Author: LS

Just a simple writer boi. LEADER OF THE CONTROL-LEFT ILLUMINATI OF THE OSR. YOU PLAY ONLY WHAT I ALLOW YOU TO PLAY.

Magical Marvels 17: Spell Lock Axe

This mundane looking axe is appears at first to be the most useless magic item ever made. When a successful attack is made against a target, the player rolls no damage. The axe instead passes harmlessly through the target, as though the axe were an illusion. The only proof that the blow even landed is a puff of purple, foul-smelling smoke which lingers a moment after a successful blow.

The true value of the axe will become apparent only when it is used against a magic user. The axe severs the link between the magician’s corporeal body, and the metaphysical energies which she commands. As a result, a magic user who is struck with this weapon will be unable to cast spells. The MU will not be made immediately aware of this, and may attempt to cast a spell (or several) before realizing their powers have been somehow blocked.

The bond between the magician and the power of her craft heals quickly, however. The power to cast spells normally will return 1d10 minutes after the blow is struck. (This should be rolled instead of damage.)

The axe should still work against most creatures which use magic. Creatures which rely on magic to exist on this plane (such as demons, or ghosts) will instead be banished for 1d10 minutes.

Picture Thursday 38: Kel'Thuzad by unknown Blizzard artist

Because game models aren’t just blocks of pixels with colors associated with them. Someone put creative energy into this, and when it’s good, it ought to be recognized.

Liches in the Warcraft games look cool. In particular, this is the Naxxramas model of Kel’Thuzad. If you are unfamiliar with either of those names, there’s a pretty dandy, 3-page short story which explores them a little bit. Or if you don’t care, that works too. Neither are really important to the artwork.

The sort of half spectral, half physical design is pulled off really well here. The ornate robes might seem unnecessary and out of place. But liches were once human, why wouldn’t they manifest with some of the trappings of earthly power to which they still cling? Their skull becomes bestial, with sharp teeth and horns, because why WOULDN’T an evil ritual meant to overcome death cause a person to gain demonic features? I like the chains the most, I think. Normally chains on a ghost represent the weight of guilt. It’s about justice for those who have done wrong. Here, I think, the chain is the only remaining connection between the lich’s body and soul. The chain cannot be damaged directly, but its presence lets those who see a lich know that their phylactery is intact. Were the phylactery destroyed, the chains would break.

Also, mateys, do not forget that today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Avast!

A campaign setting which is most certainly NOT called "Dungeon World."

I mean, that’s what I wanted to call it, but somebody else got to that name first.

When I returned from hiatus, I made a big show of abandoning Pathfinder, and moving on to Lamentations of the Flame Princess as my game of choice. And for the last few weeks, on and off, I’ve been working on the setting where my first LotFP game will take place: “Not Dungeon World.” (It will have a better name soon). As you might infer from the lack of proper name, the world is far from complete. At present it’s mostly a series of amorphous chunks of content which connect together in some way with which I am not yet acquainted. But I’ve agreed to run the first group of people through the world next week, so I thought I’d start talking about it here.

I have two major goals with this world. The first is to create a setting which I can use for numerous groups of people. I like the idea of running a bunch of different one-off games in this world once its more polished, as a way to get to know more of the tabletop community. Second, I want to make a world which is is weird. I like high fantasy, and I like low fantasy, but now I want to try something which no one has ever done before. And if someone else has done it, please don’t tell me, because I’m enjoying being a special snowflake about this.

Some large-ish quantity of time ago (400-150 years), a great magician known as “The Motherless Warlock” decided to build himself a sanctum. But no mere tower would suffice for the warlock born of man, so he crafted instead a sphere of stone and mortar. He set it adrift in the heavens with the sun and the moons. He took with him his servants and his followers, and reigned unchallenged on the magic-made-world, above the world of mere men below.

A generation ago, The Motherless Warlock left, and did not return. Why he did this or where he went is uncertain. Some speculate that he died, but this seems unlikely as he never appeared to age a day after 30. Others speculate that he ascended to an even higher level of power, beyond the need for his kingdom. Most, however, do not care where he went. They just want to find a way off of this accursed rock he left them stranded upon.

The players were born to this world. Their parents remember living on the green and blue sphere which rises in the sky each day. They tell stories of plentiful food, bustling cities, green grass, and blue sky. The players have known none of these things, but they want to. Everyone wants to! It’s terrible here. The only thing to eat is flavorless grey slop which appears three times a day in the village square–and there’s never enough of it. Supposedly, when the Warlock was here, magical feasts would appear each day. But most of these magical apparatus are broke, and no one knows how to fix them. A few towns have found patches of dirt and tried farming, or tried to domesticate some of the more edible creatures, but these attempts are fraught with danger. The magical runes carved around each town prevent non-human creatures from entering, but that protection does not extend to farms or herds. Most of these are mercilessly destroyed by some magical monstrosity or other.

The only hope for the future, most agree, is to find a portal to the world below. One must be hidden in the labyrinthine depths which fill the innards of the sphere. But who is foolhardy enough to venture down there?

(See why “Dungeon World” would have been a perfect name? Damn).

A fun alternative to dying.

No idea come to being in a vacuum. So before I begin, I’d like to point out that Courtney Campbell did something similar to this, which totally influenced my idea. (Though I was mostly inspired by a post by “Medieval Battlefield Medicine” over at Spells and Steel)

There’s a lot of disagreement about what hit points represent, which isn’t a disagreement I care about. Hit points represent whatever a given GM says they represent, and for the purpose of this post, hit points represent something similar to ‘luck.’ When you take a hit in the game, what is actually happening is that the flat of the blade slaps your arm. The warhammer bounces off your shield and rattles you to the bone. The fireball leaves you with the equivalent of a bad sunburn, but nothing worse.

Until you get to zero hit points.

When a character reaches 0 hp, they are still fine. They can fight and act normally without any penalty. But their luck has completely run out. Successful attacks against the character no longer deal damage. Instead, the GM rolls on the following chart. 2d6

  1. Finger destroyed! Randomly determine which.
  2. Hand destroyed! Randomly determine which.
  3. Arm destroyed! Randomly determine which. (Massive Bleed! See 11)
  4. Foot destroyed! Randomly determine which.
  5. Leg destroyed! Randomly determine which. (Massive Bleed! See 11)
  6. Eye destroyed! Randomly determine which.
  7. Head destroyed! You are dead!
  8. Internal bleeding! Debilitated in 1d4 turns, dead 1d6 turns after that. Can be saved with magical healing.
  9. Kidney destroyed! Save v. poison increased by 1d4. (if this one happens twice, you’re dead!)
  10. Lung destroyed! Reduce CON by 1d6 + 2
  11. Massive Bleed! Debilitated in 1d4 t6urns, dead 1d6 after that. Can be saved if the blood can be stopped. (Successful wisdom check required by whoever makes the attempt. Only one attempt per turn per wound.)
  12. Permanent cosmetic damage. (Ear/nose gone, unable to grow hair. Not simple scars.)

Is this goofy and unrealistic? You bet. It makes absolutely no sense for a character to be hit over and over and over in combat, and take no ill effects from it; then, after crossing an arbitrary threshold, suddenly every hit has an ill effect. That’s ridiculous. But here are the reasons why it is awesome:

  • Increased player survivability over methods where the character is simply dead at 0. I’ve been told that players enjoy surviving.
  • Makes it likely that characters will end up with missing digits or limbs. Those are cool, and the players will have a good story to tell.
  • Realistic stuff is lame anyway.

It’s up to individual GMs to determine what game effects this kind of stuff ought to have, but regardless, I suspect players should be given the opportunity to retire their character and roll a new one if they suffer anything too debilitating. A rogue in a wheelchair, or a magic user without any fingers to cast with, would be rather unpleasant to play. That said, a magic user in a wheelchair, or a monk with no fingers, could still be super interesting.

Magical Marvels 16: Hellfire Jar

It has never been entirely clear whether Hellfire Jars are the product of an alchemical master, or whether they are in fact jars of true hellfire. In either case, the objects themselves are blessedly rare. And those who know of them consider them far too dangerous to use–unless they have the lack of good judgement and scruples normally associated with brigands and traveling adventurers.

When released from its ceramic jar, the fire will immediately fill a 10x10ft area, and expand at a rate of 1ft per minute. The hellfire burns sand, and stone, and steel just as a normal fire would burn wood. It reacts the water the same way normal fire reacts to lamp oil. Regardless of what is placed in its path, the hellfire will spread at 1ft per minute. Curiously, the hellfire does not consume anything on which it burns. If put out, it will appear as though the fire was never there.

The fire’s only weakness is the turning ability possessed by goodly clerics of level 3 or higher. A cleric of the appropriate level will instinctively feel the urge to turn the fire, upon seeing it. They need not make any check to perform this action, the fire will simply die down before the power of their faith. A single cleric may clear 10ft per level, per turn. (So, in 10 minutes, a level 3 cleric could clear 30ft of flames).

Any living creature caught within the hellfire’s area of effect is completely immobilized by pain. They will writhe and toss, but cannot coordinate their body sufficiently to run, or even move purposefully in any direction. Every turn which a person is subjected to this tournament will cost them 1 point of permanent wisdom loss. A reduction of 3 or more will leave a character with severe PTSD. In practice, they can never be within 15ft of any fire without entering a catatonic state for 1d6 turns. A wisdom reduction of 6 causes permanent insanity.

Adventure Module Review: "Fuck For Satan" by James Raggi

“Better Than Any Man” is better than the best adventure module I’ve ever read. It transcends that paltry distinction, because when I was done reading it I had gained more than knowledge of a cool adventure. My views on tabletop games had shifted. The bar for monsters, and art, and adventures was set higher. I knew, before placing my big ol’ Lamentations of the Flame Princess order, that nothing I read would top it.

“Fuck for Satan” isn’t “Better Than Any Man.” In fact, if I’d read FFS first, rather than BTAM, I probably would have stopped reading halfway through and given up on Lamentations of the Flame Princess altogether. In Raggi’s own words, this is a “screw-you dungeon.” There are numerous occasions when even I–having read the adventure in full–have no idea how I would survive if I were a player. I’m all in favor of punishingly difficult, but FFS is sadistic. I can only imagine there are players out there who are either significantly more skilled, or significantly more amused by cheap deaths, than I am.

That being said, the book is hardly without value. In fact, it’s chock full of amazing ideas. “The Twinkling Star” in particular is so fucking phenomenal that I literally called my buddy on the phone so I could read that section of the book to him. And when my girlfriend got home, I read it to her. I had never given serious consideration before to the positive potential of meta gaming. The idea that the players have leverage over the GM is gods damned delightful. You can be sure my players will encounter something similar to Twinkly sometime soon.

Come to think of it, anything surrounding the dungeon is fantastic. The generic setup leading to a humorously unrewarding payoff; the hilarious, and needlessly long old man rant which you’ll never actually use in the game; Twinkly; the titular fucking in the name of Satan, performed by well meaning, brain-addled twits; and the giant walking penis creature who just wants to go home. These elements make me want to run the adventure. But these elements make up less than half of the module.

The bulk of the module is a dungeon which I do not think I could survive. If I was being careful to the point of draining all of the fun from the game, I think I’d still die. If the GM let me read the adventure before running the dungeon, I think there’s still a pretty fair chance I would die.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t good stuff in the dungeon too, though. There’s a monster living inside of a book called the Half-Realized Poorly Conceived Terror which I’ll definitely use at some point. And “The Eye and the Basin” is super cool–though perhaps a little harsh. Part of me thinks it would work fine if players were only required to cut off a finger to solve the puzzle. But another part of me really likes how it’s written, with players needing to kill and gut a hireling (or fellow PC) and sacrifice their heart. The Luck Sucker is also ballin’.

Final verdict: read Better than Any Man. If you like that, then maybe consider Fuck for Satan. There’s a lot to like here, and even if you never run it, you’ll enjoy reading it. Whatever other flaws it might have, I couldn’t put it down until I had read it all the way through.

Oh, and P.S., Jri-Khan is a cool dude. I might make him a recurring NPC in one of my game worlds.

Dungeon Tolls

Courtney runs a game on Saturday mornings called Numenhalla. It’s quite good. Good enough that I drag myself out of bed at 5:40 am on a Saturday to play in it.

Though, I confess, I’ve been late more often than I’ve been on time.

There are many reasons why I love playing in Numenhalla. The fact that Courtney is my bro is high on that list, as is my awestruck reverence for Mad Bill Danger. But more than anything else, I love Numenhalla because it is, by a titanic margin, the most polished & unique game I have ever played in.

Among its many unique traits (though it may only be unique to me, as Numenhalla is my first “Megadungeon”) is that nothing really exists outside of the dungeon. I’ve been told to think of the town outside as a menu screen. Play doesn’t happen there. We can manage our affairs in town, but once we enter the dungeon, we cannot return to town until we’re ready to end the game. It’s a fascinating way to play. Something I wouldn’t mind experimenting with myself someday.

On a completely unrelated note, I recently purchased a fantastic Indie game called Rogue Legacy. It’s a side scrolling action game with gameplay similar to the better among the Castlevania games. There are many facets to it which make it interesting and unique, and I recommend it if you enjoy those types of games. Perhaps my favorite aspect of the game is the way they handle gold.

When you enter the Rogue Legacy dungeon for the first time, you have 0 gold. You fight, and jump, and claw your way through as much of the dungeon as you can, killing monsters and stealing the gold coins they drop. Eventually, inevitably, you die, and the game ends. But then you get to make a new character. This new character is the son or daughter of your previous character, and they’ve inherited all of the gold you gathered in your previous run! They can spend it on gear and upgrades which will be passed down through all the (hundreds) of generations your family is sure to have.

Once this new character has spent all the gold they can, and are ready to enter the dungeon, they are greeted by Charon. He demands a toll of you before he will allow you to enter the dungeon: every unspent coin you have. Once you’ve been reduced back to 0 gold, he will allow you to enter the dungeon. A dungeon which has been completely randomized since your last visit.

I’d be curious to see how this mechanic would work if used in a tabletop game. The party may plunge the depths of the dungeon, gather their treasure, and return to the surface. But they may not hoard their gold! Any gold unspent before returning to the dungeon is taken as a toll. (Or, perhaps more in character, wasted away on booze). Of course, the prices of items in town would need to be adjusted accordingly, but that wouldn’t be hard.

Deadly Dungeons 26: Bugaboos

Aside from the single door through which the players entered, this circular room is completely featureless. Its only occupant is a swarm of plum-sized, multicolored insects buzzing about in a massive swarm. These insects produce a lot of noise, but don’t do much of anything else. It’s rather strange, actually. The swarm doesn’t react to the entrance of players, nor to the open door. Even if a player were to leap into the midst of them and waves her arms around, the bugs would just flit around her as though she were not there.

There are blue, yellow, green, red, violet, orange, teal, and lime colored insects in the swarm. These colors have no meaning. They are an obfuscation. Also, dungeons are not colorful enough.

The colors of the insects will be noticed at first glance, but it requires a moment of examination to notice that many of the insects bear aberrant features. Some have unusually large eyes, others have massive teeth, a few have tails, lots of them have stingers–though they will not sting, even if pestered by aforementioned arm-waving adventurer.

Attacking the tiny, fast moving creatures with a conventional weapon is a nigh impossible task. They have an effective armor of 24*. Catching them is actually much easier. Attempting to grab one with your hand requires an attack roll against armor 18*. If either of these attempts misses by 5 or less, it is a simple miss. If they fail by 6 or more, then the player hit/caught one, it just wasn’t the one they intended. Roll on the chart below to determine which. If the players use a jar or bag and sweep it through the swarm, they will catch 1d2 of the creatures without fail, but what they catch will be random. If they use a proper net, they’ll capture 3d6 creatures, but again it shall be random.

The aberrant features of each creature correlate to an effect. The moment they are damaged or captured, they will pop into a cloud of dust, and that dust will reform into whatever the bug’s type calls for.

1-2. Normal: No effect.

3. Bulging Eyes: A door appears on the wall. If there is nowhere for the door to go, then either a corridor is created leading to another part of the dungeon, or the door becomes a permanent, two-way portal to a random dungeon location. (50/50 chance that it is a location already explored, or a new location the players haven’t found yet). The GM may choose whichever option fucks up their map the least. Note that this is not a secret door. It does not exist before the bulging eyed bug is caught, and thus cannot be discovered before then.

4-6. Large Mouth & Teeth: The dust reforms into a monster from the random encounter table for this area.

7-9. Stinger: A trap appears, and is immediately sprung on the players. It could be a pit trap, or an arrow trap, or a collapsing ceiling, or whatever the GM fancies.

10. Tail: A chest appears, with treasure inside of it!

Note that this is only a very basic sampling of what might be present in the room. If the GM so chooses, there could be drooling bugs which create fountains with a random magical effect; bat-winged bugs which reverse the room’s gravity; bird-winged bugs which cause all of the adventurer’s gear to become animated and attack them; bugs with legs which grant the players a blessing; or bugs with a contented smile on their faces which grant enlightenment. As with everything in the game, the possibilities are quite endless.

*This is based off LotFP rules, of course. Pathfinder players would want to bump those numbers up significantly, while players of games with descending AC would want to drop them quite a bit. The idea is that this is a puzzle which a fighter is best suited to solve. There are many rooms which are best suited to a magic user, or cleric, or specialist/thief. I thought it would be nice if there was a puzzle which required a character to have really good to-hit rolls.

Picture Thursday 36: Deplorable Book Molestation

Last month I cut a bunch of my expenses, set a bunch of money aside, then purchased one of nearly every product in the new Lamentations of the Flame Princess store. As you can see, my physical items arrived today, and I’m relishing in the decadent act of rubbing them all over my body.

And a hearty thank you to the generous Mr. Raggi for including LotFP bookmarks, and a copy of the Grindhouse edition! Neither of which I ordered, but both of which will be put to good use.

I seriously considered doing this photo in the nude, with shirts covering my unmentionables. You’re welcome for thinking better of it.

Now leave me. I have books to perform…acts upon.