In the jungles and swamps of Lamarakh live vinegarroons - voracious scorpion-like hunters. Most are smaller than a man's hand, and eat small insects. But others grow to the size of bears, and attack anything greater than 2' in size. They are eight legged and armed with strong pincers and long whip-like tails.
Vinegarroons take their name from the acetic acid they produce, which has a pungent, not unpleasant vinegarish smell. This odour is a tell-tale sign of danger, which those growing up in Lamarakh are well aware of. Travellers, however, may find the scent attractive - and this is usually their downfall.
Giant vinegarroons lair in caves and tree-hollows, but they like to lie in ambush, either buried under a layer of soil or hiding in a tree. They are astonishingly agile for their size and fast climbers. Whether up in the branches or under the soil, they surprise their opponents on a roll of 1-4, rather than the usual 1-2, and are only themselves surprised on a roll of 1. They have very poor eyesight, and rely on their two very long feelers - usually up to three times the length of their body - to sense prey. If they are waiting in a tree the feelers will be disguised as hanging creepers; if they are lurking underground the feelers will be hidden beneath leaf litter. As soon as something comes close, the vinegarroon strikes, jumping out of hiding and attacking with pincers and tail. If both pincer attacks hit, the tail attack is at +2 to hit.
Vinegarroons use their acid for defence. If seriously threatened they can spray a burst of the substance out from the abdomen. This blast covers a wide area and burns metal and skin, causing 1d8 damage to anything within a 5 yard radius and permanently damaging armour by d2 points.
Giant Vinegarroon
Armour Class: 2
Hit Dice: 4 (L)*
Move: 150' (50')
Attacks: 2 claws/1 tail, or Acid Spray
Damage: 1d10/1d10/1d6, or 1d8 (special)
No. Appearing: 1
Save As: F3
Morale: 10
Treasure Type: V
Intelligence: 0
Alignment: Neutral
XP Value: 125
So spring is here, the cherry blossoms are beginning to bloom, everybody is out drinking in the parks; this is the only three-week period of the year in which Tokyo could be described as beautiful.
It's got me thinking about the passage of seasons. Calendars, you see, are generally one of those things that I despise in an rpg setting. Too much opportunity for piddly annoying book keeping and confusion. ("In my setting, there are 10 months, six of which have 46 days, three have 30 days, and one has 15! They're called Janubacky, Februbacky, Mar..z.z..z...zzzz...") And when are they ever really used? "The Baron of Snoozeville expects you to be back on the fifth doy of Octobacky, and not a waak later."
But what if each season brought with it something unusual? For example, here in Japan the seasons have rather distinct flavours - snow in winter, cherry blossoms in spring, sweat in summer, and red leaves and cedar pollen in autumn. (I used to think of this as an annoying Japanese cliche, because it's not as if Japan is the only country in the world with four seasons, but what's certainly true is that the seasons here have very distinct beginnings and ends, as if somebody up in the sky is flipping switches on and off.) It isn't a great stretch to imagine some sort of extreme climatic change bringing with it game-affecting side-effects. For example:
- In spring, a certain tree begins giving off a pungent pollen which causes dwarves to become sexually active.
- In autumn, the dragons are out in force looking for food to build up fat reserves for their winter hibernation.
- In winter, colder temperatures in the valleys allow frost giants to raid further into civilised areas.
- In summer, swarms of cockroaches scour the land of food, causing localised famine. Some varieties even eat flesh, and strip the weak and old down to the bone.
And so on. What's clearly needed is a table of random seasonal effects, isn't it?
The Yellow City sits at the mouth of the God River. It gets its name from the curious sandstone from which it is built, which seems to glow an amberish shade in the sunlight. It has a mixed population of humans, slug people and crabmen, who form three discrete castes, with slug people at the top and crabmen at the bottom. It is known as a city of assassins, poisoners, alchemists and priests.
Here are a few Yellow City NPCs.
Abhijit the Victorious is a retired club-fighter who, as the name suggests, was undefeated in his ten years in the pit. Now grown fat and rendered half-mad by poppy narcosis and old head injuries, he survives on the good will of his old fans.
Nabendu, whose mouth is black is an alchemist, who has the unfortunate tendency of trying to taste all of the potions he creates. This long ago rendered his lips, teeth and tongue black. But his prices are reasonable, and as long as he is still alive his customers can trust that the potion he is selling is not deadly.
Old Luulaalaali is a fortune teller in the largest of the Yellow City's bazaars. She* uses the traditional slug people method of fortune telling, which involves trailing mucus on the ground and having the customer try to describe the shapes it makes.
Vardhan, Worm Breeder is a breeder of velvet worms, particularly the small, colourful varieties used as pets. Secretly he also breeds assassin worms for a select clientele. He is soft spoken and makes barely a sound when he moves; it is often noted that over the years his character has come to somewhat resemble that of his 'children'.
Dimdaalo Jen is an importer of poppy seeds from the Hundred Kingdoms, and runs a large opium den above a tea-shop. As a slug person one* does not partake in the smoking oneself, but usually sits quietly in a corner, watching the debauchery. One is accompanied everywhere by two human eunuch slaves from Lamarakh, fat and muscular, armed with machetes.
Dipika the Sly is an ex-whore who now plies her trade as an assassin. Exquisitely ugly and lacking one eye, she is in high demand because of her expert knowledge of blow pipes and darts.
The Fat Crab has the unusual distinction of having earned a nickname from the humans and slug people living in the Yellow City. Crabmen are usually ignored, but the Fat Crab displays an unusual intelligence and malevolence, and has gained a certain infamy. He runs one of the crabmen ghettoes which run down from the city to the shore, and organises his people to kill any foreigner who enters. There are rumours that his followers occasionally kidnap humans from the areas nearby their ghetto, to be dismembered alive for sport.
*Slug people are hermaphroditic. By convention some choose to be known as 'he' and some as 'she'; others prefer to be referred to as 'one' or 'it'.
Back in the early days of this blog, I wrote two posts on random events at weddings and funerals. Here's one for births. It can be used at any time an NPC (or PC!) has a baby and the DM is casting about for an adventure hook. On the day of labour, roll a d20 and consult the following table.
1 - The baby has red eyes and clammy skin, and does not smile. There's really something not quite right about it...
2-5 - The baby is terribly weak. The midwife believes it will only survive if it can be given a regular supply of a certain herb, which is only found high up in the nearby mountains.
6-10 - The baby disappears from its cot the following night, despite being in the same room as its parents.
11-13 - Judging by its appearance, the baby is quite clearly not the "father"'s. He's the only one who apparently hasn't realised this.
14-16 - The mother becomes convinced over the following few days that her baby has been replaced by a changeling (this can be true or false: DM's choice).
17-18 - Whenever the baby is in the room, small objects seem to move of their own accord.
19 - Sometimes, when the baby is asleep, a dark and ethereal figure can be seen lurking in a corner. It disappears almost as soon as it is noticed.
20 - The baby has a pair of wings.
Max recently put up a post asking for homebrew campaign setting descriptions of 25 words or less. My effort, in the comments, wasn't very good. It occurred to me that using full sentences was a waste of words, because you have to use inconvenient prepositions and articles. So here's my 25 word Yoon-suin sentenceless breakdown:
Tibet, yak ghosts, ogre magi, mangroves, Nepal, Arabian Nights, Sorcery!, Bengal, invertebrates, topaz, squid men, slug people, opiates, slavery, human sacrifice, dark gods, malaise, magic.
How's that?
As there are no mammals in the southern parts of Yoon-suin, the people living there have been forced to rely on domesticated giant invertebrates. Many of the most common are varieties of the velvet worm. Three are described below.
Giant Brown Velvet Worm, also known as the Spit Worm, the Hound Worm and the Fanged Worm.
This stealthy hunter is eight to ten feet in length and a voracious hunter. Wild, it prowls the mangroves and jungle at night, searching for prey. Domesticated, it is used as a guard and war-beast. Like all velvet worms it is single-minded and brutish; it will attempt to kill and eat more or less anything it comes across. Spit worm handlers therefore raise the creatures from birth to associate certain pheremones with poison, and protect themselves from attack from their own worms by smearing those pheremones on their skin.
Like all types of velvet worm, spit worms are silent and fast, but also practically deaf and almost blind. They sense entirely by scent and touch. As they prowl, their long feelers (known as 'lips' to their handlers) move this way and that, attempting to detect prey. As soon as a potential victim is detected, the spit worm immediately raises its head and sprays two coils of a noxious glue-like substance from nozzles beneath its mouth. This glue immediately binds the prey, paralyses it, and partially digests it, and the spit worm begins to eat it alive.
Spit worms are nocturnal, and sleep during the day. They are impossible to detect at night - opponents are always surprised.
Armour Class: 4Hit Dice: 6*Move: 150' (50')
Attacks: 1 bite or 1 glue spray
Damage: 2d6 or paralysis (save vs. poison)
No. Appearing: 1
Save as: F6
Morale: 7
Treasure Type: Nil
Intelligence: 1
Alignment: Neutral
XP: 500
Blue Velvet Worm, also known as the Assassin Worm.
This tiny creature, only two inches long at most, is used by the assassins and murderers of the Yellow City to dispose of their enemies. Wild, the assassin worm hides in dark places waiting to ambush prey. As the tool of an assassin it is usually deposited inside a shoe, pocket or bed, so that it can bite an unsuspecting hand or foot. Its toxin is among the deadliest known, and there is no antidote. Victims are doomed to an hour of excruciating itching pain before death.
Armour Class: 8
Hit Dice: 1 hp
Move: 60' (20')
Attacks: 1 bite
Damage: Fatal, no save.
No. Appearing: 1
Save as: F1
Morale: 7
Treasure Type: Nil
Intelligence: 1
Alignment: Neutral
XP: 6Giant Leopard Worm, sometimes known as the Riding Worm.
This is the largest domesticable velvet worm in the Sandurbans. The fact that it often grows larger than 12 feet in length, and the ease with which it can be manipulated by pheremones, means that it can be used as a steed in battle (though it is unsuitable for long journeys). This takes considerable skill, as leopard worms have none of the intrinsic empathy of a horse. About all a rider can hope for is to point his steed in the direction of an enemy, and then cling on.
The leopard worm does not spit, but relies on its speed and ferocity to capture prey. It therefore relies less on stealth, unlike its relatives, and is diurnal. It has rudimentary eyes which can sense movement.
Armour Class: 3
Hit Dice: 9
Move: 180' (60')
Attacks: 1 bite
Damage: 2d8
No. Appearing: 1
Save as: F9
Morale: 7
Treasure Type: Nil
Intelligence: 1
Alignment: Neutral
XP: 900
Because for my work and research I spend most of the day on the internet, I do rather a lot of trawling through rpg-related forums and blogs. (This is about the only perk of spending day after day in front of a computer.) And because people who post on forums and blogs about rpgs are an ornery lot, this boils down to reading lots of amusingly vitriolic flamewars. (rpg.net is the indisputed king of these, though the rpgsite has its moments.) A waste of time, perhaps, but no more so than watching Japanese TV, and occasionally more educational and edifying.
A common theme running through these flamewars is that an awful lot of problems get blamed on rpg systems, when really the fault is with the players. I call this the Forgetting That One Shouldn't Behave Like A Dick Head phenomenon.
Some examples might help to illustrate:
1. Older versions of D&D are bad, because they rely on individual DMs' judgement, and this means that players who "get on with the DM" or can "convince him to rule in their favour" have an unfair advantage. Often presented by fans of 3e and 4e, which supposedly leave less to each individual DM's judgement and are thus "fairer". This is a not actually a problem with older versions of D&D. It is a problem of DMs and players behaving like dick heads and being biased and easily swayed or excessively manipulative, respectively.
2. D&D 4e is bad, because it forces everybody to do things a certain way - if you are a Warlord you have to do this or that in combat, and if you don't, other players will accuse you of failing to properly fulfill your role and not being a team player. Again, not in fact a problem with 4e, but a problem of players behaving like dick heads and being inflexible and mandarin.
3. Cyberpunk 2020 is bad, because you can manipulate character generation and equipment a certain way and create characters who are virtually indestructible killing machines. Not in fact a problem with Cyberpunk 2020, but a problem of players behaving like dick heads and trying to create munchkin characters to ruin everybody else's enjoyment rather than just participate in a fun game.
4. The Rust Monster is bad, because DMs use it to spoil players' fun by destroying all their hard-earned magic items. Not in fact a problem with the Rust Monster, but a problem of DMs behaving like dick heads by deliberately trying to piss off their players, and also of players behaving like dick heads and being cry babies and forgetting that it's just a game.
You get my drift, anyway. As a rule I tend not to read much 'GMing advice' on blogs, because I think it all boils down to something rather simple: play with cool people who are your friends, not dick heads, and don't be a dick head yourself. Mostly it all works out fine from that initial foundation.
An occasional series which stats-out and re-imagines the creatures found on Fighting Fantasy book covers.
Number 5: Gwillick and The Eater
Gwillick is a diminutive, scrawny being, probably human, who roams the wilderness and ruins of the Eastern Wastes, alone save for a companion who he calls 'The Eater'. This is a dinosaur, who Gwillick apparently managed to tame some years ago. Armoured like a stegosaur and with a similarly powerful tail, it is carnivorous, with a mouth full of shark-like teeth.
Gwillick is a cannibalistic, sociophathic murderer, who has never been able to fit into society and has long given up trying. The Eater is probably the only living being he has ever met whose mentality is anywhere close to his own: vicious, mean, unsubtle and voracious. Together they hunt for human prey, who they devour together.
Gwillick will generally try to kill and eat anybody travelling the Wastes who he believes is weaker than himself (and The Eater), and will avoid or try to bargain with those who are stronger. He has a practiced eye and is reasonably good at judging his own capabilities, and the DM should take this into account.
Gwillick carries a magical sword, which is an ego weapon (+2) with an Intelligence of 8, and the ability to detect magic and find secret doors. Gwillick stole it years ago, before his self-imposed exile from human society. The sword was the family heirloom of a Baron who Gwillick was employed by as a dog handler. The Baron died (apparently of consumption, though poison was suspected) and Gwillick was never seen in the region again; nor was the sword.
Gwillick the Cannibal
Armour Class: 4
Hit Dice: 6*
Move: 90' (30')
Attacks: 2
Damage: By weapon (Sword +2)
No. Appearing: 1
Save as: F6
Morale: 7
Treasure Type: V
Intelligence: 10
Alignment: Chaotic
XP: 500
The Eater
(Medium Armoured Land Dinosaur)
Armour Class: 1
Hit Dice: 9*
Move: 90' (30')
Attacks: 1 bite/1 tail
Damage: 1d6/2d4
Trample Damage: 2d8
No. Appearing: 1
Save As: F5
Morale: 6
Treasure: Nil
Intelligence: 1
Alignment: Neutral
XP: 1,600
Stephen Fry once remarked that a newspaper columnist should be allowed, just once in his career, to write a column about not having anything to write a column about. In similar vein, this is the only time I'm going to write an entry in this blog about writing other blog entries.
That is, I'm thinking about doing some interviews in the spirit of (read: shameless rip-off of) Norman Geras' famous Friday morning normblog profiles - short profiles of other bloggers and regular commenters, though naturally to do with role playing games. Much more in-depth, inspiring and interesting than "What games do you like?" and "Do you like being a GM or a player?"
I have two corollary questions:
1 - As a reader, would this be something you'd like to see once a week or so (maybe every Friday or something), or would you rather just have the usual patented Daily Esoteric Nonsense Tangentially Related to Role Playing Games from the mind of yours truly?
2 - Would you like to be interviewed? I'm not interested in doing this with just the 'famous' bloggers; so long as you feel that you are interesting and have interesting things to say about games, and that other people might want to hear those things, please drop me a line. The address is jean.delumeau AT gmail DOT com.
Addendum: this does not mean that I'm running out of things to say and in need of filler, so never fear. As I'm sure you are aware by now, I can write reams of this tripe indefinitely.
As a rule, I'm not a fan of vampires. The whole idea never captured my imagination even as a child, and ever since Anne Rice and Vampire: The Masquerade the things have had this awful veneer of supposed 'coolness' and a geek cache that I loathe so much I can't adequately put it into words. Skinny bisexual spoiled rich kids are not cool - they're ANNOYING.
But I like the idea of politican-as-vampire, and I think that White Wolf missed a trick in going down the teenagers-and-ennui route. (Financially they didn't miss a trick, but in noisms' Ranking of Good Games they certainly did, and we all know which of those is the more important.) I really think there's great potential for a game about vampires in the Corridors of Power, whether in Westminster, Capitol Hill, the Diet, or whatever country you prefer. I say this mainly because vampires and politicians are practically indistinguishable from one another, but also because I just saw the film Il Divo, the story of Giulio Andreotti, three-time Italian Prime Minister, who happened to bear a striking resemblance to Count Orlok of Nosferatu fame - both in looks and personality. This then reminded me of Michael Howard, one time Home Secretary in one of Margeret Thatcher's cabinets, who famously resembles a vampire, not least in having Romanian ancestry. (Anne Widdecombe once offhandedly remarked that "there is something of the night about him" - one of the most notorious comments a British politician has ever made about another.)
I think some political systems would be more amenable to this sort of game. The Japanese Diet, and the Italian Parliament, with their well known ties to organised crime, would be the easiest to envisage being populated by vampires. The more open British and American systems, with their intense media scrutiny, perhaps not so much. (Although trying to maintain a blood habit while avoiding the prying noses of journalists could be a great game in and of itself.) Play could revolve around all kinds of corruption and derring-do - from assassination of rivals to bribery to tabloid indiscretion. I think I'd be more inclined to use a diceless system to run it, though - maybe Amber (if I ever get around to properly reading it) or Nobilis.
Or perhaps Risus...
