Boggles are Heroplane-type things. Grosser than a human would normally deal with. But they're not particularly combat-oriented, and their strengths come about mainly through their magic.
They are generally dark-skinned beings with long noses, goggle eyes, and multiple arms and legs (varying from boggle to boggle). I think of them as hairless. Some are grossly male, some grossly female, and others (the majority) appear sexless. They can be quite small, and range up to human size. Occasionally one is larger (the PCs in my campaign spotted one, named Fred, over a hundred feet high).
Examples of Boggle Magic:
The PCs encountered a boggle who challenged them to single combat. While fighting the creature (who had quite an excellent combat skill -- 90% or something), the player noticed that injuries to the boggle's body manifested themselves as partial deflations of his physique. ThHus, as it took more damage to one leg, the limb became flabbier and floppier. Periodically, the boggle stuck its left thumb in its mouth, puffed up its cheeks, and _blew_ into its thumb, which re-inflated whatever body parts were collapsed. The creature was finally beaten when the PC sliced off its head. The body collapsed like an empty bag, and the head, intact and hurling imprecations, was left to its own devices.
When dying of thirst at the gate of the boggle castle, the PCs were greeted by boggles who tossed them gold coins. The more the PCs pled for something to drink, the more coins were thrown at them. Finally one of the boggles seemed to get the idea, and led them to a large feast room. There, spread before them, was all manner of foods to "refresh them" as the boggles said -- there were potato chips, salt pork, spicy hot peppers, dry biscuits, and all manner of highly inappropriate food. Some glass containers apparently filled with a clear substance were on the table, but the substance proved to be filled with solid glass, rather than water.
One of the PCs had died on the way up the mountain, and the PCs were carrying his corpse on the back of his high llama. The boggles ran off with the high llama early on, to be encountered again in the feast room. There, the PC's corpse was glued onto the wall about 20 feet up, dangling all askew. His high llama had had each hoof glued onto the ceiling, directly over the feast table. Thus upside-down, it was braying, twisting, rolling its eyes in terror, and defecating freely. At one point, some boggles wandered into the room (they did not seem to have any sort of hierarchy) and remarked on the fact that the human corpse was dull and lifeless. They walked up the wall to the corpse and began to tickle it, in an attempt to make it kick. After a while, the tickling took effect, and the PC, returned to life, began writhing and screaming, begging the boggles to stop.
Later, the party met a boggle drinking something out of a jug. The party's troll snatched it away and gulped it down. It did refresh him, but also turned his skin orange, and he stayed that untrollish shade for the rest of his life.
The party also found a large closet filled with tied bags, mostly lumpy and some wriggling. One huge bag, over 20 feet across, teemed with motion. The boggles offered to open it for the PCs, but were talked out of it. Later on, the PCs found that that bag was filled with dozens of live chaotic monsters that the boggles had defeated. Other bags contained other things, like a complete turkey dinner, houses, etc. One bag, when opened, looked down on a green countryside thousands of feet below. Clouds could be seen, the sun shone, etc. The PCs were tempted to jump in, because they could see rivers and lakes below (they were still half-crazed with thirst).
Eventually the PCs found that the interior walls of the boggle's maze-like fortress were made out of plasterboard, and they began chopping their way directly through, instead of groping around. Still lost, they asked a boggle the way out. He replied,"Follow your nose", at which moment the nose of the lead PC began to grow and grow down the hall, then curve around a corner. The PCs raced after the nose's end. When they were able to run faster than the nose, they would "catch up" towards it, and it would become shorter (though still growing). WHen they lost ground, the tip of the nose flew further away. The PCs put on a burst of speed when they could see the exit ahead, and nearly caught up with the nose. When they emerged from the castle, the PC's nose was only a foot long. But there it stuck.
A boggle trap: a river of molten metal protected part of the castle defenses. It was only about 8 feet across, but before jumping it, one of the PCs threw a stone first (this was a close call -- their initial plan was for the troll to toss a smallish PC across). The stone hit an invisible wall, built right on the opposite shore of the river, and plunked into the glowing liquid.
Anyway, that's how I played boggles. Goofy, weird, with stupid practical-joke style magic.
Sandy P.
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