Archive
February’s Monster of the Month: The Abbey Lubber
A perfect nuisance to enliven a stay at a monastery – and if you prefer inns or private houses, the buttery spirit and the clurichaun are quite similar!
As usual, you get 3d6/d20 and d100 stats, stat guidelines for other systems, plus three adventure seeds (fantasy, historical, and modern). There are also case studies from medieval Germany and 17th-century England.
The members’ vote for February was tied between this little beauty and the lamia, so March’s Monster of the Month is decided! Look forward to her mythological origins and some intriguing differences from the versions you’ll find in many games.
Join the club at https://www.patreon.com/MonsteroftheMonthClub. Paid memberships start at just $1 per month!
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GW Memories: Frankenstein
In a previous post, I mentioned the Frankenstein game that Mike Brunton and I developed at Games Workshop, and promised to say a little more about it.
As far as I know, there was no formal plan to spin off a set of boardgames themed around classic horror monsters. Fury of Dracula came with Steve Hand when he joined GW, and he also created Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb, but the visual presentation of each was very different. Frankenstein, of course, was never published, for reasons that will become clear.
Anyway, here is what I remember.
It all started in a Nottingham city centre pub one evening after work: The Bell, if memory serves. Mike and I started riffing on a Frankenstein concept and throwing out ideas, each more ridiculous than the last. Ale flowed and we were cracking each other up, as we often did, but the following day we thought that we might actually have something. Mike drew up a map and some rules, and I started writing silly text on some blank cards.
The premise of the game was very simple. The board was a hex grid with a lab at each of its six corners. Each of the 2-6 players took the role of a mad scientist involved in a race to create a monster from body parts. The bulk of the board was made up of spaces representing a typical German-ish town from the old Hammer and Universal horror movies, and players set out across the board in search of the body parts they needed. The hospital, the morgue, and the graveyard were able to supply some parts, but a quicker option was to obtain them from innocent townsfolk. Think of it as a beetle drive (the Cooties game, to American readers), with added murder.
Townsfolk came in various strengths, which was matched against the player-scientist’s Lunacy rating in combat. A nice little balancing mechanic ensured that while a higher Lunacy made you more likely to win, it also reduced the number of body parts you could retrieve from an encounter, because you made more of a mess of your victim.
By today’s standards, the range of victims was quite tasteless, including women and children, but this was the 80s and tasteless humor was considered edgy and fun. Take a look at The Young Ones or almost any other British comedy of the time. Anyway…
Other players could try to sabotage you by playing encounter cards on you to increase the difficulty of a combat. Police cards, in particular, could stack to a hideous degree if multiple players decided to gang up. Otherwise, you drew an encounter card when you entered a new space, and either chose to fight it or save it – perhaps to play on an opponent.
The object of the game was to collect all the parts for a complete monster – torso, left and right legs, left and right arms, head, and brain – assemble them in the lab, and wait for a storm (also an encounter card) to animate your creation. Storms came in varying strengths, which affected the chances of success. There were also sabotage cards – lab accidents, rotten parts, and so on – to slow opponents down. The first player to animate their monster successfully was the winner, although we were also considering an expansion pack (de rigeur for boardgame pitches to GW at the time) in which the monsters started terrorizing the town themselves, and fought it out for final victory.
Mike and I assembled a prototype and played it in the GW Design Studio with other writers and designers, to universal acclaim. We were invited to demo it for Bryan Ansell himself at his impressive home (Castle Grayskull to us mortals) just outside Nottingham. Or rather, I was – and that’s where things started to go awry.
Mike was Yorkshire through and through, never afraid to speak his mind and equipped with a wit that could seriously upset anyone whose abilities were not commensurate with their rank – and in his mind, that included most of Games Workshop’s management at the time. It was decided that he shouldn’t be present at the demo, and I should do it alone.
The trouble was, Mike had been tinkering with the rules and the draft I took to the demo was completely new to me. The demo was a disaster, and both Mike and I were berated the next day by various middle managers who denied ever having liked the game and how dare we waste Bryan’s time like that.
Frankenstein was over. I made various efforts to fix the problem, but Bryan had decided it was a bad game and that was that. All the game’s most vocal supporters now hated it, and always had, rather than helping us to get a another chance at a demo. And this despite the fact that the game had already been mentioned in White Dwarf’s news column, the very accurately named “Awesome Lies,” and that cover art had already been commissioned from Les Edwards, the artist behind the Fury of Dracula box art. Our game had failed, and was never to be mentioned again.
And it was all my fault, or at least I felt it was. Frankenstein remains a lifetime regret, although I have to be honest and say that its gallows humor crossed most lines of decency and good taste, and it would definitely not be publishable today.
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And Also…
November’s Monster of the Month is posted on my Patreon page.
The hag is a well-known creature in many fantasy games, but the underlying folklore is complex, varied, and often terrifying. This 6-page, system-agnostic, PDF monster toolkit includes:
- Stat guidelines for d20-based, d100-based, and other tabletop roleplaying systems.
- A full monster description with lists of basic and optional skills and traits.
- Notes on four variants: Black Annis, Grindylow, Cailleach Bheur, and Fad Felen.
- Three adventure seeds, covering fantasy, historical, and modern settings..
As a member of The Monster of the Month Club, you can expect regular, in-depth treatments of creatures from worldwide myth and folklore—some familiar, some not—in a system-agnostic format that is easy for an experienced GM to use with the tabletop rpg system of their choice.
Join us on Patreon at patreon.com/MonsteroftheMonthClub, follow us @MotMClub, or email [email protected].
Sobek, Egyptian God of Crocodiles (AD&D 1)
Just posted for free and paid members of the Monster of the Month Club: August’s reprint is an AD&D1 Deities & Demigods treatment of the Egyptian crocodile god Sobek, from Imagine magazine in 1984.
https://www.patreon.com/MonsteroftheMonthClub
Want to support my work?
If you’ve enjoyed the content on this blog, please consider supporting me by making a small donation. Here are a couple of ways to do so.
Thanks!
And Also…
August’s Monster of the Month is posted on my Patreon page.
The dullahan is a demonic rider from Ireland, who might be the ancestor of Sleepy Hollow’s headless horseman, Ghost Rider, and many others. This 5-page, system-agnostic, PDF monster toolkit includes:
- Stat guidelines for d20-based, d100-based, and – through comparisons with common creatures from most settings – all other tabletop roleplaying systems.
- A full monster description with lists of basic and optional skills and traits.
- Three adventure seeds, covering fantasy, historical, and modern settings.
The Monster of the Month Club As a member, you can expect regular, in-depth treatments of creatures from worldwide myth and folklore—some familiar, some not—in a system-agnostic format that is easy for an experienced GM to use with the tabletop rpg system of their choice.
Join us on Patreon at patreon.com/MonsteroftheMonthClub, follow us @MotMClub, or email [email protected].
Solasta: Worldbuilding an Award-Winning D&D 5e Setting
It all started in 2018, when I was contacted by Mathieu Girard, a game developer based in Paris. I had worked with him briefly some years before, when he was a producer at Ubisoft and he recruited me as a contractor for a third-party game. Since then, he had left Ubisoft, founded Amplitude Studios and sold it to SEGA, and now he was preparing to realize a long-held dream: to create a Dungeons & Dragons video game that would be completely faithful to the game rules and would bring the tabletop experience to the screen without compromises. And he was going to do it using the 5e OGL.
Over the course of a rainy week in December of that year, I met with creative lead Antoine Guillaud and lead game designer Xavier Penin at the offices of the newly-founded Tactical Adventures and we hammered out the basics of the world of Solasta. It was to be a high fantasy world with comparatively low magic, which was slowly returning after a great cataclysm.
Solasta had been a very magical world, dominated by a tyrannical elven empire but populated by many other peoples. It had no humans, no gods, and no clerics – until it collided with Tirmar. That world was Solasta’s opposite in many ways: humans were the only sentient species, and there was no magic except for that provided by gods and their clerics. A rebel god had opened a rift between dimensions, causing the two worlds to smash together; by the time Solasta’s greatest magicians had managed to close the rift, Solasta was studded with parts of Tirmar that had been pressed into it like two colors of clay kneaded together. There were humans, there were gods, and there was divine magic.
The elven empire fell. Whole lands and peoples were re-arranged, and after a century of chaos, a kind of stability was achieved. The area around the rift is still a monster-haunted wasteland, where adventurers search for lost magical treasures among the ruins of the fallen empire. As the new nations jockey for power, such relics are vital. Even as the nations plot against one another, they must face an external threat: the Sorr-Akkath, reptilian shapeshifters dedicated to serving the rebel god, who is trapped on this plane as a result of the cataclysm and plots to return to Tirmar – or whatever is left of it. Widely believed to have been wiped out during the cataclysm, they are becoming active once more, though few people believe they are anything more than a legend.
Solasta: Crown of the Magister was released for PC on Steam in 2021, and as part of the build-up to the game’s launch, a Kickstarter campaign offered a 5e tabletop sourcebook as one of the rewards. It made sense: we had designed everything using that ruleset, so the information was there; the world had been designed in enough detail that the book’s text was 90% ready; and there was a plentiful archive of concept art that we could use as illustration. The only thing TA didn’t have was expertise in laying out and producing a tabletop rpg sourcebook, but I knew someone who did.
At the same time as working on Solasta, I was working with Rookery Publications, an indie tabletop rpg publisher founded by Andy Law, who had been running the WFRP 4th edition line for Cubicle 7, former Games Workshop and Blizzard artist Mark Gibbons, and writers Lindsay Law and Andy Leask. With the Rookery’s help the sourcebook was released, looking every inch a “proper” 5e supplement.
The project had already caught the eye of Wizards of the Coast, who were not expecting anyone to produce a video game using the OGL, let alone a whole setting that straddled electronic and tabletop games. After a brief correspondence through lawyers, it was agreed that the sourcebook could go ahead, so long as it was only distributed to Kickstarter backers.
Crown of the Magister carried on, winning a Pegasus award from the French Academy of Video Game Arts and Technologies in 2022 alongside rave reviews across the board. An XBox version was released, and regular downloadable updates expanded the game and the story.
Relations with Wizards improved, and it was agreed that the sourcebook could be re-issued for public sale. Again thanks to the Rookery, it was revised and updated with new classes, creatures, and other information from the downloadable expansions, and it is now available to all from Modiphius Entertainment. And I couldn’t be happier.
I don’t know whether I’ll ever have the opportunity to return to Solasta, but I’m incredibly proud of what it’s become. Building fantasy worlds is one of my favorite things to do, especially with a great team like the ones at Tactical Adventures and the Rookery.
Links
The Solasta 5e sourcebook PDF on DriveThru (affiliate link)
The Solasta 5e hardback from Modiphius: US | UK
Crown of the Magister on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1096530/Solasta_Crown_of_the_Magister/
So there you have it. On Saturday, I’ll return to Advanced Heroquest with the monsters from my 1991 “Advanced Heroquest Undead Supplement” manuscript that didn’t make it into “Terror in the Dark.”
The Moons of Arksyra: The d20/3.5 Setting You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of
In 2004, I was working in Boulder, Colorado for a pair of startup game developers. They shared the same ownership, management, and staff, but Hypernova Games focused on tabletop products and Evil Genius Games* developed video games. The Moons of Arksyra was the product of both.
When I arrived, the Arksyra IP was in the early stages of development. The lead writer had created the bones of a very interesting fantasy setting, in which several moons of a gas giant were linked by an ancient system of teleporters called the Giharan Towers. There were playable species, some familiar (like the elflike N’Miri) and some more novel (like the catlike Ky-Bril). My job was to help organize and strengthen the work already done, in preparation for pitching an adventure game to Sony for the soon-to-be released PS2. Then I had an idea.
The proposed video game would take several years and a lot of money to develop, even with backing from Sony – supposing we got it. Within six months, I estimated, we could put together a d20 System sourcebook which could bring in a little cash, establish the IP and the company in the minds of gamers, and if all went well, anchor a line of tabletop game products for Hypernova.
The book came out, and was uploaded in PDF form to DriveThruRPG, which was new then. The Playstation game was never finished, but Hypernova and Evil Genius did complete a couple of downloadable games before relations between the two principals – one creative, the other financial – deteriorated to the point where all communication was conducted through their lawyers. The twin companies lasted just about a year, although I have just discovered that the Hypernova Games brand has carried on under one of the original owners, and has achieved some success in developing casual games. Their website is at https://www.hypernovateam.com/.
The Moons of Arksyra setting went no further, but the PDF can still be downloaded from DriveThru. If you’re interested in my second major world-building project after Warhammer’s Old World for WFRP, check it out (affiliate link). It’s a fairly modest thing, which I had hoped would have the chance to develop further, but though it’s far from perfect, I still look back on it with some fondness.
That’s all I have for now, but I hope you found it interesting. For more on my work for d20 System, D&D, and associated games, see My Complete and Utter D&D/AD&D/d20 Bibliography.
*Not the same Evil Genius Games as the company that was in the news earlier this year.
Wights in D&D 3.5
In Dragon #348 (October 2006), I wrote “Ecology of the Wight”. A lot of my original material was cut from the published version, so here it is. I hope you find it useful, or at least interesting.
I was hoping to include a link so you could buy the magazine online, but it doesn’t seem to be available on DriveThru or the DMs’ Guild. If anyone knows of a place where non-pirated copies can be obtained, please drop a link in the comments below. Thanks!
Advanced Wights: Non-Core Sources
This article [the one in Dragon] assumes that the DM is only using the three core rulebooks, but DMs who have access to additional rulebooks and supplements will find more options for producing advanced wight characters.
Libris Mortis
Buy from DriveThru (affiliate link)
In addition to general notes on undead characters and NPCs, this sourcebook contains much that will be useful to a DM planning a wight-centered adventure or campaign. The evolved undead template allows the creation of ancient and powerful individuals with spell-like abilities. Feats like Improved Energy Drain, Spell Drain, and Life Drain increase the power of the energy drain ability that wights share with many other undead creatures. Monstrous prestige classes include the lurking terror with its enhanced stealth abilities, and the tomb warden (only available to a wight who has already advanced by other means) which confers many useful abilities within the confines of a particular tomb complex. New undead creatures include the slaughter wight, which could make a good leader or champion, and several other monsters that might be found alongside wights in a barrow-field or necropolis.
Monster Manual II
Buy from DriveThru (affiliate link)
Of most interest is the spellstitched template (page 215), which confers spellcasting ability on an undead creature. With their high Wisdom, wights gain access to first through third level spells by spellstitching – and gain some useful save bonuses – while only increasing their CR by one.
Savage Species
Buy from DriveThru (affiliate link)
The emancipated spawn prestige class (page 75) is available to creatures and characters who became the spawn of an undead creature such as a wight, and who regain their independence after their creator has been destroyed. As they advance in this prestige class, emancipated spawn gradually remember the skills and class features that they had while living. The wight template (page 136) can be used to create variant wights based upon any humanoid creature.
Wight Lairs
Unless they are under the command of a necromancer or some other master, wights normally lair in tombs. As their full name of barrow-wights suggests, they are often found in earthen burial mounds, but they can make their lairs in any kind of tomb complex or necropolis. A wight lair will usually be the original burial-place of the oldest wight in the pack (sometimes called the master wight); younger wights are usually the spawn of that first individual.
Wight lairs are usually cramped, dark places. Narrow passages and low ceilings hamper weapon-using intruders and favor unarmed wights. They use their knowledge of their lair’s layout, along with secret doors and passages, to spring close-quarters attacks without having to advance under fire from spellcasters and ranged weapons. Labyrinths of short passages allow a pack of wights to surround intruders and attack from all sides; their Hide and Move Silently skills give them a good chance of gaining surprise. Shifting walls and other devices are sometimes used to confuse and disorient outsiders.
Wights’ acute senses and stealth skills make them skilled and dangerous ambushers. When faced with a strong party, their usual tactic is to try to pick off enemies one by one, draining their life energy at leisure and turning them against their former comrades as wight spawn.
A Sample Wight Lair
The map shows a typical barrow where wights might be found. Built millennia ago to house the honored dead of a long-forgotten people, it is built of stone, filled in with dirt and rubble between the walls. Its front is dominated by a curved façade of monumental stones.
Inside, a narrow passage leads past a number of empty tombs (which might hold minor encounters such as rat or spider swarms) to an apparent dead end. The rubble is a decoy, though, intended to distract intruders while 4-5 wights use the secret passages to get behind them. They will not attack right away, but will follow stealthily until the adventurers are busy fighting the rest of the wights in the narrow confines of the two pillar rooms. Then they will mount a surprise attack, surrounding the trespassers and using their energy drain and create spawn abilities.
The four rooms at the far end of the barrow belong to the king and queen, who may be more powerful than the others (see Advanced Wights above). The treasury contains a little treasure (note that wights normally have none). The king’s tomb is hidden by a secret door in the back of his stone throne, and may contain some magical treasures or other special items.
Finding Wights
Wights are not only found in dark barrows on lonely, mist-wrapped moors. Here are a few ideas for placing them in other locations.
The Dead Below
From their headquarters in an abandoned catacomb beneath a city’s oldest cemetery, a powerful band of wights can use sewers, thieves’ tunnels, and other underground passages to reach almost anywhere. Moving mainly by night, they remain unseen and unheard as much as possible, ambushing unwary victims returning home from the city’s hostelries and other unfortunates who are outside after dark. Their ultimate goal may simply be to survive undetected, or they may have come to the city in search of an ancient treasure that was stolen from their leader by grave-robbers, and which now rests in the vaults of the thieves’ guild, or the academy of magic.
Fortress of Nightmares
The wights’ stronghold is heavily defended, both above and below ground, with multiple entry and exit points through small tombs and mausolea nearby. In addition, the wights may have control of swarms of vermin, rats, and the like, as well as alliances with other undead creatures – especially lawful evil undead – that make their home in the cemetery. These undead allies may not fight alongside the wights, but they might inform them of adventurers headed their way, or mount surprise hit-and-run attacks on living trespassers who are already engaged in fighting the wights.
The Forbidden Island
A remote island also makes a suitable home for a pack of wights, especially if it is dotted with the remnants of a lost civilization. If no living souls have set foot on the island for a long time, the wights’ hunger for life energy will make them particularly aggressive. Their first act will probably be to disable any watercraft or other means of escape from the island, and then pick off stragglers or scouts to reduce the visitors’ numbers before mounting an all-out attack by night. They may set traps in the thick jungle of the islands, or among the rubble-choked ruins.
Not Just Mummies
Desert tomb complexes – with or without pyramids – also make good homes for wights. Adventurers will probably expect to find mummies in such locations, and wights will take them by surprise, at least initially. If the wights are dressed in scraps of bandage, the confusion over their true nature may last beyond the first encounter – and nothing worries adventurers more than not knowing what they are up against. True mummies can act as leaders or elite fighters, and spellcasting mummy lords can make up for their comrades’ lack of magic.
My Complete and Utter D&D Bibliography
Everything I have published for various editions, starting in 1982. Includes links to some free downloads.
Click Here.
Return of the Bling
Here are a few more images that Pinterest threw my way. Apart from Jewish bridal rings, I did not know that rings in the shape of buildings were a thing, but here is an interesting selection.
I’ve thrown in a few thoughts about what these shapes might mean for magical rings in a fantasy game.
Note: All images are copyright their original owners, at the urls indicated.
The Castle
The castle is a symbol of safety and protection, so this ring might give its wearer a significant boost to armor protection, or protect in some more subtle way.
The Palace
The palace is a place of power and authority, so a ring in that form might give its wearer a boost to their social status and accompanying skills, making others treat them as powerful nobles even if they are not.
The Temple
Like the portable shrine ring from an earlier post, this ring might give the wearer the same protection as being on consecrated ground, or it might give their prayers greater efficacy, perhaps even granting limited clerical powers to a non-cleric.
The Tower
Towers are usually associated with wizards, so this ring might enhance a wearer’s magical abilities, possibly allowing them to cast spells at a higher level than normal or making their spells harder for targets to resist.
So there are a few ideas to play around with. For more buildings, search for ‘architectural rings’.
It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got That Bling
If you like this kind of post, you’ll also want to see these:
Armillary Rings: Handy for astronomers, astrologers, and navigators.
Compartment Rings: Hide your true allegiance, or carry a secret message.
Poison Rings: An old classic.
Gun Rings: Add more punch to your punch.
Eye Rings: Protection, divination, gaze weapons, and more.
Miscellany: No theme, but lots of possibilities.
Let us Bling: A Ring for Clerics that unfolds into a portable shrine.
Monday Maps #13: A Quick Tutorial on Caves
Happy Monday! I hope you and yours are all staying safe.
I haven’t posted a Monday Map in a little while, but I came across this YouTube tutorial that is worth seeing. If you’re like me and the only things you can draw are a breath, a bath, and a conclusion, invest 1 minute and 14 seconds of your time and take a look.
Hammers and Dragons has a Facebook page here with links to a free downloadable maps, including this one. Of interest to Warhammer and WFRP fans will be the Skaven temple posted on May 7th. Here’s a small-scale preview:
One of the things I especially like about Hammers and Dragons is that artist Tomasz Ratajczak is teaching himself to draw, so he’s not presenting some lofty masterclass that makes the rest of us feel like idiots. And yet, his simple techniques produce results that would not look out of place in a professional publication. He’s only just getting started, but I’m looking forward to seeing more from him.
Links
Hammers and Dragons YouTube Channel
Hammers and Dragons Facebook page
Making Monsters: Ahuizotl
I’m still pushing ahead with my monster-related #secretproject, despite several delays. In honor of the day, here’s a creature from Mexican folklore.
For first-time readers, this post is part of a series in which I am trying to develop a system-agnostic format for describing monsters, relying on your suggestions and feedback to get it just right before I launch this particular #secretproject formally. The Comments section is at the bottom of the page, so let me know what you think.
The Ahuizotl
The Ahuizotl is a medium-sized predator, about the size of a dog and combining the physical appearance of a dog and a monkey. It has black fur and four limbs ending in dextrous hands and a long, flexible tail ending in a fifth hand.
It lives in rivers and watery caves, hiding beneath the water and using its prehensile tail to grab victims and drag them to their deaths. Sometimes it will mimic the crying of a lost child to lure victims close enough to be grappled.
It eats the corpses of its victims, especially relishing the digits, the teeth, and the eyes. If prey is plentiful it will leave the rest of its victims uneaten. An Ahuiztol lair is usually an underwater cave, strewn with bones and uneaten corpses.
The name ahuizotl translates from the Aztec Nahuatl language as “spiny aquatic thing.” Although reports of the creature do not normally mention spines, optional rules for spines have been added under “Special Abilities” below.
RANGE
Image by Jean Vervelle, borrowed from his ArtStation page (https://www.artstation.com/doctorchevlong).
Real World: Mexico
Fantasy World: Tropical rivers. Lone or pack (2d4).
TYPE: Animal
SIZE: Medium (4ft/1.25m long)
MOVEMENT
Run: 50 feet (15m) per round
Swim: 30 feet (10m) per round
ATTRIBUTES
Strength: Animal, medium (e.g. wolf)
Dexterity/Agility: Animal, medium, dextrous (e.g. monkey)
Constitution: Animal, medium (e.g. wolf)
Intelligence: Animal, intelligent (e.g. wolf)
Willpower: Animal, intelligent (e.g. wolf)
Hit Points/Health: Animal, medium (e.g. wolf)
Armor/Defense: Fur + Agility (e.g. wolf)
ATTACKS
Bite: Animal, small to medium (e.g. medium dog, wolf)
Grapple: High skill (65%)
Stealth: Moderate skill (35%), underwater only
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Aquatic: The Ahuizotl is fully aquatic and capable of breathing underwater.
Spines (Optional): Sharp spines, up to 1 foot/30 cm long, erupt from the creature’s vertebrae. They confer a slight armor advantage against attacks from that direction. Any character trying to grapple the creature must make an appropriate skill or attribute test (wrestling, dexterity/agility, or similar) each round: failure means the character suffers damage as from a successful dagger or short sword attack.
Links
If you would like to know more, here are a few links. Any search engine will find many more.
More Like This
A Load of the Blings
This time, there’s no theme – it’s just a few bits and pieces that have caught my eye.
This delicate memento mori ring would look good on the hand of a gothic lady, or even a female necromancer. In the latter case, it might be enchanted – giving a bonus to dice rolls when casting necromantic spells, perhaps, or protecting the wearer from necromancy or the undead.
This ring and bracelet combination is a lot less subtle, and could have some serious necromantic properties. It might give the wearer’s touch the same effects as a touch-range necromantic spell, for example. Or the wearer might gain the touch ability of some undead monster, like the Chill Grasp of a WFRP4 Cairn Wraith or the paralysis of a D&D ghoul.
Not magical, but still quite useful, is this ring with a concealed pin. No well-dressed assassin should be without one: just a dab of blade venom, and you’re good to go. A targeted strike to the bare neck of an unsuspecting mark might even merit a small bonus to hit if your GM is in a good mood. Damage will be poison only.
This one made me think of Ranald, the god of thieves and gamblers in the Warhammer Old World setting. Appropriately, its effects depend on the dice that are handily built in: a 12 might win you a full-blown miracle, while a 2. . . well, it was nice knowing you.
Clocks are large, cumbersome devices in most medieval fantasy settings, but a sundial like this one tells the time more or less accurately – provided you understand the seasonal shifts in the sun’s path.
Here’s one that every Dwarf engineer will want. The telescope function is useful by itself, of course, but add a compass and you’ve got a primitive theodolite for making maps.
That’s all for this time. Stay in, stay well, and stay safe!
It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got That Bling
If you like this kind of post, you’ll also want to see these:
Armillary Rings: Handy for astronomers, astrologers, and navigators.
Compartment Rings: Hide your true allegiance, or carry a secret message.
Poison Rings: An old classic.
Gun Rings: Add more punch to your punch.
Eye Rings: Protection, divination, gaze weapons, and more.
Let us Bling: A Ring for Clerics that unfolds into a portable shrine.
Architectural Rings: A building on your finger.
Graeme Davis 