Treasure Hunters of Charlemagne

The latest adventure from Ganesha Games in the Four Against Darkness (4AD) series is Treasure Hunters of Charlemagne. I wrote this supplement, and thought it might be a good idea to say a little about it...

From cover to cover, it is 44 pages, and requires two of the core books to play, the original Four Against Darkness and Four Against the Abyss, written by Andrea Sfiligoi. The reason is that the party starts at 5th level, so all the rules in Four Against the Abyss come into play, such as expert skills, madness, lycanthropy, hirelings etc. I really love the additional things Four Against the Abyss brings to 4AD, and this adventure has been developed with those rules in mind.

Treasure Hunters of Charlemagne is set in Europe in the late 8th Century. You use a party of 4 characters which can be of any class, except for elves, dwarves and halflings. Despite being in a real world setting, it is outright fantasy, so you still have wizards with all their spells, clerics, barbarians, rogues, warriors and swashbucklers.

Inspiration is drawn from mythology of the time and works such as chanson de geste. The world is full of mythical beasts, enchanters, and magic items. It is also full of deceit and intrigue, some of which makes its way into this adventure.

The game takes place on a map of Europe. You decide which areas to travel to. Each area has its own fixed encounter and background, so you have a lot of control in the path taken and developing the unfolding story. The campaign is not meant to be scripted, there is no one correct answer. Many different paths that can be taken to achieve the end goal.

Random encounters happen as the party travels around Europe from place to place, from things jumping out of forests and mountains, to bustling towns. The game is meant to play like an "edited highlights reel", where sometimes you travel without incident, at others all manner of things start to go wrong.

Towns are very important, it is here where a party gets to recover and engage in other activities; there might be a jousting tourney for warriors, thieving opportunities for rogues, wizards might try to track down ancient books for spells and clerics pray in a monastery. You might also bump into interesting people and hire some help. Things can also go terrible wrong here, such as characters getting into drunken brawls and even be arrested.

Another aspect I wanted to model was party unity, or fellowship. Unlike a one-off dungeon bash, here the game could represent many months of travel, so keeping the party motivated becomes an issue. The party will face tests of its fellowship, that could see a character storm off!

The ultimate aim is for the party to find clues, survive all the various challenges, including political and other intrigues that may be thrown its way to recover the spear of destiny and deliver it to Charlemagne. No doubt that once this happens, new chapters will be added to the chanson de geste!

Knight of Destiny

The latest offering from Ganesha Games in the Four Against Darkness (4AD) series is The Knight of Destiny. I actually wrote this supplement, so will try not to wax lyrical about it too much...

Some background first. 4AD is a solo RPG game created by Andrea Sfiligoi, where the player controls a party of four characters that move through a randomly generated dungeon. Since its initial release, a number of supplements have come out. First was Caves of the Kobold Slave Masters, and then Dark Waters, both of which will kick off first level parties through to the third level. The next release was The Three Rings, which is for third to fifth level characters, so a logical progression for parties that moved through one of the previous supplements. Though the 4AD base game itself can be applied to any world or background, the supplements have theming, being set in the world of Norindaal, which is the official world of Song of Blades and Heroes.

The Knight of Destiny applies the game system to a medieval Arthurian world, where a single character (a starting 3rd level paladin) heads out from Camelot on a quest for the grail. It is set in the outdoors, so there is no dungeon generation or map making. The main inspirations are Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, the John Boorman's 1981 Excalibur film, and even a good dose of Chaucer's Pardoners Tale!

During the adventure, the paladin will come across a whole menagerie of creatures and characters, some benign, others not so. An important concept in the game are inns, it is here where the paladin can rest and listen out for rumors to help in the quest. Retainers can also be hired at inns; they will bring with them various skills (that the paladin does not have) to help on the quest. Another key concept is piety; at various points in the game, the paladin will have to make life threatening or moral decisions to succeed, as only the most righteous can find the grail.

While the paladin is busy questing, a larger story develops in the background where the evil and traitorous forces led by Morgana and Mordred will grow in power and try to defeat King Arthur. There is a role reversal for the player here, as the paladin can shift from being the hunter to the hunted, as increasingly powerful knights (bosses) will try to stop the grail from being found.

My aim was for The Knight of Destiny to provide a solid challenge, and be random enough for it to give a different game/experience every time it is played. My success rate in playing is somewhere below 50% - so finding and returning the grail to Camelot is not that easy! The randomness is brought about by a number of tables, similar to the 4AD base game approach where there is no scripting.

Anyway, I hope this a good addition to the 4AD family, taking the system into a semi-historical / mythological background.

Review of Dark Waters (No Spoilers)

Having just downloaded Dark Waters, the next supplement to Ganesha's Four Against Darkness (4AD), I was keen to give it a play.

4AD is a solo pen and paper RPG, which tries to capture the classic feel of the dungeon bash. The game has a lot of replay-ability as dungeons and monsters are randomly generated. One "scripted" supplement has already come out, Caves of the Kobold Slave Masters (CotKSM), which follows a set theme with a background plot.

Dark Waters is second supplement to come out, and like CotKSM, has a scripted background plot and a strong sea-faring/swashbuckler theme. It also introduces an entirely new character class - the Swashbuckler, a sort of fighter with some thematic abilities suiting the class.

The first part of Dark Waters is similar to the first part of CotKSM, in that there is an already generated map with it's own set of bosses and minions. One major difference is that the party can choose from two separate narratives to start with, each with it's own benefits and outcomes (what these are is not known before the choice is made).

So I created the following 1st level party to venture through the first section;

• A Swashbuckler (Jacabo)
• A Wizard (Balthazar)
• A Cleric (Ethelred)
• A Dwarf (Thorgrim)

It is hard to write about what happened without giving away spoilers, but it felt more difficult for a 1st level party than the core 4AD. A lot can go wrong, some of the situations and bosses were challenging. Though no-one was lost, Balthazar (the Wizard) and Ethelred (the Cleric) came close. They all got to level up, but had to spend most of their treasure to remove certain conditions that happened to them. There are things that can happen to characters that seems quite bad at the time, but can end up being a cool (and really pirate thematic) character effect.

The second section is in the dungeon crawl format of 4AD. It is thematically tied into the world of Norindaal, and is the exploration of a sunken temple somewhere near Atlis, with its corresponding sea creatures. There are new tables for the various monsters, events, treasures, features and other things. During the game I rolled up 21 rooms before completing. After running into a lot of the different minions and vermin, I found that the attack abilities of the monsters in this adventure probably favours a different party/character mix than what works in 4AD. This is good, as what works in one game should not necessarily work as well in another.

In the end, more through good luck then good management, the party survived intact. One thing I did (hopefully correctly) was that I found 3 clues, and used them on the "weakness of a monster" ability, which can make all attacks on the final boss at +2. Clues are one of the great things in 4AD, and give some extra narrative. I just need to think up something creative as to what the clues could represent :) Ultimately, Jacabo and Thorgrim ended up on level 4 each, while Ethelred and Balthazar ended up on level 3 each. There was a fair bit of cash and magic items at the end, as the intrepid party awaits it's next adventure.

One feature of Dark Waters was that some campaign benefits are bestowed upon the party. How these can come into play are probably up to the players imagination and forthcoming supplements.

Overall, there is a lot of bang for your buck here. For the price of a few dollars, there is at least 2 hours plus of entertainment. The new swashbuckler character class also looks quite usable outside of Dark Waters.