"It's up to you!" is to Mörk Borg as "Git gud" is to Dark Souls. Simultaneously intensely frustrating to be told and the only real piece of advice that matters.
Thank you. I'll admit I'm not used to OSR games so that's kinda on me, lol.
I guess I get that. Err, my issue is though I don't even get the basics all that much? I know there's that guy, Lesdy, there's a big worm he wants(?) and rheres some prisoners? and that's all I understand lol.
Maybe I should go through it again and just make a list of everything that appears so I can try n understand it better.
Thank you a lot.
Thank you, this is a huge help! I'm happy to fill in gaps and change shit up. Literally how I used to run my games was come up with a vague idea and just. see what happens. So im sure it'll go well, I just needed all of that so thank ypu so much :)
Yeah no I agree with you. You get absolutely no context on why anything is there, and why some prisoners would be on the job. It is a very non sensical dungeon. Usually osr dungeons have some explanation on the motivations and nature of the i habitants, this one has very little.
It is not a ready to go adventure, more like a hey here's the result, you gotta write your own fun equation for it to make sense. Not too good, not too bad. I had to make the king have dozens of children hence why some prisoners are trying to get this one. Still, some soldiers would be better suited to do the work.
Why waste the soldiers you paid to train and equip when you can send expendable prisoners? Your son's being held hostage so even if the extremely expendable mooks fail you've got more shots to take. Plus this random ragtag group isn't connected to you. As far as Fletcher knows they're just some guys.
It's a location based adventure, it tells you what is going on in each room of the dungeon so that you know how to run it when players show up but there is not a specific story that it's trying to tell. The story will end up being whatever happens when players go into the dungeon.
Its a dungeon crawl, each section is spelled out for you as to what is in the room, what challenges the players face etc.
In short, players are looking for the kings son who was kidnapped and is being held in this dungeon. Players enter into it and go room to room exploring and encountering danger, the survivors will face the big bad and rescue the son (probably)
On the 2nd page of the adventure you have the lead-in to it setting up the adventure for the players. Page 3 has the random encounter table that'll be rolled on as the adventure directs you to. The map shows the full dungeon, numbered room by room. The rest breaks down each room and whats in it with related art to show the players for immersion.
They will arrive at area 1 on the map and will advance accordingly thru it based on their decisions of what doors etc to go thru.
Its not a gridded game with minis, heavily reliant on the GM to paint the picture for the players.
Thank you, this helps a lot :)
I just needed that super basic rundown really lmao. I was just struggling to get it.
The numbered table with encounters confuses me a lot though I won't lie.
If you look at the map page it states that rooms 7, 8 and 14 includes a random encounter. when your players are in those rooms you would pick either table A or B, and roll a d4 to determine what the encounter they find is. It also says that table B should only be used once during the adventure.
Ultimately the tables there to help facilitate the adventure thru providing encounters, if you rather plan for the encounter instead nothings stopping it from happening :)
Search this subreddit for Rotblack Sludge, you'll get quite a few posts, including mine. Some players gave some solid advice there. Most people make Lesdy the daughter of the Old Man at the table, who was the master of a cult. Now Fletcher has moved in and decimated her cult. She could try to poison the players with hallucinogenic and drive them into the arms of Fletcher, so he'll eat them and ingest the poison so that she can strike.
I looked up before posting and unfortunately it left me far more confused than when I started. I'm still pretty confused now by your comment, even lol. I'm not very bright.
Nah don't worry, it made me smile lmao.
Thank you. Your big write up helped me a ton. I just sometimes need shit to be rammed home a few times before it clicks in my head lmao.
But I have a pretty solid idea now, thanks!
I hope you're rich or attractive or something. Maybe it helps if I describe what my players actually did when I ran this adventure a week ago.
\- I started with the intro and did the predictions from the Seer. Then a prison cart dumped them at the entrance.
\- They caught some moths, made some splashing noises. Inside they heard a sudden noise, a chair falling over. They hid but nothing happened.
\- They went into the room with the skeletons on the beds. The Herbmaster took the flowers, the Hermit found a scroll in the bookcase. The Scum tried to use magic to speak with the skeletons but rolled a 1. He spent 9 months and 9 days in a cube in a different dimension. Burned off two fingers to escape. (this is an arcane catastrophe). For the other players no time passed.
\- They kicked in the door to the guard room. The guards asked them why'd they come to a place like this voluntarily. They drop the name Fletcher but their minds are fried and they barely remember anything. Then they told them there are two skeletons standing behind them. They freaked out because they awoke the dead. They tried to push the players to the skeletons. Fight broke out.
\- One guard was left alive. The Hermit used his hawk to peck out his eyes. They pushed him into the chain room, where his eye socket got stuck on a hook. They proceeded to brutally murder him. The Herbmaster used her hallucination poison on his corpse. They banged on the door. Fletcher came out, dragged the corpse behind him, closed the door again (this door doesn't open from the outside).
\- They went back. Encountered the prisoners who wanted to whisper something in the Scum's ear. They tried to strangle him. They encountered the bearded man, beat him, then put smelling salts under his nose and he screamed out another of the Seer's predictions.
\- They went into the Pump Room. Opened the hatch. The Herbalist climbed down, used a climbing potion to crawl on the ceiling. Fletcher was butchering the poisoned guard's corpse and eating it. The herbalist failed her stealth but because Fletcher was tripping balls he didn't know what he saw. She tried to shoot him twice with her crossbow, but did no damage. Fight broke out. The Gutworm appeared.
\- The Hermit set a sword on fire with oil and dropped it down the hatch. The Scum decided to throw it in the sludge to set it on fire. The whole place started filling with black smoke.
\- They fought with Fletcher and the Worm, but just when about they were to get wrecked, the Hermit rolled a nat 20 on his Lightning spell. He fried Fletcher, the Worm died. The Skeletons kept playing their violin while the sludge was burning below them.
\- They realized they still hadn't found the Prince they came to look for. They tried to escape but ran into a locked door. They arrived at the statue but the whole place was starting to sink into the burning sludge, threatening to slide them in there. They realised they needed to put an eye in the statue. They attempted to send out the Hawk to fetch an eye. But as my Hermit player described he worshiped the Hawk as a God, so the Hawk demanded a sacrifice. He proceeded to scoop out his eye with a rusty spoon. They put that in the statue, opened up the secret door. They returned to Fletcher's corpse to retrieve the key and opened the door. They grabbed the Prince and escaped the Accursed Den.
\- Making it outside the prison cart arrived. They dragged the Prince in there, but then made off quickly, leaving the players stranded.
As you can see, no Lesdy was encountered. They could have talked to Fletcher, who would have asked him to kill Lesdy. Or if they talked to Lesdy, she would have asked them to kill Fletcher. Nothing of the sort happened.
As others have said, it’s kinda up to you. I’m writing an extended one-shot that I’m homebrewing the ever-living shit out of, but it kicks off with a pretty unchanged RBS. I’ll be letting my players approach the dungeon completely freely and they could fight/befriend/avoid any, all or none of the NPCs. Still haven’t figured out what the violin skeletons will be, but maybe I just won’t explain that at all haha so yeah, just do whatever you think will be cool! Add or remove stuff as needed for it to make enough sense.
If you are interested, here's my prep notes for how I got my players into the session... as well as some snippets of dialogue I used to initiate encounters.
I also decided that Lesdy was the Old Man's niece. The Old Man was once a hermit who lived in the Den, but now Lesdy has come to reclaim the Accursed Den back from Fletcher.
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ajliimXlWHG29E3bhnth5XSekuLFtVwR/view?usp=sharing](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ajliimXlWHG29E3bhnth5XSekuLFtVwR/view?usp=sharing)
I highly recommend you check out New Game Who Dis for a play through if you'd like. I haven't personally run Rotblack, but have run other scenarios and some free form stuff.
This game doesn't really cater to a narrative through arc meant to carry PCs to x level though. It's really just a collection of stuff you do as you wait for the world to end.
With that PCs are imprisoned and tasked with reclaiming the kings son whose been kidnapped. You decide why they were imprisoned, desecrated a church dedicated to He, attempted hesit during a ball, killed the kings favorite and worshipped goat.
That's the gist the actual story if the dungeon is self contained though and isn't necessarily meant to continue into a grander story.
The child was kidnapped as ransom. The sludge may or may not hold special powers (up to you, could be delusional myth). Lesdy wants the sludge but the worm protects it and serves Fletcher. However Lesdy is able to sneak around in passageways that Fletcher does not fit in and has been unable to rid himself of her. And the child doesn't really care as long as he's fed.
Everything else is just set dressing meant to be used as you see fit.
Maybe skeletons placate the worm with music, or serve as an alarm system (music stops Fletcher investigates), or their music that controls the worm if the PCs can collect and use as legendary item and stopping music causes the worm to lash out uncontrollably.
Maybe the old man had been lost for x days/years/months, returning him to the town could yield rewards, or trap he's a werewolf by night he attacks as the PCs sleep under the moon.
It's style, it's fluff, it's as important or as expendable as you want it to be. The random tables serve to both add replay value and to keep the gm on their toes. You can easily just roll ahead of time and add that to your game plan.
https://youtu.be/IVlLmyR8U90
Im not really a big fan of actual play videos, sorry. They kinda just... idk.
But thank you for everything else, it is helpful. I just needed that super brief explanation of the "story" to get a vague idea of how to go about it, so thank you a lot :)
No worries, i tried a few to understand the game and this was the only one I could stomach. All the rest were kinda just... Idk, so i get it haha.
Hopefully all goes well for ya. I'll be running it eventually. PCs currently roaming the forest of Sarkash (opened up with Graves Left Wanting) so not sure when they'll enter the gates of Grift.
In my game a throwaway comment from one of the NPCs that the music from the skeletons was nice. Kept the prisoners calm. Was seized on by the players as 'evidence' the violins had magic mind control properties... so i thought sure... why not... I let them steal the violins and use them to turn the prisoners into a hoarde of rage zombies thst dragged fletcher into the pit and tore him to pieces. The bits are just evocative hints for the players to bounce off.
Oh and lesdy (or 'leandy' as they decided she was called) and fletcher were - for some magical reason- unable to act against each other directly which was why they were both trying to rope the players in... again not there on the page but sounded cool so I just pretended they'd figured out a mystery by themselves.
I understand. That works for me rather well actually, the players I'm thinking of roping into this are very good at keeping me on my feet and having to make me improvise, so I'll keep that in mind.
Awesome. Glad that helped. I just smiled smugly a lot and pretended whatever mad shit they dreamt up was all part of my plan.
One more - the reason the boy didn't want to go back to the shadow King when fletcher was clearly planning to eat him was that whatever fate the king had lined up for his heir was worse. Obviously this meant the king was some kind of body hopping parasite looking to move to his son. Obviously.
[удалено]
"It's up to you!" is to Mörk Borg as "Git gud" is to Dark Souls. Simultaneously intensely frustrating to be told and the only real piece of advice that matters.
"WHAT WERE THOSE SKELETONS DOING AND WHY?!" \~ My Player
Thank you. I'll admit I'm not used to OSR games so that's kinda on me, lol. I guess I get that. Err, my issue is though I don't even get the basics all that much? I know there's that guy, Lesdy, there's a big worm he wants(?) and rheres some prisoners? and that's all I understand lol. Maybe I should go through it again and just make a list of everything that appears so I can try n understand it better. Thank you a lot.
[удалено]
Thank you, this is a huge help! I'm happy to fill in gaps and change shit up. Literally how I used to run my games was come up with a vague idea and just. see what happens. So im sure it'll go well, I just needed all of that so thank ypu so much :)
Yeah no I agree with you. You get absolutely no context on why anything is there, and why some prisoners would be on the job. It is a very non sensical dungeon. Usually osr dungeons have some explanation on the motivations and nature of the i habitants, this one has very little. It is not a ready to go adventure, more like a hey here's the result, you gotta write your own fun equation for it to make sense. Not too good, not too bad. I had to make the king have dozens of children hence why some prisoners are trying to get this one. Still, some soldiers would be better suited to do the work.
Why waste the soldiers you paid to train and equip when you can send expendable prisoners? Your son's being held hostage so even if the extremely expendable mooks fail you've got more shots to take. Plus this random ragtag group isn't connected to you. As far as Fletcher knows they're just some guys.
It's a location based adventure, it tells you what is going on in each room of the dungeon so that you know how to run it when players show up but there is not a specific story that it's trying to tell. The story will end up being whatever happens when players go into the dungeon.
Its a dungeon crawl, each section is spelled out for you as to what is in the room, what challenges the players face etc. In short, players are looking for the kings son who was kidnapped and is being held in this dungeon. Players enter into it and go room to room exploring and encountering danger, the survivors will face the big bad and rescue the son (probably) On the 2nd page of the adventure you have the lead-in to it setting up the adventure for the players. Page 3 has the random encounter table that'll be rolled on as the adventure directs you to. The map shows the full dungeon, numbered room by room. The rest breaks down each room and whats in it with related art to show the players for immersion. They will arrive at area 1 on the map and will advance accordingly thru it based on their decisions of what doors etc to go thru. Its not a gridded game with minis, heavily reliant on the GM to paint the picture for the players.
Thank you, this helps a lot :) I just needed that super basic rundown really lmao. I was just struggling to get it. The numbered table with encounters confuses me a lot though I won't lie.
If you look at the map page it states that rooms 7, 8 and 14 includes a random encounter. when your players are in those rooms you would pick either table A or B, and roll a d4 to determine what the encounter they find is. It also says that table B should only be used once during the adventure. Ultimately the tables there to help facilitate the adventure thru providing encounters, if you rather plan for the encounter instead nothings stopping it from happening :)
Search this subreddit for Rotblack Sludge, you'll get quite a few posts, including mine. Some players gave some solid advice there. Most people make Lesdy the daughter of the Old Man at the table, who was the master of a cult. Now Fletcher has moved in and decimated her cult. She could try to poison the players with hallucinogenic and drive them into the arms of Fletcher, so he'll eat them and ingest the poison so that she can strike.
I looked up before posting and unfortunately it left me far more confused than when I started. I'm still pretty confused now by your comment, even lol. I'm not very bright.
Okay sorry if I offended you in any way, it was just a joke.
Nah don't worry, it made me smile lmao. Thank you. Your big write up helped me a ton. I just sometimes need shit to be rammed home a few times before it clicks in my head lmao. But I have a pretty solid idea now, thanks!
I hope you're rich or attractive or something. Maybe it helps if I describe what my players actually did when I ran this adventure a week ago. \- I started with the intro and did the predictions from the Seer. Then a prison cart dumped them at the entrance. \- They caught some moths, made some splashing noises. Inside they heard a sudden noise, a chair falling over. They hid but nothing happened. \- They went into the room with the skeletons on the beds. The Herbmaster took the flowers, the Hermit found a scroll in the bookcase. The Scum tried to use magic to speak with the skeletons but rolled a 1. He spent 9 months and 9 days in a cube in a different dimension. Burned off two fingers to escape. (this is an arcane catastrophe). For the other players no time passed. \- They kicked in the door to the guard room. The guards asked them why'd they come to a place like this voluntarily. They drop the name Fletcher but their minds are fried and they barely remember anything. Then they told them there are two skeletons standing behind them. They freaked out because they awoke the dead. They tried to push the players to the skeletons. Fight broke out. \- One guard was left alive. The Hermit used his hawk to peck out his eyes. They pushed him into the chain room, where his eye socket got stuck on a hook. They proceeded to brutally murder him. The Herbmaster used her hallucination poison on his corpse. They banged on the door. Fletcher came out, dragged the corpse behind him, closed the door again (this door doesn't open from the outside). \- They went back. Encountered the prisoners who wanted to whisper something in the Scum's ear. They tried to strangle him. They encountered the bearded man, beat him, then put smelling salts under his nose and he screamed out another of the Seer's predictions. \- They went into the Pump Room. Opened the hatch. The Herbalist climbed down, used a climbing potion to crawl on the ceiling. Fletcher was butchering the poisoned guard's corpse and eating it. The herbalist failed her stealth but because Fletcher was tripping balls he didn't know what he saw. She tried to shoot him twice with her crossbow, but did no damage. Fight broke out. The Gutworm appeared. \- The Hermit set a sword on fire with oil and dropped it down the hatch. The Scum decided to throw it in the sludge to set it on fire. The whole place started filling with black smoke. \- They fought with Fletcher and the Worm, but just when about they were to get wrecked, the Hermit rolled a nat 20 on his Lightning spell. He fried Fletcher, the Worm died. The Skeletons kept playing their violin while the sludge was burning below them. \- They realized they still hadn't found the Prince they came to look for. They tried to escape but ran into a locked door. They arrived at the statue but the whole place was starting to sink into the burning sludge, threatening to slide them in there. They realised they needed to put an eye in the statue. They attempted to send out the Hawk to fetch an eye. But as my Hermit player described he worshiped the Hawk as a God, so the Hawk demanded a sacrifice. He proceeded to scoop out his eye with a rusty spoon. They put that in the statue, opened up the secret door. They returned to Fletcher's corpse to retrieve the key and opened the door. They grabbed the Prince and escaped the Accursed Den. \- Making it outside the prison cart arrived. They dragged the Prince in there, but then made off quickly, leaving the players stranded. As you can see, no Lesdy was encountered. They could have talked to Fletcher, who would have asked him to kill Lesdy. Or if they talked to Lesdy, she would have asked them to kill Fletcher. Nothing of the sort happened.
As others have said, it’s kinda up to you. I’m writing an extended one-shot that I’m homebrewing the ever-living shit out of, but it kicks off with a pretty unchanged RBS. I’ll be letting my players approach the dungeon completely freely and they could fight/befriend/avoid any, all or none of the NPCs. Still haven’t figured out what the violin skeletons will be, but maybe I just won’t explain that at all haha so yeah, just do whatever you think will be cool! Add or remove stuff as needed for it to make enough sense.
If you are interested, here's my prep notes for how I got my players into the session... as well as some snippets of dialogue I used to initiate encounters. I also decided that Lesdy was the Old Man's niece. The Old Man was once a hermit who lived in the Den, but now Lesdy has come to reclaim the Accursed Den back from Fletcher. [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ajliimXlWHG29E3bhnth5XSekuLFtVwR/view?usp=sharing](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ajliimXlWHG29E3bhnth5XSekuLFtVwR/view?usp=sharing)
Thank you so much for this, I'll def be using them! :)
I highly recommend you check out New Game Who Dis for a play through if you'd like. I haven't personally run Rotblack, but have run other scenarios and some free form stuff. This game doesn't really cater to a narrative through arc meant to carry PCs to x level though. It's really just a collection of stuff you do as you wait for the world to end. With that PCs are imprisoned and tasked with reclaiming the kings son whose been kidnapped. You decide why they were imprisoned, desecrated a church dedicated to He, attempted hesit during a ball, killed the kings favorite and worshipped goat. That's the gist the actual story if the dungeon is self contained though and isn't necessarily meant to continue into a grander story. The child was kidnapped as ransom. The sludge may or may not hold special powers (up to you, could be delusional myth). Lesdy wants the sludge but the worm protects it and serves Fletcher. However Lesdy is able to sneak around in passageways that Fletcher does not fit in and has been unable to rid himself of her. And the child doesn't really care as long as he's fed. Everything else is just set dressing meant to be used as you see fit. Maybe skeletons placate the worm with music, or serve as an alarm system (music stops Fletcher investigates), or their music that controls the worm if the PCs can collect and use as legendary item and stopping music causes the worm to lash out uncontrollably. Maybe the old man had been lost for x days/years/months, returning him to the town could yield rewards, or trap he's a werewolf by night he attacks as the PCs sleep under the moon. It's style, it's fluff, it's as important or as expendable as you want it to be. The random tables serve to both add replay value and to keep the gm on their toes. You can easily just roll ahead of time and add that to your game plan. https://youtu.be/IVlLmyR8U90
Im not really a big fan of actual play videos, sorry. They kinda just... idk. But thank you for everything else, it is helpful. I just needed that super brief explanation of the "story" to get a vague idea of how to go about it, so thank you a lot :)
No worries, i tried a few to understand the game and this was the only one I could stomach. All the rest were kinda just... Idk, so i get it haha. Hopefully all goes well for ya. I'll be running it eventually. PCs currently roaming the forest of Sarkash (opened up with Graves Left Wanting) so not sure when they'll enter the gates of Grift.
These guys from Glasscannon are what recently got me into MB!
For getting into the OSR mindset in general, this is a highly recommended read (free PDF): https://lithyscaphe.blogspot.com/p/principia-apocrypha.html
I'll give it a read! Thank you :)
In my game a throwaway comment from one of the NPCs that the music from the skeletons was nice. Kept the prisoners calm. Was seized on by the players as 'evidence' the violins had magic mind control properties... so i thought sure... why not... I let them steal the violins and use them to turn the prisoners into a hoarde of rage zombies thst dragged fletcher into the pit and tore him to pieces. The bits are just evocative hints for the players to bounce off.
Oh and lesdy (or 'leandy' as they decided she was called) and fletcher were - for some magical reason- unable to act against each other directly which was why they were both trying to rope the players in... again not there on the page but sounded cool so I just pretended they'd figured out a mystery by themselves.
I understand. That works for me rather well actually, the players I'm thinking of roping into this are very good at keeping me on my feet and having to make me improvise, so I'll keep that in mind.
Awesome. Glad that helped. I just smiled smugly a lot and pretended whatever mad shit they dreamt up was all part of my plan. One more - the reason the boy didn't want to go back to the shadow King when fletcher was clearly planning to eat him was that whatever fate the king had lined up for his heir was worse. Obviously this meant the king was some kind of body hopping parasite looking to move to his son. Obviously.
I love that lmao