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Ambience for Your Table: Suno AI (with Caveats)

So, in the past I've picked up all sorts of music for tabletop RPG ambience. I treasure both of Stephen Michael Sechi's Music from Talislanta CDs, for example, and the first year they did GenCon I bought all of Toxic Bag Productions' available sound effects CDs . I love me some tabletop ambience, which is ironic as most of my face-to-face gaming lately has been in hobby shops, which are the worst places to do ambience; my FLGS doesn't have rooms, so we're out in the middle of the shop floor with all the noise of 40K players competing with my GM voice. And there are plenty of people who do tabletop gaming music for free. There was a point where I had listened to everything Matti Paalanen put online for tabletop ambience; he put whole albums online for free for people to use at their tabletop games. And for Traveller, the band Lord Weird Slough Feg put out the album Traveller , which actually tells a story. So, all that to say, I have no problem paying somebody for
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Monstrous Monday: Quazar Dragon

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This one took a long time. I know it's not Monday, sue me. From Susan Lawson's article “There Can Never Be Too Many Dragons, Right?” in Dragon #96 (April 1985), it was never meant to be used in a regular campaign, just to end ones where the PCs had acquired several kingdoms' worth of magical items that made them otherwise untouchable -- by having the quazar dragon devour their home planet. Classic Old School methodology. Nevertheless, when I read SpectreCreations' Cosmic Dragon Breviary , the idea wouldn't let go of me, to convert the dragon and make it part of the Cosmic Dragon family. It fits really well with the rest of them, and would make a dangerous foe. So, here is the quazar dragon, in all his formidable glory.
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Wondrous Wednesday: Robe of Blending (Waring 3-speed)

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There were two robes of blending that basically had the same shtick -- instead of the robe "blending" you into the background, it "blended" you like a kitchen blender. Ha ha! The first was Allen Hammack, who wrote one up in his article “The Lighter Side” in Dragon #35 (March 1980), about typos in the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide. The second was the prolific John M. Maxstadt who put the Waring 3-speed into his article “Still More [Gods Forbid] Outrages From the Mages” in Dragon #144 (April 1989). But I thought, you know, there's room for a robe that can shoot blades at opponents, and giving it a curse isn't the worst. So, here's the result.
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Monstrous Monday: Plush Golem

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There were actually two different sets of plush golem published for Old School D&D, both in April Fool's articles. The first was written by James MacDougall in the article “Not Found In Any Stores!” in Dragon #120 (April 1987). Written for AD&D 1st edition, it had Small-sized plush golems. The second was in Anne Brown's article “The Dragon’s Worstiary: Golems” in Dragon #228 (April 1996) for AD&D 2nd edition. This one was a Large-sized plush golem, and the description calls out Barney the Dinosaur and Hobbes (of Calvin & Hobbes fame). The following writeup combines some from both versions.
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Fantastic Friday: Zagyg’s Comedicon

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So, this one comes from the Arcane Lore column in Dragon #270 (April 2000). Authored by Robert S. Mullin, “Greyhawk Grimoires: Zagyg’s Comedicon” introduced a new spellbook by Gary Gygax’s in-game alter-ego, Zagig Yragerne, one-time mayor of Greyhawk city, then the demigod Zagyg the Mad. As Arcane Lore columns go, it was kind of disappointing. None of the spells were as broadly useful as the ones in The Crazed Book of Mog , and I felt the flavor was a little bland. But I like the idea of a spellbook which might have much more powerful magics, that no one has yet encountered because of the innate dweomer of chaos and confusion around the object.
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Wondrous Wednesday: Arrow of Sleighing & Wand of Lightening Bolts

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For this installment, I’m going back to an early issue of Dragon . When they were editing the AD&D 1st edition Dungeon Master’s Guide , there were a number of typos. Allen Hammack did an article in issue #35 (March 1980) called “The Lighter Side,” where he came up with stats for magical items based on his favorite typos. Here are two of them.
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Monstrous Monday: Werecamel

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So, I’ve been scanning old issues of Polyhedron (the RPGA's house magazine, put out by TSR) for humor content, and came across the module “The Camel’s Nose” is Polyhedron #29 (May 1986). The adventure follows a group of nomadic Valley Elves as they make a pilgrimage to a site holy to Camelopardus, the Camel Lord of the Desert. It’s exactly what you’d expect of a joke module from the mid-80s, but it has some charm for all its flaws. A werecamel plays a part, and I couldn’t resist converting it. I also include a camel stat block because I'm not happy with the several different ones I've found online. I didn't get to finishing this up until Tuesday, but “Monstrous Monday” only works one day a week, so I'm back-dating it.
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