Review Review: Class Review: Zmia Garina’s Completely Normal Girl With Too Much Blood

 

Still from Dracula (1931) featuring Frances Dade as Lucy Westenra and Count Dracula as himself

Fulfilling my own prompt, reviewing another's blogpost, for Glaugust 2026. I actually found it difficult to find the right sort of post to respond to, since there's many great posts in the glog scene that I just have unvarnished appreciation for, and so there's little engaging in my review of it. Vivanter's December 2024 review of a class by Zmia Garina, the Completely Normal Girl With Too Much Blood, is actually interesting in itself, and certainly worthy of comment, even at a remove of over a year. 

It takes a certain amount of bravery to turn a legitimate analytical lens to someone else's blogpost. This is someone you know in the remote-yet-personal way of being fellow netizens of a discord server. You might play games with them or chew the fat, and any criticism seen as being negative feels way more personal than reviewing a movie by some famous director you'll never meet.

And yet even the most casual blogpost engaging with the hobby can be engaged as art or as rhetoric, and there's something satisfying in taking an engaging OSR post and "taking it seriously," laying out how you think it works and what it has to say. This is what Vivanter's review is taking up, which is all the more impressive because unlike his other class reviews he is grappling with the topic of playing "a girl who by her very nature (biological and mystical) attracts the violence of male strangers", and fair enough. If I was writing such a review, I would definitely be nervous that if I didn't write it perfectly, my acquaintance would think I was calling them an abuse apologist or something.

Is Vivanter's review written perfectly? I don't know, it's well-considered and well-written, but the achievement isn't in making it impossible to be misunderstood but trusting that if you write carefully and with good intentions, people you care about will take it in its intended spirit. In this wild world, that trust is never guaranteed to be fulfilled. A dragon is something which is hard to kill, and yet you must try.

Notably, the acquaintance of the reviewer and the reviewed here facilitates the author to respond. If you follow the link to Zmia Garina's original review, you'll see that a sentence has been crossed out and a note added accepting one of the main points of Vivanter's review. This isn't the sort of thing that we typically consider when we think about critical review. The artifact being analyzed doesn't usually textually change as a result of review. Yet in the world of DIY RPGs of the OSR, it's NBD to not only incorporate suggestions and points of contentions in later posts, but to edit the original piece.

With preliminary discussion of the context around the review covered, I move now to reviewing the review itself.

Vivanter's immediate consideration with the Completely Normal Girl With Too Much Blood is a very sensible one. He notes that the class, with abilities like "Object of Desire" and "Can I Fix Him?" is engaging directly with the fraught tropes and attitudes around girlhood, toxic romance, and essentially the sexual horror/horrific sexualism of the vampire story. His review does not preclude the suitability for such themes at the table, but observes that such themes might be a surprise to the incautious DM. The class is written with a light-hearted tone and makes jocular references to tumblr memes, and while it has a couple warning notes about keeping things comfortable for the table, Vivanter says that you "should have a plan for working through these themes with your table that exceeds a simple safety conversation".

This is such a reasonable suggestion and it is based in such a reasonable concern that I surprise myself a little bit by reflexively disagreeing. The extent to which these themes would benefit from extra discussion above and beyond the basic will obviously vary group to group, so the first thing I imagine is adding this class to a game with the people I usually play with and expecting no issues. I would definitely want to establish a consensus about where our lines are for themes of abuse, interpersonal dynamics, and blood-letting, but isn't that sort of the simple safety conversation-- coming to consensus on subject matter?

On the face of it, I would say yes. But discussions of subject matter are sort of bald without discussion of tone and genre, and it's in those determinations that I think a lot of the tension of Vivanter's review lies. The difference between a relationship that's "fascinatingly complex" and one that's "concerningly abusive" often lies in questions of genre.

The way Vivanter writes his review, I would say he is totally aware of the significance of this distinction, but I would have wanted to see the topic treated more broadly and more explicitly. He mentions that Tiqqun's Preliminary Materials For a Theory of the Young-Girl can be "usefully applied" alongside sources like Twilight, but mixing your condiments in this way is what I would caution people to think twice about and discuss with their table above and beyond normal conversational aids. There's a stance towards "fucked up" romances popular among the same tumblr set that produced the memes which inspired this class that claims some agency for the Completely Normal Girl. 

 What does it mean to say "i could make him worse"? It's a term I only hear used for fictional characters, whose bad traits can be safely enjoyed from the remove of being totally outside the context of their existence. The speaker can ignore or disengage in the medium the character exists in, or personally rewrite it. Suffering caused by a "toxic" character can be romanticized, limited, and controlled-- the paramour can be abusive, but can't abuse the reader or the author. To say "i could make him worse" is to put oneself in the role of the Completely Normal Girl, but maintaining some of that authorial stance which affords the invulnerability of framing, which allows the player of the Completely Normal Girl whatever they get out of participating in a story about dating a devoted yet bloodthirsty vampire without the potential for real-life harm. It's a view of fictional abuse that allows it to be problematic (and we all love to grapple with interesting fictional problems) without itself being a problem, such as would necessitate the end of the relationship dynamic.

 This complexity, through which the same relationship trope is either light-hearted or deeply challenging depending on tone and genre, is why I think Vivanter says Zmia Garina "leads the class with a note that it 'touches on themes of romance and sexuality,' but the text doesn't directly contain mechanisms for either, so we must conclude that the rest of the class takes this relationship dynamic as subtext." And since that subtext may drastically differ depending on the background familiarity and buy-in of the players, I have talked myself into agreeing with Vivanter's point about the need to go over things with the players extra-well before introducing the class to the average game. I just wish he had spoken more to this point, so I could see if we were thinking along the same lines or if my reasoning is totally alternate to his.

At least half of the review covers this interesting thematic topic in this extensive way, to the point where the review of the actual mechanics the class uses feels like a secondary matter. I am falling into the same pattern. His description of Vitae, the defining resource of the class, skips over a couple of points that I think bear mentioning. The amount of Vitae a Completely Normal Girl With Too Much Blood generates is actually quite a lot, and managing it is likely to be a big deal for the first two levels, when it's going to fill (one supposes) 3d6 inventory slots per day if not quickly spent. The most potent ability the class gets is at the C template, when Vitae no longer fills inventory slots. There's something to be said also about the idea that this is a class where advancement largely comes from a succession of realizations about oneself, as opposed to improvement to become worthy, a classic gendered storytelling distinction.

Vivanter's advice about the potential upside of more guidance on the introduction of vampires is a straightforward good point. I think there's something really neat in how the class imagines a progression of randomly encountered monsters being converted into hirelings and then retainers. The procedure feels like it would slot satisfyingly into a standard dungeon adventure game, and yet I feel like if I ran this I would make a simple generator for romance-ready gothic monsters just so I have something to go off of when designing what would eventually become dozens of potential suitors. 

The review has a few more thoughts about the class features, but I don't feel the need to comment on those comments individually. They're well-considered, and where I might disagree nevertheless I'm glad to read them and try them on. It's a rare compliment to see someone thinks about your glog class with this degree of care, and I appreciate that Vivanter's review embraces the concerns and considerations useful to playing a glog class off of someone's blog. Ultimately, while I'm not a partisan for constantly reviewing everything and making the blogosphere a more "serious" realm for "critique," where it appears I wouldn't object if it held as a goal Vivanter's approach.

 

The Laws of Man

Quick premise on da boss's orders: 

Shrewfield-On-Avon, a rustic village whose particular location has swamped it with glaziers and pane-mongers after a longstanding window excises has ended. Home to a hydraulics inventor/weapons tycoon who has whipped up a great mechanical manor, all pumps and engines and mills and floor-to-ceiling glass. 

Recently people of the village have been losing time, sometimes coming to with some half-formed machine they were seemingly in the middle of building. As the amnesiac tinkering continues, some start to drown themselves and no one knows why. Everyone blames the tycoon, but can see everything that goes on in his glass mansion except for his automatic water closet and his daughter’s boudoir, both of which are walled with stone.

Turns out, all the tycoon’s piping has awoken a chthonic spirit of some kind— you might call her a cave fairy or cobold or  echo. She’s fascinated with using newfangle hydraulic power to increase her own abilities and suborn the surface world into her own ambitions for underdark politics, so she’s been belching cave gas up from ponds and streams. When someone breathes enough of the gas, she can control them for a while. Other than these duped and temporary bodies, she has only one ally— the daughter of the tycoon, whom she has seduced. With the spirit’s instructions, the daughter has begun convincing her father to invite a loose cannon admiral to court her— a deadly acquisition for the spirit!

 

Gloggies Nominations 2025

 This year, the Gloggies follow a democratic process, in which members of the community are called upon to nominate the posts that stuck with them and inspired them, for later voting and accolade.

I really appreciate the community events that come up in the GLoG server. Despite owning the server, I'm the author of very few of these events, and it's the work of civically-minded luminaries like Vivanter, or Hilander with his GLoGmas hosting, or Locheil with their GLaugust MCing, that make these events so vibrant.

To select my nominations, I scrolled through blog posts made so far this year and clicked on some of my favorites, the ones I kept thinking about since they were posted. If you read every blogpost in my glog server, you would be reading about three a day, and I know I ended up reading only a fraction of them. So as you are reminded of some of the best-appreciated blogposts, I'd recommend maybe looking at a post from someone you don't normally follow and commenting on their work. Certainly we have many great names who have come to grace the server who were not well-known a year ago.

Nominations

Best Dungeon Post: Alxin Lake Caravanaserai, by Locheil. This great scenario shows the strength of Eil's writing and her attention to detail. The whole thing fits together as a mystery, a dungeon, and a story on its own.

Best Class Post: The Ichabod, by TheFirstGokun. An example of his easy and evocative style, and a character type I would love to see explored in a campaign.

Honorable Mention: A trio of classes from Locheil's bespoke single-level cloak-and-sword class bandwagon. Vivanter's Academian (neat worldbuilding, full realization of concept), TheisticGilthoniel's Huguenot (charmingly direct translation of history), and The Spaniard, by SunderedWorldDM (needs no explanation). Bandwagons like this really show the strength of collective creativity, and I think these classes are better than the sum of their parts because of how they all eventually relate to each other.

Best Monster Post: The d666 Monster Generator, by Louis and Locheil. Really fun to play around with, and created some really cool creatures.

Best Rules Post: The 2 Arbitrary Beings Who Are Exes Table by Louis. There were a lot of one-neat-trick posts this year, and this one was my favorite.

Honorable Mention: Esprit, recorded here by Lexi. While this was a hallmark of Locheil's bandwagon, I think the mechanic itself is just rock-solid.

Best Lore Post: Arise, Ye Wretched by Occultronics. Her bombastic and vital Hex setting takes a lot of the footwork, creative energy, and enthusiasm that I previously associated with Josie's ancient settings and puts it in this whole other milieu that just works so well. Sometimes it feels like a more grounded and modern setting can trade off with storytelling possibilities, but this just doesn't feel like it's the case here. Seems really fun.

Honorable Mention: I'll Have You Die for This! by Locheil. A trademark wit shows his trademark wit.

Best Theory Post: Firearms in Dungeon Crawls, by G. R. Michael. Just spitting the facts. In the past, I've complimented Michael's settings sense of materiality, and this is a good example of the mastery of basic facts that makes a DM seem authoritative to the laity.

Best Non-Dungeon Adventure Post*: I made this category separate from the others because I didn't know where to put those adventures that weren't per se dungeons, and it felt weird to place them under Rules or Other. I nominate The Heart of Communication by Regalia. Great execution on concept and thematic consistency, and some really fun details. I love Wolphelia d’Ream, the literal wolf who is the fourth most eligible lady in the region.

Best Other Post: the Spiceomancy Trading Card Game, by TheFirstGokun. Not only impressive for the art put into it and the special touches, but for showing the power of imagination. You could keep clicking the generator until you owned every card, you could could neglect to delete cards you trade away. But that would suck and you don't do that.

Honorable Mention: Anybody Remember the Gallon Man? by Mergo-Kan. When I was making the first draft of my noms, I knew that the Craftsman was going to be my nomination for Other, and as I was scrolling through I made Anybody Remember the Gallon Man by honorable mention. Then I noticed that the Craftsman was actually from 2024, which meant that for the ten minutes or so before I remembered the card game, Gallon Man was my #1 choice for miscellaneous glog posts in 2025.

GLoGmas 2025: A Single Season, Never Two

 Merry Glogmas to Mr Ampora! Very happy for your new blog, and hoping many good things for you in the new year.

1st Level

1. Cure Light Wounds (also called "Cup of Cheer")
2. Detect Evil
3. Detect Magic
4. Light
5. Protection from Evil
6. Purify Food and Water
7. Remove Fear
8. Resist Cold

2nd Level

1. Bless
2. Find Traps
3. Hold Person
4. List*
5. Resist Fire
6. Silence 15’ Radius
7. Dans Un Sac*
8. Speak with Animals

3rd Level

1. Continual Light (Continual Darkness)
2. Cure Disease
3. Flight of Animal*
4. Know Disposition*
5. Remove Curse
6. Click, Click, Click*

4th Level

1. Create Water
2. Cure Serious Wounds
3. Neutralize Poison
4. Protection from Evil 10’ Radius
5. Speak with Plants
6. Dower*

5th Level

1. Council*
2. Create Food
3. Dispel Evil
4. Insect Plague
5. Quest
6. Reassembly*

List

For one hour, the caster can stare at someone for a round to determine if they're naughty or nice. This is a different sort of distinction to alignment, for many who are naughty are good at heart.

Dans Un Sac

For one hour, the caster empowers a bag or other vessel, allowing it to carry extra goods weight 500 pounds without burdening the person carrying it.

Flight of Animal

For two hours, the caster urges an animal into a spirit of lightness of spirit sufficient to fly, moving at galloping speed. This may cause a morale roll for an untrained and unprepared animal, and the caster has no extra means of communicating with the creature.

Know Disposition

For one hour, the caster can sense the direction and degree of excitement of a creature they focus on, up to 120' away. This can either be a specific individual or a particular type of being.

Click, Click, Click

For ten minutes, the caster and their belongings become hyperflexible, able to slip through any gap three inches wide or wider.

Dower

The caster conjures a bag full of 200 gold coins which must be given in true charity, lest they take another step down the path of Krampification

Council

In heated and pedantic debate lasting at least a full day, the caster and any number of clerics aiding them ask the gods a number of yes/no questions equal to the number of clerics participating and gets true divine answers. Save vs spells or one of the clerics becomes your mortal rival, seduced by the darke whisperes of semiorthodoxy.

Reassembly

Carefully put together up to five creatures who have died from violence within three days (or been preserved). They return to life, weak and sick for a couple weeks. If there's a chance you mixed up some pieces or are missing bits, the DM will make a save vs wands for them and adjudicate potential possessions, Phineas Gagery, and so on.

The Better Parts of Earth for Hexmaps

For some reason, we all like to see real-life places covered in hexmaps. Because the six-mile hex can contain so much, it can be easy to assume that you can fit something like the USA or the continent of Europe in a large but reasonable-size hexmap. But if you've ever looked into this, you'll find that inclination is wrong. Six-mile hexes contain a lot, but the Earth has a lot a lot a lot of ground to cover, and if, like the dedicated Idraluna Archives you make hexmaps at this scale for much of the Earth, you'll find that a lot of regions are just vast swathes of hundreds of hexes of tundra or desert or something, not very dynamic or interesting.

So I'm taking the liberty of going through all Idraluna Archive's maps and pointing out the ones I think might be best inspiration for a hexmap for a campaign or wargame. The maps Thomas provides are all kind of low-resolution, so I think it's more likely you'd want to use them as direct and detailed inspiration for your own more gameplay-focused take with your own system's needs. Go 75% real-life topography, 25% Outdoor Survival chunkiness and contrived routing challenges.

So, without further ado, the maps I think have a pleasing mixture of terrain, routing choice, and inspiring beauty:

Africa

Nigeria, especially the southern half.

Upper Nile

West Africa

African Great Lakes

African Great Lakes. Look at those swirling biomes and convenient water routes.

Asia

Dzungaria (#1 for mountain pass-centric games)

Fertile Crescent, avoiding the swell of Arabia (which is always done dirty by hexmaps)

Manchura

honorable mention to Borneo for if you need a generic island hexmap.

Dzungaria. Plenty of choke points for a creative DM to put some dragon den or humanoid city in.

Europe

Iberia (#1 for generic European fantasy games)

South Central Europe

Anatolia

Iberia. Some hard barriers, some softer ones. Good mixture of wide homogenous zones with more varied ones.

North America

New England
Central Mexico
Great Plains (more homogenous but still has variety)

New England. Simple but pleasing. Mountains you can try to route around.

Oceania

Tasmania

Tasmania. There weren't a lot of maps for Oceania, but this one is okay.

Oceans

None

South America

South American Pampas

East Brazil

Mato Grosso (#1 for heavily forested games)

East Brazil. Lovely mix in the east there.

There it is, the cream of 118+ maps. If I had to pick one to run a game for, I might pick Iberia, especially if gameplay would only occur in a smaller section; or the African Great Lakes, especially if long-distance travel would come up a lot. Such realistic scales are unfortunately a bit too big for most campaign purposes, but you can always take the juiciest section from the quivering whole, or reproduce the whole map at a different scale. Thanks again to Idraluna Archives for going through the work of making hexmaps for so much of the Earth. Very interesting stuff.

Humbling the Human Instant (Monsters)

More fun playing with Loch and Louis's monster generator. This time, I mostly went through a list of half-formed monster ideas and used the generator to flesh them out. This is why so many are humanoid in form.

For your own ease, here is an automated version of that generator using Spwack's list-to-html marvel: 

Pilate Bush

Grow slowly, only reliably reaching ambulatory adulthood near cataclysms and old battle sites. Lacking the full spiritual dimension of humanoids (which they are far more closely related to than true bushes), they seek to understand the divine spark of conscious life, like anatomists from the good old Burke and Hare days. They study victims spread-eagle, eventually giving up, drinking down the blood, and moving on.

HD 4. Armor: Needles. Attack: +2 impale/impale/impale/impale. Mind like a beefeater. Moves like an octopus on land— not apt, but surprisingly quick. # 1d2

• Needles: provide armor as leather, bypassed by sawblades, machetes, or fire.
• Impale: On hit, the target takes d6 damage. Until the Bush is dead, the target must make a grapple check to free themself from the needles. On a failure, they must either remain where they are or make a save vs death as they slide off the branch.
• Organization: tend to chase off others of their kind, but 50% chance an adult Pilate Bush is training its 2 HD offbudding. On that Treasure Type V lifestyle.

Eukaryote

Ancient pre-humanoids, chitinous guys with odd jaws and experimental shapes. Some tall and thin, others bell-shaped, others squat, and so on. Suspicious of intricate crafts, they count loyalty as the highest technology. Known for their anaugers, those who seek glimpses of the upcoming ages and help their community to plan for them.

HD 1. Armor: as chain. Attack: weapon or Friend. Mind like a first-generation business owner. Moves like an old man with a cane, swims with hesitant grace.

• Friend: Once all life feared the dry, deadly land. It was lightning, dancing light, that told them "I will go with you. I will bless and better you," In one round, a eukaryote can call out a spot for their friend to strike, and the vicinity goes tense with ozone. In the next round, the friend pounces, all flame and light— save or take 3d6 damage and everyone can see your skeleton.
• Lycanthropy: The moon has slain many Eukaryotes for fleeing his service in preference for the high-falutin land. A Eukaryote gets -3 reaction to all encounters found in the moonlight, and attacks against one in moonlight crit on a 19 or 20.
• Organization: undirected and ad hoc. Often encountered in groups of 1d8. Their spokesfigure is usually a carpenter or warrior. Elder Eukaryotes grow fatter shells and an extra HD, and are afforded bone kama as status symbols. Communities have Treasure Type D.

Carbonifer

Claim to have invented fire, but you'd think they'd be a bit more bored of it if that was the case. Broad-faced, neckless humanoid amphibians, they are genial swamp-dwellers who have through intelligence fucked up their ancestral niche. As a species, the carbonifer mates in the hot, dark summer, but suitable conditions can be simulated with enough smoke and fire. Small wars have been fought merely to gain hold of enough dry, flammable buildings to set the mood for an army's single's night. A more enthusiastic collier there has never been.

HD 2. Armour: sometimes. Attack: as weapon, or +2 tail whip 1d4. Mind like an impatient workman. Moves like a monkey in an axolotl's body.

• Coalsmoke: Groups of Carbonifers love to burn their so-special smokes, especially in exigency. Each subtle hue in the coal can be brought out by the patient screever to filter out some behavior or perception. This one filters out anger and fear, and thus pacifies. That one renders impossible the concept of an "army." When you breathe the smoke, save or have the intended concept filtered from you for 1d6 Turns. 
• Sluggard: Overexcitement mingles the fresh and spent blood in a Carbonifer's heart. They get -4 to grapples, physical saves, and the like.
• Organization: found in crews of 1d4 x 2, always operating in even numbers to facilitate use of the butty system. Carbonifers prefer their mixed coalsmokes to most magic items, but can meet or exceed the craft of dwarves with ten times the bulk and a steady-burning power source. Treasure Type G.

Nosto

Dignified and romantic, subtle and shrill, everyone dreams of dating a bat-person who fell from the moon in a meteor. But truth is often the disappointment of our dreams. These are a stoic and cynical lot, on a reckless mission to gain their way back home.

HD 1/2. Armor: Grace. Attack: Foil 1d6 or Bite. Mind like a James Bond. Moves in brief flutters, unused to the weighty earth.

• Grace: When holding still, unarmored. Otherwise, armor as plate and +3 to physical saves.
• Bite: Save or be suborned, charmed by the little guy hanging off your neck or arm, their skull flattening around their mouth. Control lasts for 25 rounds, minus victim's Charisma score. If the Nosto is killed before the duration ends, the affect [sic] continues until removed, dealing 1 damage to the victim.
• Organization: Nostos operate in isolated cells of 1d4+2, with a 2 HD handler. They are known to use magic wands and scrolls. Treasure Type S.

Hadean

Rocky centauroids from a world like our own volcanic past. They regard our experience of liquid water and plate tectonics as a pitiable state. Morose, cynical, and egalitarian.

HD 3. Armor: Rock. Attack: +2 (+4 when charging) Sledgehammer 1d8 or +3 Rescue. Mind like an umarell. Moves like an overladen deer.

• Rock: provides AC as chain armor, and DR 2 vs attacks that wouldn't be very effective against a rock guy, like a sword slash.
• Rescue: especially charitable Hadeans may try to carry off targets from their humid, soft-fleshed environs and rescue them to a nearby volcano or chasm. When a Hadean charges or rides by a foe, they can roll vs the target's AC to sweep them up. Someone who grapples their way free of a Hadean may risk 1d6 road rash damage (leather armor negates).
• Avert!: Hadeans regard lithostratic inquiry and geology to be the key to avoiding liquidity on their own world, and must save or be fascinated by sufficiently interesting minerals, fossils, or stones.
• Guileless: The unicameral Hadean mind is unaccustomed to flim-flammery, rhetoric, or legalism. It cannot assess whether a complicated series of logical statements are straightforward or deceptive, and thus many Hadeans regard the humanoids of our world like tottering tricksters. They get disadvantage vs. mazes.
• Organization: 2d4 clades (1d6) make up a pride, led by a 5 HD mare and a 4 HD quartermaster, who has a 50% chance of owning 1d4 stones similar to our world's feather token. Instead of a tree token, for instance, it might summon a lattice of gypsum. Instead of an anchor, a lodestone. Instead of a bird, a mole. Treasure Type A.

Pangean

Four-foot-tall brightly colored vulturoids, with round teeth, slutty mynacean garments, and advanced glass eyewear. Used to be top dog before their supercontinent-spanning empire was split apart by warring successor-generals and tectonic plates. Though their society is egalitarian and still very advanced in ingenuity, Pangean society at large disdains most of the world as jumped-up former colonies and ungrateful yokels. Nabobs seek to recreate their "golden age" society in missions across the continents, never admitting that the golden age they chase is long-set.

HD 1. Armor: none. Attack: Spell or Mammalesis Staff. Mind like a Lepidopterist. Moves like a vulture.

• Mammalesis Staff: used to keep servitor species in line, way back when. The target saves or grows more hirsute, spawns extra ossicles, broadens their forehead, and/or lactates. This deals 1d6 damage and 1d3 dexterity damage. If a creature is reduced to 0 dexterity in this way, they explode into a pile of live young of a new species. A staff has 2d6 charges.
• Dirge: to maintain their society's haughty and exclusive customs, Pangeans are stuffed with cultural programming and a literary canon like they're foie gras. If anyone plays the Notes of Noy, or quotes other examples of the works memorializing their lost empire, Pangeans must test Morale or flee and weep, thinking only of their losses.
• Organization: expeditions of 2d6 Pangeans, led by one 3 HD professor (75% chance of magic staff, 50% chance of 1d3 spell scrolls, 25% chance of treasure map) and accompanied by 1d20 non-Pangean servants. Treasure Type E.

Schioppa

Captured valkyries, left to winnow and molt in cages of armor plates, too clumsy to heal or carry, and too ill-oiled to sing thee to thy rest.  Most confuse them for ensorcelled armor with plaster wings. Sorrowing weapons of war, bound to bound forward like charging destriers to break a line, and leave the souls of the vanquished for the crows. Some wander the byways now, stuck in a never-ending pilgrimage, laying strangers low for there is nothing else they can do and no one to stop them.

HD 3. Armor: plate. Attack +6 Barrel Through 3d8 or +2 Buffet 1d8. Moves like a nurse just coming off a long shift, or like a drunken bull. Mind like a rambo.

• Barrel Through: with at least 20 feet of space to build up speed, a Schioppa can run straight through formations, walls, and even your scrawny ass, essentially running a path of destruction in a 60' straight line. Any hit that exceeds the target's AC by 5 or more throws them into the air, to somersault and crumple.
• Angelic: though diminished and pitywauling, the Schioppa still has scruples unbroken. Children and the totally innocent cannot be Barreled Through, and the monster is careful not to harm someone who is already dying. If she somehow breaks this prohibition, she must save or become demonmail.
• Bitter Fruits: A slain Schioppa's armor has a 50% chance of being cursed with one of the following: (d4) casts levitation at inconvenient times 1/day, -4 AC, frightening afterlife dreams that prevent rest, or -6 to attack Lawful creatures. Otherwise, a set of armor is worth 1,000 to a collector or 2,000 to a godi or jarl. Treasure Type U.

Breaker Guardo

The elite soldiery of and main export of Breakerland , a remote mountain nation which maintains shrines to gods of traps, gold, and lack of moral outrage, even trapping the few tunnels and passes into their land and banking for demiliches and Orcuses. There are two sorts of Breakers— those who carry a knife, and those who carry a knife and a short-hafted mancatcher. The cream of the crop are rented out to patrol and vouchsafe the bodies of  warlords, dungeon masters, and most famously, the faith head of the Archdruidal States. 

HD 2+2. Armor: Costume. Attack: +2 Mancatcher or +2 Knife 1d4. Mind like a child soldier. Moves like a parade ground bravo.

• Costume: Pantaloons and doublets of slate grey or marbled marble flicker into braggadocious technicolorcolor right before the Breaker attacks. Ambushes on a 1-2, as long as they remain still. Protects as leather +1.
• Mancatcher: On a hit, the target takes 1d6 nonlethal damage from the jostling spikes within the collar, and saves or is grappled. If reduced to 0 damage while mancaught, the victim is half-conscious and helpless, easily led and unable to defend themselves.
• Ancient Enmity: goes postal in the presence of a Gessler, an explosive skeletal wheel-shaped creature known for trampling crops by night and thwarting the looting of cities and churches. And you know what? Fair enough. Also fears other tokens of their local superstition, such as the linden leaf, depictions of Lady Medusa, and the touch of a Lawful cleric.
• Organization: Found in platoons of 2d4 squads of six. Like to carry magic items as a display of wealth, but tend not to use them. Treasure Type C.

Carnifex

When the wrong person is interred in a sarcophagus, especially a chamber intended for a rare and noble personage, the unrest in the ceremonial vessel and the lich can mingle together, spiraling around the unrest of lacking the proper inhabitant. Stone swells over the fingernails and tastes the gums. Bone swirls through and around the coffin. Once waiting becomes unbearable, the box-body floats up and begins to search for the right occupant.

HD 6. Armor: Lithossum. Attack: Apprehension and +6 Crash 1d8 or +4 Swallow. Mind like a starving rat. Moves like a mastiff running on ice.

• Lithossum: The ornate planes of the box are easy to strike (armor as leather) but harm is only suffered when attacked with something that has a reasonable chance of damaging stone.
• Apprehension: the mind of the Carnifex rubs against yours, searching for familiarity that will never come. You sense death probing you. Save vs fear or refuse to approach the Carnifex for a turn.
• Swallow: the lid unhinges to engulf someone— perhaps this is the correct occupant? If it is, the carnifex immediately disanimates. Otherwise, it begins to drain the moisture and youth from the victim, 1d4 Constitution damage each turn. The Carnifex will always use this ability after crashing into a group of foes.
• Vacation: The box's interior still contains the rooted skeleton of the original, erroneous occupant, the skull flickering with electrical force. When the skeleton is exposed (including during and right after the Carnifex attempts to use its Swallow ability), it can be attacked. It is unarmed and lacks the Lithossum ability, and when harmed inflicts double damage on the Carnifex. Treasure Type B.

These last two were largely the creative work of Renegade, who is very good at synthesizing a strong concept from the table results. I composed the words.

Scadu Fairies

The shadows of fairies, and some say their opposite. Rough and crass, they bring unwelcome news and unwise solutions, then demand they are enacted. They're always saying things like "So what if she gave back the ring? She can't run around with someone else!" and "You should kill your boss!" As a group, they have a raggedy hierarchy like kids playing soldier.

HD 1/2. Armor: smallness as chain. Attack: +1 needle 1d2. Speed: annoyingly fast. Mind like a tattle-tale. Moves like a dragonfly.

• Things of Shadow: Live in the shadows of flowers. At night, you can't see them and therefore they disappear until sunrise. They are flammable, and if one member of a cloud of Scadu Fairies is ignited, there's a 50% chance a nearby one will be too (and so on and so on). 
• Organization: Frequently appear in clouds of 2d10 or more, dispersing into a spy network to sniff out wrongdoing and demand the person they imagine to be the victim to seek justice. Treasure Type U.

Melach Hashuta

Also called a Fool's Angel. This creature hides in cavern pools, turning them into deadly sludge. A golden crystalline thing that can shift from the form of a pillar to a pile to a grasping tendril. Its touch fills water with sulfuric acidic. Made by an ancient logos as a chthonic angel to protect the occulted teachings of that godhead, and gradually parasitized by pyretic structures which help it drink up the vital juices of interlopers.

HD 5. Armor: as chain. Attack: +5 slam 1d8. Moves with lumbering reproach. Mind like the scripture of an inhuman god.

• Crystalline Coating: has achieved perfect, austere stillness, resembling a remarkably large but inert pyrite outcropping. Ambushes on a 1-3. Though large as a stallion, it can flow through any space large enough for a newborn foal. 
• Sulfuric Acid: All water touching the monster is impregnated with potent, scentless, colorless, oily vitriol. Those who might touch it unknowingly save to realize the danger in time, or take 1d6 damage, and 1d6 for each round spent in the water. Wood chars, leather suffers, metal discolors. If the water is superheated, as by a fireball, it will disperse acidic fumes in a 60' radius.
• Forehead: A broken Melach Hashuta will reform over the course of 1d4 days unless the pyrite around its head is scraped away to reveal the Secret Name that animates it. As soon as it is read, the creature slow, fails, and dims.

Seven Parable Monsters

 Written in celebration of Pilgrim Procession's birthday

Bukti- born from a potters' field like a snake from an egg when a people long suffer and groan for relief. Over the course of a day, turns from a skittering soft quadruped to a bearded and serious vagrant. Will fight authorities on behalf of the wish that birthed it. Attempts to imprison it will be thwarted by angels and coincidence. When slain, roll a d4:

1. 10% of the dead within 2 miles animate as zombies 2. Every public building catches fire 3. 40 HD of angry animals emerge from the wounds 4. Instead of dying, now there's two identical bukti.

Hand- bulky, muscular, radially-symmetrical creature, all quaking limbs and mouths singing exultations and a fat blue eye. Grants blessings in exchange for alms (as cleric spells), but when the party encounters any hostile force the blessings abandon them. Healed HP is depleted, conjured food turns to ash, etc. Roasts lambs and domesticates wolves.

Zenf Devil- tall, goatlike figure with greasy human hands and a stiff leather sling. By wringing its hands over seeds or pips, it can temporarily turn them into magical tokens that, when struck against a hard surface, causes a fully-grown tree to burst forth. This deals 2d6 damage when fired from the sling. Zenf devils, actually a kind of hairy monkey, slowly drive forests about, smother fires, and cut off nearby communities from each other.

Adosedo- in some ways, the opposite of a guardian angel. Imagine if a goose was turned into a nasty little reality TV personality. Claws deal 1d4 wisdom damage, and for each damage they manage to claw 10 silver coins out of your very flesh— what were those doing there? Oh, and one of the coins contains your immortal soul and anyone who picks it up can command you. Adosedoi are most often seen after being conjured by irresponsible wizard grandfathers or bored youths.

Idolie- a great saturnine magician with vague features and a cloak that seems to change colors. His great trick is to summon faces in any surface wide enough to bear one, and to command these faces to look out for intruders, bite passers-by, or yell real loud to distract from his escape. Will perform complex auguries with the tarot for PCs, but instead of coming true the auguries will just summon more faces at the appointed time.

Skavir- a scorpion-tailed troll with potent X-Ray vision who can see down to the very bones of a person, where the secrets are kept. When stung, someone must save vs doing something  pointless and terrible on their turn in a combat round. Regeneration halted not by fire but by excuses for its actions, no matter how tenuous or disingenuous.

Pygmachoi- thin collectors of weakened joys. Pale, soft-spoken, charming creatures. Technically lawful-aligned, they seek out magic, wonders, love, and potential, harvest it, and hide it away in a gilded box, one for every group. Stats as rabbits, but grapple like gorillas, wrenching abstract concepts as technicolor tendon-like cords from their targets. Overharvested victims become pygmachoi in 1d4 weeks. Imposing despite their frailty. Someone who consumes too much of a gilded box's contents gain 2d6 wisdom and charisma and lose 3d6 intelligence, becoming a giant songbird, oscar fish, or capuchin monkey if they reach 0 intelligence.

SunderedWorldDM and Phlox Present: Ticket to Nowhere

 Once several weeks ago, Sundered of the Sundered Shields and Silver Shillings blog generously offered some art as a prompt for a dungeon. This is what I came up with, a miniature dungeon that would be at home in a planar or cosmic campaign. I knew I wanted to make an adventure space of the "ransacking" variety, where rather than combat or overcoming physically imposing obstacles a lot of the fun comes from checking out objects and vessels for their strange contents. I hope it will be fun to play.

You can click the picture to be taken to the dungeon!

Reviewvember: Flame and Fortune

 Today I ran a one-shot of Flame and Fortune from the Tabletop Curiosity Cabinet blog. I did this to fulfill my own challenge for Reviewvember: 

1. play with content from someone else’s blog, then 
2. write about it on your blog.

Please join me in doing likewise with an adventure, class, or magic item from a blog you admire, even if you can only do step 1 before the end of November.

This will not be a full play report. Instead, I'd like to talk about the dungeon as informed by the game I ran in it. This one-shot was played over the course of two hours on discord with five players, reusing characters from previous games. These characters possessed classes from various blogs, the monster, flex wizard, baboonist, prophet, and soulcaster wizard.

I selected Flame and Fortune because it was short and straightforward in writing, and because I felt it had a memorable premise well-realized in the floating volcano and the zero-G magma chamber. In play, the party did not end up doing much exploring or making use of the jacquaysed features of the dungeon, but the structure of the dungeon definitely facilitated a quick, incident-filled session.

Flame and Fortune features three intelligent creatures in the volcano. The first encountered, a researcher, rolled an aggressive reaction roll and then was killed and eaten by a party member, so there was not as much negotiation with her as there might have been. In the dragon's hoard, the party discovered that the magic sword they had been sent to retrieve was intelligent as it threatened to wake the dragon, and that led to an exciting back-and forth in placating it. I felt like the module's notes on roleplaying the sword, as well as notes on what it wanted and feared, were pretty much exactly what I would have needed to decide in order to make that challenge work. The PCs sneaking across the hoard to grab the weapon suddenly getting blindsided by a complication (the sword doesn't want to leave) is proper D&D.

On my preliminary read, I was worried about the volcano's central chamber, where magma slowly floats up in bubbles to a ceiling shaft in a zero-gravity environment. The module has some tables to roll on for navigating the chamber and its fissures and tunnels, sort of agnostic about the exact method for doing so, saying:

If players use a strategy to cross the room that relies mostly on luck (spanning a rope between the two points, vaulting to the other side, etc.) you could use this luck table for each character crossing

I was worried that the result would be too vague or feel disconnected from the method, but I actually found it was easy to adapt and sold the danger of the chamber well.

Another point I'd like to make is how much I adore the little MS Paint illustrations. They communicate exactly what they need to and the dragon is pretty cute and well-expressed! Look at this:

Overall, Flame and Fortune is a quick, well-made, straightforward dungeon. It's pretty small but it feels monumental, and most games could stand more of the reliable joys of volcanos, dragons, and talking swords.

Powers Full-Fearsome: miscellaneous abilities to put in the world somewhere

I've compiled a few abilities from GLoG classes published in the past few years, scavenging some of the features that really go hard or were in some way neat to me. They seem to me to have the opportunity to get a second life as a one-off reward, magic item, or skill learned from a mentor in games that don't already happen to feature that class. Since there are so many GLoG classes out there and so few can be used in a single campaign, this could be a good way to recycle them, make them useful, and appreciate them.

You may have to do a bit of adaption but I trust you. Every output is a link to the original page and author.