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It seems that I am slowly approaching post #200 in this blog.

Here is something in a little bit of lighter vein inspired by a discussion in the forums and the movie Full Metal Jacket I saw many years ago. It was written after a particularly long day and meant to be harmless diversion telling about fictitious GM…

The creed, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this post are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), events, things, places, buildings, products or feelings and beliefs of any particular person is intended or should be inferred. No particular GM style is meant to be promoted by this. No animals, no monsters, intelligent or non intelligent species nor NPCs nor anything else were harmed in the making up of this post.

Mythras GM’s creed
This is my game system.

There are many like it, but this one is mine.

My game system is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.

Without me, my game system is useless. Without my game system, I am useless. I must use my game system true. I must play wiser than my players who are trying to kill my villains. I must hit them before they hit me. I will…

My game system and I know that what counts in game is not the rounds we fight, the noise of our battle shout, nor the fumbles we make. We know that it is the hits that count. We will hit…

My game system is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its sights and its nuances.

I will keep my game system clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will…

Before the secret masters of RPG, I swear this creed. My game system and I are the defenders of my game. We are the masters of our world. We are the saviors of my life.So be it, until victory is ours and there is no enemy, until another campaign!

A bit later interaction with GM and the players
And the way I see it ladies, you owe me for ONE JELLY DOUGHNUT! NOW GET ON YOUR FACES!”

and the whole troop is doing pushups and chanting:

1-2-3-4 I love Mythras Core

Sorcery Calculator has a major upgrade. Sorcery spells from Fioricetta – both the ordinary and illusionist kind have been added. Sorandib spells have been added as well as Mythic Constantinople. After the Vampire wars had a few interesting spells that have been added.

You can now select which set of sorcery spells you are using: RAW, RAW + Monster Island, RAW and all the others or everything.

For those that are strong in the force – one can now add up to 18 sorcery spells to the list if your intelligence matches that.

Some small UI tweaks here and there.

 

More about sorcery tool here and here and even here and grimoires here and magical difficulty modifiers here

Sorcery Calculator has a major upgrade. Monster Island spells have been now added to spell list. You can select either to have them available or not. For those whose INT is weak the tool now states if they try to add a number of spells beyond their ability to memorise. It calculates also number of unique spells chosen. If you happen to choose a Monster Island sorcery spell the name of the spell is written in appropriate red.

For each of the spells chosen it also states the page you can find the description in the RAW or Monster Island book. Some small UI tweaks here and there.

The tool also now should work with Google Sheets and couple of earlier Excel versions as they do not work with recent concat function.

More about sorcery tool here and here and grimoires here and magical difficulty modifiers here

Sorcery Calculator has a major upgrade. You can now add ten of your favourite spells (a grimoire usually has seven or less) from a selector. For these spells the calculator calculates the effect of your skills and abilities according to RAW. It contains all the sorcery spells in Mythras Core Rulebook. For the description of spells you need to go to the book, all the calculations are here.

Other updates include calculating durations and ranges so you will have 65 minutes instead of only having POW * 5 minutes. Some UI tweaks here and there.

More about sorcery tool here and grimoires here and magical difficulty modifiers here

Bird in Hand is a must have scenario for Monster Island, the most useful sword and sorcery sandbox I have used in the past 40+ years of GM’ing (I have GM’d Monster Island since 2013). Monster Island setting and the scenario itself can be used almost anywhere and in many settings from sword & sorcery to pulp among others. In the Monster Island and in the scenario city people are humans and natives of the island are lizard people but that is easily changed to other kind of jungle dwelling natives. The scenario itself is easy to drop into any ongoing Monster Island campaign – adjusting or adding the hooks and NPCs accordingly. In my campaign it was sword and sorcery based setting, humans from the continent in the port city and headhunting human tribes in interior. We played with characters in mid level skills and long history of roleplaying.

The scenario starts in Grimsand – the only civilized town in Monster Island and the writing brings Grimsand to life. There are multiple interesting NPCs that you can interact with and get in trouble with. The actions your players can have an effect on the NPCs, plotlines on the scenario and also on your future in Grimsand. The first part of the scenario stays in the city and a session or two will be spent there with plenty of opportunities for roleplay, using variety of skills to figure out what is going on and dealing with the increasing number of forces interested in the maguffin. I liked that there were multiple options written out for the various paths players may take. As in great scenarios there are multiple paths thru the first part of the scenario. Eventually the party needs to brace themselves and head into the jungle for most likely a two or three session romp but it could be more. Monster Island interior is deadly so players better be prepared and they will be lost in the jungle if you push into the green interior without the right combination of skills and help. If you are quite lucky and resourceful you may be able to tackle the jungle part with one long session but I would not push it that way. 

Hex crawl rules at the end of the scenario are pure gold – making the island itself an adversary that needs to be tackled. They will be used extensively in my ongoing campaign on Monster Island and would be useful also in other jungle or difficult terrain based campaigns.

This is a scenario that melds with the tone and the spirit of Monster Island. It is a worthy addition to Monster Island, Mythras and a great sword and sorcery scenario – and that is high praise indeed.

Great work, John – highly impressed.

5 stars out of 5

You can find the scenario at least in DriveThruRPG and Amazon

Based on experience in using them for a bit – the travel rolls and fatigue have been separated to two sheets so you can print them on A4 and still read the type with relative ease.

Travel rolls look like this

And the fatigue table like this

Calculates now (again) the difficulty modifier for combined spells. Additionally calculates both the resulting level of difficulty AND difficulty grades. Some tweaks.

More about sorcery tool here and grimoires here and magical difficulty modifiers here

There was a question on Facebook about Finnish translation of the names. Found an old document where I translated for my own campaign the names available at the time – somewhere mid to late 80’s. They were done in my student days. Nowadays perhaps would change a few when both the Glorantha and my knowledge of English has changed.

Reflecting back on time: when this translation was last saved it was written with Word version prior to Word 6 and it does not open with current versions of word. The only available Glorantha materials were

 Borderlands

Cults of Prax

Trollpak

Dragon Pass

DW14

genertela

Griffin Mountain

Pavis

RQ Companion

There was no internet for general public. Alarums & Excursions was the closest I knew about general community. Things have changed a bit…

The file as PDF is here

From what I hear there are several expeditions in various campaigns that are heading to interior of Monster Island. Built up some new versions and new variations of the shoals, flocks and hordes in the Monster Island. Now there exists all the sizes of Flocks and the links work again for example: Enormous Swarm of Jellyfish . You can find all these by using search word : Flock , it will find also other people’s flocks.

Rats

Include chance of getting a disease

Bats

Piranhas

They include blood sense and swimmer ability.

Leeches

Crab swarms

Jellyfish

Lovers of sword and sorcery have a field day now with the long awaited hard cover release of Monster Island by the Design Mechanism and the most appropriate new scenario for it – A Bird in The Hand. Run, don’t walk to Lulu to purchase the hard cover for the sandbox and the new scenario. A Bird in the Hand will give you an excellent induction to Monster Island. You will need a hard cover for the Monster Island as the sandbox will last you a long long time with a lot of gaming. It can easily be slotted into your campaign – in mine I changed the lizard folk to native tribesmen and the high folk to serpent folk with some extra camouflage powers.

A Bird in the Hand scenario contains the wonderful hex crawl rules put together by John Holmes and my group was given a chance to put them to extensive play test and have used them in every scenario ever since. The hex crawl rules makes it a must buy for the scenario itself, for the Monster Island travel and also for other jungle related scenarios. The only thing that is “missing” from the scenario hex crawl rules is a GM sheet for the various hex crawl features. The scenario is perfectly playable without GM sheet and has all the rules.

The Core rules have tucked inside them rules for Survival, Precipitation, Exposure and Wind effects. The combination of Monster Island and the Hex Crawl rules in the scenario makes the terrain and weather of the island itself an adversary worth planning for. Your party better have navigation, survival, endurance and several other skills.

Useful Folk Magic for Hex Crawl

Many folk magic spells would also come in useful. It is of course sad that by default Monster Island does not have folk magic. YMIMV. Cool would help quite a bit during a scene. For drying yourself off “Dry” would help in helping survive the jungle night. Might might help when trying to avoid the encumbrance penalties from Burdened or above conditions. Pathway would help in not losing one’s way so easily within a single scene. Preserve would help in keeping the rations good for longer than the Monster Island week. Tire would be nasty spell against the already fatigued – might even kill a person. Vigour would help avoiding the burdened and above conditions Fatigue rolls and Warmth could help for a bit in the night.

These of course will burn quite a few magic points as they are targeted per person, will last only a short while (scene might not be a day, sounds like too strong for a cantrip like folk magic spell) and magic might not work every time. It is also worth noting that Cool and Warmth requires concentration that might be broken by the denizens and surprises of Monster Island.

GM Sheet for Hex Crawl

I was inspired to create a GM sheet for the Hex Crawl and John was kind enough to provide some feedback to tune it a bit.

You will need Mythras Core Rules, Monster Island and the scenario A Bird in the Hand. GM sheets provide summary information at a glance and refer to the books.

The GM sheets contain

• The Monster Island (and Jungle) Hex Crawl Travel rolls
• The Monster Island Hex Crawl Travel Distance
• Camping in Wilderness V1.3

The GM sheets combine information about Monster Island temperature effects,

The Monster Island Armour Penalty Fatigue Calculator

The Monster Island Armour Penalty Fatigue Calculator tool calculates the effects of Monster Island Jungle rules for wearing armour. The tool is currently an excel – will likely be added to toolsfrompavis.com later on. Mark here your current fatigue level (Fresh, Weary…), your strength, worn Armour ENC and all other ENC than armour. Monster Island is unforgiving if you wear any armour at all so be prepared for that. If you need to calculate the weapon, specific armour set and other equipment ENC use the Encumbrance calculator and mark down what you need here.

The

The files are here

• Monster Island and Jungle Travel Rolls
• Monster Island Travel Distance
• Camping in the Wilderness
• Monster Island Armour Fatigue Calculator
• Fatigue chart

…and they will appear also in the Mythras charts page and Starting Resources for GMs

To get the best of these you will need the Mythras Core Rules, Monster Island and the scenario A Bird in the Hand from Design Mechanism , Mythras Encounter Generator will create you encounters.