Burgeoning Blogs 3

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51. May I please see a devious trap or dangerous hazard you have created?
A fountain with a shin-deep pool of clear water. 

• [Important item] clearly visible at the bottom of the fountain 
• Starving, translucent ooze detectable only by
• Close inspection (optical anomaly in the water)
• Tossing in a small item (bounces off cell membrane)
• Reaching into the water (triggers an attack).

52. Please share 3 new/distinctive magical spells you or your players have created

• Rite of Perfect Discoverie - A scrying spell that locates an item’s possessor / possessed item if you have the other component present. Requires ritual circle and mirror; mirror displays a path from caster’s present location to target’s present location. Ritual draws attention of Beasts of Many Angles, who will appear in mirror in the peripheral vision of caster; initial response will be curiosity / investigation, further use will set them on the hunt.
• Call upon NIN-SU-GAL – A means to summon and propitiate the Lady of the Great Flesh, derived from the rites of the Lušārātum (“hairy men”). Requires ritual circle, food offering, and some medium of visual communication (television, computer monitor, mural or painting, etc). Encounters will be brief and distressing.
• Blood Clot - Triggers a catastrophic stroke in the target after ~6 seconds of sustained eye contact on failed save. Requires series of hand-signs; mouthing trigger words to maintain focus common but not necessary. Deeply traumatic to witness.

53. Share a puzzle or riddle that has produced a memorable experience for you
I’ve mentioned it in a previous post, but I’m still pleased with how I was able to use the Navajo Code Talker booklet in my Delta Green campaign. 

54. Share some common superstitions practiced by the people of your setting

• It’s good luck to spit over the side of a bridge the first time you cross it.
• The father of the gods’ favorite food is noodles; offering it to guests brings good fortune (and is just being a good host).
• Cats are messengers of the gods (when they feel like it), and so shooing one out of a shrine is extremely bad luck.

55. Show me three brand new monsters you have created for your game!

Daemonophagic Hippopotamus
An otherwise ordinary hippo that has gained a vivid red-and-black coloration from a diet of demons.

Red Fundament Footsolider
A tall, grey-skinned creature in rust-red armor like an arthropod exoskeleton. Communicates with its packmates with a series of mandible clicks and throaty wheezes. Two carry long rifles, one carries a flamethrower (as Cone of Fire)

Meat Pile
An elderly slime, no longer able to flush detritus out of its body; a sludgy mass of dirt, decaying flesh, broken bones. Stinks to high heaven. Leaves a filmy trail on the ground. Effectively immune to damage (unless you can sustain an intense burn). Will slowly pursue the party through the dungeon, squeezing through tight spaces and unseen passages to move between non-adjacent rooms.

56. Summarize your campaign setting in 2d20 words or Less
2d20 = 4 (3,1)
Things I personally like.

57. Talk about your favorite Blog/Creator for a little bit! Give them some compliments!
Arnold Kemp is the reason I started my blog, and he’s the reason I got involved on G+ back when the party was going strong. A new post on Goblin Punch is a drop-everything-and-read-it moment, and has been for over a decade.

58. Tell me about a book or movie that really influenced you in terms of these games!
It feels like cheating to say Lord of the Rings, but I’ll say Lord of the Rings. Specifically in the field of orcs: I think Tolkien kinda fell into a perfect storm scenario where he paired an extremely potent core idea with pretty dodgy execution, and D&D copying the latter without the former has led to an entire genre ecosystem of compounding issues over 50 years. But all those compounding issues fall into the “shit makes for good fertilizer" category for me, and I like the challenge that they present to me as a writer; it’d be easy to just remove orcs, but I  find it more rewarding as a writer to go “okay, here’s what Tolkien was aiming for, here’s the issues, can I thread this needle?”

Considering I have like, 7 alternate versions of orcs cooked up at time of writing, the answer is “well, at least it's a productive line of inquiry if nothing else.”
 
59. Tell me about a thing you've included "just for you" without regard to the players
Valeria (positively) described Unicorn Meat as  “VaatiVidya bait” and that’s one of the best compliments I’ve ever gotten. I fill basically everything I write with references and connections and allusions to other things, regardless of whether or not people will ever find them (though I always love it when they do). 

The best example for Unicorn Meat isn’t particularly hidden, but it’s also not directly stated in the text: if the players visit Stitches at the med hut, they’ll be told about a bunch of sci-fi paperbacks on one of her shelves. If they then go to White-Eyes’ room they’ll find more books, and that’s the only other place on the farm where they show up - which even if the players forgot the books in the med hut or never visited Stitches, the fact that White-Eyes is blind should tip them off that someone’s been visiting her (and presumably reading to her, which is a clue to the nature of the relationship).

60. Tell me about a time your players surprised you or ruined your prep/plans!
When running Kidnap the Archpriest years ago, one of my players (new to RPGs at the time) barreled into the gatehouse immediately and the alarm was raised right then and there. I didn’t really have enough experience or wherewithal in the moment to roll with that punch. The entire session basically collapsed right there.

61. Tell me about the moon(s) in the sky. What are some beliefs associated with 'em?

• There’s a demon that lives on the moon that curses women with menstruation as revenge for some past heroine or goddess getting one over on them.
• There used to be seven moons, but the dragon Bakunawa ate six of them before being defeated by the gods.
• Wizards faked the moon landing, which then spurred other wizards to land on it for real due to the one-upmanship inherent in academic vendettas.
• The moon is hollow, and Hell is located inside it.
• The moon is inhabited by bat-winged men who live in sapphire palaces.
• The moon is the corpse of Theia, the earth goddess’ twin sister
• The moon divorced the ocean and married the sun; the ocean still pines for her.
• The moon is the severed head of Ganda, the first giant.

62. What "something" wouldn't be in your game if it weren't for the players?
I don’t have any good examples off the dome, though I maintain a “if the player wants something in the game, put it in (or the closest available analogue)” policy.

63. What are 10 new things that you put on your equipment lists for purchase?
I think that shopping in rpgs is by and large a waste of time that should be abolished. If players want something not on the list they can tell me “hey I would like to buy X” and we can go from there. 

64. What are 6 things one might encounter on the way to the nearest dungeon?

1. Makeshift graves of some unlucky delvers, none more than a year or two old. One has recently been disrupted by a wild animal or monster.
2. A peddler of trinkets, tokens, relics, charms, patent medicines, assorted esoteric knick-knacks, and anything else that might be of interest to a delver looking for a bit of extra spiritual protection.
3. The corpse of some alien entity of the chaotic true depths; it managed to reach the surface, but died from the spiritual influence of the sun before it could cover two-hundred paces. Neither scavengers nor decomposers will touch it.
4. A goblin community, packing up camp and preparing to move onward now that they’ve been driven out from their home in the dungeon by another faction
5. Abandoned excavation equipment from a failed attempt to quarry out the structure.
6. Heads on stakes, left as a warning.

65. What are a few good tracks/traces for the most commonly encountered foes?

• Goblins leave graffiti everywhere
• Troll piss stinks to high heaven and they mark their territory with it
• Ghouls leave behind the cracked-open bones of their meals
• Orcs have distinct footprints (hobnailed boots with steel toes and rubberized treads)
• Undead only smell of rot if they’ve been active for a while or if it was a slapdash job
• Deep Ones naturally smell strongly of salt and fish
• Some varieties of demon alter art and text by presence alone

66. What are five frivolous things adventurers can spend their gold on?

1. Collectible figurines of popular characters
2. Painstakingly-constructed dwarvish handicrafts
3. Mayfly high fashion that falls apart as soon as it's taken off 
4. A box that you put money into and get nothing out of. Maybe one day it’ll work…
5. Hand-painted custom-order terro cards.

67. What are four legendary treasures one might search for in your game?

1. The Four Tiger Sword - A blade forged in the hour, day, month, and year of the Tiger. Extremely effective against spiritual foes, but purposefully left unsharpened for symbolic reasons.
2. The Claw - A palm-sized, teardrop-shaped sapphire reputed to have miraculous healing qualities. Belonged to an ancient prophet, currently in possession of migratory monastic order. Identified by a crescent-shaped flaw near its center.
3. The Book of Ingenious Devices - A book outlining the construction and maintenance of a wide variety of mechanical tools and devices, both mundane and magical.
4. Stopsvalinn - Heirloom buckler of a now-dissolved noble family; a rusted red octagon with blocky white symbols in an unknown script.

(Magical items in games are a field where I say less originality is better: they’re supposed to stand out and be important, recognizability or real-world antecedent can help emphasize that if used appropriately)

68. What are some common long-distance communication methods in your world?

• Postal service (letters & packages; variable speed)
• Troll stones (real-time voice; all users tormented by trolls providing live commentary)
• The Murder of All Crows (letters & voice messages; fast; pay in carrion or sweetmeats)
• Scrying (real-time voice & image; wizard-gated)

69. What are some deadly diseases/awful afflictions one might unfortunately catch?
You know, this is something I have never really contemplated before. Probably because “disease that’s interesting in an RPG” overlaps with “weird magical curse” in my head. Mundane diseases in RPGs are just mundane diseases and I don’t think “your character is feverish and shitting themselves and has to sit out this session” has much of a function in a game except for the (very useful) excuse for a missing player.

Anyway, Red Death and Black Fever would be my go-tos for in-universe historical epidemics, and then if I wanted to hit players with something specific I would probably just search the SCP wiki by tag and pick some highlights.

70. What are some interesting herbs/plants one might find foraging?
I’ve got a copy of Fungi of the Far Realms that I've never been able to use, so probably something from that.

71. What are some of your favorite resources or tools you use in your games?
Clocks are great, love a good clock. You can use ‘em to track damn near anything.

72. What are some unusual drugs/intoxicants in your setting?
I don't have a proper list, so I'd probably just crack open Esoteric Enterprises and use that. But liao is definitely an option: see through time and space, attract Hounds of Tindalos, all the hits. 

73. What are the best snacks you've found that work during a game?
I don’t have a standout best, but the worst would be the time in college when I was going to run a game, we all ordered Chinese food beforehand, and then I spent most of the evening in the bathroom choking on an insufficiently-chewed piece of General Tso’s chicken.

74. What could I bring to a game that would bribe the referee?
I don’t take bribes but I do appreciate offerings of food, previous entry notwithstanding.

75. What degree of "kitchen sink" or "gonzo" is acceptable in your games?
I like my settings to be pretty weird (understatement of the year) mashups of inspirations, but while they certainly qualify for both categories I don’t know if I’d use those terms myself. I’m all about the connective tissue that forms between elements of the setting, and kitchen sink / gonzo usually feel to me like all the weird stuff is just kind of free-floating around.

There’s bound to be a crashed spaceship somewhere, but it’s also going to be more on the hard-science side of the spectrum vs flying saucer, is what I’m trying to get at here.