FYI new blog header

The new graphic at the top of the blog is a still from the 1982 Rankin-Bass special The Flight of Dragons.  I wish I could give you some more stills, but my own copy is pretty low quality.  And the youtube clips of the great intro have embedding turned off.  Go check it out.  The opening song is by Don "American Pie" McLean. 

So instead I'll do a short run down of whatever images I can find via google search.

Carolinus, the Green Wizard, (Harry Morgan) has discovered that the magic is going out of the world as mankind embraces logic and science.

He calls a meeting of the Four Wizards.  Three of them agree to create a Last Realm of Magic, an invisible place for the elves and dragons and such to live.

The fourth wizard, Ommadon (James Earl Jones), is not cool with this plan.  Instead he plans to use his evil magic to corrupt the new world.  The other wizards swear to stop him, but cannot oppose a brother wizard directly.

The oracular Voice of Antiquity selects Peter Dickinson (John Ritter) as the champion needed to defeat Ommadon.  Trained as a scientist but a wannabe fantasy author and game designer, Peter is the only man who can straddle both worlds.

Carolinus travels to the future, where he finds Peter attemtping to secure financing to print and distribute this blockbuster new game about dragons and wizards.  The pieces represent Carolinus and other people back in magical times, showing Peter's strange connection to the times of magic.

Arriving in the past, Peter meets Gorbash, Carolinus's house dragon.  A spell fumble by the wizard results in Peter's mind being placed in Gorbash's body.  Peter eventually figures out the science behind dragons: they produce hydrogen naturally and float like zeppelins.  When they need to descend they burn off the hydrogen and vent it from their mouths.



Joining Peter/Gorbash and his draconic mentor Smrgol is Sir Orrin Neville-Smythe.  Everyone who watches this show would remember Sir Neville-Smythe as the most stereotypical British knight ever, except that everyone really remembers how he falls in love with Carolinus' daughter Melisande when he's a grown man and she's five years old.  Creepy.

Seventeen-year-old Melisande is Peter's love interest.  She is not allowed on the quest and spends a great deal of the adventure sick in bed, having visions.



I like the archer Danielle a lot better.  She's kickass with her bow.  Sir Orrin eventually forgets his obsession with Melisande and falls in love with Danielle, clearing the way for the inevitable Peter/Melisande pairing.  Two other companions added to the quest as they travel to Ommadon's lair are Giles the Elf, who looks just like a Rankin-Bass hobbit and a talking wolf played by Victor Buono.  He was a real show stealer as King Tut in the old Batman TV show.



The entrance to Ommadon's gloomy realm is guarded by this three-eyed ogre that the two dragons have to rassle.

But before wrassling, the dragons get blotto drinking wine by the barrelfull.

The final confrontation between good and evil takes the form of Peter explaining to Ommadon how all his magic is a load of crap.  His scientific knowledge literally shields him from the evil wizard's powers.

Dispelled in a poof of logic, Peter claims Ommadon's crown of power.  (Which incidentally, serves as the inspiration for the Red Crown of the White Queen in my Wessex campaign.)

The Last Realm of Magic is saved.  Peter literally sells the crown at a pawnshop to finance his game and he's reunited with Melisande.  They kiss, roll credits.

All in all, a charming little tale that's lots of fun to watch.  I've skipped several interesting parts that I can't find good stills for.

Carolinus's message that as humanity grows into a world of science and logic they must keep the magic of imagination in their hearts still speaks to me today.  Carl Sagan was saying the same thing at roughly the same time in Cosmos.  If Carl Sagan and a wizard can agree on something, I'm pretty sure it's true.

Dang, is it Wednesday already?

Man, I got crap to do!  Anyway, here's a wizard:

So this one time Finn and Jake go to wizard
school and learn all these kickass powers...

two brief FLAILSNAILS items

• Mike Davison of sword+1 is running a G+ play-by-post tournament.  The players guide PDF is here and the results of the first round are here, but the real action of the event is in the individual threads started by +FlailSnails Jousting Field.  Thirty knights competed in round 1, with 16 in round two (one contest was a tie and both advanced). One brave participant, Sir Polycarp, died from wounds received on the field of battle.  And my guy won 50 gold betting on the results of one contest!
• I think everybody who plays a wandering FLAILSNAILS adventurer should develop a brief stock intro, just two or three lines that give your character's name, what they reveal about themselves and what is obvious about them from their appearance.  "Donnal MacDonnal is a patchbeard youth clad in ancient scale mail and the tattered remains of a fancy cloak.  He's a fighting man of the spear-throwing, sword-swinging variety.  Donnal is accompanied by his henchman, the idiot-wizard Stanislav, and a magic pet lizard that is absolutely no help in combat or any other situation."  Something like that.  A quick readthru of these intros at the start of a session would really help orient people, I think.

Caves of Myrddin updates, part 2

"Hey, let's go hunt some medusas!"

When has that ever been an good idea?  That's what Sir Alexander Manning, Flinny the Elder, Rando the Halfing and the dwarves Farley and Blodgrist settled upon as a perfectly reasonable course of action.  Entering the Dungeons of Dundagel via the Grand Stairway under the big heap of stones in the center of the courtyard, they proceeded to track some serpent trails past several statues (a ghoul, a dwarf, a magic-user and an amazon warrior).

Sure enough, they eventually do battle with a trio of the snakey ladies.  Surprisingly, no one was turned to stone.  Sir Manning softened them up with a grenade that exploded with rainbow sparkles and deadly radiation (found in Urutsk, apparently) and some oil flasks followed thereafter.  Two of the three medusas fled at this point but the third was more angry than scared and bumrushed the party.  Farley grabbed a handy mirror and threw himself upon the gorgonous foewoman, wrestling her to the ground and trying to push the mirror into her view. 

For his trouble her asp-hair bit him in several places on the face and Farley curled up to die.  Fortunately another PC (Flinny I think) sucked the poison out, saving the dwarf but leaving him weakened.  Meanwhile the rest of the party curbstomped the medusa to death and carefully removed the head.   A test on a nearby non-giant rat established that the petrification power remained.

Following the trail of the medusas, they found another one that was finished off by the burning oil and a large hole in the floor with a rope leading down.  A dropped torch fell 100 feet or so and spluttered out in a small puddle of water.  Farley wastes no time in beginning his descent.  At 20' or so from the bottom he reaches the ceiling of the chamber and checks around as best he can with his mirror for that third medusa, but instead he only sees a room full of cheese.  Ancient wheels of red-rind cheese line the walls, ranging in size comparable up to wagon wheels in diameter.  The pungency here is fierce.

The rest of the party descends.  Most of them fall to examining the routes out of the room, while the halfling Rando decides to investigate the biggest pile of cheese wheels, awakening the Cheese Wheel Golem guarding the rest of the cheese.  Imagine the Mad Thinker's Awesome Android, only built out of wheels of stinky cheese.  The fight is epic.  Rando is beaten to within an inch of his life, including a blow that rips an ear from the side of his head (gotta love those Arduin crits) and at one point the ensorcelled cheese smothers him completely.  But he wields the might Hammer of the Gnome Kings and bursts out of its cheesy chest like a baby xenomorph!  The rest of the party are stabbing and hacking away, while Sir Manning wrestles a giant cheese-arm.  Eventually torches and oil are brought to bear, turning the monster in a harmless, melty mess.

All five adventurers return to the surface and get blitzed over at the Blue Rabbit.  Treasure for the run:

one medusa's head
19 asp-venomed arrows
2 shortbows (though I'm not sure anyone claimed these)
a stone rat
3 statues (the amazon and the two naked ladies on the surface were hauled away by cart)
as much cheese as everyone could carry, including the arm that Sir Manning wrestled
several small scars on Farley's face
one ear, halfling

I believe Sir Manning is throwing a cheese-themed party at Wike House, his newly-acquired manner in Lysnowyth, the campaign hex adjacent to the Abbey, the dungeons, Castle Bouttreaux, etc.

Caves of Myrddin updates, part 1

I've run three sessions since my last update.  Last Wednesday the game store group spent the entire session Beyond The Portal To Goblin Land*, so no real info is available.

On Saturday I ran a session at GaryCon for a bunch of players.  My notes are a little rough, but here's what the initial party looked like, I think:

4 dwarves: Balgo, Glavin, Lou and Guthouse Barrelboy.
Two halflings: Jonny Baggadonuts and the One Hit Point Wonder
Two magic-users: Simon and Robin.
Two fighters: Ragnar and Glavin
One elf who rolled so low for starting gold that he couldn't afford armor: Bellow
One cleric: Brother Steve

The One Hit Point Wonder was accompanied into the dungeon by Patsy the Loser.

Welcome to my nightmare.

This party entered the dungeon via the North Tower and had a brief run-in with Alice Cooper, who is a vampire, and his pet snake, who is also a vampire.  They then mucked around on the level with the purple raiders and the magic throne for a bit, until they stumbled upon the Goblin General Store.  Somewhere along the way Guthouse Barrelboy bought the farm.  Was he the one beheaded by the Mad Unicorn, or did the fake door with the poison gas trap kill him?  I can't recall.  Either way he was replaced by a cleric named Brodo.  Another PC died, but I can't quite figure out who it was from my notes.

Speaking of the Mad Unicorn, those bastards killed it.  I'm pretty sure Ragnar ended up with its horn.

The following a map purchased at the Goblin General Store, they attempted the south tower and the Spiral Staircase to Hell.  After finding one of the Hellmouths near the bottom of the vertical map they explored an area previously untrod by adventurers.  There they found a pool containing a stone sarcophagus, from which they released Ra-Por-Hotep, an ancient evil lich from the days when Cornwall was a colony of Ancient Egypt (???).  I thought these guys were totally doomed, but one of them finally remembered he had received a Potion of Undead Control from the Deck O' Stuff.  A few dice rolls later an Ra-Por-Hotep was the slave of the good guys.  He was ordered to surrender all of his substantial treasure hoard to them and then go jump into the Hellmouth.

The party then raced back up the stairs and ladders to the surface, fearful that Ra-Por-Hotep and/or the forces of Hell would soon be after them.  They ran into a little trouble with vampire Sean Connery from Zardoz but somehow managed to get past him and steal his paralysis pistol.

Pleased with their haul from the lich's hoard, they descended upon the Blue Rabbit and boozed it up.  Two of them woke up having joined the Church of Satan while drunk, a third donated to the CoS blood drive and a fourth came to in the bed of one of Ewella the Alewife's daughters.  One of the married ones.

Today's session write-up will come a little later.

*That's the title of Module WX3, third in The Wessex Campaign, an adventure series that doesn't actually exist.

So I guess Starfire comes from planet 8

So this map is for the Vega star system, setting of the Omega Men comics, as it appears in the pre-crossover-of-the-moment DC Universe.  I don't know anything about the Omega Men, but figuring out what this map means in the absence of that information would be an interesting exercise.  I think something like this map would make for a cool science-fantasy/planetary romance D&D setting.

Caves of Myrddin PSA

I've decided to teleport the Mad Unicorn into the Dungeons of Dundagel.  From a comment of mine on an old blog post:

The Mad Unicorn is a wandering monster that has appeared on multiple wandering monster charts of mine. Intruder_W encountered in at the beginning of my only 3rd edition campaign, where it wrecked a party exploring ol' Quasqueton.

The poor creature began life as a normal, well-adjusted unicorn, but ended up cursed to forever wander the underworlds. If it finds a way out of a dungeon it is immediately teleported to a random location inside some other dungeon. Years of wandering an unknown number of hellholes has driven it insane.

This backstory was written for the express purpose of beating up PCs with a unicorn.

No one has been able to slay, capture or save the Mad Unicorn.

Yet.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/



Time Bandits vs Monsters

I friggin' love the monsters in Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits.


Okay, this is obviously some dude in a cheesy barbarian get-up and a paper mache mask, but this minotaur totally works for me.  Maybe it's those hollow eyes, like a minotaur is a man with the head of a dead, decaying bull.


Best ogre this side of the Revenge of the Nerds franchise.



More bovine monsters.  These minions of Evil really creeped me out as a kid.  Lanky, skeletal things with horns and scythe like single boneclaws where their hands should be, making horrible inhuman noises as they chase Kevin and his larcenous friends about the place.  I know the billowy black robes are meant to conceal the poor stiltwalkers underneath, but they also serve to make the creatures look vaguely insubstantial as well. Do these things have a name?

Wizardly Wednesday

boring dice charts

Back in the day brand new Lords of Creation boxed sets came with three kinds of dice: a twenty sider, a ten sider and a sixer.  The d10 and d20 were Zocchi dice, but I think the d6's might have been cheap cubes with pips.  I don't quite remember.

One oddity in LoC and nowhere else was that the game occasionally called for a 2-16 result, but did not come with any eight siders.  An early chapter of the rulebook explained how to use the dice, as is customary in many RPGs up until this day.  To get a 2-16 result it instructed you to roll d10+d6.

I've long wanted to know exactly how the change of dice from 2d8 to d10+d6 affects the probabilities involved and the other day I finally sat down and did the math.  Here are the results, represented visually.

Using d10+d6 instead of 2d8 flattened out the bell curve. 2d8 peaks at a roll of 9, just the way seven is the most common roll on) 2d6. With the d10+d6 combine all numbers from 7 to 11 all have an equal chance of occurring, exactly 10% chance for each.

The only other place I recall seeing this sort of set-up is Uncle Gary's new and improved wandering monster charts in the back of the Monster Manual II. He uses d12+d8 in lieu of 2d10 to create charts with many equally common monsters in the middle.

This chart shows the differences between the two methods for "roll some number or less" type situations. I don't think LoC actually uses d10+d6 for these situations, but it wouldn't be more than 3% off from a 2d8 test for any given target number.

As always, feel free to double check my numbers by doing the math yourself.

Here we are, born to be kings

There's been a wee bit of talk about doing up a retroclone of Tom Moldvay's crossgenre RPG Lords of Creation, though I'm not sure anyone has done any work on it.  I'm not sure if there's actually an audience for such a thing.  Quick show of hands: anybody reading this interested in playing LoC but can't find a copy cheap?  Last time I checked reasonably priced boxed sets pop up on eBay fairly regularly.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that if such a project got off the ground then Princes of the Universe wouldn't be a terrible title for it.


Nowadays I laugh a little when Freddie says "bring on the girls!"  When I was a kid I had no idea.

Anyway, I've been thinking about Lord of Creation the past few days because I've got the nugget of a campaign concept rolling around in my brain.  Maybe I'll write more on that later.

Trumpeter of Doom

A while back over at Swords & Dorkery cool dude Mike Monaco posted this great pic from the Lost Minis Wiki.  Officially, that's meant to depict a lich blowing a horn, but I thought it would be cool to make it into a new undead type.

TRUMPETER OF DOOM

No. Enc: 1 
Align:Chaotic

Move: 90'(30')
AC: 5
HD: 4
Attacks: 1 chilling touch
Dmg:d6 plus save or slowed 2d6 rounds 
Save as: MU4 
Morale: 12 
Treasure:uhhh, B? let's say B.


In combat the first action of this undead jerk is to give a blast from it's bronzed rams-horn trumpet.  The sound carries up to d6 miles outdoors and d6x100' underground.  All living creatures who hear it will feel the skin crawl and their hair stand up on end.  Those within 60' must save versus petrification/paralyzation/WILL/whatever or flee at maximum speed for 2d6 rounds, dropping whatever they have in hand and selecting their route randomly.

Like most undead this creepy mofo is immune to mind-affecting spells.  Normal weapons do not harm it unless constructed of silver or blessed.  Dude is also immune to cold and magic missiles, because I said so.  Turns as a wight.


Once you kill this guy a wizard and a cleric can turn the trumpet into a lesser horn of blasting by one of them casting dispel magic and the other remove curse.  These spells must be cast at the same time.  A lesser horn of blasting works just like the regular kind, but only has 2d4 charges. After the charges are exhausted it can still sound a note audible at the same distances listed above.

Anytime a necromantically-minded spellcaster goes into a properly concentrated graveyard and attempts to animate an army of zombies or skeletons there's a flat 1 in 20 chance one of these rotters pops up too.  It rather than the necromancer will command the animated horde.  The Trumpeter's first order of business will be the murder of the necromancer, after which it will lead its undead charges on a general purpose rampage.  Trumpeters of Doom encountered in dungeons may be created by other means.

Some Beloved Dragon Articles

In no particular order.

"D&D Option: Orgies, Inc" - Jon Pickens, issue #10, page 5+.  This gem and the similar rules in Dave Arneson's First Fantasy Campaign are the primary influences on my carousing rules.  Pickens' "D&D Option: Demon Generation" in issue #13 is also pretty sweet.

"Good Hits & Bad Misses" - Carl Parlagreco, issue #39, page 34+.  Fun critical/fumble system my group played the crap out of during our high school years.  Reprinted in one of the Best of Dragon volumes, number 3 or 4 I think.

"Customized Classes" - Paul Montgomery Crabaugh, issue #109, page 8+.  Recent work done on the web has probably rendered Crabaugh's method of making non-Advanced classes obsolete, but I've gotten a tone of cool results out of his system.

"Dragonchess" - Gary Gygax, issue #100, page 34+.  My introduction to the crazy mixed-up world of chess variants.  I've been working on a couple 2-d versions of Dragonchess on and off for maybe a decade now.  (Nice folks waiting for Fleet Captain updates probably shouldn't think about that last sentence too much.)

"Believe It or Not, Fantasy Has Reality" - Douglas P. Bachmann, issue #40, page 10+.  Bachmann's system bends fantasy gaming into a more new age hippie/psychedelic fairytale/Campbellian monomyth direction.  Although written with D&D and Chivalry & Sorcery in mind, I recommend this one for Pendragon fans.

"Gandalf Was Only A Fifth Level Magic-User" - Bill Seligman, issue #5, page 27.  My vote for the best article ever printed in the magazine.  Should be required reading for anyone who thinks you need a large number in the Level field of your charsheet in order to experience "epic" play.

"The Taming of Brimstone" - Donald Mumma, issue #71, page 35+. Kickass little Boot Hill module.

"Dino Wars!" - Tom Moldvay, issue #166, page 48+. Tabletop rules for little plastic army men versus rubber dinosaurs.  Ran this at a con once with buildings made of cereal boxes.  Good times.

"King of the Tabletop" - Tom Wham, issue #77, page 33+. A classic Tom Wham silly boardgame.  I suspect that playing this one when we were kids is the secret origin of my sister's vast boardgame collection.

"Spells Between the Covers" - Bruce Heard, issue #82, page 55+.  The earliest system I've seen where an MU must obtain and track the contents of their library.  A little over-complicated perhaps, but the percentage chart full of magical treatises totally rules.

"Not Quite the Marvel-PHILE" - Jeff Grub, issue 97, page 77+.  Because who doesn't need stats for Frog-Man and Howard the Duck?

just preserving a G+ thread, pay me no mind

Jeff Rients  -  Yesterday 9:56 AM (edited)  -  Limited

You know what would be a neat? A campaign that uses BX D&D's 4+3 approach, with four human classes and three non-human race-as-class choices, but using totally different classes than the seven canonical options.

 -  Comment  -  Hang out  -  Share

+5

 -  Robert Fisher, Alex Schroeder, Reynaldo Madrinan, Mike Davison and 1 more

13 comments

David Rollins  -  I'd play that!

Yesterday 9:53 AM   

Chris Hogan  -  Slaine-flavoured Celty game: charioteer, warped one, druid, bard/jester (+ Fomor? Slaugh? Titan?)

Yesterday 9:56 AM (edited)   

+4

  

John Berry  -  Pilot, Scientist, Soldier, Psyker, Hovering Squid, Omega Reticulan, Bearman.

Yesterday 10:01 AM   

+8

  

Steve Lawson  -  Alchemist, Artisan, Ruffian, Gravedigger; Flumph, Thought Eater, Mimic.

Yesterday 10:07 AM   

+4

  

Mike Davison  -  +John Berry I want to play in that game.

Yesterday 10:08 AM   

John Berry  -  +Mike Davison You and me both, friend. I've been wanting to play that game for 15 years.

Yesterday 10:15 AM   

Steve Sigety  -  Hyborian Age setting: barbarian, merchant, sorcerer, pirate; serpent-man, giant ape, Summoned Thing from the Outer Dark.

Yesterday 10:18 AM   

+5

  

Steve Lawson  -  Hunter, Chieftain, Shaman, Tamer; Gryphon, Manticore, Centaur

Yesterday 10:22 AM   

+2

  

Reynaldo Madrinan  -  A series of little game books like that would be awesome.

Yesterday 11:27 AM (edited)   

+3

  

Reynaldo Madrinan  -  Space Ninja, Nova Samurai, Star Mage and Cosmic Shaman

Yesterday 11:29 AM   

John Berry  -  Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Gary Oldman.

Yesterday 11:34 AM   

+1

  

Chris Hogan  -  +John Berry: Nonhuman race: Smileys. :/

Yesterday 11:39 AM   

+2

  

Steve Lawson  -  Garage Rocker, Prog Rocker, Scenester, Sound Guy; Record Label Executive, Hippie, Drummer.

Yesterday 11:42 AM   

one more thing from The Elfish Gene

"British rock stars of the seventies were still awestruck when they travelled to the States to find the seats reclined on planes and that ice was served with water. Most people didn't have central heating--the average temperature in a British front room in 1970 was 15 degrees centrigrade or 59 degrees Fahrenheit. This is the sort of level at which most people today would require a jacket if they were going out. We had a telly that came with a slot meter that meant you paid for your viewing by putting a coin into its back. Watching an Agatha Christie was always made more exciting by the knowledge that the money might run out before Poirot put his hand on the killer's shoulder."

This is my favorite passage from Mark Barrowcliffe's The Elfish Gene. (Page 59 in the hardback, if anyone cares.)

A cool chart missing from B/X & LL

If I had to guess I'd venture that most fans of the non-Advanced versions of D&D have a mechanic or two found in AD&D that they cherish.  For me, it's the chart that comes right after determining that a wandering monster has appeared but before rolling on charts for wandering monsters by level.  I'm not normally a fan of introducing extra steps into simple procedures like the wandering monster check, but I really like that little chart in AD&D and OD&D that you check to see what level wandering monster shows up.  Instead of third level monsters wandering solely on level three, you can get monsters visiting from above or below.  This adds variety and keeps the players on their toes.

So here's the chart I made for Basic/Expert D&D and/or Labyrinth Lord.  I hope the formatting works.

Level of Monster Chart Consulted

Depth Below	1	2	3	4-5	6-7	8+
1	1-4	5	6	-	-	-
2	1	2-4	5	6	-	-
3	-	1	2-4	5-6	-	-
4	-	-	1	2-5	6	-
5	-	-	-	1-4	5-6	-
6	-	-	-	1	2-5	6
7	-	-	-	-	1-4	5-6
8	-	-	-	-	1	2-6
9+	-	-	-	-	-	1-6

The BX/LL wandering monster charts have this oddity where there's just one chart for levels four and five and another chart for levels six and seven combined, which throws off just swiping the AD&D chart.  Also, the AD&D chart is d20 based and I wanted a d6 chart.  Dungeon level 2 on this chart represents the ideal I was shooting for: a 50% chance of using the monster table for the level you're on, and a 1 in 6 chance of using the chart for monsters one above, one below or two below the level.

The DMG notes that number of critters appearing should be scaled by level.  First level monsters found on level 2 will generally appear in twice their usual numbers, fourth level monsters slumming on the third level will have half as many as in their usual group, etc.  A single third level wandering monster will probably be enough to scare the beejesus out of the newbies on level one.

If you use custom wandering monster charts the same effect is easy to achieve.  Just put "Roll on the level 2 chart" onto the level one chart and stuff like that.  That's what I did with this monster chart for one of my con games.

Here's an old Trav chart I made

Found this on the old hard drive the other day.  I guess I made it for filling out the roster of larger ships plying the Gateway Quadrant.

RANDOM CREW MEMBERS
Human? (1d)
1-5 Yes, roll on Humaniti Type table
6 No, roll on Alien Type table

Humaniti Type (2d)
2-7 Mixed Imperial
8-9 Solomani
10-11 Vilani
12 Minor Human Race - glue something stupid on their forehead or something like that

Gender (2d) - works for most aliens too
2-7 Male
8-11 Female
12 Other

Alien Type (1d)
1 Vargr
2 Bwap - Karel Čapek's Newts as interstellar bureaucrats
3 Uplifted Animal - pick something besides a canine or feline, please
4 Parahuman - look like a Minor Human Race but a product of convergent rather than divergent evolution
5 Kancer - sixlegged crabspider types
6 Other

Stone Age LotFP

by DeviantArtist Stephen Daymond

I had an idea this morning for a short RPG campaign where the PCs are survivors of a stone age tribe broken up by some sort of disaster, like a bigass storm wrecking their camp and scattering the clan.  There's been a handful of caveman style RPGs over the years, and at least one GURPS supplement (GURPS Ice Age, IIRC) but I'm thinking Lamentations of the Flame Princess would get the job done in a suitably creeped up fashion with just a smidgeon of work.  One place that would need a little bit of thought is the Common Activities rules, a.k.a. the skill list.

Architecture - This is basically Find Traps/Find Sliding Walls/etc of the older versions.  While architecture as such probably hasn't been invented yet, similarly interesting environment factors can come into play, like figuring out if a cliff is too crumbly to climb safely.  Maybe call it Enviromental or something like that.

Bushcraft - I kinda want to split this into Hunting and Gathering, since I imagine those two activities taking a lot of time and being split up among different specialists in the tribe.

Climb - No change needed.

Languages - If you assume that language is a fairly new invention and that everyone speaks a slightly different dialect of the same ur-tongue then the LotFP "roll to understand the new guy" rules actually make more sense.  No change needed.

Open Doors - Since doors probably haven't been invented reskin as Feat of Strength or something like that.

Search - No change needed.

Sleight of Hand - No change needed, but with no pockets to pick this might not be the most useful skill to develop, though I'm sure some enterprising player can get some use out of it.

Sneak Attack - No change needed.

Stealth - No change needed.

Tinker - Locks don't exist yet and mechanically fiddly traps are probably rare as hen's teeth, but I like the idea of a skill that rates technological prowess.  Flintknapping, bowmaking, even basket-weaving could fall under this category.

A few other things in LotFp would need to be changed as well.  The MU would need to be modded to lose the books and lab.  How demihumans would fit into the scheme would need to be addressed.  How one earns XP in a world without an excess of hidden riches is another issue.

Flumphfest 2012!!

"I think someone should do a new illustration for flumphs. First impressions are everything, you know." -Michael Moscrip, today on Google+

Here's the original Fiend Folio illo, lightly shaded.

By DeviantArt member ButterFrog

Dire Flumph by Eli of the blog I See Lead People





Fairly recent Flumph illo by Andrew Hou, for the Pathfinder version.
Either those goblins are friggin' tiny or that Flumph is much larger than the original version.

by Welltun Cares

Rich Burlew's cartoony interpretation for Order of the Stick

 America's sweetheart Zak S presents this vagina dentata version,
which frightens and confuses me.