The Campaign Builder's Guild

Some of you may have read my Uncommon EVIL article in Issue #7 of the Guide. Well I wrote another article for the upcoming Guide, and I had an EVIL "left over" because I couldn't get it finished until recently.

I thought the Guild members might enjoy my diabolical rendition of phase spiders:

"I can see through them! They're not human, you have to understand!" he screamed through the bars, but the guard had stuffed cotton in his ears and was quickly losing the fight against sleep. The man in tattered and dirty robes began to pace back and forth. "Too many eyes, and fangs. But where do they come from?" he muttered. "Legs, all legs!" A noise brought him to a stop - a soft whisper came from just outside the bars.

He could have imagined it, but the hair on the back of his neck and arms prickled. "They're coming!" he screamed. Then he did hear it - a squeal and a chattering, and something large slipped in the cell with him. The spider-like horror on the ceiling fluttered and shimmered into existence, rapidly gaining disgusting solidity.

The multitude of dark eyes stared down upon him, and below two vicious fangs seeped noxious poison. He dropped to the floor and crawled back to the corner, but there was no escape in the small cell.

The mage had seen too much and then dared to speak out. Luckily, the city guard believed the broken man was just a vagabond, but they couldn't take any chances. They had finally come. The broken mage whimpered and begged as the horror stalked forward.

I've barely touched it so far, but I already think it's a very nice job. It's good to see such a monster given opportunity for real mayhem.

Thanks for the kind words. I don't know if I'll be able to do any more UE articles for the Guide, but I hope to keep it up - maybe one a month. It helps give the brain a break from the more serious writing pursuits and deadlines.

Actually I really like this idea--as I am trying to change and adapt the Drow concept for my own game, alter and reinvent them, I can look at this and see a whole new set of ideas for spider alliance. Of course they aren't really spiders at all but extra dimensional horrors. I like the application of this so I hope you don't mind if I steal this just for pure gaming purposes.

One thing I like about it is that this is a good example of freeing the game from the 'roll playing' aspect and actually creating a sense of "what would it be like if this were real?" I also like the fact that there is a solid normal front for the villain.

That's... awesome. The entire concept of phase spiders being intelligent evil rather than 'OOH I APPEARED OOH PREY KILL' evil is good. I like the concept of the Uncommon Evil things, and these I think are very good.

For me its all about the story, and less about the mechanics. So many of the monsters are underutilized and poorly realized (IMO). I really enjoy thinking about how they may interact with the environment, and making them stand out.

I write UE in the hopes that someone will use some of the ideas. If you, or anyone does, I would enjoy hearing how it comes out.  

Thanks again guys. And if you have any monsters you'd like to see in UE, I'd love to hear them. They may be realized soon enough.