Races of Outland (updated)

I've been silently working on a project that is an OD&D supplement that includes all my Outland stuff in it. I normally don't like to talk about things I'm working on until they're done, because of the very real (and likely) possibility that I'll never finish. My hard drive is littered with half-baked ideas and unfinished projects. Further, Outland steals from is inspired by so many other sources, I often have doubts about whether sharing such a document would be a good idea to begin with.

Anyways, I figured it would be a nice thing to use in my game and sort of a cool souvenir for my game store players. I really enjoy reading other people's homemade game supplements, and I can appreciate the time and effort that is required to document one's lifted material ideas in a way that can be used by others.

Anyways, to make a long story boring, I at least have the Races part done, so I figured I'd at least share that much, in case I never get any further. It can be found on the "Outland OD&D Game" menu item above, or just get it HERE.

???

d20-Style Saving Throws for Labyrinth Lord or B/X D&D

If you are interested in adding d20-style saving throw categories to your Labyrinth Lord or B/X game, I've devised the tables that will allow you to do so.

How it works: These saves work exactly like the standard saving throws for B/X in that they are target numbers that the player needs to meet or exceed in order to be successful. Ability modifiers affect saves in the following way:

• CON bonus/penalty applied to Fortitude saves
• DEX bonus/penalty applied to Reflex saves
• WIS bonus/penalty applied to Will saves

It should be obvious which save is applicable in a given situation. Fortitude saves are for poisons, diseases, surviving resurrection or transformation from stone to flesh, etc. Reflex saves are for dodging lightning bolts, dragon breath, wands and so on. Will is for resisting mind-affecting spells such as charm or fear.

The process for generating these was simple. I just started with a base save target of 15, and improved the values based on the charts in the d20 SRD. A normal save progression is improving at a rate of 1 every 3 levels, while good saves start out at +2 and improve at every even-numbered level.

There are a couple of things to note. First, the ability modifier range for B/X is -3/+3, so if you are going to use these for OD&D, where the modifiers only range from -1/+1, you may want to change the base save number to 14, but I will leave that up to you. Secondly, I use separate race and class, and no level limits on demi-humans, so I don't give them ridiculous save bonuses; they simply use the save tables based on their class. However, I would likely give them minor bonuses to keep with tradition. For instance +1 to all save rolls for the lucky little bastard Hobbits, and +2 vs. poison/+1 vs. magic for Dwarves. I will leave these racial bonuses, if any, to be determined by the referee, since whether or not demi-human level limits exist in your game should be a big factor in determining what those bonuses might be.

I only advanced the tables to level 10, since that should cover 99% of the games happening out there, and I've only play-tested these at level 2-3. In the event you use these for your game, and need to go beyond level 10, you should know better than anyone if the saves should continue to advance at the same rate, stop advancement completely, or advance at a slower rate. It all depends on whether or not the party has a lot of items that are giving bonuses to saves or boosting abilities beyond 18, etc.

One final note is that one of the main strengths of the original saving throw categories is the evocative names they were given. Let's face it, "SAVE VERSUS DEATH RAY" is way cooler than "Make a fort save". That being said, the save categories I present here can always be renamed in order to keep that flavor. I am not so creative when it comes to such things, but I am interested to hear what you guys might come up with.

Outland Characters

I've been tinkering around with some rules to use for my old-school type game. Mostly it's just things that affect character creation and flavor, with the goal of promoting a darker weird sword & sorcery style, but with plenty of room for gonzo wackiness as well. I was hoping to get everything compiled and put into a nice PDF to release all at once. I even got some cool art to put into it in a legitimate fashion. To make a long story boring, it's taking forever, so I've decided to just release the stuff I've been working on in a piecemeal fashion on the blog, and I'll worry about putting it together later.

Duel by Miguel Santos

The body of work is inspired by the Labyrinth Lord Original Edition Characters book, in that it is meant to be sort of a player's handbook rather than a complete rule set. So far there is no "official" game system it is meant to work with, but I am doing it with an eye towards B/X, Labyrinth Lord, and Basic Fantasy RPG. It should work fine with any of those core systems. I don't want to make another retro-clone, just a fresh way to make characters for an existing game of your choice.

Here is the short list of what you can expect:

• Separate race and class (humans are still the only ones that can level as any class)
• No level limits on any race
• No alignment - I've never used it in a meaningful way in any game. It just seems to be more of a source of potential disagreements than anything else. I see this as one of the main causes of the cleric's unpopularity. Some dude is always trying to shove his ideas down your throat about how a cleric is supposed to be played because of alignment. Sorry alignment, I have no use for you.
• Racial ability bonus as in the LL AEC (usually +1 to something and -1 to something)
• A number of humanoid/monster PC races
• 3 or 4 core classes (still undecided on whether to make a complete thief class, or make it a fighter subclass), with kits or subclasses to further customize them
• Some d20isms, such as ascending AC and Fortitude/Reflex/Will saves
• Super-simple encumbrance rules (even simpler than LotFP!)
• All-new spell lists. Not original in that they were created by me, but rather picked from various sources. (Ancient Vaults and Eldritch Secrets likely being the most prominent)
• Alternative spell system, probably much like the sorcerer from d20, but perhaps also with some ideas stolen from DCC. The main thing is that no caster will ever have to memorize spells at the beginning of the day. I've always hated that mechanic.

As you can see, nothing revolutionary. More just my personal picking and choosing of stuff I like, most of it created by other people who are smarter than I am. Feel free to comment on any of it - your input is appreciated.