Russ Hillborn (Old Art XXI)

Russ Hillborn is a cat person character I created long ago. He's sort of a Gandalf figure who appeared in a short comic called Winter.

Let the Dead Stay Buried Please V

Jer Arr, a concept from like... 2003?

Furry Pirates: A Terrible Tale of Table Tyranny

Tables are part of RPG DNA. There were tables in Dungeons & Dragons and there are tables in nearly every RPG since. Nearly, not all.

This is because tables are the way we have decided to present data that changes per given criteria. So if you tell me that a warrior hits on a 7 or better I don't really need a table for that. But if the warrior's to-hit of 7 becomes 6, 5, 4, etc., depending on their level of expertise... now I might benefit from table.

Some games' core mechanics are table-based. Certainly D&D's mechanics employed several tables such as the classic to-hit vs. AC, or the cleric's turning table, or the saving throw matrices ("matrix" is another word for table, albeit with a wider range of application which we do not give a shit about here).

Here's a screenshot of attack tables from the game Furry Pirates, which I own for some reason.

You see how that one works? Simply ascertain your ability in attacking, cross reference it against your target's skill level in defending, and you'll find your base chance of hitting. Then I guess you make your roll. If you happen to be defending, you'll need to do that same kind of exercise but on a different table. Easy-peasy. This method probably flows like warm butter over a hot skillet during play. Right?

My interactions with players at public games leads me to suspect that this would not go over very well with modern groups. To be fair, it probably didn't go over well when it came out. How many people out there have played this game ever? More than once?

I don't want to trash Furry Pirates, here. It is certainly not the only game to have a lot of tables*. Tables can be great and are part of RPGs forever. But table mechanics tend to be more bothersome. People love to roll on a table for a special event, such as a critical strike or "you found something cool". But to have to constantly reference large, complex tables for repetitive actions? No way. I doubt anybody enjoys that.

And I know that I often bitch about people who seem to be incapable of even engaging with any game's mechanics. "I just want to tell my stories, not read rules." (Then try not playing games!) But there is a point at which the game system is asking a bit too much. And to be completely fair I have never played this game nor do I know all its rules. So I could be wrong about it. But my gut tells me that attack matrix is clunky as fuck at the gaming table.

*I own a couple of the Rolemaster books and last time I flipped through one I was greatly impressed by how all of it was tables. All of it.

So now that I've trashed Furry Pirates for having a very ridiculous combat mechanic, let me do it a solid and sing some praises. This game has a lot of cool pirate shit in it. It's explicitly set in the real world (The New World, c. 1700) and is loaded with stuff about ships, sailing, piracy, voodoo and magic, actual historical figures like William Teach (Blackbeard) and Captain Kidd, and a load of awesome resources you can use for this and really any pirate game. It's like the author was fascinated by the subject and crammed all their knowledge and ideas about it into a game with talking animals as characters. Which, honestly, sounds like a lot of fucking fun to me.

Art by Terrie Smith

Let the Dead Stay Buried III

Arzra

Back in the early 2000s I was doing more comics. I had this comic going for a few months (doing 1 page a week) that was about a gender-shifting catperson named Arzra (spelled backwards: Arzra). I really fell in love with this character. The whole gender-shifter concept, for me, was a direct inspiration from Tanith Lee's Death's Master. Lee's Flat Earth books are foundational to my inner fantasy worldview. I place them squarely in the sword-and-sorcery category alongside Robert E. Howard's Conan.

Anyway, Arzra was a gender-shifting catperson version of Conan. I wrote the character as a wanderer, getting into adventures, with a strong sense of savage honor. At this time in my life I was a pretty rabid individualist in my philosophy. I would have called myself "libertarian" at the time, though the term for me had a different meaning than what we think of today (I always picture cowboy hat-wearing rednecks with guns screaming about free speech today). For me, this was about opposing authoritarian moral police.

Arzra was meant to be a vehicle for me to tell exciting fantasy stories that could be sexy and philosophical at the same time. I have several scripts lying around and they generally involve the character wandering into a weird place and encountering a weird entity, usually with some kind of dialog exchanged that cuts to the bone of how I felt about religion and morality. Arzra wasn't inclined to take a knee before authority and he had no interest in being responsible for anyone other than himself. She was a barbarian, after all, albeit with a sharp mind. She could slice you open as easily with her words as with her sword.

The art to the left was part of the comic, which was done with brush markers, colored pencils, and Prismacolor markers on bristol. I believe the pages were something like 14x14 inches. It was a lot of fun to do, but the amount of labor that went into each page was a bit much for me to sustain over time. And these were totally rated R pages with lots of nudity, making it a bit awkward to share later on Facebook and the like.

I did a bunch of drawings of this character for the period of a year or so and I really hoped I could turn it into a "regular" comic book series. Alas, doing anything "regular" just doesn't seem to be in my DNA. The only reason Black Pudding has persisted (yes I'm still working on #6!) is because it has very few constraints. I allow myself to wander and do whatever I like, within the domain of old school D&D style gaming. If I tried to make each issue themed or have an ongoing comic in it I'd probably flounder and sputter out. Much love to creators who can crank out issue after issue of comic book series over time. Salute!

Lace Featherdawn and the Domain of the Kitty Cats

Back in the mid-2000s I drew a lot of cartoon catgirl art. I was, for a time, really into that aesthetic. I wasn't a furry, in the strict sense. I never identified with the label and I just didn't have much common ground with that community beyond a great love for anthropomorphic cartoon animals. It wasn't a lifestyle or identity for me. I just appreciated the aesthetic of what I still call "funny animals" and "cartoon animals". And I still do, very much.

Drawings like this one are little gems in my catalog. This figure looks really nice, I think. She's sexy and soft and strong and cool. But of course when you mix funny animals with pin-up sex appeal you are treading on the kinky turf of the furry fandom whether you accept it or not. I never fully accepted it.

She's not bad, she's just, y'know, drawn that way.

I guess it's because this is, for me, just another pin-up piece. It's actually part of a broader project at the time to create a fantasy world peopled by these animal-type characters that weren't straight-up reflections of any particular animal. Lace Featherdawn isn't a cat. She's a catgirl, for sure, but not a cat. She's a fantasy character that is part of a fantasy species.

I used to doodle in the margins a lot.

Of course I was probably resistant to the furry label because of all the heavy heavy baggage it comes with. Furries get a lot of shit. They are unfairly maligned by the broader public because at a casual glance it looks creepy and fucked up to be drawing sexy animals doing it (the furry fandom is pretty rife with porn, y'know). I didn't want to be put in that category and since I didn't really identify with the label I didn't feel any need to subject myself to such torture. I wanted to draw sexy cartoon pin-ups and so that's what I did.

Later when I created Rabbits & Rangers I intentionally avoided ever using the furry label. R&R is not a furry game book, it's a funny animals game book. It's Bugs Bunny and Captain Carrot and Usagi Yojimbo in a dungeon. Full stop. But since funny animals are included as part of the furry aesthetic, then if you are a furry R&R is going to be in your wheelhouse even if I don't consider it to be a "furry fandom book".

There's probably a Venn diagram showing some overlap between old grogs like me who read Usagi Yojimbo and young whipper-snappers who identify as field mice. But the similarities, for me at least, are only skin-deep and the divide between me and the field mice person is substantial. Much love to you, mouse. Be your own self and fuck the haters.

All of this reminds me how very interesting the topic is. Like... what is it about animal characters that is so appealing? When I wrote R&R I was absolutely engrossed in making each animal type distinct and hopefully fun to play. Each type was like a mask. And therein, I think, lies the appeal. Cartoon animals are masks. They are stand-ins for ourselves, with the animal bits being character traits we fantasize about - not at all unlike superhero powers. Where's the bright line between a guy who can fly and shoot eye lasers vs. a guy who is a walking, talking alligator? Both are humans at the base (we couldn't identify with them otherwise) and have fantastic augmentations (flying, chomping!).

Maybe there's some book out there that dives into this idea? I dunno.

The Original Zyn Dweomer

From 2008, this little race graphic is a visual note about the five races of my setting Land of Hof, which I briefly changed to Zyn Dweomer for a month before deciding ZD was gonna be all anthropomorphic animals.

Norg are horned giants and they actually have bluish skin.
Oribii are short cartoon people. You can see them in Black Pudding #5.
Mongra are animal people.
Grimmers are like goblins and orks and shit.
Arcazians are elfs. I actually drop some Arcazia on you in Black Pudding #4 on the elf page of the OSR Playbook.

My older ideas seep into my newer ideas, demanding that I use the most prominent elements of them somewhere so they don't fade away and die.

Here's another version.

Armorhawk

For the upcoming Troika! setting, here is background 22...

Armorhawk

Back on the Hawkmoon there is a battle cry: Beak and steel, talons and will! Where there is atmosphere, you soar on feathered wings. Where there is naught, the jetpack will do. The Shrew Parliament are out to kill you and you're out to kill them.

Gear:
-Featherlite armor
-Blaster
-Arm canon (dmg as fusil)
-Jetpack
-Dried mice snacks

Skills:
2 Talons & Beak (dmg as small beast)
3 Fly
2 Pistol
1 Canon
2 Keen Vision 

Special: 
Fly twice as fast and twice as far by doffing armor (takes 1 minute; 5 minutes to don).

Bad Bunny Landing

Here's a re-colored version of an old drawing. I like this much better. More atmo!

The Questing Beast RPG Revisited

Ron Edwards of Adept Press recently played my old game The Questing Beast at IndieCON and made this video talking about it.

The main thrust of the video is that Ron was concerned about the mechanical difference between the games. Primarily, that The Pool gives players a choice whether to take narrative control where TQB doesn't offer that choice. I designed TQB to be a little more "controlled" than The Pool in the sense that I wanted it to feel complete as a system. I wanted everything to be very clear and well structured. The Pool has clarity as well, but is far more open-ended as to how things can emerge from play. At least in a sense, that is.

Anyway, it's been a very long time since I thought about these games but I'm happy that they still get some traction here-and-there.

You can get The Pool and The Questing Beast for free.

Hold Critter

The classic Hold Person spell becomes Hold Critter in a world of talking animals.

Droono Duckshar

In one of the last Rabbits & Rangers games I ran, the PCs went up against Count Drake-Yulla in his forbidding haunted castle. They never encountered his arch-rival, Droono Duckshar the Fowl Wizard!

This was a random thing I drew last night. I am in the midst of a bit of creative blockage so anything I manage to put down on paper (digitally or otherwise) is a boost to my confidence.

This was interesting because the entire time I doodled it I was pondering the direction of the game. As it stands, R&R is a perfectly fine Labyrinth Lord supplement. You can see that I referenced several things from the book on this sheet. But the ultimate question I've been asking since the book came out is what is R&R going to be in the future? Is it a LL supplement or a game of its own? If a game of its own, then I have no reason to stick with pure D&D rules. I've posted many times about this topic. I have written lots of versions of the game that are not D&D-based. But something keeps me tethered to the old rules. It's as if R&R was always meant to be funny animals in dungeons... so why would I use alternate rules? I have no high-and-lofty theme in mind beyond funny animals with swords. I could write this as a standalone game with an original rule set, going the way of Ironclaw or The World Tree. And that would be fine, except I feel like anyone playing it will simply say "this is just D&D with different rules".

And yet there are plenty of people who will look at the current R&R and say "this is just more D&D stuff... with goofy talking frogs."

You can't please 'em all.

When I think about it and let my hair down, this whole thing can be summed up in a simple equation:

Looney Tunes + Conan + D&D = Rabbits & Rangers

So you'll know what to expect when I know what to expect.

R&R: Ready and Willing

Here's a new Rabbits & Rangers drawing for the upcoming project. This was based on a sketch that  had been sitting around for at least 3 years, maybe more. I had actually started inking it over a year ago and finally sat down and knocked it out this morning. Turned out pretty cool, I think.

I don't like predicting what I'll do in the future because I'm constantly changing my mind and in the end what I do is what I end up doing. Hell, that's what Black Pudding is... just the stuff I do, not the stuff I planned to do. There's a difference. If I did all the stuff I planned to do I'd be the most prolific creator in history.

This drawing made me think about flying rules, which I cover fairly well in the current book. I am going to re-write that section to make it simpler, less fiddly. But the point is simple. A bird character can't fly and carry their normal amount of equipment. The bird in this drawing cannot fly without doffing their cloak, at least. I say in the book that you can hold one small item and still fly. So the staff would be out too. But I'm considering some ways in which a flying caster could still fly with a staff, as part of the fabric of the setting. Like a spell or special skill they learn. I'm not sure yet.

Hoofnar the Barbullian!

The age of beasts, witches, and sorcerers! A time red in tooth and claw! Witness now, o traveler, these tales of daring deeds and hirsute heroics. Truly these are the days of furious four-fingered adventure!

Hoofnar is a comic character I've been thinking about for a few years. Probably posted about him before. I did this cover mock up in a moment of inspiration. Maybe this might lead to an actual comic book? I do love my funny animal comics.

NOTE: I actually have no memory of how I ended up with two distinct comic book character ideas that are reddish-skinned, horned adventurers. Zarp and Hoofnar are vastly different in tone, but have certain shared traits. In fact, all my Hoofnar art prior to this cover shows him with very red skin and I labelled him a "red bull". I moved to a brown skin here to distinguish him a little bit more from the skinny little devil character.

Rabbits & Rangers in PDF and Print

Bears? Tigers? Stoats? Fossas?

Yes to all.

Rabbits & Rangers, a Labyrinth Lord supplement, is now available in PDF and print. If you like funny animals and fantasy then I got you covered.

B/X Bode: The Lizz Character Class

©I'm firing up a new B/X D&D campaign and I decided all the classes needed to be unique. No standard races or classes allowed. One of the classes the dripped out of my brain late last night was this. If you know da Bode, then this will make sense.

PDF is here.

LIZZ

You are a righteous one. You da boss.

RESTRICTIONS

Your Prime Requisite is spunk, but that don’t matter. You got all the juice. You fight like a Thief. You can use little bitty weapons like daggers, short swords, and little bows. You can wear armor what was made or modified to fit ya, but you ain’t no good at it and when you gets hit with a 20 or you rolls a 1 it falls off. You gots a 3 in 6 shot at makin’ any magic doohickie do its thing but if ya rolls a 6 something real bad gonna go down.

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Lizard Luck: Sometimes da crazy universe has a heart an’ smiles luck down on ya like sweet rain. If things go south, you can petition the big ole ‘verse howevers ya like and if ya makes yer savin’ throw vs. spells somethin’ real good gonna go down. ‘Course… if ya was ta fail dat save real bad… well, you might get tossed about like a piece of cabbage.

Honey Magnet: You is not only da boss o’ adventure, you is da boss o’ the ladies. When you see a dew eyed sweetmeat of a mountain cantelope (a female, or whatever), you gotta save vs. spells or be compelled ta woo her wit witty words and witticism stuff. Roll a d20. If you happen ta gets a 20 she’s all into ya like a charm person done happened. Otherwise, who knows?

Naturally, this is a fan-fic post and the art and original characters are (c) copyright Bode.

B/X Bode: The Lizz Character Class

©I'm firing up a new B/X D&D campaign and I decided all the classes needed to be unique. No standard races or classes allowed. One of the classes the dripped out of my brain late last night was this. If you know da Bode, then this will make sense.

PDF is here.

LIZZ

You are a righteous one. You da boss.

RESTRICTIONS

Your Prime Requisite is spunk, but that don’t matter. You got all the juice. You fight like a Thief. You can use little bitty weapons like daggers, short swords, and little bows. You can wear armor what was made or modified to fit ya, but you ain’t no good at it and when you gets hit with a 20 or you rolls a 1 it falls off. You gots a 3 in 6 shot at makin’ any magic doohickie do its thing but if ya rolls a 6 something real bad gonna go down.

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Lizard Luck: Sometimes da crazy universe has a heart an’ smiles luck down on ya like sweet rain. If things go south, you can petition the big ole ‘verse howevers ya like and if ya makes yer savin’ throw vs. spells somethin’ real good gonna go down. ‘Course… if ya was ta fail dat save real bad… well, you might get tossed about like a piece of cabbage.

Honey Magnet: You is not only da boss o’ adventure, you is da boss o’ the ladies. When you see a dew eyed sweetmeat of a mountain cantelope (a female, or whatever), you gotta save vs. spells or be compelled ta woo her wit witty words and witticism stuff. Roll a d20. If you happen ta gets a 20 she’s all into ya like a charm person done happened. Otherwise, who knows?

Naturally, this is a fan-fic post and the art and original characters are (c) copyright Bode.

Rabbits & Rangers: Sheep on the Borderland

My Monday group finished the first playtest adventure for Rabbits & Rangers, a Labyrinth Lord based guide to running cartoon animal campaigns. I cobbled the adventure together without writing much down. I decided to riff on B2: Keep on the Borderlands and I called it “Sheep on the Borderland” (naturally).

The gist was this. A band of adventurers called the Sheeple (all Sheep) went missing after making a journey to an ancient ruined keep northwest of the great city of Zyn Dweomer. The sister of the Sheeple’s leader enlisted the PCs to help her find her lost brother. Her name was Bree Arkus.

I took the map of the Keep and drew a ruined sketch of it. I put a huge rift in the earth next to the Keep, related to the dark magics that were at work in the area.

The PCs explored the surface of the ruin, where nearly all the walls and buildings were reduced to rubble. They fought hammerhands, who were responsible for most of the smashing of walls. It’s kinda like cats clawing… they gotta smash stuff.

Anyway, the culmination of the adventure was an encounter in the only remaining intact structure… the Chapel. So here’s a sketch of the Chapel layout.

There were stinky diseased goblins, Sheep, Monkeys, giant spiders, giant snakes, slithering snake people, and a half bull half sheep demon. It was fun. I learned a great deal about the tension between cartoon style mechanics and straight Labyrinth Lord play.

Next playtest begins Monday… In the Castle of Count Drake-Yulla! I hope to write this one up as a module to supplement the book.

The text for Rabbits & Rangers is finished. Right now I’m focused on playtesting and doing art for the book. I do not have a release date yet. It will depend on when I get the drawings done.

Rabbits & Rangers Update

Rabbits & Rangers is a game supplement for use with Labyrinth Lord. The book will give you the necessary rules to play cartoon animals in fantasy settings. It includes 50 animal races, each with unique perks and drawbacks, and it includes a small selection of optional rules that help promote the “cartoon” side of the idea.

The text is written and edited and playtesting has been going on for many weeks. I’m working on art and I hope to have the whole thing put together in a few months.As I get closer to finishing I’ll narrow that down to a more specific date.

I plan to follow the book up with further animal races and perhaps some adventure modules. We’ll see how that goes. I also want to invite others to publish materials compatible with R&R, once the book is “in the wild”.

I started thinking about this game years ago and I have written several versions of it using original systems, which I may or may not publish in the future. But this version is purely OSR and I wanted it to be firmly grounded in Labyrinth Lord rules. I tried not to add any extra baggage, though as a necessity there are a couple of rules that should be observed in order to get the flavor across.

For example, size really matters. So I include in the game a very simple way to deal with the mouse who fights the elephant.

I also include a “luck point” system inspired by the old Conan adventures published in the 1980s. This is the kind of system I use in all my OSR games and I felt it would be a good fit here too.

Animal PCs have a “nature” that reflects a strong emotion or other characteristic. This is a way to convey behavior similar to cartoon characters who have an exaggerated personality or physical schtick, such as being grumpy or greedy.

For the truly cartoony campaign, there is a whimsy rule. This can be used if you want those pianos falling from the sky or PCs painting doors on the sides of walls and walking through them.

All of these are optional. You can use all of them or none. The list of animal races, which is the meat of the book, can be utilized in any OSR game without the need for nature or whimsy. My goal was to make this book usable.

Here's an example animal from the game. The art is not final.

Wolf

Medium mammal

AC Mod: no adjustment

HD/hp: d6 min

Move: 120' (40')

Abilities: +1 to any two ability scores

Tooth and Claw: 1d6 bite; 1d4 claw

Night Vision: 30’

From the scruff of your neck to the pads of your feet, you are the romantic subject of every Bard expressing her inner animal nature. Rightly or wrongly, you are seen as the original wild animal who can’t be tamed by the fineries of civilization.

Howler: You can issue a haunting howl from a distance, causing your enemies a -1 to hit for their first attacks against you and your allies. You shake their nerves!

Loyalty: You gain +4 to saving throws against magic or other effects that would cause you to betray your friends and allies. When acting in direct defense of an ally you gain +1 to hit and damage and +1 to saving throws for 1d3 rounds.

Pack: When coordinating attacks with allies you gain +1 to hit for 1d6 rounds. You must actively engage in coordinated attacks to gain this advantage, requiring at least 1 turn of planning prior to the battle.

DCC Class: Chainmail Chicken

I'm always thinking about how to put funny animals into RPGs in a way that feels right for me. So here's a pass at doing a DCC class based on the ubiquitous chainmail chicken...

Get the PDF here...

CHAINMAIL CHICKEN

You are no mere seed-pecker, no simple egg-layer. You were born under a brighter star and will submit before no man or rooster. With a hefty blade in your feathered hand you hack, slash, and cluck your way to a heroic destiny.

Hit Points: You gain 1d10 hit points per level.

Weapon Training: You can use any weapon that is common to your place of origin. Upon using a new weapon for the first time you lose 2 die steps on your attack, but this penalty vanishes immediately.

Alignment: You are a free spirit, often battling against an oppressive hierarchy. You lean toward neutrality or chaos but may also be lawful.

Warrior Tricks: As a clever fighter you share the warrior’s Mighty Deed Die and can perform awesome Deeds. You use the warrior’s level advancement table.

Initiative: You add your level +1 to initiative rolls. You are perhaps a little too keyed up.

Aura of Awesome: Something about a chainmail chicken fascinates her enemies. When you issue a challenge to your enemies before striking a blow they must all pass a Will save or be temporarily impressed, suffering a -1d3 to all attacks against you until the save is made or until you take a blow or miss an attack. The DC for this save is your Luck score + Personality modifier + half your level, rounded down.

Flogger: In combat you sometimes go a bit nuts, launching into a wild flurry of attacks that, while awkward and clumsy, can be quite devastating. When you have lost half or more of your hit points in a single fight you can flog. If you do not wish to flog you must pass a Will save vs. a DC equal to the last successful attack roll against you. Only then can you quell the furious anger swelling in your bosom.

Level	Title
1	Squawker
2	Pecker
3	Seed Slayer
4	Flogger
5	Feathered Champion

A flogging attack must be in melee. During a flogging, you make a number of attacks against any enemies within a 10’ radius equal to your Luck + level. These attacks cannot be Deeds and you do not gain the benefit of a Deed Die modifier, though your Luck modifier must be added to the roll. Each time you miss a flogging attack your Action Die is reduced a die step. These quick, shallow, unfocused attacks deal only half damage. Crits count only as automatic hits but gain no other benefits. A flogging attack lasts one round. Your AC and next attack roll are reduced by 1d3 for one round following such a frenzy of blows.

Feathered Faller: You can’t fly but you do have feathery wings. For every 10’ you fall up to 100’ you may make a DC 10 Ref save to avoid all damage, applying the appropriate check penalty based on armor worn. If you are carrying an excessive amount of equipment the Judge should assign a check penalty for that as well.