Monsters Remixed: Humans

Here is the last of the monsters remixed! This series started in October 2011 with Slimes, Molds and Jellies. So it's about time I finished it. The goal behind this series was to mix things up for the benefit of both the players and the DM while using the basic building blocks of the original dungeon monsters to arrive at creatures that may be a little weird and different but still feel like archetypes.
Magic items and Treasure for all of these creatures can be generated with another quick roll of a handful of dice with this: Treasure Hoards and Magic Items The other Monster Remixes are in the links to the right.

The way this works is you roll 1D4, 1D6, 1D8, 1D10, 1D12 and 1D20 all at the same time and write down the results: Cavemen who are also religious wackos and who are lead by a thief! or a group of heavy cavalry lead by a Magic-User who are hiding for some reason, or unarmed berzerkers with a bunch of followers! Who are these people? why are they following around berzerkers? why don't the berzerkers have any weapons? Maybe the berzerkers are just regular guys from one clan who were fed psychotropic fruit by a bunch of guys from another clan (the followers) who are daring them to do stupid stuff and laughing about it, or maybe there in the middle of some kind of weird berserker annual ritual or coming of age ceremony, or maybe the berzerkers are ladies with some kind of low grade lycanthropy that only effects ladies (a curse!) and the followers are their families, or...

Download here!

Animals Remixed

Here's a little thing in my Monsters Remixed series.  This one is takes otherwise mundane animals and makes them a bit weird.

The idea here is that these animals are not necessarily a thing to fight, they're more a tool to figure out how to use.  They're the fauna version of the Telecanter's (geographical) Wonders.

Here's the pdf.

UNDEAD remixed

This one is just in time for your Halloween themed games!  In this installment the remix includes the powers and abilities of the Undead creatures.  As with most of these remixes, I've looked to later editions (mostly the 1e Monster Manual) for some inspiration and added a few new elements of my own to fill out the tables but the bulk of the characteristics on the table are from ODnD.  Hopefully the result will be some creepy monsters that your PCs don't know what to do with.

I'm experimenting with a different format for this one, basically taking a cue from Telecanter and added the sentence at the top to organize the rolls.

Let's try this out:

An animal corpse (I'm going to say it's a cow) actually appears beautiful (and otherwise normal) but goes all Jekyll/Hyde and turns into cow-corpse monsters.  They cause Level drain (by trampling) and fear/revulsion.  They are vulnerable to fire and garlic.  (HD: 1 AC: 3 No. App: 15)  I think the local villagers call them the Fell Herd and are totally terrified of them.

How about another?

Bandaged corpses of women.  They cause fear/revulsion and regenerate.  They are vulnerable to mirrors and water.  (HD: 3 AC:7 No. App: 3 Dmg: D8)  These I think will be called the Shunlilly Sisters and the rumor is that they dwell in a big decrepit mansion at the edge of town, and Old Man Shunilly came back from a grand voyage with a mysterious treasure and then disappeared.

These remixes were inspired by Sham's pointing out how the monsters are categorized in the Monster Reference Table.  When I started doing these remixes Sham was still occasionally posting but the Grog n' Blog has been silent for years now.  I'm really grateful that the blog is still up, it's a great resource!

Download the pdf

STONERS Remix

I thought that I already put this up here, but it doesn't look like it.  This is the latest in my ridiculous and unnecessary remixing of all the the monsters from vol II: Monsters and Treasure.  I put the Save vs. Stone creatures together with the Lycanthropes and snuck in the Gargoyles.  The stoners and the werefolk aren't usually associated with each other.  In OD&D there's a cryptic Saturday horror movie matinee inspired connection between lycanthropes and vampires, but for these remixes Undead (including vampires) need to be their own thing.

In my mind the Gorgonae like to turn Lycanthropes into stone because they make the nicest statues, and their Lycanthropic bodies & souls can somehow magically interfere with the effects of the Gorgon turn-to-stone attack.  I don't think that background interferes with the remixing of the original monster write ups.  I'll leave it up to the DM to determine if Gargoyles are in some way magically bound to the Gorgon that made them or if they have their own society and hold secret enclaves on moonless nights to plan their flight to a mythical city in the South Sea.  Maybe a Gargoyle's autonomy depends on the intelligence of the creating Gorgon.

Download here:
GORGONS, LYCANTHROPES & GARGOYLES 

As usual there is a worksheet at the bottom to keep track of what's rolled up.

The only monster remixes I have left to do are humans and undead!  I want to redo Dragons to hew closer to the source material, but I figure I better get these all done before I start redoing them.

HUMANOIDS Remix

I've completed another one in my series of Monsters Remixed:

This preview looks all weird and crappy, but the pdf looks good.  In fact, it looks better than some of the previous Monster Remixes because I learned how to convert text to a table in Open Office Writer instead of forcing excel into being a graphics program when it's not.

Humanoids Remixed takes the basic attributes of the humanoid races in ODnD: goblins, kobolds, orcs, hobgoblins, gnolls, ogres, trolls, and giants and mixes them up.  The idea is that instead of just rolling "orc" on a table, or having to make up from scratch something that is more interesting than orcs, the DM rolls one of each die and looks at this page to make a new type of humanoid.  I've rolled up some of these, and it all seems to work, but they need some kind of name I think so something like this should be added:

HUMANOID NAMES
1	Grom-	-ling
2	Dreg-	-lin
3	Trog-	-ek
4	Hob-	-bold
5	Gno-	-erk
6	Ko-	-dob
7	Org-	-s
8	Kil-	-dog
9	Blud-	-rok
10	Krag-	-bones

For example:

DREGDOGS

Fat, three foot tall, 1 HD, nomadic humanoids 200 strong who ride about in their walking castle and wear leather armor.  Their leader is a Lvl 3 fighter and he's got 8 guards with 2 HD.  They keep as a pet a scorpion tailed, winged, headless goat thing with a voracious appetite and 4 HD.  In the lair they've got 2000 cp and 3000gp worth of gems.

In the example above I combined the Nomadic attribute with the result rolled for Lair: Castle.

KILERKS

Gaunt, five foot tall, 1 HD, regenerating cave-dwellers, 60 of em. Lead by one of their own with 5 HD with 10 guards at 2 HD and 40 giant bats.  5000 cp, 1000 sp and a scroll of snake control.

Now all I have left are the humans, undead, save vs. stoners and animals.  

Here's a link to the pdf:

HUMANOIDS Remixed

There's more in the free loot links to the right.

Monster Remixed: The Otherworldly

This is my latest in a series of posts remixing the canonical monsters from OD&D.  These remixes blend monsters within categories  established in the original game.

The otherworldly includes Elementals, Djinn, Efreet and Invisible Stalkers.  This remix was tricky, I've created and discarded several versions of these tables.  After adding lots of things that were not derived from the original monsters I eventually returned to the monster's descriptions for material.  I did have to add some things to elementals to make them interesting.  (Elementals are soooo boring)  The secret compulsion comes from the  Qareen which I found mucking about on Wikipedia looking for anything djinn related.  I left it deliberately open to interpretation what exactly would count as being exposed.  Does that mean getting touched?  successfully hit in melee?  merely seeing one?  The same goes for the "Language of Control" that Magic-Users may learn.  The idea is that those familiar with the Arcane can discern the other worldly thoughts of pure elementals and use that knowledge to command them. It doesn't say this, but that effect is supposed to last D20 days just like the Secret Compulsion.  It's also up to interpretation how an otherworldly trapped in a object might get out or how the DM is to adjudicate this.  If you're having trouble with this, read or re-read 1001 Nights.

In case this is confusing I'll give a run down of how to use this:

Roll one of each die.  You can roll more than one D20 if you have extra. To read the results start with the D12.  This'll tell you what kind of elemental you've got and whether or not it's a "pure elemental" with no extra powers or something more Djinni like with extra powers.  Next look at the D8.  This will tell you if the otherworldly creature is determined to accomplish some specific task, or if it's imprisoned in an object, or if it's goals if it even has any are alien to humankind. The D10 gives you the object or mission and the D4 is generally only used if the creature is on a mission. The D6 tells you how many powers it has, or the chance in 6 that an M-U can learn to temporarily control elementals.

Here is the download:
The Otherworldly

Now this, Slimes Molds and Jellies,  crazy fey and crazy fey beasts, and Dragons and Chimeras are done. All I have left are the undead, lycanthropes, humanoids, save or stoned and animals, oh and gargoyles.

Dragons & Chimeras

Monsters Remixed continues!

I have made one more step toward this project's foolish completion.  Here is the problem I set out to solve:
The same old monsters can get boring.  And making new monsters is great, but what if your short on time?  (I have already spent more time on this "time saver" than really makes sense, so hopefully somebody besides me can use these)  The idea was to mix up some of the characteristics of the old monsters to make new ones, and to give to the players some of the sense of surprise and discovery that made these games great in the first place, but with creatures that are still based on classic monsters.
I did this remix of Slime Molds and Jellies and then I found this fantastic post at Sham's Grog and Blog.  I had thought that the order that the monsters were presented in Monsters and Treasure was just slapdash, but of course it was Gygaxian genius at work.  There is an order.  Then I started thinking that the ordering and Shams breakdown would be a great way to give this remix treatment to every single one of the monsters presented in that Original Little Brown Book.

The names that Sham came up with for the monster categories are great.  One that grabbed me was "Fairly Tale Miscellany."  So I did the Fey Beasts (Centaurs, Unicorns, Treants, Pegasi, Hippogriffs, Rocs and Griffons) and Fey Humanoids (Pixies, Nixies, Dryads, Gnomes, Dwarves, Elves) from that category.  With those two, I played more fast and loose with the creatures than I did with the slimes.  Gnomes and Dwarves might be offended that I just called them "ugly elves" but it seemed appropriate.  My goal was to evoke the fairy tale roots of those creatures and at the same time make them... you know, weird.

I started looking at the "Monsters of Myth" (Manticoras, Hydras, Chimeras, Wyverns, Dragons, Gargoyles, Lycanthropes, Purple Worms, Sea Monsters, Minotaurs)  There are some real heavy hitters here! ahem. DRAGONS.

Here is what I've come up with:

Dragons, Dragonesques & Chimera

Gargoyles I'm saving for later, and Lycanthropes will be their own thing.  Remixed here are Manticoras, Hydras, Chimeras, Wyverns, Dragons, Purple Worms, Sea Monsters,  and Minotaurs.  Actually I didn't really do anything with Sea Monsters, but neither did the original, so if you're rolling on this and your at sea then it's a sea monster.  I couldn't just throw dragons in the hopper with the rest, especially since it's already been done so well before.  Instead I went the other way and made Dragons less random and weird, more iconic.  The rest get mixed up into various Chimerae.

So this is what I have left:

Lycanthropes: I really want to remix the Werethings but no bright idea has hit me as of yet.  They need to be in there, because you can buy a silver dagger right there at the beginning of the game.

Bad Guys: Men, Kobolds, Goblins, Orcs, Hobgoblins, Gnolls, Ogres, Trolls, Giants.

  These I will divide into two groups: Men, and the rest.  I am planning on really messing with the humanoids.

Dead Guys: Skeletons, Zombies, Ghouls, Wights, Wraiths, Mummies, Spectres, Vampires.

  Somewhere I have seen where somebody else did a random undead generator thing, which I remember thinking was pretty good, but now I can't find it.  If you know what I'm talking about please let me know who made it! 

Save or Stoned Guys: Cockatrices, Basilisks, Medusae, Gorgons.

  Gargoyles may be added back in here.

The Otherworldly: Invisible Stalkers, Elementals, Djinn, Efreet.

  These will be fun.

Monsters Mundane: Horses, Mules, Small Insects and Animals, Large Insects and Animals.

  These are so boring!  I have some ideas on how to make these interesting but if it doesn't coalesce I'll just skip em.

At the end of the monster descriptions there is this kooky and rambling listing for Other Monsters: 

Titans & Cyclops:  If I break out the Giants from the Humanoids these might get included.

Juggernauts & Living Statues: These might get a remix, especially if the Gargoyles don't fit with the Save or Stoned guys (and gals)

Salamanders: These are definitely going in with the Otherworldlies.

Gelatinous Cubes: represented in Slimes, Molds and Jellies!

Robots, Golems, Androids: Surely there is a random robot generator out there?  Golems would go great with the Living Statues.

I have no idea when I'll get to these.  I feel like I ought to be doing something more directly useful in a game, like developing one of the campaign worlds I have knocking around in my head.  We'll see!

What's in the Woods part II

This is the companion to the "Beasts of Fairytale Miscellany" post from a while back.  This one, like the first is using the excellent classification of D&D Monsters laid out by Sham here.  While that set of random charts was a remix of the more monstrous or animal-like Fey creatures, this set remixes the Humanoids.  This includes: Nixies, Pixies, Dryads, Gnomes, Dwarves and Elves.

 I added some powers not included with the originals to make these creatures more fearsome and/or appealing to the PCs.  You could, for example roll up a "fairy" who has the head of a bear, can cast a Geas on a PC and turn invisible.  (the PCs better hope that reaction roll goes well!)

The default creature is an "elf" but the definition of elf is wide open.  

The stats in the middle are actually pretty representative of the original material.  In play I don't think I would stick to the number appearing or use it only as a rough guide.  I think I would make encounters with individuals or mixed parties more likely than a bunch of fey with all the same properties.  Though I would keep the Home consistent even with a mixed group.

The bit at the bottom of the page there is so the DM can note whatever type of Fey creature is rolled/encountered.  That's there because this (as well as my other creature remixes) are intended for that moment in-game when the PCs go in a direction that you didn't expect.  You could of course also use this in advance if you wanted to. 

Here is a link to the pdf:  Humanoids of Fey Woodlands

When I get a chance maybe I'll bundle these remixes together.

Winged Tree Lion!

I've made a table that remixes the more monstrous creatures from the group that Sham categorizes as "Fairy Tale Miscelany": Centaurs, Pegasi, Treants, Unicorns, Hippogriffs, Rocs and Griffons.  The idea here was to do the same thing with these creatures that I did with Slimes Molds and Jellies (That's a revised S, M, J pdf there, reformatted to fit on a 8.5x11 portrait).

Remixing the above "fairy tale" creatures the way I have can lead to some weird results... such as the Winged Tree Lion! Testing this, I rolled Eagle, Tree, Lion with the Special Ability: Teleport.  So this creature has Eagle clawed hind legs, I'll say that it can fly by vibrating translucent blue-veined leaves that cover it's "trunk" and the lion head has a mane of ivy with brillain colored mushrooms hidden within it.  and the PCs just met D6 of them.  (what happens if you eat those mushrooms, hmm?)

Here's the pdf:

BEASTS OF THE FEY WOODLANDS


Also, check out the info to the right on Old School Gaming in Sacramento if your in the area.

Slimes Molds and Jellies!

Even if you are not in the camp that says all monsters should be unique, it can be a challenge to find or create monsters that savvy players can't just easily metagame their way through.  To help alleviate this challenge I created this chart that allows a DM to quickly create a remixed version of the slimes molds and jellies of classic fantasy adventure gaming.  This chart can be used on the fly or when preparing a dungeon.  Personally I think it works best when used to generate an ooze or two to give various rooms or regions in a dungeon a specific flavor.

Please download and let me know if you use it:

Slimes, Molds & Jellies!