Simple Firearms

 The concern about adding guns to d&d is that they tend to change the game the same way guns changed combat in real life; it's even more deadly than it was before and heavy armor is less useful. Combat skill is a little less useful as anyone can point and pull a trigger and kill.

I see these effects as reinforcing what makes old school d&d fun - deadly, unpredictable combat, focus on diegetic problem solving rather than relying on stats and abilities, weighing risk/reward before getting involved in combat, with the default being to avoid a fair fight at all costs.

There's lots of things to talk about when it comes to how to integrate firearms into your campaign, but I'm not doing that today. Instead I'm going to offer simple mechanics for handling firearms in the game. We can talk about the intricacies another time.

Primitive firearms

These include all ancient or early black powder guns, mini-canons, arquebuses, flintlocks, muskets, blunderbusses, and cap-and-powder pistols. These are probably the ones most refs will be willing to include because their primitive nature offers a fair number of counterbalancing drawbacks.

Looks like 4d6 damage to me.

First, these things take a long time to load. The kind of muskets used during the revolutionary war could get 2, maybe 3, shots off per minute, if you knew what you were doing. At 20 seconds reload time per shot that's about three rounds to reload, if you're using 6-second combat rounds. During that time you have to be standing still like a doofus.

As you can see in the above gif from Princess Mononoke, Lady Eboshi has peasant women busy loading rifles in preparation to hand to someone else to shoot. This is a good use of unskilled henchmen, like porters or torchbearers, and seems like something clever players might come up with to avoid the drawback of spending several rounds reloading to get one shot.

another alternative is what Blackbeard the pirate was famous for. Having a bunch of wheellock pistols lit in holsters all over your body. Just draw and fire. In WWN you can have half your strength score in readied items on your body. Leaving a slot for a melee weapon that gives the average player maybe 4-5 pistol shots. 

Difference between Firearms

The main difference between different styles of primitive firearms is power, accuracy, reload time, and how susceptible the weapon is to being ruined by water. 

First: water. If the gun gets wet it's ruined. In Princess Mononoke there's a scene where Lady Eboshi and her men fight off some giant wolves in a storm. They have the weapons wrapped in waxed/lacquered paper and large umbrellas to protect them from the elements. I'd rule that any steps like these would be effective. Maybe if the non-combatants holding the paper failed morale and fled the weapons would be ruined. Ruined could mean anything from the black powder being soaked, to the weapons needing to be cleaned or even taken apart in a safe, dry location.

As for Power, this really depends on your campaign. Compare to similar in-game effects. To my thinking d6 represents the ability of a weapon to kill a man in one blow - the average HD being a d6 (OD&D rules). Somebody 

For pistols I'd do 2d6 damage. Rifles are 3d6. Really heavy duty stuff is more, maybe 4, 5, or even 6d6 for stuff as powerful as a fireball spell: like mortars or cannons.

Of course, in real life people often don't die from a single gunshot wound, especially if it doesn't hit any vital organs. If healing magic is prevalent in your campaign you might even assume anybody who survives the combat is likely to make a full recovery. Some of your own guess work is required here to see what works for you and your players. 

Then there comes the problem of armor. Anyone familiar with the history of firearms is aware of the arms race between firearms and armor until the point at which it made more sense just to get rid of the armor all together. In world war 1 they started experimenting with metal plates woven into gambesons again, and eventually to modern times there are effective armors against firearm.

In medieval times plate armor was "proofed" against firearms. That means that the armor maker would shoot the armor with a firearm at a certain distance after it had been completed "proving" that it was capable of deflecting a bullet at such and such distance. Of course the average soldier couldn't afford such state-of-the-art fully articulated battle plate, but they could probably afford a steel cuirasse and helm which would be proofed the same way.

Shock Damage from WWN is pretty cool, but I don't like the fuss of implementing specific shock ratings and minimum damage values for each weapon and armor. 

Instead we'll split them into basic categories. 

Firearms come in Light (2d6) Heavy (3d6), and Artillery (4d6 or more). Probably nothing short of enchanted armor could withstand the force of Artillery, so we'll mostly ignore those.

Armor is either proofed or unproofed. Unproofed armor is basically no armor against firearms: you have to make a successful saving throw to avoid. Wands/Rays seems like a good choice. If you successfully save you "dodged the bullet", otherwise take full damage.

Proofed armor offers some protection. By the way, this is gonna use Ascending Armor Class. If you insist on using Descending Armor Class you're probably use to doing pointless math, so I'll let you figure it out yourself.

AC11 is unarmored, roll 11 or better to hit. That gives a regular ole human (1hd, AC11, +0 to hit) a 50/50 chance of hitting another regular ole unarmored human. That AC11 represents your ability to dodge an attack without bringing armor into the mix.

Thus, the first 10 points of AC are just you. If you want to apply Dex bonus to this base AC be my guest, but I don't.

Every point after that is your Armor. If a firearm attack (d20+Dex+Ranged bonus) beats the proofed AC, attack successfully penetrated the armor.

If the attack was at least 11 but less than the AC of the armor, it was stopped by the "proofing" or bullet-resistance of the armor, you only take half damage (roll damage, divide by 2).

If the attack was 10 or less it misses completely or deflects off the armor harmlessly.

Light armor is rarely proofed. Its main components are textile or leather. Maybe if the armor is Kevlar, or is woven with mythril thread it'll be bullet proofed.

Medium armor can be proofed, that's the steel cuirasse mentioned before.

Plate armor is ye old standby of proofed armor.

Another alternative is to have "proofed" armor simply deduct its armor bonus from the attack on a successful hit, so Proofed Light would reduce the incoming damage by 2, Medium by 4, and Plate by 6. Might be enough to save your ass.

Accuracy. I'm not gonna muck about with different accuracies for different firearms. Instead you can go look up the effective ranges for different firearms. If the attack is further than that it automatically misses. Don't forget that a lot of weapon accuracy for old weapons is typically assuming the weapon would be used in formation, like a firing squad, and shot towards a large surface, like an enemy battalion. Combat in d&d isn't like that, it's usually man-to-man skirmishes. So if some old ass rifle says it was effective up to 400 meters or some shit, I'd be skeptical. They probably mean it's capable of hitting a barn at 400 meters, not a little mustachoed goon picking his nose.

Reload time

We already touched on this before: 20 seconds for a trained musketeer to reload a familiar musket. That's roughly three 6-second combat rounds. Double or triple that for big guns, halve it for small guns like pistols.

pew pew

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.

Small Gods

Also: D&Deities

I prefer my gods to be small, petty, morose, malignant, and self-important. They aren’t all-knowing or all-powerful, although they may pretend to be. They aren’t wise, although they are crafty. They’re more like Greco-Roman gods; they’re overly theatrical, appearing in claps of thunder, or a million writhing insects form into their body, or a burning white stag with nine arrows in it leaps over a waterfall, and with a booming voice announces their name and demands for obsequience. If they don’t get it they’re liable to throw around polymorphs or strike blindness or worse. They make henchmen quail and drop to their knees, and they like it if they can make player characters draw back in fear.

Gods are often made by mortals ascending to godhood, either via their own might, or by bathing in cosmic energies, or being raised by a their patron diety, or killing another god, or attaining enlightenment. These gods are the most self-serving type, as some small part of them remembers what it’s like to have absolutely no power, and they still derive ugly pleasure from punching down on those weaker than them. Think Buddha or Jesus, but with a chip on his shoulder.

Another type of god is created by the faith of their followers. Cultists dream up some deity, say Nartsag the Defiler. He’s a huge maggot, the size of two school buses, with a heavy-eyed human face, and he’s come to eat the dead flesh of the world and restore it to purity. Gods love purity, but they all have different ideas about what that means. This guy wants to restore the world to its primal state, a genetic soup of goo, and flies, and water. So these Cultists of Nartsag gather in town squares, collecting money, preaching, gathering in defiled ground, subjecting themselves to weird flagellation and purposefully contracting pestilences. They run sick houses in major cities where they collect all the infirm, ill, and mutated, and they treat them with ineffectual ablutions. Ostensibly, this is to help ease their suffering, but really they’re collecting the sick water in tanks in underground temples where they make an ocean of putrid filth to one day raise Nartsag from Oblivion.

 

How to Make a God

This is the important part: gods like this are very real to the cultists, but not to anybody else. They have to be brought into this world by rituals that player characters might have a chance to stop. Sometimes a high priest has to throw themselves into the fire at the end to grand the blood-payment to open the gate. Or they may believe that this deity is in another realm or universe, and they need help getting into this one. Either way it’s the Cult’s force of belief, their faith, that eventually coalesces into a godhead taking shape on this plane.

Gods love to be worshiped. It’s why they’re here. What did they do that’s so special, to be worthy of worship? Go ahead and ask one and find out, they’ll tell you. They’re the epitome of the cackling evil overlord, squawking on and on about their plans, about their greatness, about their triumphs, showing you all the special golden trophies they’ve been collecting since they were the squirt of a bigoted thought in a backwater sycophant’s head.

They are very powerful, but they aren’t omnipotent. They have certain powers, certain domains. They are immortal but they aren’t invincible. They can be killed, but they would never admit this, even to themselves. They might have armor that protects them from all wounds, or the ability to kill with a look, or regenerate 50 hp per round, or to teleport to the moon and live without air, but they aren’t invincible. Technically. They’re more like super-heroes. If Superman lived in my universe some idiot gong farmers would probably have started worshiping him and eventually it would have gone to his head. 

 

Introducing: The Lord of the Underworld!

All this makes the deities way more interesting. It gives them human foibles, makes them accessible. You can touch this thing, maybe not directly, but it’s another level of NPC above the kings and sorcerers. Also, players tend to feel a certain reverence for deities as long as you don’t surprise them with it.

I remember I had some players go and investigate a cairn I mentioned in the description for something else. I had to think up something quick, so in 30-seconds I sketched up a couple rooms, threw in a super obvious spear trap, a stupid key-and-door puzzle and some runes and skeletons and stuff.

They get through the key-and-door puzzle before I figure everything out so I start adlibbing some murals about a goddess of the earth and animals or something, there’s this god-goddess pair. They feel her presence and it’s all motherly, and she asks them to bring back her husband. Then they go and clear the spear-trap room.

I knew there had to be some big pay-off and treasure, then I remembered that part in Sailors on the Starless Sea, where the player characters sail...on a starless sea...and then there’s some big evil god they fight and everybody’s like woah holy shit we’re playing cool fantasy stuff. So I just do that, there’s a ship, and a giant squid attacks, and they end up at the bottom of an underground ocean with an alter to a god. There’s a silver bowl and a ceremonial knife, so obviously my players cut their hands and put their blood in.

I already primed them with the goddess stuff. She’s got qualities they like, earth and animals and motherly love, so they’re all down. Her husband turns out to be this bleak woeful god of war, kind of like Odin. He asks them to bring back their religion, to help them enter back into this world so they can set it to rights. The players agree. He gives them silver stuff and blessings they get to write on their character sheet (single use: negate a successful attack) and send them on their way. So now my players are totally inducted into the cult of whoever these guys are, and they’re totally on board with proclaiming these gods to the world. They bringing up the gods to NPCs every chance they get.

That’s way more fun than your player looking in some stupid book and going “I dunno, I worship the god of the sun… and beer!”  

 

Making Demands

So Now you have your petty god, and some powers, and you’ve introduced them to your players. But what do gods actually do? First, they’re perpetually at war with each other. They each want to re-shape the world, and they all want to be the only god. They have enemies, truces (never allies), colors, elements, favorite flowers, fashion sense, interior decorating choices, favorite board games, favorite foods, all that shit, and they hate anybody that doesn’t fawn over their taste. Including other gods. They’re jealous, vindictive, small-minded and incredibly fucking strong. Imagine a bunch of catty drunk girls at a bar, but they can all fly, have skin made from steel, can lift a truck, and secrete mind-control pheromones. Also they can grant wishes.

That brings me to my next point: Gods love to dangle carrots in your face if you do their dirty work. Gods want to do the least they can possibly get away with, while taking all the credit and all the power. Kind of like the CEO of a big evil company, but with heat vision. Their self-improvement program is a huge pyramid scheme, where the more followers you induct the higher in the power-ladder you get to grow. You dump money and time and energy into it and they dish out magic weapons, and spell powers, and give you extra henchmen when you please them. If you fail them they rip it all away and leave you hanging, just to remind you who’s in charge. Your magic sword turns into a dove, your healing spell summons a bunch of locusts, your hands turn into wheels. And your patron diety just laughs and laughs until you apologize and make a big show of sacrificing bulls/maidens/jewelry at their nearest shrine.

Thus you need to have the gods interacting with the world somehow. Gods are lazy, they don’t show up in person unless they have to. Instead, they prefer to send stand-ins or omens, the vaguer the better. Thus, shrines and temples and priests. Need some sage advice? Go to Pithion Lord of the Dark Water’s temple, burn some incense, toss a few coins in the slot, and the high-priestess does a little dance and dispenses wisdom. What does this have to do with Pithion? Who cares? Now we know where to go to get the Crystal of Blhabla.

Need a different thing? You gotta do a quest, just like any other NPC. If you want this thing I have, you gotta do a thing. Also you have to dedicate your eternal soul to my whims or I’LL GET ANGRY.

Get healing, get quests, get spells. Players love this stuff. Last but not least: Clerics.

 

Meet my old class: Pilgrims

My favorite class in Morrowind is the Pilgrim. It’s a stealth-based class, specializing in speechcraft and healing, with minors in illusion magic and alchemy. The idea is these free-booters traipse about, talking their way in to trouble, and when they get there they use magic and running the fuck away to get out of it.

It makes me think of pilgrimages in Medieval Europe. Basically, making pilgrimages was a big deal, everybody was doing it for all kinds of reasons. Healing, fertility, boredom, for showing off to your friends how devote you are. Humans haven’t changed at all in ten-thousand years. A whole class of lazy asshole grew up around making pilgrimages, where these guys would wander around, avoiding work, going from holy site to holy site, collecting all the badges, and along the way they would hawk fake holy relics to idiots, shmooze their ways into monasteries so they could drink up all the beer and drool on the tabernacle, dawdle up to peasant farmers and demand room and board on account of their holy rigor, eat all the food then sleep until 11:15, then go off to the next place, all that jazz.

That’s what I want my clerics to be! No more being some ‘holy warrior’ for the church but oh yeah sorry, we can’t afford anything so go meet up with some cut-throats and hedge-wizards and figure it out yeah? Mitra will be pleased. Traditional clerics make no fucking sense outside of the original Blackmoor campaign.

We live in a world with dozens of gods, covering dozens of different realms of power, from oceans, to rot, to love, and animal-husbandry, etc, and they all grant the same twenty spells? They all give their followers power to rebuke undead? They all send their holymen on crusades to…. Go beat up goblins and take their stuff?

Instead, what I want is a conman or a ne’er-do-well who’s going off on adventures for personal gain and, yeh, if they can pitch some coin Patron Deity’s way, or beat up some Holy Foes great.

So let’s do it like this.

Everything's the same as Cleric except:

They can use their deity’s favorite weapon, which they carry as a symbol of their faith, and also the same kinds magic-users use. Optionally, just let them use all weapons because fuck it.

Instead of Rebuke Undead they can cast Protection from Evil as a spell-like ability, whereas “evil” is whoever is trying to kill the pilgrim, or is the enemy of the god they’re calling upon for help. The god gets to decide whether this is an appropriate use of their name. If they demand it too many time maybe it fizzles out, or the god doesn’t hear them, or afterwards the god demands some quest or penitence for bugging them too much.

At first level it’s only a couple feet wide, centered on the Cleric, let’s say enough room for one other person if they’re hugging onto the Cleric. The way I think of this spell is that it kind of pushes back monsters and they have to work really hard to step into the light and try to hit the caster. It’s kind of the like old way Rebuke Undead was adjudicated. At fourth level if becomes 10’ wide, they can block up a whole corridor with it.

 Undead are supposed to be horrible, unstoppable monstrocities. Isn't lame if the cleric can just roll dice to see if he can scare them away? And then, when it doesn't work? 

"I try to turn the zombies" *clatter*
"Oh sorry, St. James is helping a kitten right now call back later"

Alternatively make them spend 10 minutes transcribing a sigil of power from the god on the floor, with chalk or salt or silver dust. It lasts for an hour and keeps out all bad stuff, but you can't move it.

As for their spells, they don’t just automatically get all those spells/miracles/prayers. They have to travel to holy sites and preform duties for their patron to be granted those spells as spell-like abilities, just like how a Magic-User has to search for their spells, be taught them, or gain them from spellbooks. They can have as many as their normal spell list, which they transcribe all those spells into a prayerbook (see where I’m going with this?)

Additionally, they get spells from this pilgrimages from their deity which are within the realm of the deity to grant. So Gods of Shadows and Sneaking grant Invisibility and Darkness, Gods of Fire grant Burning Hands, Light, only Gods of Healing Grant Healing. Maybe Gods that have particular foes, like Undead, or Devils, or Unicorns can grant turning against those foes.

Maybe a Pilgrim can have like two or three favorite deities, as long as they don’t clash with each other. Gods are selfish and petty but also they’re kind of dumb and I dunno. It’s probably fine. Or whatever. Dance monkey, dance!

 What does this fix? It makes the Cleric more dependent on deity interaction. It takes out the stupid Judeo-Christian stuff. It gives more variety in spells, and differentiates between clerics (they haven't all been personally granted specific spells). It puts the cleric reason for adventuring in-line with the other adventurers, while still giving him excuse for building a temple.

The sickening putrification of live birth (play report 2 & citycrawl rules)

Great Demon Eyes & Flight of the Glistening Wyvern
2/12/2020
On our next game Charlie couldn't make it, so I had Jordan and Anne roll up throwaway characters to explore a dungeon randomly generated by Wizardawn (the same deadly dungeons generated for the Fellowship of the Bling games)

Anne & Jordan find themselves in the blistering northern wastes, in a small cleft between two high ridges. There's a watering hole in the middle and the stone walls narrow to a point of suspiciously flat rock. The pair search the rock and find a removable brick, inside which is a switch that opens the entrance.

Beyond is thick with cobwebs. Walls are dark green stone carved in shapes of demons. East is big demon door. West door is smashed into cobweb filled hallway. They lit up torches and as they entered a curving formless shape shot out from the shadows of the western hallway and chased Anne, who ran back to the safety of the light. The formless thing hated light, avoided it, and squeezed itself under the demon door.  Cautiously they go west down the hallway.

In the hallway they listen and hear nothing, then proceed further into an immense hall with stone columns shaped like coiling cobras. They eek further into the hall, watching their steps and pass another pair of columns. As they pass between them a lumbering glutton covered in long hair dragging a stone club lopes from the shadows and demands treasure for passage. Jordan refuses, so the lumbering glutton picks him up by his ankles and starts shaking him.

Anne sneaks behind the creature whilst he's distracted and shoots him with her bow. A critical hit, the arrows pierces the back of the creatures skull, killing it. The huge body topples over and Jordan barely rolls out of the way. Inspecting the corpse they discover the wound in its brain is beginning to heal. Jordan hacks the glutton's head off.

They head further eat and pass over a fallen column. Beyond is the lumbering glutton's nest, full of trash, with a blackened firepit and pieces of human bodies. They spend time searching the remains and find a handful of copper groats.

At the end of the hall they find a massive stone door barred by a dolomite slab. They aren't strong enough to lift the slab so they spend 30 minutes hacking through the chalky stone with their weapons, slightly damaging Jordan's longsword.

The din brings on an attack from 5 starving wolves. The pair manage to shove the door open wide enough to slip through. Three wolves get through also before they get the door closed behind them. The wolves leap to attack and the pair enter battle.

A wolf leaps and tears out Jordan's throat. At this point we remember I had them roll 4 characters for the adventure, so I let Jordan enter his second character right in the middle of the fight. The two continue fighting, wounding two wolves. The wolves teeth bounces off the restless duo's leather armor. Then Anne takes out a flask of oil and sets the wolves on fire. They fail their morale check and run off into the darkness.

The two inspect the room, finding a jammed wooden door to the north. They leave the door and head south through an open doorway. Their torches burn out so they light new ones.

In the southern room they see a pair of glowing eyes high on the eastern wall. Jordan moves in to the middle of the room and is instantly vaporized by lasers from the eyes. Jordan takes over Anne's secondary character.

Down to their last characters they are more cautious. They edge around the room and find the eyes are really rubies set into a 12 foot tall brass statue of a demon, surrounded by glowing runes on the floor. The runes create an invisible barrier around the statue. They edge around the barrier, staying close to the statue, and find a switch on the other side that deactivates the barrier.

Jordan climbs on the statue and pops outs the gems, as big as fists. As he does a horned serpentine head slithers out from a collapsed hole in the ceiling, curved teeth dripping with venom.

The pair take off running to the north, the creature flies out of the hole, held aloft by two huge batwings, a pair of eagle-like talons hang below it, it's tail a ball of dripping spikes. The creature is swift but clumsy, the pair are able to make it to the stone door and force it open.

They slip through and begin running across the hall. The flying devil smashes down the stone door and soars into the air, smashing into a column and crashing to the ground in a pile of snapping teeth and rubble.

Anne and Jordan are able to make it back to the entrance and escape.

I let them transfer the rubies and groats to their main characters, retiring the surviving throwaways, netting them 619 XP total.



They spend the rest of the game back in Darkstone. They talk to Lady Elizabeth, the lead ex-adventurer, and she puts them into contact with a real estate agent named Toadly, a diminutive man (a mere 24 inches tall) with a pencil thin mustache, greasy blond hair parted down the middle, and dapper frilly clothing, riding in a one-man chariot pulled by an elven eunuch.

The pair ride alongside Toadly as he shows them various dilapidated manses in sundry disgusting and leper-infested neighborhoods. Eventually the pair settle for the one with the most rooms, in an up-and-coming block facing the putrid river. Toadly is willing to drop the price from 1800 to 1100 if they do a job for him.

Toadly's rival Meglordenstein has been giving him trouble long enough! The tiny real estate agent wants them to break into Meglordenstein's house, smash up some stuff, steal some stuff, raise some mischief, make him realize that he's got enemies and that he should watch himself....but without leaving evidence that Toadly was behind it.

They wend the session with Anne declaring she wants to spend 100 groats filing the paperwork to get the floorplan from the assessor's office. Jordan does a number of jobs with Lady Elizabeth to increase his standing and make a few extra groats.




The Miracle of Birth & Bob Humungous Rips a Guy's Hand Off
2/19/2020
Bob -- Level 1 Dwarf Thief (Jordan)
Rowan -- Level 1 Elf Thief (Anne) Elvish mutation: Apish hands for feet
Kraig -- Level 1 Elf Magic-User (Charlie) Elvish mutation: Bony head crest

This game Charlie is able to join us, so the pair fill him in on what's what. Anne passes her Wis check so I give her an accurately (but messy) map of the Meglordenstein's house. Then she spends an extra 100 groats to roll two checks and ask two questions, which I answer with one word ("How many traps are there?" "3", "how many guards does he have?" "1"....They take this as a sign that Meglordenstein is an idiot for only having one guard)

Jordan rolls and finds that he did 6 jobs for Elizabeth over the last week, so I have him roll a save for each stat. He fails half of them, so I award Bob 75 groats and a -2 penalty to Wis for the session.



Before we get into the swing of things it's time for the party to give birth!

They head back down to the muckmen's lands to get what advice they can. The king of the muckmen (whom they aided by assassinating his political rival) is flippant, insulting, and unhelpful. They manage to squeeze a bit of information from him. Namely that muckmen like to attack and eat each other's babies and that muckmen are terrible parents. The king renounces any support for the rearing of the hybrid muckmen/elves and muckmen/dwarf about to be born.

The party goes into labor for 13 hours as the babies tear their way out of their backs. Rowan & Kraig succeed their Con saves, but Bob fails, rupturing his penis (taking -1 Con for the session). The king's apothecaries then use their advanced remedies to heal the party in short time.

They are now the proud parents of 2 foot tall disgusting flat-faced stumbling mutants. Rowan carries her in her backpack. Bob puts his on his shoulder and gives it a knife. Kraig ignores his for the rest of the session.

Before they leave Kraig asks the muckman king to teach him more spells. The king laughs and hands him a giant bloodsucking leech. Kraig hands the leech to his baby.




After much deliberating and discussing the floor plan the party still can't come up with a plan, except to somehow find their way to the Study (which they don't realize is on the third floor) so I urge them on to at least check out the house.

It's been snowing heavily the past two days, so there's over 6 inches of snow on everything. Shovelmen have been working round the clock to clear the main streets, but everything else is packed. Nobody is out and about. At this lattitude there's only 5 hours of sunlight during Winter, so they use this to their advantage.

Nobody sees them on their way there. They find the manse: surrounded by sculpted hedges and iron sconces. They push open the front gate then decide it's better to look for a back entrance.

They slink through the shadows to the back of the house and find a small service door. Bob hoists himself up and peeks through a small window finding a kitchen. They decide not to go in there. Rowan climbs to the second floor and peeks in the window, finding a flicker of candlelight shining between two plush curtains. She climbs onto the nearby roof and drops a rope down for Bob and Kraig to climb up.

There's a central tower on the roof here, topped by a stone cupola or watchtower. Bob climbs up, Rowan follows him, Kraig tries but falls 10 feet taking d6 damage and rolling on the death & dismemberment table. He falls onto his face, crushing his nose, bruising his eye, and knocking out several teeth. This has the miraculous result of increasing his Charisma from 5 to 9.


 Bob finds a trap door in the cupola with a handle shaped like a silver hand. He listens at the trap door and hears a man cough, as well as the rustle of paper. He tries to open it but the handle springs to life and grabs his arm. Thinking quickly he snatches the potion of giant size from his pack and chugs it, growing 12 feet tall, bones cracking and clothing/equipment tearing free from his body until he becomes large enough to fill the cupola with his girth. Rowan barely squeezes in and climbs onto his shoulder.

Bob tosses his shredded clothes and equipment down Kraig. Kraig is out of commission and begins to crawl his way gingerly off the roof.

With a jerk Bob rips the trapdoor from its hinge and smashes his way into the floor below.

By this time Kraig has made it to the ground. The chefs from the kitchen run out to see what all the commotion is. Kraig acts confused along with them.

Humongous Bob, broken penis swinging freely, drops down into the second floor, where he is temporarily blinded by the darkened room, and a man wielding a sword springs to the attack! The man's strikes are quick as lightning but fail to scratch Bob's girth! Bob attempts to grab the man who deftly ducks out of the way. Rowan jumps from Bob's shoulders, attempting to Merge With Shadows, but fails, instead rolling into cover by a small statue.

The man attacks again, his glowing sword glittering and clanging against Bob's supernaturally tough skin. Bob grabs the man and picks him up, rips the sword from his hand (taking the hand with it) and hurls him against the wall. The man takes 3d6 damage, fails his Save VS Paralysis, and collapses to the floor unconscious.

Rowan finds demonic looking book on a pedestal and uses her cloak to pick it up without touching it. Bob opens a nearby door and enters, finding a strange helmet hanging from the ceiling on thick wires. Tiny curtains with pull cord line the walls. He opens one and finds a large scorpion. He begins to feel is body throb and knows that his potion's effects will wear off soon so he rips the helmet from the ceiling by the cables and the pair exit through the roof. Before they leave he stops to bellow "THIS ONE'S FROM TOADLY!!!!"

Bob lands on the ground with a thud, digging into the soft dirt half a foot. Then he turns on the stunned chefs and flicks one across the lawn with his finger, before suddenly shrinking down to normal size.



The three exit the property and run smack into a number of guards coming to investigate the disturbances. They detain the two suspicious elves and naked dwarf. Kraig casts sleep and knocks everybody out, then slaps his comrades awake. They run for it. Since Kraig isn't carrying his baby I declare that he loses it, and if the get back to safety he can roll to see if it miraculously reappears.

Smack into more guards. They run down a side street. Rowan tries to find a flask of oil in her pack but trips. They outrun some guards.


Citycrawls
At this point I start using the Citycrawl rules from Last Gasp. I use a grid and sheets of paper to simulate the streets/alleyways, using red dice for their characters and white dice for the guards.

Each round I use the same order:
0. A player does a roll-under Dex check & pursuing guards to theirs. The winner has the highest number without going over their Dex. Players rotate clockwise starting from the one with the lowest Dex
1a. Roll for Streets/Alleys and complications and place sheets representing buildings on grid
1b. If players win they gain one "step" on the guards. If the guards win they reduce the players "step" by 1 and appear on the board (I throw white dice representing the guards randomly onto the grid)
2. Players declare their actions
3. If there are any guards, those guards make their actions.

If players make it to the edge of the board we continue with the next section.

The players were either trying to make it back to the Ravenloft Inn (They knew it was South-east, and they knew they'd recognize the area when they got close, but they didn't know exactly how to get back) OR they had to gain 3 "steps". If they were brought to -1 "steps" they'd get forced into a combat with the guards.

I made a map of where the inn was in relation to the players by writing the word RED with all the letters connected to sort of look like streets, then I threw a couple dice on there. The south-east one was the inn, the northern one the players. Each new map they entered was an intersection, with main streets decided by the map and alleyways decided by throwing a d4.



It was a blast and I highly recommend giving this a go sometime. It made the city itself a dungeon, with obstacles and choices. Players had to guess their way back in the direction of the inn, cleverly avoid guards by dipping down alleyways, and use their surroundings (including the Z axis!) to their advantage.


Eventually they found a manhole cover and climbed down in to the sewer to wait out the chase. They sat down there for an hour and I threw two encounter checks, both were clean. They were safe.


Toadly was excited to hear all about it. Jordan shushed everyone and played it off like a regular ol' prank instead of a near disaster, and they sealed the deal on the house, and kept all the treasures.


 Safetly back at the Ravenloft in Kraig decided to read the book. Doing so caused his flesh to mutate and become rubbery and indigestible, making him immune to acid damage. They could've sold it for 100 groats but decided to keep it.

They lay their heads to sleep. Then Kraig rolls a Wis check to see if his baby survives and crits. His mutant baby shows back up at their second floor window carrying 19 groats in a sack and a leech full of blood.

I award Kraig 19 XP

High Adjudication: Checks Without Difficulty Class

Difficulty class is known to skyrocket once you start trying to classify everything with a set number. As the players get better it becomes necessary to raise the bar to keep them struggling.

Adjudications and rulings not rules means DMs should be comfortable coming up with odds for success on the spot without relying on a set rule.

Personally I don't like having any real rules beyond the very basics, the stuff the players need to know to function, like how classes, advancement, battle, and spells work. This gives me lots of room to try new techniques.

An alternative for stat checks I haven't seen is this: roll a d20, add the stat mod. Loosely adjudicate based on the number rolled.

1 is critical failures. Not only did you fuck up but something really bad happens.

These drop off in severity up to 9. Lead from the fiction and push back either hard or soft, but there's a new barrier.

Natural 10 is the cut off. Below this you failed or things swing against you. At 10 their ability mod might put things one way or another a bit, but it's mostly a stalemate. Either you made little progress or theres some kind of unforseen consequence, a barrier, a cost, something is lost on the way to success. A soft negative move might happen here, the player makes the jump to the ledge, almost slips and falls, and part of the ledge crumbles away making further leaps across more difficult.

12+ is about where success happens. Things are going good, you've managed to do the thing. Usually here I'll give The World a soft neutral move, usually just for flavor or to ramp up tension, but nothing bad happens. You're safe.

17-19 is where great successes start happening, things swing a bit in the player's favor. Not only do they manage to catch the rope as their companion falls, but a sudden burst of strength lets them start hauling them back up quickly.


20 is obviously a critical success. Free moves, bonus attacks, whatever.

The key here is to understand what the player is trying to do and tell them the consequences for failure. Rolling the dice means throwing stuff to chance, so there's no point in having a DC. Shits up in the air. You're literally "rolling the dice" and flying by the seat of your pants. In such a case the swinginess is a boon. Leaving things up to chance is not smart, it's stupid, but sometimes unavoidable. In a way it's a punishment for taking risks.

But big risks come with big rewards. Players are required to figure out what a reasonable risk is before they pull the levers, what they're willing to lose in the way to fame and glory.

The dice is a slot machine. Your PC's ability mods might help push things in your favor, but nothing is ever certain. Careful, clever play and engaging with the fiction is the best way to avoid rolling dice.

Edit: I was wrong when I said I haven't heard of anyone else doing this. This is basically the Dungeon World mechanic!

The difference here is that DW uses 2d6, so you're more likely to get middle results than a wide spread, and ability modifiers affect the roll more with 2d6. In my version the mods might just make the difference in edge cases, which is kind of how I like it.

It's easy to forget that when we're talking about PCs we're talking about capital-A Adventurers. These guys are just a cut above normal folks. They're veteran warriors, mages who can cast AN ACTUAL SPELL, members of a clergical crusading sect, and...well, thieves. They're competent at what they do or they wouldn't be first level.

Should a mage be able to bend iron bars? Should a fighter be able to decipher an ancient manuscript? Should a cleric be able to hide and sneak attack? It depends on the type of game you want to run.

With my system averagely abilitied dudes could do mostly the same things. With free adjudication you can make the dice roll anything that seems reasonable. Maybe a mage's success at bending the bars means he's able to wedge them just enough for him to squeeze through but not the bulky warrior. Maybe having a bonus in an ability means that your successes are that much more successful. Mods as multipliers?

A +3 means unless you roll a 1 the lowest score you can get is 5 (on a natural 2) which is only halfway between a total failure and squeaking by! It also means you hit the success threshold easier.

The thing I like about this is that it allows for partial results and building momentum rather than pass/fail.

Rough encumbrance, no math

Encumbrance is more about what you're carrying than how much. Sure, you could stuff a backpack with trinkets and junk and jaunt about with it, but our adventurers are also wearing armor, carrying weapons and torches, with bows and shields slung over them, with belts and bandoliers of scrolls and bottles and daggers. Also they're expected to be nimble and make successful saving throws, including swinging on ropes, climbing cliffs, and swimming. Rarely is pack weight taken into consideration, and when it is it's in the form of counting. Math isn't a fun game to play at the table.

Realistically a person can carry about 20% their body weight without becoming exhausted, this is about 25-30 pounds for most people. Remember that the heavier you are the more of your own body weight you're carrying around by default, so that counts for something too. A larger person isn't necessarily capable of carrying more than a small person over a span of time, even if they're capable of exerting more force in one go.

I appreciate the granularity of weight-based encumbrance, but it could use some simplification. If you don't think about stuff like this much it has a tendency to slip through the cracks. Having traveled for many years on foot I'm quite aware that carrying much of anything for extended periods of time is exhausting. If you aren't a hiker I ask that you try it for a weekend. You'll quickly realize something you've been missing from your games. I ask my players about their encumbrance every time they try to do anything that requires mobility, and any time they collect treasure. It's just innate in me because I know it matters.

You could probably hike around in a dungeon all day wearing plate mail if you carried nothing but your weapons, but at the end of the day you'd be desperate to get that stuff off. Traveling overland wearing plate mail is out of the question unless you're mounted, and even then you're going to be sweaty and achy. It takes a lifetime of conditioning to do the things knights could do in plate mail, and even they struggled.

There's this video of a guy training like Jean Le Maingre aka Boucicault, running around doing exercises to condition his body for wearing plate mail. Shit is 26kg or about 60#s. He seems to have pretty good mobility, the joints are all well articulated, but you can tell he's struggling. He has a hard time getting up on the wooden horse, and he runs at a slow trot.

I assume that any fighter or cleric that wanted to survive to second level would perform training like this. This explains why magic-users can't just throw on plate mail and cast spells and get the same benefit as fighters--it's physically and mentally exhausting, requires peak physical ability, and such constant conditioning leaves little time for the immense study regimen required to cast even the most basic spells. Fighters are medieval knights, and magic-users are medieval monks. A monk would probably struggle just knowing how to don the harness, much less how to move efficiently in it. Saying a magic-user could wear armor might be equivalent to saying that anybody with two hands can drive a car, except it's a 60# car you wear on your body.

In the video he's shown climbing an artificial rock wall. This isn't analogous to climbing an actual rock wall, as the hand-holds are large and designed for climbing. I figure the rough uneven surface of a stone tower or cliffside would be a much different experience.

I would call plate mail heavily encumbering. If you're wearing it I'd probably cut the encumbrance weight in half, say 30#, because of how the harness conforms to your body. Nobody except Shiva has enough arms to carry all that shit around though. You either wear plate mail or leave it behind.

On the other hand, a chainmail hauberk is about 20# and they're relatively comfortable to wear. The weight it definitely noticeable but it balances well across your body well and you get pretty used to it just wearing it a lot. Unless you assume 'chainmail' means the full suit, not just the hauberk, in which case it would be as heavy and encumbering as plate mail. It's harder to explain why a magic-user can't wear chainmail and still cast spells, unless you believe that stuff about metal interfering with magical auras.

Or if you're down to say "this is a game, you guys play as 'archetypes', weapon and armor restrictions exist to help differentiate the classes, since you're supposed to work as a team."



The Rules
Okay so let's make something gameable out of all this. The following system works nicely as it fits with the Armor Class steps (10, 12, 14, 16) and movement rates (120, 90, 60, 30)

Encumbrance is about your load, how big a pack you're carrying, what you're weighted down with. Traveling on foot much of anything is encumbering, so we'll do this in batches.

Wearing nothing, you're totally unencumbered. You can do flips and jumps and polevault over pirahnas. You can remain unencumbered as long as you don't have a backpack. A grappling hook tied around you, manacles for a belt, a dagger in your shoe, some scrolls tucked into a secret pocket in your jerkin, a 6 foot staff in one hand, you're unencumbered. I'll even let you take a pouch belt or bandolier for holding little stuff like jewelry, specialists tools, a couple bombs, rations, or potions. This is where thieves and mages should be to get the most of their abilities.

If you're carrying a backpack of gear or treasure, leather armor, a couple of weapons or whatever, up to roughly 25# you're lightly encumbered. We might take your stuff into account a bit when it comes, particularly if you have to swim or climb or balance. Dropping your backpack is a free action but you lose initiative. This is where adventurer-types like bards, rogues, or spellswords should be, the guys that need a few extra things and look cool doing it. Also, it's where everybody should be if they're doing overland travel.

Alternatively you could outsource the carrying of stuff (in order of disposability) to slaves, donkeys, porters, lighterlads, or henchmen.

If you've got a bunch of gear, medium armor, and a large weapon you can't just tuck away, like a battle axe or a halberd or a shield, over 25# of stuff, you're encumbered. Subtract 1 from your dexterity bonus. Your maximum move speed is reduced one step (eg 120' to 90'). You can still do athletic things, but you're at a disadvantage.

If you've got over 50# of stuff, wearing plate mail, carrying a halberd, a shield, a sword, five daggers, and a bandolier of bombs, you're heavily encumbered. Subtract 2 from your dexterity bonus, your move speed is reduced two steps (120' to 60'). You can't cast spells, can't swim, you can't jump, you can barely climb, and you have to remove your armor (which takes like 20 minutes) to do any of that stuff and trail it behind you on a rope or small raft or donkey. Fighters and clerics do their best loaded out like this, but it shouldn't be their job to do delicate tasks or carry loot or gear.

Carrying more than this you're basically fucked & you can't run or fight at all, you're stuck at a 30' move speed, and you roll with disadvantage on everything. This includes carrying a wounded party member on your back, hobbling around with a serious illness or injury, or something equally taxing.

Bulky items are important to remember here. Brocade tapestries, bolts of moonwool, rare paintings, large weapons, fat sacks of gold are all bulky and hard to manage. Carrying two increases your Encumbrance rating.

Also, torches have a 1 in 6 chance of going out each turn when dropped, but lanterns only check once when they fall (but they shatter and catch on fire).



A gold dinar weighed 4.25 grams. There's 453.5 grams in a pound. Thus 100 gold pieces is about a pound. I would call 'a fat sack of gold' somewhere between 10 and 15 pounds, something that's gonna get in your way and jangle around and throw you off balance. Thus ~1200 gold is encumbering. If a player asks me "I have 1120 gold, does that count as bulky?" my answer would be yes. If you're not sure, the answer is yes. Carrying around shit is exhausting. Small treasures can be valued in coin sizes. Whole 10s numbers are good, so 1, 10, 20, 50, 100, but who has time for that? If I look at your equipment list and my eyes glaze over you're encumbered.




Seriously. On my last hitchhiking adventure I carried, on my person, a guitar, a change of clothes, a gallon of water, a book, a ball of twine, a knife, 2 cans of sardines, 150' of paracord, a 10x12 tarp, a pair of vicegrips, a tiny cook stove & a canister of propane, a titanium spork, and a tiny aluminum pot. Shit was 25# not counting the guitar (my weapon and shield) and it was awful. I wanted to throw it all in the garbage and go naked. This was also my lightest pack.


Really this comes down to conversing with the players, which is really a lot of my DMing, and it works best if everybody is constantly aware of it. Time, movement speed, carry weight, and torches are those things you update each turn, or each new room. "What are you carrying? Where is your stuff at?" "You have armor & a shield, that's encumbered, you'll have a hard time doing that thing"..... OR "you've got a crazy strength bonus, I think you can manage carrying the thief and his gear, and your gear on your back and climbing up this rope while goblins shoot arrows at you.........IF YOU ROLL 2 IN 6"

Nobody likes counting stuff in the heat of the moment at the table, so it's best just to gauge it and say encumbered or not. Real life works more like this. When it doubt, you're encumbered.



This starts looking a lot like the Slot system in Knave, which I'm a fan of. Problem here is what consitutes a slot? Is a weird scroll we found a slot? Is this bronze necklace a slot?

One thing I like about it is that the best armor is like 4 slots, so nobody uses it. Everybody goes with the lightest stuff. This is good because it models reality. If you're an adventurer in a dangerous place you want to be light because running away is better than dying.


Movement speed
Since 10 minute exploration lengths assume everybody is sneaking around, testing the environment, taking breaks now and then, your encumbrance doesn't have much of an effect here. You can be all kitted out and still move at a slow pace. Once you have to hide or move quickly or climb a boulder or act at once, that's when the weight really becomes a burden. Burdened people also roll with disadvantage on initiative.


BONUS ROUND: Why does plate mail even exist?

Plate mail in the real world developed quickly in response to primitive firearms. Our world doesn't have firearms, because it has fireball throwing shadowmancers so who cares about boom-boom smoke powder, so why does it exist? The answer is monsters.

Shielding your whole body with metal plates is a great idea when ogres are trying to twist you in half and fiendish otherworldly wargs  slink in the shadows of any given forest. The armor in our world developed in order to protect warriors against such things.

 Because this is a fantastical world of magic we can assume our armor is of a different technological strain than the real world variety. The articulation is better, they can make it lighter, they can meld together materials that don't exist in our world. They can put spells on it that help resist certain types of damage.

 But that golden age when knights sallied forth to do battle with evil is long gone. The age of Law is over and the Age of Chaos encroaches on us from every direction. Technological advancement has ended and all those ancient ways are lost and mysterious. Humanity is dwindling and growing stupid and demons are becoming more common. Modern smiths can't make armor like them of yore, they can only imitate it, and rare expensive materials are hard to come by because no major trade routes exist.

Thus the plain old expensive plate you buy at Bigtown is just iron riveted together as best they can figure. It might even be heavier and worse than the stuff they made in the real world.

The REAL good stuff, the ancient magical protection, is a true treasure. If a king or vizcount owns a suit it will be their pride and joy, kept locked behind magewalls and wyrmfire. A pretty-looking imitation will be commissioned to be worn on parades. The only time they'll really bring it out is during war.

Wearing this stuff around will get you attention, both good and bad, unless you use illusions to hide its magnificence, and even then Truly Powerful armor demands to be seen and will resent being hidden.

If you wear recognizably magical or ancient armor knights and lords will give you difference, and bribers, swindlers, cutthroats, and renegade barons will demand your hide. Patrons will flock to you, archwizards will scry you, thieves guilds will drool, and assassin cult will conspire.

The same, though, is true for wielding magic weaponry or powerful spells. Carrying this shit around in public is equivalent to carrying around grenades and sniper rifles in our world. People are terrified, the panopticon will turn its eye towards you, and trouble woe and riches follow you everywhere.

Magical armor has a great chance of being lighter than the above stated encumbrances, but it comes with other costs.

Starving in the dungeon

Everything get simplified. Everything that's not in the book gets adjudicated. Lots of moving parts that requires extra tables and chart referencing is too much stuff to keep track of. Since your character's survival is predicated on their HP all of the bad shit that you suffer should affect their ability to stay alive and recover from combat.


Eating food is healing
At the end of the day you have to eat food and get some sleep to recover one HD hp. If you don't do both of those things you don't get to recover. It's that simple. If you don't sleep at all you roll with disadvantage on everything until you get sleep. You can go hungry as long as you want, but those hp won't come back til you eat so it's self-regulating. If a PC eats their favorite food they roll with advantage when healing.

In the wilderness you can roll bushcrafting checks to see if you find food, 4 hours per check. This works better if you're familiar with the locality/climate/denizens, or if you're a skilled hunter or tracker. Most of the time bushcrafting stuff is related to Wis. Being skilled gives you bonus points. The less fruitful the clime the harder the check.

Raw meat keeps for about a day or two. Adventurers have pretty hardened stomachs and can survive eating mostly funky stuff. If you cook it it'll keep for a few days. If you find some way to preserve it, like with salt or some kind of mild edible acid, it'll keep indefinitely. If it's definitely rancid the PC will smell it, but everything underground smells rancid.

If you make a meal by combining ingredients everybody eating it gets some +1s to healing based on complexity and deliciousness. Probably it won't be delicious though because you're eating goblins and giant slugs. I'm talking like if someone managed to find or bring something palatable into the dungeon, that normal people eat. Like blood sausage or pickled octopus.

What about in the dungeon?

Finding food underground has to be roleplayed because it's not just lying around like it is in the normal world. If another monster doesn't eat it, the dungeon itself will. You could try eating that slime growing from that drainage pipe. Catch a rat. Gnaw some old bones. Mostly you're gonna have to eat monsters. Hope you brought some cooking gear.

How long does it keep?
The surface levels of the dungeon probably has stuff that's kind of like the stuff in our world and obeys things similar to our rules. It keeps for 1-3 days usually.

The deeper you go the more the rules breakdown. Deep underground reality becomes toxic. Wounds turn septic quickly, diseases spread fast, and everything rots into goo and is consumed by something else within hours, like in a jungle made of hate. By the next day dead things are typically mummified or transformed into putrefied ichor. You have to eat it then and there.

Is this thing gonna make me sick?The answer is probably yes. When eating monsters make a Con or Poison save. If you fail you get sick. Either roll with disadvantage for a while or don't heal your HP or take some stat damage or be completely immobile while you hallucinate and scream and vomit for 2d20 hours. If somebody is a healer of some kind and has access to herbs and can explain what herbs their using and how, they can make a Int check to see if you get better. Then they mark off a use of their herbs.

Disease and mutations
are more or less the same thing to me. The difference is if it's curable or not. Diseases do stat damage and get worse, but probably you'll also get scales or feathers or start rotting or your tongue will turn into a hand and start trying to choke you. Probably worms will crawl out of your anus at night and be so itchy you can't sleep, or your genitals turn black and shriveled, or you'll get a crystallizing rash that spreads. It depends on the thing you eat, whatever that thing is like is what happens to you. You don't turn INTO that thing, but consuming its essence starts having an effect on your DNA. You might be able to cure it by eating more of whatever you ate, but that's probably just be an old wives tale. Maybe your god can hear your prayers all the way down here, and they care enough to listen.

Underground cookbooks
They exist but they're mostly written as jokes by charlatans and taking them seriously could get you killed or worse. Drow don't write cookbooks because drow don't eat food, they have highly trained slaves to brew mixtures of purified essence for aesthetic pleasure, like extractive of the colors a sentient being views as it dies while being tortured, the more subtle and wordless the better. Stuff underground mostly just kills and eats everything it can find without concern for taste. If there are any sources for what's good underground they're written by other adventurers in barely legible script as part of their logs, and can be found on their dead bodies.

Can we get fancy?
You can get as fancy as you want, but it's not going to help your situation. This isn't "Delicious in Dungeon". You're eating stuff that still want you dead even in death. This stuff isn't part of the natural world, there is no food chain or ecology down here. Monsters sprout from each other's nightmares, through rips in aetheric space, or spontaneously generate from mucous touching ashes or septic neck wounds. You're ingesting pure cardinal sin, ire, hate, greed, and venom. It tastes and smells like sewage, turns into a hard knot that blocks your intestines, and your body has no idea what to do with it. Its chemistry is not even of this world.

What about cannibalism?
Probably your safest bet, really. Stuff from your world isn't inherently toxic. You might go crazy eating people though. Veins of the Earth handles this nicely.

I didn't bring a cookpot... Can I hollow out this huge skull and brew soup in that?Now you're thinking like an adventurer! You just earned a +1 on your Con save to see if that beholder brain soup shreds your mind into pieces.

The moral of the story is bring food. Bring lots of food. But food is heavy. Next I'll talk about encumbrance.

Wrasslin Owlbears

Grappling is fun. Jump on the dude and pull 'em to the ground, strangle the life out. Just like Conan! RAAWWGGHH BODYSLAAAMMM!! Like everything else in life people try to overly complicate grappling rules. I like my gameplay simple and decisive. If you put yourself at risk to accomplish a goal your success has to be worth the danger. I try to encourage players to do things other than just say "I stab his face". You gotta make the mechanics just as simple as attack rolls. Saves are good for everything.

A strength check is enough--how does your strength compare to their strength? Maybe if the other guy is big enough they could get a size bonus, but who really cares? How much fun would it be for the halfling with 18 strength to strangle an ogre to death? We know from the fiction that he couldn't choke out a black dragon but I'm willing to be lenient in certain cases for rule of cool.

If they want to strangle an unsuspecting victim unconscious they'll probably automatically succeed if they pass the check, especially if they're using a garrote. Regular combat is too granular to go straight to auto-shotting dudes while grappling, so mostly its about restraining a foe, and yourself at the same time while both combatants struggle for supremacy. If you wanna try to throttle them after grappling they take d4 damage on proceeding turns. You can't grapple someone and stab them with something bigger than a dagger at the same time.

A PC with a martial arts background could probably do more with hand-to-hand combat than others. If a Tanner cum lvl 1 fighter wants to throw sick high kicks he'll just  fall on his face.

The danger is here: If you fail your save it puts you at a disadvantage. Oftentimes this means the grappler becomes the grapplee, or gets knock prone, or thrown off a cliff, or gets sucker punched in the tussle. Depending on what system I'm running getting attacked while defenseless could mean a bonus damage die, damage taking the next die size up, or jumping straight to critical damage. If two PCs are holding a monster while the third stabs it in the face the fight is probably over. This goes both ways: monters can and do use the most of the grappling mechanics.

Wizlock--magically bind someone's wrists together after touching them. Can be broken with a strength check Vs caster's Int.

Pile-d-d-driver--after grappling an opponent bodyslam them on the following turn. 1HD monsters are instantly killed. All others take d12 damage and are knocked prone for d4 turns.