Diablo Magic Items for OSR Games

I've loved the Diablo series since the beginning. I've played endless hours on Diablo 2 and 3. I love the lore, and enjoy the mindless destruction of the endgame game play. I also love OSR games.

Wizards of the Coast released a series of Diablo II licensed supplements for AD&D and D&D 3.X: monstrously faithful conversions, brilliantly showing how the videogame game play is abysmally distant from the type of experience I like in tabletop RPGs.

In diablo video games you pulverize monster after monster, looking for magic items that will make you stronger, gaining xp from kills, which will unlock more skills to pulverize faster.

In OSR rpgs you hunt treasures in dangerous places, and for the most part try to avoid danger...

And yet I think there's room for some kind of Diablo(ish)-OSR(ish) mash-up. It's something I've always dreamed of designing. 

For now, here's some iconic Diablo (2, specifically) items that I've always found interesting, converted for Old-School Essentials and similar OSR retroclones, in a handy d20 table.

These are not "faithful" conversions. Every item has 1 to 3 special properties, not 10+. They are my interpretation of each item, when translated into a simpler game like Old-School Essentials. 

d20 Unique Items

1. Stormshield: Shield +1. All fire, cold and lightning damage is halved.
2. Magefist: Iron gauntlets. Fire spells that inflict damage cause +1d6 damage (can be used by any class).
3. Duriel's Shell: Plate armor +3. +1 to all saves, +1 hit point per level (max +10).
4. Highlord's Wrath : Amulet. The wearer gains one extra melee attack every round.
5. Ormus Robes: Fire, cold, and lightning spells that inflict damage cause +1d6 damage.
6. Ravenfrost: Ring. Cold damage heals the wearer by the same amount, instead of harming them. Cold spells and effects never affect the wearer in any negative way.
7. Skin of the Viper Magi: Leather armor +2. +2 to saves versus spells.
8. Steelrend: Steel gauntlets. Metal weapons inflict +2 damage (may be used by all classes).
9. Mara's Kaleidoscope: Amulet. +2 to all ability scores.
10. Metalgrid: Amulet. +2 to melee attacks, +2 to AC. May summon a Bronze Golem (2d4 charges).
11. The Cat's Eye: Amulet. +3 AC versus ranged attacks.
12. Windforce: longbow +2. May fire 2 arrows per round, range is doubled.
13. Thundergod's Vigor: Belt. Lightning damage heals the wearer by the same amount, instead of harming them. Bare hands melee attacks inflict +1d8 lightning damage.
14. Halaberd's Reign: Helm. When worn by a fighter or barbarian, all their retainers gain +1 to melee attacks and damage and +1 to Loyalty.
15. Sparkling Mail: Chain mail +2. +2 to saves versus lightning-based spells and attacks; lightning damage from spells and attacks is reduced by 1.
16. Iceblink: Chain mail +2. +2 to saves versus cold-based spells and attacks; cold damage from spells and attacks is reduced by 1.
17. Venom Ward: Plate mail +1. +2 to saves versus poison.
18. Leviathan: Plate mail +2. Indestructible. Grants Strength 18.
19. Azurewrath: Crystal longsword +2. Indestructible. Deals +1d4 cold damage. All undead in melee range suffer 1d4 holy damage at the beginning of every round.
20. The Grandfather: Two handed sword +2. +3 hit point per level (max +30).

Into Old School? Check out my other OSR posts!

Who's the New Guy Anyway? d20 Answers for OSR Games

Here's a new table for your OSR game of choice, wether it is Old-School Essentials, Labyrinth Lord, Sword & Wizardry, or any other clone of OE, B/X, or BECMI Dungeons and Dragons.

Of course brave DMs can adapt it to other editions and other games.

The table is straight from Notable Novices and Notorious Newcomers, my third electronic/print-at-home zine for Old-School Essentials.

Who Are You?

Roll a d20 to find out the reason why the party immediately welcomes a new member... such as a replacement character that's hastily rolled mid-session.

Some of the results are fairly obvious, some are more exotic or outlandish, and some affect the new character's statistics. Use with caution!

1. The new character is the hitherto unknown stepbrother or stepsister of another party member! Adventure runs in the family blood, it seems. The two of them are so happy of having met, they both receive +5% experience points as long as both are alive. The bonus only applies for sessions both characters participate in.

2. The new character grew up in the same village, city district or community as another party member, and spent their childhood playing together.

3. The new character has a crush on another party member and is eager to show their worth and bravery.

4. Another party member has a crush on the new character, and is eager to show their worth and bravery.

5. The new character cultivates, together with another party member, a not-so-adventurous hobby, such as crochet, soap-making, painting, or poetry.

6. The new character has heard of the group’s legendary exploits, and won’t leave them alone until they are considered part of the company.

7. The parents, spouse, or siblings of another party member have had the new character swear an oath to watch over them and make sure they are safe while adventuring. The new character receives +10% experience points as long as that party member is alive. The bonus only applies for sessions both characters participate in.

8. The parents, spouse, or siblings of the new character have had another party member swear an oath to watch over them and make sure they are safe while adventuring. That party member receives +10% experience points as long as the new character is alive. The bonus only applies for sessions both characters participate in.

9. After one glass too many, the new character bet that they could be as much of an adventurer as anyone else. If they survive their first adventure, another party member owes the new character 1d100 gp.

10. The new character has read some ancient tomes and scrolls, and has identified another party member as “the chosen one” of an obscure prophecy involving a dragon and a great danger to the realm. The new character receives +10% experience points as long as that party member is alive. The bonus only applies for sessions both characters participate in.

11. Another party member has identified the new character as “the chosen one” they’ve been dreaming of, a person destined to great things. That party member receives +10% experience points as long as the new character is alive. The bonus only applies for sessions both characters participate in.

12. Because of a “misunderstanding”, years ago the new character spent some time in jail together with another party member. They both have the same tattoo as a memento of that period!

13. The new character is the hitherto unknown twin sibling of another party member! Adventure runs in the family blood, it seems. The two of them are so happy of having met, they both receive +10% experience points as long as both are alive. The bonus only applies for sessions both characters participate in. The new character’s ability scores are increased or lowered by 1 point in order to become closer to their twin’s scores.

14. The new character comes from the distant future! Time travel has swept most of their memory, but they still remember a 30 feet high, golden statue of the party members.

15. The new character has a clue or map to a treasure that is hidden in the same place the group is currently exploring or is heading to.

16. The new character is the sole survivor of an unlucky group of adventurers, who have been slain by the monsters in a nearby lair or dungeon. Eager for revenge, the new character receives ten times the experience points from those murderous monsters.

17. The new character is simply irresistible and all party members welcome them unconditionally! The new character’s Charisma score changes to 18.

18. Despite being an adventurer, the new character sounds like the most sensible, sound-minded person you could find in a tavern! The new character’s Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma scores change to 15, if they were lower.

19. The new character is a welcome addition to the party because everyone knows they bring good luck! The new character and all other party members gain +1 to all their saves, as long as the new character is alive. The bonus only applies for sessions the new character participates in.

20. The new character is a welcome addition to the party because they are one of the most promising and gifted members of their class! Their prime requisite changes to 18. If their class has more than one prime requisite, the player chooses which ability changes to 18.

The full version of Notable Novices and Notorious Newcomers includes three tools in total:

The first is the "Who are you?" table as above.

The second is "What's your story?", and provides the previous adventuring career of freshly rolled character that starts the game as level 2 or higher.

The third determines the magic items they've looted during such adventures, and has different columns based on character class.

While the "Who Are You?" table is a simple d20 table, the tables for higher level characters have a specific mechanic: you make a roll for every level, adding each level to the roll. So, for example, for a 6th level character, you roll six times: 1d20, +1, 1d20+2, 1d20+3, 1d20+4, 1d20+5, and 1d20+6.

For this reason, both tables take into account the 14 level limit of Old-School Essentials and thus go up to 34 results.

Notable Novices and Notorious Newcomers is already available and is Pay What You Want, so go and check it!

You can also check out my other Old-School Essentials e-zines, and my Lands of Legends series, which is currently on sale as a nifty bundle!

As I have more and more stuff coming in 2022, including more e-zines, adventures, and a super secret larger project, if you don't miss it out you should check my linktree to stay in touch!

About Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss

 Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss is a third party Old-School Essentials dungeon crawl adventure for characters of 2nd to 4th level.

It is written and illustrated by Frederick Foulds and published by Oneiromantic Press and was published in 2020.

In short: a quick adventure (one or two sessions), with a horrific (almost cthuloid) theme, and lots of stuff to interact with.

I've grabbed the hardcover print-on-demand version on DriveThruRPG which is a nice A5 book, counting 60 pages cover-to-cover (the actual adventure, if you don't count the credits and the OGL license, is 43 pages).

The Ominous Crypt itself is a 10 rooms dungeon. Before the dungeon description, you get an introduction, 3 pages of background, 2 pages describing the Blood Moss from the title (which is a creature of sorts), a page with 3 possible hooks to the adventure, and 3 pages describing the village near the crypt, including a map, one NPC and an event which introduces the adventure. 

The (beautiful) dungeon map appears non-linear at first look, but once you notice where the secret doors are, the map actually is a straight line, with just three one-room branches, and the secret room which conveniently reconnects with the entrance room.

At page 21 begins the dungeon proper. As I said, the dungeon is only 10 rooms. Each room is described in 1 to 3 pages, and all of them have a lot going on, with stuff the characters can examine, loot, interact with, and fight.

The room descriptions are structured as bullet points, with colored and bold text where needed. As I said, there's lots of details, but the presentation makes it easy to navigate and find out all the important stuff.

The dungeon has a detailed backstory which involves a (very) holy crypt, now defiled "from the inside" after the corrupted body of a mage was buried in. The defunct mage hosted a fungal being from the void (the titular Blood Moss), which has spread on the floors and reanimated some skeletons. The "alien" moss initially appears as part of the environment, but actually is the "final boss" of the dungeon, with its main node rooted in the mage's corpse.

Some personal considerations.

I like that "solving" the adventure has visible consequences for the village outside the dungeon, and the presentation is top notch, making it very easy to run. I also like that among the treasure is a very good example of a sentient sword, a type of magic item I struggle with. This one, it is well detailed and makes sense within the scenario.

I'm not sure about the treasure. Magic items are more than enough for a 10-room dungeon, but considering the risks, the amount of gold seems a bit low.

Some of the "tricks" (the one that opens a secret door, plus a sort of riddle) aren't perfect (i.e. there aren't many clues for the players to figure them out) but I think it's ok as they are "only" required to get to the big treasure room and to avoid a sort of trap.

So, all in all I like this scenario and actually plan to run it in the next weeks. What I think I'll do is keep the treasure as is, but lower the HD of most creatures by 1, so as to (probably) make it suitable for level 1 characters. Considering the deadliness of the adventure, the degree of player skill it requires, the fact that it's fairly short, it may very well be a valid alternative to the more famous Tomb of the Serpent Kings as an introduction to Old School games!

Holy-Themed Desert Encounters for OSR Games

    New weekend, new table from Lands of Legends!

This week, I offer a d10 table with ten Holy Desert encounters for your OSR sandbox campaign with simple stat references for your classic game of choice, wether is Old-School Essentials, Labyrinth Lord, Sword & Wizardry, or any other clone of OE, B/X, or BECMI Dungeons and Dragons.

Use them to spice up your sandbox!

These are straight from the Areas section of Lands of Legends Holy. Check it out for hundreds more!

But before the table, a little reminder! I've wrapped the five Lands of Legends PDFs into one big sweet BUNDLE available for the duration of the holidays. Hope this counts for making it on the nice list!

So here's the table:

Deserts - Holy Encounters

1. Reverse Sphinx. This sphinx commands the group to ask her a riddle. Players have a few minutes to formulate one. If they can’t come up with a riddle, the creature attacks them. If she (and the DM) cannot answer in 1 minute, then the heroes have passed the test and can go, with the help and blessing of the creature. If the sphinx answers the riddle, she’ll be amused and ask for one more, until she cannot answer, or the group has amused her with three different riddles.
2. Dust Angel. A whirlwind of dust appears and disappears at a distance and seems to follow the group. Later, in the presence of a danger, the whirlwind will appear again, rising around the whole party, wrapping or hiding them from enemies, erasing their tracks or carrying them to a safe place. Inside the whirlwind, the heroes can see a gentle, smiling face.
3. Black Scorpions. The heroes spot or are approached by a black scorpion, as big as an arm. Any guide or native will tell them that it is a sacred scorpion and it mustn’t be killed, even if it tries to sting them. Actually (this is the natives' secret) their venom quenches all thirst and hunger.
4. Mad Hermit. This crazy, babbling old man, dressed in rags, feeding on locusts and desert dew, is the most powerful cleric the world will ever see. If only one could make him listen to reason. Only very patient players should find out the truth.
5. Prophetic Vulture. This big bird, black from the point of its beak to the talons of its feet, is a spirit of doom: it can speak, with a baby’s voice that comes out of its closed beak, and will only say the name of a place known to the characters, and then the sentence “...is doomed”. And it is true.
6. The Ark. In the midst of this arid region lie the remains of a huge, ancient ship. The wreck, preserved by the dry climate, has no masts. Inside there are large and small ramps and stalls and ancient marks of horns and claws. Gigantic parasites may still roam in the lower decks.
7. Living Icons. A gigantic temple stands in an area of rocky formations. Its priests are skilled sculptors and their worship is to create colossal statues of the gods, which they infuse with a sort of divine life-spark. Inside this sanctuary are the images of most known gods, which may be contacted directly to obtain responses or blessings.
8. Nativity. In a secret cave, three magicians have gathered from distant lands to officiate a forbidden ritual: the birth of a god, which will happen in 2d6 days! They have brought special substances, astrological diagrams and dozens of servants. Attracted by a light in the sky, shepherds of the area are flocking to see. What will the new god be like? Randomly determine alignment, morality and power of the new god or make it the avatar of an existing deity.
9. The Herald. A dense flock of red birds comes from the west. They gather in front of the party, assuming the appearance of a god speaking through twittering and fluttering of wings, resulting in a deafening roar (Save vs Spell or be deafened for 1d6 hours). Any god can speak  this “Herald". Today, it warns the group of some danger (roll the next encounter and anticipate part of it, or hint at the features of an area the party is likely to visit).
10. The Octahedron. The party has just found one of the octahedra, which are said to be tears of the goddess of dawn made into geometric crystals by the god of forges. Those who shake an octahedron in their hands before attempting a task will receive the aid of the gods: they can add d8 to a roll they are about to perform. As soon as the octahedron is shaken, it dissolves in a cloud of dust.

If you enjoy this type of content, check my other random tables posts, and my OSR stuff on DrivethruRPG: the Land of Legends series and my pwyw e-zines for Old-School Essentials: Wondrous Weavings Warped and Weird and Mysteriously Missing & Merrily Met!

My next pwyw Old-School Essentials e-zine will be released this month! To find out what it'll be about, and grab it as soon as it's out, follow me on Facebook, Twitter or Telegram!

Fairy Cities for OSR Games

   New weekend, new table from Lands of Legends!

A slow, frustrating Saturday with my kids going through yet another swab, and probably another week off from school because of several covid cases around. And even the school I work at has got half a dozen cases or more. So let's escape to some Fairy City!

This week, I offer a d10 table with ten Fairy Civilization areas for your OSR sandbox campaign with simple stat references for your classic game of choice, wether is Old-School Essentials, Labyrinth Lord, Sword & Wizardry, or any other clone of OE, B/X, or BECMI Dungeons and Dragons.

Use them to spice up your sandbox!

These are straight from the Areas section of Lands of Legends Fairy. Check it out for hundreds more!

But before the table, it's time for an announcement! I've wrapped the five Lands of Legends PDFs into one big sweet BUNDLE available for the duration of the holidays Hope this counts for making it on the nice list!

So here's the table:

Civilizations - Fairy Areas

1. The Floating Castle. This castle floats 200’ above the ground. It is home to the Three Archmage Brothers, served by 12 animated crystal statues and protected by 90 gargoyles. They travel through kingdoms researching knowledge, rare alchemical components and, very rarely, apprentices.
2. Goblin City. An accumulation of hovels, shacks and huts stacked on one another on many levels, around a network of muddy streets and alleys. Structures are built with a jumble of parts randomly juxtaposed, totally unsafe, and about to fall down. Bridges, roads and stairs, completely unnecessary, go back and forth without reason, with blind alleys and twisted meanders. Construction sites, scaffoldings and excavations are found everywhere, with the most unlikely workers. The Goblin Committee rules the city, hosting emissaries from distant tribes. Navigating the city requires an INT check, and failure may result in a monster encounter or a nasty cave-in or collapsing building (3d6 damage).
3. Modern Times. In this metropolis all the hard work is done by golems and mechanical servants; sewer oozes digest the waste, bulettes are used for digging tunnels and mines, the breath of dragons is employed in forges and alchemical workshops, rust monsters serve the scrap dealers and so on. Each monster in the bestiary has been tamed for a particular use, including many humanoids, who live in the nearby slum, while humans are employed as geometers, architects and superintendents. But who is on top of the hierarchy?
4. Webtown. This town hangs from magically protected ropes attached to the huge rocks at the sides of a ravine, because the region is so infested with wild beasts that the only safe place to live in is the air. Hundreds of hammock-houses in rope, leather and fabric hang over the abyss below, with rope bridges and ladders connecting the two sides of the ravine to the houses.
5. Armilla, Town of Nymphs. This once beautiful city has been abandoned for centuries. Among the ruins, the beautiful baths, aqueducts, fountains and basins work perfectly and do not seem aged by a day. Beautiful girls are often seen swimming in pools and fountains, disappearing at will in the pipes and reappearing somewhere else, at another point reached by water. Consecrated to the goddess of water, Armilla is inhabited only by this group of water nymphs, protecting it against invaders and the passage of time.
6. Of Giants and Men. This town is inhabited by giants, but there is also an entire population of humans. To the giants, the humans in the city are what mice are to men, hiding in caves, behind walls or under the stairs, pilfering from their larders, barns and cellars. The giants fight off men as parasites, or capture and cage them like pets. They also use big panthers to dig out their unwanted guests.
7. The Well of Wonders. This village is famous for its enchanted well: those who dare drink its water undergo some kind of change. Roll a d10. Each individual can only be affected once! 1-3: reroll a random ability with 4d6; 4: rejuvenate 2d6+5 years; 5: gain a random first level spell as a natural ability; 6: loose a level; 7: become immune to poison; 8: gain a level; 9: change sex; 10: randomly change race.
8. Slumbertown. This cursed village is generally avoided: all its inhabitants sleep and nothing wakes them up. No one grows old, nothing decays. If a visitor attempts to harm someone or take something, all visitors are teleported to the last bed where they slept, remembering their visit as a dream. The only way to lift the curse is to find an empty bed in the village and sleep for a whole night. Poltergeists will try to wake up the newcomers, so five rolls (WIS checks) must be failed. The witch that cursed Slumbertown might be displeased, though!
9. The Clockwork City. This whole city is a complex construct. Roads, stairs, walls, palaces and towers are wired together and can move and change configuration under the control of the City Masters for special needs such as sieges, wars, urban planning, curfews, and so on. 
10. Maple Town. This place, also called The Farmyard, is inhabited by anthropomorphic animals who follow a complex code of honor (carnivores cannot eat humanoid or humanized animals), trying to create a utopian society. They gather from around the world to formulate a common statute and an early universal declaration of animal rights, so the city is like a great parliament. Humanoids are welcome, but often viewed with suspicion.

If you enjoy this type of content, check my other random tables posts, and my OSR stuff on DrivethruRPG: the Land of Legends series and my pwyw e-zines for Old-School Essentials: Wondrous Weavings Warped and Weird and Mysteriously Missing & Merrily Met!

My next pwyw Old-School Essentials e-zine will be released this month! To find out what it'll be about, and grab it as soon as it's out, follow me on Facebook, Twitter or Telegram!

About a Groats-Worth of Grotesques

 A Groats-Worth of Grotesques is a big bestiary for OSR games.

I've received a print copy for review from the author George Edward Patterson. The DrivethruRPG print-on-demand version is a nice big A4 softcover book, counting 251 pages. It was released in May 2021.

From the DrivethruRPG blurb:

Being a SYSTEM-AGNOSTIC Role Playing supplemental treatise ON MONSTERS; which is to say a BESTIARY for your Tabletop Games of Fantasy. Styled in the manner of the Baroque Period; a Curiosity Cabinet of Creatures for enlivening the table!

The over 100 entries were gathered out of sundy authors, philosophers, physicians, and poets; sacred and profane. The illustrations are collages of diverse prints and emblems. From the lowly ant to the earth shattering Behemoth, the mundane dog to the alien Ch M G, this collection is a rollicking gambol through history and myth.

The blurb itself shows the (awesome, to me) baroque, anachronistic language style of the book, which aims at making it an in-world bestiary collecting information and rumors as they would be reported by sages and chroniclers of your fantasy world.

While the blurb describes it as system-agnostic, each creature entry includes simple game statistics (AC, HD, damage, and special features) which make them easily portable to most OSR games.

Things I liked:

• Art. Lots of it. Each creature entry is accompanied by at least one public domain image (engraving) which has been, in most cases, artfully photoshopped to better match the author's idea. Public domain engravings have a long tradition of cheap (and fascinating) art for RPGs, so this might sound as nothing new. But what's here is stunning: the quantity and variety of images is insane, and the quality of the alterations is stylish and serves the author's ideas very well.
• The baroque textual style. The book is presented as a XVI century bestiary: The book title and general introduction, and the first description of each entry feature a marked and remarkable baroque style, which obviously matches the art. The creature descriptions are particularly fascinating as they weave bizarre observations by a writing persona that is implied to be from the implicit game world.
• The general theme of the grotesque. The creatures presented can be divided in thee groups: ordinary creatures, "classic" fantasy creatures, and unusual creatures. The first groups features creatures such as ants, camels, bears and so on, and imaginary creatures. The trick in the book is that all of them have at least one unusual feature which makes them interesting and subtly weird. The same applies to "classic" fantasy creatures (these include Dragons, Hell Hounds, Leucrotas, Mantichoras, Giants, Griffins and others): all have a twist, a unique take, and often a series of variants which are often all you need to make your classic fantasy game feel fresh without turning its monster fauna into an all new, completely unfamiliar, world. The last group is made of creatures that are new. A few examples: Bishop Fish, Vegetable Lamb, Filth Licker, Haunted Umbrella, and the Wonderful Two-Headed Girl. These are brilliant and and are the incarnation of the grotesque theme. Surreal, otherworldly, somewhere between nightmare and fairy tale, and yet somehow with a very real feel to them.

In short: I'm impressed with this book, which deserves more attention than it's had so far.

I can see this book as an excellent resource for a series of OSR games: Old-School Essentials, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Sword & Wizardry, and any other post-clone like Knave or Maze Rats. Especially if you want to inject your "classic" fantasy campaign with bits of unusual, surreal, fantastic, horrific, surprising creatures, and even more so if you want to completely put aside classic creatures for new ones.

A final note on price. At the time of writing this, the A4, 251 pages softcover is priced a mere $13.99, which is a lot of bang for your buck, when compared with many other products with a much lower page count, and the PDF is $4.99.

Grim Jungles for OSR Games

  New weekend, new table from Lands of Legends!

A bit of a boring Saturday morning here, dreaming of upcoming holidays but still having to deal with work & everyday chores. Time to plan my next Kickstarter! There will be time to write about that in the next weeks...

For today, I offer a d10 table with ten Grim Jungle areas for your OSR sandbox campaign with simple stat references for your classic game of choice, wether is Old-School Essentials, Labyrinth Lord, Sword & Wizardry, or any other clone of OE, B/X, or BECMI Dungeons and Dragons.

Use them to spice up your sandbox!

These are straight from the Areas section of Lands of Legends Grim. Check it out for hundreds more!

So here's the table:

Jungles - Grim Areas

1. Geese Graveyard. Natives of the region say that in the heart of this jungle lies the fabled “golden geese” graveyard, where these birds go to die and become solid gold statues. Following the natives' directions is relatively easy and, indeed, golden geese can often be seen in the sky, heading to a precise location. It is a lost temple, surrounded by a village of cannibals and all the natives are their accomplices, trying to keep them at bay. Explorers who reach the village are brought to the "graveyard", surrounded and killed. Their remains are then given as food to cruel golden geese, who fly from across the region to feast on human flesh.
2. City of Tigers. Cruel man-eating tigers inhabit this impenetrable jungle and often make forays into the neighboring villages. Legends say that in the middle of the jungle lies the terrible City of Tigers, whose pavilions are built with human bones and skins. Cruel Rakshasas and weretigers rule it with an iron paw and their envoys are everywhere, hidden among men, in order to send more and more victims to the jungle. These emissaries (and all the tigers disguised as men) can be recognized because they have reversed hands and feet, with thumbs and toes on the outside.
3. The Invasion of Impossible Things. A mysterious skull-shaped green asteroid has fallen in this jungle, and now its deadly radiation contaminates the whole area. Those who spend more than a week and fail a Save vs Paralysis become a kind of reptilian creature within a few days (1d4). Leaving the area before the transformation is complete reverses and cancels the phenomenon, but leaving later causes the victims to explode in a burst of bloody pieces. If the transformation comes to completion, the victim's skin rips and a mindless lizard-man emerges trying to bite and devour everyone. The creature's bite is contagious like a werewolf’s and produces the same effects, but a Save can avoid the transformation.
4. The Real Living Death. A terrible curse affects those who die in this jungle. Bacteria keep the corpses together after death and allow smaller organisms to take part of it: the dead bodies are eaten as usual by bugs, worms, centipedes, fungi and molds, but they still maintain their structure and mass. As time goes by, all these beings "become" the corpse, which ultimately consists of a mass of plants, fungi and parasites and behaves as if it were still living and sentient. And it moves in search of food.
5. Cannibal Holocaust. This jungle is inhabited by tribes of cannibals who are accustomed to eat their dead, enemies defeated in war, the diseased or elderly ones and those who commit grave crimes. Despite these habits they act very politely with visitors, treating them with the utmost care and attention and inviting them to their special banquets as honored guests.
6. Death Valley. In this lush forest all predators, including reptiles, fish, mammals and birds, have poisonous attacks with teeth and/or claw!
7. Head Hunter Trolls. This jungle is the kingdom of a peculiar kind of trolls: they are about as tall as a man, and as nimble as monkeys. Primitive and savage, divided in several scattered tribes, they collect the heads of enemies and preys, both humanoids and animals, and then cut gashes on their shoulders and stick the severed head inside. Most heads just attach and become simple living tissue, slightly shrunk in size and slowly sliding down the chest; about 1 out of 6 is assimilated with better functions so that it can breath, eat and see, though it will become mindless; about 1 out of 6 of these breathing heads will be fully functional, retaining its knowledge and mental skills, though its will won’t be free unless the troll’s head is severed. The oldest and fiercest tribe leaders and warriors are covered with heads, many are shrunk, some are crazed and horrified faces, and a bunch are there, staring, thinking and serving the troll’s will.
8. Wooden Death. This jungle is dotted with the remains of long abandoned villages: rotting huts, broken wooden walls and canoes, stone totems. Amid the ruins, inside small holes, broken pottery and baskets, as well as in the shadows of the nearby vegetation, hundreds of murderous wooden dolls, with big horrible heads, topped with human scalps, stand vigil and are ready to assault anyone entering their territories. The dolls are possessed by the maddened souls of the dead natives, who were tricked into this undead slavery by evil spirits. Clerics may attempt to turn these 3 HD undead, while wizards and necromancers might be tempted to capture one and make an enslaved familiar of it.
9. Grim Scales. This jungle has no mammals nor birds. Equivalent creatures are all reptiles and all are ferocious predators: scaly monkeys, bat winged lizards, slinky, cold blooded scale tigers.
10. Termite Forest. This jungle is infested with carnivorous termites, whose territories are avoided by most animals. If explorers get close to their mounds (bizarre towers, up to 30 feet high) to examine them, it is already too late. The swarm comes out and attacks, dealing 1d6 damage with tiny bites and toxic saliva every round. In order to save their lives, heroes must stand very close to a flame, dive into water, or pour great amounts of oil all over them.

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