Shatner versus himself!

Big thanks to my good buddy Pat for the link!

so, hey. 3.5.

Dane, one of the awesome players in my Wednesday night game has threatened to run some Dungeon Crawl Classis-fueld D&D 3.5 this summer.  I got rid of pretty much all my WotC-type D&D stuff awhile back, keeping only Rappan Athuk and anything with the words "Judges" and "Guild" on the cover.  So I told Dane that any character I made would be based entirely on the Hypertext SRD.  Nowadays when I flip through that website I ask myself why I've never seen an old school SRD.  Being able to download a free PDF copy of Swords & Wizardry or Labyrinth Lord is rock solid awesome, but at some point mimicking a prior media form is counterproductive.  Like how you gain nothing by limiting a TV or movie production by limiting the action to what will fit on a theatre stage.

Anyway, I got to daydreaming about what kind of character I'd like to play in Dane's hypothetical game.  Most of my first ideas were stuff that could be played in any edition ("Hey, fighters are awesome.  Also: wizards.") or fairly obvious stretches ("Half-elf paladin whose fairy blood and mission from God pull him in different directions").  But I've got two ideas that I wouldn't normally think to try under a TSR edition.

1. A halfling sorcerer who works through pipe-based effects.  Fear my smoke rings, mofos!
2. A commoner.

I'd really like to try the second option just to see how far I'd get while totally sucking, but I'd probably feel guilty about not pulling my weight.  Anyone out there try playing a commoner in a party of mechanically competent characters?

growing into the awesome

I'm told it's easy to get the impression that all the old school bloggers are grumpy old men who hate anything that Wizards of the Coast does.  This is not entirely true.  We have a few grumpy young women as well.  Also, Wizards has produced so much D&D material over the last decade or so that one is bound to find some good stuff in there if you don't just dismiss it all out of hand.  For example, I still kinda like the Template as a systematic way to give multiple disparate monsters a similar theme.  Many individual templates were pretty sucky though, such as the Fiendish template.  One would be hard-pressed to find a more boring way to mechanically express the idea that this particular monster has the brimstone taint of hell about it.

Another concept where I like the idea but not the execution is the magic swords and junk from Weapons of Legacy.  A chapter with a similar topic also appeared in the 3.5 version of the Unearthed Arcana.  I'm told by my sources that Earthdawn and the French rpg Bloodlust also covered similar ground but I've got to give WotC credit for getting me thinking in this direction.  The basic idea I'm digging on is giving low-level PCs a magic item that starts out weak but grows as the PC levels up.  Rather than constantly feeding PCs a slow diet of more powerful magic swords, you give them a single sword that grows with them.

I like the idea but not Wizards' execution of it.  First of all, both WotC versions require the PC to sacrifice game mojo (by taking levels in a stupid prestige class and/or dumbass feats) to make their trinkets pokevolve.  Nertz to that.  Second, the items grow in a systematic, preplanned way.  That's the exact same thinking that put me off chargen as a source of fun.  It makes every time I level up a PC in 3.x seem as enjoyable as doing my taxes.  Maybe you enjoy tax planning and keeping all those receipts, but I greatly prefer taking the standard deduction and getting on with my life.

Here's how I'd handle a Weapon of Legacy.  First start out by assuming that any magic weapon found in play with just a bonus (i.e. a plain ordinary sword +1, axe+2, etc.) is a dormant weapon.  Enchanted in a bygone age, these weapons sleep between periods of activity just like dragons.  Awakening them requires that they be found by an heroic personage (someone with levels), named and used.  Upon the heroic personage gaining a level, the player gets to roll to see if some of the dormant power within the weapon becomes active.  This would involve a huge-ass random die chart, of course.  If a new power becomes available, the PC is expected to give the sword an epithet.

Example: 

DM:  Inside the treasure chest you find 250 gold pieces stamped with the image of a long-dead king and a silver-hilted sword in an ancient scabbard of cracked leather.
Tom: I start filling my pack with gold.
Bob: I grab the sword and draw it from its sheath with a flourish.
DM: You feel an eerie power course through your sword arm.  It's a sword +1, dude.
Bob: I will name you... Doombringer!
Tom: Way to rip off Moorcock, dude.  Heh.  I said Moorcock.
Bob: Shut up.  Okay, howzabout Kings-Gift, since we're stealing some dead king's treasure here?
DM: I like both.  Kings-Gift sounds vaguely Old English, like I would believe a sword found in Beowulf would be called that.  But I'm always for more doom in the campaign.
Bob:  Doombringer it is, then.
Tom: I saw Beowulf in the theater.  Those wrist crossbows were rad.
DM: Part of me wants to smack you.  The other part likes wrist crossbows.

Later that session:

DM: Okay, that's four dead ogres split five and a half ways, or 291 XP each, 145 for the henchman.
Bob: Ding! Ding! Ding!  I just leveled up.  How's life as an elf, Tom?
Tom: Grumble, mumble.
DM: Bob, roll to see if Doombringer gains additional powers.
Bob: What do I roll?
DM: I don't know.  This is just an example and Jeff's still working out the details.  Let's say you rolled +2 damage versus a recently slain foe of your choice.
Bob: Awesome!  We're still in the Ogre Hills, right?  I'll take it versus ogres.
DM: Excellent choice.  To gain access to this power you have to give it an epithet.
Bob: What's an epithet?
DM: An additional name/title that someone or something goes by.  Like Chicago is the Windy City or Batman is called the Darknight Detective.
Tom: I know!  You can call your sword DJ OGA KILLA.
Bob: Right.  Because I've always thought of my paladin as a thug rapper.  Still Ogre Killer is sort of in the ballpark, isn't it?
DM: Ogres-Bane?
Tom: The Og-sterminator!
Bob:  Ogre Slayer.  My sword is now Doombringer, the Ogre Slayer.  Fear me, vaguely gigantic cave-men of the Ogre Hills!

Later Bob's paladin and Tom's elf fall into a pit and die.

been a while since I did one of these...

Varlets & Vermin - great new free PDF full of low level monsters

The Diary of Jack the Ripper - transcription of the hoax that made the news a few years back

Denebian Slime Devil - I'm pretty sure one of the Arduin books or something like that has stats for one of these

Lords of the Middle Sea - need a map for your post-apoc campaign?

I Am Not A Gamer - Roleplaying Games, Cultural Artifacts, and Self-Identity

How did this get into distribution?

Seriously, what the hell is going on here?

source

fear the Solymi

So over the past week or so I've been reading the Iliad as translated into English prose by 19th century poet Samuel Butler. I spent a fair amount of time back in college with Richmond Lattimore's poetic translation, as I minored in Classic Civilizations. But I've been meaning to get around to re-reading the Iliad ever since I bought a set of the Britannica Great Books series over a decade ago. Those babies ain't gonna read themselves.

Anyway, book VI mentions in passing the three great deeds of the hero Bellerophon, who got a write-up in the original Deities & Demigods.  Bellerophon's deeds include defeating the Amazons, slaying the Chimera (which Butler describes as a fire-breathing 'goddess' with the head of a lion, the body of a goat and the tail of a serpent) and fighting the "far-famed Solymi".  No explanation is given for what the heck a Solymi is.  A quick googling suggests 'Solymi' was the name given to a tribe of people, but I decided it needed to be a variant chimera.

SOLYMUS

# Encountered: d2 (d4)
Align: Chaos
Mv: 120' (40')
AC: 4 [15]
HD: 9
Attacks: 2 claws (d4+1/d4+1), bite (d10), gore (2d4)
Save as: Fighter 9
Morale: 9
Treasure: XVII - F

The solymus (pl. solymi) is a magical hybrid creature with the body of a lion, the head and tail of a great serpent and the horns of a wild goat or ibex.  Thrice per day a solymus may vomit forth a glob of poison 5' in diameter, which may be directed at one foe or two standing side-by-side up to 50' away.  Those attacked by the poison glob may save versus breath attack to dodge it, otherwise they suffer 3d6 poison damage.

Total Eclipse of the Shatner