With all the feather ruffling about the Hugo Awards and the mud slinging and bitch slapping about what the awards should stand for, I mentioned at Black Gate that the people who want space adventure books over socially thoughtful science fiction could simply make their own award without getting into indignified fights with the Hugo people. For example there have been the Gemmell Legend, Morningstar, and Ravenheart Awards for heroic fantasy for a few years, which to my knowledge have been very well received by fans of this type of fantasy.
And as someone has pointed out to me, the voting phase for this years Gemmell awards has just opened. You can just go here and vote for the works you enjoyed the most. Unfortunately, I have to admit that I haven’t read any of those on the lists, as I don’t really read a lot and most of it are old classics.
Though I am currently reading Blood of Elves, which I didn’t know got the first Legend award in 2009. (Even though the Polish version had been released 15 years earlier, but whatever. It’s a really cool book.)
I’ve been looking at the Numenera RPG this week and while I wouldn’t say I am a fan of it and don’t plan to run a campaign with it, I do quite like the basic rules framework behind it. It’s not quite rules light, but manages to strike a pretty good balance between quick and easy rules while still being relatively open in what kind of characters you can make and what they can do. The problem with classless RPGs like Shadowrun or GURPS is that character creation is a lot of work as you build your custom characters from scratch and assemble them from very small parts. On the other end you get games with character classes like Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, where your choice of class determines a huge part of your characters to the point of dictating much of the characters personalty and backstory. And of course, there’s the d20 games which combine the worst of both worlds. There are also games like Fate and Burning Wheel, which define characters more by their role in the story than their own traits and abilities. The Cypher System used by Numenera and The Strange is pretty close to what I consider an ideal approach. There are three classes (warrior, rogue, mage), three ability scores, six levels, and monster stats really come down to only their hit points and the difficulty for all dice rolls the player characters are making against them. Bit more complex than Barbarians of Lemuria, but I think not really very much. I really quite like the idea of the system, though not so much their execution in Numenera.
Actually quite a while ago, it was announced that there would be Cypher System Rulebook, which will be released this summer. I’ve seen stores that already have it for preorder with a release date of late July, but that might just be their personal estimate and nothing official. (Like amazon listing release dates for Baldur’s Gate 3 for years. Good times…) And I have to say I am quite interested in this.
My interest with Numenera started because it’s an RPG that is about explorers setting out into a vast wilderness to explore the ruins of past ages to scavange for pieces of techno-magic they could bring back to their villages and city states, where they could be of great use and further the understanding of these artifacts. Which happens to be exactly the same thing I am doing with my Ancient Lands setting. While Numenera looks good, there is just a lot of focus on electronics and robots, which is admitedly a bit distracting when you want to use a Bronze Age fantasy setting. But it’s still a game about exploring places and finding stuff with special properties, so having a book with just the cypher system to use as a base for your own settings really does sound quite appealing. Might even work well for a Star Wars or Mass Effect campaign.
While Numenera got quite a bit of attention at its release, I hadn’t really heard much about since. But while looking for the original announcement for the new book, I was really quite surprised to see how much stuff there is for both Numenera and The Strange. No clue how well it sells, but it looks like this might be a system we’ll be having around for quite some time to come.
I’ve started to combine all the Fantasy Safari posts of each book in a single page and put them on an index page, which you find here and in the menu bar above. This is probably easier than searching for all the original posts separately.
The Chosen One is essentially a ghoul who causes temporary Constitution damage instead of paralysis. It doesn’t say why it is named that way, and only that chosen ones are made by the Red Wizards of Thay as servants. Very weak entry. (Variant Ghoul +1)
Crawling Claws
Crawling Claws, on the other hand, are awesome. They also are the other hand, as they are created only from left hands taken from dead or even living humanoids. They don’t have any special abilities or fancyful backstory. They are just animated hands that crawl around and attack people, which is cool and fun enough by itself. Creating one is only a 3rd level spell and each claw is automatically under the command of its creator. For some reason the spell is also evil, even though nothing about it indicates why. Ah well, alignment! Never made any sense, never will.
Darkenbeasts
I am not sure where the idea of monsters being the creation of crazy wizards comes from, but it might very well have been Forgotten Realms. Darkenbeasts are somewhat reptilian and bat like monsters created from ordinary small animals by the Red Wizards. As their name hints at, darkenbeasts can not tollerate sunlight and after each ten minutes of exposure there is a 25% chance that the magic will end and the monster return back into an animal. In addition to being winged servants with a high resistance to magic, a wizard can also use a darkenbeast to store a spell for later. When the darkenbeast is near its master, he can retrieve the spell and aim it at whatever target he pleases, which destroyes the darkenbeast in the process. I think these are cooler than winged monkeys.
Deepspawn
The Deepspawn had the potential to be one of the truly iconic weird monsters of Dungeons & Dragons, but somehow it remained limited to Forgotten Realms and didn’t really make any appearance after 2nd edtition. It’s on the cover of Lost Empires of Faerûn, but I think that’s it. When I first got into D&D with the Forgotten Realms campaign setting box (the 3rd edition FRCS had not been released yet), I thought that this creature was the fourth member of the exclusive group of aboleths, beholders, and illithids. But no it’s not, which is a shame. The deepspawn is a monster with a large spherical body over 5 meters in diameter and has six long tentacles. Three of the tentacles are used as arms, while the other three end in large maws full of sharp teeth. Its eyes are all over the body. The deepspawn by itself is not a terribly dangerous fighter and has only little magic abilities that would make any difference in a fight, but is completely immune to any poison and has a high resistance to magic. Its main ability is to spawn copies of any kind of living creature it has eaten, which takes between 1 and 4 day for each spawn. As a result, a deepspawn is never encountered alone but always surrounded and protected by a considerable force of other monsters it created. While the spawning ability is a bit dubious to me, I really do like its appearance and the idea that something like that would be the mastermind of a dungeon that rules over all the lesser monsters. The deepspawn got updated in Lost Empires of Faerûn, since the stats here are pretty shoddy. Size got increased from Large to Huge (which for a 5 meter sphere with long tentacles seems more correct), Strength got increased from measly 19 to 29 and Charisma bumped up from 4 to 10, which makes much more sense for something with Intelligence and Wisdom of 17. Now that looks a lot meaner, like something of this appearance should. Continue reading “Fantasy Safari: Monsters of Faerûn (D&D 3rd ed.), Part 2”
The Alexandrian has been writing (a lot) about railroading over the last weeks and I read an older article by the Angry DM from a couple of years back a few days ago, in which he touches on Schrödinger’s Gun (among several other things). Which made me think some more about both subjects and how they are related, and resulted in some of my own thoughts I want to share. The reason why you should read this article and not just the two I just linked, is that this one almost certainly will be a lot, lot shorter. ^^
So the basic question that has been pondered a lot among gamemasters for the last years, and almost certainly to some extend for well over three decades, is to what extend GMs could or should change their prepared and randomly generated material to compensate for shortcuts the players unexpectedly discovered. There seems to be a certain segment of paleo-academia disciples who advocate that GMs should be completely impartial and the game essentially randomly generated by dice, which will be used exactly the way they fall. What the players will do is entirely left up to them, with the GM not taking any action to promote or inhibit any decision the players might make. To keep it short and civil, I personally don’t see any appeal in that kind of game.
I am much more interested in games that have some kind of story, but one in which the final outcome is very much determined by the course of action the players decide on, with a slight random factor introduced by the dice. But I think that to have an interesting outcome and an interesting journey to get there, the adventure needs to begin with an interesting setup. Which in practice means that I begin an adventure by establishing that the village is getting attacked by a monster at night. The monster has a reason and the monster has a plan, and if the players don’t do anything to prevent it, the monster will continue with its plan. But what the players decide to do about it is entirely left to them. Theoretically they could decide they don’t care and leave the village to its fate, but in practicae all players understand that preparing an adventure takes work and time, and if they like their GM, they always go and investigate and won’t decide that todays game only last 5 minutes and go home. Which is why I always play with people I already know or who are good friends of my good friends. Among friends, people are normally happy to run with whatever makes the whole group happy, even if it’s not 100% exactly what their personal preference would be.
As a GM, I don’t have any predetermined outcome planned. I assume that the players will be able to solve the mystery and put an end to the monster attacks, saving most of the villagers. But if for some reason the players make descision or false conclusions that result in their failure, then that is what is going to happen. If the players have a good idea to become friends with the monster and help it in destroying the village, I am not going to stop them. If they screw up so badly that they can only watch the village go down in flame, then that’s how it will end. I think I am fairly laid back and don’t make it very hard for the players to accomplish the outcome I assume to be the most likely they want to get. Which in this scenario would be finding the monster and stopping it before it causes too much more damage to the village. But I think it’s important that other outcomes are possible and that the players know that other outcomes are possible. There needs to be a chance that the players will be unsuccessful and there needs to be an option for them to decide on a different goal than the one I assumed they would want to pursue. Because I believe that this is what ultimately gives meaning to the adventure and to all of the players actions. If events A, B, C, and D will happen no matter what the players do, then there will be no feeling of accomplishment at the end, and no feeling of urgency or suspense during the adventure. So if the players come up with a plan that goes straight from B to D while completely avoiding C, then I think a GM should still go with that. (Which is why I am no fan of the adventures published for D&D 3rd edition and Pathfinder, as those usually can not progress unless the players are going through each of those events in the predetermined order.)
I have been given a number of interesting suggestions for more monster books, among them Creatures of Barsaive for Earthdawn and Creatures of the Dreamseed for Engel, which I am currently trying to hunt down. In the meantime, we’re going to explore Monster of Faerûn, the last Dungeons & Dragons book I have on my list of books I want to cover.
Monsters of Faerûn was one of the very early books for D&D 3rd edition and the first monster book after the original Monster Manual. The cover of the book matches the Monster Manual and not the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting as all other Forgotten Realms books later would. It is also the only book that has the title “Monster Compendium” in it’s name. I assume it was planned to have it as a distinct product line, but all further monster books were 200+ pages hardcovers, unlike this 100 page paperback.
I started with fantasy stuff in 1999, the year before 3rd edition was released, and that start was Baldur’s Gate, the game that made BioWare the giant of Western RPGs that it had been for until recently. (Really not a fan of any of their games since Mass Effect 2, which is the best videogame of all time!) A game that just so happens to be set in the Forgotten Realms, so I had to get this book right when it came out. And even though it’s by far the smallest monster book ever released by WotC, and also just the second they made, I think this one really the best one by a far margine. When I went to get the monster pictures from the old art archive from WotCs website (they are still up, but you’ll only get there through search engines), there was barely amy that I didn’t download. And most of those that I am not going to cover here aren’t boring, but they are either beefed up versions of monsters from the Monster Manual (cloaker lord, greater doppelganger) or I already covered them when I did the 1st edition Fiend Folio (bullywug, fire newt, giant strider, gibberling, quaggoth). Truly wonderful book and almost all of the creatures can be imported to other settings without problem. I think a good dozen of them directly inspired monsters for my own Ancient Lands setting. If this book were Star Wars, it would be The Empire Strikes Back.
Monsters of Faerûn
Monster Compendium: Monsters of Faerûn for Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition by Wizards of the Coast, 2001; 86 pages of monsters.
Aballin
The Aballin is a type of ooze whose most distinguishing trait is that it looks just like water. It also can change between two different states, one being a thick slime, the other a water like liquid that is almost impossible to harm. It is one of the many classic creatures of the type “everything is trying to kill you”, but I think actually one of the less implausible ones. It’s just another slime like all the others, except that it has a clear color. When in its semisolid state, an aballin is quite strong and can slam enemies with considerable force. However its main mode of attack is to engulf its victim and simply drown him.
Banedead
The Banedead is a variant ghoul created by clerics of the evil god Bane. One of their hands is a large claw, which also happens to be the holy symbol of Bane, and also deals 1 point of Dexterity damage. Which is not as measly as it sounds. Since it’s tied to a melee attack, there is no saving throw and there’s a good chance you’re going to encounter them in significant numbers. This can get quite bad over time, especially as banedead are not very strong otherwise and therefore likely to be fought by PCs of low-medium level. Dealing with larger numbers of them over several encounters could make for a very interesting adventure. An interesting detail of the banedead is that they are also created by priests of the Banes son Xvim, which tells us that this book was actually released before the FRCS, as from that point on Xvim is dead and Bane is back! (Variant Ghoul +1) Continue reading “Fantasy Safari: Monsters of Faerûn (D&D 3rd ed.), Part 1”
