Charles Saunders’ Imaro might be the best sword-and-sorcery successor to Robert E Howard’s Conan the Barbarian. In my opinion, Imaro beats C. L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry by a hair and Gardner F Fox’s Kothar the Barbarian by a mile. (Kothar’s pretty hacky but, I admit, I love it anyway.)

Imaro is a black hero in a vast fantasy Africa. The African plains setting gives Imaro plenty of room to flex his muscles, and plenty of beasts to overpower, sorcerers to kill, and ruins to plumb. Compared to this setting, fantasy Europe seems claustrophobic, but I guess there are more literary agents in fantasy Europe: Imaro is out of print. After its debut in the 70s, there wasn’t a reprint of the original Imaro stories until 2006. Now those are out of print as well. Look how expensive Imaro books are on Amazon: even used copies are $40 to $100. The cheapest way to get the first book is actually the $21 audiobook.

I have the 2006 reprints of books 1 and 2, and I thought that was all the Imaro there was. I just learned that Charles Saunders is still publishing Imaro books on Lulu. Maybe the best living sword-and-sorcery novelist doesn’t have a major book contract (??). And at $20 each, those Lulu books look damn cheap compared to the Amazon prices. The biggest barrier to entry for a new reader is finding a copy of Books 1 and 2.

Here’s my recommendation for the budget-conscious barbarian lover:

Buy the audiobook of Imaro for $21

Buy Imaro 2: The Quest for Kush audiobook for $14

Imaro 3: The Trail of Bohu on lulu for $20

Imaro 4: Dossouye on lulu for $20

Imaro 5: the Naama War on lulu for $20

When I first saw the Walsperger Map, a medieval German world map, I was struck by the fact that the Kingdom of Heaven is a physical place at the edge of the map (located vaguely in the China area). You could walk to Heaven! I thought it would be fun to make a D&D world map based on this conceit. All the planes of the Great Wheel are accessible by walking to different corners of the world.

Here’s the map I drew based on this idea.

My actual campaign map is the little continent in the middle: radiating outwards, the locations become more outlandish until, at the edges of the world, you find the City of Brass, the Gates of Hell, and other magical locations. Each of these is a gateway to a plane. You might sail into the city of Ys from the Prime Material Plane, and sail out again into the Plane of Water.

I’ve narrowed down the many Great Wheel locations to ten big portals.

The Outer Planes: I’ve lumped all the realms of the gods together in the east, in a series of islands in the Sunrise Sea. Presumably, Celestia and Bytopia and all the other outer planes are each represented by an island: once you set foot on one, you might find yourself on the infinite plane described in the various Manuals of the Planes. Or maybe they’re just big islands. That’s up to the DM.

Similarly, I lump the Abyss, Hades, Gehenna, etc. into “the hells”. All the demons and devils have to share that mailing address. Since the Gates of Hell have a physical location (the frozen South), every general who claims that his men would follow him “to the gates of Hell” has a chance to try and prove it.

The Inner Planes: I’ve spent some time thinking about the elemental planes and how I could make them into adventure locations.

I decided that the plane of air is the ever-changing world above us, of cloud castles and cloud giants. Normally, the clouds are insubstantial to you, unless you first travel to the canonical D&D location of Aaqa.

The Plane of Fire can be entered by another canonical D&D place: the City of Brass, which I put at the pole of the Burning North. (If you prefer your north frozen and your south burning, you can use my map upside down: all you have to do is reverse the compass rose and rename the Sunrise Sea to the Sunset Sea).

I think that, in a game where the ground is riddled with dungeons, the Plane of Earth is the most sinister of the inner planes. In my cosmology, it’s a plane of infinite Gygaxian dungeons: the Mythic Underworld. Somewhat perversely, I placed its entrance in a mountain-sized tower on an island. But hey, sometimes dungeons are in mountains.

Finally, if you want to get to the swashbuckling, nautical Plane of Water, you can go through the real-world-myth city of Ys, which is built below high-tide sea level and only protected from inundation by its high bronze walls and gates.

The Fourth Edition Planes: 4e brought the Feywild and the Shadowfell into the D&D cosmology, and I think they deserve a place on the Great Wheel. I’ve put them both in the West.

The land where the sun sets is a good place for the palace of Death. I picture the Necropolis as a completely empty and still city. If you hear the sounds of a carriage or a horse from a neighboring street, don’t seek it out: it’s Death on his way to work. If you enter the city’s palace, you might find Death, alone and bored, lounging on his throne, and willing to play a game with you, for the right stakes.

Fairyland is also to the west. I’ve called my fairyland Lyonesse, after an Earth myth of a lost Western land and after Jack Vance’s fantasy series. The Lyonesse and Ys myths are related, and, on my map, they’re next to each other. An elvish land belongs in the west of the world. Tolkien’s elves were a people in decline, and going West was their equivalent to dying. I’ve made Lyonesse a resting point on the way to the land of death.

Other Material Planes: My campaign world also uses a conceit from the 3rd Edition Manual of the Planes. In the “Winding Road” cosmology, every Prime Material Plane is connected to exactly two other Prime Material planes along an infinite road. (I didn’t even know about this cosmology until I read James Wyatt’s recent article. I thought I invented it!) I’ve created gates that link my world to two Prime Material planes: 1) a desert that only a madman can cross (a feature borrowed from Rory’s game map); and 2) a high-magical-technology city called Mezentium that recently appeared out of the southern mists, threatening the Southern lands.

I filled my map with heightened-magical-reality obstacles to easy planar travel: the Boiling Sea, the Islands of Dread, the Dark Sea, the Mists, the Dragonlands, and the Sea of Storms guard the portals. There should be no mundane merchant caravans to the realms of the gods or the City of Brass. Only mid- or high-level heroes can get there, and only after larger-than-life journeys.

My map is inspired by medieval European maps, which were pieced together from traveler’s tales and guesswork. Therefore, in-game, my map is just as untrustworthy, and just as speculative around the edges. Maybe Lyonesse is twice as big, or maybe the Golden Sea doesn’t exist at all. It all depends on what I, as a DM, need for my next adventure.

Here’s a copy of my map with the center left blank for your own continent:

The PCs travel to a distant continent, another planet, or a nightmare dimension. Where are you going to get an entire ecology of weird, exotic, never-before-seen D&D monsters?

If you bookmark a list of pokemon, you have almost 1000 new mosters at your fingertips. Don’t use the original 151 pokemon: everyone knows what Pikachu looks like, and maybe one of your players had a Game Boy back in the day and can rattle off a bunch from the first game. But not a lot of people are familiar with the hundreds of pokemon from the second through sixth generation. And even if they might recognize a name or a sprite, will they be able to place a description?

You don’t have to know anything about pokemon. Just pick a critter and describe it.

“The water is alive with what look like scuttling, severed dragon heads. On closer inspection, you see that the ‘heads’ are actually the grossly disproportionate right claws of tiny crabs. The huge claws have fake eyes and very real jagged teeth.”

That’s #693, Clawitzer.

“A huge metal bell floats in front of the dungeon door. Manic red eyes stare at you from the bell’s face: between the eyes, a mouth jabbers and gnashes horrid teeth.”

That’s #437, Bronzong.

“A floating sword slices the air in front of you. Trailing from its pommel is a long silk cord and an elaborate sheath.”

#679, Honedge. Maybe not a great Pokemon but a good D&D monster.

Sure, there are plenty of duds: “You see a floating keyring.” (#707, Klefki) “OK, this guy is like… a sumo wrestler with… a novelty foam hand?” #297, Hariyama) but the Monster Manual has some duds too: we ignore ’em.

If you examine them closely, Pokemon have a curiously unsettling quality. There’s something about them that makes you feel like you’ve descended into a world of madness. Come to think of it, they might make a great population of savage flora and fauna for the Far Realm, competing with beholders and grell for mastery of that plane of horrors.

In my last post I talked about how the Astral Plane takes different forms depending on how you enter it: on an astral ship you sail the Astral Sea; from a Manual of the Planes you explore the Astral Library; etc. But however you experience it, it’s all the same place.

I forgot one major incarnation of the Astral Plane: space. (Duh. “Astral” does mean “starry”, after all.)

What is the Astral Plane? It’s a big bunch of nothing connecting a bunch of interesting nodes (planar gates, or astral islands in 4e). It maps pretty well onto space travel. Now we know another way to enter the Astral Plane: launch ourselves into orbit. Spelljammer’s Wildspace is just another manifestation of the Astral Plane.

When your D&D characters steal a spaceship, or hop on the back of a cosmic dragon, or teleport to the Warden colony ship, what can they expect to find out there where no adventurer has gone before? The usual sci-fi fare. A water world. A world ruled by gods. A dead world poisoned by a mind flayer empire. Just the same sort of places you could find by plane-hopping.

I’ve complained about the astral plane before: I never had a use for “a great, endless sphere of clear silvery sky” which is primarily used to get to more interesting places. However, I found myself using an astral plane in the mearls sidebar game, with one little tweak.

Your perception of the astral plane is determined by how you enter it. For instance, in the sidebar game, you dive into a pool to travel to the fairy realm. Along the way, you pass through the astral plane: since you enter it through a pool, it takes the form of a vast ocean. Elsewhere in the world, a forgotten corridor in a library might lead you into the Astral Plane. In that case, you’d experience the entire plane as an infinite, labyrinthine library.

The advantage of this change: Every time you enter the plane by a different method, the DM can describe it differently, coming up with a unique, and potentially flavorful, setting with new puzzles and challenges. An Astral spell might take you to the standard, boring silvery-sky plane. The magical rings from Magician’s Nephew take you to a forest, an “in between place” filled with portal ponds. An astral ship takes you to the 4e version of the Astral Plane, a silver sea dotted with islands. If people entered the plane by each of these methods, they might perceive the same group of githyanki raiders as simultaneously flying through the air, running through the forest, and sailing a ship through the ocean. Each perception is 100% factually correct: after all, any physicality in the Astral Plane is just an analogy clothing an ineffable spiritual ideal.

Here’s an adventure complication: you find a map of part of the astral plane. It’s a classic pirate treasure map, with islands and shoals. When you enter the plane via a library, you have to navigate the Astral Library using your map of the Astral Sea.

Jason from Two Kings Games / Gygax Fund is filling in for me this week, with three gonzo campaign conceits:

So, I recently had the chance to try Dark Heresy, a RPG by Fantasy Flight Games. Like most other games, it does certain things very well and others could have possibly been done better (which could honestly be said about almost every game out here, I’d think). After sitting down with my group to start playing, the first thing they did was hand me my pregen. Then they began to unfold how my Psyker character fit into the Dark Heresy lore. As they wove the setting’s story and elements it was quickly obvious that there is no shortage of over-the-top dramatic elements that come along with the WarHammer 40K universe. One example was that the books made mention of an undying ever-sleeping emperor who is fed thousands of souls a day to be kept alive and thus, through his “spirit”, keeps open the mythical energy that allows interplanetary spaceflight. Sounds like something ripped out of a Megadeth song. This sparked my imagination and I felt it would be fun to come up my own over-the-top dramatic campaign setting elements to share with all of you. I hope you enjoy ’em!

The Nine Dragons of Nol
The Nine Dragons of Nol are as old as time itself and the universe lives and dies by their whim alone. Their breath is the wind, the seas their tears and the stars are the embers of their flames. Some say they are reality themselves. Others say the dragons are merely powerful bullies who feed off of the fear of men. Perhaps there’s a little truth to both stories. Once a week, the Nine Dragons require the Kingdoms of Men to offer up 200 wagons of gold and precious gems (equaling roughly 400,000 gold pieces) or suffer utter destruction. Of course, adventurers are set off into the world to seek and collect treasure as fast and furiously as possible, in order to keep the world safe from the all-powerful Nine.

The World-Eater
You live in a world ravaged by ice and snow. Large woolly beasts roam the tundra and a frozen death is always waiting around every corner. According to legend, the world will stay frozen until Boonz, the god of the underworld, has had his fill of sacrifices. A giant pit, half a mile wide, sits guarded by the Umbrish Monks in the north continent. The monks have taken a lifelong vow to keep the pit safe and more importantly to ensure that the pit is fed flesh, daily. All tribes, kingdoms, and free men must send half of their already scarce supplies of meat and other hunted animals north to the monks for the daily sacrifice. Those who do not comply are held in contempt by the Umbrish and then must be forced to offer human sacrifice. It is believed that one day, with enough sacrifice, the world will once more feel the warmth of spring and the never ending winter will end. Legend dictates that if the offerings stop, the world will become nothing more than a frozen ball of ice, uninhabited by even the hardiest of life. In reality, a world-eater, a planet sized parasite, crashed into the world thousands of years ago and borrowed deep beneath the surface. It feeds on the core of the planet, thus slowly killing it, if not fed regularly.

The Kingdom of Blind Men
The Kingdom of Bray, hidden deep in the valleys of the Bluecap Mountains, is ruled by the enchanting and beautiful immortal elven queen, Queen Raween Belladonna. In fact, the queen is so enchanting that anyone entering the Kingdom of Bray has had their sight removed permanently, either magically or otherwise… Even newborn children are stripped of their sight on the day they’re born. The subjects of Bray, who seem to be fanatics for their queen, are trained at birth to use their other senses so acutely that they’re able to function completely without sight and are taught at a young age that the sacrifice they’ve made strengthens them and brings them closer to the gods.
Oh, also the Kingdom of Bray is well known for its most perfect statues… 😉

My sister Laura, who’s a D&D player and artist, made me these dice for Christmas:

There are 24 dice total, so that means Laura drew 144 tiny, beautiful pictures of food. She tells me that she stole the idea from some other product she saw but didn’t buy – presumably Recipe Dice. Laura’s dice are more D&D-themed: I bet the Recipe Dice don’t have so many forageable plants, mead, and so on.

Laura decided I needed the dice after playing in my food-focused run-through of Isle of Dread. My players were always making Nature checks to find unique toppings for their pizzeria. If only I’d had these dice then!

It’s great to have a collection of niche specialty dice, and they’ll come in handy whenever the ranger looks for food, but there’s another reason why a bunch of these dice made it into my travel dice box:

When I DM, I’m often too lazy to use real minis. I often use d6es instead. With their faces turned to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, it’s easy to keep track of who’s attacking who: “Which orc do you hit?” “#4.” The problems with this classic technique are that 1) no matter how many d6es you have, you’re limited to sets of 6 monsters, and 2) the rogue is likely to scoop up your minis to roll sneak attack damage.

Now replace the d6es with a large number of non-numeric dice. The images on the dice are irrelevant, just so they’re unique. The dice make whimsical minis: “Which orc do you hit?” “The banana.” You’re limited only by the number of dice you own. You don’t need to carefully turn the faces up to specific numbers: you can roll a handful and play them as they lie. And they’re useless for rolling sneak attack damage, so the rogue won’t steal them.

Laura’s not gonna hand-draw you another set of Dinner Rolls dice, and you can’t have mine, but you can get most of the same benefits by picking up some Recipe Dice or Rory’s Story cubes or similar picture dice.

A lot of first-edition spells never made it to 3e and beyond. The higher-level spells are particularly wacky and might be fun to drop into in a later-edition game.

LEVEL 6 SPELLS

Glassee: This spell lets you see through four inches of metal, 6 feet of stone, or 20 feet of wood. (When do you ever find a wooden object 20 feet thick?) This is a nice dungeon-exploration spell, an upgrade of level-3 Clairvoyance. Where Clairvoyance is foiled by a thin sheet of any metal or by darkness, Glassee is only foiled by lead, gold or platinum.

At this level, there are plenty of other ways of finding out what’s in the next room: passwall, teleportation, disintegration, and rock to mud are level 6 or lower. On the other hand, Glassee doesn’t alert anyone on the other side of the wall. The problem is that, since it’s a level 6 spell, it’s expensive. Even a 20th-level wizard only has 4 level-six spots, and so can be foiled by a dungeon with 5+ rooms.

The obvious way to make this spell useful is to make it permanent, but hold on: the glassteel spell is coming up. We don’t want to step on its toes.

Invisible Stalker: If you wanted to summon an Invisible Stalker, you’d normally have to wait until you could cast Monster Summoning VII, a 9th level spell – and even then, you could only control it for half an hour tops. The Invisible Stalker spell is a much lower-level shortcut: it lets you summon an Invisible Stalker and give it a mission of indefinite length. That’s cool!

In general, I prefer a spell for summoning a specific creature to a bag-of-tricks random monster spell. For instance, given the choice between a Summon Random Dinosaur spell and Summon Triceratops with a Saddle And The Triceratops Comes With A Barber Pole-Striped Lance And Also A Pair Of Sunglasses, I’ll take the latter, even if I’m missing out on a 16.6% chance of a T-Rex.

The Invisible Stalker spell is arguably a better NPC spell than a PC spell. I can see the PCs upsetting a wizard, and then living in fear of the invisible stalkers on their trail. It’s harder to imagine the PCs using it, because it moves the action offscreen. Imagine this:

DM: The evil duke has retired to his castle.
FIGHTER: We’ll have to assault the castle! We can gain access by fighting our way through the dungeons!
WIZARD: No need! I’ll just cast Invisible Stalker every day and send them after the duke. One of them will eventually slip through his defenses!
DM: (crumples up castle map, cries)

Of course, using Invisible Stalker in this way is pretty much equivalent to hiring an NPC assassin, and there are extensive rules for doing that in First Edition, so I guess it’s perfectly kosher.

Spiritwrack: This spell has one of the coolest names in D&D. Spiritwrack is an extremely complicated spell for exacting servitude from summoned demons and devils. It could have been a simple spell that specified the chances of enslaving a demon, but it’s more than that: it’s packed with details, like a little formula for a mini-adventure. The demon’s (true?) name must be learned. A vellum document must be prepared, “covered with gold leaf in a continuous border.” It requires ink made from powdered rubies and the ichor of a slain demon of type I, II, or III. It ends with a negotiation between the spell caster and the DM playing the part of the demon, with the demon in greater pain each round. It reads as if it were cribbed from Jack Vance or another fantasy author, as it very possibly was.

I’d give this spell out as treasure in any D&D edition, and I wouldn’t change a thing. I suppose it was left out of later editions because of the Satanism scare: it is probably the closest thing in the D&D books to the demon-summoning instructions so feared by Jack Chick and his ilk.

LEVEL 7 SPELLS

Cacodemon: This is another spell for summoning a specific creature type, like Invisible Stalker – in this case, mid-level demons. It was probably left out of later editions for the same reason that Spiritwrack didn’t make the cut. It’s got lots of details for drawing pentagrams and lighting 5 black candles and other Satanism hysteria fuel. Other spell components include “mercuric-nitric acid crystals” and alcohol, which are actually the ingredients of a real-world explosive, I think. D&D as Anarchist Cookbook!

Cacodemon is actually a likely prerequisite for using Spiritwrack (gotta summon the demon before you can threaten him). A perfectly reasonable spell for a high-level evil spell caster’s spell book. The Christian right has pretty much given up on D&D as a threat, so we can be as occult as we want!

Duo Dimension: High level D&D spells in 1e seem to grow increasingly baroque and bizarre, and lend themselves to more and more outlandish gameplay. This spell lets you become two-dimensional, like a character from Paper Mario. You can do anything a paper version of you can do: pass under a door, stand in front of a landscape to make it a portrait, etc. Furthermore, you’re invisible when viewed head-on. Although this spell gives you many of the benefits of improved invisibility (which is normally only available to illusionists in 1e) it seems to me that it’s primary a puzzle-solving or outthinking-the-DM spell. With creative interpretations of this spell, you can sneak nearly anywhere.

The spell has a downside: while you can’t be attacked from the side, head-on attacks do 3x damage to you. I’d love to see this spell in a minis-heavy game with facing rules. In fact, I’d like to see it at all, preferably earlier than level 11. Imagine this as the signature move of some stealthy low-level wizard: an arcane trickster or even a stealth-domain cleric. It might open up the world in interesting ways.

LEVEL 8 SPELLS:

Glassteel: This is basically the permanent version of Glassee. It’s the spell you use to decorate your dream castle. You can make glass as hard as steel. Level 8 is kind of high level for such a niche spell, considering that Limited Wish is level 7, but at least it’s cheap: its material components are free, so as soon as you hit level 15, you can upgrade home security by installing bullet-proof windows, you can protect your beakers and vials against falls and explosions, and you can provide your fighter friends with stylish see-through weapons and armor, all for nothing! Considering that it’s basically a freebie, it’s surprising that more high-level magic weapons aren’t transparent: a stained-glass Holy Avenger would be a great paladin item.

Here’s an idea inspired by a trip to a merry-go-round: who’s to say that all the steeds sold by the local ostler are horses? I’m not talking about high-level mounts like griffins and dragons. Maybe 1 out of every, say, 20 riding horses are actually riding goats, rabbits, or the like. The roadways and even the royal cavalry are brightened by the occasional fantastical mount. It makes the D&D world a little more fairy-tale, and what’s wrong with that?

There are basically three classes of steed in D&D: riding mounts, war mounts, and exotic mounts (griffins, dragons, pegasus, etc). The last category is already handled adequately by D&D rules. Here are more options for the first two, within the budget of low-level adventurers. Each beast comes with a few variations: alternate animals with the same stats.

UNUSUAL RIDING STEEDS

1 in 20 of every riding horse for sale is actually an unusual riding steed. Roll d12 to determine the type. Unless specified, riding steeds never engage in combat. Price: The same price as a riding horse or pony.

1: Riding rabbit. Travels in a series of jarring hops, up to 10 feet high and 30 feet long. Unskilled riders with a Dexterity score of less than 12 will fall off (double normal damage) after 1-6 minutes of travel. (The rabbit salesman probably didn’t mention this.) Variations with the same stats: grasshopper, flea, frog.
2: Riding stag. Will only deign to bear riders of elf size or smaller, and can carry half as much weight as a riding horse. Makes a charge attack that does 1d10 damage. All other combat will be left to the rider. (10% of riding stags are intelligent and speak elven, although the human salesman doesn’t know it.) Variations: ram, goat, antelope.
3. Riding butterfly. Hovers between 3 and 5 feet off the ground. Flits randomly in any direction, making general headway in the direction the rider wants to go at 2/3 the speed of a riding horse. Its unpredictability adds a +2 bonus to its rider’s AC. Must be pastured on flowery fields instead of grasslands. Variations: bumblebee, hummingbird, moth.
4. Riding palanquin. A floating covered litter that requires no servants to carry it. It flies 3 feet off the ground, carries half the weight of a riding horse, and moves at half the speed. It requires no food or rest, so it can travel as long as its rider extends the occasional pallid hand to point listlessly in the desired direction. Hit point damage must be repaired by a carpenter at 10 GP per HP. Variations: floral throne, broom, hobby horse, blowfish hot air balloon.
5. Riding mole. It can only gallop at 2/3 normal riding horse speed, but it can also dig through earth at 1/10 riding horse speed (alas, not while being ridden). Doesn’t mind dungeons and other confined spaces. Variations: earthworm, gopher.
6. Riding ostrich. If it or its rider are attacked in melee, it will respond with a kick or peck, for 2d6, and then run away until the attacker is no longer in sight. Every turn, the rider can try a Dex or Riding check to bring the mount back under control. Variations: kangaroo, flamingo, chicken, peacock, chocobo.
7. Riding bronto. Huge, peaceful herbivore that moves at 1/3 the speed of a riding horse and can carry up to 4x passengers/cargo. Variations: blue ox, turtle.
8. Riding pigeon. Can fly up to 100 feet high unencumbered, or 15 feet high with 100-200 pounds of weight. Variations: other non-raptor bird, bat.
9. Riding squirrel. Can climb at up to half its speed, and can jump up to 15 feet over gaps between branches or buildings. If it sees or hears combat, it will try to climb and escape/hide. Every turn, the rider can try a Dex or Riding check to bring the mount back under control. Variations: spider monkey, jumping gecko.
10. Riding mouse. Doesn’t mind entering dungeons and other confined spaces, but fears open fields. Variations: Rat, fox, shrew, chipmunk.
11: Clockwork mount. Roll d20 on this table to determine the type: any result above 10 means it’s a clockwork horse. Has the qualities of the original animal but does not require food or rest, and damage must be repaired in a forge at a price of 10 GP per HP.
12: Exotic mule. Roll a d10 twice on this table and combine both animals (or variations thereof) into a hybrid, with the qualities of both animals.

UNUSUAL WAR STEEDS

1 in 20 of every warhorse for sale is actually an unusual war steed. Roll d12 to determine the type. Unless otherwise specified, these animals have the stats of a heavy warhorse and do claw/claw/bite damage equal to the heavy war horse’s hoof/hoof/bite. Price: twice the price of a heavy warhorse.

1: War wolf. If a war wolf bites a target, and the unmodified attack roll is greater than the target’s Strength score, the wolf pulls the target prone. 5% of these animals talk, but they only say depressing, cynical, or creepy things. Variations: hyena, hound, weasel, badger.
2: War lion. It fights like a heavy warhorse with +1d6 hit dice. For each additional hit die, its price is increased by the cost of a heavy warhorse and the damage of its bite attack increases by +1. Variations: tiger or other great cat
3: War boar. These black pigs often serve witches in black masses. Attack: charge attack that does 2d10 damage, or a gore that does 1d12 damage. Variations: ox, elk, bull, rhino
4: War ogre. An ordinary, poorly trained ogre fitted with a saddle. Has the stats of an ogre instead of a heavy warhorse. If it’s subject to any temptation (hit by a new enemy, in sight of meat, etc) it must make a Will/Wisdom check or go out of control. Its rider may force it to ignore that particular temptation by striking the ogre with a whip or other weapon (automatic hit, normal weapon damage). Variations: baboon, bear.
5: War zebracorn. Two-horned zebra, familiar to many from World of Warcraft, but originally appearing (as far as I know) in a Gardner F. Fox pulp novel. The poor man’s unicorn. Fights as a heavy warhorse except on the charge, where it does 2d10 damage. Variations: giraffecorn, roostercorn, al-miraj.
6. War frog. A brightly colored poison-dart frog that runs on its back legs. The touch of its skin forces a poison/fort save/Con check or the subject takes 1d6 extra damage. A target may only take this damage once per round, even if hit by multiple attacks. The rider must be heavily clothed and gloved to avoid this poison. The rider may wipe his or her weapons or arrows on the frog’s skin to poison them. Variations: Hovering jellyfish (also called war flumph), hovering electric eel (does electricity damage).
7. War wasp. Hovers between 3 and 5 feet off the ground. Makes a single attack for 1d4 damage. On a hit, the target makes a poison/fort save/Con check or takes 1d12 extra damage. The rider should accept that anyone riding a war wasp is probably not one of the good guys. Variations: robber fly, mosquito, also not the good guys.
8. War Beetle. Thick armor gives it a +2 AC. It makes a single pincer attack that does 2d6 damage. On a hit, it can grasp its target and do an automatic 1d6 damage every turn until the target escapes. Variations: ant, beetle, crab, scorpion (a scorpion has a second attack, the same as that of a war wasp, and costs twice as much as other unusual war mounts).
9. War centipede: Makes a single bite attack, which does 1d4 damage. On a hit, the target makes a poison/fort save/Con check or takes 1d6 extra damage. The centipede can carry up to 4 riders. Variation: War cobra.
10. War Wolverine. In addition to its normal attacks, it can release a foul-smelling cloud, straight behind it in a 30-foot-diameter sphere. Anyone in the sphere is stinky for 1 hour. Stinky creatures, and anyone next to them, make all attacks at -1 unless their Constitution is 15 or higher. Variation: polecat, skunk.
11. Flamingo Woman. This sentient tribeswoman has the lower half of a flamingo and the upper half of a woman. She’s not for sale; she hires herself out as a steed/mercenary or steed/guide. Variations: centaur, or roll d10 on this chart to determine the lower half of the animal.
12. Exotic War Mule. Roll d10 on this table twice and combine both animals (or variations thereof) into a hybrid, with some or all of the special qualities of both animals. If it has all the qualities of both, its cost is doubled.

Lots of horses rule: You’re not going to roll d20 for every horse in a mass cavalry charge. Make the following nonmathematical assumptions: For every 20 steeds, exactly 1 is unusual. Furthermore, for groups of less than 20, if you roll the # of steeds or less on a d20, exactly one is unusual. For instance, for five horses, you’ll have one unusual steed if you roll 1-5 on a d20.

Last night I dreamed that I inherited a haunted house. It was chock full of cursed/creepy objects, some of them good enough to stat up as D&D items.

Oracular Skull: This skull is set into the wall. When you make “eye contact” with its sockets, it says something like “pay me a tribute and I will answer any question you wish.” It opens its mouth. If you put money in its mouth and ask a question, it will answer with a high degree of accuracy. The price varies based on the difficulty and importance of the question, from around 50 GP for something like “what is the most common hair color in the country” to 1000 GP for “what is the secret weakness of the lich king”. The problem? The skull doesn’t specify its price for each question. If you put in too little for a certain question, it gobbles down the money and says, “Not enough, ask again.”

For extra creepiness, set this magic skull into a wall made of nonmagic skulls.

In my dream, I asked the skull, “What is your price structure?” hoping that this would be a free question. The skull replied, in an aggrieved tone, “I said, pay me a tribute and I will answer any question you wish.” So you have to pay to find out the price of a question. Nice racket, dream skull.

So let’s say I use this skull in a game, say on the third level of some dungeon. Let’s further say that I make the skull’s answers infallible, though brief. Does this break the game? I’d have to try it out to make sure, but I have a feeling it wouldn’t. For most PC parties, its answers are extremely expensive, in several ways: 1000 GP is a lot, and it’s easy to overpay if you need to beat an unknown price, and it can be somewhat taxing to get down to level 3 of a dungeon, even if you’ve cleared it before. It’s certainly more expensive than the various spells that let you ask questions of the gods themselves.

Snake Ring: This is a big, showy, gem-studded ring, clearly worth a lot of money. Its central gem is a pointy crystal that sticks out like a needle. When you put on the ring, you discover that the central gem wiggles around like the needle of a compass. It does its best to point towards the nearest location of at least 1 pound of food (possibly in your backpack).

If you touch the ring to food, the gem turns into a 1 1/2-inch-long snake, crawls out of the ring, and eats a pound of food. After it finishes, it lets you know telepathically that it will perform a service for you. It can perform any service that a tiny snake can accomplish (1 HP, and with a bite that does 1 point of damage: poison save or the target falls asleep). It will return to the ring after it completes its task or after 1 day of trying.

Here’s the weird thing about the ring: after each use, it requires double the food and is double the size: so on its second use it requires 2 pounds of food and is 3 inches long, and on the third use it eats 4 pounds and is 6 inches long, etc. On each use, its bite damage also goes up by 1 point.

In my dream, my friend was excited about finding the ring, but I was deeply suspicious of it. I wondered: once it gets big enough to eat, say, 160 or 320 pounds of food at a time, will it consider the closest person – maybe even the ring owner – to be the closest food source? At some point, is it going to go on some sort of food binge and eat all the food in the world?

Another disquieting thing in the dream, probably sparked by the events of the Mearls sidebar: we found the ring stuck on a weird, leathery, boneless, severed hand. In order to slip off the ring, my friend had to cut off a finger. How did the original owner’s hand get like that?