Howdy,
Things be hotting up with the game!
what's new
Since the game launched, it's been pretty manic. I've spent a fair bit of time down at the Post Office sending out piles of the game to those who've picked it up early doors, and can't thank enough those who're giving it a go before I even get it off the ground. My first print run of stock's being depleted at a decent rate, but as I've said, this is just the beginning. I have so many plans for my little game, and can't wait for you to see it unfurl out there in the wild.
One of the things I'll be doing this week is to meet with a couple of amazing local souls who're planning on running The Chaos at a local ttrpg gathering coming up this summer, and also for a rising star podcast, so I'll share more on that once we're further forward.
Work's also continuing on squeezing every ounce of functionality from the website. This week I've launched The Chaos Ledger, which I'm mucho proud of. Basically, in the midst of what's likely to be a...chaotic...session of the game, with this ledger you can add a bit of structure to keep track of things. It helps you roll and record an entire session of the game, and I hope you find some use for it even if, like me, you much prefer shifting the tech to one side at the table.
On the site I've also added to the free battlemap vault and started slinging up the first of my other decks. Starting with The Snap, my card deck of dungeon geomorphs that fit nicely with the game, my plan is to set up an entire shoppe for you to browse, as like I say, all my other decks very much go hand in hand with The Chaos. Almost like that was the plan all along!...
Finally, I'm continuing to work on my upgraded Patreon in the background. I've written another scraps of the chaos adventure to follow up on Them Bleedin' Woods that's been downloaded now a fair bunch of times, so that and more of the same will be available for patrons, together with the secret roll generators, upgraded map vault, and much more that I've been working on.
Thanks so much for your patience - this ol' soul only has two hands, so it's taking longer than I hoped to get everything out there! That said, I did have some time to close the door, take a deep breath, and journal a quick solo session of the game, which was so much fun. Here's the notes from that, which I hope you enjoy...
a solo journal
A record of my last solo session of The Chaos TTRPG, heading toward the Bleached Hills
Before I leave The Keep
I've sat at this table in The Keep long enough. The oak’s carved up with other people's stories. Names, trails, warnings scratched so deep you can feel them with your eyes closed. Someone's drawn a crude skull near the north-east track, circled twice. Someone else has crossed it out. I don't know which of them is still alive.
The rumour that's eating me alive is this: there's a chapel in what’s known as the Bleached Hills, half-sunk into the hillside in the midst of The Wilderness, and in its crypt lies the journal of a siege engineer who worked for the old lords. Someone in town told me this engineer mapped the underground ways. Every secret passage, every collapsed tunnel under this part of The Realm. Well, I need those maps. My brother’s down one of those tunnels. He fell through a sinkhole three months back, and everyone here told me he was gone. Me, though? I know he isn't. I know it.
(I’d rolled my character's traits, failed career, and so on to kick off: Brash, Wiry, and Former Miner. That last one matters. I'll push it when I can.)
I check my pack. Rations, rope, shortblade, a lantern I'm not sure will last the afternoon. I chalk off one ration already, for the morning meal. An older adventurer named Pell catches my eye across the table and gives me a nod that, I think, means nothing good. He's been to the Bleached Hills. He came back alone.
I head out.
Morning: First Watch Roll
The gate of The Keep drops behind me, and the world opens up cold and grey. I roll for the weather: Damp and Overcast, which yep, pretty much sits right with what I can see. A low ceiling of cloud pressing down on the scrubland, the grass mulchy, mist sitting in the hollows. My crappy boots are already soaking through. The terrain roll gives me Broken Ground, which I guess means the path north-east is treacherous with loose stone and sudden drops.
I roll my 1d6 for navigation and get a 4. Good. Turned slightly, so I'll be heading more east than I'd like, but I'm moving. Not lost…I think.
I walk for what feels like two hours before the land begins to get serious about itself.
There's a smell out here I didn't notice before. Like old fire. Like wet ash. I hear ravens somewhere above the mist, not calling, just there, wheeling. I feel the broken ground underfoot, how it shifts and crunches, how you have to give it your full attention or it'll have you over. My miner's legs know this. My body knows this. But my mind keeps going to that journal. To those maps. To my brother's face.
The Watch Roll: Something's Out There
I roll up for encounters this watch.
A result I didn't want: hostile contact.
I stop. Listen.
Something’s moving through the gorse to my left. Low. Deliberate. Not the frantic scurrying of a rabbit or bird but something with patience. A crawler scout, maybe, or something worse. The mist makes it impossible to see more than twenty feet, and whatever it is, it knows that too.
(Time for an odds roll: is it alone? I roll a 2 and call it unlikely. No. There are more. But rolling for surprise, it seems we’re all aware and primed.)
Three of them, I think. I can hear the breathing now, shallow and fast. Crawlers, all right. I catch a glimpse of a narrow silhouette slipping between two stones. They haven't charged yet. They're watching me, maybe working out whether I'm worth the trouble.
I reach a slow hand to my blade.
(I play dirty here, using my Former Miner career to my advantage. I know the lay of this broken ground maybe better than they do. I use a raised ridge to my right as a natural barrier and try to roll under my presence. I get a 5. You beauty!)
I don't wait. I kick a loose stone hard into the gorse, a sharp crack like a breaking branch, and bolt up onto the ridge while the sound bounces around the hollow. (with a modifier given my part cover and the environment, I roll above their grit) As I roar like a caged grunter, I hear them bolt. A shriek of surprise. I press flat against the cold stone, heart going like a drum, and count to thirty.
Nothing. They've gone. I don't know if they'll circle back.
I feel the thumping in my chest ease off, just slightly. I'm shaking, and not from cold.
Afternoon: The Bleached Hills
The mist breaks near noon and the Bleached Hills rise ahead of me like old bones left out in the sun. Pale limestone, almost luminous, striped with dark gorse. Nothing moves up there. It looks like a place where things have just...stopped.
I find the chapel without much trouble. The rumour was right about that, at least. It's half-swallowed by the hillside, its single tower leaning as though it's tired. The door’s old iron, badly rusted, standing open. The smell coming out is deep and cold and…vegetable, like a cellar that hasn't been aired in a generation.
(I roll for what I see, hear, smell, and fear. Something's been here recently.)
Inside, I can see bootprints in the dust. Fresh ones. Someone else has been following this rumour, or was. The trail leads toward the back of the chapel and down through a trapdoor, splintered at the hinge.
My lantern catches and I descend.
The crypt is small. Three stone ledges where corpses once lay, now empty. On the centre ledge, a satchel. I cross the room in four careful steps and open it. Inside (I roll 5 on my odds roll): the journal. Battered leather, the pages stuck together at the edges with old damp.
I press it to my chest and close my eyes, feeling something I haven't felt in three months.
Possibility.
But the bootprints down here go the other way. Around the far wall and into a passage I can just make out in the lamplight, a narrow thing heading north, heading down. Whoever else came for this journal didn't take it. They took the passage instead. A step too far for me today, anyway.
(I mark it in my ledger. I mark the passage on the map. I note it for next session.)
I pocket the journal. I start back up through the trapdoor and into the chapel. The afternoon’s getting on. I need to move, if I want to make it back to The Keep before dark.
The Return: They Were Waiting
(I roll badly on my odds roll - a 1!) The crawlers weren’t done with me.
I step out of the chapel door, and yep, one of them is sitting right there on a rock ten feet away, eating something I'd rather not look at closely. It sees me at the same instant I see it. For one long, stupid moment, neither of us moves.
Then it screams.
I leg it.
(The chase is on. I beat them on my initiative roll. I'm treating each round as an odds roll, with my good agility giving me a little modifier on the first roll since I've got a head start. First roll: 3, but with the modifier it’s a 4. I'm ahead.)
I take the slope at full pelt, arms pumping, the journal tucked tight under my left arm and my blade still sheathed because I'll need both hands for the terrain. Behind me, I can hear all three of them now, the scrabbling of quick feet on limestone, a high chittering that sounds almost like laughter.
The broken ground that slowed me down this morning is now the only thing I have going for me. I know where the drop is on the left side of the ridge. I know the flat shelf of rock about forty yards ahead that crosses over the worst of the loose scree. I bank right, hit the shelf, and don't slow down.
(Second initiative and chase rolls: I'm pulling ahead. Another 4. Still moving.)
I'm down off the ridge and into the scrubland before I look back. Two of them are still coming. The third has fallen, maybe twisted something on the scree. Good.
I push through the gorse, arms getting shredded, and then it happens.
(I roll on the complications table: 2d6 and I get a 6. An environmental impact disturbs the location.)
The ground drops away.
Not all of it, not a cliff, but a sinkhole the size of a cart, opening up right in front of me with a sound like a sigh. Rolling a 12 so under my agility, I throw myself sideways and hit the wet grass hard, rolling, feeling the journal dig into my ribs. Behind me I hear one of the crawlers shriek, not at me this time, and I scramble upright in time to see it teetering at the edge of the hole, all its attention suddenly on not falling in.
The second crawler pulls up short behind it.
I don't stop to watch what happens next. I bolt.
(Third initiative and chase rolls: with a modifier since they've lost momentum, the dice gods are with me and I beat them on initiative and then roll a 6. I'm clear.)
By the time I've covered another two hundred yards and the sound of them has faded into birdsong, I let myself slow to a walk. My chest is burning. My left forearm's bleeding from the gorse. I’ll take a point from my health for that. I fumble the journal out from under my arm and check it: intact. Battered, damp, but intact.
I chalk off a second ration. I've earned it.
I mark in my ledger: Watch Two, return journey. Crawlers circled back. Three in pursuit, one fell on scree, one stopped at sinkhole. Complication: sinkhole. Lost the pursuit. Forearm: minor. Journal: safe.
I notice something while I'm writing. My hand is steadier than I'd expect. I think about what Pell's nod meant this morning, and I think, maybe, that I'm starting to understand it.
Evening: Roll to Return
The Keep wall appears out of the dusk like something reliable. The gate torches are lit. I can hear voices inside.
(Time to roll to return. The rules are simple: 1d6. A 4-6 means I get back safely, a 2-3 means I return missing one item, and a 1 means I take damage. I rolled a 5.)
I walk through the gate. Nobody notices. Nobody needs to.
I go to the big table, sit down, and start writing in my ledger while the details are still fresh. The skull near the north-east track. The chapel. The passage heading down behind the crypt wall. The bootprints that weren't mine. The sinkhole that swallowed my problem for me when I needed it most.
I write my brother's name at the top of the next blank page, because that's who all of this is for, and then I set down the pencil and stare at the engineer's journal in my hands.
Those underground maps are in there. I know they are. The passage in the crypt goes somewhere, and whoever came before me and didn't take the journal, decided the passage mattered more. That tells me something.
Next session, I go back.
I go down.
thanks so much!
for your support & inspiration
Please share the game with all & sundry, spreading The Chaos into every dark corner its flickering torches haven't quite reached. My aim is for the game to grow like an invigorating fungus on the minds of the OSR community and beyond, and I can't thank you enough for being a part of this.
Meantime, if you've not yet joined The Realm discord, here's the link for that, and I look forward to seeing you there! Be sure to let me know any suggestions you have about what to include in the next issue, or about the game itself, and enjoy the rest of your day. :)
Best,
Scott
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