Mad Gaming Madness

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 ...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

 An article from the April 1994 issue of Dragon magazine (#204), this was by Matt Posner, “Arcane Lore: The Crazed Book of Mog.” Unlike a lot of articles of a similar type, the joke spells provided actually had real uses, and the book was an interesting object in and of itself. I've used different spell names that I found in The Incomplete Book of Books and Tomes IV on ENWorld. I'm not sure who the authors are, so I haven't credited them; if somebody knows, please post the information!

So, in Dragon #168 (April 1991), there appeared an article by Robin C. Ashmore and Michele Batter titled “Merty’s Manual of Magical Merchandise.” The article provided a number of items one might find in a magic shop, each with a useful effect (well, mostly useful) and a detriment, along with a price. The prices for these items were somewhat absurd, but it was meant in humor.  This article appeared after I stopped regularly reading the magazine so it passed me by, but when I got the Dragon Magazine CD Archive  and read through issues I missed, it drew my attention. While I don't think the items are as flavorful as others that appeared in previous April issues, they had more utility than most. Others seem to have thought so -- most of the items appeared (with prices unmodified) in the AD&D 2nd edition  Encyclopedia Magica series, Volume 2. Here, then, are some of the items. Prices have been removed, as we don't generally do those for 5th edition. If your campaign does...

So, when the blog went into hiatus, I had been wrestling with the Pink Dragon. I was trying to combine two different pink dragons from comedy articles: The pink (candy) dragon from Rick Reid's scenario “The Caves of Confection,” in Polyhedron issue #051 (January 1990). The pink dragon from Jeanne McGuire's entry in Not Necessarily the Monstrous Compendium in Dragon #156 (April 1990). Both of these had humor elements, but still had (I judged) some gameplay value and I felt it would be good to combine them into one fully-fleshed out creature. But making a full stat block for a new type of dragon in D&D 5E is hard . You can go simple for Lair and Legendary Actions, but that feels like a cheap copout. And I'm a huge fan of Spectre Creation's Cosmic Dragon Breviary , and in that one he statted out five full new species, with new Lair and Legendary Actions. So, when I came back to the blog, I felt I needed to finish this guy before moving on; he'd been waiting long e...

Continuing with the comedy items are these two, which are, again, of extremely limited use. I don't tend to use curses much, but the curses on these items feed into the humor. EDIT: Accidentally posted an earlier draft of this blog post. Oops! Fixed now (5/18/2023).

So, two more items from the backlog today, of questionable use, from two different articles in the 80s  —  one by John Maxstadt and one by James MacDougall, both prolific authors of several articles to Dragon . One of the tricks with these items is trying to find a use  —  maybe not a good use, but some sort of use  —  for each of them; otherwise, there's little point to doing a conversion. Fortunately, I feel like these authors in particular also tried to make the items have some edge-case uses beyond just a one-use joke.

So, since I'm picking up over a year after my last post, I decided a good first move would be to update the list of humor articles I posted last year . There were a few I missed the first time around, but I'm still pretty proud of it -- it's a comprehensive list.

So, I had a change in work shift, and recently I had a baby! Nevertheless, I have a backlog of stuff I should post, things I'd started to work up and then put on the back burner to focus on Real Life. So, two weapon items today.

This blog post refers to this post by Skerples of the Coins & Scrolls blog. Go read it, it's fantastic. Equipment A mining rig consists of a mining pick, a lantern, a rope (50', hemp), a sack (small), and a backpack. An Adventurer can purchase one at any affiliated kiosk near the Blockchain Mine at the price below; the added cost includes fees for AdventureGild ® certification of the durability and quality of the elements of the pack. A High-Quality ® mining rig consists of two pickaxes made of Mythryl ®, a lantern (bullseye), a rope (50', free-range organic hemp), a sack (large), and a backpack with a patch certifying it is a High-Quality ® item, making you the envy of other Adventurers. An Enchanted ® mining rig consists of the same gear as the High-Quality ® pack, but the pickaxes are enchanted with Nystul's magic aurum  ®; the sparkling gold sheen provided by the enchantment displays to all the magical nature of the pickaxes, which guarantees they will be use...

One of  areas which all role-playing games share (as opposed to, say, story games) is some amount of random chance affecting things. Some games have randomly-generated characteristics used to define a character. Even in games where characters aren't randomly-generated at all, dice are used in determining the results when a player attempts to overcome a challenge where the outcome (one way or the other) is not guaranteed. For many years in the early days of the RPG hobby, most games used random numbers for character generation. Since there was a dearth of material for any one game (even the big dog in the early days, TSR, didn't originally produce scenarios -- the first scenario produced for D&D was by a company called Wee Warriors), many hobbyists converted material back and forth. This is simple to do if you're handy with math, and trivial now, when there are websites where the computer will do the work for you . I was reading an article by Graeme Davis from Imagine #...

Today's items come from "Still More [Gods Forbid] Out-rages From the Mages," by John M. Maxstadt from Dragon  #144 (April 1989). In their original form the joke really only works if the items are found together. I think there's the germ of some interesting usability hiding in these jokes, and with a little work I think the following retain humor while being potentially useful in a few edge-cases in games.

 Another one from Mr. Maxstadt. I like the idea of giving some character to monsters, and this is a very flavorful cursed version of the rug of smothering . Rug of Mothering Would-be independent adventures prepare for thrilling heroics, only to end their peace of mind prematurely as the rug be-neath their feet animates and smothers them – emotionally.    A rug of mothering can be made in many different forms, from a finely woven carpet fit for a queen-mother to a coarse mat from a peasant matron's hovel. Creatures with the ability to sense magic detect the rug's false magical aura of transmutation magic.    In some cases, a rug of smothering is disguised as a carpet of flying or another beneficial magic item. However, a character who stands or sits on the rug, or who attempts to utter a word of command, quickly finds that it forms an emotional attachment to them. Once the rug has formed an attachment to a character it will always be found somewhere about their...

Two food-related items today. 

Today's monster comes from the Dragon #156 article, "(Not Necessarily the) Monstrous Compendium." Submitted by Sharon Jenkins, I think it's an interesting low-level celestial you can put into a module and not worry about it single-handedly taking on an encounter. I've had players convince unicorns to do their dirty work, and while it's a valid option for PCs, I don't mind having a noncombat alternative. The unicow is not nearly as potent as its more famous cousin, while still providing a healing respite for the party—but it's not going to tank the Big Bad on their behalf.