Another character sheet commission for the adorable Wil McKinnee, Hakaak the half-orc who carries his halfling lady friend around on his back for “combat maneuvers”.

 

Did you know that I played a game with Wil where he jumped on a Pterodactyl being ridden by a javelin-thrower, stabbed it in the side, then used the sword as a rudder to make it crash dead into the ocean, backflipping away from it in the nick of time? Well I did, it was epic.

So remember that cave map I donated to Matt Jackson, and subsequently all the wonderful things that happened to my players when they went inside it?

Well it’s now a little adventure pdf that you can take home to meet the parents.

 

It’s Pay What You Want, so if you’ve ever wanted to give me money for some reason here’s your chance, or alternatively you can take it for free and digitally spit in my eye, I’m fine with it either way as long as you enjoy it.

 

Click below to make all of your wildest dreams come true.

 

Here have some art, originally drawn for Patrick Stuart’s Veins of the Earth.

Now that it has an actual publishing deal these will probably never appear in the actual book because aesthetic consistency, with the whole thing likely to be illustrated by Scrap Princess (who is a brilliant machine).

 

Nevertheless I’m glad they happened, the Alkalion is one of my favourite things I’ve ever, ever drawn, and they all forced my fingies to keep working and working and now starting a new drawing isn’t the struggletown it was at the start of the year.

 

Unsolicited life lesson: THE MORE YOU STOP DOING THINGS OUT OF FRUSTRATION AT YOUR OWN INEPTITUDE THE LONGER YOU WILL BE TERRIBLE AT THEM. Push through the pain cupcake.

 

The Alkalion

 

The ToRaptoise

(still not really what I pictured when I first read about them and got all light-headed and dreamy,

but the design goal that Scrap and I ended up coming to was “a carnivorous penis spilling out of the worst vulva”, so I think I can lay some claim to success)

 

Sonic Pigs: the pigs that make you shit yourself and weep

 

My brother Michael joined us for this one and rolled up a character while we wrapped up the giant spider murder situation.

Well actually first Sophie showed everyone her first set of dice and the adorable little suede bag she sewed for them, and we talked about Emma’s potential upcoming date but maybe not with a friend of a friend who legitimately “left his card” for her at the store (says Emma, “What’s dating? I don’t know how to date. I normally just get them drunk.”), and we ate some satay, and THEN we wrapped up the giant spider murder situation.

Rose: Damonallit Aspurta, enormous jangling Moorish Devotee of the Corpulent One and his recent convert, Obediah Duncaster the angry overweight drunkard.

Emma: Malatesta du Caddis, autistic murdermachine extraordinaire, and the fabulously feathered maleficar Thoth’mora Gnostos.

Sophie: Florian Voldaris, recently crippled Francish dandy still searching for his purpose in life while hobbling around on a silver candlestick peg-leg, and Sangr’all Humgha, Thoth’mora’s unidentical plump and “booby” twin sister.

Consumables: Rose got this “experience” gift card for being the tits at work, but all the “experiences” kind of sucked so instead we spent it on $200 of red wine, so we drank like two bottles of that and I’m obsessed with sarsaparilla right now and also there was a jam donut tower.

Cameraphone photos throughout taken by Rose.

Read the rest…

Nameless Searcher asks:

“can ur poo turn in two a fungus or worm as i feel like summons running up an down my body”

 

Dear Reader,

Thankyou for your query regarding poo, and its inherent ability to form a portal through which fungal worms may be summoned!

The sensation you describe running up and down your body is in fact the molecules of your very being vibrating at a different frequency in order to allow entrance from the beyond, and should subside within 3-4 days once the fruiting conqueror has settled within the new confines of your flesh. In the meantime, it would be wise to refrain from inspecting your rectum in any way, as the sudden appearance of a finger, or leering eyes reflected in a mirror, could be construed as aggression by your new symbiotic god, elevating its rage to fevered heights that would make the very mountains weep.

As in all things, deal with your new guest with softness and compassion, and in no time at all you will begin to reap the fruit that your warmth and poo has sown.

 

With Heartfelt Regards,

Last Gasp.

Let’s talk about random generators.

 

First of All +Joshua Macy made an excellent little Chrome extension called Roll M that allows you to roll on anything that looks like a table within your browser.

Now, while rolling on tables is neat and all, the thing that makes me really excited about it is that it also works with groups of images.

 

I’ve already talked about how easy it is to make visual encounter boards with Pinterest. Well now let’s blow those socks off.

First download Roll M. The link was back up there hurry up.

Yes, you will need Chrome.

Now head over to this Pandaemonium board I made full of art and miniatures. I’ll probably add more later shut up I’ve been busy. These are the things your players are going to start running into because fuck it.

 

 

Okay now click on the icon Roll M put on your toolbar (that’d be the white square with five orange dots) and then move your mouse cursor over the Pinterest board.

Notice how it highlights things in blue? It’s showing you the areas you can select for rolling! What you want to do is get it to highlight in a wrapper around all the images, so just move your cursor into the margin between a few images… and click.

 

INSTANT VISUAL ENCOUNTER RESULT.

 

And unlike my d20 Ostentatious Fashions board I didn’t even need to number them! So useful. Image too small? That’s okay just click on it.

 

 

For Another Thing +Benjamin Eisenhofer told me about a little program called Inspiration Pad Pro (there are dodgy-looking blue links to download the free desktop version, it’s fine trust me).

While it requires a little bit of learning on your part, if you can get your head around the process you’ll be able to build and save tables that you can run through the program to generate random results, even putting in conditional sub-tables (if result is “You Grow a New Dealy” generate “Oh God Where?!” etc.) if that takes your fancy.

 

 

And now for the mewling thing that has been keeping me up all night, every night.

 

 

After having made a couple of automated random generators of my own, and thinking about Brendan’s wish for an easy way to automate things, I decided to make a random generator template.

It is called Choose Your Own Generator.

With this generator you can input your own entries for up to 7 tables and generate random results right there on the webpage without ever having to touch a scrap of code, even choosing the display of the results and how many you generate at once.

 

Well Paolo Greco, being an amazing man, wrote a little javascript bookmarklet that he could run on the page in order to collect the data from the tables and turn them into a link that generates a pop-up result every time you click it.

So I turned that into a button on the page, so that you don’t have to get your soft hands soiled with javascript.

And then I modified it to also pick up the display option.

And then, as wonderful as this was by itself, I wanted more.

 

So I started teaching myself how to use databases and got three-quarters deep into a working archive page before I was talking to Paolo and he advised me that he actually deals with databases for a living, and graciously oversaw the final stages of what I had begun.

 

So what does this mean for you? It means The Seventh Order of the Random Generator, a public archive of bookmarklet random generator links created and submitted through Choose Your Own Generator.

 

It means a bevy of random generator links that aside from being used on the archive page, can be DRAGGED TO YOUR BOOKMARK BAR AND KEPT FOREVER, that can be COPIED AND TURNED INTO BLOG POST LINKS. The code is entirely contained in the link, once you have it, you don’t even need to be connected to the internet to use it, it just pops-up from whatever page it was run from.

 

So enjoy, make some freaking generators already.

 

I need some sleep.

I was a handler for last year’s Secret Santicore, and in the spirit of the terror season offered prizes to those whose entries gave me the most joy.

 

After making Santicore’s vast belly shake M. Diaz of Gloomtrain requested that Rose draw him a Lamia, refined and wicked, so here she is in all her plump glory:

 

And because he’s an absolute sweetheart he insisted that he complete an extra request for me in return, so I asked for some predictions you might get from a Soothsayer Sophisticate and holy shit.

 

 

	THE MANNER OF DELIVERANCE
d8	The Soothsayer Sophisticate...
1	Slices a lamb open with a gloved hand and inspects its viscera as they tumble to the floor.
2	Examines a flock of birds through an apparatus with many lenses and mirrors.
3	Delivers their pronouncement while reading the newspaper. You cannot see their face.
4	Inhales a bright red powder from a carved silver box and shrieks their prediction as they whirl around the room, arms outstretched, eyes vacant.
5	Screams as their head snaps back and their back arches, then whispers a prophecy.
6	Cuts a hole in your palm and peers inside for strange truths.
7	Is eating breakfast and describes your future with a spray of crumbs.
8	Dies, thrashing and bleeding from the mouth, even as their peals of laughter fill the chamber.

 

 

	THE VATIC UTTERANCE ITSELF
d30
1	You will perish in your moment of most awful triumph.
2	Yellow is the colour of madness, and red is the colour of fear.
3	Something ancient and strange from beyond the horizon has learned your name.
4	Your enemies will come bearing weapons of bronze.
5	Dolls signal calamity, while spiders are harbingers of good fortune.
6	You will go to the house without doors.
7	Dusk is the most dangerous hour, while midnight is the safest.
8	Do not trust men with dogs, women with birds, or children with snakes.
9	Never dance in the light of the full moon or sleep under the light of the sun.
10	You will one day be trapped between fire and sea.
11	Death wears tattered silk.
12	Calamity is the child of hesitation and the mother of rectitude.
13	Only foul things wear more than one face.
14	Great fortune sleeps beneath cloven feet.
15	Something has awakened beneath the city. It is hungry and evil and very, very old.
16	Never eat the flesh of dogs.
17	You have been the victim of a great deception.
18	Trust in the keen perspicacity of mothers.
19	Goats are bearers of evil.
20	Your salvation lies in the hands of a child bearing a spindle.
21	Kings and councillors plot your end in hidden chambers.
22	Something foul stirs itself in the sea.
23	Even as we speak, fools and thieves disturb the old barrows.
24	You will acquire the enmity of a herald.
25	The Red Eye Star shines brightly and hungrily over your head.
26	A wild queen seeks to strike you down, and her children wish to eat you.
27	You will reap great profit from a scene of terrible bloodshed.
28	The guardian grows feeble, even as the beast gnaws at its chains.
29	Soon, a harvest will yield dangerous fruit.
30	Run.

 

M. Diaz writes like nobody’s business.

The plausibly brilliant Wil McKinee commissioned me to draw a character sheet for him and I did because who could say no to that face.

 

Description by Wil:

 

BLABERUS

 

Is a 28 year old Hermaphroditic Halfling (About 3′ tall) with short blonde hair and an untrusting face. She wears a leather chest and backplate of dark brown. There is nothing underneath this. Her pants are baggy but tapered. Upon the head and down over the shoulders sits a chainmail cowl, held tightly in place by a Crown of Ears, collected from an array of beasts and humanoids. They listen to and transmit to BLABERUS the thoughts of a single individual/entity once per day. She carries a Potion of Spore Blast (2 hours after drinking, the potion will cause the consumer to projectile vomit forth (15 feet) fungal spores with a 40% chance of infecting any target on her person.

Her primary weapon is Scrap’s

 

MERCYS SHADE:

It’s a weaponized umbrella, made out of fancy arcane metals. It can be a shield or a staff, you can deflect one projectile with a successful dex save by open it quickly. It also arrest a fall to a gentle descent if held aloft open.

 

Except for there is an evil looking dagger tip at the hilt on this one.

There’s a shortbow in there too.

 

Actually, replace the eyes with the crown of ears. 5in6 to search regarding hyper-hearing (otherwise 1insix par usual), though if the environment is near-silent movement slows to 5′, unless she makes vocalized sounds which would make it 10′. The Umbrella does 1d6 DMG. The bow as well.

 

 

So after Rasmus killed himself in the death explosion of the soul-stealing swamp rock elf daemon and his son Remus was confined to the Sanatorium due to black ooze infection a sack of gold and xp was sent to Rasmus’ begrudged and estranged daughter Raeleigh, who sighed, bought herself some swords to hit things, and hopped on the next boat to New Feierland.

 

 

And she didn’t even die or anything. Here’s her diary.

 

Read the rest…

I played my first online game by taking a trip to Trent B’s New Feierland, a place every bit as horrible as I’d been told. I loved it.

What follows are the thoughts of Rasmus Carbuncle, Belligerent Soldier of Lost Fortune.

 

 

Well when I came to my senses I was below ground with a bunch of sketchy fellas that seemed to be looking for something, a little nimbly bloke had climbed up to the roof and waved at us when some stitched up dead goatmen fucks came wandering out of the dark.

The prancy magic man next to me cops a javelin through the arm but doesn’t cry much, so I yank it out and stab it in front of us like a pike while he starts waving his arms around. The first dumb dead goatfuck comes charging straight at the pike so while he’s flailing around I behalve him with my horrible blood-rusted claymore, then piss on the shards of his stomped-in skull for good measure. A fella in armour misfires with his fancy-schmancy pistol while another picks up a rock and dusts a goatskull with it, then nimbly little Blixa drops from the roof knife-first and lands in a cloud of broken beastbody.

Javelin boy’s arm-waving stops and the rest of the goatfilth finds themselves caught in some kinda magic web I guess, I don’t know, I don’t traffic with that stuff. We knife them real quiet and head off towards the grumbling roars that started after that useless pistol shot.

 

I pull one of these fellas up and ask for a refresher of just what I’m doing here apart from hitting goats with swords, and he tells me some eye creature is giving the filthy miners bad dreams that makes them not work which is bad. Fair enough.

Little Blixa’s up on the roof again but soon enough there’s sounds like something mighty huge digging its way up from below the tunnel and more of that godawful groany roaring. So we sets up a rope tripline with walrus tallow all smeared over the rocks in front of it while the noise gets louder, and Blixa buries red and blue gems under the stones further into the tunnel like a crazy fuck before climbing back up to the roof.

 

Out of the darkness comes this slimy bulk of god damn rock dragging itself along with its forelegs, staring at us with glowing green eyes and making our trap look powerful stupid. Blixa looks like he’s going to throw up for a second then handwaves something about eyes being bad but I don’t get it. It drags its body over the buried gems and there’s a great fucking explosion, the slimy moss covering it catches fire and it starts running at us and I take a few discrete steps backwards.

Blixa drops from the roof like he’s going to knife it in the face but falls flat on its head with a wet smack, staring into its eyes then sliding off and falling right in the fucking grease we were going to light up.

The fella in the heavy armour and this big Salt Soldier the prancy magic man summoned up start taking swings at the thing between getting smacked away, and rock-thrower Gaffer Grunion sticks with what he knows but passes out as soon as the rock leaves his hand. Okay eyes bad, I get it now. The handy bloke next to me lassos Blixa with a nice silk rope so I grab it and pelt in the opposite direction, which is pretty easy seeing as he’s all greased up.

 

Behind me fireballs are exploding and grown men are soiling their pants, I flip Blixa over and grab every explody gem he has left and stuff it into my ded rat sack.

The big rock sludge fuck is on fire now, stomping around in flaming grease and beating the shit out of the Salt Soldier. I open up my Monkey Skull Snuff Mull and breathe deep, I feel good, this is good, I run at the big dumb rock fuck staring at my feet and hurl my precious rat sack right into its big dumb face. I feel good.

 

 

 

What follows from this point are the thoughts of Remus Carbuncle, in New Feierland to find his father Rasmus.

 

 

 

Well, this place is awful. No one knew where my father had gone except for this dwarf guy and now that we’re here, the people my father had gone with are climbing out of a stinking hole in the ground covered in blood and filth, telling me that my father just saved them by blowing up a flaming rock creature with a stupid amount of exploding gems and dead rats not ten minutes ago. They say the resulting unholy green explosion vapourised one of their friends and a chunk of stalactite took my father’s head clean from his shoulders, leaving his body to slump to the ground in a fountain of blood. I don’t know why they would tell me that.

 

They lead me to his body and I lose it for a minute, screaming at the dark. I take his Monkey Skull Snuff Mull and his Sabatons, still full of warm piss, he would have wanted it this way I think.

They tell me all about the things you can find in this godforsaken hole in the ground and my ears perk up at the Alter of Transmutation, or Transformation, Trans-fuckingsomething and right now I want nothing more than to be something else. They lead me to it and I take a hit of booze for my father, then pour it onto the alter amid my falling tears. My knees go weak and my stomach cramps and I’m rolling around in the caltrops some fuck spread around the alter while I wasn’t looking and I’m vomiting and rolling in the vomit. When I can stand up the only thing that seems different is that looking at light hurts like hell and I want to scratch my eyes out. I hate this place.

 

We go back out into the caves and ignore whatever’s flapping around in the dark and come to a short hall with a barred door. Some stitched abomination is standing inside and the little guy they call Blixa spritzes holy water through the bars which of course makes it start sizzling and throwing itself against the door snapping its teeth. They’re all talking about throwing rocks at it until it dies or wasting crossbow bolts and I tie a rope around the hilt of my sword and start jamming it through the bars until the thing is dead, stupid thing doesn’t even stop throwing itself at the door.

 

When it’s in pieces they find a box in the room that Blixa pries open with a crowbar, he pulls out some axes and a book and some kind of spice pouch and I don’t care.

 

Back out in the caves and then we find a room with a round wooden door standing slightly ajar. The room inside is round too and looks like some kind of lab, with two benches carved right into the floor in the middle.

There’s a grated cabinet towards the back and they all start hitting it with things and fucking up their weapons, but hey the cabinet is slightly dented now so whatever makes you happy.

Blixa climbs up on the roof and I grab a hooked pole from the wall and walk towards the door with this Salt Soldier thing. Next thing I know some miner with pale skin like black-shot marble is pulling himself around the corner with a sack in his hand. The others try to ask him what he’s doing here but that black shit is pulsing and he’s getting closer so I swing at him with my new pole and break myself off a piece.

He screams to his friends of course but then Blixa’s dropped a net on him and I’m stabbing him in the back with swords, but then his friends drag him away and shut the goddamn door on us!

 

They’re yelling something about us stealing their treasure but we haven’t even got anything yet and from the sounds of dropping stones I think they’re trying to brick us in?

We smear oil around the floor and rig up a rope attached to the door, running it around the corner of a bench for leverage, three of these guys yank on it and get the door back open but two of them fall down and seven miners come running into the room, including the prick I sworded in the spine. I lob the rest of my booze right into his face but before I can throw a torch the Salt Soldier topples over and knocks it out of my hand. God damn it.

People are tussling on the floor with these miners and getting black vomit all over them, then Blixa smashes his lantern into the oil and two of the fuckers light up like pyres, so I hook booze boy with my pole and send him staggering into the flames.

 

And right there, when it seems like maybe things aren’t always fucking terrible in this place, right there is where the big guy in all the armour comes swinging through the smoke, misses the miners, and fucking stabs me. If I were to measure how good I feel on a scale of ‘hit points’ right now I would give it a solid none, none hit points. No wonder my dad is dead.

He mumbles an apology and scuttles off and I’m still standing so I charge at the smouldering miners with my sword, hoping for a shishkebab, and what I get is my sword knocked out of my woozy hands and black bile spewed all over my right arm.

The skin is tight and chewing and I’m on the floor, I reach for my poniard to hack off the arm and everything goes dark.

 

I’m cutting off the arm but no matter how much I cut there’s always more arm, and then all the right arms have been cut off but they’re always regrowing and the severed ones crawl up to my mouth and try to climb inside, the hands on the floor detach from their arms and they’re shiny new piles of goo and they tear at my ears and nose and they become goo too and always always I’m cutting and it’s eating and I want to wake up but I’m not asleep but this is a dream but there’s always more arm.

 

When I wake up we’re outside and they’ve amputated my arm to the shoulder, they say there’s still more of the black shit in my shoulder though, it’s spreading towards my face, they’ve tied me up and I have this overwhelming urge to bite something.

They say they’re taking me back to town to find someone that can help me, Blixa says he owes me a blood debt for what my father did, they say they need to lock me up in a box now. That seems reasonable.

 

 

 

 

Remus is now back in New Feierland, locked up in the basement sanatorium of the newly founded Baron Blixa Von Apfelsaft of Barovia and Barovania Center For The Amelioration of Unspeakable Afflictions. Blixa takes his blood debts awful seriously and is spending more money than Remus has seen in his whole shitty life to save him, giving the matriarch healer of the area 10,000gp now and promising another 40,000gp if she’s able to find a cure instead of burning the still-living body as is customary in New Feierland.

When they opened the box it was full of black bile and he was growing a new arm and snapping his teeth, so uh, we’ll see how that goes.

 

 

New Feierland: Utterly Terrible 10/10 Would Play Again.

 

 

Appended Obituary by Trent B:

 

The look on his face makes it wonderful.

 

Like… Pissing into his only nice thing, being a pair of steel boots, whilst not even using his fly correctly and holding a dagger… nothing in that registers as being anything worth any kind of thought or emotion. It’s just exactly what needs to be done. All of it. He’s not even looking. He’s like staring down the shitty road that he is in the middle of, just waiting to finish pissing in his boots so he can put them back on and keep walking.

 

Worst character.