D&D is, after all, a truly unique invention, probably as remarkable as the die, or the deck of cards, or the chessboard. — J. Eric Holmes, Dragon Magazine Issue 52

One of my little habits is keeping a commonplace book. A commonplace book was essentially a medieval scrapbook; as Wikipedia puts it, commonplace books were idiosyncratic journals “filled with items of every kind: medical recipes, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, proverbs, prayers, legal formulas. Commonplaces were used by readers, writers, students, and scholars as an aid for remembering useful concepts or facts they had learned.”

I keep my own “commonplace book” in a text file, filled with what I think are smart quotes about religion, politics, or whatever else I happen to be reading lately. And a big chunk of that is RPG quotes. Today, I thought I’d share part of my little collection with you.

Systemic blandness is, simply, a system that is neither elegant in itself, nor interesting despite not being elegant, nor charmingly inelegant. To explain: Risus is elegant in itself. It is incredibly easy to pick up, has surprising depth, and is very well thought-out. Cyberpunk 2020 is interesting despite not being elegant. It is somewhat complicated and you have to keep quite a few things in your mind as you play, but there are things in there that are genuinely interesting (the combat system, the life events system, etc.). Pre-3rd edition D&D is charmingly inelegant. In the abstract it is stupidly overcomplicated and messy, but it doesn’t matter because it could not be more charming. It is lovable. […]

I would [call] D&D 3rd edition [bland]. It ironed out all the charm from TSR-era D&D but did nothing to make it more interesting or elegant. — Noisms, On Explicating System Preference

There’s a big part of the OSR that you either grok or you don’t. Many of my D&D-playing friends simply don’t understand the aesthetic appeal of early editions of D&D.

It’s a tough nut to crack. Some of it, of course, is simple nostalgia (although I was born almost a decade after the release of Moldvay Basic). But I think it goes well beyond nostalgia, to a sense of earnestness that is missing from today’s D&D products. Today’s products are clearly the product of a team of editors, art directors, and market research staff.

D&D products of yesteryear, however, are clearly the product of one or two energetic minds and one poor, frazzled editor. That has its downsides—I’ve written before that Moldvay Basic organization is an unholy mess. But there’s also a warmth and enthusiasm (GIANT SHREW!) that fades from any product over time.

When I read early D&D editions, and look at the art, I can feel the excitement the authors still felt. Noisms nails this on a higher level: The system itself is full of effusive charm.

Dungeon Mastering is hard.

It’s a chaotic, magical, talent that is easy to learn, but maybe only really old dudes with wizard eyebrows master. I like to call when I make mistakes “fucking up”. I make mistakes to this day when I run games. — Courtney Campbell, On the Corpse of the Quantum Ogre

One of the hardest parts of DMing for me is overcoming that feeling of inadequacy that comes from reading really kick-ass play reports from, say, Patrick Wetmore. Not sure if this classic line from Courtney makes that easier or harder, but it sure rang true. Maybe the problem is that my eyebrows are simply not up to snuff.

The God that Crawls will trap your player characters. It will chase them! And it’ll kill them quick if they expect to carry out their dungeoneering business as usual.

If any of this sounds unfair, remember that “Adventurer” is defined as “one who looks for trouble,” and “Adventure” is defined as “The trouble an adventurer finds.” — James Edward Raggi IV, The God that Crawls

Raggi is divisive, and frankly I don’t feel like running any of his adventures except perhaps The God that Crawls (too deadly, too railroady). But no one has ever so pithily answered the charge that old-school lethality is simple DM brutality. It’s not (just) capricious, it’s a different set of assumptions that lead to different kinds of play.

Pathfinder and 4e are like Final Fantasy—they assume that your character is important, that their story should be coherent and morally-satisfying. They want to create fun gameplay systems, but they don’t want the game to jeapordize the tale that’s being woven.

Old school RPGs are like roguelikes, like Brogue. Your character is fragile, and while they may start out foolish they’ll either learn cleverness or end up a pile of ash. The story of an old-school character is like that of a World War 1 soldier—sad and often far too short. But if your character might be snuffed out by one mistake, the reward for careful and successful play is a feeling of immense accomplishment.

I’m not sure one of these playstyles is morally superior to the other, but I’ve played an immense amount of both Final Fantasy X and Brogue. Beating Brogue was the most satisfying gaming moment of my life, a moment built on the bones of literally hundreds of characters. The challenge fueled me and gave my choices meaning.

I quit Final Fantasy X one hour before the end.

What truly makes heroes of legend, in the end, is not what they were born with; it is what they achieve, in a risky life full of adventure, peril, and courage—and sometimes lots of trickery and guile, too. — Swords & Wizardry Core Rules, “Roll Attribute Scores”

A corollary of the above principle. New-school players often fixate on the cruddy ability scores of most “Iron Man”-generated characters. They’re missing two things. First, and critically, ability scores are marginally significant in a world that can kill even the brawniest fighter in two hits (assuming you’re running B/X or a close relative). Second, that randomly-generated ability scores are an invitation. They ask the player “What can you make of me? What kind of adventurer has 17 Charisma and 14 Wisdom, but 6 Con and 8 Dex?” There’s nothing wrong with building an ideal character via point buy, but there’s a certain magic to following the dice. After all, restrictions breed creativity.

There are unquestionably areas which have been glossed over […] We have attempted to furnish an ample framework, and building should be both easy and fun. In this light, we urge you to refrain from writing [us] for rule interpretations or the like unless you are absolutely at a loss, for everything herein is fantastic, and the best way is to decide how you would like it to be, and then make it just that way! […] We are not loath to answer your questions, but why have us do any more of your imagining for you? — Gygax & Arneson, OD&D, The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures

What can I add to my favorite quote from the game that started it all?

Image Credits

All illustrations from D&D Basic by Tom Moldavy

During the Lulu 40% Off Fall Madness sale, I picked up Patrick Wetmore’s Anomalous Subsurface Environment, a megadungeon sleeper-hit getting rave remarks in every review I’ve read (the notoriously harsh critic Bryce Lynch, of tenfootpole, called it “an absolutely amazing setting and a wonderful dungeoncrawl. It hits all of the points I’m looking for: evocative & terse descriptions, imaginative settings, tricks & traps, new monsters, great multi-path maps, ‘naturalism’, factions, vermin. I could go on and on.”)

The critics are entirely right. If you buy one OSR product, buy this one. Buy it ahead of Stonehell, even, or Swords & Wizardry. I laugh out loud reading ASE. I laugh like the first time I read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s all amazingly fresh, astoundingly creative. Go. Buy. This. Book.

To match my words to deeds, I decided to rewrite my character tumbler for Basic Fantasy for ASE (and for Basic D&D). The layout is the same, but the professions are all fresh and are, dare I say it, cleverer and more likely to produce amusing gameplay. I also took the liberty of crafting logos and slogans for the two pre-apocalyptic corporations that (SPOILER) unearthed the Anomalous Subsurface Environment—check all this out after the jump.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, a character tumbler (or funnel, as the genius inventors at DCC RPG call it) starts each player off with four sadsack 0-Level characters who are forced into a dungeon. Each has -100 XP, and most will die quickly. But those who survive to 1 XP attain Level 1, and become full-fledged PCs. For a fuller explanation of why character tumblers are awesome, see my Basic Fantasy version.

I ran this ASE Tumbler last night, with my three doughty players and their twelve Oligarchs, Moktars, Beggars, etc. taking on the Moktar Lair mini-adventure from ASE1, and the first half of the gatehouse. We all had a riotously good time, though my players are cleverer than I’d hoped: Only 4 out of 12 have perished so far.

The Moktar lair makes a decent character funnel, though your players will need to be quite clever to penetrate its depths. Mine were lucky enough to have an actual Moktar PC, who negotiated and bullshitted well enough to persuade the other Moktars to release the merchant (a certain amount of leverage was provided by the butchering of two Moktar guards just outside the mouth of their den). The players went on to murder Terry & Phil, and barter their way through the western end of the Gatehouse. Well done, gentlemen!

Even if you’re not running ASE, this character tumbler ought to fit in well in any other gonzo/science-fantasy game—while I’ve tried to evoke the flavor of ASE as much as possible, there’s precious little material that’s exclusive to it. You could also just use the Professions table to generate random NPCs (although ASE includes a massive number of fantastic NPC tables already, so why do you need this one?).

Downloads

ASE Character Tumbler: The character tumbler, in standard PDF.

ASE Character Tumbler: The same character tumbler, in convenient booklet format.

Image Credits

“Four Races” by Brian “Glad” Thomas, ASE2–3, p. 9

“Dynamt Logo” by me

“IMES Logo” by me

Starting a new run of Hat Tip posts, linking to some of my favorite output from the firehose of OSR content I consume every day. Since it’s the start of 2014, I figure I’ll run long in this inaugural edition and hit my personal highlights of last year’s reading.

d12 Wandering Sorcerors—Dungeon Dozen: How to pick just one Dungeon Dozen post! They really are the Crown Jewels of the Old School Renaissance. But this pairs with the Anomalous Subsurface Environment like goat cheese and honey (my product of the year, incidentally), and generally encapsulates what makes Dungeon Dozen great.

“Surviving Levels 1-3 of Basic D&D”—Ben Lehman: Some fantastic strategy tips for players on how to survive Basic D&D’s insanely deadly combat. Reminds me of the lessons I had to learn playing rogulikes, and I sure wish my own players would take this to heart.

On Fractional Ability Points—The Disoriented Ranger: A fun and pithy houserule for increasing a character’s ability scores, but in a way that feels old-school and dice-y. I rejigged this as a pdf for my own players.

Orangutan Character Class—Monstrous Television: A simple, silly, fun character class. Favorite quote? “They can communicate enough to purchase gear (assuming they are allowed into a shop unattended), although they will likely be charged extra by greedy merchants.” I also pdf-ified this one for my D&D binder. Please also see: Amazing illustration of my brother’s Orangutan character, by my friend Josh (LEFT).

Gibbering Mouther Character Class—Dyson’s Dodecahedron: If Dungeon Dozen is the OSR crown jewels, Dyson’s Dodecahedron is its scepter (and I guess Tenkar’s Tavern is the orb?). Of all his efforts this year, the one I loved best was this writeup of the Gibbering Mouther as a class. The Gibbering Mouther PC was, hands-down, my gaming group’s most memorable charcter of the year. (I made a PDF of this guy too.)

How Interesting Can Rocks Be?—False Machine: Unexpectedly interesting, as it turns out! The best one is Spark: “Spark’s intent is blunt but its effects are subtle. It usually hits when thrown. If cast at a policeman, general, king or pope it will always knock their headgear off. Spark will be ignored if you are searched for weapons. Spark wants to cut chains and smash locks, to shatter spears and cut blunt notches in expensive swords.”

Hexographer Map of Europe—ADMC: A gorgeous, insanely-detailed (insanely-detailed) hex map of Europe. I haven’t used this yet, but I am simply dying to send my players hexcrawling through Medieval Europe. Also includes the Hexographer source files, an issue close to my heart.

Starting Equipment—Untimately: The best equipment generator I’ve ever seen. Curves starting weapons and armor based on hit dice, so fighters tend to get better kit than wizards. A very nifty piece of design. (What’s that? You also have an insane B/X binder full of house rules and want a pdf of this too? It’s your lucky day.)

d12 Subclasses—Dyson’s Dodecahedron: Dyson’s other standout work of the year. These d12-based subclasses remind me of fractional ability points, in that they are a very OSR way to add some of the character differentiation modern players demand.

Handmade B/X Character Sheet—Pontos de Experienca: Fantastically evocative character sheet, far better than my own handmade efforts last year year.

D100 Random “Minor” Science Fantasy Treasures—Dungeon of Signs: Written to integrate with ASE and Dungeon of Signs own fantastic Tomb of the Rocketmen series, this is a standout set of treasures. Of particular note: The “fragile” column, and entries like “Silk Corset boned with broken sword blades of fine steel”.

The Incredible Changing Brick—Blog of Holding: Quite simply, my favorite magic item of the year.

If you’re looking for even more OSR goodness, look no farther than Links to Wisdom, a directory of all that is best about our end of the hobby.

As for my own year, I have two posts I’d particularly like to highlight. My most popular post was the B/X Quick Reference Sheet. But while that ref sheet is well and good, my favorite was IDA0: Plague-Stricken Halls. I loved that the finished module looked almost like a “real”, professional module. Oh, and that it was a work unto itself! Oh, and I loved the cover art by my friend Alex Langenstein. Go download that noise (and steal the magic items, they’re all Creative Commons-licensed).

Image Credits

From har Dyrene Sjæl by Theodor Kittelsen (public domain)

“Lanky” by Josh Adams

Detail from “A Hexographer hex map of Europe” by Ville Makkonen

D&D B/X - Ficha de Personagem Personalizada à Mão! by Diogo Nogueira

Cover of IDA0: Plague Stricken Halls by me, cover illustration by Alex Langenstein.

The Compendium of Creepier Creeps

Continuing the feature begun with The Hollyshade a few months back, although this creature differs from that one in several respects: It was drawn in a Rhodia DotPad (less pretty, better paper); it’s inspired by reading The Dying Earth, and it’s much cuter. Oh, and it’s statted for B/X, not Basic Fantasy.

Like much of my output, this is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which allows you to share it or reuse it in nearly any context.

The Esm

Ungainly, unkind and untrustworthy, the Esm is an opportunistic agent of Chaos spawned from demonically-tainted flux stone. Once birthed, the quickly form squabbling warbnds and set off in search of magic items or demihumans—both of which they eat, Esms being wicked metal-human hybrids birthed of magic and driven to cannibalism. In their cowardice, however, they can usually be bartered with.

AC: 7
HD: 1
Attacks: 1d6 Damage (or by weapon), Belch
Movement: 60’ (20’)
No. Appearing: d4+1
Save As: Normal Man
Morale: 7
Treasure Type: R (B)
Alignment: Chaos

The Esm generally fights with his crude weapons. In desparation, he may belch forth a noxious goo dealing d4 damange within a 5’ radius. However, this may (1–2 on d6) kill the Esm outright due to internal bleeding.

1 out of 6 Esms are “mages”, fighting as 2 HD creatures and knowing a single random Level One spell (used more or less randomly).

The monster text included in this article, and the illustration, are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License Please attribute by linking to this article.

I finally—finally!—started running Moldvay-Cook B/X recently. I went whole-hog: I printed out the pdfs, hole-punched them, carefully interleaved them with a few sheets of house rules, neatly separated each chapter with binder dividers. I even printed out the covers in full-color, and slipped them in plastic sleeves.

I am really living large. And I am loving this ruleset. But there’s just no getting around it: These rules are… idiosyncratically organized (at best). The key tables and rules are scattered across body text, in three or four chapters, and it really slows me down at the table.

The existing B/X reference sheets were all a bit too long for me; and perhaps more to the point, I decided I needed a B/X quick ref when I was away from a printer, and had only grid paper and pen. So I copied a bunch of tables. By hand.

This one has all the classics: Attack Matrices, a Fighter Saves chart, even a summary of the key rules about doors and light sources that I always seem to forget (A note on the doors: I wrote that 2/6 doors are stuck; I think I picked that up from Stonehell, not M/C. Ignore if you wish.).

Hope you find it useful!

Downloads

.png version (warning: huge file)

.pdf version

I have no special knowledge of Vance’s work. I impulse-bought Mazirian the Magician a few months back, but never got around to reading it. But reading all of the moving obits Jack merited, I felt compelled to pick it up and try again.

I stayed up until 3 a.m. that night reading, and till 2 the next day to finish it. As a real adult now with a real job and an increasingly Twitterified attention span, commanding my attention that long is a real feat.

As it happened, I was running D&D that Friday for the first time in forever (and B/X D&D for the first time ever; my fellow OSR nerds, I beg forgiveness). Inspired by Vance, I remembered the fantastic Dying Earth Spells for D&D (which I first encountered on Untimately). I ran Stonehell in a haphazardly-imagined “Dying Earth”-lite, and I was entirely sold. I loved the dramatically-named spells, loved the setting, loved the whole bag.

But while I had a much-more atmospheric Magic-User/Elf spell list, the Cleric was stuck with the generic. “Resist Cold”. “Light”. “Remove Fear”. All fine enough in their way, but they didn’t quite fit in with “The Metamorphoun of Fire” and “Phandaal’s Polyglottal Lobe”.

I did some scrounging for a follow-up, but while author John once alluded to a Cleric version, I never managed to locate one.

So, (asking my beloved reader to bear in mind that my knowledge of Vance, B/X, and Cleric spell balance is shaky) I humbly offer up “Cleric Spells for a Dying Earth: Level One”.

I tried to make them Cleric-y, of course. Few are particularly useful in the heat of combat, and most allude to supra-human entities. But I thought it was more important they be Vancian: I hope they evoke a world that is rich in history, deeply amoral, and in irrevocable decline.

Cleric Spells for a Dying Earth

Level One

Elshazzar’s Obliterative Visage

Range: 0
Casting Time: 1 minute
Duration: 3 days

Anyone who looks upon the target will entirely forget what the target looks like as soon as they lose eye contact.

The Adjuration of the Murderous Queen of Heaven

Range: 30’
Casting Time: Instant
Duration: 1 day

If the target fails a save against Spells, they act without any pity or mercy until the spell expires.

The Birthword of the Loyal Servitor

Range: 0
Casting Time: 1 minute
Duration: 2 turns

One small statue you touch animates and attempts to obey a single command.

The Cross of the Forgotten Savior

Range: 0
Casting Time: 1 turn
Duration: 4 turns

Draw a cross in the dust; no Chaotic creature can come within 10’ without taking 5d6 damage.

The Mantra of Marvelous Fecundity

Range: 100’
Casting Time: 1 turn
Duration: Permanent

All vegetation within a 10’x10’ area experiences a half-century of growth in a single turn.

The Paean to Earth’s Lost Moon

Range: 0
Casting Time: Instant
Duration: 3 turns

Target creature loses 6 points of Intelligence (with a minimum score of 3) and temporarily forgets all prepared spells, but gains +1 to melee to-hit and damage.

The Prayer to the Bloodied Heart

Range: Special
Casting Time: Instant
Duration: Instant

You and four creatures within 20’ of you each lose 1 HP, and one target you touch gains 1d8+1 HP.

Zanathiel’s Blessed Wineskin

Range: 0
Casting Time: 1 minute
Duration: 1 day

A wineskin you touch will dispense 2d6+level gallons of delicious wine.

Downloads

Download spells as .pdf

Download .docx source

Image Credits

Cleric of Skulls by beelzebuddha, licensed CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.

Shoggoth by Pahko, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0

I don’t mean in an off-putting, game-y, 4th edition way, either. The competitive pressure in the video game space is huge, leading to all sorts of interesting experiments. Because the pressure is more intense—and perhaps also because there are more consumer dollars supporting game makers—this experimentation happens much more quickly than the pen-and-paper side of the hobby.

One of my favorite minor innovations is Final Fantasy X’s Sphere Grid (pictured, right). When I picked FFX up around my 14th birthday, I was fascinated by it. To briefly summarize, the Grid was the best sort of metagame: You would gain Spheres, then spend those Spheres to advance your characters along a winding system of tracks. At various points the tracks would split, and you’d be forced to choose how your character would advance.

Leveling up was no longer a mechanical process, or just a choice of whether to learn a new move. Instead, I was moving around a map, I could take my characters wherever I wanted.

In reality, the Sphere Grid was not that different from a standard ability tree. One ability chained into another ability, and more powerful abilities were locked away behind weak ones¹ Your decisions never quite made as much difference as you hoped. But there were key differences.

First, the various branches of the trees wrapped into one another. It wasn’t a tree, it was a huge, inter-related flowchart. A character could wander onto another character’s branch, or double down on their own specialties. The characters weren’t just crafted by the developers, I could play a key role. Making my Tidus—the protagonist—more of a healer changed how I felt about Tidus, even in cutscenes which I had no control over.

Moreover, the fetching map presentation really engaged me with the grid. As a kid, I used to spend hours poring over Tolkein and Might and Magic maps—and I never even cared about Middle Earth or Xeen!² The map presentation itself was enough to draw me in; and I spent many happy hours doodling my own fantasy maps (example, left).

The beautiful grid presentation of the Sphere Grid similarly attracted me. I loved tracing out the complex loops and chains throughout the grid. I could forecast where a character might be headed. I’d sit and count the number of nodes separating me from an ability I really lusted for, then debate with my brother whether it might be better to shoot for a slightly closer, but less-exciting, ability instead. The visuals really mattered.

I’d love to see this idea explored in the RPG space. There’s nothing to prevent it. A character sheet could have the grid printed right onto it, and as characters improved the player could color in grid points and spread out or specialize as they chose.

A few years back, when I first started flirting with Proper Motion, this was in my initial plans. As the concept has evolved, this idea has started to look out of place with the OSR feeling I’m shooting for with Proper Motion. But I’d still like to see this happen.

With that in mind, perhaps someone might find this draft character sheet I made back then useful. I’ve already put together the grid, now all you have to do is the hard part. My idea was that characters could start from one of the three triangles, then proceed outward/around the edges (greater specialization) or inwards (generalist characters).

The files are an Inkscape SVG; and its PDF and PNG output files (opt for the PDF if you just want to print it out and scribble on it). I’m licensing them all CC BY, so make something of it!

Downloads

All downloads licensed CC BY 3.0. Please attribute by linking to this page.

Space Fantasy Sheet, .pdf

Space Fantasy Sheet, .svg and .png source

Image Credits

Sphere Grid Illustration from the Final Fantasy Wikia, from Final Fantasy X.

Childhood Map, by me, age 14.

Space Fantasy Sheet, by me.

The Game is called Proper Motion: A Fantasy of Ptolemaic Space. That’s quite a mouthful, so let’s unpack it a little bit.

Proper Motion is a space fantasy game inspired by Spelljammer. Or at least by what I thought Spelljammer was when I read the elevator pitch: wooden ships sailing thru a boundless, infinitely-varied fantasy universe.¹ Proper Motion is also the child of Mario Galaxy, whose universe of micro-planets uninhibited by ordinary physics still enchants me every time I think about it.

Proper Motion is a game where humanoid elephants sail wooden boats to a 20’ wide worldlet inhabited only by a peculiarly reclusive frost giant. Or where a motley crew of adventurers sets out into the deadly Gravelands in hopes of finding the legendary Orb of Solid Gold.

It’s a game rooted in an ancient science based on the four elements (hence the almost-gratuitous “Ptolemaic”), and a world so run thru with magic it makes Eberron look practically mundane.

The worldlets of Proper Motion are borne along by the Zephyr, a ceaseless breeze that blows from the bright heart of the universe to the huge belt of dead worlds that encircle it. Between the fiery central Forge and the Gravelands lie millions of planets, varying from a few feet to a few dozen miles across. These worldlets are mostly isolated, but are connected by traders, pirates, navies—Zephyfarers. Adventurers, you might call them.

Proper Motion’s world is saturated with magic. One consequence of this is that each member of one of the seven Zephyrfaring races² is born with a single innate magical ability—a Knack.

Each person’s knack is totally unique to them. Some knacks are quirky, some dangerous, a few almost useless. But each one defines the character³ of the man or woman born under it. When players roll for their Knack, it should prompt them to ask questions like, “How did my character discover this knack?” Just as the meager possessions of a level-0 funnel character give them an unexpected dose of personality, so a Knack helps connect players to their fresh level one PCs.

Proper Motion contains 1d100 of these unique Knacks. Here are 20 of my favorites:

Image Credits

Mario Galaxy Wallpaper from Puissance Nintendo

Kindori image scanned from Spelljammer: Lorebook of the Void, page 79.

Today, 137 other bloggers are all blogging about their love of the system. The S&W creators are also running a nice 25% off sale in appreciation; use the code SWApprDay at checkout.

I didn’t know how much value I could add as a system-critic. But I still wanted to pay the system the pretty compliment I think it deserves, so I’ve written a module for it! I’ve never written a S&W module before, and found it a pleasingly simple process: S&W is not fussy about the details of armor class asignment or XP values, allowing me to focus on writing.

The module is dubbed IDA0: Plague-Stricken Halls. In it, a lawful goblin fortress has been overrun by a strange plague, leaving its wonderful magical riches free for the taking. Among these are a Font of Ever-Burning Oil, and a Ring of Forbidden Fruit which turns your own skeleton against you! The module also includes new monsters, a nifty map, and of course a fully-keyed dungeon.

It’s written for my own house setting, Terra Pericolosa, which is set on medieval earth. As such, the goblins were mostly Catholics, and I’ve sprinkled Biblical allusions throughout the text. If there’s interest, I might do a follow-up post on Terra Pericolosa. For your own games, it could easily be adapted and dropped into any hexcrawl.

The entire interior contents are licensed CC BY 3.0, meaning you can reuse them in your own work easily. Everything except the cover, and the lovely cover image by Alex Langenstein, are free for the taking. So use them!

Downloads

IDA0: Plague-Stricken Halls (full-color)

IDA0: Plague Stricken Halls (greyscale)

Source Files in Markdown, Word, and .SVG

Starting a new feature! These are creatures I’m creating and drawing in an awesome silver PaperBlanks notebook. Kudos to the Random Esoteric Creature Generator for helping make these possible.

First up: The Hollyshade. That this is possibly the best drawing I’ve ever done may show the limits of my artistic talent (other artistic output). This monster is statted for Basic Fantasy, but should be pretty easy to drop into other OSR games. Image and monster text are both CC BY 3.0, so feel free to repost/use in your own books.

The Hollyshade

A thick cloak of holly leaves covers this stocky biped. Many eyes peek from the foliage, as does a large beak protruding from its off-center head. Its sole arm is muscular, and ends in a shimmering greataxe. A cluster of wood stakes pierces its torso.

AC: 12‡
HD: 3**
Attacks: Greataxe +3 (d10); Flying Stake +3 (d4) (20’)
Movement: 30’ Jump 30’
Key Abilities: Smoke Cloak +1, Non-Magic Immunity
No. Appearing: 1
Save As: Fighter: 3
Morale: 12
Treasure Type: N and +1 Greataxe

The hollyshade is a relentless hunter created when a human’s blood is shed on a holly bush. With sufficient bloodshed, the bush becomes dependent on the magical energy received from blood and yearns for more. Its boughs twist and turn under the great influx of magical energy, eventually forming a hollyshade.

From there, the hollyshade will go out and seek fresh blood to water the bush, killing indiscriminately and dragging its victims’ bodies to lay on the bush’s roots. A hollyshade’s parent bush will spawn a new hollyshade 1d4 weeks after one is killed, until the bush is chopped down.

Smoke Cloak: A cloud of thick black smoke extends fifty feet from this creature, surprising with 1-4 on 1d6.

Non-Magic Immunity: The Hollyshadow is immune to non-magical weapon damage.

The monster text included in this article, and the illustration, are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License Please attribute by linking to this article.

But while Basic Fantasy looks to Moldvay et al. for inspiration, it is not as slavish as many other OSR games (they’re called retroclones for a reason). Armor Class ascends, as God intended. Race and class are largely divorced (to my players’ eternal relief) but not entirely.

This is mostly good, but occasionally Basic Fantasy pitches a feature from BD&D I liked. So it is with GP-as-XP.

A quick definitional aside: GP-as-XP is the rule, prevalent in early D&D and many retroclones, that players primarily earn experience points by finding loot. Generally, every gold piece returned to safety is another experience point in the bank.

Modern RPGs outside the retroclone movement take a number of approaches to experience: Points earned for using your skills (The Burning Wheel), XP for developing your character background (every GM desperate to see a little personality from their PCs), or for completing major story objectives (everything from GURPs to 3e to, yes, Basic Fantasy). I have no issue with these three, so far as they go.

There’s an elephant in the room, however: XP for killing dudes. This is, of course, the classic choice since (I think) AD&D.

I think it stinks. Mostly, it distorts a player’s view of the game. Players naturally crave advancement. But however much fun treasure is to earn and spend, that magical *ding* earned when leveling up is so much more fun. Everyone loves to level. It’s in our gaming genes.

Earning XP from killing monsters disincentivizes clever play. There’s little advantage in stealing a few sacks of treasure from Smaug’s lair, if it’ll just earn you a magic scroll or two. No matter how clever your scheme for depriving Smaug of his stuff, if you can’t off Smaug, or least a few of his minions¹, you’ll never make it to the big leagues.

This discourages many of the things old-school roleplaying values, especially caution. It also encourages players to resent “unfair” challenges: If they need to kill those monsters to advance, it’s understandable that they’ll be irritated by facing too many foes they simply can’t hope to kill. Furthermore, it gives an advantage to combat-oriented characters at the expense of the stealthy or clever.

These problems are not even confined to pen-and-paper roleplaying games. Brogue, perhaps the greatest roguelike of the last few years, recently made a radical move away from experience earned by killing monsters. Instead, characters advance by finding magic potions: Killing monsters has little benefit except getting them out of your way.

When Brogue made this switch, I was astounded how much it changed my play. Cowardly characters really were suddenly viable; melée became a choice rather than a necessity. A whole new side of the game opened up, where existing mechanics took on sudden new life from one simple change.

So for me, Basic Fantasy needs GP-as-XP.

To that end, I’ve made a quick one-page GP-as-XP rules page. The page is numbered “42” so you can drop it in as a replacement in a printed copy of Basic Fantasy (no art, however, since this runs up against the terms of the Basic Fantasy license).

Downloads

GP-as-XP.

All files licensed under the Open Game License, for full terms see the file downloads.

If you liked this post, follow me on Twitter @InfiniteDragons

Image Credits

Dragon Year, licensed CC BY-NC-ND 3.0, by ~Meoon

Dile’s Treasure, licensed CC BY-NC-ND 3.0, by ~Tanimatic

Brogue Image: Screenshot by Austin Schaefer; Brogue designed by Brian Walker

But one bit of DCCRPG really captured my imagination: The character funnel, which turns four sad-sack level-0 characters into one level 1 PC by the power of dice and almost-certain death.

The character funnel brings a very OSR approach to a very OSR problem. The problem is that most retro-styled games have very swingy character creation. The beloved Iron Man stat generation system (roll 3d6 in order for each ability) is particularly bad in this regard.

Out of (say) four characters, Iron Man will generally turn up one rock-solid character, two mediocrities, and one you just feel sorry for. This is fine for players 1, 2, and 3; but it can really blow chunks for poor player 4.

There’re two classic solutions to the problem: One is to make character generation more merciful (Fine enough for most GMs; but those of us who like a little arbitrary brutality find this unsatisfactory), the other is to tell players to suck it up (Also fine enough, until you get the player who rolls five 10s and a 7. What do you tell that poor bastard?).

Most of the OSR GMs I’ve read suggest that this swinginess is just fine: The characters who survive were the ones who deserved to survive. Players will eventually learn to love their sucky characters for their unique histories, rather than their raw numbers. This does little for more modern players who don’t want to slog through their first few sessions with a suboptimal 10-10-10-10-10-7er like the one mentioned above. Indeed, in my experience, many players will have given up on the entire OSR system well before they can enjoy this compensation.

DCC’s OSR solution is very nifty: It accelerates the building of that character history. Let’s outline it briefly: Each player creates four level-0 PCs. Each of these receives a tiny fragment of personality and backstory: A race, profession, and a few meager possessions. You then send these sadsacks through the meat-grinder of a typical D&D dungeon. The few who manage to claw their way from -100 XP to 1 XP attain level one, and get a class and a proper place in the campaign.

The idea, then, is that players learn to love the idiots who survived simply because they’re the ones who managed to beat the odds. Who cares that your survivor (a farmer, with nothing to his name but a goat and a smile) has 7 Strength and 4 Charisma? Somehow his 13 Intelligence allowed him to pull through, and he’s now ready for a profitable career as a wizard.

It’s a damned great idea. But I wanted to use it with my system of choice, rather than DCC, and I wanted a free version of the idea so even non-DCC players could enjoy it. So I wrote up a Basic Fantasy version (.pdf; .odt also available).¹ This should work just fine with most other OSR games, as well, though you’ll need to adjust saves and AC.

The funnel turns up all sorts of evocative characters: An Elven Ragpicker with 16 Charisma, unencumbered by any possessions except a sack of broken glass. A Dwarven Beekeeper, apparently not hampered in her chosen profession by her 4 Dexterity. Human Nobles with pet monkeys; Halfling Vintners with three jugs of wine; even Dwarven Wizard’s Apprentices.²

The Funnel has one other use: It’s very good for creating NPC parties, and indeed just common NPCs in general. Three rolls on pages two and three will get you 90% of a basic NPC, and ten minutes or so of effort will produce a crew of four suitable for dropping into any dungeon.

Not only that, but I flatter myself that the list of possessions will create amusing corpses for PCs to loot. If you do use the Funnel to create NPCs, I’d suggest just doing two or three rolls on the Equipment Generator, rather than buying loot for each one individuallly.

Downloads

Basic Fantasy Character Tumbler, .pdf

Basic Fantasy Character Tumbler, .odt

Basic Fantasy Character Tumbler Sheet, .doc

All files licensed under the Open Game License, for full terms see the file downloads.

What’s an OSR¹ devotée to do, if they prefer their news aggregation come via Twitter? Seriously, I swear every OSR blogger is as old school about RSS and Google Reader as they are about their roleplaying games.

You see, I adore the older roleplaying games, and I might just like OSR bloggers even more. The creativity in the community is astounding (see the Dungeon Dozen, for example, which posts creative new uses for your d12 every few days). The commitment to historical research is just as impressive, occasionally even scary: Check out Playing at the World, the sister blog for the acclaimed 700-page history of D&D.

And yet, while I attempt to swim through all this stuff, I find myself encumbered by masses of RSS tangleweed. I don’t want to check fifteen RSS feeds, or a feed aggregator, or fifteen individual webpages. I want it on Twitter! I propose a Twitter hashtag to remedy this: #OSRblogroll. When you find an awesome OSR blog post, Tweet it, and use #OSRblogroll to help the rest of us find it!

I can make something up, of course. But my made-up answers tend to be same-y, or simply not believable. It’s a tricky nut to crack.

I’m still working thru my answers to those first two questions. Recently, however, I realized a partial answer for the third: What is that monster thinking? Or, perhaps more relevant, what’s that monster likely to do? What’s his personality like?

Most OSR games answer this question two ways: A text blurb describing the monster, and a Morale stat to indicate how brave the monster is in combat. Both answers are inadequate.

The text blurb has two problems: It’s hard to digest quickly when flipping thru a statblock, and it doesn’t account for variation between the monsters. Sure, goblins in general might be vicious little opportunists, but what’s this goblin like? Is he pure aggro, or does cowardice come uppermost? Of course, the GM can make those calls on a case-by-case basis, but I have the aforementioned fear of same-y mobs and boring situations. Furthermore, many OSR GMs right want the the dice to make those calls.

The Morale stat’s usefulness is more obviously limited. It tells you what a monster does in combat, but that’s about all. It does nothing to tell you what the monster might do when negotiating with players; how long their friendship might last; or anything else not related to the shedding of blood.

My draft answer to this is a rule I’m calling Wickedness. All potential enemies have a Wickedness modifier. The higher the modifier, the greater their wickedness. Here’s the draft text I wrote up to explain this:

Wickedness

d6+Wickedness	Personality
0 or less	Friendly
1	Indifferent
2	Territorial
3	Mercenary
4	Backstabbing
5	Predatory
6 or more	Blood-crazed

All enemies have a Wickedness statistic, which indicates how their Personalities are inclined. More wicked creatures are more likely to have “bad personalities”. Note that personality does not replace reaction rolls; it will, however, modify their results.

GMs should be creative when interpreting Personality results: A “backstabbing” serpent might simply keep its distance until its victim turns its back; a backstabbing Slonovi mercenary might befriend the party over a period of weeks before suddenly turning on them in the night.

Personality results skew negative. For this reason, good or neutral creatures usually have Wickedness “penalties”: A peaceful monk might have a Wickedness modifier of –3; a common animal –2, or an opportunistic bear –1. On the other hand, wicked or aggressive creatures have Wickedness “bonuses”: A +0 for an irritable python; +1 for a triggerhappy soldier; or even +2 or +3 for a demon or hardened killer.

A quick example is in order: Suppose the party encounters a fellow adventuring band—of zombies, led by a red-robed necromancer! But while this necromancer is exceedingly evil, she’s not necessarily violent: Wickedness +1, perfect for a cautious sort of villain. Before the party says a word, the GM rolls to determine her personality:

d6+1=5, Predatory

While the necromancer might not attack instantly, she’s clearly ready to crack some heads. Perhaps her current minions are missing a few too many limbs, and she’s ready to replenish her squadron? Whatever her reasons, it’s clear our heroes will soon be defending themselves against an undead onslaught!

This rule does have one flaw: it can’t immediately be related to existing OD&D/BD&D/AD&D monsters. I’m still working out this issue: If you have any suggestions, please let me know in the comments!

On this site, I’ll chronicle my gaming projects, which are mostly small rules tweaks for OSR games. I’m currently working on Proper Motion, an OSR-inspired game I’m calling a “science fantasy of Ptolemaic space”.

Find me on Google+, or email me at austin@{this site}. Cheers, and happy gaming.