The Devil's Sword

I recently watched The Devil's Sword. I picked it up because the back of the box called it "One of the triumphs of Indonesian fantasy cinema." I recommend this flick for it is a mighty bounty of D&D-able moments. 

It starts of with a comet falling and an old guy with a (wolf?) head staff makes a sword out of glowing ore from the comet. He puts a wolf head pommel on the sword. Banyunjaga (below) has a pair of swords with croc head pommels. I think all of the swords used by the main characters have animal head pommels. Who needs detect magic or identify when all you need to do is look to see if it's got an animal on the pommel?

THE CROCODILE QUEEN:

She emerges from water with her servants after a red cloth flies out of water. Her servants wrap her in the red cloth and when they unwrap her she’s magically wearing fancy clothes. Do your NPCs do things like that? They should.

There’s a cage of cannibals just kind of randomly placed in a corner of the Crocodile Queen’s Chamber. What could go wrong there?

The Crocodile Queen has a white leather couch and the back of it looks like a white leather crocodile. This couch is really a marvel to behold. Look, this is a silly movie. but if your open to the kind of aesthetic experience exemplified by this couch then you'll get a lot out of it.

Really you will.

BANYUNJAGA:

He's a warrior who serves the Crocodile Queen. He emerges from exploding rocks laughing maniacally, then kicks a boulder, jumps on it and flies to where he wants to go, laughing maniacally the whole time. This is how you do NPCs.

There he goes. Hahahaha!

Other times he just pops up out of the earth. Is that a thing in martial arts movies or Indonesian mythology? Other characters do that to, including the crocodile men.

 Crocodile men are always lookin' for a tussle.

THE BRIDE AND THE OLD WOMAN:

Banyunjaga breaks up a wedding party and it’s the bride who has a big fight with him while the groom waits on the sidelines/hides. In this movie the female characters duke it out along with the guys, they are generally interesting and have agency though things don't end well for most of them.

This lady is a bad-ass.

There’s a lot of really truly crazy martial arts action. The bride makes this whirlwind/wind gust attack by spinning a parasol. One guy's weapon is a hat on a string. Banyunjaga does this decapitating scissor attack with his two swords that's pretty great, and I'm not even going to tell you what the old lady does.

There's a fight outside of the cave where the Devil Sword is just to see who gets to into the cave. That is definitely something I'm going to use. Before the fight one guy magically creates graves for the others just to show how hardcore he is, which should be a thing you can do in D&D. It's easy enough for the DM to throw in little magical or quasi-magical flourishes like this for the NPCs but I think the PCs should have a way to do it to. Depending on the flavor of your game everyone could do it, only characters of a certain level, or only M-Us and again depending on the desired flavor this could be a "signature move" or something like the above example that is clearly magical.

The evil warriors refer to themselves as "The Evil Warriors"

There are a LOT of headbands. Seriously. All of the main characters have headbands. Most of the extras have headbands too. I think the Director sent out a memo that said if you showed up to the set with a headband you got to say a line in the movie. All kinds of headbands. Skinny headbands. Thick headbands. Bejeweled headbands. Spangled metallic headbands. Clean headbands. Dirty headbands. Multi-colored headbands. A headband that hides an obviously false bald head. There's different headbands for different occasions. You've got your general purpose headband for fighting and such. You've got a headband for gettin' it on. Then maybe another headband for gettin' it on underwater. Devil Sword the RPG would definitely need a random headband table.

"Old woman, there is room for only one tiger in this jungle." (actual quote)

"I brought my jeweled headband, did you bring yours?" (not an actual quote)

The Magic of Cinema Forever

Well, the subject of my last post may be a hopeless cause.  Here is a cause that is near and dear to my heart and that has better prospects of being successful:
The best video store in the world, although they don't give out free beer. has started a Kickstarter to become a non-profit.  It looks like they're going to make their goal.  I'll be delighted if they do.
For preservation of legal access to copyrighted material I can't say it better than Outlaw Vern

OK, but this is a gaming blog, sooo....

d24 things from the film Saragossa Manuscript to add to your DnD:

1. Soldiers on opposites sides both enraptured by a marvelous book in the middle of a battle.
2. Ghost haunted inn in a desolate mountain pass, master suite is carved into rock, half cave and half immaculate carved rock.
3. Soldiers arguing with their commanding officer, playing a crazy lute thing and wearing ginormeous cummerbunds.
4. Hangmen on a gibbet with a vulture and piles of bones.
5.  Emina and Zibelda sisters from a foreign land, want to marry protagnist, but he must obey the Prophets Law, can only see them in his dreams and drink from a skull chalice.
6. A guy loses a duel then gives his soul to the devil, then lives and gets married.
7.  Ladies say fruit is bad for you.
8. There’s a guy missing an eye, you find out later zombie gypsies ate it.
9. Zombies/spirits try to talk a guy into coming outside so they can get him but he’s safe in the chapel.
10. The Spanish Inqusition!
11.  Zota the bandit stages a rescue.
12. A guy stuck in a crazy devil mask.
13. Things happen then wakng up by the gibbet again and again groundhog day style.
14.  A friendly Cabalist who tells of: Nach-Sou-Chasi, Chaldean knowledge,  Shir-Ha-Shi-Mir, magic words/numbers, how Adonai made the world with a word, Setir-So-Har, Pandemonium.
15. Some people can distinguish between Hungarian and Polish zombies.
16. “oh yeah, I just happen to have a castle in the neighborhood” not an actual quote, but it happens.
17.  “Good company is more precious than wealth or black magic.” Actual quote.
18. “You have books here, all the wisdom in the world is to be found on these shelves.” Another actual quote.
19. A guy in a story in a book finds the book he’s in a story in.  
20. When an old gypsy starts to tell his story a guy with a big ass spanish guitar sits down behind him an starts playing.
21. A cool gypsy in a wide brim hat just chillin on some stone lions on the town square till a rich guy pays him to spy on his wife.
22. A guy’s friend dies and he visits him as a thunderstorm to tell him about the afterlife.
23. “only an uneducated man who sees a thing everyday thinks he understands it.  A true researcher proceeds among riddles.  He errs but he gets nearer his goal every day.”
24. A fortune telling whore and another who smokes big cigars.

This list is only a tiny tiny fraction of the game worthy elements of this movie, including the whole story-within-a-story-within-a-story premise.  You could base a campaign on this movie!

I found this movie at my local video store.

Even though it's the 21st Century and oh my god aren't you downloading TV shows straight into your brain like everyone else? I'm still in love with Scarecrow Video.  Were it not for this Temple of Cinema of a Video store I would never have even heard of Saragossa Manuscript or lots of other great and terrible movies I have enjoyed watching over the years.  We are really lucky to have this place in Seattle and We should support it!

Ninja vs. Aerobics and Make Game Stuff Right Now

Last night I watched Ninja III: the Domination and this gem of 80's cinema validates completely my notion of Cursed Blades at least if you equate demons with ninjas, let's not worry too much about the details.  Ninja III also validates the writer/directors opinion regarding the erotic possibilities of V8 juice, but that's also a detail we shouldn't worry too much about.  Anyway I recommend the film, though my girlfriend would not.  

Let's change the subject.

Sometimes I'll be thinking about D&D and I'll obsess over something stupid like saving throws or thieves skills or how much damage two-handed swords should do, when what I should be thinking about is how to make my next game more awesome.  I mean I love thinking about saving throws or thieves skills or how much damage two-handed swords should do and we should all do that, we really should but then it'll be game night and I'll have half a map so we'll play Cataan and that's fine and great but not what this blog is about it's about actual D&D-type gaming.  That stuff is like, "Hi my name is Steve and I'll be your server for the evening" and what I need is the stuff cookin up in the kitchen. (more back of house and less front of house)   

So what I'm going to start doing is pretending like the time that I have to noodle over D&D is all I have before the next game. Today I did and this is what I came up with:


Wizard Wastes Encounter Table:
1 wyvern
2 humanoid scouts 
3 merg band (merg are running bird riding mongols, great riders and archers)
4 caravan beleaguered and off route, will pay for guidance, replace with another human group from civilization after this is rolled
5 dinosaur, lone carnivore 
6 dinosaur, group of herbivores
7 Cactus treants, replace with another plant thing after rolled
8 Giant centipedes
9 pteradactyls
10 giant undead spider, weirdly friendly humanoid shaman riding/living inside, replace with another weird thing after rolled


Events Table
Sandstorm: this doesn't happen randomly, it happens when the ruined city is fleshed out by DM, storm exposes city under the dunes

Rumors: beginning players hear all of these, work them into an intro monologue, tales of the crusty hermit style:
1 Ruined structures, ancient carved stones buried in the dunes
2 spending night under temple will turn humans into ghouls, some say ghouls are doomed forever, some say they can be changed back to humans 
3 demon city full of powerful magic is under temple
4 other wizards manses dot the rim of the wastes, some ancient, some new

Some things in the Wizard Wastes:
Oasis: mud, water, bamboo, some trees, likely to encounter
Obelisk: very weathered ancient obelisks dot the desert
Ruin: very weathered stone buildings, a few walls only



Encounters below the Temple:
1 Ghouls
2 giant centipedes
3 toad men subteranean desert dwellers
4 MU and mercs
5 

Toad men traps, involve sandbag weights, stone slabs, random scavenged sharp things, fiber chords, pits, meant to trap ghouls mostly, they'll dig a smooth pit, cover it with weak wood, and cover the whole path with sand.

Toad men holds defended well against ghouls, they tunnel themselves. 
Toadmen weapons are dried root clubs w shards of sharp stone, cactus spine blowgun darts, slow if hit (half move, -2 to hit, effects ghouls)
Toad men go to surface at night only, to hunt desert owls, forage cactus...
Toadmen chief is corrupt, maybe possessed, Maybe has a cursed blade.

Clawblobs: gross oozes with many claws, climb as high as they can. (Put one or two in the roof of the temple) they are dimly intelligent, attack from above by falling on victim, clawing, clinging and enveloping in ooze. Absorb everything but stone, Get bigger when they feed and split. They smell like rotting meat.


Kinds of Monsters:
Monsters that move in from the desert (toadmen)
Monsters that spawn from chaos below (claw blobs)
Monsters from surface that make forrays below (humanoids, other MUs)Monsters originally from surface, corrupted by chaos below (Ghouls) 



This is certainly incomplete, but it came together very fast and it goes a long way towards filling in the most recent map I have started and the area around it.  My advice: Make Game Stuff Now!