Elemental Reductions

This post is part of October's Blog Carnival theme of Horror and Fantasy , hosted Timothy S. Brannan's The Other Side Blog "Another zombie.  Ho hum.  I'll kite it, you stick it with arrows."  Zombies by liftarn, under CC0 There is nothing horrific about zombies.  Here, look, courtesy of Basic Fantasy RPG: Zombie (undead) AC : 7[12] HD : 2 Attack : 2x +1/weapon or swipe (1d8) Mv : 20 ft.   No. Appearing : 2d4 (4d6 in the wild) Save : F2 Morale : 12 Treasure Type : none  XP : 75 It's basically a slightly worse gnoll that never retreats.  This has been a chip on my shoulder for a long time.  Here's what I propose:  First, every undead creature should be freaky: they utterly violate the natural order of the world.  They should be described with that in mind.  Play up the disturbing appearance of their decaying yet animate corpses and their putrefying stench. Mechanically, we might reflect this character reaction i...

A combination of another bout of Covid and elder family members getting hospitalized delayed this by a few weeks, but my hopes for a steady gaming group seem to finally culminate in an actual game last night.  Socrates was delayed by theatrical problems, but Gwenchant and I arrived at Soddentowel's place, and, after discussing parenting and schooling, snacks and drinks, we got around to talking about play experience and what we were going to play.  It probably helped a bit that we had hashed out lines and veils and a few other session 0 topics on our Discord. After determining that Gwenchant and Soddentowel's play experiences were more exclusive to latter day D&D , we decided to each make two characters to play the Shadowdark quickstart, using 3d6 down the line, with a house rule stolen from the *WN books of replacing one attribute with a 14.  Socrates got there shortly after they started making characters while I skimmed the GM's Guide.  I think it took us abo...

 This post is a response to Xaosseed's post Your great-grand-elf's elvish: long lives slowing language change (RPG Blog Carnival) .  I suggest reading that first in its entirety, before I dig into it.  My goal here is to have a deeper discussion, not just to rain Xaosseed's linguistic parade.  This lede hooked me: The RPG Blog Carnival prompt from Beneath Foreign Planets of WORDS! Etymology, Onomatology and Linguistics sparked some other thoughts for me - on the stability of language when there are very long-lived organisms around.   Xaosseed shared the hypothesis of the post: The core thought here is that you can find thousand year old elves, dragons and giants around - presumably still speaking the same language with the same accent as when they learned their languages in their your - so accents and languages would change much more slowly in such settings than in our own world.  Xaosseed then set up the setting's premise with respect to linguis...

Through September Attronarch of Attronarch's Athenaeum is hosting September 2024's RPG Blog Carnival!  The theme is  Wondrous Weapons and Damning Dweomers . This post shares a number of magical weapons which are relatively rare, missile weapons! Firestar: 5 throwing knives +1, found in a custom belt with five sheaths on it for them.   doing 1d3 damage, +1 fire damage for each other Firestar knife already in the target.  When a third Firestar dagger is embedded in the same target, these knives explode, doing 3d6 fire damage, or double damage to zombies, and re-appear in their sheaths, while the sheaths of destroyed daggers turn black.  At dawn each day, any missing but intact daggers return to their sheaths.  Made for High Hill Halflings by Dwarven pyrotheurges during the war against the Zombie King. Radiant Short Bow: A +1 shortbow, +2 against undead.  When the bowstring is pulled back, an arrow appears where expected, but made of solid light, ...

Through September Attronarch of Attronarch's Athenaeum is hosting September 2024's RPG Blog Carnival!  The theme is  Wondrous Weapons and Damning Dweomers .  In relation to that, I would like to talk about the elements of generating a magical weapon with a touch more depth than Old Gary got into. Typical D&D weapons provide a benefit, but with no drawback.  This is great as far as it goes, but I believe a little more thought should be put into it, since each weapon should have the following elements: A numeric bonus An allegiance An intended enemy A weapon effect A side-effect First, I believe all magic weapons should have a numeric bonus, even if it's just +1 to hit and damage.  Call me old-fashioned. Second, gentle reader, all weapons should have some sort of magical effect, even if it's just an elemental damage bonus.  Weapons are made for a purpose, and are made by some person or group.  The makers of the weapon set the allegiance. That doesn'...

This Month's Blog Carnival topic is  It Came From Beyond Time hosted by Xaosseed on Seed of Worlds . On Temporal Displacement Xaosseed points out that typical D&D settings frequently have the chronological displaced of one sort or another:  Ancient artifacts and tools of various sorts Travelers from a different time The remains of ancient civilizations All of these have come up in my only half-completed D23...24...25(?) mega-dungeon.  I'm sure there are about 8 of you (Hi Sam!) who want to read all about this, but if you do, you'll have to do it the proper way, and roll 3d6 down the line. What I think would be more beneficial, is to talk about why and how I have intended to use various elements.   The Elements of my D23 Here are the elements: An ancient temple and crypt complex of the Hagamido (frilled lizard people) that dominated this world an indeterminate tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago, during an era freakishly similar to our own Jurassic p...