Spes Magna Games

Speaking of ShadowDark (which I did a bit last post), I’ve started working on a new Spes Magna Games project, the first one in quite awhile, that combines my fondness for folklore and my occasional mania for making monsters.

The Denham Tracts are a collection of mid-nineteenth century English pamphlets collected into a single publication by Michael A. Denham. The pamphlets deal with history, poems, proverbs, sayings, slogans, and stories. This collection is most perhaps most famous for its list of creatures popular in folklore, a list that some allege is from where J. R. R. Tolkien took the word “hobbit”.

It is this list of creatures that is the subject of my new Spes Magna Games project. I’m not making a monster for every creature on the list. There is some repetition as it lists the same creature under different names. That said, ignoring repetition, The Denham Tracts provides plenty of inspiration.

For example:

Black Dogs
Black dogs are not truly canines, although they often resemble man’s best friends. A black dog is a supernatural creature, one that possesses uncanny powers and often appears as a harbinger of some terrible, impending fate. All black dogs have a dangerous howl as well as these two traits:

Impervious. While incorporeal, only damaged by silver or magical sources.

Incorporeal. In place of attacks, become corporeal or incorporeal. While incorporeal, ADV on WIS checks to track living creatures.

Gallytrot
A large dog with shaggy fur white like fresh snow, its outline indistinct, hazy, as if the creature fades from canine to fog. Its eyes are featureless, dull blue orbs.

The gallytrot preys on cowards. Its howl sounds like a cacophony of screeching cats and angry hornets.

AC 14, HP 26, ATK 1 bite +3 (1d6), MV double near, S +2, D +2, C +2, I -1, W +1, Ch -1, AL N, LV 4

Howl. Living creatures within near must make a DC 12 CHA check on turn or become scared for 1d4 rounds. While scared, suffer a -2 penalty on attack rolls and checks. If a scared creature is attacked, on its next turn it must only move away from its attacker.

Tags: monsters, Shadowdark

Well, my summer vacation is about 3/4 done, and it’s been an odd one.

We’ve had two storms that took out the power in Houston, the latter being Hurricane Beryl, which left pretty much the whole city in the dark. For about two weeks of my eight week vacation, Casa Chance has had no electricity. Good times.

I continue to GM games. I’m running a C&C/DCC/MCC mash-up every other Saturday. This campaign is loosely set in The Marmoreal Tomb. The PCs live in Sisak (from Dungeon #24 [July/August 1990]), very nearly the easternmost vestige of civilization. There are two groups of PCs. They’ve fought an evil wizard, a murderous demon-wolf, a human-sacrificing gnome, a hill giant family, a stone minotaur, and a bevy of evil humanoids. They’ve also started to deal with the meta-plot consequences of the campaign world being invaded by modrons.

I’m also running a DCC/MCC mash-up set in a post-apoc World of Greyhawk. In the funnel session, a mob of 0-levels defended the Inn of the Welcome Wench from a bullywug invasion during a horrific thunderstorm. In the second session, the survivors investigated the absence of Rufus and Burne. The PCs broke into the pair’s tower to discover the wizard Burne transformed into a horrid creature using its eye and mouth tentacles to operate Rufus as a puppet. The PCs found themselves facing a deadly threat, and so they fled the tower.

During and since North Texas RPG Con, I’ve picked up a few new RPG products. Let’s read about one of them now. I’ll get to the others later.

Tales from the Tavern, Issue #1 from Elven Maid Inn. This 98-page, system-agnostic gaming magazine is full of good stuff. There’s an essay. There are two interviews. There’s an explanation of Dystopian Dawn character creation. I dig the crossword puzzles and the two “NPC Extravaganzas”, which give system-neutral write-ups for NPCs to be dropped into my campaigns. There’re also monsters, fiction, spells, and campaign lore. It’s a great debut issue, and I’m looking forward to Issue #2.

Caveat: The editing in Issue #1 is spotty. There are numerous typos throughout, some of which would have been caught by spellcheck. This doesn’t make Issue #1 not well-worth checking out, but it does irritate my inner English teacher. Also, those last two links are affiliate links, and I’m the affiliate.

If you’re looking for worthwhile creators on Patreon, here’re the ones I currently support:

Talons and Tales: Art and stories created by a youthful artist. There’s not a lot of content here yet, but what there is amuses and inspires. Talons and Tales had me hooked with 29 June’s “Squirrel Rogue” post, especially the sketch of the squirrel rogue crouched in front of a locked chest, pausing long enough to give the viewer the side-eye.

Tome of Salvaterra: Many wonderful examples of stock art, maps, and creatures illustrated by Fernando Salvaterra, who is “a Brazilian freelance writer and illustrator who loves RPG and maps.” I get a real old-school vibe along with some whimsy as well.

Jeshields – RPG Stock Art: The title says it all. Illustrations come in black-and-white and/or color (depending on your level of patronage). There are monsters, characters, and items, oh my! There is a lot of content here. JE releases 10 illustrations a month and gives away credit for his on-line store of stock art. Not only that JE’s runs a great game of marines versus aliens.

Silver Compass Maps: Silver designs maps for table-top gaming. I’ve used several of them via Foundry when playing on-line. These maps usually have variants, such as daytime or night for outdoor maps. Silver does some lovely work, and my players have commented how nice her maps are.

AlexTheMapMaker: This my newest Patreon. Alex puts out one to three maps monthly. His town maps are what sold me. They’re simple, easy to read, and come with a handy key of main buildings. He also has battlemaps as well as isometric and traditional dungeons. What’s not to like?

The 2021-2022 school year is over. This month, I’m running two one-week summer camps for students. The first starts on 6 June, and the happy campers shall spend 15 hours learning the basics of Latin grammar, some history of the Romans, and the fundamentals of anti-javelin defense. Later in June, I’m looking to spend another 15 hours teaching a group of middle schoolers how to play 5E D&D. Best of all, I get paid for the camps. Huzzah.

A few days before the end of the school year, I killed my Facebook accounts after the fifth time in a month of ending up in Facebook jail. Too often in too short a period of time I was penalized and admonished about violating Facebook’s community standards, which is absurd since Facebook isn’t a community and the enforcement of its “standards” is arbitrary at best.

The first straw was me getting incarcerated for pointing out to another poster that their opinions bore more than a passing resemblance to the eugenic racism and classism of the early 20th century. The final straw was a longer incarceration for commenting in a D&D game forum about how the players’ first response to an encounter often involves violence.

But on to other things!

I at long last purchased Mutant Crawl Classics (MCC) from Goodman Games. I’ve read most of the rulebook. I love this game, and it’s given me an excuse to dust off an idea I had many years ago. That’s right. It’s the return of Venusian Amazons Rule the Earth (VARE).

MCC fits VARE well enough. Both are post-apoc science fantasy inspired in part by TSR’s classic Gamma World (about which I’ve written before). My ideas for VARE also draw on Marvel’s awesome Killraven and DC’s even more awesome Kamandi, as well as Thundarr, the Planet of the Apes films, and a variety of pulp stories, perhaps most especially those involving Buck Rogers and John Carter.

(Nota Bene: Links to DriveThruRPG in this post are affiliate links; if you clink and buy, I get a few pennies.)

Some of MCC’s setting assumptions don’t work with VARE. Most significantly, the heroes of VARE do not live in a quasi-Neolithic world built on the remnants of an ancient civilization that commanded technology so advanced that it blurred the lines between science and magic. When the end that was nigh arrived, it was brought not by nuclear war (for example), but instead arrived when Venusian Amazons left their homeworld to conquer our world.

The Venusians Amazons have established military colonies after subjugating humanity via vastly superior Venusian technology. Massive veneriformers work around the clock to alter Earth’s ecosystems to be more comfortable for the Venusian Amazons. Countless humans and native flora and fauna have died. Others have mutated into new, often frightening forms. Human collaborators live in domed communities, protected from the veneriformers’ effects in exchange for unquestioning loyalty to Earth’s alien conquerors.

When planning how to use MCC as the engine for VARE, the first thing that changes regarding character creation relates to level-zero occupations. VARE’s cultures extend beyond MCC’s default Terra A.D. setting. Therefore, my VARE-friendly version of Table 1-2: Character Occupations:

Tags: Gamma World, MCC, VARE

Merry Christmas!

First up, as promises a few days ago, there’s trouble in Schuhdorf! An evil noble lady with magic powers has polymorphed Schuhdorf’s leaders into goats and stolen them before flying off in her giant shoe. Later that night, eerie singing from the woods lured away several of the village’s children. Can the heroes track the children and rescue them? The Lady in the Shoe is a 5E D&D adventure for five 2nd-level characters includes details about how to scale the dangers for weaker or stronger parties. It’s pay-what-you-want with a recommended price of $1.

In other news, I purchased a virtual treasure chest of stock art from Aegis Studios, one of which is Jack Badashski’s burbling Skull Ooze, which appears below as a new monster.

Nota Bene: That last link is an affiliate link.

Ooze, Skull

The skull ooze is one of the more insidious fragments of Juiblex that has squirmed its away from the Abyss to the Material Plane. This blob of inky viscosity hides within a skull, waiting for something living to stray too close. Don’t let the skull ooze’s tiny size fool you into thinking it’s a small threat.

Tiny ooze, unaligned

Armor Class 13
Hit Points 7 (2d4+2)
Speed 20 ft., climb 20 ft.

STR 5 (-3), DEX 16 (+3), CON 12 (+1), INT 1 (-5), WIS 6 (-2), CHA 1 (-5)

Damage Immunities acid, cold, lightning, slashing
Condition Immunities blinded, charmed, deafened, exhaustion, frightened, prone
Senses blindsight 60 ft. (blind beyond this radius), passive Perception 8
Languages —
Challenge 1/4 (50 XP)

Amorphous. The skull ooze can move through a space as narrow as 1 inch without squeezing, although it has to leave its skull behind.

Corrosive Form. A creature that touches the skull ooze or hits it with a melee attack while within 5 feet of it takes 2 (1d4) acid damage. Any nonmagical weapon made of metal or wood that hits the skull ooze corrodes. After dealing damage, the weapon takes a permanent and cumulative -1 penalty to damage rolls. If its penalty drops to -5, the weapon is destroyed. Nonmagical ammunition made of metal or wood that hits the skull ooze is destroyed after dealing damage.

The skull ooze can eat through 2-inch-thick, nonmagical wood or metal in 1 round.

Spider Climb. The skull ooze can climb difficult surfaces, including upside down on ceilings, without needing to make an ability check.

Actions

Pseudopod. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 2 (1d4) acid damage, and the skull ooze attaches to the target. While attached, the skull ooze doesn’t attack. Instead, at the start of each of the skull ooze’s turns, the target takes 2 (1d4) acid damage. In addition, nonmagical armor worn by the target is partly dissolved and takes a permanent and cumulative -1 penalty to the AC it offers. The armor is destroyed if the penalty reduces its AC to 10.

The skull ooze can detach itself by spending 5 feet of its movement. A creature, including the target, can use its action to detach the skull ooze, but this subjects the target to the skull ooze’s corrosive form.

Tags: 5E D&D, monsters

Merry Christmas!

Over at DriveThruRPG, you can find Santa’s Holiday Bag of PDFs. This bundle includes ten PDFs for 5E D&D that are full of monsters, magic items, character options, maps, and more. The normal cost for all ten PDFs together is almost four bits over $14, but Santa has slashed prices by about 50%, making the bundle’s cost $7. Appropriately, the bundle remains available through all twelve days of Christmas.

And here’s a new magic item!

The Golden Crozier
Staff, very rare (requires attunement by a cleric)

This powerful magic item functions just like a staff of the python, and it has further powers as well.

The crozier has 10 charges for the following properties. It regains 1d6+4 expended charges daily at dawn. If you expend the last charge, roll a d20. On a 1, the crozier thereafter functions only as a staff of the python.

Magic Weapon. You can use an action to expend 1 charge, which lets you wield the crozier as a magic quarterstaff that grants a +3 bonus to attack and damage rolls. This effect lasts for 1 minute.

Spells. You can use an action to expend 1 or more of the crozier’s charges to cast one of the following spells from it, using your spell save DC: aid (2 charges), control water (4 charges), create food and water (3 charges), create or destroy water (1 charge), dispel evil and good (5 charges), guiding bolt (1 charge), hold person (2 charges), and magic circle (3 charges).

With aid, create or destroy water, guiding bolt, hold person, and magic circle, you can expend more than the requires number of charges. Each additional charge expended for one of those spells count as if you had cast the spell using a higher spell slot.

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