Tag Archives: monster

Tentacles of the Deep – An Undersea Monster

23 November 2018 Rodney Leave a comment

What do Cthulhu, an octopus, and many politicians have in common? Tentacles! That’s right, tentacles!

As roleplayers, we kind of love tentacles, don’t we. Evard’s black tentacles, Day of the Tentacle, mind flayer chins, and the Japanese porn industry – tentacles have dipped their slimy appendages into every part of geek culture.

Today, I’ll share a new monster I’m working on that’s 100% tentacle, and tell you how you can join in and playtest it at your table.

Tentacle Miniatures - Hand Made Monsters — Tentacle Miniatures. Easy handmade monsters.

The above tentacles are based off the Watcher in the Water from The Lord of the Rings movie, and the miniature Games Workshop made of it. They were relatively cheap and easy to make, too.

In most cases, the adventurers are fighting against whole monsters, but what if you wanted to only pit them against a giant’s hand, or a dragon’s claw, or the tentacles of a creature hidden deep below the waves?

That’s where the tentacle of the deep comes in. First, I’ll talk about the miniatures, then I’ll show you where to go to find the stats.

Making Tentacles

I made my tentacles with wire and modeling clay. You could probably use Green Stuff, but anything that won’t go brittle when it cures is fine. For the water effects, I used clear silicone, then painted the tips of the waves white. Lukes APS has an excellent tutorial on water effects that’s well worth checking out for this kind of project, and his silicone idea worked a treat.

I painted the miniature dark green, and used a mixture of Citadel’s Bronzed Flesh and Goblin Green on the underside. Paint the base black, because it really adds depth once the silicone is added to the top. When I was all done I used a gloss varnish to give the tentacles a wet look.

D&D Stats for Your Tentacles

We’ve published the stats for these tentacles, free, on the DMs Guild. Grab your copy here.

If you like the monster, let us know or drop a tip in the tip jar. If you’ve got creative feedback, we’d love to hear from you too.

Black Friday with Rising Phoenix

This Black Friday we have a massive 50% Off Sale on Drive Thru RPG. This includes books compatible with Dungeons & Dragons and the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, as well as stand-alone games, map tiles, and all of our Solo Adventures.

Looking for some unique gaming gift ideas? Check out our Black Friday Buyer’s Guide.

Till next time, play good games!

Rodney Sloan
Rising Phoenix Games

Check out our store, subscribe to our newsletter for monthly updates, and visit us on our blog, our Facebook page and on Twitter.

General

We are the Stitched!

30 May 2018 Rodney Leave a comment

They came in a deadly whirlwind of steel and spell, annihilating all within the catacombs. In the aftermath, you awoke, gaining sentience from residual magic they’d left behind. Battered and frail, you creep forth.

Last week I wrote about flexing your game design muscle, which is where Stitched comes in. In Stitched, you play the reanimated remains of long-dead corpses, eager to feast and grow in power. The game is my entry into this year’s 200 Word RPG Contest. This month’s RPG Blog Carnival’s theme is “What Scares You,” which gives me the perfect opportunity to share the game and talk about it.

Before we jump in, a word of thanks to Reckoning of the Dead for hosting this month’s carnival.

Stitched!

Stitched is a game for 1–5 players and a GM. You’ll need 8d4, 4d6, 2d12, and 1d20. The GM uses a pile of counters.

The Stitched

You are undead, weakened but sentient after tomb raiders invaded your dungeon home. You begin with 1d6 to represent your abilities. As you hunt, you’ll gain dice, allowing you to attach them to your growing form by spending two similar dice: 2d4 = 1d6, 2d6 = 1d12, and 2d12 = 1d20. Each die represents a different amalgamation of necrotic flesh with a shared consciousness.

Playing the Game

The GM sets the scene, then players take turns describing their actions. Roll the dice. A 4 or more indicates success. A 1 is an injury: split the die or remove it if it’s a d4.

The GM can increase the difficulty by 1 by giving a player a token. A player can spend 2 tokens to gain 1d4.

Reap the Flesh!

The Design Perspective

So that’s the game, in all its 200-word glory. The core of the game is the dice mechanic, which I first built to emulate oozes splitting and rejoining. Playing an ooze, even a sentient one, didn’t sound like a fun session at the table, so I changed ectoplasm into limbs and got the Frankenstein’s monster-like stitched, undead that can sew more body parts onto themselves.

I hope you enjoy it.

For more games I’ve designed, check out 3 Stone Stories (free) and Claustrophobia!

Rodney Sloan
Rising Phoenix Games

Check out our store, subscribe to our newsletter for monthly updates, and visit us on our blog, our Facebook page and on Twitter.

Events, Field Guides, Products

Merry Christmas

21 December 2016 Rodney

To all our fans, friends and family in roleplaying, a very Merry Christmas!

2016 has been quite a year, and 2017 promises to be even better. We couldn’t have done it without you, so to say thank you, here’s a copy of Baleful Strix, a beautiful Field Guide illustrated by Bob Greyvenstein and written by Rodney Sloan.

Download your copy here.

Have a fun, safe and relaxing festive season!

Rodney Sloan

Rising Phoenix Games

Field Guides, General

Chilling Curiosities—A Field Guide

1 December 2016 Rodney

Our newest book, Chilling Curiosities—A Field Guide is out!

Chilling Curiosities—A Field Guide

This time we’re covering a bunch of new, low level monsters instead of the standard fantasy monsters like we’ve done before. I’m interested to see how well this does compared to Griffins and Phoenixes. Also, we’re trying the horror angle, so we’ll see if that’s a hit or not.

Some of the monsters are really fun too. We’ve got an eye in a jar, an ooze that gets more powerful when you attack it and a dream-haunting apparition. As always, Bob did excellent work on bringing the stats to life, and the layout is equally chilling.

I really want to recommend this to GMs who are running a low level (lvl 1–6) campaign, particularly a horror one. I think the new monsters will test your players in new ways, that’s exactly what I designed them to do!

Contests, Events, Field Guides, Products

Happy Thanksgiving

24 November 2016 Rodney 2 Comments

We’d like to wish all our US and Canadian customers a very special Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is not a custom where I’m from, but I’m blessed to have joined my American friends in Japan to celebrate this special holiday before.

Image sourced from http://www.wpclipart.com/

Personally, I’m thankful that I’m running Rising Phoenix Games full-time now, and that wouldn’t be possible without your support. Some of our customers have come back again and again, some have written sterling reviews on Drive Thru RPG, and many have picked up one of our products and enjoyed them with friends, and at the end of the day, that’s a big part of what this hobby is all about.

Our newest line is our Field Guide series of monster books, which includes Griffins—A Field Guide and Phoenixes—A Field Guide. The series is illustrated by the talented Mr. Bob Greyvenstein and written by myself. We have several more Field Guides in the works, covering fantasy staples as well as new creatures and races. Now, if you sign up for our newsletter, you’ll receive a copy of Baleful Strix—A Free Field Guide.

We’ve also put out a new 1-on-1 adventure, Dying Dead, which is compatible with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. We’re offering you a chance to win a copy by guessing what monsters we’ll be covering next in our Field Guide series. More details on the blog. But hurry, the contest ends on the 30th of November.

Have a great one and tell thrilling tales.

Rodney Sloan
Rising Phoenix Games

Field Guides, Products

New Monsters and Free Books

8 November 2016 Rodney 8 Comments

We’ve been hard at work on THREE new monster books, one of which will be available as a free download to subscribers.

Our production schedule looks like this:

Griffins—A Field Guide
TBA—A Field Guide (Art done, writing almost done)
TBA—A Free Field Guide (Art done, writing done, currently in proofreading)
TBA—A Field Guide (Art done, crunch done, fluff to be done)

Any guesses as to what we’ve got planned? Leave a comment below and one lucky reader will walk away with a free copy of Dying Dead.

And don’t forget to subscribe for a chance to get your hands on that free field guide.

Contest Details, AKA, The Fine Print
The winner will be randomly drawn and announced on the 30th of November, 2016. To claim your prize we’ll need a valid e-mail address. Your prize will be fulfilled via Drive Thru RPG.

Products

Griffins — Designing the Beasts

20 October 2016 Rodney

Griffins — A Field Guide, our first monster book, went up on Drive Thru RPG last week. The book, beautifully illustrated by Bob Greyvenstein, features six different griffin species, from a small griffin familiar to the large noble griffin and a terrifying evil griffin.

Designing the half-lion, half-eagle creatures presented a unique challenge. The beasts had to be varied enough to provide GMs with plenty of options, while still fitting in with the griffin theme. The trick, we discovered, was to design for specific roles. So we’ve got riding griffins (the noble, common and wingless griffin), others built for encounters (the feral and terror griffin) and the sorcerer’s griffin built as a familiar.

Our field guide approach is different from other traditional monster books in that we provide a rounded look at our subjects. We included griffin rider archetypes and a cavalier order—the Order of the Gryphon—plus sections on ecology and on rearing and training, to ensure there would be something for players too.

If you like griffins, be sure to check out the book, I think you’ll be impressed.

Events, Tips and Tricks

Something wicked this way comes!

17 October 2015 Rodney

The folk over at ofdiceanddragons.com have announced that it’s carnival time, and what a creepy carnival it is. Here to hound and harrow your players is the Seething Slime, an ooze for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game that gets more powerful as the heroes get more angry.

Seething Slime by D & R Sloan. © 2014 – 2015.

Continue reading Something wicked this way comes! →

Adverts, Avernos Gazette, Campaign Journal, Contests, General, Inspired in Japan, Maps, Products, The Book of Faces

RPGSS2015 – Round 4

19 February 2015 Rodney

Voting for round 3 of RPG Superstar 2015 is now over, with 8 contestants left to bust out an encounter for round 4.

Did you have any personal monster favourites? I really liked the Geomaw and the Stonevine Stalker, although I think the Stonevine Stalker needed a lot more to make it stand out. Just think about the Womping-Willow from Harry Potter, or Old Man Willow from The Lord of the Rings and Rockbiter from The NeverEnding Story film. They were all interesting in their way, but none of them were show stealers. Nazguls and Dementors, now those were monsters.

Avernos Unearthed
This week the Elves take their place in Avernos. Misunderstood, mistrusted and feared, this reclusive race fights an invisible war with a dark evil.

RPGSS2015 – Round 3 Voting

12 February 2015 Rodney

Voting for round 3 of RPG Superstar 2015 has begun. Go check out those monsters.

Avernos Unearthed & The Book of Faces
Due to a Japanese national holiday, these sections will return next week.

Campaign Journal
My first game of Call of Cthulhu didn’t happen, probably because of a big event that sucked up the player pool. Never the less, dice were rolled and demons fought, so happiness all around. Instead of CoC we played the Legend of Drizzt D&D Adventure Boardgame, which will soon be joined by a new release for the series, the Temple of Elemental Evil, scheduled for release on April 30th. I’m pretty stocked for that!

Also, if you want to play Call of Cthulhu and you only have two interested people, check out Monophobia, A Fear of Solitude. We might give this a try sometime soon.

Rising Phoenix News
Maze Tiles are a simple and effective solution for building a moving, shifting maze. Complete with levers and gears, these tiles work well as a clockwork dungeon, a gnome’s warren or artificers puzzle.

The set includes 4 tiles with unique designs on each face, giving you a total of 8 options to build your mazes with. Available as a PDF download and as Print on Demand.

Grab them on
Drive Thru RPG

Inspired in Japan
The ninja create perhaps the most evocative of images; that of the skilled, invisible assassin. But what does it really take to be a ninja? Getting whacked a lot, that’s what.

That’s all from me until next Thursday.
Tell Thrilling Tales

Hottest New Book

Ninth World Guidebook