Session IV: 'But I Don't Want to Look in the Bucket'

Our Party
Azok - Silver Dragonborn Barbarian
Harrod -Half Elf Paladin
Grog -Half-Orc (Ogren) Fighter
Scruffy - Blue Dragonborn Paladin
Stephen - Halfing Bard
Peter -Human Thief

When we last left off half of the party was facing off against a pair of giant maggots that had just ripped their way out of a corpse, while the other half was getting friendly with a rust monster. The maggots were dealt with post-haste while the rust monster was lured away by throwing the paladin's helmet into the sewer like tossing a ball for an eager dog.

You can tell you're dealing with new players when they did not immediately search the body, which meant they didn't find the treasure map on the dead pirate's body. Turns out I didn't need the hook anyway.

Instead they trekked on ahead where they found a storeroom guarded by a Ratling warrior and a half dozen giant rats. The ratling is an NPC I actually stat'd named Nasher. He played dead with a couple of hit points left and was able to scuttle out of the room once they had lost interest in him. Nasher and Skabies (who we will get to in a moment) had been hired by someone to steal Grixby's master's amulet, but were playing with it a bit before turning it over.

Meanwhile, Scruffy, broke into a heavy boarded up old dormitory for the sewer workers. The only things inside were some old cots, a table and a large bucket under the table. Scruffy went in first and they all ended up confronting this illusion-projecting, face eating monstrosity that had been hibernating in the bucket. Much hilarity ensued. We also learned that one of the twins can poke his brother in a certain way that makes him fart, which isn't really useful to me as a DM, but you never know.

After all that, I was finally able to reunite the party just in time for Azok, in his eagerness to loot the next room, barge down a nearby stairway and into a room where the Ratling Warlock Skabies was playing around with the Amulet of the Green Sign.

And we left it there. The next session isn't until the new year, but I told them that after they deal with 'the Ratomancer' as they dubbed him, they will level up. They are looking forward to that.

I broke a bit early because I wanted to ask the group what they wanted to do next year. They were running off in all directions until I broke it down a little simpler: keep exploring the dungeons, get on a ship, leave the city and explore the area, or stay in the city.

The little shits voted to stay in the city. So instead of coming up with mazes, monsters and traps I gotta come up with NPCs and stores and plots and street names and stores. Seriously, I am the least prepared for this. Cities are large and complex with politics and people and intrigue - which has never really been my style and I don't have a lot of ideas that don't get super complicated, super fast. I'm not sure my DMing skills are up for this.

The Shannara Chronicles

They look as bored by this as I felt. 

I normally don't like to do this, I'm normally in favour of people enjoying what they enjoy, but I think its my duty to point out just how bad this series is.

I went into this expecting it to be kinda bad, but hoping it was of a kind of bad I could ignore (Into the Badlands), or perhaps even be a little charmed by (The 100). Instead all I got was plots that varied between non-nonsensical and boring, dull stereotypes, unlikable characters and no sense of the world beyond its 90210 meets Lord of the Rings aesthetic. When you can't get any traction out of a magic meets post-apocalyptic setting, you're just not trying.

Then again, I've always thought the books were derivative trash that quickly shifted into overstuffed, self-important melodrama (neither type was uncommon in fantasy books of their times: post-Tolkien and then 80s epic fantasy respectively) so perhaps I shouldn't have been so surprised.

Munchkin Monster Cards: Tequila Mockingbird

Monster Munchkin Cards: Lust Monster

The Cheapest DM Tries 3D Printing...

So in the real world I work for a university, and like many schools nowadays they have a 3D printing service. Last week I stopped in and talked to the guy and it turns out he's a gamer as well. We spent a solid hour talking gaming, printing and going through models that I might like. Academic projects have priority (of course), but he's gonna try pumping out a few of the models we found. Its not expensive, less than a dollar for a standard 25mm mini. The trick apparently, is finding model that will print well. 

In the meantime he gave me a couple of failed minis he had on hand that will make decent ruins.   

~Half-breed, How I Learned to Hate the Word~

I don't like half-breed characters. They are in the rule book so I make allowances for them but I do have some serious issues about the whole thing.

not the least of which.

For one, I'm becoming less and less keen on using the word 'race'. It is a politically loaded and biologically incorrect term that should be confined to the past. I prefer 'species', and the scientifical part of my brain knows that different 'species' don't generally interbreed. That is the part of the actual definition of the actual word. Then there is the fact that I can't help but things like a half-turtle/half-cat PC to be inherently ridiculous, even in a fantasy setting (now Gammaworld or TMNT is a different cauldron of mutants entirely). And finally, it is just cheap, fucking power gaming.

Half elves I am okay-ish with. They are Tolkien cannon, and in my gameworld elves are highly magical anyway, so you can handwave some of the biology. Since elves are so-long lived anyway, I figure that they have ways of controlling when and if they have offspring. That means most half-elves are the result of at least a short-term (sometimes a very-short term) relationship.

Half-orcs are another matter. In fantasy media, Orcs are almost always the bad-guys, at war with the 'good' special and people of the world. This makes the origin story for most half-orcs ...problematic at best. If you're okay with that kind of thing, that's fine. Play your game your way. But my real-world job puts me in contact with people who have been sexually assaulted and I have no desire for all that pain, anger and confusion bleeding into the game I use to escape some of that. Consent in general has become a BIG part of my game. House rule #1 is you can't charm/control another player, or start a PVP fight unless BOTH players agree to participate*. If one side says they don't want their character to do that, it doesn't happen. Agree or get the fuck away from my table.

To get back to the topic at hand, my first idea was that half-ocs could be a people unto themselves, like the Metis. The side effect of two clashing civilizations who eventually come together and build their own culture. You'd have to stop calling them half-orcs, but that isn't a bad thing.

But here we run into my specific problem. I don't use 'orcs' in my game. I just have lots of goblyns of different sizes and shapes, Labyrinth style. I did this mostly for clarity, but also to keep the players on their toes. They never know exactly what KIND of goblin they might be facing.

"Is this the kind that slings flaming poop at us again!?"

So how do I get half-orcs? It took me a bit to figure this out, and if I didn't have a player choose to be a half-orc fighter I might have not even addressed the issue. But after some thought, I decided that half-orcs are actually just small Ogres (which are a species of giant). Like my goblyns, ogres come in many different shapes and sizes and some are born a little smaller, a little smarter than their parents. Ogres don't care much for their offspring anyway and once they've been taught to hunt they have to fight for their place or face abuse, forced servitude or might even be eaten. As a result, the smarter, smaller ogres run away where they sometimes find smaller creatures to dominate. These are the ones that become the head of a goblyn or kobold tribe. Some might encounter someone smarter and more powerful who is in need of a minion or two. Others gravitate towards pockets of civilization. There they they pick up enough skills to become mercenaries and labourers etc.  

None of this might never come up in-game, but I don't really care. It clears up a problem I have with the game, and it adds a detail to my world that I like. And for me, the real joy of being a DungeonMaster is the world-building.

*this does not include combat effects like a confusion spell that is intended to take an opponent out of the fight for a few rounds. But it does include things like the DM (me) using a Domination spell on a PC and then using that PC to attack another player or betray the party. I would only do that with the player's permission.

Munchkin Monster Cards: Stoned Golem

Monster Munchkin Cards: Psycho Hose Beast

Re-skinned Ghoulfiends. Still the unstoppable undead, just more gender and orientation friendly.

Pirate of Darkwater - The RPG

If the party goes the pirate-ship route, I will be drawing heavily from these sources. 

The on-line Worldbook

Worldbook PDF (without pictures)

Monster Stats. 

Munchkin Monster Cards: Cat Girl

The Wednesday Night, Dungeonmaster Blues

"But I didn't get the email!"

The organization that hosts the game either cancelled tonight or postponed it until next week. My spam filter caught the email and I didn't find out until I walked into the store. I'm not upset, it didn't cost me anything but a little gas.

But by Crom, I hope they just postponed it because I don't have any plan for what the group will do next after they leave the current sewer/dungeon.

I've got lots of ideas and I've given the party some open ended clues for possible directions (a treasure map, a doorway that goes deeper level below the sewers, a magic key to ... something), but tonight I wanted let the group decide what they were doing next. Then I was going to plan it out over the holiday break. My basic ideas are that they continue the dungeon crawl (the doorway), or have a pirate/nautical adventure (the treasure map), or keep exploring the city above (the key), or maybe even something else that I haven't thought of (which would be awesome!).

If tonight's session was cancelled it means I won't know what they want to do until the first game of next year, and that only gives me the two weeks between the sessions to come up with next subplot/mini adventure.

Monster Card Illithid Spawn

Party will be facing one of these tonight....

Munchkin Monster Cards: Bullrog

My original plan was to do the book alphabetically, but this big fella was a little much to take on a first. I`m pretty sure I`m not building higher-level threats correctly, but when I'm not sure I always side with what I think would be fun. I prefer lower level campaigns anyway so if I were to use anything like this, I'd tone it down anyway. 

Munchkin Monsters I Will Not Be Doing

Gelatinous Octahedron
I might come back to dice-related oozes later, but as written in the MMM there just aren't enough differences between this and a regular Cube to bother with.

Jabberwocks, Plutonium Dragons, Poison Ivy Kudzup Flytraps, Pterodactyls, Squidzilla, Tentacle Demons, Unspeakably Awful Horror
These have already been done in some form or another.

Lepercauns
I was starting to stat them up, then while image searching I saw a lot of pics of real people infected by the disease and it just stopped being funny.

Munchkin Monster Cards: Judge Fredd

Munchkin Monster Cards: Platycore

Munchkin Monster Card: Maul Rat

Munchkin Monster Card: Gazebo

In celebration of the new month, I`d thought I`d present this classic piece of D&D lore. 

Munchkin Monster Cards: Face Sucker

Munchkin Monster Cards: Snot Elemental

Munchkin Monster Cards: Doppleganstas

Munchkin Monster Cards: Kamikaze Kobold

Back to the Munchkins!

Munchkin Monster Cards:Flying Frog

Monster Cards: Killer Tomato

Another homebrew, one I'm surprised you don't see more often.

Monster Cards: Gothmonkey

Githyanki to Gothyanki in the Munchkin Monster Manual finally to my own homebrewed Gothmonkeys. I want to save the Gothyanki powers for when I come up with stats for a Grognard. 

These critters are often found in jungles or hanging out in markets, arcades and bazaars where they don't really bother anyone, but they just really bring the mood down, you know? 

The Cheap DM

The first actual-play session I did with the kids I had a bunch of monsters printed out and glued to foam-board, but I didn't have any images for their characters yet. I needed something I could use in the meantime, so I stopped by the local second-hand shop and ended up with a bag of classic Army Men that I picked up for a dollar. The kids each grabbed a solider in a different colour/pose and used that the first night. 

Which got me thinking, why doesn't a game company do something like this? Its easy to find spiders and insects around Halloween, and I've seen people finding packets of skeletons and zombies, so why not packets of cheap, common monsters like goblins, kobolds, spiders, or more authentically D&D creatures like owlbears, umberhulks etc? You could even do 'hero' packs with generic knights, eleves, dwarves, haflings and wizards. 

It would be a blessing for cash strapped DMs such as myself who absolutely cannot even begin to afford the absurd cost of building a decent mini collection. 

While I wait for that particular corner of the nine hells to freeze over, I've been working on my standees and I'm quite pleased with how they are turning out. All I do is grab some art from the interweb, size and format it in Excel and save it as a PDF before sending it off to Staples to be printed on their cheapest cardstock. I can do about ten pages for less than $5, and I end up with a decent amount of monsters, though I am not looking forward to cutting out the eight-pages of goblins.

The finished party, along with some plastic pieces scrounged
from second-hand shops and dollar stores. 

At the same second-hand store I found a board game I'd never heard of (something about making movies) that even had a few small maps. But what I really liked was that it came with a whole bag of plastic bases. The cardstock from Staples isn't thick enough to fit into the bases, but all I have to do to for a fix is glue a few extra strips of the cardstock to the inside of the folded standee.  

I didn't have to print this guy. I don't even have
a place for him in the story yet, but by-gum I dd it anyway.   

The first batch of monsters I did that I'd glued to foam-board isn't holding up so well. With no other way to stand them up, I used small butterfly clips, with works but that crushes the board and/or peels the cardstock off the backing. I'm not too concerned. I'll use them until they fall apart and if I still need them, I'll print them again as standees. Lesson: Foamboard is great for tokens, terrible for stand-ups.  

My shadows took a beating.  

 And last but certainly not least, I was FINALLY able to pick up this little beauty. For almost two months been sitting on the shelf at the local game-shop where I play with the kids, but since the bi-weekly game night is always two days before pay-day I'm usually pretty strapped. This time I deliberately put aside the cash, and was able to pick it up for a very reasonable prince. They shop has a few decent modules and I've already picked up an original Expedition to the Barrier Peaks as well as a copy of TSR's Lankmar. 

Sesson III: "That's Our Scruffy!"

Every party has that one guy who charges on ahead, and in our party that guy is our Dragonborn Paladin, Scruffy. After splitting into three groups last session, the rogue and the bard were battling shadows in a darkened room, while in another part of the sewers, the Barbarian, the Fighter and the Half-Elf Paladin squared off against a pack of giant spiders.

Scruffy meanwhile, had wandered off alone and blundered into a room where a ledge surrounded a deep pool. A Gelatinous Cube was there, feeding off the effluent being carried by the sewage. It was suppose to be an encounter for the whole party, not one character and I quickly realized that the GC was going to win any one-on-one fight through sheer hit-points alone. Not how I like to kill PCs. Luckily the Cube fumbled and I used that to have Scruffy notice that the ledge under the Cube was old and crumbling. He took the hint and started hacking at the floor instead until it gave way and dumped the GC into the rushing sewer water. The group immediately began joking that the GC would come back, seeking its revenge.

You all understand that I HAVE to do this now, right?

I went looking for suggestions on-line and the best response was having GC be washed out to sea and becoming a pirate. I'm leaving the next direction of the campaign up to the players, but a pirate/lost island adventure is definitely on the table. If they go in this direction, this has to happen.

If they remain in the city, I might have it become a crime-lord (leader of a gang known as 'The ____ Square'?), or possibly 'lurking monster killing innocents in the streets'. If they continue to explore the dungeons or go into the Borderlands, I might make it a Warlock or a Mage.

No matter what happens, the thing is coming back wearing a giant eyepatch.

The night ended with the Barbarian and Fighter and HE Paladin stumbling over a cave-in trap, cutting themselves off. They then stated messing with a bloated corpse they found with a tattoo of a catfish on its neck. Looting the body is not advised when its full of giant maggots.

The bard and the thief met back up with Scruffy and broke down a door that had been hastily nailed shut, from the outside. Inside the room smelt of iron and rust and no one recognized the large, red lobster like creature chittering in the far corner. It didn't display much interest in the thief, but it got very excited when Scruffy in his full, shining plate and badass sword, walked into the room. Scruffy thought it was cute and let it rub its long, feathery antenna all over his full and shining plate.

This is why I love playing with the kids. Who gets to sick a rust monster on a completely unsuspecting party nowadays? Hands down the most old school encounter I've ever run and I'm freakin' stoked about it. Just goes to show, its not the edition you're playing that matters, its the style.

Line of the Night:
Came from the player who runs Gorg, the Half-Ogre fighter. He doesn't talk a lot and when he does its very slow and methodical. But last night he looked right at Scruffy's player and said, "The guy who runs ahead and breaks into all the rooms...." there was a bit of a longer pause here so Scruffy said, "gets all the treasure?"
When Grog said, "I was going to say, 'dies first'."