25 Years Ago...

Okay, we're wrapping up the month of October! I wasn't sure I'd get it done with all the monsters to go through, but it's the 31st and this is all that's left. November won't be nearly as swamped, since the core rules are officially done. But I'll still get started on it ASAP. Alright, so according to my lengthy Product List file, there are three online files left to go. The first is a Cliffhanger, The Village of Camiram . This is a much longer Cliffhanger than the previous one, with eight installments. And instead of an adventure, this is a complete 'home base' village. That sounds fine to me. I'll incorporate it into Tasiri pretty much as-is, I suppose. So, Camiram is a small village of about 500 souls, mostly human with the other races represented to varying degrees. Halflings are the most common demihumans, followed by dwarves. The town mayor is a 4th-level halfling 'noble', which I assume should be the aristocrat class from the DMG ....

Okay, so we're finishing up October with five online additions. Two of them are adventures, so I'm going to split them between tonight and tomorrow. Two are shorter additions, and one is a bonus Halloween Map-o-Week which I'll cover tomorrow. So, up first is this month's online adventure, Base of Operations . This is a short adventure, seven pages long, written for 5th-level characters. It's set in an abandoned castle named Brightstone Keep, which has come under new management, specifically an orc cleric/necromancer with some troll friends. The adventure starts when characters come to the town of Marikest, which is a large border town that has recently been stripped of its 100-man army. Unfortunately, the people of Marikest are pretty sure that they are going to need that army due to the threat of banditry, especially since the best men in Marikest went with that army. But Brightstone Keep is rumored to have some old treasure to be found, so of course enterprising P...

Okay, so as I mentioned, this is one I don't physically own yet, so I'm just going to do a quick overview from a PDF file. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up a copy before too long and I can give it a proper read-through. Until then, this will have to do. So, Into the Dragon's Lair  is the first Forgotten Realms  product of 3rd edition, not counting the Polyhedron issues. It's a 96-page adventure set in Cormyr after the death of King Azoun IV and his daughter Tanalasta. It's a nation in turmoil now, with an unwilling regent ruling until Azoun's grandson, Azoun V, can take the throne. This is not for the weak; this adventure is for 10th-level characters, easily the highest we've seen so far. There are two parts of the adventure. The first is the quest to find the lair of the dragon responsible for killing the king. The dragon is dead, but the lair still looms. It turns out that the lair is actually on a demiplane in which is located a city of extradimensio...

Yes indeed, Polyhedron Magazine. There was one back in August as well (143), but it had no relevant content worth going over from a gaming perspective, just Realms info. This one, however, has several articles that include gaming stats, so I decided to pick up a copy and go through it. For those unfamiliar with it, Polyhedron was the official magazine of the RPGA, and first saw print all the way back in 1981. It wasn't available in stores; you had to be a member to get it. The RPGA products aside from Polyhedron included modules such as The Egg of the Phoenix , also not available in stores until a later compilation brought several of them together in a 'supermodule'. Polyhedron included quite a bit of gaming material in its first few years, but it was the Ravens Bluff era that really gave it a boost. The Living City campaign was the official RPGA setting from the very late 1980s until...well, I had to look it up, but it lasted until 2004. So, Polyhedron does include some Ra...

Okay, now that we've finished with the Monster Manual  and the core rules in general, I now have...five days to get the rest of the month's stuff done, and there are three things left plus online stuff. So, I'm going to dive right in and get the whole Dragon #276 done tonight. Ready? Let's go! The focus of this issue, obviously, is monsters, since it came out alongside the Monster Manual . But it's also a Hallowe'en issue as is tradition for October mags. So I'm willing to bet we get some horror-type monsters within, as well as that subtle prestige class named on the cover. And, the part I'm really liking, is the article with step-by-step instructions to create a new monster. Let's do this. Ad, ad, cover art, table of contents, ah, editorial. This talks about using your subconscious, through your dreams, give you game ideas. I like the part about dreaming that everyone else in the world had vanished, and he was all alone, and he put that into a game ...

Okay, this is the Map-a-Week that came out 25 years ago: The Haunted Temple . It looks innocuous enough, I think. I'm going to put it somewhere near location 8 on the Journey map. It's out of the way, which makes it easy to put whatever I want inside without worrying about affecting other things in the region. So, this is an old temple that was abandoned for some reason, and now it's haunted. Well, that suggests ghosts, doesn't it? So yeah, I'm going to put those templates to good use here. At least one, anyway. We have 19 locations to stock, so let's get to it. I'm going to make this a dungeon for 5th-level characters, I think. That seems reasonable. 1. Fountain. The gates leading to the temple are old and broken; the right gate is rusted in place and can't be closed unless a DC 25 Str check succeeds. If the gate is closed, it makes an utterly horrific shrieking sound that can be heard a long way off, and will definitely attract predatory creatures in t...

God, I hate being sick. It just sucks the life out of you and makes getting things done nearly impossible. But I'm going to plow through and finish this off, because I'm running out of October to work with, and there's still more stuff to post about for this month. So, let's finish off the Monster Manual  once and for all, and then the core rules are DONE. So, Appendix 3 introduces the new Templates. This is a very neat idea that sidesteps the problem that earlier editions had where all members of a certain monster class were basically the same. You could have a 6th-level fighter, a 9th-level wizard, and an 8th-level rogue get bit by a werewolf, and if they all contracted lycanthropy, they would all end up as a 4 HD werewolf, period. That kind of takes away from the believability of the situation. I know, talking about believability with werewolves and vampires running around. I'm talking about the in-game believability. Why would someone who used a sword for most o...

Okay, so we finished off the main monster section yesterday, but there are still plenty of critters to go. Unlike in earlier editions, 3rd edition splits off animals and vermin from the regular monster list. I suppose it's because a) animals aren't going to have lengthy writeups since they aren't going to have much in the way of special abilities, and b) there's no need to include art in these sections since everyone knows what an ape or a shark looks like. So, we'll go through the animals and vermin real quick; the templates will be a next-time thing for sure. For the animals and vermin, I'm just going to list the size, HD, and CR, plus any extraordinary ability scores and any notable special abilities. Oh, and the advancement, because why not? Bigger and stronger animals are always handy. So, it won't take long. First, the animals: Ape (Large, 4 HD, CR 2, Str 21. Adv 8 HD) Baboon (Medium, 1 HD, CR 1/2. Adv 3 HD) Badger (Tiny, 1 HD, CR 1/2, berserk rage whe...

Let's get through the rest of these, shall we? The Tarrasque is one of those campaign-destroying monsters that made its first appearance in the Monster Manual II  in 1983. It is a Colossal Magical Beast with 48 HD and a CR of 20, and there is only one of them in existence. I mean, per campaign, right? I would hope that someone using the tarrasque in their game wouldn't expect everyone else to just accept that they can't use it in theirs. I certainly wouldn't consider it exclusive to someone else's game. Anyway, the tarrasque is really, really tough to kill. It WILL hit you with its attacks (+52 is its lowest attack bonus), and it will shrug off a lot of your hits in return (AC 35 and damage reduction 25+5). Even if you do hurt it, the regeneration 40 will take care of that. Its carapace deflects all rays, lines, cones, and magic missile  spells, and what it doesn't deflect will still have to get past the spell resistance of 32. And if you somehow get it down to ...

Man, that was quick...I ordered the November stuff on Saturday, and today it arrived. Four days. Meanwhile, I hadn't finished unpacking the October stuff. So, I already got the Pool of Radiance: Attack on Myth Drannor module, and now I also have Dragon #277, Dragon Annual #5, Dungeon #83, Living Greyhawk Journal #2, Forge of Fury , and the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer . Unfortunately, this copy doesn't have the map of Greyhawk included, and neither did the first Gazetteer  I picked up, so I'm stuck without one. I can always print a copy, I suppose, but it would be nice to have an actual map. So, let's get through the 'S' section, which is a big one. We begin with the mighty Sahuagin, who first appeared in the Blackmoor  supplement in 1975. They are a nasty crew of Aquatic Humanoids (Medium-sized) with 2 HD and a CR of 2. They hang out with sharks, are amphibious, don't like fresh water at all, and go into a blood frenzy when they take damage, which makes them ...