The Tolkien Toolkit

Me and D, talking (edited for concision)...

Zak: What's something you'd like to see in 5th edition D&D that was not in any previous edition of the game ?

D: I'd like to see a total replacement of the non-human races with something else (no more elves, hobbits, dwarfs or orcs)! They've made some interesting moves in that direction but leaving the old standards in there means the assumptions of the game don't change.

Z:

One-- My problem with that is the cliches make it really easy for me to explain the options to my "not the usual fantasy RPG demographic players" very fast. "You know, elves right?" "Oh, right, ok". Too much straying from cliche in initial PC choices means I need a lot more buy-in. "Like, ok, it's kind of like a hunchback but has gears for arms and cloaks for teeth and the culture is based on exchange of meerkats and..."

The issue is not feasibility but whether it'd be a good idea period. If D&D went totally Mieville (or whatever) it'd be really hard to explain to anyone who wasn't in a certain subsubgenre of cultural payingattention-ness, whereas as it is now it casts a wide net and you can funnel the game toward avant-garde fantasy ideas after you get buy-in . Seems like a decent solution to me. Somebody has to make the elfgame where there's elves.

(See: The describability problem.)

Two-- "assumptions of the game"?

D:

Assumptions like you can play a human that can be any way any real person could be; a creature that is lucky, small and fast; something large, dumb and ugly; something tall, beautiful and graceful; or something short, tough and mean.

The short tough and mean guys don't get along with the tall graceful ones. The big ugly ones don't get along with anyone. Humans get along with everyone (kind of). The little ones just try to hide their communities or blend into the larger races lands. But really everything is not so different because some of them can mate with each other and everyone is competing for the same resources.

These are assumptions everyone goes into a game with. Your "You saw Lord of the Rings, right?" promise that is fulfilled with every setting.

Does that make sense?

___

(Interpolation: You may have heard this idea before, I certainly have. Only versions of this argument I usually hear are dumber and angrier than this one.)

___

Z:

It makes sense except the whole point of Medieval folklore is it is a bunch of incredibly stupid ideas (theocracy, monarchy etc.) thought up by our ignorant forbears and that's why the D&D world is horrible and full of bad monsters and evil kings and therefore fun to fuck around with. Also: part of the point of the game for many people is to transcend and fight personifications of these ideas.

The traditional ideas have value precisely because they expose the ignorant reptile thinking at the base of our culture. The devil being equated with sexuality for zillions of years for instance explains so much more about the way people think than if I subbed in some mutant thing I thought up yesterday. Thinking about this world is good and smart and helps people. It is not the only world worth thinking about, but D&D is a major existing cultural representation of that exact world of ideas.

D:

I agree these things are based in folklore, but they are still interpretations of that folklore. Elves in Celtic folklore where frightening monsters that stole children, musicians and craftspeople for their amusement. In D&D they are often the good guys. An ancient race in decline. It's not quite the same thing. Tolkien's take on elves was great, it's just sad to me that there seems to be no room for anything else.

Z:

Yes, but I am also saying that the players' default position regarding the cultural assumptions behind these ideas starts out critical rather than naively accepting. Simply because their own modern world is so obviously not full of knights and orcs.

The exception is children--but if we don't grant them the ability to turn the mythology of childhood into an adult consciousness then we have to start bowdlerizing our way through every single product that resonates with them ever created--which I think is a very very dangerous cultural practice not only due to the damage it would do to all pre-1990s art for children but to child-rearing practices in general. Build skeptical children, not a padded room for them to be credulous in.

Or simply this: if you don't use "elves vs trolls" someone else willbecause it's an idea that resonates. So use the idea in an interesting, self-questioning way rather than pretending it doesn't exist. The repressed always recurs. The altered gets evolved.

D:

OK Zak, maybe I can explain where I am coming from.

I think my main problem with what I called the assumptions of D&D is that I see them as mostly one man's interpretation of the common folklore.

I'm a bit of an odd ball because I didn't read any tolkien until I was in my 20s. As a child I was more familiar with the source material (folklore) than the shiny world of middle earth he had created. The first fantasy I read was Ursula K LeGuin's Earthsea books. Those stories operated under a different framework of ideas. Not completely different, but different enough.

D&D introduced me to tolkien's elves, dwarfs and hobbits. To me they weren't entrenched tropes, but strange new takes on old familiar stories. Elves were like the Sidhe, but nicer. Instead of coveting master craftsmanship or music they were master craftsmen and musicians themselves. It wasn't huge leap, but it was one that I had to make.

It is amazing to me just how much the tolkien take on it has invaded our culture. With the movies, books and all of the other IPs that make use of these same tropes, including 40 years of D&D, it really has become a common mythology.

You are correct, the idea of trying to ignore all that common ground would only create barriers to play. Besides, I have had tonnes of fun playing in that same framework. I guess it just bothers me that it has become the "right way" to do it, instead of one way of many.

Z:

D&D has successfully "drifted" Tolkien in the past (and Tolkien was, in turn, a "drift" of Victorian fantasy, which was a "drift" of Medieval folklore). I think further "drift" is probably the best solution.

D:

"Drifting" is a great way of putting it. Some interesting drifting has already happened in D&D. Dark Sun and Birthright come to mind as examples.

I feel like a crazy person right now because I agree with pretty much every point you've made. The Tolkien setup still feels like a box. Drifting is a great way to turn the box on it's side, giving us a whole new perspective and set of possibilities, but it's still inside the box. I like the idea of jumping OUT of the box, even though it seems insane and impossible. Not to mention lonely.

Clearly D&D needs to remain inside it's own framework to move forward. I wonder if they can leave room for drifting or jumping in their new rules?

Z:

I think pretty much every version of D&D allows totally chucking out the Tolkien race kit. It's not a problem. Dark sun? Eberron? The options have always been at least implied since even 0e:

"There is no reason that players cannot be allowed to play virtually anything, provided they begin relatively weak and work up to the top"

(The same author's AD&D DMG later reversed this position, but the rest of D&D overrided him, so whatever...)

_______

This all lead to Cole starting another conversation...

What PC races besides the "Tolkien Four" have enough broad folk or mythic resonance to be accessible and quickly grasped by new players not deep in the nerdosphere?

Where we talked about the possibilities of animalpeople, devilpeople, hags, mummies etc etc and then it all ended, as usual, with us talking about Iron Maiden.

On account of they're the best way to explain Githyanki.

Comic Book Villains Ripe For D&Dification

Dr DoomVictor Von Doom of Latveria is periodically made medieval in actual Marvel comics. Evil knight behind perforated mask with a few magic-user levels. And he already has a castle with a map. Go nuts.


The Time Trapper.
Who is the Time Trapper? Click to enlarge...
"It is known that the Time Trapper dominates the wasteland of Earth in its dying millennia....He possesses great armies and weapons of power, the source of which are unknown"

And he looks like that. So you don't even need to change his costume.

He can age you or de-age you or send you through time or whatever.

Just don't remind him how things used to go back in the day.


Dr Fate When He's Bad
Dr Fate is what DC comics has instead of Dr Strange. He gets his powers from an ancient Egyptian helmet so naturally there are lots of stories where someone bad gets the helmet.
In a Keith Giffen miniseries he makes a demon mouth appear in mid air and projectile vomit raw eldritch plasm on Batman fucking killing him.In a Neil Gaiman future story the Fate helmet becomes all corrupt and old and vampiric and suchlike. It sits in a neoEgyptian temple being all...
...and then some idiot does and then Fate uses the poor bastard's mouth to deliver the following critique of Gygaxian cosmology: "Order. It's offal. Chaos. It's garbage. They were just different names for the same thing: The gurgle, ooze, purl and spurt of protoplasm, deluding itself that there's meaning. There is no meaning. Just the flesh. And death. And..." then the helmet sucks the life out of the guy wearing it falls to the floor and it lays there being gross.

Artifact or relic? Hmmm...

The Demon Bear that fought the New Mutants...

It's a demon. It's a bear. Need me to draw a map?

Shuma Gorath
Maybe Shuma-Gorath is cheating--the name is from RE Howard and the rest is pure Lovecraft, but there's something about the platonic tentacle-eyeball-nothing-else simplicity of old S-G that's terribly appealing. And why not give Gorath the same schtick as...

Starro The ConquerorNow, of all the possible individuals who might try to take over the world by having small duplicates of themselves climb onto everyone's face, Starro is maybe less my first choice than, say, Scarlet Johannsen, still, Starro is pretty cool.So cool I had a Starro attack the PCs at sea a couple weeks ago...

Marvel's Merlyn
In the case of Alan Moore's take on a manipulative, time-travelling, dimension-hopping Merlyn, a picture is worth a thousand words...
'

The Mindless Ones
They're big and tough and zap you and are from another dimension. Also they have no minds. Their "No. Appearing" figure is pretty grim.

Malekith The Accursed
What If... Robert Plant was a dark elf sorcerer in crazy warpaint who unleashed the Cask of Winters? Then you would be playing some excellent D&D is what. So enjoy that.

The Beast

Not not the blue guy who goes "Oh my stars and garters"--the creature from the Elektra: Assassin miniseries that's worshipped by ninjas and possesses people via evil milk. Also possessed of a fairly impressive traditional claw claw bite routine.

Mordru
There isn't that much that's special about Mordru per se--he's just another in a long line of beardy wizards--but that issue of Legion of Superheroes (the "Mordru-verse" issue) where he establishes complete Orwellian dominion over Earth using technomagical surveillance and controls all the other villains is pretty sweet.

Earth X Uatu
The gorgeous dysversal Earth X miniseries used Machine Man's origins in the old 2001:A Space Odyssey comic series as a backdoor to bring in a lot of visual references to Kubrick's film, but none more memorable than John Paul Leon's image of Marvel Comics omniscient, objective Watcher as a crippled, corrupt version of the 2001 Starchild collapsing under the weight of his own big smug overevolved head.

Ego, the Living Planet

Speaking of big heads. Got the All-My-PCs-Are-Level-20 blues? Have them fight a planet.

Klarion the Witch Boy
He's disturbing and so is his cat.


Etrigan The Demon + The Gargoyle

He's a duke of Hell, he speaks in rhyme and his soul is wedded eternally to an unfortunate scholar named Jason Blood. The only thing not totally D&D about Etrigan is his technicolor outfit...But that's easily fixed by saying he dresses like Marvel's similar-looking-but-less-cool-acting Gargoyle...

Now That's A Monster Entry

They are called MONKEYS (Simia) in the latin lan-
guage because people notice a great similitude to human
reason in them. Wise in the lore of the elements, these
creatures grow merry at the time of the new moon. At
half and full moon they are depressed. Such is the nature
of a monkey that, when she gives birth to twins, she
esteems one of them highly but scorns the other. Hence,
if it ever happens that she gets chased by a sportsman
she clasps the one she likes in her arms in front of her,
and carries the one she detests with its arms round her
neck, pickaback. But for this very reason, when she is
exhausted by running on her hind legs, she has to throw
away the one she loves, and carries the one she hates,
willy-nilly.

A monkey has no tail (cauda). The Devil resembles
these beasts; for he has a head, but no scripture (caudex).

Admitting that the whole of a monkey is disgraceful,

yet their bottoms really are excessively disgraceful

and horrible. In the same way, the Devil had a founda-
tion when he was among the angels of heaven, but he was
hypocritical and cunning inside himself, and so he lost
his cauda-caudex as a sign that all of him would perish
in the end. As the Apostle says: 'Whom the Lord Jesus
Christ will kill with the breath of his mouth'.

'Simia' is a Greek word, meaning 'with squashed
nostrils'. Hence we call monkeys this, because they have
turned-up noses and a hideous countenance, with wrinkles
lewdly puffing like bellows. It is also said to be a charac-
teristic of goats to have a turned-up nose.

Cercopitheci1 do have tails. These are the only ones
to be discreet, among those previously mentioned.

Cynocephali2 are also numbered among monkeys.
They are very common in Ethiopia. They are violent in
leaping and fierce in biting. They never get tame enough
not to be rather ferocious.

Sphinxes' also are reckoned as monkeys. They are
shaggy, defenceless, and docilely ready to forget their
wild freedom.

1 Aidrovandus says that the English is 'marmuset'.

2 The Baboon, the dog-headed ape, possibly the Egyptian god Anubis.
According to Gesner, the sphinx is a real monkey, and the Sphinx of art,
woman in front and lion behind, is merely an imaginary representation of
it made by painters and sculptors. Perhaps he is not so wrong in this as he seems.

At any rate, the Guinea Baboon is called a sphinx to this day.

A note on fabulous animals will be found in the Appendix.

From Bestiary: A Book of Beasts by T.H. White

Well worth it and all on-line here courtesy of the University of Wisconsin.

Green Manilishi With The Two Pronged Crown

Sitting on the

couch

drawing

waiting to go

home.

Diseases, Dungeons, Bookbinding, Alcohol, Bestiaries, etc.

-First, A Picture

-Then, two public service announcements:

-Jim Ward--as in Drawmij's Instant Summons--needs help. Hook him up if you have a buck.

-You guys like miniatures right? This one's called Sasha and fights cancer:

Get an exclusive 28mm miniature and help combat Cancer and MS. Full details here:

http://frothersunite.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=36069

and on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Frothers-Charity-Thingy-2012/239388002780960

-Now, a picture from some Danish guy's house that I think is funny:

-Noisms asked us all some questions:

Book binding. I presume I speak for like a gazillion gamers when I say I'd like to have my RPG books bound well and would not like to read thousands of blog posts about how RPG books should be bound well.

"Doing a voice". Ding.

Breaks. I have a break if someone has to take a phone call anyway and we're not in the middle of something. I also have a break if a major objective just got finished and so we might keep going or we might just stop and hand out xp--figure out after the break.

Description. Ding.

Where do you strike the balance between "doing what your character would do" and "acting like a dickhead"? When I'm playing I generally just ask "Is that ok?" to the other PCs. When I'm running the game--the few times it comes up--it's a question of knowing the individual player well enough to know how disruptive they can get and knowing how to communicate with that specific person.

PC-on-PC violence. Aside from Mandy's brother, most of my players know each other and are socialized enough to at least know how far to push it. And with Mandy's brother it's just funny because there's a whole big-sister little-brother dynamic going on.

How do you explain what a role playing game is to a stranger who is also a non-player? I don't explain RPGs to strangers.

Alcohol at the table? On a 5 or a 6. My players' PCs tend to act exactly the same whether they're drunk or not, so far as I can tell. The only difference is they have an excuse when they can't remember NPCs from the session before.

What's acceptable to do to a PC whose player is absent from the session? I just have the PC disappear and be carried off to fairy land while nobody's looking.

-Now, a dungeon:
(click to enlarge)



-And finally, an observation that could probably be its own post but whatever:

Monsters. The monster bestiary in a published game book (if the game is D&D-like) isn't just things the PCs fight or things that define the setting: they are also a reason PCs care about leveling up and going on with the campaign.

Some players want their PCs to acquire power or wealth or status, but I think a lot of them leaf through the Monster Manual and see Asmodeus and go: I wanna meet that guy. And I want to be tough enough to beat him. And I want to have earned it,

Game-defining monsters like the dragons in Shadowrun or D&D or the beholder or the demons in Warhammer give the PCs the constant unconscious feeling that there's more out there in the game.

Games which don't have that, or game genres that don't have that--I think they need something else to keep PCs on the hook. Like I can see being playing a cowboy for a session or two--but why keep going? What am I gonna see in the 80th Boot Hill adventure that I didn't see in the first? Or, rather: what do I unconsciously anticipate that I am going to see in the 80th Boot Hill adventure that I didn't see in the first?

So having a sort of "public" awareness of the monsters in your game--so public even your players know these monsters--is a useful thing. The value of that has to be weighed against the "all-unknown-monsters-create-mystery" thing.

The "One More Idea" Method

Another experimental idea-generating method.

You could use this for campaigns, hex-maps, cities, etc. I happen to need a lot of dungeons, so I'm going to use it for a dungeon in this case...

(Note: this worked pretty well so I might use the dungeon in this example, so if you're playing in my game in LA don't read it...)

Step One:

Start with a random or hastily-thrown-together dungeon (or city, or list of campaign elements, or hex-map locations or whatever).

I'm gonna use a random dungeon and I'm gonna populate it using the instadungeon tables...

(unlike the actual complete instadungeon rules, this method is slow, so if I'm taking the time here I might as well use a genuine dungeon rather than the flow-chart-like maps that the instadungeon method produces)

Key:

1 soldier-type monster riding brute
2 brute monster staked down
3 locked and trapped door
4 soldiers guarding weapons/treasure/boss
5 3d6 soldier-type monsters
6 locked door, pick-crusher trap
7 extra tough lock
8 major villain
9 sleeping soldier-type monsters (barracks)
10 1d4 soldier-type monsters
11 locked & trapped door

Step Two:

Run down the list of things you randomly or hastily generated and add one detail to each thing. It doesn't have to be an amazing detail, just some detail.

I'm going to start with the major villain in room 8. It's behind a secret door and a portcullis, so I'm going to decide it's a prisoner. It's creations/servants have risen up against it.

Then I'm moving out from there...the soldiers guarding it in 4 are...(looking for something I haven't used lately)...thornchildren (they're spiky botanical-monsters from Vornheim).

Now room 6 has a pick-crusher trap (I'll say it's the west door near the guards) since that technology seems a little beyond sentient roses I'll say the dungeon was built by someone other than them and they are infesting it...

Room 7 has an extra tough lock--I'm gonna say it's both locks to room 7 since that makes more sense. And the locks are tough because...they're choked and grown-over with pieces of dead thornchild.

Room 9's full of sleeping guards--thornchildren? No, let's say they're some monster that tends or "grows" them. It will come running if there's a ruckus in room 4.

Room 10--3 more thornchildren--what are they guarding in room 11?

Room 11--locked and trapped door...because there's treasure in here.

3 Ok, so let's say both these doors are locked and trapped.

1 & 2 have brute monsters. Why would they be in here? Probably experiments. Something that someone tending/creating thornchildren would also be interested in...ok, let's say they're gibbering mouthers. And the one being "ridden" is being experimented on by some sort of humunculus or other igor-ish assistant.

...And last we have room 5. It makes sense if this is the first room the PCs see, which means the locked door and the guards make sense and it means this dungeon is probably below ground as opposed to being a building. I'll also roll for how many guards the room has...

1 soldier-type monster riding brute g. mouther being experimented on by "igor"
2 brute monster staked down gibbering mouther
3 two locked and trapped doors
4 thornchildren guarding prisoner
5 3d6 soldier-type monsters first room 10 guards
6 locked door, pick-crusher trap built by original architect
7 extra tough locks grown over w/spiky vines
8 major villain--prisoner
9 sleeping soldier-type monsters (barracks) tends thornchildren
10 1d4 soldier-type monsters 3 thornchildren
11 locked & trapped door treasure

Step 3:

Repeat step two for each item, in order, until the dungeon is interesting to you.

1 soldier-type monster riding brute g. mouther being experimented on by "igor" room is full of chemicals/potions with bizarre effects
2 brute monster staked down gibbering mouther it is an aggregate of tortured souls
3 two locked and trapped doors room appears empty
4 thornchildren guarding prisoner can't tell humans apart, they identify their master using a creepy question
5 3d6 soldier-type monsters first room 10 guards the guards are animated objects of some kind
6 locked door, pick-crusher trap built by original architect the villain who is locked up in the prison
7 extra tough locks grown over w/spiky vines this room used to be the villain's bedroom
8 major villain--prisoner a succubus
9 sleeping soldier-type monsters (barracks) tends thornchildren leader of the revolt against the succubus
10 1d4 soldier-type monsters 3 thornchildren if all 3 sing simultaneously they generate a sleep spell
11 locked & trapped door treasure 4000 gp, some random items and the key to the prison

____________
1 soldier-type monster riding brute g. mouther being experimented on by "igor" room is full of chemicals/potions with bizarre effects "igor" is a small girl in velvet--an immature demon
2 brute monster staked down gibbering mouther it is an aggregate of tortured souls it is inside a thaumaturgic circle--like the other mouther, it will lash out at anything near it--including other monsters
3 two locked and trapped doors room appears empty room used to be a parlor of sorts, secret door is behind a painting. The painting is a disturbing-looking and semi-animated portrait of the succubus, however, so PCs, hopefully, will be scared to mess with it.
4 thornchildren guarding prisoner can't tell humans apart, they identify their master using a creepy question "What happened to your dear sister?""Baked in a pie and sold to starving salesmen!"(the gibbering mouthers say this, among other random phrases. this is the only phrase that could be a logical answer to this question. they also give other hints--make a list of 7-12 mouther phrases to read off in a babble--practice pretendign you just made it up so PCs don't know they're significant)
5 3d6 soldier-type monsters first room 10 guards the guards are animated objects of some kind they are little cherub statues that look like Falconet's cupid from the Louvre--only all are damaged in some way--wing cracked, arm handless, etc. They come in "hear no evil" "speak no evil" and "see no evil" varieties and can make you deaf, mute, or blind respectively--with a kiss. They also try to choke you by shoving their hands and feet in your mouth.
6 locked door, pick-crusher trap built by original architect the villain who is locked up in the prison actually, it's more of a finger-amputator than a pick-crusher. The fingers appear in a finger-sculpture in hallway between 7 and 3. All the traps are amputators of one sort or another. All the locks are large and ornate and obvious and look like locks on diaries.
7 extra tough locks grown over w/spiky vines this room used to be the villain's bedroom it's full of pyxides containing small, moaning "mouthers" in jars and is done in a predictable opulent-infernal-floral motif.
8 major villain--prisoner a succubus will appear to be a harmless female alchemist interested in exotic plants.
9 sleeping soldier-type monsters (barracks) tends thornchildren leader of the revolt against the succubus another immature demon--this one looks like a fetus
10 1d4 soldier-type monsters 3 thornchildren if all 3 sing simultaneously they generate a sleep spell this room is an elaborate, fountained bath, it is half full of black (soulless) blood, victims may drown in it. Will come back as soulless undead.
11 locked & trapped door treasure 4000 gp, some random items and the key to the prison this door (and all trapped doors in the dungeon) require singing a specific tune to get past. The mouthers sing all the tunes at one point or another. The amputation is not mechanical, it is magical--the first to touch a door without singing the appropriate song simply loses the limb in question,

And there it is. I think I might add a few more empty rooms to the final version (the instadungeon tends to overpopulate dungeons) and maybe a library with books on exotic horticulture, and maybe a torture garden...

Random Spacemonster Generator

A bizarre silhouette of gargantuan proportions shambles into the lurid mesh of wire, halogen and indicator light...

This table has been playtested once for FASERIP and was grotesquely successful, it can easily be adapted to any sci-fi game, though since it's at its most effective when the "veil" is pulled back it's better if you are cool with that playstyle...

"Roll a 6-sider..."

"Um, ok...5?"

"It's a 'Thraxian...' roll again."

"3"

"'...war'...' roll again."

"6"

"'...squid from planet...' roll again."

"1"

"'...Twelve'. It's a Thraxian Warsquid From Planet Twelve."

(Players happy.)
(Fun obtained.)
(Small rubber toy placed on board)
(Players happy again.)
(All details of size, limb arrangement, means of locomotion, etc. will match the toy used.)
(Battle commences.)
___________
Ok, roll 3d6, one at a time.
(Any rule or 'crunch' detail specific to the Marvel-Superheroes RPG will appear in blue: assume FASERIP stats of: GdGdAmMnFeFeFe. Assume no Karma. Assume power rank of any abilities is--duh-- Monstrous.)

(Health = 150 + 10xnumber rolled on first d6 here)(Yes I realize this is not the canonical way to calculate FASERIP health scores. The Thraxian Glaxothrox annihilates all human mathematics with its eyebeams.)
1. Gorgallian
2. Vortaxian
3, Zortakkian
4. Polarian
5. Thraxian
6. Karkalian

1. Throg- (swallows foes)
2. Glaxo- (eyebeams)
3. War- (horns or claws, S:Un E:Un)
4. Gorgo- (radiation breath)
5. Slime- (supersticky or superslippery)
6. Zergo- (sonic shriek)

Body armor = 10x number rolled on third d6 here...
1. -worm
2. -throx
3. -beast
4. -squid from Planet (D6: 1- X 2- Z 3- Twelve 4-Zool 5- Crax 6- 99)
5. -sphere
6. -crawler from Dimension (Have players roll a d10 and then just pick a number that sounds cool and isn't the number they just rolled. Dimension Nine is the default.)

(superhero counters used during playtest, front row L to R: The Thing (sculpy), Wolverine, Mister Fantastic, Spider-Man (can't tell but it's done with Sharpies), Thor)

Child of En-Gorath, or CIFALganger

Wikipedia: "A doppelgänger is a tangible double of a living person in fiction, folklore, and popular culture that typically represents evil."

Fiend Folio: "The CIFAL--the name is acronymic of 'colonial insect-formed artificial life'--is an agglomeration of several swarms of insects...which come together to form a single amorphous creature about man-sized.

Wikipedia again: "Aggressive mimicry is a form of mimicry where predators, parasites or parasitoids share similar signals with a harmless model, allowing them to avoid being correctly identified by their prey or host."
______

I feel like you can probably figure it out from there, right folks? We're all DMs here. She's not your auntie, she's bugs. The first hint is usually subtle, a fly emerging from the left nostril as someone lights a cigarette, etc.

Addendum

I encourage any GM running the "Immortal Zoo of Ping Feng" adventure from Vornheim: The Complete City Kit to use these rules to determine the Flailceratops' attacks. Note that results 1 and 4 should be replaced with a morning-star strike and result 17 should be interpreted as swinging the chain around in a threatening manner.

Monsters and Items

This is just a page to help me organize old stuff on this blog to make it easier to find.

Monsters

CifalGanger/Child of En-Gorath
Sublunary Men
Vomiter
Fishwife
Thog
Tower Golem
Skrath
Hollow Bride
Maggot Naga
Eye of Dread
Narcissus Peacock
Maidenmother Crone
The Chain
Wyvern of the Well
Nephilidian Vampire
Lingua Necrotica or Plague Tongues

Items

Hammer of Exorcism
Random Megadungeon Treasure Table
Artifact: Oorld's Wide Web
Artifact: Unimaginable Star of...
Forgetting Dust
3 Items
Binding Painting
Other Items

This Kept The Girls Busy For An Hour Last Night, Give Or Take

Creepy wizard

2 attacks per round

2 spells (unlimited uses):

-Save or target sticks to everything they touch (even through shoes or gloves). Unknown to anybody, stickiness is permanent but it can be dissolved by some common substance, depending on kind of wizard. (Mine was undead, so I figured it'd be dissolved by holy water.) 50 foot range.
-Automatically switch places with target. Line of sight range.

Hit Dice: Average party member X 2

Gygaxian Democracy #10: The Vidrageist

Let's crowdsource a sea monster...

Vidrageist
FREQUENCY:Very rare
NO. APPEARING: 1
ARMOR CLASS: 4
MOVE: 6"//12"
HIT DICE: 6+4
% IN LAIR: 50%
TREASURE TYPE: Special
NO.OFATTACKS: 2
DAMAGE/ATTACKS:
1-8/1-8
SPECIAL ATTACKS:See below
SPECIAL DEFENSES:See below
MAGIC RESISTANCE:Standard
INTELLIGENCE: Animal
ALIGNMENT Neutral
SIZE: L (20' long)
PSlONlC ABILITY: Nil
attack/Defense Modes: Nil/nil
LEVEL/X.P. VALUE: VI/475 + 6/hp

Despite the name--and many legends to the contrary--this bizarre amphibious creature is not undead. They are often found basking in the moonlight atop the ruins of flooded cities, and it is said that the moon grants them their strange abilities.

Upon first encountering any creature, the Vidrageist will...

(your turn)

Gygaxian Democracy #7: The Lottery in Babylon (Final Version)

Here is the Lottery In Babylon Gygaxian Democracy post reformatted to be usable, contributors are named but not hotlinked. To follow contributors back to their lairs, consult the original post. Redundant responses and ones that did not fit the original remit (a lot of the responses had to do with what the bearer would do rather than what the Jackalmen seeing the mark would do, which wasn't what I was looking for--I should've been more explicit, I guess) have been edited out and I've added a few at the end to make up the numbers.

The Lottery in Babylon

Like all men in Babylon I have been a proconsul; like all, a slave; I have also known omnipotence, opprobrium, jail. Look: the index finger of my right hand is missing. Look again: through this rent in my cape you can see a ruddy tattoo on my belly. It is the second symbol, Beth. This letter, on nights of full moon, gives me power over men whose mark is Ghimel; but it also subordinates me to those marked Aleph, who on moonless nights owe obedience to those marked Ghimel. In a cellar at dawn, I have severed the jugular vein of sacred bulls against a black rock. During one lunar year, I have been declared invisible: I shrieked and was not heard, I stole my bread and was not decapitated.

-- from Jorge Luis Borges, The Lottery in Babylon(translation by I actually don't know)

The Babylonian Library still exists, though now it is practiced mostly by jackal-headed men who live beneath the earth.

All who would pass through the doors that stand at the entrance to the territories of jackalmen must first draw a fragment of carved bone from a Well of Fate.

Each bone marks s/he who drew it with a symbol (on the forehead, usually, if the creature has one), and the faith of the jackalmen demands that all jackalmen obey the mark until it fades (usually after one day), treating each visitor as the mark demands, no matter how s/he behaves.

The bond is not magical (though the forces that keep the doors of the realm from opening for any traveller who does not bear a mark and the forces which cause the mark to appear on the bearers skin are) and the jackalmen obey these marks in obedience to sacred custom, rather than mystic compulsion. The marks never literally grant the bearer abilities or compel them to commit acts.

The marks are: (first digit: roll d4 minus one for first digit, second digit: d10. reroll d4 unless d10 indicates a "0")

1. The bearer of this mark must be ignored.

2. The bearer of this mark must be given fresh meat three times. (The bearer may be slain, but must be fed first).

TrentB said...

3. The bearer shall receive a gift of one wordly item from all he shares a word with.



4. The bearer shall receive a gift of one wordly item from all he passes. May it feel greed no more.



5. The bearer must have all hair shorn from its body.


rorschachhamster said...
6. The bearer of this mark must be led to the serail of the jackalmen to give proper respect to the goddess of fertility...

LoungeAndDestroy said...
7. The bearer of this mark shall be spit upon by all who see him.



8. The bearer of this mark shall be given a trail of the living, so his feet will never touch the ground



9. The bearer of this mark must be told a lie by all who speak to him.

biopunk said...
10. The bearer will be freely offered any available fermented dairy products.

Shame will befall a jackalman whose offering is rejected. Social rank will diminish, breeding opportunities will be lost, ancestral and familial recipes will be altered.

C'nor (Outermost_Toe) said...
11. The bearer of this mark must move only by cartwheels. They are not allowed to sleep or stand still until the mark fades. Failure to comply with these restrictions results in being turned into a small mammal, to be carried by those marked with (3).



12. The bearer is fed to a Jabberwocky. Alternately you can use one of those weird mirror creatures. 



13. The person who bears this mark is given the Rapier of Noirrac, a tiefling rogue. Noirrac is not pleased with this, and will seek to retrieve it.



14. The bearer is transformed into a jackalman. Whichever of the jackalmen first met him or her adopts them into their clan.

Chance said...
15- The bearer wears the rune upon his head , all jackalmen will refrain from attacking the bearer but will instead seek to lure him into the crypts of the old city to perform rites of ressurection or reincarnation for the cities inhabitants , they will ruthlessly protect the bearer of the mark , but will not allow him to be free of the city or stay overlong outside the crypt areas. The bearer it turns out can reincarnate the old inhabitants - as Jackalmen. (Or at least that's what the jackalmen think)

Mark said...
16 The bearer of this mark shall give the definitive interpretation of the Testament of Kreel White Spot. The testament is written in Gnollish. Whether the bearer speaks Gnollish or not is inconsequential - however s/he interprets the testament goes.

17. The bearer of this mark shall walk upon the earth and leave no trace of his passing behind. No sign, sight, memory or progeny shall remain behind him.

18. Capture the Flag: The drawing of this mark initiates the Great Game. The bearer is taken to a central point and freed. However, three teams of jackalpeople have formed, made up of the best warriors. The first two teams are divided by gender and seek to kill the bearer - the team that succeeds secures dominance for their gender (a matriarch or patriarch is installed, the way households are organized shifts - the whole shebang.) The third team is made up of hermaphrodites and the otherwise genderless, who seek to defend the bearer. If the bearer is alive when the mark fades, this team wins and may shape the culture as they see fit. These are the only rules - beyond them all bets are off and the jackalpeople will freely slaughter one another in order to overthrow or maintain the current status quot.



19. The bearer of this mark is treated as an ally by all adults. However, any child will attempt to kill them. The adults will neither defend nor assist in the murder of the bearer - they just idly watch. The child that succeeds is thought the reincarnation of a long-dead jackalheaded hero.



20. The bearer of this mark is thought the avatar of a dead jackalheaded trickster god whose return signifies the end of all jackalheaded peoples. The bearer is to be treated better than the jackalheads' own ruler. They will be given anything they desire. Jackalheads will commit suicide if asked. Then, when the mark fades, the bearer will be tied down and eaten alive by the 12 youngest jackalheaded pups to have teeth enough to chew. This process turns the 12 pups into avatars of the jackalheads' pantheon of warrior gods.



21. The bearer of this mark is to be sealed inside the skull of a giant, which is then filled with either:

1. A mild acid (will ruin cloth and paper, removes all body hair, permanent scarring over entire body), 
2. Cave Bees (like normal bees but deal with fungi spores instead of pollen), 
3. Jackalhead pups,
4. Cave Honey Mead (think bourbon with traces of LSD in it), 
5. Blood,
6. Snakes and chicken eggs,
7. Snakes and live chickens, 
8. Hallucinogenic Mushrooms, 
9. Rotting meat, 
10. A candle, some dice, a couple hunks of meat and a kobold who just happened to draw the same sign that morning.

When the mark fades, the bearer is free to do whatever.

22. The bearer of this mark must not see a jackalman.

IHaveTilFive said...
23. S/he will be challenged by a jackalhead champion to ritual combat. If the challenged is refused, the bearer will be scorned, allowed only in the Beggars' Alleys of the city. 

Unsuccessful bearers will be shamed. Both ears will be torn off (d3 dmg each), and the left arm will be withered (-6 on all rolls involving it). Appropriate Charisma penalties would also be assessed.

Chris Lowrance said...
24. The bearer of this mark must possess a forked tongue. If they haven't one, the problem will be graciously corrected with a hot knife.



25. The bearer of this mark is assigned a war party of at least six jackalheads who will obey them without question until the mark fades. However, all six must die in service during this time - if they return to their tribe alive, they will be forever shamed and forever hate the bearer.



26. The bearer of the mark is known as the Blessed Culler. They must select 1d12 Jackalheads, who will be staked down and slowly crushed to death as heavy stones are piled on them one at a time. If the bearer doesn't choose before the mark fades, they will be staked down and slowly crushed to death as heavy stones are piled on them one at a time. Note that anyone can be chosen - from the lowliest jackalhead hunters to the high priests - but the consequences will remain. Selecting a well-loved jackalhead hero will earn the ire of the entire tribe, selecting the highest priest will certainly make an enemy of someone, etc.

Zak:
27. The bearer of the mark cannot be touched with metal.

28. Any questions by the bearer of the mark must be answered truthfully

29. A noncombatant jackalhead must circumabulate this PC at all times.

30. All jackalmen must move about on all fours while the bearer of this sign is in the room. (They're pretty good at it.)

A Lot Of Monsters

Click to enlarge. Click twice to enlarge bigger.

Gygaxian Democracy #6: 37 Villains

More Gygaxian Democracy

Here are 37 villains--not just foes, but arch-schemers.

I rolled up random traits for each one using Jacquays' "Central Casting".

All you have to do is pick one and make it make sense. Elaborate in any direction that will make the villain usable and interesting--including tying one villain to another.

Making it goofy is easy--a manticore with a mold allergy is already goofy. Making it not goofy is harder...

1. an unusually intelligent, independent eye of dread born in a bar, serves a harvest god

2. blubeard, a drunken pirate king, someone important died when he was born

3. mad king from a foreign land, left hand is scaly claw

4. a young witch betrothed in a political marriage to be consummated upon reaching age of majority

5, a red drider queen living peacably among humans

6. immobile whispering statue* (crow tattooed on face) knows magic

7. eel medusa (married)

8.albino (intelligent) flail snail who serves an infamous master

9. pudding, skilled at math, controls animals has adopted a young human

10. Chasme with mind control powers served by a gobiln

11.seahag who lusts after luxury

12. fishwife who is an informant to a higher power

13. goblin attempting to end his life of villainy skilled at duelling

14.maggot naga with healing abilities

15. (ordinary) naga once enslaved and forced to bear children

16. sorceress medusa whose lover's parents were slain by an artist

17. nephilidian vampire queen who serves a baron as part of a complicated wager

18. unicorn-head guy who is a friend of a much older character

19. mind flayer whose ally died of a disease

20. demon who will inherit a kingdom if it can first produce an heir

21. giant centipede with excellent hygiene

22.vampire vengeful and EXTREMELY (rolled it twice) angry

23. depressed white elf sorcerer

24. white tiger rakshasa female w/ a phobia about magic

25.manticore with a vulnerability to mold

26. succubus with an unconscious physical tic

27. necrophiliac slaad

28. marilith allied to a half-elf

29. eye of fear and flame that's also a baron

30. beholder served by a cat

31. an orange eye of the deep

32. lich who was told to seek out his sibling companion by a mysterious voice (my guess is the sibling is the eye of fear and flame)

33. demilich obsessed with a half-elf rival (same one marilith is allied to?)

34. Glasya (from MM2)--who is allied to her second cousin

35. jubilex-allied to a dragon

36. demogorgon--a marquis

37. tiamat--served by an serpent



_____
*courtesy of greypumpkin's response to the last Gygaxian Democracy post

New Monsters, Items & Stuff Invented By The Table

Experimenting with The First Draft of The One Table.

Here's what I did with my results:

Where's the basic plot of this thing coming from?
Aeschylus (d8--I got Prometheus Bound)

The PCs meet a punished-type person who prophesies for them that their actions will free him.

With a side of what?
Dr Doom

The punished-type person is a schemetastic villain. The PCs will probably try to avoid having the prophecy come true. A kind of anti-railroad plot here.

Where am I going to get an idea for the big, crazy fight?
Modok

Ok, but without the chair. Just some huge bastard with an enormous head, stumbling around.

And the totally incongruous element?
Elric stories

There's an Elric story called "The Fortress of the Pearl". I can't remember what this story is actually about but for my purposes here it's a giant pearl that's also a fortress.

The multivalent trick the PCs can fuck with and turn against the adventure?
Love boat

Ok--there is a room where everyone falls in love. The villain hopes to lure a PC there.

And the new monster?
The mastermind here is a (random monster). I used some online 3.5 thing and got an aasimar which is some angel-type thing, then got bored and rolled again and got a doppleganger.

I decided that basically there's something someone thinks is an angel but it isn't one. Or it's a second-rate one.

Dumb prop/DM gimmick?
Roll a random monster. Build the most stereotypical situation you can around this monster. Investigate all possible naturalistic inconsistencies in said situation.

Dog. Fetches stick. None of our dogs fetch sticks.

Stupid DM gimmick here: The girls are always bringing dogs to the game. So: there's a guardian monster (or three) in the pearl palace. Secretly the place is laid out analogously to the actual place we are playing the game in and the movements of the monster are based on the movements of the dogs.

Nondeath situation-altering punishment a PC might face?
The anti-life equation.

Remember how the anti-life equation was supposedly buried in Jimmy Olsen's brain? (Ok, maybe you don't.) I figure the villain can bury the mcguffin formula in the PCs brain. So even if they defeat the villain, it's there waiting.
____________

Other people's interpretations of these and other results are here.
____________
I screwed around with the chart some more and came up with a few elements I like a lot:

-The Aeschylus thing above plus rolling London Fields for the dumb gimmick got me to...every time a PC does x___ (shed blood?) the villain grows stronger. The PCs have to try to do the adventure without doing x or the villain breaks loose.

-For multivalent trick you can use against the scenario, I got "Bloody Hammer" which I decided, based on the lyrics, is a magic item that can cure insanity (or possession) by pounding someone unconscious with it. Greyhawk fans might wanna re-skin it as the mace of St. Cuthbert.

-For New Monster I rolled "Silence of the Lambs". I figure: This is Monster A. Monster A will answer any question about how to defeat Monster/Villain B. However, Monster A grows in power for each answer it gives you. This monster could be the same villain from the Aeschylus thing above or it could be the Wyvern of the Well or it could be some whole other thing.

-I rolled up Basically The Love Boat With A Side of Frank Miller DD Vol 1 (The Elecktra saga). I figure: the Love Chamber from the result above works just fine, however, anyone who is loved due to the Love Chamber is then vulnerable to a geas from an Assassin Stone (or something)(in other words, if you use the love thing then that person can be made to try to kill you).

-For New Monster I rolled Star Wars. Thinking of the Jawas' robot-zapping weapon I came up with a Lodestone Golem. Which is already (Google...) apparently a Magic The Gathering monster but I figure its gimmick here is it's magnetic (oddly not a feature of the Magic monster) and crackling with blue lightning. Worse than a rust monster, if you think about it.

-For Monster--I got The Greased Goat--The Sign of Denied Passions (an astrological sign in WarhammerFRP, if you don't know) and then Bosch for Stupid DM Gimmick. I figure there's a demon called The Thwarter. It approaches in human form. In the course of an ordinary conversation it will find out what the PC wants. Then, so long as the demon lives, the PC will never get that thing (no matter how abstract). Possible addendum: The demons occupy a realm precisely resembling a Bosch painting (pick one and print it out). The PCs have to find the relevant demon, but have to avoid pissing off the other demons in the process.

____

Some notes:

-Naturally, I'd advise DMs to look at the whole table and cross out any sources/phrases they consider uninspiring and write their own.

-An "after you're sick of a result, cross it out and write your own" rule looks good.

-I generally assumed that any result could be re-skinned to fit a fairly vanilla D&D situation & got what I assumed. Other people didn't and came up with totally chaotic scenarios. Like when I got "Love Boat" I basically parsed apart every idea I associated with the show until I came up with something usable.

-After my first batch, I decided to just keep rolling new sets until whatever I had reached a critical mass of "Oh that's interesting". It may be possible to redesign the procedure to take advantage of this.
___________

So I like my results. But are they any better than if I had just sat and thought of an adventure for that length of time? Who knows, but my thought here is that it's not about the ideas being better than usual, it's about making the process of thinking up adventures fun in a different way than creation-ex-nihilo is.

Like sometimes you wanna write an adventure and sometimes you wanna sit and play Donkey Kong when you should be writing an adventure. If writing the adventure can be effectively made into a game in itself then maybe you get more stuff written and the campaign and the options available are richer for that. hmmmm...

If You Can Make a Better Dungeon in Under 2 Minutes, The Next One's Free

...which, come to think of it, so is this one...

I'm pleased to say the 2-minute dungeon contest produced an excellent dungeon. Everybody fucking wins.

I've patched the following one-shot room-by-room, using contestant entries for each room, authors of the relevant ideas are in parentheses...

Vornheim Home For the Treatment of Distracted Young Females



It's an all-girl mad house. This is the top floor. The prisoners have recently escaped. Of particular interest are a pair of insane witch sisters of Akira-like power. They are randomly altering fellow prisoners, guards & sections of reality.

Outside the asylum:

14. (Outside)
(Marc)A ginormous garden. The only way out is to get lost.
(Roger the GS) Hole in the ground. First an arm with a right hand comes out, 3HD, AC 7, hits for 2d4 damage. Then an arm with a left hand (same). Then a leg with a right foot (same, but hits at -2). Then a left foot. When you kill the arms and legs a head comes up, you just have to whale at its 4 HD AC7 until it's dead and then like a gumball machine 600 gp fly out of its dome.

3 Possible Entrances:

9.Completely wrecked from eldritch explosion. (Tom) Lords (9Ftr)(former guards, made mad) sparring for the hand of an amoeba (marc)--which is made of (Duglas) dirt & melted glass--resulting from said explosion. They've been cursed, and will become (wickedmurph) weretigers, but don't know it yet.

11. WC (Chris Lowrance), alchemical books about the machines in room 10, lots of rope, (wickedmurph) heads.

10. Bloody slime everywhere (wickedmurph), bloodstains (TrentB), flies (me), steampowered machinery (Chris Weller)(The Cramp) (this was alchemical and exploded, releasing the slime which causes wild-magic effects), green slime (IHaveTilFive), dried remains (Duglas), half a woman in a pool of slime (C'nor), Ladies sparring (Tom)(upper-class lunatics arguing over who caused the explosion and maimed their friend). This used to be a healing mineral steambath for the patients, one of the baths is intact but the water's been turned into a water-weird (with scalding abilities) by the explosion(Ben L). It will not be apparent unless someone enters the bath.

In the corner of this room...

13. Comfy chairs (Chris Lowrance)--if the entire party sits in one of them at once they will break through a weak spot in the floor and reach the rest of the asylum below (Chris Weller), the other one has the remains of what was once an inmate eating porridge (TrentB), his face is on the wall (wickedmurph).

Through a door there's...

15.(this used to be the rorschach test room) It's populated entirely by the method the players use to enter the room. The door has a key on a ribbon tied around the knob. If the players search for traps-- there is a trap in the room. If the players pick the locks-- there is a lurking monster in the room. If the players force the door, there is a brute force monster in the room. If the players use the key, there is a succubus in the room-- the monster may seduce with sex, power, knowledge, xp, whatever. (The sisters came in here and accidentally summoned the Axiomatic Dragon.)

At any rate, it will be furnished with: semen in an aquarium, swimming (me)(they are of various random species and one of them will fertilize any egg of any kind placed in the aquarium)(the resulting hybrid beast will grow to full maturity in 5 minutes), and the walls are lined with psychological textbooks, but now they are all blank (Chris Lowrance).

Going deeper into the madhouse from (10.) brings you to a large room. (TrentB)--This used to be a dining room. Table covered in blood. Two broken chairs. One untouched. The inmates have turned the left half into a...

7. (Marc)--Jousting arena. Everyone mounts pigs and weapons are odd-shaped snakes. (Chris L)--there are teeth all over the floor.

Amid this lunacy, and into the right half of the room, some inmates are (Chris w) bowling. Behind the pins there's...

8. (JDJArvis/Chris W)a horrible giant tapestry made of woven spider silk by one of the former residents (now a zombie) showing a treehouse in back yard. It's (Wickedmurph) a mimic. (It has 9HD however...) noticing the two matching snowflakes on the painting (this is Vornheim, there's always snow) will cause it to revert to an ordinary art object (me).

One of the jousting pigs sits here on a jeweled stand--he is a polymorphed king (marc) from a distant land.

Behind the painting is an area of nothingness. Anything touching it ceases to exist and the world forgets it ever existed (TheCramp).

Upon close inspection, the teams of inmates jousting here will be revealed to be simulacra reconstructed by the sisters out of guilt (they slew them in a rage, early on) using the nearest available materials--one team is made of vegetable matter (from the garden), one half is made from machinery (Duglas). (Sounds totally like a Star Trek plot.)

Beyond that, there's a hallway, radiating rooms...

2. This is where the sisters keep a series of brass gears controlling the Idol in the next room (3)(marc) the sisters have protected it with an insane pit trap (ben L) leading to a pit full of cats that explode when threatened (C'nor) and, (by way of warning) a dead dog(me). Also in the pit is a stoned flock of cockatrice, a trap tile unstones them (chris L).

3. Iron idol (Ben L) on a dais with a mouth carved into it (chris weller) surrounded by a mud pool with bits of women's clothing floating in it (marc), an otyugh lies beneath the mud (IHaveTilFive) and a stoned Basilisk, real, but actually stoned: bleary eyes, etc., gaze half-effective due to red eye, bobbing half-drowned in the mud (Chris L) and a victim of it, frozen mid-scream (TrentB).

(The other inmates were drowned in this mud to create the idol.)

The idol and the mouth will answer one question per person. The mouth always lies, the idol always tells the truth. The gears in room 2 work the idol. This used to be the sisters' cell. They built the idol to counteract the lies coming from the mouth (which drove them mad, so they say). They want to ask it where the 3rd sister has gone, but are currently occupied elsewhere.

5. Storage room. Inmates belongings: 500gp (Jarvis), d20 sp, laundry (TrentB)(an effective disguise but filled with bedbugs)(Wickedmurph)--a box full of living snakes (TheCramp), food (IHaveTilFive), 5 golden rings (Tom), and a caged cat that's the 3rd sister, polymorphed (Ben L). She's been here all along. Her return may sober her sisters, or maybe not...

6. Kitchen. Covered with rotten oats and fungus (TrentB) hospital kitchen and food-requirement records. Careful examination of them explains everything (IHaveTilFive). The floor's covered in redworms (Chris L) crawling into a hole which is actually a portable hole (TheCramp) the witches' familiar, an imp, cowers in the oven (wickedmurph).

4. Inmate's room. Recently used bedding, stained with a few drops of blood.(JDJarvis) An Axiomatic Dragon (C'nor) (8 inches long, curled claws, grey, lying in the middle of the bed) holds court here, feasting on a box of dead wolves (TheCramp). If the PCs do nothing, nothing happens. Every action by any PC while in this room results in an action of like duration by one of the dragon's courtiers. They are: a giant snake (Ben L), 4 harpies (Tom), a humanlike praying mantis that resembles a pretty woman with a hungry look (marc), two elf women that won't stop singing (can't?)(Chris L), and impossible rats (wickedmurph)(they can -only- do things rats can't).

The elf women are the mad sorceresses responsible for all this but they've cursed each other so they can't stop singing long enough to get anything done and they've accidentally summoned the Axiomatic Dragon, to whom they are now enslaved.

And in the closet is...

1. A statue of a basilisk and a flock of cockatrice locked in deadly combat. Not real.(Chris L)...In the middle of 50 dessicated heads. All the heads are from non-existent beings(Marc). Poison snakes slither through the scene (wickedmurph).

Have You Seen These?

If you're like me you need pictures of the dessicated carcasses of imaginary creatures all the fucking time...

Here's like a hundred of them.

I Can't Remember If I Drew This Then Invented It or The Other Way Around

Xortoise

The four-headed, radially symmetrical xortoise is half-xorn, half-giant tortoise.

It originates on the Elemental Plane of Earth, moves slowly, eats gems, is about the size of a pair of Toyota Camrys, and--it is claimed--great wisdom can be found etched into the markings on its shell.

However, since the shell is crisscrossed by a great x-shaped, spiketoothed mouth, it is not easy to read the shell of a living xortoise.

The xortoise takes 81 days to digest and can only do so while lying totally still, completely submerged in earth or mud, so adventurers able to explore the beast's stomach before it returns to its lair often find years worth of precious stones inside.

It Came From The Bottom Of The Page

I read all the comments. Right now I'm combing backwards through the ones on the Alphabetical Monster Thing and writing down adventure ideas--there are a lot of good ones--check it:

Jeff Rients said... I've always thought of the Xorn as food tourists. The rubies from the Prime Material taste different from those back home.

I'd use the Xig-zag/Xim-zum combo with the Mutant Future radiation rules. The antimatter version would mutate undead only.

LurkerWithout said... I think Jeff Rients is on to something about the Xorns. Maybe worked gems and gold and stuff just tastes better than raw from the ground. So like a faceted gem is like getting food prepared by one of the people from Top Chef: Masters while just digging up your own is like just pulling stuff and eating it from the garden direct...

Eric M said... I like to think that Xorns raid the prime material for these things out of jealous rage, as if precious metals don't belong outside of the plane of earth.

Kind of like africans who protest blood diamonds, except they're unintelligent earth-monsters with mouths for heads.

Erin Palette said... It's probably poor form to toot my own blog and homebrew fantasy setting, but in my world of Pellatarrum, the Xag-ya and Xeg-Yi are alien, inscrutable "angels" and "demons" of the setting, as there are no gods and the people worship the Energy Planes themselves.

mordicai--
worgs, well. I basically just describe them as goblins who have been lobotomized & surgically altered to be quadrupeds, so other goblins can ride them.

Derek Upham said...

"The scariest thing about a giant wasp from my players' perspective is embodied by the "spider eater": that it will paralyze you and lay its eggs inside you, so that eventually you are eaten alive by its larvae."

*Temporarily* paralyzed. You are then mind-controlled into protecting the developing larvae.

http://www.damninteresting.com/mind-controlling-wasps-and-zombie-spiders

http://io9.com/5015317/a-parasite-that-induces-love-in-its-host

spiritoftherain said...

The coolest undead monster I've ever seen with the word wight attached to them are the ones from the Myth: The Fallen Lords series of Real Time Strategy games by Bungie. The official description of them is a "stitched-up corpse, given new life by dark magic as a breeding ground for virulent disease and foul decay." They're basically huge fat undead creatures made practically buoyant by all manner of nasty, virulent pathogens, barely contained by their huge fleshy bodies. Their only attack is to stab themselves in the gut and release the toxins in a massive, devastating explosion, and the same thing happened if you managed to kill them.

Wights were always trouble in that game; you had to make sure your army was safely away before sending out archers to blow them up from afar. And the fact that they could hide underwater meant that they could just creep up from behind while you were distracted and take out half of your army.

Norman Harman said...

When I saw "shriekers as spells" I thought of shriekers that cast a specific spell rather than shrieking when disturbed. Just the thing for a fungal forest fed from the wizard's tower effluent.

richard said...

There should be a "make shrieker" spell that you can cast on ANYTHING, that makes it grow a screaming mouth and freak players the fuck out. Also, "make unsettling whisperer."

( I like the following subthread fun merely because it's so typical. In a nice way. Jame being James and BigFella being BigFella...

Original entry:

Shambling Mound

The shambling mound is the DnD version of the Man-Thing. The carrot/tuber nose is the giveaway and makes it more like the Man-Thing than the Swamp Thing--who was invented a year later by the roommate of one of the guys who invented the Man-Thing. Both of these, in turn, derive from an older character known as The Heap and The Heap no doubt derives from an even earlier monster which I have no idea what it is but I'm a hundred percent certain that someone in the comments will let me know all about it as soon as I post this entry.

James Maliszewski said... FWIW, Gygax claimed that it was in fact the Heap, not Man-Thing or Swamp Thing, who was the inspiration for the Shambling Mound. Take that as you will.

BigFella said...
Regarding the Shambling Mound, there's also an old Theodore Sturgeon novella called "It" which was about a swamp critter formed around a submerged skeleton which I think was the inspiration for all of the moss men that cropped up mid-century. )

Charles Ferguson said... Stag-head-candle-guy = totally cool.
I imagine it with yellow goat eyes with those freaky black vertical slit-pupils, that maybe when you get up close you see are actually in the shape of hourglasses or stretched out inkblots that resolve into a shreiking face (probably your own). I figure its a Predator-style trophy-hunter: the candles are made from the rendered down fat of its most prized victims, and the flames are their trapped souls. Maybe it has a number of lives = the candles, and as each candle is snuffed out it loses a life? It would very likely flee by arcane means if it lost a candle, only to return (extremely pissed off with the snuffer for denying it one of it's trophies) to exact revenge & replace the candle with whoever inflicted the terrible indignity of defeat upon it.