OSRenstein: wizard abilities

Detect Magic: Wizards can detect the presence of magic simply by concentrating and looking at an object. In game terms, this costs an action and the wizard can move no faster than a slow walk while doing it, but it costs no MP. If a wizard touches an object that is magical or a person under the effect of a spell, the wizard automatically and instantly detects the magic without needing to concentrate or look for it. This detection only allows the wizard to sense the presence of magic, the wizard learns nothing about the effects or spells used unless they spend time trying to identify the magic.

Identify Magic: A wizard can discern the properties of a magical item by spending six hours in careful meditation with the object. This process allows the wizard to determine all of the magical properties of a single magic item, including how to activate those functions (if appropriate), how many uses of magic remain, and what sorts of spells were used in the item's construction. The wizard does not need to spend MP, nor do they need to be secluded; as long as the wizard is allowed to handle the item without interruption or distraction, it only takes time. A wizard can also identify magic on a creature that is under a spell, but most living things will not sit still to be examined for six hours without some form of restraint.

I like the idea of having a wizard that could specialize in a school of magic and not be required to lose access to certain divination spells which seem like general utility wizard abilities. Also, giving wizards special magic-related abilities that they can perform 'at will' means that I could potentially run a game where wizards start with no spells.

The reference to MP? I'm using Magic Points to cast arcane spells, which is an idea taken from the psionics system in Stars Without Number.

OSRenstein: clerics' Turning ability

Clerics can Turn wild beasts and unholy creatures by holding their deity's holy symbol aloft and commanding the creatures back. At any time the cleric may use an action to make a Turning attempt. Clerics can attempt to Turn any creature with the Animal, Un-Dead, or Demon trait. This Turning check uses 1d20 and adds the cleric's Hit Dice and WIS modifier - unlike a Spell check, this roll doesn't suffer penalties for wearing armor.
The base roll needed is 8 or higher to turn animals, 10 or higher to turn un-dead, and a 12 or higher to turn demons. The Hit Dice of the target is added to the number needed to successfully Turn them. For example, a Demon with 3 Hit Dice will only be Turned on a roll of 15 or higher.
Animals and un-dead that are successfully Turned will try to flee from the cleric until the cleric is out of sight. If cornered or trapped, the Turning ends and the creature will likely attack the nearest opponent. Demons that are successfully Turned are not compelled to flee, but cannot willingly approach the cleric. If forced to approach the cleric, or cornered by the cleric, the Turning ends and the Demon may act as it pleases.
An attempt to Turn a creature that has already broken free from being Turned will automatically fail. Failing a Turning attempt doesn't count as breaking free from being Turned, and the cleric may attempt to Turn a creature (or creatures) as many times as they wish.

My take on simplifying a cleric's Turning ability. Also, I would point out that being able to turn animals is influenced by Dungeon Crawl Classics, but seems like something priestly characters should have always been able to do.

OSRenstein: the Feat die

Warriors don't have an Attack score, instead Warriors have a Feat die. The Feat die is an extra dice that is rolled when a warrior attacks, the result of the Feat die is added to the Warrior's attack roll, in this way the Feat die is a rollable Attack score. The number of sides on the Feat die increases as the warrior levels up.
Prior to any attack roll, a warrior can declare a Feat. This Feat is a dramatic combat maneuver within the scope of the current fight. The Feat does not increase damage but can have some narrative or strategic effect. For example, a warrior may try to disarm an enemy with his next attack, trip an opponent, slide down a bannister and crash his shield into three opponents at the bottom, temporarily blind an opponent, and so on.
The warrior’s Feat die determines the success of such a maneuver. If the Feat die is a 3 or higher, and the attack hits, the Feat succeeds. If the Feat die is a 2 or less, or the overall attack fails, the Feat fails as well. It is possible for an attack to hit but the Feat fails, in this case the warrior still inflicts damage for a successful attack.
The Feat die does not increase in size beyond 10th level, and never receives Advantage or Disadvantage.

Dwarves have a d3 Feat die they use when fighting. This acts exactly like a Warrior's Feat die but is different and separate from a Warrior's Feat die, a Dwarven Warrior would roll both and use the better result of the two. Unlike the Warrior Feat die, the Dwarven Feat die never increases in size.

This mechanic originated as the Mighty Deed Die from Dungeon Crawl Classics. I really love the simplicity of giving fighters the ability to use special combat maneuvers without having to fiddle with a list of feats. I always despised that characters might have to specialize to disarm somebody, and then might never get the opportunity to disarm someone. Being able to execute a maneuver in the heat of the moment is so much more heroic. And fun!

OSRenstein: how to make a character

1) Roll 3d6 and record the sum result for each Ability in order: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and finally Charisma.
If none of your rolls is 13 or higher, then raise your lowest roll to 13.
You may swap two Ability scores.
Notate your Ability score modifiers under STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, and CHA.
Then generate your Luck score (2 + your highest Ability score modifier) and your Load stat (5 + STR / 10 + STR).

2) Select a race and write down any special abilities your character possesses.

3) Select a background and notate any abilities and learned skills from your chosen background (skills start at "0").
Generate your starting silver.

4) Select a class and write down any abilities inherent to the class.

5) Select a class kit. Notate the special kit ability amongst your class abilities, any equipment your kit comes with, and add skill levels where appropriate (skills start at "0" and receiving two of the same skill during character creation increases it to 1).

6) Generate your starting Hit Points (HP) by rolling your class Hit Dice and adding your CON modifier (do not decrease your HP rolled if the CON modifier is a negative).

7) Purchase additional equipment using your starting silver, if desired.

I want the chapter structure of my book to mirror the Holmes Basic Rules, despite the fact that I'm deviating from many of the B/X concepts. Still, starting my book with a good old character creation checklist seems like the best way to dip players' toes into the rules. This is how the checklist currently reads in the pdf.

March 2019

I thought I was going to start writing in this blog more but it turns out I've been writing some other things instead. What are they? Well...

OSRenstein is my homebrewed set of rules for fantasy role-playing. As of right now I have 39 pages written. This is what I'm pouring most of my energy into. I want my players to have the rules I'm using and have them all in a single reference document as well. The influences on these rules are varied, but most of them originate within the OSR and it's a frankensteined set of rules and house rules so...
OSR + frankenstein = OSRenstein

Kosranon is my setting book. That's not the title but it's what I've labeled it as on my hard drive. I may be putting all of my energy into OSRenstein right now but I want to publish this book. It's going through a lot of revisions as I build it, right now I only have 8 pages written and a large hex map which I think I should scale down. However, there's lots of notes on my blog here, but I consider those 'rough draft' ideas and a lot of it has been revised or will be altered in the final book.

Hexvouna is my megadungeon. This thing will likely never be finished! I have no idea how much I have written as I have multiple notebooks, several emails I sent to myself (and emails between Arnold K and myself), and a few posts here and there about the thing. It's been in my brain ever since I was GMing the Dwimmermount megadungeon at the time and kept thinking it didn't make sense that Dwimmermount didn't have a central staircase that connected most of the levels. Then I saw this post by Dyson's Logos. My next step for Hexvouna is likely to track everything that I've written down and start organizing it into a cohesive collection of information, then editing and fleshing it out.

I would like to commission a few artists, and I definitely need someone who's good at layout and design to help me out once I bring Kosranon to completion, but at the moment I'm just writing. I don't want to start spending money on art and publishing resources until I have a nearly complete book.

Infinite Dungeon Generator with a deck of cards

Suit: Clubs have enemies of fewer HD than PCs, then Hearts (enemies of same HD as PCs), then Diamonds (enemies are 1 or higher HD than PCs), and Spades is highest (enemies are up to double the HD of PCs)

Value: is the number of things in room, roll 1d12 and this is how many monsters there are (up to the value of the card), the rest are objects or treasure, face cards should have more treasure than monsters; Ace cards should just be treasure! Ace of Spades is just a room with a very valuable treasure, Queen of Spades potentially has 12 monsters with double the HD of the PCs

Passages: the card value also determines how many more rooms split off, divisible by 3 have three rooms splitting off (3,6,9,Queen), divisible by 4 have two rooms splitting off (4,8,Queen), this means the Queen rooms always have a secret passage leading out, the rest of the cards have one more room

re-introducing the Damned

The apocalypse came and went, now its leftover terrors lie across the land like a plague of fear. The weak cower in their hovels, content to eke out a meager life, praying that demons in the guise of men will pass them over. For those demons have no fears, they refuse to kneel, they want your crowns. And how will you threaten them from atop your thrones? How can you reason with a fiend when all it knows is hunger?

Johnstone Metzger once granted me permission to convert his Heralds of Hell playbooks into a legal-size format, and he granted me permission again to revise those same playbooks to the second edition rules for Apocalypse World.

After a delay of my own devising, I can finally reveal this, the fourth of five, the Damned, with all new artwork provided by Marie Ann Mallah!

LINKS
letter size
legal size
full book size

Dark Souls is easy

I decided to pick up Dark Souls again. "I own it," I thought, "I should probably try playing it again." But I kept putting it off, some other game was always ready to be played. Recently, somebody told me that Dark Souls was easy, and when I asked him to explain he said "The secret to winning Dark Souls is knowing where to dodge, not when."

I remember struggling to beat the first boss, the Asylum Demon, and getting killed repeatedly, losing souls, frustratedly running through the same monsters trying to get to a boss fight I felt was barely winnable. Then I popped the disc into my Playstation, made a new character, coasted through every corridor with barely a scratch and defeated the Asylum Demon on my second attempt. Suddenly, armed with this newfound wisdom, I was charging through Dark Souls like a superhero dropped into a room full of mooks.

I still make mistakes, I still get killed a lot, and I still don't really understand what all the numbers and words mean on my "character sheet"

clicken to embiggenbut I'm no longer finding the game tedious or boring. It's a genuine joy to play!

I still haven't gotten very far, I think. The Chosen Undead is tasked with ringing the two Bells of Awakening during the first act, and I've only rung one. But yesterday, I defeated the Gaping Dragon on my second encounter with it, and I wasn't even using the best weapon I had against him.

not my video!
this guy has better equipment than me

OSRenstein: how I'm rewriting the spells of D&D

I'm not sure what day I started writing on, but I've got about 15 pages of rules written with 9 more pages drafted out with little details and bullet points of what I want to write. I've been sending my gaming friends copies of the pdf as I update it and I promised them that I would have the 1st-level wizard spells done with the next version.

This is how I'm writing the spells, I'll use the Shield spell as an example.

The first thing I do is write down the important details of each version of the spell as it has appeared throughout the various versions of the official D&D rules (except 4th edition because fuck that edition):

basic - affects caster, lasts 20 minutes
magical barrier between the caster and his or her enemies.
It moves with the spell caster.
gives AC 2 vs missiles and AC 4 vs other attacks

1e - lasts 5 rds/level
invisible barrier before the front of the caster
negates magic missile attacks
gives AC 2 vs hand hurled missiles (axes, darts, javelins, spears, etc.)
gives AC 3 vs small device-propelled missiles (arrows, bolts, bullets, manticore spikes, slingstones, etc.)
gives AC 4 against all other forms of attack
also adds +1 to the magic-user’s saving throw vs. attacks which are frontal
all benefits of the spell accrue only to attacks originating from the front

2e - lasts 5 rds/level
invisible barrier in front of the wizard
negates magic missile attacks
gives AC 2 against hand-hurled missiles (darts, javelins, spears, etc.),
gives AC 3 against smalldevice-propelled missiles (arrows, bolts,bullets, manticore spikes, slingstones, etc.)
gives AC 4 against all other form of attack
also adds a +1bonus to wizards saving throws against attacks that are frontal
benefits apply only if the attacks originate from in front of the wizard

3e - lasts 1 minute/level
creates an invisible, tower shield mobile disk of force that hovers in front of caster
negates magic missile attacks
gives +4 shield bonus to AC. applies against incorporeal touch attacks, since it is a force effect.
shield has no armor check penalty or arcane spell failure chance
unlike a normal tower shield, you can’t use the shield spell for cover

5e - lasts 1 round
invisible barrier of magical force appears and protects you
Until the start of your next turn, you have a +5 to AC, including against the triggering attack
you take no damage from magic missiles

This tells us a lot about the Shield spell, and it also shows us how D&D has changed over the years. Imagine that!

I want to strip the spell of its complexity, much like 5th edition has, but I want to retain a long duration, similar to the Basic version. Notice also how the Basic version of the spell gives a much bigger AC bonus than all the other versions of the spell. I like that most versions of the spell completely negate Magic Missile attacks.

Shield (abjuration)
Creates a magical barrier in front of the wizard that negates all missile attacks and provides +4 Armor against anything attacking the wizard from in front.
Casting: 1st level, 1 MP.

Looking at every version, that's the Shield spell as I want it to be played in my rules. This is what I've written before I've considered any of the specific modifications my custom rules might apply to it yet. I'm already using Magic Points instead of a Vancian system, and that's baked into the Casting descriptor.

I've included the ability to cast a spell as a reaction in my rules, and I think Shield fits perfectly as a spell that a wizard may want to cast in the heat of the moment. The only real decision I have to make is whether I want this to be a spell that the wizard casts and then it just exists for the duration of the spell, or if I want to change it into a spell that must be concentrated on to maintain.

I'm going to choose the latter, but I also want wizards to have the option to cast it as a spell they don't need to concentrate on, something with a long duration. My Magic Point system already gives me the perfect way to make this a potentially powerful spell at higher levels simply by adding a scalable duration.

Adding all of this means the final version of the spell looks like this:

Shield (abjuration)
Creates a magical barrier in front of the wizard that negates all missile attacks and provides +4 Armor against anything attacking the wizard from in front. Can be cast as a free action, but the wizard must concentrate to keep the spell active.
Casting: 1st level, 1 MP. Each level added to the MP cost allows Shield to last for 10 minutes without being concentrated upon.

I might need to fix the wording of "Each level added to the MP cost" but for now it works, and this is only the fourth spell I've worked on so far.

The list of 1st-level spells I'm working on is
Alarm (abjuration)
Cantrip (all)
Charm Person (enchantment)
Chill Touch (necromancy)
Find Familiar (ritual)
Floating Disc (invocation)
Grease (summoning)
Hold Portal (transmutation)
Light (transmutation)
Magic Missile (invocation)
Phantasm (illusion)
Read Languages (divination)
Read Magic (divination)
Shield (abjuration)
Sleep (enchantment)
Spook (necromancy)
Steed (summoning)
Ventriloquism (illusion)

I'm writing a rulebook

My players and I want to go back to playing D&D, and I had the idea of trying to convert Stars Without Number's skill system into something I could use for a fantasy setting. My recent forays in dissecting how magic could work in a non-Vancian way got me thinking about Kevin Crawford's two different systems for psionics in Stars Without Number. Now, I also like ideas that are presented in the Black Hack and Dungeon Crawl Classics and I grew up playing 2nd edition ... I have all of these ideas rattling around in my head, and in the past I have photocopied pages from different rulebooks to use for my weird Frankensteined rule sets, but this time I'm putting together a pdf that I can send my players and say "This is the rulebook!"

I have an urge to make it generically fantasy and release it for free publicly, calling it OSRenstein! But right now I'm working on it as a private rulebook for my own table, nobody else's eyes on it, and I'm working in a lot of setting-specific rules, like including the oukek as a playable race.

Things I've included so far:
28 skills
races get their own background choices, which includes some skills, starting gear, and silver
classes are customized with kits, which give a special ability and some skills
warriors get a Feat die - which is the same thing as DCC's mighty deed die
arcane magic uses a point system
Luck stat

My shopping list of things to include:
Ability checks are saving throws
Reaction rolls + morale
random encounters
Ascending AC
Learning spells = Intelligence check
usage dice?
kits with implied social standing are restricted by backgrounds
system shock = Constitution checks = save vs death

the problem with Clerics

I’ve talked about this before but I started thinking about it again in relation to my recent thoughts about Vancian magic.

Too much of D&D has been lifted from a monotheistic (Christian) cultural template. Clerics who worship a pantheon of deities might dedicate themselves to one deity, but they would still be worshiping and actin on behalf of the entire pantheon. Real-world pantheonistic deities had temples (or shrines) that served specific purposes, so shouldn’t their temples also serve societal functions? Calling on one deity would be like using a particular sphere of magic, but you'd have access to all of the pantheons' granted abilities. Highly specialized pantheonistic clerics fit within the 3rd edition rule structure, but it makes more sense that most clerics wouldn't be highly specialized.

Singular deities, or monotheistic religions, would be rogue and suspect. At the very least, weaker.

Another idea: Where are the commandments?
Clerics of a pantheon would have rules they need to follow. This is usually where alignment comes in, but I often find alignment to be nebulous, intangible, and easily argued into submission. I've always felt that clerics need a philosophy to live by if they don't have commandments, guidelines for their behavior that are separate from alignment. But what about a deity that says, explicitly, "Thou shalt not kill, under no circumstances?" That cleric would be a pacifist, and the society they came from wouldn't have capital punishment. Let's take it a step further and have a deity that commands "Thou shalt not kill humans, under no circumstances?" That cleric would have no problem killing dwarves and elves and orcs and so on, but the culture they were raised in is most assuredly racist.

Here's what I think:
All clerics should be able to bless and consecrate and heal, and able to purify food and drink. A single cleric would make a community prosperous. Clerics should either be incredibly rare people, or else all of society would revolve around them being the most important citizens - when the gods are REAL then you basically would live in a theocracy! Each community might not have a very powerful cleric, but visiting bishops would tour towns and cities where worshipers reside and they would visit to heal limbs, cure diseases, and ensure the prosperity of their followers. Being a cleric in such a world would be like civil service.

kickstarter krazy

For the last two years I've been kickstarting board games with the rational that they're coming with a ton of miniatures and if the game is bad then it's still worth it. Except I funded too many of them, plus I went Frogdog on the latest Kingdom Death and that helped to kill my wallet once and for all. I spent a decent grand kickstarting board games and game books just in 2018, and that's not something I'm proud of. I don't have time to play anything anymore either. I started this year with the idea that I was no longer going to help fund anything on kickstarter, and yet I've already broken that resolution by funding Silent Titans, Into the Wyrd and Wild, and now Cha'alt.

Cha'alt is the latest supplement by Venger Satanis, a native to my part of the country - his house is only 10 minutes away from mine - and it looks just as crazy and over the top as anything else he's written. He's had sixteen previous kickstarter projects and they all hit their goals, and were all delivered on time (I think the old school map was delayed but only due to a printing error). Cha'alt still has two weeks left and hasn't hit its funding goal yet, but I think this is the first time I've seen one of his projects with such a high goal set. It's also the first time he's tried to make a hardcover print run.

And now, I can't fund anything else for the rest of the year... unless Jacob Hurst creates a campaign to fund his next swordfish island book, but then that's it!

escape from Vancian magic

here is a continuation of my ramblings about Vancian magic

What do I dislike about Vancian magic?
Memorization.
What do my players dislike about Vancian magic?
Memorization.

Solution: get rid of memorization.

What do I like about magic?
When a wizard, in DCC, rolls a 20 and gets an uber-result or a bonus effect.
What do my players like about magic?
When the spell does what they want it to do.

Solution: make the spells simple affairs that have the potential to make uber-results.

The idea I have now is to give wizards Magic Points that they use to cast spells.
Earning Magic Points by leveling up (this is a rough draft):
Level 1 = +1mp
Level 2 = +1mp
Level 3 = +1mp
Level 4 = +2mp
Level 5 = +2mp
Level 6 = +3mp
Level 7 = +3mp
Level 8 = +4mp
Level 9 = +4mp
Level 10 = +5mp

Wizards add their best bonus between Intelligence and Constitution to their Magic Point total at each level. A Magic-User with +1 to int and +2 to con gets +2 Magic Points (total of 3mp at 1st level, 6mp at 2nd level, 9mp at 3rd level, 13mp at 4th level, etc.) That might be too fiddly, but it's my starting point.

Spells also cost an equal amount to cast so a Level 1 spell costs 1 Magic Point to cast. There is no roll and no memorization, if the Magic-User knows the spell then they cast it. Magic Points recover completely after resting/sleeping for 8 hours. Magic Points can probably be recovered through meditation, magic items, or just having reduced costs for specific conditions. Some sort of crystal or plant, maybe both, can help a wizard recover MP faster. Some things, like monsters or cursed items, would drain MP!

Spellburn: if a wizard "burns" their Constitution they can create an uber-effect with a spell. Burned Con points recover at 1 per week, magical healing doesn't increase the amount healed or reduce the time needed to heal. Maybe a purple lotus flower could recover burnt Con.

Map spell progression to leveling, a 3rd-level wizard can cast 3rd-level spells, but do they know the spell?!

Specialists get reduced casting costs or can create bonus effects easier with their specialized school.


Coda
This all assumes a 10-level character progression.
Having written this all out and looking at it side by side, I'm leaning toward comparing the different versions of the same spells across multiple systems (AD&D, Labyrinth Lord, LotFP, DCC, plus anything else I own) and seeing if I can distill the spell down to a simple action with little need for adjudicating effects.

non-Vancian

I've been thinking a lot about how magic works in D&D and how it could be simpler. My players tend to be casual and don't read the rulebooks backward and forwards. Only one person I play with owns a Player's Handbook, and the rest of them are at the table for the ride I'm giving them. As a result, none of them have ever played a wizard or cleric.
"Too busy."
"Seems like a lot of work."
"Complex."
Just what I've heard from them. Meanwhile, I read blog after blog of OSR enthusiasts inventing rules for streamlining combat or generating random encounters, but nothing for just giving players a simplified wizard character with little to no work on their part.

Enter Stars Without Number. The original rules have a very streamlined and elegantly simple way for psychic characters to progress through their power. The revised edition expands on this system, adding common abilities attached to the psychic's skill level with the area of psychic discipline.

This last week I've been thinking about how you could apply this simple elegance to wizards, and there are a lot of pitfalls. How do you give them the ability to detect magic and identify magic items? How do you give them the same arc of power present in earlier versions of D&D? How do you allow them to specialize in one type of magic? I stopped trying to solve all of the problems and decided to just make my own wizards. I've never liked the Vancian system of magic, and I always felt the 2nd edition AD&D method of specializing in a school was hobbled with bad bonuses. I like the idea though so I want there to be two types of Magic-Users: specialists and wizards. Specialists would be characters who receive less power overall but get automatic bonuses from their school/affinity and Wizards would receive greater powers but would not be able to specialize in any way. So far, this is what I've come up with:

Assuming a 10-level character progression...
Magic is divided up into affinities, or paths, and a magic-user studies an affinity in order to cast spells from it.

Magic-Users have Magic Points equal to their Constitution score plus their Intelligence modifier.
1st-level Spells cost 9 Magic Points to cast at 1st-level. At each successive level, they cost 1 less Magic Point to cast. All spell levels act like this, thus a 2nd-level Magic-User casts 2nd-level spells with 9 Magic Points and 1st-level spells with 8 Magic Points. Specialists always reduce the cost to cast their spells by 1 Magic Point. Sleeping for 8 hours restores all Magic Points.

All Magic-Users can Detect Magic. They need to concentrate to see magical auras, which means moving slowly and taking no other actions. When a Magic-User touches an object, they instantly know whether it is magical or not, regardless of whether they're concentrating or not.

An example of an Affinity might be:

Necromancy
Level 1 = Speak with Corpse (spirit of dead body speaks to necromancer)
Level 2 = Scare (frightens opponent into fleeing/cowering)
Level 3 = Drain Life (touch creature and drain 1d4hp to gain 1mp per caster level each round)
Level 4 = Contagion (produces/spreads disease)
Level 5 = Enervation (fatigues living creatures)
Level 6 = Create Undead (raises corpses as zombie soldiers, or assembles bones into skeletal servants)
Level 7 = Magic Jar (necromancer's spirit is able to live on past the destruction of their body)
Level 8 = Clone (makes a perfect copy of one creature)
Level 9 = Death Spell (instantly slays one creature)

I'm not sure if this really works, I'm going to keep thinking about this though.

poor parenting

I've been neglecting this blog. I've been content being a lurker on most forums and on most blogs, only commenting when I truly feel like I have something to add to a conversation, and largely haven't been making anything new, just working on my own games and keeping my players entertained. With the collapse of g+ I'm losing the avenue of expression that served me the best. In the meantime, I've joined reddit and I've decided to make writing in my blog a regular occurence, even though I believe I only have about 20 regular readers. Hi folks! and thanks for sticking with me during my protacted silence!

Things I want to do in 2019:
- produce a rulebook for my players, used exclusively at my table
- draw more maps
- write an adventure and publish it online
- write in this blog at least once a week

Not incredibly lofty goals, but it's difficult to make time for writing when I don't have a comfortable space to work in. These next few weeks I'm not celebrating the holidays, instead I'm cleaning my house, rearranging furniture, and preparing to sell a whole bookcase worth of board games, card games, and books just to clear out space.

re-introducing the Horseman

Those seals are broken and the end has come.
Seems like we didn't all get the message, huh?
Well, somebody has to break the bad news to the fools gone deaf.
Better be one tough sonofabitch though.
These motherfuckers are likely to kill the messenger.


Johnstone Metzger once granted me permission to convert his Heralds of Hell playbooks into a legal-size format, and now he has granted me permission again to revise those same playbooks to the second edition rules for Apocalypse World.

This is the second of five, the Horseman, with all new artwork provided by Marie Ann Mallah!

LINKS
letter size
legal size
full book size

re-introducing the Last Child

We knew we’d never live enough to grow old, but our children never even grow up. Between cannibals, plague and the black wind howling in our minds, the souls of our young are snatched from our homes nearly every day.

Except for that one, the youngest. The last one born, who looks at you like they say the sun used to, before all of this. Don’t speak of kill or be killed, this one has other means, so strange to see. Is this child really the last of us, or the first of something else?


Johnstone Metzger once granted me permission to convert his Heralds of Hell playbooks into a legal-size format, and now he has granted me permission again to revise those same playbooks to the second edition rules for Apocalypse World.

This is the first of five, the Last Child, with all new artwork provided by Marie Ann Mallah!

LINKS
letter size
legal size
full book size

re-introducing the Grotesque

They talk about the apocalypse like it’s a curse. They talk about the apocalypse like it took something from them - the golden age of once upon a time. They talk about the apocalypse like it’s an act of betrayal, perpetrated by some malign entity.

They talk about the apocalypse as if they don’t realize you’re standing right there.

Thanks to the generous permission granted by Avery Alder, I have revised the Grotesque playbook to fit with the second edition rules for Apocalypse World, with all new artwork provided by Marie Ann Mallah!

LINKS
letter size
legal size
full book size

random encounters as ability checks

When you traverse an unremarkable section of the dungeon, roll+LUCK (whoever has the lowest).
On a 10+, nothing will accost or surprise you until you enter another room/passageway.
On a 7-9, you're fine for now, but you can hear something in the darkness. Choose 1:
- you can't be surprised
- you can't be prevented from retreating
On a miss, random encounter (the GM determines what and how it approaches you).

Megadungeon to rule them all

I don't think that I really like megadungeons. Not as written, that is. I think most are designed too cleanly, in one way or another, and a megadungeon should be messy and wild.

Stonehell is a wonderful concept, but many of the areas feel too lived in for what is supposed to be living in its halls. Plus each map is too uniformly square, which doesn't really make sense with the history the place has.

The Ruins of Greyhawk are just, well, dumb. Too many things that are designed to hobble a specific playing style, and too many areas that seem disconnected from one another.

I'm GMing Dwimmermmount again, and I have found that the limitation of this dungeon is in thinking of it as a center of civilization. There are no wide corridors for troops to march down, there are no plazas for marketplaces, and there are certainly not enough bathrooms for the supposedly hundreds or thousands of people who once lived here.

I've repurposed Dwimmermount as an old wizard's school and laboratory. Instead of the remains and evidence of soldiers, we have former wizards. The Empire didn't stop the ascension of Termax, a schism of his own students did. This opens up so many more possibilities. The secret society that wants to re-enter Dwimmermount to resurrect Termax is competing with a rival secret society that wants to re-enter Dwimmermount to ensure Termax is dead.

Population
I've included the mountain's ecosystem as something to draw upon for random encounters. There is a magical explanation for why nobody moved in and out of the mountain for two centuries, but I rather like the idea that there are cracks through this magic and the lizards and bugs of the mountain found their way in to become natural prey for the predators surviving in dark hallways for two centuries.

The population is finite, however. There is no restocking of the dungeon happening here. There are 61 kobolds. Once they're dead, they're gone for good. Any result on the encounter table for kobolds should just be replaced with the next option down. In this way, I've also rewritten the random encounter tables, the most dangerous foes are the highest rolls. Kill, defeat, and displace everything that is weak on one level and the only thing that remains are the predatory threats who have run out of prey and food.

The rooms are not static
It's easy enough to just use the descriptions of the rooms and apply some common sense as to what might be in one. There are orcs on this level, so why is this room empty? Let's put some orcs here and have them cooking a snail and moss stew on a small firepit. Where does the smoke go? Nobody has asked, but there a small holes in the surface of the ceilings designed for ventilation. Too small to crawl into, unless you're an insect. Where do the vents go? All over the mountain, it's a three-dimensional maze that is virtually impossible to map!

That's a key trait that I just don't seem to have. If nobody asks, why bother coming up with an explanation for it? Because if I think of it, I need to explain it to myself and then I have an explanation ready.

Who wants in?
I've created a few factions that are looking for passage into Dwimmermount. They're all hanging out in the local town for now, but as soon as the PCs return with orc heads and stories of dungeon delving they'll be making their way up to the gates, and become instant rivals for the loot to be found inside.

The Order of Cytophim. A secret society of magic-users who wish to ensure that Termax is dead and never coming back. They vow to use magic to preserve the Law, and punish those who wield spells carelessly.

Termaxian Cultists. People who believe Termax is still alive, that his godhood is imminent.

Dwarven outfitters. They believe the mountain should belong to them. It was a dwarven home before Termax moved in and displaced them!

Sken's Rogues. These guys are awful!

Queen Ilona. A Thulian descendant who wants to reclaim Dwimmermount as her ancestral home, and rule a new kingdom from it. Inspired by the PCs from the last game I ran in Dwimmermount.

Wait! You're GMing a new Dwimmermount campaign?
Oh! Yeah. Didn't I mention that? I started a new campaign two weeks ago and kicked it off by giving everyone Dwimmermount as an adventure I'd like to run again. We're playing using the Freebooters on the Frontier rules, which is a sort of OSR-ified version of Dungeon World (itself a D&D-ified knockoff of Apocalypse World).

I really like the system for two reasons:
1) it randomizes everything very neatly and in a not complex way that is easy to GM on the fly
2) it is very deadly and careless PCs will get FUCKING MURDERED if they don't take care of themselves

So, I really like Freebooters and I incorporated some elements from the Black Hack into it, and that's what we're playing with. We had one session and everybody really successfully killed some orcs but they made enough noise to draw the attention of some giant spiders and now we'll get to see if they survive the second session.

This is the picture I used for Muntburg, I forget where I grabbed it from:

To summarize, my rules for GMing a megadungeon, or Dwimmermount, anyway:
Nothing is organized, the rooms and the creatures are wild and messy!
The population is finite, and can be killed off, displaced, or recruited/enslaved.
More people want to get inside!