Zardoz

I was looking over Sword & Magic: Adventures on Fomalhaut and I saw the appendix of "Recommended Media". The very last thing listed is "Zardoz". What is this Zardoz? I asked myself. I had seen the crazy picture of Sean Connery - one of my players even uses it as his avatar on our forums - but I never really knew what it was. So, I downloaded it and made my wife watch it with me. She was quite busy playing Bejeweled Blitz on her laptop in the kitchen, so I had to remind her that her presence was requested in the living room like six or seven times before she finally joined me.

I won't bother trying to summarize it, as you can find that sort of thing elsewhere easily here or here or even here. All I will say is that we had a good time watching it. We sort of got into a little bit of MST3K-style commentary a few times, but mostly just sat in shock wondering what kind of weird shit was going to happen next.

Verdict: 3-1/2 Bandoliers

Watch this movie if: You like small 70's boobies, sci-fi movies extremely light on the sci part, or riding on horses and catching women in nets sounds like good sport to you.

LotFP Spell Contest Results

Earlier in the week, Mr. Raggi announced a most excellent contest in order to get a new 1st-level magic-user spell to fill out the spell list in his upcoming LotFP: Grindhouse Edition Boxed Set. I submitted two entries, and didn't win, but they are included in the free PDF he posted of all the submissions. Here is the announcement of the winner, which includes the downloadable PDF. Congratulations to Daniel on producing a most excellent spell!

The two entries I take credit for are Incontinence and Transphonia. I thought them to be unique, clever, well-balanced, and more useful in a tavern than in a battle, which is how I prefer my spells. However, two other submissions - Finger of Flatulence and Voice Swap - were very similar to mine. Nonetheless, it was a good exercise and I'm glad I participated.

I particularly liked Visible Man, as I was just giving some thought to how to give a fighter a taunt effect, similar to that in the video game which stole a few years of my life, but without making it obvious I was using ideas from a video game, and this seems to fit the bill perfectly.

Elves of Outland

None of my players in any of the several games I've run over the past year have ever chosen an elf. I suspect it has to do with their stereotypical tolkienesque presentation. I can't speak for them, but for me, the generic presentation of the elf has become quite stale. In order to make the players give the elf another look, I decided to try to breathe some new life into it for my Outland OD&D game. Another side-goal was to try to make humans more appealing, so I've stripped the elves of their magic, making the Magic-User a human-only option. If no one selects a magic-user, so much the better. That would only contribute to the grittier feel I'm going for in Outland. Without further ado, I present the Outland Elf.

Elf by Brynn Metheney

Elf
The Elves are savage tribal warriors of the blasted Northern wastelands. They usually range from about 6'2" to 6'8" tall and weigh between 190 and 240 lbs. They are nomadic hunters that have found a way to make a living in a harsh land where life is sparse and fleeting. They wear simple loincloths, and favor the spear and the longbow, as they can easily craft all of these from the inedible parts of their prey. They have developed a resistance to the scorching sun, and can go days without water when necessary. The various tribes are at constant war with each other, competing for the scant resources offered by the land they inhabit. The only time the tribes interact in a nonviolent way is during the first week in spring, when they meet at a sacred, neutral site and trade the females that have come of breeding age in the previous year. This is done only to prevent inbreeding. This also results in all elven children being born in the dead of winter, and those too weak to survive the conditions are forsaken and left as a meal to the wild beasts of the wastelands. Elven endurance is unmatched, and they can run for great distances in the unbearable heat and frigid cold of the wastelands, often tracking their quarry for days with little or no rest.

Mechanics
Advancement: Elves level as fighters, and use the same XP progression and saving throws as the fighting-man. If a human XP bonus is used (I give humans an extra 5% in addition to the normal 5-10% based on prime requisite) then no XP bonus cap is needed. Otherwise, the elf is capped at a maximum 5% prime requisite bonus. Referees may choose to place a level cap on elves, but from a balance standpoint, it shouldn't be necessary.

Elven Quickness: Elves do not wear armor, as it is too cumbersome and impractical. However, they are extremely quick and nimble, even for their size. As a result, elves are treated as wearing armor based on the table below, depending on their dexterity. If they should equip armor or shields of any sort, they lose this bonus and simply use the AC based on their equipment.

Dexterity
  Score            AC
   9-12            as Shield
  13-15            as Leather + Shield
  16-17            as Chain + Shield
    18             as Plate + Shield

Elven Endurance: Elves can run or hold their breath twice as long without experiencing any negative effects.

Wasteland Weaponry: Elves get a +1 to hit with spears and longbows.

That's it! Not a whole lot to it, just a bit of flavor, mostly. Even if you don't want to make this a PC option, they could make for a good NPC encounter to add to your hex tables or whatever.

Most of you will notice these ideas are not completely original, and I am not ashamed of that. The 2E Elves of Athas supplement offers one of my favorite non-traditional take on elves. If you haven't checked it out, it is worth a look, but I can't recommend buying it unless you are actually planning on running a Dark Sun game under 2E rules and using all the crazy options offered. Otherwise, you will find only a small percentage of it's 96 pages to be of any use.

Please feel free to post additional ideas and criticisms for this elf. I'd love to hear other ideas and feedback.

Double-Digit Followers!

Thanks to Arkhein from Rather Gamey for being the 10th person to click on the little "follow" button over there on the right. And many thanks to the 9 people who came before him as well! I'm feeling all warm and fuzzy inside. Anyways, back to work. If you like what you see here, become a follower and tell your friends.

Thanks!

Lessons in Roleplaying

Read this over at Beedo's kid's site, and almost burst into tears laughing:

So after that we went back to check on the door that was spiked shut and extremely bad news for us we heard hundreds of zombie fists banging on the door so we learned a lesson don't ever play a Raggy's adventure again cause not only are we trapped in a dungeon by zombies but we have already accidentally unleashed ten thousand zombies three thousand ghouls and an ancient vampire all in one adventure and we are only level 3.

 Priceless!

Hand-Drawn Maps and Typewriter Notes!

I just caught this post on iheartchaos via this post from a few days ago over at the K&K forums. If you want to get straight to the point, it all leads to this page here. Lots of neat stuff in there!

D&D Pronunciations

I was reading Limpey's post over at Aldeboran about some of the strange monsters from D&D. It led off with the catoblepas, a monster I've never used, due at least in part to the fact that I had no idea how to pronounce it. That reminded me of a page I came across recently (probably posted on someone else's blog, but I can't remember who at the moment) that had a list of pronunciations for D&D stuff. The link is here, but I'll repost just the pronunciations, since that's all I care about at the moment.


Aarakocra: a-rah-KO-krah
Arquebus: AR-keh-bus
Baatezu: bay-AH-teh-zu or BAH-teh-zu
Bardiche: bar-DEESH
Bulette: boo-LAY
Catoblepus: kuht-OH-bleh-puhs, also kah-TA-ble-pus
Chatkcha: CHAT-k-cha (thri-kreen throwing weapon)
Chimera: ky-MAEE-ruh, or ky-MAIR-ruh (rhymes with "care of")
Chitin: KITE-in
Cuirass: KWEE-rass
Drow: DRAU (as in drowsy; rhymes with now and how)
Dweomer: DWEH-mer (rhymes with "hem her"), or DWIH-mer; sometimes DWEE-mer
Falchion: FAL-chun
Geas: GEE-ass, or GYASS (both with a hard "g")
Gygax: GY-gaks
Halberd: HAL-berd, (not HAL-bread)
Herb: ERB
Ioun: EYE-oon
Iuz: YOOZ or EE-uz
Ixitxachitl: iks-it-ZATCH-i-til or ik-zit-zah-chih-tull
Lich: LITCH (as in ditch), *not* LIKE or LICK
Lycanthrope: LY-kun-throhp, LY-kan-throhp (like lichen rope/my tan rope)
Lycanthropy: ly-KAN-thruh-pee
Mage: MAGE (as in age), *not* MADGE (as in badger)
Melee: MAY-lay
Otyugh: AHT-yuhg
Sahuagin: sah-HWAH-gin
Scythe: syth (rhymes with tithe)
Svirfneblin: svirf-NEB-lin
Tanar'ri: tah-NAHR-ree
Tarrasque: tah-RASK
THAC0: either THAK-oh, or THAKE-oh
Vargouille: var-GWEEL
Vrock: vrahk
Wyvern: WIH-vern (as in did learn), or WHY-vern
Zaknafein: zack-NAY-fee-in

Here are all the ones I pronounce incorrectly:

Baatezu: buh-TEE-zoo

Bulette: boo-LETT

Catoblepus:  cat-o-BLEE-pus

Dweomer: dwee-O-mer

Geas: geez (with hard G, like geezer)
Ioun: eye-OON
Otyugh: OH-tee-oog
Sahuagin: sa-WOG-in
Scythe: I always pronounce it with a K sound, even though I know better.
Vargouille: var-GOO-ee


Did you find anything in here you didn't know about before? Are there any of these pronunciations you would contest? Do you have any that you pronounce differently, and that's just how it is, and you aren't likely to change?
 

These are My Players

So when my group got together to play OD&D for our first time, the players were making their characters as I was explaining some of the key things that were different between OD&D and what they were more accustomed to (d20-based games). When I got to the part about alignment, and explained that there were just three alignments, Lawful, Chaotic, and Neutral, they all simultaneously grabbed their pencils and started erasing.

I looked at their sheets, and to the last, they had all erased G's and N's so that everyone's sheet now had a "C" with an eraser mark next to it.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, these are my players...

Outland: My First Stab at OD&D

This is something I have had on the back burner of my mind for a long time. Last weekend, when one of the players in my Council of Thieves campaign cancelled, I seized the opportunity to set it into motion. I got my wife, my sister, my brother-in-law, and my little cousin together to play OD&D. I'll talk more about how the session went in a later post, but for now I'd just like to share a bit about the setting.

A while back, Il Male of The Yaqqothl Grimoire posted an awesome map for his Yaqqothl setting. This, in turn, inspired me to work on a map of my own, heavily based on his work:

Outland Map - Revision 1

This map is just a rough draft - a place for me to sprinkle in my ideas, but already I probably have more than we could ever get through. The goal is to follow James M.'s method, initially painting with broad strokes, seeing where play takes the party, and flesh things out as we go. The party started out entering the area, tentatively referred to as Outland (I'm open to more creative names if you'd like to offer any), through the mountain pass in the southeast. Their destination was the keep, and that is where adventuring began.

The first thing I dropped on the party to let them know that this place wasn't home was the fact that there was a second, blood-red "sun" low in the western sky, shrouded in black clouds. This second sun doesn't rise and set like the regular sun - it just hangs there in the west, unmoving. At night it isn't bright enough to illuminate anything any more than the moon would, but it gives everything a creepy red tone.

That's it. That's all the party knows and that's all I know. They can ask NPCs about it if they are curious, and they will likely get many different theories about what it is. The players will have to decide for themselves what it is, or perhaps discover more about it through play.

Here are some of the points of interest I have planned for the region:

• At bottom right is the keep where the adventures begin, and the hex immediately to the south of it is where the Caves of Chaos lie. (Or the caves might be in the same hex as the keep. I haven't worked out a scale yet.)
• The gray forested area is where I will put my Tales of the Old Margreve supplement to use. It's an awesome haunted forest with an Eastern European twisted-fairy-folktale feel, complete with werewolves, wicked fey, and a witch or two.
• I'll probably place Death Frost Doom in the hills to the southeast of the forest.
• The pyramid-looking thing in the swamp of the southwest region will be a Temple of the Frog inspired thing. I have a number of bullywug minis that I need to put to use. It will be a fun challenge to make them the proper demon-worshiping baddies that they should be, and not just some form of joke monster.
• The village by the lake will be inspired by Pembrooktonshire.
• The crazy stuff in the northeast will be built upon Golarion's Worldwound.
• The island over in the west will likely have some Freeport elements, but perhaps not. I kind of want things to get weirder and weirder the further west the party travels. Perhaps I'll just need to read a bunch of Clark Ashton Smith before I do anything with it.
• Not sure where yet, but there will have to be snake-men. Not "Yuan-Ti", just good old-fashioned snake-men. There are some jungle areas, so I should be good there.
• And last but not least, the iced-over island in the northwest could be a number of things. I am optimistic about Beedo's Black City. It looks to have high potential for awesome, and I will be watching his progress closely. Another possibility is to use the Ghostwalk supplement I picked up during paizo's Thanksgiving black friday sale for a song. I haven't really looked at it much yet, though, so I'm not sure if it's even any good.

I found this awesome painting on ArtOrder, which really got my brain stirring about this lost city, whatever it ends up being...

So there's the bird's-eye view of the place. A land of wonder and weirdness and potential death at every turn. My next post will be about what our first session was like, and I will be soliciting advice for running an old-school style game as well. There were a few issues that popped up, so I will need some help for sure!

Fisher-Price My First Painted Miniature

For Christmas this year, my wife got me (I bought with her blessing) a starter set of Reaper Master Series paints, which includes the first 54 colors in the set, and is enough to do most things, as long as you aren't afraid to do a bit of mixing here and there. Then of course I also had to buy brushes, and I had to get the best kind, and numerous other supplies. When it was all said and done, I spent a few hundred dollars on supplies for painting minis.

I am OCD about most things I undertake, so I spent hours reading online about how to paint minis at sites such as Hot Lead before I started trying to paint anything. I also got my sister the book How to Paint Citadel Miniatures, and had a gander before I wrapped it up for her hehe.

Haha, I just typed the title into google to find a nice link to where one might be able to purchase the book, and the first result was a scribd link to the full pdf, so there ya have it!

At any rate, here are the results of my first outing as a mini painter:

Nualia - Front View

Nualia - Rear View

Sorry for the grainy pics. I either need to get a new camera or need to take some photgraphy lessons - not sure which. Perfect? Hell no, but I was happy with the results considering it was my freshman effort. I still need to add another layer of flock to try to cover up the metal between her feet, and the color of the flock looks way crappier than I anticipated, so I'll probably apply some paint to that as well.

I only tried painting a mini once before in my life, when I was around 14 or so. I used a crappy watercolor brush, and lord knows what kind of paint. Needless to say, it was an absolute mess. It was so bad that I couldn't even wrap my head around how painting these things was possible. Turns out that being older, more patient, and having a bit of a bigger budget with which to buy the proper equipment goes a long way towards producing a better result. The flipside of that is that finding the time to set aside to do some painting with a 2-year-old running around the house can be rather difficult. Hopefully I can get up to a better production rate than one mini per two months. Otherwise, this queue of a dozen unpainted minis is going to last a long time!

The next thing I want to learn how to do is how to make those awesome dungeon tile-looking bases. If anyone has any good tips or links on the topic, I'd love to hear about them. Thanks in advance!

Some DIY OSR Books

Just the other day I discovered the wonders of spiral binding. I just printed these out at home on my laser printer (a worthwhile investment for any gaming material junky like myself), printed out the covers on cardstock (two of them in color), and brought them in to the print shop. They charged me $4.37 for each book, which included the transparent protective cover, the plastic spiral binding, and the sturdy plastic-ish backing.

The books pictured are, from left to right

• Labyrinth Lord Revised Edition (I finally broke down and paid the 6 bucks for the PDF with art)
• Swords & Wizardry Core Rules (text is from the current 3rd printing, but I used the cover from the second printing, since the image from the third printing is cut up into a bunch of pieces)
• Original Moldvay/Cook/Marsh Basic and Expert rulebooks combined into a single volume, complete with custom cover utilizing more of the artwork of Kevin Mayle (can you tell I love his work?)

These books are awesome because they open and and lie flat on the gaming table. You don't have to worry about them getting bastardized by one of your friend's cheeto hands or spilled drink, and they fold all the way back around on themselves, so they are less cumbersome to read.

Note: If all you have is an inkjet printer, don't bother. Just get the whole thing printed up at the printer. It'll be cheaper that way.

Conan the Adventurer Animated Series

When I was in 5th or 6th grade, there was an awesome cartoon that was airing at 6:00AM on the weekdays called Conan the Adventurer. I got my ass up every day by 5:45 to watch it, and that in and of itself is a testament to how much I liked it, because I have always held sleep in very high regard.

I've recently been watching the series again with my 2-year-old daughter, and we've been having a blast. It holds up really well in my opinion. Every time an episode is reaching it's conclusion, she knows it before the credits and closing song even come up. Without fail she exclaims, "WATCH TOMAN AGAIN!" (She still has trouble making a K sound)

This was one of the few cartoons from my youth that I can still watch and fully enjoy today. I'm ashamed to admit I've never read any R.E.H. Conan stories, so I can't comment on how the two compare, but I plan to remedy that soon. The series is a true serial, with continuity between episodes, which was a lost art for a while, but has come back to us along with the advent of the DVR. The show uses artfully simple fantasy tropes, and the world as presented is thankfully very different from the Tolkienesque stuff that I am so burnt out on. Pretty much every episode provides me with a handful of ideas I would like to use in future adventures. Some examples of these nuggets are "serpent men that can only be defeated with weapons made of a rare alien metal that came from a meteor that fell from space" or "giant telepathic gorilla-man who's spaceship crashed and people worship him as a god, but he is really enslaved by an evil sorcerer that stole his magic rod after the crash."


This is the kind of content that I love. Simple ideas that can be built upon to make for some cool games. If you've never seen this cartoon, or haven't seen it in 19 years like myself, I highly recommend checking it out.