Updated Giant List of Swords & Wizardry Resources

I think I've accurately updated the Giant List of Swords & Wizardry resources, after negligently allowing it to get a whopping year out of date. Check it out here:
http://swordsandwizardry.blogspot.com/p/all-swords-wizardry-stuff-i-know-of.html

That's all I have for today, and there will no doubt be many omissions that will need to be fixed.

...and I'm all out of bananas

Girallons are a pretty cool monster, even though they originated in third edition D&D. Like the grick, I think Wizards of the Coast managed to dig out a bit of folkloric ore here that somehow didn't make it into the tomes and grimoires of Advanced and Second edition D&D. (Basic players: hush. It didn't have 4 arms, so it doesn't count).

Way back in 2009, the somewhat-and-possibly-unjustly-reputationally-tarnished James Maliszewski also turned his attention to the girallon, although he took a different direction than I'm about to take. Consider all of this discussion to be linked to the OGL.

James pointed out that the four-armed white ape has its origins in the Barsoom novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. In those books, the apes were 15 feet tall and really, really dangerous. If you're viewing the girallon as a re-skinned copy of the Barsoomian white ape, then the 7 hit dice given to them by the SRD was actually pretty small. I think of 9HD as being something that correlates -- because of the hill giant -- to something that's about 10ft tall. Something 15ft tall ... that's more in the range of 12 hit dice as far as I'm concerned. So, I think James got pretty close to the Barsoomian ape with his writeup, but perhaps not to the intentions of the girallon. 

Here is the version that James created (all open game content):

Girallon
Number Appearing: 1d4+4
% in Lair: 10%
Alignment: Neutral
Armor Class: 6
Move: 12
Hit Dice: 9
Attacks: 4 claws (1d4+2), 1 bite (1d8+1)
Save: F7
Morale: 9
Hoard Class: XX
XP: 1000

The girallon is a fifteen-foot-tall albino ape-like creature, lacking hair on its body, except for its head, which also possesses a large, fanged mouth. A girallon has six limbs, the middle set of which can be used either as arms or as legs, depending on the circumstances. These creatures are strong and dexterous and possess remarkable intelligence, with some of them even able to craft crude weapons and other implements. Girallons typically live in small family groups led by a dominant male. Fortunately, girallons are rarely encountered, as they prefer to dwell in out of the way places, particularly the subterranean ruins of past civilizations. Girallons possess infravision of up to 60 feet. 

I think it's too powerful, because I see girallons as being -- basically -- smaller than this. They are specifically only 8 feet tall and are described as being cousins of the gorilla. In other words, I think what James did is very cool, but that he should have named it a "White Ape-Thing of Mars" instead of tacking on the name of an existing, less powerful, creature.

I stumbled across girallons recently because they figure into one of the adventures in the Razor Coast books that are being produced for Frog God Games. I had to prepare a converted Swords & Wizardry version of the girallon. How to go about it? Well, the first thing was to take a look at James's version, and I rejected it for the foregoing reasons, and the fact that the author in the Razor Coast adventure had definitely not treated it as a 15ft tall creature. The numbers were just too large for that to work. Basically we're seeing the conversion being pushed in a particular direction by the relative power levels of 3e/PFRPG creatures to one another. If you diverge too far from the web-like network of relative strength in the SRD, you end up creating problems for yourself later on, if you do lots of retro-conversions to old school. I like to think of this kind of backwards conversion as a SWitchback, since it's a neat little use of SW, when I use Swords & Wizardry ... yeah, I know, it's totally cheesy, but DO I NEED TO REFER YOU TO SIMON PEGG'S DEFENCE OF NERDS? Do I? I didn't think so, because if you've read this far you are a nerd like me. Just sayin',

That was a digression. Mea culpa.

Let's get back to the topic of four-armed apes, and ignore how that's a sentence you wouldn't really expect yourself to be writing or reading in a "normal" life. Four-armed apes. This is what I decided to use for my girallons:

GIRALLON

Hit Dice: 5

Armor Class: 6 [13]

Attacks: 4 hands (1d4), bite (1d8)

Saving Throw: 12

Special: hug and rend

Move: 12

Alignment: Neutrality

Number Encountered: One, 1d4, or 1d10+5

Challenge Level/XP: 5/240

Girallons are savage, magical cousins of the gorilla, with four arms rather than two. When moving on the ground rather than through the trees, a girallon walks on its legs and lower arms. An adult girallon is about 8 feet tall, broad-chested, and covered in thick, pure white fur. It weighs about 800 pounds.

 Girallons live in troops led by a dominant male. Solitary girallons are usually young males looking to start their own troop. Girallons are very territorial and tend to attack intruders without warning, including strangers of their own kind. Groups of girallons may attack in a line to drive prey toward a cliff or other hazard, or quietly form a ring around their target and suddenly close in.

Stat block for Swords & Wizardry:

Girallon:  HD 5; AC 6[13];  Atk 4 hands(1d4), bite (1d8); Move 12; Save 12; AL N; CL/XP 5/240; Special: hug& rend.

Silence, varlet!

Interesting post over at Dragonsfoot from Frank Mentzer:
http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=35588&start=2130#p1333519

Here is the text of the particular post, but once you're done here, I recommend taking a look at the entirely different take on the discussion in that group.

What's interesting is that there are three types of silence:
1) Silencing yourself for stealth but you can hear
2) Silencing an area (if yourself, you can't hear)
3) Silencing another person but not the area they are in.

Food for thought when designing spells or magic items.

Frank Mentzer wrote:

Yup, that's one of the notable differences between the two systems.

As you note, the OD&D/Moldvay/BECM/RC (ie Classic) version only suppresses your own sounds, while the AD&D 1e/2e version protects vs sound-based effects from monsters.

The AD&D versions reflect the progress of the game. Silence is really inconvenient for spellcasters, so it should be balanced by protection (vs harpy song etc).

From what I've seen, everybody playing Classic uses the AD&D version.
imo the Classic is version broken; you can't cast and you're vulnerable.
My bad. :/

Recommended fix: Best of both worlds

Silence 15'r: Use the 1e version; full sonic lockdown.

Add New:

Quiet 20'r
(level, range, DR, etc same as Silence)

(Why 20'? Why not? Avoids confusion with Silence 15'...)

Apply Classic interpretation BUT permit spellcasting & command word use. Does not affect incoming sounds. Commonly used to render party noise inaudible. The effect moves with the recipient/target; save to avoid, making it stationary (as with Silence). This may be used offensively, preventing a target creature from using a sound-based attack as long as it remains within the effect.

F

A bit from Razor Coast

This isn't designed as a sneak peek at Razor Coast, because there is much cooler stuff in Razor Coast, but this happens to be something that I needed to create for it, and, you know, I needed a blog entry, so here it is.

Bale sharks were apparently some sort of Pathfinder template, either an official one or one that was created for the Pathfinder version of Razor Coast. When the manuscript got to me for conversion, Skeeter Green had already turned the template special-sharks into regular big (7HD) sharks. However, he'd left the "bale shark" name in there, since we've been keeping some of the Pathfinder names as good flavoring for the slumgullion.

Anyway, I decided that if we've got a good name like "bale shark," we should do something with it. So without really making any major alterations or giant leaps in the monster department, I used my conception of worgs (evil spirit-things in wolf shape) to create a similar type of spirit-in-shark creature, a worg of the seas. Could have called it a warg-shark, I guess, but I think "bale shark" just sounds better.

Bale Shark

Hit Dice: 7

Armor Class: 6 [13]

Attacks: 1 bite (1d8+4)

Saving Throw: 9

Special: Feeding frenzy

Move: 0 (swim 24)

Alignment: Chaos

Number Encountered: 1 or 1d4+1

Challenge Level/XP: 8/800

In the deeps of the oceans, bale sharks are to normal sharks as wargs are to wolves. They have a malign intelligence that might almost be the presence of a possessing spirit. They kill more than they devour, they ally themselves with powerful leaders of Chaos in the undersea realms, and they will serve as mounts to aquatic raiders and reavers.

Other than their evident intelligence and strangely mottled markings, bale sharks are not physically different from an unusually large, but normal, shark. Since other sharks tend to roam in the same area, however, a bale shark attack may trigger the approach of other sharks, and a feeding frenzy. The feeding frenzy operates as per normal, although the bale sharks are able to control themselves.

A feeding frenzy will cause 2d6 sharks of any size to appear from surrounding waters. All the shark will attack madly, and each time a shark attacks there is actually a 1 in 6 chance that it will target another shark instead of a human.

*the art I used for this is the awesome work of Dan Mumford. I had to track down that link, by the way, because the original image linked to a dead myspace page. Plus, I claim dibs on finding him as an artist; he's awesome.

Just a Couple of Grins and Notes

My son this morning, playing Skyrim: "This blade just isn't cutting it." <pause> "See what I did there?"

Erik Tenkar's group is kicking loose on a Swords & Wizardry campaign: See here, as if Tenkar's Tavern isn't already on your list of blogs, since he is taking on the mantle of the majordomo of the Old School's go-to blog.

In a not-quite-so-intriguing note about Swords & Wizardry, I have finally been updating the Giant List of all Swords & Wizardry Stuff. It might be current now, although there are probably several things I have missed. Indeed, one has just sprung to mind, so I will add it when I'm done posting here.

Brevity

"There are an estimated 1,100-1,200 killer frogs here."
Nominated for the best 9-word sentence in an RPG book. (Fiction is another category).

"This is Free Trader Beowulf, calling anyone"
Nominated for best 7-word sentence in an RPG book.

Especially when talking to players, brevity is the soul of adventure. Players have shorter attention spans than you would think. Don't waste time prattling: get the dice rattling.

Travelers and Thieves

You can't see all the detail, and this definitely isn't the best album by Blues Traveler ... but I love this cover picture from the Travelers and Thieves album. It screams old school D&D to me, not just the image but the title of the album, too.

This view of adventurers is sometimes derided with the term "murder hobo," but in many cases that term is wrongly applied -- particularly in fantasy games. There is a whole type of fantasy game in which the attraction is the idea of crossing the border of civilization into an area that's entirely wild ... and fighting that wildness. (And, yes, taking its stuff). It's not murder in this idiom, it is defense of the helpless civilians that are back behind the lines.

In the zombie apocalypse, when a beat-up VW van skids into the parking lot with some guys leaning out the door blazing away with all kinds of weaponry, and you dash into the safety of the van just ahead of the zombies that the guys are blowing away ... that's these guys. They aren't murder hobos, they are force-recon hobos.

The whole concept of this sort of fantasy is that everything outside the hedges and fields is basically "Here be Dragons." It's zombie apocalypse from one horizon to the next, with the exception of the few enclaves where the endangered species of humanity depends upon the tough sons-of-bitches that are better at killing than the worgs and the ogres.

It's not the only kind of fantasy, but if the camera were to be following Aragorn in the year prior to his arrival at the Prancing Pony in Bree, I think you'd be seeing Middle Earth through an entirely different, and considerably grittier, lens.