not to be confused with the Karkus, which is from Dr. Who

So this semester I'm in this trippy class called Literature and the Related Arts: Sfumato, Synesthesia and Spirit, which I took mainly because the prof is the right kind of crazy.  (Also, "William Blake: WTF?" is an ongoing literary interest of mine, so any class about literature and the visual arts is Right Up My Alley.)  We had a guest lecturer this week, a local landscape painter whose work has gone from fairly straight representational oil-based cornfields to psychedelic watercolor cornfields.  Apropos of nothing, this dude recommends listening to Emerson, Lake & Palmer's second album Tarkus, which I am doing as I type this.  Some kindly miscreant uploaded the whole thing to YouTube.  Thanks, kindly miscreant!

While poking about the internets for this album, I stumbled across this image, from inside the album:



click to embiggen

I just thought all you all needed to see that, especially my Encounter Critical homies.

Bonus Classes of Sarpedon

For my next campaign I wanted something like AD&D style subclasses with less of the hassle.  So I'm calling the result Bonus Classes.  A Bonus Class is a very simple layer over an existing class, with an additional stat prerequisite.  So unlike AD&D subclasses, you don't hassle with their own rules anywhere else.  No custom spell lists or experience point charts, for example.  So here's a first draft at a Bonus Class for each of the canonical seven BX classes.  Note: no attempt has been made to balance this stuff.

Blaster Knight (Fighter Bonus Class), Prerequisite: Cha 13+, you get a random blaster gun (chart forthcoming) and all the social perks of being a knight

Psi Lord (MU Bonus Class), Prerequisite: Wis 13+, you may use the psionic rules from pages 19-21 of the LotFP version of Geoffrey McKinney's Carcosa.  Also, you have a big bald head.

Ninja (Thief Bonus Class), Prerequisite: Str 13+, you get access to the list of cool ninja gear (forthcoming) and whenever attacking from surprise you get d4 additional attack rolls

Adept (Cleric Bonus Class), Prerequisite: Int 13+, each level starting at first you get one random MU spell added to your cleric spell list, this means you actually get a spell at first level

Malformed (Dwarf Bonus Class), Prerequisite: Cha 9-, you may roll d4 mutations/defects

Gray Elf (Elf Bonus Class), Prerequisite: Con 18+, each level you gain a random MU or Cleric spell (you choose which list to roll on) as a daily power

Psycho (Halfling Bonus Class), Prerequisite: Int 9- and Wis 9-, may flip out like a maniac in combat for d6 rounds, during which Psycho gets 2 attacks/round at +2 to hit (melee only), but must fight for the entire period rolled even if that means attacking allies

Celestial Sects of Sarpedon, part 2

7.

SECT NAME:	The Alphomegans
GOD:	Oneg the Prober, Lord of Mutation
SYMBOL:	ridiculous mustache (handlebar, Franz Joseph, Hulihee, etc); clerics unable to grow a mustache wear an artificial one in order to turn or cast
GARB:	purples and/or pink robes with long sleeves and concealing hoods plus a shoulder strap satchel or a fanny pack
SPECIAL RULES:	at every even numbered level (2, 4, 6, etc) the cleric gains a random mutation/defect at 5th level their satchel functions as a bag of holding
OTHER STUFF:	worship sites including standing stone circles, huge Uluru (Ayers Rock) style outcroppings of natural stone, and the location of unexploded nuclear missiles some of the Malformed dwarves of Sarpedon are Alphomegans Priests of the Eternal Regeneration (see below) are welcomed as brothers and sisters of the same strange birthright.

8.

SECT NAME:	Bringers of the Light
GOD:	Tefral the Surveyor, the Great Lantern-Bearer
SYMBOL:	lit lantern, clerics of this sect cannot cast spells/turn unless holding a lit lantern (continual light and electric illumination count, so long as they are lanterny shaped)
GARB:	either pinks and reds or purples and greens (see below)
SPECIAL RULES:	turned undead do not flee, they explode in big balls of white light
OTHER STUFF:	Among all the Celestial Sects of Sarpedon there is a minority position that holds that the Celestial Gods should never be named outside the holiest of ritual observances.  E.g. 1 in 6 Crimson Arbitrators will refer to their god as the Judge or He Who Judges, never calling him Arishem.  This heterodoxy is most common among the Bringers of Light.  Fully half of their temples consider naming Tefral to be blasphemous.  These priests wear robes of purple and green.  The more mainstream Tefralist temples wear pinks and reds.  The rivalry between the two schools of the Bringers of Light is intense and sometimes violent.

9.

SECT NAME:	The Eternal Regeneration
GOD:	Ziran the Tester, the Great Beneformer
SYMBOL:	skull displaying various nonhuman attributes or additions such as batwings or tentacles, a third eyesocket in the forehead, fangs, etc.
GARB:	hat or helmet with red wings (bat or bird), blue robes with red trim
SPECIAL RULES:	1st level clerics of Ziran begin play with one random mutation/defect and gain an additional one every odd level thereafter (3, 5, 7, etc).
OTHER STUFF:	Some of the Malformed dwarves of Sarpedon are members of this sect. Alphomegan clerics are considered allies, joint heirs of the grand blessing of genetic instability.

10.

SECT NAME:	Sisterhood of Infinite Patience
GOD:	Yasmana the Abider, She Who Watches the Skies
SYMBOL:	The Divine Phuthan (Foothand), which looks kinda like this: source
GARB:	Purple robes decorated with circles of red and/or blue, masks with third eyes painted on forehead
SPECIAL RULES:	Laser eyebeams: number of attacks per day equal to level, for d6 damage per level to a range of 10’ level (e.g. 5th level cleric gets 5 attacks per day for 5d6 each to a range of 50’)  No to-hit roll required, but creatures immune to normal weapons save for half
OTHER STUFF:	The Sisterhood was once an exclusively female sect that now admits male members.  Male clerics of this sect are refered to as Man-Sisters until they reach third level where Man-Mother becomes the correct title (even higher ranked are the Man-Matriarchs). This sect is more centrally organized than most, with the Mother Temple of the Holy City of Yasmana dictating policy for most other temples.

11.

SECT NAME:	The Holy Hunters
GOD:	Thoryon the Smiter, Hunter of Evil
SYMBOL:	double headed axe or hammer
GARB:	red robes with white and gold trim, elaborate helms
SPECIAL RULES:	may use hand axes and battle axes
OTHER STUFF:	the clerics of this sect are more self-righteously interventionist than a lot of these organizations, they seem pretty confident they can fix the world by smashing in the right skulls

12.

SECT NAME:	Students of the Silence
GOD:	Amalagar the Proclaimer, Utterer of the Final Word
SYMBOL:	The Negatron, a metal tuning fork-like instrument sometimes with a cube, sphere or pyramid at the bottom
GARB:	black robes with white or light blue trim or white robes with black trim, often involving lots of zigzags
SPECIAL RULES:	can use Lightning Bolt as a third level spell, Transmute Rock to Mud as a fourth level cleric spell (but not its reverse), and Disintegrate as a fifth level cleric spell
OTHER STUFF:	lots of members of this sect take vows of silence, a randomly recruited NPC of this sect has a 2 in 6 chance of never speaking save to cast spells

Come fly with me

Page X20 of the 1981 D&D Expert rules includes a section titled "Traveling by Air", which includes this neat section rating who can ride what by hit dice.  For example, human-sized characters can ride (or be carried off by) all the canonical BX dragons because all those winged lizards have at least 6 hit dice, the minimum required to lift a human.  My favorite part is that flying creatures rated from 3 to 5 hit dice can carry halfling-sized riders.  (Pegasi and hippogriffs fall in this hit die range, but are specifically granted an exception allowing them to carry bigger folk.)

So I thought I'd look through the BX monster sections to see what sort of flying monsters a band of pint-sized aerial adventurers could ride.  Here's what I found:

gargoyle - a mount immune to normal weapons will probably get you into more trouble than you want
harpy - might require ear plugs or larynx removal
lizard, draco - goblins on dragon lizards sounds pretty cool
cockatrice - illogical, unfeasible but imagine a halfling sheriff enforcing law from the back of one of these
hawk, giant - sounds cool
pteranodon - maybe you'd think a dinosaur with a 50' wingspan could carry a fullsized human, but with only 5 hit dice that isn't the case, still I'm imagining cave halfings on these babies and that sounds cool
wraith - If you see a halfling wearing a necro-harness and riding the back of a wraith, run.  Just run.

The Erol Otus illo at the top of the post is from the page with the Travelling by Air rules.  I've often wondered about that hippogriff-rider.  Is that a cyclops with a ponytail wearing a crown?  And the woman on the flying carpet looks like she has horns on her head, which contributed to my theory that maybe elves or some elves or elf-women or at least some elf women had horns.  See also this Bill Willingham piece from the inside cover:

Triple badass threat.

Celestial Sects of Sarpedon, part 1

Eventually this will be a big ol' chart (maybe d20) that newly minted clerics roll on.

Celestial Sects

1.

SECT NAME:	The Crimson Arbitrators
GOD:	Arishem the Judge, He Who Judges
SYMBOL:	see below
GARB:	red robes, white belt/girdle/sash, ridiculous cylindrical hat
SPECIAL RULES:	no holy symbol required, instead each 1st level cleric receives a small runic tattoo with special white ink on their right thumb which serves as their holy symbol.  Upon advancing a level the cleric must get the new tatoo expanded.  By third level the thumb and part of the palm are covered, by ninth the hand and forearm.
OTHER STUFF:	Often called upon to settle disputes.

2.

SECT NAME:	Order of the Seventh Eye
GOD:	Eson the Search, Lord of the Seventh Eye
SYMBOL:	hand with eye in palm
GARB:	robes of green and one other color, typical dark red, brown or purple; clerics of this order paint their faces with 2 additional sets of eyes, kinda like this:
SPECIAL RULES:	can use tridents (d6 stabbing 1 handed, d8 2 handed, throw range as hand axe), use 2 MU spells Water Breathing (as Cleric spell level 3) and Wizard Eye (as Cleric spell level 4)
OTHER STUFF:	temples tend to be by or under water

3.

SECT NAME:	Servants of the Gatherer
GOD:	Gammenon the Gatherer, the Golden Cyclops
SYMBOL:	winged eye
GARB:	varies from temple to temple, but lots of golden jewelry whenever possible
SPECIAL RULES:	can cast Web as a second level cleric spell, webs are shimmering red
OTHER STUFF:	clerics of this god tend to use knobby maces painted red, additionally they have access to some high tech weaponry (pistols, rifles, grenades, etc.) they totally swiped from some time-travelling Nazis

4.

SECT NAME:	The Measurers
GOD:	Hargen the Measurer, Lord of the Mountains
SYMBOL:	eye in a triangle or eye on a mountain
GARB:	green and orange robes, split cape
SPECIAL RULES:	none
OTHER STUFF:	temples on or at the foot of mountains

5.

SECT NAME:	The Rune Lords of Jemiah
GOD:	Jemiah the Analyzer
SYMBOL:	a series of special runes worn on a headband/tiara/crown, sometimes a blue heart
GARB:	greens, greys and blues, covered with nonsense runes
SPECIAL RULES:	gains Read Magic as a 1st level Cleric spell, usable for unlocking MU scrolls
OTHER STUFF:	because the Rune Lords can use but not transpose MU scrolls they are widely reviled by magic-users for their ongoing depletion of ancient magics

6.

SECT NAME:	Children of the Smiling Shadow
GOD:	Nezzar the Calculator, the Smiling Shadow
SYMBOL:	a handheld cube, pyramid, octahedron or dodecahedron of transparent glass, crystal, etc.
GARB:	black and blue robes, hooded cloaks
SPECIAL RULES:	may use Phantasmal Forces as cleric level 2 spell, +2 saves versus cold (becomes +4 at level 5)
OTHER STUFF:	According to rumor, the greatest temples of this sect are at Sarpedon’s poles

Five Things You Need to Know About Sarpedon

Howdy!  Back in April of last year I wrote a weird thing about a science fantasy D&D world I called Sarpedon.  I've decided to try fleshing it out a bit.

Five You Need to Know About Sarpedon

1. Sarpedon is a gas giant system. A huge ringed planet looms in the sky. Technically the world that the adventures happen on is Sarpedon E, the gas giant being Sarpedon Prime. However, in daily conversations its clear to most people whether you are talking about the Sarpedon in the sky or the Sarpedon under your feet, so most folks don’t specify.

 

2. Jack Kirby’s Celestials are the gods of the setting. These armored space giants are just as silent and enigmatic as in Kirby’s original vision, so that the various beliefs of the sects and temples on Sarpedon are based upon what people think about the Celestials. The gods are real. The divine power of clerics seems to be based upon them somehow. But they don’t hand out cosmic truths or give commands.

 

 

3. It gets pretty hot on Sarpedon. People dress more like Frazetta’s Barsoom than most Middle Earthy fantasy worlds.  I'm still working on a good simple rule for overheating while wearing heavy armor that uses one's Con score but isn't a complete kick in the pants.

 

 

4. There are two strains of humanity on Sarpedon, with their own histories and cultures. The Cyrannians (see below) are descended from Earth people, while the Gandaharians have their own range of skintones (blues being most common, but reds, yellows, greens, greys and stark whites have been seen). The Gandaharians have a genetic predisposition towards total baldness and some have pointed ears, but otherwise they are physically identical to Earth-type humans. Beyond appearance, there are major cultural differences between Cyrannians and Gandaharians. The Gandaharians live in small matriarchal groups. Their technology tends to be more organic.

5. The Cyrannians are descendants from a minor colony so far in the space boonies that the Cylons didn’t know they existed. They never got the evacuation order. New Cyrannus on Sarpedon E is a colony of the original Cyrannians, though contact with the mother world has been lost for centuries.  Their culture is more classic D&D faux-medieval pseudo-feudal than the matriarchal tech-organic hippy-ness common to the Gandaharians.

is my blog dead or what?

Hey, gang.  Spring break approaches and as a grad student I've got a crapload to do, but I thought I might try to hop on the wagon and start blogging again.  I've got some notes for a new campaign that I could flesh out a bit and at least one really stupid D&D rules idea we can talk about.

The thing is, I've been considering switching venues, possibly to tumblr.  Would that be a big inconvenience for people?  I know that would make commenting a bigger hassle, but honestly I'm not sure if I can resume writing a blog and responding to comments.  And something about the interface just sooths me, whereas blogger has always been a mild pain in the ass.  I dunno.  Please share your opinion.