Archive for the ‘fluff/inspiration’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

jurgen’s rituals

Friday, June 1st, 2012

After writing 99 rituals to gain power over fey creatures, I probably don’t need any more, but I can’t resist collecting them.

James Branch Cabell’s novel Jurgen is a weird combination of picaresque and high fantasy that takes the usual conceit of the picaresque, “every level of society is absurd and corrupt”, and it extends it to fairyland, heaven, hell, and other planes of existence. I think the book might have a Message, but I was too busy taking notes on the rituals needed to overcome supernatural creatures.

And the notary’s wife followed her to Amneran Heath, and across the heath, to where a cave was. This was a place of abominable repute. A lean hound came to meet them there in the twilight, lolling his tongue: but the notary’s wife struck thrice with her wand, and the silent beast left them.

Characters might learn that being struck thrice with a wand of, say, ash, causes hellhounds to flee. Three strikes requires three melee hits, so there will be an interesting tension between this and the fact that three sword hits might just kill the creature. Of course, the math is different if three strikes with the wand causes the hellhound to SERVE the striker.

The voice of Dame Lisa, now, was thin and wailing, a curiously changed voice. “There is a cross about your neck. You must throw that away.” Jurgen was wearing such a cross, through motives of sentiment, because it had once belonged to his dead mother. But now, to pleasure his wife, he removed the trinket, and hung it on a barberry bush; and with the reflection that this was likely to prove a deplorable business, he followed Dame Lisa into the cave.

In this circumstance, Jurgen is forced to give up what’s obviously a potent protection in order to enter a magical realm. This is the type of decision that monsters may well try to force on PCs. What if you can’t enter the vampire’s castle unless you leave your holy symbol at the door?

“If this Thragnar has any intelligence at all and a reasonable amount of tenacity, he will presently be at hand.”

“Even so, he can do no harm unless we accept a present from him. The difficulty is that he will come in disguise.”

“Why, then, we will accept gifts from nobody.”

“There is, moreover, a sign by which you may distinguish Thragnar. For if you deny what he says, he will promptly concede you are in the right. This was the curse put upon him by Miramon Lluagor, for a detection and a hindrance.”

Two great fairy rituals here. Accepting gifts from someone is an obvious way to put yourself into their power, so you’re probably best off if you never accept gifts or food while in fairyland.

I also like the fact that the creature will always concede to your denials. It’s a quirk that could give personality to a conversation. Even if the PCs don’t know about the weakness beforehand, it’s the kind that they might be able to figure out.

Tags:
Posted in 4e D&D, fluff/inspiration, news, RPG Hub | 1 Comment »

the night land and the tragic story of the D&D world

Friday, May 25th, 2012

I previously described William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land as the Shadowfell sourcebook written in 1912, but I never got around to quoting any inspiring passages.

I stood in one of the embrasures of the Last Redoubt—that great Pyramid of grey metal which held the last millions of this world from the Powers of the Slayers.

Outside of one populated pyramid, the world is dark. (As you might expect from its name, The Night Land is a dying-sun or dead-sun novel, set on Earth, millions of years in the future.) The inhabitants of the pyramids know of no humans who live outside the pyramid. That’s one thing that The Night Land has over any plane of shadow, actually. Even if you’re trapped in a realm of shadow, you know that the multiverse is alive with light and life. Outside of the Last Redoubt, though, there’s nothing… forever.

Here’s a section where the protagonist gives a bestiary and geography of the Lands. I can’t resist quoting this giant section because it’s all so creepy:

And so back to my telling. To my right, which was to the North, there stood, very far away, the House of Silence, upon a low hill. And in that House were many lights, and no sound. And so had it been through an uncountable Eternity of Years. Always those steady lights, and no whisper of sound—not even such as our distance-microphones could have discovered. And the danger of this House was accounted the greatest danger of all those Lands.

And round by the House of Silence, wound the Road Where The Silent Ones Walk. And concerning this Road, which passed out of the Unknown Lands, nigh by the Place of the Ab-humans, where was always the green, luminous mist, nothing was known; save that it was held that, of all the works about the Mighty Pyramid, it was, alone, the one that was bred, long ages past, of healthy human toil and labour. And on this point alone, had a thousand books, and more, been writ; and all contrary, and so to no end, as is ever the way in such matters.

And as it was with the Road Where The Silent Ones Walk, so it was with all those other monstrous things … whole libraries had there been made upon this and upon that; and many a thousand million mouldered into the forgotten dust of the earlier world.

I mind me now that presently I stepped upon the central travelling-roadway which spanned the one thousandth plateau of the Great Redoubt. And this lay six miles and thirty fathoms above the Plain of the Night Land, and was somewhat of a great mile or more across. And so, in a few minutes, I was at the South-Eastern wall, and looking out through The Great Embrasure towards the Three Silver-fire Holes, that shone before the Thing That Nods, away down, far in the South-East. Southward of this, but nearer, there rose the vast bulk of the South-East Watcher-—The Watching Thing of the South-East. And to the right and to the left of the squat monster burned the Torches; maybe half-a-mile upon each side; yet sufficient light they threw to show the lumbered-forward head of the never-sleeping Brute.

To the East, as I stood there in the quietness of the Sleeping-Time on the One Thousandth Plateau, I heard a far, dreadful sound, down in the lightless East; and, presently, again—-a strange, dreadful laughter, deep as a low thunder among the mountains. And because this sound came odd whiles from the Unknown Lands beyond the Valley of The Hounds, we had named that far and never-seen Place “The Country Whence Comes The Great Laughter.” And though I had heard the sound, many and oft a time, yet did I never hear it without a most strange thrilling of my heart, and a sense of my littleness, and of the utter terror which had beset the last millions of the world.

As I mentioned, the unrelieved bleakness of a dying-earth story beats the spooky exoticism of the Shadowfell. Therefore, the details of The Night Land might be better used in your D&D game as the hopeless final destination in a time-travel game. If you go that route, you might need to provide some intermediary time-stops: if The Night Land is ten million years in the future, what do things look like five million years from now?

Hodgson has a character recall a time before the sun quite went out, and it’s also worthy of mention.

She did see, as in a far dream, yet very plain, a great metal roadway, set in two lines that went forever unto the setting Sun; and she then sudden to say that she did see in her memory the Sun, and she to have a strange and troubled amazement upon her. And there did be Cities upon the great road; and the houses did be strange-seeming, and did move forward eternally and at a constant speed; and behind them the Night did march forever; and they to have an even pace with the sun, that they live ever in the light, and so to escape the night which pursued forever, as she did tell, and a dread and terrible chill that did live in the night. And there did be cities far forward in the morning Sunshine, that did have gone before at speed, and set the husbandry of the world, and to be finished and gone forward again ere that certain of the latter cities did come to that place to the reaping; and the night to come presently to that place; but this not to be for some part of a year after that the crops were taken. But how long this might be, she not to remember.

Walking cities that lumber around the earth to avoid the dread night of a year-long day! Another good setting there. And now our future-pointing time travel game has three stops, each more depressing than the last:

  • Dark Sun
  • The Walking Cities
  • The Night Lands

    To complete the tragic downward spiral of the D&D universe, we should add three ancient-past time-travel hubs, each grander and more comforting than the last, until we get to the dawn of the world, when people lived in harmony and the gods walked the earth.

    • Tags:
    Posted in fluff/inspiration | 3 Comments »

    the badass skeletons of the Fiend Folio

    Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012

    The 1e Fiend Folio spent years in the doghouse. As a kid, I wrote off the Folio as a collection of gimmick and useless monsters – including the adherer, flail snail, carbuncle, and flumph – topped off with an unnecessarily large helping of badass skeletons.

    Lately, there’s been a bit of a reclamation project, with various game designers and bloggers returning the the Folio for inspiration. I’ll do the same today. I’m leaving the flumph for someone else, though; as part of the May of the Dead carnival, I’ll be rating, in alphabetical order, the Fiend Folio’s many, many badass skeletons.

    Apparition

    Non-Badass Appearance: As badass skeletons go, the Apparition is pretty conservative. He’s only half-heartedly swathed in mummy bindings, and no sinister fires burn in his eyesockets. Only the Russ Nicholson art saves him from mediocrity.

    Badass Mechanics: The Apparition has 8 HD and 0 AC, and, like many of the Fiend Folio critters, it has unique insta-death mechanics. If you roll over your Intelligence AND Constitution on 3d6, you “suffer a massive heart seizure and die instantly.” I like this monster because if you’re sufficiently smart, you’re totally immune to its powers. Stay in school, kids!

    Badass Rating: 1 Skeletor

    Coffer Corpse

    At 2 HD, the Coffer Corpse is one of the few low-level badass skeletons.

    Badass Description: The Coffer Corpse is “found in stranded funeral barges”, so keep that in mind when you are planning an adventure on a stranded funeral barge.

    Badass Mechanics: The Coffer Corpse doesn’t cause you to save or die. He just grabs you by the throat and, like Bryan Adams, never lets go (until you kill him, which shouldn’t take too long as he has an average of 9 HP.)*

    Badass glowing eyes: Check.

    Badass Rating: 3 Skeletors

    *I mean until you kill the coffer corpse. But Bryan Adams also has 9 HP.

    Crypt Thing

    The Crypt Thing just sits in his crypt all day (% in lair: 100%) and uses his special mechanics to puzzle wayward adventurers.

    Badass Mechanics: The Crypt Thing teleports each saving-throw-failing party member 100-1000 feet in a random direction, and lies to the rest of the party, claiming that the teleported creatures have been disintegrated.

    Badass Motivation: Although they are neutral, “their aim appears to be solely that of obtaining pleasure by creating confusion and dissent.” I guess it’s the kind of neutral that is slightly chaotic and slightly evil. For a skeleton with glowing eyes, though, it’s practically Lawful Good.

    Badass Appearance: This guy looks a lot like Skeletor, so full marks for that.

    Badass Rating: 3 Skeletors

    Death Knight

    Badass Story: The Death Knight is a lich created by Demogorgon from a fallen human paladin. Every word of this sentence drips with Metal!

    Badass Hit Points: The Death Knight has 9 HD, but he’s so awesome that they’re TEN SIDED DICE. I guess because they’re from paladin class levels.

    Badass Stats: The Death Knight has high stats even by paladin standard, which is saying a lot. He has 18/00 Strength and his Intelligence is Average-Genius. He also speaks 3-6 bonus languages!

    Badass Mechanics: The Death Knight has more kickass powers than you can shake a femur at. Highlights include 75% magic resistance that, 11% of the time, reflects spells at their caster; power word kill; a 20-dice fireball; and a gate spell.

    Badass Steed: The Death Knight rides a nightmare. That’s the gold standard for villainy. If you’re a bad guy and you have to ride a regular horse, you might as well hang it up.

    Badass Rating: 5 Skeletors

    Eye of Fear and Flame

    Badass Life Goal: “It constantly stalks the underworld seeking lawful or lawful/neutral parties or individuals. It will command an individual, or member of a party, to perform evil deeds.”

    Badass Mechanics: One eye fires a 12-die fireball every three rounds. The other acts like a fear wand every round. That’s a lot of magic that it’s slinging around. That’s what you get if you don’t perform evil deeds.

    Badass Glowing Eyes: Yes, and they are gems worth 1,000-2,000 GP each.

    Badass Rating: 3 Skeletors

    Gambado

    Non-badass Description: “Supported on its thin (but very strong) neck is a skull – usually of an animal but sometimes of primitive man.” A primitive man? Like a soccer hooligan? How can you tell that from the skull? Or is it, like, a hominid? Anyway, the gambado’s body is like a cylindrical spring. It hops.

    The gambado better be, like, a South American legend or something, otherwise this is pretty lame. (consults dictionary dot com) No, “Gambado” is just an old fashioned word for a hop. The gambado hides in a thin little hole and gambadoes out at people. STUPID.

    Badass rating: 0 Skeletors

    Huecuva

    The Huecuva is a 2-HD monster, “similar in appearance to a robed skeleton”. It has two gimmicks: it is able to polymorph self three times a day, and its touch infects the victim with acute cardiovascular-renal disease. I kid you not. Mechanics based on the Diseases chart in the DMG!

    This one IS based on a South American legend. A point for that.

    No points for the mummy wrappings. It looks like the Huecuva saw the illustration for the Apparition and thought to itself, “I can get more wrappings than that guy.” There is such a thing as TOO many wrappings, Huecuva. You look like a kitten that got into the yarn: there’s a thing called self-control. Don’t give me that look.

    Badass Rating: 1 Skeletor

    Necrophidius

    Badass Name: Necrophidius. Great name. “Drown in your tears of terror, for I am Necrophidius the Malificent!” “Ladies and gentlemen, the next president of the United States: Necrophidius!” “Necrophidius, bring the car around front.” Necrophidius.

    Badass Mechanics: The necrophidius is another hopping snake skull-head like the Gambado, but at least it can execute the Dance of Death (treat as hypnotism).

    Badass Construction: You can make your own necrophidius! The ingredients include “the complete articulated skeleton of a giant snake (poisonous or constrictor) and the skull of a cold-blooded murderer killed in the last 24 hours.” The good thing about this is, after you kill the murderer in order to make your snake, YOU are a cold-blooded murderer, so your skull can be used to make a second necrophidius!

    Badass Glowing Eyes: Yup.

    Badass Rating: 4 Skeletors

    Revenant

    Badass Backstory: “Under exceptional circumstances, those who have died a violent death may return from beyond the grave to wreak vengeance on their killer – as a revenant.” Revenants do all sorts of creepy stuff to their killer: “lock its claw-like hands around its victim’s throat,” “stare into his killer’s eyes” causing the killer to be “paralysed with terror”, and track the killer “wherever he may be.”

    Badass Indestructibility “Weapons – normal and magical alike – do not affect the creature.” If it is somehow dismembered anyway, its limbs continue to act. It regenerates 3 HP per round. It is immune to acid. I see why the description talks about the revenant tracking its victim – this is a guy you want to run away from.

    Badass Entry Requirements: In order to become a revenant, you need Wis or Int greater than 16, Con 18, and total characteristics totaling to 90 or more (wow! 15 average! Although it’s not quite as difficult if you use the Comeliness stat.) Even so, you only have a 5% chance of coming back. Why are we getting all this info about how hard it is to become a revenant? It seems to imply that PCs will want to become revenants.

    Badass Glowing Eyes: “Its eyes – sunken in the face – are at times dull and heavy-lidded but, particularly when nearing its intended victim, they will blaze up with unnatural intensity.”

    Badass Rating: 4 Skeletors

    Skeleton Warrior

    As Death Knights are the lich versions of paladins, skeleton warriors are lich versions of high-level fighters. What’s up with thieves? No one wants to make lich versions of thieves.

    Badass Jewelry: A skeleton warrior’s soul is trapped in a golden circlet. If you put on the circlet, you may control the skeleton. While you’re not in control, it tries to kill you. There’s lots of text about how exactly this works.

    Badass Intelligence: Skeleton Warriors have Exceptional intelligence, and are neutral (tending towards evil). If you wore the circlet, could you force the skeleton warrior to work as a college professor, even if you didn’t have a high enough intelligence to do it yourself? I bet Skeleton Warriors are tough graders and they love to fail you. “This will not be sufficient, Mr. Necrophidius. I said five pages, and this is four and a half.”

    Badass Rating: 2 Skeletors

    Son of Kyuss

    Badass Dad: Kyuss was an evil high priest who invented a new form of undead. Living the dream, Kyuss.

    Badass Mechanics: Sons of Kyuss radiate cause fear, regenerate like trolls, and their mighty punches inflict leprosy. More diseases from page 12 of the DMG!

    Badass Gross Worms: Sons of Kyuss have “fat green worms” crawling out of all of their skull orifices. “One worm per melee round will jump from a son’s head to an adjacent character”, potentially turning the character into a son of Kyuss in 1-4 melee rounds.

    Badass Rating: 3 Skeletors

    Eleven skeleton monsters is probably too much for a monster manual supplement! But, as my wife notes, it is almost enough for a calendar. How awesome would that be? I wonder if Russ Nicholson has all of the original art?

    Posted in fluff/inspiration, legacy D&D, RPG Hub | 27 Comments »

    Kickstarter reward progress!

    Wednesday, April 18th, 2012

    I’ve been working hard in the random dungeon mines, mining random dungeons! I’ve got a few bits and pieces to show you.

    First, here’s a small version of the Random Dungeon poster file I sent to the printers:

    All the backers will eventually get a big PDF of this, and most of you will get one, two, or more paper copies as well. The printer schedule is later than I’d like: I’m still hoping for late April delivery. We’ll see. I’d planned for the poster to be available for WOTC’s reprintings of the First Edition books. It looks like WOTC has pushed the reprints to June, so even if I’m late, I’ll still beat them.

    I’m working hard on all the other backer rewards too! I’ve got a lot of draft versions of things: I’ll show you some samples of what’s coming.

    Dungeon Robber: I spent all this weekend playtesting Dungeon Robber, the solo board game played on the poster. (As a reminder, everyone who donated $5+ will get a PDF of Dungeon Robber.) Here’s a sample table from the Treasure section:

    USELESS ITEMS TABLE (roll 1d6)
    1: Bad Art. Heavy. You are convinced it is worth 500 GP and will carry it in preference to any Heavy treasure of lesser value. You will only drop it if you are fleeing from a monster; while carrying it, you will not flee if you are at full health. If you get it out of the dungeon, you’ll be unable to sell it. Still, you’re convinced it’s a masterpiece. You’ll keep it in your house, and no one will ever appreciate it like you do. High Wisdom: You recognize this item as worthless and leave it where it is.
    2: Moldy clothes. They’re worth 1gp, but when you pick them up, you must save or take 1d4 damage.
    3: Flawed weapon. It does 1d6 damage, and breaks the first time you hit with it. Worth 1gp.
    4: Spoiled food. You can only throw away spoiled food if you’re being pursued by a nonintelligent monster, and you’ll throw away good food first. If you leave the dungeon with it, you get sick for 1d6 days, during which time you will not heal hit point damage. Worth 0gp. High wisdom: You recognize this food as spoiled and leave it where it is.
    5: 1d20 cp.
    6: 1d20 sp.

    And here are 9 ways I died while playtesting:

  • After killing two skeletons and finding a 500 GP piece of jewelry, I was killed by a third skeleton. Stupid skeletons!
  • I used a Charm spell to gain a troglodyte henchman, but then we were both killed by an arrow trap.
  • Unarmed, I was pursued by a kobold. I was trapped and slaughtered in a dead end.
  • On level 3, I was crushed by a falling-door trap.
  • My level-one dungeon robber found himself lost on level 8, through an unfortunate succession of chutes and elevator rooms. I managed to find the stairs to level 7, where I was paralyzed and eaten by a carrion crawler.
  • After a successful dungeon run where I romped down to level 3 and came home with 500 GP, I went back in the dungeon and was killed on level 1 by a kobold.
  • Delved to level 3, where I ran from a bandit. He cornered me in a dead end, and in desperation I attacked him with my flawed short sword. I killed him with a critical hit, but my sword broke. I quickly headed for the exit, but I was killed on level 1 by a skeleton.
  • Fell in a pit with closing walls. Because I was wearing plate mail and I refused to drop my heavy stone coffer full of nigh-worthless copper coins, I was unable to climb out before the walls crushed me.
  • Took my 5th-level thief down to level 8, snuck up on and killed a su monster and manticores, and fought, sneaked, and fled my way back upstairs with 10450 cp, 3300 sp, 5000 gp, 700 pp (6,834 GP total), and only 2 hp left. A few rooms away from the stairs, I fell in a spiked pit and died.

    Conclusion: The most dangerous place in the dungeon is level 1 when you’re returning with treasure!

    Interactive version of the poster: Haven’t started on this yet. Eventually, $5+ backers will get it.

    All-Star Dungeon Master book: $17+ backers will get this PDF containing adventures and rules from heavyweight DMs Mike Shea, Mike Mornard, Tracy Hurley, Tavis Allison, Jared von Hindman and James Maliszewski. James Mal has shared with me a rough draft of level 1 of Dwimmermount: as a preview, I’ll send that separately to you $17+ backers. Players from my campaign, DON’T LOOK! Actually, go ahead: it will do you little good, now that we’re on LEVEL TWO of Dwimmermount!

    D&D Stickers! $22+ backers are all getting a sheet of 20 stickers by various awesome artists. The guy at Stickeryou.com was so excited about how the stickers looked that he sent me a blurry photo from his cameraphone of them on the assembly line. It doesn’t do them justice, so I’ll wait to show you a scan of the actual stickers. But, on a related note…

    Virtual Table tokens! If you’re getting stickers, you can also get WOTC Virtual Table versions of all the stickers as hero and monster icons. Most of the icons are cropped portraits of the original stickers. Here are a few!

    Paul’s DM Notebook: This is an ever-growing reward for $22+ backers: I keep on thinking of things to add. Here are two pages from my current draft (click for PDFs):

    That’s where I am right now. I’m going to keep working on every reward until it’s time to put posters in tubes!

    • Posted in 4e D&D, fluff/inspiration, news, RPG Hub | 4 Comments »

    you shall know the monsters by their traces

    Tuesday, April 10th, 2012

    OK, back to D&D!

    I’ve been thinking about monsters that leave signs of their passing: creepy clues that mystify the PCs the first time they’re encountered. After the PCs have fought the monsters once, these clues allow the PCs to make informed choices about what’s behind the next dungeon door.

    This was inspired a little by Mike Mornard’s tales of the original Gygax dungeons: outside a particularly dangerous part of the dungeon, the PCs might notice skulls and gnawed bones. Skulls and bones are so generic, though. Here are some extremely specific monsters and the strange trails they leave:

    the teeth and buckles man

    The party comes upon a pile of scattered metal bits: belt buckles, coins, and a sword blade. Besides the metal items, there are a few dozen human teeth on the ground, along with a few splotches of blood. A hundred yards later, the party finds a similar pile of metal and teeth.

    Later, the PCs encounter a few leather-clad human guards. The weaponless guards wave the heroes, grinning, their pink mouths empty of teeth.

    So here’s my idea: this monster, which is sort of like an extra-creepy doppelganger, eats people and then takes their form. It hates to touch metal, and it can’t do teeth: it can’t digest them and it can’t imitate them.

    In battle, the Teeth and Buckles Man grabs and absorbs its prey. Its attacks are AC attacks that ignore the armor bonus of non-metal armor: it’s perfectly happy to eat leather. The creature’s grab does damage every round until the creature or the target are killed, or the target escapes. If a target is killed by the Teeth and Buckles Man, it takes the victim’s form: it sheds all metal and spits out the victim’s teeth before it continues.

    The Teeth and Buckles Man is resistant to wooden weapons, like staves, and natural weapons like claws. Metal weapons and teeth do full damage.

    I think that the Teeth and Buckles Man does its best to masquerade as its victim, the better to take any companions unawares. It’s not a very effective ruse, though, because the monster can’t talk, and is unaware that its toothless smile is unnerving.

    The Red Unicorn

    The PCs find that a section of the dungeon is criss-crossed with many thin trails of dried blood, like one of those fancy desserts drizzled with chocolate. Eventually, the PCs find that a blood trail down one of the corridors is fresh and red.

    The players might well freak out and refuse to investigate. If they follow the trail, they’ll eventually corner a white unicorn. From the beast’s mouth drips an endless rope of bloody drool. The unicorn will attack in a panicked frenzy.

    If the PCs incapacitate or kill the unicorn and investigate, they will find that something strange is lodged in the unicorn’s throat: maybe a black iron burr, or a wide-eyed silent toad, or a small dancing man with arrowheads instead of feet. If this object is placed into any creature’s mouth, that creature will drool endless blood and attack all creatures on sight.

    It’s always tempting to use unicorns as victims of the tragic and grotesque. Maybe one of these days I’ll include a healthy, happy unicorn in one of my games.

    Here’s why I think this is a good idea: Bizarre monster details aside, I think it is good to give players some basis on which to make decisions. “Do you turn right or left?” and “Do you open the door or not?” are not compelling decisions unless you have an inkling what’s to the right or what’s behind the door. Many wandering monsters could profitably be exchanged for signs of the wandering monsters’ presence, enticing or warning the PCs about what’s ahead.

    Posted in fluff/inspiration, RPG Hub | 6 Comments »

    $20k goal reached! At $22k, mind-melting dungeon art from Jared von Hindman!

    Monday, April 2nd, 2012

    We’re 1000% funded! That means that we’ll be seeing dungeons from Mike Shea, Mike Mornard and Sarah Darkmagic. Let’s continue the Backer Reward Bonanza!

    You’re probably familiar with the work of Jared von Hindman. You might know him from that Stupid Monsters article you just read yesterday, or his regular column, D&D Outsider. Or, if you’ve spent a lot of time on the official D&D site, their 404 page. Or, if you’re classy, these cartoons about opera.

    Jared’s going to do some art for Dungeon Poster backers! If we hit $22k by the end of the week, everyone who pledged at least $22 will get a PDF of an original project – call it Jared’s DM Sketchbook – which will contain five separate dungeons, each with its own theme, each rendered as a watercolor painting. I can guarantee that anyone who reads all five cursed pages is guaranteed to lose at least one sanity point.

    Here’s a rough sketch Jared sent me. Tell me you don’t want to roll this out in front of your players and tell them its the map of this session’s dungeon.

    Posted in fluff/inspiration, news, RPG Hub | No Comments »

    dwarves are from the shadowfell

    Thursday, March 29th, 2012

    In 4e cosmology, elves are the natural-world descendants of the eladrin of the Feywild. The Feywild is the bright counterpart of the Shadowfell, the land of death.

    Ever since the rivalry between Legolas and Gimli, dwarves have been foils for elves. So what if dwarves descend from the Shadowfell?

    It kind of makes sense. Dwarves are underground creatures who spend their time fighting the encroaching darkness. THAT’S WHAT THEY DO FOR FUN. That and build tombs and worship ancestors. And they are dour. So dour.

    So let’s say that, long ago, the ancestors of the dwarves migrated from the Mountains of the Shadowfell. They established themselves in the mines and caves of the natural world, fighting goblins and kobolds instead of whatever dark shadowfell creatures they used to battle.

    Does the Shadowfell still contain the Ancestors – the dwarven equivalent of eladrin? Maybe.

  • The Ancestors might now be enslaved to some powerful shadow creature: that long-ago flight to the natural world might have been a slave rebellion.
  • Or they might be taller, more graceful and more sinister than regular dwarves, with strange powers to walk through earth and stone, and with darker greeds.
  • They might be extinct. The story of dwarven civilization seems to be one of decay. Maybe some forgotten dwarf tunnels lead to the old Shadowfell palaces, more cunningly worked than any modern dwarven architecture, now abandoned to ghosts and balrogs and whatever else doomed the Ancestors.

    • Posted in 4e D&D, fluff/inspiration, RPG Hub | 1 Comment »

    every book has monsters in it, if you read metaphors literally

    Friday, March 16th, 2012

    Here’s my latest theory: in order to make memorable D&D encounters, all you have to do is keep your eyes open for odd metaphors in fiction, and think “What would this be like if it were literally true?”

    They Fight with Ropes Around their Necks

    “I suppose the fellows will show fight.”
    “Not a doubt of it, from the specimen we have had of them. They know that they have no mercy to expect at our hands, and that they fight with ropes round their necks.”
    The Pirate of the Mediterranean: A Tale of the Sea (William Henry Giles Kingston)

    Actual meaning: The fellows will be hanged if captured.
    D&D meaning: The pirates of this sloop actually fight with nooses around their necks, with the strangle rope dangling behind them. This is to prevent them from running away: if they turn to flee, you can grab the noose and strangle them. As a side benefit, it freaks people out. As a side penalty, they’re extremely vulnerable to flanking attacks.

    War Lions

    Ask all mankind about both me and them,
    When I attack on the day of battle.
    I have left their lions overthrown in war,
    Among those plains upon the burning ground.
    -The Arabian Nights

    Actual meaning: I’m not much of an interpreter of Arabian poetry, but I suppose the guy speaking has defeated some enemy warriors?
    D&D meaning: WAR LIONS. What a great idea. One of my campaign world’s empires now uses trained, armored war lions. They’re too dangerous to ride: they’re a terror weapon. It takes a brave front line to stand against a charge of fifty armored lions.

    The Pig Wife

    “Local folklore? How does it go?”
    “You wouldn’t be interested.”
    “I just said I was.”
    “Then you shouldn’t be. It’s old pig-wife talk.”
    -Greg Keyes: The Briar King

    Actual meaning: It’s gossip spread by the wives of pig farmers.
    D&D Meaning: The Pig Wife is a woman who lives in the fey woods. She will apologize that her husband is not there to greet visitors, but he has unfortunately “escaped from his sty.” If visitors stay for dinner, she will serve them pork chops. Anyone who eats a pork chop will be attacked within 24 hours by an enraged wereboar wearing a wedding ring.

    Posted in fluff/inspiration, RPG Hub | 4 Comments »

    Playing D&D with Mike Mornard: D&D as a loving pastiche

    Friday, March 9th, 2012
    This entry is part 8 of 12 in the series D&D with Mike Mornard

    During last night’s D&D game, DMed by original Greyhawk player Mike Mornard, we talked about a story I’d recently heard on an old episode of RadioLab, about a composer named Jonathan Cope. Cope wrote a computer program that could analyze the works of a classical composer – their musical intervals, chord progressions, and other patterns – and instantly generate new music in the same style: pastiche Bach, or pastiche Mozart. To my untrained ear, some of the music sounded pretty plausible. One faux-Beethoven piece sounded a lot like an alternate-history version of the Moonlight Sonata. (As Mornard noted when I told him the anecdote, Bach would be especially easy to analyze, since he was consciously playing number games in his music.) Other composers resist the idea of Cope’s computer-generated music, but Cope, I think, was acting on a respectful, loving desire to have more of the music he loved. I think that’s what gaming, fan fiction, and other forms of fandom are all about, at some level: the desire to understand the rules of the world you love, so that, for a little while, you can live there.

    During our D&D game, we also talked about something seemingly unrelated: the upcoming John Carter movie. I’ve been a huge fan of Edgar Rice Burrough’s Martian books since I was a little kid, and I waver between a hesitant optimism and a fear that Hollywood’s Mars won’t live up to twenty-five years of memories. That’s a look into the soul of a pessimistic fan, the kind who just isn’t prepared to be happy.

    Mike has a different attitude. “If I can see some Tharks tearing it up, I’ll be happy,” he says. That’s a look into the soul of a happy fan.

    The Martian books are very influential on D&D and TSR, Mike reminded me. The original D&D books are rich with Martian references. The wandering monster tables contain references to the following monsters, all natives of Burroughs’ Barsoom: Thark, Thoat, Calot, White Ape, Orluk, Sith, Darseen, Apt, Banth, Red Martian, Black Martian, White Martian, and Yellow Martian.
    (more…)

    Posted in fluff/inspiration, game design, legacy D&D, other systems, RPG Hub | 4 Comments »

    Fixing the elemental planes

    Monday, March 5th, 2012
    This entry is part 3 of 4 in the series planes

    Featureless expanses of earth, air, fire, and water are just not that interesting, even liberally sprinkled with elementals. That’s a core problem with most of the D&D planes of existence – they’re more like allegories than locations. Unless you’re playing Pilgrim’s Progress: The RPG, allegories probably don’t feature heavily in your weekly game.

    In my opinion, the best planes are the ones you can wander into unawares: the faerie kingdom, the land of the dead, dreamland: and the inhabitants will seem strange and frightening, and the rules will not be the rules you know, but they will be close enough that you won’t have to wear a space suit.

    With that in mind, here’s my attempt to fix the elemental planes: earth, air, water, and fire.

    Earth: The plane of earth is no fun because there’s nothing to do except get encased in solid rock. What if, instead, it’s a vast megadungeon, aware and malevolent like the dungeons of OD&D? Like all the best planes, it has its own rules: that everyone but you can see in the dark, and that doors that stick for you open easily for monsters. In fact, many dungeon crawl campaigns might as well be set in the Plane of Earth, except that the players occasionally “go to town” to rest and sell their loot. This fabled “town” might be one of the strange bubbles in the Plane of Earth, little places where people live in the illusion that there is a whole aboveground world around them.

    How can you wander into the Plane of Earth accidentally? A lot of dungeons are filled with pits, and some of the pits are bottomless. Bottomless pits drop you into the Plane of Earth. You could keep falling in such a pit for minutes or days: you stop when you successfully grab at a door or ledge along the side of the pit. (Long drops are common in the Plane of Earth, and the rules of the plane are such that an otherwise deadly fall always leaves you with 1 HP). Falling for miles is easy: finding your way back up to the real world will be a Herculean task. Depending on how far you fell, you might have to adventure your way up past dozens or thousands of dungeon levels to find the portal you fell through. How’s that for claustrophobia?

    Air: Just as the Plane of Earth is below us, The Plane of Air shouldn’t be an infinite, featureless expanse: it’s in the sky. I assume that we’ve all looked down at the clouds out of the window of an airplane, and imagined striding across them like giants. But even in the world of D&D, clouds aren’t usually solid.

    When you travel to the Plane of Air, the natural world becomes insubstantial, and you start to gently ascend as if on an air current. Cloudstuff is the only thing that you can touch. The clouds are constantly changing, their castles and villages appearing and disappearing, and the creatures of the clouds come and go too: you might see a cloud deer emerge from the billowing ground, run from a cloud wolf, and then dissolve, and leave not a rack behind.

    Furthermore, when you’re on the clouds, you can interact with the storm giants. In normal life, storm giants cannot physically attack or be attacked by the creatures of the natural world. (They can, however, throw lightning bolts at the creatures of the prime material plane.)

    Fire: For this one, I’ll use an idea I mentioned before: of a campaign world where fire was sentient, and had lineage. A fire lit by another fire would share many of its characteristics, as a child does of its parent.

    Fires in this world could level up: a level-one fire would be one that was just lit for the first time, and would have no special powers. A level-twenty fire might have an intelligence, wisdom, and charisma of 20, and a bunch of special powers: telepathy, the ability to burn without consuming fuel, and the ability to burn with blue cold.

    Rather than an endless plain of flames and lava, the Plane of Fire would be a world that was dark in many places: with no sun or moon, it would only lit by bonfires, the great Eternal Fires that rule kingdoms, and the torches borne by mortal slaves.

    Water: I’ve racked my brain and I can’t think of a way to make a Plane of Water that’s significantly cooler than a garden-variety ocean. Sure, it could be infinite, but infinity is overrated. Just making something big doesn’t necessarily make it more interesting. So do you have any ideas?

    Posted in 4e D&D, fluff/inspiration, RPG Hub | 15 Comments »

    « Older Entries
    Newer Entries »