Hordes & Hoards: The Dagonites

Its been years since I've actively tried to write a "module", and even longer still since I've tried to write a series of encounters that you might either call "adventures" or "modules". Its been so long since I've played, the old noodle is rusty. :P

Thankfully, I am keeping part of the creative process from going completely dull by working on LBB & H&H. Occasionally, a flash of genius lights up my brain-pan, and I get an idea for a really cool encounter, or even a series of encounters. The trick is to write it down before I forget it all.

That happened to me again last night. My problem probably lays in where to start. There are over a million good ideas rattling around in here, and I mostly write in story-teller mode, so its very difficult for me to set up an encounter for a 'module. 

Editing the monsters for Hordes & Hoards might help me curb my desire to overwrite everything, and simply put in relevant details without boring the reader. (Yes, I have a tendency to bore myself when I overwrite, in fact, I'm sure I'm doing it now...) (yawn)

The trick to good dungeon/encounter design is to pick a monster (or treasure, or trap, or any combo) that will be interesting, challenging, and playable for the referee. Nevermind if the players think, or don't think these things for the moment; its the ref's job to MAKE the encounter these things. If you can sell the encounter to the referee, you got a game!

To accommodate the referee in this task, the ref needs tools, and not just any ol' tool, although the simplest tools are often the best for creating stuff from near-scratch. (What I'd call "scratch" is a copy of Holmes Basic, dice, pencil & a couple sheets of blank paper; "near-scratch" is adding a copy of the MTA, DMG, MM, B2, graph paper, & a protractor!)

LBB & H&H are supposed to be the tools for my game, so I am taking a lot of time & TLC to make sure that I front-load it with everything I can possibly think of, to a reasonable degree. For H&H I could just as easily use the Monster Manual, as it has nearly all the monsters from 0e, GH, BM, EW, HB and a plethora of monsters from the Strategic Review & The Dragon that many players never saw if their ref didn't a copy of SR or TD. 

I am also convinced that I am not breaking any new ground here that others haven't already thought of as far as cataloguing monsters in a format most usable to the ref on the fly; Al Krombach's "Monsterless Manual" comes to mind first, as does Zenopus' series of one-page reference sheets, and other worthies in this area. 

So, I know I'm not doing anything new, as most of us are gamers first, designers second (or last, in my case), and I know I am definitely standing on the shoulders of some other giant. 

But occasionally, even this old dog can come up with something new, if heavily inspired by one of the First Giants in the genre. Zenopus has already admitted that his "Ancient Builder" monster is an analogue of the Old Ones, and suggests that the Dagonites in Holmes' "Maze of Peril" is an analogue of The Deep Ones. 

Since I've never had the chance to read Maze of Peril, I had to guess at a lot of details when I decided to this evil race of deep subterranean frog-men, and I had no idea that "Dagonite" was possibly used as an alternate name for the Deep Ones. I guessed at a lot of it, and after comparing my version of the Dagonites with the (TD#12) Old Ones, I'm glad I did make those guesses!

DAGONITE (Lovecraftian Frogmen)
Number Appearing:	2-5/10-100
Armor Class:	Variable, 7 to 3
Move in Feet:	60/180 swimming
Hit Dice:	2-5
Dexterity:	10-14
Alignment:	Chaos
Number of Attacks:	2 claws/1 bite/1 tongue
Damage per Attack:	1-4/claw, 1-6/bite, grapple/tongue
% in Lair:	50%
Treasure Type:	D
Source: MP, HH

     Dagonites are commonly mistaken for Deep Ones out of ignorance; but let it not be said that it is unfortunate, for actively searching out any knowledge of the Old Ones eventually leads to madness and everlasting death.

     Dagonites are bipedal humanoids that stand 3 to 6 feet tall with most of the amphibian features of frogs. Their coloring varies from mottled brown, rust, red, gray, blue and green. They hunt in packs of 2-5, but their lair will have 10-100 members.

     Their lairs are 'cities' built in large natural caverns, or a large constructed chamber, with a running water source, and an area for many still, stagnate ponds to lay eggs in and provide a suitable environment for their growing young. The structures of their buildings are mud-daubed and hut-like, but on a large scale, if the cavern or chamber size will accommodate them.

      Their round or oblong huts and buildings are rarely spaced apart -- built close together with common walls, ceilings, floors join at the oddest angles to create many nooks & crannies, and support for a neighboring structure. Huts and other structures are built on others, forming a lump-shaped hive of sorts. When interior walls, floors or ceilings collapse due to stress, the area is cleared out, and the new, larger interior is used instead.

     Dagonites are intelligent and have a language of their own, consisting of croaks and groans typical of frogs, but rarely attempt to communication with other races, let alone any who trespass in their territory. However, there is a 10% chance per hit die of any dagonite to understand the common tongue and half that percentage to actually be able to speak it, with modified croaks and groans.

     Dagonites will attempt to capture intruders and hold them in cells to await their fate: either sacrificed to their evil tentacled gods or to be thrown into one of the shallow, stagnant ponds and eaten, raw and alive in a mass feeding frenzy of just hatched, young Dagonites.

     Their clawed and webbed hands and feet are capable of wielding weapons as true hands, but they prefer to make attacks by leaping up to 20 feet onto an opponent and striking with both claws and bite. They can strike with their tongue in melee, as it is coated with a natural, sticky substance and has an innate strength rating of 12-15, capable of disarming armed opponents or grappling an opponent's limb or appendage up to 10 feet away to prevent escape. The tongue, however, when exposed can only take 2-5 hits, separate from the total Hit Dice of the creature.

     The leader of a city will have 8 Hit Dice and the ability to spit acid up to 20 feet 3 times per day. The acid does 1-6 hits per round unless scraped off, taking one round and taking 1-3 hits. This acid is water resistant and takes twice as long to wash off.

     One of the ponds in the city will have a structure built near it, with one end opening up and covering one corner of the pond, like an indoor/outdoor swimming pool. The pond will always be jet black and opaque. This is a temple to the Dagonites' foul, dark god, C'thulhu. Such temples are safe for the Dagonites to come in and perform rites and rituals, but intruders will always attract the attention of the temple guardians: 4-7 Cthulhic Elementals.

Hordes & Hoards work continues... haltingly...

I'm beginning to sound like a broken record when I say things like "I don't have internet at home!" "I'm overworked and underpaid!" "I live in third world country conditions!" /whinging.

Its the way of the min/wage world, but before I leave to put in another application for a higher paying job, I just wanted to put two things out there in the 0e/Holmes blogosphere: I really am sorry I did not devote as much time as I wanted to Michael Thomas' Blueholme drafts, and I am positively sure that there were a lot of other volunteers out there who did take up the challenge of proofreading & playtesting. I have a lot of irons in a few different fires, so...

The second thing I wanted to put out here is that work on my own "Hordes & Hoards" (volume II for my own "Levels Beyond Basic" houserules) continues with many stops & starts, bad ideas, and the general cajoling from a dedicated few that work should even continue on this project, or anything else I've been schlumping around on.

I still don't have a unique view of "Hordes & Hoards", although I've thought of a couple angles that require far too much work on my already overloaded schedule. The first of these 'bad ideas' was to arrange H&H like the Monster & Treasure Assortments, but instead of a single or double line entry for each die roll, each entry would be the MM style entry for the monster, plus a good portion of the entry also describing the monster's lair or locale where encountered (if randomly determined -- most likely a hallway or wilderness setting...) and the Treasure Type written out, not just A, B, or C.

The second idea was to break the Hordes section of H&H into leveled sections of monsters. The 1st to 3rd level "Wandering Monster/Random Encounter" tables would dictate which monsters would be described in section 1-3, the 4th to 6th levels dictating which monsters would be in section 4-6, etc..

My overall feelings towards H&H is that I want a go-to Monster Manual for LBB, but I don't want another boring Monster Manual. Even collating the monsters from 0e & Holmes for LBB to create a MM doppelgänger is a formidable task (for me and my time limitations) that requires a lot of motivation and focus. If I'm not focused in the few hours each week that I have available to work on this, I get nothing done. Not one monster collated into the collection.

So when I say that I have a couple of 'unique' ideas for H&H's presentation, they are just ideas, and are in no way easy to implement -- at least until I get all the collating done. So, for now, just the collating will continue.

What, exactly do I mean by "collating"? I find a basic monster entry from 0e, Holmes, C'thulhu, or any other source, and I reformat it into the stat-block I have currently come to use, which is halfway between Holmes and AD&D's monster stat block:

MONSTER NAME
Number Appearing:
Armor Class:
Move in Feet:
Hit Dice:
Dexterity:
Alignment:
Number of Attacks:
Damage per Attack:
% in Lair:
Treasure Type:
Source:

Other special abilities, especially innate powers, psionics, etc., are largely handled in the description that traditionally follows the stat-block, and if a monster is unintelligent & unaligned, the Alignment entry will not even be present.

Collecting all these monsters from several different sources takes up most of my time. Even the eventual arrival of getting the monsters named set up in alphabetical order was (and still is) an enormous task, but that much is largely done. So now, I go through the listings, and 'spruce up' each entry, making sure that all the versions of each monster from multiple sources jive, or at least do not generally contradict each other, and in some cases, I've added my own grey box text, or changed the wording to it just enough so it does make sense, significantly to give the monster a new direction, or just thought the original text was awful enough to discard it all and make it a wholly new creation -- OR it is a wholly new creation of my own!

Many of the other sources for H&H are Lovecraftian in origin, as that would naturally follow for a Holmes-centric set of house rules. Most of these monsters were penned by Holmes, Kuntz, or Ward, but I've tried to maintain the original entries from Dragon #12 as much as possible from the C'thulhu Mythos Expurgated, adding only what was necessary to make the monster as complete as I think it needs to be for LBB.

A few are analogous creations by a few people here 'n there.

For example, I'm adding Zach Howard's (Zenopus, of Zenopus Archives) wonderful "Ancient Builder" monster, (http://zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/2013/01/ancient-builder-new-monster.html) and as of right now, it's the first one alphabetically in Hordes & Hoards.
Here is one of my own (see below), that can easily be partnered with another of my monsters, the Dagonites (analogous to the Deep Ones). I'll post that one next week, if I remember to do so, if/when I get online.

C'THULHIC ELEMENTAL (TENTACULA NEVESTA)
Number Appearing:	2-5
Armor Class:	6
Move in Feet:	90 for 30 to 180 feet
Hit Dice:	3-8
Dexterity:	14
Alignment:	Chaos
Number of Attacks:	1-3 + per round
Damage per Attack:	2-12 if dragged into jaws
% in Lair:	100%
Treasure Type:	D
Source: HH

      It is rumored that these slimy horrors were first summoned from the elemental plane of evil (if such a place exists) by ancient priests of Nyarlathotep, and these conjured horrors destroyed their temple and spread under the world via the temple's underworld gates. 

        Living in holes, crevices, or tight spaces no bigger than 10'x10' in total darkness and alerted to any source of light, anyone approaching will always be surprised as 2-5 30' to 180' long green tentacles lash out and attempt to encircle a target. 

       If it misses, the tentacle will try again next round and be joined by a second tentacle, and the third round by a third tentacle, and so on. 

       If the tentacle makes a successful grab attack, the victim must make a dexterity throw to maintain control of his weapons, otherwise his arms and any weapons held are also wrapped tight to the victim's body and will be unable to make any attacks. 

The tentacles do no damage, but they drag the victim to the hole the round after a successful attack. The next round, the victim is dragged down into gnashing jaws that do 2 – 12 per round.

Work on "Hordes & Hoards"

I've wound down work on LBB "Characters & Combat" and "Magic", for the time being, and have started developing Hordes & Hoards, the Monsters & Treasure volume for the LBB house rules.

I want something functional yet modelled after what I will use at my table, but as far as releasing it into the wild internet public, its ho-hum, just another fucking monster manual, so I've been thinking of other functional bits & pieces to add to it to give it just that li'l something that would make it stand apart.

So far, I've decided to add a line of randomly determined treasure according to the Treasure Type of each monster (no big whup there, Bob...) and either a piece of art from ancient D&D times (hello, Greg Bell & C.Corey!), something a bit more modern (who are these pieces by???), or a bit of random dungeon lair (map & 1pd) that features said monster made by yours truly.

The write-up for the bit of dungeon won't even be a quarter of a 1pd (one-page dungeon), but just enough to get the referee something to jump start the ol' creative process when the decision is made to use one of these standard critters.

So far, the sources of monsters for H&H range from 0e (The Single Volume Edition), Holmes Basic, Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry, and a few from here & there - early issues of The Dragon & the Strategic Review, one mash-up from Classic D&D (that I recall), one from Metamorphosis Alpha, and another (maybe more) from Classic Traveller.

More later (so much for doing blogwork at work...)

Version 11 is up!

A very short note to let you all know that I've completely skipped versions 9 & 10, and have gone straight for ELEVEN.

"Our versions go up to eleven!"

So much for the obligatory Spinal Tap reference.

A bit more added here & there, a bit more clear formatting, more shaded boxes, Zenopus' Random Character Backgrounds added (without his permission, of course...), and the reasons keep adding up as to why these PDFs are unregulated house-rules for playing D&D, and not an official OSR marketable product with PI, IP, copyrights or copylefts.

Its a total hack. Always was, always will be.

There are some other things about version 11 I was probably going to mention, but I'm guerilla internetting and my coffee shop is about to close for the evening.

Just download 11 (if googledocs will let you) and find those easter eggy changes for yourself! I dare ya!

:D

Examples of Play

This is a short, preliminary post that I hope will lead to an ongoing concern for my rules updates. Eventually I want to post actual examples of play and combat using LBB rules, but I haven't really had the time to actually roll up some characters and inflict a dungeon on them, let alone doing a step-by-step diary of the action and finishing it off with a written piece that highlights these obscure rules in an entertaining and illuminating way.

I mean, I do have a group of characters that I rolled up using the basic 0e rules, and I posted a short, but entertaining (to me, anyway) journal at Dragonsfoot, [0e/Holmes] Exploring the Djangorun Depths (http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=65248) but I haven't really had the time to do this for LBB rules.

Perhaps a bit of re-tooling is in order, so I can cull a few worthy examples of play and combat that fits in the context of LBB rules.

Of course, the best way to go about this is to actually playtest the rules, which I have not the time to write up a new dungeon scenario, nor do I have any players that would be interested in anything but Pathfinder rules, let alone a Holmes expansion like LBB. 

Ah well, I tell myself that this is why this is my hobby, not a business model! ;)

Levels Beyond Basic version 8 is up!

In fact, BOTH sections of Volume I are up; Section 1 - Characters and Combat, and Section 2 - Magic.

ODT is a wonderful medium to work in, but just not Libre Office 3. Before the upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04.whatever, the default ODT MSWord clone worked just fine. There were no hang-ups when I created odts that had 50 or more pages, with or without pictures, columns, footers & headers, and whenever I converted the odt into pdf - the finished product would not hiccup and bounce the inserted pics to the next empty page and otherwise screw up my page settings.

So, due to my own lack of time and patience to sit down & figure out why these things are happening, I just split LBB into 2 parts. There is nearly 30 pages of other stuff that wound up on the editing floor, and did not make it into this version. Most of it is a section on Variant spellcaster classes that needs a lot more work to make it presentable to my players as a set of house rules. This section may wind up in Volume III, the Referee's Guide.

Another biggie that got the ax is the "Spell Index" sorted by schools. This was cut due to the expected size of the index when finished (I only have the MU, Cleric and Druid spells listed so far - and I have yet to finish the Illusionist & Witch spells!), and b sorting spells by school, the rules would shift ever so blatantly towards the Advanced game, even if classifying all spells according to AD&D schools is primarily a tool to help players & refs design new spells.

Cutting the index led in turn to the cutting of the Vancian Spell section. There are only a handful of finished spells for this section and several hundred Vancian spell names with only another hundred or so with the barest descriptions of what the spell can do.

Of the final thing to get cut is the Warlock Variant and the Tiefling race. These are pet projects of mine, and may eventually find their way into a house rules supplement. For now, I am primarily designing a Tiefling Warlock class for a new player who likes these sort of things. For that matter, I rather like Tieflings, and I think that the Warlock class is a drop-dead fit for that race. Unfortunately, it may not blend so well with the implied setting of Holmes and Portown. Time will tell, and thankfully so, as I will have to spend quite a bit of it to perfect this race & class for LBB rules.

WHEW! Now that Volume I of "Levels Beyond Basic" is finished, its a load off my mind, and now I can start serious development on the second volume tentatively titled: "Holmes' Hordes & Hoards". I originally wanted to reprint all the monsters and treasures from 0e, Holmes & the Supplements, only put together  - exactly like the Monster Manual, and the treasure section of the DMG...

However, that idea never really settled well with me, since, if I want HH&H to look just like the MM & DMG, why not just use the MM & DMG instead of reinventing the wheel yet again? So, taking a cue from the ingenious "Dungeon Alphabet" for S&W or Labyrinth Lord (or any OSR game for that matter), I will attempt to present monsters and treasures in a slightly different way. In fact, it may turn out to look a lot like the Monster & Treasure Assortment supplements, but there are a lot of little extras that I will throw in too.

Things like: a "Why is This Monster Here?" table; a Holmesian monster name generator; the Portown Wandering Monster Encounter Table (geared towards my own version of Portown), an Ancient & Rare Coins table, and other variations on random magic items, and some other things I thought of whilst driving at work last night and promptly forgot about...

I continue to change Volume III's name, which may be a fortunate thing. At this moment, it is tentatively titled "The Holmes' Referee's Portown Guide", or the HRPG. I expect that Volume III will most likely undergo several more name changes until it is finally finished.

I am continually finding a lot of things to cram into the Ref's Portown Guide, and I am afraid that it may be easier to rename all of my optional rules and slap a "HRPG Supplement" tag on the cover of each and be done with it!

I have so many things ready to go, but have never released (due to art & copyright stuff), that without further editing, could take up 100 or more pages already. Just thinking about it exhausts me. :P

Anyhoo, most of this is purely speculative until its actually finished. LBB vol. I is not really finished, because I'll always toy with the writing and go in and find typos and contradictions in the rules I added, but mainly, it'll never be finished until I find or make my own original art for it.

Also, I do not intend to start a kickstarter, crowdfund, or patronize for any sort of campaign of other people's money to put this into print. It'll always be free, as long as it stays up, and not declared to be an illegal document.

Any modules I create for 0e, Holmes, Basic, Advanced, or otherwise OSRIC, or OSR in general is another story. I could rationalize selling modules or adventures (campaigns) on Drivethru or RPGNow for a few bucks or cents, whichever comes first. :D

Delayed Actions in Combat

   The work on the Reference Sheets has been a long time in coming, and I've finally found that window of motivation to throw myself into. The major changes so far have centered on removing the Spell Casting in Combat table, as it is no longer relevant, and revising the Combat Round Sequence, and subsequently, the Order of Events section in LBB.

   But lest I forget, the biggest change in the LBB was to split it into two sections - the Characters and Combat Section and the Magic Section. Both sections weigh in at around 47 to 50 pages now, and my OS seems to be handling them a lot smoother. I will post them at some point after this series of revisions; hopefully I will find a bit of temporary art to put at the head of the Magic Section. I am still working on a few penciled pieces, but they are nowhere near what I want for the book(s). 

   One detail that struck me while I edited the Combat Round Sequence was the usefulness of Delayed Actions. Basically, the initiative winner of the Surprise, First & all Subsequent rounds has the option of delaying a specific action until later in the round, and it occurred to me that I want to expand on the idea to make it more palatable to players and point out the usefulness of a delayed action.

   Combat in LBB is primarily Dex based, as Holmes Basic combat is; the character, NPC or monster with the highest Dexterity goes first, however, I have put in the option of rolling a 1d6 for each side or individual, as each group will have their own preferences.

   However, a Delayed Action is specifically designed to be very advantageous for those characters with high Dexterity, it is a common sense thing to see it codified in LBB. I don't even recall where I picked up the Delayed Action rule, but I thought it would open up combat in unexpected ways if players know about it, and could possibly use it when the Initiative is theirs. (Of course, the Referee should use it too when the Opposing Side has the Initiative!)

   To clarify who can delay an action in combat, in the case of 1d6 per side style initiative, the Initiative Winning side combatants each may delay their actions; Individual 1d6 winners and Dexterity based Initiative, anyone may declare a delayed action IF that action is used against an opponent with a lower Dexterity.

   The first useful thing I thought of in using a Delayed Action is to delay one's attack until a specific action by an opponent happens. Examples include triggering a trap set by the party (pull rope "A" to trigger deadfall of rocks and lumber at "B"), firing a nocked arrow at an opponent if they reach for the Gold Maguffin, or running to block a melee opponent attempting to charge the party's spell-caster who is attempting to cast a spell.

   Are these adequate examples of player strategy for your groups? Besides really flumphing the attack roll, is there any drawback to declaring a Delayed Action in combat? Is there anyway to encourage 'thinking outside the box' by offering more concrete examples of Delayed Actions?

   This topic has the possibility of being another useful Sidebar topic in the LBB. :)