Finally: Lazer Dwarves!

This is going to be kind of a catch all post, starting with some self interest and navel-gazing, but stick with me and there will be a sweet finish!

CAMPAIGNS

So here are the games I'm working on running:

#1 will get written about more here in the future I'm sure.  It will take some work to get together and then there will be players to find... this one is definitely on the back burner.

#2 will use my DMing improv tools, but also would be a good place to drop in things like Death Frost Doom or Tower of the Stargazer.

#3 is on the front burner as the players are asking "when are we gonna start?"  The system will be 4e D&D but the soul will be Encounter Critical.

#4 is just an idea and maybe won't happen but if it does it's going to draw heavily from the Black City and Land of Ice.

BLOG PROJECTS

Ongoing things I need to write about/finish: 

Monster Remixes: these are maybe not quite half way done.  I'm still hoping that someone will be able to tell me where I found the undead remix so I don't have to do that one.  I've decided that I'm definitely going to do the mundane animals, they will be fun though not entirely mundane.

Image of the Dungeon: Will likely finish this with one post.


Castle and Dungeon Maps: that huge castle I did is still my most popular post thanks in no small part due to Paul, so I've done another castle map and plan to do more.

Orc Cult Cave and Castle Lyongast - Map-less Adventure Generators with roll mat.  These will be used in the pick-up game.

Player Handbook Giveaway for pick up game (with house rules, like Planet Eiris, but as clear and concise as possible)

DM Book (for pick up game)

BLOG ROLLS

I've noticed that several folks who used to have me on their blog roll no longer do.  If your reading this and you're thinking "this dude is on my blog roll for sure" maybe check and see.  I know a few times Blogger has dumped blogs off of my roll and I had to re-add them.

and now.... 

LAZER DWARVES!

I promised lazer dwarves on my first post, here they are!  These are for the 4e-esque space-fantasy game.  I was to lazy to draw the robo-claws on the "storm trooper" (they're an air elemental inhabiting a robotified stormtrooper suit, get it?)  The face of the Psi-Witch is from Skinner.  These are half-assed but they were a lot of fun to put together.  I'll print these out to use in-game (and so I can draw on those robo-claws).

SLEESTAKS

Brendan liked the idea of re-skining Dragonborn as Sleestaks in my last post, so I'll expound on that idea a bit.  I'm sure there have been write ups of Sleestaks and a playable race but this is specifically for 4e D&D or a simplified/hacked facsimile. 

SLEESTAKS:

Sleestak PCs are identical to Dragonborn, but they look like the guys pictured above and they have no breath weapon power.  Instead they have one of the following powers:

"Sleestak Memories"
one in ten Sleestaks can, in brief flashes of insight, remember the ancient secrets of their ancestors.  (Roll D10 at character generation.  They have this power if a 1 is rolled.)  Once per session the Player can make up a detail about any dungeon environment the characters find themselves in, details may include secret doors, passwords, codes, the location of a pylon or how to operate a pylon.  The DM should let the player throw their idea out there in one short sentence, but then further details are for the DM to determine.  Note that ancient Sleestak technology allows for structures that are larger on the inside than the outside and other warping of time and space, so dungeon maps need not be modified except to note the location of any new Sleestak generated details.  It is of course the prerogative of the DM to declare a dungeon off limits to this power because it was not built by Sleestaks or has been otherwise untouched by their weird lizardy claws.

"Sleestaks Come in Threes"
All Sleestaks that don't have Sleestak Memories have this power.  At character generation, the PC will have 2 Sleestak companions who appear to be identical to the PC, have identical equipment, but have 10s in all stats, no powers, and only 1 HP.  These accompanying Sleestaks may be controlled by the Player.  They will not be automatically replaced, but more may be recruited if the Player wishes and the DM allows. 


These are weird and maybe overpowered compared to typical 4e powers, but I don't mind.  To put this in perspective, I played Rifts and liked it.

Here is where the PCs could start out or venture to in a campaign with Sleestak PCs:

Sleesport

On the bluffs overlooking a huge briny lake sits the city of Sleesport (pronounced Sleaze Port).  Founded by a bug-eyed and lizard skinned version of Bugsy Siegel and resembling both Vegas and Lankhmar, Sleesport is largely owned and operated by a criminal gang of Sleestaks.  Anything can be had in Sleesport.  Non Sleestak NPCs feel a mixture of respect, fear and loathing for the Sleestaks.  Sleestak PCs may be drawn into the machinizations of their powerful brethen, however, this will almost always prove to be more of a pain in the ass than a benefit for the PCs.  It is rumored that a lost city lies hidden beneath Sleesport.

Electro-Necro-Orchard and Flying House

It's been too long since I've posted so here are a pair of locations.  These are graphics, produced by architects I've found and annotated for gaming purposes.  The first was described as an electric power plant/necropolis/orchard which leads me to believe that they are handing out random tables from the 1e DMG to architecture students.  I decided to stick with the program and made it an electro-ghoul factory town.

 This one is the house of Pluma d'Antimore the witch.  Her house is suspended from the moon by silver chains.  She is known for her extravagant parties by the end of which several guests are likely to have been polymorphed into birds.  The wayward sons and daughters of several very powerful and influential noble families are in her flock.  Guest are transported to and from her parties by holding onto a ribbon held by one of her birds and saying a magic word which renders them weightless, allowing the bird to carry them.

   If I use these it will be in a game of 4e D&D re-skinned to look like Encounter Critical.  I know, that's basically what Gamma World is, but I don't own Gamma World. I'll have them roll up characters from the basic 4e books on character sheets that look a lot like this and then let them find laser guns and acquire mutations and such.  I'd probably end up with some of Brendan's House Rules, but Dragonborn would be called "Sleestaks" (and have no breath weapon) and Eladrin would be "Vulkins".

Dunsany & Elfland

...and now for something completely different!

I've been reading The King of Elfland's Daughter before I go to sleep.  a week or two ago, I drifted in and out of sleep as I was reading and as I did so the inspiration for this card game came into my mind.  This is a very short game that uses your basic playing cards.  It's kind of like a cross between Poker and Magic the Gathering.

It doesn't really have anything to do with Lord Dunsany, but I decided to call the game ELFLAND because of what I was reading at the time.

Here is a pdf of the rules for the game: ELFLAND

From the introduction (by Lin Carter) to The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany:

  "One of the four or five genuinely great exponents of the adult fantasy was Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, the eighteenth baron of an ancient line which stretches back almost one thousand years to the Norman Conquest.
  Lord Dunsany was born in 1878 in Castle Dunsany, a 12th-century fortress which was his ancestral home, in County Meath, Ireland, among hills that were already rich in song and fable a thousand years before his Norman ancestors came a-conquering by the right hand of Duke William the Bastard.  These lands were the age-old demesne of the Ard-ri, the emperors of the ancient Celts. In Meath was Tara of the Kings, so sacred and venerable that the king who held it became High King of all Ireland.  Thus the hills and fields of Dunsany's childhood were steeped in golden legend, and some of the enchantment and music of antique Tara entered into his wonderful stories.
  Lord Dunsany was and astounding man.  A sensitive poet, an enthusiastic huntsman, and inveterate globetrotter, he was always off hunting lions on safari in Africa or teaching English literature in Athens (from which he escaped one jump ahead of the Nazis when they invaded).  Yet he found time to write over sixty books..."

Wow.

Image of the Dungeon

I want to write a bit about Dungeons/Mega-dungeons and Architecture/Urbanism.  When I started this blog I
intended to focus on architecture and design of dungeon environments, so it's about time I get around to it!  I
started this post and got sidetracked by the content of the Megadungeon Planning posts.  Now that I have that out of my system (for now) I'll return to writing about:

The Image of the City Dungeon

A while back at D and D w/ p. stars there was a fantastic post  where he sort of reverse engineer's an essay
from Rem Koolhaas' S,M,L,XL as if it were about mega-dungeons.

I want to do a similar sort of thing with this book:  (though with less theory mumbo-jumbo.  Really I just want to steal his analytical tools to give an underlying structure to megadungeons)

If you went to school to study architecture or urban planning then you probably had to read this.  If not,
you've probably never heard of it.  Kevin Lynch is a big deal when it comes to Urban Design, and I want to look at how his ideas could be used in the creation of and running of megadungeons.

One thing I want to make before we dive in is that while I'm using the term "dungeon," I really mean
megadungeon.  Something at the scale of a city rather than a single building.  The Mythic Underworld, vast and unknowable is the territory that we'll be exploring with this little forray into Lynch's book.  Of course, it's
the DM's job to know the unknowable, and the PC's job to map the unmappable!

This is how the book begins:

"Looking at cities dungeons can give a special pleasure, however commonplace the sight may be.  Like a piece of architecture, the city dungeon is a construction in space, but one of vast scale, a thing perceived only in the course of long spans of time.  City Dungeon Design is therefore a temporal art, but it can rarely use the controlled and limited sequences of other temporal arts like music.  On different occasions and for different people, the sequences are reversed, interrupted, abandoned, cut across.  It is seen in all lights and all weathers.
    At every instant, there is more than the eye can see, more than the ear can hear, an setting or a view
waiting to be explored.  Nothing is experienced by itself, but always in relation to it's surroundings, the
sequences of events leading up to it, the memory of past experiences... Every citizen  adventurer has long associations with some part of his city, and his image is soaked in memories and meanings."

That text is clear and I don't feel like I really need to unpack it too much. The important thing is that we are thinking about the way this giant place is perceived and that the way it is perceived can't be planned by the DM. (unless you're a railroader, which is fine if that's what your players are into, but you might as well stop reading this now if that's the case)  I think the bit in bold is especially applicable to Megadungeons as opposed to dungeons (which are more likely to see one use, with one group of adventurers, and be approached from one way only)

"Moving elements in a city dungeon, and in particular the people and their activities, are as important as the
stationary physical parts.  We are not simply observers of this spectacle, but are ourselves a part of it, on the stage with the other participants.  Most often, our perception of the city dungeon is not sustained, but rather partial, fragmentary, mixed with other concerns.  Nearly every sense is in operation and the image is the composite of them all."

The dungeon is effected by the Adventurers.  also by monsters and  NPCs of course, but (this obviously isn't stated by Lynch) it's the perception of the PCs that matters to us.  It's not just City=Dungeon, but also City=Dungeon=Stage.  Also, we are talking about an image, but all five senses contribute to that image.

"Not only is the city dungeon an object which is perceived (and perhaps enjoyed) by millions of people of
widely diverse class and character, (you know, like magic-users, thieves and half-elf barbarians) but it is the product of many builders who are constantly modifying the structure for reasons of their own.  While it may be stable in general outlines for some time, it is ever changing in detail.  Only partial control can be exercised over its growth and form.  There is no final result, only a continuous succession of phases.  No wonder, then, that the art of shaping cities dungeons for sensuous enjoyment is an art quite separate from architecture or music or literature.  It may learn a great deal from these other arts, but it cannot imitate them."

The dungeon changes from one adventure to the next, but also it's original form is determined randomly by Wandering Monster tables at least, maybe even by random room generators and the like.

What Lynch is aiming for is "Legibility" or "...the ease with which its parts can be recognized and can be organized into a coherent pattern."  Now, for gaming this legibility is especially important (even though it might sound kind of boring now, just wait) because there is no actual city, I mean, dungeon.  The whole thing is a construct in the minds of the players so communication about the environment and the events in that environment is critical, especially in old school games where there is less reliance on game mechanics and more reliance on description of the scene and actions.

"Although clarity or legibility is by no means the only important property of a beautiful city kick-ass megadugeon, it is of special importance when considering environments at the urban scale of size, time, and complexity.  To understand this we must consider not just the city dungeon as a thing in itself, but the city dungeon being perceived by its inhabitants (and more so the interloping adventurers)."

What really matters isn't the dungeon and all of it's special little one-of-a-kind snowflake qualities, back story etc. but how the PCs experience it.  If the Orc Chief hates the Spider God but that never comes up in play or the PCs don't pick up on it then it might as well not be true.  In their experience it isn't true.  Managing the perceptions of the PCs is how you make the dungeon awesome.

"Many kinds of cues are used: the visual sensations of color, shape, motion, or polarization of light, as well as other senses such as smell, sound, touch, kinesthesia, sense of gravity, and perhaps of electric or magnetic fields."

In an RPG it's usually one step removed: the verbal description of those senses rather than the actual senses.
Lynch talks a bit about wayfinding and how the "mental picture of the exterior physical world that is held by an individual" is how a person finds their way in a city.  This is even more so in a Dungeon, if you don't imagine it, then you're not there.

Lynch diverts a bit into the deeper meaning behind this giant structure:
"A striking landscape is the skeleton upon which many primitive races erect their socially important myths."
Right?  What was buried down there that those primitive races started mythologizing?


And he acknowledges that some chaos can be good:
"It must be granted that there is some value in mystification, labyrinth, or surprise in the environment."  Important enough that there is a 1 or 2 in 6 chance of it. (surprise that is)  And if you crawl around in a cave for long enough you are sure to get lost at some point but being completely lost the whole time isn't usually fun.

Ok, up to this point I have mostly just been cherry picking cool quotes that make it sound like Lynch is talking about dungeons, but now I'm going to wrap up and the really useful stuff will have to wait for a future post or posts.  Lynch says that an environmental image is made up of structure, identity and meaning.  of these, structure and identity are what he mostly concerns himself with in this book.  Works for me. What we are trying to do when we DM is communicate an imaginary physical world to the players, if we want to worry about the meaning behind that we can, or we can run a fun-house and retroactively rationalize it if we feel the need to, or something that makes sense/would be cool comes naturally out of play. 
I want to slide one more quote in along those lines:

"The image should preferably be open-ended, adaptable to change, allowing the individual to continue to investigate and organize reality: there should be blank spaces where he can extend the drawing for himself."

So whether you call it Legibility or Imageabilitiy or Visibility (Lynch uses all three) How the DM communicates the game world to the Players is... well that is the game or half of it anyway.  A strong Image of the Dungeon comes from: Clues to the nature of the identity and structure of the game world that keep the game moving and describing the game world in a way that helps the players to really create their own image of the game world, and contribute to it.

The next time I post about this will be about the Five Elements that Lynch uses to analyze the image of cities dungeons: Paths, Edges, Districts, Nodes and Landmarks.  I'll look at how we can use those five elements to make huge kick-ass dungeons.

Mostly Dead is Slightly Alive; Hit Points, Injury and Recovery

Fellow bloggers at Aeons and Auguries and the Fighting Fantasist have gotten me thinking about Hit Points.

I've mentioned this in passing before.

After playing D&D for a long time I've fairly recently decided to take Mr. Gygax at his word and rule that HP are abstract and not actual wounds. Here is what I've started doing:

INJURY

When characters reach 0 HP they roll on this:

I was inspired by this and this. Like Aos, I wanted the table to be generic, that is I wanted it to make sense for an injury made by tooth and claw as well as blade or bazooka.  Like Trollsmyth I wanted things like knockdown and buff to be possible and I wanted helms to be important.  I also wanted the super simple hit locations to play a role.  This table's label is a bit of a misnomer, I don't use this when a Natural 20 is rolled, only when characters are dropped to zero HP.  I suppose I meant it that way when I made the chart and maybe I would use it that way if I was playing a game with high level characters.  Zero HP is the worst a PC can be, I don't track negative HP.  Depending on how they roll on the crit. chart, a PC with zero Hit Points might be walking around just fine, or they might be on the ground dying.  This could also be used in a pinch for fumbles: roll a D4 as if the D6 rolled a 2.

RECOVERY

HD are rolled every morning.  If you've spent the night in the wilderness or in a dungeon, then your HP can go down when you make this roll.  I've thought about also making them roll an extra die and dropping the highest in wilderness/dungeons, but I haven't tried that yet.  If the character is in civilization (as in a house, castle or inn, crashing in a haystack or barn counts as camping) then if a lower number than the character's current HP is rolled it can be disregarded. 

If characters take a short rest (1 turn) then they can add 1d6 to their HP, but their HP cannot be raised over their max for the day.  They can rest as much as they like, consecutively or not, but their HP won't exceed the max for the day. If a character has been reduced to zero and is wounded or dying, then they stay at zero until fully healed, resting won't help.

I have only used this a few times and I haven't used this at all in a game with a Cleric but this is how I would deal with their healing spells: Cure Light Wounds would eliminate one Light Wound, or make a serious wound a Light wound, or make a dying character merely seriously wounded.  A character healed this way would not loose the limb, and would be only faintly scarred.  The Cure Serious Wound spell would eliminate completely a light wound or a serious wound and would make a dying character only lightly wounded.

If the Character is dead and there are no high level miracle workers around, there's only one thing you can do: go through their clothes and look for loose change.

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!