Just another Thursday Night on the blogs.

"There are sexist messages in RPG art and maybe we should think about that."

"No, that would just make the artists make shitty art."

The first is a no-brainer. The second, I don't agree with, but the guy saying it is smart and makes strong interesting arguments. Also, several of the comments are smart, specifically from Trollsmyth, TheCramp and Telecanter. Several others are mind-numbingly stupid.

Ah, the internet....

Skadi must Eat of Every Meat

Like barbarians? More accurately, like loving mockeries of Howardian fantasy archetypes? Even more accurately, appreciate a good butt joke?

You'll like Skadi as much as I do then. It's the Thursday update on Dumm Comics (several of the others are great too, though).

Gygaxian Democracy with your host, Zak Smith

I've been throughly enjoying the Gygaxian Democracy series over at Playing DnD with Porn Stars. Basically, Zak posts some kind of prompt - a table to fill in, a keyed dungeon to stock, a list of villians - and the rest of us provide the rest. Crowdsourced DM material, in other words. The results have been mostly fantastic, and I'm really proud of what Smith's prompts and the other contributions have inspired out of me. Here's a few of mine, but really, read the others as well.

1. For a list of villains, I choose to fill in the details for "giant centipede with excellent hygiene"
2. Shriekglass is made from the cries of dead virgins, and is being smuggled into town. Several parties are interested in it, including mine (which I used a Tarot deck to make up).
3. The King has lost his head. The Forces of Badness have made impostures, each of which has a different effect if put back on his body. Like inflating and floating away.
4. The Hammer of Exorcism exorcises things hammered with it. Unless it doesn't, in which case one of a number of things might occur. Like total protonic reversal.

TIC... TOC.... TIC...

An awesome but hard as hell exercise from Zak Smith's blog: Stock a dungeon with 15 rooms in under 2 minutes.

Follow the link to see the map - I don't think it matters, though. Any layout of 15 rooms will do. Here's mine, but I'm really bad at telling time* so I think I accidentally went over:

1. Statue of a basilisk and a flock of cockatrice locked in deadly combat. Not real.
2. Stoned Flock of cockatrice, real, trap tile unstones them.
3. Stoned Basilisk, real, but actually stoned: bleary eyes, etc. Gaze half effective due to red eye
4. Two elf women that won't stop singing (can't?)
5. Bannana trees
6. floor covered in redworms
7. floor covered in teeth
8. Giant tapestry made of woven spider silk
9. caged spiders
10. spider milking apparatus
11. WC
12. Kid pounding head against floor, wound keeps healing
13. comfy chairs
14. kitchen
15. library, all the books are blank 

*Not kidding - I don't know why either.

Creature Feature 13: Touring Ghosts

Up to bat again is Steph Cherrywell, who's second book through Slave Labor Graphics is now on Amazon. She's good. Go buy it.  In Steph's own words this time:  

The ghosts of those whose vacations were cut short by untimely death, these ghosts are "tied" to traveling, rather than to a specific place.  They haunt inns at night, messing up rooms and causing food to disappear, and popular tourist spots during the day.   The city elders usually want them hurried on their way, unless of course the most famous spot in town is a haunted house, in which case they might be looking for a way to make them stick around...

I see these as the D&D equivalents of your road ghosts - your Big Joes and Phantom 409s, your Hitchhiking Prom Queens, that sort of thing. The key here is the free roaming thing - most ghosts are haunting a specific place, but touring ghosts move around - in fact, they have to travel every bit as much as a focused haunting must stay put.

Don't sound like much of a problem? Maybe one or two wouldn't be. However, anyone who has taken an extended sabbatical will tell you tourists usually end up meeting other tourists. Then they stick together through the rest of the trip, and meet others. This snowballing effect means that, when touring ghosts come to your town, it may be in a spectral swarm.

Creature Feature 11: Trophy Ghoul

As evidenced by my being behind a day, I'm getting slammed with work this week. Thankfully, Steph Cherrywell has sent a few ideas to help out. This one's all Steph's.

Trophy Ghouls are created when the stuffed and mounted remains of animals killed for sport are raised. These undead beasts may be whole, or they may be only a part of the animal (like a mounted head). The later case can usually float, as can some smaller Trophy Ghouls such as fish. Pelts can become Trophy Ghouls - they move as if whole but can enfold and smother victims.

Art by Steph Cherrywell

COMBAT:
Trophy Ghouls often hold a grudge against their slayers, and will prefer them or their descendants over other targets. As former prey, however, they enjoy turning the table on any predator.

For the most part, the average Trophy Ghoul behaves much like a zombie - they are stiff and slow compared to living examples of their species, but hardy and strong. They retain the attacks they had in life. However, when destroyed they burst into noxious clouds of malevolent sawdust that hangs in the air, chasing down and choking the lungs of their foes in one last act of ill will. Fire will annihilate this cloud, and the Trophy Ghoul, for good.

The Switch-Witch Addendum

I've made an edit to the Switch-Witch to give Kitty Lowrance credit, as the concept was mostly her own, right down to the name. I just elaborated on it.

In other news, Steph Cherrywell will be joining me in illustrating some of our month's beasties! She's already done the Grounded Ghost, and more are coming, including our Halloween Grand Finale.

Finally, a note on stats: I'm probably not going to worry about them. Stating things up well is truly the hardest part, and I don't want to rush it. However, I may retroactively add stats as part of a super-cheap PDF. That will depend on how much interest this garners between now and then.

Creature Feature 4: The Grounded Ghost

(A big, big thanks to Steph Cherrywell, who will be contributing art to these throughout the month! I also made a lot of this entry up based on the image she sent, so she gets extra double special credit for this one)

Many years ago a hoard of troll-like creatures swept through the land. They snatched up and devoured anything they encountered with their prehensile tongues, and tore down forests to build colossal fires for no discernible purpose. Armies that rode out to meet them were slaughtered, discovering too late that while the monsters could be slain, their spirits seeped into the earth with their blood, congealing below the surface and regenerating. Just as soldiers celebrated victory, a new wave of foes would rise from the dirt. Humans called it the Rippling War, because it was fought in a perfect, growing ring as the monsters spread every outward, leaving nothing but fire behind them.

Everything changed when the Druids appeared at the front lines of the Ripple. None realized so many existed until that day, and now most have forgotten the great roaring armies that poured from the forest. They came armed with scimitars of carved bone and long pikes of cedar core. As the monsters fell, the Druids rolled their corpses away and drove the pikes down into the dirt where they once lay. Soon the creatures realized something was wrong, and they retreated. For weeks the Druids hunted them, always marking the spot their blood fell with a cedar post. No new beasts rose, and the Rippling War was over.

Art by Steph Cherrywell

Most of the posts have weathered away, taking the spirit they pinned with them. Others have been buried by time, or paved over, or lost in great cataclysms. But there are some that remain, overgrown and worm eaten in the forest, or tall and lonely in a secluded glen. Disturb one, and you might hear a gruff voice ask your help. “You pull,” it may say, “and I’ll push!”

COMBAT:
Grounded Ghosts are actually ethereal creatures bound beneath the soil by a sacred cedar pole. They cannot move or take any action while the pole remains, and can only speak if the pole is touched or otherwise disturbed. Removing the pole or destroying it by any means will allow the monster to become corporeal again. It will be very hungry.

In the flesh, Grounded Ghosts are large, strong and tough. Their tongues are actually their throat turned out, and have a “mouth” on the end for dragging prey into their huge gullets. The tongue turns back in like a rolled sock as it retracts, enfolding the victim and eventually spitting them into its stomach. The beast can stretch to accommodate prey as big as it is, and prefers to eat things alive. It isn’t above pummeling prey to death or tossing them into a fire first if they struggle too much. Overall, Grounded Ghosts are obsessed with destruction, and will slay, burn and tear apart all they encounter. A free Ghost will likely seek out trapped kin.

Meet the Players

Spucky Conkerbucket - Art by Steph Cherrywell

My online campaign has now progressed across four sessions, two of them one-on-ones with the individual players. So who are these illustrious players that have felled giant trapdoor spiders, hit little girls with rocks, and dodged mad cows?
On her laptop a few feet away, trying not to peek at my giant monitor(s), there's Kitty Lowrance. One trick to playing online, when two of you are actually in the same room, is being careful to type anything game-related in chat so as not to exclude the other player. Thus we have two conversations going at once - Kitty, your turn. "You hungry?" I'm go to swing my greataxe at the dark-haired guy. Um, what do I add to that roll? "Yeah... let's make popcorn!" Since you're raging? I think it's + 6. "Okay. After my turn I'll go start it."

Kitty plays Agartha Daggath the "barbarian." Her background and motivation remains a cipher, but her personality had quickly developed - hot-tempered but nobody's fool, mildly self-interested, argumentative. Without realizing it my wife is role-playing the same archetype as Han Solo.

At 5' 10" and 270lb, Agartha swings a greataxe the size of a halfling with murderous strength, and when she goes into a rage, she's already shown the ability to drop typical level 1 opponents from full life to -10 HP in a single blow. The Barbarian is not just a weaker version of the Fighter.

Of course the imaginary dragon in our fantasy game shouldn't talk. I knew we were doing something wrong.

SHHHHHHHH!!!

After being unable to sleep, I got up the other night and saw Zak Smith had just posted this. A quick exerpt for the lazy:

Even though it has little to do with the bottom line, once in awhile the pyrotechnic display of bigotry, sexism, self-righteousness and can't-be-bothered-to-google-ignorance that I periodically get in my inbox in response to this TV show that the Escapist pays us to make about our game kind of makes me despair for humankind.

The post is mostly to thank his readers for being intelligent and bolstering his mood against the ionic-fuckwit-pulse emanating from his inbox each time a new episode of I Hit It With My Axe goes up. What followed was an outpouring of support from his readers and the old-school-gaming community. Later on, Mandy Morbid, one of the stars of the show and Smith's girlfriend, posted:

I honestly can't say my experience doing the show has been altogether-especially-positive (due to the massive sexism issue and the amount of exposure I opened myself up to--knowingly) but everything you all are saying helps heal whatever regret I have and makes me feel like I'd like to continue with it given the opportunity.

It was at this point I went from feeling merely sympathetic (having dealt with massive waves of hatemail all the time in previous jobs) to just goddamn angry that a group of people should get so much flak for such blindingly stupid reasons it makes them seriously consider not continuing to get paid for playing a game.

Then you have to consider the actual positive impact the show has had - either via first or second-hand accounts, there are women gaming now specifically thanks to watching the women on the show have fun doing so. One commenter mentioned how the blog and show helped them with their own marginalized status as a queer gamer.

Furthermore, should they not accept the opportunity to keep doing the show (if offered), it will deprive me of something I enjoy. I do not appreciate being deprived of things.

More importantly, I don't appreciate the world being deprived of things that are good for it because the tumors of humankind managed to extend their pustules within range of a keyboard.

Unfortunately, it's one of those situations where there's little to be done besides not being the thing you hate. The very fact Smith's original post has over 60 comments, all of them positive, shows that at least this corner of the old-school-gaming community has the right idea. That's really, really good to know.

Scalable NPCs

Responding to the idea of "NPCs as Artifacts" on Telecanter's Receding Rules:

I like the idea of having some scalable NPCs handy. These are villains you can pull out that are more interesting than "Bandit Leader" but with plug-and-play features so the are just as fair a threat to level 1 PCs as level 20.

I specifically want to avoid just adding more underlings. I am cool with upgrading equipment or spells, but it should be iconic stuff - the evil sorcerer with a fetish for electricity would have some better, stronger electricity-based spells. I specifically do not mean that, if the NPC is reoccurring, they should scale - there are reasons when you might want to do that, but usually it cheats PCs out of the pleasure of going back and kicking the ass of the putz that sent them packing last time.

Not sure if this concept fits with Telecanter's original idea, but it's something I've been chewing on and the Artifacts thing made me thing of it.

Without further adue:

Phillip the Culler

Phillip's body is as tense and knotted as corded rope, and he has the charisma of a coiled viper. Few who knew him as a boy would be surprised to learn he became a highwayman, and a good one. When Phillip's crew are working a stretch, it's with a methodical grace that's yet to fail him. Phillip has established a near-mythological reputation for himself as "Phillip the Culler," through the clever combination of a fear-inducing poison, his talent at sneaking and hiding, and his expertise at fighting with the twin sickles handing from his best. His overriding preference for his iconic weapons may be his most exploitable weakness in combat.

Scaling: Phillip should always fight with his twin sickles, but how good he is at it is up to the DM. Without any help, a character is severely handicapped in most rulesets when they fight with two weapons. Increasing his skill with the weapons, with dual-weapon fighting, and the quality of the sickles themselves all incrementally strengthen Phillip's threat. The actual effect of his poison is also worth tinkering with - simple morale penalties, up to forcing characters to drop weapons and flee, or cower, on a failed save are all possible.

Undead Gundam Zombie Mechatech! (Bicycle Panda Rollerskate)

The following was generated using Zak Smith's Mad Libs Dungeon Generator. I take no responsibility for the stupidity of any of my answers.

This one's for Joesky

I've been made aware that Joesky's Rule is now in effect. Unfortunately, this means my last post was in direct violation, and I'm pretty sure that means I'll get socked in the gut with a fistful of nickles if I don't correct it.

Sorry, Joesky. Without further adieu:

RANDOM RUMORS TABLE: Random crap people are whispering around that town or village.

1: A witch hunter is in a nearby hamlet, and her methods are simple: All the citizens must take their turn sleeping on a oil-soaked pyre. If nothing happens, the citizen is not a witch. Thus far the pyre has burst into flames every night at the same hour.

2: Goblins are actually born from eggs, which are laid in the bellies of kidnapped children. This is believed because a local boy who was lost in the woods for a week returned shitting one obsidian orb each day.

3: One of the PCs is thought to be a famous pirate, dangerous but loaded with gold and worth a considerable bounty dead or alive. On a 1 or 2 a merchant will lower prices 25% out of fear. On a 3 or 4 they will raise them 25%. All taverns contain 1d4 drunks who think they can take the PC. (The actual pirate is of the opposite gender, a halfling who is short even for halfings, broke and hundreds of miles away).

4: There's a party of NPCs in town that have been claiming to be the PCs. Everyone likes them better, even if the truth is revealed.

5: "For a good time, pay a call on Leanna." (Leanna turns out to be a giant spider with an attractive woman dangling in front of its maw angler fish-like.)

6: Slips of parchment are being handed out, saying that if presented at the local weaponsmith your purchase is 50% off. They weren't made by the weaponsmith, who would be driven out of business if they were honored. Angry customers may riot.

7: The PCs are vampires. 50% of people encountered at night believe it. 25% of people encountered in daylight do. 5% of vampires do.

8: A local barkeep, Fish-Faced Floyd, is a mummy. (He is.)

9: A local shopkeep, Slow-Eyed Sue, is a lich. (she isn't.) [she is a night hag]

10: If you look at your reflection in the water left in wagon tracks after a rain, your blood and the rainwater will switch places, killing you instantly. This is a children's "urban legend" that (you guessed it!) came true for one young man.

I Now Pronouns You Gender-Neutral Anonymous Entity

Sometimes, small things are important.

According to Zak Smith, who helped edit it, Lamentations of the Flame Princess uses exclusively male pronouns when referring to an indefinite person. Since by far the most important point of Smith's post was "Hey, awesome independent game now available for preorder!" I didn't want to start a big conversation in the comments about this. There were some, enough for James Raggi to clarify his position (he saw downsides to all options and went with what was most comfortable to him) and I'm fine with that.

But I do want to talk about pronouns here.

It's some time in the late '80s. You just pulled the 2e D&D Player's Handbook off the shelf at... wherever the hell you bought RPGs in the late '80s. What spells can a player choose as a level 5 wizard? According to the book, he can pick from the following list. Is a fighter proficient with a greatsword? Yes, he is.

Now, several of the pictures are of women. Presumably, anyone playing the game could be female. Did the writers just assume no woman would play D&D? No. In the front of the book you'd actually find a disclaimer. I can't find the exact text, but the gist was: Centuries of use have "neutered" the male pronoun, so it's okay to use it exclusively.

So they felt the need to warn you: "Hey, we're going to assume you're male unless otherwise stated, because male is the new andro, except when it's still male." The premise that male pronouns have been "neutered" is demonstrably false the moment you find yourself needing a disclaimer to say so. [EDIT: I've removed a line here that could be misconstrued as comparing sexism and racism. That wasn't the intention: I think such comparisons are inevitably toxic because all forms of discrimination are equally foul, yet fundamentally different. Since I don't think the line was necessary to the argument, it was easier to cut it.]   

It obviously occurred to the writers that some people were going to be bothered by the it and those people were probably female. It's entirely likely, from the art direction and other clues, that the authors wanted these women to play. Otherwise, they wouldn't have run a disclaimer defending their position. What I don't understand is: Why was that so much easier than just saying "his or her"? Or alternating?

Why does it matter?

I write copy for a LGBTQ porn site, and part of my task is to look at the model's bio and use accurate gender identifiers in my writing. Sometimes that info isn't there, and I have to play it safe and use NO pronouns. If you try to guess, you will almost always be wrong. The difference between a transgendered man and a woman who is genderfucking but still identifies as female isn't something you can tell by site. Some models prefer neither pronoun - they want to be known as it, their or they ("it's not just genderfucked, it's grammar-fucked!"), or a modern "invented" neutral pronoun like ze and zir.

It may also sound like nitpicking political correctness* but to these people, it matters. They've struggled with their identity all their lives. Their government - supposedly the most democratic on Earth - denies them basic rights on a daily basis. A majority of their fellow citizens - in this "freest nation in the world" - mostly think they are perverted, insane or hellspawn that it is okay to murder. They've fought really, really fucking hard to claim their identity and when I have the ability to ensure they are referred to as who they are or in the very least not alienated because I found it easier to just assume a status quot? I'm damn hell going to give them that respect.

Likewise, when a woman reads "he" when a book refers to someone they may very well be, the message is clear even if unintentional. This book is not for you. It is for the norm, which is male - that is why we assume a being is male first unless specified otherwise. Thus it has been in medicine (at the cost of untold women's lives) and really every human endeavor for a very long time. You are not the norm. You are other. Put this book down.

Not the message you want to send when trying to diversify and expand your hobby.

It would actually be more accurate to assume an anonymous party to be female. Statistically it is more likely. Also, in the womb we all start out on the same trek - towards a female body. At a certain point those destined to be male develop a divergent anatomy, with some vestiges of the female left over (look down, boys. Notice anything pointy and pointless on your chest?). Plus we have centuries of use of the male pronoun to make up for.

Things have gotten better. That disclaimer was in 2e. Today, D&D 3e and 4e proudly use mixed pronouns, alternating between "he" and "she." They also catch flak for this in some quarters. Personally I think this is one of the better advancements of the game, besides getting rid of the seven million saving throws. The ire of a few trolls, and maybe a bit of extra effort when constructing a sentence, are small prices to pay to make people feel like you want them playing your game.

---

* "Political correctness" as a term was actually first used in the modern sense by the New Left to describe leaders who "talked the talk but didn't walk the walk," so to speak. Think "Racist Senator Pretends to Like Jazz." It was also used by feminists to describe the anti-pornography movement's attempts to appropriate their ideas for their own agenda to define and narrow female sexuality. It wasn't until the 90's that clueless right-wingers used the term, which more often than not was used as a pejorative against themselves, to label any attempt to actually care about the effect of your actions upon other human beings.

In other words, if you think calling me "politically correct" will invalidate my argument, fuck your grandpa.

Early Dark vs. Lamentations of The Flame Princess: Comparing Two Games That Aren't Even Out Yet

I was pointed to this Kickstarter project today: Early Dark, an RPG. Meanwhile, James Raggi IV is finally taking orders for his Lamentations of The Flame Princess: Weird Fantasy Role-Playing.

If I were going to buy one of these two games, based on what I know about them as it has been presented to me, I honestly do not know which I would pick. The both have fundamental goals I like very much. Yet both goals, while not in opposite directions of one another, require a significant detour if you want to see both.

Early Dark

I'm in love with the concept of Early Dark - a fantasy RPG based on world cultures beyond just the European Middle Ages. THAT is the kind of game I can see getting more people, and different kinds of people, interested in the hobby. Some would argue that D&D has done this more and more over the years, but... well, bullshit. "Oriental Adventures" is not going to appeal to a whole lot of Asian kids. Hell, I can barely get past the title. How about we change D&D to "Honkeys on Horseback" while we're at it? "Crackers and Krakens?" "Weapons and WASPS?"

No? Maybe no "Oriental Adventures" then. Sounds more like a massage parlor, says my wife. And we all know there are no "happy endings" in old-school roleplaying.

Anyway, yeah, Early Dark sounds cool - I'd love to role something like an Apache warrior or a Zulu priest. The only thing that makes me nervous is the glimpses we get of the character sheet. That looks like some hardcore crunchiness (although it was pointed out to me that may be more reference material than actual stats. And the makers do condemn d20 for being too rules heavy during the video). Still, I see some stuff on there that makes me think very much of old World of Darkness: Arcane, Mundane, Loom, Thrive? These are terms that you can only know the application of if you play the game, unlike "strength" or "magic points." WoD was TERRIBLE for this, and maybe they still are - I don't know. You practically had to be an Eastern Religions major to play "Kindred of the East."

Lamentations of The Flame Princess: Weird Fantasy Role-Playing

Okay... give me a second to catch my breath... I wonder if Raggi IV would be offended if I call it "Lam-Flam" from now on. Let's find out.

Lam-Flam sets out to do something very different from Early Dark. Duh - James Raggi IV is a champion of the Old-School Roleplaying Renaissance (OSR) and has very strong opinions about it. He's also not at all concerned about the fact D&D is, due to its origins, very ethnocentric. Which isn't to say he condones real-world racism, but that he doesn't see a problem with race as portrayed in the game unless you actively correlate in-game races like orcs with real-world minorities. At least, that's what I've taken away from past posts on his blog - see "D&D and Racism."

It should come as no surprise, then, that one of differences between his game, D&D and the retro-clones is that Lam-Flam actually simplifies the concept of class and race - actually, in some instances class and race are the same thing. Rather than seek to expand your options for customizing and building your character, Raggi IV has condensed everything to "pick from a list of what you want to be."

Which, actually, has an appeal all its own. Especially if you're looking to get into RPGs for the first time, or introduce some friends to the game whom you suspect would balk at the more complicated... well, from what I've heard about Lam-Flam, if it's too hard to pick up your last hope is "TWERPS."

But of course, there's another important aspect to Lam-Flam: That bit after the colon. Raggi IV apparently sought to create a game that captures the spirit of the Weird - less "Lord of the Rings" and more "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward in Medieval Europe with Swords." This, I'm very, very interested by, especially knowing that Raggi IV is a gifted writer with a strong imagination in the subject.

The Point?

Why compare two games that aren't even technically out yet? Because I find it fascinating that in 2010, two new fantasy roleplaying games are growing out of the soil tilled by Gygax and Co back in the 70s. Two very different games that are also unlike any generation of the original crop. It's still good soil, and fresh ideas are still gestating within it.

Brainworm, Large

Idea totally stolen from Steph Cherrywell's delicious comic Intragalactic. No, really, it tastes good - lick your monitor and see.

The Brainworm, Large (Also know as the 'Brainworm - Large,' the 'Brainworm (large)' or the 'Brainworm fingerquotes Large fingerquotes') is a... um, worm that eats brains, absorbing the information contained therein. It then uses the corpse to find more prey... unless the victim was sentient.

The parasite survives by gripping onto the skull of its victim via four strong mandibles, gnawing into the brain cavity and devouring the contents. The worm then "plugs into" the sensory organs, takes control of the muscle system and receives sustenance through the victims' usual methods. It can live this way indefinitely, preserving the corpse it's riding in an (almost) perfect state. However, the worm can't progress in its growth cycle this way, and usually uses the host to reach a fresh meal of brains.

However, when a brainworm mistakenly latches on to a fully sentient lifeform, something odd occurs. While the victim still dies, the memories and emotions absorbed by the brainworm form a dominant personality. The worm both recalls being a brainworm, and being the victim. In this state, the parasite effectively becomes a new incarnation of the dead host and will simply try and live the life it technically ended. Often with a massive guilt-complex.

For crunchiness (rules, for you non-DnD blog readers), most mental stats of a brainworm-bitten PC or NPC remain the same. The primary difference is that the actual life form is the large grub-like worm-thing stick out of their head, and only damage to it can kill the character. The corpse can suffer damage, and at 0 - CON hitpoints the worm will be forced to detach from its ruined host. Otherwise the corpse can go indefinitely. No critical hits or sneak attack bonuses. The only drawback is that the body cannot heal naturally, and potions of healing (as with any other potion or poison) only affect the worm. Healing spells work normally.

If someone aims for the worm, use the worm's AC to determine if they hit it. If attacking the worm specifically, sneak-attack damage, critical hits DO apply.

If someone attacks the character without aiming for the worm (most figure it's a hat), natural 20s are assumed to hit the worm, but still without bonus damage. Things that hit everything in an area, like fireballs, hit the worm.

So, here's what happens when your PC's brain gets eaten. Drop your Charisma 1d4 for the giant bug and the fact you look like death. Raise your Intelligence and Wisdom each a point for the addition of the brainworm's past meals (which would have all been non-sentient things, remember?). Raise your Constitution 1d4 for being dead meat. Lower your Dexterity a point for mild joint stiffness and counterbalancing the big thing sticking out of your head.

And without further adieu, the Brainworm:


Attached Brainworm, Large
Abberation, Tiny (although quite Large for a worm)
HP: 6
AC: The host's, minus armor, plus 5 (+2 size, +3 natural armor)
Saves: Fort + 1, the other two are the same as the host's
Abilities: Str 18, Dex Host's -1, Con 13, Int Host's +1, Wis Host's +1, Cha Host's -1

Unattached Brainworm, Large
HP: 6
Initiative: +0
Speed: 10 ft
AC: 15 (+2 size, +3 natural armor)
Saves: Fort +1, Reflex +0, Will +1
Abilities: Str 18, Dex 11, Con 13, Int 2, Wis 11, Cha 3
Attacks: Leap and Grab with Mandibles +5
Special: After a successful grab, the worm can automatically bite for 1d10 damage each round until dislodged. On a natural 20 it's grabbed the opponent's head, it may spend a turn to maneuver to the back instead of biting. On the next round, it instantly opens the skull and devours the brain, killing the victim. On the subsequent round it may take over the corpse.

A True Classic

 Sorry for the recent lack of posts - work's been busy as Hell.* The good news is Kitty and I played our second game this weekend, and it went smashingly. Really just a dust-up with some goblins, but it was fun and challenging enough for a lone level 1 cleric and a thief NPC.

Meanwhile, over on I Hit It With My Axe, Satine Phoenix's character is the first to fall, which lead to the inevitable "NO! BLACKLEAF! I'M GOING TO DIE!" jokes. Man, that thing never stops being funny.

Here's a breakdown of it written as a decent imitation of a MST3K episode. It's one of the many tracts of cartoonist and crazed lunatic Jack Chick, and always good for some laughs until you realize how large a portion of the world has read and believed him.

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*Where, according to over 200 tiny little comics, I will be attending.

Tolkien, Race and Archetypes

Swords and Dorkery has an interesting post about J. R. R. Tolkien basing the dwarves of Lord of the Rings on Semetic culture, including the writing, language and architecture. Which, of course, raises issues about the whole big-nosed, squat money-hoarding thing.

Just in case anyone's getting up-in-arms about this; look. There are racist ideas in Tolkien's writings. The Swarthy Men? Come on. I love his books, but they are very much about protecting the comfortable, the normal, the familiar from the strange and other.

UNRELATED: Why Twitter is down today

@FiendAngelical figured it out. (I'm the one that edited the picture)

Sex, Lies and Embedded Video Clips

The other night, my wife and I sat down and watched every episode of I Hit It With My Axe.

For those of you who haven't seen it, I Hit It is a weekly series of short videos detailing Zak Smith's D&D campaigns with his circle of friends. Because Smith is also the porn star Zak Sabbath, and his friends tend to be coworkers, I Hit It is pitched as "D&D with Pornstars."

Which is also the name of Zak's blog, let's be fair. But here's the thing - I'd watch this group of people play regardless of profession and am almost annoyed by the Escapist's "HEY GUYZ BOOBZ" promotion.