X2 - Castle Amber 2026 - Session 7 - Can I Help You? Part II

In my last post, we left the heroes in the Chapel, where Simon confronted them. I should have labeled the map last time, but this is what we roughly have: 

Technically, no one is surprised, but Simon's marked out like a Shakespearean actor and said his line: 

"Can I help you!" 

On target for a haughty D'Amberville, but a poor plan for picking a fight. He is denoted by the red S. Behind him were the bone golem and the pack of skeletons. On the left, I have marked out the 3 groups of Zombies. 

Parker and Warren tense and begin advancing on him, with Jude following. They know the D'Amberville family well. In reaction to this, the snap-case characters react. Khouri and Lance loosed arrows as they are a team. Although separated, they think alike. Rety joined in the fun. Sybil ripped off a magic missile. Alexei starts playing the organ to set the tone. 

Simon paid for his mistake, taking 13 points of damage. 

Sooooo many targets.

Round 2. I roll 3 dice for initiative. The skeletons and golem burst through the door behind Simon while the zombies start moving towards the sound of Simon's voice. Parker, Warren, and Jude continue their advance. Lance, Khouri, Rety, Nononn, and Merry loose arrows. Gabby and Dorian merely watch while Sybil steps out of Bel's way so he can loft his
magic missile. 

Simon took another 12 points of damage and can't cast a spell. He readied a mace. He is down to 12 HP. He allows the skeletons and golem to interpose themselves between him and the party. 

Round 3. The party continues to roll well for initiative. Parker, Warran, and Jude sweep past Merry and Nononn. Nononn drew his sword and followed them. Sybil and Bel were out of magic missiles and split up. Sybil ran after Jude's team while Bel made for the stairs. 

The dynamic of the combat changes. Merry and Dorian turn all of the skeletons but are perplexed by the golem, which they can't identify at range. 

Lance and Khouri kept firing arrows, but missed. This gave Simon a chance to cast hold person on Sybil, rooting her in place. 

Round 4: The bone golem and Jude's team met. Parker and Warren were struck for 3 and 7 HP. The zombies burst out of the western door. Merry could hear them, but couldn't see them as they were behind the statues. He stopped and turned. Simon struck Bel with continual darkness. Bel stumbled into a statue, triggering it. It bestowed a very ironic gift on him: a scroll of protection from magic. Helpful, but not really. 

The fighting men go at the golem, dealing 12 points of damage. 

Khouri, Rety, and Lance target Simon again. They do one point of damage, knocking him to 11 HP. 

Gabby ran down the stairs, intending to help Sybil. She was blocked by Bel, flailing between two statues, enshrouded in darkness. She yelled at him to stop moving. Luckily, he didn't trigger either statue again. 

Round 5: The golem gets the drop on the party again, this time with Simon helping. Warren, Parker, and Jude took 8, 7, and 3 HP damage, respectively. Khouri was not able to get an angle on a target and advanced in on the melee, bow still drawn.   

At the bottom of the stairs, Bel flailed against the statues, thinking he was under attack. Gabby grabbed him and pulled him away. The darkness spell was far more effective than I thought it would be. Lance followed her into the chaotic situation.  

Jude managed to strike Simon for 6 HP, leaving just 3 HP. 

Rety climbed over the railing and down to the chapel floor. Climb is a wildly under-used and under-rated ability.   

Round 6: The party tied with the monsters for initiative. Merry easily turned the zombies, and they retreated back to their cells. Khouri continued her advance, while Lance stumbled towards Gabby and the confused Bel. Sybil was still held. 

The golem was struck for 18 more points of damage, leaving it with just 7 HP. Simon backed up but used Finger of Death on Nononn. He handily saved. 

Charles opened the eastern door and muttered: "What's happening?" This woke Madiline and her bloodlust for Charles. She charged for the stairs with Doian in hot pursuit. 

Round 7: The party goes first. Nononn slipped around the golem and narrowly missed Simon in the doorway. The three fighters pummeled the golem to death. 

Lance, Merry, and Khouri continue their advance on Simon. Dorian and Madiline made it down the stairs, while Rety sprinted to the altar. Lord, this room is big. 

Simon took a second go at Nononn with Finger of Death and this time the fighter lost. 

Round 8: The three fighting men breached the door and killed Simon. Gabby finally restrained Bel, while Madiline raged at Charles. Rety paused, not knowing which way to go. 

Charles smiled evilly and darted forward to cast a spell. Nononn rose from the chapel floor and shambled to intercept Madiline. Due to the nature of his death, Nononn rose with his full hit points, armor class, and weapon. 

Narrative rounds: The chaos was complete. Madiline and Nononn raced at each other, with the whole party in pursuit. Charles protected his retreat with a wall of ice. Rety separated from the party, entering the northwestern door to stalk Charles. The animated Nononn slew Madiline and turned on the party. Sadly, the party defeated their former ally.

Rety had followed Charles back to his lair in room 30 and observed from the shadows, hidden off to the right of his door. Charles readied himself for a battle, securing his room the best he could. He cast darkness at the northwestern turn of the hallway. He sent his wizard eye down to the northwestern doorway of the chapel to watch the party. Rety silently watched, bow in hand, while Charles searched his library for anything that could assist him in the upcoming fight. 

Khouri led the fighting men down the northwestern hallway, taking a moment to swipe at the wizard's eye. Alerted by the attack on the eye, Charles took a final frantic look around the room. That was when Rety loosed an arrow into his back. She had surprised him. 

His shriek caused the fighting men to move in double time. Merry and Khouri took the lead to get the others through the darkness. 

In the next round, Rety stepped into the room and hit him with another arrow. And that was all the time the angry fighters needed to enter the room themselves and put an end to him. Jude and Merry threw up a stink about dismembering the body. The other grumbled but agreed.   

They circled back to kill the skeletons before everyone banded together to spike the zombies' cell door shut. 

We leave the party with Sybil held, Bel enshrouded in darkness, and Nonnon dead. Everyone except Dorian, Gabby, and Lance had some wounds. 

The party had defeated 18 zombies, 9 skeletons, a bone golem, and three of D'Amberville. 

There will be a lot of mopping up before the next session. I will post bookkeeping, share Warren and Parker's character sheets, and award experience. 

Module Review - S2 White Plume Mountain

As part of my campaign to improve the website, I am rewriting some of my oldest posts, focusing on reviews first. 

This was originally posted on June 1st, 2016. Depending on what happens to the party, I might make this module my 2027 series. B2, X2... S2 seems to track. 

I can't believe I've been doing this for that long. 

Title: White Plume Mountain
Code: S2
Author: Lawrence Schick
Rule Set: D&D
Year: 1979
Pages: 16
Number of characters: 4-10
Levels: 5-10
Rating: ★★★★☆

White Plume Mountain is part of the Special series of modules. It is meant for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and expects a large number of characters at relatively high levels. Interestingly enough, the scenario spells out that many adventures into the dungeon will be required and may cause a rotation of adventurers through many sessions. That is a nice touch. I like the long-term play and replayability, similar to what I did with B2 and X2. 

Written by Lawrence Schick and published in 1979, this standalone module plunges players into the subterranean maze of a volcanic dungeon located in the Shield Lands. The story kicks off when three legendary magical weapons named Wave, Whelm, and Blackrazor were brazenly stolen from the vaults of richie-rich collectors in Greyhawk. When the owners received a mocking poem signed with the symbol of the wizard Keraptis, they tempt a party of plucky heroes to brave the volcanic tunnels with promises of cash and prizes. 

I love this style of play. Early failures and setbacks to the player characters are muted by the ability to retreat to the complete safety of the nearby town. This is very different from most dungeon crawls where characters must hoard limited resources. Instead, players find themselves on a quest to obtain those 3 magical weapons at all costs. Monsters and puzzles and challenges protect them. Backtracking enables inspired progress along with resupply and fairly realistic gameplay. Players can leave their horses at a local village or hide them in a natural cave before entering the south-facing Wizard's Mouth cave. This adventure takes the learning curve for games and makes it a positive. White Plume Mountain is more like The Moonshot than D-Day.

The dungeon itself is a masterclass in puzzle-box design. It forces players to combine brains and brawn to overcome hazards that cannot be solved by simple violence. Navigating the complex requires dealing with everything from a gynosphinx offering riddles to terrifying environmental death traps. Razor-sharp blades and a heat-induction tunnel chop and wear the party down. Players must carefully manage their character's resources as they tackle distinct branches to recover the stolen artifacts.

The Heroes encounter a wild array of off-theme challenges. Wave, the trident, is protected by a watery monster inside a force field under a boiling lake. The warhammer, Whelm, is protected by a crazy waterpark gone wrong with a resident vampire. Blackrazor, the mythic sword is protected by a friendly hobbit. Even if a party manages to run these gauntlets and collect the weapons, they face a final twist at the exit. Powerful efreet named Nix and Nox attempt to intercept them and herd them toward Keraptis' final trap. 

This module also features wonderful artwork. My personal favorite is the fighter on page 6. It isn’t the best, but it captures the character's reaction so perfectly. The fighter’s confused look is classic. Who jumps platform to platform over hellishly hot mud? Everything in fighter school trained me not to do this. This illustration perfectly highlights the terrifying suspended disk challenge where heroes must leap across chains above boiling mud while dodging active geysers. The images for Blackrazor and the Mountain itself and Keraptis are iconic of classic Dungeons and Dragons.

You can find this as part of a set, S1-4. DriveThru RPG also has Dungeon Tiles and a new version for 3.5 Adventures to supplement your collection. 

Planning Session 7.1 - Keys and Oops

We left the party in the Chapel, in the middle of a massive brawl in Castle Amber. 

This post is kind of spoiler-heavy, so you might want to stop reading here. I am going to tell you what happens to the party in the future. I am already 3 sessions ahead of the Chapel, although you can't know that. 

While this is a solo playthrough, "solo" is not 100% accurate. I often point this out within individual posts. 

First, I have been using AI to assist me in tracking the whereabouts of the party when it splits up. This helps me track time and locations. I don't use AI for grammar checking because it gets excited about dashes, dash-em, commas, and semicolons. AI cannot assess sentence complexity very well and will suggest these bits of punctuation far too often. It will also battle with my built-in Chrome spellchecker, which is crazy. It also cheats if asked to roll dice or "randomly" select an option. We'll see that happen again shortly. 

Second, I often ask my children to throw dice and select character actions. They don't really want to sit and play, but occasionally they help me with this series by helping roll through large combats or throwing plot twists at me. 

I also use my copy of OSR Solo, an old-school oracle book for solo play to generate ideas, which I guess is a third modifier in this less-than-solo adventure. 

Let's get to the second big oops of this series. Pizzalla, Solvo, and Thomas have all died. Alexei has been turned insubstantial. Alexei's items are just as insubstantial as he is. But Solvo's backpack contained a bag of holding, and were both were transferred to another character's bag of holding in a second backpack. Technically speaking, I lost track of those supplies, and the party did, too. 

After the Battle of the Chapel, the party will discover their mistake and Parker and Warren will be properly provisioned as fighters, complete with bows and arrows, plus some other kit. 

Next item. I should have tracked the keys. I had forgotten that the party needed 3 keys. Here are their locations as of now: 

3. Study (In Gabby's possession.)
18. Fountain of Death (The Rakshasa took it)
27. Consultation Room (We are almost there)
52. Bobbing for a Key 

The module does suggest reducing the number of keys depending on how the party is doing. Essentially, I have hard-coded a reduction of one key by allowing the Rakshasa to take one from the fountain. I figured they would either die and the party would loot the key from the corpses, or the Rakshasa would make it to the gate and the party would find one key already there. 

First, I asked AI if the Rakshasa should enter Averoigne. I asked it to ignore mechanics, the module, and just give me a yes-or-no answer. It said yes and backed it up with all kinds of mechanics and hallucinated details about the module, Clark Ashton Smith's writings, and D&D in general. 

Sigh. AI, you kind of suck. 

I was going to roll a die and consult my copy of OSR Solo but then decided that Rakshasa in Averoigne would be fun. No random die rolls, no AI. It's fun. I am doing it. 

Why? Because I want to introduce a new NPC to Averoigne, a person named Madeline. She is a chef. She was created using my very own ruleset for NPCs called Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners.

However, this set of rules isn't the one that has been downloaded hundreds of times. 

No, this is a complete rewrite specifically meant for Old School Essentials and I will use their Open Game Content license. I hope to have this done by Christmas, and it will be my first non-PWYW title. I will not take the old edition down. It will continue to be PWYW. 

I plan on 2, maybe 3 booklets in this new edition. The first is the rules, and the second booklet will be a helper PDF and zip file so that others can build content off of it. I have to comply with their OGL, and I plan on being as helpful as possible to other creators. I haven't decided if a 3rd booklet is necessary. 

In order to assist with this project, I have created an OSE character generator. Critical to this project is the ability to generate characters using average dice, which this generator does. I AM using AI to create this generator, BUT as a crutch for the coding skills I have lost. As time goes on, I am recovering my coding skills and my reliance on AI is dropping. 

I hope you stick with me in these year-end endeavors and stay for what is to come in 2027. In the next post, we will see how the party fares in the Chapel and possibly beyond. 

X2 - Castle Amber 2026 - Session 7 - Can I Help You? Part I

It has been far too long since I posted the adventures in Castle Amber. We left the party in the Chapel. 

It's easy to forget how big the Castle is. Each square is 10 feet, not five. Since I am discussing size, the party now has 3 extra characters. I have decided that Alexei will be present until the party exits the Castle. He is non-corporeal, so he is limited to magic only. 

Parker and Warren have taken the class of Fighter. Since the beginning, they have had 24 HP. On average, they must be equivalent to 5th-level fighters, with no Constitution bonuses. As Fighters, they are much more dangerous than Demos Magen, mostly due to armor and weapon selections. Given the party is trapped in the castle, they have only the halberds and breastplates they were pictured holding. The party also gives them some daggers and slings, the only extra weapons the party had. 

We left the party in the corner marked 25, with a sleeping Magdalene D'Amberville. Alexei wandered away, up the stairs, to inspect the organ in the Choir Loft. 

Simon's room (32) is an odd place, with 3 secret doors leading to it. Charles's room (30) makes more sense. Rooms 26a-f contain Zombies, while Room 27 holds the bone golem and skeletons. 

I mention this as Alexei approached the organ. The party was not being quiet, so we are about to experience a lot of combat. Remember I mentioned how big the castle and chapel are? It turns out, all of the creatures in here are faster than most of the party. That will play into combat. 

Zombies in D&D are fast-moving but slow-fighting. They can run down a party, but once they catch them, Zombies are always last to act. That is an interesting dynamic.

Let's put the players on the field and take roll call. 

Alexei, Rety, Dorian, and Lance went upstairs. Rety and Lance have bows out to act as overwatch for the party, while Alexei wondered if the organ worked. Dorian administered care to the sleeping Magdalene D'Amberville, while Merry, Nononn, and Gabby guarded the area. Belaphon and Sybil, ever incautious, explored area 24 near the trap door and altar. 

Parker, Warren, Jude, and Khouri had a plan. They moved to the east side of the chapel and breached the door leading to 26a-c. I made a judgment call and decided all the doors were well maintained and set up to open into the space they protected, like monastic cells rather than prison cells. Jude listened at the outer door and the door to 26b. He heard nothing and opened the door. 

The zombies bellowed at the intrusion, and Jude slammed the door closed. 

In the first round of combat, the lead Zombie threw the door open, and Jude hit him with his polearm. Khouri stepped in and fired an arrow into its face, finishing it. Parker and Warren retreated back into the chapel, with Warren dropping his weapon to hold the door open and keep the torch high. Parker guarded his back. 

Lance and Rety, alerted by the noise, nocked arrows and leaned on the railing. Everyone else in the party looked to action, uncertain as to what was happening. 

Round 2: Khouri darted through the open door and turned around, bow leveled. Jude and the next Zombie exchanged blows as Jude retreated through the door. Warren slammed the door closed. 

Rety and Lance could see the melee, but had no targets. Bela and Sybil could see movement, and Bela cast light on the altar. The rest of the party drew weapons, but couldn't decide whether to retreat or move to Jude and the others. 

Unbeknownst to the party, Simon decided to check on the noise. Simon moved to the western door to the chapel and would not arrive for 5 more rounds, even if he ran. Charles hates noise and does nothing. Also unknown to the party, the remaining 6 zombies advance from 26a and 26c to back up their brethren. 

Doors can be a real problem. 

But the statues are worse. 

Round 3: Khouri moved south along the wall, while Jude, Warren, and Parker formed a wall of polearms. The two zombies died in the hedgehog of long weapons. 

Charles was on the move, while Simon cursed the noise of battle. 

The rest of the party made a choice and started moving to the stairs to the choir loft. Merry and Nononn drew bows and covered Dorian, the sleeping woman, and Gabby. In stepping out of the space, the Fighter and Paladin almost triggered a statue. Bela and Sybil moved southward, still facing the action, unsure where they were needed most. 

I really need to paint these guys.

Round 4: The doorway to 26a-c was blocked by the bodies of Zombies, so the four heroes backed up. The three Fighters, ready for combat, didn't think of the danger of the statues. They almost triggered. Bel and Sybil paced them, moving south. The damned statues prevented anyone from firing, except Khouri, who was on the south wall. Since she hadn't tried to cross the row of statues, she was not in danger of triggering them. 

Khouri hit the first Zombie through the door with an arrow. It turned to face her, but she was out of reach. The three men faced the remaining five zombies, but only three were in reach. One was dropped. 

Round 5: Charles made a stop to collect the bone golem and the skeleton crew. 

Khouri loosed an arrow not at the zombie pursuing her but into one of the last two Zombies leaving area 26a-c. She struck well. The 3 fighters downed two more Zombies. To collect, one Zombie pursued Khouri while the remaining four pursued Parker, Warren, and Jude. Finally, everyone could see the Zombies. 

Nononn and Merry sprinted to support Jude's battered team. Again, the party was lucky as the men didn't trigger the statues. Khouri dropped her bow and darted between the statues. One of them triggered and touched her, raising her Constitution by a point. She had only a 9, so this bonus didn't really help her. She and the Zombie exchanged blows, with Khouri taking the worst of it: 8 HP. Her Zombie was down to one hit point. 

The fighters tore into their remaining foes. Two down and two to go. Jude and Parker took minor damage. 

Round 6: Bel and Sybil ran to the stairs, making it most of the way. Nononn and Merry slowed as the fighters dispatched the remaining Zombies. 

Round 7: In the silence, Khouri moved to recover her bow, this time remembering to inch between the statues to prevent another triggered curse or boon. The Paladin and the remaining fighters rallied on the eastern side of the chapel. 

I don't think Moldvay meant for this area to become a battlefield. I suspect the intention was to ambush the party in the nooks and crannies of 26a-f before letting the party stumble into different pitfalls of the northern end of the chapel. 

This area is a wonderful place to let a young party cut loose and learn the ropes of mass combat. It presents so many challenges. The doors and statues are barriers to sight while also representing problems. The magic users are too young to unleash combat-ending spells. The distances and darkness caused issues with turning undead, simply because no one knew they were undead. Picking different areas to pass through meant that some characters weren't even in the melee. Also, the speed of the monsters matched the characters, making retreat a possible losing proposition. By clustering together, the party managed to avoid getting overrun and slaughtered. 

Speaking of clusters, Simon stood listening at the door on the northwestern side of the room, with his gang of undead behind him. In typical D'Amberville fashion, he threw open the door and shouted: 

"Can I help you?" 

Alexei knew what he had to do; he took a seat before the organ and began to play. Next time, we will see the other half of the Chapel Blitz. 

Updates and Other Boring Things

I have a lot going on lately. 

I have ordered another collection of metal starships from Studio Bergstrom. The larger ships at the bottom are called GP Indochine Cruisers. The 4 small ones are Nipponese Corvettes and the singular one in the middle is a Mongolian Cluster Frigate. I am completely unfamiliar with the source material for these ships, but I love the designs. 

I now have 21 of these ships, which should be enough to play A Billion Suns by Osprey Games. I love that Osprey got into the game business. You can grab a copy on DriveThruRPG. This is a fleet action game, which I enjoy, but I am also looking for other rulesets. If you have any suggestions, please leave them in the comments. 

Previously, I had been using paper tokens for ships. I made a ton of designs. I might upload them to my shop on Ko-Fi when I have the time. 

File under super boring, but I updated the page links above. I have decided to style the website name as TOG in space-constrained places. When I created These Old Games, it never occurred to me to use the initials. I will now. 

I have also updated my privacy policy. I personally don't collect much information beyond what Google already does through the blogger.com website. This is mostly directions to the privacy policies of companies that supply ads to me. 

I am leaning toward only using Awin-based ads for physical goods. This choice is very much a mismatch right now, but I plan on adding more content that directly links to art supplies. For example, I will have my eye on this set of detail brushes, which will be handy for the ships above. 

You might also notice the experiment tab. That is also new. Give it a try and let me know what you think. 

Other upcoming decisions are coming. First, I added myself to LinkTree and also joined SubStack. Jumping to SubStack is to follow some creators I found on MeWe. I don't plan on a big presence there. I barely use my Ko-Fi account as it is, and theoretically, both should generate funds. They don't, but I like the concept. 

In other news, I may jump off the Facebook bus. It drives virtually no interaction and no traffic to my website. 

Shortly, my posts will be returning to Castle Amber. 

What I do on Sundays

It's been over a month since I last posted. I haven't been idle, but I also haven't been playing games as much as I would like to. 

This week is our 25th anniversary, so that is my highest priority. We've actually been together since 1996 or 1997, depending on how we count. That is more than half our lifetimes. 

It's mind-blowing. It feels so long ago and just like yesterday. 

Last month, we went on an adventure to Lake George, Lake Luzerne, and Saratoga Springs. We went hiking, horseback riding, slummed in a few bars, had a wine tasting, and went to two concerts. 

This was our big 25th anniversary blowout weekend, and we had more than a blast. 

In Saratoga Springs, Kitty and I went to see her favorite band, Dave Matthews Band. She wanted a poster from the show, but it was cost-prohibitive. So, I am painting her a copy. 

You'll notice it is horse-themed, thanks to the famous racetrack in Saratoga. It's so much fun that DMB gets in on the local life and events. 

I am, of course, using Meeden Paints but with a twist. I normally use oil paints, but since I have been working on models, I wanted to try acrylic paint. Both links will take you to Meeden, to the types of paints I ordered. I receive remuneration for purchases through the clicked links. 

It's a weird switch, because theoretically acrylics are "easier" to use. Maybe for someone who has always used acrylics, that is true. Cleaning up is ridiculously easy. You spend so little time cleaning up, you hardly have to plan to paint. I love it. 

Also, I believe I can use this paint for models. It's artist paint, but I suspect it will be fine. 

That fired off another side project. I ended up buying several sets of paint brushes, for models, for oils, acrylics, and watercolors. Oh, yeah. Why not take on three different styles of painting? 

Anyway, I kept mixing up the brushes or misplaced them. I kicked myself for not ordering a holder or two from Medeen or running to Michaels for one. 

I have a laser. Why not put it to work? 

I found a free design for a guitar pick box and adapted it to hold paint brushes by putting holes in the lid and a support frame on the bottom to keep the brushes from flopping over. This design uses a living hinge, a technique I've never used. The hinge is easy in principle, but I had issues in assembly. 

I suspect the creator uploaded a file that was "good enough" for their task. I will refine my techniques and the design. If I come up with something unique, I will post over on Etsy or Ko-Fi. 

I have really let my Ko-Fi page languish. I need to fix that. 

Next up: Fiver's saga. The big boy is healing nicely. There is no holding this giant rabbit back. We are uncertain if the screws and plate in his leg took correctly, but he doesn't seem to care. He can jump and climb almost as well as he used to. However, we have not caught him on the counters or dining room table since the accident. 

We have developed a daily routine that pairs with a second hobby: gardening. When I wake up, I get him out of the cage, refill all of the water bowls with fresh water, then feed the cats. Fiver climbs up in my chair and waits for his freshly picked herbs and vegetables. 

I do not let him eat in the chair, despite how he thinks it's his throne. He is such a pleasant boy in the morning, unlike the cats who act like 4:30 am is 4 and a half days without food. 

I have been reading a lot lately. I have slammed through 3 books in about 3 weeks. I read John Scalzi's Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigade. I opted to get a physical copy of these books, but they are also available on Libro.fm. Memberships are cheap. I do the 2 books a month, but they have a cheaper 1 book a month option. 

The third book I am currently ploughing through is A History of Native American Land Rights in Upstate NY. I picked it up at the Lake George History Association. This is a lovely little museum next to Shepard Park in Lake George proper. 

The ironic thing is, the book covers the history of the place where I live in Western New York and has little to do with what I would call "Upstate New York", like Lake George. 

Surprisingly, it speaks a lot about what George Washington was up to at the foundation of our country. 250 years later, and sometimes you forget that NYC was the ad hoc capital of the country, that Buffalo was the Wild West, and that the area around the Hudson was (possibly) a hotbed of British Loyalists. 

This book pairs nicely with another favorite of mine: Farm, Shop, Landing: The Rise of a Market Society in the Hudson Valley, 1780–1860 by  Martin Bruegel. If you like Colonial American History, this is a great read.  

Additionally, I have been poring over my new POD BX books. You can order them here (Red) and here (Blue) from DriveThru. While I am locked on to OSE, these are my favorite D&D books. 

Check back later this week; I should have more updates and probably a book review or two for you. I might also talk about how my wife Jennifer got her nickname, Kitty. 

A Diminutive Post

 I am getting ready to write a module where the characters experience the whole adventure under the effects of Diminution. Everyone will be 6" tall for this one. Garter Snakes become dragons, squirrels could be mounts and cockroaches will be even more terrifying than usual. 

One interesting feature of the potion is, it overclocks the characters. The effect should last no longer than 120 minutes per the Red Basic rules. But since the character have all shrunk from 6 feet to 6 inches, they perceive time differently. They believe each dose of the potion shrinks them for twice as long, four hours. Since everyone is operating on this scale, they have no measure of comparison. 

I'll use a mish-mash of magic, history, and biology for this setting. I can't wait to share this. 

Finally! BX Red and BX Blue!

 It finally happened, both the BX Red and BX Blue are now available on DriveThruRPG as POD. 

Not only did I buy them, but I also used them for a one-off adventure. 

You can order them here (Red) and here (Blue). The last couple of pages of each printing include the flyers that would have been packed out in the box with the dice, crayon, and book. I have owned several copies of these, as I read the covers right off of them. I am really glad to have them back in my collection.

I had to cook up an adventure for characters of levels 1-3, and I will share a few details of this in the future. 

I believe this series of posts will land squarely on my Ko-Fi page. Right now, I have virtually no followers and zero membership fees. If you have a Ko-Fi account, come and follow this adventure there. 

Connections! What I didn't know about Dennis Sustare

I happened to catch a video on YouTube about D&D Druids, called What are the Druids Supposed to be? by Daddy Rolled a 1. A name I hadn't expected popped up: Dennis Sustare. 

If that name sounds familiar, he was the creator of one of my favorite games: Star Smuggler. He has along list of creations and contributions, and I'm pretty sure Star Smuggler is low on his list of achievements, but it's my favorite. 

I had no idea he created the D&D class for druids. That is really cool. 

Anyway, you can download, print, and play Star Smuggler from dwarfstar.brainiac.com or read about it at Boardgamegeek. I am glad to see I am not the only fan. Dennis Sustare graciously allowed Dwarfstar to host the files. Please honor his restrictions on sharing. If you head to BoardGameGeek and check out the file section, you will find all kinds of helpful information. 

A few years ago, I recreated the planet tiles for this game. The original set came with tiles A to K plus one for asteroids. The original game required you to invert some of the tiles, which made reading annoying. I created a set that comes in left and right sides, so none need to be flipped. My adaptations are hosted on BoardGameGeek, you can check those out here. 

You can check out the first appearance of druids in OD&D Supplement I: Greyhawk (0e) as a monster or as a player character in OD&D Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry (0e). Both links lead to 

Studio Bergstrom - Quality Models

I am on a side quest of sorts. I have a favorite website for spaceship models. I would like to share it with all of you. The website is called Studio Bergstrom, and I love these models. Take a look: 

Had I been thinking, I would have lined them up with the grid. The largest is about and inch and the smallest, half that. They are so cool. 

I need some brushes for models, oil painting, and my new hobby, watercolors. All of these links go to MeedenArt.com, my new advertiser. I may receive a commission on qualifying purchases made through these links. 

My oil painting case survived the fire through some sort of freaking miracle, so I have a ton of brushes of the wrong kind for painting models. But if I have learned nothing, if you have something, you can make it work for you. 

I don't want to go on too much of a tangent, but this box belonged to my grandmother. The fact that it somehow survived warms my heart. If I had time and energy, I'd make this my one and only tool kit for art and carry it everywhere. This image is from over a decade ago. I have upgraded my paint set to 170 ml tubes with this set from MeedenArt. 

I hope she knows how much I love this thing, no matter how much the contents change. 

Anyway, back to the task at hand. Making stuff work. I used the smallest oil painting brush I could find on these tiny models, and the results were not horrible. Not perfect, but considering what I had on hand, I feel good about them. 

This could start a whole second tangent here, but this green scheme is modeled on Hera Syndulla's Green Squadron from Rebels. While painting these models, I listened to more than watched Return of the Jedi. 

There really was a Green Leader and Green Squadron of A-Wings in Return of the Jedi, which is a great... call forward? to the Greens of Star Wars Rebels. In RotJ they have red ships and green uniforms, but it's a cool touch. 

These are free-painted, using a mammoth 1/32 inch brush. As I said before, I need to buy some new tools, but I think I made it work. 

Studio Bergstrom also makes two different kinds of bases. These are described as resin, but to the average dude like me, they feel like rubber. All of them are black. You put a standard pin in them and glue the model down or up, if you look at the second picture below. 

The links to Studio Bergstrom are a part of this post for review purposes. They are not a sponsor, nor do I receive payment from them. Click to your heart's content. 

These stands are super cheap and a great option for any number of flying models. The website has a disclaimer: "Does not take paint well," which I took to be a challenge. You'll notice I didn't paint the bases. These are spaceships. Why paint a black base a color? 

I could paint them if I meant to use them on a different colored surface, but I'm not, so I won't. I trust that the company knows best, but I want to try sanding, then a clear coat, before slapping paint on these. I'll post the results when I am done. 

I will post a full spread of all of the models at the end of this series, but I really wanted to focus on Green Squadron today and A-Wings in particular. 

I purchased 18 A-Wings, 3 B-Wings, 3 X-Wings, and 6 Y-Wings. This distribution seems to be about right for the Rebels Era. The Rebels don't really go crazy for X-Wings until Star Wars, which is just a few years later. 

Here are 2 images of the bases, first large: 

And the next, small. 

Yes, they require some handiwork, but nothing serious. I sat outside with my wife, with a glass of wine and a pair of scissors, trimming away. All of these took less time than a bottle of wine to finish. 

Now for the crazy bit: Studio Bergstrom does these in two different scales. A 1" scale which is what I have, but he does a smaller fleet scale series. Those are really tiny. To be honest, I can't give you a true scale, but if I had to guess, the 1" fighters are 1:600 scale. The fleet scale might be 1:2400, but that is a wild guess on my part. They do look nice. 

Here is a handy table of links for the models I have: 

Fighter Model	1" Scale (single fighter)	Fleet Scale (set of 6)
A-Wing	Click here	Click here
B-Wing	Click here	Click here
X-Wing	Click here	Click here
Y-Wing	Click here	Click here

In another piece of transparency, over on Studio Bergstrom's Facebook page, I urged him to raise prices. Since 2017, the very reasonable prices have only increased by about 11%, which is not enough. He tries to keep things reasonable and stable for his buyers, possibly too reasonable in my opinion. 

This is the first of a whole series of posts. I need to cover B-Wings and Y-Wings, then some other models I bought for A Billion Suns. I hope to alternate between model posts and D&D posts with the odd review post in between. 

In closing, let's remember one of the craziest A-Wing moments from Return of the Jedi. 

X2 - Castle Amber 2026 - Session 6.1 - Curses and Boons

We Were Promised Jetpacks are from Scotland.
This statue is cursed. 

In my last post, I didn't detail what each party member received from the Statues. 

Lance received a magic item, a +2 shortsword. Merry was given a +2 flaming sword, which he gave to Khouri. Both also received a ring of fire resistance, which they each kept. This means every member of the party has at least one magic weapon and a magic item. 

Khouri was cursed to grow a tail, which would slow her movement. As a post-human, she is immune to haste and slow. Instead, she was briefly incapacitated as her systems fought off the curse. She gets very hot when these sorts of alterations hit her. She might be able to fight or run while under this effect, but at a penalty. I love this effect as it is both helpful while coming at a cost. 

Merry was diseased, but he has a divine immunity to diseases. No effect. 

This is a Disney Magic Sword.

Sybil had her Intelligence go up from 13 to 14. This is not entirely helpful since she is chaotic with a disastrously low Wisdom of 6. On the positive side, she gains another bonus 1st-level spell. I use the old D&D Wisdom table for Magic-Users, switching out Intelligence for Wisdom. I got the idea from the Goldbox game Champions of Kyrnn.

The final curse is very interesting. Dorian was cursed with Empathic Healing. I totally ripped this off from the text-based game, Gemstone IV. 

Here is how Empathic Healing works: 

Dorian's cure and heal spells only work on himself. He can't directly cast them on others. Nor can he cast the reverse of a healing or cure spell at all. They don't function for him.  

When healing someone else, he picks a fixed amount of damage to cure: 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, or 20. You'll notice these numbers match dice. The subject of the healing immediately receives these hit points, up to their maximum HP. He cannot over-cure someone to more HP than what they had. Any extra HP is lost. When curing blindness, disease, etc., the subject is cured immediately. 

In the next round, the damage or status is moved from the healed to Dorian. 

Transferring hit point damage works like this: Dorian picks a number from the list above. He rolls a die to see how much damage he suffered in the transference. But there is a push-down effect. If he attempted to restore 20 HP, he rolls a 1d12 to see how much actual damage he took. A choice of 12 results in a 1d10 die roll, 10 points is reduced to a 1d8, and so on. Curing 4 HP, he receives a flat 2 points of damage. Dorian needs to be aware of his own resources since this could kill him outright if he doesn't have enough HP. 

In the third round, he can cast whatever spell he wants on himself to get rid of the damage. 

In the case of blindness, disease, etc. Dorian is allowed the same saving throw the victim failed. If necessary, he can cast the appropriate cure on himself, either immediately or when he has time. Since Clerics pray for spells, he can do this even when blind, deaf*, poisoned, cursed, or diseased. This is a benefit to Dorian here as the allowed saving throw can eliminate the need for casting a spell.

There is one more effect of this curse: it is communicable. If someone uses magic to heal Dorian, like Merry the Paladin or a different cleric casts a spell on him, the healer could also be cursed to have Empathic Healing, too. 

I like curses that work like legal stipulations. There is some good with even the worst curse. Khouri and Gabby have equally weird curses on them. Khouri is nearly immortal, but she is not subject to haste or slow spells. Other magical effects won't work on her, but I haven't explored all of these options yet. Gabby accidentally let a spell get away from her when she cast the Bonds of Hospitality on the Unicorn and Dragon**. She is forever bound to be hospitable to them because they are immortal. The same goes for Alexei, which is less of an issue as he is insubstantial. This will become a plot point later. 

Curses that become a definition of a character are the best because no one has to work to remember them. They just are. 

Next time, the party will meet a person slightly more cursed than themselves. 

*A second campaign note: I have a status for being deafened, and there is a second spell for curing it. It is the same level as the one for blindness. 

**Third campaign note: Unicorns and Dragons are effectively immortal in my campaign. They can only die from violence and misadventure. 

The IRL Update - Where did I go, What happened to Fiver and AI Shenanigans

The last 5 weeks have been Shenanigans. Things went sideways when our boy Fiver broke a leg. We have no idea how this happened, but it did. It was a bad break that required surgery. 

Of course, this happened a day before we planned to go to Lake George and a week before my daughter Catherine was going to move out. Neither could be canceled, so Catherine got him to the vet for an assessment while we went off on vacation. The break required some screws and plates, something the local vet was not able to do. The other option was amputation, again, something the local vet wasn't equipped to do. 

I said the local vet couldn't do this or that like that is a bad thing. It wasn't. They were able to get us to the appropriate animal hospital, coordinate appointments, and stabilize him with medication for comfort. They were awesome. 

As soon as my wife and I got back from Lake George, Catherine and Jen packed up Fiver and drove to the closest animal hospital that could do the surgery: Cornell University Exotic Pet Hospital. They did an amazing job. Fiver spent the week at their facility before coming home. 

During this time, I managed to get the garden ready. As you can see from the image, Fiver gets a daily pile of fresh herbs. He was not happy with the cage at first, but he got used to it. It's more like a cage in a pen. The whole area is about 8 feet long and six feet wide, with a small dog crate inside. There is nothing stopping the cats from getting in there to visit their buddy, and Fiver is smart enough to get out. But he doesn't feel like escaping right now. We don't lock him in the crate unless he is traveling, and he uses it as a bedroom. 

I know virtually everyone in the world has rabbits outside their homes, but what makes all rabbits "exotic" is the equipment and resources necessary to provide care. Our vet can't do surgeries on rabbits, especially a giant rabbit. They don't have much call for it. Dogs and cats have surgery all of the time, perhaps many times a day. They are equipped for those procedures because of the frequency of the need. Also, it's relatively cheap because of the frequency; the volume creates a built-in subsidy for that care. For that reason, getting a dog or cat neutered or spayed is super cheap. In case you were wondering, that cost us over $500 for Fiver's neutering, and it had nothing to do with his extraordinary size. The leg surgery was many, many times more.  

Think twice before you buy a rabbit. They really are exotic. 

The garden is tied to Fiver. We grow a lot of food for him. This year, I used AI for planning the garden. It helped me schedule when to start seeds, what to grow, how to arrange plants, etc. It could tell me what sort of things were safe for rabbits or bad for them. This is a big help as Fiver broke his leg at the exact moment all of these tasks were due. 

One of the drawbacks of AI like Gemini and ChatGPT is the lack of persistent memory. From the user's perspective, every new chat is a blank slate. You can schedule events in Calendar or Gmail, and make lists in Keep, but it isn't the same as having a little avatar waiting for you. Creating an account allows you to access prior chats, and both services have a persistent memory of what has gone before, but it's really weird. 

For example, when the LLM updates or the interface changes, I have to remind the AI to stop calling me "Phil". I know who I am. The other odd thing is, sometimes the language model will dredge up information and fixate on a couple of random bits, often in the form of "safety warnings". 

For example, it is aware that I like wine and I have diabetes. Out of the blue, it will suggest alcohol treatment centers or a better doctor. Thanks. It's conflating my purchasing wine for birthdays and holiday gifts with actual consumption. I do 3 wine tastings a year, and I use AI to keep a running tab of what my preferences, those of my wife, and family members and friends I buy gifts for, so it is kind of understandable that it thinks I drink a lot. 

In my last post, I mentioned that AI fixated on 4 characters from my Castle Amber Sessions. I asked it to find many of the misspellings I made in those posts. However, it also noticed that the names Lance, Gabby, Khouri, and Dorian appear more often than not and it locked on to them when I asked it to simulate the statues interacting with the party. 

One of the more perplexing things is the name Rakshasa. Both AI and my spellchecker are horrible at correcting typos of this name. I am fixing that today, without the help of AI. I write using my 1999 iBook, and all of the text exported from there is fine, but when I throw it in Blogger, Gemini and the built-in spellchecker go nuts. I just have to compare what I originally wrote to what was actually posted. 

In my next post, I will detail what the party received from the Statues. Right after I fix the Rakshasa issue... manually. 

These IRL updates won't be shared on social media because they are outside the genre of games, so if you like these posts, click that follow button or try Campaign Wiki, which gathers blog posts for you. 

X2 - Castle Amber 2026 - Session 6.0 Count Your Curses and Blessings

Tangent! You can now get these books POD!
Basic here and Expert here.

Gamers often perceive Old School D&D as lethal. That is true and false. Combat tends to be lethal because the players make poor choices in combat OR the DM goofs and throws a scenario at the party that they misconstrue as winnable. This is poor playing by either the character, the DM, or both.

Completely random things tend to be mitigated by the party being aware of a threat that they avoid, plus they have a saving throw or skill throw as a backup option. That tends to make magic, tricks, and traps far less deadly than combat. 

In all fairness, PC in anything higher than 2nd edition have way too many ways to avoid death. It's the way people play. Instead of the campaign, it's the individual players that count. I dislike this because players can be heroes, but never the stuff of legends. 

When playing OSE or any AD&D or B/X game, I have a general guideline: If no one rolls for it, whatever is expected happens, for good or bad. This isn't cheating. It's simply not leaving fate to dice.  

Back to the scenario at hand. Castle Amber, the Chapel. This is my typical ad link so you can buy it. 

I know... I know. If you are one of the dozens of people who are reading this, you own it. But still, there is the ad link.

It's been over a month, so let's recap. The heroes met the Dragon and the Unicorn, and with their help, defeated the Wild Hunt. There are 13 or 14 characters, depending on how you count:

1. Alexei (turned to a ghost) 

2. Belaphon

3. Dorian

4. Gabby

5. Jude

6. Khouri

7. Lance

8. Merry

9. Nononn

10. Rety

11. Sybil

Maybe one of the statues looks like
this.

We can add Warren, Parker, and Gronk the rabbit. Gronk will never have stats, being a familiar and a rabbit, but the two Magen are there to absorb party losses by slowly becoming a classed character. 

The party has advanced to the door to the chapel of Castle Amber. I need to put on my DM hat to navigate this part of the module. In the chapel, there are 24 statues with a 1-in-6 chance of coming to life (per character) and bestowing a curse or boon on that person. The problem is obvious: with only the 10 classed characters, every single statue should trigger every single time. That is neither mysterious nor fun, because the characters have a 50-50 chance of receiving a bad or a good effect. This turns the whole scenario into a Monty Hall conga line. The surviving characters would receive only the benefits of taking the fallen's treasure. 

The way I read this is that part of the module is that this is an event that should be mysterious. I also don't want the possibility of forking out 24 magic items, boosting everyone's stats, or giving every character a permanent plus one. I want events that further the story. 

Good-bad-good-bad!

First things first, upon entering the chapel, the party hears strains of music. Alexei's ghost plays a sad song on his lute. Surprised, but not too surprised, the party greets him. He warns them that what is about to happen is tragic. Madeline Amber was buried by her brother prematurely, and it will be unlikely that the party will be able to save them both. He also warns them about the dangers of the statues. 

Being non-corporeal, he does the only thing he can to assist them: he casts sleep on Madeline Amber to give the party time to think. He also mentions the Rakshasa entered the Chapel, discovered the trap door, and have moved on to their certain doom. Having done his good deeds, he fades away to his now eternal work of playing for the revelers in the Dining Hall. 

I dislike the trap door in this area because it is a dead end for the party to make it to the dungeon without finding the keys and secret to escape Castle Amber. This is one of the challenges when writing a module: something may make sense on paper, like the presence of a trap door, but could also vex the players and DM by causing unfixable problems. Alexei's warning to the party made more sense to me than ignoring the trap door as the module advised. 

Next problem. The statues trigger too often to be mysterious. One in six is a lot. I devised a new mechanic to trigger the statues. Looking at the saving throw charts, most of the characters have around 5 in 20 to save vs the effects of the statue. Well, that is close to 3 out of 4, so I rolled a bunch of four-siders. If the result was 1-3, then I rolled a 1d6 to see if the statue came to life. Yeah, the math doesn't work, and I am doing it backwards. 

After a bit, even this felt like too much die rolling. I could have resorted to my favorite OSR Solo oracle book, but that is also more die-rolling. I am not a fan of AI, but I do have a Gemini and ChatGPT account, so I asked AI to do it. 

And it was not as good as what I would have gotten from OSR Solo, but it was easier.  

I was reminded of why I don't like AI. I got a result, but a very curious one. The numbers look random, but for some reason the bot fixated on specific characters. I repeated this 4 times per chatbot. For some reason, it fixated on just 4 characters: Lance, Gabby, Khouri, and Dorian. At least 2 of those characters were hit in every run, sometimes more than once. When I removed several from the mix, the AI locked on two other characters. 

I don't like these results, but I am running with them with one modification. When Gabby saw the first statue touch Dorian, she immediately stopped participating. Jude stopped with them. In rerunning the scenario without these three characters, Lance, Khouri, and Merry became victims of AI fixation. 

Here were the results: Dorian was cursed. Lance received a magic item, as did Merry. Khouri was cursed to grow a tail (the slowing result), which her Post-Human physiology negated. Again, she suffered some harm as she overheated from negating the attack. Merry was touched a second time and was diseased. He is immune to that. Sybil received a +1 to one ability, and it was not a helpful one.  

I might make a follow-up post because I think I know why I got these results. We are going to leave off here. The next post will be 6.1, where I detail these results and possibly talk about AI.