Shenandoah Valley Kingmaker

It is a little-known fact, but waaaaaaaaaaaaay back in the day, I was unconstitutionally knighted by the governor of the state of West Virginia.

The state of West Virginia, you see, has this very strange tradition, dating back to 1931, wherein students in the 8th grade compete to prove their comprehensive knowledge of the history of the Virginias (theoretically this is meant to only be the history of West Virginia, but since WV spent so long conjoined to their neighbor to the east, the two are inseparable). The Golden Horseshoe Award is presented every year, and culminates in a ceremony in which "each student kneels and, with a tap of a sword on the shoulder, is dubbed either a Knight or Lady of the Society of the Golden Horseshoe."

The idea behind the Golden Horseshoe award stems from a 1716 expedition organized by Lieutenant Colonial Governor Alexander Spotswood which crossed the Blue Ridge Mountains with the intent of opening the Shenandoah Valley for settlement. The West Virginian award stems from the (false) idea that Spotswood's Transmontane expedition actually made it into what is present-day West Virginia. 

While I'm sure all West Virginian's would like to claim the fertile (and prosperous) Shenandoah Valley as part of their state, the organizers of the Golden Horseshoe Award further prove their own ignorance of the history they are testing by claiming on their website that the motto of the Transmontane expedition was "Sic jurat transcendere monte," ("Thus he swears to cross the mountains"). The actual motto is "Sic juvat transcendere montes" ("Thus it is pleasant to cross the mountains") -- in reflection of the fact that they had a massive drunken celebration when they saw the fertile valley beyond. As recorded by Lieutenant John Fontaine:

"We had a good dinner, and after it we got the men together, and loaded all their arms, and we drank the King's health in champagne, and fired a volley, the Princess's health in Burgundy, and fired a volley, and all the rest of the Royal Family in claret, and a volley. We drank the Governor's health and fired another volley. We had several sorts of liquors, viz.; Virginia red wine and. white wine, Irish usquebaugh, brandy shrub, two sorts of rum, champagne, canary, cherry punch, water, cider, etc."

All that ragging on the Golden Horseshoe Award is largely irrelevant.

What is relevant here is that I was among the 221 winners of the Golden Horseshoe Award more than 20 years ago, and got a top score on the test by doing what I do best...converting ~400 years of VA and WV history into an AD&D campaign. Sadly, I never got to run that campaign (as I only had one game going at the time and it ran very very long), and I thought all of my notes were lost when my parents moved only a few weeks after I went off to college. Lost, that is, until my mother dropped off a box of my old junk this past summer, wherein I found my old notes (from 1995).

So, armed with reams of notes, written by my 13-year-old self, and some first-hand experience of how awesome the Shenandoah Valley really is, I set out to resurrect that old campaign and finally run it. Of course, with an extra 20 years of gaming experience, I realized that I had to collapse the scope a bit, because my notes covered from the founding of Jamestown to the end of well after the American Civil War...

I settled on the expedition from which the Award took its name as having the most D&D potential, and placed the campaign in the years immediately following Governor Spotswood's expedition. Thus we have a sandbox campaign with plenty of unexplored wilderness to poke around in (the Shenandoah Valley is famous for its many, extensive cavern networks -- I mean dungeons), with the looming threat of political uprising and war with a vastly superior imperial power in the not-too-distant future.

I settled on Pathfinder as the rules-set, mostly because Pathfinder has a really solid set of rules governing wilderness exploration and settlement, as introduced in Paizo's Kingmaker Adventure Path. 

Then, to make the whole thing a little more fantasy-flavoured and D&D-ish, I dropped it into my alt-history world where Henry V is undead and ruling England and France 300 years longer than he should have been (which my last half-dozen Pathfinder campaigns have been based in).

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With that context, the original plan for the campaign looked something like this:

The year is 1720 CE. The place, Germanna, the first settlement in the Imperial Dominion and Colony of Prosperia to accept settlers from Germania, about a hundred miles north, north-east of the colonial capital Williamsburg. But this is not the story of Germanna, nor even of Prosperia Colony, this is a story of what lies beyond.

Four years ago, in the year 1716, then acting governor Alexander Spotswood lead an expedition from Germanna fifty leagues to cross over the Misty Blue Mountains and view the as-yet-unexplored land that the natives called “The Beautiful Daughter of the Stars” and founded the noble “Order of the Golden Horseshoe” from the fourty-six members of the initial expedition. That was then. In the intervening four years, Spotswood has ceded his governorship and become, by the grace of his lordship Emperor Prospero I, Count Spotswood, ruling Spotsylvania County from his new seat in Germanna Colony, and grown quite fat and rich off of Germanna’s iron and silver mines. Now, these four years later, Count Spotswood has commissioned a new expedition to cross the Misty Blues, not simply to view the lands beyond, but to subjugate and settle them.

This is where you come in, young heroes. Count Spotswood, old and settled as he is, is not going to make this trip himself as he did “in his youth”. No, that is your job. You young (or not-so-young) settlers of the small but bustling mining community Germanna, have been issued a charter by Count Alexander Spotwood and Imperial Governor Hugh Drysdale to cross the mountains and make the fey-haunted river-valley beyond ready for settlement.

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Of course, no D&D game is ever as simple as a DM might plan. As you'll see, my players managed to upend my Colonial-Expansionist plans in a hurry...for which I could not be more thrilled. I'll be posting adventure logs and house-rules for this campaign in the very near future, but for now, let's get to know our protagonists:

Amos Fortune: Human Barbarian. Formerly a slave belonging to George Mason III, he was taken along on the first Transmontane expedition to pitch tents and dig latrines. Near the end of the expedition he escaped and has been hiding out in the home of his friend Grond, a dwarven cook working at the local watering hole.

Tess Wilberforce: Drow Alice. The daughter of an indentured German miner, Tess is quite the firebrand. She is also an outspoken opponent of the practice of slavery — both the overt kind practiced by the plantation owners, as well as Count Spotswood’s indenturing of father and the other German miners.

Líadan: Fetchling Warlock. This darkly beautiful creature from faerie arrived in town quite dramatically. Luckily, the destruction of the tornado that deposited her in the colonies was blessedly localized, with only a single fatality. Although she was initially confused by such human concepts as ‘property’, ‘currency’ and ‘personal space’, she has been willing to pitch in to help the colony time and again, from helping to tend the wounded to hunting for food to supplement poor harvests.

Sara Mashi: Human White-Haired Witch. Sara’s family hails from Japan, by way of the Netherlands after her father was deposed as head of the Koga clan following the Koga infiltration of Hara Castle during the Shimabara Rebellion. Sara was born in London, many years after her family’s exile, and later emigrated to the colonies. Now old and white-haired herself, Sara serves as Germanna colony’s midwife, while secretly honing the ancient talents of her clan passed down by her father.

Zibbler Zen-Topple: Tiefling Blue Mage. An educated, experienced, and initiated Imperial Wizard, Zibbler recently returned to Prosperia colony from gallivanting across Europe when he received news that his aging father and mother had both taken ill. He has worked for the last year managing his father's small farm on the edge of the county and trying to get his parents' affairs in order.

Thond Grubsmith: Dwarf Fighter. This surly old hill-fairy works as a cook at Zimmerman's Tavern. A nomad at heart, his house is little more than a lean-to of scrap wood and tarps, easily assembled and just as easily torn down and bundled into his pack.

A Chicken as Black as Your Soul

With all due apologies for having not posted a damn thing in five months...

Somehow Chickens have become a major component of my latest Pathfinder campaign (more on that in a hopfeully not-too-much later post). Never one to leave well enough alone and let something in my campaigns be mechanically boring, this obviously necessitated a new, more interesting chicken. Conveniently, the real world has provided us with This Beauty which was just begging to be a magical goth-beast.

Originally from Indonesia, this breed of chicken has quickly spread throughout the known world thanks to Dutch traders, who refer to it as the "Svarthöna". These chickens take ‘dark’ into an entirely different realm. Their feathers are black. Their skin is black. Cut open an Ayam Cemani and you’ll find black muscle anchored to black bones. Even their organs are black. And what do you get for all this unrelenting blackness?

 In Asia, Ayam Cemani are renowned as much for the mystical powers of their black meat as they are for their extraordinary ink-black feathers that shimmer with a metallic sheen of beetle green and purple. On the Indonesian island of Java, the Cemani has a long history. It is a chicken with exalted status, used in rituals that date back as long ago as the 12th century. The blackness of the Cemani makes it a preferred go-between, an emissary between the mortal world and the gods, who love the Cemani chicken’s meat and blood more than any other offering. In fact, it is believed that these black birds are, in fact, among the original stock of chickens, the first domesticated mortal descendants of the the fabled Cockatrices of Faerie.

 Despite their hypnotic otherworldly beauty Ayam Cemani are usually hardy, low maintenance, and by disposition easy to handle. Until they are angered that is, at which point they become terrible harbingers of the eventual heat-death of the universe...

 An Ayam Cemani encountered in the wild has a 25% chance of possessing additional Sorcerous or Clairaudient powers. These exceptional specimens are CR 1/2.

Ayam Cemani

CR 1/4

XP 100
N Tiny Animal
Init +0; Senses Darkvision 60 ft., Low-Light Vision; Perception +5

DEFENSE

AC 12, touch 12, flat-footed 12 (+2 size)
hp 5 (1d8+1)
Fort +3, Ref +2, Will +1
SR 5; Resistance Cold 5, Sonic 5
Immunity Petrification

OFFENSE

Speed 30 ft., fly 20 ft. (clumsy); drift
Melee bite -2 (1d3-4)
Space 2-½ ft.; Reach 0 ft.
Special Attacks

STATISTICS

Str 3, Dex 11, Con 12, Int 3, Wis 12, Cha 15
Base Atk +0; CMB -2; CMD 4
Feats Icy End of the Earth
Skills Fly -4, Perception +5, Stealth +8
Languages Auran
SQ Drift, Shadow Blend

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Drift (Ex)

A chicken flies in short bursts, and can't use its fly speed to hover. When it flies, a chicken must end its move action by landing or perching on a solid surface.

Shadow Blend (Ex)

In any illumination other than bright light, an ayam cemani blends into the shadows, giving it concealment (20% miss chance). If it already has concealment, the miss chance gained from concealment increases to 50% (though this does not count as total concealment). An ayam cemani can suspend or resume this ability as a free action.

ECOLOGY

Environment any land
Organization solitary or flock (5–50)
Treasure none

While not particularly useful to travelers as combatants, chickens are prized for the hearty breakfast meals they provide if properly fed and cared for. Chickens are highly social creatures that raise their young communally.

 They're picky about the spots where they roost, and a hen rarely strays from a particular nest once she's laid her eggs there. A fertilized chicken egg hatches into a chick after roughly 3 weeks of incubation. 

In addition to their quick reproductive cycles, chickens have the ability to thrive on simple foods, and they are valued in both rural farming communities and metropolitan areas for their delicious and nutrient-rich eggs and meat. An ayam cemani hen can produce up to one egg every 3 to 4 days. The eggs, like the birds, are coal-black, sometimes with white or grey flecks, and are relatively small, weighing roughly 1½ ounces. 

Their beak and tongue, black comb and wattles; even their meat, bones and organs appear black. The blood of the Ayam Cemani is normally colored. The roosters weigh 4–7 lbs and the hens from 3–4 lbs.

Poké-finder: Part 2

As previously mentioned, I started a Pokémon-based campaign for my kids this past week. Given their youth and enthusiasm our sessions are short and frequent (one hour, right before dinner every night). We're six sessions in and their loving it. I'll try to present these "session logs" weekly, as a digest of their adventures. Given the shortness of the sessions, not a lot happens each time we play, but the frequency keeps the progress moving.

First though, lets talk about mechanics. While the Pathfinder class I alluded to in the first post forms the core of the idea for this campaign, it was built with the intent of plugging it into existing Pathfinder games, and thus not quite as Pokémon-y as I'm trying to capture with this one. Also the short amount of time I gave myself for kicking this game off did not allow a lot of refinement. To the end of giving the game a stronger Pokémon feel, here are some quick ground rules I've laid. Most of this is reskinning, but some are new rules that I'll need to better document and clarify in the future.

• Pokémon gain experience separately from their trainers. The PCs gain experience from encounters, gaining abilities as per the Eldritch Tamer class, but this has no real effect on their Pokémon (mostly relevant for increasing their hit points, skill points, and attack rolls for throwing poké-balls). Each Pokémon has its own separate experience total, and, because the PCs are likely to have large numbers of them in rotation, and combat in the game is almost exclusively focused on the Pokémon, they need considerably less experience than their trainers to gain levels.
• Since Pokémon level is not tied to PC level, the "spells" known by the Pokémon are not dependent on the PC. The more Pathfinder-focused version of the Eldritch Tamer has a finite number of spells per day which are drawn from a list of abilities known by the beast they have deployed. For Poké-finder, each spell ("move") known by the Pokémon is usable once per encounter (to help encourage rotation and discourage over-reliance on a single uber-Pokémon), excluding basic attacks like claws and bites. All moves known by the Pokémon are based on Pathfinder spells but re-skinned to Pokémon moves (i.e. the Rain Dance move is the Cloud Burst Pathfinder spell).
• All Pokémon have defenses and weaknesses as per their Type, with Double, Half, or No damage as appropriate. Moves/Spells with obvious types (such as spells that deal Fire or Lightning damage) match up in the obvious way. Types that are less obvious have some guidelines (i.e. spells with the Evil descriptor are "Dark" type, all other spells from the Necromancy school are "Ghost" type, moves based on Psionic Powers are "Psychic" type, etc.), but no hard, documented rule yet. [working on this one]
• All standard attacks (Claw, Bite, Slam, etc.) possessed by the Pokémon are of the same type as the Pokémon (choose one for multi-type Pokémon). For example a Steel-type with a claw attack would count as using a Steel-type attack when using its claws ("Metal Claw" if you will) or an Electric-type using a bite attack would count as using an Electric move ("Thunder Fang").
• Standard Pathfinder resistances such as Fire Resistance or Damage Reduction are removed or ignored in favor of Pokémon type-based defenses.
• Eldritch Tamers do not have a Charisma-based limit on the number of creatures they can catch. Instead they use Poké Balls, and may have no more than six with them at any given time, and manage them through use of a Pokédex.
• All combat encounters in the adventures are replaced with either wild Pokémon (to be fought and caught) or enemy Trainers with their own Pokémon to fight.
• All treasure dropped is converted to Pokémon-themed items. Weapons are Poké Balls, Wands and Scrolls of spells are TMs that can be used to teach different spells to the PC's Pokémon, Potions are Potions (hey that's easy), etc.

Whew, that was longer than I thought...I had planned on including session logs with this, but we'll start those next post...