Electrified acid ladies and gentlemen. And since it’s real, the player’s can’t claim you’re just making this stuff up to kill them.
Update Your Monster Manual Dept.
Reindeers have ultravision, folks – assuming you’re playing a version of the Grand Old Game that includes ultravision.
Revised RPG Dept.
And the revised Mystery Men! E-Book is now on the air! Download to your heart’s content, and if you see any additional errors, let me know. I’ll probably do a final revision next week.
A few random bits and pieces today. I’m trying to get some traction on finishing Mystery Men! and writing the Mu-Pan material, but mostly working on the conversion of Tome of Horrors and writing encounters/lairs for all the beasties therein. Lots of fun, but lots of work as well. Currently up to mid-“S”, have until end of March to finish. Pray for me. Sending HCC #3 off to the Frog God today (if I don’t forget to). So, enjoy some random junk …
FROM THE “OVERHEARD IN MY LIVING ROOM” FILE
My wife was quizzing my daughter on ancient China, and one question about what the called the trade route from China to the west had as a possible answer “The Polyester Road”. Brainstorm.
Imagine post-apocalypse America. In this case, the apocalypse in question is a new ice age. The planet is colder and drier. Canada is under a sheet of ice, the U.S. Midwest is a sand sea desert and the Mississippi a mere trickle. Two population centers survive in North America. On the west coast you have folks living and farming from Southern California into Mexico, with almost all farmland going to grow food. On the east coast, you have large settlements from Virginia to Florida, with the most powerful and wealthy settlement being the city-state of Kinston (in what we now call North Carolina). Why is Kinston so powerful? They alone know the secret of making polyester. Yes, for societies that now wear two hundred year-old rags and animal pelts, that have to push all their resources into growing food, there is no more valuable material than polyester, the fabric of kings. Since the destruction of the Panama Canal, it has made economic sense for the merchants of California & Mexico to make their way across the Void Zone at the heart of North America along the famous Polyester Road to Kinston.
I’m picturing the well-to-do in leisure suits, the legions of Kinston in fiberglass/polyester armor, the city-state ruled by the Lords DuPont, etc.
FROM THE “DANG, THAT’S ONE BIG APE” FILE
That would be French singer Sylvie Vartan with Kong on the Champs Elysees. I can’t tell you the last time I had a chanteuse sit on my stomach in the middle of the street. Them big guys get ever’thin’. Via Kippage – NSFW
FROM THE “WHAT THE?” FILE
Nathanial Clark, “I approach the cavern.” Via Super Punch.
… is cool. Eric Canete – check him out, won’t you. He’ll show up on Deviant Friday sooner or later. Never watched much of the old Gargoyles cartoon, but I can certainly get behind Demona.
Item Two
Are pen and paper games ahead of the curve? Consider – in the case of rules-lite games, you have a slim set of rules to which you can add modules/house rules (i.e. apps) to build the experience you want, as opposed to something like Warcraft, which offers some pretty cool features, but forces everyone into the same experience. Want the ability to fly around on dragons and joust – no problem in Rules-Lite Pen and Paper – heck, somebody probably already wrote some rules for that. Want to do it in Warcraft (and honestly, maybe you already can – I have no idea) – you’ll need to ask and they’ll need to put it in a list of things to do and then debate on whether this is an idea that will be popular with everyone – oh, and you’ll need to have a subscription of some sort. Most rules-lite and rules-lite supplements are either free or very cheap. Maybe pen and paper has a brighter future than we all thought in a world of program-it-yourself entertainment?
Item Three
Random Thoughts Table (Roll D4)
1. Did I remember to extinguish the hearth before I left on this quest?
2. You know, I really like pretzels.
3. Is that idiot seriously going to tap that damn 10-ft pole on every floor tile in this hallway?
4. I should totally stab the thief in the back – he’d never see it coming.
My best friend drew up a random table for one of his characters (Rygar the Last), which included things like accidentally discharging his crossbow. Good times.
Item Four
Anyone want to trade a black and white illo for NOD #6 for a full page ad of their choice in the magazine. I’m writing up the next level of Izrigul’s Pleasure Palace (the best – and only – multi-level dungeon ever published in NOD). The whole level was designed as a theater by the demon Izrigul and features two factions at eternal (and pointless) war with one another. The troops on one side are tieflings in the style of Spanish soldiers from the 17th century armed with staffs that shoot rockets/sparks and sabers. The other side is composed of bugbears with snow white hair in the style of the powdered wigs of the time, wielding halberds and hand axes and dressed like 18th century French soldiers. I’d love a pic of one facing off against the other. Think opera/ballet meets D&D. Email me if you’re willing and able.
With random mustaches, of course! With scant apologies to A&A.
Having compiled this list, I’m now thinking that every dwarf clan I write up will have an official clan mustache and/or beard – maybe the ‘stache and beard are the dwarf version of heraldry? Hell, maybe their need for mustache wax is what drives the little buggers to dig up so much gold. Or maybe the Chandler’s Guild is the power behind most dwarven thrones? Or maybe I should just shut up and post the darn list already …
1. Natural – unshaped, unshaven, drawn by the hand of God, so to speak.
2. Hungarian – big and bushy – the mustache, not the people.
3. Dali – narrow, points are curved steeply upward; favored by surreal artists.
4. English – narrow, whiskers are long and curled up on ends (see photo to right).
5. Imperial – whiskers grow from both the upper lips and cheeks and curled upward.
6. Fu Manchu – long mustache grown only from the upper lip; favored by inscrutable geniuses from the Far East. The Pancho Villa variety is thicker and droopier.
7. Handlebar – like a Fu Manchu that has been trained to sit up (though not speak, although you know some wizard out there has tried).
8. Horseshoe – a bushier version of the Fu Manchu, but with hair growing not just from the upper lip, but also down the sides of the mouth; favored by hulks of the Hogan variety.
9. Pencil – a very thin mustache along the top of the lip – dashing on Errol Flynn, just plain creepy on John Waters (as it should be).
10. Chevron – thick and wide, it covers the entire upper lip – no curling here, mister.
11. Toothbrush – more popularly known as the “Hitler Mustache”, ‘nuff said.
12. Walrus – bushy mustache that completely (or mostly) covers the mouth.
All information drawn from Wikipedia. For random beards, please step this way to Aeons & Auguries.
Looking for a quick way to get your adventurers into a mythic underworld? They will never see this one coming. And it will take more than 50 feet of rope to get out.
And for the record – I think it looks fake, though I might be wrong.
Edit – I’ve seen more on the story, and it is apparently (and unfortunately) real. I just wondered because of how perfectly circular the hole looks. Sounds like a horrific event.
My three day conference in Chicago, as good as it was, is thankfully over and I’m back in Vegas. I have a book review to write, a PDF to get out (about 90% done, little art left to deal with) and some encounters in the infamous city of Ophir to write about. And the artwork to the right – has nothing to do with anything. Just a coffer corpse strangling a mildly peeved high-level cleric. And congratulations to those who get the reference in the title …
Land of Nod 
