Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Dark Continent Redux: Introduction

Dark Continent Redux
A Fantasy Core Adventure
© Jerry Harris 2016
(This link will take you to the Fantasy Core Playtest Rules.)





Introduction
[Or should I say, “Dark Continent Do Over?”  The first time I posted this faux “Adventure Path,” Fantasy Core hadn’t been written yet and I no longer had my AD&D books, thus I couldn’t stat anything out.  I’ve always felt bad about that.  Just posting the text seemed like too much of a tease.  This time we’ll do it proper with maps and stat blocks, along with cleaning up, tightening up, and expanding the adventure.  I still don’t have the 5e books, so no stats for that this time, but it shouldn’t be too laborious to convert.]    

This adventure setting was inspired by Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppala’s Apocalypse Now.  (Dante’s Inferno gave some inspiration to them both).  The Japanese anime classic Ninja Scroll inspired the main villains. 

The colony herein is based on the old Belgian Congo in Africa, currently Zaire.  This adventure follows the “Africannes” (Short A-Free-Cans) River inland (cf. Congo River).  The Characters will going up river into the jungle colony to find and eliminate, err… terminate with extreme prejudice, an insane wizard, Kurtz.

The colonial and native human (and demi-human, as you will) inhabitants of the continent are clearly physically differentiated.  The differences are up to the group to decide upon.  The morality of conditions in the colony are likewise up to group to exploit or ignore.  There are situations and events in the adventure for the players to react to, but there is little narrative judgment on them. 

By the end of these adventures, the players may wish to “go native” and lead the rebellion.  Or, they may want to enter into the struggle for power in the colonial government.  Or, they may have completely different objectives.  These choices will be beyond the scope of this adventure.  Regardless of any side the players choose, the group should have ample motivation to go after Kurtz.  They will learn that he is a deadly threat to both sides and everyone in the country.

This adventure derives some inspiration from The Mountain Witch RPG, as well as an inspired account of a game using Apocalypse Now as the setting.  Putting a snitch, a loyalty officer, a foreign operative, a native sympathizer, a rival colonial political agent, and even a member loyal to Kurtz could make for an interesting game, depending on the party.  If I were running the game, I’d play it straight.  The group is likely to have enough problems without fratricide being one of them.   

Possible Fantasy Core Rules Change
I keep referring to the Fantasy Core PDF as “Playtest rules.”  This is because it really hasn’t been tested enough to be considered playable without some scrutiny.  I think they work in principle, but in practice, the rules likely need some adjustments. 

After writing out most of this, it seemed obvious that the XP system laid out in the rules wasn’t going to work.  Nobody in the group would be leveling up over the course of the adventure under those rules, which seems ridiculous given the task in front of them.  I don’t like the idea of making the XP awards bigger (but go ahead if you do), so I’m adjusting the tables instead.  I’d suggest using these for the adventure, but it’s still a work in progress.  The Characters in the adventure should start off from 5th to 7th level.  I’d hope they’d gain at least two levels by the end.

Levels 2 – 5                             Levels 6 – 10
2nd      10 XP/1 Major Task          6th      15 XP/1 Major Task
3rd      10 XP/1 Major Task          7th      15 XP/1 Major Task
4th      10 XP/1 Major Task          8th      15 XP/1 Major Task
5th       10 XP/1 Major Task           9th      15 XP/1 Major Task
                                              10th     20 XP/2 Major Tasks


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