Year: 2013

The New Project

As I said when I first came back, I want to focus my attentions on completing larger projects. I also said I was already working on one, and that I would discuss it in a later post. This is a later post.

My original plan was to make another module. I’ve got a lot of ideas for a sequel to The Hidden Tomb of Slaggoth the Necromancer, as well as ideas for entirely new adventures. I still plan to make more modules, because it’s a lot of fun. But now that I have my feet wet, I’d like to try something a little more ambitious. Not quite as ambitious as a fully developed game system, but more demanding on my fledgeling talents than a 60-page adventure module would be.

As much as a year ago, I began to think that my “usable game content” post series’ (Colorful Characters, Magical Marvels, Merciless Monsters, Lively Locals, and Deadly Dungeons) would make good material for game supplements. Anything a GM needs to produce in large amounts can become a little tedious, so having a book filled with unique, developed ideas which can be modularly inserted into any game is useful. So for a little while now, I’ve been working on putting together a monster manual.

We don’t have an official title yet, but I’m working with the same two artists (Catherine Bradley and Ronnie Whelan) who worked with me on Slaggoth. The project is only just in its infancy now, but we have the basic concepts for over 100 different monsters, which seems like a good start!

Here are my goals.

  • End the project with between 290 and 320 monsters.
  • Do not take longer than 1 year to complete the game design and writing elements of the project. (The artists may need a little more leeway than I’m giving myself).
  • It’s more important to keep a tight time schedule than it is to hit the goal for the number of monsters. Neither goal is written in stone, but if at the end of 1 year all I have is 150 monsters, I’ll end the project there and move on to something else.
  • No GM should be able to open this book to a random page and ever think “Pft, I could have come up with that in 2 minutes!” Every monster should be unique and exciting. Not just because they look cool or have a cool backstory, but because they challenge the players in creative ways.
  • When finished, the product should be of high enough quality that I am comfortable asking people to give me money for it. Because I plan to ask you to give me money for it.

At present, I’m about 99% sure this book will be compatible with the Lamentations of the Flame Princess game. I’ve asked James Raggi, and it sounds as though this will not be a problem so long as some simple, common-sense requirements are met. Of course, most OSR games aren’t too difficult to switch between, so if you play Labyrinth Lord or something, the book should still be very accessible. But I like the way LotFP’s core rules insist on monsters which overrule the game’s normal structure.

I’m sure I’ll be posting more about this project in the future, though obviously I must be somewhat discreet. I don’t want to give away too much on the site, and make those who buy the book feel cheated. I’ll also be maintaining the “Current Project Status” bar over on the left, which will be updated every now and again when I feel like it. Likely once a week or thereabouts.

Colorful Characters 26: Ronder Thelleper, The Drunk Warlock

 Ronder Thelleper, or as he loudly proclaims himself to anyone who will listen, “The Greatest Warlock in Existence,” is the strangest caster you’ll ever meet. He doesn’t know how to read, and he worships no gods. All he wants is a cold brew, and someone else to buy them for him. For enough coin, he’ll hire on with any band, and face any danger, for the promise of a steady stream of booze.

Armor 12, 3 Hit Dice, Movement 120′, 1 dagger attack, Morale 8 (Lamentations of the Flame Princess rules)

Magical abilities function only while Ronder is completely drunk. If he’s only tipsy, or starting to sober up, spells might function at 1/2 effectiveness, as ruled by the GM. Using any of his magical abilities requires a full round, as it does for other casters. There is no limit to the amount of times these abilities may be used in a given day.

Firebelly – Flame arcs from Ronder’s mouth, unerringly immolating his target for 2d6 damage. save v. breath for half damage.

Bubbly – Tiny bubbles pour out of Ronder’s clothes, and begin to grow larger. They float towards a targeted group. 2d6 human sized creatures must succeed on a save v. palatalization or become trapped in a bubble for 1d4 rounds. The bubble cannot be popped from the inside, but can be popped normally from the outside.

Blackout – A single target must succeed on a save v. magic, or become stupefyingly drunk. They will stumble around, tell people they love them, and probably fall asleep at the soonest opportunity. Fades as normal drunkenness would.

Reverse Goggles –The target of this spell must succeed on a save v. magic. Upon failure, they will find Ronder irresistibly attractive for 1d4 + 2 hours. During this period they’ll do whatever they need to do to get his attention and make him happy. 

Anytime anyone asks Ronder to perform a task, roll 1d6 to determine what Ronder does.

1-2: Ronder performs the task as requested.
3-5: Ronder performs some task which he thinks will be even more beneficial to his employer. These are almost always terrible ideas.
6: Ronder gets confused. His turn is wasted. Make a morale roll to determine if he has become confused enough to change sides.

Ding! Level Three

We interrupt our normally scheduled Picture Thursday to announce that Papers & Pencils has completed its second year. Woo! It’s honestly kinda hard to believe. By the time I reached the site’s 1st anniversary, I felt as though I had been writing for years. But the second anniversary completely snuck up on me! I didn’t even have time to ask my ladyfriend to make a doodle for me this time.

As with last year, I thought it would be valuable to go through the past year’s posts and pick out the gems to share with anyone who might have missed them. Even with the long break I just finished taking, there’s about 200 posts to go through, so I’m just going to dive right in.

Lively Locals: 6: The Godstone, 7: Lilbr, Village of the Dead, 8: Hero’s Rest –  The Lively Locals series is one I think I enjoyed writing more than anybody enjoyed reading. And I’ll be the first to admit that it is far more hit-and-miss than my other “Friday game content” series are. All the same, last year had several which I thought were great. Lilbr, Village of the Dead in particular would make for a fantastic adventure location. Also, because nobody asked, Lilbr is an anagram of Brill, because I like Brill.

Merciless Monsters 6: Octorok for Pathfinder – Just as I was starting to think about what would become my LOZAS project, I decided to take the most classic Zelda monster there is, and stat it for Pathfinder. Because I’m a nerd, I decided to figure out how the creature’s anatomy functioned, given their strange ability to hurl rocks from a large orifice on their bodies. I’m still rather proud of what I came up with.

Seven Cursed Items for Fun and Profit – There’s nothing particularly special to mention about this post. It’s just seven cursed items which I still think are pretty cool.

Legend of Zelda Adventure System: Notes on Magic – The Legend of Zelda Adventure System, or LOZAS, was never finished. But it produced some of the coolest ideas I think I’ve ever had. The magic system, in conjunction with the spell list, is something I’d love to revisit in a future game system.

Zelda Adventure System: Rationale Behind the Game’s Experience Mechanic – Aside from being notable for the ridiculously long name, the mechanic I debuted in this post (having a single type of difficult goal which, whenever achieved, grants a level) was and is quite popular. I’d go so far as to say that of all the mechanics I can claim credit for, this one is the most well liked. Which is cool, because it’s a great mechanic.

Merciless Monsters 7: Fotavyon – The Fotavyon may be my single favorite monster I’ve posted on this site. The thing makes a freakin’ minefield of exploding eggs around its lair. And the art cbMorrie made for it is phenomenal.

Streamlined Skill Rolls – Blogging, or indeed any creative effort, is an odd beast. Sometimes the stuff you think is crap turns out to be very popular, while the stuff you work hard on gets ignored. I really like the streamlined skill rolls system, though I don’t think many other people do.

Using an Open-World Video Game as a Campaign Setting – I think I enjoy remembering World of Warcraft a lot more than I enjoy playing it. I’d still really love to do this sometime.

Campaign Management Toolbox – Orchestrating a campaign has always been a struggle for me. Running sessions is easy, but making good notes, and creating a world which is both consistent, and alive, is a struggle for me. Gathering / inventing these management tactics has helped a lot, though not all of them were as useful as I thought they would be when I started out. My technique needs updating. Perhaps there’s a future post in that.

8 Rules for Dungeon Improvisation – To be honest, I’m not sure if this post is good or bad. Am I repeating shit that everyone knows, or am I sharing the secrets of a skillset which not every GM has? Am I being pompous about my ability, or does this post actually help people? I hope it’s the latter. I don’t like being pompous, and I like being good at things.

The Girl and the Granite Throne: Chapter Four, and Chapter Five – I love writing The Girl and the Granite Throne. I love it when people read it, I love hearing what they think of it. I love the never ending slog of revisions I go through, which I’ll never be happy with no matter how many times I go through it. Unfortunately, 6 chapters (including the prologue) in 2 years is not a great record. It’s hard to prioritize a project which can never make me money (Wizards of the Coast owns Vecna, who plays a central role), and hasn’t been all that popular with readers. (Not surprising, this is a gaming blog, not a fiction blog).

Despite that, I’m not giving up on TGatGT. I have enough story plotted out already that I could get to chapter 50 and still have more story to tell. Chapters 4 and 5 were huge leaps forward in quality, and easily represent my best fiction writing so far.

(Which means I really need to write more fiction).

Vampiric Classifications 1: Hierarchy and 2: Types – I love vampires, and I enjoy the challenge of creating comprehensive lore. These posts are easily the best things I put out during a very long dry period of shitty posts. (I had an extremely unfortunate situation going on at the time). Were I to write them again, I’d change a few things, close a few loopholes, etc, but that doesn’t diminish how cool these posts already are.

Magical Marvels 8: The Greatsword of Horrid Dreams – Back in 2008, when I was playing World of Warcraft for several hours a day, I had a sword. It wasn’t the best sword for a Warlock. It wasn’t even all that great. But it had two things going for it. First, it was the best sword I could get. And second, it had the coolest name and the coolest appearance of any item I’d ever possessed. It was huge, and purple, and had a partially translucent appearance to it. And while I eventually replaced it, I have fond memories of it, and those memories inspired me to make perhaps the coolest magical weapon I’ve ever posted on P&P.

Feat Slot System for Pathfinder – The Feat Slot system popped into my brain a few days prior, when I was writing another post about feats. I sketched a quick outline of it, and got some positive / curious response, so I expanded the outline into an entire post. The Feat Slot system is one I would very much like to integrate into a future game system as an official part of character advancement.

Simple, Deadly Poisons – It’s hard to reinvent something which has been part of tabletop games since their inception. People have been thinking about traps and poisons for nigh on 40 years now, and just about everything has been done and tried. And while I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that someone else had come up with this idea before me, I still feel as though it’s one of my bigger accomplishments to have come up with a method of running poisons which is, in my most humble opinion, better than any other I’ve seen.

Critical Hit and Critical Fumble Charts for Pathfinder – Being honest, this chart is a tad bit bland. I never had very good luck with it, as my players seemed to almost exclusively roll on the low, boring results. That said, I like that all of the results are grounded and believable. Charts with wacky results are fun, but there’s something to be said for a more “realistic” chart, even if realism isn’t a design goal I often praise. (Also, Tatsubo’s comment was highly educational for me).

Fallout 3 Tabletop Game 1: Characters, 2: Skills, 3: Equipment, 4: NPCs and Foes – This game system is not good. It was never really meant to be good. Any casual reader will notice that it’s extremely crunch-heavy, requires lots of work on the part of the players to maintain their characters, and just generally doesn’t follow my design aesthetic. The goal wasn’t to make a game I’d call good. The goal was to recreate Fallout 3 as a tabletop game, and in that effort I think I succeeded well enough, and learned some interesting things along the way.

And it’s still totally playable, I think. I’d like to run it sometime.

Moving with Subtlety, and How to Roll Dice for it – This is a stealth system based on the Streamlined Skills System mentioned above. I quite like it, but it also had a lukewarm reception.

Pathfinder Class Analyses, Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Wizard, Alchemist, Cavalier, Inquisitor, Oracle – Holy shit that was a lot of links to find. The Pathfinder Class Analysis series has been one of the most edifying projects I’ve undertaken for Papers and Pencils. Going through each class and its abilities, thinking about what I would have done differently and spelling it out in detail, is a large part of what inspired me to take my leave of Pathfinder, and begin thinking about finding (or making) a game which is more in line with my sensibilities.

Checking for Traps is Bullshit – This post taught me an important lesson which, truthfully, makes me a little sad. Regardless of how much work you put into writing something valuable and interesting, the attention it gets won’t be able to hold a candle to a mediocre post with an inflammatory title. I think this post received more comments than any two other posts I’ve put up.

For those interested, Courtney’s response on his own blog convinced me I had been wrong.

D&D Christmas Carols: Dark Lord Wenceslaus – I was shocked this didn’t get more attention. It’s a video of me making a total fool of myself. What does it take to please you people!?

Deadly Dungeons. All of them, except 1, 2, and 6 – I’m not going to link these individually, because there’s something like twenty good ones in this past year, and I don’t need to develop carpel tunnel any earlier than I already will. This series is probably the best thing I’ve ever introduced on the site. Its given me an opportunity to make some really cool maps, and share some of my best dungeon ideas. The awesomeness of this series is part of what convinced me to start spending more time producing game content, rather than working on game mechanics.

Placing Treasure – While placing treasure is a pretty basic GM skill, I rarely see sourcebooks offer advice on how it can be done best. Perhaps nothing I wrote here was news to more experienced GMs, but it took me a long time to figure this stuff out.

Crafting Weapons & Armor in Pathfinder – Fixing Pathfinder’s crafting system was probably the most ambitious thing I ever tried to do within Pathfinder’s ruleset. The difficulty involved in just getting the damn thing to work was profoundly disheartening. None the less, I’m proud of the outcome.

Magical Marvels 10: Glasstouch Dagger, Magical Marvels 11: The Steedmaker Barding, Magical Marvels 12: Silvertongue Ink – None of these really have much of a story, or any interesting additional information to share. I just think they’re super cool magic items. And that’s what this post is all about: sharing the stuff I think is super cool.

Ability Scores Weighted by Race – I worked hard on this idea. I think I spent an entire evening pacing my apartment, trying to figure out the best way to mate the decision of which race to play, and the rolling of ability scores. I knew I had something, I just didn’t know how it should look. The work paid off, the idea is great and people responded to it quite favorably. Easily one of the best mechanics I’ve made.

Simple Attack and Grapples – At the start of this year, I was heavily invested in working on a project called “Rocksfall.” It started as a Pathfinder hack, but grew into an entirely unique system when I decided that I wanted to rewrite the combat rules from the ground up. This is what I was working with.

Book Review: “At the Queen’s Command,” by Michael A. Stackpole – A book review for a book I quite liked. In and of itself, probably not a post which would end up on this list. Except for the fact that the book’s author, Mike Stackpole, is a childhood hero of mine. And not only did he share this review on his twitter feed, but sent me a message thanking me for writing it. I was on cloud 9 for the rest of the day. I don’t even know what cloud 9 means, but I was on it. That’s how stoked I was.

When Ginny Bo Fails a Morale Check – An awesome idea, stymied by the fact that Ginny Bo did not survive long beyond the writing of this post.

Merciless Monsters 13: Simonlefera, or “Cricket Wizard” – The Simonlefera marks the beginning of a shift in the way I develop monsters. A shift towards the unsettlingly bizarre. A shift towards bolder mechanics, divorced from the normal game structure. Plus that’s gotta be some of the best art I’ve ever personally produced.

Vendor Saving Throw – A clever mechanic, although Brendan’s criticism in the comments is probably correct. There’s no need for each community to have a different saving throw.

Free Module: The Hidden Tomb of Slaggoth the Necromancer – My first gaming product. A significant personal milestone, for me, and a fun dungeon adventure if I do say so myself.

LS and the Fuzz Covered Vessel – It seems strange to include a week old post in a retrospective. But next year’s retrospective won’t look at any posts prior to this one, so if I’m going to point it out, I have to point it out now. And I think it’s a pretty great post, with some pretty great ideas. The idea of forcing players to literally memorize their spells, in particular, sounds really fun to me.

And that’s it. Hope you enjoyed this past year, and I hope you’ll enjoy the next one more!

The second annual reader census will probably go up next week.

Link: Gophers and Goblins

A reader named Lewis recently commented on one of my older posts, about my Campaign Management Toolbox. I always enjoy it when older posts get attention, and this particular reader had some nice things to say and some interesting thoughts on my calendar system. Super cool times.

As I often do, I checked the commenter’s own blog, Gophers and Goblins. I discovered that he has been expanding upon the ideas I mentioned in my own post. He’s done quite a job of it too. The first post explores the calendar system, which  he’s put more work into than I ever did, even providing some useful printouts. The second post completely revises my “World NPC” system, for the better I think.

Check them out if you, like me, struggle with maintaining your game world.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess

So with Pathfinder and I no longer an ‘item,’ I’m on the market again. I don’t think I’ll ever make the same kind of commitment to another system. But then, nobody ever anticipates the day that special game comes along, do they? And as it happens, I’ve had my eye on Lamentations of the Flame Princess for awhile.

I actually don’t recall when LotFP first came on my radar, but my first distinct memory of the game is the fear in my fellow adventurer’s eyes when our GM announced that we was running “A Raggi module.” (as in a module written by James Raggi, creator of LotFP). It took me a few months to get around to purchasing the game, and when I got it in hand I was immediately impressed with it, before even reading a word. Multiple books, printed character sheets, and a full set of dice were included in my $35 Grindhouse edition of the game. What’s more, the art is gloriously imaginative, provocative, and NSFW. I don’t think I ever realized how much the tame-ness of most RPG sourcebooks bothered me until I found this book which was actually willing to engage with me as an adult. To depict all of the violence I so gleefully describe to my players.

Upon reading the books, I was profoundly disappointed. Not because the books were bad, but because I saw many of my own ostensibly unique ideas had already been published by someone who managed to come up with them before I did. I thought I was going to be so very clever someday when I released a game system, and the GM’s Guide was largely just a collection of essays on GMing, rather than a collection of charts and numbers of limited usefulness. I thought my system would be so much easier to understand with expansive examples of play–though even I wouldn’t have been so bold as to fill an entire book with them!

I don’t love everything about LotFP, of course. The magic research / magic item creation systems seem to be more trouble than they’re worth. Some spells are so dangerous to use that I don’t know if I’d ever be willing to cast them. The idea that only fighter’s advance in combat ability has a certain appeal, but I worry about how it will affect play as adventurers start to reach mid level. And call it a nitpick, but I’ve never liked games which measure movement in feet. My ability to perceive distance is not good, so saying a character has a movement of 120′ means nothing to me.

But for every con, I could list a half dozen pros. And two pros in particular make this game worth it all on their own. First, the rules work. And second, these are among the most lightweight rules I’ve ever seen. More lightweight than any of the other old school games I’ve encountered. And that’s good, because it gives me so much more room to tinker and expand on my own, which is what I love to do anyway.

Not Everything Needs to be Finished

I’ve started, and decided not to finish, a number of tabletop game systems in my time. Most of them are from long long ago, such as the Final Fantasy VII system, the Metal Gear Solid system, and the Starcraft system (the latter of which I was really only working on as a gift for my girlfriend at the time). Since I began writing Papers & Pencils, I’ve toyed with a few new system ideas, but for the most part I haven’t mentioned them here. I always feel embarrassed and a little guilty when I inevitably decide not to finish something. Doing that on display for the whole Internet to see is even worse. That’s how I felt when I stopped developing LOZAS, and it’s why I’ve never mentioned Rocksfall in the body of a post until now.

To a degree, these feelings are justified. The world is filled with failed writers and game designers who start a lot of projects and never finish any of them. When a person starts a creative project, ideas are flying around in their head at lightning speed. They can hardly put them down on paper fast enough! But large projects, by very nature, can’t be finished quickly, and inevitably, the project starts to run into snags. It’s discouraging, but the cold truth is that no significant work has ever been completed without its creator running into snags which needed to be overcome. Follow-through is one of the most important skills for any budding creator to master. It’s a skill I’m still working on in myself, and that knowledge contributes to my guilt and embarrassment whenever I decide to end a project.

But during my hiatus, I came to a little realization. My LOZAS game, despite being a failed project, did produce some interesting results. The experience mechanic I developed sparked a lot of interesting conversation. And even though it won’t get a chance to be used in LOZAS, it could very easily end up in other games later. Other mechanics I worked on were not as generally popular, but I like them and will likely re-use them in future projects. The way magic worked in that game remains highly interesting to me, and I would very much like to see it developed further.

LOZAS failed, but LOZAS gave me tools and ideas which I’m taking with me as I move forward to other projects. What other tools might I find if I explored other ideas I’ve had? Ideas I’ve specifically avoided developing because I knew I wouldn’t finish them? Yes, it’s important to follow through on the projects I’m taking seriously, but perhaps I shouldn’t expect every project I start to be serious. Perhaps I can start designing a Final Fantasy VI tabletop RPG as an exercise, with no intention of finishing it. Maybe I can get a few good posts out of it, learn a few interesting things, and then move on without embarrassment or guilt, because it’s not a failure of my ability to follow through, it’s merely the natural end of a project which was never intended to be worked to completion.

LS and the Fuzz Covered Vessel

You know how any time there’s a new phenomenon popular with children, there’s always some group of nutjob adults who make a scene about how it’s corrupting the youth? They’re always kinda funny when they go on TV and rant about how “pokemon” is jap-talk for pocket monsters, and monsters are like demons, ergo the pokemons are subtle attempts by the devil to get into the pockets of our children. It’s less funny when you’re a child and those nutjobs are your parents.

A lot of stuff was verboten for me as a kid, ostensibly because of demonic influence. Sometimes I cared enough to subvert those bans, as I did when I started playing D&D in secret. But other times I didn’t want to risk it. And that’s how I made it to the venerable age of 26 without exploring a single piece of Harry Potter media. It’s really too bad, actually, since I was 11 years old when the first book was released in the U.S. Same age as the series’ eponymous protagonist.

Over the years I’ve seen enough parodies of it that I became thoroughly familiar with the source material, but it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I decided to sit down and marathon the films and see what I’d been missing. I’ll spare you any review, since I’m pretty sure I was the last person on earth who hadn’t seen them. I will say, though, that I was surprised that they actually lived up to the hype. After a lifetime of hearing about how great this story was, I honestly did not expect to like it very much. But 2 minutes into the movie I felt like a kid again. It was like watching Star Wars for the first time. I was captivated, and plowed my way through the first 3 films in a single day, and all 7 by the end of the week. I got my hands on the books 3 days ago, and I’m halfway through the second one already.

And because I’m me, discovering such an interesting world naturally led to thoughts of what a marvelous tabletop game it would make.

Hogwarts is basically a dungeon-hub. It’s a huge, intelligent castle with countless secrets to explore. In the Philosopher’s stone the children must sneak past a three headed dog, escape from a large entangling plant, find a door key in a room filled with hundreds of flying keys, play a deadly game of life-sized chess, solve a riddle to discover which potions will protect them and which will kill them, and finally confront an evil wizard, all in pursuit of a magical treasure. That sounds a lot like D&D to me. It’s the same in the second book, where the children must find a well-hidden secret passage, leading into a complex of caves, where they eventually encounter and fight a basilisk.

It doesn’t take much imagination to extrapolate from these starting points. If there is one chamber of secrets, why not twenty? Hogwarts is a megadungeon, and you need to escape from its depths by the end of every session, because otherwise you’ll miss class.

Here’s what I would propose. Players start as first year students. Every student is a magic user of course, but some class-like distinction could be made by allowing the players to sort themselves into one of the school’s four houses. A player in Gryffindor, for example, might have bonuses against fear effects. Whilst a kid in Ravenclaw might be allowed a bardic-lore style check for knowing any random piece of information the party needs. Perhaps further class distinctions could be gained by the choices the player makes in which classes they will take. At the start of the year they choose the classes they’ll attend between dungeon-delving sessions, and at the end of the year they’ve gained some bonus or ability from that course.

Magic would be particularly fun, since magic words are such a large part of the source material. Spells could be divided into “spell levels,” representing the years in which they would be taught to students. There is no limit on the number of spells which can be cast per day, or how many times a spell could be cast. HOWEVER, in order to cast a spell, the player must be able to recite the proper magic words. No magic notes would be allowed at the table, forcing the player to actually keep the spells in their head. (Functionally, a no-notes rule would be impossible to enforce. But in the spirit of fun, I think most players would acquiesce).

Rather than progressing according to experience, players would progress by years of education. In lieu of gold, magic items and “house points” would be awarded for successful adventures.

I can’t be the first person who thought of this, right?

Dear Pathfinder,

Pathfinder and I have had a long and tumultuous relationship.

When I started Papers & Pencils, then called “Comma, Blank_,” I was still a D&D 3.5 player. I was aware of Pathfinder, but preferred to stick with the system I already had 30+ supplements for. About two years ago, by some happenstance, I was chatting with a fellow at my local comic book store, Fantasium. He was interested in starting a Pathfinder campaign, and he seemed cool, so I gave him my email address and purchased the Pathfinder Core Rulebook on an impulse. I never heard from that guy again, which didn’t matter much, because I was thoroughly impressed by Pathfinder’s improvements to 3.5. My initial reaction to the system was nothing but fawning praise, and I immediately started referring to this as a “Pathfinder Blog.”

Then I found Hack & Slash, and from there started to explore more of the OSR. I was exposed to a greater diversity of game design theories than I had known existed, and many of my fundamental ideas were challenged. My opinions began to shift. Issues which I had previously viewed as “the limitations of tabletop games,” became “the limitations of the tabletop games I’ve played.” As an example, I had long been frustrated by how difficult it was to get players to manage their characters on their own, the OSR made me realize that perhaps my game was asking them to manage too much shit.

In the last two years I’ve become increasingly dissatisfied with Pathfinder. One reader* recently told me they were surprised I still played, given how critical I am of it. And truth be told, I don’t. Not really. I do still have one Pathfinder game in progress, but I run it in such a modified form that there’s about as much Pathfinder left in that game as there is man left in Darth Vader. And when this campaign ends (presumably when I move away from the players) I doubt if I’ll ever start another game based on the Pathfinder rules.

Put plainly, Pathfinder and I have parted ways.

That doesn’t mean you’ll never see another Pathfinder post here. I’d like to finish my Pathfinder Class Analysis series, because I’ve found that project to be fertile grounds for game design inspiration. I’ve also got at least one pathfinder-specific project which I’ve wanted to finish for years now, but have been putting off because I’m lazy and dumb and lazy. What it does mean is that Colorful Characters, Merciless Monsters, and Magical Marvels won’t be posted with Pathfinder game rules any longer, which is a big relief for me, because fitting everything into the Pathfinder framework was exhausting work.

Since 90% of my readership is non-pathfinder players anyway (somehow I ended up as an honorary initiate in the OSR?) I presume this news is long overdue for most of you.

(*Hi Matt!)

Magical Marvels 12: Silvertongue Ink

When discovered, this item appears to be a moderately ornate inkwell, filled with a silvery liquid. The inkwell itself appears only slightly valuable, and the liquid inside can easily be mistaken for quicksilver. Altogether, a merchant would pay perhaps 50 gold pieces for it.

If the silvery liquid is used as ink (any quill will do) whatever is written with it takes on magical properties which affect whoever reads them.

A statement of fact, however ridiculous it may be, will be believed. A command, even a command to kill oneself, will be followed. And a question, no matter how personal, will be answered. A successful saving throw against magic can be made to negate this effect. However, unlike many similar effects, a successful save will not alert the subject to the fact that someone has attempted to affect their mind, unless they are a magic user of 10th level or higher.

It should be noted that addressing a note with something to the effect of “To the King of Gorpagop” will cause whoever reads it to immediately stop reading it, and make every effort to deliver the note to the king of Gorpagop.

When found, the inkwell contains enough ink for 100 words.