Summer Revels

I just had a pretty excellent and productive gaming weekend. I was able to run three separate RPG sessions and play in a fourth, and had a chance to try out a new boardgame. We usually have about a dozen attendees for these weekends and this summer we tried something a little different by adding some structure and setting caps on the number of players at different events. Although I have years of experience refereeing games with large groups of eight, nine, or more players it’s never easy and frankly nigh impossible to keep everyone consistently engaged. Like most referees, my personal sweet spot is four to six players for most RPG systems: it’s really hard to cajole other players into running games for larger groups.

The experiment largely seemed to have worked: everyone had a chance to play in at least one session of an RPG, and I think the quality of play and depth of engagement was higher. So I think we’ll probably try this approach again.

I ran two sessions of the Great Dungeon of the North with two separate groups, each representing rival adventuring parties exploring a new area of my house megadungeon. The Dome of the Phoenix is a legendary location on the third level that had been discovered decades earlier but its location had been lost for years and years.

We used 5e rules and I had prepared ten pre-generated 3rd level characters for players to pick from, though a couple of players had brought their own. I also used Xanathar's Guide to Everything to generate two lists of magic items. The magic guidelines found there are so useful they really should have been in the DMG.

The first adventuring party picked characters and divided up magic items from the first list before descending into the third level. The party included Fergus Elfriend, a human fighter; Haf Ulfarson, a human cleric; Tamako Jun, a human samurai, and Azibus the Green, a human wizard.

The second party did the same two days later in both real time and game time. This group included Eldrin, a wood elf wizard; Brother Leonard, a human cleric; Rikken, a hill dwarf fighter; and Sigar Sigarson, a human barbarian.

I ran both sessions somewhat like a tournament module in that each party had four hours to get through as much of the dungeon as possible. I also used some rules to discourage the 15-minute adventuring day and emphasize the resource management aspect of older versions of D&D. While I allow short rests (with wandering monster checks, natch!), long rests within the Great Dungeon are unpredictable and even dangerous on the lower levels: damage is not always healed and spells and other resources are not always recovered. The best place for a long rest is back in Delvetown.

I intentionally built the Dome of the Phoenix region to emulate a classic Jaquay dungeon crawl experience, complete with secret areas and multiple paths. My plan was to build the whole area out of Dwarven Forge terrain based on “trays” of cardboard for easy deployment, but I simply ran out of time before the weekend.

It was very interesting to see two separate groups tackle the same stretch of dungeon. While the first group enjoyed “first mover” advantage, the second group benefited from being able to see where the first group had gone. I assumed some restocking in the two days between delves, so some rooms had new monsters and in other rooms the monsters switched up their tactics.

The megadungeons of early D&D contained an element of player competition, as different groups competed to loot newly discovered sections of Greyhawk or Blackmoor. I had never really captured that dynamic for the Great Dungeon of the North before this adventure.

The first group got fairly far on their expedition, but ended up looping back to the entrance room just as their time expired. The second group spent a little more time in Delvetown gathering rumors and was able to find the Dome of the Phoenix—and more importantly, unlock its secrets before time ran out.

All-in-all, I was satisfied with how the sessions played out. Adding a time limit as well as player competition added a level of urgency to the Great Dungeon that has been badly missing from my game, and I hope to tweak this formula going forward. Neither group spent any effort on mapping their expeditions, and I would like to bring back that aspect of old school play. I will try to post my dungeon key in the coming weeks.

I also ran another Into the Interface session of Traveller using the Mongoose 2e rules. The Professor’s Charter found the crew of the Starjammer still in the Wu system. A man claiming to be an Imperial researcher from the University of Daibei chartered the armed packet for a trip to the Desolation (Magyar 1506 B401200-E) system, a lawless haven for pirates and smugglers just beyond the Imperial border. As usual for the Starjammer, nothing quite transpired as advertised. I’ll try to post some more detailed game notes in the weeks ahead. Again, I think a smaller group really sped play and encouraged engagement.

Over the last few weeks I have been hard at work on my 2nd Dynasty model of the Starjammer, hoping I would be able to use it in this session. Alas, although I have made good progress I once again simply ran out of time. It has been interesting trying to cross over to model building from miniature painting. While there seems to be some overlap between the two hobbies, there are also many differences and I have been struggle to pick up new techniques.

I also got a chance to play in one of the short adventures from Candlekeep Mysteries, a brief investigation into the source of some tainted books of lore. It was a nice change of pace from the usual hack and slash, though I regret some of my character choices: an anti-intellectual cleric was not much use for this one, and a brainy wizard or bard would have been much better suited for the scenario. Lest anyone think this adventure was completely without mayhem and violence, the final encounter was so badass that we barely made it out alive: more than once I thought we had a TPK on our hands. I would definitely like to play more stuff from this book.

Finally, I had a chance to play the boardgame Concordia, a trading game set in the ancient Roman world. This was a lot of fun and the complexity level was just about perfect for my tastes. (It helps immensely to play with folks who know the rules.) With five players I think we were able to finish in a little over two hours. I would absolutely like to try this game again.

I had a great time catching up with old friends and I’m already looking forward to our next gathering this coming winter.

Weird Monsters: Otyugh

Now comes the otyugh, one of the stranger occupants of the rogues’ gallery of strange Dungeons and Dragons monsters. The otyugh first appeared in the 1e Monster Manual (1977), and Echohawk over at En World has written up a pretty exhaustive history of the monster in the game.

The otyugh is an intelligent, telepathic aberration and an early attempt to rationalize the dungeon ecology through Gygaxian naturalism. The monster is part of the “clean-up crew” along with the carrion crawler, gelatinous cube, and the oozes. The otyugh, which may or may not have been inspired by the Star Wars trash compactor monster, is a scavenger that consumes a “diet of dung, offal, and carrion.”

It’s a fairly tough monster for a humble niche. The early artwork for the otyugh was not particularly inspiring: not even the great Erol Otus could make this monster very fearsome. The 3e Monster Manual (2000), though, finally hit upon a visual design for the otyugh that made the creature look like the alien monstrosity that it is.

This basic look was carried over into both 4e and 5e. Although there have been several licensed and off-brand otyugh miniatures over the years, I don’t think I had any before I picked up this Nozur’s Marvelous Miniatures version from WizKids. It’s a nice sculpt and a fairly straightforward paint. I airbrushed a basecoat of leather brown, then experimented with some of the Army Painter tones. The finished miniature got a layer of Vallejo gloss varnish.

I’m not completely satisfied with the results: the teeth are a bit more muddled than I would have liked and the gloss from the varnish is a bit too much even for a slimy sewer monster. Not quite sure what I need to do with these glossy figures.

How it Started

In the mid eighties I had a fairly brief stint painting miniatures for my Dungeons and Dragons games. As I’ve mentioned before, I was first made aware of D&D through an article in Dynamite magazine from 1981 that prominently featured photos of kids playing with painted miniatures. That same year the 1981 JCPenney Christmas catalog had an intriguing spread of D&D paraphernalia, including pictures of the Dungeon! boardgame, Moldvay Basic, the 1e Player’s Handbook with Trampier cover, and the contents of Grenadier’s Dungeoneers and Monsters Action Art boxed sets, including a striking bugbear. These images made me forever associate the game with miniatures.

The game books, however, made clear that miniatures were strictly optional and I spent the first few years happily playing without lead figures. But once I had a chance to buy minis with my own money, I jumped. I first started collecting and painting figures around 84 or 85, a tumultuous time for D&D licensed miniatures: the Grenadier license ended in 1982, then TSR produced their own miniatures in 83 and 84, then Citadel had the license in 85 and 86, before Ral Partha won the license in 87. As such, my small collection of vintage miniatures contains representatives from all four of these lines.

I didn’t do much gaming during college, and so my collecting and painting of miniatures ceased altogether. Even after I resumed running D&D games, everything was theater of the mind until Wizards of the Coast launched their Dungeons and Dragons Miniature Game in 2003. The plastic figures, which came in random packs, were relatively cheap, highly portable, and best of all, pre-painted. I amassed a good collection over the next four or five years. My buying steadily fell off once I had a decent selection, and as prices rose and quality dropped. By the time Wizards discontinued the line in 2011, I was buying hardly anything except singles on the secondary market to fill the holes in my collection.

On August 11, 2012 I pledged the Reaper Miniatures Bones: An Evolution Of Gaming Miniatures Kickstarter. I hadn’t painted miniatures for over 20 years, but I was between D&D games and wanted to pick the hobby back up. I received my pledge in 2013 and the very first miniature I tackled was this Sandra Garrity hydra, and I expressly chose it because it was a nice large sculpt, seemingly a simple starter model. I had to relearn many lessons forgotten over the intervening years but at the time I was fairly happy with the results.

My initial goal, and the one I still strive for, is to produce miniatures for the tabletop that are at least as good as the pre-painted options. I’m not looking to win any Golden Demons, but I do want something respectable that I can use in my games.

That said, I look upon this hydra ten years later with no small amount of cringe. The brushwork is sloppy and heavy, the color scheme boring, and there’s no shading to speak of. And to be fair to myself, the initial line of Reaper Bones were a little rough: many of the casts were blurry, flashy, and marred by mold lines. I also followed the advice that “Reaper Bones don’t need to be primed,” which, in my experience, is a lie. Even with a thorough scrubbing, I find that most base coat colors do not adhere well to the original Bones material, which leads to overpainting. A thin layer of gray primer would have done wonders for this hydra.

I’ve continued to back each and every Kickstarter since, and bought additional unpainted miniatures from WizKids and other companies. This next hydra is from the Reaper Bones 5: Escape from Pizza Dungeon Kickstarter, and the Greek Odyssey Expansion pack. It’s a great sculpt by Julie Guthrie, clearly inspired by Ray Harryhausen’s design from Jason and the Argonauts (1963). It was also cast in the newer Bones Black material, so the details are crisper and sharper. I primed this with Army Painter gray and used the airbrush for the base coat, then spent much of the time with inks and highlighting.

I’m sorely tempted to strip the original hydra and start over, if only to see what I could do now. I’m glad that my skills have improved over the last ten years, but I’m under no illusion that I am anything but a middling painter: Painting the Bones V Hydra by Bird with a Brush shows what a real painter can do with this same model. That said, I’m happy with where I am at: I find painting a soothing, enjoyable pastime that helps clear my head in between other projects. New skills and techniques continually beckon: I want to get better with my airbrush, and I want to try out wet blending.

Huge and Hungry: Purple Worms

“These huge and hungry monsters lurk nearly everywhere just beneath the surface of the land… Purple Worms never check morale and will always attack” —Dungeons and Dragons Book II: Monsters and Treasures (1974).

Purple worms have seemingly been in every single edition of D&D, plus David R. Megarry’s Dungeon! board game (1975). They feature prominently in the underworld tableau on the back cover of the 1e Monster Manual (1977). In the early versions of the game purple worms were one of the apex challenges, found only on the lowest dungeon level matrices: 50 feet long and eight to ten feet in diameter, with 15d8 Hit Dice, a poison sting, and the ability to swallow an ogre whole, they were not to be trifled with. For perspective, Orcus and Demogorgon “only” had 12d12 and 10d20 HD respectively in Eldritch Wizardry (1975).

Although I had a pretty decent pre-painted purple worm from the 2006 War of the Dragon Queen set, I grabbed the Goremaw miniature from the Reaper Bones 3: The Search for Mr. Bones Kickstarter back in 2015. I think my plan was to paint this one, like Mashaaf, for my Age of Worms campaign, possibly as a stand-in for an Ulgurstasta. In any case, this miniature became yet another Bones 3 model stuck in my painting logjam.

I finally got around to tackling this figure in April and once again, a Michael Mordor tutorial proved extremely helpful. I primed the model with Army Painter spray-on Uniform Gray, then used Army Painter Alien Purple for the base coat. Due to the sheet size of Goremaw, the airbrush helped make quick work of this step. I then used Army Painter purple tone before painting a yellowed bone color on the horns/teeth/whatever that cover its body. Mordor used more of a pure white on those. I tried his technique of washing the teeth with Army Painter Strong Tone, then wicking away the highlighted areas with a Q-Tip. I didn’t get the same great results he got, in part because my bone color was already stained and the Strong Tone didn’t create a good enough contrast. I would have been better off using a pure white to pull off this technique.

I then did a lot of dry brushing. I initially thought I had done too much but overall I’m satisfied with the results. This was an incredibly fun model to paint: the Bobby Jackson sculpt has a very dynamic, writhing pose and looks like the monster just burst out of the dungeon floor to surprise some poor adventurers. It’s also a suitably large model, heavy in the hand and about 100mm in diameter at the base, suitable for its Gargantuan size.

Purple Worms in the Great Dungeon

Purple worms are only found in the North within the basin of the Great Gobbo River. It is said that the hills of granite and ledge that encircle the basin act as natural barriers to the worms, preventing their expansion into other areas. Along the flood plains and foothills of the Gobbo the worms are a frequent terror, and a mottled variety are found living in the muck at the bottom of Black Lake. The dragon Old Brokehorn has been spooted fighting more than one of these horrors, a terrifying struggle between two titans. Purple worms are said to occasionally tunnel into the deepest levels of the Great Dungeon, and particularly bold adventurers have sought out worm tunnels as a possible new route into the lower halls. Clutches of purple worm eggs are sometimes found with 1d10+10 immature worms.

The following text is Open Game Content.

Purple Worm, Immature

This flailing, wriggling creature appears to be a gigantic earthworm, five feet long and nearly a foot round, its slimy skin colored a purple so dark as to be nearly black.

0e

Immature Purple Worm CL 3 (60 XP)

An immature purple worm has a poisonous sting but cannot swallow whole.

HD 1; AC 4 [15]; Atk 1 bite (1d6), sting (1d4 + poison); Move 4; Save 17; AL N; Special lethal poison (+4 saving throw).

3.5e

Immature Purple Worm CR 1/2

Always N Medium magical beast

Init +0; Senses tremorsense 30 ft.; Listen +2

Defense

AC 16 (+6 natural), touch 10, flat-footed 16

hp 9 (1d10+4)

Fort +2, Ref +2, Will -2

Offense

Spd 10 ft., burrow 10 ft., swim 5 ft.

Melee 1 bite +1 (1d6), 1 sting -4 (1d4 plus poison)

Space 5 ft.; Reach 5 ft.

Special Attacks poison (DC 11, 1d2 Str/1d4 Str)

Statistics

Str 11, Dex 10, Con 13, Int 1, Wis 6, Cha 6

Base Atk +1; Grp +1

Feats Toughness

Skills Listen +2, Swim +0

Ecology

Environment Underground

Organization hatching (11–20)

Treasure standard

Advancement 2–5 HD (Medium); 6–10 HD (Large); 11–15 HD (Huge)

5e

Immature Purple Worm

Medium monstrosity, unaligned
Armor Class 14 (natural)
Hit Points 22 (4d8 + 4)
Speed 20 ft., burrow 10 ft.
Str	Dex	Con	Int	Wis	Cha
11 (+0)	10 (+0)	13 (+1)	1 (-5)	6 (-2)	4 (-3)
Saving Throws Con +3, Wis +0
Senses blindsight 15 ft., tremorsense 30 ft., passive Perception 8
Languages —
Challenge 1/2 (100 XP)
Actions
Multiattack. The worm makes two attacks: one with its bite and one with its stinger.
Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +2 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 3 (1d6) piercing damage.
Stinger. Melee Weapon Attack: +2 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 2 (1d4) piercing damage, and the target must make a DC 11 Constitution saving throw, taking 3 (1d6) poison damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.

OPEN GAME LICENSE Version 1.0a

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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.
    • System Reference Document 5.1, Copyright 2016, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.; Authors Mike Mearls, Jeremy Crawford, Chris Perkins, Rodney Thompson, Peter Lee, James Wyatt, Robert J. Schwalb, Bruce R. Cordell, Chris Sims, and Steve Townshend, based on original material by E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.
    • Huge and Hungry: Purple Worms, Copyright 2023, R. Dorman.

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.