The Ten-Minute Guide to the Hill Cantons

What the Hell is This Special Snowflake?

This Slavic acid fantasy snowflake is the world of Zem. The Hill Cantons is a region proper (a loose collection of poorly-run borderlands cantons ostensibly ruled by the Overking), the name of the seven-year campaign and now a published backdrop to be ignored and smiled at indulgently like an eccentric uncle.

Zem is a world divided into four near-symmetrical parts, double bisected by the World Canal, domed by the heavenly firmament, and riding on the shell of the World Turtle that swims in a spiraling loop through the cosmic void. It is believed to have its reflection in an mirroring Anti-Reality.

Old wives also foolishly believe it to be a spherically-shaped, concentric “shellword” , a world inside of an Overworld and containing another Underworld. And that the heavenly firmament is but the illuminated rock underside of that upper layer of the world which itself elliptically orbits an outer sun, one of countless billions.

But that's crazy talk.

You can click on me. 

Where did Zem Come From?

Some believe that a dreaming Overgod in floated from Demonspace to this dimension and created it in his self-loathing/loving image. Others believe that the world is but a psychic projection of another, a shadowy cave of folk-spirits and broken platonic ideals.

What Kind of Cracked God Would Want to Live Here?

For a world dominated by a monotheistic religion (the Sun Lord and Solarity) that denies even the existence of other divine forces, Zem is crawling wall to wall with countless cohorts of failed gods, godlings, local gods, beast gods, hero cults, and atrophied gods.

Read all about it in the Hill Cantons Cosmology if you aren't asleep yet. Or see here for the Cosmological Appendix N. 

Just What Exactly is Up with the Weird?

The Weird is a marble-cake band of mythic wilderness/underworld and magitech other dimensions bleeding over and living in a constantly changing/moving (dialectical) tension with human civilization. It is a shifting zone of Other Reality. It's where the feral things are.

But I said it way better and with more detail here. One of the in-game models of this is the Chaos Index campaign idea. 

Civilization?

Human civilization is smaller, more thinly-rooted and more inwardly-focused than our world. There's a small-scale survey of the campaign spots in Hill Cantons Compendium II , but here's the big picture rundown:

The Overkingdom of Nemec, Nurian, Heimeti, and Pahr Lands, a “bright colors” psychic projection of late 16^th century Western and Southern Slavic (the Pahr) and German (the Nemec) countries. The coreland Overkingdom has three large semi-autonomous borderlands regions: the Hill Cantons, the Translittoral Canton of Hoimatbuch and the Marches of Nur (famous for its War Bears and kuduks).

Kezmarok on the Rock and Over The Water, a former empire now clinging to life in a half-ruined metropolis after 500 years by the Turko-Fae. Run by the Decade King, a monarch that until late was deposed and blinded each decade. Quite a bit written about this glorious dump here, here, and here.

Himyar, the 19^th century Orientalist/pre-Muslim Arabic-ish “Scarlet Sultanate” of the south (with a splash of Clark Ashton Smith necromancy). 

Hy-Brasos, barely-settled Magyar-esque horse nomads cum feudalists with war wagons. Pity the poor dirt-gnomes, glammer-slyphs and talking dogs enslaved by them. 

The Kozak hordes, Old Pahr horse nomads. The western horde being led by Hetboy Pavol.

Oiorpata, that distant and exotic isle near the resting point of the Sun Lord's daily ride, are a fine, strong-boned, if verbally assertive race of Amazons noted for their love of high-crested, baroque helmets, polished armor, and knitting circles.  

The Pantless Barbarians.   

Races and Places Weird

Hyperboreans. A long-fallen, world-spanning super-human civilization that possessed great lost sorcerous techologies (read Kirbyesque space gods/science fantasy). Shit went south a millennia ago and their Necromancer-King successor-states left great undercities and ruins on their way out.

Anticantonal Eld. Lords of one of the Cold Hell (a rigid, hierarchical anti-reality). You know, these assholes.

Turko-Fae.Grey-skinned and inscrutable, these strange turbaned warlords have laid seige lines outside Kezmarok for five centuries. They wipe clean (literally) any bit of civilization they wrestle control over.

Grugach.Crazed homicidal and anarchic they pore forth from the so-called "Summer Country" in elk-riding hordes to lay waste to...well anything.

Vlko. A lost (but found by the players) Old Pahr kingdom.

The Feral Shore. A former Kezmaroki borderlands completely wiped clean 500 years ago by the Turko Fey. Now thick with Old Pahr mythic wilderness and the center stage for the current campaign.

So Wait, Aren't We Still Talking About an Elfgame Here?

Yes, yes we are. While I will admit to slipping semi-embarrassingly into long daydreams during the real world grind, there is no childhood hand-carving figurines, collection of awkward short stories for my made-up world. The HC is a creation that has no independent force driving it other than the anarchic and organic process of layer being laid down on lair from the repeated bruising contact with the play table over seven years of running it.

It's a campaign world that has an arc divided up my discernible “phases”. Starting as a West Marches, radically plotless and exploration style campaign, it morphed into a broad-bases sandbox with layers of accreting layers of mystery. (That devolution plotted here). 

Still the game, D&D and its microexploration focus, drives the setting. And all roads lead to the dungeon.  

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Marlinko Easter Egg Contest

I do love my homages and in-jokes so. Whether it be a small backhills town, murderhole or weirdo nation, the Hill Cantons is sloppy with literary references, nods to current events, woots to favored creators, lampoons of dreadful real world trends, etc. And the published work is no exception, Slumbering Ursine Dunes containing a rather large (and seemingly not-caught) Big Lebowski reference, a wereshark and grotto ship hat-tip to John Eric Holmes, and a host of smaller little eggs.

Fever-Dreaming Marlinko is even worse, positively bursting at the seams with them. The inestimable Gus L even calls me out in a thoughtful review for it with the Catacombs section (and he's most likely correct about their jarring nature.)

So friends, having accidentally over-ordered some print copies of Marlinko, time for another dumb Hill Cantons contest.

Contest Goal

A very simple one this time, there are 12 literary and movie direct homages hidden in the text (there are actually 17, but five of them seem way too veiled to be anything but a chuckle-point for me and maybe the home group players). Whoever finds the most, wins! (Note: I am specifically ruling out campaign in-jokes and broader D&D homages, just sticking to books and movies.)

Contest Prize

The winner gets to choose from the following list:

1. a print copy of both Fever-Dreaming Marlinko and Slumbering Ursine Dunes.

2. a $10 gift certificate to Amazon (don't spend it all in one place, hoss).

3. a copy of a book or movie from the reference list (barring a runaway auto-pricing fiasco).

Contest Deadline

Given that you have to wade through 70-pages of my quirky-ass writing I am putting out a longer deadline than my usual contests, July 21.

To enter your submission, email me at kutalik at the gmail dot the com.

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What Ho, Frog Demons

Holing up in a converted New Hampshire barn has me fiercly procrasti-tasking around finishing the manuscript for Misty Isles of the Eld (all the while with Luka Rejec working like a machine to produce an inspired round of self-directed illustrations) and skipping ahead to the last and final stretch adventure coming out of the Slumbering Ursine Dunes project, What Ho, Frog Demons, a sandbox that pulls together a number of smaller adventure sites around the Dunes and Marlinko into a tidy little (and slottable in a home campaign) package.

The dreaded Frog Demon Temple (an intensely deadly and traperrific smallish dungeon with an extradimensional backdoor), the manor of the Beet God, and an outline of the backhills dungeon-infested town of Bad Rajetz will all have a turn after having been game to the hilt in my own campaign.

But here's a Wodehousian teaser of the set-up for the first scenario.

Jevo and I

“Nasty business with the Lord-Surveyor, Jevo. What.”

“If you say, Pan Vostvr.”

“I mean look at the face of it, old chum. Man writes an apologia titled A Corelands Defense of The Absolute Necessity of Frog Demons. I mean that is just asking for it, isn't it? One doesn't just casually stroll into salon stating 'you know frog demons, there is a warty race worth putting on the show about' and not expect to get stuck in.”

“Quite right, sir.”

“Still disappearing outright on the first high official visit to the borderlands in 76 years, that's a rum show and in Marlinko of all places with a temple so near. A frog demon temple of all things. Perfectly dreadful. One must do something about that kind of msvavo [Pahr slang roughly meaning “outrage/tragedy/funny bit”]. Now, Jevo, I know you have a bit of a thing when it comes to my embossed half-plate but I must have it for this adventure, what.”

“The one with the leering satyr face and protruding man-breasts, Pan Vostvr?”

“You will come around to it, Jevo.”

“I don't believe I will, sir.”

---

Ropucha Rigygtzenacht, Surveyor-Lord of Canton Departments Both Hilly and Forested, has announced that he will be conducting an official inspection and tour of both Marlinko and Ostrovo cantons. In the Cantons he is, of course,  more famously known as “The Garrulous Grease Toad,” a nickname attributed to him due to both his bulbous oily countenance and the famous, eccentric apologia he penned “Feuerundflammen: A Corelands Defense of The Absolute Necessity of Frog Demons.” Locals are shocked at the news, it has after all been almost 76 years since an Overking-appointed cantonal high official has actually set foot in the borderlands.  Beyond his official duties the grandee is said to be offering “sizable bounties for items of magic” including 5,000 gold suns for a “certain staff” (details available upon inquiry).  

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Fever-Dreaming Marlinko Free Map Download

Well Fever-Dreaming Marlinko, finally, finally wormed its way out of my own acid-dreams and hopefully into yours. Backers of the Slumbering Ursine Dunes will find copies sitting in their hot little inboxes and all others can find the 72-page city adventure supplement right here on Drive-Thru RPG.

To celebrate--and give you a taste and a tool at the table--we are making the ever-talented and delightfully-eccentric Luka Rejec's three isometric maps (city map and two dungeons) available as part of a free download map pack on DriveThru (look for it tomorrow when I am off my champagne bender).

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Reavers of the Weird Microgame

North Texas RPG Con was naturally a ton of fun, productive even. I won't rub it in. Much.

The ancient and obscure boardgame I brought for our beer and pretzels evening, King of the Mountain, though interesting looking was chocked full of way too many quirky exception rules and I quickly vetoed my own idea after a read through. The half-giant Robert Parker had the bright idea of adapting my old By This Axe campaign idea, the Reavers of the Weird for a quick evening game and I shaved it down on the fly into what is now a microgame.

Jason Sholtis, Trey Causey, Andrea, Mike Davison set down to a crazed anarchic evening of stealing, conniving, villager humiliating and murdering. In other words it was great.

So here's a game for you.

Background and Set-Up

Countless centuries of gavelkind succession laws have cranked up the fractionalizing, autarkic, hair-splitting pettiness—so typical of life in places with a foot in the Weird--to a feverish pitch in the Translittoral Canton of Hoimatbuch. That chilly, windy easternmost bastion of the Overkingdom is further plagued by a strangely-virile nobility creating a maddening over-proliferation of hyphen-crazy micro-fiefdoms as each holding is divided equally among the male children of each line.

You are the holder of one of these tiny sub-divided micro-states, your neighbor is a similar such asshole. You both want to kill and take each other's stuff, but are limited to the rules of low-intensity warfare that the Overking imposes.

Each player as part of his squalid little holding receives a livestock corral, a village filled with tax-paying chumps, a blood-apricot orchard, a swollen (yet strangely beautiful) prize pig and a charming (almost), rustically-decorated, black-timbered manor house. Ridding your opponent of his or her assets being the object of the campaign.

Each player receives eight footmen, four archers and three mounted. The actual figures can be (and should be if you want to bring the full gonzo) just about anything. In fact the game is abstracted enough that just about any playing pieces can be used with each manor locale either having a terrain representation or even just a notecard.

The Campaign Turn

Each turn (roughly a fortnight) the player can elect to mount 0-1 offensive actions (see below) and as many defensive actions as he cares. All actions are considered to occur simultaneously. The campaign ends after six turns and victory points are computed.

The players have five minutes at the beginning of each turn to wheel and deal among themselves. Reserves can be combined for joint defense. Attacks are never jointly conducted but players can gang up to conduct multiple individual attacks in a turn.

Players write down their offensive and defensive actions for the turn and reveal them at the beginning of the turn--or pass them to the umpire if you have one. Raids are resolved clockwise from the lowest initiative rolling player each round.

The dreaded Cantonal Lummox. Special rule coming soon.

Offensive Actions

Each turn can assign a leader or general and accompanying units to conduct a raid (each force must have a leader). He picks one of the options from below.

Steal Livestock

Humiliate Villagers

Burn Blood-Apricot Orchards

Defensive Actions

Each turn the player also assigns his non-raiding units (again each must have two or more to various locales.

Assign Guards to Livestock

Assign Guards to Village

Assign Guards to Orchard

Assign Reserve (assign figures to serve as a reserve for pursuits and defense)

Buy Reinforcements (usable on the fourth term to buy five new Footmen, see Victory Point penalty)

Combat

Combat occurs when a raid is caught (see Raid Resolution). All raids end with either the death of one side or the retreat of the attacker. The attacker may retreat at the beginning of each round but is forced to suffer a free attack from any archers or mounted left among the defenders.

Combat goes in rounds and is simultaneous. Archers get a free attack in the turn before melee starts. Each round the players roll to hit and pass the dice with hits to their opponent for saves. The defender chooses which figures to allot saves to.

To Hit on a d6

Archers 5,6

Footmen 5,6

Mounted 4,5,6

To Save

Archers 6

Footmen 5,6

Mounted 4,5,6

Raid Resolution

Opposition

Raider rolls d6 when on a raid to see what resistance she faces.

-1 Raiding Force has 1-4 figures

-1 Raiding Force all mounted

0-	Get Away Scot Free (Roll on Plunder)
1	Escape with No Plunder (No Effect)
2-3	Fight Locale Guard Only (Victorious Raider Rolls for Plunder)
4	Fight Locale Guard and 30% of Reserve (Victorious Raider Rolls for Plunder)
5	Fight Locale Guard and 60% of Reserve (Victorious Raider Rolls for Plunder)
6+	Fight Locale Guard and 100% of Reserve

Plunder

Victorious raider roll a d6 on the follow charts.

Modifiers:

-1 Raiding Force has 2-4 figures

+1 Raiding Force has 11 and over figures

Livestock Raid

1-	Nothing stolen
2-3	1d6 animals stolen
4	2d6 animals stolen
5	3d6 animals stolen
6+	3d6 animals stolen plus Prize Pig or Fine Horse

Village Humiliation

1-	Local folk laugh and ask “is that all you got?”
2	Village idiot forced to wear Eld helmet
3	Blacksmith tarred and feathered
4	Village headman (notable) cuckolded
5	Local temple Sun Lord priest (notable) beard shaved
6+	Relative of Boyar (notable) speckled with dung

Orchard Burning

1-3	Fire doesn't catch
4-5	Orchard burned
6+	Fire spreads to other orchard. Two orchards burned.

Add up after six turns. The highest score wins.

+1 VP for each pig in possession

+5 VP for each Prize Pig

-2 VP for each village commoner of yours humiliated

-3 VP for each village notable of yours humiliated

-5 VP for taking reinforcements

-5 VP for each orchard burned

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Fever Dreaming Marlinko Going to Bed, North Texas

The last stretch of Fever-Dreaming Marlinko has been..well...a stretch. My natural impatience starts showing in this last part of the cycle, but another round of layout and proofing (disrupted by the fact that nearly all of the Hydra Collective is packing up and heading to North Texas for the week) is something readers will appreciate--so it's looking like we will go to press somewhere around June 12-13 (or later, such are things in our hobby).

(If you are going to North Texas RPG Con, track me down and say howdy, I am friendly-ish and likely to be running a pick-up Marlinko session or wargame.)

Inevitably I hate most everything I write with a reflexive hatred as soon as it clears my keyboard. It takes months, some times years for my own stuff to become rehabilitated in my own eyes. 

But I feel pretty good about Marlinko. Ironically I think this stretch adventure, which was supposed to be a relatively disposable 20-page Kickstarter supplement to Slumbering Ursine Dunes, is not only a thing in its own right but is stronger than the thing it supplements (and longer even).

Pulling in Luka Rejec to do maps at the 11^th hour turned out to be better than I imagined. All three of his maps went beyond even what I imagined. I mean just check out this beauty, the backcover map. I'm also way happy with both Jeremy Duncan and Jason Sholtis's art in the final product.

click on me.

But one of the reasons why I am genuinely excited beyond the required “fake it to, make it” enthusiasm small DIY publishers are supposed to project is that you will find several urban adventure mini-systems stuffed into Marlinko that I am pleased as punch about:

• A Chaos Index with escalating events/triggers scattered throughout the city. Meeting an NPC when things are stable might be a wholly different experience than when it's escalated into high weirdness later (and things in the city go from being a bit eccentric to hallucinatory as play progresses)
• And because one cannot have enough whirly bits in a sandbox, I threw in a whole news generator with full news brief like the campaign news I have been writing for years for the eponymous Hill Cantons campaign.
• A tiger-wresting mini-game,
• A weird nickname generator,
• A section on running scams, hoaxes and grifting activity in a city that loves the Mountebank (the player class is in there too).
• A (often very funny) carousing system tied into the quirky city quarter (contrada) by Robert Parker,
• A“fair play/pay” guild system for hirelings (solidarity!) also by Robert/ 

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AD&D's Apocalypse and Domain Game Index

Mad Max Fury Road is predictably jamming my nerd circle frequency on Google Plus. Naturally thoughts run to things post-fall-like and discussions around post-apocalyptic gaming are breaking out here and there. An interesting thread on Big Purple has resurrected an old school line of exploration: the apocalypse of D&D's implied setting.

That thread dovetails nicely with my blog indexing push, so let's run a circle back to two series of interlocked Talmudic ruminations that started with the post-apocalypse of AD&D's original flagship setting Greyhawk and led to analysis of the implied domain-level play in first edition.

If you read one post out of this list, I would suggest “What Rough Men Tell Us About AD&D's Implied World,” one of my personal favorite posts (and I usually hate with a passion the things I write). If you read a second check out the “Howling Emptiness of the World of Greyhawk” or the last post “AD&D's Apocalypse and Hereafter.” Do make sure to read the comments, they are half or more of what makes the threads interesting and the posts bounce dialectically from them.

Post-Apocalyptic Greyhawk

The Howling Emptiness of the World of Greyhawk

Some seriously nerdy number crunching around the population density of the Greyhawk gazzeteer revealed a very interesting fact: that world is much crazy empty compared to medieval Europe. Rumination on that wildness and its implications launches the series. “...Even the wildest places of Europe at the time are orders of magnitude more settled and prosperous than Veluna. Those wide light green clearings on the Darlene map turn out not to be dull vast tracts of farmland peopled by plump, happy yeoman, but barely held little bastions.”

Postscript on Greyhawk's “Howling Emptiness”

Analysis and historical comparisons supporting the previous post.

Post-Apocalyptic D&D: Greyhawk vs. Wilderlands

Emptiness comparisons between the Wilderlands and Greyhawk and the two apocalypses of each setting.

AD&D's Apocalypse and Hereafter

A full exploration of the post-apoc dimensions of Greyhawk and encounter tables in the DMG.

Domain-Level Play in AD&D

AD&D's Domain Game

A second branching thought train starts here. The first edition hardbacks support a wide and robust (but horribly organized) range of domain-level play guidelines and rules with implications for game play that are more interesting at points than recent attempts to implement “domain games.”

AD&D's Domain Game: the DMG

What the DMG actually lays out for domain play and how that differs from later attempts.

AD&D's Domain Game: Growing a Demense from the Beautiful Chaos of Encounter Tables

Another one of my personal favorites despite the long awkward header. The weird gonzo beauty of what happens when you use the DMG encounter tables for demense recruitment (as suggested by the book).

AD&D's Domain Game: Pity the Poor Name-Levels and Their Private Warbands

In which I try to figure what the hell is going on with all the name-level characters and large bands of "human monsters" the Monster Manual prescribes and the implications of that.

What Rough Men Tell Us About AD&D's Implied World

Taking the previous thought and comparing to the near-apocalypse/collapse of 14^th century France. Many of the previous thought trains come to together and reach climax.

What the Hired Help Say About Ruling the Gygaxian Implied World

Some further postscript analysis about NPC, hirelings and production of goods by the book.  

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