Trollzine 4 needs artistry

I am not a good drawer, so I thought I would put a call out to the wild and wooly. TZ4 has suffered delays, and one of the biggest is a dearth of pictures. The relevant thread is here (The link is to the last page as the thread has become very long...)

The Trollzine is a totally fan-based, free product - gotta get this one done so we can start on #5!

Any help would be appreciated!

UGH! (Trollish for "Thanks" in this instance)

Collecting the wisdom vs the Hive Mind

Collecting the wisdom wins again!!!

Really they are not antagonistic and man this is a good idea.
Zak gives a step-by-step tutorial that may be explained as clearly and plainly as is humanly possible.
Consequently, Old Guard's Dragon Tables are now there whenever you need them.

Drop-dead easy and kinda astounding. I now hereby race all of you to "shields shall be splintered"! Certainly the most widely adopted old school Internet house rule I am aware of...

This is next level Hive Mind shit! Sometimes you actually have the time to go back and read deep into the Gameblog, the Grog'n Blog - there's so many ones that really reward
a reader willing to do some scouring. And when you don't have the time (or the inclination I suppose), maybe I do. Or maybe 30 people all over the world do!

Really neat!

yay! pictures of cool helmets!

the one on the right in particular
the one on the left - badass!
a gift to Henry VIII from the Byzantine Emperor
Whoa(thanks to various posters at Historum.com)

[1e] Implicit setting WIP

(I'm considering this page a work in progress. More citations and such later, and I tend toward discursiveness anyway)

Plenty of people[1] at various times have left their ideas about this before now, and I have always found it a totally fascinating idea. To tease enough small detail out of just the MM, PHB, & DMG to build a campaign environment that is somehow as "close to the bone" of the AD&D rulebooks as one could possibly create. I can't even sure that it would be a setting I would have much interest in playing in or running - but it is an interesting thought experiment that many of us have spent some time with.

These details range widely - from the implications of specific game rules (like Gold spent = experience points, the Cleric class almost certainly necessitating the presence of gods or god-like things & alignment, etc) to the spinning of fantastic causal chain constructions of the social reality of life in "D&D land" (DMG pg 106 the Humanoid Racial Preference Table, the selection of possible NPC personality features).

It rests on some fundamental/pseudo-fanatical SOPs like:
1. Pedantic, literal reading of minute detail and cataloging thereof. Sometimes a joy in itself - a very difficult endeavor to sustain (for me anyway).

2. An ability to focus mostly/only on details of fine granularity. Example - the assumption that magical artifacts exist in the first place vs what the presence of The Throne of the Gods implies, range and varieties of Men subtables in the Wilderness Encounter section (though Gygax has said that those were intended as "primitive examples" that DM's would certainly rework to fit their own campaigns. (Oh God! Am I going to have to find that one in the Enworld monstrosity? No!)

As an example, these are the points of interest I draw out of the first entry in the first AD&D book - Aerial Servant:
conjured by clerics
can be found roaming the astral and ethereal planes ("natives"?)
move twice as fast as the invisible stalker (suggestive of conjuration 'arms race' between clerics and magic users in the past?)

[1]
Scott's from Dragonsfoot (2006) --- I find this really inspiring.
Amazing "speculative analysis" by Scottsz of WG4

P.S
I spent some time using the Internet, trying find an attribution for the phrase "There is no such thing as discovery, only recognition or re-discovery" - but that is a paraphrase. Hence the difficulty of citation...

A few random things

1. Liz Danforth is selling the original art for City of Terrors, the actual piece that became the cover. Wish I was a collector!

2. More things on Ebay myself (link to the right) (Bushido, V&V, Aftermath, Rolemaster, D&D)

3. Schoolin' & studyin' is kicking my ass!

4. The Tricks, Empty Rooms, and Basic Trap Design book over at Hack & Slash is a fantastic read and resource.

5. Requisite Joesky content (Thul sa doom Thul sa doom Thul sa doom)
An evil cult for 1e

99 PILGRIMS (CE – Cult of the Three Dooms)
Clerical Leadership
CHANTRY PRIESTS
1 3rd level and 6 2nd level clerics
1 5th level and 3 4th level clerics
All clerics below 6th level serve in the chantries.
CHAPEL PRIESTS
2 6th level cleric
These clerics occupy the chapel
PROPHET OF THE DARK CHAMBER
1 8th level cleric
This cleric occupies an isolated underground chamber
Exceptional characters:
fighter: 3 (lvl 7, 7, 1) A pair of twins, the 7th level fighters, and a gnome 1st level
assassin: 1 (lvl 5)
thief: 3 (lvl 7, 5, 2)
magic user: 1 (lvl 7)
Deity:
Called the Three Dooms, it appears at times as a withered & one-eyed dwarf, a
healthy mature human male with a third monstrous arm extending from the chest,
or as a heavily hooded and robed crone who can reveal a third eye. Its
presence among the cultists is in the form of Raugak, a type IV demon (using
much illusion, project image, and polymorph self). It acts as an intercessor
between the cult and a greater power in the Abyss. It is loathe to Gate in brethren, as it does not want to share the bounty of its current worship. Raugak lairs in the darkness beneath the chapel, indoctrinating the cult's prophet into the deeper mysteries of its Master's Dooms (i.e. driving him insane).

 Raugak (Type IV demon) 
 AC -1          SA spells and powers
 MV 9/12        SD +1 or better to hit
 HD 11 (51 hp)  MR 65%
 A 1-4/1-4/2-5  INT 14

Refer to OGL if required.

When Cloud Giants Go Bad

(in response to Grognaria's call to arms)
Tell us about your orcs... well orcs are made by giants. Powerful giant shamans know how to turn the livestock that pesky humans keep into beast-men. A good way to keep the frontiersmen away. They do the same with boars that men chase, dogs that bay at the edges of their villages... I pictured the orcs as mostly simian featured with jutting jaws and big bottom teeth (I think from my favorite orc lead figure of the day).

It's been a very long time since I played, but back then I had an elaborate magical evolutionary tree. In short, when the world began, there were Dragons, the Fae, and Giants. Assume the usual "ages pass in cycles of animosity and lassitude, mankind rising unnoticed by the Big 3", as they were in a kind of a magical arms-race of evolution. At this point, another player gets involved in this life creation racket: wizards.

So the only race that wasn't created by magic is the humans. I might try to dig through old notes to find the ridiculously complicated causal chain of life... I remember that dragons made dwarves & kobalds from rocks, fae made goblins & elves from fairy dust(?), giants made orcs & gnomes from animals.

The arms race side of it was this: A dragon makes a dwarf. Dwarf meets a Fairy and gets changed to a brownie. Or dragon made a kobald instead. The kobald meets the wrong cloud giant and is transformed into a griffon... Each of the 'client races' could be further transformed by the opposing 'creator races'.

I think I was riffing off of TITAN - in which your pieces could muster recruits based on the terrain of the space they occupied. I liked the wizards too, but they kinda had the shit end of the stick. The old races had much latitude in what they could do to a wizard. Unseen servants, intelligent magic items, familiars, permanent spells - these things could be transformed into esoteric creatures (say, save or fire giant turns your ring of spell storing into a salamander). It meant that magic users would have to divest themselves of much of their adjuncts and accoutrements when facing the magic using varieties of these older races.

It was interesting - way too much trouble to go through to contextualize the presence of the minotaur(giant curse), otyugh (fairy curse), and ogre magi(dragon curse). I'll dig around and see if I can't come up with the tables I made for this a long time ago...

Wilderness Monsters by Season

To make up for the Hottie Elf Chick madness sweeping through the ranks of us old fogies, here's an encounter table based on the current season. Yes, it's d76. Oh well.

	Spring (C)	Summer (L)	Fall (C)	Winter (L)
1	Green Dragon	Red Dragon	Black Dragon	White Dragon
2	Elf (CG)	Dwarf (LG)	Elf (CG)	Dwarf (LG)
3	Dwarf (N)	Elf (N)	Dwarf (N)	Elf (N)
4	Dryad	Dryad	Efreet (N)	Djinn (N)
5	Ettin	Efreeti (LE)	Ettin	Ghost
6	Gargoyle	Gnome (LG)	Gargoyle	Gnome (LG)
7	Ghoul	Goblin	Ghoul & Ghast	Goblin
8	Gnoll	Goblin & Hobgoblin	Gnoll	Goblin & Hobgoblin
9	Gnome (N)	Hobgoblin	Gnome (N)	Hobgoblin
10	Dwarf & Gnome (N)	Dwarf & Gnome (LG)	Dwarf & Gnome (N)	Dwarf & Gnome (LG)
11	Elf & Gnome (N)	Hell Hounds	Elf & Gnome (N)	Gorgon
12	Grey Ooze	Black Pudding	Harpy	Hell Hounds
13	Harpy	Hydra	Hydra	Kobald
14	Jackalwere	Kobald	Jackalwere	Goblin & Kobald
15	Gnoll & Jackalwere	Goblin & Kobald	Gnoll & Jackalwere	Hobgoblin & Kobald
16	Leprechaun	Hobgoblin & Kobald	Lizard Man	Goblin, Hobgoblin &Kobald
17	Lizard Man	Goblin, Hobgoblin &Kobald	Werebear	Lamasu
18	Werebear	Lammasu	Werboar	Wereboar
19	Werewolf	Lizard Man	Werewolf	Manticore
20	Berserker	Wereboar	Berserker	Berserker
21	Nomad	Manticore	Nomad	Dervish
22	Brigand	Bandit	Brigand	Bandit
23	Pilgrim (N)	Dervish	Pilgrim (N)	Pilgrim (N)
24	Pilgrim (CG)	Nomad	Pilgrim (CG)	Pilgrim (LG)
25	Pilgrim (CE)	Pilgrim (N)	Pilgrim (CE)	Pilgrim (LE)
26	Merchant	Pilgrim (LG)	Merchant	Merchant
27	Spirit Naga	Pilgrim (LE)	Spirit Naga	Nightmare
28	Minotaur	Merchant	Minotaur	Nymph
29	Nymph	Night Hag	Night Hag	Orc
30	Ogre	Orc	Ochre Jelly	Ogre Magi
31	Ogre & Gnoll	Ogre Magi	Ogre	Pilgrim of & Ogre Magi
32	Orc	Pilgrim of Geryon & OgreMagi	Ogre & Gnoll	Pilgrims of & Rakshasa
33	Orc & Ogre	Pixie	Orc	Ogre Magi & Goblins
34	Shadow	Pilgrims of & Rakshasa	Orc & Ogre	Ogre Magi & Hobgoblins
35	Gynopshinx	Rakshasa & Hobgoblins	Purple Worm	Ogre Magi, Goblins &Hobgoblins
36	Giant Spider (CE)	Gynosphinx	Giant Spider (CE)	Ogre Magi & Bugbears
37	Sprite	Rakshasa, Goblins &Hobgoblins	Roc	Ogre Magi, Goblins,Hobgoblins & Kobalds
38	Stirge	Rakshasa	Satyr	Remorhaz
39	Giant Toad	Stirge	Stirge	Slyph
40	Treant	Giant Toad	Giant Toad	Ice Toad
41	Troglodyte	Wight	Treant	Wight
42	Troll	Wolf	Troglodyte	Wolf
43	Will-o-wisp	Dire Wolf	Troll	Dire Wolf
44	Vampire	Wraith	Vampire	Winter Wolf
45	Wolf	Rakshasa	Shadow	Roc
46	Dire Wolf	Shedu	Will-o-wisp	Wraith
47	Yeti	Skeleton	Skeleton & Shadow	Shedu
48	Skeleton	Skeleton & Zombie	Skeleton	Skeleton
49	Skeleton & Zombie	Spectre	Skeleton & Zombie	Skeleton & Zombie
50	Skeleton & Shadow	Criosphinx	Skeleton & Shadow	Spectre
51	Shadow & Zombie	Hippogriff	Shadow & Zombie	Criosphinx
52	Androsyphinx	Stone Giant	Androsphinx	Yeti
53	Hieracosphinx	Fire Giant	Hieracosphinx	Griffon
54	Griffon	Barbed Devil	Hippogriff	Frost Giant
55	Blue Dragon	Horned Devil	Cloud Giant	Ice Devil
56	Hill Giant	Ankheg	Storm Giant	Brownie
57	Ankheg	Basilisk	Centaur	Blink Dogs
58	Basilisk	Brownie	Chimera	Bugbear
59	Bugbear	Blink Dogs	Bugbear	Cockatrice
60	Bulette	Pilgrims of Dispater	Cockatrice	Pilgrims of Dispater
61	Centaur	Pilgrims of Geryon	Pilgrims of Jubilex	Pilgrims of Geryon
62	Chimera	Displacer Beasts	Pilgrims of Orcus	Doppleganger
63	Pilgrims of Jubilex	Pilgrims of Dispater &Barbed Devil	Djinn	Displacer Beasts
64	Pilgrims of Orcus	Pilgrims of Geryon &Horned Devil	Doppleganger	Pilgrims of Dispater &Horned Devil
65	Djinn	Fire Giant & Hobgoblin	Displacer Beasts	Frost Giant & Hobgoblin
66	Hill Giant & Orc	Fire Giant, Hobgoblin &Goblin	Frost Giant & Orc	Frost Giant, Hobgoblin &Goblin
67	Hill Giant, Ogre & Orc	Stone Giant & Orc (N)	Frost Giant, Ogre & Orc	Pilgrim of Geryon & OgreMagi
68	Hill Giant & Gnoll	Stone Giant & Dire Wolf	Frost Giant & Gnoll	Pilgrim of Dispater &Ogre Magi
69	Hill Giant & Bugbear	Pilgrim of Dispater &Ogre Magi	Frost Giant & Bugbear	Pilgrim of Geryon & IceDevil
70	Hill Giant, Bugbear &Gnoll	Brownie & Pixie	Frost Giant, Bugbear &Gnoll	Pilgrim of Dispater & IceDevil
71	Hill Giant & Ettin	Wraith & Shadow	Hill Giant & Orc	Goblin & Bugbear
72	Basilisk & Gargoyle	Spectre & Shadow	Hill Giant, Ogre & Orc	Wraith & Shadow
73	Troll & Troglodyte	Dryad & Pixie	Hill Giant & Gnoll	Spectre & Shadow
74	Pilgrims of Orcus &Shadows	Gnome & Pixie	Hill Giant & Bugbear	Ghost & Shadow
75	Centaur & Sprite	Spectre & Shadow	Hill Giant, Bugbear &Gnoll	Brownie & Gnome
76	Treant & Sprite	Wraith & Shadow	Hill Giant & Ettin	Yeti & Wolf

Refer to OGL if required.

Yo doodz! D&D 4.5 beta (HoT eLF Chick build) arrives!

I won't even bother with a picture, but man - the spikes!

[Freak Jazz] PRIMITIVE OHIO!!!

My Early Gaming History

The recent batch posts on the development and history of “OSR” got me thinking about my personal experience starting as a gamer.

My brother taught me how to play chess pretty early on, though I've never been particularly good at it. Mastermind and Stratego. I loved Stratego. When I was 9 years old, my brother would have his high school buddies over to play D&D. He had the basement as his own room. I can remember the 3 LBB + supplements on his book shelf, Holmes basic, monochomatic modules, and certainly the AD&D hardbacks. Card table, bean bag chair, dehumidifier, dead beetles in the corners. They were stoners, late 70's stoners. I can remember my sister freaking out because one of them chased her around the house with a roach clip, me having no idea what such a clip was at the time.

I didn't play, but they let me watch a few times. Enthralling. One of the dudes, Wooten was his last name – very theatrical. He got put to sleep by a homonculus... poor Wooten. Anyway, Mike (my brother, 9 years my senior) starts to play the Ogre and Melee microgames with me. Once again, my poor sister – after my first kill in Melee (which must have been a good roll as my brother narrated that I'd cut his head off), I rush upstairs in excitement and brag to her about beheading my bro. No wonder uptight people were freaked out by their kids playing D&D! She thought that was gross. I thought her braces were gross. Good times.

So – eventually Mike agrees to run my first game of D&D. Roll up stats, 3d6 in order, got a high wisdom score. So be a cleric, says he! I remember being intimidated by the details of the open-ended decision making. For example, the character's name. Mike generated one for me out of the back of B1 with slight variation (“Greggo of the Mountain”) because I couldn't name the dude. My character awakened in a small room with a monster - I cannot remember what it was. I want to say it was a ghoul, but I can't remember precisely. Anyway – how's that for “You stand facing the dungeon's door...” - it's obvious that the set-up is going to go violent, fast – and I froze! I didn't know what to do, didn't want my character to die. I begged Mike to tell me what to do to get out of this situation. He told me to use my suggestion spell. OK... what do I tell it to do? I hemmed and hawed for a while in indecision, Mike wouldn't tell me what to say, instead giving examples of what I should not say... Man - I was kind of a wuss! It was scary! Finally: “Tell it to sleep.” Then mush it with your mace.

It's safe to say that this experience frustrated him, as we did not play again for a long time. Eh – he was 18, I was 9 - I don't blame him. So we'd play Risk, Battleship, and Midway (a Milton Bradley boardgame, I remember liking it, wonder if it stands up...). And I took my experience into my friend Scott's garage - along with some six-siders from Monopoly, pencil and paper. We made up a game of D&D based on my imprecise memory. I DM'ed, probably used The Fantasy Trip in my brain for combat (I'd played that more and knew how to use the dice for it). I think it ended with him trapped in a pit. Hee hee.

My local gaming shop (The Griffon – go give them all of your money! They deserve all of it!) held a convention, and my brother took me along. I can remember almost nothing about this – certainly I was not registered to play in anything, but they had a few computers there, and you could wait in line to play (what turned out to be) an early version of Telengard. And as a little brother, I was obliged to bug my brother incessantly to play D&D with me again. He wasn't into it. He had other things going on at that time that I was not aware of, but he did take me over to a computer lab on the campus of Notre Dame university. And here we played a Star Trek game, the turns displayed on printer paper. One of the things Mike had going on at that time was getting a job as a computer programmer for an insurance company, and he had not yet graduated high school. Self taught, he was one of those guys that got into the computer industry before it was self-regulated. Another thing that he had going on was falling in love with a depressed girl and experiencing a religious conversion. As a consequence of one or more of these things, he decided to destroy his D&D collection by fire. Bummer. Thankfully, I rescued a Holmes Basic set, Ogre and Melee/Wizard, but all the other D&D stuff went *poof* in my back yard. While he prayed.

Before the conflagration, my earnest whining and wheedling, my begging him to play D&D one last time PAID OFF! I don't remember my character this time, but this one “came to” in a room with a pedestal and a rug. Atop the pedestal, a crystal. Touching the crystal did 1 hit point of damage. Every turn, a “blue bolt” would shoot out of the crystal and hit my character for the same amount of damage. I could not dodge the bolt, nor find any cover. I could not find a way out of the room. I was killed by the blue bolts without really having done anything except frantically searching the walls for secret doors. Afterwards he told me there was a trapdoor under the rug. Obviously I was not really prepared to think outside the box back then...

He quit high school, kept his job, got kicked out of the house, moved in with his girl, married her and had a daughter, and they went to church all the time. I stayed home of course (remember, big age difference). I'd go to the library and check out D&D books. I tried to run my friend Alan through D1, but he balked at the idea that he'd need henchmen and mules. I remember him getting really up-in-arms over the mules... My best friend lived close to downtown, so we would go to the Griffon and look at books. I didn't really play much at this point – until I stumbled across Tunnels and Trolls in a Hallmark Card shop. Still utterly confused as to how this particular distribution scheme/sales point came to be, but business is mostly baffling to me anyway.

Tunnels and Trolls worked for me. I'd use spells and equipment lists and other things from D&D and AD&D, but I grokked running T&T in a way that I hadn't got D&D. Me and my neighborhood friends would stay up all night dungeon crawling our way to ridiculous super-heroic status (flying ships, death rays, constant invisibility, AWESOME). I'd run solo modules for my friend Seaghan (pronounced Shawn/Sean) over the phone, expand them when he'd take actions that weren't on the list of options. My friend Ernie developed an interest in Aftermath, Pendragon, Rolemaster, and he gifted me the 1st editions of Character, Arms, Claw, & Spell Laws. He did this as a going away present, as I was moving to Memphis Tennessee. Good thing too, as my gaming experience there got kinda ugly.

Turns out that I moved next door to a D&D player! What luck, right! He was excited that he had figured out he could kill Lloth by using Whelm. I had no idea what he was talking about... but – he DM'ed. None of my friends really DM'ed - I pretty much had all-time DM duty. So I was glad to play some D&D for once, though it took me a minute to get used to rule-breaky, fudge-for-badassery, DM driven power gaming.

As I was getting accustomed to this, there was the afternoon that his dad called us into the living room to have a conversation. He understood that I had come from Indiana, and so he wanted to share with me some details regarding the inferior nature of black people, to raise my awareness and expand my mind by telling me some of their techniques for bankrupting welfare so that they would not have to work, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, et fucking cetera. First time I'd really encountered a seemingly rational, apparently evidence-based argument for racism. From an adult. Ugh.

I did not go there again, and my time in Memphis ended up being pretty brief anyway – just a little over a year – and then back to South Bend. In my absence my friends had kept gaming, and and top of that, none of them took up bigotry! Ernie liked Aftermath and Pendragon. Seaghan got into Top Secret. Donn ran Champions. Jack got us into Call of Cthulhu. I freaked over Paranoia. We'd play all night Diplomacy, long sessions of Squad Leader. This would have been freshman & sophomore years of high school. Lovely time for gaming! Never really did a consistent campaign – none of us really had most-favored-characters... strange to think about that now. I'd write all kinds of dungeons, nations, elaborate magic items, classes, spell lists, etc... but we flitted around games pretty constantly, and board games were a big component. And hardly any D&D too.

I quit school and my friends graduated, so the halcyon high-school gamer life came to close. I kept my books for a while, and certainly do wish that I hadn't sold off & lost them at this point - there were some goodies there. Gradually life & music, girls, weed, books & eventually education – there's (potentially) a lot more to life than playing D&D, and those are the things I did for a long time. Every once in a while I'd open up a notebook and map a continent, write up some encounters or something, but no gaming really. Magic the Gathering came out and I hopped on board for a year or so. It turned some of my RPG potentiometers to somewhere between 4 and 6, and as a casual player, it was fun, but the economics of play were not of interest to me. It's a good game and occasionally I still go to the comic shop here to draft when a core set comes out. I like it at its simplest.

D&D 3.0 came out. My room mate gets the books and we try to play. Of course, DM'ing falls squarely on my shoulders. Eric played back in the day, but we didn't know each other then. He was really into Oriental Adventures and 2nd Edition AD&D. He made a female human monk. We all know that there are differences in play-styles, yes? I hadn't run a game of any stripe in roughly a decade. My goto fantasy RPG was T&T, and when I am winging a game, that is the mind set I slip into. As soon as his character (with back-story of vengeance in place, serious shit) saw the flashing neon sign above a cave that read “ADVENTURE HEREIN!!!” the game crumbled. Oh well. I was interested in some aspects of 3e, but did not form an experienced opinion of it until later, when I played (as a player) in a few games. It was OK and my problems with it seem consonant with the general grog consensus (character build optimization snoozer, feat memorization toward astute system breaking, fiddly not-abstract-enough combat, etc).

So D&D3 didn't do much for me, but then, when I'd go to the local hobby shop, I began to see Hackmaster and I thought it looked hilarious. Then the DCC modules, very clever. The look of these products got to me - I don't remember even perusing the contents of these books. Instead, I reacquired Rolemaster...

This post is long and I am tired. A good night to you.