August 2019 – Aboleth Overlords

World of Dungeons Skill Hack

World of Dungeons is a great game by John Harper, kind of a demake of Dungeon World. Even if you’re not really into story game-ish mechanics, World of Dungeons does a lot of fun things, I’m especially fond of its magic system, where Wizards are abusing quicksilver and binding spirits to do their bidding.

One thing I do not like, however, is the skill system. World of Dungeons operates on a 2d6 roll, often plus or minus a small number based on an appropriate attribute. Results of a 6 or less is a total failure, 7-9 is a complication where you sort of get what your character wanted at a cost, and 10 plus is a total success.

When you are rolling and have a relevant skill trained you can never failure. What is suggested is that the character suffers the mixed complication, but one that is worse than had they rolled a 7-9. I feel this is annoying on several levels.

One is just that I feel completely removing the chance for failure is thematically unaligned with the source material. I feel that it removes the possibility for a style of GMing that I am partial to – where even if there is a small minute sliver of a chance of a character succeeding, they get a shot at rolling. Why this is removed is because I now have to grant a partial success to someone with a relevant skill no matter how crazy or incredulous the situation is.

The other aspect of the skill system that particularly bothers me is that it adds a conditional fourth tier of resolution. Not only do I have to be able to think up (or ask for) complications on the fly, but then I also have to be able to twist them ever so slightly. There is no guidance for how to accomplish this. This ALWAYS slows down my game.

I do not run a ton of World of Dungeons any more, but I think when I do next I will just house rule skills to roll 3d6, dropping the lowest result. This gives the character a benefit for taking the skill, while still keeping the chance of failure present.

Let me know what you think of this or your experiences or thoughts working with skills in World of Dungeons.

Liber Goonica vol. 1

I wrote a submission for Goon Jam, a game jam focused on hacking and providing optional rules for Tunnel Goons.

Go check out the Liber Goonica vol. 1.

Zothique Inspirations

Zothique is a collection of short stories by pulp maestro Clark Ashton Smith. It covers a far-future Earth where most of the continents have fallen under the ocean, some lands have risen again to be reforged into new landmasses, and magic and fantastical creatures live again.

It’s one of the foundational series of stories for the Dying Earth genre, supposedly inspiring Jack Vance to write his take on the genre years later. While it is not one of the works that appears on Appendix N many people consider Smith’s exclusion as a major oversight, or due to some amount of distaste for Smith’s more racy subject matter.

As an amazing work of fantasy, lets use some of the occurrences from these stories as an inspirational encounter table for old school fantasy gaming:

Zothique-influenced Encounters:

A group of travelers, escorting a young bride for a king.
Severed body parts, crawling around in the wilderness.
Gargantuan skeletons, wearing turbans of snakes.
Necromancers-in-exile, riding skeletal steeds with undead servants in tow.
A eerie glowing orb, floating in the air, disintegrating dead flesh on contact.
A vampiric ferret, the familiar of a grim wizard.
A prince on the hunt of a rare quarry.
Jackal-faced ghouls.
A world-weary poet, seeking excitement that will bring them to the brink of death.
A crestfallen lamia, guarding a tomb.
An astrologer, being guided on a quest by a mythical creature.
A massive swirling darkness surrounding the party, with the sounds of cackling demons within.
Massive plants with human parts spliced onto them.
The statue of a dark god, wielding a massive weapon, whispering pacts.
Sentient bird nobles.
A deep sea current, abducting ships to a grim isle.
Swarming mass of crabs.
Cultists of the charnel god, pursuing grave robbers.
A rival adventuring party, looking for the relics in tombs.
A city-state participating in the funeral of a noble by participating in city-wide debauchery.

RPGaDay 2019: Day 13 (Mystery)

So far I have only really found 2 mystery games that I enjoy: Cthulhu Dark and Bluebeard’s Bride. I really want to try more games in the Gumshoe system, but I bounced hard off of Trail of Cthulhu when I played it once years ago.

There’s obvious issues where you cannot hide information behind rolls. But its also fairly hard to to even conduct a mystery where you hand out all of the clues. If you need to know the places to go and people to talk to, it still often turns into a game of “What is the GM thinking?”

I would really love to see more OSR mystery games, as they tend to toy around with basic role playing assumptions in ways that a lot of games do not.

Roll Under Skill System Hack

This takes your basic roll-under attribute check, a discrete skill list, and the basic idea from something like RuneQuest to make a system where every class can advance in skills.

Initial Skills

Take the Lamentations skills, or any other series of skills you want and set them to 0.

Rolling Skills

Any time the referee calls for a skill check roll a d20 under the appropriate attribute (which can change depending on the situation) plus the value in a particular skill.

If you get under this value, you succeed. If not, you fail and place a mark near the skill.

Advancing Skills

When you level up look over your sheet and choose up to three skills to attempt to advance. Roll a d6 and try to roll equal to or over the current skill ranking plus the number of marks next to the skill. If you do so, you advance the skill – improve the skill value by 1.

After you have attempted to advance at least three skills, erase all of the marks.

Justification

This allows anyone to advance in skills, which can be useful if you are not playing with some thief equivalent, or want everyone to be able to learn skills without having to figure out multi-classing.

This also binds the skills to a somewhat reasonable level, making it unlikely for any one in particular to contribute too much over the course of a campaign.

RPGaDay 2019: Day 11 (Examine)

When you examine the corpse, roll d10:

You find branded onto the base of its neck a jagged rune, something you swear you have seen graffitied somewhere within the slums.
There were carrying a bag full of teeth, some recognizably inhuman.
Hidden in a false heel of their book is a letter, warning the Lady of the Manor that an assassin lurks within her court.
Snorting as they wake with a start, frightened to be surrounded by such knaves.
You discover that they are not human at all, that underneath the facade of skin is some sort of clockwork construct.
Their body begins to spasm to and fro, they lurch up onto wobbly legs as their head and fingers burst open, revealing a colony of writhing worm creatures.
A false eye, some sort of finished pearl or another smooth stone.
Their pockets are stuffed with drugs. Cheap, dirty drugs.
The body begins to rapidly decompose into some kind of an ooze, which then quickly makes its way to escape towards the nearest crack.
The body is actually that of a famous wizard, who had been masquerading as a commoner.

RPGaDay 2019: Day 9 (Critical)

I have a love/hate relationship with the ideas of critical rolls. On one hand, I love ridiculous tables, things driven by chance, etc.

On the other hand, I often dislike that something can be completely won or lost by a roll alone. I tend to like these sorts of things to be eventual outcomes of a successful plan or a stupid idea. The chance that something can just get a 5% roll, which will happen frequently enough, and maim or murder a character or npc outright is a little too frequent for me.

Because of this I have mostly modified my “criticals” in OSR games to require the person being critted upon to make a saving throw before any effects are levied, and even then I end up using a temporary wound chart.