Grendel's Arm

The petrified arm of a massive beast, Grendel's Arm can be wielded as a two-handed weapon that does 1d10 damage. The arm still retains a measure of its inherent ferocity; after it has been wielded as a weapon by a character, it strikes out on its own against the same foe with an attack bonus of +6.

On an attack roll of one, the wielder of the Arm must make a Saving Throw vs. Magic Device. On a failed Save, Grendel's Mother becomes alerted to the location of the bearer of her son's arm.

Our Universal System Can Do All the Genres, Look!

THESIS: An "Our Universal System Can Do All the Genres, Look!" cover is invariably lame.

PROOF:

Let's illustrate that our game can handle ANYTHING YOU CAN IMAGINE by showing the most generic tropes floating around in space in...bubbles.

Or maybe quadrants? 

Hey that genres-in-quadrants thing that GURPS did above seems like a good idea! Right? Right?

Okay, what if we scrap the quadrants and just mash it all together? Oh, no, that's just a god-damn mess:

Okay, okay, let's simplify then. Less is more, right? Right?

Maybe simple will look better if we do a color gradient? Maybe?

Okay, that didn't work. Maybe if we make the cover look like the label of a body-building supplement?

Hmm, da Vinci is cool, right? Gamers love da Vinci!

This is what is looks like when you lose all hope:

Haunted House Encounter Table

1. Hungry Shroud (shadow)

2. Possessing Geist (ghost)

3. Dreadful Apparition (banshee)

4. Mischievous Ghost (poltergeist)

5. Tortured Wraith (wraith)

6. Vengeful Specter (spectre)

WEARING A FACE THAT SHE KEEPS IN A JAR BY THE DOOR

Add caption

(You can see the whole thing here. It's great.) 

Eleanor Rigby
AC 12, Move 120', HD 5, HP 23, bite 1d8, Morale 10
Special: 

• Eleanor Rigby can assume the facial likeness of anyone she has seen.
• Eleanor Rigby is compelled to pick up any grains of rice that are scattered before her, provided that the rice has previously been thrown upon a newly-married couple.
• Eleanor Rigby has advantage on attacks against all the lonely people. 

Crimson Peak's Truth, Bone Temple, Monsters in Literature

Crimson Peak reveals the truth about Gothic lit. fans:

* * *

Here's a map I found some place or another that will likely get used in a game someday:

* * *

Song of the Moment: Cocteau Twins, "But I'm Not"

Things from the forest die here

But I don't

Dead forest things are offered here

But I'm not

* * *

Monsters in literature, in one handy graphic:

Color-Coding a Character Sheet

One thing new players sometimes struggle with in rpgs is finding stuff on their character sheets, which makes sense if they're just not used to the visual conventions and layout strategies of tabletop games. I'm wondering if color-coded characters sheets, like my above example of a custom LotoFAP sheet, could help. Something like "Okay, what's your Armor Class? It's in the red area" might just save some time and help nail things down.

If you want your own technicolor Baphomet character sheet, I've made it available here as a pdf.

Penny Dreadful's Design Inspirations

'Penny Dreadful' Costume Designer Gabriella Pescucci on Her Dreadfully Delicious Designs 

The Villanoska Mystery: The Road to Villanoska

Hurstcote is as vile a den of corruption as you might dare imagine. Within an opium den in a particularly loathsome street three "heroes" gather to meet their prospective employer: Isoline, a dark-eyed gypsy left upon the doorstep of a cathedral; Marius, a thin, nervous man from an ancient house who dabbles in the criminal underworld; Galen, a gnarled little brute with a taste for whiskey and a thorough knowledge of the darkened woods.

Their employer, Madame Urania, is a hulking woman who speaks plainly. She has had a distressing letter from her sister in a village to the north. According to her sister, the citizens of Villanoska have been turning up dead with alarming frequency, and the death do not seem to stem from natural causes. Each victim was found bloated and water-logged, as if they had been drowned at sea--a strange thing for a land-locked village. Though little love is lost between Urania and her sister, Urania feels a duty to send some willing bodies to Villanoska to fetch her sister before she becomes the next victim to whatever is plaguing the village. 

As the heroes set out the next morning they are relieved to let the stink of Chancel recede behind them. But all is not well in the dark lanes that lead north from the city. Sharp-eyed Marius realizes that the trio are being shadowed by creatures who stay just out of sight within the trees. Surreptitiously, they ready their weapons for the inevitable ambush. 

The ambush comes in the form of a number of shambling figures breaking forth from the treeline, surging forward on legs seemingly set at the wrong angle, waving butcher knives and rough-hewn clubs. Galen lets his blunderbuss sing its scattershot song, Marius slips his rapier between ribs with insouciant aplomb, and Isoline calls down the burning wrath of the saints. The group take a few minor wounds, but soon the landscape is littered with the misshapen corpses of their attackers. As this is no safe ground to regroup upon, they opt not to rest here and instead press on to                                                          Villanoska.

Ah, Villanoska at last! A sleepy, ramshackle village protected by a poorly-mended wooden stockade. Urania's sister, Cybaline, is located. She's reluctant to leave the town; when pressed for what little information she has she remarks that if the characters can discover the source of the murders in the village they will receive a substantial reward. 

Others are questioned--and it is determined that the only known source of water in the village is the common well at the center of the what passes for the town square. The well is nondescript from the outside, and shows no signs of obvious malevolence. 

Unconvinced that all is as innocuous as it seems, Galen is lowered down into the well by his rope-laden compatriots. Deep within the well he notes that there are holy runes dedicating it to Saint Arethia--except that these runes have been crudely defaced. Whatever sanctity once guarded this important source of water has been utterly effaced.

The trio retreat to the way-inn to ponder what this might mean, replenish themselves with food and rest, and to wait for the morning sun to rise before taking action. 

#drawlloween round-up

All of those mini Snicker bars are gone, so I guess Halloween is over.

FUCK THAT, let's keep it going another week at least.

Anyway, one thing I did over the course of October was participate in #drawlloween. If you haven't seen it before, it's a challenge to draw one Halloween-related thing per day. I'm posting my output below; I'm still strictly amateur and have only been drawing for a couple years now, but I learned some things by doing these and mostly I'm proud of myself for not missing a day.