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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Open Game License v 1.0a Copyright 2000, Wizards of the
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System Reference Document Copyright 2000-2003, Wizards of
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Authors Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, Skip Williams, Rich
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Rateliff, Thomas
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Fantasy Core RPG Rules and Dark Continent Redux, Copyright
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