#RPGaDAY2019: Last

Today's topic is Last.

Here we are at the Last.  The last post of the 2019 #RPGaDay.  What have we all shared and learned?

It has been a real treat to interact with so many people here on my blog and online.

I found a lot of great new people on Instagram and Twitter and that has been great.
I discovered a couple of new games that I hope to get to try out someday.

My personal goal was do all of these.  Last year I was going through some health issues that prevented me from getting last year's done (nothing major and it is taken care of now), same with the October Horror Movie Challenge.

I am of the frame of mind that the ending of one thing is the start of something new.  I am a big believer of “Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.”

So with that I close the door on #RPGaDAY2019 and look forward to the October Horror Movie Challenge and #RPGaDAY for 2020.

#RPGaDAY2019: Connection

Today's topic is Connection.

While in games this is an easy thing to do, in the online-related world of selling games it is a bit harder.

One of the big reasons I wanted to do this #RPGaDay was the potential of connecting with others.  To see what sort of cool things we are all doing and share it that.  Like my post yesterday I mentioned I enjoy a lot of games. I also enjoy talking to people that make games.  All sorts of games really.

Ultimately I want more people to see my games and me to see other people's games too.

Drop me a note if you discovered me through the #RPGaDAY2019.  I am very curious.

#RPGaDAY2019: Evolve

Today's topic is Evolve.

I think most gamers would agree that their play style will evolve over the years.  How have their games evolved?

I have had the pleasure and the privilege to have run many games over many years. Decades really.

The way I played in the late 70s and early 80s is very different than what I was doing in the late 90s and early 2000s and those are both very different than today.

I think if I had to describe my growth or change (who knows if a change is better until you test it) it is not Evolution but rather Assimilation. 

Even in the very beginning, I was taking ideas from other games and making them part of my own game.

I have talked at length about my love of the RPG Chill.  I have also talked at great length of my love for story and character of Dracula.   I always wanted a vampire like Dracula in my games. But more than just the stats in the Monster Manual or the D&D Expert book.  A real, un-breathing, un-living character to go after the characters. Or, more to the point, the character to go after.

Enter Chill Vampires.

This book and the Vampyre mini-game from TSR gave me something D&D was not. A playable Dracula (and Elizabeth Bathory and Jackson Dela Croix and more) with Dracula's castle.  I worked it in and came up with a 13 HD version of Dracula and a brief adventure stolen from the pages of Marvel Comics version of Dracula.
Then in 1983 the Hickmans did it all several orders of magnitude better with Ravenloft.  So yeah I grabbed that and all vampires in my games became named NPCs.  There was no such thing as a random vampire, lich or spectre in my games after that.

I suppose then it is no surprise I ended up working on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG.

In a way, Ghosts of Albion is that assimilation in reverse. Starting with my then pinnacle of achievements (the Buffy line) and adding in elements from my past (Chill, D&D, and WitchCraft).

Even today I grab what I want from other games and mix as I need.  It is one of the reasons I have a Plays Well With Others feature here.  I have a new one coming up too that is a subset of that.  Can't wait to debut it.

This is also the reason I don't understand the attitude of "One True Wayism"  even if I didn't take material from other games in my playing I would still change over the years, so I know there is no one true way.  I have also worked on too many different games to believe that.

When I hear someone say "I only play D&D." or "I will never try game X." my first thought is "wow, how sad for you."  There are so many great games out there and even if I never play them all (and I couldn't possibly) that does not diminish their worth. Who knows, maybe the next love of my life is out there now sitting on someone's computer waiting to be published.  I might get to play it, but I will certainly adapt it for games.

#RPGaDAY2019: Love

Today's topic is Love.

There are a lot of things I love about RPGs.  I could go on about the games I love, or the social aspects, or the friends I have made over the years.  But today I think I want to talk about one love I have not talked about before.

Gen Con.

I love Gen Con.  I do.  The larger it gets the more I love it.  I started going only recently, the last 12 years, but I love everything about it.

I love the spectacle, I love the dealer's hall, the food trucks, staying in the hotel with my family, playing games all day and all night.

Every year for the last few years we have been staying at the same hotel, the JW Marriot Indy, so showing up there feels like, well, coming home.  My kids love the hotel and we are within walking distance of everything we want.  The Marriot has open gaming till 3:00am in their ballrooms, so it has been our tradition to play a game of D&D 5 for the last 5-6 years every night.

Every year we also try out new places to eat and we LOVE the food trucks. We love the cosplay parade and all the cosplay there.

Of course, there are the games.  I try to get a nice variety in with the kids. We try out new games, play some old ones.  One year I did "The History of D&D" for my family where we played every edition we could get into. Where else can you do that?

This is no slight to other cons, I have had great times there too.  But Gen Con is our love.
I also know that people complain it is "too big", not me.  I love the fact that 70,000 people are there.

It is a great feeling to be in a place where 70k+ people are there all for the same reasons.  It is a wonderful time. 

I know there will be a time when we don't go. My kids are getting older, it is getting more expensive and that drive from Chicago to Indy is the WORST.  But for now, I am going to enjoy Gen Con with my family. 

Cult of Diana: The Amazon Witch for Basic Era Games

The first of TWO related releases for Lughnasadh and Mabon and continuing my Back to Basics series.

Cult of Diana: The Amazon Witch for Basic Era Games

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/286580/Cult-of-Diana-The-Amazon-Witch-for-Basic-Era-Games?affiliate_id=10748

Diana, Queen of the Hunt!
“Let us be Diana's foresters, minions of the moon”  - William Shakespeare

Artemis and Diana, Forever Young. Forever Wild.
Time out of mind the symbol of Diana meant freedom. And in freedom there is Power.

This book introduces the Amazon Witch Tradition. Witches from the ancient time of myths and legends.

 - The witch class and two new witch covens

 - 40 Spells and 8 Rituals for witch characters

Fully compatible with BLUEHOLME^TM and other Basic-Era games.

Fully compatible with other witch books from The Other Side.

All for the low, low price of FREE.

Overtly this is designed to go with the Blueholme Prentice Rules. This gets you going using my Holmes inspired witch class for the price of a couple of clicks.

Also, check out the first of my Back to Basics witch books, The Daughters of Darkness for Basic Era Games.

AND Coming soon...

Children of the Gods: The Classical Witch Tradition also for BLUEHOLME!

#RPGaDAY2019: Suspense

Today's topic is Suspense.

Want Suspense?

How's this.  Tune in later today for a big announcement! ;)

Monstrous Monday: Spider, Unlight

"It was a creature from the Outer Darkness.  Clothed in the shape of a gargantuan spider, but far more fell.  It's exact shape was difficult to make out, save from where darkness gave way to a deeper unlight.  All we could see were it's monstrous eyes. Each one glowed and betrayed great and evil greed or thirst for light and life."

- From the Journals of Larina Nix

The foul and fell creatures known as the Unlight Spiders are not true spiders, but take that form from the deepest fears of mortal kind.  They are in truth shapeless spirits of the voids beyond the blackness of the darkest realms.  Such is their hunger they feed not just on life, but on the light itself.
They crave light as much as they loathe it.

Here they are for Old School Essentials.

Spider, Unlight
10' long spiders of complete pitch-black color.  Hide in dark webs in the deepest, darkest pits they can find. 
AC 4, HD 7** (32hp), Att 1 × bite (3d6 + poison), THAC0 17, MV 90’ (30’) / 180’ (60’) in webs, SV D8 W9 P10 B11 S12 (F8), ML 10, AL Chaos, XP 1210, NA 1 (1d3), TT Ux2
• Growth: Every time the Unlight Spider drains life levels equal to twice their own HD they grow one size category larger. 

HD	hp	XP
7	32	1,210
14	63	6,600
28	126	26,600

• Energy drain: A successfully hit target permanently loses one experience levels (or Hit Dice). This incurs a loss of one Hit Dice of hit points, as well as all other benefits due to the drained levels (e.g. spells, saving throws, etc.). A character’s XP is reduced to the lowest amount for the new level. A person drained of all levels dies and cannot be raised.
• Infravision: 180’
• Loathe the Light: -1 to-hit in lighted conditions (Light spell) and -2 full daylight (Continual Light spell) conditions.
• Mundane damage immunity: Can only be harmed by magical attacks.
• Poison: Causes death in 1 turn (save vs poison).
• Webs: Creatures caught in webs become entangled and unable to move. Breaking free depends on Strength.
<10: Impossible to break free
10-13: 6 rounds
14-17: 5 rounds
18-19: 4 rounds
19-22: 3 rounds
23+ : 2 rounds
The webs can be destroyed by fire in three rounds. All creatures in a flaming web suffer 1d6 points of damage.

#RPGaDAY2019: Idea

Today's topic is Idea.

Ideas come from a lot of different places.  For example, this weekend's big idea came from my desire to do something big.

I am wrapping up my first big D&D 5 campaign, The Order of the Platinum Dragon, which will end in the Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits, but instead of using the "Steampunk" spider ship, I am going with the fan-created adventure Skein Of The Death Mother by John A. Turcotte.

My idea is to do something really special.

I have 5 2ft x 2ft pieces of a shitty particle-board.  I have tubing, I have some LED lights. I have a ton of plastic spiders and a few broken mini-figures. I will get some spider-webs from the Halloween store, some gaming paper, some paint.  I bet there are some maps I can print too.

I am going to build some giant "geomorphs".

The plan is not really to replicate the map above but to get the feel of it.  I am likely to make rooms close to 13, 21 and 26 above, but also do some of the clusters of smaller rooms too.

I have 5  boards, so I figure I can "geomorph" them enough to build something really cool and flexible.

It should not take me too long, unless I get loss in the details, but it should still be fun.

#RPGaDAY2019: Calamity

Today's topic is Calamity.

In many ways, this post is a continuation of my post on Lost.

One of the things all my Lost Lands have in common is they are lost due to some calamity.

Atlantis, Doggerland and East Beleriand were taken back by the sea.  Their secrets hidden by the waves.

For the Suel Empire, it was the Rain of Colorless Fire.  And that makes it interesting.

I think flooding is something we can get.  We see it. Some have experienced it.  I  grew up near the Illinois River Valley.  My wife grew up near the Fox River Valley (it was her backyard).  We have both seen several "once in a lifetime" floods.   Flooding I get. I know what happens, even when it is terrible.

Fire from the sky?  That is some apocalypse-level shit.

I think that is also one of the reasons that attracted me so much to the whole Suel Empire.  Their world was just under a sea, in this case the Sea of Dust, but they were wiped out by fire.  Like Pompei.

A good calamity can add some gravitas to your world.  Plus it helps explain all those lost treasure hordes dragons seem to have.

Rain of Fire 

Level: Witch Ritual 6

Ritual Requirements: Minimum 3 witches, see text

Range: See text

Duration: See text

"It is said that only those that give life know the price of taking a life.  This is why originally only witches were given the power to destroy." 

- From the Journal of Larina Nix

The witches of old had powerful rituals both of creating life and creating death. This ritual is very much the latter.

Three or more witches are needed for the most basic version of this horrible ritual, more witches added the more devastating the effects.  Each witch must know this ritual.

The witches take a prepared focus item, an effigy made from the same materials of their target.  Usually a town or a locale. Each witch contributes a bit of blood (1hp worth) to item's creation since life must be given to take life

Once the ritual has begun the witches make a plea and summons to dark gods of vengeance, destruction, and fire.   The pleas, once heard, will be answered in kind, with vengeance, destruction, and fire.   

The witches then burn the effigy, each providing the flame via magic.  Once that is done the fire rains down on the actual location destroying it and anyone in it.  Victims can run from the location if they make it out of the area, they will be safe, but a save vs. Spells must be made or take 1d6 hp of damage per all the level of the witches involved, or half on a save.

Witches Participating	Minimum Damage	Area Sq. Miles
3	36d6	5
4	48d6	10
5	60d6	25
6	72d6	50
7	84d6	100
8	96d6	250
9	108d6	500
10	120d6	1,000
12	144d6	2,500
13	156d6	5,000

Material Components: The effigy of the place targeted, made with materials from the target. Each witch also uses a rod of ash that she uses to focus her energy on the effigy then they raise their rods to sky to direct the energy out to the target.  Each witch also contributes 1hp worth of blood in the casting.

This ritual is rare and all witches must know the ritual in order to cast it.

I wonder what lies in the Suel Cities of Dust?  Treasures? The Suel people preserved only as ashen shells?  One day I should find out.

Water was running; children were running 
You were running out of time 
Under the mountain, a golden fountain 
Were you praying at the Lares shrine? 

But oh your city lies in dust, my friend 

We found you hiding we found you lying
Choking on the dirt and sand
Your former glories and all the stories
Dragged and washed with eager hands 

But oh your city lies in dust, my friend 

Water was running; children were running
We found you hiding we found you lying 

But oh your city lies in dust, my friend 
Hot and burning in your nostrils
Pouring down your gaping mouth
Your molten bodies blanket of cinders
Caught in the throes 

And your city lies in dust

#RPGaDAY2019: Triumph

Today's topic is Triumph.

Let's all cast our minds back to the early and mid-80s when D&D was getting REALLY popular.

There are more, if you want to find them.  Lots more really.

The biggest Triumph we have had as RPG players and geeks, in general, is that society has come to embrace us.

The biggest movies in the world now are all nerdy topics that never would have worked in the 80s.  Comic-books, stories about wizards, Lord of the Rings, movies about Aliens.

Let's have a look at the at the top box office earners according to Box Office Mojo.

1	Star Wars: The Force Awakens	BV	$936,662,225	2015
2	Avengers: Endgame	BV	$858,188,415	2019
3	Avatar	Fox	$760,507,625	2009^
4	Black Panther	BV	$700,059,566	2018
5	Avengers: Infinity War	BV	$678,815,482	2018
6	Titanic	Par.	$659,363,944	1997^
7	Jurassic World	Uni.	$652,270,625	2015
8	Marvel's The Avengers	BV	$623,357,910	2012
9	Star Wars: The Last Jedi	BV	$620,181,382	2017
10	Incredibles 2	BV	$608,581,744	2018

The only "non-geek" movie in the bunch is Titanic.

Now celebrities tout their geek and D&D cred like it is a badge of honor and respect.
Vin Disel,  Stephen Colbert, Felicia Day, Dwayne Johnson, Joe Manganiello among many others routinely talk about D&D.  Will Wheaton walks around Gen Con like he BELONGS there (spoiler, he does!).

And then you have something like this.
Actress Dominique Tipper from "The Expanse", a British/Dominican actress of color so no where near the stereotype of a D&D player.

WHY DID NO-ONE TELL ME ABOUT D&D?! Whhhhhhhhhhyyyyy @Casanvar was most suprised when I messaged him and was like “bro why havent we played D&D yet?” And then I was all “so can you DM a D&D game for the cast next season?” 😂 lets see if I can get everyone on board hehe!

— Dominique Tipper (@Mi55Tipper) August 20, 2019

Her Twitter posts after this have been a delight.  She is falling in love with the game so many of us love and it is a wonderful thing.

The Triumph of D&D is how we went from being persecuted in the 80s to being in the limelight today.

They say the best revenge is living well and D&D is living well indeed.

#RPGaDAY2019: Surprise

Today's topic is Surprise.

What is the most surprising thing you ever witnessed in a game?  I have to say it was a game my older son ran for my youngest son and the sheep.

It was so surprising because of how crazy it all was and how much noise we heard coming from the basement.

So it goes like this.  The party was supposed to get to the next town to get to a job.  The job was what the adventure was supposed to be about. Simple right?  So they all decide to take a short cut through a field and stay off the main road.  They ask what is in the field.  My oldest, not having planned this bit out (because why should he) rolled and said "Sheep".

The players freaked out.  They all wanted to have sheep as pets or animal companions.  So they spent a long time chasing sheep, trying to charm them or casting any spells they could think of.  By this time some of the players got tired of chasing sheep so they started killing them. Next thing the players they started try and raise the sheep from the dead, others wanted to bring them back as zombies.  Then the characters started attacking each other, the zombie sheep started to attack the characters.  By the end of the night, some four hours later, the sheep were all dead, the countryside was on fire, and at least three characters (out of six) were dead.

There was so much yelling and laughing and shouting.  We were laughing our asses off upstairs.

Every kid downstairs had to tell us their version of the story.

I know I am not doing the story any justice here. But it was so damn funny to hear them tell it.

Adventures in Hyperborea

Hat tip to Jason Vey for sharing these with me.

So if I know ANYTHING at all about Conan, likely it came from Jason Vey. In addition to being a top rate game designer, he is a Master's level scholar on Robert E. Howard.  So when he shares something related to Conan, or Howard or realted topics, I pay attention.

This week he shared this with me, Adventures of the Hyborian Age. This is an older site with adventures for the Mongoose d20 Conan game.  Jason is using this material for his OD&D-based Conan game which sounds fantastic.

He shared with me something he knew I would love. A Conan-flavored conversion of one of my favorite adventures of all time, S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.

The new adventure has a more Hyborian feel to it and draws heavily from Conan lore, in particular, Red Nails.

HS4 The Lost Caverns of Acheron

The adventure is, at it's heart, the same as S4.  Save now it has been reskinned for the Hyborian Age and all the background has been changed.

Now maybe I have been reading a lot of Eric Fabiaschi of late (or always really) but this sounds like a PERFECT adventure for  Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea!

Eric has had a LOT to say about AS&SH (most of his blog) and S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.  In fact he pulls in a lot of Jason Vey's own game, Amazing Adventures into the conversations too.

In fact, I am very curious to hear what Eric has to say about this adventure. (EDITED: I talked to Eric before this post went up. He has played it using AS&SH. He also pointed out my next point.)

Now AS&SH only takes us to level 12.  This adventure is right up against that level limit and might even be a bit more than a party can deal with. I would alter this by having a larger party to be honest or carefully scaling the encounters.

Outside of the Hyborian skin the biggest change is the Witch-Queen Xaltana.  She essentially combines the characters of Iggwilv and Drelzna into one.

So instead of this:

We get this:

It actually works out quite well. In fact, Xaltana is much more interesting than Drelzna ever was. (Sorry D!)

Appropriately the adventure takes on a more Clark Ashton Smith feel to it.  This plays so well into the sequel WG4 The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun. Which could in like fashion be reskinned as The Forgotten Temple of Thasaidon. Hmm. Maybe that is something to try; borrowing heavily from The Tomb-Spawn.

She would make a great Witch Queen!  More on that later.

#RPGaDAY2019: Lost

Today's topic is Lost.

One of my favorite things in RPGs is visiting or exploring lost lands.

I am currently re-reading Tolkien's The Silmarillion.  I didn't enjoy it as a kid, but when I re-read as an adult a few tears back I loved it.  Today I am getting a lot more out of it still.

One thing that bugged me back then that I adore now are these maps.

As a kid I was very familiar with this map:

I had this on my wall for years until I went to college.

But this map in the Silmarillion bugged me.

Obviously, these maps are related.  Reading the stories I knew these were the same worlds or at least related lands.

It wasn't till I noticed the only commonality between the two maps, on the far right of the Middle Earth map and the far left of the Beleriand map you can see the Ered Luin, the Blue Mountains.

It works better if you place the maps like this and sink the lands under water that Tolkien mentions.

Now, this map fills me with joy.  Look at all those lost lands!  If I ever do a Middle-Earth game there will be a way to visit these lands.

Even if I never do I want to know more about it.  What happened to these lands when the waters claimed them? Were there still people there?  Not just lost Gondolin, all the places.

It reminds me of Doggerland.  A lot more real and closer to home, but no less lost.

Think about it 8,000 BCE, lands to the east of England.  Walking from (what would be) London to (what would be) Copenhagen.

This is a Mesolithic (Middle to Late) period in human history.  We know so little about this time and the people that lived here.  Not just a lost land, a lost people, a lost time.

Sure we have some wonderful archeological finds from this time, but who were the people? What did they do? What sort of adventures would they have had?

Again, I might never get the chance to do anything with it, but I do love looking at these maps.

Back in the early days of AD&D 1st ed I took an immediate liking to the lost lands of the Suel Empire of the Greyhawk setting.

Like Middle Earth, I want to run a game set during the Invoked Devastation / Rain of Colorless Fire.  Something along the lines of the Doctor Who episode "The Time Monster" where the PCs get sent back in time to witness the destruction. I would have watched it around the same time I was playing AD&D 1.

I love lost lands, one day I might even get to visit them!

In a time of Ancient Gods...

There were the ones that beseeched these gods for power and it was granted!

These are the witches of the Classical Traditions and their closely allied sisters the Amazon Tradition.

Coming soon for the BLUEHOLME Journeymanne and Prentice Rules.

Sumer. Egypt. Greece. Rome.

These are the foundations of civilization. Where mythology, religion and magic collide in a fertile land.

It is a time of Gods and Witches!

This book introduces the Classical Witch Tradition. Witches from the ancient time of myths and legends.

•         The witch class and four new combination classes
•         Guidelines for playing any species of witch
•         Six witch covens of the Classical Tradition
•         120 Spells and Rituals for witch characters
•         24 Monsters to challenge or be allies
•         29 magic items and six artifacts
•         Three Non-player character witches from pages of mythology

Also fully compatible with Daughters of Darkness: Lilith and the Mara Tradition.

#RPGaDAY2019: Vast

Today's topic is Vast.

Vast. Seriously it is like it is too large of a word to tackle all at once.

To any PC in any sort of RPG the setting should feel vast.  For D&D it is can be the world or the known planes.  In sci-fi games, this can be the galaxy or even the universe.

But I don't write vast.  I write local.

Yes, there is a whole world out there, but how much of it are the PCs going to see? What do they really know about it?  Sure, there were people in the 13th century that had a pretty good idea what the world looked like, but did the peasants?

Let's look at Star Trek and by extension my BlackStar game. Because really, what is more vast than space?

That is a map of the Known Space of the Star Trek universe roughly at the end of the 24th Century.  My BlackStar game is likely to be set 50 years prior to this.
This is a LOT of territory.  The Sol system is where the larger yellow line is.  Click to see larger.

This is roughly 1,500 Light Years wide, of the Milky Way that is 105,000 Light Years wide, about 1%.

That's a lot of untold stories. 

I wish I had more time to do more!

#RPGaDAY2019: Noble

Today's topic is Noble.

I have to admit. I don't really do a lot with nobles or nobility in my games. Unless of course, they are a plot device.  Either a backdrop ("The King has ordered...") or the big bad ("Count Dracula, I presume.").

Honestly, I really should do more.

Recently I received my PDF of Adventures Great and Glorious from Joseph Bloch's Kickstarter.  I have not read it all in detail but so far I like it.  Between it and some of the rules found in Adventurer Conqueror King, there is a lot to help me with a good system of kingdom creation and management.   Who knows, maybe it will give me some ideas for my upcoming "War of the Witch Queens" game.

The gold standard of this sort of game is naturally Pendragon.  A game I adore but never got to play much.  Another one that comes to mind is Birthright.

Birthright is an odd one for me.  Odd in the sense that I know nearly next to nothing about it.  It came out during TSR's dying days. In the Second Ed era I was firmly entrenched in Ravenloft,  but by 1997 I was giving up on D&D.  I had started to move on to other games already (this was the height of my Mage years) and I was generally very disappointed in D&D by then. I had even sold off large sections of my collection to where I was down to just a few dozen books.

At a Gen Con some years ago I got to play in a Birthright game.  It was fun, I played a Goblin archer (fighter), but in this game, goblins were a lot smarter. So more like an angry halfling.

I don't own any Birthright books, which is a crime really.  So I am thinking of picking up the core set.   From my understanding, it would convert well to 5e.

What are your favorite games or supplements for dealing with PCs becoming nobles and ruling the lands?

Monstrous Monday: Goblin Men

“We must not look at goblin men, 
We must not buy their fruits: 
Who knows upon what soil they fed 
Their hungry thirsty roots?”

- Christina Rossetti, 1862

There are two artistic movements that have fueled my imagination for my games more than anything else I can think of; Tolkien and the Pre-Raphaelite movement.
They converge at Goblin Men.

In Rossetti's poem, the Goblin Men are found in the Goblin Market. Honestly, if this poem doesn't fill you with ideas for your games I don't know what will.  In Tolkien's Lord of the Rings Goblin Men are essentially half-orcs. Both types are depicted as evil, or at the very least, desiring mischief to humankind.

The fact we don't have Goblin Men in D&D is a crime.

Since my theme this year is "Back to Basic", here are Goblin Men for my two current favorite Basic-era Games, Blueholme and Old-School Essentials.

In my worlds, goblins are closer to fey-creatures than they are to orcs.  Mostly evil, or at least mischievous creatures.  I might adopt some of what Pathfinder 2 is doing with them as well to make them more of playable race.    Goblin Men are born to human women that wander too close to lands where goblins dwell.  Not through sexual congress, but an intermixing of essences of the magics that surround goblins.  Often the goblin child is taken in the night by goblins and a stillborn changeling is left behind; opposite of what other faeries will do, taking a human child to leave behind a living changeling.

Goblin Men
(Blueholme Journeymanne Rules)
AC: 7 (leather armor)
HD: 1d8
Move: 25
Attacks: 1 weapon Damage: 1d6+2
Alignment: 3N : 1CE
Treasure: 12 (1)
XP: 10

Goblin Men
(Old-School Essentials)
Ugly humanoids with elongated lower tusks and glowing, orange, but intelligent eyes. Dwell in dark forsaken places.
AC 7 [12], HD 1 (5hp), Att 1 × weapon (1d6+2 or by weapon), THAC0 19 [0], MV 60’ (20’), SV D14 W14 P15 B16 S17 (NH), ML 8, AL Chaotic, XP 10, NA 1d4 (2d10), TT R (C)
▶ Infravision: 60’.
▶ Hoard: Only have treasure type C when encountered in the wilderness or in their lair.


Goblin-men appear as larger, fiercer versions of a goblin with an uncanny glint of human intelligence in their eyes,   Some Goblin-men are so akin to humans as to pass for an ugly human (15%).  Most are neutral in temperament with only a few being truly evil.  All though are mischievous creatures not above taking advantage of others when the opportunity presents itself.

Unlike goblins, goblin-men can withstand daylight and take no penalty for fighting in conditions of bright light.

Goblin-Men make a good substitute for the half-orc and provide an air of mystery to the creature.  Who was its mother? Did she stray too close to the Goblin Markets? Eat their fruits?

#RPGaDAY2019: Scary

Today's topic is Scary.

It is said that everyone loves a good scare.  But I LOVE them.

Spend any amount of time here and you will learn that I love horror movies, horror RPGs and adding elements of horror to my otherwise non-horror games.

Horror was always my thing, even when I was really little.  My mom loved horror and used to tell us the way scary and certainly not appropriate for children stories when we were little and we loved them.   A lot of the horror-themed material you see here has there roots in some of those stories.

My current purely horror game is "Star Trek meets Cthulhu" game in Black Star.
Stephen King once said that horror needs to start with what you know.  To truly feel horror you have to begin in a place of safety and comfort.  For me that is Trek.  Then you add in the horrors.

Doing a proper horror game is not always easy.  Think about Gothic Horror for a moment.  The reason it is as effective as it is it that the hero, or most often, a heroine, is powerless against the forces that she is dealing with.  The same is true for Cosmic Horror, the forces against humanity are so vast and so powerful that we become insignificant in the scope of it all.

Trek represents humanity at their best, their most powerful, their peak. To turn that setting into horror I am going to need something very powerful.  So in a way, it is an experiment for me to see if I can merge two of my favorite things.

Hope to do some more here soon.