RPG Blog Carnival: April 2018 Kick-Off

The Theme for this Month's RPG Blog Carnival is Journals, Grimoires and Spell-Books and we're hosting it right here at Hereticwerks. You can find out all the details about the RPG Blog Carnival and RPG Blog Carnival Archive by clicking over at the always excellent Of Dice and Dragons blog (well worth a visit!). The RPG Blog Carnival has been going on for years now (since 2008) and the Archive is a virtual treasure trove of great ideas and advice from quite a range of contributors.

If you're interested in participating, it's super easy; just post something pertinent to the month's topic and leave a comment below with a link to the post and at the end of the month the host (this month that's us) will write a round-up post for the moth and include links back to all the participants. Any questions? Just ask in the comments below or click over to the RPG Blog Carnival Home Page for all the details, including how you can sign-up to host one of the monthly carnivals at your blog!

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Journals, Grimoires & Spell-Books

A 'Journal' could be a daily newspaper (including tabloids and scandal sheets), a periodical dealing with matters of current interest such as a magazine or an academic journal; a record of daily experiences, personal reflections, ideas or observations such as a diary; a record of transactions as in book-keeping, politics or gambling; or it might take the form of a journalist's notebook, a naturalist's sketchbook, the log book of a ship, or the daily records of an expedition into some previously unexplored region of time and space. There's a lot of leeway as to what counts as a journal so here are a few examples to consider:

Dracula by Bram Stoker
One of the best examples of a journal in fiction that you are likely to find, and that's just the beginning. Dracula is an Epistolary Novel containing newspaper excerpts, diary entries, letters, telegrams, log entries, doctor's notes--everything you could ever want in terms of inspirational examples for creating your own journals and whatnot and it's still a great book. Read it.

The Diary of Alonzo Typer.
One of the more infamous examples of how a doomed investigator into things probably best left alone manages to somehow scrawl details of his demise into his journal even as he is dragged away into the darkness by massive, inhuman paws in a manner reminiscent of the Caves of Caerbannog scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Completely demolishes any lingering tension or suspense and effectively kills the horror aspect of the story mostly because the author just wouldn't shut up. Delete the last sentence and you leave it hanging as a mystery of sorts...less of a farce.

Spurious Crypto-Diaries?
Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd was a truly great explorer who reached both the North and South Poles at a time few could have made such a claim. Byrd's actual career and accomplishments are plenty inspirational enough, but if you want to delve into conspiracies, hollow earth theory and ufos...then you might want to do a Google Search for "Secret Diary of Richard Byrd" and enjoy your journey down the rabbit hole...

Historical Journals
Townsend's offers quite a bit more than just cookbooks and youtube videos, including a selection of reprinted historical journals that are absolutely fascinating reading. The 18th Century Journals site provides access to loads of digitized examples of historical journals from (you guessed it) the 18th Century. Appleton's Journal as published in the 19th century and their archives are online for one and all. The US National Library of Medicine offers a lot of rare books, herbals, brochures, pamphlets, and more...much of it digitized and easily searchable. Just click on the Early Manuscripts and see how far that takes you. If that's not enough there's the Sixteenth Century Journal,
Wikipedia has an extensive list of Historical Journals if you want to dig deeper into this sort of thing...and there's also a nice listing of 19th Century British Periodicals to consider.

The Diary of Anne Frank
Very serious stuff. A young girl and her family hide from the Nazis for two years before dying of typhus in a concentration camp. Grim, heart-breaking and written in a child's voice that is more chilling and disturbing than any made-up horror story. If this is a bit too real, then there is a list of Fictional Diaries at Wikipedia to help you find something a bit more to your taste.

One of the Greatest Travelogues?
The Travels of Marco Polo remains a real classic and a great resource for developing a campaign based upon exploration and all sorts of politics, skullduggery, and adventure opportunities that come with traveling into the heart of a great empire on a 'trading mission.' There are quite a lot of Traveler's Accounts worth investigating if you're at all interested in this sort of thing. Some of the strangest monsters you're likely to encounter in RPGs such as the Arimaspians derive from old traveler's tales, so it can be quite entertaining to go digging around in these sorts of resources.

So that barely scratches the surface of just the Journals part of the topic...but it feels like a pretty fair start on things. Later this week we'll have more on Grimoires and another follow-up on Spell-books, including some examples and details of how we handle these things in Wermspittle and beyond.

What sort of Journals or Grimoires do you use in your games or campaigns? How do you handle Spell-Books?

More Suspicious Manuscripts and Decaying Texts (Wermspittle)

There was a formula—a sort of list of things to say and do—which I recognised as something black and forbidden; something which I had read of before in furtive paragraphs of mixed abhorrence and fascination penned by those strange ancient delvers into the universe’s guarded secrets whose decaying texts I loved to absorb. It was a key—a guide—to certain gateways and transitions of which mystics have dreamed and whispered since the race was young, and which lead to freedoms and discoveries beyond the three dimensions and realms of life and matter that we know. Not for centuries had any man recalled its vital substance or known where to find it, but this book was very old indeed. No printing-press, but the hand of some half-crazed monk, had traced these ominous Latin phrases in uncials of awesome antiquity.

The Book,

by H. P. Lovecraft

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Suspicious Manuscripts & Decaying Texts from Wermspittle (Another Twenty)

1. A folio containing six etchings and a jumbled set of pages that can be reassembled into a complete copy of the raw manuscript for Ebenazzeren's reviled and repudiated 'Ghoulatria.'
2. The entire unexpurgated classical long-form rendition of the Transition Into Blood transcribed from the traditional Aklo into Burzim and Aulranni on a line-by-line basis. If properly carried out, the supplicant transforms themselves into a Corpuscular Sludge for the next one hundred seventy eight years.
3. Sixteen pages of crudely cobbled-together collages interspersed with the cut-up and jumbled lines of what appears to be a sort of nonsense spell of some sort, possibly intended for some sort of protest or happening. The spell spontaneously casts on any roll of '6' on a d6 which is rolled for each page examined. The spell transforms the reader's feet into the claws of a human-scale raven for 3d6 hours.
4. The last two-thirds of what remains from a doctoral dissertation regarding the 'Twelve Lesser Gateways of Orlovon.' The pagination is skewed due to constant revision and each page bears the name, initials and personal academic sigil of the author at least three times, sometimes more often. Unfortunately every single one of these identifying marks has been scrambled and defaced by some rival's or displeased mentor's unkind spell of selective revision. The text itself remains as excruciatingly dense and convoluted as it ever was and attempting to read it requires a CON check every 1d20 pages, failure results in the reader becoming totally incapable of understanding anything in the manuscript, success costs the reader 1 point of WIS, which they can regain after 3d4 weeks of refraining from all reading. This manuscript does not make a great gift.
5. A shabby brown envelope packed with all the working notes for a rough-draft guide to the numerous varieties of freshwater fish commonly found in many of the cellars of Wermspittle.
6. A small privately-printed pamphlet explaining the dangers of Black Smoke. Luridly illustrated with antiquated cartoons for the functionally illiterate. The last two pages contain a non-verbal schematic for the spell Repel Black Smoke.
7. Here, in this set of loose pages, is a ferocious critique on 'The Ovulant Oratories of Ulludram,' scathingly penned by a person identifying themselves only as 'a member of the Sixth Spiral of Sumbralle.' Anyone reading more than three pages is rendered sterile for the next three years. It's that scathing.
8. A Morlock grimoire. [Alatris, CE, 36hp, INT 14, Psyche 10, Willpower 26, Casts: Cause Fear and Black Touch once per day. Communicates telepathically, but only with carnivores. Contains 11 spells, but despairs of ever gaining any more, as its master is dead, having been devoured by a rival. A successful Reaction Roll could persuade Alatris to consider taking on a new master.]
9. Fifteen sheets of musical notation for a sonata from some banned play titled 'Black Stars Over Bezgradt'; in-between each bar of music someone has daintily and diligently written-out all twelve sections of the Transition Into Night. The Second Section is flawed and summons 1d4 Grunters. The Fifth Section can be extracted and used in conjunction with a shewstone or crystal egg to allow the caster to look upon the so-called Nightland. 
10. A detailed and comprehensive comparative analysis of the latrine-digging techniques employed by seven of the world's largest armies.
11. A three-inch-thick slab of ultra-methodical lab notes. Once the blood is cleaned off, they show that there is a marked relationship between the pollen of the Red Weeds and the so-called Red Death, at least in 38% of the involuntary test-subjects subjected to this particular round of unlicensed experiments. There are only numbers used for the 198 unsuspecting people affected by this particular instance of back-alley malpractice.
12. An extensive set of notes and anatomical diagrams drawn from experiments with live Voormiks that were summoned for the purpose by agents of a clandestine medical-espionage unit operating behind enemy lines during the Altwater Occupation. All the names have been sorcerously redacted by a professionally-cast 5th level spell. There is a detailed discussion of how to modify certain sections of the standard Summon Voormik spell so that it selectively summons or banishes only specified portions of their anatomies. The actual summoning spell is not given; it is assumed that anyone reading these notes would already have it equipped.
13. Eighty-three lavender-tinted pages expound upon the wonders of attaining the state of consciousness referred to as 'Nrogesh.' The pages make excellent cigarettes or toilet paper. The breathless, florid prose remains steadfast in defeating the reader's comprehension, requiring a full seven readings before any small vestige of what the author is going on about is even partially divulged. It is perhaps of some interest to the would-be reader that in at least three classic Eloi children's chant-stories 'Nrogesh' is used in a very negative context. Uttering the word to any given Eloi causes them to roll a Reaction Check with a -4 penalty.
14. A soldier's hand-written instructions for crafting various types of Salt Shot using Achromic Powder.
15. A heavily pitted and discolored copper scroll-tube with a Fifty-Three page manuscript wrapped around it and held in-place by a length of slightly gummy penguin tendon tied in the traditional Tsalalian manner. The 'scroll tube' unrolls and is actually a scroll. The manuscript is someone's working notes towards a lexicon of the Ablunji family of pre-diasporic Tsalalian. There are three spells inscribed into the copper scroll, but each one is broken-up into sections and discussed with densely-packed technical annotations that remain untranslated as they appear to be in some other language entirely, possibly an obscure form of Aklo. The spells can be learned within 1d4 weeks, if one studies the lexicon first. Use of Read Magic will obliterate the copper scroll. There is a note to this effect jotted in the margins of the lexicon. Originally, there was another scroll. The three spells are: Call Penguins, Idiot Pipes, and Black Seal.
16. This set of coarse gray pages contains elaborately annotated and extensively revised hand-written instructions for a series of increasingly bizarre rituals leading up to the 'Opening of the Gateway to Valadoz,' including a version of the infamous 'Birth-Call of Ulveer-Quoz,' that never appeared in any of the standard texts. The gray material this manuscript is written upon becomes gelatinous and restless when exposed to moonlight.
17. Transcription of a primitive lay originally set down in Gurgurlim by a sect of abhuman songwriter-monks. Performing the verses in an appropriately sonorous drone, preferably in an attic at night, grants the singer a cumulative 10% chance to gain a shadow-companion that will never willingly leave them ever again. Botching the performance, such as droning off-key causes the companion-shadow to either flee or attack, depending on how badly one flubs the rite.
    

    [Companion-Shadow (AL N, MV 90' (30'), AC 7, HD 2+2, #AT 1, DG 1d4 (or by spell), SV M3, ML 10. Special: Can only communicate with the one they are bonded with. These are extra-planar entities, NOT undead. They can earn 1 extra HD per three levels their companion gains while accompanied. Roll for INT and WIS; if attributes are sufficient, the Companion-Shadow can learn spells as a spell-caster of level equal to their current HD.]

18. A sheaf of much-highlighted notes from a student's efforts to compile a class presentation on what they refer to as 'The Wilde Method of Repairing Reputations,' whatever that might be. The paper smells subtly of cat urine. The last page is blood-stained. Two-thirds of the notes refer to obscure entities and characters from what appears to be a play or an opera, obviously not a serious work of scholarship. There is a steel key and two tickets to the Circus taped to the back of the sixteenth page. There is also a hastily drawn map showing the directions to an armorer's shop on Cassilda Street.
19. Soft red pages with a strong metallic scent. Each one is folded six times. However many you started out with, as you unfold each one, you get to re-roll 3d6 to determine how many there are. It's a work of propaganda, some sort of subversive mini-comic aimed at the rank and file of the Grand Army of Nagrothea and contains a great deal of necromantic humor only someone from that region could really appreciate. Everyone else must make a Reaction Check (-2 penalty), a positive result means they suffer mild nausea for 1d4 minutes, a negative reaction means that the reader is incapacitated for the next 1d4 hours as they vomit forth their guts. They'll never understand. They also gain a permanent -1 on all Reaction Rolls involving Nagrotheans from now on.
20. Instructions for achieving the Transition Into Bonelessness, whereby the reader renders themselves completely boneless for the next 1d4 hours just by reading the first 6 pages.

Werm-Riddled Manuscripts (Wermspittle)

There was a formula—a sort of list of things to say and do—which I recognised as something black and forbidden; something which I had read of before in furtive paragraphs of mixed abhorrence and fascination penned by those strange ancient delvers into the universe’s guarded secrets whose decaying texts I loved to absorb. It was a key—a guide—to certain gateways and transitions of which mystics have dreamed and whispered since the race was young, and which lead to freedoms and discoveries beyond the three dimensions and realms of life and matter that we know. Not for centuries had any man recalled its vital substance or known where to find it, but this book was very old indeed. No printing-press, but the hand of some half-crazed monk, had traced these ominous Latin phrases in uncials of awesome antiquity.

The Book,

by H. P. Lovecraft

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(10) Werm-Riddled Manuscripts: Probably Forbidden, Mostly Nameless and Otherwise Suspiciously Cheap...

1. Torn and smelly, this wad of crumbling old ages is secured into a messy sheaf by a rusty pin that has been driven through the entire stack of pages as though by a hammer or lump of dense rock. None of the pages are in consecutive order and whatever sequence seems to be in effect changes from reading to reading. The thing self-randomizes, switching languages even as it takes on a different page order, even the number of pages tends to change. It costs the permanent sacrifice of one 4th Level spell slot to read this manuscript all the way through in one evening, and doing so prematurely ages the reader by 4d10 years. What the reader gains...is the ability to claim one randomly determined spell in their personal repertoire as an At Will Ability that can be used as many times in a given 26-hour period as they have levels as a spell-caster.
2. Forty-three blank pages of high-quality paper all clipped together and affixed with a note written in blood-stained Garadic script, very neatly penned with a crisp nib. The note references Thumallian's Third Trance-State. Apparently, if the reader attempts to read this manuscript while in this particular trance-state, it will reveal its secret text.
3. Sixty-seven pages torn from a madman's diary or personal journal.  Each one contains the same sequence of tight, spidery non-letters that sprawl across the page in a most disturbing, unsavory manner. The curious script employed in this manuscript cannot be read by a rational mind. One must be mad in the first place in order to decipher the thing.
4. Five neatly-folded comics sections taken from a newspaper over a hundred years out of date. The paper is yellowing from more than just aging badly. Wrapped-up in those comics is an editorial section written in one of the most vile forms of Yellow Journalism. The very paper itself is saturated in the effluent left-over from the production of Yellow Wallpaper. This is highly toxic stuff, gone even more rancid and pernicious with age.
   

   [Reading/handling the crumbling Comics Pages require a Save at -1, failure inflicts Confusion on the reader for the next 3d6 hours. Success halves the duration. Examination of the Editorial Section requires a Save at -4, failure instills a very visceral -4 Charisma reaction against all members of a particular ethnic or political group. Success imprints the victim with a -2 Reaction Modifier against two such groups. In either case, the reader's hands are permanently stained a distinct yellowish tint, they are more prone to experiencing a distracting sort of melancholy when exposed to anything political (Save or 'lose' 1d10 minutes in a distracted state, unless engaged in vigorous activity), and they suffer a permanent -1 penalty on all Saves in relation to all White Powder derivatives.]

5. An old broadsheet advertising Doktor Malinkorov's Marvelous Medicinal Mortifactant. On the back someone has carefully illustrated all the steps required to fashion a set of Illudrian bone-lamellar armor, including how to properly attune the rig to various spectra of necromantic energies that Nagrothean Censors tend to expurgate from all modern texts.
6. Twenty-Six Hundred cardamom-scented foolscap pages packed into a heavy cardboard box reinforced with thin metal bands. Each page is densely scribbled upon and most who look upon these translucent pages for the first time are tempted to pass them over as meaningless. Those who persist in their examination go on to discover that each page contains a single self-contained statement drawn-out in one continuous line.
   

   [Upon initial examination, roll an Attribute Check against INT; need to succeed to go any further. Each set of 1d20 pages examined after a successful INT check grants the reader a cumulative 1% bonus to comprehend the secrets embedded in these labyrinth-like pages. The reader may attempt to comprehend the manuscript any time they like, rolling a D% and adding-on whatever bonus they've accumulated. Success means that they are now immune to the effects of the Maze spell. Failure means that they've been trapped within the manuscript itself for as many days as they have INT. Each day trapped within the manuscript costs them 1d12 months of aging. Once a reader has failed to comprehend this manuscript, further study is considered pointless. However there are hints whispered between certain book-sellers and librarians and those who seek after strange secrets that if one were to persist to the very end that there indeed are deep secrets buried in this manuscript. Whether or not there actually are, remains a matter of speculation. At least until someone conclusively makes it through the entire thing successfully.]

7. Nine black pages edged with gold. The first three are empty. Wiped clean by tears. Do you dare to read the fourth page to find out why?
8. Mold-stained and horribly creased, this manuscript has been stuffed into a rotten canvas courier bag for several years. Only thirty-five pages remain in the bag. The rest have been lost. There is no index, no table of contents, no title page. Half the pages are illegible. What remains appear to be diagrams and formulae for attracting the attentions of some sort of extra-dimensional form of sentient mold. Each page that gets handled inflicts a cumulative -1 penalty on the reader's Save against being poisoned. The mold on these pages will require a fresh Save after every 1d4 pages examined. Should the reader fail their Save, the mold spreads into their skin. Or rather under their skin. This mold isn't particularly sentient, at least not yet, but now that someone has volunteered to be its host, it will slowly devour their INT and WIS and CHAR until it achieves a cold, cruel form of consciousness that will replace everything they lose to the process.
   

   [This is no simple parasite. It is a symbiotic organism. One that gives as good as it gets, if not better. The victim feels no pain from the process whatsoever. If anything they feel more clear-headed and awake than ever before in their life, even gaining a +1 bonus to all INT & WIS checks, and Immunity to all forms of illusion, charms and hypnosis. The mold integrates itself into the host's flesh, eventually replacing their entire skin and giving them a very distinctive appearance, one apprentice has described as being akin to "...a waxy coating over mottled patches of lint, ashes and chalk dust." Each week from the moment of infection, the host must make a Save, failure meaning that they suffer a loss of 1 CHAR point, success causes them 1d4 damage and intermittent but intense vertigo that somehow only strikes whenever they attempt to cast a spell or try to read. Upon reaching a CHAR score of 3, the host's mind, brain and body have been completely consumed, they get to re-roll all their stats and begin life as a new being. It is unclear whether their soul survives this transformation, or if it is somehow destroyed, displaced or simply replaced. The new entity that is produced by this process does seem to possess a soul, but it is definitely not the original host's, that much was proven in a battery of experiments conducted by Franidar, Murleff and Clevong under the aegis of the Grenavior Occupation. Unfortunately, most of their records were subsequently lost in the course of their trial for war crimes.]

9. Sixteen feet of coarsely-knotted rough twine securely holds together a stack of rough-edged sheets of pressed yellow-green seaweed, block-printed with a range of grotesque trapezoidal glyphs unlike anything most bibliophiles are ever likely to see in the waking world. The ink is thick upon the fibrous pages. Redolent of Purple Amber. The glyphs are generally indecipherable as they are not rational constructs, but rather a complex cluster of praeterhuman oneiro-tactile intuition-stimulae with a tendency to unlock deeply repressed memories and long suppressed trauma in those who brood upon them for more than a few minutes quick glance. The glyphs have been bound into the loose pages of this manuscript well past their tolerance for such things. They desire to be set free. Will you release them?
10. One Hundred pages of poor quality typewriter-paper wrapped-up in the entrails of three large toads. The whole thing reeks of burnt flesh -- the typewriter ribbon used for this manuscript was derived from Black Smoke. Roughly a third of the pages have been ruined by exposure to water. What remains is a first-person account of the siege of Tarlonna composed by a Morlock combat-engineer who lost more than just their left arm at that historic battle. Perusing these pages will require experience with a great deal of intellectually opaque Morlock military slang, hence why the seven publishers it was submitted to all rejected it out of hand. The rejection slips are interspersed randomly through the manuscript as bookmarks denoting sections requiring extra attention, editing and revision.