AC: 5
HD: 3
Movement: 90'
Attacks: 1 (Chains)
Damage: 1d8
Save: F3
Morale: 10
Hoard Class: N/A
XP: 65
Friday, May 20, 2011
Chain Ghouls
AC: 5
HD: 3
Movement: 90'
Attacks: 1 (Chains)
Damage: 1d8
Save: F3
Morale: 10
Hoard Class: N/A
XP: 65
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Green Devil Face 4
This is going to be a review post, so if you don't like reviews you can fuck off.
All right, let's get this thing started. First, an introduction: Green Devil Face 4 is one in a series (duh) of products by James Edward Raggi IV of LotFP fame. He's got a lot of products worthy of praise but I only had like 5 bucks left in my paypal and decided this would be the best way to spend this was on some miscellaneous package of things that I will probably use for campaign inspiration. Oh, it's meant for use with older editions of D&D (BECMI, B/X, Moldvay/Cook/Mentzar, AD&D, S&W, LL and etcetera.)
The booklet begins with a new character class: the Knight of Science. I get a really dark Warhammery feel from this class, which, for me, is always a good thing; It also feels (to me, anyway) a lot like a paladin-alternative with a distinctive Raggi-esque weird fantasy feel added-on.
The second article is a sort of mini-dungeon, the Tower. It's generic enough that it could fit in with most campaigns, and is definitely a horror-style of adventure. I quite like it and will probably spring it on my pc's the next time I run a prep-less game. The only thing I wonder is why an evil empire would bother just setting up all these random things that *might* entice and harm people unless it's just evil for the sake of being a dick.
The new spells introduced run the gamut from awesome to kinda cop-out ish (IE the animate deads, army of one, the steal spells) to being something that I find pretty cool (vomit guts, bloodless, black blood). overall though, I think that even the less interesting spells will get used so it's mostly a taste gripe. The magic items are similarly a split between the two categories, with some being pretty cool (Candle of Ill Lumination, Book of Faust) but others are kinda lame (Basket of Bountiful harvest, Bag of Spirit Holding).
The random inn generator I can see a lot of potential use for, and it's probably among the best value you'll get out of this booklet.
The Wand of the Weird owns, no question to that.
The rest of the booklet is mostly mini-dungeons, a few that I've seen on various blogs (Zak's, for example.) so I felt a little cheated there. Having it all collected in one place is cool, but it doesn't really offset the fact that it's out there for free on the internet. A bunch of this is still fairly useful for trap rooms in dungeons though, and I REALLY REALLY like the shaggy dog, however boring people may find it.
Overall, this pdf is worth the five bucks you'll shell out for it, and I would definitely reccomend it if you have the money sitting around and want to support more of Raggi's work.
All right, let's get this thing started. First, an introduction: Green Devil Face 4 is one in a series (duh) of products by James Edward Raggi IV of LotFP fame. He's got a lot of products worthy of praise but I only had like 5 bucks left in my paypal and decided this would be the best way to spend this was on some miscellaneous package of things that I will probably use for campaign inspiration. Oh, it's meant for use with older editions of D&D (BECMI, B/X, Moldvay/Cook/Mentzar, AD&D, S&W, LL and etcetera.)
The booklet begins with a new character class: the Knight of Science. I get a really dark Warhammery feel from this class, which, for me, is always a good thing; It also feels (to me, anyway) a lot like a paladin-alternative with a distinctive Raggi-esque weird fantasy feel added-on.
The second article is a sort of mini-dungeon, the Tower. It's generic enough that it could fit in with most campaigns, and is definitely a horror-style of adventure. I quite like it and will probably spring it on my pc's the next time I run a prep-less game. The only thing I wonder is why an evil empire would bother just setting up all these random things that *might* entice and harm people unless it's just evil for the sake of being a dick.
The new spells introduced run the gamut from awesome to kinda cop-out ish (IE the animate deads, army of one, the steal spells) to being something that I find pretty cool (vomit guts, bloodless, black blood). overall though, I think that even the less interesting spells will get used so it's mostly a taste gripe. The magic items are similarly a split between the two categories, with some being pretty cool (Candle of Ill Lumination, Book of Faust) but others are kinda lame (Basket of Bountiful harvest, Bag of Spirit Holding).
The random inn generator I can see a lot of potential use for, and it's probably among the best value you'll get out of this booklet.
The Wand of the Weird owns, no question to that.
The rest of the booklet is mostly mini-dungeons, a few that I've seen on various blogs (Zak's, for example.) so I felt a little cheated there. Having it all collected in one place is cool, but it doesn't really offset the fact that it's out there for free on the internet. A bunch of this is still fairly useful for trap rooms in dungeons though, and I REALLY REALLY like the shaggy dog, however boring people may find it.
Overall, this pdf is worth the five bucks you'll shell out for it, and I would definitely reccomend it if you have the money sitting around and want to support more of Raggi's work.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Slagshard
An idea I had for a world in the Warhammer 40k universe.
The imperium is a vast machine of war, one that sprawls across the galaxy like the reaching arms of some industrious insect. Many planets have been converted to the task of creating the millions of weapons for the emperor's armies, and thousands more have been stripped bare of all valuable resources. Mesuvian III is one such planet, stripped bare by the resource hungry Mechanicum of mars. It's ancient strip-mines lay barren for many centuries, until the nearby world of Vaultaun was declared as one of the many Forgeworlds presided over by the red-robed priests of mars. Soon, the demand for resources from other planets outstripped any capacity to harvest resources at a fast enough rate. soon, many more planets within a few lightyears lay as barren as Mesuvian III had. Until, that is, a large merchant-house conglomerate decided to cash in on this. they offered to other planets, a large garbage disposal service, choosing Mesuvian III as the key planet for their trash to be dumped.
Thousands of tonnes of steel iron and other scrap metals were hauled to Mesuvian and their cargoloads were dumped into the vast strip mines of the planet. This continued for decades, until the mercantile conglomerate (now named as Mesuvian Metal Reclamation) had gathered the funds to requisition large-scale land crawlers that could be retrofitted to process the excess of scrap metals into usable material. This was then sold to the mechanicum at an exorbitant rate. MMR has turned their venture into an extremely proffitable enterprise, essentially dominating the market for raw materials in the region.
The planet of Messuvian (now know colloquially as Slagshard) had, before the large scale processing of raw ores, been a somewhat arid, but mostly habitable planet. The imperium had no concerns over the destruction of the planets fragile environs, and ravaged it to a barren rockball. what little surviving ecosystem there was mostly adapted, but even as they were beginning to thrive, the MMR dumped a tomb of scrap metal and slag on their heads. The once-verdant plains are now seas of razor-sharp shards of metal and radioactive decay. Completely uninhabitable outside of the land crawlers that roam it's surface, stopping every so often to be unloaded by monstrous cargo spacecraft.
Crime thrives on Slagmetal's crawler-cities. Illicit trade; such as narcotics, weapons and foodstuffs is mostly ignored by the largely inept and corrupt police force. making it not to dissimilar from many of the planets in the imperium at large. This has allowed for the spread of heretical cult activities on some of the seedier crawlers. This has not been helped by the largely uncaring MMR corporate executives pushing for more work hours in the hellish foundries and forges aboard the cities.
Several foundry-cities have been lost in the throes of rebellion as MMR sent strike teams into their hearts, only for the atomic stacks powering the cities to be overloaded by rebels. This has resulted in a loss of production of metals, leading to the loss of production of war materiel on the nearby forgeworld, leading to the current string of failures in the Devaairn crusade. Most of this knowledge has been suppressed, but the Inquisition is currently investigating MMR and several of it's crawler-cities.
The imperium is a vast machine of war, one that sprawls across the galaxy like the reaching arms of some industrious insect. Many planets have been converted to the task of creating the millions of weapons for the emperor's armies, and thousands more have been stripped bare of all valuable resources. Mesuvian III is one such planet, stripped bare by the resource hungry Mechanicum of mars. It's ancient strip-mines lay barren for many centuries, until the nearby world of Vaultaun was declared as one of the many Forgeworlds presided over by the red-robed priests of mars. Soon, the demand for resources from other planets outstripped any capacity to harvest resources at a fast enough rate. soon, many more planets within a few lightyears lay as barren as Mesuvian III had. Until, that is, a large merchant-house conglomerate decided to cash in on this. they offered to other planets, a large garbage disposal service, choosing Mesuvian III as the key planet for their trash to be dumped.
Thousands of tonnes of steel iron and other scrap metals were hauled to Mesuvian and their cargoloads were dumped into the vast strip mines of the planet. This continued for decades, until the mercantile conglomerate (now named as Mesuvian Metal Reclamation) had gathered the funds to requisition large-scale land crawlers that could be retrofitted to process the excess of scrap metals into usable material. This was then sold to the mechanicum at an exorbitant rate. MMR has turned their venture into an extremely proffitable enterprise, essentially dominating the market for raw materials in the region.
The planet of Messuvian (now know colloquially as Slagshard) had, before the large scale processing of raw ores, been a somewhat arid, but mostly habitable planet. The imperium had no concerns over the destruction of the planets fragile environs, and ravaged it to a barren rockball. what little surviving ecosystem there was mostly adapted, but even as they were beginning to thrive, the MMR dumped a tomb of scrap metal and slag on their heads. The once-verdant plains are now seas of razor-sharp shards of metal and radioactive decay. Completely uninhabitable outside of the land crawlers that roam it's surface, stopping every so often to be unloaded by monstrous cargo spacecraft.
Crime thrives on Slagmetal's crawler-cities. Illicit trade; such as narcotics, weapons and foodstuffs is mostly ignored by the largely inept and corrupt police force. making it not to dissimilar from many of the planets in the imperium at large. This has allowed for the spread of heretical cult activities on some of the seedier crawlers. This has not been helped by the largely uncaring MMR corporate executives pushing for more work hours in the hellish foundries and forges aboard the cities.
Several foundry-cities have been lost in the throes of rebellion as MMR sent strike teams into their hearts, only for the atomic stacks powering the cities to be overloaded by rebels. This has resulted in a loss of production of metals, leading to the loss of production of war materiel on the nearby forgeworld, leading to the current string of failures in the Devaairn crusade. Most of this knowledge has been suppressed, but the Inquisition is currently investigating MMR and several of it's crawler-cities.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Some thoughts on using Shardminds in Dark Sun
So I'm going to be running a Dark Sun campaign in a few weeks or so, and most of my players have gone through the character creation process. I allowed (for some reason) one of my players to play a shardmind. For those unfamiliar with shardminds, they are (under 4th edition fluff anyway) pieces of a gate to the far realm that has been broken, and feel some intense obligation to fix the gate by joining back together OR kill every other shardmind in a belief that this will fix things. As well, they don't need to eat or drink.
This doesn't really work in Dark Sun.
So I've modified (read: butchered) their background. In my Dark Sun setting, they are essentially giant spellshards (A Dark Sun alternative to spellbooks; they're easier to hide than weighty tomes.) that contain ancient defiling magic of such potency it will fry a continent.
This opens up a lot of avenues for character development, plot hooks, motivations, etc.
In this setting, they are used politically in a similar fashion to how nuclear weapons were during the cold war; as deterrence. The sorcerer kings hoard them, and are loath to let anyone get their hands on one. Many small conflicts the sorcerer kings have participated in since the dawn of the Red Age have been to keep these from falling into the hands of rebel political groups and other city-states.
Another thing they may contain (rather than apocalyptic magical power) is pre-Green Age knowledge of magics and psionics, in addition to histories of peoples subjugated by the sorcerer kings. Things that if learned, could upset the balance of power one way or another.
The only way to harness this power is to sacrifice a shardmind in a 13-day long ritual under a new moon. Obviously a sentient spell container is going to be a bit hesitant about this whole thing, and the shardmind's creators took this into account when they made their creations. Thus they created 7 obsidian stones that when used correctly could control the shardmind's body. These have long since been lost in the dust that now covers the lands.
The bonds holding the magic within the shardminds have weakened somewhat over the millennia, and when they exert more control over their inherent psionic abilities, these bonds weaken further, allowing them to draw deeply from this well of chaotic power within their own bodies.
They still don't need to eat or drink or whatever, but they are pretty distinctive, and they're always being hunted by various agents of the sorcerer kings. I feel this balances out their lack of need for basic needs.
Oh, I've also sort of combined them with the Nerras from Monster Manual 3 as one race, so they have all manner of distinctive appearances, from crude mirrored humanoid shapes with no heads to shapes closer to a man's, but with harsh and crystalline features.
This doesn't really work in Dark Sun.
So I've modified (read: butchered) their background. In my Dark Sun setting, they are essentially giant spellshards (A Dark Sun alternative to spellbooks; they're easier to hide than weighty tomes.) that contain ancient defiling magic of such potency it will fry a continent.
This opens up a lot of avenues for character development, plot hooks, motivations, etc.
In this setting, they are used politically in a similar fashion to how nuclear weapons were during the cold war; as deterrence. The sorcerer kings hoard them, and are loath to let anyone get their hands on one. Many small conflicts the sorcerer kings have participated in since the dawn of the Red Age have been to keep these from falling into the hands of rebel political groups and other city-states.
Another thing they may contain (rather than apocalyptic magical power) is pre-Green Age knowledge of magics and psionics, in addition to histories of peoples subjugated by the sorcerer kings. Things that if learned, could upset the balance of power one way or another.
The only way to harness this power is to sacrifice a shardmind in a 13-day long ritual under a new moon. Obviously a sentient spell container is going to be a bit hesitant about this whole thing, and the shardmind's creators took this into account when they made their creations. Thus they created 7 obsidian stones that when used correctly could control the shardmind's body. These have long since been lost in the dust that now covers the lands.
The bonds holding the magic within the shardminds have weakened somewhat over the millennia, and when they exert more control over their inherent psionic abilities, these bonds weaken further, allowing them to draw deeply from this well of chaotic power within their own bodies.
They still don't need to eat or drink or whatever, but they are pretty distinctive, and they're always being hunted by various agents of the sorcerer kings. I feel this balances out their lack of need for basic needs.
Oh, I've also sort of combined them with the Nerras from Monster Manual 3 as one race, so they have all manner of distinctive appearances, from crude mirrored humanoid shapes with no heads to shapes closer to a man's, but with harsh and crystalline features.
Friday, September 10, 2010
An intro, I guess...?
This would be an intro, I'm Justin, 18 years old living in shitsville (Edmonton, Alberta). This blog is where I will dump game theory, tables, plans, opinion posts, and other things, not just about D&D, but about RPG's in general. Mostly right now me and my group play D&D 4e, but I am something of a fan of the Old School Renaissance that's been sweeping thee D&D community for the past couple of years.
Ahhmm. I guess that's about it, I *hope* to post on this thing on at least a semi-regular basis,so I guess have fun reading what little creative output I can manage.
edit: My group and I. Suck it, Mo!
Ahhmm. I guess that's about it, I *hope* to post on this thing on at least a semi-regular basis,so I guess have fun reading what little creative output I can manage.
edit: My group and I. Suck it, Mo!
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