Le Stat d'Dump

There seems to be some discussion going around about good old Charisma and its -- mostly unjustified -- reputation as a useless statistic in Dungeons & Dragons-likes. Here's a blog post by Richard about it, that I saw about two days after a Discord group was also discussing the matter. I assume there's some blog or video somewhere that kicked off people's interest, but I'm not hip enough to know where that is.

In the aforementioned Discord group I pondered for about 20 seconds, then blurted this nugget, or something like it:

Charisma represents your character's strength -- small s -- of personality, which among many other useful functions, also manifests as bloody-minded tenacity. When you reach 0 Hit Points, instead of collapsing into unconsciousness, you can fight on for a number of Rounds equal to your Charisma score before dying.

And there you have it!

EDIT: In hindsight, this is ridiculous, and not in the way I tend to like either. So maybe this is better:

Charisma represents your character's strength -- small s -- of personality, which among many other useful functions, also manifests as bloody-minded tenacity. When you reach 0 Hit Points, instead of collapsing into unconsciousness, you have temporary Hit Points equal to your Charisma score. Once these have run out you are properly dead.

That's a bit better. Charisma still has an effect, but doesn't make you invincible for 3-18 Rounds.

Dungeon23: 039-051

I started a new day job last week. That's my excuse for missing Megadungeon Monday. I'm not sure I'm convinced.

Still, here's some #dungeon23 content bringing us up to date, and (gasp) completing Level 1!

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39. A small room full of old candles, a single rotting wooden desk and an even more rotten stool. A bone scroll case has rolled under the desk, and contains a beautiful -- and well preserved -- illuminated text that finally resolves a centuries-long academic dispute between rival schools of historians. One group will pay 300sp for the scroll, but their rivals will offer 400sp to "lose" the scroll instead.

40. Single occupancy monastic cells.

41. This cell is packed floor to ceiling with TERROR MOULD. Somewhere in the middle of the fungal blooms is the corpse of a dwarf; good luck getting to it!
The unfortunate fellow was carrying a pair of rusty daggers, and a sack containing 456sp and a magical potion of healing. The problem is that the potion originated in the Opposite Universe and in fact does 1d6+1 points of damage to anyone drinking it, unless they also come from the Opposite Universe.

42. A locked brass gate -- itself an Oversized item worth around 150sp -- blocks access to the outside world. Or the inside world if you're coming the other way. Two 8' statues of generic holy warriors guard the room and pierce visitors with their stony gaze... but are just statues. One's shield features a tree motif, while the other's features a coiled serpent.

43. Through the bars of a heavy -- and locked -- iron gate can be seen a large metal wheel set into the floor. The mechanism is ancient and stiff and turning the wheel requires an Open Doors test, with a +1 bonus if anyone thinks to apply oil. The mechanism activates the watchemacallit in XX.

44. A large but simple dining hall, with huge tables for swashbuckling atop.

45. An old kitchen with all manner of improvised weaponry, and also a nest of seven SKULLBUGS, munching happily on the Terror Mould, to which they are immune.

46. The secret door is small, about 2' by 2', and at ground level. It is concealed from both sides.

47. Four very old wooden chests sit empty and in a state of rotten near-collapse.

48. A weird orange goo drips from the ceiling in this area; save versus Breath every 10' to avoid the drips. The goo is quite sticky and difficult to remove, but is otherwise harmless. It tastes both sweet and sour.

49. A pair of GREENROBES lurk, paying most attention to the corridor to 50.

50. A very fancy spiral staircase, decorated with an elaborate carving of a serpent, leads down to XX. If the carving could be somehow removed -- it is part of the staircase so good luck with that -- it would be worth 10000sp.

51. One YELLOWROBE and three REDROBES loiter here, looking for something interesting to do/kill. A secret panel in the north wall hides a rusted iron box containing 470sp.

GREENROBES

GREENROBES, so healthy: Armour 14 (as leather), Move 120', 2 Hit Dice, 7hp, two-handed sword 1d10, Morale 9, Number Appearing 1d3. Half damage from bludgeoning or crushing weapons.

GREENROBES are, guess what, malevolent -- possibly fey -- spirits that take the form of floating, ragged monk-like robes. Cruel and mischievous, they delight in capturing and murdering sentient beings. They favour large two-handed swords, as they think they look cool. They have no physical form beyond the robes themselves; as such they are very quiet -- they surprise unaware opponents on 1-3 -- except when they communicate with each other, which they do in howls and moans.

A GREENROBE can, instead of attacking, touch another being and heal 1d4 hit points. GREENROBES can, um, touch themselves.

GREENROBES are not undead, although they seem similar, and are intelligent and spiteful enough to pretend to be in order to trick, for example, clerics into wasting their turning abilities. Bastards.

GREENROBES obey the howling, moany, commands of higher-ranked *ROBES, and can order REDROBES and YELLOWROBES about.

Unboxed Terror

If you were curious about what's in the Big Terror in the Streets box, then ponder no longer as Martin of Daddy Rolled a 1 unboxes the, um, box here:



Martin plans to do a lot more video content, so why not give him a Like and a Subscribe, as the kids say.

The adventure is available in print in Europe here and in North America here; the fancy boxed set version from Martin's video is only available from the European shop, alas, but they will post to Not Europe. A pdf version is available here.

Cradlegrave

Well, it can't all be Dungeon23 content!

I got this book for Chrimble and have been thinking about it ever since. I think I'm ready to put those thoughts down in words. Maybe. Ish.

Published over 11 weeks in sci-fi-mostly anthology comic 2000AD in 2009, Cradlegrave looks very much like an entry in the "Hoodie Horror" genre, and it sort of is, but the cover is a bit misleading. I'll go into more spoilery discussion below, but if you want a brief non-spoilerific review: it's an effective and interesting modern(ish) horror story, with clever writing and excellent art, and it is much recommended.

And now, the meaty bits...

Aside; Hoodie Horror: Former Prime Minister and pig-botherer in chief David Cameron appealed to the middle-classes with his vision of "Broken Britain" in which THE POOR -- gasp! -- were waiting, with hoods and knives, to rape, stab, and steal from good honest hard working Britons and, of course, only a Conservative government could prevent this, mainly by freezing or starving the poor to death, a shameful policy that continues to this day.

This vision spawned a brief mini genre of horror film in which hooded youths became the faceless monsters in the dark, lurking on their estates, ready to pounce. These films were sometimes supernatural, more often not, but were almost always conservative in tone, disgusted and horrified by Britain's "underclass". Eden Lake (2008) is perhaps the most famous example, Harry Brown (2009) the most offensive, and Attack the Block (2011) is a notable inversion or retort, to which we will return.

For more on the genre, there are excellent brief introductions here and here.

So, Cradlegrave then. What we have here is a horror story set on a housing estate somewhere in sunny Lancashire. Ravenglade is the official name, but the locals call it "Cradlegrave" because no one ever escapes; you are born there, you live there, and you die there. Social mobility is a myth told by the rich. Our protagonist, Shane, returns from a stint in a Young Offender Institution intent on making a fresh start and not falling into old habits with old friends, only to find that there is something rotten at the heart of the estate. Something alien.

"Lovecraftian" is the obvious description, and it is superficially so, with a horrible gribbly thing spurting out "black milk" like Shub-Niggurath itself, and even a nascent cult forming around the creature, but I suspect old Howard would have recoiled from the portrayal of the youths as misunderstood rather than irredeemable scum. Like Attack the Block -- I said we'd return -- Shane and his friends are petty criminals who drink and smoke and take drugs, but -- crucially -- that doesn't make them bad people. Their lifestyle is very much presented as a response to the deprivation of their surroundings, almost an adaptation to things they cannot themselves control. There is no judgement; this is all bad, but it's the way it is, and it's not always their fault.

In fact, the real horror turns out to be the nice old couple down the road, Ted and Mary, who just wish for things to go back to the way they were in happier times, before the estate -- and, one suspects, the people -- sprang up around them. Literal "old ones", but perhaps not in the way Lovecraft would have intended. Mary is, or has been physically co-opted by, some sort of entity and begins corrupting the estate; Ted helps her at first, but when it becomes clear that the thing in the bedroom is no longer his wife, escapes in the only way he can. As the corruption spreads and what little social order there is breaks down, it is up to Shane to take action, which he does through a firebomb, reprising the crime that put him in prison in the first place.

It's a bleak, dark story. Edmund Bagwell's art is both mundane at depicting the realities of life on the estate and gruesome when presenting the alien body horror of Mary's transformation and how she, um, "interacts" with the locals. There is little sense of hope. You get the feeling that the estate falls under Mary's sway as much because it's something to do as any overt alien influence. Shane escapes and leaves the horror behind, but while he perhaps "wins", it's clear that not only does the horror continue in his absence, but his fresh start was a, um, non-starter. And of course the larger social issues remain unresolved; you can lob a Molotov at a monster, but you can't burn down decades of deprivation and lack of social support, you can't burn down a class system that is stacked against the poorest and most vulnerable.

(Unless you're French, probably.)

The only way to win is to burn everything down and run away. That's bare bleak, bruv.

Cradlegrave is a greasy, prickly, unpleasant little horror story, and I mean all of that as a compliment. It's deep and fascinating and I wish it was more well known. While Hoodie Horror is perhaps of its time, I think Cradlegrave still has things to say -- alas the poor are still demonised under the Tories -- and is still effective and relevant, like all the best horror stories.

Dungeon23: 034-038

My gosh, Megadungeon Monday is on time this week! Sort of! Ish! It's a #dungeon23 miracle!

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34. A single statue of "T" -- see room 02 -- with arms crossed and a stern expression on their literally stony face.

35. The upper level of a library, shelves lined with scroll tubes. The wooden walkways -- marked with RW -- are rotten and weak. Two REDROBES patrol the room.

Roll 1d6 each time a character uses a platform; on a 6+ it collapses, dropping the character 20' to the floor below -- room 79 -- taking at least 2d6 damage. Add +1 to the roll for every additional character on the same walkway; *ROBES are sort-of-but-not-really weightless so do not add to the roll.

Most of the scrolls on this upper level have rotted away, but six documents remain; they are mundane accounts of everyday occurrences from centuries before, but are worth 10sp each to a historian.

36. Stairs down to the secret library in 80. Searching reveals a loose stone in the eastern wall, behind which is a sack containing 480sp.

37. An old scriptorium. Wonky wooden desks collapse and half-finished scrolls crumble at the slightest touch. A Turn spent sorting through the debris will turn -- ho ho -- up an intact and quite beautiful scroll, which appears to be some sort of epic poem. Any character with an Intelligence of 12 or higher discerns a hidden meaning in the text; spending 1d4 days studying the poem uncovers directions to a buried treasure somewhere else in the campaign. The treasure consists of 600sp.

38. Spiral stairs down to the secret library in 80.

BLUEROBES

BLUEROBES, reflective gits: Armour 14 (as leather), Move 120', 3 Hit Dice, 11hp, two-handed sword 1d10, Morale 8, Number Appearing 1d3. Half damage from bludgeoning or crushing weapons.

BLUEROBES are, yes, malevolent -- possibly fey -- spirits that take the form of floating, ragged monk-like robes. Cruel and mischievous, they delight in capturing and murdering sentient beings. They favour large two-handed swords, as they think they look cool. They have no physical form beyond the robes themselves; as such they are very quiet -- they surprise unaware opponents on 1-3 -- except when they communicate with each other, which they do in howls and moans.

BLUEROBES reflect spells and magical effects directed at them. Spells cast by a character of first or second level are reflected back at the caster; effects directed by a caster of third level or higher rebound if the BLUEROBE saves versus Magic.

BLUEROBES are not undead, although they seem similar, and are intelligent and spiteful enough to pretend to be in order to trick, for example, clerics into wasting their turning abilities. Bastards.

BLUEROBES obey the howling, moany, commands of higher-ranked *ROBES, and can order REDROBES, YELLOWROBES, GREENROBES, and BROWNROBES about.

Dungeon23: 028-033

Oh dear, the #Dungeon23 schedule has gone utterly; I think I'm supposed to have moved on to Level 2 by now, but I still have some ideas for Level 1 that I want to explore. Onward!

(But not downward, apparently. Not yet.)

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28. A breeze flows into this room from 29, as well as the sound of birds fussing.

29. The room is dominated by a pool of dirty water, and statues identical to those in room 2. Oh, and big piles of guano from a flock of weird, striped, big-headed birds that have nested in here, having gained access through a 2' hole in the ceiling.

The birds are harmless but the *ROBES find them intimidating and try not to stay in this room if they can avoid it; any *ROBE on its own will need a Morale roll to resist a backwards furtive shuffle out of the room.

The pool is about 1' deep and the water is opaque with filth; in the south-east corner, covered in centuries of grime, is a silver crown, with four empty sockets where thumb-sized gems should be. This is the CROWN OF ETLUZ PEQZUS, a powerful magic item, but without the gems - found in locations XX, XX, XX, and XX -- is just a draughty metal hat, albeit one worth a handsome 900sp.

The statues do nothing.

30. The passage here has collapsed. It can be cleared, but will take tools and probably days. Beneath the rubble is the skeleton of an unfortunate adventurer, who almost made it to the surface with 58sp and 4gp.

31. Four REDROBES are on high alert and twitchy -- surprised only on a 1 -- guarding a circle carved into the stone floor. The circle has a faint blue glow, and appropriate investigation reveals that it is enchanted with teleportation magic. It is a one-way teleport circle, from location XX, but there's probably no way for the players to work that out from here.

32. Some sort of meditation room, from the large but now quite rotten cushions scattered across the floor, and the numerous bells and chimes hanging from chains of various lengths. Sneaking through the room without disturbing a chime requires a Stealth roll, or a save versus Paralysation, if your game doesn't have Stealth rolls. You'll work it out.

In the smaller room beyond is a large and tarnished bronze gong, and a BLUEROBE, just chilling out. The BLUEROBE tries to alert its allies by hitting the gong, then rushes to attack. The gong is decorated with serpent and tree symbols, is Oversized, and is worth about 500sp.

33. A sturdy and relatively new wooden table holds a large leather-bound book containing lists of numbers. This is an accounting of the creatures the *ROBES have killed and fed to the grub-thing in 13. There is a 50% chance that there will be a REDROBE in here, adding to the ledger.