On this day the Slave Lords have been defeated!

Over the weekend the boys escaped the Dungeons of the Slave Lords and started a revolt in the city of Sudderham to defeat the Slave Lords.  They managed to kill them all including the leader Stalman Klim.

I decided that Klim was not a cleric of the Earth Dragon cult, instead, I made a more tangible connection to the Elder Elemental Eye.  Yeah I could go all convoluted with the connections and cover cults and fronts, but really the boys have enough details to juggle.

On the Water Dragon on their way back to the Duchy of Urnst I hit them with the big plot point.  The Sun just went out.

In typical fashion, my youngest announces that someone is killing Sun Gods.

While they were unconscious in the Dungeons I told them they had a flash back to an adventure very early in their careers, and one they don't remember.

So for the next adventure, I am going make 0-level B/X Basic versions of their current 7th level D&D 5 characters and take them through T1 The Village of Hommlet.

I was going to do this using 4e, but a few things have happened recently that have made me really want to do this as Basic D&D.  Plus this is a flashback to when the characters were "younger" so a simpler system is really what I want to give it that right feel.

Any XP they get in Hommlet I am going to give to their 7th level characters.  Afterall, if they just now remembered the adventure that could not have had any advantages from the XP till now.

Also, the nice thing here is I am going to take advantage of D&D Basic's features as features (and not as I thought of them then as bugs).  So the sorcerer and the warlock are going to be Magic-Users. The elven ranger will be an Elf.  The Paladin will be a Fighter and so on.  The only sticking point is the Dragonborn.  I think he will be a Dragonborn.  Just like a Dwarven fighter would be a Dwarf. So yes I am going to use Race-as-Class for this.

I also got all my B/X GM's Screen stuff in the mail yesterday from +Richard LeBlanc so Basic is on my mind.  More on that though in another post.

The Sun is gone. The Order of the Platinum Dragon has a lost memory to recover.  And now they hear of giants coming down from the hills to brazenly attack villages...

Monstrous Mondays: Street Faerie

For today I want to post something I was working on over the weekend for a possible Swords & Wizardry game I have coming up.

Plus I thought it also might be nice to revisit a classic monster. Well...one of my classics.
You can see other Street Fae here and here.

Michael Thomas, Victorian Gothic Fairy

Street Faerie
Armor Class: 9 [10]
Hit Dice: 2
Attacks: Spark* (1d4)
Special: Blink, Glamour
Move: 12
HDE/XP: 3/60

Sreet Faeries are fae that have chosen to live in the urban sprawl of large cities rather than the normal sylvan glades and woods that one typically associates with their kind.
A typical street faerie stands about 3' high, but can glamour themselves to be taller or shorter by 2' in either in direction.  They have peppered moth wings that they can hide when needed.  Many will live in cities and disguise themselves as children or young humans.
A Street faerie can also "Blink" as per a Blink Dog or a Dimension Door spell.
Their only attack is a Spark which is a spell like attack (no save). They can cause a spark of electricity to shoot from their fingers causing 1d4 hp of damage.
A typical attack of a Street Fae will consist of a spark attack and then them blinking away.

Don't forget to include the hashtag #MonsterMonday on Twitter or #MonsterMonday on Google+ when you post your own monsters!

Zatannurday: Tribute to Darwyn Cooke

Last week we lost a great.  Darwyn Cooke died after a brief but aggressive battle with cancer.

I loved Darwyn's style and his heroes always looked like they were happy to be heroes.  They were the best versions of the characters.  Maybe not always the version we wanted to see, but better than the "grim-dark" heroes so many artists (and filmmakers) seem to want to do.

I loved how he always showed Wonder Woman smiling.

And of course when she didn't need to be.

He knew how to make Selena sexy cool.

And of course he knew how to draw Zatanna.

But I enjoyed Minutemen Before Watchmen Comics the most.

Silhouette became something else under his care.

But this video was also something he did well. For Batman's 75th Anniversary.



We are going to miss you Darwyn. You and your influence on the DCU.

White Star Traveller

Free Trader Beowulf, this is "The Lady Lilith". We acknowledge your Mayday and have you on long range scan. Our ETA is 2 mins, 37 seconds.  Hold tight Beowulf, help is on the way.

I love White Star.  It's not groundbreaking, or 100% original (Star Wars + D&D), but it is a great representation and it is a ton of fun. +James Spahn did a kick ass job and managed to get me back into Sci-Fi RPGs.

But back in the day our Sci-Fi games were not this:

But this:

There are some things in Traveller that I think of as a "must have" in a sci-fi game. Things like skills, some more psionics, and dying in character creation...wait, maybe not that.

White Star's class system covers broad skills well, but I have not tried to do very granular or specific skills yet.

Plus there are just a lot things in Traveller I just liked that I would love to see added to the White Star.  Maybe this is something I can do for my Black Star game.

There are also some things in Star Frontiers I like too, but that is something more for blog posting I think.

A Treasure Trove! With Pics!

So no "real" post today.  I spent my writing time going through my latest treasure trove.

I joined a bunch of area online "Garge Sale" groups on Facebook and one panned out yesterday.  So cash in hand I drove to nearby Schaumburg, IL and picked up a couple of milk crates full of old-school goodness.   It was not till this morning that I discovered what I really had.

Lots of minis including a wizard's lab.

A D&D Electronic board game in working condition and from what I can tell all the parts.

Modules, Top Secret and even a few Marvel Super Heroes books and some Star Frontiers.

Two Greyhawk folios with maps.  They are in rough condition though, between the two I might be able to salvage one.

More character sheets!  Always need these.

No idea what these are.  But I can't wait to find out!

A lot of the books have water damage like this.  This was not a collector's collection, but a users and a player's one.  There are also a few duplicates.  This was because the husband and wife that sold them merged their collections.

The B/X boxes are empty but the books have been cut up and put into that brown binder.  See I KNEW someone had to have done this.  The BECMI Master's box has both the Master's set and the Immortals set inside. The hardbacks are in decent enough condition. The Monstrous Compendium is in fantastic shape.

I have NO idea what this is.  It is made by TSR and it is from 1974.  The product list on back doesn't even list D&D.

Their old Gen Con folder with the games they were going to choose for 1983.

Some JG stuff.

Cut out minis.  From 1984 I think.

And this was a surprise, a 6th printing of Swords & Spells in near perfect condition.

An absolute ton of modules and books.  Some duplicates within the group and some with my own collection, but still enough "new" stuff to make it worthwhile to me.

It's going to take me some time to sort through all of this stuff that is for sure. But I will have a blast doing it.

Hammer of the Gods

The boys will soon be wrapping up their journey through the A-Series and then on to GDQ.  My plan is to play either G or D during Gen Con. After all, what could be better?

But before that happens I want to introduce the big bad problem, someone or something has snuffed out the Sun.  The lands are dark and cold and people are dying.  The is going to be a huge meeting in the City of Greyhawk to try to figure out the problem.  The big guns of the world are going to investigate a lead they think is good while the PCs deal with some giant raids.  I don't need to tell you which group is going to be successful.

BUT before that can happen they need to solve the problem of not freezing to death.

The idea is for this one shot adventure the Council (in Greyhawk) will ignite a large asteroid called "Moradin's Forge" to give them temporary light and heat.  They wanted to do it to one of the moons, but the witches in the world objected to that (and thus allows me to set the stage for the next adventures).

I need something for a group of 8th level characters to do in this.

Alternately I could have the boys play some of the council; very high-level wizards and the like to set it ablaze.  But really setting the Forge on fire is not supposed to be the difficult part.  I thought maybe they would need some special fire to do it, or means to get it to the forge.  Maybe even finding Moradin's Hammer to do it.  But while the stakes are very high, I want it to be something I can do in a 4-hour afternoon.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Bonus points if it can be tied into Led Zeppelin at all.

I might never be clean (mentally) again....

So for the last couple of days I have been doing some world-building research for a couple of projects.  All was well and good till this last round.   I fell into a "Flat Earth" rabbit hole.

Now don't get me wrong. I love reading a good crazy conspiracy theory as much as next guy and I find pseudo-science to be comical.  But this...this just made me weep for humanity.

Honestly. I have said "What the fuck is this?" so many times today that I think I have used up my lifetime quota.

So I need something to clear out my brain. Like a good documentary...or a horror movie. Something to get the stupid out.