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Have a Rockin' Halloween!

A few old faves for the season...

Purchasers of Self-Published Products...

If you are like me and like to buy lots of self-published materials from the OSR dudes out there selling their wares... and you are also like me and prefer the Print + PDF purchase option... and they aren't offering that...

Do yourself a favor, and just ask. Often, the person(s) will be perfectly happy to send you a PDF (often for free) if you buy the print product.

Ask and you shall receive!

Tinkering with Classes

The other day, Jeff Rients made a post about this old Dragon magazine article that allows you to build custom classes based on the component pieces.

I have been reading that article and goofing around with the basic principles since I read it. I've done some slight reworking of it to fit my game better, probably taking away more than adding, and I think it has just what I need to break out race and class as two separate things for my B/X-ish Outland game.

I took the 400 base XP and split it among the four things everyone must pick - hit dice, fighting capability, weapon damage, and saving throws. For everything else, I just performed the math on the values so that all you have to do is pick what you want and add all the numbers up.

Here is a draft of my version, which includes a very drafty version of some alternatives to the cleric's turn undead. These alternatives (Channel Energy and Cure) are stolen from 3E and DCC, respectively.

Here are some rough samples I created using these as well.

Once I'm comfortable with the basics, it should be easy to add new things that players come up with.

The best part, is this will allow me to split out race and class. Then I can have races with very simple bonuses, and if there's a race with something a little bit too special, we can just tack an XP value onto it. I like that the Labyrinth Lord AEC attempted to do this, but I think their approach is overly complex. Here is just a snippet from that version:

Dwarves receive the following saving throw bonuses:
• +2 save versus breath attacks
• +4 save versus poison
• +4 save versus petrify or paralyze
• +3 save versus wands
• +4 save versus spells or spell-like devices

I just don't like that.

I'd do something more like this:
Humans - +1 to any ability score.
Dwarves - Infravision, +2 to saves against magic (no more special dwarf saving throw table, they just use the class one), and they know stuff about stone.
Elves - Immune to ghoul paralysis. Sometimes when they pass a secret door, it becomes limned in a weird green light. No one knows why.
Hobbits - +1 to all saves. 1 bonus luck point. Can throw or fire a stone as far as a short bow.
Tieflings - Darkness or Cause Light Wounds 1/day.
Orcs - Intimidate: make a medium strength check (2 of 3 d20s equal to or under STR score). Success causes the enemy to make an immediate morale check at -1. Usable 2/day.
Goblins - Infravision. Pick pockets.

Something like that. Then level limits could be removed as well. Just thinking out loud. Anyways, if you see any holes in my basic approach here, please let me know.

Labyrinth Lord AEC Spell Reference Booklets

I put together some spell reference booklets for the cleric and magic-user. The source material is the Labyrinth Lord Advanced Edition Companion, but I pulled out the IP and also fixed the spell entries that say things like "this is the same as the cleric spell, so go look up that one even though you are a magic-user".

The PDFs are interior pages only, so you will have to make your own covers for these booklets using your favorite copyrighted art. I would have included the one I made for myself, but the art I used is from a currently in-print book that is less than 30 years old, so I figured I'd try not to piss those people off.

Enjoy!

Labyrinth Lord AEC Magic-User Spell Reference
Labyrinth Lord AEC Cleric Spell Reference

P.S. - If I ever get a player that plays a druid or illusionist, I might do those as well, but I don't see that happening in the near future.

Feast of the Gods

Adapted from one of the Arduin books (I forget which one).

This large golden platter is usually held by a statue in some deep, dark, and super-dangerous dungeon. At the foot of the statue is a plaque which reads in a long-forgotten tongue, something about eating if you believe the gods are on your side, etc. Read languages will easily decode the message, or possibly an intelligence check for a bard or some PC with a background in linguistics.

On the platter are three items - a loaf of wonderful-smelling bread, a large piece of juicy roasted meat, and an ornate chalice filled with a rich, dark wine.

Should the PCs be brave enough to partake of this feast, here is what happens.

Guidelines: There is only enough of each item to benefit (or screw over) one person. A single person may only benefit from one of the items.

For each item consumed, roll a d10. All effects are permanent.

Meat
1-3: Strength/Agility/Stamina (STR/DEX/CON) are reduced by 1d4.
4-10: Strength/Agility/Stamina (STR/DEX/CON) are increased by 1d4.

Wine
1-3: Personality/Intelligence/Luck (INT/WIS/CHA) are reduced by 1d4.
4-10: Personality/Intelligence/Luck (INT/WIS/CHA) are increased by 1d4.

Bread
1-3: PC loses 1d4 levels.
4-10: PC gains 1d4 levels.

Theoretically, one person will get screwed over, but of course it all depends on the dice gods. PCs should have at least a hint of what they are getting themselves into - perhaps rumors could be dropped in well beforehand. Just be sure you are okay with following through with it if a PC with bad luck loses 4 levels!

In our game, the level 5 cleric lost 3 points of Per/Int/Luck. The level 6 barbarian gained 4 points of Str/Agi/Sta. And the level 6 ranger leapfrogged to level 10!

Best Laid Plans...

We ran our Pathfinder/DCC mashup game last weekend, and I was really excited for it because we were starting on this 4-level dungeon that I completely stocked myself, and I had a lot of fun doing it.

One of the things I had in it was this:

I thought this was really cool, but the statue is on level 2, while the amazons are on level 4, so the PCs would have to put in some effort to be able to take advantage of this thing. Furthermore, the goal of their expedition into this dungeon is on level 3, so there is a very real chance they will get what they are there for and leave (which is probably the smartest thing - level 4 is pretty nasty). So I knew going in that this was one of those things that might not get used.

However, I failed to realize that as soon as they encountered the thing, they would smash it to see if there was treasure inside.

Facepalm.

Well, who knows. Maybe they'll find the penis and decide to hunt down a make whole spell. Yeah, right!

Oh yeah, just to clarify, the amazon leader is wearing the thing like a strap-on. Maybe there is someone else out there with an equally disgusting mind that would like to use this? Go for it!

The Book of Vile Darkness

As time goes on, I get more and more comfortable taking stuff from any version of D&D (except 4th) and using it in my games. Back on Free RPG Day, I bought Monte Cook's 3E Book of Vile Darkness from one of my local game stores. I imagine it must have been quite popular at the time it was released (I wasn't playing then), because it's damn good. There are a ton of great ideas in here to kick the creepy factor up a notch. Here is one example:

Demonic Graft Machine: This machine is a mass of metal tubes, gears, arms, and wheels that turn and move silently. At the front of this machine, a wide iron plate fashioned into the form of a hideous face grins with a wide, open mouth. Through the mouth, the innards of the device are visible. The device is part machine and part demon, infused with fiendish essence and powered by evil magic. It is used to graft demonic additions onto the bodies of willing or unwilling victims.
Anyone that comes within 5 feet of the open mouth must succeed at a Reflex save (DC 15) or be grabbed by a tonguelike appendage and dragged into the machine.
Within the bowels of the machine, the victim’s body is sliced, burned, punctured, and torn. These operations deal 6d6 points of damage to the victim in 1 round. In the next round (if the character is still alive), demonic flesh and essence is added to the victim’s body, restoring 5d6 points of damage. On the third round, the character is spit out with a new demonic addition in place (roll on the following table).

d%: Demonic Addition
01–25 Left arm. The arm is long and flexible like a tendril, with a crude, three-fingered claw at the end. It functions as a natural weapon dealing 1d4 points of damage plus the character’s Strength bonus. Weapons used in the hand take a –2 penalty on attacks. Once per day, the arm can produce magic missile as the spell from a 5th-level caster.

26–55 Right arm. The arm is muscular and sinewy, with a clawed hand. The arm confers a +2 inherent bonus to Strength. As a natural weapon, the arm deals 1d6 points of damage plus the character’s Strength bonus.

56–70 Thick and muscular legs. The character gains a +2 bonus to his Constitution score.

71–85 Slim and agile legs. This addition increases the character’s speed by 10 feet when not wearing heavy armor or carrying a heavy load. The character gains a +5 competence bonus on Climb and Jump checks.

86–100 Familiar. Grafted onto the shoulder, back, stomach or hand, a demonic familiar is a small face with an evil expression. This face has Intelligence 12, Wisdom 9, and Charisma 6. If the character is a wizard, the face can teach him one new spell for every spell level he knows. If the character is a spellcaster, the familiar povides a +2 inherent bonus to the ability score that determines his bonus spells.

Now, this thing is obviously loaded with 3E mechanics, but the underlying idea is very simple to convert to any edition you happen to be playing.

Personally, I love giving PCs power that is clearly tainted with evil or some negative side effect, and seeing how they proceed. I also love mutating the shit out of them, so something like this is right up my alley. Currently, I have a half-elf cleric covered in hair from head to toe, a half-ogre barbarian with goat legs, and a female goblin with a moustache in my campaign (Thank you Dave Hargrave for your Whimsy Wine idea!).

But this thing is really cool. A trap spits out the victim with demonic modifications? I can almost guarantee that once the first PC comes out of this thing, the others are going to want to line up to go in voluntarily. I think I'll have to rule that the thing broke after one person goes through it.

Adventures in Munchkinism

So my brother-in-law decided he wanted to run a drow noble campaign, using Pathfinder rules, and allowing everything on the Pathfinder SRD site. I'm thinking, this is crazy! He had us roll stats three different ways: 3d6, reroll 1s; 4d6 drop lowest; and d12+6. Then we could pick whichever set we liked the best and arrange to taste.

Thus, I set out to make the most broken character I could without putting forth too much effort. There is so much crap available, I'd still be sifting through feats if I wanted to really take it seriously. First, the stats. d12+6 gave me the best results, with the following scores: 18, 18, 15, 12, 11, 10. Two 18s! The drow noble modifiers are totally insane. +4 Dex, +2 Int, +2 Wis, +2 Cha, -2 Con.

Dex being the best, I went for a Dex-based class. Rogue seemed kind of lame, but I found a new class from the new Ultimate Combat book - THE NINJA! This class is totally broken. At level 2, I can already turn invisible as a swift action (meaning I can still move and attack in the same round). It's totally fucked. We played one session, and let me be honest, it was fun as shit. We're all supposed to be brothers/sisters from the same family, and we just came of age (86 years old) and are going to be sent to the drow school for learning devious shit. So for our first session, we did some trials. One was to pick a mushroom from a set of four and hopefully not die or get fucked up. I'm not sure what we were supposed to figure out, besides just guessing. Anyways, I got a crazy-ass bluff score so I faked eating the mushroom. I rolled shitty, so it didn't work, but I followed up with a use of my 1/day suggestion spell, to convince the test's administrator that I had in fact eaten the mushroom. At least that worked. I later found out the mushroom I picked was some crazy hallucinogenic kind, so later that night all our PCs split it and ate it, and promptly proceeded into the dungeons of our own house to pull monsters out of the cells and kill them for sport, while tripping.

I laughed my balls of the entire session, and was in tears once or twice. We decided to be the Black family. We have Joe Black (me), Jack Black, Frank Black, and I forget what my sister's was. I think next session, we will actually be going to the school. I expect lots of amazing fun, sort of like if completely immature superheroes were to attend whatever school Harry Potter went to.

Now for your pleasure, here is my completely overpowered level 2 character:

Loads of Free Fun

A few weeks back, I ran a sort of experiment. I wanted to run a level 1 Pathfinder adventure with level 0 DCC characters. I already had some copies of the free DCC RPG Beta Rules printed up, and I had picked up this free goblin adventure on Free RPG Day.

In order to make it a little more meaningful, I told the players they could each roll up 4 level 0 goblin dudes, and any survivors could become level 1 henchmen of their main characters in our Pathfinder/DCC frankenstein game that has been running for almost a year now. It was easy to fit this in plotwise with our ongoing campaign.

The adventure was a ton of fun. The module needs a little bit of adjustment to run for DCC, but I did it all on the fly without any problem.

The dares were especially fun, and since level 0 DCC characters don't get hardly jack for items, it is very worthwhile for the players to try. I think I killed like 5 PCs from the dares alone.

Here were the most memorable:

The very first dare, "Dance with Squealy Nord", where a character has to ride a piglet rodeo-style for three rounds (3 successful Agility checks, roll equal to or under Agility score on a d20). First roll was a fail, and the PC fell off the pig and died.

Hide or Get Clubbed: This is the goblin version of hide and seek. The dare-taker rushes off into the marsh without any weapons and attempts to find a good hiding spot (I allowed the PCs to make two checks - d20+agi mod and d20+int mod and take the better result for their hide check). The other goblins try to find him, and if they do, the finder is allowed to whack the previously hidden goblin with a club. Once the goblins start looking, roll 1d10 to determine how many goblins come close enough to the hiding goblin to attempt –1 Perception checks to notice the hiding goblin. (Rolled a 10 and the first one found him.) If a goblin finds the hidden goblin, the resulting club strike automatically inflicts 1d4–1 points of damage. (BAM! DEAD! HAHAHAHHAA!) If no goblins find the hidden goblin, he wins a loan of the mystical Ring That Lets You Climb Real Good (a ring of  climbing).

After the dares, there's just one encounter on the way to the target. (Note that the adventure references the Pathfinder Bestiary, but you can get the needed stat blocks for free at d20pfsrd.com if you don't have the actual book.) This is a relatively straightforward encounter against a big spider. Probably one or two guys will die depending on initiative. I made certain to explain the obvious trail back to the spider's lair after the fight so the PCs could pick up a few more mundane weapons.

Then, the final part, which really needs to be toned down unless you don't care about having a TPK. There is a wasp swarm trap, which the PCs will find impossible to kill off once triggered using Pathfinder swarm rules, since they are immune to normal weapon damage. Additionally, the druid at the end can summon a swarm (and she should!), which can be very deadly, potentially killing up to 4 PCs per round, but that one only lasts 2 rounds.

By the end, only 2 PCs remained from the 16 we had at the beginning. One of the players took a body part from one of his deceased 0-level dudes that he was particularly fond of, in order to have his main character get him resurrected someday. (Awww, how sweet.)

In summation, this session was a big hit with the players, and we spent most of the session laughing our asses off, which is how it should be. I highly recommend trying this combo, as the silliness of DCC 0-level play and this particular adventure complemented each other perfectly.

B2: Outpost on Outland

Zak with porn stars made a pretty good post about B2 as a one-page dungeon. Since a lot of the work I've been doing with Outland is very similar (although still not as lightweight as his stuff), I figured I'd take the opportunity to say, "Look at me! I'm smart too!"

Outland has barely anything to it right now. This is by design. For me, Outland is somewhere I can dump any idea I have and have it fit in okay. It's kind of meant as a remedy for my gamer ADD. If I get bored, I can just drop in a few hexes of whatever it is that is catching my fancy at the moment, whether it be space aliens, colorful dinosaur-riding men, wicked fey munchkins, the traditional huge ruined pile, a haunted house, castle amber, you name it. In case you are curious, the entire concept of Outland was sparked from this fine piece of work. I hope that guy starts posting again. I really enjoyed his stuff.

The basic framework I've started with and am building upon is of course B2: Keep on the Borderlands. The only thing is it's terribly organized and too wordy, so I'm basically rewriting it for my actual use at the table. I've changed the details, but the basic underlying framework is identical. Outpost of some far-reaching empire... check. Caves with a bunch of monsters... check. One of the things I've learned about myself is that writing stuff down makes it stick in my brain. Even if I'm running a module, I need to write down the important stuff myself, or I'll just forget it all. So I just figured since I'm doing that anyways, I'll just change everything.

The Last Outpost of the Undying Empire (a.k.a. The Keep)

So the keep is roughly the same, but it's crappier. It's surrounded by wooden palisades. Anyone riding a horse there gets their horse confiscated and slaughtered, since the beastmen can smell horses from miles away, and will mount a raid if they know horses are around. The place is watched over by Lord Something-or-other (it hasn't come up yet). There's guards, a sage, some shops, crappy tenements for the poorer folks, and nice apartments for rich visitors. Also a handful of undefined buildings in case I need them for something. The map stays in pencil in case there are changes I feel like making.

A lot of farmers are coming up here to farm the "blue tubers" that grow so well here. They are exported back to civilization for top dollar. No one knows why they're so popular amongst the nobles back home yet.

The Bell & Weasel, a dive bar outside the walls, has been the most popular place to party thanks to the tavern tables from Vornheim. An elf made it to level 2, only to get greedy and try to make some money by pit-fighting in the basement of that place. I just rolled a random encounter, and it was appropriately a pit viper, which he fought against and promptly proceeded to die. He made the first few saves, and came close to beating it, but fell just short.

The Outpost Hinterlands Wilderness Map

Here is the hex map, and you can see a lot of eraser marks on it already. The vast majority of it is still subject to change, as the only hexes that have been adventured in (not counting traveling) are 1014 (the keep), 0816 (the caves), and 1111 (Raid on Black Goat Wood). I love swamps, so I have to have a swampy spot in there, and I'm thinking of a Pembrooktonshire-style village up there by the lake, provided it doesn't get erased, but the thing is pretty wide open at this point, so the sky is the limit. I really like B4, so I may drop that in somewhere if I get around to giving it another read-through and jotting some notes. I'm also pretty certain that one of those forested hexes leads to X2: Castle Amber, a module I was very excited to run a few months back, but it didn't work out.

The Caves of Insert-Word-More-Evocative-Than-"Chaos"

Here's my version of the caves. First session yielded an air shark attack, which was pretty awesome. Can't wait for the Old Lady encounter to come up either. I have absolutely no idea what it is at the moment, so I'll be forced to think of something on the spot, which can be stressful, but it tends to yield fun results.

So far only the cyclops monkey nest has been fully cleared. It would make a decent base for anyone wishing to make some serious excursions into the caves, or the strange dungeon, the entrance to which was discovered in the back of the alien caves. I wish I could post the alien caves map, because I'm pretty fond of it, but it hasn't been fully explored yet.

Cave A: Cyclops Monkey Nest

I can post this one, since it's been fully cleared and the cave is now vacant (but for how long, no one can say). Anyone that's been paying attention to this blog for a while might notice a striking resemblance to a previous endeavor of mine. But, the players from my home group already did that version, so I had to switch it up a bit.   I wish I could nicely type up all my stuff with detailed notes and such for others to use, but honestly, it's boring as shit and takes 100x longer to do it that way versus just coming up with the idea and jotting down the rough notes like you see above.

At any rate, I got the opportunity to give (shameless name drop incoming!) Bruce Heard's cleric a cyclops eye mutation in these caves, and that was one of those awesome moments in gaming. He just gave me this weird, blank look, like, "What the fuck are you doing to D&D!?!?" No idea what was really on his mind, so we'll just have to see if he comes back to play a second session.

Now, I still have a few things left for me to refine in my games:

1. I always bring way too much crap. I need to DRASTICALLY cut down the amount of materials I use in my games. My goal is a single Miscellaneum of Cinder-style booklet that has all the charts I use in one place, so I can stop flipping through literally a dozen books. And I would love to find a single monster book to rule them all, rather than the five or six I usually depend on. No, not Tome of Horrors, that's way too fucking big. I just got my copy of AC9: Creature Catalog in the mail today, and I'm hoping that will do the trick, at least for a while.
2. I think I need to do more work up front regarding treasure. I fancy myself a monty haul guy (learned that from Jim Ward), but I've just been putting rolls on two-or-three-levels-higher-than-party-level treasure tables from Kellri's Encounters Netbook in my adventures, and they haven't yielded the magic item wealth I was hoping for. At a minimum, I think I need to just put rolls on magic item tables specifically in rooms, rather than waiting for them to come up on the treasure tables.
3. I need a better way to organize my NPC notes. They always end up scattered all over the place. Hasn't been an issue so far, but as more and more play happens, I'll begin to lose track of things.
4. Probably a bunch of other stuff, but those first 3 have been the biggest annoyances so far.

So there you have it. This is my creative-outlet-for-an-uncreative-guy thing I've been doing, and I've been having a lot of fun with it. If you made it this far, congratulations! I never read anyone's blog posts about their personal campaigns if they are this long, so I try not to write this kind of stuff myself, but I just felt compelled to do this one. If you read the whole thing I hope you got something out of it.

Outland House Rules Booklet (Draft)

I finally got my Outland house rules booklet about 99% done. I just need to put in the credits to all the people I got art and ideas from, and figure out how to get that damn Quentin Caps font embedded on the first page. If it's something you think you might be interested in, feel free to take a peek and let me know what you think.

click for link to download

This was inspired by the work of Jason Vey, Jimm Johnson, and includes many of my favorite house rules by OSR dudes around the globe. It represents the vision of my personal "perfect D&D" (although that's certainly a moving target, and there's always room for more!)

Enjoy!

P.S. - I will update it as soon as I get the final kinks out as well.