Shit Wizards (4/26/2026)

GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Sam Tillis, Jozy Zim, James Lawton, Ryan Fox Squire, Adrienne Mueller
System: The Black Hack

I offered to run TBH for SeanCon and to my profound surprise, many people wanted to play in it. So, where we go.

The Ruined Tower of Gormalong

The ‘wizard’s tower’ is a classic fantasy trope and makes for an iconic first game session. It’s fitting then, that this sample adventure is a re-imagining of a dungeon beneath a wizard’s tower – that first appeared in the 1977 edition of ‘The Original Fantasy’ rpg. It’s presented here in an easy to read format and aims to provide a good evening’s fun for a Games Master (GM) and 3-5 Characters of first Level.

A long weary century ago the malevolent and devious wizard Gormalong built his tower on the cliffs overlooking the beleaguered port of Black Wharf Bay. The townsfolk whispered about the excavation works Gormalong undertook – digging out cellars and passageways, looking for lost treasures amongst the buried ruins of a city that once stood on site of the dilapidated and forgotten port.

Decades later – a careless disaster befell Gormalong. A column of black eldritch flame engulfed the tower – destroying large parts of it, killing the mad wizard. Still the townsfolk shunned the place, reporting odd lights and ghastly sounds echoing from it at night. Even the flattening of its upper levels by trebuchet did little to improve its reputation.

That’s what I started with. A five page adventure and a new to me game that had some really fun elemnts (like roll to see what you find on a corpse, which we used multiple times) but also some areas where I wanted more. So, as the OSR invites, I built it.

First, the town of Black Wharf needed an identity. People inside it who had wants and desires and troubles of their own. Also it needed to be something players could affect. Fuck it up by stealing from merchants and burning down houses or improve it by helping people. So I started with this sheet to track the trouble, town imrpovements, reputational boons, and all the weirdo NPCs.

This took about an hour to think up and another hour to layout, but at the end of the day, it’s just some lists of fun things, some weirder than others.

I also don’t like the Carousing rules. Not because I don’t want people to tell stories over a feast, but I personally don’t want the only way to connect with people to involve getting shit-faced drunk. So I made three alternative means of Sharing Experience.

It’s not as pretty as The Black Wharf, but I ran out of time and it was perfectly serviceable.

Finally, I saw there were a lot of rooms without things in them, and I didn’t want to spend too much time during the game rolling up random encounters, so I pre-rolled them…and boy oh boy did I get some results.

Our Characters

Zlyman the Magnificent, an escaped serf-wizard who served in the Great House of M’kack-Sho, but lacked the toilet magics required to rise up in the ranks. His familiar Jõm, the toad with human legs (and pants) was often derided, but stayed true to Zlyman. [Sam]

Ozra the Inebriated, who doesn’t remember anything beyond yesterday. Literally, was here memory wiped or is she just that drunk. Her tiny six inch moon-faced man familiar Gulileatrix probably knew, but it would be improper for him to say. [Jozy]

Ermin, the priest of Zuülish, resplendent with his flaming brass hammer, who was nearly scarified by a winged being to open a direct conduit to Züulish, but as a miracle his internal organs were moved around and the impairment did not end his life…so he lived to serve the god that protected him. [James]

Blackheart, the thief who had been sold to wizards as a child. “The Black Void” made the young thief steal from other wizards enchanted by his magic. Blackheart is now more resstant to magical effects due to his connection with wrath of wizards in his childhood. Now he just goes by Blackheart. [Ryan]

Fergus, of Black Swamp. He remembers goats and his best friend Fargo, who he killed and scalped for looking at him the wrong way. He still carries part of Fargo with him now. [Adrienne]

Highlights

Zlyman taking a shit portent (reading the feces) and getting a chance to foreshadow some dangers ahead, an albino spider crawling out from the odure. AND THEN IT HAPPENED IN THE DUNGEON. Portents work!

Ozra the Inebriated (and her 2 hp at 2nd level) making friends with Miley the bartender, who towered over everyone.

Blackheart, who had been abducted by wizards as a child having serious considerations if Ozra was his abductor despite being entirely different person (Fargus was getting his in head).

Clerics being so wildly powerful that I just eventually went with it and said Züulish, the god of things moving around inside themselves (including her own shifting umlat), was constantly blessing Ermin and helping him out. Several times others had to roll for things and it just worked for Ermin.

She (which they chose to pronounce as Shay), a smuggler, now afraid to go on the water, having two pirate ghost friends in the entrance, and to embrace the silliness of the game their names were pronounced Thay and Hay.

Sam realizing that everything an NPC said was a quest. Bertrand the Better needed 10 souls to appease his master. That’s a quest. Flarg is missing his eye. That’s a quest. She is afraid of leaving town. That’s a quest.

Blackheart stealing lockpicks from She, and then they were critical for getting into a room locked with a magic lock, and trying to make it up to her later by paying her more than they were worth.

I complete fucked up the “one of these can never lie, one ne of these can only lie” puzzle rooms, but it worked out when someone pulled a giant spider out of the bowl and cracked it open to find a key. Next time I run this dungeon (if there is a next time), I’d play that part better.

Fergus being this unrepentant killer who also had a real soft spot for Bertrard (who smithed with nothing but an apron and pined after his missing husband). When Fergus walked through the ghost mist and forgot the name of his friend he had killed for looking at him the wrong way, I felt genuine loss.

That busted trebuchet outside of town. Fix it up and that thing would be better than a wizard. As we all know, rock beats magic.

Fergus biting into the ice crab, shell and all, for a snack and to show how tough he was. Frosty!

Zlyman getting a crit to resist the rushing spectral ghost river that washed away memories, and instead getting a memory of the actual creator of this tower Mazberdaz, and that Gormalong himself was a shit wizard apprentice (in this case, shit as in bad, rather than fecalmancer like Zlyman).

Ermin banishing the undead, so they could take their loot. This is peak dungeon crawling moves.

Blackheart finding someone who died in an alcove…and then resting in that alcove, and being attacked by the previously banished ghost. Peak GM bullshittery there.

Opening the door to find a Balor and five Black Wizards, who were clones of five other Black Wizards giving them instructions through a magical shield, and managing to get out it by way of dropping the Tonic of Watery Absolve on the floor, truing the stone to water, and breaking the summoning circle, freeing Maloch the demon!

Door opens, Fergus panics and has a heart attack. But he was okay!

Earlier, Ozra the Inebriated going to the summoning circle outside of town and talking to Bertrand the Better, who offered a hefty sum for the gems they recovered and dropping them through the gate to the void spawn on the other side, that were hungrily tormenting captives. Bertrand at least seemed nice.

Thoughts on the Game

I loved the leveling system. It might be too fast eventually, but it was great for all the characters to make it to level 2 (level 3 if we had more time and they could have shared their experience). Not only does the system reward a wide array of experiences, but it also makes the town an active part of adventuring. That’s the reason I wanted to build up Black Wharf Bay.

The alternatives to Carousing that I added worked pretty well. I might tinker but I was happy with those.

The random tables did some truly random stuff. Rolling this up a random was wild:

• Creature: Balor (HD10, true name: Mall’och, p.85) that is enacting a dark ceremony with a soul trapped in a bottle (Gormalong’s soul). Supposed to lead them to his treasure. And Five Black Magic Wizards (HD5) who are delegating to their Five clones with a reflective gold shield who are negotiating a price with the Balor for Gormalong’s soul.
• Lighting: Dim light from room exterior.
• Room type: Store for perishable goods.
• Feature: innumerable smelly candles. The right candle, if lit, will free Mall’och from his binding. Any other will bind him for another 1000 years.

I thought about ignoring that roll, but it isn’t in the spirit of OSR. You roll a demon and 10 Black Wizards and that’s what’s there. The good news is that these creatures are so powerful, the players know better than to mess with them (much) and the characters are almost beneath their notice.

My biggest complaint was that the starting adventure is full of ghosts and there are no stat blocks for ghosts! Like, it isn’t a single ghost you might need to come up with and could look at a 6HD specter to model it after, they are a bunch of 1HD ghosts with no stats at all. I decided (more or less arbitrarily) that they couldn’t be hurt with non-magical weapons (leaving everyone in the party fucked) but since Ermin could Banish Undead, they at least had a way of scaring them off. Later there was supposed to ghost crab, but I missed the ghost part so I just made it a frost crab, which was still dangerous, but at least they could affect it.

I think the Usage Die was fine, and a good way of compressing down what otherwise would have taken up more space on the character sheet, but like a lot of other folks that have studied the effect in play, I didn’t find it generating the uncertainty and tension I was hoping for. Perhaps in longer term play as effects wore down to d4s people would be worried, but I don’t think we ever had something drop below a d6.

Sam pointed out that compared to all the other weirdness in the game, the spells themselves were pretty standard D&D fare. He’d have liked something with a bit more character. I’m contemplating creating a whole new list of shit spells.

It is so much fun to play a game with a tiny scope (a single town, a single dungeon, and handful of wierdos). It just frees up my brain from trying to keep track of what is going on everywhere and lets me invest in the moment. After running years of Blades and other games with deep, rich settings, I highly recommend starting with a very small world you can discover together.