Resources For Every GM: Reference Books Part 3

Good evening everyone!  Today I wanted to share some resources that should be on, well, everyone's shelf.  That's right, not just GMs, but everybody!  The are books that can inform, help, and entertain you.  They are all field guides, but I have 3 that I want to point out first because I have a preference for these types.  Now there are, of course, dozens of field guides you may be able to think of and more will come later, but for tonight I want to start with the theme of monsters!  Each of these books can bring you knowledge of the real world and some interesting entertainment if you enjoy the outdoors.  For those who play games (whether or not you enjoy the outdoors) you will find a host of ideas for GMing!  Note: I will not be linking these because they are often locality based and you may prefer to find your own region.


Insects / Spiders / Etc:  If you know me, or have paid close attention to certain articles, I have training in entomology, the study of insects.  As such, it is only proper that field guides featuring these little guys sit at the top of the list.  Of course, they tend to include other terrestrial arthropods in those books as well, like spiders or centipedes.  Insects are fascinating and I have many a odd fact I could tell you that amazes everyone, but a field guide like this might help you find some on your own.  Or maybe you'll just find interesting models for your giant bugs that attack the party.  For me, some of the spiders (well all of the spiders) are incredibly terrifying.  Whether you are exploring the backyard with your kids, looking up something you found, or digging for info this is definitely a resource that will help you discover twists low level characters won't expect from giant bugs and unique species to challenge even high level characters.


Seashore:  This is one I have on my shelf for a very good reason.  I'll give you a hint:  Cape Cod.  I live there, so there is seashore EVERYWHERE.  From sand to marsh to tide pool, we have it.  The great thing about the sea shore field guide is it shows you just how much lives there.  From fish to mollusks to crustaceans to jellies.  There's so many creatures and so much variety.  A field guide like this, like the other, can provide natural entertainment for the outdoorsy type if you live near the shore.  If you don't live near the sea shore that's ok too, because this might benefit you even more in terms of RPGs.  The ocean is an important aspect many campaign worlds / settings because it is such a good means of food, travel, and culture mixing.  Having better access to knowledge of life there is an invaluable thing!


Mammals:  This might be one of the most important of your nature field guides.  Mammals extend the range of environmental niches with great efficiency and variety.  You could even say that, right now, is the time of mammals.  While the great giants no longer exist, there are still plenty of furry creatures from the bottom of the food chain to the top.  Reptiles have trouble in certain portions of the world, fish are restricted to water, and birds had their time with the dinosaurs (although New Zealand is much more dominated by birds than mammals so that's awesome).  Anyway, there is a lot you can learn from the roles different mammals have in their environment and the crazy variety you may not have known existed.  Perhaps think about buying a field guide from a different part of the world and figure out what does what job there.  Not everywhere has rabbits (though many of us are familiar with them), so something must do what they do in those places.  Help make your world a little different by borrowing certain real-world creatures your players may not know!

Science In Gaming: Horrific Flies & Laughing Birds

Greetings once again!  This week I bring you another lead post for a new article.  The goal this time is bring science and D&D together.  Yes, this has been done and is done all the time.  Let's be real though, there can never be too much science mixing with D&D.  Can there?  Aside from that, my intention here is to do something a little different than what I tend to see in most instances of combining science and gaming.  That tendency is the adding of science into fantasy settings.  Often this is robots or lasers, or making something more magical or steampunk based to make it fit in a fantasy setting.  (As I edit this I feel the need to share the link for Wizard's new Unearthed Arcana article discussing modern era games and providing me with just the options I need for part of my oncoming campaign)  But this has been done since the beginning, isn't a tinder twig just a match?  Sometimes, as with Planescape, we go the opposite way and put fantasy into a sci-fi setting.

So what do I think I am going to do differently?  Honestly, not much.  I am going to take a subtle, perhaps none-existent, twist to this.  I am going to take science and not just stick it into D&D but inject D&D into it and vice versa.  An amalgamation (this word always reminds me of Lobo the Duck) of science and fantasy.  Maybe you feel the subtle difference I do, maybe I'm making it up,  and maybe you'll notice it after reading the article.  Regardless, I hope you enjoy the combination of science and gaming.


The subject of this leading post are two homebrew monsters.  One of these is a creature I have already made and used in my Pathfinder campaign.  The other one is a creature I am working on currently for future use in my campaign.  Let's start with the one I have already made: the laughing birds mentioned in the title.  Admittedly the only combination with science here is turning a normal looking creature into a horrible, undead-creating monstrosity.  Nevertheless, I call it the blather bird and it comes with a bonus: the grinning husk.  The initial idea for this came from a couple places.  The first was the death of one of the PCs while under the influence of Tasha's hideous laughter.  What if there was a creature that caused you to laugh yourself to death?  What if the result was an undead, forever grinning corpse, hungering for the stable emotions of the living?

Somehow (I honestly forget how) I remembered the song of the kookaburra.  This bird is supposedly so very happy in his tree.  Laughing and singing, king of his domain.  Imagine a giant kookaburra, a bird whose head is almost laughingly out of proportion with its body.  Now imagine it laughing to the point where you begin to worry or become annoyed, then it attacks.  Poison seeps into your body through the cuts it gives you.  Your ability to discern things begin to decline.  Logic is no problem, but what is or isn't important?  Mania sets in.  Not only that but the laughter is almost contagious and you laugh, and laugh, and laugh.  Until all you know is the world is a funny place.  And you laugh yourself to unconsciousness, and continue laughing until you die.  Finally you rise again knowing only the hunger for emotions that will stop you from laughing, the emotions of the living.  Well, that, and the only answer for the world is to laugh at it...

In my world there is an entire forest of these birds.  They sit in the trees waiting for the unwary and passers-by.  Hordes of grinning husks, the former living, roam the forests adding a distant, mad laughter to the background noise.  The gather in groups at the sound of the blather bird, following the uncontrollable laughter of its prey, hoping to feed on their emotions before they too succumb to the mania.


WARNING: the next creature involves some rather gross biology turning into even more gross undead monsters.  If you don't want nightmare fuel or hate bugs or parasites than maybe you should ignore it and skip to the last paragraph.


The other creature is one for which I do not have a name yet, and in a similar vein.  The similarity was not purposeful.  The blather bird was created over a year ago, this one I have only the base concept, to be fleshed out in this and a future article.  While listening to a past episode of This Week in Science (a podcast you can all find by searching for that name or TWIS), I heard of crickets that have rapidly evolved in just under twenty years in order to avoid a parasitic fly species.  For those interested it is a crazy case of biology on a number of levels and very interesting, especially if you are a fellow entomologist, and the link is right here.

For those wondering where this is going, the fly that parasitizes the crickets is horrific (hence the title) in its own way.  Like many parasitoids, the larva of this fly live inside the host feeding and being protected by it until they pupate.  Then, as the host is left to die (if not already dead) the adults emerge to repeat the cycle.  All in all pretty gross (or awesome) and not new.  Ridley Scott anyone?  But this fly takes it to the next level.  Instead of injecting the eggs or larva, it sprays them onto the crickets.  Yes, you read that right, sprays them.  After which they burrow into the cricket's body and go about their business.

Now if you're having the same thoughts that I did, than you understand how these could be an amazing D&D monster.  They do not, however, spray crickets like a crop dusters sprays his crops.  It is much more low key than that.  But what if?  What if they were gigantic enough that the maggots fed on people instead of crickets?  And, for the added horror and use in my campaign, why not make them stink of undeath?

My idea is pretty much that.  Giant flies that spray maggots which burrow into people, perhaps unnoticed.  These then act as a disease until they burst forth to repeat the cycle just as in real life.  But perhaps these creatures are weapons, the dead they create turning into the mindless undead.  Perhaps they follow the armies of undeath spraying the numerous victims of towns in order to both propagate and ensure the survivors are not as lucky as they thought...


Next week I am going to give you guys the stats for my blather bird and the grinning husks, because why not?!  I will also be editing them and as I get any feed back can tweak and balance them.  In fact I will create a page to hold monsters and their stats to keep them up to date and in one place.  In a few weeks, after I finish the other creature, I will share those stats as well.  Until then!