog writing last year— I posted 102 items in 2018, more than twice the next highest year (2015 with 47) and almost five times what I posted most years since I started this blog in 2012. The volume is especially notably because I only had a single post before March 2018. It was a questionable year for blog reading though… at least from what I can tell. Posts will get 10-20 views in the week I post them and that’s about it. Almost all of the referral links in the blog stats are for scammy clickbacks, for sketchy pharmaceutical hawking blogs or other obviously fraudulent and more importantly non-RPG blogs or sites. The few comments that I did get on posts in 2018 were all spam as well. Despite attempting to promote the blog with a twitter account (@antag_relations) and making sure to post fairly regularly on it to keep it from entirely being a wasteland in between blog post tweets I don’t seem to have grown the blog audience from the three people I know read it which has been disheartening.

Ultimately though, I’ve decided to keep posting here and to accept that maintaining the blog is something I’m mostly doing for myself and not for an audience, after all Lonely Fun has a long and storied tradition as part of the RPG hobby and so this blog will be my outlet for that. That said, if you’re a reader of the blog and not someone I know personally, if you send me an email at “Antagonist.relations(at)gmail.com” to let me know you’re out there, I’ll happily send you one of these snazzy stickers or a pack of the AD&D Second Edition Collector Cards if you’re interested.

Image: Shit Stickers where the I is a 1 on a d20, unopened pack of 1992 Series TSR D&D Collector Cards

So, what are my goals for the Antagonist Relations blog for 2019?

• Keep posting Weird Magic Items and Music to Game to Posts.
• Post more module and system reviews.
• Post at least 100 updates again.

Back in 2018 when I made the conscious effort to revitalize the blog, I planned on putting up lots of tables, but by the summer I had discovered that churning out a table every week or two was difficult, so I’m going to let those drop away and not spend time trying to come up with another table of names just to say I got another table made. On the other hand, I’ve really enjoyed writing the Weird Magic Item and Music to Game to Posts so those will continue.

You’ll also continue to see cross-posts from the Antagonist Relations Podcast, we recorded our first episodes of 2019 on January 4th and I hope to have them edited and ready to post soon. I swear that eventually I’ll do another Lonely Fun podcast just for Ben and there is a chance that there might be another potential podcast to come as well, though that one is really tentative.

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...

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…

Antagonist Relations Podcast 38 - Murder, Mayhem and Modules, Oh My!

Antagonist Relations Podcast 38 - Murder, Mayhem and Modules, Oh My!

Ben, Cassandra, Christy and Zack ramble on a bit after playing a third session of Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures, mostly discussing murderous rampages and old modules.

as well as other assorted nerdery.

If you want to know more about Beyond the Wall, check out the Antagonist Relations reviews:

Antagonist Relations reviews Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures
Antagonist Relations reviews Further Afield.


Please take our listener survey here.

RPG Inspiration Twitter Bot List - Sword Names Table

Instead of posting another table of surnames I've made, I figured I'd put this up. I made a list of RPG Twitter Bots I find interesting/inspirational. If you have any suggestions to be added, let me know.

RPG Inspiration Bots - a list by @antag_relations

I'm hoping to have a Magic Sword/Weapon name bot set up later this summer. I've been thinking about the few swords in Thomas' al-Qadim AD&D Church game, like Angel's Fang and Wizard Death. I created a little table to generate Sword names and then couldn't stop myself after, so I started randomly generating thousands of interesting magic sword names that will eventually go into the bot. But for now you can enjoy sword names like "Ghost Shaver" and "Moon('s) Edge".

d20	Sword Name Prefix	Sword Name Suffix
1	Foe	Wrath
2	Adversary	Slicer
3	Spleen	Vengeance
4	Death	Fang
5	Moon	Blade
6	Blood	Render
7	Weakling	Breaker
8	Gore	Shard
9	Shining	Wound
10	Silver	Shaver
11	Dawn	Death
12	King	Ender
13	Angel	Edge
14	Heart	Skewer
15	Ghost	Piercer
16	Sharp	Slasher
17	Widow's	Ache
18	Sir	Carver
19	Steel	Bane
20	Mountain	Tickler

Also, last month I converted my old Zombie Twitter RPG account into a twitter account just for my RPG nonsense, which you can follow at its new handle: @antag_relations

Planescape Item Charts

One of the things I enjoy most about running Planescape using the 2nd Edition AD&D rule-set it was originally written for is all the fiddly, particular bits about the way the setting interacts with the mechanics. That includes the fact that magical weapons and armor lose part or all of their bonus as they are moved further from the plane they were created on.

As I began to prep for my current Roll20 game, I realized that I needed a good way to come up with where various magic weapons and armors were created so that we could calculate any bonuses lost as the party lugged them around the planes. So with a little work, I whipped up a few tables to do just that...

2d12	Table 1: Category of Plane
2	Inner Plane
3	Inner Plane
4	Ethereal
5	Astral
6	Astral
7	Astral
8	Outer Plane
9	Outer Plane
10	Outer Plane
11	Outer Plane
12	Prime Material
13	Prime Material
14	Prime Material
15	Outer Plane
16	Outer Plane
17	Outer Plane
18	Outer Plane
19	Astral
20	Astral
21	Astral
22	Ethereal
23	Inner Plane
24	Inner Plane

2d12	Table 2: Inner Planes
2	Salt
3	Dust
4	Ash
5	Smoke
6	Water
7	Water
8	Water
9	Earth
10	Earth
11	Earth
12	Fire
13	Fire
14	Fire
15	Air
16	Air
17	Air
18	Mineral
19	Magma
20	Magma
21	Ooze
22	Ice
23	Lightning
24	Radiance

2d12	Table 3: Outer Planes
2	Sigil
3	The Beastlands
4	Mount Celestia
5	Carceri
6	Arcadia
7	Pandemonium
8	Bytopia
9	Arborea
10	Baator
11	Outlands
12	Outlands
13	Sigil
14	Sigil
15	Outlands
16	The Abyss
17	Acheron
18	Ysgard
19	Elysium
20	The Gray Waste
21	Mechanus
22	Gehenna
23	Limbo
24	Sigil

2d12	Table 4: Prime Material Plane Locations
2	Athas
3	Eberron
4	Eberron
5	Krynn
6	Krynn
7	Krynn
8	Krynn
9	Oerth
10	Oerth
11	Oerth
12	Oerth
13	Toril
14	Toril
15	Toril
16	Toril
17	Mystara
18	Mystara
19	Mystara
20	Ortho
21	Ortho
22	Nehwon
23	Nehwon
24	Aebrynis