Enemy Within Chapter 2: Mary and Robert

Chapter 2

"Enemy Within" is campaign written for the Dark Fantasy role playing game Shadow of the Demon Lord by Robert j. Schwalb. My campaign is set in present day Washington D.C. and I have molded the core rules to make it work. You can find out more about the story, characters, and progress HERE

In between sessions, Monkeywrench and Billy Jack learned that the men they killed in the basement are part of a large group whose sole purpose is to open a portal to another “dimension” called The Pale or bring about the destruction of this one. Whichever comes first.

Monkeywrench honed his fighting skills. Billy Jack became imbued with magical ability and spent his downtime understanding more about his magical talent and the Shadowed World. They also  met and recruited a hipster faun barista, Eldric.

A Night to Forget - A Shadow of the Demon Lord session

So it has bean a LONG time since my last post...

While I have gamed quite a lot over the last couple of years, I have not written about it.Jobs, family, kids, and ADD have really interfered with my ability to post. But anyway, here I am and here is  another post!

A Night to Forget

After running and playing Shadow of the Demon Lord by Robert J Schwalb for a while now I wanted to try something a bit different. I looked over the book, house ruled a few things, added some equipment, and changed the setting a bit. Then, me and three others sat down to make characters and test it out.

D&D with Kids! Tools of the Trade

Tonight's game was postponed due to scheduling conflicts and believe me my youngest (Stealthy age 6) said many time he couldn't wait to play, "Dungeons of Dragons." No, I don't correct him cause I think it's cute! Despite not being able to play, we did get a bunch of D&D hype going on this week.

D&D with kids! "Chasing Pigs"

I have taken my first steps into indoctrinating my children into the world of role-playing games and that of Dungeons and Dragons. I watch them "roleplay" with each other all the time in their imaginative play together. I heard many times, "Ok now I say, Back you foul beast!" as the oldest swings an imagined sword of fire towards my oldest who is pretending to be Slimer from Ghostbusters. He in turn says, "I've leveled up so your fire sword can't get past my slime armor." So, I know they have the imaginations. They have these basic pre-programmed ideas of fantasy, swords, of powers and of levels of monsters and of fighting bad guys. I figured it was about time to get them into RPG's, especially Dungeon's and Dragons.

Shadow of the Demon Lord story

I am re-posting this entry with some news. An NDA has been mostly lifted and I am finally, FINALLY able to share a dark secret! Since about the beginning of 2014, I have had the honor and privilege of being a playtester for the very first game from Schwalb Entertainment, LLC, Shadow of the Demon Lord.

Here's the thing. I could talk about Robert J Schwalb's ridiculously long list of design credits (D&D 5th Edition, A Song of Ice & Fire Roleplaying, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, everything else). Or I could tell you all the ways Rob's twisted mind has spewed forth this game of apocalyptic dark fantasy. But you don't care. What you care about is that this game is really, really, REALLY good. It's super easy to learn, even for people who've never played a tabletop RPG before. It's super easy to run and write adventures for. The narrative presented below is actually a session that I ran for my group of playtesters. Some parts of the NDA are still intact so I can't really go into details about story creation but let me tell you, this session was created completely on the fly, in the moment, and done with the greatest of ease!

Character's are built around a path system that lets you build any kind of character you want, now matter how out-there, and still be as effective and involved as any other player. And most importantly, every single time I've sat down at the table to play it, or run it, I've had a blast.

Now to the Narrative: 
Some of you have read this before, if so I've changed some wording because... Well now I can say say some stuff! For the others, I hope you enjoy...

Renholder is a human "looking" traveling priest, spreading the word of his heavenly father to all who will hear.

Bjorn and Gandr are both Jotun, decendants of the great giants of the North. They are traveling together by sea. Gandr is a child whose parents were recently killed and is now in the care of his uncle, Bjorn.

Andron, the Orc, was on his way back from an outpost to find his village ravaged by plague. With nowhere to call home he took to the road.

They all descend upon a small Nordic-esque fishing village. The two giant-kin arrive by trade ship from the north. Once docked, a member of the ship’s crew frantically yells something to captain in a foreign tongue then points towards the village. The captain pulls out a telescope and spies the area. He drops the telescope and begins barking orders to his crew. The crew quickly ushers the passengers off the ship, raises the gangplank and rushes the ship back out to sea. The other two players enter the town from different ends, one from the east and the other from the south.

Simple Possession Act 3 (pt 2)

Skleet erupted over the comm in a panicked state complaining about upcoming problems. He found B'uran at the space port. But he wasn't alone. It appears that ol' stumpy B'uran was in league with the twin Twi'leks that we ran into on that space station of Kesaris! You know the one that shot Skleet in the face! He's gonna like getting revenge on that one.

GM NOTE: I use the image of Oskara, the pregenerated character from the EotE Beginner Box to represent Sheva'asta and Teva'asta, twin Twi'lek Bounty Hunters . Because she just looks bad ass!

Simple Posessions Act I Outline

Someone asked me to post a high level outline or description of what I use to run my sessions and I thought, OK. But then I got thinking about it and realized that it might be a bit harder than I thought. Reason being is that I generally GM off the cuff, on the fly, or by complete improvisation. I play off of, and react to, what the characters do in game.



With all that in mind, sometimes (meant rarely) I come up with an incredible adventure idea or story arc and want to completely flesh it out. When I do this, my intentions are to post it online somewhere for all the world to see and enjoy, but then my A.D.D. kicks in and I never get it finished (hence the title of my blog). This time, however, I have Episode 1 Act I completely fleshed out and ready to send to the webisphere! 


Bare in mind, that this was written explicitly for my group and may not work for all groups. I know what motivates my group, and generally know how they will react to situations. If they don't react the way I need them too, then I at least know how to coerce them into making the decisions I want them to, without them noticing too much.


So here goes...

Simple Possession Act 3 part 1

This Act begins as the crew of the Krayt Fang land on Formos. The come here looking for an astromech droid that is carrying vital information about the Kessel Run. Formos is practically a barren rock that is located at the end of Kessel Run. The rocky barren landscape is not very hospitable and the air is thick, stale and barely breathable. The planet has one space port that is surrounded by a small town consisting mostly of warehouses and small homes. Although Formos is primarily used for small smuggling operations, there is a small Imperial garrison station here.

I have decided to narrate this Act through the eyes of our scoundrel, Knosh. It should offer a different perspective on the group and their dealings. I'd like to eventually tell parts of the story from all players perspectives, but who knows.

Also, there wasn't really much in the way of GM notes to include. there were a lot of failed rolls, most of which will not be noticed by Knosh, so it was left out.

So here we go....

Simple Possession Act 2 (pt 2)

As Knosh was heading back to the ship, he noticed B'uran leaving the space port. Just my luck. He followed him for a few minutes and eventually caught up with him. With a blaster pointed at him, B'uran and Knosh came to an agreement. Just about that time, they noticed a patrol of Stormtroopers heading their way. They quickly returned to the ship.

The deal they made was that B'uran would give us 1,000 credits to get him off the planet. They negotiated that he would give us half now and the other half once he was off the planet. About this time, Skleet was waking up and was wondering where his 200 credits were. We thought he was just still out of it from the sedative but he argued that he told Knosh that it was only 800 credits but in reality there was 1000. Either way, they were all mad at me, except for Tabo. He's been a bit quiet since we arrived on Tatooine, maybe the sand is affecting his breathing apparatus.

Simple Possession Act 2 (pt 1)

Last night was another session of my campaign. It was so awesome. As I told my players afterwards that the story is going along so much better than I had planned and each on of them are placing little plot hooks here and there that will make the over all story just amazing. To our dismay, our Wookie pilot did not attend. He promised he would be there next time.

GM NOTE and SPOILERS: For this Act, I used the setting of Mos Shuuta as laid out in the Beginner Box Set. I presented the adventure sort of backwards than intended. As written, the PC's are trying to escape Mos Shuuta and Teemo, in my game they are trying to gain audience with him but are also still trying to find the Hyper Matter Reactor Ignitor and fix the Krayt Fang. I originally did not plan on using the imperial presence of Lt. Herkin and the Stormtroopers as laid out in the Beginner Adventure but because of Obligation I decided to throw them in with a little different story hook than is in the Beginner game.

What else? Ah, B'uran. The Tw'lek who was Trex's bounty. I have changed his back story around a bit, I can't really say how just yet, but he is still wanted by Teemo and ads a lot of inter-character intrigue to the session. As you'll see.

So here we go, Simple Possession Act 2, as told  by our noble doctor No'vus Waravan...

Simple Possession Act I (pt 2)

"T-minues 2 minutes 30 seconds until emergency orbital reentry"

Holy shit! This station IS sinking!

It was good thing that on the way to this station I did a bit of research and happened to have a map of the station stored on my data pad. With that, a course to the next, and only, hangar was pretty easy to find.

GM NOTE: Old doc here went to pull up his data pad and try to search for another hangar. He rolled a triumph so I stated that he had already had the map stored and could find a short cut to the hangar.

Right behind me were Knosh and the others. In fact there were probably a few times during our run that Knosh pulled ahead of me. He seemed more panicked than the rest of us and was looking for an escape pod. Poor guy. It seemed that everyone he found, was already taken or that the entry doors were stuck. I guess that happens in a dilapidated space station. which made him panic even more.

The Cast

And away we go...

I've been writing pretty steadily over the last few weeks getting ready for my Edge of the Empire Campaign. I'm really excited about running and cannot wait. The title of the campaign is A Dark Black Past (DBP). Yes, Megadeth came across Pandora and I used a bit of lyrics, but it is makes for a perfect title for this campaign. The first episode titled Simple Posession and as the title suggests the episode revolves around... wait I can't exactly say just yet as I have some players that will read this.

I have about 9 people that want to play but based on past experience that is too many. I once ran a Star Wars RCR game that had 12 or 13 people and it was a nightmare. If I remember correctly they were trying to take command/control of a Star Destroyer and one combat lasted 4 hours. Needless to say that the campaign only lasted one session and was never brought back up. I'm really surprised that my players ever wanted me to GM again.

GM Holocron

Today, or yesterday rather, I've started my GM Holocron. I would like to thank GMChris and GMDave for this fabulous idea. They presented the GM Holocron on their d20radio Order 66 podcast. This idea will prove to be very very valuable in my future GM plans.

While they have a community GM Holocron, I've decided to do my own instead. I am having issues creating stuff on theirs. If one day I gain the right permissions to add pages, I'll contribute a lot of content.

Basically, a GM Holocron is a stockpile of resources designed to make the arduous task of planning and setup of a session easier. The GM Holocron is a document/folder/ file system that will contain lists of NPC's, equipment, adventures, images, ships, and encounters (called set pieces). I would normally have just used InDesign or Publisher,  but I have recently found Evernote which is perfect for what I want to do.

Campaigning in the Edge

This is my first post in a while because…. Well, I haven’t really done any gaming in what seems like forever. With Star Wars Edge of the Empire RPG on the horizon this will all change soon. In fact, the Core Book, the GM’s Pack, and Beginner game should all be on my doorstep sometime next week. I hope. I tell ya, I can’t wait! I’m as giddy as my 5 year old before his birthday party!

The plan is to start my campaign shortly after they finish up this current epic adventure, set in the universe of Marvel Super Heroes. Yes, the classic 80’s RPG. Sadly, I am not playing in that one, but the few sessions I’ve watched, it seems awesome!

In the meantime, I am slowly and carefully building my campaign. This campaign is to be a yearlong epic adventure mixed with intrigue, deception, bounty hunting and the shady underworld of a galaxy far far away. While I don’t want to give too many spoilers away, I do want to set the hook.