Uilleax, the Fathom Wyrm

Millenia ago, people lived on Loth Ravenor, and stood sometimes for days in the surf and listened to the secrets that the ocean told them. They built a black temple on the island there and killed black sharks and hung them from the walls of the temple, and made instruments from the flesh of sharks and cattle and played old songs that the ocean told them, and prayed, and in time Uilleax the Fathom Wyrm came swimming from under the waves and crawled into the temple and became their god. It taught them what ways to honor it, and spells no one knew, and how to placate the Gods of the Winds and of the Currents, and how to see into the dreams of fish and waves, and make congress with the fish, and be knowledgeable of the ocean.  They built Loth Armanea and every millennium Uilleax destroyed one third of their city as payment and sacrifice for the gifts he gave them. One thousand and one years ago, he entered Loth Armanea, set ablaze the city, turned the city council into salt, swallowed the emperor and his nine royal children and ninety wives, and crawled into the ocean, and has not been seen since.

It is said that Uilleax the Fathom Wyrm was three kilometers in length and possessed one thousand legs and was the color of blood and mucous and that his gaze gave strange life to dreams and that in his presence the ocean sang odd arias, and danced. 

One thousand and one years now has the temple on Loth Ravenor stood empty and its halls are kept by black puddings, millipedes, serpents, goatmen, and shoggoth.  Goats live in the trees around the temple and their horns grow strange, and they speak the language of men and fish.  The gates to the temple are guarded by old devotees to the Fathom Wyrm and suffer no one to pass, and still place gold and sacrifice within the entrance where Uilleax once went, and the treasures are taken by the monsters within, for the clerics believe the monsters are beloved of the dragon, and sacred to him.

They pray for his return, and seek him on pilgrimage across the ocean, and Loth Armanea arms itself in preparation.

Clerics of the Fathom Wyrm may choose these powers at the appropriate level instead of their domain power.

1st level: Learn the Language of Fish. Gain proficiency at Swimming, and add double proficiency bonus to Swim checks. 

1st level: Your touch becomes poison. Make an unarmed attack as a bonus action. On a hit, the target becomes poisoned for 1d4 rounds (disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks), and each round that it is poisoned takes 1d4 poison damage. This leaves a suppurating wound, and if the creature takes 10 or more damage this way, the wound scars permanently. You may do this a number of times per day = Wisdom modifier. 

2nd level: Channel Divinity: Brine. You can present your holy symbol and cause a salt wind to howl. Each hostile creature within 30 feet of you must make a Constitution saving throw. A creature takes dehydration damage equal to 2d10+cleric level on a failed save, and half that on a successful save. A creature reduced to 0 hp by this power turns to a salt statue. Also on a failed save, each creature's weapons and armor degrades by an amount equal to your Wisdom bonus. 

6th level: Channel Divinity: Charm Fish, and Slimes too. You present your holy symbol and speak an invocation to Uilleax Each fish, jellyfish, slime, or ooze that can see (or sense) you within 30' must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failure, it becomes charmed by you for 1 minute or until it takes damage. The charmed creature is friendly to you and anyone else you decide

8th level: Once on each of your turns when you hit a creature with your weapon you may deal an extra 1d8 psychic damage as their thoughts become torturous and terrifying. When you reach 14th level, this (of course) increases to 2d8 damage. For every eight damage a creature takes from this attack, they become unable to sleep for one day.

17th level: You learn the names of the Currents and the Winds. As an action you may name a Wind or an Ocean Current and direct it as you like. A wind may blow in any direction, gust at the strength of a storm, become still, or anything else a Wind might do. An Ocean Current may change directions, become still, become confused, loop onto itself, or the like. Maintaining control over a Wind or a Current counts as maintaining concentration on a spell, and must be spoken to again each round as a bonus action.

Psychic Kung Fu Fantasy Pirates

These are for my new wavecrawler campaign. I want my players to get random weird abilities regardless of their level and I just love the idea of weird fantasy pirates using kung fu and psychic powers. If you're in my game and don't want to be spoiled, don't read these! You'll see the lists if you ever get a power anyway.

Psychic powers  

Each time you get knocked unconscious you have a 1% chance to learn one of these. I figure you could either roll every time you get KO'd or tally it up per session and roll at the end of session, or when you level up. If that turns out tedious or annoying then I'll would probably change it to be every time you level up you have a d% chance = your Charisma score.

These can be used once per week, or you can recharge one by spending d20 points of your favorite psychic ability score, which regenerate one point per night of rest. 

DC = 8 + Proficiency bonus + Charisma mod (5e) or 10 + Charisma mod + 1/2 Level (3e) or Save vs Spell (I guess). 

Roll 1d20

1. MIND BLAST: Shimmering zig-zag lines spring from your head. Everyone in a 25’ foot cone must make a Will save or take 8d6 damage and be stunned for 1 round. (Mindflayers in my campaigns can use this one at will)

2. CHAMBER OF POWER - your chest bursts open and becomes a psionic fire pit -- replace CON with CHA and you shoot psychic fire at a random target within 300’ every round for 2d6 damage for 1d4+CHA bonus rounds, and then you start to attract all magic into your chest for 1d4 rounds—all magic cast within 300’ caster must make a Will save or target you instead—and then your chest explodes in a flash of light 300’ wide, and everyone within 30’ (including you) must CON save or go blind for 1d6 rounds.

3. POORLY LEARNED SPELL. you learn a random spell that has a 50% chance of backfiring.  Every time you successfully cast the spell you get d20% better at casting it.

4. TELEPATHY--lasts d6x10 minutes. Range 300' feet. You can communicate back and forth, send images, etc., any thought you could plausibly have can be transmitted.

5. MARTYR POWER - You must make eye-contact with a target within 10’. They will take 2x the damage or healing that you receive for 3d4 rounds (Will save).

6. Everyone in fifteen foot sphere is pushed away 5d4 feet, wall and ceiling crushed away in perfect sphere, you get a nosebleed. If someone is crushed against a wall or object they take 8d6 damage (Con save for half)

7. You instantly learn the next d20 d20 rolls you'll witness. This includes ability checks, saving throws, attack rolls, and so on.

8. FROM THE FUTURE - an extra, helpful you from the future appears and acts for 1d4 rounds, and then you both disappear for that number of rounds, and then you reappear alone.

9. FUGUE STATE - you revert to the state you were 1d4 rounds ago and all your actions are undone

10. NEXT MELEE ATTACK DAMAGE = damage you just took

11. SPLIT VISION—Your vision goes split-screen.  One side of the screen shows what’s in the location where you use the power, as if you’re still there, and the other side of the screen shows where you can currently see.  This lasts for 1d6x10 minutes.

12. Anti-magnetic - repel metal at the same rate as it hits you for 1d4 rounds. You can't touch metal or wear metal armor and you float a centimeter off of metal floors, but that's frictionless so you'll probably fall if you try.

13. Change the color of your skin (is a little imprecise and lasts until you use it again)

14. Vomit Flesh—You vomit 5d4 pounds of living, bloody meat.

15. Weapon floats in front of you and uses your INT instead of STR for attack and damage. You can use it each round as a bonus action for 1d10 rounds.

16. BLISTERING TELEPORT WALK: Woommmm... you flicker as you levitate through the air up to 2x your move; you're immune to damage during the move.

17. Everyone in 10' radius sphere (centered on you) instantly forgets everything they know about you, forever. (Will save to resist)

18. CAUSE MUTATION: Target must save or gain d6 random mutations. You black out for d4 rounds.

19. Next sentence you speak is automatically believed (no save)

20. Mind probe. Touch enemy’s head. The target makes a Will save. On failure it suffers 1d6+CHA damage and is stunned and you gain complete knowledge of the past 1d4+Cha mod days of its life OR Complete knowledge of some finite area of understanding roughly equal in contents to a short book OR You gain 1d4 of its Skill or Weapon proficiencies OR One spell it knows.  This knowledge fades after a day.  If the target makes its save, the power backlashes and you take 3d6+CHA damage.

Kung Fu Powers

Each time you kill a guy in melee combat you have a 1% chance to learn one of these. You'd probably want to tally these per session instead of rolling each time you off a guy. Like above you could probably do a d% chance = Wisdom every time you level up if you wanted to simplify things, or just grant them every so often. In my last campaign I let melee characters without any magical powers get one every other level and it worked out really well. Everyone love it. Nick got Pythagorean Leap at level 2 and spent the next two years stacking dice.

These are usable once per day, i.e. you get them back after a Long Rest.

These are all from Zak Smith's call for kung fu moves for his crowdsourced Gigacrawler game, so specific authors are multiple - see http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2011/01/gigacrawler-martial-arts.html?zx=59fd826b27aeb88 - seriously these are all really good, but these 20 are my favorite. I'm so glad these got made.

Roll 1d20

1.      Golden Monkey Hook Strike: Leap into the air, hook leg around target's neck, land on the ground and attempt to crush trachea. A successful hit automatically causes 4 damage + target makes Fortitude save v. DC 10 + 1/2 Level + Dexterity Modifier to avoid 4 choking damage, plus target is on the ground and grappled.

2.      Lucky Number Dodge: PC chooses a number between 10 and 20. Each time an attacker rolls that number to hit the PC, s/he may automatically trip the attacker.  Once per day when an attacker rolls that number, the PC may automatically dodge that attack.

3.      Thousand Drunken Tongues Technique: After a successful unarmed to-hit roll, the player begins to speak and the GM starts a stopwatch. The player must then continuously describe, in detail, a series of physical movements his or her character is using to attack his or her enemy, without stopping.

(Example: "I leap into the air, twist, land on top of the guy's head, reach down, shove my fingers into his eyesockets, pluck out one eye, throw it into the air, slice it in half with my dagger, catch the pieces in my mouth, spit them into his face, jump off his head, sweep his legs out from under him, catch him by the hair, throw him through the window, jump through after him, punch him in the neck four times before he hitsthe ground"...etc.)

If the player pauses for more than one second ("one Miss-iss-ipp-i") the recitation must stop and the GM stops the stopwatch. The longer the player speaks, the more dangerous the attack. The attack causes damage equal to one third the number ofseconds the description goes on (rounded down).

The described attack does indeed occur--though it can only include actions which thePC (or, at least, a Jet Li-like version of the character) could physically perform--i.e. if the PC can't eat metal then the description cannot include the PC eating the target's sword. If the description suggests some result in addition to direct physical damage from the assault (i.e. if the strike involves the target being disarmed or thrown into a spike-filled pit), the target may be allowed a Reflex save v. the attacker’s Dexterity.

Although the described attack can include any number of actions involving weapons, they do no additional damage and the initial to-hit roll is made as if it were an unarmed strike. If more than one target is included in the description the PC can decide how exactly to allocate the damage generated.

An attack description can last up to 30 seconds.

4.      Familiar Ancient Ronin Dodge. If a PC is being attacked by two or more foes at once (melee or missile), this allows the PC to cause the enemies to hit each other (if the physical set up makes that plausible). The PC must successfully dodge the first attack, thereafter the other attacks are presumed to have been dodged as well. Theenemies all then make their attacks at each other. If the PC's roll is unsuccessful, it's wasted for the day.

5.      Palm of Unfathomable Justice: The PC may make 3 armed or unarmed melee attacks this round, using Strength for attack and damage on the first strike, Dexterity for the second, and Wisdom for the third.

6.      Keening Vampire Lunge: The PC must use a bladed or spiked weapon, claw or bite attack or anything else that could cause a bleeding wound. The attack is resolved as normal, but the defender gets a penalty to melee attack rolls equal to damage taken for 1d4 rounds. The attacker gains the same amount as a bonus for the same number of rounds.

7.      Pythagorean Leap: Set a d20 down. Now, stack dice on top of it. When thestack falls, count the number of dice. You may strike anyone within that number x5 feet, by leaping against a ceiling or wall and then straight at them. You can also simply jump that distance without attacking, or use a weapon in mid-leap (useful for dropping a bomb right on top someone, for instance).

8.      Nebulous Pin of Hot Anguish: Arms behind your back, you bump the target with your chest. Until the end of your next turn, if the target moves away or attempts to attack you, it takes damage equal to your Charisma modifier + your Wisdom modifier.

9.      Music From the Heart of Space: Make a melee touch attack using your Charisma instead of Strength. You swirl your arm, touch the target and speak a proverb. Target falls asleep for 1d4 rounds. 

10.  Golden Orbital Whip: As a full-round action, you move your speed to a target and resolve an attack. The target does not take damage but instead moves a distance in feet equal to your Strength to collide with another target. Roll 1d6:

1- First target takes damage and Second target falls
2- Second target takes damage and First target falls
3- Both targets fall down
4- Both targets take damage
5- Both targets fall down
6- Resolve an attack against the second target, using the Armor Class of the first target.

11.  Portal of Akenhopis: This is a stance of whirling limbs which reduces any projectile damage by d20 for 1d4 rounds.  Any damage reduced to 0 is deflected back at the attacker. The effect will also end when the user makes any hand-to-hand attack or attack with a handheld weapon.

12.  Accumulative Judgment: The practitioner touches a nearby individual, either PC or NPC, who is NOT antagonistic toward the practitioner, at the same time voicing a short exhortation of action. If a PC, the player may choose not to participate, but participation can be the character's only attack for the round. Thetouched individual then touches another (as yet untouched) individual, and so on, to a maximum of 1d6 individuals per level of the practitioner. All individuals touched in this way become immediately focused in mind and body, shaking off stupors, glamors, minor hallucinations, simple hypnotic states, and other dazes of mundane or magical nature. Additionally, the final individual so touched attacks an opponent ofthe practitioner. This strike inflicts normal damage, plus 1 point for every person in the chain of Accumulative Judgement, including the striker, but not including theoriginating practitioner.

13. Claw of Megathrox. Using a clever feint, the PC grabs two of an enemy's limbs, spins, hooks a third limb under his/her leg and twists the third limb back upon itself, rendering it useless. The complexity of the attack requires the target to have at least 3 arms or appendages placed roughly where arms would be. It is useless against two-armed creatures (or creatures with only 2 functioning arms). If the PC's Dexterity is higher than the target’s Constitution, the twist is automatically successful. If it is equal or less than the target's Constitution, there is an opposed Dexterity v. Strength roll. A successful attack also does d4 hp damage.
14. Reptile Emperor Ninefold Seeking Fist. The PC can attempt to redirect up to 9 attacks by creatures in a 15-foot radius toward any target of his/her choosing. The PC must announce his/her attention to use this technique at the beginning of a round but the GM should proceed as if the creatures under his/her control do not know this is about to happen. The attacks must be ones that could plausibly be redirected by physically manipulating the attacker (for example, a psionic attack would not be redirected). The PC makes a Dexterity roll against the attack roll of each attacker, a success indicates the attack has been redirected and must be rolled against the new target instead of the intended one. If no attacks are made in that round, oh well, thetechnique is wasted for the day.
15. Cataract of steel and blood. The PC makes an attack with a weapon he is holding. If it hits, he may drop the weapon, draw another one and make another attack. This goes on until the PC misses or runs out of weapons. He can use any kind of weapon during the cataract, from knives and clubs to firearms (althought he firearms must be loaded). Unarmed counts as one weapon unless he can make more than one unarmed attack per round.
16. Amazing ram onslaught. During the PCs turn, he may move through any enemys position or square or hex or whatever movement system you use. Each time he does so, he gets to make an unarmed attack against that enemy. If the unarmed attack deals damage, the enemy is knocked down. He may keep moving even if the attack misses.
17. Someday Soon Your Doom Is Coming. .Select an opponent you have struck in another combat-- not THIS fight, but any combat previous. ANY contested roll or attack roll made against this character is at +1 for the duration of the combat. If they survive & you use this technique in ANOTHER combat, the bonus increases by one...& so on & so on, until at last you are victorious & kill them.
18. Qolra-Huun's Ascent. You may move in a normal-to-high gravity atmosphere as if in a 0-gravity atmosphere until the end of the next round.
19. Tiger Facial: A series of furious claw attacks wrecks the target's face: make a successful attack and roll d6
    1 Just deep wounds (dripping blood blinds opponent 1 round)
    2 You leave a horrible scar (-2 to attack rolls from pain until healed)
    3 You pluck off one of their lips; +d4 damage
    4 You rip your victim's nose off; +d8 damage
    5 Raking one eye out you leave the target half-blind; +d10 damage
    6 You hold your target's face while he bleeds and howls; +d20 damage
20. Boiling Miracle Axe-
    
    Make contact with a heat source equal to or in excess of 100c (pass your hand near a lantern, block a laser blast with your fist). Your fluid movement "catches" this heat, usually blocking or snuffing the source, and spirals it down until you strike the surface on which you stand. Any creature or electronic device within 15' of you suffers damage; you take no additional damage. The amount of heat you can transition is based on your WISDOM and, as shown on chart below with corresponding damage:

WISDOM//up to TEMP(C)//DAMAGE

1-2//200//2d6+2
3-4//300//2d6+6
5-6//400//2d6+10
7-8//500//3d6+2
9-10//600//3d6+6
11-12//700//3d6+10
13-14//800//4d6+2
15-16//900//4d6+6
17-18//1000//4d6+10

You may use this move as a reaction when faced with a fire-based attack. You take damage as normal but may execute the manuever. The user can choose to hold therelease of the heat until next round. If he elects to do so, the user suffers additional damage as outlined above.

Heeeeeeere we go!!

Here's the scenario:

I'm starting a D&D Marilith wavecrawl sandbox with some friends in Oakland at the same time as with some friends back in Philly. Since I live in Oakland, the Philly game is all on Google Plus. The idea is it's 30,000 years before the events of my last campaign, and the whole world is an ocean with numerous archipelagos, fortress islands, island cities, pirates, volcanoes, whirlpools, sea beasts, etc., and the Demon Lords and Distaff Powers are still alive and rule horrible island empires, and no one really knows how to make ships yet since it's so far in the past, so it's all inflated bladders, ships shaped like giant metal men, kayaks, swords that just float on the water and people hang out on the blade, houses, inverted metal cones with stairs that spiral downward into the ocean, etc., and the gods are more-or-less the same, except Fenrath the Wolf God is a giant wolf stuck on an island somewhere, and Belm is a three-headed cow god of fertility and civilization and roasts, and the Fathom Wyrm is more or less in charge being the Mile Long Ocean Dragon, and there are tons of ocean witches and bird witches and ice witches, so Izorides the Witch Goddess is pretty strong. What else - I don't know a whole lot about this world, I'm holding off until we finish the starting adventure (if we ever do), which goes like this:

The players wake up unconscious in the dungeons below an island fortress operated by yakmen, but the yakmen are currently battling crazed blood-covered muscle guys, and weasels are sucking blood from the corpses, and there are zombies with the tops of their heads from the jaws up sawed off patrolling everywhere, and it's dark and confusing. Pretty quickly they can find captives in the dungeons who can inform them that they were actually part of a mercenary crew sent to this island to steal "The Lambent Eye of Uvraj the Vacant," but when the first strike team infiltrated the fortress and gazed upon the eye it drove everyone insane, which is why the players lost their memory, and now the yakmen have mopped up the opposition save for pockets of lunatics in various closets and chambers. If they follow the clues they can figure out that the fortress is run by some sorceress named the Lady Olivia von Kirin Santos, who is renowned for her beauty (as well as presumed dead by most for the last thirty years) so determined people keep questing to her island to follow the rumors and woo her and failing and getting locked up or tortured. And she keeps weasels.

Kittens here, but you get the picture

So session 1, Oakland:

Adam as Gurdjieff Niaflim, Eric as Pumpkin the Gnome, and Ricky as Appear the Sorcerer make their characters. This takes a very long time. We don't have enough copies of the book and it's hard to find where the right information is. Eventually it's all sorted out and they spend some time opening cell doors and finding fish. They find a prisoner named Stevens Ragusa, scare the bejeezus out of him with dancing lights, ("I make a light shaped like a guy and say 'Wooooo'" "Stevens says 'Torment me not, ghost, I have suffered enough at the hands of these yakmen' ") and make him their ally. G.N. says, "I really want to know what it's like outside." In a torture chamber they find an ice ooze in a corked cauldron and slay it. They walk into a room and kill a handful of yakmen battling their former comrades. Session ends. I panic (how does XP work in this game??) and give everyone 316 XP, enough to level up. This was not cathartic for me and I am dissatisfied. I message my friends Nick and Jameela who live in Philadelphia and ask them if they want to play DnD and they text me exclamation points and swear words indicating that yes, they do.

Session 1, Philly:

Jameela as Pacca the Cleric, and Nick as Milton Measely, a teenage astronomer who gets his powers from a satellite called The Eye in the Sky. Jameela doesn't know what feat to take. "There are feats in this game?" They spend some time opening cell doors and finding mice. Someone casts an illusion down a hall and a headless zombie runs up and KOs Pacca - knock-down brutal fight ensues and the victorious adventurers bandage up in a prison cell while the weasels patrol around but are fooled by the illusory door. They scare the yakmen away from the battle with their illusions and their former comrades burst through the door and slaughter the yakmen and bathe in their entrails. Pacca and Milton lure the pirates into the torture chamber and release the ice ooze which freezes the lunatic pirates and threatens to freeze Milton's eye to the keyhole where he's peeking through but he makes his save and the ice ooze slithers down to the ice chambers. Pacca and Milton meet a mysterious dandy in a purple wig named Three-Face Adamson who feeds them false information and teleports away when they close the door. Pacca and Milton Measely bicker: "I told you we should have killed him," etc. Session ends. I've prepared this time for XP awards and give them a meagre sum of XP. I feel satisfied.

Session 2, Philly, the very next day ("Come on Nate, let's play again" "Well alright"):

Pacca and Milton save a sword-legged pirate named Aliu Alexi from a wardrobe. They go into a dank chamber where three doors are sealed with red paint and candles burn on tall candelabras and incantations are written on the doors and they hear the beating of a heart beyond one and they say "Nope" and go the other way.  In the arms of a pig idol they find a glass orb the size of a bowling ball with magical multi-colored snakes inside, steal it, find a window, and led by Aliu Alexi hightail it back to the boat, which is actually a white cathedral shaped like the underside of a cow on the inside, and it's operated by an invalid priestess of Belm named Morrigan von Moon, who's employing a purple-skinned mercenary captain named Vex Mondri, and they promise Pacca and Milton Measely 300 GPs to rescue the Lambent Eye of Uvraj the Vacant. Session ends. Another meagre sum of XP. "XP for gold in this campaign," I remind them.

Session 2, Oakland:

Enter Sasha as the urchin thief Nicolai. She brings wine. We create her character for what seems like days. I really want to play Dungeons and Dragons. Adam eventually rejoins as the dwarven wizard Gurdjiff Niaflim. Adam: "He has a disgusting, flaccid body, and a transparent wrap like cellophane which displays colors and patterns." Me: "Perfect." G.N. finds Nicolai hiding in a wardrobe. After chasing the yakmen away, their former comrades burst through the door ("Two muscled men covered in blood and wielding knives burst through the door") and Nicolai spends some rounds trying to bring them back to their senses with hypnotic words and a lit candle. It almost works too. They stab Stevens Ragusa with their knives and bathe in his entrails. G.N. kills them with a quarterstaff while Nicolai watches. G.N. throws the body of Stevens down the stairs to the ice chambers. Enter Billi as the "trifling" druid Cr33d at the bottom of the stairs, who looks like Lisa Loeb but is made of cotton candy. All play dissolves into jokes and pop culture references as Billi describes his character. Everyone becomes distracted and tired. G.N. says "I really just want to see this ocean world. I wish we could go outside." Session ends. A meagre sum of XP. I am saddened and want to play more.

Session 3, Oakland again:

This time I bring beer, peanut M&Ms, and kettle chips. Sasha brings home-made peppermint fudge and wine.  Zombie guards attack the corpse of Stevens Ragusa and Gurdjiff Niaflim becomes impatient and runs past them into a chamber filled with ice blocks. A zombie tries to strangle him. A zombie tries to tear off Nicolai's face. Appear appears at the top of the stairs and incinerates one with a fiery orb and G.N. destroys the other with his quarterstaff. The three of them melt gold coins out of an ice block for half an hour and scare away a pack of yakmen. They melt a potion of vomit grey ooze out of an ice block. They melt a legless woman out of an ice block. "My name is Virtue von Bask - I came to this island to woo the beautiful Olivia von Kirin Santos, but she refused my advances, etc." "Olivia von who?" say my players. "Nate, do you just spend your overnight shifts thinking up these names?" Yes I do. I need a quest quick. I flip through my fancy new copy of A Red and Pleasant Land. Roll roll. Seduce ______. "Bring me back to safety, but - um - if you seduce the Lady Olivia, and humiliate her in her nakedness, I will reward you, uh, greatly." My players are unconvinced. They carry her pick-a-back upstairs. They find the room with the heartbeat. Pumpkin shows up from a meditation meeting across town (or something) and says, "Sure I'll play, what's going on? Okay. I open the doors." Everyone recoils. Everyone stands in the next room. Pumpkin opens the doors and finds mummified yakmen, as well as (oh shit, uh, roll roll roll) a wealth of gold, a magical scroll, magical mushrooms, and (this next thing is not random) a giant beating heart in a curtained cage. G.N. identifies it as the heart of a sea titan. "Huh," they say, and kill it, and bottle the sea water that flows from it. They go into a room and hear lunatic shrieking behind a door. Pumpkin says, "I open the door." Everyone recoils. The room is filled with insane pirates. Pumpkin says, "I run past them. No wait, I torch that creepy doll on the wall, and then I run past them." So he does. The pirates are distracted. Appear grabs a kayak from the wall. They escape out the front door. Guys are impaled on stakes out there. Yakmen stand on top of a gatehouse and don't see them yet, so they climb the giant black wall that runs the length of the island and down into the ocean to a black tower out in the ocean. It's freezing cold and the clouds are real low. The slate grey waves break against the rocks. They walk along the wall to a watchtower behind the keep and climb it. They still have Virtue von Bask. They can see the whole island up here. There are hills and twisty brined trees. They can see a small hut on a small rock in the ocean. They can see the cathedral boat. G.N. says, "I liked it back inside. Let's go steal that eye." Everyone agrees. Session ends. Everyone levels up to the cusp of level three because of the huge amount of gold they found. Wowzers, hm, gold for XP is a weird beast, I say to myself.

Session 3, Philly:

My friend Jon lives in Austin and works in a governmental compound somewhere underground in a cubicle and he wants to play but he doesn't have a webcam or a mic, so we agree to try it out. We make his character the day before this time. He creates King Hu Harpagos, a mute Reptile Man with chalk and a chalkboard. I say, "Okay, you can either roll 3d6 in order down the line, or. . ." "I'll do that," he says, and does really well except for 4 INT and 7 WIS. I told Sasha that she could speak an animal language as her extra language so I tell him the same thing and he decides to speak snowfinch, which is a dialect of Passerine, spoken by swallows, sparrows, and finches. I tell him he knows one secret about the world and he quickly comes up with a good one. Jon is a real gem. He and Pacca and Milton Measely make for the shore in two rowboats with a small contingent of pirates. Vex Mondri told them he'll give them 10 GPs for each lunatic pirate they bring back alive. I'm eating home-made guacamole and tangerines and blueberries and smoked herring and Sasha's leftover wine. They march up to the gatehouse. Pacca took the feat that makes her take 3 less damage from every attack when she's wearing heavy armor. "WTF," I say. "Okay." They kill a pack of walking sharks and the savage trained eagles that the yakmen guards send at them. Fifteen yakmen pour out of the front gate wielding swords but they pepper the yakmen with flintlock fire and crossbow rounds and magical spells. King Hu fights admirably. The pirates break and run. The yakmen break and run. "This is fun," says Jameela/Pacca. They gather their pirates. They intimidate the yakmen, who indicate that they're scared of the Lady Olivia and her . . . "That's a drawing of a crawling eye," says Nick. They go into the keep and fight the lunatic pirates in the entrance hall. The lunatic pirates push down a good-guy pirate and tear out his eyes and are about to bathe in his entrails but the good guys K.O. them in time and bring them back to the ship and have an argument with the purple-skinned pirate captain, who doesn't want to deliver on his word, since they lost so many pirates in the fighting. Everyone crosses their arms and frowns. Morrigan von Moon sighs from her chaise lounge. "I must have . . . the eye." They sleep the night. Session ends and my friends get enough XP to level 2.

Virtue von Bask (No legs not pictured)

"The Lady Olivia von Kirin Santos, Leaning Upon a Tiger, Not a Car"

- - - - - - - - - - -

What's the take-away from all this? I'm not sure - always bring good snacks. Tell everyone to show up an hour before the game actually starts. Tell new players to show up an hour before that at least, or if possible do it with them separately. The 5e PHB is poorly organized and it's really laughable and I'm amazed they didn't do better. Don't give new players too many doors per room, but possibly only if they're Adam, and want to get outside. Print out good pictures to show your friends. If you're doing gold for XP, better be prepared for a fluke roll on the random treasure table to rocket your players almost all the way to level 3. Simple initiative is a lot better when you roll it at the beginning of each round - seriously, everyone winces every time I say "Roll for initiative!" and clenches when they lose and go "Yess!!" when they win. It's really great. Give yakmen bows or spells. Give the enemies a ton of HPs or a shield if you want them to last more than a moment. Stockpiling notes from one group to the next can really make a dungeon complicated, in a good way. A pretty small sandbox island with one dungeon and a handful of NPCs and a few d100 tables can last a really long time.

Forever into the sunset

So it's what . . .  four months later?

The gang took down the Overking of All the Lands.  They broke into his fortress, released the captive princess Derrida von Chasm from where she was chained beside his throne next to a pile of loot and a wedding bed, transported the loot down the cliffside onto the horses there, lured the Overking and part of his warband into the fortress, dropped the portcullis, turned the ramp that the goblins scrabbled on into mud, greased the walls so the goblins kept falling off, wrested the Seventeen-Eyed Spite Crown from Overking's head, melted his demon armor by pouring metal-to-ice potion through murder holes, pulled from his side the spear that was granting him invulnerability, and turned him to stone with the magic sword that St. Coreme granted them in return for killing the witches Frost and Thorn.

There was a moment of stunned silence and then they fled onto the waiting horses and rode into the sunset.

So that was our last game pretty much.  Turns out that running a campaign over video while trying to acclimate to a new city wasn't as fun as I thought it would be.  But it was a good ending.

I'm scheming to start a new game though.  I keep saying to friends, "Hey, so . . . do you want to play Dungeons and Dragons?"  My boyfriend Bobby says yes.  He even has dice.  "Can I be a robot?"  "Ummm... yes.  Wait, I don't know.  I mean.  Maybe not.  What kind of robot? Only if you can find a really good picture of a robot.  Maybe you should not be a robot.  Well, a robot could be good."  "Why can't I be a robot, Nate?"

Cue days of indecision.

His roommate Glen who owns a cafe in San Francisco says yes.  Bobby's bike mechanic Angus plays Magic the Gathering so I bet he would play Dungeons and Dragons.  My co-worker Ocean says that she hates fantasy and will never play Dungeons and Dragons.  My co-worker Chris says yes, and that the only other time he played a roleplaying game it was Shadowrun, and he made a cloak and wore it.  My roommate Adam says maybe.  I said to Bobby today, "The problem is - what room do we play it in?"  "What are you talking about Nate?"  "We need a large table."  "Can you play without a large table?"  "It's not really that fun.  You might better spend your time doing something else if you don't have a large table."  I looked at his small kitchen table and considered.  "Yours is small."  "Oh but Nate," says he, "it can extend to double its size."  "Ahhh..."

I do not even know what kind of world the campaign would be.  How will I find time to write as well as work as well as work out as well as go to shows in Oakland as well as play Dungeons and Dragons?  I'm very bad at scheduling, when I started playing in Philadelphia I made Shayne do all the scheduling and coordinating.  But then I remember that dream I had with the beautiful medusa in the small room, and the idea of simple initiative but you re-roll initiative every round, and imagine my friends pretending to be knights and witches, and see all these new ideas on the blogs, and I really want to play Dungeons and Dragons.

Meanwhile the gang keeps on riding those horses southward with the treasure and the princess.  Farewell Dirtface and Sad Ed and Jaime von Klaw and Grim and Frederick and the rest.  May we meet again in another reality.

What I've Been Up To

Playing my online game every week or two or three.  It was a month between our previous session and last week's session.  The guys are involved in an assassination attempt on "The Overking of All the Lands," a purple orc with a broken neck and a spear who his side, who's stolen the 17-Eyed Spite Crown of Scorn the Androgyne from the Princess Derrida von Chasm, and taken her as his consort.  Jaime von Klaw (played by Michael Tom), a rich wizard from Belmric and an atheist, got drunk in Olomoc several months ago and was waylaid by thugs, and in his drunken stupor appealed to the God/dess Scorn for protection.  The thugs were turned to stone and he was laden with a geas to retrieve the 17-Eyed Spite Crown and return it to a rightful priest of priestess of Scorn.  Every day he doesn't seek the crown he loses one point from a random stat.

Okay.  So what do I need to make this happen?

I need a villain.  I need a base.  I need a list of all his minions.  I need to know what they're doing and when they do it.  I need a countryside for them to waylay.  I need a country between the players (who were in Olomoc) and the destination (somewhere in the Goblin Wastes).  I need the Goblin Wastes.  So I wrote all of this.

In addition to the standard red goblins who cast magic missile at the person who slays them and yellow goblins who cast confusion on anyone who touches them, we have green goblins as a random wizard, blue goblins who start tiny and grow a size every time they're hit, black goblins who are high level fighters and have special weapons and armor, and white goblins who can cast a single high level spell and are stretched across the shields of the black goblins.

Plus I can use this for the rest of the Overking's minions.  And this for his fortress (more or less).  And I can say that the original builders of the fortress were obsessed with (roll, roll) camels.  And that the warband of the Overking of All the Lands worships (roll, roll) Abjecta, Queen of Maggots.  So they're roaming the countryside, stealing people, planting the maggots of carrion crawlers in their flesh, and cultivating them in preposterous egg-shaped cages on long thin legs.

I got to use this scene.  Frederick Longtooth, a werewolf monk of Fenrath, decided to climb up the cage and cut her throat, dodged the torrent of carrion crawlers maggots that flooded the cage area, and avoided taking I'm pretty sure any damage as his friends doused the swarm with fire.

Afterwards Sad Ed goes "Nate, I'm killing all of the prisoners, and burning their corpses."  "Okay Thomson.  A column of greasy foul-smelling smoke winds upwards over the fortress."

Before this they had a long sneak and kill in the fortress that ended with a running battle with the forces left behind to guard the castle while the Overking and most of the warband were off gathering people for the maggot making process.  They killed so many goblins.  They killed the dark elf cleric Veshtoroc von Toxin.  They set some goat men on fire and sent them running into the shanty-town goblin camp, which caught on fire.  When the Great Grub (size H carrion crawler, HD 8) plugged into their tower and climbed the stairs and started waving its bazillion paralyzing tentacles at them, they threw a potion of turn-to-stone into its mouth and turned it to stone.  When the remaining goblins and tiny jackal men and guys with mouths on their hands and wargs barricaded themselves in the throneroom, Sad Ed drank a potion of eat metal and bit a hole in the door and uncorked a bottle of hallucinatory green smoke and smoked out the goblins and they ran in and murdered everybody.

And there chained to the throne in a chainmail bikini was Derrida von Chasm, lost princess of the Moriad, and a formidable priestess of Scorn.  "Untie this collar at my throat!  For it makes me invisible to the eyes of my God, and unable to cast their magic."

"Right away!" sez they.

"Thanks," sez the princess.  "I was on quest to the Canyons of Pain and Misfortune when I was waylaid by this orc. I would have slain him in an instant, except the weapons of my companions could not wound him, and my spells could not harm him.  Slay him!  I will aid thee."

And now they have a high level priestess on their side, just as the returning warband of the Overking thunders on the horizon, and my players are sending emails back and forth going "Fuck, what do we do? what do we have? how are we going to do this?"  They're very smart.  I'll have to think up something good for Wednesday.

Orostranthy, lost cities, and the shattered labyrinths of Illith Varn

Not so long ago the Goblin Wastes were called Orostranthy, a ragged kingdom of dwarfs and people, which was beset by the dead minions of Orcus to the northeast and the living minions of Urizen to the south. The Silk Wall was erected about eight hundred years ago to block the advances of Urizen's goblins - they spilled from his feathered head when he was slain by Queen Marybelle soon after the beginning of time - but Havith Orr the Goblin City was moved north on the back of a four-headed turtle the size of a mountain. So the Silk Wall instead blocked the remaining southern dwarfs in with the remnants of the demons, the Chaos beastmen, and the demon worshippers which alternately plague and settle the land around Urizen's eternally rotting corpse.

Now the Silk Wall was constructed by an alliance of the people of Orostranthy and the dwarfs, who ruled from their mountain fortress, "The Augur of the Sun." The beastman slaves of the dwarfs and the rough peasantry of Orostranthy pulled the stone from a ruined city of unparalleled beauty which sprawled for nearly a hundred miles between The Augur of the Sun and Orostranthy's capital city, Tcorsk.  When the stones were removed, a twisted, changing landscape remained. The goblins call this land beautiful, and dwell in it.  The dwarfs call it ugly, and live in siege fortresses to block their sight of it. They construct tunnels beneath this land, and exile their traitors into it. People fear this land. Where they could not scavenge all of the stone, districts of the vast city remain, but none reside there except puddings, animals, and beastmen. People who live long in those districts begin to speak old poetry, see ghosts, walk backwards in their sleep, and eat each other.

After the wall was built and Orcus was slain and buried in his Dungeon of Graves, a long decadent peace came upon Orostranthy, until the Black Drake Azhardhul came from the West and established a fortress in the foothills of the Black Mountains, and waged war upon Tcorsk and the monarchy there.  His slaves were chained and branded and made to worship him.  It is said Azhardhul had one hundred legs and four wings and was three miles long, and that the touch of his violet breath turned the living to ash.  Warriors of Orostranthy came to slay him but he was unwounded by their weapons, unturned by their magic.  The maiden Coreme led a heretical cult against his rule, and was flayed and crucified for her sin.  But as she died she prayed to her own holy name, and the dragon turned to black stone.  The freed slaves of Azhardhul made a city from the dragon's body and lived in it, but were raided by northern barbarians, and not a stone remains except for the Shrine to Saint Coreme, still Holy to the people of Orostranthy, who remember but dimly the rule of the Black Drake.

Orostranthy declined. The wizard Illith Varn led an army against Tcorsk, but was driven back into the strange dungeons beneath the Canyons of Pain and Misfortune, in the changing lands south of the Silk Wall, and beheaded by assassins in his sanctum. Wars with the goblins of Havith Orr, internecine warfare, beastman warbands, and demonic incursion led to the loss of previously strong trade with Loth Armanea and the blue elves of the Cobalt Isles; with the white elves of Undying Velenheim; and with Belmric. The country outside Tcorsk became unsafe, and over generations Tcorsk itself dissipated, while the succession of monarchs sought new ways of power: worship of the Angel of Colors, conjuring of airey spirits, consort with the sorcerers of the Black School, and eventual subservience to the skilled dwarfs at the Augur of the Sun. When the dwarfs migrated south to the black jungles of Abazidun to follow the worship of their new diamond god, Orostranthy's isolation became complete.

The highways that cross the kingdom are in disrepair. The labyrinth surrounding Havith Orr has extended far across the landscape, and Havith Orr creeps northward by miles each year. The Silk Wall is unguarded and broken in many places, and kept by monsters in many others. The people of Tcorsk are gone, having sought refuge in other cities - Olomoc, Beldr Tuum, Loth Armanea, the Seat of Worms, Velenheim, and even Belmric and the western cities. Only the palace Solemn Cry remains, where King Roderick sits in his chambers, gazing into the fragment of glacial ice brought to him from the Kraal, and Queen Ang is vanished. No one even remembers how long she's been gone.

And now new rumors issue from the Canyons of Pain and Misfortune: a deep fog billows from the dungeons there, and lights can be seen in the windows of the mesas at night. The Skoros Orb has been found again, in the tunnels far below, where the armies of Illith Varn were driven and slaughtered, but none have recovered it. The flying fortress of the Sky Witch has anchored in the air over the Canyons, and moves not as the weeks pass. And explorers who enter the shattered labyrinths beneath the canyons bring to the surface tales of a golden dragon, a river of slime, the locked gates of a strange city, worshippers of a pantheon of unknown gods, and the lost riches of Illith Varn's army . . .

Thomson shares his ideas for his bard "Sad Ed" with myself and the group

"nate,

the tintinnabulation chamber is an array of special plates that, when set up and properly configured, allows ed to visit a variety of distortions on the beings and material under the influence of the enclosed acoustic environment through special and calculated musical interventions.

here's how it works.

ed surveys his surroundings in order to figure out how to fit the tintinnabulatory chamber into the local environment. he does this by sitting at the intended focal point of the chamber and meditates while humming a hypnotic, tuneless, modulating music -- a mapping tone that returns to his sensitive ears and sonically-sensitive brain a sort of "musical topology" of the environment. the bigger and more complicated the volume, the longer and more difficult the mapping process. a regular, rectangular prism of a room is relatively easy to map. a forest or a convoluted cavern is harder. a flat, airless plain is simple. a windy mountain peak is harder. the harder the mapping, the longer it takes, and the greater the chance that he'll make a crucial error that could compromise -- in perhaps volatile ways -- the magic he lets loose into the chamber after its construction is complete.

after mapping the site, ed uses chalk, grease pencil, paint -- any old marking substance -- to trace out the chamber's schematic. these schematics look like a series of nodes and lines connecting them to each other. the nodes indicate locations where the tintinnabulation tiles should be installed. the connections indicate the relationships they should have -- the lines describing the flow of acoustic information inside the chamber.

next, he installs the tiles. monkey b goode can be trained to help, and the other members of the party can help, too. monkey b goode has a musical ear, too (remember, he has a little guitar? that's how we met, i challenged him to a dual!), so he can set these things up pretty well on his own, and he'll get better. other party members can help, too, by following ed's and goode's directions. ed of course has to do the fine tuning at the end, to make sure the placement is perfect. the tiles are installed using adhesives; nails; magic; suction cups; solvents that join them seamlessly to their host surfaces -- however they need to be, depending on the nature of the installation site. each tile is joined to adjacent tiles with special sonically conductive wire that helps them to maintain rigid relative positions and blend their sounds together.

the tintinnabulation chamber is, essentially, a big, spherical perimeter that prevents all sound generated inside the zone from escaping, and keeps all sound generated outside the zone out. you see, each of its component tiles functions like a one-way acoustic gate, or a kind of cell membrane. each tile vibrates and, depending on the frequency, it lets different sounds in and keeps the rest out. ed controls their vibrations by playing a special song, a song unique to each chamber. the song is the audible counterpart of its chamber -- the "ghost" to the chamber's flesh. he can read each of his chambers like music and improvise different themes for the chamber on his guitar.

what can the tintinnabulation chamber do?

let's say an enemy walks in. by playing an aggressive theme, ed could inflict sonic damage on the enemy from all sides. since sound is pressure waves, a massive attack could simply crush the enemy. or he could heat the enemy up, catch him on fire by playing contrapuntal music that drags the air against itself until it catches. or he could depress, enrage, cheer up, or otherwise emotionally manipulate the enemy. he could cause the enemy to burst or fade away by playing resonant musical frequencies that destabilize the enemy or move the enemy out of phase with natural reality.

the chamber is also a perfectly soundproof space. no one can hear you scream from the outside -- or maybe, if you were screaming inside, maybe even you couldn't hear it. the inside is a soundless void. you hear the rushing of blood in your head, and it drives you mad with fright.

friendlies could also camp inside a similarly soundproof chamber, secure in the knowledge that their voices wouldn't carry into unfriendly territory.

by adjusting the echoes and delays of the chamber, ed can create misleading, disorienting, unbalancing false perceptions about the size, shape, and orientation of the enclosed space, too. it's hard to keep your balance in a sonic hall of mirrors! it fucks up anything that needs an inner ear to stay upright! and maybe you'll lose your lunch, too.

ed can also interpolate roars, whistles, howls, screams, sobs, whispers, coughs, caws, hisses, and any other thinkable sound into the chamber. this could be a good way to hound a murderer with the voices of his victims, or trick an enemy into revealing secrets at what seems to be the request of a friend. or maybe ed just drives a wolfmount insane with high-pitched dog whistles, causing it to turn on its rider! or, by sending out a signal into the night sky, ed could fill the chamber with bloodsucking vampire bats, swarms of stinging insects, or hooting monkeys -- anything attracted to his phony mating calls.

operating on a higher level, ed could use particularly insidious fugues to "hack" the language center's of a being's brain, causing him to spill secrets and think aloud. by playing at certain subsonic frequencies, ed could even induce motion in the bodies of his foes, forcibly casting those in the chamber into a puppet show of his own design. a sort of mind control...

finally, at its most arcane extremities of operation, the chamber, in conjunction with an inspired performance the likes of which ed is barely ever capable, can even transform sounds into stable, standing waves, making the audible into physical matter. the chamber becomes a 3-D printer, a universal constructor, a holodeck that makes use of hard sound instead of hard light. needless to say, the artifacts created within cannot be transported out, but, in their native land, they're real enough. the entire area could become an iron maiden or a block of stone. it could become filled with water. or maybe it just gets full of furniture or simulated people, or illusory, holographic gold. it becomes a space of illusion -- sometimes even deadly illusion.

and there are other uses, too, but i think you get the gist. 

obviously, this is a powerful machine that requires a whole set of skills and a degree of musical prowess that ed has not fully attained. he'll need to learn this sonic mapping meditation humming; the design and installation of the chamber's architecture; and the many complex songs and techniques by which he can unlock its wild variety of powers. he'll need a good ear, a good eye, a good mind. he'll need to study music under bards and casters even greater than he, maybe even find a monastery of musical monks to initiate him into their brotherhood. and he'll need to find gifted magical engineers who can help him build and test the actual tiles and conductive wiring that connects them, too. 

but doesn't this idea sound cool? i think it sounds cool. i'd love to hash out the game mechanics and limits of this idea with you sometime.

yours,

thomson"