Original Roleplaying Concepts
In Room 2 there are five round passageways that lead out. They look like old lava tubes and are larger than the one the salamanders came out of.
On the first tube on the left the party will come face to face with the three large mastif-like hounds. They are large, vicious, and on fire.
These are powerful Hellhounds.
One has 7 HD, and two have 6 HD. They attack the party.
The area at the bottom of the stairs is an oval-shaped natural cave. There are small openings in the walls where fires can be seen. In one of the larger holes to the left of the stairs a glow can be seen. The glow, and the heat, grows stronger by the moment.
From the hole emerges a large lizard-like creature, a Fire Salamander.
There are two in total, they crawl out to attack the party.
They have Treasure Type F x2 hidden in their lair.
The passageway beyond the opening on level 6 leads to long, long stair going down.
Giant visages of the soulless damned are carved into the walls on either side of this massive staircase. The detail is phenomenal and you swear it looks like they could reach out and get you.
The air here is hot and quite fetid. The heat seems to come from everywhere, and even the rocks glow with a soft hellish light.
While on this level humans, elves, forest gnomes, and halflings will suffer a -1 penalty to hit due to the heat. Dwarves, deep gnomes, and others accustomed to the deep caves of the nether dark suffer no penalties.
Nothing gets me in the mood for working on a campaign or writing new material quite like a good playlist.Enjoy!
A couple of Kickstarters close to my heart today.
Wasted Lands: The Dreaming Age Role Playing Game
A tabletop RPG of cosmic horror, swords, and sorcery in a savage lost epoch, 1000 years after the Old Ones fell to their eternal sleep.
I have been talking about this Kickstarter all month, and now it is live. Please check it out and give Jason your support.
Sherwood: The Legend of Robin Hood 5E
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sherwood-the-legend-of-robin-hood-5e#/
Adam Thompson, brother of the late Jonathan Thompson, has taken over Battlefield Press and plans to get Jonathon's unfinished work completed. And I, for one, could not be happier.
Jonathan was a great guy, and he had such a love for RPGs and everything about them. It is great knowing that there are still guys like Jonathan and Adam for every crappy person in this biz you meet.
I have only gotten to know Adam over the last few days, and he also seems like a great guy. I can think of nothing more fitting than getting all of BPI's projects out there for gamers to enjoy.
Sherwood, here is something that should have been a no-brainer. Robin Hood, for D&D. Yeah. Let's make this one happen!
Let's kick off this inaugural Deities & Demigods II post by trying to figure out what should be in the standard stat block for these gods. Let me begin with some assumptions.
The Triple Hecate, 1795. William BlakeNow these assumptions are working under a much larger assumption of how my Deities & Demigods II posts will be like moving forward.
Today I want to focus on the stat block. I am not detailing anything about this god, yet nor am I even defining things like standard divine abilities or power levels. Let's go with AD&D 1st Ed standard until I have reason to do otherwise and see where this goes.
I am going to start with the example of Hecate from Greek Mythology. After this, I will use her and this example to develop a new pantheon of gods. I spent a lot of time with her yesterday in preparation for this post.
Let's look at how Hecate is presented in the various D&D books.
Deities & Demigods: AD&D 1st Edition
For this I want to break down the AD&D 1st Ed Deities stat block.
HECATE (goddess of magic)ARMOR CLASS: -2
MOVE: 12"
HIT POINTS: 289
NO. OF ATTACKS: 1
DAMAGE/ATTACK: See below
SPECIAL ATTACKS: See below
SPECIAL DEFENSES: See below
MAGIC RESISTANCE: 89%
SIZE: M (51⁄4')
ALIGNMENT: Lawful evil
WORSHIPER'S ALIGN: Any being working with magic
SYMBOL: Setting moon
PLANE: Nine Hells
CLERIC/DRUID: 14th level druid
FIGHTER: Nil
MAGIC-USER/ILLUSIONIST: Special
THIEF/ASSASSIN: Nil
MONK/BARD: Nil
PSIONIC ABILITY: I
S: 12 1:25 W: 9 D: 20 C: 22 CH:25
I separated the sections with hard returns. I would use color, but that gives some screen readers for the visually impaired issues. So instead, I will go with the sections.
The first section starting with AC is very combat-focused. The number of attacks, damage per attack, special attacks, and more.
The second section starting with size is personal information and worshiper's information. This one is great for expansion.
The last section starting with classes is somewhat combat-focused and somewhat personal. For Hecate here, we expect she has some spellcasting ability but maybe not a lot of fighting. Though as a personal note, I disagree with her Wisdom being so low.
After this follows her description.
Ok. One of the most common complaints about the presentation in the D&DG is that this is too much like a monster. I high-level monster, but a monster all the same. It has AC and HP, so it must be able to be attacked and killed. This is not what we want or need. We have nothing here about her Clerics (save for those that use magic), holy days, or anything a worshiper might need/want.
There is a table in back that is actually much more useful than anything in the stat-block above.
This includes their name, Sphere of Control, Clerics [M,F,N-H], Rainment [head, body], Colors, Holy Days, Sacrifice [Frequency, Form], and Place of Worship.
For Hecate, these are: Magic, Hell Hound, yes, yes, no, bare head, tunic, blue-white, fall equinox, monthly on the full moon, ox, and mountain glen.
This is good material.
Legends & Lore: AD&D 2nd Edition
I don't need to go into as much detail here since the entries for all gods are typically shorter. But let's have a look at what we have anyway.
Here we get into the concept that the stats are not the God, but their avatars on the Mortal plane.
Ok, so you can't fight the god, but their avatar instead. A little better I guess.
There is mention here of the duties of the priesthood, what spell domains they gain, what Weapon and Non-Weapon prophecies they have access to, and so on. Though nothing about holy days, animals, colors or the like. Each pantheon/mythos does have some new spells and artifacts listed so that is also nice.
So the avatar and details on the priest characters are a good takeaways from this one.
Deities & Demigods: D&D 3rd Edition
Lastly, let's look at 3rd Edition, even if it is very different than the first two.
Ok I did pick this for a reason. There is a lot of information here for the players of the Clerics of these gods, which also gives us a Rosetta Stone of how to talk about the gods of other editions. That Rosetta Stone is the D&D Patheon, which at this time was primarily the Greyhawk one. Other editions use a similar set of gods and talk about what their priests can, can't, and could do. BUT that is all for another time. Let's get back to Hecate.
We get Domains, Divine Rank, her Alignment, favored weapons (which can be used by her priests) and Portfolio. All good information.
Unfortunately, 3.x goes on to embrace the worse parts of the 1st and 2nd Ed's books and then makes a bunch of their own.
I mean yeah, there is lot of information here, but is any of it needed by her clergy? Ok the sections on Dogma and Clergy and Temples is good. But do I *really* need to know or care how many Feats she has. No. Not unless she is going into combat. Which she shouldn't do.
There is an "Avatar of Hecate" on the next page that is reminiscent of the AD&D 2nd Ed one, but still, not exactly something we need.
What, if anything, can I get from all of this?
Well. Sadly the default presentation for the first 25 years of D&D appears to be "God as High-level Monster," which is not at all helpful.
I broke down these stat-blocks WAY back in 2010 when I was detailing a new cult, the Church of Lolth Ascendant, for the Drow Goddess Araushnee. There I captured the stats that seemed most valuable to the clerics (and players of the clerics) of that particular Goddess.
This has me wondering.
What should the format of a "Deities & Demigods II" be? What is the purpose of a book of gods for a D&D-like game?
Given what I have worked through here and in previous posts, I can see two different but related projects.
First, I can see a need/desire/want for a continuation of the format of the 1st Ed AD&D Deities & Demigods, monster-like stats, and all.
Secondly, I also see a need for a book of gods, demi-gods, and heroes, along with all the above-identified positive things like duties of the priesthood, holy days, and more. I would add new divine spells that are only available to those priesthoods. That's a much larger and more exciting project to be sure.
Deities & Demigods II is something I can do here, with some work. The other project, the so far unnamed one, that will be something that will take longer.
I think for the next post, I should first figure out what would be needed for a D&D-game god write-up.
Moving through the city the sounds of animals fighting can be heard. In a small depression, what looks like three panthers are attacking a large lizard.
There are three, but sometimes it can be difficult to tell. They ignore the lizard and move towards tastier prey, the party.
They have treasure type D.
Hecate. Encyclopedia Britannica.Trying out a few things today.First, I wanted to play-test a Sorcerer character, which is the Wasted Lands equivalent of the Witch from NIGHT SHIFT. In particular, I wanted to try out Hecate since I had already done Ereshkigal, even though I knew they shared certain similarities.
Secondly, I wanted to do Hecate because she is the first focal point of my new series on the Deities & Demigods II project/feature here.
Thirdly, and related to both points above I wanted to work out how my Heka (the Hecate of my Grecco-Egyptian myths) and Helga (the Hecate of my Roman-Norse myths) would work out.
And lastly, I wanted to try out the Divine Touchstones feature of this game. As it turns out, this feature makes all the difference in the world.
The Character: Hecate
For my second (and third and fourth) character, I am choosing Hecate, the goddess of witches, magic, the crossroads, and ghosts. She has been a favorite for a long time. She will also be the first Goddess I cover for my D&DGII project.
Hecate is a Sorceress in the Wasted Lands, no doubt. Well...some doubt. While her main deal is magic, she also has that aspect of Ghosts. In the end, I stuck with Sorceress and found a nice way to add the spooky stuff I wanted.
HecateClass: Sorceress (Persona Aspect)
Level: 7
Species: Human
Alignment: Dark Neutral
Abilities
Strength: 12 (0)
Agility: 14 (+1)
Toughness: 16 (+2) N +1
Intelligence: 15 (+1) N +1
Wits: 13 (+1)
Persona: 17 (+2) A +2
Fate Points: 10
Defense Value: 8
Vitality: 5 (d6)
Degeneracy:
Corruption:
Check Bonus (A/N/D): +4/+2/+1
Melee Bonus: +0
Ranged Bonus: +1
Saves: +4 to Magic based
Special Abilities
Arcana, Arcane Powers
Corruption
- Unnatural Parlor
Divine Touchstones
1st: Sense Ghosts
2nd: First Level Spell: Nightvision
3rd: Summon Hellhound
4th: Class level: Necromancer (1 level)
Necromancer (Divine Touchstone 4th)
Channel the Dead 22%
See Dead People
Summon the Dead 15%
Command (Spirits)
Protection from Undead
Turn Undead 20%
Spells
1st: Mystical Senses, Create/Extinguish Light, Sense Death
2nd: Animal Summoning, Eternal Flame
3rd: Fly
Arcane Powers
1st: Beguile
4th: Shadow Walking
7th: Exorcist
Divine Notes: Magic, Witchcraft, Crossroads, Ghosts
Background: Priestess
Gear
Dagger: 1d4
This version of Hecate is the Greek Goddess of magic, witches, ghosts and the crossroads. I leaned into the last two to give her powers over spirits and undead. She gains her Divine Touchstones as part of significant aspects in her adventuring career. Sense Ghosts would be something that came to her naturally along with Nightvision, she is also the Goddess of the Night. Giving her a level for her 4th Divine touchstone was really what sold me on the touchstones. If she wants another level then she will need a higher-level touchstone to get it.
This is really what sets Wasted Lands apart from other gritty Swords & Sorcery games.
It is also what helps set one character apart from another.
Heka and Helga are by definition just other versions of Hecate with something a little different. What is that something? Well here it is the arcane powers they get, but mostly it is the Divine Touchstones they earn.
For these next two characters I am keeping the base stats all the same. Human, 7th level Sorceress. But the differences now come from the spells, Arcane powers, the Divine Touchstones. One note since Sorcerers can choose their Aspect between Intelligence, Wits, and Persona, I picked different ones for each.
The Character: Heka
Heka is the Hecate of the Greeco-Egyptian mythology. While she is not a goddess that research into the Ptolemaic dynasty existed and would have worshiped (like Serapis or even later Hermes Trismegistus), she could have been in a D&D-like world.
In this mythology, Heka is more focused on the learning aspect of magic and is the goddess of Dark Secrets. Her relationship with Isis is the same as that of Ishtar with Ereshkigal. Dark and Light sisters. So for this, I switched her Aspect to Intelligence.
Like Hecate, Isis is connected to the underworld, so Heka would also be an underworld guardian and more of a protector of occult secrets. While this could lead to "Wisdom" and "Wits" I felt intelligence was the better choice. I have also always felt that Isis was one of the more intelligent gods in any myth.
HekaClass: Sorceress (Intelligence Aspect)
Level: 7
Species: Human
Alignment: Neutral
Abilities
Strength: 12 (0)
Agility: 14 (+1)
Toughness: 16 (+2) N +1
Intelligence: 17 (+2) A +2
Wits: 13 (+1)
Persona: 15 (+1) N +1
Fate Points: 10
Defense Value: 8
Vitality: 5 (d6)
Degeneracy:
Corruption:
Check Bonus (A/N/D): +4/+2/+1
Melee Bonus: +0
Ranged Bonus: +1
Saves: +4 to Magic based
Special Abilities
Arcana, Arcane Powers
Corruption
- Uncomfortable Aura
Divine Touchstones
1st: First Level Spell: Read Languages
2nd: Enhanced Senses
3rd: Class level: Sage (1 level)
4th: 1 level of Necromancer
Sage (Divine Touchstone 3rd)
Lore: 27%
Mesmerize Others: 10%
Spells: 1st Level: Prestidigitation
Spells
1st: Beast Speech, Command, Protection from Undead
2nd: Beguile Person, Extra Sensory Perception
3rd: Clairvoyance
Arcane Powers
1st: Detect Thoughts
4th: Telepathic Transmission
7th: Polymath
Divine Notes: Magic, Witchcraft, the Dead, Occultism
Background: Priestess
Gear
Dagger: 1d4
This version of Hecate combines part of the concept of Isis. So her connections to magic and the underworld are the same. As I said I consider Isis one of the most intelligent gods, so Heka reflects this. By combining that with magic, witchcraft, and the underworld she becomes a figure of Occult knowledge. Much like her fellow syncretized god, Hermes Trismegistus. Indeed, if Hermes Trismegistus is the "patron" of the various Hermtic Orders, then Heka would be the patroness of various Occult orders. Maybe even laying claim to secrets from that great temple of learning from the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, the Library of Alexandria. It certainly ties into the lesser-known Roman Goddess Cardea, the Goddess of Doors, and access to knowledge that has been conflated with Hecate before.
I deal with the Roman Hecate below.
The Character: Helga
Helga is the Hecate of my Roman-Norse mythology. She combines aspects of Hecate, Hel, Hades, and Frau Holt. She also has connections to Frigga and Freya and would be the patroness of seers and seiðr. For this reason and the Frau Holt connection, I see her as more of a Crone-like figure.
I also gave her the Wits Aspect for her connection to wisdom.
HelgaClass: Sorceress (Wits Aspect)
Level: 7
Species: Human
Alignment: Dark Neutral
Abilities
Strength: 12 (0)
Agility: 14 (+1)
Toughness: 16 (+2) N +1
Intelligence: 15 (+1)
Wits: 17 (+2) A +2
Persona: 13 (+1) N +1
Fate Points: 10
Defense Value: 8
Vitality: 5 (d6)
Degeneracy:
Corruption:
Check Bonus (A/N/D): +4/+2/+1
Melee Bonus: +0
Ranged Bonus: +1
Saves: +4 to Magic based
Special Abilities
Arcana, Arcane Powers
Corruption
- Unnatural Parlor
Divine Touchstones
1st: Empathy
2nd: First Level Spell: Sense Death
3rd: Class level: Psychic (1 level)
4th: Spirit Guide: Hound
Psychic (Divine Touchstone 3rd)
Psychic Power: Temporal Sense
Supernatural Attack
Sixth Sense
Supernatural Power: Precognition
Spells
1st: Command, Glamour, Predict Weather
2nd: Invisibility, Invoke Fear
3rd: Fly
Arcane Powers
1st: Enhanced Senses
4th: Beguile
7th: Wild Form
Divine Notes: Magic, Witchcraft, Seer
Background: Priestess
Gear
Dagger: 1d4
This version of Hecate leans more into the dark side as befitting a Goddess of Magic, Ghosts, and Witchcraft that was syncretized with the Goddess of the Underworld and Goddess of Magic and Witches.
In many ways Helga feels like a better fit to me. Maybe because my whole idea of a Roman-Norse pantheon stretches back to a time when I was first reading myths and had a book that had both of them (along with Beowulf), which was the same time I was learning to play D&D.
Helga is the darker side of Witchcraft. while she has "good" figures in her mix like Freya, Frigga, and Frau Holt, she has Hel as well.
Taking the base "Hecate" stats wand moving forward I emphasized her connection to the psychic world and her Seer powers. This gives her the Divine Touchstone of Psychic to gain some of those powers and a few more spells and powers.
--
I am EXTREMELY pleased with these characters. Not just as characters but as a means to work out my ideas on who these Gods should be. The Divine Touchstones are a great way to help build what later could be called divine abilities. I also see all three of these goddesses as being active as goddesses in a NIGHT SHIFT game.
This game, the WASTED LANDS, is going to be really great and I am looking forward to seeing the final versions in print. Please sign up for Kickstarter if you can.
This also gives me a LOT of ideas for my new Deities & Demigods II feature.
Leaving the Necropolis, there are rows of what could be homes. There are plenty of over-run mushroom farms. None of these mushrooms look like the edible ones from earlier in this cave.
These homes are not just abandoned; they are overrun with mushrooms. There are even dead bodies, or the remains of them, covered in mushrooms.
The surfaces are also covered with Yellow Mould.
Additionally, there is a type of Zombie found in a few of these homes (1 in 1d6) that have 1d4+1 Yellow Mould Zombies.
These are treated as normal zombies but are not undead. They are covered with the same yellow mould and any character killed by the zombies or the mould will rise up in 1d4+6 hours as yellow mould zombie. Once this happens they can not be raised.
Note: If the party has any of the healing wands from the level above they cause damage to the mould and zombies at 1d4+2 per charge used. Likewise, any healing magic will cause damage instead of healing.
One of the great bits of synchronicity of my education back in the late 70s early 80s was my discovery of two very different authors. The first was Erich von Däniken who had a lot of ideas that appealed to my young self, a self that was fed a steady diet of mythology, astronomy, UFOs, and new-age ideas. For me, at age 9 to 10, this seemed like great stuff. It all seemed to fit so well. Then I discovered the second author, Carl Sagan. I had seen the various episodes of "In Search Of..." and all the episodes of "Cosmos." So at age 10 there seemed to be a worldview that *could* include both. I mean, the fringes of science were the fringes, after all. Sagan told me that in black holes, the laws of physics break down. Maybe there were other places/things/times like this?
"Chariot of the Gods"
It is no stretch of the imagination that Carl Sagan and Cosmos utterly changed my life. I always had wanted to be an astronomer, and Sagan was the model I wanted to follow. Too bad I get to a point in Calculus where I stop understanding it. Thankfully it was enough to help me out in statistics.
And I read, with abject horror and then absolute delight, Sagan's masterful takedown of von Däniken (and Velikovsky). He so utterly destroyed everything von Däniken had said and claimed. The evidence and case were overwhelming for me; Erich von Däniken was a fraud, and Sagan was the true visionary. At the age of 10, I tossed out, mentally speaking, all the things that were spiritual or pseudoscientific. I relegated all my "magical thought" to my new obsession, D&D.
But I never really let the ideas go away. Even Sagan himself entertained the possibility of ancient aliens, but as always, he met it with his famous standard, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
One of those ideas was about ancient aliens visiting Earth and being interpreted as gods or angels.
Von Däniken was not the only one to have these ideas. There was Zecharia Sitchin, who gave us, among other things, the 12th Planet and Nibiru. But the biggest one was Immanuel Velikovsky. There are more, but this is not a post on pseudohistory or pseudoscience. This is a post about gods. I'll try to recover from my self-inflicted irony wound here later.
The Aliens
I would like to reconstruct the "Ancient Alien" idea with some major changes. First, since this is a One Man's God post, these are not aliens but actual gods. I am going to present them as such. They can be "Alien Gods" to be sure, but these are Gods in the D&D/FRPG sense of the word.
I will do it, though in such a way as to leave enough doubt in the readers' minds. That "doubt" is really just my wiggle room so I can use them as "gods" in my various D&D campaigns or as aliens in my various modern games like NIGHT SHIFT.
I want to build something that feels like it came right out of the occult-infused 70s.
Given all of this, it should not be a huge surprise that I will be drawing on many of the same research and literature reviews I did for my April A to Z of Conspiracy Theories. I am going to include and draw on the following posts (many of which were originally written for an earlier version of this very post):
I would take a lot of this material and put them together as a group of gods. I have PLENTY of examples.
Case in point: The Norse Gods and the Nordics. Take the "alien race," the Nordics, for example. Called such because, well, they are tall and blond. In my take here, the aliens become the Norse Pantheon, essentially what you see in the Marvel Movies with the Asgardians.
Case in point 2: The entire plot behind the Stargate movie and TV series.
Mine will not be so neat and certainly not so benevolent as those.
Also, I want to avoid some well-documented racist tropes inherent in the Ancient Aliens as Gods theories. This can best be summarized as "white people couldn't figure it out, so therefore Aliens!" Even in the 70s, I saw this.
Union of the Snake
The academic work on this is known as the Ophiolatreia: Rites and Mysteries of Serpent Worship. This covers many religions and practices. But it also plays a little loose with the definition of "Serpent."
Let's try something simpler. There are 1000s of Gods, and there is no way I am going through all of them to find "interloper" gods or ones that don't quite fit with the rest. But I can start with the same resource I have been using this whole time, the Deities & Demigods.
I will work it this way. I'll take all the Gods in D&DG and find the ones that don't fit, and for the most part, I will focus on the reptilian or snake-like gods. I will add a couple more because they fit well with my ideas.
The Flock
Given the fixation on snakes and reptiles, there needs to be a good representation of those sorts of gods in this new pantheon. Also, many of these gods will be "sky" gods. While there are archetypes all gods fall into, I am not going to necessarily follow that here like I did in the Roman-Norse Pantheon.
While the people here are reasonably "Good" aligned, I can't say the same for the gods. In fact, I am going to have this pantheon of gods be primarily evil. Their design here is to enslave humans and make them build these giant temples for whatever reason. Conquest? Food? I'll see as I build them. The humans here are doing what they can to appease these powerful beings in the only ways they know how given their times and tools at hand. This is what makes the process more "Stargate" and less "Marvel's Thor."
So who are these people? This has to be Bronze Age or long before; the Neolithic sounds better. 5,000 BCE feels right. This also allows me to use some Proto-Indo-European notions of gods. Indeed I might even reconstruct my own versions of the PIE Gods, not unlike what I did with the Roman-Norse Pantheon. OR, and here is an idea, the PIE Gods existed, and these "Alien Gods" were the ones they warred with. This tracks with the common element in many PIE myths of the Hero/God slaying the Dragon/Serpent. Could the Dragon/Serpent be these Alien Gods? This is the Chaoskampf of many myths.
Remember, I am not putting together a Master's Thesis or Ph.D. Dissertation here. I am building something for the D&D, NIGHT SHIFT, and WASTED LANDS RPGs. I get to bend the rules of proper academic research as much as I like.
I will use these ideas to expand my monsters, Ophidians, and Saurians.
The Gods
Here are some gods that look like they fit my criteria of a snake/reptile/non-human god in a pantheon of human gods. Eastern religions, or, more to the point, non-European ones, have far more variety in their gods. Note: I am also going to get into the subject of Good vs. Evil here. Some, like Queztequotal (Aztec) and Shāhmārān (Turkey) are objectively good figures. Others are not.
While I will focus mostly on the myths as presented in the DDG, there are far, far more. I am going to avoid monsters for the most part, but some will sneak in. Though I will add more gods that I know as appropriate.
Babylonian, Sumerian, and Akkadian Mythos
I talk a lot about Ma Yuan and Ma Yüan-shuai in my discussion of the Chinese myths, I think I might keep him "as is" for this.
This could be a pantheon all on its own. Several of these have their own "portfolios." And there are so many more.
While I am considering this as something to use with NIGHT SHIFT as "Ancient Aliens." In the WASTED LANDS, they could be heroes (still aliens of a sort) that become gods. Though in at least one case, Jormungandr is another name for Yig.
I could revisit these as part of my Deities & Demigods II since this might be my last Syncretism post for a bit while I spend some more time on my Deities & Demigods II ones.
While within the Necropolis, the party moves near an open temple. As the party approaches, they are surrounded by Shadows moving in. Though before they can attack, a haunting music can be heard. The Shadows move back and surround two elves, a male and a female. The woman is playing a long double flute that looks like it is made of bone. The man is holding a skull with eyes of balefire.
The shadows move back into the ground.
When the last of the Shadows have gone, the woman stops playing.
They are dressed similarly and even look the same, obviously related. They look like the shadow elves you have seen, but their skin is darker, and their hair is lighter. The woman greets you first.
"Greetings. I am Runu, and this is my younger brother Urnu," she says.
There is a snort from the male, and a "younger by mere seconds." escapes his lips just loud enough to be heard by all.
Runu points to a rune on the ground that one of your shoes has kicked dirt onto.
"The Rune of Ake keeps the shadows confined to the temple. When you walked over it broke the magic. But no matter." She brushes the dirt away, and the great circle of runes glows briefly and then fades.
They tell you they are Shadow Elves, but they are also Drow/Dark Elves and therefore despised by all elves. More importantly, they tell you they are not under the sway of the Vampire Queen.
They mention they need a particular jewel from an idol in the central temple. The idol is that of the Demon Lord Orcus and the temple is his.They causally mention they know they are searching for the tomb of the Vampire Queen. ("Why else are you here? It's not the scenery!") They also add that the large temple is the access to the lower levels. There is a secret door under the idol.
If asked why they are helping, they will say that the Shadow Elves will kill them on the spot, but the adventurers are a curiosity to them and they have a chance to reach the temple.
If asked why they need it, they will claim it was stolen by the Vampire Queen, and they want to return to their home temple.
If the party tries to attack them, they use their Rings of Invisibility and sneak away. They do want the adventurers alive to face the monsters in the Temple.
The double flute are "Pipes of the Susurrus" and they require training to use.
There is nothing of note in this local temple.
--
Note: Runu is a Profane Necromancer, Urnu is a Gothic Witch. Most of what they tell you is true. Save for a few details.
- The Shadow Elves will kill Runu and Urnu true, but they will also kill the adventurers. Runu is playing up how many Shadow Elves are here.
- Runu summoned the shadows herself to scare the adventurers.
- They do need the gem, the Eye of Orcus, but it is far more dangerous than they let on.
- They want the adventures to face the monsters of the main temple.
- They have no love for the Vampire Queen
I have a couple of things going on this month. First off I am still doing the #Dungeon23 challenge. The level for June is the dead city of the Shadow Elves. Also, I am waiting for the print proof of Monster Mash II to arrive. So I figure I can do a little for both today and detail the Shadow Elf from Monster Mash I as an OSE Monster listing.
I have done Shadow Elves before, but not as a proper Old-School Essentials monster.
Shadow ElfTall, thin elves with pale gray to dark gray skin. They have jet-black hair and long, pointed ears. Also known as Umbral Elves. They live in dark cave systems and places where shadows are the strongest.
Armour Class: 6 [13]
Hit Dice: 1* (4hp)
Attacks: 1 × weapon (1d6 or by weapon)
THAC0: 18 [+1]
Movement: 120’ (40’)
Saving Throws: D12 W13 P13 B15 S15 (Elf 1)
Morale: 8 (10 with leader)
Alignment: Neutral (Chaotic Neutral)
XP: 19
Number Appearing: 1d4 (2d12)
Treasure Type: C
Shadow Elves are often confused with Dark Elves.
Most Shadow Elves follow the Faerie Lord Scáthaithe, The Umbral Lord. Others have fallen under the sway of Darlessa the Vampire Queen.
Shadow Elves as an OSE-Advanced Race
Shadow elves have the following requirements and can take the following classes.
Requirements: 15 or greater on DEX
Ability Modifiers: +1 to DEX
I need to update my twins, Runu and Urnu, to these rules. With Runu as a Profane Necromancer and Urnu as a Gothic Witch.
There are many, many empty buildings here. Most are empty and look like they have not been occupied in centuries or more. There are no monsters or traps, and only small lizards and rodents.
Empty homes (marked as "11") do have the following:
Roll 2d6
2: Small pouch, 2d6 x10 GP
3-4: Small pouch, 1d4 x6 SP
5-6: Small pouch, 1d4 x2 CP
7: Nothing
8-9: 1 Gem, 1d6 x4 GP
10-11: 1d4 Gems 1d4 x5 SP
12: 1 Gem 50 GP
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There are at least 20-40 dwellings that are empty like this.
The passageway opens into a huge open cavern extending for thousands of feet.
There are plenty of what appear to be empty dwellings. There is a globe floating near top of this cavern that glows with an eerie, eldritch light. It appears to be a large moon.
Small animals and large insects run here and there, but they avoid the party.
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This is the former city of the Shadow Elves.
This one has not launched yet, but the sign-up page is ready.
Wasted Lands: The Dreaming Age Role Playing Game
A tabletop RPG of cosmic horror, swords, and sorcery in a savage lost epoch, 1000 years after the Old Ones fell to their eternal sleep.
I am very, very excited about this one. Although I am not really part of the development, I get the joy of seeing it in development and enjoy it as a fan. Plus this has been Jason's baby for years, my typical nonsense can be added at my table.
From the Kickstarter:
The Old Ones are gone...How can you not be excited about this?
I hope to post more about this game all month long. I still have some characters I want to make and some adventures to talk about.
This game uses the same RPG system as does NIGHT SHIFT (The O.G.R.E.S.) but it will include conversion guides for Spellcraft & Swordplay (O.R.C.S.) AND Castles & Crusades (SIEGE Engine).
This could also be the non-OGL D&D replacement you have been looking for.
More to come!
Continuing down the passageway down from Rooms 3 and 8, there is a turn to the right.
This room has water pooling in the center. Stopping on it will trigger a sinkhole causing the entire floor to collapse.
Everyone standing 15 ft from the center will fall 10ft and take 1d6+2 hp of damage. Climbing out is not difficult due to the uneven nature of the hole.
This is not a trap, just a natural sinkhole.
I have spent much time with the classic AD&D Deities and Demigods. And a fair amount of time with it's prequel, Gods, Demi-gods & Heroes, its AD&D 2nd Ed counterpart Legends & Lore, the 3rd Edition D&D version, Deities & Demigods. I thought I was running out of things to say about this, with maybe one or two more posts.Doing the playtesting for WASTED LANDS has made me think a lot about gods again and how many there are out there.
To recap here are mythos covered in the AD&D 1st Edition Deities and Demigod/Legends and Lore.
There are also other categories of myths and legends.
Good coverage, but not everything, to be sure. More Norse gods are listed in the GD&H book and later get a huge feature in Dragon magazine. There are more Finnish Gods too. The Howard/Hyborea gods of Conan also get a listing in GD&H. Though if you grab the PDF or POD versions of GD&H now there are no Melniboné or Hybora sections.
But what is missing?
Despite their coverage in Dragon, we don't get any of the gods of the World of Greyhawk. Same with the WoG Suel Gods. The Roman gods are not covered really. There are all the demi-human gods in the Unearthed Arcana. Then we have more in Dragon and that is not counting what we can get from Castles & Crusades.
We have enough for another volume really. A Deities & Demigods II.
Deities & Demigods II
Collecting all the above material and trying not to do too much duplication here is a proposed Deities & Demigods II for AD&D 1st Ed.
That is a lot.
And that is not counting the ones I also made myself, my Greco-Egyptian Gods, and my Roman-Norse ones.
This could get quickly out of hand.
I have been looking for something to replace my "One Man's God" Feature. Maybe this is it.
I'll need to think this one over.
What would you like to see? D&DG format? Later formats? Gods as monsters with HP or Gods as...well Gods? I think Gods as Monsters really runs counter to the idea the original designers wanted but despite that they gave us stat blocks for them and that is what people know.
Lots of different ways to depict the gods. I suppose I'll just have to figure out what works.
Though I suppose most readers here would want something akin to the AD&D 1st Ed presentation.
Have to mull this one over.
I suppose I could just play-test these gods in WASTED LANDS and see how they all come out.
Returning to Room 3 and taking the left-hand path leads to another long tunnel.
On their way through the passageway, the party encounters 2 large cave bears.
They are a mated pair returning from an unsuccessful hunt. They are agitated and hungry.
There is a nearby cave on the left with its stash of treasure (Vx2).
Growing up the shows I really loved (in addition to Doctor Who and Star Trek) were the various horror anthologies that came and went during the 80s, 90s, and before. "The Twilight Zone (all versions)" was chief among these, but so were shows like "Night Gallery," "Monsters," "The Outer Limits (both versions)," "Amazing Stories," and two of my favorites, "Tales from the Crypt" and "Tales from the Darkside." It was "Tales from the Darkside" that influenced me the most. I wanted my games (at the time largely AD&D) to be more horror-like. Even in sci-fi, I could not help but notice how many of the elements in The Outer Limits would also appear in Star Trek, or more to the point the other way around since I watched Star Trek first.
In the end, I got my wish. NIGHT SHIFT is the perfect distillation of both Horror and old-school adventure rules. A rule system I have been doing in one form or another along with a horror-filled background that is perfect to model the horror and dark sci-fi I grew up loving.
The only thing missing is the anthologies.
I spent my weekend (like every weekend in late spring early summer) out in the garden helping my wife. I was doing some weeding and thought I needed to do a set of themed adventures I could publish. They are unrelated to each other, but all have a common thread of horror.
Then I realized something. I had already started this.
I have written a lot of adventures for many different games. All of them (for the most part) have a horror feel to them.
So to get the ideas rolling for Tales from the Other Side, I figure I will talk about the adventures I have already done and how they can be used with NIGHT SHIFT. I am just going to focus on ones that are readily available. I am looking back at some of my old docs and seeing which ones I own outright and can re-do and which ones never saw the light of day.
The Dark DruidThis adventure was a prequel adventure to what was called "The Djinn Arc" that never got going. It's purpose was to introduce new players to the game, and it featured the original cast of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." It focused on Willow and Tara as the reincarnations of Bohdmal and Liath (respectively) as the foster mothers of the great Irish hero Fionn MacCumhail (Finn McCool). It features the return of an ancient evil and two new kinds of vampires. The biggest issue with it is that it is an introductory adventure for what should be a "season" of related adventures, not an anthology.
So much of my writing from that time is baked into the DNA of NIGHT SHIFT that converting the game's tone is minimal at worst.
Mechanics changes:
This adventure gives some argument of while the stories are anthologies, the characters remain the same throughout.
The Haunting of Oakcrest ManorThis adventure has been successfully converted to NIGHT SHIFT many times. Since it uses Labyrinth Lord rules, conversion is trivial. I ran this both at Gary Con 2021 and Gen Con 2021 as a NIGHT SHIFT adventure where I changed the name to Willow Crest Manor. Both manors are based on a real-life place from my old hometown known as Maplecrest.
The biggest change here is to update when and where you put it. Personally, any small town will do. It just needs to have about 100 years worth of history. Dark woods are good too, so somewhere above the 40º North Latitude line is good in my mind. When I did it for Gary Con I set it near Rockford, IL.
Witching WeatherI do adore Blue Rose, I love the optimism and the feel of the game. So of course I bring horror to it. I must be damaged. This adventure requires that you find and rescue five psychic children. Trouble is there is a monster that wants to eat them (thinking they will make it more powerful) and a demon lord of storms that thinks they are his children. In Blue Rose this is all set in the town of Garnet, but in my running of this using NIGHT SHIFT, I set it in Alton, IL. It features another member of the unpleasant Meacham family and my homage to the Piasa Bird.
For changes, there is the tone and location. Use the demon stats from NIGHT SHIFT and one of the many versions of the Piasa Bird I have posted here.
The NightmareMy most recent adventure is horror through and through. A night hag, or in this case a dab tsog, has been attacking members of the local Hmong community. There is also a Will-o-the-Wisp feeding off of the dying energies. Tone wise this is perfect for NIGHT SHIFT.
Chill's skill checks are little different than that of NIGHT SHIFT, but as a rule of thumb, and roll pf +1 above what a character makes in NIGHT SHIFT is 5%. The Nightmare, in addition to being written for Chill, is fairly self-explanatory and can be used as is with a variety of systems.
For the Will-o-the-Wisp you can use my stats for them here. For the Night Hag you can use the hags in the core rules of NIGHT SHIFT.
The next two are total cheats since I did not write them but I did do the D&D 5e conversions for them.
The Shrine of St. AleenaThis adventure is a conversion of the Labyrinth Lord adventure created by Peter C. Spahn. The horror elements here are light, but as St. Aleena is the patron Saint of adventurers she is still a good choice. The characters come here and then the horror ensues. There is still an evil cult and still unnamable evil spawn here.
The Shrine of St. Aleena has thematic connections with my own Dark Druid, or at least, it did when I ran it for my group here.
To update this adventure change it over to some modern location, I would say on the outskirts of some town, but it has to be old. So East of the Mississippi River. Otherwise you are good to go.
Classic Modules Today: CM2 Death's RideThis is even a bigger cheat than the Shrine of St. Aleena above. But it is solid horror. Death's Ride is an old-school TSR adventure for Basic (Companion) D&D for characters 15th level and above. It has all sort of nasty things going on and really tough monsters.
My D&D 5e conversion scales them down a bit (but not much). It fits with the whole "weird shit going on in far off places" horror. I mean in this respect it is not much different than "The Children of the Corn."
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Almost enough for a mini-campaign.
I'll have to work on some more and see what I have that I can resurrect.
Hopefully there will be more Tales from the Other Side.
