It Came from Toronto After Dark: Exit Humanity

October 25th, 2011

These It Came from the DVR articles are going to be a little bit different.  As an early Christmas present to myself, I picked up a festival pass to the Toronto After Dark film festival.  So the first difference is that these are new movies, on the big screen, instead of old ones and niche programming on the small screen.  The second difference is that these are going to be short.  I’ve got eighteen films to see in seven days (as well as dressing up for the annual zombie walk), so I’m not going to have a whole lot of time to write, and I want post these while the blood is still fresh.
Toronto After Dark is a horror and genre film festival oozing with gobs of monster and rpg inspiration, but most of the films it showcases won’t see wide release – so in addition to extracting some rpg goodness from each movie, I’ll also give them a bit of a critique, so fellow gamers can know what they need to track down and what to avoid.  I’ll try and keep spoilers to an absolute minimum.

Exit Humanity

The first of several zombie films in the festival, Exit Humanity follows the trials of Civil War veteran Edward Young as he deals with a horrifying zombie outbreak that threatens to destroy everything he holds dear.  The movie is framed as the chronicle of Edward’s Journal, the action interspersed with narration and small animated vignettes.

Slow Burn, Character Driven, Horror

With all the zombie action at After Dark this year, Exit Humanity was the movie I expected the least from, and I was very pleasantly proven wrong.  I wasn’t sure how the animated segments would mesh with the rest of the picture and I was worried it would ruin the immersion.  It didn’t.  In fact, combined with the excellent, gravelly voice over of Brian Cox narrating, the journal sequences really helped to pull the movie together and keep it moving forward.
The most surprising element of the film though, was the lead, newcomer Mark Gibson.  Genre movies and zombie movies in particular, are not exactly known for their displays of acting talent, so a zombie film that’s a character driven narrative with a slow emotional build seems doomed to failure from the start, but Gibson carries the weight.  Yes there are a few Anakin-shout-at-the-heavens moments, but Gibson honestly delivers a depth of emotion almost unseen in movies of this budget.
The score was also excellent.  Creepy, slow banjos transport you to the period and are absolutely perfect for the lonely tracts of wilderness, devoid of human life, where the story takes place.
For all my praise, I do think Exit Humanity was longer than it should have been.  Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated the time it took on screen for the characters to develop their relationships (it lent the events more emotional weight), but there were parts that really dragged.  There is action and excitement, but if you’re looking for a high-octane, zombie splatter fest, this is not it.
Exit Humanity is recommended, especially for fans of character driven horror, like The Walking Dead (the ties to this series are even more direct – the zombies in the film are even called ‘walking dead’), or for fans of Westerns (plenty of zombie and six-shooter action).  In fact the film is a great gateway for fans of one genre to test the other.  I can see an awesome viewing party where Exit Humanity is presented between The Walking Dead and the recent remake of True Grit.

RPG Goodness

If you play or are interested in the Deadlands rpg, then Exit Humanity is practically required viewing.  It’s not a perfect match, but I think you’d be hard pressed to find a better film to get new players in the mood for the setting.
Without giving away any spoilers, Exit Humanity, like many zombie movies, focuses on the mechanics of the infection and transmission of the zombie plague as a plot point.  In spite of 4e D&D’s embrace of some elements of Romero style zombies (the ‘shot to the head’ in the form of the zombie weakness trait), the game has yet to introduce a zombie with a plague spreading bite (there are some good 3e examples – my favourite is from the 3e Dark Sun adventure in Dungeon magazine 110).  To correct this, I present the Romero zombie (in Gamma World format, since that’s what I’m playing lately).
The description of the zed virus and Romero zombie template isn’t missing (well, not by accident), it will just have to wait until later in the week.  There are at least two more zombie films in the festival and I need to save some crunchy material for them.

Romero Zombie

“Every dead body that is not exterminated becomes one of them.  It gets up and kills!  The people it kills get up and kill!”

Named after the creator of a series of documentary videos scavenged from the cities of the ancients that chronicle first-hand accounts of the monsters’ attacks, Romero zombies are carriers of the highly virulent zed virus that wiped out their own worldline.  Ironically, it is the predations of killer robots, malevolent extraterrestrials, mutant plants and radioactive monsters from other apocalyptic worldlines that keeps the virus from overwhelming this reality.

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It Came from Toronto After Dark: Monster Brawl

October 22nd, 2011

These It Came from the DVR articles are going to be a little bit different.  As an early Christmas present to myself, I picked up a festival pass to the Toronto After Dark film festival.  So the first difference is that these are new movies, on the big screen, instead of old ones and niche programming on the small screen.  The second difference is that these are going to be short.  I’ve got eighteen films to see in seven days (as well as dressing up for the annual zombie walk), so I’m not going to have a whole lot of time to write, and I want post these while the blood is still fresh.
Toronto After Dark is a horror and genre film festival oozing with gobs of monster and rpg inspiration, but most of the films it showcases won’t see wide release – so in addition to extracting some rpg goodness from each movie, I’ll also give them a bit of a critique, so fellow gamers can know what they need to track down and what to avoid.  I’ll try and keep spoilers to an absolute minimum.

I had planned to post a Monsters of the Hyborian Age article before doing another It Came from the DVR, but as is usual, life got in the way and I ran out of time before Toronto After Dark crept up on me.  I’m working on Queen of the Black Coast, easily one of the best written Conan tales, and I want to do it justice.

Monster Brawl

Can there be a better pairing than Ménage à Monster and a festival that opens with a movie called Monster Brawl?  The plot is simple.  A lonely wrestling ring, set up in the middle of an abandoned hilltop cemetery, is host to the world’s first pay-per-view monster brawl; an extravaganza that brings together monsters from across the globe to fight one another in no-holds barred death matches in the name of glory and entertainment (complete with WWF style smack talk between the matches).
The matches are divided into two conferences, the undead (featuring the Mummy, Lady Vampire, Zombie Man, and Frankenstein) and the creatures (featuring Cyclops, Witch Bitch, Swamp Gut, and Werewolf), with the heavyweight champion of each conference facing off in a final match for the title belt.

An Unabashed, Fun B-Movie

Monster Brawl isn’t for everyone, but I have a feeling that if you’re reading this blog then it might just be for you.  It embraces its b-movie nature and runs with it, not wasting anyone’s time with a lot of exposition explaining why the monster brawl is taking place or adding some kind of narrative that pushes the viewer into rooting for one monster over another (they are all given fairly equal screen time – though the Mummy, Frankenstein and Swamp Gut were clear crowd favorites at the festival).  Director Jesse Cook knows exactly who his audience is, classic monster lovers who’ve ever wondered if a zombie or the gill-man would win in a fight, and he delivers.
Like many of us who grew up in the eighties, I was a huge wrestling fan, so it was nice to see Jimmy ‘the mouth of the south’ Hart (who was at the screening and absolutely hilarious in person) in the picture.  Monster Brawl manages to capture the feel of those old WWF days, before wrestling began to take itself too seriously, by using larger than life (if 2 dimensional) characters, plenty of humor, and over the top action.
There’s also more than a little bit of Darkstalkers in the DNA of this movie.  Not only is the set-up similar to the popular series of fighting games, Lance Henrikson’s disembodied voice provides videogame-esque commentary throughout the matches (“magnificent combo!”) – I half expected to hear him shout “finish him!”  – but I guess that would have caused some problems with the Mortal Combat people.
The makeup and effects were decent, which is surprising considering the film’s budget, with really only the Cyclops’ big unblinking eye looking a little crap.  Still, I’ll take imperfect practical effects and traditional makeup over the kind of on the cheap CGI that other low budget studios spit out any day of the week (I’m looking at you Asylum – Megashark vs. Crocasaurus was unwatchable).
In order to keep costs low, Director Jesse Cook edited Monster Brawl himself, but the editing could have been tighter, especially in the first half of the film, where the shots seemed to hang on for a few seconds longer than they should have.  It might not annoy others like it annoyed me, but I’m a firm believer that editing is one of those things you should never notice in a movie when it’s done right.
I was also a little disappointed that the monsters displayed fewer supernatural powers than I expected.  It would have been great to see the witch cast a spell or the vampire summon a swarm of bats.  Again, I suspect it was budgetary concerns that kept that kind of thing to a minimum, but it makes you wonder why the filmmakers included a witch among the monster lineup in the first place.
Ultimately, Monster Brawl is best enjoyed in a party atmosphere, with lots of cheering and jeering, just like a live wrestling match.  The Toronto audience was great (we Torontonians have a reputation for being a high energy, engaged audience at things like After Dark and the TIFF’s Midnight Madness screenings), but I worry the film would lose a lot of its fun if viewed at home alone.
Monster Brawl is recommended, especially if you can rustle up some friends and beer to enjoy it with.

RPG Goodness

Most DMs in a D&D campaign might balk at adding in such a recognizable ‘named’ monster as Frankenstein into their game (even though everyone knows Adam and Strahd from the Ravenloft setting are Dracula and Frankenstein).  However, on Gamma Terra I think that a fight against Frankenstein’s monster would make a great encounter – especially if the GM wanted to incorporate themes from Frankenstein Unbound (and since the whole reality collapsing in on itself is what happened in Gamma World it’s entirely appropriate).  Here are the Gamma World stats for your very own monster brawl (created by modifying the stat block for the flesh golem).

Frankenstein’s Monster

“Yes, if you want to be a jerk about it, it’s technically just called ‘the monster’.  Try telling that to it when you’re being pounded into the ground like a tent peg.”

In countless world-lines crazed scientists searching for the secrets of life have created, re-created, and re-animated this misunderstood homicidal construct.  In return, it protects the one who breathed life into its collection of parts, whom it affectionately calls father (regardless of the individual’s actual gender).  Some believe the monster kills so its ‘father’ can use the raw material to construct it a bride.  Whether or not such abominations could create offspring is a question best left unspoken.

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It Came From the DVR: Vampires vs. Zombies

October 9th, 2011

When I was younger, I used to love nothing more than staying up all night in the cathode ray glow of the television with a bottle of caffeinated beverage by my side, watching such late night fare as Incredible Hulk reruns, badly dubbed kung fu flicks, and rubber suited monster movies.  They were hardly Shakespeare, but I’ve found inspiration for writing and gaming in even the darkest dregs of cable television (not everything is redeemable – Charles in Charge comes to mind).
Now that I’m older and (slightly) more responsible, my DVR stays up all night for me, recording a smorgasbord of visual junk food.  In this series, I boil that junk down and extract the interesting bits – campaign ideas, adventure locales, encounter set pieces, and of course, monsters.
Spoiler Alert! Yes, spoilers are going to abound.  When dissecting a movie or television show to find the hidden awesomeness, you’re bound to reveal things about the plot.

Deadliest Warrior

I am a big fan of Deadliest Warrior.  Each episode they use a computer simulation to pit two of history’s greatest warriors against one another, collecting data about weapons, armour and fighting techniques along the way.  Yes it’s cheesy, it’s arbitrary and the Americans always win (which is even easier to ensure this season, with the addition of highly subjective ‘x-factors’ to the criteria), but I am a sucker for any show with gratuitous slow motion shots of pig carcasses and ballistics gel torsos being hacked to pieces (I also love Mythbusters).  Plus, the trash talk between experts is hilarious.
From a gamer’s perspective, it’s a little like watching Gygax’s fetish for arms and armour come to life, albeit with a few less pole arms.  After spending years with some of these weapons on paper, it’s nice to see them in action.  Of course, if you’re reading this blog, the odds are you’ve already seen the show.  There’s a lot of overlap in the Venn diagram describing people who are gamers and people who wonder if a ninja would win in a fight with a pirate.  And if you haven’t seen the show yet, it’s definitely worth checking out for that alone – but I want to talk about the finale.

Vampires vs. Zombies

Now, normally the show deals with real historical figures and martial traditions, but for the season three finale the producers decided to take a sidestep into folklore and pit two iconic undead monsters against one another (depicted here in a mash-up of Clyde Caldwell’s cover of Ravenloft and Jeff Easley’s cover for The Magister).  To give their professional opinion and help with the testing, Steve Niles (author of 30 Days of Night, representing the vampires), and Max Brooks (author of World War Z, representing the zombies) were brought in as experts.  As would be expected, both by the type of tests they run on the show, and by the version of the undead presented in both Niles and Brooks’ work, the show assumed biological versions of vampires and zombies instead of supernatural ones (so no flying or transmutation for the vamps, and no magically animated body parts attacking on their own for the zombies).
The episode was a lot of fun, and even more gruesome than usual.  I heartily approve of using dog and crocodile bites as analogs for the impact of zombie and vampire bites.  Once the data was collected, Deadliest Warrior moved on to the real highlight – a hydraulically powered biting machine they used to chew apart a couple of ballistics gel torsos made up to look like a vampire and a zombie to measure the damage the monsters could inflict on one another.  The vampire stand-in even had a pumping jugular so they could time how long it would take the creature to bleed out if a zombie got a lucky hit (like I said, they went for the more biological version of the vampire – so they needed blood to survive).  I also have to congratulate Max Brooks for taking the smack talk to a whole different level.  I easily could have watched a half hour of him bad mouthing vampires and it still would have been entertaining (but then I would have missed out on the biting machine, which would have been a crime).
Not surprisingly, even with the advantage of overwhelming numbers on their side, the zombies lost.  Which, as big a fan of zombies as I am, is at it should be.  Zombies are mindless, and really only have one strategy, while vampires are at least as smart as mortal humans.  They also had the vampires fighting with their teeth and claws, when they could have easily used any of the human weapons featured on the show from the past three seasons.  Zombie movies are great, and I think they make a better metaphor for our consumer capitalist society than vampires do, but in an actual fight – vampires win.  But really, why would vampires and zombies fight at all?  Wouldn’t vampires simply avoid an approaching zombie horde since they don’t have anything to gain by destroying them?
My partner and I usually like to bet on Deadliest Warrior, and in our ‘post-game’ debate these questions came up, which got me thinking (yes we will argue with each other about anything, which should be obvious by how seriously I am taking such a ridiculous show).  In combat it’s true that vampires would mop the floor with zombies (as the dramatized portion of the show demonstrated), but when two predators compete with one another in an environment, that’s rarely the factor that determines survival.  If it were, the world would be swarming with smilodons and megalodons.  Predators compete with one another by stealing the other’s food source.
The problem for vampires is this: both vampires and zombies have the potential to infect others and create spawn, but vampire spawn compete for food (living blood) with their creators so it’s not in the vampires’ best interest to create too many, while zombies just keep making more zombies (since they are mindless and exist only to spread their virus anyway).  So while vampires may win the proverbial battle, they will most likely lose the war, as the zombie plague spreads like wildfire amongst their food supply and the vampires are left to die of starvation on a dead planet filled with wandering corpses.  It would also put vampires in the strange position of having to risk their ‘lives’ to shield humanity …  a scenario rife with possibilities for role playing games.

The Planet of the Dead Campaign

This campaign works best with any post-apocalyptic rpg: Rifts, Gamma World (Gamma Rifts even!), D20 Apocalypse, Mutant Future… but it could also easily work with D&D (especially if you wanted to use the world ending arrival of Atropus from Elder Evils), or even a dark take on Mutants and Masterminds (think Marvel Zombies and the Midnight Sons).  Hell, you could probably even use something like Palladium’s Invid Invasion for the Robotech rpg (imagine riding a red and black, vampire built cyclone through the wastelands, fighting giant, gestalt mega-undead formed from the lashed together bodies of hundreds of zombies).
Here is a breakdown of the campaign arc such a game might take.

Outbreak

This short adventure makes a great prequel to the campaign and sets up both the relationships of the PCs as well as setting the tone for adventures to come.
Hours before the global outbreak of the ‘zed virus’, the characters are investigating a series of murders on their home turf.  The victims have been drained of blood and suffered horrible neck injuries (which should raise a lot of flags amongst the players).  As the deceased are all from vulnerable populations (homeless and sex trade workers), the authorities (police, city watch, etc.) have shown little interest in finding the perpetrator, so it falls to the PC’s to get to the bottom of things (perhaps they were even contacted/hired by the family of one of the victims).
The reality is that a powerful clan of vampires, known as ‘the family’ is using their influence to cover for the indiscretions of one of their more reckless members (you can’t do an end of the world game without at least one nod to The Omega Man).  The family is important in the campaign, but doesn’t appear again until the late stages of the game.
The PCs can follow the clues left by the careless vampire to an old tenement building it has been using as a lair (its behaviour has estranged it from the rest of its brethren), but the clock is ticking.  Outside, the zed virus is spreading faster than in can be contained, and a shambling horde of the undead is headed the PCs’ way.  The vampire seems like the least of the party’s worries when the zombies show up.
An interesting climax to the adventure could be an encounter that transforms from and invasion of the vampire’s lair to a defense of it (perhaps making a temporary truce with the vampire, or maybe a gory three way battle).

Survival

Fast forward six months (or a year) and the world has not fared well.  Society has crumbled, the government no longer exists, and the organized war against the zombies has been lost.  The battle for survival begins.
The PCs can be wandering nomads, foraging for equipment and supplies, or they can be holed up behind makeshift barricades, venturing out on short treks for food and medicine.  This kind of format makes this portion of the campaign perfect for short, goal-oriented adventures (find food, rescue loved ones, etc.), that emphasize the demoralizing hellscape of the post zombie apocalypse.
Dangers abound, not just from zombies, but from other more predatory survivors, the environment and starvation.  Encounters with zombies should be varied – the Resident Evil series of games did a great job of making a wide range of monsters to fight by having the t-virus constantly mutating and infecting different animals in different ways (and if the game system already has all kinds of strange creatures you can really go to town when introducing the zed virus).
Getting an infectious zombie bite should always be a threat, but in an rpg it can’t be as virulent as it is in the movies (unless you’re running a Call of Cthulhu game I guess).  Players generally expect a higher degree of survivability for their characters than you get in the average horror movie.  If you need an in-game reason the PCs get a saving throw, or (if you are using a 4e-style disease) can get better from the virus, perhaps they already have some in-built resistance to the plague that the average person doesn’t benefit from (in a fantasy campaign maybe they have been blessed by the gods, or drank water from a magical fountain).
Pepper these short adventures with rumours of a zombie-free colony of survivors that’s been founded some distance from town (however far it needs to be to make the travel dangerous and memorable).   The worse things get where the characters are, the more likely they are to take the hook (and if they were already nomads, getting to this sanctuary may have been their goal all along).

Asylum

Hungry and ragged from the journey, the PCs arrive at the colony, a self-contained complex of hi-tech buildings, complete with armoured greenhouses and its own nuclear power plant (or an impenetrable, walled city with its own self-contained vineyards and orchards in a fantasy game).  Amazingly, the colony is as zombie free as advertised and welcomes the PCs with open arms.  The place is floor to ceiling gleaming white tile and chrome, bright fluorescent lighting, and most importantly, fully equipped with clean, running water (in a fantasy game the colony would be a neo-classical daydream of the Acropolis, filled with white marble and mathematically precise colonnades).  In exchange for residency, given the PCs’ skills, all they need to do is volunteer for the colony’s defense force.
At this point in the game an easy, by the numbers adventure will lull the players into accepting the colony at face value (or not, most rpg players are a pretty suspicious lot – but that’s OK too, the game doesn’t hinge on them being trusting).  Under orders from the defence force, a daytime raid against a group of uninfected bandits, or a simple seek and destroy mission to clear a group of undead from a nearby roadway would be good fits.
Once they have begun to settle into their new life, throw the occasional clue about the colony’s true purpose the party’s way: in spite of the steady trickle of survivors coming in, the colony never seems to run out of room or resources; the PCs have never met or seen any of the people who defend the colony through the night; the colony’s leaders are constantly shifting people from one living area to another – every week it seems the PCs have new roommates and neighbours; there is no crime in the colony, yet the PCs haven’t seen any internal police.  It won’t take much for the PCs to want to investigate further.

The Bloody Truth

Eventually the PCs will use whatever means they have (force, guile or subterfuge), to get to the bottom of who really runs the colony – a group of vampires called the family (possibly including the vampire they fought at the beginning of the campaign, if it escaped), protecting a small pocket of humanity from the zed virus to preserve their food supply.
The PCs might stumble onto direct evidence of the family (using whatever means of vampire detection are suitable to the game and type of vampires it features), or they may break into the core of the family’s secret activities in the colony – a cavernous, refrigerated vault underneath the colony’s reactor that houses a living blood bank.  Hundreds of comatose humans, hooked into a web-like network of intravenous tubes, some providing just enough sustenance to keep these poor souls alive, while the blood they produce is slowly leached away by others (a fantastic image courtesy of the film Daybreakers).
As more and more survivors make their way to the colony, the family adds more bodies to the blood bank, always making sure to keep enough free humans to supply a healthy breeding stock.  Preference is given to those humans with highly trained skills, powerful defenders (like the PCs), and pregnant women.  Criminals, agitators, and dissidents are all prime candidates to be taken to the blood bank.

Endgame

The endgame of the campaign is completely dependent on the actions of the PCs (which goes without saying for any part of the campaign, but here especially so).  As distasteful as it is, the party might decide to maintain the status quo.  Sacrificing a portion of the population might be deemed a worthwhile price for the vampires’ protection against the zed virus and the continuance of humanity.  The challenge for a party that takes this road is in convincing the family that they will keep the vampires’ secret.  Doubtless the family will arrange for tests of loyalty which might be as dangerous as fighting the vampires themselves (and since the family’s opinion might not be unanimous, this is a great opportunity for high stakes political intrigue and espionage).
Most rpgs are action oriented, and many of the players I know would want to take the other road, overthrow the family and free the enslaved humans.  The challenge here is obvious and could be played out as a climactic Helm’s Deep type battle between the vampires, their minions and whatever freedom fighters the PCs can muster together (you could even throw in an ill-timed zombie attack for good measure), or as a series of guerrilla attacks between the PCs and the vampires (in between which they must once again fare for themselves in the zombie infested wasteland).
There is also the possibility that some PCs will want to side with the family, while others will want to destroy the vampires.  You should definitely be prepared for some inter party conflict here.  Emotions can run high in these situations and it might be a good idea to call a session before the PCs decide what they are going to do (think about the fate of Rorschach in Watchmen – some players might be cool with that, while it could ruin the campaign for others).

Vampires as PCs

Many of the game systems mentioned feature the option of playing as a vampire.  At first glance it might seem a bad idea to include these character options, but they can add an interesting twist to the whole campaign.  The vampire PC might already be a member of the family (and should be prepared for some of the previously mentioned conflict at the end of the campaign), or might be a member of a different group of vampires just as ignorant of the colony as the other PCs (and might be equally horrified by the activities there).  A vampire PC won’t automatically side with the family any more than other PCs will automatically want to fight them.

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The Flesh Mime and Other Belated Updates

September 24th, 2011

Ménage à Monster slowly stirs from its torpor, gathering the strength to birth more horrors into the world…  But this isn’t a lame filler post (well not entirely) – unlike my last post, I actually have real content to present.  It just happens to be on another website.
At the end of August, the good reptilians at Kobold Quarterly posted one of my creations on their website: the flesh mime.
I’ve never been completely satisfied with the direction 3e and 4e D&D took with the doppelganger.  So I designed the flesh mime to move the monster away from being a sophisticated assassin infiltrating surface society, and return it to the predatory shapeshifter of the 1e Monster Manual that viewed humans as food.  My second design goal was to make better use of the ‘spot the imposter’ trope (you know, ‘shoot both of us it’s the only way to be sure’) than the game had in the past, so flesh mime not only impersonates you and steals your abilities, but only the truly observant can tell you apart from the monster (I think that skills are an under-utilized dimension of 4e combat: ‘Insight, it’s not just for skill challenges anymore’).
The picture is J.J. Abrams’ updated version of the salt vampire from Star Trek (whose cameo was unfortunately cut from the finished film), which, it should be obvious by now, was one of the inspirations for the flesh mime.
While you’re at KQ, you should also check out the Nihilimentis, a monster I designed for them way back before Ménage à Monster existed.  The Nihilimentis owes its inspiration to another monster from a long running SF show – the weeping angels from Doctor Who.  I’m proud of the risks I took with this creature, but keep in mind that it was created before the Dungeon Master’s Guide II, so the damage output needs to be tweaked a little to use it in current games.
In house news, unpacking is just about done, and despite problems with the closing (which I’m told is not out of the ordinary), and the city digging a giant hole in our driveway on the day we took possession (not quite as normal), my partner and I are settling in very nicely.  The city even fixed our driveway this week which is good, because I was half expecting the aforementioned giant hole to start spawning hordes of tiny stop-motion animated demons like the ones from The Gate.  I hope there aren’t any zombie workers trapped in our walls – drywalling after they break out is a pain in the ass.

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Bottled Chaos

August 11th, 2011

I wish I could say my slowdown in posting here has been because I was away at GenCon, but sadly that’s not the case (I’ve only been once, back when it was in Wisconsin, but I will return).  My partner and I recently purchased our first home (so I’m not really all that sad), and I’ve been pretty busy getting ready to take possession and move in.  It’s been stressful, so there hasn’t been a whole lot of time to generate Ménage à Monster content.
I’ve always hated moving, so I knew that packing up the apartment would put me in a bad mood, but home ownership is an entirely new game – one that I don’t have a complete understanding of the rules.  It draws on a knowledge base that I am woefully ignorant of, and I’ve got to admit I’m a little bewildered.  I’ve always been a renter, so I never really concerned myself with anything that I deemed the landlord’s problem.  I’m not one of those guys who watches Holmes on Homes (my brother is Mike Holmes’ spitting image, but I guess that doesn’t count), so when the insurance broker asks what kind of wiring the house has and what the wires are made of I don’t even know how to go about finding out (compounded by the fact that there is a major language barrier preventing clear communication with the current owners).  And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, the ‘known unknowns’.  It’s the ‘unknown unknowns’ that I’m really worried about.
It doesn’t help that every time I watch the news or open a newspaper there’s another story telling me that buying a house was a dumb idea and describing in excruciating detail how sinkholes, sewage mishaps, bedbugs and termites are going to make it unliveable.
But I’m also excited (I can’t wait to get my group together and christen the house’s basement as our new gaming space).  I guess if this were a D&D adventure, right now I’d be the stereotypical crusty dwarf who complains the whole time but secretly can’t wait to get back into the dungeon for an old-fashioned crawl.  I’m way too tall to be a Dwarf, so no more bitching from me.
One benefit of packing is that it’s pretty fun getting to sort through some of my stuff that hasn’t seen the light of day for many years (is it weird I like to flip through my old comics to sort them alphabetically?).  The whole process is a bit like a strange archaeological dig into your own life.
Apparently, somewhere in the chaos, I also found the time to screw around on Photoshop and create this homage to the classic Absolut ads of my youth (which are apparently experiencing a renaissance), using the awesome, Nurgly (not a real word) Les Edwards cover of The Lost and the Damned.  I’ve said it before; life just isn’t worth living if you can’t find the time to procrastinate on something completely unproductive.
So over the next couple of weeks expect a slowdown of activity here while I establish a lair in new territory and clear the land of monsters.  I’m going to need more boxes… and some men-at-arms would be nice too.

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Random Encounters: The Steading of Cyberworks 7

July 29th, 2011

As I promised in my last post, I present my conversion notes for running the Gamma World boxed set’s introductory adventure, Steading of the Iron King, in the world of Rifts. This covers the entire adventure, so the post is a little long.
Spoiler Alert!  If you haven’t played through Steading of the Iron King, and plan to (or if you are one of my players – there’s a ton of spoilers in here about the campaign!) my commentary and walkthrough of the adventure is going to spoil it.  Not that there’s any world shattering secrets in the adventure, but still, spoilers.  You have been warned.

Introduction

Reading through the adventure when I first picked up the boxed set is one of the things that helped convince me that Gamma World was a suitable rule set for the Rifts setting.  The final encounter with the Iron King immediately brought to mind the cover of the Rifts Sourcebook, with Hagan Lonovich sitting on a cybernetic throne, stroking a bottweiler and wearing A.R.C.H.I.E’s interface helmet.  Also, for the campaign I am running, I wanted the tone to be a little more serious than the ‘stupendico’ installation evoked, and the mixture of insane A.I. and Wizard of Oz that is Cyberworks in Rifts seemed a perfect fit (deadly serious and ridiculous at the same time).
I moved the action to a pre-rifts Cyberworks facility in the tech heavy area of Mississauga, just outside of Toronto, now the magic rich city of Lazlo (as a Torontonian, Lazlo’s prominence in the world of Rifts is one of the features that attracted me to the setting in the first place).  In Rifts canon, A.R.C.H.I.E. 3 and Cyberworks are located underneath the Aberdeen proving ground in the state of Maryland.  I try not to break canon when I use an official setting, but I do like to bend it (there’s nothing wrong with breaking canon, but I find working within it a useful tool to the thought exercise of building a campaign), so in my game, A.R.C.H.I.E. 3 is only the most successful of Cyberworks’ experiments in artificial intelligence.  Scattered across North America are other facilities with less developed A.I.s, including A.R.C.H.I.E. 7 in Mississauga.

Background

Once the players had developed their own backstories, laying out their motivations for joining a mercenary company working for Lazlo (‘the Misfits’ mentioned in the previous post), I used the following vignette to set up the adventure:

Against all odds, for the past two weeks, life has been sweet.  Sitting in you bunker atop the bombed out shell of an old hotel, the most dangerous obstacle you’ve had to face was boredom.  The ruins of the lonely highway, the highway for one, over which you have been keeping watch, has lived up to its name.  Two days ago you even had the fortune of unearthing a pre-rifts mini-bar with its contents intact!  Some of it was even fit to drink.
The recent war between the Coalition and Tolkeen has everyone on edge.  That was the reason the city of Lazlo hired you in the first place.  With more troops than they could spare reinforcing their allies to the west, Lazlo’s generals were concentrating what little strength they had, back behind the city walls.  That meant they needed mercenaries like you to act as scouts and sentries (early warning systems and cannon fodder), along Lazlo’s most accessible entry routes.  But hey, what did you have to complain about?  You haven’t heard a peep out of the Detroit and Windsor rifts, and it sure beat dodging dog packs and Xiticix on your own.
Life has been sweet… until yesterday.  You were deep in contemplation that it probably wasn’t a good idea to drink anything out of a pre-rifts bottle, even if the seal was intact, when the perimeter microwave fence was tripped.  After you pulled your head out of the latrine, you and your team sprang into action.  It turned out to be a decrepit robot, waving its limbs threateningly and trying to speak with a busted, crackling loudspeaker.  Then, without warning, it caught fire and exploded.  Odd, but considering what was walking around the wastelands of North America, not completely out of the ordinary.
Then the same thing happened today.  Only this time the robot managed to fire off a small missile into the building next door before it expired.   It also gave you a message: “Run program 1!  All enemies of the Iron King must be destroyed!”  It was a small sample size, but you didn’t like the pattern that was developing.  It was time to earn your pay.

Note: Anyone not from southern Ontario probably isn’t going to get the ‘highway for one’ play on words.

The Real Story

The Iron King (his assumed name) and his cronies were once a part of the Bloody Cavaliers, a gang of bandits raiding the area between Lazlo, Iron Heart and Free Quebec.  They were sent to the Cyberworks facility by Captain ‘cross-eyes’ Zora, the gang’s infamous leader (nicknamed for her habit of putting iron spikes through the eyes of those foolish enough to stare at her disfigurement), to use Cyberworks’ robot stockpile to create a diversion and distract Lazlo’s defenders.
Instead, the Iron King found A.R.C.H.I.E. 7’s cybernetic control helm and began tinkering with one of Cyberworks’ failed experiments.  Unlike the fully sentient A.R.C.H.I.E. 3, this machine intelligence can only communicate empathically and is vaguely self-aware.  Mastering control of the facility’s manufacturing capabilities is a long process of trial and error, and unfortunately for the Iron King, exposes the human mind to dangerous levels of psychic feedback.  It wasn’t long before such mental damage caused the Iron King to descend into all absorbing megalomania.  Cutting off communication with Captain Zora and the rest of the Bloody Cavaliers, the Iron King has taken the first small steps to creating his own robotic fiefdom.
Clues that the adventurers find here might put them on the trail of the Bloody Cavaliers, which is good, since Captain Zora has been busy in Lazlo…

The Handouts

Click on the picture below to download the 2 page PDF.  I apologize for the general monochromatic tone; I have a black and white printer, so I make most of my play aids in grayscale.
If you’ve ever played Portal 2, you’ll notice I cribbed most of Cyberworks’ warning signs from that game.  I’ve never actually played the game myself (or its precursor), but I found Aperture Laboratories’ signs while Googling ‘insane A.I.’ and I thought they were hilarious.

Encounters

Encounter S1: Tower Defense

The old trail you discovered while backtracking the robots’ trail skirts a glowing crater.  It ends at the base of an ancient, sunken, office tower, where wastelanders carrying crossbows stand watch, supported by porcine humanoids carrying flails.

For the adventure, I re-skinned the badder steading guards as wasteland vagabonds, which I described as looking like central casting punks out of The Road Warrior (which worked nicely since the armour, weapons, and powers fit perfectly).  The porkers I kept as is, but described as looking like the gamorrean guards from Return of the Jedi.

Encounter S2: Tower Interior

Two interior cornices have been converted to guard platforms, where wastelanders wait with crossbows.  In the far corner an aerie is heaped with bones and carrion, the roost for a dragon-like creature with iridescent yellow scales.  An old carpet, embroidered with runes lies on the floor near the doors.

For this encounter, I made the planter of grab grass into a magically sticky carpet of adhesion, with the same effects.  I re-skinned the yexil as a winged dragonsaurus (from the Atlantis book), with the power of acidic spittle, instead of laser eyes (does acid instead of laser damage, but is otherwise the same).
The wastelanders’ barracks room is an old ‘executive quiet room’ complete with scavenged pre-rifts ergonomic cots.

Encounter S3: Warren Entry

A pair of wastelanders are taking cover behind a boardroom table, pushed on its side at the bottom of the stairs.  Strange, dust covered statues line the corridor, depicting what looks like an android holding the Cyberworks logo triumphantly in the air.

I re-skinned the badder slave drivers as momma’s boys – wastelanders with pop can sized M.O.M. implants sticking out of their skulls wielding crowbars.  I exchanged their flails for crowbars and renamed crippling fail as leg breaker (with the same effect).  Fear wave and control pain work fine as is, psychic powers granted by the implants.
Since the human slaves in the cage are effectively brain-dead, I made the destruction of the machine (the AR-06 Psychotron) end their lives and put them out of their misery.  It was a little too early in the game for the kind of moral quandary that rescuing vegetative captives presents.  Other GMs may feel differently.

Encounter S4: Moth Infestation

The chamber is dimly lit by patches of blue moss that glow with the same radiance as a ley line.  An earthen ramp spirals down into an enormous pit in the center of the cavern.  Scattered amidst the luxurious clumps of moss are half a dozen humanoid skeletons.

I kept the black blaashes as they were, since radiation shooting, giant moths are perfect for Gamma World and Rifts.  I know that radiation was the theme tying the two monsters together, but the blood birds weren’t insectoid enough for me to be teamed up with the blaashes, so I re-skinned them as radioactive stirges (from D&D, not Rifts).  All that was needed was to rename radioactive plumage to radioactive aura and beak to proboscis (no mechanical changes).
Since this is an encounter with lurkers and artillery, instead of having the monsters flying around in the open when the encounter began, as in the original text, I had them hiding in the cover of the deep moss, waiting to ambush anything that entered the chamber  (such as adventurers lured in to investigate the skeletons).
I also wanted to add a bit more exploration to the session and mitigate the feeling of ‘next room, next combat’ that this adventure is prone to, so when my players decided to scout the chamber’s adjoining tunnels I added the following encounters in.

The walls of the first cave are festooned with strange leathery sacks, stuck to the stone with some kind of secreted resin.

A moderate (DC 13) Nature check reveals the sacks to be blaash egg cases (as well as the danger of destroying them).  Like their parents, destroying a blaash egg sack releases an explosion of radioactive goo (close burst 1, +6 vs. Fortitude, 1d6+3 radiation damage).  Note: I use Nature for monster knowledge checks about creatures with the terrestrial origin, Science for the extraterrestrial origin, and Arcana for the extradimensional origin.

The secondary tunnel twists back and forth for about 40 ft. and then stops at a dead end.  There is a small tracked robot here, similar in design to the one whose trail led the party to this base, trapped in the corner, grinding away its motor in an effort to get out.  Judging by the rut in the ground it’s created, you think it’s been here for a few days at least.

Stuck in a failed program, the robot is oblivious to anything the party does, but its volatile construction makes tampering with the machine potentially dangerous.  I made this encounter a complexity 1 skill challenge (4 successes before 3 failures), that begins with an easy (DC 9) Mechanics check (opening up the control panel on the robot without damaging it), and ends with a hard (DC 17) Science check (reprogramming the robot to obey the party instead of the Iron King).  In between are moderate (DC 13) skill checks that reflect the idea of repairing, reprogramming, and using Kirk-esque cajoling to get the robot to do what the players want (my players used Mechanics, Science, and Interaction respectively).
Success at the skill challenge means the party has reprogrammed the robot and can use it in combat (the robot has 1 Hit Point, a movement of 3, 13 in all defenses; as a standard action an ally can command it to fire its missile which destroys the robot and has the following attack: burst 1 in 10, +7 vs. Reflex, 2d6+7 fire and physical damage, half-damage on a miss).
Failure means that the party has accidentally triggered the robot’s missile, destroying it and damaging themselves (close burst 1, +7 vs. Reflex, 2d6+7 fire and physical damage, half-damage on a miss).
Outside of combat characters can try and get information from the robot with hard (DC 17) skill checks (I allowed a hard Science check to access the robots memory files, which gave the party a glimpse of the map as well as an image recognition file for the Iron King).

S5: Cyberworks Factory Exterior
This encounter is appropriate for Rifts without modification.

S6:  Cyberworks Showroom

Light panels on the ceiling flicker intermittently, casting sinister shadows in this stunningly clean chamber of steel and ceramic.  Strange machines, labelled AR-72 action inverters, hum and blink in the center of the room.  Alcoves line some of the walls, proudly displaying their wares – a veritable legion of robots in various states of decay.  The sounds of hydraulic lifts whoosh form adjoining chambers.

The only changes I made to this encounter was to re-skin the soldierbots as A-63 all-purpose heavy bots, with no changes to their powers (the robots seen flanking the throne on the cover of the Rifts Sourcebook, sans rifles).

S7:  Cyberworks Restricted Area

Except for a space near the doors, the floor here slopes toward a central trench that is filled, floor to ceiling, with flickering beams of red light.  A pair of partial conversion ‘borgs stand on the other side, flanked by two tracked robots that look like the perfected versions of the machine that attacked your bunker at the hotel.  Near them is a panel of flickering lights.

I re-skinned the hoop sharpshooters as wasteland head-hunters, armed with JA-11 sniper rifles.  I renamed axe hack as bionic wrist claws, and hop as bionic leap (no mechanical change to either).  Since I wanted the rocketbots to fit thematically with the opening of the adventure and the robot found in area S4, I got rid of their fly speed, upped their land speed to 5 and gave them the treaded trait (rocketbots ignore difficult terrain).

S8:  Cyberworks Factory Floor

A huge mechanized arm hangs from the 30-foot-high ceiling.  Machines and dynamos hum along the chamber’s periphery.  Two massive vats swirl with scintillating colors; the fluid appears to move on its own.  On a 10-foot-high platform at the rear of the room stands a full conversion cyborg with a crazed look in his eyes, wearing a large, almost spherical helmet, connected to the machines by endlessly coiling spools of wires.  Standing between you and the ‘borg are a pair of robotic hounds and two scowling juicers.  One of the juicers has decorated her light plate armour with the cartoon logo of a bear, the other with the cartoon logo of a frog.

I re-skinned the laserbots as bottweilers (they shoot their lasers from a concealed cannon in their mouths), got rid of their fly speed, increased their land speed to 6, and replaced electrojolt with bite (physical instead of electricity damage).  I re-skinned the hoop warriors as the sugar twins, a pair of deadly juicers wielding vibro-swords, replaced axe slash with vibro slash, big hop with steroid jump, and transmuting touch with sundering strike (no mechanical changes to any of the powers).  The Iron King kept his name but I re-skinned him as a full conversion cyborg, added the robot keyword, and replaced katana with bionic wrist claws (no mechanical change).
Once the battle is over, characters can try and use the cybernetic control helm.  Each use inflicts 2d6+7 psychic damage on the operator (optionally, rather than killing the operator, a character reduced to 0 Hit Points by this can develop an insanity adjudicated by the GM or by rolling on the insanity tables in the Rifts rpg).  Characters using the helm can do one of the following: an easy (DC 9) Science or Interaction check reveals what A.R.C.H.I.E. stands for (Artificial Robot Cerebellum Housing Intellect Experiment); a moderate (DC 13) Science or Nature check reveals the location of two other A.R.C.H.I.E. experiments, one in London Towne (pre-rifts London Ontario), and one in the Hammer (pre-rifts Hamilton Ontario); a hard (DC 17) Science or Arcana check (depending on what the character is trying to create) allows the operator to use the mechanized arm and wild nano vats to create an Omega Tech item (draw two cards as a reward and choose one);  a successful complexity 1 skill challenge allows the operator to create a bottweiler minion with 1 Hit Point that follows the commands (a standard action) of the operator (this option is guaranteed to kill or drive the operator insane so use with caution).

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Field Report: Gamma Rifts

July 24th, 2011

I’ve written a lot about my love/hate relationship with Rifts, so I won’t beat that horse anymore, suffice to say I’m one of the legions who love the setting and hate the system.  Currently, I am using the latest edition of the Gamma World game to run a campaign set in the world of Rifts (the basic modifications to the rules are here, and a set 30 of Rifts flavoured Omega Tech cards are here).  That campaign is well underway, and I thought I would share some of the tabletop experiences as an example of how a Gamma Rifts game can work.
After a couple of sessions we’ve played through ninety percent of a Rifts modified version of the introductory adventure, Steading of the Iron King (my next post will cover the modifications I made to the adventure as well as some of the handouts I used for it).

The Good

I’m very pleased with the game so far.  The looser, more streamlined rules have been fun.  While the abstract nature of the rules governing weapons and armour might be off-putting to Rifts purists (a baseball bat with a nail in it does the same damage as a vibro-knife), I haven’t missed a dozen books worth of guns or keeping track of all that ammunition (another aspect of Gamma World that has been taken to the abstract level).  In fact, freed from the restrictions of a highly detailed equipment list, everyone had a ball making up their own weapons and armour during the character creation process (more on that later).  It might be a less realistic approach to weapon damage, but it does a far better job than Rifts ever did of allowing for the broad range of character types drawn from the multitude of sources that inspire a kitchen sink science fantasy game (and have them still be useful to the party and fun to play that is).
The Rifts set of Omega Tech cards printed up beautifully (better than I thought they would actually), for the price of less than 2 WOTC booster packs at Kinkos, and mesh nicely with the cards contained in the boxed set.  The mix of the Gamma World and my own splugorth, techno-wizard and magic items did a good job of reinforcing the nature and feel of the setting.
Most importantly, the feel of the game at the table captured the best elements of Rifts – quirky, bizarre characters having madcap adventures in a dangerous and deadly serious world that is often contradictorily ridiculous and funny.

The Bad

While Gamma World does a great job of recreating what I call the ‘street level’ of Rifts (city rats, cyborgs, juicers, ley-line walkers and mind melters), it isn’t that great at emulating the epic side of Palladium’s signature game (mega damage, pistols that can put a hole in a mountain, easy access to long range nuclear missiles, and characters that can fly at Mach 2 at first level).  This wasn’t a big deal for me, as those were aspects of the game I never really felt were integral to the setting, but others may feel differently (I had long toyed with the idea of running Rifts using the notes in the Rifts Conversion Book to convert everything to SDC as a way of dealing with the game’s problems – so that gives you an idea of where I’m coming from).
Finally, if you hate 4e D&D (which provides the core ‘engine’ of Gamma World), you’re going to hate using Gamma World in any setting.  The abstract level of many of the rules (equipment, ammunition, healing outside of combat, and the Alpha and Omega cards) can be a turn-off to players with a more simulationist bent.

The Party

The best way to demonstrate how a Gamma Rifts game actually plays out is to take a look at the party of adventurers my players put together for our campaign (check out their portraits at the end of the post).  Character creation in Gamma World is fun, and the addition of figuring out how the two origins worked with the character’s power source (tech, magic or mutant), only added to the process.
My players rolled their origins but chose their power source based on suggestions from me and the other players of how such a character might be envisioned (for example he Wheeled origin and the tech power source might produce a tracked cyborg like the ones in the Russia worldbook, while the mutant or magic power source with the same origin could be interpreted as some kind of centaur creature).  Often, the ideas that were generated during character creation were also informed by the random skill bonus each Gamma World character receives.
We are still getting used to interpreting the Alpha cards according to power source and not just as a mutation (spells for magic, and gadgets for tech characters), but I think that will get easier with a little nudging from me and the inclusion of more game elements that are affected by power source differently (things like gamma terrain, hazards, and monster powers).
Once the rolling was finished, I asked each of my players to describe themselves, their armour and weapons, and come up with a reason why they were members of a band of mercenaries working for the city of Lazlo (the set-up of the first adventure that I’ll detail next post).  It wasn’t far into the first session that my friends dubbed their party ‘the Misfits’, and besides being an unforeseen Jem reference (which is cool in itself), describes them pretty well.

Lazarus Project Subject E (Laz-E to his friends, for his slow movement rate), is a dead man with no memory of his former life, resurrected and powered by a large graviton reactor in his chest.  He wears armour made from the cast off junk he found in the destroyed lab where he was ‘born’ and wields an old parking meter in combat that occasionally spits out strange coins.  He joined up with the Misfits by accident, hoping one day to uncover the mystery of his origin.  [Re-animated/Gravity Controller with the Tech power source wearing heavy armour and using a heavy 2-handed melee weapon]

Willow is the spirit of a Dryad who survived the destruction of her bonded tree, constantly weeping a slow trickle of tear-sap from haunted eyes.  She wears the bark of her former home as armour and wields a greatclub made from the tree’s thickest branch.  She joined the Misfits as part of her crusade against the Coalition, whose engines of war destroyed her grove.  [Yeti/Ectoplasmic with the Magic power source wearing heavy armour and using a heavy 2-handed melee weapon – there was already an actual Yeti in the party so the Yeti origin’s bonus to Nature, combined with another bonus to Nature through the random skill bonus roll, led to the interpretation of the character as a nature spirit, the Yeti’s claws becoming thorny branches]

Big Claw is a Yeti fire warlock.  She wears armour made from cast off metal scraps, uses a manhole cover as a shield, and wields a magic sword made from the unmeltable ice of the North Pole.  She joined the Misfits to aid in her search of the southlands for a piece of ‘hairless ape magic’ (technology) that can reunite her with her northern tribe, and bypass her enemies in the Coalition state of Iron Heart.  [Yeti/Pyrokinetic with the Magic power source wearing heavy armour, shield, and using a heavy 1-handed melee weapon]

The Master looks human, but insists he is a ‘time lord’, and constantly reminds others of their species’ inferior status.  He wears a personal force field projector on his back and wields a handheld disruptor.  He joined the Misfits hoping the techno-wizards of Lazlo would aid him in repairing his destroyed transport, which he calls a TARDIS (and the Misfits keep him around because he’s a mechanical genius).  [Electrokinetic/Temporal with the Tech power source wearing heavy armour and using a light 1-handed gun – the Master’s personality is the direct result of his abysmal Charisma score]

Paranoia is a risk averse Mind Melter whose psychokinetic abilities are so strong she can rip other versions of herself from parallel dimensions into her own reality (usually to die horribly in her place).  She wears a jacket of red dragon scales as armour, uses a large dragon scale as a shield, and wields a baseball bat with a nail though it.  She was born in Lazlo, so helping with the war effort comes naturally… joining the Misfits means she doesn’t have to follow orders or stick around if the Coalition war machine comes calling.  [Telekinetic/Doppelganger with the Mutant power source wearing light armour, shield, and using a light 1-handed melee weapon]

Notes:

Just a quick note about the illustration.  This is how I picture the Misfits in my mind when we play – I’m sure my players see themselves differently in the game world (after all I’m only working with a brief description – they’ve got the whole mental picture), but I tried my best …  Finding good reference material for a female yeti is very difficult (in the end I went with Marvel’s Snowbird in Sasquatch form).
Back in high school, when my friends and I ended our epic 2e Temple of Elemental Evil campaign, we commissioned an artist at Toronto’s Pandemonium convention to sketch a portrait of our party.  I can’t remember the name of the artist (and I don’t have a copy of the picture), but I have newfound respect for his talents – even more so that he was able to get it right.

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Shadows in the Moonlight – Part Two

July 16th, 2011

The Shadow in the Trees is the second creature from Robert E. Howard’s story, Shadows in the Moonlight.  For the summary of that tale, as well as the iron shadow monster theme, click here.
This is also the second of Howard’s man-eating grey apes that I’ve featured in this series.  The first, Thak, appeared in Rogues in the House (and before I’ve finished with Howard’s stories, there will be at least one more).
Spoiler Alert! All of these Hyborian age posts are going to be filled with spoilers.  From the summary, to the monster stats they are going to ruin any surprises as to what the monster is, when they pop up in the story and how and why they are killed.  You’ve been warned.

The Shadow in the Trees

“In general outline it was not unlike a man.  But its face, limned in the bright moonlight, was bestial, with close set ears, flaring nostrils, and a great flabby-lipped mouth in which gleamed white tusk-like fangs.  It was covered in shaggy grayish hair, shot with silver which shone in the moonlight, and its great misshapen paws hung nearly to the earth.” – Robert E. Howard, Shadows in the Moonlight.

Lore

Nature DC 15: Grey apes are a brutal and savage species of carnivorous primate that dwell in lonely mountains and hills.  Their minds are more developed than true apes, and they often employ crude tools and weapons, though they are no less capable of ripping an enemy apart with their bare hands.  It is prophesized that grey apes will one day evolve into a species that will challenge humanity for dominance.
Nature DC 20: Some grey apes have honed the skill of rock throwing to such a degree that they can rebound a single stone between two targets.  These apes hide caches of projectiles throughout their hunting grounds, each carefully chosen for its weight and balance.  Against large groups of enemies, grey apes hurl massive chunks of brittle stone that explode in a shower of painful and debilitating shrapnel.

The Shadow in the Trees in combat

The Shadow in the Trees is a wary and cunning hunter.  From behind a barricade of natural cover, or difficult terrain, it surprises its prey with a veritable barrage of hurled missiles.  Only when its broken victims have stopped screaming, does the carnivorous ape move in to feed.
Like all grey apes, the Shadow in the Trees is prone to fits of bestial anger.  When wounded, the ape is possessed with a homicidal fury, dropping its weapons and abandoning caution to rip and tear the source of its pain to bloody shreds.

Encounters

The shadow in the trees is drawn to ancient, vine choked jungle dungeons, where crumbling walls and loose flagstones provide the creature with ample ammunition.  These forays bring the ape into contact with a wide assortment of strange creatures.  In such an environment, the adaptable grey ape will utilize mindless denizens, like oozes and undead, as a natural bulwark against attackers.  In turn, more organized creatures, like bugbears and gnolls, are eager to press a creature like the Shadow in the Trees into service with steady bribes of raw meat.

Notes

My main goal with the Shadow in the Trees was to extrapolate on the mechanical design of Thak, the first grey ape, without making a carbon copy.  I like that Thak is essentially two creatures in one – a leader who relies on traps who transforms into a straight hand to hand brute when it becomes bloodied.  That way, halfway through the fight, the creature’s altered tactics keep the players on their toes.
I continued that theme when I made the Shadow in the Trees.  It’s an artillery creature that avoids melee characters, who transforms into a hand to hand brute that rushes into the thick of the fight (cribbing its bloodied attack from Thak which I thought provided a nice mechanical thread between the two monsters).  The coolest part is how well this approach reflects the events of the story (the beast spends most of the tale hurling rocks from the concealment of the forest, only to emerge and confront Conan directly when its volatile rage gets the better of it).
When I create the next grey ape (which is about 8 stories away – so not anytime soon), I’m definitely going to continue with this pattern.  One of the things I love about the 4e bloodied mechanic is that it lends itself so well to these Jekyll and Hyde type transformations (though I guess in the case of the grey apes it’s Hyde and Hyder).

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The Best Dragon Covers: 301-fin

July 8th, 2011

This is the last instalment of my celebration of Dragon magazine’s 35th anniversary, and I have to admit it’s a little bittersweet (part one is here and part two is here).
Roger Moore may have been my favourite editor, but my favourite era of the magazine is the time Dragon spent under the stewardship of Paizo publishing (with Eric Mona as editor).  Paizo injected the magazine with this amazing youthful energy that made it exciting to read in a way that only an optimistic, upstart company can do.  This batch of Dragons delivered consistently good material, with something in almost every issue that I wanted to incorporate into my game (it also presented a blend of ‘fluff’ and ‘crunch’ that suited my tastes perfectly – and I try and emulate on this blog).  The only thing I can really hold against Paizo is that they stopped the practice of including a reprint of the cover art sans text in each issue.
And then it stopped.  The cancellation of Dragon hit me pretty hard.  My subscription had followed me through so many phases of my life; the thought of never getting another issue in the mail was very depressing.  Yes, the online magazine has been much better than anticipated, and the incorporation of its material into both the character generator and the online compendium is tremendously useful to players and DMs alike (and would probably be impossible with a print version), but still, I think Dragon lost something when it went digital (call it gravitas).  Especially the covers.
That’s not an indictment of the art, rather just an observation that in an online magazine, covers don’t really mean much (even more so that they don’t bundle the articles into a single pdf anymore).  Electronic images seem so much more impermanent, without a physical presence, I quickly glance at them and scroll down the page, another ephemeral chunk of culture to be consumed without savouring.  So, sadly, my celebration of Dragon covers stops with issue 359 (as usual click on the image for full size).

I mentioned Wayne Reynolds’ emergence in the last article, and if anything, his star grew even brighter during the Paizo days of Dragon, producing numerous covers and a spectacular 3.5e DM screen that was given away as a bonus with the magazine (that I’m still using).  These are two of his best.
I always thought the repeating crossbow was a bit of a goofy weapon until two things changed my mind – an episode of Deadliest Warrior and the cover of Dragon 305.  Rogues are one of my favourite characters to play and this painting perfectly sums up all the greatest features of the class.  Lightly armoured, quiet as a shadow, and a face that leaves no doubt that this man is a scoundrel.  I was the DM at the time so I never got to make this character in the game and had to settle for using this cover as my portrait in Neverwinter Nights.
WAR might be known for big, bulky armour, and wall to wall action scenes, but here he displays his skills at rendering the undead (and check out his depiction of the Githyanki Lich Queen on the cover of Dungeon 100 if you need more proof).  Vecna’s name has been in the game as a villain since (almost) the beginning, but there are few depictions of him.  Not having a phonebook of visual precedents worked in Reynolds’ favour with this piece.  Instead of wrapping the whispered one up in a big voluminous robe (the kind you associate with liches), WAR went for a more exotic, almost primitive look.  It’s a choice that might bother some, but to me it makes Vecna look ancient and primal – more like a god and less like your garden variety undead spell-caster.

Marc Sasso probably had more Dragon covers during this era than any other artist.  His style is definitely square in the ‘new-school’ of Wayne Reynolds, but as much as I admire WAR’s talents, I think that Sasso has a greater command of perspective that gives his paintings more depth.
That kind of depth really isn’t in play for his cover of Dragon 312, but if an anti-paladin crashing through the stained glass of a temple on his nightmare mount while the clerics crap in their robes isn’t good enough for this list than I don’t know what is.  I’ll admit I have a weakness for the little skulls moulded into the knuckles of the warrior’s gauntlets.  This painting could just as easily be the cover for a metal album (and incidentally Sasso has made more than a few), which is just the place you want to go when depicting the over the top evil of an anti-paladin.  I’m not what you would call a metal-head, but I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for the aesthetic – especially vans airbrushed in full Frazetta mode (my family had a big van for years, but my father wouldn’t let us put so much as a bumper sticker on it).
Sasso’s cover for Dragon 332 is less metal influenced, but a much better painting.  I think it’s cool that he decided to go with a wild-eyed, lightly armoured, mercenary type as his Dragon slayer, rather than your traditional St. George figure.  In my games at least, there were a lot more of the former than the latter.  I also love his portrayal of magic – the spreading blue glow of arcane cold is subtle, but noticeable, and it fits the game accurately (in 3e, Red dragons take extra damage from cold attacks).

 

Dan Scott’s cover for Dragon 315 is memorable for me in so many ways.  First, this issue, focusing on D&D’s ‘dead’ game worlds is one I go back to all the time, so it’s hard for me to separate my joy for the content of the issue when seeing that painting.  Second, that’s a great depiction of Strahd.  I’ve never used him in a game, but I’ve always been fascinated with him as a villain.  He’s sort of like Dracula (OK, an exact clone of Dracula), a name that’s so big it’s nice to have as a legend but hard to put into an encounter and do him justice.  Finally, the layout of this piece immediately brings to mind the covers of The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Book of the Dead series.  I’ve mentioned my boundless love of the OHOTMU many times before on this blog, but when I got my first issue of the Book of the Dead as a birthday present in grade 7, I thought it was that much cooler than ever before.

 

 

 

 

The thing that makes Scott Fischer’s cover for Dragon 329 stand out is that it looks more like contemporary art than fantasy illustration.  The composition, tone, and reference to Ingres’ Odalisque, make it seem like the kind of painting your partner would let you put up in your living room (I’m lucky enough to have a gamer for a partner so there wouldn’t be a problem either way).  Except that it’s also a painting of a medusa that’s just turned a guy to stone (it’s hard to see with the logo, but he’s petrified with a look of absolute horror).  It’s the visual equivalent of a song by The Jam – all poppy and melodic on the surface with dark and politically charged lyrics underneath.

 

 

 

 

Mind flayers are one of my favourite monsters (just look at the background image for this blog), so any cover that features one already has my attention.  The cover of Dragon 330 by James Ryman actually shows one in the act of devouring some poor soul’s brain.  When I was a kid, Bill Willingham’s back cover piece (which showed the same activity) for Descent into the Depths of the Earth, gave me the heebie-jeebies.  Ryman’s cover is a worthy successor, and the longer I stare at it the itchier my scalp gets.  The emotionless face of the illithid, contrasted with the sheer terror and pain of its victim works to demonstrate just how alien these things are.

 

 

 

 

Before Steve Prescott became Paizo’s go-to guy for their Pathfinder rpg, he made Dragon covers for them.  I guess the art directors at Paizo like him for the same reasons I do – his versatility.  I think these two covers are his best work for Dragon, and they also illustrate his ability to work at either end of the scale spectrum.
In his cover for Dragon 331 Prescott takes us to the gritty and personal street-level of adventuring.  This is the kind of Nick Fury-esque adventurer that I dig.  His gear is worn, and you can tell from the menagerie of weapons, climbing tools and odd mystical bits that this guy is a veteran of dungeon delving.  But the best part of this picture is that Prescott is able to make the character look fully kitted out without crossing the line into parody like say, Citadel’s complete adventurer miniature.
A little more than a year later, Prescott’s cover for Dragon 344 takes us from the street to the epic and he doesn’t miss a beat.  As the goddess of evil dragonkind, Tiamat is awesome.  Possessing a head that represents each species of chromatic dragon, she seems a much more natural progenitor than Bahamut the platinum dragon does for the metallic dragons.  The stand out feature of this painting is Prescott’s attention to detail.  Each of Tiamat’s heads corresponds in shape and style to the models laid out by Todd Lockwood and Sam Wood in the Monster Manual.  I’m a sucker for that kind of continuity.  Artists’ styles change but you get the sense that the game world is alive when what they are depicting the same creatures (say what you will about the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon, but they did the same thing with their version of Tiamat – albeit with the 1e dragon models).

 

 

I DMed a long running planescape campaign for 3e, but my love of that setting began way back in high school when the boxed set was released.  R.K. Post’s cover for Dragon features Planescape’s icon, the Lady of Pain.  Even though her face appeared on almost every product in the line, there were only a handful of pictures that showed the Lady’s complete figure.  I talked about R.K. Post’s style last article, and with a creature as creepy and enigmatic as the Lady of Pain, it’s a perfect pairing of subject and artist (if I was wealthy beyond imagination I’d commission Clive Barker to do a painting of her).  When this issue came out, my Planescape campaign had concluded (so I couldn’t use the picture in-game), but this cover brought me right back there, my mind wandering the streets of Sigil all over again.

 

 

 

If Steve Prescott is versatile then Andrew Hou is an absolute chameleon.  He seems to move effortlessly between the anime influenced style of the new school and a more traditional style of fantasy illustration.  Looking at these two covers it’s hard to believe they are painted by the same artist… that one of them features the two-headed Demogorgon seems highly appropriate.
I’ve used golems as adversaries many times in D&D, and even though the rules for creating them as servants have been in the game since 1e, I have never played in a party where we crafted one.  I’ve really wanted to, and my friends and I have come close a couple of times, but it just never happened.  I had this issue of Dragon sitting on my computer desk for over a year, hoping that my players would be able to make use of it, but it wasn’t to be.  Hou’s cover for issue 341 was never very far away when I was preparing for game sessions, its newly forged iron golem full of the promise of an iconic aspect to D&D wizardry.  It’s a shame 4e has no decent golem crafting rules.
Hou’s cover for Dragon 357 is a great painting of Demogorgon (I am so glad Paizo returned Demogorgon to his baboon headed self, and didn’t use the hyena version from the Book of Vile Darkness).  For some reason the style reminds me of old movie posters, full of dark atmosphere and the distant drums of action.  I can just see it tucked away in the corner of an old video store (Queen Video if you’re in Toronto)… ‘Prince of Demons ‘, with animation by Ray Harryhausen, featuring a band of adventurers suddenly transported to another dimension where they witness the endless carnage and turmoil that is the abyss!

 

 

And here it is, the final cover, Dragon 359.  I’m not actually that crazy about the Larry Elmore painting.   There’s something jarring about the strange outfit the woman is wearing that irks me, but that electro-sword is cool, the green dragon (in reference to Dragon magazine’s first issue) is a nice touch, and as always he has created a background more beautiful than most artists’ foregrounds.  Besides, it’s the last issue – its cover would deserve a place of honour even if it was a blank page.

 

 

 

As an afterthought, I wonder how fantasy illustration has been impacted by Dragon going digital.  Looking back at my favourite covers and researching the people who made them, I see that many prominent artists made a splash in Dragon before moving on to other things (many of whom are now the primary illustrators of Pathfinder and 4e).  As I mentioned at the start of the article, I haven’t been paying much attention to the digital Dragon covers, but is it occupying the same niche in the industry for artists that it once held?  Hopefully it does, but if I am any indication, these new fantasy artists are not getting the attention that they deserve.

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I Levelled Up!

July 5th, 2011

There are certain recognized milestones for a D&D character’s development – a wizard learns fireball, a fighter gets a second attack, a rogue trains a skill up to +20… when it comes to personal, real life development, the milestones  come with less frequency and are certainly less impressive.
But I’m proud of myself anyway.  My milestone?  I created my first cover.  Here’s the backstory.  I’ve been posting my favourite Dragon magazine covers from different eras, saturating my brain with great art.  One of the reasons I create my own pictures for the monsters I produce on this website is so that I can get back in the swing of drawing regularly again (an activity that I’ve associated with RPGs since I was a kid, but exercise less and less as I get older).  It’s great practice that comes with its own built-in impetus (for a guy like me, that’s the best kind of impetus); I hate monster stat-blocks without an illustration.  Reminiscing over those back issues of Dragon inspired me to begin experimenting with color in my pictures.
Meanwhile, while perusing the RPG Blog alliance, I noticed that Mark at Mithril and Mages was holding a contest to design a cover for his application, Treasure Book on Demand (a very cool program that randomly generates a whole book in pdf form, with treasures for every ‘hoard class’ in the Labyrinth Lord game – that’s the same as ‘treasure type’ in 1e D&D).  He was looking for an A4 sized illustration in colour – just the thing I’d been experimenting with.  I thought to myself, I could do that (in a fit of un-me-ness).  And I did.  Here’s what I made.  And it won!

OK, there were only two people who entered, but Mark was classy enough to give us both first prize.  That was awesome (and greatly appreciated), but the real milestone is that I was able to fill up that page with something, and even though I can already see a lot of things that I would like to change (I admit that time constraints made me rush the images that appear in the mirrors – and it shows), I’m very proud of the finished product.  It was a lot of work, but like any adventurer who manages to make it out of the dungeon bruised, bleeding, but alive; I think I’ve learned a few tricks and expanded my skill-set.
For the basic design of the piece, I wanted a chest full of riches, with a set of mirrors reflecting different sorts of treasures (as a way to show how the Treasure Book can generate infinite combinations).  Then I tried to jam in as much detail as possible, because in any haul, it’s the little things that are always the most exciting.
Seeing as Labyrinth Lord is a retro-clone, I went back to the old school masters for inspiration when gathering reference material (like I needed an excuse).  Some of the tributes are obvious, others a little more obscure (especially the not-exactly D&D ones).  For those who don’t like spoilers, I’m putting the sources of all the picture’s ‘Easter eggs’ in the comment section.
It might not be Dragon material, but it’s my fireball (or at least Melph’s minute meteors).

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