Gloom Elves

Gloom or shadow elves are a subrace found in Noxia, the somber northern country of Azurth. They are Noxia's primary inhabitants, having risen from underground habitations to colonize the surface with the Witch Queen Morthalia's ritual working that caused Umbra, the Shadow Moon, to stand still above the land and made it visible to mundane eyes. The gloom elves were at first allies of Angvaine and Nocturose when the pair of would-be conquerors arrived from the Witchocracy of Ix. Ultimately, they sided with the rightful queen Morthalia after the usurpers fell out, and it's likely their wizards taught her the Umbral ritual.

Gloom elves have skin colors ranging from ashen to dark gray. Their eyes range from pale to the color of bloodstone. They are often thin by elven reckoning and have larger ears. Gloom elves are longer lived than other elves; they can live over a millennia. However, they decline more rapidly with age. This is often cited as the reason for their morbid pre-occupations and yearnings for undeath.

Ability Score Increase. Intelligent score increased by 1.
Superior Darkvision. Radius of 120 feet.
Sunlight Sensitivity. Gloom elves have a disadvantage on attack rolls and on vision-based Wisdom (Perception) checks in direct sunlight.
Cantrip. Gloom elves know one cantrip of their choice from the wizard spell list.
Weapon Training. They have a proficiency with rapiers, shortswords, and hand crossbows.

Frog Folk in 5e

Frox or Bufokin (a bit of a misnomer, as frox resemble frogs more than their warty, dry-skinned cousins) are amphibious humanoids native to the bottomlands and marshes of the country of Yanth. Following rivers, they've ranged beyond their ancestral home to be a common sight in river towns. Their call and response work songs can be heard dockside all over Azurth. Frox work as bargemen or stevedores in civilized areas, and as hunters, farmers, or guides in their villages.

Frox legends say they come from a land across the Boundless Sea, which they left to escape persecution by a terrible and poisonous race of toad-folk, but this claim is considered doubtful by the scholars of Azurth for many reasons--not the least of which being that the Boundless Sea has no other side!

Frox are generally shorter than humans and tend to be thinner of limb, though many develop a potbelly as they age. Their skin colors are generally a dull green or brown, though they range from muted reds to purplish-gray.

A wealthy Frox businessman and tribal chieftain visiting the palace

Frox Traits
Ability Score Increase. Dexterity increased by 2 and another ability score by 1.
Age. Frox live shorter lifespans than humans on average with only a few living beyond their mid-60s. They are mature by their early teens.
Alignment. Frox tend toward good but are have no special affinity for Law and Chaos.
Size. Frox are between 3 and 4 feet tall. Small.
Speed. Base walking speed in 25 feet.
Jumper. Frox can long jump their full Strength score in feet from standing start, and double their Strength in feet with at least 10 feet of movement in a running start. They can high jump a total of 6 feet (rather than the usual 3) + their Strength modifier in a moving high jump and  half that for a standing jump. They have an advantage on Dexterity (Acrobatics) checks to land in difficult terrain.
Swimmer. Frox can swim at their full movement rate and rough waters only cost them 1 extra foot for each foot of movement. They use double their Constitution modifier for the purposes of holding their breath.
Resistance to Poisons. Frox have an advantage on saving throws against poison and resistance against poison damage.
Moisture Dependent. Frox require twice as much water as most races. However, submerging most of their body in water for 20 minutes or more reduces their requirement to standard levels.
Languages. Frox can speak and read (limited) Common. They also speak their on croaking, chirping tongue, which has no written form.

[Thanks to Evan Elkins, the creator of the Froglings, the basis for the Frox.]

A frox traditional dwelling

Planning for 5e: The Races

The traditional D&D races as presented aren't in many cases a precise fit for what I want to do with the campaign I'm planning, but I want to use more than I might otherwise to give D&D 5 a good trial, and to make things easy on my players.

Elves: They’ll be there, but I’m not sure quite how yet. Maybe some wood-elves with a Hobbit vibe to them. They will probably be rare, and in isolated places, at least within the Land of Azurth.

Dwarves: There probably will be something pretty much like the D&D standard dwarf, but these guys will be rare. The more common dwarf type will be something like the Kologor dwarves of Hollow World, i.e. the beer-drinking, ninepin-playing variety. There may also be something like the Dark Sun dwarf in the arid parts of Sang.

Halflings: Halfings will be in abundance, though they may not be distinguished from other “little people” races as much as in standard D&D. I suspect they may well have a chance of unusual traits like on the Dwarf Land trait tables.

Gnomes: Gnomes will just be another variety of little folk, distinguished only by their aptitude as tinkerers. There will be a number of them clustered around Viola, the Clockwork Princess of Yanth.

Tieflings: These will be the majority of the population in Daemonland beyond the borders of Azurth. They’ll show up elsewhere, but rarely. In appearance, they’ll typically be more DiTerlizzi than the 5e illustations.

Dragonborn: Though they may be a bit different, they’ll be found in Sang, but probably not elsewhere.

Wednesday Comics: Sketchy Syzygy

The end of The Price will wait another week. I read 5e instead of writing the post. Enjoy these renditions of Syzygy Darklock by other hands until that time:

Angel Medina gives us Dreadstar and Syzygy with a 90s sensibility.

alientechnology2mars delivers this cool rendition.

Maps for a Fairy Tale Pointcrawl

Looking around for cool fantasy maps, I've come across of number of maps of fairytales/folklore/myth. They don't have any hexes (though that could be remedied), but they've got all the encounters laid out right their for you.

Probably the biggest and best of these is Bernard Sleigh's "Ancient Map of Fairyland." It's really big, but you can peruse it and soak up all its detail here. If that's too much here's the slightly less detailed Jaro Hess map of the "The Land of Make Believe":

The writing is small there, but this blog post runs down a list of all the points.

Saving the easiest to read (and most modern) for last, here's a map by Walt Kelly of Pogo fame:

Lay of the Land

This is stuff I'm working on for my anticipated 5e game. It's all subject to change without notice:

The land is laid out like a rough circle, and at its center is a city-state with crystalline spires, a Sapphire City grown from jewels that were alleged to be fragments of stars. The master of this city is not a king or emperor, but he does claims stewardship over all the land. He is famed as a wizard, and his greatest act of thaumaturgy was growing the Sapphire City. The Wizard seldom wastes his magic on such gaudy displays, though, and the more cynical speculate his primary art is something other than magic. All agree he is a man of cunning.

Four countries encircle the region of the Sapphire City. Their rulers are a contentious lot, but deference (or fear) of the Wizard holds them in check.

The country to the East is Yanth, and its colors are violet and yellow. It's ruler is a Clockwork Princess, at once wondrous artifact and great artificer, renowned across the land. 

The country to the South is called Sang; Its color is crimson. It's ruler is the famed Princess of Battles, said to have hatched from an egg in a dragon's brood and to have vowed to take no lover who did not first best her in combat.

Artist: Yoshitaka Amano

The country in the West is Virid, and green is its color. The Enchantress who rules it is said to be the most alluring woman in the world. She has a palace beneath the waters of an inland sea.

The country in the North is Noxia; Its colors are the black and gray of its blighted and gloomy landscape. Its dread Witch Queen cares little for the living and is obsessed with death--and undeath, and has been so since her lover fell into an eternal sleep.

One Universe Supers

Not too many years ago, I spent a lot of time constructing (in my head mostly, but also some notes and timelines) a superhero crossover universe inspired by Philip J. Farmer's Wold Newton family (or the expansion of the idea by Win Eckert and others). I've never wound up gaming in this universe, but I still think it would worth trying one day. The basic elements are these:

1) The comic books and other media we get are actually fictionalized/disguised versions of events in a real universe. They probably have as much relationship to real events and people as the movie Tombstone does to the OK Corral and the lives of the Earp brothers.
2) There is one, primary Earth. All the Marvel and DC heroes (as well as a number of other comic and pulp characters) inhabit this world.
3) This world is as "real" as our world, except for the inclusion of superpowers and what not, so people and institutions have behaviors and motivations much more similar to what we see outside our window than in the pages of kid's funny books. Also, "realistic" means people age; no sliding timescales.

Here are some examples of how that would be put into action:

Does there just happen to be two brash bowman who wind up with blonde girlfriends with sonic screams? Nope. Green Arrow is a legacy hero, and "Hawkeye" is the original's sidekick grown up, who was briefly a villain, then an authority-questioning hero. he didn't pay enough attention to his side kick, and the kid fell into drug abuse, but eventually gets clean and becomes a SHIELD agent.

Or, here's the true history of some reptile-themed villains: A scientist named Curt Connors, desperate to help injured vets like himself, sets up a special clinic in the Florida giving an experimental treatment--with tragic results. One of these before doomed veterans gets his wife pregnant, and the child grows up to show latent genetic damage and enters a life of crime:

Anyway, you get the idea. It's amazing how many of connections like these you could make, and I think it would make for a fun campaign with a lot of room for creative (at least in "discovering" connections) with the advantages of using established comics universes.