After an attempt to read a strange necromancer spell book went horribly sideways, three characters in my game gave birth to seeming clones of themselves through their mouths. The two who thought to eat the mouth babies gained a point in a random stat. The one who didn't is now aging one year every day -- as is her mouth baby. A few XP really seems like gilding the lily here.

I would not grant XP for any of that list. It's a list of stuff that happens to you on your way to get XP, i.e.: game play.
 

So I don't really* think that the long months of summer could ever produce enough food to keep settlements going through the long years of winter.

In Myperborea, I kind of try to keep the Howardian civilization-vs.-savagery thing going, though mostly under the surface. It's kind of a PC vs. NPC thing. Like for example there are PC druids, who embrace the balance &c. &c. but REALLY are accessing power through a certain progression that gets them more power up to potentially ridiculous levels -- if they can stay alive. Then there are "chaos" druids (specific references would include "Ruined Palace of the Metegorgos" and some stuff from Arnold K's blog) that have given themselves over fully to natural forces and are, at best, orthogonal to humanity now. The zooanthropes from the Gene Wolfe torturer books are also analogs here.

But then and but so the point is that then there are the "civilized" classes, and these are the people that make human civilization possible pretty much everywhere except maybe the Khromarium peninsula. Druids are a solid example again and probably the most common ones. These are the people collecting prisoners and captured monsters and deformed adventurers to burn in the wicker person at the festival days. Their dedication to channeling life energy into the ground creates tiny arable zones that endure in all except the year of full darkness, where all life energies are canceled. But even in spring and summer years, most of Hyperborea is just too damn cold for growing enough to support human settlements.

And so the blood. And so the lotus. And so the people of fell aspect and intense mien who will hire adventurers and use them for whatever they are worth to get whatever is needed to shave the fine percentages between existence and extinction for these isolated settlements in the great dark.

Fun part is me, I don't care whether human civilization survives in Hyperborea! I'm just letting the dice talk!

Anyway, that's my take on winter: blood,

gizmomathboy wrote:

kane wrote:

I'm curious is this project alive?

 
Indeed it is.

It's just on the back burner because of getting ready for Gary Con and such.

Plus...there are some fiddly bits about how I won't to code it up and such.

I have a decent amount done. I'm mostly wading through the tables that modify the base result.

So, look for something hopefully in mid to late April

But keep the pressure on him, Kane, for gods' sake! He can rest during year Bat!

Ghul wrote:

Handy Haversack wrote:

Manny suggested I prep something else to run since some DMs have to cancel -- "Maybe what we played in last weekend!" "You mean the haunted plague tenement? With the disease gargoyle whose voice is made of worms? And all the vomit zombies? Maybe *next* year ..."

Is that role-playing, or a reenactment of another Saturday night in NYC?
 

I couldn't hear you over the sound of baseball playoffs.

mabon5127 wrote:

I will not be attending Gary Con this year and will need to cancel my events. I am an Exercise Physiologist working with special populations. Most of my clients are 60+ with many comorbidities like diabetes, respiratory conditions, obesity, and high blood pressure. I do not wish to put my clients at risk upon my return. Given the close proximity to people from around the world that are attracted to this convention, I believe this to be a viable albeit small risk.

I wish to apologize to those that signed up for my games and wish them good fortune in finding others.

Shoot. We sure will miss seeing you AGAIN, mabon!
 

Heard a cut off the soundtrack on the radio last night. Wild stuff!

https://www.wfmu.org/listen.m3u?show=91783&archive=183592&starttime=0:19:32

grodog wrote:

Handy Haversack wrote:

I can't see anything that would need to be altered in the stats if you needed dragons. Maybe improve their AC by a step?

Over the years I worked up several house rules as improvements to baseline AD&D dragons, and will be reevaluating them with more mature eyes in my new Greyhawk campaign.  You can check them out at http://www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/temp/grodog_AD%26D_dragon_rules_03.pdf if you're curious.

Handy Haversack wrote:

But maybe also a good time to really dragon up your dragons, make them unique, true creatures of legend? Instead of the AD&D treasure dispensaries they often became?

To the latter I say "Pish" ;) while to the former, I'll add that I've been reworking the neutral gem dragons from TD#37, and should have a nice post about them on my blog sometime before the Ides of April, or so....

Allan.

A "pish" from grodog is more valuable than paragraphs from most people!

Will check out your write-ups, Allan!
 

measuredrums wrote:

So stoked! ... Scored two Hyperborea events this year ... Michael Simon's "A Heist in Khromarium" and mavfire's "Lost Cairns of the Savages" ... and will playing in both with two of my oldest old school gaming buddies from waaaaay back in the early 80's ... Anyone know of a Hyperborea forum members get together happening at any point? Would love to meet some of you fine fellows and put faces to names ... See everyone there!

I think Ghul said we should all just feel free to hang out in his room. I'll bring the bagpipe-music CDs.

I'm sure it's playing too much to type, but I gotta say: I am really enjoying going back to the 3rd lvl. pregens I made a couple of years ago and using Acrobat's Typewriter tool to XXXXXXXX out the magic items for my Chimera game at GaryCon. I guess we know which character is a stand-in for the author!

I can't see anything that would need to be altered in the stats if you needed dragons. Maybe improve their AC by a step?

But maybe also a good time to really dragon up your dragons, make them unique, true creatures of legend? Instead of the AD&D treasure dispensaries they often became?