Category: News

I have seen a lot of random tavern name generators through the years and have never really been happy with one.  I mean, paper is inherently limited and most of the online versions seem to be dutifully copied from paper sources or don’t seem varied enough.

So I decided to give it a go with an electronic tavern name generator powered by NBOS’s Inspiration Pad Pro 3.0.  Here are 25 randomly generated names:

1. The Howling Parson Taproom
2. The Forest’s Tavern
3. The Eclipse’s Barroom
4. The Able Lass’s Pub
5. The Blustering Pub
6. The Zinc Brew Haus
7. The Amicable Sailor’s Pub
8. The Tenne Magus’s Brew Shop
9. The Mighty Alehouse
10. The Bizarre Griffon Brew Lodge
11. The Swaying Tavern
12. The Ravenous Sibyl Beer Lodge
13. The Druid’s Spoon Alehouse
14. The Trident’s Barroom
15. The Brawler’s Beer Lodge
16. The Ancestor’s Flagon Alehouse
17. The Living Tavern
18. The Bishop’s Plate Alehouse
19. The August Tavern
20. The Wizard’s Stein Pub
21. The Cunning Taproom
22. The Spike’s Tavern
23. The Swaying Creator Pub
24. The Greedy Beholder Pub
25. The Snowy Alehouse

 

It is tweaked toward providing tavern-specific results (steins and mugs and such being common) and is loaded with common fantasy adjectives and nouns.  By my own runs of 25 results, it tends to produce 4+ very good names and 2+ names that might cause a smile or chuckle.

You can download the generator file right here – and have fun with it!  If you’ve not used Inspiration Pad Pro before, you’ve been missing something!  And it doesn’t cost a dime.

-Kilgore

I’ve been steadily plodding along, mapping the original Judge’s Guild Tarantis into the new century, from scanned bitmap to sleek vector.  Along the way, I stopped and recreated the logo which I would guess was originally created by Jennell Jaquays.  I am not sure about the colors, but it should definitely tie back to the sea if possible.

As for the map itself, good grief, it just seems to go on and on.  I’ve gotten many cases of white-line fever, missing big parts of buildings and needing to go back and fix forgotten or overlooked sections.  I am working as fast as I can, but there is a certain monotony to it that becomes mind-numbing after 2 or 3 hours.

The map above is altered from the original in the sense that I have taken everything off of the grid system.  The above image is just a quick experiment, but I plan on taking the entire city off of the harsh North/South grid system and laying the majority of the sections off at slight angles.  It already feels a bit less mechanical in nature and I will continue to work at it, hoping to give it a more humanistic, friendly touch.

I’ve finished 5 of 10 regions – and while that sounds like 50%, it is probably closer to 60%.  The temple and palace regions are fairly low detail, leaving the scholars section, the docks, and finally all of the buildings scattered around town.

Once the town is slightly rearranged and reordered, I will then address the city walls.  I anticipate needing to shift them a bit, so they will be the last thing done.  I want to study how long walls and gates were built and will try to “build” a functional city wall.

I will also NOT put walls up around the docks like the original.  The idea of navigating a ship through a narrow aperture almost made my head explode and it was my only significant dislike of the original map.

Rather than enclose the docks with a wall, I will place a man-made island that shields the port while housing a building for steersmen.  Ships will pay a fee to be steered into port and later for space on the docks.  Taxes on the cargo in the holds will be accessed before the ship can leave.

I am also debating how I am going to handle lettering.  I do plan on lettering the streets, but I am less sure about numbering the buildings.  Since I am going to use this with Fantasy Grounds, all I need to do is to place a pin and it is all good.  On the other-hand, the map will be worthless to anyone but me which would sort of suck.  So a player’s map (no notes) and a DMs map is the likely solution.

On a similar trail of thought, I am not really making any concessions towards printing.  It might be an error that I regret later, but we’re a long way into the digital age and anyone who needs a print probably can manage to convert a color image to grayscale, section the map, and otherwise take care of the problem themselves.

Just a quick note to mention that I added social media logins in the realization that no one wants to manage another login at another site if they don’t have to.  Hopefully it will at least open the potential for comments from visitors.

It was not a half-hearted attempt to put the player at a disadvantage while engaging some mindless, brain-eating zombies.  It was a HARD level encounter for 5th level characters and it was augmented by a trap that had split the group.  It was a serious encounter.

Ogre Zombies stirred, shambling towards the ramp, ready to hammer the dwarf relentlessly.

The party’s Dwarven fighter had triggered the trap – a section of the floor had dropped, suddenly forming a ramp.  In the dark chambers below, Ogre Zombies stirred, shambling towards the ramp, ready to hammer the dwarf relentlessly.

The party’s bard had other ideas.  He went second in the encounter initiative order and strummed up some trouble on his electric lute in the form of Hypnotic Gaze.  All six of the ogre zombies were in the area of effect and it was then that I noticed that their only immunity was against poison.

What!

In 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons, zombies (and several other forms of undead) no longer have their long-held immunities to charm and other forms of mentally influencing magic.  In fact, they have poor wisdom scores and are actually rather susceptible spells of this nature.

It was an insanely easy 5k of experience to earn and the encounter was over almost before it had began.

Of the 6 Ogre Zombies, only a single one made a save and he was mowed down.  The party quickly reset the trap, and with the Ogre Zombie sealed safely inside the hidden chamber, they moved on.  It was an insanely easy 5k of experience to earn and the encounter was over almost before it had began.

If you are a DM, you might want to closely examine the creatures you intend to use – they may have been watered down or otherwise altered.  If you are a player, Hypnotic Gaze is a green-light for combating the zombie apocalypse.  In fact, being a zombie hunter could be an easy way to earn a lot of experience assuming you have hypnotic gaze available.

Traps.
Pits, poisoned dart shooters, pendulum blades and axes, gas bombs, acid baths, and falling blocks of stone all triggered by tripwires, pressure plates, magic powers, or by the actions of the victims themselves.  Traps are the cherry topping the sundae that are dungeons – you rarely see them anywhere else.

A dungeon really only exists to kill players, right?

As a DM, I’ve had a bit of a love-hate relationship with traps.  When I first started playing, I liked them because of the gradual sense of dread that they forced upon the players.  It made them realize that nothing could be taken for granted.  And why should it?  I mean, a dungeon really only exists to kill players, right?

Yet gradually I came to dislike traps.  Ok, roll Tommy.  A 3 you say?  Alright, you stumble, the toe of your boot getting hung-up briefly on something.  You hear some thumps as some darts strike you and the wall.  Two of the darts are stuck deeply in your thigh.  You can see a greenish liquid on the half-dozen or so darts on the floor.  I need you to roll another d20 man – add your constitution bonus.

If poor Tommy doesn’t save, he takes all that poison damage and half if he makes the save.  Arbitrary death, perhaps, killed by nothing more than failing to make a pair of die rolls.

I hate that crap.

I prefer traps that create situations.  Sometimes, the situation can be the trap itself – how to I get out of this sealed room before it floods?  Or the trap can be designed to put the party as a great disadvantage during an encounter – just image a hallway spinner that spins one of the party members in to a room alone, cut off from the party.  Or another that knocks everyone down just before the orcs arrive.

Plan out some large-scale mayhem, move entire rooms, spin entire hallways….

Pits are so… unmemorable.  Darts shooting from the wall…so over used. Plan out some large-scale mayhem, move entire rooms, spin entire hallways, make your players have some terrible concern that maybe, just maybe they were teleported a great distance.  There are so many things that traps can do that are much more entertaining for everyone involved than merely killing player characters.

-Kilgore