Stuffed Crocodile

A blog (mostly) about tabletop roleplaying games

Public Key

npub1rz4dezsc37q5vae4y4r03cquavprv43jpcvkwyx72sq2fsyxrndsp0fvqr

NIP-05 Address

gmkeros.wordpress.com@gmkeros-wordpress-com.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsp32ku3gvglq2xwu6j23hcuqwwkq3k2cequxt8zr09gq9yczrpekcpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43qganxjy

Publishing to

relay.mostr.pub

Author Public Key

npub1rz4dezsc37q5vae4y4r03cquavprv43jpcvkwyx72sq2fsyxrndsp0fvqr

Show more details

Last Notes

2024-12-24 16:50:53

- reply

you’re welcome 🙂

2024-12-23 22:01:21

- reply

Well, they didn’t really tamper with it, the text was kept the same, but the ads were inserted making it feel like it was part of the text

2024-12-23 18:48:11

A Monday Miscellany of Links pt. XXIJ.R.R. Tolkien Illustration “Bilbo comes to the Huts of the Raft-Elves”, 1937
The last few weeks I have been posting pretty often, daily even, which is interesting. I sometimes do get these posting spells for a bit with this blog, and that’s quite nice. Anyway, today I had business in Warsaw and wasn’t able to write anything before I was on the train back, so this post has been created on a shaky train halfway across Poland.
Downloadable Stuff
Mirkwood Tales (archive.org)
Adventure Class Starship Geomorphs Book (Yet Another Traveller Blog)
Random Tables
d100 – Dungeon Flora (d4 Caltrops)
d100 – Dungeon Fauna (D4 Caltrops)
d100 – Sentient Swords (d4 Caltrops)
d100 – Unconventional Shields & Bizarre Bucklers (d4 Caltrops)
Market Making (Elfmaids and Octopi)
GM Aid
When travelling, shit goes wrong (Luke Gearing)
The Very Avoidable Pit of GM Burnout (Deeper in the Game)
Reputation Tables (Luke Gearing)
Random encounter generator for DnD and other ttrpgs – Unlimited variety! (Dawnfist Games)
Dungeon Stocking – Expanded (d4 Caltrops)
Thought
Single-Axis Outer Planes (From the Sorcerer’s Skull)
Hobby History
D&D and Traveller (Grognardia)
The Mirkwood Tales RPG: the link between the original D&D rules and text-based computer games (Zenopus Archives)
Crowther’s Adventure and Mirkwood Tales (Renga in Blue)
Terrain Building
Walls for the Gameboard (Blood and Spectacles)Rate this:
#Adventure #Art #dnd #Tolkien #traveller #ttrpg
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/bilbo-comes-to-the-huts-of-the-raft-elves-42907363225570384737341162306.jpg?w=630

2024-12-23 18:48:11

A Monday Miscellany of Links pt. XXIJ.R.R. Tolkien Illustration “Bilbo comes to the Huts of the Raft-Elves”, 1937
The last few weeks I have been posting pretty often, daily even, which is interesting. I sometimes do get these posting spells for a bit with this blog, and that’s quite nice. Anyway, today I had business in Warsaw and wasn’t able to write anything before I was on the train back, so this post has been created on a shaky train halfway across Poland.
Downloadable Stuff
Mirkwood Tales (archive.org)
Adventure Class Starship Geomorphs Book (Yet Another Traveller Blog)
Random Tables
d100 – Dungeon Flora (d4 Caltrops)
d100 – Dungeon Fauna (D4 Caltrops)
d100 – Sentient Swords (d4 Caltrops)
d100 – Unconventional Shields & Bizarre Bucklers (d4 Caltrops)
Market Making (Elfmaids and Octopi)
GM Aid
When travelling, shit goes wrong (Luke Gearing)
The Very Avoidable Pit of GM Burnout (Deeper in the Game)
Reputation Tables (Luke Gearing)
Random encounter generator for DnD and other ttrpgs – Unlimited variety! (Dawnfist Games)
Dungeon Stocking – Expanded (d4 Caltrops)
Thought
Single-Axis Outer Planes (From the Sorcerer’s Skull)
Hobby History
D&D and Traveller (Grognardia)
The Mirkwood Tales RPG: the link between the original D&D rules and text-based computer games (Zenopus Archives)
Crowther’s Adventure and Mirkwood Tales (Renga in Blue)
Terrain Building
Walls for the Gameboard (Blood and Spectacles)
#Adventure #Art #dnd #Tolkien #traveller #ttrpg
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/bilbo-comes-to-the-huts-of-the-raft-elves-42907363225570384737341162306.jpg?w=630

2024-12-21 22:46:21

[Glimmermark] The Wild Hunt
There are no Glimmermark games for the next two weeks. Which means there also are no expeditions into the wilderness or the local dungeons as we are running on a 1:1 campaign time scale, with every week in real life being about a week in the game.
But why is that?
I mean, why is that for the people in the Glimmermark?
It turns out going out is just not something people do in the Mark, because it’s just too dangerous out there. Evil-doers are about when the nights are the cold and long. But worse, there are those who hunt these evil-doers, and who is an evil-doer or might just be someone with the wrong smell is up for debate. The days between Winter solstice and the first day of the next month is when the Wild Hunt scours the land.
Mind you, NOT the end of the year, as the year in the Glimmermark starts in the height of summer (because I started the campaign on the 1st of July…).What’s a Wild Hunt anyway?
The Wild Hunt is a common motif in the folklore of various western, northern, and eastern European cultures (and maybe even India). How and when it happens is different, but most often it takes place in the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany, although it likely is older than Christianity in these parts, and likely was supposed to be in the days after the winter solstice. Wild Hunts typically involve a chase or hunt lead by a mythological figure, accompanied by other spirits, both of humans, dogs, and other animals, and other mythological figures.
The Wild Hunt was introduced into DnD in the Celtic Mythos section of Deities & Demigods in 1980, and as with many interpretations of the myth for DnD, it was the fantasy-Celtic one of Cerunnos and it’s fey-based origins that stuck with the game even to 5th edition and Pathfinder. And it’s not a bad interpretation, but as someone who actually grew up with the local German folktales of the Wild Hunt this limitation always irked me a bit. I mean, it even claims that only Celtic areas (areas with Druids) would have the Wild Hunt.
Anyway, the stories about the Wild Hunt seem to be most abundant in Germanic countries, and if you want to dive deeper into the topic I can recommend Jürgen Hubert’s website, as he has translated a lot of even rather obscure German folklore into English. Days of the Hunt
People in the Glimmermark will celebrate the winter solstice with drinks and bonfires to light the night. It is quite the sight, as all over the dark landscape fires light up, both in human and non-human settlements. But there is a reason for it, because the day after gods and spirits call to the hunt. If you stay indoors at night you might hear the hounds of the hunt bark in the sky. If you go out at night… well, then you might become the game…
The wild hunt is a supernatural event that takes place once a year for twelve days, from the day after the winter solstice, to the beginning of the new year. Any encounter rolled in the wilderness at night will be with a Wild Hunt, either predetermined, or chosen by rolling on the table below.
People have different stories who actually is leading the hunt, but that all depends on what area they are in. There seems to be an ancient compact that allows gods and other entities to hunt their game in these days, and only if their quarry is abroad. It is possible for multiple wild hunts to meet, and sometimes stories about this have been told, but unless the gods involved have a deep enmity against one another they seem to prefer leaving each other in peace at this time.
Who is hunted also is a different matter. Some hunters seem to be fine with assuming everyone out at night in the deepest winter is up to no good, while others differentiate between the living and the dead, specific tribes, or other, more oblique criteria.
There is always a Master of the Hunt, but who that is will determine who else might be in the hunt.
Except for the hounds. They always are there (at least 1d20 of them), dark and fearsome, and able to track a target for hundreds of miles. Stories tell they are the spirits of dogs whose death was unjust. (A similar story is told about the steeds)
Bystanders might be affected. Anyone gazing at this phenomenon too long will be affected by this as well (Save vs. Spell) and might be inclined to join the host on it’s way. Anyone meeting the gaze of the host too long will be suspected of challenging them. The recommended behavior is to fall on the ground and avert your gaze. 1d10 Masters of the Hunt1. The Horned One
Stag-headed, shadowy, and fiery-eyed this master of the hunt often shows up in areas where druids hold sway. It is not quite clear what, if anything, this hunter is. A hunting party will consist of the entity, 2d20 hounds of the dark hunt, and only rarely 25% chance also other stag-headed individuals of lower HD. They will hunt down any clerics performing blood sacrifice and necromancers. They will specifically target ones that are level 12 or higher, but they will notice the stench of blood and decay from any practitioner.2. The Lord of Frenzy
One-eyed and riding an eight-legged horse, this being will show up in a large group, with 1d12 Valkyries, and 2d20 spectral warriors who died a straw death. They will hunt down giants and dragons, and those warriors who are slain in battle are immediately carried off by the valkyries.3. The Old Ruler
A spectral king or queen from ancient times will rise together with 1d12 of his finest knights, to drive all invaders off the land. There are few places where people have been living uninterrupted for a long time so the chance for even a local to escape their depredations is only about 50%.4. The Fey
A fey lord or lady of great renown has called to the hunt and will ride out with 1d10 fae warriors and 1d20 faerie goblins. What their goals are seems almost indeterminable, but they seem to slay those with CHA under 7, and abduct those with CHA of 17 or 18 if they can.5. The Lone Hunter
A spectral undead figure in black, only accompanied by a pack of wolf-like black hounds. This used to be a skilled hunter (at least level 9) who had sinned against his chosen deity and now is tasked to hunt down evil-doers during the 12 days. The hunter will not speak, but will be able to communicate with simple gestures. If players help them reach their allotment of quarries they might be released of this bond and gift them an appropriate treasure.6. The Pale Rider
A spectral party lead by a skeletal rider on a white horse and about 2d20 skeletal warriors. These collect the souls of the dead or those who should be dead to join them into their ride.7. The Dragon Slayer
A hunting party of ancient looking warriors lead by a single figure with bare chest and head, hunting for any dragons, wyverns, or other larger serpent-like creatures they can find. Meaningful help in their fight can provide them with a minor treasure from the dragon’s hoard.8. The White Host
A shining white host of 2d100 spirits on spectral horses lead by a cleric in silver armor flies over the sky. Any undead affected by their radiance will be turned/destroyed as if affected by a level 9 cleric.9. The Wild Huntress
A host of mostly female warriors lead by a beautiful huntress in leathers and furs. Their quarry are 10. The Devil
Or at least A devil. This being will ride out with 1d10 fiends in attendance. It’s quarry are oath-breakers, but they will gladly take along anyone they meet. Unlike the other hunts they do not generally fly, and have no problem entering settlements (but they stay clear of sanctified holy places)
#dnd #labyrinthlord #osr #rpg #ttrpg
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/1280px-la_caza_salvaje_de_odin_por_peter_nicolai_arbo.jpg?w=630
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/wild-hunt.png?w=630

2024-12-21 13:50:16

[Traveller] Reworking the Classic Traveller Rumor Matrix
During my excursions into reaction rolls for Traveller lately I realized that the Traveller book has a template for how to create rumor tables (or just come up with rumors on the fly). Unlike other games (uhm… DnD) which never get into this deeper than having a rumor table in some of their scenarios.
This also obviously was used in the creation of the rumor tables for the early scenario booklets. So if you are interested in how this look in practice you could just check e.g. Kinunir, Leviathan, or Twilight’s Peak to have ready made examples. And I think it works quite well, because those letter codes in the table give a generic idea of what sort of rumor one might encounter.
(speaking off which: rumors also showed up on the Encounter tables, so could be encountered randomly).
And it would even be possible to just roll on it and decide on the fly what sort of rumor (speak: hint) the characters would get.
In my opinion the matrix is a bit too complicated though. There’s at least one additional step in the table between rolling and looking up the result which really doesn’t need to be there.
Now unlike the usual d66 tables modern (Mongoose) Traveller is fond of which give you 36 different values to play with, this one gives you… how many exactly?
There are 36 choices for sure, but there are 26 different values (because it’s using the 26 letters of the English alphabet for them) some of which show up multiple times both in the table and the list of letters. which means there is a certain spread of likelihoods to encounter specific rumors. And because of the way it is structured the more general rumors in the lower part of the table are in there more often than others.
OK, no, I have to make this a bit clearer.
Let’s find out how this works: all letter codes show up at least once, for 26 letters.
Letter codes U V, W, and X show up thrice, and are designated General Rumors.
Letter Codes Y and Z show up twice, also as General Rumors, but they are designated specific and misleading background data.
This means from 36 different values 20 should provide info for the adventure at hand, the other 16 should provide general data.
In addition multiple values in the 20 first letters of the alphabet have the same category as others.
Major Fact C and Major Fact P have the same likelihood to appear, at 1/36. They should be different major facts though.
Reference to library data W and L have different weights. The more generic W has a chance of 3/36 to show up, while L merely shows up in 1/36 cases.
The differences between the categories sometimes are a bit fluent. How do I make a clue that is veiled instead of misleading?
On the other hand, it just gives a framework to work with so this is OK for now.
So now lets rework that table into something easier to use:
If my knowledge of statistics hasn’t completely left me, all the entries on the table above should have the same chance of happening (unless using biased dice). But that means we can just cut down on the whole thing and not lose anything from it.d66Letter CodeRumor11ABackground Information12BMinor Fact13CMajor Fact14DPartial (potentially misleading) fact15EVeiled clue 16FInformation Leading to trap21GLocation Data22HImportant Fact23IObvious Clue24JCompletely False Information25KTerminology26LLibrary Data Reference31MHelpful Data32NLocation Data33OReliable recommendation to action34PMajor Fact35QBackground Information 36RMinor fact41SVeiled Clue42TMisleading clue 43-45UBroad Background Information 46-52VMisleading Background information53-55WReference to Library Data56-62XGeneral Location Data63-64YSpecific Background Data65-66ZMisleading Background Data
And here we have it. Now to create a rumor table for an adventure or a location merely write down the letters A to Z, then fill in appropriate info. You don’t even have to fill all of it anew all the time. Just leave every entry over 42 the same and just change it on occasion (maybe after PCs have encountered it once or twice), leaving you with 20 rumors, hints, and infodumps you want to feed your players.
#Roleplaying #rpg #traveller #ttrpg
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/im-bann-des-psychogons.jpg?w=630
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/pasted_image.png?w=335

2024-12-20 14:10:20

[Art and Inspiration] Rick Guidice’s NASA illustrations
You have seen his works before if you ever looked at anything regarding space colonization. Rick Guidice was an American illustrator who did some stellar work illustrating some of the scientists at NASA were working on. Some of his most striking stuff was regarding various ideas for space colonies. And if you look up any article for that his illustrations are often the first thing that pop up.
#Art #illustration #nasa #Space #spacecolony
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/astronaut-guidice-2.jpg?w=630
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/external_view_of_a_bernal_sphere.jpg?w=630
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/spacecolony1.jpg?w=630

2024-12-19 22:28:20

[Traveller] Drinax pt.1: Where does King Oleb keep his armies?Art by Richard Powers
So as I mentioned I am preparing to run a Pirates of Drinax campaign and as I talked about in the article one should not see the UWPs of certain worlds as holy writ.
Which is fitting, because the day after I wrote that I looked at the UWP of Drinax itself and realized it could never fit with the campaign as written.
That’s of course a bit of a bummer.
It doesn’t help that the numbers are different between different printings. That’s just Mongooses infamously shoddy quality control. But the UWP has been around for longer. The sector data came from the 1984 Atlas of the Imperium. Later it was worked out in the The Third Imperium fanzine.
Now the UWP isA33645C-F
Which translates to
Starport A Excellent: Starship Construction, Overhaul, Refined fuel
Size 3 Small (4,800 km, 0.24g – 0.34g)
Atmosphere 3 Vacuum (very thin)
Hydrographics 6 Wet World 60%
Population 4 Moderate (70 thousand)
Government 5 Feudal Technocracy
Law C Extreme Law (no privacy)
Tech Level F High Stellar (anagathics)
Ok, so what’s wrong with it? Or rather, where is the campaign wrong?
Issue 1: according to the Pirates of Drinax book the starport at the Floating Palace is almost an A class port, but it can’t build ships. Yeah, sorry, but then it’s not an A. It’s a B.
Issue 2: I don’t like the size. If that’s the actual size the world is tiny (mercury size). I’d prefer it to be a 4 (Mars size) or above, but that’s my own opinion. In any case this makes Drinaxian characters still low-gravity worlders, and according to the rulebook they might have issues with higher gravities.
The Floating Palace might have gravplates installed that easily might push the standard gravity up there to 1g (also collecting oxygen for a standard atmosphere), and Vespexers basically can’t go anywhere without either vacc suit or hazard suit, thus training themselves to a similar standard as normal 1g dwellers.
Some people also have suggested Drinax might be particularly dense due to rich metal content, therefore providing a higher gravity environment. This might also explain how it got so rich and important in the first place.
Issue 3: actual problem, atmosphere is a vacuum world, with a very thin atmosphere that should not allow anyone to live there, much less for plants and trees to grow (which according to the book they do). According to the text the tribes use hazard suits they get from the palace, but not vacuum suits. But they also survive from hunting and gathering. I would also put this one up to 4 so the atmosphere becomes thin and tainted.
Issue 4: Population 4, with 70.000 people in the already overcrowded Floating Palace. Which ignores the Vespexer tribes which are surviving on the planet. But this is a common problem with UWPs as counting population seems very hard to do. I would maybe bump that one up to 5 to account for multiple tribes/tribal nations among the Wastelanders.
Issue 5: Feudal Technocracy. Except if the description of the world is right it sounds more balkanized to me. On the other hand the tribes seem to get hazard suits from the palace so despite their pretensions of being independent they still depend on them technologically, which is kind of the definition of a Feudal technocracy.
Issue 6: Not really an issue, but technically law level only goes up to 9. But there’s enough exceptions. One has to assume the place has absolutely draconian rules and no privacy at all.
Issue 7: Technology level is 15 High Stellar. But is that really so? Clearly they are missing basically everything to actually BE a TL 15 civilization. They might have the knowledge, but it doesn’t seem like they can produce consistently at that tech level. But ok, let’s assume they have high stellar tech.
This all indicates to me that the author took the UWP and made the scenario without a care what the canonical data said.
That said, it seems the actual UWP is more like B44655C-F. And that’s a very careful approximation.
Here’s what prompted all this: my players recently made characters for Pirates of Drinax, and most of them went with Vespexer Army characters.
It’s even given as an option for Vespexers in the PoD book. Does the book indicate which army that is supposed to be?
Of course not.
Is it the imperial army? I doubt it, too far from the border.
Is it a Vespexer army? The book doesn’t indicate the Vespexers have enough infrastructure for that. It might be that certain communities have their own fighters, but one of my characters went all the way to the equivalent of Duke here, and his events didn’t fit with some small backwater army.
So I assume one of the few ways off the planet for Vespexers is to join the Drinaxian Starguard, as cannon fodder. According to the book the big conflict the starguard had over the last few decades was the invasion of Asim. But besides serving as an occupation force, what else were they doing?
I think they were engaged in the 57th ct. equivalent of peacekeeping missions to various planets around the Reach, and with that I mean they basically sold their military as mercenaries to the highest bidder, and then dropped them off back home not in the Floating Palace, but wherever hellhole they came from. No wonder the Vespexers hold a grudge.
tl;dr: in his sleevies!
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/da86adb3012796d7c3562b0ce936d4f0-36910355784702076654729584716.jpg?w=500

2024-12-18 14:53:39

[Traveller] The Lord Weird Slough Feg – Traveller
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdyaBu5nge0&list=PLLD8tmFAuglok24oZSdFAPC7zvj40kjDE
In 2003 The Lord Weird Slough Feg (they later shortened the name to just Slough Feg) released a concept album based on Traveller of all things. This was way after the star of Traveller as an RPG property had gone down and before it rose again. From what I remember the early 2000s were not really great for the game, so this seems to have been rooted their appreciation of the game.
It’s a bit too metal for my taste. Not that it’s bad, but it doesn’t quite fit with what I would connect with Traveller as a game. Also as nice as it is to have a musical version of Traveller, the lyrics are somewhat… debatable…
I am a space pirate, you know my name
Asteroid mining is a dangerous game
Imperial navy can’t keep up my pace
Chasing a rock into Zhodani space
You heard about me in the frontier wars
Psionic menace carrying alien spores
Still, this exists. So there’s that.
#heavymetal #Music #sloughfeg #traveller

2024-12-17 14:25:00

[Glimmermark] …but what about helmets?
As we all know Shields Shall be Splintered!
Shields
For our Glimmermark game we agreed that shields are a necessity for the aspiring adventurer, as they allow you to soak one damage roll by sacrificing the shield.
I would argue that technically that is not limited to only shields but could also involve any other handy thing you could use to soak the attacks of an opponent with, like a chair you picked up, or a nearby NPC (although those wouldn’t give you +1 to your AC).
In case it’s a magic shield it loses a +1 for any damage roll soaked. (this damage is repairable though, at least until it’s broken completely).
characters have to announce if they want to sacrifice their shield before the damage roll takes place, unless they are fighters. Fighters can choose to sacrifice a shield AFTER the damage roll, as they have much better experience to gauge if an attack in actually dangerous or just bothersome.
Critical Fails and Critical Hits
The whole idea of a crit on a natural 1 or 20 was not originally part of the game. This was one of those house rules that came from fanzines, but became so ubiquitous that everyone was using it. Dungeons and Dragons only acknowledged their existence in 3rd edition, and even then only as an optional rule.
And there’s a reason for that, they mess up the nice maths of the rest of the combat system and make it work less well than they would otherwise.
But still crits are kinda part of the fun, so we have them in our game as well. Unlike the more elaborate Crit tables going around our ideas are rather simplistic.
A natural 1 on a roll is a critical failure, which means the attacker loses this attack for next round. This is implying something happened that made them e.g. lose their balance, have their weapon get stuck in a tree, etc. Something like that.
If the attacker has multiple attacks it only loses this one attack and can still use the others. Maybe he/she/it dropped the weapon, got their tentacles twisted, etc.
A natural 20 on a roll is a critical hit, which means the attacker does automatic full damage with this hit.
…but what about helmets then?
Helmets let you ignore a critical hit and have a normal damage roll instead. They break when that happens, but hey, at least it’s not your head that breaks, huh?
Same rules as shields: helmets are destroyed, unless they are magic, in which case they lose one +1.
This also applies to large hats, although these generally do no give you the +1 armor a helmet normally give.Rate this:
#dnd #Glimmermark #osr #ttrpg
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/helmets-1.jpg?w=630

2024-12-16 16:30:00

A Monday Miscellany of Links pt. XX
Ho humm… these link collections are getting a bit long sometimes, especially if I don’t actually post them for a while.
Free Stuff
Goblinoid Games offers a draft of the Labyrinth Lord 2nd edition on their website
Pocket Basic Rules for OSR (drivethrurpg)
Random Tables
Where Did I Get These Spells From? (Elfmaids & Octopi)
Human After All (20 Ways To Achieve Immortality) (Dungeonfruit)
Dungeons in Decline, seige conditions and desertion (Elfmaids & Octopi)
Thought
It’s the Barter Economy, Stupid (Prismatic Wasteland)
Simple Weapon Lists (Ken the DM)
Roleplaying Games are Wargames (Gorgon Bones)
DELICIOUS IN DUNGEON: Let the Players Do The Creative Cooking (I cast light!)
Gygax’s Fortress (All Dead Generations)
Role Playing Games as an Educational Stimulation (Analog Games Studies)
Tabletop and Digital Rituals in Dungeons & Dragons (Analog Games Studies)
Shifting From Economics to Logistics (Traverse Fantasy)
D&D is not a game. It’s games (Wizard Thief Fighter)
GM Aides
AS THE WORLD TURNS: Retrocloning the Regional Events Tables (I cast light!)
PHILANTHROPY AS CAROUSING: Making Your Mistakes Other Peoples’ Problems (I cast light!)
An Example Draft of A Game Master’s Statement (Grumpy Wizard)
Titles and Honors to Award Your PCs (Brandes Stoddard)
Ability Scores as Origin Stories (Beneath Foreign Planets)
Create a sandbox map in 7 easy steps (or 10) (Methods & Madness)
Good Lore/Bad Lore (Mazirians Garden)
Listed Assumptions as Dungeon Characterization (Whose Measure God Could Not Take)
Other
Getting Started with Miniatures Painting: Basic Tools and Paints (Gorgon Bones)Rate this:
#blogospherefinds #dnd #osr #rpg #ttrpg
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/orlando_furioso_4.jpg?w=630

2024-12-16 11:19:56

Terry Pratchett interview in Adventurer 11 (June/July 1987)
Adventurer was a rather short running UK RPG magazine. In the last issue, Adventurer 11, June/July 1987, there was an interesting interview with Terry Pratchett, where he recounted his experiences with D&D (he used to play and early Discworld has at least some influences from that) and why he stopped.
My favorite part is this one:
I gained marvellous insight into human nature one day when I introduced the concept of D&D to six ladies who worked in the tele-ads department of a local newspaper for which I was working-They cottoned on to the idea fairly quickly, so I gave them a little scenario which I’d been round backwards and forwards and upside down. They got one central idea torture everyone you meet and grab everything you can. It was a beautiful scenario. There were goodies, baddies, people on your side, monsters. They didn’t care. They just marched in and killed everybody. It didn’t matter to them if their victims were lying there, half-dead. An hour into the game and the air was smoking over the table-they were kicking doors down, no advancing carefully down passages-they ran, swords out. There was one monster which was nearly impossible to kill. They were supposed to find a secret device to help, but they just stood round its cage and kept sticking their swords in. Eventually its hit points came down from one billion trillion to something you could deal with, and they were quite prepared to stand there all day prodding it!The dice rolls were all in their favour and I as DM just gave up. If they couldn’t understand what something was. they threw it away. Out went various clues, secret keys, parchments, but any recognisable treasure went into the sack. And out they went, with two trolls and one zombie they’d made into beasts of burden. It was the first time anyone had ever raped a dungeon. There was nothing left.Rate this:
#Discworld #dnd #Fantasy #osr #pratchett #terrypratchett #ttrpg
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/adventurer-magazine-11_00000.jpg?w=630
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/adventurer-magazine-11_0039-1.jpg?w=630
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/adventurer-magazine-11_0040.jpg?w=630

2024-12-15 13:42:00

Rethinking variable damage
So Cauldron gave me the opportunity to actually play a lot of ODnD for once, and with that came the notion of using a single damage die to roll the damage on targets.
For context: this is how it worked in the original rules of DnD, and it is not something that I really considered beforehand, as variable damage is so baked into my concept of playing DnD, that I found the idea of using just the d6 for damage inherently limiting. When I started with DnD it was 2nd ed. ADnD, and of course that one had variable damage all the way through. A dagger should just make less damage than a sword, shouldn’t it?
Well, why exactly should it? If you stab someone in the right place with a sword they’ll be as dead as if you stab them with a dagger, wont they? Also combat in early Dungeons and Dragons is inherently abstracted. How exactly does it help in the first place if one weapon can make 1d4 damage, while another one can make 1d8?
For what it’s worth I very belatedly realized that the standard as given in Labyrinth Lord is actually d6 for damage dice as well, with variable damage given as an optional rule. I hadn’t even realized it was only an optional rule until one of my players asked me about it. Of course it only mentions it’s the standard rule once and then every other mention of damage mentions variable damage (because the optional rule affects it as well).
It sometimes is weird how we don’t even realize the inherent bias we approach stuff with. You can write rules as clear as you want, someone with a different idea will come and read something that just isn’t written there and will be convinced YOU are in the wrong.
But what’s the benefit of using a single damage die instead of multiple ones?
I think it mostly comes down to simplicity and efficiency. Do you need to look up what damage you can do with your weapon, or some random weapon you got your hands on? No. It’s gonna be 1d6, modified by strength.
So what’s the problem with using this?
Well, why would you use any other weapon than e.g. a sword and an axe with a shield, if the damage you do is exactly the same?
Historically that’s actually quite the good point, larger 2-handed swords were really not that common, and when they were used often had very specific functions on the battlefield. They also do keep you from using a shield.
So there needs to be SOME benefit of using 2-handed weapons besides style.
One common solution is to make them slightly better. Philotomy’s Musings gives the idea to roll them with advantage: you roll 2 damage die, and you take the higher roll.
Or the 2-handed weapon does 2d4 damage. That also sounds like a nice solution. Definitely higher damage output than that 1d6, but not out of this world yet. It also could work with damage from crossbows.Rate this:
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/schlacht_bei_muhldorf3.jpg?w=630

2024-12-14 12:37:23

[Labyrinth Lord] Goblin (Character Class)Arthur Rackham, “The Little Peoples’ Market”, 1913
Goblin (Character Class)
Req.: DEX 9 and CON 9
Prime Reqs: STR and DEX
HD: 1d8 (as monster HD)
Max Level: 6
Fighting: As equivalent monster HD
Saves: As Fighter
Goblin Level ProgressionExperienceLevelHit Dice (1d8)011-11.000212.000328.0004332.00053+165.00063+2
A goblin usually is slightly smaller than a hobbit, commonly with red or yellow eyes that can flicker red in
the dark. Their skin colour ranges from pale greenish-yellow through any shade of orange to a deep red, but giving all that many descriptions is quite futile, as their distant faerie-blood often shows in a variety of physical features.
Goblin culture is tribal, often leading a lifestyle of raiding for anything including food, weapons, and slaves.
Though often experienced as crude and ugly in appearance by those more “civilized”, goblins are as
intelligent as dwarves and humans, and capable of quite remarkable workmanship, if they find the time.
Due to their short height, goblins cannot use two-handed weapons or longbows, but can use any other
weapon or armor. They gain the same benefits of being hard to hit by larger creatures that hobbits and dwarves gain.
They must have at least 13 in one or the other prime requisite in order to receive the +5% to experience and a STR and DEX of 13 to receive the +10% bonus.
As goblins spend most of their time underground, they have darkvision up to 90ft. but they suffer a –1 penalty to all rolls when in full sunlight. Goblins possess fangs they can use to bite for 1d6 damage when weapons are not at hand.
They speak their own language and the common tongue, many also knowing dwarf, orc, and elf languages.
Due to a historically close relationship with one another they receive +1 on reaction rolls when encountering or training wolves, wargs, or other lupines.
Reaching 6th Level: Goblins who reach this level can set up their own goblin kingdom. A goblin
king/queen always has 2d6 loyal bodyguards of at least 3rd level. All goblins in the presence of their goblin king/queen have a morale score of 9.
Note: I first published this in my campaign newsletterRate this:
#dnd #labyrinthLord #osr #rpg #ttrpg
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/st_nicholas-42-1-196.jpg?w=630

2024-12-13 12:35:55

- reply

especially the very first year or so there were multiple different takes on the story, some of which came out before the movie did (the novel and the first issues of the comic)

2024-12-13 11:15:00

[Art and Inspiration] Marvel Star Wars #1-6 (1977)
I was just thinking how people completely miss out on one of the most interesting aspects of this comic series. Marvel Star Wars ran for 108 issues, concluding in 1986. But at the beginning the first few issues adapted Episode IV A New Hope, or as it was then known “Star Wars” into comic form.
But the interesting thing was that it was not adapting the movie as such, it was clearly working from the screenplay, as there are scenes in there that never got used, and the designs of the movie were not finalized yet, so we encounter lots of interesting things in there which never, or nearly never, showed up again. These get less over the course of the adaption already, but the usual Marvel style and colors of the day never really disappear.
By the way, regarding the cover: at what point is Luke in this movie ever in a position to destroy the galaxy?! Also why is Vader green? I mean, it suits him, but still…
This looks much more like an action movie than the movie actually ended up looking like, despite it being Star Wars and everything.
You might not know that there’s a hole scene set in Anchorhead where we are introduced to Biggs (who we meet later on Yavin IV) and Luke’s other friends. The scene can be found on YouTube, unfortunately the only footage is so destroyed that they didn’t even attempt to put it into the Special Edition, leaving Biggs as a somewhat obscure character forevermore. On the other hand the scene was called “American Grafitti in space” before, and it would have sucked out a lot of energy from the beginning of the story.
I just want to note that this is the torture droid that comes into Leia’s cell. Another one of these designs that don’t come from the movie itself. Also note the pink walls of the Death Star.
Oh look! It’s our favorite Huttese… ape… person?
Yeah, the scene was filmed back in the day, and it was intended to replace the stand-in they used for filming it with special effects monster (although who knows if that wasn’t Lucas fibbing again), before simply giving up on the scene altogether. They later redid the scene with the worm-like Jabba for the Special Edition in 1997 and used a CGI overlay for that.
The ape-like Jabba the Hutt from the comics reappeared in the comics a few times more, before the release of Return of the Jedi and the slug-like Jabba made him disappear into a puff of retcon-scented smoke.
The fun thing here is that we don’t have a clue how big those star destroyers actually are from the picture. If we hadn’t seen one in the very first issue I’d have thought these are way smaller crafts and not the massive dreadnoughts that appear on screen. In fact the previous issue doesn’t really help with that either, as unlike the movie you don’t get a sense of scale in there. Likely because besides some basic design the artist didn’t have a clue what size they were supposed to be. Actually…
…look at this panel from the first issue. This makes the Star Destroyer look tiny, tinier than the Tantive IV. I assume the artists didn’t know until the film actually came out how the sizes of these ships were to relate to each other.
By the way this makes it look very much like a S-Type scout from Traveller, which came about just a few months prior.
This is a way more trippy way to depict hyperspace than the movie, and I think we all lost something when this was replaced with the usual starfield turning into stripes design. Yeah sure, they did it because they didn’t have a clue how it’d look in the movie. But look at it! It’s amazing!
I do have to say that the fight between Vader and Obi Wan is way more epic than what we get in the actual movie. The movie makes it look like the fight between an old man and a paraplegic that it actually is, but of course back in the day it was the height of excitement. It wasn’t every day you saw a samurai cyborg battle a space warrior monk with laser swords after all. Unlike today where the glut of Star Wars media lately seems to have brought up excactly that.
This implies a very different story than what the prequels in the end gave us, yet it still fits with what we got in Episode 3 and the Clone Wars TV series.
By the way the series is very interesting to read even after this. Clearly they were struggling with finding any story to tell, but the comic book was too successful to just end it. So the next few issues were about Han reenacting The Glorious Seven/The Seven Samurai with a green space rabbit and a delusional Don Quixote who believed himself to be a Jedi knight. It did get better, but the first few years seemed like a desperate attempt to somehow squeeze more material out of this one movie. Rate this:
#1 #Art #comics #marvel #starwars #starwarscomics
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/starwars1977-1.webp?w=630
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/sw11-1.png?w=630
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/sw12.png?w=630

2024-12-12 10:45:26

Arcade goes to a game store and finds instead… A Dragon’s Den
It wasn’t all doom and gloom and Satanic panicking in the 80s about rolepaying games. Dynamite Magazine actually had a few features about this new sort of game, and they all have a rather positive spin on the whole enterprise. The famous one is of course the one with the cool homebuilt Dungeon Grognardia and Sarah Darkmagic wrote about before, but there was another article by Suzanne Lord in the March 1982 issue that I came across recently.
Arcade Goes To A Game Store And Finds Instead… A Dragon’s Den
Once upon a time there was a store called The Compleate Strategist, which sold war games. When a new type of game, known as Fantasy Role Playing (FRP), appeared, they sold that, too.
The first of these new games was called Dungeons and Dragons. In it, players got to become — for a few hours — the characters they played. They could be centaurs, or wizards, or even thieves all in search of a treasure that waits at the end of the dungeon. They ran into all sorts of imaginary adven-tures that were great fun. And no two games were alike, since the players made up all the adven-tures as they went along.
D&D and other FRP games mushroomed into a national mania, and The Compleate Strategist is living happily ever after as the place to go for anything connected with FRP games!
That’s why ARCADE went there to find a really good D&D game actually being played. We had heard that players there got so involved in being the characters they played that their games went on for days, weeks — even months.
We arrived at the store and found a Dragon’s Den — a gaming room right in the back of the store!
On Saturdays from one to five o’clock, garners and game masters of all ages come to play all sorts of FRP games. There’s no admission charge. But you do need a vivid imagination and the desire to play fantasy games that are really out of this world!
ARCADE walked into a tiny room one Saturday and found about 40 people crammed together and having some very strange conversations. If you are familiar with D&D or other games of its type, what we saw and heard may make some sense to you. If not, join us for a very weird afternoon!
There are three game masters (GMs, those who lead the games) and only room for two games today. One group leaves, with no hard feelings, to go elsewhere and play really weird games.
A large group remains to play D&D, and a smaller, older group sets up for a different type of role playing game they call “Xanth.” Xanthers refer to the younger D&D players as “Munchkins.”
It’s very noisy and confusing. People talk about past games played. “Remember when the golden lion was stolen?” says one. … so I offered them a choice — give me half of Lentura — or die!” laughs another.
Soon the game masters have set up, and Xanthers are deciding on their characters’ forms and powers. The GM explains that she has made up the land of Xanth, and that the object of the game is to survive it!
At the same time, the D&D GM is describing some places in his game plan. “If I have to use one word for these places, I would use — sleazy!” Giggling breaks out. Clearly, everyone who can will visit these “sleazy”spots — in their imaginations only, of course!
“You’re beginning to be too loud!” the store manager shouts from the door.
The games intensify. Xanthers are lost in an imaginary land where anything could be dangerous. Some players choose to try every situation they run into. Others won’t even touch anything.
A D&D character has been stabbed. The player rolls his dice to see how bad the wound is. The higher the number the worse the wound. The GM gives such a yucky description of the injuries that everyone breaks character and laughs.
Most of the D&D players want to hack through everything in their paths. Xanthers are more thoughtful. “That can be handy” is something one Xanther says of almost anything that happens to his character, even when his character turns bright blue!
Because of their love of battles, about half of the D&D® characters are “dead” within a couple of hours. But in this particular game, when a character dies, the players. stick around to advise the “living”!
Meanwhile, a Xanthan Centaur sinks in quicksand. “I can help her,” a player says. “I have power.”
“Only over inanimate objects,” the GM objects. “A centaur is animate.” Rules about powers are set and agreed on before the game. It’s up to each player to remember the rules. This player remembers and gloats as he says, “The sand isn’t animate!” And he declares that the sand has been separated from the water. The centaur walks out. These players are all thinking fast!
D&D players are deep into the plight of one character. In their excitement they shout, “Offer him something!” Others yell, “Nah, kill him!”
A voice booms from the door. “Now it’s TOO LOUD!” roars the store manager.
All the Xanthan explorers are still alive. But they’ve been trapped in a dark, wet cave for over two hours! They are still there when the store closes at five o’clock. Is this the end of the game? No! The Xanthan players arrange to come back next week and continue their game. The five remaining D&D characters decide to end their game without getting the treasure.
We all leave the store, normal people once again. The fantasy is over, but we’ve got some great memories. We’d been to dangerous lands, survived critical situations, crawled through dank, dark caves, and met ogres, demons, dragons, and wizards — all in a small room in the back of a store. It was strange. It was funny. It was weird. And ARCADE loved every minute of this very unusual Saturday afternoon!Rate this:
#dnd #ttrpg
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/dragons-den.jpg?w=630

2024-12-11 12:27:01

[Traveller] Conceits less spoken
I am preparing for a Traveller game, and so here are a few conceits that bear repeating for understanding the setting and the rules properly. In a lot of cases those are truisms or commonplaces, but I think it helps to keep them in mind.
Space is vast
“Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
People seem to forget it, because encounters happen at all. But space is vast, and outside of the 100D limit barely anything can be encountered unless you know its there already. Sizes and distances in space will be bigger than what you expect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMZ5WFRbSTc
Techlevel isnt what you think it is
Yeah, i know its cool to think about going to planets with knights or steam trains from some high stellar post-singularity society. But people aren’t dumb, and there’s no reason that people would use lower tech for everything if better stuff could be ordered and delivered in a month.
Now if they have the money for that is another question, but tech level doesn’t mean there only is technology of that particular level present. It merely means this is what people can produce on this world. A world of a few thousand people with tech level 3 doesn’t mean they will only drive around in horse carts, it means they have to import higher TL stuff.
There is in fact FTL communication
People always claim that there’s no FTL communication in Traveller, and then they immediately go and discuss FTL communication.
There is no instanteneous FTL, yes. But if you send a handwritten letter to the next star system via ship and it arrives there in 3-4 weeks, that still is FTL.
But that sort of FTL communication scales weirdly because of how it works. Thanks to the way jumps work (they always take a week no matter the distance, even if you jump in place), you only can communicate FTL if your recipient is at least a light week away.
Meaning inside a solar system you are limited to communication at light-speed at best.
That also means significant delays between communications from one planet to another. If you are skimming fuel from a gas giant and you get contacted from the system’s main world, there should be at least an hour between messages back and forth (that is if the distance is similar to the distance Earth-Jupiter).
Interstellar Communications don’t work the way you think they do.
This is an extension of what I was just writing about: how do people actually get news and/or messages?
For some reason a lot of people assume it’s gonna be not unlike 21st century earth, and you’ll get live TV transmissions or video streams from one side of the galaxy (or at least the sector) to the other. The problem is of course that the average player of Traveller lives on 21st century Earth, and even thinking about how it would have been when Traveller was written seems like a stretch. It used to be there was no video streaming, and even live transmissions on TV were an event. And that before you got your news delivered by postal mail on a newsreel or in a foreign paper. Considering the distances involved a lot of it has to be something like that. News are made somewhere, and then they are disseminated over the rest of Charted Space mostly by X-Boat transports, with outlying systems touched on only by subsidized or even just independent traders (i.e. the PCs).
I always assumed it works something like Usenet: messages, news, and electronic mail, are created on one world, then sent via transmission or simply data containers to the ships that transport them on. At the next stop (a week after leaving) all the new messages not yet in the system are brought into the message queue, batches of messages are created and sent, again via transmission to X-Boats, or data containers, onward to the next goal, disseminating around the Imperium and Charted Space jump-by-jump. I also assume not all the messages manage to make it everywhere. There likely is a priority mechanism that expires all but the most important messages after some time or distance. The Imperium might have future storage tech, but sifting through the messages generated by Trillions of sophonts might be impossible.
I wanted to write something about that network and scenario ideas for it at a future date.
Fun fact: Classic Traveller came out before Usenet was a thing, originally mail transported by ships was implied to be actual literal mail.
Most people are not Travellers
One thing people notice about the careers available in the Traveller character generation is that a lot of them are kind of military, or at least some other government service. People actually who likely already were working in between planets for the most part, or who had some reason to work in space before. And that makes a lot of sense, because most people in the Traveller universe are likely never going into space in the first place. There are often multiple planets with billions of sophonts in each subsector, who live their whole life never venturing out of their atmosphere, or if at all maybe for a trip to some moon. Some more affluent people might have space cruises looking at the rings of the gas giants. Wealthy people, or those who are doing it as a once-in-a-lifetime trip might travel around space for a bit, going to a neighboring system or maybe the subsector capital. Few of those ever would even go farther than the next subsector. Sure, their ancestors came from somewhere among the stars, but now they live here, and why should they travel the stars when they haven’t been to their own planet first?
Jump travel is not trivial
A jump takes around a week. A week where you can’t go anywhere, and where the only thing you see outside the windows is jump space (which is implied to drive you mad if you stare at it for too long). Also it’s expensive even for a low passage (in addition to being potentially deadly). Even a quick trip to the next system and back will have you cooped up in a spaceship for three-four weeks with in-system travel. You either spend an arm and a leg to be thoroughly entertained or given drugs so time flies (high passage), are bored out of your mind (middle passage), or get frozen and might never wake up (low passage).
Zero-G is the norm in space
It’s a bit hidden because in Traveller tech levels grav-plates come about roughly the same time that jump-drives do, so there’s not really a reason to experience 0g on a spaceship, except when the power is down. But most of space is in fact 0g.
This should come up way more often than it actually does.
Planetary classifications are inaccurate by nature
For some reason people have the tendency to see UWPs as holy writ, trying to explain how an unlikely classification actually works, instead of reasoning out that there must be some mistake. And I get it. It’s fun. Trying to come up with an explanation how a TL3 civilization manages to survive on an airless rockball does bring out ideas.
BUT the data is supposed to be in-game survey data. And data that is at least 40 years old (the last survey having been published in 1065). Stuff might have changed in between. Governments might have been toppled, population might have risen or fallen, atmospheric data might have changed. But also: maybe some scout 50 years ago was in a hurry and misinterpreted something.
Planetary Classifications are in-game data
A lot of this particular aspect of the game now is being downplayed. Mongoose Traveller 2e doesn’t use the UPP anymore (although it at least has a sidebar to explain what it is) and UWPs given often are expanded out at least in some way.
But in the beginning, at the time of the original Classic Traveller, the idea was a simple one: space is limited on a spaceship and on a spaceship’s computer. So even having a Library program to request information from was a significant investment in the early rules (even having a computer at all was a significant investment in money and space on a starship, although one that Travellers could not do without). It was implied that booklets like The Spinward Marches and the barebones information it provided, the two Library Data booklets, and the Atlas of the Imperium, were RL copies of in-game artifacts. Someone plotting a course for a ship might have no other information about the neighbouring systems than the hardcopy of the old survey data they got from the scout service for a few creds, and part of the game was to make sense of this information, to find and collate information about those other worlds, and plot the most profitable and least dangerous route for the Traveller to take.
This of course became less and less realistic the more computers started to become a staple of real life, and with much more power than players in the 1970s might have ever expected. It didn’t make sense anymore that a few lines of sector data was the only thing available, when it now is possible to just download the whole of Wikipedia for your own use. And to do calculations of complex orbital mechanics on the side. Rate this:
#mgt2 #rpg #sciencefiction #traveller #ttrpg
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/spacecolony3edit.jpeg?w=630
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/yojimo.jpg?w=630
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/space-colony-3.jpg?w=630

2024-12-10 08:45:31

[Glimmermark] Learning Magic in the Glimmermark
Learning Magic in the Glimmermark
When I started to plan for the Glimmermark one of my main ideas was to make it even more Vancian, instead of getting rid of the Vancianess like many people would prefer to. Magic needs to be rare, mystical, and hard to get. Magic effects need to be dangerous and closely guarded. Magic is something that you can work for yourself, but you also need to put the work in.
Sidenote no. 1: the draft of my house rules is also using the Cleric who gains (limited) spells from the gods, and an OSRified warlock class that gains an even more limited amount of powers directly from a patron. The magic user, be it witch, wizard, or however they call themselves, does not rely on other beings to weave their magic. They can be more versatile and much more powerful than the other two spellcasting classes. But they have to work for it.
Spells are rare in the Glimmermark since the old Empire fell, and often are closely guarded secrets to whoever possesses them. Most magic users will be able to speak about the various spell effects that are known to mankind at length (it’s a common topic for classes in guilds and chantries), but most of them will never have seen anything beyond a 3rd level spell, maybe a 4th level spell in action.
The 1st level spells from the spell list can be bought, either as scrolls from any magician willing to part with them (at 100gp per spell, or in the copy of a grimoire containing 1-3 spells from a guild or the occasional trader or collector (at 500gp per contained spell). Guilds normally have all the 1st level spells at hand.
To actually learn the spell, i.e. copy it into their own spellbook in a usable manner, a simple intelligence check needs to be done. If it fails the magic user needs to wait until they are more experienced (i.e. they have reached the next level) to try again.
Spells of 2nd level are harder to get, although they sometimes can be bought as scrolls for 300gp a piece, or in grimoires costing 1000gp per 2nd level spell. There is a 50% chance that a guild has any specific 2nd level spell from the main spell list. (see below)
Spells from 3rd level on are basically never sold outright. Even attempting to buy one their owners often demand additional tasks or services from interested buyers. Notably many guilds will teach a single of their higher level spells for free to members in good standing who have reached the appropriate level of magic (that is, if the guild in question has such a spell and not all of them do), and any further ones only to people who perform an appropriate service to the guild.
Sidenote no.2: in my rules you cannot prepare more than one copy of the same spell at once.
Learning spells from MU’s spellbooks: spellbooks are the private notes regarding a spell and might have idiosyncrasies. Learning a spell from them needs a Int -3 check (to a minimum of 2)
Learning from a Master: a master teaching a specific spell helps with learning it. If this option is available the Int check is +2 (to a maximum of 19)
Magic Guilds and Covens
There currently are no proper magic schools and universities in the Glimmermark. There are local guilds though that do offer specific services for members. Guilds are professional organizations that are trying to protect the local professionals (i.e. wizards) from outside talent muscling in. Places where they hold sway normally have the use of magic banned by anyone but the members of the guild. (that is to say, there are allowances made for the use of lower level spells in most cases)
Covens on the other hand are more secretive, often more rural and spread over a larger area, but will work roughly the same. Unlike guilds they do not advertise, but their services are equivalent.
A Guild normally has all the 1st level spells, a selection of 2nd level spells (50% chance of any given), and a progressively lower chance of higher level spells (20% for 3rd, 10 % for 4th, 5% for 5th, 1% for 6th). These are the spells the guild officially holds, often provided as trades or journeyman pieces. The individual members of the guild might hold more they have found by individual research.
Sidenote no. 3: yes, spells go to level 6. Spells of higher level are clearly fabulation
Spiegelheim Guild of Spellweavers
Spiegelheim is the largest city in the Glimmermark (just barely though as it is right at the edge of the region, located at the south end of Spiegel lake). The guild is a rather quiet affair, with the most active part being their chantry, i.e. their magic school. Most students at the school will never become proper magic users and mostly attend it to gain the academic background needed to work as scribes, merchants, accountants, or some other clerk position in the rest of the Glimmermark (the scribe in Castle Aberwacht is an alumni). Despite it’s pretensions to be a full Wizards Guild it mostly works as a non-magic school. More serious students have to search for further education in other parts. At any point during the day there are 10 students (lvl0) and 1-3 masters (MU5+) here. The guild sells scrolls and basic potions to non-members. Any teaching or research demands membership in good standing though (500gp per year, but includes the right for room, board, and a private workspace)
Can teach [spell list used is from Lanyrinth Lord]:
1st level: all
2nd: Arcane Lock, Continual Light, Detect Evil, ESP, Knock, Levitate, Locate Object, Mirror Image, Phantasmal Force
3rd: Hold Person, Water Breathing
4th: Dimension Door
5th: FeeblemindRate this:
#dnd #labyrinthLord #osr #rpg #ttrpg
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/gamla_stockholm_1882_s284_fig138_adj.jpg?w=630

2024-11-28 15:57:15

[Traveller] Reaction Rolls and Morale for MGT 2e
Reaction Rolls and Morale for MGT 2e
I am prepping for a Pirates of Drinax campaign right now, and as the current version of that is for Mongoose Traveller we are going to use that edition. There is something to be said about the way the newer edition (now even with a refreshed look for this 8 year old game) doesn’t have the stark black and white art and design that made me fall in love with the system back in the day. There’s glossy paper and colors all over the books! Imagine that, Traveller books in color…
Anyway, the rules definitely have a better layout than in first edition, even if I am missing the simplicity of the old design.
But as I was going through the game to relearn the system (it really is incredibly similar to MgT1 in so many ways you can basically convert basic stats on the fly) when I realized it was missing reaction rolls and morale checks. At least any that I could find.*
A quick check in my old MgT books actually showed that no, that one had them neither.
Weird, despite trying to emulate Classic Traveller as close as it could with how it worked, these parts didn’t make it through.
As both of these have become one of my favorite tools over the last few years I decided to put them in again. Reaction rolls and morale allow me to run NPCs that do not always react the way I would personally react.
So here is an attempt to make a new table, based very roughly on Classic Traveller, Cepheus Deluxe, and my D&D houserules for NPC reactions. .
NPC Reaction Table
This table is to be used for meaningful encounters only. Most people encountered in daily live will ignore the PCs and be ignored. Sometimes they will acknowledge the other side briefly, but go back to ignoring them right after (e.g. a shop clerk taking their payment, a guard taking note of their presence).
This table is for those encounters where Travellers are brought into a an encounter situation that does not allow to go back to ignoring each other.2d6Reaction1-Immediate Attack2Violent (immediate attack on successful morale check of 9+)3-5Unfriendly. Will do anything short of attacking.6-8Indifferent, largely uninterested in PCs9-11Friendly, will help12Helpful13+Enthusiastic friendship
DM +1 if character served in armed forces for 5+ terms**
DM -1 if world population is 9+
DM -1/-2 if biased (racially or otherwise) against characters
Depending on environments mods can be used as DMs, e.g. EDU mod for academic setting, SOC for social setting
Follow up checks also use the DMs above and should take into accounts measures to defuse situation.
Morale Table
This table is used to determine how a side in a fight keeps it together once casualties start.2d6Result5 or lessBreaks/Surrenders6-8Fighting Withdrawal9-15Keeps Fighting16+Fight to the Death
Calls for morale of one sides in a fight can be called by the referee:
* when first death in fight happens
* 25% of one side is incapacitated (dead or otherwise out of fight)
* 50% of one side is incapacitated (dead or otherwise out of fight)
* if changes in battle situation change outlook drastically (e.g. someone shoots a gun in a knife fight)
Dice modificators that can apply:
DM -2 if the 25% and 50% are reached in the same combat round
DM -2 if leader dies (for 2 rounds, until new leader takes over)
DM +1 if side is military/mercenary
DM +1 if leader skill present
Optional: this rule can affect both NPCs AND PCs.***
Notes:
* yes, it turns out Morale is in the Companion on pages 6/7, but in a way that introduces a new stat.
**does this makes sense? Maybe not, but it was in the original Traveller rules
*** this was actually how it works in CT, and it might not be a bad ideaRate this:
#reactionRoll #traveller #ttrpg
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/tim-white-trading-post-1976a.jpeg?w=630

2024-10-30 14:05:12

This is one of those things I did for campaigns before: a small newsletter/zine with infos, hints, and used rules about the campaign. It isn’t strictly necessary, but I always liked the idea to have a physical reminder of the campaigns I ran, even though the campaign itself has a wiki-page on campaignwiki.org.
Despite the font and the title (in antiquated German to boot), the newsletter itself is half-German, half-English, which I found more reasonable as I am not completely set on running only German-language games in this campaign. The crunch part of the newsletter is in English. Which in my opinion makes sense, as the reference rule book we use right now is Labyrinth Lord Revised from 2009, and not the German translation that came out beforehand. The revised version has some errata in there that make more sense. So as we already use the English rules when playing, additional rules and rules clarifications are also written in English.
If you want to do something like this for yourself, here’s a few hints:
don’t do game reports yourself. If you want game reports get the players to write them. Doing them yourself does not give the player perspective that you want (you want to know what they got from the game, not what you remember, of course you know what happened), and it’s way more work than is enjoyable
hardly a hint: you don’t have to redo everything all the time. It’s not a proper publication, it’s a just a campaign update. Just give a few new rumors/hints, update any characters and their levels, maybe remove bigger articles with rules so you don’t have conflicting versions floating about. Less is more.
Get your players involved to write stuff if they want. Let them interact with the zine. You want to advertise for new hirelings? Put an ad in. Maybe the scribe will pay a small amount for new stories and curiosities brought to him. Try to think how the rest of the world will react to what the characters did.
Print it out, staple it together or put them into a binder. Refer to it at the table. These are parts of your campaign material now. Let them become part of your rules. Glimmermärkische Zeytungen – Ausgabe 1 (October 1204)DownloadRate this:
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/2024/10/30/glimmermark-glimmermarkische-zeytungen/
#dnd #labyrinthLord #osr #pnpde #rpg #ttrpg
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/zeytung.png?w=630

2024-10-28 09:10:03

Cauldron 2024: Manor on the Borderlands
…of Hessia and Thuringia that is. But that means in living memory the Iron Wall ran merely a few hundred meters away from the location.
And I swear I wanted to go there and make a proper picture but there was simply no time. I managed to play more during the last weekend than I did during some of the last few years.
So last weekend was Cauldron 2024, the “OSR-Euro-Con”, organized by the PESA Nexus.
I saw it happened last year and was miffed I completely missed it until pictures showed up online. So I made sure to plan for it early on this year.
The convention took place in a small manor house in eastern Hessia (Schloss Hohenroda), which makes for really central Germany. It ran from Thursday the 17th to Sunday the 20th.
I managed to get there by Thursday evening, much too late and tired to actually do much but talk a bit with people and watch them play a Braunstein game where I lacked context. This was an issue I will have to deal with next year when the convention is planned even further west: either I get someone else to drive with me, or I have to travel by other means. I am not used to driving this long alone.The town of Badwall under attack
The next few days were filled with lots of gaming, as games started right after breakfast and were only interrupted by meals (and sometimes ran into the mealtimes as well).
It was fun, it was nice having people around that actually were talking the same things I was interested in, and which understood what I was talking about. Even with other RPG conventions that’s not necessarily a given. It was also fun doing some really nice creative gaming that did not involve following some sort of railroad for the sake of it.
On the other hand it also showed the audience of the hobby definitely trending towards the bearded old guy demographic (and considering how early I went to bed I definitely feel like I’m part of it).Chainmail naval battle
Games I played
2 games in Wanderer Bill‘s Grenzland campaign (ODnD White Box+Chainmail). Different characters though, because the one from the first game was time-locked (and the one I played previously in his campaign safely back home…).
The campaign is running in real time, and when the game moves ahead the characters are out of commission for further games until it catches up. Which meant when we started venturing out in the second adventure the big fight of the first scenario still was in the future. In the goblin market, miniatures not to scale
Our first adventure we were supposed to explore south of the campaign base Blaufahr to find new people for the depopulated settlement. The last few months in the campaign seem to have been quite rough. So we were given money to find new people and opportunities.
Instead we decided to go to the dungeon to loot. We rescued a few goblins from bandits and tried to establish friendly relations with the goblin king. Unfortunately the goblins at the local goblin settlement were wary of us, and when one of our MUs decided to steal an ancestral artifact the whole situation went sideways. Our fighters heroically managed to behead the goblin king and show off his head to his people. Then they were slaughtered by his enraged citizens.
(There was in fact a chance they’d crown one of them the new king)
We spellcasters instead headed to the exit when it started to go wrong and managed to survive largely unscathed.
The second adventure was a scouting mission northwards, to figure out where a group of orcs that had attacked recently had their settlement. Through some smart play and good die rolls we befriended some scouting elves, hitched a ride on their ship, found the settlement, mowed down a patrol, then took their leader prisoner. All without casualties.
Then a random encounter with cockatrices hit us hard and turned the adventure into fantasy-vietnam, as our decimated party tried to hurry through unknown territory, getting the prisoner back to Blaufahr.
The four petrified elvish men-at-arms we left behind are now a permanent fixture in the ongoing campaign, at least until someone with a stone-to-flesh scroll comes by…
And that’s all exactly the weird off the wall gaming experience I love when playing ODnD.
baexta had a session of Albie Fiore’s The Lichway (from White Dwarf #9) on offer, run in ADnD/OSRIC, and I decided to take part. Especially as I realized I had forgotten everything about the scenario from running it… 12 years ago? Well, not everything. I remembered the central conceit. But the GM telegraphed that early on and the others figured it out and I didn’t have to feel bad about it. He also offered The Halls of Tizun Thane, and while I would have loved that one as well I just prepped that recently.
This was also the first time I actually properly played ADnD 1st ed. by the book, and I realized my view of it was correct: it’s a good resource to take parts from, but I do not care about the complexity itself. And ADnD is not actually all that complex, just more so than I like for this kind of game. I think there’s other games that do the complexity better.
It also was the first time I played Old School Essentials proper, as in another game we went down to The Jeweler’s Sanctum from the OSE Adventure Anthology I. Despite OSE being basically just a restatement of B/X with clearer design it also oozes some dark fairy tale vibe that seems quite different from standard B/X DnD. The game bore that out, even though it was quite the standard dungeon crawl: we were to explore an improbably large dungeon under a jeweler’s workshop. The scenario whittled away our resources with smaller encounters (giant centipedes and rats) before hitting us with a near TPK in the form of grey oozes. Our GM daeman managed to present this all quite well (he has a knack for using minis and terrain… and printing them out), but I can’t help but think that the scenario itself has issues. On the other hand we clearly didn’t figure out some of the stuff in the dungeon, so I might just be missing the point.
The last one I took part in was The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen, a DCC funnel presented by le moule intello as a basic DnD scenario. It seems he wanted to run it as a DCC scenario as well but received some negative feedback about that before, so decided to switch it to DnD on the fly. Which… I don’t know. I signed up for the game when it was advertised as a DCC game, and so did daeman (see above), and I think we both wouldn’t have minded to play DCC instead. And I think it would have worked oh so slightly better because the magic system of DCC seems more geared towards this. That said, it still worked the way he ran it.
A funnel is a scenario concept where you start with multiple 0-level characters and develop them during the game for use in a later campaign, or you lose and replace them. Your characters might come out with some useful skills or magic items, and a proper backstory.
That said this scenario was more linear and basic than I might have liked, and seemed very specifically intended to introduce people to the hobby. And for that it might be very useful. It just also drops the players into a very specific Heavy Metal-style setting where nobody questions a queen living for 300 years and regularly sacrificing her least liked subjects to some eldritch being from beyond.
Other things…
Blackrazor wrote a tournament module for the convention (“Children of the Sea”), and I originally wanted to GM it, but didn’t find the time to look into it before. And when I signed up for it I either mistook the time slot or the game disappeared, so in the end I didn’t even play in it. It seems to have been quite fun though.
There was unlimited coffee. Unlimited coffee!
Also a free candy bar for brain food.
I received a Nibelung Saga game and the new issue of Grenzland on the Convention, but I will have a look at those in separate posts
Some other people’s posts about it:
Ghoultunnel: Cauldron 2024 – The OSR Euro Con
Die Ogerhöhle: Rückblick Cauldron Con 24 (in German)
Vorpal Mace: Cauldron Con, Thursday and Friday
Zpátky do dungeonu: Do ciziny, a přece domů – reportáž z Cauldron Conu 2024 (Czech)
Bestia Ex Machina: Another blog entry about Cauldron 2024!
GoldDiggers’ Adventures: Days I, II, III+IV
Ahriman‘s Chainmail Battle Report (German)Rate this:
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/2024/10/28/cauldron-2024-manor-on-the-borderlands/
#cauldron2024 #Convention #dcc #dnd #ose #pnpde #Roleplaying #rpg #ttrpg
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/20241020_0846117e292430775570945383.jpg?w=630
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/20241017_2153537e25656133385361694776.jpg?w=630
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/20241019_1339397e35687413081806562456.jpg?w=630

2023-11-23 22:26:15

Going off tangent: British money still is weirdUlster Bank 50 pounds note
Sometimes Britain is really weird. I was writing a post about money in Dungeons and Dragons when I remembered something odd we encountered when visiting Northern Ireland back in the 2000s: Northern Irish Bank notes.
No, not just British paper money, actual bank notes issued by private banks in the constituent part of the United Kingdom that is Northern Ireland. Scottish ones as well.
It turns out they aren’t actually legal tender anywhere in Britain (because legal definitions can be weird), but you can just pay with them in shops. It’s a bit like the Euro gonna-catch-them-all hunt for different coins, as multiple banks have the right to issue currency and do.
Somehow nobody ever had mentioned the existence of seperate paper money in Scotland and Northern Ireland to any of us. And to be fair, it’s not supposed to be seperate. They are equivalent to the Pound Sterling, but better don’t try to pay with them in England. People seem to get really pissy about that when you try. They are supposed to take them, but some places just won’t. (They can’t give them out as change)Bank of Scotland 20 pounds note
Conversely Scotland and Northern Ireland generally accept each other’s notes.
This is stuff that nobody ever talks about somehow, a regional quirk that flies under the radar most of the times. Danske Bank 20 pounds
By the way, one of the banks that can issue money in Northern Ireland is Danske Bank, a Danish bank based in Copenhagen. It seems they bought Northern Bank a while ago and retained their right to issue bank notes.
Another one is Bank of Ireland, which is based in Dublin. So two institutions from the EU can issue money in UK. Isn’t that interesting?
And don’t even get me started on the Manx pound, which is issued by the government of the Isle of Man (a crown dependency) and which you might get as change in Belfast. Unlike the money from the other two this one is not supposed to be interchangeable with the British pound. The Isle of Man is as Wikipedia puts it “in a one-sided de facto currency union” with the UK, meaning the pound sterling is legal tender on the island and backing its own notes with it. Some people might accept them, others don’t.
(To be fair it appears banks and post offices anywhere in Britain take them)
The Wikipedia article for the Manx Pound still talks about what will happen when the UK finally adopts the Euro. I think nobody updated this since 2006.Rate this:
#BankNotes #Britain #money
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/ulster-bank-polymer-c2a350-front.png?w=336
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/111174872_rbs20front.jpg.webp?w=630
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/danske-bank-20-polymer-thumbnail.jpg?w=500

2023-10-26 09:30:00

Did you know that wargaming, and by extension the tabletop roleplaying hobby, can claim descendence from a H.G. Wells book?
In 1913 already well-known novelist H.G. Wells published Little Wars: a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys’ games and books which provided a simple system for wargaming with miniatures.
Now, wargaming was older of course (I mean, there was chess after all, and Kriegsspiel was created as a training tool for the Prussian army in the 18th ct., and he does acknowledge a relation), but I think this might have been the first (published) ruleset to involve using toy soldiers and terrain built from toys.
According to the book the idea for the game came to notable pacifist Wells during a visit by his friend Jerome K. Jerome, where they began shooting toy soldiers with a toy cannon after dinner, which spiraled into a mess on the floor as more and more toys and written rules were added over time.
He even started with further extensions, and with thoughts how to integrate this whole system into the larger context of Kriegsspiel and make this into a strategic campaign. That all sounds very familiar.
What takes it from just interesting into adorkable territory though are the pictures. Pictures of soldiers and terrain, yes, but also of Wells and his friends playing the game properly dressed in some casual suit and tie.
The book often is reprinted alongside the previous book Floor Games, in which he describes games to be played by kids on the floor that do not involve war. Notably he described himself and his friends playing the war game, obviously trying to make a difference between children’s games and games for adults here. (although his subtitle indicates kids could be interested in it as well)
Where to get it
There’s reprints that can be found easily enough on various internet bookshops. But as these books are very much in the public domain right now the texts can be found on Project Gutenberg, archive.org, WikiSource, even as a free audiobook version on LibriVox
Little Wars on Project Gutenberg, Archive.org, WikiSource, Librivox (audio)
Floor Games on Project Gutenberg, Archive.org, WikiSource, Librivox (audio)Rate this:
https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/2023/10/26/h-g-wells-and-the-beginning-of-miniature-wargaming/
#h #Miniatures #scienceFiction #toySoldiers #ttrpg #Wargames #wells
https://gmkeros.files.wordpress.com/2023/10/littlewarscover058_13382528983.jpg
https://gmkeros.files.wordpress.com/2023/10/mrwells.jpg
https://gmkeros.files.wordpress.com/2023/10/img-010a.jpg