6 variations of the same encounter featuring a gargoyle

 

This started out as a writing exercise. If you have your own idea for a related encounter please leave a comment. (The image is from the Emily Morgan Hotel in San Antonio, Texas. It is haunted.)

1. A gargoyle comes to life every night and eats someone they find walking the city streets.

2. Due to lack of building inspections the roof of the church is deteriorating. Last night a section of the corner with that creepy statue fell off and killed someone.

3. The gargoyle doesn't actually come to life. It's a normal statue. The stories of them are lies. A cult is murdering folks for blood rituals. They stalk the streets every other night.

4. OOPS! A wizard accidentally cast a spell which ricocheted out of sight. Unknown to them it was stone to flesh which hit the gargoyle.

5. A new fad of owning monsters-as-art has been spreading across the city. This has been dangerous. Did you hear about the person who bought that gargoyle thinking it would be cool to show off to their friends?

6. A piece of solid stone spoke to a sculptor. "Carve me in the image of a monster" it said. When the last piece was chiseled off the gargoyle killed the man.

Anyway, the point is, gargoyles are cool! I think they would make for a great encounter using Kriegmesser (troika). Below I've provided my own stats for gargoyles and cultists to be used with Troika. 

Gargoyle
A stone elemental twisted by demonic magic.

Mien

1. Irreverant
2. Skulking
3. Protruding, but not moving

Stamina 24
Skill 8
Initiative 2
Armor 4 or 0 against tools designed to damage stone
Bite or Claw as Large Beast

Special - Immunities of inorganic constructs

Cultist of the Broken Statue
They worship chaos. 1d6+1 appearing. Armed with garrotes, daggers, a net with hold person cast on it, and each with a scroll of flesh to stone. Test luck or be turned to stone for d3 rounds. If a scroll is used a second time on the same target the effect is permanent.

Mien
1. Faithful
2. Hospitable
3. Muttering, "what'cha doing with your life?"

Stamina 11
Skill 6
Initiative 1
Armor 0
Damage as weapon

Special - They have a third eye (unseeable until opened), test luck or be stunned for the first round.

Frontier Scum mini-campaign

session 1

I am starting a mini campaign of Frontier Scum with 3 of my friends. Only 2 players made it for the first session. Here’s a quick summary of our game.

I was planning to run The Bark Witch of Carcass Country but figured it would be something I needed to plan more for as knowing my players would just kind of run through it fairly quickly.

Anyway, I started them with a prompt from that adventure. They are on the run from some regulators and the party is on their way to find a place to lay low.

They started off at sunset traveling through the hillside when they find a two story home. It’s the Family of Carcass County adventure.

They decided to just walk up and knock on the door. The father of the family answered the door and as soon as I described his face being ‘long in the tooth’ they shot him in the chest. So needless to say from here on out they just found themselves fighting the entire family. Which ended up going well for them. Never had to roll on the death/drop table.

After exploring most of the house they went into the last room where they all got bed bugs. They stripped naked, set the house on fire, and were back on the trail.

After getting enough distance from them and the house they set up camp for the night, still naked except their boots. The following morning Ol’ Skrumpy from the Bark Witch adventure came across their camp. Immediately they got the upper hand on him and took his clothes. They tied him up and told him to lead them safely to Sickwater Oasis. They got into a fight with a Trog, found the derelict boxcar and are a few days from Sickwater Oasis still.

Friday we’ll see if they can survive their next encounters.

my thoughts on Fungiable, or the only zinequest4 post I'll be making

First off FUCK nfts and crypto. The author of Fungiable feels the same. 

This zine is built off the absurdity of nfts and how they spread like fungal spores, disgustingly. 

It's a hack of the Wretched & Alone rpg which I've never played. I'm a fan of playing rpgs solo but I've never played a game that is intended to be a journaling experience. Looking at the kickstarter all you need is some dice and a deck of playing cards to begin your tech horror journal. 

I'm a big fan of satire and dystopian futures. Something new this zine is doing that I think is a first (leave a comment if I'm wrong. leave a comment if I'm right) is after completing the game there's a new game plus feature. 

One of the stretch goals for it is a limited handcraft version printed from L.F. OSR that will come with an actual coin. Definitely check out their stuff if you've never heard of them.

I really enjoy body horror for some reason. It's the most frightening thing I feel that can happen to players in games. Something inside of you. 

Here's a quick introduction I copied from the kickstarter page.

"You see a message from an old college friend. Intrigued, you decide to check it out. After a little catching up, they ask if you've heard of SPOR coin, the next big cryptocurrency according to them. You've heard the rags to riches tales, so what could possibly go wrong?"

Seems like as your character's bank account grows so does this fungal infection. CREEPY. Fuck, this reminds of that segment from the Creep Show movie where Stephen King is that farmer that turns into his crop. I think it may have been CORN.

Fungiable can be found here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dicemaven/fungiable

P.S.
Let's keep brutally punching up at tech bros.

first time running Frontier Scum

 

Tomorrow I’m running my first session of Frontier Scum. The plan is to make a short campaign of it that lasts 5 sessions or so. One player who does awesome design work for TTRPGs may not be able to make the game tomorrow so we decided to run a quick 1 on 1 game.

I decided to use a little zine I’ve wanted to play a while now called Swine. It’s available in a few places. You can find a physical copy at Exalted Funeral, here on Blark’s itch page, and from Spear Witch in the the Violence TTRPG jam zine.

We started the game in middle of the action. Fire Bug, the nick name of the player, was robbing a pig farmer of his whole head of 18 pigs.

After failing to make any type of negotiations with the rancher Fire Bug shot him dead. He realized after the fact that moving 18 pigs to be sold to a man 4 days away on horseback might be harder than he had originally anticipated. So he went to the neighbor to try to convince them to lend a hand.

For the neighbor I used Loraine Moody, from The Family of Carcass County entry that was submitted to the Frontier Scum Jam happening right now on itch.

Obviously hearing the gunshot from earlier and knowing that the pig rancher doesn’t usually have outsiders as guests she set her large dog on Fire Bug. She tried to run into the house but took a shot to the back first.

Fire Bug got into a whipping fight with the dog and rolled a natural 20 so he gained a skill in whip fighting. Oh and he rolled a 1 in this encounter too and lost his ace.

After a real nasty bite from the large dog Fire Bug retreated back to the pig ranch to heal up using the whiskey bottles he found in the man’s house.

Now ready to get the 18 pigs to the buyer I asked the player if he wanted to take the hills or the road. It turned the 4 days journey into a 5 day ride. Course he wanted to take the hills. He’s a wanted man. Wanted dead for arson I think it was.

I decided to roll 3 encounters a day.

The first one was “1d3 pigs have been led astray by a hill witch’s song deeper into the wood. It will take time to find and retrieve them.” Fire bug tried to whip at the single pig that was following the song but it ran off and he still had 17 to worry about.

Further down into the woods the next encounter was “the pigs get into fermenting barrels buried in the earth, becoming too drunk to walk. They need 1 day to recover fully.” Fire Bug decided to set up camp for the night. He looked for tracks in the area for bears or wolves but failed his wits check. I asked the player if he was going to try and keep watch or anything like that but he said he was just going to sleep. I had them roll a difficult Wits check to see if he would wake up in the night but he didn’t. 3 bandits ended up coming through his site and stealing 6 pigs.

In the morning Fire Bug successfully rolled a WITS test and found tracks of the men and the pigs. It lead to the road.

He passed by to witchy looking older ladies and they offered to trade their talisman for a pig but Fire Bug wasn’t interested.

Further down the trail Fire Bug came across some hastily buried graves but kept moving.

Oh, I kept rolling a d6 when I rolled each encounter the second day. On a 1 he would find the pig bandits.

Right before sundown he saw the 3 men and his 6 pigs up a ways. He tried to rustle up all his pigs and have them stampede the men. I decided he would need to pass a difficult luck test. Fire Bug failed that and the men heard him coming. They turn away and see him. We roll initiative.

Fire Bug was able to take out the only bandit that had a rifle from a distance. When he rode in to attack the other two men who only had melee weapons it went real bad real fast. They clubbed him real good and he fell off his horse. Fire Bug was at -1 HP and rolled on the drop check table. The bandits took all he had and left him for dead but Fire Bug was still hanging in there.

We ended the session there. I realized after he should have rolled d4 at the end of the scuffle which would have at least brought him to zero HP. He was out of food, drink, dip, and smoke though so he probably would have ended up having to crawl his way back, somewhere, somehow.

R.I.P. Fire Bug.

When I asked the player about the session a few hours later he said Frontier Scum was like GTA and he wants a better goal next game, like robbing a bank.

cryptid in july poetry day 22, the merman

 

a poem about the merman

i am in my cocoon like cave

the ocean is very cold

there are too many fish

i tried to hold a dolphin’s fin and hug it

but it doesn’t want to hug me

so i swam away

i swim slowly to the surface

it is rainy today

it is grey and boring

i have a feeling of immense foreboding

i glare at everything

everything glares back at me

it’s the anniversary of my cousin’s suicide

he screamed at a lionfish

until it stung him

in his neck

with an anal fin spine

cryptid in july poetry day 21, the lizard-man of scape ore swamp

 

a poem about the lizard-man of scape ore swamp

it’s raining outside my window
i think that this rain
should probably symbolize death

i wonder if it is raining outside
my other window
i walk into the kitchen
look out the window

”it is raining
and it still symbolizes death”

my girlfriend looks at my forehead and says
”why do you say things like that?”

”i was joking”

”i don’t think you’re joking
you’re always saying stuff like that”

it is raining outside both windows
i am in the kitchen
sitting on a small chrome stool

i pull my cellphone from my pocket
look at it in my open hand

my cell phone opens up like a mouth

”i was just being funny
i’m bored and tired of watching tv with you”

”maybe if you’re really bored you can just fuck me on the couch with my legs up in the air and i can scream real loud, or something”

i pretend to smile

but she knows i’m not really smiling

”you’re kind of a bastard” she says

”what?”

”nothing”

”i’m tired”

i turn off my cell phone
go outside
sit on my stoop
lean my head against the railing
the railing is cold
hard
but i lean my head there anyway
i wait a while
i don’t know what i’m supposed to do anymore
i should wait here until somebody tells me what to do

i go back inside
i clean all the dishes by hand
i dry them with a towel
i walk into the bathroom
shut the door
sit down on the toilet
i stand up
open the door
walk into the kitchen
i spray the counters with spray cleaner
sit on the couch
i stand up
walk to the window
look out the window

my bear neighbor is looking through their window at me so i wave back but they don’t wave back

i walk into the kitchen
lie down on the floor
feel the floor’s cold
through the scales on my back

”what are you doing?”
my girlfriend asks

”contemplating”

”do you want some ice cream?”

i nod

i will eat the ice cream

cryptid in july poetry day 20, the black eyed kids

 

a poem about the black eyed kids

black eyed kids are able to view all things equally
they are not obsessed with any one thing
unless sarcastically

they have the ability
to scream in agony
while maintaining a neutral facial expression
and calm body posture

they forgot where they were buried
and return to the wrong hole
unable to enter the earth

there should be a specific word for this disappointment