Alternate Histories

January 21st, 2011

Alternate histories and rpgs have a long relationship, one that has moved beyond settings (say, like the alternate weird west of Deadlands), to the games themselves.  Let me explain. A popular trend in the internet fuelled ‘old-school renaissance’ of role-playing games is to imagine (and then create) the games that ‘could have been’ but weren’t made.  You’ve got the B/X Companion (the imagined continuation of the Moldvay/Cook Basic and Expert D&D rules which were abandoned in favor of the BECMI sets), Adventures Dark and Deep (a hypothetical version of 2E D&D if Gygax had stayed with TSR), Spellcraft and Swordplay (a game that adheres to the original Chainmail combat conventions instead of the ‘alternate’ D20 mechanic presented in OD&D), even Stellar Battles (a ‘what-if’ scenario that has Gygax making an RPG of Star Wars in the early 80s and then losing the license). 
Now there’s a lot I like about the old-school (the art for one, most obviously), but there’s a lot I don’t like as well (player vs. DM relationship, highly idiosyncratic systems, rules that rely on arbitrary DM fiat), and since the old-school rules are the thing I have the most problem with I’m not all that interested in these systems (I do admire the passion that goes into these projects though).  That said, I really like the idea of taking an already existing idea or product and tweaking some of the facts as a way of re-imagining it and making something new (probably why I was such a huge fan of the What If? series from Marvel).  It’s a great source of inspiration for monsters and adventures – another tool in a DM’s kit that’s not to be ignored (and the complete premise of the excellent Star Trek reboot).
The thing that got me thinking about all this alternate history and re-imagining was a post over at the Rue-Morgue website that directed me to artist Sean Hartter’s blog and this old post where he created a series of alternate reality movie posters.  Here are a few highlights (click on them for a bigger picture), but I strongly recommend checking out the post and seeing all he has to offer (he’s selling them as full-blown posters as well).

First we’ve got an 80s live action movie of the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon, starring Jurgen Prochnow (the captain from Das Boot, also collectively known, along with Edward James Olmos, and Bryan Adams, as ‘my people’) as Venger. Written by the guy who gave us Dirty Harry and Conan the Barbarian, with trippy, synth (probably too loud) background music by Tangerine Dream.  If this movie had been made I can totally see it replacing The Sword and the Sorcerer in my childhood mythology.

The next poster asks the question: what if Ray Harryhousen’s pet project wasn’t Greek mythology, but Jack Kirby monster comics?  The answer, an awesome vehicle for a pre-Michael Jackson Corey Feldman with an epic score by Basil Poledouris (hmm, another Conan connection), is Devil Dinosaur.

Then comes a much more serious and early version of Ghostbusters, starring the greatest actors of 60s era horror, with a very freaky Bette Davis as Zuul (Bette David eyes indeed).  It only makes sense such a pedigree would be rounded out with a writer like Robert Bloch (the man behind Psycho).

The next poster has nothing to do with monsters, but I had to include it because I’m always bugging my friend about liking Daredevil so much (I shouldn’t make fun, especially since my favorite hero is Dr. Strange, so I’m in no position to be throwing stones, but what are you going to do?).  It stars William freakin’ Shatner… need I say more?  I will anyway.  This movie would have Daredevil bare-knuckling in a 70s hell’s kitchen, and with Friedkin at the helm (who did the Exorcist and Cruising), you know it would be a much grittier New York than we saw Ben Affleck in, filled with violence, vice, and exploitive nudity (a pre-imagining of Marvel Knights maybe?).

The last entry isn’t really a poster but the package for the Atari 2600 game for Cloverfield, if those two cultural artifacts had come about in the same era.  This one cracks me up, because as anyone who’s ever played the E.T. game knows, what you see on that screen shot would have been the whole game (though I don’t think it’s possible for any game to be worse than E.T.).
Like a lot of great art, these pictures do so much with very little (visually, obviously a lot of thought went into the era appropriate style and credits).  In my own way, I guess I’m so jazzed up about re-imaginings and alternate histories, because that’s one of the things I’m trying to do here.  You could call Monsters of the Hyborian age a ‘what-if’ scenario where the creators of 4e D&D went back to one of the literary inspirations of the game instead of distancing themselves from it.

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Random Encounters: Grindylow

January 18th, 2011

So at the suggestion of KaosEleQtric regarding my retrospective on Rifts, I’ve converted the grindylow to 4e D&D stats.  The exercise reminded me of two things.  First, just how much mileage you can get out of a random generator.  If you’re stuck for an idea of a challenge to face your players it is definitely worth checking out the multitude of random generators online (if only for a thought experiment to get the juices flowing). 
The second thing I was reminded of was just how great 4e handles monster creation.  Don’t get me wrong, the system has its flaws, but when it comes to making new monsters its king (and I‘m in love with the monster builder in the adventure tools).  I really like the approach the rules foster to monster creation.  You tackle the design from the perspective of what you want the monster to do, first and foremost (i.e. shoot eye beams, fly around, or in the case of the grindylow blind people, drag them into the water and sting them), and the end result is a monster that mechanically fulfills that vision.  I love that goblins, kobolds, and orcs all feel different in combat because they are mechanically different from one another (now I just wish that the classes in 4e felt a little more different from one another).  Could 3e handle any of the monsters I’ve created on this site?  Of course it could, I just think it’s a lot easier in 4e (now when it comes to customizing already existing monsters 3e is definitely the king – I love the idea of adding class levels and advancing venerable monster specimens in size). 
With all the rumors of 5e floating around (which I think are premature personally), lets hope D&D keeps this approach to monster design.

The Grindylow

“When I was a lad my grandmother used to warn me away from the twisty bog, for that was the home of the grindylow.  When I had seen my fifteenth winter I ignored her tales, as young men are wont to do, and set off into the bog with a group of ruffians in search of gold and adventure.  Nary a one of them survived, all dragged beneath those black waters by the thing’s long, cruel claws, its tail cracking like a horseman’s whip.  The grindylow had found us, and I’ll never forget that crying, screaming little boy I saw reflected in those hateful eyes.”

Lore

Arcana DC 15: Grindylow are malevolent fey that live in noisome bogs and other still bodies of water.  They prefer to drown their prey, but are just as capable out of the water. 
Arcana DC 20: The touch of pure silver burns the grindylow’s corrupt flesh, preventing it from healing.  The creature’s magic aura befouls any water it stays in, earning the grindylow the enmity of Nymphs and Druids.

The Grindylow in combat

Grindylow tend to focus on weaker targets who they can easily blind and drag back to the water.  They are slow witted creatures driven by an unceasing hunger for humanoid flesh and are incapable of formulating complex plans on their own.

Encounters

Grindylow are usually too cowardly to tackle a group of well armed heroes on their own, but are often pressed into service by smarter and more powerful creatures like bog and river hags.  Grindylow like to hide at the fringes of combat, waiting for an opportunity to grab the wounded and drag them away from their allies.

Notes

If you’re going to use the grindylow in Gamma World add the extradimensional keyword to the monster’s description.
I ended up giving the grindylow regeneration, something the original version didn’t have, since I was emulating the only creatures in D&D with a weakness to silver:  lycanthropes (which makes sense since the silver weakness in the Rifts version was emulating the Rifts version of lycanthropes).

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Random Encounters: Gamma World and Rifts

January 14th, 2011

Note: For this blog entry I’m assuming the reader has familiarity with the Rifts setting, because, well, you wouldn’t really be interested in using it for your Gamma World Game if you didn’t.
Last week I mentioned my desire to run a Gamma World game within the setting of Rifts.  I’ve thought more about it and I definitely think it can be done with very little modification.  I like the setting of the Gamma World game itself, its fun and I especially love the weird interpretations those on Gamma Terra have about the culture (and naming conventions) of the ‘ancients’ (us).  But a ‘kitchen sink’ setting like Rifts offers a few advantages, the most important being the easy (and expected) importation of all the cool magical monsters from D&D.  On the other side of things, I get to keep a setting I love while ditching a rule set I’ve come to loathe.  I’m not the first to do this.  Converting Rifts to other game systems is something of an internet wide pastime (which, in my opinion is a good barometer of how great a setting it is and how problematic the rules are).  Of the blogs I follow there’s BTR (that’s better than rifts), Outsyder’s Spectrum Shock, the 4e Rifts Earth Saga, heck even Ryan Dancey (the father of open gaming) is on record saying that Rifts needed a d20 version (and that’s just the tip of the iceberg).  There is such a demand that the forum at Palladium books even has a section detailing why they won’t allow Rifts to be converted to any other system (I’m just going to assume Palladium has enough problems of its own to care what I’m doing in the corner over here).

Characters

So how to make it work using Gamma World?  The best attempt I’ve seen is here, and it takes the approach of creating new character origins based off of the Rifts O.C.C.s and R.C.C.s (juicers, power armor pilots, mind melters, etc.).  The origins are good and it does a great job of directly translating the source material, but that’s not what I think is needed.  In Gamma World, the more origins the better (that way there’s less of a chance of duplication within the party), so any approach that limits them to a static set I think is missing out on one of the appealing things about the game (plus it looks like each Gamma World supplement is going to add to the list).  Instead, my solution is to have characters add another level of detail, layered on top of their origins, that filters their powers into something that would better fit in the world of Rifts.  After all, the character creation process in Gamma World is all about interpreting how those origins interact with one another, the power source just guides that interpretation in a Rifts direction.
 Using the table, characters can roll or choose a power source.  Each power source gives a label to the character’s powers (Alpha mutation cards).  So for example: an Electrokinetic Yeti with the technology power source could be a bionic Dog-boy with a built in neural mace attached to its arm; a Radioactive Gravity Controller with the magic power source could be a Ley-line Walker with ominous glowing eyes, always floating a few inches off the ground; and a Speedster Hypercognitive with the technology power source would be a perfect Juicer. 
To continue the example: a bionic Dog-boy with the hostility Alpha card has learned how to short-circuit his neural mace to override a target’s cognition; a Ley-line Walker with the stoke resentment Alpha card casts the ‘wisps of confusion’ spell; and a Juicer with the venomous spurs Alpha card draws a poisoned switchblade (why are these powers always changing?  That’s explained in the altered Rifts fluff at the end of the article).
Allowing for broad interpretations fits Gamma World better and I think allows for the kind of infinite possibilities necessary to recreate the tremendous variety of O.C.C.s and R.C.C.s in the Rifts game.

Other Rules

Add Arcana to the skill list (it screws up the symmetry of the skill list, but nothing’s perfect).  When importing creatures from D&D add appropriate keywords: dragons, demons, elementals, undead, and goblins make great extradimensional monsters; grell, kruthik, mind flayers, and oozes make great extraterrestrial monsters; carrion crawlers, displacer beasts, owlbear, shambling mounds, and spiders make great terrestrial monsters.  Finally add some magically oriented Omega Tech cards (these templates make it easy), like the TK -Machine gun, Cloak of Invisibility, Rune Weapons, and Symbiotes.

The World

A subtle change to the Rifts fluff brings the two games a little closer in line with one another:
“In the ages of the ancients, humanity lived in a golden age of prosperity.  It was a time of high technology, human augmentation and fusion powered travel.  Sages don’t agree on the causes of the ‘Big Mistake’ that awakened the rifts and brought down the apocalypse.  Was it a global war of pride between the kingdoms of the ancients that snuffed out a billion souls whose backlash of psychic energy was too much for the earth’s ley lines to bear?  Were the ancients being punished for ignoring the warning of their prophets that the stars would align for the return of the children of the Old Ones?  Perhaps it was the hubris of ancient scientists at fabled ‘project arrowhead’ attempting to open a doorway to another world?  Perhaps all are true.
Regardless of the cause, the results of the Big Mistake are plain for all to see.  Ley lines, pathways of psychic energy that crisscrossed the planet, crackled with overflowing energy.  Where these lines intersected the power was so great that rifts to other dimensions were torn through the fabric of space.  Magic, once thought to be superstition and sleight of hand, became a powerful force in the world as real as science.  Alien intelligences, demons, and creatures from nightmare poured through the rifts to invade our world.  Atlantis rose from the ocean, unleashing biblical tsunamis on the world’s coastlines.  Civilization ended almost overnight, but not before the ancients unleashed their most powerful weapons of mass destruction.
That was a hundred years ago.  The Americas are a wasteland dotted with settlements carved out of the junk of the ancients.  People use whatever they can to survive, be it scraps of technology, magical incantation or newfound mutant ability.  But nothing is certain in this post apocalyptic age.  The chaotic energy of the ley lines affects all things.  Guns might stop working just as a machine that’s been dead for years lurches to life.  Spells carved into millennia old tablets have random and unpredictable results.  Mutants, their DNA forever altered by exposure to radiation and magic spontaneously grow wings and breathe fire.
It is a harsh world we have inherited from the ancients.  One filled with monsters and uncertainty.” – from the History of the Wasteland, 101 P.A.

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The Tower of the Elephant

January 10th, 2011

Most fans of the Conan stories count The Tower of the Elephant among the best, and I can’t disagree.  More important though is the obvious influence this story must have had on D&D.  The premise of the adventure is classic D&D stuff: Conan hears a rumor in a bar, forms a party, and braves a monster and trap infested location for treasures which don’t turn out as he expected.  And since this story predates the game by a few decades, I guess it would be more correct to say that D&D is classic Conan.
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.

Summary

From the end of Conan’s career in The Scarlet Citadel, Howard takes us to the beginning, and a much younger and inexperienced Conan.  The scene opens on the Maul, a dangerous maze-like section of an unnamed Zamorian city where city guards fear to tread and thieves rule the night.  In a dimly lit drinking den Conan hears a Kothian kidnapper gossip of Yara the priest, who dwells in the elephant tower with a great magic gem known as the heart of the elephant.  Conan doesn’t understand why a thief with any courage hasn’t simply taken such a treasure yet and the Kothian mocks his naiveté.  Conan (even rawer than we’re used to seeing) takes offence and cuts the cur down where he stands.  In the chaos following the fight, Conan strides out into the night, the target of his adventure clear.
In the gardens surrounding the tower Conan finds he is not alone in his endeavor.  There is another trespasser in the garden by the name of Taurus, the self proclaimed ‘prince of thieves’.  The two come to an agreement and proceed together – just in time to dispatch a group of ravenous lions that had been placed in the gardens as savage guards.  Conan and Taurus scale the perilous tower and enter, but the lions are not Yara’s only defense.  A monstrous spider hiding in the upper chamber poisons Taurus and almost slays the Cimmerian as well.  Only Conan’s barbarian instincts see him through the fight alive.
Alone, he continues his quest for the jewel.  In one of the tower’s rooms he finds a strange and monstrous creature with emerald skin and the head of an elephant.  But instead of a climactic battle with this demon we are given something else.  The creature is Yag-kosha, blinded and broken on the rack – a thing to be pitied.  Yag-kosha has been Yara’s prisoner for centuries, working his magic for the priest against his will, unable to escape even by taking his own life.
The elephantine beast came from green Yag, across the cosmos, while Conan’s people were still primitive ape-men (the same Yag the seeds of Yogtha the Devil Flower were scattered from).  Slowly, over vast spans of time his people died out until only Yag-kosha was left, now a shadow of his former self, indentured to the cruel tyrant Yara.
Yag-kosha sees in Conan a means for both liberation from his torture and revenge on the man who inflicted it.  He instructs the barbarian to put him out of his misery by cutting out his heart and pouring the blood on the magical jewel he is linked to (the treasure Conan has risked so much to claim).  The bloody task complete, Conan is to find Yara and present him with Yag-kosha’s final ‘gift’.
Not one to be squeamish about such tasks Conan obliges Yag-kosha and does as he was instructed.  Taking the gem, Conan finds Yara in the haze of the yellow lotus.  The dark priest is hostile and outraged at having his meditations disturbed, but goes silent when Conan delivers the heart of the elephant.  The strange jewel enspells Yara, shrinking him to diminutive size before absorbing him.  Inside the glass walls of the fantastic jewel Conan watches Yara trembling before a fully restored Yag-kosha.
Not sure if what he had experienced was real or not Conan steals away from the tower empty handed as the imposing tower shatters with the first rays of the sun.

Yag Starcaster

“Conan stared aghast; the image had the body of a man, naked, and green in color; but the head was one of nightmare and madness.  Too large for the human body, it had no attributes of humanity.  Conan stared at the wide flaring ears, the curling proboscis, one either side of which stood white tusks tipped with round golden balls.” – Robert E. Howard, the Tower of the Elephant

Lore

Dungeoneering DC 15: The Yag are a race of elephant headed, alien beings from the green star of the same name.  Each Yag is bonded to a crystal, through which it works powerful magic.  The Yag are extremely long lived, so much so that many consider them immortal and worship them as gods.
Dungeoneering DC 20:  A Yag can die, but destroying its mortal shell merely frees the creature’s powerful, winged spirit.  It is not known what caused the Yag to flee their home, but it must have been an awesome threat both physically and spiritually to send these beings across the void between the worlds.

Yag Starcaster in Combat

Yag are emotionless and methodical in combat.  These creatures know that their physical forms are nothing but imperfect reflections of the spirit.  For this reason a Yag does not fear death, and in many cases may even welcome it, if it furthers the creature’s goals.

Encounters

Yag are often the leaders of strange star-worshipping cults, perfecting their ancient magic and teaching it to their followers.  They care little for the politics of the ‘lesser races’, but the pursuit of their alien goals often brings them and their followers into conflict with outsiders.
It is rumored that powerful star pact Warlocks can ritually bind a Yag into servitude.  Such tales usually end with the Yag wreaking bloody vengeance on the Warlock who bound it.

Notes

I really liked the idea of the Yag shrinking PCs down and trapping them in its gem (what we used to call ‘minimus containment’, back in the day), so I cribbed parts of the devourer’s trap spirit ability to make it work.  Since the creature is supposed to get more powerful when it dies I thought about making its freedom power work when it got to 0 hit points and adding a healing ability to it, but elite creatures have enough hit points already (especially since it gains insubstantial, it had the potential to make the combat too long).  I figured making it ‘die’ when it got bloodied was probably a better call (and makes the creature die and be reborn at a better point in the combat).
I used dungeoneering for the lore check simply because that’s the 4e convention for creatures of the aberrant origin.  If you’re not married to that convention then I would recommend using arcana instead, it just seems more appropriate for the astrological/alien bent of this creature than dungeoneering does.

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Retrospective: Rifts

January 6th, 2011

Now that I have the new Gamma World boxed set, I’ve been toying with the idea of using the rules to run a game set in the world of Rifts.  In the way of research, I cracked open the Rifts books that I still had and took a stroll down memory lane.  As I mentioned before, during the nineties I briefly cheated on my first rpg love (D&D) by having a brief but intense relationship with Rifts.  My gaming group and I were a little more than halfway through our epic 2e Temple of Elemental Evil campaign, and realized that our original notion of rotating DMing duties each adventure was not going to pan out (I quote the back of the module, “hours of entertainment”).  It was going to take all of high-school to finish (and it did).  To keep things fresh, we occasionally took a break and tried out other settings (Dark Sun, Spelljammer, Al-Quadim), and games (TMNT, Top Secret).  We were playing every week, so it was easy to find the time.
One of my friends wanted to try his hand at running a game and had just picked up Rifts.  I was familiar with Palladium through TMNT, Heroes Unlimited and Robotech, so it wasn’t a stretch to try, but when I saw what character options the game had I was instantly sold.  You can have a cyborg and a wizard in the same party?  That’s cool… wait what’s that?  YOU CAN BE A DRAGON?!  After seeing that, I was convinced we would all play dragons, but my friend picked up the Rifts Conversion Book and Rifts Worldbook One: Vampire Kingdoms and there was so much cool crap it was overwhelming (there was one dragon in the party, but I ended up playing a vampire named Chopin whose coffin was hidden in his piano).  We were hooked.
Fast forward to university and I was drifting farther and farther away from D&D.  I kept my subscription to Dragon, but 2e was starting to feel stagnant.  The only regular game I was running was Rifts, and even when the campaign was on hiatus the setting so intrigued me that I couldn’t help but roll up NPCs and create Rifts material (if you search the net you might find the very amateur font I made based on the diabolist’s runes – they even used it on the Palladium website for a while) in my spare time.  Rifts is also the game that introduced my partner to role-playing, so for that I’ll always remember it fondly.
In spite of my enthusiasm, Rifts as a game system has a lot of problems.  Reams have been written on the what, wherefore and why of this, but by grad school, the game’s warts were beginning to burn me out.  It’s in vogue now to decry game balance as unnecessary (and perhaps 4e does fetishize it), but play Rifts for a few years and you’ll miss it.  Maybe I’m an inadequate GM, but making interesting encounters that would challenge a party that included both a chiang-ku dragon temporal wizard and a plain old SDC operator was trying (in the end I encouraged SDC characters by giving them a ‘special item’ to start the game with – the longest running character, a mutant opossum, had Captain America’s shield).  The fact that each new book seemed to have more powerful weapons, armor and character classes than the last just added to the balance issues (by the tenth book the glitter-boy power armor, the supposed final word in personal weaponry, was starting to look like a piece of junk).
As time wore on, I wasn’t spending my time creating anymore.  Instead I was trying to think up house rules to make the game work. It got me down.  Then something completely unrelated to Rifts happened that changed everything.  D&D 3e was released.  Suddenly, I remembered why D&D was my first love and what I had been missing all that time.  I dropped Rifts like a hot potato and went running back to her.  The new edition seemed to answer every problem that had plagued my Rifts campaigns: it had untrained skills, humans with mechanical advantages, and most importantly a single experience chart – because all the classes were worth playing.
Since then I’ve haven’t looked at the old Rifts books that much, so re-reading Erin Tarn’s gazetteer of North America was a blast, both as nostalgia and as inspiration (whether the Gamma World thing actually pans out or not).  There was something else in the core Rifts book, tucked away at the back that I had completely forgotten about: a set of random tables for making supernatural monsters on the fly.  As a GM I had absolutely loved these tables, not only were they fast and easy but they gave PC’s a good reason to take the demon and faerie lore skill (each monster had a special weakness the skill could reveal).  I was very disappointed to find out these tables were cut from the Rifts Ultimate Edition (don’t get me started on how disappointing this book is in general but the fact they would cut something useful like the monster generator and add in a page of rules for cyber knights to change the color of their psi-swords is a pretty clear illustration of why Ultimate Edition didn’t bring me back into the fold).
Well, looking over the tables my dice started itching again and I couldn’t resist whipping up a supernatural predator.  So after all the blather, I present the crunch: the grindylow.

The Grindylow

These dark and twisted faeries haunt bogs and lakes, preying on children and lone travelers who venture too close to their lairs.  Although the grindylow prefer life underwater, they are amphibious and just as capable on land.  Grindylow prefer dank and dismal surroundings and use their magic to befoul any waterway they occupy, earning them the enmity of nymphs and water sprites.
Grindylow are slow-witted and incapable of formulating complex plans.  If food grows scarce they simply relocate, finding the quickest and easiest source of human flesh available.  On Rifts earth, this is often in the sewer outside of a body chop shop, where they feast on the patrons’ discarded parts and the butchered remains of cyber-snatch victims.

The Grindylow – supernatural predator
Alignment: Diabolic
Attributes: IQ 6, ME 9, MA 4, PS 20, PP 18, PE 21, PB 2, Spd 12
M.D.C.: 80
Horror Factor: 13
P.P.E.: 40
Weight: 250 lbs (113 kg)
Size: 7 ft tall
Natural Abilities: swim 90%, track by sight 44%
Combat: Three attacks per melee (including one magical attack)
Damage: large retractable claws 3d6 M.D., prehensile tail with stinger 2d6 M.D.
Bonuses: +1 on initiative; +3 to strike; +2 to parry and dodge; +3 to save vs. poison and magic
Magic: Once per melee the grindylow can use either blind or spoil (this is a natural magical ability and not a spell, so it has no P.P.E. cost)
Psionics: None
Appearance: A squat gill-man with long, spindly arms and a prehensile tail
Average Life Span: 600 years
Habitat: Sewers, bogs, lakes and streams
Enemies: Water sprites and nymphs.  The grindylow is fearful of well-armed groups.
Allies: Other creatures with a similar taste for flesh, and depraved individuals who use the grindylow as a man-eating ‘pet’.
Notes: The grindylow is vulnerable to weapons of silver, which inflict M.D. on the creature equivalent to the weapon’s S.D.C. damage.

Notes:

So after rolling its feeing habits (a solitary hunter who feeds on humans), and natural abilities (swimming), I figured the grindylow from English folklore fit the bill nicely (also the villains in the great China Mieville book, The Scar).  That’s what I love about a set of random tables like this; many times the random results will point in a specific direction or remind you of something cool that’s been squatting in a dark corner of your brain that you haven’t thought about in a long time.  Sure, you sometimes get something that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense (say a 25 ft tall predator that hunts in packs of 36 that breathes flames and is vulnerable to fire), but as long as the process isn’t too involved its easy to scrap it and start again (this time I got medium sized creatures who hunt in small packs, cast fireball every round and are vulnerable to symbols of goodness – instant hound of hell).

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The Scarlet Citadel – Part Two

January 2nd, 2011

This is the second creature from Robert E. Howard’s The Scarlet Citadel.  For the summary of the story as well as the creature from the pit, click here.
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.

Yothga the Devil Flower

In the cold, black depths of the cosmos hangs the star known to warlocks as Yag the accursed.  From here, yothga the devil flower spreads its seeds into the world to nourish itself on the thoughts and memories of intelligent creatures.  It is said the seeds will only germinate in the lowest, most vile reaches of the underworld, and that as the plant grows, horrible monsters take refuge in its roots.  The devil flower feeds by immobilizing its prey in its tendrils and showering them with potent sleeping spores.  Once asleep yothga uses its alien flowers to siphon a victim’s thoughts and memories until only an empty soulless shell remains – a slow and ghastly process that can take a decade or longer.
Only those powerful and mad enough to make a pact with the powers of the outer dark know the secrets of cultivating one of yothga’s stalks.  For these individuals the devil flower is a powerful tool of unending torture and imprisonment.

Notes

The devil flower is one of the creepier creatures of Tsotha-lanti’s dungeon and plays a much more pivotal role in the plot than the thing from the pit, so that alone demanded that I should create statistics for it.  But as a stationary plant that didn’t eat enemies so much as imprison them, it seemed much more like a hazard than a monster.  The monster summoning comes from Pelias’ comment that pulling the plant up by the roots is dangerous because Conan “…might have found things clinging to the roots against which not even your sword would prevail.”  I used the ghoul and wretch of Kyuss simply because they were minions of the right level (I also felt they fit the whole ‘roots in the underworld’ thing), but any level 13 minion would do (a minion balances out the XP of the devil flower being killed with a single action, I think a full fledged creature would be too powerful).  Even though the story has yothga putting people to sleep forever (until the plant is removed by an outside force), I thought that in the context of a D&D adventure it was just too deadly, so I added the option of using a healing surge to wake up.  If you were running a very gritty and deadly game you could remove that option to reflect the source material more faithfully.

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Happy New Year

January 2nd, 2011

First, apologies for pulling a George R.R. Martin and not posting the second half to The Scarlet Citadel.  It’s done and has been sitting on my computer for awhile but I haven’t had a chance to post it (which will be rectified momentarily).   Things got pretty crazy around the holidays, having people over, cooking lots of food and cleaning up, so I ran out of time.  New Year’s Eve was a blast, we hooked up my friend’s computer filled with ROMs and arcade style console joysticks to my TV and had a retro game extravaganza – easily a year’s worth of monster inspiration there.
I also took a little time out to enter (against my better judgment) Paizo’s RPG Superstar competition again.  Now I think it’s a great competition and I follow it every year, but there are so many fantastic entries that making the top 32 cut is a long shot at best.  I invested about a day’s worth of work into my item, which I think is about right.  Any more time than that is probably wasted agonizing over something that the judges, who have to look through thousands of entries, probably won’t even notice (something which I know I’ve been guilty of in previous years).

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Random Encounters: Powered Armor of the Barrier Peaks

December 24th, 2010

Synchronicity (not just a great song by the Police, it’s also the most powerful weapon in Robotech) is to thank (/blame) for this post.  Right around the time I read this D&D Alumni article about using the new Gamma World game to convert the classic module Expedition to the Barrier Peaks to 4e, I was exposed to the gonzo magnum opus, Booty and the Beast, over on Mr. Lizard’s gaming site.  I was inspired.
It’s no coincidence (eh, synchronicity), that these two things should gel in my mind.  Old School idol Erol Otus did the art for both products and both feature technological gadgets and weapons to incorporate into your fantasy rpg.  The art and the crazy ideas in these two products are inspiring. It reminds me of a time when my mind was more open and new ideas were as easy as flipping open a comic, or turning on the TV and adding a few more ingredients to the mental stew.  Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, but I was never afraid to try.  Then I became a lot more serious about rpgs.
I have a confession.  As cool as I thought it was (and I even owned a used 1e copy of Gamma World), I’ve never played Expedition.  There’s a reason.  When I was learning the ropes of DMing in public school, if I saw something I liked in one of the books, my players would find it (which led to the party’s ranger carrying a brace of magic short swords including a luck blade, nine-lives stealer, frostbrand, and more).  While this was its own kind of fun, as I got older it started to lose its luster and I tried very hard at being a more serious DM.  For me, when the players got their hands on machine guns and rocket launchers (putting the rpg in rpg) it was a sign that the game had gone to crazy town and the campaign was about to implode.  So as much as, ‘it’s the adventure where you get to fight robots and pick up lasers’, appealed to me, it also had a giant blinking warning sign above it.  Dungeons and Dragons was a tightly controlled universe that didn’t need game breaking technology floating around for the players to trip over (in high school I had a reputation as being pretty stingy with magic items).  But there’s a part of me that’s very attracted to genre crossing (probably influenced by Marvel comics’ approach), which is probably why I found Rifts so refreshing in the 2e days (my love affair with Palladium is fodder for another post).
Skip ahead many years (too many) to the present.  My head full of Otus Galactic Dragons and Bart Carroll issues the challenge to stat up the powered armor from Expedition.  Now, I don’t own the new Gamma World, so I don’t know what an ‘omega tech’ card is, but I wanted to see if I was able to make a version of the armor that could be brought into a 4e game without destroying it.  I decided to make it an artifact, since it appealed to the DM in me (artifacts are unique, easily controlled by the DM and are only in the game a limited time) and I thought the concordance mechanic was a good abstraction of the players trying to figure the thing out.
I’ve rambled on far enough without any goods to show for it, so without further ado I give you the powered armor of the Barrier Peaks.

The Powered Armor of the Barrier Peaks

Powered armor of the Barrier Peaks is appropriate for characters in the middle of the paragon tier and upward.

Goals of Powered Armor

• This artifact is not sentient and so has no goals of its own.

Roleplaying Powered Armor of the Barrier Peaks

Powered armor of the Barrier Peaks is different than other artifacts.  It cannot communicate with its wearer and has no specific agenda it was created to pursue.  It is the product of a foreign science even the most powerful archmagi find impossible to understand.  Mastery of the item comes through experimentation and tinkering.  Damaging the armor and allowing its power source to run unchecked will lead to the ruin, not just of the armor’s owner, but of everything around her.

Powered Armor of the Barrier Peaks Lore

History DC 20: Legend holds that the infamous steel clad dungeons of the Barrier Peaks were formed when the comet Warden crashed into the mountains decades ago.  The winding passages of these mysterious halls are filled with exotic treasures and dangerous creatures seen no where else in the world.  Perhaps the greatest treasure of all is the fabled suit of powered armor that is said to lie here, buried with the remains of the advanced race that built it.
History DC 25:  Sages speculate that the alien magic used to create the powered armor of the Barrier Peaks is the same that drove the warlord Lum insane in his quest to build the gargantuan machine that bears his name.

Pleased (16-20)
“Your spells are quaint superstitions next to the technological might of super-science.”
The armor’s enhancement bonus increases to +5.
Power (Daily): Fusion Blast.  Standard Action.  Close burst 5 (enemies in burst); Constitution vs. Reflex; Hit: 4d6 + Constitution modifier fire and force damage and ongoing 5 fire damage.

Satisfied (12-15)
“The secrets of this strange magic begin to open up to me.”
Power (Daily): Force Field.  Immediate Interrupt.  You can use this power when you are hit by an attack that causes damage.  You gain resist all 10 + Constitution modifier until the end of your next turn.

Normal (5-11)
“I sense great power here fore those with the wisdom to use it… and great danger for the ignorant.”
The wearer is just beginning to understand the armor’s potential.  Careful testing of its capabilities in combat will unlock greater functions.

Unsatisfied (1-4)
“I know I can figure this thing out.  I just need more time.”
The wearer has taken the armor for granted, using its capabilities without bothering to try and understand its systems.  Overloads and malfunctions are becoming more commonplace.
The armor’s enhancement bonus drops to +3.
Special: The first time each day a critical hit is scored against you, you suffer ongoing 10 lightning damage (save ends).  Aftereffect: you are weakened (save ends).

Angered (0 or lower)
“What does this button do?”
The armor is severely damaged and it is only a matter of time before a complete critical systems failure.
The armor’s enhancement bonus drops to +2.
Special: The first time each day you score a critical hit make the following attack as a free action: critical malfunction; close burst 4 (allies in burst); Constitution vs. Reflex; Hit: 4d6 + Constitution modifier fire and force damage.

Moving On
“The flux capacitor is completely drained.”
All machines eventually break down, burn out, or run out of fuel.  Even a fusion powered suit of armor.  How and when the armor moves on depends on how well the artifact’s owner can control it.
When the powered armor of the Barrier Peaks reaches its limit, if it is at least satisfied, the owner is able to power it down during a non-critical time (during an extended rest, for instance) and avoid any catastrophes.  In addition, time spent breathing the nanite filtered air has had beneficial side effects.  The owner gains a permanent +2 bonus on Endurance checks, and can re-roll (keeping the higher roll) any failed Endurance check made to avoid suffocation or drowning damage.
An unsatisfied or angered suit of armor goes into critical meltdown at the most inopportune time.  The armor explodes and makes the following attack (which includes the owner), close burst 5 (all creatures in burst); +20 vs. Reflex; Hit: 3d10+6 fire and force damage, and the target is knocked prone; Miss: half damage.

Notes:

I wanted to use a skill challenge to increase concordance because I felt it nicely replicated the complex flow charts that Expedition used to ‘simulate ignorance’ in the proper use of technological items.  Players could experiment with these items during downtime, but the charts had some dangerous outcomes so there was real risk involved (losing charges, getting hurt or the item blowing up).  Since my version of this item was an artifact and didn’t have charges, and given how healing and extended rests worked in 4e, that meant I would need to tweak things in order to preserve that element of danger.  I felt a simple solution would be to make a skill challenge that could only be undertaken during a combat encounter.  That way, if the players want to increase their understanding of the armor they have to be willing to sacrifice some of their combat actions (not to mention potentially losing a healing surge).
The picture is a twenty-one gun (or maser) salute to Erol Otus’ illustration of the power armor in Expedition.  Somehow the 1970’s science fiction imagery of power armor just seems to fit D&D better than the anime aesthetic (although I do picture Gigantor as the mighty servant of Leuk-O).

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The Scarlet Citadel – Part One

December 22nd, 2010

The Scarlet Citadel might not be the best Conan story ever written, but I think that page for page, it has more monsters than any other (and they’re some of the coolest as well).  That made it pretty hard to narrow it down to a single creature to showcase… so I chose two instead (it’s the holidays).  Like the title says, this is part one – I’ll post another fiend later in the week. 
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.

Summary

The second published Conan story takes place after the Phoenix on the Sword.  Now that Conan has dealt with his internal enemies, he must now face the external threats to his kingdom.  The tale begins with Conan on the field of battle, betrayed by Aquilonia’s neighbor, Ophir, to the King of Koth.  Outnumbered his knights are quickly cut down and Conan is captured by the power behind the throne of Koth, the dark wizard Tsotha-lanti.  The Kothians spirit Conan back to their capital and imprison him in the dungeons of Tsotha’s infamous scarlet citadel.  Here Conan is given an ultimatum: continue to rule Aquilonia as a satrap of Koth or face death at the hands of the horrors below Tsotha’s citadel.  As we knew he would, Conan rejects the offer (to put it mildly).
In the dungeons Conan encounters a huge albino serpent, a flopping tentacled thing whose sobs sound too human, an invisible floating creature (that mouths noiseless obscenities at him), and a vampiric plant that feeds on thoughts and memories.  From the clutches of the devil plant Conan frees another sorcerer, Pelias, Tsotha-lanti’s chief rival (who might be just as bad as Conan’s captor).
With Pelias’ aid Conan flies back to Aquilonia astride a great bat winged monstrosity just in time to retake his capital and rally the troops. At the head of his army Conan rides southward to meet the armies of Ophir and Koth head on.  In the ensuing slaughter the kings of both enemy nations are cut down and Pelias exacts grisly vengeance on Tsotha-lanti.

The Thing from the Pit

“Its unstable outlines somewhat suggested an octopus, but its malformed tentacles were too short for its size, and its substance was a quaking jelly-like stuff which made him physically sick to look at.  From among this loathsome gelid mass reared up a frog-like head, and he was frozen with  nauseated horror to realize that the sound of weeping was coming from those obscene blubbery lips. ” – Robert E. Howard, the Scarlet Citadel

Lore

Dungeoneering DC 20: The thing from the pit is the result of the wizard Tsotha-lanti’s twisted experiments with the Far Realm.  Its form is so loathsome that few can overcome their disgust long enough to get within striking distance, and its cackling laugh can unnerve even the most stalwart of warriors.

The Thing from the Pit in Combat

The thing from the pit revels in the fear and disgust it inspires; taking great delight in driving its enemies into deadly traps and other hazards.

Encounters

There are few creatures that can stomach the company of the thing from the pit save mindless oozes and other, equally deformed, aberrations.  The latter find the thing from the pit’s ability to shepherd prey across the battlefield invaluable.

Notes

This creature doesn’t play that large a role in the story but it really grabbed my attention.  Its appearance was so bizarre it was hard to ignore, and more importantly, it freaked Conan out so much that he flees rather than try to fight it.  It made Conan run away.  This is the same guy who earlier in the story was able to hold perfectly still while a giant snake reared over him dripping acidic burning venom onto his legs.  I wanted the thing from the pit’s powers to reflect that.  The creature isn’t much of a threat on its own, but you combine it with other creatures, hazards and traps and I think it becomes quite deadly (in the story it almost gets Conan to fall down a well in his flight from it).
Even though this story takes place after the phoenix on the sword, I decided to make it a lower level than the slave of the ring – Tsotha-lanti’s creation just doesn’t end up hurting Conan like Thoth-Amon’s summoned demon did.
In terms of the picture I found it quite a challenge to draw, and going by Howard’s description it went through a few iterations.  In the end I opted for a less true octopoid body and instead drew inspiration from Jim Holloway’s illustration of the yochlol from the 1e Monster Manual II.

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Random Encounters: Paean for the Outer Dark

December 18th, 2010

I was up late staring out the window, thinking about star pact Warlocks (I love the implied setting of these characters), the dark void between the worlds, and Deities and Demigods (with tentacles) when a certain song by Rush came on…
Which led me to uncover this lost scrap of arcane knowledge, acid etched into paper thin sheets of adamantine:

Excerpt from Paean for the Outer Dark

Invisible to telescopic eye
Dark Hadar
The star that would not die

All who dare
To seek her source
Are swallowed by
A deadly force

Through the void
To be destroyed
Or is there something more?

Atomized — at the core
Or through the astral door —
To soar…

I set a coarse just east of Caiphon
And northwest of Acamar
Flew into the light of Delban
Sailed beyond the cold white stars

On my ship the ‘Sea of Fate’
Wheeling through the great beyond
Headed for the heart of Ihbar
With the black blade that it once spawned

Blackrazor, her siren song
My ship cannot resist her long
Nearer to my deadly goal
Until the black hole —
Gains control…

-translated from the original Deep Speech by the mad poet L’iel Prane

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