Silhouettes XLVIII

For your charts, maps, and player handouts, these are all public domain, so use them as you wish.

A wild dog, rabid dog, or wolf:

And with all the insects I posted last year I never got in a praying mantis:

A Viking warrior on horseback:

and another priest or wizard calling for a spell:

These have all been added as vector graphics to the zip file linked in my sidebar to the right.

Two Cool Things

Hubert Duprat took caddis fly larvae and let them build their cocoons with precious materials.  What if dragon young weren't lizards but grub-like things that did this?   (via Boing Boing)

This is a triple gear designed by mathematicians Saul Schleimer, Henry Segerman.  All three gears actually rotate.  Maybe the hearts of constructs look like this.  (via Metafilter)

Anti-Stylites

Sort of shaped like this

I'll drop the in-game prose and just talk at you as a DM for this one.  I thought it would be cool to have religious hermits that, rather than living atop poles, lived down in holes.  Not caves-- think a bottle-shape carved from sandstone, the eremite living below with food lowered down and waste pulled out.

Now imagine a community of these holes close together.  They would probably do that to make it easier on the support folks.  Or maybe the support folks get inspired and carve out their own cells nearby.

  Now imagine all the support folk die of plague.  Or a war causes them to flee.  Plenty of creepy implications for our eremites.  Years later, players visit the valley/cave with all the hermit holes.  Some are filled with water.  Some have undead in them.  But all have a chance for holding holy items and texts.  Some might have mini libraries (no reason these hole dwellers need to be completely ascetic, maybe living underground is more symbolic).

You end up with something like B1's magic pools for players to investigate.  And I'm always interested in trying to put players in positions where they feel vulnerable as they explore-- like going down a hole alone.  Or, worse yet, submerging themselves in a water-filled hole.

Anti-Anchorites

These men and women are always found in bustling, lively, people-filled places.  Taverns and brothels, smithies and guardrooms--They smile, remain quiet, and seem to thrive amidst the noise.  Perhaps their mystic energy is so strong, to meditate on it in silence would cause them to ascend.  Perhaps they are demons and undistracted contemplation would cause them take their true form.  Whatever the cause, they are loathe to be alone.  But their time among people gives them great insight.  Anthony the Lesser was said to know every secret desire from watching a person's gait.  Teresa Albina was said to know the number of days till a person's next sickness, next love, and eventual death on first sight. 

Misc VI

Wake in Another World
When an adventuring party sleeps they awake in a different dungeon.  It is a real place, not a dream.  When they sleep there they awake back in their first world.  How long does this go on?  What caused it?  What interesting things can be done with alternating one-day time limits?

Next level of the idea is that when there is a TPK the party wakes up somewhere else, another world, and they are changed.

Construct Class
You are a statue.  You start play with ~5 HD and all the related bonuses.  You never go up in level, however.  And you do not heal.  I wonder if balancing power with a limited total amount of life would be an interesting challenge for experienced players.

Option one is to allow "upgrades" by purchasing enchantments and smithing/stone work.  Essentially you could "level" by using gp as xp.

Class as Race
Entering a profession in this weird world changes you physically.  Wizards gradually become wizened, sexless things.  Fighters grow in size and brawn up.  Rogues become thinner and harder to see in shadows.  Changing class might require surgery or at least prolonged sickness.

Class as Lifestage
In this weird world everyone starts as a rogue.  When they die, they transform into fighters.  And when they die in that form they transform into wizards.  The order can vary according to your taste, but all are stages in the life arc of one creature.  What will the final death reveal?