Writober! Slime! Shadowdark Post-a-Day In October

This month is Drawtober: 31 drawing prompts related to the Shadowdark RPG, 1 a day, throughout October. But I’m borrowing the prompts for short essays. Today’s prompt is “Slime”.

The topic of “slime” instantly makes one think of two things: First, slime on walls and floors of dungeons/sewers. Second, the Green Slime monster which isn’t in the core Shadowdark book’s monster section.

Let’s talk about the seemingly innocuous slime first.  How can this be useful in a game?  It can be a sign of a monster near by–a giant slug for example. Other monsters could leave tracks in slime that show you a creature has been in this area or allow the party to follow them.

And if you want to stress the “seemingly” part of seemingly innocuous slime, you can have it cause a disease, have a residue that allow magical tracking, or even just regular footprints. All of these are ways it can factor into your game.

Moving on to slime monsters, the following creatures in the core book mention slime: Aboleth, Gelatinous Cube, Gibbering Mouther, Ochre Jelly, and Primordial Slime.

So here’s a Green Slime:

AC 11, HP 9, ATK 1 touch +2 (1d6 acid), MV near (climb), S +1, D +1, C +0, I -2, W -3, Ch -4, AL N, LV 2
Stealthy. ADV on DEX checks to hide and sneak. Often drops from above.
Acid. When it touches a victim, sticks on and exudes acid. The acid destroys wood or metal (including armor) in 6 rounds, but cannot affect stone. Once on a victim it automatically hits each turn and damaging the slime does half damage to the victim.
Consume Flesh. A victim who dies from it become an additional green slime in 1d4 turns.
It Is Slime. Immune to moral checks. Only damaged by fire, cold, and magical sources.

Here are our previous Writober posts so far:

1. Torch – Rules for magic torch items (each is a single use magic effect spell like alarm or detect magic).
2. Skull – Goblin shaman who can turn victims’ skulls into ways to store spells.
3. Fiend – Lists of talents that Devils & Demons typically have for making your own.
4. Shadow – Easy ways to make other creatures into shadows.
5. Contagion – Discussing the purpose of diseases.
6. Valkyrie – A new 3rd party class.
7. Toadstool – A new 3rd party ancestry.
8. Witchlight – Alternate sources of “witchlight”.
9. Luck Token – Alternate ways a GM may allow a luck token to be used.
10.  Rage – The signature ability of a Barbarian class.
11. Altars – Ways to amplify priest spells into rituals when using an altar.
12. Pit Trap – Several ideas to spice up the good old pit trap.
13. Death Slug – Looking at the Death Slug’s deadliness and how that’s similar to old-school and low fantasy games.
14. Evil Eye – Various types of “Evil Eyes”: magic items, monsters, or curses.
15. Morzo Moth – A look at the Morzo Moth’s talents/actions makes one see the variety of the Western Reaches book’s monsters.
16. Diamond – Three subtopics: diamonds impacting economy; as spell components for rituals or spells not-yet-accessible; and a enhancements for magic weapons.