Lizardmen Tribal Hero

Lizardmen, Tribal Hero

Armor Class:  4[15]

Hit Dice:        3+1

Attack:          claws or weapon (1k6), depending on tribe

Special:          Underwater

Move:            6 (12 when swimming)

HDE/XP:        3/60

Tribal Heros are the veterans of the tribe. They survived many battles and ritual duels. Their hide is usally marked by many scars. Unlike their lesser kin, they tend to wear light armour made of cured hides of many hideous beasts that populate the marshes.They usually lead hunting packs of other lizardmen. Like all lizardmen they can swim very well and hold their breath for long durations or even breathe underwater.

It's not unusal for a Tribal Hero to accompany priests during their journeys.

Random Lizardmen Tribe Generator

There is a little project that I want to accomplish, but it'll be better if I do it in little pieces. This way, if in the middle of it I decide to stop, some material will already be online and ready to use. To be honest, yersterday the project itself was a locale in a swampy wilderness, but now I'll probably try to make it into a module or something similar. So, to add some background and denizens to the area I've come up with an idea of another random generator, this time for lizarmen tribes.

Generating a tribe consists of a number of steps:

1. Determine size of the tribe
2. Generate the first part of the name
3. Generate the second part of the name
4. Determine scale colour
5. Determine preferred weapons

Roll 2d6 to detmine size of the tribe:

2. dying out (1-10, a leader, k3 children, k4 women)

3-4. small (2-20, a leader, a tribal hero, 1-3 priests, 100% noncombatants)

5-9. medium (4-40, a leader, 1 tribal hero for every ten warriors, 1-6 priests, 150% non-combatants )

10-11. big (8-80, a leader, 1 great tribal hero for every ten warriors, 1 tribal hero for every 5 warriors, 4-24 priests, 150% noncombatants)

12.great (16-160, a leader, 1 great tribal hero for every ten warriors, 1 tribal hero for every 5 warriors, 1 chosen of the gods, 4-24 priests, 175% noncombatants)

If you roll a number of tribe members corresponding to a lower value in the table, use numbers for that value.

Roll d20 to determine the first part of the tribe's name:

01. Poisonous

02. Venomous

03. Great

04. Black

05. Green

06. Blue

07. White

08. Yellow

09. Brave

10. Cunning

11. Silent

12. Bone

13. Marsh

14. Ivory

15. Amber

16. Cobalt

17. Emerald

18. Blessed

19. Hunting

20. Wild

Roll d20 to generate the second part of the tribe's name:

01. Snakes

02. Shadows

03. Spiders

04. Fangs

05. Claws

06. Talons

07. Tails

08. Crocodiles

09. Whispers

10. Lizard

11. Serpents

12. Ghosts

13. Monsters

14. Beasts

15. Scales

16. Children

17. Brood

18. Spawn

19. Teeth

20. Jaws

Roll a d8 to determine scale colour:

1. Black

2. Green

3. Orange

4. Red

5. Red-green

6. Black-orange

7. Navy

8. Green-brown

Roll 2d8 to determine preferred hand weapon:

2. sword

3. sword and shield

4. spear

5. spear and shield

6. axe

7. axe and shied

8. two-handed axe
9. none (claws)

10. club

11. great club

12. none (claws)

13. hammer

14. hammer and shield

15. two-handed hammer

16. long knife

Roll to determine preferred ranged weapon:

1. short bow

2. darts

3-4. javelin

5. none

6. sling

The Rules Behind the Stuff

I'm a person that thrives on spurs of creativity. In other words, I find it difficult to sit down and get things done, but I do like have a single idea that I can quickly convert into something more... substantial. Probably it's because of the fact that I'm very prone to procrastination, or maybe it's the sanguine element of my character. Whatever the reason, I'm quite aware of that fact.

Yet still, I do want to produce content for this blog, something that might be of use for some people other than myself (well, maybe right now not many people read what I write, but this blog is two days old and hopefully it'll gain some popularity over time). If I were publishing things related to my retroclone in progress, nobody would have had the possibility to use it. That is why I decided to choose one game and write the stat-blocks and orther rules-related stuff acording to that particular ruleset. My game of choice is Swords & Wizardry: White Box.

Why? The reasons are two-fold. First of all, the rules are simple without being simplistic. S&W:WB possesses all that I need and leaves plenty of space to provide house-rules etc. Secondly, it's a proxy for my own system. It's quite possible that if I manage to finish my game, I'll rewrite the content of this blog to be used with it (leaving the S&W stats, of course).

But if I have something finished for my game I'll also post it here, because feedback is a thing that encourages me to work. So things like basics of the game, Abilities, Classes/Races etc. That will go to the main rulebook will probably appear here as a "work-in-progress" status thing.

Oh, yes. And hopefully my writing will improve along the way. Writing in English only for the purpose of my Academic Writing class made me use a lot of hedging, and the neccessity to keep the deadlines and meet wordcount limits quite delimited the vocabulary that I use in my writing (but I believe it did not touch my inner lexicon as I seem to passively know a lot more words than I'm actively using).

D30 Table of Random NPC Quirks

The Finals are drawing nearer with every passing hour, but one cannot study all the time. And what can be more relaxing than compiling some random tables? Recently I've read about the Order of the d30, and shot a look at the stuff involving this particular, a bit peculiar, die shape. As I am a proud owner of a d30, I've decided to come up with a d30 generator of my own design.

d30 Table of Random NPC Quirks

The NPC:

01. is alergic to dust (sneezes loudly and whines a lot about it)

02. proclaims himself the Prophet of End Times

03. is possessed by an entity that is stuck inside his body (it wants to get out but it can't)

04. is a bastard of a local noble/aristocrat

05. has better claims to the throne than the actual ruler

06. is addicted to having his blood sucked by vampires

07. believes himself to be a werewolf

08. is schizofrenic

09. believes that dark eyes indicate that evil can look through them

10. has only one, unblinking eye in the middle of his face

11. thinks he's a minor character in a tale of some kind

12. has a slave mark

13. cannot use verbs

14. is a sentient version of one of the mindless undead

15. is a sentient weapon that somehow got reincarnated

16. dresses in flayed humanoid skin

17. has one arm made of stone

18. falls into rage when he sees figurines depicting horses

19. is on a noble quest to retrieve a holy relic

20. looks exactly like one of the characters

21. claims to be a descendant of one of the characters that came from the future with a warning

22. rides an exotic animal (zebra, polar bear, great wolf etc.)

23. can speak only through the parrot sitting on his shoulder

24. never looks the heroes straight in the eye

25. claims to be a giant trapped in the body of a halfling

26. is a wanted criminal

27. tries to sell the characters a red cloak that "gives the ability to fly"

28. has complete amnesia

29. took the vow of peace

30. roll twice

The Dragon Roars!

The idea of starting a blog about RPG was in my mind for about a year now. Well, not. That would not be true. I already have one blog about this particular hobby, but it's in my native tongue. Honestly speaking, I still don't know about what I'll write here. There are various topics I'd like to cover, but only time will tell if I have enough will to do it.

The main reason behind this blog is to train writing. And I can't imagine a better training than writing about one's hobby. What can be expected? Reviews of the OSR stuff that is available for free (probably I'll translate the reviews of Swords & Wizardry and White Box that I've published on my Polish blog), the designer's log on my own work-in-progress retroclone (writing about it here can be a motivation to get the thing rolling and playtested), which I plan releasing for free both in Polish and English. I also plan to dwell upon what we can port to our games from novels and video-games.

I think that this will suffice for the first post. Game on!