The Real Monstrous Matters: Oliphaunts in India

So this is pretty cool.  A pair of papers recently dropped giving a detailed analysis of a huge elephant skull that was found in India way back in 2000 (alongside a bunch of human tools).  And no, it isn't an Oliphaunt (or Mûmak)...but it is pretty darn big.

One of the papers focuses on the morphology and phylogeny of the skull (and thus the animal), placing it in the genus Palaeoloxodon, which has some of the largest elephants that ever walked the planet.  (There's a really good summary of this paper over at Discover Wildlife.)  It appears that this individual is a second example of a species previously named Palaeoloxodon turkmenicus, which in the range of 4 meters/13 feet at the shoulder (and around 10 tons) was certainly...well, mammoth:

P. turkmenicus and a human silhouette.  Image by Chen Yu; swiped from Discover Wildlife.

It's worth mentioning, though, that there's another species in the genus, Palaeoloxodon namadicus, that some estimates would place as the largest land animal ever at over 5 meters/17 feet, and up to 22 tons in weight!  Here's a nice little video on that one:

(The other paper, meanwhile, has more information on human interaction with the elephant, based upon marks on the bones and tools found nearby.  Both articles point to an age in the range of 300,000 to 400,000 years, which will never stop blowing my mind.)

Of course, even a 22-ton behemoth doesn't measure up to what we saw in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films:

From here

I'm not familiar enough with Tolkien's original works to know if that's the size we should expect based upon the books themselves, but man are they fantastic animals.  (What is it Sam tells Frodo?  "No one at home will believe this...")  They've got to be at least...what, 40 feet tall?  So if we assume, at the high end of Palaeoloxodon, a beast that's 17 feet tall and 22 tons...something roughly the same shape but about 2.35 times the height would probably give us an animal weighing about 13 times as much.  So...around 286 tons?  Did I do that right?  Impressive!  (The Mûmak, not my work...)

And the coolest part is that they're using them as war machines.  I'm sure there have been plenty of takes on Oliphaunts in RPGs over the years, but I think I'll just stat one out for Monstrous Matters purposes on the premise that it's a REALLY big elephant.  It looks like the flagship proboscidean has about 8 or 9 hit dice in a typical d20-based system.  Do I really want to make a Mûmak a monster with like 80 HD, or as I would play it in Monstrous Matters gaming, a Strength value of around 80?  (Rhetorical question...)

Considering the D6-based system I've been playing with, it probably makes the most sense to pull ideas from Mini Six (which includes elephant stats and some nice, simple scaling rules) and WEG's Star Wars Miniatures Battles (which has a nice way of handling creatures by not worrying so much about what humans consider intelligence, and instead giving them an Orneriness Code that's used to test how difficult they are to work with).

From here

Oliphaunt

Scale: +4

Handling Difficulty (trained): 7

20 HP, 11 Defense

Strength 4

Dexterity 1

Knowledge 1

Presence 1

Attacks: 2x Tusk (1D6+4 damage) or Trample (2D6+4 damage plus target is knocked prone)

EDIT:  And I realized I posted this without mentioning the most basic of courtesies...a Happy Halloween to everyone!

Geeky SKAturday: Garden of Love (Don Drummond and the Skatalites)

From The Guardian

Jamaican trombonist Don Drummond is truly one of the giants of ska history.  He was a founding member of the legendary Skatalites...probably the most influential ska band ever...and his gift with melody meant he also wrote a number of their most celebrated songs.

Unfortunately, the last few years of his life were marked by tragedy, but in the time he was with us, Drummond gave us beautiful tunes that will last as forever as tunes can last.

There's a comic series about Drummond's life called Trombone Man: Ska's Fallen Genius that is currently in progress.  Written by Adam Reeves, with art by Constantinos Pissourios, and based on a book by Heather Augustyn, it looks really promising.  You can get the first issue free by going here and follow the Kickstarter for issue #2 here.

From the project's Facebook page

Finally, I'm sure this sound will be at least a little familiar to some of you...

Garden of Love

3rd-level Sound

Casting time: 1 action/8 hours

Range: 150 feet

Duration: Intantaneous effect/1 year

This sound channels the caster's inner love into the growth of plants within a specific area. There are two ways to cast the sound, granting either immediate or long-term benefits.

If you cast this sound using 1 action, choose a point within range. All normal plants in a 100-foot radius centered on that point become thick and overgrown. Movement through the area costs four times its usual value.

You can exclude one or more areas of any size within the sound's area from being affected.

If you cast this sound over 8 hours, you enrich the land. All plants in a half-mile radius centered on a point within range become enriched for 1 year. The plants yield twice the normal amount of food when harvested.

Ezra Brady, the Ranger (because sometimes it's just fun to look at characters)

I would imagine that many of us love RPGs, at least in part, because of the strangely pleasing feeling of having a character summarized on a character sheet.  I don't really even know how to describe it.  There's a certain power to having all these words and numbers mashed together, representing everything needed to put that character through some trials and generate real stories.

It doesn't even have to actually happen.  I've gotten a ton of enjoyment just from reading over species and classes in publications like Dragon and Fight On! and thinking about the characters I COULD make with them.  I am sometimes frustrated by the fact that we don't have unlimited time to enjoy all the cool stuff this world offers, but for some reason, this world of unlimited possibilities of who I could be is reassuring.

The presentation of complete characters, usable in new stories and potentially carrying the legacy of stories they've already experienced, is also one of the things that attracted me to blogging about RPGs.  Others, of course, do it much better and more consistently than I do.  Justin at Halls of the Nephilim, for instance, shares a ton of evocative character and monster builds on his blog.  I don't know how he knocks out those seemingly complete characters in more complex systems like 5E (yep, I called it complex); I would get so bogged down in minutiae that it would cease being fun pretty quickly, but I love looking over the details he puts into characters that start to tell a story before the story even starts. 

And Tim at The Other Side...he's pretty much made an art out of giving us characters for a variety of games, often reusing themes and personalities (like his iconic witch Larina Nix) to fill out a multiverse that can be enjoyed outside of specific game sessions.  (And yes, I do still "mourn" the loss of regular retellings of the story of Tim Knight's Acrobatic Flea on his blog Hero Press, but I'm sure the Flea is living on in many, many corners of the multiverse!)

So, where am I going with this?  Eh...nowhere, really.  I just really like looking at characters sometimes and wanted an excuse to post this guy...Ezra Brady.  He was my character in a 3.5 game about...checks notes...THIRTEEN years ago...?  (Oh man I'm getting old.)  Named after two Linneman dogs, he would eventually multiclass in (if I recall correctly) a third-party or homebrewed Pathfinder class called the Beastmaster, picking up an animal companion of his own.  I'm pretty sure it was a wolf and had a produce-based name in honor of my girl Celery.

Anyway...thanks, John A., for letting Ezra run around your world of Dragnaria!  Here's how he started, and down below, I'll stat him out as I would for a starting character using my current system of choice.  (Note:  I was sort of obsessed with the idea of portal fantasy at the time, so I was very glad John the DM was willing to let me run with the backstory I wrote...)

In hindsight, I wonder if using a mini with a red beard was a bit of a Mary Sue move...

Ezra Brady

Human Ranger 1

Str 10  Con 9 (-1)  Dex 16 (+3)  Int 13 (+1)  Wis 11  Cha 8 (-1)

SAVES  Fort +1  Rflx +5  Will +0

AC 15  FF 12  Touch 13

HP 9

Deity: a god/God  Alignment: NG  Init: -3  Move: 30 ft

ABILITIES  Favored Enemy: Orc; Track; Wild Empathy

FEATS  Weapon Focus (Longbow); Toughness x2; Point Blank Shot

FLAWS  Noncombatant; Unreactive

COMPOSITE LONGBOW +5 (+6 <=30 ft), dmg 1d8, piercing, crit x3, rng 110 ft, wt 3#

LONGSWORD -1, dmg 1d6, slashing, crit 19-20 x2, wt 4#

LANGUAGES  Native tongue (English), Common

SKILLS  Climb 4 (+4), Handle Animal 4 (+3), Heal 4 (+4), Ride 4 (+7), Survival 4 (+4), Swim 4 (+4), Craft (Bowmaking) 4 (+5), Knowledge (Nature) 4 (+5)

GEAR/MONEY  Composite Longbow (100 gp, 3#), Arrows (20) (1 gp, 3#), Longsword (15 gp, 4#), Leather Armor (10 gp, 15#), 114 gp

Ezra Brady led a pretty normal life in “our” world, although it was a life filled with secure adventure. Ezra earned a modest living working at REI, filling his free time with outdoor activities like hiking and spelunking. One day, on an expedition in a cave in central Illinois, Ezra’s gear failed him, and he went hurdling earthward through a cold pool on the cave’s floor. Surprisingly, he wasn’t injured at all, but when he emerged through the water’s surface, he realized the cavern around him had changed greatly. Climbing to dry land and slowly coming to his senses, Ezra heard noise around him. He wouldn’t know what they were at the time, but there were orcs at work.

The orcs captured Ezra, stealing all of his earthly belongings. Through guile and sheer effort, Ezra escaped from his captors and found friendship with an elven hermit living in the mountainous surroundings. This mentor taught him to hunt, to survive in the wilderness around him, and to fight back against the single minded orcs. After several months of tutelage, which included extensive training in the land’s native tongue, Ezra ventured eastward in hopes of finding a way back home. He eventually found himself in a village that seemed to be marked by strange happenings of late; hoping that this might be connected to his awkward appearance in this world, Ezra decided to see what he could learn in the charming but frightening hamlet.

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It's really just an old plastic D&D mini that I colored (just the cloak) with a black sharpie.  It probably wasn't the best idea to do a quick 'n dirty re-base so that he now looks like he's standing in chocolate mousse...

Ezra Brady

Species: Human

Home: Earth

Current Location: Dragnaria

10 HP, 14 Defense (leather armor)

Strength 2
Dexterity 5
Knowledge 3
Presence 2

Skills: Bows +4, Tracking +3, Animal Empathy +2, Medicine +1

Languages: English, Common

Goal: To get back home!

Quote: "I have a feeling I'm not in Illinois anymore..."

Geeky SKAturday: Cupid (Amy Winehouse...among others...!)

Hey, it's still SKAturday!

It may not be proper to note Amy Winehouse in the title up there (vs. the other artists that have taken on this classic), but it's her cover that inspired this post by being in regular rotation for me lately.   (If you've never checked it out, Amy's ska stuff is really good...)

Here's her take:

"Cupid" was written and originally released as an R&B song by Sam Cooke in 1961...

The song has seen a number of outstanding cover versions over the years, some of which sit happily enough in a Rudie's wheelhouse to earn it a place in the canon of ska.  Johnny Nash, the American singer-songwriter who perhaps most famously gave the world the song "I Can See Clearly Now," released a rocksteady version in 1969:

American ska mainstays the Slackers covered it on their collection Lost and Found and regularly played it live for quite a while...

And the version that introduced me to the tune was performed by the Usuals, a Florida ska band that released it on a really cool red, heart-shaped record back in 1998 (which also included the incredible song "Hey Boy," and was very kindly given to me long ago by my buddy Jake):

So...let's make it a sound for a Rudie!

I figure a Charm spell plus a love connection should probably be tougher than Charming a Person but easier than Charming a Monster...so maybe 3rd level?  Then, we can add in an element of a Philter of Love...removing the "if a gender you're usually attracted to" clause because really, if we're going to the level of creepy where we're forcing amorous feelings on a character, why would we put a gender restriction on it?

Cupid

3rd-level Sound

Range: 30 feet

Duration: 1 hour

Save: Wisdom

You call for Cupid's arrow to be targeted at a creature you can see within range.  If it fails the saving throw, it is charmed by another being of your choice for the duration of the spell and will regard that being as its true love while charmed.  When the spell wears off, the creature will remember the events of the previous hour and, if sufficiently intelligent, know that it was emotionally manipulated.

A Goblinoid Family Tree

(Or really a phylogenetic tree.  I just liked the sound of family tree more in the title.)

So, in reading a post by James over at Grognardia, about Dragon articles on fantasy languages, I started to wonder if sometimes I just don't fly my geek flag high enough.  As in...maybe I'm not appropriately minmaxing the fun I could get out of the RPG hobby by not allowing myself to just go nuts like I want to as a nerdy scientist who also loves games about elves and goblins.

James posted a tree of language families, originally appearing in Dragon #66, that shows the development of the Middle Elfin tongue into a variety of fae languages.  And it's awesome.  I love that sort of stuff, so why don't I do more of it?  I wonder sometimes if I remain so focused on having an "anything goes" attitude about the world(s) I game in (like the setting for the Monstrous Matters campaign) that I miss out on creating things that would genuinely make me smile, even if I don't completely buy into all of the specifics.

With that in mind, I'm going to consider this a worthwhile way to spend a few minutes.  Here's a phylogenetic tree of a few goblinoid species, along with a few creatures from that galaxy far, far away that I suspect might be closely related.  (If you have access to genetic data, please let me know; this is just based on physical characteristics.)

Images from the Forgotten Realms Wiki, Wookieepedia, and Scryfall

I feel like this just opens up a whole world of stories for how these species became distributed as they are.  Maybe I'll follow up there.  (If you'd like to see some of my related ramblings, please check out the stuff I've written about the Fantaspora Hypothesis and #WookieesAreBugbears.)

Thanks for looking!  Now, for a character (cribbed from RPGGamer.org):

Image from Wookieepedia

Wicket

Full name:  Wicket Wystri Warrick

Species: Ewok

Home: Endor

15 HP, 12 Defense (small size)

Strength 3
Dexterity 3
Knowledge 2
Presence 4

Skills: Survival +4, Thrown Weapons +3, Languages +2, Climb +1

Goals: Helping and protecting his friends

Quote: "Goodbye.  Good-bye."

Cobra and the Democrats, at it again

Oh.  Man.  Come on, America.  And now that I probably have enough words in these first few sentences that I've moved beyond the little blurb that might pop up in the few feeds this blog is in...y'know, so I don't shock with my language or anything...holy shit, what is going on?!

I kind of can't believe that my enjoyment of the intentionally ridiculous schemes employed by the international terrorist organization known as Cobra must now be tempered by the fact that Americans are being manipulated into believing that actual Cobra tactics are being used on us by...our own government, I guess...?  Coastal elites?  Scientists?  Just a bunch of Democrats?  Who tf knows.

Anyway, if you don't know what I'm rambling about...I guess there are evil folks controlling the weather.  And they sent those recent hurricanes to us...causing legitimate disasters...in order to target conservative voters.  And mine lithium.  Or...something else evil.  I'd say you can't make this stuff up, but apparently you really can, and it might just become the batshitcrazy antics of a cartoon weapons dealer who wears a metal mask, or it could become a real belief of the American public.  One or the other, because why not?

Destro and the Weather Dominator; from Joepedia

So yeah, scientists and relief workers are getting threats for doing their jobs.  Meanwhile, misinformation and pointless shit-stirring have a real impact on people's lives in a world where all guns don't shoot red and blue lasers, and everyone doesn't get to eject right before their plane explodes.

Maybe I should just be happy that I've always been more of a Joe comics guy than a Joe cartoon guy.

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Anyway, if you happen to see this and would like to send any financial help to those affected by the recent US weather disasters...and believe me, I understand that there are really effed up things all over the world, amongst which you must divide your shareable money...here are some orgs that we feel good about supporting.  (Please note that this list is very much focused on western North Carolina and includes some organizations focused on nonhuman animals, because that's where Laura and I used to live -- and have friends who have been greatly impacted -- and because we're crazy animal people.  However, help is still needed in Florida -- and probably elsewhere -- as well, and I simply believe all beings are worth helping in these situations.  So, please don't hate.)

BeLoved Asheville

World Central Kitchen

Brother Wolf Animal Rescue

Asheville Humane Society

Animal Haven of Asheville

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Hrm.  Now because I'm still a nerd, here's the real designer of the Weather Dominator...

From Joepedia

Destro

Full name:  James McCullen Destro XXIV

Weapons Manufacturer; Owner, M.A.R.S. Industries

15 HP, 12 Defense (light body armor, steel mask)

Strength 3
Dexterity 2
Knowledge 4
Presence 3

Skills: Engineering +4, Business +3, Intimidation +2, Firearms +1

Goals: Winning; profit; family honor; protection of the Baroness (like she really needs protecting)

Quote: "They shall learn the price of their arrogance!"

Geeky SKAturday: Moon Hop (Derrick Morgan)

In preparing my magnum opus, I'm trying to nail down a simple yet flavorful way to handle spellcasting.  My approach for now (in addition to looking at how it's handled in games like Mini Six and FIE, I SAY!) is just to develop ideas I've had for the 5E Rudie class I wrote about a while back.  If I can make it work for the spell-like Sounds of a Rudie, I'm pretty sure I can make it work for the stuff a wizard or cleric would cast.

So here's more low-hanging fruit, reskinned and rephrased from that SRD we all know so well.  The song is Derrick Morgan's 1969 classic "Moon Hop," which celebrated the moon landing (is that obvious? apologies if so).  It might be a bit more well known to many through the variant performed by Symarip, which apparently became a hit in the UK in like 1980 on the heels of 2tone's popularity.  And of course, the place I heard it first (and which I would imagine is the way many people learned of the song) was the Specials' incorporation of it into their sets during the height of their popularity.  (I heard recordings; I didn't see those sets.)  All three of these versions are below...

The disclaimers:  (1) Yeah, it really isn't a ska song (other than maybe the Specials' version), but it is certainly in the very-closely-related early reggae style.  (This is often called skinhead reggae, of course...I just avoid that term sometimes, depending upon the audience, since the term skinhead has taken on a very different and very problematic meaning for many people.)  And (2) I know an accusation came out toward Derrick Morgan about a year ago that is also pretty terrible.  Obviously this doesn't impact the quality of his music from 55 years ago, but for some reason I feel like it has to be said, and for what it's worth, I haven't seen any resolution to the issue that makes me believe it has to be true.

Wow...okay, that was way too long...here's the Sound and the songs...!

Moon Hop

1st-level Sound

Range: Touch

Duration: 1 minute

One creature's jump height and distance are tripled for the duration of the sound.

The original:

Symarip's version:

The Specials' take: