Skullfuck Mountain Wizard Magic

For Skullfuck Mountain (hereafter SFMTN), I'm using the Dying Earth Spells for D&D supplement. A magic-user's beginning spells are determined by rolling for them per the guidelines in the document:

So basically they begin play with read magic (which is the only 0-level spell in the supplement) plus three randomly determined 1st-level spells.

The magic-user has access to all spells known, but is limited in spells castable per adventure by the charts in the Holmes rulebook (and I guess for beyond level 3, I'll just use the charts for the wizard from the d20 SRD, since Men & Magic already has a discrepancy at 3rd level, and that bothers my OCD side).

Interesting that I'm using Dying Earth spells and not requiring memorization, isn't it? Do you see the irony? DO YOU!?!?!

So now the question becomes "How does the wizard advance the number of spells he knows?" Well, I figure all additional spells will be gained by learning them from scrolls or spellbooks found while adventuring. I've put together a pretty basic procedure for attempting to add a found spell to the collection of spells known. It is loosely built around Holmes' scroll creation rules, but I figure the time component will just always be one week. We generally assume one week of time passes between dungeon expeditions, so the magic-user will get one roll between each session of play. They can opt to wait additional weeks if they want, I guess, which reminds me, I need to make an events chart of stuff that happens in the dungeon and surrounding areas to make downtime matter. One event per week seems like too much, so maybe a 1 in 4 chance of an event each week, which would make things roughly monthly. Anyways, I digress. Here is the procedure for learning new spells:

Showing my true nerd colors with this flowchart

As far as limiting spells known, Holmes already has a chart for that, and if I find that too restrictive I could just use INT score as the maximum spells per level a magic-user may know.

Another thing I'm thinking about, but haven't quite figured out yet, is corruption. After playing DCC, I don't know if I could ever play without corrupting magic again. Just an idea off the top of my head that will require further thought:

X in 30 chance of corruption per casting, where X is the spell level.
Spell levels 1-2 = Minor corruption
Spell levels 3-4 = Major corruption
Spell levels 5-6 = Greater corruption

Then there's the cleric. Not sure what to do about clerics yet, but we currently don't have any, so I don't think I'll bother spending much brain bandwidth on that until we actually get one.

Welcome to Skullfuck Mountain!

In a far-off land there is a small lake. On the lake's south end, there is a small village that has a cozy inn, a few shops, and a well-regarded brothel. On the north end is a giant fucking skull-shaped mountain reputed to have monsters and treasures in it. What would you like to do?

Last Saturday my home D&D group of friends met up in my back porch to play. It had been over a month since we played, and I was hemming and hawing about whether we should continue our Gamma World game, or the DCC-based Demonland game we played last time we met. So I did what any good ADD-afflicted DM would do - I started a brand new game!

I've been drawing some modular maps in the style of Stonehell Dungeon, or the One-Page Dungeon if you prefer. The only difference is that I did mine 20x20 instead of 30x30, just as a matter of personal preference. I'd also been daydreaming about a Castle Greyskull/Gamma World-based megadungeon for a while, and the kicker was when I stumbled upon this old thread about the UK version of Holmes Basic. I found the artwork to be very inspiring, and it prompted me to break out my Holmes book and give it another gander. So I cobbled all these ideas together, keyed a few of the maps I made, and grabbed a few unused or lightly-used things from my regular Outland campaign that's been going strong for a while now. I linked everything together so I had levels for the eyes, nose, and mouth, and some extra stuff in case something crazy happened. The end result was maybe 10 sheets of notes and maps, roll up some ultra-shitty Holmes PCs, and off to adventure!

Phony alternate universe cover I made with FF art by Fangorn

It turned out to be quite a fun adventure. The dwarf fighter rolled 1 hp, so right away the thief kept trying to gank him and lost two characters trying. That fighter ended up being one of two survivors, and was able to make 2nd level after carousing. He then proceeded to roll an 8 for his next hit die. Pretty sweet if you ask me. That is the stuff of legend. There was judicious use of the mule for cover, and the super-deadly 2d8 Holmes firebombs. I typed up the house rules we used on the Smith Corona XE 6000 my mom dug up and gave to me after the game, and that was a fun exercise in itself. I really dig the finality of it all when using a typewriter (my correction ribbon is expired). The typewriter itself probably post-dates Holmes by 8 years or so, but who cares. Old and crappy is old and crappy, right? Anyways, I think this things has legs, so we'll be playing this again next time.*

PDF of the typewritten house rules, for those that might be interested.

P.S. - I finally got an excuse to use the magnificent Dying Earth Spells for D&D, so that's a big plus as well!

P.P.S. - This is totally ConstantCon/FLAILSNAILS-able, and I think these guys could use some competition.

* Unless I get struck by another bout of ADD

Alternative Combat System for D&D

If you're playing B/X or something similar, but perhaps you're a bit of a "roll player" (like me!), here's a quick little bolt-on system to bring some extra action into your combats. It is built on the basic principles of the DCC Mighty Deeds™ combat stunt system.

Step 1: Bump the thief up to a d6 hit die. Let's face it, he could use the boost.

Step 2: Use this for attack rolls:

1d16 + HD, i.e.

Fighter/Dwarf: 1d16+1d8
Cleric/Thief/Elf/Hobbit: 1d16+1d6
Magic-User: 1d16+1d4

For stunts, you have to declare them before rolling, get a 4+ on the hit die and a high enough total roll to score a hit. If you do not meet both conditions it's a miss. If you do meet both conditions, you can choose between scoring double damage (called shot), or scoring normal damage plus applying an effect, such as disarming, knocking down, pushing back, etc.

There's no advancement built in, so if you want the PCs to improve, you'll have to figure that out yourself. I figure a magic sword or whatever would allow you to replace the d16 with a d20 (more or less equivalent to a +2). I figure this is enough of an improvement over the regular system that we can just ditch the improvement over time. If you want to see the mathematical effect, check this graph.

For crits, you can do whatever, but I'd probably just do natural 16's for the sake of simplicity and giving a very minor bump to crit chances. Maybe even have fighters crit on 15-16 so they can be real murder machines.

If for some weird reason you don't already have several sets of zocchi dice, d16s can be bought individually.