Thanks Your Charles Stross/ If You Want Slaad You've Got It...

Slaad on the rocks
Slaad on the streets
Slaad in the sky
Slaad on the sheets
If you want Slaad
You've got it...

It looks like someone else has caught Open Content Versions of Non-OGL Classic D&D Monster fever, as Bat from Ancient Vaults & Eldritch Secrets has presented the first of the Senufio (SErial NUmbers FIled Off): The Scarlet Marauder.

Hyperspace Monster Encounters

In rare reaches of the galaxy hyperspace is subject to a myriad of vibrations, refractions, radiations, inclusions and interferences; in some if these areas there is a chance that a ship making a hyperspace jump will experience the materialization of something near or within the vessel.

d30
1 - Githyanki (Fiend Folio)
2 - Grell (Fiend Folio)
3 - Coeurl (Booty And The Beasts)
4 - Silver Spider (Arduin III)
5 - Xill (Fiend Folio)
6 - Mind Flayer (Monster Manual)
7 - Elder Thing/Primordial One (Deities & Demigods, Carcosa, Realms of Crawling Chaos)
8 - Sorcerer (NPC)
9 - Mi-go (Deities & Demigods, Carcosa, Realms of Crawling Chaos)
10 - Colour out of Space (Realms of Crawling Chaos)
11 - Type d6 Demon (Monster Manual)
12 - Lifeforce Vampire
13 - Ghost Ship (75% chance of undead)
14 - Rakshasa (Monster Manual)
15 - Shambleau (Ix)
16 - Dimensional Shambler (Realms of Crawling Chaos)
17 - Hound of Tindalos (Realms of Crawling Chaos)
18 - Doppleganger (Monster Manual)
19 - Hideous Space Beast (Ix)
20 - Slaad (Fiend Folio)
21 - Hyperspace Planetoid (consult appropriate matrix)
22 - Ancient Alien Construction (consult appropriate matrix)
23 - Wormhole/Dimensional Rift/Pocket Dimension (consult appropriate matrix)
24 - Beholder (Monster Manual)
25 - Gorbel (Fiend Folio)
26 - Flumph (Fiend Folio)
27 - Time Storm (consult appropriate matrix)
28 - Maggot Farmer (Swords & Dorkery)
29 - Hyperspace Pirate (Men, Pirate)
30 - Space Aliens (Carcosa)

Blair's Big Dumb Planet Algol Megadungeon

Apologies for the lack of posting lately, I've been sick and somewhat run down. Work and illness have been interfering with my gaming, and the latest Fallout installment has been sucking up a lot of my attention as well.

But I've been a doing a bunch of work on my Algol megadungeon. At this point, I have the following mapped out:

Level 1 - 143 rooms
Level 2 - 144 rooms
Level 2.B - 39 rooms
Level 3 - 82 rooms
Level 3.B - 9 rooms
Level 3.B.3 through to 3.B.7 - 34 rooms
Level 4.A - 28 rooms
Level 4.B - 22 rooms
Level 4.C - 22 rooms

The level labeling system is kind of funky right now; the oddball named levels are sub-levels or sub-complexes within the megadungeon. Of course there are byzantine interconnections between the levels.

I've paid attention to the erudite Gabor Lux's past works analyzing dungeon construction and flow, and the big levels are designed with that in mind by incorporating "loops" within the dungeon avenues. In effect there are several "neighborhoods" within each main level, as well as "freeways," complexes of corridors that allow one to travel throughout much of the differing areas of the level without having to deal with doors or major barriers; thereby allowing the giant worms and flying jellyfish means of traversing the dungeon.

A big influence has been Empire of the Petal Throne's Underworld and megadungeon innovator M.A.R. Barker's work. For my own game, one of the tentpoles of the megadungeon monster stocking will be from D&D variant EPT. The other three tentpoles being Carcosa, Arduin and the original Fiend Folio (including White Dwarf FF content), with some cherry picking from Talislanta. In any published version most such critters would be replaced with original or OGL content, but in my own game I get to use Gorbels without turning them into little exploding, clinging toddler-robots first.

As an aside, I've read previous online musings about using the Fiend Folio as an alternate Monster Manual instead of the aforementioned MM, and I have to say, I can see it working. There's definitely a nice range of humanoids in the kobold-equivalent to ogre-equivalent spectrum. Plus, forget everything you know about Gibberlings and read them with through a pulp Swords & Sorcery lens.

I'm going with a sparse monster distribution, with 1 "encounter" for every six rooms or so; with allowances for some encounter groups controlling several rooms. The general vibe I'm going for with this aspect is vastly ancient, abandoned decrepitude punctuated with moments of terror. With pockets of really bad areas.

At the 1-to-6 monsters placement-to-room ration, it works out to 24 monster encounters for the first two levels...which is quite a lot, and leaves me with a lot of room on my plate for the Tekumel/Arduin/Carcosa/Fiend Folio buffet...

Orion Slave Girls and the Slaad of Planet Algol

Yes, the above Star Trek clips have Nothing to do with the subject of this post...aside from Green Skin...

I am quite fond of China Mieville's creation Bas-Lag, despite Dickensian Leftist fantasy not being my regular cup of tea (I'm more a fan of contemporary leftist reality), and I especially loved the Weavers.

"Large, multidimensional spider-like beings who regard life on Bas-Lag as an ongoing work of art. They use their considerable powers to interfere with events according to their individual sense of aesthetics, and seem to appear primarily before major events. Weavers speak in a disjointed, babbling flow of half-poetry, and are totally unpredictable. The Weaver who appears in Perdido Street Station has an absurd fascination for scissors, however this fascination is only the most recent in a series (it is mentioned that the Weaver was previously interested exclusively in chess sets), and can change radically without notice. Their minds, when read, seem to be in a constant state of dreaming. A Weaver also appears in Iron Council. It is unclear whether it is the same Weaver or a different one, but it advocates social and economic revolution, sparking the train strike and the eponymous union that the book centers on."

I found the babbling insane multidimensional arachnid genius quite charming, and I knew that I would have to have a race on Planet Algol that rips off...I mean that is inspired by them.

While going over candidates for the Elder Races it struck me that Charles Stross's contribution to the Fiend Folio, the highly magical chaos-infused Slaad, were a perfect fit for the role of "Planet Algol's Weavers."

They're chaotic, alien, magical, extra-dimensional and geniuses...

Actually Blue and Red Slaad are Low intelligence, Green Slaad are Average, Grey Slaad are High and only the Death Slaad are Geniuses; There goes my Slaad/Weavers idea?

Nope, the Blue, Red, Green and Grey Slaad are juvenile Slaad. Reds are infants, Blues toddlers, Green children and Grey are teenagers. When Slaad reach adulthood (which takes thousands of of years) they are the real Slaad- the capital-S Slaad, the insane, multidimensional, babbling, eccentric geniuses. Most juvenile Slaad frolic in "The Pond", a pocket dimension of chaos energy where the young Slaad-lings frolic and sport. Sometimes they get lost and wander onto Planet Algol, sometimes their "elders" summon them. But they're children; Incredibly powerful, dangerous, and insane children.

Contrary to their name and depiction, Death Slaad are not brooding bad-asses. They are eccentric collectors that speak in a babbling wordplay. They have goals inscrutable to mankind and spend millions of years fulfilling these goals, which are their equivalent of a recreational hobby, albeit an obsessive one.

There's no description of what color they are in the Fiend Folio, they're whatever color they want to be! Scarlet, purple, black, pink, garish patterns. Adult Death Slaad display the same variation in colors and patterns that real life frogs and toads do, except with an insane chaos psychedelic style.

Death Slaads are not malicious. They get their name from the fact it is especially easy to meet your death while dealing with them, but in most cases it is an accident, a misunderstanding. It's hard for the Slaad to remember how fragile other beings are while they are in the frenzy of their obsession. Besides, there's millions more of the small mammalian insects with such brief lives.

The Slaad may have evolved on Earth in the Devonian Period or on Planet Algol in a similar era. They were originally a species of frog-like being who were exposed to immense magical radiations that kickstarted them onto a path of accelerated, multidimensional evolution. Now the universe is their playground. Make that play-pond.

A Quick Observation Regarding the AD&D Fiend Folio

While leafing through my copy, making lists of creatures suitable for my Planet Algol campaign, I noticed that there are a disproportionate amount of monsters in this book that implant eggs in their victims, each with different specific rules regarding incubation periods, symptoms, larva, hit point loss, death, cures, etc. Combined with the raw, leprous, great artwork in this tome, and the cyclopian orcs of their version of the Games Worshop edition of Basic D&D, I really get the impression that the oldschool UK D&D crowd were a weird bunch, in a totally awesome way.

The Serpent Leopard

Posted here on Referees' Resources, a homage to a Fiend Folio classic.