Man, I love these guys.

In my mind the trunk of the car is loaded with backpacks, torches, and battle-axes.

No wonder he was such a pain in the butt.

Is it me, or is Robin Hood's nemesis rolling around in Doctor Strange's colors?

Haunted Cities and Swamp Elves

So I've been doing some more work on stocking the wilderness map for my OD&D sandbox setting. I decided to go back to the original wilderness encounter charts to see what they suggest about the D&D landscape. Dig this page:


I added the color boxes to highlight what I wanted to talk about. Let's start with the green box, which is the random city encounter table. According to this chart half of all city encounters will involve Men (meaning bandits, brigands, berserkers and various high-level NPCs with entourages) while the other half of all city encounters involve a run-in with various undead. Obviously this simple chart predates the more elaborate and awesome options in the 1st edition DMG, Ready Ref Sheets/City State of the Invincible Overlord, or Midkemia Press's Cities. And while this particular chart omits the all-important random harlots, I really like the suggestion that OD&D cities are positively crawling with ghosts and skeletons.

Consider for a moment the fact that some cities in our world are thousands of years old and we don't even have elves around. If even a small percentage of the dead return to the world of the living each year, how many will be lurking around a city after ten generations? A hundred generations? Under such circumstances ancestor worship might be a practical necessity, to keep Uncle Lou's spectre from getting out of hand.

Moving on, the purplish oval shows that referring to the "Giant" sub-table is an equal possibility in all terrain types but the city. The blue box contains the Giant sub-table. Looks like this table is the origin of the term "giant class" as a means of referencing the evil humanoids that rangers are extra skilled in beating up. The original "Giant class" of humanoid consists of all the critters on that list starting with Kobolds and stopping with Giants. The last four items on the list, Gnomes, Dwarves, Elves, and EntsTreants, aren't Giant class because they're the good guys.

So under these rules you can encounter a dwarf in a swamp, an ogre in a desert, and elves in the mountains. In fact, you have an equal chance of finding them there as you do of running into such creatures in what we nowadays consider their native environs. I don't know about you, but this situation immediately suggests to me the possibility of secret races such as Desert Dwarves and Hillbilly Trees. Or maybe elves and kobolds get out a lot more than I normally suspect.

By the way, I can't find halflings/hobbits on any of the OD&D wilderness encounter charts. I think I'm okay with that.

One Brief Observation

I like to keep things as upbeat as possible on the ol' Gameblog, so I'm not going to get too deep into the fiasco surrounding Zachary Houghton's resignation as an ENnies judge. It's a damn shame Zach felt he had to go because, as I said when he was running, he's my kind of gamer. His voice in the process made the ENnies far more relevant to me.

But I wanted to post because some people have decided to call Zach names for his harshing on some behavior of the other judges. That's totally understandable in a situation like this and Zach's a big boy who can take care of himself. He doesn't need me defending him. However, I must object to the one or two interested parties who felt the need to drag Zach's family into the mix. That's across the line.

Let me put it to you this way. I used to repossess cars and foreclose houses for a living. I've been called a lot of things over the years. One time this woman called me an asshole over the phone because she thought she had put me on hold and was talking to someone else on her end of the line. Another guy wrote a letter to my superiors referring to me and my co-worker Laurie as "the spawn of Satan". Once or twice someone told to me to my face that I was ruining their lives.

Never once did anyone bring my family into it. Not once in twelve hundred repossessions, a similar number of court cases, and maybe 50 or so home foreclosures. Anyone thinking that some stupid award for a stupid role-playing game merits that level of jackassery has completely lost perspective.

again, five links

The Best Subsector Map Ever - Thanks BeRKA!

One Million Orc Tribes

Say Yes or Face The Dungeon

List of Melee Weapons That Don't Exist, But Should

Chaos Patrons!

Upcoming Convention News

FlatCon in Bloomington, Illinois is next Saturday, October 4th. It's not officially on the schedule yet, but I've submitted an event for Saturday afternoon (or Saturday morning if they can't fit me in later in the day). The plan is that I'll be running my own idiotsyncratic version of OD&D for up to twelve foolhardy souls. If it doesn't get on the schedule I'll still have my OD&D and Encounter Critical stuff with me. Don't hesitate to ask me to run something if we can find a spot to sling dice. Just look for the guy wearing this:


The Saturday after that I plan to attend I-Con in Springfield, Illinois. I haven't figured out how to submit an event on their bare bones website, but again I'll have my gamecrap with me. If we can find space I will totally run something at the drop of a hat.

Shatnerday again