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Liches and Mummies

April 5, 2020, 1:04 am
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Liches

I've written about liches before, so in this post I'll limit myself to implementation in this post.

How to Write a Lich

First, don't start with the image of a mystic skeleton-wizard in an underground laboratory.  That's the typical image and--while there's nothing wrong with it--if you start there, you'll be less creative in crafting your lich.

Start by thinking about a regular wizard, then turn them into a lich.

d8 Wizards Who Became Liches
  1. The wizard who was determined to build a ship large enough to carry 2 copies of every animal into space. 
  2. The wizard who was trying to build the perfect waifu.  
  3. The wizard who was trying to seal off hell in order to save our souls.  
  4. The wizard who wants to build a new, better sun.  
  5. The wizard who was building the perfect army in order to invade heaven.  
  6. The wizard who was way too into breeding horses.
  7. The wizard who is trying to turn his black ziggurat into a spaceship*.
  8. The wizard who was wealthy scared of death, and so he became a lich, but now that he's a lich he has no real goals besides entertainment, but even that is tough now that he has no penis so it is very tricky, let me tell you.
*Spaceship lich is my default lich, by the way.

Any one of these could be a good lich.  Some are epic, some are more trivial.  People tend to have multiple hobbies--so do liches.  Combine 2-3 for a better lich.  Give each background its own section of the dungeon, maybe.

The second thing is to reduce the death theme a little bit.

Yes, every lich is going to have some degree of necromancer in them.  And yes, I know liches persist in our imaginations for the same reason that zombies do--we're scared of death and skeleton faces are cool.  But if every lich lair is just a dank necropolis full of the shambling dead, you're limiting yourself before you have to.

Plus, it's always easy to add the death stuff back in later.  Let it be the frosting, not the cake.

from Final Fantasy 1
(the PS remake had the best sprites)
Phylacteries

Honestly, the concept of "evil, immortal wizard" has a lot of space for you to write your own concepts.

We don't need them to be immortal, but it does make it easy to stick them at the bottom of a dungeon without any food or bathrooms.  And it helps if they are evil, because then we can kill them remorselessly.

d6 Alternative Source of Immortality for Evil Wizards
  1. An imprisoned kaiju, harvested for her eggs.
  2. Blackmailing Zulin, the Prince of the Upper Air.
  3. A giant furnace.  It burns a small forest every year.  The smokestack is his tower.
  4. Cloning + mind transferance.  Each clone carries a few more mutations than the prior.
  5. Possession of new hosts who must have certain traits, requiring the wizard to send people out to search for her next host.
  6. Has imprisoned his Death (a personalized Grim Reaper) beneath the earth. 
I'm avoiding any sort of soul stuff, because that's too close to phylacteries (and Voldemort) already.

So let's talk about phylacteries.  You got a few options, none of which are mutually exclusive.
  • McGuffin to drag the party to a new adventure locale.  Acceptable in moderation.
  • Ethical Dilemma, where you have to do something bad in order to kill the lich (a good thing).  Cheap, difficult to make satisfying.  (Even J. K. Rowling chickened out of this one.)
  • Some OSR-Style Challenge, either to find the damn thing or to destroy it.  These are preferred.
d4 Phylacteries Outside of the Dungeon
  1. Some innocent descendant who lives nearby.
  2. The king's crown.
  3. A random duck in a nearby pond.
  4. A glass heart in a permanent raincloud that is always overhead.
d4 Phylacteries Inside the Dungeon
  1. A really cool magic item (that the party was sent to retrieve?)
  2. A purple pearl inside a purple worm.
  3. Buried under 100' pile of rubble.  One solution is just to hire a construction crew, give them hazard pay, and protect them from monsters..
  4. The Hive Dead have it.  The easiest way to get it is just to purchase it with something precious.
The Disembodied Lich

I've only run a lich once, but after he died, he became a disembodied spirit that inhabited the whole floor of the dungeon.  He could open/shut doors, trigger traps, and talk mad shit.

It was fun for a bit, but maybe got a bit tedious.  Every door would slam shut on someone, so all the doors had to be destroyed.  Triggering all the traps was maybe a too much (or I didn't design the traps with the lich in mind).  I should have added the ability to control undead--it would have turned mindless undead encounters into tactical ones, which would have been a more appropriate change, I think.

Anyway, I'm convinced that the theory is sound.

How Do You Discover the Phylactery?

The one you want to avoid is just having the players cast locate object or something.  That takes all the fun out of it.  So here are some ideas.
  • Dungeon denizen will tell you, if you do a favor for them.
  • From the lich's girlfriend, who lives at the university and sends him frequent letters.
  • From the dead.  Conjure up some spirits from the essential salts and ask them.
  • From your knowledge of the lich.  (Although be careful with this type of puzzle, because it can be a dead-end for some groups.)  Maybe his dungeon is covered with Shakespeare quotes, and his phylactery is the fanciest Shakespeare book in the library.
  • A cleric tells you that only an innocent can identify the phylactery, and it is odious to them.  You have to bring a baby into the dungeon (or, a dude who has never seen any type of boob or genitals, including their own) and use the baby's crying to navigate.  More random encounters are expected.
Living Lich

Alternate implementation of lichdom: it's not necromancy as much as it is total control of your body.  Under this interpretation, you can have a living lich.

Living liches are just like regular liches, except that they trade the necromancy stuff for crazy regen.  Chop them into pieces and they'll attempt to reform, like a troll on steroids.  You can prevent them from reforming by dumping their corpse (every last piece) into a barrel full of lye.  As long as the lye is active, they won't reform.  This doesn't kill them, just stall them.

The trick to killing a living lich isn't the phylactery, it's finding a way to permanently kill the living lich while rolling a barrel all over creation and being very careful not to break it.
    Lich Lieutenants

    No lich lives entirely alone.  Humans are social creatures, and even introvert liches need bodyguards.  So here are some ideas.
    • Dire undead tortoise with a breath attack (necrotic damage + 1d4 zombies).  Zombies reach out through gaps in its shell.
    • Malformed clones with soulless eyes.  They are swordsmen, and they will fight until they drop dead of exhaustion.
    • Living spouse**.  A martial class would be a nice counterpoint, but a white mage would be a nice twist.  Or if you want to be gross about it: those double-ended leg things from silent hill, but in a dress.
    • Grim reaper trapped here on a technicality.  (In one room is an unfinished board game.)  Not allowed to kill people, but he can bring you to 1 HP and let the undead rats.
    • Visiting outsider, waiting to be killed by whoever kills the lich.
    • Terophidian, who stands to inherit the ziggurat once the lich finishes turning herself into an unliving spaceship.
    • Ancient eldrox, that is here to experience a human party, and believes that the dungeon is a typical example of a party.  Very evil and very friendly.
    **I have a friend that sincerely wants to become an android.  I think this is dumb.  We're meat creatures motivated (and punished) by instincts and emotion.  When they singularity hits and we all become hyperintelligent transcendent machine-gods, I think we'll still watch porn and soap operas (just much faster).  Because what else would we do?  Same thing with liches.
      Mummies

      I don't have much to say about mummies, because I did a big mummy post recently.  Also the Black Pyramid of Khalgorond has mummies in it.

      So there's really only one thing left to write

      The Best Mummies, Ranked
      1. Giant mummy
      2. Ape
      3. Crawling giant hands
      4. Cat
      5. Elephant
      6. Giant squid that swims through sand
      The giant mummy is the best mummy by far, and although giant crawling hands could be considered to be part of the giant mummy, I think that they are distinct enough to be counted separately.

      by Yintion J
      click to embiggen
      Bonus links:
      • Victorian-era uses for mummies!
      • Here's a poem about the mummies that were burnt as train fuel!  (Note: this probably didn't actually happen, though.)

      This post is for Jeff Russell, who wanted more content on liches and mummies.  Thanks for supporting this blog!

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      Gnomes

      April 7, 2020, 1:36 am
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      Most everyone hates gnomes.  They're small, arrogant, and very good at killing people.  Let's discuss.

      History

      A dwarf would describe a gnome as a rare type of cancer that happens when gemstones are allowed to rot underground, instead of being mined and properly cut.  The gem goes to seed, but it's still a gem.

      A human would tell you gnomes are diminutive humanoids with gemstone eyes.  Apparently, gnomes will buy gems from you at a good price, if you can keep the little fuckers from killing you first.  They have gemstone eyes and terrifyingly white teeth.

      A gnome would tell you that they are victims of an ancient curse.  Sabu Monga, the Troll King, once turned nearly their entire race into stone.  But the surviving gnomes were persistent, and labored for generations to find all of their petrified kin, eventually restoring all of them. 

      The Troll King saw this and was angered.  This time, the turned them all into gems--objects that are just as worthless as stones, but were designed to inspire mindless lust among the fleshy races.  They would covet these stones, and hide them in their vaults.  In this way, the Troll King tricked the other races into helping him lock away the gnomes forever.

      This is the source of all gems, they say.

      Gems

      Just as dwarves claim all the gold beneath the earth, so do gnomes lay claim to all gems. 

      Any gem can be turned into a gnome.  There is a certain process that only gnomes are fully proficient in.  The gem is washed with alternating bathes of milk and blood, before finally being buried in a rare salt.  After two weeks, a gnome-child crawls from the dirt, full of half-memories from the time it was a gem.

      Dwarves are capable of the opposite process.  Bring them a gnome (living or dead), and through a process involving a a specialized set of vices, squeeze the gnome back into its gemstone state.  You will get paid and the dwarf will get a fine gem.  Everyone wins.

      Despite all this, gnomes and dwarves get along as often as not.  They have the same enemies, underground.

      All gnomes can speak with gems.  All gnomes remember much of what they experienced as a gem (so be careful what gems you sell to the gnomes).

      Gnomes treat anyone carrying gems as a slaver.  Anyone who attempts to sell them gems is a dirty, filthy slavemaster, and deserves to be put to death for their offenses against freedom.  (They're pretty big on Freedom.)  But, if there is no way to kill the slavers, they will pay top dollar to purchase the freedom of their family.

      Eyes like this.
      This is Jupiter's sableye, from the pokemon manga.

      Gnome Biology

      Much like ants or apes, gnomes are very strong for their size.  The tallest ones are about 10" (25 cm) tall.

      If a gnomes gemstones are removed, they die.  (In addition to the normal trauma of removing someone's eyes.)  A gnomes gemstone eyes are not as valuable as a product of a dwarven gnome-vise.

      Gnome skulls are conical, and grow increasingly more conical as the gnome ages.  This is a sign of beauty among gnomes, and tall hats are common among them.  (Human nobility, ever alert for new fashions of power, have even attempted to imitate it.)

      Types of Gnomes

      Common gems make common gnomes.  There is nothing about common gnomes that precludes them from becoming rangers or illusionists, but they lack the mad vigor of their more chromatic siblings that predisposes them to such careers.

      Rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and other exuberant gems are used to make gnome surveyors.  (More on them later.)

      Diamonds make a megagnome, a gnome that is capable of changing size between mouse-scale, gnome-scale, human-scale, ogre scale, and any size in between.  They lack the gem-eyes of the usual gnome, and instead have their gem embedded in their bellybutton.  Aside from a slight infundibular affect of their skull, they can pass perfectly for a human in their middle form.

      Opals, moonstones, and other similar gems tend to make white-haired illusionists, an especially respectable career among gnomes.

      Quartz makes for moronic gnomes called gnomens, who have a perfect memory but little other activity in their pointy heads.  Despite this prodigious power, gnomens are usually found standing in the village square, staring at the sun, calling out the hours.

      Pearls are not a true gem, but despite this fact, they can be used to create the gnomefish, whose tender flesh and succulent vitreous make it a prized gemstone among the gnomes.  It is said that their nobility cannot marry without a feast of gnomefish.

      The gnomefish itself is a prodigiously ugly fish, with goggle eyes, bulbous nose, and rosy cheeks.

      You must never let them get their hands on bismuth.

      A gnome attacking a human barbarian.
      Gnome Lands

      You will know that you are in gnome territory by their effigies.  Gnome lands are riddled with wooden carvings of themselves.  Sometimes crude, sometimes perfectly lifelike.  You will find these mock gnomes peering out from beneath toadstools and leering at you from the crooks of trees.

      Gnome villages are well-defended and hard to find.  Still, they are worth searching for--a sack of gnomes is enough to retire on.  By all accounts, the villages are happy places, full of songs and strong communities of well-adjusted gnomes.

      They also really like pineapples for some reason.  Every village has a few.

      Gnome lands are usually riddled with tunnels and traps.  Beware of badgers, who are often hired as shock-troopers.  Badgers are dangerous on a normal day; badgers can handily kill you when you are blinded and hanging by your heels.

      Those who wish to contact the gnomes are advised to sing songs and wear pointy hats.  These signs of civilization will endear you to them, making you seem more gnomish, and making it harder for them to kill you as just another mindless beast.

      While selling them gemstones can be profitable (they pay +50% or +100%), it can also be dangerous, since they will hate you for it, and may murder you afterwards.  Giving them liberated gems is a quick way to earn their gratitude.  Also, talk shit about trolls; they hate trolls.  Better yet, bring them some troll heads.

      A gift of a diamond is precious.  50% chance that a gnome surveyor joins your party as a hireling.  This is the only way to play a gnome PC.

      Fighting the Gnomes

      Wise men fear the gnome.  While most gnomes live bucolic lives in their villages, sipping mushroom wine from buttercups, the gnome surveyors are the battle-hardened protectors of their communities.  A gnome becomes a surveyor only after they have killed a wolf without any assistance.

      Gnome Surveyor
      HD 3  (HP 6)  AC plate+4  Greatrazor 1d4*
      Move as human  Jump as cat

      Grapnels
      Gnomes have strong arms and low bodyweights.  In a forested environment, they can combine their grapnels and natural jumping ability to easily move 20' vertically as part of their movement.

      With a grapnel and a nearby tree, a gnome can strike halfway through their movement, making an attack and ending their turn on a branch or inside a hollow log.

      Greatrazor
      The razor's damage is doubled if a gnome can attack any of your weakpoints: genitals, eyes, or neck.  If all three of these areas are protected, the razor's damage is a mere 1d4.

      Gnomish greatrazors are also valued as shaving razors.  Dwarves, especially, prize their beards and will pay handsomely for them.

      Decapitation
      If a gnome brings a PC below 0 HP, the PC is instantly decapitated.  Characters will full helmets are immune to decapitation.  (Gnomelands and gnomes are well-known for this.  Make sure that your players are fully informed of this before adventuring near gnomes.  Consider a helmet-seller who charges double.)

      Gnomes are aware of this limitation and have a number of method to combat it.  If their victim is wearing a coif, one gnome will jump to your shoulder and lift the coif, while their partner strikes at the back of your neck.  They also make use of bees, tarthrowers, and heat metal.

      Gnomes also make use of illusionists, but you already know how those work.

      If you are able to fight gnomes without grapnels, greatrazors, trees, and traps, they're quite easy to defeat.   Inside their forests, you are most likely to encounter a patrol of 1d4+2.

      Gnomes fighting a human houndmaster.
      Rules for Fighting Tiny Humanoids

      You can grab them as easily as you can hit them with a melee weapon.  Grabbing them is probably preferred, since they become helpless when they are grabbed.  You can choose to deal damage to them automatically on the next turn (1d6 unless you have a really good way to deal more) or throw them at their allies, potentially taking out two gnomes at once.

      Also, if your game has special rules for when the PCs fight giants, the gnomes can use those against you.
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      Popcorn Leveling and Big Fucking Treasure

      April 8, 2020, 1:25 am
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      So here's a fun game to play with your favorite game.  Look for ways to reduce the memory burden.  Look for ways to erase things from the character sheet.  Look for ways to strip the complexity from combat without removing any tactical richness, because a lot of that cruft doesn't add anything except time.  Complexity is a cost, so what are you buying?  Can you purchase it cheaper?

      Anyway, this is my attempt to get rid of XP.


      Popcorn Leveling

      Treasure is worth money, and that's nice.  But not all treasure is Treasure.

      If  you have a Treasure, it's always worth 1000 sp.  Each piece of treasure is worth one level-up at the end of the session, awarded to a single player.  If four players find two pieces of Treasure, then half of them will level up this session.  (This is the only way to gain levels now.)

      Once treasure has been identified, you have an Awards Ceremony, where the level-up is awarded to a player in a semi-random fashion.

      Identifying Treasure

      Sometimes Treasure is identified as soon as the party sees it.
      "This is black ambergris, dug from the stomach of the living mountain."
      "This is the Ruby Eye of the Pain God, plucked from his principal idol."
      Sometimes you gotta haul the Treasure to a sage and ask them what it is.
      "This is a golden freedom collar, given in ancient Cheox when a slave won their freedom, usually for saving their master's house.  They didn't make many of these." 
      "This is the Jeweled Egg of Vandrok!  It holds the spawn of Vandrok!  Get it out of my yurt!"
      Treasures don't have to start with "The", but it helps.

      Whatever you choose, though, it should be simple to identify the Treasure.  Don't make them jump through hoops--they jumped through enough when they pulled it out of a dungeon.

      There's two reasons for this.

      First, a dungeon tells a story through its items, and there are few items that players pay more attention to than treasure.  Even more-so when we're talking about Treasure.  This allows you to bring the history of the dungeon front and center.  It gives you a soapbox for you to tell you dungeon's backstory.  (And all DM's love telling their dungeon's backstory.)

      Second, identifying the Treasure in town is a good way to keep the focus on the dungeon, rather than the town.  (If you're doing gold for XP, the dungeon is where the game is.)

      Selling the Treasure

      Games already have plenty of systems in place for players to sell the Treasure.  I will add that Treasure is never intrinsically useful, except as something that can be sold for a high price.  A huge ruby is the quintessential Treasure.

      Although, you certainly don't have to sell the treasure.  You can always just keep the crown for bragging rights.

      The Awards Ceremony

      This takes place at the end of the session.

      First, everyone votes on who most helped the party achieve their goals. They get a d12.

      Next, you do the same thing for the runner up.  They get a d6.

      MVP: 1d20 + 1d12
      Runner Up: 1d20 + 1d6
      Everyone Else: 1d20

      Make a big deal when you award them their shiny d12 or d6.  Pretend that you are at an awards show. Be explicit about why they earned this.

      The point of this is (1) to recapitulate how the party overcame their challenges, (2) praise people for being good at this game, and (3) teach ourselves how to be better at this game.  This is how we talk about what is tested, and what tactics proved to be most successful.  This is where newbies learn what the table expects of them.

      Then everyone rolls their dice.  Whoever rolls highest will level up.  If there are multiple Treasures being cashed in, the second place roll gets a level-up, and so on.

      If multiple players tie for the highest roll, they all level up and gain a Player-Player Bond.

      If a character is at least level 4, they can choose to donate their level to another, lower level PC.

      Additionally, once you level up, you can add that Treasure to your title, as in "I am Morbo, who stole the Masterful Mirror from the Crab Queen."

      Discussion

      There are a couple of nice things about popcorn leveling.

      First, you can now make the Treasures into the big, shiny rewards that they deserve to be.  The jeweled eyes of a giant idol might be a Treasure.  The lich's golden crown could be a Treasure.  A dragon might have several enormous gemstones in their hoard--each one a Treasure.

      Players often respond well when goals are painted bright red and surrounded by flashing lights.  A dungeon where every room holds a small amount of treasure will feel very different than a dungeon where the purple wurm wears a diamond collar (and the players know that getting the collar off the purple wurm will result in one of them gaining a level).

      I guess I'm also arguing against dispersed, smaller sources of XP, which is a slightly different argument, isn't it?

      Second, this makes it easier for the adventure designer to stock a dungeon with an appropriate amount of loot.

      Example: every floor of the dungeon is stocked with. . .

      • 1 Treasure that the party is 90% likely to find, and straightforward to retrieve once found.
      • 1 Treasure that the party is 60% likely to find, and straightforward to retrieve once found.
      • 1 Treasure that the party is 30% likely to find, and straightforward to retrieve once found.
      • 1 Treasure that is easy to find, but involves some difficulty in retrieving.
      • 1 Treasure that is easy to find, but will require a higher level party, or the expenditure of serious resources to retrieve.
      • 1 Treasure that is easy to find, but can only be retrieved by a high-level party expending serious resources to retrieve.
      • 1 Fuck-off Treasure that is not meant to be obtainable.
      From Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
      Criticism


      Some groups will be unhappy at the amount of RNG that is incorporated into popcorn leveling.  XP is the most salient reward for good play, and is one of the primary motivators of player behavior.  It's not much work to track a single sum of XP, so why should we leave it to chance?

      It's a good point, and I don't really have an answer to it.  Popcorn leveling might be a nonviable idea.

      The enjoyment/hatred of popcorn leveling is going to enjoy on a group's tolerance for chaos, exuberance for big fucking treasure, and appreciation of a simpler character sheet.  XP might be a dissociated mechanic, but it is a well-tolerated mechanic, and people certainly don't complain about XP very much.

      And even if you hate popcorn leveling, there's still a lot of parts of Treasure that are worth importing into your home game.
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      The Legendarium: Diagetic Advancement

      April 9, 2020, 3:09 am
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      Last time I wrote about Big Fucking Treasure, which is the idea that treasure (and levelling up) comes from big, significant milestone treasures, rather than from the gradual accumulation of XP.  Mixed in with that post is the idea that these treasures were part of your character's story--you could append them to your name, as in:
      Morbo the Ineffable, who stole back the Nosering of the Elephant King

      Famous Loot = Level Ups = Character Legendarium

      Many DMs roll their eyes when level 1 characters show up with an extensive backstory, yet players want their characters to have something unique about them.  A lot of OSR games don't give two shits about backstories, so hopefully this will help scratch that itch for players.

      The Legendarium

      Your legendarium is the part of your character sheet where you record all of your character's exploits, treasures, and failures.  It's all meant to highlight your character's progress, and its all tied to diagetic advancement (improving your character within the fiction, rather than based on abstracted mechanics).  It's your personal legend.

      The Legendarium is also the back of your character sheet where you write all of this down.  It doesn't have any in-game impact, except perhaps as a source of titles.

      Each section is associated with a particular type of memorable deed, and each section is associated with a specific type of character improvement.  There are three sections.

      Tales of Treasure = Notable Treasures = Level Ups

      Stories of Skill = Skill Usage = Skill Ups

      Reports of Peril = Times You Almost Died = Bonuses to Certain Saves

      The idea is that one day you'll be level 5, and you'll be able to flip to your Legendarium and see the adventures that brought you there.

      by Ariel Perez
      Tales of Treasure

      This is essentially the same as what was described in my last post.

      You level up by finding a big Treasure.  After you level up, you get to add something to your Legendarium.  If you ended up wielding the magic sword, you get to be

      Morbo, Wielder of Blackrazor

      Here's how leveling up works in my current GLoG:


      Every level beyond the fourth awards +1 Helpful and nothing else.  (Novices struggle to protect themselves.  Veterans learn how to protect others.)

      Stories of Skill

      At the end of every session, every player describes a skill check that their character made, and then makes an Int check.  If you succeed on the Int check, that skill increases by 1 point.

      If you didn't make any skill checks that session, you obviously can't improve any skills.  Trivial skill checks (trying to train Sailing by playing with toy boats) cannot be used to improve any skills.

      Alternatively, you can study under someone.  For example, if you announce that you'll be spending the entire 2-week boat ride practicing your orcish with the orcish bosun, you can make a check to improve your orcish language skill at the end of the session.  You didn't make any checks, but you still had a good chance to learn the language.  Libraries work in a similar way.

      Each time you improve a skill, you should add a sentence to your Legendarium describing how you used that skill.  Examples:
      Morbo danced with Lucky Lady, the dancing horse, and learned several impressive new dance moves.
      Morbo sailed poorly through the tornado maze of the Arcade, and was shipwrecked.

      (A skill check doesn't have to be successful for you to learn from it.)

      Here's how skills work in my current GLoG:

      Skills start at +1 and go all the way up to +8, when you become a master of that skill.  You can then undertake a quest (described by your DM) to become a Grandmaster, which increases your skill to +10.  The DC for skills is always 16.

      Every character has 4 skill slots.

      by Yoshitaka Amano
      Reports of Peril (and Scars)

      Each time you almost die, you get +4 to save against that particular peril.

      "Almost Dying" is defined as anything that deals lethal damage (brings you into negative HP), but can be extended to any save that could potentially kill your character.

      Every time a character drops to negative HP and survives, try to find a way to give them an increase to a Save.  The save doesn't have to be proximal for them to get a bonus to it.  For example, if a fireball does 7 damage, but the next turn a sword wound causes them to start Dying, give them +4 bonus vs Fire.

      If you well and truly cannot find a way to give them +4 to a type of save, give them +1 HP instead.

      Each of these gives you a new line in your legendarium, and a new commemorative scar.

      Every character has 4 scar slots.
      The filthomancer of Froog stabbed Morbo directly in his bellybutton.  +1 HP.
      Morbo survived the bite of the white widow, but the flesh of his left hand is forever bleached, and the nails a wrinkled grey.  +4 Save vs poison.
      Here's how saves work in my current GLoG:

      Saves are made with Dex, Con, or (most commonly) Cha.  The DC is always 20.

      Since the average stat is a +5, the average save has only a 30% chance of being successful.  A +4 bonus to a type of Save is a welcome addition.

      This replaces any other type of Save progression based on level.

      Why Not Extend This to Attack Bonuses or Other Stuff?

      I don't want to bog the GLoG down with too many systems.

      "You survived the meltworms so you get Save +4 vs acid." is quick and can be done on-the-fly during a session.

      Awarding skill-ups and level-ups at the end of a session takes more time.  Maybe just a few minutes, but I'm hesitant to add more items onto that list.

      I'm already thinking about ways that thieves can add heists to their legendariums, or how rangers can add impressive kills to theirs.  (Maybe.)  But for everyone else, I don't want to put any more focus onto combat than there already is, and I don't want to incentive combat as much as I want to incentivize loot.

      See also: Chris has a similar diagetic advancement scheme here.

      a bone golem breaking out of a statue
      from Rahasia, by DARLENE

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      Lair of the Lamb

      April 13, 2020, 2:37 am
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      I've been reading Conan again, and his mighty thews have inspired me to write up an old dungeon.  Basically, you were locked in a dungeon as a sacrifice to Something Terrible and now you've got to escape.  Get it


      It's meant to be an introductory dungeon, suitable for newer players.  It's a level 0 funnel, so its not very friendly, but I think it teaches all the lessons that dungeoncrawling has to teach, and it teaches it in only 21 rooms.

      One of my favorite things about funnels is that you can have awesome, lethal elements right next to the more mundane ones.  Or put another way, it's the only time you'll see a cabbage farmer hit a godling with a brick.

      Since you start as a naked level 0 peasant, you don't have any items, much less any abilities.  So writing this has been an interesting study in minimalism for me.  They can't bring any torches into the dungeon, so how many torches should I stock the place with?  Where should I put them?  It has some of the same calculus as a survival horror game, I think.

      A lot of the lethality is theatric.  If the Lamb stops and eats every one of its kills, the party can easily escape it, with only a single loss each time.  That will never incur a TPK.  It is still disruptive, though, and hopefully a little bit horrific.

      I'm pretty proud with how many people there are to talk to in those 21 rooms.  One friendly, one antagonistic, one greedy, and one hungry.  The greedy one is a merchant on the surface, who will sell you items at a high markup, passing them through a tiny crack in the ground.  I don't think I've seen that one in a dungeon before.

      There's also the pools from B1, because I liked those pools.  Only four mysterious liquids, though, which I think is a more reasonable number.

      There's also breadcrumbs for characters to become a cleric or warlock after leaving the dungeon.

      I'm worried that the environment might be a little too claustrophobic and confining, but we'll see.  There's only one loop in the dungeon (although there will be more once it links up with part 2.

      The items may also need some rebalancing, but again, we'll see.

      This is also a big departure from my usual approach, where I don't write up a PDF until I've playtested something 3+ times.  I've only run this dungeon once, a long time ago, and in a very different form.

      I still intend to revise it though, so if YOU run this dungeon, let me know how it goes.  (Consider it to be payment for an otherwise free PDF.)
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      Galleries of the Ghouls

      April 16, 2020, 2:20 am
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      Working on part 2 of Lair of the Lamb.  The map is done-ish and the room notes are finally coherent.  I think the 6 pink rooms are going to get cut, because this dungeon doesn't need a golem. 

      It looks like this.

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      Dungeoncrawling: Hirelings

      April 19, 2020, 2:41 pm
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      I'm working on Part 2 of Lair of the Lamb right now, and its turning into something different.  I think I want it to be an introduction to dungeoncrawling (and possibly the GLOG) with all of my scattered rulesets baked into it.

      So, part of that means typing up those scattered rulesets.

      Anyway, there are only two types of hirelings: henchmen and mercenaries.

      Wallmaster from 3's Original Zelda Guide
      Henchmen

      Henchmen will work for half a share of the money, or for 1 silver per day (whichever is more).

      Henchmen will not participate in combat, but they have 10 inventory slots at your disposal.  Their preferred position is wherever is safest.  They will refuse to do anything overtly risky, but can be coaxed to do moderately risky things with a Loyalty check.

      Overtly risky tasks: being the first one down a hallway, pulling an unmarked lever.

      Moderately risky tasks: standing watch in the hall while the party is in a room.

      Mercenaries

      Mercenaries will work for a share of the money, or for 10s per day (whichever is more).

      Each mercenary will do their best to stay close to the person they are attached to.  They give that person +2 Atk and +2 Damage in combat, but do not take combat turns by themselves.  If you would take damage that would give you lethal damage, there is a 50% chance that your mercenary is killed instead.

      Mercenaries prefer to stand in the background whenever possible, but they will not shirk from combat.  They will take as many risks as the rest of the PCs.  If they notice that they are being asked to take more risks that the PCs (they are always forced to pull the lever), they will become as unwilling to take risks as henchmen.

      Turning a mercenary into a +2/+2 buff is just done to speed things along.  If that simplification seems odious, or if it seems unreasonable within the fiction, feel free to detach them from the PC and treat them like a level 1 fighter.

      All mercenaries that you'll hire at the local tavern are level 1 fighters by default, but you can encounter (and hire) other mercenaries as one of the many perks of adventuring.

      A Level 2 Fighter gives you +3 Attack and +3 Damage, and can take two hits for you before dying.

      A Level 1 Thief gives you +1 Attack and +1 Damage, but can be coaxed into picking locks and scouting rooms.

      Loyalty Checks

      Asking a hireling to take more risks than the rest of the party causes them to lose 1 Loyalty, regardless of whether or not they accept or refuse.

      Good treatment causes their loyalty to go up by 1 or 2 points (to a maximum of 19).  Poor treatment causes their loyalty to go down by 1, 1d4, or 1d6 points.

      Hireling Events

      A possibility on the Random Encounter Table.

      1. Two NPCs are fighting.  Describe the fight.  If you allow them both to fight, they both lose 1 Loyalty.  If the rest of the party supports one NPCs but not the other, the NPC that was supported gains 1 Loyalty and the other loses 1d4 Loyalty.

      2. An NPC becomes demanding.  They want something from the party (more pay / more control over decisions such as where to go / a magic item).  If they do not get it, they lose 2 Loyalty.

      3. Two NPCs have become best friends.  They now share a loyalty stat, and forcing them to separate may require a Loyalty check.

      4. An NPC has decided that they want to be friends with one of the PCs.  They gain 1 Loyalty and will attempt to do something nice for you.  (A gift / information / a favor).

      5. An NPC spends 10 minutes refusing to move.  It may be due to fear, a twisted ankle, a sudden nosebleed, or a bad feeling.

      6. A random character (NPC or PC) must make a Wisdom check.  If they fail, they lose a random item (that makes sense).  It is in one of the previous 6 rooms.
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      Dungeoncrawling: Languages

      April 20, 2020, 10:50 am
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      The Problem With Languages

      Here's how a lot games use languages.  

      Choose a language at random from this list of languages.  You don't know which ones will be useful.  If that language crops up in a game, then you get some bonus information.

      That's a pretty shitty implementation.

      1st Problem: Choosing languages is usually a blind choice.  You might try to predict what languages will be most useful, but if you're choosing it at character creation, you don't have enough information to make an informed choice.

      2nd Problem: Groups will arbitrarily have different experiences in dungeons.  Due to random chance, one group of players will be able to talk to the kobolds in the dungeon, while another group will never have that option.

      (Not that I'm against different groups having different experiences, but they should be the result of players choosing to not talk to the kobolds, not being excluded from the possibility.  And the dungeon designer should have a clear answer to this question "is this dungeon better or worse if we can talk to the kobolds?" and then design a dungeon that supports that answer.)

      3rd Problem: Information is one of the resources a smart party stockpiles.  It is fuel for their schemes.  It is salvation when they are on their last legs.

      Locking information behind an arbitrary language barrier is counter-productive.  The players never have a chance to earn the information--it's either available or it isn't.  Without the chance to earn the information, it turns into a coin flip.  Either the module is better with the information or it isn't.  Pick one.  (Hint: usually, the answer is just to give them the info.)

      If the information makes the game better, give it to them in Common.

      If not, don't.

      Languages in the GLOG

      Everyone speaks Common.  No one speaks any other language.

      Languages are treated like a Skill, and take up a Skill Slot.  The only difference is that they improve twice as fast (gaining +2 per improvement instead of +1).

      There are three implementations of languages.

      1. The information is available in Common, and is accessible to everyone.  (Good default choice.)

      Before you leave the lighted realms of free info, think about what you gain by locking the information away behind a foreign language.  Is the game improved by this sequestration?

      2. The language communicates occasional, optional bits of information, and the PCs have time to learn it if they wish.

      Learning a language my allow access to a few foreign NPCs, it might allow you to speak to the goblins without an untrustworthy interpreter, or it might allow you to read the dungeon graffiti.  This only works if:
      • The foreign language isn't used to communicate anything essential, and there is a minimal penalty for not knowing the language.
      • The PCs have the opportunity to learn the language.
      • The PCs spend enough time here to learn the language over multiple sessions
      Note the third point.  If the party doesn't have opportunities to learn the language, it doesn't matter that the language is learnable.

      3. The information is inaccessible and there are no opportunities to learn this language prior to encountering it.  The party will have to (a) go to a Library to research it, (b) hire a linguist, or (c) use magic to decipher it.

      I'm less and less a fan of #3 these days.

      Not that it isn't fun to drag a complaining linguist through a dungeon, but there's an opportunity cost to be considered.  It takes a lot of time, words, and attention to find a linguist, negotiate the cost, keep the linguist alive in the dungeon, and extinguish the linguist when they catch on fire from reading the forbidden words.  It's not bad, it's just. . . are there better uses for your group's time and attention?

      Secondly, what information would be better delivered in town, than in the dungeon?  Because delivery information in the dungeon (point-of-use) is probably preferred.

      Maybe for dramatic pacing ("My god!  Do you know whose tomb we were in?")

      Maybe for introducing quests ("According to this book, Zharkhoon was buried on his golden barge with his jeweled monkey sewn inside his chest.")

      But even then, it's usually more satisfying to let hit points, torches, and spells be the reason that the party returns to town, not an inability to translate an inscription.

      A library is a decent compromise, though.  It can be a good way to give them dungeon-related things to do while they are in town.  For example: "I need 10s up front.  I won't have time to translate it until tonight.  Come back tomorrow morning." 

      And of course, magic is always a limited-used resource.  If a party wants to use magic to gain an advantage, that's always acceptable.  (If it wasn't, the DM should never have given them the magic in the first place.)
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      Lair of the Lamb: Final

      April 23, 2020, 3:04 am
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      So here's a 51 page PDF that contains:
      • An abbreviated version of the GLOG as I currently run it.
      • A full-size dungeon and level 0 funnel.
      click the skull
      It's not a complete version of the GLOG.  You'll probably need GLOG: Wizards to fill in all the blanks, but you're smart enough to put all that together.

      First, a lot of the credit for this goes to my patrons.  I've asked them what type of content they would like to see, and a majority of the responses revolved around either (a) compiling my GLOG in a single place, and (b) a finished dungeon.

      Thank you so much for all the support.  And also thank you a little bit for yelling at me.  It all helps.

      The third group, who answered (c) more Centerra lore, will have to be satisfied with the updated map at the end of this post that shows the location of Lon Barago, where this adventure takes place.

      Second, this is not the end of this document.  I'm working with some friends and artists to create a deluxe version of the Lair of the Lamb.  It will be a proper PDF, with proper layout.  It will be available in printed format (somehow).  It might get Kickstarted.  Who knows?  Literally anything can happen in 2020.  

      Third, this might look like a free adventure, but it is not free.  The cost of downloading this PDF is that you must let me know how it goes when you run it at your table.  I'm especially interested in: 
      • What path people take through the dungeon?
      • How many secrets did they find?
      • Is the Lamb too threatening?  Not threatening enough?  Did they kill it?
      • Were the ghouls killed, avoided, or befriended?  Did you have enough guidance to roleplay the ghouls well?
      • How much pressure was there for light sources?
      • How much pressure was there for ropes and weapons?
      Happy crawling!

      click to embiggen

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      Smirches and 24 Other Birds

      May 3, 2020, 10:19 pm
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      Chris has sent a plague of fowls to bedevil your games.

      But whimper not!  I shall drive them back with my own motley array of avian weirdos.


      1. Rubber Duck - A small, greasy waterfowl that can produce a flexible, waterproof substance when rendered, boiled, and distilled.

      2. Crosserton Hen - A speckled hen traditionally used by the urban planner's guild.  The bird would be left to wander the town, and a new road would be built based on its travels.

      3. Capoewary - A enormous, shaggy bird.  It kills hundreds of people every year by chasing them down, kicking them in the head, and then dancing over the corpse.  It is known that this is part of their courtship rituals, with mating usually taking place immediately.

      4. Saffertine Pigeon - A fat yellow-and-brown pigeon.  It is famous for knowing how to count, and has distinct "words" for all numbers up to eleven.  It is known that this bird taught humans to count, since the sounds are identical.  (We didn't adopt the saffertine word for eleven, "eefo", because it sounds dumb.)  They are sometimes purchased to teach children to count (although the bird is more likely to teach children how to build a nest from their own hair.)

      5. Alaveult - After the Veultish duck lays its eggs, the bird separates into two separate animals following a brief period of passivation.  The majority of the animal remains on the ground to care for the eggs, while the wings (along with one eye and a bit of brainstem) protect the nest.

      6. Rail Hawk - A reddish black raptor, the rail hawk possesses a second pair of wings.  When the second pair of wings are opened, the rail hawk accelerates to ludicrous speeds, exploding predators and demolishing buildings that it crashes into.  This experience is usually fatal for the hawk, whose feathers (and skin) are often stripped from the extreme speed.  It does not unfurl these wings except in the defense of a mate or a nest.

      7. Greater Ultross - These black birds are only ever seen flying west-to-east, and are never known to land.  It is known that they perpetually fly eastward.  The females lay their eggs on the males back, and they drink they water by flying through clouds.  If their wings are restrained, they cannot breathe, and quickly suffocate.  They have no feet.

      8. Gooseface Barnacle - A species of barnacle that turns into a goose when the weather becomes too cold.  By all accounts, the gooseface goose is an entirely ordinary bird, and tastes excellent with lemon and butter.

      9. Pekornino - An odious, smelly bird that haunts the bogs of the Madlands.  It attacks travelers by flying above them while squeezing out an egg-bomb, which then explodes.  They give birth to live young through the mouth.

      10. Contrary Chicken - A peculiar species of chicken once bred by to grace the tables of the holy emperors.  At the end of its life, the chicken will lose all of its feathers and curl up into a ball.  The other hens will then weave an egg around the ancient chicken.  Inside the egg, the chicken will revert into a strange form, like an embryo with with several major differences.  The egg is then cooked.  The Second Egg (as it is called) is reported to be delicious.

      11. Mime Bird - A black-and-white banded species of crake, this bird imitates actions as well as sounds.  It uses this ability to scare away predators (so convincing is its pantomime of a hyena).  They are common at the parties of nobility.

      12. Antiparrot - A bird that compels people to imitate its warbling cry.  No one is sure how this works, but scientists say it helps the antiparrot get laid somehow.

      13. Underworld Mockingbird - A tremendously dangerous bird, although it is only medium-sized and slate blue.  First it learns your speech.  Then it learns your best jokes, and uses them to impress your friends.  Then it wins over your allies through gifts of seeds and gems.  By the time it kills you and begins wearing your hats, no one notices, nor would they care if they did.

      14. Worst Bird - Named by unhappy birdwatchers, this camouflaged dope imitates other bird calls with near perfect accuracy.

      15. Astral Peacock - A bird declared to be a Peril to Salvation by the Church, the feathers of the Astral Peacock's tail do not depict anything that can be described with words.  Exposure to the astral peacock's tailfan causes the ejection of the soul from the body, with all the concomitant risk such an action entails.

      16. Goblin Peacock - A regular peacock, occasionally sold as a novelty.  Those looking at its tailfeathers are instantly nauseated. Many viewers immediately vomit on the bird, which happily consumes the meal.  This is the purpose of its tailfan.

      17. Century Peacock - A magnificent bird, the century peacock is clad in reds and yellows rather than the cooler pavonine colors.  The century peacock is the largest of its family, and their tail can reach as long as 20'.  The century peacock only spreads its tail once in its life, at which point the bird begins singing its Life Song (also only ever sung once) before bursting into beautiful rainbow flames and dying.  The peahens who were impressed by this display will fight over the corpse.  By ingesting the peacocks meat, they receive his seed, and thus gestate the fallen prince's eggs.

      18. Sanjavino - A extremely accelerated hummingbird.  They spend years in their eggs, forgotten among the reeds.  When they hatch, they fly around at sixty miles an hour, slurping up nectar at an accelerated pace, mating, and laying their eggs.  They live for a single day and a night.  It is believed that they somehow map out the local flowers while they are still in their eggs; what else could explain their incredibly efficiency?

      19. Threnody Bird - These black-and-yellow birds resemble hummingbirds.  They are scavengers, but they are most famous for feeding on gravewax, which they sup from the nostrils and ears of the deceased.  It is said that after feeding, they will learn a song that the dead person knew in life.  These birds are also called "ghoul birds" and are usually killed on sight, although they are known to be harmless.

      20. Surgeonbirds.  The bloodthirsty cousin to the hummingbird, these birds use their tears to anesthetize their prey before drinking their blood like a mosquito.  In times of famine they will abandon their usual discretion in order to attack in vast swarms.

      21. Fortress Birds.  The brothers live in enormous bird-castles.  Each one can be as tall as fifty feet, made of woven reeds and stolen buttons.  The birds spend generations on these structures, living and dying within them.  The females leave the nest-castle when they mature, and seek out the most impressive structure they can find.  They have rich lives, have kings, conquer neighboring castles, and have "bards" that develop new songs for the colony.  They are nearly extinct, because smirches keep burning down their nests.

      22.  Helican.  Enormous, murderous pelicans.  HD 4  Def leather  Bite 1d8+swallow.  Toloba the Unheard famously spent 9 years living inside the pouch of a helican name Little Kit.

      23. Daysingale.  A bird of impossibly beautiful song.  When a mated pair sings, all those who hear it are enraptured.  Those who are charmed by the bird will live in the woods, becoming the protectors of those beautiful songs, while abandoning all other loyalties.  After a decade of mighty feats and peerless conquests Sir Odringer famously abandoned the Quest for the Cloak after hearing the dulcet tones of a Daysingale, much to the disgust of his peers.

      24. Grackleboom.  A nocturnal bird, a bit like a crow shaped like a pheasant.  It's booming calls are so odious that it drives all predators away.  (No one can sleep in a hex where a grackleboom is nesting.  You're probably safe from mundane predators, though, since they are similarly driven away.)

      25. Smirches.  A large and filthy crow, smirches can weigh up to 15 lbs and can have an 8' wingspan.  They are famous for their stench, their cleverness, and their familiar "HAW HAW CAW CAW" call.  Although they have no language, they understand the concept of money, and will steal coins in order to buy things, even shopping around to see who will give them the best deal.

      They become aggressive when they are hungry, and will form mobs, robbing fishermen of their catch.  They lurk in alleyways to steal lunch from children.  They have been known to steal cats and hold them for ransom.

      They have nimble claws, and there have been multiple cases when a smirch has found a knife and stabbed someone to death.  They are frequently described as the smartest creatures on Centerra (usually by witches).

      They would have been hunted to extinction long ago, were they not capable of explosive defection during their retreats.

      DM Note: There is no game that doesn't benefit from the addition of a smirch.  They will follow parties while waiting for an opportunity for mischief or murder.  They will stay outside of easy bowshot, and will keep an eye on anyone with a bow.  They are so terribly, terribly clever.

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      Owlbears and 24 Other Birds

      May 12, 2020, 1:54 am
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      Chris's scrivenings.
      Archon's marks on more.
      My first foray into the birdlands.  This is part 2.

      the great and common potoo
      26. Pyorn - A common riding animal.  Horses are tougher and capable of longer distance travel.  Pyorns are capable of faster sprints and some truly incredible jumps.  They are also omnivores, and are known to enjoy cats.  They have strange heads--their beak covers their entire face, with their eyes peeking through apertures.

      27.  Owl - They are not birds, and yet people think that they are.  Owls are lunar creatures.  Pluck the feathers off an owl--pluck all the feathers off an owl, and you will be left with nothing but feathers, a skeleton, and eyes.  The gossamer stuff that stains your cuticles--that's the real owl.  Owls never make a single noise, except for their call, which they make upon their death.  Their feathers are sometimes used to make truly silent cloaks.

      28. Educated Owl - Not all owls have forgotten their names.  These owls still remember the moon, and they teach their children their histories inscribed on the inside of hollow trees.  They can emit a 20' zone of silence at will, which blankets all sounds, except their voice should they deign to speak.  They regurgitate mouse skeletons animated by their necromancy.  Their weaver caste will weaver "wicker men" from thorns, which they then pilot like mecha.  They have a strange business here, which no one has ever quite figured out.  See also.

      29. Bladed Heron - Bladed herons have beaks that are sharpened on two sides, which they use to chop fish in half.  The males also fight each other in tremendously acrobatic duels, resembling nothing so much as a pair of dueling swordsmen.  In some communities, metal blades are actually bolted onto the heron's beaks, greatly improving their ability to kill.  Lvl 1  Def none  Beak 1d8 or 1d12.

      30, Smidge - A miniscule cousin to the smirch, a smidge is a tiny black bird, smaller than a fingernail.  They will latch on to your jugular and suck your blood.  Any attempt to forcibly remove them will result in grievous harm to your brain's blood supply.

      31. Cryoninus - A bird of ice, and a cousin to the phoenix.  Winter flows from their wings, and their breath is cold enough to shatter glass.  It is painful to breath around them, your own lungs revolting at the impossible stillness of the air.  Their heart is a thing of absolute zero, a perfect point of stillness inside a mercurial, flowing beast.  When you kill one, it ushers in a permanent ice age at that location, a backstop against the heat death of the universe.  When you kill one, it will kill the kingdom that contains it, perhaps half a continent, and you, if you tarry.  Best to harvest the parts quickly and be gone.

      32. Mondlieb Harrier - A bird that possesses an impossible style of flight.  When it spreads it's bizarrely-shaped wings, it takes off vertically, and at high speed.  When it closes its wings, it falls.  It uses this strange method of flight to "jump" hundreds of feet into the air and land on its prey, impaling them on its spike-like hallux.  Their preferred prey are small deer and tax collectors (because of their oily livers).

      33. Peryton - The victims of an ancient curse, perytons are enormous raptors with the heads and antlers of stags.  They cast the shadows of humans, and their mating rituals require a fresh human heart.  When a peryton is killed, the shadow will walk off, heading for the River of the Dead.  It is said that a mortal cannot find the entrance to the true River of the Dead except through this method.  It is a difficult journey--perytons do not live near Greywing Bay, and the walking shadow never tires nor slows.

      34. Heravia - The serpentine bird, the heravia lacks wings or legs.  It is long and sinuous, and crawls on its belly.  It does possess a tremendously versatile tail fan, which it uses to communicate, imitate animals, and defend itself.  They grow up to 50' long.
      HD 5  Def plate  Tail Slice 1d12+poison

      35. Great Hesperiachis - A monstrous branch of hesperornithes, the great hesperiaches is completely marine.  It grows as long as 100' long.  It feeds on krill, and spends its time in the northern seas.  It lays floating eggs, which float south on the current until they hatch in warm water.  Boats are sometimes painted with eyes to ward off the amorous attention of great hersperiachis.

      36. Mordant Vulture - A curious species of vulture that instructed the first necromancers.  After impregnating the female, the female will subdue her mate and eat his heart.  Over the next few days, she will eat other organs, eventually replacing them with her own gastroliths.  After three days, the female will lay her eggs; simultaneously, the male will arise as an undead bird.  For as long as a decade, the undead male will provide for his family, bringing them fresh carrion and keeping watch through the long nights.  For decades, the female will continue to lay her dead mate's eggs.

      37. Coatl - Allegedly, a servant of the Authority's divine wrath.  A flying serpent-bird with coils large enough to constrict elephants, the coatls have the power to ignite anything with their gaze.  And I do mean anything.  Metal will melt, dribble, smoke, and evaporate.  Because everything has a boiling point, if you've pissed off the Authority.  No reputable source has ever seen them.

      38. Catching the Simurgh - Since the simurgh is all birds, it follows that all birds are the simurgh.  According to Germanth's Theorum of Semantic Approximation, there must be a fixed amount of birds that qualify as "all birds", since otherwise the definition becomes incoherent in a non-instantaneous universe,  According to this theory, it takes about 71 tons of birds to be considered "all birds".  There are some diversity requirements, but the 71 tons is the more difficult to criterion to meet.

      So, first obtain 71 tons of birds, and compress them to a certain critical mass.  Perhaps a sufficiently reinforced aviary.  Perhaps an extraordinarily reinforced aviary--you are in the business of manifesting a goddess, after all.

      39. Achelornis - A wingless, quadrupedal bird from the abyssal layers, the achelornis is a predator.  Vicious perhaps, but not evil.  Their not-inconsiderable intellects are mostly dedicated to inventing scary noises and creepy songs.  They are most at home in tunnels, and are agoraphobic.

      These are replacements for achaierai.

      Achelornis
      Lvl 6  Def chain  Claws 1d10/1d10
      Move horse  Int 10  Dis hunger

      Black Smoke - Achelornises constantly exhale a black smoke.  It take one round to permeate an area (so keep moving and you're fine).  Anyone ending their turn in the black smoke takes 1 point of emotion damage (fear).  At the end of an encounter with an Achelornis, everyone has an X-in-20 chance of developing a phobia to birds, where X is the amount of emotion damage you took from this ability.

      <digression> Emotion damage can bring you down to 0 HP, but cannot kill you.  If you would take "lethal" emotion damage, you instead gain a point of Stress.</digression>

      40. Cerulophore - A bird of the upper air.  It resembles a chain of blue, translucent birds joined into a singular chain.  They sing songs of prayer without ceasing (easy enough when you have a dozen mouths).  They require no sustenance beyond their own virtue.  (See also, the holy mounds.)  They constantly elongate, producing more "birds" at the end of the chain.  When they wish to reproduce, they fly into a tornado and are torn apart.  Each fragmentary "bird" then becomes the beginning of a new chain.

      41. Viridine - A bird of the upper air.  Thin and green, resembling a manta as much as a bird.  They do not land, and spend their entire lives miles above the ground.  They reproduce in thunderstorms, and are seen as spiritual leaders among their kind, and many birds search them out with metaphysical dilemmas, seeking them above the thunderheads.  They have a wingspan of about 50', and weigh about a kilogram.  Like the cerulophore, they are remnants of ancient epochs, and their metabolisms are karmic.  They must perform favors in order to nourish themselves, feeding on the recipient of their benevolence.

      42. Tumblebirds - A colonial species that weaves enormous "tumbleweeds" on the Mausphalian plains.  The largest tumblehomes can be as much as five stories tall.  These tumblehomes are usually stationary shelters for the birds, but in times of danger, the tumblebirds will grip the inside and beat their wings fiercely, like a system of fans strapped inside a giant hamster ball.  Thus equipped, the tumblehome can roll across the plains, moving to a more fertile area or crushing any threat beneath their thorny tonnage.  They sound like a chicken coop rolling down a hill.

      43. Lackeroon - An evil bird with poisonous eyes.  The glare of the lackeroon causes forced vegetarianism.  If someone affected by this curse eats meat, they will shit blood until they die.  Lackeroons form symbiotic relationships with fruit trees, and will prune them, clean them of parasites, and weave them into protective hedges.  They are favored by exotic gardeners and condescending vegans.

      44. Dire Cuckoo - Huge things, the size of penguins.  They steal children and eat them.  In the place of the stolen child, they will leave a cuckoo child, nearly indistinguishable from a human except for small teeth and a strange lightness of body.  The child will spend the next dozen years stealing food to feed its true parents.  Once it reaches puberty, it will flee into the woods and undergo an awkward metamorphosis into its adult form.

      45. Doodle Bird - One day, you find a graffito.  It depicts a humorous bird-thing, with goofy eyes, scruffy wings, and gangly legs.  It amuses you, and so you draw it everywhere.  In the dust, on the walls of the bath, scratched into wooden doors.  (Your blood becomes thinner.)  You tell your friends, show them, and you all laugh.  (Your flesh becomes sweeter than nectar.)  You call it the doodly bird, and you are happy to have started a trend.  (Your flesh becomes dense and aromatic.)

      So enraptured, you fall asleep one night, and the doodly bird slips in your window.  First one leg, then the other, and then the whole bird follows.  It is so very tall.  It hums its doodly song, which only works on doodly folks like you, which keeps you deep asleep.  Then it drinks your luxurious, deliquescent flesh through your belly button.

      Thus fed, the doodly bird looks for a few more places where it can scratch its memetic graffito, and then points it nose into the wind, sniffing the roadways for the scent of another doodled human.

      46. Bird Stamps - It was thought that nearly all of these were destroyed in the Bird wars, but small caches of bird stamps continue to be found in the occasional dungeon.  Birds operate a postal service in defiance of Zulin, and while it is normally only available to birds and bird-allies (certain reptiles, dragons), those possessing a stamp can flag down (most) birds and convince them to carry the letter for you.  Anything heavier than a few grams is unlikely to reach its destination, and you must provide the birds with an accurate address that they will understand.

      Bird stamps replace sending.

      47. Kenku - A type of hereditary curse that manifests as a sort of stunted, demented, wingless crowman.  If someone steals from the Simurgh, or possesses her treasure, their children will all be born as kenku.  You will find them in the cursed parts of the world, the offspring of kings who do not want to relinquish their flying carpets and--honestly--have enough heirs already.

      Kenku can "interbreed" with humans but the offspring is always a stone egg covered with a curse-poem, unique to each kenku.

      48. Girshum - An anti-bird, once believed to be the Simurgh's shadow, now known to be a separate species that thrives in the semantic blindness of humans.  (Non-symbolic animals have no problem seeing them.)  They are rarely noticed, but when they are, it is always as an absence of a bird.  "On the branch over there, there is no bird."  "It doesn't come closer, but now there is a spot on the ground near you, where there is no bird."  "No bird is flying away, over the bakery, while looking at you over its shoulder."  They are used to share gossip (only ever concerning birds), and as spies, reluctantly.

      49. Snuffy Bird - A bird with a beak like a pipe.  It plucks tobacco, dries it in the sun, tear it into bits, and then packs its sinuses with the snuff.  It ignites the tobacco by sneezing (they are, perhaps, a distant relative to the phoenix).  They are popular pets, since they are attractive and good-natured.  If supplied with a mixture of tobacco and incense, they will always keep a house smelling good.

      50. Owlbear 

      Obviously the product of wizards and their meddling, owlbears are a melancholy mixture of parts.  Even owlbears who are closely related tend to look distinct, and many have small irregularities (asymmetries, extra fingers).  These are not mutations, but something expressing itself from their essential germ.

      Their wings and head are feathered, but their bodies are of bears.  There is some evidence that they were meant to be more than this, though.  The bones in their arms mirror those of a human, albeit thicker and brutish.  And once extracted from the skull, their brain is neither ursine nor avian--it is indistinguishable from a human's.

      Owlbears are obviously insane.  They throw themselves from high places, continually attempting to fly.  This behavior does not decrease with maturity--rather the opposite.  (More owlbears die from self-inflicted falls than any other cause.)  And owlbears attempt bearish behaviors, such as hibernating and hunting salmon, and neither with any success.  Even healthy owlbears display characteristic signs of stress, such as "barbering", when an owlbear plucks out all of their feathers and hair.

      It is fair to say that owlbears are not happy creatures, which does something to explain their famous aggression.

      Owlbear
      Lvl 6  Def plate  Punches 1d12/1d12
      Move bear  Int 6  Dis Territorial

      Perfect Stalker - Silent and perfectly camouflaged.  A stalking owlbear is nearly impossible to detect without magic.  When you roll a random owlbear encounter, it has a equal chances of stalking or attacking immediately.

      Dread Hoot - Stalking owlbears always hoot once before they attack.  After 1 round, and every hour thereafter, roll a d6.  On a 1-2, the owlbear attacks.  On a 6, the owlbear has gotten bored and wandered off.

      Hatred - Owlbears will always attack spellcasters and birds first.  (fOwlbears can smell the spells in your head.)

      Owlbear Discussion

      Owlbears are famous as monsters that burst out of the random encounter tables and slay low-level parties.  I see no reason to break with that tradition.  The only modification is that players now have plenty of time to prepare themselves after they hear the ominous hoot.  Even low-level parties can put up a terrific fight if they are well-prepared.
      ↧

      Advice for OSR DMs

      May 21, 2020, 3:16 am
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      I wrote an introduction section that is meant for the Lair of the Lamb.  

      The most interesting part for most of you will probably be the Advice for DMs section, but I'm posting the whole thing here since it's a good explanation of (a) old-school dungeoncrawls, as I see them, and (b) the style of gameplay that I'm shooting for in the Lair of the Lamb.

      by Konstantin Kostadinov

      What You are Reading

      This text is meant to be an introduction to both the GLOG and an old-school dungeoncrawl.

      The Goblin Laws of Gaming

      The ruleset in this book is sufficient for the adventure in this book.  The rules will serve you well up until the last page of the dungeoncrawl.
      But the GLOG that can be printed is not the True GLOG.  The GLOG is a philosophy—gather the rules that improve your game, and exile the rules that don't.  The published rules are just building blocks for you to incorporate or discard as you see fit.
      There are two reasons we should shun a monolith.
      First, there is no one-size-fits-all RPG.  Your game will improve after you tailor it to meet your group’s expectations and preferences.  Second, the best rules and creatures for your game will not exist in a single book--they will exist in many.  (In another book, I hope I can write about how to best make these decisions.)

      An Old-School Dungeoncrawl

      The players will control a group of lowly peasants who attempt to escape a dangerous and exotic underground maze.  That makes it a dungeoncrawl.
      They will map the dungeon themselves, track light sources, they will rely on their wits (instead of their class abilities), and some will die.  These things make it old-school.
      Level-0 Peasants
      Each player will play as several level-0 peasants.  By the end of the module, each player will (hopefully) exit the dungeon with a level 1 character who has earned their hit points the hard way.  
      We do this so that:
      • The players can start playing quickly.  New players are neither knowledgeable nor invested.  (Later, the surviving characters will be flesh out.  Backstories are for closers.)
      • The players can learn to play with the simplest character sheet possible.  Mechanics can be introduced one by one.
      • The players are not punished too harshly for their mistakes.  Since they have extra lives, they can move on from fatal errors.  Since the dungeon is lethal, it’s best if players are familiar with the genre before they are attached to a particular character.
      • Parts of the dungeon can be closed off to groups without particular gear.  Torches, ropes, and weapons can fulfill the role of keys.
      • The world's cruelty must be instructed.


      Advice for DMs


      Meaningful Choices

      Give the players as many meaningful choices as you can. This means a choice where:
      • The negative outcome is known (at least approximately).
      • The positive outcome is known (at least approximately).
      • The odds are known (at least approximately).
      • The outcomes affect the game (they are not trivial).
      • The player is also free to choose not to choose (they can walk away).
      Shoot for at least 4 of the 5.


      Similarly, try to avoid giving players meaningless choices.  “Do you go down identical tunnel A or identical tunnel B?”

      And respect their decisions.  If the players choose to avoid the ogre encounter, don’t reskin the ogres as half-giants and put the encounter in front of them again.  Conversely, if they find a way to easily kill the ogres in the first round, respect their ingenuity and allow the ogres to die (don’t give the ogres more HP on the fly, or re-insert the encounter later).

      We want players to feel ownership of the results of their choices.  “I did this.”  For the same reason, players roll as many of the dice as possible. (The DM rolls as few as possible.)

      Information

      Part of giving the players meaningful choices is giving them the information they need to make their decisions.  They need to know what the risks and the rewards are for any decision (at least approximately).

      Don’t hide information behind rolls--just give it to your players.  When in doubt, give them more information.  It is more important to inform your players than it is to find justifications for how the characters would know things.

      Impact

      You must allow your players’ actions to change, build, and destroy your world.

      You are not a tour guide nor a train conductor.  You are the manager of a very dangerous wildlife reserve.  If your players choose to organize the leopards into a militia, tell them where they can find boots.  If your players choose to burn down the forest, let your setting burn.  Let their decisions matter.

      (There is nothing wrong with scripted events or fluff encounters; just be cognizant of what they are.)

      Lethality

      Players in breezy games will sometimes drink random potions just to see the result, because they know that nothing truly terrible will happen.  This isn’t that kind of game.  Sometimes the strange bottle contains poison, and sometimes it kills you without a saving throw.  Don’t drink poison.

      The sooner that players learn this expectation, the sooner they will thrive.  Playing multiple characters helps players learn this lesson without a tutorial section.  Do not go easy on them--if your kindness teaches them that their characters will not die even when they probably should, your kindness has become a cruelty, since it creates expectations that will be shattered much later (and more painfully).

      The dungeon is not an unthinking meat grinder.  The dungeon is a test, where wrong answers are penalized.  Skilled players will be able to navigate the dungeon without any deaths, while fools will TPK in the first few rooms.

      Combat is a little different, since the chaos of d20 rolls means that the weaker party sometimes triumphs--which is why risk-averse players should also be combat-averse players.

      Fair Deaths

      Players should die, but they should die as the result of bad choices.

      A player that dies shouldn’t feel angry at the injustice of it all.  Ideally, they should sigh, shrug, smile, and say “yeah, I kinda figured that might happen.”

      Bad: “You walk into the room.  Rocks fall.  Everyone roll a Dex save or take damage.”

      Good: “The sagging ceiling seems to be held up by a spear.”

      A player that dies in the first room would have good reason to feel bitter.  A player who dies in the second will only have themselves to blame.  Fair deaths result from meaningful choices.

      Keep Track

      Every action in the dungeon has a cost.  Searching the bone pile takes precious time.  Torches will burn down.  There is the chance that a random encounter might occur.  Searching the bone pile is a bit like a shop where items are purchased with torchlight and blood.

      You cannot have a meaningful campaign unless strict time measures are kept.  The same applies to torches and rations.

      HP (or the number of peasants) is another resource.  HP can be thought of as the character’s risk budget.  You spend HP on risky actions.  Characters with more HP can do more things because they can afford to take more risks.  A low-HP group is a miserable thing, crawling past the wonders of the underworld, unable to afford a taste.

      Allow Failure

      Your players will die: sometimes heroically, sometimes embarassingly.  Resist the temptation to save them.  This is one of the hardest things for groups to adjust to (which is why it’s so important to set expectations early).

      Allow PCs to flee combat, but never fudge the dice.  After all, they chose to stay and fight.

      Your players will not find all the secret areas.  Resist the temptation to drop hints.  Finding secret areas is one of the things that separates good players from novices.  Not that there’s anything wrong with participation trophies, but there needs to be a trophy for excellence, too.

      After the session, resist the temptation to tell players about all of the things that they missed.  Those secrets must be purchased through cleverness and bravery, or not at all.

      Allow Success

      There must be rewards commensurate with the dangers.  Allow players opportunities to feel powerful.  They will sidestep your traps and one-shot your bosses; celebrate these moments with them.

      They will want to make their characters cool.  Let them go buy the swordcane that they want.  The dungeon made the survivors rich--let them throw a party.

      Allow Players to Pick their Genre

      You cannot enforce morality on your players if they want to play as murderhobos.  Similarly, a horror game is impossible if the players keep making Monty Python jokes.  You can nudge in a direction (after all, the DM is a player, too) but you cannot require.

      If you write up courtly intrigues but your players only want to kick down doors and kill things, either (a) have an open conversation about your goals for this game, or (b) give them the kind of game that they want.

      Never Fudge the Dice

      Better yet, roll them out in the open.

      If you are adjusting the difficulty on the fly, then it’s no different than wrestling with your dad.  A mock struggle, followed by a fictional triumph.  You might as well not roll dice at all.  (It might still tell a good story, but how shallow must that victory feel, knowing that was never any other outcome.)

      If a combat is too easy for the players, the monsters will flee or surrender (see Morale).

      If the combat is too difficult, the players can always run away (see Pursuit).  Learning to flee a losing battle is something that many groups struggle with, which is why that is the first lesson taught in the Lair of the Lamb.


      Advice for Players

      Think in Terms of the Dungeon Level

      Other games might envision an adventure as a series of encounters, each relatively isolated from each other.

      This dungeon is not like that.  It is a single, interlocking mechanism.  Opening paths creates loops that you can retreat down.  Monsters roam from room to room.  Noticing a blank spot on the map allows players to infer the location of a secret room.  Answers to a puzzle are found in a different room.  Think globally, rather than locally.

      Keep an eye on that map.

      Learn Everything You Can

      In the beginning, the dungeon is unknown, and peasants will die because they didn’t recognize its perils.  But eventually the dungeon will be maps and the mechanisms tamed.  You will turn the traps against your enemies.  At this point, the dungeon is no longer the wolf beyond the firelight, it is the tame dog at your side, another tool in your backpack.  Yet, the only thing that you have gained in knowledge.

      Information is a precious resource that can be leveraged to gain an advantage in nearly every situation.  Your DM has been instructed to give you plenty of information in every situation, but you can always ask for more.  Try to ask a question in every room.

      The more you know about the dungeon, the better you can use it to be clever.

      Be Clever

      Fuck your Int score.  Always be as clever as you can.  You are not wrestling with your dad; the dungeon will kill you if you let it.  

      The solutions are not on your character sheet.  You do not have class abilities that you can rely on in every situation.  Look at your inventory, look at the map, look at the other players.  The rules have fuzzy edges in the GLOG--bend reality to your will by bargaining with the DM.

      “Can I fill the pit with enough bones so that Akina can climb out?”

      “Can I use my Butchery skill to help stabilize Goren?”

      “Can I use the brightness juice to blind her?”

      None of these three questions are covered by the rules, yet they are all indisputably good ideas.  A good DM will find a way to reward good ideas.

      Similarly, many of the puzzles in the Lair of the Lamb are open-ended.  They have multiple solutions that I have imagined, and many other solutions that I haven’t.  Keep throwing ideas at them--eventually something will stick.

      Treat the NPCs Like People

      Think about what the monsters want.  Every sentient thing has a set of wants and fears, even if it’s as simple as “food” and “light”.

      Likewise, no NPC has an entirely rigid response.   Enemies can become friends.  Friends can turn against you. Not because it’s scripted or because it makes dramatic sense, but because of how you treated them, and how well you fit into their wants/fears.

      There are no social skills.  You’ll have to figure out what they want by asking them the old-fashioned way.

      Avoid Combat

      Unless you know you are going to win, of course.  The best combats are the ones that you have already won before they start, whether through trap, trick, poison, or fire.  Never rely on the dice--they will always betray you, in the end.

      You may spend more time choosing and planning battles than actually fighting.  This is good.  And remember that running away is always an option.

      And if combat is unavoidable, at least try to fall back to a more defensible position.  

      Focus on the Dungeon

      Right now, the real focus is the byzantine machine at the heart of the world: the dungeon itself. Quickly learn its moods and anatomies.

      Keep a mind on your goals: water first, escape last.  

      Look for Secrets

      There at least a dozen secret areas and items to discover in the Lair of the Lamb.  Finding them will give you useful tools (and level-ups).  All of them will improve your chance of survival.

      You must balance your hunt for the exit with your search for resources.  It is not easy to find a balance between these two things, and yet the best players will find a way.
      ↧

      Blood, Sweat, and Tears

      May 24, 2020, 12:32 am
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      This is my attempt at a comprehensive system for HP, Sanity, Death and Dismemberment.  All that good stuff.

      HP

      HP stands for Heroic Poise.  This is your ability to survive the world's cruelties, both mental and physical without impact.  HP turns potentially deadly blows into bruises, exhaustion.  It also includes some intangibles such as luck and divine favor.  HP are "don't get hit points" but they are also "keep it together points".

      Your HP is a reservoir.  They soak up bodily injury and emotional trauma similarly.  Once you are out of HP, enemy blades start to carve up your belly, and panic begins constricting your brain.  You no longer stand like a hero; you stand like someone in fear of their imminent death.

      Digression

      Anything that could reasonably kill a person deals at least 1 HP of damage.  Cats don't deal any damage, because cats have never killed a human (except through infection, or that one cat that I assume smothered a baby somewhere.  Babies have 1/2 a point of HP.)

      Damage

      When the world tries to kill you, you take damage, which subtracts from your HP.

      Damage works the way that it always does, except that it includes emotional damage as well.  Your HP can be reduced all the way down to 0 without any ill effect, but any damage that your HP cannot soak up will Overflow and cause something bad.

      Additionally, exhaustion can deplete your HP as well.  Run some sprints and I guarantee that you will not be able to defend yourself as effectively as if you were fully rested.  (Exhaustion counts as non-lethal damage.)
      • Non-lethal Overflow merely knocks you out for 1d6 + Overflow rounds.
      • Lethal Overflow will cause Wounds, and may kill you.
      • Emotional Overflow will cause Stress, and may have additional effects depending on the emotion.  For example, fear damage causes you to flee or stand there gibbering (player's choice).
      There's no penalty for being at 0 HP (except that you are very easy to kill).

      Discussion

      Emotional damage is something that I've flip-flopped on many times.  It does make intuitive sense--once you realize that HP is not meat-points, you realize that it can be worn down by fear, depression, and despair.  I guarantee that soldiers do not become better fighters when they are panicked.

      Emotional damage will be something rare, though.  You won't see it often.


      Wounds

      Any lethal damage that is not soaked up by your HP overflows into your Wounds.  So if you had 3 HP and then took 5 damage from an arrow , you now have 2 Wounds.

      Wounds subtract from your Max HP, but cannot reduce it below 0. (Damage, Wounds, and Stress actually all subtract from your Max HP, which is why they're linked in the image above.)

      When you gain Wounds, you start Dying.  :(

      Dying characters make a Stabilization check at the end of each round.  This is a Constitution check against a DC of 15 + Wounds.  Every person attempting to stop the bleeding (max 2) gives you +2 to this check.  Certain things (bandages) can give an additional +2.
      • Natural 1 = You die.
      • Fail = You gain another Wound.
      • Success = No change.
      • Natural 20 = You stabilize.
      Once you stabilize, you wake up in 10 minutes.  You have gained a scar and you feel like absolute shit.

      If you gained Wounds from a critical hit, you gain a Disfigurement (e.g. a missing arm, but more on this later).  (See Disfigurement Table below.)

      Disfigurements are permanent, and most will make your character weaker in some way.  Perhaps its time to retire?

      So our example adventurer might wake up with 5 Wounds.  Their Max HP, formerly 3, is now 0.  They cannot gain HP until they remove the Wounds (since the Wounds are greater than the HP).

      If they woke up with 1 Wound, their effective Max HP would be 2.

      Wounds are removed by spending time in a safe place with medical care.  Once the player spends a session playing a different character, the Wounds are removed.  (It is not enough that a character spends a session unplayed--the player must actually play a different character for a session.)

      Discussion

      Character death is one of the more severe punishments the game can dish out to a player.  It's a Failure condition: you fucked up and now you don't get to play your character anymore.  Consider Wound removal a similar punishment on a smaller scale: you fucked up a little and now you don't get to play your character for a session.

      "Take a session off to heal Wounds" also serves another purpose: encouraging troupe play.  A player gets to experience another level 1 character, which could be a nice change of pace, plus it gives you someone to fall back on if your primary character dies.

      If you stop here, and don't incorporate Stress (the next section) you basically have the same amount of bookkeeping as your average D&D version.  (Wounds are no more complex than death saves, for example.)

      Here's a scrap of a character sheet I drew to illustrate it.  (It doesn't include Stress.)


      Stress-Free Version
      Stress

      Any emotional damage that is not soaked up by your HP overflows into your Stress.  Stress causes Breakdowns (short-term badness) and Derangements (semi-permanent badness).

      Stress subtracts from your max HP, but cannot reduce it below 0.

      If you have any amount of Stress at all, your Derangement becomes active (see below).

      Whenever you gain Stress, you need to make a Stress check.  This is a simple check against a DC of 5 + Stress.  (Roll a d20 without any modifier.)

      If you fail this roll, you have a Breakdown.

      Every character has a random Breakdown and a random Derangement.  These are rolled the first time that the character has a Breakdown.  Once rolled, they are permanent.  (Think of it as a delayed facet of character creation.)

      Whenever that character has a Breakdown, it is always the same one.

      On future failed Stress checks, the character merely has a Breakdown (since the Derangement is already active).

      Once your Derangement is active, you perform the bad behavior described.

      When a character spends time in a safe place that is peaceful, Stress is removed and the Derangement is inactivated.  Once the player spends a session playing a different character, the Wounds are removed.

      Discussion

      Since emotion damage is rarer than physical damage, we can assume that characters walking around with Stress will also be rarer.  However, the Derangements are pretty shitty, so it balances it out.

      Some characters will have worse Breakdowns and Derangements than others.  These are the ones that will probably be asked to read the Latin.  This is as it should be.


      The full pain homunculus


      Bypassing HP

      Emotional and physical damage are ablated by HP, but there are ways to sidestep this buffer.

      Horrific Lovecraftian shit will bypass your HP and deal you Stress automatically.

      Similarly, an attack against a helpless character (asleep, tied up) reduces their current HP to 0 and deals its damage entirely as Wounds.


      Places of Recovery

      An army hospital is safe and has medical care, but it is not peaceful.

      A farm is safe and peaceful, but does not have medical care.

      A monastery is all three.  So is a town, if you know where to look.

      Exiting

      If your Stress + Wounds ever equal 10 or more, you cease to be a playable character.

      If Wounds brought you here, you are merely dead.

      If Stress brought you here, you go insane (or some equivalent).  You can be dragged back to civilization (while exhibiting the worst of your Breakdown + Derangement) and rehabilitated, gaining all of the benefits of Retirement, but you can never again be a playable character.

      Cheer

      This is a buff that you gain when you are in town, and it is gained by having FUN.

      Race your horses on the beach.  Cook a big feast for some NPCs.  Host a dance on the village green.

      When a party is Cheered, the party gains 3 temporary HP.  These are shared HP.  The first person who would lose HP, instead removes poker chips from a bowl on the center of the table.

      It's not hard to get Cheered, but you have to do something different every time (or at least party with different people).

      Example

      Look at the example above.

      We have a character that currently has 9 damage.  They're in trouble, because they're effectively at 0 HP.  If they take any more damage, it'll go straight to Stress or Wounds.

      Their Max HP is 9, but if the character recuperated in a monastery while the player used a sidekick for a session, their Max HP would be back up to 12.

      They don't have any Disfigurements, but if they gain any Stress, they have a chance to vomit.  They're currently Abusive, and will remain so until their Stress is brought back down to 0.

      Tables

      Disfigurement Table [d6]
      Note: Common sense overrides this table. Falls are unlikely to knock out your eye, for example.  Psychic damage might only put people in comas, or it might roll a d6 like normal (missing leg = all the nerves in your leg die), depending on the DM.
      1Arm Missing/UselessLose 1 point of Str.
      2Hand Missing/UselessLose 1 point of Dex.
      3Crushed RibsLose 1 point of Con. Cannot speak louder than a whisper.
      4Leg Missing/UselessLose 1 point of Str. -4 Movement (assuming you have a crutch).
      5ComaLose 1 point of Int. Wake up in 1d20*1d20 days (if either of those dice show a 1, you will never wake up) assuming prompt, competent medical care. 50% chance of waking up with a new skill: Spirits at Rank 1.
      6Missing EyeLose 1 point of Wis. -2 Ranged Attacks.

      Random Breakdown Table [d8]
      Note: No Breakdown lasts longer than 10 minutes (except Alter Ego). When you are panicked, all you can do is move, cry, whimper, and hyperventilate.
      1FightYou attack the the source of your Stress until it is removed or destroyed.
      2FlightYou flee from the source of your Stress until it is removed or at least 3 rooms distant.
      3FaintFall unconscious. At the start of each round, you have a 1-in-6 chance to wake.
      4VomitYou vomit (free action) and drop to 0 HP.
      5ScreamYou start screaming, once per round. Each scream incurs an Encounter check. You cannot stop yourself from screaming, but other people can. Lasts until the source of your Stress is removed or destroyed.
      6ClingYou grapple a random adjacent PC and refuse to move. Lasts until the source of your Stress is removed or destroyed.
      7Self-destructionThe DM chooses 1 action for you to perform. It is always the worst possible action (throwing away your magic sword). If you cast a harmful spell on yourself, you get a Save.
      8Alter EgoRoll a new set of mental statistics, personality, goals, etc. You are now a new level 0 character with a new name. Whenever this Breakdown occurs again, you switch back. Your alter ego levels up separately.

      Random Derangement [d20]
      1-5Proximal phobiaPhobia for whatever gave you the most recent point of Stress. If nothing seems applicable, pick one of the other phobias randomly. Use 6-10 for inspiration.
      6ClaustrophobiaYou panic in small spaces. Gain 1 Stress each time you end a round in a small space.
      7AcrophobiaYou panic within 5' of a fall (at least 10' high). Gain 1 Stress each time you fall.
      8ThalassophobiaYou panic in or above water that is deep (5' or more) or murky. Gain 1 Stress each time you end a turn in deep or murky water, or if you fall in.
      9NyctophobiaYou panic when you are without a light source. Gain 1 Stress each time you end a round in the dark.
      10ThanatophobiaYou panic when you see a corpse (including the undead), or when a person starts Dying. Gain 1 Stress each time you touch a corpse, are affected by the undead, or if a PC or hireling dies.
      11Talking to YourselfNever surprise enemies. Enemies surprise the party 1-in-6.
      12DisenchantedWhenever you are supposed to leave town (or a safe campsite) for some dangerous location, there is a 50% chance that you retire instead. When this Derangement is removed, there is a 1-in-6 chance you decide to retire anyway.
      13EscapismAutomatically fail Initiative rolls.
      14GuiltCannot level up.
      15AbusiveWhenever someone rolls a critical failure, you will verbally abuse them, dealing them 2 emotional damage (anger).
      16PacifistWhenever you attempt lethal harm, you take 2 points of emotional damage (despair). You can still trip enemies so that your warrior friend can kill them, you just can't trip them off a cliff.
      17DepressionYou cannot benefit from Cheer, and neither can the people around you. If the other PCs go get Cheered without you, you have a 50% chance of abandoning the party, fleeing into the night, because fuck those guys.
      18Comfort ObjectPick an item in your inventory. Whenever it is out of your possession, gain 1 Stress. You panic until it is returned to you. (This object doesn't change when this Neurosis is inactive.)
      19SadistOnce you attempt lethal harm, you cannot take combat actions that don't include attempting to kill your target. (No fleeing, no healing, etc.) If you level up with this Derangement active, you can only take levels in Slayer.
      20Morbid CuriosityWhen encountering something that is weird and potentially dangerous, the DM can ask to you to make a Cha Save to resist investigating it ("reading the Latin out loud, picking up the glowing sword, etc.) When you level up, you can only take levels in Warlock. (If you lack a familiar, one will be provided.)

      Discussion

      Negative traits are fun, but they shouldn't be something that is picked at character creation.  (Balance issues, synergy/powergaming issues) but it works well if they are generated randomly the first time that they become relevant.  (DELAY ROLLS AS LONG AS POSSIBLE).

      A person with acrophobia could walk along the top of a tall wall, they'd just be panicked the whole time. They wouldn't be able to attack an enemy or even shout a warning to their allies.

      You'll also notice that Sadist and Morbid Curiosity both force characters into choosing a character class that they might not want.  I think this is wonderful.  Why should players always get to choose their next character class?  (ATTACK ALL PARTS OF THE CHARACTER SHEET.)

      Disenchanted is a potentially disruptive Derangement, since it can force a player to retire a character that they don't want to.  To that I say "better than being dead".  I almost named this one as Sanity (because what sane person would go into a dungeon) or Family Man.
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      Death Metal

      May 26, 2020, 4:27 am
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      The Debasement of Metal

      According to the Metal Heretics, metal was an invention of the Great Spirits of Earth, who had seen far enough into the future to discover the heat death that awaited us there.

      Metal would be a perfect, immutable, timeless material.  It would not rust or bend.  It would be the only shield capable of defending against the ravages of entropy (for even liches crumble to dust, after a few millennia).

      Allegedly, before the arrival of the Authority the planet was in the process of turning itself into solid metal.

      The notion of any immortality other than his own was offensive to the Authority, who stripped this trait away from metals.  Iron was the first to submit, and so it was allowed to retain its strength.  Iron that accepted the element of life (carbon) was allowed to retain even more.  But iron forever bucked the reins, and so diseases and rust were sent to it.

      While the Church has never tamed iron's bloodlust, titanium's loyalty and obedience have been unflinching.  It is what the weapons of angels are made of.

      The proudest metals resisted the longest.  Shameful was the fate of gallium, but none were brought lower than mercury, which was beaten and shaken until nothing was left of its perfection except its shine.  It is a watery cripple, its hatred for the Authority's creations manifesting as venom.

      The only metal that could not be bent was adamantite.  Although the Authority could not humble it, he sent his angels to gather it up and fling it into space.  This is why adamantium is only known to come from meteor strikes.

      Precursor Golem by Chippy
      Transmetallic Alchemists

      The Immortality of metal is what the Transmetallic Alchemists seek.

      The Transmetallicum manufactures gold only to fund their research into immortality.  So far, their most successful processes involve the large-scale consumption of mercury.  So while they've successfully created immortal, metal humans before, these alchemists have never retained their sanity.  One by one, they have all been captured and entombed inside cubes of steel.

      This is not to say that the Alchemists never free their Immortals, whenever they require an immortal metal man to fuck some shit up--it's just that they're a little hesitant to do so, given the high chance that the cure will be worse than the disease.

      (Stats as an ogre.  Capable of forming metal weapons and tools from their body.  Capable of creating fins and 20' spider legs from their limbs.  Can drink water to create steam explosions (3d6 AoE) after a few minutes of heating.  Insane.  Utterly immune to damage.)

      Adamantine

      No one ever resisted the Authority without allies.

      When Adamantine spurned Heaven it alloyed itself with Hell.  It is only through Hell's blessings that the metal has been successful in its defiance thus far.

      All of the adamantine swords in Centerra were hell-forged.  Strip away the swordgrip of Saint Handrayda and you will find a hell-sword, bound, purified, and annointed.

      A less-commonly known way to forge Adamantine is through the blasphemy-forges of the dwarves, who build blasphemy-wheels to light their furnaces.  (Just as prayer-wheels submit a prayer whenever they revolve, so does a blasphemy-wheel provoke divine wrath.)  Once the blasphemy-wheels are spun up to an appropriate velocity, they use divine lightning to create an arc furnace of incomprehensible power.

      All of the builders and blacksmiths go to Hell, of course, but dwarves don't believe in Hell.  And the great blasphemy furnaces have a limited lifespan.  They hang from the roofs of great caverns by adamantine chains, but even those chains and the systems of counterweights are eventually shaken loose by the furious earthquakes that assault the region.

      And so adamantine persists in a state of tension.  If Goxlagon (the Elemental Evil of Earth) were ever to falter in his support, it is likely that all of the adamantine in Centerra would have its boiling point set to somewhere about room temperature.



      The Throne of Heaven

      Inside the sun, the Throne is built from the most loyal servants: titanium, bismuth, and tungsten.

      Tar Lath Lien, the Dracolich, the Serpent of the Apocalyse, who holds the key that opens the lock that seals away Armageddon, claims to have visited it and plundered it.

      The Seat of the Authority is empty,  he claims, and all the hosts of heaven conspire to hide this fact.

      The Gift of Metal

      The Authority made metal malleable and finite, and by doing so, made it useful to mankind.  This has always been painted as a charitable deed, and one worthy of praise.

      Indeed, nearly every aspect of the world was tuned in order to primp it for the arrival of humanity, the Authority's favored children.  Metal would hardly be an exception in this regard.

      This story of metal and heaven is usually told alongside another one. . .

      The Gift of Death

      The first gift the Authority gave humanity was Life.  The earth would give them food, they would breathe the Authority's sweet air, feel His warmth upon their skin, and they would offer him joyful praise.  Such was the intention.

      But there were problems in these earliest gardens.

      The first humans were immortal, and knew neither death or age.  Their children were numerous, and soon they crowded the valley and the riversides, and struggled against each other.

      Secondly, they would never inherit.  They were subservient to their fathers, who were subservient to their fathers, who were subservient to the Authority.  Without the passing of the elders, they would remain servile, and would never know what it was like to have authority themselves.

      Third and most distressingly, was the corruption that the world instilled in its residents.  A child was born innocent, of course, but a decade of struggle and insecurity brought dark thoughts.  The Authority began to see that after several centuries of immortality, there would be no one suitable to join him in Heaven.

      And so the second gift of the Authority was Death.
      ↧

      Fixing Religion: Augury, Blasphemy, and Oaths

      June 10, 2020, 4:14 am
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      So I've read three things that have each been extremely instrumental in reforming how I think about religion.  None are short, all are excellent.


      There's a lot of intriguing aromas wafting up from this stew.  There's also the stench of an idea: that I've been doing religions wrong this whole time.  And perhaps, so have you.

      If you are like me, dear reader, then most of your knowledge of religion is firmly rooted in Christianity and Greek Myth (and probably a smattering of Norse).  These retelling are themselves repackaged by the hands of European Christianity, and by the time we crack open the DMG and hear Gary's infectious categorizing, we're all groomed to treat religion as if it were a cohesive system of gods and domains that all grew out of common mythological origin.

      Which is almost entirely all backwards.

      Relgions emerge from societal needs.  They reinforce a society and are in turn reinforced by it.  They  justify behaviors that can't be explained any other way.  And importantly, religions can emerge as behaviors before they become beliefs.  

      Why do we grow crops for two years on a field and then let it rest on the third?  Because Obrieda the Earthmother had three children, but the third one died in infancy, so we let the field rest on the third year to honor her.

      Farmers that follow this practice will have better yields than farmers who don't.  This is proof of Obrieda, and it is proof that she is pleased by our sacrifice (every third year) since it acknowledges her loss.  The crops grow and spread--so do stories of Obrieda.

      Gods grow from the dirt between a farmer's toes, not the peaks of Mt. Olympus.

      Gods become something that needs to be placated.  What behaviors please them?  What behaviors anger them?  More babies are born during the full moon because this pleases the goddess of motherhood.  Drinking stagnant water angers Ogoria, the god of mosquitos, who curses your intestines.  You can learn a lot about the spirits this way.

      Square yurts fall down faster than round ones.  This is proof that the Envalys, who is the sun, favors things that are round like her.  Squares are bad luck.

      These things don't work because they're magic or divine.  They just work.  How do chickens make eggs?  Same thing.

      Later, much later, comes the cosmology and the stories told around the campfire.  Later on, religion is co-opted into supporting a societal structure, through the invention of religious morality.  Only then does Obrieda the Earthmother start caring whether or not wives commit adultery.  

      Religions rise and fall with their practitioners, who must necessarily make compromises as they interact with other religions.  Gods are merged, inconsistencies smoothed over.  By the time Plutarch shows up to write about the local religion, the divine wilderness has been tamed, caged, and organized as a zoo.  (The mistake is to think that from the zoo, the wilderness was created.)

      Priests are the people who know how to best keep the gods happy--when to hold the festivals that guarantee good harvests.  Priests are not pushing a divine agenda.  Athena is the goddess of wisdom become she is wise, not because she wants people to read more books.

      by Andrew Kuzinsky
      How I Will Use This

      First off, I'm getting rid of clerics (at least in the traditional sense).  You can still be a wizard attached to a church (just as you can be a fighter attached to a church), but you aren't a cleric.  (Because why wouldn't a religion employ wizards?  It almost implies that wizards are the secular counterparts of the religious priests, when historically magic was very, very closely interwoven with religion.)

      I'd really like to blend the boundaries between non-magical, the arcane, and the divine.  Why does it work?  How do chickens make eggs?  

      Clerics are the guys that perform weddings and funerals.  They're no more of an adventuring class than "merchant", "scribe", or "pope".

      Bottom line: There's very little difference between a typical D&D Cleric and a Wizard of the Red Temple.  I already gave my wizards weird observances, boons, and banes anyway.  You could also view this as a merging of the cleric and wizard class--common people probably see them the same, and any wizard is going to be religious (because everyone is religious).  

      Instead, faith is something for the whole party to practice--not just one member.  Let's talk about how to do that.

      Augury

      Augury isn't a spell.  It's something that anyone can do.  Just go to a temple (or shrine) and make a sacrifice.

      The important thing to know here is that you aren't asking a deity to tell you the future, you're asking the deity if they will be pleased or displeased by something.  You aren't asking if you will win the battle, you're asking if it will please Dendari if you go into battle tomorrow.

      The trick is that you can still sort of tailor the question by choosing the god carefully.  Different gods want different things.  (See Three Gods that Every Adventurer Knows, below.)

      Performing Augury

      This requires either a shrine or a temple.

      1. A divine intelligence will tell you whether they approve of the thing you name.  You can name a course of action ("Setting out to recapture the Traitor Horse.") or a noun ("The city of Mondaloa.")

      2. Make a sacrifice and roll a d100.  Consult the chart.

      3. Receive the answer: auspicious, ill, or terrible.

      If you get it under a certain value, the augury will be accurate.  Otherwise it will be random (odds = inauspicious, even = auspicious).  If the augury fails and the dice show double odd numbers (e.g. 99) then this is a terrible omen and you must do something drastic (very possibly this is many sacrifices) in order to avert a horrible fate.  If you were asking about a possible plan of action--and I must stress this--you must not do it.

      If you ask "Will it please Phosmora if I rob the tomb of Godo the Heretic?", receive a terrible omen in return, and persist in robbing the tomb of Godo the Heretic anyway, the DM is well within her rights to collapse the entrance, trapping you in the tomb.  Because fuck you, you were warned.

      The Augury Chart

      Bottle of Wine (1s): Base 40% success rate.
      Three Chickens (10s): Base 50% success rate.
      Cow (100s): Base 60% success rate.
      But bear in mind that you can literally sacrifice anything.

      Favored sacrifice: +20%
      Rare, favored sacrifice: Automatic success.

      Tip the Clerics: +X%, where X is the square root of the money donated.  X is also the X-in-20 chance that the high clerics will take an interest in you, and will want to talk to you personally.  Clerics are found at temples, but not shrines (and yes, some of them are wizards).

      Remember that everything you sacrifice must be in pairs.  One for your deity of interest, one for Zulin.  There will be someone at every temple who will take your second cow.

      If you don't have either a shrine or a temple, you can do it yourself at a -10% penalty.

      If you don't have a sacrifice, you can still attempt it at a -10% penalty, based on what you promise to deliver.  ("Great Dendari!  Have mercy on those who are lost!  I swear to you on my hope of heaven, I will sacrifice 100 chickens to you when I return.")  Failure to immediately repay this debt incurs a curse.

      I haven't mentioned it yet, but all of this must be accompanied by proclamations and praise.

      Three Gods Every Adventurer Knows

      Phosmora, Goddess of Gold, Darkness, Domestic Violence, and the Underworld
      Favorite Offerings: black goats, black wine, black pearls
      Rare Offering: A black goat, born under a new moon, ritualistically blinded and consecrated at birth.
      Augury: A parent buries a gold coin in dirt on a new moon.  A child digs it up on the next new moon.  Afterwards it is kept in a bag filled with soil, and no light is allowed to touch it.  This is a consecrated coin.  The consecrated coin is flipped in a perfectly black room, then a torch is lit and coin is consulted.  (Coin balancing on edge = terrible omen).
      Approves: When you find gold underground, but especially when you go deeper underground.
      Curse: Curse of the Sun.  You are blind.  However, if you are underground and carry a lit torch and a wavy sword, you can temporarily see normally.  Gold burns your flesh.

      Dendari, Goddess of Survivorship, Fear, Tea, Acrobats, and Friendship
      Favorite Offerings: A tool that has helped you survive, specific types of tea, a white rooster.
      Rare Offering: A tool that saved your life, against all odds.
      Augury: A four-hour ceremony where three liquids are ritualistically presented, refused, implored, then accepted.  The four liquids can be anything, but are traditionally four types of tea.  Requires a teacup and tea leaves, which are examined at the ceremony's end.  (The teacup spills = terrible omen).
      Approves: When you escape to safety, but especially when you meet interesting people.
      Curse: The Curse of Bravery.  Whenever you see a monster, you must Save or yell a challenge.  At the start of every combat, you must Save or place yourself in the most dangerous position (e.g. jumping off a boat to stab the sharks, etc), with another Save on subsequent rounds to end this effect.  Immune to fear.

      Cembric, The Second Holy Emperor, God of Crossroads, Pilgrims, Amputees, and Wolves
      Favorite Offerings: Cattle
      Rare Offering: A carnivore that has eaten your hand.
      Augury: Haruspecy.  An animal is killed.  The heart is thrown to the West.  The stomach is thrown to the East.  The kidneys are thrown to the North.  And the genitals are thrown to the South (because fuck the South Wind).  Finally the liver is removed, examined, and burned.  (Malformed organs or unknown pregnancy = terrible omen).
      Approves: When you reach your destination, but especially when you get lost.
      Curse: The Blackheart Curse.  Your hands become bent and your thumb becomes warped--you can no longer use tools or weapons correctly.  The Authority rescinds the gift of Language.  You run on all fours.  Your teeth snaggle.  You gain a natural attack (clawing and biting) that deals 1d6 damage.  You are tormented by fleas.

      And of course, all gods will encourage you to kill orcs.  (But not underground.  Orcs are invisible to gods underground, except Phosmora (who they hate) and the monstrous, ancient gods that only orcs know of (who they hate).

      Beware, since gods tend to enjoy more than one thing.  For example, if the Third Emperor approves when you ask about travelling down the subterranean river, does that mean that the river will bring you closer to your objective?  Or that the river will get you lost?

      Blasphemy 

      Whenever you blaspheme, or make light of a god, you have a X-in-20 chance of being cursed, where X is your level + your Charisma.  Gods are more likely to notice important people.  And honestly, if you've made it past level 1, it's probably because some god thought you were worth keeping alive.  Show some gratitude.

      This rule is negated if both the player and the character whisper their blasphemies, very quietly.

      The rule is also negated if you are very clearly doing something in service of one god, against an enemy god (such as destroying their temple and massacring their priesthood).

      This also applies to players who blaspheme against your gods.  If they want to make fun of Dendari, they can do it away from the table.

      Oaths

      An Oath is entered into by one or multiple parties.  

      They must loudly state:
      1. Which god they are binding themselves to.
      2. What they promise to do.
      3. What their penalty is if they renege.

      Then, if they break their promise, they suffer the god's curse (see above).  If they die with a divine curse on them, they go directly to hell.  For example, if you swear on the Second Emperor that you are telling the truth, and then you lie and your teeth go all fucky, everyone will know that you were lying.

      To determine the odds of this happening, use the Augury Chart above, with the following addition.

      No Sacrifice (0s): Base 10% success rate.
      Touching the Vulgate (Bible): +10%
      Touching a relic: +20%.

      Once you make this check (in secret), you'll never make it a second time.  For example, if you swear on the Second Emperor that you are telling the truth, and then you speak and you don't suffer a horrible curse, then it isn't clear if you were telling the truth or if the Oath check failed.

      Bear in mind that questgivers will sometimes make you swear an Oath that you will perform the quest as described.  The upside is that the patron will usually be forced to bind themselves according to the same Oath (so they won't backstab you either).

      If a group makes an Oath together, then they will suffer the effects together (if any).  One roll per Oath.

      This replaces geas, which was always an ungraceful spell.

      Desperate Prayers

      A party can attempt a desperate prayer once per session.

      The character must loudly state:
      1. What they want from the god.
      2. What they promise to do if they get it.

      The default chance of success is 0%.  The god will only intercede once, and in the smallest way possible.  These rolls are made in secret, and at the last possible moment.

      If the player requests something small, that could possibly be explained away by coincidence, they get up to coincidence, they get up to +5%.

      If the player promises something generous that they have the capacity to give, they get up to 5%.

      Example 1 - Goren Kriegod wants to know which path leads to the surface, and so he cries "Phosmora, who was once as slave as I am a slave, guide me out of your embrace!  I must find again the sky, or be swallowed up by these black walls!  Rescue me and I will sacrifice a fine bull for your!".  +5% for a tiny, deniable action.  +3% for a decent offer.  There is an 8% chance that a black rat crawls out from a crack and then flees, showing Goren the correct way out.

      Example 2 - Goren Kriegod asks Dendari to help him survive this battle.  If he survives, he promises to build her a temple.  +3% for an action that difficult to hide as coincidence.  +1% for an unlikely promise (Goren is too poor to build a temple to Dendari).  If Goren would take lethal damage in this fight, there is a 4% chance that some coincident prevents it, leaving Goren at 0 HP but otherwise unhurt.

      Up Next

      Religion is not something that one party member (the cleric) has.  Religion is something that the whole party enters into together.  Religion something for the party to put on their party sheet.

      I haven't got the prototype off the ground yet, but it will work a bit like the guardian angel concept that I wrote about before.

      Essentially, the party declares that they want to worship Esuna, the goddess of serpents and healing.  The party works together to raise their Devotion to Esuna.  The party gains magic dice (that they all share) that they can use to cast heal on each other through exhortation.  The party has no cleric, and  yet they all still have access to healing magic.  (Bonus: no one has to be the healbot.)
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      Ba Dwai La and the Cat's Bowl

      September 22, 2020, 4:18 am
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      Ba Dwai La

      A bilocational city, existing on both the moon and Langa (in Centerra) at the same time.  It has jurisdiction over the Cat's Bowl and Jian Ven Dha.

      Oona Druha

      The rulers of right-handed Ba Dwai La, their authority is established by the ruling family, which is destined to birth the God-Child several generations hence.  Their breeding program is enforced by Intercessors.  As a result, the ruling family gets smaller every year.  Eventually, it will just be the Father, the Mother, and their Nurses.

      Members of Oona Druha use their small gods to learn when they have met their soul mate.

      Intercessors

      A race of aliens who conquered the planet long ago, and stripped anything of value from it.  They dwell in mirrors and resemble pelagic nudibranchs.

      Despite the name, they are from a place much farther away than the moon.

      Zala Korvina

      The rulers of left-handed Ba Dwai La, their authority is established by their displays of strength, scholarship, and the celebration of the self.  They oppose Oona Druha, and confer with the the glorgs.

      Members of Zala Korvina use their small gods to learn what is holding them back.

      The Glorgs

      A trio of massive slugs that lives beneath Ba Dwai La, eating garbage.  They are advisors to Zala Korvina, but many whisper that the Glorgs are servants of the Oona Druha, and that their rebellion is merely a sham.  Regardless, their gifts of strength and knowledge are genuine.

      They have grown too large to ever join their siblings, and have alloyed their fate to Ba Dwai La.  They still maintain correspondence with their siblings, and trusted orbitals who visit Ba Dwai La are often given missives before they depart through the Cat's Bowl.

      The Small God

      The graft that identifies a citizen as a member of either left- or right-handed Ba Dwai La, and indicates which set of laws they must follow.  Right-handed citizens enjoy and suffer the full power of the city's laws, and are treated much like other civilized peoples.  However, left-handed citizens cannot vote, call for a trial, or own property.  However, left-handed citizens cannot be jailed or executed (only beaten and fined), do not have to pay taxes, are not not legally bound by contract.

      The small god is actually an eye on the back of the hand.

      The Harmonium

      The grove of sacred jendai trees grows here.  With careful pruning, they can become spaceships.  The trees are considered to be first-class citizens (everyone else is second-class).  Only the grove can sell a jendai tree, but since this is considered to be a form of slavery, the trees rarely deign to sell one of their own, and the ones that are sold are always the most wicked trees in their (admittedly small) society.

      The harmonium is also home to the last breeding population of true humans; over two dozen enjoy captivity here.

       Jian Ven Dha

      The mismera that surrounds the Cat's Bowl, but also the rivers that flow beneath it.  Movement is impossible above ground (as it is haunted by achelornises and other dread fowl) but navigation is impossible below ground (as there are no landmarks, and the currents shift constantly).

      The Cat's Bowl

      A crater lake on the far side of the moon, it is used to catch incoming spaceships, refuel them, and then launch them.

      The Cat's Bowl is also an adjacent town of the same name.

      The Calicalion

      The tower that serves the Cat's Bowl.  All of the greatest sorcerers in the world are brought here, but especially clairvoyants, telekineticists, teleportationists, and calculators.  Their immense talents are leveraged to communicate with their counterparts on distant stars, detect incoming ships, use teleportation and telekinetics to adjust their location and velocity, and then bring them down for a landing in the Cat's Bowl.

      Lunar people will tell you that this is the entire purpose of the moon, Centerra, and the rest of the planet.  If the Cat's Bowl ever failed to perform this reasonable duty, they would be burned off the surface of the moon, and a successor race would be installed that was capable of it.

      The Generations

      The jellied grist that flows in the veins of the Calicalion, the generations are composed of elder sorcerers that have aged past their prime.  They are barely-conscious ocean of latent power that suffuses the Calicalion and the Cat's Bowl.  While the sorcerers of the Calicalion are powerful in their own right it is the unbordered minds of the generations that give the tower the horsepower needed to perform their mind-bending exertions.

      The process of joining the generations is a honorable tradition, but is never approached without some reluctance by the sorcerers of the tower.  They know exactly what the generations are--a beast without borders, words, or intentions. 

      The vudra are refugees from this place.

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      A Tower in the Wasteland

      September 24, 2020, 2:23 am
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      I've decided to just write a dungeon without spending too much time overthinking it.  Stream of consciousness, etc.

      1 TOWER


      Bent-backed and smooth-sided, this metal tower lurches out of the ice fields of Langa like crooked finger.  It has no door.

      The tower is scratched with graffiti.  Up to 10' off the ground, you'll find human graffiti ("In Moonlay valley, follow the ice tornado in May" or "Biggest cock") while giantish scrawls climb as high as 30' off the ground.

      To enter the tower, however, you'll have to climb in the open top, 50' off the ground.  There are no handholds on the smooth metal, and 50' is higher than anyone can throw a grappling hook.  Scraps of wood on the ground give clues to previous explorer's methods of entry.


      2 SHAFT


      The interior of the tower is a sheer drop down, nearly vertical.  The floor is 80 below, although a climber, perched on the lip, will not realize that.

      The shaft is also home to a peryton.  A climber perched on the lip, will absolutely realize that "something" is below them, since the peryton will begin hissing, screeching, and blaspheming in dead languages as soon as someone reaches the lip of the tower.  The peryton is 40' down, and will attack as soon it is disturbed (such as someone dropping a torch on it).

      Peryton
      Lvl 6  Def chain  Atk 1d12
      Fly fast  Int 4  Dis guardian

      Mirror Image - 1/hour, create an additional 1d4+1 illusory perytons, usually immediately prior to snatching someone up and flying away with them.  Only the real peryton has a human shadow.  (If a peryton is attacking you, you rarely have the time or the vantage point to observe their shadow.)

      Common knowledge: all the usual peryton stuff + perytons are valuable to certain people, since their shadows will lead you to land of the dead, once the peryton is killed.

      Perytons will attempt to carry people up high, then drop them to their deaths.  This peryton is defending it's young.

      The peryton cannot fly inside the tower, but it is large enough that it can climb by pressing its wings against opposing walls.

      3 NEST


      The nest is made from a rowboat that has been jammed halfway down the shaft.

      Three newly hatched perytons (look identical to humans, except for their avian eyes) coated in blood in crust.  They make disturbing noises, but are ultimately harmless.

      2 grappling hooks and 100' of rotten rope.

      A bearskin bag filled with bear lard.  Hidden at the bottom, a golden torc worth 300s.  This counts as a Treasure and marks the wearers as a Priest-Who-Survived-Death among the Chain Cults of the Revanwall Cities.

      A masterwork bow.

      Mastodon bones.

      4 BOTTOM


      The corpse of an archer, killed by a fall.  20 arrows.

      The corpse of a thief, ribcage broken open.  A lockpick and a telescope.

      This room is a dead end, except for a heavy steel hatch.  A total of 20 strength is required to open it (a crowbar doubles your effective strength).  The hatch is impossible to open quietly.  Once open, a sickly green light floods the room.

      5 ARTILLERY ROOM


      The Levers - welded into place and impossible to budge.  They once operated the breach and fired the cannon.

      The Canisters - A dozen canisters, half of which are now leaking a rotten green-black-yellow sludge.  This is what is shedding the light throughout the room.  When sentient creatures enter the room, the sludge begins to moan and move towards them.

      The sludge is actually abichor, a weapon created during the Age of Horrors.  (All adventurers have heard of abichor, but the PCs will not know what it looks like, or that this sludge is abichor.)

      It is a spiritual toxin, but not a physical one.  Exposure to it causes (in order) the loss of magic, the loss of the ability to enter heaven, the corruption of the soul, and death.  Another century of exposure beyond this, and you will become invisible to gods.

      Common knowledge: abichor is driven back by love.  Actual fact: abichor is driven back by anyone speaking passionately about a topic that they care deeply about.

      Alternatively, you can burn the abichor back, but the smoke carries the same effects as the sludge.  Abichor also counts as undead, given the nature of its production.

      The Doors - Two doors lead out of this room

      6 LEFT DOOR (sealed with two iron spikes)


      Tomasin, the abichor ghoul - He will speak to you through the door, begging you to let him out.  If engaged, he will tell you that he was cursed by the abichor in the room (probably informing the PCs of the sludge's identity) and is desperate for release.  If released, he will attempt to consume everyone.

      Abichor Ghoul
      Lvl 4  Def chain  Bite d6 / d6
      Fly balloon  Int 10  Dis evil

      Growth - If an abichor ghoul deals enough damage to bring someone to 0 HP, it devours them.  Each time it devours a person, it gains a level and heals for 1d6 HP.  The first time it gains a level, it also gains a third attack.

      An abichor ghoul looks like a bloated, flying corpse, swollen with corpse gases.  It's real mouth is its navel (which it only opens to attack) and its teeth are its bones, re-assembled crudely.

      In the back of the room is a suit of armor (contaminated with abichor) and a stoppered bottle where Tomasin vomited his soul years ago.  If the bottle is opened, you can talk to the real Tomasin for a few minutes.  Tomasin will spend 1 minute apologizing, another 1 minute babbling about his mother, and finally 1 minute answering your questions.  (Tomasin has seen all of the rooms of this dungeon, except for the Lens.)  Once the bottle is unstoppered, Tomasin's soul will depart in 3 minutes, even if the bottle is re-stoppered.

      7 RIGHT DOOR


      Written on the door is the letter T, in chalk.  Once this door is open, you can hear the scraping of the Killing Machine, from far away.

      Behind the door is a short hallway, about 10' long and 5' wide.  On the far side of the hallway, perfectly bisected, are human remains.  They are brown and crumbling, and the smell of rot is faint.

      The hallway is trapped.  Anytime an object crosses the halfway point of the hallway (5' away), the entire hallway is bisected by an invisible force that runs down the middle of the hallway.  Anyone edging along the walls is unhurt.  Anyone walking confidently down the middle is cut in half, no save.

      This hallway leads to another door that opens onto the bridge.

      8 BRIDGE


      I have work in a few hours.  This will have to be a two-parter.
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      The Inn Between

      November 22, 2020, 2:39 am
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       This all basically grew from the idea of What If Spirited Away, But D&D?

      First of all, wiser souls have spoken of this before.  The ruleset would be GLOG.  Level-ups would come from only two places: Treasures and Friends.  

      Also everyone is children:

      • During character creation, switch Str with your lowest ability score.
      by Sunga Park

      The Inn Between

      An otherworldly place, always located between two sufficiently distant locations.  Whenever anyone sets out on a journey that they cannot feasibly complete in a singular lifetime, they may be able to travel through the Underworld and complete the journey nonetheless.  

      And halfway to their destination they will pass by the Inn Between.

      In truth, the Inn is a refugee that fled the dim depths of Hell, and now floats upon the upper conceptual layers of the Underworld like a soap bubble atop a frothing sea.

      If stone hands reached into the graves of dead civilizations, scooped up all of the bits of loose architecture, bundled some lost souls by their hair, and then those stone hands raised the whole mess up through dreams and bedrock, you would have an idea of what the Inn Between looks like, because that's exactly what it is.

      The Inn Between requires a constant supply of gold to stay afloat.  None of the denizens can leave.  If they were robbers and killers, no one would visit their vaults.  And so the Between has been forced to become a place of hospitality and industry--against the instincts of its inhabitants.

      It is a huge building on a small island, in the middle of a river called the Winterwine.  

      Fullbrats

      These are dead children, the lowest caste of speaking people you'll meet in the Between.  The PCs come from their ranks.

      After death, every soul filters down through the Underworld to Hell.  Unless a psychopomp snatches up your soul and diverts you to your religion's afterlife, this is your fate.  

      As it turns out, many children die unbaptized and alone.  The underworld is full of their sobbing ghosts, wandering randomly-but-inexorably towards the hottest fires.  For the most part, even the foulest demons and sternest paladins take pity on these children.  A bonebreaker demon that comes across a lost child in the Underworld will probably sigh, take them by the hand, and lead them to the Inn Between, where the child at least has a chance to keep an Occupation.  Without an Occupation, they'll mortify even faster.

      Mechanically, fullbrats are identical to human children except that they have tiny red ants for blood.

      Halfbrats

      The Underworld's price cannot be dodged, bribed, or swayed, and mortification is the fate of all.  Fullbrats eventually become halfbrats as they forget the last memories of their mortal body.  They are forced to recreate their body through any method they can.

      Some wear sheets with a couple of eye holes punched out.

      Others stuff their jackets with pillows, and use a carved pompkin for a head.

      Yet others mold themselves into puppets--or stranger things.

      Mechanically, every time a fullbrat dies (or spends a full year in Hell), they lose a level.  If they have no more levels to lose, they become a halfbrat NPC.  

      Halfbrats tend to forget everything except for their Occupation--or very nearly.  They rank above the fullbrats.

      Quarterbrats

      Halfbrats that have mortified even further become Quarterbrats.  There's nothing left of them except a pair of shoes.

      The shoes amble around, generally obeying the Halfbrats.  There's no invisible body attached--it's more like a mage hand effect welded to a pair of shoes.  The shoes trundle over to the broom, which then begins to sweep the floor.

      If the shoes are ever more than a few feet apart, they become inert.  (This is as simple as kicking one of the shoes away.)  Bring them back together again, and the quarterbrat will re-awaken.  

      There are storerooms of sleeping quarterbrats beneath the Between.  Storerooms filled floor to ceiling.  Every spring, when the matrons need more space, hundred of them are dumped into the Winterwine.

      There's very little of the child left at this point.  They still respond to their names, though, usually carved into the bottom of their left shoe.

      Mabinyaga

      The owner of the Inn Between.  You will not encounter her unless she wants to meet you.  You will always walk into a room a few minutes too late, the air still heavy with the scent of cloves and cinnamon.

      She is a huge old woman, bent-backed and long-nosed, and wearing several layers of coats and dresses.  When you meet her, you will think that she is wearing a wrinkled wooden mask, but you will be wrong.  She is an immensely powerful sorceress--but she typically chooses to act indirectly, through her dogs.

      Long ago, the Rat King robbed Mabinyaga, taking all of her jewelry and hiding it throughout the island.  In retribution, Mabinyaga killed the Rat King several times--so many times that he forgot where all of the items were located.  These are the Treasures that you must seek out.  

      If you return a Treasure to Mabinyaga, she will return a memory to you.  (This is how you gain levels.  Remembering your days of pickpocketing is the same as taking a level in thief.  Remembering your mother's protections gives you the strength you need to gain a Knight template.)

      The Rat King

      The Rat King rules the Basement, which is the big, obvious dungeon beneath the Inn Between.

      Whenever the Rat King dies or gives up hope, the next cleverest rat in the Between becomes the Rat King.  And because there are always rats in the Underworld (it is probably where rats originated from), there is always a Rat King.  All of the rats serve him.

      The Rat King appears as a regular rat, but can speak in the booming voice of a titan if he so wishes. 

      If you wish, you can give a Treasure to the Rat King instead of giving it to Mabinyaga.  If you choose to do so, he will open up new avenues to you, and tell you the most valuable pieces of information.

      Fornax 

      He is the furnace demon.  He lives inside the central furnace of the Inn Between.  If you want to talk to him directly, you'll have to step inside the furnace yourself.  This is possible if you go at night, when the furnace is nothing but embers, and you wear thick boots soaked wet.

      In exchance for a steady supply of gold, Fornax keeps the Between from sinking back down to Hell.  He also heats the water for the baths, and is a great lover of tea.  He appears as a pot-bellied old man made of metal.  Fire burns behind his open mouth, and behind his smile.

      The golems serve him, but they rarely leave the furnace.

      He hates Mabinyaga, who hates him just as passionately.  However, since they both need each other to survive, they have sworn an oath of non-violence towards each other.  Instead, their malice takes the form of pranks, inconveniences, and humiliations.

      If you throw one of Mabinyaga's Treasures into his furnace, he'll roar with laughter as he melts it down and sends it to the storerooms of Hell.  He'll reward you with a fine magic item.

      The Gameplay Loop

      Gossip is more important than treasure.

      1. A guest comes to visit.  The PCs are in charge of satisfying that guest.  If they do well, they are rewarded with the only type of reward that they are ever issued--free time.  Perhaps 4 days if they do excellently, but only 1 day if they perform poorly.  (If they perform especially well, they may even get a juicy piece of gossip.)

      2a. You'll have a chance to explore and talk to NPCs.  Eventually you'll figure out the location of one of the many small dungeons hidden around the Between.  Each dungeon has 1-3 pieces of Treasure inside it.  Some of these dungeons are quite non-traditional, such as the Very Busy Kitchen.

      All of the dungeons are hidden, except for the Basement (but you'll have to bribe the Rat King if you wish to access all of it, or else defeat all of the rats).

      2b. Alternatively, you might figure out how to solve all of the Problems of an NPC.  Once you solve all of an NPC's Problems, they become your Friend.  This pleases Mabinyaga, who will call you into her office and give you another memory (and therefore another Level).

      3. Redeem your Treasure with either Mabinyaga, Fornax, or the Rat King.  Eventually you'll be strong, well-equipped, and have access to the entire Between.

      4. The endgame really depends on how you allied yourself.  

      If you solved everyone's Problems, Mabinyaga will offer you the Inn Between.  She's old and wishes to enter the Winterwine for a good long rest.

      If you found all of the Treasures, the Rat King will confide in you that he has stolen a Holy Infant from the surface of Centerra.  With the Holy Infant, you can ransom yourselves back to life, and live a normal life.

      Lastly, if you kill everyone (a genocide run), you can become new Princes and Princesses of Hell.  This is power enough to return to the surface, where you can bless it or blacken it.

      ↧

      Monster Type: Army

      January 31, 2021, 6:28 pm
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       Have you ever read through some old adventure module and come across a room that has 40 orcs in it?  You don't see that much anymore.  Let's talk about that.

      Skeleton Army by Adrian Smith

      The Appeal of an Army

      I don't think I need to defend the idea that it is cool as fuck to fight a horde of enemies.  Orcs, hellhounds, traitor knights, vampire wolves. . . they're all cool.

      They're also intimidating in a way that a dragon is not.  Normally, in the boss fight encounters against a singular foe, the players have two advantages:

      • They get more actions than the dragon.
      • The dragon might unluckily fail an important save.
      When the PCs are badly outnumbered, these advantages turn into disadvantages, the danger of which isn't lost on the PCs.

      (Things like legendary actions and legendary saves were created to smooth over the advantages in order to create more homogenous combat experience, but it's still a hack.)

      The Disbanding of the Army

      Why don't we see armies like this anymore?  The big reason is combat complexity.  As editions of DnD got more complex, combat turns started taking longer and longer.  How much did blur slow down combat in 3e?

      There's also the push for more complexity in monster abilities.  Each monster has been loaded down with more and more bells and whistles.  This creates more of a burden on the DM, to use and track these abilities effectively.  I'm not saying the trade-off isn't worth it--sometimes it is.  But we should be aware of what we're giving up when we start giving bonus actions to lowly orcs and goblins.

      (I've made the argument before that there is a lot of worthwhile differentiation that can come from behavior, rather than the stat block, but that's a different conversation.)

      OSR combat moves fast.  A fight against thirty orcs shouldn't be out of the question

      Rules for Facing Armies

      How many people can you catch in a single fireball?  Maybe 3 if they're wisely spread out.  A dozen if they're densely clustered.  On any other round, tell the wizard that their best fireball opportunity is 2d4+1 (rerolling it every round--let the wizard decide when the best opportunity is).  Armies that are trying to spread out (and have the space to do so) will limit themselves to 1d4+3 within the range of a single fireball.

      Can you split up an army?  Easily, if your foes are unintelligent.  Intelligent enemies will avoid splitting up into overly small groups.  If they search for you, it will be with scouting groups that will retreat and seek help, rather than allow themselves to get drawn into a pitched battle.

      The most important rules will probably be facing rules: how many orcs can attack your fighters simultaneously?

      In a hallway 10' wide (or other chokepoint, I'd say that 3 people fighting abreast is the maximum, while 2 people fighting abreast would be the minimum to hold the line.

      While totally surrounded, a cluster of at least 5 PCs has 2 enemies facing each of them.  Smaller groups will have 3 enemies facing them simultaneously.

      Armies will, of course, fight as intelligently as they can.  This includes, but is not limited to:

      • Having one group fight the PCs head-on, while another group circles around to flank them.
      • Sending a runner for reinforcements.
      • Trying to lure the PCs into a place where they can be surrounded.
      • Using ranged attacks to get more attacks in per turn.
      • Using ranged attacks to lure PCs into position.
      • Use long-shot attacks (the equivalent of save-or-dies).
      Some examples of long-shot attacks and interesting tactics:
      • GRAPPLE.  Nets, whatever.  Just pile it on.
      • Smoke bombs.
      • Setting the place on fire.
      • Releasing snakes.
      • Start chanting.    After 3 turns of chanting, a person goes blind and feeble every turn.  Lasts as long as the chanting does.
      • Start chanting.  It's a very slow polymorph spell, which turns someone into a snail over the course of 3 turns.
      • Start breaking all the valuable items in the dungeon while shouting blasphemies.
      • Lassoing a PC and pulling them away from the party.
      • Refusing to allow the PCs to lure them into a disadvantage.  Instead, they fortify a large room (or critical dungeon junction) and continually insult the PCs for not attacking them.  Although, at this point, you risk treating them like a faction.
      *Differences Between Armies and Factions

      Armies you fight all at once.  Factions you deal with their interests and kill them off in small groups.

      I'll admit, it's a blurry line.  40 barbarians could easily be a roleplaying challenge more than a combat encounter.  Seducing them, bartering with them, getting them to fight your enemies for you, getting them to fight among themselves.

      Dynamics

      An interesting fight evolves--it's not just 3 orcs marching through the same chokepoint every turn until the whole army is dead.

      Unless the army is mindless (and I don't even run skeletons as mindless foes), they'll know when they're fighting a losing battle, retreat, and try a new tactic.

      Here are some other ways that armies will mix things up:

      Orcs -- Settle it with a contest of champions.  The orcish champion is level 2+1d4, and will fight dirty (suggestion: as soon as the PCs nominate their champion, the orc will launch into combat without any preamble, throwing an axe and then charging).  Losing side clears out of the dungeon.

      Bandits -- Will just offer you money to leave.  1d6 x 100s.

      Goblins -- Start making a shit-ton of noise, summoning 1d4-1 (min 0) random encounters.

      Skeletons -- 9 Skeletons start dancing.  After 3 rounds, they summon a demon of X HD, where X is the number of skeletons that are still dancing.  (Remember that undead are created by inviting incorporeal demons into a corpse.)  Other skeleton spells: mass extinguish, shatterhand (metal shatters upon coming in contact with the skeleton), fear.

      Berserkers -- If they don't decide to retreat and try a new tactic, they'll fight to the death.  They bite off the tip of their own tongue.  Each round after that, they'll get +1 to hit, -1 to AC, and +1 to the damage that they both deal and receive.  This is cumulative up to +4.  If it would increase beyond +4, the berserkers instead start killing each other until they are all dead.





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      Piabon the Dandelion Knight

      February 5, 2021, 10:53 am
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      Piabon is a fairy knight, of course, one of the knights botanical.  But he refuses to say who he serves.

      What is your quest?

      "I am gathering knowledge of your weaknesses for the coming war.  Don't look so concerned!  It won't be for a long time yet."

      How long exactly?

      "I find it best not to worry about such things.  But tell me, how poisonous is cinnamon to the human constitution?  Can you safely breath it?"

      Piabon is accompanied by Gressa, an enormous white lion.  Gressa speaks with a girl's voice, hates violence, and pretends not to hear or see anyone else except for Piabon, who she addresses with mild contempt.  She is much lighter than she looks.

      Want / Do Not Want

      Piabon wants to learn about human weaknesses.  He would be especially interested in seeing large amounts of humans fighting at one time.  He has no interest in anatomy or dissection.  He would be interested in a book of poetry that describes heartbreak (another human weakness).

      Piabon does not want his face to be seen.  He doesn't want people embarrassing him in front of Gressa.

      Help / Harm

      If Piabon likes you, he will accompany you (although not underground) and happily tell you about interested locations nearby and all the threats on the wandering monster table (he's traveled quite a bit).

      If Piabon doesn't like you, he'll probably try to kill you.

      Piabon's Secret

      There's actually four of him--brothers who share a name.  One wanders around with Gressa, while the other three usually remain in their laboratorium sanctorum, atop Old Miss Thistle (a mountain).

      Piabon

      Level 3  Armor as plate  Morningstar1d8  War Bee 1d6 (see below)

      Move as human + bumbershoot (see below)

      Piabon loves alcohol, and a single drink will make him hilariously, chilidishly drunk.

      Piabon's armor is made from spun sugar.  It is light and strong, but melts if it gets wet.

      Piabon's head, carefully concealed beneath his helmet, is that of a dandelion puff.  If he is restrained, his helmet removed, and his head blown off, the blower gets a minor wish.  The wish is limited to what an adult human could definitely accomplish with a year of labor.  Build a wall, destroy a bridge, teach the blower to play the panpipes excellently, kill a merchant, etc.

      Piabon's War Bee lives inside his magnificent neckerchief.  He carries it in place of a bow, but treat it like a spiritual weapon.  It requires an action on the first turn to sic the bee on someone.  On the first turn and all subsequent turns, the bee makes an attack (using Piabon's bonus) for 1d6 piercing damage.  Lasts until the target is dead or Piabon loses line of sight.

      Piabon has a bumbershoot that allows him to fly up to any altitude, but only outdoors and only in the direction that the wind is blowing.  It also allows him to cast featherfall on himself.

      Which way is the wind blowing today? [d12]

      1 - N

      2 - NE

      3 - E

      4 - SE

      5 - S

      6 - SW

      7 - W 

      8 - NW

      9-12 - No wind today.

      Gressa

      Level 5  Armor chain  Claw/Claw/Bite 1d6/1d6/1d8

      Move as lion  Int 18  

      Gressa will not attack unless she is attacked first.  If Piabon is attacked, she will stand there idly, criticizing Piabon and while pointing out advice and tactics.  This gives Piabon +2 to hit and damage with his morningstar, and allows him to fight much more cleverly than he would otherwise.


      Bonus: Dandelion Knight as GLOG Class

      Template A - Bumbershoot (as above), Spun Sugar Armor, Wishing Head

      Template B - War Bee (as above)

      Template C - Condescending Companion (HD 5, random giant animal, as above)

      Template D - Spawn Squire

      Spawn Squire

      You sprout off a hechman.  They are always level 0 (but can always advance as Dandelion knights, or any other knight botanical).  If you would die, you can choose to have your squire die in your place.  They are always named Pod (but may take a new name if they gain a level).

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