These stairs take the party down to level 9. The temperatures are much cooler now. 

As the stairs descend (at least 200 ft) there are other staircases. Many are broken, but other still look viable. These others usually lead to dead ends, lairs of monsters (use Wandering Monsters), or fall into darkness.

The feeling here should look like a broken and destroyed kingdom of stone.  This is more of the original dwarven mountain and has been less "renovated" by the Vampire Queen.  There are also areas of the original Citadel of Necromancers here too, under the devastation of the mountain.  Dwarven character will be able point out at least four different types of structures here: the original stone of the island, the dwarven mountain, modifications by various wizards and necromancers who lived here, and finally, modifications from the experiments of the Vampire Queen herself.

The Necromantic aura of the upper levels mixes with the demonic ones of the level above and something else that even the most learned magic-user can't quite identify.

Every 6 turns roll for wandering monsters as normal. There is a 25% chance that the monster encountered is a "Shadow" version. It looks like the shadow of the monster. It attacks, but it has no physical form so it can't damage or be damaged. Every 3 turns a "Shadow Wizard" will be spotted. This is a dead wizard or student who does not know they are dead. They go about their business as if it were a normal day for them. They do not damage or interact, but they are creepy.

One of the best things about blogging and writing about games for so long is I have gotten to meet so many really great people and made some really great friends.

Two such are Tim Knight over at Hero Press and Pun Issac over at Halls of the Nephilim. Both are great guys, and we all have many intersecting interests in RPGs, comics, and movies.  So it is no real shock then when we decide to go over and play in each other's sandboxes.

Over the summer, they graciously allowed me to use two of their iconic characters, The Acrobatic Flea and The Web Archivist, for The Wasted Lands.

Now they have returned to honor and built versions of my misanthrope villain, The Refrigerator, for their own respective supers games, along with tweaks to make him work in their worlds. 

• The Refrigerator of Knight City: Villains & Vigilantes (mod)
• The Refrigerator of  Carbide City: 5th Evolution

Both are great takes on my villain, and I love the additional little details they have both added. 

What is the point of having an iconic character if you can't share it?

 This is a tough one. I have had so many favorites over the years. Each one representing a different point in my life and gaming.

Most of these will be known to readers here.

Basic (B/X) D&D - not the one I started with that would be the Holmes Basic, but the one that got me deep into the hobby.

AD&D 1st Edition - This is the one I played the most in those early days. The Monster Manual was my gateway drug to RPGs coming from Mythology.

Chill 1st Edition - This was either my first or second RPG after D&D (tied with Traveller) but it was my first horror RPG, and it spawned everything after.

Call of Cthulhu - Not my first Horror RPG, but one of my favorites. Really set the bar on what a horror RPG should be.

Masque of the Red Death - not an RPG by itself, and a bit wonky, it did something I always wanted: it brought my AD&D 2nd ed rules to Gothic Victorian Earth and Horror. Ravenloft brought some of this earlier, and both were my game of choice throughout the 90s until D&D-burnout set in and I went to my next big thing. 

CJ Carella's WitchCraft - I can't overestimate how much this RPG changed things for me. The world was close enough to that of Chill, Call of Cthulhu, and Masque of the Red Death that my ideas for those games gained new life under Unisystem. I loved the game so much I pestered the publisher, Eden Studios, to let me write for them. The result was my next favorite.

Ghosts of Albion - while this might be self-serving, it is my favorite for a reason. Everything I wanted in a Unisystem game is here. Victorian era, magic, horror, and Unisystem. I would have happily written for Unisystem for ever if I could have.  Which leads me to my last one and the top of my list.

NIGHT SHIFT Veterans of the Supernatural Wars - Again, a little self serving but NIGHT SHIFT is everything I have ever wanted in a game. It combines the best mechanics of all the games above along with a play style I love and in a world, or more to the point worlds, I enjoy.

If I only get to pick one, then it will be NIGHT SHIFT.

I have had the luxury and the privilege to work on a great number of RPGs over the years. Some of which were dream jobs and dream games. I consider myself lucky. But of all of those, NIGHT SHIFT is not just my favorite game, favorite rules, and favorite setting; it was also my favorite writing experience. Only Ghosts of Albion and my various Witch books come close.

Thank you, Dave Chapman for hosting this again! I had a great time.

 The last room on this level is dominated by a large treasure horde and an equally impressive guardian.

Red dragons were promised all the treasure in the former Dwarven kingdom. This Red Dragon is the last of their offspring. He is not as crafty or as strong as his forebearers, but he is still challenging.

He has H x5 treasure. There are a couple of chests of holding as well.

 I have a soft spot for Obscure RPGs. But I think one of my favorites, warts and all, is Lee Gold's "Lands of Adventure."

The game has some flaws, but it is such a fun concept and a great idea. Plus, the art and design are fantastic. 

I reviewed it a couple of years ago but have only played once or twice since then. It really is an old-school gem from the ancient days of Dragon Magazine.

 Continuing on past the Queen's broken throne room, the party turns a corner to the left and sees a horrific sight.

Trapped inside a magic circle is an ancient Chaos Hag. Though it is hard to know which kind she is, but she tries, and fails to shift her shape to that a beautiful elf maiden.

She croaks out, her voice dry and cracking, to be let out. She is in a panic. These are the first people she has seen in centuries. 

She will make a weak attempt to claim she is an elf polymorphed into a hag. This ruse though can't last, since she is so hungry. Her's is a similar tale to other creatures here. 

IF the party says they are hunting for the Vampire Queen then she will say she was trapped here after the Queen took over. This is true. She also says that there is only one seal left holding her in. Also true.

If the party agrees to free her she will give them the Hand of Glory at her feet and that will allow them to sneak past the guard of this level.  Mostly true. She will give it to them yes, but the Hand is so old it won't work very well.

Also there is 50% chance that if freed she will attack the party and eat them.

 Hello. My is Tim, and I am addicted to dice.

It began innocently enough. I got a set in my D&D Basic. Then another in my D&D Expert Box. Then B. Dalton's Bookseller in White Oaks Mall had Dragon Dice in full sets and percentile genators.

Then I got clear sets. Blue sets. Discover more. Now...well, now I have no clear idea how many I have. I have sets for characters, a set for each game, and sets for DMing certain campaigns. Metal dice, tiny dice, huge dice.

So what did I get in the mail yesterday? You guessed it.

These retro dice were made by Threshold Diceworks. Which you can find on Facebook and their Etsy store. He was taking pre-orders a while back and mine finally came in yesterday and I am very pleased with them!

They compare very favorably to the sets I had with my Expert set, the Dragon Dice polyhedrals, and the sets that came with the Mentzer Basic boxes.

Yes. Those are my Mentzer dice still in a bag and unopened and unmarked.

I even have some Armory Dice Markers for them! I might swap a d10 in each set for a proper set of percentile dice. I can even use them for Star Frontiers.

Now. I just need a good dice bag for them.

These will likely be my Old School Essentials dice or my Wasted Lands ones. 

In any case, I am really happy to have them. When they start selling more I need to snag an orange d8.

Ah. This one stuck with me as the most memorable encounter.

It would have to be the first time I encountered a Lich in the AD&D 1st Edition days. I think it was the summer of 82 or so.

The DM read the monster's description, and she decided that it had all these new spells because it was a former high-level magic-user. She played the monster as we would have today, but back then, that was kind of a new thing. Not only that she had poping in and out of the Ethereal Plane more or less at will. 

Needless to say it kicked our 6th to 7th level asses. That lich kicked our asses.

While I was annoyed, I later looked back on it and thought about how well she had done with it all. 

So yeah, freaking Liches are dangerous.

Since that day, my undead have all been way more powerful. 

 The cave continues. Further ahead is an open area. There is what appears to be a broken stone throne. 

This appears to be the queen's throne room, but it appears to have been destroyed. There is subtle magic on the throne. 

If a dwarf or female character sits on the throne a scene is played out of the throne room in it's glory days. All the PCs see dwarven courtiers with gnome, human, and even elven dignitaries. All enjoying themselves as scenes through the years are shown. One scene shows what appears to be an informal gathering interrupted as the figure of the Vampire Queen comes into the room ridding on the back of some demonic hell-beast. Demons soon overrun the room and kill everyone in sight.

Characters must save vs. Paralysis or feel the death shock of those victims. Failing, they take 2d6 hp of damage, save for half.

Characters gain 45 xp each for seeing this scene.

If a female dwarf sits on the throne, then she sees the same tableau, but does not need to make a save and she takes no damage. She also gains The Blessing of the Dwarf Queen for the remainder of this level. This is a +1 to hit and +1 to all saves.

 I interrupt my regularly scheduled Monstrous Monday post for our monster harvest we worked on over the weekend.

Long-time readers will know that my wife has a huge garden. She has over 115 tomato plants and somewhere north of 120 peppers from sweet to super hot. 

We brought in tomatoes, peppers, carrots, garlic, some onions, okra, beans, basil, and even some potatoes. 

We spent Sunday processing them all.

I processed about 3 gallons of Tomato sauce and we also made tomato soup to freeze.

This was our third harvest this year so far and we have least two more.  With all the picking (and you have to do the weeding then too), processing, and freezing, we hit the couch last night, and both of us crashed.  This was all a lot easier 25 years ago when she started her garden.

Honestly, I should have made a "Tomato Monster" but was too beat.

Now to convince my chef son to make me something will all this garden fresh produce!

 Scares do not come easy to me anymore. I consume horror movies like most people watch sitcoms (and laugh as much), nearly all my non-D&D games are horror and a fair amount of my D&D ones are as well.  So for a game to REALLY scare me, it has to be special. And it is usually NOT due to the rules being used.

Case in point. My online games from 2006 to 2009 that I called "Vacation in Vancouver."  I played it starting with WitchCraft and then moved over to True20 (a game not known for its horror).

The hook was that members of Vancouver's supernatural community were going missing.  Long story short, there was this entire underground where vampyres, demons, and witches were getting together and engaging in all sorts of lewd sexual acts in exchange for essence.  After a while, even open acts of magic were considered acceptable.

The game, though was not really about sex or even depravity (there was a lot of sexual slavery going on and it was hard to know who was using who), but about addiction and losing yourself.

A couple of characters had to be literally pulled back from the edge.

As a role-playing experience, it was intense.  There was not much combat, to be honest.  Part of that was out of choice (the characters were investigators, not thugs) and part out of necessity (combats online can be dull, even in Unisystem).

The game ended like many others, not with a big finale but gradually dying off.

The mystery of where all the supernaturals were going was solved, but not the one of the demonic sex trafficking. The demons never actually killed anyone. In fact, they seemed to be concerned for the welfare of the Gifted and Lesser Gifted in their "care".  And there were plenty of volunteers for the demons, too, since the exchange of Essence was pleasurable for both (but only humans can 'regenerate' Essence).

There were some very interesting games, though, that came from all of that.  It was one of those rare RPG moments where the bad guys might have won, and there was nothing the PCs/Cast could do about it.  While the game was fun and provided some of the best pure Horror roleplaying I have run in a long time, I am just not sure how it could even be revisited.

 This cave area continues on and opens up to a large area.

This cave is huge and the ceiling extends up and far out of sight.

There are several thousand bats that are scared off of any light source. They do not attack, but can still frighten the characters.

 This is a two-fer for me. There are two games I want to see a new edition of and I hope that once again they are the same system.

I would love to see a new edition of Mutants & Masterminds AND a new edition of a DC Comics RPG.

I started with M&M back in 2nd Edition and I loved it. Such a great game.

When 3rd Edition came out I grabbed the PDFs right away and was going to pick up the print versions, but Green Ronin also had released the DC Adventures game that used the same M&M 3rd edition system. So I got all of those books.

I'd love a 4th edition of M&M and wonder if it couldn't move a little closer to their AGE system.

I also want a new DC comics RPG. I know there is a new Marvel game out and yes it looks great, but I have always been more of a DC guy.  I also want to buy more Green Ronin stuff.

The bottom of this staircase opens to a chamber in a cave. The cave continues on, but to the right is a stone structure.

The structure is a mausoleum of seven gnome thanes.

The tombs are ornate but have been pillaged many times over the centuries. 

 There is no treasure and no undead here. 

 Like games and dice I have a few favorite character sheets.  Though I will admit my all time favorite is a blank sheet. because at that point the potential is limitless!

My "Willow & Tara RPG" sheet. I made this one myself for my combined Buffy/WitchCraft/Ghosts of Albion game. It had details for all three games so characters could easily move between the rules.

Likewise, I had a WitchCraft variant I used that also had similar information.


I love Mage, and the Sorcerer's Crusade sheet is one of my favorites.

For pure nostalgia sake I love the Green D&D Basic sheets.

And the AD&D 1st Ed sheets too.

Though my own Witch character sheets are my most favorite of all.

 Normally I avoid tie-in fiction for RPGs. 90% of the time, you can what I call, "hear the dice being rolled in the background." Most of it tries to cleave too close to the rules and less interested in telling a good story. 

But that is not always the case.

Back when I was gearing up to run the GDQ series for my family, I wanted to read what others had done, to immerse myself in the world and the adventures again.  That is when I discovered the writing of Pauli Kidd.

Pauli took the familiar locations and then gave me characters I really enjoyed. The Justicar, Escalla, even Cinders. They were a very rare treat. She did a fantastic job here, and I never heard the dice once.

Set in the World of Greyhawk, these books are less about these fabled locations and more about the characters. I had so much fun with them that I included Evelyn, the Princess Escalla as the daughter of the Justicar and Escalla (half-human/half-pixie, looks like an elf) in my own running of these adventures. Through interaction with the party, she became the lead freedom fighter to free the surface elves from their enslavement by the Drow across multiple planes. 

Another set are the Brimstone Angels series for the Forgotten Realms by Erin M. Evans. While the books focus on the twin tieflings Farideh and Havilar, the books cover some of the biggest events in Faerûn and even deftly cover things like the changes in world history from 3rd Edition to 4th Edition to 5th Edition.

Her books were so well received that it even added details to the rules, such as Mahen, Farideh, and Havilar to the list of Dragonborn names. 

There are few others, but these are the best in my mind.

 Moving through the door, the party finds themselves in a long room. Inside waiting are two succubi.

They look at the party and tell them that all they really need are two more souls, and their 1,000 year servitude to the Vampire Queen is complete. So they are taking volunteers. 

If two characters agree to give up their souls (not likely) all four disappear in a cloud of brimstone.

If the alu-fiends are still alive, they do have souls, but the party would need to trick them somehow into giving their souls to the succubi.

The party can kill the succubi, but they will return in 21 days to do it all over again.  If it looks like the party will fight they will simply disappear and return later.  They have no treasure and are really prisoners of the Vampire Queen.

These demons are smart and are not fond of combat.

Succubus

Armor Class: 0 [19]
Hit Dice: 6+6*** (33 hp)
Attacks:  2 claws (1d3 x2) or 1 kiss (see below)
Special: Energy drain, demon abilities.
THAC0: 13 [+6]
Movement: 120’ (40’) / fly 180' (60') 
Saving Throws: D10 W11 P12 B13 S14 (6+)
Morale: 8
Alignment: Chaotic
XP: 825
Number Appearing: 1 (1d2) 
Treasure Type: I, Q (typically)

Succubi are demons (Lilim) that appear as beautiful women. They are not particularly strong, nor do they work well in groups, but they are cunning and exceptionally intelligent. 

The succubus's kiss can drain a victim of one energy level (or one point of Constitution). 

Succubi have the following demonic powers:

• Become Ethereal at will
• Charm Person
• Clairaudience
• ESP
• Shape-change, humanoid forms only
• Suggestion
• Succubi can also gate in other demons, but there is only a 40% chance the gate will open: 

• Type IV (70%)
• Type VI (25%)
• Lord or Prince (5%)
• Succubi never gate in Type V demons due to a long-standing enmity. 

 Favorite dice??? How do you choose that? I have different sets for different needs.

This is the set I use when playing Ravenloft of any other Horror themed D&D-like game. Made up my black and red dice with some Castles & Crusades dice thrown in.

These are my main D&D dice right now.

My Ghosts of Albion Dice.

I got a bunch of Drow Dice at Gen Con and have used at Gen Con when running the GDQ series.

Some of my oldest dice. Used these throughout highschool.

Various witch-themed dice.


Halloween-themed dice!

More old dice to add to my collections.

Some "Holmes-themed" dice, including some Gary Con ones.

A box of character-themed dice with their minis.

Various dice bags from my years of playing.

These though are my best sets. Original TSR-era Dragon Dice from the Basic and Expert sets. These are my "showcase" ones. These are the rules and dice that don't get played. I have plenty of other copies for the table. 

So you see...how can I choose?

Going back to Room #2 the next passage looks similar to the passageway for Room #6 (and #3).  Once entering the room the party sees two succubi.

These "succubi" are in fact two Alu-fiends.

Alu-Fiend Demon

Armor Class: 1 [18]
Hit Dice: 6+6*** (33 hp)
Attacks:  2 claws (1d4+2 x2) or 1 weapon (1d6) +2
THAC0: 13 [+6]
Movement: 120’ (40’)
Saving Throws: D10 W11 P12 B13 S14 (6+)
Morale: 10
Alignment: Chaotic
XP: 1,250
Number Appearing: 1d2 (1d4) 
Treasure Type: C

The alu-demon is the female demonic offspring of a succubus (or other Lilim) and human. Though part demon, not all alu-demons are inherently chaotic (although good alu-demons are extremely rare). The typical alu-demon has black or brown hair and dark green, brown, or black eyes.

Alu-demons might be sent to the Material Plane to seduce mortals. When on such missions they typically arrange their flowing hair so it hides their horns and also fold their wings against their backs (and tuck them under their robe, shirt, or whatever garment of clothing one happens to be wearing at the time).

Each time an alu-demon hits with its claw attack it gains temporary hit points equal to the damage she inflicts. These temporary hit points disappear in one hour. 

Alu-fiends have the following demonic powers:

• vampiric touch 
• immune to poison
• magic resistance (15%)
• telepathy 100 ft.
• Alu-fiends can cast the following spells: 

• Charm person (3/day)
• Dimension door (1/day)
• ESP (3/day)
• Suggestion (1/day)

There is a 15% chance that these alu-fiends will not attack at all.  They are here to drive victims to their "sisters" in Room 10, behind the closed door ahead.  They will claim they are trapped here due to the magic of the Vampire Queen. This is mostly true. They will claim that if the party can get a scepter from the next room they will be freed and seek their vengeance against the mages of the Vampire Queen (this is a complete lie. They heard this from other demons here).

Recently I read on fred's HM fan blog that Heavy Metal magazine is no more.

I have often said that Heavy Metal (the music, the magazine, and the movie) was/were as much of an influence on my early 80s gaming style as were the likes of Dragon magazine, White Dwarf, and really, far more than most of the Appendix N books.

The news comes to us via Bleeding Cool and Multiversity Comics.

While I have not read HM in a long time, it was part of my D&D experience as much as anything. I even rank Taarna among the celebrated heroes of fantasy, right along with Conan, Elric, Frodo, Fafhrd, and the Gray Mouser.

This is not an age that is kind to the printed word, less kind even to the printed word on paper. I don't hold out any hope that HM will return in a new form any more than I hope that Dragon will.