Spriggan's Den

Fantasy Safari: Creature Collection (BECMI), Part 5

The fifth part of the Creature Collection with more Monsters and Undead.

The Hivebrood is a swarm of insects that reproduces by putting larvas into humanoid bodies which then grow to turn the person into one of them. They are all controlled by a hivemother. Maybe back in the early 80s that concept was still original. But probably not. The most interesting ability they have is that the broodmother is able to turn larvas into a more powerful form than normal drones to become hiveminds. Hiveminds have the interesting ability that they can gain any ability from any creature they eat, which includes any spells memorized by spellcasters they consumed. When in danger, a hivemind can release a chemical cloud that spreads through the hive and shares a single ability with all the regular drones for three rounds, after which it is lost. If that ability is something like casting fireball, the result can be utterly devastating for the PCs.

The Ice Wolf is simply a different name for the well known winter wolf and has exactly the same abilities. (Demon Dogs +1)

The Kopru is a classic monsters from X1 The Isle of Dread. It’s fame is mostly tied to that classic adventure. They have three tails which they use to grab enemies and have a special power to control the mind of any creature and have full accees to it. I did some snooping around if the kopru predates aboleths that are surprisingly similar, and it turns out they both appeared in the same year. And in addition, The Isle of Dread and Dwellers of the Forbidden City were both written by Zeb Cook. So yeah, they are basically the same idea slightly modified for B/X and AD&D. This is the same Cook that did the “Cook Expert” set of the “Moldvay/Cook” edition and also the Kara-Tur and Planescape settings. Why isn’t he more famous? He’s probably the second most influential person to make D&D into what we know now. Aboleths are a lot cooler than kopru, though.

The Nagpa is from the adventure X4 Master of the Desert Nomads, which is one of my favorite ones. And also made by Zeb Cook. Not as cool as the Bhut but better than the Juggernaut from the same adventure. They are humanoids with vulture heads and various magical powers like making objects within 20 meters to burst into flames or decay, paralyse all lawful characters within 3 meters, and cast darkness and illusions. It took about 30 years until designers realized that just four or five spell abilities are enough for an interesting encounter and you don’t need a spellcasting monster to have as many spells as a high level wizard. Continue reading “Fantasy Safari: Creature Collection (BECMI), Part 5”

The Ultimate Retro-Pulp Fantasy Setting

A couple of weeks ago me and a few others threw around some random ideas for the Ultimate Retro-Pulp Fantasy Setting. It didn’t get very far, but even with the little we got it’s already a really cool setting I really would like to use for a couple one-shot stories or adventures.

To begin with, we have planet with a giant moon, which is the home to amazons and dark elves, who occasionally come to raid the planet riding on giant space whales.

On the planet there are the evil serpent men and the island empire of Talantis. The Talantians also build air ships, which can fly to the moon as well. There is also the great dragon sorcerer Tyrannosaurus Hex. Hawk Men are one of the minor races that inhabit the planet. There are also giant apes and dinosaurs.

The moon would be even more hardcore and dangerous and only for experienced heroes. Below the surface live the dangerous Generic Brand™ Mind Flayers.

Regarding religion, the true gods are totally weird and alien beings from a different plane of reality and beyond human comprehension. There are lots of temples in all the cities, but only the high priests really know what kind of thing they are worshipping. Gods don’t intervene and don’t reveal themselves to normal people.

Colossal stone bodies cover the landscape and are the remains of titans, who were very powerful, but not true gods. There also is no real difference between a sorcerer and a priest, their magic is all the same thing.

Based on all these things, the tech level for weapons and armor would best be Antiquity. No knights in plate armor or samurai, or anything like that. That means chainmail, dragonhide, breast plate, and boob plate.

Nothing new under the sun?

“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

I’ve been looking around for some more RPG and Sword & Sorcery related blogs to add to my own personal list, and there have been two major things I noticed.

For one thing, it seems that the world of RPG bloggers is entirely dominated by OSR gamemasters. I would say more than four out of five posts about RPGs on those sites are either B/X or AD&D and to a lesser extend Traveller. Which might be distorted that I am primarily searching for new sites by browsing through the links on sites I already know, and perhaps these people just don’t care about any posts about other games like Pathfinder, Vampire, Shadowrun, Fate, or Star Wars. Possible, though there still seems to be an unusually high amount of sites devoted entirely to OSR games.

The other thing is that the amount of posts on these sites has steadily been going down in recent years. Sites at blogspot conveniently display the number of posts per year, and almost everywhere I look the peak is at 2010 to 2011. Some started to reduce their number of posts to a third in 2011, others only in 2012, but from that point on it’s almost always steadily down. Trollsmyth is actually the only one I know of who has been around before 2008.

Which I find strange. I’ve heard in multiple places that the games market has been steadily growing for the past years. By some estimates even 20% every year.

Has everything be said that has to be said with nothing more to add? I find that very hard to believe. Yet, where is everybody?

Fantasy Safari: Creature Catalogue (BECMI), Part 4

Continuing the exploration of the Creature Catalogue with the chapter on “Monsters”.

The Aranea is a large intelligent spider with humanlike arms to the sides of it’s head. It’s a original creature from the Known World and though it had made it into the 3rd edition Monster Manual it didn’t see a lot of use outside of the setting to my knowledge. The arenea presented here is quite different from the one in the Monster Manual. It is highly intelligent and can cast spells like a 3rd level magic user, but it does not have any ability to shapechange into either a human or hybrid form. It also does look a lot more like a full spider and has no other humanlike feature except its arms. Interestingly its alignment is also Chaotic, which makes it basically evil in the 3rd edition alignment system.

A Baldandar is a creature similar to doppelgangers. However, they are not shapechangers but masters of illusion instead. They can create almost any illusion imaginable in a radius of 80 meters and their illusions will remain for 10 minutes after they stop directly controlling them. Their illusions are not simply deceptions of the senses but are partly real. A baldandar can even cast illusions of other spells, but creatures targeted by them can make a saving throw at a -4 penalty to recognize that they are fake and be unaffected. It also can make itself invisible and fly around at will, which makes them very difficult to catch or corner.

The Bargda is a creature related to ogres and trolls and usually found as the leader of a group of these monsters. In addition to their great strength and toughness, they are so horribly hedious that anyone who sees them must make a saving throw or suffer a penalty to attacks and damage. In addition to attacking with a huge club, a bargda can also bite, which transmits a disease that reduces the victims dexterity. Continue reading “Fantasy Safari: Creature Catalogue (BECMI), Part 4”

Surprise!

Surprise, as it is explained in Dungeons & Dragons throughout almost all editions is a bit weird. In the TSR editions, it is usually explained that in the case of an encounter, both the players and the (potential) enemies roll a d6. On a roll of 1 or 2 they are not surprised, on a roll of 3-6 they are. If both sides or neither side is suprised, initiative is rolled to see which side goes first. If one side is surprised but the other is not, then the side that is not surprised gets to act in the first round and the other is not. After that round initiative is rolled as usual.

3rd edition ditched the d6 roll and only mentions in passing that a Spot or Listen skill check might be used to determine awareness, but it also explicitly calls the begining of the encounter a Surprise Round.

But when you think about how awareness and surprise would work outside of game mechanics, it doesn’t really make much sense. The flaw here is that the rules make it sound as if you have two groups running straight into each other and one realizes a bit faster what is going on than the other group.

Surprise Motherfucker — Surprise, Motherfucker!

But why does the group that has surprise only get one round during which the other side is still inactive? If you become aware of the other group before they do, you usually still have the option to not make your presence known to them immediately. If you are opening a door in a dungeon and there is an enemy on the other side, then yes. They may be surprised, but after the initial shock they would immediatly jump up and go for their weapons.

But unless you play a simple Hack & Slash game, that’s not what you’d usually be doing. You can become aware of another group before you are standing face to face. You silently creep through the dark corridor and reach a cave where an ogre is chewing on human meat with his back turned towards you. You hear voices talking around the corner or you might see the light of a lamp approaching from behind a bend in the corridor. In these situations you still have some time to extinguish all lights, find hiding spots, or run away before you are noticed at all. Depending on the distance you might still have a lot of time to prepare for battle. Once you jump out of your hiding places, then you are getting your surprise round during which the other group can not take any action.

Of all the editions of D&D I have here, only the Rules Cyclopedia even mentions this at all.

When one party is surprised, the unsurprised party notices the surprised party at the 1d4x10 (feet indoors, yards outdoors) distance rolled; the surprised party won’t notice the unsurprised party until they reach half that distance.

Thanks, Aaron Allston. If this was your own houserule, it’s a really good one. Maybe it had always been asumed, but to my knowledge it has never been explained like this anywhere else. Using this rule also makes a huge difference for thieves at low levels. Sneaking up on a guard to backstab it with 20% to Move Silently at 1st level is just suicidial. Nobody would ever do that, especially when you only have 1d4 hit points yourself. In combination with a surprise system that lets you turn around and back off to a distance outside the encounter distance, 20% is something to actually consider.

Imagine a the maximum encounter distance of 40 feet inside a dungeon. Both the thief and the monster make their surprise roll at 40 and if they are both surprised, they will notice each other at 20 feet. If the thief is succesfully Moving Silently, he will automatically detect the monster at 20 feet, but the monster will not notice him at either 40 or 20 feet. If the rest of the PCs stay 25 feet behind the thief, the thief will reach auto detect distance to the monster before the main party reaches possible detection range. The thief then can give a hand signal to the other or return back to them and tell them what he saw. Then the entire party knows the monster is there, make a descision whether to approach or not, and if they do they will have surprise on their side. The monster still has to roll surprise again to see if it will notice the party at full encounter distance or half encounter distance (which might be as close as 5 feet on the roll of a 1 on the d4). Even if the Move Silently roll fails, there is still chance to get regular surprise on the monster and the thieves friends are right behind him. It’s a lot less stupid than trying to walk up to a monster that might know you’re walking straight into the reach of its attack.
This is another one of these cases where an odd old rule mostely went ignored for being irrelevant though it does serve an important function: Encounter Distances. You don’t have to roll it and you could always decide on an appropriate value yourself, but any surprise system worth using should have the option to retreat undetected or prepare an ambush. Just a single free round of action before combat automatically starts isn’t cutting it.

Magic of the Ancient Lands: Ghost Paint and Soulstones

Ghost Paint

The dark elves of the tropical jungles in the south make a special paint from chalk and various plants and minerals with alchemical properties that is used to draw runes on the bodies of their warriors. These runes draw energy from the spirits of the clan and the jungles they inhabit to give the warriors strength and protection. The runes can be created at different degrees of complexity, with the fully completed patterns being the most powerful ones.

Least runes are very simple and only a couple of lines and can be done in a minute. Shamans apply a few of these to themselves every morning and when going to war all the warriors are given some to protect them in battle. Even apprentice shamans can do these and scouts patroling the borders of the clans territory are often given one or two by an apprentice before leaving the village.

Lesser runes are used much more limited and are only given to special people, like senior shamans, leaders of warbands, or scouts send into enemy territory. They take 10 minutes to create and can give the person significantly increased strength, reflexes, and perception.

Greater runes take one hour to make and are therefore only used for very special situations like shamans summoning a very dangerous spirit, chiefs leading their warriors into battle, or clan champions fighting an important duel. They can give a person inhuman strength and endurance and require a great deal of magic power from the shaman that creates them.

True runes are the most powerful patterns that can be made. They take several hours to make and a very experienced shaman, but when completed they allow a spirit to take full possession of the person as its avatar. The possessed person becomes incredibly powerful, but it is widely believed that any person who has once been possessed this way could become possessed again without summoning the spirit god and then it would not be bound by any contract made with a shaman. Therefore anyone who had been given a true rune must be slain after the possession ends.

Soulstone

A soulstone is a gem or piece of bone that has been carved with many symbols that serve as clues how one could find the place where they were originally made and to which clan it belongs. A soulstone is given to any members of a Vandren clan who leave the clans ancestral homeland and serves as an anchor for the owners soul in case he should die on his journey. If a Vandren dies while in possession of his soulstone, his soul will retain its form for far longer before completely fading into the spiritworld. If the soulstone is returned to his clan, the spirit will follow it and can be laid to rest by the clan shaman in the village shrine. It is believed that the shrines in the center of Vandren villages is a source of spirit power that allows any newborn children in the village to gain some of the strength and courage of their ancestors. If a Vandren would die far away from the clan, his power would be lost to them, but with a soulstone at least some of it can be recovered even long after the person has died and his spirit almost entirely faded away.

Clans will always give very great rewards for anyone who returns a soulstone to the shrine regardless of the circumstances of its recovery. Getting the strength and courage back which has been with their ancestors for generations is more important than any indignity of paying a scoundrel or greedy treasure hunter. Sometimes soulstones pass through several hands before they reach their final destination, as it is well known that they can be turned into gold and silver eventually. The easier the clan indicated by the engravings is to identify and the closer its current location, the more valuable they are. Some highly dispicable warriors collect the soulstones of the enemies they have slain and keep them as amulets to claim their power for themselves. To almost any other halfway decent folks this is one of the most horrible things that could be done to an enemy and absolutely without any honor. Anyone with at least some shred of honor will see that the soulstones of fallen enemies are returned to their clan.