Agreed. That is the best version of the mothman I have seen. he will be making an appearance in my d20 Modern game.
Was someone asking after me?
It did it all for you man. You have no idea how hard it was not to say something over the past few months. Glad you all like it. ^_^
I s'pose I shouldn't tell you that James spilled the beans months ago on the chat then ...
Not surprised... he's kind of mouthy. At least the deep crow didn't slip though. ^_^
The cool pic didnt hurt at all either.
No doubt! It totally reminds me of this old Frazetta piece... but maybe even creepier!
I see you still haven't got that Custom Avatar yet! ;)
Yeah, I've been meaning to do something about that. I need to hit Kyle up for a version the the lich I use everywhere else. :P
I kept reading and thinking, oh i can do this with him then another idea then another. Thats what I dig about it the most; it generated an avalanche of ideas. The cool pic didnt hurt at all either.
Agreed. The powers fit so well into the mothman legends. That is the main reason I want to use it in my d20 Modern game. It is so creepy and diturping that it works well with my storyline. It is the perfect means to foreshadow a major plot point.
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The cool pic didnt hurt at all either.No doubt! It totally reminds me of this old Frazetta piece... but maybe even creepier!
Hard to say which pic is cooler really...
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I kept reading and thinking, oh i can do this with him then another idea then another. Thats what I dig about it the most; it generated an avalanche of ideas. The cool pic didnt hurt at all either.Agreed. The powers fit so well into the mothman legends. That is the main reason I want to use it in my d20 Modern game. It is so creepy and diturping that it works well with my storyline. It is the perfect means to foreshadow a major plot point.
If you’re using him in a Modern game, you might also consider giving him some sort of special ability that disrupts electronic devices. Don’t some of the stories suggest that when Mothman is about lights flicker, radios go to static and TV’s show only a strange herringbone pattern?
Sweeeeeet!!!
uh oh ...
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In the mothman prophecies book he or his controllers have complete control over electronics in general. He also has available methods to control fate, reality or manipulate it. Having lights flicker and exhibit odd behavior could be great, he is a most modern monster. Mothman uses our toys as messages of doom. If the mothman were to pop up in the current year i am sure the iphone would start getting some real oddities
Thanks for the ideas.
If the mothman were to pop up in the current year i am sure the iphone would start getting some real oddities
Well, if you have seen Apple adverts and still bought the stuff, nothing can faze you.
I read somewhere that the mothman has an impossibly large mouth. I always found that creepy for some manner. Not that the rest isn't, but this is one of those details that make a good urban legend great!
And to have (almost) captured the piquant eloquence of the esteemed Tycho in the description text...well played, sir.
Ha! Awesome. I admit to have been trying for that in the creature's description (especially with the "truly ancient" part), but aside from that and the sidebar all the rest of the credit goes to Johnathan Drain. You can check out his original version on his website here. I was going to write it up myself, but after seeing that John had already done the heavy lifting Pathfinder style, I figured why no just ask him to take another swing at it. I'd much rather show off a die hard's awesome work in Pathfinder than just have one of us staffers tread the same ground.
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It's a very good thing I wasn't drinking a tasty beverage when I flipped the page to the Deep Crow. I LOLed, I admit it. And to have (almost) captured the piquant eloquence of the esteemed Tycho in the description text...well played, sir.
"Don't go into Power Dome A!"
"DID YOU HEAR ME, MAN?"
"FOR THE LOVE OF GOD..."
"DON'T GO INTO POWER DOME A!!!11!!1!!"
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I, too, love the Mothman write-up in Pathfinder #16. After reading the entry, however, my thoughts were that what I could do with it are very, very limited. But I see here that some people came up with a lot of ideas for it. So... please share your ideas on how to use the Mothman! That would be most awesome.
Creative Director
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I, too, love the Mothman write-up in Pathfinder #16. After reading the entry, however, my thoughts were that what I could do with it are very, very limited. But I see here that some people came up with a lot of ideas for it. So... please share your ideas on how to use the Mothman! That would be most awesome.
The first thing that comes to my mind is that, with his by-design relatively low CR, stacking some cleric or sorcerer levels on him makes him a really cool BBEG.
BUT! For inspiration for the standard, out of the box mothman, I strongly recommend tracking down and reading John Keel's The Mothman Prophecies. The movie they made from the book is okay inspiration, but falls FAR short of the countless creepy bits of inspiration in the book, which is written like equal parts case study, research paper, and first-person horror.
The coolest way off the top of my head to use Mothman in a game is to pick a small town and have the PCs arrive to find that SOMETHING has been messing with folk. The mothman's mind-warping gaze lets him control what anyone remembers from an encounter with him. Maybe the mothman's been harvesting body parts from people for some eerie reason, and there's a lot of folk in town who are missing thumbs and ears but can't remember where they lost them? Alternately, the agent of fate spell-like ability works VERY well to effect some sort of potent local disaster, like the sinking of a big ship or the burning of a crowded tavern. The local mothman might be engineering just such a disaster, and have a very specific date picked out for the ruin to happen and he uses his other abilities to manipulate the villagers to ensure that there'll be all the ones he wants to be at ground zero when he pulls the trigger. In this case, the adventure becomes a race against time as the PCs work to unravel who's behind the strange things in town and stop him before he can finish the deed.
Keep in mind too that since mothmen can project image three times a day, they should NEVER be physically encountered on the first go against the PCs. And once mothman knows about the PCs, you can bet some nightmare spells will be coming their way!
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If you give Mothman some cleric levels make sure he summons in bizarre creatures as a distraction from the main event. A drunken midget bigfoot, ,something that likes to mutilate cattle or a not so pure outsider.
The book is great for inspiration. Like James said there is a hell of alot going on in the book.
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Thank you James and Paul. That helps a lot. I guess my problem was that I wasn't thinking of the Mothman as a villain. I was seeing him as more of a neutral figure that appeared before a disaster--- not actually engineered the disaster. But y'know, I think he'd make an awesome villain!
You know what would be cool, is tales of the Mothman appearing before the death of Aroden.