I have posted some but not much.

It occurs to that many of the D&D blogs I follow haven't even updated since I've started this thing. Which on one hand, is cool: since Jeremy Duncan stopped posting I've made nine posts. But on the other hand, it's easy to imagine many of these ancient wyrms stirring again. Jeff Rients has been at this for years before I even started reading blogs, and I bet he'll still be here years after I stop. It's weird, thinking that if I stop today, I may be a rush of mumbled words in between the breaths of a giant.

But hey, at least I was here. I guess in the end that's all you can ask for.

On Crow Vampires

You may have heard of sludge vampires. You may have heard of sewer vampires. But have you heard of crow vampires?

They are terrible creatures.

Crow vampires are made of vampire crows. When a regular crow feeds on the corpse of a man, it becomes vampiric. They look like regular crows, but if they sink their beak into you they will suck your blood, stealing one point of health. Crows have 1d4 HP (plus whatever they stole), and it takes at least three of them to turn into a crow vampire. They do this by flying into each other and combining their hit points, melding into the shape of a man. They only do this if they're hungry.

Crow vampires look like men, but with their arms and legs replaced by black talons. A swipe with them deals 1d8 damage, but their bite is more feared. Crow vampires love to pin you down with their massive strength and then take a good long drink from your jugular, stealing 1d6 health. When you're sucked dry, they turn back into crows and feed on your corpse. 

Crow vampires are immune to damage: they just turn back into crows. So if you shoot a crow vampire with a gun and deal 3 damage, a crow will fly out of the bullet wound. If you swing an axe, deal 6 damage and chop off an arm, the arm will split into two crows and fly away. Then next turn they'll fly right back and reattach.

This means you need to kill crow vampires twice, once as men, and again as crows. Otherwise they'll just keep reforming. Fire is good: if you set the vampire on fire, when it splits into crows they'll be on fire too. Silver is potent, for wounds dealt with silver spawn no crows. If all else fails, find sunlight. Crow vampires can't keep their man shape in direct light, so they'll split up and fly away. This is why attacks only happen at night or on overcast days.

Crow vampires do not have personalities: they're made of crows. They're just a more powerful hunting form. But if a vampiric crow eats the brain of a wizard, it turns red and becomes intelligent. The more of the brain it eats, the more it remembers of its past life.Whenever this red crow is part of a crow vampire, its personality takes over.  It makes for an odd sort of immortality, being a crow vampire wizard, but some wizards claim it's the only way. The most powerful of these are composed of hundreds of crows and can cast terrifying magic. 

Sometimes multiple red crows fuse into a single crow vampire. The less said of these individuals, the better.

On How Quickly Children Learn

Today I ran a game for my little brother and his friends. These kids were all 13-14, mostly eighth-graders, and only my brother already knew anything about D&D. During college, playing in the dorm's study room, I taught a fair number of new players what all this Strength and Dexterity nonsense was about, but I was a bit anxious about trying to teach four unruly youths at once. I mean hell, half these kids play Skyrim and the other half uses facebook. I need to compete with that.

We were running the Palace of the Silver Princess, mostly because I'm a lazy cur who forgot to prepare anything the night before. This week I should probably read the damn thing, since at the end the party was attacked by some priests and I have no idea who they work for. So, new players, unread adventure, motley collection of house rules. I had no idea how this was going to turn out.

Random Dwarf Name Table

Did you know that Jeff Rients wrote a random dwarf name table? 

Did you know that Gandalf was actually the name of a dwarf in the Norse Edda's? 

Did you know that I like to take things to their ridiculous extremes?

So yeah. Random Dwarf Name Table. Roll d100 twice. If there's a blank, roll again on the first roll column to fill it.

For best results, pair dwarves off, changing only the first letter of their name, like Virfir and Mirfir or Skurin and Durin. Important dwarves are exempt, and may even warrant a last name. 

Or in other words: just copy the Hobbit.

#	First Roll	Second Roll	#	First Roll	Second Roll
01-02	B	-ain	51-52	L	-imir
03-04	B	-an	53-54	M	-innar
05-06	B	-il	55-56	M	-irfir
07-08	B	-in	57-58	N	-ir_ir
09-10	Br	-ith	59-60	N	-ofar
11-12	D	-iur	61-62	N	-ofur
13-14	D	-oin	63-64	N	-ombur
15-16	D	-or	65-66	R	-om_ur
17-18	Dr	-yr	67-68	S	-onar
19-20	Dw	*	69-70	Sk	-orin
21-22	F	-ali	71-72	Sk	-urin
23-24	F	-ari	73-74	Sw	-undin
25-26	Fr	-austri	75-76	T	-un_in
27-28	Fr	-ili	77-78	Th	-yrath
29-30	Fr	-imli	79-80	Th	***
31-32	G	-ithi	81-82	Thr	-andvari
33-34	G	-oni	83-84	Thr	-and_ari
35-36	Gl	-ori	85-86	V	-augspori
37-38	H	-osti	87-88	V	-inskaldi
39-40	H	**	89-90	V	-olgthrasir
41-42	H	-alar	91-92	-	-olg_asir
43-44	H	-alin	93-94	-	-ornbori
45-46	J	-andalf	95-96	-	-orn_ori
47-48	K	-aupnir	97-98	-	-othvitnir
49-50	L	-ifur	99-100	-	-otsognir

*Roll a d20, then d100, then a d20. Combine.

** Roll a d20+20, then d100, then a d20. Combine.

*** Roll 2(d20)+40. Add an -i to the end.

Simple Psionics

The first bit here is the why. If you wanna skip to the good stuff, just scroll till you reach the d12 table. Go on, I won't stop you.

I really love Psychic powers. I really hate how psychic powers are portrayed in D&D. It seems nothing ever passes the Jedi Test, which is simply "Do these rules let me throw stuff around like Yoda?"

Some systems use skill checks. This weirds me out, since that means that sometimes Yoda tries to lift the X-Wing and just... can't. The force is more constant then this. I dislike the mechanic of a boolean can/can't because sometimes my character will roll poorly and I will feel lame.

Some systems use mana, or psi points, or whatever you want to call it. This also weirds me out, since it means Yoda can just run out of juice. Even if you're a mind reader or a pyrokinetic, it's strange to have an arbitrary cap, a limit to how much you can use your powers. Only this many mind readings a day. Psychic powers seem like they should always be on. Mana makes the whole thing feel too much like a rip from magic.

The excellent Scrap Princess posted this. It is fantastic. It is psionics as philosophy, as raw emotional turmoil. But it completely fails the Jedi test.

But it does show me that maybe psionic powers can just be this thing you can do, all the time. Which creates its own set of problems! With no limits, how do I stop someone from just Mind Controlling EVERY ONE THEY MEET. My players would do it too. They like to watch me cry.

Then, I found this, written by the fine Ramanan Sivaranjan. It uses mana points, more or less, but here's the awesome bit: the surge system. You have this power, this awesome thing you can do. But then you can get your psychic nosebleed on and WRECK SOME HAVOC. So without further ado, this is how I run psionics.

On Psionic Powers

Next time you level up, spend that level on learning a psychic power instead. Pick one from the table, or just roll a D12. I don't really care.

All powers take up your standard action. You can only activate one power per turn. Activating a surge power costs 1D4 HP, or whatever your HD is. You start with two powers and gain an additional power every level.

While surging, psykers start bleeding from the nose, and their skin barely but noticeably shrivels as the muscles are eaten away to sustain the caloric needs of their spells.

#	Free Effect: You can do this any time you want.	Surge Effect: You have to pay 1d4 HP to do this.
1	Psionic Immunity: While you concentrate, you can't be targeted by other psychic powers.	Psionic Blocking: While you concentrate, your target cannot use psionic powers.
2	Illusion: You project a mental image into a single target's mind. Unrealistic behavior lets the target make an INT check to realize the illusion is all in their head (thought they still keep seeing it).	Mass Illusion: You project a mental image into the head of everyone within a CHA x 10 feet.
3	Telepathy: You can read minds, and beam your thoughts to others. The target must be within CHA feet of you. With an opposed CHA check (you get +5), you can even pass the thoughts off as being the target's own.	Mind Control: For the next level turns you completely take over a creature's mind, dictating it's actions. Mind controlled characters are easily recognized by their up rolled eyes. When the victim is forced to do something they'd detest (ie; hurt a loved one, give you their wallet) they get a CHA save to snap out of it.
4	Read Memory: By touching a person's head, you can read their memory. Depending on whether they're awake, they experience this as either a flashback or as a dream.	Write Memory: You erase or rewrite a subject's memories, changing an hour of memory for every minute you work. Note: If a subject realizes their memories have been tampered with, they don't get the old ones back. What's gone is gone.
5	Torpor: By slowing the effects of time on yourself, you enter into a state of status, where heat, cold, and your wounds don't affect you. You remain conscious and can awake at any time.	Paralysis: You slow down a target, freezing them mid-step. To the target, it looks like the world is stuck on fast forward.
6	Haste: By accelerating the effects of time on yourself, you move at double speed. Every turn you can move twice and act twice, but you lose one hit point from the strain.	Time Stop: For your level turns you accelerate time so quickly that everything else is frozen. During this interval you, and only you, can move and act as normal.
7	Dowsing: You can discoverer the location of a person or object, provided you've personally seen or touched that thing before.	Precognition: You can see what will happen in the future to a person or object you've personally seen. Looking into your own future gives you a seizure that stuns you for 1d10 rounds, since it changes just as quickly as you see it.
8	Clairvoyance: By focusing on a place you've been to, you can see it as if you were standing there. Your eyes glow while you do it.	Teleportation: You focus on a place you've been to and instantly appear there. You take everything you are carrying and anyone you touch.
9	Phase Shift: You transpose yourself into a quantum state, and become misaligned with reality. Attacks have a fifty percent chance of going through you entirely.	Bilocation: You transpose yourself into a quantum state, creating a quantum clone. Both of you can take different actions. If one of you takes damage, the waveform collapses: that copy disappears in a puff of quarks and the other copy is "the real you."
10	Telekinesis: You can move up to 10 x CHA x Level pounds. You move it with all the dexterity of a giant baby's hand.	Disintegrate: You rip the object you're using telekinesis on apart. You destroy up to your level of HD instantly.
11	Static Shock:  You become electrically charged. Anyone who hurts you gets a nasty 1d4 damage shock.	Electrokinesis: A huge bolt of lightning erupts from your hands, arcing between your level targets and dealing each d8 damage.
12	Spontaneous Combustion: By rapidly vibrating tiny bits of matter you generate enough heat to set things on fire. 1d6 damage for every turn of flames, but they go out as soon as you stop concentrating (unless you ignited dry leaves or gasoline).	Spontaneous Explosion: You point, it goes boom. 1d12 damage to everything in a ten foot range.

Life on an infinite regression of corpses.

Everyone has their pet setting. This is mine.

It is in the future. The deep future. It is after the end, though which end isn't known. It is not simply post-apocalyptic: it is post-post-post-post-post-post-apocalyptic. Man's empire has waxed and waned and waxed innumerably, to the the point where no one remembers where the species has been nor where it is going.

The Earth is the single most evident example of this. The North American continent is rent in twain, separated by a Mississippian ocean. The remains of dying governments cling to outdated mandates to rule. They call themselves the Extant States of Usonia. Nomadic gatherers hunt twelve foot tall dogs amidst mile high skyscrapers. Strange machine cults prowl vast desert/junkyards, hoping to reassemble their broken gods. Ape-kingdoms, led by a tougher, more virant strain of humanity, wage war and win slaves from their black stone keeps. Sand is no longer found near water; beaches are covered in endless sea-glass mosaics.

The moon, shining and green, speaks to unimagined changes. If you focus a telescope you can see cool black lakes, and green fields with white flowers, and the remains of crashed starships.

This strange new world has strange new rules. You can prove a man a wizard by his single black hand; every time he casts a spell, the nanomachines grow and consume a little more of him. Always make sure to drive out the electronic ghosts from any tech you find. And one must never mistreat a cat, for it may rise upon two feet, shot you with it's laser pistol, and call you a wanker. Unless it's just a cat.

There are whispers of other worlds. That on Mercury the wheeled city of Mist races to avoid conflagration on the planet's sun-lit side, while looting the tomb-tunnels of the First Men. That the gods still walk on the water world of Venus, and may bless you with a new, more aquatic form. That on cold, snow covered Mars the Clone Kings war, even as they scheme and plot to plunder the asteroid belt before the Thought Lords of Saturn can do the same. And that on Jupiter, past the Galilean moons and the Rad Boys and the Great Maze, lies a way out. To the rest of humanity.

But who can say what that even means, among the clones and the mutants and the bio-engineered beasts and the mad gods. Man has no true faster-then-light drive, no pathway to the stars. Perhaps that is for the best.

IT LIVES!

Well, I posted about Battle Mountain. Real place in Neveda, by the way, but the point is I am now free to never talk about it again. Instead, fiction! And D&D! And no doubt incoherent ramblings. Once a day! More then once a day? Probably not more then once a day. Probably once a week, maybe, until this thing dies a slow and painful death. Like all blogs do in time. Except this will take like what, a month tops?

Whatever. Bring it on, Battle Mountain.

The Epic Of Battle Mountain

We are gunning across Nevada, cruising at a hundred miles an hour on a thin grey river of asphalt. With the sun behind us and the plains ahead of us we are awash in gold. It soaks into our skin and gleams off our smiles. And it is at this point, were everything is beautiful and nothing hurts, that we see the sign: white letters on green metal, it says simply: Battle Mountain, 12 miles.

Well that sounds cool.

As we head over a small hill the freeway stretches out in front of us and in the distance, the sky darkens. Clouds have gathered, blotting out the sky like a jar of spilled ink, and their shadows form a rapidly approaching jagged line that rips the earth into light and dark. On the sides of the road are skulking black things, the frayed remains of tires, arranged like the skulls of dead foes. Go back, they say. Go back or join us.

Suddenly, lightning. There's a flash, and then a white chain strings itself across the sky. It's arc is parabolic: does it remember what ground is? As if in answer, another jolt of lightning slams into the earth, then another. Pillars of energy light our way in the now black landscape, soundless in the confines our car.

Traffic slows down, slightly, and our neighbors crowd in. Though we drive two ton metal monsters some deep part of our brain whispers that there is safety in numbers. And then, the rain. It's scattered and sparse, but unfelt winds drive it into the windows like a jack hammer. TAP TAP TAP it screams, trying to get inside, and soon it is pouring, smashing into us in side sweeping sheets, a windborne torrent. The whispers are defeated and futile; it feels like driving underwater.

Meanwhile the slope steepens. Mountains seem to rise around us, primal and raw from the earth, the howling winds their birth screams. Behind us the sun shine a furious crimson from a gap in the dark clouds. And in front of us, shrouded in winds and rain, wreathed in lightning, and burning red from the gaze of an angry god, looms Battle Mountain.

It is the most metal thing I've ever fucking seen.