Up from Room 11 is a room covered in bones.
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| Virgil Finlay |
Skeletons equal to the number in the party plus retainers rise up from the ground and attack. They are undead and can be turned.
There are no usable weapons, but 25 cp can be found among them.
There is an old saying, "When one door closes, another one opens."
But you know what? I hate that saying.
When a door closes, you open it back up.
I grew up playing D&D. When you encounter a closed door, you make your "Open Doors" roll and kick it in!
Look. I love D&D, and I likely always will. While Hasbro's choices disappoint me, I am not going to let them stop my fun.
So at home, I am still going to play the games I like. On my blog and for my writing? Well, there are plenty of exciting existing alternatives. It now sounds like there are going to be more alternatives too.
But maybe the "OSR" phase of my game writing is over. It was fun, and I loved doing it. But many other games are out there that need love and attention, and I am excited to try them out.
One of the original purposes of my original "The Other Side" website was to talk about all sorts of games that I enjoyed. So let that continue now.
This room has a faint glow, and there is the smell of roasted meats.
In this space, there is a stone room but also a forest scene of glowing nearly transparent trees as far as the eye can see. Characters can only walk the 20 feet by 20 feet of the room. In the center of the grows a large tree laden with fruits.
The fruits are oval-shaped and look like mangoes. The fruits taste like roasted meat. Characters can eat them with no problems, they are fine if a little bland. They disappear once removed from this room.
Across from Room 10 is a similarly configured room.
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| Photo by Pixabay from Pexels |
A secret door in the floor reveals a sack of 150 GP. The coins are ancient and unknown to the PCs.
Up from Room #8 and across from Room #9 is Room #10.
It appears to be of the same dimensions as the previous rooms 5 through 9.
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| Virgil Finlay |
Once the room is entered, a group of semi-human Phantoms appears.
The Phantoms can not attack, but a failed saving throw vs. Spells will cause anyone to run out of the room in fear. Once out of the room the fear effect dissipates.
They have 1-1 HD and 1 hp. Magic weapons are required to hit. There are 10 and their AC is 9.
The phantoms can be Turned by a cleric. A bless or dispel evil spell will also destroy them. The entire group is effected by these magics.
Well...
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| Photo by Mike B on Pexels |
I have to admit, the wind has really been knocked out of my sails here.
My plan was to produce one of these a week, every Monday. And I was well on my way to doing that. I had everything in a great database that auto-calculated everything, including a CR calculation I was very happy with.
I had over 500 monsters with over 300 done.
The desire here has evaporated even if I could find a way to do them.
This has also killed what I wanted to do for Basic Bestiary.
I still want to do something with all these monsters. I have worked too much on them just to let them lie here, forgotten on my hard drives.
I am looking into other licenses and other means of publication. But they most certainly will not be for D&D or retro-clones. Not until this OGL nonsense gets sorted. I have worked well under this safe harbor of the OGL for a long time. Maybe it is time for me to branch out and give some attention to other games I enjoy.
This appears to be another empty room.
Magic using characters feel a greater unease here.
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| Image by kues1 on Freepik |
A detect magic or similar magic will reveal a small hand-sized portal at about 3 ft off the ground near the middle of the room. Sticking any mundane item through will cause it to disappear as if stuck into a hole. Pulling it out will have it reappear with no damage.
If a character puts a hand or arm through the will feel warm breezes (like a summer's day). They can pull their hand out again with no problems.
If the characters keep doing this then the 5th time a hand moves through the portal, something will grab it. A combined strength score of 25 is needed to pull the character free.
The character in question will have a bruise on their wrist from whatever grabbed them.
