Sharpened Hooks: The Bloody Contests of Tanadara

The real-life Frank Dux of Bloodsport fame claims that the Kumite is a secret 60-round single-elimination tournament held every five years. A sixty-round single-elimination tournament would require over a quintillion (~1.2 × 10¹⁸) participants, which is several orders of magnitude more than the total number of humans who are estimated to have ever lived on earth (~1.2 × 10¹¹ as of this writing) and would obviously be impossible to keep secret.

But of course, in imaginary worlds, fighting tournaments can remain unconstrained by size or secrecy. What if the whole world were embroiled in a fighting tournament?

Aeons ago, the apocalyptic elf cabal known as the Thorns of the Haemophage succeeded in their ages-long goal to summon the Blood Gods to the world of Tanadara. The forces of Chaos ran roughshod across the surface of the world, only stopping when the elves—rightly horrified at the destruction they had wrought and realizing that the end of the Age of Man would probably also be the end of the age of everything—invoked desperate spellcraft to bind the Blood Gods long enough to bring them to the negotiating table.

The price of peace was ultimately the Malraninin, a vast tournament requiring the participation of all able-bodied sapients on Tanadara. Occurring only once every hundred years, the Malraninin takes years to finish, comprising a single-elimination tournament featuring every healthy humanoid in the world. (Just wrangling everyone and pairing them takes weeks if not months.) Although most fights are not to the death, there are no restrictions, and enough fights are deadly that the Blood Gods remain quiescent for now.

As the longest-lived race, the elves are the keepers of the Malraninin, charged with ensuring all participate. (The average human is born and dies without ever participating in the Malraninin, which is more than enough time to forget the grave import of the contest.) Participation is mandatory; any who refuse, or who run and are caught, or who voluntarily maim themselves to avoid the contest, are executed. Cutting a deal with your opponent ahead of time to throw a fight is considered poor form and also a form of refusal, but it also tends to be rather hard to prove and so is somewhat commonplace in the early rounds. (But then again, sadistic opponents might take advantage of you taking a dive, so make sure you trust your fight partner before you coordinate a fight.)

It will probably surprise no one to learn that high-level magic-users are exceedingly rare on Tanadara, because they usually flee when they first learn teleportation or planar travel. Conversely, unknowing planar travelers may find themselves in a The Return of the Archons situation, being conscripted into the chaos of the Malraninin without a full understanding of the situation. (And the locals are unlikely to believe your claims of being from another world or dimension, because that sounds like exactly the sort of tall tale someone would spin if they were trying to claim an exit from the tournament. Not that it would help you even if they did believe you; the Blood Gods hunger for you just as well as any native-born Tanadaran.)

Incidentally, even those cosmologists who know of other worlds don't know about the Malraninin, because the folk of the world do not often speak of it, especially with strangers. The spies of the elves are always watching for tournament-dodgers, and it is best to avoid their scrutiny.

Unsurprisingly, however, Tanadara has a much higher concentration of martial artists than most other worlds; most inhabitants know at least the rudiments of boxing, swordplay, offensive magic, or some other self-defense art, even if they are not especially skilled.

During any given Malraninin, thousands if not millions of people can die, so the Malraninin is equal parts celebration and mourning ceremony. Despite the violence, the final rounds of the Malraninin bring pilgrims from across the world, so there is a certain level of cultural exchange brought by tournament season.

After the tournament, survivors often return to their lives a little more harrowed than before. (Which is especially unfortunate, given the silence and shame around the Malraninin. Domestic violence and suicides often spike after a Malraninin, not that anyone keeps track of such statistics.) Life continues apace, at least until the next tournament.

It goes without saying that the Malraninin requires years of planning, and that several large-scale projects (like war) stop for it. Farming and other necessities of course continue, although such responsibilities do not prevent participation. If your community needs you, you had better fight like it.

Story Hooks:

• Your village's headman was just and giving, but he died during the Malraninin and his sons are not quite so altruistic. You and your band have undertaken a quest to retrieve him from the lands of the dead (and maybe to get revenge on his killer along the way). But the elves claim bringing back one of the Malraninin dead risks the Blood Gods' wrath. Will you risk taboo to restore your village's fortunes? Will the elves allow this trespass to go unanswered?
• In the midst of adventuring in your GM's typical setting, you somehow stumble into Tanadara and are recruited into the Malraninin. (Perhaps you delve too deep into the Deepearth and emerge on the surface of Tanadara, or perhaps a wizard's trap sends you very far away.) Do you fight, or do you attempt to flee? If you flee, can you return to the anomaly that sent you here? And if you fight, what if one of your opponents seeks to fight to the death?
• Your remote tribe was uncontacted by the outside world until thirty years ago, when trade opened with your neighbors. Your village prospered under the trade agreements until now, when elves appeared and said all must participate in a fighting tournament or die. Will you go along with the strange foreign elves' wishes to avoid trouble, or will you resist their demands?

The Chicken of Duplication

Although typically found in fantasy space, there is no reason why one couldn't find terrestrial Chickens of Duplication.

There are those who revere the divine entity called the Chicken of Creation, a deific chicken who birthed the world and all within it. (Some believe there are many such chickens, although whether or not there are many Chickens of Creation or merely one is probably not useful for most people.) Among its many progeny is the Chicken of Duplication, a semi-divine chicken of monstrous size. (As with the Chicken of Creation, it is unclear whether there is one Chicken of Duplication or several.)

The Chicken of Duplication is often found flying through other dimensions or even the void of space. If by some strange circumstance you need stats for one, your system probably has an equivalent of a Tyrannosaurus rex; just add a flight speed and you're basically all the way there. They typically don't bother astral ships or other large objects or creatures; they might approach a vessel and give it a curious peck before moving on. Of course, if the occupants decide the peck is an attack and fight back, they will face the full fury of this semi-divine chicken.

Lone travelers are in more peril, as the Chicken of Duplication is roughly as vicious as a regular chicken.

(For Chicken of Duplication stats in 5th edition-style games, I'd start with a regisaur, change the type to celestial, add a fly speed of 120 ft., and change the tail to some manner of stomp or talon attack, dealing slashing damage instead of bludgeoning.)

If the legends are true and there is only one Chicken of Duplication, killing it doesn't stop it: it is reborn in a few days from one of its own eggs. (And like a terrestrial chicken, it lays eggs periodically without fertilization. These eggs are often in remote places in other dimensions. As such, there might be many, many eggs that have not yet been found, and one cannot truly kill the Chicken of Duplication without finding and smashing every such egg.)

The divine beast is rarely seen, but the eggs are the primary reason why anyone knows or cares about it. (It's possible the "Chicken of Duplication" isn't even a chicken; if someone saw a giant chicken and someone else saw a giant hen's egg, a third scholar could have connected the two.) An Egg of Duplication appears to be a hen's egg that is a little larger than human size, somewhere in the seven-by-five-foot range. It feels like a hen's egg, too, although it is significantly stronger — cracking the shell requires a concerted effort, as the shell is harder than steel. It is vulnerable to acid, however. Destroying or cracking the egg renders it inert and kills whatever is inside. (Although if it has not yet been activated, it might produce a truly prodigious amount of yolk. Scholars and sages no doubt would have plenty of uses for the yolk and shell of such a potent celestial egg...)

However, touching the egg with bare flesh causes a reaction. The creature who first touches the egg is enervated, taking a handful of damage, ability score drain, a level of exhaustion, or some similar mechanic that would easily heal in a day or two. No further touches have any effect on either the egg or the person touching it.

If the creature is too large to be contained by the egg, the egg remains inactivated until a creature of the appropriate size touches it.

After being touched, the egg hatches in 1d6+4 days, producing a nude duplicate of the creature who touched it. The duplicate has the same statistics as the original at the time they touched the egg, and the duplicate likewise has access to all of the target's memories until the moment it touched the egg.

As far as anyone can tell, such duplicates have no sinister agenda. However, apart from being birthed from an egg, they believe they are the original, and so will no doubt be very confused and possibly upset by whatever happens next.

The Leap Yeap

Evansville Press, Indiana, February 5, 1912

The leap yeap is considered native to the plains of the lush world of Varasla, although scholars have documented the creatures on other worlds. A leap yeap appears as a cross between a rabbit and a kangaroo, albeit the end result is as large as a Clydesdale. Although the creatures roam wild across the plains, they have also been domesticated as mounts and pack animals and so may be found in settlements outside their native range. (For example, although they are not native to the mountains, travelers have found them to make good, sure-footed mounts in uneven terrain. Some long-haired varieties have even been bred for colder climates and higher altitudes.)

Although they tend to be skittish rather than aggressive, the occasional leap yeap-related death is not unknown; their hind legs can deliver a powerful kick, and their claws are sharp enough to disembowel victims.

BECMI-style stats:

No. Enc.: 1d6 (5d6)
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 180' (60')
Armor Class: 7
Hit Dice: 3
Attacks: 2 (1 bite, 1 kick)
Damage: 1d4/1d4
Save: F2
Morale: 6
Hoard Class: None
XP: 50
Leap yeaps are skittish animals, found both roaming in herds or alone as mounts. They can leap up to 30', and often do if frightened—a riot of stamping feet and screeching.

5e-style stats:

Leap Yeap
Large beast, unaligned
Armor Class 13
Hit Points 22 (3d10+6)
Speed 50 ft.
Str 13 (+1), Dex 17 (+3), Con 15 (+2), Int 2 (-4), Wis 11 (+0), Cha 7 (-2)
Skills Perception +2
Senses passive Perception 12
Languages —
Challenge 1/2 (100 XP)
Standing Leap. The leap yeap’s long jump is up to 30 feet and its high jump is up to 15 feet, with or without a running start.
Actions
Kick. Melee Weapon Attack: +3 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 6 (2d4+1) slashing damage.
Bonus Actions
Skittish. The leap yeap takes the Disengage, Dodge, or Hide action.

No Prep Is Wasted

If you run games long enough, higher-order patterns begin to emerge without your direct input. A campaign setting is a thing better divined than made.

I have previously posted about Arctic Death, Infinite Night, my "arctic Ravenloft" campaign. (If you want the basic setup, this post has all the details.)

Well, that section of the campaign has wrapped, and as they say, the slime's coming home. They killed the darklord, did the obligatory bookkeeping, and now the wizard has built a spelljamming helm and they have acquired a vessel in the hopes of returning to the home they fled via the Gardens of Ynn, essentially causing most of the issues in the campaign to date. As for the Domain of Dread of Isiksivik, when they slew the darklord, the whole realm fell back into the world it left centuries ago.

But which world is that?

I've been ruminating on that particular question for months now, but then I remembered What Luck Betide Us. Many years ago, some friends asked me to run a 4e campaign, and I did a lot of work on it before we started. Like, I made a map of a region a million square miles in size and filled in the settlements with procedural generation before the campaign started. (To contrast, the Sorrowfell Plains map for Crux of Eternity is still mostly empty, with landmarks only going on the map as they come up in play.) While a fun exercise, I wouldn't recommend trying to build a campaign setting from the ground-up like in What Luck Betide Us, and I certainly wouldn't have the time to do it now unless someone were paying me.

Well, as with most campaigns where you front-load much of the work, that game died a horrible death after only a couple of sessions. So it goes.

But that just means that there's an unused campaign setting just sitting in my notes, one that I know fairly well because I made it up. Isiksivik can easily sit to the far north of the region from What Luck Betide Us, and what's more, the dwarf's sketchy backstory fits nicely with the overall aesthetics of the dwarven theocracy of the Farhelfik Commonwealth and the elvish magocracy of the Lanirilis Protectorate. She can just as easily be from the same world!

(The characters in Arctic Death, Infinite Night subsequently met the major campaign villain from What Luck Betide Us, because they fit well with her agenda in the service of Chaos.)

Years ago, I also teased The Wizard at the End of the World. I didn't know anything more about this entity than I put into the blog post, but I figured the rest would sort itself out in the fullness of time. In trying to solve this problem, I also solved that problem: The Wizard is indeed the second iteration of a BECMI-style Immortal, originally from the Sorrowfell Plains but now ascended after some time shenanigans, and What Luck Betide Us features the world she made during her first ascension. (I already knew she made a world, I just didn't know that it was clearly this one. But it nicely explains a couple of things I never quite figured out during the course of What Luck Betide Us.)

(The characters in Arctic Death, Infinite Night subsequently met this Immortal in her guise as the elf Archdruid Lueliten. She has ties to the dwarf's backstory and clearly has some future knowledge about what has happened and will yet happen.)

If there's a takeaway from all of this, it's the advice I gave at the start: leave gaps in your campaign creation where interesting things might go. The players don't need reams of epic backstory to jump into a game, so you don't need to make them. However, if during the course of planning or play, you determine interesting connections between your disparate, intriguing details, give them context and make them matter. (Remember: nothing the GM does matters unless it emerges at the table. This is why the other players ultimately have more power than the GM, because every decision they make matters.)

It's the Tim Powers design principle, but applied to one's own writing: in a couple of places (I'm citing this one in particular), he references doing research for his latest book, giving this anecdote, "Half the time, if it's very late at night, I find sometimes when I open some new research book, it'll appear to confirm my fictional theory, and I’ll think, 'Oh my god, Powers, you’re not making this up. You've stumbled on the actual story here.' Except in the morning, I'm sane again." Leave gaps, interrogate those gaps, and then divine your own campaign setting from what you find.

Now the only way to truly recycle all my ancient prep is to find a way to re-use plot points from my aborted Spelljammer campaign from ten years ago...

Review: Spelljammer: Adventures in Space (and D&D 5e)

I wasn't going to write this review.

Despite recently running a lot of fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, I don't have an overwhelming urge to talk about it much here on the ol' hobby blog. I may publish the occasional piece of 5e content here, but the actual rules and the culture around the game has been analyzed to death elsewhere. The scene certainly doesn't need another voice muddying the waters and Wizards of the Coast has no need to benefit from either my praise or scorn, so I keep doing the stuff I like with or without them.

However, two things spurred me to write this review:

1. I love the Spelljammer setting, as the tags Spelljammer and SPELLS WILL BE JAMMED might suggest.
2. Most of The Dreaded Discourse™ surrounding the new Spelljammer release has been of even worse quality than usual.

So, this is perhaps less a review than a rebuttal. If you happen upon this review, consider this a message in a bottle: if someone on social media told you how horrible the new Spelljammer box set was and how you need a bunch of third-party content to make it playable, I'm here to more appropriately calibrate your expectations. (In short: the rules are perfectly acceptable, being neither excellent nor terrible, and you don't need anybody's homebrew to "fix" the new rules.)

However, this review will be a bit long, because it is (in my mind) impossible to discuss an official fifth edition D&D release without talking about WotC's design goals in making D&D 5e. (And you can't talk about those design goals without discussing what came before.) As such, this is a partial review of fifth edition itself. These reviews won't be especially in-depth, but they will hopefully be helpful.

If you're only here for a specific section, refer to the table of contents below.

Table of Contents

I. The History of D&D (and Table-Top RPGs)
II. Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition
III. Spelljammer: Adventures in Space

I. The History of D&D (and Table-Top RPGs)

If you remember your history pretty well, you can safely skip down to section II. Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Conversely, if you really want to delve into the thick of RPG history, authors like James Maliszewski, Ben Riggs, Jon Peterson, and Shannon Appelcline do great work in this sphere. (Although as with so many things in the hobby, their focus is often on Dungeons & Dragons specifically, leaving some of the less-renowned-but-still-influential aspects of the hobby unexamined.)

But the short version is that D&D starts in 1974 as a game exploring site-based and event-based adventures — pulp heroes wandering into the wilderness, facing danger in dungeons, and gathering the treasures therein (typically to fund their own personal projects).

Within a decade, more narrative structure emerges in game scenarios, exemplified by the investigation- and skill-heavy Call of Cthulhu in 1981 and the Hickman revolution starting with 1982's I3: Pharaoh. Money stops becoming a vital resource and starts becoming a supplement: 1989's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2e does away with XP-for-gold (although it remains as an optional rule), instead focusing primarily on fighting monsters, while 1991's Vampire: The Masquerade completely abstracts character wealth as part of the Backgrounds system and assumes it is not a primary goal.

By the end of the 1990s, the transition from site-based or event-based adventures into plot-based ones culminates in the ascendance of the metaplot: an overarching story that runs in the background of published game materials, such that collectors can read the books to put together the puzzle and players can interact with big events in the background of the setting. Many of the big games of the era have a metaplot revealed during the line's development (Cyberpunk, Deadlands, Delta Green, Unknown Armies, and World of Darkness all come to mind), and while D&D as a whole avoids a metaplot, most of its campaign settings have them. (Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Planescape, and Ravenloft certainly all had metaplots.) The metaplot is simultaneously remembered fondly by fans as an interesting serialized story in its own right, while also being reviled as a bloated gimmick to sell books.

When TSR collapses and Wizards of the Coast takes over the game, they put their own stamp on the game by combining the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons line with the BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia era-D&D line into simply Dungeons & Dragons. A few of the popular games at the time followed suit, relaunching in the early 2000s with slick new editions and largely abandoning the metaplot structure in favor of increased accessibility. However, this is an era in which a lot of games design more explicit rulesets (relying less on GM rulings), and also replace the metaplot subscription structure with a emphasis on "character builds" — the game line is now a vehicle by which to build an optimized character. While D&D 3e exemplifies this with its so-called ivory tower design, you see it in lines like Exalted and new World of Darkness.

While game lines become more bloated, desktop publishing and forums like The Forge and RPG.net allow for the creation and proliferation of smaller, more focused indie RPGs. While some of these games are short-lived, as befits a smaller and more narrow play experience, a lot of them are read by other game designers and introduce more mechanical concepts into the RPG ideaspace.

After an eight-year development cycle, Wizards of the Coast finally takes what it learned and rebrands D&D again into the wildly-polarizing fourth edition. This continues a lot of the game design trends of third edition, taking them to their logical conclusion by further emphasizing combat as the focus of the game. Combat procedures are explicit, repeatable, and largely in the players' hands. (Instead of GMs making rulings on things the players want to try, most of what a character can do is located on the character sheet.) The game's encounter design also lends itself to largely linear adventure paths of straightforward plots broken only by the game's setpiece battles.

While the game still sold well, the backlash online was fairly intense, taking two interesting forms:

1. The grognard bloggers who stuck with BECMI or AD&D during the third edition era start swapping design notes with the arthaus punk bloggers, forming the OSR largely by accident.
2. WotC ends their contract with Paizo Publishing, the contractor who published Dragon and Dungeon during the third-edition era. Since they now have a lot of experience writing third-edition content, they make their own third-edition retroclone called Pathfinder.

The backlash and increased competition for dungeon-y, dragon-y adventure game design space results in fourth edition D&D having one of the shortest development cycles of any D&D edition. After only four to six years depending on how you count it, WotC takes these disparate pieces of information — the stuff happening in the storygames sphere, the stuff happening in the OSR sphere, and the fan response to Pathfinder — and returns to the drawing board to release "D&D Next" for the game's fortieth anniversary.

II. Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition

While I read some D&D books and played a single, hazily-recalled game around 2006, fourth edition was my first edition of the game I ran and played beyond one session, starting in 2011. (As noted elsewhere, I mostly ran World of Darkness before coming to D&D.) As such, fifth edition is the first version of the game that I have followed largely as it released, instead of piecing it together in hindsight. I don't know if that makes me especially qualified to write what follows, but now you understand my background on the subject.

Forty years of game design brings us to this. During the mid-2010s, I recall someone calling fifth edition, "everyone's second-favorite edition of D&D," and that sounds about right. I recently described most of the fifth edition releases as "a C+ essay." (As with most things in the universe, I often describe it as, "Not as good as the fans say it is, but better than the haters say it is.")

If you play Super Smash Bros., D&D 5e is Mario, excelling in no particular area but robust in all of them. In the immortal words of George Costanza, 5e is "right in that meaty part of the curve: not showing off, not falling behind."

In short: it's good. (But not great.)

A lot of the things that drive its popularity include its prevalence (as it acts as a sort of lingua franca in the RPG hobby), its thriving play culture, its dominance on livestreaming RPG shows, and the fact that it more-or-less does what it advertises. If you want an adventure game that lets you go on adventures about exploring strange locations, interacting with interesting NPCs, fighting monsters, recovering treasure, and becoming more powerful while doing so, it handles all these things.

If you want a flatter power curve; a less number-heavy experience; something that focuses less on resource management; an experience that more consistently reflects a specific genre rather than "whatever breed of fantasy happens at the table tonight;" something that takes place in a more modern setting; an experience that actively dissuades combat; or a setting with no magic or different magic other than the pseudo-Vancian model, you probably want to look elsewhere.

As noted on this blog, I operate in a lot of indie spaces, and they tend to complain about Dungeons & Dragons at length. (So much so that allegedly anti-D&D places are where I sometimes get significant news about official D&D releases.) But those complaints are often incoherent, and clearly represent some personal issue with the game. In my mind, there are only three legitimate complaints about fifth edition D&D, and they're unlikely to change any time soon:

1. It's corporate art. And like a lot of corporate art, it's designed to be as inoffensive as possible. It's bland and it doesn't really do anything innovative.
2. The rules are complicated. It's very number-heavy and worries about fine details like positioning and resource management. If you have difficulty tracking a lot of variables, if you have a disability that makes it difficult to keep numbers in your head, or if tedious note-taking doesn't sound like your idea of fun, this might not be the game for you.
3. The culture overshadows the game at the table. Strictly speaking, this isn't the fault of the rules, but it does lead to a lot of trouble online. D&D is incredibly widespread, and people are overwhelmingly likely to learn the game from a mentor. As such, everyone thinks they know what the rules are, but almost no one actually reads the books cover-to-cover. (And even if you do, the rules are complicated. Nobody can keep all of the rules in their head at once.)
4. A phantom fourth argument that is partially true is that the game is pretty expensive. That isn't totally true: while there might be marketing pressure and peer pressure to spend money on it, the basic game is technically free. You can download the Basic Rules for free (or use the Basic Rules on D&D Beyond), use an online dice roller, and find enough free content online to run the game for the rest of your life without doing any work. I suspect the thriving community around the game and the free rules are two of the many factors that maintain the game's popularity.

But to understand why WotC has made the design decisions it made, one must understand that this represents forty years of game design and fifteen years of Wizards of the Coast corporate analysis. Fifth edition is a fundamentally reactionary edition, responding to all that came before and combining aspects from the previous eight or so editions of the game into something that tries to please everyone. The overall trend is one of retaining some of the most popular rules and incorporating bits of design from other games while also simplifying concepts from previous editions: multiple spells are condensed into aspects of a single spell, floating modifiers are condensed into advantage/disadvantage, monster stats are simplified from their third edition counterparts and all relevant information is found reliably in the stat block. (Recall that, during the BECMI and AD&D era, valuable statistical information like special abilities and spells were often hidden in the monster descriptions, usually-but-not-always in the same place.)

Also recall that, while a lot of the design of previous editions has proven quite popular, analysis suggests it maybe wasn't sustainable. Ahead of his recent book, Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons, Ben Riggs made a handful of posts on Twitter and elsewhere about TSR sales figures, and they paint a bleak picture. The classic AD&D 2e box sets are fondly recalled but apparently didn't sell terribly well. Likewise, we know that third edition was popular and is well-regarded by the fans, but that edition had a punishing release schedule with an enormous game line. We don't know much about WotC sales figures, but it seems reasonable to surmise that they developed fourth edition because sales were flagging.

(I would also be remiss if I ignored the fact that fifth edition is also designed around the Adventurers League organized play program and the community content on DM's Guild, which is part of the complex mélange of factors that drives the game's popularity. The game can only be but so outlandish, otherwise it would interfere with the open table policy of the Adventurers League. Likewise, any content that fans really want to see can easily be made by the community and posted on DM's Guild for pay — which per DM's Guild policy, still monetarily benefits Wizards of the Coast. That's pure passive income for them.)

In short, the unified design and staggered release schedule for fifth edition indicate that Wizards of the Coast has learned from its business mistakes. They're not constantly churning out content every month, they're not establishing expansive metaplots, they're not trying to innovate while also risking failure. (The streaming space also provides a constant stream of free advertising for the game without WotC having to put out anything new. At this point, they don't need to churn out new content every month, and it's easier to catch press for the new release when it's a big one every quarter or so.) It's all very safe, focus-tested, and conservatively-designed. Whatever else someone's opinion of D&D 5e, these trends all suggest that this was a very conscientiously-designed edition of the game. (The feedback from the ongoing open playtest of the game no doubt guides some of its development and contributes to the smooth, inoffensive nature of it.)

III. Spelljammer: Adventures in Space

Which brings us to the actual point of this post.

You have a new edition of the game that also tries to be a legacy edition, supported by a continuous open playtest of the rules and a burgeoning fan community. While the original fifth edition release in 2014 focused on the popular Forgotten Realms as the game's implied setting, fans have been clamoring for old content like adventures and campaign settings to be re-released under fifth edition. Wizards of the Coast started releasing legacy content fairly quickly, beginning with an Eberron playtest in 2015 and an official release of an expanded version of I6: Ravenloft (entitled Curse of Strahd) in 2016. Fan requests for additional updates continue across social media, and WotC continues to publish it.

Hearkening back to the Spelljammer: AD&D Adventures in Space box set, Wizards of the Coast releases Spelljammer: Adventures in Space in 2022. As with most of their other products, the production values are decent, the art is lovely, and the organization is as expected. It's a C+ essay — it promises rules for spelljammers, space-themed monsters, and an adventure, and it delivers exactly what it promised.

Interesting tidbits from the new setting include:

• In contrast to the original 2e setting, there is only one kind of spelljammer helm, and it no longer requires your spell power to use it. (This last fact is even a change from the helm of the scavenger published in 2018's Dungeon of the Mad Mage.) Every spelljammer is roughly as maneuverable as any other, and there is no longer an upper limit to the tonnage of a ship.
• Spelljammer helms can still only be used by spellcasters, though. You just don't have to turn spell energy into motive force anymore.
• They don't include all the ships from the old material, but again, it's pretty easy to convert old material to the new system. As it stands, the new set includes a lot of old designs and adds a few new ones.
• Spelljammers are very accessible in this edition. You can probably get one, helm and all, for about 25,000gp or so. (In 2e, spelljammers were expensive, especially the helms. While a spelljammer is a good place to invest one's loot after many expeditions, it's also fun for players to be able to buy one relatively early in the game.)
• The phlogiston from 2e is gone, replaced with the Astral Plane. I actually like this change, as it means that even low-level characters might have the resources to voyage into other worlds: journeys are now unlikely to take more than two months' worth of supplies, as the Astral Plane doesn't require rations or air. Of course, the trade-off is that the Astral Plane is way more dangerous than the phlogiston. (Not counting the inherent risk of setting your whole ship on fire in the phlogiston, of course.)
• Also in keeping with the Astral Plane, there are no space lanes, star systems have a tendency to move like bubbles in a sea, and you automatically orienteer in the direction of something by thinking about it. In short, they've made it easy to get around by leaving those details up to the Game Master — you don't need a map to get from Krynnspace to Realmspace, and the trip is as long or short as the GM decides it is.
• You can never go wrong with more monsters, and the included Boo's Astral Menagerie has plenty:
• A lot of Dark Sun monsters appear in this version, such as braxat, b'rohg, gaj, psurlons, and ssurrans. (The thri-kreen also appear as a playable race in the Astral Adventurer's Guide.) A leaked map even indicates that "Doomspace" in the included adventure Light of Xaryxis was originally going to be called "Athasspace." As it stands, Fyreen in Doomspace certainly sounds like a post-post-apocalyptic Athas. WotC also has a habit of teasing future products in current ones, although such references are just as likely to be fanservice. (But they've previously suggested that they'll do Dark Sun... sooner or later. Maybe.)
• A couple of BECMI-era monsters from Mystara also appear, like the brain collector/neh-thalggu and the feyr.
• In addition to some classic Spelljammer setting monsters, like arcane/mercane, dohwar, space swine, and zodar, there are also a handful of unique monsters in this edition, like space clowns and vampirates.
• The included adventure, Light of Xaryxis, is typical Wizards of the Coast fare: a linear plot crystallized around a couple of good ideas. It's looks fun to play and easy to run, but there isn't much in it that makes me excited to run it.
• Compare and contrast: John Battle's recent offering The Sun King's Palace is a little messier than Light of Xaryxis and looks like it might take a not-insignificant amount of preparation to run without messing up the presentation, but The Sun King's Palace is so much more evocative than Light of Xaryxis that I'm way more excited at the prospect of preparing it and running it.
• However, in the defense of Light of Xaryxis, I thought the hook was clever: it is a deliberate homage to the Flash Gordon serials of the late 1930s as well as the 1980 movie. It even has genre-appropriate cliffhangers between chapters!

Apart from the proliferation of Dark Sun monsters and the clever design to the included adventure, there aren't any surprises here. What you see is what you get.

However, as noted at the start of this review, the impetus for this review is to clarify some of the criticism online. Most of it is misleading and represents a different product from the one I read. We'll go through a few of the recurring criticisms I have seen:

1. "They didn't include [insert my favorite spelljammer monster or ship type here]!" This one's easy: if you're an old fan, you probably still have your books, or you bought pdfs from DM's Guild. Adapting old material is easy; Wizards of the Coast even gives you conversion guidelines. Specifically in the case of monsters, D&D 5e doesn't often publish fifteen variations of a single monster anymore. The guidelines in the Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual, and Boo's Astral Menagerie are pretty clear: if you want a weird version of a monster, take an existing one and give it different traits. Boo's Astral Menagerie gives guidelines for this process to make wildspace-dwelling versions of normal creatures.
2. "They didn't include the tables for making solar systems, or the subsystems for determining orbits!" They weren't going to. Remember, a major idea behind 5e is simplification. For determining orbits, they just tell you to calculate the distance between planets mathematically. They assume that you're going to use the included adventure as inspiration for other star systems you make, rather than relying on random tables. If you want the old subsystems, they're still in the 2e books, waiting to be used. (Also, those subsystems were all optional rules anyway.)
3. "They didn't tell you how to determine how far away you have to get from a planet to reach spelljamming speed!" In keeping with the (comparatively) more narrative focus of fifth edtion, they probably figure that's "however long the GM wants it to take." According to the old box set, on average it takes forty minutes to an hour to escape a planet's gravity well, more if it's windy, so I would use that as a guideline. I usually go with an hour; an hour is enough time for a single random encounter check, so that sounds good to me.
• If you want a more official ruling on this, the Astral Adventurer's Guide defines the air envelope of a planet extending out to a distance the same as the planet's diameter. That's... actually about right for Earth, but that distance describes the outer edge of the exosphere, which is too thin and too exposed to space to support actual life. Chapter five of the Dungeon Master's Guide describes terrestrial life typically ending above 20,000 which is also reasonably accurate; Earth's troposphere ends at about 40,000 feet, beyond which the atmospheric density is only one-thousandth of its value at sea level. While the gravitational pull at that altitude is about the same as at sea level, "the place where breathable air ends" is probably good enough for RPG games and occult symbolism. Twenty thousand feet is just under four miles, which most spelljammers can reach in a half-hour to an hour.
4. "The Astral Plane makes travel between systems too easy! Characters can't get lost in the Astral Sea!" I suspect that's part of the point. (But as noted above, the Astral Plane is often scarier than the phlogiston. I don't think there were astral dreadnoughts in the phlogiston...) Once you get to the Astral Plane, the GM decides how long the journey takes and what you encounter along the way, and all of this is in keeping with the procedures for GMing a game these days. If you want to make it more complicated and less certain, then do so.
• I would also remind anyone who thinks that you can't discover something by accident that the star systems move. You can take a five-month-long return journey to Realmspace only to find that another star system has bobbed into your path along the way. Likewise, since you can only travel to places that you know exist, learning that a specific star system exists so you can fly to it sounds like a pretty good adventure hook to me.
5. "They left out the rules for ship combat!" This is actually the critique that spurred me to write this review. Whenever I see this complaint, I re-read the "Ship-to-Ship Combat" section in the Astral Adventurer's Guide to make sure I didn't imagine it, and every time the rules are still there. They give guidelines for ship-to-ship combat, but they assume that you will remember the rules for combat, objects, and vehicles from chapters eight and nine of the Player's Handbook, and chapters five and eight of the Dungeon Master's Guide.
• A much more valid critique is that they ought to have provided a reference reminding you of where to find the relevant rules, or have provided a summary. For example, I had forgotten the rules for object saving throws until I went looking for them. (In D&D 5e, objects automatically fail all Strength and Dexterity saving throws, but succeed on all other saves.) That's why you need to read chapter eight of the Player's Handbook for spelljammer purposes; heaven forbid they would be in the "Object" section of chapter eight of the Dungeon Master's Guide.
• "Why are the rules for ship combat spread across five chapters in three books?" is an exceedingly valid critique. Does your game need hundreds of rules spread across several rulebooks in 2022? (Into the Odd, Mothership, and World of Dungeons all come to mind as short RPGs that could support years of play, not to mention the hundreds of one-page RPGs floating in the digital aethers.)
• "You need to get this fan supplement to make the rules playable!" is not a valid critique in this case (and really just sounds like someone's gimmick to sell more DM's Guild content or to bring you to their blog).
• As always, I would recommend using the procedures as defined in the core books before deciding it doesn't work for your group and adding third-party rules into the mix.
6. "They didn't use the expanded vehicle rules from Ghosts of Saltmarsh or Baldur's Gate: Descent Into Avernus!" Remember, those are optional rules, and the developers have a lot of ground to cover in this book. (And again, the keyword of this edition is simplification. I suspect that they're moving away from optional vehicle rules because they weren't as popular as people on the internet suggested, or they're trying to streamline things for One D&D in 2024.) The basic vehicle and object rules are in the Dungeon Master's Guide, and they're perfectly serviceable.
• If you want to use the more detailed vehicle statistics from Ghosts of Saltmarsh or Baldur's Gate: Descent Into Avernus, nothing is stopping you from doing a conversion, although converting sixteen ships to the more complex Ghosts of Saltmarsh system and running spaceship combat in it with multiple ships sounds like a nightmare.
7. "The adventure sucks!" As noted above, Light of Xaryxis has problems, but they're pretty consistent with the problems of other fifth edition adventures. (Too plot-focused, too linear, stakes are so high as to be totally abstract.) I suspect, however, that most people are reacting to the structure of the adventure, and they completely ignored the part where the authors say that it's a love letter to pulp adventure movie serials of the early 20th century. If you've seen the hokey plots and shocking swerves of a Flash Gordon or Commando Cody serial, you'll understand what the authors were trying to accomplish. (And despite the adventure's flaws, I feel like they succeeded.)

So, if you happened to find this after hearing that the new rules are unplayable, I'm here to tell you that they're perfectly serviceable. They may lack a lot of the flavor that made Spelljammer so beloved in the 2e era, but they're a good starting point. If you're looking for a rehash of the Unhuman Wars; the complicated subsystems for celestial mechanics; the granular ship mechanics; and a setting line comprising over two dozen products spread across box sets, books, Monstrous Compendium binder pages, and magazine articles, you won't find it here. (And Wizards of the Coast didn't take your old books away. Use them!)

However, if you want a stripped-down, back-to-basics version of the setting for fifth edition, you get exactly what you are expecting here and not a jot more. Honestly, if you read what they did with Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, you shouldn't be surprised here: in that book, they reset the metaplot such that you don't have to follow the old books to use the Domains of Dread in fifth edition, but you can absolutely include stuff from the old books if you like. It may not be innovative game design or provocative art, but it makes good business sense: include something interesting enough to draw in new fans while leaving enough gaps and references to legacy materials to avoid alienating old fans.

Edit (September 3, 2022):

After all that talk of Wizards of the Coast attempting to make their new edition as inoffensive as possible, The Dreaded Discourse™ continues apace. In the fifth edition Spelljammer adaptation, the hadozee were given a backstory wherein they were small, lemur-like creatures who were uplifted by a wizard to be used as workers and slaves before the wizard's apprentices helped liberate them.

If you know anything about Western history in the past five hundred years or so, you probably already see the problem. (A relatively comprehensive account of the scandal appears on this TechRaptor post.) For the record, I thought the backstory was a little weird, especially given how much of The Dreaded Discourse™ revolves around the long arm of the transatlantic slave trade, but I casually assume every big company hires a sensitivity reader these days and so promptly forgot about it.

After this fact was discovered and discussed on Twitter, Wizards of the Coast has issued a statement and errata and has already altered the race's description on D&D Beyond, removing the offending sections and slightly altering the hadozee's gliding ability. (However, some users have taken umbrage with the "Hadozee Resilience" trait, suggesting that it also reflects negative stereotypes against real-world ethnicities. As of yet, WotC has not issued a change for that.)

Edit (September 4, 2022):

Current WotC drama validates my boring opinion that mythological fantasy is simply too foundationed on ancient regressive philosophy (things like inherent evildom, platonic purity vs corruption, cruelty manifesting as physicality) to satisfy modern moralities. 1/4

— kirin (@koboldstyle) September 3, 2022

Edit (December 12, 2022):

After grousing about how players can't read, it is with a heavy heart that I must admit that I can't read, either.

In my refutation of point #3, "They didn't tell you how to determine how far away you have to get from a planet to reach spelljamming speed!" I made an error. A recent re-read of the Astral Adventurer's Guide reveals, "A spelljamming ship automatically slows to its flying speed (discussed later in this chapter) when it comes within 1 mile of something weighing 1 ton or more, such as another ship, a kindori (see Boo's Astral Menagerie), an asteroid, or a planet."

For some reason, I (like every other loudmouth on the internet, apparently) thought the "1 mile" rule didn't cover planets for some reason.

So by that math, escape velocity is much easier in 5e than it was in the 2e days; rather than an average of 40 minutes, most ships reach spelljamming altitude in 15-20 minutes. (The fastest ships like damselflies and shrikes reach spelljamming speed after a seven-and-a-half minute ascent.)

Remember, kids: reading is fundamental.

The Obligatory Update: 2015 Edition

Sadly, not a whole lot happening on the gaming front.  (At least, not anything truly blog-worthy.)

I'm still running that Dungeon World game.  I don't have much DIY stuff for it, though, because the PCs' responses to most things are Hack and Slash and Volley (usually with intensely graphic descriptions).  They are exceedingly efficient at murdering Scandshar.  I have a couple of extra monsters and magic items, but those will likely stay under wraps for now.  (Although, if you missed The Wendigo compendium class, there's that.)

It looks like Nicole and I are about to play a spot of D&D 5e.  I already have a sorcerer in mind; I don't know what she'll play.

Spelljammer has returned to my headspace and still won't let go after a year and a half; it now comes complete with a character creation document (still in progress, of course).

The current plan is to run A Single, Small Cut and Death Frost Doom at Madicon this year, as a sequel to the Death Love Doom run from two years ago.

A friend of mine wants me to run Rifts, which would require me to read any Palladium book; I have several, but I've never had cause to read them.  I suppose this is just cause.

The Carcosa megadungeon continues to lay fallow.  I think my New Years' resolution should be to get that underway.

I have been playing more video games, however.  I'm currently absorbing Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age II, and D&D: Daggerdale.  As I'll likely be playing Dark Souls next, I clearly only play video games that start with "D" anymore.  I think that's why Spelljammer has returned to my headspace; fantasy immersion brings me back to AD&D.  (Plus it helps that Dragon Age is a little sandbox-y, as that's completely what I want for Spelljammer.)

Quimmermount

So I made a bad pun on Google+ yesterday, suggesting that Rafael Chandler should have called Slaughtergrid by the name "Quimmermount" instead.

But then I stormed a brain and realized — orcs on Rockulon Prime were originally vat-bred by the drow, like Peter Jackson's take on the Uruk-hai.  Being that the drow were sufficiently advanced, it makes perfect sense that birthing pits would somehow be self-regulating (or at least some of them would have been).  Probably some mild artificial intelligence, making the whole thing like a sentient ooze that generates orcs.

So what if one went bad, like cancer?  A cancerous flesh labyrinth, burrowing deeper into the earth, spreading corruption as it goes.  A malign, insane, genius-level intellect guiding the dungeon.

It would still have traps and monsters, but these would be part of its immune system.  There would probably also be mutant orcs as its birthing pit protocol became increasingly corrupted.

It could probably also have treasure — it produces bezoars and pearls and weird mineral deposits that work like gems, and it has probably absorbed precious metals and magic items.  It probably has caches from adventurers who previously attempted to delve it.  Or it created weird, organic devices of its own design, looking like chaositech or Yuuzhan Vong nonsense.

For that matter, what if Quimmermount needs organic material to generate further legions of progeny?  What if it is deliberately attracting adventurers to generate the necessary material, supplementing it with whatever its pseudopods can catch.

So, Quimmermount.  A cancerous orc birthing pit worming its way into the earth.  A living, breathing megadungeon.  It's a thing.

Brainstorm the Second: By the way, if you run a game like Lamentations of the Flame Princess which tones down the fantasy elements and makes creatures unique, perhaps this is the only source of orcs in your campaign setting.  Maybe orcs are relatively rare, only haunting one particular location with Quimmermount at its heart.

So when some baron asks you to look for these greenish, pig-faced monsters haunting, say, the Black Forest, you find the corrupted birthing pit at its heart, no doubt made by some antediluvian civilization for unknown purposes.  Or maybe the original birthing pit seed fell to Earth in a meteor strike, and has only now grown enough to start spewing out its bio-engineered progeny.

Maybe orcs are humanoid because it uses human DNA as the template.

I'm just rambling now, but there you go.

Panderii Skirmishers

The Panderii Skirmishers — also known as the Panders, the Pander Fighting School, or the Dagrayuro in the elves' native tongue — were a fighting unit organized under the Dark Elves of Rockulon Prime.  Well aware of the potency field permeating Rockulon Prime's Crystal Sphere, they developed a fighting and training style to make use of it.

Since the collapse of the drow, some military schools have continued to practice the school while other warriors have learned and developed some of the tenets on their own (or read about them in old tomes, or whatever).

A Panderii Skirmisher advances as a typical member of the fighter class — same base attack/thac0/whatever, same saving throws, same XP chart.  If your game uses prime requisites (such as AD&D), these are also unchanged — for example, AD&D 2e requires a minimum Strength 9, and offers a bonus 10% XP for a Strength of 16+).

Panderii differ from normal fighters in several ways:

• If your game system assumes fighters automatically attract followers at domain level (or whenever they build a stronghold), Panderii do not automatically gain followers.
• If your game uses weapon specialization for fighters (as AD&D 2e does), Panderii don't gain that, either.
• Panderii cannot wear any armor, although they can use shields.
• Panderii are limited to the following weapons: clubs, daggers, darts, hand crossbows, knives, lassos, short bows, slings, broadswords, long swords, short swords, and staves.

However, in exchange for these limitations, Panderii gain the following benefits:

• Panderii Skirmishers gain a +2 bonus to AC (so +2 for ascending AC, -2 for descending AC).
• Panderii move at 1.25× normal speed.  So, for example, Labyrinth Lord assumes 120' as a base movement speed; Panderii would move at 150'.  In AD&D, the base movement for a standard human is 12; the Panderii would move at 15.
• Panderii Hit Dice move up one step — so, a Labyrinth Lord fighter with d8 HD would step up to a d10 HD; AD&D fighters with d10 HD would step up to d12 HD.
• Panderii also gain the thief ability to Move Silently, with a base chance equal to the Panderii's Dexterity score + level.  As such, a Level 1 Panderii with Dexterity 14 would have Move Silently 15%, whereas a Level 9 Panderii with Dexterity 16 would have Move Silently 25%.

For obvious reasons, Panderii tend towards high Dexterity to boost AC.  On Rockulon Prime, they also tend towards high Strength or Charisma, as high values in these offer natural AC bonuses, as per the potency field.

Twenty Questions About Rockulon Prime

E. M. Lamb of (the now-defunct) Malleus Blogstrorum keeps telling me that we should do an actual sourcebook for Rockulon Prime.  I don't know if and when such a project would come to pass, but we can always humor the thought exercise.  Having recently happened across the twenty questions for Khorlhossa, I decided to apply Jeff Rients' twenty questions to Rockulon Prime.

1. What is the deal with my cleric's religion?

Rockulon Prime is traditionally monotheistic, so you more than likely worship the Space-God.  Encompassing everything, you can be of any alignment and worship any of the dead-but-dreaming Space-God's aspects.  The nearby planet of Llurb Tdunon allegedly worships Lolth, the Princes of Elemental Evil, and two of the Slaadi Lords, so some few heretics might worship those.

2. Where can we go to buy standard equipment?

Most towns of decent size have general stores, blacksmiths, etc.  You likely won't find anywhere that sells everything you need, but the market probably encompasses whatever you'd want.  The sample town of Västernorr holds the Bizarre Bazaar, and being close to the borderlands, you can probably find any weird equipment item or piece of scavenged drowtech if you look hard enough.

3. Where can we go to get platemail custom fitted for this monster I just befriended?

Any blacksmith worth his salt could probably custom make armor, particularly in a settlement where mutants are welcome.

4. Who is the mightiest wizard in the land?

He's technically off-world, although still in the planet's orbit, but the demilich known as the Librarian of a Thousand Lunacies probably counts.  Doctor of metalphysics and wizardology Karl Satan is probably one of the best known in academic circles.  Wiss Khan Sin was fairly potent in his time.

5. Who is the greatest warrior in the land?

Many storied heroes are known to the people of Rockulon Prime, but Midnight Lordzealot allegedly killed Glithuthatu the Putrid, an infamous Hell-Maggot that had long plagued the people of Fórnarlamb.

6. Who is the richest person in the land?

Again, off-planet, but the Librarian of a Thousand Lunacies certainly counts.  There's a lot of talk that the monarch of the enlightened city-state of Skarpurlofa holds a great deal of wealth in her coffers, but some folks also say the Cosmic Hierophant of Lok Tooran controls a fair amount of cash garnered from tithes.

7. Where can we go to get some magical healing?

Any major city probably has a temple with a settled cleric of the Space-God.  Smaller towns and villages may have a doctor or herbalist who can give you some treatment, even if it's not wholly magical.  Some borderlands towns may have access to scavenged drowtech, which might as well be magic.

8. Where can we go to get cures for the following conditions: poison, disease, curse, level drain, lycanthropy, polymorph, alignment change, death, undeath?

Again, a temple can probably help you in a major city, although you may also want to check out a drowtech specialist.  Smaller towns have to make do with doctors and herbalists, who very well may not be able to treat any major curses.  The fabulous lost technology of the once-great drow might be able to handle that, but again, that depends on finding a mechanic, scavenger, or Grease Monkey with access to lost drowtech.

9. Is there a magic guild my MU belongs to or that I can join in order to get more spells?

The University of Wiss Khan Sin is probably the best known, but there are no doubt other schools and guilds throughout Rockulon Prime.

10. Where can I find an alchemist, sage or other expert NPC?

Major cities and border towns are your best bet.  Anywhere with a University of Wiss Khan Sin annex is probably safe.

11. Where can I hire mercenaries?

Any major city-state or border town probably has a mercenary company of notable size.

12. Is there any place on the map where swords are illegal, magic is outlawed or any other notable hassles from Johnny Law?

The whole world is pretty adventure-friendly, although you may have to deal with whatever strange decrees the local leaders have concocted.  The Cosmic Hierophant and his Schizoid Parliament of Lok Tooran have some...rather strange local ordinances.

13. Which way to the nearest tavern?

The tavern is the heart of the town, so you're likely close to one.

14. What monsters are terrorizing the countryside sufficiently that if I kill them I will become famous?

Hell-Maggots are so grotesque and feared that they likely count, especially for the larger ones.  Individual spots may be plagued by feral mutants, goblins, gnolls, orcs, undead, or whatever local monster is common in the region.  Liches tend to be widely feared enough to count.  Creatures of the Outside — aboleths, beholders, mind flayers, and suchlike — are also widely feared and hated enough to count.

15. Are there any wars brewing I could go fight?

There's always some pissing contest among city-states.  Lok Tooran's Schizoid Parliament tends to instigate conflict with its neighbors.  The undead warlord and Dread Warrior known as Seraph Sinner-anger is frequently on the march with his warband, and rumor has it that he can only be stopped by the Axes of Evil of Torturion...

16. How about gladiatorial arenas complete with hard-won glory and fabulous cash prizes?

They're not common, although sizable towns and cities on the frontier likely have them.  Any town lacking gladiatorial bouts will likely have unofficial boxing matches or fights if you want to get in the underground fighting circuit.

17. Are there any secret societies with sinister agendas I could join and/or fight?

Since the Space-God encompasses all alignments, his Evil adherents frequently count (although some rule openly).  Secret societies tend not to range beyond their own city-states, although there are persistent rumors of a widespread conspiracy of jingoist drow who wish to return to the glories of their decadent and fallen civilization.

18. What is there to eat around here?

Depends on where you go.  Prodigious quantities of alcohol are pretty much universal.

19. Any legendary lost treasures I could be looking for?

Well, the Axes of Evil mentioned above likely count.  The lost technomagical marvels of the drow are renowned as being fairly potent.  Any warlord who could recover an operational Bloodstone Bomb (and not vaporize himself and the surrounding countryside in the process) could probably take any city-state he or she wanted.

20. Where is the nearest dragon or other monster with Type H treasure?

Again, depends on where you are.  The now-dead Lord Vau had a lot of treasure stashed in his tower, and there are some dragons overlooking hordes.  Some of the older Hell-Maggots rest among hoary tombs with archaic treasure hordes, although the legendary Vakothmm the Tumescent Putrescence allegedly lairs in the hallowed halls of a long-dead drow queen.

Ill Lithids versus Iron Skalds

When they first arrived on Rockulon Prime, the potent psionic might of the illithids found resistance from the magics of the dying drow and the growing elf subraces.  Naturally, they turned their massive intellects to the problem in the hopes of finding some countermeasure.

The battle of all battles!

Centuries later, with the decline of the elves and the ascent of humanity and the other demihumans, certain illithid enclaves found the answer.  Several mages and bards learn ancient bardic music and are collectively known as the Iron Skalds, descended as they are from the traditions of the Metal Hymns of the Space-God.  However, other musical traditions exist.  One such tradition, hip-hopera, is of unknown pedigree — a mix of metal, drowtech-derived electronica, and tribal rhythms, various sources claim drow, half-orcs, halflings, humans, and others among the style's progenitors.  Whatever the case, the illithids determined its rhythms could act as a possible counter to Heavy Metal Hymns.

These hip-hopera enclaves have become known as Ill Lithids.

To act as a delivery system for these hip-hopera rhythms, Ill Lithids psychics originally relied on subvocalization and certain applications of their innate Mind Blast.  However, some managed to reverse engineer old drowtech to act as an automated delivery system, powered by bloodstone fuel cells.

A boombox; alternately, a "ghetto blaster."  Be careful:, it is said a boombox can change the world.

An alteration of an old drowtech sonic weapon, a boombox or ghetto blaster can play normal music or pump out hip-hopera jams at supernaturally enhanced decibels.  A drowtech boombox works much like a Screamer from Wisdom from the Wastelands Issue #9, dealing energy and sonic damage in a cone-like shape.  It is usually good for roughly twenty shots, although it may have more power, depending upon the power source.

Of course, the Iron Skalds are not to be outdone.

Not to be outdone, some traditionalists among the Iron Skalds have organized themselves under the Elvish motto, "Orhaud gyth, telpenc gurthel."  (Literally, "Enemies of metal, your death [is] our reward.")  A fair number of bards and metal wizards take it upon themselves to deal death to Ill Lithids whenever possible.  Some extremists even take it so far as to kill any practitioners of hip-hopera, assuming that they are compromised by Ill Lithid agents.  (Which is sometimes, but not usually, true.)  As such, the bloody culture war continues across the face of Rockulon Prime with little signs of slowing...

Campaign Updates

Things continue to be slow on the things-to-post-on-the-hobby-blog front.

But, I continue to run and organize campaigns, so that's good, right?

If you want to read about my D&D 4e game that's been running for two years (we play infrequently, unfortunately), check out Crux of Eternity.

If you want to read about my comparatively more recent AD&D 2e Spelljammer game, check out Can't Take the Sky.  We also play infrequently, although we're scheduled to play this weekend.  I'm not convinced that will work out.

Fiend Folio World: Llurb Tdunon

(Apart from any errant travelers who may happen upon the world, Llurb Tdunon is entirely made of Fiend Folio creatures.  Feel free to check out the Fiend Folio-only encounter tables that accompany this world.)

Set in the same star system as Rockulon Prime, Llurb Tdunon is an enormous world (albeit with Earth-strength gravity), hundreds of thousands of miles in diameter.  (In Spelljammer terms, it's a Size H, Type E spherical world.)  Llurb Tdunon is a savage land of tundra, desert, forest, and jungle.  Like Rockulon Prime, Llurb Tdunon's development was also influenced by the coming of the Space-God.  Unlike Rockulon Prime, Llurb Tdunon did not play host to the dead-but-undying deity's corpus, but rather, the planet was infused with large quantities of the Space-God's blood (so much so that it has a somewhat ruddy hue, and even has a series of red rings, formed by frozen blood droplets).  The quantity of deific blood prompted both strange evolutionary lineages as well as the proliferation of extraplanar portals.  Various outsiders — such as githzerai and githyanki, slaads, and even the occasional devil — roam the landscape.  It is said that the Princes of Elemental Evil even roam the landscape in material forms.

The natives, largely ignorant of the mythos of the Space-God, instead worship the strange outsiders that have come to be known on this world.  In addition to the Princes of Elemental Evil, the planet's inhabitants are also known to worship Ssendam, Lord of Insanity, and Ygorl, Lord of Entropy.  While many of the planet's drow worship the Princes of Elemental Evil, some have turned to the heretical worship of Lolth, Demon Queen of Spiders.  (Oddly, apart from retrievers, there aren't really any spider-like creatures on Llurb Tdunon.  Scholars think the local populace either treat the spiders as mythological creatures, or that some of the drow originate off-world and brought spider lore with them.)

Note that the good races typically also worship these deities, although their prayers and sacrifices are largely rituals of placation, and they tend to worship different aspects of the deities.  The Princes of Elemental Evil, for example, are venerated simply for their connection to natural forces, while some clerics refer to healing spells as "The Closing of Lord Ygorl's Eye," referring to the idea that the Lord of Entropy's ignorance allows growth and healing to happen.

All-in-all, Llurb Tdunon is a savage land populated by monstrous humanoids and weird creatures.  Barring visitors from other worlds and planes, native sapient races include creatures such as aarakocra, bullywugs, dakon, drow, flinds, githzerai, kenku, svirfneblin, and the like.  With no native unifying race, the races tend to be insular and largely keep to themselves.  (Adventuring parties composed of humanoids, however, occasionally occur.)  As such, cities tend to have lots of untamed land between them, and they tend to organize along racial lines.

(Parties interested in the background of Llurb Tdunon may wish to read about the development of Fiend Folio encounter tables.)

Fiend Folio World: Fiend Folio Encounter Tables

(If you just came here for the Fiend Folio wandering monster tables, click the following link: View: Fiend Folio Wandering Monster Tables.)

Long before I started blogging, Jeff Rients mentioned the idea of "proscriptive campaign creation," referring to a campaign with certain intentional limits.  In the linked post, he discusses using Booklet 2: Monsters and Magical Items of S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth as the starting point of a campaign setting, but he also mentions the prospect of using 1981's Fiend Folio as the basis of a campaign setting.

While adventuring through the OSR blogosphere, I feel like I've heard this concept a couple of times, and decided that since I'm working on a Spelljammer game for my associates, now would be as good a time as any to work on the concept.  (For that matter, the Spelljammer core box set notes the possibility of using obscure Fiend Folio creatures to populate a world on pages 11 and 12 of Lorebook of the Void.)

As such, I decided to make a Fiend Folio-only campaign setting.

I'm really just here for the Fiend Folio stuff

Before I bore you with a ton of design notes, here are the Fiend Folio-only wandering monster tables in Google Drive spreadsheet format.  If that's all you want, just follow that link and you're good to go.  They're not terribly pretty, and they're not in a good format for printing, but they're readable.

When I decided to make a Folian setting, I discovered (to my surprise) that it had not yet been done publicly.  Jeff Rients has been compiling any data people post regarding the Fiend Folio, but there isn't much apart from a few musings on the subject.  In terms of AD&D-style data points, there were only two: Rients' own post on the Folian mythos, detailing the bleak gods of the Fiend Folio, and  Chris Hogan's Fiend Folio-only wandering monster tables, showing only the Dungeon Level wandering monster tables.  (Special thanks to Chris Hogan of Vaults of Nagoh for compiling those tables, because that jumping-off point was exceedingly helpful.)

So, over the course of a few days, I converted all of Hogan's tables to d100, removed any errant non-Fiend Folio results (his tables include humans, rival adventuring parties, demon princes, and groaning spirits), and reduced the "DM's Option" results (which I interpret as either DM's choice or special encounter tables or whatever) to 3% of the chart.

I also proceeded to convert all of the wilderness tables to D100 and remove all the Monster Manual results.

Here are more relevant notes:

• These tables assume access to TSR's 1981 Fiend Folio for AD&D 1e.  Several of the creatures have been reprinted elsewhere, so it's not totally necessary, but everything makes more sense if you have it.
• As per the original Fiend Folio, the aleax, denzelian, hound of ill omen, terithran, and trilloch are omitted (although the terithran appears on the Ethereal Encounter Table).  The creatures typically only appear in specific circumstances.
• All percentages are kept as originally on the random encounter charts.  I make the same assumption as Chris Hogan and assume creature frequency is the same in a Folian world.
• DM's Option is whatever the DM chooses.  You can throw a rival adventuring party into the mix, use a special encounter table, pick a creature you want to use, or whatever.  (If you're stuck for ideas, you can always just re-roll.)
• As in the original text, the wilderness charts feature several italicized creature names.  These creatures have a 75% likelihood to be encountered airborne.
• I replaced the number appearing distributions with dice ranges.

If I made any glaring errors on the charts, feel free to leave feedback in the comments.  And make sure you check out the tables.

(Also, interested parties may wish to check out the sample world of Llurb Tdunon.)

The Maim Cabinet

For the curious, I'm still alive.  It's been a little while since I've posted anything that's not a Deadlands replay, so here's what you missed:

I've mentioned a Spelljammer game a couple of times, and it has already begun.  (Watch this space for updates if you're into that sort of thing.)  Anyway, since this is first-level characters in AD&D, I decided to make a hack to make combat slightly less deadly, but at great cost.

So You Should Probably Be Dead

As soon as a character hits 0 hit points, that character typically dies.  (A variant rule lets characters survive up to -10 hit points, with critically wounded characters worsening by one hit point per round until death.)  This rule exists somewhere between those two.

Under this rule, when a character hits 0 or fewer hit points, that character can still be revived as long as a would-be healer gets to the character within one round.  (Keep in mind that AD&D rounds are a minute long, so that should be plenty of time; the DM can modify this as necessary.)  As long as any healing brings the character above 1 hit point, the character is revived.

Of course, it's not that simple.  The character took a shock that most people would not survive, and in fact, that probably required magic to save you.  You should be dead.  As such, you probably took a serious, permanent, and crippling injury.

As such, any character so revived needs to roll his or her System Shock percentage (DMs who don't use System Shock may take a CON check or a saving throw vs. death or whatever appropriate check you can contemplate instead).  Success indicates that hit points are healed, the character is revived, and everything is okay.  Failure means that the character rolls 1d20 on the Injury Table, below.  Negative hit points are applied as modifiers to the roll below, so a character at 0 hit points takes no penalty, a character at -1 hit points takes a -1 penalty to the d20 roll, and so on.  Simple, right?

Injuries on the table below can be healed by way of a regenerate spell or local equivalent, when appropriate.  (These injuries probably also disappear on subsequent resurrections, as well.)  The DM is the ultimate arbiter for what is required to heal such an injury.  (Likewise, the DM can always a declare a character beyond saving through this method.  Death from poison, massive damage, decapitation, and suchlike are viable choices.  In such case, only raising the character from the dead will work.)

Roll 1d20:

20: Only a Flesh Wound: No further injuries beyond hit point loss.
19: Lingering Scars: No real mechanical injuries, but the character suffers from chronic pain.  She can probably predict when it's about to rain with reasonable accuracy.
18: Disfigured: Your scars are significant enough to influence people's opinion of you.  Take a -1 reaction adjustment penalty.
17: Broken Limb: Randomly determine a limb.  That limb is broken.  A broken arm prevents the user from using that arm for anything and temporarily removes 1d4 Strength from the victim.  A broken leg reduces the user's movement speed by half and temporarily removes 1d4 Dexterity from the victim.  Lost ability points return at a rate of 1 per week assuming the limb is completely immobilized.  Failure to properly rest the limb while it heals assesses a permanent -1 penalty to all actions with the limb (and improperly healing a leg means that the victim always treats her encumbrance score as one category worse than it actually is for the purposes of determining speed).  Assuming the limb heals properly, it is thereafter treated as a Lingering Scars result.
16: Gelded: The character's reproductive organs are damaged, and the character is now sterile.
15: Injured Larynx: The character's larynx was injured.  The character cannot talk above a whisper, and cannot shout.  There is a 10% chance that the larynx is injured beyond any use, meaning that the character cannot speak (only making quiet, rasping noises) and cannot cast spells requiring verbal components.
14: Aphasia: The character has difficulty communicating with others.  Lose 1d4 Charisma.
13: Delirium: The character suffers from chronic confusion.  Lose 1d4 Wisdom.
12: Brain Injury: The character suffers from intelligence loss.  Lose 1d4 Intelligence.
11: Injured Spine: The character suffers from balance issues and loss of coordination.  Lose 1d4 Dexterity.
10: Gut Wound: The character suffers from a devastating wound to the torso.  Lose 1d4 Constitution.
9: Bad Back: The character suffers from a muscular dysfunction.  Lose 1d4 Strength.
8: Missing Eye: The character suffers from a -1 penalty whenever depth perception is a useful element (such as melee combat), and a -2 penalty whenever depth perception is vital (such as ranged combat).
7: Ruptured Eardrums: The character is totally deaf.
6: Maimed Limb: As Broken Limb, but the condition is permanent.
5: Blindness: The character loses all eyesight, acting as if in total darkness.
4: Punctured Lung: The character loses 1d4 Constitution, and has difficulties with exertion.  Overland movement is half normal, and any period of strenuous physical activity (maybe a minute or so) requires a Constitution check or else the character loses a round catching her breath.
3: Damaged Heart: As Punctured Lung, except a failed Constitution check requires an immediate saving throw vs. death or else the character suffers an immediate and fatal heart attack.
2: Retrograde Amnesia: The character loses a level.  Experience points and hit points remain, but the character acts in all other respects as if she were one level lower than she actually is.
1: Coma: Your character revives, but falls unconscious immediately.  Assuming proper care and nourishment, the character can make a Constitution check every 1d8 weeks.  Failure indicates the coma persists, while success indicates the character awakens.  A character loses a number of ability score points equal to the number of weeks spent in the coma.  These points should be taken from random ability scores, as determined by the DM.
0 or below: Death: Your character is dead.  A generous DM might rule that, since you were revived and died again, you rouse enough in your final moments to give some final words to your would-be savior.  A grim confession?  An enigmatic statement?  A touching memory?  The choice is yours.

A Note for 4e Fans: Parties interested in grievous injuries for 4e should consult the Less Death, More Danger! article from Dungeon 204.

Second Note: One of the resources consulted for this post was this Giant in the Playground forum post for 3rd edition house rules regarding maiming.  It talks about wounded characters in general and has a much simpler injury table than is recorded above.