(Apologies to my long-suffering beta readers, who’ve probably seen more than they care to on this subject already!)

With some linguistic foundations in place, and using the materials I’d already prepared for the game before my detour into Elvish, I’m ready to start actually populating this setting with stories.

The first thing that comes to mind is reviving my “homecoming hobbit” story, and in fact the character (“Not-Dead” Darby Sandalthorn) features prominently in the background material of the setting-as-campaign-backdrop. I fully intend to start writing stories about this character in the upcoming months, possibly to post here, definitely with the intention of gathering into a book of “Jack the Giant-Killer”-style tales. (The one big sticker there is: do I use the premises for RPG scenarios first and then write the stories, or just write ‘em, knowing that my players will read them and that I therefore can’t use them for RPG scenarios? That remains to be seen.)

However, I’ve also been making an effort to look at the setting as more than just a backdrop for my displaced halfling and a weekly D&D game. I’ve tried to make this a setting that would support both big stories and small ones, depending on the kind of story I want to tell. I have at least one very, very epic tale in mind that makes poor little Darby look like a pebble on the beach of time, which could also fit nicely in this setting, but that requires a lot more meat to be put on the setting’s bones.

To that end, as I’ve worked I’ve tried to keep one eye on the big picture, while sketching in all the little details about where Darby lives. And I also cannot ignore certain realities of both the culture we live in, and the fantasy market, and keep these things in my mind as well.

First of all, there’s a lot of fantasy out there. And not just that, there’s a lot of what for lack of a better term I’ll call “Tolkienian” fantasy, and as I’ve mentioned before, this is something I’m going to just have to get comfortable worth to make the story work. Darby Sandalthorn’s world has elves and dwarves and hobbits and goblins in it. It just does. Without those things, it would be a different world. There are some surface differences… my version of Elvish instead of Quenya or Sindarin, dwarves who have dark skin instead of pale, etc., but as settings go, at least on the surface, it’s pretty generic.

I thought about trying to come up with ways to address this, but in the end they all came down to what I call the “My dwarves are different!” problem. A lot of fantasy settings—gaming settings in particular, but fiction settings as well— take the standard tropes of fantasy and tweak them around a bit, then sit back and seem very proud of how “fresh and original” their setting is.

“My dwarves are different! They have blue skin and long noses!” “You call that different? My dwarves are really different! They’re lithophages who subsist on rocks and have diamonds for eyes!” “Oh yeah? Well my dwarves are even more different: they are all genetically-identical close who reproduce by mitosis!” etc., ad nauseam.

I… don’t want to mess with that. First of all, it’s the fantasy equivalent of giving every planet a different forehead and calling them aliens. Second, the only reason to use a literary trope is to take advantage of the tools that trope provides for you. If you don’t have any real use for the trope, don’t bother with it at all. So where I’ve diverged from the “generic,” so to speak, I’ve done so for specific purposes.

Does this mean my setting will be on the plain side? Possibly. But it’s also important to remember that the setting is not the story. I could come up with the most elaborate, finely-detailed byzantine clockwork of a setting, but nobody would give a damn if there wasn’t something interesting happening there. The setting is like the backdrop of a stage: it’s there to provide a context for the play, and can add all kinds of depth and beauty if done well, but it is not the play itself.

The one major exception, and admittedly an ironic one, is the !hobbits. Hobbits and the Shire (or an approximation thereof) are part of the core conception of this setting, and yet they’re the specific creation of Professor Tolkien’s and the one thing I can’t simply lift and use without lawsuit-proofing them first. Elves, dwarves, heck even powerful-but-cursed magic rings all have classical antecedents. And while folklore is chock-o-block with “little people” from gnomes to puckwudgies to the Tuatha dé Danann, none of them are hobbits and hobbits are not them, if only by virtue of not being faerie.

Of course, “halflings” have been somewhat genericized, thanks to RPGs, Willow, and the like. So I can (and will) use them without too much fear, but I have to find a way to make them mine first. This leads to the tricky task of figuring out how to adopt/adapt/assimilate them into my work without losing the core aspects that made me want to use them in the first place.

My halflings are different! They’re lithophages who subsist on rocks and have diamonds for eyes!

Hmm… no.

For now, as least for a working model, I’m sticking with fairly generic halflings. The main ideas I’m playing with at the moment are that their own word for themselves may be “hauflin” (a Scots word that roughly translates to “young adult” or possibly “that weird period when one is neither a child nor an adult”), which gets mangled into “halfling” by the big folk; and that they may also refer to themselves culturally as “dhíbir” (an Irish word which means “banished”), but this gets colloquially munged into “dibbs.” I’ve not completely settled on either of these, and I realize that it’s a sort of “theme park” approach to linguistics, but keep in mind this is just intended to be something good enough to get on with. Hopefully something better will come to me as I go.

-The Gneech

The trio of hags known collectively as “Mother, Maiden, and Crone” are a powerful covey of terrors in the service of a great and sinister evil. In my Revenge of the Giants game, they were actually at the front of an army of giants who invaded the campaign city, but the giants little knew that the hags actually had a greater agenda of their own. While the giants were looking to conquer, the hags were only interested in slaughter and sacrifice and were channeling souls to Acererak, the demilich of the Tomb of Horrors.

The three hags are Mother, an annis matron; The Cold Woman, an annis hag druid with affinity for frost (the “maiden”); and The Keening Crone, a green hag bard. These stats were created before the official Pathfinder conversion for annis hags, so it’s my own writeup. I haven’t compared my stats to the official version, but I would guess they’re fairly close and either one should work.

Mother (CR 9)

CE Large Monstrous Humanoid (female Annis Hag Matron)
Init +1; Senses Darkvision (60 feet); Perception +21

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AC 25, touch 10, flat-footed 24 (+1 Dex, -1 size, +15 natural)
hp 126 (12d10+60)
Fort +11, Ref +9, Will +10
DR 5/bludgeoning; SR 20

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Spd 40 ft., Flight (30 feet, Average)
Melee Bite +19 (1d6+8/20/x2) and
2x Claw 19 (1d6+8/20/x2)
Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft.
Spell-Like Abilities Alter Self (3/day), Bestow Curse (3/day), Charm Monster (3/day), Create Greater Undead (1/day), Create Undead (3/day), Cure Moderate Wounds, Mass (3/day), Cure Serious Wounds (3/day), Dominate Monster (1/week), Fear (3/day), Fog Cloud (3/day), Inflict Moderate Wounds, Mass (3/day), Vampiric Touch (3/day)

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Abilities Str 27, Dex 12, Con 20, Int 14, Wis 14, Cha 14
Base Atk +12; CMB +21; CMD 32
Feats Alertness, Blind-Fight, Combat Casting, Great Fortitude, Intimidating Prowess, Multiattack
Skills Bluff +17, Diplomacy +11, Fly -1, Intimidate +18, Knowledge (Arcana) +10, Knowledge (Planes) +10, Knowledge (Religion) +10, Perception +21, Sense Motive +4, Spellcraft +17, Stealth +10
Languages Common, Draconic, Giant
SQ Rend (Ex)

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Rend (Ex) Causes 2d6+9 damage if you hit with both claws.

Next week: The Cold Woman.

-The Gneech

The text is open content using the OGL. “Mother” was created by John “The Gneech” Robey. Stat blocks created by Hero Lab®.

I have finally managed to construct a complete sentence in Elvish! O.o

By which, I mean my own Elvish, not Quenya or Sindarin or any other writer’s Elvish.

Those of you familiar with my previous writing efforts may know that I did create an Elvish language for the fantasy novel I wrote some years ago, but I was never satisfied with it. First of all, it just sounded kinda ugly. Second, it was woefully incomplete, consisting mainly of about fifty vocabulary words, some incomplete cases, and a word order structure.

But real, working languages are complex things with lots of fiddly little bits. “Jane sees Spot run?” Easy. “Jane wishes that Spot would stop barking or else she intends to kick his yappy tail?” A bit more complicated. My Elvish-as-was could handle “Jane sees Spot; Spot is running.” Maybe. My new Elvish isn’t quite to the yappy tail-kicking stage yet, but it’s getting there.

Éncurod dho yrhegil aflif ydangras. Ydwandwin jútlil ulwanaras. Mér iodrad yjanlil!

I believe that the riders have reached the river. They will have crossed it at dawn. Go to them now!

“Great,” you might be saying. “But what is it good for?”

Well, that’s a tougher question to answer. Long story short, I’m doing some worldbuilding. The immediate purpose is my upcoming Pathfinder game, which is looking more and more likely to be a real thing the more I work on it. But in the more long term, well, I think I have a nice, robust world starting to form up, and I will probably begin using it for my fiction.

Is it the most original fantasy setting out there? No, and I won’t pretend otherwise. This is a setting that exists because Middle-earth in not in the public domain. On the other hand, just because the cherry tree in my yard grew from the seed of a cherry tree in the neighbor’s yard, and both trees look very similar, doesn’t mean that my cherry tree isn’t also beautiful and able to have a nifty fort in it.

…Hmm. I lost that one somewhere.

Point is, while I may be emulating the master, I’m not simply copying his work and calling it mine. The stories I have in mind for the setting to support are not the same stories Tolkien told; the issues they explore and the purposes they serve are not the same issues and purposes of Tolkien’s work. But I am using his work as a model for the kind of breadth and depth a setting (and a story) should have.

Anyway, my original idea for the RPG campaign was that I would simply use Welsh as a stand-in for Elvish, care of Google Translate, and I got pretty far into the campaign prep doing that; but as I got further and further into it, I became more and more eager to use the setting for other purposes as well, without wanting to have to go back and yank the Welsh out. And it’d be a lot easier to do that now, while I’m still in the fairly broad sketches, than it would be later, after I’ve already got dozens of maps and pages and pages of background info.

So yeah, I’m creating an Elvish language. I will also do one for dwarves (which will hopefully be easier as I’ll need so much less of it) and may at least dabble in some other regional languages. And if all goes well, this will be investment in something pretty amazing down the line.

-The Gneech

PS: Why yes, I am a nerd, why do you ask?

Another winner bubbled up last night from the Gneech’s Action Adventure Dream Vault. Most has been lost in the intervening time since then, but I do remember some highlights…

The whole dream takes place on a dark, wet night of course.

I was a smart-alecky wandering adventurer-type in a post-apocalyptic world somewhere between Escape From New York and Full Throttle; not exactly what you’d call badass, but capable enough and a quick thinker (with a snarky sense of humor). Circumstances unknown (or possibly forgotten) had brought me to a small town that appeared to be the remains of an amusement park, repurposed, and with suitably eccentric inhabitants. Like any good village full of post-apocalyptic degenerates, they were superstitious, fearful, and downright stupid, and prone to feeding anybody they didn’t like (which boiled down to anybody who wasn’t born and raised in the village) into a thing they called “The Cruncher.” Naturally, as a smartass, it wasn’t long before The Cruncher and I had a date, along with a handful of other people the villagers had been saving up for their periodic Cruncher-feeding ritual.

The Cruncher itself consisted of a large concrete bunker with a round main platform inside that looked more or less like the transporter room from Star Trek, and a small control room off to the side. Six to ten people would be put out onto the platform, the villager operating the controls would twiddle some switches, and a giant white ceramic thing would plunge down over them, there’d be a loud noise and some yelling, and then it would rise back up and they were gone, leaving no trace.

Naturally the villagers, being both stupid and insane, believed the victims to have been crunched out of existence (hence the name “Cruncher”). While I didn’t know what happened to the victims, I knew they hadn’t been crunched, so I was more curious than frightened when shoved onto the platform and “crunched” myself.

The Cruncher, it turned out, was actually an elevator; the white ceramic thing was a protective shield designed to keep out harmful radiation of some kind (possibly from the inevitable nuclear war that creates these post-apocalyptic settings). The yelling was the result of it being, well, a very fast elevator, that unceremoniously dumped its passengers out at the bottom of the shaft and shot back up again to reset.

Under this amusement-park-turned-village was a large underground installation, the purpose of which had been lost to time. Mall? Offices? War-proof housing for the duration? Who knows. But now it was dingy, derelict, and dangerous. As for the inhabitants, well, if the people above were degenerate, the people below were downright feral. They knew the sound of the elevator under the Cruncher meant feeding time, and they were there and ready for a free snack.

This led to the most action-oriented part of the dream, essentially a chase sequence through the tunnels and warrens of this underground installation, fleeing its deranged inhabitants and all manner of “WTF I don’t even” things that the other Crunchees and I found along the way (such as the room full of broken and disused animatronic clowns).

As we fled, various members of the would-be escapees fell to chasing degenerates or other hazards; at least one fell down an open elevator shaft as I recall. Very few of the images from that part of the dream lingered much past me waking up, but I remember that the chase ended in a pit full of junk and muck that was basically the trash compactor from Star Wars. There was a narrow metal ladder bolted into the wall, which the remaining escapees and I climbed for dear life (after the requisite wisecracks), feral tunnel-dwellers climbing up behind us using their fingernails in the cracked walls.

At the top of the ladder, for no reason other than It’s A Dream Deal With It, there was a helipad with a running and prepped helicopter. Fortunately, it was a futuristic pre-post-apocalypse helicopter, all electric engine and intuitive “drive it like a car” controls, so I could fly the thing. Unfortunately, as my fellow escapees and I got to the top of the ladder and made a run for the helicopter, the feral inhabitants of CrazyTown came surging up after us, bringing down all but myself and one other (whose identity I have since forgotten upon waking up).

The dream ended with myself and the other escapee lifting off and into the night in the helicopter, speculating on whether or not the ferals would raid the village of degenerates now that they were on the surface and trying not to think about it.

And then I woke up.

-The Gneech

So for the first Monster Monday post, I’m actually going to post a Pathfinder update to a critter I created in 3.5 for the Kobold Quarterly blog.

This writeup uses my original text, but the KQ text works just fine. Go with the one you prefer!

Grimdaw (CR 1/3)

N Tiny Magical Beast
Init +3; Senses Darkvision (60 feet), Low-Light Vision; Perception +12

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AC 17, touch 15, flat-footed 14 (+3 Dex, +2 size, +2 natural)
hp 5 (1d10)
Fort +2, Ref +5, Will +2
Immune paralysis, disease, energy drain, fear

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Spd 10 ft., Fly 60 feet (Average)
Melee Talon x2 +6 (1d4-3/20/x2) plus disease
Space 2.5 ft.; Reach 0 ft.

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Abilities Str 5, Dex 17, Con 10, Int 4, Wis 14, Cha 6
Base Atk +1; CMB +2; CMD 9
Feats Weapon Finesse
Skills Fly +7, Perception +12, Stealth +11
SQ Disease (DC 11) (Ex)

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Disease (DC 11) (Ex) Any creature struck by the claws of a grimdaw must make a Fortitude save vs. DC 11 (Constitution-based) or become nauseated by infectious bacteria attacking their nervous system, causing symptoms ranging from numbness to phantom sensations and extreme pain. After 1d4 rounds the victim becomes slowed (as per the spell). The secondary attack of the disease happens after 24 hours and causes paralysis for 1d4 days.

Grimdaw Immunities (Ex) Grimdaws are immune to disease, drain effects, supernatural fear, and paralysis, making them uniquely suited to existing among the undead. (Their immunity to fear doesn’t make them recklessly brave— in fact, they tend to be quite cowardly creatures— it simply prevents them from fleeing in supernatural terror from a mummy’s despair ability, or instance.)

The Grimdaw, or “ghoul crow,” tends to nest and flock around graveyards, abandoned churches, swamps, or other unwholesome places and resembles a large and shabby crow or raven with a gruesome, skeletal-like head. Despite their appearance they are not undead, but actually scavengers and carrion-eaters that can coexist among the undead and feed on the remains of those the undead slay.

On their own, grimdaws retreat from larger creatures and will only attack if their mates or young are threatened; however, they are occasionally known to form into large swarms, commonly known as “riots,” which become very aggressive and will attack any creature of size Large or smaller size on sight. The exact reasons for the forming of a riot of ghoul crows is unknown.

Grimdaws are bright and, if tamed, can make good pets. They have been known to become the Arcane Familiar of necromancers (acting as a raven except without the ability to speak), or may be taken as an Animal Companion by clerics with the Death domain in place of the Bleeding Touch ability as if the cleric were a druid of the same level. While not terribly fearsome in combat, grimdaws make excellent spies or couriers.

Grimdaw Riot (CR 2)

N Tiny Magical Beast (Swarm)
Init +3; Senses Darkvision (60 feet), Low-Light Vision; Perception +16

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AC 17, touch 15, flat-footed 14 (+3 Dex, +2 size, +2 natural)
hp 16 (3d10)
Fort +3, Ref +6, Will +3
Immune Grimdaw Immunities, flanking, staggered, critical hits, precision damage, Swarm Traits
Weakness Vulnerability to Area Effects

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Spd 10 ft., Fly 60 (Average)
Melee Swarm 1d6 plus disease
Space 10 ft.; Reach 0 ft.
Special Attacks Distraction (DC 11), Swarm Attack (1d6)

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Abilities Str 5, Dex 17, Con 10, Int 4, Wis 14, Cha 6
Base Atk +3; CMB +4; CMD 11 (can’t be Bull Rushed, Grappled, or Tripped)
Feats Skill Focus: Perception, Weapon Finesse
Skills Fly +11, Perception +16, Stealth +11
SQ Disease (DC 11) (Ex)

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Disease (DC 11) (Ex) Any creature struck by the claws of a grimdaw must make a Fortitude save vs. DC 11 (Constitution-based) or become nauseated by infectious bacteria attacking their nervous system, causing symptoms ranging from numbness to phantom sensations and extreme pain. After 1d4 rounds the victim becomes slowed (as per the spell). The secondary attack of the disease happens after 24 hours and causes paralysis for 1d4 days.

Grimdaw Immunities (Ex) Grimdaws are immune to disease, drain effects, supernatural fear, and paralysis, making them uniquely suited to existing among the undead. (Their immunity to fear doesn’t make them recklessly brave— in fact, they tend to be quite cowardly creatures— it simply prevents them from fleeing in supernatural terror from a mummy’s despair ability, or instance.)

Distraction (DC 11) (Ex) A creature with this ability can nauseate the creatures that it damages. Any living creature that takes damage from a creature with the distraction ability is nauseated for 1 round; a Fortitude save negates.

Swarm Attack (1d6) Creatures with the swarm subtype don’t make standard melee attacks. Instead, they deal automatic damage to any creature whose space they occupy at the end of their move, with no attack roll needed. Swarm attacks are not subject to a miss chance for concealment or cover. A swarm’s stat block has “swarm” in the Melee entries, with no attack bonus given.

Enjoy!

-The Gneech

Open content using the OGL. The Grimdaw was created by John “The Gneech” Robey. Stat blocks created by Hero Lab®.

Well, my attempt to put aside GMing doesn’t seem to be going so well; for the past few weeks I’ve been grinding away on a campaign idea that won’t leave me alone. It’s nothing new under the sun– essentially a Lord of the Rings clone, with the main item of note being that it really is a Lord of the Rings clone, right down to singing (well, chanting) goblins and all sorts of detailed fiddly world notes and linguistic flourishes (like as an elvish dictionary that I use for creating consistent, meaningful place names and such). Assuming I can pull it off, it’d be very much a literary campaign, rather than a gamey one.

One of the issues with it, however, is finding the balance between making the world distinct from the Generic D&Dland of every other game, and making so much work that I might as well be running some other game. For instance, I don’t want there to be bags of holding, fireballs, and magic missiles flying around, so I banned arcane casting classes for PCs (except for bards). But I also made that important thematically: arcane magic is the arrogant imposition of the caster’s will over the natural order of the universe, and as any good Tolkien scholar knows, that’s bad juju. Divine magic, by contrast, is allowing yourself to be the conduit of a higher power and is essentially a humble thing. The exception to this is loremasters (i.e., bards), whose study of the world has taught them how to skillfully work within the natural order, rather than to just override it, so to speak.

Admittedly, it’s kind of a kludge. But again, it’s striking a balance between the needs of the story (i.e., flashy, blasty magic should be rare and mostly in the hands of badguys) and the need for an easily playable game (I don’t really want to spend a month editing the spell list for every class in the universe).

The biggest place where this is going to be an issue, in the long run, is going to be in scenario design– because D&D (and by D&D here I mean Pathfinder, but you get the drift) has an established progression of standard foes by level, e.g., kobolds, then goblins, then orcs, then gnolls, then hill giants, blah-blah-blah. But I don’t want to use that standard progression. In fact, in this setting, large swaths of the usual Monster Manual menagerie just don’t exist or are very different from the usual canon. (Chromatic vs. metallic dragons? What does that even mean? And what is this “astral plane” of which you speak?)

This means I can’t just call up call up the bestiary and start picking random critters to toss in and build a scenario around that, nor would I want to. I’m building the skeleton of a story here (with the players providing the flesh and soul), so I need to come up with what will be there and then make numbers to suit.

For instance, in one of the very early scenarios for the campaign I have in mind for the players to be confronted by an ettin as a dangerous “boss encounter.” (Why an ettin? Because they’re cool, strange, frightening monsters that fit the folklore/fairy tale/epic fantasy feel that I’m going for while still being unusual and exotic.) Unfortunately, a by the numbers ettin is CR 6, way way over the heads of any starting party.

For a regular campaign, as a sacrifice to ease of prep, I’d just say “screw it” and go with an ogre instead. But like I said above, this campaign is different. This campaign is a story first, and for the encounter I want, it pretty much has to be an ettin. What to do? One possible answer is something I’ve talked about many times before: reskinning the monsters.

I mean, I could just take the stats for an ogre, swap out its Iron Will feat for Two-Weapon Fighting, give it an arbitrary +4 to Perception checks, describe it to the players as having two heads, and call it an ettin.

Alternatively, I could craft a workable “Lesser Ettin” monster that hits the CR spot I want by stripping hit dice and stats off of the standard ettin. That would probably take 30-60 minutes all told and give me a new critter I could use indefinitely.

Either approach will satisfy the needs of this particular campaign and I haven’t yet decided which one I will use. But the crux of the problem is that either one takes more time than simply taking an existing critter and running with it– and prep time is what killed gaming for me before.

I’m not sure what to do about that problem. It’s every clear that my brain wants to do this game and isn’t going to leave me alone until I at least give it a shot. But I barely have time to do the things I’ve already committed to, much less add a time-consuming delve into Deep Fantasy Geekery that will only be enjoyed by a handful of people.

On the other hand, I could always use the variant statblocks I come up with for blog content. Maybe I’ll start doing Monster Monday posts where I put up the critters I’ve come up with… after the players fight them.

-The Gneech