Introducing Moolsh – An Example DMC Stand-In

Moolsh of Lankhmar – a spy/thief of the Guild.

Moolsh is a guilded thief who works, sometimes, alongside Glendawynn. He works the patch/quarter next to Glenda’s and you can read a lot more about Moolsh if you check out the session write up’s number three, and four. He’s a DMC (that’s Dungeon Master’s Character) but he’s also my ‘stand in’ if one of the PC’s die mid-game. One way in which you can keep the player occupied if he dies mid-game, rather than sitting, brooding and watching everyone else survive and perhaps haul off loads of treasure and experience checks, is to give them a DMC/NPC to play. So, have one or two of your DMC’s well rolled out – making them, in my terminology ‘major’ DMC’s, as I consider the minor DMC’s not worthy of a full character sheet – they get a mini-potted version.

Here’s his Hydra character sheet so you can check out how a spy/thief looks in the game-system as it stands at the moment (this is a version 1.1.2 character). If you have a stand in character the player can take part, at the same time take some off the load off of you as DM – one less character to run – just don’t make it too major a character. They can then hand the DMC back to you for the next session, when they introduce the new character you have co-created with them, or it might turn out that they want to stick with your minor-DMC you’ve given them to take over for you in the game. This takes some of the aftermath of the immediate sting out of a character death, and is one way as a DM that you can enable a player to manage the ensuing transition from one character to the next.

A Bit About Hydra Character Generation.

Just to say some points about the differences between Hydra character generation 1.1.2 and 1.0 (not that you know much because all that interesting stuff remains ‘protected’ and I’m still writing it). First some of the attribute names changed. Just in an effort to make them sound more like how they should be, and what they are meant to be representing and capturing. You can see the differences if you look at an earlier 1.0 character sheet. Then work history or occupational development, I’ve just abandoned proscribed occupational skill lists as unnecessary thanks to rolling up Moolsh and leaving my occupational skill list behind. I realised that I had it so flexible anyway, that it is better to negotiate the skill selection based on thinking about ‘what would be reasonable for a Woodsman from the Lakes of Pleea to have developed?’ rather than slavishly following a list. The occupationally based skills was already flexible – you could discard and plug in skills you wanted with little restriction, and now its completely open ended overseen by the DM to maintain sense. The most important thing is how the work history years carves up the categorical increases pool (ooh revealing some mechanics here!), and this is subject to negotiation now rather than being in anyway proscribed. The end result is the same – a spread of skills based around different working histories, varying in depth according to lived experience opportunities, social background, location and length of occupation. Yummy!

Moolsh the Thief Spy of Lankhmar

Introducing Burlinthearm of Lankhmar: Original Character Artwork

Having had a day off work I’ve been very productive working on my art portfolio. I’m trying to kill multiple birds with a single stone by starting my new portfolio with character art of my DMC’s. Here’s my impression of the Mercenary Merchant Burlinthearm of Lankhmar, character sheet to follow. I used a combination of media, pencil, ink pens, felt-tip, acrylic paint on heavy weight cartridge paper (140gsm). Even so it’s buckled because I didn’t originally plan this on being a painted piece but that’s how it evolved. I was inspired by a combination of Burli being like Brian Blessed (Gordon’s Alive!??) and Henry VIII. The hat is a recent purchase, and adorned with a curious feather of some kind of exotic bird. Burli got his scar in a recent fracas with unlicensed thief types.

Burlinthearm of Lankhmar giving his trademark grin. He's outside one of the many seedy bars in the City.

An Example Hydra Character – Amberrh the Barbarian Princess

This is one of the DMC’s, published in the hydra version 1.0 character sheet. Amberrh is the first character I rolled whilst developing hydra so she’s very dear to me. She’s a little pint-pot northern barbarian princess. Underestimate her at your peril because she’s a demon with her fists and feet. Not to mention she is mega charismatic and a barbarian babe.

This is published as if it were a player character, so in the way PC’s record their characters rather than the guts n all DM version. I’m very happy with my logo btw, the image is a medieval picture of – uh – an hydra!

Here is the first character ever generated with hydra version 1.0 - my DMC Amberrh!