Spes Magna Games

A few days ago in a Facebook group, a gamer wondered what sorts of abilities an intelligent dog might have as a player character. I didn’t offer any helpful suggestions, but what I did offer inspired the rest of this post.

Blink Dog Deities

In the Forgotten Realms, a few deities think blink dogs are special to them. This doesn’t mean that blink dogs worship those deities, but it does provide idea fodder. For example, Baravar Cloakshadow, gnomish deity of illusion and deception, honors blink dogs. The other two deities are gods of wanderers, earth, and death. Interesting, I think, and a good starting point for blink dog deities.

Bupguau

Bupgau appears as an idealized blink dog: intelligently shining eyes, lean and strong, lustrous coat of fur, et cetera. He is clearly not of mortal origin. Bupgau is the father of all blink dogs, and it is from Bupgau that blink dogs learned how to teleport. Bupgau is clever, playful, and even a bit of a trickster, but his pranks are never malicious.

Ghavau

Ghavau resembles a blink dog, but her coat is black and dusty and her fangs glow whitely. She vanishes into shadows with ease and appears without warning. Ghavau is the mother of all blink dogs. She is the protectress of the den and pups, and she also welcomes blink dogs into paradise after death.

Vufhaf

Vufhaf, son of Bupgau and Ghavau, is the brother of all blink dogs. His fur is wild, his eyes always seek, and he runs so fast that no arrow can catch him. Vufhaf teaches blink dogs the art of the hunt and the skills needed to defend the pack. He is a warrior and a provider. His battles against displacer beasts are legendary.

Blink Dog Clerics

Blink dog clerics are not common, but they do exist. A blink dog cleric seldom honors only one of the three blink dog deities. Rather, all three are paid homage at appropriate times. A blink dog cleric casts spells as a 4th-level cleric. Three special blink dog cleric spells are known to exist.

Barkskin
Level: 1st
Range: 0
Duration: Until discharged

When the blink dog cleric casts this spell and touches a creature, the spell imbues the recipient’s skin with magic. If the recipient takes damage from a melee attack, the recipient’s skin barks like an enraged dog. The creature who triggered the spell must make a saving throw versus Spells with a -2 penalty on the die roll. If the creature fails this saving throw, it flees for two turns (as if affected by cause fear).

Fetch
Level: 1st
Range: 0 (caster only)
Duration: 1 round

The blink dog cleric casts this spell and immediately teleports up to 20 feet to make an attack against a creature. If the attack succeeds, the creature takes damage as normal. The blink dog then teleports another 20 feet, taking a single object from the creature. The object must be of an appropriate size and weight so that the blink dog can carry the object in its jaws.

Heel to Heal
Level: 2nd
Range: 0
Duration: 1 turn

When the blink dog cleric completes this spell, a 5-foot-radius zone is established around the caster. The zone moves with the caster. Once per round for the duration of the spell, a creature that teleports into the zone is healed 1d6+1 points of damage.

Tags: B/X D&D, monsters, spells

Well, poo.

I had planned on an twelfth day of Christmas post, perhaps writing a bit about Twelfth Night celebrations involving wassail, wassailing, and special cakes. Obviously, that didn’t happen. Say, “La vee.”

Over the weekend, my son Christopher and I watched Zero Charisma, starring Sam Eidson as Scott Weidemeyer. (N.B. That link is to the trailer.) I’ll avoid spoilers for those who’ve not seen this 2013 independent film, but I’ll offer my two coppers after the still of a scene from the movie.

Zero Charisma is not a bad movie. It’s not a particularly good movie either, in part because it can’t seem to make up its mind what kind of movie it wants to be. Is this a parody? Sort of. Is it a comedy? Sort of. Is it a melodrama? Yeah, it’s kind of that too. Who am I supposed to be rooting for? It’s hard to tell. Most of the characters are pretty unlikeable, especially Eidson’s Scott. At times, it seems I’m supposed to pity Scott, but other times he’s so horrible that he merits scorn. The same is true for several of the supporting characters.

Scott is not a nice guy. He rains on parades. He’s dictatorial. He’s verbally abusive. He’s dishonest. He’s got a hair-trigger temper. He is, in his own estimation, a loser, and he embodies all the worst stereotypes about gamers: overweight, socially awkward, stuck in a menial job, intimidated by pretty women, and resentful of those better at things he wishes he was good at.

While watching Zero Charisma, uncertain about what the movie’s conflicting tones expected of me, I was reminded of a guy I gamed with for a short time. Let’s call this guy C.A.

Shortly after I left the Army at the end of 1992 and moved back to Houston, I got together with a few of the folks I gamed with in high school. We also roped in some new players, including C.A., who answered an ad thumbtacked to the gamer board at Nan’s Games and Comics Too. At the time, we were playing Champions, and C.A. via phone conversation seemed an enthusiastic player.

We met a Fred’s house to play. C.A. showed up, dropped off by his mother, which didn’t really raise eyebrows despite C.A. being roughly our age (that being mid-20s). Fred’s mother lived with him, and another player, Ben, lived with both his mother and grandmother, whom he helped care for. The first thing I noticed about C.A. was how familiar he looked, but I figured he might have one of those faces, so I left it alone.

It didn’t take long to figure out C.A. was a bit off kilter. His insistence on the letter of the law regarding the rules extended mostly to other characters, but not his own character (which was a sort of martial artist rubber man in the vein of Bruce Lee meets Mr. Fantastic). During non-game talk, C.A. seemed a bit too eager to either one-up the experiences of others, or else he made claims that were simply bizarre and untrue (such as his claim that he knew for a fact that H.P. Lovecraft based the Necronomicon on the “real Necronomicon”, which C.A. had read). I chalked C.A.’s behaviors up to either nervousness in a new situation or to a rather dry sense of humor that we didn’t know him well enough to quite get.

And so we gamed about once a week, and we had fun. C.A. was quirky, to be sure. He showed signs of being a bit volatile when he didn’t get his way, but can’t anyone have a bad day? He wasn’t abusive. He wasn’t violent. He more intense and stubborn, and I’m hardly one to condemn someone for being stubborn. That is a level of hypocrisy to which I do not aspire.

Some time after meeting and gaming with C.A., I figured out why he looked familiar. He had been a student at Spring Branch Senior High School at the same time I was there doing as little as possible to earn my high school diploma. I still remember the first (and possibly only) time I noticed C.A. It was in the morning in the cafeteria. He was sitting facing my direction several tables away from where I was sitting. He was reading a comic book. Two of the high school’s many third-rate thugs sauntered up to him, took the comic away, and tore it in half before laughing and walking off to congratulate each other on being jack asses. I remember feeling bad for C.A.

C.A. was a student in special education. Back then, circa 1984-1985, most students identified as needing special education services were segregated from the main student population. There were several temporary buildings (called T-shacks) behind the main school building where students in special education received instruction. From what I remember, most of the students were obviously developmentally delayed. Children with Down Syndrome, for example, seemed more common three decades ago.

C.A. was not developmentally delayed, at least not intellectually. He was a bright guy. Looking back through the lens of years of experience as a teacher, I can say with a degree of confidence that C.A. was some shade of autistic. High-functioning, to be sure, but socially quirky enough to have been identified as “disruptive to the general education learning environment” (as was the public school thinking back then).

But back to our Champions game, which was interrupted by my wedding and honeymoon. I don’t remember if we invited C.A. to the wedding. If we didn’t, that might explain what happened while my bride and I traveled to El Paso, Texas, to visit my aged grandmother who could not travel. If we didn’t, we should have. It might have made a difference (but maybe not).

We’d been out of town for a couple of days and our regular game day rolled around. A very irate C.A. called Fred. He yelled at Fred, demanding to know why I wasn’t answering the phone. Fred explained I was out of town. C.A. demanded to know when Fred was coming to pick him up for the regular game. C.A.’s mother wasn’t available for transportation, and C.A. assumed this meant Fred was responsible for picking him for the game. Fred explained there was no game because I, the GM, was out of town. Fred wasn’t much of a gossip, but he let me know enough about C.A.’s phone call that day to understand that C.A. went from very irate to verbally abusive at the top of his lungs.

We never gamed with C.A. again after that incident, and watching Sam Eidson as Scott Weidemeyer in Zero Charisma reminds me of why. But it also makes me a little sad.

Tags: gamers, movies

Merry Eleventh Day of Christmas!

Ug. I’m tired. Today was my first day back on campus after Christmas vacation (which, the observant among you will have noticed, once again ended early as there are still Days of Christmas left). I like to make a big splash after an extended time away from school, so my students got class/homework, reading assignments, and a new poem to memorize. Huzzah.

So, if you’ve not seen The Last King, you owe it to yourself to watch it. It’s a hoot, and it has without a doubt the best scenes involving good guy medieval warriors on skis fighting to save the baby heir to the throne from bad guy medieval warriors on skis. Seriously. Check out the trailer at this link.

And now a new magic item.

Skis of Travail
Wondrous item, rare (requires attunement)

These finely crafted wooden skis are each about five feet long. It requires an action to don or doff the skis, and the magic of them makes poles unnecessary. While wearing the skis, you not only treat ice and snow as normal terrain, but you gain a +10 foot bonus to your speed. You also enjoy these abilities:

• You can use your bonus action to Dash across ice and snow.
• When using the skis to move across ice and snow, foes make opportunity attacks against you with disadvantage.
• As part of your move when skiing across ice and snow, you can jump three times the normal distance, but no farther than your remaining movement would allow.

Tags: 5E D&D, Christmas, magic items, movies

Merry Ninth and Tenths Days of Christmas!

I got distracted by Things yesterday and didn’t get a post posted, which means today we get two new magic items rather than just one. How exciting.

Even though Epiphany’s official date is 6 January, Epiphany was celebrated yesterday at my parish. One of the themes of Epiphany is the invisible becoming manifest, a word the Latin roots of which lean heavily toward meaning “caught in the hand”. While you can’t catch them in the hand (because they’re PDFs), you can get four of my OGL OSR publications at a 57% discount by purchasing the Epiphany Bundle. This bundle includes these Swords & Wizardry-compatible treasures:

Demi-Human Adventurers: The Dwarf, the Elf, the Gnome, and the Halfling presented as old-school race-as-class options.

El Mariachi de Combate: The character class for those who want to combine musical prowess, dazzling showmanship, and martial skill.

The Bard: Knower of untold wonders and secrets who survives by cunning and charm. The Bard includes new spells and new magic items as well as a full character class.

The Magus: Adventure as a student of hidden star signs, dreams, and the movements of both smoke and fire. The Magus also offers several new spells.

World War Weird Classes: Add some weirdness to your WWII: Operation WhiteBox game with ten classes ranging from Demi-God to Gremlin to Zombie.

And now for two new magic mirrors!

The Manifest Mirror: This mirror is tall and wide enough to fully show two humans standing side by side in front of it. It is meant to be attached to a wall as it is far too heavy and unwieldy for easy transport. The mirror’s magic shows clearly the true reflections of invisible, ethereal, or polymorphed creatures and objects. Shape-changing creatures, such as doppelgangers and lycanthropes, have their true selves shown in the glass as well. Usable By: All Classes.

Altar Mirror of Steadfast Purpose: This sacred mirror, set into a decorative box meant to be displayed atop an altar, aids Clerics in their daily devotions. The mirror is aligned to either Law or Chaos, and only a Cleric of that alignment can benefit from the mirror. A Cleric who prays for spells before the mirror gains a +1 bonus to-hit modifier to melee attacks and a +2 bonus on saving throws against charm and fear. These bonuses last as long as the Cleric does not cast the last of his highest level spells prepared for the day, but the bonuses do not last for more than one day in any event. Usable By: Clerics.

Tags: Christmas, magic items, Swords & Wizardry

Merry Eighth Day of Christmas, and welcome to the first day of a Happy New Year!

In keeping with today’s numbers of eight and one, I’m taking a familiar theme (the monstrous spider) into new terror-tory. Well, new to me. For Christmas, I picked up Green Ronin’s Fantasy AGE Basic Rulebook and Fantasy AGE Campaign Builder’s Guide. Below is my first ever attempt at making a new monster for Fantasy AGE.

The ng’urud, a monstrous arachnid, live in arid regions, preferring rocky terrain. Intelligent and clever, it monitors game trails, paths, and roads. It prefers to hunker down, perhaps camouflaging itself with sand or scrub, bursting from its hiding spot to ambush its prey. The ng’urud usually hunt alone, but several ng’urud may band together in order to stalk and kill more effectively.

Ng’urud

Abilities (Focuses)
3 Accuracy (Bite)
0 Communication
3 Constitution (Stamina)
4 Dexterity (Stealth)
3 Fighting (Leg Spike)
0 Intelligence
2 Perception (Tracking)
4 Strength (Intimidation)
2 Willpower (Morale)

Speed 14, Health 40, Defense 14, Armor Rating 5

Attacks
Bite: +5 attack roll, 2d6+4 damage
Leg Spike: +6 attack roll, 2d6+4 damage

Special Qualities
Favored Stunts: Knock Prone, Lightning Attack (2 SP), Poison Spit (2 SP), Skirmish

Exoskeleton: The ng’urud’s hardy exoskeleton provides an AR of 5.

Frenzied Attack: The ng’urud makes one bite and one leg spike attack as a single attack action. Both of these attacks can generated stunt points.

Lightning Quick: The ng’urud performs the Lightning Attack stunt for -1 SP.

Many Legs: The Knock Prone stunt used against an ng’urud requires 1 more SP than normal to work.

Poison Spit Stunt: The ng’urud spits venom at a visible enemy within 12 yards as a special stunt costing 2 SP. The venom numbs the target’s higher brain functions and senses as well as causes searing pain. The target must make a TN 13 Constitution (Stamina) test or suffer the venom’s effects. An affected target takes 1d6 penetrating damage. The target also incurs a -2 penalty to Communication, Intelligence, and Perception, which remain until the end of the encounter or until the target receives magical healing.

Talent: Quick Reflexes (Journeyman)

Wall Crawler: The ng’urud can walk up walls and even on ceilings.

Threat: Moderate

Tags: Christmas, Fantasy AGE, monsters