Friday Frazetta - Halloween Edition

Infamous Arrows of Kwille

Infamous Arrows of Kwille

No one knows the origins of the legendary fletcher and bowman Kwille, but dedicated archers are sure to come running when the colorfully dressed, odd little traveler is in town. He crafts and sells a wide range of peculiar arrows* not found anywhere else. Kwille is good at sizing up his customers, and so charges 20gp per level (based on the average level of the party) per arrow, rather than a fixed price. For instance a party averaging 4th level will be charged 80gp per arrow.

Kwille is not very forthcoming about the properties of his arrows, typically offering only one-word descriptions of their abilities ("fire.", "love.", etc) and has been known to heap scorn or even deny sales to those who demand more explanation.

Occasionally a brave (or foolish) man will challenge Kwille to a contest of skill at archery, but if any have beaten him, it has yet to be recorded or verified (any bow is treated as a +5 weapon when held in Kwille's hands). When beaten, the challenger is doomed to buy Kwille's drinks for the remainder of the day and night, and suffer through his countless inappropriate jokes and nauseating tales of seduction.

Kwille typically has 2d6 arrows of various sorts available for sale on any given visit. All arrows lose their magic upon being successfully striking a target. Arrows that miss have a 50% chance of retaining their charm. Roll on the table below (1d12) for each arrow to see what Kwille has:

1. Red Arrow - This arrow is made of some reddish wood with a flame-shaped copper-burnished arrowhead, and cardinal feather fletching. Upon striking its target, it bursts into flame for an additional 1d6 points of damage to anything within 5'.

2. Gray Arrow - This arrow is made of chalky wood with mica fletching and a slate arrowhead. Upon striking, a target must save vs. petrification or turn to stone. It will sink as deeply into solid stone or metal as a normal arrow would into soft wood. This arrow is also unbreakable, and is useful for spiking doors open or shut, hanging a rope from, etc.

3. White Arrow - This arrow is made of white wood, with goose feathers and a silver, feather-shaped tip. Upon striking its target, that target must save vs. spells or fall into an unbreakable slumber for 2d6 turns. Sleeping with an unfired white arrow held in loosely in one hand results in double the normal healing for the night, but there is a cumulative 5% per night that this drains away the arrow's magic.

4. Yellow Arrow - This arrow is made of bamboo, with canary feathers and a bronze tip. Handling it imparts a vague feeling of unease and a mild case of heartburn. Any target struck must save vs. fear or fall into a helpless fit of panic and shakes for 2d6 rounds, fleeing if possible.

5. Green Arrow - This arrow is made of fresh, mossy pine, fletched with parrot feathers, and tipped with an eroded-looking copper arrowhead. Anyone sniffing at it is nauseated. Targets struck take 2d6 points of poison damage (save for half).

6. Black Arrow - This arrow is made of pale bone, fletched with crow feathers, and tipped with a chip of obsidian. It is unnerving to handle. Targets struck must save vs. spells or lose 1d3 levels (or HD, death if reduced to "0"). Only one such arrow is available at a time, reroll any further results of "6".

7. Blue Arrow - This arrow is made entirely of glass and fletched with gull feathers. It will cause frostbite if handled barehanded for more than a round. Upon striking a target, it releases a blast of freezing cold, doing 1d6 points of damage to anything within 5'.

8. Pink Arrow - This arrow is made of balsa, fletched with doves feathers, and tipped with a soft pewter arrow head that only does 1hp of damage. It is pleasantly warm to the touch. Anyone struck by this arrow must save vs. spells or fall madly in love with the first individual they see.

9. Ghost Arrow - This arrow appears to made entirely of some sort of cohesive mist. It can be bent and even crumpled up, but will straiten back out in a round or so. Anyone struck by one takes no damage, but must save vs. spells or suffer total amnesia.

10. Hollow Arrow - This slightly wider than normal arrow is hollow, fletched with pigeon feathers, and tipped with a glass arrowhead. The arrowhead unscrews, and the shaft can be filled with one magical potion, vial of acid, or vial of holy water. Upon striking its target, the arrow does only 1d2 points of damage, but injects or splashes the arrows contents as appropriate.

11. Gold Arrow - This arrow is made of willow, fletched with red-tailed hawk feathers, and tipped with a gold-leafed arrowhead. These arrows are treated as +5 magic arrows, and will return to their owner's quiver upon a miss (unless that miss is a natural "1"*.

12. Motley Arrow - This arrow is made of random-looking, seemingly cobbled together materials. Its appearance belies its potency, however, as upon firing it bursts into 2d6 separate normal arrows (roll to-hit for each, against up to 3 targets).

*It should be noted Kwille's arrows are "Infamous" because any arrow fired has a 5% chance of flying off into the distance for a round before turning back around and targeting the person who fired it (determined by the person firing it rolling a natural "1" to-hit). The archer must then roll to-hit a second time against their own AC.

The Gary Gygax Memorial Home for Gaming Retirees

"Hope I die before I get old..." - Pete Townshend

Not necessarily, Pete.

When people talk about what they're going to do when they're old and gray, I think back to my youth. My Mom worked a lot in retirement and nursing homes. I think about those old guys and gals huddled around tables playing cards and sipping crude-oil-thick coffee for eight hours a day, and think - they could get a lot of gaming in!

I'm predicting 2040 sees the first formally dedicated retirement home for RPG players. Probably in Boca Raton, FL. What do you think?

On a related note, I see a lot of frustrated GMs on the interwebs lamenting the difficulty in getting a gaming group together. Ever think of volunteering at your local Nursing Home or Retirement Community (the picture above is one near my office, looks like Hogwarts!)? Can you imagine running a game for a bunch of folks that grew up reading Weird Tales every day after school? Something to think about...

What does a WotRP character look like?

Character preview today over at Warriors of the Red Planet.

Warriors of the Red Planet - the Blog

As I finish up the WotRP manuscript over the next few weeks, I thought it would be fun for it to have its very own home in the blogosphere. So check out Warriors of the Red Planet. In addition to progress reports, the blog will compile the various previews already done here at BtBG, new previews, Sword & Planet art and rumblings from around the internet, and even some serialized Sword & Planet fiction.

Take a look, and let me know what you think!

Omegea - Session 3

Session 4 of Omegea is tonight, and I realized I haven't posted about session 3 yet. Last session found the party licking their wounds a bit from last time, and enjoying a bit of the treasure they picked up (they've been quite impoverished until now), along with some restorative wine and food.

They discuss a bit over dinner what to do next. They've got three adventuring sites to explore at the time (the Face in the Wastes, the Dome, and the Grogor Obelisk), and are very much getting the hang of sandbox exploration - plan your time and resources wisely. The obelisk at least they know they must attempt soon - the mystical scroll they obtained to gain entry purportedly only works beneath a full moon, and that is occurring early the next morning. They decide to equip themselves and set back out to the Head to hopefully plumb any remaining mysteries before the obelisk demands their full attention.

They purchase some lime and salt, in hopes this will aid them against the giant sluglike creatures known to haunt the interior of the great Head. They make it to the head without any great hardship, and once again perform the ritual of opening. They enter the head and begin to explore.

Remembering they had never checked out the Head's "basement", they head there first. They descend the spiral stair-chute cautiously, and find themselves in a box-like chamber lined with shining aluminum cabinetry, and a door with a bright yellow sign on the far wall. Exploring the cabinets, they find them stocked with crumbling papery boxes (rotten cardboard), filled with shiny aluminum cylinders (canned food). They crush one open and find it filled with long-spoiled pink ooze. They ransack the whole room and turn up nothing of real use until the end - a roll of laminated maps! They then turn their attention to the door.

The door has a a glassy, hand-shaped symbol in the center. The magic user places his hand upon it and a ghostly voice speaks, "user not recognized!". The (Lawful) cleric steps up and tries - "user recognized, proceed!". Past the door and into the next chamber, they see shuffling in the shadows at the far end a horde of man-like beings in rotten white jumpsuits. The horde lurches forward, eerie green lights flickering in their eyes, and their hands outstretch greedily. The party falls back into the storage chamber searching frantically for a good place to stem the tide. The Fighting Man then pulls forth the odd gun-like weapon found beneath the seat of the ornithopter in Session Two, clumsily loads a shell and fires at the mindless ranks before him!

There is a flash of multicolored light, and a wave of heat, once, twice, three times and then all goes dark. When the party's eyes readjust to the gloom, they find the horde is destroyed. Each wears a thin, platinum headband set with an onyx chip. They collect these and hastily exit the basements.

They turn their attention to the unexplored higher reaches of the Head, passing again the "Mayday!!" grille, and the head's facial control panel, until at last they come to the uppermost chamber within the head. A bluish low emenates from within and they find themsleves before a black iron pedastal with wires, tubes, and pulsing lights. Atop it is afixed a bizaare metal and glass contraption with what appears to be a brain floating within.

"Attend Me" a booming hollow voice intones, and the party feels a dire compulsion overtaking them. All save the fighting man reach helplessly into their packs and draw forth a platinum headband, placing it upon their own heads. The reptelf, upon so attiring himself, shrieks and descends into tormented madness, while the remaining go limp and await orders from their new master. The Fighting Man however draws forth the weapon of the ancients yet again, fumbling to load another shell. "Defend Me Slaves" booms the bodiless voice, and the characters lurch toward their former companion.

It all comes down to a single initiative roll - tpk or victory? Fortunately the fighting man wins the roll, and the Brain Chamber explodes into light, heat, and sound. Its a near-tpk anyway, as most of the characters are brought to death's door by the backlash. A little healing brings them round, and the party packs up whatever else they can find and exits the Head.

On the road back to Majinta they have an unfortunately run in with a less than honourable patrol from Majinta. Harsh words are exchanged, and then blows! Both sides eventually flee the scene, but the party realizes they will not easily regain entry to the city of Majinta without assistance. They return to the Witch of the Western Wastes and ask her assistance.

She agrees to provide them with disguises and a coin of charming. She also buys the stockpile of platinum headbands and tells the party they must have encountered the remnant of one of the infamous Mindlords of Dyskatyr, perhaps the result of one of their many attempts to gain immortality gone horribly awry.

With the help of the coin, the party returns to Majinta and plots their exploration of the great Obelisk. After midnight, they proceed to the obelisk and beneath the light of the full moon pull forth their scroll and read it. The Magic User realizes they are reading a simple scroll of detect magic. Nonetheless it outlines the secret door into the obelisk and reveals the mechanism to open the door. Once inside, they find themselves in a recurring sequence of perfectly cube shaped rooms, until they at last pass through an amorphous, spongy tunnel onto a great landing with iron bridges suspended from chains that seem to dissapear into a great void. They select a bridge at random and follow it across to another landing with a great pair of doors flanked by giant guardians with wicked curving greatswords.

They banter a bit with the guards, hoping to trick their way in, but things start to get ugly, and there we end the session.

Oh yeah, the cleric (Diago the Unwise) leveled up! He gets spells now!

Coin of Charming - this one-use item appears as a single, uncommonly shiny silver coin of the local mintage. If dramatically presented during a session of negotiation or bargaining, it will render all individuals (previously unaware of its presence) temporarily compliant and uncaring of the outcome, providing nothing too drastic and uncharacteristic is attempted. Once used, the coin reverts to normal tender, and anyone charmed by its effect forget the occasion altogether.

Oh, all right...

I almost never join in on these, but what the hey. Seeing so many other cool lists made me wonder if I could even pick 15 games, as I tend to be more of a "reader who games" than a straight up gamer. But, to my suprise more than 15 immediately sprang to mind, though some required a little research to find the actual name of games that I remember as "that space mining game" or "that all magic users game". Anyway, here they be, in no particular order save number 1.

1. AD&D 1E - most played game ever both for me and probably 95% of gamers I know.
2. D&D B/X - you never forget your first time.
3. MERP - I played the hell out of this game, and miss it.
4. Twilight 2000 - from back when we still expected the bombs to fall any day.
5. Squad Leader - what I immediately think of when I think of "war game".
6. War & Peace - the biggest and best wargame I ever played. It takes like 3 months to play, so I only ever played it twice.
7. Risk - what can I say?
8. Microlite20 - Everyone should have about 15 copies of this stashed in their various campaign setting boxes or books for instantaneous gaming.
9. The Lords of UnderEarth - my favorite fantasy microgame.
10. Revolt on Antares - my favorite scifi microgame.
11. Star Frontiers - probably number 1 on my "I should really break that out and play it again" list.
12. Wizards Quest - my favorite Avalon Hill fantasy game, I played with 4 friends quite recently after tracking down a copy on ebay and was pleasantly surprised to find the game just as good as I remembered.
13. HARN - number one on my "wish I had had a chance to play that" list. I've spent a lot of time drooling over the maps nonetheless.
14. Diablo - possibly sacrilege to include a computer game on this list, but its, in my opinion, the best dungeon crawl you can get on a flatscreen.
15. Stratego - cause my junior Ravyns love to play it with me!