Jason Morningstar, creator of Fiasco, proposed an interesting challenge on the Story Games forums a few days ago.

OK, Story Games global brain trust, let’s make skeletons cool and unnerving. What are the key components in skeletonry? What will make them badass and memorable? I want players to pee their pants when they hear that dry rattling down the corridor, not snicker and pull out their blunt smashing tools.

It’s a great thread, full of inspiring posts. Check it out. People offered up some very cool inspiring ideas. I was struck with a new take on skeletons, which I wrote up and posted on the forum.

Click that link or read on for the comment in full, a cool reply from Jason Morningstar and a Dungeon World move for these new ‘Mockingbardian Skeletons’, as Jason has dubbed them. Continue reading...

Full Disclosure: I received a free PDF copy of the Midgard Bestiary after providing feedback and a playtest report of the draft version.

Kobold Quarterly and Open Design should be familiar to a lot of you by now, and those kobolds just keep going! Currently underway is one of their biggest projects ever: the Midgard Campaign Setting. If you’re interested in collaborative worldbuilding and shaping a new setting, you should check it out.

Lots of Open Design projects in the past have been for the Pathfinder RPG, but Green Ronin’s AGE system (used for the Dragon Age RPG) is enjoying a surge of popularity these days too. Hence, the Midgard Bestiary. It’s packed full of 50 monsters and adversaries newly statted up for the AGE system and is a very welcome addition to any AGE GM’s tool kit. I highly recommend it. Read on for the full review.

It’s Free RPG Day again. Last year I released my first roleplaying game on Free RPG Day. It’s called ZILLA! and is a game of destruction, mayhem and love. You’re a giant zilla on a city-smashing rampage. Zillas are powerful and hard to kill, but they are prone to becoming enamoured with humans. Will you fight another zilla, escape the city to a better place, smash the city to the ground, or even… find love?

This year, I have released a free character pack with three pre-generated zillas for you and your friends to take to town. This is the ‘Classic Character Pack’ and it isn’t hard to see the inspiration behind Thoron, the giant lizard with atomic breath, Leoptra, an enormous psychic moth, and Kapparo, a gargantuan magma-infused tortoise.

Download the classic character pack for free. If you don’t yet have the game itself, download ZILLA! for free too.

Happy Free RPG Day, everyone!

You might also be interested in reading...

• ZILLA! – My Free RPG Day Offering
• Link Hoard: Free RPG Round-up
• Fever Dreams – Entertainment Built on Pyres
• Kobold Quarterly #14 for Free!
• NPC Description Tables

• 2,261 words for #nanowrimo already! Unlike my MC, my week is off to a good start.
• 4,607 words for #nanowrimo and the fun is about to begin for my main character.
• Adding “Write 2000 words” into Epic Win as a daily task is motivating. Also add this optional daily task: “Write 2000 more words” #nanowrimo
• RT @Riesetheseries Don’t forget RT this message to possibly win an EXCLUSIVE #Riese prize pack! Watch Riese: Kingdom Falling on @Syfy.com/riese
• Lamest/coolest lycanthrope ever: the werecrossbow.
• I was going to try 4E again once Character Builder got the Essentials update, but I have unreliable Internet so a web-based CB rules me out.
• After watching Kiss Kiss Bang Bang again, I have to say that Robert Downey Jr. would make an incredible Harry Dresden.

I’ve talked about it, I’ve tweeted about it and now here it is: my first post in a series about reskinning monsters. I think this is one of the simplest and most powerful tools in the GMs toolbox. Put plainly, reskinning means to take the stats of a creature and describe it differently. It’s when your PCs encounter a long serpentine crocodile with a red lion-like mane, but you use the stats for a generic wolf. If the wolf can trip, your crocolion can chomp down on character’s legs and snap them to the ground. If the wolf has some sort of howling ability, make it a fearsome roar instead.

Most of the time, your players will never know the difference and they’ll be entrance and in-awe of this weird new monster they’ve never seen in all your monster books and supplements. It also has the benefit of them not getting the upperhand on you through player knowledge. “Oh, watch out guys, wolves can trip you”. If it doesn’t look like a wolf, they won’t immediately know its abilities.

There’s a lot more to it than that though. You can have a lot of fun with it and step-by-step build up an unique monster with ecology, tactics, weakness and strengths actually quite different that the base creature. In this post, we’ll take a look at the basics and reskin a creature as we go. I’ll follow up this article with a deeper look at other aspects of reskinning.

• Reveal of psychopathic split-personality BBEG in #pathfinder game made my entire group recoil in chairs and go “Ohhh… $#&%!” I love GMing!
• RT @mouseguard Mouse Guard RPG boxed set includes the main book w/ minor corrections, a supplement w/ new rules for mounts, additional weapons, &adventures
• More about the Mouse Guard RPG boxed set. Pawns, dice, cards, a map, a new supplement, and more! http://bit.ly/99J7d1
• I discovered an awesome site today: www.creaturespot.com Excellent source of creature art. Great for reskinning #rpg monsters.

• @newbiedm Sunken Empires http://bit.ly/cZa2Fi may be inspiring. Aquatic rules, gear, race/class variants and a half-sunken city #pathfinder
• RT @Dice_of_Doom Cthulhu, the god your god could smell like… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc90UhV6hJA http://fb.me/EmyWJxpi
• Light from the setting sun filters through darkening clouds, bathing the world in sepia. Wind-chimes tone as an old timey storm threatens.
• RT @GreenRoninPub The open mechanics playtest for Dragon Age Set 2 has begun! Go to http://tinyurl.com/267lm3y to participate.
• RT @paizo The MAGUS Open Playtest has now begun! This new playtest Pathfinder class mixes martial skill and magic in a… http://fb.me/tm9MrhFK

• Master Plan – Phase 1: post GMing advice, NPCs, mini-plots etc here and at http://www.pyresofvam.com Phase 2: ??? Phase 3: World domination!
• What magic is this? It sends missives worldwide? Excellent… I shall issue tweets of doom to recruit minions. Prepare yourselves.#fromvam

You might also be interested in reading...

• Monster MashUp Contest Update
• Nevermet Press Monster MashUp Contest
• Tweets of Doom for the week ending 2010-11-07
• Reskinning Monsters: An Introduction
• Revamping Skeletons

You might also be interested in reading...

• Monster MashUp Winners
• Nevermet Press Monster MashUp Contest
• Tweets of Doom for the week ending 2010-11-07
• Reskinning Monsters: An Introduction
• Revamping Skeletons