Let me introduce the Gelatinous Cube’s Irish cousin

Black Stuff – Level 7 Elite Brute

Large natural beast (blind, ooze) XP 500
Initiative +4 Senses Perception +3; tremorsense 5
HP 170; Bloodied 85
AC 18; Fortitude 19, Reflex 11, Will 11
Immune gaze; Resist 10 acid
Saving Throws +2
Speed 2; see also engulf
Action Points 1
Slam (standard; at-will)
+10 vs. Fortitude; 1d6 + 4 damage, and the target is immobilized
(save ends).
Engulf (standard; at-will) ✦ Alcohol
The black stuff attacks one or two Medium or smaller targets; +10 vs. Reflex (automatically hits an immobilized creature). On a hit, the target is grabbed and pulled into the stuff’s space; the target is dazed and takes ongoing 6 damage until it escapes the grab. A creature that escapes the grab shifts to a square of its choosing adjacent to the cube but is intoxicated for a number of hours equal to the number of rounds they remained within the stuff. The black stuff can move normally while creatures are engulfed within it.
Foam Head
Due to the creamy foam found on top many adventurers walking through a dark dungeon do not see the black body hanging below.(Perception DC 25) or until it attacks. Creatures that fail to notice the black stuff might walk into it, automatically becoming engulfed.
Alignment Unaligned Languages —
Skills Stealth +5
Str 16 (+4) Dex 12 (+4) Wis 11 (+3)
Con 17 (+5) Int 1 (–3) Cha 1 (–3)

Black Stuff Tactics
Black Stuff tend to stand in corners gentle swaying but when they move they never go in a straight line. Staggering one way and then another with no real direction is it’s general mode of travel so it is very hard to predict it’s movements.

St Patrick’s Day RPG Carnival
The Game Traveller is hosting a day long blogging Carnival for St Patrick’s Day. Anything Irish and RPG related is game so get along and get your own entry posted.

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I have a painful confession to make. I used to be a wargamer. I’ve done it all in my time from fantasy to Napoleonic to sci-fi. I’ve been clean for 3 years now and with with the power of the Great Old Ones I hope for many more. I was recently tempted back to the game by an old acquaintance but managed to deny my urges.

It did bring back some memories that I could really have used for the blogging carnival on Homebrew. Back in my school days we spent the weekends roleplaying with the spaces between campaigns playing either Warhammer Fantasy or Warhammer 40k. We never had much in the way of armies but we were enthusiastic and enjoyed the settings that much that even although we had the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay books we created a stripped down version of 40k with a few of the WFR skill rules thrown in and ran it as a roleplay system for around 3 years.

It was by no means a good system. In fact other than the combat system nicked straight from Rogue Trader everything else was fluff. The skills you had basically covered whether you could use the equipment you owned and nothing else. You never rolled against the skills and everything was determined by your stats which on occasion and the GM wanted to include an element of chance you might roll against but again it was a rarity outside of combat.

Thinking back at our games I cannot believe how far from the 40k setting we ended up. You have to remember that this was all years before Dark Heresy or any of the smaller hive world style games GW brought out. All we had to go on was the monthly White Dwarf magazines and the W40k rule book and compendium. We had no idea what kind of worlds were out there and apart from the mention of hive worlds we had no real idea what one of them was. We had our characters play Space Marines that would wander about a planet for a while before striding off on their own private titan and then taking off in the spaceship of the parties Harlequin Solitaire. We didn’t have a clue but we loved it. I think you could possibly put it into the branch of rpg games described as minimalistic in that we didn’t even have anything other than the combat rules written down we just didn’t need them.

Ah the memories.

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So this months Blog Carnival is about gaming goals and resolutions. Uncle Bear is hosting this month and even if your getting a little tired of resolution posts you should check out the rest of his site and I can get lost in there! Everyone seems to have had the same idea of posting up a top three/five list of what they aim to achieve so I’m going to try and be a little different.

I got into this blogging game because a: I like writing and b: I like gaming. I never thought for a second when the idea first popped into my head that I’d end up as part of the RPG Bloggers Network or that I’d meet so many like minded people. Were I to live in the USA I’d make a point of attending one of the larger Cons in an attempt to meet these aforementioned folk but life is not that easy. I’ll just stick to berating them on Twitter or finding some way to trek across the city and throw fruit at Games of State’s windows.

So how does this post fit into the carnival this month? Well I think 2009 is going to be a year of collaboration. Someone pointed me in the direction of a blog post last night that hit a chord. With the worldwide recession hitting us there are no startups really making it big with big money backers but there are plenty of people with shared interests getting together, watching each others backs and getting things done. The The RPG Bloggers Network is one example and the CMF Advertising Network is another. A group of people with the same idea working towards the same goal and it’s working. Look at how well the RPG Bloggers Network has been received and how quickly it’s grown. I see great things coming from those guys in 2009.

Over on the RPG Bloggers Network Google Group (We really need to come up with a quick and snazzy acronym for that) an idea has been floated about a network wide collaboration. The aim of which will end up with a campaign setting for anyone to use. The specifics are still being discussed between those interested and those that floated the original idea but I think it’s going to be huge. Not only do we get to give to the community with our every post and the network provides us with many readers but we will all be able to contribute to something that we can give back to the readers. I can’t wait to get stuck into that project.

Even if this does not go ahead I’m hoping to bring in another writer or two to give my own campaign settings a good kick and get them finished and written up.

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