by BeloW06

An item Board Game Designer: Terry Catton has been added to the geeklist The most prolific game designers and their spot in the board game hobby

by Flyboy Connor

Session #35: Dungrunglung
August 26, 2026

GM:
Me (Pieter)

Players (level 6):
Braxir: Bronze Dragonborn Sorcerer/Warlock (Kiril)
Dorfan Tomblemomble: Forest Gnome Wizard (Drew)
Gorem Ragefire: Half-orc Barbarian (Matthias)
Nimm Stormtear: Tiefling Cleric (Tanja)

Absent:
Bree Thrushcross: Lightfoot Halfling Ranger (Lisa)
Wit: Tiefling Warlock (Lisanne)

In Port Nyanzaru, the party visited Syndra Silvane, to inform her of their exploits. Syndra suggested that Omu could probably be found near the Peaks of Flame. She asked for one of the party's sending stone, so that they could use them to keep her updated, and if needed ask for reinforcements.

The party then visited Father Zitembe, who told them that his divinations had told him that, while the Dreamer's amulet was clearly related to yuan-ti, and that it seemed to have some link with the Death Curse, it was not actually related to the Death Curse's cause. He also told them that to find the exact location of Omu, they might consult an ancient being who was alive during Omu's heydays. His divinations had pinpointed several possibilities in this respect: Zalkore, the creature in Nangalore; a Naga in the ruins of Orolunga; an ancient dragon in the southwest of Chult; or a being which resided on the Heart of Ubtao.

The party decided to check out the Heart of Ubtao, after Dorfan had learned some new spells. They traveled down Tiryki river, got off near Firefinger, and traveled south. Close to where they left the river, they discovered that there were many grung in the jungle. They tried to avoid them, but Gorem made too much noise, and the grung spotted them. While grung are usually hostile, these were not going to attack. They tried to explain something, but only spoke grung. Dorfan cast Comprehend Languages, and derived that they were looking for help, and asked the party to follow them. The party did.

They were brought to the Grung town Dungrunglung, which was surrounded by a thorn maze, with huge, dangerous-looking thorns, some of which had zombies impaled on them. The grung entered the maze and the party followed. In the maze they found that the walls were changing all the time, creating new passages and closing off others. THe grung knew where they were going, though.

After a long trek through the maze, they exited in the center where a wide pool surrounded a shrine. Hovels surrounded the pool, and there were plenty of green grung around. Around the shrine patrolled eight strong-looking grung. The grung guides led the party through the pool to the shrine, where they entered. Here they found an inner pool filled with fluorescent fungi, and a smaller pool in the back which contained a golden grung wearing a golden band. An orange grung was next to the golden one.

The grung guides said "Meet King Groak" and they bowed. The party followed their example.

GM's thoughts

As we hadn't played for over two months, I started with a long summary of all that had happened in the first 34 sessions. Since I had no idea what the party was going to do next, I hadn't prepared anything for the future. When the party was in front of King Groak, I had to stop the session, because I knew only vaguely what would happen here. But it was time to stop anyway.

by Moonlight_Fox

robbbbbb wrote:

Re: Magic: I think this doesn't work. For one, Magic depends on a whole host of embedded culture around fantasy and fantasy gaming that D&D brings about over twenty years. For another, the rules are complex enough that they depend on a gaming culture that has built up the sophistication to easily subsume the rules. In other words: Magic doesn't work without D&D to spend a decade or two paving the way for it.

Discounting the TCG Steve Jackson (British) published in 1993 which didn't catch on but was released around the same time as MTG and apparently had a scratch-card aspect:

More specifically, we see a couple of trading card games prior to MTG - Or, rather, games to play with trading cards; I think there are a couple of games designed to use the stats printed on baseball cards to simulate baseball games. I don't think any of those caught on, and they were predominantly an ancillary aspect to more general trading cards rather than the reason the cards were being made.

The collectable style of games that existed prior to MTG, that I know about at least, are children's gambling games - Marbles, Pogs, and the like, where you're both forming a collection and the base assumption, or at least common variant, of the game is that winning lets you take some or all of the loser's collection they played with and add them to your own ('keepsies'/'for keeps' [Though in some of those games, when playing keepsies, it wasn't a binary win or loss, but each item in the game could be won or lost individually, so a game of marble's winner - the person who knocked the most out of the ring - could still some of their marbles during the game.].

I'd even file conkers into that 'children's gambling games' category - Though with conkers it's less 'the winner gets to keep the loser's conquer' and more 'by the nature of how the game works the loser's conquer will be destroyed since the game consists of swinging horse chestnuts strung onto a shoestring against the other until either you destroy your opponent's or they destroy yours' (I don't know if this is why the earliest edition of MTG had an 'ante' system, but it certainly makes sense given the games played with collectable things prior to it)

MTG is doing a few things - It fits into the genre of D&D, has a rules complexity more in line with D&D (but also sports simulations and wargames) than with other styles of game, but it's also designed to be able to be played while waiting for people to arrive at the D&D session. For a collectable game to fall into the space MTG occupied, without instead falling into the 'children's gambling game' category, you'd need it to match a social event for more than two people that can't start until everyone shows up, and for those people to be interested in playing games. I think it's the predominance of group play of D&D that I think sets the stage for MTG (I suspect you would be able to get a TCG out in the 80s?)

by BeloW06

An item Board Game Designer: David Manley has been added to the geeklist The most prolific game designers and their spot in the board game hobby

by BeloW06

An item Board Game Designer: Joseph Propati has been added to the geeklist The most prolific game designers and their spot in the board game hobby

by TomTomThePipersSon

An item RPG Item: The Second Doctor Sourcebook has been added to the geeklist Dan's 'Arrowdown' and other Dr Who games - Characters

by wourme

Related Item: Superstar DJ's, Here We Go!

Have to say I was surprised to see Madeline Goldstein's name appear on the VGG index page. This artist is one of my favorite new discoveries in recent years and her album that came out earlier this year is great.

https://madelinegoldstein.bandcamp.com/album/speaking-to-the...

by BeloW06

An item Board Game Designer: Ivan Sorensen has been added to the geeklist The most prolific game designers and their spot in the board game hobby

by robbbbbb

To respond to a few of the posts above:

Re: Ticket to Ride or Catan: I think these would work. I don't know that you get the groundswell of support that hobby gaming gets in the 90s, but I bet TTR, specifically, could catch on and become interesting and sell well.

Re: Magic: I think this doesn't work. For one, Magic depends on a whole host of embedded culture around fantasy and fantasy gaming that D&D brings about over twenty years. For another, the rules are complex enough that they depend on a gaming culture that has built up the sophistication to easily subsume the rules. In other words: Magic doesn't work without D&D to spend a decade or two paving the way for it.

Re: Shadowrun: I think genre expectations kill you, here. Shadowrun is a reaction to Cyberpunk, which in turn is developed out of the literature. Neuromancer doesn't release until '84. There's no real definable genre until the late 80s, at least. Without that background, the game setting does not work. Which is too bad, because it's a terrific setting!

by BeloW06

An item Board Game Designer: Jason Tagmire has been added to the geeklist The most prolific game designers and their spot in the board game hobby

by BeloW06

An item Board Game Designer: Frank Stark has been added to the geeklist The most prolific game designers and their spot in the board game hobby

by Basti aus Hamburg

Related Item: PERMAFROST!

Gamernurse wrote:

Sven seems to be a common name in your party :p

Yes, I name all my heroes “Sven” in the gamebooks. But this is actually the first one in which I've met another Sven. I met the second Sven at the poorhouse and added him to my party.