Weird on the Waves (Review)

For a while now¹, I’ve been dreaming of a maritime campaign, so I jumped on Weird on the Waves a year or so ago. It’s finally out, and it’s OK I guess.

Background

Weird on the Waves started taking pre-orders in 2017 as a LotFP-compatible product. It released in 2020 with generic D&D rules and notes for both “old school” and “new school” styles of play. It is available from Rebecca Chenier’s itch.io page for $5.99 or from her other storefront (?) for $10.99. I don’t know what the difference is, but I got mine from itch.io if there is one.

The Elephant in the Room

Is Rebecca Chenier cancelled? I don’t know man. If she’s a grifter, she seems benign. I did keep an eye out for any of the worst issues of Blood in the Chocolate and didn’t find them here.

Overview

The setting is the Caribbean in 1666, just before the “golden age of piracy”. But something is wrong: ships can travel to the Caribbean, but they can’t leave again. Instead, they find the islands surrounded by a sentient, hateful ocean full of strange and magical islands.

Chapter 1 - The Weird Waves

In addition to the setting pitch and the list of inspirational media, this chapter also explains basic D&D terminology in a way that’s not enough to be useful on its own, but enough that it might not match whichever system you are using. I would have preferred if it just owned OSR-style stats or 5e-compatibility, and didn’t feel the need to explain dice notation again.

This chapter also contains the part of the game that I’m most likely to borrow from: the basic “gameplay loop” of Weird on the Waves. That is the structure of finding a lead and following through and the procedures for sailing (like other games have procedures for exploring a dungeon or hexcrawling).

Chapter 2 - Character Creation and Play

This chapter also suffers from system indecision. It has rules for things that your base game should already have², like swimming, drowning, encumbrance, experience, etc. It has some suggested backgrounds, but without the mechanical heft of full 5e backgrounds, which is probably fine. It does also have rules the base game is unlikely to have, like firearms and a general-purpose “maritime” skill.

Chapter 3 - The Mermaid

When characters die in Weird on the Waves, they can be brought back as a mermaid by the ocean, but without their memories. The mermaids here are suitably weird (we are treated to some of Rebecca’s own art), and the bulk of the class is a d100 random-advancement table. It has details for “New School” and “Old School” games.

Chapter 4 - Goods and Equipment

Maybe someone likes this, but for the most part I don’t care what the cost of a cutlass is, or the range of a blunderbuss compared to a musket, meticulously-researched though I’m sure it is. I appreciate the miscellaneous bonuses that come from ship’s pets, and I like that all the currency conversion rates are as simple as possible.

Rules for disease also end up in this chapter, because medicine is here. Fair enough.

Chapter 5 - Ships and Sea Vessels

Like equipment tables for boats. I would be perfectly fine with four basic ships and then keep the section with perks and customizations, but I assume that some people get a lot out of this.

Chapter 6 - Sailing the Sea

Here is real meat. If Chapter 1 had procedures for “dungeon exploration”, Chapter 6 is the random encounter tables and rules for morale. (It is actually random encounter tables and rules for morale, so that wasn’t a great analogy.)

Chapter 7 - Ship Combat

I’ve read a bunch of ship combat rules, but I’ve never actually run any. This looks simpler than Pathfinder but more helpful than B/X, so that’s promising. Ocean hazards are also in this chapter, and I’m not sure why they’re not in the previous one instead.

Chapter 8 - Ending Combat, Days, and Voyages

Unlike the last section of Chapter 7 (“Ending Combat”), the title of this chapter refers to repairs after combat and also other parts of the sailing procedure that happen at the end of the day (e.g. morale checks) or the end of voyages (e.g. selling treasure).

Chapter 9 - Wave Master Rules

This chapter has a setting overview (“the ocean is magic and hates you”) and details (“the government of Cuba”) and GM advice (“historical accuracy is overrated”). There are also rules for “Wave”, “Weal”, and “Woe” dice, which represent the will of the malevolent sea. Wave dice get added to the GM-side of contested rolls, Weal dice are added to player rolls (like inspiration maybe), and Woe dice are rolled for prompts to make a situation worse whenever a player rolls a natural “1”.

This chapter also has all the random tables, and they seem all right.

Chapter 10 - Adversaries and Monsters

There are three kinds of monster in here: small or mundane animals, NPCs, and weird creatures. I could probably do without stats for “Cat” and “Dog”, especially because the important parts (bonuses for having a ship’s pet) are already elsewhere. I could also do without stats for “Sailor” and “Commoner”, because the base system should already have these, and I wouldn’t have to convert anything.

The weird creatures are one of the best parts of the book though, from a flavor standpoint. We’ve been told before that the sea hates humans and mocks them, but these creatures are actually showing that. The ocean learns that humans need vitamin C to survive, so it makes carnivorous citruses that suck vitamin C. Explorers start littering guns and ammunition, so the ocean induces crabs to become fortresses. It really captures the weirdness and hatred and confusion of the setting.

There are also some named NPCs (mostly historical figures) to serve as rivals, patrons, etc. These are fine and useful.

Chapter 11 - The Horrors of Pig Island

A short adventure, but probably solid. There are only so many ways to do a shipwreck adventure, but this one is cleaned up, with a little bit of Circe, and showcasing some of the atmosphere of the Weird on the Waves setting.

Chapter 12 - Race to Mondo Island

This adventure really showcases the sailing protocols, but doesn’t seem to add much. The PCs have a map, hire a crew, encounter some weird stuff, and hopefully return with the treasure. If nothing else, this is a useful illustration of how to use the tools in the book.

Impressions

• The PDF is not accessible at all. This is, in my opinion, the strongest argument against this book. The text is not searchable, there are no bookmarks, and every page is a flat, lo-res, grayscale image. Ostensibly, this is to prevent piracy (irony noted), but I don’t understand quite how, because people pirate PDFs all the time. This is only slightly alleviated by the inclusion of a hi-res map booklet.
• In what I assume is a result of this decision, the text of some tables is larger than the space allows, leading to crowded, hard-to-read entries like this:
  
• The book is a one-person effort and the limits of that show. For example, it could really use an editing pass to catch all manner of little things (the wrong “its”, “Île/Isle” confusion, etc. In one place, the book refers to a “Weird” die, even though the new types of dice are “Wave”, “Weal”, and “Woe”.) It reminds me of Ynn in that respect: strong concept but lots of loose ends.
• No rules are given for renown, although the text mentions it a few times. It’s not a big deal to improvise, but I remember one of the things I did like about the Pathfinder pirate rules was a subsystem for tracking “infamy”.
• It doesn't need to be 224 pages. A lot of space could have been saved if a single system was picked, or some things were left assumed. But I wouldn’t mind the length so much if the PDF were searchable and indexed.
• The art is a bit of a letdown. Rebecca referred to the book as a “millstone around her neck” in the preface, and I’m glad for her that she finally got it finished (I know the feeling). But somewhere between concept and finished product Rebecca’s own art was replaced with standard-issue public domain art³, and I find it uninspiring. To see what could have been, I have reproduced two pages from a 2019 sample document (left) next to their released counterparts (right).
  
  

Conclusion

Would you like me to review your product? Here’s how to make that happen:

• Write a solid product that blows me away.
• Write a product of any quality that happens to be on top of my pile when I’m in a writing mood.
• Ask me? I don’t know if this will work, nobody’s ever tried.
• Write a product that doesn’t exist, that I already really want to read and make it infuriatingly close to good.

I would say that I could definitely get some use out of this, except for the accessibility issues. If I can’t search it or navigate it, it’s going to be more hindrance than help at the table.

Islands!

Weird on the Waves has a weird island generator, so as is tradition, I gave it a half-dozen spins. It’s got occupants (1d12, 9 entries), shape (1d20), resources (1d8, 6 entries), buried or hidden treasure (1d6), and noteworthy features (1d100, ~30 entries).

Island 1

Occupants: Spanish colonists (60 commoners, 10 sailors, 1 noble)
Shape:
Resources: Coconuts (Provisions)
Buried Treasure: Buried trove (Ivory (0.1 tons, 12000 gp), Fresh water (1 ton, 100 gp))
Noteworthy Feature: The island is cursed, causing all who dwell upon it to slowly be turned into different kinds of fish people. The transformation is slow, causing anyone who stays there longer than a month to develop fishy traits.

Island 2

Occupants: Coconauts (110 coconauts)
Shape:
Resources: Coconuts (Provisions)
Buried Treasure: Sealed crate of textiles (175 gp)
Noteworthy Feature: Site of a cursed item. A random cursed item is hidden somewhere on the island. The item is a valuable treasure, but holds a terrible curse if used or possessed by a character. The exact nature of the cursed item is up to the Wave Master.

Island 3

Occupants: Uninhabited by humans
Shape:
Resources: Island cedar trees (Materials)
Buried Treasure: Buried Trove (Spanish wine (0.2 tons, 300 gp), Livestock (2.1 tons, 75 gp), Clothing (1 ton, 300 gp))
Noteworthy Feature: The island is cursed, causing all who dwell upon it to slowly be turned into different kinds of fish people. The transformation is slow, causing anyone who stays there longer than a month to develop fishy traits.

Island 4

Occupants: Dutch merchants (100 sailors, 2 captains)
Shape:
Resources: Island cedar trees (Materials)
Buried Treasure: Buried Trove (Dyes (0.2 tons, 500 gp), Textiles (0.3 tons, 525 gp), 14 Provisions (0.4 tons, 140 gp), Materials (1 ton, 100 gp), Narcotics (0.5 tons, 1000 gp), Rum (1 ton, 400 gp))
Noteworthy Feature: Within the island is a cave system with 17 chambers, forming a treasure-laden but heavily trapped dungeon.

Island 5

Occupants: Buccaneer camp (13 buccaneers, 1 captain)
Shape:
Resources: Island cedar trees (Materials)
Buried Treasure: Sealed crate of textiles (175 gp)
Noteworthy Feature: An abandoned settlement. Tobacco and sugarcane has been planted, houses and camps built and intact, but completely empty save for a few splashes of blood. Pirates didn’t kill these people, but something did. Setting up a camp here is easy, but encounters are doubled.

Island 6

Occupants: English colonists (50 commoners, 10 sailors, 1 captain)
Shape:
Resources: Sea cave (Hiding place)
Buried Treasure: Cache of Barbados rum (12 barrels, 480 gp)
Noteworthy Feature: An abandoned settlement. Tobacco and sugarcane has been planted, houses and camps built and intact, but completely empty save for a few splashes of blood. Pirates didn’t kill these people, but something did. Setting up a camp here is easy, but encounters are doubled.

Notes

These are pretty good, combining a lot of the best features of other tables I’ve liked. I like that most islands are inhabited, I like that every island has a secret treasure, and I like the little maps. The only thing that feels “off” is the specificity. When it lines up well, the specificity makes the whole thing come together beautifully (Why does Island 4 have two captains? Obviously there are North and South camps, and they are fighting over the extensive treasure caverns.) But then when it doesn’t line up obviously, it can be tough to make it fit (How is the livestock “hidden” on Island 3?). In other places, I wish there was a little more detail, like about the cursed item on Island 2. The "weighting" of some of the tabes feels off slightly, but I can't put my finger on it.

Are any of the islands giant turtles?

No turtles, but one possible island is a fossilized whale that begins to move again when the characters uncover its calcified heart. Same vibes.

---

1 I recently caught up with an old friend and we were talking about D&D. I told him about the nautical campaign I was dreaming and he said, “Ian, you need to do that already. You gave me the same pitch in High School.” Now I’m worried because I don't remember that at all.^back

2 Or not, as you might know if you’d ever looked for LotFP’s drowning rules. This uncertainty goes some way to explaining, if not excusing the bulk.^back

3 Which isn’t to say that this can’t be done well. I quite like the public-domain collages in Johnstone Metzger’s work, and I find that Emmy Allen’s work tends to recontextualize the images enough that they don’t bother me.^back

Creatures of Near Kingdoms

I made a Goodreads account just to review this book (although hopefully it will encourage me to be more thoughtful in my reading). I'm afraid that whatever I do, my reviewing style will probably be very dry, but FWIW, I really enjoyed this book.

Creatures of Near Kingdoms by Zedeck Siew
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The book is ~160 pages, paperback, liberally illustrated with woodcuts. There are 25 flora and 50 fauna inside, with each described on the right-hand page via a short second-person vignette with ecological digressions, and illustrated on the left-hand page. It could be described as a bestiary of a near-future mythical Malaysia.
I loved this book. The second-person narration seems strange at first, but it quickly becomes very comfortable, like the voice you talk to yourself in your head with. I don't think you are meant to be a specific person. Instead, each new vignette gives you new family, new surroundings that immerse you in the narrative much more deeply. The creatures are not described scientifically, but rather they are brought to life by the ways that they interact with your newly-assumed everyday life.
My heart was broken several times and I laughed out loud a few times also.
It is hard to describe the illustrations in a way that do them justice, but they are critical to the mission of the book.

View all my reviews

You probably don't need to know this, but for whatever reason, some books take me months to get through, and some books I read overnight (this doesn't seem to affect my enjoyment either way). Despite its format suggesting the former, I devoured this book. Maybe it was the anticipation while it was in the mail.

You can order Creatures of Near Kingdoms here, or by contacting Zedeck directly (he is on tumblr, instagram, G+, etc.).

Bestiaries and The Ubiquitous Sages

Bestiaries

The Ashmole Bestiary (Source: Wikipedia)

Monster books are great. Let's look at some more obscure ones than the Monster Manual that everyone knows.

Bonus Bestiary

by Jason Bulmahn and F. Wesley Schneider

Paizo released this pamphlet as a preview of the Pathfinder Bestiary on Free RPG Day 2009.

• It's marked "3.5 OGL Compatible" on the back, even though it uses the Pathfinder rules. I guess they're close enough that Paizo was hoping not to scare people.
• At the time of printing, the Bonus Bestiary was monsters that didn't fit in the main book, and so this was the only place for them. Some of them I can imagine were missed (the Allip), and some of them less so (the Ascomid).
• As of the Bestiary 3, I think all of the monsters in this book have appeared in other Pathfinder supplements.

Monster Manual II

by Ed Bonny, Jeff Grub, Rich Redman, et al.

A follow-up to the 3.0 Monster Manual. Hereafter referred to as MMII.

• Pages 4-21 explain how to read a monster's write-up, but the information is complete enough that it could probably be used for making monsters too (a laborious task in 3.X).
• The last two monsters (Scorpion Folk and Razor Boar) are designated open game content, which I think makes MMII unique among non-core WotC publications (Technically even including core: IIRC the books themselves are not OGC, only the SRD). I wonder what might have been.
• The MMII is unique among the monster manuals for never getting a 3.5 printing.
• I think the skull on the cover is meant to be that of an ethereal marauder, but I don't know that there's a "canon" solution.
• This book is often remembered for its stupidly high-level monsters, but in fact, they do not comprise the majority of the monsters (see Figure 1). I remember it more for introducing me to many of the more off-beat monsters from older editions, such as myconids and thri-kreen. A lot of the new monsters are pretty uninspired though; it's very hit-or-miss.

Figure 1: Challenge rating distribution in MMII.

Legions of Hell

by Chris Pramas

I think I got this free with a subscription to Dungeon magazine a while back. It's pretty good though.

• The stat blocks are irrelevant, as are the templates and prestige classes. What really makes the book worthwhile is the dozens of detailed devils with their schemes and manoeuvrings through the political structure of hell. Each of them has goals and activities outlined both in hell and in the material plane.
• I appreciate that entries frequently play off of each other. For example there are rival dukes of rhetoric and eloquence (appealing to logic and the psyche, respectively). It gives the book a very complete feeling.
• The book has occasional tie-ins with Hell in Freeport, which I do not own. But I would be interested to see if any of it also appears in the associated "world of Freeport" settings; I seem to recall that Green Ronin had all of their settings in a shared world.

The Ubiquitous Sages

As it was noted in "Let's Read the Monstrous Manual", many monster write-ups refer to "sages" with strangely specific knowledge and theories, implying some sort of twisted academic discourse in the D&D universe. When writing, it's an easy trap to fall into: when I do it it's because sometimes I just don't want to decide how something works, or I think something is a good idea but struggle to make it interesting, or I have multiple conflicting ideas. Basically, it's because I'm lazy (although I do try to catch myself doing it).
This fall-back device has some strange implications though. Take, for example, this passage from the AD&D Monstrous Manual:

Naturally vicious and almost evil at times, displacer beasts harbor an undying hatred of blink dogs. Many theories attempt to account for this enmity. Some sages believe it springs from antipathy in temperaments -- the lawful good blink dog would naturally be the enemy of a creature as savage and destructive as the displacer beast. Others argue that it is the displacement and blink abilities which cause this antipathy -- the two abilities, when in close proximity, somehow stimulate the nervous system and produce hostile reactions. Encounters between the two breeds are rare however, since they do not share the same territory.

Authorship

The judgements implicit in "almost evil" and "undying hatred" contrast sharply with the pseudo-scientific prose in the rest of the text. On the other hand, the back-and-forth of competing theories suggests a reliable communication infrastructure, the use of "sages" and "others" plural suggests a community of academics, and the note that natural encounters are rare introduces the possibility of a controlled laboratory environment, complete with technology that can contain an ethereal blink dog.
The contrast of these prose styles might be explained by the method of writing of a real medieval bestiary: Greeks and Romans would hear stories from all over and write them down. Then monks would copy, translate, and illuminate, these manuscripts, and add a layer of Christian allegory. In some cases, these were then later translated again with annotations, like this one, leaving many competing authorial voices. I think this (possibly unintentionally) makes for a somewhat more "realistic" bestiary.

Naming the Sages

If there is an academic community however, these books do a pretty poor job of citing things. Proper citations and references might be a bit much, but let's at least name the sages. Take the above blink-dog passage:

Many theories attempt to account for this enmity. [Nymphitylus believes] it springs from antipathy in temperaments -- the lawful good blink dog would naturally be the enemy of a creature as savage and destructive as the displacer beast. [Marixtus the Optimist argues] that it is the displacement and blink abilities which cause this antipathy -- the two abilities, when in close proximity, somehow stimulate the nervous system and produce hostile reactions.

I think the addition of names is a minor change that adds a more academic tone. I can easily imagine several names reappearing throughout a text, alluding to the nature and reliability of different sources.
Of course, names for ancient sages should be Greek. So here is a table to name them:

Sage Names

A half-dozen samples:

• Hegetius of Stratonicia
• Hierocrates the Epicurean
• Porphygias the Cynic
• Phaeneas
• Alexagnote Mallotes
• Carneacydes of Athens

Epithets can be generated with a d100, or a d30 to exclude place names, or a d20 to exclude Greek epithets. On 1-2 in 6, I exclude the epithet all together.

Recollections of 3.0 and Roman Names

Recollections of 3rd Edition

The type of thing I did just recently, may be one of the better things I have chanced upon: I feel much better about getting rid of things after I've enumerated reasons I should, and I feel better about keeping things if I'm more familiar with them. For now, I'm looking at my 3.0 books, since they've been mostly superseded by 3.5 and Pathfinder.

Player's Handbook

by Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, and Skip Williams

This wasn't my first exposure to D&D (I got started from a 3.0 boxed-set), but it was close to it. It's well-used and held together with masking tape these days.

• The first printings of the core rules (2000) were priced at $20 ea. I don't know if WotC planned to take a hit on the core rules and get it back in the extras (like consoles), or if they were genuinely cheaper, but I've ever since felt slightly betrayed by $40+ rulebooks.
• The PHB was the first of the three core books to be printed. As such, my printing has a "2000 Survival Kit" in the back, containing basic monsters and magic items, and rules for DMing and designing a dungeon, as well as a sort of quick-start dungeon. I always felt that the other two core books were somewhat extraneous after these 16 pages.
• It came with a CD. I don't know what was on the CD, but I think it was a version of Character Gen, which is now a nifty open-source program.

Dungeon Master's Guide

by Monte Cook, Skip Williams and Jonathan Tweet

So far as I know this book is largely unchanged in 3.5 anyway. The only thing I've found is that the NPC generation section is a bit better than in 3.5.

Monster Manual

by Skip Williams, Jonathan Tweet, and Monte Cook

The most important part of this book is the pictures, and those didn't change in the move to 3.5. Also, I think 3.5 has a few extras.

Psionics Handbook

by Bruce R. Cordell

This was the book that introduced me to psionics.

• The system it uses is notoriously a mess. Some of these things were fixed in 3.5, and some of them were fixed by Dreamscarred Press, and some of them are fundamental, but the concepts are still awesome.
• Soulknife is only a prestige class in this edition, although in 3.5 it becomes a base class.
• This is the book where the Gith* début in 3.0.

Tome and Blood

by Bruce R. Cordell and Skip Williams

• A paperback rulebook at the same price as my PHB, it's was a bit flimsy, but still feels quality.
• Has a lot of good information on how to play an arcane spellcaster (e.g. "Fun with Prestidigitation" and "Researching a New Spell").
• Has a lot of good fluff that I don't think made it to Complete Arcane: setting-neutral arcane organizations, wizard's hideouts, that type of thing.
• I have a memory of an article detailing the design process of the Candle Caster prestige class, but it isn't here and I can't find it for the life of me.

Living Greyhawk Gazetteer

by Gary Holian, Erik Mona, et al.

I have nothing against Greyhawk, but this is far too in-depth for me. It details the political positioning and affiliations of every little piece of the continent. I've got a little ~16-page pamphlet with a quick summary, some maps, and some adventures and dungeons, and that's enough for me.

Treasure Quests

by James M. Ward

A lot of third-party products from this time are hit-and-miss. This is one of those "misses", generally speaking. It would appear the authors were well-meaning but sloppy, and it frequently refers to WotC's product identity.

• The binding is wire-ring, which is nice. It lays flat on the table.
• Each two-page spread has a map with a few rooms, some npcs and some treasure. Despite the blurb's claims, there isn't really much to link each map, or even each room, but they're not entirely unrealistic either.
• There are recurring references to a wizard NPC named "Ren". Unfortunately these are never explained anywhere.

Green Races

by Timothy Brown

A campaign setting made entirely of monstrous races seemed like a neat idea, but suffers from similar problems to Treasure Quests.

• Each region details the predominant inhabitants, the structure and tactics of their military, usually some sort of ruin in each territory, and a prestige class.
• The only crunch in the book are those prestige classes.
• The picture quality is low, and the backgrounds grey, giving the whole book a sort of photocopied feel.
• There are further sections for "Non-Aligned Combatants" and "Dungeons, Ruins, Caverns, and Lairs". These are actually not bad; they've got some good original content.

The Book of Eldritch Might

by Monte Cook

I think this was the first third-party supplement I bought, and I don't regret it.

• Really nice feats, spells, prestige classes, and items, although I don't much care for magic constructs.
• Appendix I is "Random Rune Description Tables", which I had forgotten about. I'll have to remember these in the future.

If Thoughts Could Kill

by Bruce R. Cordell

A pretty mediocre adventure with some good ideas and some mediocre extras to show off a system with serious flaws (See above: Psionics Handbook).

• One of the endings is pretty cool: letting one of the players re-architect the psionics system.
• I feel like any non-psionic PCs would start to feel left out. Sure it has the option of letting an NPC be the psionic one, but I don't feel like that would be any better.
• Interestingly, the psionic lich appears in this book, and also in 3.5 psionics. I wonder how the stats compare.

AEG "Adventure Boosters"

These include "Servants of the Blood Moon" by Ree Soesbee, "The Last Gods" by Kevin Wilson, and "Princes, Thieves, & Goblins" by Marcelo & Kat Figueroa.

• These are a good form-factor and price: $2.50 for a 16-page "hot-dog folded" adventure. The last two pages of each are new material (monsters and items mostly)
• The adventures themselves are somewhat bland and uninspiring. "Princes Thieves & Goblins" makes the mistake of devoting the whole first page to a history lesson, and "The Last Gods" is full of creatures that "cannot be harmed and are completely immune to magic" and the like.
• Oddly the 3.5 series of similar adventures was very well-written IIRC, and much more sandbox-y.

Penumbra Adventures

These include "Lean & Hungry" by Chad Brouillard, "The Tide of Years" by Michelle A. Brown Nephew, "Three Days to Kill" by John Tynes, and "Maiden Voyage" by Chad Brouillard. These are all good; even the ones with boring premises manage to be exciting.

Roman Names

Just as the Great Khan has seen fit to extend the contest deadline, so have I seen fit to procrastinate further. I have taken a list of Roman names found here, and truncated and padded it until it makes a neat table:

Roman Names

A half-dozen samples:

• Publia Hortensia Rulla (F)
• Quinta Claudia Planca (F)
• Publia Sicinia Longa (F)
• Gnaea Acilia Dento (F)
• Titus Horatius Stolo (M)
• Marca Livia Barba (F)

In general the name has three parts:
Praenomen - This is like the first name. There's not so many of them, and I have the table set up to (very) roughly weigh them by frequency.
Nomen - This is a sort of family name. The female form can be made by replacing the "-us" ending with "-a". To roll a d120, roll a d10 for the ones place and a d12 for the tens and hundreds places. Treat a "12" as leading zeros unless the d10 rolls a "0".
Cognomen - This specifies which branch of the family one comes from. A d200 is rolled like a d120 except using a d20 in place of a d12.

Nitpicking and Reviews

I've accumulated a fair bit of gaming material that I'm only just now getting the chance to more closely examine and sort through. Here are some of my thoughts, opinions, impressions, and notes.
I'll do my best not to pick at every typo and mess-up, though it goes against my nature.

Left-to-right, top-to-bottom: Lamentations of the Flame Princess (with tiny dice), The Magnificent Joop van Ooms, Thrilling Locations, Monstercology: Orcs, DM Campaign Record

The Bloodmoon Goblins

by John Grana

One of the first Kickstarter projects I backed, it was finally released (a little more than a year late) last month. Despite my annoyance at its delay, it seems like a solid product to me. Some of my players have expressed interest in playing goblins, so I may give it a try.

• The lack of "splat" is surprisingly pleasing. I suppose I've just gotten used to ignoring lists of feats and spells.
• The book keeps an informal tone, but restricts actual joking to frequent sidebars. This distinction pleases me.
• It takes a decidedly old-school approach to the campaign, in that it starts off more controlled ("The king says to do this") but the end-game is ultimately player-driven ("We want to overthrow the king","We want to establish trade relations with . . .", etc.).

The Bloodmoon Goblins can be purchased at DriveThru RPG for (free sample at same).

Monstercology: Orcs

by Rick Maffei

Of all the 4E stuff I got, this book looked the most approachable (I know very little about 4E). It's basically what it says on the tin: a book about orcs. Unfortunately, most of the fluff (not all) falls flat and the crunch is too system-specific for me.

• Physiology and Habits is the best of the fluff to me. I may make some notes on this section before inevitably passing it on.
• Relationships with Other Races is something I hadn't considered before. Most of this I don't care for, but I like the Orc-Drow dynamic.
• I don't think it was necessary to make four subspecies of orc and three new  cross-breeds. I just can't justify it.
• The table Pocket Items (p. 43) was almost reason enough to keep the book, except that it's been done before (and non-specific pickpocket tables would also work). Upon further investigation the Flask Subtable does not actually have anything alcoholic, which is a grave oversight.
• The names orcish deities are occasionally confused: I'm tempted to let it slide, but I take it as an indication that they were becoming bland and indistinguishable even to the authors.

Monstercology: Orcs can be purchased at the Goodman Games Store.

DM Campaign Record

Another pull from the grab-bag, and also technically a 4E supplement, but it seems pretty system-neutral to me.

• Pretty good coverage of what I'd want to keep track of: calendars, major NPCs, character stats, deaths, custom encounter tables, house rules, etc. and also what books are allowed.
• Does not have any pre-compiled content, which is something I've taken a liking to.
• Has one of those aforementioned pickpocket tables, with a target social-class subsystem. Handily, this system is also used in the quick NPC features section.
• Has one of those tavern name tables. Probably not the most useful of things.
• Is missing credits for Interior Art, Graphic Design, and tellingly, Proofreader.
• Although its a 4E product, it still has the OGL in the back, and the text of it refers to "Character Codex".

Then again, this was from a grab bag, so it's possibly a reject of some sort.
The DM Campaign Record can be purchased at the Goodman Games Store.

Thrilling Locations

A Supplement for the James Bond 007 Game

Contains rules for playing in casinos, hotels, restaurants, trains, boats, planes, and airports, as well as floor-plans for major locations in the movies. I will confess to not only having no familiarity with the system, but also to not having really watched very much James Bond.

• Information overload. Some of these things really could have been left out:
• Population of Monaco, pros and cons of citizenship (p.14-15).
• Rules for roulette, baccarat, blackjack, etc. (p. 19-22).
• Great Hotels of the World (p. 44-45)
• Great Restaurants of the World (p. 65).
• I could go on . . .
• It's unclear to me if this is intended for the players or the GM. Most of it is clearly GM-only, such as who is secretly spying for who, and whether or not the wine is poisoned. But, for example "The Bed's Too Small" (a sub-section of "Notes for the Gamemaster" (p. 47-48)) contains two pages of tricks that players may wish to employ in securing their rooms. Many of them are not at all obvious to the player, so I don't see what use a GM would have for them.
• It's unclear to me what this is: sometimes it reads like a set of pre-written unlinked encounters, sometimes like vicarious fiction about the life of luxury, sometimes like a leaflet from the board of tourism, sometimes like the CIA World Factbook, and sometimes like the toolbox I'd kind of expected.
• The system has some wonky separation of character and role, which makes it difficult for me to follow what's meant to be happening sometimes.

Now that I've written all that, it occurs to me that this was probably not a great purchase. But if you're interested, or know something I don't know, I bought my copy of Thrilling Locations from Paizo.

Let's Read the AD&D 2E Monstrous Manual

While we're on the subject of really awesome things, here is one of the best things I have paid no money for. I can't possibly begin to communicate the number of ideas I've gotten from it, or the amount of time I've spent reading it (I'm still only in "G"). Whoever linked it to me, I hate you forever and thank you so much.

• My only regret is the occasional dead link, usually to a picture. I suppose I'll have to go actually acquire a copy of the Monstrous Manual, but then I'm not sure I could call this a free product anymore, because this is the only reason I would buy it for money.
• When I eventually finish, it might be amusing to go back through and tabulate the creatures with usable corpses or valuable eggs or some other recurring theme.

The threads are consolidated here, and formatted and indexed in a PDF here. The author, noisms, has an excellent blog, and this guy informs us that one of the contributors also publishes stuff on Paizo's website.

Addendum

This post initially reviewed Vornheim: The Complete City Kit, Lamentations of the Flame Princess (Grindhouse Edition), and The Magnificent Joop van Ooms, all published by Lamentations of the Flame princess. For a variety of reasons, I no longer support Lamentations, and I especially do not want to support Zak S or encourage others to do so. For more information, see my post here. It's also been seven years since I wrote these reviews, and I find the books are not so impressive to me now. In the interest of transparency, I have moved my reviews of these products below this disclaimer.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess (Grindhouse Edition)

Overall this is a really nice set of rules, and I'm glad I finally picked up a hard copy. In particular, the spells are awesome. I know there are a lot of reviews of this already, but I haven't read most of them, so I may re-iterate tired points.

• The tiny dice are awesome.
• The "Adventuring" section is ordered alphabetically, which means that things like skills aren't grouped under one heading. This is weird, because they're all essentially the same mechanic, but appear interspersed with unrelated things.
• The color pages in the middle are unreferenced and unlabelled. This probably wouldn't irk me so much if they didn't remind me of photo plates from old technical books.
• In two places I feel like I missing something: the spell "Strange Waters II" and the example item "Purple Lotus Powder Type II", which are both missing their "Version I"s. In particular I feel like Strange Waters II is an artifact from some editing pass.
• The Referee's booklet (p. 76) has a table for converting AC between several systems. It is unreferenced and uncaptioned, which is a shame because it's a useful thing that could use more attention.

I knew this going in, but it irks me that there is no separation of game and setting. There exists no non-grindhouse edition, and many of the rules are specific to a certain tone of campaign. For example, the summoning spell is all I'd heard it was, but several of the special forms are too dark (or meta) for my tastes. I think I may use some of Scrap Princess's stuff should the need for substitutes arise.

The Magnificent Joop van Ooms

by James Edward Raggi IV

The stuff about Joop van Ooms himself I may or may not use (it's good, but doesn't grab me), but the first half of the booklet is excellent for any city with a wharf or a black market.

• The convenient (half-A4?) size fits well in the box for LotFP, which is convenient because I feel like it might get damaged on its own.
• "Down on the Wharf" - a giant encounter table:
• 8 - "[everyone dies, Amsterdam is gone, start over]" annoys me. It might be passable, but it's not very fun and the tone offends me. I'll re-roll the event if I want to, or interpret it as I will. "Seriously." or not.
• 28 - missed opportunity for a stealth table, by ending the list with "wherever". A trivial decision could have been avoided by padding the list of cities just a bit.
• 48 - people die in random and unexpected ways, and I guess that could be interesting. But I'll probably make this into an assassin-mage's Lightning Bolt. This also takes care of the awkward moment when nobody at the table has a d30.
• As an adventure hook, "rocks fall, everyone dies" is even more out of place than in a table because there are no circumstances under which someone might be forced to "run with it". Ironically, this one gives better chances of survival and more details than the other one.

Vornheim: The Complete City Kit

by Zak S.

Let's not end on that note, shall we? Here's a truly awesome product that is maybe the best thing I have ever paid money for. And the competition is all more expensive.
(Bear with me, my notes are rough and I don't have my copy with me.)

• The covers being used as "drop-tables" to generate random values is immensely cool. But it makes me want to model the probability distributions of the dice, how different dice bounce and roll, how it changes if the edges are bounded, what biases are introduced by a right or left-handed player . . .
• Something somewhere in the book triggered a ramble in my notebook about the common tongue that I can't figure out at the moment.
• When re-rolling on the table of book subjects (p.49) to determine the actual subject of the book you have just determined the language of, there is no need to discard rolls of other languages:

What I believe to be a Swedish textbook about the French language.

Which takes care of that particular ugliness (I dislike discarding and rerolling). A lot of the mechanics in the book are particularly elegant, to say nothing of the actual gaming material, which I can't wait to use.

Grab Bag and Ancient Rome

I got my Goodman Games Holiday Grab Bag today (the sale is ended now). It contained:

The top row is things I'm definitely keeping (most of the 4e stuff is alien to me).

• The Random Esoteric Creature Generator by James Edward Raggi IV
• In Search of Adventure ed. Ken Hart
• Points of Light by Robert Conley
• DM Campaign Record
• Age of Cthulhu 2: Madness in London Town by Rick Maffei
• DCC #58: The Forgotten Portal by Chris Doyle
• DCC #59: Mists of Madness by Harley Stroh
• DCC #60: Thrones of Punjar by Rick Maffei
• DCC #72: Beyond the Black Gate by Harley Stroh
• Wicked Fantasy Factory: A Fistful of Zinjas by Luke Johnson
• Monstercology: Orcs by Rick Maffei
• Master Dungeons: Dragora's Dungeon by Harley Stroh
• Master Dungeons: Curse of the Kingspire by Harley Stroh
• Azagar's Book of Rituals ed. Dwight Hulse, Aeryn Rudel, Harley Stroh
• Amethyst: Foundations by Chris Dias

Which I think is a pretty good pull, especially considering The Esoteric Random Creature Generator was not only on my wish list, but enormously discounted:

So About Ancient Rome . . .

I'm thinking of doing something for the Great Khan's latest contest. Initially, I was thinking of making some sort of itinerarium, but I don't think I'll be doing that anymore. But for the use of others, The Orbis Project is an amazing resource.
For the entry I'm considering now, here are two translations of Vitruvius' On Architecture:

• trans. Teubner (well-annotated)
• trans. Morgan (illustrated)

While I may or may not finish in time for the contest (13th January), I'm having a lot of fun with it, and I wish everyone else the same.

My Bookshelf

Mostly I've been too busy for gaming, but I thought surely I could get in on something so simple as the bookshelf meme. So I took the picture, but I haven't actually got around to it until now. And you may notice that it's rather sparse in terms of actual gaming-related material . . .

The bottom shelf is more interesting than the top. On the left:

• Carcosa
• Vornheim
• The God That Crawls
• The Decision Book
• Jon Hodgman's Encyclopaedia of COMPLETE WORLD KNOWLEDGE:
• The Areas of My Expertise
• More Information than you Require
• That is All

 And on the right, starting after the CD binder:

• Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges (I do not read Spanish yet, but someday I will learn)
• Collected Nonfictions by Jorge Luis Borges
• Don Juan in Hell by George Bernard Shaw
• Seven Nights by Jorge Luis Borges
• Wonder Tales from Lord Dunsany
• Welsh Place-Names and Their Meanings by Dewi Davies
• Historic Newfoundland by the Newfoundland and Labrador Tourist Development Office
• Some pamphlets (unrelated)
• Railsea by China Mieville
• The Ship of Ishtar by A. Merritt

Let's hope I can get more gaming books on there next semester.

Addendum

This post mentions Vornheim, a book by Zak S. I do not want to support Zak or his work, and encourage others not to either. For mor information, see my post here. The post also mentions Carcosa and The God that Crawls, other products published by Lamentations of the Flame Princess. For a variety of reasons, I also no longer support Lamentations.

Scattered Thoughts

Notes from my summer activities and my first month of blogging. Mostly with at least half-hearted attempts to make them gaming-relevant.

Summer Reading:

 

The Space Trilogy by C. S. Lewis (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength)

An exciting classic "science fiction" trilogy. I thoroughly enjoyed it, although at times the overt Christian themes were grating on my secular humanist upbringing. The villains in That Hideous Strength were particularly strong, and I hope my own games can have villains that good. I also took extensive notes on the language as I went, and eventually I'll share those somehow (hopefully without diluting the content of this blog).

The Long Earth by Stephen Baxter & Terry Pratchett

A grand exploration of infinity, with some bizarre characters. Reminded me that dinosaurs are awesome.

Railsea by China Miéville

Great world-building with good proportions of secrets, bizarre new things, and enough familiar things to stay grounded.

Doc Savage Stories

I got back to my pulp roots with some old Doc Savage books ("The Land of Always-Night", "Mad Mesa", "The Dust of Death", and "The Stone Man"). This directly inspired Pulp Materials.

Things in Museums:

My favorite part of visiting the UK is the museums. Here are some things I thought it worth making a note of when I saw them.

• A German "schwerdt" (which unhelpfully appears to mean sword) was 4-6' long, and was not used in heavy over-head swings, but for fencing. The technique was to keep your off-hand just under the hilt as a pivot, and to control the motion of it with your good hand from the pommel. (Pitt-Rivers Museum)
• War quoits (chakrams) are basically sharpened rings, thrown like Frisbees held from the inside. I imagine they'd just be like exotic throwing knives in a game. (Pitt-Rivers Museum)
• In Guyana, traditional duels involve each participant standing close to the other and pressing their shields together. The first to lose their footing loses the duel. (Pitt-Rivers Museum)
• Instead of a traditional knife-bayonet, some early pistols had a sort of mace-head attachment on the barrel. I wish I'd taken a picture of this. (Tower of London)
• Before the formalization of molar theory, molar equivalencies were found using a slide-rule with salts marked in the positions of their molar weights. (Museum of the History of Science)
• When Copernicus first proposed his heliocentric model, people started using it for its accuracy, while simultaneously denying the validity of its assumptions. Essentially, it was used as an empirical model, but its implications ignored. (Museum of the History of Science)

 

Old Music:

• Long John effected an escape wearing shoes with a heel in front and a heel behind. Consequently, he was very difficult to track.

A Month of Blogging:

In my eagerness to post, or general confusion, I seem to have missed some things.

Fire!Fire!

Quench bears are obviously inspired by Smokey Bear. I would have used an image, except that I couldn't for the life of me parse the Smokey Bear Act, and decided to err on the side of caution.

Snake Oil

I could not remember for the whole time I was composing that table that the name I was looking for was "patent medicine". If I revisit the table someday, I'll keep that in mind.

Spider Racial Track

The post was going to have an image, but I forgot it. I'm just editing it in now . . .

Pulp Materials

Somewhere between Fire!Fire! and here, I forgot how to make a table in Blogger. Maybe I did it directly in html? At any rate, the table isn't really big enough to justify its seclusion in a Google Doc.

Pub Names

Nonsensical pub names are apparently a long tradition--and just as old a complaint. From what I understand they are frequently mutations of older names that may have made more sense.

The Future:

Classes have started now, but it remains to be seen what effect this might have on this blog. On the one hand, I'll have less time to myself and more other work to be doing. But on the two hand, I'll probably actually get a game going, and be doing more directly involving gaming. As I have no set schedule for the blog anyway, I don't expect any of these changes will be noticed.