Original Roleplaying Concepts
Moving on down from the glowing portal in Room #19 there is another door to the right of the party.
Jason Glover - Free Art AssetsThis room is empty save for the bodies of what are believed to be other adventurers. Their weapons are gone but a care search will find a Potion of Heroism and a Potion of Healing (1d6+1). (Finding these is worth 50 xp to the party).
Likewise, their valuables such as coins are gone.
Frantically working on a lot of updates behind the scenes here. But one I want to address that I am looking forward too is what am I doing with the games I run.
Presently I am still in the middle of three different D&D 5e games. They are all part of my Come Endless Darkness mega-campaign:
All are presently 5e.
My plan is to convert one to Castles & Crusades and the other to Pathfinder 2e.
The obvious choice here is to convert The Second Campaign to Castles & Crusades since it has a lot of old-school 1st material. The next obvious choice is to convert my Into the Nentir Vale to PF2 since it is a broader mix, and I think it is funny that D&D 4 is once again losing out to Pathfinder.
I am not sure how much I'll talk about them online. BUT I do want to talk about how the conversions go.
So in each case, I will grab a PC or NPC from them and see how they convert. I will post that since that is something people will be interested in. In fact, as I am writing this, I am thinking of two PCs in particular that would really make good examples of conversions.
I also might post the Big Bad for each in their new stats. The Second Campaign is overtly about Demogorgon, but I had always thought they would not actually encounter him. The Nentir Vale is all about Orcus.
In any case, it should be a lot of fun.
Making another right, we come up on encounter area #19. To your immediate left is an opening to a small room.
In Room 19 there is a glowing portal. From the portal 1d4+2 Goblins are coming through. These goblins look similar to the previous ones.
The portal opens from a nighttime world with several moons in the sky. Other goblins can be seen in the distance. The portal is one-way, Goblins can come into this world, but they cannot go back.
Let the characters explore the portal as much as they like, but there is no way to go through it.
Turning right (for now) the PCs enter encounter area #18. The hallway is the same stone as before, but it is somehow darker. The hall is 20 feet wide and extends some 60 feet into deepening darkness.
Standing in the hall, seemingly waiting for the PCs is a small group of goblins.
The goblins are not waiting, but they are not surprised either. They have come up from the lower rooms to investigate the noise. There 1d4+4 goblins here. They are all 1-1 HD (4 hp each, or 1d6). They have shortswords, short bows, and wear leather armor.
If combat goes against them after the first round, one will flee down the hall to bring back reinforcements that arrive in 2d4 turns.
The OGL 1.1/2.0 drama has thrown me for a loop. Not gonna lie.
My whole "Year of the Monster" was built on a foundation of doing monsters of various types all year. I still can, but I need to pivot.
Case in point. I have been silent for the last few days so I can get at least one of my planned monster books out. I am scraping nearly everything and dumping all the art I would use for other projects into it. Hopefully, I'll have something soon.
I also admit that my enthusiasm for some other plans that were going to extend into 2024 is critically low.
Even if WotC/Hasbro does some serious backpedaling, my trust is low, and my expectations are non-existent. This is disappointing because I have enjoyed all editions of D&D. I have also enjoyed writing for all editions of D&D. But I am, right now, not willing to support Wotc/Hasbro and the new version of D&D and my support of 5e is going to be minimal here.
I am though looking forward to some Pathfinder 2nd Ed discussions and deep dives. Also, I am going to try to feature more smaller publishers here. See what they have to offer. Even ones still doing 5e. It's not their fault that Hasbro is doing what they are doing.
So bear with me in this pivot phase.
Past the last two rooms, the grand hall splits left and right.
There is a grand statue of the Vampire Queen. Inspection will reveal that the statue is made of newer material than the surrounding walls.
Notes: Things should start picking up.
I have seen lots of great maps online for others, and I thought maybe I could share mine. ;)
This room is identical to Room 15 across the hall.
This includes a similar specter with the same warning. Though this ghost seems angrier. If the ghost is touched or attacked, it will become a bloody specter and attack. This is a true undead.
Bloody Spectre. AC 7. HD 3 (13 hp). Att# 1. Chilling touch 1d6. Special: Silver or magic is required to hit. Turned as a Ghoul (3 HD). No treasure.
Note: If the PCs encounter Room 16 before Room 15, then swap the contents so that this is always encountered after the first specter.
Up from Room #13 is another room of similar shape and size.
Within the room appears to be the glowing specter of a young woman. Her form wavers back and forth.
She warns the PCs from going further into the crypts and to turn back now.
The specter is not undead but an illusion.
Across from Room #13 is another room.
Free Art Assets - Grey Gnome Games - Jason Glover
This room is empty save for some bones, a rusted sword, and an empty barrel. There are rats, but they are of the normal sort.
This issue with the OGL is changing all the time now. I suppose there will be some sort of announcement about the OGL 2.0 today (yes we are on the 2.0 now).
But until then, we have decided to have a big sale on all Elf Lair Games products, including NIGHT SHIFT.
https://www.elflair.com/For products on our website, use the code DOOMSDAY40 at checkout to get 40% off your sale.
For our products on DriveThruRPG, all are on sale for 25% off, no code needed.
Again, NIGHT SHIFT and our upcoming new fantasy RPG "Wasted Lands: The Dreaming Age" will break free of the OGL and will be powered by our in-house O.G.R.E.S.
Interesting times ahead! Let's all have some fun together and get back to what we have always felt was our #1 job; make fun games for people to enjoy.
Up from Room 11 is a room covered in bones.
Virgil FinlaySkeletons equal to the number in the party plus retainers rise up from the ground and attack. They are undead and can be turned.
There are no usable weapons, but 25 cp can be found among them.
There is an old saying, "When one door closes, another one opens."
But you know what? I hate that saying.
When a door closes, you open it back up.
I grew up playing D&D. When you encounter a closed door, you make your "Open Doors" roll and kick it in!
Look. I love D&D, and I likely always will. While Hasbro's choices disappoint me, I am not going to let them stop my fun.
So at home, I am still going to play the games I like. On my blog and for my writing? Well, there are plenty of exciting existing alternatives. It now sounds like there are going to be more alternatives too.
But maybe the "OSR" phase of my game writing is over. It was fun, and I loved doing it. But many other games are out there that need love and attention, and I am excited to try them out.
One of the original purposes of my original "The Other Side" website was to talk about all sorts of games that I enjoyed. So let that continue now.
This room has a faint glow, and there is the smell of roasted meats.
In this space, there is a stone room but also a forest scene of glowing nearly transparent trees as far as the eye can see. Characters can only walk the 20 feet by 20 feet of the room. In the center of the grows a large tree laden with fruits.
The fruits are oval-shaped and look like mangoes. The fruits taste like roasted meat. Characters can eat them with no problems, they are fine if a little bland. They disappear once removed from this room.
Across from Room 10 is a similarly configured room.
Photo by Pixabay from PexelsA secret door in the floor reveals a sack of 150 GP. The coins are ancient and unknown to the PCs.
Up from Room #8 and across from Room #9 is Room #10.
It appears to be of the same dimensions as the previous rooms 5 through 9.
Virgil FinlayOnce the room is entered, a group of semi-human Phantoms appears.
The Phantoms can not attack, but a failed saving throw vs. Spells will cause anyone to run out of the room in fear. Once out of the room the fear effect dissipates.
They have 1-1 HD and 1 hp. Magic weapons are required to hit. There are 10 and their AC is 9.
The phantoms can be Turned by a cleric. A bless or dispel evil spell will also destroy them. The entire group is effected by these magics.
Lots of little things going on here during this time between 2022 and 2023. I am not sure what day it is or even the time, but hey, here we are.
Hastur, Ifrit Princess, and 3 Goblins in a trenchcoat.Year of the Monster
I have made some oblique references to this, but 2023 is going to be my Year of the Monster. Going back to my earliest roots of this hobby and talking more about monsters and monster-related topics. So more monsters for NIGHT SHIFT, more Monstrous Maleficarum, and a few other projects I have in my back pocket.
So this is one I just found out about. The idea is neat. Detail a new room every day for a 12-level mega-dungeon in 2023. I have never really been a fan of mega-dungeons, BUT as a writing exercise, I can see how it would be fun. I would want to have a theme and do it for Old-School Essentials. Though I have not made up my mind just yet.
New Year, New Character
I have done this for the past two years, and it was fun. I had an idea for this year but have run out of time to do it right. Have to think some more about this one.
OGL 1.1 and One D&D
Well. Once again, people are freaking out. Here is exactly everything we know for sure about the new OGL coming out when the next version of D&D is released.
And that is it.
Everything else is, at best, speculation and, at worst, Chicken Little style running around fear mongering. My personal plans are not changing. I will still publish under the OGL 1.0a, and still use the 3.5, Pathfinder, and 5e SRDs as I see fit.
Other Items
More "This Old Dragon" and other regular features. I am undecided on The April A to Z Challenge yet, and I am pretty sure I will not do another 100 Days of Halloween. But who knows.
Hope everyone is having a great Holiday Season.
Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas who celebrates.
Around here, we give (and receive) a lot of geeky gifts, thought I might show off a few.
Victorian? Horror monsters? England and Ireland? Yes, please! Got this from my oldest. My youngest printed off a bunch of demons and devils for me on their 3D printers too. Expect a review for this one!
My oldest ended up with multiple copies of the new Dragonlance book. So I got this one! ;)
AND after 40 years, I finally got a copy of Steve Jackson Games' Undead!
I am planning a larger review of it, and it's counterpart from TSR, Vampyre.
Both mini-games deal with the hunt for Dracula. So looking forward to playing them both and seeing how they compare.
I should also point out one other gift.
My wife got me a new photo rig for taking all these pictures.
Still experimenting with lighting, angles, and settings. You will see all the results here. All the pictures above were taken using this. I even have a spare phone I could use as a permanent mount if I desire.
I am starting off my 2023 Year of the Monster this week with something I have been planning for a while.
So please allow me to announce the publication of Monstrous Maleficarum, Issue #0 Christmas Special.
From Issue #0:
My goal is to publish a regular series of monsters for the 5th Edition of the World’s First Fantasy Role Playing Game via the Open Gaming License.
These will be monsters from my regular series “Monstrous Mondays” from my blog The Other Side. I will be taking what I have learned from my own monster creation over the years and from my reviews on what works well.
This Issue #0 will feature some Christmas-themed monsters and replaces the fifth edition version of Krampus I published years ago.
Each issue will cover a theme. Sometimes a closely linked set of monsters, or other times other similarities. The themes will largely be around the myths and legends of our world and other creatures I have found or made in my readings. In particular, the readings around the myths and legends of witchcraft. Thus the “Maleficarum” part of the title.
I will also endeavor to keep each monster to one or two pages so they can easily be printed out for use in your games. Also, my personal goal is to lay out these pages so you could, in theory, print them out and use a 3-hole punch to add them to a three-ring binder like editions of old. Collect what you want, and ignore the others.
Presently I have nearly 500 monsters ready to go. How many of them will see publication and get into your hands is unknown, but it will be an adventure for us all.
There will be framing text for each issue brought to you via various NPCs I have used over my 40+ years of gaming experience. Some, like my witch Larina and my undead-hunting cleric Johan will be familiar to readers of my blog. Others, like Jassic here, are maybe only known by name.
I hope you enjoy this adventure with me.
Going back to my box of Dragons this week to pull out a nice one from January 1988. I say "nice" but the issue is in fairly bad shape with no cover and pages falling out. The winter of 1988 was an odd one for me. I had a girlfriend leave me (quite literally, she never came back to school), and I was entering my second semester of college. Though I did start hanging out with the girl I would eventually begin dating and then marry, but that was still years off. INXS was the biggest music group on the radio. Robin Williams and "Good Morning Vietnam" was the king at the box office (whatever happened to "Good Morning, Chicago!"?) and on the shelves was #129 of This Old Dragon. We are solidly into the "theme" issues of Dragon now. The cover, a Dwarven cleric of Thor, reflects this. There are a few articles coming up that I think helped set the stage for how demi-humans would later be dealt with AD&D 2nd ed. Certainly, it was beyond what you would have seen in the Golden Age of AD&D 1st Ed. These are the end of the Silver Age of AD&D 1.
Letters has some Top Secret S.I. questions and some questions about cover art.
Forum has the (then) latest debates on whether or not Magic-Users can use weapons and/or armor. Some good cases are made here to be honest. All largely moot these days.
We get to the Featured Section, Demi-humans.
Len Carpenter is up first with Arcane Lore, Magic of the Dwarven Priests. It is a rather good one to be honest that gives tips and ideas on how to play the "newly permitted" Dwarven cleric PC. I am not sure if this article had anything to do with it, but the Dwarven Cleric became something of an iconic figure in the 3.x days. To that end this article still has some sound advice on not just what a Dwarven Cleric can and could do, but also what spells they are likely to have access too and which ones they would not. There are also plenty of new spells just for dwarven clerics. If you play a dwarven cleric today then this is a good article to dig up regardless of the system you are using.
Children of the Spider Goddess from Eric Oppen is next and gives us some insight on the Dark Elves. I went back to this article way back when I was running the D series for my family. I was running it all under 5e and there have been millions of words written about the Drow and Dark Elven between this publication and when I used it, but I still found it quite helpful for working out how the drow act and do what they do. While I have always felt that Drow should be Lawful Evil this article made a good point about how Chaotic Evil would work better.
John R. Prager hits us with a short article about altering the dice rolls for abilities in Give Demi-humans an Even Break! Essentially demi-humans get extra dice they can roll for determining their abilities. For example, if you are going to play a Hill Dwarf you roll 7d6 for Strength and just take the highest three. This might run counter old school dice rollers where you roll first and then determine the race/class or new schoolers where getting a low score in something typically associated with a particular race is really no big deal. Yes, there is even a column for Comeliness.
Halfling get a new class of their own in Don't Sell Them Short by Peter Dosik. The Halfling Guardians are bit like Halfling Paladins. Perfectly playable archetype/class.
C.E. Misso finishes us up with a bit on driders in Entering the Drider's Web. Driders' status have changed over the years with them being either cursed (this article) or the chosen of Lolth. I also took this and put it in my Drow (D1-2,3) folder. While maybe not the exact heralds of the age, they were certainly forerunners of the days when everyone wanted to play an edgy drow.
The Role of Computers by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser (and copyrighted 1988) covers the then state of the art in computer games. Their featured game is Tower of Myraglen for the Apple IIgs. Make sure your Apple has been upgraded for stereo sound for this game! It is not the best game they have played, but it does take advantage of Apple's 640×200 resolution and sound capabilities. They also have a bunch of smaller reviews for Acolade's Pinball Wizard, Beyond Zork, GBA Championship Basketball, California Games, and more.
Nice full-page ad for Traveller 2300.
Runequest fans get a treat in A Sorcerer's Supplement: New Sorcery Spells for RUNEQUEST by Michael DeWolfe. I have the classic Runequest rules, so I should hold on to this. I have still never played.
Sage Advice covers all those new questions that come with new rule books. This time for the D&D BECM (no I just yet) rules.
Big four-page ad for Warhammer. The worlds of D&D and Warhammer have been drifting further and further part by this time. Might be one of the last ads I'll see for it.
Dean Shomshak gives us a nice treat. The Dragon's Bestiary this month covers monsters from the Para-Elemental planes of Ice.
The Game Wizards from Jim Ward this month is A Volume of Oerthly Delights. He lets us know what could be part of the new Greyhawk Adventures hardcover (the last AD&D 1st edition hardcover). He gives us some ideas he is considering for the new book. They include: Greyhawk's Hall of Heroes, Greyhawk's Book of Creatures, Greyhawk's Book of Magic, Greyhawk's Book of Magical Devices, The Free City of Greyhawk, and Greyhawk's Clerics and Temples. I can't recall how many of these made it to the hardcover, but I do recall their being some monsters.
Our fiction section is The Old Ways are Best by Larry Walker.
"Who's in Charge Here?" by Bryan Caplan gives us guidelines on how many leaders in the form of higher-level fighters and/or cavaliers one should expect from a group of soldiers.
Powered armor gets more details for Star Frontiers from David Dennis in Armored and Dangerous. I really should get a Star Frontiers game going again. It was a lot of fun.
John C. Bunnell is back again with more book reviews in The Role of Books. He covers the likes of Sword and Sorceress IV, Tales of the Witch World, Agnes Day, and Murder at War.
Role-playing Review by Ken Rolston gives us two soon-to-be classics; one for AD&D and one for D&D. Up first we have GAZ 3 The Principalities of Glantri. Long-time readers here know how much of a fan I am of Glantri, and Rolston concurs, saying it is the best city presentation for a TSR game world. He also says that the book is nicely presented and well-written. His other is a little boxed set known as The Forgotten Realms Campaign Set. I don't suppose I need to go into detail on how this one was received here.
Up next are small ads. Lou Zocchi has some Deities & Demigods with Elric and Cthulhu in them. Send him 40 bucks. Oh, and I never did get my characters drawn from Anvil Enterprises.
The Convention Calendar has the best cons for the Winter of 1988, including one I actually went to!
Lots of conventions listed here. Far more than we have now.
Dragonmirth has comics.
We end with some ads and just Snarf Quest. No Wormy, though. The last strip would show up in a couple more issues. Little did I know I was at the time living just a couple miles away from where Tramp was living.
So a fun issue. Great if you are into demi-humans.
Mine has seen much better days, and I am unsure if it will survive the trip back to my box.
It's Tuesday, and that means a look at my latest mail call items. This week has some pretty good stuff.
Up first, a special Vampire Queen adventure from Bill Barsh and Pacesetter Games.
The package I got also came with 15 pre-gen characters to use.
Long-time readers will know I am a big "Vampire Queen" fan, buying a lot of books on this theme. This new purchase rounds out my "Pacesetter" collection.
And part of my larger Vampire Queen collection.
Pacesetter Games
I also got two RPG-adjacent Calendars for 2023.
First is the 2023 A Year with Djinn Calendar from my good friend Djinn in the Shade.
And that is about the only month I can actually show. Djinn is great, and I love the exploits of her sorceress Solaine.
You can find Djinn (and Solaine) here:
Secondly, I also got the GinnyDi 2023 Calendar.
I have spoken about Ginny Di before and I think she is great. Her calendar features many of her original characters including Morelia the Wood Witch. I grabbed the now sold-out Deluxe Ginny Di 2023 Calendar so I got the character card and the Ginny Di Dice.
Ginny is a lot of fun and this will work great in my game room.
Ginny Di online