Harry Potter & Greyhawk

At long last, the final installment of the Harry Potter franchise, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Pt 2) is hitting theaters tomorrow. I'm sure by now most people who game have either seen the movies, read the books, or like me done both. It may just be me, but when I first experienced these stories I saw a lot of good characters and concepts (especially horcruxes) I wanted to use in a D&D campaign. Indeed, never since the Hobbit has supposed "children's fiction" moved my imagination this much. Yes, I am talking about the feasibility of running a wizard school campaign in Greyhawk! Crazy you say, grognards? Perhaps. But all the information you need to build one is there in canon, all you need to do is to pull it all together:

The School

This part is easy, in the most central place of all, Greyhawk City, we have the University of Magical Arts ready to be used!

"Across the whole of the Flanaess, the rich and the humble alike dream of sending their children to Greyhawk's prestigious University of Magical Arts." -Living Greyhawk Journal #5

Built by the mayor-archmage Zagig Yragerne, this structure is hard to miss in the city. It is a pyramid with no doors, windows or mars of any kind, and a wall surrounding that. New students are met at a pre-arranged spot at the pyramid and are allowed in by a mage using spells to bypass the school's protections. The university has an underground auditorium and nine floors, each corresponding to a level of arcane study.

Tutors and senior students may come and go from the university at will, but the youngest students aren't allowed to leave the pyramid at all for their first two years! Students who finish this apprenticeship (and are thus first level wizards) are then allowed to leave the school and "explore the world". Because of this practice, students of the university generally return to train for their further levels. (Note: this means students of the higher levels may be quite older than those starting out.) There is generally 100 new apprentices on the first tier, 60 1st level mages, 40 2nd level, 20 3rd level and decreasing so on as the students become more advanced and move on. Admission to the University of Magical Arts requires sponsorship of another wizard, approval of the board of tutors and an initial fee of 100 gp. The school takes applicants from most races and all over the Flanaess, with the Greyhawk domain area being most common of course. 

Important NPCs
When running a magic school like in Harry Potter, you need a host of characters. The teachers are a good place to start and luckily there are a few in canon already:
Kieran Jalucian (Principal and also Guildmaster of Wizards) (Wiz 21)
Tobin Potriades (Senior Tutor from 576-591 CY)
Abrazaldin Hosk (Senior Tutor 591-present) (Wiz 20)
Darnak Khorshan (Head Porter, both the university and the Guild of Wizards have dwarven security) (F6)
Ephraim Blackrod (Master of Ceremonies, a ceremonial title but does hold real power in the school)

Playing Youths
The first reservation most gamers would have is playing children. In Harry Potter they start at Hogwarts at an awful young age but the school encompasses several years and age groups, thus by the end of the saga the main characters are respectably matured enough to be decent adventurers. This in mind, a DM can adjust the starting ages for his wizard school along with what the players are comfortable roleplaying. I can speak on this through experience; I ran four full game years of a "hero high school" campaign using Mutants & Masterminds and if you gradually adjust the game from a non-lethal "light hearted" storyline to a "darker" more dangerous one, the age of a young PC really doesn't matter since most of the action occurs among peers of their own age. If you follow the Harry Potter stories, this is how things progress.

Now one of the first logistical problems of younger characters is they aren't physically or mentally on par with the adults that they encounter at their school. There are a few solutions to this. First, in the hardback AD&D book Greyhawk Adventures, there is an interestingly extensive ruleset for playing "0-level" characters. Apprenticing characters using this must train and build their skills and attributes all the while under the tutelage of  an instructor. Even alignment is formative with morality and ethics being tracked in this 0-level system. Perfect! A less intensive way to handle the age disparity (as we did in M&M) is to simply lower the baseline attribute for point buy characters. As the character ages (at whatever rate the DM determines), these stat points raise back up until they are considered typical "young adult" PCs. There are other perks you can give for aging up to young adult such as a few extra skill points, feats, or whatever the DM can imagine. Also remember, most editions of D&D have optional rules for "level training", that is you are not allowed to actually raise a PC to the next level until time and money is invested. These systems would be good to look into for simulating the time and energy spent in the University.

An All Wizard Campaign
Some players might blanch at the thought of everyone playing the same class since it lacks the balance needed for a traditional D&D game. Being a wizard in Harry Potter is common but in Greyhawk it is not. This is problematic but not a total loss as long as the first couple years of apprenticeship takes place inside the wizard school environment. All a clever DM has to do is tailor the plots and obstacles toward a group of wizards, and since most things inside a well regulated wizards school are not out to kill the PCs even low hit point wizards don't have to perpetually worry about being slain. Once the PCs are allowed to leave the pyramid and roam the city or beyond, is when they may begin multi-classing and occasionally taking on non-spellcasting companions. Yet, every time they return to the University the stories will certainly center on wizards.

Finishing Touches

The University does have competitions in the Free City Arena with the other colleges of Clerkburg. The nature of these events isn't certain (though I have my own ideas) but it wouldn't be a stretch to say the University has its own intramural version of Quidditch that is played there or beneath the pyramid.

Want that Harry Potter flavor to your magic? Try this site that lists latinized names for D&D spells. It's not silly, Ancient Suel is generally considered the 'latin' of the setting.

Main villain? Guh! Do I have to do all the work? How about a student sponsored by the renegade Seeker, Eli Tomorast? That would set the PCs up for a lifelong enemy!

Essential sources for the University: City of Greyhawk Boxed Set (1e/2e), Greyhawk: The Adventure Begins (2e), Living Greyhawk Journal (issues 4-5), Greyhawk Adventures (1e/2e) and one last book, College of Wizardry (2e). I never owned this book, but if any accessory was ever written with this type of campaign in mind, this has to be the one.

Dragonmirth Reborn

One of my favorite parts of reading Dragon Magazine "back in the day" was all the comics. There were full length features like Finieous Fingers, Wormy, Snarf Quest, What's New and so on, but there also was a section called Dragonmirth that featured shorter comic strips. Nothing more than one to three panel gag comics based on D&D these pages were by no means less humorous than the full length-color series in the same issues. Indeed, prolific gaming cartoonists like Aaron Williams (Nodwick) and John Kovalic (Dork Tower) got their starts doing short Dragonmirth comics. As a life-long cartoonist myself, Dragonmirth was very appealing to me for that reason. I often dreamed to get a minor strip in Dragon as a foot in the door, but I never got the nerve to actually submit something. Only years later when Paizo was about to have the rug pulled out from under them and have the Dragon/Dungeon licenses taken away by Wizards, did I actually pitch something to the magazines. I'm sort of glad it didn't get accepted since Wizards promptly squashed comics in their online version.

Fast forward to this summer. In its ever back-pedaling effort to win back fans, Dragon has brought Dragonmirth back from the dead. Now we have a new host of weekly comics that are being tried out, from professional artists and amateurs alike. I will admit, I'm a little sore that I didn't hear about the return of Dragonmirth sooner, there wasn't any open call for comic strips that I'm aware of nor can I find any special mention about submissions now the column is up and running. In my own expert judgement and given the nature of the internet vs. print versions of Dragon, most of these comics will fail, but a few may last a while we shall see! And who knows, maybe ol' Mortellan will finally get a chance to shine in Dragon one day (although I'd much rather be in print).

Below is some links to the new comics they've put out thus far. Feel free to comment about them.

Epic Campain (by Aaron Williams) Aaron has been doing this for a long time and his distinctive style of art style seen in Nodwick continues here.
The Keep on 16th and Valencia (by Jason Thompson) This one has a manga-anime flair, as explained in the artist's bio.
Alignments (by O and Dern) This one has promise.
Claypipe and Tinder (by Micah Farritor) I really like the art style of this guy. This one could've come from the old mags with its B&W look.
The Critical Hit (by Laubenstein and Taylor) This one has great art, but the writing and typography is terrible. It was was so bad, I even tried my hand at improving it (sorry fellas).

Update: 4/14/2021: This post is horribly dated and full of broken links that I had to remove. Snarf Quest and What's New may still be out there on the Net. I don't have a link yet. The links to the new comics Dragon put out are all gone too, because Wizards wants us to forget the 4E era.

Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan 4E

Bart Carroll over at Wizards has posted recently in his D&D Alumni article about the release of a 4th edition conversion of the 1st edition tournament module, The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan. My knee jerk response to this article was "what took them so long?" On further reflection it looks like it could be a good read, if one can get their hands on a copy:

"The Lost Crown of Neverwinter season for D&D Encounters starts up on Wednesday, August 10th. If you run one session during the month of August as a Dungeon Master, you might get your hands on the special bonus adventure: The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, updated for 4th Edition. (The special bonus adventure will arrive 6-8 weeks later, and because we have limited supplies, this offer is only while supplies last.)"

So the release is tied to the apparently popular D&DE program and not the focus of the next storyline. It does still show that Greyhawk is being developed for 4e in stealthy bits. For Tamoachan's sake, this one might be a decent showing:

"Originally written by Harold Johnson and Jeff R. Leason, Hidden Shrine was staged as part of an ancient ruined city, and it was "…once the northeastern capitol of the Olman empire, which covered much of the southern continent centuries before current history began." The World of Greyhawk boxed set would place these distant ruins at the very edge of its map, somewhere within the "savage lands south of the Olman Islands and southeast of the Holds of the Sea Princes."

"Stephen Radney-MacFarland designed the conversion, taking care to preserve the original module's sensibilities and challenges."

So S.R.M. was behind this conversion (I thought he was hired by Paizo?), that should be a boon to Greyhawk fans as he was heavily involved in the heydey of the Living Greyhawk campaign. I tip my cap to Wizards for going to an author with Greyhawk community cred. I believe "keeping the original module's sensibilities and challenges" refers in part to Wizard's current trend backwards in adventure design which I also covered recently. Beyond that, Stephen has apparently taken care to preserve the analog Olman culture and much of the nastiness of the Shrine, but to fit with today's 4th edition concepts:

"Still a ruined temple of the Olman people, their background has been slightly reworked so that now this "…human culture worshiped not only powers from the Astral Sea, but also a collection of primal spirits, fey creatures, vampires, and even monstrosities of the Far Realm. They built city-states that banded together as empires and waged mighty wars against enemies both internal and external. These people were the Olman."

"All that is currently left of the Olman civilization," the new background continues, "are the scattered tribes of their degenerate descendants, now prone to Demogorgon worship and savagery." The Hidden Shrine remains one of their derelict structures that still holds "…great treasures and the legendary magic of the Olman. All feature deadly traps and creatures still bound to the dead empire. The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan is one such temple. Dedicated to Zotzilaha, vampire god of the underworld, and built to imprison a powerful Far Realm entity, it is filled with lost secrets and merciless traps."

The article goes on with more about monsters and traps, but you get the idea. Given that I'm running a campaign in the tropics of the World of Greyhawk currently, this announcement has certainly piqued my interest, and perhaps I'll have to break out the original before long. If anyone eventually gets their hands on this updated module, I'd love to hear about its content. Until next time!

Update 4/14/2021: I had to remove the broken link to the Carroll article because 4E is no longer archived by Wizards. Sorry!

Sea Princes #10: Rescue Mission

Welcome to another session of my Hold of Sea Princes campaign. When last we saw, the crew of Captain Rennaud's Bird of Prey sailed into port at the city of Sasserine to deliver home the wayward daughter of the lord of the Taskerhill family. It was planned to be a time of rejoicing but nefarious things were afoot. Here is our dramatis personae...

Victor Emmitt Hammond (fighter, talon grabbed)

Araxo Tydan (rogue, illicitly gabbed)
Cuahtehmoc aka "Cuahto" (ranger, verbally jabbed)

Brother Pickles (cleric, opponents stabbed)

Cpl. Henri Morgan (rogue, loyally tabbed)

Proud Olman deckhand, Cuahto made to provoke his tormentors, Megaron the Bold and Handsome Griff as they left the ship on their shore leave. Megaron was ready to take the bait, but only through the slick and confident demeanor of Griff did they ignore the challenges. That's when first mate, Araxo Tydan dragged the riled-up ranger along with him to make some more contacts in town. Asking around, it was soon learned that most black market trade went on in the district of Sasserine called Shadowshore.  Going straight for the top, Araxo used his silver tongue to get an audience with the reprehensible Emil Dracktus, lord of Shadowshore. After going around several times in their cant, Dracktus gave Araxo a contact named Barrasso to get in touch with anytime he was ready to do business in Sasserine. 

Meanwhile, Cpt. Rennaud, Skullbreaker Rotario and Victor Hammond escorted Anna Taskerhill back to her family manor in the Cudgel District and at first the gate guards did not believe she was who she claimed to be but soon they came before her father, Lord Kalmadar Taskerhill and the entire court was overjoyed at her safe return. As the crewmen mingled with Anna's adoring family and friends a singing was heard from outside the hall. Everyone was drawn to it and that's when the flock of harpies attacked! Diving at the crowd, many fled while others stood transfixed. Anna on the other hand was grabbed up in the talons of one and was carried away to the north. Captain Rennaud and Vic were also grabbed by their steely talons (each wore an arcane metal anklet) and were taken to the sky a short distance to be dropped on Parrot Island. Here, the last departing harpy gave a shrill message to them:

"The Ironclaw will release the lost daughter for the Owl's nest-egg. Sail alone toward the setting sun or by sunrise she becomes Osprem's handmaiden!"

Once off the island, Lord Taskerhill was informed of her capture and ransoming by the Crimson Fleet's own Captain Ironclaw McGrath of the Hideous (the same ship they had encountered back in Narisban when they found Anna) notorious for his tamed harpies. Rotario quickly went to round up the most of the crew who were on leave (Five were not found) and Victor got back to the ship to get their vessel ready for a hasty departure. Once the captain had returned to the ship, he was joined by several men of the Taskerhill house guard, including Major Trowton and Cpl Henri Morgan. They carried a treasure chest, ready to pay for her return from the pirates if necessary. Speculation abounded on board as to what the "Owl's nest-egg" was, but Araxo learned discreetly that the captain is also known as "the Owl" in some parts shedding some more light on his past. A plan was soon formulated among the assembled forces to double-cross Cpt. Ironclaw before he could.

Not too far out of Sasserine to the northwest, Victor spotted a ship anchored off on the horizon bearing the flag of the Crimson Fleet (red with a black skull). Before the Bird of Prey could close the entire distance another ship was noticed on a course to intercept. Major Trowton recognized it as the Pearly Eye, an Amedio Trading Concern ship owned by the Bevenin family, the Taskerhill's rivals and to whom Anna was originally betrothed. Apparently the family had been tipped off to Anna's return and capture by someone in the Taskerhill court. As the sun began to set the three ships anchored and began to angrily parley. Captain Rennaud claimed to Ironclaw he did not have what this so called nest-egg, Major Trowton was angry that the Bevenins were intruding on a ransom negotiation and Ironclaw was further enflamed when he was tipped off that the Bird of Prey had a rare black-powder cannon discreetly pointed at their ship.

All the while, the PCs (including Scar Medorga and Cpl Morgan) took a launch was taken under cover of dark to the aft of the Hideous. Climbing up a rope they gained entrance to Cpt. McGrath's cluttered chambers. Seeing no sign of Anna so far, they rifled through the room. Among the knick-knacks pocketed, they found a map of the south seas, a golden key and the captain's personal log. Going out of the room they heard sounds of a fight brewing outside, and soon found the room Anna was held in, yet not before a team of four pirates were sent down to retrieve her for Ironclaw.

The away team fought valiantly (Brother Pickles harpooned one guy and reeled him in), easily overcoming the pirates. At one point, a loud explosion was heard resulting in an iron ball tearing a big hole into a side chamber near their melee. With Anna rescued, the team made their way out the stern and down the rope while a battle still ensued elsewhere. Before they could all get back to the rowboat, a single harpy was loosed and attacked them. After firing arrows, harpoons and insults at the winged wench, she fled the scene and the crew was free to make it back to the Bird of Prey, still unsure of the outcome of the greater battle going on...

Game note: I'm not sure if I mentioned it before, but I'm using cannons Murlynd be damned! As this is a lower magic campaign than even what I'm used to running for Greyhawk I think the use of cannons is a fair trade off for ubiquitously using fireballs instead. And y'know, it feels more like a pirate campaign this way. However, I don't have any plans for using pistols or rifles yet.

 

 

Fiction: The Knot Part 2

"For some, the knot loosens. For others, it tightens."

Canonfire's own Ragr has recently posted the second part of his excellently gritty urban tale, The Knot. In this installment we are introduced to a new character, the weary but streetwise Chief Constable Braydon Flynt. The Chief has his hands full as a well-dressed man is found murdered in the wrong part of town. That's when the investigation begins. Yes folks, it's CSI: Greyhawk!



"The killer may have earned the
experience, but the victim got the
point!" (YEAAAAAAAH!)


Oh yes, and there is also a bit more of the youthful Ryel from part one in this episode. I can't wait to see where this story goes next!

CHECK OUT PART 2

GH Comic #311: Celestian Lost

When last we watched, the crew was marooned in the Sea of Dust. Zagyg and Murlynd went one way, while Celestian stubbornly went his own way after finding a mysterious bag buried in the sand. Later on, the forces of Lawful Evil came searching the same spot for said bag. Let's see how Celestian is progressing...

READ THE COMIC HERE

Happy Richfest! (601 CY)

I hope everyone is having a good holiday week so far. In the spirit of the holidays, I'd like to commemorate the Living Greyhawk Campaign which, if it was still in operation would officially be on 601 CY (the 103th anniversary of Greyhawk City's becoming a free city.) The closest analog to a holiday at this time of the year in the World of Greyhawk setting is Richfest (note, the following information is derived from Greyhawk the Adventure Begins).

Richfest is the seven week holiday that falls between the months of Wealsun (low summer) and Reaping (high summer). In Greyhawk City the only day of this week that is an official holiday is Richfest 4th or Midsummer Day. On this day businesses close up and all but the most vital city employees are exempt from work. Midsummer Day is also called the Holy Day of Pelor (god of the sun) as this is the height of summer. On this day the public is invited to attend a festival beginning on the grounds of the temple of Pelor in the Garden Quarter. A service runs from dawn till noon and then in the afternoon a huge feast is given to all in attendance.



pictured: clerics of Celestian
as they idealize themselves.



The festivities do not end there. The priests of Pelor then parade down the central highway of the city, the Processional, handing out more food and healing to those who need help (especially children) while at the same time shaming well-to-do citizens into donating money to the temple. Unbeknownst to the charitable priests, during this time they are under the watchful protection of both the Guilds of Thieves and Assassins, many of whom received the same kindness from Pelorians as children in past Richfests.

Midsummer Night then turns to the Grey College Observatory where the clergy of Celestian (god of the stars) hold a ceremony during the dual full moons, Celene and Luna. This is a night of great portent as astronomical phenomena is almost always seen, in addition to the eclipse of Luna by Celene. This is also the time of year when there are the greatest number of werewolves out hunting in the Flanaess.

Richfest is also celebrated in the nearby towns of Narwell (Foundation Day) and of course Elmshire where thousands of halflings spend the entire week doing their usual merrymaking and eating.

And sometimes fireworks!