A new project: Greyhawk, Pathfinder and HeroLab

Over the past week I’ve spent a few hours each day/evening on a new project. Since I started playing Dungeons & Dragons, the World of Greyhawk has been my setting of choice – originally it was the ONLY setting! I’ve got a considerable set of resources on my RPG bookshelf and a great assortment of files on my PC. There was a thread on the HeroLab (Pathfinder) Forum recently that had been dormant for three years – had anyone done anything in HeroLab for Pathfinder based on the world of Greyhawk? A new post grabbed my attention, and a new group on Facebook went from two to forty members in a few days.

I’d done a little bit of work adding some extra Greyhawk stuff into my 3.5 HeroLab files, and rather more for Pathfinder – since I use Greyhawk with Pathfinder, not their own world of Golarion. (Why spend extra money on a new world when I have a heap of stuff here already?) I was able to offer my work and merge it with the work the groups leader had put together. While we have a lot of Greyhawk enthusiasts and Pathfinder players/GMs, there seem to be very few who have done much work with the HL editor.

This is all for a game and setting I love, and stuff that I will use myself, so in itself that’s great. I also really enjoy researching and writing (I do it for writing RPG adventures, and story/novel writing), so add some data-entry and a little bit of coding – I could do this all day. The only way it would get better would be if I got paid for it! (If I got paid for it, I would do it all day!)

So what does our data-file have so far?

5 Human ethnicities (Baklunish, Flan, Oeridian, Olman, & Suel)

3 Elvish sub-races (High, Gray & Wood)

22 Greyhawk specific languages

110 Deities (mostly Human, but also Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Halfling, Orc) with mostly detailed descriptions

I’m still filling out data for the Deity background/description, and then I need to finalise the Cleric Domains from 3.5 that don’t exist in Pathfinder. There’s been 2nd edition D&D/Greyhawk spells and magical items suggested, and Greyhawk Regional Feats… all work for the future.

I do have some figures ready for painting – a few of them were undercoated a year ago.  I might take a break from HL this weekend and do something more to them.

I’m also oh so tempted to insert a “railgun” as one Deities favored weapon, just to see if anyone notices!

 

UPDATE: (Apr 2018) My ‘RPG Resources” page has details on adding a Secondary URL to Hero Lab so that people can download the Greyhawk file through Hero Lab.

The setting now includes:

Player Races: High Elf, Gray Elf, Wood Elf
6 Human Ethnicities: Baklunish, Flan, Oeridian, Olman, Rhennee, Suloise

NPC Races: Valley Elf, Wild Elf
Creatures: Aspis (Cow, Drone, Larva), Beastman, Booka, Camprat, Crystalmist, Dire Raven, Giant Raven, Horgar, Hook Horror, Ingundi, Mist Wolf, Needleman, Norker, Slow Shadow (lesser, greater), Son of Kyuss, Soul Beckoner, Swordwraith (template), Tyrg, Vampire Cactus, Vampiric Mist, Xvart.

27 Greyhawk Languages

114 Deities: 7 Baklunish, 10 Flan, 21 Oeridian, 18 Suloise, 17 General, 8 Dwarven, 11 Elven, 6 Gnomish, 6 Halfling, 6 Humanoid, 5 Orcish.

24 Cleric Domains: Celerity, City, Cold, Competition, Courage, Creation, Destiny, Domination, Dream, Force, Greed, Hunger, Inquisition, Mind, Mysticism, Oracle, Pact, Pestilence, Purification, Sky, Summer, Summoner, Tyranny, Winter.

11 Spells from “Iuz the Evil”: Blackhand, Blood Gloat, Bonechain, Chain Madness, Claw Cloud, Death Touch, Lifebane, Stone Curse, Summon Varrangoin, Turnbane, Venomed Claws.

Prepainted Mini’s – Repaint and conversion

Recently I obtained a Paizo prepainted mini – their Snake Demon (or Marilith). The actual figure looked better than most images I’d seen, but one thing that had bothered me was the sword blades. Two bright green, one yellow, one black, two silver/grey? They all look the same – except where some have bent slightly. I thought I’d repaint them.

The figure is impressive in size and it’s a nice sculpt and pose. The image doesn’t show the colours for the body accurately – it was actually silver with dark blue detail on the back of the tail. I wasn’t greatly taken on the pale purple hair and the more I looked at it, the more I decided to change. I’ve done a complete repaint to something closer to the early 1st-2nd edition D&D images of a Marilith – pale flesh, green body, red-brown hair. I added yellow highlight to the upper snake tail scales and kept with the dark blue inlay on the rear scales. The sword got different metallics for the hilts and gunmetal on blades. For some subtle variety, one blade got a touch of silver, one gold, and the others coloured ink.

 

I spent time yesterday converting my annoying Gnoll figure – the one wrapped up in his flail. I’ve wanted to do this for a very long time and it ended up being fairly easy to cut away the flail head and chain and trim/file the body to cover up the alternation. I turned up what looked like a bell on the end of a piece of chain and with a little filing, I had a flail head and chain to attach to the handle the gnoll holds. This took a little mucking around to get the chain end to slot into the handle – I don’t want it to break the first time someone drops the figure! Glue, and later some careful repainting of the addition and back of the gnoll. I think I’ve done a good enough job that you wouldn’t know I made changes unless you were already familiar with the figure.

Here’s both the original pictures and then the altered figure: