Labyrinth Lord Cover to Cover: Part 2, pages 4 and 5

For this series of posts I will be using the free PDF of the 

Labyrinth Lord rules that can be found Here at Goblinoid Games
This is the second part of a series, find the first part Here

   Pages four and five cover section one of the rules. Whats section one you ask? The introduction, including stuff like dice notation and other useful things. For any of you out there planning to make a rules book like this don't skimp on it. What you may take as common knowledge might not be as common as you think.

Page 4

   This page starts off with a little example of play split by some interesting stuff. Right after the first part of the example it gets right to the heart of what a roleplaying game is. Beginning with telling you that "There are no limits" and continues with an excellent analogy comparing roleplaying to acting out a play where there is no script because you make it up as you go along. It also introduces the concepts of levels and the fact that gaining them increases your power. The second bit of the example that follows is a little gruesome with the character ending up in the bottom of a pit on top of a fallen comrade but it sets the stage quite well for what this is all about.

   Next the page talks about the various base ideas such how there is a moderator who in the fine tradition of rename what they are called in every game is name the "Labyrinth Lord" who runs the world and all the Non Player Characters (NPC). While the other players each get to control a Player Character (PC) who is their in-game alter ego. All real basic stuff for roleplaying games really but it no one says it how are there supposed to be new players coming into the hobby.

   The import thing it say after all that though is that no one "wins". Now you may be scoffing at that or wondering why I bring something like that up but anyone coming into this from modern Computer Roleplaying Games this can be quite a shock. Even just coming from the perspective of games in general this can be quite odd. The only thing I don't agree with is that it follows this revelation up with a wishy washy statement that basically comes down to saying no one "Loses" either. It may just be that I come from the game where Losing is !!Fun!! but I like to lose for a reason. If I do something stupid and my character dies, he died. Now pointless death isn't losing if you couldn't do anything about it, but whatever.

   The next area talks about adventuring and what it means. Basicly saying you going to be in the labyrinth (read as dungeon) a lot and that while the Labyrinth Lord can make the places, the option to use pre-made setups.  There is more on the pages after this but its the start of the dice section so I will just patch it into the next page where the bulk of it lies.

Page 5

   Dice, that and common terms and abbriviatons but Dice it where its at. It starts by going over that there are six types used in play then gets down to what all those notations mean. The first example is 3d4+3 which they descibe thusly,  "roll three four-sided dice, sum them, and add 3"  then goes over what the fancy notation means. It follows all this up with a nice table showing how to obtain various d# results such as the d3 where you use a d6 with one and two equaling one, three and four equaling two, and five and six equaling three. This is an immensely useful table for people who are new to all these funny dice.

   Next it goes over terms and how apparently the word level can be used quite a few different ways. First there is character level, then a spells level, followed by a monsters level, and finished off by what level of the dungeon you are on. I never noticed that before.

   Finally it finishes up with abbreviations such as strength is STR and this is needed whether you wanted to assume people already knew all about roleplaying games or not. The reason is because of how the Labyrinth Lord rules where made they couldn't use all of the terms from D&D. For instance THC obviously means Trojan Horse Capers, right? (Note: THC does not mean Trojan Horse Capers, it actual stands for Treasure Hoard Class)

   To finish up now seems to be a good time to mention that I like the two column format they use. It looks clean and fits the correct amount of information to a page. The columns are easier to read then just having the text go all the way across the page as well so over all good formatting.

This is the second part of a series, find the first part Here

Once again you can find the rules Here at Goblinoid Games

Labyrinth Lord Cover to Cover: Part 1, pages 1 to 3

For this series of posts I will be using the free PDF of the 

Labyrinth Lord rules that can be found Here at Goblinoid Games

   Seeing as I will be using the free and thus art free version I will only be able to comment on the actual content. Which now that I think about it will work out better then not for what I intend. This first post will be somewhat shorter then the ones to come seeing as its only about the first few pages to get them out of the way.

Page 1

   A mostly blank page but you can get a good feel for what is to come from what little text there is. It says near the bottom "Classic Fantasy Roleplaying Game of Labyrinths, Magic, and Monsters" which is exactly what I wanted from it so even though it has basically no art it is already pulling me in.

Page 2

   This page contains the Foreword and Acknowledgements. If you just skipped over the Foreword then I advise you to go back and read it. Dan Proctor was able to sum up a good number of ideas that are floating around in the OSR as well as putting into words what I feel a good retroclone should be. I was tempted to just quote the whole thing but that is not what I am here for so just a small quote will have to do, "This effort is meant to complement, not replace, the fine work that came before it. If Labyrinth Lord succeeds in being a good representative of old-school fantasy roleplaying, it only does so because it lies on a solid foundation. I cannot, and would not, pretend to take any of the credit."

Page 3

   The table of contents dwell here. Not as exciting as dragons maybe but I would like to complement them on the formatting that they used for it. Proper indentation allows you to find what you need. There is quite a number of entries that have the same page number as the one before it but I can see no way to remove that without removing the utility the table.

Once again you can find the rules Here at Goblinoid Games

I live

   Family still visiting but later today I plan to do what I had scheduled for Monday. Hopefully everything will settle back down real soon.

Family and why I don't have a real post today

   Close relatives from a Washington (the state) had arrived Wednesday and so I don't have any free time at the moment. Lots of fun but its all at my Grandmas house where they are staying so I don't have access to anything.

Master of Orion 2

   Master of Orion 2 (MOO2) is a game that I enjoy quite a bit. It does require DOSBox to play on newer computers but that is easy enough to fix and seeing as it is so popular a quick Google search will find what you need for you specific computer to get it working.
   The game play is fun and a number of things are present that you just don't see in modern games. One of the interesting mechanics is that you get to put your planets workers where you want them between the three jobs. Now this may not sound like much and seem quite simple as well as used in modern games of similar type but not in the way MOO2 does it. In current games you get sliders to adjust how much of you population works at whatever. With the system in MOO2 you actually have little graphics of the people that you drag to where you want them and each race has its own image which allows things like mixed population planets.
   I could go on about a number of other things but I found something better. While searching recently for a decent tutorial for it I found a series of movies on YouTube that went through a "Lets Play" of it. This was an amazing find as it was more of a Lets Learn and in fact was title that. It is by Quill18 and the series goes through an entire game of MOO2 but most important the first few are all basically a decently in depth tutorial on whats what in the game. Here is the first part and the rest can be easily found from there. Be warned, he does use foul language from time to time so if you care about that kind of thing just letting you know.
   I had played the game before but because a lot of it was a little obscure at points I never did quite good enough and the videos explained a good number of things. I am currently working my way from the lowest difficulty up with a game once a day till I either win them all or find my level of skill.
   If you like Civ-like games you will probably like this one. I know I did and I would definitely advise people to give it a try if they get a chance.


   Also of note is that Quill18 has done a large number of other "Lets Play" videos for many different games. I have so far watched some of the Civ4 and 5 videos as well as the Master of Magic and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri and they are all of good quality and fun to watch though once again, warning, foul language is occasionally used.

In look of topics

   I am as the title may suggest in look of topics to talk about. My problem as always is not a lack of choices but a overabundance of choices. Just talking about D&D there are quite a few things I would want to say. If I take into account that I also technically include Programming and roguelike games into what I talk about here there is quite a few things to say.. I just need direction. On Friday I have my Megadungeon to do leaving Monday and Wednesday.
   Something I have been thinking of doing is basically been done to death in the OSR blogs. A cover to cover type thing. Of course I plan to do it on the free Labyrinth Lord rules and I don't think anyone has done that yet. People have reviewed it or supported it but never a cover to cover.
   Starting next Monday I will probably do that but it still leaves Wednesday. As such anyone who wants to can leave a comment and tell me stuff they would like to here about on Wednesday from now on. Of all the suggestions I will pick whatever sounds best.
   I may also at times review stuff  like I did with the book "Castle" and because I don't go out and see movies that often whenever I do see one in theater I will review them as well like I did with "Thor". I will try to keep the reviews somewhat in line with the three main topics of this blog.
   Also at some point I may inflict my artistic skills upon you all. I have had people say my drawings are not that bad but I don't think so. It may just be that growing up with a mom who was a professional artist/graphic designer might have warped my impressions of whats really good but I think I may just stay with my pessamistic out look for how good my art is till I get a few more opinions of it.

being late to a party is never fun

   I mentioned that recently I have been going back and reading through a good number of blogs. This means I have recently been quite sad. Everytime I come across a good post or whatever and I read the comments I feel the need to give my own thoughts on it. Of course then I realize the last comment was two years ago and that was someone doing what I wanted to and the actual conversation ended even further before that. I love to argue over a few things that I believe I am right. Sure I could just post my views anyway but no one except maybe the author will see it if even that. It takes two to tango and the same goes for an argument.

Golems and bad rolls

   Those two things sum up what today went like for me. In the wizard tower we continued on from the room of animated objects and found two force something or other golems. Having generic construct immunities basically took half our party off line until the sorcerer tried magic missile and had it work. They where large creatures with the ability to do a ranged touch attack and if they hit you where moved and knocked down. Apparently they where meant to be something in a room full of traps where they just shift you onto them over and over. They did just fine pushing us into each other though. We managed to beat them so after a good minute or two of healing we moved on.
   In the next room was two more golems. This time they where some kind of magma golem. The party preceded to continue to miss them over and over again. When they died they burst damaging anyone next to them and turning all the squares adjacent to them into molten rock. We ended up with one of our party members seperated from us and at negative eight health. For the longest time the only one damaging the last golem was the sorcerer who after using up all his ray of frost spells started using a sling. We managed to win but are quite low on health and I am out of spells above zero level though I do have a second level spell, heat metal, which I will not cast as it lets me use my fiery burst feat. Lot of good that did me this time.
   Overall we missed a lot of attacks and failed a lot of reflex saves. The treasure was nice though as I found a wand of heal light wounds with ten charges. We also found some other stuff including a masterwork heavy wooden shield, masterwork tower shield, and mithiril heavy shield as well as a wand of mage armor. This meant that everyone got to upgrade their armor in some way.
   There is another room before we finish this level. There may or may not be another level though I assume since it is a mage's "tower" there will be multiple levels to it. Good thing we did not finish this and get back to the risk mode of play. I was the only person who made any characters to act as heros. I slightly cheated in that all three of mine where the same stats but different names. This is perfectly fine though and they are only meant to stay at the three cities we have without any heros and give their bonus to the armies residing there in case the place gets attacked. I named them Allen, Branden, and Carl Broscows. Here is the stats for all three of them:
Neutral Good Human Male - Figher Lv1
AC: 17 (Touch: 13, Flatfooted: 14) - HP: 12
Str:10(0) Dex:16(+3) Con:14(+2) Int:8(-1) Wis:10(0) Cha:18(+4)
Fort:+3 Ref:+3 Will:+0 - BAB:+1 (Melee:+1, Ranged:+4/+5[Heavy Crossbow])
Feats: Point Blank Shot, Rapid Reload, Weapon Focus[Heavy Crossbow]
Skills: Intimidate:4(8) Ride:4(7) - Speaks Common
Heavy Crossbow [1d10, crit 19-20/x2, range 120', 8lb, P]
Sling          [1d4, crit x2, range 50', 0lb, B]
Dagger         [1d4, crit 19-20/x2, range 10', 1lb, P or S]
Scale Mail     [+4 AC, max dex +3, check penalty -4, 30lb]

Megadungeoning part 0

   Oh a fancy title just for a bunch of posts chronicling my descent into the deep. To start I will say I did not get as much finished yesterday nor today as I wanted. I set aside an hour both days plus extra time when I had it. Yesterday while I did not do as much as I would have liked all I missed really was the scanning it in part. I managed to make the first piece of my map of level one.
    On a slightly off tangent note if you look back and check all my pasts dungeon maps they are straight line with no cave type parts. That would be the reason for today not getting as far as I wanted. Here is what I managed to do:

   If you will note the parts not yet traced. Yes all cave type stuff. Luckily I figured it out now. Depending on how much I work on it tonight it will probably be finished up either tonight or "early" tomorrow. I am using Inkscape for the map. To get the jaggeder walls I used the Filters\Distort\Torn edges, and the less jagged but still rough walls where using Filters\Textures\Stone wall.
   As for what all goes where on the map the only thing I really have planned out is that there is a 75% chance of some intelligent monsters being in that hacked out room right near the entrance. It has a few holes that allow anyone looking through them to see people approaching the entrance.
   I plan to have the area where it is being a giant plateau type thing. If you have read the first few books of The Corean Chronicles by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. then you know how big a plateau I mean. I basically am planning on a reverse dungeon only instead of having it a tower I am using a plateau. I may or may not include other stuff from the books because even though I the first trilogy quite a bit I want to stay closer to D&D and would prefer to not include firearms and stuff like that though the nightsilk will probably be in my game in some form.

Thor 2011

Warning: Spoilers

First I would like to say I really enjoyed the movie

and give it around 8/10 and now onto the review

   On Tuesday I went and saw the movie Thor in 3d. Over all I liked how they translated the comic book hero into a movie though seeing as I have not recently read any of the comics I can not vouch for how close to the material the movie comes.
   I will say that they did an amazing job with portraying Loki as a silver tongued trickster though making him a misguided daddy's boy does not really fit him. Up until Thor gets told of Loki's betrayal he is able to guide Thor's actions like a superb puppet master.
   The ending of the movie while blatantly setting up for Thor 2 was good despite itself. I will now make some predictions about the story for Thor 2 because they set it up so obviously. First Loki will become king of the frost giants by lying and saying something along the lines that Thor killed their king. Being the son of the dead king and having their power source they will accept him will little hesitation. Loki not wanting to take Thor head on but wanting vengeance will instead go to earth and go after the girl. The girl will by then have a prototype bridge and when Loki beams in will use it go for help at Asgard. Because it is a prototype it will only be able to transport two people at a time so Thor and the girl will go back to earth but at that point either the machine will explode or Loki will destroy it stranding Thor on earth with a good number of ice giants to fight and a Loki who has come full into his power as an ice giant. Likely Thor will lose the first battle and lose his hammer which he must then search out and then go have a big boss battle with Loki and driving him back to the ice giants home thus setting up for Thor 3. There is a possibility of having other heros join him in Thor 2 but there will be a Thor 2 though a third Thor is up in the air as at that point they may have done movies for all of the base avengers and so can do a movie about how they became a team.

I already knew but now I know

   I will never be able to DM a game of D&D 3.5. Probably the only system of D&D that I can tolerate DM will end up being the classic versions. This is of course not much of a problem as I was not planning to DM anything but to start with but now I have cause.
   I am currently making what will basically be NPCs.and I am sure that there are a great number of ways to make it easier and such but I can't help trying to make them good. Before this I have never tried to make more then a single character at a time. This is perfectly fine for me. I can be a player and do all that no problem. Anything more and it quickly spirals out of control for me.
   I have looked at classic D&D and easily imagine being able to DM it but 3.5 is not my cup of tea. I don't know how others manage it. My DM uses a laptop that auto generates basic enemy's and such so I guess that would help but in the end I realize it would be no fun for me. Nothing surprising coming out of this revelation but putting it in writing will help it sink in better so here it is.

Interesting campaign development

   First I have learned a new and interesting meaning to halfway. You see it means that after 5 waves we are halfway and have x number of waves left where x is the number of waves it took to breach our wall. We still won the overall battle but what ever.

   The interesting development is that we are now not only going to be dungeon crawling but also playing a Risk like game. We currently control 4 areas on the map. Each area can in a amount of time that we just called a turn produce either a number of soldiers or an amount of gold. We also have a city that can train heros. A hero is basicly a PC we make and our current characters count as heros. Training a hero takes a turn for every 1000gp it costs. A basic first level hero costs 1000gp so takes only a single turn to make. You can furthur train a hero in a city that can train heros at the cost of new level times 1000 but the highest you can train a hero this way is our main characters level.
   In a Turn you can move as many soldiers or heros from their current area to an adjacent area on the map. In each area there are a number of dungeons with varing levels and if a hero is in the area they can instead of moving go and try to clear it. In this way heros can gain levels and basically act just like our main characters. This is also the only way to get a hero that is above our main characters highest level.
   A hero may lead an army and gives a bonus that is equal to Charisma mod divided by four plus the base attack bonus divided by three. The highest mod of all heros in the army is the one used. The Charisma part represents the ability to lead and the base attack bonus represents the knowledge needed to lead.

On the map we currently control Harwin, Campos Proelii, Peregre, and Nanum Protegamur. We have two first level heros and a third on next turn who are going to be spread out to provide their bonus to armies. We also have but do not control a powerfull mage hero in Nanum who once a day can make a portal between their and any other province we control allowing any number of troops to pass through and a 15th level hero who is a changling with that one class that lets you at the start of the day be whatever type of class you want who we also do not control but will be roving around as she wants. We can only currently make human heros because we only control a human city that can train heros though I think if we either take another races town or make friends with them we may be able to make them as well.
   Currently all of the main characters are in Peregre and doing a dungeon crawl in a Mad Mages Tower. Outside the tower had two gargoyles guarding it. Inside we only managed to clear the first room...   Literally as everything in it was an animated objects. Three chests, three candlesticks, and a table. The table had over 70 hp and hit quite hard. I see a theme going on here and believe that from now on before we touch anything in the tower its getting a nice flaming burst to the face.
   Of interesting note we had reached forth level and apparently the DM lets us have +2 to a stat every four levels instead of just +1 so I now have 20 wisdom.

Class or Skill

   I like class based roleplaying games. I also like skill based roleplaying games. What I don't like is when you try to mix them. Take your pick but choose only one when creating a system please. Why do I say something like this? In D&D if I play a thief and someone else plays a fighter and we are the same level I should be able to hide better, end of story. The thief class is sneaky but in a system that has both classes and skills such as D&D 3.5 you could end up with a fighter out hiding your guy if you did not put any point into hide.  This is not how the system should work. Closer to home my cleric had no points in knowledge[religion] till 3rd level while the sorcerer maxed it. This meant that my character, a person who literally talks to his god on a daily basis could not even by the rules attempt a roll to identify a holy symbol of his own religion!
  This frankenstein of a circumstance came from trying to bolt on a skill system to a class system. What a class system is good at is quick and broad characterization, the Magic User knows arcane secrets, the Fighter is a master of battle, and the Cleric is a religious type. These are very broad stokes in which to make your character yours. This type of system defines what you can do, not what you can't and in doing so even though the options are few the possibilities are great.
   A skill system is the exact opposite of this. By choosing your skills you define what you can't do. If you don't have the ride skill you can't ride a horse while the class system doesn't tell you one way or the other. Some people over time have suggested that you could combine class and skill by doing stuff like changing skills to mean your extra good at it instead of just being a binary where not having it means not doing it. This Wont Work. Or more specifically you could make the system but the players will still play it as if not having the skill meant not being able to do it. With all this though a skill system is not bad. Because of how you create such a system its not just having 3 skills and putting points into a single one every time which would be like a class system but instead you have many options all of which do things worth having. A skill system does not restrict creativeness by restricting options, it creates opportunities for it. A party comes to a deep underground chasm that is not all that wide. In a class system your players just jump over it, this is very straight forward but what about in a skill based system where no one in the group has the jump skill? Well what about using a rope to bridge the gap, after all that one guy took the rope use skill.

   Wrapping up I will say once again both systems are quite all right on their own. Combining them though is futility if you are trying to keep both systems intact. They are opposites and they do not attract people. A cleric of Pelor who can't even recognize his own religions symbol when played by the book is a broken mess. Both systems define who the character is but by using opposing systems. Skill systems let you create your character after play, a class system lets you create your character before play. The 3rd/3.5 Edition of D&D is the closest to combining the two systems out there and no I don't mean the actual skill system, I mean the basically free multiclassing options which is taking classes and making them the skills in a skill system. There may be a perfect combination out there but unless you already saw the fact that multiclassing was a skill system I highly doubt you will find the balance point.

GROGNARDIA: Open Friday: Gamebook Art

GROGNARDIA: Open Friday: Gamebook Art: "One of the contemporary trends of the hobby I must confess to not liking a great deal is the rather 'art heavy' nature of a lot of gamebooks..."

   To which I commented "Art is like using spices in cooking. Sprinkling it in improves the flavor but using to much overpowers the actual dish. Also like spices, good art tends to be expensive so using a lot can really jack up the price." but with some thought I realized I wanted to expand on it and include more cooking references for some reason.
   I want to start by say that art is not just to gamebooks like spices are to cooking. It is the same to gamebooks as spices are to cooking. Some things can be taken from this. First is that a gamebook does not Need art to be good and in fact some of the better rule systems are just as good with or without just like a really good steak.
   Also as I had mentioned using to much of it overpowers the actual dish. Its basically the joke "would you like some [main dish] with your [condiment]" and while this may just be over enthusiastic use of seasoning it could be malicious. A rich sauce with a shellfish dish may be used to hide the fact that the shellfish are no longer wholesome and just like that a lot of high quality art could easily hide a broken rule system long enough for you to purchase it.
   Another thing to look at is price. Sure for both spices and art the price for a decent quality has gone down some but the really good stuff is still expensive. I don't know about others but I would myself prefer a sprinkle of the really good as compared to a flood of average. Sure you might only be able to afford a few high quality pictures and a great cover for you book but this will improve the content without hiding it while if you spend the money on a lot of average art you will only be bringing the overall quality down. Remember a little good accents your work while a lot of average pulls your work towards that average.
   Art has its place in gamebooks and should not be left out unless you really can't afford it but its better to leave out if you can't afford art at least as good as your work.

Everyone has one

   As I mentioned I have been reading a number of blogs lately and Everyone has a Dungeon they seem to be currently making or using that would fall under the term "Mega". That is right, the oh not so humble Megadungeon. I don't have a dungeon let alone one worthy of such a prestigious title.
   My world building desire conflicted with it and I felt that I needed where a dungeon was going before I made the dungeon and of course to properly place the where in a world was a great and wonderful thing. Of course with out anything to keep me even keel on such a "world spanning" project I barely managed to get anywhere.
   Not to say my world is in anyway bad or some such. What I have in my head for it is quite fine as is but its more set towards the traveling adventure party rather then the dungeon diving variety. It is a world meant for exploring and right now what I need is something I can just have people come along pick up an already made character and sit down to play.
   My world would work if I could get a group willing to to play old school and tromp around in my world on a regular basis but all the people that I know in real life who play D&D for the most part play either 2nd Edition AD&D or 3.5 D&D and don't have any desire to play a game based before AD&D.
   I believe though that I can manage to go to my local game shop and have pick up games. I barely need a town for that and in fact probably should barely have anything beyond the dungeon to start. No one is going to want to memorize stuff like what country they are in or who controls the next county over when they are just going to playing the one time. They want to sit down and get down to the dungeon proper.
   Basically all this is the long way around to saying I need to make a dungeon of great size and re-usability. I need something that I can run a thousand times with new players each time or any mix of people who have already been down into the depths and still have it be fun for everyone. I also want persistence so I can't just have a new dungeon every week. This means a Megadungeon, and not just any such place but one with a "first level" of immense size and a great number of entrances to all parts of it.
   I plan to start on it and post about it next week at some point. I will use Labyrinth Lord rules for the dungeon and use the process of creating it to better learn LL's rules.

Black Eyed Fungus

Lore

   Truly a horrible type of fungus. While on its own it is completely harmless but if introduced into or present in a living human sized creatures body while they are sick will cause a horrid reaction. The body unable to defend itself from both a disease and the fungoid infection will quickly lose ground until the fungus has completely infests the hosts brain. Upon this the fungus will take control of the creature causing it to search out an out of the way place and waits. When another creature of the right size comes near them the being will attack with great ferocity. If the controlled creature happens to win it will go back to waiting but if the creature dies an amazing reaction occurs in the fungus. A multitude of black mushroom like growths will burst forth through the eyes and release a cloud of dark colored spores. The if a creature within the cloud has spores land on any open cuts or in the eyes they will be infested. Unless the creature is healed by magic or spends a week of bed rest the next time they come down with a sickness they to will be at great risk of being taken by this vile form of fungus.
   A creature fully under control of the fungus are easier to identify the longer they last. Upon complete control the eyes of the victim will become a deep black and any wounds they happen to get will have small patches of relatively benign types of mushroom growing out of them which seems to speed the healing process. While any magical healing will cure the victim before the eyes become black after that the victim can only be cured by strong divine magics. Ironically though if cured they would also be free of whatever ailed them as upon gaining control the fungus eradicates what allowed it come into power and the body will be immune to any further diseases as long as infected.

For mechanics I will be using Labyrinth Lord rules

   If infected by the fungus when you become sick you must make a save versus poison or it takes control in 1d3 days if the disease is not cured. If it fails to gain control it retries every day after. To cure a controlled creature requires a Cleric of 9th level to cast Cure Disease. A person that is just infected luckily only needs either some form of healing magic or a full week of bed rest to be relived of the infection. The fungus can only infect a creature of about human size. If bigger it can not get a foothold and if too small the creature can not handle the required amount of fungus so if the creature would be controlled instead the creature has a 50% of dieing from having to much of its brain replaced with fungus. A controlled creature has stats similar to the following:
No. Enc.: 1d3 (1d6)
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 120' (40')
Armor Class: 7
Hit Dice: 3
Attacks: 2 (claw, claw)
Damage: 1d4/1d4
Save: F1
Morale: 12
Hoard Class: IV
XP: 40
A creature controlled by the fungus will seek out a dark semi lonely place to sit and wait, only foraging for food when absolutely necessary. When it sees a human sized creature if will wildly attack and try to wound as many creatures as it can before it is killed so as to increase the chance of successful infection. When one dies a mass of black fungus will burst out of each eye and release a 10' radius burst of dark spores and anyone within the cloud must save versus Breath Attack with a the roll modified by -1 for every three points of damage taken during the fight. The creature when wounded will heal twice as fast as would be normal because of the growth of benign white mushrooms on the wounds.

This is my first monster I have ever stated up for any roleplaying game so Please comment on it and tell me what you think of it or what could be improved.

Today I helped defend a city

   We actually managed to get through a session without any of us dieing. What happened was after last time we got teleported to a big city to help defend it. By doing this we basicly just joined the rebellion seeing as when we get there we find out that the goblins and such are attacking because the evil king made them. The baron did not want to register his magic with the king so obviously the answer is to send a hoard of evil creatures.
   I believe we survived because of something I did. The DM let us design the section of wall we are defending. I made it a gate with a double door and had a screen of peasent houses in front of the walls. The houses where set up so as to funnel the enemys at us without letting them get volleys of ranged attacks against us. This turned out to be a wise disicion as we only got six 1st level fighters to to start. The only problem and the closest to having a character dieing that we had was that the psionic fighter type decided he wanted to stand right in front of the gate. He has a better attack with ranged weapons and he chose to try to melee.
   The first wave was fine because it was only goblins and they died quickly enough. No real problem here as we basicly killed a third of them and the rest ran away. Between waves the DM rolled to see how the rest of the fight was going and one place did badly so we lost two of our fighters.
   Next wave was a group of six wolves and they got close enough that I could actually attack them. I am perplexed at my team mates at this point and onward as they complain that my burst 5' 2d6 fire damage attack is lame when even if the enemy saves it is a minimum of one damage attack that always hits. Anyway the wolves die quickly enough. The rest of the fight was even keel at this point so we neither lost nor gained fighters at this point.
   Now a fun wave. Three ogres come at us. Mr stand in front of the gate of course gets his block knocked off and goes down to negative nine hp. Luckily I had put a lesser vigor on him already because the wolves did some decent damage to him so he auto stabilized. Without him we did quite well against the orges. The sorcerer in the party had just learned the spell Power Word Pain which does 1d6 a turn for a number of turns depending on the current hp of the monster. Combined with my 2d6 every turn and a barrage of bolts the orges fell quickly. Before the next wave I had to rush out and drag him back in. I also used my domain heal to get him conscious. He stayed inside this time.
   The forth wave was some troops with tower shields covering a battering ram. This wave managed to take out the first gate but other then that died quite handily. That is except for some crazy fire resistant goblins which where manning the ram. Everyone else had to take care of them. The fight went well somewhere else so we got another fighter this wave.
   The fifth wave was a siege tower with a number of enemy fighters in it. This was the first wave where any of our fighters got damaged. In fact every single one of them got hit once. We where able to do a good bit of damage to the people before they got to use. Once they did they had a bit better luck then before but no one went negative. It helped us that the DM decided that you could 5' step and change out your weapon.
   This was the last wave we did and the DM mentioned that it was half over so I guess five more waves are to come. For thouroghness here is the stats for the fighters we had:
12hp 18ac +4melee +2ranged 1d8+2melee 1d8ranged
and because I put arrow slits and such on our wall they where at 22ac till the final wave when the enemy actually got into melee with them. After the fifth wave the fighters where at 6, 10, 9, 10, and 8 hp so if we have any taken from us because of the fight going bad else where I plan to give them the first one. I do have a scroll of Mass Lesser Vigor though so some of them may end up being healed depending on how many extra people I can heal beyond the rest of the party.

Future plans for the blog and three small dungeons

   Well the A to Z challenge has finished and I made it all the way through so now what? I don't think I can manage posting everyday or even just every weekday constantly. The option to just post when I feel like it is there and I plan to do that but I need schedule so I do post.
   I think that a Monday, Wensday, Friday schedule would be best for now. Also I won't be counting my updates on the campaign I am in as part of that schedule so no cheating and calling it my Monday post for me. I will of course keep posting as the mood strikes me which will probably be a good amount because what I am currently trying to do will probably give me a good number of things to talk about.
   I am try to go and read from first post to current every blog I have in my Blog list thing. Of them I only have three left which are ChicagoWiz's RPG Blog which has around 675 posts, Jeff's Gameblog weighing in at 2608 posts, and The Society of Torch, Pole, and Rope which has 590 post but I have already read 221. I also plan to reread Grognardia and Delta's D&D Hotspot because while I have read them already it was a while ago. Otherwise if I have it in my blog list of things I like I have read it all.

   And now for the second part of the title. Just telling you what I plan to do is a little boring so I decided to include some small dungeons I had recently made. I don't really have much a plan for them because I made them while testing a method of random dungeon generation. The two smaller ones are 20x20 and the big one is 30x30 and they are all at 5' to a square.

The above is the first that I made. I like how it looks and I think if I was to use it I would remove a good number of the doors and roughen the walls so it looked like a cave because it would make a good monster lair.

 This is the second and while I like how the one part had rooms 8 and 9 off separate I find that the square rooms detract from it. I had forgotten on this one to vary room width and height and so it looks to meh.

This one I like and may use at some point because it looks nice. Also the center part that contains rooms 18 through 22 was drawn in and not random at all. I figure 18 is the guards room, 19 is the kitchen with 20 being a mess hall. 21 is probably the sleeping quarters for the regular types and 22 is the leaders room and where they keep their treasure. Who lives there though I don't know except they are intelligent and somewhat organized.

   The way I made the maps is hand drawing them then scanning them in and using Inkscape. The doors and room numbers where done on the computer so my originals don't actually have doors or anything.
   As for how I generated the maps themselves I rolled a d20/d30 to decide where the entrance went. On the 20x20 maps I wanted diagonals so used a d8 to decide which way to go. If I rolled a directions that would not work then I rolled up a room using 2d3 for the width and again for the height of the room to be made. I then tried with the d8 again, if an invalid direction came up again I would roll till I got two valid results. A new hallway off of a room would be placed on a wall by using whatever size dice was closest to the walls size and rolling it. I then rolled a d3 to decide which side the second square of the hallway was or if it was only a 5' wide hallway. I then basically repeated this till the area was full. On the bigger map I only used the four cardinal directions so used a d4 instead of d8 and when I had gotten to the end the center was still empty so at that point I filled it in by hand.
   Its a simple system though I probably did not explain it right. Overall I don't think I would continue to use it for other maps though I do like using 2d3 to decide the width and another 2d3 for height. It allows a random sized room between  2x2 and 6x6. I will probably later on redo my method so it works better and because of my interest in roguelike programing probably make some sort of program to more easily test my method. No promises on any of stuff after the maps though.