Adventure Tourism

I talk to Noora from Monkey’s Paw Games about Harley Stroh’s classic DCC funnel adventure Sailors On The Starless Sea.
You can find Noora on Twitter @monkeyspawgames and buy physical products from monkeyspawgames.com.
All of Chris’ work can be found at Loot The Room.
Subscribers to Detritus get episodes early.
Pick up Sailors On The Starless Sea from DriveThruRPG. The Adventure Tourism logo and artwork were created by Micah Anderson.

Chris
Welcome to adventure tourism, a podcast where I talk to creators in the tabletop role playing games industry about the adventures of influenced and inspired them. I’m Chris from Loot The Room, and today I’m joined by Noora from Monkey’s Paw Games. Nora, who are you?

Noora
Yeah, so I’m Noora I run Monkey’s Paw Games and I hilariously enough only got into DCC in the last maybe year. And it kind of really sort of blew my mind away as far as as different like OSRS go just because usually everybody’s trying to imitate like, BX and and, and they did something completely different with like the dice chain and the mutation stuff. It’s it’s very, like, I love how inspired by like Warhammer Fantasy it is, and and that kind of it’s one of those things where I’m like, I really wish that I found this earlier. Because I think I would have been I would have been so into this like way, way, way earlier.

Chris
Same. I had exactly the same experience with it. Yeah, if I’d found DCC when I was 10 Instead of adnd. Obviously, it didn’t exist when I was 10. But you know, but still, yeah.

Noora
Like, I’m not sure what do you know, when they started putting these out? Because I know it’s not new, like it’s not super old, but it’s, you know, like,

Chris
I don’t fully know, like, I know, that used to publish D&D stuff, right, I think. I don’t know. I only found DCC last year or maybe, what year is it? Maybe 2020. I think I found ecc. I think it goes back to like 2012. So I think it’s 10 years old this year.

Noora
Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Because they had like an anniversary something earlier.

Chris
Oh, yeah. Though, that would make sense. It’s a weird game, because it like the book. And the way it’s presented kind of represents everything that I hate about RPGs. But it does so much cool stuff that I really love.

Noora
Oh, yeah. The I have the the softcover rulebook, the latest edition. And it’s, I remember when it came in the mail, I was like, this is this makes Zweihander look small. It’s it’s like the thickness of my forearm. It’s gigantic. But it’s the, you know, the art directions. Great. The layout is so much fun. Yeah, it’s like you said it. Like, there’s so many things that I should hate about this book. I just like there’s so much enthusiasm.

Chris
That’s That’s it. Like, it’s, it’s obviously a labour of love. Right? Yeah. Like, and I think that, that shows through the whole product line as well. Like all the adventures and everything. clearly written by people who really love it.

Noora
Oh, yeah. And even like, like the introductions to all of them. You know? It’s funny, because I feel like if I had read that, like, especially reading it now, the introductions are almost a turn off, because it’s like, oh, remember the good old days when NPCs were there to be very groggy, right? It’s so groggy. I was like, I don’t want anything to do with this. But then the whole team and everything they put out, it’s like, no, these are like, these are like the good Grogs they’re not It’s not Yeah, it’s not Comic Book Guy. It’s like, just like, they’re just like weird dorks. And I say dorks very affectionately. So just like weird dorks that want to run. Keep on the Borderlands forever.

Chris
And um, I’m so into that. Yeah. So I mean, I guess this is probably the right time to say what adventure have you picked for us to talk about?

Noora
So I picked Sailors on the Starless Sea, which is might be my favourite module ever written. It’s definitely my favourite DCC module,

Chris
It’s like the DCC module.

Noora
it’s it’s the funnel too I think, right like I think this is yes is the one that they always get defaulted to.

Chris
It was it was my first funnel. When I said two years ago, I keep hearing about funnels. Somebody please run a funnel for me. This was the one that got run for me. Yeah,

Noora
this one, I think It’s I think it works so well to from a funnel perspective because it’s almost like a party game. Like if you have a sufficiently nerdy enough crowd, you’re just like, okay, everybody’s rolling five characters. We’re gonna take a shot every time one of you dies hilariously because, right? It’s like, it’s very, and it’s like, all the notes are very, you know, like the the background is basically just like, hey, you know, the first five minutes of The Lord of the Rings movie. It’s that, but it’s Sauron and Saurons brother. And it’s like big Warhammer Fantasy vibes with like, oh, you know, there’s chaos gods and they’re evil men. Good. Killed them all, except they’re not really dead. And now instead of being like heroes, you’re a bunch of goobers from a town that keeps getting raided by beast men. And you’re going to like get your people back, which is like, it’s very much just like, okay, and go.

Chris
It’s like, the classic funnel setup of like, you are a mob of peasants with pitchforks and torches,

Noora
which I that was one of my favourite things, too, about that. That OSE funnel that just saw, Zed & Two Noughts, which, yeah, took me a embarrassing amount of time to realise the pun in the title.

Chris
Zoo. Yeah. I just got it. Literally. You’ve just heard me.

Noora
Yeah, it’s like I read it like four times cover to cover because I thought it was just fantastic. And then probably on the fourth time, I was like, son of a bitch way. This it’s, it’s so good. But in the same thing, it’s just like, Yeah, you’re a bunch of you’re you’re, you’re like a pockmarked mob of pitchfork and torch wielding, nobodies and maybe some of you will survive. So, so that you know, it’s, it’s, it’s so much fun as a starting point, as opposed to being like it like it’s so the antithesis of, of 5g. And I don’t even mean that necessarily as a shot at 5g. But it’s just like, No, you’re not like a like, No, you know, but you you do not want a background. If any of your characters have a background, they are going to die immediately.

Chris
The more we know about them, the more it’s going to hurt. Well, it’s

Noora
funny because too because I I was running funnels before I knew what a funnel in the terms of DCC was because, like, I ran a lot of dark heresy and legend on the five rings, both of which low level campaigns are very funnel like,

Chris
and like, Okay, I don’t haven’t played either of those games. So

Noora
both games, it’s very, very easy for you to die horribly, almost immediately. In fact, dark heresy, it’s almost expected in the classic, sort of like Warhammer style. And so yeah, I remember the first campaign that ever ran for dark heresy. It was a very, I think I started with seven or eight players. And it basically opened with them waking up with a headache in jail, being told that they had 30 seconds to grab gear out of a locker and then being shoved into a shuttle and then like, dropped onto a planet in the middle of a war zone. And I think there were like, like three people died in the first session because they ran into like an enemy patrol and an APC. And they got absolutely opened up on with like, a machine gun. But then like, one of the characters ended up like it was it was a lot of fun because they were fighting in like a cornfield. And then one of the dudes had like a big heroic moment where he like stole a grenade off a corpse and like lobbed it into the couple of the of the tank. And and that’s

Chris
the beauty of funnels, right is you get that moment where the character becomes a hero.

Noora
Exactly. There’s no like nobody had any backstories it was just very, very simple characters that everybody started out with. It’s just like, Okay, you are like, space cone and you are dude with a lot of guns. You’re a battle nun and you’re vaguely psychic person that’s obsessed with dice. Let’s go. And then their characterizations kind of evolved from that and and that campaign ended up running for like, six years before I had to stop jamming and wow, now one of the players are still carrying on with it as far as I know. That’s awesome. Yeah, it was it’s a it was a funny game for something that started on the the 4chan IRC server in like 2008

Chris
Wow, yes.

Noora
Weird times. But that’s like so. So like, that’s, that’s what I that was like the first funnel. But like, I didn’t have a word for it. And so like, coming across this and coming across sailors in particular, it was such a like, like, oh, there’s a word for that. And like other people are doing this and it’s really cool. And then there’s there’s a famous sort of like meme story of a dark heresy game using the like, the only war rules which is like, like Warhammer like war stories, basically, where they just like through like, like, you play as like a regiment, not like, so it’s kind of like, like, what’s that plays in the dark one? That’s the same thing sort of thing of Banda blades or whatever? On the blades? Yeah, yeah, it’s kind of like that. But because it’s Warhammer. It’s just a meat grinder. Right. Yeah. And it was like, There’s somebody wrote up like a, like the story of this game where the regiment just kept getting thrown against, like, Orcs and like, Tyranids and stuff, and then down from like, 5000, faceless goons to, you know, a dozen or so and then that becomes like, the party kind of thing. And I think that was that’s like in the 4chan era, too. That’s like, long before?

Chris
Or maybe not, I don’t know. So Sailors On The Starless Sea specifically. I know it’s great. You know, it’s great, obviously. What are some like? What’s your best memory of running or playing sailors?

Noora
I think my favourite. So hilariously enough, because I am like, forever GM basically, I’ve not actually run it. I’ve never actually played it. I’ve only run it.

Chris
That’s really interesting, because I’m forever GM. But I’ve never run it. I’ve only played it.

Noora
I’ve, I’ve run it maybe six seven times. It’s it’s very much like my touch point for when I’m sort of introducing people to what like, so So when people always like, especially on Twitter, people like oh, you know, what is the OSR? What is the OSR and people go to like design pillars or you know, this and that and the other. But I’m always kind of just like, if you want to know what an OSR game is compared to like another game, run sailors on the starless sea. And you’ll, you’ll have figured it out by the end of it, basically. So I think my favourite memory of running this is the first time so so this, this module has, I think my all time favourite encounter ever written, which was it Page Three has all the encounters based on the area. And it’s it’s the encounter right before the chaos Lord. Which is just 22 Beast men. That’s the greatest the greatest encounter ever written. That’s, like, that is it’s it makes me laugh every single time I read it, because it’s like, Wait a second. Like, like, 20 No, that’s not actually like, it’s actually 22 which is such an oddly specific number less so specific. What? Why not? 20? Why not? 25? No, there are 22

Chris
yeah I’m so used to encounter tables being like, 2d6 goblins,

Noora
right? Or Yep. Or, but no, this is just no, there are 22 Beast men go. That’s, that’s hilarious. Because, you know, and that’s the scene where you know, you get off the dragon ship after the cast Leviathan and you can try and, you know, take like cultist robes and sneak through them or you can just try and rush them all. My experience everybody always just tries to rush them always that’s what we did. Which is, which always ends up being a hilarious fight on top of the like, pyramid altars sort of thing. I don’t think it ever describes it as a pyramid but I I can’t see it not being a pyramid.

Chris
It gives off pyramid vibes.

Noora
Definitely. But yeah, just just that fight because it’s always like, the party jumps off the dragon ship. And there are 22 Beast men waiting for them on the steps of a pyramid and that’s just a very cool fight that at least five people die in every single time.

Chris
Oh, yeah. We we did not make it back across the lake. Oh, no. Yeah. Very much so

Noora
it’s, it’s a it’s a hard one because they don’t pull punches. No, and and that’s why that’s why I like this module as a like, example of OSR way, because everything here is designed to kill you. And Harley Stroh is so good at writing things that kill you, but in a way that like, it never feels cheap. It never feels cheap. It never feels undeserved. And it’s always very funny. Like, like 22 Beastmen is a great encounter. There’s another one in it that’s like, Oh, it’s a trap. After the the basement champion, I think where it’s like the it’s like the dagger comes out in the chest or whatever. And it’s, not only does it say like, you take one D for damage, but it’s also like you lose one d two fingers, which is such. Like, you didn’t need to add that. But he did. And I love it. There’s like no, you, you. It’s not, it’s not roll or you lose fingers. It’s no this is how many fingers you lose. Which, again, going back to like characters having heroic moments. It also provides so much opportunity to have like, very memorable but inglorious moments. So like if you survive this funnel, but you are the poor idiot that lost 1d2 fingers to that trap. That’s just a great story for like, your character. Forever. You know, you have this grizzled warrior who’s like, you know, makes it to level 10. But you’re always down Wandy two fingers because you reached into a treasure chest at level zero. Yeah. And I think that’s fantastic. Like that’s, that’s just it’s such a there’s there’s so much opportunity for like, very slapstick.

Chris
Oh, yeah. I think as well I love so you get the heroic moments, you get those in glorious moments. And you always get every funnel I’ve ever run or played. You always get moments of like, extreme cowardice. Oh, yeah, like the moment I fell in love with funnels and realise that like funnels are basically my favourite mode of playing. Whatever version of d&d… was the first death, the first character I lost in sailors was to the tar ooze.

Noora
I love the tar ooze so much.

Chris
I love the tar ooze. And we were in that room. And it was just like, slow and inevitable. And I picked up a stick or something and decided my character was going to fight it. And everyone else just left the room and barricaded the door with me inside it with the tar ooze. It was great. It was like I had the best time getting murdered.

Noora
it on fire by the fire snail. And yeah, that, that. I really love that. Because that whole like, chapel where it’s like, Oh, it feels like it can burst into flame at every moment. And there’s so much like, obvious tension. And after, you know, the divine horrors, which always kill at least two people, and then the avalanche, which always kills like five people. By the time they get to the chapel with the tar who’s in it. As soon as you’re like, oh, and you get a bad feeling about it. Everyone’s just like, nope, nope, nope, nope, no. Get the fuck out of here.

Chris
I think we we evaded the vine horrors, we didn’t go near them. Because someone, someone had a telescope in that starting equipment. And they telescope, the vine horrors and was like, No, we’re not going to do that. But then the avalanche got three levels.

Noora
Yeah, that the avalanche is is the way that this in this module opens is perfect, because it gives you that choice. But it’s very much a choice of like, okay, how do you want to? How do you want to be taught immediately that

Chris
how would you like to lose three or 4 characters

Noora
Yeah like It doesn’t softball like it doesn’t sort of ease you into it. It’s just kind of like, No Your choices are being strangled to death by Seymour or just an avalanche kills you. And it really like it’s a great way of seeing what kind of party you have. Yes, immediately too because it’s like do we will just rush in the front door or do you try and go around the side

Chris
and you feel that shift at the table and the way people approach it as well? Yeah, like they go from we are the heroes of this story to oh shit the were 15 of us and now there’s eight Yeah,

Noora
It’s, it’s a great like, because it just sort of like, presents these situations. These terrible, terrible choices and it’s like, I don’t know, what do you want to do? And even like, even from the rumours, because half the rumours are just false, but the other half of them are, are totally accurate. Like this is like, like, one of the rumours is just straight up, don’t go into well, somebody always gets told, right from the beginning, right in the opening box text, don’t go in the well.

Chris
And someone always goes in the well

Noora
Somebody always, every single time like, Hey, I wonder what’s down here. It’s like, well, you die. You get turned into stuff, and then you die. It’s great. And but because you’ve been told, because there is the rumour, right? And then, but then as soon as that happens, because then they’re like, oh, one of the other rumours is that there’s a dragon. So then people start like, looking for the dragon, which is technically not false. Because there’s a dragon ship, there is a dragon ship. But yeah, it’s a sleeping dragon lurks beneath the keep except his quest. And he’ll grant you a wish. Like, that doesn’t happen. But somebody goes down the well and dies. And then like, oh, well, that must be true, too. Right? So it’s perfect.

Chris
So I can’t remember if you were involved in this conversation the other day, but we were talking about the difference between rumours and plot hooks and the different purposes they serve. Yeah. And like Sailors is very light on plot hooks because it’s very much like you start in media res as you’re going on this adventure, you bought into it. This is what we’re doing tonight. But the rumour table is so good. Because it like you said it’s it’s almost a teaching adventure. It’s like, in fact, he even says in the text is up to the players to sort the truth from the lies. Yeah. How do you feel about that? Like the rumours. Half of them have just been tricks effectively.

Noora
So I I love it because like you said as as like a teaching point, I think there’s a big maybe not a disconnect, but not not a disconnect and like what rumours mean. With like, Trad play and what rumours mean with like, OSR play I guess? Because now I admittedly haven’t read too many like 5E modules but I’ve read a lot of Pathfinder stuff because I find the what’s the like structured play Pathfinder stuff where the is like the adventure society or whatever?

Chris
Like adventurers league for 5E…the pathfinder society, isn’t it?

Noora
Pathfinder society that’s what it is. Yeah. And and it’s like there’s there’s like an adventurers guild, it’s very much like, like your your clock punchers. You know what I mean? You’re like, you’re like a nine to five adventure and you’re getting jobs from like, your boss is like, Okay, you got to go to the minds of fan delver this week. Like, that’s, that’s funny. To me. That’s very funny. But all the rumours for stuff like that they’re all true. Yeah. And they’re used sort of as plot hooks, whereas with a lot of older modules, which I have read a lot of, like, especially you look at, in search of the unknown, there’s like a D20. Rumour table. And like, 15 of them are just like, blatantly false. Which I think it’s well, they’re rumours, right. Like, the whole point is,

Chris
is it’s, you know, what, when was the last time you heard a rumour that turned out to be true?

Noora
Exactly. It’s, it’s something to entice you. And it’s like, what, what I think, where I think the sort of miscommunication is, is that rumours now are used as a way for the GM to inform the players in a in a kind of diegetic sense. Where they like, you know, you know, the innkeeper giving the quest, and then this is this is the information for the characters, but it’s also for the players. Yeah, as a rumour table. To me. That’s just purely world information for the characters, not necessarily for the players. And so it doesn’t have to be true or not.

Chris
No, I think there’s maybe a difference in like, I think with trad play, or at least modern trad play. There’s maybe this expectation that like, yes, the GM is controlling the world as Sara but the GM is going to be upfront with the players about stuff. And there’s not really a separation between the world and the GM, like, yeah, Whereas OSR plays very much like, the GM is not going to mislead you necessarily, but the characters was in the world and I and that’s just, that’s just the fact of the world.

Noora
Yeah, no, I think that makes sense. I think it makes a lot of sense. And it’s like there’s, there’s a difference between, like the role of a GM as as like a like, like Trad plays, it’s more like storyteller and OSR play, it’s always almost more like, like referee facilitator kind of thing. Like you’re at least the way that I usually run games and I sort of understand play is that in that kind of genre, it’s the, you know, the GMs role is, is to present opportunities for the player to get into trouble, basically, as opposed to like, guiding them on this epic quest sort of thing.

Chris
Yeah, like in trad. You’re almost like, unveiling the story. Yeah. And so if some if a if someone is lying or misleading the characters that’s usually got like, some kind of payoff in the story beyond just this isn’t true. Yeah.

Noora
I think it points to there being a story in the first place. Like there’s no yeah, there’s no story in sailors on the starless sea

Chris
there’s barely even the idea that the beast men have been stealing villagers. Yeah, that’s nice. I think you can skim read the start of the adventure and completely miss that. Yeah.

Noora
Like you could, you could, you could not even use that if you wanted to. You could just be like, you know, there’s some

Chris
there’s a keep on the hill and here’s a rumour

Noora
Yeah. And you know, you’ve you’ve assembled an angry mob and have gone to investigate it or whatever, right? Like, it doesn’t have to be like a rescue mission sort of thing. You know, the rescue mission element does help especially with like, after the after the cast champion, you can you can sort of replenish your, your little XCOM stable of, of levels, your characters,

Chris
that’s a really nice, really nice trope of funnels, I use the the Arcadia funnel that I wrote kidnapped villages to replenish your last characters.

Noora
It’s, it’s a very good one. Especially because there’s so much treasure in this module, which that’s one thing that it it’s funny that people used to be so concerned about the like, like Monty Hall, sort of module where you get like, too much treasure or whatever, right? And, and this one throws like there’s a lot of stuff that you can get, you know, there’s that there’s that cage that nobody has ever found that has like a plus one long sword and, and blah, blah, blah. Just past the portcullis in here. And then there’s the magical axe

my favourite part about that is it explicitly says that you have to break his frozen fingers to pull the axe off. I love that whole slip and slide room is great. Nobody’s ever gone for his armour though. Which always kind of disappoints me a little.

Chris
No, we bypassed that room completely. When we played it, we I think we’d seen enough shit that when we saw that completely frozen part of the dungeon, we were like, No, yeah, exactly.

Noora
There’s there’s a tonne of treasure there. Like there’s, there is a lot of opportunity to outfit your characters. But like that, you know, there’s there’s a lot of risk involved as well. Yeah,

Chris
it really does that risk reward balance really well.

Noora
Yeah, one of the one of the more interesting things that I’ve had happened running this once is one of the groups they lost a bunch of people to the avalanche and then the vine horrors and then the poor Collison counter, which is another one of my favourites because it’s a really great way to I feel like with especially with with funnels, sometimes you can like the way that you run monsters is very mindlessly. But it’s a great opportunity to showcase how enemies are like thinking beings with like strategy and stuff. So like the poor calls encounter. Where you can you can literally cut like somebody in half like drop a portcullis on a person, but what I always try and do is have to have to be spend the to be spend that are hiding there. Wait until half of the party has moved under the gate, and then drop it and then split them because now you’ve split them up. So you got to figure out how to open the portcullis again. So you’ve probably dropped a gate on somebody which is a lot of fun in the first place.

And so yeah, It’s just like there’s, there’s, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of opportunity, but there’s a lot of risk. But

one thing that I, I’ve only seen one group do, which was after that after the portcullis encounter before the sprint champion, you know, we they started out with, like, 18. And I think they were down to like, five or six. And they were like, can we just go back to town and get more people? I was like, Yeah, but it’ll take a couple days. And that’s what they did. You know, they went, they went back to town, everybody went back up to five characters, six characters, or however, I think it was six characters. And then they came back. And the module sort of prepares for that in an interesting way. Cuz some of the things what is the the seeds for the vine horse, they regrow in like windy for days, right. And so I think they lost two or three people to the vine horrors at first, but then killed them. But then the spores come back in three days. So then when they came back with a full party, they saw there were like, five more vine hordes waiting there. So they had to go around and go up the avalanche thing.

Chris
That’s amazing.

Noora
And it was just, it was like, That was that was something that like, I would never have thought of. I think Stroh thought of it because that’s why like some things are measured in days and some things are measured in hours, but but I would have never thought that before they just did it and I think that’s another thing that these kind of modules and especially funnels provide opportunities for us because there’s just so much liminal space to play and like even more so than a than other kind of typical LSR type module. But then again, like the DCC modules all written so, so well, like they really do a great job of, of providing like a, like a sandbox to play. And as opposed to like a structured adventure, like, like the OSC stuff is is a lot of fun. And it’s really well written and the encounters are super cool.

Chris
It definitely feels a bit more trad-adjacent, than the DCC stuff

Noora
there’s there’s definitely a structure to it. Whereas the DCC stuff, like this one, and then even even the like dungeon ones, like was a tower of the Black Pearl or that one, that one’s

Chris
Yeah, that’s another Stroh, isn’t it? That’s the convention module from a couple years ago. It’s,

Noora
that’s like, fairly structured as far as a DCC module just because it’s like a dungeon. But even then, you know, there’s, it’s, it’s very Gonzo, it’s like, all of this stuff is written. That really reminds me of like, the sort of mega dungeons like caverns of Thracia, stuff like that. Like it’s very vague, very much, I think, done their research on.

Chris
I mean, I think DCC bills itself as like, I read everything in an appendix N, and then wrote a game informed by it. Yeah. And I think that really comes through, like in the game and in the adventures and in the content. They may for it it’s very, like, what’s the phrase I’m looking for? It’s not bound to Tolkein in the way that like d&d is,

Noora
yeah, definitely. It’s much more like pulp inspired.

Chris
Yeah. So um, Sailors On The Starless Sea. See, how do you think has it had any effect on your work? Like, directly or indirectly, or even if it’s just in the case of like, how you approach design,

Noora
but it definitely has the whole the way that it opens again, is it’s like, and, and Jared is rolling his eyes at the thought of this, but you know, the old like, oh, Mario, world, one rule one, like, teaches you how to play blah, blah, blah. But in this case, like it’s not, it’s not wrong. It’s a teaching adventure in the same way that like, Tomb of the serpent kings is, yeah. In that, you, you kind of learn about the genre as you play. And you know, the way that the way that it does that without editorialising I find a really really well done. And also it’s just good writing. Like, it’s very evocative. It’s funny. It’s gross. It’s

Chris
on a sentence level is just like, you can read it for fun. Oh, yeah.

Noora
Yeah, like you know, like I said, it’s like having to break fingers to get the axe. And, like the mutation tables on the goat and which is one of my favourite. I love any game that has a mutation table. I’m like a sucker for just because it’s funny.

Chris
My favourite on the mutation table is the the hunched, furred back with a second tiny head.

Noora
Yeah, that one. It’s very Total Recall

I love that one. I love any of the ones that like, turn you into like, like a snake or a lizard or give you like tentacles or whatever those are, those are always a tonne of fun. That’s one of my favourite things about like, Warhammer Fantasy. And, and 40k role playing games too, is because they have like similar mutation tables that you can get just by being exposed to chaos. But those ones I find it’s too bad. Like, it’s harder to use. Because especially in dark heresy if your character gets a mutation, that’s basically a death sentence, right? So, so it’s like, you know, there’s the fun of like, how to hide that mutation, but also at the end of the day, it’s like, no, you’re just gonna die. Whereas in DC, because it’s very like weird Gonzo pulpy fantasy. You could just have a dude with a tentacle for an arm. And like it’s weird but that’s not like a character ending affliction it’s it’s just something that you have now right? And it’s the same with with the DCC spell tables right like you know, I was joking about this on on Twitter the other day about how like you could just have he could be a wizard with chicken legs because you tried to cast fireball and I think that’s what it is.

Chris
I think fireball was the my first exposure to DCC. Matt Sanders sent me a photo of the the two page spread for fireball Yes. Like this is DCC. And I was like, What is this game?

Noora
Yeah, it’s it’s the, the selected the tone, and the writing and the information presentation. I’ve really tried to take notes from in my own in my own writing. And also like, there’s a there’s a conversational tone to the way that the game is written. Because it’s such a dense book, that it would be very easy for it to feel like you’re reading a technical manual or like a textbook or something. But it isn’t dry, like none of their writings is dry. You know, it’s evocative, like I said, it’s funny. You can you can read it just for fun. The writing is really well done. And it kind of goes on and on a little bit, too much like you could you could definitely edit it down.

Chris
It’s very, but it’s very maximalist in like every sense

Noora
Exactly, but it’s very easy to get caught up in the enthusiasm and not really care about how maximalist it is. And I just, I love the, these were like, I’d already kind of done it before. But then like, it’s kind of funny, like, to look back on the state sort of stages of me as a game designer, like, before. I, when I was just writing for other games, I didn’t think of myself as like a writer or a game designer, particularly. And then as soon as you put on that game designer hat, you’re like, Okay, I have to think about like, mechanical elegance, and I have to think about balance. And I have to think about this and that and the other and it has to be intuitive and slick and present. And then at least I got to a point fairly quickly, where I was like, Yeah, but none of that’s fun. Yeah, or it’s not fun for me. And so stuff like DCC where they’re just like, game balance 20 to be spent.

Chris
Go Yeah, I think there’s a really interesting overlap between especially Stroh’s adventures, which are really well written and almost kind of, they don’t depend on the mechanisms to be good. And something like a really good trophy dark incursion. That is just pure, good writing good ideas, because there’s no mechanisms happening there at all right, because I know you’ve written some really cool trophy dark stuff as well as like your OSR stuff? Do you feel like there’s something there? Or am I just talking out my ass?

Noora
No, definitely, I think trophy dark is a very, that was like, it’s a very, it can be a very gateway drug to the OSR, which I think is funny because, you know, they wrote trophy gold to be like the OSR trophy dark, but I find dark to be more way more OSR than gold because it you just there’s like you said there’s no there’s no mechanisms, there’s no amassing resources or, or abilities to try and counteract or negate the encounters. You know, you can play an entire incursion, and never once look at your character sheet. And, and that, to me has always been like, like, if you could sum up the OSR as a maxim, design wise, for me, it’s always been your character sheet doesn’t have the answer. And, and trophy dark is 100% that. And like you said it very much like when you strip away all the layers when you strip away the mechanisms and the like the expectation of of, of like mechanical mastery, like system mastery of understanding how the game works, and how to break it, when you strip away all that you’re left with really good writing for the GM. And you’re left with just kind of intuitive thinking for the players. And like player skill gets thrown around a lot in this genre. And I do think it’s a skill. But I think player still skill gets misinterpreted as something that like, like, oh, pro gamers like I am the greatest OSR player, blah, blah, blah, like you can, if you just run keep on the Borderlands for 20 years straight, like you’ll be able to figure out any, like it’s not, it’s not player skill in that, like you are the ultimate dungeon crawler, or whatever. And I find often a lot of the really fun moments come from when you expose people who aren’t used to like dungeon crawling type role playing games, to these games, they have no expectations and no references from which to draw upon. So they come up with really cool ideas that you would never have thought of, like, going back to town. That was somebody that I had never played a role playing game before. And they’re just like, why are we? Why? Why would we keep going? Why? Go back and get more dudes. And everyone was like, we can do that. And I was like, Yeah, that’s a really good idea.

Chris
That’s a really fun one. Because I’ve seen that happen, and it break a game. And that was the first time my brother tried to run. What was the first FFIV hardback adventure hoard of the Dragon Queen? The Kobold press one, right on the adventure opens with you’re walking towards the town. And there’s a Dragon attacks it. And we were like, why would we go towards that?

Noora
Yeah, right. It’s no, nope, nope. I guess we’re going I guess we’re going to the next town.

Chris
I guess we’re gonna be LOI. And that completely brought the adventure. But leaving and coming back is is an entirely different prospect. And it’s a fun little distinction there I think. Yeah.

Noora
I think it would have been as much fun too if they had decided that like, this was enough. And they were just going back to town. Because they did but bring a bunch of treasure and stuff

Chris
Yeah. And ultimately, that’s what they’re there for. Right?

Noora
Yeah, you’re just there to get money. And so I think you could you could do fun things with like, Okay, well, you you looted the first part of the of the keep, and then you went home. But the keeps still there and the Beast men are still there. And the chaos Lord is still there. So eventually, that’s going to spill out.

Chris
And that’s a very, like, classic. If you look at like classic Mega dungeons, like, yeah, the expectation is that you do it in a series of delves, and you may come back to it a year later, having had adventures elsewhere. And maybe things have changed, and maybe some things haven’t. And I think modern track kind of forgets that I think.

Noora
Yeah, it’s supposed to happen all at one go. Or it’s implied that it happens all at one go like, again, when I was reading in search of the unknown, the way that it’s describing exploring the dungeon, it talks about how things change over time. And like if you clear out The orcs in the first level. There’s like troglodytes in the lower level, like, like stuff from the lower levels come up because they’re being kept at bay by the stuff and the upper levels. And that’s really cool. And that’s, you know, that’s one of those things that. Like you said, I think a lot of more recent Trad modules, they don’t do. Because the idea is you go through this once, and you go through this in one or two sessions, and then you never come back, as opposed to like, keep on the Borderlands where you’re supposed to come back to, in search of the unknown where you’re supposed to, like, develop a base here, even, you know, even sailors on the starless sea like after you. I mean, assuming that you you make it off the, the island when it sinks.

Which I’ve had, like maybe one group do. It’s very much like, oh, you know, it spits you out. Maybe you, you just go back to where the keep is. Or maybe you go somewhere else entirely. It’s totally up to you. And you could totally have a group that’s just like, No, we want to go back and like, take over the keep, because you could just take it over

Chris
you’re level one characters, and now you have a keep,

Noora
yeah, you could you could take the keep over and not go into the well or the other. Well, the sinkhole, you just not go down?

Chris
That’s a good rule for life, really, isn’t it? Yeah,

Noora
you’ve got you’ve got Beastmen in the basement that keep trying to come up, but you’ve got to keep and you’ve got like a pile of treasure, and you keep exploring more and more and more. And I, I find that all of these old adnd modules. You know, what we, what we think of now is like, like West marches or like, What’s the word for it? Like? Not not campaign play, but

Chris
like domain play

Noora
Domain play, that’s it. That was just how the game was supposed to be? Yeah. Because, because before, like, originally, you needed, you needed gold to level up. But you also needed time and training. Right? And that’s what the problem with with or the alleged problem with these, like Monty Hall modules was, was that, oh, you’re handing up too much cool too quickly. But in like, the old, like, odd rules to advance, like a party of because the recommended party sizes, which are also gone. So they’re like seven, eight people, right?

Chris
Yeah. And then they assume hirelings as well. Yeah. You’re paying employees.

Noora
I think it’s like six or seven characters from level one to level two under the old rules. Cost like 20,000 Gold.

Chris
Yeah, of course, you’re handing it out like candy.

Noora
Yeah, right. Which it’s, it’s bananas. But that was like, just the way that it was intended to be like the game arose out of board games play. And the idea was that you were like a war band that was building into like, an army or a castle or whatever. Yeah.

Chris
Yeah. The goal was always scale. Yeah.

Noora
And I think it’s only since like, Third Edition, probably, because I kind of skipped second edition. But it feels like in third edition, it became Lord of the Rings heroic fantasy, as opposed to, like army builder.

Chris
Yeah, I mean, I grew up with second edition. And I think it was it was heading towards I think once Dragonlance happened. It started to move towards a more like episodic story based you are individual heroes doing individually heroic things, right. Like, I don’t remember really doing much in the way of domain play and like, building armies and stuff when I played ad&d, but I was also eight years old. So you know.

Noora
Yeah, my knowledge of second edition is strictly with the Ba;dur’s Gate and Icewind Dale games. It’s the only reason I know why how THAC0 works. Yeah.

Two things as sort of final notes about why I love this encounter so much or this module so much. First, the environment is actually hilariously more deadly than any of the individual fights. Yes. Like the avalanche fight is incredibly lethal. It’s not even a fight. It’s just like, you all take one D 10 damage, and your equipment is destroyed hilarious. Stuff like The Rock grubs are basically environmental kills the traps So it’s more about like being cautious and sneaky than it is about being like. Tough, heroic and violent. Yeah. So so that I love. But also, if you look at the two, like big encounters in this, the the cast Leviathan and then the boss the chaos Lord, the castle of if and fight is so much harder than the chaos Lord, and you can bypass it. But like, I think the the chaos Lord dies after like 20 damage, and you have to do 66 damage to make the giant squid runaway, which is a very like, borderline like JRPG like secret boss type encounter that I think is so much fun because and it’s one of those things where it’s like, okay, well now you’re on a boat, and you have to cross this ocean. And everybody knows that something funky is going to happen. You know, there’s, there’s the tablet that like, possesses you to start carving hearts out. And also there’s just like, it’s a big expanse of water and you’ve got a boat, you’re like, Okay, we’re gonna get attacked by like a giant shark or a squid or something.

Chris
And you’re all wearing armour. And yeah, you’re not sure that any of your peasants can swim.

Noora
And it just like, grabs you off the boat and sucks you in the water. Like that’s, it’s that’s just a great encounter. Because it’s, it’s so it’s almost more again, like an environmental sort of thing. Like you’re not really fighting.

Chris
I mean, the environment makes it the environment makes the encounter what it is. Because if you were still on the beach with the Leviathan, you would just run away from it.

Noora
Yeah, it’s just not as funny. But like, when you’re in the water, you know, it’s trying to eat the boat. It’s trying to you like, it’s it’s great. So, so that, that’s another thing that I’ve I’ve tried to sort of emphasise, because I love I love travel games, especially like, like to be a fun campaign is less like dungeon crawling to get treasure, but it’s like going on like journeys across weird landscapes. And so coming up with ways that the landscapes are more perilous than any fight. Yeah, I find infinitely more enjoyable. And that’s something that ultraviolet grasslands does really well. Especially like, there’s the one, the one section, it’s my favourite section in the whole book of the death facing passage.

Chris
I haven’t read it, so you don’t have to tell me about it.

Noora
So it’s basically this giant Canyon. And then there is a giant black tower with like an evil eye off in the distance. And you can’t see the tower from anywhere. But when you’re trying to traverse this canyon. If you look at the tower, you die, you get turned to dust immediately. So you have to cross this canyon without looking backwards. Because if you look backwards, you turn to dust. It’s It’s hilarious. It’s it’s so much fun. Because there’s no role, there’s no, like the only kind of save is to like, try not to look directly at the face of death. And you don’t even have to go through the canyon. And in fact, everything and everyone is like, no go round, because it’s not good there. But if you want to go through the death face and Canyon, you might get evaporated. And that’s just it’s just really funny to me. So that kind of thing. Like I love that writers are still doing this kind of like giant middle finger to the not even really because it because it it it Telegraph’s it from a mile away. And I feel like if you get turned to dust you kind of like, well, I should have seen that coming. It is called the Death facing passage. Like yeah, it’s it’s very funny. And so I love this, you know, people, I mean it. It really depends on the expectations for the game, obviously, because a lot of people feel very attached to characters if they’re playing like a character driven story. And they have an idea for their character story and the kind of randomness of that sort of evaporation would feel very unfair. But if you’re buying into these kinds of this kind of play these kinds of journeys, I can’t see anything other than it being an absolutely hysterical like pounding on the table moment of Whoops. Sorry, Chris, but you, your character looked at the face of death and you turned to dust in front of literally everybody, because like, what do you do? As the rest of the group? There’s like, oh, Chris just got turned to dust. What do we do we go back. Do we? How do we how do we? How do we?

Chris
How to how do we go back without looking at it?

Noora
Yeah. Do we tell? Do we tell their folks? What do we like what? Sorry, Chris. What happened to Chris? Oh, yeah, they looked backwards and got turned into salt. We tried to bring back their personal effects, but they also got turned to salt.

Chris
Sorry, sorry. We have got plenty of seasoning now though. So

Noora
yeah, it’s that’s it’s very funny. Like it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s like it’s like the Bridge of Death in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Right. It’s,

Chris
it’s really grim, but really funny at the same time. Yeah, you can’t you can’t not laugh at that. It’s that’s slapstick. That sounds great. I’m gonna have to read UVG just for that.

Noora
It’s worth it just for like, a couple parts like that. Like, sometimes it’s just like, No, you die. There’s like, like, every every new zone, there’s a misfortune table where you roll, basically a charisma check. And depending on how well or how badly you do on the check, good things, or nothing or bad things happen. And the bad things are usually pretty funny. That they’re either from like you lost. You lost your shoes to you got turned to salt. Excellent.

Chris
This was really fun. Thank you so much for giving me an hour of your time. This was great.

Noora
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Thanks for Thanks for bringing me on to talk about my favourite. My favourite ways to kill people.

Chris
Yeah. For the people who are hopefully listening, where can we find your stuff? What do you got going on?

Noora
Yeah, so I’m all there is a I run a web store monkey’s paw games.com, which I sell mostly other people’s work just small run prints of zines and pamphlets and smaller games in Canada, but I ship worldwide and then you can find me on Drive Thru RPG and Itchio at monkeys ball games, or on Twitter, at monkey’s paw games, where I’ve got a lot of my own work, and also through stuff like Patreon I’m doing which actually your envelope just went in the mail today. Of the speaking of travel games, I have we’re doing we’re bringing back the 80s play by post with Chainmail. So and that’s on the Monkey’s Paw Patreon. Which every month everybody’s getting a postcard with like a little mini adventure encounter. Weird, weird stuff. I’m so excited for that. Yeah, it’s gonna be good. I got I got like a little guide book printed out with all the rules and the the characters and character sheets and stuff and it has a note section. So by the end of the year, everybody’s gonna have a little booklet that has like their weird journey in it. So I think it’s it’s kind of like a, like an OSR journaling game, which I think is going to be pretty cool. It’s very, it’s very Fighting Fantasy inspired. So I was

Chris
just about to say I can’t believe we’ve been talking for an hour about a venture that Russ Nicholson did art for and we haven’t mentioned Fighting Fantasy wants. So I’m gonna get you back to talk about like Warlock of Firetop Mountain or something.

Noora
Oh, I will yell about Deathtrap Dungeon for half hour easily

Chris
Cool. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. And thank you for listening to this. I am Chris Bissette. I run Loot The Room. You can find me on Twitter @Pangalactic and everything I do at loottheroom.io

Links to all of Noora’s work. And the stuff that we’ve talked about will be in the show notes as well as a transcript of this episode. Thanks very much for listening.