Stealing Monsters

Some of the best monsters are people. And some of the most intriguing people are villains.

Jon Wilson, of Appendix M put the bug in my head to steal a villain with his post on The Rival Party. These characters are decidedly different, with incredibly cool powers and abilities. I love the idea of a rival party as adversaries.

I immediately thought of a character I want to steal for a campaign. He is the Monomach from Stephen R. Donaldson's Mordant's Need series.

The Monomach is the villain's right-hand man, the most skilled swordsman in the land. As a villain, he is totally one-dimensional. He's given a target and then the target dies. Or at least that is how he should work.

He is actually simple enough to build an AD&D character class with little adaption. First, he is a fighting man so he has all of the abilities of a Fighter. Second, he has the disguise abilities of an Assassin. Third, he has some ability to heal himself like a Paladin. Finally, he will gain the damage bonus of a Monk. His prime requisites are Strength, Constitution, and Intelligence. To get a +5% bonus to exp, he must have at least a 12 in each of those skills. To get a 10% bonus, he must have a 15 in each.

In framing the villain as a character with a class, he can scale with the Player Characters. He can start relatively weak with the PCs and grow from there.

Let's assign those abilities by level.

On creation - +1 to Strength or Constitution regardless of race.
Level 1 - Disguise as an equal-level Assassin.
Level 3 - Laying has as Paladin of equal level.
Level 5 - Damage adjustment as per Monks +1 per 2 levels.

What are the Monomach character's limitations?

They are limited to two magic items plus one magic weapon and one magical piece of armor. They are limited to only equipment they can carry, even at home. They cannot backstab as Assassins do. They do not fight weaponless as Monks do. They do not have the variety of weapons of a fighter, they tend to stick to one main weapon and one backup. They don't often use bows. They can ride horses, but can not care for them. They work alone and are likely to strike at "friendlies" as they get in the way like a berserker. This berserker tendency is not a special skill or ability, it is just a ruthless and bloody methodology. They are relatively poor in day-to-day skills, unable to cook, care for animals or hunt making them reliant on their master's staff for self-care.

This lack of people and daily living skills prevents them from having followers, retainers, or constructing a keep, tower, or another base of operation. When assigned to retainers by their master, they tend to follow the retainer until a target presents itself.

What would make this type of character too overpowered? A crystal ball and a ring of teleportation. Yeah, I would totally give my evil Monomach a ring and crystal ball.

The United States of the 1980s

I'm watching Stranger Things, Season Three. The Russian characters kill me for all of their 1980s styling. They were right there in the beginning of season, but as tangential characters. Just enough was known about them to build a tense story which really had nothing to do with the Soviets. They were a McGuffin for season 1, left out of season 2, but in season 3, they are a major plot point.

I'm not going to spoil Stranger Things for you, but American TV used to portray Evil Soviet Citizens in a particularly goofy way.

One of the things that stands out to me is, as the Evil Characters, they always had some tiny amount of easily understood motivation. Usually it was played to show their humanity. And where those motive forces most came into play was a deeply subversive scenario.

Said Soviet Super Citizen was always physically stronger than the American opponent, often smarter in very technical ways, but total out of their element when not dealing with brute force or when the operation deviated from the characters background knowledge.

Where the subversion comes in is not in the fact that once the Super Soviet Citizen is free of home influence do they show some heroic, sane and pure traits, but the fact that nearly every aspect of Western European and American culture is designed to somehow subvert them. They want a hamburger, a Coke, a convertible, a nice house, etc. All the things common people like.

While I am sure that many times the intended message was "America is just better", the actual message was cultural perversion. Basically, the good guys end up bribing the Soviets with good ol' American Scooby Snacks.

"Did you just bribe Cthulhu with ice cream?"
"Not any old ice cream. Häagen-Dazs* is the shit."

Let that one sink in.

While we can't go back to the 80's, I think this is an excellent method of designing better villains. Most of the time villains are rather one dimensional, but being evil, they should succumb to perversion of a bigger evil.

*There is some deep irony that Häagen-Dazs came into being to save an American ice cream company from bad sales and lack luster marketing. Make it look different, and poof!, profit.

Slate Wands

I have a couple of old slate wands in my locker. I wonder if these are rechargeable. 

>analyze wand
You analyze your slate wand and sense that the item is free from merchant alteration restrictions.
You get no sense of whether or not the wand may be further lightened.
>analyze other wand
You analyze your slate wand and sense that the item is free from merchant alteration restrictions.
You get no sense of whether or not the wand may be further lightened.
>pre 405
You gesture and invoke the powers of the elements for the Elemental Detection spell…
Your spell is ready.
>cast at wand
You gesture at a slate wand.
The essence swirls as it flows in a fog of chaotic patterns around the wand.
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.
(Forcing stance down to guarded)
>pre 405
You gesture and invoke the powers of the elements for the Elemental Detection spell…
Your spell is ready.
>cast at other wand
You gesture at a slate wand.
The essence swirls as it flows in a fog of chaotic patterns around the wand.
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.

They don’t play nice with 405 like a Thanot Wand so I don’t know how many charges they have.

>cast at wand
You gesture at a pale thanot wand.
You sense that the wand is a magic item that holds the spell “Limb Disruption” with a fair amount of charges.
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.

A hit, a palpable hit.

I am off hunting swordsmen, so of course I can only find heralds. This morning, I decided to ensorcell my baby blue kakore runestaff. It was a good choice.

>incant 719
You trace an intricate sign that contorts in the air while
forcefully invoking Dark Catalyst…
Your spell is ready.
You gesture at a putrefied Citadel herald.
CS: +325 – TD: +280 + CvA: +17 + d100: +48 == +110
Warding failed!
… and hits for 11 points of damage!
A putrefied Citadel herald is suddenly engulfed in flames of pure
essence!
… 25 points of damage!
Flames incinerate right leg to the bone. Not a pleasant sight.
It is knocked to the ground!
… 15 points of damage!
The Citadel herald’s left arm trembles with the cold.
… 20 points of damage!
Heavy shock to left leg. Gonna limp for awhile.
… 25 points of damage!
Strong blow to chest!
You feel 5 mana surge into you!

Necrotic energy from your kakore runestaff overflows into you!
You feel energized!
Your kakore runestaff flares with a burst of flame!
… 15 points of damage!
Burst of flames chars neck a crispy black.
You hear a sound like a weeping child as a white glow separates itself
from the Citadel herald’s body as it rises, disappearing into the heavens.
A putrefied Citadel herald writhes on the ground then spits, “This
cannot be defeat…” before lying motionless.
The very powerful look leaves a putrefied Citadel herald.
The white light leaves a putrefied Citadel herald.
The dim aura fades from around a putrefied Citadel herald.
A white glow rushes away from a putrefied Citadel herald.
A putrefied Citadel herald seems slightly different.
A putrefied Citadel herald seems hesitant.
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.

I tagged him with DC which triggered a flare from my kakore staff and then an ensorcellment flare. I wish someone had been there to applaud.

Runestaff Collection for Gemstone IV

Magarven is lucky. He has found three rune staves in three weeks, bringing his collection to 4 four.

He first is a blackened orase runestaff, which is +20 and ensorcelled.

The second is a deringo runestaff that carries two different enhancements. It adds +2 to my mana and +6 to Dexterity. It has an odd bonus of +14. It is currently fully charged.

The third is a baby blue kakore runestaff, which adds to my mana regeneration. It is also ensorcelled. This one has bonus of +9 and flares with fire.

The last and most recent discovery is a banded faewood runestaff. It does not appear to have any special statistics other than the +20 to defense.

Pretty soon I will need a golf bag for all of my staves.

Tips and Tricks - Enhansive Items in Gemstone IV

There is a quick trick to figuring out if an item has a temporary enhancive bonus. Take it to the Adeventurer’s Guild and attempt to recharge it. Not only does this detect an enhancive you might not know about, he will tell you if it is full or not.

River's Rest - Ships and Dust Background Information

I was wondering why there was so much dust in River’s Rest. It turns out that River’s Rest is modeled on Andalusia in Spain.

Andalusia is a mediterranean climate and experiences both torrential rains and cool dry spells. This was revealed by Scribes on the forum.

Perhaps the image on the left is the hills where the Kakore was harvested for my runestaff.

I think it is wonderful.

The current descriptions go back to Bradach and Jineer. They gave the town a dry and dusty flavor, with vague hints of Middle Eastern Culture. I would describe it as Moorish, but Middle Eastern fits, too.

Another possible easter egg in the town is the inexplicable model ship available at Bertha’s. It might have been modeled on the ship in MYST, however no clear evidence of this exists. There is a couple of ships in the River’s Rest environ’s, so this could be completely independent of the MYST ship.

Analytics Rots the Soul

Stepping behind
my own curtain

According to Google, I have about 2000 page views a month. My target is a modest 3000 views a month. These are not thousands of individual people, several thousand times that someone comes to the site to read something. Fair enough, I think is a good measure.

But what are they reading?

According to the stats, my readers aren't reading much about me. My top 5 posts, in order are:

Google Docs Templates for D&D
Book Review - A Brief Study of TSR Book Design
The 3 Toadstools and #tenmonstersetting
Module Review - BSOLO Ghost of Lion Castle
Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners - Update - We are live!

The first is about  Benjamin Connell’s 3.5 Character Sheet, which I love for my D&D campaigns. The second is a review of Kevin Crawford's history of D&D books, the typography, style and page layouts. This was extraordinary helpful for my self-published books. The 3 Toadstool post was about Shane Ward's excellent campaign icebreaker experiment, Chris Hall's expansion. The ideas totally invigorated my creativity to produce new content for my campaign and my books. Ghost of Lion Castle was a solo adventure by TSR, which was a favorite of mine on rainy days. The final post is all about my first book.

So what?

3000 page views a month is not much of a goal. But to get there, I have understand my audience. If my goal was to convert every reader to a book purchaser, I am a total failure.

But was that ever my goal? I've been doing this since 2012 but didn't write my first book until 2018. That book was born out of the frustration of dealing with an accident at work, not any desire to... you know... make money or gain fame.

I've posted links to my books and thrown up some ads to make the website pay for itself, which is working. I have DriveThruRPG hosting files to mostly free titles I have written (I hate file hosting myself) which is also working. But going forward, I mean to be a part of the gaming community. My purpose isn't to make money or gain fame, but to transmit great ideas to the larger community.

In the month of August, I am bring out two new titles, which are totally tangential to the These Old Games. I mean to update and bring back 52 Weeks of Magic, which is a highly enjoyable activity even though it doesn't generate webhits. But most of all, I mean to write about all the things that are happening in this community.

At some point, I became a service provider, a place to read about all of the wonderful ideas from across the web.  Its time to fully embrace that.

Wish me luck!

Practical Tactical - Which Edition of D&D is Best?

I find myself attracted to some of the older versions of D&D based on the speed of play. If you are tactical combat person, I would suggest either D&D (Red Box) or the Blue rules by Holmes. I lean towards the Red Box because that was the game of my time.

I prefer a role playing style game and as a consequence gravitate to AD&D, Rules Cyclopedia or 3.5. 3.5 does what I want, but I like the quickness and expansiveness of Cyclopedia more. What I often do is mash Cyclopedia with AD&D. It's quick, sloppy and as expansive as I need, without the clunks that come with 3.5. I allow for all of skills and spells in Cyclopedia, but with all the classes and races from AD&D. In some very rare cases, I have allowed the races and classes from Cyclopedia in AD&D with zero modification. That gets weird and really isn't any better than what AD&D offers from its class choices.

Which is best? Well, the one that you play. No other opinion is possible on that. Outside of capturing the flavor of your campaign, the rule sets are flexible with enough abuse.

One of the things that changed between the editions was the numbers of players at the table. When I was playing AD&D I had as many as 12 players in the action. I never split the party unless someone said: "I need a break." If that happened, it was assumed that those players on break would be left behind and not a part of the action, no matter what. This was problematical in the respect that sometimes the second half of the party failed to progress after the first part of the party. Things would get weird.

I never developed a solution for this. What would actually happen is that half of the party would go eat or turn into DJs for a couple of hours, which meant they were observers, not players for the duration. For the most part, they were pretty good at self-moderating, meaning they knew what happened to the rest of the party, but would behave in character, as if they didn't know. They were a great bunch of people.

In any event, as you look at the newer rule sets, the number of players has dropped off from 6-9 or 6-12, down to a mere 4. I hate that because it removes some rather practical tactics from the players hands. When you are operating 12 characters, who are supported by perhaps some torchbearers, porters and a few followers and hangeroners, things slow way down.

I don't mean the game play, but the natural measure of time was slower. Things were done in Turns of 10 minutes each. Being so long, it made sense to have the characters in a marching order which changed and evolved during that 10 minutes.

The lead character would be a thief or ranger. The first wave of characters were usually fighters. The second wave were the squishy magic using types mixed with missile type characters. The last rank was often the weaker fighters. In my campaigns, the players usually did 3 blocks of 4 characters, so they could fit down a 10 foot wide hall. Many times, characters would swap out of positions to meet certain goals. It was very effective.

If you suppose just 4 characters, those parameters vanish.

Being a role playing yet tactical minded person, I would encourage my players to take the time to succeed.

One thing I could never account for but very much wanted to was "evolution" of fighting formations. Say for example, the thief ducking back between the two fighters behind him, so they could deal with a threat. My solution was to simply make sure they had the time to do such things or create scenarios where surprise prevented such things but was not immediately fatal.

When playing encounters for any edition of the game, the DM has to make sure that nearly any scenario cannot be thrown into a "party kill" condition on a single turn, or worse, a single die roll. It takes a bit of creativity to create these story points while maintaining the believe-ability of the scenario.

I recall a particular vicious combat between some hobgoblins and the party. The thief got caught trying to disable an already disabled pit trap. The hobgoblins had triggered the trap and decided to spike the lid in the closed position. They snapped off the tops of the spikes and covered the area with garbage. The thief botched all of his rolls, except a save vs Dexterity to avoid plunging to his death. He was dangling by his fingertips as the battle raged over him.

Wicked fun.

In the very next session, the magic user had exhausted most of his offensive spells early on, but the thief came up with a deliciously fiendish use for his remaining spell, Passwall.  The wizard unleashed the spell at the floor in the middle of a group of hobgoblins. Two fell in and one was left dangling by his fingertips. Turn about is fun, eh?

Beautiful.

That created some interesting DM rulings and decisions by the party. I decided that the wizard could simply end the spell immediately killing those inside the hole or he could ease it closed which would allow the hobgoblins to crawl out as the hole. The party ended up with 3 hobgoblins acting as retainers because their chieftain had a policy of not negotiating for prisoners. I had to call in reinforcements to make the last battle a reasonable challenge, but the players loved every nail biting moment.

Ah... the twists, turns and complexity from what should be a simple set of rules (but probably isn't).

If you are interested in packing the party with NPC types or give your players secondary skills, try out my home brew rules called Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners. If you desire some interesting locations for your campaign, I have two rule set agnostic map sets called Kobold's Folly and the Compass Rose Inn. As final offering, I have an old, old characters sheet for use with AD&D and Unearthed Arcana.

Timely podcast

I love  Aaron Mahnke's Lore podcast. This week, it's about Kobolds. One part history, one part myth, Lore is a wonderful journey to the the darker things. Lore also has wonderful background music by Chad Lawson.

Funny, I just released a little map about kobolds.

Truth or Tall Tale Tuesday (TOT3) - 1 in 3

Molly’s husband asked if they had a thermometer because he wasn’t feeling well.

Her initial answer was “I am feeding two babies because I am their mother, not yours. I am not the keeper of thermometers so you need to go look in the bathroom.”

Several minutes later, her husband comes back downstairs and asks, “Do we really need three thermometers?”

She turned to see him with a glass thermometer in his mouth and replies “You have one in three chance of wanting me to answer.”

Molly is now officially the keeper of thermometers in her house.

***This is a switch up for Truth or Tall Tale Tuesday. This story is both true and not true. My sister in law relayed this tale to me at a party. She told it as true but was drunk. When I asked her about it later, she had forgotten all about it and was pretty sure it was a humorous story she made up.

Writing is Art

This section is for rough works, slightly better than drafts, but still incomplete experiments. As experimental works, they should not be taken as true, or factual, even though each item does contain a bit of fact. In many cases, these experiments have been abandoned because I couldn't figure out where they were going or in some cases, what the rules or boundaries were.

Occasionally, poetry will appear. I'm sorry, I'm not good at it but sometimes it pops into my head.