99 Random Vancian Spells +1 of my own devising

A hundred spells Phandaal personally had formulated--though rumor said that demons whispered at gus ear when he wrought magic. Pontecilla the Pious, then ruler of Grand Motholam, put Phandall to torment, and after a terrible night, he killed Phandaal and outlawed sorcery throughout the land. The wizards of Grand Motholam fled like beetles under a strong light; the lore was dispersed and forgotten, until now, at this dim time, with the sun dark, wilderness obscuring Ascolais, and the white city Kaiin half in ruins, only a few more than a hundred spells remained to the knowledge of man. Of these, Mazirian had access to seventy-three, and gradually, by stratagem and negotiation, was securing the others.

In response to a Reddit post the other day, I finally remembered to flog the daemons I have in my bottle of containement in the Level 4 sublaboratory and here is 99 Vancian Spells generated Pseudorandomly. There is some Maze Rats in the code, not the current one but the alpha version, and a couple of different name generators of my own devising and contorting. I add an ultimate capper to the end of the list since 99 seems to me an unseemly number, at least to my Western and Post-modern sensibilities

Glassine Shard of Dale Dugpiss

Bilious Vitalisation of Golonar

Flensed Tentacle

Gerontification Spiral

Drenal's Creeping Chocolate Tongue

Ithaugha's Pendulous Earth Heart

Tsaonac's Bony Servant

Devastating Oil of Armael

Boorish Intimidating Pattern

Crislan's Dripping Elemental

Intransigent Boffola Bolt of Ciloldenense

Fungal Assassin

Insidious Hanging Storm of Phalros

Abi-Dalzim's Egregious Summoning of the Incendiarism Mephit

Bellicose Summoning of the Imparting Devil

Maximillian's Stitched Coil

Melf's Charm of Histrionic Enrapturement

Goloazash's Soothing Chaos

Mist Rotten Monolith

Minor Ashen Defilement of Felojun

Gossip Gate of Sabga

Lesser Awakening Echo of Rary

Nahal's Scaly Elemental

Bezoar Inflammation

Serten's Silent Disencarceration

Shambling Rimed Nexus of Nyaothoa

Halbel's Charm of Parsimonious Trampling

Saruel's Elemental of Serpent

Abhorrent Summoning of the Seismism Elemental of Rasaz

Zelmir's Sickly Hand

Saramin's Warding Moss

Affronting Necrosis of Nahal

Ashen Elemental of Maximillian

Greater Taciturn Vengeance Gaze

Charm of Black Commingling of Mordenkainen

Salty Steed

Daedsisulpg's Oracle of Deflecting Flame

Ingurgitation Stream of Yshisa

Azathotep's Legendary Charm of Arcadian Manducation

Bankel's Adroit Wooden Sigil

Thrushing Elemental of Otto

Conducting Elemental of Turjan

Elegant Web of Cthathotep

Recalcitrant Teetering Lock

Serendipity Marshalling of Simgri Erelian

Nystul's Minor Abstraction Stream

Charm of Pernicious Soporiferousness

Serpentine Water Wave of Saint Anastasia

Belmerplen's Golden Elemental

Egregious Plastic Coil

Pollen Steed of Braaren

Turjan's Gerontification Field

Legendary Reptilian Elemental of Tenser

Flowery Gathering of Otto

Moldy Disencarceration of Seraphael

Narach's Summoning Night Touch

Greater Placid Torrent of Futhagath

Mordenkainen's Phantasms Tree

Drawmij's Greater Living Pugnacious Column

Sella's Tunnel of Condemning Lightning

Damarvyr's Ropy Golem

Abi-Dalzim's Dead Sewn Tunnel

Caustic Summoning of the Concupiscence Beast

Saint Horace's Trampling Disk

Kheaat's Greater Feathery Tree

Haludiah's Lesser Poison Word

Nithlas's Lesser Charm of Mendacious Envisioning

Bigby's Flatulent Elemental

Kandive's Minor Gaze of Wine

Charm of Trenchant Concupiscence

Touch of Transposing Rust

Genosh's Thrushing Prism

Larbyrdua's Flatulent Shroud

Venomous Scream of Otto

Numbing Pyramid of Drenal

Annaara's Lesser Creeping Fungal Voice

Nybor's Slashing Ghost

Gad Leis's Rotten Elemental

Charm of Puckish Transportation of Rary

Gad Leis's Febrifacience Assassin

Cobabihish's Kibble Fabrication

Ramonmosnen's Dead Woolen Prism

Major Brilliant Elemental

Sickly Burst of Drenal

Bigby's Pestilence Elemental

Pervasive Summoning of the Arriving Elemental

Judicious Bilious Beast of Rary

Kandive's Spray of Rebounding Earth

Futhamir's Legendary Roaring Incendiarism

Tenser's Greater Vengeance Artifice

Elder Crystalline Call

Vidagan's Wilting Mouth

Damela's Sickly Elemental

Legendary Ropy Elemental

Lesser Path of Silver

Roaring Burst of Tenser

Otiluke's Intermuring Pulse

Charm of Mendacious Expunging of Surlim

Sotjutepkheher's Voluble Summoning of the Aeriality Daemon

100. (mine own) Haon Dor's Greater Entropic Daydreams

On Politics in [Noun]

So listen. Black Lives Matter. Trans Rights are Human Rights. Racism is Fucking Bad. Injustice is Fucking Bad. Oppression of the Other is Really Fucking Bad. Stay with me, here. If you don't agree with this first line, then this post is for you, but maybe the whole blog is not. Don't @ me, bruh. There's some gaming stuff at the bottom of this, but you have to wade through the screed first. I ain't even trying to change your mind even. Only Free Market Jesus can change your mind.

I hope you have read up to this point, and are about to retort (clever boy!) something like "Keep Politics Out of My Tabletop Roleplaying Games!" Because, you Clever Boy (probably almost always a White Dude) of course, of course you are about to say it. You are merely an antibody in a vast system, a White Blood Cell, so to speak, so to stretch a metaphor. Wargames are an offshoot of War, always (in the UK and the US) the province of the Dyspeptic Old Rich White Men who send the poor and disenfranchised youths off to die. To die with a funny dream in their heads, that the cause of the Wealthy is also the cause of the Poor. In the beginning, the hobby's roots in Wargaming, Kriegspiel, Violence and Suppression of the Hideous Other for Riches... Well, how did it give rise to a population of people quibbling about the niceties of nipples in Officially Licensed Projects?

Man, you gotta understand that for the most part, the business end of the Industry upon which the Discourse thrives. It's extractive. It eats your good ideas and it shits money into some guy's pocket. It's colonial in the sense that it goes into your brain and stays there taking up space like all memes do. It takes the clever ideas of the people who use it, gussies them up a bit, and sells it all back to them and makes them think that they (The Users) are not in charge of things. If there wasn't a whole thriving industry of Desktop Roleplaying Publishers making awesome, free, and easily distributable products, WoTC would not now be selling 60 dollar full-color glossy-paper tomes of whatever it is they sell these days. WoTC would have died 10 years ago and RPGs would be a pleasant and hilarious memory made fun of on what is left of network television.

So: it depends on this monolithic industry, protected by legions of vocal fans who want New Stuff, but don't want Things to Change Too Much. So like: Ravnica and Sword Coast stuff, because for example Mystara and the old D&D stuff that were attempts at diversity were (A) shitty (because they didn't really go to the people they needed to go to to find out about the real history of stuff) and (B) not well received because at root, the hobby has almost always been until relatively recently about the Dumb Hero Fantasies of proto-fascist White Guys. Thanks, Tolkien! Thanks ER Burroughs! Thanks, I mean the list and the Road Goes Ever On, dig? Even Dune was some misguided shit, as forward thinking as it may appear in retrospect. You're seeing the tension of Everybody Wanting to Play Their DnD vs. the Party Line, is partly where the problems' are arisin'. I told somebody the other day that shit-heel that he was, Zak at least Head Cultist Cabbage, uh, Savage, uh whatever, at least he had an interesting notion about beating the Corporate Guys at their own game. I mean, he's a total shit heel, but anyways.

In late summer, maybe the fall of 2015 when Orange Hitler announced his thing and came down the Golden Escalator, I ran a couple of games that was a fun and booze-fuel'd joke about the Never-ending Presidency of The Orange Emperor - the Google group for it was named "Twilight of The Orange Emperor" and it was about a ragtag group of drug-abusing, hot-rodding mutants on the way to Grammas' House but like there was a Quarantine and you wasn't supposed to travel and the deathbots and the foot soldiers and jackboot thugs of the Orange Emperor's forces was tryn real hard to stop youse. And the real magick was the friends we made on the way, and also high levels of radiation and environmental pollutants. The end of the first session there was a giant chrome Ivanka combiner-bot because who the fuck knows or cares who that asshole's current wife is (I think if I were to refactor the thing it would be The Sinister And Long-Suffering Mother of The Barron, Freemarket Jesus Bless Her Heart). At the time, I thought of the thing only as a sinister joke in Poor Taste. Don't Blame Me, I Voted For The Other Guy is the age-old refrain, yes?

SO: What does the current Winning Empire of The Orange Emperor look like?

Well, The Imperial Cult of Free Market Jesus, a sort of friendly, blood thirsty, avaricious talking head - that's the base. There is nothing He wont say to keep you in the chair, sending money, hoping for some far-off savior to come and make things right. Every GP sent to his spokespeople ensures the hurrying-up of the Happy Apocalypse so don't worry about fixing things here on the Aeurth.

Under that, there is a Deep Death Kult. A cult of fire, of hatred, of child sacrifice, of strange and insidious sexual proclivities. The DDKists have various mutations - gills, wall-eyes. Cork-screw tails beneath their robes, man-faced rat things nipping at their heels and whispering agendas into their ears while they loll in post-frenzy bliss.

Together, these two march The Military across the globe in immense battle vessels, where they abuse each other and literally itch for a fight, ingesting combat drugs and engaging in sex-violence riots.

Well-meaning but totally inept unelected officials run the infrastructure of the Imperial Continent and Territories (including the Moon). They are under-funded . The Law is the most notable and has resorted to seizure of citizens' assets and they promote the myth that (although they have access to cutting-edge weapons of war handed down/cast off from the Military) that they are under Intensely Dangerous Circumstances at all times. They mostly crack down on the Poor, The Mongrel, The Clever, The Curious, not Elves because of course elves are conservative in their cruelty. Nipples are not permitted on men, of course, but nipples are permitted on succubi and sorceresses if we may have our 50% cut up front and you can't get a permit anywhere else. If the whole system fails, then they too will be without a job and then who will buy The Products? The gizmos? The expensive dice and glossy books? So they wittingly or unwittingly work to keep the thing propped up. The Emperor you know is better than the stark terror of trying some new thing that might not work, even if the thing is really and truly not working.

There is a plague afoot, of course, of Nurgle or Orcus, or Apollo, or the Handsomest Talking Head. If you catch the plague, of course you die coughing blood, but it does make you very interested in what Charismatic People on TV have to say, which fits in nicely with the Cult of Freemarket Jesus. Millions dying but it's okay, because they are The Poor, The Tired, The Downtrodden and their utility for the Empire is limited and FMJ and Nurgle have agreed to split the benefits.

Everywhere there are tiny enclaves of Regular Old People of varying colors and creeds, trapped in their houses and villages. Most don't want to die, but some catch the thing going around and of course don't stand for living in fear when it's very likely you're going to die coughing up blood soon.

Other games sort of depend upon the Hubris of the Ancients, and how they fucked up, and let's get their treasure through Sword and Wits, but of course no savior is coming, no kwisatzhadderachs are permitted anymore (the permits simply not issued since infrastructure will not support it)

Everywhere there is promise, but there is no more hope, techonology is abundant but it's never put to good use, unless of course it will make some cultist Even More Wealthy. The guiding hand of The Market is guiding everyone into a crypt, or a tomb, to commodify what is there or die trying. Imagine all the best ideas that early Star Trek had, but like IN REVERSE. More like a funny Rogue Trader (not the recent one the one in 1986). Like if Thatcher and Reagan had commingled their ichors and gave birth to an insipid Orange Fart in a cheap mobster's suit, spread thinly over a frothing war machine. things have gotten so stale on Earth that the emperor has even declared the whole of Space an enemy so as to point The Miltary's ire skyward, and to spread The Plague out to the Stars and Beyond

All right, time to roast some meats. Drink some distilled liquors and avoid heat.

Fuck Trump. Fuck all charismatic narcissists with their hands in your pockets. To say that politics don't belong in games (or therapy, or any other human endeavor) is laughably stupid, short-sighted, and in the interest of the status quo of which we may or may not be a part.

See you in the gulags. Wear you goddam masks.

Free Dungeon Level Friday - Class of '84 Versus The Lair of The Robolich

This mini stares at me from my pile of shame.

The idea behind this project is like, Class of Nuke 'Em High, my DCC/Alma Mater hack called ALMA MONGREL and also the omni-present spindly form of The Sinister Robolich, who plagues my nightmares and occupies my days, damn his current iteration. Ivan Reitman-meets-John Hughes-meets-Lloyd Kaufman if you get me.

great movie, or Greatest Movie?

So like, The Breakfast Club and Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone have a Venn Diagram node, that being Molly Ringwald and that's who this post is dedicated to at the moment. Also, Overdog, who in my opinion spawned 40K quite nicely and so if you fail your Defense Against the Dark Arts because maybe the teacher is a TERF whackjob, then you get detention in the grimy cells beneath Central High School and from there you may slip into the Underzones... I ought to do a play-through but, really it's all a play-through in my head all day long and while it amuses me, well, the impact on physical reality may diminish us all

Here you can have the (subtly improved with many changes to the code but still not where I wish it) 4th level of  Mr Shiny's Detention Zone in the hideous dimensional rift beneath Central High. Join Claire Standish, her alternate-dimension doppleganger Niki the Scav, and their trusty roboporter EU-Dee (Enlarging Unit Decommissioned) as they discover the Tennis Racket of Lobbing +2 before suffering a TPK/Temporal Crossrip. Don't worry I'm sure they will be okay for the next session. The code is so fat and logy and stinky that I should just scrap it and start again but... but it owns me, now, I think 

There are no genres only an endless parade of cowardly adjectives, packed into 1054 lines of code-skeleton plus associated linked lines in other tables that leaked out of my brain so maybe, uhhh, fuck it I estimate 40,000 lines that have unspooled themselves in my head since 1983 with an effectively infinite dreary number of possible combinations. Maybe more than infinite! Transinfinite! 

Speaking of which, #blacklivesmatter #loveislove and #transrightsarehumanrights

If you don't agree, I take back my gift to you and you can stick to your Dragonlance or whatever

BREAKFAST AT OVERDOG'S

1. Hell Hound, hidden Gauntlets of Ogre Power and Shield +2 locked in iron trunks, and a trap: Caltrops, which must be avoided with a DC 14 Dexterity save or party members take 1d6 damage.
2. Toxic Five-Headed Hydra, a cauldron, full of foul water, hidden 21 native amethyst 250gp, trapped with: Corrosive Gas, causing all non-magical items to have an inopportune chance to fall apart.
   
3. The cramped room has a Contact Poison on a cauldron, full of pure drinkable water, forcing a DC 16 Constitution save or die. The trap is attached to a elevator. * like I said it's not perfect by any mean
   
4. There is 1252 gold , hidden here.
5. The cramped room has a Retractable Laser Turret attacks as Level 3 Magic Missile. The trap is attached to an arch.
6. G-Virus 4 Ghouls, a stall, and a trap: Disintegration Beams, forcing a DC 19 Dexterity Save or 40 damage.
7. The party can encounter 4 Mephits (Mixed Types), here.
8. Graffiti here says BEWARE THE POOLS. in blood.
9. Steam 2 Troglodyte Zombies, a steps, hidden Broom of Flying and High Tech: Power Fist Nonfunctional, trapped with: a Fusillade of Darts.
10. This cavernous room includes an Intricate Cloning Machine. The interacting character sacrifices 7 HP and gets faithful/insane/flawed clone.
    
11. 4 Ghouls, hidden 26 hematite 25gp divided into small coffers, and a trap: Slowing Gas. The victim is slowed for 4 turns, DC 15 Constitution save.
12. A Panic Gas. The whole party moves at +4 in the Initiative order for 3 turns but all actions are at -1d keeps the Eyes of Petrification and antique coins worth 950 gold safeguarded.
13. There is antique coins worth 2008 gold , hidden here.
14. Mecha Minotaur, an idol of  Sam Walton, and a trap: Blinding Gas. The party must make a DC 22 Constitution save or -4 to all attacks for 1d4 turns.
15. This cramped room includes a parking lot with 11 rusted-out automobiles or skimmers. The entry-gate is non-functioning. Vending machine, random items, will steal 25% of money inserted.
16. There is Helm of Comprehend Languages and Read Magic and High Tech: Automatic Rifle Functions on 1-12 in 20, hidden here.
17. Graffiti here says BEWARE THE TENTACLE BEAST. IT ATE GALSTAFF. in charcoal.
18. This room has a maintenance area. There are Vermin control devices e.g. traps, flamethrowers (2d6!), nerve-gas grenades (1d8 plus paralysis on DC 10 Constitution save), microwave emitter guns (1d10).
19. The party can encounter 12 Leech Rabbits, here.
20. Frost Troll, hidden 27 amber 100gp stored in pottery jars, and a trap: Poisoned Arrow Trap. The party sustains d20+5 attacks that do 1d6 damage and a random DC 15 poison.
    

(Here's the list of features I've mostly yet to implement in the main block of code)

## Feature wishlist

## 1. Geases and quests

## 2. Difficulty of some traps and saves scales with dungeon level via variable (editor's note: very easy, probably finish it next)

## 3. Integrated personalities of some generated NPCs (also super easy since I have like 4 of those)

## 4. Standardized formatting for monsters (bold), treasure (italics) - meh, maybe will maybe won't do

## 5. Re-rollable via link options for non-sensical entries

## 6. Room sizes, with larger rooms containing larger features

## 7. Random chance of adding a template to a monster - the templates are included - note added kludgy version on June 19,2020

## 8. Better treasure the farther down you go, maybe like the random treasure system in DMG1e

## 9. Lair treasure vs. Carried Treasure?

## 10. More Steam, Electricity, Magnetism

The Kids are Alright

#blacklivesmatter

I think the statements by WoTC about their product is terrific. I especially think that the statement by the Warhammer Community about GW's thing is especially terrific. Why? Well, for example 40K is rife with prose, visual art, and philosophy that glorifies violence, authoritarianism, bigotry, and hatred. So if you're a young lad not steeped in the traditions of Reagan and Thatcher and can't recall that Rogue Trader was a scifi/fantasy game deeply entrenched in anti-authoritarianism, you might get the impression that telegraphing those messages in the fiction is tacit endorsement of those philosophies. If you can't clearly delineate between reality and fantasy, you might think that the slaughter of The Other as depicted in the fiction is A Good Thing. Sure, we Old Fellers (listen I'm 45 and you should never ever ever trust anybody over 30 kids, especially not a charismatic clever artiste who has plenty of money and a fascination for half-his-age girls but I digress)

(remind me somebody to integrate my wargaming blog into Hapless Henchman)

Sure we Old Fellers clearly understand that NO no no! No people are inherently bad or good in the Real World. That nuance and those grey areas are of course what real life is like. That these great geniuses we hold dear who thought these things up whole cloth, like Gygax, like that guy Zak, like Ellis, they didn't STEAL those ideas so they could make money and get laid! No! They were in it for something else. Like the principle of the thing. Gary wanted you to question authority, home rule things, and definitely photocopy your books to share freely with other kids - the ideas were what mattered to Gary. He just wanted you to think for yourself. We don't give a fig where Arneson or that nice lady with the small-press ideas was taking things. For example.

I seen about 4 blog posts this AM linked from twitter that were direct responses to WoTC's statement. And you know what? I'm 45. I been doing DnD for about 80% of my life, give or take. Star Wars, too. You kids take it and run with it. Get rid of race. Get rid of racial bonuses. I find I prefer things like Into the Odd where those things aren't even posed in the text and if you want them, inject them, but you don't need to eject anything. it's not broken by design. It doesn't depend upon these old crusty Anglophile Middle-Class Country Gentleman ways. If DnD was a clever and funner offshoot of that old white guy's 'game of kriegspiel or whatever, GREAT.  I remember when 5e was approaching I was like "ehhhhh, who cares, I got mine" and a couple of folks on G+ said "hahahaha old man! you protest too much!" and I was hurt then, but the reality is that DnD is no longer mine. It might have been a long time ago, but better things have come. They took me a long time to find. DnD is big, and it's for the kids. Let the woke kids have DnD. They will make it theirs and it'll be better in the grand scheme of things than what a controlling, patronizing, paternalistic authoritarian balding, reactionary, overweight, swindling white dude wanted you to play. I'm not saying the dude wasn't multifaceted - hey man the thing is more nuanced than that. He wasn't an Orc, for example. Nobody's all bad, right?

Stay woke, kids. Fuck these menopausal old guys and their pearl-clutching. Do crime/Be Gay. Burn it down and what you drag out of the ruins will be better than what (in their hubris) The Ancients made. Get suspicious of anybody that gets nervous if you don't spout off about how great the brand is.

   

Tablesmith Retro-Kitchen Sink Dungeon

I dunno. Like, the question is: If I tell the pseudorandom generator to make me a couple of dozen rooms of a dungeon, if I steal all the bits from 10 different places 'n' gussy it up with whatever I can from my own head, does that mean I made the dungeon? Or did I just author the code? I don't know. I can't tell anymore, but after generating a thousand thousand rooms, checking this code for glitches and undesirable bits, jiggering numbers around, editing links and all the other minutiae, here is a thing that comes burbling to the surface of my screen, which you may have, if you promise to NOT drink that 5th cup of coffee. It's empowered by the 3.5 DMG, the 1e DMG, Ruins of the Undercity, Paranoia, Call of Cthulhu, Mutant Future, Gamma World 1e, I don't know what else... this is 10 rooms of weirdness for you.

1. The entryway to the dungeon is: a broken collosal war machine, will Dimensional distortion - Height/Depth - seems larger than maps suggest (multiply dimensions by d10x100 feet) if awoken, hidden pre-historic coins of plasticrete worth 367 gold, and a trap: yellow mold.
2. Hidden treasure, here: 140 gold .
3. This room was once a well. Within it, there is a chute and an animal nest.
4. 8 Chicken Wolves, a screen, and a trap: Undeath Glyph - Awaken all undead, turn nearby recent dead into zombies.
5. This irradiated Cleric still has its chainmail hauberk on and a Staff in its hands.
6. There is a pillars of scrutiny: if diverge from some particular random Alignment, then judged and causes Door, resisting - needs a DC 17 Strength check to open here, and a trap: Door, resisting - needs a DC 17 Strength check to open. (I didn't say it was perfect! far from it)
7. This room is spotlessly clean and free of dust. In the corner, there is a grinder.
8. 3 Tcho-Tcho guard Mirror of Life Trapping and antique coins worth 585 gold .
9. An abandoned storage area, with Cryo-tube, containing possessed Necromancer.
10. Mostly empty and clean, this room smells of ozone.

I'd play it. I guess some dismal part of my brain has played it a couple of times, now. It only doesn't make sense if you think too hard about it! My plan is to generate a hundred or so of these a week for a while, and then edit it into some reasonably playable thing (the above is pretty raw)

Fight the Power