Adventure Time! Icelops

Icelops are giants who inhabit frozen and high mountainous regions. They often adorn themselves with elaborate camouflage that imitates plants and even animals and gives them an 80% ability to hide in snowy environments.

A cold climate relative of regular Cyclops, Icelops look fearsome but often have a more child-like demeanour than their cousins and can be easily distracted by sweets, toys or boisterous play. With the lack of depth perception penalizes them with -2 to all attack rolls. Blinding them reduces the roll by -5. They rarely use weaponry but can hurl rocks and snowballs up to 200’ and 3d6 damage.  

Icelops

Labyrinth Lord

No. Enc.: 1

Alignment: Chaotic

Movement: 90’ (30’)

Armor Class: 5

Hit Dice: 13

Attacks: 1

Damage: 3d10

Save: F14

Morale: 9

Questamundo

Rank: 6-11

Body: 17

Mind: 2

Spirit:  5

BP: 50

Alignment: Neutral

Damage: +7,    Thrown Snow-boulder +10

Armour: -7

Special Abilities: Hide in snowy/mountainous environments. Q+10 to Spot.

Musings on Magic

I recently realized that I’ve never played a D&D Wizard and reading through Labyrinth Lord and D&D5 lately I’ve begun to realize why … the magic system is not my bag, man. Though it claims to be ‘Vance-ian’ , it is actually not. Yes, in the Dying Earth, Vance’s wizards had pre-loaded spells but that is as far as it goes. (If you’re keen, read through the Dying Earth RPG or Talislanta 4e for MUCH better interpretations of Vancian magic.)

D&D reduces spells to bullets and Wizards (at least higher level ones) to heavy artillery. I’ve seen attempts at making it seem a bit more ‘mysterious’ or adding complications such as material components, but nothing in any form that anyone would actually want to play.

There is nothing actually WRONG with the D&D magic system, if that is the way magic works in the D&Dverse - then that is the way it works in the D&Dverse. At least it is internally consistent. It just isn’t to my taste.

The hang up for me is Saving Throws. The more powerful the character, the better their chance at resisting magic. That seems wrong. No matter how powerful Conan became, he ALWAYS feared magic and Superman’s second most exploited weakness is his vulnerability to magic. Yet in the D&D system, both these guys would have saving throws up the whazoo.

The thing is, that from Merlin to Gandalf to Doctor Strange, Zantanna, Harry Potter and Ponder Stibbons … I’ve never seen a magic system work that way. In almost every other interpretation of magic that I have come across if a spell fails it is because the wizard screwed up, not because their target was somehow able to shrug it off. If the spell gets casts, it works.

So for my own homemade system, I’m developing a system where the wizard must make a series of rolls over a couple of rounds to ‘weave’ a spell together. If they make all the rolls, then the spell is successfully cast and there is nothing the target can do about it. I think I could make this work for LL/D&DBasic as well, but it would take some heavy tinkering and I’m thinking that it must have already been done by someone.

Adventure Time! Snow Golem

I've redone the Snow Golem because I wasn't happy with the original D&D stats. Now they are Labyrinth Lord compatible.
Snow Golem
Snow Golems are sometimes created by wizards inhabiting high mountains or Polar Regions to be used as guardians to their lairs. If their creator passes away or forgets about them, the golem will eventually become autonomous, at which point their alignment and temperament will become randomly determined.
Snow Golems can only be harmed by magical or heat/fire weapons. They are also completely immune to cold based attacks, though they can be temporarily blinded by a well-thrown snowball.
If they are in a snowy environment, Snow Golems can repair themselves by packing in new snow, and have even replaced heads and limbs. If attacked by Fire/Heat, snow golems melt by getting smaller (half damage at half hit-points). Snow Golems are the enemies of Fire Wolves.

Labyrinth Lord
No.Enc. 1
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 120’(40’)
Armour Class: 5
Hit Dice: 6
Attacks: 2 (Fist/Snowball)
Damage: 2d6 / 1d6
Save: F6
Moral: 4
Treasure: None
Questamundo
Rank: 5-10
Body: 15
Mind: 2
Spirit: N (equal to rank if autonomous)
BP: 40
Alignment: Neutral
Damage: +6
Armour: -6

Because you're all dying to hear my thoughts on the Next Edition, right?

A couple of my players have expressed an interest in taking the D&DNext playtest for a spin, while I am leaning more and more towards converting the D&DBasic campaign into full-on Labyrinth Lord.

New Editions have always bothered the crap out of me because it is like trying to convince someone else to love bean casserole. You might LOVE bean casserole and could eat it six days a week, but if someone else thinks it tastes and smells like an old, lumpy gym sock, nothing you do or say will ever convince them. While it might be fun to debates the merits for a while or tell them that your homebrewed version tastes better, in the end you are just going to have to let it go. Just because they prefer tuna casserole doesn’t make them an asshole.

Nor do I like new Editions because of the cost. My carefree days of disposable income are long behind me, sucked away by mortgage payments, medical concerns, hungry animals and lots and lots of bills. There is no way I am shelling out $100plus dollars every few years to add yet another Player’s Guide/GM Manual/Monster Manual to my shelf next to all the other editions.

And whether you play the new edition or not, suddenly everything else on that shelf is now obsolete. You’re now driving a Desoto and its damned hard to find parts. If you insist on clinging to your diesel guzzling ways, soon you’re reduced to scavenging through files of Raistlin/Tasslehoff slashfick, hunting for homemade conversion guides on a wayback’d geocities sites.

Not to mention that it is this sort of idiocy results in things like edition flame wars, OSR self publishers and copycats like Pathfinder. They all have their merits (except edition flame war trolls), but they all lead to dissatisfaction and degradation of the original product and causes WotC to shed customers like dandruff off a Con-goer.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for Hasbro/WotC releasing* miniatures, computer games, board games, apps CCGs or whatever else they want with the D&D logo stamped on the front. Come to think of it, I’d LOVE the idea, because I think that in the end it would help bring proper (imaginative) role-playing back to a whole new generation (lost to ‘passive’ computer rpgs like WoW and Skyrim). Sure they’ll probably use tablets and interactive cards or figures, and who know what other tools to play. Some old schoolers are going to bitch about how the new kids ‘don’t play like we used to’, but those old schoolers are now in their thirties, forties or more. The game MUST evolve or it will die, and I’m not afraid to say that I have caught the whiff of gangrene settling in. Nor do I believe that D&DNext is anything more than a temporary bandage.

But please WotC, for us old school guys pushing forty, the guys who care enough to write bullshit pieces like this for a blog that no one reads, stop fucking with new editions and give us a game we can all rally behind! No more total reboots or attempts to be clever (Next!) or cribbing from MMORPGs. Just give us a straightforward (backwards compatible, or is that too much to ask?) game and STAND BEHIND IT. You give us that, and we’ll stand behind you.

*I can’t help but wonder if Hasbro isn’t promoting D&D harder more because of the wingnut Christian climate in the States right now. Maybe they are afraid of another ‘Mazes and Monsters’ style backlash which could lead to a boycott of other Hasbro products. Just a thought.