New around here? Register your SA Forums Account here!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $10! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills alone, and since we don't believe in shady internet advertising, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Also technically don't humans have the advantage that at the "end" of the story, unless everyone's happy staying in Vortex World, only one of them can isekai everyone into a new reality? The team better keep you safe if they ever want to get to a new reality that has fast food outlets and gacha games.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Asterite34
May 19, 2009



PurpleXVI posted:

Also technically don't humans have the advantage that at the "end" of the story, unless everyone's happy staying in Vortex World, only one of them can isekai everyone into a new reality? The team better keep you safe if they ever want to get to a new reality that has fast food outlets and gacha games.

I mean, yes, but did you see all the canon surviving Humans toward the end of SMT 3? I think the amount of "pure" humanity you need to reach the endgame is a bit flexible, the Demi-Fiend just sucked at philosophy

EclecticTastes
Sep 17, 2012

"Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."
I appreciate that the mechanics cleave so closely to the actual games. Human characters (and also dogs) fusing with demons goes all the way back to the SNES games and is regularly used as a plot point to show that someone's either completely lost it, or is willing to give up their humanity to save the day (or that one very good boy is going to continue being a very good boy forever). Playing as a Demon would be an interesting roleplaying challenge, too, as fused demons have little to no continuity of identity. Each new form would bring with it a new personality and new dynamics with the other PCs. In Nocturne, at least, the one bit of lore on the matter says that a fused demon still has the memories of the demons used to create it, so you're not a completely new person (other titles treat fusion like a form of reincarnation, and IIRC there's a line in SMT V that implies demons in that one are simply desummoned in order to summon a stronger one and there's no actual connection between them), but it would be fun to figure out new quirks with each form.

Ettin
Oct 2, 2010


Ancient Enemies: Marx Was Right

The rest of Ancient Enemies is about the Eldritch Society's enemies, the Children of Chaos/Chrysalis Corporation. This is going to be a weird one to cover, because I distinctly remember covering the earlier books years ago and posting that there was no way a corporation could be so obviously evil and not get caught. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha H

Anyway, Chapter Four: Minions of an Endless Chaos opens with a short story about the Director, the avatar of Nyarlathotep that runs Chrysalis. He's an Egyptian man in a white suit who hangs the original The Scream and The Persistence of Memory in his office, because human suffering and melting clocks are symbolic. In the story he holds a meeting in there and fires a guy for failing to summon Shub-Niggurath in the first metaplot book.

quote:

The Director let that sink in for a moment. Mr. Vaqueirinho began to sweat ever so slightly. "I see. However, the conditions for such a ritual are very specific. You have missed your window. Now the Black Mother cannot manifest."

"Sir," responded Mr. Vaqueirinho. "We are looking into a way around such limitations."

The Director sighed. "There are none. This failure is inexcusable. I'm going to have to let you go." A cloud of vapor suddenly occupied the space where Mr. Vaqueirinho sat. And then there was nothing.

This chapter covers the Children of Chaos. It begins with their history, adding more detail to what was established earlier.

quote:

There have always been those who believe that giant corporations are evil. In the early days, it was because the owners and managers took gross advantage of the workers. As time went on, there were other reasons. Giant corporations polluted and abused the environment with no care for sustainability. They began to kill off small business and local flavor as they globalized. They even got to a point where they were so big they could not be policed by governments, and began to kill for their bottom line. This was all before the year 2000, before everything changed. The thing about it is, these corporations weren't evil, despite the outside perception. They were simply greedy.

Unlike its predecessors, the Chrysalis Corporation actually is evil.

I get the point that the Corporation is objectively worse than a mortal corporation, but "corporations aren't evil" definitely hits different in The Year Of Luigi 2025. Excuse me sir but Jesus says greed is a sin—

The Children of Chaos have been around in some form since the early days of civilization. They believe that the status quo is unnatural and "unchecked order" is stagnation, so they've occasionally "prodded" society to mix things up—if by "prodded" you mean "incited revolutions that resulted in the deaths of millions," created/introduced drugs, and made governments corrupt to spark unrest. Which specific historical tragedies can be blamed on Nyarlathotep is wisely left as an exercise for the reader. (Maybe this forum truly is Something Awful...?)

(Incidentally, I guess this explains that part in Mortal Remains about the Chrysalis Corporation mixing faulty/tainted goods into the products they sell, like bottles of mental health medication that have a few faulty pills in them. :moreevil:)

Anyway, then Chrysalis happened. It began as a small consulting firm, and slowly grew by taking equity from every company they helped until they had seats on their boards; after some clever mergers and other trickery, they basically took those companies over and became a conglomerate. The executives became ludicrously rich, but that wasn't enough to satisfy their greed; when the Ashcroft Foundation began messing with the occult, they got jealous and formed the T99 Division to delve into it too. That led them to the Necronomicon, then the Breath of R'lyeh, then (by combining them) the Rite of Transfiguration. The text warned them about the Old Ones, but they assumed they were just myths and the Dhohanoids (which they named after the Formula of Dho-Hna) were just sparkling aliens. In fact the executives got excited enough to undergo the Rite themselves, even before the cult showed up.

The Children of Chaos infiltrated the corporation to steal the Rite at first, until they got dreams telling them to just take over. Chrysalis managers and executives got dreams too, which told them who to hire and promote; the cult basically Inceptioned their way up the ranks until they had the company by the balls. The process was complete when the Director simply walked into the board room one day and took over.

Creating the Eldritch Society was a bit of a cock-up, but they're confident they'll win, because:

quote:

[...]it would be almost impossible for the Eldritch Society to bring the powers of the New Earth Government against the Chrysalis Corporation. Surely, the company does hold great influence in the halls of power, but that isn't it. There is simply no way the Eldritch Society could ever bring together enough compelling evidence to prove the existence of an evil cult-infested multi-national corporation, that is also a government contractor. The company covers its tracks too well and is too entrenched. The system they have set up is one that allows them to operate in perpetuity, without concern for discovery.

Presumably the short fiction in Unveiled Threats where the Ashcroft Foundation discovers that Chrysalis sells arcane batteries with fetuses inside ends with the story getting buried? Obviously the point of this is to discourage Tager PCs from trying to expose Chrysalis, so I guess the corporation would offer up a patsy or something to keep the larger corporation's image clean? As far as I know that story never got followed up on.

The next section is about Nyarlathotep. It's a big cosmic god, it's interested in humanity and likes to mess with them, and its true plans are unknown (at least until the metaplot wraps up). The text floats a rumour that that Dr Anton Miyakame (creator of the Engels) is/was influenced by an avatar of Nyarlathotep, along with Teresa Ashcroft. This didn't get followed up on either, although (spoilers) Burning Horizon does suggest that at the very least someone was influencing Teresa.

We get descriptions of the two avatars of Nyarlathotep created for this game, starting with The Director. He's the avatar running Chrysalis—he even actually does the business stuff, to make sure the cult has the resources it needs. (It helps that both sides require espionage and murder.) Everyone bows down to him because he's an alpha, and he likes to You Have Failed Me For The Last Time his underlings to motivate them. He can spot Tagers on sight and the Society has no idea how to stop him.

quote:

The Director is perhaps the most famous, or infamous, of Nyarlathotep's avatars. He is a dark-skinned Egyptian-looking man in his mid-forties, handsome and debonair. What is amazing is that this creature that is fundamentally god-made-flesh lives in plain sight and is often a media figure as head of the Chrysalis Corporation. He coordinates the company, takes meetings, and occasionally speaks with the President of the New Earth Government. No one has any clue what he is, which is mostly a function of his enormous power. He has never said his name, claiming that the title Director is all people should know him as, for the security of himself and his family.

With my new Mature, Enlightened Perspective I can accept that the Chrysalis Corporation can be evil for the evil's sake and get away with it, but the idea that the President of Earth hangs out with a guy whose name he doesn't even know is testing the limits of my mind palace. They looked into him and found less than nothing and went "ah well, guess we'll just call him Boss"? This must be that Power of Money Marx warned me about. Possibly Nyarlathotep is using up some magical power on this because it'll be really funny when people find out what he means when he talks about "his family". You could also point to to the US President bowing to Yuujirou Hanma in Baki and say it's anime. I'd rather you didn't...

The Blind Lady, the avatar running the Circle, also gets a writeup. She's pretty obscure—only the Circle has seen her, and she likes to play Hide and Seek with them when she comes to visit:

quote:

The Blind Lady does not maintain a constant physical presence in the lower dimensions. However, the leadership of the Circle always intuitively knows where to find her. She always appears in someplace indicative of the decline of society, whether they be abandoned buildings, forgotten basements, industrial sites, or the like.

She has empty bloody sockets for eyes, because power is blind (and therefore above morality). She teaches that the only true crimes are to be afraid of power, afraid to use it, or to not use it to fit in with the weak. (Nyarlathotep is still better than you though so get ready to wield it in his name, fucko.) She also likes to speak in riddles and metaphors, which is a very funny thing to do after making your minions travel to a condemned Arby's to see you.

This section ends by mentioning that Nyarlathotep also has a Migou cult, who like to mess with their kind like the Children of Chaos do with humans. Sometimes Nyarlathotep makes his Migou help the Children of Chaos: bringing knowledge, leading them to ruins, helping Dhohanoids move through Migou territory, that sort of thing. There's even a sidebar that says that despite Mortal Remains making it clear you can't play Migou in non-Migou games, you can play a Migou cultist in Children of Chaos games:

quote:

However, this section presents one unusual circumstance – those Migou cultists who are called upon by Nyarlathotep to assist the Children of Chaos. If you are willing to portray a Character that is a traitor to its own race and must keep its activities hidden from them, who will never be entirely accepted by the Dhohanoids with which it must work, and must also keep its presence secret from the New Earth Government, you may be someone who can portray a cultist Migou.

However, this is an extremely challenging Character option and not for the less-experienced. Please honestly assess if you are the kind of person who is truly capable of portraying such a Character. Regardless, you will need your Storyguide’s approval to portray a Migou in a Chrysalis Corporation game, as he must be up to the challenge as well. Storyguides, feel free to throw this option right out if it doesn’t work for you.

1E spends a lot of time explaining why players can't do things, and it's funny that even when it's saying players can do something after all it talks like your dad giving you the keys to the family car. You sure you're truly capable of pretending to be a space bug? Scratch the paint and your rear end is grounded, son.

Ettin fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Mar 2, 2025

Quackles
Aug 11, 2018

Pixels of Light.



Leraika posted:

space geese :allears:

:honk:

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Oh boy, the option to play Mi-Go! I mean, on the one hand, hell yeah, love options for playing weird aliens and stuff. On the other hand, I can't wait to see how bad and stupid it is.

Ettin
Oct 2, 2010

PurpleXVI posted:

Oh boy, the option to play Mi-Go! I mean, on the one hand, hell yeah, love options for playing weird aliens and stuff. On the other hand, I can't wait to see how bad and stupid it is.

Migou rules were in Mortal Remains, but if I made a set of Eldritch Society PCs for fun I can make a set of Children of Chaos PCs too :getin:

By popular demand
Jul 17, 2007

IT *BZZT* WASP ME--
IT WASP ME ALL *BZZT* ALONG!


Most Lovecraft-influenced media would be better served just starting over with a new mythos but CT consistently fails to decide between paralyzing cosmic horror and heroic action anime in an almost unique way.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

By popular demand posted:

Most Lovecraft-influenced media would be better served just starting over with a new mythos but CT consistently fails to decide between paralyzing cosmic horror and heroic action anime in an almost unique way.

I want to see a Lovecraft-influenced game that takes what it needs from Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, The Shunned House, the Call of Cthulhu, At the Mountains of Madness, the Silver Key stories and that one story about the wizard whose death curse was hiding under the floorboards with a knife for decades.

Because everyone who smugly worships "cosmic horror" nihilism always seems to forget about the ones where a handful of dudes with dynamite, science and an indomitable spirit make a difference and "unknowable alien horrors" like the shoggoths are actually a perfectly comprehensible slave uprising.

By popular demand
Jul 17, 2007

IT *BZZT* WASP ME--
IT WASP ME ALL *BZZT* ALONG!


"We might win, even if only for a brief moment" is a legit way to enjoy cosmic horror and I like how games like Delta Green and the Esoterrorists handle it.
CT just can't avoid the narrative backlash on every turn.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all

PurpleXVI posted:

I want to see a Lovecraft-influenced game that takes what it needs from Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, The Shunned House, the Call of Cthulhu, At the Mountains of Madness, the Silver Key stories and that one story about the wizard whose death curse was hiding under the floorboards with a knife for decades.

Because everyone who smugly worships "cosmic horror" nihilism always seems to forget about the ones where a handful of dudes with dynamite, science and an indomitable spirit make a difference and "unknowable alien horrors" like the shoggoths are actually a perfectly comprehensible slave uprising.

Kevin Crawford’s Silent Legions is about generating your own mythos with attendant creatures, spells, artifacts and cults. One of the classes expressly lets you get turbo crits on creatures immune to crits as a basic feature, so I feel it hits that spirit. The book is also about running a CoC game as a sandbox campaign, which is a little out there.

By popular demand
Jul 17, 2007

IT *BZZT* WASP ME--
IT WASP ME ALL *BZZT* ALONG!


Also someone please pay Ruthanna Emrys a bundle and create a The Innsmouth Legacy RPG, the world is entirely ready for a 'Lovecraft was hateful propaganda and there's a cold war' game.

Dawgstar
Jul 15, 2017

PurpleXVI posted:

Because everyone who smugly worships "cosmic horror" nihilism always seems to forget about the ones where a handful of dudes with dynamite, science and an indomitable spirit make a difference and "unknowable alien horrors" like the shoggoths are actually a perfectly comprehensible slave uprising.

Pompous GM: "You can only briefly struggle against the uncaring ancient ones who do not even recognize you as sentient and... what? No, no you can't just ram a boat through his skull! Yes, I KNOW that worked before but-"

Traveller
Jan 6, 2012

WHIM AND FOPPERY

If the universe is truly uncaring, then it also doesn''t care about Great Cthulhu getting popped like a pimple by a Norwegian sailor.

mellonbread
Dec 20, 2017
MONSTER BOOK DOUBLE FEATURE Part 4: Creature Compendium Creature Selection


This will be a short update. We’ll go over the basics of a CC1 Creature Compendium stat block and choose some monsters to populate our next dungeon.

Let’s check out a stat block for a monster I’ve already used. This stuff will be familiar to people who know this genre, but we’ll cover a couple standout elements.



Because it’s based on the AD&D Monstrous Manual and presents stats for that edition and for the Basic/Expert rules, this book uses descending AC and presents die values as a range of possible outcomes, leaving the reader to decode which dice should be used and in what quantities. In this case the Number Appearing is 2-12, which is easy enough to translate to 2D6. Note the other dubious conventions from the original. Quotations around “to-hit” but not other keyworded rules concepts, big fat loving paragraphs with flavor information mixed in with game information in a stream of consciousness… The monster’s base chance “to-hit” (what we’d call Attack Bonus today) isn’t listed because in the descending AC system of the era you used a table that cross referenced monster HD with the target’s AC to get the necessary die value.

There’s a bunch of notation at the beginning of the book for things like move speed and how to tell at a glance if a given movement rate is flying, burrowing, swimming, etc. One interesting detail I never noticed is how the 0e/AD&D speeds are given as the number of inches a miniature can move per action, while the Basic/Expert movespeeds are given as how many feet the character can move in the game world. Other differences I’m more familiar with. The Basic/Expert set uses the Law/Neutral/Chaos system while the 1e rules use the now-standard 3 by 3 alignment grid. They look the same on the Cactus Cat because it’s neutral both ways.

I know a lot more about the Basic game than I do the 1e rules, so this will be a learning experience for me too. I may even have to learn the Psionics system…

Let’s look at another entry, one of my favorites.



Your standard dragon-men who lead evil armies, but with some personality. They’re evil assholes but they love to drink and party and eat tasty treats. They have interesting motivations that govern how they interact with the players. Notice that the Dragi is Lawful Evil in 1e and Chaotic in Basic, because in the B/X rules Chaotic is functionally just evil.

One thing that bugs me: Dragi ride Griffons, which is cool, but this information is buried at the end of the second to last paragraph rather than front and center. It’s the first thing you’d notice about them if you encountered one.

Time for another pick list. Each poster may select ONE MONSTER from the list. I’ll take the first five. If I need more to fill in gaps in the adventure I’ll take the runners up.

Creature Compendium Pick List posted:

ADARNA BIRD
AIRWALKER
AQRASETH
ARASSAS
AZIZA
BAT, ARCTIC (ICE)
BATAR
BEETLE, GIANT FLAYER
BESTIAL BEAST
BILOKO
BRAIN BAT
BRAINCRAB
CACUS
CADEJO
CALYTAUR
CHÖTGÖR
COW DEMON
DINGONEK
DJETABI
DOBARCHÚ, GREATER
DOBARCHÚ, LESSER
DONESTRE
DOVER DEMON
DRACOPEDE
DRAUGR
DUNTER
DWARF, BLACK
DWARF, RED
EAGLE HOUND
ELEMENTAL, MUDMIST
ELEPHANT, WHITE
ELOKO
FEAR LIATH
FETCH
FIRE FOX
FLUXBUG
FLYING HEAD
GASEOUS LANTERN
GIANT, DIRT
GIANT, PHASE
GORILLA, GIANT SPIDER
GOWROW
HAYRA
HEIKEGANI
HIBAGON
HYRCINIAN BIRD
IPOTANE
JENGLOT
JOGAH
KALA
KHIIMORI
KRABEN
LEECH-MAN
LEOGRYPH
LESHII
LICH, NEPHIL
LIGER
LINNORM
LONGMA
LYMPAGO
MAPINGUAN
MIND HUNTER
MIND MOTH
MOLECRICKET, GIANT
MOTHMAN
MUCKWING, RAZORTOOTH HAMMERHEADED
MUDLOC
NIGHTMANDER
OPHIOTAURUS
ORLING
POSSESSOR
PUKWUDGIE
QUICKSLIME
RATATOSKR
RED ETHER
REVOLVING BEAST
ROTMOUTH
SALEERANDEE
SCORPION, WHITE
SHOCK SNAIL
SKELETON, RUBY
SKELETON, RUPTURE
SKELETON, STONE
SKINKMAN
SKUNKBEAR
SKYFISH
SNAKE, GIANT TWO-HEADED
SNATCHING SERPENT
SPIDER, GIANT TROGLORAPTOR
SPINDLER
SPIRIT, FLAILING
SPRITE, DOHMA
STINKING PILE
SYMARU
TANGLEWORM
TARANTULA, BONE
TAROLTULA
THUZZENDAHG
TUKKATOR
ÜULOCH
VITTORA
VULBAT
WAMPCAT
WHITEWINDER
WORM, CARRIAGE
WORM, RIDER
WORM, SANJU
WORM, SARCOPHAGAL
XANTHER
YAK-MAN
YOUREE
ZATHOA

Drakyn posted:

I don't have anything meaningful to contribute but can I just say that although I've enjoyed the Monster Overhaul I REALLY enjoyed this exceptionally out-there but bizarrely coherent scenario you've set up using it and a selection of crowd-picked nonsense.
Starting with a list of interesting things and linking them together is easier and more fun than starting with a mundane baseline and trying to add fantastic elements back in. It’s why my attempt to "fix" Castle Gargantua has tighter gameplay than the original, but isn’t as evocative. It’s why the best part of my Hex24 project was the tournament contestants (Gorrister the Great and his randomly selected Brigands of All Nations) and the weakest part was the Steading of the Giantess Morwenna (she needs a dining room and a bathtub and a study and a bedroom and a guest room and a pantry...)

I think replying to someone's review to say you enjoyed reading it counts as a meaningful contribution. It's something I need to do more, even if I can't think of any smartass commentary.

Quackles
Aug 11, 2018

Pixels of Light.



Ooh! I'll pick the Bat, Arctic (Ice).

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtmlfuEukMs

if that's not a valid pick i'll go for GIANT SPIDER GORILLA

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

Okay, what the gently caress is a Revolving Beast

GoonWhisperer
Jun 27, 2023
I need to know what's in the stinking pile

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









GoonWhisperer posted:

I need to know what's in the stinking pile

your flatmates have been wondering this for a while

Everything Counts
Oct 10, 2012

Don't "shhh!" me, you rich bastard!

GoonWhisperer posted:

I need to know what's in the stinking pile

Come with me, adventurer, to West of Loathing

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
Dingonek, let's go down under

mellonbread
Dec 20, 2017
Looking good. Our dungeon will have
  • Arctic Bats
  • Dingoneks
  • Giant Spider Gorillas
  • Revolving Beasts
  • Stinking Piles
It needs a boss monster. What should it be?

Shorter Pick List posted:

Cow Demon
Donestre
Hayra
Jogah (Burrowing)
Pukwudgie

Leraika
Jun 14, 2015

Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.
pukwudgie pukwudgie pukwudgie

Quackles
Aug 11, 2018

Pixels of Light.



What's a Jogah (Burrowing)?

mellonbread
Dec 20, 2017

Quackles posted:

What's a Jogah (Burrowing)?
Long story short it's the Iroquois equivalent of a Gnome.

As opposed to the Pukwudgie, which is the Wampanoag version of a Gnome.

mellonbread
Dec 20, 2017
MONSTER BOOK DOUBLE FEATURE Part 5: Creature Compendium Creatures


It's time for another whack at the Creature Compendium. This time we're checking out the six audience picks who will populate our dungeon.

BAT, ARCTIC (ICE)
Arctic Ice Bats are large 1HD diurnal white bats that live in cold climates, gathering in swarms of 3D6 and taking advantage of their white coloration to surprise foes in snowy conditions. Their bite does minimal damage but injects a venom that turns the victim’s blood to ice on a failed Save vs Poison in 3D6 rounds, instantly killing them. Their poison can be cured by an injection of catdragon blood, because catdragons are immune to their venom.

Are the bats predatory? Do they use their venom to hunt or for self defense? Some Shrews and Moles have paralytic venom that they use to capture insects and keep them alive in larders. Male Platypuses use incredibly painful but otherwise harmless venom for self defense. Slow Lorises drool a necrotizing poison that they can smear on their bodies to deter predators. Technically Vampire Bats are venomous, their bite injects a poison that inhibits blood coagulation around the site.

This is an important question because an attack by Arctic Bats is really, really dangerous. With 1 HD the bats don’t have a great chance to hit, but an average swarm size of 11 means at least one will probably get through. Saves vs Poison are the easiest category to pass, but if you have to make one every round your odds aren’t good. If Arctic Bats behave like Vampire Bats they might attack you while you’re sleeping, which means you’re really in trouble. Neutralize Poison is a Cleric 4 spell, which means it comes online around Level 6.

I think the bite turning blood to ice strongly suggests that the bats use it defensively rather than to hunt. Freezing blood makes it impossible to lick up, and bat dentition isn’t suitable for biting through and chewing chunks of ice. In real life large bats (these ones are over a foot long) are usually fructivores. Not an option in arctic conditions, maybe they eat lichen or dungeon fungus? The biggest threat presented by these monsters is probably startling a swarm and getting panic bit. You might hunt or even raise them for venom. A poison that turns blood to ice is basically Ice Nine from Cat’s Cradle. If a single bite is enough to turn several litres of blood into water then it could have a similar effect on seawater.

There’s no picture of Arctic Bats and they yield no treasure.

DINGONEK
A Dingonek is an obscure African cryptid, allegedly spotted by a big game hunter around Lake Victoria circa 1910. It’s a big scaly monster with fangs, claws, and a stinger on its tail.



You can see what I mean when I say this book evokes the feel of 0e/1e D&D monsters. These things really look like a lovely plastic toy you’d find in a bag in the 1970s, just like the classic Rust Monster, Bulette and Owlbear designs. But Dingoneks are no joke. They spawn in packs of 1D10, they have 7 HD a piece, they’re well armored, they’re champion ambushers, they move faster than you, and they get a multiattack with two separate chances to inflict poison that kills you in D4+1 turns. That’s about half an hour of life, much slower than the bats, but with a greater chance to hit and two poison attacks per monster per round. Neutralize Poison, or even just Delay Poison, is at a premium in the Creature Compendium.

Put all this together and we can imagine Dingoneks behaving like pack hunting Monitor Lizards. Rush in, bite the target, fall back and wait for it to expire before chowing down. These things are incredibly nasty, the kind of big game noblemen and barbarians would hunt to prove their vigor. Or because they want the treasure. In the Basic/Expert game a Dingonek pack yields Type M treasure, with an average value of 50,000 GP. For reference that’s 10k less than the average output of a Dragon’s hoard, though Dragon hoards also have a chance to spit out magic items.

GIANT SPIDER GORILLA
Giant Spider Gorillas are four armed cave dwellers who roam in Troops of 1D6. They’re beefy at 7 HD each, almost never surprised thanks to their strong senses, and they get a cool multiattack ability where each successive hit out of four does more damage.



The last couple monsters were “Animal” intelligence. Giant Spider Gorillas are “Low” which means 4 to 7 INT according to the lexicon at the start of the book. That’s well within player character range, especially if you’re draining INT (something you’re allowed to do in the Basic game) to boost your Prime Requisite (the stat that gives you bonus XP). So Giant Spider Gorillas are smart enough to have basic societies, potentially use tools and technology and language. I don’t know if this is the intention of the book, monsters which have societies typically get a description of how many can be found in a village, what percentage are adults vs children, leaders with more HD and maybe a special power or item…

Let’s say the Spider Gorillas are intelligent and gregarious just like the real thing. Let’s go a step further and let them communicate with the players. Primate intelligence and use of language is a contentious topic in linguistics, but in AD&D this is a simple matter of busting out your alignment language. Alignment languages are much maligned for not making any sense, but they allow the players to communicate with a broader range of monsters than if you stuck with the standard spread of common, elven, orc, gnoll, troll, undercommon, draconic, abyssal, deep speech… In the Creature Compendium the neutral alignment language gets a lot of play, since there are a lot of neutral animals with enough intelligence to potentially communicate.

Real Gorillas are omnivorous with a strong preference for plants. Chimpanzees will gladly chow down on birds and monkeys but Gorillas don’t seem interested in hunting anything larger than termites. According to the description Spider Gorillas are carnivorous, I’m not sure if that means they’d hunt humans but they’d absolutely fight to defend their territory against intruders. Real Gorilla “fights” are mostly displays of strength, lots of charging/countercharging without actually fighting. They’re strong and can do insane damage if they get ahold of you, but prefer to win by intimidation. I think Spider Gorillas encountering adventurers for the first time would fight like this.

There’s a trend I talked about in my The Sword And The Flame review, where in primitive/medieval societies where the deadliest ranged weapon is a shortbow you can get away with a lot of skirmishing just outside engagement range of the enemy. Against soldiers armed with breachloading rifles that immediately becomes nonviable, every second you spend posturing in line of sight of the enemy you’re taking casualties. To survive you’ve got to set ambushes, control line of sight, get as close as possible for a decisive rushdown, and be somewhere else when reinforcements arrive. After a few encounters with adventurers I imagine Spider Gorillas would adopt similar tactics to deal with magic, powerful ranged weaponry, armored soldiers…

Spider Gorillas yield Treasure Type C in the Basic Game, which is an average of 1,000 GP and a chance of two magic items. If they rolled one I’d let Spider Gorillas use a magic sword or other obvious weapons, but not anything that required a command word or literacy.

PUKWUDGIE
Pukwudgies are legendary creatures from Wampanoag lore, horrible little magic users who hate humans out of jealousy and torment them with sometimes-lethal pranks.



In the Creature Compendium they’re 6 HD Chaotic Evil mages who roam in bands of 2D4 and have a whole suite of nasty special powers. Pukwudgies carry poison shortbows that kill the target in 1D6 turns (average half an hour) after envenomation. They can turn Invisible at will, cast Control Undead 3 times a day, and cast from the MU list as a level 6 Magic User. They also have a 50% chance to carry a spear and a further 50% chance to carry a dagger. This is important in case their barrage of magic attacks and lethal poison arrows don’t kill you and they need to deal small amounts of chip damage.

We get some behavioral notes for these little bastards. They hate humans and will always attack humans on sight without a reaction roll. They’re sadists who love kidnapping and torture. Oh and their skin glows brighter the brighter the moon is in the sky, with no glow during a new moon. A Pukwudgie camp yields treasure types A and C, so 19,000 GP on average and a chance of magic items.

These little guys are overpowered as gently caress. Level 6 Magic Users get two Level 3 spells, which means they can throw out Haste, Hold Person, Fireball, Lightning Bolt… 5 Invisible Hasted Pukwudgies could wipe out a group of adventurers very quickly, probably in a single surprise round. Their sadism might be the thing that stops them from instantly killing unprepared adventurers. They want living victims to torment and use Hold Person (or Sleep against weaker foes) to take adventurers alive, giving them an opportunity to escape. The Control Undead power means they can raise up people they’ve tortured to death and send them to attack their former friends. I think the poison arrows are the odd one out. A poison that kills in sixty minutes or less isn’t useful for capturing victims, or for self defense. Maybe they shoot you, then taunt you from invisibility as you slowly expire.

REVOLVING BEAST
Revolving Beasts are shape changers who roam in packs of 1D6. They can rearrange their muscles and bones inside their skin to take different shapes, move via different modes of locomotion (flying, swimming, climbing) and gain additional attacks by extruding extra limbs. Their HD ranges from 4 to 6, with the largest beasts at HD 6 being the size of an ogre and the smallest the size of a Dwarf.



When a Revolving Beast transforms, it spins around wildly. Anything within arm’s reach is slapped for D4 damage. Anything of Animal intelligence that gets slapped must test morale or be scared off by the sound of slapping bones. When they aren’t transforming, the beasts get a multiattack based on how many limbs they have. There’s no guidance on the maximum number they can extrude, or what the tradeoff is for getting more limbs. The monster can only transform into something it can see, remember or imagine.

Like Spider Gorillas, Revolving Beasts have Low intelligence. They’re Chaotic Neutral rather than just plain Neutral. Like with the Arctic Bat we don’t get any detail on their diet or social behavior, so I’m not sure if they use their powers to hunt prey or eat vegetables or escape danger or what. They can get pretty big but their attacks don’t deal a ton of damage, although they get multiple per round. The ability to scare off animals by slapping them is useful.

Based on their stated capacity for imagination and their alignment, let’s say Revolving Beasts are like crows or parrots. Playful, creative, opportunistic scavengers who run around causing havoc. They’re tough to keep out of places and tough to catch because they can climb and leap and fly and swim and burrow. Like the Gorillas they yield Type C treasure, easy to explain as a propensity to collect shiny objects.

STINKING PILE
Stinking Piles are 2HD slimes that look and smell like poo poo. They spawn one at a time and there’s a 90% chance to mistake them for just another pile of dungeon filth on the floor. If disturbed they emit stinking clouds that give victims a -1 penalty on their rolls-to-hit for 1D4 dungeon turns.



Stinking Piles have a well-defined ecological role by Creature Compendium standards, crawling slowly around the dungeon floor hoovering up waste. They swallow treasure in the process, yielding an average 445 GP worth of coins and gems. Not a bad haul for a helpless monster whose only attack is to inflict a tiny debuff. Wading through the poo poo is lucrative, but I imagine once you learn this you overturn every pile of filth in the dungeon looking for coins.

ANALYSIS
The descriptions in the Creature Compendium are full of mechanical detail but only a few clues for monster behavior and ecology. We’re putting in more work than we did in the Monster Overhaul. Our dungeon is going to be brutal, we have three monsters with fatal poison abilities. It’s going to be reasonably lucrative, with at least 71 grand scattered across the various monster communities.

I’ve already got an idea for how to fit the pieces together. See you next post!

mellonbread fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Mar 4, 2025

BinaryDoubts
Jun 6, 2013

Looking at it now, it really is disgusting. The flesh is transparent. From the start, I had no idea if it would even make a clapping sound. So I diligently reproduced everything about human hands, the bones, joints, and muscles, and then made them slap each other pretty hard.
That old-school art is really charming. Looking forward to what you cook up, dungeon-wise.

Libertad!
Oct 30, 2013

You can have the last word, but I'll have the last laugh!

Asterite34 posted:



Shin Megami Tensei TRPG Part 3: So this here's supposed to be Tokyo? Doubt I'd find any sushi or geishas in this hellhole

In spite of what few benefits humanity gets, I can't see them as an appealing option for play for most players outside of modern weapons enthusiasts who love the idea of blasting apart Biblical Eldritch Horrors with AK-47s or riff off of Ash from Evil Dead. Which does sound cool, but in my general experience something like "play as just about any monster" is going to be a lot more appealing, especially when demons have more staying power and magic. Additionally, the "be weak initially, strong later" may not always work out in actual play if the group finds that the game isn't for them or the campaign is short.

Ettin posted:



Ancient Enemies: Marx Was Right

The rest of Ancient Enemies is about the Eldritch Society's enemies, the Children of Chaos/Chrysalis Corporation. This is going to be a weird one to cover, because I distinctly remember covering the earlier books years ago and posting that there was no way a corporation could be so obviously evil and not get caught. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha H

I myself have dropped a few reviews ages ago (Ptolus and Dragonlance: Key of Destiny come to mind), and contemplated coming back with a fresh set of eyes. My views on various things certainly evolved from the early 2010s, so I know I would likely read and grade things differently now vs then.

Ettin posted:


With my new Mature, Enlightened Perspective I can accept that the Chrysalis Corporation can be evil for the evil's sake and get away with it, but the idea that the President of Earth hangs out with a guy whose name he doesn't even know is testing the limits of my mind palace. They looked into him and found less than nothing and went "ah well, guess we'll just call him Boss"? This must be that Power of Money Marx warned me about. Possibly Nyarlathotep is using up some magical power on this because it'll be really funny when people find out what he means when he talks about "his family". You could also point to to the US President bowing to Yuujirou Hanma in Baki and say it's anime. I'd rather you didn't...

Between the world’s richest man causing his company’s own stock to tank from his manchild behavior, the CIA both failing to assassinate Castro over 600 times and somehow letting Trump the obvious Russian asset get elected twice, the Capitol during Jan 6th 2021 having less policing than the average public high school, and the Russian military using insecure cell phones to communicate with each other, I’ve lost a huge amount of confidence in the richest and most powerful groups in the world being an eighth as competent as their conception in pop culture. So I can easily buy that a President in Cthulhutech not bothering to do basic research on a corporate ally he chills with is easy for me to believe.

Sorry if this sounds like a bitter tangent, but people acting like idiots in fiction doesn't break my suspension of disbelief like it does in the past.

mellonbread posted:

MONSTER BOOK DOUBLE FEATURE Part 5: Creature Compendium Creatures


PUKWUDGIE
Pukwudgies are legendary creatures from Wampanoag lore, horrible little magic users who hate humans out of jealousy and torment them with sometimes-lethal pranks.



In the Creature Compendium they’re 6 HD Chaotic Evil mages who roam in bands of 2D4 and have a whole suite of nasty special powers. Pukwudgies carry poison shortbows that kill the target in 1D6 turns (average half an hour) after envenomation. They can turn Invisible at will, cast Control Undead 3 times a day, and cast from the MU list as a level 6 Magic User. They also have a 50% chance to carry a spear and a further 50% chance to carry a dagger. This is important in case their barrage of magic attacks and lethal poison arrows don’t kill you and they need to deal small amounts of chip damage.

We get some behavioral notes for these little bastards. They hate humans and will always attack humans on sight without a reaction roll. They’re sadists who love kidnapping and torture. Oh and their skin glows brighter the brighter the moon is in the sky, with no glow during a new moon. A Pukwudgie camp yields treasure types A and C, so 19,000 GP on average and a chance of magic items.

These little guys are overpowered as gently caress. Level 6 Magic Users get two Level 3 spells, which means they can throw out Haste, Hold Person, Fireball, Lightning Bolt… 5 Invisible Hasted Pukwudgies could wipe out a group of adventurers very quickly, probably in a single surprise round. Their sadism might be the thing that stops them from instantly killing unprepared adventurers. They want living victims to torment and use Hold Person (or Sleep against weaker foes) to take adventurers alive, giving them an opportunity to escape. The Control Undead power means they can raise up people they’ve tortured to death and send them to attack their former friends. I think the poison arrows are the odd one out. A poison that kills in sixty minutes or less isn’t useful for capturing victims, or for self defense. Maybe they shoot you, then taunt you from invisibility as you slowly expire.

Yeah no kidding. They also sound complicated to run, too. I honestly feel that monsters who have a huge amount of abilities/spells should be reserved for “boss level threats” and solo types. I imagine that having to track multiple spells, undead minions, and poison arrows will be difficult for a DM to juggle.

Libertad! fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Mar 6, 2025

EclecticTastes
Sep 17, 2012

"Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Libertad! posted:

In spite of what few benefits humanity gets, I can't see them as an appealing option for play for most players outside of modern weapons enthusiasts who love the idea of blasting apart Biblical Eldritch Horrors with AK-47s or riff off of Ash from Evil Dead. Which does sound cool, but in my general experience something like "play as just about any monster" is going to be a lot more appealing, especially when demons have more staying power and magic. Additionally, the "be weak initially, strong later" may not always work out in actual play if the group finds that the game isn't for them or the campaign is short.

A lot of Japanese TTRPGs have options that are underpowered, but authentic, and it seems that they're less concerned with balance than they are with properly emulating the work/genre being presented. Fiend and human PCs would be treated as the "main" characters of the campaign, with demons being the colorful supporting cast. A lot of games that were released over there at the time also had less focus on party unity, or even being present in the same scene. There's a ton of interesting differences in design philosophy*, just going over the handful of translated titles I've gotten my hands on (Double Cross, Tokyo NOVA, TBZ, Maid**, etc.), and if I could comb through a few more, I could probably do a deep dive on the subject sometime.

*Well, compared to works made around the same time; a lot of more recent storygames have adopted similar mechanics or styles, either independently or through direct inspiration, and I think even the newest Japanese title I've seen translated is at least a decade old at this point so who knows how the scene's evolved since then.

**Okay Maid also has... other issues, too, but it exemplifies my point just as much as the others.

mellonbread
Dec 20, 2017
MONSTER BOOK DOUBLE FEATURE Part 6: Creature Compendium Minidungeon - Volcanic Vent of the Pukwudgie Potentate


You picked six monsters from the CC1 Creature Compendium, let’s put them to work. In attendance:
  • Arctic Bats
  • Dingoneks
  • Gorilla Spiders
  • Pukwudgies
  • Revolving Beasts
  • Stinking Piles
THE CURSED MOUNTAINS
Our story takes us north of the Thousand Lakes, to the great ice sheet which covers the Cursed Mountains. These enormous spires lie frozen under vast glaciers, summits periodically exposed by magical fire events, deliberate excavation, or natural geologic activity. The melted peaks draw explorers to the extraordinarily hostile frozen wasteland in search of the ancient treasures concealed therein. As magic and science advance, so to do adventurers into the frozen north, drawing ever closer to the heart of the ice.



THE PUKWUDGIE POTENTATE
Under the Monarchy, the Pukwudgies’ affinity for torture, stealth and magic made them natural secret policemen. While the Old King didn’t trust the imaginative little sadists with fine detail work, they proved indispensable in spreading terror and crushing rebellions. They loved him for letting them do what they did best and will never forgive humanity for killing him, or the Orcs and Halflings for their role in it.

The collapse of the Monarchy, combined with relaxed government controls on the teaching and practice of magic, has removed the Pukwudgie’s protection and placed them on equal footing with humans and demihumans. The Pukwudgie Potentate Nectanebo and his four commandos are holdouts, fighting a guerilla war against all comers from their hideout in a volcanic vent in the Cursed Mountains. As far as they’re concerned, nothing has changed. Even if the Hanged King never comes back, they’ll keep doing what they love.

20% chance all 5 Pukwudgies are out raiding.
20% chance all 5 Pukwudgies are torturing captives in 12
Otherwise they are placed according to their key entries. If the alarm is raised they turn invisible and converge on intruders, stalking for the right moment to strike.

THE VOLCANIC VENT


When the Cursed Mountains aren’t cloaked in endless arctic night, smoke rising from the Volcanic Vent is visible miles away. In the dark season the black thread can still be picked out amid the stars and moons and smears of colored light decorating the horizon.

Closer up, two openings are visible. A small, circular vent belching a column of black smoke, and a larger sinkhole venting clouds of steam. A small river of glacial snowmelt flows down from the packed ice into the sinkhole, forming a waterfall.

Temperatures on the surface are low. Explorers need heavy arctic gear, Endure Elements or some form of portable heat to avoid freezing.

Below the surface is a Cave Elf bath complex, itself built atop an older structure and a series of natural caves. Things warm up as you descend.

MAP AND KEY


1:Vertical shaft choked with smog leads through the bedrock and ice to surface. Smoke and heat make climbing fatal without fire resistance, weather magic to clear the air… Sloped passage leads down to 6, steep tunnel to 7.

2: Ice passage strung with chimes. Bone and salvaged metal rattle loudly with careless passage, alerting Spider Gorillas.

3: Narrow icy ledge goes around sinkhole. Very narrow ledge behind waterfall. West side has handholds used by Spider Gorillas on surface expeditions. 11 ARCTIC BATS roost here at night, may panic bite intruders if disturbed.

Light visible from east tunnel into ice. Invisible PUKWUDGIE guard is supposed to alert the others to intruders but prioritizes pushing unaware victims off the slippery ledge.

4: Pukwudgie House in ice cave. Platforms connected by ladders, animal furs and soft cloth. Room lit and warmed by magical fire that burns without smoke or fuel. 2 Pukwudgies here sleeping or fussing over equipment/magic items. 5,100 GP in coins and jewelry plus arrows, jug of Pukwudgie poison, Bangles of First Blood (wearer always appears unharmed) looted from Cave Elf bath complex, the first of many minor magic items.

5: Pukwudgie storage in ice cave. Heaped cloth, furniture, nude statue of Cave Elf from bath complex below glows blue for illumination. 23,000 GP in coins and gems. The treasure sparkles with blue energy, discharges Lightning Bolt trap if touched.

6: Den cave. 1D4-1 Spider Gorillas lay on sleeping mats, smoke meat over pit, or work on handicrafts (others are out hunting in the arctic wastes).

7: Trash pile. Gorillas drop unwanted items down hole in roof of old massage room. Dingoneks swarm when trash is dumped, unable to reach hole. 902 GP in dropped treasure plus X Ray Monocle (lets wearer see the skeleton of any creature).



8: Old Cave Elf bath complex. Big pool fed by waterfall. Nude statues of Elves brandishing weapons. Water cascades out of pool into volcanic vent sending up huge steam clouds. Four DINGONEKS frolic here, unable to reach barricaded Spider Gorilla dens or Pukwudgie hideout. Statues have 5,000 GP in jeweled eyes and decorations. Pool holds 39,000 GP in gold and jewelry plus Darts of Silence (deal no damage but stop target making sound or casting spells).

9 Balcony with Jumping Spider statue. Scorch marks on marble floor in groups of eight. Statue lasers non Cave Elves who approach door. Pukwudgies turn invisible so light passes harmlessly through them. Each spider eye worth 500 for a total of 4,000 GP.

10: Webbed corridor. Webs magically extruded by artificial cribella in walls, slowly regenerate if cleared. Concealed Ventriloquism trap sounds alarm in 4 when triggered.

11: Meditation room lit by soft crystal lantern that slowly changes color. Cave Elves carved it to channel thought energy and achieve inner peace, allowing them to recharge spells without sleeping just like their surface world counterparts. The Pukwudgie Potentate Nectanebo meditates here to regain spells, wearing looted Cave Elf Gloves of Authority (anyone slapped must test morale). Crystal Lantern fittings worth 5,000 GP but fragile. Ring of Disguise Scent lost in gap between floor tiles.

12: Wizard lab converted to torture chamber. Floor lighting from glowing runes. Tables, racks and crosses for binding prisoners. 1 Pukwudgie normally here idly flipping through books or maintaining equipment. If Pukwudgies have captives all 5 are here indulging their sadistic impulses, distracted.

Shelves hold water damaged books, Druidic and Clerical trinkets the Pukwudgies can’t use: Rod of Resurrection, Scrolls of (protection from plants and animals, summon animals, water breathing, invisibility to animals, control weather, striking, continual light, continual light, sticks to snakes, dispel evil). Old jugs and bottles, antidote to Pukwudgie poison in unmarked jar notably free of dust/cobwebs.

Secret door behind shelf leads to 10.

13: Gorilla storage cave. Hides, food, woven cloth, raw materials like bone and stone. 900 GP in assorted coinage, Cloaker Leather Coat (hide in darkness even vs darkvision and infravision, doesn’t fit Gorillas).



14: Sloped passage. Spider Gorillas stacked objects behind doors to keep Dingoneks out of den.

15: Linen closet. Barrels and shelves. +1 Dagger and Cave Elf Codpiece of Holding discarded here.

16 Holding pen for bath attendants. Furniture stripped, old stains. Ring of the Masochist concealed behind crumbling baseboard of wall (wearer cannot be incapacitated by pain. addictive).

17: Geothermal vent. Towering mineral deposits belch black smoke. Terrestrial tubeworms filled with chemosynthetic bacteria feed on minerals. Smoke and heat kill quickly without protection. 5,020 GP in dropped treasure slurped up by Stinking Piles which ooze along the floor, plus the Broach of the Tippler (prevents wearer from passing out due to intoxication).

18: Precarious handholds and ladder over pit allow access to geothermal vents.

19 Ledge over pit, used for waste disposal from 21. Revolving Beasts use this escape route if beaten at 20, climbing icy walls with ease.

20: Prehistoric altar to Bloodfeast, Primordial God of Sacrifice (later worshiped by the Cave Elves in his male aspect as the Headsman and his female aspect as the Weaver). Hallucinogenic fumes rise from glowing sacrificial hole in floor. Six REVOLVING BEASTS dance in the mist, clattering as they whirl and transform from shape to shape. Dingoneks won't enter for fear of Revolving Beast bone slap attack. Door north to 12 impregnated with Fireball trap by Pukwudgies, inadvertently rendering it scalding hot.

21: Old temple slave quarters. Revolving Beasts have piled shiny objects here. 1,700 GP in jewelry and coins plus Tin Mirror (bearer casts no shadow, does not appear in reflective surfaces, is invisible to scrying).



THE SPIDER GORILLA TROOP
There are three Gorillas in the troop. They don’t have names and they don’t have a leader, but they reach group decisions quickly. They wear coats made from arctic animals to survive in the harsh conditions of the Cursed Mountains. They have a truce with the Pukwudgies, whose ire is reserved for humans, Orcs and Halflings. They are afraid of the Dingoneks but know how to carefully avoid the Arctic Bats. They light their homes with simple lanterns made from bones filled with Cave Penguin fat.

The Gorillas aren’t at home in the frozen wasteland, they were chased out of the cave system where they lived and have struggled to survive ever since. They attack only in defense of their cave or if adventurers look weak enough to kill and eat. They can be bribed with food, but would take a lot of persuading to fight the Pukwudgies. Because they called a truce, and because they’re scary. If they could be convinced, their strong senses of smell and hearing would be invaluable at detecting invisible ambushes. They could be enlisted as mercenaries by someone who fed them lots of meat and led them to a more hospitable climate.

One Gorilla carries the +1 Sentient Sword Naranja. The blade only speaks Elf and the Lawful Good alignment language. It can detect traps, metals, good or evil, and can cast Teleport once per day. Since it can’t communicate with the Gorillas they can’t activate its powers. When it encounters adventurers it shouts a greeting in both languages. If they can understand it asks them to please take it with them, though not to massacre the innocent apes.

CAPTIVES
I normally use the Monster Overhaul generation tables to quickly create prisoners held in lairs. Since we're going old school for this dungeon, we can use the OSE NPC Adventuring Party Generator instead. We'll use the Advanced Fantasy rules since those backport all the AD&D content to the Basic game. The generator gives us stat blocks but leaves personality up to the user to generate. Let's give it a spin.
  • Level 3 Chaotic Barbarian w/ chain armor and staff
  • Level 1 Chaotic Fighter w/ chain armor, shield and longsword
  • Level 2 Lawful Gnome, spells color spray, spook
  • Level 3 Neutral Druid, spells invisibility to animals, fairy fire, slow poison
  • Level 2 Neutral Gnome, spells chromatic orb, chromatic orb
Neat. These guys might be a surveying party, looking for a good route through the mountains to the legendary heart of ice at the center of the Cursed Mountains. If it were just wild animals and the gorillas these guys would be well equipped to take on the dungeon, with illusions and druidical powers. But the Pukwudgies took them by surprise with disabling spells cast from invisibility and they got captured. The Barbarian spawned with a Potion of Longevity since the generator gives a chance of magic items, the Pukwudgies lifted that off him and tossed it in the storage room with all their equipment.

WHY ARE YOU HERE?
…And what are you going to do about it?
  • The Lakemen’s Camp at the edge of Ishizaka’s Land, the furthest permanent settlement in the Cursed Mountains, has suffered a series of raids and kidnappings. The Men of Lake are always quick to blame any misfortune on the evil magic of tiny invisible spirits, but this time they may actually have a point. Someone needs to go out to the Volcanic Vent, rescue any captives still alive, and put a stop to the Pukwudgies’ depredations.
  • Arctic Bat venom is an invaluable alchemical reagent for its ability to freeze a solution of salt water at human body temperature in a matter of minutes. Go harvest some in this death pit we found.
  • The Cave Elves figured out this whole Magical Industrial Revolution thing before it was cool on the surface. Yes they were slave trading, torture obsessed religious fanatics, but they successfully incorporated labor saving magical devices into every aspect of their lives. Go into the bath complex over the vent and bring back some trinkets for our wizards to reverse engineer.
  • For the Momios, an order of revenge-obsessed cargo cultists that sprang up after the fall of the Monarchy, the war never ended. They still offer a bounty on Pukwudgie skulls. It’s gory, incredibly dangerous work, but such is the life of adventure.
  • Remember in the first bullet, where I said some people got captured by Pukwudgies? That someone is you. Start the game in room 12, about to be tortured to death, when something interrupts the festivities. Maybe the Dingoneks got through the door, maybe a Revolving Beast knocked something delicate over and started a magical fire... Whatever it is, now's your chance to escape.


ANALYSIS
If you descend down the sinkhole the entrance to this dungeon is the most dangerous part, with a precarious ledge and a potential ambush by dangerous monsters. When I designed it I thought of actual AD&D dungeons like G3 - Hall of the Fire Giant King, where the first room is the toughest because the monsters rally and rush the players down when the alarm is raised. A party that can deal with the Pukwudgies will have no trouble with the rest of the place. The Dingoneks are nasty if you get close but are trapped in the bath complex at the bottom of the map. The Pukwudgies could strategically open doors to give them a clear path to the players.

What levels is our dungeon intended for? The Creature Compendium doesn’t include stocking or encounter tables for any of its monsters, so we don’t know what dungeon level they would normally spawn on. I wouldn’t want to tangle with anything in the book until the Cleric had Neutralize Poison castable, which ballparks us at Level 6. That also gets our Magic User up to the same level as the Pukwudgies, opening up spells like Invisibility 10’ Radius that put the players on more even footing. But they’d still lack the raw firepower of five enemy casters. The first generation of modules were written to be played with a larger number of player characters than what’s now standard. The G series modules recommend a party of 9 to 10 characters for good odds of success. You can make up the difference with henchmen, but there’s an upper limit of how many idiots you can cram onto a narrow ice walkway when going up against enemy mages armed with Fireballs. Unless you melt your own tunnel through the glacier, or carve new steps in the ice, or rig up an elevator with rope and pulleys…

Let’s say four Level 6 characters are the lower bound of who can survive in the Volcanic Vent of the Pukwudgie Potentate.

Libertad! posted:

Yeah no kidding. They also sound complicated to run, too. I honestly feel that monsters who have a huge amount of abilities/spells should be reserved for “boss level threats” and solo types. I imagine that having to track multiple spells, undead minions, and poison arrows will be difficult for a DM to juggle.
It's not as difficult as you might imagine. Pukwudgies cast as Level 6 Magic Users, which means they get two spells each of 1st, 2nd and 3rd level. We can assign spells two ways.
  1. Assume the Pukwudgies are a military unit of experienced commandos and have selected and memorized an optimal spell loadout. That means most of them will be packing Sleep at Level 1, utilities like Levitate (for vertical movement around the big pit) or Phantasmal Force for crowd control at Level 2, then Hold Person and a direct damage spell (Fireball or Lightning Bolt) at Level 3. Swap one of the Level 3 spells out for Haste on one guy, since in the Basic game it buffs the entire party.
  2. Assume that Pukwudgies are nonhuman fairy creatures who don't (or can't) pick spells according to any rational scheme we would understand. In that case we can use the OSE spells memorized generator to quickly equip each one with a random selection of spells. It might seem more complicated for each monster to have its own random selection of spells, but in practice only a couple are actually going to be useful in a given encounter, so you've actually shortened the list of monster tactics that have to be tracked.
Either way, the basic question is whether Pukwudgies try to take the target alive (Hold Person, Sleep, maybe Charm Person or Phantasmal Force), focus them down fast as an immediate threat to the group (Fireball and Lightning Bolt), or indulge in a psychotic prank that isn't as effective as the first two options but gratifies their need for chaos. Pukwudgies have Morale 12, which is hypothetically unbreakable. That could mean they're disciplined supercommandos who never retreat, but it could also mean they're willing to throw their life away to hurt you. Pukwudgie suicide bombers, Pukwudgies cutting the rope holding both of you above the abyss… Their sadism might be their biggest weakness, they could harass you forever from invisibility and be safe but they can’t resist throwing themselves into danger to gently caress your poo poo up.

On the other hand, the slow acting but lethal poison arrows are useless for personal defense but make a good attritional weapon, fired from a distance by invisible bastards to wear down an opposing force. One really nasty use is to tag someone with a poison arrow, then ambush the party as they evacuate the casualty for a mad dash to the nearest Cleric who has Neutralize Poison castable. Firing arrows might just be something for the Pukwudgies to do with their second action when Hasted, since if you’re playing with the Basic rules you can’t cast two spells in a single turn.

Contrary to what I said last time, the Control Undead ability is unlikely to see much use because Pukwudgies can't actually create their own undead. I thought they could, but Animate Dead is a Level 5 spell that you can't cast as a Level 6 Magic User. Control Undead would let Pukwudgies take over a preexisting group of undead, in which case you'd have a Pukwudgie lair guarded by undead.

That's enough for now. Next post we'll wrap up the monster books.

mellonbread fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Mar 6, 2025

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

we'll get there sooner or later




Huh, I thought animate dead was level 3. Then again that was from AD&D2E, which may have already been too far down the ol' hole for OSR.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso

By popular demand posted:

Most Lovecraft-influenced media would be better served just starting over with a new mythos but CT consistently fails to decide between paralyzing cosmic horror and heroic action anime in an almost unique way.
Cthulhutech is an interesting niche case because it uses IP that was trendy and public domain at the time (Yog-Sothothery) to shamelessly rip off a very specific set of anime references.

Eldritch Skies is a much smarter game, but it's also more open-ended and demands more prep work. Cthulhutech slots you into some premade roles, but it also doesn't exactly tell you that the mecha game, the mutant ninja game, and the occult investigator game are three different campaign styles that can't be mixed freely.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all
I’ve never checked, but is Cthulhu supposed to be pronounced with a silent c like in cthonic? Silly Greek people.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

we'll get there sooner or later




Pvt.Scott posted:

I’ve never checked, but is Cthulhu supposed to be pronounced with a silent c like in cthonic? Silly Greek people.
I believe ol' Howard said it was meant to be a kind of "Khluu-hu' or something

I just go with "K'Thulu" when I've had to mention Him aloud

Halloween Jack posted:

Cthulhutech is an interesting niche case because it uses IP that was trendy and public domain at the time (Yog-Sothothery) to shamelessly rip off a very specific set of anime references.
I am down with anime references, and anime in general (at least as a food group if not a primary intake) -- but I am always annoyed when I see directly through a transparent direct lifting of something. I recall this made me roll my eyes a few times when reading through Chuubo. Yes, Jenna, I also saw that anime. Reference something more obscure like Kakegurui.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso
I am a little weary of 2-4 page indie storygames based on exactly one anime or video game.

Traveller
Jan 6, 2012

WHIM AND FOPPERY

Where is the Witch from Mercury R.Talsorian book

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk










these posts are just incredibly good value, thanks for making them!

LatwPIAT
Jun 6, 2011

Pvt.Scott posted:

I’ve never checked, but is Cthulhu supposed to be pronounced with a silent c like in cthonic? Silly Greek people.

More like "Khlul-lhoo", per a letter he wrote, though it's not supposed to be pronouncable by humans in the first place.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Quackles
Aug 11, 2018

Pixels of Light.



Halloween Jack posted:

I am a little weary of 2-4 page indie storygames based on exactly one anime or video game.

Clearly the superior product is 2-4 page indie storygames based on two anime or video games. :agesilaus:


Pvt.Scott posted:

I’ve never checked, but is Cthulhu supposed to be pronounced with a silent c like in cthonic? Silly Greek people.

K'thUwU :nyoron:

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply