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Mazes and Monsters: magic charms

Monday, April 4th, 2011
This entry is part 31 of 34 in the series Mazes and Monsters

Gear up your Hanks with a chapter of magic items! Here’s the PDF of the full chapter.

Click to download the pdf.

As a sample, here’s a charm that, for sheer baroque old-school madness, knocks the Eye of Vecna into a cocked hat:

Graven Eye of Gellor. Level 8 charm. This is a faceted ruby with twelve faces. (It looks much like a d12.) On each face is carved the iris of an eye, along with a unique magical rune. To use the Graven Eye, you must actually put out one of your own eyes and put the Graven Eye in its place. From now on, you will probably want to wear an eye patch a lot of the time.

At the beginning of every day, a different face of the Graven Eye will face the world, and you will have a different power when you gaze through the Graven Eye. Each morning, roll on the following table:

Table 9-1: Graven Eye of Gellor
1: Eye of Understanding: You gain the benefit of Read Strange Languages all day.
2: Eye of Fear: You can make an attack on people in throwing range or closer. If you hit, they are Mazed (RONA 6). While Mazed, they fear you. They may either stand where they are, not moving, or spend their turn moving away from you.
3: Eye of Seeing: You gain a trait die on all RONA checks involving seeing or perception. Also, you can see invisible creatures.
4: Eye of Truth: When people are lying, you see them surrounded with a red haze.
5: Eye of Light: You can shine light from your eye as if it were a lantern.
6: Eye of Lies: You can change your appearance to that of any person or monster that is approximately your size. Whoever you change your appearance to must have the Graven Eye of Timor visible as one of its eyes. The change of appearance does not affect your abilities or the appearance of your clothes and equipment.
7: Eye of Change: For the entire day, whenever you go through a door you’ve never been through, you roll on this table (rerolling 7s), temporarily taking on a new power. Passing through the same door multiple times has no effect.
8: Eye of X Rays: You can see through anything within throwing range (walls, curtains, etc) except lead. This doesn’t let you see in the dark, so you can’t, for instance, see the coins inside a dark coin purse or treasure chest.
9: Eye of command: You can make an attack on someone within throwing distance. If you hit, you do no damage, but you may issue them a short command. They are Mazed (RONA 4). As long as they are Mazed, they must follow your order. The Maze ends when the order has been fulfilled. The attack will fail if following the order will obviously lead the creature to immediate harm. (Near future harm is OK. The Mazed creature will not stab itself but will insult a dragon.)
10: Eye of the Mind’s Eye: You may make any images or visions you want appear in the sparkling surface of the Eye.
11: Eye of Darkness: You are blind in this eye. You gain a weakness die on all RONA checks involving seeing or perception.
12: Eye of Flame: As an attack, you can shoot a fiery red beam from your eye. It can attack at bow range, but unlike a bow, can also attack people next to you. It does fire damage. You gain a Trait die on the attack roll.

Mazes and Monsters: Monsters!!!

Monday, April 18th, 2011
This entry is part 32 of 34 in the series Mazes and Monsters

Here’s the M&M bestiary from levels 1 to 5, from the lowly Pixie to the mighty Mazosaurus Rex. The Mazosaurus Rex is not SPECIFICALLY attested in the movie, but I think it can be inferred from the awesomeness of Mazes and Monsters.

Download Monsters PDF

Finally you can have your own sweet Mazes and Monsters GM screen!

Monday, May 9th, 2011
This entry is part 33 of 34 in the series Mazes and Monsters

The original Mazes and Monsters MC screen.

The original Mazes and Monsters MC screen.

Or Maze Controller’s Screen, to be more precise. Just like the one that Daniel rocked in the movie.

I’ve made a printable screen that is JUST AS COOL as the original, and it has all the Mazes and Monsters charts you need to run the game. (Edit: I’ve added a blank template as well, for use with other games: see below.) Wandering monster matrix, Maiming Subtable, it’s all here. It looks something like this:

Click for a bigger view

Click for a bigger view

Here are all four PDFs you need to construct it. They’ll be in the completed M&M PDF.
left front section
left section
right front section
right section

Or if you want blank templates so that you can play with your own rules of choice but LOOK like you’re playing Mazes and Monsters, you can use these instead of the left section and right section:
left section (blank)
right section (blank)

I’ve tried printing and cutting it out, and the completed castle looks pretty nifty. I can’t wait for my next M&M playtest.

Printable Mazes and Monsters game board

Monday, May 23rd, 2011
This entry is part 34 of 34 in the series Mazes and Monsters

You probably remember sitting around with your friends playing Mazes and Monsters back in the 80s, but your mom threw away all your M&M stuff during the Tom Hanks Scare of ’82. And original Mazes and Monsters gamebooks are so hard to find on eBay! How are you supposed to play M&M retro clones?

Problem solved! I’ve lovingly restored the Mazes and Monsters game board onto hand-crafted free PDFs. Just print out two of each PDF and tape them together.

Mazes and Monsters board, bottom left and top right

Mazes and Monsters board, top left and bottom right


Between this and the Maze Controller’s screen, you’re just about ready to descend into a spiral of fantasy and madness. Candles not included!

Coming in a week or two: Paper-doll minis, suitable for Mazes and Monsters, or for any game system that features fighters, holy men, and frenetics.