Some D&D monsters from my girlfriend

My girlfriend and I sometimes message each other at work.

She doesn't like D&D, not any more. I still haven't managed to bait her into coming to a session yet, despite telling her that it isn't the same game (4e) we played before and it's much more fun and much less combatty.

Oh well, but since she writes she likes coming up with things with me.
This is one of those times.

The Drill Man

me:  so ok, i'm trying to work out how I'd make a man called the Drill Man scary

giving something scary a benign sort of name works well

like the Thin Man, The Rake, Quiet Men, Granny Rags

but drills are pretty scary anyway so it'd have to be something unexpectedly horrifying, not just a dude with a big drill who comes after you

K:  His fingernails turn into drills that he uses to lobotomise you

me:  christ

K:  Which leaves you able to think

but not communicate

and then he makes you watch while he does it to the rest of your family

but because you can't communicate you can't help them

me: you can invent all the monsters from now on

Drill Man
MV 120' (40') AC 12 HD 2 ATK 1 (drill fingers) DMG 1d4+special SV F2 ML 9
special:  Has Stealth 5 and Sneak Attack 4. If he attacks you while you're unconscious he starts to lobotomise you. You wake up but cannot speak or move as you lose d6 WIS per round. At 0HP all you can do is watch as he moves towards your friends.

Unfortunately this is the only image I could find for drill fingers.

Manny and Quinn

Some backstory –

One night, because I do this sort of thing from time to time, I asked her what she’d do if an animated mannequin walked through our bedroom door. She said she’d chop it up, which I said would be fine until the hand started crawling up from the foot of the bed.

She got really scared because it was late and we’d just watched Fringe, so to talk her down I invented this story about how it was a nice mannequin who was friends with her and she hung out with him and stuff and she was much less scared. 

Anyway, he is called Manny and his girlfriend is named Quinn and they are great together.

me:  i still think the mannequin people are super cute though, I'll use them as things that were meant to be creepy but turn out sweet

manny and kim, was it?

Kathryn:  Manny and Quin

*Quinn

me:  ok!

it'll be like proper horror thing, probably if they go rob someone's house

when one of the party is alone, one of them walks in

OH GOD WHAT DO

if they attack the mannequin it acts like a normal person and runs and hides

K:  You're going to kill Manny and Quinn? ;-;

me:  psh they won't die because they can fix each other

K: upon closer inspection of the house, all of the photos have Manny and Quinn in them, often in photos on vacation, etc.

me:  brilliant

K: OH, and they can have a wedding photo!

me:  haha yep ok writing this all down

perfect creepy location to ratchet up the dread and the should-we-even-fucking-stay-here

but twist - they are a normal couple

it is just difficult for them since they can't speak

except, presumably, to each other

K:  Sign language

me:  I guess they have fingers if they're full size mannequins

I want them to have little poseable men as children now too

child sized mannequins and they swap the parts to larger sizes as they get older

K:  Hahaha yes

me:  Oh and they always have stylish clothes and do a lot of their purchases via proxy

K:  Indeed.

maybe Quinn is a fashion designer for high society

which makes them a good target for thieves which sets up this whole thing

me:  Good idea.

K: Manny can be a male model

Haha

me:  for sure!

but they're very reclusive and mysterious because they don't want people to know that they're mannequins

K:  Precisely!

me:  I like it a lot

K:  I like you a lot

Manny and Quinn
Stats as unarmoured humans. Act as normal humans in all respects except that they are mannequins and can't speak. Parts can move independently if removed but they are not violent people and will do anything to protect each other and their kids.

The Muscle Wizard

Alright, the motherfucking Muscle Wizard.

We nearly lost the original macho man, but by god's grace the internet archive saved Monstrous Television from the bowels of nothingness.
Thank fuck for that let me tell you.
Dan at Basic Red made his own one to tide us over until Monster Johnson gets back from whatever plane he's disappeared off to (and linked to my familiar thing too now I look at it, so chuffed), so here's mine.

Why

I have too much grim darkness in my setting. Humans fear magic. Dwarfs are loveless and alone. Elves are fey and fucking scary.
Themes are fine, but if you're a PC in a world of horror and pain and want to be feel way awesome despite it, you have few options.
I needed to create something that rose beyond the grim darkness of the far generic medieval.
Something incredible.
Something beyond reality.
Something.... muscular.

REDLINE, like Pacific Rim, is a movie that I am so very very glad exists

What

The Muscle Wizard.
Behold the final personification of gonzo.

Key goals:
 - Like wizards except both better and worse
 - None of that exp bonus for stats shit
 - Can cast Fist
 - Give them nothing, but punch from them.... everything!

I don't know how I forgot about Ultimate Muscle but it still exists

How

- In my thing, regular wizards have chaos seeping into their heads and brains and souls. The only way to get the chaos out of your head is to throw it out into reality as a spell.
 -  Clever no? (no)
 - Instead of letting chaos into their head, the muscle wizard let's the chaos into THEIR BODY.
 - Wizards control chaos by contorting their thinking in weird ways, muscle wizards control chaos by CONTORTING THEIR BODIES.
 - Muscle wizards are the ultimate opposition to grimdarkness, punching their way to glory.

THE MUSCLE WIZARD CASTS FIST

 _________________________________________________ 

Base class: HD, saves and exp track of the Magic User.

Punch-casting: Muscle wizards cast all spells instantly and thus can never have their spells interrupted. All spells have a maximum range of 10’ which is extra distance they run/jump/flash-step and punch, although they are never adversely affected by their area effect spells.

Muscle magic:  A muscle wizard’s fist does d4 damage. Their fists get a bonus to hit and damage based on the highest level of spell they have prepared. They can use this bonus on other muscle-based activities like running, arm wrestling and kicking down doors.
They gain +1 HP for each level of spell they have prepared.
They lose these bonuses as they cast the spells.
If they hit 0HP as a result of spellcasting they fall unconscious from the overexertion.

Still a wizard: Muscle wizards cannot double up on spells and may flip reversible spells upon casting. They spend the same amount of time on research and transcription as a normal wizard.

 _________________________________________________

Punch-casting means that Muscle Wizards, above all other casters, never have to wind up their spells. This means, of course, that they can get up close and personal with the bad guys with their manly fists of fury. The extra distance is because I like the idea of a muscle wizard flash-stepping behind someone, letting off a quippy one liner, and unleashing their spell, or jump-punching a flying enemy who is otherwise too far away to reach.

Anything that doesn't make sense as a punch-cast spell (eg. Charm Person, Identify) has to be refluffed to involve fists somehow. This is up to the player and it doesn't matter if it's silly, that's the point.

Muscle magic is the core of the class, obviously. The d4 damage for fists is to encourage punching and they can, of course, be dual wielded. 

The core tradeoff in playing the Muscle Wizard is between using spells and being good in combat. As you lose spells you lose manliness, surely the worst thing a Muscle Wizard can contemplate. This is in contrast to Magic-Users (lose cantrips as you lose spells) and Elves (lose passive Elf features as you lose spells) which puts all the MU-spell-list-using casters in a nice thematic loop.

Still a wizard is just to keep things simple, and the changes have the same reasoning as the Magic User's.

Don't get in his way

Lessons from running for the new group

First things first

I made a "What was weird about that one night stand?" generator. Mainly because it struck me that every time my PCs get lucky at the generic local tavern I tastefully fade to black and/or make them roll under all their ability scores at once to ascertain relative satisfaction.
Real sex isn't like that, you go home with some random chick you met that da clurb who seemed quirky and interesting (read: drunk and disorderly) and there will definitely be some fucked up thing that happened that you can tell your mates about the next day and which will haunt your Never Have I Evers for years to come.

Anyway, it's here in the NPC section or HERE if you want to roll on it right the fuck now.

So anyway

I've had the pleasure of running D&D for a new group recently, hopefully it has become self-sustaining since a guy invited another guy and we're playing at a pub in London on Beginner's Night for a D&D meetup group.
If you or someone you know are ever in London on a Tuesday hit me up.

But! Here are some tips and cool things about running games in the physical world -

On the plane to Poland with my non-RPG-playing housemates.
"So guys, what is the most terrifying creature you can imagine? I'll add it to D&D"
Half an hour later the legend of the Goosegoat was born.

Jenga blocks

Holy shit this was the best idea ever.
Something I have often struggled with, especially in the middle of playing a game, is describing how the corridor or room or area actually looks. I am terrible at it.
Jenga blocks? Suddenly you can tell the map maker "ok the intersection looks sort of like this and you are here" and they can see that it's like a T intersection except the left hand turn is offset by 10 ft.
Best of all, you can erase and recreate the amount of corridor/room they can in their light source as they move down the corridor and nobody bats an eyelid because that's as much room as you have on the table.
I used to draw stuff to show them how things look, but Jenga blocks are infinitely more tactile and adjustable on the fly and visible from across the room.

And there's more! You can scale that shit.
The players got to a city (Karlstadt from BTAM) and wanted to split up to do their own things and find various info. Sure, I'm good by now at shifting between players between actions so that each doesn't get bored, but that's the easy part.
The hard (possibly unnecessary but generally good to do) part is showing where they are in the city. Just make a circle of Jenga blocks, give a vague sense of scale, and move their pieces around.

Plus! Hey they're fighting across multiple levels? You can just stack jenga blocks and get a tangible sense of scale! So rad!

AND mine are drinking jenga blocks, so you have something to do if some people are late or you finish early or nobody's feeling it tonight!


This post was mainly to wax lyrical about how great jenga blocks are, but there's more.

This post will be interspersed with character sheets from the new players because they are super cute.
Behold an artist's rendition of the legendary goosegoat.

Paperclips and coins

You know what's great about abstraction? Fucking everything.
Back when I was running 4e we had these super cool printed cardboard battlemat sheets.
They were great, but they were limiting. I couldn't just say "Ok there is a bush like here and a fire pit like here", I felt like I had to go grab the high quality printed bush and the high quality printed fire pit and put them onto the same high quality printed forest scene that I'd used for twenty wilderness encounters before that.
And that took fucking forever let me tell you. By the time I found the fire pit the spontaneity was gone. 

Aside aside, coins are the best enemies and paperclips are the best heroes/retainers.
What's that? Miniatures are also rad? I don't have room for those in my bag because I have to take it to work and then to the pub where we play D&D and laptop bags are the only reputable carriable container for the suit-wearing man of means.
The other issue is that I try to have no idea where my players are going to go or what they are going to do, so having endlessly reusable coins and paperclips means I'm not put out when they go somewhere my miniatures can't follow.

Plus, paperclips are awesome because the players can draw a portrait and slot them into the clip and suddenly you have a freestanding guy with a face. If they die, they can draw a new portrait. Easy money.

I only saw these notes when I opened up the sheets and I am really touched.
They are actually making notes and I love these new players so much.
"Cat is OP - confirmed - cat is still OP", brilliant.

Random Failed Career
The second best thing ever after Jenga blocks.

"Ok so your guy is a ____ and you used to be a ____ before you became an adventurer."
 - Makes player-made backstory unnecessary (fuck thinking hard about your character before you're actually pretending to be them).
 - Gives characters some random stuff that's not on the equipment list that they can use inventively, but if they can't be bothered they don't have to be bothered (they can always be bothered).
 - Since it gives them a starting weapon, means I can fuck with starting cash and charisma (see here) without worrying about whether I'm preventing them from buying a starting weapon.

I probably haven't said this enough before on the internet, but these character sheets are fucking beautiful.
Logan made them for me special and I am forever indebted.
God damn I look like a professional gangster when I show up with these babies.

Starting a Campaign

Some shithead when they said that waking up in a dungeon is the best way to start any adventure.

Start of the campaign, "Ok, you regain consciousness and you are strung up in a torture chamber by iron manacles". Questions begin. Limits are found. The scene expands from my initial description to something greater. One person's manacles are weakly attached, there is only one guardsman because his guardmates ran out the door saying something about a monster attacking the entrance. There is a smell like cooked pork and you are all way hungry. The equipment you brought at char gen is stored in a locked cell nearby. And so on and so forth.

New people get a short spiel "ok this is where the players are. You guys stumble across them, you don't have to join the team but honestly it'll be more fun for everyone if you conveniently think of a reason to be mates".

Last time they got some info that the current party didn't know about which was interesting for both sides.
And it fucking works. Off we go, and the new guys are slipping easily into their new roles.


"Haha, there's no way you could do that thing with the stuffed cat on a rope in Skyrim"
Fuck yea, I think I got 'em.

4e Power/Sex Move generator

You may or may not be aware, but Logan Knight of Last Gasp fame made a customisable generator thing here. It is awesome and to show you how awesome it is, behold the D&D 4e Encounter Power and/or Sex Move generator!

CLICK HERE!

Inputs:
Column 1 -
The Alberquerque
The Humming
The Spinning
The Ultimate
The Australian
The Cockney
The Highly Profitable
The Uncontrollable
The Queer
The Mighty
The Pleasurable
The Unstoppable
The Brixton
The Southend
The African
The Lubricated
The Massive
The Girthy

Column 2 -
Piledriver
Cross-counter
Explosion
Tornado
Splasher
Guzzler
Reversal
Flannel-Filler
Back-Bender
Handstand
Wheelbarrow
Jackhammer
Widowlicker
Boiler
Reciprocator
Penetrator
Reacharound
Urge