Sessions 9 & 10 of the Virtual Hump-Day CHA'ALT Campaign

 

Session #9: Pantomime Worm

As the fuchsia sky darkens and the lavender moons start to rise, the shadows around this ruined city spread like inky deep-purple things. The entrance to wa'avenjour, the place before the place, is open. It's black in there. You have no idea what is waiting for you. But there is a slurping sound.

The PCs find some metallic purple caltrops and the party's wizard, Nicollo, turns them into a pixie-fairy.

You see a woman laying on a bed in what used to be a well-appointed room that's fallen into disrepair.

The slurping sound is coming from where she is.

As you approach, you can see some kind of insect that's attached itself to the outside of her ear. It's making that slurping noise. You see something like a tongue flick into her ear.

The PCs gave the insect to Mid for him to hold, but then it squirted some jale liquid onto him.

Mid says something about being able to feel her dream and walk into it as he immediately falls asleep and drops the insect that scurries through a hole in the wall.

Then a portal opens and everyone can see Mid in this dreamworld as he's fondling the breasts of a female PeeWee Herman and encouraging the guys to come in and find some demon vaj.  Somewhere along the way, a dream-whore wielding a chainsaw brought it down hard on the Midnight-elf hireling, and I rolled enough damage that it killed him.  

After all those dream shenanigans, they open a door and find a demon demanding tickets before the PCs are allowed in.  If they don't have a ticket, they can either buy their way in or put on a pantomime worm costume and perform for everyone at the party.  They put on the worm outfit and two of the three become the sandworm's neck-penis.  An old woman who claims to be the "birthday girl" insists upon it. 

A crystalline man leans against a wall, smoking.  He points to a corner of this massive party room. It's got squares of different color. There's a turquoise square, magenta, tangerine, fuchsia, chartreuse, and purple. Each square is lit up with its own color. "They can be dangerous if used properly."

"You don't play, you choose.  And it chooses you, as well."

The adventurers leapt onto the turquoise square and I asked for a d100 roll.  The result was 69, hoss.  They enter a room in some kind of turquoise dimension and find two blonde women in a complimentary position on a fancy chaise-lounge chair.  The PCs investigate and explore, only to eventually find themselves melting into a sewer grate and then waking up.  Most of it had been a dream.  Though, they still had the pantomime worm costume and Mid was still dead. 

Next thing they knew, bandits entered their room and attacked.  The PCs killed a few and the rest fled.  That's pretty much where we ended it.

For loot they had a couple issues of Red Cherry Magazine, some magenta coins, and that sweet-ass pantomime worm getup.  Plus, I believe they still have that insect that squirts out jale-hued dream liquid.

Session #10:  Cha'alt Breaks Some Adventurers 

The Saint gets everyone back on track, just like a good droid should.  He reiterated that the party needed to find a way to go deeper, in order to modify the prophecy.  

An NPC overheard him... 

"A man who stays on task," a robed stranger says as he opens the door into your room. "I like that. I like that very much."

"Do you know the ha'aiku?"

"My name is Zurik. I live down here in these subterranean ruins. This is my home."

One of the PCs gave it a go and recited a haiku that included swimming fish.

"The way to Cremza'amirikza'am is not far, but unless you know the ha'aiku, the door will not open."

"I've never seen a fish swim."

"It must be a Cha'altian ha'aiku. That's what the magenta door asks for... what it demands before opening. Do you know it?

"I only know of one line. Here, let me show you." He gestures for you to walk through the door. Zurik points at the ground which is scorched with a slut-glyph. It's barely recognizable to you, so you rely on Zurik's translation.

"Sickly-sweet." He points at the symbol while walking in a circle around it. His eyes are all black. It's obvious he has demon blood in his veins.

"I've seen other ones before, but didn't know what they were. Just hours ago, I fell asleep and had a vision. You 3 were in my dream, and you were searching for 3 slut-glyphs that, when read before the magenta door, opened it, and that way led to Cremza'amirikza'am."

4, 3, and then 7... syllables, that is.  Traditionally, that's the order, but Cha'alt natives have written plenty of ha'aiku that ignore it. 

The Saint deduced what they needed to do as automatically as his waste disposal movements... "So, we must find the other two glyphs and then work out the order?"

Their new travel companion, Zurik, led the way to a doorway with a sign above it that read "Learing Center."  Walking in, the place looked like a high-tech medical facility or scifi hospital.  There was a woman in a straightjacket that bumped into The Saint and barked at him, a guy in a white lab coat with clipboard and moustache, a nurse who smartly ran away as soon as she clapped eyes on the PCs, and an orderly wheeling a gurney around.

The guy with the clipboard told them they should leave because adventurers being here triggered patient anxieties.  You see, this is where ex-adventurers in Cha'alt go when no other place will have them.

"These are the people who played around with Cha'alt, but just couldn't hack it. Cha'alt broke them, broke their minds. Now, they're cared for here, in this facility."  Sad!

While the PCs hoped they never ended up in a place like this, they searched for possible glyphs.  Finding none, but seeing the lights flicker and hearing a tremendous thud sound, the PCs prepared themselves. 

As all this was happening, a patient started talking about how he used to be a sorcerer, and he grabbed a magic sword and it became his penis.  "No glyphs... only doodles of cartoon worms and bananas and... they're all penises - A'aaahhhhgg!!!"

He jumps out of an open window that just happens to be there in the hallway.

The clipboard guy gets into a fetal position and rocks back and forth. "This is no bueno."

A portal appeared suddenly as a mauve-worm screamed out of it and chomped the clipboard dude in half.  At that point, the PCs were ready to leave and hurried out the door.  It lead to the more usual dank dungeon environment with spider webs aplenty.  

They made it to an oddly angled room painted dark purple and black in a haphazard manner, like the work was done by folks more interested in human sacrifice than staying within the lines.

More bandits - this time laying on a tapestry with prostitutes.  When the bandits ask what they want, the adventurers know the importance of showing strength right off the bat.  They kill 2 of the bandits in the first round, and the rest flee.  The prostitutes stay, get railed, and leave with a pink gemstone for payment.

Looks clear to you. You can hear murmuring from within. It opens into a dimly lit room painted cinnamon.

There are people in the room, discussing matters in hushed voices.  The men are wearing what looks like brown wormskin armor. The women wear white flowing dresses.

There's a machine like a big pipe in the back corner of the room. There's a transparent viewing area in the middle of the pipe and you can see something moving in the illuminated greenish water.  A scrawny man in brown robes limps up to you and asks if you have an appointment with anyone from the Sherza'ad dynasty.

The PCs go with "Do you know who we are?" and the scrawny guy lets them approach and speak with whoever they want to see.  That's where we ended it.

Thanks for reading - next session is this Wednesday!

VS

p.s.  Yes, weekend badges are now available for July 2026's VENGER CON V: The Will To Power.  Want a great new TTRPG community where you can hang out with other gamers, get ideas, advice, and training in order to improve?  Look no further than the fastest-growing group on X - it's the Kult of Kort'thalis.  Want the hardcover Cha'alt trilogy?  Here's how (and they're currently on sale!)!!  

Gary Con XV [convention report]

 

I got back from Gary Con 2023 yesterday afternoon.  It was a good time.

Having GPS or google whatever really helps getting around.  I believe my last Gary Con was back in 2019 (where I got lost on the way home) and I didn't realize you could just have your phone navigate you all the way to your destination.

But this time, I had a friend navigate and the phone technology working, so got back in an hour and twenty minutes, stopping in Milton for some delicious fast food Mexican... Taco John's.

Anyway, let's get down to business!

I ran 5 games.  All of them Cha'alt and all with Crimson Dragon Slayer D20.  I came up with an original scenario for the convention, which I like to do when there's time.  And I ran that thrice, along with a semi-original scenario that borrowed heavily from previously published material.

For those who want to hack Cremza'amirikza'am (or any megadungeon) and turn it into a convention game or one-shot, here's what I did - provide a reason for them to go, present some kind of encounter, complication, social interaction, or whatever on the way to getting there.  Then, I dug out one of my many hand-drawn cavern maps and cherry-picked rooms, encounters, and set-pieces on the way to the McGuffin at the other end of the map.

Yeah, I ran that twice, and it worked just as well as the original scenario.  I decided to go with a smaller player max of 6.  In the past, I wanted to meet, game with, and run adventures for as many players as I could at one time, so usually a max of 8.  And that's fun, but when you've been doing this as long as I have, you realize that with a group of 8, generally, you'll have 2 or 3 very active players who do most of the talking and decision making, then you have 1 or 2 players who perk-up occasionally, taking a secondary role on the action-scale, and finally everyone else stays in the background until it's their turn to roll dice and let me know the result.

With a smaller group of players, you pare that down.  Let's say you have a group of 4 players.  Usually, there will be 1 player who's the most active, 1 who's moderately active, and the other two are pretty much wallflowers.  That's... not ideal.

I mean, every group makeup and dynamic is different, so there's no telling for sure until you actually sit down and start playing.  By and large though, the bigger the group, the more active-players you'll have... and you really need active-players because they generate the fun and excitement, they drive the story and get the action rolling.

I asked one of my players in the Sunday game (Sunday mid-morning is always my lowest attended session of a convention) what the best game he played in was.  He didn't remember the system and barely remembered the scenario.  So, I asked him point-blank what made it so fun.  He said the players. The players were really engaged and into the game (usually preceded by a passionate GM), and their enthusiasm just made everything else better.

So, there you go.  I think I'll go back to max-8 player sessions because there's a better chance of getting 3 or 4 active players.  I still remember a couple of different Game Hole Con sessions with 7 or 8 players each and how wild and crazy things got.  Looking back, each table had 4 or 5 active players, and it just made everything about the game come alive... well, more alive.

Let's talk about the pre-gens, shall we?  So, this convention, I decided to make things easier on me and the players.  I came up with ten PCs that all fit on a single page.  They didn't have any numbers or mechanics, though.  Just name, class, race, something about who they are as people, and a significant moment in their background that intersected with another PC's background (sometimes 2 or 3 PCs).

I printed-out 50 of those sheets so every single time a player sat down, he'd get that sheet to have and look at the entire game (frequently, players would write down who their companions were playing in the margins of that PC roster for easier interactions), then keep after the session was over, if they wanted some kind of souvenir.  Once everyone had picked, I'd hand every player a simplified character sheet and we'd spend about 2 minutes filling in the numbers... level, armor class, hit-points, etc.

That was literally it.  Because it was always the same ten PCs, I pretty much knew them all, and there was enough variety that everyone had something cool to pick from - without so much choice that it took them forever to decide.  Best of all (though it happened to be completely unnecessary in all the games I ran this weekend), the remaining, unchosen PCs could be in the background yet at the ready.  So, if one PC died, that player could assume one of the other PCs on that sheet immediately, rather than waiting to create a new character and for me to find a way to jump them back in.

That is now something I'm going to do with every fucking convention for the rest of my days... unless I stumble upon something even better.  If you struggle with character generation or pre-gens, I suggest you give it a try.

My games being Cha'alt, the scenarios focused on the Federation, the Great Old Ones, zoth, the Loc-Na'ar, bizarre creatures, weird dimensional rifts and sacrificial altars.

What else?  Oh yeah, Crimson Escalation!  I've used that for every game I've run (except for a couple playtests of Obsidian Escalation) for the last year or so.  It's awesome, and I've never had a combat last more than 7 rounds.  The only downside, if you can even call it that, is that long boring battles won't pad your session.  So a standard 4-hour sessions will probably come out at about 3 hours because your players didn't waste time with, "I hit... 2 points of damage," on the 11th round.  

As a GM, I tried to narrate almost every single attack, which (most of the time) went well.  Every once in a while I was tongue-tied or flummoxed, but there was so much flavor text that it was like an all-you-can-eat buffet.  I even got to try out GM Ben Shapiro's "How do you do it?" or "Tell me how you do it?" to good effect!

If you haven't seen Ben Shapiro Game Master D&D, I recommend you watch this.  I never expected to take GMing cues from an A.I. Ben Shaprio Game Master... but here we are.

I bought a book on writing that I hope to use in my scenario design and GMing (will review that once I've read it), and 3 sets of dice.  I would have bought more at the con (other than food, which was fantastic, BTW - that chocolate croissant from the lobby coffee shop [warmed-up] changed my life), but I only sold 2 Cha'alt books and the dice merchants wouldn't budge on price.  $43 for three sets of dice - ouch!

My favorite of the new dice is called Blueberry Doom.  They have such a cool look.  I don't normally go in for opaque dice, but the weirdly marbled "blueberry squirt" coloration in these lavender dice with deep- purple numbering just tickles my whimsical bones, I guess.

If I had sold a couple trilogies, I would have sprung for a matching set of The Last Unicorn bookmarks for my girls or fantasy artwork for my game room.  The economy, at least among independent creators, is circular.

Oh, and the highlight of the convention (but only if you count Twitter likes) was sitting directly behind Vince Vaughn during one of my games.  When he was done, Vince stood up to leave and was swarmed by several people wanting pics and whatnot.  I didn't want to add to his fan-service burden, so waited until he had a free second and asked for a quick picture, which he graciously accommodated.  

Who else did I meet and take pictures with?  So many fine gamer folks, I can't name them all... but there are pics in my Twitter feed, if you go look through @VengerSatanis.  The most notable was running into "ShadowDark Kelsey" who knew my buddy Colin.  Kelsey was really nice, telling me how much she enjoyed my writing, said that she was a fan of mine, and that Kort'thalis Publishing books like How To Game Master Like A Fucking Boss had inspired her.

Yes, if I had thought of it, I would have put a signed and numbered hardcover Cha'alt book in Vince Vaughn's hands before he exited, but it just never occurred to me.  Next time!

Speaking of next time, the next gaming convention I'll be attending just happens to be the one I'm organizing - VENGER CON II: Electric Boogaloo.  Grab your ticket today (limited to 100 attendees)!

And if you'd like some hardcover Cha'alt trilogy love, Here's your chance.

I believe the Crystals of Chaos campaign is picking up where it left off this coming weekend, so I've already got to start thinking about more GMing stuff... plus, finish revising the Advanced Game Mastering Like A Fucking Boss manuscript before it goes to layout.  

And here's a photo of me with my friend Griff from BlackMoor Film fame!

Feel free to comment down below.  I'd love to get your feedback (especially if you played in one of my sessions).  Alas, there's always room for improvement, so criticism is also welcome.  Well, not welcome, but I'm learning to tolerate it.  ;)

Make your next game the very best it can be, hoss!

VS

p.s.  On the drive back home I was talking to Colin about incentivizing players and their PCs to interact with stuff that has little or nothing to do with the main objective.  So many times, the players bypassed, ignored, or spent minimal time exploring aspects of the adventure that didn't intersect with the main objective.  I'm going to tackle that next!

Cha'altian Session Reports

 

I was able to squeeze two virtual sessions in this week.

Both were on Roll20 (I gave a couple other platforms a shot, but quickly got confused and abandoned my quest for an alternative), 90 minutes, text only, 18+ (even though we never got to explore anything sexual or erotic... hey, it happens!).

The 90 minute structure is something I'm extraordinarily familiar with.  A lot of people don't like it.  I receive a decent amount of criticism for running shorter sessions.  All I can say is that if you have 5 kids and a day job, then you know how difficult it is to carve out 4 hours on a weekly or even bi-weekly schedule.

Both sessions involved exploring a network of tunnels and caves.  Another similarity is that both sessions had two players by the end.  I accept random drop-ins, so that's to be expected.  People are flaky on the internet.

For those curious, I usually don't have anything specific in mind when constructing these maps.  I just start drawing.  Automatic drawing is a technique invented by Austin Osman Spare.  I've forgotten more than I remember about him, and don't think scribbling lines via my mouse counts as a magical act, but it is part of the greater whole.  And I do view my current roleplaying sessions as magic rituals.

As usual, I gazed upon the Kort'thalis meta-sigil as I prepared for my sessions.

Before I get into more detail, here's a list of guidelines that have appeared out of play...

• If a player has not chosen a race for his character, I'm just going to assume he's human.
• If a player suddenly disappears, the GM (me) will roleplay his character - assuming there's a small party of adventurers.  It's not fair to a pair of adventurers who go in a dangerous environment when they believed there were three of them.  If the party wouldn't miss a character, then I occasionally describe his gruesome death as that abandoned PC steps in a trap or fiddles with sorcerous runes discovered on a cave wall.
• Engagement is crucial!  With noobs, I'm constantly inviting them to take part in the action, make decisions.  "While the thief is scouting up ahead, what is Ba'ab doing?" Stuff like that.
• If players make leaps of logic, I'll usually let the first one or two go, but then will quickly put the kabosh on that stuff when it seems less likely and/or taking advantage.  For instance, Vindl, a thief cyborg wanted to use the phosphorescent fungi in the cave system for energy, and be able to turn his mechanical arm into a blaster.  So, I said sure.  But shortly after he wanted to construct a shield out of scales picked off a dead creature.  I told him it would take time and the proper tools.

Halfway through the second session, I took over the missing player's character, Ja'ay the demon warrior.  Every GM worth his essential salt knows that GM NPCs shouldn't overshadow the actual PCs.  So, I used Ja'ay as an interesting background character, spurring action like taking one tunnel over another when the PCs couldn't make a decision.  Precious minutes ticking away.

The second session was the first game after vocalizing my theory... the GM's paradigm should make its presence known every single encounter!  While I've been doing that, more or less, unconsciously for years, this session I consciously looked for opportunities to make the game's reality feel more eldritch, gonzo, science-fantasy, and post-apocalypse.  Did it change the session dramatically?  No, I don't think so.  But going back and observing the session a day later, I'd say consciously trying to infuse my chosen paradigm into every single encounter improved immersion and the game in general by about 5-10%.

Going back to the first session, the couple of PCs were too intimidated to fight the giant Lovecraftian spider things in their network of tunnels and caves.  You know me, I'm all about quick and easy minimal rules.  So, each PC incurred an attack of opportunity whenever they ran past the creature in order to evade it.  I think that worked well.  It happened a couple of times and each time one PC was wounded.

Oh yeah, I got to use my Eldritch Hit Location table over on my SubscribeStar page (publicly available). I think the players got a kick out of slashing or bashing large, scaly rodents in the umthra'ax.  I'll need to use it once or twice more before seeing the true value of something like that.

I don't want to ruin the endings of either adventure because I like running the same adventure (with small variations each time) with different players.  Both were fun, though!

As sometimes happens with my open and welcoming drop-in approach to running sessions, I popped someone's roleplaying game cherry.  That player had never played before, and somehow wound up at my virtual table.  Introducing people to the hobby is definitely a highlight of my weird journey.

Will probably run another session or two next week now that ALL KICKSTARTER CHA'ALT BOOKS HAVE BEEN MAILED OUT TO BACKERS!!!  Yes, I finally got to the end, and it feels fantastic.  Gonna make the most of my free time - it's all about playing, well mostly about playing.  I'd say at least 85%.  Writing and designing game mechanics and such is absolutely worthwhile, but creating a world through the act of roleplaying is something that's above and beyond the background construction.

Last night, I tweeted something out that seemed profound at the time when I was not totally baked.  I'd like to share it here.

"Creating tales of pulp sword-and-sorcery is all that is."

That's it.  That's the tweet.  Lol.  Focusing on that, while leaving all the peripheral bullshit fiddle-faddle outside, will restore your faith in this hobby.  And that's something I believe is in short supply.  

Being part of the magic, fashioning awesome stories of wizards, warriors, dungeons, and dragons will get you closer to PSYCHOCOSM than worrying about campaign lore, balanced encounters, extensive PC backgrounds, the unfairness of monsters critting, and "racist" flying squirrel-monkeys in space.

Lose yourself in the fantasy, and that becomes reality.  

VS

p.s. My new Kickstarter campaign for Encounter Critical III just got approved, so will launch that early next week (probably Tuesday).