Lighthouse at Shipbreaker Shoals

An adventure I wrote, Lighthouse at Shipbreaker Shoals, has just recently been published! The pdf is available now at DriveThruRPG, and a print edition will be available soon at the Goodman Games webstore. 

Earlier this week, I appeared on the Maw of Mike podcast to promote the adventure. I thought I should also take the opportunity to talk here about my design process. 

Before the pandemic, in a time that now feels like it belongs to a different era of history, Stephen Newton, author of a half-dozen DCC modules and publisher of Thick Skull Adventures, reached out to me to write an adventure for him. This was my first time being commissioned to write an entire adventure.

Stephen's pitch was that this new adventure would take place in the same setting as Attack of the Frawgs and The Haunting of Larvik Island, and should serve as an optional bridge between the two. 

I agreed that I was interested, and started brainstorming possible ideas. I read Fawgs and Larvik, as well as several reviews of them, both positive and critical. I noted a few things that ended up being relevant to the final form of the adventure. 

The first was that Stephen's other two adventures were set in a fairly realistic medieval environment with most of the weirdness coming from the monsters who were invading it. So I decided that whatever I wrote should be grounded in an interesting, but essentially ordinary structure that could exist in the real world. I initially thought of the brewery that gets introduced in Frawgs, but decided against that because of the second thing I noted, which was that the first adventure is set in the characters' hometown, and the second takes place on a distant island. 

So I thought that whatever I wrote should give the newly ascended 1st level characters, who'd just survived a Zero Level Funnel, a reason to leave home and a reason to go onward to the islands. This led me to decide on a coastal adventure, with the beach as a kind of juncture point between the landlocked village and islands surrounded by sea. Thinking about things that happen right on the coastline that might motivate people to travel outside their hometown for the first time, I hit upon the idea of a lighthouse in trouble. 

cover art by FRK Pyron

 

What should be the source of the trouble? Well, Larvik begins to introduce the cosmology of Stephen's gameworld, which, without spoiling the details, involves a elderly sea god and some sibling rivalries between his children. Making one of the children a spiritual protector of the lighthouse, and the other two the source of the monsters, turning the battle for the site into a kind of proxy war in the squabblings of childish divinities, sounded promising to me. I also double-checked with Stephen to make sure I'd gotten my understanding of his gameworld's theology right. 

In retrospect, by this point, the adventure was shaping up to be much more of a prequel to Larvik than a sequel to Frawgs. So I had my site, and I had my source of danger. Now it was time to decide how they were interrelated. In keeping with the setup of the other two adventures, I decided that the lighthouse had gone dark because of an incursion of weird monsters. That would be a worthy reason for newly forged heroes to come investigate, and if the trouble at the lighthouse is being caused by gods who are also related to the problems on Larvik Island, then the players both have a reason to go off and learn more about them, and Larvik is slightly enriched by providing more background on the gods of its setting.

At this point, I free associated a bit. One episode of the show Connections, which I'd watched recently at the time, talks about the history of lighting technology. Limelight was was on the first really bright lights that people figured out during the Industrial Revolution. It was never widely used in lighthouses, but it theoretically could have been. Limelight is named that because chemical compounds containing calcium are often called lime-something, for example, limestone. A form of limestone is what makes the famous White Cliffs of Dover so white. Now, it turns out that limelight works by burning something called quicklime rather than limestone - but it was easy enough to set aside the inconvenience of that detail and imagine a lighthouse set on some white limestone cliffs, and to imagine that the lighthouse uses a magical lantern that burns limestone as fuel to make an impossibly bright signal beam. All this was inspired by reality, but since no one who's not a chemist or construction worker has heard of quicklime, it's slightly easier to understand than the truth.

Also in the news around the same time, for whatever reason, was something about hagfish and their fascinating slime. I can't remember why hagfish were considered newsworthy at the time, but what matters for the adventure is that (a) hagfish vaguely look like worms, or even more vaguely, like dragons, and (b) hagfish slime looks just like water until you try to touch it. The idea of a giant hagfish as the climactic encounter for the adventure appealed to me very quickly. You can see the beast up there on the cover. The fact that the effect of the hagfish might be invisible until you investigate it closely appealed to me as a possible source of mystery to investigate.

And so the adventure I ended up writing is structured as a kind of mystery. It's a crime scene, and as you explore it, you find out information about the victim, and you discover evidence in the form of signs and portents that show you what kinds of monsters the gods sent to commit their crime. Because the perpetrators are godlings, and because it's D&D, some of that evidence is quite dangerous to the investigators. Since there are two gods, there are two kinds of incursion, and although the Barnacle Bear is inspired more by the appearance of the character Doomsday from DC Comics than it is by actual barnacles. It functions as a mini-boss of the site, and you can see it in the art below.

As I built the adventure site, I thought about making a fairly realistic map of a lighthouse and lighthouse keeper's house and estate, and I thought about how to make each "clue" different and interesting. What might happen in the well? The kitchen? How would these monsters be affected if the lighthouse keeper had a sauna? Both the big monsters have vulnerabilities that you can learn about by investigating the estate. I added a turnspit dog to the kitchen, both because it was another interesting thing I'd learned about on Connections, and because it tells you something interesting about how the lighthouse functions. 

The climactic encounter is something I'm proud of, and involved a lot of back-and-forth with Stephen to get right. But if you've been wondering for the past couple paragraphs how a party of 1st level characters stands any chance of defeating a dragon, the answer is that there are clues about its weaknesses in the adventure, and I wrote explicit GM advice about what to do if the players try to act on those clues. You definitely won't win just by swinging your sword at it - it's much too big and powerful. But there are ways to hurt it badly, to maybe defeat it, or at least drive it away. But if you don't learn enough from the investigation - or think quickly on your feet during the battle - then your 1st level characters probably will die. And since they were fighting a seemingly overwhelming opponent, I hope those deaths will feel appropriate. Victory is possible, but it's not guaranteed.

interior art by FRK Pyron

One last thing I want to note is the reason that Stephen is listed as doing "additional writing" and not just "editing" or "publishing" on the cover. Stephen's editing was invaluable. This was the first of a couple projects where I've really, REALLY benefited from having an editor with a keen eye for quality who has noticed my weakest areas and pushed me to do better. But in Stephen's case, he also stepped up and added some of his own writing to a couple places that most needed it. 

At the beginning of the adventure, I'd written a table of interactions between the party and the townspeople of Sagewood. It was essentially just a rumor table with a bit of advice and an extra piece of equipment for each standard character class. Stephen expanded it into more of a roleplaying opportunity. 

My idea for the magic lantern was - aside from the fact that it could burn rocks as fuel - a little lacking in terms of seeming all that magical, and it didn't particularly have a role to play in the final fight, except that ideally you'd want to keep it from getting destroyed in the fracas. Stephen rewrote it to be a real artifact, something truly important and precious. Both those inclusions make the overall adventure stronger and better, and I'm glad that it looks the way it does now, instead of how I wrote it.

My Brilliant Friends - A Conversation with WFS of Prismatic Wastelands and Barkeep on the Borderlands

My friend and Bones of Contention coauthor WFS is kickstarting a pointcrawl adventure called Barkeep on the Borderlands. I got added as a coauthor thanks to a successful stretch goal, and most of the Skeleton Crew will also be writing bars for the crawl, along with OSR luminaries like Chris McDowall and (potentially!) Luka Rejec.

As the final weekend of crowdfunding approaches, I chatted with WFS to ask him some of his inspirations and his feelings about real-world barcrawling.

 

 

Anne - So Barkeep on the Borderlands and the Raves of Chaos are obviously inspired by the widely owned, widely played, and widely criticized D&D adventure, The Keep on the Borderlands, and the Caves of Chaos adventure site. There have been a couple of interesting responses to the original Keep in the last few years. Alex Damaceno's Beyond the Borderlands zine and Greg Gillespie's Forbidden Caverns of Archaia spring to mind immediately.

You've actually written before about your thoughts on Keep, but if you'll indulge me, why did you decide to make your barcrawling adventure a kind of response to this classic?

WFS - Many of my best ideas begin their lives as puns, which was the case with Barkeep on the Borderlands. I typically have a few score ideas swirling around in my head at any given time, and in this instance two of those combined. On the one hand, I had been rereading some classic modules and found The Keep on the Borderlands very interesting - as evidenced by my blog post you referenced. On the other, I was nostalgic for a simple pre-pandemic pleasure that I had taken for granted, which is hopping from bar to bar with a band of friends. Somehow the two ideas slammed into each other and I thought of two puns, both the title “Barkeep on the Borderlands” and the more descriptive subtitle “a Pubcrawl Pointcrawl.” From the title alone, I felt like I had a lot to work with. 

I think combining two disparate elements into a cohesive whole is a really helpful creative exercise. It’s why the spark tables in Electric Bastionland are so genius. You have to figure out how the two ideas fit together and come up with something totally unique. For Barkeep, I had to figure out how a pubcrawl fit into the world presented by Keep on the Borderlands.

Anne - And why do you think it's such a popular adventure for people to respond to? Is it just that it was included in Holmes' Basic Set at a key time? Or is there more to it than that?

WFS - I don’t think one can discount its inclusion in the Basic Set, the gateway for so many into the hobby, but there does seem to be something special about the adventure itself. After all, they replaced In Search of the Unknown with The Keep on the Borderlands for a reason. And I think it is because the adventure is itself so basic that made it so useful to early gamemasters and so beloved. It has all you need for the core game loops of D&D: a starting town, a surrounding wilderness and a dungeon filled with monsters. 

But just as important as what it includes is what it doesn’t include. There are no proper names in the module: people are just called the Priest, the Castellan or the Taverner. The political environment is just a sketch: the Keep exists on the border of some civilized land to the west and untamed wilderness to the east (which sounds like the classic West Marches in reverse), but there are no details you might get in later products that tied themselves to Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, etc. The motivations of the monsters and cultists in the module are also hazy at best. And all of this blank space allows for the gamemaster and player to project their own ideas onto it! After I wrote that post on the module, I heard back from a lot of people how they interpreted it differently, like viewing the chaotic bandits as a scouting party of some evil human empire to the east, or deciding to raid the Keep instead of the Caves of Chaos, or playing the adventure straight as Gygax seems to have intended. The Keep on the Borderlands’ flexibility to contain all of these competing narratives and motivations is its abiding strength.

Anne - I'm curious to know your thoughts on a recent drinking trend. How do you feel about amaro? I know that Brad Thomas Parsons is not single-handedly responsible for the rise of bitter Italian liqueurs, but he is more or less single-handedly responsible for getting me into them. I read his books, Bitters and Amaro, and that convinced me to try them, and from there I've just kept trying new bitter flavors.

WFS - I am really not up on any of the latest drinking trends; I prefer to stick more to the classics, old fashioneds, negronis, whiskey sours and the like. I have had a few amaro spritzes, but didn't find them particularly revolutionary. 

In terms of trends, I am of course aware of seemingly every brand getting into the hard seltzer business, but I'm not too keen on them. Something in that vein that I have enjoyed, however, are the Finnish Long Drinks, which to my understanding actually contains gin. It's no gin & tonic with a splash of St. Germain, but if I'm at a tailgate and everyone is chugging beers, it's probably my canned drink of choice. Any amaro drinks you'd recommend?

Anne - I actually would say the negroni is a good starting point! It's pretty easy to experiment with y swapping out one ingredient to see how you like the taste with a different spirit, or another liqueur instead of vermouth. Campari was my first amaro, then Aperol, then I discovered you can mix them, and by now, I've tried maybe a half dozen others.

I actually thought of White Claw and its cousins as a trend, but I almost never drink them, myself. Somehow almost all the ones I've tried have had a metallic aftertaste. That might just be a quirk of my palette though.

WFS - That’s exposes my ignorance - I didn’t know Campari was a type of amaro. I need to get on your level.

Anne - Admittedly, until I read the Amaro book, I didn't know the word, let alone any examples! I think bitter flavors have become more enjoyable for me as I've gotten older.

Okay, last question. Looking beyond Barkeep on the Borderlands, you named your blog for a campaign setting, the Prismatic Wasteland. You've mentioned before that Luka Rejec's Ultraviolet Grasslands was one of your inspirations. But could I ask you to pop the hood for a moment, and ask you to talk about another inspiration? What's something I could read or watch or listen to that would help me understand a part of the Prismatic Wasteland? And how does the source relate to the final product?

WFS - I’ll give you three, one being a science fantasy book old enough to be on the original Appendix N, the second being a children’s TV show, and the third is another classic D&D module - I have range. 

So the first (and potentially somewhat obvious) answer is Dying Earth by Jack Vance. The stories of the Dying Earth take place amidst the decay of an untold number of decadent civilizations but the stories are about wizards, and monsters and magic. However, what is understood as magic is really the ritual tinkering with ancient sciences and technologies that are no longer understood. This all rings true for the Prismatic Wasteland setting as well.

But the Prismatic Wasteland is bit less dark than the Dying Earth, which while light at times is not always so. I describe the Prismatic Wasteland as whimsical post-post-apocalyptic in genre, which aligns more with my second influence, Adventure Time. Adventure Time was a show that ran on Cartoon Network but garnered a following of adults due to its sense of humor. While it can read as just pure gonzo fantasy at first (with talking animals and a kingdom full of candy people), over the course of the series, it is revealed that the world is the way it is due to a series of apocalypses, and the remnants of the older civilizations, humanity included, are scattered and scarce.

For the third inspiration, we’ll move away from science fantasy and the Dying Earth genre entirely. The Isle of Dread is an adventure for B/X D&D and is only a few years younger than The Keep on the Borderlands. It is also one of the first adventures I ever ran. I have always preferred its flora and fauna (which includes dinosaurs) to the typical pseudo-medieval stock in most D&D settings and adventures. The Prismatic Wasteland setting is similar, but with a more science fiction spin: it takes place across an entire continent, which was terraformed by an advanced civilization to be the ideal vacation resort for an intergalactic populace. But now the island’s many spas, mega-malls, amusement parks, high-end dining and other amenities are unrecognizable, derelict versions of their former selves. And the AI-enabled robotic animals that were designed to be capable of reproduction run wild from the amusement parks in which they were once contained. I call these creatures “animaltronics” and they do include dinosaurs. So I guess I would be remiss in not also listing a fourth inspiration: Jurassic Park.

A book, a TV show, a TTRPG adventure and a movie. How’s that for a variety of sources!

cover art by Sam Mameli

 

My Weird & Wonderful Interview with maxcan7

At the start of the year, or maybe it was the end of the last one, maxcan7 of Weird & Wonderful Worlds messaged me to ask if I'd like to participate in his ongoing interview series. I agreed, and in the last couple weeks we found a time to sit down for a chat.

That interview has now been released!, and you can read it here.

Thank you to maxcan7 for the opportunity to participate in this project, and for the chance to talk about myself and my views on the online RPG scene.

My First 6 Months with Bones of Contention

About six months ago, I announced that I was joining the Bones of Contention blog. Although this has been one of my least productive blogging years, I did manage to get a few posts in.

 

 
 

Dungeon Dioramas - In the Light of a Ghost Star & Earth Expedition One

 

For my first post, I decided to review one of the first adventures put out by the prolific minimalist Nate Treme. In addition to a careful reading of the gamebook, I was able to base my review on some actual play experience with my regular Friday night game group. This one also features something that I hope I can still make a somewhat regular feature of the column, a section where I put the procedural adventure generators in the book to work and run them through their paces by generating an entire setting.

 

 

Cryptic Signals - Mausritter, Anomalous Subsurface Environment, Honey in the Rafters, Doodle Champion Island Games

 

One of the interesting things about Bones as a blog is that we have multiple authors. The Cryptic Signals series of posts tries to use that to offer a series of short vignette reviews of several different game books. I went ahead and organized this one, and wrote two of the reviews, including for the Pokemon-like browser game Google released to celebrate the 2020 Summer Olympics. My review of Mausritter included another test of adventure generation procedures.

 

  

Dungeon Dioramas - Night Land

 

When I wrote my Ghost Star review, I mentioned that I had been hoping for a setting like William Hope Hodgson's Night Land, which led Trey from From the Sorcerer's Skull to recommend this Night Land to me. Aside from the name and the basic premise of a weird, futuristic land stuck in eternal darkness, this adventure doesn't borrow much from Hodgson, but I'm still glad I read it. 

I feel like mentioning the book in my first two columns makes it seem like I'm obsessed with Night Land, and I'm sure I'll review more science fantasy in the future, but I promise that every column won't be about how another game designer has failed to sufficiently remind me of Hodgson.

Cryptic Signals - Dissident Whispers

This was our most thematic Cryptic Signals so far, and to be honest, I liked that so much I hope more of them will have some sort of unifying theme. I picked my second favorite review from the book. I didn't review my favorite - yet - because I don't want to pigeonhole myself as only writing about Mausritter. I'm hopeful that we'll do another batch of reviews from Dissident Whispers though, and if we do, I'll be sure to review it then. The process of writing my three "mini reviews" so far makes me wonder if I'm constitutionally incapable of writing an actually short review, but it is good practice reining in my tendency to wordiness.

Dungeon Dioramas - Root Quickstart & Pellenicky Glade

My last review of the year looks at the free, public materials for the upcoming Root roleplaying game. I backed the Kickstarter, so I have the pdfs for the full game, but I wanted to base what I wrote on the parts that people can actually play. I wished I could have included this year's Free RPG Day adventure, but I didn't pick it up in person, and the pdf still isn't publicly available. 

I'm glad there was an adventure to review though. It could be tempting to fall into a trap of just reviewing rulesets, but I think the most interesting part of this project is looking at the more actionable advice that shows up in adventures. I want to note that Root actually has a small system for procedurally generating the campaign area, but I didn't bother testing it out, precisely because the availability of pre-written villages makes the random generator to create them less important.

Index of Reviews by Title

My final contribution to Bones for the year was to make an index of the reviews so far. For next year, I hope to use my Cryptic Signals entries to highlight some zines that I think have done something interesting, but that maybe don't rise to full review status. I also hope to try out the Folie a Deux format that Gus and WFS pioneered. I think they're another good way to use our numbers, and I have a couple already tentatively lined up. I just need to come out of my shell enough to get them written.

Blogs on Tape 4 - Resources 4 All

Nick LS Whelan has started the fourth season of his Blogs on Tape podcast, and I'm honored to have one of my posts included as the first episode of the new season!

You can listen to the episode at Episode 89 - Resource Management 2: Defining Our Terms, and you can read my original blog post here.

Another round of big thanks to Nick for the entire Blogs on Tape project, and for including my work in it!

Bones of Contention

I recently joined the Skeleton Crew of a new blogging enterprise - Bones of Contention.

  

The overall goal of the blog is to serve as a repository of reviews written by a group of people who have at least somewhat similar taste in RPG adventures.

Individual motives for participating probably vary from person to person. My motivation is to take a closer look at the kind of adventures that interest me most, to understand how they work, and to think about how they could be improved.

My initial plans are to focus on adventures that use procedural generation, and to look at some of the new "heartwarming" rulesets that are being released. I may expand my list as I go. These are things I've been meaning to look at more closely anyway. So for me, joining Bones of Contention was originally mostly  an excuse and a motivation to actually go forward with that intention.

That said, I think there's something valuable about creating a miniature community of reviewers, and I'm curious to see how our tastes will evolve over the course of the project. Will they converge? Will they grow apart? Will any of our reviews produce valuable aesthetic or game-design insights? I'm excited to find out.

You can read the introduction, and meet the other Skeleton Crew members, here.

The Class Alphabet for DCC RPG

  

The Class Alphabet for DCC

 

In spring 2016, David Coppoletti reached out to me and a couple dozen other DCC fans on Google+. He had an ambitious idea - a sourcebook of 26 character classes for Dungeon Crawl Classics. Sometime in fall or winter 2020, David's idea appeared as a finished book, The Class Alphabet for DCC RPG. You can read Raven Crowking's review here.

I was convinced by David's G+ pitch, and wrote the Knave. Later, due to the logistical challenges of managing the contributions of so many collaborators, I ended up a second class, the Cyber-Zombie.

The Knave receives, I think, the single longest class write-up in the book. My goal was to combine the various Jacks of fairy tale and nursery rhyme, characters like Liane the Wayfarer and Cugel the Clever from Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories, the Fool from Neil Gaiman's Books of Magic, the imagery of playing cards, and the tarot. I was also experimenting with the limits of the "you're no hero" writing style; I described Knaves as being nasty in a way that almost makes me uncomfortable to reread. The Knave class is so long because there are four fully described sub-classes based on the suits of playing cards, each subclass has its three Mighty Deed of Arms equivalents they can learn, there are 22 spell-like effects based on the major arcana of tarot, and also, yes, because of long-windedness on my part.

The Cyber-Zombie was my attempt to create a class that you can only start playing after your previous character has died. I was definitely inspired by Terra Frank's three undead classes from the first Gongfarmer's Almanac. As a Cyber-Zombie, you start out at whatever level your old character was, and you retain a remnant of your old class powers, although reduced from before. Cyber-Zombies also get upgrades. I based the possible upgrades on Super Metroid and Mega Man X, and on the Centurions cartoon series. 

The other authors in the collection are a veritable Who's Who of DCC fans and publishers - including Reid San Filippo of the Crawling Under a Broken Moon zine and the subsequent Umerica sourcebook and adventure series, Diogo Nogueira of Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells and Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells and plenty of other projects, and plenty of other names that you might recognize from their contributions to The Gongfarmer's Almanac, their participation in various DCC podcasts, their DCC blogs, or other gaming publications.

It's a pleasant surprise for me to see The Class Alphabet finally out. This was one of the first times I was invited to contribute to a collaborative writing project. Quite a lot has happened in my life, and in the world, since David first approached me. I'm very happy to see that he was able to realize his goal.

Blogs on Tape 3 - Encumbrance is Bliss?

Nick LS Whelan continues to convert a curated selection of rpg blog posts into audio files for the Blogs on Tape project. I'm a fan! Admittedly, my opinion here is biased by the fact that he's just recorded a third episode reading aloud one of my posts.

My third appearance is Episode 82 - Mechanics for Resource Management: Part 1, The Easy Way. You can read the original entry on my blog here.

My writing previously appeared on Blogs on Tape in Episode 71 - Should We Start Numbering Hallways on Our Maps? (original entry here) and in Episode 47 - Campaigns I Want to Run: Dungeons & Decorators (original entry here).

 

Once again, big thanks to Nick for his ongoing contribution to the rpg blogosphere! You can also check his How to Help page if you want to support this project.

I Shall Destroy all the Civilized Stretch Goals!

I previously mentioned that I will maybe be writing a DCC patron, depending on the result of a crowdfunding campaign.

The campaign is Joshua LH Burnett and Leighton Connor's adaptation of Fletcher Hanks' golden-age comics into a DCC setting with multiple adventures, titled for the villains of one of Hanks' strips, The Leopard Women of Venus.

At the time I'm writing this, the campaign has about three days left. It'll end early morning on Thursday, November 21st. The campaign has received enough pledges to fund, and barring a catastrophe, in the next 72 hours it will receive enough pledges to commission Stephen Poag, who's art has become almost synonymous with DCC and the OSR more generally.
 

Josh and Leighton also hired TSR luminary Erol Otus!

 
Josh recently ran one of these adventures at Acadecon in Ohio, and he published a summary on his own blog. I'm reprinting it here, along with a photo of his judge's map.

"The adventure started with the gathered zeds receiving their mission from Forecastle J. MacBeth, leader of the Humanoid Coalition and my favorite NPC. The party needed to cross through the dangerous jungle to a crater where an alien spaceship had crashed 72 hours previous. They were to salvage what they could from the saucer and find out what had happened to the previous retrieval team."

"The trek across the jungle was treated like a dungeon, with paths connecting to various clearings. No need to overwhelm new players with wilderness-crawl rules right out the gate, I figure. The party encountered a shrine to Fantomah, got the jump on some Martian scouts, fought a deranged Flying Saurian, and avoided the deadly Venusian Bees. Little-to-no casualties at this point, thanks to luck and sound tactics."

"When the party arrived at Gorgon’s Gorge, things started to turn. Three giant flaming claws smashed, squeezed, and burned several members of the party before they were destroyed."

"Eventually the party found the wrecked saucer and set to exploring it. The radium miner’s geiger counter let them avoid the ruptured core at the center of the craft. The Martian cafeteria seemed promising until mutated slime puddings dropped from the ceiling killed several of their number. The sadistic surgical robot the oversaw the bio-lab also managed kill some of the players before getting scrapped. The Martian barracks were the most deadly of course, as a cadre of Martian pikemen and gunners winnowed down the PC party. When they party eventually decided to examine the saucer’s power core, the co-mingled monstrosity that was once two members of the original team killed several more PCs (It had three attacks!). At long last, the PCs managed to rescue the two survivors from the original expedition and were able to call in MacBeth for an extraction. Of the 18 level-zeroes that started the adventure, only seven made it out alive. That’s what I call a good funnel adventure!"
 

A view from the judge's vantage point.

 
There's another stretch goal still waiting to be funded, and that's the one that determines whether or not I'll be hired on to the project. I remain optimistic, but I thought I could improve my chances by talking about what you'll get if I get involved.

My potential contribution is a patron that plays an important role in the Venus of LWOV, but who could also fit in to a campaign for Mutant Crawl Classics or Crawling Under a Broken Moon. If hired, I'll be writing a patron to act as the leader and benefactor of the Science Robots.
 

Science Robots by Diogo Nogueira

The obvious starting point is going to be Fletcher Hanks' own comics. I was able to read the first collection, I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets, through my public library system. Unfortunately, all the Space Smith comics are in the second compilation, You Shall Die by Your Own Evil Creation, so I'll need to ILL a copy straight away. I'll also want to see what Josh and Leighton have written about the Science Robots.

But I do a few ideas of my own already. I know that for some people, the idea of robot immediately conjures up images of Forbidden Planet or Lost in Space or Robot Monster, but personally, I'm much more inspired by Stanislaw Lem and Star Trek ... and by the delightful Futurama homages to them both.

Stanislaw Lem's Star Diaries are among his funniest short stories. They're the voyages of his naif spaceman Ijon Tichy, as he blunders from one situation he's too foolish to understand to another. In "The Seventh Voyage" for example, he basically re-enacts the plot to Timecrimes, minus the horror and the sexual violence, simply because he's too arrogant and too dumb to get out of his own way.

In "The Eleventh Voyage" an Earth government sends Ijon to spy on a robot planet. He wears a suit of armor that disguises him, and consults an instruction manual on robot society to help fit in. In the end, he discovers that all the actual robots rusted away long ago. The entire robot society is made up of spies in costumes, all of whom are too frightened of being caught out as imposters to notice that their neighbors are just playacting too. It's a really powerful condemnation of the Soviet government, and a veiled call for citizens to realize that they're not alone, and to democratically overthrow the one-party government. Aaand, it's a great inspiration for what the Science Robots might be like!

Futurama actually got a couple episodes out of "The Eleventh Voyage" - both Fear of a Bot Planet, where they travel to a robot planet where the incompetent government of robot elders has all the robots spend all day ritually hating humans as a distraction from their crippling lugnut shortage, and Insane in the Mainframe, where a human is misdiagnosed by a robot psychiatrist as being a malfunctioning robot, and eventually comes to believe it.

Meanwhile, you can't have a society of robots without a giant supercomputer to rule over them. I mean, okay, you caaan, but why would you want to? One of my favorite things about Star Trek is that Captain Kirk has basically two go-to moves to solve any problem. The first is to seduce an attractive woman, and the second is to make a computer go crazy. And in one notable instance, the woman is a robot, and when he seduces her, that makes her computer brain go crazy. Maximum Derek Kirk! In case I thought I was alone in noticing this, nope, other fans have dubbed this the "induced self destruction" phenomenon. Kirk's third go-to move, incidentally, is the double axe handle punch that apparently his stunt coordinators thought was the most futuristic looking fight move possible.

My favorite giant computer episode of Star Trek was the one that for some reason needed to remove Spock's brain from his body to act as a processor. That one was called, um, checks notes, "Spock's Brain". Futurama has their own giant computer episode, "Amazon Women in the Mood", where it turns out that the giant computer is actually just a robot hiding behind a giant facade, and the robot herself is at least as fallible as the people she governs.

The point being that I imagine the Science Robots are directed by a giant supercomputer, that may or may not be what it appears. It's certainly vainglorious, hypocritical, and despite a possible vulnerability to children's logic puzzles, a deeply illogical entity. The Science Robots themselves probably have profoundly inaccurate misconceptions about humans, and might have a few armor-wearing humans living as members of the Robot caste of their society.

Now, you might say "but Anne, what if the Science Robots are ruled by a GOOD computer?" Let me remind you that the Robots keep humans as chattel, and routinely uplift selected humans to act as military units by injecting them with irradiated cat blood and giving them flamethrowers to wear as hats. While the entity who makes this decision MIGHT have good intentions, and be better than its deeply horrible neighbors, it is certainly NOT a paragon of military strategy or any other virtue.

So those are my personal touchpoints, beyond the works of Fletcher Hanks and the previous writing by Josh and Leighton. If you back the Kickstarter and my stretch goal gets funded, this is the sort of thing you can look forward to from me. You can also look forward to 175-page comic-book sized campaign setting with two other patrons, two introductory adventures, and a plethora of art by OSR luminaries for all your classic dungeon-crawling enjoyment!

I am become Strech Goal, destroyer of crowdfunding campaigns

Joshua LH Burnett (Bernie the Flumph) and his writing partner Leighton Connor have announced a Kickstarter campaign for a DCC setting and adventure Leopard Women of Venus!

The whole thing is inspired by a comic by Fletcher Hanks, one of the really gloriously weird artists from the Golden Age of pulp comics. You can see a sample page below:
 

 
The setting and two (or three! stretch goals!) adventures are all based in a science fantasy Venus where there's a pile-up of squabbling factions, including the Science Robots, and their defenders, the titular Leopard Women. To find out more, though, you should read the sales precis on Kickstarter, or look at the free preview.

I've admired Josh's writing before, and enjoyed playing in a couple of his adventures, so I'm excited to be involved in this project.

There's also an exciting list of other collaborators! In addition to Josh and Leighton as the lead authors, the artists include Erol Otus, Matt Kish, Bradley K McDevitt, Evlyn Moreau, Diogo Nogueira, Juan Navarro, James V West, and Joshua LH Burnett again. Fiona Maeve Geist and Steve Johnson are editing.

The project funds at $3000, adds art by Stefan Poag at $3500, adds me at $4000, more art at $4500, and a third adventure at $5000.

You can get the pdf for $15, print-on-demand and pdf for $20, and the above plus pdfs of Josh's two previous zines Sanctum of the Snail and Draugr & Draculas for $30.

This is a project that will likely appeal to fans of DCC, Golden Age comics, gozno science fantasy, and Josh's previous work.

If the project hits its second stretch goal, I'll be writing a mysterious and secret new DCC patron, whose identity will no doubt be revealed later as part of a canny marketing strategy! You can see some of my previous patron writing here. Until then, you'll have to be content with seeing Stardust the Super-Wizard and Fantomah the Mystery Woman of the Jungle become DCC patrons on Venus.

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!

CRAWL-thulhu

My friends John Potts and Todd McGowan have just published the second issue of their DCC zine - CRAWL-thulhu!

Zine by John Potts, Art by Todd McGowan

I was a playtester and a volunteer proofreader for issue 1, and I wrote a couple sections of issue 2. John and Todd worked as partners with John doing almost all the writing, editing, and layout, and Todd providing all the art. Because John has decided to retire following the release of issue 2, I'm going to be the lead author of all future issues.

CRAWL-thulhu issue 1 introduces advice for running a Lovecraftian campaign using Dungeon Crawl Classics. It replaces the Luck score with a Sanity score, has rules for Sanity loss due to encountering elements of the Lovecraft Mythos, has a list of 1920s occupations for zero-level characters, and has a complete adventure "A Horrible Day at the Dunwich Fair", which I've played through twice.

CRAWL-thulhu issue 2 introduces a skill system for mystery investigations in DCC, has six 1920s character classes, rules for spellcasting and magic, some death & dismemberment style tables I wrote for recovering from insanity and near-death, and offers more advice for running Lovecraftian campaigns using DCC.  

(And I should note, the tables here are different from the death & dismemberment table I wrote for DCC earlier. They're tailored to the horror genre and the modern setting in the same way that my original table is tailored to DCC's regular setting.)

Zine by John Potts, Art by Todd McGowan

 
So if you like DCC or Cthulhu or both, you might like to take a look at what my friends made!

My agreement to take over writing in the future was very recent, so at the moment, I don't have any answers about what will happen to the Discerning Dhole Productions imprint, or what will be in the contents of future issues. I'm sure I will shamelessly advertise here when issue 3 is ready to be released. In the mean time, CRAWL-thulhu issue 1 and issue 2 are available for you to enjoy!

GFA18 - North American Familiars

My very last entry in the 2018 Gongfarmer's Almanac was a reprint and update of something I wrote earlier that's fallen out of print now. One nice thing about putting this up on my blog is that I can add in the hyperlinks to the other settings I mention in the introductory essay.

My writing on this piece was edited by Cory Gahsman. That fantastic art piece is by Carmin Vance, and I just love the detail he put into it, especially the behavior of the cat familiars, the wanted poster, and the way the possum familiar's potion looks like a little jug of moonshine.

Because I waited so long to post this, the call for submissions for the 2019 GFA has gone out! It won't be organized on Google Plus as it was in years past, but it's found a new home (actually several new homes) on MeWe, on the Goodman Games discussion boards, and on its very own website! (Click that Participate tab at the top to volunteer!) Writing submission are due by May 1st, art submission by June 1st, and they could always use volunteers to help with editing, layout, publishing and coordination. 
 

Image by Carmin Vance

 
When a wizard in a North American setting casts find familiar, they don't summon one of the entities from the DCC core rules. Instead, they summon a familiar spirit from the local territories. Lawful familiars in North America mostly take the guise of domesticated animals and animals that form civilized communities. Neutral familiars mostly appear as wild animals whose very existence symbolizes the frontier in the minds of city-dwellers. Chaotic familiars dress themselves in the guise of pests, vermin, and decay.

These familiars are usable in any DCC campaign that takes place in a North American setting, whether it's the Dark Territories and town of Brimstone from Carl Bussler and Eric Hoffman's Black Powder Black Magic, the Shudder Mountains from Michael Curtis' The Chained Coffin, the Trails of David Baity's Dark Trails, Our World from Diogo Nogueira's Lost World setting, the Crawling Revolution led by James Walls' Revolutionary Crawl Classics occupations, the Esoteric America watched over by Michael Curtis' Secret Antiquities patrons, or any similar locale.

As in the DCC core rules, if the familiar has an ability and no modifier is listed, the wizard gains a +4 bonus to use that ability. I imagine fey familiars as being child-sized or waist-height, but looking so elfin and otherworldly that they'd never be mistaken for a human child.

North American familiars are an itinerant sort. At the judge's discretion, either at the beginning of each session, or each time the wizard gains a level, their previous familiar departs and a new one comes to take its place. This could be the original spirit taking on a new physical configuration, wanderlust causing one spirit to move on and another to replace it, or a regular shift-change between punch-clock geists. The wizard enjoys a different master's benefit each time their familiar changes (besides, what fun is a table with 72 entries if you only get to see one of them?)


LAWFUL FAMILIARS
Familiar Physical Configuration (and Master's Benefit)

1     White cat (move very silently)

2     Hound dog (all followers, retainers, etc. receive +2 to morale checks)

3     Miniature horse ('spooked' feeling warns caster of surprises and ambushes)

4     Miniature long-horned steer (+2 hit points)

5     Miniature blue ox (+1 Stamina)

6     Prairie dog (excellent hearing)

7     Groundhog (caster knows upcoming weather each morning)

8     Beaver (swim speed 20')

9     Yellow miner's canary (supernatural ability to detect traps and hazards)

10    Pigeon (caster can 'home in' on route out of dungeon or back to town)

11    Cock rooster (loud, commanding voice)

12    Barn owl (ability to see at night as well as during day)

13    Red-tailed hawk (excellent vision)

14    Bald eagle (excellent vision)

15    Giant ant (+1 to all attempts at ESP, scrying, etc)

16    Giant honey bee (melee attack deals poison: DC 12 Fort save or temporary loss of 1 Strength)

17    Child-sized scarecrow (opponents are -2 to morale checks)

18    Miniature covered wagon (once per day, the caster can ‘find’ a single low-cost mundane item in their pack)

19    Miniature train engine (movement 40')

20    Fey school-teacher wearing glasses and elbow-patched tweed jacket, never speaks, communicates using writing slate (caster can attempt to read any unknown language as lawful thief of the same level)

21    Fey Catholic priest, dressed in black robe with white collar (one of caster's known spells is replaced by a random cleric spell)

22    Fey soldier in blue-coat US Army uniform (caster is proficient with all weapons)

23    Mysterious fey figure dressed in gunfighter's outfit, mouth covered by bandana, never speaks (+1 to initiative and to all missile attacks)

24    Tiny feather-winged angel wearing white robe, face identical to caster's, speaks up whenever caster is tempted to disobey interests of patron (+1 to saving throws versus chaotic magic and supernatural effects)


NEUTRAL FAMILIARS
Familiar Physical Configuration (and Master's Benefit)

1     Gray cat (move very silently)

2     Possum (+1 to recovering the body checks for caster and familiar)

3     Badger (+1 melee damage)

4     Miniature stag deer (+1 Personality)

5     Miniature bison (+1 AC)

6     Gray Wolf (extraordinary sense of smell)

7     Miniature mountain lion (+1 Strength)

8     Miniature grizzly bear (+1 to melee attacks and melee damage)

9     Toad (ability to hold breath underwater for 20 minutes)

10    Gecko lizard (climb speed 10')

11    Desert tortoise (+2 AC, movement 20')

12    Armadillo (caster is proficient with shields, suffers no spellcheck penalty from carrying a shield, can shield-bash as a dwarf)

13    Mockingbird (caster is able to speak 1 additional random language)

14    Whip-poor-will (beautiful, haunting singing voice)

15    Crow (uncanny ability to detect gemstones and shiny objects)

16    Wild turkey (excellent at hiding in forest)

17    Giant grasshopper (once per day, caster can leap 10' vertically or 20' horizontally)

18    Will-o-the-wisp (familiar acts as candle-light in darkness)

19    Tumbleweed (caster can withdraw from melee combat without opening themselves to a free attack)

20    Fey wilderness scout, dressed in leather suit and racoon cap (uncanny ability to find paths and know direction)

21    Fey woodcutter wearing plaid shirt, carrying axe (+1 to attack and damage against plants and fungi)

22    Fey card-sharp, dressed in gambler's finery, carries tarot deck (+2 Luck that restores each night if used, similar to a thief's recovery of Luck)

23    Dust-devil cyclone (once per day, after hitting their first opponent in combat, the caster can continue making attacks against new opponents using the same weapon and action die, until missing an attack or running out of opponents)

24    Tiny elemental (+1 to all saves and checks related to that element. Roll 1d10 to determine element: (1) earth; (2) air; (3) fire; (4) water; (5) dust; (6) fog; (7) ice; (8) lightning; (9) mud; (10) exotic element such as gold, silver, gemstones, demon ore, etc.)


CHAOTIC FAMILIARS
Familiar Physical Configuration (and Master's Benefit)

1     Black cat (twice per session, impose -1 penalty on opponent's roll)

2     Raccoon (ability to pick pockets as a chaotic thief of same level)

3     Weasel (supernatural ability to squeeze into tight places)

4     Porcupine (anyone grappling or dealing melee damage to caster takes 1 damage from quills)

5     Polecat skunk (immune to nausea and stench)

6     Coyote (+1 Agility)

7     Tiny python (extraordinary sense of smell)

8     Tiny rattlesnake (melee bite attack deals poison: DC 16 Fort save or temporary loss of 1d6 Stamina)

9     Miniature alligator (successful melee attack grapples opponent, automatically deals 1d6 damage per subsequent round)

10    Bat (excellent hearing)

11    Miniature buzzard vulture (caster is able to safely eat rotten or spoiled food)

12    Black swan (once per day, caster can reroll any natural 7, and once per day, caster can reroll any natural 13)

13    Giant millipede (climb speed 10')

14    Giant maggot, transforms into giant black housefly during combat (‘skin crawling’ feeling alerts caster to presence of disguises and shapeshifters)

15    Tarantula spider (melee attack deals poison: DC Fort save or temporary loss of 1 Agility)

16    Giant mosquito (bite attack deals 1d4 damage and heals wizard of 1 hit point)

17    Tiny black scorpion (+2 to Fort saves versus poison)

18    Miniature skeletal horse (+1 to all attempts at planar communication or travel)

19    Miniature black stagecoach with large glass windows revealing casket inside (+1 AC and +1 saving throws versus undead)

20    Beautiful fey saloon dancer with skin flayed from her back, dressed in can-can outfit (+2 Personality)

21    Fey tattooed lady, dressed in bathing suit, covered in ink showing Patron's motif (+1 to spellcheck of random spell)

22    Fey hanged man (grants an extra life - the first time caster dies, the familiar dies instead, and caster is restored to full hit points, less the consequence of familiar dying)

23    Child-sized human skeleton (+1 damage to undead and +1 damage from necromancy)

24    Tiny bat-winged red devil, face identical to caster's, speaks up whenever opportunity arises to tempt caster to advance Patron's interests (+1 to all saving throws versus Lawful magic and supernatural effects)


Note: Most of the entries above originally appeared in the article "Familiars of the Dark Territories" in Black Powder, Black Magic, volume 4. Lawful entries 7, 10, 17, and 20, Neutral entres 12, 13, 19, and 21, and Chaotic entries 12, 14, 16, and 19 originally appeared in the post "Pseudo-Preview of BPBM4" on the DIY & Dragons blog.

My Gift to You - The Old School Phoebe Meme

Alex Chalk from To Distant Lands managed to get me thinking about how Phoebe from the Magic School Bus cartoon always brought up her old school, and how things were different there.

Image by me. Image source.

This gave me the idea that there should be a meme where Phoebe talks about "old school" style roleplaying. Thus I present to you Old School Phoebe!

Image by me. Image source.

Mostly, I wanted something a bit lighthearted after a very heavy couple weeks. Feel free to make your own, but if I could make one request, it would be to keep them light. The image is from a kid's show, after all, and I really don't have the heart to look at any non-tongue-in-cheek defenses of "old school" style anymore. If you have an edition war to wage, find a different weapon.

GFA18 - Mountain Lion Magic Items

Okay, so actually the FINAL final mountain lion entry for the 2018 Gongfarmer's Almanac is a pair of mountain-lion themed magic items. I almost forgot I wrote this! My Black Powder Black Magic campaign needs a fair number of magic items, because characters can find demon ore, and trade it for magic items, which means the campaign NEEDS magic items for the characters to acquire. (Ideally, characters should have to "quest for it" rather than just trading in the ore like it's currency, and long term, I should possibly think about some kind of rule for "retiring" items that have been used long enough, but those are concerns for different posts.)
     
So the story behind both these items is that I watched the Lego Batman movie, and Catwoman has like one line in the whole movie, where she's helping a gang of villains break into a building, and we see her on the comms, and she's like "Meow-meow, we're in, meow-meow!" It's practically a throw-away line, but I loved the idea of her bookending all her sentences that way. So then I watched Black Panther, and the little sister Shuri has these cat-faced gauntlets that fire vibrating soundwaves as a weapon. And in my head, every time she fires these things, she says "meow-meow, meow-meow!" (Next time you watch Black Panther, try adding that sound-effect yourself. It's delightful!)
  
So the first item is pretty much just Shuri's gauntlets, and the second is a variation on the same idea, which arises out of the first. (It also lets you play at being Lego Catwoman, the same way the first one lets you play at being Shuri.) Plus, I don't know, in addition to the fun of getting my players to say "meow-meow" to use their magic item, I kind of like the idea that a magic item might have a command word that the players have to know and say. The presence of a "magic word" has a certain fariy-tale-ness to it that I like, and having the player say the magic word is sort of an immersive role-playing element. Outside of a situation like this, I would probably pick magic words like "abracadabra", "alakazam", "hocus pocus", and "open sesame". 
  
Danny Prescott edited this article, and the others in the series, and he was a big help in making sure that my physical descriptions evoked the right mental image and that my instructions were clear and easy to understand.
  
    
Gauntlets of the wailing mountain lion: These metal forearm-guards are made of the same vibrating material as a tuning fork or xylophone bar. The gauntlets seem to hum or purr constantly, sounding a musical note when struck against each other or used in combat. Each guard is carved to look like a mountain lion, tail wrapped around the wearer's forearms, haunches gripping the wrist, and the lion’s chin resting on the knuckles.
  
The gauntlets grant +1 AC and allow the wearer to make an unarmed punch for 1d4 damage, but prevent wielding another weapon in combat. They are ideally paired for two-weapon fighting. At least once per day the wearer can invoke the mouths to fire a soundwave at a target as a ranged attack for 1d14 damage by saying magical phrase "myow-myow," and the player has to say it out loud.
  
Spellcasters can use this power a number of times per day equal to the highest spell-level they can cast. If the wearer uses two-weapon fighting to fire two soundwaves at once, this counts as only a single use of the gauntlets.
  

  
Gloves of the were-lion thief: These coal black mouse-leather gloves have weighted knuckles. The leather on the back of the wrists and hands is worked to look like a cat preparing to pounce - tail curled above the wrist, haunches perched on the hand, chin and forepaws gripping the knuckles.
  
If worn by a non-thief these gloves allow the wearer to make an unarmed attack like a blackjack (1d3 subdual damage) with an additional +1 to hit and +1 damage, and once a day, the wearer can say the magic phrase "myow-myow" to use any one thief skill using a d24 skill die.
  
If worn by a trained thief they function as above, however the thief may instead say the magic word to roll a d24 skill die thrice per day, and if the thief uses this power while backstabbing the attack deals lethal instead of subdual damage with the automatic crit rolled on the monster crit table. When invoked, the player has to say the magic phrase out loud. Thieves who use this power more than once per day must use it for a different skill each time.

  

GFA18 - Were Cougar

The last entry in my series of mountain lion variations for the 2018 Gongfarmer's Alamanc is the were-cougar. Traditionally, the ability to shapeshift between human and feline forms is associated with the wampus cat, but I thought it was an interesting enough ability to stand alone. For roleplaying monsters, I think it may be better to have just one really stand-out ability, and for the wampus cougar, that was already the mourner's wail, and the were-cougar was born. 
   
She's the only mountain lion with a real alignment, and I thought giving her a demon's crit sort of fit well with her supernatural aspect. While I wanted her to shapeshift often so the players could see it (well, or at least imagine seeing it) I didn't want that to create any kind of confusion involving a second stat-block. So she has one stat-block, one hit-point total, and her shapeshifting is basically cosmetic, which is fine with me. I added the coin-toss to make her shifting random. I didn't want it to happen every round, but I thought it might be harder to remember instructions like "every third round."

   
The association of the word "cougar" with older women who want to date younger men led me to the idea of the lover's wail. I probably wouldn't have thought of that if I'd chosen a different cat, but I'm glad I did. It reminds me of some of the early D&D monsters who kidnapped party members by making them fall in love. That's the worst-case outcome here, but a normal failure just means that you'll spend all your downtime with your new cougar-wife, and if you're lucky, she'll actually join your party as an NPC ally. Danny Prescott edited this entire series.
 
   
Were-cougar: Init +3; Atk claw +3 melee (1d4+1) or bite +4 melee (1d6+2) or wail (special); AC 13; HD 3d10; MV 40' or climb 20'; Act 1d20; SP shapeshifter, pounce, lover's wail; SV Fort +3, Ref +3, Will +4; AL C; Crit DN/d4.
  
A were-cougar is a shapeshifter with two forms. In her human form she appears as a woman on the cusp of old age wearing simple local dress. She seems feisty and self-reliant. In her lion form, she has a slightly demonic air, pointier ears, shaggier fur, sharper claws (she uses identical statistics regardless of form).
  
A were-cougar is the implacable enemy of the nearest town, and may treat PCs as allies if they are outcasts there. She collects husbands and has a harem of 1d8 local men in her den at all times. She is not particularly jealous, and allows her men to take second wives, so long as she retains their primary loyalty. There is a 50% chance the were-cougar is first encounter her in lion form.
  
If a were-cougar makes the first attack of combat she will use her lover's wail; otherwise she attacks normally. Thereafter, she will alternate attacks between claw, bite and wail, pouncing when possible. Each round she doesn't pounce flip a coin; if heads she uses her move to shift between her human and cougar forms. A were-cougar prefers to use her claw and bite attacks against female opponents and against males who pass their Luck check against her wail. If every living male opponent has been affected by her wail she will return to her den and any new husbands will follow.
  
Shapeshifter: A were-cougar takes half damage from ordinary weapons. She counts as unholy for lawful clerics. The were-cougar can shift between her human and cougar forms as a move action.
  
Pounce: A were-cougar can pounce to gain an extra d20 attack die and attack with any two attack options, i.e. claw and bite, bite and wail, or wail and claw. The were-cougar can only pounce if she surprises its victims, attacks first due to initiative, or has taken no damage since her previous attack.
  
Lover's wail: A were-cougar sings a haunting, wordless song, like a lonely woman singing to her cat. A were-cougar's wail affects the male opponent with the highest Personality score who hasn't been affected yet today (in case of tie, she targets the opponent with the highest Luck score from among those with highest Personality). The affected target rolls a Luck check to see how he is affected.

• Half Luck score or lower - The were-cougar falls in love with the target and stops combat immediately. She will offer to marry the target and join the them as an NPC who mostly follows his instructions. She will follow him anywhere in order to live her life beside him.

• Luck score or lower - The were-cougar is the most beautiful woman the target ever saw, but he knows it is just not to be.

• Higher than Luck score - The target falls in love with the were-cougar and retires from combat while trying to talk his friends into stopping their attack. The target spends his downtime between adventures living with the were-cougar as her lover in her den. He refuses to go on journeys that would take him too far away from his lover.

• Higher than double Luck score - The target falls deeply in love with the were-cougar, and fights to the death to prevent anyone else from attacking her. The target retires from adventuring to marry the were-cougar and live with her forever in her den.

Demonic crit: A were-cougar rolls 1d4 on the demon crit table.