Oct 27
JaybeeGeneral
I love Tony D's monsters. His outsiders ranged the gamut from grotesque to alluring. The marilith here is sensual and appealing... until you actually fight her and get horribly maimed.
A friend emailed me this link to a website which hosts every single AD&D 2E monster with their respective illustrations. This is awesome because I can safely say 2E has the best codex of monsters out of any RPG product. Period. I’m pretty sure this isn’t legal, per se, but I’m also positive Wizards knows about this and isn’t interested in shutting down a free project that doesn’t interfere with their current line. Click on the random monster button if you’re feeling particularly daring.
Lomion.de
Oct 19
JaybeeDevlog
This has been a slow week. I’m chiseling away at monsters and doing some radical changes to how their stat blocks are present by creating a uniform list of abilities so combat portions aren’t bloated and wordy. I want you to take one look at a monster’s block and immediately know how to play that monster.
Moses is is on “Trap the Soul” which leaves about 40 more spells remaining although about half of them are reverse spells. Once he’s through with that I should be finished with my final revision of items so he can sort through that then it’s off to monsters and technically we’ll be done! It’s still months more of work but it’s getting somewhere.
I would like to draw attention to this blog which is working on creating dynamic nested tables. The results create unique encounters such as “goblins running from dinosaurs” which is far more interesting to both DM and player than rolling for a random encounter with goblins. Will the players fight the goblins in their desperation or will the goblins run past them and the players get attacked by the dinosaurs? Will the goblins beg the players to save them only to stab them in the back? I’ll be adapting a system like this as an alternate random enemies table.
Finally, I’ve been looking over several free RPGs to rewrite based around a couple of ideas churning in my head. I want to adapt FATE/Spirit of the Century into a sword and planet based fantasy system. I also want to adapt RuneQuest into a realistic, low-fantasy world based on alternate history where the players are feuding lords who rule over whole regions (kind of like Birthright). I’ve been reading a lot of HarnWorld recently and I’ve got a hankering for highly detailed simulationist worlds.
Oct 13
JaybeeDevlog
So I said last time that I would add in proficiencies… unfortunately, it’s not feasible at this stage. I went through WPs at first but the base rules are too restrictive for my tastes: you’re either okay with a weapon or god awful (and this is why I disliked optional rules in general). I turned to the fighter’s handbook for a solution which lead to weapon groups and styles. This lead to all the combat additions like pinning and additional called shots which lead to the addition of speed rules for weapons which lead to… yeah, you get the point.
I’ve always wanted FG&G to be easily moddable and I still plan to keep that. There will be multiple versions of the game available in pdf and rtf format. Each version will be marked by the kind of supplement it contains such as FG&G: Weapon Proficiencies or FG&G: Non-weapon Proficiencies. There will be the basic, stripped clean FG&G document as well as the kitchen sink all-in-one document. Basically, you can download whichever document with any combination of rules that you want or download the base document and each supplement individually and add to it as if you were downloading errata for a book or something.
There will only be two print versions: the basics and the kitchen-sink.
As for things to do, I still have more monsters to complete but I’m tired of working on monsters right now. I’ll be editing the items so that they’re as complete as possible before the editor gets to them. Spells have taken some 6+ months but again there’s like 300+ spells and we cross reference errata from Dragon and Wizards Compendium to fix them.
Oct 10
JaybeeDevlog
Began the proficiencies chapter which will now be included with the book. Proficiencies are broken in “combat skills” and “general skills” which are basically weapon and non-weapon. I’ve included the revisions from the later sourcebooks (including weapon styles and weapon groups) to make proficiencies and weapons a little more flavorful. No, I’m not touching the Options books or anything beyond the ’95 revisions. I’ll leave that for later if at all.
Weapon skills are finished and tomorrow I’ll move on to general skills and hopefully be done. This means changing/adding a lot of material including weapon speeds. Fortunately it’s not much of a time sink and progress will continue as normal.
Finally, I’ve begun creating a random planet generator for a possible sword & planet universe. This generator will create the kind of alien planets you see in Edgar Rice Burroughs works or other interplanetary fantasy stories. Planets are unrealistic, fantastical, and usually more hostile/primitive than even the most generic fantasy earth. This should be done by Wednesday when I’ll post it as part of an ongoing series of turning 2E into a more pulpy style.
Oct 09
JaybeeDevlog
I went through AD&D’s monster manual, picking stuff I was missing but thought was necessary for a D&D flavored game. Whew, what a list! I think I’ll have to cull it down to at least half that size. I’ll probably go through OD&D and use that as a reference for “must-have-monsters” instead because it’s much smaller. With that said, monsters will be categorized by type (alphabetical) -> monster name (alphabetical). A table listing monsters alphabetically and which page they appear on will be available but I prefer my monsters organized by their type first so I can be like “Hmm, I want a monstrous humanoid *flips page* ah, here we go.”
The monster types really aren’t any different from 3e’s types. There’ll be similar subtypes but there’s no official listing for it in this game. You’ll notice “ooze” is missing: for the purposes of the game, oozes are abominations (and rightfully so).
—-
Abomination (I actually like this term more than aberration; it’s flavorful)
Animal
Construct
Dragon
Elemental
Fae
Giant
Humanoid
Immortal (outsiders)
Monstrous Humanoid
Plant
Undead
Vermin
—-
Here’s a work-in-progress for the argus-eye (ahem, beholder) monster.
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