Groty i Giganci and a farewell to the Ymid

I recently discovered another gaming product that used a great deal of my artwork, the Polish language Groty i Giganci written by Simon Piecha, and based on Swords & Wizardry Whitebox.

There is also a supplement available from the same source, also loaded with my artwork, called Osteria. I wish I could read them , the books are beautifully done.

Meanwhile, after several years of play by post gaming in my DFRPG game Northport over on rpol.net, the juniors group have finally said farewell to the Ymid. The Ymid was a creation of GarrisonJames, over at the blog Hereticwerks. After very loosely assisting in the destruction of a demonic shop, (the Ymid, being an elder thing, is both curious and indifferent to their cause, but did help convert one of the PC’s into a Cultist of the Elder Gods, armed with gate spells that helped them shut down the shop).

They had just helped the Ymid rebuild his floating skiff, which had been crushed by a dhole exiting the gate from the Vale of Pnath… The skiff was powered by a lead acid battery that stimulated four pig hearts to circulate a gallon of flying porions through a series of bladders and arteries built into the frame of the skiff, and the outer ring had millions of cockroach wings under it to provide both a creepy hum, and some ability for steering.

They had paid for the flying potions by selling a Yr-go to an alchemist (the monocular fungal creation had grown from an eye snatched from one of the Vejovian cultists the group’s priest had following them around, leaving Pierre the One Eyed victim to strange visions and dreams), along with a chunk of bile covered gold the Yhad given them from a dead gods gallbladder it used as a purse.

I even had them rescue the Ymid from a giant spiderweb, just like in Clatterdelve, and at the same time, one of the PC’s got a giant spider familiar.

Starica Babicka and more Warlockery

My crew of feybloods who are busy fighting a group of armband wearing racial supremacists (because I am far from apolitical) recently had made a side trip into a swamp to meet a hag. They did so because of a critical failure on Faerie Lore, but got a little information about the workings of the Winter Court.

Surprise, the Summer Court is deeply into the lives of mortals (Most Feybloods exist for a reason) but the Winter Court is only disinterested in them. Mortals scarcely matter to most of those fey. However, a faction that is offended by the “Dilution of pure fey bloodlines” is involved in glamouring small minded humans to act antagonistically against those different from themselves.  If it were true in our world, a circle of iron could put an end to racism, but here we are, in a world where we cannot blame otherworldly creatures for our own expressions of hatred.

Here is the local ruler of the swamps east of Northport, Starica (Strega) Babicka, assorted Folk tales of Baba Yaga, and a bit of Dolmenwood, as filtered through GURPS: Fairie, Lloyd Alexander and Charle De Lint.

 

Starica Babicka

Hag fairie, strong 

ST:16 [60] DX: 13 [60] IQ: 14 [80] HT:13 [30]

HP: 16 [0] Per: 14/16 [0] Will [14] FP:13*25

Bs: 7.5 MV: 7 Dodge:11 Oar Parry:12

DR: 2 SM +1 (0)

Oar (16) 2d+4 cutting or crushing.

Claw (15) 1d+2 crushing

Bite (15) 1d-1 cutting;can unhinge jaw and swallow SM-2 or smaller on a critical success.

 

Advantages:

Winter court rank 2 [10] Differential smell [15]

Acute sense of smell+2 [4],  Enhanced magic resistance +4 [20]

Magery 4 [45] Energy reserve +12 [36] Terror(switcheable) [33]

Injury Tolerance (except to meteoric iron, magical weapons and fire) [30]

Hard to kill +2 [4] Hard to Subdue +2 [4] DR 2 [6]

 

Disadvantages:

Code of honor, fae [-10] cannot harm innocents [-10] Jealous [-10]

Stubborn [-5] Odious Personal Habit: eats sentients (only bad children) [-15]

Vulnerable to meteoric iron (1d) [-10]

 Quirks:

easily offended, suspicious, Likes riddles,Avoids full sunlight,

fond of frogs as food (they test their bravery by seeing how long they can stay in reach of her), 

SKILLS:

Staff 16 [12]

Polearm 16 [12]

Brawling 15 [4]

Wrestling 15 [8]

Area knowledge, swamp 15 [4]

Current events, faerie court 14 [1]

Savoir faire, faerie court 14* [1]

Hidden Lore, Faeries 17 [12]

Naturalist 18 [20]

Survival, wetlands -15 [2]

Natural Philosophy 18 [20]

Thaumatology 18 [8]

Alchemy 16 [16]

Herb lore 16 [12]]

Occultism 16 [8]

Dungeon butcher 16 [8]

Fishing 14 [1]

Boating 15 [8]

Cooking 16 [8]

 

Spells:

All at 16:  Alarm, nightingale, mystic mist, the entire plant college; much of the Animal college (communication spells),seek, shape, create +3 more in all four elements, most food and illusion spells, 

All at 20:  Curse, perfect illusion, illusion disguise, dispell magic, missile shield, magelock, create object, mystic mark, recover energy, Sense life, sense foes, resist fire.

 

She travels in a leather corracle that she can sling over her shoulder(it changes size from a yard to three yards wide, is waterproof,  fireproof, has DR 10 and self repairs),

and uses a carved oar (dragonbone staff/poleaxe) With which she has 16 skill and gives her 10 fp as a power item.

 

Now the cluster of 125 point characters would have been no match for her if she had been angry, but they placated her with honeycomb found with a Survival roll and a meat pie purchased in the market, even with the handful of hazelnuts that granted beast speech…

Meanwhile, Ruby Fire Games has put out  a bunch of supplements for Warlock! that are all full of my artwork, and have some wicked good ideas on handling corruption from spellcasting (all magic in Warlock comes from pacts with demons) and has rules for elves, dwarves, and halflings and cool things like a Hand of Glory.

You can get a look at the main book for warlock here.

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Warlock!

Fire Ruby Designs just released this beauty on Drivethrurpg.  You can get it as a pdf for about $6, and as a hardback for $25.

This game has the most comprehensive  collection of my stock art so far -54 separate images of mine, making for a very comprehensive look to the product, and a great portfolio piece for me.

Like what you see in this book?

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Castle Xyntillan!

Gabor Lux has just released his hardcover megadungeon Castle Xyntillan

He talks about it here

It features art by Peter Mullen, Stefan Poag, and fourteen pieces by me!

I spent the last few months working on these commissions, although a few of the pieces are from my stock art bundles.

The castle itself is a haunted mansion that blends Tegel Manor with the weirdness and doomed romanticism of Edgar Allen Poe, and the films of Jean Cocteau.

Also released at this time (in Hungarian,  the English language version is yet to be released) is Shadow of the city God, for which I drew the cover and another illustration. More work by Stefan Poag is in this as well.

I had some fun with the second scene, where some adventurers stumble upon a political cult led by a con artist.  Greta is not amused.

 

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Marginalia and a few products I like

Following a Black Friday sale of 80% of all of my gear on Drivethru that netted me my largest payday from OBS (just imagine if that stuff was full price!) I released a bundle of small filler art. I enjoyed the process so much, I may do more of these.

The inspiration comes from a couple of places; Sergio Argonne’s border cartoons in Mad Magazine, medieval manuscript illuminated filler, and these panels of adventurers by David C. Sutherland  III from the DMG

To that end, I have included some of my staple characters, the thief from my first Character stock art is here climbing a rope, and the elf and knight stumbling upon the secret door in Dungeon Scenes 1 are now climbing a mountain.  I will definitely be building more of these scenes.

A friend of mine released a water based setting for 5e on DM’s Guild called Fathoms Below that I thought was pretty good. It has a nice backstory (Tritons took over a Sahugin fort, and built it into a starfish shaped major trading city, full of intrigue, with an anchored flotilla of rafts directly above, where your air breathers can live, if they are not in some of the domes below. There are some tongue in cheek character backgrounds that pay homage to the Little Mermaid without getting too campy. All too often water based adventures are shunted into auxiliary rules dependent on magic items, and in this case, while there are limits on what surface characters can do, there are a plethora of underwater races (the ones that aren’t new have to be found in other rulebooks, WoTC doesn’t let you quote whole slabs of character abilities), including the usual suspects like sea elves and mermen, along with jellyfish and octopus folk. The variety was surprising, and I recomend the book, along with its  supplement .

As usual, when contemplating GURPSifying races from other games, the huge cost of things like Amphibious, Extra Limbs and Flexible make things like half octopus characters dreadfully expensive, but that is one of the things I like about point buy systems; it costs more to be exotic and powerful up front, rather than using level limits or added XP cost – neither of those methods address starting level character balance, and adding a racial template of assorted boni to a fully fleshed out class template results in a more costly one; building the racial template into the class template (by 86ing other advantage options) results in a character who might be less than starting equivalent for others of their template -DF’s 250 point base builds characters with a rough equivalence to 5th-8th level AD&D characters, and dropping in a 25 point racial template makes you almost a level lower. Most of the PC races are in the 20 point range, but some (mostly those infused with the supernatural) cost 75 points, making them relatively weaker when compared to characters built as human.

 

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Pumpkin Spice!

I am drinking a PSL with a pumpkin donut, and have a pumpkin spice candle burning as I, a wiccan, celebrate Samhain.Two weeks ago I went to Maine to look at the turning of the leaves. I am pretty basic.

This makes me the perfect target audience for this excellent addition to Timothy Brannon’s collection of witchcraft related gaming supplements. In addition to a collection of tongue in cheek references to the trope of those who enjoy the seasonal beverage (his sample characters embodying Maiden, Matron, and Crone are Becky, Karen, and Carol) with spells and powers like OMG Becky, I Want To Talk To Your Manager, and Resting Witch Face, it actually has a lot of content I want to be playing with. The rest of the magical abilities include the sort of Fairytale abilities that would let you emulate the abilities of both Cinderella’s fairy godmother and the Wicked Witch of the West.  The rituals that emphasize the ssense of community of a coven warm my heart, but then I have always been a fan of witches.

Illustrations below copyright by the Beistle Co, and Adrienne Adams

I did some illustrations for this one:

Now, there is one spell in the book called Eerie Forest, which makes people caught in the affected woods uncomfortable and frightened. Given the Pumpkin Spice Tradition’s love of All Things Autumn, I propose the following spell:

Enchanting Forest:

Level: Druid 3, Magic User 3, Witch 3

Duration: 10 min/level

Range: a 60′ radius of forest

With this spell, the caster intensifies the experience of being in a beautiful autumnal forest, with glorious fall folliage, crunchy leaves, and just enough of a briskness in the air to appreciate a light scarf and a favorite sweater. The caster can designate one creature per level to recieve the benefits of this experience, +2 to saves, and the effects of a remove fear spell.

Material components: a lovely crispy fallen leaf

Note: This spell may be cast in conjunction with Eerie Forest, creating an area that is both delightful to some, and disturbing to others.

 

When I have included witches in my GURPS  games, it was easy to build them in Fantasy, as magery is the source of all spells, and the witches could just pick up spells from, animal, body, plant, elemental, communication and empathy, and mind control without issue. With DF, it is a little more complicated. IFor a 250 point witch,would require a familiar, from DF 5, magery 0, and 60 points from any of the other spellcasting classes: druidic power investiture, magery, shamanic, and elemental attunement, with any of their powers (autotrance, faerie or spirit affinity, green thumb, plant empathy, empathy…it goes on) At some point I have to lay out the class complete, and also detail the funky familiar called the Meowl!

 

Undead Stock art and reviews

Just released this week ( and in time for Halloween) is my latest bundle of stock art : Undead available from DrivethruRPG for $4.99.

 

I have been doing a lot of work these past months for Gabor Lux’ Echoes from Fomalhaut, and in particular for his upcoming Tegel Manor inspired megadungeon, Castle Xyntillan, and the still-in-development In the Shadow of the City God

 

Two of his most recent items, The Nocturnal Table currently available as a pdf from Drivethrurpg and featuring work by Mathew Ray, Stefan Poag, and Peter Mullen as well as myself, along with EFF#6: The Rising Tombs which has art by myself and Stefan Poag also, both are suited for describing convoluted weird cities at night. As my own game takes place in such a place, I found this rather interesting. The random encounters in the Nocturnal Table go way beyond the old DMG city encounter tables, and into some very strange places. Otherwise boring encounters with nameless NPc’s are richly described run ins with peculiar named personages, each with a distince flavor. There has been a lot said about demonstrating an implied setting by examining the encounter tables instead of dropping in extensive exposition, for example, regarding OD&D. The Rising Tombs does this with minimal descriptions and small notes, and leaves the reader to connect the dots.  In one part of the city, in a sealed community where the swells reside, it is always night with a perpetual full moon. This is atmospheric, but there are some supporting features; The city is ruled by a powerful illusionist, and also the rich folks are near immortal and addicted to potions of longevity… or they may be vampires.  The under layers of the city evoke a bit of the depths of  Dwimmermount, without dumping pages of history up front.  There are, by way of anticipating adventurers who want to burn down the tavern, mentions of an enormous machine that extends into the depths, that might explode like a megaton warhead if tampered with, and the side note that one must wear “sacred vestments” (radiation suits) to safely enter the lower levels of a dungeon. Not only are the routes to this area from a  cheap hotel that H.H.Holmes might have built, or through the green room of a collapsing Theater haunted by a phantom… or through a temple of a rat/plague god. These are not your typical entry by sewer dungeons, and definitely not like either  my  or Hasbro’s  taverns with conduits to the underworld.  Gabor Lux, (known on forae as Melan), for all his resentment against the Sworddream style of OSR derived play, is firmly in touch with the parts of our hobby that are gonzo and rooted in Weird fiction.  It is no secret that I like that style of gaming, as I grew up reading my dad’s virtually complete Appendix N library (assembled as it was printed, in crumbling 35 cent paperbacks, most of which I have been reacquiring from used booksellers), and while a good amount of both Gabor’s and John Stater‘s products are procedurally generated, they go into some far out places that I am happy to illustrate.  That headless undead in my stock art bundle is based on one of the encounters in Nod zine, although I forget what issue.  I own copies of about eight issues I did illustrations for, but there are 26 other issues of the same grade of super detailed and strange hexcrawls.

Meanwhile, in my game, there have been some odd developments.

The group travelling with the  demon hunting celestial Kalima  have decided to try and summon her back to the world after a demonologist they were fighting banished her with a hurled Spellstone. I was thoroughly expecting that they would be glad to be rid of such a DM PC, but no plan escapes an encounter with players unscathed. They are enlisting the leader of a Kali cult named Molaram to help in the summoning…

My Wuxia group has traveled into the megafauna rich land of Veroigne, nominally to collect a rice harvest for the Sahudese population back in Northport, and have encountered the odd ecosystem of the rice grower’s village.  Swarms of stirges rise out of the rice paddies, but are chased away from the workers by a sacred giant dragonfly, from whom the party received a blessing, much the way the other group in the area had their ranger blessed by the Stag of Veroigne, who was somewhere between the Forrest Spirit of Princess Mononoke, and Bambi’s father. Both groups have seen tracks of giant rabits being stalked by dire wolves.

The group that were hired to hunt a rampaging beast have instead decided to try and take over an abandoned castle, which brings me around to an issue developing around my Juniors group. They have been trying to establish themselves with real property (excepting those among them who have Social Stigma:Criminal, who cannot directly own real property in Northport) and I have been using the Base Perk as a leveled one.  Base normally gives you a place that you don’t have to pay rent that is about as good as what you might have, but with a status level of 2 levels lower than your own.  At status 0, that is not much to talk about, in this case, a peasant’s hovel or tenement row house in disrepair. I suppose in other settings it would be a back booth in a diner or a leaky basement apartment.  Making it a leveled perk lets you raise it by one status level per point invested, which means that at 3 points, it is a clean, functional status 0 home.  This group of PC’s are trying to control the housing above an entrance to the dungeon and in particular, to a magical gate.  I had originally had them invest in independent income, but that was only netting half a silver a month per point at average wealth, so I converted those points to base. The Initiate in the group has been attracting followers (not yet bought as allies) who have been doing things like basic carpentry, weeding, whitewashing…etc, that have resulted in the area being upgraded.  A lot of the things I have been thinking of here were sort of echoed in Necropraxis’ blog about Stronghold Achievements for low level characters.

I miss things like the Mansion advantage from GURPS VtM, and the leveled advantage Sanctuary, from the defunct Advanced Goblins & Grottoes setting from Otherwhere dot org, (sadly even beyond the reach of the internet wayback machine). That one let you build anything from the Batcave (large, secret, secure) to something like the airships of Girl Genius.

Far Away Land OSR and the Robot Hussein Test

Dirk Stanley’s OSR adaptation of his wonderous setting Far Away Land is now available for those that missed the kickstarter, and you can grab it here

As I have said before, the art looks like the best of Adventure Time

  with a healthy dose of Zardoz, Gamma World, Thundar the Barbarian, mixed with a lot of general happy gonzo weirdness, from player characters that are angry, bear riding telepathic nuns who fight axe wielding evil clones of Abraham Lincoln, and their little stabby hockey masked associates called horrors, to multi eyed, square headed,  or even of jack-o’ lantern faced spellcasters, warriors, or thieves.

The ruleset is roughly based on SWCL

And has four classes: Light Mages, Chaos Mages, Fighters, and Thieves.

Light and Chaos mages each have their own spell list, and a common gray magic list they share. Thieves have no backstab ability, making fighters more important in combat. There are twelve playable races, including dwarves and elves, but those are among the least interesting. All of these races, which were more or less the local equivalent of human from their dimension of origin, get bonus abilities from telepathy, limited teleportation,  weather prediction, favored enemies, resistances and immunities, rapid healing, and bonuses to hit or to ability checks. Humans get their choice of a hit bonus (there is a better version for fighters than thieves) or a bonus spell.

The setting is wildly imaginative, and there are conversion notes for adding materials from the regular FAL game to the FAL OSR game.

There is a lot of support for FAL

and I recommend getting as much as you can to complement the OSR game.

How would I convert this to GURPS? I would take my low level (75 point) character templates (available here), add the racial abilities, and I would then build the characters up to 125 points, which is suitable as a starting point for this

As the setting isn’t Dungeon Fantasy per se, I would eliminate the need for the unusual background “Ha ha! I can teleport” for the Blonin, and charge them as follows: Warp [25] (range limited to 20 yards, -45%, and limited use, twice per day, -30%).

Charging out nonhumans for their racial abilities makes human characters slightly better at their class for the same amount of points, but less flashy.

To play using my preferred system, I heartily recommend buying not only the OSR book, but as many FAL supplements as you can get your hands on, the setting is that good.

There are clockwork characters, but as they are limited to thief and fighter, the system fails what I call the “Robot Hussein” test: can I build an android healer? So far, you can build a Warforged Cleric in some editions if D&D, you can do it in GURPS, of course,  Gamma World, and in Solar Blades and Cosmic Spells .

I want to play a damn Heal bot.

 

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Odysseys and Overlords and Ruins and Portals

My publisher, Travis Legge, has released an Old School game. Odysseys and Overlords is a BFRPG variant with a distinct flavor. The implied setting is somewhat post apocalyptic, and there are three non human peoples; wildfolk, spell scorched, and abyss kissed. Spells Scorched are elves of a very distinct flavor, their flesh is covered with runes. Abyss kissed are the Tieflings of the setting, and Wildfolk make me think of Ookla from Thundar the Barbarian.

Each of the nonhuman races have a homeland, and there is an excellent Bard class. Plus, there is artwork of mine within the Game Master’s Guide, and in his Patreon exclusive starter adventure, Caverns of the Cromags.

You can support his patreon, and get this and other exclusive content here

And you can get the rulebooks for Odysseys and Overlords here

also released recently is my latest bundle of stock art, Ruins and Portals!

Currently on sale for the May sale on Drivethrurpg, you can get it here.

I am currently working on a bundle of faerie art. Unfortunately Necrotic Gnome is not extending a license for Dolmenwood based content, so I cannot sell the Woodgrue or Moss Dwarf for commercial use, but you can use them for your character sheets if you are playing a Dolmenwood game, preferably using Old School Essentials (formerly B/X Essentials). If you get any of Wormskin or BX/E, you can get the Demihumans of Dolmenwood book free.

Just go back the Old School Essentials Kickstarter  it has just a few days to go!

 

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Excellent Customer Service at Necrotic Gnome

As you may know, if you follow this blog, I am a big fan of Gavin Norman‘s Setting Dolemenwood which is available in print and PDF at Drivethrurpg.  I have contributed art to Wormskin #7, and also made an amateur translation of the Demihumans of Dolmenwood into GURPS format.

(Incidentally, the Kickstarters of both DFRPG Monsters 2 and The Citadel at Nordvorn have both funded Whoot!)

The latest of the Dolmenwood books is Winter’s Daughter, a beautifully illustrated adventure about encountering an elf of the Winter Court.  I wanted it, and initially leary of the international shipping rates, opted in for just the PDF at 6 euoro ($7.05). I later rethought this, and Gavin walked me through just ordering the print version (don’t ask him to do this again, anyone in their right mind (i.e.: not me) would have ordered the combo plate for 12 Euro, and what turns out to be a mere 7 Euro shipping. My reluctance came from a package that cost me $56 to ship to Canada. In any case, I managed to screw it up again, and Gavin took care of it all. For a while, I was concerned that I was going to get it and he wasn’t going to get paid, because PayPal took three hours to process the transaction, and I was sure I had screwed up.

I own almost everything from Necrotic Gnome in print, and I have to say they make a lovely Dunsinian product that is easy to convert to any OSR system, and as I have shown, to the Dungeon Fantasy Role Playing Game as well.  Gavin has also Streamlined B/X into the lovely digest sized Old School Essentials line, which works beautifully with the setting, as does John Stater’s Bloody Basic: Weird Fantasy Edition. If you like slightly creepy faerie adventures with nonstandard characters, I cannot reccomend the entirety of Wormskin and the other Dolmenwood line enough.