Ghoul Prince

I drew this in a sketchbook and meant to include it in Black Pudding 8... but I forgot. Doh! 

Black Pudding 7

Finally, it is HERE. Black Pudding 7.

This issue features the following awesomeness.

Character Classes:

Rat Bastard

Iggy (by David Okum)

Flamer

Eyeball

Monsters:

Rocky

Grave Crusader

Dracowisp

Tyrano-X

Queen of the Dark Light

And the rest of the issue is a gazetteer of Yria, the setting of Black Pudding. It is an iteration of Pan-Gea. The five cities described, many areas sketched out, lots of random tables.

Go!

Gretch

The gretch is a monster that appeared in Black Pudding #1 in 2016. It is basically a thing that spontaneously appears from old candle and spell residue in a wizard's lab. I picture old wizard towers having at least a few gretches roaming around. Perhaps the wizard wasn't able to control them and they murdered them in their sleep?

Poking around in old documents I rescued from an old computer, I found what is certainly the first reference to the gretch, from 12/2007 or earlier:

Cir Lan – A wicked sorceress searching for the swords of the Old Kingdom to tap into their mystic powers and discover the great secrets of life. She uses winged gretches as familiars and always has a wild look in her dark-ringed eyes as if she were on speed.

I have never used a gretch in a game. I need to remedy that. 

Beakadon

Here's a sketch and a monster block for Doomslakers B/X.

Beakadon

Armor Class: 5 [14]

No. Enc: 2d6

Hit Dice: 3 (14 hp)

Save: F3

Move: 50’

Morale: 9

Attacks: 1 x beak or kick

Treasure Type: Nil

Damage: 1d8 or 1d6

Alignment: Neutral

XP: 65

These tall creatures walk on long, thin legs, their bulbous eyes keeping constant watch for danger (they can only be surprised on a roll of 1 on 1d6). They navigate swamps and ponds and leap over small walls or obstacles with ease, even when carrying a rider. They will kick to defend themselves, reaching as far as a polearm. But once the threat is closer they will strike with their savage, sharp beak. If a beakadon scores a natural 20 on a beak attack, something on the target will be broken (helmet, shield, armor, weapon, etc.). In the case where the target has no items other than clothing, they will lose the use of a random limb for 1 day (roll 1d4 to determine).

Beakadons are easily trained to carry riders or gear and cost twice as much as a horse. Even wild beakadons can be quickly trained to carry a mount. But when attempting to ride one for the first time, the PC must make a Charisma check. If the check fails, the creature will attack the PC. This will continue until the check is made.

The meat of this animal is delicious and sweet. It is highly valued in regions where the creature is not native. But in lands where beakadons roam wild, it is considered to be bad luck to eat them.

Burer

Working on the monster section for the upcoming Doomslakers B/X book. I have been maintaining a monster document since around 2014, coded in Labyrinth Lord. So most of the monsters going into this book are from that document, updated to my current taste.

Here's an example critter that I kinda like. It's a monster that offers no threat to the party and has no treasure. But harming it is a very bad idea. In fact, if the party harms a burer the only rational thing they can do next is find a quiet room and lay low for three days. 

Burer

Armor Class: 9 [10]	No. Enc: 1d6
Hit Dice: 1 (3 hp)	Save: F1
Move: 40’	Morale: 4
Attacks: Nil	Treasure Type: Nil
Damage: Nil	Alignment: Neutral
XP: 0

This weird little potato-shaped creature lives in dens where it snuggles with mates for weeks at a time before surfacing to find some tasty butterflies and hummingbirds. It has no real defensive capabilities, but is a creature of blessed magic.

If the burer is spoken to, it will reply in perfect local dialect. The creature will go on a bit, talking at length about local happenings and revealing 1d4 local secrets of relevance to the party. On a roll of 4, the fourth secret will be the location of a treasure horde.

Any party that harms a burer will suffer 3 days of bad luck during which all random encounters do happen and all healing rolls yield a minimum result.

Zarp in Pan-Gea (color)

Here's the finished art for the new Zarp piece. Zarp hitchin' a ride across the broken lands of Pan-Gea on the back of a duck-skulled tigerlope with his friend Shullaroo.

Here's some B/X stats for ya bones.

Duck-Skulled Tigerlope

AC: 6 [13]

HD: 8 (36 hp)

Move: 150' (50')

Atks: 2 claws/1 bite or 1 gore

Dmg: 1d6/1d6/1d10 or 2d6

No. Enc: 1d6

Save: F8

Morale: 9

TT: V

Align: Neutral

Big, loping beasts with long horns. Can be tamed for riding. Will charge for x2 damage if 60' or more space is available.

Hump back stores fatty milk to sustain the beast up to a month without food.

Hrogfin with Stats

 

Hrogfin

Hrogfins like to pump iron when not eating raw human flesh.

Bog Beast

The swampy world of Ur-97 is home to more than just bog beasts and reptiles. Silent watchers stand waiting...

GOZR: Sun Son

The wizard has summoned something hot tonight.

GOZR: Unique Items

 More on this topic right here.

Another design choice I made on GOZR was to make items unique. Like... there isn't a catalog of magic items. There are random lists of magic stuff on tables but not a section of "magic items". This is carrying on the spirit of games like DCC RPG wherein we're encouraged to make everything in our adventures unique to that adventure.

That isn't to say stock items or stock monsters are bad. I absolutely disagree with that take. And in fact many of the creatures for GOZR are standardized. Because they're not necessarily weird magical weirods, but savage primordial species. This is sci-fantasy and since the PCs are already weirdos with a wide variety of physical appearances, I'm making the monsters more akin to what you'd find in an Edgar Rice Burroughs planetary romance than in a D&D monstrous tome.

Conan and the Low Level PCs

For fun. I sketched this and started inking it while playing D&D the other night. Added the figures last as I wasn't sure WHO was gonna be on the stairs. I couldn't decide between a part of D&D noobs or Conan. So why not both?

I believe this will be the centerpiece of Black Pudding #7 with the stats for the helligators given in that white space above the carnage.

Lesser Gods of Rone Campaign

I am going to run a new campaign for the Monday night Doomslakers group. It is set in a world called Rone, which is a lake world I dreamed up maybe 15 years ago. I pitched it to the group like this:

Jack Kirby and Mike Ploog fall into an EC Comics fantasy world controlled by the better side of Vaughn Bodé's imagination. A mist-covered lake riddled with tall, mossy islands and weird creatures. Old gods beneath the dark waters. Strange races of weirdos. Long lost temples. Robots. Armies of ants. Waterlogged dungeons where slumbering computers reboot as you tread the dead hallways. It is a platform game slick with algae.

It's a BX D&D based campaign with 9 custom classes, including the one pictured here. Should be a hoot! Might even be a published thingie for Old School Essentials to be squeezed out of it.

GOZR Creatures

Here's a sample of the creatures from GOZR. Still a work in progress, but the stat block is very simple.

THREAT: This number ranges from 0 to 7+. It is the number of times the creature can make additional attacks or other actions or force re-rolls.

DEF: Defence is the number subtracted from damage. Always a minimum of 1 point dealt on a hit.

HP: Hit points.

SIZE: Small, gooz, large, giant, and huge. The creatures of this world will lean to the large size. Lots of megafauna. Also, creatures are assumed to be of animal intelligence. Intelligent monsters are not a thing, generally. But you can get some interesting behavior just looking at the animal world.

DMG: How many hit points of damage dealt per attack. Generally based on size, but varies.

Beyond that, I'm avoiding an obligatory description as each will have art. Instead, just going to include some bullet point notes about behavior, special attacks, defenses, etc. I'm also including tables for creating creatures on the fly.

The RPG Folder Filled With Nothing But Love

Continuing this series of "reviews", as it were*.

The Kitten is a character class by Kirt Dankmyer - the dankest Kirt in the world - written for The Black Hack

I wanna play a kitten. Seriously. I only deal 1 lousy point of damage per hit, but I only TAKE 1 damage per hit from supernatural enemies. That's frickin' cool. Werewolf? I gets tossed about, lick myself, walk away.

And I can cast spells? Dawg**. That's cool as shit.

Of course my most important power is cuteness. If I'm being cute, I can do stuff maybe a little easier than otherwise. And that's true of kittens in real life, right? If they want the sandwich they can get the sandwich more easily by putting on a cute air.

Kittens rule.

The Blob is a one page game by Joaquin Ollo. It's a weird little thing and I kinda dig the idea.

You are a blob. Everyone else is an egregore, which I gather is a kind of "hivemind" or thought form. So basically you haven't been assigned a shape and you navigate this weird landscape of other players who kind of try to impose rules on you and the endgame is you have a shape of some kind.

Very strange and lovely. Cool cover art too.

The Purple Worm Graveyard by Tony Dowler is Labyrinth Lord adventure for character levels 1-3 with juicy art by Ed Heil. I love Ed's art so much!

The adventure is about a worm god cult. It includes some "moves" that I believe are based on or inspired by Dungeon World stuff. But I'm no expert on that game so I could be wrong.

One thing I love most about this little adventure is the last sentence of the final encounter area: The large gong summons a purple worm. Now... this is based on old school D&D. And it's a low level adventure. So if the PCs make it this far and actually summon a purple worm... well, you know what that means. TOTAL PARTY KILL.

Nice.

*It occurred to me just now that "as it were" is one of those phrases I sometimes use without knowing a damn thing about its origins. I'll look it up later.

**Why the hell did I say "dawg"?

Founders and Legends III

I did the art for the Founders and Legends III banner this year. Instead of a dragon, Luke & company wanted a chimera type creature. So this is what I did.

The idea was based on a really old sketch I did and never really used anywhere. This was called "Veng Bulak".

Front End Alignment

My car is pulling to the right. Tires have weird wear patterns. My front end is waaaay out of alignment.

Oh... wait. This is about gaming. So it's not that kind of alignment. Sorry.

(Come to think of it, I haven't even thought about front end alignments since I bought my first new car in the 90s. What was it about older cars? My old AMC Spirit was constantly out of alignment.)

Alignment sucks. I said so in this post, and I still mean it. You don't need alignment in D&D games. You might think you do, but actually in fact you absolutely do not. So ditch that shit right now. Of course, as I said in that other post, alignment is actually useful in other iterations of the game, such as DCC RPG. In that game alignment is both fun and useful, unlike in D&D where it is constraining and pointless.

Here's a newsflash: orcs are a racist trope. Indeed, it's true. The arguments for this are pretty solid and I'm certainly convinced. But also... who cares? It's really not a big deal. Orcs are dumb and boring anyway, so fuck 'em. Make your orcs more monstrous, less like Mongol hordes, and maybe that will fix it. I don't know. And I kinda don't care. But yeah... the racist trope allegation does hold water so stop bitching about it.

More importantly is the drow thing. It's quite god damn clear that having your prominent black skinned race of people be inherently evil is kind of a problem. This has been known for decades. Hell's bells, I remember joking about this shit in high school. And that was the 80s, when racism was just How Things Were™. I'm happy that WotC is addressing this problem, and the orc thing as well. It's a net good.

Stop bitching about it. They're trying to sell the game to young people, not our old asses.

TL;DR version:

Alignment in D&D is stupid and boring. Get rid of it. Or use it like DCC uses it.

The orc and drow tropes are kinda racist. Deal with that. You can still use orcs and drow if you want and if anyone tells you that you're being a racist you can say "Fuck off". It's fine. But honestly... orcs are boring so fuck 'em. Let's come up with new stuff.

EDIT: I just learned that Netflix removed the AD&D episode of Community. One of the best episodes! Fuck the bastards. What a dumb, stupid, cynical move.

Two Slayers (Old Art XVII)

From 2005, for a commission.

Tremorworm (Old Art XII)

Here's another Fawn Rainchild pic, part of the Pan-Gea mythos. The setting here is a mystical lake called Rone. I have harbored serious thoughts that Lake Rone will be on my hit list of potential future projects. Perhaps a good old Old School Essentials setting. Who knows?

Let the Dead Stay Buried IV