Yora – Page 99 – Spriggan's Den

Fantasy Safari: Monsters of Faerûn (D&D 3rd ed.), Part 2

More Forgotten Realms goodness:

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, 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.

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.

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”

Anton and Erwin are taking the train (or not)

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.)

But sometimes C is really, really cool…

Continue reading “Anton and Erwin are taking the train (or not)”

Fantasy Safari: Monsters of Faerûn (D&D 3rd ed.), Part 1

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.

Monster Compendium: Monsters of Faerûn for Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition by Wizards of the Coast, 2001; 86 pages of monsters.

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.

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”

Book Review: Death Angel’s Shadow

I think I first read about Karl Wagners Kane a few months ago at Black Gate, and I thought it sounded very interesting. Stories of a true anti-hero whom many consider to be a monster, who is both a great swordsmen and very powerful sorcerer, yet still a character of great depths and deep reflection. I’ve read the story Undertow in The Sword & Sorcery Anthology and while not great, ot really made me want to read more of Kane.

So I picked up Death Angel’s Shadow, which is the first collection of Kane stories I am aware of, but that doesn’t have to mean that these are also the first written ones, and I believe they actually are not. So who is this Kane? He is a very muscular and skilled swordsmen, but that is where the similarities with Conan already end. Both Kane and Wagners writing are a very different story from Howards classic barbarian hero and his countless imitations.

Kane was not a man easily mistaken for another. His red hair and fair complexion, his powerful bearlike frame set him apart from the native Chrosanthians in a region where racial features leaned to dark hair and lean wiriness. And his rather coarse features and huge sinewed hands did not make him too exceptional from the mercenaries displaced from the cold lands far to the south. It was his eyes that banded him as an outsider. No man looked into Kane’s eyes and forgott them. Cold blue eyes in which lurked the wild gleam of insanity, hellish fires of crazed destruction and bloodshed. The look of death. Eyes of a born killer.

Kane is an immortal who has traveled the Earth for countless centuries, cursed by ancient gods to never find any peace in death. He is a great warrior, but also a very powerful sorcerer and through the centuries has ruled over many different lands and made his name known throughout most of the world as a tyrant, conqueror, and bandit. He is a man who is feared, and expects to be feared, and has no illusions or guilt about the death and attrocities he brought upon the world. Yet what we see of Kane, at least in this book, is not a mindless raging killer, but a man of many different aspects. Continue reading “Book Review: Death Angel’s Shadow”

Books I have not read yet

But plan to do so in the near future:

The Witcher Saga by Andrzej Sapkowski. I am actually already two chapters into Blood of Elves, but for some reason haven’t really been any books these last couple of weeks.
Bloodstone by Karl Wagner.
The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula Le Guin.
The Saga of King Kull by Robert Howard.
The Gods of Mars by Edgar Burroughs.
Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky.
Elric of Melniboné by Michael Moorcock.
The Dinosaur Lords by Victor Milan (when it’s out in July), because it has a knight on a dinosaur on the cover!
Imaro by Charles Saunders.

Fantasy Safari: Monster Manual (D&D 3rd Ed.), Part 4

Completing the Monster Manual:

The Vargouille is a creature from before there were different creature types in D&D and eded up as an outsider in 3rd edition, even though it could just as well have been made undead like the bodak. As far as I am aware, they first appeared in the Planescape setting and they are a wonderful example of how the setting is full of things that are simultaneously silly, cool, and somewhat creepy. A vargouille is a humanoid head with a large pair of wings that has a terrifying scream that makes any creatures within 20 meters become paralyzed by fear. Their bite does very little damage, but also has a poison that makes it impossible for the target to heal any kind of injuries. But most terrifyingly, a vargouile can fly up to a paralyzed victim and give it a kiss, which starts a slow process of transformation that first makes the hair fall out, then the ears turn into large bat wings, makes it go insane, and finally causes the head to ripp off the neck and fly away as a new vargouille. Funny. But as always, some more description what you’re supposed to do with it would have been nice.

The Wight really is just a very beefed up ghoul. I like this monster and when you go into the details its background and context makes it a quite different creature. It’s still a starved corpse that sneaks around in the dark. (Variant Ghoul +1)

The Winter Wolf is a huge white wolf with who can breath icy cold and whose bite deals cold damage. Just like a color flipped hellhound. It’s bigger and tougher though, and also of human intelligence and with the ability to talk. They are not exactly masterminds, but are smart and dangerous enough to be villains in their own right who command weaker creratures as their minions. (Demon Dog +1)

And of course the Worg, because Tolkien did it. And everything that Tolkien did has to be in D&D! Its a big wolf that is slighly intelligent and evil. (Demon Dog +1)

Xills are creatures that come from the novel Voyage of the Space Beagle, which also got us the displacer beast. It’s a four armed, demonic looking humanoid, but it’s actually from the ethereal plane. Unlike most ethereal monsters, it takes a xill significantly longer to move between the ethereal and material world, which makes impossible to quickly blink in and out and avoid any retaliation by its enemies. They are very intelligent and also evil, and as a nice thouch we’re also told that groups are often led into battle by a cleric of a deity of strength and travel. Their four arms help them with wrestling their enemies and when they can get a hold, they use their poisonous bite that can paralyze for several hours. The saving throw to resist it is not too high and there’s a good chance to withstand the poison, but then the xill can just try again the next round until it works. Unlike other monster (foreshadowing!) their ability to grapple is not excessively high and they can not try to bite without grappling an enemy first, which makes the ability not too powerful, but still something that can add a nice touch to a fight. Especially when the xills want to take prisoners, which they do to implant their eggs into them. With a duration of 90 days until the eggs hatch, there is plenty of time to try to rescue those prisoners and get them help. If you make some more backstory and context for them, these could be quite interesting enemies for a campaign. Continue reading “Fantasy Safari: Monster Manual (D&D 3rd Ed.), Part 4”