State of Beyond the Wall

Hi blog.  I'm sorry I neglected you.  It's been a hot minute since my last update and simultaneously a lot and not much of anything has happened.  I got very sick, had Christmas, worked a lot, roleplayed very little, bought a bunch of new dice, moved, and got a cat.  She's pretty.  The cat is partially blind and totally deaf, so her name is Hellen Keller.

Also, every picture of her looks like she's possessed by Satan...a definite plus.

On the gaming front, my group finished a half year long campaign in a highly unsatisfactory way, mostly because a lot of the interest in the game had waned (especially from the GM quadrant) and nobody's schedules seemed to be meshing well.  We had a one shot game of Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures over spring break (I'll get into that game later), and tried to play Legend of the Five Rings, but scheduling conflicts completely ruined that.  We also tried to play another game of Pathfinder run by my friend, Jacob.  It ended up being an extremely abstract game world with somewhat ill defined characters and we all got confused.  The game is now "on hold."

The one shot for Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures was pretty fantastic.  First off, the game is hands down my favorite Open Gaming License quasi OD&D retroclone.  It's dead simple (no attacks of opportunity).  Skills are handled by rolling under the applicable stat (with a +2 on the stat if you have the applicable skill), attack and defense are handled as normal with the D20 system.  There are destiny points to do things like re-roll, and the entire system is scaled back so that it is less complex and characters are far less powerful than most D20 games.  The two real pieces of genius, however, come from the magic system and character creation.  Magic in Beyond the Wall is not Vancian but divided into three types of magic: Rituals, Spells, and Cantrips (and is not broken down into Arcane and Divine).  Spellcasters can cast infinite Rituals and Cantrips per day, but have to roll under the appropriate stat (and spend time and spell components on Rituals) to make sure the magic doesn't go haywire.  Spells can be cast at the rate of once per level per day (so a third level character can cast three spells per day) before they are tapped out of their magical reserves.  

Character creation is the best part of Beyond the Wall.  There are three classes, Warrior, Mage, and Rogue, but each class has several "Playbooks" such as The Reformed Bully (Warrior), Witch's Apprentice (Mage), and The Young Woodsman (Rogue) as well as playbooks for hybrid classes such as The Young Templar (Warrior/Mage) and The Gifted Dilettante (Rogue/Mage).  Each Playbook has a packet of tables that you roll on to determine facets of your character's backstory, special starting weapons/equipment/allies/pieces of knowlege, relationship with the other characters, and skills and spells.  Almost every roll gives you a +1 or +2 on a stat so that you can't min max stats.  Each roll is dripping with flavor.  Your character could get the childhood trait "All children fight, but you never lost."  You could end up having thwarted a barbarian invasion through guile with "the help of the player on your right," or even end up with a pet bear (the Assistant Beast Keeper playbook is awesome) or a wife (looking at you, The Village Hero).  

The print version from DriveThruRPG is literally all the game packets jammed together in a hardcover.  It's possibly the only game I do not prefer in dead tree version.

It does have some wonky bits.  It uses oldschool saves (Vs breath weapon, polymorph, etc), but has rules to substitute Fortitude, Reflex, and Will.  It has race as class for Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings (in a seperate, PDF only packet), which I do not like.  However, those playbooks are really cool and flavorful, so I can almost give it a pass.  It also has a pretty awful print version.  The game is broken up into packets (character creation, monsters, spells, and a PDF for each playbook) which make it really easy to navigate in PDF form.  The hardcover is the core packets simply printed and put in a hardcover.  They are still paginated in packets, so there are like 4 page 1s and no index.  It's annoying.  Still, the book is small enough that it is navigable, but I'd recommend PDFs for this.  I did print out all the playbooks to pass around the table though.  

My one shot was a simple horror story, which this game lends itself to quite well due to the low power level and focus on spirits and unique versions of classic foes like goblins and demons in the small bestiary.  My group was pretty slap happy and goofy and ran amok.  Much fun was had by all.  It was a blast, but nothing to write home about or really inspire anything.  It did feature an aspect of the fantasy world I've been creating, but I plan on writing about that for future posts so that I can get back into this whole blogging thing.  

For now, I promise I'm back into this posting thing.  More will follow.

It Is Called Dungeons & DRAGONS, After All...

As someone who has very little experience with dragons in games (surprising after 13 odd years of play), I have decided that I very much dislike the standard metallic/chromatic dragons that are presented by the standard D&D bestiaries.  Sure, I love black dragons and their swampy maliciousness.  I love brass dragons for their quizzical loquatiousness too, and I highly enjoy copper dragons, but the rest tend to not inspire as much as I'd like.  Luckily, it seems like there is a neverending stream of other dragons from elsewhere, and while a lot of them I find intensely lame (heloooo gem dragons), most are awesome.

Rust dragons are easily my second favorite dragon.

I like dragons in two categories: alien superintelligences and ravening dumb monsters.  Too often, they're some watered down middle ground (white dragons have intelligences higher than most wizards, spells, and speak a bunch of languages, and yet are described as feral beasts).  While ravening dumb monsters are awesome though, it really cuts into the true impact of dragons.  Dragons as super-villain, almost godlike beings who would as soon snack on the puny, dumb humans as consort with them.  Many can polymorph into humanoid shapes as well, meaning there can be awesome reveals as to who the bad guy is.

Another factor in the horror of dragons is their destructive potential.  Aside from the fact that they're giant reptiles with teeth and claws and tails that can level houses, they have breath weapons, and spells.  Some even have multiple breath weapons.  I love the fact that a dragon can level a party, but most of my favorite dragons have ways of mutilating a party aside from draining their hit points.  Rust dragons destroy their stuff, shadow dragons drain levels, and my favorite dragons, brine dragons, drain Strength and bring pain.

Look at this majestic beast!

While technically an aquatic dragon, my favorite place for brine dragons are inland salt lakes.  One of my favorite villains I've ever run was a brine dragon by the name of Riozzo.  My group collaboratively designed a game world to run a collaboratively DMed series of games in.  The world, Everith, was a gas giant with floating islands of land.  There were airships, and it was a space-opera-ey type game except without the space part and with 100% more D&D (technically Pathfinder).  The second of our games was on a moon called Batham.  Batham touched the atmosphere of Everith and had its own life forms and ecology.  One of the main points of history was a war between the Inevitables (Law) and Proteans (Chaos).  Riozzo was subcontracted by the forces of law, and was the guardian of their towers on the edge of a salt lake crater.

Now, that was thousands of years before our campaign.  The war between law and chaos subsided and died off.  Riozzo devoted himself to the studies of the universe (physics, time control, astronomy, and alchemy), awaiting the time he would be called back to the war and setting things in motion in his own way.  From beyond the stars, he brought many strange lifeforms, experimenting on them, and, once he had learned all he cared to from them, set them as guardians around his caldera home.  He was the stately figure that loosed his Akata hounds to feed on the town I mentioned in my favorite NPC post, and eventually became something of a looming presence in that campaign.  Riozzo has also appeared in other campaign worlds of mine.  I justify it by him plane hopping as immensely powerful beings are wont to do.  

Honestly, the fact that he surpassed the simple stats of an ancient wyrm brine dragon is the reason he's my favorite, but salt as a simultaneously corrosive and purifying agent played for some important imagery for him and my way of justifying his actions. 

Humans

First off, sorry.  Pokemon has taken over my life, blah blah blah.  On to the challenge.

Humans are my favorite humanoid.  A) everyone knows what they are.  B) they are endlessly mutable.  C) extra feats and skill points (in D20 systems) are great.  And D) it's easy to slip into a "human" mindset, because I already have one.  Need random townsfolk or a horrifying cult?  Got it.  Humans are the baseline by which all other races are measured, therefore they're overlooked often.  As with other overlooked things (i.e. cats), I like using them to blow peoples' minds.  

Seriously, who is going to pay attention to the guy on the end?

One of my favorite tricks with humans is in a setting with a hidden bad guy and several possibilities as to who it could be, for example, a high council.  Describe everyone the exact same, just point out races.  It's a guarantee that the human is the second to last one the players will suspect (after the Aasimar).  But anyways, this is a short post, because there's not much else for me to bring to the table.  

What Is My Favorite Grass Type...

First off, this post is late because of Pokemon X.  I would say I'm sorry, except I'm really not.  My inner child gets crotchety when he doesn't get let out to play, and he kinda flipped out with unadulterated glee about a new version of Pokemon, and he was also not happy about having to wait until payday to get it.  As a quick review, if you like Pokemon, get it.  It's fantastic.  I get to have Squirtle in my team almost from the get go again, and that makes me so happy I will forgive any and all sins the game has (which are few and exceptionally minor).  I knew I was getting Squirtle soon on, so, unlike most versions I did not go with the water type starter.  The only other exception was Black and White where I went with the super adorable fire pig, Tepig.  I went with a grass starter for the first time ever, and Chespin has been cute and pretty damn powerful so far.  I could seriously gush about this forever, but I want to get this blog post done so I can go back to playing it.

Chespin!

Luckily for me, grass type starters kinda tie into today's blog topic which is about which elemental or plant is my favorite.  I've mentioned how I don't really like elementals as outsiders, and I don't really dig them that much in general.  That leaves plants, and I really do have a favorite.  I love me some Treants.  I'm a huge Tolkien fan, and have always loved the Ents, and Treants really are just D&D Ents.  They're also huge, cool, and really brutal to have to fight.

I love treants...

Here's the kicker with this though; I have never used a treant in a game that I have run.  I've only encountered them a precious handful of times.  In fact, treants and assassin vines are the only two plant types I've ever encountered in games, and I hate assassin vines because they always kill my character or nearly kill my character.  The biggest run in I've had with a treant was with the undead lord cleric mentioned in my undead post.  Benny, my juju zombie minion was constantly killed by a rogue treant every time we went near his woods.  Said treant disliked poor Benny because he was an "abomination," and eventually ended up being the poor zombie's complete undoing after grinding him to an un-resurrectable pulp.  And that is that.  

Here's another treant for the road.

Outsider

Outsiders are freaking awesome.  Of course, they also have the largest range of types, because they can be just about anything.  From demons to angels to fire spirits to horrors from beyond the stars, outsiders have a giant depth of possibilities.  The question for today also lumped immortals into the mixture, which further convolutes my choices, because I do love some Dorian Grey style immortality, but I'm going to stay away from those.  It feels like cheating picking something that is a unique creature.  That's also why I'm going to eschew picking my favorite Demon lord, Demogorgon, although he's awesome and a half.  I mean, look at the picture below.  You'd expect that to be a feral beast.  He has an intelligence that makes most high level spellcasters look like Forrest Gump.  Love. It.

So cool.  

Now that I've ruled out unique creatures, I'm gonna also rule out elementals.  They tend to be presented very simply and are thus boring.  While demons (and devils and daemons and whatever nonsense category they're in this week) are my favorite category by far, because I like the bad guys, my favorite outsider is actually a good one.  Lawful good, in fact.  My favorite outsider is the Hound Archon.  First off, they can turn into dogs.  That immediately makes them awesome surprise guests.  Remember that dog that you've seen around town?  Surprise, kids, he turns into a Hound Archon and smacks you down for breaking into that potion shop last week!  One of my friend's games used a Hound Archon in dog form following us around as a guardian from the gods.  It was sweet when the big reveal came.

Wanna play fetch with your head?

On top of that, Hound Archons are pretty beastmode combatants.  For a low-mid level monster, they hit pretty hard, have a decent armor class, are super mobile (at will greater teleport), and with darkvision, low-light vision, scent, and at will detect evil, and an awesome perception bonus, it's hard to get away from them.  Their spell like abilities add some nice utility as well, and, in general, they're a really good option for a fight or ally.  They don't outshine the party usually as an NPC who helps the party along.  In short, they're exactly what a holy enforcer should be. Plus, they're dogs.  They're adorable. 

Animals and vermin are an often under appreciated group of monsters.  Sure, the Druids get their wolf animal companions, and every party runs afoul of some worgs or a leopard or something.  Animals are ubiquitous in RPG settings.  Horses get at least low level parties from place to place, towns have an abundance of chickens and cows or whatnot, and every forest has deer to hunt, but animals are never all that scary.  Even in cinema, a place were all sorts of every day stuff gets creepy, animals really don't have a true niche for horror.  Sure, there's Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds and Cujo and...well, I guess it could be expanded a bit more if we included were beasts, but I'm not.

This movie still scares the shit out of me.

My animal of choice for Dungeon Master usage, however, is the well known, unassuming, and absolutely adorable common cat, Felis catus.  Sure, there's the whole fantasy trope of witches having black cats, and I do enjoy playing off of that, and talking cats are a big deal in certain milieus, but there's something amazing about using cats to set the mood.  If there's a cat purring by the fire, people tend to take that piece of scenery as a clue to get comfortable.  If a cat hisses at an NPC, it's an immediate tell that there's something amiss.  Feral cats in a run down area add to the feel of decrepitude, and having a cat dart off when they fail a perception check ratchets up the tension quite nicely.  My favorite use of cats, however, is as a monster.

Not like this...

One of (I believe) my most successful on the fly episodes was started by one of my players telling me that he wasn't going to be present for the upcoming session of my Pathfinder game right in the middle of what I was hoping would be an epic multi session chase.  I had to improvise.  I had been reading stuff from The SCP Foundation (which is seriously one of the most amazingly creepy things to read ever), and stumbled across the crazy cat lady article.  After freaking out completely when several feral cats started fighting on my front porch (I was reading the article at 2am), I realized what had to be done.  I pulled out some sweet templates, designed a mini dungeon, and worked out a challenge appropriate super unique monster.

The session began with the characters waking up to find their friend had disappeared.  They found his tracks leading away from the camp joined by a set of cat footprints.  They followed the tracks into a canyon, and, as they went further and further down, the rogue bringing up the back noticed that there were cats following them.  Lots of cats.  Hundreds of cats.  Their horses had run off into the canyons in a previous session, and as they tracked their friend, they came across the corpse of one of their horses.  For those of you who do not know, cats will eat larger animals.  Y'know, like people.  The horse had been stripped of most of its flesh.  A successful Knowledge (Nature) check revealed most of the teeth marks to be cats.  The horde of cats watched them make this grizzly discovery.  

Cats can be rather unnerving.

The party hastened on, eventually coming to the mouth of a cave with a small, wooden door.  Their friend's footsteps led inside, and they also realized that they were surrounded.  The only place not crawling with cats was (hopefully) inside the cave.  They entered and shut the door behind them only to be met by the stench of cat piss and a screeching, scarcely comprehensible woman.  One of the players knocked her out and killed her, and that was when the cats outside started yowling and scrabbling against the door.  Small furry bodies started thudding against the door, and claws began to scratch away the wood.  

That was pretty much the moment all the players started panicking, and once the cats scratched through the bottom of the door and started swarming them (using the D20 swarm templates to completely eff things up) they kinda fell apart.  It was a miracle they survived with the complete lack of teamwork they showed.  Two players hit other players with their burning hands sprays, and it was only someone knocking a bookcase against the door to stem the tide that got them out of deep crap.  Going out was obviously not going to happen, and so they ventured inwards.  They had a choice of two tunnels, and a deep, throbbing, spine shaking purring from one of them made them rush down the other.  

They discovered that the long tunnel they'd headed down led to a room full of sand and cat poop.  It also had a large pile of dead, decomposing stillborn kittens in the corner (yes, I went there and now have a special circle of Hell).  The far wall had a large, wooden grate, and, with the purring they'd heard earlier getting closer, they managed to knock it off its mooring enough to squeak through in time to see a giant hulking cat like form enter the room behind them.  Freaking out, they headed on.  The next room they found was a room full of metal cages which they though were empty until a pile of straw in the corner of one of them moved.  It was a dirty, scrawny, terrified, half mad humanoid. 

Whatever it was started ranting at them that the big cat monster was controlling the woman and the other cats, and he was here to breed a new one of her when she was ready to go.  He wasn't overly clear on the last part, wouldn't get out of the cage (he was terrified of the cats), and begged them to kill him.  They ended up mercy killing him and moving on.  The next room (and a dead end) they found helped clear up some of the confusion with the whole "breed a new one" where they found the preserved, mummified corpses of clones of the old woman in various stages of decomposition alongside alchemical supplies.  

After smashing stuff, they worked up the nerve to go back, afraid to spend the night to rest because they'd glimpsed several small holes that cats could get in through.  I'd also been hyping up the grossness of layers of cat fur and dander everywhere and saying that they were sneezing and their eyes were watering and that their leather armor would probably forever take on the smells of cat piss.  Y'know, environment stuff.

Basically, it was a dungeon inspired by an episode of Hoarders.

They backtracked to find the giant purring monster waiting for them.  It was a hulking mass of matted fur and rotting flesh and fangs and green glowing eyes that smelled of cat and piss and rot.  They battled it long in those caves and finally hacked it to pieces and hastened on.  Shortly thereafter, they managed to find their way out, find a holding area with their friend, and get away.  The cat swarms had dispersed with the death of their god and his priestess, and the canyon was made a little safer for a time.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I love using cats in RPGs.

Beauty Is In The Eye

Today's blog entry for the challenge asks what my favorite aberration is.  Now, I've not experimented much with Aberrations in my games, mostly because they're mid to high level monsters, and most games don't last that long.  Plus, aberrations aren't that easy to work into all games.  Aboleths are aquatic, and most of the rest are underground dwelling, antisocial, monsters that don't fit in with society.  Mind flayers are really neat and all, and I've used them to some effect in the past, but they're iconic, and people expect the same thing out of them every time I've ever run them.  Unfortunately, they're pigeonholed like all aberrations into just being monsters despite having cool ecologies.

Mind flayers are basically mini Cthulhu.

There is one aberration though that, while pigeonholed as monster, thrives on those grounds.  They are the floating bags of eyeballs and fun that are beholders.  As one of the Dungeons & Dragons classic monsters (like mind flayers), beholders have unfortunately not crossed over into other games like Pathfinder and Lamentations of the Flame Princess where they are sorely missed.  Luckily, the conversions aren't that hard, so there are fan made "eye beasts" that terrorize adventurers, but since they're not printed in a book, it's not the same.  There's not full color glossy art next to a stat block in a pretty hardback outside of what Wizards of the Coast puts out.

Awesome art like this.

That also means that it's nearly impossible to find a good miniature for them.  Reaper makes an "eye fiend" mini, but it has tentacle legs and doesn't float so it isn't the same.  Wizard's D&D minis line has a few, but like much of that line, they're either hard to find, expensive, corny, or all three.  Plus those plastic minis have crappy bases and don't stand up well.  Que sera.  I don't use minis much anyways, but I like having them on the occasions that I do.  Plus they're pretty on my shelves.

And the one from Reaper is pretty cool...

The great draw of beholders is their eye rays.  Sure, there's a pre-set list of what eyes do what, but that's beyond easy to switch out, and it's awesome to see a player's face when an eye does something that isn't in the book.  They also completely screw over parties.  Back the beholder into a corner, turn the central eye and its antimagic field on the spellcasters, and let the eye rays or high damage mouth deal with the fighters and rogues and rangers.  They can't be flanked because of the eyes, meaning rogues do crap against them anyways, and fighters fail the necessary will saves from eye beams with alacrity.  Paladins are one of the few threats, and an antimagic field and some munching from the outset do pretty well for them.

They even have ecology and different breeds if a GM feels the need to include all that.  The AD&D Monstrous Manual details much of it and most of the breeds, making it a good read.  Dealing with beholder culture means quite high level characters though, so it's not something I've found much use for.  Still, as bosses of a dungeon, cool enemies controlling kobold tribes, or a wandering beasty on a foggy, ruin covered moor, beholders are freaking awesome.  

This party is probably screwed.