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Revised, Partial List of Very Fantasy Words (Update!)
The most recent update to the Revised, Partial List of Very Fantasy Words can be found here!
Need to make a region sound more like a Croft or Realm? Want to make sure people reading your fantasy text think of you as argute?
Well then, you need a Very Fantasy Word!
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Holiday Poem: The Night Before Adventure
Happy holidays all! Regular articles will return with the new year, but for now please enjoy this bit of silliness.
It was the Night before Adventure and all through the Party,
Not a Creature Was Stirring, their snores much too hearty.
No one on watch, they trusted a spell,
And if it didn’t work, their mage they’d give hell.
The steeds were all stabled, the familiars asleep,
The summoner’s eidolon made not a peep.
The rogue clad in mithral, paladin in full plate,
Knew the forces of evil would just have to wait.
When from camp’s edge there arose a loud scream,
Two boom, three zaps, and one laser beam.
“To arms” a knight screamed, to weapons they dashed,
Though the bard didn’t make it, his head was too bashed.
The wards all collapse, some hirelings did flee,
As a cyborg rust monster attacked us with glee.
“I won’t kill you all” it said in voice clipped,
“I’ll just rot your stuff, so your power is dipped.”
The adventurers all gasped, and considered the horrors,
Of loosing their status as bad-ass top scorers.
They rolled their initiative, and cast up their buffs,
And leaped up to engage in violent fisticuffs.
The monster did taunt them, and call them bad names,
As it used its evasion to dodge magic flames.
They stabbed it, and slashed it, and missiled it with magic,
Until its form was quite punctured, lifeless, and tragic.
The adventurers smiled, and kicked the dead brute,
For they knew in its lair, there was surely more loot.
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Horrifically Overpowered Star-Feats
Very soon, RGG will be releasing Starfarer’s Codex: Horrifically Overpowered Feats.
And it’s my fault.
This is, obviously, a new entry in the Horrifically Overpowered line of game supplements, bringing the world of OP to Starfinder-compatible games. And while it WILL update many of the old Pf-edition OP feats, that’s not all the book has.
Oh heavens no.
It is SO much worse than that.
“How bad could it be?” you ask. Pretty bad. game-breakingly bad. You should never allow ANY of these into your campaign.
Seriously, let me show you.
Here’s just a few examples of Horrifically Overpowered Star Feats.
Ain’t Got Time To Bleed (Horrifically Overpowered)
You can rest when you’re dead.
Benefit: As a full action, you can use any option available to you that normally takes 10 minutes. You are subject to all the other restrictions of the action (it’s fast not free, get real).
Ancestral Plasma Canon
You have an item your family has carried into star battle with star demons for star centuries.
Benefit: Select one category of item that is not consumed when it is used, such as a small arm, heavy weapon, light armor, an armor upgrade, or a technological, hybrid, or magic item. Each time you gain a new character level, this item is upgraded to any item of the same category you wish with an item level no greater than your character level +2. If the item is lost or destroyed, it or a replacement returns to you no later than the next time you gain a character level.
Resolved (Horrifically Overpowered)
No one is more resolved than you are.
Benefit: The Resolve Point cost of any ability or option that requires Resolve Points is one lower than normal for you. If that makes the Resolve Point cost 0 or less (yeah, or less—if you are allowing THIS option, who KNOWS what you’ve allowed into your campaign?!) you can still only use the ability if you have at least 1 Resolve Point remaining in your Resolve Pool.
If you want to make me stop writing such ridiculous pandering products which appeal only to power gamers and bring shame on my reputation as a professional, feel free to join my Patreon, in the hopes the money will distract me and put an end to this terrible idea.
Or… I mean back me and tell me to write more. As long as you give me money, I don;t care what you ask me to do.
Ichthine–A Species for all -finder games!
As far as I can tell, the urge to do this species came straight from the art, by the amazing Jacob Blackmon. Certainly nothing else I can think of inspired this. The write up should work for both the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and the Starfinder Roleplaying Game.
ICHTHINE
The ichthine are an ancient, accomplished species who have had access to star travel for millions of years. Able to place themselves into a natural form of hibernation, their species travelled the stars in vast slower-than-light ships to explore and learn. However, lacking any way to communicate with each other or their homeworld, each ichthine ship became its own hub of knowledge and developed its own culture. Most eventually began to break down in systems lacking the technology to repair or replace their advanced systems, and the ichthine inhabitants within eventually choose a new world to colonize. Ichthine than thus be found on thousands of world, many of which have no native star-travel capacity, or have only developed such capacity in recent centuries. If the original ichthine homeworld is still populated, none of the current ichthine populations know where it is. It has even been suggested the ichthine originated in a different galaxy, though most scholars dismiss this as hyperbolic legend.
Ichthine culture has survived, however, in part because they have a remarkable racial memory that retains a great deal of core knowledge from generation to generation. Each ichthine is born knowing the Aquan language, already able to speak and understand basic phrases, with a general knowledge of the history of their line. Thus most ichthine populations are aware of their long history of star travel, even those living on worlds with no more than iron age levels of technology. While the ichthine diaspora happened so long ago that many isolated ichthine populations have evolved to look radically different than their distant cousins, most recognize their kinship to ichthine of all types, and can remember in general terms a time when they had a united appearance.
On many worlds ichthine are known as “grandparent fish,” and are considered skilled advisors and scholars, Icthine generally take a long view of things, from history to politics to religious tolerance. This partially comes from their long lifespans and partially from their racial memories, but also seems to be a natural tendency of the species. While young ichthine are significantly more excitable than their older relatives, even as “tads” ichthine generally contemplate major actions and their consequences before diving into them.
However, once an ichthine has decided a risk or consequence is worth the benefit that causes it, they are loathe to reconsider that opinion without significant new evidence. This sometimes leads to ichthine picking up damaging vices, or remaining friends with people who have changed from being short-sighted or brash to being genuinely destructive or evil. Ichthine also think strongly in terms of groups, and hate excluding anyone once they have been accepted into any social or cultural organization.
(Art by Jacob Blackmon. Available as stock art here!)
Species Traits
Ichthine are Medium monstrous humanoids. Despite their fishlike appearance, they can easily manipulate items with their nimble fins as well as a human with two normal hands.
+2 Wis, +2 Cha, -2 Str. Ichthine are calm and caring, often contemplating how helping others may help them as well, but have frame ill-suited to the leverage needed for optimized application of strength.
Movement. Ichthine have a 20-foot move rate, and a 30-foot swim rate.
Deep Senses. Ichthine have low-light vision and darkvision. When in a liquid environment, they also have blindsight, 30 feet.
Amphibious. Ichthine can breath air and water with equal ease.
Depth acclimated. Icthine ignore penalties for high pressure, both in water and in normal atmosphere.
Hibernate (Ex). As a full action an ichthine can slow its metabolism to a crawl, radically reducing its need for air, water, and food. In this state it does not suffocate or starve, and is considered unconscious for most purposes. However, a hibernating ichthine can make Perception checks at -10 to notice changes to its environment while hibernating, and choose to end its hibernation as a full action. A DC 10 Medicine check is required to differentiate between a hibernating ichthine and a dead one. An icthine’s hibernation can last for tens of thousands of years with no harm.
Racial Memory (Ex). An ichthine can attempt a recall lore task with untrained skills, regardless of the check’s DC. An ichthine receives a +2 bonus to all recall lore checks. If the recall lore check is for questions relating to the ichthine’s own heritage, this bonus increases to +10.
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The Aberrant Empire
Aberrations are usually presented as lone monstrosities to be slain for their loot, or fallen kingdoms of single aberration species well past their glory days.
But if dwarves and elves and humans can have multi-species nations, why can’t there be a vast, thriving, dangerous Aberrant Empire, where all things alien and unwholesome serve a single Aberrex ruler.
Aatheriexa taskmasters cruelly drive monstrous humanoid laborers and magical beasts of burden to build twisted basalt monoliths, work fields that grow fleshy fungus, and forge weapons designed to tip tentacles and adorn eyestalks using greenish metal poisonous to non-aberrant races.
Akaname commandos sabotage the wells, waterways, and sewers of major cities or strongholds too near the Empire’s borders, ensuring disease and infestation keep potential enemies weak.
Blightspawn priests rule over congregations of non-aberrant “hostkin,” who literally give their bodies for the worship of twisted gods and the incubation of elite Imperial species.
Brume inquisitors ensure the loyalty of all with the Empire and draw knowledge out of the memories of its captured enemies, while cerebral stalkers turn what’s left of any subject into a useful servant of the Aberrex.
Choker assassins end the lives of those who threaten the Empire in silent attacks, or slaughter those foe’s loved ones and allies if unable to crush the enemy’s windpipe directly.
Destrachan heralds sound the calls to mobilize Aberrant armies, and learn the sounds of insanity from their Aberrant nobles to let loose mind-shattering calls that blast psyche as well as flesh.
Ailing aberrations that have served the empire well join in final, dread rituals to combine into egregores, or yah-thelgaad, ensuring their experience and fell knowledge can continue to fulfill imperial needs for centuries more.
Ethereal filchers both guard the border planes around the Empire, and act as intelligence agents, stealing opposing forces plans from their very pockets.
Froghemoth juggernauts, directed by armored ghorazagh commissars, anchor mighty armies and naval forces, acting as living siege engines, and often ridden by khardajeen artillery.
Incutilis and their lords man flotillas and watery caravans, ensuring that the appetites of the Empire are met, and that those who oppose them are subdued and forced to serve the Empire’s needs.
Hyakume magecrats rule Imperial territories, each defined by a strange border that respects no boundary non-aberrant eyes can perceive.
At the center of the Empire, sits 13 tychilarius, jointly the Aberrex, an aberrant amalgam of all the Empire’s best, most loathsome agents and lords. Do they serve a greater master? If so, can mortal minds even comprehend it?
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Weird Worldbuilding
Sometimes, it’s the weird little corners of your world that players will latch on to. In a post-apocalypse campaign I ran, the players ran into an old, fully automated factory that made self-heating cans of “Joe,” an artificial coffee-flavored meal substitute. I noted that there were some faded old signs (“Start Your day with a Big Cup of Joe!”), and that there was a trading village down the hill from the factory.
Before the players ever got to the trading village, they had formed dozens of theories about how the Joe Factory got raw materials (from roving “acquisition drones” who had once picked up cargo runs, but has simply adjusted to become automated hunter/gatherers dumping crops and game and ore in the Joe Factory intake hoppers) to how the village used the Joe cans to survive. Drinking it, of course, but also hammering out old cans to make tools, opening a dozen cans in a pot of water to heat and sanitize it, to pouring the thick Joe on thin rocks, letting it dry into a vinyl-like fabric, and making clothes out of it.
It was all much more interesting than what I had planned, so by the time the players got to the village, and I adapted and expanded off their best ideas to create a culture that was part cargo cult, part hipster battle clans (with the Blak, Sprezo, and Mhokah the most powerful factions).
So, sometimes a throwaway line or idea is just a drop of color in the impressionist painting that is an RPG campaign world… and sometimes it’s a jumping-off point for a much more fantastic and interesting element that’s explored in depth.
As a result when I have a weird idea, I often make sure to note it down and roll it around in my head a bit. Maybe nothing comes of it. Maybe I mention it once next time I am running a game off-the-cuff.
But maybe it’ll pay much larger dividends.
So, I told you that story to tell you this one.
In the Starfinder Roleplaying Game, there is a lizardlike race known as the vesk, who have their own empire, and a weapon like an axe with spikes instead of an axe-blade called a “doshko.”
Between the stress and exhaustion of the apst few weeks, and the OTC cocktail I’ve been using to try to sleep at night, an idea popped into my head, unbidden.
A phrase, really.
“Drink Dochcola, the Taste of War. … Or Else!”
Heh.
I like the idea of a soft drink called “Doshcola,” though I presume it’s sold by a megacorporation that has very little to do with the vesk. Some vesk might even see it as an insult, a dishonor to their traditional weapon of war and symbol of their warlike god.
But that could be interesting, too.
So, as a jumping off point, I present the best slogan I came up with for Doshcola.
Doshcola Slogans
“Conquer Your Thirst”
“Give Your Lizard Brain a Drink”
“Spiked with Flavor”
“Now in new Plasma Doshcola Falvor!”
“Get a Taste for War”
“Doshcola. Deadly Serious.”
“4 out of 5 inhuman mercenaries prefer the sharp taste of Doshkola, over blood and dirt.”
“Doshcola. Because what else will you drink, beer made with Dwarf Sweat?”
“Now with 72% less Skittermander Tears!”
Speaking of Weird Little Corners
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Iffy Fantasy RPG Dinners
Sometimes, you need something out of the ordinary for a fantasy RPG dinner scene.
Sometimes, you just need a laugh.
Top Ten Iffy RPG Dinners
“No, it’s not seafood. But it is peeled, coated in flour, pepper and salt, and deep-fried!”
“It’s a one-ingredent fusion food! Also popular with chimera crisps, griffon au grautin, and manticore fries.
“It provides both the hare meat and the veggies, all in one butchering.”
8. Owlbear Mole Poblano
“No not owl-bear-mole. Mole poblano. The sauce. It really brings out the, ah… the gamy flavor of the wild mammal-and-fowl meat.”
5. Mimic Meat.
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Blade Jogger
Blade Jogger
In preparation for seeing Blade Runner 2049, Lj and I opted to watch a version of the original.
I’d like to claim it inspired me to write a post about how the only innocent character isn’t the protagonist or antagonist, or thoughts on what we owe our inheritors, an essay on the value of a life lived for a single moment, or my analysis on why the universe itself cries throughout the entire film, or something classy like that.
…
But that just wouldn’t be me.
Instead you get:
Ten Mash-Ups I’d Watch But Have Never Heard Anyone Suggest
(and their advertising tag lines).
Blade Runner vs. Predator
Who hunts the hunter?
Robocop V – Chucky Cop
When the police are demonic dolls, who do you turn to for help?
Christine: Transformer
Evil is changing.
Dungeons and Dagon
You are not high enough level.
Men in Black Mirror
Whatever’s going on, it’s weird and depressing.
Doctor Clue
Master Mustard, in the 11th century, with the lead pipe.
G.I Joe vs the Volcano
Amercia’s Best can Get the Job, but can they Do the Job?
Gremlinbusters
Who You Gonna Feed After Midnight?
The Last Star Writer
A fanfiction forum is a test from an alien alliance to pick the one geek who can think of ideas awesome enough to save the galaxy.
Guardians of the Galaxy Quest
They’re going to need Guy’s leg.
Honorable Mentions
The Fhtagn Four
Mr. Fhtagn. His mind can bend into any shape!
Invisible and Insane Woman. Out of Sight, Out of Mind.
Eldritch Thing. It’s Cthulhuing Time!
Human Torch. We set a guy on fire. He… doesn’t do much.
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