Bargain Bin Children's Books: Monster and Adventure Supplements!

  Look at this Monster Book I once got for 3$!:

  I discussed it a few years back in THIS VIDEO about using Dollar stores to find cool stuff for your D&D games. Hell, I even made my whole DM screen from things bought there. And you might tell me "Hey wait now, that's a children's book, that's not a D&D monster book!"

  Well sure, theoretical nay-sayer, you'd be correct... But I'm a big fan of looking for inspiration in unexpected places, as I once also discussed. 

  To be honest, today I was looking for a children's storybook I could buy for cheap to adapt into an actual playable D&D adventure and share it on the blog. I couldn't find the right book for that specific idea for the time being, but I'm keeping my eyes open. However, one could easily fill a hex map with unlikely inspiration. A lot of monsters from the book seen above interact with the modern world a lot, so they could fit a modern horror game perhaps. But others can work with traditional D&D with very little to no changes to their story and modus operandi.

  Don't believe me? There's some legit creepy stuff in there. Let us take a look at the Cry-Alotis:

  O.k sure, he looks a bit gooffy now (and I'll spare you my thoughts on what the front of his body looks like) but look at that thing next to him; That's a tree. This thing is HUGE. It also has a very human-like face, which is sort of disconcerting if you describe it the right way at the table. Here's the full bio on the guy:

  At the beginning of the book in the 'Monster Rules to Follow at all Costs' they mention it's good to always have monster food ready to feed those who may want to eat you. He likes Salty Pretzels so we'll take that into account. O.k then...

  Its body makes me think of a T-Rex in shape and size. A T-Rex has 18 HD in the closest OSR monster book I've at hand! (Castles & Crusades:Monsters & Treasure) Not that its mouth would be as powerful from the looks of it. O.k then...

The Cry-Alotis

18HD

Movement: 40 feet

AC: 15

Attacks: Bite 5d4 + Tail Slam 1d12

Special: Grab: Anyone smaller than the Cry-Alotis who's hit by its Tail Slam must succeed at a Saving Throw v.s Paralysis or be constricted by the tail. Only one person at a time can be held like this. Every round the victim can try a new saving throw to escape, but if it's bitten by the Cry-Alotis while constricted, the victim will be Swallowed Hole. 

Swallow Whole: While Swallowed Whole, a victim will automatically receive 4d6 Acid damage each round from inside the stomach of the creature. The victim can use small edged/cutting weapons to cut their way out, if they manage to cause at least half the creature's normall HP in damage they will have succeeded in cutting through and the creature will be dead even if it normally would have had HP remaining. All attacks from the inside will automatically succeed. Someone Swallowed Whole can attempt to use a bigger edged/cutting weapon but they must succeed at a Saving Throw v.s Paralysis at -4 before every attempt.

Loves Salty Pretzels: If given the choice between eating humanoids and eating salty pretzels, the Cry-Alotis will always choose Salty Pretzels first. (This should be a little known fact without researching the monster first but maybe Bards could have heard tales using Bardic Knowledge or the similar skill/ability from your system of choice. And if your system doesn't have Bards then ignore that last bit.)

Guilt: The Cry-Alotis feels guilt over the fact that it needs to eat humanoids to survive. (He can survive from certain vegetables temporarily but not in the long run and they are very distasteful to him.) If anyone tries to make him feel guilty or sad in any way, the Cry-Alotis must succeed at a saving throw or spend 1 Turn crying without pursuing anyone. This effect will be undone if the monster is attacked while it's crying however. If a DM feels kind, the Cry-Alotis can even hint at this guilt by talking to itself out loud or by apologizing directly to his victims for what it is about to do.

Reduced Chances of Surprise: Depends on your rules of choice for the math but between its size and its constant crying, it's very unlikely that this creature would surprise anyone.

  If anyone uses this guy for their campaign, please let me know!

Superheroes vs Death Frost Doom!

  I recently ordered Amazing Adventures, its Companion, and the Book of Powers. The latter has rules for playing superheroes. Even though I like ICONS as a Superhero RPG, I also like the idea of an OSR-like system for them. (Even if I suspect ICONS will probably run more smoothly for the genre.) 

  Henchman Abuse has some funny play recaps of when he ran Death Frost Doom for his players and it was just cool to see how he converted that adventure to fit his post-ap Sci-Fantasy setting. (Links to part ONE, TWO, THREE and FOUR.)

  The idea of having a team of Supers doing basically dungeon runs appeals to me. After all, what are supervillain lairs if not traditional RPG dungeons? How would an adventure with superheroes go with something like Death Frost Doom, or Fuck for Satan, or The Tomb of Horrors even?

  I'm gonna try it at some point. And I'll be sure to post the results on this blog when I do.

My contribution to Dungeon Lord

  Some years ago in 2016 I was contacted by Terra Frank to contribute to her Dungeon Lord magazine. I worked on it to flesh out an idea she really liked form my blog posts and she decided to make the theme of the issue all about this idea of mine. There was even an interview with me in the mag. It was very cool and flattering.

  For a long time I wasn't paying attention to Goggle Hangouts and during that time I missed Terra Frank's private message about the issue being out and how she'd send me a few printed copies once those would be ready. I finally saw the message last month. She sent that message in February 2017. Oops. 

  She doesn't seem to be on social media much these days so she hasn't seen my reply yet. No printed copies have been made of the magazine so I have received none, there's even a comment at the product's RPG Now page asking if there's gonna be a copy in print. I hope she'll eventually come around to doing those, I like the idea of people being able to hold a physical copy of my first work for the tabletop RPG world.

  The irony of it is that since I was getting no replies I ended up buying a copy. I had to pay to read the magazine I contributed to. Don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming Terra for this since at this moment she hasn't even seen my request for a PDF copy and I was too curious for the final result to wait another year. (It seems to be the pacing of our conversation after all.)

  I've found a single review of it online so far at DCC Trove of Treasures. 

  The review is positive overall, I'm happy to say: "Dungeon Lord continues with a kick-ass issue that marks a new high for this zine (in my humble opinion, anyway). The Do-It-Yourself ethos, combined with great artwork, makes the issue a joy to read."

  That said, there was some useful and fair critique of some aspects of it, which I want to openly address:

"Note that the prospective judge will probably want to do some prep work before running this...DCs for checks and saves are not given, not every creature has statistics, and some of the mechanics mentioned in the dungeon or the accompanying bestiary are from other systems. There is also, as presented, no way to enter or leave the dungeon, as neither stairs nor passage leads into Room #1."

  I have to make a confession, I don't own DCC RPG. It seems like a really cool book but I already own so many versions of D&D that I never got my hands on it. I wrote the dungeon with vague mentions of Saving Throws without using DCC's terms for saves and then asked someone else to convert it to DCC for me. It was a task that was not fully completed it seems. I dropped the ball there, if I was going to write for that system I should have familiarized myself with it and written all those bits myself. If I'm writing the material, I should be the one making sure all the details are right. 

  As for the entrance missing in Room #1... Whoops, indeed.

  I also want to add that some bits from the interview are out of date of course. Chronicles of Death and Dungeoneering's storytelling project where people could vote on the outcomes of a story I wrote is a project I have dropped, but I'm keeping the name and logo for a project that I'll announce in this blog when it's ready.

  You can get the Cruel Issue HERE.

Idea for a Low Life Adventure: Explorers from Another Time!

  This is an idea I've had for a while, but first of all I'd like to specify it requires players with a good sense of humor and able to roll with the unexpected.

  So you grab your Savage Worlds book as well as the Science Fiction Companion and tell your players you're gonna run them an old-school sci-fi game of Flash Gordonesque aesthetics. You tell the PCs they can play robots and even friendly aliens as per the books, but at least one Human would be a good idea. Heck, maybe you even run them a story or two of classic sci-fi adventures to set them at ease.

  The idea of having the sci-fi specifically be a cheesy old-school one is so the players will retain a certain sense of humor about the whole thing and not feel too betrayed when the twist happens; They come across a black hole, are dragged into it and find themselves in... THE WORLD OF LOW LIFE, set in their own distant future! (With their ship too damaged to fly again at that point of course.)

  Truth be told as hilarious as this idea is to me, it does have a bit of a railroady aspect to it in the sense that it assumes the players cannot avoid the Black Hole for this twist to happen. There's a few ways to deal with that.

- You don't run games previous to this event, the game starts after their characters have already been through the black hole as background. It is recommended you initially drop them in a spot without intelligent beings in their immediate presence and with monsters that won't betray the comedic tone of the setting right away. As they move closer to civilization, they start to understand this isn't the game they thought it would be...

  - You can also openly let your players know from the start that some of your ideas might include an event or two they won't be able to avoid and promise them bonus Bennies for their temporary loss of player agency when the time comes, as well as the promise that it won't be a recurring thing.

- You could use Low Life's Oith as a Ravenloft-like place they visit temporarily before finding a way to escape from it, the 'Weekend in Hell' type of adventure. (Weekend in Heck?)

  For those familiar with the Low Life setting, you might now see why I mentioned at first at least one Human would be recommended for the adventure. How would the visit of such a being affect Oith's civilization? Maybe it doesn't at all, maybe everyone thinks the Human is the weirdest Bodul they've ever seen. Maybe the mere presence of a Human or two starts a local religious war (and if it does it should really be based on ridiculous notions regarding the PCs and their looks and habits).

  This idea doesn't have to be for sci-fi only, I hear magic portals are a thing in Fantasy... Again, just make sure there's at least one Human in the group. For giggles.

Home-Made DM Screen!

  Sharing these photos of my home-made DM Screen. If you like it, the photos show the process, tools and materials used to make it (in no particular order). I got all the pieces and materials at Dollar store. If you have questions on how I made it or suggestions to make it even better, feel free to comment.

The inside has blackboard sections and one corktile side. 

I use the blackboard on top of the drawers to mark initiative during combat.

The Dice Tower a friend made for me happened to be just the right height!

Quick rules references for less book-browsing mid-game. Not done writing them all yet!

The drawer box was its own thing at the store, I didn't build it from scratch.

The first store I went to had more modern-looking walls. I found the more medievalesque ones after.

House Rule for Humans and Half-Elves in 'Castles & Crusades'

  First a somewhat long side-note/introduction/rambling to explain why I'm House-Ruling those Races in the first place as well as my thoughts on how I came to this idea. If you just want the House Rule simply go to the end of this post, really. 

  So I have been running my D&D campaign for many years now, using the 'Castles & Crusades' system. As far as OSR systems go, it's my favorite. 

  It was the one that first used the OGL to return to a more Old-School style. It was the first to use the Saving Throw as a skill check. (Attribute checks basically do almost everything in the game in fact.) It involved every single Attribute to specific saving throws, making no attribute a bad choice. It's super easy to use with pretty much everything OGL/D&D out there.

  It does a lot for me as a DM. I don't have to worry about skill points for NPCs. It separates Race and Class which I personally prefer. It doesn't make starting PCs a bit too powerful for my taste (Looking at you, 5e. Which to be fair I would have bought if C&C didn't exist already, it really is a nitpick.) It doesn't have those Level Limits I hate so much. (Although they forgot about the implications of removing said limits when it comes to Elves and the Wish spell!)

  I know some people dismiss it because the SIEGE engine is often criticized. I myself am not an adherent of the SIEGE engine, where all Saves start at 18 except for Prime Attributes (all characters get to choose 2, except Humans who get 3) that start at 12. Instead of the saving throw Target Numbers going down as characters level up, players get to add their level to their die roll. It's pretty much the same thing really, except the numbers on the Target Numbers never change that way. As you can imagine, saving throws for Level One PCs on non-primes are kinda tough since you need 18 or higher to succeed. Since you get to add your level even at Level one I guess one could say it's 17 but still pretty tough, and that's for most of your saves unless you're a Human, then that's 50% of your saves. On top of that, for years I thought that if you were rolling a saving throw against a monster's special attack, its HD was a penalty to your roll, although today I was trying to find that rule somewhere and couldn't find it, so maybe I got it confused with the rules for Turning Undead and for Saving Throws vs Spells. I digress big time.

  Anyway, I was turned off by the SIEGE Engine because it made Saving Throws a bit too harsh in my opinion. I decided to go the route of other OSR games, set the initial TN at 15 for all Attributes and then lower them by 1 every level. Simple, yet it removed the advantage of playing a Human and to some degree a Half-Elf raised by Humans in the game.

  My solution was the use the rule of Basic Fantasy Roleplaying and give Humans a 10% bonus to XP (5% for Half-Elves raised by Humans.) Except I recently read this. My initial reaction was to consider increasing the % bonus to XP, but I figured now might be the time to get rid of the extra math while calculating XP for every PC and over the years I've noticed that playing a Human was slightly boring. Why not fix that and go back to what C&C was doing to an extent without using the whole 18/12 system?

  So basically Humans get a +6 to one of their saves over other Races, and Half-Elves raised by Humans get a +2. If the initial TN is 15, putting a +6 on a Saving Throw roll seems a bit too good. Spreading the +6 as a +1 for every Attribute felt m'eh. So I could split the +6 bonus into two bonuses of +3 for Humans. But I was reminded again of how BORING it is to play a Human in many OSR games. I wanted something that would make it feel fun, even if in a very superficial way. 

  5e has the advantage idea of rolling two d20s and picking the best one as your roll, but an advantage won't allow you in any case to go over a TN you previously couldn't beat and I already use the advantage idea when I don't feel like coming up with a proper numerical bonus to something. It just wouldn't feel like this special thing only Humans have. Still, rolling more dice is fun, so maybe I can take that +3 and replace it with 1d6. On average it's the same thing, but it's more exciting.

  So Humans have Human Spirit: 1d6, where they can choose two Attributes that will get a +1d6 bonus every time they roll them. And following that premise, Half-Elves raised by Humans get Human Spirit: 1d4 for one Attribute. When rolling with Advantage, only the d20s are multiplied, not your Human Spirit die.

  Please let me know what you think!

Dwarves in 'Lamentations of the Flame Princess'

  Just a quick observation that I made a while back regarding Dwarves in Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

  Normally in most versions of D&D, Dwarves have a slower movement speed , as do Halflings. The latter are described as 'swift' in LotFP, so they're given a bonus to their Dexterity modifier and a bonus to their AC. No comment regarding their movement speed, which actually means they move the same speed as a Human. Same goes for Dwarves. (And it's interesting to also mention as a quick side-note that the traditionally agile Elves are given no Dexterity modifiers in this game, they can be as clumsy on average as Humans can.)

  So anyway, one of the cool things Dwarves have (in this version and in others) is that it takes more encumbrance to slow them down. And all the Races/Classes (same thing in LotFP) move at the same speed here. So if everyone moves at the same speed by default, and if it takes more encumbrance than the others to slow Dwarves down...

  That makes Dwarves, by default as soon as encumbrance comes up, the fastest Race in LotFP.