Warlords of Scrundor

The kingdom is MINE!

I had an idea for a new game on Thursday night, which I've been working on for the last few days. In it, players take on the roles of ambitious Orc warlords in the foul orcish kingdom of Scrundor, and try to over throw the king, Grolg the Unfeasibly Smelly. The game play is something like talisman, with players moving around a board made up of inner and outer rings, with Grolg's palace at the centre. The difference here being that the board is made up of cards, and these cards can be moved or replaced during the game. Each location has a quest or special ability associated with it which players can attempt to use.
At present, there are 16 unique locations for the inner ring, representing the mountain of Scrundor, eight of which are in play at any one time. The quests here are harder, but the rewards greater. The outer ring has 16 cards in play, from a potential pool of 32. The quests and challenges are easier here, but the rewards are not as great.
Players are rewarded with followers from the four tribes of Scrundor - each of these grants a bonus on a different type of quest. The other types of reward come in the form of gold (used to buy things like followers) and loot cards (which can be anything from a Really BIG Axe to a blessing from the unpronounceable Orc god, Drotzch, or a spell of some kind). There are currently 150 loot cards, although may of these are duplicates.

Well... sounds legit.

I am currently working on the quest cards - some locations just let you draw a quest card instead of having a specific quest printed on them.
All of this is going to be printed out on business cards for play testing before I work on the art. Anyone who wants to contribute art, fell free to email me.

Adventure Hooks: Orc Slave Mine

I've decided to publish an intermittent series of adventure hooks and adventure ideas. I'll be keeping things as generic as possible so that you can use them in any system you want. I do have a fair few ideas for adventures floating around (mostly fantasy), but some of them are being kept under wraps incase I want to run them myself!
Anyway, here's the first - the Orc Slave Mines. This formed the basis of a play-by-forum RPG I ran with the kids from my school wargames club for a few months. This one is a good starting adventure for a new party because it helps to explain how all the characters met up, but you can run it just as well with an established party. Anyways, on to the adventure!

The players have been captured by Orcs and thrown into the Slave Mines. I started it off with everyone regaining consciousness and finding out they were in the dungeons, but you can have some of the characters already there when the others turn up. Anyway, they start locked into a dungeon cave, deep under ground. They have had their equipment taken away, and each of them is wearing shackles. These shackles contain Null Stones - strange black stones which drain magical energy, thus preventing mages from casting while wearing them. Also in the dungeon with them is a wizzened and ancient kobold. Outside the dungeon they can hear what seems to be a battle going on between Orcs, and some other species with higher pitched voices.

Obviously the first order of business is to break out. Depending on your party there are a number of approaches - they can try to smash the door down, but without axes that'll be pretty hard. If they talk to the kobold, they'll find out something rather interesting and useful. The Kobold is Krt'K, leader of the Kobold Revolutionary Army. The noise they can hear outside is the Kobold slaves in open revolt against the orcs, and coming to bust him out.

That green stuff is luminous fungi. Not orc flatulence.

The KRA team are armed and armoured, but the slaves are just using what they can find - shovels and picks mostly. Their attack has caught the Orcs by surprise, and given time they will be able to get to the dungeon and bust out Krt'K. They'll probably be pretty happy to see a bunch of sturdy heroes with a grudge against Orcs locked in with him and bust them out as well.

So now it's a matter of escaping the maze-like mine itself. Do the players go it alone, or do they decide to side with the KRA? Do they try to use the KRA to their own ends in a bid to cause even greater havoc upon the Orcs? Do they try to stir up a revolt amongst the other races which the Orcs are lording it over? How do they find their weapons and gear (when I ran this, one of the players had a pet Dragon which the Orcs were keeping in a cage above ground - finding the dragon was one of his primary motivations)?

Of course, the Orcs will regroup soon enough and come back into the slave mines in force, so time is limited and the party will need to think fast.

I used this adventure as the starter for a whole campaign, so I also had some adventure hooks set up in the slave mines themselves. There was a second dungeon cave, which contained some NPC adventurers who had also been captured. They were on a quest of their own and would try to recruit the heroes. There was also a Dwarf cleric in a cage in the torture chamber (it's just not an Orc dungeon without one!) who was seeking a powerful artefact when he was captured and his companions slain. He was near death, but if the heroes healed him he would try to recruit them to his quest (of course, they didn't know he was actually a villain seeking to use the artefact against his people).

Okay, so that's the first instalment of Adventure Hooks. I have intentionally not gone into great detail about the quest since you'll probably want to change it around a bit to fit in your setting. I've used Orcs and Kobolds (with the odd Goblin and Troll thrown in) but you can use anything you like. You can make the slave mines as large or as small as you like to make the adventure last longer, and you can make it as easy or hard as you like for the heroes to find their stolen equipment (in my version they had to actually get out of the mines to find it - it was in a store hut above ground).

GROLG'S FEAST

Grolg's Feast started life as Phoofbum's Feast, a card game about Halfling chefs trying to out cook one another. Then I realised this was boring and that Goblin chefs would cook MUCH more interesting things!

Light from guttering elf-fat lanterns cast a weak and flickering light within the banqueting hall of Grolg the Unspeakably Smelly, high Orc King of Scrundor. It cast weird and fantastic shadows, which danced over the debris scattered over the high table and the army of apprehensive Goblin slaves who scurried to and fro with great steaming dishes piled high with the most revolting delicacies.

         “FOOD!” Bellowed Grolg, “Bring me the next course!”

         A small goblin in an enormous white chef’s hat and huge, waxed moustache dashed up bearing an mighty platter, the lid of which was a Dwarvish shield. With a flourish, the chef whipped off the lid revealing a whole roasted pig on a bed of potatoes, carrots, turnips and hedgehogs, with an apple in it’s mouth. Grolg rammed his fork into the pig, lifted it with one hand and took a huge bite. He spat the steaming flesh out and roared, “It’s undercooked! Take this worthless turnip-head away and roast him! I’ll have him for supper!”

         Two huge orc warriors grabbed the startled chef and dragged him away.

         “MORE FOOD!” bellowed Grolg. The assembled Goblins shuffled nervously, trying not to catch his eye.

In Grolg's Feast, each player is a Goblin Chef trying to impress Grolg the Unfeasibly Smelly, king of Scrundor. To do this you need to produce a three course meal, and score more points than the other chefs. You get Recipe, Ingredient and Special cards to achieve this. Each recipe is worth a certain number of points, and needs certain ingredients. You need to trade with the other chefs to get these ingredients, while all the time playing dirty tricks on them to stop them scoring the big points! The game is very simple (I have taught both my Mother and Sister-in-Law to play - actually it's one of her favourite games!) and pretty quick. The rules are basically done... now it's a matter of art.

Don't hold your breath about this coming out any time soon, there's more than 60 pieces of art required for the cards. I've been using cards without for playtests, but the flavour of the game comes from the disgusting ingredients and recipes so art is essential! Oh well, it'll eventually get done...

Grolg's Feast is also the first appearance of Scrundor, the foul Orcish kingdom which has now ended up being used as an RPG setting and is gradually getting more and more detailed...

Well, here are some cards to keep you entertained until I finish the game...