Hedley Lamarr, High Priest of Evil Chaos

I've been thinking about Raggi's advice (in both the LotFP rpg and the Random Esoteric Creature Generator) that we should use real people more and humanoids less for our cannon fodder.  It's a concept that has real possibilities.  It adds a little dramatic oomph to encounters with 1 hit die goobers that might otherwise degenerate into "oh, more orcs" and increase interest in actual monsters by reducing the volume of encounters with such weirdies.

But if you knock kobolds, goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, gnolls and bugbears off your standard encounter lists, then who the heck will man the Caves of Chaos?  This might seem a minor point to you, but when pondering big changes to the game I often think about The Keep on the Borderlands as something approaching as Platonic ideal in the realm of D&D.  If a proposal renders module B2 unplayable, then I'm not sure I want it.

But then I thought about Blazing Saddles.

I want rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers and Methodists.

The Borderlands are basically the Old West redacted to Mythic Caucasia anyway, so why not draw on a source like this?

Wizardly Wednesday

The evil wizard Kelek, from the D&D cartoon.  Also available in action figure form.

Dig that classic look. 

Kelek rode around on a dire wolf, which I think is pretty badass.

He also had a sweet secret hideout and a siniser plan to gain magic power by stealing unicorn horns.

Blessed Saint Emmet

Artist/cool guy Jez Gordon (also responsible for the new DungeonFu thing-a-ma-bob for G+ gaming) hooked me up with a photoshopy of St. Emmet, the patron saint of the monastery where most of the Caves of Myrddin PCs chill out at between adventures.  (Since Hugo the Bastard bought his own manor house a few miles away, some adventurers have been staying there instead.  As I understand it to get an invite you have to speak French with an outrageous accent.)  Thanks to various shenanigans, one of my Wednesday crew officially owes St. Emmet two personal favors.

Ol' Emmet here is the lesser known and more apocryphal brother of St. Perran, patron saint of tin-miners and Cornwall in general.  Why St. Emmet has the head of an ant is subject to a wide variety of conflicting local tales, some of which cannot be repeated in polite company.

Thanks, Jez!

two quick thoughts

1) Here's a new skill idea for Lamentations of the Flame Princess weird fantasy yadda-yadda: Jack-of-All-Trades.  Defaults to 1 in 6 for all adventurers, maybe 2 in 6 for whichever of the demi-humans in your campaign are likely to have a lot of jobs during their extended lifespans.  The basic deals is that J-o-T works like the language rules. You need to know if your PC can help sail the ship or make a horseshoe?  Roll JoT.  If successful, add "sailor" or "blacksmith" to your list of secondary skills. Not suitable for all campaigns.

2) Is wizardry systematic or ad hoc in your campaign? (Or maybe there once was a complete system of magic in the golden age and the present MU rules represent a fragmentary understanding of that system.) Are spells part of a metaphysical schema or are they just the list of known effects caused by certain words, gestures and cogitations? Do your NPC magic-users tend to have ability outside the core system of spell memorization?  Can PCs gain similar special abilities? One of the neat things about the feat system in 3.x was its potential to give individual MUs different relationships with the spell system.

No Caves of Myrddin tomorrow morning

Sorry, folks, but it looks like the car will be packed so tightly I'm going to have to choose between taking my game crap or taking my school crap.  The end of the semester looms large and I got stuff I got to get done.

Wizardly Wednesday

Most wizards need spellbooks or wands. Not this guy.

emergency Caves of Myrddin session special guest report

It was a wet and overcast morning as I Zaunn the Mage departed for Nightwick Abbey. I was accompanied on my third expedition to Nightwick by Redwall the scoundrel, who insists I call him "Boner", two fighters called Donal and Agnes the Average. We also had Agnes's torchbearer and our dogs. We had a total of 5 dogs with us, since I had replaced Riddler and Lemming with "Steve" and "Thingy". Gentle Ben decided to stay behind and celebrate, I mean drown his sorrows at the loss of his master last week.

This time we headed to the South Tower, noting as we went that a series of ruined arches had appeared over the week. We're sure they weren't there last week but appeared to have been there for centuries.

Entering the south tower we discovered that it's interior was pretty much identicle to the north, right down to the trapdoor with a rusted ladder beneath it. We repeated last week's plan of using a rope spiked into the floor and lowered down the trapdoor. Beneath was small room with a door to the west, a long staircase that corkscrewed down and a corridor with a door in the eastern wall, opposite the stairs, and a door in the western wall. We headed to the western door and Boner caught a strong wiff of mold. We were debating if we should try it or the easter door when across the astral plane, in the distant mystical realm of South Knoxville some arcane structure called "The Internet" collapsed.

Suddenly Boner and I, along with out loyal hounds, found ourselves transported to the world of Wessex. There we met with the rogue Blixer, who talked us into aiding him in hunting some vampires. He and his talking dog, Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter led us into the Caves of Myrddin where he tied up a thrice blessed donkey and the dogs. He and Boner hid behind a secret door while I sat in a nearby tunnel with Steve and Thingy.

In time misty forms drifted into the cavern and solidified into four vampires. One of them decided to feed off of the donkey and a moment later I heard Abe say "Woof woof", which was the signal. I flung out my holywater soaked net and was able to cover three of the four undead. Boner and Blixer both missed with their nets but I was able to upend the bucket of holy water we'd soaked the nets in over the uncaptured vampire. He and the vampire who had tried to feed off of the thrice blessed donkey were destroyed while the other two turned into fog and escaped.

Boner found a vampire fang and intends to make it into jewellery while Blixer found a treasure map to a location nearby. On our way there we met a friend of Blixer's, Philip the Black (or something) the four of us were able to locate the treaure cache in an unexplored area of the dungeon. There we found a pile of treasure including a magical flaming sword which Boner claimed, and a scroll of spells which I took. We shared the gold amongst us and headed back into town to celebrate. 

This is where everything went terribly, terribly wrong. In our drunken stupor Boner was transformed into a pig, Philip became the property of the Castellan's wife and I was married off to Kerra, the pox-faced daughter of the local alewife. It's a dark day, a dark dark day.