The Bogeywoman's Cave

"Weirdness" doesn't necessarily mean "new stuff". Sure, most authors of weird fiction invented new creatures, new deities, and new places for their work, but weirdness is more of an atmosphere than just throwing unfamiliar things together and making something odd. For example, practically every Star Wars movie adds never-before-seen creatures, planets, and places into its universe, but it hardly ever comes across as weird in execution. The goal of this post is to prove that an adventure doesn't have to reject all of D&D's traditional monsters in order to be weird. Without further blathering, here are 6 weird adventure seeds that don't use any new monsters. 1. The Goblin Circle Strange, stunted humanoids (goblins) have been seen dancing in the ruins of a stone circle, around a huge bonfire. However, whenever anyone has approached to attack the creatures, the bonfire has suddenly gone out, and the monsters are nowhere to be seen. Every ni...

NOTE: The following key requires the use of WGR1: Greyhawk Ruins to be used properly. In order to avoid infringing upon copyright and merely making a helpful tool for a game master, monster statistics and the map for the dungeon level have been purposefully omitted. The module can be purchased  here The Tower of War (Level 2) W201 4 small shelves, 1 in each corner, each holding a gold ingot (500 coins each) on red velvet Ingots are coated in contact poison W202 Bones and corpse of a giant ant W203 Small round table with dice and some stools in center of room, trash all over the floor 4 troglodytes, spending the day in these rooms on a dare W204 2 long dining tables, with 90 coin gold candelabras on each table 6 skeletons sitting at the tables, 4 zombies in suits of armor W205 Old kitchen with 3 zombies and a son of Kyuss W206 Locked room, secret trap door is trapped with trip-wire activated poison spears Ant...

Happy Halloween, and a blessed Samhain! In celebration of one of my favorite holidays, I have decided to write up a type of creature that has appeared in the artwork of Halloween cards and picture books for decades; the pumpkin goblin! These little beasties are plant-like relatives of the more common goblinoids, and are rumored to be created by witches sprinkling goblin blood over a pumpkin patch and calling upon the power of the faeries. The end result of this strange ritual is a horde of short-lived pumpkin-headed plant-like humanoids who are loyal to their creator. Pumpkin Goblin Move:  60 feet/turn Hit Dice:  See below Armor Class:  8 Treasure Class: L Alignment:  Lawful Evil Attacks:  1 Damage: 1-6 Pumpkin goblins vary in size dramatically, much like pumpkins. The smallest ones are no larger than a toddler, and possess a mere 1-4 hit points. Most are around half the size of an adult human, and possess 1-6 hit points. Human sized pumpki...

NOTE: The following key requires the use of WGR1: Greyhawk Ruins to be used properly. In order to avoid infringing upon copyright and merely making a helpful tool for a game master, monster statistics and the map for the dungeon level have been purposefully omitted. The module can be purchased here The Tower of War (Level 1) W101 Band of 10 dwarves (1 leader, 2 guards, 7 warriors) guard the tower, with a pet brown bear The leader, Stillguar, takes a 1/3 cut of any gold found in the tower by adventurers Instead of paying the tax, the party can take the great risk, where the dwarves throw 2 hammers into the air, and the orientation of them determines what happens and what is paid Great Risk Table 2: Lose all gold 3: Lose all gold found in the tower 4-9: Lose ½ gold found in the tower 10: Lose 1/10 gold found in the tower 11: Keep all gold 12: Dwarves give the party a gold ingot worth 500 coins W102 Table, stove, and some barrels Barrels...

DISCLAIMER Note that the following is just my opinion on how I like room descriptions to be written, and I do not think that the following writers are incompetent or bad adventure designers. (From WGR1: Greyhawk Ruins) Writing an adventure is technical writing, not a narrative*. Saying what a room is with tons of adjectives and evocative descriptions is the job of the game master, not the adventure writer. This is because if the game master has to read a several paragraph long wall of text whenever the party enters a new room, the game slows down to a crawl. Not to mention, the more descriptive a room is, the more chances there are for the game master to miss something in the heat of the game. For example, lets look at this room's description from S1: Tomb Of Horrors, by Gary Gygax: MAGlCAL SECRET DOOR: This entrance to the remainder of the Tomb is along the stairway which leads down. It can be found by any means, but nothing will enable it to be opened until the a...

Libris Mortis: The Book of the Undead was a supplement for D&D 3.5 that detailed character options, new spells, and new monsters relating to undead monsters. In my opinion it suffered a lot from the rules and writing bloat typical of the era, but there was still a lot of goodness held within. One of the more interesting of the new monsters that was introduced was the Desiccator, an undead water elemental. It took the form of a sickly, salt-encrusted and child-sized humanoid with no facial features other than a mouth, and whose breath sucked up water. They were essentially anti-water elementals. Now, water elementals do not exist in the Holmes Basic set, but they do appear in the Monster Manual for AD&D, which, as explained in the Zenopus Archives , is most compatible with the Holmes rules, not AD&D. So, without further ado, here is my take on the Anti-Water Elemental. Desiccator Move:  80 feet/turn Hit Dice:  4 Armor Class:  6 Treasure Type:  ...

Hey y'all remember this post? Well I'm finally making a follow up to that. The beings that flounder and wander the otherworldly town of Raven Hill do resemble their "normal" counterparts, at least superficially, but they always seem broken and wrong somehow. They are not truly the monsters they resemble, but nightmares spawned from the subconscious of any who wander into the accursed town. Below are some tables to roll on to change the physical appearance of regular monsters to make them like something out of Silent Hill. (The Insane Cancer from Silent Hill 3) Common Traits All (or at least most) of the monsters of Raven Hill have the following characteristics: No eyes Do not speak, or show any signs of intelligence beyond animal instinct Are naked, and have wet, hairless, rubbery skin, but do not possess sex organs Being near them causes a ringing noise in one's ears Subtracting Traits (d6) The following remove physical features from the cre...