Catching up

I haven't forgotten to blog, but I just haven't much concrete to show for it.

The Cheliax-themed Wayfinder #11 debuted at PaizoCon 2014. In addition to helping with editing and proofreading, I contributed the Addiction Devil (Atropocustra). I found the perfect spell-like ability for it in Rogue Genius' The Genius Guide To 110 Spell Variants (at Paizo and DriveThruRPG) by the awesomely talented Owen K.C. Stephens. Editors Tim & Paris found the perfect artist to illustrate the atropocustra, the gifted Michael Jaecks. Seriously, just look at that amazing picture!

I've got submissions nearly fine-tuned for Wayfinder #12 (Osirion) and a critter drafted for Wayfinder #13 (Ustalav). I'm very very excited for Paizo's upcoming Technology Guide and the Iron Gods Adventure Path, and new ideas keep burbling up in my brain for them. I've also got two huge racial supplements (new races with all the societal flavor, class archetypes, magic, equipment, deities, etc.) that I need to finally commit to completing from all the e-drafts and scraps of paper from my GM notebooks, but who knows when that'll be.

Sal'awaan and brushtail fennec

An update... finally!

So, I just received news Sunday that two of my three critter submissions for the Cheliax-themed  Wayfinder #11 didn't make the cut. Which still isn't bad, considering 1) how much competition there is to get anything into an issue, 2) the hard page cap on this PaizoCo 2014 edition because it'll receive a print run, and c) both of them fit much better in the upcoming Osirion-themed issue.

The third critter is making its way through editing, but I've thrown the other two into some quick HTML for the Web:

• Critter #1 is the sal'awaan, a humanoid shapechanger based on the sal'awa cryptid from real-world Africa and the lupin therianthrope  legend of real-world Europe. You'll find its article here. (6/15/2014 Edit: Link pulled to rework it.)

• Critter #2 is the brushtail fennec, a fennec fox-variant briefly mentioned way back in the Legacy of Fire Player's Guide. The existing templated-conversion has never sat well with me; it's physically too big, too strong, and ignores the fennec fox's keen hearing. So I rebuilt it. (6/15/2014 Edit: Link pulled for minor reworking.)

If you have any suggestions, questions, or corrections, don't hesitate to comment.

Edit: Fixed some HTML issues.

Molemen, ziphryn, and nacritoi are here!

Late last year, the good folks at Little Red Goblin Games announced they were developing a new book, and they were looking for a few more ideas. So, they announced a competition for new developers to take two or more existing RPG critters or humanoids and then design a new hybrid race. A slew of very talented and creative people entered. They somehow managed to narrow all those great entries down to just three for the book. They were the molemen (a buggane/dwarf hybrid) by Nick Esposito, the ziphryn (a gnome/flumph hybrid... yeah, let that boggle your mind) by Jason "Mikaze" Garrett, and the nacritoi (an oread/rakshasa hybrid) by Sarah "Ambrosia Slaad" Counts...

me!? (Yeah, I'm still kinda stunned about it myself.)

And now, I'm pleased as can be to announce the new book has just been released: Little Red Goblin Games' Racial Guide 2.5 Halfbreeds and Hybrids, available now at DriveThruRPG and Paizo.

I only had a small part in contributing to the book, but I sincerely hope that everyone who buys it really enjoys it and that it adds to their own games. I'd also like to congratulate everyone who entered, and to thank Scott and everyone at LRGG for being such professionals and so generous for the opportunity.

Ah yiss!

So, Tim and Dain burned a lot of sleep and midnight oil, and someone at Paizo stayed late, but it's finally here... Wayfinder #10 has arrived! Quick, go get your free copy right now! And if you liked what you see and read (or have constructive criticism on how to make it better), please consider leaving some feedback or a review.

Moar critters

“Moment of Science: Squirrels and Snakeskin: Have you ever heard that some squirrels eat snakeskin? Maybe you haven't, but it's true.” [via the always awesome, Shadi Petrosky]

Nifty ideas for ratfolk to deal with the plethora of deadly snake-inspired predators (as well as naga and nagaji).

“How A Dog Has Lived For Eleven Thousand Years—In Other Dogs: A dog that was born 11,000 years ago stumbled across the elixir of life, and is still alive today. It didn’t find immortality through a diet of mung beans or daily doses of resveratrol. Instead, that ancient dog employed a more radical solution. Some of its cells became cancerous and invaded other dogs, and those dogs then spread its cells to still other dogs. That ancient dog lives on today in the bodies of countless dogs around the world today.” [via artist extrordinaire, Todd Lockwood]

What about a sentient cancer that lives on parasitically in its hosts, influencing their behavior to interact peaceably and/or violently with others to spread communicably? Maybe it also affects its hosts reproductive abilities, helping to spawn many of those “impossible” crossbreeds, amalgams, abominations, and aberrations? Wizards can't be responsible for all of it.

(See also the disturbing case of Henrietta Lacks.)

This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.

I'm supposed to be proofreading more Wayfinder pages right now, but I can't seem to bend my brain to the task. So, I'm gonna drop a buncha links here in no particular order, put We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions in the CD player, and go sit quietly for a bit and marinate about lunch and other things.


Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen: “This Land is Your Land”

Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band: “We Shall Overcome”

Pete Seeger: “Forever Young”

Pete Seeger and Johnny Cash: “Worried Man Blues”

Pete Seeger and Oscar the Grouch: “Garbage”

Pete Seeger: “Abiyoyo” (on Reading Rainbow)

Pete Seeger: “Guantanamera”

Pete Seeger: “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh”

Pete Seeger: “Theme From Goofin' Off Suite”

Pete Seeger and Brother Kirk: “The Ballad of Martin Luther King”

Pete Seeger: “What Did You Learn In School Today?”

Pete Seeger: “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy”

Pete Seeger: “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”

Joni Mitchell and Pete Seeger: “Both Sides, Now”

Pete Seeger: “I’m Gonna Be an Engineer”

Pete Seeger: “Turn, Turn, Turn”

R.I.P., Pete. Hope you bump into Woody and make a joyful noise together. :)

Proofreader, Proofreader

Now I have “Matchmaker” from Fiddler on the Roof in my head.

Just got the expected email needing proofreaders for Wayfinder #10, and replied to help. I can't wait to see what feedback and comments (good and bad) my [REDACTED] gets. It's almost here...

Critter Ideas

“Male characins fish for females with ant-shaped body parts: Anglerfish... have worm-like growths on their heads that act as living fishing lures to entice their prey. The swordtail characin, a small fish from Trinidad and Venezuela, has a similar lure, and it uses it not to attract food, but sex. The male characin has a small bean-shaped patch attached to his gill flaps by a thin thread. When he swims, he holds these ‘flags’ against his body. When he encounters a female, he flares one of them out in front of her. The female clearly thinks that the flag is food, for she bites at it vigorously. While she’s occupied, the male sidles across and impregnates her with his sperm.”

 Filing this away as some possible aquatic version of a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing.

“Absurd Creature of the Week: Foot-Long, Sex-Crazed Snails That Pierce Tires and Devour Houses: ...Florida finds itself overrun once again. The creature was reintroduced here in 2011, and this time, according to Cowie, it may well be ‘bizarre, voodoo-like religious proceedings’  to blame. The snail’s slime, he says, is coveted in certain South American rituals, and practitioners may have released the giant snails into their Miami-area backyards, hoping they’d breed freely....authorities questioned a Florida man said to have convinced his followers to drink the fluid from live giant African land snails, which he sliced open before squeezing the slime into their mouths. If you can believe it, the victims fell violently ill — ironic, what with this being a healing ritual.... Today, Miami is simply overrun with the things. Not only do the giant snails chow on some 500 economically important plants in the area, they’re devouring houses. It seems they have a taste for stucco, which contains precious calcium.... Yes, you can eat giant African land snails. But cook them well. I mean really well. Just boil them for a month. Grill them with napalm if you have it. Because like many snails and semi-slugs, this species carries the deadly rat lungworm. As its name suggests, the parasite attacks rats, which pass the larvae in their feces. Snails that eat this waste are infected, as are folks who eat the snails. In humans, the larvae attack the brain, leading to meningitis and often a pretty horrible death.” 

So many ideas and flavor here. Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha! The calcivore bit reminds me of M'Lee from Farscape. And then there's these two spider tidbits from NatGeo:

“How Do Spiders Fly for Miles? Mystery Solved: As if spiders aren’t unnerving enough, did you know that some of them use an electrostatic charge to leap into the air and fly for miles? They’re probably coming to your house.”

“Spider Webs Reach Out To Flying Insects. Cool, But So What? ...Victor Manuel Ortega-Jimenez and Robert Dudley from the University of California, Berkeley have shown that in the moments before a bee or fly careens into a web, the web reaches out to meet its victim.”

There’s got to be a cool electrostatically-powered/enabled spider in these two ideas. It’d be neat to have the “intensified-empowered-shocking grasp magus” run into something unexpectedly immune/highly-resistant to his schtick and able to use shocking attacks of its own; hope the magus remembered to prep for defense too. Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!

RPG Ideas

“Serfdom of Sulphur Night (Kawah Ijen Volcano Indonesia): For over 40 years, miners have been extracting sulphur from the crater of Kawah Ijen in Indonesia. To double their meagre income, the hardiest of these men work nights, by the electric blue light of the sulphuric acid exhaled by the volcano before climbing up to the top of the volcano with their heavy charge.” [via Inhabitat]

Nice visual to counter the usual red-orange palette of the usual depictions of the Plane of Fire and its inhabitants. (Horrifying working conditions for those poor desperate Indonesian miners though.)

“Mystery of the Lyubov Orlova: Experts say the ship, which is likely to still contain hundreds of rats that have been eating each other to survive, must still be out there somewhere because not all of its lifeboat emergency beacons have been set off.” [via MeFi]

There's a critter and/or mini-adventure/set-piece (haunted by rat spirits?) in this somewhere.

“Bizarre, see-through sea creature baffles angler: "Pictures have been going around of a small jelly like creature a fisherman pulled into his boat off New Zealand. The creature has been identified as a salp, most likely Thetys vagina. Salps may look like jellyfish but they are more closely related to vertebrates.” [via MeFi]

Hmmm, a salp-inspired azata? Maybe a new familiar for flumph and ziphryn mages?