I have been working on a set of game boards to depict Lolth's lair in the Abyss. They are not done yet and hope to show them off soon. I have been taking my family through the Classic Greyhawk Campaign starting with T1 (AND B1) and working all the way to Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits.
While running I have added other material to the campaign to flesh it out more. This includes such classics as Bone Hill, Ravenloft, and Castle Amber but other details like a Stone Giant fortress Cloud Giant castle in the sky (for G4 and G5 respectively) as well as more details for the Drow City of Erelhei-Cinlu and a revamp of Lolth's lair.
While it is too late in the game for me to use it, Joesph Bloch, the Greyhawk Grognard, has released his own D4 to expand the Drown of Erelhei-Cinlu. You can find it on his blog.
It looks fantastic really, and let's be honest, Bloch knows his Greyhawk. So I am certain that it would have been a nice addition to my campaign. Plus it ties the GDQ series a little closer to the Temple of Elemental Evil, which is the ultimate goal of my campaign as well. I understand he is doing a Q2 or something akin to that. I have also wanted a good Q2. Though I am adapting the Monte cook adventure "Queen of Lies" for it.
But until then, I have a few more "spiderweb" monsters I need to weed out the uninspired choices in Q1.
Ghost Spiders appear as semi-transparent, glowing ghosts of huge spiders. They are not spiders, nor are they exactly undead, but rather they are the demonic projections of fears powered by necromantic forces.
A ghost spider is found anywhere where the influence of demons is strong and where mortal creatures can interact. The fears of spiders are magnified till a ghost spider is created. As such it radiates a fear aura that mimics the spell Cause Fear. Anyone under 5 HD/Levels must make a saving throw vs Spells or fall under the influence of the spell-like effect. Creatures higher than 5HD/Levels gain a +2 to their save. Creatures 9HD/levels or higher are immune to these fear effects. Those affected will be frozen in fear and unable to move, run, or attack. The ghost spider will then attack with webs (as per a giant spider) to immobilize other potential victims. Then will then use their bite to kill others. Ghost Spiders are not living and therefore do not require to feed on victims. They instead feed on the fear they cause and the pain from deaths.
Ghost spiders are treated as undead and can be turned as a 5HD creature or as a Spectre. Like all undead they are immune to charm, hold and sleep spells. They can only be struck by magical weapons. Once destroyed the ghost spider will not reform, but other ghost spiders may be created in their place at a future date. The only way to destroy them forever is to remove the demonic forces that create them.
No. I am not talking about one of the most fantastic albums ever released (though I should probably spill some virtual ink on that someday). I am talking about the number of options afforded to us in streaming entertainment.
In this time of Covid-19 we are supposed to stay at home and avoid interaction with others. That is fine, but it means we are spending a lot more time at home. So I have been enjoying a lot of what streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Amazon, HBO, and CBS All Access are really trying to get our attention with more programming. Since I am also saving a small fortune by not having to drive into work anymore I am enjoying all of them.
Since I have been spending my week categorizing over 350 different demons for my demon book I don't have much RPG content to share right now. So what's good on streaming?
CBS All Access
Or the all Star Trek all the Time Channel. Star Trek Discovery Season 3 has been fantastic this year. The crew jumped 900+ years into the future (3188 to be exact) to save a sentient AI from falling into the wrong hands. It doesn't quite have the emotional connection that Season 2 (the search for..well...Spock) did BUT for a Trek fan like me it has been great on the fan service and easter eggs. This is essentially Season 1 of the new 32nd Century Star Trek. This gives the creative team so much more freedom to do the special effects they obviously wanted to do anyway but also gives them some good storytelling freedom away from the established Trek canon. This is amusing because this season has had the most callbacks to previous versions of Trek outside of Season 2's TOS homages.
Additionally, we are getting new episodes of Picard, Lower Decks (maybe and second season is coming I have not heard), and new shows like Strange New Worlds (Pike's Enterprise) and Section 31, Starfleet's Gray Ops group. For a Trek fan this is fantastic!
Amazon Prime
My October Horror Movie Challenge would not have been possible without Prime. We have been watching a lot of Vikings lately. Don't confuse it for actual history (even though it was on the History Channel) it has been fun and has given me some ideas.
The Second Age Middle Earth series is underway. Casting has been announced, but I don't think filming has started yet.
Hulu
Have not taken as much advantage of this one as I should. But the really fun Helstrom was here (and not Disney+ for some reason) and it shows that when Marvel does Horror, it can do a great job of it.
In many ways, Helstrom and Satana (Ana in the series) was Marvel's answer to DC's Constantine even though Hellstrom (2 "L"s) premiered a decade before. Hellstrom, Satana, Doctor Strange, Blade and Dracula were all part of the Marvel Horror universe that I loved as a kid. The changes from the comic to series were needed and very welcome to me really. It is still full of Marvel AngstTM, but it is also a lot of fun.
HBO Max (or + or Go or whatever it is called now)
HBO has been around forever. It and Showtime were two of the very, very first "movie channels" out there. But today HBO is better known for its series. True Blood (which for some reason is getting a reboot) and Game of Thrones are two notable ones. This past year I have been watching Lovecraft Country (which is fantastic!) and His Dark Materials, which is getting better in Season 2. We also got the DC shows, Harley Quinn, Titans, Doom Patrol, and soon we will be able to see Wonder Woman 84 and the Synder Cut of Justice League.
I don't care. I am such a DC fanboy that I am excited about this.
Netflix
The Champion of the Streaming Channels, but it has had some serious competition from Disney+. Let's see what they have been offering me. Netflix will be forever fixed in Geek Heaven for Stranger Things. We will be getting the 4th season of that soon; filming is underway. Enola Holmes, based on the YA books was also a hit, even if it didn't exactly conform to the established Holmes canon. We also got The Witcher based on the video game and now R. Talsorian Games RPG of the same name.
Speaking of Season 4, we are getting the LAST installment of the Chilling Adventure of Sabrina near the end of the month. It looks like they are taking it where the comic also went, into dealing with Cthulhu and other Lovecraftian horrors. It looks like it should be great.
I was a little disappointed in ChAoS when they killed off Dorcas played by the lovely Abigail Cowen. while it may have been part of the plot, she was quickly scooped up it seems by another Netflix production, Fate. I saw the trailer for it today and thought it looked cool, THEN I saw what it was at the end.
Fate: A Winx Saga. Whaaat? Winx Club as a comic and then a kids Nickelodeon animated series. I thought it was a poor rip-off of Disney's W.I.T.C.H. so did Disney in fact. Turns out Winx Club was published and in production a full year before the W.I.T.C.H. comics came out. This is by the same people and is supposed to be darker and more adult. I happy to see Abby Cowen is something where she is the star, I thought she had great potential on ChAoS and this should be fun too.
Oh. If you have not seen The Queen's Gambit it is fantastic.
Disney+
What can you say about Disney+? I mean even before they acquired Lucasfilm and Marvel they had one of the deepest wells of titles and characters. Honestly just between the Disney, Pixar, and ABC material they own they could have been fine as a streaming service. But let's be honest, as great as Pixar is no one dropped the cash for Disney+ for that alone. Disney+ has been moving along famously in the last year or so thanks to The Baby Yoda ShowThe Mandalorian. It has been a fantastic show and Season 2 has been delivering an action-packed episode all season long AND with great storytelling AND with characters I never thought in 40 years I'd see on TV. While I am a Star Trek fan deep in my DNA, I do love Star Wars. The adventures of Not Boba Fett and Space Pikachu has been some of the best Star Wars I have seen. Disney+ could honestly do a victory lap now, but that was until yesterday when they made their 2021 announcements.
I have no idea how many new shows and movies are coming out for Marvel and Star Wars now. Lots. More than I ever thought one studio would try to do. Instead of trying to recap them all (lots of other sites are doing that) let me just focus on the ones that interest me.
WandaVison
I have a love/hate relationship with Scarlet Witch in Marvel. First, she was never really a witch so I often felt "lied" too, except the times she was a witch. And a mutant. She was a villain, she was a hero, she was depowered, she was overpowered. As a character, she was all over the place. And sometimes she was just that, all over the place. She suffered from bouts of insanity, deep depression, and loss.
I will give the movies credit on a couple of things. Divorced from her "mutant" background it gave her character more definition. Also for the first time, I bought into her's and Vision's love for each other.
The new series WandaVision looks like it takes the background of the comic's characters and really makes a good series out of it.
Seriously, this could be Wanda going mad and her powers acting out creating new realities or something else. Or both. Given the character, it is likely both. Elizabeth Olsen is also a great actress and she can pull this off. Frankly, the riffs on "Bewitched" are enough to get me to watch it.
Watching this new trailer really puts a different spin on the first trailer released.
There certainly something else going on here. I am looking forward to it.
Marvel: What If...?
One of my favorite Marvel Titles was "What If...?" The comic would break off into different sorts of stories all under the "What If" question. What if Spider-man joined the Fantastic Four? Was the first one. "What if Gwen Stacy had lived? was an interesting one as well. The best may have been the introduction of May "Mayday" Parker as "Spider-Girl" and the Gwen Stacy arc eventually planted the seeds to give us "Spider Gwen". If Barry Allen/The Flash is the center point of DC's multiverse, then certainly Spider-man is the center of Marvel's. It seems a little odd to me then that Spider-man doesn't feature at all in the trailer of Disney+'s "Marvel: What If...?" series.
I am sure it is more shenanigans with Sony. Though the rumor is now that Alfred Molina will return as Doctor Octopus in the third Spider-man movie. Additionally, we could get past Peter Parkers as well now that Disney owns what was 20th Century Fox and Into the Spider-verse was a huge success.
Here we are. Our geek cups run over and there is more to fill even more cups.
Never would I have suspected that we would have so much genre entertainment at our fingertips. Which is good since we really should not be going anywhere.
Margaret Brundage is another artist you may not know by name but certainly by her art. I will go out on a limb and say she was one of the most recognizable artists of the Pulp Era.
Margaret Brundage, born Margaret Hedda Johnson was born December 9, 1900, in Chicago, a place she would call home till her death in 1976.
She was looking for work when she found Farnsworth Wright editor of "Oriental Tales" and then "Weird Tales" Brundage would paint covers for both magazines and sign them "M. Brundage" so no one knew it was a woman doing all this art of scantily clad or nude women in peril.
Her artwork became part of the image of Weird Tales in the 1930s with some authors, Seabury Quinn notably, not only requesting her work but working in scenes of her art into the story. Others like Clark Ashton Smith and H.P. Lovecraft were less pleased with her work. But there is no doubt that her covers sold magazines.
Often her covers also had to be toned down for publication. Her other works were even more risque.
She would go on to do 66 covers for Wierd Tales. Some have gone on to become classics.
If you enjoyed the previous adventures in this series, like I have, then you know what to expect here.
If you love the old-school style modules but want something that is just "a little more" then I highly recommend these.
One day my plan is to run these all with some flavor of B/X since the adventures top out at 14th level. Though the adventures are very much in the 1st Ed D&D vein and not really "Basic", it's what I want to do with them.
Maybe when the Advanced books for Old-School Essentials come in I'll revisit this idea.
Another monster I have been playing around with for a while. This one goes all the way back to my AD&D years, though under a different name. I have always liked the idea that Lichdom is never an assured thing for evil wizards and a lot can go wrong. Here is one of those times.
Dybbuk Medium Undead (Incorporeal) Frequency: Very Rare Number Appearing: 1 (1) Alignment: Chaotic (Chaotic Evil) Movement: 180' (60') [18"] Armor Class: 4 [15] Hit Dice: 12d8+36*** (90 hp) Attacks: 1 touch or by spells Damage: 1d6+3 cold damage, or by spell (see below) Special: Ethereal, incorporeal, harmed only by magic, possession, animate dead, undead Size: Medium Save: Magic-user 12 Morale: 10 Treasure Hoard Class: Special (dybbuk box) XP: 3,500 (B/X, OSE) 3,600 (LL)
The process of becoming a lich is filled with peril and risk. Thankfully, for the forces of good, few learn the secret and fewer still meet with success. While most of the failed attempts to become a lich end with the permanent death of many evil mages, sometimes the process fails, the body is destroyed but the evil spirit lives on. These failed attempts at lichdom as known as a Dybbuk.
The dybbuk is the disembodied spirit of an evil magic-user who attempted to become a lich but whose body was destroyed before the final process was complete. The spirit remains tied to the mortal realms, unable to complete its transformation to a lich or move on to whatever plane it was due to move on too in the afterlife. The creature is evil and has a hatred for all living things.
A dybbuk is an incorporeal creature inhabiting the ethereal plane. It is invisible and can only be hit by magical weapons that can attack ethereal creatures. The creature will appear like a spectre and can be mistaken for one. When it chooses to attack a creature it will reenter the material world and become visible to all.
The most feared attack of the dybbuk is its ability to possess others. They will seek out magic-users and their pride demands that they seek out only the ones of the highest levels to possess. The victim must make a saving throw vs. spells (Lawful victims have a +1 to saves, Chaotic victims have a -1 to saves) or become possessed by the dybbuk. If possessed the victim gets another save every 24 hours. However, there is a progressive -1 each day to the save. Additionally, the victim will lose 1 point of constitution each day. When they reach 0 they are dead and cannot be resurrected as the dybbuk has destroyed their body and soul. If a victim makes the save the dybbuk cannot make another attempt for 24 hours.
Once in the body of a magic-user, the dybbuk will use any spells their host body knows. Typically they will attack anyone and everyone nearby, such is their hate for all living things. Those that can see ethereal creatures will see the dybbuk “riding” on the back of the possessed victim. A dybbuk also has the ability to animate 3d6 HD worth of skeletons and/or zombies. The bodies must be readily available, but a dybbuk will make sure plenty are on hand near it’s lair. These undead creatures follow the orders of the dybbuk til they are destroyed.
The dybbuk can be turned by a cleric as if it were a lich. Once in a victim though only an Exocism, Holy Word, Cleanse or similar spells will be effective in driving the evil spirit out. When the dybbuk is forced out it will spend the next 24 hours in its Dybbuk Box, or where its soul now resides. To fully destroy a dybbuk this housing for their soul must be destroyed.
I have gone on record with my love for the newest generation of D&D Players. They are passionate about the game they play and they LOVE their characters. I know that can sometimes feel a bit odd to the old-school crowd, but I don't care. They have passion and energy and it is them that will carry role-playing into the future for the next generations, not us.
Among all these "New School" players one of my favorites is Ginny Di. I'll provide some links below.
I featured her last week as the start of my Tasha's Week of Everything. She did a cosplay of Tasha, sponsored by Wizards of the Coast. It was a fun video and I enjoyed seeing all the work she put into the costume.
This week she is back with another great video. Here is her Twitter post for it.
pictured: a dyed-hair woke millennial snowflake feeeemale here to put her girly SJW hands all over your tabletop games 😌 pic.twitter.com/fv9ACwbG1o
— Ginny Di 📆 #Natural2021 calendar (@itsginnydi) December 2, 2020
And the video itself.
I know what you are thinking and to quote the Ninth Doctor, "I bet you are fussing and moaning right now, typical."
But really, how is this any different than what we all used to do anyway? Roll 3d6 in order and deal with it. Ginny is not so much against "Old School" as she thinks. Maybe against the "Middle School" of character optimization (positive spin) or Min-Maxing (negative spin).
It is also great advice. Characters should never be perfect. Flaws, quirks, and shortcomings make for far more interesting characters. Stan Lee knew this well. Peter Parker was a neurotic teen struggling to make ends meet. Doctor Strange was an arrogant prick before and even after his accident. Tony Stark was an arrogant prick alcoholic. I have/had a cleric who is afraid of the dark, a warlock who is colorblind, a dwarven thief that was kicked out of his clan, loves opera, and hates ale (one did not cause the others).
One of the things the New School D&D players do and do well is to think about their characters and try to build a good group dynamic. This is mocked in Old School circles as "back story" but that is a rather naïve or limiting way of looking at it. It is simply a different way of having fun with the same game.
Here is another video where she talks about 50 Character Builder Questions to ask of your character. Now in a game like D&D where characters can grow and change a lot based on what happens around them then I say it is ok to answer "I don't know yet" or even change answers later.
She does these before each session (not all of them of course) and I think that is a good way of doing things. I have been looking at her list and thought I might use some of them for my 31-day character challenge in January.
Aisling
An aisling is a poetic dream or vision and an Irish name for girls. It is also the name of Ginny's elf warlock/druid character. And she is also such a great character! Here are some videos about her character.
Count me among those that have grown to love Aisling as well. She is such a great character and sounds like she is a lot of fun despite no because of her various flaws.
Since I feel that Ginny's advice is actually in line with Old School character creation ethos I wanted to try to recreate Aisling for old school/OSR D&D. Since she is a warlock/druid "witchdaughter" it makes sense to me that she is a type of witch. Her Fey patron, Ùir, the Woman of the Soil, would make her a good Faerie Witch, but given her multiclassing into a druid and other factors, I see her as a Green Witch. All apologies to Ginny for borrowing Aisling here.
Dragonlance is back in the news (and not for great reasons) now and it got me thinking about the original trilogy. I thought maybe in this Covid time I would return to Krynn and see how well my memory of it holds up.
There is an old saying, "The Golden Age of Sci-Fi/Fantasy is 14." That rings truest for me here since I was 15 when Dragons of Autumn Twilight was released in November 1984. I devoured these books back then. I had been on a steady diet of Tolkien and Moorcock and others that I thought of as "near-D&D", since these books actually had real D&D terms and spells in them they had to be better, right. RIGHT?
Well...even then I could still "hear dice being rolled in the background" as it were.
I'll be blunt. The books are not great and a lot of my fondness for them has more to do with the time in which I read them and nostalgia. This was never brought into sharper focus than when I tried to reread them about 12 years ago. The icing on the cake was the terrible direct to video movie of Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight.
I like Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. They are very good people. I like their adventures. Ravenloft by Tracy is one of my all-time favorites. The Legends Trilogy is good as far as my memory goes. So I am rereading this again with a more open frame of mind.
Instead of complaining about these stories for what they are not, I am going to enjoy them for what they are. I am not sure if I'll post much about them here. Covid-19 is doing a number on the Universities and I have never been busier, so my free time to read is limited to a couple of minutes over lunch. But if something comes up then yeah, I'll share.
I can say this, I am three chapters in and I am enjoying what I am reading. There is heart here and that is something some other books seem to lack.
