Bazaar of the Bizarre (A Gamers Gaming Getaway 2022)

RPG system: Bazaar of the Bizarre
Participants: 1 GM, 6 players

By

A Gamers Gaming Getaway (2022), Blackwells Adventure Centre, Near Bromsgrove, B60 1PY, United Kingdom

Alan Morrigan

Description

In the Plaza of Dark Delights, which lies seven blocks south of the Marsh Gate and extends from the Fountain of Dark Abundance to the Shrine of the Black Virgin, the shop lights glinted down. For there the vendors of drugs and the peddlers of curiosa and the hawkers of assignations light their stalls and crouching places with foxfire, glowworms, and firepots with tiny single windows, and they conduct their business almost as silently as the stars conduct theirs.

Fritz Lieber.

Lankhmar! Grandfather of every adventurous city, cesspit and wonder, where the Overlord Glipkerio rules in name and by dispute with the Thieves Guild, that itself was the first, before other lesser imitations seeded themselves in a hundred other worlds. Glorious, decadent, dying, thriving, where untold centuries rest upon the bones of the old and where not one thing cannot be stolen, be it jewel or mansion, fish, silver, or reputation. Lankhmar, where Captain Blackwood’s uneasy band of loyal rivals still evade the thieves and the slayers, all needing that one last score, that one great caper, that polish to their legend, to escape the city each knows they will never truly leave.

The Bazaar of the Bizarre is the second of our stories set in Fritz Lieber’s classic milieu. A role-playing game to be played on Sunday morning, in concert with (but by no particular means in consequence to) Saturday’s Ill Met In Lankhmar game. By dint of timing the shorter of the two, again the system is simple and used only in times of conflict or danger, where a player’s wit is more important than some number. A system without dice, but with a hand of cards, of bluff and combination.

The stories of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, the protagonists of Lieber’s tales, are ones of friendship against the odds and so despite the reprobates, villains, thieves, and malcontents that make up the band undertaken by the players in this, as with Ill Met In Lankhmar, this is a cooperative game. The characters may bicker, mock, cajole, and connive but they have each the other in a city where apart they would by morning be less than a treat for the old rats of ancient Lankhmar.

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