Alternative Undead 4: Mummies

Mummies are, like many undead, loaded with preconceptions due to Victorian stories and the films that were inspired by them. Egypt, pyramids, sand, scarab beetles, thick bandages, all associated with mummies. There are mummies in other cultures throughout history but the D&D mummy (including any artwork and minis) are clearly "Egyptian".

Alternative Undead 3: Sirens

Before anyone asks, I am aware that sirens aren't traditionally undead, but as with my zombie post (where they were basically zombies, but not undead) I'm going to switch them up to suit my aesthetic vision, making them something in between  seahags, sirens and banshees.

Alternative Undead 2: Zombies

Zombies have undergone a renaissance in the past few years, shambling in to the consciousness of more people than ever thanks to the success of Left 4 Dead, The Walking Dead, Shaun of the Dead and Dead Dead of the Dead Dead Dead (one of these may be made up).

I'm a big fan of the zombie genre, but not of zombies in fantasy, they are an inherently modern/scifi monster as far as I'm concerned. Skeletons will always be my go to for mindless corpses (thanks to Ray).

So what to do to keep the general feel of zombies but move away from rotting brain eaters?

Alternative Undead 1: Vampires

So undead, I love them, you love them, the whole world is going crazy for them, whether as soap opera zombie dramas or vampire/werewolf/dull girl love triangles. But how do you keep them fresh in your games? There's nothing wrong with a classic garlic hating vampire, but sometimes you want a different feel.

Creepy and sexy, pure win

So I've been thinking about the undead and trying to come up with a twist, this is the first in a short series.

The Funnel. OF DOOM!!!

So we had a friend round last week and I ran the level 0 funnel adventure "The Portal Under the Stars" from the back of the DCCRPG. It was just two players so I had them roll up 6 characters each and everything was adapted on the fly to Labyrinth Lord. Despite not preparing for the adventure at all (it was very last minute) it all ran fairly smoothly and was close enough to LL that I could wing the stats without worry.

Our friend had never played an RPG before but took to it pretty easily. After some rash action at the beginning (getting 3 characters killed before my girlfriend had lost any) he slowed down and was a bit more thoughtful, he'll make a fine old school player with some practice! Hopefully he'll join in with our future campaign, even if it's only as an occasional player.

Some spoilers of the adventure after the picture, be warned!

Update! (or Damn life, always getting in the way...)

I have a few posts planned honest, but a birthday, illness and new job have taken over for now. Here's a quick update on what's been happening.

Random Coin Design Generator

It occurred to me that although gold coins are a huge part of D&D they are very rarely given any thought beyond the usual arguments about how much to give and whether xp should be linked to it. I thought a simple method of generating designs that are on the coins, representing the lost and alien civilisations that built the dungeons and left the treasure would be a fun way of adding some weirdness and highlighting that, actually, its pretty crazy that there are all these gold coins lying around.

So I made a D20 table, you can roll once for a quick generation or three times for extra randomness. Some of the ideas are taken from actual coins (horned turtle for example). I'm sure you could use this to add backstory to a dungeon, giving some explanation of it's origin or just as some throwaway flavour.