Recently I woke up from a dream with the phrase “The Monorthodox” ringing in my head.
What do you think The Monorthodox is?
Archive for the ‘fluff/inspiration’ Category
name day: The Monorthodox
Thursday, November 4th, 2010how do you even mummify a robot
Sunday, October 31st, 2010Happy Halloween!
Enjoy this wrestling match between Minoru Suzuki and a robot mummy.
jewels in The Jewel of Seven Stars
Saturday, October 30th, 2010
The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker
The stone, of one piece of which it was wrought, was such as I had never seen before. At the base it was of a full green, the colour of emerald without, of course, its gleam. It was not by any means dull, however, either in colour or substance, and was of infinite hardness and fineness of texture. The surface was almost that of a jewel. The colour grew lighter as it rose, with gradation so fine as to be imperceptible, changing to a fine yellow almost of the colour of “mandarin” china. It was quite unlike anything I had ever seen, and did not resemble any stone or gem that I knew.
Here’s a peculiar treasure: a beautiful stone of rare appearance. It has absolutely no magical qualities. What do the PCs do with it? Well, if they give it to a sculptor, they will be able to commission one small statue of surpassing quality and loveliness – that sculptor’s master work.
What will they do with the stone? Will a PC commission something personally meaningful? Will they give it to a patron NPC to curry favor? Will they commission something stupid? or will they let it sit unclaimed on someone’s character sheet?
I have a feeling that a lot of groups will take such a stone as a challenge to come up with something cool, and that will increase their investment in the game world.
The Jewel of Seven Stars
Friday, October 29th, 2010The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker
The Jewel of Seven Stars is a locked-room mystery, which is a mystery genre which requires a little extra work in D&D. It’s not enough that all the doors and windows be locked from the inside. At the very least, the room must be warded against teleportation, entry via other planes, and insubstantial creatures passing through walls. Alarm should also be used, to ward against invisible assassins. Without any of these countermeasures, the question becomes not “how could this happen?” but “which well-known trick was used?”
Given these minimum requirements, the only interesting locked-room murder victim is a paranoid high-level spellcaster (or someone – possibly royalty – who can hire one).
The Jewel of Seven Stars is much less well known than Dracula, but it is still a magical fantasy, so the same rules apply. The victim is basically a paranoid high-level spellcaster (steeped in the arcane mysteries of Egyptian mummies). He’s set up his own defensive magic, but he’s been stabbed anyway – in a way that cannot be self-inflicted.
Off the top of my head, here are some fantasy locked-room mystery solutions:
- The victim is the recipient of a voodoo-doll-style curse where they can be hurt remotely.
- One of the trinkets in the room is a hostile Figurine of Wondrous Power.
- Stabbed or bludgeoned by an animate piece of furniture.
- The murderer was admitted by the unsuspecting victim. After the crime, the murderer re-locked the door and re-set the wards, shrunk to the size of a flea, and is STILL IN THE ROOM oh my god Sarah is in there now
- The murderer is a snowman, who melted. (ALWAYS be suspicious of an unexplained puddle of water. ICE IS ALWAYS INVOLVED)
the mummy’s curse in fiction
Wednesday, October 27th, 2010Monster Manuals have never dealt with the classic “mummy’s curse”. Monster Manual mummies give you “mummy rot”, a disease which has slightly different effects across the editions, but it’s always just a workplace hazard for mummy killers. When you come out of the temple, you head to the cleric to get your disease removed, and that’s the end of it.
The mummy’s curse superstition seems to have something to do with a lingering doom that hangs over the heads of those who disturb mummies,and is something like, “100 years after the tomb was opened, NOT ONE of the excavators remained alive!” Inasmuch as it makes any sense at all, it’s about death under mysterious circumstances, some time after the adventure, of seemingly healthy people. DON’T VIOLATE MUMMY TOMBS, or you’ll get approximately the same kind of bad luck you get by breaking a chain letter, or not being on that one flight.
Could we actually come up with game rules for the mummy’s curse? The 4e Unearthed Arcana “Curses!” article might be a place to start. What I’d like to see, though, is official rules text like
Any PC who disturbs the sarcophagus is subject to THE MUMMY’S CURSE. THE MUMMY’S CURSE cannot be removed by Remove Curse, Remove Disease or any other means short of Limited Wish or Wish. THE MUMMY’S CURSE has no immediate effects. However, the PC should note it on his or her character sheet.
The actual effects of the Mummy’s Curse should be SO HORRIBLE that, lest PCs discover countermeasures, they are NEVER PUBLISHED IN ANY BOOK. Heck, maybe the effects of the curse are determined retroactively. Like, when the PCs are finally eaten by gnolls, the DM leans over and taps the character sheet. “MUMMY’S CURSE,” he says.
the curse of the mummy’s curse
Tuesday, October 26th, 2010
In honor of Halloween, it’s mummy week at blogofholding! All mummies, all week!
Mummies have had a rough ride. They’re the afterthought of the undead, in D&D as in pop culture.
It’s easy to drop a vampire in to an adventure because they’re generic; sure, Count Dracula is Transylvanian, but it’s easy to imagine a vampire from elsewhere. Mummies, on the other hand, are tied to a specific Earthly time and place. Just as you can’t have the party fight Franklin Delano Roosevelt without explaining how he got from 1930s USA, it’s hard to drop a mummy into an adventure without dropping in Egypt too. If you include a mummy, do you include heiroglyphics? Pyramids? A stripy King Tut beard?
There are 3 ways you can go with mummies:
Crazy Funhouse Dungeon Land. You roll on Wandering Monster table VII and get a mummy. You look up the mummy description: you see that the “No. Appearing” column says 2-8, so you roll the dice and the party fights 6 mummies. That’s just how it goes in Crazy Funhouse Dungeon.
Egypt Land. You put an Egypt-flavored ancient civilization in your campaign world. In a RPG that revolves around robbing tombs, that’s not terribly hard to work in. You probably throw the mummy into a trapped tomb into a desert; you might include a sphinx as well. Pyramids are optional, but maybe a little too much?
The problem with this approach (if it is a problem) is that this adventure will feel very Egyptian, and not very, say, Greyhawk.
Mummy in a Strange Land. You reflavor the mummy with a bizarre new origin, sufficiently different that it doesn’t read as an Egypt analogue. For instance, mummies are the keepers of a vast extradimensional library. When a librarian dies, he is swathed in book pages related to his area of expertise. He is then brought to unlife as a mummy so that he can continue his librarian duties, but as a mummy, he knows only what is written on the pages of his wrappings. Mummies are often encountered in dungeons searching for ancient books to add to their mummy wrappings. (Am I vaguely remembering this from something I read, or did I make this up?)
Reflavoring the mummy is an uphill struggle, because the Egypt mummy story is so well-established that it will take a pretty strong flavor to overpower it.
Circumnavigate the D&D globe!
Friday, October 22nd, 2010In a comparison of the east and west coasts of Africa, the book mentioned that prevailing winds are southern on the west African coast. Until improved ship designs in the 15th century, ships could sail down the coast of Africa, but they could not sail back!
African Civilizations by Graham Connah
D&D ships are probably of medieval design, and it is quite possible that, as in the real world, there may be one-way journeys for D&D ships. Here’s a natural way to impose the same kind of walls and one-way doors on the campaign map that exist in the dungeon.
Imagine the easternmost continent of a campaign world has a prevailing easterly wind along its deadly southern coast. Once you go too far, it’s impossible to sail back to the known world. Let’s say that there’s a tempting ruin right on the edge of the point of no return. Getting there requires a ship-based skill challenge. Success means that the PCs get to the ruin. Failure means that the PCs’ ship is caught in the current/prevailing wind and has no way of getting home except by circumnavigating the globe, which will take a year or more. Here is a skill challenge with major consequences for failure! Failing the challenge would change the nature of the campaign, potentially for many game sessions, into a ship-based Odyssey campaign. Failure in this case might be much more interesting than success.
(more…)
wading by torchlight
Wednesday, October 20th, 2010Here’s a fun dungeon room:
The room is a pool: everyone is kneedeep in water. On the other side of the pool are hooded enemies who, among their other attacks, shoot a ray that they use to dispel or suppress magic light (Light spell, sunrods, etc). The PCs must use torches or lanterns in order to see. It’s dark and shadowy and the light of the torches shines off the swirling water, making the room’s floor invisible.
The front-line enemies have an attack that disarms PCs. If you are disarmed, you have to waste time feeling around the bottom of the pool for your weapon. If the enemies disarm you of your torch or lantern, the room is potentially pitch-black.
In the middle of the room is a pit (invisible by torchlight because of the light conditions). The enemies avoid it, staying at the edges of the room. If someone falls in, they are swimming while everyone else stands, and must use move actions to climb out. Their light sources are extinguished.
Are there things in the dark water? Teeth that clamp onto swimming PCs? Maybe.
When I ran this encounter, I put away the minis. I described the blackness, the torchlight, the hiss and smell of water, and the echoes of combat in the room. No one wanted to be fighting in that room in the dark. And no one stayed in the water long enough to find out if they were alone.
City altars
Friday, October 15th, 2010Another interesting things from the cities of the West African forest: archaeological evidence from one city shows that there were altars built right at the side of their paved roads. That made me think of this:
Lovecraft's fountain
This is a fountain in Providence, RI, H. P. Lovecraft’s home town and where I lived as a teenager. Local legend has it that if you drink from this fountain, you will return to Providence – and that Lovecraft drank of it before he went to New York, which is why he is buried in Providence.
(more…)
a real photo of ents
Wednesday, October 13th, 2010
DUDE, LOOK AT THOSE ENTS ATTACKING THAT MONASTERY
THEY ARE JUST RIPPING IT TO SHREDS
THIS ONE IS CLIMBING UP ON THAT ONE’S BACK SO IT CAN SMASH THE HELL OUT OF THE ROOF
LOOK AT THE WAY THEIR GNARLY FINGERS TEAR UP THAT FLIMSY STONE! I WONDER WHAT THEY ARE SO MAD ABOUT
DUDE I THINK WE SHOULD GET OUT OF HERE THERE ARE MORE TREES COMING
I found this picture in a photo gallery from Prah Khan, Cambodia at travelblog.org. The pictures are all amazing. You should use them all as visual aids in your D&D game. Every one could be the centerpiece of an encounter.
