Gygaxian Naturalists: Your Campaign's Monster Manual According to the Players

This may have been proposed before, but just in case it hasn't...

So I was thinking about Galbaruc, and monsters, and how I wanted to handle monsters in my campaign setting, and what I wanted to emphasize, and avoid, and I got to thinking about a session of Jeff Rient's Caves of Myrddin campaign I was in a few weeks ago. We were somewhere beneath the East Tower, having just descended to a new level, and we encountered a grayish, winged creature we took to be a gargoyle. This prompted a brief discussion on whether or not our characters would know what it was, let alone its strengths and weaknesses, etc. And then Jeff said we were free to use any out-of-character knowledge we wanted. In fact, we were welcome to open the book right there on the spot, and look up the relevant entry.*

This came as something of a shock to me. For most of my (admittedly short, by community standards) gaming career, this simply WAS NOT DONE. "Metagaming" was high on the hierarchy of sins. This was madness. This was the Pope handing out condoms at a Pride rally.

So we looked up the entry, decided we had very little chance of taking on such an opponent, and ran like hell. But I didn't trust the entry anyway. The whole thing made me paranoid. No, there was a reason Jeff was so blase about the whole thing. This wasn't a gargoyle at all. Or maybe it was, but it had some kind of crazy anti-gargoyle powers and shot napalm out of its nipples or something.

I loved that feeling of uncertainty-- of having information right in front of you, but not quite being able to trust it. For all I know, Jeff might simply be running with absolute transparency, and I was getting all worked up for nothing.

But this made me think about Herodotus' History, medieval bestiaries and the accounts of early travelers and explorers. We've got information, sometimes very specific information, but it's not exactly reliable. Often, this information is second-hand at best, and you have writers and illustrators, often with the best will in the world, working from garbled accounts. And all this is further confused by a thick fog of lies, exaggerations, wishful thinking, and pious tempts to imbue these creatures with religious symbolism. I have a T.H. White translation of a medieval bestiary that describes the panther as a symbol for Christ, attests to the miraculous ability of the beaver to detach its own genitals (and thus become a symbol of chastity) and depicts the crocodile as some kind of wolf-creature with eagle talons.

This would be perfect for gaming, and even better for ConstantCon games, where you have a nice big pool of players and their characters hopping from game-world to game world. There's already a sizable amount of rumor and speculation flying around about the Caves of Myrddin, for example.
The PCs are explorers -- they venture into bizarre, uncharted territories and CHART THEM. Dungeons are explored, passages marked, traps, secret doors, and mysterious items cataloged and referenced for later use. Secrets are bought, sold and traded. Bounties are offered by other players for the heads of particular miscreants.

There's really no reason monsters can't work the same way. The party encounters some strange critter or swarm of critters they've never seen before. Half the party is wiped out, but the survivors take notes. "Large, single red eye and a black beak, wings, covered in dense, foul-smelling white fur. Can breathe paralyzing fog at least once a round. We needed at least a 16 to hit, so AC is 3 or lower. The one we killed was still alive after we did 18 damage to it, but then the cleric (God rest his poor soul) got it for 8 points in a single hit and killed it, so we know it had somewhere between 19 and 26 Hit Points. They seem to travel in packs of 3-5."

Later, these creatures acquire a name, maybe a sketch from someone whose character encountered one, or, even better, someone reading that person's account of the encounter. Rumors about possible weaknesses are raised. What if it's some kind of demon. Would Holy Water affect it? Only one way to find out... G+ chat sessions become Explorer's Clubs. "Didn't you try smearing your faces with gnoll bone marrow, old boy? No?"



*Now that I think about it, this may have just been so we'd stand around dawdling and he'd have an excuse to roll for Wandering Monsters

EPT: Thursday Night on the Island

The Foreign Quarter of Jakalla has been abuzz lately with talk of the latest expedition to the Manse of Kotaru hiChakresa.

- Two stout warriors, Dagazar (Evan Elkins) and Orin "the Witless" (Jason Kielbasa) and a priest, Orin "The Wise" made their way to the mysterious island.

- They encountered two small boats already on shore, and, after some deliberation, decided not to ascend the steep, rock-hewn staircase, but to circumnavigate the island,looking for another point of entry. At the southern tip of the island, they found the mouth of a sea-cave.

- Upon entering, they found themselves in a small chamber that proved to be part of a larger complex. They also seem to have found some treasure, to judge from their satisfied expressions upon returning.

- Shortly after they began exploring the complex, they found themselves assaulted by a number (which seems to vary with each telling) of human foes. Dagazar has been proudly wearing the mummified, shrunken heads of two of these adversaries (a male and a female) from his belt.

Dagazar's own account of the expedition can be found here.

My Empire of the Petal Throne Game: the setup.

I probably should've mentioned this before, but I've been running Empire of the Petal Throne on Google Plus. I've been running it in conjunction with Chris Kutalik over at Hill Cantons, and we've hashed out a set of FLAILSNAILS-style conventions: The Jakalla Protocols as well as some houserules. Both games are set, as the name suggests, in and around the Tsolyani port-city of Jakalla, the "City Half as Old as the World" -- a teeming, decadent southern metropolis, where the PCs, bas fresh-off the-boat barbarians, attempt to earn gold, glory, and citizenship. To this end, we've staked out different locations -- Chris' games have focused on a section of the Jakalla Underworld - the labyrinth of tunnels, ruins, and passageways that lies beneath the city, while I've set up shop on a little island off the coast, where a member of a prominent clan has an ancestral manor house. We're both kick-starting our games again, after a brief hiatus, and I thought I'd share something about mine.

Here's what you know:

- The house currently belongs to Kotaru hiChakresa of the Golden Sunburst Clan.

- He hasn't been seen in over a decade, during which a meshqu plaque outside the gate has declared that he is indisposed and must not be disturbed.

- His clan suspects he may be dead, but, due to the strictures of Tsolyani etiquette, they cannot directly violate his publicly-stated wishes. Meanwhile, the house and the surrounding grounds have fallen into disrepair.

- His grand-niece, Mara hiChakresa, offers 300 kaitar per person to the party that can either provide irrefutable proof of his death, or convince him to sign a contract relinquishing the property back into the ownership of the clan as a whole. In addition, the Deputy Sub-Minister for the Housing of Foreign and Indigent Persons owes her a favor, and would be able to furnish the necessary paperwork to secure better housing for the party (most of whom are languishing in the Tower of the Red Dome, a notorious, vermin-infested flophouse.

- Kotaru hiChakresa is/was quite wealthy and had/has a reputation as something of a sorcerer.

- One adventurer has died trying to scale the wall. When he reached to top, he was incinerated by numerous beams of light.

- Undead caretakers have been found roaming the grounds outside the wall, and in the lighthouse. All encountered so far have been destroyed.

- There are hostile creatures of some sort inhabiting the nearby caves. It had been proposed that the caves might contain a secret passage to the manor house, though this theory has yet to be tested, as the party was attacked by arrow-firing assailants shortly upon venturing inside.

[NSFW] Ken Russell: 1927-2011 -- Thanks for 84 years of Beauty, Grotesqueness, and Lusty Excess

My favorite movie director died last night. The list of adjectives that were typically trotted out to accompany his often hostile reviews included: "vulgar," "tasteless," "shrill," "camp," "trashy," "exploitative," "lurid," "overheated," and "self-indulgent."

These are not, strictly speaking, inaccurate impressions. But if these are vices, then he made a unique virtue of them, and he never committed the far more common and far more damning sin of churning out work that was boring, trite, safe, and thoroughly respectable. I can't think of anything else to say right now that gets across the impact-- the lyrical, brain-shattering jolt this man's work has had on me, so I'll shut up for now and let the work speak for itself.

NOTE: Some of the following video clips would probably not go over well in an office environment, a day care, or a convent. Please exercise discretion.

Empire of the Petal Throne Character Sheet, and Brief Update

- So I made a character sheet for the original, 1974 Empire of the Petal Throne RPG. It's not perfect, by any means, but I hope it'll be useful. I know next to nothing about imaging, layout, and design software (I put it together on MS Word) so feel free to make any adjustments, improvements, or embellishments on it as you see fit -- just let me know so I can link to it, and use it myself. You can find it (in .pdf) in the "Downloads" sidebar to the right.

- I just realized that a few of those downloads were set to "private" so if any of you were trying to download a pdf and couldn't access it, they should all work now.

- "Rival Adventuring Parties" has been fixed so that it actually functions as a table.

Solomon Kane Wishes Ye Gluttonous Wretches a Happy Thanksgiving*

Everyone's favorite Puritan** bids you enjoy your nourishing repast and good fellowship (without ever losing sight of the fact that feasting, like all fleshly pleasures, is vain and fleeting, and that your sinful bodies are destined to fatten the worms even as the turkey does your mortal frames).

*Yeah, I know there's a distinction between Puritans and Pilgrims, but there's that hat...

** A pretty short list, as it turns out:
1. Solomon Kane
2. John Milton
3. ?

These Guys are Getting Statted Up and Dropped Into Galbaruc

Well, not on the city itself, but beneath it, sure, and in lonely places in the wilderness, and beneath the sea, and inhabiting strange, unexplored islands. I found these pseudo-Rabelasian monstrosities on the always-excellent Monster Brains yesterday, and they're exactly the sort of bizarre creepy-yet-somewhat- whimsical monsters I want to use in my setting. They look like the guys who were taking a cigarette break when it came time for the Temptation of St. Anthony, or something Sir John Mandeville saw on his travels while tripping on strange drugs with Prester John.

Here's a few:

What Galbaruc Looks Like [part 1 of ?]

Miscellany and Update: 11/15/2011

1. If you're not playing in Jeff Rients' Caves of Myrddin game, you're really missing out. Odds are, if you're reading this, you're reading his blog already and have heard the wild rumors and speculations of this dungeon haunted corner of Cornwall. If the schedule (Jeff starts at 4:30 am CST) is putting you off, take a chance and sign up anyway. I'm not a morning person in the slightest, but it's been more than worth it, every time. In addition to being some of the most fun I've had at a gaming table, virtual or otherwise, each session doubles as a master-class in how to run a challenging, compelling, and satisfying game of Old School D&D (we're using B/X).

2. Jack Shear, author of 13 Flavors of Fear: Weird Setting Sketches for Lamentations of the Flame Princess (yer humble narrator has some material in the appendix) has just come out with a new blog: Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque. And he starts it off with a bang -- 100 strange and phantasmagorical things to happen to your players when they miss a session. Check it out!

3. After a lengthy hiatus, I've started breaking out the art supplies again over the last month. I'm still experimenting and re-learning how to draw, but it's very satisfying to get ink and graphite (I haven't tried painting again yet) on paper. Here are a couple of recent attempts:

Beyond Good and Evil: "Charming" and "Tedious"

I was thinking about this Oscar Wilde quote the other day:

"It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious." *

At the risk of being tedious myself, I'd like to propose the following as an RPG thought experiment. It's not particularly profound, but it might be amusing. Strip out the "Good" and "Evil" from the standard AD&D alignment chart and replace it with "Charming" and "Tedious" -- so you end up with Lawful Charming, Chaotic Tedious, and so forth. I can't remember the number of "fictional character alignment charts" I've seen, sifting everyone from different iterations of Batman to the cast of Family Guy into the classic 3x3 grid, and I'm curious to see what such a chart would look like with that substitution. Take a character from real life, comics, books, TV, etc,, and drop them in. Take a character you're currently playing, and see where they fall on the grid. Just off the top of my head, Special Agent Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks would occupy one end of the spectrum at Lawful Charming, while the late Muammar Gadaffi and, say, internet trolls typify Chaotic Tedious.

*Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)