Magical Magic That Feels Magical

14. Heart Of The Beast:  Cast this spell on a slain monster’s heart (or reasonably equivalent organ or portion), then consume it.  At any time, you may take the devoured creature’s shape, once, for 10 minutes.  You will retain some physical mark of this transformation afterwards.

Once again, Taichara hits it straight out of the park!

UPDATE: Ok, I posted too quickly.  Here are some thoughts:

Heart of the Beast is clearly meant to allow you to assume the shape of creatures, but "monster" can be an ambiguous term; could the truly unscrupulous use this to mimic a murdered person?

Can you use Skyclad in conjunction with The Stars to Guide You?  I'd certainly allow it.  

Ashe and Earth

If you're a regular reader over at the LotFP blog, you'll have seen Ashe Rhyder's entry in Raggi's March art contest. Rhyder's also been over at G+ offering to do art at request. Leaping at the chance, I finally got the Gefirir that Taichara created for me illustrated:

A Hamsterish Bestiary

I mentioned Taichara's Hamsterish Hoard of D&D yesterday. She's got a great assortment of imaginative, original critters for BECMI (which means you can pretty much use any of them as-is for any TSR edition of D&D). Going through it, I made this annotated and incomplete list of monsters that might make an appearance on my example hex-map island.

Alraune - carniverous mandrake (plant)

Ankeri - gazelle-men (humanoid)

Brass Jackal - clockwork jackal (clockwork guardian)

Briarbones - aggressive vine wrapped around skeleton (plant)

Cepes - fungus-men (plant)

Cricipter - flying hamsters! (cute)

Dreamsnake - memory-stealing serpent (snake, reptile)

Greenfang - carniverous cabbage (plant)

Heartbriar - carniverous, ambulatory plant (plant)

Iaret (Cobra Lord) - snake-man (snake, reptile, humanoid)

K'kithil - sapient scarabs (insect, humanoid)

K'sshir (Nightmist) - carniverous cloud (phenomena)

Lithira (Pearl Gazelle) - magical gazelle (herd animal)

Lurru - large locust (insect)

Marrowlight - carniverous pumpkin (plant)

Raintiger - magical, stormcalling feline (elemental, water, feline)

Sau'inpu - necrophagic humanoid jackals (canine humanoid)

Sshian - snake-men (snake, reptile, overlord)

Thief-of-Hues - color (and emotion) stealing snake (snake, reptile)

Hex Mapping Part 8: Go For the Eyes, Boo. Go For the Eyes!

If you’ve been reading my blog (or many others in the OSR) for any length of time, you’ve likely seen praise heaped on Taichara’s Hamsterish Hoard of Dungeons & Dragons. Taichara doesn’t post often (the site is on hiatus right now) but when she does, it’s amazing stuff. Even better, if your players don’t read blogs much, they’ve likely missed out on all the hamsterish goodness. So they’ll have no idea what hit them after you unleash the hoard’s hordes upon them. Muah-ha-haaa...

I’ll be returning to the Hamsterish Hoard repeatedly for inspiration and monsters. Today, I’m going to use one of my personal favorites, the ankeri.

South and west of that northern V of mountains that cradle the human settlements, a pair of rivers wind out of the mountains, through some hilly terrain, and then join before continuing down to a swampy delta and then into the sea. Nestled along these waterways are the handful of villages and towns of the ankeri. Their homes are made of kiln-baked bricks and thatched with the grasses and reeds of the rivers. In addition to chickpeas and grains, the ankeri also farm papyrus (for they are a highly literate society) and various breeds of hamsters from which they weave an especially fine and water-resistant wool. Cricipters, especially albino ones, can also be found in grand aviaries in some of their temples, as they are seen as the messengers of the gods and the bringers of love and fertility.

The ankeri nation is a loose confederacy woven together by a shared faith. The supreme position of their priests makes their nation technically a theocracy, but it is a tolerant one that primarily wields influence though judicial means. Most personal matters and conflicts between clans are settled through an ornate and festive dueling culture. Matters that touch on the larger community are brought before a council of priests to adjudicate.

The ankeri are likely to serve as another group that might prove friendly to the PCs, or at least willing to deal with them as commercial customers. Trusted PCs may be able to buy maps of the lands surrounding the river communities of the ankeri. Even the best maps, however, won’t show anything beyond the mountains. So far as the ankeri are concerned, that’s terra incognita.

Cohesion among the ankeri is reinforced by their neighbors: two nations of merochi which live on opposite sides of the river, bracketing the ankeri civilization between them. (Hey, it’s my blog, I’m gonna pimp my critters too!) Each nation has its own ceremonial center, a broad plaza surrounded by stone-walled, curve-roofed barracks for visitors, the small complex where the priestesses who tend the site dwell, and a ziggurat temple. Few merochi can be found here, however; most dwell in scattered settlements where the males raise the young and supervise the slaves who tend their fields (many of whom are ankeri or gelded males) while the females hunt.

There’s a lot of interaction between the ankeri and merochi. The ankeri sell the merochi most of their pottery, clothing, and jewelry. In return, the merochi sell the ankeri leather, feathers, captured animals, and their services as mercenaries. Unattached merochi males frequently serve as guards in the homes of wealthy ankeri, or in the clan caravans of the sau'inpu merchants who travel between the settlements of both ankeri and merochi.

Among the slaves of the southern-most merochi are gnolls and thri-kreen. They can tell the NPCs something of the bizarre lands that lie further south, where the volcanoes still rumble with angry life, and fill the skies with clouds of strange ash.

And now a musical interlude: But-kicking For Goodness!

For Taichara: Historical Settings

Taichara's asked for some input on what people want from an historic setting for RPGs, in her case specifically Red Box D&D. Again, I find myself pressed for time, so instead of writing something pithy and quick for her comments, y'all get a whole blog post. ;p

My chief interest is in how this setting can shake up my game. Whether I'm going to use it as a brief jaunt for a change-of-pace in an existing campaign, or the setting for an entire campaign in itself, I want to know pretty early on how this will be noticeably different (and, hopefully, better) than your bog-standard Middle Earth clone.

Culture
This really is the bedrock, from whence all the rest should flow. Who are the folks that live here? What's important to them? Where do their assumptions differ from ours?

Granted, this is the area most likely to be ignored in the heat of a game. Players often bring their cultural baggage to the table, and that's fine. But there's a good chance I'll want to let them play strangers in this strange land. So show me how these folks are different from the people I know. At the very least, let me know what they eat, what they wear, what they love, and what they fear. I'd like to know how they celebrate the stages of life, and if their ideas are different from ours on that score.

Politics would be useful as well. Who wields supreme executive power and upon what mandate? Who is likely to hire the PCs, and what are they likely to want done? Who might try to thwart the PCs? Who's in charge of maintaining law and order, and what are their methods and tools?

Calendar
If you give me nothing else on their culture, I do want this. How do they measure time? What days are special to them, and how do they celebrate them?

Gods
What do the people of this setting worship and how? This is where you can really shine and be useful to the DM, since D&D generally gives you next-to-nothing on playing and adjudicating clerics. Let us know how clerics interact with the temples and the gods. What worldly and organizational resources does the cleric have to draw on? What sort of behavior is likely to get a god's nose out of joint? Does the religion of this setting necessitate changes to the clerical class, or the creation of entirely new classes?

Equipment
The D&D equipment lists tend to be a bit anemic as it is. Feel free to flesh them out with all sorts of setting-specific goodies.

I'd not go on too long about weapons. Yeah, they can be cool, but D&D's combat is so vague it really can't tell the difference between a viking's broadsword and the pharaoh's khopesh. If it's important, go into metals and materials and how they make a difference, but most things can be mentioned briefly (“they make their shields from woven wicker” or “their helms are fashioned from the tusks of boars fixed to leather caps”) and then you can move on.

You'll probably find it's more interesting, especially for folks who enjoy hex-crawling, to talk about mounts and beasts of burden. Ancient India has elephants, and ancient Egypt will have the camel. Such beasts can make a big difference in combat, logistics, and wilderness exploration.

Normally, I'm not a huge fan of additional magical goodies, but they can be evocative and this is Taichara we're talking about here. ;) If you are going to give us new magical items, make sure they are both new and evocative. A bag of holding with feathers stitched to it is still a bag of holding.

Architecture and Maps
Most historical time-periods have evocative architecture that immediately brings them to mind. The Egyptians, of course, have the pyramids and their great, giant columns in post-and-lintel architecture erected on a grand scale. The Romans had their arches and the Colosseum. The Japanese have their sliding paper walls and nightingale floors. Show us how these things work and give us some context for them.

Give us maps of the homes and shops of the average folk, and at least one tavern, inn or similar place where adventurers are likely to congregate. Maps of temples would be useful, especially if there are competing faiths in this setting. A map of a village or a city where adventures can start or take place wouldn't be a bad idea, either.

Think also about common locations for adventures. Tombs, forts, jails, palaces, temples, houses-of-ill-repute, seedy taverns, and inns are all places where adventurers might practice their trade. Maps are something we don't often see enough of in books like this.

Magic
You can do a lot to make a setting feel special by changing the rules for how magic works or creating new magic. One place D&D is historically lacking is in daily-use spells, the sorts of magic people used in their homes or in their work, and yet it's the what we have the most examples of from real history.

Monsters
Again, normally I'd say don't go crazy here, but we're talking about Taichara, and such things don't apply to her. :D Some creatures just scream to be made over (the mummy, for instance) while some are missing all together. Keep it flavorful and remember that this is D&D, so we don't need giant stat-blocks or great whopping lists of powers.

I'd rather not see amazing re-imaginings of the traditional monsters. The scarab-swarm lamia of 4e, for instance, does nothing for me. I'm quite happy with the traditional monsters as we see them in folklore.

Sample Adventures
Please include at least one which highlights how adventures in this setting can be different. I'm just as capable as the next guy of replacing the King's daughter with the Pharoah's daughter. Give me something that really highlights, for me and my players, the possibilities of the setting. Give me something that only this setting and no other can deliver.

And heck, if you want to give me a book of adventure locations that, over its pages, reveals a setting to me, that'd be great. It doesn't necessarily have to be a tightly-linked adventure path, but maybe five “locations” that include an introductory adventure, some tomb-like areas to plunder, a city or town that can supply both a base-of-operations as well as adventures in its own right, the headquarters of a powerful antagonist, and maybe a wilderness area suitable for exploring and building a stronghold on.

Player Handouts
Finally, steal a page from Monte Cook and do a player's PDF. This should help explain the setting, lay out the basics of the culture and any rules changes the players will need to know to make a character in it. If you're going to spend money on art, it should show up here. Art is a great way to make a setting come alive, and to communicate the style, themes, and feel quickly. If at all possible, it should help the DM sell the setting to the players.

Magic Item: Wayedge

A few days ago, when I posted a comment over at the “Hamsterish Hoard of Dungeons & Dragons”, the verification word that popped up was “wayedge”. I commented that it sounded like the name of a magic item I'd expect to see on that page, and Taichara agreed. So, today, we're both posting our versions of what Wayedge is. This is mine:

Wayedge appears to be a rather unremarkable, heavy-bladed, large kitchen knife. The blade is made of a dark grey, glossy material which tapers to a sharp point, is not quite a foot in length, with a triangular cross-section and only one sharp edge. The handle is fashioned of bone with odd marks carved into it that are easily mistaken as an attempt to make the grip less slippery, and the parts are joined by fittings of orichalcum.

In truth, the blade is a single piece of magically shaped diamond and the handle is fashioned from the phalanx bone of a grey slaad. The blade can, with enough force, cut through nearly anything short of adamantium. While somewhat clumsy for combat, the blade's cutting ability translates to a non-magical +3 “to hit” bonus (meaning that it doesn't count as magical for harming lycanthropes, non-corporeal foes, etc.).

Wayedge wasn't designed to be a weapon, however. It was fashioned with the ability to slice holes in Planes, allowing passage from one Plane to another. The Plane on the other side of such a cut is randomly determined, but is always a Plane which is adjacent to the one the where the cutter currently is. (If you're using the traditional multi-verse wheel, a person cutting a hole in their Prime Material Plane might open a way to a neighboring Prime Material, the Ethereal , the Astral, one the Elemental Planes, or the Planes of Positive or Negative Energy, as all of those are “adjacent” to and “touch” the Plane of the cutter.)

In order to make this cut in a Plane, the edge must be coated in the blood of a single creature. Then the cutter recites a chant three times while stabbing at the air and pulling downward with the blade. (The chant is actually carved into the handle, in the letters that make up the strange markings carved into the handle.) Whatever Plane the cut opens into, it will have everything necessary for the survival of the creature whose blood is on the edge of the blade. That means, there will be air to breath, the temperature will not be so hot or so cold as to pose a serious danger, and it won't be in the middle of rock or the bottom of the ocean, if such things would be an immediate threat to the creature whose blood is used in the ritual. The blade will not, however, insure a lack of enemies on the other side of the rift.

The cutter can usually make a rift as long as they are tall every round. These cuts heal at a rate of roughly 6 feet per turn.

The blade is assumed to be of sshian manufacture, as the runes carved into the handle are a simplified version of that race's courtly script. Legend puts it in the hands of their most famous assassin, the infamous Washak-lum, who personally saw to the deaths of three empresses and nine sorcerers, as well as murdering the dragon Grangom and severing the hand of a river titan. Washak-lum met his end, according to legend, at the hands of a yakfolk sorcerer inhabiting the body of one of the assassin's favorite hierodules.

The knife falls out of legend for thousands of years but it is shows up in the hands of Tecolotliztac, a sorcerer of great renown among the lizardfolk at the height of their second empire. He is known to have been personally slain by the Necromancer at the Battle of Atlyei. Rumor then says that the Necromancer had the knife on his person during the sack of the pleasure gardens of Amocampa. The blade is never mentioned again, and some wonder if the Necromancer used it to escape the destruction of his armies, taking it with him to some unknown Plane.

UPDATE: Here's Taichara's. It's interesting that our minds seemed to orbit the same idea.

And here's David's version over at "Tower of the Archmage". Anybody else do one?

ADDITIONAL UPDATE: Here's Oddysey's vaugely creepy version.

AND YET ANOTHER: Here's JB's bloody version.

Cellar of the Poyma

At last!

Ok, I'm a bit slow, but I finally got this scanned and posted. Huzzah!

So what you're looking at here is where we left off last time in my Labyrinth Lord hack. This is the cellar beneath the Villa of the Poyma. Green slime, a nest of rats, a torture chamber, and a well-stocked wine cellar. But what's that large room in the NE, beyond the secret door and pit trap? That's where we left off last time:

The room beyond is larger than any you've been in yet. 45' square, with this door in the middle of the western wall. Four massive pillars are in the corners, each fashioned to resemble a twisting riot of snakes surging up towards the ceiling, the snakes crafted from different metals: silver, iron, copper, bronze, and even a few that appear to be gold. The roof is domed and ribbed, and the entire effect gives you the feeling that you are looking into the gullet of a some leviathan.

The walls are painted red with a repeating pattern of tiny gold and green flowers, which only heightens the disturbing sensation of being swallowed. In the middle of the southern wall, you see a massive portal of gleaming red orichalcum. On either side of it are clusters of large pots, six on each side, each large enough to hold you and small friend.

The floor, fashioned from alternating tiles of glossy green and yellow stone, is smeared with blood. It is littered with the detritus of recent combat: the bodies of seven elves, four of which have been stripped naked. Three more naked elves hang from long tendrils of root and earth dangling from the ceiling. These three are alive, but badly bruised and battered, and all three sport smears of mud over ugly-looking claw marks. Two are male, and you think you recognize them from the assault on Uban's temple. The third was their leader, the elven woman with the strawberry-blonde hair.

Hunched in the middle of the room, its back to you, is a massive, bestial figure, a creature apparently of living stone. From here, all you can see is it's stony hide, mossy lower legs, and a rack of gorgeous crystal antlers rising from its head. It appears to be hunched over the body of another dead elf, and the body twitches a bit as the head descends, and you hear more of that odd ringing sound, though now its source is clear: the stone beast is chewing through the slain elf's chain mail. The belongings of the stripped elves are arranged into two piles: one for clothing, packs, and generic equipment, and a second pile of armour and weapons.

I made a few mistakes last time I ran this adventure, but nothing serious. It was mostly due to me getting knocked off my game by a family phone call in the middle of things. Among stuff that got left out were two recently deceased elven bodies in the cellar and on of the cells in that long north-south passage south of the torture chamber. None of that was serious enough to retcon.

In other news, the game has moved to Sunday nights, from 7 PM to 11 PM Central time. If you'd like to join us, drop me an email at trollsmyth-at-yahoo-dot-com.

Fluid Edge - An Invitation to Play

To make magic magical, I've suggested making it dangerous. There are, of course, other options. How about magic that invites you to experiment, to indulge your exploration itch, and rewards you for thinking outside the box?

Taichara delivers again. Not only is this a fun toy for the players to explore, but the DM can also use the blade to express something about the campaign. Is the blade useful? Benevolent? Scary? Eldritch? Do the result reflect a theme? Are they random (I could easily see one of Jeff's random generators being tied to this)? Comedic? There's all sorts of fun to be had with this wonderful magical "weapon".

And here's another cool thing: the "guts", if you will, the actual working mechanics of the weapon, can be ported to any system. 4e, 3e, OD&D, True20, Pendragon, Burning Wheel, GURPS, whatever lights your fire.

Keep your eye on Taichara's Hamsterish Hoard. Lots of neat stuff happening there.