The Dancing Hut

During the boom days of 3e, I bought a lot of third party d20 products, many of which saw heavy use in my games. I haven’t bought nearly as many third party books for 5e, but a few months ago I did pick up the Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga from the Dungeon Master’s Guild. We started this adventure back at the end of March and just wrapped up, having played for about a dozen weekly Roll20 sessions. While not a shot-for-shot recreation of Roger Moore’s classic AD&D treatment from Dragon magazine, the new Dancing Hut certainly captures the wild and wacky feel of the original.

This was a fun adventure and I was reminded again and again how satisfying a weekly game can be: the players quickly got into a groove and the sessions ran more smoothly with each subsequent session. Dave Coulson did a nice job of reworking the material from Roger Moore’s original into a new and entertaining 5e adventure.

In many ways the Dancing Hut is the ultimate funhouse dungeon, an interdimensional space that does not obey normal laws of geometry or logic. And Baba Yaga herself is an exceedingly powerful figure, nearly on par with a deity, and has spent millenia wandering throughout the multiverse and across several alternate realities. As such, her Hut is filled with all sorts of wonders and marvelous creatures.

My players quickly understood the terrible threat posed by Baba Yaga, and as such they took great care venturing through her Hut. They used their very best manners when interacting with the Hut’s often bizarre inhabitants, an approach that served them well as they navigated through the outer rooms.

Much of the fun in playing through this adventure is watching the players try to figure out the rules connecting different rooms. The non-linear layout can be disorienting and strange, but because the relationships between rooms are consistent, the experience isn’t quite as frustrating as might be expected.

Each of the outer rooms has some sort of interesting inhabitant and set piece. Although a few of the creatures are actively hostile to explorers, most are indifferent and some are even helpful—but all are fairly memorable. Coulson does a nice job of sketching out these personalities and providing brief roleplaying notes.

Coulson also suggests a handful of adventure hooks that can be used to provide motivation and direction to the PCs. While I would highly recommend that DMs use at least one of these hooks, I would give the players plenty of opportunity to explore the Hut before starting to tug at those hooks.

The Palace in the Forest, a site I created for the adventure. The image was generated using Dall-E.

I have only a few quibbles about the adventure. There are several stray references to monsters and items not in the core rules, but no indication which book they appear in. (This may be a restriction of publishing through the Dungeon Master’s Guild.) 

I would have liked to have had a little bit more direction as to what each inhabitant knows about other rooms in the Hut. And while Coulson provides great guidance for the initial encounter, there’s little direction for what might happen on repeat visits to the same room—something that can happen a lot given the non-linear structure of the Hut. A simple random table might help mix things up and create a sense of dynamism. For example, on 1d6: 1 - Inhabitant is gone, 2-3 - Inhabitat is still engaged in initial activity, 4 - Inhabitant is irritated by the return of the PCs, 5 - Inhabitant welcomes the returning PCs, 6 - Inhabitant is engaged in a discussion with 1d4 Chickenfoot Ogres.

But all-in-all, this is a solid and enjoyable adventure, well written and professionally laid out. The quality is easily on par with the top-level third party publishers from the d20 era. One of my players evidently enjoyed the Hut so much that his character, the Bold Salamander, elected to stay behind and serve Baba Yaga in her gladiator pits (!). While I never saw this turn coming, it made total sense for the Salamander and was a fitting end to the adventure.

Gray Render

This miniature, much like the Nightwalker, was one that I thought would be an easy paint in between more challenging projects. And once again, I was wrong.

The gray render debuted in the 3e Monster Manual (2000), one of a handful of monsters created specifically to showcase new game mechanics—and in the case of the render, the revised grapple rules. A really great D&D monster needs not just a neat mechanic or ability, it also needs a nice visual as well as a solid hook into the game setting. Alas, while the gray render helped round out the mid-range challenge ratings of 3e, it was otherwise just a blander and slighter weaker umber hulk.

The gray render was brought back to 5e in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes (2018). It’s quite a bit tougher (Challenge 12) and has some new distinctive quirks, but what really makes the beast pop is its new look. Like the 5e nightwalker, the 5e gray render seems to be inspired by a Guillermo del Toro movie—namely, the first Hellboy (2004), and Wayne Barlowe’s design of the monster Sammael.

WizKids added a new gray render miniature in Wave 14 of their licensed Nolzur’s Marvelous Miniatures, and if anything the figure is even better than the reference art. The sculpt is great, with finely textured hide much like an elephant or rhino. It ended up being tough to paint, and as with the nightwalker part of the problem seemed to be going so dark over a white primer. I also struggled to get just the right tone of gray, as I swung back and forth between inks and washes and being much too light or much too dark before finally landing at about the right level. In retrospect I wish I had tried putting some Army Painter Dark Tone ink right on the primer, with some drybrushing highlights on top of that.

My own struggles aside, this is a great figure that was well worth fighting with. But I’m not sure my players will agree—Mwah ha ha ha!

Darkness Visible: Nightwalker

In Dungeons and Dragons, a nightwalker is one of three forms of nightshade, evil extraplanar creatures inimical to all life. These monsters first appeared in Frank Mentzer’s Master Rules set (1985) for the Basic D&D system. As the Master set focused on characters from level 26 to 36, nightshades were intended to be suitably epic-level threats—and they mostly deliver on that premise. 

The nightwalker was a 20-foot tall, pitch-black humanoid with 21–26 HD and lots of special abilities, including its signature move: destroying a character’s magic items. I’ve known players who would rather have a character killed than lose their magical goodies. I think the nightshades were probably the most, and possibly only, memorable new monster to come out of the Master set.

The nightshades were converted to 2e AD&D in the Mystara Monster Compendium Appendix (1994) with their abilities mostly intact. From there these monsters were brought into 3e with the Monster Manual (2000) and placed into the System Reference Document. Paizo also included these monsters in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary 2 (2010).

Nightshades were not included in the 5e core books, but the nightwalker did make Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes (2018) as a Challenge 20 undead. The 5e nightwalker lacks the signature ability to destroy magic items (boo) but does have several suitably nasty abilities, including the dread Aura of Annihilation: “Any creature that starts its turn within 30 feet of the nightwalker must succeed on a DC 21 Constitution saving throw or take 14 (4d6) necrotic damage and grant the nightwalker advantage on attack rolls against it until the start of the creature’s next turn. Undead are immune to this aura.”

One of the best things about the 5e nightwalker is the new visual look for an old monster. The 5e artwork clearly taps into the Pale Man from Guillermo del Toro’s haunting Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) but also recalls the xenomorph from the Alien movies. It’s really a perfect fit for a silent, extraplanar horror.

WizKids has a great miniature of this monster, part of their licensed Nolzur’s Marvelous Miniatures line. I snatched this up thinking it would be an easy paint that I could bang out in between other projects.

I was wrong. First, the miniature is partly translucent to capture the smoky wisps of negative energy floating off the monster—so with my skill level I really couldn’t use my airbrush on this model. Second, the Nolzur miniatures all come primed with a white primer. This is normally a feature, but it turns out painting a base coat of black on top of white primer is a nightmare—every time I thought I was done I would find another tiny speck of white peaking through. Eventually, though, I was able to start adding highlights of dark blue and gray to bring out the features on this great sculpt.

A Michael Mordor video was very helpful for approaching this model, and he had a particularly helpful technique for painting the translucent parts. Although this mini turned out to be much more work than I had anticipated, I was happy with the final results and hope to throw this beast at some unsuspecting players in the not-too-distant future.

One quibble I have always had about the nightshade: how are they undead? Undead are normally creatures that were once living but died and were subsequently transformed into some foul mockery of life. So what was the living antecedent for a nightwalker? The Mystera Compendium has maybe the best idea I’ve yet read: “Some sages suggest that when numerous undead beings are destroyed, the energies released on the Negative Energy Plane coalesce to form a nightshade.” In a sense, this makes nightshades “undead undead,” which is a good enough explanation for me.

RIP, Russ Nicholson

A few weeks ago we learned the sad news that Russ Nicholson had passed. Russ was a talented illustrator whose black and white work graced early issues of White Dwarf, the 1st edition Fiend Folio, and the Warlock of Firetop Mountain Fighting Fantasy gamebook, all of which were incredibly influential on me and many fellow gamers. In recent years Russ had maintained a blog, The Gallery: Art of Russ Nicholson where he posted some of his newer and older work.

Both Grognardia and Zenopus Archives posted excellent tributes to Russ and his work. He played a significant role in the evolution of Dungeons and Dragons: his illustrations of many iconic monsters in the Fiend Folio, such as the Grell, Githyanki, or Sons of Kyuss helped popularize those creatures and continue to influence their depictions in the game today. 

Personally, the Fiend Folio was my very first AD&D hardcover, even before the Monster Manual, and I spent untold hours poring over that book and drinking in his work. Russ had an uncanny ability to create evocative, detailed images that could make even the dumbest of monsters—and let’s face it, my beloved Fiend Folio has plenty of dumb monsters—seem cool.

The early issues of White Dwarf contain many great Russ illustrations that are probably unfamiliar to most American gamers, including several Fiend Factory installments that feature monsters cut from the Fiend Folio. (For my money, a few of these “director’s cut” monsters are actually stronger designs than several that actually got into the book.)

The striking cyclops illustration above appeared in White Dwarf 21 (Oct/Nov 1980) as part of the article "Fiend Factory: One Eye Canyon - Mini-Wilderness Scenario, 5th-7th Level," written by Albie Fiore—who contributed several monsters to the Fiend Folio, such as the berbalang and firenewt.

The look of this cyclops actually has a surprisingly long and interesting pedigree: some sleuths over on Dragonsoot traced this back to a couple of illustrations of “one-eyed orcs” in the UK version of Holmes Basic (1977) done by “Fangorn,” aka Chris Baker, who was also a veteran of the Fiend Folio. The illustrations then inspired a 1979 Citadel cyclops miniature from their Fiend Factory line.

It seems odd that D&D has never really had a cyclops design that has stuck, even though it is such a classic from Greek myth. It’s not for lack of trying: they are mentioned in the OD&D Monsters and Treasures book (1974) as "Super-strength Giants with poor depth perception” (21) and statted out in the OD&D Gods, Demi-gods, and Heros (1976) as having “all the powers of a Storm Giant, but they are much more intelligent” (17). (In fact, a cyclops even graces the frontispiece of GDH.)

In 1980 the Cook/Marsh Expert set and the AD&D Deities and Demigods both take very different swings: while the Expert set goes with a 13 HD giant, the DDG breaks them into lesser and greater cyclopes. Both 2e and 3e follow the DDG model in Legends and Lore (1986) and Deities and Demigods (1990). I think the problem with all of these is that they hew too closely to Greek mythology, making these monsters much too powerful and tying them too tightly to a specific milieu.

AD&D tried to address these problems by offering the “cyclopskin” in the Monster Manual II (1983), which also also appears in the 2e Monstrous Compendium Volume II. Neither version seems to have caught on, perhaps because of the lack of a strong hook: this 5 HD, 7-½ foot tall monster is basically just a tough, one-eyed brigand.

More recent iterations haven’t been done much more to distinguish themselves beyond being big and having one eye. The Pathfinder cyclops is a CR 5, 10 HD giant with an odd “Flash of Insight” special ability. The 5e cyclops is just a Huge, CR 6, 12 HD giant.

I keep coming back to the Fangorn/Russ/Fiore version as maybe offering the most distinctive take yet on the cyclops for D&D. I tried a few different conversions of their version, but none really worked: I kept ending up with just a really big, one-eyed giant. Then I realized I was making the same old mistake of trying to stick too closely to Greek myth.

Take another look at that Russ illustration: that doesn’t look like a half-divine son of Poseiden so much as a mutant from a sci-fi B movie. And with that in mind, it seemed to make more sense to recast the cyclops as an aberration than any sort of giant. This gives the cyclops more of its own niche within D&D, and is actually consistent with the D&D tradition of mining classical mythology for names and basic concepts but then veering into more generic science fantasy for specific implementation. For example, consider the D&D treatment of the hydra, gorgon, medusa, pegasus, or minotaur.

With that in mind, here’s my own take on a cyclops for 0e, 3.5e, and 5e, which leans heavily into the B movie inspiration. I would love to be able to get my mitts on some miniatures of these things. In fact, wouldn’t it be great for Otherworld Miniatures to do a whole set of Russ Nicholson-inspired figures?

The following text is Open Game Content.

Cyclops

This hulking biped looms nearly eight feet tall, its powerful arms ending in clawed hands. Its face is dominated by a single, clear sea-green eye in the center of its forehead, a wide, gaping maw, and two upswept, pointed ears. Its lumpy, weathered hide is patched with straggly clumps of greenish-black hair.

Insatiable and Unpredictable. Cyclopes are impulsive and emotional, prone to almost childlike outbursts of fury. They have a dark hunger for both humanoid flesh and strong drink.

Raiders and Plunderers. Cyclopes form small bands and haunt wild lands and caverns, occasionally raiding humanoid settlements for food, treasure, and captives. Their ferocity and strength allow them to dominate bands of weaker evil humanoids.

Unnatural Horrors. A cyclops cannot reproduce naturally with another cyclops, and must instead rely upon humanoids, giants, or others to produce new cyclopes. Cyclopes can interbreed with an appalling number of creatures; any resulting offspring not born as cyclopes are eaten.

0e

Cyclops CL 7 (600 XP)

The cyclops can immobilize an opponent within 60 feet with a glance. The target must make a saving throw or become completely immobilized for 1d6 rounds. The effect ends if the target takes damage or is shaken roughly by an ally.

HD 6; AC 4 [15]; Atk 2 claws (1d4), bite (1d8); Move 12; Save 11; AL C; Special hypnotic glance.

3.5e

Cyclops CR 3

Usually CE Medium aberration

Init +0; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Listen +3, Spot +3

Languages Common

Defense

AC 15, touch 10, flat-footed 15
(+5 natural)

hp 33 (6d8+6 HD)

Fort +3, Ref +2, Will +6

Offense

Spd 30 ft.

Melee 2 claws +6 (1d4+2), 1 bite +4 (1d8+1)

Space 5 ft.; Reach 5 ft.

Special Attacks hypnotic glance

Statistics

Str 15, Dex 11, Con 13, Int 8, Wis 9, Cha 13

Base Atk +4; Grp +6

Feats Alertness, Iron Will, Multiattack

Skills Climb +5, Intimidate +3, Listen +3, Spot +3

Ecology

Environment any

Organization solitary, gang (2-9), or tribe (10-19 plus one 11 HD leader plus 20% noncombatants)

Treasure standard

Advancement 6–10 HD (Medium); 11–14 HD (Large); 15–18 HD (Huge)

Special Abilities

Hypnotic Glance (Su) As a standard action, a cyclops can fascinate a creature within 30 feet with a look. The target creature must succeed on a DC 14 Will save or be fascinated for 1d6 rounds. This is a mind-affecting effect. The save DC is Charisma-based.

5e

Cyclops

Medium aberration, chaotic evil
Armor Class 14 (natural)
Hit Points 58 (9d8 + 18)
Speed 30 ft.
Str	Dex	Con	Int	Wis	Cha
17 (+3)	11 (+0)	15 (+2)	8 (-1)	9 (-1)	13 (+1)
Saving Throws Wisdom +1
Skills Perception +1
Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 11
Languages Common
Challenge 3 (700 XP)
Actions
Multiattack. The cyclops makes 3 attacks: two with its claws, one with its bite.
Claws. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 6 (1d6 + 3) slashing damage.
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (1d8 + 3) piercing damage.
Hypnotic Glance. The cyclops targets one creature it can see within 30 feet of it. The target must succeed on a DC 12 Wisdom saving throw or become charmed for 1d6 rounds. While charmed, the creature is incapacitated and has a speed of 0. Any potential threat, such as a hostile creature approaching, allows an affected creature a new saving throw. The effect ends for an affected creature if it takes any damage or if someone else uses an action to shake the creature out of its stupor.

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15. COPYRIGHT NOTICE
    
    • Open Game License v 1.0a, Copyright 2000, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
    • System Reference Document, Copyright 2000-2003, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.; Authors Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, Skip Williams, Rich Baker, Andy Collins, David Noonan, Rich Redman, Bruce R. Cordell, John D. Rateliff, Thomas Reid, James Wyatt, based on original material by E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.
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    • RIP, Russ Nicholson, Copyright 2023, R. Dorman.