Dungeons & Dragons - A Guide to the Demonomicon of Iggwilv

In this guide, I am going to try to collect all of the information on this magic item from various official D&D sources. When I first wrote this article, there was no 5th edition Demonomicon. It has since appeared in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, so I have updated this guide to include that information.

The Magazine Articles: The Demonomicon is a magic item that deals with demon summoning and demon lore. The Demonomicon of Iggwilv is also a term used for a series of articles in both Dungeon and Dragon Magazines. 

This guide does three things:

1. Discusses the 5e Demonomicon.
   
2. Goes over details of the Demonomicon from previous editions.
3. Runs down the Demonomicon articles in Dragon and Dungeon Magazines.

What Would be in a 5th Edition Demonomicon?

Demonomicon of Iggwilv

I had done a lot of research on the Demonomicon in the hopes of helping DMs make their own version of the item. First we'll look at what I found, then we'll take a look at the official version that appears in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything.

Here is what I thought should be in a Demonomicon:

5e Spells: Get this free pdf here by Mike Mearls. There's your 5e demon summoning right there!

Bound Demon: It should have at least one page with a demon trapped in it.

Demon Lore: Extensive lore on demons and demon lords. The character should probably gain a large bonus when it comes to demonic lore checks.

Maps: Maps of obscure Abyssal layers and directions on how to get to them. Notes on which layers are too deadly/toxic to explore.

Graz'zt: Lots of notes on Graz'zt and his triple layer of Azzagrat. She spent years there with him. They have a severely dysfunctional on-and-off relationship. She would know a lot about mariliths, balors, succubi, lamias, jackalweres and bodaks.

Tuerny: Possible notes on Tuerny the Merciless, a demon who created the Iron Flask of Tuerny. Iggwilv teamed up with Tuerny for a while (see Isle of the Ape).

Homunculus: Notes on the creation of a homunculus. In Iggwilv's Legacy (Dungeon #151), Iggwilv made one of these out of black clay. It is carved to look just like her. It can't speak, but it has a telepathic bond with the creator.

Magic Item Formula: A formula for building a prison of Zagig and the command word for it. This item can trap someone and shrink them down to 3 inches tall. You have to know the target's truename to trap them. There are currently only 5 prisons of Zagig in existence.

Truenames: A number of truenames of minor and major demons. Everything from some random quasit to a demon lord.

Spells: There would probably be a lot of spells from the Player's Handbook. I think these would definitely be in a Demonomicon: banishment, contact other plane, planar binding, trap the soul, and gate.

Special Spell: You might want to put in "Lover's Call," a spell that Iggwilv has in Dungeon #149. This spell allows you to summon an aspect of Graz'zt for an hour.

Pentagrams: This should have tons of notes on making magic circles, like the material in the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth adventure.

Demon Summoning Spells: You might want to convert some of the 1e and 3e ones.

Scroll down to the notes on Dragon 336 to see the details of a Demonomicon found in Krestible.

All the way at the bottom of this guide are Greyhawk expert Grodog's thoughts on what would be in a Demonomicon.

Tasha's Cauldron of Everything - The 5th Edition Demonomicon

Tasha's Cauldron of Everything has a ton of new spells, rules, subclasses, and magic items for 5th edition. The book focuses on Tasha (also known as Iggwilv) and the Demonomicon is detailed on page 125.

It is "the most thorough and blasphemous tome of demonology in the multiverse.: Demons have ripped certain pages from the book.

Piece of the Abyss: The book contains a secret piece of the Abyss itself, which keeps the book up to date. "It longs to be more than reference material."

Random: Has 4 random properties that you can pick from the DMG.

Spell Power: While holding the book, you can cast Tasha's hideous laughter as an action. 

Spells: It has 8 charges, which can be spent to cast magic circle, magic jar, planar ally, planar binding, plane shift (to the Abyss only), and summon fiend.

Damages Fiends: When you hold the book while casting spells, fiends take maximum damage.

Trapping Fiends: The first 10 pages are blank. Once per day as an action, you can attempt to trap a fiend within a blank page. 

Destroying the Demonomicon: We actually get details on how the Demonomicon could be destroyed. It goes like this:

1. Remove Pages: 6 different demon lords must each tear out 1/6th of the book's pages.
2. Go to Realm: Anyone who opens the book while the pages are gone is teleported to a nascent layer of the Abyss.
3. Get Staff: At the heart of this layer is Fraz'Urb'luu's staff.
4. Transformation: If the staff is taken from the realm, the Demonomicon becomes a mundane and out-of-date copy of the Tome of Zyx.
5. Problem: Fraz-Urb'luu immediately knows that the staff has emerged.
   

Demonomicon Lore
 

Drelzna

History: The Demonomicon first appeared in an AD&D 1st edition adventure called The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth by Gary Gygax. The group adventures through an old lair that once belonged to Iggwilv. The Demonomicon is in a room that is guarded by Iggwilv's daughter, a warrior-maid vampire fighter named Drelnza.

The Demonomicon is one of seven tomes found near the vampire's hidden coffin. In later publications, we learn that the first volume of the Demonomicon was the Tome of Zyx, written by Zagig of Greyhawk. Iggwilv, who was known as "Tasha" at that time, stole the tome and added to it. The Tome of Zyx became better known as the first Demonomicon.

Using the Demonomicon: The book is bound and sealed. Each copy has two guardians. If it is opened, a xeg-yi appears and attacks. A xeg-yi is a "globular black creature with many ray-like tentacles." It shoots bolts of negative energy.

When the first is killed, the second appears in 1-6 weeks and pursues until it or the target dies. The second is "..a ghost, a nycademon, devil, etc." A devil?

Truenames are Powerful: The Demonomicon is fully detailed in the second booklet of the adventure. We are told that it is a "treatise on the powerful evil creatures of the lower planes." It contains truenames of demons. Many demons have secret truenames. Those who know them can gain control over those demons.

It was claimed in one D&D source that Iggwilv knows the truenames of twelve or more demon lords and uses their truenames to control them. If this is true, then she is more powerful than any demon lord out there.

Each of the six copies of the Demonomicon have different information in them. Most of them contain a lot of information on the biology and psychology of demons. It is said that Iggwilv knows more about The Abyss and demons than any creature in existence (including demon lords).

Most of the volumes of the Demonomicon have these spells that relate to the summoning and binding of demons:

Cleric Spells

• (Lvl 4) Abjure: This is an exorcism, basically. It allows you to expel a possessing creature from a mortal body.
• (Lvl 7) Exaction: You can summon a planar creature of a similar alignment and force it to complete a task for you
• (Lvl 7) Henley's Digit of Disruption: Shoot a bolt of positive energy that can disrupt undead. I have no idea who Henley is.

 Magic-User Spells

• (Lvl 5) Dismissal: Send a creature back to its home plane
• (Lvl 5) Dolor: Force obedience from a hostile creature from another plane. No saving throw! Magic Resistance doesn't stop it! It only lasts two rounds.
• (Lvl 6) Ensnarement: Lure a planar creature to a previously-prepared location. The creature is trapped until freed, or if someone disturbs the magical circle/diagram.
• (Lvl 7) Banishment: Forces a creature to return to its home plane. It can't come back to this plane ever.
• (Lvl 7) Torment: Force submission and obedience from a captive outer-planar creature.
• (Lvl 8) Binding: Securely imprison an extraplanar creature in a magical circle/diagram. There's a whole pile of options on how the creature is restrained, including being chained, put into a slumber, or even becoming non-corporeal. 

Diagrams: In the booklet, there's a section on magic circles/diagrams. There's pentacles, circles, thaumaturgic circles, etc. Each is used for something different, like sealing a magic container (an efreeti bottle, for example) or protecting against creatures from the elemental or astral plane. It's a lot of fun stuff that could help you flesh out the demon summoning process if you decide to use it in your game.

Dragon Magazine #82 - Spells Between the Covers 

This article gives guidelines for spellcasters who want to research spells. There's a great section on creating a library. It costs 2,000 gp to stock it with materials that let you research 1st level spells. It would cost 74,000 go to stock a library with books to research 9th level spells.

We get a massive list of books. Each book has some spells in it. Here's some of the titles:

• "Idioms & Rare Cryptographs" by Elminster
• "Legendry of Phanoms and Ghosts" by Evard
• "Manual Powers Beyond the Life" by Bigby

and..

"Lore of Subtle Communication" by Tasha (aka Iggwilv).

The spells in this book: Ventriloquism, message, comprehend languages, legend lore, Tasha's uncontrollable hideous laughter.

This article is utterly fantastic. It lists over 100 tomes, many of which relate to actual D&D NPCs.

Dragon Magazine #225 - Campaign Classics: Three Greyhawk Grimoires
 

Iggwilv's Nethertome

This is a very cool article that details three special tomes:

• Vecna's Ineffable Varorium
• Acererak's Libram
• Iggwilv's Nethertome

She sure is prolific, huh? She wrote Lore of Subtle Communication, six volumes of the Demonomicon and a Nethertome, too.

The cover is a perfect square is made of obsidian with a piece of black-scaled demon hide over it. The paper is delicate and nearly transparent.

The Nethertome was stolen from her when her servants fled the Lost Caverns.

We get a long recap of Iggwilv's history. Then we learn that she tried to summon Graz'zt again, but this time Graz'zt used a magic device to repel her binding magic. He captured and imprisoned her in the Abyss "...where she remains to this very day." Tuerny frees her in Isle of the Ape.

We are told what is in the Nethertome:

• There's a long treatise on the Blood War.
• There are chapters about the chaotic nature of the Abyss, methods of safe travel there and places that should be avoided.
• A few chapters detailing demons and their psychology.

Here are the spells in the Nethertome: Protection from evil, conjure elemental, contact other plane, domination, anti-magic shell, ensnarement, invisible stalker, forcecage, sequester, binding, maze, trap the soul, gate, imprisonment, temporal stasis.

Then there's a few new spells:

• (Lvl 9) Iggwilv's Lightning Cage: It creates a forcecage with bars of lightning.
• (Lvl 9) Iggwilv's Timeless Sleep: It permanently puts the victim into temporal stasis. This is actually similar to the 5th edition spell Sequester (PH page 274).

Dragon 336 - Demonomicon of Iggwilv

This is an article that updates the spells from the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth to 3rd edition rules. It also adds some new details. It says that each of the six tomes are a lesser artifact, and that their contents differ.

Evil Spellcasters: When holding the Demonomicon, the wielder casts "evil" spells is if they were 5 levels higher. It also gives pluses to certain skill checks in conjunction with the spells inside.

Trapped Pages: The first five pages of the Demonomicon are blank. You can use them for magic jar, trap the soul, etc. Basically you can trap souls on the pages.  

"If a soul or creature is trapped within one of these pages, a distorted, shadowy face reminiscent of the bound being's visage appears upon the parchment."

The highest level creature trapped in it can use the spell "dream" on any creature who has touched the tome in the last 24 hours.

The books contain information about the truenames of demons.

The Demonomicon of Krestible: We actually get details of one of the Demonomicons. This was found in the town of Krestible.

It has two creatures trapped in it:

• Rafeth: A vrock who meddles with the minds of mortals by entering their dreams.
• The soul of an ancient, nameless nobleman. He screams and pleas for someone to release him.

A list of truenames:

• Kramvilshanki: Insane quasit
• Amquessol: Ebon-skinned succubus
• Chr'rt and Vr'rsst: Identical twin bebiliths
• Rwarurgar'ekbluroo: Obese nalfeshnee

Extensive notes on Fraz'Urbluu, Juiblex, Pazuzu and Zuggtmoy.

Dungeon Magazine #151 - Iggwilv's Legacy

This is a massive remake/sequel of the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. In it, there are notes on the Demonomicon. Apparently, the only way to actually open a Demonomicon's golden clasps is to put it on the lectern in Iggwilv's Horn on the world of Greyhawk.

Studying it takes one week. On completion, the spellcaster can cast any spell in the book even if it is not on their class spell list.

There's a few 3e spells in it:

• Abyssal army
• Anticipate teleportation
• Hellish horde
• Planar bubble
• Refusal

It's also got a million normal spells from the Player's Handbook.

The reader gets a massive bonus to knowledge checks (+15!) on anything demonic.

D&D 4th Edition Demonomicon

This 4e sourcebook, called simply "Demonomicon," has a ton of great stuff:

Each volume is a heavy, brassbound tome of parchment pages set with clawed clasps. The cover is made of "demon leather." 

Six volumes are known to exist. "This vile codex held the dark secrets of Iggwilv's dominance over more than a dozen abyssal lords."

Tome of Zyx: It is said to be based on a prior work called the Tome of Zyx, written by Zagig Yragerne. I believe Zagig was a real life D&D character of Gary Gygax. He became the mayor of the city of Greyhawk.

In published continuity, Zagig adventured with The Company of Seven. "Tasha" was a member (of Tasha's Hideous Laughter" fame). Tasha was really Iggwilv. She became Zagig's apprentice and lover. Together they bound the demon lord Fraz-Urb'Luu  in Castle Greyhawk.

She eventually ditched him and stole his Tome of Zyx.

Demonomicon Magazine Articles

Juiblex

This series of articles is very highly-regarded, especially the third edition ones written by James Jacobs. Here's an index/rundown:

Dragon Magazine #329 - Pazuzu: Lamashtu is mentioned as an enemy of Pazuzu! Pazuzu ate her eyes and banished her to an unknown layer of the abyss. She knows Pazuzu's truename.

Dragon Magazine #333 - Fraz-Urb'Luu: When Zagig summoned Fraz-Urb'Luu, he used an artifact called the Ichor Lance to try to carve away some of his essence. Fraz destroyed it but the explosion injured him. He was trapped in Castle Greyhawk for 200 years.

It was Iggwilv who obtained the Ichor Lance and helped Zagig figure out the truename.

Dragon Magazine #337 - Zuggtmoy: There's a really great chart of fungus hallucinations.

The Endless Maze of Baphomet

Dragon Magazine #341: Baphomet: Spends much of his time in the Tower of Science creating new form of demonic life.

Dragon Magazine #345: Kostchtchie: He was once a mortal who was so hideous his family abandoned him. He lived in the woods and met Baba Yaga. She gave him a bunch of skulls and a black diamond that could contain his soul and thus make him immortal.

He was eventually slain by Gwynharwyf, who shattered his diamond.

Dragon Magazine #349 - Dagon: Some Kuo Toa worship Dagon, and their most talented bards are known as 'The Voice of Dagon.'

Dragon Magazine #353 - Malcanthet: She has at least a dozen palaces in other Abyssal realms aside from the Razor Throne in her realm of Shendilavri.

Dragon Magazine #359 - Apocrypha: This issue has what I believe to be the last James Jacobs Demonomicon article. The others focus on a single demon lord. This one is called "Apocrypha," The article says there are sections in some Demonomicons that are written by people other than Iggwilv.

One such tome details the 6 types of the demon races, which are really odd. 

This article also details five "minor" demon lords for the DM to use as he or she wishes.

Ardat, The Unavowed: She is a three-headed harpy with raven-black wings. One head is of a beautiful woman, the middle is a fanged harpy head, and the third is the head of an old hag.

Ardat doesn't have an abyssal layer of her own. She wanders with her "Soul Sirens."

Dwiergus, The Chrysalis Prince: He is a house-sized thick soup of swirling demonic arms, legs, heads, wings, etc. He lives in the Fleshforges, where demons are made.

Lascer, Lord of The Shadow Shoal: He is 9 feet tall and rail thin. He has a rapier wired to each hand and he has a huge wound on his stomach stitched shut with twine. Sometimes, spidery legs reach out from within the wound. He is being groomed by Obox-Ob to be a slayer of demon lords.

Shaktari

Shaktari, Queen of Mariliths: She is a giant marilith with eight arms, black skin and fiery eyes. She was a great general in the Blood War until she was imprisoned. She has escaped and is recovering in her home layer of Vudra. Vudra is a sea of blood dotted with islands ruled by mariliths, detailed in a Dungeon Magazine adventure from issue 60 called "Nemesis."

Ugudenk, The Squirming King:Ugudenk is an endlessly long purple worm. His realm is full of tunnels he's burrowed.

Dragon Magazine 360 - Graz'zt: This thing is fantastic. Tons of info! James Jacobs even details the Argent Palace a bit.

Dragon Magazine 364 - Yeenoghu: The 4th edition ones are not written by James Jacobs. They are still good, but it's not the same. My favorite stuff in this one is Yeenoghu's palace. It is a rolling fortress pulled by demons and slaves doing a round trip through the plane each year.

Codricuhn

Dungeon Magazine 172 - Codricuhn the Blood Storm: This guy was once the elemental lord of the fury of the sea, but the Chained God (Tharizdun, I think) transformed him into a massive, hideous demon-thing made of flesh, coral and bone. He is endlessly trying to climb out of the Abyss to destroy the mortal realms.

His "layer" is a storm that rages around him, called Coagulus. There are six floating spheres in the storm. Inside each is a different demon planning on killing and replacing Codricuhn. The article mentions that these guys are demon lords, but it also refer to them as a demons. I assume they are prospective demon lords, entities right on the verge of ascension:

• Gullet: An evistro deemon who lords over a band of sycophantic elves
• Anastraxus: A great warrior who controls a band of mezzodemons (aka mezzoloths).
• Kaelinruth: A glabrezu who lives in a palace made from crab carapaces.
• The Lady of Sorrows: A marilith who searches for perfect love. She collects Codricuhn's tears.
• A half-dozen hezrous, each with their own army of dretches, fighting for control.

Dungeon Magazine #188 - Juiblex, the Faceless Lord: Juiblex might be as old of the Abyss, a sort of living infection. His realm, Shedaklah, is the "sewer of the Abyss."

Dragon Magazine #369 - Baphomet: This is weird. They already did Baphomet. Lots of great details on the Endless Maze with a fantastic piece of art for it. It has a portal to "every maze in the cosmos." The Maze demons are great, too. They are these evil red cloud-things made from the souls of mortals who died while trapped in the maze.

Turaglas, the Ebon Maw

Dragon Magazine #376 - Turaglas: This thing might be the sentient afterbirth of the Abyss, the "...hands and eyes of the Abyss itself." Turaglas is a huge blob of chaos-matter that sends aspects of itself out to ravage mortal worlds.

Dungeon Magazine #205 - Shemeshka the Marauder: This one's weird. Shemeshka isn't a demon lord! She's a Planescape NPC. Very good article, though.

Dungeon Magazine #208 - Fraz-Urb'Luu: Not much new stuff. They statted out the Staff of Fraz-Urb'Luu, 4e-style.

Dragon Plus #4 - Belaphoss the Mad: This is the bad guy from Sword Coast Legends. He's one of Demogorgon's lieutenants who thinks he's going to overthrow his master some day soon. He is a balor who has a greataxe with a whip attached to the handle.

Grodog's Thoughts on the Demonomicon

This is taken from Dragonsfoot. Grodog knows more about Greyhawk than almost anyone.

"I like the idea of Iggwilv's Demonomicon being one of several volumes she penned over her long, dark career---much like the Glassography and Guide being the third of seven volumes in the Savant-Sage's massive work. So IMC, she divided her life's lore among multiple different books entitled Demonomicon, with each volume thematically focused on various related-ish infernal and/or planar topics:

1. Demons; conjuration/enslavement spells; truenames
2. Gates and other magical transports (magic pools, dolmens, etc.), fading lands and demi-planes; "the Map" (a la Time Bandits)
3. Demons; abjurations; truenames
4. Mythic/planar geography; structure of the multiverse; demi-planes and planar/transportation/non-gate magics
5. Artifacts and relics, magical histories, divinations
6. Demons, semi-demons, quasi-deities, demigods, and other semi-divine creatures (saints, liches, demiurges, etc.), genealogy, cloning magic
7. Volumes 7 and 8, at least, are assumed to exist based on references and notes in the other six books; their subject matter is surmised to focus on the planes of The Pandemonium (Hades through Limbo)

I'm still very enamored of the idea of Iggwilv living a gated-life---that is, that she lives in homes scattered across many planes and locations, connected by networks of gates. I got this idea while reading S4 and comparing its background to the original tournament version Lost Caverns of Tsojconth, in which her lair is said to be near the Sea of Dust and Geoff (perhaps in the Hellfurnaces?), rather than in the Yatils (that could easily be the by-product of the Yatils not existing until Gary created the original Darlene maps for the campaign, of course, but I'm not really worried about that):

Fun Fact: In the original AD&D tournament adventure Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, Iggwilv was a guy..."

Links

Canonfire: The Demonomicon of Iggwilv
The Demonomicon was influential in the creation of Doom

Everything You Need To Know About The Tarrasque

I talked a bit about this monster in my post about the best D&D monsters by edition. But the tarrasque deserves the deluxe treatment. Why? Because the tarrasque is the top of the food chain, the biggest and baddest of the mortal monsters! Only Gods, demon lords and archdukes of hell are a bigger deal!

Supposedly there is only one tarrasque in existence, but there are a few published instances that contradict this. Obviously, as the DM you can decide for yourself if this is a unique creature in your campaign. 

I will also get this out of the way here at the top of the article. I love the Tony DiTerlizzi depiction of the tarrasque (to the left). I hate the more recent depictions. So in my game, it doesn't have a freaking Gamera shell.

Full disclosure: I once threw two 6-armed tarrasques at my party when I was 13 years old. The creatures were slaughtered by our insanely over-powered heroes (I didn't know what I was doing, in my defense).

I had no idea that this creature was based on a real life mythological creature out of France. It is known as the Tarasque.

It was mentioned in a 4th edition article: "The iconic D&D beastie is loosely based on the realworld myth of the Tarasque, a turtle-shelled French dragon that was charmed by a saintly woman and was slain, like King Kong, due to its weakness for beauty."

I did a little research and learned that the Tarasque was a sort of dragon with a lion head, six bear legs, a turtle shell and a scorpion tail. Saint Martha (her brother was Lazarus - he died, and Jesus Christ cast raise dead to bring him back) tamed it and led it back to a town where the people killed it. The people felt bad about what they did, so they became Christians and re-named their town Tarascon.

AD&D 1st Edition

The Tarrasque first appeared in the AD&D Monster Manual 2. It is 50 feet long and has 6 attacks. He "ravishes" the countryside for miles. When he rumbles through, the land becomes a barren waste for years because the tarrasque eats everything - vegetation, animal life, even black licorice.

When it makes a bite attack, if it rolls an 18 or higher, it severs an extremity of the victim.

When you see it, if you're level 3 or less, you can do nothing but stare in awe (no save!). If you're under level 7, you flee in panic. Level 7+ people can save vs fleeing.

- It is immune to magic missiles, lightning bolts and cones of cold. There's a 1 in 6 chance these spells are reflected back at the caster!

- It regenerates one hit point per round and is only harmed by magic weapons.

- To slay the tarrasque: Drop it to -30 hit points, cast wish and wish for its' death.

- Supposedly there's around 100,000 gp in gems in its' belly. Dwarf blacksmiths can use portions of its' hide to make d4 +5 shields.

- The tarrasque sleeps for 5-20 months, then rampages for 1-2 weeks.

From what I can find, the tarrasque appeared in a few 1e adventures:

- H2 Mines of Bloodstone & H4 Throne of Bloodstone: It is hanging out in a temple of Orcus..? Part of the temple has 8 rooms that Orcus uses to test followers or kill prisoners or whatever. One room has a tarrasque. Apparently somehow when it is over, the room "resets" and the tarrasque is brought back to life. Then in H4, it is encountered on the 333rd layer of the Abyss - Orcus' domain. It lives in a cave or something. In both instances, it's literally just a monster placed in a dungeon.

- WL16 The World Of Krynn: This book has four Dragonlance adventures. One of them is called Dargaard Keep, where the adventurers attack Lord Soth's keep. In the final battle, Soth waves his hand, a door opens and... the tarrasque lurches forward to attack. Welp, OK then.

AD&D 2nd Edition

The text in the Monstrous Compendium is practically identical to the 1st edition Tarrasque for most of the entry.

Its' THACO is a -5. It's been a long time, and I know THACO gives people headaches. Here's why. In the olden days a low Armor Class (example: plate mail gives you an AC of 2) was good and an AC of 10 meant you were wearing no armor at all. What this means is that if it rolls a 1 to hit, it hits an AC of -5 or in 5e terms, an AC of 21!

So basically the tarrasque has a +21 to hit in 5e terms.

There's this really weird note at the bottom: "Creatures with a minus THAC0 can only be hit on a 1." What the hell does that mean?

I googled it and found that Skip Williams answered this in a column on wizards.com:

 "Lee asks: 'The 2nd edition Monstrous Manual entry for the tarrasque ends with the sentence: "Note: Creatures with a minus THAC0 can only be hit on a 1." This makes no sense, as a monster's THAC0 can't possibly modify what something else needs to roll to hit them. I always thought it should have read that the tarrasque can only miss an attack by rolling a "1". My anal-retentive friends, however, will only acquiesce to an official ruling on this subject. Can you help me out?'

Ah, the tarrasque--a suitable topic to end this set of questions. Lee, that is indeed a truly bizarre statement from the Monstrous Manual, which defies both mechanical and thematic logic."

"....THAC0, as defined by the 2nd edition PHB, was the number a character needed to roll in order to hit AC 0. The THAC0 number could then be used to calculate the number needed to hit any Armor Class. This definition ends with the somewhat dubious statement that "using THAC0 speeds the play of combat greatly."
 

The 2nd edition tarrasque had an AC of -3. Thus, a 1st-level warrior would need a 23 to hit it, a 5th-level warrior an 18, a 10-level warrior a 13, and so on. Nowhere-except for that bizarre statement in the Monstrous Manual-is it ever implied that a 1 is needed to hit a negative THAC0. Just another mystery of the tarrasque, seemingly."

OK, that really wasn't very helpful. It looks like someone just got a little mixed up writing that note and nobody caught it or knew what the hell it meant.

In the ecology section, it is mentioned that the "elemental princes of evil" may have created the tarrasque. Or it may be a "great, reptilian punisher sent by the gods to end the world".

The tarrasque appears in these 2e products:

- How the Mighty Are Fallen: The heroes need to get the tarrasque's pituitary gland and give it to a wizard. Yup!

- Practical Planetology: On the world of Falx, there's apparently many tarrasques in a docile state, eating rocks. 

- The Apocalypse Stone: This adventure was designed to end your 2e campaign so you're fresh for 3e, which was about to come out at the time of the adventure's release. I really wish they had done this in 4e. As the apocalypse is going on, the tarrasque goes on a rampage and the heroes must stop it.

3rd edition

The tarrasque appears in the 3e monster manual. It's pretty much the same deal as in earlier editions. It's gullet can hold 32 medium-sized creatures! A severed limb grows back in d6 minutes.

Usually the best part of doing research like this is getting to crack open a Paizo issue of Dragon Magazine. The Ecology of the Tarrasque appeared in the final printed issue (#359), an issue I've barely glanced at. This issue is full of awesome stuff: Time-traveling dragons, a Demonomicon of Iggwilv entry, Greyhawk magic items. There's even an article that answers big questions like "Who is the Lady of Pain?" an "What are the Dark Powers of Ravenloft?". It also discusses out-of-game mysteries, like what happened to 2e Greyhawk designer Carl Sargent.

The ecology article starts off with a little bit of fiction about the "Monster Hunters Association". Members include people named Dreelix, Willowquisp, Spontayne and Buntleby. Oh, Ed Greenwood is writing this. Come on, now. Willowquisp?! Really, Ed? In my tarrasque article?
 

We learn:

- Its' carapace is like melted diamond

- It has three stomachs, Swallowed stuff goes through all three. Stomach one punches, squeezes and claws at swallowed stuff. Stomach two is an acid cauldron and strips magic from magic items. Stomach three is a furnace. Waste is absorbed by the tarrasque.

- When it is time for hibernation, the tarrasque can earth-glide like a xorn, "swimming" through earth, leaving no tunnel or wake.

There's a wizards.com article expanding on the tarrasque. Mostly it's just three huge freaking stat blocks that some poor guy spent hours cooking up to create variant versions of the tarrasque. One version is for "modern d20" - basically it's Godzilla. Here are the other two:

Five-Headed Pyrotarrasque

The author suggests that perhaps the tarrasque grows five heads after tearing through and devouring a wizards' lab or tower. That seems like a really fun idea.

Spellwarped Woodling Tarrasque

It lives deep in the woods, resembling an ancient tree when dormant. It might live near a sinkhole of mage. Awesome!

The tarrasque appears in:

- The World's Largest Dungeon, an adventure that contains every single monster in D&D. The tarrasque is in a mine burrowing toward a pit that holds thousands of demons. That sounds pretty epic.

4th Edition

The tarrasque appeared in the 4e Monster Manual. Its' stats were horrid. I cannot stress this enough. I insisted on running it as-is from the book against my epic-level PCs and it was awful. It had tons of hit points and did no damage - the syndrome that all of the first wave of monsters in 4e suffered from.

Looking at it now, though, it doesn't seem as bad as I recall. It has an aura which brings fliers close to it. It can make 2 attacks... sometimes. It can frenzy and attack many enemies.... when bloodied. But with 1420 hit points and resist 10 to all damage, it will take forever just to bloody it. The most damage a PC ever did in one round, if I remember correctly, was 180 points. And that's from an exceptional player using an action point.

The thing that sticks out the most to me here is the tarrasque's complete inability to deal with stun (you can't do anything on your turn when stunned) and daze (you only get one action on your turn). In epic tier, most classes can stun and daze quite a bit. Each round takes quite a while in real-life, and when your monster is stunned for a round or two, that's a half hour of real life time where the PCs are just teeing off on it. But with 1420 hit points, they're not making that much of a dent and it becomes a lame exercise of rolling hits and damage with people groaning "is it even bloodied yet?".

On top of that, if there was one monster in 4e that should have had threatening reach (which means it can make opportunity attacks from a few squares away), this is it! There were only a handful of monsters in all of 4th edition with threatening reach, and I never understood why. It was an incredibly potent feature that changed a fight completely. Just getting close enough to hit the monster with a melee attack is a challenge with threatening reach. And this is a monster that should be a challenge!

The monster got a big boost in Dragon Magazine #418. In one article, it is outright stated that The Tarrasque was created as a living weapon in the Dawn War. The primordials created it to spite the gods.

"Before their exile, the archomentals wrought one final act of spite. Combining their talents, they fashioned in secret an abomination of unquenchable hunger. Imix the Fire Lord infused the tarrasque with burning internal heat and murderous energy. Cryonax the Bringer of Endless Winter and Ogrémoch the Stone Tyrant gave it immortal endurance. Olhydra the Mistress of the Black Tide and Yan-C-Bin the Great Cloud inspired the creature’s inexorable wrath. There is evidence that at least two Elemental Princes did not survive this creation process—a force of acid and a creature of bone and blade—but their names have been lost."

The article points out that the tarrasque can swallow and destroy artifacts. It lists three that actually were destroyed: The Talisman of Ahrjez, the Ebon Band and the Fang of Baator.

Another article in the same issue details a cult of the tarrasque known as The Reckoners. They believe that the tarrasque is a primal spirit of justice and punishment.

The article also contains updated stats for the tarrasque. Less hit points and immunity to stun! Much better. They pumped up the damage and lets it make two attacks when it takes damage (once per round).

5th Edition

This version "..carries itself like a bird of prey..". Uhh.. what? There's a couple paragraphs kind of vaguely to referring to some of the material from previous editions. It has 676 hit points! Wow. It also has blindsight and has a Challenge Rating of 30 (which it should!).

It can auto-save three times per day, and has advantage on saves vs. magic.

The spell reflection is handled well. Roll a d6. 1-5 means most ranged spells don't affect it. On a 6, the spell is reflected!

It makes 5 attacks. They do anywhere from 24-34 points of damage each.

Wow. When it swallows you, you are blinded and restrained and you take 56 damage at the start of each of the tarrasque's turns!

It has some pretty basic legendary actions it can use at the beginning or end of other creatures' turns.

There you go. Now wreak havoc upon your players!

Let's Use The Deck of Many Things

The Deck of Many Things is probably one of the most notorious items in all of Dungeons & Dragons. It kills campaigns, pure and simple. Drawing from it just one time can kill you, yet group after group can't stop themselves from drawing just one more card.

In this blog post, I'm going to take a look at the deck from the different editions of D&D. I am also going to tell you about what happened earlier tonight, when I put an AD&D 2nd edition Deck of Many Things in the hands the teenagers in my Thursday 4th edition campaign.

I've run into the deck once or twice, mostly as a player. During a campaign under the best DM I've ever played with, we got our hands on a deck. I think the DM wanted to end the campaign. He'd loaded this campaign up with a lot of odd ideas. Our characters ran an orphanage, we'd fought our way through the interior of a spaceship (from Star Frontiers? Or maybe it was the ship from City of the Gods?). All I know was, we had obtained grenades and laser rifles. And we played through an adventure based on the movie Leprechaun, and another one based on Stephen King's Sleepwalkers. It was different, but fun.
 

Entry from AD&D 1st Edition Deck

He gave us the deck, knowing it would likely kill the game. He even said so. He was right! We kept drawing, and soon my character had a mortal enemy and was fighting the Grim Reaper - literally. I probably tried to shoot him with my laser rifle (is there any question that D&D is awesome?). The campaign was over.

I have run about six sessions of fourth edition for these kids, by request. They all seem to like it quite a bit. I couldn't wait to give them the deck of many things. It's a classic D&D experience.

The first edition deck and second edition deck are very similar. I used the second edition version because 2e is what I cut my teeth on and am more comfortable with.

AD&D Second Edition Deck

How the Deck Works: You must declare how many cards you are drawing. If you want to draw more than one, you can, but you must draw them one at a time. You draw the card, suffer the effect, replace the card, shuffle, and draw again.

Each card has a different magical effect. Some effects include suddenly owning 9,000 gold, to having Death show up to kill you, to being granted 1d4 wishes. Yes! wishes!

The deck disappears if The Void (effect: your soul is trapped somewhere) or Donjon (You are imprisoned) are drawn.

Sun is a little tricky, as it generates a miscellaneous magic item. That can take a few minutes, especially depending which edition you are playing.
 

Moon is the one that grants wishes. It is like the wish spell, which has certain limits. Heck, the entry in the 2e Player's Handbook sort of urges the DM to screw with the PC: "As wishing another creature dead would be grossly unfair, for example, your DM might well advance the spellcaster to a future period in which the creature is no longer alive, effectively putting the wishing character out of the campaign." Well, how about that crap?

Skull is the card that summons a "minor Death". "Defeat Death or be forever destroyed". The minor Death has an AC -4 (that's an AC 24 in 5e terms), 33 hit points and always wins initiative and always hits with its' scythe for 2d8 damage. The character must fight it alone. For my game tonight, I had declared to the PCs that if they drew Skull, they were just dead. No sense in drawing it out.

Key is really odd. The PC gets a treasure map and a magic item. I kind of assumed that the map led to the item, but that is not the case.

Balance changes the character's alignment. In 4e that's a bit odd, as there is the "Unaligned" option. So when the unaligned character drew it, I rolled randomly for his new alignment.

The 3rd edition Deck of Many Things is on the d20 SRD page. I see that you only get one chance to draw from it.This deck seems very similar to the 2e deck.

In 4th edition, there are two versions of the Deck. Why, I have no idea. One version is from Dungeon Magazine #177. It is described as a paragon tier artifact.

The effects are completely different than in previous editions, to suit the regimented style of 4e. It really takes the wacky fun out of it, though the author made a worthy effort.

The 4e Comet card is particularly lame. We went from "defeating a monster and instantly gain a level" in 2e to "Double the XP award for the next major quest the party completes". If you are not familiar with 4e, that is the equivalent of about 1/10th of the XP you need to gain the next level. And people usually forget to give out XP awards for major quests anyway!

Moon once granted a wish. In the 4e deck, you now have one minute in real life to look up any ritual you want and "gain the benefit of having performed that chosen ritual with the maximum possible result".

Have you ever seen how many rituals there are in 4e? There is no way you can do this in a minute. I can't even think of a ritual worth using in this way to begin with. I had to pull teeth to get players to use rituals, even when I waived the gp cost to cast one!

Ruin is particularly amusing. In 2e, your magic items are all gone forever. In 4e: "All your magic items turn into residuum equal to 80 percent of their purchase value."  The horror!

I'm not trying to bash 4e. I love it. But the deck of many things just does not work in 4e. It loses all of its' pizazz.

Buy this thing!

Let's not forget that one deck was not enough! In the boxed set adventure, Madness at Gardmore Abbey, the deck was given the royal treatment. Let me just say right now that I bet you can get this boxed set for cheap. If you find one, buy it! You get two awesome poster maps, a sheet of dungeon tiles, a set of tokens (including really nice Deck Tokens) and the best part: an actual Deck of Many Things. As in, real cards.

In my opinion that alone makes this box worth buying. It contains a gigantic adventure, too. It was released at the end of 4e's lifespan, and was well-regarded. I ran it back then. It was fine. As is usually the case in 4e, there's some cool encounters in it, but as a whole it drags just due to the fact that each encounter takes about an hour of real-life time.

The whole adventure revolves around the heroes collecting the cards off of the different villains in the adventure. When they put the whole thing together, they have a heroic tier artifact version of the deck.
 

Somehow I haven't lost these yet.

The deck also has this weird extra effect. You can use it in an encounter to generate a token to be placed on the map. When a creature steps on it, they can use a power related to the token.

The Moon token lets you regain an encounter power. The Skull token lets you make an attack that can knock a creature unconscious. The creature must keep making more saves. If it fails three, it dies!

I like the token idea and I will use it. It should keep our 4e encounters interesting.

I was very excited to run this session tonight. It was a weird, fateful evening. As I ran the game in the store, just by chance a few old players stopped in and watched us play. One player is the guy who ran the dwarf  (in 1989!) who became the dead dwarf god featured in the logo of this site. Another guy was one of the players of my Gardmore Abbey game back in 2011!

The adventure involved making a Shadow Horse, going to the village built on the dead dwarf god in the astral sea, and killing a red dragon. Long story! In the dragon's hoard was... a Deck of Many Things.

The heroes had been warned repeatedly about it. In real life I'd been telling them about it for weeks. They carefully brought it to their home - an abandoned mountain temple (the Mountainroot Temple from Scales of War).

The players were very hesitant. I was a bit worried. Maybe they wouldn't draw any cards at all! An NPC drew three cards. He ended up dying from the third card, but he'd obtained a keep and a treasure map first.

And then came the maddening flood. The players drew card after card. They'd draw a card that gave them an 18 intelligence (remember, I used the 2e version with a couple exceptions) and a keep. Then the next card would be Ruin - which made their wealth and keep disappear.

The entire party ended up with evil alignments. They'd all ended up drawing the Balance card. At that point, they were determined to keep drawing until they got wishes. They wanted the wishes... to remove the negative effects!

I'm yuh worst nightmare

That's the lure of the deck. You're drawn in by the good effects (there's only a few cards in it that are really harmful) and you keep drawing until you get a bad one. Then, you keep drawing to try to remove the bad stuff. Sooner or later, you draw one of the bad ones.

The party wizard drew Skull. He died.

This did not end the frenzy. The party drew from the deck for one hour of real-life time. I can not tell you how many draws they made. I can tell you they have four planar enemies (three from The Shadowfell, one from The Feywild). They are all Evil. The party's NPC cleric has complete loathing for the party fighter. The only reason they stopped drawing is because the store was closing.

Next week, the group is going to follow their treasure map into the desert to find riches. And the deck will be right there in the hands of the party's caster, generating tokens and just waiting to be drawn from again.

The campaign is likely doomed, but it was worth it. There's something about the deck in use. It creates a frenzied, exciting and just plain fun session. You can't use it all the time, but I think every gaming group deserves to have some sort of encounter with a deck at some point in their run.

If for nothing else, the DM can use it when he or she is sick of the campaign and ready for something new.

Dead in Thay: The Chosen

I walked in the store today and witnessed evidence that the new edition is off to a good start. The store had two large stacks of starter sets for sale last week, and this week most of them are gone (Bryce Lynch has a great review of the starter set adventure here). And since the new edition has rolled out, my encounters group has been expanding at an alarming rate.

For a very long time, we were a solid group of 5 players and 1 DM. In each of the last two weeks, we have had 9 players and 1 DM. Usually I would say that 9 players is too many, but for whatever reason it has worked out quite nicely.

Best of all, the 12-year old girl brought her friend - another 12 year old girl. I would love to be part of getting more young females into D&D. The key there is to make sure our environment is welcoming. So far, so good, pretty much.

There was another new player this week - a pleasant, outgoing, modern-type college kid. His character's name was similar to "Heineken" and "Hadoken" so I had plenty of terrible dad-joke material to work with.

Our heroes have begun the endgame of Dead in Thay. They have begun to assault the Temples of Extraction! In each of these ten temple rooms, there's a shrine where a "Chosen" of a different Forgotten Realms god is trapped and having his or her essence drained to power the lich's ascension to godhood. A Chosen is a special follower of a god who has special powers.

My goal today was to do five rooms out of the ten. We had to really push, but we got it done. These rooms are cool and I really like the shrines. Basically, each room has a special effect, and then each shrine has to be dealt with. To approach a shrine, you have to walk into an energy field (DC 10 CHA save or take 5 damage and be knocked back). Then you have to destroy the shrines with three DC 15 checks by shattering pillars, using arcana, etc. If you fail the check, you take 5 force damage and are sent flying off the shrine. The shrines added a lot, especially when some of the PCs wanted to kill the evil Chosen that they came across!

In the stat block of the Red Wizards, the module gives you the choice of using different specialist Red Wizard types. Up until now, I haven't done that because I figured it would mean that I would have to look up different spells. For the most part, my villainous spellcasters use Magic Missile, Fireball and Blight. It has been simple to remember how the spells work without glancing down, and the players fear them every time. It had yet to get stale. But I figured that since we are entering the special finale, I should twist it up a bit. I decided to use the Conjurer type of Red Wizards today, because they have a special teleport power. I ended up never using this, but hey it was there.

Room 98. Temple of Poison
 

This whole thing starts off with a real rough dose of reality. The PCs appear in a room full of dark mist that they have to save against or be stunned for a round! This allows the red wizard inside to drop a fireball on them with ease. Yikes.

Once the adventurers overcame the mist and slaughtered the wizards, they took a great deal of damage when trying to mess with the shrine. DC 15 is not an easy roll to make, and they had to make three.

The new guy decided that the Chosen of Zehir in the shrine needed to die. The Chosen was a Yuan-ti follower of the god of assassins, after all. The player seemed happy about the idea of Zehir assassins trying to hunt him down and slit his throat. That might make for a cool encounter back in Daggerford.

Room 99. Temple of Suffering

This room had red mist that either healed you or hurt you when you damaged somebody else. It was very cool, though I think the mist effect was too weak. It should have healed/hurt people for half the damage they dealt, rather than one quarter.

I keep forgetting about treasure. There are treasure suggestions are way earlier in the pdf, but it's an extra task to deal with when preparing and it's easy to let it fall by the wayside.

The Chosen in this room was a good guy named Kieren. The heroes actually used potions of healing to try to restore his health a bit.

Room 100. Temple of Pain

This room has a "web of pain" effect. When you take damage, you might end up with disadvantage, basically. This didn't come up much, because a good portion of the group stayed in the hallway. I forgot to stack this with the shrine effects.. I am kicking myself now.

The adventurers killed the undead in here, and then took a good squint at the Chosen trapped in the shrine. I described her as a pale, thin-lipped, dark-haired woman wearing all black. She was a female half-elf Chosen of Loviatar, goddess of torture and pain. New guy decided to kill her too, reveling in the idea that agents of two gods would be after him.

101. Temple of Ooze
 

The walls in here are of gray ooze. When you move within 15 feet of the walls, an ooze tendril can hit you for 10 points of damage! This is especially nasty because, well, you have to enter the room, and therefore you must brave at least one tendril attack.

And of course, with this group, they just stayed by the walls the whole time, and thus were getting ooze-tendriled in all sorts of uncomfortable places.

Our heroes killed the wizard, the wight and the oozes in here. They again had trouble with the shrine. New Guy was now on a full-on "Slaughter The Chosen" kick, but the other rogue in the party stepped up and was prepared to defend him with violence.

This Chosen is a drow who is linked to Ghaunadaur, the underdark lord of oozes. The drow was indebted to the brave rogue, and we tossed around the idea of her being rewarded with some kind of blobby pet.

102. Temple of Shadows

This room was full of "Poisoned Shadows". If a PC took damage in here, they'd have to save or become blind for a short time.

I wasn't prepared to run this one properly. It was an encounter with 6 shadows in a magically-dimmed room. Special rules obviously applied, but I was too focused on getting this encounter done in time and I think it wasn't as cool as it could have been.

The other thing is that the adventurers took a severe beating in this session. The cleric had pretty much used all of his healing, and the group continued to let each shrine beat the bejeezus out of them rather than approaching them with care. These DC 15 checks are not easy. But, the group could have sorted out which PC has the best chance of dealing with a shrine, and sent that one in alone instead of the "Black Friday Stampede" we ended up with.

Another element that makes this room dangerous was that when the Shadows hit you, you take a -1 to all Strength-based rolls (including to-hit and damage). This is cumulative. So, if a Shadow hits you five times, it brings you to a -5 penalty. And you die. New guy ran in this dark room alone, was swarmed, and came very close to dying.

But our heroes persevered, killed the shadows, and I think killed the Chosen - a female drow of Ibrandul (God of darkness).

That's where we stopped, exactly where I wanted us to be. These rooms were easy to prepare, they were creative, they felt fresh and interesting - I love this dungeon. This is a great final stretch. I am looking forward to seeing how the final area - The Phylactery Vault - plays out.

Blade Runner, Shadowrun and Philip K. Dick

I have talked my "elite" Sunday group into pausing our D&D next/5e campaign to play Shadowrun for a few weeks. Shadowrun is a game that I've always liked, but I never had any sort of grasp on the rules.

We're going to do two more sessions of D&D, which gives me a couple of weeks to prepare. I know it is hopeless for me to try and master the rules in this time, so I am going to run this game "loose" (rules-lite, I guess). We'll do the basic dice pool stuff and kind of eyeball the rest. This is a group that is on the same page as me. They prefer concocting a swift solution over grinding the game to a halt over some rules dispute.

When I think of sources of inspiration for Shadowrun, I think of a couple things: Blade Runner, Akira and Queensryche. I know Neuromancer is a massive influence on the game, but I just can't get through that book. What excites me most about Shadowrun is the opportunity to create a satirical setting, taking real life stuff such as the Kardashians, Men's Rights Activists and prescription drugs and twist them up for my own purposes in the campaign.
 

I watched Blade Runner. I'd seen it once before but wasn't really paying attention. I think the appeal of the movie lies in the setting. The pace is slow, allowing us viewers to soak up all of the neat little touches. I'm a big Harrison Ford fan, but he wasn't at his best here in my opinion. Then I read up a bit and learned that he didn't like working with Ridley Scott at all and it made more sense. I've also read people talking about what a bad actress Daryl Hannah is. I thought she was fine. She had a real memorable look in this movie.

I made a list of things I saw or came up with as I watched that could be useful:

- Huge video wall on the side of building, geisha eating a strawberry

- Hovering ship/blimp/zeppelin broadcasting ads

- Japanese vendors of shrimp rolls. High tech chopsticks?

- An NPC who does origami of shadowrun monsters

- An NPC with one eye blue, one eye red?

- Whole blocks of the city are empty. People are moving away.

- Video-chatting with women in prison. This is from a podcast I listen to. They were talking about how you can pay $9 to talk to a real-life female prisoner for half an hour. The possibilities here.. wow. I will probably have an NPC contact of the heroes (in the game I believe a contact is also known as a "Mr. Johnson") who is a comic book guy-type who has a "girlfriend" in prison. That might be a very handy contact, honestly. If the PCs give him 9 bucks (errr... nuyen) he can have his girlfriend ask around the prison and dig up dirt for the PCs.

- Lit-up codpieces. I am vastly amused by the idea of a high tech codpiece. What does it do? Maybe it can convert urine into a laser beam to shoot at enemies!

- Image cube: A holographic cube that is a 3d photo of a room. This would be perfect for a crime scene.

- Female dancers/strippers in hockey masks. This was an odd little thing in Blade Runner. The hockey masks didn't quite work for me. I think it might be cooler to have them wear masks of stylized japanese devils?

- Hair dryer: A clear globe. Put your head in it and hot air whisks around. You probably remember this from Blade Runner with the snake-lady. It was hard to hear, but apparently her stage show involves "taking pleasure" from the snake..? Harrison Ford hears this, makes a face, but then turns and watches.

- Smartglass window tint. You probably remember this from the movie too. I'd imagine you could come up with all sorts of other cool ideas for tech-glass. I should probably check out google glass to see what that can do.

- Umbrellas with glowing handles/poles. This was one of the most noticeable touches in the movie. It went a long way toward creating a futuristic setting. It looked cool and it made sense.

Then I read the book Blade Runner is based on. Well, ok, I listened to an abridged audio version of the story. It is called "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Phillip K. Dick. I've never read anything by him before (I read mostly non-fiction) and I was none too thrilled with how in the book our hero Deckard is married and cheats on his wife with seemingly no guilt or repurcussions.

I read more about Philip K. Dick and was astonished to find that Total Recall and Minority Report are also based on his work. In fact, it is entirely possible that the "colony" people are leaving Earth for is on the Mars of Total Recall! How crazy is that?

"Androids" has some very cool ideas in it. There are these machines called Penfields which people use to control their moods. They type in a three digit code and boom they can have three hours of joy, or program themselves to go to sleep, or even schedule 4 hours of depression.

I like this idea a lot but I want to use pills, partly because I associate the pill logo on the back of Kaneda's jacket in Akira so deeply with my idea of what Shadowrun is. I also like the possibility that, like in real life, when you don't have access to these pills, you get a little wacky and maybe have withdrawals - but in a fun, Shadowrun way.

Also in the book is a popular TV show called "Buster Friendly and his Friendly Friends". I love this and definitely want to cook up some celebrities, movies and TV. I plan on devouring the Shadowrun pop culture book Shadowbeat and will use that as the basis to create some fun, sarcastic pop culture stuff.
 

I know that there is Shadowrun slang out there already. I think the slang word I remember the most is "chummer". I was never big on their slang. Same with Planescape, too. I appreciated the effort, but I was never able to call someone a "berk" and have it come off in a way that was beneficial to the game. It was always a distraction. It could be that I simply didn't commit to it enough when playing my NPCs. By creating slang I am comfortable actually saying out loud at the table, I think it will have more of the desired effect.

Saikin dou Desuka: What's new?
Daijyoubu desu: No problem

And of course we'll need a bunch of japanese swears. I will use "Kusottare" liberally.

In the book, animals are mostly extinct. Owning a pet of a real-life animal is a very big deal. There's a touch of this in Blade Runner, when Deckard sees the owl at Tyrell Corporation. He is told it is synthetic. I don't find any of this particularly useful for a Shadowrun Campaign.

There is also a whole plotline about this pseudo-religion called Mercerism, and whether it is a hoax or not. It is really odd and I kind of didn't like the whole idea. I do think that corrupt politicians and religious figures are a pretty big part of Shadowrun though, so I may try and work that into it in some form.

What I want out of Shadowrun is motorcycle fights (like in Akira), Sin City-esque NPCs in strip clubs and seedy bars downing shot after shot slung by cyber-broads, and of course rainy nights and flickering neon signs.

I started going through Shadowbeat, and should have a full report on it soon. It has a lot of material on playing a Rocker or member of the press as a character (who the hell would want to play a reporter as a PC?). I was vastly amused about the section on "Sasquatch Rock"...

I have Dead in Thay today. We shall see if the group continues to grow...