From The Daily Beast |
A tribute to the wolf by Katelyn Windels on Instagram |
American Wolffolk
Dexterity 1-6
Knowledge 1-4
Presence 1-5
Abilities: Darkvision
From The Daily Beast |
A tribute to the wolf by Katelyn Windels on Instagram |
Abilities: Darkvision
Fishbone was one of the most popular American bands playing ska back in the 80s. They're certainly legends of the genre, although they are probably known more for their eclecticism and unique high-energy blend of funk, metal, soul, punk, reggae, and on and on and on.
They unexpectedly released a new song on Thursday. It is political and timely.
Let me be clear, because I know not everyone is going to like it...I truly want civility in political discourse. I have cult members in my family and don't want to dehumanize anyone. I believe in peace, probably to a fault as judged by most people...as in I believe there is power in peace, and in the cases where there are clearly more powerful forces at work, those are our chances as humans to give peace power. BUT (I know you knew one was coming) I do occasionally need folks around me to be blunt enough to remind me that there's a lot going on in America right now that should not be normalized, and that there are ultimately convictions that matter. In a world where I have been threatened and called a "liberal piece of shit" by a guy standing in my own backyard, I'm obligated to still try and recognize when things are...well, not okay.
Stay safe, everybody.
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Alright, let's lighten things up by giving the Rudie a sound from Fishbone. How about the one that might be rudest of all of their rude stuff?
Skankin' to the Beat
So this is pretty cool. A pair of papers recently dropped giving a detailed analysis of a huge elephant skull that was found in India way back in 2000 (alongside a bunch of human tools). And no, it isn't an Oliphaunt (or Mûmak)...but it is pretty darn big.
One of the papers focuses on the morphology and phylogeny of the skull (and thus the animal), placing it in the genus Palaeoloxodon, which has some of the largest elephants that ever walked the planet. (There's a really good summary of this paper over at Discover Wildlife.) It appears that this individual is a second example of a species previously named Palaeoloxodon turkmenicus, which in the range of 4 meters/13 feet at the shoulder (and around 10 tons) was certainly...well, mammoth:
P. turkmenicus and a human silhouette. Image by Chen Yu; swiped from Discover Wildlife. |
It's worth mentioning, though, that there's another species in the genus, Palaeoloxodon namadicus, that some estimates would place as the largest land animal ever at over 5 meters/17 feet, and up to 22 tons in weight! Here's a nice little video on that one:
(The other paper, meanwhile, has more information on human interaction with the elephant, based upon marks on the bones and tools found nearby. Both articles point to an age in the range of 300,000 to 400,000 years, which will never stop blowing my mind.)
Of course, even a 22-ton behemoth doesn't measure up to what we saw in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films:
From here |
And the coolest part is that they're using them as war machines. I'm sure there have been plenty of takes on Oliphaunts in RPGs over the years, but I think I'll just stat one out for Monstrous Matters purposes on the premise that it's a REALLY big elephant. It looks like the flagship proboscidean has about 8 or 9 hit dice in a typical d20-based system. Do I really want to make a Mûmak a monster with like 80 HD, or as I would play it in Monstrous Matters gaming, a Strength value of around 80? (Rhetorical question...)
Considering the D6-based system I've been playing with, it probably makes the most sense to pull ideas from Mini Six (which includes elephant stats and some nice, simple scaling rules) and WEG's Star Wars Miniatures Battles (which has a nice way of handling creatures by not worrying so much about what humans consider intelligence, and instead giving them an Orneriness Code that's used to test how difficult they are to work with).
From here |
From The Guardian |
From the project's Facebook page |
Garden of Love
In hindsight, I wonder if using a mini with a red beard was a bit of a Mary Sue move... |
Human Ranger 1
Str 10 Con 9 (-1) Dex 16 (+3) Int 13 (+1) Wis 11 Cha 8 (-1)
SAVES Fort +1 Rflx +5 Will +0
AC 15 FF 12 Touch 13
HP 9
Deity: a god/God Alignment: NG Init: -3 Move: 30 ft
ABILITIES Favored Enemy: Orc; Track; Wild Empathy
FEATS Weapon Focus (Longbow); Toughness x2; Point Blank Shot
FLAWS Noncombatant; Unreactive
COMPOSITE LONGBOW +5 (+6 <=30 ft), dmg 1d8, piercing, crit x3, rng 110 ft, wt 3#
LONGSWORD -1, dmg 1d6, slashing, crit 19-20 x2, wt 4#
LANGUAGES Native tongue (English), Common
SKILLS Climb 4 (+4), Handle Animal 4 (+3), Heal 4 (+4), Ride 4 (+7), Survival 4 (+4), Swim 4 (+4), Craft (Bowmaking) 4 (+5), Knowledge (Nature) 4 (+5)
GEAR/MONEY Composite Longbow (100 gp, 3#), Arrows (20) (1 gp, 3#), Longsword (15 gp, 4#), Leather Armor (10 gp, 15#), 114 gp
Ezra Brady led a pretty normal life in “our” world, although it was a life filled with secure adventure. Ezra earned a modest living working at REI, filling his free time with outdoor activities like hiking and spelunking. One day, on an expedition in a cave in central Illinois, Ezra’s gear failed him, and he went hurdling earthward through a cold pool on the cave’s floor. Surprisingly, he wasn’t injured at all, but when he emerged through the water’s surface, he realized the cavern around him had changed greatly. Climbing to dry land and slowly coming to his senses, Ezra heard noise around him. He wouldn’t know what they were at the time, but there were orcs at work.----------
Skills: Bows +4, Tracking +3, Animal Empathy +2, Medicine +1
Languages: English, Common
Goal: To get back home!
Quote: "I have a feeling I'm not in Illinois anymore..."
Cupid
You call for Cupid's arrow to be targeted at a creature you can see within range. If it fails the saving throw, it is charmed by another being of your choice for the duration of the spell and will regard that being as its true love while charmed. When the spell wears off, the creature will remember the events of the previous hour and, if sufficiently intelligent, know that it was emotionally manipulated.
(Or really a phylogenetic tree. I just liked the sound of family tree more in the title.)
So, in reading a post by James over at Grognardia, about Dragon articles on fantasy languages, I started to wonder if sometimes I just don't fly my geek flag high enough. As in...maybe I'm not appropriately minmaxing the fun I could get out of the RPG hobby by not allowing myself to just go nuts like I want to as a nerdy scientist who also loves games about elves and goblins.
James posted a tree of language families, originally appearing in Dragon #66, that shows the development of the Middle Elfin tongue into a variety of fae languages. And it's awesome. I love that sort of stuff, so why don't I do more of it? I wonder sometimes if I remain so focused on having an "anything goes" attitude about the world(s) I game in (like the setting for the Monstrous Matters campaign) that I miss out on creating things that would genuinely make me smile, even if I don't completely buy into all of the specifics.
With that in mind, I'm going to consider this a worthwhile way to spend a few minutes. Here's a phylogenetic tree of a few goblinoid species, along with a few creatures from that galaxy far, far away that I suspect might be closely related. (If you have access to genetic data, please let me know; this is just based on physical characteristics.)
Images from the Forgotten Realms Wiki, Wookieepedia, and Scryfall |
I feel like this just opens up a whole world of stories for how these species became distributed as they are. Maybe I'll follow up there. (If you'd like to see some of my related ramblings, please check out the stuff I've written about the Fantaspora Hypothesis and #WookieesAreBugbears.)
Thanks for looking! Now, for a character (cribbed from RPGGamer.org):
Image from Wookieepedia |
Skills: Survival +4, Thrown Weapons +3, Languages +2, Climb +1
Goals: Helping and protecting his friends
Quote: "Goodbye. Good-bye."
Oh. Man. Come on, America. And now that I probably have enough words in these first few sentences that I've moved beyond the little blurb that might pop up in the few feeds this blog is in...y'know, so I don't shock with my language or anything...holy shit, what is going on?!
I kind of can't believe that my enjoyment of the intentionally ridiculous schemes employed by the international terrorist organization known as Cobra must now be tempered by the fact that Americans are being manipulated into believing that actual Cobra tactics are being used on us by...our own government, I guess...? Coastal elites? Scientists? Just a bunch of Democrats? Who tf knows.
Anyway, if you don't know what I'm rambling about...I guess there are evil folks controlling the weather. And they sent those recent hurricanes to us...causing legitimate disasters...in order to target conservative voters. And mine lithium. Or...something else evil. I'd say you can't make this stuff up, but apparently you really can, and it might just become the batshitcrazy antics of a cartoon weapons dealer who wears a metal mask, or it could become a real belief of the American public. One or the other, because why not?
Destro and the Weather Dominator; from Joepedia |
Maybe I should just be happy that I've always been more of a Joe comics guy than a Joe cartoon guy.
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Anyway, if you happen to see this and would like to send any financial help to those affected by the recent US weather disasters...and believe me, I understand that there are really effed up things all over the world, amongst which you must divide your shareable money...here are some orgs that we feel good about supporting. (Please note that this list is very much focused on western North Carolina and includes some organizations focused on nonhuman animals, because that's where Laura and I used to live -- and have friends who have been greatly impacted -- and because we're crazy animal people. However, help is still needed in Florida -- and probably elsewhere -- as well, and I simply believe all beings are worth helping in these situations. So, please don't hate.)
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Hrm. Now because I'm still a nerd, here's the real designer of the Weather Dominator...
From Joepedia |
Skills: Engineering +4, Business +3, Intimidation +2, Firearms +1
Goals: Winning; profit; family honor; protection of the Baroness (like she really needs protecting)
Quote: "They shall learn the price of their arrogance!"
Moon Hop
One creature's jump height and distance are tripled for the duration of the sound.
I'm too stoked about this piece of art to sit on it anymore! Just had to share...
One of my innumerable ongoing nerd projects is to finally put together the bits and pieces I've gathered to play a campaign based upon the paranormal research and protection organization known as Monstrous Matters, whose members investigate the intrusion of extraplanar creatures upon our world. It's sort of my take on Ghostbusters meets D&D...maybe my own version of a fantasy heartbreaker...and I'm hoping to have a rules-lite yet suitably evocative document to share with the world by...well, I guess I should just say the end of the year at this point, since I move so slowly on everything hobby-related.
I knew that the incomparable Kelvin Green would have some excellent ideas for representing this type of adventure in a single picture, so I hit him up for it, and he did not disappoint. Quite the opposite, actually...I kind of can't believe how much I enjoy looking over the details he put into this piece! Without further ado, here is the first official image for Monstrous Matters, the organization:
I'm probably gonna have to make some version of this into a header for the blog eventually. Until then, I'll keep fighting through my gamer ADHD* to chip away at the game, while undoubtedly getting distracted by a variety of similarly inconsequential projects along the way...!
(Thanks Kelvin!!)
* FWIW, I'm not ashamed to mention that I have received this actual diagnosis...not "gamer ADHD," that would be weird...but regular old ADHD. I say this not to brag (ha!) but to make sure it doesn't look like I'm taking a legitimate hindrance on others' lives and turning it into a joke. For some reason, people seem really comfortable making jokes about having some of these alphabet soup disorders -- ADHD, OCD, PTSD, probably more -- and while I threw in a flippant mention of one of them, I figured: Why not pull the mood down a bit by making something into a more serious issue than it has to be? But hey, that's probably just the OCD at work, eh?
[Insert "come out to play" joke here.]
I just found out last week that the insanely talented Lin-Manuel Miranda of Hamilton fame (along with In the Heights and the soundtracks for Moana, Vivo, and Encanto) has a concept album coming out next month (the one that starts tomorrow) based on The Warriors. I'm pretty stoked.
Check it out HERE |
As I mentioned recently, I've become a bit of a Playbill collector over the past few years, and my love of the transcendent musical Hamilton definitely played a role in that development. And The Warriors...so, I found it relatively late in life, interestingly through learning about its potential influence on beat 'em up video games - specifically Double Dragon and Renegade - that I really liked as a kid. But now, if you catch me on the right day, I'll probably tell you it's one of my favorite movies ever. It's just so freaking...I don't know, stylish? Beautiful? Slick? Cool? I feel like a lot of folks of a certain age and outlook just have to admit, whether or not we think it holds up as quality cinema, that it's just badass.
It looks like Miranda is taking some interesting creative approaches - like casting women for all of the Warriors (plus replacing the Lizzies with some dudes called the Bizzies) and anthropomorphizing the boroughs of NYC by giving them distinct voices (maybe...I'm just guessing based on the cast list). And the cast itself has some legends.
If you're interested in learning more about this most fortuitous combination of things I really dig, you can check out the album's website HERE. I assume there will eventually be a stage musical, but either way, this looks awesome.
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And for a nerd touch, here's the film's closest-thing-to-a-hero Swan statted out as I've been putting numbers to characters lately...
Image from HERE |
Skills: Brawling +4, Courage +3, Streetwise +2, Knife +1
Goals: Survive; defend the Warriors
Quote: "When we get there, you stick close by, okay?"
From the free and excellent Dyson's Delve mega-ish-dungeon...check out this level HERE. |
In my continuing efforts to become a liberal coastal elite, fully out of touch with my working-class roots [that's mostly sarcasm, in case it needs to be said], I've become a pretty big fan of Broadway musicals. I've long enjoyed musicals [and (1) have even been playing around with writing one for like 20 years, and (2) think that an RPG that plays out like a musical might be the most amazing game I can imagine]. So, now that Laura and I live close enough to hop over for a day in NYC, we take whatever opportunities we can (and can afford) to see the best that musical theater has to offer. (West End theatergoers, I'll entertain your arguments.)
Our current Broadway favorite obsession is Hadestown. This musical has an interesting origin, as it started out in smaller theaters in New England, then was turned into a concept album by its creator, Anaïs Mitchell, in 2010.
Starting in 2016, the musical made its way to an off-Broadway theater, then to Edmonton, to London, and finally to the big stage of Broadway (although it uses a fairly small stage, to be honest), winning the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2019. It's inspiring, as a would-be creator of a variety of media, to see that an idea was able to progress this way. And in all seriousness, it is a freaking work of genius.
Hadestown tells the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, set in what seems like a Depression-era New Orleans juke joint (as Hermes tells us, "Don't ask where, brother, don't ask when"), plus this setting's associated underworld, called Hadestown. I could gush about pretty much every aspect of this production, but I'll try to keep it brief by saying that it is a complete work of art, with meanings that I'll probably be working through in my head until the day I take my own trip across the Styx. It is also beautiful. The underworld's dieselpunk aura is especially striking:
This is actually a shot from a Korean production, rather than Broadway, but the dark deco feel is still there. Image from HERE. |
The end result of this mashup of mythology and Americana is a near-perfect story that always leaves me wanting more, to the point that I start to imagine what other works of classical mythology would fit nicely into this cultural milieu. I eventually recognize that overplaying the details and themes that make Hadestown so transcendent will probably just lead to a bunch of stuff that doesn't feel nearly as special anymore. That little drive is always there, though -- whether it's due to my comic-filled childhood or my love of gaming, I inevitably want to expand the "Hadestown Universe" just to get more of it. (That's a tendency I've chosen to call the Gotham by Gaslight effect.)
We took in the production for the second time last Wednesday...and while there are a number of excellent songs in the show, there was one that was just taken to another level that day. Having watched the American presidential debate the night before, and listened to the anti-immigrant nonsense espoused therein*, I was struck by the remarkable fact that Mitchell wrote the song "Why We Build the Wall" way back in 2006. Many viewers assume the show is just a statement on modern American politics...but it's really just a show about the nature of humanity and of being human, and this song just happens to hit a lot harder because of the world we live in now.
If you have a couple of minutes, I really, really recommend giving this tune a listen. Here's a lyric video featuring the original Broadway cast (leading right into the last few lines of the first act). Laura and I were a bit late to the game, so while we actually missed the runs of the original main cast members, we have not been left wanting. Hades is currently portrayed by Phillip Boykin, whose performances have been jaw-dropping, to say the least. (The last time we saw it, in the split second between the end of the number and the rise of applause, you could hear a guy a couple rows behind us just say, "My god...")
Now, to make sure I'm keeping this blog suitably ridiculous, I think I'll close this out by taking a look at Hades as a character in a Ghostbusters-type game. So here goes...
Image from HERE |
If we're using the "Ghostology" section of the old Ghostbusters RPG's Operations Manual, Hades would fall into the category of Really Bad News, which includes "demons, powerful gods, and the like." This essentially puts him into a category where he doesn't need stats, because the PCs aren't going to be able to do much to affect him anyway...that is, unless they can find that one unique way to defeat him. For the Hades of Hadestown, there are some key weaknesses that can be seized upon: (1) his greed and love of power, and (2) his genuine love for his wife Persephone. Anything the players can do to impact Hades will have to feed off of the insecurity that comes from these two qualities of the character.
However...he should be a little more fun to play than that. So, here are a few tidbits stolen/adapted from an OGL 5e take on Hades:
Spell-like Abilities (all at will): hellish rebuke (3rd level), mold earth, thaumaturgy, fear, phantasmal killer, wall of stone, gate
Soul Syphon: Hades inhales souls in a 60 ft. cone. Each creature in the affected area takes 13D damage unless they pass a Strength check with a difficulty of 21, which cuts the damage in half (rounded up).
Bass-Baritone: Hades' voice is really, really low. Just do your best.
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* Yep, I know immigration is a complex issue (as they all are), and there is a discussion to be had on the proper approach to reform that accounts for both American safety and human dignity. BUT...that bullshit last Tuesday? That was nonsense.
Mini-ethical dilemma today: I honestly feel a bit strange posting anything too...eh, hopeful and...I dunno, frivolous...on 9/11. But y'know, if I wait till tomorrow, the clock will be almost at zero on this. And I do want to share it...and you can't really deny the American connection here. Today is a day to celebrate heroes!
The Core Rules are already on DriveThru as a PWYW, so you can check out the basics before buying into it. The mechanics definitely look solid, although I'm really in it more for the worldbuilding. The art is familiar but unique. And Mike, frankly, seems like a good dude.
It's already funded and into stretch goals. Check it out HERE if you'd like to join me in getting in on the superheroic action!
Okay, a very low-effort post today...!