Three Alternate Monster Lists

Brother Juniper from Goblin Flowers recently asked a question about alternate monster lists that jogged my memory for a few classic ones.
 

 
Roger G-S from Roles, Rules, and Rolls made Varlets & Vermin, 28 pages of low HD monsters and a smattering of public domain woodcuts that are exactly what you'd expect from the author of the Pergamino Barocco.

"Demi-Real Monster - When a summoning goes partly wrong, or an illusion of a living thing takes on existence, a demi-real creature is created. The monster starts out half-transparent and shaky in form. The monster gains hit dice by leaving its mark on the world - most often this means scoring damage in combat. Once it has its full hit dice it is permanently real. If killed before then, its body will waver and wink out of existence. A demi-real creature that is aware of its existential condition, and able to communicate, may very well try to negotiate a different way to gain full reality than fighting a dangerous group of adventurers."
 
 

 
Zenopus Archives wrote One Hit Point Monsters, which is 20 entries of exactly what it sounds like. I've admired this blog's creativity before, so I'm not surprised I enjoy these.

"Danse Macabre - Finely-dressed skeletons emerge from the ground. One plays the violin while the others try to dance with characters for 2d6 turns. Only attack if resisted. If danced with for the entire time, skeletons sink back into ground leaving a reward. Entire group turns as ghouls."
 
 

 
Al Krombach from Beyond the Black Gate made 6 tables of 20 monsters as Alternative Wandering Monster Tables. There are no descriptions here, so the evocative names do all the heavy listing. Al is coauthor of Warlords of Mars (which really would have looked lovely in a color edition), and his collaborator Thomas Denmark wrote his own OD&D monster book called Beasties.

"Level One - Beetle, Nuclear; Level Two - Ooze, Stop Motion; Level Three - Obsidian Judge; Level Four through Five - Wereslugs; Level Six through Seven - Spiderbear; Level Eight - Toad of the Abyss."

Dungeon Alphabet Dozen - E is for ECHOES

E is for ECHOES
Roll 1d12!

Random Inexplicable Echoes of the Underworld

1 Everything player characters say is repeated back in Igpay Atinlay.

2 Echo has a horribly unconvincing French accent.

3 Second character to speak (and ONLY that character) has no echo.

4 Second character to speak (and ONLY that character) receives an addendum to their echo, making it sound like they're insulting the other player characters under their breath.

5 Rude echo repeats everything the characters say, but in a really mocking and sarcastic tone of voice.

6 Menacing echo repeats everything the characters say, but somehow makes it sound like a threat.

7 Immature echo inserts as many sexual and scatological references and Freudian slips into repeats as possible.

8 Annoying echo repeats everything the characters say, but replaces the original subject of every sentence with "Your mama..."

9 Searching the area for any purpose reveals that the "echo" is actually a KOBOLD hiding in the shadows.

10 Echo definitely sounds like a parrot, beginning every sentence with "Awk!", ending with a whistle, replacing every instance of the word "I" with "Polly" and any mention of a desired object with "a cracker". No amount of searching can find the bird though.

11 Echo repeats only the last word of each sentence, and repeats it three times times times.

12 Echo repeats everything the characters say, and every time there's a break in the conversation, also repeats the words of a party of rival ADVENTURERS who have heard every word the player characters have been saying.

Two Salt-Throned Alien Cultures

Over at Throne of Salt, Dan has set up a series of generators for making alien cultures, at least partial inspired by Ursula LeGuin's Hain Cycle of books and stories. Dan recommends choosing 3 of his 25 cultural trait tables, and maybe 1d3 mutations from Coins & Scrolls biological mutation list. I'm also going to assign each culture a trait from one of Melsonian Arts Council's planar culture generators.

These took quite a bit of thought to make coherent sense of, so I can't recommend trying to do this at the table. These procedures should be used during preparation only.
 
 
Culture 1 - The Skyminders
 
Danscape cultural traits - age, learning, rank
Age: "Transitions celebrated: child to youth, youth to adult, adult to elder."
Learning: "Learning must be active, rooted in traveling and interacting."
Rank: "Higher status means more trepannations, so as to let more spirits of the open sky into the mind."

Melsonian cultural trait - dress
Dress: "Nudity as social scale. The rich wear nothing while the poor dress in endless filthy layers. Nudity represents the access to warmth? The opposite may be true, where the rich wear clothes 'cos it's valuable, the poor are prevented. Like the the old Imperial Purple. Origins or traditions may be misty. Skin painting a distinct possibility."

Biological mutations - burst of speed, cilia lips, mirrored hands
Burst of Speed:  "Once per day, can double movement for 10 minutes."
Cilia Lips: "Wriggly. Seals food inside. Like kissing a millipede."
Mirrored Hands: "They swap sides."

The Skyminders' ancestors were fully aquatic, and their lowest classes are still required to dwell fully underwater, their minds closed to the sky. The working and middle classes live in partially flooded districts, the water level in any given neighborhood carefully indicating its status. Only the elites live fully on land, atop spires, in fact, to be closer to the sky-spirits and further from the sea.

The Skyminders' bodies and attires are as closely calibrated to their social position as their homes are. The elites have the entire tops of their skulls removed, so that their brains are fully opened to the air, and their minds fully opened to the sky-spirits. They alone are permitted to go nude. Beneath them, the middle classes may, over the course of a distinguished life, attain a filigree of trepannations, while a worker at the start of their career has only their fontanel open to the heavens. It is a crime to wear fewer clothes than the holes in one's head would indicate, and a mark of shame to wear more. The lowest classes go swaddled in public, with even their heads and faces wrapped tight to prevent them from polluting the sky-spirits by contact. Criminals are welded into a prison of metal masks and clothes that block them from the sky.

Outsiders, of course, are the lowest of all, though it is confusing that they arrive from on high, closer to the sky-spirits even than the highest of spire-dwelling elites. But they must be low, for are they not covered completely? Do they not wear impervious suits to separate themselves from the sky? Do they not bring their own gasses in tanks, so that they may breath without inhaling the sky?

Skyminders are born shelled, and as they age, shed their stiffer skins for the supple blubbery leather of adulthood. Each shedding is a great occasion, celebrated as fully as a new trepannation, or the glorious skull removal ceremony. Each upward (or downward) movement in status is also a going-away, it must be accompanied by travel to a new place, to be around others who now share one's new caste, and away from those who might remember one as they were before. The Skyminders' bodies still bear the signs of their aquatic past. Their hands are fins, their mouth adapted for bottom-feeding, their thick skin requiring no clothes to stay warm atop the coldest peaks.

Though outsiders are obviously the lowest of the low, still when they visit, they are sometimes allowed to accompany a Skyminder into areas where their level of clothedness would otherwise be forbidden. For though they must surely be great sinners and criminals to be locked in such suits and shunned from the heavens, still, the Skyminders appreciate the tales of anyone who has traveled so far.


Culture 2 - The Dragonkin
 
Danscape cultural traits - learning, child-rearing, work
Learning: "Oral histories and folklore, taught by extended family members."
Child-rearing: "Members of eunuch caste act as teachers and caretakers."
Work: "Labor ought serve the public good first, and the personal good second."
 
Melsonian cultural trait - family
Family: "All social engagement is official. Marriage ceremonies, friend ceremonies, enemy ceremonies. Most significant interactions must be played out within the confines of a relationship or else is considered illegal/immoral."
 
Biological mutations - snake tongue, the vapours
Snake Tongue: "Can extend up to 1'. "
The Vapours: "Your breath comes out in foggy white burps. -2 Stealth."

The Dragonkin are the descendants of dragons, those great firebreathing beasts that still dwell in the Kins' zoological gardens and nature preserves and on the Forbidden Continent. The Dragonkin still hatch from spherical amphibian eggs like their ancestors, and their juvenile forms look just like miniature dragons, until they metamorphose into their adult bodies.

Like the ancestral dragons, the Kin possess tongues that extend half their bodylength, and blazing chemical furnaces inside their chests that superheats any moisture they inhale past the boiling point, so that their breath comes out in a great billowing fog. The poets of the Dragonkin have always practiced a form of cloud calligraphy, using their long tongues to shape their exhalations into cloudforms that either mimic or provide ironic commentary on their words - although few lay Kin possess the skill to practice this art.

The dragons are a perpetual reminder to the Kin of their animal past, and so the Dragonkin place great importance on rules and rituals, the only things (or so they believe) that keep them from reverting to their ancestral brutality. The most fearsome monsters in Dragonkin folk tales are monsters with the hearts and minds of dragons hidden in the bodies of Kin.

The Dragonkin have ceremonies for all good behaviors - and any behavior not honored by the proper ceremony is automatically not good. Every interaction between business associates, friends, even family members, plays out in a choreographed ritual, a scripted dance that allows slight improvisation, but only within strict confines. There are rituals for working, for shopping, for eating and bathing, for sports and games, for love. Every ritual is for the benefit of others, for the good of the community of Kin.

To take any action outside the prescribed ritual, to perform any service purely for the good of oneself, is to give in to the beating heart of the dragon that races inside every Kin's breast; each step outside the path is a temptation to wander further and further away, to venture into the Forbidden Continent of the soul. The choreographers who devise new rituals are among the Kins' greatest artist, but they are also seen as heretics, their new dances perhaps invitations to enact the old and bestial ways.

The tales of the dragons, the history of the Kin, every dance and ritual, every useful skill, these are taught to the young by a blessed caste of sacred eunuchs, who perform a special rite just before the final metamorphosis into the Kin's mature and gendered forms. The eunuchs give up the chance to lay eggs or fertilize them, to become the matriarchs and paters of Kin society, in order to birth adult minds rather than infant bodies, in order to become the parents of civilization itself.

It took some time for the Dragonkin to recognize the morality of the outsiders, who wear Kin-shaped eggs over their entire bodies, for the outsiders' behavior did not initially conform to the Dragonkin's own ceremonies, and the ceremonies of the outsiders are strange and all but invisible to Kin eyes. Many Kin still fear the outsiders, who (though they have eunuchs) have no single caste that fulfills all the eunuchs' sacred duties. Many Kin fear that the outsiders, inside their strange eggshells, have the hearts of dragons, the secret sinful souls of the ancient monsters.

Lost World Miscellany - Greater Adria, Lotharingia, Doggerland

 
Lost Continent Revealed in New Reconstruction of Geologic History
Robin George Andrews
National Geographic

"This continent first separated from what is now Spain, southern France, and northern Africa, forming a separate landmass the team has formally dubbed Greater Adria. But as the planet’s rocky plates continued to inexorably jostle about, this continent tumbled down into several subduction zones, Earth’s destructive geological maws."
 
 

 
Did the Vanished Kingdom Foreshadow the EU?
Michael O'Loughlin
The Irish Times

"Lotharingia can be defined as that huge stretch of land, including the Netherlands, Belgium, and large parts of France, Germany and Switzerland, that runs down through the heart of Europe from the North Sea to the Alps. Squeezed between the great states of France and Germany, it long ago ceased to exist, becoming one of Europe’s vanished kingdoms, like the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. But it continues to lead a ghostly afterlife."
 
 

 
Searching for Doggerland
Laura Spinney
National Geographic

"Eighteen thousand years ago, the seas around northern Europe were some 400 feet lower than today. Britain was not an island but the uninhabited northwest corner of Europe, and between it and the rest of the continent stretched frozen tundra. As the world warmed and the ice receded, deer, aurochs, and wild boar headed northward and westward. The hunters followed. Coming off the uplands of what is now continental Europe, they found themselves in a vast, low-lying plain."

"Archaeologists call that vanished plain Doggerland, after the North Sea sandbank and occasional shipping hazard Dogger Bank. Once thought of as a largely uninhabited land bridge between modern-day continental Europe and Britain - a place on the way to somewhere else - Doggerland is now believed to have been settled by Mesolithic people, probably in large numbers, until they were forced out of it thousands of years later by the relentlessly rising sea."

 
 
 
Note - I've decided to adopt the "Unholy Misc" format from Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque (a blog so gothic, even its miscellany is unholy!) This will be an occasional feature, because I don't want to overdo it, but I have always considered inspirational media to have a home on my blog. This first miscellany is devoted to recent (-ish) news about "lost worlds" in Europe.

Dungeon Alphabet Dozen - D is for DOORWAYS

D is for DOORWAYS
Roll 1d12!

Random Pain-in-the-Ass Doorways of the Underworld

1 The door opens draw-bridge style, falling on whoever opens it for 1d12 damage and pinning them to the ground, unless they save vs paralysis to dodge out of the way.

2 Thick, oversized door has another smaller door right behind it, 1d12 smaller doors in fact, each new door revealed as the previous one opens.

3 The door revolves on a central axis instead of opening on a hinge. Each time a player character tries to go through, flip a coin. Heads they make it through, tails they're back where they started.

4 Door flies open violently at the slightest touch, throwing the first player character who attempts to open it 10' into the next room. They're unhurt, but spend 1 combat round lying prone.

5 Astonishingly transparent sliding glass door does 1d3 damage to anyone who walks into it (unless wearing a helmet.) Impossible to tell there's a door there at all until someone blunders into it, 1-in-6 chance of silently closing after each person passes through, super-slick surface frustratingly causes all attempts at marking the glass to slide off onto the floor.

6 Door loudly slams shut between each player character who uses it. It's no trouble to re-open it, but the noise means that there's a 1-in-6 chance that a wandering monster will appear in the emptier of the two rooms immediately after it closes.

7 Door cannot be opened by any means by player characters, but each exploration turn they spend attempting to open it, there's a 2-in-6 chance that a wandering monster will come through the door, opening it with ease and shutting it too quickly for the characters to keep it open.

8 Door was the entry-way to previous room occupant's lair. Previous room occupant was utterly paranoid, and door has 6 locking mechanisms. They all use the same key, but unless the player characters have it, they all have to be picked separately. All those locks also mean that it's twice as difficult as usual to batter down.

9 Door has a coin-slot and opens automatically after player characters insert 1d12€.

10 Largest available reasonably-intelligent wandering monster serving as a "bouncer" for the door, with an identical monster on the other side. It demands to see identification papers or hear "the password" before letting anyone through. It will also accept a bribe of 1d12€ per character, but would never be so gauche as to broach the subject itself. If the player characters attack, two more bouncers are nearby waiting for the shift change.

11 Door features large red button next to it. If player characters push the button, a bell dings, a light goes on above the door, soft music plays, and the door opens 1d6 exploration turns later. The door can be pried open without waiting, but reveals only empty black space, and anyone who passes through falls 50' before landing on back in the original room.

12 Door cannot be lock-picked or bashed down, but whenever player characters knock, instead of knocking sound, they hear a voice saying "Knock, knock." If they answer "Who's there?" and allow the door to finish the entire joke, it opens on its own.

A Mechanic for Misinformation

Okay, so your player characters are trying to gather information.

Maybe they're detectives on a case, or chthonic investigators looking for clues, maybe they're picaros out rumormongering, buying drinks for the house, trying to loose some rival adventuring party's tongues, or vagabonds accumulating a collection of bardic lore.

What have you. There's information, and they're trying to gather it.

Okay, so you assign a Difficulty Class or a Target Number or whatever, and you ask them to roll the dice, and they roll too low.

What happens next?

Well, you could just decide that they failed to gather any information. Or, you could roll on the Random Misinformation Table, below.
 

 
RANDOM MISINFORMATION TABLE

1 Dangerous Rumor - Not just a lie, you learn something like the opposite of the truth. Acting on this rumor will put your life in danger. If you're directed to another site, the place is a deathtrap or ambush.

2 Wild Goose Chase - No information, but you're directed to another site, which will supply more random misinformation.

3 Harmless Rumor - A lie, but incorrect without being dangerous. Acting on this rumor will inconvenience you.

4 Trivia - No information, or at least not what you're looking for. But at least you know that you don't know.

5 Treasure Map - No information, but you're directed to another site, which will supply the information you're looking for.

6 Partial Clue - The truth, or at least part of it. The information might be incomplete or cryptic, but it's correct, and might combine with other clues or partial clues. If you're directed to another site, you'll learn more than you were originally asking for.
 

 
You could also assign these results their own DCs or TNs, or you could break them up to create subtables corresponding to different degrees of misinformation.

I would assign results 1-2 to a critical miss, 3-4 to a miss, and 5-6 to a partial hit in a system with three degrees of failure, and assign 1-3 to a miss and 4-6 to a partial hit in a system with two degrees. Considering the alternatives, "no information" is a beneficial outcome.

The results of receiving random misinformation tend to be action-focused, so that even if your players didn't learn what they wanted to know, they probably at least know what they're doing next.

The problem with "no information" as a result is that it can kill any forward momentum. (This could also be a problem with a partial clue.) Reducing the frequency of that outcome should reduce the risk of your players getting stuck. If they do seem stymied, encourage them to think of their other possible leads and follow up on one of those instead.

I generally roll most dice out in the open, but I suspect this will work better if the players don't know in advance what type of misinformation they're receiving.

Dungeon Alphabet Dozen - H is for HALLWAYS

H is for HALLWAYS
Roll 1d12!

Random Pain-in-the-Ass Hallways of the Underworld

1 Hallway looks twice as long as it really is, walls narrow and ceiling dips to the point where you're squeezing through at the other end. Coming back it looks only half as long as it is. Understanding the geometry doesn't help un-see the unavoidable optical illusion.

2 Hallway looks normal, but is subtly slanted and preternaturally smooth. Roll under Dexterity to avoid falling prone and taking 1d6 damage while sliding down to the lower side. Getting back up to the higher side is going to require a climb walls skill check, or the use of a rope fastened to something at the top.

3 Hallway holds queue of 2d12 human peasants waiting in line. The peasants move through the door at the far end at a rate of one per exploration turn. They'll get angry if the player characters try to cut. If questioned, they're either thrilled with anticipation but assume the characters are in on the excitement, or impatient with no time to talk to someone who doesn't even know what they're doing here. When the player characters finally make it through the door, there'll be no sign of any of the peasants, and no indication of what they were waiting for.

4 Hallway is a stinking open sewer. Effluent runs down a wall near the door from a grate in the ceiling, flows in a wide river of filth to the far end, then disappears down a drain in the floor. Rotting garbage and solid waste line the walls. Anyone who's been recently injured should save vs poison or catch a DISEASE.

5 Hallway acts as a wind tunnel. Characters can only move at a crawl through the fierce gale, light sources are extinguished, missile fire is impossible.

6 Hallway must gently rotate on a central axis (although no one but a gnome could possibly feel it, and who can believe a word they say?) Each time the characters walk down the hall, flip a coin. Heads the door opens to the other side, tails it opens to the room they just came from. Walking back through the door they just came through never works to circumvent this problem though.

7 Hallway is seriously 10x as long as it appears on maps, feels like it takes forever to get to the other side, no one can see either doorway once they're deep enough in to the damn thing. Get ready to burn through torches, waste time dealing with equally perplexed wandering monsters.

8 Hallway is literally a maze of branching tunnels, ramps, dead-ends, and hairpin turns. Enter the hall only where it appears on the map, but exit to a completely random room. Roll under Intelligence to go back the way you came, or under half-Intelligence to return to any previous destination. Once you close the door on the hall though, the ONLY way back to the maze is through the original entrance.

9 Hallway is painted with dozens of arrows pointing back the way the characters came. Signs hang everywhere extolling the virtues of the room the characters just left: "This way to the greatest wonders of the dungeon!", "Suffer no more! Behold the mystical secret door to the fabled land!", "Leave poverty behind! Treasures abound in the region ahead!", "Say goodbye to boredom! Wonders and splendors galore!", "See the sights! Become the envy of your friends!"

10 Both the inward facing doors in the hall are identical pain-in-the-ass DOORWAYS.

11 Less of a hallway and more of a "fall-way," or rather, a pain-in-the-ass PIT. 2-in-6 chance the first character in the marching order just falls right down to the bottom the moment they walk through the door. Continued danger for each additional character until someone manages not to fall in. Exit door is at the bottom.

12 More like a "crawl-way" really, hall is only waist-high. Requires squeezing through on all fours at half normal speed. Any gnomes in the party feel obnoxiously smug about being able to remain upright.

Non-Core Underworld & Dungeon Alphabet Dozen

I was going through some old files on my computer recently, when I came across an idea I had before I started blogging, one that I actually continued to write about even after I started my blog, although I never posted it about here before.

The idea was for a "non-core campaign" - a campaign that excludes all core classes, monsters, magic items, and spells. Non-core gaming would use only supplemental materials, only additions and extras, and no core-rules materials at all. (I suppose you could also call this a "peripheral campaign", after the core-periphery binary from geo-politics, but I like sound of "non-core" better, personally.)

There are as many possible non-core campaigns as there are core rulesets and coherent bundles of supplemental material, but in addition to thinking about non-core gaming as a general concept, at the time, I was also thinking about a specific non-core campaign set in the Mythic Underworld, using only the supplemental materials from 1st edition AD&D, as well as the things added new in AD&D,  and the things from OD&D and the two Basic editions that weren't included in AD&D.

Although it was something I used to think about, it wasn't originally my idea. I got the idea from seeing a series of posts about gaming using only the classes from the Unearthed Arcana, and only the monsters and gods from the Fiend Folio.

Jeff's Gameblog first proposed the idea of running a game using only materials in the AD&D module S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. Then years later, Jeff's Gameblog again suggested running a campaign using only the gods and deities from the Fiend Folio.  Around the same time, Vaults of Nagoh created wandering monster tables using only the Fiend Folio, and City of Iron considered what it would look like to only allow spellcasters to use the spells contained in Unearthed Arcana.

So I'm hardly the only one to toy with these ideas, although to-date, as far as I'm aware, all anyone has done is toy with them. At one time, I fancied myself the publisher-to-be of this project, although I've since abandoned that idea. I like to write, and I would like to publish, but I don't want to become a publisher. Also, depending on your perspective, publishing anything for this project is either unnecessary, or inevitable, or something that's already been done.

It's already possible to run this particular non-core campaign using the original supplemental rulebooks, and I have no doubt that as long as Necrotic Gnome continues to exist as a company, they will eventually publish versions of these materials, doubtless in their trademark smartly organized two-page spread format. The logic of the Old-School Essentials project makes this inevitable. (Especially since he already expressed interest in the idea back when he was City of Iron.)

Also, the more I've thought about it, the more I think that Veins of the Earth is essentially a non-core campaign, using the canonical non-core races of the Underdark, but combined with False Machine's own supplemental bestiary, which is mostly better than the admittedly hit-and-miss menagerie inside the Fiend Folio. (Whether he intended it that way, I don't know, but the result is that Veins fills a very similar niche to what I'm talking about.) It's also inevitable that, sooner or later, someone will publish another non-core campaign setting in the vein of Veins of the Earth - it was simply too popular to not inspire both imitation and response.

So this idea actually has been given form - at least a kind of form - already, and it's likely to appear eventually in a form very close to what I originally imagined reading those old blog posts. This is a project that doesn't need me to do anything.

However, what I find most interesting, thinking about the non-core underworld, is trying to imagine its implied setting. Over the years, I know I've seen many people discussing the "implied setting" of OD&D - the kind of world that's implied by the available classes, lists of spells, monsters, maps, and campaign-building advice. Semper Initativus Unum did a particularly through examination. Aside from one post by Swords & Dorkery however, I've never seen anyone ask about the implied setting of the non-core underworld, which is a shame, because it's worth asking about.

I mean, what kind of world has barbarians, cavaliers, paladins, and rangers, but no ordinary fighting-men? What kind of world has assassins, bards, and mountebanks, but no regular thieves? Druids and monks, but no clerics? Illusionists without general magic-users? Half-elves and half-orcs, but no elves and no orcs?

What kind of setting has all the weird latter-edition spells, but none of the originals? All the extra monsters, but none of the basic ones? No familiar magic items, but crazy high-tech gizmos from S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks and random artifacts from the Dungeon Master's Guide? A pantheon of "gods" who're all arch-demons and lords of elemental evil?

The non-core underworld is gonzo AF.

By now, most of those additional classes, spells, and monsters have become nearly as canonical as the originals, but there's still something inherently weird about making them stand on their own, without any original material alongside them. There's still something unsettling and uncanny about an Underdark-only campaign, where the most familiar entities are like funhouse parodies of the ones we really know and love.

By this point, I consider most of what I originally wrote for the non-core campaign (back when I still had "when I grow up" dreams of being the next star publisher of the OSR) to be unneeded, or derivative, or both. But there is one bright spot in my old files. For awhile, I worked on my own "dungeon alphabet dozen" - a combination of the Dungeon Alphabet and the Dungeon Dozen as a way to generate gozno content to help fill out the campaign world. After all, if good artists borrow, and great artists steal, then surely the greatest artists of all time are those who do mash-ups, right?

Anyway, back then I actually finished a few of the 12-item lists I started, and wrote a decent amount for a few more. I never put any of them on my blog before, because I was both afraid of success and afraid of failure. I was afraid that if I posted them and people liked them, that I'd attract the wrong kind of attention, and become subject to harassment. I was also afraid that I'd disappoint people. I feel like there's an implicit promise when you start something like this, that you'll post every letter, in order, in a timely manner, and they'll be good. I think maybe I was always more afraid of success than I needed to be. As for failure, let me make you an explicit promise - I probably won't post every letter, and they definitely won't be in order, and it definitely won't be in a timely manner. As for their quality, I'll trust that if I like them, you'll like some of them, though maybe not all.

So for now, until Michael Curtis and Jason Sholtis team up to take me for a long walk off a short lawsuit, viva la non-core underworld!

Procedural Generation Demonstration - Box Full of Boxes' Subdimension, Hive, and Bastion

Box Full of Boxes is a relatively new blog on the scene, but they've already written several interesting random generators, including one to create a small extradimensional space to use as an adventuring site, one to create a criminal meeting place, and one to create a law-enforcement organization. Let's make all three, and see if we can determine how they're connected.
 

Illustration by Rockwell Kent for Moby Dick

 
Subdimension - The Vault of the Hesperus
Rolls: 4/2, 5/2, 8/2, 6/4

On the Second Day, God made the oceans and the sky; on the Fifth, God made all the great creatures of the sea, and every living thing that teems within the waters. On the Seventh Day, God rested, and took His pleasure yacht out onto the seas, and He saw that they were good.

And then came the War in Heaven, and the pleasure ship was made a ship of war. The angel Ismael captained the ship, christened the Hesperus, and Ishmael sailed the Hesperus across the seas, and there fought the great worm Leviathan. Every angel aboard perished, save for Ismael, who was rescued by the archangel Rachel. Together the two angels locked the Hesperus in a vault, still littered with the unburied dead and the detritus of battle, and they returned to the heavens together to await the outcome of the War.

God opened the vault only once, to instruct Noah on the building of the Ark, and to collect the bodies of the angels to await the eventual resurrection of their bodies, but on that day, God left the door ajar.

Today, it is possible to enter the vault where the Hesperus is kept in drydock. When the eye of a hurricane is centered over the spot where God slew the Leviathan, the same spot where Noah released the dove, a ship within the eye that plots a course toward the Evening Star will sail through the open door and enter the vault of heaven where the Hesperus still waits. It is strewn with the debris of war, but seaworthy, and able to sail across the sky and cross the celestial spheres, to go anywhere its captain wishes to take it.

The tale of the Hesperus is told in Melville's recent novel The Leviathan, in the apocryphal Book of Ismael, in The Collected Expurgated Cantos of Paradise Lost, and in tall tales told during storms at a certain seaside bar.
 

Illustration by Rockwell Kent for Moby Dick

 
Hive of Scum & Villainy - The Anchor & Saucers
Rolls: 1, 7, 3, 3

Amidst the overcrowded seaside streets of the Wharf District is a bar marked only by the sign of a fat lizard with a morning-star flail where its tail should be. On rainy days it fills up with shop owners and fishing-ship captains, who gather to trade stock and drink rum served with tea. Although the place is always full of the murmur of conversation, it's impossible to eavesdrop on anyone in there, which makes it ideal for conducting business without fear of the competitors sitting at the next table.

The proprietor, Ismael, looks barely more than a boy, and though battle-scarred, is quite beautiful. The regulars call him "the old man" and "the dinosaur". During particularly harsh storms, he entertains the bar with raucous tales of the hunt for a great whale or sea serpent.

Ismael enforces only two rules that outsiders find strange. First, none of the business conducted may be illegal - indeed, those who try discuss crimes find that not only eavesdroppers, but no one at all can hear them speak. Second, no members of the royal navy are allowed inside.
 

Illustration by Rockwell Kent for Moby Dick

 
Bastion of Law & Order - Seventh Fleet of the Royal Navy
Rolls: 5, 1, 4, 6

The largest building in the Wharf District is the urban base for the Royal Navy, home to the infamous Seventh Fleet, led by the notorious Admiral Abrahad and his right-hand man, Fleet Captain Isaiah. The fleet captain is always impeccably dressed and marches preening through the streets several times a day, his uniform made from much finer fabrics than are standard in the navy. Abrahad is withdrawn and rarely seen, except peering through the windows of the Admiralty Building, or standing atop its roof, staring down at the wharf. The sailors of the seventh fleet follow the fleet captain's neat example in their habiliment, but give off the unsavory impression of being a pack of murderous thugs disguised in the Queen's uniforms.

Ostensibly the Seventh Fleet is responsible for enforcing all maritime laws in the Wharf District, but the sailors mostly only ever seem to collect "taxes" from all the local merchants, ship captains, and anyone new passing through the district. Anyone attempting to report a crime or seek compensation from the fleet office is likely to subjected to an interminable stack of forms and "filing fees" in order to make their case, and the outcome is equally likely to be a summary dismissal, a back-alley ambush and beating for the plaintiff, or an over-the-top show of "justice" as the Navy executes the accused and confiscates all their effects.

Admiral Abrahad is extremely interested in any information about the interior of the Anchor & Saucer. He might attempt to pressgang newcomers into going inside as his spies, or may send sailors to waylay out-of-towners as they leave the bar. Once Abrahad has heard the final detail he needs (which will sound totally innocuous to the teller), he'll try to recruit any adventurers who are onhand to sail to a particular spot in the ocean, and he'll seem maniacally pleased that there's a hurricane pressing down on his expedition. A group of regulars from the Anchor & Saucer will likely seek recruits and mount a counter-strike to disrupt Abrahad's plans.


All Moby Dick graphics were found at the Book Graphics blog.

Blogs on Tape 2 - Hallway Boogaloo

After a summer hiatus, Blogs on Tape is back!
  

  
And, I'm honored to report that the most recent episode was a reading of one of my blog posts. This is the second time something I've written has made it onto Blogs on Tape, and I couldn't be happier.

You can listen here to Episode 71 - Should We Start Numbering Our Hallway Maps? and read the original post here.

You can also go back and re-listen to Episode 47 - Campaigns I Want to Run: Dungeons & Decorators and re-read that original post here.

Big thanks to Nick LS Whelan for the work he put into these two episodes, and for the whole Blogs on Tape project!