So I have been reading D&D blogs for a while now, and I came across an article (that I can’t find at the moment – I’ll link it here when I do) about minion generators. It was, in essence, Gauntlet. Since we’re about to move to the next part of the dungeon, I wanted to give my players a challenging (but not too challenging) encounter before they get to the good stuff (BTW gang – if you’re reading this, I’m just goofing off right now, the real story starts back up next week – so be glad you took that rest).

Anyway, this looked like a LOT of fun, so I figured I would throw it in as a micro-mini-boss.

So, the set up : (more…)

Anther bit of flavor text that seems to have taken on a life of its own in our D&D game. I give you, the Taco Stand

Foodstuffs across the planes and realms can vary wildly, with each society and environment having its own delicacies and customs. There are also many common foodstuffs, a turnip by any other name is still a starchy root vegetable, and as one wise scholar noted “It’s a strange thing, but every sentient race has its own version of these Swedish meatballs! I suspect it’s one of those great universal mysteries which will either never be explained, or which would drive you mad if you ever learned the truth.”

And into the niche of standard common foods, came the Taco Stand.

The Taco Stand can be found in almost any city of note. It serves Tacos, and it has a Bucket. The owner of said stand ALWAYS sounds like he is from an eastern bloc country.

Taco Stand Lore

Streetwise DC5 : The taco stand serves Tacos. Two for 1 silver. The origin of the meat is always questionable, commonly from “the butcher near the farrier’s house.” Sometimes, there are specials (“half silver extra!”), like chicken, spiced rat, or buzzard (Beware the long pig, though). In general, though, it is best not to ask. However, they are all guaranteed to be “99% arsenic free” and hot sauce is available for those needing extra flavor. The Bucket is for the slop, the stand’s privy, and usually washed every daily by the proprietor of the stand. Usually. It is also best not to ask in what order the making of tacos and washing of the bucket took place.

Streetwise DC 15: The owner(s) of the Taco Stand(s) are all from the same family, who have spread out making tacos for whoever will buy then. They and their brothers learned it from their father, and their father and his brothers learned if from their grandfather, and so on. Noone knows where they came from originally (perhaps the mythical land of “Man-hat-tin” where there are many marvels), but wherever there are large numbers of people, there will be Tacos.

Additional Checks :

• Nature DC10 : determine if it really is eatable meat
• Nature or Alchemy DC15 : determine if today’s batch is really 99% arsenic free
• Nature DC20 : Determine Origin of Meat. Not for the foolhardy or cowardly.

“You want Bucket? I give you Bucket! Bucket is clean! I wash Bucket, then make Taco!” - Taco Stand Guy in the City of Temples

Author’s note : This started as flavor text, and sorta grew from there. I needed a store, and well…
The Co-Op

There are few things as useful across the cosmos as a good supply shop.

The Co-Op (no-one knows what it’s actually called) is a one-stop shop for almost anything an adventurer needs.  Be it the latest in magical items, the simplest of trail rations, or the rarest of gloves, the

Co-Op has it. And the Co-Op has EVERYTHING, from the best to the worst. Need an organically raised cockatrice egg? Check the magically cooled produce racks. How about 1000 feet of monofilament? Ropes and ties on aisle five. There is a very strong emphasis on fair-trade, organic, and humanely produced materials.

Staffed by a perpetual series of 20-something politically active humanoids (depending on the plane, mind you) who fit the universal constant of “Stoner” and/or “Hippie.” They are generally managed by an older group of former “Stoners” and/or “Hippies” – you know the ones. While it seems odd that you can get ANYTHING at the Co-Op no-one seems to care. And the people who live near a co-op are very protecive of it. Adventurers tend to settle in neighborhoods near Co-Ops.

It should be noted that the local Managers are evasive about exactly how deliveries are made, and noone is allowed to stay in them overnight. There seems to be no delivery entrance, but there is a stockroom in the back.

A Co-Op is found in almost every large city of every plane of existance.

Knowledge About the Co-Op :

Streetwise DC 10 : The Co-Op is the place to go if you need ANYTHING. Buy a membership ($15 GP), and you are entitled to a 5% discount on all goods, with a 5% dividend at the end of the year. The Brass City and Shadowfell stores are said to stock things best left on those planes.

Streetwise DC 15 :  Anyone caught in the store overnight is considered a tresspasser and theif, and dealt with by the cleaning staff. These people are (usually) never heard from again.

Streetwise DC 30 : Deliveries and nightly cleaning is done by a firm contracted by the mysterious owners of the Co-Op. The exact staffing for this varies from plane to plane. In all casses, they must be able to get in and out of the stockroom every night, leave the store vermin free, and do it all with humane methods.

Cleric Bronner’s Mystical Soap
Category: Gear
Price: 10 sp
Weight: 2 oz solid, 4 oz liquid
Description: Cleric Bronner’s Mysical Soap can remove almost any stain or scent. For one encounter after use, Cleric Bronner’s Mystical Soap grants a +2 Bonus against smells, stinks, or funks, or breath weapons.

No one is really sure where Cleric Bronner comes from, or where he goes to. All anyone knows is the Cleric Bronner spreads the gospel of his Mystical Soap in every dimension, creating monasteries dedicated to his “Moral Ac-Beorc-Cen” and the making of soaps. The soaps are of high quality, inexpensive for the common adventurer, and get out almost any stains or stenches (including the lich crotch musk so common to enchanted jockstraps).

As far as anyone knows, the soaps themselves are not magical, just made from a formula of the highest quality and secrecy. It is known that all ingredients are organic, fair trade, and natural, unlike many other soaps, which are made via conjuration and poaching.

The labels of the soaps also serve as an evangelical device – each label is printed with “highlights” of the “Moral Ac-Beorc-Cen”, although not a COMPLETE rendition of all it’s tenets. If anything, each variety of soap contains some fragment of this legendary moral guide, but no one has ever managed to piece it all together despite centuries of trying.

Here is a sample from the Wolfsbane Soap :

“3rd: For the University: A kelpie can only love its friend! Lacking frontal lobes, it must fear-smear-slay-slander-dominate-dictate-distort or devour anything it does not understand or disagrees with, that’s a kelpie! But a humanoid being knowing full-truth, the Kingdom of He Who Was’s Law, must teach friend & enemy the Moral Ac-Beorc-Cen to help unite all hunanoid-kind in our Eternal Creator’s great All-One-God-Faith, or that being is not yet Humanoid, a traitor to He Who Was’s Race!”

And a sample from the Greenbane Soap :

“Like a beacon breaking through dark clouds that pass; your deep embrace, your sensuous kiss, who else but He Who Was can make Love last 1 trillion years of sweet eternities! Who else but He Who Was! We are not true, while calculated calm controls us; blood flows near spirit in cold divided flame! Only love’s stormy passion, striking deep within us; can turn blood to spirit & spirit to blood, untamed! Spirit to blood, untamed!”

Consultation with the soap-making monks and nuns of Cleric Bronner’s Mystical Monistaries has resulted in the beleif that you have to be truely devoted and spend years studying (and inhaling soap fumes) to fully understand the Moral Ac-Beorc-Cen. But most of the Prime Material Planes are willing to accept that.

Because it’s REALLY good soap.

Available wherever adventuring gear is sold, in solid bars or vial of liquid, and in a variety of pleasing scents.

A regular question I see on Twitter and Facebook is “Hey, are you playing D&D online?” The answer is “yes” – and here’s how we do it.

First up, you need a couple of things :

Player Tools
- D&D Character Builder
- OpenRPG v 1.8
- Ventrilo (although any group-chat capable VoiP will do)

DM Tools
- All of the above
- D&D Adventure Tools
- D&D Compendium
- Combat Manager
- An Image Editor (GIMP or Pixelmator in my case)
- A collection of Icons for players, monsters & etc
- A web server for the images

In a nutshell, We use Character Builder for managing the character sheets, OpenRPG to view the map and miniatures, and Ventrilo to do voice chat.

This all allows us to simulate the tabletop experience over the internet and the vast distances that (mostly) separate us. Dice rolls, movement, monster positions, etc are all handed by OpenRPG. Players email me their character sheet files from the Character Builder on a regular basis (i.e. when something changes). For ease of use and administration, I have OpenRPG running in “server mode” on one of my remote linux servers, so that I don’t have to mess around with firewall settings and trying to run the server on my laptop with everything else.

About once a week (usually the day before) I use the image editor to generate a map image for use in OpenRPG. Sometimes it’s fancy, sometimes not. The basic square on the map is 50×50, so the image size is based around that. I upload the map & any new icons to the web server, and then use the OpenRPG map tools to put together the basic layout for the night. I then use Adventure Tools, the Compendium and Combat Manager to set up any combat encounters in advance.

On the night of the game, I use two monitors – on the “main” screen of my laptop I have openRPG, and on the second screen (to my left) I have Combat Tracker. This gives me a full heads-up-view of both the player positions, monster positions, and everyone’s status. Used that Daily? Marked in CT. Monster has 30 HP? Tracked. Rooster the Paladin is blinded? That’s there too. VERY handy.

Now, later this month, rumor has it we’ll all be in one place at one time. And this means real maps, real dice, and my laptop with JUST combat tracker up and running. Unless my iPad comes in soon, and someone has made something similar to Combat manager for that.

I can dream, can’t I?

So a few weeks back Ursula did some guest art for A Girl and Her Fed[1] of Dire Koala. Being the geek that I am, I was inspired to build stat blocks for it, as well as for the the Dire Eucalyptus and Dire Fire Ant included in the description. Hope you enjoy them, and if you think they need tuning, comment! As a bonus, you can click the images to get the .monster files for the D&D Monster Creator. Then you can unleash them against your players[2].

And, an update to the Dire Wombat :

[1] Are you reading AGAHF? Go! Do so now! I’ll still be here when you’re done. Yes, start at the beginning. DO IT! DO IT NOW!
[2] And for *MY* players, no you probably won’t see these in-game. Any time soon, anyway…