here's a neat chart

Villains and Vigilantes was one of the great superhero RPGs from the period before the release of official Marvel and DC games in '84 and '85 respectively. Written by Jack Herman and Jeff Dee and illustrated by the latter, V&V had a lot of good stuff going for it. Unlike it's #1 rival Champions, V&V used both level mechanics and random generation. As a kid I though that made the point-buy based Champions the better game. But nowadays I look back at the period where I played a lot of Champions and wonder what the hell I was thinking spending so much time fiddling with all that math when I could have just rolled up some weirdo and started playing. (The short answer is that I liked the company of the people I played with, which trumps a lot of other considerations for me.)

Anyhoo, you can buy a bunch of V&V at drivethru these days. I think Jeff Dee has continued to revise the system but under different titles. I recall he had out a rulebook called Living Legends ten or fifteen years ago and I think Mighty Protectors is a more recent incarnation of V&V. But I don't know much about either of those. Today I wanted to share a chart from the second edition back in the day. This chart can be used for randomly determining the level of anyone the PCs encounter:

Need to know the level of the supervillains opposing the party? Just throw 4d6 and cross reference with the highest level on the team. This chart could be used in a D&D-type game easily enough to generate NPC parties or things like that.

The rules note that to use this chart for thugs and henchmen divide the result by five and round up. (This could result in a situation where the master villain of the scenario is 1st level but their right hand goon is 2nd, 3rd, or 4th level. That could be a fun dynamic to see play out.) For civilians divide by ten and round up. 

One other weird bit of trivia about V&V: although it would be super easy to begin character generation by throwing 3d6 five times for your PC's Strength, Endurance, Agility, Intelligence, and Charisma, the rules actually come with guidelines on how the GM should rate each of their players in this regard! I.e. the assumption was that you played a version of yourself in this game, only with superpowers. The only other game I know like that from back in the day is Timelords by Greg Porter. (Not to be confused with Time Lord, which was a licensed Doctor Who rpg.) I normally think of Greg Porter as the mind behind the delightfully schlocky Macho Women with Guns line, but he has a load of other rpg credits on top of that.

Die and die again

As I mentioned back in January, the main gaming I've been doing over the last year has been Tunnels & Trolls solos. Sitting around a table with folks has felt like a health hazard, while my entire job moving onto Zoom has reduced the appeal of online gaming. But I got my second dose of the magic juice today, so maybe I'll get back to a tabletop game sometime soon.

Meanwhile, I have killed a lot of characters in various T&T dungeons. Here are just some of the deaths that survive in my recent notes:

• Hundfric the Bold - killed by bloodbats
• Tandok the Soggy - gnawed to death by giant rats
• Rikulf the Dim - slain by a bored troll
• Nelatu One-Hand - turned to stone by a giant floating eye
• Kundrag the Exile - shivved by an Elvish gambler in a tavern
• Oon the Outlaw - murdered after getting drunk with a wench
• Gorp Scroggin-Schmogle - fell in a duel with a necromancer
• Myrric the Slayer - walked into a room full of lava and died
• Humot of the Blue Mountains - drowned by a giant octopus
• Rankin of Khazan - soul trapped in a painting forever
• Viktor the Shark - cut down by two undead knights

I've killed dozens more poor pitiful adventurers than just those listed. Very few have made it to second level before their untimely demise. Nelatu One-Hand up there is my only PC so far to achieve third level, although he lost his left hand to some very nasty monkeys prior to his unfortunate petrification.

Some things I have learned making all these T&T characters in batches and getting most of them killed:

• I don't mind sending waves of these poor bastards to their deaths, so long as the death isn't boring.
• I've lost a lot of PCs to bloodbats, which appear in multiple T&T solos. I'm getting to be like Samuel L. Jackson and snakes, only vis-a-vis bloodbats.
• One of the reasons I don't mind losing so many PCs is because I genuinely enjoy rolling up new characters. Sometimes I use the random function in a spreadsheet to roll up a ton of stats for a bunch of dungeon fodder, but sometimes I just roll dice 3d6 in order. Either way, I enjoy seeing the adventurers that emerges from random generation.

  

  Truth in advertising: You start
  the adventure butt naked.

• Also, all of those deaths really add a sense of accomplishment when you get a PC through an entire adventure. In my notes I have 17 PCs that I sent into the adventure Naked Doom. Only 3 made it out alive. I didn't stop at one success because I wanted to find out if there were multiple nonlethal end states. There's at least one branch of the adventure that I still haven't full explored.
• Despite my love of making characters and sending fourteen-seventeenths of them to their deaths, I've been repeatedly reminded how much I dislike buying equipment for new PCs. It just feels like a chore, especially for the seventh goon in a row you've sent into Buffalo Castle or Deathtrap Equalizer Dungeon or whatever. And in T&T you can't just buy every fighter a sword (normal) like in Basic D&D. Every weapon has a Strength and Dexterity minimum, so you need to look at the extensive weapons lists to find a weapon that you can both use and afford.
• As a result, I am drawn to T&T adventures that do the equipment selection for me. That's how I got on a such a Naked Doom trip. The premise is that you have been convicted of a crime in the city of Khazan and condemned to a trip through their punishment dungeon. You begin the adventure with no equipment or clothes even. No thought needed. Just lots and lots of deaths. Then there's Goblin Lake, in which you play a goblin equipped with a flint dagger, a ragged loincloth, and a little net suitable for catching normal-sized frogs. Gorp Scroggin-Schmogle above is one of the two goblins I got through Goblin Lake in one piece.
• There's also a couple of modules that come with a completely pre-made PC. Beyond the Silvered Pane and Sea of Mystery both come with pre-made, fully-equipped 2nd level rogue that you can name and let loose on the adventure. I haven't played them much though, as starting at 2nd level feels a little like cheating.

Goblin Lake features both a great
Liz Danforth cover and the excellent
Bluebeard font.

steal this loot

Oh, no. We just had this discussion.

On the facebook noted coolguy Christian Conkle asked for ideas as to what could be found in the loot sack of a post-apocalyptic ogre. I just wanted to save my response here:

75% of a bicycle, a copy of Dianetics translated into Esperanto, 3 empty cigar boxes, 14 cans of spam, a glowy box 3" per side, the left arm of an android, 16 pushbutton fires (like high tech sterno), the Mona Lisa rolled up and stuck in a length of PVC pipe, a dogcollar that translates dog sounds to simple human phrases ("Want food!" "Go outside!") with only 40% accuracy, a ballpoint pen with a small selector that allows one to write in 256 different colors, the pickled heart of Justin Bieber, a passcard that allows you to board the SS Elon Musk (a cruiseship style hovercraft presently at the bottom of Lake Ontario), a small animal-shaped robot that functions like a Tamagotchi, 3 bottles of 5Loco

Also, his royal guard were all paladins but that doesn't seem relevant to the rest of the post.

The Leprechaun King carousing with a human friend.

I had a dream the other night that there was a Leprechaun King named Zap! Yes, his name had an exclamation mark at the end. Consider the notion that all leprechauns are named liked that. And by "like that", I mean after the visual sound effects of the 1966 Batman TV show. So here are all the canonical names for leprechauns under this scheme:

Random Leprechaun Name (d87)

from Space Gamer #74, IIRC

1. Aieee!
2. Aiieee!
3. Arrrgh!
4. Awk!
5. Awkkkkkk!
6. Bam!
7. Bang!
8. Bang-Eth!
9. Bap!
10. Biff!
11. Bloop!
12. Blurp!
13. Boff!
14. Bonk!
15. Clank!
16. Clange!
17. Clank-Est!
18. Clash!
19. Clunk!
20. Clunk-Eth!
21. Craaack!
22. Crash!
23. Crraaack!
24. Crunch!
25. Crunch-Eth!
26. Eee-Yow!
27. Flrbbbbb!
28. Glipp!
29. Glurpp!
30. Kapow!
31. Kayo!
32. Ker-Plop!
33. Ker-Sploosh!
34. Klonk!
35. Krunch!
36. Oooff!
37. Ooooff!
38. Ouch!
39. Ouch-Eth!
40. Owww!
41. Ow-Eth!
42. Pam!
43. Plop!
44. Pow!
45. Powie!
46. Qunckkk!
47. Rakkk!
48. Rip!
49. Slosh!
50. Sock!
51. Splaat!
52. Splatt!
53. Sploosh!
54. Swaap!
55. Swish!
56. Swoosh!
57. Thunk!
58. Thwack!
59. Thwackel!
60. Thwape!
61. Thwapp!
62. Touché!
63. Uggh!
64. Urkk!
65. Urkkk!
66. Vronk!
67. Whack!
68. Whack-Eth!
69. Wham-Eth!
70. Whamm!
71. Whammm!
72. Whap!
73. Zam!
74. Zamm!
75. Zammm!
76. Zap!
77. Zap-Eth!
78. Zgruppp!
79. Zlonk!
80. Zlopp!
81. Zlott!
82. Zok!
83. Zowie!
84. Zwapp!
85. Z-zwap!
86. Z-z-z-z-wap!
87. Zzzzzwap!      (source)

Only native speakers of the Leprechaun tongue can clearly differentiate the subtleties of correctly pronouncing things like "Zam!" versus "Zamm!" versus "Zammm!" Turns out Leprechaunese is rife with such pitfalls, owing to its status as a language isolate, with no known relation to the linguistic family that includes the Common Tongue. Leprechauns who regularly interact with humans, dwarves, elves, and hobbits constantly deal with people mangling their names. Many simply bear the humiliation in silence, but occasionally you'll find yourself in an argument with one of the wee folk and you just don't understand why they're yelling "My name's not Splaat!, you gigantic simpleton! It's Splatt!"

Some leprechaun communities are so driven to distraction by the mispronouncing of their name that they develop intricate systems for identifying a pseudonym, a "humanish name" they only use with outsiders. Here's a typical example of this sort of thing:

Leprechauns don't really get human names.

But what about the exclamation point at the end of leprechaunish names? In my dream I didn't hear the Leprechaun King's name said aloud. Rather "Realm of Zap! the Leprechaun King" was written on a map next to a set of islands that looked a little like the Misty Isles or maybe Vog Mur. It could be an aveolar click, but ending every name with the same sound seems like a dull addition to this system. I think it would be better if  the exclamation mark at the end of every leprechaunish name is not pronounced. Rather, it is a textual indicator that the word is a personal name. This allows one to easily distinguish in written communication whether you are talking about your cousin Vronk! or his hometown of Vronk@.

According to an ancient legend, every time the Caped
Crusader punches a criminal a leprechaun is born.
This is why most leprechaun communities
feature a shrine to Blessed Saint Batman.

You're probably doing ogres wrong.

Thanks to the Nameless Jedi for inspiring this post. Let's begin with a simple thought exercise.

Allow me to intriduce you to Orlando the Ogre. Formally, he's Orlando Pedgewick Ogremoore the Third, of the Crystalmist Mountain Ogremoores. He's a middle manager in the Crystalmist division of ChaosCorp and a junior officer at his country club. Orlando the Ogre wants to be your friend.

Now, before you click to read the rest of the post, imagine the color scheme you would use to turn my black-and-white illo into a full color jobbie. Do you have that image locked in? Then click away.

This is the kind of thing I do on Saturday mornings.

I turn an old piece of Battlestar Galactic concept art into an album cover.

Edit to add:

 

Q: What color is a tirapheg?

So I've been re-reading the Fiend Folio, as I am wont to do from time to time. And once again I was struck by how in the old monster write-ups you can easily tell whether the monster creator regularly used minis or not. You'll get what are effectively detailed painting instructions from the minis-users, whether a retail figure exists for the monster or not. People who use minis in their games a lot tend to think in color. 

Then there's creatures like the tirapheg. Heavy on the kind of description you need to convey to players what the hell it looks like, but not much in the way of color info. The shape of the monster tends to be top priority in the imaginations of the non-minis set.

I guess you could read the descriptors of "naked and hairless" and "human-like" to imply that you should paint your tirapheg in normal human skintones. That strikes me as a super-creepy option. But the fact of the matter is that we don't know for sure. The original vision of the tirapheg could look more like one of these:

Of course, it is entirely possible that the tirapheg might appear in later monster books I haven't read and the updated write-ups include color info. Heck, there could even be an official prepainted plastic mini for all I know. That's not really the point of the post though. Rather, I want to suggest that when you write up a visual description for a new critter, consider including both the physical shape of the thing and a color guide as well. The color info will help even the Theatre of the Mind style DMs to describe the thing, while it also greatly benefits a lot of minis painters.

And don't worry about the fact that an official mini of your monster doesn't exist. Even a DM like me, who rarely uses figures and can't paint his way out of a paper bag, can do a little kitbashing if the situation call for it. It only takes a small plastic lobster from a zoo gift shop, the wings off of a plastic dragon fly, a toothpick, and a bit of paint to make a garbug, for example. Heck you could fake the wings with cardstock if you wanted. A tirapheg probably wouldn't be too hard to mock up out of Sculpey or you could hack together parts from a couple of Reaper sculpting dollies.

No offense to whoever at Games Workshop
sculpted this unreleased tirapheg figure, but I
figure a lot of people could do at least this well.