Money Conversions

So, in the previous post, I discussed my early modern Unknown Armies game.

However, I neglected to share a useful thing I made.

The Ascension of the Magdalene gives a conversion statistic for Venetian ducats to D&D gp.  I also found a reference document converting the various currencies found in 1632.  (That document also relates old currency to modern United States dollars.)

Since all statistics indicate that early modern British pounds, shillings, and pence are roughly equivalent to Warhammer's gold crowns, silver shillings, and copper pennies, I also put those in the conversion.

Using all these statistics, I made a chart that converts Venetian ducats, Dutch lions, Dutch guilders, Dutch stuivers, gp (with a separate entry for the extremely valuable gold pieces in LotFP), sp, cp, WFRP gc, WFRP s, WFRP p, and modern USD.

Hopefully this is useful to you.  View the "1610 UA Currency Chart."

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.)

Secret Santicore 2012: Random Equipment

Due to unforeseen circumstances, Secret Santicore 2012 will not be released.  Wampus Country details the affair here.

But, individual Santicorians (Santicorons? Santicoids?) are posting their stuff, so I figured I might as well do the same.

I was requested to make a random chart for starting equipment.  This was rather daunting as there are several excellent starting equipment charts currently available — Hill Cantons made one, Untimately made one, and Abulafia has one (I'm sure I missed some good ones, but those form a good starting point).

Anyway, without further ado, here it is.  If you have need of a random equipment list for starting-level old-school D&D characters, hopefully it meets your needs.

Secret Santicore 2012: Random Starting Equipment

Addendum: In lieu of a pdf, Santicore articles will be released by the production staff on http://santicore.blogspot.com/.  Read 'em, they're good for you!

Addendum 2, Electric Boogaloo: Here's my entry, evidently from another Secret Santicore blog.

The Tomb of Theronna Onyxarm

So I did a series of posts on running an oD&D game (here's Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3).  In that game, the players played college students attempting to escape from the Tomb of Theronna Onyxarm, a long-forgotten dwarf folk hero.

Well, I finally put up the Tomb.

I removed a lot of my extraneous notes, and now the document only details the tomb.  All D&D-specific references (read: Product Identity) have been removed and replaced with Labyrinth Lord references.  However, astute observers will note that this tomb can be used with any old-school ruleset with minimal fuss.

In addition to the tomb itself, The Tomb of Theronna Onyxarm also details a new creature: the hive lizard.

Download it here.

Scenario: Relic

So, a little while ago I started running a Cthulhu Dark Ages campaign.  It tapered off (though I still have the notes for it, and hope to return to it eventually).  However, the introductory adventure, entitled "Relic," can easily stand on its own.

For this reason, I submitted it to Protodimension Magazine, but as I have not yet heard from them (this was months ago, by the way), I will assume that they are not going to publish it.

As such, I'll just host it.

In "Relic," a traveling monk comes to the investigators' home town and asks for assistance in retrieving church relics.  However, it quickly becomes apparent that all is not as it appears — the monk's strange accent and turns of speech may suggest that he is a foreigner, and the relics are unlike any ever seen by medieval Bretons.

Download it here.

If you have any questions, comments, and the like, go ahead and post them in the comments or somehow establish contact with me.  Feedback is welcome.  If it's terrible, I want to know about it and make it better (or just acknowledge the advice for next time, and leave a shrine of terrible behind).