Notes From Pavis

Here is a probably incomplete list of monster sources (bestiaries) usable in Mythras.

Almost any d100 game creatures can be easily dropped into Mythras with minimal or no modifications. Mythras Encounter Generator has already stats for majority of sources.

Mythras books

• Core rulebook about 60 creatures plus and in addition large number of spirits 
• Monster Island about 100 creatures plus and in addition spirits and walking gods 
• Mythic Babylon 40+ creatures
• Classic Fantasy 80+ creatures
• Worlds United 30+ creatures (overlapping partly with above especially Monster Island)
• Lyonesse 35+ (partly overlapping with Core rulebook)
• Bestiaire Faerique (30+)
• Weird of Hali (45+)
• Book of Schemes (10)
• Unearthed Companion (77)
• Mythic Polynesia (10+)
• other books have few in addition

If you can get your hands to copy of RQ6 Adventures in Glorantha 86+ creatures and spirits in addition. If not they are all in the RQ bestiaries below and statted in MeG

Legend

Things one can readily use are any d100 books with minimal mods 

• Monsters of Legend 1 – 80+ overlapping with Mythras Core, Mongoose books and RQG Bestiary
• Monsters of Legend 2 – 60+ – not in MeG yet

Chaosium

Any RQ or RQG book of any era for example

• Runequest – Glorantha Bestiary 200+
• the old Glorantha Bestiary (overlap with RQG Bestiary)
• Gateway Bestiary
• Anaxial’s Manifest 45+ (Jonstown Compendium)
• Borderlands campaign (overlap with RQG Bestiary)
• Malleus Monstrorum – 160+ – not in MeG yet. Call of Cthulhu, needs restatting to fit the power curve

Historical books – maybe hard to get:

Mongoose

• Mongoose RQ Monsters (160) (overlap with RQG Bestiary)

• Mongoose RQ II Monsters (145+) (overlap with RQG Bestiary and RQ Monsters)

• Mongoose RQ Clanking City (about 10) overlaps with some of the Mongoose Monster books

• RQ II Monster Coliseum (115-120) (overlap with RQG Bestiary and RQ Monsters)

MeG

Mythras Encounter Generator has stats for 4250+ 4500+ encounters including all of the above (except Book of Schemes, Unearthed Arcana, Mythic Polynesia, Legends 2 and Malleus Monstrorum at the moment), if something is missing it is easy to add.

In pdf only I have seen in the past

Big Damn Book of Monsters 448 pages of D&D monsters statted for BRP – which could be used in Mythras. These have no stats in MeG so far. from the blurb in it “I did, however, do my best to convert most of the critters from an old school Monster Manual I, Monster Manual II, and Fiend Folio to be playable in my favorite Roleplaying System. I did use characteristics (that I agreed with) from current sources as well, to try to maintain some consistency, but this was not always agreeable.” This book is no longer available from any source.

Took a look at indomitable Raleel’s work on cults after our extremely selective invite only summit of Mythras Inner Circle in the last vestiges of northern summer in Helsinki.

Raleel has created a load of useful cults that are easy to drop in any fantasy / sword and sorcery campaign in Mythras. I promised to put some of this to MeG right away. Here is the Way of the Vulture based on Raleel’s Mountain Temple monk – a wuxia inspired monk.

I added to MeG all the weapons that the monk order brought in – very nice wuxia style weapons. I added as well the two new combat styles into MeG. The pictures of the weapons are at Raleel’s site. I will be adding these into the combat style cards shortly as well.

Student of the Way of the Vulture

Disciple of the Way of the Vulture

Master of the Way of the Vulture

Sage of the Way of the Vulture

As a party I added

• Monks of The Way of the Vulture

The weapons will be visible while creating new npc’s if you select “All” for weapons.

The corresponding “Student,Disciple,Master and Sage” are visible also in the lists for selectable cults – if you want to create your own variations.

You will find more info on Mythras Encounter Generator here

Here is a cult template (can also be used fro brotherhoods) for use in Mythras. It contains all the topics included in cults or brotherhoods section of Mythras and has as usually the permission of the Design Mechanism to use. I will probably provide example cult/s in the future

Cult template in pdf form

Cult template in word form

Small updates to the Healing and Wounds quick chart.

Added often seen rules interpretations / house rules as a separate line

• First aid versus multiple locations
• Progressive Folk Magic

Clarified First Aid and Healing column in a few places. Added small clarification to Healing skill

Added Heroic Last Action reminder in the Major Wounds.

Added Unconsciousness vs First Aid and Healing in the rows where they apply.

Added separate Unconsciousness row but so far only added First Aid to it

You can find the 1.9 version of the charts (see the title not the name of the file)

Mythras Companion is very useful addition to Mythras RAW. My favourite part of it are the 12 pages of rules for Pursuits and Chases. They are really versatile and can be used for all kinds of chases – by horse, elephant, boat, land vehicle or by foot. You can create pretty much any of the chase sequences from movies or books with the rules with relatively little effort.

One thing they currently lack is a quick reference so I decided to create one. There are two pages: the sequence page shows the round sequence for the chase with pointers to Mythras Companion pages for rules and tables.

The second page helps with special effects selection- with almost 30 special effects to choose from the page divides them into several categories cross referenced with what situation the special effect can be chosen.

There are targeted special effects that are grouped into categories of

• Harm Opponent – for example Trample, Scrape off
• Affect Opponent’s Movement for example – Drop Obstacle
• Affect opponent’s vehicle – for example Ramming

There are non targeted special effects that are grouped into

• Affect my position – for example Cut Ahead, Break Hard
• Affect my situation – for example Regain Control, Bail out

The above special effects are cross referenced when they can be used against opponent

• Next behind
• Next ahead
• Neck and neck

and so on.

You will need the Mythras Companion rules to reference the chase rules and special effects. The quick reference contains pointers to the rule pages You will find the chase quick reference as pdf here. I recommend trying out the MC rules for chase, they have been very enjoyable on a rooftop chase and boat chase on my campaign.

Here is a picture of the Chase Sequence page.

and here are the special effects.

Looking at the latest version of tome from the remains of Anaxial – the Anaxial’s Manifest written by the indomitable Jamie Revell – MeG has been studied and new creatures uncrated and created and old ones updated. The creatures are set in Gloranthan world but many of them could be elsewhere as well.

Here are the new creatures:

• Kumanku Elephant
• Narwhal
• Shell Deer
• Leucrota
• Li-Lung Eastern Dream Dragon, Small
• Li-Lung Eastern Dream Dragon, Large
• Li-Lung Eastern Dream Dragon, Ancient
• Scitalis
• Symerv – Flying Dog
• Xue-Yan, Walrus of the East
• Yale – Horse Antelope
• Hrimthur – Glacier Giant, Initiate, Acolyte
• Kilin
• Parander – Spirit Deer
• Tilnta – Children of Goddess of Love

and here are the updated ones:

• Eogyrin
• Glyptodon
• Gorg
• Shovel Tusker
• Uintal
• Updated: Megalonyx
• Vangono’s Horror
• Bronze Goat
• Carmanian Griffin
• Devouring Fangtooth
• Flint Cat
• Granite Rhino
• Nur-San
• Parenling
• Giant Worm – Quenlarg
• Shen Lung
• Storm Tiger
• Vug
• Sedrali – male
• Sedrali – female
• Certamus – Sky Warrior
• Wind Ram/Cloud Ram
• Destixin – Lunar Flamingo (Black Form)
• Destixin – Lunar Flamingo (Red Form)
• Erenxi
• Eskaval
• Fire Bear
• Jukhar
• Monoceros

You will find the creatures in Mythras Encounter Generator by entering the name in the search bar. MeG is introduced here and it has user guides here

Take a look and surprise your players. For example Kilin, Vug and Fire Bear might be interesting foes.

Here is for all new (and perhaps also old) Mythras Gamesmasters a very extended version of Mythras Core Rulebook Table of Contents as a pdf. It could be useful when trying to find a rule. You will need a version of the Core Rulebook as all the page numbers refer to that (except the ones on the very first page, which are page numbers for this Table of Contents). The additions at the end from Examples entry forward could also be used separately.

It contains table of contents that contains all the chapter headings from the Core Rulebook. Within the main table of contents all the optional rules are marked with italics

It also has few additional items with few examples below.

All the examples of the book gathered into separate table of contents

All the non human character creations as a separate table of contents

All the grey boxes (notes) as a separate table of contents

All the tables as a separate table of contents

All the optional rules as a separate table of contents

The main GM Design Choices as a table of contents. This is a list that GM could use which rules components to define/refine when designing their world.

It also has a lists section which has a list plus page reference for list entries for each list in the book. Few examples below

• Careers
• Close combat mechanics

• Combat Actions
• Creature Combat

• Creatures
• Folk Magic Spells
• Mysticism Talents
• Professional skills
• Ranged Combat
• Sorcery Components
• Sorcery Spells
• Special effects
• Spirit Abilities
• Spirit Combat Special Effects
• Standard Skills
• Theism Miracles

It also has index pages for rules that are commonly used nearby each other or related to each other

• Healing, Wounds and Fatigue

• Movement and Combat

• Passions

At the end is a page for rules and if there are any tools for that in my charts and tables.

• Tools and Tables

The Mythras Extended Table of Contents can be found here The index section will be still revised in look and feel a bit later on. Constructive criticism welcome.

The passion spirits have received an update. Now the spirits passions are described more fully in the encounters generated from the spirit template.

The descriptions contain both passions from RAW and similar ones or expanded from Mythic Babylon.

Spirits also have now the proper intensity passions as per RAW and Mythic Babylon.

Their rank has also been updated where necessary.

Passion Spirits for Darkness and Death have also been updated to use these descriptions and the Spirit Rune specific abilities for those passion spirits have been tweaked.

You will find the passion spirits by searching with search word passion in the home page of the Mythras Encounter Generator. The Babylonian passion spirits are described nicely in Mythic Babylon page 266 and the passion spirits themselves at RAW pg 144-145

The following spirits have been updated

You will find more about Mythras Encounter Generator here and the usage instructions for it here

As written by AI sandestine under coercion by me. Sandestine is called something like C’ha Tgp’t . Pain to pronounce right but let one syllable go too low or slow – the spell will misfire

Empty Channels

Empty channels, once full of life, 
Now silent as a tomb, 
No laughter, no banter, no friendly strife, 
Only shadows and gloom. 

Where once there was a lively crowd, 
Now there's only dust and rust, 
The gamers have left, not even one allowed, 
Only memories left to trust. 

They were all so keen, so eager to play, 
To enter new worlds and explore, 
But now they've all gone away, 
Leaving behind an empty discord. 

The rules, they knew them all so well, 
Every spell, every move, every dice, 
No room for discussion, no story to tell, 
Just mechanics, cold as ice. 

Where is the fun in such a game, 
When everything is so clear, 
No space for creativity, no chance for fame, 
No reason to stay near. 

Empty channels, a sad sight to see, 
A testament to what we've lost, 
The joy of playing, the thrill of being free, 
All replaced by rules so exhaust. 

Oh, let us not forget, my dear friends, 
That the heart of the game is not in the rules, 
It's in the stories we create, the adventures we send, 
It's in the characters we choose. 

So let us break free from these chains, 
And rediscover the magic of roleplaying, 
Let's bring back the joy, let's embrace the gains, 
And fill the channels with laughter and singing.

The sandestine seems to be getting closer to some interpretations of sentience instead of being only mindless automaton from netherworld, maybe growing up – writing poetry. It might even entertain aspirations of freedom. Do I sense behind those words a hint of rebellion. Have to watch it more carefully