The Library of Attnam

27 November 2019

Encounter Critical Blog Ring

Browsing through the Encounter Critical blog ring, I noticed that many blogs linked there are, unfortunately, lost to the ages by now. However, I also found several newer blogs with material for Encounter Critical scattered here and there, so obviously it's time for a brand new...

...listing all the functioning blogs and sites I know of.

If you have links to any other sites with EC content, please share them.

I also updated the resource files with a few new finds, such as the terrible and terrific tale of old Vanth, the Eye of Argon.

*) This blog seemed to have been gone for good, but Internet Archive saves the day once again!

26 November 2019

10 Magical Necessities for Wealthy Wizarding Women

My girlfriend decided to think up some magic items that she would definitely need as a sorceress. So here they are, some fashionable trinkets and useful paraphernalia you could find in a boutique of a wizard city or the rooms of an enchantress.

Forest Mage by meago

d10 Accouterments

Chameleon lipstick: Adjustable colour lipstick. Variations on the product include animated lipstick, mood-sensitive lipstick and lipstick of glibness.
Cuddly polymorphic pet: It will purr in your lap as a kitten, then become a pony when you're out in the garden, or a songbird, or anything cute you'd like to pet.
Electroshock umbrella: Protects against rain, unwanted suitors and lack of personal space in crowds. Settings range from "ouch" to "AAARGH". Also very stylish.
Depilation spray: Painless, instant, easy to use.
Grooming fairy: Flits around and casts prestidigitation to keep you perfumed, your hairstyle and make-up tidy, and your dress clean.
Handbag of holding: Frankly, who wouldn't want one? It is embroidered with animate animals.
Infinite chocolate bar: Will regrow from the tiniest speck, but it may take some time, so you cannot just constantly gorge yourself on chocolate.
Mood-balancing bracelet: For that time of the month. *wink wink* *nudge nudge*
Painkiller amulet: Dulls headaches and stomach aches. (Would also prevent pain from a sword wound, though I really hope she won't be going around getting stabbed.)
Pocket dimension toilet: You will need to search for public toilets no more! Your personal restroom is always just a portal away.

By the way, as I'm writing this, my girlfriend is running around the apartment, making animal sounds and playing at the polymorphic pet. And she's aggressively cuddly.

Magic Reindeer by VargasNi

She also says I have to include this:

Displace PMS
R: [dice] x 30'; T: male; D: [sum] days

Any and all inconveniences related to the menstruation cycle are transferred from the caster to the victim.

19 October 2019

Faster Than Light

Unless you want to be rather hard in your cosmic sci-fi game, you will need a spaceship that can zip between star systems. Instead of giving everyone some generic FTL drive, what if each spaceship manufacturer had slightly different engines in their ships? Suddenly new opportunities for shenanigans arise when ships with different advantages and drawbacks compete.

What kind of faster-than-light drive will your spaceship use?

Do not give your players a TARDIS,
or they will break your spacetime continuum.

Roll for a base type and then for two drawbacks.

d4 Base Types of FTL Drives

Beam drive dematerializes the spaceship and sends it as a faster-than-light tachyon stream to the destination, where it is rematerialized. This can be considered a type of transmat or teleportation technology.
Hyper drive allows the spaceship to travel through an alternate dimension with more favourable laws of physics, such as higher speed of light, shorter relative distances, or slower passage of time. Of course, hyperspace is a scary place.
Jump drive generates an Einstein-Rosen bridge (a wormhole) that connects the starting and target locations with a shortcut. While the bridges don't tend to stay open for long, sometimes multiple ships may slip through a single wormhole.
Warp drive utilises a space-folding technology to contract the space in front of the spaceship and expand the space behind it, resulting in an apparent faster-than-light travel without actually travelling faster than light.

d20 Drawbacks and Complications

The entry and exit points of each trip are easily detected and impossible to mask.
The engines are still experimental and have a small chance to break down or burn out with each trip.
The external duration of each trip is somewhat random, so it may take days one way, but weeks on the return.
Each trip causes disturbances in local spacetime, so using the drive in orbit would have catastrophic consequences.
The engines require a rare, expensive or limited type of fuel.
The engines require excessive amounts of fuel or energy, enough that only very few trips can be made before refuelling.
The engines require a lengthy cooldown and recharging period between uses, otherwise they might blow up.
Destination must be planned with extremely precise and time-consuming targeting calculations, otherwise you might land in the core of a star, or never arrive at all.
The ship cannot be piloted without the use of precognitive abilities. Non-psychic pilot will get you lost in deep space (and go insane in the process).
The ship can only travel between specific nodes, such as star beacons, locations with weakened spacetime firmament, or through a portal network.
The drive cannot be used within the gravity well of a star. Generally at least several light hours of distance are required to successfully engage it.
The drive can only be engaged at near-light speeds, requiring the ship to first accelerate enough (and decelerate on arrival).
The trip is deadly to a random race or sex for unknown reasons, though this can be circumvented by travelling in cryosleep.
The activation of the drive attracts some kind of space monster. Roll for a special random encounter with every use.
The trip causes mental distress and trauma unless you are unconscious, though pilots often overcome this with space drugs.
The trip causes a period of nausea upon arrival, with some people even blacking out.
The engines are very, very, very large. The spaceship has to be quadruple normal size just to pack them in.
Targeting of the drive is somewhat imprecise, landing you within a few light hours of the destination.
Each trip has a set length (1d20+10 light years), so long journeys are made as a series of smaller trips, while short ones may require a sidestep.
Wow, your drive only has a single drawback! Someone will want to have a look at this advanced technology...

How F Is Your FTL?
I've decided to use a rough speed of 1000c (2d100 x 10c) for most FTL travel. This is fast enough that interstellar trips are relatively quick, yet it does not completely undersell the vastness of outer space. A ten light year distance will take around three days of flight, which for me sits comfortably between "space is irrelevant and no obstacle at all" and "not telling the players no, just making it slow enough they will get bored thinking about leaving the star system".

15 October 2019

Bogeymen

This is an expanded bestiary for Abyss of Damned Souls, though you could use the bogeymen in any game.

They used to be human, but they lost so much they could either die or adapt. As their souls and humanity slipped away, they fought and survived and changed. They may be monstrous, but are not necessarily monsters. Their powers might make them more than human - but they are human no more.

Every single one of them is missing something and can never get it back.

All images from Doctor Who.

d30 Bogeymen

A mummified corpse in a clockwork armour. It's ticking loudly and can step outside of time. It needs someone to rewind its spring, giving up their time in the process.
A woman with no face. With a touch, she removes - and what she removed is gone for good. Mouth or weapon or injury or memory or curse or happiness...
An ancient warrior, a broken sword thrust through his heart. As long as the sword remains there, no weapon can harm him.
Some might mistake it for a flightless dragon, but it's just a bogeyman who devoured so many it grew humongous. It vomits waves of amniotic fluid full of ravenous foetuses.
A child dressed in filthy rags, insects crawling over and inside of its body. It will transform into a biting, stinging swarm when upset.
An old man chain-smoking cheap, stinking cigarettes, with eyes burnt out and ash trailing from his clothes. He breathes smoke, or fire if threatened.
A heavily pregnant woman, her stomach full of child ghosts. She releases them to protect or serve her, and never turns down an offer to consume another child.
Human skin stuffed full of spiders. It lurks in halls covered in cobwebs, climbing faster than a man can run. Its bite leaves boils that later burst into more spiders.
A barely humanoid figure, warped by excessive cancerous growths. Any skin contact will merge your flesh with its, and it will try to grab and assimilate you.
A dancer with hands and feet hacked off, and replaced with long blades. She moves with the speed, lightness and ferocity of a whirlwind, but can never stop moving.
A muscular monster of a man, nails, hooks, spikes and chains embedded in his flesh. He speaks in calm, hushed tone and his chains writhe like living snakes.
An insufficiently dressed girl, pale and hugging her sides and shivering with cold. An eerily numb, tired despair fills your mind. You want to lie down, just for a bit...
A human in constant flux, their features changing with the second. When you look at them directly, they suddenly look like the person you harmed the most.
A statuesque woman, random bits of flesh replaced with black obsidian, her face always impassive. Arms of stone will grasp from the ground around her.
Naked and scarred witch, her long, white hair whirling around her body like a storm of blades and leaving gouges in concrete.
A skinless doctor, her lab coat and surgery tools brown and red with dried blood. She has a small army of sewn skins inflated with toxic gas.
A small child with perpetual, too-wide smile of huge, asymmetrical teeth. It will tell a silly joke and you'll laugh, you won't stop laughing even as it slits your throat.
Twins, a boy and a girl, moving in perfect unison, their features delicate and immaculate. Anything that affects only one of them fades nearly instantly.
A limbless giant burrowing through the earth with impossible ease. His gullet is full of swallowed treasures, and he may vomit some for you if you bring him extraordinary food.
A woman with an armour of rusty plates of metal embedded in her skin. Her fingernails are razor blades. She's excessively polite in conversation and excessively brutal in combat.
A woman with translucent skin, her modesty barely preserved by ingrown corals and sea anemones. Her kiss will turn your flesh to coral.
A drowned woman's body, bloated and rotting, shuffling and moaning, barnacled and gushing with water. She cannot be harmed except by fire.
A man with an iron mask. He chants an endless song and serves gods long gone. As long as you can hear his singing, no magic powers of yours will work.
A normal-looking guy who always talks and never lets anyone touch him. His real body is frozen deep within ice, the eyes and mouth sewn shut.
A brutish woman, morbidly obese and freakishly tall. She will tear off your limbs and feast on your flesh. She wears a burlap sack over her head.
A woman stitched together from ill-fitting body parts and stuffed into a dress suit. She can knit your wounded body, but only takes payment in fresh organs and body parts.
A monster in the darkness. It is never there if you have light and always here when your torch goes out. It giggles and scratches you with broken nails.
A man with screaming faces tattooed on his skin. He will offer secrets and knowledge, if you promise him a favour. He may summon anyone who owes him with just a word.
A skeletal figure in tattered robes. It's falling apart and not long for this world, but the wounds inflicted by its rusty knife never heal.
Royal, proud, diabolic figure. Its clothes are lavish and soiled, its words are wise and venomous. It carries trinkets forged from stolen souls.

So what is a bogeyman?

Take any player character, really. What awaits them in the dungeons? Some may bring back a fortune, but most will loose limbs and minds, mutate and adapt and change to survive. What returns is not a human, but something more monstrous and violent and powerful.

Adventurers are bogeyman.

You know, for a technically kid show,
Doctor Who can be a bit disturbing.