Pyres of Vam » monsters

Revamping Skeletons

Mockingbard — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:55:44 +0000

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

Posted By: Jason Morningstar

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. I’ve talked about reskinning monsters before; this thread focused on revamping and reimaginging them instead. Click that link or read on for the forum post in full, a cool reply from Jason Morningstar and a Dungeon World move for these new ‘Mockingbardian Skeletons’, as Jason has dubbed them.

First off, my forum post:

Posted By: Mockingbard

Posted By: Krippler

Skeletons with eyeballs. Some of them do not match. They have many blind friends who are eager to recieve a fresh pair. Some skin, a heart, intestines and genitals would be nice as well and a brain for those trixy plans.

Posted By: ivan

You will find skeletons stuck in a loop of repetitive obsessive painfully pointless behaviors, while at the same time trying to preserve a mockery of humanity by wearing fine clothes and trying to fill themselves with the entrails of their victims to look alive.

Posted By: C. Edwards

Skeletons can see only the past and any living thing they encounter appears as a vision of horror, hatred, or pain from their former lives. They speak among themselves in a complex language of clicks, clacks and scratches. Gathering in long-forgotten places, skeletons have grand balls where they parade, spin and cavort to music only they can hear.

Posted By: Jason Morningstar

I like the idea of personalizing them.

I love all the comments here, but these ones fit best with an idea I’ve had while reading this inspiring thread.

Skeletons constantly recall the happiest (or most memorably emotional) moments of their lives, and while no living creature is around they can indulge in this fantasy. Once adventurers arrive in all their fleshy glory, the skeletons’ lack of life becomes clear, the dream is shattered and the skeletons blame the living intruders. Skeletons attack with their hands and teeth, even if using weapons they try to grab you.

Upon being touched by a skeleton, their memories flood into you: playing with their children in a park; marrying their wife; the satisfaction of a hard day’s labour and drinks with friends at the tavern. Their touch also saps the flesh from your bones; it crawls off your bones and onto the skeleton, restoring it to a semblance of life but in your guise (or a strange mongrel mix of many people it has sapped). It’s disguise is nowhere near perfect. It holds up as human from a distance, but close inspection reveals some irregularities, and it begins falling apart within hours or days. They can’t talk, but make rough, throaty noises and their eyes are unfocused or work independently. They can look sort of normal but always kinda wrong or creepy. Like they’re wearing an Edgar suit.

If the skeleton saps enough flesh to become whole again it seeks out living people and tries to recreate its memories. It approaches children in a park; it crashes a wedding, believing itself to be the groom; it pulls up a chair at a tavern and joins the living there, pouring a drink down its disconnected throat. In close proximity it doesn’t take long for others to realise something is wrong. In defence or in anger at the spoiled recreations of its memories, it attacks, drains more flesh and moves on to find another place where it can try again to relive its memories. Hopefully those adventurers it attacked but didn’t kill will use the flashes of its memories they saw to work out where it would go and track it down.

Jason liked the idea and extrapolated on it:

Posted By: Jason Morningstar

I’d also point out that Mockingbardian Skeletonsknow stuff- they remember important details of their lives and transmit that to their victims. So it is easy to imagine circumstances in which a seeker of knowledge might hunt down the living skeleton of the ancient King of the Nau Tuchaninut Dwarves and willingly accept his dry embrace…at least for a little while. But the meat-head who smashes the old King to bits isn’t just destroying a threat, he’s erasing vital and irreplaceable knowledge of the past. Which of the Three Elven Regents was given the Rod of Selka the Arbiter at the old Dwarf’s coronation five hundred years ago? The fate of a kingdom rests on knowing.

And Marhsall Miller made a Dungeon World move for “Mockingbardian Skeletons”:

Posted By: mease19

When a skeleton touches your skin, roll+WIS. On a 10+, you see this place as it once was and the skeleton shows you why it is here and what it wants. On a 7-9, the GM will write down why it is here and what it wants on a sheet of paper, tear it in half, and offer you one of the halves.

This was a great thread and I’m happy my contributions were so well received. People are still adding cool stuff to it, so make sure you head over, check it out and add to it if you’re so inclined. Feel free to use the Mockingbardian Skeletons in your own games. And check out the related Concerning Sirens thread that has just started up.

Review: Midgard Bestiary, Vol 1 (AGE System)

Mockingbard — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 08:00:01 +0000

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.

Layout & Art

Including covers, the PDF is 58 pages and other than the monsters there is a table of contents, an introduction from Jeff Tidball (AGE System Lead Developer), and a brief ‘How to use this book’ section. After that, it’s on to the monsters.

Overall the book is very well laid out with one monster per page, all with a neat, clean stat block in the style featured in the Dragon Age RPG itself, which is very easy to reference in play. Keep a list of the Standard Stunts handy and everything else you need to run the monster is there in the stat block. Two of the monsters have an extra box on the page: one about the Gypsosphinx’s riddles and how they affect combat, the other about the Harem Assassin’s courtesan weapons which appear to be fully usable by player characters.

As well as the stat block and description, each monster entry features black and white art of the monster. While much of the art is familiar, it is all beautiful and evocative and it’s great to see it all collected together like this from across the many Open Design patron projects. Each piece gives you a great sense of the monster being detailed and all are perfectly serviceable for holding up to players and saying “You see this”. I should also mention the coloured cover art, which features a cool action scene of an elf and centaur fighting a dragon. Some cover at tends to be very passive, but there is real action here.

The Monsters

Most of the beasties here are drawn from past Open Design products and converted to the AGE system, though there are a handful of brand new creatures from the Midgard campaign setting. This isn’t a bad thing at all, just a point for clarity. It’s actually really great. It’s like a ‘Best Of Open Design’ Bestiary with old favourites given new life in a new system. I’ve used the bone crab before but seeing the AGE version in action during our playtest was a lot of fun. It was so easy to run a few of these guys at once and their hive tactics worked perfectly. I can’t say enough about how much fun it is to use these monster’s stunts!

It really shows in the monster entries the care and dedication taken in crafting their stats. The AGE system is used to full effect in this book with tonnes of powers and stunts new to the AGE system. One notable exception is the Alseid Hunter which has no special powers. I asked author Josh Jarman about this during the playtesting process and as I suspected the Alseid has purposely been left without unique powers to make it easily usable as a player race. It’s a great foe, specialising in ranged attacks and I could easily see it as an NPC or PC.

Josh was great during the playtesting process and based on feedback I provided the Death Butterfly Swarm was tweaked. It’s a challenging threat, but in the earlier version my players found it near impossible to kill without a mage. Non-mages felt a bit useless in combat against it. Now players are still in for a tough fight but creative ones have a good shot at taking the swarm down even without magic. The monster is a lot more fun to fight. I was a little worried about this one before, but I feel that it’s now a more versatile foe and I’ll definitely be using it in my AGE games. Again, the changes made from playtest feedback are a testament to the consideration put in by Josh and the other designers; they really wanted this book to be the best it could be and they’ve done a great job of getting it there.

As I mentioned above the stunt system really shines with these Midgard monsters. Running them as a GM is almost as fun as fighting them as a player! Even if you’re on a cold streak with few to no stunt points the monsters hold their own. And there are plenty of them. One thing that’s been missing from the Dragon Age RPG is a big book of beasties; and now we have one. These monsters obviously suit Midgard, but I can easily imagine a lot of them feeling quite at home in Thedas. With such fun stat blocks, they’ll be great for reskinning, too. Whatever you do with them, 50 new monsters appropriate for a wide range of PC levels will provide endless opportunities for excitement in your AGE game, regardless of the setting.

Speaking of setting, while these monsters would work in most worlds, the bestiary is a great peek into the world of Midgard. The descriptions of the monsters flesh them out beyond their stats and really make you want to run them, giving you further ideas about how, when and where to spring them on your players, as well as what their habitats and behaviours are like. Some of these, like the dust goblin scavenger and Arbonesse exile are specific to Midgard and their descriptions speak of empires and wastelands and other elements of the campaign setting. It should get you excited for Midgard or at least provide inspiration for your own settings.

Potential Downsides

This review has been pretty positive so far, but there are three things that you should know before you make a final decision about whether to purchase the book. These aren’t bad, really, just important to be aware of.

First, this is a book for GMs, not players. Also, it’s a bestiary, not a gazetteer. Now, these points might seem obvious, but I think they bear mentioning. While there are some juicy titbits of Midgard setting information in this book, its purpose is to present foes for GMs to stack against players. If your primary goal is to learn more about Midgard, this isn’t the product for you. Join the Midgard Campaign Setting project instead; that’s where the real meat is. That said, if you really want every single piece of information there is about Midgard, you should also pick up this book.

Secondly – and I’ve already mentioned this, but it’s worth repeating – there aren’t that many new monsters here. If you’ve been part of several Open Design projects before you may be familiar with a lot of these monsters. That should be fine, because they’ve never been statted up for AGE before. However, if you’re grabbing this book just for art, descriptions and inspiration, just be aware that you may have seen many of these foes before. Again, not a biggie, just something to note.

The third potential downside is more important, especially for new AGE GMs. None of the monsters in the book have “levels” or “challenge ratings” or the like; no indication of which ones are appropriate foes for PCs of different levels. Now some you can sort of tell because they have crazy powers that would wipe out lower level PCs, but it’s not always obvious.

This is more a symptom of the Dragon Age RPG and AGE System itself, rather than any fault of the Midgard Bestiary’s. For those of you unfamiliar with AGE, there is no real ranking or indication of challenge rating of monsters. This fact could make the Midgard Bestiary – or any AGE bestiary or monster list – far less useful for new AGE GMs who are unsure which foes to throw at their players.

The Game Master’s Guide of Dragon Age RPG Set 2 has a partial solution. Page 17 has a section called Combat Math which talks about the mechanics of constructing appropriately challenging encounters. It goes on to point out how complicated this can be and follows up with a simpler method of guesstimating and getting the challenge somewhere in the right ballpark of difficulty. This goes a long way to helping AGE GMs present encounters that aren’t too hard or too easy.

That said, if you are the type of GM who is comfortable tweaking the monsters’ stats on the fly that could help you while you get a feel for how these monsters fit in. Proving too tough to hit? The next near miss strikes the foe’s armour and knocks part of it off, making them easier to hit from now on; or you just take a few hit points away, secretly (or add a few if the fight is too easy).

Another useful aid is to look at the adventures included in the Game Master’s Guides for Sets 1 and 2 and compare those monsters to the ones in the Midgard Bestiary, to get an idea of about how challenging they are. Experience, here, will also help over time. It’ll get easier.

So, that’s all the ‘negative’ things I have to say about this book, really: it’s a book of monsters for GMs (not a setting guide or a player’s book) and you’ll have to do a little prep and a bit of thinking before using the monsters.

Verdict

Midgard Bestiary Vol. 1 is a great product. If the potential downsides listed above don’t bother you, you’ll enjoy this book. While many of the monsters may be familiar to Open Design patrons, they are all interesting and engaging challenges and statted up for AGE they feel brand new and are a pleasure to use. Midgard Bestiary Vol. 1 is a must have for any AGE GM. 50 new monsters to throw at your players as well as to use for inspiration and insight into how to build your own. Great art and great descriptions, coupled with AGE monsters that are just a whole lot of fun to run! Your players will be constantly surprised by the versatility of these foes thanks to their unique powers and stunts.

There’s plenty here to love and the Midgard Bestiary is a great addition to any AGE campaign. The book only costs five dollars; that’s a lot of bestiary for your buck. This book has gone through extensive playtesting and has had lots of love and talent poured into it. $5 is an absolute steal. In fact, grab the free Dragon Age RPG quick start rules and Open Design’s Midgard Bestiary Vol. 1 and you’re set for hours of action-packed monster bashing, stunt rolling fun! See you in Midgard.

ZILLA! – Free ‘Classic Character Pack’

Mockingbard — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 02:04:22 +0000

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!

Tweets of Doom for the week ending 2010-11-07

Mockingbard — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 11:00:33 +0000

This is a compilation of this week’s Tweets of Doom. For more, check us out and follow us on Twitter.

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.
New Pyres Post: “Reskinning Monsters: An Introduction” – as promised, the first of a series about reskinning monsters: http://wp.me/pS7pB-zJ
7,029 words for #nanowrimo so far and I managed to finally post a 788 word introduction to monster reskinning too http://wp.me/pS7pB-zJ #rpg
Machine of Death in PDF form, for free! Amazing! Download, read and if you love it – 100% likely – buy a physical copy! http://bit.ly/9rJUO0
Machine of Death podcast too, which is equal to or cooler than the free PDF: http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/machine-of-death/id402077546
Like the art in my latest article? If so, thank @beastofoblivion for being cool and letting me use it. See more at http://bit.ly/blDcCH
My main character just used the phrase “frogger on speed” to describe his sudden burst of acceleration running across a busy road #nanowrimo
Oh, yeah! 9,101 words so far! Awesome! #nanowrimo
Do you dare gaze into the Eye of Chaos? Enough to get you started with John Harper’s dark fantasy #ApocalypseWorld hack http://bit.ly/ahii5a
Woo! Going out tonight, but managed to fit 2000 words in first. Total: 11,190! Almost two days ahead. Yay! #nanowrimo
Make that 11,714 words. BAM! Saturday and Sunday’s word count is in the bag! I’ll try to get ahead even more this weekend #nanowrimo
Heard a band tonight that had an electric cello and sung that “the turkey’s full o’ stuffing and the stuffing’s full o’ soul!” So cool!
13,726 words so far. Main character has just had his status-quo shaken. I find Scrivener really helps me frame scenes. #nanowrimo
All of this talk of #GammaWorld, I wonder how many of its players are aware of #ApocalypseWorld http://apocalypse-world.com/ #rpg #dnd
Only 6 hours left to back Human Contact. It’s definitely going ahead so get in on the action: http://bit.ly/azHEI0 #humancontact #rpg
Just discovered Warren Ellis’ FreakAngels, a free comic about 12 psychic people in post-apoc flooded London http://www.freakangels.com/?p=23
Fascinating set of links about Sexism in Gaming http://bit.ly/ajWSjZ Lots of the content is just appalling and certainly eye-opening.
Re-potted my two baby tomato plants today in TOMATO TOWERS! They will reign from on high across this land and they shall call it This Land!
15,907 and the MC’s reality is about to break! Tomorrow’s the first day I know I likely won’t get any words done. Lucky I’m ahead #nanowrimo
Now, to listen to the Machine of Death podcast while doing the dishes, then go to bed and dream up trouble for tomorrow’s #pathfinder game.
I’ve been doing my chores and just scored a Armour of the Llama – Epic Win! http://bit.ly/ao6xRS

Reskinning Monsters: An Introduction

Mockingbard — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 10:57:17 +0000

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.

Start with Art

I follow a lot of cool artists on Deviant Art and I recommend every GM interested in monsters subscribe to the RSS feed at Creature Spot, too. I often see great pieces of art for unusual creatures and think, wow, I want to use that in my game. You don’t have to painstakingly come up with balanced stats for every cool new piece of art you find. Reskinning solves that for you. I recommend starting with art, as it gives you a good idea of what you’re going for and also gives you something that you can show to your players and say, “You see this!”

For the purposes of this post, I’m going to reskin a monster as I go, to show how easy it is. I’ve just jumped onto Creature Spot and found this nasty, weird looking beastie, by Allison Theus a.k.a. beastsofoblivion. Click the picture for a bigger version at her Deviant Art page.

"Splice - Escapee" by Allison Theus (beastofoblivion)

So, here we’ve got a beast “comprised of bits of boar, hyena, leopard, lemur, owl, and beetle”, to quote the artist. For stat purposes, I’m thinking the leopard and beetle parts are the most important. Basically, now we look for something that would resemble that, stat-wise. Opening up my Pathfinder Bestiary I look for leopards and, hey, there is one! If you want to play along at home, here’s a link to to the leopard’s stats. Let’s see, it has bite and claw attacks and it can pounce, rake with claws and grab with mouth. Perfect!

The body is most leopard like, so it’s a good base. It’s wicked claws already have a linked attack, so that’s great. But that crazy beetle maw is a different matter. If you look at the leopards stats, it has a bite that allows it to grab smaller creatures if it hits. See the long, tongue-like bit on the picture of of the new monster? I’m gonna say that it’s a prehensile tongue with sharp barbs like a combination of a cat’s tongue and fishhooks.

So, now when I describe this thing attacking with the ‘bite’ attack and succeeds on the grab, it’ll sound a bit like this: “The creature makes a low clicking snarl in its throat and lunges at you, piercing your flesh as it clamps down with its sharp mandibles. You feel its barbed tongue hooking in and latching onto your skin”.

Ouch! That’s the same attack, just described differently. It acts exactly the same and does the same damage. It’s all colour and flavour that makes reskinning so effective.

It only took a few minutes, but I really think this critter’s ready to go. Wasn’t that easy? It is statistically identical to the leopard, but thanks to the art and the description it’s a lot more interesting – they are the key to this whole thing – and players will really wonder what the hell they’re up against. I’m going to finish this post here, as an introduction to reskinning.

Join me next time as we look at how we can tweak the habits, habitats, tactics and other elements of reskinned creatures to make them even more different than the base creature.

Tweets of Doom for the week ending 2010-10-17

Mockingbard — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 10:49:47 +0000

This is a compilation of this week’s Tweets of Doom. For more, check us out and follow us on Twitter.

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.
Yesterday I met some cool people: some aspiring writers and a published writer. We talked about castles, Japan and werewolves. Good times
Weather should affect your NPCs. For instance, like real people, many NPCs would try their best to stay indoors when it’s raining #rpg #tips
Have you watched the PAX Celebrity Game? I don’t play #4e, but loved watching this. Some nice bits of rping, too http://bit.ly/cywKIZ #dnd
RT @giullina The Female Character Flowchart: http://tumblr.com/xf5lkvnhz
Tweeting from my new iPod touch! Pip is a fantastic dice rolling app all gamers should have. Great for D&D, Savage Worlds, Dragon Age etc.
Played #Murderland tonight. Mr Green was in the billiard room all game, fighting almost every turn. Results: http://yfrog.com/ebl0ej
Wife GMd for first time today: ran #DragonAge #rpg module, the Dalish Curse. Added awesome origin for my PC & memorable NPC meeting. LOVE!
Here is my party: Gallen of Midridge (me, warrior), King (Mabari rogue) & Jacqueline the snarky healing circle mage http://yfrog.com/6rnqxhj
Wife tweaked the module so the Fuldors were Jacqueline’s family. It was awesome! Lots of good voices, personalities and little touches.

Tweets of Doom for the week ending 2010-09-26

Mockingbard — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 05:50:22 +0000

This is a compilation of this week’s Tweets of Doom. For more, check us out and follow us on Twitter.

@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
RT @SavageBloggers Savage House Rule: Shortened Skill List http://goo.gl/fb/eya34 #SavageWorlds
New Pyres Post: “Mini-Flashbacks: Linking Characters Into the World Through Play” http://wp.me/pS7pB-xG
Epic fan-made trailer for Minecraft. If you play or are just curious about #minecraft you won’t regret watching this. http://bit.ly/dkNnBd
Prep-Lite Manifesto http://bit.ly/9f6JBS Great advice from @gnomestew Identify your weaknesses as a GM and make a template to help you prep
I read http://glyphpress.com/shock/ today by @joshuaacnewman. Interesting game. Hoping to run it in the not too distant future.
#monster Emaciated “vampires” survive in vacuum of space; live on energy from stars, but seek out & drain electricity from ships & humans
#monster Blinding beings of light hide in glare of sun, can melt metal & flesh with proximity and touch (inspiration: http://bit.ly/aMSyQs)
Haven’t played Geiger Counter yet, but looks great http://bit.ly/aMSyQs Cooperative survival horror. Would pay to see the example movies.
#npc Mage with monkey familiar seems in shock, something’s off. Monkey is intelligent (or demon-possessed, etc) & mind-controlling the mage.
#monster Enkhanté is the legendary elephant-eating beast, collossal, yet able to burrow and hide underground. Craters and quakes herald it.
New Pyres Post: Free Playtest RPGs http://www.pyresofvam.com/odds-ends/link-hoard/free-playtest-rpgs/

Tweets of Doom for the week ending 2010-09-12

Mockingbard — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 11:48:02 +0000

This is a compilation of this week’s Tweets of Doom. For more, check us out and follow us on Twitter.

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
#ebz I’ve gone to Fallen London! http://www.failbettergames.com/echobazaar
#ebz The rarer and cleverer of the city rats – the dangerous ones – employ their tiny hands to marvell… http://fallenlondon.com/c/231504
Woah, late home from work = players arrive to my apartment before me! Luckily, we’re playing Fiasco tonight so no prep for me. Awesome
Regarding Fiasco, we started last week but started late and it was our first time playing, so we only got up to the Tilt. Tonight we finish!
Playing Fiasco, eating strawberries. Woah… Double Strawberry! It’s starting to look like a Triple Strawberry!! What does this mean?
#Fiasco was excellent! Faith healing detective, opium-addicted miner, mail order bride grifter and another miner lying about striking gold!
My copy of Apocalypse World has arrived in Australia! I’m looking forward to barfing forth Australiana apocalyptica Thanks @lumpleygames
Breezy first day of spring banished yesterday’s crazy thick fog of war.
New #Fiasco playset released today http://bit.ly/ceu6vf set on a titanic-esque cruise ship with flashbacks and a “loathsome Sea God”. Sweet!
Just founded the #Vamguard. Join at http://www.pyresofvam.com/vamguard/ to become a faceless minion and help me conquer the world #fromvam
Sorcerer’s gear from our #pathfinder game: 1 x Cure Light Wounds, 1 x Peace-bound Crossbow, 1 x Flying Fox, 1 x EMP Bomb. It’s a weird game.
http://bit.ly/c8p9kS posted by @twoscooters convinced me to buy S/Lay w/Me. I just read it and I’m not yet in love with it. Need to play it.
Sushi train then big #pathfinder session. Haven’t been able to prep much. Lucky it’s a rainy day, which makes me feel creative. Improv, go!
Playing #pathfinder one PC just bought a horse that thinks it’s a cow and it fell in love with the paladin’s mount.
“Eye of the Tiger” happened to be playing as the PC decided to train the cow-horse to be “the funny guy” to win the paladin’s mount’s heart.
Me (eating ice cream cake): “These are hardcore sprinkles” Friend: “I don’t think anyone’s ever said that before”. Hooray, I am an inventor!
Just finished epic #pathfinder session: 2 PCs nearly dead, baddie was 1 round from forcing a summoned evil god into paladin’s near-dead body
Also it’s 2am and we started playing at 2pm… wow! Sleeeeep…
#ebz There are many ladies of negotiable virtue in Fallen London, but Sinning Jenny is certainly … http://fallenlondon.com/c/245546
Hard copy of Shadow, Sword & Spell just arrived. Looks great. Lots of bang for your buck even for international buyers: http://bit.ly/9zUQgP
#ebz I’ve aided squidmen, moved in above a gambling den, gone crazy, chilled in honeydens & fed blood to my scowling flint idol >:D So fun!
#npc Poisoner accidentally poisons self, nearly dies; now samples own wares to reach brink of death, sees beyond veil, speaks with dead
#item Bleakhowl: legendary axe forged in cold mountain fires and infused with souls of wolves; howls when swung, it hungers for warm blood
#plot Monster steals people’s skills but must swap them for others it’s absorbed; blacksmith forgets his craft, learns dead language etc
#ebz The Rubbery Men are the ones who resemble squids, a little. They trade deep amber for the ti…http://fallenlondon.com/c/259752
Tomorrow: the aftermath of last week’s #pathfinder battle. Paladin and monk unconscious, really messed up in BBG secret base. Should be fun!
#plot Restless dragon is waking, causing quakes. If PCs don’t stop it, its volcano lair will erupt. Mining too deep is waking it.
#item Helm of Heavenly Sound: mer-crafted helm shrieks in wearer’s ears; underwater makes soothing sounds, resist fear and sound effects
#item Shadow Shroud: cloak woven from shadows gives wearer large bonus to stealth but is quickly destroyed, like fog, by touch of sunlight
#item Bloodhound Crossbow: contains receptacle for blood; embedded compass points to donor. Big bonus to hit donor, penalties to hit others.
Fargo: “But my head is where my head is”. I love #Eureka!
Finally finished catching up with the last two seasons of #Eureka. I’m loving the over-arching plot of Season 4. “Same town, big changes”.

Monster MashUp Winners

Mockingbard — Thu, 06 May 2010 10:34:10 +0000

Congratulations to Jarrod Camiré for his excellent winning entry to Nevermet Press’ Monster MashUp contest (and congrats to the three runners up, too). I’m glad I entered, and this is actually one of the entries I hoped would win. I have a soft spot for Hecate these days, since my post about the goddess Tarsis.

Monster MashUp Contest Update

Mockingbard — Sat, 01 May 2010 01:11:43 +0000

Sadly, Nevermet Press had to temporarily close the voting for their Monster MashUp Contest due to “widespread voting fraud”. Thankfully, they’ve found another online venue and voting has begun anew. However, the voting is now only open to those who submitted entries and Nevermet Press content developers. Despite most of you not being able to vote, you should still check out the listing of the entries for inspiration for your games. My entry is Entry #17, if you’re interested.