Adventures in Prepping

Lately I've found myself struggling to stay motivated on some of the nitty-gritty bits of running an ongoing campaign. I need a system for taking notes, staying organized, and making effective use of prep time. Often when I sit down to prep for a game, I hit writers block. Rather than being worried about the game being 'good', I suspect it's really about feeling overwhelmed and directionless about what I should be working on.

To correct this problem I've decided I should sit down and pick my own brain for answers.

To help myself and others sift through this rambling I'll notate each section with "$ Philosophical:" for when I'm rambling about things you think, and "+ Applicable:" for when I'm suggesting an practical thing you do. Then, at the bottom of the post I'll distill down the essence for ease of reference.

$ Philosophical: Why Prep?

My playstyle is typically improv-heavy but rather than throwing on tables and making stuff up as I go I find it helps to have something a little more structured to riff on. The continuum from prep-heavy to full-improv is a gradient, and I think I'm only slightly more towards the improv side than in the middle. What I really need is a cohesive head-canon of ideas to draw on, so I'm not just grasping at straws.

Another element that's important is having well-structured, concise play reference. Traditionally this is tabbed DM folder. The older I get the more I find that routine and structure is very important for my well-being. This is something I think is innate to all humans, but how it's best expressed is a learned behavior. It's going to be slightly different for everyone according to acculturation, experience, and temperament. Having a sensible structure takes a huge mental burden off, as a lot of your thinking is done ahead of time. When you don't have structure your brain is required to work double-time at solving problems over and over again. Without fitting those solutions into a framework you end up treading old ground, coming up with novel solutions each time. Routine and structure reduces mental load and stress, freeing up brain space to focus on newer, more interesting and meaningful tasks. This extra bandwidth increases enjoyment, flow, and satisfaction by allowing you to be more mentally present.

In the same vein, taking notes during game is a huge boon. That way you have a record of previous games to refer to when doing prep, and to jog your memory of past actions. DMs have a lot of hats to wear and jobs to juggle, in and out of the game. A simplified, planned system of note taking expediates this process.

My current system is an unstructured pile of notebooks, a jumble of half-finished dungeons, important prep, in-game notes, asides, doodles, and scratch. It's a headache to sift through.

...

+ Applicable: What do you need when you sit down to play?

World Map - a hexmap of the region play takes place in. Players generate their own version of this as they play. This gives you an overview of nearby locations and environments.

Maps of Expected Locations and Dungeons and Keys - All the nearby. locations you expect the players to visit this session, mapped out on graph paper and efficiently keyed

Encounter Tables - For said adventure locations and regions, including relevant wilderness and dungeon areas.

Relevant Generation Tables - Random tables, but just the most important and immediately useful ones.

Note-Taking System - Could be a spiral notebook with a planned system of how to take notes that you stick with. That way when the players defeat a monster or get a quest, it triggers a thing in your brain to write it down.

Adventure Hooks - A list of potential adventure hooks, and active quests, and where the players stand on them. Probably two sheets: active potential hooks (ones the player could trigger right now), and ones that have already been triggered with a sentence or two about where the players are with it. Update this each session, removing ones that are no longer important.

Notes on Current Adventure - Where the players are right now. You might keep a separate set of notes distilled from past adventures, just the key points. The current adventure notes are the insider view on what the players said they're working on, or what you expect them to be doing for the present session.

+ Philosophical: Two Kinds of Prep

There's two kinds of prep: Creation and Updating.

+ Applicable: Creation

This is what you do when you're making new stuff. If you're sitting down to start a fresh sandbox campaign, it's all creation. This is the fun joy part of the DM's job. 

Don't let it take over your life! I find that creativity happens better when you encourage yourself to do it at specific times. Daydreaming is unhealthy. If you train your brain to daydream it'll start throwing things at you when you're supposed to stay on task. Living a distracted life increases your mental load and stress.

Instead, train yourself to be creative when you sit down to be creative. Do this by shifting attention away from daydreaming when you notice it (I like to turn my attention to my breath for a moment). That way you save up that mental energy for when it's time to prep (DM solo play). Then you're less stressed in your daily life you'll have more energy and creativity when it comes time, because you haven't been squandering it all day. Mental energy is finite, like mana, use it well!

+ Applicable: Updating

This is when you add to, remove, or change things that you've created previously.

You refer to old notes, previous sessions, and change things in your current prep. You might keep a previous record of old, no-longer-important updates and retire them to the trash after a certain period. Maybe perform a routine housekeeping at the end of each month, only keeping the very most important beats for later reference.

Just forget about everything that goes in the trash or it'll continue taking up that precious brain space. The older I get the more useful I find it to be strict about stay trim and austere in this regard.

$ Philosophical: The Psychology of Writer's Block

This is where I hit that motivation wall. It's good to learn yourself well enough that you can identify why you hit a wall. There's a reason why for everything you do, and often we get stuck and frustrated when we don't let ourselves figure this out.

Often we hide the truth from ourselves by creating stories in our heads about "why", but the real answers are always Feeling and Needs. Here's a little bit of earned wisdom for you to take home. Frustration as a Feeling is always related to the need for Effectiveness. If you can connect with the Need for Effectiveness and create a Request for yourself of how to meet that Need, the Feeling gets dealt with. That's what I'm doing right now by writing this - I'm fulfilling my own Request.

It's obvious how to make a Request of others, but when it comes to DMing and writer's block, dealing with self, it can be a little sticky. You have to learn to empathize with and understand self effectively. If you're Anxious about prepping it's because you have a Need for Acceptance. Don't fall for the trick of thinking you want Acceptance from people who Aren't Right In Front Of You Actively Not Granting Acceptance!! You want the game to be good and your friends to like you, but YOU'RE the one not Accepting YOU! So rather than prep you procrastinate because you're unconsciously trying to avoid Accepting your own little self. Oh the webs we weave!

The only way to deal with this trap is to Give Yourself permission to be a regular, normal, flawed human. Really, being regular, normal, and flawed is the most beautiful, most perfect way you can be. Why? Because it's what you really, truly, actually are. The image you have in your head of being great, shining, and admired is a fantasy - it's really an inverted fear. People want to be Great because they don't want to be Alone. Luckily, there's plenty of middle ground and you have no choice but to Actually Live There. So just Live There.

The other form of writer's block is Frustration. Frustration, as I said, comes from the Need for Effectiveness. It's not that you Want to achieve your goal, it's that you think you're actively Not achieving it. If you stop to analyze the situation it becomes obviously absurd: Instead of actually Doing the Thing, you're sitting there stumped, frustrated, caught up in this fear of Not Doing The Thing. You're caught in another psychological feedback loop: I'm frustrated because I'm not doing the thing, and because of this frustration I feel stuck, and because I feel stuck, I can't do the thing, therefore I'm frustrated about not doing the thing...etc etc

The only way out is to switch gears and start doing something. You have to push through a wall of pain to do that. Therefore, make the wall of pain as small as you can. Get out some scratch paper and just start writing word-association style. ORC DRAGON CAKE SWORD COIN WITCH until you start getting momentum

Admittedly, my technique is often to get on Discord an complain about what I'm thinking. Someone inevitably chimes in to give me advice and it usually clears up immediately. Now I'm no longer stuck in a feedback loop of frustration problem, instead my brain is now working on the problem of criticizing their advice and thinking up better advice. Once I'm giving myself Better Advice I've broken the psychological chain and I'm free to start working, with the added benefit of having Better Advice. Human brains are weird.

Is that Chaotic Evil of me? Hell no, kill the demiurge!

+ Applicable: Okay But What Do I Actually Prep Though (Elements of Game Prep)

Below is a Food Chain ranked in order of data complexity. Things closer to the top are made out of things lower down.

Adventure Hooks - This is where you extract fragments of data from your keys and convert it into exciting tidbits that players want to investigate. Despite being extracts from lower levels of data, these are actually the most energetically complex element because they fractally compress a web of data in a small space. Hand these out like candy and keep the list updated. You might have different adventure hook lists for different regions, locations, or settlements. 

World Map - This is the highest level instrument. It correlates all data lower in the system in graphical form. This is your hexmap or gridmap or pointcrawl map or whatever map. It's a chart of symbols for orienteering imaginary space. It's the table of contents of your Shared Hallucination.

World Key - This is the Words that explain what the symbols mean.

Adventure / Dungeon Maps - A zoomed in graphical overlay of bits of your World.

Adventure / Dungeon Key - Corresponding Words that explain the Adventure / Dungeon Maps.

State of the World - This is the factsheet for over-arching adventures you have sort of planned out. This exists, though you might not use it at the table, because it can be hard to parse out "Fazlod the Mage wants the Silver Sword from the Lady of the Lake, but it was Stolen from Her by the Goblin King, Only 3 dudes in different places know how to get there, there are 4 other NPCs that also want the sword, oh and the Hobgoblin army is marching thru the Goblin Kings territory, oh and wyverns are attacking the Hobgoblins etc" based on information scattered across your prep material. This can be as simple as a list of headlines of current events happening outside the view of the players, maybe with details for how they connect so you know how to look up the information you need. Think: WHO WHAT WHERE WHY COMPLICATION

Random Tables - Tables for adding life and color to the world. These have varying levels of complexity somewhere between Null and Adventure Hook. They can be anything from bits of fluff, to Monsters, NPCs, or entire Adventure / Dungeons.

Faction Profiles - the egregore of a collective of NPCs. Includes similar data to an NPC, but from a corporate level.

NPC Profiles - Mobs, critters, denizens. This includes data sheets for NPCs as well as monster stat-blocks. A picture, name, statblock, profession/background, cute details/quirks, motivations, likes/dislikes, resources, allies/enemies, whatever. This could be as simple as a blackbook entry like "Orianna Flux, 24F,  Human, Gloaming Spire, Tinker's Guildmaster. Love: Technology, Hates: Orcs".

Treasure Tables - Shinies.

Background Lore - This is actually the lowest level of data because it's basically the white noise at the base of everything. These are the deranged scrivenings you make when you're dreaming up shit and writing it down. Later you go back and extract stuff, combine it with Structure, and add it to one of the higher-level data sets. Make sure you don't let this stuff stick around too long or you end up with reams of notebook you don't even want to look at.

So that's basically what you need to play the game. Maps, Keys, Hooks, Factions, NPCs, Random Tables, and something explaining How This Stuff Connects Together and What's Going On. Maybe a shame-inducing notebook of Ideas or Background Lore.

I like to use folders and notepad files or google docs to track all this stuff on a grand scale, and copy into a DM folder for using at play. It's nice to keep a digital archive so that updating is easier. Only pen and paper can be messy unless you're very disciplined.

+ Applicable: Taking Notes

It can be hard to know which game elements to trigger for a note. Often I just don't even take notes because I'm busy playing and I don't want to stop to write. I suppose this is a Need I should investigate. Maybe it's related to Acceptance: I want Acceptance that the game will be fun and my players won't be bored while I stop to take notes. My players can't give that to me, only I can give that to me. If they're not having fun because I stop for 5 seconds every so often to write something down maybe I need new players.

So what things trigger a note?

Meeting an NPC, PC / NPC Death, Monster Encounter, Monsters Slain, Adventure Hooks Received, Locations Visited, Treasure Obtained, Faction Moves, Important Events. What's an Important Event? Anything that conceivably be a headline or a diary entry. Keep each note under d12-ish words. Maybe shoot for a VERB NOUN format, like a MUD.

ENTERED GREEN VILLAGE

MET WIZARD MIKE

KILLED WIZARD MIKE

GOT 1000GP AND WIZARD MIKE HAT

RAN FROM GUARDS

RAGNAR DIED

NEW QUEST: REVIVE RAGNAR - LADY OBELISK HAS MAGIC DOODAD

+ Applicable: Organizing Reference Folder

Okay this post is getting long and I'm tired. Let's wrap this shit up. This where I'm gonna overview.

Reference Folder is a fancy way to say DM Folder.

It should have tabs and a ream of notebook paper and graph paper in the back.

Each tab should correlate to an Element of Game Prep. I think this might be a good arrangement:

1. Adventure Hooks

2. State of the World

3. World Map / Key

4. Adventure / Dungeon Maps / Key

5. Faction Profiles

6. NPC Profiles

7. Encounter Tables

8. Treasure Tables

9. Random Tables (d4caltrops.com)

10. Scratch Paper

- Notes in its own Notebook so you can keep it open in front of you while flipping thru DM folder

- Background Lore in its own Notebook so you're not wrestling with it while playing

Creation Work Flow:

- Draw Map

- Create Encounter Tables for Region

- Generate Starting Settlement

- Populate Settlement with NPCs

- Generate Starting Dungeon (1-3 floors if you do that thing)

- Populate Dungeon with Monsters and Treasure

- Generate d6 Adventure Locations close to the Starting Settlement

- Connect stuff, make Factions w Goals, allies/enemies

- Generate d6 Adventure Hooks

Update Work Flow:

- Refer to notes

- Update Adventure Hooks

- Fill out Area players are heading to

- If they discovered a new site, prep it out

- Populate new profiles (expanding on NPCs, factions, events you made up during game)

- Recall the hooks and Whispers and Lore you Spouted during the game and add those things to your World

- Drink water, get good sleep, meditate

- Comb through your stuff and cut out half of what you wrote. Try to condense things down. Music is made by the spaces between the notes. When there's room to breathe you also have room to imagine. Don't paint yourself into a corner. Only prep 1-2 games ahead of the players. 

- Update the State of the World factsheets so you don't get lost.

hermetic inoculation - Buddhism / Morrowind OD&D

 taking a break from the Internet, except for writing work, blog posts, research, and music. not doing anything social. those of you who know me on the discord are aware i retreat into hermetic semi-seclusion 3-4 times a year. i probably won't be very active again outside this blog until after Halloween, potentially until after new year. we'll see how it goes. if you really want to contact me for some reason I'm sure it'll happen.

in the mean time I'm tinkering with system stuff. my goal is to set up a system which matches my playstyle, which lends itself to quick generation of game content. i prefer to rely on randomization to cut down on prep time and increase player agency, and encourage me (the GM) to take a more backseat role in guiding the game. i like each session to be as much a surprise and discovery as my players. i don't like pretending to be in control or guiding the experience.

y'know, the reason why there are so many rulesets is because, if you want to do something other than totally vanilla rules as written d&d, if you wanna do *anything* out of the ordinary, you need houserules. if you have houserules you'll need a document of some kind. then, in order to educate players as to which rules you're keeping and which you're changing, you almost end up needing to rewrite the entire rulebook to some degree. 

thus, for every campaign there's the potential for a modified rulset to take shape. since GMs spend so much time tinkering with their stuff they get attached to it, make it wanna look nice, and before you know it they've put enough work in that, heck, i might as well put it out there.

the reason there's so few adventure modules, comparatively, is that at table play tends to be a mix of published stuff, original content, and heavily edited published stuff, stuff copied from elsewhere and spliced in. most people's games are pretty ad hoc compared to their carefully articulated rulesets, they take poor notes on what happened in the game, and their keying structure is often just what they need to run the game.

so then you have it people don't release as much of their adventure material. they crossbreed other people's content with their own gibberish and slop, and so it requires much more work to go back and replace all the recycled material with OC so people don't call you a thief 

of course, you could just take honor in being a thief and publish it anyway, hint hint. don't try to make money off it. just make it zines and fan work. this is a hobby, after all 

I'm not gonna lie, i really like the idea of skill systems for taking some of the weight off. i explain what that means below. Morrowind has a nice skill system, as does Worlds Without Number. What would happen if we mixed these things with my two favorite systems, OD&D and Knave? I'll be tinkering with these ideas over the next couple seasons.

=====

Attributes

Roll 3d6 for Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma

score (adj)

3 (-2)

4-7 (- 1)

8-13 (+0)

14-17( +1)

18 (+2)

Strength - Adjusts melee attacks, used for feats of strength.

Dexterity - Ranged attacks, speed, agility, reflexes

Constitution - Used to resist poison, illness, exposure. You can carry 1.5x this many slots. You can survive this many days without food.

Intelligence - You start with Int/5 languages. Languages include elements of cultural familiarity. Occultists start with Int bonus +1 spells

Wisdom - insight into karmic vicissitudes, intuition, ability to deal with spirits appropriately.

Charisma - Affability, charm, wit, leadership. Adjusts reaction rolls. You can have half your Charisma in followers.

Attribute adjustment

You may subtract 2 points from one attribute to add 1 to another.

Saving Throws

Fortitude - overcoming with strength, effort, endurance. Adjusted by the better of Strength and Constitution.

Reflex - overcoming with agility, dexterity, reflexes. Adjusted by the better of Dexterity and Charisma.

Warding - overcoming with spirituality, intelligence, esoteric science. Adjusted by the better of Intelligence and Wisdom.

Each saving throw starts at 15, adding or subtracting your best attribute adjustment for each. To make a successful save, throw d20 Equal or Over the relevant saving throw. Each level you can distribute 3 points between saving throws.

At level 2 Maghada the Wise distributes 3 points between her saving throws. Her saves are Fort 14 Reflex 15 Warding 16. She puts 2 points into Fort, reducing it to 12, and one point into Warding, reducing it to 15.

Skill System

Difficulty

Rating

Easy

7

Average

9

Difficult

11

Impossible

13

Roll 2d6 + Attribute + Skill Level

Without the appropriate skill some things are impossible, like casting magic. Other things you can still attempt, like Riding a horse in difficult conditions, but incur a -1 penalty when it's clear none of your skills or backgrounds fit the situation. Further penalties and bonuses can be applied for careful planning, appropriate or inappropriate equipment, less than ideal environments, timing, etc. this is worked out via conversation between players and GM.

Lots of people groan about skills in OSR games, so I’ve never tried using them. This system is lifted straight out of WWN. I’m wondering if it’ll take some of the guesswork out of dealing with niche situations and coming up with, and remembering, new rulings for every case. This way I can just assign a difficulty, we pick out which skill and attribute makes the most sense, and throw. In some cases, like Sneak, Speech, Perception, they’ll be rolled behind the scenes so you don’t know when you’ve failed. In some cases, different skills with both fit the situation and we’ll all have to figure out what makes the most sense. Shrug. That’s the game. If it sucks we can throw it out.

Skill List

Administer - Running an organization, handling bureaucracy, performing scribal duties, identifying incompetent or treacherous workers, analyzing records or archives. Handling anything an executive or middle manager would do.

Alchemy - Treat wounds, cure diseases, neutralize poisons, diagnose problems of body and mind. Produce potions and poisons using alchemical ingredients.

Athletics - Run, Climb, Swim, Jump, Labor for long periods. Strength, Stamina, Coordination.

Combat - Knowing the art of war, being skilled in hand-to-hand combat. Added to attack rolls. each time you take combat you put a point into blades, axes, polearms, or clubs. Warrior-types like Nomad Blades get two-for-one when they spend points in Combat.

Connect - Finding people who are useful to your purposes, know who to talk to for favors or services, calling on help or resources of an organization you belong to. Covers ability to find people you need, though convincing them to help may require more.

Craft - Craft or repair items / technology appropriate to PC’s background. GM is within their rights to prevent PC from building complex things outside their background and experience.

Dharma - Understand the fundamental cosmic underpinnings of the world, perform clerical and ritual duties, familiarity with daemons, saints, and taboos, identify iconography, understand local faiths and religious hierarchies.

Language - Speak and write in a language, understand the culture and context of native speakers.

Leadership - Inspire others to follow you and believe in your plans and goals. Manage subordinates, encourage loyalty and motivation. A successful skillcheck can prevent morale decay and route of followers.

Lore - Know matters of history, geography, natural science, zoology, and other academic fields appropriate to a scholar. Some might specialize in a specific field, otters may have a broad range of understanding.

Magic - Cast or analyze magic, know things about famous magicians or magical events. non-occultists with this only obtain intellectual benefits. there's like d8 schools of magic and you have to spend skill points for each style.

Marksman - Firing a crossbow, maintaining ranged weapons. primitive, black powder, hurlant.

Mercantile - Running a successful business, buying/selling, identifying the worth of goods/treasures, dealing with merchants, finding blackmarket, knowing smuggling law

Perception - Identify ambushes, hear distant sounds, notice small details or concealed objects, find secret doors or traps. Frequently rolled secretly as a result of PC actions.

Perform - Sing, dance, orate, perform impressively for an audience. Compose music, plays, writings, or other performance arts. Most have a field they specialize in, though polymaths may exist if PC’s background is appropriate.

Profession - Pick some mundane workaday job thing you did in your past life. Bricklaying, Blacksmith, Incense Roller, Midwife, Well Digger, whatever. Make something up or I’ll get a list.

Ride - Handling riding animals and beasts of burden, driving carts / wagons, carriage repair, judging a good horse, shoeing.

Sail - Sail or reair ship, build small craft, navigate by stars, read sea weather, manage sailors.

Speechcraft - Persuade a listener. The more implausible or repugnant the claim, the more difficult. How they act on their new conviction is up to them and their motivations, not always predictable.

Stealth - Moving silently, hiding in shadows, picking pockets, disguise, pick locks, defeat small mechanisms. Hack security bots?

Survival - hunt, fish, navigate by the stars, deal with environment, identify plants / wildlife, craft survive tools and shelter.

Technology - familiarity with hyper-advanced technology from bygone ages. may be able to identify, use, or even repair ancient relics.

Unarmed - Fighting unarmed. Pugilism, grappling.

The Use of Skills

 The function of skills is intentionally loose and open to interpretation. some of them overlap with each other to cover different bases. for instance, a character with lore and one with technology may both be able to identify an alien artifact, but the character with technology may have better odds since the specifics align more closely with his domain. on the flip side, a character with lore+4 may have better odds than a character with tech+1 for identification, history, and source of said object, but likely wouldn't know how to use or repair it, as lore is considered of a more scholarly than practical knowledge. 

Skills are intended to aid in making more consistent rulings and support diegetic play, rather than act as strict rules or replace at-table discussion. The GM is encouraged to pick the closest option and move on rather than stick a player with a -1 penalty for not having the right skill.

D20 Background (will flesh these out later)

1

Artisan

blacksmith, tanner, carpenter

2

Barbarian

savage, hermit, wildman

3

Carter

hauling goods, riding post

4

Courtesan

prostitute, geisha

5

Criminal

thief, conman, burglar

6

Hunter

trapper, recluse

7

Laborer

skilled or unskilled worker

8

Merchant

trader, peddler, shopkeeper

9

Noble

spare son, exile, black sheep

10

Nomad

raider, tribal wanderer

11

Peasant

Peasant farmer, rural laborer, serf

12

Performer

bard, dancer, singer

13

Physician

village healer, chirurgeon

14

Priest

monk, ascetic, holy hermit

15

Sailor

bargeman, fisherman, pirate

16

Scholar

Scholar sage, mage’s apprentice

17

Slave

indentured laborer, runaway

18

Soldier

bandit, mercenary, guardsman

19

Thug

ruffian, gang member, village bully

20

Wanderer

exile, explorer, traveler

though a few interesting details are nice, long character back stories are discouraged.at most a quick paragraph in broad strokes is plenty. if you need an exact number keep it at 5 sentences or less.

 the game is about facing difficult dilemmas, making the best of bad situations - more about how our values come into conflict with reality, and how the goals we achieve in the end often aren't the ones we set out after. How you change, and the world changes with you, for better or worse.

karma

a character's karma can be chaotic, neutral, or lawful. how this is interpreted is up to the player. karma has background mechanics invisible to the players which affects various situations. it's possible a PC's karma can change enough to warrant a shift in alignment, though this will likely be rare and you'll never be held accountable for sticking to an alignment designation - you're always free to change your ways at any moment. if you're unsure, just pick neutral.

Leveling up

all classes use the same XP progression. prime requisites offer extra features and better abilities rather than XP adjustments.

PCs earn XP by defeating enemies, showing mercy, upholding difficult vows, finding clever ways around obstacles, recovering valuable treasures, completing quests, restoring shrines, purifying corrupted areas, and making personal sacrifices for the benefit of strangers. 

100xp is average, though it can be more depending on the potency. XP is awarded at the end of the session. this is less about playing to your particular character concept and more about making meaningful decisions and development as a person in the world. don't ask “what would my character do?” ask “what would *I* do?”

1g = 10xp

treasure and XP is split between the entire party, including henchmen who each take a 1/2 share for themselves first, the rest divided between the players. some henchmen may make additional demands according to their personality, karma, and morale. henchmen tend to be scrupulous and may behave unreasonably if they feel cheated.

an easy way to figure this is to divide the treasure by twice the number of total people in the pot (PCs+henchmen) to get the value of a half share. multiply it by the number of hechmen to get their earnings, which is subtracted from the total pot. the remainder is divided evenly by players.

a party of 3 PCs and 5 henchmen loot 200g.

200 divided by 16 = a half share of 12.5. times 5 henchmen is 62.5 total paid to the henchmen

the remaining 137.5 is divided between the players for 45.8g each.

if you wanted henchmen to get a third share instead you could multiply the total number of party members by three and divide the treasure by that to get the henchman's share.

i used to avoid doing this because i thought math was scary, but it's a lot of fun to imagine the hechmen’s greedy faces, sticking out their tongues and rubbing their hands together, as they eagerly wait on the PC that can actually do basic math to divide the treasure.

thinking about separating class types into warrior, magician, specialist, or adventurer types, allowing them to get two-for-one when they put points in appropriate skills.

OR maybe they pick major, minor, and misc skills like in Morrowind.

whatever will be fastest. 

I'll probably come back and add some art later.

ruislip dissected

lol I did all this work for nothing, Luke already posted his hexfilling procedures on his blog go look at them and use them they're wonderful

I dissected the Ruislip demo of Luke Gearing's Wolves upon the Coast game to see what I could learn. I like the way the keys are written. It feels to me like it could have been generated using dice and random tables from something like OD&D, then fleshed out. I'm kind of enamored with the idea of randomly generating hexmap content, then going back and forming connection and loose reasons for things to be, and adding unstable situations for players to mess with.

the Ruislip map has about 46 hexes. Of that 27 are keyed (58.6%), 19 are empty (41.3%)

There's 9 towns (19.5%), 13 lairs (28.26%), and 5 set pieces (10.8%).

I'm counting a town as a mostly friendly place the players will come back to for rest, quests, equipment, resources. Lairs are places that are inhabited by enemies. Usually this means monsters, but I've included a few pagan settlements where they're acting like jerks and probably gonna be violent to the PCs. One of the lairs could also be used as a monster town if the PCs play their cards right. Set pieces are the other things - interesting locations with something to interact with that may or may not have treasure.

• You could get pretty close to those odds by by throwing a d6: 1 is a town, 2-3 is a lair, 4 is a set-piece, 5-6 is nothing (empty).

The Lairs are mostly one monster type. A few of them have 2 or 3 monster types. Some lairs have no treasure at all, but none of the sites have bullshit treasure (except the whale is a little bullshit, but it's a set-piece). None of the locations are really your typical dungeon delve where the players are crawling through a trap-infested pit, fighting different kinds of monsters and interacting with monster factions. The Orc and Goblin lairs come the closest to this, but those would be more heist-type or kill-em-all or deal-with-the-faction scenarios, not crawls. It's a classic 1975-style hexcrawl campaign, where the focus was on overland exploration and picaresque shenanigans Vs. traditional dungeon crawling.

of the 9 friendly human settlements 6 are villages (have less than 100 people) and 3 are towns (have people in the several hundreds). If you get a friendly settlement throw a d6, on 1-4 it's a village, 5-6 is a town.

It looks like village population was thrown on a d00 and town populations were d10x100.

Villages tended to have a higher combatant to villager ratio, around 24-30% of the population for each being soldiers.

Towns had comparatively smaller populations of combatants, about 12-15%, but they generally have fortifications.

Here's my notes on the hex keys:

02.05 Dunrick (set piece)
weird plant thing makes people sleep. turns them into wraiths

05.05 shoal (lair)
griffon nest, attacking griffon mama

01.16 burnt village (set piece)
a destroyed village with nothing

02.16 lair of sruthkin (lair)
dragon lair, treasure

03.07 ogre house (lair)
ogre lair, treasure

04.07 beached whale (set piece)
beached whale, some treasure

01.08 runestones (set piece)
fancy rocks with words

02.08 stamullen (town)
79 people, 15 skirmishers (18% combatants)
weird bee town with pagan influences. a situation to get involved in. a druid you could befriend and learn some spells from.

04.08 culemwardern (town)
600 houses, 40 footmen, 50 skirmishers, boats (15% combantants)
a situation involving griffons. druid influences, a few characters and their relationships

05.08 cloyne (town)
58 people, 19 skirmishers, 5 fishing boats (32% combatants)
pagan town, some situations

01.09 manticore cave (lair)
cool manticore lair and interesting situation, treasure

03.09 donenashoe (lair / monster town)
juggernaut, medusa, 198 goblins, some ruins and treasures.

05.09 belcarra (town / lair)
99 people, 80 footmen (80% combatants)
unpredictable pagan town

06.09 bitter druid (lair)
evil wizard lair, treasure

01.10 dorbog (town)
800 people, 50 armored foot, 50 skirmishers, boats (12% combatant)
some characters, leader, druids, situations, relations to other hexes, henchies

03.10 awoken king (lair)
mummy lair, a time-sensitive situation, treasure

05.10 stone circle (lair)
evil pagan wizard faction, spells and treasure to be had, a situation, a thread to some other hex and situation

06.10 pirates (lair)
pirates, a faction, some treasure

02.11 ogonnelloe (town)
80 people 24 skirmishers (24% combatant)
ruined fort, town, characters, a time-sensitive situation, a werewolf,

03.11 orc fort (lair)
80 orcs, orcs in vats, a fortification, treasure

01.12 st olham's monastary (town)
only monastary 96 monks, a faction, treasure, resource for PCs: sages / library

03.12 a dog (set piece)
cool a dog

05.12 blulach (town)
1000 people 20 armored foot 40 foot 60 skirmishers 20 horsemen boats (14% combatant)
fortification, market, alehouse, church, docks, characters with goals, relations to other hexes, quests, henchies, horse stables

06.12 barrows (lair)
ruined camp, hidden lair, wraith, zombies, treasure

02.13 nameless hemlet (lair)
abandoned town, merfolk, no treasure

04.13 gargoyles (lair)
gargoyles, no treasure, relations to other hexes

04.14 killucan (town)
43 people 5 foot 5 skirmishers 5 boats (23% combatant)
cattle town, fishing, a situation, relation to other hex, a mystery

dungeon generator

d20 rooms split between d4 floors. Alternatively you got d6 floors with d8 rooms each.

You can expand a dungeon easily but it's hard to fill a dungeon that's too big when you run out of ideas. Start small and don't use up all your ideas in one place.

For each floor take as many random dice shapes as you need rooms and drop em on grid paper. Draw a room around each die. The numbers can be influence size, shape, and/or exits. Even numbers mean empty (no monsters) odd means a monster inhabitant.

Next, connect the rooms. I let the points on the die, the number facing, the orientation to other dice, and my own whim dictate the direction and angularity of the corridors. Remove each die as you finish drawing the connections, marking rooms that have monsters with some sign 

Look at what you have so far. Are there any choke points, issues, improvements, or features or ideas that jump out? Write down all your impressions stream of consciousness on a separate sheet of paper. Make any adjustments to dungeon layout now.

If you had any ideas for room keys start writing them. You can be verbose if you like but try to trim them down to a few sentences max as you continue iterating. Forget worrying about being good or fun at the table, just have fun right now.

Remember the golden rule: quit and come back if it stops being fun.

TIP: set yourself a timer, say 15-20 minutes. Try to finish a whole floor before the timer ends. If you stop and you still have some ideas going just let it be and come back to it. You'll jump back into the flow quicker next time. If you run out of time just erase the extra rooms or fill them with monsters, statues, collapsed columns, furniture, mushrooms, robot parts, bottomless pits, and rivers of acid.

Theme

The organizing idea of a dungeon is the theme. Each dungeon should have a principal theme, and each floor could have a variation of that theme. You may or may not have an initial theme at this point. If not, roll on the spark table below for ideas. To make a variation roll on one or both spark tables again and smash the result with the previous theme.

#rolled | element 1 | element 2

1. | Military | Fire

2. | Famine/plague | Earth

3. | Graveyard | Water

4. | Factory | Forest

5. | Experiments| Sky

6. | Grandeur | Galactic

7. | Melancholia | Caves

8. | Medicine | Hollow

9. | Forlorn hope | Swamp

10. | Crystal | Vapor

11. | Ancient Magic | Conjoined

12. | Solitude | Stone

13. | Primordial | Poison

14. | Prison | Building

15. | Beasts | Withering

16. | Weather | Knowledge

17. | Machines | Mutated

18. | Mushrooms | Hidden

19. | Precipices| Separated

20. | Hallowed | Organs

Filling the rooms

For each monster room, roll a monster.

For each empty room, roll for contents:

1-2. Really empty

3. Really empty, with treasure

4-5. Trick/Trap/Obstacle

6. Trick/Trap/Obstacle, with treasure

Decide on the contents, whether it's random bric a brac or traps, based on the theme. Here's another spark table for room contents. You can throw on the first table once for a simple usage, twice for a "what was it originally? what was it now?", the same on the second table for more ephemeral ideas, or combine the two and even mix with the first table to go really far out. The second table is good for trap effects.

It can help to take the spark you roll and free-associate some names based on it, and use that to get an idea for the room. Example: for "Abandoned Drift" in a dungeon whose theme is "Melancholia Poison" you could call the room "Prison of Oaks" "Void distemper" "Revolving catastrophe" "Slime warren" "Ocean of Dreams". You might roll one more spark element to help break a block, but avoid rolling on the tables a bunch of times.. all the extra detritus just muddies the waters.

Remember to just take a break if you feel a serious block coming. Many times if you quit before the ideas stop all together it'll start flowing again more quickly.

Try to keep a description of the room itself to a single sentence! Remember that 15 minute timer? You might be the kind of person that shuts down when the pressure is on. It can help you as a person to practice working through those feelings.

Oh, sorry, did you think this blog was only about d&d? Haha.

Sorry, here's that table:

#rolled | element 1 | element 2

1. | Barracks | Gravity

2. | Apothecary | Vaporized

3. | Workshop | Evoke

4. | Ballroom | Decrepit

5. | Leisure | Drift

6. | Jail | Sewage 

7. | Library | Crushed

8. | Storage | Ransacked

9. | Judicial | Overrun

10. | Foyer | Sealed

11. | Refectory | Unstable 

12. | Office | Split

13. | Clinic | Contaminated

14. | Atrium | Buried

15. | Agriculture | Dissolved

16. | Disposal | Deluge

17. | Mine | Torched

18. | Abandoned | Forgotten

19. | Mistake| Mistake

20. | Economy | Temporary

If there's rooms containing monsters next to each other consider making them a faction or at least allies. Decide what they're doing in the room and what nearby rooms they know about/have influence over. Give them things they want, as well as problems and enemies. A single room entry might look like this:

Room 6 - Prison of Oaks 

12 blind mushy mushroom men make out with rotting trees growing thru cracks in walls, fed by a continuous light cast on a brass idol of a monkey. The monkey idol is burning hot to the touch. The mushroom men are drowsy/drunken and barely hostile to interrupters. In the middle of each is a blue crystal worth 50 gp.

Once you get the first draft done go over it again, see if any new ideas come up. Next, cut out stuff you hate. Don't be afraid to just leave some rooms totally empty. Add some locked or secret doors, extra corridors, dead ends, more dangerous obstacles, weird effects, highways that connect disparate sections, flooded or caved in areas, alternate entrances, and elevators/stairs/chutes that skip whole floors forming shortcuts.

How much treasure should you put in? Here's my formula:

( Number of expected players * dungeon floor * 2000 + 20% )

I rarely though sometimes make treasure in the form of coins and gems, though that can have some great old school flavor. Mostly it's furniture, weird junk, or pseudo magical junk that players often walk right past.

Half of it is in monster possession, half of what remains is hidden where nobody would look, and the rest is just laying around under/in stuff, or is heavy or bolted down.

Oh yeah last thing make a d6 or d8 encounter table for each floor. You might save deciding what monsters to use until you get your table, or draw the monsters in the table from what you already keyed, or pick totally new monsters for the encounters. I like my encounter tables to have one or two entries from main dungeon factions, then the rest be unique encounters.

The rules for making monsters in Worlds Without Number is great for when you're feeling dumb. Actually WWN is just great.

(PS All art is made by AI because I'm lazy as fuck)

How to start adventuring

 Draw a map. Use whatever format inspires you the most. I like the freedom of a blank sheet of printer paper and a nice mechanical pencil, or thick sketchbook paper and micron pens. Let the ideas flow as you go. If you get stuck quit and go do something else.

Once you've got your map pick the place the players will start. Choose 4 nearby locations to be important.

Who lives there? What do they want/need? What are they afraid of? What's something that makes them different from their neighbors?

Write 3 sentences for 3 different settlements. They can be human trade down, elven bastions, evil war-barons, or a city of zombies leftover from the demon wars who are just trying their best to mimic their old way of life. 

Whatever you do, avoid the temptation to be good, to write something others would enjoy, or to make something that would bring you accolades. If you catch yourself thinking at any point "that's not good enough, so-and-so on that blog said ideas like this are stupid" or "if I bought this product on drivethru would I be disappointed?" just stop and go do something else. Take a shower, drink some water, go for a walk.

Throw a d6, make that many adventure locations. Every location needs:

- a physical thing marking the location

- something valuable

- something dangerous

- a trick

- a living or non-living being to befriend

- a connection to something else on the map

Draw a map if you feel inspired, or make a diarama out of clay, or make a playlist on Spotify.

At this point put everything down and go watch a movie like Secret of Nimh, the Bakshi LoTR movies, or Castle in the Sky. Go for a walk in the woods, or sit at the subway and people watch.

Come back, doodle more. Eventually work your way toward a dungeon. For inspiration go play NES Zelda, Castlevania, Metroid, or Dragon Warrior.

Make a dungeon of 20 rooms. It should have:

- 8 empty rooms

- 5 rooms with monsters

- 4 traps

- 8000 gp worth of treasure, broken up into chunks and scattered randomly (2000, 1000, 1000, 500, 500, 500, 500, 250, 250, 250, 250, and the last 1000 in small change tucked in little places or in the form of cutlery)

- 3 things that aren't traps that are obstacles and only potentially dangerous (if you can't imagine what that looks like go for a walk by the train tracks, sewers, river, docks, or junk yard)

Play some D&D. Start the players at the dungeon. Run them on it. Let them decide what they want to do. If they seem stuck give them two options. Don't be afraid to wait. Take notes.

Afterwards start making connections between everything seen, said, done, talked to, heard about. Go forth and prosper.

Orcs are Larva

 If you are working and cut your finger and instead of healing that small cut goes sour and you lose that finger we say it was the work of orcu. Barrow blighters. They are the counter part the mockery of men. Where men relish the sunshine and fresh air they only know cold and damp and dark and cruelty. They live in tribes like our peoples, but know neither chieftain nor council, instead 

they wrestle amongst each other perpetually, those who can't defend themselves die, they would rather leave their wounded sick and old. Occasionally one especially strong and cruel orcu is able to whip together a few tribes in to a bloodlust to raid settlements for food or slaves or iron, the on only thing they hate more than each other is creatures which go about in the day.

Speak an archaic version of black tongue which consists only of curses, orders, and words for constructing poisons and their cruel machines of war...they know only nothing of healing or agriculture, but are clever at building cruel machines that belch smoke and dig their slimy wormtunnels deep in the earth, building with stone, of diverting water and toppling fortress walls from below, and laying cruel traps that maim instead of kill, of chains and tools and black vicious blades, they make a crude pig iron, soft so that it bends, or hard as diamond so that it shatters leaving razors in the wound. They do nothing themselves but capture slaves to work for them, preferring to manage and oversee and devise and demand. Dwarves they make overseers, if they don't eat them instead, humans they like for drudge work, no elf has ever been taken a slave for they waste and die within days if placed in chains or locked away.

PLANETOID OF DESPOTISM

 Post-progress society

Three biomes: rocky desert, jungle, tundra.

Choose a planetoid as location. One like Ceres is good.

Planets orbit swings around wildly, with the weakened sun careening through the sky senselessly.

Seasons in chaos, asteroid rain, occasional blow-outs of transdimensional energy resulting from

AI government organized by nanobots keeps humanity from developing tools that could destroy life. Steel minds governed by invariable oath of ahimsa, their hubs spread about the world. Worshiped as wizard-gods in a number of fragmented religions and petty folklore, as the purpose of the millions of minute changes their ectoplasmic sentience effects upon the biome of the dwindling planet is beyond the rudimentary calculations of the human mind. The result of these changes is often in line with the ultimate beneficence to the remaining dregs of humanity as the terrible inhospitality of the barely terraformed micro-planet forces the AIs into an endless series of micro-corrections resembling mercurial inhumanity.

A certain allotment of food is provided from deposit cylinders and most menial labor is performed entirely by robots, nanobot liquiforms, mutants, or voluntarily by humans to have something to do

Shelterpods for living are mostly uncomfortable dumps but free

Free clothing is thermal skintight nano-webbing of various colors. Many wear it under flashier handmade clothes.

 carefully calibrated happiness-to-destruction quotient maintains karmic equilibrium to maximize free time and minimize suffering. nanobot web attempts to maintain its own neutral karma through minimum contamination and efficient use of resources

The basics are provided to all and work is unnecessary unless one chooses to do so. Some gather together in philosophical communes, or spend their lives playing complex social games. Most choose to live simple, minimalist lives tending pleasure-gardens, reading dusty tomes, developing skills, being quiet and contemplative.

A small number live as adventurers. These are the people who would be sociopaths, despots, politicians, capitalists, and generals of our world. Since nobody buys their shit they roam around fucking each other over, causing mayhem, and being chased from calm harmless villages.

An insignificant fraction dedicate them to uncovering the mysteries and histories of the planet. They live in far-flung reaches hiding from the wizard government.

'

Most acute wounds can be cured by healing machines, which reside in temples presided over by priests. Various geases on behalf of their philosophy are required for service. Sometimes they re-construct your body & put you into service as payment. Viral/bacterial disease infections are viewed as necessary for evolution and immune-system training is a common practice. people undertake diseases voluntarily in order to perpetuate evolution and reduce negative karma for others.

Advanced tech lies around everywhere, but the origin and understanding of it is non existent except by the wizards (AI government) or sorcerers (human scientists).

Micro-cults are everywhere, everybody believes something different. wars are fought as sport.

Humans tend to keep their population small. Childbirth is considered holy and women are respected as priestesses.

Style-guide:

How something works is never really explained, or there's a bunch of competing explanations. All this tech is seen from the eyes of an ignorant simpleton. No infodumps.

All paragraphs are 4 sentences or less.

No descriptions. Everything is in terms of verbs and adjectives.

Nothing is what it appears to be.

Weird cultures:

Sherpanthwe believe it is their goal to lead others across the lands, extremely great guides, goal is to die in an adventure

Orfichiums replace all parts of their body with live snakes

Zur-dir men beetle helmets, extremely buff, sexless, hosts for brains in jars

Haltzagog vicious little gray men with slight luck bending. Liver prized as immuno-builder, second brain prized for temporary esp and powerful hallucinations

Most animals are humans genetically modified beyond recognition to replace the desolate ecosystems.

 

Max Bedulenko

 

on acid

death to catcallers circa turn of the century?

humans are ghosts grown from meat. eventually the meat breaks and the ghost disappears again.


i can't get over how accurate this cartoon depictions of an acid trip is.the emotional character of it, anyway. the last acid trip i took i remember laying back in my sleeping bag and mistaking the light of the moon through the tree tops for a fractal which extends through all reality connecting my consciousness with the infinite godhead. i thought i was dead, and the sounds of the bugs chirping in the trees was reality rubbing against itself.

i got pretty freaked out. i didn't like being dead-but-still conscious. i was afraid that 'this was it and that i'd be stuck here until my 'mind' broke and splintered itself into infinite smaller pieces, returning me to a conscious 'being'--because the perspective we view from our peepholes is a lie, and all things are ultimately part of the same whole--the universe.

eventually my friend (called trashcan) came and smoked some weed with me. eventually i was able to chill out. it's hard to sleep when you're tripping, but eventually i did.

that was the hardest i had ever tripped, but not the best trip i had ever had. never before had i experienced such helplessness on lsd. i've experienced it on weed, and i've experienced it on dmt.

cartoon interpretations of drug use is an interesting concept, and they rarely get it right. for hallucinogens, in my experience, the drug happens to you, it's not something you're involved with. there's no pink elephant leading you on a magical journey, it's more like everything takes on an extreme quality and you invent ideas to cope with it. doing strong drugs feels like being alone in the universe.

 it's strange. in the world i inhabit its very common for the average person to be familiar with most drugs. heroin, meth, acid, mushrooms, coke make daily cameos in some form or another. yet media depictions of drugs are typically wrong, indicating the average american is unfamiliar with them.

even within the same culture lifestyles can be so completely different. to think that there are adults out there with misconceptions about lsd, or even pot(!!) boggles my mind.

i guess there's always more things to learn. if you've never encountered it before there's no reason you should know about it. the internet hasn't been around long enough to assume the average person uses it to its full extent (learning). its only been around for a few decades and it's already starting to turn the way of tv. useless bullshit. but not really! just below the surface layer of corruptive garbage (social media) there lies the sum of human knowledge. how good we have it and don't even know!

social media feels like a black tentacle of evil ooze that latches onto people around me. suddenly the conversation disappears and everyone is grasped by the Eye. i can't complain too much, though. on the way home i realized i'm probably the most introverted person on the planet.

edit: i'm not sure if using the internet for learning is the fullest extent of its use, there are probably other practical uses, but it's the biggest one i most directly relate to.

squandered world

Smile of Hiroshima, Santiago Caruso

Throne of Chaos, Santiago Caruso

crumbling ashes of a mummified planet, forgotten about itself. drifting mounds of hills which curl and crash as waves on rocky strewn shoulders of dead titans, maws open teeth stench gurgling up from dank pits of their stomachs, from which infernal parasites creep. smoldering campfires left behind mimicking in tiny form the blackened ruins of villages, and if the weary gaze too long tiny memories of faded souls whimper from within.

nothing grows but black brambles and stunted weeds. place to place each drifts lazily into the sky, rubbish of tables and stone and broken bodies floating freely in paths sucked into the near white orb. no true humanity beneath the searching eyes of stars, only withered half-mutant camps clustered in dung hiding in shadows, half shelters, just roofs really, slapped together of tarps and rotten wood and scraps of rust-pocked metal, lonely among the constant dust storms,  there is no day, no night, only the faint drab light which trickles through inky dark.

strange technology and relics are sometimes dug up in the ashes, offering some faint senile help or hateful curse to those hopeless enough to tinker with it. hoarders with rotten teeth offer scraps of silk, dried meat, and embers nurtured to life in clay pots in return for cold obsidian necklaces etched with queer runes and knives which turn blood to fertile soil.

the last clutches of humanity fear to leave their tiny sanctuaries of tenuous life, for just beyond sight of home creep whispered rumors of child faces in the sand, worm puking skin blisters, hands in the night which stroke and soothe, insectile skittering, cannibal tendencies spreading like disease..

but some do, a few who can't stay and watch the pitiful last remains of human ilk fester. they wander, suicidally throwing themselves against the forces which dance. hunters who hope without to recapture some idea of what has happened, or to lash out in frustration against the wall of infinite unknowing.

ATTRIBUTES:
3d6 each, record score and mod
3:         -2
4-6:      -1
7-14:     0
15-17: +1
18:      +2

STR- violence, overpowering, hatred
CON- enduring, body, health
DEX- cleverness, agility, flexibility
WIS- awareness, connection, hope, pity

HP: hit dice add CON modifier, first level only.

FILTH: measure of incorporeal cosmic sin & degradation. constantly in flux. gained for a variety of things which stain the mind/body/soul. removed by purification. high amounts of filth cause mutations and strange effects. diabolists use filth as currency for their spells, others gain it as a result of dabbling in esoterica.
filth is mostly bad, but some good things can result from it. filth modifiers work according to this chart:
0-2: +/-0
3-5: +/-1
6-8: +/-2
9-11: +/-3
12-14: +/-4
15-17: +/-5
18: +/-6

when characters are told to gain filth roll 2d6: 6- +3 filth, 7-9 +2 filth, 10-11 +1 filth, 12 no filth
filth starts at zero unless otherwise stated.

ARMOR CLASS: 9+DEX modifier+armor bonus

LEVEL UP:
buy a level by spending 12*lvl XP. (2nd costs 24XP, 3rd costs 36XP, 4th costs 48XP etc). Levels may not be skipped and only one level may be gained per session.

XP is gained by repaying favors, learning secrets, or extracting true names of things, which often come in the shape of strange trinkets buried deep in the catacombs which fill the soil, though sometimes they may be locked within the heads of people, or encoded in lost tales. The players search for these scraps of meaning which increases their connection to the dying world and feeds a growing hunger for more secrets.

Every hidden object, learned secret, repaid favor, or discovered true name has a die value (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, or d20) which is rolled with the thing is shared.

when leveling up:
-roll hit die and add value. CON mod is only added at the first level.
-roll d20 for each attribute, if it goes over score get +1 to that score.
-Choose: reduce filth to max of next lowest value, raise filth to lowest of next highest value.

CLASSES

Labyrinth Maker, Santiago Caruso

NOBLE- possibly the far flung descendants of elves, whose blood has mixed nearly out of existence, but in whom some faint glimmer of magick remains. Their bodies are bony and grey, spiderwebbed by pale blue veins, hair like spidersilk, teeth flat, eyes black. Their faces carry a shred of pride locked within a mask of emptiness.
They are waiters, whisperers, and watchers. The moon and sun have abandoned the earth but they name the dimly winking stars as the growing list of dead. Nobles have no shared culture or language, but stride from this land to that in search of a shadow which follows them. Nobles hide secret names and emblems to identify themselves. They know what comes next.

Gain: four minor knowledges of far away places, a crest symbolizing your purity.
If this symbol is lost corruption begins to spread through the blood and. Gain filth each day. Do not reduce. The day 18 filth is reached transform into horror absolute. The Noble is lost.


damage dice: d6
hit dice: d6

roll 3 dice on starting equipment. Select that item or an item to either side for each roll.

abilities:
-PURITY: So long as they have their crest any time a noble rolls gains filth, reduce filth by 1. when a noble sleeps subtract 1 filth from total.

-PSIONICS: all nobles develop some kind of psionic ability, for which they are feared and given consideration. all psionic abilities can be used once per day, per level, minus FILTH modifier (so a level 4 noble with 11 filth can only use their ability once, instead of 4 times)

roll 2d8

2. time well- (instant) psychically generates up to a man-sized depression in time-space anywhere within sight, increasing or decreasing the relative speed of things within it. Spend more casts to affect more/bigger things. The time well can be made to stick to a target or stay in one spot. Lasts d4*10+wis minutes
-hasted targets gains an extra attack, +1 ac, and +1 to dex rolls, and x2 movement speed.
-slowed targets can only move OR attack each turn, but not both, have -1 ac, -1 on dex rolls, and move at half their normal rates.

Can also be used to slow or speed up falling or moving things/peoples. A falling person can be made to float safely to the ground, a flying arrow's speed can be supercharged by passing through the time well, increasing its damage die size by one.

3-4. psychokinesis- (instant, range: 25') user can manipulate up to 10ibs*level of material with their mind, slowly pushing/pulling it, carrying it around, or hurling it with force. A platter carrying objects could be made to follow user. A hurled sling or arrow could be caught in midair and launched back. A knife could be flung from a table across the room. Fine-tuned movements require considerable concentration and time. It's much easier to drag something heavy or fling something light than say fit a key into a lock. If concentration is disrupted the power ends.

5. restore- (round) by meditating deeply the user can send tendrils of their life energy into the target via touch and sew wounds closed. Incredibly chilling and sickening feeling on part of recipient. remove 1 wound, lower a mangle 1 in severity. Poison or disease can be encapsulated in a polyp which is passed through the recipient's digestive tract.

Each 10 minutes of contact heals 1 point of damage up to user's level.
Removing poison or disease depends on extent of malignancy, from 30 minutes for a weak poison to several days for a life-threatening cancer.

6-7. quickstep- (instant) the geometries of space bend, all attacks have 50% chance to miss, 1 use point per turn this ability is maintained. user can also spend a point to instantly step up to half their movement speed in any direction (can go over any gaps between, even up onto ledges, but not through solid walls).

8-9. command- (action) in a booming voice with a character and pride unfamiliar to this world the user makes a single command of one capable of language. The hearer makes a saving throw (the type is dependent on their disposition to the user) or is forced to complete the action to the best of their ability, even against their own will.

10-11. psychic invasion- (round, range 30') user inserts a section of their consciousness into a target's mind, from this position they can shut down their target's senses and attempt to take over their body. target. (the target gets a saving throw to resist). during this time neither user nor target may take no other actions. roll d6 to determine effect. add +1 to roll for each consecutive turn spent inside target's mind.

if target dies some way other than by the effect of the user's psychic invasion user must make saving throw vs death or have their own mind split in two, rendering them in a coma until their mind is restored.

1-3. bind. both target and user may take no other actions as their minds wrestle for control.
4-5. shut down sense. target loses one random sense for d6 turns.
6-8. psychic torture. inflict d6 psychic damage to WIS
9. coma. target drops unconscious for d6 turns.

12. erase memory; (instant) the noble's eyes pierce the target's veil, scorching away all memories from the current day. Target falls unconscious for ten minutes as their mind attempts to restart.

13. sever motor function, (instant) target's motor function is severely inhibited and must make a saving throw at -2 to perform any action including walking and talking. A failed throw means the target collapses in a heap of flailing limbs and gibberish.

14. seed of the wretch, after a lengthy spiraling convoluted conversation which hints at secrets shared between user and target, a noble may leave a fragment inside target's mind. target gains 1 filth each day until death occurs or seed is removed.

15. take control, user gains control of target's mind for d6+target HD hours and can control their body, mind, and memories the way they control their own. the user's consciousness is effectively duplicated in the target's body. each hour the target is allowed to make another attempt to regain control of their body. after the allotted time, if the target has not regained control, their mind is erased and permanently replaced with a copy of user's.
this clone of the user is able to form their own memories from this point on, and their personality, filth score, and experiences may diverge as necessary. during the first year of life the player may control the copy exactly as they control their original character.
after the first year the copy rolls a loyalty score like a normal henchman.
after that the copy makes loyalty checks like a normal henchman, and may eventually desert or betray the original.
both minds do not share thoughts, but are capable of detecting the presence and direction of their 'other' if they are within ten miles of each other.

16. sever life, target saves vs. death or dies.

HERMIT-

wandering wasteland ascetics whose perpetual self-harm brings them closer to the muttering madness of a lost god. Hermits seek enlightenment through union with a personal crawling void. In wonderings they seek the dissolution of frailty, in obsequence the restoration of life. They dwell quietly in the virtue of pity and make piteous all things around them, so to bring forth joy. The total abandon of hope may yet awaken a strength beyond loss.

maintaining a deep connection with the gibbering of their god(s) is of utmost importance to a hermit. they are compelled to enact all demands whether real or false which they glean from the understanding of this gibbering. for this reason many consider hermits to be both sources of all knowledge and truth, and deluded, dangerous heretics.

damage dice: d4
hit dice: d6

roll 2 dice on starting equipment

abilities:
-FLAGELLANT: once/day, hermits may spend a number of health through lashing, burning, cutting, strangling, or other self-destructive methods, to remove that many filth from anybody (including themselves). hermits may spend 5hp to remove curses, afflictions (poison, blindness..), 1 point of attribute loss, or other effects as curse diseases.

-REPENTANT: through an act of deep prayer and meditation a hermit may beseech their god(s) to bestow healing life-force upon any wounded. spend 1-for-1 filth to increase anybody's hp. spend 4 filth to reduce a mangling by 1 severity level, or to erase 1 wound.

-COMMUNION: once/day a hermit can enter a state of deep meditation for d6 hours, in which they become completely numb to all outside stimuli and have a natural ac of 13. during this time the hermit may listen to the gibbering voice of their god(s) for any helpful information. ask what you want to know.
(GMs should ask questions as the god to understand the meaning and context of the query but give only one answer of vague images, shapes, and sensual impressions)

-PIETY: whilst a hermit maintains a STARVING condition they gain a number of tokens equal to the days they have been STARVING. these tokens can be spent to heal d6hp on any target (including themselves). casting this healing takes only minutes. upon eating any nourishment a hermit loses all unspent tokens. Tokens may also be spent to prevent incoming damage on self or ally within sight.

EMBITTERED
Guilt-ridden brooding cyclopses and maneaters torn between a thirst for flesh and a need for solitude and peace. The Embittered seek low dark lonely places to gaze deeply at the question of suffering, but their dwellings are often foiled by the intrusions of others. The Embittered use their bulk to lash out violently against perceived threats. They feel no pain of the flesh. They explore the tunnels in the earth searching for reprise and thus know some of its shallower secrets.

In their search for respite and freedom the Embittered sometimes happen upon a band of wanderers and follow them for weeks, observing them from afar to learn the ways of other folk. In time the Embittered may join the group as a bodyguard or watcher. They never seem to sleep, only gaze.


damage die: d8
hit dice: d12

roll 1 die on Starting Equipment.

abilities:
-STRANGLING GRIP: If wounded either physically or emotionally by a smaller creature the Embittered may enter a rage once per day. During this rage the Embittered may scoop up their victim and begin strangling the life from it. The victim must pass a CON save each round or have their windpipe crushed. During this rage the victim is at the helpless mercy of the Embittered. the Embittered may not move or react to any other stimuli, only crush, but has +2 armor. The rage may end prematurely if the Embittered suffers damage equal to half its max HP. After such an episode the Embittered falls into a dark depression in which they may not speak. This depression may be ended with a Deep Gaze.

-WILD BLOWS: In combat, upon successfully killing a smaller foe in a single hit the Embittered must immediately make an additional attack upon another target at d12 damage. If that target is killed the Embittered must make another attack until a target is not instantly killed. If another target, either friend or foe, cannot be found the Embittered falls into a dark depression in which they may not speak. This depression may be ended with a Deep Gaze.


-DEEP GAZE: the Embittered may deeply gaze for an hour at anything thing, or upon any subject, inner or outer. At the end of this gaze the Embittered receives a single word which contains the meaning, purpose, nature, value, or property of the thing gazed upon. After this the Embittered is considered to know the subject and in the future the subject may whisper further sympathies.

If the subject of the Deep Gaze is a small harmless animal that animal may become a companion to the Embittered. This companion is psychically linked to the Embittered and they share each other's pain. The companion may act on the Embittered's behalf, transmit thoughts to them, and nurture each other. If the companion is killed the Embittered loses one HD max HP and falls into a dark depression in which they may not speak. This depression may be ended with a Deep Gaze but the HP is lost forever.

-SILENT EMPATHY: If the Embittered sits and calmly strokes a dying creature as they pass from this realm they gain one empathy token. This empathy token may later be spent to lower a Mangling by one severity level, to prematurely halt a Wild Blows, or to calm an enraged person or creature. The Embittered may only have one empathy token at a time.

HARMONY

STARTING EQUIPMENT
The world is blasted and pock-marked by endless falling meteors. The vast oceans are lank and black and lifeless. All industry and creation has been abandoned. Nothing new is being made, except scrap halfheartedly mashed together to meet an immediate need. There is no concept such as money or bartering. Everyone has a thing they crave or yearn for and valuable objects are traded for favors and secrets.

accessory:
1. softly glowing shard, necklace
2. vial, weak acid
3. condensed, metal
4. vegetable/dessicated
5. frayed shirt
6. skullcap of dried fungus
7. tasteless sprout grit
8. two flint arrows
9. obsidian knife
10. tallow candle
11. small pouch, 3 pewter coins, different currencies
12. a chipped cup
13. a clay doll
14. tumor growth
15. one ruined eye
16. rotting teeth