Further insight into the world of Muppet-inspired D&D

One of the bigger problems of doing a campaign using what's normally considered to be low-level fodder as the main player race for a D&D game is "Who do you use to to fill in that hole in the enemy selection/ecology/hierarchy?" It becomes even more difficult if you're considering using another low-level enemy type as a possible race for p,layers as well.

Well, I was looking at some Legend of Zelda fanart this evening, and inspiration struck as I looked at a pair of Moblins, who are one of the initial enemies in the original Legend of Zelda game.

So where am I heading with this exactly? Well, one of the big themes in the early Muppet movies is that they're all a bunch of free spirits who manage to get by, even if times are bad, and will go out of their way to help out others who might need a hand or some other experience. The villains, on the other hand, tend to be more established, and have a lot of resources.

So what better enemy for a Muppet-Inspired D&D game than Moblins who are actual sterotypical gangsters, like this fellow over here on the right.
Now things were starting to fall into place. Moblins fall into the following categories;

Hoods (typical D&D Goblin stats) 85%
Wiseguys (D&D Hobgoblins) 14%
Dons, aka Capos, or 'Da Boss (Bugbears)1%

Moblins, always looking for a new opportunity, are frequently visiting Goblin villages and towns looking to recruit or to find suckers for their latest scheme. They typically get blown out of town.

This has not endeared the goblins to the Moblins.

Thus the Moblins, when not trying to recruit or con the goblins, are frequently plotting to destroy the goblins villages, which is somewhat difficult as the goblins are doing an excellent job in that regard.

Most Moblins carry around instrument cases and use them as clubs, (which have little to no effect on the Goblins), but a few (very few) will keep a dagger or a shortsword in the instrument case.

If asked, the average goblin says that Moblins can be great fun in small does, but they tend to get borin very quickly.

Work In Progress Backgrounds for my Muppet D&D game.

I had been planning on saving these until I got them finished (those tables are what's holding them up so far, but since +Jez Gordon declared today to be “Awesome Gamer Day, then I should least toss up a preview for the folks that are interested in this.

First up, and the most completed, the Mad Bomber. Since I'm going for a Muppet Show feel for some aspects of this game, I should mention that goblin bombs are not particularly dangerous, partly due to the goblins immunity to blunt damage. (it knocks out, rather than actually injures). When a goblin bomb goes off, there's a smokey cloud of soot, and most within its radius (around 5 feet) are knocked back or sent flying a short distance.

The inspiration for this background is Crazy Harry from the Muppet Show. This charming fellow would show up, and set off an explosion, and then there'd be some laughter.

Bombers do more than blow things (and goblins) up for humorous purposes, They also contribute to the well-being of Flopsburg by going fishing. A few well-placed bombs, and there's enough fish for a few days. The fish is the nearby Tenebrous Loch have adapted by multiplying on a larger scale than normal, thus preventing a potential loss of food for the goblins.

Up next are the Stick-Pokers, whose (potentially dangerous) job is to poke at things with sticks. (the areas around Flopsburg have a certain deadliness to them that can not be understated).

Many of them start out with long sticks, and those that aren't suddenly gobbled up by any number of unsavory things soon move on to shorter sticks, learning to rely on quick reflexes to avoid danger. Since most of them provide assistance to hunters and woodcutters (the goblins are constantly rebuilding Flopsburg), most soon learn how to field strip an animal, thus gaining the proficiency in the Survival skill.

While that's the general idea of what I have thus far, I'm still considering other Backgrounds for the goblins, including a Storyteller/Performer Background.

The initial hexmap for my Muppet D&D setting.

Here's where it starts to come together.

It's still pretty rough, but most of the areas are there. This version is a DM map, as it shows a few locations that I'm thinking of using as adventure spots. Flopburg is in an area with scrubs and small hills, and the goblins only go there if they get bored and decide to hunt there, as the wood does not work well for building.
Most of their wood comes from the Gibbering Bog, or better yet the Gloomy Thickets (though they rarely go too deeply into the Thickets). Each hex is roughly a human league (as per Jeff Rients, but since most goblins are small, it takes them a little longer to get through them).

Now with added river.

Muppet D&D: first thoughts and an inkling of a setting.

 Recently, an idea came to me, and while still currently raw and unrefined, has something that I can work with and add onto. My working title for this is Muppet D&D.

What Muppet D&D isn't is Muppet characters reenacting the Lord of the Rings or the Dragonlance Saga. What it is, however, is an attempt to craft a setting that takes the feel of the Muppet Show, and adapt it to the D&D milieu. (Your Muppet D&D may be different from mine, however).

South of the Barbed Crags, and the Gloomy Thickets, past the Nebulous Moors and the Gibbering Bog, the Exuberant Runnel flows southward, going past the goblin village of Flopburg

(though calling that fiasco a village is kind of pushing it) towards the dark waters of the Tenebrous Loch.

Flopburg, while a chaotic mess most of the time, somehow thrives regardless of whatever natural rules that may be followed elsewhere. The goblins spend most of their days building or repairing houses (or what passes for them at times), collecting food, tuning instruments, cooking or making things to blow stuff up with.

It is with bombs that the goblin begin to excel. While the method of bomb making is generally known to to the Mad Bombers of Flopburg, they will teach anyone who asks (and in many cases, didn't ask). The bombs tend to have two general purposes in goblin society; fishing and entertainment.

Every night, the goblins of Flopburg gather, and have a wild party, glad to have survived yet another day. These parties are accentuated with music, laughter, feasting, explosions and more laughter.

An interesting feature of goblin explosives is that they really don't injure anyone-- even when one is sent flying and hits something, it laughs, and runs back to the party. It had been discovered that blunt force trauma had little effect on anyone, other than perhaps knocking someone out for awhile. While goblins are curious and inquisitive, they long ago learned to shrug and get back to whatever they were doing, but did note that this effect only carried over to other sapient races, not to animals and many of the monsters (goblin explosives, however, had no ill effect on anything)

It is to this almost idyllic setting that I intend to introduce science fiction energy weapons, because such weapons in the hands of the goblins would be funny, even if they do happen to inflict serious damage.

Inspiration for new monsters in your games.

While it is known that a number of classic and iconic D&D monsters were inspired by a bag of plastic 'dinosaur' toys that were available in the 70s, it isn't known that a number of those toys were Chinese bootlegs of monster toys from the classic Jpanaese Ultraman series of shows.

So it hit me that if Ultraman toys were inspirational in the creation of some great monsters, then why not look at kaiju design from Ultraman (and other sources) for new monster ideas;

This charming fellow is called 'Gabadon', and looks remarkably similar to the classic 'Land Shark' or 'Bullette'.

Now here's a possibility for a non-combatant monster. He looks like a deep thinker, and could possibly a sage of great knowledge.

Obviously an insectoid or crab-man. Those claws look like they could do a d8 of damage easily.

Perhaps a feral relative of the common lizardman, much like the goriila or other great apes are to humanity.

This imposing fellow looks like a winged owlbear/hook horror hybrid.

Instead of a breath weapon, this dragon most likely has an eye-beam attack. A few structural mods, and you could have a suite of eye-beam dragons with different types of eye-beams.

A mad druid's tree-splicing experiment gone horribly wrong? A horror of super-science unleashed upon the world? You decide.

I can see the possibilities for this one. Eye-beams, claw/claw/bear hug, and can be directed by a smaller critter via the handlebars on its head.

Obviously an arboreal ambush predator, lying in wait in piles of leaves for unsespecting victims to wander by.

Using its bright colors to attract prey, this critter then uses its swaying movements to hypnotise its victims before going in for the strike.

This one looks strangely familiar...


And there you have it. Some potential new monsters to liven up your games. A few visual tweaks to any of them, and you have something new to play with.

Now with added features

Apparently the latest rage in the OSR blogosphere is a widget that allows users to print posts to pdf. This was all started by Jeff Rients of Jeff's Gameblog.

I don't know if anyone will use it here, but it was easy enough to install.

As I read through the Ready Ref Sheets...

As I mentioned in my last post, I acquired a copy of the Ready Ref Sheets (2nd Edition) yesterday. I've since gone through it a little, and thought I'd share my thoughts on it.

The first section is on city encounters. The charts are a bit on the crowded side, but there's some usable stuff in here. There's even a page explaining what some of the charts are intended for.

Up next is a section on npc women, starting with social status and profession. There's an interesting system on gaining favor with women through a mixture of communication and buying expensive gifts, which might actually dovetail in nicely with the infamous 'Random Harlot Table'.

There's even some complications that randomly crop up and make things more interesting for PCs.

After that, it talks about the likelyhood of women being trained as fighters in a militaristic society (just over 50%). It goes on to give a few locations where they might train, and then talks about daughters of nobles, including such things as their social rank, and circumstances revolving requests that will involve her father's intervention.

Turning the page, there a lot of tables for generating female npcs, ranging from disposition, their inclination towards the PC (and modifiers towards it), Houri garb, and physical characteristics.

Here's where it gets interesting.

The tables range from things like height, dress sizes, alignment (only 5 here covering Law, Chaos, Good, Evil, and a single Neutral) and finally complexion. It's complexion that really caught my attention. It starts off with with some realistic skintones, then moves into some SF/S&S/S&P inspired colors (red,blue and yellow). After that it's Downy Golden Fur, Feathery Down, Scaled, and Transparent to Bone. The first three of these have a asterisk after them denoting additional traits to the complexion. They are;

• also has feline tail
• winged
• half mermaid (?)

I was fairly surprised to see that one could very easily roll up a catgirl! Here's a trope/meme that really took off in the last 20 years, and yet I came across it in a supplement written in the 70s, over 30 years ago. Now I admit that there was a female Kzin crewmember in the animated Star Trek series, and Batman foe Catwoman dates back to the 40s (and there could even be something in the pulps that I haven't heard about yet), but this came out of nowhere.

Admittedly, this took a lot out of the discovery that they had also put in Lieber-ian ghouls (people with transparent bodies save for their eyes and bones).

Well, that's all for now. I'll come back later and give further impressions about the RRS.