A to Z: N is for Nibblott
Posted: April 15, 2011 Filed under: A to Z, aldeboran 1 Comment
Nibblott was/is a small village, similar in scale to Greyhawk’s more famous Hommlett. I think it first appeared in one of my adventures back in 1980 or so… and, since then has been recycled by me and reappeared elsewhere. Nibblott was home of the famous “Stumble Inn” where many player characters met and rested. It is ruled by the infamous Baron Kragy and his even more famous cousin, Ogar Thinwhistle. When Nibblott was in Blackmoor, the above coats of arms were used for some of the towns. From left to right, they were (in order) Temple of the Frog, Vestfold, Glendower, Blackmoor, Svenny, Nibblot and Coot. Nibblot was also in Aldeboran, as witnessed by this early map: 
A to Z: M is for Monster Manual
Posted: April 14, 2011 Filed under: A to Z, aldeboran, monsters 5 Comments
Back in 1978 or so, I first acquired the ‘Monster Manual.’ It soon became (and remains) one of my favorite books. By the standards of today, it might be considered a pretty primitive effort. No color illustrations, no online updates or errata or discussion groups, etc. The interior illustrations are black and white. Some of the drawings look pretty amateurish. Many of the monsters are downright silly. Plus the book leaves all sorts of questions unanswered. For example, it says that the touch of the tendrils of the violet fungi will rot your flesh, but fails to say what having ‘rotted flesh’ means for your character. Despite the flaws, this remains my favorite monster book. Maybe I love it because it was the first book like this that I owned (although The Glass Harmonica Lexicon is somewhat similar and I had that book as well around the same time). Maybe I love it because we had so much fun with it. Maybe I love it because I spent so much time turning the pages and reading the descriptions and wondering at these fantastic creatures. I don’t know, but I think it remains one of my favorite books.
This Modern World
Posted: April 14, 2011 Filed under: politics Leave a commentFunny (or not so much) comics from Tom Tommorow:
Exquisite Corpses in progress
Posted: April 12, 2011 Filed under: art, exquisite corpses, publishing 5 Comments
As has already been announced, Lamentations of the Flame Princess is bringing out a new edition of ‘Exquisite Corpses’ this year so I am busy working on new paintings. Above you see the new ‘mutant’ painting for the second edition (about 1/2 done) next to the original 1st edition mutant(unsliced). Read LOTFP’s announcement about it here.
Should the worst occur…
Posted: April 12, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized 1 Comment
Should the worst occur, and, as Ted Turner predicted in 2008, humankind be reduced to a level of savagery that includes cannibalism, I have decided to only eat those who earned more than I did in the years before the collapse (I’m assuming if the world has all gone ‘Cannibal Holocost,’ most of us won’t still be bothering to show up for work, thus I specify ‘pre collapse’ earnings as my standard). If reduced to cannibalism, I will eat only the rich for two reasons. The first reason is out of a regard for my own continued good health. The rich will, by virtue of access to better food and medical care, be more likely to be free of the parasites and viruses that will make eating the poor like a game of gustatory Russian roulette. Secondly, I won’t feel as bad about eating the rich… and since the world of the future is going to be a challenging place that will require that I be well rested in order to survive, I can’t have pangs of guilt keeping me up at night.
Hirelings and "The Mule Abides"
Posted: April 12, 2011 Filed under: Dungeons and Dragons, rules 2 Comments
Eric Minton made a recent interesting post about Hirelings on “The Mule Abides” about players ditching or eliminating hirelings in order to game the XP system for more benefit to the PCs.
He said: (I previously posted on the subject of)“…how players try to ditch their hirelings in order to avoid giving them a share of treasure… it’s an emergent behavior that comes out of the intersection between rules and player goals: if the aim is to acquire gold and XP, and hirelings bleed off gold and XP, then it’s in the PCs’ interest to ensure that the hirelings perish in the line of duty before they can get their share… “
Minton then goes on to describe some of his suggestions for dealing with the topic; well worth a read if such things are of interest.
But it also sparked some thoughts in my own brain about hirelings in D&D… and reminded me of some thoughts I had in recent years on the subject.
I think when we first started playing D&D, we were playing a ‘sandbox’ game without really knowing it. We would roll up player characters, then we would have these player characters traipse off into the dungeon to kill things and get treasure. There was no ‘overarching plot or goal to it (and, in the context of this post, I’m avoiding arguing over whether or not that was a good or bad thing). We believed that one could not have XP levels that one did not earn and EVERY PC had to start out at level 1. We just thought that was how it was done.
At some point, however, in my childhood gaming group, we started rolling up PCs that would be of the appropriate level for a published adventure that we wanted to play if we did not already have one. This seemed like fun at the time… and that is still how we ‘do it’ in the game group I currently play 3.5e with.
One of the things I proposed to the group of guys I play with is a campaign where players all had to start out at level 1 but players could have more than character. Only 1 character could be your “active” PC at a time — all others would be temporary NPCs while the primary PC was under the player’s full control. Although I thought the idea had merit, the few players who expressed an opinion didn’t like the idea.
I was not running a game at the time that I made the suggestion. Any thoughts?
A to Z: K is for Khunmar!
Posted: April 12, 2011 Filed under: A to Z, adventures, Mines of Khunmar 3 Comments
Today is brought to you by the letter K.
Khunmar (as in “Mines of Khunmar,”) starts with the letter K. Khunmar is my magnum opus, my megadungeon, my Castle Greyhawk, my Castle Blackmoor, my Stonehell, my Castle of the Mad Archmage…
The fellow at right has discovered why you should ‘go’ outside rather than dump a load in Khunmar.
I am definitely repeating myself here, but, in case you did not know, Khunmar is a big-ass dungeon drawn on graph paper, sheets of notebook paper, etc. I started it in the 80s, kept adding to it over the years and now it remains, a testament to the fact that for much of my teenage years I did not have a life. Fastforward a few decades. I found the binder in my parent’s attic. “I still have this?” I took the maps with me and scanned them, then wrote out brief outlines of each level and put them together in a pdf that I released for free over the series of tubes we call the internets.
Since there were around 8 levels (each level occupies an average of 2-5 sheets of graph paper) and lots of side and sub levels, the low res document was about 6 mb in size. People liked it.
Geoffrey wrote me and said how much he liked the dungeon and offered to type up my handwritten notes. Every few weeks I would scan a couple pages of my chickenscratch and email it off to him and he would patiently puzzle out what I had written 20+ years ago and type it. I think it took him a year or even two to finish that thankless, Herculean labor. Then a publisher (I’m not sure if I should refer to them by name so I will err on the side of caution) expressed interest in publishing it. For one or two years we exchanged emails but nothing happened. Somewhat frustrated but with no malice, I finally wrote to them and said I thought they should either commit or I would pull the project and try to do it on my own. They expressed regrets but indicated they were more interested in another megadungeon that wasn’t Khunmar, so, to my regret, we parted company.
This leaves me where I am now. Every six months or so I blog about “this is the year I will finish and publish Khunmar!” and then another six months go by before I work on it again… but, now that it is such a huge undertaking and 100% on my shoulders, I find myself a bit overwhelmed and undersupplied with time to give Khunmar it’s due. So I am somewhat leery of making any promises at this point other than to say that although not much progress has been made since my last post on the subject, I have every intention of finishing Khunmar… I just don’t know when.
A to Z: J is for Jermlaine
Posted: April 11, 2011 Filed under: A to Z, aldeboran, movies 5 Comments
Jermlaine are little evil bastards, that, as far as I know, first appeared in Gygax’s ‘D1’ adventure, “Descent into the Depths of the Earth.” At least that is where they first came to my attention. Unfortunately, they never got the play time they probably deserved. They are tiny, evil little things… maybe about a foot tall. They live in caves and passages and wait for clueless adventures to come trudging along. When the idiotic big folk stumble into a Jermlaine ambush, they find the tiny creatures are sabotaging their gear, stealing their stuff, tripping them with cords, setting their hair on fire, etc. There is something fun and brilliant about attacking players with tiny, sneaky nasty little creatures that will always employ hit and run and sabotage. The ‘jermlaine’ always reminded me of the monsters from a 1973 television movie called “Don’t be afraid of the Dark.” I saw that movie when I was a kid… and it scared the bejeezus out of me… the “Jermlaine” in the movie are tiny, evil, pointy-headed people who live in the walls and enjoy tormenting the woman who inherits the house where the Jermlaine live. I think they even killed someone and were always setting traps and then disappearing whenever anyone other than the woman they were torturing came around so they all thought she was going crazy. Since it was made in 1973, they didn’t have CGI to do the special effects, so, if I remember right, they would shoot actors in evil ‘Jermalaine’ costumes with giant props (like huge scissors that the Jermlaine might use as a weapon) and then cut that in with the regular sized actors interacting with the normal size props. Both the ‘jermlaine’ and the actors who portrayed the humans seldom appeared in the same shot together; they had to tell more of the story through cutting and implied relationships through editing. I don’t think the little creatures in the film were ever given a name, so ‘Jermlaine’ is probably Gygax’s invention, but I feel certain the inspiration for the creature (right down to the pointy head) was borrowed from the TV film. I found the trailer for the original film on You Tube:
Wolverton: Crab People!
Posted: April 10, 2011 Filed under: art, ideas, inspiration 3 Comments
Anyone know where it comes from?