SquiddWizzard

I have been thinking over my setting, Stonegrove, a fair bit of late. I have been considering that trying to make a full campaign setting is honestly probably a bit much. I'm considering winnowing it down to a hex crawl or a point crawl. Another major problem is that I want there to be tension between elves/humans/goblins, but I want them to mostly get along. Mostly. Trying to think of interesting problems is a bit difficult for me. I have also been considering rewriting the goblins as toad people and the elves as mushroom people, but perhaps that is the start of something else. For a variety of reasons I have focused on nurturing the analytical part of my brain and my creative side has atrophied a fair bit.

This post brought to you by the bit of a spat going on between Monsters & Manuals and The Tao of D&D. The former advocates 'just do what works for you' while the latter points out 'what does works mean?' I think 'do what works for you' is honestly pretty decent advice, though I do understand it's not very specific. I've DMed in 3.5, B/X E and 4th. I am very much 'just do what works for you' but I'm going to try and off offer some meaningful, hopefully helpful definitions of works here. So, definition of something working, from a rules perspective is: Is understandable/comprehensible. It doesn't have to be logically consistent, but it needs to be actually usable at the table. This is fairly subjective; for me, standard B/X D&D initiative is unusable, as are the different weapon speeds; so I don't use them. You can only learn this by doing. The rule is not clumsy/does not negatively impact the action and progress of t...

Unlike my previous posts, this is for a non D&D based system; probably a PbtA derivation, or maybe BitD. So, if you're an OSR/trad only kinda person feel free to skip this one, you won't hurt my feelings. I promise I'll have more on that front soon, but there is some interesting comparing dice towards the bottom if you're into that. I like some aspects of Shadowrun & oWoD.. Er, Old World of Darkness--is that OWOD, OWoD, Owod, OwOd? No idea. Never played it, only passingly familiar. I've played Shadowrun like twice, no idea which edition; point buy classless systems bore me to tears, no thanks GURPS et. Al. Shadowrun: Juxtaposition of cyberpunk and fantasy The concept that increasing cybernetic enhancements or other artifical aspects decreases access to magic for whatever reason WoD: The idea that the PCs are hunters, mages, werewolves, or vampires I know there are other properties, I don't care; those are the main ones & the most fl...

One of my current ongoing projects is a city called Stonegrove. This could be a hexcrawl, a pointcrawl, a module, a small setting, I'm not sure yet. I've been playing around with it. Here are some basic concepts: Base is a mix of B/X Essentials, Labyrinth Lord, popular house rules and possible other stuff. Playable races are Human, Elf, Goblin Uses Race-As-Class Humans have, basically, Fighter, Cleric, Magic-User Goblins have Fighter, Magic-User Elves have Fighter, Cleric I actually switched to using the term 'Bloodline' instead of 'race' for a few reasons.  Some info on the bloodlines, as I've written them so far: Humans Physically largest, strongest bloodline most diverse only bloodline to have  knowledge of smithing vulnerable to White Death came to Stonegrove escaping..something? Hundreds of years ago Elves vulnerable to iron are the original inhabitants, and built the ruins that the city is build among sequestered themse...

After trying out some blog posts here and there as well as examining the ebb and flow of my own life I realized that my creative output can be spontaneous, fun, and short bursts OR longer-more developed, planned/thought out longer posts. Frankly, my life as a whole is overly planned, has too many long-term goals and not enough of the spontaneous, short-term posts. Until further notice I'm going to try and write short, more frequent posts. We'll see if that works better for me and how any readership develops. That said, here are a few monsters I've been thinking about a whole lots lately Blemmys Cyclops symbiote/intelligent goo with a penchant for bonding with other life forms fungi toads!?

I've continued thinking on the forestcrawl idea and I think I'm going to write it up as a pretty basic module/dungeon. I'm going to need to think more on the specific ideas and names I'll need as well as how I want it to flow, etc. I have the following characters in mind: Queen Queen Mother King Consort Deposed King Consort (NPC/monster write up in previous post) Obviously, being spiders, they're matriarchal as female spiders outlive male spiders and get substantially larger. This is going to be a lower to mid-level dungeon I expect. I am planning on having a mix of spider behavior (burrowing and also climbing/web making), different weird spider toxin behaviors (death, paralysis, possibly petrification?).

After running Tomb of the Serpent King for my group and messing up the characterization of Xiximander, I decided it'd be fun to have a monster that is friendly, but deadly. Since I love spiders, I'm planning on writing up something similar to the Mirkwood portion of The Hobbit. I think a great NPC/enemy is a giant spider who isn't interested in attacking the PCs because he's just had a massive meal, so instead he just chats. He could even potentially offer gear from other adventurers who he killed. not sure. So, let's start a write-up, just for the hell of it. Grumblewitz, Deposed Prince-Consort Grumblewitz is a massive spider the size of a horse. He lives in the center of a web that spans several trees.  AC 5 HD 6 (28 hp) Att 1 x bite (2d6+poison), THAC0 17, MV 60’ (20’) / 120’(40’) in webs SV  (F5), ML 8, AL Chaotic, XP 100, NA 1 , TT Unique Non-combat:  Grumblewitz is the deposed consort of the Brood Queen, and if spoken to will happily make leg...