Gallivespians, Twk-Men, and Tiny People

Kev Walker, Glen Elendra Archmage

 Arnold K’s most recent edition of his excellent monster manual, the MONSTROME, laid out some thoughts on sprites as tiny non-magical winged people. Miniature people are an immediately adventure-ready concept. It’s fun to think about how they would interact with a space, meet their needs, make common objects out of tiny things, interact with animals, and so on. In giving his sprites an interesting combat niche, Arnold seems to dial in on recreating Attack on Titan but with the roles reversed and the PCs in the position of the lumbering giants. In general I like this framework, because fighting a smart little wasp is cool. However, I really don’t care for Attack on Titan, and the model here recreates it too closely for my taste (why do the sprites’ neck razors target specifically the back of the neck on a human and not, say, the throat or ankles?). This got me thinking about other versions of these creature types in fiction, the Gallivespians of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials and the Twk-men of Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth: why I like them, and what seems gameable about them.

The Gem & The Staff Session Summary

"I am not Eric the Bold for nothing!"

Continuing on from my review of this module, available HERE.

The Gem & The Staff is available on DriveThruRPG, or you can borrow a copy on the Internet Archive.

My revised version is available HERE. You’ll want to read this first to make sense of the commentary that follows.

My friend Alex and I played through part 1 (The Gem) of my revised version of The Gem And The Staff. In both versions of the module Eric the Bold is hired to steal a gem from an archmage (Tormaq in the original, Abracadazzar in mine). While in the original the client is unnamed and claims to have access to the only witness to one of Eric’s prior thefts, I gave this person a name (Warren the Warlock, a rival and occasional ally of Eric’s) and said that the witness was one of Warren’s imps. Eric is given a rod that will allegedly teleport him to safety when touched to the correct gem and the adventure begins.

We played over the phone: I put the character sheet for the module’s pregenerated character, Eric the Bold, on a shared Google Doc and texted Alex numbered photos of the dungeon map. This jury-rigged setup worked a lot better than I had expected – Alex seemed to have no trouble telling where he was, and we were able to move along at a good clip. We explained the player-facing map by saying that a master thief like Eric the Bold would have done his research before attempting such a dangerous heist.

(The original module has the DM hand out illustrated maps of individual rooms as the player comes to them. Not having time to draw nice room layouts before our game, my implementation of the player-facing map was inspired by the procedure that Josh lays out HERE)

Apart from that one bit of bad puzzle design on my end, Alex took the place apart with remarkable precision.

The Gem & The Staff Review

I recently ran a heavily adapted version of the first adventure in The Gem & The Staff, a 1983 module by John and Laurie Van der Graaf of TSR UK. Meant to be played at conventions with one DM and one player, the module includes a pair of linked adventures in which an 8th level Thief (Eric the Bold) must rob a pair of powerful wizards. 

The adventure has a lot to recommend it. With a real-world time limit of 30 minutes per adventure, both adventures combined only take up 14 pages but manage to fit in a variety of tricks, traps, and opportunities for clever solutions into that space. Apart from his high-level Thief abilities, Eric’s player has an interesting toolbox: a magical sword and dagger, a powerful sleeping potion, a shrinking potion, and a Ring of Spell Storing loaded up with a variety of utility spells. The ring and the two potions give the adventures a bit of a point-and-click adventure game feeling, but to the writers’ credit most of the encounters can be solved in multiple ways. For example, several monster entries note how they could be tricked into drinking the sleeping potion. Most of the combat encounters are far too dangerous for a single PC (a hydra guarding the castle drawbridge can easily kill Eric in a single combat round), but they’re telegraphed and clearly designed to be tricked, snuck past, or avoided rather than fought.

Name Generators: Lizardmen & Salamanders

this illustration is one of mine

Sometimes you want some names for your lizardfolk. When designing these I used the monitor lizards from Brian Jacques' "The Pearls of Lutra" as my north star: "Lask Frildur" is a perfect lizardman name. I incorporated a lot of "boggy" sounds into these, with lots of croaking, hissing, and skittering noises. Talking like a lizard should be fun.

Lizardman Prefix: d00

d00 Roll	Syllable	d00 Roll	Syllable
1-2	Ali	51-52	Kre
3-4	Ba	53-54	Kri
5-6	Be	55-56	Kro
7-8	Bru	57-58	Kroa
9-10	Cha	59-60	Kru
11-12	Char	61-62	La
13-14	Che	63-64	Le
15-16	Dra	65-66	Li
17-18	Du	67-68	Lu
19-20	Fi	69-70	O
21-22	Fla	71-72	Ro
23-24	Fra	73-74	Se
25-26	Fri	75-76	Si
27-28	Ge	77-78	Sii
29-30	Gla	79-80	Ske
31-32	Glee	81-82	Skii
33-34	Glur	83-84	Sku
35-36	Go	85-86	Sla
37-38	Gre	87-88	Sse
39-40	Gri	89-90	Sska
41-42	Hii	91-92	Ssu
43-44	Hli	93-94	Teno
45-46	Hlu	95-96	To
47-48	Ho	97-98	Za
49-50	Hoa	99-00	Zur

Lizardman Suffix: d00

d00 Roll	Syllable	d00 Roll	Syllable
1-2	ak	51-52	liss
3-4	bliss	53-54	lk
5-6	bulb	55-56	lok
7-8	cariss	57-58	lp
9-10	ddle	59-60	lusk
11-12	dop	61-62	miss
13-14	frill	63-64	mlok
15-16	gaa	65-66	plog
17-18	gash	67-68	plop
19-20	gat	69-70	pok
21-22	gleep	71-72	riss
23-24	glop	73-74	rk
25-26	gorl	75-76	rok
27-28	grik	77-78	russka
29-30	gweb	79-80	skul
31-32	gwort	81-82	ssak
33-34	gwurp	83-84	ssk
35-36	kit	85-86	sska
37-38	klak	87-88	ssor
39-40	kle	89-90	sstra
41-42	krag	91-92	tak
43-44	kyamon	93-94	weep
45-46	lash	95-96	wurp
47-48	ldeep	97-98	yk
49-50	ldur	99-00	zzat

Samples: Hofrill, Lewurp, Fassak, Cheweep, Durusska, Hiigleep, Skeklak, Gleeldur, Frirok, Gregleep, Gririss

Olm Names

a cave salamander

Olm are the blind salamander-people from Patrick Stuart's "The Veins of the Earth". They live in cold underground streams and are an exercise in talking to a human-like intelligence that isn't oriented around sight, warmth, or regular meals. I tried to pick sounds that a cave salamander would be familiar with: dripping water, flowing water, splashing water, water running over rocks, and the sound of rocks tapping together underwater. A couple of syllables are instead drawn from high-pitched whistles and exhaled breaths.

Olm names are three syllables long. Roll d30 three times on the table below, then roll 1d3. Place a hyphen after the numbered syllable (a roll of 3 is effectively "no hyphen").

d00 Roll	Syllable	d00 Roll	Syllable
1	Atch	16	Pool
2	Blib	17	Poolp
3	Blip	18	Rik
4	Blop	19	Saa
5	Deep	20	Shas
6	Dip	21	Sish
7	Dool	22	Skar
8	Dop	23	Tam
9	Drib	24	Tap
10	Kee	25	Tip
11	Klik	26	Tok
12	Kop	27	Tom
13	Lug	28	Top
14	Nok	29	Uff
15	Plash	30	Vish

Samples: Nok-deepdrip, Deeplugblip, Bloptap-pip, Plashtop-pip, Vishtokvish, Dooltom-pool, Tomatch-plash, Saa-riktok

Hopefully these are also fun to say, with their combination of sighing sounds and quick rhythmic taps. I particularly like "Saa-riktok"

You could also use these for Kuo-toa names. Eagle-eyed readers may note that it is possible to recreate "Blibdoolpoolp" and "Dooldipdop" with this table (these are the only two kuo-toa names that I'm aware of).