Give Me A Myconid And I Will Create A Substandard Version of That Joesph Manola Post About Snakemen

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I GOT THIS PICTURE FROM HERE: IT V.GOOD



This seems like a bad idea already.
This is the post it's riffing on : (。ヘ°)
Except I'm doing it with Myconid

Postulate 1 : Fungus breaks down things
Postulate 2: Fungus can utilize elements from things its breaking down in its growth processes
Postulate 3: Intelligence is among the many elements that can utilized like that
Postulate 4: Myconids got their intelligence this way
Postulate 5: They got this from eating god
Postulate 6: God was everywhere and everything but is increasingly lobotomized by Myconids being smart
Postulate 7: Fungus can utilize elements from one organism  it has already successfully infected in its infection process on another organism

Given these 7 Postulates I will now explain the monster manual!!

ALTHOUGH
I don't really know what postulates are and think I'm going to need a lot more to make this work so lets abandon this pretense now

What I'm saying is the world was full of animals and perfectly ecosystems and god was spread even through its creation but then as fungus broke down matter it eroded the god and become intelligent.
As it spread through out everything it drags various traits from one organism to another.
Its eventual goal is total entropy , an ungodhead nirvana.
Intelligence creates complexity and complexity is an even better way of creating entropy.


Dwarves: Moles + Rocks +  Generic Biped
Elves: Squirrels + Generic Biped + Snakes
Halflings:   Prairie dogs + Generic Biped
Gnomes, Pixies, Quicklings, Leprechauns, and all those others small annoying fairies: 
Insects+ Biped+Single Emotion
Orcs: Pigs + Biped + Hippopotamus/Aggression
Goblins: Bats+ Biped
Hobgoblins/Bugbears: Goblins + ants
Humans: Generic Biped + Termites
Lizard Men:Isopods + Biped
 Kobolds:  Bedbugs  + Biped
Giants: Humans+ Whales
Ogres: Humans + Elephant Seas
Ogre Magi and Hags: Cruelety + Biped
Dragons: Just Grabbing Anything That Murders And Sticking It Together
Trolls:  Remain Spark of Divine Currently Undersiege by Any Negative Physical Trait The Fungus Can find
Demons, Devils, etc:  Insects + Dreams +Appetites of Elements
Dryads: Flower Spider +  Biped
Nymphs: Desire +  Chameleon + Biped
Minotaurs:  Fungus rerouting through next generation bring monstrous traits to the child. The bull form of Minotaur is the most well know one

Mermen and Aquatic Elves: Stingrays + Bipeds
Sahuagin:  As Above but with Teeth Everywhere
Chimeras, Manticores, Harpies, and other apparently pointless 'crossbreed' creatures:  Fungal grab backs trying to  encourage concentrated population and militarism and elevation of violent ideals
Slimes, oozes, gibbering mouthers, etc: liquid + hunger
Ilithids:  Squid + Flatworm + Biped. The brain eating is some kind of parasite cycle involving introspection
Beholders: Just a bunch of eyes from everywhere + concepts such as Destroy , Control , Hurt 
Ghouls: Biped + Saxon/burying Beetle
Yuan-Ti: Actually Avantgrade Herpes
All those giant animals all over the place: animal + localized physics erosion

main take aways:
-Things look like things but don't let the names fool you. Lizardmen are actually more like isopods if you look at them closely
-The nature of reality is made up of elements like hunger, wet, pride etc. Any non-compound noun is probably an element because we can't think further than god.
- Civilization or anything else seen as "progress" is just a fungal conspiracy to speed up entropy
-Everyone and everything contains fungus , your desires fears and dreams are all placed there by fungus to speed up entropy
-the troll is the closest thing to god

Appendix:
 I should of used more of the "animal is an incarnation of pride, lust etc" common to medical allegorys so if you wanna use this you should mine from that
http://bestiary.ca/intro.htm

Geological Time

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another prompt:

Time flows out from the core. It collects in deep minerals. It can be mined

The evil had won , the land was under the shadow.
Then they found the device
And went back
and changed everything
so the evil lost

But a denied future does not disappear, the new future lands atop and folds it away.

Length, width and breadth collapsed into nothing , (the cube), but the times (the sticky out bits) were crushed down into physicality (the cube).



So now in the deep earth heart of the new future,  there is time to be found.

Many kinds of time.
As:

Our perception of time doesn't change, we just perceive different times.

Groon: Time before a disaster. Can do everything fast but move,  nauseating,  hyper focus on weird details 

Sull : time experienced when wandering lost. Stutters between very fast and lurching slow. Can discontinuous move distances, things forgotten re-appear  . All Sull time seems the same time.

Vis: Happy moments that last forever and then are gone. Exist without consequence , while it lasts.

Blist: Grief's fugues. Time moves slowly but in giant mass, like a molasses cold flood. Numbness and , despite everything, healing.

Ghuu: Time where one is too busy to be horrified or despair. Moves quick , with ugly pauses. Tasks done with methodicalness, no feelings yet. 

Lurcha: A sudden wretch of different time, a reversal of experience . Like a sudden accident in drunken night that sobers and chills. 

Artifact

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"Pick an artifact from the old DMG 1e Gygax thing.  Rewrite it - make it good."

Artifacts are almost an "artifact" themselves by now, i.e something that's still there because it was there at the start.

The nature of the label of them suggests a categorization and standardisation somehow of magical items that is annoying.

The original dungeon master guide had this bizarreness with each artifact having its entry listing it's powers as 1 of I , 3 of II 10 of III.
Each letter referred to a list of powers , and then the d.m would make their selection and write it in the space provided in their entry.

This was so players couldn't ever know what the artifact exactly did , without stealing the d.m's copy of the dmg.

It meant that none of the artifacts had much in the way of themed powers and was overall pretty goofy.

Am I going to rewrite one? No, I don't like any of them enough.

For artifact to be a useful categorical distinction from magic items then we need to think about how magic items work first.

If magical items are common , then the world needs to super weird to make that interesting, and the magical items more weird. Like everyone have rings of flying is bad, but everyone have pig-balloons is good and inflatable pig technology being part of the setting.

So what would make an artifact in that setting? It would need to be powered by something super rare and the rarity be part of the setting. The last works of the gods, alien leakage, the unravelling of the space itself etc.

If magical items are rare , then they would benefit greatly from having the lore of the artifacts anyway, This is the Sword of the Great Betrayer, These are Teeth of The Moon Eater etc.
So  would artifacts risk just being the upper scale of magic items, which is fine, but artifact then is a looser term?

I'm losing my point here .

New point:

Make artifacts do one thing that seems like a complete cheat, the rules of the game are broken or atleast warped greatly. 

Examples:

THE LENS 

it's apparently a retina from some kind of early beings, of great size. It's used by replacing the top of your skull with it , it's about that size . 

Once this is done the possesser can cast anyone elses spells, depleting them from their reserves. Anyone they can see or are otherwise reasonably sure of their position can be used in this way.

Unfortunately the possesser can no longer undertake any task which would require a roll to succeed. They must use magic or automatically fail it.

OTHER MECHANICS SUITABLE

THE HAND

You assign all targets of attacks (within normal range of the attacks) . However any attacks that are directed at you (and not assigned else where) automatically hit .

THE COIN

At the start of a round,  estimate how many rolls will be needed, then roll those dice at the start of a round and assign them . If you overestimate you lose this ability next round.

However must always accept a fair wager

THE SKIN

no longer suffer damage, don't have hitpoints anymore.

but can't change at all. Always the same mood, can't get exp or lose levels, don't get more or less hungry or thirsty, no long term memory. 

THE DOVE

don’t roll to hit anymore , just hit them , but must keep fighting until all participants in a combat  are slain

Gristly Skeleton Table Setting

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Picture unrelated

"Minimalism as it applies to RPGs is like Maze Rats, where the setting is a set of words in random tables or a plotline is a rough flowchart of names, objects, and locations. 

Giving yourself room to improvise while giving yourself enough structure to be stable."

Another prompt that I'm responding to RIGHT NOW:

THE BEGRISTLED SKELETON OF YOUR NEW CAMPAIGN SETTING IS MADE FROM THIS:

Foundation Of Economy Is:

1.Shark Teeth (cutting, jewelry/art objects, trade object)

2.Sewage Methane (fuel , balloons)

3.Coca leaves (stimulant (mild and completely not mild), medicine , memorial(?), rituals) 

4.Lobotomized Gnomes (labour, food, books, batterys)

5.Condescend Darkness (sun protection, hiding from gods, sleep aid)

6.Rice (food, ethanol , paper)

7.Tea (mild stimulant , status object, ancestor appeasement) 

8.Opium (medicine, drug, astral ablative armour)

9.Uranium (ghost  spirit magic protection, heat, armour + supernatural defense penetrating weapons)

10.Gelatine (glues, sealant , protection against environmental diseases)

11.Guano (for fertilizer + gunpower)

12.Silks, various (clothing , rope, sails, dreamcatchers)

Threat that shapes everyone's lives

1. Hungry Soils

2. Evil stars 

3.Social Structure Dominated by Scattered Feuding Warlords

4.Player Races not native , difficult to get enough protein and nutrition from flora and fauna

5.Barely Contained "cold-war" between 2 massive empires

6.ongoing Colonisation by distinctly advantaged Others

7.Fundamental Forces Essential To Life are weakened e.g the sun , fertility, water

8.Fauna getting steadily more monstrous and hostile

9.Munitions and weapons from ancient war  keep going off or being found and causing upheavals

10. Climate change (either Warming or Cooling)

11.Kaiju Eggs From Space

12.Dangerous Discoveries In Magic or Technology or Brain Powers

Significant Historical Event Which Shaped Quite A Bit I Can Tell You

1.Super Big War

2. Mountains All Started Floating

3. Seas drained to vast underground caves

4.contact with underworld people

5.Gods all killed each other

6.Alien race started using this world as their transitionary afterlife

7.A better version of fire discovered

8.Mutations

9.Universal language discovered, extends to mineral and vegetable kingdom as well as all animals

10.Previous Ancient and Establish Ruling Wizard Class overthrown

11.Doomsday happened but it was mild

12.Seas Rose but super buoyant gas discovered 

Immediately Noticeable

1. Warrior Caste Very Important  but Tattoos as armour and class war

2. All domestic animals some form of worm

3. 7 colours of rain with different properties 

4. Puppet based technologys

5. Sky Rivers and Lakes

6. All plants quite animated and semi-motile

7. Intensive Vertical Architecture 

8. No violence in cities, even waring armys will eat with each other

9.Extremely large anthropods

10.Big Chucks of Death things lying around

11. Bridges To Moons

12. Everyone smokes and lights incense to keep imps, batmites,midges and ghosts away

Underlying Thing:

1.Despair

2.Crazed Optimism 

3. Mystery , Deception

4.Age of Exploration/Exploitation

5. Corruption of Ideal

6. Total War

7. Heroic War Improving Opportunity 

8. Nude Surival

9.Weird Shit All The Time

10.Sacrifice To Maintain Stuff that isn't that great but no-one has better idea  

11.What Cost Is Power

12.Moral Relativism 

Apex Predator:

1.Giant Severed Hands

2.Cog Squid

3.Poison Lion

4. Corpse Python 

5. Sin Dragon

6. Angels

7. Walking Cruelty Tower

8. Starhound

9. Tyrannosaurus Rex 

10. Skinbear

11. Broiling Wheel

12. Trains

Main Adventure Locale:

1. Rotting Palaces and Pleasure domes

2. Crashed WarShips

3. The Fronteir

4. Gristling Skycaves

5. The Past

6. Ice/bone/wart/timebergs

7.the underworld that's actually underground

8.the underworld that's only accessible from weird places and doesn't really geographically make sense

9.scavenging prisons

10.Trash mounds

11. Islands

12. Dense biomes like jungles or grave forests

Picture unrelated, it's from Joan fontcuberta's Stranger than fiction

Traps

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This was prompt for a paragraph response blog post.

Actually it's 2, I'm conjoining them 

"Gross dungeon traps and how to utilize them purposefully."

"traps. why are they there? what are they for? who built them? how do you make them seem like an organic part of the setting and not just something the dm put in to annoy you?"

Firstly making traps "realistic/genre appropriate " is good as it adds predictability to them. 

and predictability in the sense of when something goes wrong for the p.cs , the players feel it's their fault.

Then there's the weird spectator  of "fairness".

The unstated working definition of fairness is often** "it appropriately tests what I enjoying getting better at doing"

(yeah "appropriate" is bit much wiggle room here, but there's no room to sum up difficulty curves here)   

So for traps to be fair, they need to be testing the ability of players to think and understand the environment they are in and solutions they come up with.

If they are somewhere , it needs to make sense in setting. How they work should have enough interactive parts to further predict , tamper, or disable them.

The how-they-work bit can be tricky as a lot of genre appropriate traps are absurd, i.e Indy Jones style magically-working , never-needing-maintenance,auto-resetting traps.

But as long there's enough work parts to them to tamper with , players are generally along for the ride.

Example :poison dart traps will have a supply of darts and a trigger but you can prob get away with 

not worrying about how the poison stays fresh and where all the cogs and springs are.

Magic can used to handwave exact details away, sure, but make sure there's enough working parts to it so it can be tampered and predicted. 

Opening a room to a lightning bolt that comes out of no-where and automatically targets the players and nothing else is bad. Having a pressure plate (classic) , or some secret sign worn by the occupants that avoids triggering , is better.

FURTHER THOUGHTS THAT I JUST WANT TO FIRE OFF AS A LIST AND NOT TRY AND DELIVER IN A STRUCTURED SHORT FORM ESSAY FORM:

-Traps can be used to put in alternative entrances to somewhere. The one that the occupants use can have more guards , the rest have a trap , which is at very least a noise or smell maker.

-Some traps aren't designed to be reset. The old caving-in tomb is one.

-Traps can designed so they selective target people, in really simple ways.
A rope with hooks at throat height (for humans ) is very easy to make and small goblins can use harassing fire before fleeing down a corridor just strung.
The tiger pit trap that collapses when something heavier than you walks across it.
Methane pockets against torch users

-If you got higher ground and someone willing to wait around then anything heavy becomes a trap.

- A shallow hole with a shit covered sharp stick is another classic. Best used if the target is otherwise distracted .



THE TRAP FILLED DUNGEON GENRE:

Then there's this genre convention of traps everywhere that no-one seems to maintain or reset,   directly benefits from and living beings wander near by etc.
Which can be explain as the dungeon is actually hates you .

(A idea I was trying to trace back , and Scott Martin mentioned this http://www.grey-elf.com/philotomy.pdf , specifically page 22, in which the weird door rules of early d&d are explained as the metalife of the dungeon acting against you)

 There's a bunch of stuff written now all over the blogosphere about dungeons growing ,actual grow in forgotten areas, creating treasure and monsters inside themselves to lure people in , not being completely lethal so people come out with treasure often enough that people here about it etc, possible gold is evil and tends to get locked up in basements and then hatches in a dungeon etc.

So yes, traps could be another way of a dungeon feeding on people

OR

If a dungeon is a lifeform , and all life forms have parasites then traps could be parasite organisms inside the dungeon.

The pit-trap has spikes which tunnel like tooth bores and secrets digestive acid, but underneath the stoney shell it's killable flesh

Inside the wall shooting poison darts at you is a spine spitting sac , with tendrils that lead down under the floor, little feathery tongues come out and lap away at the paralyzed


Swinging blades that when cut , thrash like gaffed fish on the stone.

*or 
**also "inappropriately advantages some people above others" 

Class Four

Print PDF Sooo that backwards monster manual was kicked off by getting some prompts to do paragraph long posts.

The idea being all my post ideas were spiralling off into things that were too laborious to get typed out, and the very first idea I use takes 3-4 posts to do.


Anyway , let's try this again

Ian Reilly said:

A 4d10 chart of alternative classes for a basic four class game to replace fighter/thief/mu/cleric

Did you know Ian that (displacerklaus) did something like this? 

http://monstermanualsewnfrompants.blogspot.co.nz/2016/02/your-letters-to-displacer-klaus.html

Anyway, I also will do this and not use the word synergic 

 

4d10 chart.. so this could be a "4-40" type deal (no) or a 4 column d10 table (yes).

The columns could be based on "classic" roles.

Though the roles people assume as classic

(fighter->tank/meatshield, cleric->healer, thief->"dps", wizard->area control/damage(?) )

are a lot informed by mmorpg .

The thief's original role was extremely entangled with how the g.m ran the game, with how they use traps, surprise, creature awareness, other classes ability to sneak or discover things etc.

And the backstab ability somehow grew into the idea of the thief as weedy but opportunistic super stabber.

I've never really like this, and also think it's weird having ambush and dirty tricks fighting styles not be a fighter thing.

As any professional murderer/soldier/gladiator/bruiser is going to take full and frequent advantage of any combat advantage they can.

It's only the (arguably mythologized) "chivalric knight" or "honourable samurai" that these techniques are a poor fit for.

Though a "warrior caste" class that is build around the central idea of it coming from a culture that has either heavily ritualised/ limited/controlled warfare or the caste is more about embodied of the values of the culture than military effectiveness .

There's more to be expanded on the idea of roles, where to split class, if they need to work ..together , etc.

But I'm getting vague on it, so table time:

ANYWAY 

concept:

1. Deceptionist

2. Scab-miner

3. Haptic

4. Liminator 

5. Ghoul

6. Loon

7. Tar-jack

8. Leech-wife

9. Zephyr

10. Under-thing

power source:

1. Occult/Secret/Tainted knowledge

2. Mutation or Physical superness

3. Magic/Spirits/Totemic /Channeling Primal Force

4. Weird Hunger(s)

5. Extreme Skill/Talent/Techniques

6. Unhumanity/Otherness

7. Parasites/Weird Friends/ Pets/ Devices

8. Nasty Bargains, Eldritch Patron

9. Schemes/bullshit/savvy

10.Roll twice, combine.

situations generally best at:

1. Fights, close

2. Fights, distance

3. "Diplomacy" , making friends

4. Discovery 

5. Surviving

6. Extra-lateral movement

7. Healing and Blighting

8. Off-piste solutions

9. Mayhem

10. Crime

also handy for:

1. A lot of damage real fast

2. Structure destruction

3. Blast Radiuses , spread out damage, crowd control

4. Being widely adored

5. Creeping people out

6. Noticing things

7. Quartermastering, foraging, "food"

8. Unnoticeability 

9. Resource/Hazard manipulation

10. Fixing , maintenance, repairs