Fuck Yeah DragonQuest! That Damn Font.

For those of you DragonQuest fans that wanted to use the familiar DQ logo font, I have good news- you no longer have to use that ugly pretender to Thalia, the font used on number of SPI games, including Swords & Sorcery, Barbarian Kings, Arena of Death, and, of course, the DragonQuest line. The fake Thalia (which goes by either Thalia, Thalia Regular or Thalia Normal depending on where you find it) that has been available for the past 10+ years can be kicked to the curb where it belongs. 

I would like to direct your attention to Thaleia, a really nicely done clone of Thalia (the real one) that is available at most of the usual places you can find free fonts. Below is a side by side example of "DragonQuest" using both fonts. For the sake of the comparison, I had to almost double the point size of Thalia just to keep them in the same bracket.

It wasn't necessary for me to show the other numerous flaws in Thalia Normal as they are pretty apparent, even without the comparison. It's a really badly done knockoff- so bad that I've refused to use it, even when I could make corrections in Adobe Illustrator. 

Below that are examples, making use of their respective names, with the ubiquitous Helvetica there as a control. The flaws are punch-in-the-face obvious simply using the font's own name. So much pain, so much pain...

Note that the art department at SPI altered the "s" a bit and the cap "D" is both larger and has a lowered baseline than the example here, which hasn't been tinkered with by me.  

Click image for a closer look

Thaleia available for free here as well as a number of other sites. Use it with gusto!

UPDATE: I discovered after I'd posted this article that there is, indeed, a "lazy s" as part of both the original Thalia and new Thaleia character sets. This mean that my statement above about SPI is now null and void.

Why I Love the Internet

A search for model and one-time girlfriend of H.R. Giger, Li Tobler brought me this-

As always, click to enlarge

B/X Notebook- Let's Go to Hell!

[This was written for TSR's Known World/Mystara setting using the B/X ruleset. It incorporates elements of Wrath of the Immortals, the Known World Gazetteer series, Greyhawk, Fiend Folio and Bard Games' Atlantean Trilogy (specifically The Bestiary.) Mitra/Mithras is the stand-in for Jehova/God and is in most respects, the same deity.]

[[Special thanks to Ettin of Hexen for his assistance in tightening this up.]]

I had this idea that Hell, by whatever name, could be represented by the three alignments of D&D, that those alignments could define, in a way, how each realm would operate. These are separate realms (or planes or dimensions) each with its own character, personified by whoever rules there. Orcus and Demogorgon are most likely familiar to long time D&D players, but Veischax is my own creation, based heavily on medieval ideas of Satan and the angelic host as presented in books like the Dictionnaire Infernal, The Magus, and the Lesser and Greater Keys of Solomon. 

Infernus is the creation of Mithras, who has sole dominion over it, despite what Orcus might think. The other two realms were created under very different circumstances, as you'll see. They belong to no particular god or religion, but only to those that inhabit them.

All three planes of Hell have these things in common- they are inhabited by entities commonly known as demons (and less often as devils) and they are places of punishment for the spirits of the dead (typically human) who have in some way displeased their deity or deities. Each realm can be entered, with varying degrees of difficulty and through various means, by mortals. Whether they can make it out again is up to fate and the DM to decide. 

The following undead spirits are found anywhere in the three Hells- spectres, wraiths, shadows & wights. These are the spirits of especially evil people that have been "promoted" above the common undead spirit status. They are not, however, part of any demonic hierarchy.

Infernus

Orcus is both the ruler and a prisoner of Infernus. Condemned there by Mithras, Orcus and his minions were the first occupants. As a realm of Punishment (Law,) Infernus also serves as prison for those souls who break the Sacred Laws of Mithras.

In the center of Infernus stands a cyclopean mountain of basalt and iron, and atop that mountain sits a grand palace, where resides Orcus, the Black Prince of Infernus. The mountain itself is rife with twisting tunnels and foul dungeons where Orcus' slaves mete out punishment to the spirits of the damned. The mountain is, in effect, one big, nasty dungeon.

Beyond the mountain is a blasted wasteland of broken earth, acidic lakes, cutting winds, and boiling rain. Sulfurous fire pits are everywhere, spewing flames and belching noxious clouds into the air. 

As Mithras is not a cruel deity, all souls that enter the Infernal Realm may eventually leave there and enter into Paradise- all save for Orcus and his horde, who are damned to see those they are forced to punish gain freedom and go on to the one place they, themselves, may never again enter.

Legions of Orcus

• Gremlin
• Undead Spirit
• Hell Hound
• Nightmare
• Greater Undead
• Nether Demon
• Broo (Lesser Common Demon)
• Ostegos (Death Demon)
• Winged Demon
• Bargda (Greater Common Demon)
• Empusa
• Cataboligne
• Nightshade (all three types freely roam the land, but none are found in the mountain)

Noth

Veischax rules the realm of the dead called Noth- a grey, cold, impossibly vast city with impassably high walls and barred gates wrought from evil iron. It is a city built by the evil of Man, not the labor of demons. What the souls of sinful men have created, left to their own devices, is a strangling bureaucracy that dominates every aspect of existence in Noth. 

The damned spend most of their existence here standing in endless lines, slaving away in mines, and building or repairing sections of the city. It is a realm of crushing tedium, periodically shattered by attacks from Veischax's minions, thus creating a constant, oppressive aura of Fear (Neutral).

Known to some as the Infinite City it is in fact surrounded by a variety of terrain consisting primarily of a cold, trackless desert and the wilderness. Those that manage to escape the city find themselves hunted by beasts of every stripe. Among the demons there exists a hierarchy, with imps in the lowest positions all the way up to the monstrous kalkydri who have claimed certain districts in Noth as their own. It is Veischax the Dethroned Emperor, however, who is the undisputed master.

Occasionally, various demonic factions will come into conflict and openly wage war on each other. Some wars have been endured for decades and some even centuries and the damned are powerless to stop them. A spirit who has been destroyed in Noth simply disperses into nothingness, only to reform later. 

Legions of Veischax

• Red Imp
• Undead Spirit
• Devil Dog
• Alastor
• Grimalkin
• Bat Horin
• Diabolus
• Demon Locust
• Asura (Pit Devil)
• Nephilim
• Kalkydri

Pandemonium 

Demogorgon rules Pandemonium, a terrifying realm of the damned. It is a patchwork landscape, with areas tailored to suit the tastes of each local demonic lord. Beyond the never ending parade of unimaginable horrors, Pandemonium consists of mounds of smoldering filth and piles of flyblown rotting corpses, broken by an occasional area of shocking beauty and serenity, there to remind the damned of what they can no longer have.

While most enduring domains in Pandemonium are ruled by type V and VI demons, it is Demogorgon's lieutenants, those few exalted demons rewarded with names, that hold the most sway beyond their master's immediate influence. None, however come close to the terrifying might of the Grand Master, himself.
Pandemonium is a place where not only the souls of the damned go beyond death, but those of other evil humanoids (orcs, ogres, etc) as well, where they are subject to horrific physical and mental brutality at the hand of demons. It is a realm of Torment (Chaos).

Legions of Demogorgon

• Goblin
• Undead Spirit
• Hobgoblin
• Bugbear (Nightjack)
• Death Knight
• Retriever
• Hag
• Type I-VI Demon
• Exalted Demon Lords

*Archon = angel.

Fuck Yeah DragonQuest! Part 2

I've decided my dude's name will be Burgos. I don't know what a burgos is, but I like the sound of it.

The next step in the process should probably be selection of your College of Magic and all the spells and whatnot, since that's the next chapter, but I'm going to save that for last. So, we're jumping over that into equipment, followed by skills.

I'll get my weapons and armor first, which are found on pages 24 and 25. As you recall from last time (heh heh) I have a paltry 45 silver pennies (the common currency in DQ) to spend. Since he's an adept (DQ's word for someone who uses magic,) he's not gonna spend much. Cold iron really jacks with magic in DragonQuest, so if I wanted to use a sword, for example, I would probably want to use weapons made of bronze or bone (which will lessen their effectiveness.)

However, since Burgos's Strength is so low, that bars him from using most weapons. No surprises here. I kinda planned on that. Adding all the various factors, I decide on a hand axe and rock (yes, just a regular dumb ol' rock) as my weapons, and decide no armor at all will do, partly because it really annoys GMs. Now, to the equipment list on page 144.

Here's what I bought-

Hand Axe- 15sp
"Clothing"- 22sp
Leather Shoulder Pouch- 2sp
Quart Wine Skin- 2sp
Sleeping Sack- 3sp

TOTAL- 44sp

I'm going to dispense with the household items and sundries for this outing, so that leaves me with 46sp to spend on future expenses. Hopefully his skills and his magic will help get him through times of no dope. An itemized list will appear on the character sheet*, just in case you wondered what constituted "clothing." Rocks, in case you were wondering, are free.

As you may recall from part 1, I have 200xp to spend on skills and magic. Since I picked my weapons, it's now time to spend some experience points on them and for that we go way in the back to page 145 and table [87.8] the Experience Point Cost Chart.

Since Hand Axe weighs it at a hefty 100xp for Rank 0 (all skills start at rank 0) it looks like I'll be skipping that in favor of Magic, and maybe rank in a skill, depending on cost. I can probably swing Rock at Rank 0, however, since it's just 25xp. So, just to make it official:

Rock: Rank 0. This means I have a 30% chance to hit a target for D-1 damage.

Looks like I'm s.o.l. on skills, too, as the cheapest one is 200xp at Rank 0. This is true for all starting characters, so it's nothing to worry about. Now that that's out of the way we can finally move on to magic. I chose the College of Earth Magic for its abundance of outdoorsy spells. These are what I can afford with my remaining experience points-

Spell of Converse with Animals with a 45-50 percent chance of success- 50xp
Spell of Converse with Plants with a 25% chance- 50xp
Spell of Herbal Lore also with a 25% chance- 75xp

Add 25 points for the Rock and that comes to exactly 200 experience points.

As a starting character, he's kind of a pussy, but that's to be expected. A 1st level D&D MU probably has 2 or 3 hp, a dagger, and one spell he can use per day, probably Magic Missile or Sleep. Alone in the woods for a night, he wouldn't stand a chance.

At least Burgos can ask a deer for a good escape route or try to talk a wolverine out of eating his fingertips. Not too shabby. And these aren't just one-shot spells, either. He can cast as long as he has Fatigue points left. I'll explain that when I go into detail about the DQ magic system another time.

Oh, yeah- he also has a 1-in-3 chance of hitting some punk with a rock.

And that, my friends, is how a DragonQuest character is made. Not at all complicated or difficult, especially when compared to, well, a ton of other games, including some versions of D&D.

*Turns out the Excel sheet was giving me a little trouble in Open Office, so I'll have to leave it out this time.

A New Monster for DragonQuest- the Kervararkin

This was originally intended for B/X D&D, but I think it works better as a DQ monster. Thanks go to my homie Ettin of Hexin for "meow."

KERVARARKIN

Natural Habitat: Plains, Woods, Fields, often around human habitats

Frequency: Very Rare Number: 1-2 (1)

Description: Kervararkins are fairies of the Unseelie Host that look like a normal house cat (q.v.) but with a head closely resembling that of a human’s. They speak quietly, often in whispers. They can communicate with cats, but are only able to utter the word “meow” as a human would. In all other respects they are like cats.

Talents, Skills, and Magic: When in shadow, the Kervararkin fades from sight as per the spell Walking Unseen [43.4.5.] They can will themselves visible for a few moments at a time or return to visibility simply by stepping into the light.

Kervararkins will know a handful of spells from either the College of  Ensorcelments & Enchantments or the College of Illusion, but will .

Despite their use of magic, it is this last ability that makes them the object of animus among human adepts- a kervararkin can cause any area around it (usually no more than a few yards) to become a low mana area, regardless of the amount of mana already present.  This does not affect their own use of mana, however.

Movement Rates:

PS: 3-4 MD: 19-21 AG: 22-24 MA: 10-15

EN: 4-5 FT: 9-12 WP: 14-21 PC: 18-20

PB: 6-18 TMR: 9 NA: Fur absorbs 1 DP

Weapons: As per House Cat [66.2]

Comments: While most people have an aversion towards Kervararkins, they are especially disliked by adepts. They can be discouraged by symbols of the Powers of Light and will similarly avoid consecrated ground.

Kevararkin is ™ and © 2014 by Richard Butler, U.S. Reg. Pat. Off.

Fuck Yeah DragonQuest! Part 1

Today I'm going to create a character for SPI's amazing rpg DragonQuest (2nd ed.) Why? Well, because DQ died a young and truly tragic death and I for one would rather not see it fade from existence. Hopefully, this example of chargen may turn some people on to the game.

So I'm gonna go through it step-by-step and also by-the-book. Since characteristics are arrived at though point-buy, we get to avoid the liberal chargen augmentation typical D&D, i.e. roll 4d6, drop the lowest; place where you want, etc.

Since we're living in the Space Age, I'm gonna use a nifty Excel character sheet that's supposed to do all the math for me. You can find it here. Hopefully it works in Open Office as I don't have MS Office.


5. Character Generation

One of the neat things about DQ chargen is that it's both randomly rolled and point-buy. How is this possible, you ask? Please, let me demonstrate for you. First, roll 2d10 (in DragonQuest, the only die used is a d10, which is expressed in the game as simply "D," so in this case I would use "2D" to describe the roll. This'll come up again later) and consult the handy Point Generation Table (not shown.) The number I roll will provide for me the amount of points I can spend on characteristics and the maximum number I can place in any one of those scores. For example, a roll of 4 gives me 83 points to distribute among the six main characteristics, but with a maximum of 24 in one

Characteristics in DragonQuest range from a minimum of 5 to a normal maximum of 25. Some races (like giants) can surpass that number in certain characteristics.

Okay, my roll is 5+9=14 which gives me...93 points to divide among six attributes with a maximum of 21 in one slot. As per rule 5.2 this also means that I can have two attributes of 20 points and three attributes of 19, should I choose to do so. I don't know quite yet. As I love DQ's magic system, I think I'll pursue that path. But I have twelve colleges of magic to choose from (15 if you include Arcane Wisdom,) so I have some cogitating to do. But first, my scores-

Physical Strength: 11
Manual Dexterity: 13
Agility: 12
Endurance: 20
Magical Aptitude: 21 (I chose this first and maxed it for obvious reasons)
Willpower: 16
Fatigue: 22 (this is a figured characteristic based on Endurance)
Perception: 8 (all characters start with an 8 in Perception.)

I decided I want him to be a robust dude that can live off the land, thus the high Endurance, but he's no John Rambo- he has to rely on his magic skills to cover the areas where he comes up short physically.

6. Birthrights

I see this guy being human, but just for the hell of it I'm going to see if I can successfully roll on percentiles for a different race. Out of the ones available, I'm gonna shoot for Elf, Giant, and Shape-Changer (lycanthrope.) According to the rules, if the roll succeeds, I have to take the race, so whichever one I get first is the one I'm stuck with. Here we go-

Elf (30%)- I rolled a 95. Fail.
Giant (06%)- I rolled a 15. Close, but still fail.
Shape-changer (04%)- a 70. Looks like I'm human after all.

7. Aspects

This tells me what my character's place in the universe is, more or less, and is probably the closest thing to D&D's alignment. It's essentially astrology. Percentiles are used again here and I rolled a 66, which section 7.1 tells me means I'm Autumn Stars aspected. What this means is that during certain days of the year (and certain times of those respective days,) my dude will either be affected or afflicted by the Cosmos. This can suggest all kinds of things about my character (looks, style of dress, personality) or I can ignore that and go with whatever mental image I started with.

8. Heritage

Now we find out which side of the tracks my boy comes from. Everything from "poor trash" to "greater nobility" and a bunch of stuff in between. Another percentile roll and I get 17 which makes nature boy Impoverished Gentlefolk. Works for me.
Now let's find out if he's a bastard. Another percentile roll will tell me if he's a bastard, legit, or a first born child. This will affect his starting money and experience. I rolled a 68, which means he's legitimate- not as much fun as the other two possibilities, but I can live with it. No changes here.

But we're not done here quite yet. Now we find out how many siblings he has, if any, and what his place in line is. A D10 roll of 1, the loneliest number, reveals that he is second in line to the Throne of Mud and Hay. Huzzah!

We're almost done for today. The final step is to find out what his starting money and experience points are. This calls for two percentile rolls. The experience point roll: 92! That starts me off with 200 xp to spend. Nice.

The money roll: 40. That's okay, I guess. This gives me 45 silver pennies. Now, I refer back to the Social Status table (8.1) for my money multiplier- impoverished gentlefolk get a 2x to their starting dosh, so I get 90 sp to blow on gear and sundries. All in all I can't complain.

I think that's enough for now. Next time I'll buy his gear, do his skills, and settle on a college of magic.

XXVc Graphics for your Shopping Pleasure

There's one aspect of my game that I was slow in developing, but something that I really felt would make it better. I've already shown some of it with the artwork I've posted already, but another part of that is "coloring in" some ideas to help bring the setting to life.

So, the following is an advertisement for the Central Universal Department Store's "Superhappiness" campaign showcasing their fine line of I don't know. The CUD Store is a common sight in all large cities and some of the crappier arcologies. It's based on Soviet Russia's GUM Store (CUD is translated from whatever GUM stands for in Russian) and Walmart's cyclopean failure, Hypermart.

Not a Hypermart, but close. Click to big it up some.

Anyway, "Superhappiness" as an ad slogan has a nice "1984" feel to it, as does the nameless, unknown product they're hawking. I imagined the contents as some kind of generic Soylent Green type food-like substance, but it could be anything in there. Brightly colored bags of shit.

Click pic to BONUSIZE

I came up with a bunch of businesses that reside under the RAM umbrella (you've already seen a couple) and will do more logos and whatever in the near future. The CUD Store doesn't have a logo. There is no bigger store on Earth, and so it doesn't need one. It just is.

Superhappiness.