Tag: gaming

Five or So Questions with Tracy Barnett on Iron Edda

Today I have an interview with Tracy Barnett, who is currently Kickstarting Iron Edda: War of Metal and Bone. I’m so excited to have him on the blog! Check out the five or so questions below. 

Tell me a little bit about Iron Edda. What is it? Why should people be interested?

Iron Edda is a Norse fantasy setting where the dwarves rose up against humanity in large, metal destroyers. To fight back, warriors bonded their spirits to the bones of dead giants. It’s epic in scope, and personal in nature. It’s a great setting because there’s room for grand action, personal stories, and everyone who comes to the game table should find a place for themselves in the setting. I’ve worked very hard to make the setting as diverse as possible.


What sparked the idea of Iron Edda?
I pitched the initial idea to Machine Age Productions for their Apotheosis Drive X Kickstarter. I wanted to write for that game, but mecha is not my strong suit. Fantasy, however, is. So when I thought about how to do mecha in a fantasy setting (with some inspiration from Skyrim), the dwarves in destroyers and human as bonebonded came to mind. Turns out that it’s a really sweet idea.

Inclusiveness is important for you. Why? What made it a priority?

I’ve lived a pretty privileged life. And as I’ve come to realize that privilege, I’ve also realized that I can turn it to good ends. There are so many amazing voices in the sci-fi/fantasy, and RPG communities that don’t get heard. I want to do the best I can to provide exposure through paid work, and diversity in the projects that I create. It’s just the right thing to do. As well, I’ve come to realize that I’m transgender. Specifically, I”m genderqueer. I don’t always identify as male, or as female. I want a space for myself in games, also. And if I’m going to advocate, I’m going to advocate intersectionally, meaning that I’m going to advocate for space for everyone.


What does Iron Edda mean to you, as a project?

That’s a difficult question to answer. One one hand, it’s just my next project and gets all the care and attention that any of my previous projects got. On the other hand, this is the biggest, most in-depth project that I’ve ever done. If it succeeds in the ways I think it could, it would go a long way toward making my dream of writing and designing full-time a reality. That means a lot to me.

What has been the greatest part of the Iron Edda project so far?

Absolutely it has been the response I’ve gotten to it. People seem to really dig the concept, and those that have played it have had a good time. I love seeing a thing that I’ve made prompt a positive response. That means a lot to me. And if I can throw a second thing in there, working with the team I’ve assembled for this project has been amazing. So many talented people working towards a unified goal is a wonder to behold.

Don’t forget to check out Tracy’s Kickstarter for Iron Edda! 

Favorite Games Evar!

Title coined by Meguey Baker


I realized recently that I’ve been gaming for about 10 years! Like, wow. I know I’m still a n00b in comparison to many people out there, but that’s a pretty long time for me to keep up with any hobby. It’s so cool to realize I’ve been doing something for so long!


I asked G+ what I should blog about and Meguey suggested I write about my Favorite Games Evar! which I thought was a great idea. I neglected to ask whether she meant specific games or game systems, so here’s a little mix of both.


This is going to come as no shock to a lot of people, but one of my favorite games of all time is Shadowrun 3rd Edition. I haven’t played any of the other editions. I know the mechanics are kind of wonky and that it’s crunchy as all hell, but the gameworld is so rich and flavorful that I couldn’t help but love it. My first session of Shadowrun was one of the first tabletop games I ever played, and I only lasted 5 minutes in the session before my character was gunned down with poisoned syringes and killed. With probably any other game I might not have ever played again, because character death without meaning is one of my biggest turn-offs when it comes to games. But not Shadowrun! I have played MANY sessions of Shadowrun, multiple campaigns of varying length, and built tons of characters.


I don’t think I have a favorite Shadowrun game, but I have a lot of favorite characters. Enough to fill a different post, so we’ll wait on that!


This is kind of a confession here: I actually like Pathfinder. Not a ton of people are fans of it, because it’s kind of a remix of D&D 3.5, but I enjoyed playing 3.5 with houserules. Pathfinder fixed a lot of the rules so we didn’t have to houserule it as much anymore, plus I really like some of the world they have put together. It’s inclusive and exciting.


In 3.5, I played a game in a world my husband designed that we eventually ported over to the Pathfinder system. I played a half-giant woman who fought in tournaments, owned her own land the size of Alaska (that was filled with diamonds), and was a serious badass. I also got to build a bunch of the gameworld, which was super fun.


I’ve also discovered I really enjoy Monsterhearts. It’s kind of funny. Up until about last year or the year before, I was very no-sex-in-games, no-relationships-in-games, etc. A few sessions of Monsterhearts changed that pretty quickly. I’ve even made two skins for Monsterhearts . I have really pushed my boundaries as a player and as a person with the game, and I’d love to do more of it.


I’m playing a Rusalka in our current game, and it’s mega fun. This is only the second campaign I’ve been in. I really am enjoying the kind of sex-and-drama-filled mess of a high school we’re playing in!


Finally, Clash and Tabletop Blockbuster are my babies. Tabletop Blockbuster is fun as hell, a rocking good time. My favorite session of it? So far, the one I played as Ransom Bentley, who I’ve been writing a fair bit about. She’s a private eye in a supernatural world. Super fun. Clash I’ve only played a few times, but I love the system I’ve designed. Right now we’re playing the Mob against the Untouchables and it is badass. When the system is really showing off, the scenes are tight and filled with conflict and it’s exactly what I wanted out of the game.


What about you? What are your favorite games?

Five or So Questions Series

Very soon I’ll be starting up the Five or So Questions Series, where I’ll interview members of the gaming community with about five or so questions.

Hope you enjoy!

Clash Playtest 1-11-2014

Yesterday I playtested my in-progress tabletop roleplaying “story game,” Clash. Clash is a game about exploring big conflicts from a small perspective. You fight, you argue, and you look at the moments that change the world. It’s a GM-less, team-based game with a table you roll against to have “The World” act against the players.

Clash has been a big challenge for me. It was put together in a single day and then fiddled with and messed with for about a year before I got the courage to playtest it. I’ve had near-zero luck getting playtesters outside my group to play, but I’ve finally got my group into it. I have a lot of emotional investment in it, as it’s my first solo game, so playtesting was really a tough subject to broach with my group.

Anyway, we finally started playtesting, and this is session 2. We had 4 players and the session was about 3 hours.

The setting is Chicago during the height of prohibition, where one team is playing the Mob and the other team is the Untouchables. We have a pretty nice mix of characters, including a young rookie on one side and the son of the woman mob boss on the other. We’ve fiddled with history a bit in part to allow for some women characters, such as my Untouchable, Penelope Wilson, who is a woman fighting against the Mob and against the discrimination within her own organization.

We had a shoot out, an arrest, threatening notes left on doorsteps, and generally a great time. My biggest goal with Clash is for it to be fun, so that was good to see. Players enjoying themselves, cracking jokes when the time is appropriate (and sometimes inappropriate), getting into the gritty parts of conflict – that part of the game is happening.

The mechanics work. Right now I’m fiddling with some numbers to make it run more smoothly, but it seems to be going pretty much right. I don’t think I’ll have many more changes, honestly, because most of it is rewording or fiddly bits. I haven’t made any big alterations so far, and it seems to be working well. I’m going to keep playtesting for a bit, but more than anything I want to get the game in other people’s hands to see if they run into problems.

The biggest change (addition, really) this time around was to write in rules about how to handle multiple actor conflicts. It was just simply adding some wording and I think the rules I wrote in work great for the narrative and mechanical purposes.

Overall I think the playtest went really well. I’m hoping to do a crunch and play some more but I don’t know how much success I will have there. I just want to play more!

Interview with David Pulver – Laboratory of the Forsaken!


Today I have a brief interview with David Pulver, a freelance writer in Canada, just for you! David is working on an adventure game for Crafty Games‘ FANTASY CRAFT Roleplaying system called “Laboratory of the Forsaken“.

B: David, do you want to tell me a little about Laboratory of the Forsaken?

D: The soon to be released “Laboratory of the Forsaken” is my first adventure for Crafty Game’s FANTASY CRAFT roleplaying system.

It takes place in the Realm, the same setting used in their earlier TIME OF HIGH ADVENTURE book, which features a conflict between the Circle (free-thinking but occasionally out of control scientist-arcanists) and the Church (nice folks unless you get on the bad side of their inquisitors).

The adventurers get to investigate the manor house of Doctor Magnus Croatalorn, a Circle member who has been performing experiments to investigate the origins of life. The Church has decided to shut him down (since he wants to prove life was magically rather than divinely created) but the inquisitors they sent after him haven’t reported back. Magnus has also dropped out of touch with the Circle, however, so they suspect something has gone wrong. 

The adventurers can either be servants of the Church sent on a follow-up mission, or agents of the Circle attempting to protect Magnus and his research before the Church can get their hands on it, or mercenaries who blunder into the situation. As they explore the manor they’ll piece together its secrets from the doctor’s lab notes and experiments. It’s a cross between a haunted house and a dungeon adventure, with elements of dark fantasy or horror thrown into it.

B: How long did it take you to create the adventure?


D: It took about two days to come up with the basic concept of a dark fantasy horror adventure set in the laboratory of a vivisectionist-alchemist who was obsessed with finding the secret origin of life. Crafty Games and I batted the concepts back and forth for a couple more weeks to set the specific details and parameters of the adventure. Then it took about a month to write it.

B: What suggestions would you have for others looking to write adventures – best practices for level design, flavor text, etc.?
D: For me, the key thing is to have a solid, interesting theme and concept and a careful outline. In this case the theme was mad fantasy science, so the adventure contained a lot of research notes, crazed experiments, and so on. Usually I work out a background first, but then get down to the nuts and bolts (e.g., what’s where, paths through the adventure, mapping, and so on).

It’s probably best to leave flavor text for last after you have the skeleton of the adventure. I’ve found that if you start with the flavor text it’s very easy to overwrite and end up with something that is too long.

That said, doing a bit of flavor text first is useful to give yourself a feel for what you’re doing. In my case I wrote a short biographical letter written by the mad scientist (Dr. Croatalorn) to a friend of his, laying out his philosophy, a key event in his childhood that led him away from the teachings of the Church and toward exploration of darker truths. I didn’t actually use this in the game – it was a bit too long – but it gave me a sense of his character and motivations, which helped me.

I did something similar for his wife Lunalia, who is another key character and possible ally of the adventurers in the plot.

Ideally you should playtest an adventure, but often players will not have time to explore all the paths. A trick you can use is to “talk through” an adventure with someone else – essentially skipping all the game mechanics (assume they win all the fights, make all the skill checks, or whatever) but just narrate what they see, who they meet, and have them tell you what they do.

This is a good way to get a sense of whether any mysteries, level design concepts and so on are too complex or too simple, and also it can sometimes reveal options and strategies you didn’t think of when you wrote the adventure.

The most difficult part of the adventure was striking a balance between a coherent, dramatic narrative (e.g., building up action and an exciting conclusion) and giving the players different routes and options. This had to be considered from the very start of the adventure, as Crafty Games Fantasy Craft setting tends to forgo a traditional good vs. evil structure in favor of different factions, any of which the adventurers could be aligned with. The adventure is set in the “Realm” background that Crafty Games introduced in their prior adventure collection Time of High Adventure. This introduced a conflict between religion and magic (The Church vs. The Circle, a group of arcane-scientists).

This became a central conflict in Laboratory of the Forsaken, but I set up the adventure so that the players could choose which side to support, or remain neutral, and also ended up writing three different variations of the adventure’s opening to accommodate different player character motivations or alignments.

Thanks to David for taking the time to share with us about his writing and design process! Check out the adventure, Laboratory of the Forsaken, at DriveThruRPG!


THOUGHTY LOGO © JOHN W. SHELDON 2013. USED WITH PERMISSION. UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
ALL CONTENT WITHIN THIS BLOG AND ANY OF THE ALTERNATE SITES LINKED ARE SUBJECT TO FAIR USE UNDER U.S. COPYRIGHT LAWS. THE OPINIONS AND CONCLUSIONS WITHIN THIS BLOG ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR ONLY, UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED, AND ARE NOT INTENDED TO REPRESENT ANY CORPORATION OR OTHER ENTITY.

The Song of My People


The leather wraps scraped across the callouses on Lilylen’s palms as she twisted the wraps around her hands. She tied them tightly. The wraps served as good protection from the wooden sticks she picked up and spun through her fingers. It was time to go, and she was nearly ready.


Lilylen stared out from the window of the holding, counting the rows of soldiers. There were near a hundred, armored and standing at the ready. Those were her chosen enemies. Chosen, yes, because there were so many different men to fight, so many threats to her home and in this case, her soul. The lord in command of these soldiers was a dark mage who had stolen the souls of his soldiers to bring himself more power. Lord Niccen, ruler of the city of Donwyn, what he called himself.


Untrue, though. She stood in the halls of Donwyn now, ready to protect it from his army of soulless men. If her side lost, then he would take over and hold the small city under thrall. This was not what she wanted. Donwyn was not her home now, but it had been for many years. She had no home, and her family had all aged away and left for the northern lights. Still, she wished to protect Donwyn, and her magic was strong.


She adorned herself with her armor now. Silver tips on her pointed ears, twisted and pierced through the skin, were enchanted to protect her from the raucous sounds of battle and hone her hearing. She pulled on a chain shirt and belted it with a leather strap that shone bright when she cinched it – her protection spell activating and spreading over her body in a shield. Finally, she raised her only weapon: her drum.


The drum was a gift from her mother on the day of her turning. Her mother had promised her the moon, and true to her promise, the large drum was made with the whitest of leathers stretched tight and it played the deepest rumbling. Her turning was a celebration of her sixteenth anniversary of birth, and marked the day her magic came true.


Now was no time for reminiscing, though.


Lilylen joined the warriors below in the great hall who all were armored and ready after enjoying midnight feast. There was a small party of adventurers standing in the center of the hall. Her companions were the fighters Dor and Leaf, the magician Wend, and trickster Fig. They had come with her to Donwyn, excited for the prospect of battle and as true friends. She would owe them everything if they won this battle. She raised her voice loud.


“Friends!” She clapped Dor on the shoulder. “It is time for the cries of battle and the victory! Let us feast our eyes now that we have feasted our bellies, and take down Lord Niccen and his thralls!”


Her words were met with a roar of approval from the crowd. Some warriors banged swords against shields in echoing clangs while they shouted and she cheered back at them.


“That’s the spirit, my good men and women! Join me now on the field!”


The warriors began to pour out of the hall, taking their places on walls and near gates. The battle was not long off, and Lilylen’s blood began to rush in her ears.


“Dor, Leaf, Wend, Fig – you are all my companions through battle again.”


“Lilylen, we fight for you as much for glory.” Dor’s eyes were bright behind her raggedy bangs. “Once we finish this, we will go back to the road and beyond.”


Fig slipped something sneakily into Lilylen’s hand. She looked down to see a small jeweled dagger, sheathed in shadow. She looked at Fig, raising one eyebrow in question. Fig just smiled and crossed his fingers.


“To war, to win!”


—


The adventurers made their way to the head of the warrior’s ranks, and Lilylen called for the gates to be opened. There was a loud creaking and clamoring as the large double gates opened, revealing the battlefield ahead. The warriors and Lilylen’s companions poured out onto the field, readying for the first light of dawn.


The sun rose slow and lazily, peeking through behind the holding and shining light on the thralls. Lilylen spun her drumsticks and rolled them on the drum, creating a deep, low rumble. A light mist fell down from the sky and settled over her fellows, providing cover from the soldiers and putting a protective shield around her fellows. The thrum thrum thrum echoed across the grass, and with that, the soldiers lurched forward, the warriors began to run, and they reached each other in a glorious crash.


The warriors had the strength of their heart and home pulsing through them, and all who heard the sound of Lilylen’s drum were given more power to resist their enemies. She strode forward, slowly, between the fighting, ducking and dodging while Dor and Leaf cleared her path. She had one responsibility only: to get to Niccen.


Dor and Leaf before her ran into the broken ranks of soldiers. The soldiers were technically powerful – precise in movement – but they lacked the intuitive skills of the warriors and adventurers, which failed them. In essence, they were strong only in numbers, just landscape to trample.


Wend walked behind her, casting bolts of mana into the surrounding crowds of soldiers and calling down fire from the sky. Fig was nowhere to be seen, but that was best. His tricks were not to be noticed until they had already been done.


They were nearly through the soldiers, pushing through while the warriors battled against the twice-strong army. At the back of the ranks was Niccen, not even fearful enough to be on a horse, standing proudly as though he were untouchable. He caught Lilylen’s gaze and there was no emotion in his eyes but sneering cruelty. She quickened her pace, leaving Wend behind unknowingly.


She was pressing forward and focused on Niccen, continuing to drum the slow rumble, when she felt a sudden sharp pain in her back. Her breath caught, she felt something within her go empty, and she struggled to breathe. She looked around behind her only to see Fig jump out from behind a soldier and land on another man – a man holding the jeweled dagger she had been carrying. Fig slashed the man’s throat with one sharp swipe, then he collected the dagger and returned it to Lilylen’s pocket.


“Be more careful!” He shouted, and the noise rang in her ears as she gasped for air. She began to lose her footing. Fig’s eyes widened and he placed his hands on her back, whispering an incantation. She felt her heartbeat pumping throughout her body, and slowly felt the pain ease and the air fill her lungs again. The battle pressed in close to them, and there were soldiers moving to attack. Lilylen braced herself.


Suddenly, a clap of thunder sounded and lightning struck, spreading through the bodies of the soldiers, turning them into crisp wastes. Lilylen sighed in relief and doubled her speed, trying to make up for lost time. She reached Niccen quickly.


He didn’t even move. She stood ten feet away from him and all he did was stand there, unafraid, undaunted. She gritted her teeth, and began to pound her drum faster, harder. She opened her mouth, and the sound from inside her was a deep bellow.


“Long we fight and long we live,
we do not fear the dark.
Strong we are and never gone,
we do not fear the burning light.
Hold back the night,
the night so cold.


We fight so long,
long will we live.”


She sang it again and again, her voice becoming louder and louder. Niccen stood there, quietly at first, then laughing. He did not notice the red light growing behind him, growing larger with each drumbeat.


“This is your plan?” He yelled above the drumming. “Sing me to death?”


Niccen moved his hands, muttering an incantation she couldn’t quite catch, even with her unique hearing. There were corpses around her from the battle, and they slowly raised themselves to their feet. Her breath caught in her throat, straining her voice. She found her voice again as she spun around with her drum, changing the beat and singing faster as she slammed bodily into the undead monsters surrounding her. They pressed in on her, grabbing at her clothes and scratching her face. Her heart was pounding in her head. She knew she didn’t have much longer until she would lose control, so she stopped moving and planted her feet. The song was sung.


Lilylen’s voice stopped mid-verse, and she banged on the drum three times in succession, and from behind Niccen appeared a giant, red, translucent dragon. The dragon was massive, a full-sized red dragon with a long crest on it’s head. Its flesh was nothing more than red light, the body of a spirit of vengeance. Niccen turned in response to its roar, and Lilylen imagined that his eyes grew wide. The dragon devoured him in one bite, and inside the dragon Niccen tumbled into its stomach. Lilylen felt elation welling up inside her, until there was a loud pop and Niccen disappeared. She spun around in panic, running into the corpses crowding around her who toppled over, the incantation controlling them no longer held.


“Fig! Dor! Leaf! Wend!” She called for her companions, who were fending off the soldiers. “He’s gone!”


None could hear her. In that moment, she felt a gust of wind burst against her side and tear through the leather of her drum. She gasped and turned to face Niccen, who was spinning a whirlwind. The wind blew so hard that it wrested the drum from her hands and took the air from her lungs. She felt as though her very soul was being pulled from her, but she staggered towards him, her face contorted with rage.


Blood boiling and rage overtaking her, her muscles grew and flexed, and her eyes tightened as the irises turned to bright red. She felt the dagger in her pocket and pulled it out, pressing her body against the whirlwind, her rage strength allowing her to resist it’s power. She screamed and bellowed at Niccen, at the wind, at everything that was in her way of tearing the mage apart.


“I will eat your soul!” Niccen cried out, and now she could hear the fear. She would always hear the fear when her rage rose within her. She breached the wall of wind and watched him tumble backwards. The look of terror on his face was all she needed to see. She tackled him and stabbed the dagger into his heart, twisting and wrenching it. The shadow of the blade spread out through his skin in a spiderweb, blackness filling his veins. She watched until the light left his eyes, hearing the crunch of cartilage and bone beneath her weight.


Soon, she felt the blood draining from her face. Her muscles weakened, and she staggered, falling to the ground beside Niccen’s blood-covered corpse. Around her, the thralls fell down, slowly but surely being overtaken by death.


She felt weightless as Dor and Leaf picked her up and carried her off the field. The warriors crowded around as she was taken to the hall. As she drifted off into weary rest, she heard the song of her people. The depth of their voices. The love in their hearts.


“For life! For victory! For Donwyn!”





THOUGHTY LOGO © JOHN W. SHELDON 2013. USED WITH PERMISSION. UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
ALL CONTENT WITHIN THIS BLOG AND ANY OF THE ALTERNATE SITES LINKED ARE SUBJECT TO FAIR USE UNDER U.S. COPYRIGHT LAWS. THE OPINIONS AND CONCLUSIONS WITHIN THIS BLOG ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR ONLY, UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED, AND ARE NOT INTENDED TO REPRESENT ANY CORPORATION OR OTHER ENTITY.

My disappointment with Remember Me



So, I haven’t finished Remember Me. It came out like two months ago, I know, what the hell am I doing?

Here’s what.

I’m still interested in the story. I think it sounds fascinating. I still was interested in the art and the visual parts of the game. 

I fuckin’ hate the combat. Like, if I did all other parts of the game, I’d be fine, but the combat is clunky and I failed so many times it took me four times as long to get through simple combat. I am slow on combat in general, and have trouble following combos (and the combos are so unclear in this game!).

It’s bad enough that I’m considering asking +John Sheldon to play through it for me while I watch, since it’s not an incredibly long game and I want to see the rest of the story. 

I’m just so disappointed. I wanted this game to succeed. The marketing was too little and the execution isn’t good enough. It makes me angry because this game had a lot of good going for it in the beginning and because they could have made a big impact if the game had just been better and if they’d marketed more effectively. 

Sigh. 

Feel free to comment below with your own stories of disappointing games (or comments about Remember Me specifically). 


THOUGHTY LOGO © JOHN W. SHELDON 2010. USED WITH PERMISSION. UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
ALL CONTENT WITHIN THIS BLOG AND ANY OF THE ALTERNATE SITES LINKED ARE SUBJECT TO FAIR USE UNDER U.S. COPYRIGHT LAWS. THE OPINIONS AND CONCLUSIONS WITHIN THIS BLOG ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR ONLY, UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED, AND ARE NOT INTENDED TO REPRESENT ANY CORPORATION OR OTHER ENTITY.

Monsters – Doppler


Doppler


One of the most frightening things for many people, next to public speaking, is to have their identity – their personhood – taken away and used for nefarious purposes. That’s what the Doppler is all about. They can duplicate any living being down to DNA with ease and accuracy.


Dopplers in their natural state are long-limbed, light grey creatures that are about 7 foot tall. They are emaciated. Each hand has three long claws, and each foot has two short claws with a third larger, curved claw. Their legs are shaped like a dogs leg, to enable them to leap higher and run on all-fours if they prefer. They are intelligent, but not very smart unless they are mimicking someone who is more intelligent. Their eyes are small slits in their face, and they have no nose. Their ears are shaped similar to bat ears, and they are nearly as large as the head of the Doppler.

The Doppler has found its pray, by Emily Vitori. 



Dopplers find their prey by using echolocation – above human hearing, but able to be heard by many other creatures. They do not need to touch their victims – they only need to get near enough to them to identify them with their screeching, and then they can easily replicate their form. Like Hanging Men, Dopplers rest in peripheral vision, normally undetected by humans. They often take the form of furniture or small animals to track people. Their goals with their mimicking are varied, from hired identity theft to personal desires for a human body.


Today’s art is by Emily Vitori. Thanks to Emily for her contribution to the project! 

Note: If you decide to use any of the monsters in a campaign, please let me know! I’d like to see how they work out.







THOUGHTY LOGO © JOHN W. SHELDON 2010. USED WITH PERMISSION. UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
ALL CONTENT WITHIN THIS BLOG AND ANY OF THE ALTERNATE SITES LINKED ARE SUBJECT TO FAIR USE UNDER U.S. COPYRIGHT LAWS. THE OPINIONS AND CONCLUSIONS WITHIN THIS BLOG ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR ONLY, UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED, AND ARE NOT INTENDED TO REPRESENT ANY CORPORATION OR OTHER ENTITY.

Monsters – Siren

Siren

On the coast of every ocean, there can be found one shore – it may be rocky, or sandy, or a moist clay, but one may always find a Siren. To the naked eye, the Siren is their viewer’s greatest desire – a chiseled, muscular man; a beautiful, voluptuous woman; a statuesque androgynous being. Whatever the beholder wishes, the Siren takes on their visage and draws their victim nearer.

The Siren has a distinctive call, a long, sad song they call out in a clear, haunting voice. They sing of loneliness and longing. The call has a strong effect on landlubbers and sailors alike, gripping at their heart and mind and pulling them ever closer into their arms.

A Siren viewing its true reflection, by Jason Cox.

However, like the myths say, it is a lie. Beneath their unearthly beauty lies a monstrous creature. Their body is like that of a human, but is dirty and covered with lichen and barnacles. Their face is where the horror lies – wide open and unblinking eyes that take up the sides of their face, and a vertical mouth lined with sharp teeth. When they capture their victim, pinning them, they devour them face first, drawing out the life energy and filling their bellies with raw flesh.



Note: If you decide to use any of the monsters in a campaign, please let me know! I’d like to see how they work out.

Today’s art is by Jason Cox. Thanks for contributing to the Monsters collection!



THOUGHTY LOGO © JOHN W. SHELDON 2013. USED WITH PERMISSION. UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
ALL CONTENT WITHIN THIS BLOG AND ANY OF THE ALTERNATE SITES LINKED ARE SUBJECT TO FAIR USE UNDER U.S. COPYRIGHT LAWS. THE OPINIONS AND CONCLUSIONS WITHIN THIS BLOG ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR ONLY, UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED, AND ARE NOT INTENDED TO REPRESENT ANY CORPORATION OR OTHER ENTITY.

Monsters – The Kid


The Kid


The Kid is five foot nothing, snotty nosed and petulant. The Kid is every bully in elementary school, and every kid who is bullied. He sneers and cringes all at once. He never meets your eyes, but can see into your soul. The son of the Flesh King never sleeps.

The Kid, by Susan Knowles.



The Kid is always around. He just finds a couch in every town and never seems to leave. He’s only one person, but he’s everywhere. Everyone knows The Kid. He eats everything in your fridge. He rubs his nose on his sleeve and spreads the common cold like a plague. When you’re feeling down in the dumps, The Kid knows just the right thing to say to make you blame yourself.


If you talk to The Kid, he will flinch away like you slapped him. If he talks to you, he’ll find any weakness you have – any feature you have that you are sensitive about – and exploit it. He’s the Kid who got beat up at recess. He’s the Kid that locked someone in a locker. An enigma wrapped in a bologna sandwich.




Note: If you decide to use any of the monsters in a campaign, please let me know! I’d like to see how they work out.


Today’s art is by Susan Knowles. Thanks, Susan, for your contribution to the project!

THOUGHTY LOGO © JOHN W. SHELDON 2010. USED WITH PERMISSION. UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
ALL CONTENT WITHIN THIS BLOG AND ANY OF THE ALTERNATE SITES LINKED ARE SUBJECT TO FAIR USE UNDER U.S. COPYRIGHT LAWS. THE OPINIONS AND CONCLUSIONS WITHIN THIS BLOG ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR ONLY, UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED, AND ARE NOT INTENDED TO REPRESENT ANY CORPORATION OR OTHER ENTITY.