30 Day Challenge: Wrap-up, posts 29 and 30

I'm going to post both of these in one post, since the first question is too stupid to merit it's own post.  And then, I'll be DONE with the 30 DAY CHALLENGE tag, a challenge that I might have been a little bit ill-advised in taking on, since it was catering to a specific gamer demographic that I don't match.  Oh, well.  I did it, and because I'm a sucker for those kinds of things, I'll probably do something like it again (although probably not as aggressively.  I still need to finish the A TO Z challenge after all, and that's only 26 entries.)

Day 29: What is the number you always seem to roll on a d20?

None.  My d20s are random, so I get all of the numbers with roughly equal frequency.  As is the case with any d20 that isn't somehow defective.  Duh.

Day 30: Best DM you've had

Now that's a tough one.  Plenty of times, I'm the DM.  When I'm not, I most frequently play with my current group, and all of the other DMs (besides me) prefer to run pre-written campaigns or adventure paths.  This isn't my preferred way to play, so although I've had some great times in those games, and the games are pretty good, and the DMs certainly know their business, it's hard for me to call them the best DM I've ever had, because they specifically haven't been running the game in the style that works best for me.

I've had some other GMs here and there, although frequently only for one-shots, that I've quite enjoyed.  One of them is a guy that has run several campaigns that I wish I could have been in, since they were so completely and totally right up my alley.  This is a guy who thinks the way I do, both as a player and a GM.  Sadly, other than a convention one-shot or two, I've only ever had him as a player in one of my games (one of my most successful games ever, though, I'll add.  And largely because of his contribution to it.)  This guy is Corey Reid, the author of the Barsoom Tales story-hour turned novel, and the author of DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND--a multimedia extravaganza, including a True20 setting, an Old School Hack variant game, and now an indie-published comic book (ten years from now, I expect it to be a full-length feature film.)

What makes Corey's GMing style so congruent and compatible with me and mine?  First off, I'll point out his willingness (in fact, even preference) for a rather loose preparation style, leading to a rather laid-back running style that easily rolls with it when players do "unexpected" things--in fact, I think he actually prefers players to do something crazy and unexpected.  Secondly, he's a guy who doesn't take gaming too seriously.  If someone's being wildly entertaining by being somewhat silly, well, that's to be encouraged.  If they're being wildly entertaining by being rather dramatic, well that's cool too.  The operational buzzword being "wildly entertaining" is what he's managed to figure out how to encourage, tease out, and reward.

I'll also point out that when I was last in a one-shot convention game with him, there was one guy who wasn't quite on the same page as the rest of the group.  Corey managed to really make that work; get him on the same page without forcing it, letting him have his thing, yet simultaneously not derailing the game for anyone else.  That was an extremely deft bit of DMing, if I do say so myself.

Sadly, Corey doesn't live anywhere near me.  He used to live sorta near me when he was in Toronto and I was only 4-5 hours away in southeast Michigan, but now he's gone much further afield.  The chances of us playing together again anytime soon are very, very low.

30 Day Challenge: Day 28 - character you will never play again

At the risk of sounding flippant because I'm going to give so short a post, let me quote Edna Mode from The Incredibles.  "I never look back, dahling."

I'll never play any character again.  Once the natural run of a character is over, and the campaign he's in is over, I don't look back--I look for the next challenge.

Sure, many of my characters are (at least mechanically) quite similar.  And in terms of approach, I do also end up with kind of "shades of gray" morality.  I find regular heroic characters to be somewhat boring, while rakish scoundrels are quite droll.

I don't want to cross the line and play an outright villainous character, but I do like a good anti-hero.  A Han Solo from early on in his character arc, who never really redeems himself and becomes General Solo, but who just remains a rakish scoundrel.  Maybe even one who falls as his character arc, and becomes more of a Boba Fett.

However, I could see playing a somewhat air-headed hero.  A bit ironically.  That could be fun.

30 Day Challenge: Day 27 - A character you want to play in the future

Hmm... I don't often think about a character I'm interested in playing until I'm actually on the verge of needing a character to play.  But let's see...

It seems like my M.O. as a player is frequently a combat-focused character, but not just a plain fighter (because they're boring.)  I've done a lot of ranger/barbarians, and ranger/fighters, and other martial type prestige classes to give myself a little more variety.

My second most likely pick is some variety of rogue. 

But honestly, for both of these, what I'm excited to do with them is to adapt or adopt some of the Pathfinder class archetypes into 3.5 and use them (most of them can be adopted straight with no modification, at least with the ranger and rogue, since the classes are so similar in structure between the two games.)

Yeah; I know, I know.  Why am I excited to run a character that's basically the same as the characters I've already run, with only minor variation?  Frankly, I just don't really like magical classes.  I don't mind some minor supernatural variants, but I don't want "full-time" spellcasters.

I could also play a soulknife, or lurk, or even psychic warrior.  What race?  Either human, or something a little more outre.  If I do end up playing a psionic class, I'd probably pair it with a psionic race, like elan or kalashtar.  Otherwise, I'd play around with some other type race.  I've always liked shifters, and I'd like to find a good LA +0 version of the classic planetouched races, like tiefling and aasimar.  In fact, I've got some other really cool ideas based, again, on some Paizo subsitution of alternate abilities that I'd like to entertain.  There's some Paizo rogue class abilities, which I've converted to feats as house-rules for me, that if I can get my next DM to allow, I'd also like to use.  They allow for some very minor spellcasting abilities, and even a familiar for non-magical classes.  I think being able to cast a couple 0-level and 1-st level spells, and have a little monkey familiar or something (or maybe an imp, if I take two feats to get an improved one) would be fun for a character who's otherwise not really a spellcaster.  In fact, if I gave it to a swashbucklerish character, it would give him a real Gray Mouser type flair.

That said, I have no idea when I'll be playing D&D again, and I'm not really in the habit of planning characters that I'm not even playing well in advance of having a campaign in which I would play them.

30 Day Challenge: Day 26 - Favorite nonmagical item

Today's the 26th and I'm making update 26!  I've finally caught up!  In fact, tomorrow, I'll actually get ahead when I do updates 27 and 28.  Of course, when I don't post over the weekend, I'll fall behind again (a little bit) but I'll be just in time to catch back up and finish on time on Monday the 30th.

It helps that there's not necessarily a lot to say about some of these 30 DAY CHALLENGE topics.  My favorite non-magical item?  It's kinda hard to have a favorite.  I'll go with the classic longsword.  Or, for DEX-based fighters, the rapier as a replacement.

Other than that; these things are so utilitarian that it's difficult to really "like" them; there just there.  I don't love my Badger garbage disposal in the kitchen sink, or my claw hammer.  I have them, and I need them, and I use them frequently.  But it's hard to call that kind of thing my favorite anything.

30 Day Challenge: Day 25 - Favorite Magic Item

One of the late 3.5 era books that I think was one of the best books of the entire era was Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss.  Not only have demons in D&D always been one of my favorite foes--rich in variety, malevolence, variety and atmosphere--but the book also managed to quite nicely balance two needs in tone: it needed to feel like classic Judeo-Christian demonology folklore, and it needed to feel like classic Lovecraftian alien, cosmic horror.  And the book managed to straddle both of those tones perfectly.  It's the perfect hybrid and synthesis of the two memes.

One thing that it introduced, that really helped shore up the notion of the latter theme, was the Black Scrolls of Ahm, artifact level magic items that work, for all intents and purposes, like Lovecraft's own dreaded Necronomicon itself.

But not only are the Black Scrolls magic items of forbidden knowledge, but the back-story is eerily similar to that of Lovecraft's book.  The "Mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred is not so dissimilar to the ancient scholar Tulket nor Ahm, and the fact that both have names of exotic Orientalism is, no doubt, not a coincidence.  There are even allusions to a similar fate: Alhazred's: "Of his final death or disappearance (738 A.D.) many terrible and conflicting things are told. He is said by Ebn Khallikan (12th cent. biographer) to have been seized by an invisible monster in broad daylight and devoured horribly before a large number of fright-frozen witnesses."  Tulket nor Ahm was apparently also killed by some kind of demonic hit squad, which not only destroyed him, but the majority of whatever country he was living in at the time.

As you can probably tell from the tagline in my blog ("D&D rules, Call of Cthulhu paradigm") anything that brings overt Lovecraftianisms to my game is to be welcomed.

As for magic items that I acutally like to use with my characters?  I tend to prefer straightforward pluses to attack, damage or armor class.

30 Day Challenge: Day 24 - Favorite energy type

Really?  Favorite engergy type?  People actually have a favorite energy type?

Why?

3e (and 3.5) reduced all of the myriad idiosyncracies of energy damage to five: fire, cold, electricity, acid and sonic.  And then, of course, there's the bizarrely labeled concepts of positive and negative energy. 

How in the world do you have a favorite among those?  Negative energy, while saddled with the stupidest name, is conceptually probably the most interesting.  As a life-draining force, and the source of all undead, it's got an appropriate fantasy feel to it.  I don't think the Negative Energy Plane is any better; but the Plane of Shadows, which is kinda like a more interesting Negative Energy Plane Lite is one of my favorites.  The 4e book about the Shadowfell and Gloomwrought, the city therein, was one of the better bits of setting development 4e saw, too.  Although, it wasn't specifically negative energy.

Still, that's my choice, and how I'd prefer to make it play a role in any of my campaigns.

30 Day Challenge: Day 23 - Least Favorite Monster Overall

Wow, so many to choose from.

I should probably just link you here:

http://www.headinjurytheater.com/article73.htm

http://www.headinjurytheater.com/article95.htm

Except that in his quest to be clever, he actually condemns a few cool monster (occasionally for really crappy art--another frequently encountered problem in the early days of the game.)

But there are lots (and LOTS) of D&D monsters that will never, ever darken the table of any game I would ever run.  But picking my absolute least favorite from among them?  The lowest of the low?  That's a hard one.

I think I'm going to go with the giff.  Space hippopotamus people who wear banana republic generalissimo uniforms and monocles.  Whoever came up with that travesty should retreat from the public eye in shame and never show his face again.

30 Day Challenge: Day 22 - Favorite Monster Overall

Wow, favorite monster overall.  That's an extremely tough one.

One monster that I've used a lot in a number of my settings is the hobgoblin (although curiously, not in DARK•HERITAGE.  Then again, I don't consider that a D&D setting.)

One of the things I like about them is that they should, by virtue of their description, not really be savage humanoids rumaging around on the fringes of society like so many bandits or tribes of barbarians.  If they're so militaristic, well-organized and lawful (ugh.  Alignment.) then why don't they have fully civilized, militaristic empires?

There was a picture floating around years ago on ENWorld (it's actually still here; I'll hotlink it here in a moment) called "Pax Hobgoblinica) which perfectly illustrated this exact concept, and I've loved it so much that I've incorporated some aspect of it into tons of my settings, with the exception like I said earlier, of DARK•HERITAGE.  But wait!  Even that's not so simple.  Kurushat, an important component of DARK•HERITAGE actually started out as a hobgoblin empire.  I later decided that hobgoblins were too traditional fantasy to belong in that setting, so I made them a human ethnicity instead.  But I didn't change anything else about them.

Eberron kinda sorta did this, with the nation of Darguun (and the past Dhaakani Empire) but even they couldn't manage to avoid the primitive savage mindset most of the time, at least until Don Bassingthwaite wrote the Legacy of Dhakaan trilogy of novels and fleshed it out a lot more.  Iron Kingdoms did it even better with the skorne.  Which, I know, I know, weren't technically hobgoblins.  But they have the same look and feel, and take the place in most respects of hobgoblins in the setting (much like trollkin take the place of orcs, and gobbers take the place of goblins, etc.)  Kurushat borrows a great deal from the Skorne Empire (and a great deal more from Roman history).

So, hobgoblins it is.  Not necessarily because they're really my favorite favorite, but because lacking any other criteria to pick my favorite, I'm going with what I've probably used the most.

30 Day Challenge: Day 21 - Favorite Dragon Color/Type

Yesterday was a complete bust.  To catch up, I had to do two posts yesterday, and two every day (except over the weekend, when I rarely post anything at all) and now I'm even further behind.  It's possible (although not likely) that I can do four posts today and get caught up.  More likely, I'll do three today and three tomorrow.

Or, if it keeps slipping, I'll be late and sneak a post or two in after the month is over.  But I hope to not get that far.  In terms of today's question, I honesty haven't ever been all that fond of the notion of color-coded dragons.  I don't mind some variety in dragons.  Sure, fire-breathers (i.e., the reds) are the classic, but appearance and abilties shouldn't necessarily be in lockstep.  And I do quite like some of the other breath weapons.  Frost/white dragons having a cold breath weapon only makes perfect sense, and some of the other options (especially dragons who spit out a big ole honkin' lightning bolt from their mouth, which is just plain cool) are attractive.

But, like I said, I don't like color-coded dragons.  Frankly, I don't like the notion of dragons being common enough to have their own societies, based on color.  I like the idea of dragons being much more singular.  If a setting has more than a dozen or two dragons in existance at the same time, then it's already over-run with dragons.

Iron Kingdoms has done dragons the best, in my opinion.  Every dragon is a singular entry.  They don't just have their own abilties, but they're got a lot of other variety and personality to them too.

So, in that sense, I'll have to break my own rule (maybe its really more of a guideline, given that I break it frequently) and quote a third party source.  My favorite dragon is Lord Toruk.

30 Day Challenge: Day 20 - Favorite Monster (Humanoid/Natural/Fey)

This run of favorite monsters on the 30 Day Challenge is getting tiresome.  I've got three more entries, but then we get into even more esoteric and tiresome questions before finally finishing up with some interesting ones.  This is a stretch of the doldrums that indicates to me that this challenge really shouldn't have been thirty days.  Twenty-five would have been plenty.

That said, I'm committed to finishing the series, and I'm committed to doing so before the end of September.  I'm doing no.s 19 & 20 today (which is the 23rd) so I'm a bit behind.  However, if I do two entries every day this week, I'll catch up on Thursday, and Friday I can do entires for Friday and Saturday--Monday, I'll do entries for Sunday and Monday, and barely end on time.  Woohoo!

And then, maybe I'll be a little more careful on what I decide to commit to doing--even if that commitment is really only to myself.

That said, tiresome or not, I'm going to go with a humanoid from today's category (I'm not even sure what a "Natural" is, and I'm kind of hit of miss on many of the fey.  I love what they've done with the fey category in the Monsternomicon books, but being "unofficial" I'm not going to count them here.  But as you probably can tell if you've read any of my other entries in this series, I'm playing kind of fast and loose with my interpretations, and often changed how strict I am (or not) on a whim to give me a reasonable choice to present here.

In any case, I clearly do have a favorite humanoid: the tiefling.  I really prefer the 2e incarnation of the tiefling (which carried forward into 3e, 3.5, and Pathfinder) to the 4e version of the tiefling.  But I really dig the 4e backstory of the tieflings.  My own DARK•HERITAGE setting clearly has nods to both versions of the bad boys.

The best source-material on tieflings that I've ever seen is Paizo's Blood of Fiends title, which I've reviewed here when it was new, too.

30 Day Challenge: Day 19 - Favorite Monster (Elemental/Plant)

What an odd pairing!  What do elements and plants have to do with each other, and why would you pick between them?  Honestly, I don't really like any plants very much in D&D.  I can kinda dig treants, since they're clearly a slightly re-named ent; the exact same concept as Tolkien's Quickbeam and Treebeard, etc.  And elementals?  Bo-ring!  They exist merely to be summoned.  They have no personality, nothing about them could possibly make them a favorite (in spite of the fact that they tend to be pretty ubiquitous in fantasy literature.)

Rather, there are other creatures, which aren't technically elemental in nature, but which are much more likely to get my vote.  Mephits, for example, are like imps or quasits, but instead of being overtly fiendish, they're overtly elemental.  Nice one.  Genies are also much like bigger, badder elemental-like creatures.  Some of them (efreeti in particular) seem to converge in concept with fiends.  I know, I know, the basic original of them is from Arabian folklore, while fiends come from Judeo-Christian writings about demons and fallen angels, and the devil, and whatnot.  After later Islamification of Arabia, the genies existed alongside folkloric entities that were more directly applicable to Judeo-Christian fiends.  But still, they seem to fill a cosmologically similar niche.  Or, if the cosmology is different, it seems to lead to only superficial actual differences.

So, since I like fiends a lot, naturally, I like genies a lot, as an Arabian Nights themed variety of fiendish-like creature.  And since I like fiends a lot, naturally, the efreeti are my favorite of the genies, since they bear the closest resemblance to "classic" fiends, in most respects.

30 Day Challenge: Day 18 - Favorite Monster (Immortal/Outsider)

I've said it before, and I will again (in fact, here I go right now!) but I think the game Dungeons & Dragons almost should have been called Dungeons & Demons instead.  The iconic foes of entire campaigns are not, in fact, dragons, but high level demons.  Particularly demon lords; the unique, ruling, powerful creatures who have darkened the table of many a game since at least AD&D's Monster Manual if not earlier.  Demon Lords play a prominent role in the adventure paths (Demogorgon in particular in Savage Tide.)

Keep in mind that while the Adventure Path as a specific form of campaign adventure is relatively new (piloted with Paizo's run on Dungeon in the later days of the 3.5 era) more loosely, you could say that they existed earlier in the G series, or the D series of modules from the AD&D era.  In these, demon lords also featured prominantly.  In addition, such classic modules as The Temple of Elemental Evil or Dead Gods also focused on the plots of demon lords.  I honestly believe that demon lords are the iconic high level opponent for PCs, and the fact that they can have servitors, minions, and patsies that the PCs must thwart from the very early levels makes them ideal mastermind menaces for an entire campaign; a role that few other monsters can take on credibly.

And even if you don't actually mean to ever fight them in personal combat, they still are just so iconic, their imagery so fascinating, and the background information on them so interesting in its own right, that the demon lords easily get my vote as the best Immortal/Outsiders in D&D.  In fact, I don't intend for them to ever fight PCs directly in personal combat at all, unless it's meant to be a complete rout or TPK for come-uppance (and that's a situation I prefer to avoid.)  I really like the "Demonomicon of Iggwilv" series of articles in Dragon that had the demon lords statted up, clustering around CR 30.  I have no intention of ever running a game over about 10th level.  Heck, at 10th level, even the Fiendish Codex versions of the demon lords that barely top out over CR 20 are still pretty much out of reach in a direct confrontation.  That's totally OK.

But... which ones, of course?  Some are better than others.  Juiblex, for instance, is basically just a shoggoth, except somehow a bit sillier.  The Queen of Chaos is Ursula from The Little Mermaid.  Zuggtmoy has both a silly name and a silly concept.

The "big three" demon lords are, however, clearly Orcus, Graz'zt and Demogorgon.  While, to my mind, Dagon is a "newcomer" that approaches them in terms of coolness, he lacks the iconicness, since he wasn't established as a D&D entrant until late in the 3.5 era life cycle (he makes up for this by being an actual Philistine god, adopted by H. P. Lovecraft as the shadowy figure behind some of his most iconic stories, though.)  Among them, it's really tough to pick a favorite.  So I'm going to fudge it and just say all three (or four.) 

Here's some pictures of Demogorgon, by the way.  I already did some Orcus ones earlier in this series, so it's the two-headed baboon-headed guy's turn.  Both of these pictures are thanks to Paizo's run on Dragon and Dungeon.  There's another great Wayne Reynolds picture of him too, but digital copies of that image are not easy to find...

30 Day Challenge: Day 17 - Favorite Monster (Animal/Vermin)

I think animals are severely under-rated as opponents in D&D.  Part of this is the design flaw of level escalation.  If a game stays at more "human-level" heroics, rather than "Justice League in fantasy drag" level heroics, animals in fact should always be dangerous.  At least some of them.  You ever faced a pride of hungry lions out on the grasslands at night when there's just four of you sitting around with swords by a campfire?  How about a herd of angry mother elephants who think that their calves are threatened?  Ever worried about getting trampled by a stampede of 1,500 to 2,000 lbs. bison?  Ever tried to kill a grizzly in the woods with a bow and arrow?

In the real world, these are harrowing experiences, and the survival of the poor little human(s) involved in them is not assured by any stretch of the imagination.  When you get a little bit further into more exotic animals--sabertooths, dinosaurs, etc., it's even worse.  I mean, everyone's seen Jurassic Park, right?  Well, T. rexes are a perfectly viable D&D animal.  They've been out there since the first Monster Manual at least.  SRD dinosaurs like Triceratops or Tyrannosaurus have CRs in the 8-9 range (curiously, the CRs are flip-flopped in the PRD for Pathfinder.  But maybe that's not really terribly significant.)  You've got to be a fairly high level party of adventurers to not be challenged by a CR 8-9 animal... especially if they appear in larger groups (as paleontologists think that they did.)  Higher level, in fact, than research by WotC back in the day suggests that most groups routinely play.  Higher level, in fact, than I'm really ever interested in running for my players.  And even if you don't use dinosaurs, SRD elephants are CR 7, so they're in the same ballpark. 

So animals, if you get into exotic animals particularly, can run the spectrum of most of an entire campaign.  If used effectively, they can be as frightening as any monster.  If used poorly, as throwaway straight-up combat encounters, then they're probably forgettable, although the same thing is also true of most monsters anyway.  Animals also have another great use at the table--as animal companions, familiars, and mounts.

Vermin, on the other hand, I don't really have much use for.  Yeah, yeah--I know. Giant scorpions are kinda a classic (Clash of the Titans, anyone?) but I just tend to think that giant bugs and stuff are kinda boring.

Rather than pick a single favorite, I'm going to have favorites for different purposes.  As an opponent to be faced in a good encounter, I'm going with lions.  At CR3, but appearing in prides, you can easily make an EL 5-6 or so encounter even if it's just a straight up fight.  If it's an ambush hit and run, at night, when the lions have all the advantages (well, curiously, lions don't have low-light vision in the SRD, but I'd assume that between that and their scent, their knowledge of where the PCs are in a fight is preternatural) then it can be a harrowing encounter indeed for low level, or even mid-level (by my standards, where I tend to top off campaigns at 10th level, or even lower.)  To mix it up, you can assume some cave lion type animals, or even just extraordinary individuals are actualy dire lions (at least in terms of statistics) to make it even tougher.  As a familiar, I like a monkey.  Agile, smart, funny, cute--what's not to love?  Plus, it automatically makes any character seem more piratey to have a monkey around.  As an animal companion, the trusty wolf makes the top of my list.

30 Day Challenge: Day 16 - Favorite monster (aberration)

Aberrations are another D&Dism that I have a soft spot for in some ways.  It seems to be the the home for a number of creatures that are weird and alien, and... dare I say it... Lovecraftian in theme.

That said, as in Lovecraft, sometimes they fit oddly into traditional fantasy.  The mindflayers are pretty quintessentially D&Dish, yet they use a number of concepts that are more peripheral to D&D overall--like psionics, time travel, and some science-fictiony concepts, especially as described in Lords of Madness.  Others, like the beholders, are just really D&Dish, and have no conceptual counterpart anywhere else.

Sometimes all of this detail gets in its own way, of course.  The gibbering mouther is an aberration.  It's rather obviously based on the concept of the shoggoth from Lovecraft, yet shoggoths, when statted out (in the d20 Call of Cthulhu book and in Paizo's Bestiary) is an ooze.  What?  Why aren't these two creatures even the same type?  Curiously, in the Paizo book, in the flavor text, it refers specifically to the mouther as being theorized to be a lesser version of a shoggoth.  However, they're not even the same creature type.

In the end, I think being iconic to D&D is a great deal lesser than being iconic overall.  Since the gibbering mouthers are conceptually the same as weak shoggoths, I'm going to unilaterally decide that shoggoths are also aberrations (even though they're not statted as such) and pick them as my favorite type of aberration.  They're a great deal more iconic than illithids, beholders, neogi, or even aboleths (as Lovecraftian as aboleths are anyway.)  So, they win.

30 Day Challenge: Day 15 - Favorite monster (undead)

Ah, monsters.  The heart and soul of many a fantasy RPG, especially D&D.  The vast catalog of monsters was always one of my primary attractions to the game; even before I was really playing it, I noticed the original AD&D Monster Manual on bookstore shelves and thought it looked interesting as... well, as a catalog of monsters, unrelated to gaming.  That said, there are many aspects of monsters in D&D that are simply quite foolish, in my opinion.  Undead in particular suffer from this.

I like undead a lot.  Given that I routinely characterize my campaign as as much horror as fantasy, this should seem natural.  The word undead itself (in the sense of a dead creature returned to unnatural life, not in the sense of simply being not-dead, which predates Stoker) seems to most likely have been coined by Bram Stoker and was an alternate title to his novel Dracula.  From ancient folklore and mythology to modern horror flicks, undead still reign nearly supreme as the fundamentally unnatural horror opponent.

And not just in horror.  If one accepts Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings as a watershed moment in the development of fantasy the genre as it's understood today, then keep in mind that it was also chock-full of undead.  From the Black Riders (Ringwraiths) and Barrow-wights, even to Sauron himself (who died in the fall of Númenor, but who's spirit "endured"--and who was known in the time of The Hobbit as the Necromancer--sounds like pretty classic undead to me.)  Fantasy and horror are often much more similar than a lot of people realize; the main difference being how the story ends.  However, as The Lord of the Rings itself demonstrates; that can be a spectrum.  LotR isn't really a triumphant and glorious ending to the threat (although there are elements of that) nor is it a grisly and horrible loss, as is often the case in horror novels.  Dracula itself has the titular character on the run and ultimately destroyed at the end of the novel, whereas Tolkien's magnum opus has Frodo and others too damaged by their experience to ever return to normal.  The shades between fantasy and horror are already awfully thin to begin with.  When openly embracing dark fantasy, as I do, they are practically non-existant.

However, in D&D undead are often confronted by the cleric, a made up archetype that has little literary or folkloric precedent, and my least favorite class (conceptually) of any ever published for D&D.  The cleric's Turn Undead abilities often function as a de facto "get out of undead free" card in a very real sense, meaning that undead are either quite horrible (or worse, simply frustrating) to deal with for parties that don't have clerics, and merely a boring speed bump for parties that do.

The other problem (and this isn't unique to undead, although it seems perhaps a bit more acute in that area) is that the same monster conceptually has proliferated into a huge variety of similar monsters in the game, often using a thesaurus to create new monsters out of synonyms for an existing monster.  In some cases this is merely to add variety, but in some it's to have the same conceptual monster be available at varying levels of play.  This is an unfortunate artifact of the design decision of D&D back in the day to be an exponentially increasing PC power curve, a problem that has become runaway in many versions of the game, rather than being fixed.  This variety means that undead in D&D is increasingly bizarre, esoteric, and strange.  I'd like to see the power level convincingly fixed and flattened, so that existing monsters can be properly challenging for a much larger stretch of a normal PCs career.  I'd also like to see monsters collapsed into fewer monsters, with a la carte options as monster powers.  For example, incorporeal undead can have as a menu the CON drain of the wraith, the negative levels of the spectre, the Madness attack of the allip and many of the abilities associated with the ghost template (from a 3.5 perspective, the version of the rules with which I am most familiar.)  GMs could then pick which ones to use based on any given campaign's needs, while not putting forth the bizarre idea that there are literally dozens of minor variations on the same concept of "ghost."

But, my reservations about the state of the game (and the place of undead within it) notwithstanding, I need to actually pick a favorite.  For that, I'll go with the eldritch from Privateer Press's Monsternomicon.  Conceptually, the eldritch is basically a vampire.  But, rather than being a specifically Count Dracula like being, with the exact same traits, abilities and weaknesses as evidenced in his novel, the eldritch is a bit different.  More flexible.  More scary, really, in most respects.  I use the template, ignore the restriction that it only be applied to elves (since my setting has none anyway) and call the result  a vampire.  Done.

You can pick up a pdf of the 3.5 update (the original was in 3e; I have that in hardcover, and the update in pdf myself) right here from the good folks at Paizo.

30 Day Challenge: Day 14 - Favorite NPC

After this one, the 30 Day Challenge schedule calls for me to pick favorite monsters (by type)--a task that keeps me busy for nine days.  Given the importance of monsters to D&D, though, it seems an important category worthy of mulitple questions.  On the other hand, I'm struggling just a bit to develop my answer to the question: who is my favorite NPC?

Sometimes with these types of questions, I'm not sure whether I want to answer in a personal way (i.e., from my own campaigns and games) or in a "populist" way; i.e., NPCs that are famous from modules, campaign settings, or novels or whatever, and are therefore known by many gamers all 'round the world.

In the end, on this one, I decided to split the difference somewhat.  My friend Corey Reid ran a lengthy campaign using a fairly heavily house-ruled (mostly redacted to limit options, at least until such time as the players discovered more options) 3e game.  He ended up posting a write-up of the game on the good ole ENWorld Story Hour forums.  He later actually compiled this into a PDF, which can be bought from Lulu.  Here's a link.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?201115-Barsoom-Tales-II-Romance-Revolution-and-BLOODY-REVENGE!!!-COMPLETE

In many ways, he's very up front about this being the story of an NPC, the Demon-Goddess, Madam Yuek Man Chong.  It wasn't meant to be; he had a great ensemble cast of great players with interesting characters.  Something one of them did made the entire campaign take a hard right turn.  A character who was meant to be a throwaway appearance--a super-powerful Ten Who Were Taken style sorceress who shows up and scares the PCs a bit or something.  He had, at the time, a funny little set of house-rules.  Swash-cards, he called them.  They were cards that the players were dealt, that they could play for interesting, modest benefits in game.  One of them was that an NPC would fall head over heels in love with the PC.  When a player pulled this one unexpectedly on one of the most powerful NPCs in the entire campaign setting--who at the time, didn't even have a proper name assigned to her--he's very upfront about how the campaign was turned on its ear and became something that he never envisioned.  Reading his account of this is interesting; it's a great example of how to roll with unexpected punches as a GM, how to play a fascinating and horribly unbalanced NPC and yet make it not overshadow the players own characters, or ruin the game, and it's a great example of just the sheer potential of our game to deliver honest to goodness great drama and entertainment.

Yuek Man Chong is, again to make a reference to Glen Cook, very similar in many ways to The Lady, or Soulcatcher.  She's not only insanely powerful, she's also actually insane.  This is par for the course for any sorcerer who manages to survive long enough to practice their craft in Corey's Barsoom.  But her integration into the game is what really works.  She never overtakes it, even though I've heard Corey occasionally lament that he's afraid she might have.  I think she's a ton of fun to read about, but only because the player characters are themselves interesting enough to go toe to toe with her (in a narrative sense, not in a let's roll initiative and take her down sense). 

When we come back for day 15, it's my favorite undead.  Which is difficult, I think, because I like the concept of undead (have I mentioned before that my game is as much horror as it is fantasy?  Well, probably not recently enough.)  However, I think D&D is guilty of ridiculous over-splitting and specialization of undead.  Finding the one that's "just right" and does what I need is easier said than done.

30 Day Challenge: Day 13 - Favorite trap or puzzle

While traps and puzzles are an old-timey D&D staple, I've never liked them.  Either as a player or as a GM either one.  I don't think that they're fun.  They're usually frustrating, and certainly extremely gamist.  They also don't really reflect much of anything in the fantasy literature from which the game sprung, or which some of it's players (i.e. me, at least) like the game to more closely resemble.

That said, there is one "trap" concept that works quite well for me.  Haunts, from Pathfinder, first released as a 3.5 mechanic, but later ported into Pathfinder.   It would work well in any d20 game, and is also easily enough adapted to any other game, for that matter.

Haunts really represent some elements of the more classic ghost story.  They don't represent an actual ghost per se, but most ghost stories have all kinds of creepy events that work, if you really dig into its nuts and bolts, more like a supernatural trap than anything else, and haunts are this exactly.

Here's the link to the relevant section of the PRD, so you can read how they work.

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/mastery/haunts.html#_haunts

30 Day Challenge: Day 12 - Favorite Dungeon Type/Location

It's the 16th and I'm on challenge number 12.  I knew I'd fall behind on the weekend!  Sadly, had to watch my Aggies (two time alumnus) lose to the Crimson Tide, but honestly, I can't argue with what was a really great football game.  To add insult to injury, the first topic in my quest to get caught up today is favorite dungeon type.  Luckily, it's slashed with Location, because I have no favorite dungeon type, I hate dungeons (the next challenge is even worse.  I hate traps and puzzles.)

So, by hanging on as if to a lifeline to the Location option, I'll grab on to fantasy cities.  From Sanctuary (of Thieves' World) to Haven (of Hawk & Fisher); to the Maul (of Conan) and Lankhmar (of Fafhrd and Gray Mouser fame) fantasy urban cities tend to err on the side of being "wretched hives of scum and villainy" and that's exactly how I like them.

I actually have a number of fantasy city sourcebooks, or fantasy city descriptions in other form (as in for an Adventure Path in Dungeon magazine) and some of them are among my favorite setting sourcebooks around.  These include Five Fingers, Freeport, Cauldron, Sharn, Riddleport, Magnimar, Katapesh, and more.  I like having these, because they havemaps I can raid.  I also like having lots of locations I can potentially raid.

That said, as with all officially published setting documents, I can't ever really use them as is.  I have to simply borrow from them instead and use them in my own way.  Part of this is because it's too much work to memorize all the details, and I'd rather just have a big pool I could pick through for details when needed.  Part of it is because I just always like to put my own spin on things, and have the ability to cherry-pick ideas from others, as well as my own ideas, or even invention as the son of need on the spot.

I do have to admit, however, that my cities tend to feel the same.  It is often difficult for me to make really meaningful distinctions between cities in my settings, that come up often enough to really feel significant.  Then again--this is often true for actual real cities that I've been to as well.

30 Day Challenge: Day 11 - Favorite Adventure You've Run

Well, this one is tough for me to answer.  I don't really run adventures.  Ever.  Sometimes I read them.  But not to run them, only to raid them for ideas.  So I literally have no idea what to answer for this one that really is completely "on topic."

So instead, I'll "cheat" just a bit.  While I've never run any D&D adventures that I can think of, I have run the infamous DARK•MATTER adventure, "Exit 23" (which was included in the original campaign setting book) several times.  Although never in its original Alternity form; I've run it adapted (by me) to d20 Modern.  This little gem of an adventure is about perfect for a 4 or so hour convention game, which is about how I've always done it, although I added a little more to make sure it filled the time completely.  It was meant, I think, to be done with six players (and that's mostly how I've done it) but I've done it before with an impromptu seven too.

It also helps that as a convention game, you can really play up the horror angle a bit more.  If a character goes down, well, that's OK.  It's just a couple hours of one-shot anyway.  The horror angle is handled very well; there's really only one monstrous encounter (an ice demon of some kind) but this is a great example of how to "milk" a monstrous encounter so it doesn't feel routine (as is so often the case in D&D.)

And that's really where the module shines.  It's moody, and it perfectly hits that horror-tone.  Sure, it ends up being all Larry Correia, where the solution to horror is to blow it up (it does take place at a gas station where the power's out, after all--and everyone knows how explosive gas is.)  There also seems to be a surprisingly amount of running into and over things with semi trucks.

I honestly can't even remember ever running another another pre-written adventure--of any system--other than "Exit 23".  So, while it's not a D&D adventure, I think it probably has to qualify.

That said, I'm a little tempted to adapt some Paizo adventure paths into something I run for my group.  They'd be heavily adapted, but they'd still be more or less recognizable.  I think either Carrion Crown or Serpent's Skull are the ones that most catch my eye.

30 Day Challenge: Day 10 - Craziest thing that's happened that you saw...

I've seen lots of interpretation of this.  I've heard of all kinds of crazy things happening in sessions from a meta standpoint, i.e. crazy things players do (as opposed to characters.)  One post on this topic I saw referred to a guy at a con game mooning the GM and doing a little dance of some kind for a roleplaying benefit, since his character was doing the same to somebody else.  Another guy I know went to a game of folks he didn't know, and one of the guys there decided that he was LARPing in the middle of the session.  And that he was playing a vampire.  And that he was going to try and bite another player on the neck with his fake vampire teeth.

I consider it a privilege not to have any stories of that kind to tell.  I do have some stories of crazy things happening, but it's always to characters not with players.

Which one to tell?  I actually have quite a few, and narrowing it to the most crazy is probably not something I can do.  Here's a pretty entertaining one, though. 

Shautha was a character in a game I was GMing.  She was a half-orc barbarian with a charisma score of... I don't remember, about 5 or so.  Not an attractive character.  She had the sex appeal of an angry shoggoth or Lena Dunham (but I repeat myself.)  But for some reason, the player decided that she was going to play up this character's obsession with girly things.  She really wanted to be a pretty little princess.  Or something.

There was a great moment where they were in the house of a suspicious minor lord who they knew was up to no good, but they didn't know exactly what his deal was.  So Shautha decided to flirt with him.  I can't remember anymore exactly how it happened, but somehow, although initially horrified, this minor lord somehow decided that really beefy half-orc gals were his thing, and they retired (with another character, who was actually attractive) to his bedroom suite as a distraction while the other PCs searched the manor.  Trying to lead him on without going too far (while Shautha on the other hand, horrifyingly wanted to see what a sexual encounter could be like) while the other characters raced to discover what ended up being the body of the patron that they were supposed to meet in town got really wacky really fast.  When the characters finally busted into the room to confront him on the death of their patron, the one character--a normal human rogue--who had at first led the flirting distraction, was desperately trying to escape the room, while the NPC was motor-boating the half-orc and singing "Oh, you touch my tra-la-la" to her and bouncing on the bed.

Naturally, it didn't end well.  The house ended up burning down, although the minor lord escaped thanks to his army of trained and armed gorillas (yes, this was the same game as mentioned in the post below) and the party was left with nothing better to do than attempt to rescue their characters, who as I recall, were carried off by demon lords.

Later, they encountered this guy again.  He had been nursing a burning crush for Shautha even after everything, and tried to convince her to leave her group and run off with him.  I think she almost did it too.  Especially after they discovered a cache of bad poetry written about her.

So, anyway.... Most crazy I've ever seen?  Probably not really.  But it's certainly a crazy story, and it's the one that came to mind today.