One of the responses to Free Kriegsspiel-inspired adventure gaming that I see often is the idea that anything occurring in a tabletop game came about from individuals creating fiction. Either through pure fiat, or interpreted from prompts and random results, or directly from an author publishing pre-determined elements in the form of a module or like material.
Since this is obviously true, the argument is that it does not matter if the content is created via the Referee, or Players, or anyone else. And while this is true of some players, its extremely reductive of many players’ drive to game. This is not to disparage any particular playstyle, but I know for myself included I largely look to gaming as a method of participating in fictional exploration – either through the lens of a character discovering things, or as a Referee presenting a world and situation to the players and seeing how those worlds collide. Ben L. has a fantastic post going over this in detail. I like the “traditional” setup (although I think that term is a bit misleading) – a Referee communicates the world and adjudicates situations with input from whatever rules they feel like using, and the conversation at the table. The Players take on Characters to respond to this situation and interact with the present world, driving for their own goals.
Given this, saying “well why have the Referee be in charge of the world, what does it matter if Ref Sarah or Player Bob decides what’s in the treasure chest or what the villain’s plot is” to me reads a little bit like if an author of a novel stopped midway through, gave the reader a prompt, and said “ok you pen the next chapter.” Writing is a fun activity, I love to do it – but 99% of the time when I pick up a novel I’m looking to lose myself in a tale, not tell one myself.
The specific roles and responsibilities we take on while gaming can certainly vary, but reducing the whole experience down to an isolated look at the end result greatly diminishes the various joys one may find in the process of a particular style of play.
I find myself in discussions pretty frequently about the nature of FKR games and storygames, so I thought I would make a short little post elaborating on this. That way I at least have a single place to reference.
So the FKR is a modern “movement” or set of communities devoted around an idea proposed by Mike Monard on the odd74 forums about seven years ago. This idea was that behind many of the classic games was the inspiration of Free Kriegsspiel – Braunstein, Blackmoor, Greyhawk, etc.
He posited that instead of a rules text giving authority, play was a conversation among the table, with players taking the roles of characters in a fictional world, and the referee representing this world, responding to them, and making adjudications. The rules in this style of play are tools for the referee. The referee doesn’t break rules as they aren’t mandate to begin with.
Why this movement is a thing at all is because many of us are enthused about this style of play. We see many games and play styles out in the wild that say the opposite – that the rules text is the be-all-end-all, that you have to play games with some heed to the “designer’s intent”, that you can’t trust anyone to fairly adjudicate even though we all agree to these games and roles by way of free association. The FKR is a contrast to all of this.
Storygames, on the other hand are their own tradition. Like any other niche or acronym in gaming its a little “depends on who you ask”, but usually I mean games that focus on a distribution or complete removal of the more traditional referee role. They can range from the PbtAs which still have a referee, although the assumption of what they do is a little different, and they have players – but those players are often leveraging the system to inject some things that traditionally a referee would do. Or they can go more on the referee-less (or “referee-full”) where no one person occupies that, and instead everyone does.
So I’m always surprised by the large amount of people who imply that you can have an FKR game without a referee, or when utilizing mechanics to distribute referee powers. They’re obviously at odds with each other. You cannot on one hand say you prioritize a style of referee-adjudication-as-entire-system, and then say also say “but yeah, only in the case where the players aren’t spending their fate points or answering a Fortune-in-the-Middle Move or there are no refs.”
This is not a value judgement on storygames – I enjoy quite a few time to time. I think they’re worthwhile games to try out and see if they are for you, and even if they’re not you at least hopefully learned something new, or maybe picked up a technique or two to take into other games. Labels are useful to communicate, and its fine for things to be different – storygames don’t need to be FKR. And you can play one, or both, or neither without that being any fault.
As someone who massively enjoys FKR games I am a little peeved at the amount of discussion by people who either don’t play FKR or outright dislike it trying to “deconstruct” it (in supposedly FKR places, at least). I think it obfuscates the discussion around actually interesting topics FKR brings to the table, like trust, a real examination of authority, setting consistency, subject expertise, etc. I feel it also prevents newcomers from trying out this fantastic style of play.
Anyway, I’m not really going anywhere with this, just felt like I should get it off my chest because I find myself in these discussions more and more frequently. What are your thoughts on the matter?
The existence of Rule Zero in a role-playing game, or any of its other equivalents, does not invalidate the existence of any other rule. Rule Zero is roughly Referee Fiat – the idea that the referee has final say, and any content of the rules-text is subject for hacking, removal, addition, etc. by the table.
There exists a certain kind of role-playing snob who upon seeing anything akin to Rule Zero to proclaim “Then why am I buying this book, shouldn’t you have designed a system?” While ignoring all the tools, procedures, adventures, monsters, or any other useful material in the text that a referee may opt to use.
Like Jim P says “Rules are not bad or dumb” – they’re a tool to for the referee to help present the world and to determine what happens when rulings fail or the ref doesn’t feel like making one. Rule Zero should be an assumed default in every traditional role-playing game, and even if its not – no designer holds power over your table should you add it in.
Rule Zero is there to aid your gaming and leaves you free to utilize anything else in the rules-text to make your game run how you want it. It does not obviate anything that comes after. It just allows you to examine those rules as they come up and decide if they are really serving a purpose.
To do something that does not make fictional sense just because a rule tells you to do so is a betrayal of the medium of role-playing. The beauty of the game is the conversation – we can discuss, negotiate, and use our understanding of fiction to shape the imagined world. A slavish adherence to mechanics that produces fictionally incoherent world negates the strength of this hobby.
So Rule Zero is always on the table, and it allows you to use whatever rules you want to produce the game that’s right for your table. Just because you might change some things, make rulings on the fly, or even throw out sections does not mean what you keep and use does not have value.
The medium of tabletop role-playing games is such that every single rule must go through a series of steps from declaring intent to do something, to the actual handling of the mechanical bits, to the resolution and reintegration of “what happens” in the fictional space. So for every rule that exists, the table must make a ruling over its use and effects.
I will try to avoid going into designer jargon land or reference dead theory [*], but the point I am trying to get across is that no matter how detailed or instructive a rule is in a game, the humans at the table still need to interpret the rule, acknowledge when and where it is going to be used, and decide amongst themselves how and what happens.
If a game tells you to roll a die when your character attacks, and if you get some number you do damage – who actually decides when this happens? What is a sufficient attack? Does the player get to direct where they attack or just their intent? Do they get any part in narrating the outcome? Does the result on the to-hit roll confer additional information, such as rolling extremely high might let the player put their opponent at an additional disadvantage?
Or take Apocalypse World’s Read a Sitch move – it says when examining a charged situation. What does “charged” mean? Who determines that? Can the player ad-hoc add context to make an otherwise un-charged situation charged? How much veto does the referee have?
Most games don’t actually explicitly answer many of the above questions. Of course the general assumption for traditional role-playing games is “the referee decides”, but how the referee and the table culture draws the line on these kinds of things varies quite heavily from table to table, and the exact differences may widely shift how the game is experienced between different play groups.
If two groups pick up OD&D and the first plays it like a very regimented wargame, the second more in a loosey goosey narrative fashion, neither are playing it “incorrectly.” Its also not an “accident” if someone interprets a rule differently from how another person tries to read the “design intent” of the game. The game doesn’t belong to the designer, it belongs to the players.
This is why role-playing games are so awesome. The game is yours. No designer and no judge has any right to come to your table to tell you that you’re doing it wrong. The methods you find to work for you, to portray and play your worlds are the right way. If you want to pick up new styles and techniques you converse with other gamers, you chat about things you tried, how that worked out, how people responded, and we as a culture refine our toolbox.
*edit: I am specifically talking about things like Big Model & IIEE, my pal Panic Pillow made a post examining this concept from a more philosophical stance, which is an excellent read
A bit of a preamble for anyone not familiar with the acronym – there’s a movement or set of movements known as the FKR, standing for Free Kriegsspiel Revolution, a (mostly) joke term intended to contrast with the OSR to focus purely on a relationship to rules in gaming – namely that the referee is the interface between the fictional world and the player characters.
These movements tend to primarily focus on very small rulesets – often stuff like “d6 roll for low” or contested 2d6 rolls, just because these kinds of rulesets allow the referee to really focus in on rulings. I think there’s also a bit of fondness for how Bob Meyer runs Blackmoor.
So from the outside lots of people are starting to assume the FKR means nearly no-rules roleplaying games. But if you look at Kriegsspiel itself, or even the kind of rulesets Arneson seemed fond of writing – sometimes there are a lot of rules. And this to me is an important thing to note. It’s not the amount of rules.
FKR to me is purely a relationship to rules. If your table is composed of a referee who portrays the world opting to use rules as a tool whenever they wish, and players portraying characters responding with what they would do if they were in whatever fictional situation the ref is describing – that to me is FKR. It doesn’t matter if the ref is using a single coin flip, or if they decide to sometimes opt into Mythras, or their own hack of ASL, or anything else. The amount of crunch doesn’t impact the FKRishness, its if the table is focusing more on the fiction over the mechanics. This is obviously easier with light systems, but if the ref feels using something heftier “behind the screen”, that’s a perfectly valid approach.
I have used quite a lot of summoning systems over the years. My homebrew setting’s magic system is heavily based on negotiating with spirits, demons, etc. and I feel like I have tried a majority of systems out there – d&d hacks, summon spells, systems lifted from whole other games, freeform etc.
A lot of the impetus for the following rules comes down to me wanting to condense as many rolls as possible. I don’t want too much diceing going on when summoning, but I also want some unpredictability. I have decided to try to leverage something similar to a few of the systems I enjoy, while also trying to use something like the Turn Undead table and reaction rolls, as well as all of the Loyalty stuff.
Anyway, here’s a briefish version that I want to playtest more. Let me know what you think and if you use similar system.
Daemons
“Daemons” in my setting refer to a specific class of entity, although are close enough to fantasy depictions of horned and hoofed demons to work in that fashion. This could probably be extrapolated to work with other classes of spirits, but for scope I am going to assume fire and brimstone chaotic beings who want to feast on souls and wreak havoc for creation.
Daemons get assigned a Rank, this goes from about 1-8 or so, although could be scaled up or down to taste. The Rank correlates to their HD, general powers, known spells, etc. Configure daemons to your particular setting but in mine each daemon has 3 HD per rank, has a number of powers equal to their rank, also knows a number of “secrets” (this may be known spells, alchemical ingredients, actual in-setting secrets like who the king has been having an affair with, how to get into a specific dungeon, or why all the gnomes took off in that floating ziggurat). Daemons also have all of the typical abilities of a supernatural entity – they can only be struck by magic or blessed weapons, can see in the dark, probably have a suite of immunities equal to their rank, can summon d6 demons of a rank lower than it (who can then summon d6 demons of a lower rank), etc.
Every daemon should have a desire – this could be fairly blunt like blood, maybe its destruction of worldly good, or maybe it’s some kind of “enemy within” long play in the cosmic game of chess. Whatever it is this is mostly likely what the summoner will need to use to bargain with the daemon, or at least use to placate it. Daemons will have a Pact score when negotiated with by a summoner. This is basically their version of Loyalty. I’ll discuss the actual details of that later on, but for now know that it’s about how long a daemon will stand to be in a contract with a summoner.
I assume you have tables for the forms that daemons take in your setting, the types of powers they can have, and the exact spells they know. While there are thousands of tables that I could recommend a good place to start would be the Metamorphica Revised by Johnstone Metzger.
Also a “Summoner” is any class that you think should gain access to summoning. I let everyone summon, but if they don’t have a magic-using class they just count as 0-level.
Preparation
A summoner needs to have occult knowledge particular to the specific daemon they are summoning. This may be one of its names, its sigil, or a particular incantation to it. Whatever this is in your setting, this is the bare minimum to get an audience with the daemon.
Beyond the minimum the summoner probably takes a number of precautions when dealing with such feisty, chaotic spirits. Firstly they are hopefully conducting the ritual in a safe and sacred place – a holy temple, a sanctum, a library of great power, etc. They probably collected a bunch of implements to aid in the ritual like cups, wands, fancy mirrors, oils, daggers, all of those wizardly knick-knacks. They should also physically and mentally prepare for such a harrowing experience – meditating, psyching themselves up, imbibing in hallucinogenic drugs, practicing occult iconography, and daemons are pretty particular about wizard funk so the summoner should probably ritualistic bathe.
Magical circles and the like are also a pretty big deal.There’s probably also some magical shapes being drawn, chalked, salted, or scratched onto the floor – one to house the demon, and another to protect the summoner. Plumb your favorite renaissance occult book, tattoo parlour examples, or anime for inspiration on those.
The actual ritual of conjuration takes a number of hours equal to the daemon’s HD, although if the caster is in a particular hurry they could speed through it in daemon’s HD turns. Hurrying or failing to prepare may produce terrible results. And on that subject…
Summoning
As long as the summoner’s level is equal to or within one of the Rank of the daemon – the daemon is most likely conjured. If the daemon really does not want to be summoned then they can save vs. spells to resist, but if the caster went to all the trouble of intoning the daemon’s true name or whatever they should probably have gotten their attention.
So the daemon shows up, fire-and-brimstone, asking who dared called upon it and for what purpose. The summoner must then negotiate with the entity, telling it what they want and perhaps offering it something in exchange. Once the negotiating has come to a place where it’s clear what the summoner is asking and offering (if anything), roll on the following reaction table using the modifiers following it.
2d6
Daemonic Negotiation
2 or less
The daemon is hostile to everyone around. If it is not contained in a circle it will attempt to kill everyone not protected if it thinks it can. All witnesses must make a save to resist the terror of the daemon, running and screaming or cowering upon failure. The daemon will probably tell its peers that you’re marked for death, as well.
3-5
The daemon refuses to act in service of the summoner, returning the abyss spurned.
6-8
Uncertain, the daemon may agree to work for the summoner if its Desire is immediately met.
9-11
The daemon agrees to the conditions, the ref deciding upon or rolling its Pact score in secret (typically 3d6).
12 or more
The daemon agrees to the pact, or is dominated into servitude, add +1 Pact score to the daemon.
Condition
Modifier
Not in a secure location such as a temple or sanctum
-1
Daemon’s rank is higher than summoner levels
-1 per difference
Summoner’s levels are higher than the rank of the daemon
+1 per difference
Summoner failed to acquire the necessary implements
-1
Summoner failed to mentally/physically prepare
-1
Summoner hurried the ritual
-1
Daemon resisted the summon
-1
Daemon was offered a poor deal
-1
A sacrifice was performed for the daemon
+1 per HD of sacrificed entity
Particularly fancy implements were created for this one specific ritual
+1 per 500gp of bling spent on this one conjuration
The offer was particularly appealing to the daemon
+1
Binding & Pacting
Unless the summoner asks the daemon for something that may be handled immediately, the two enter into a pact. Much like loyalty, the referee either decides on the Pact score for the daemon, or rolls it, adjusting it by the results of the summoning. Every week that a daemon is in service to a summoner without having its desire met, its pact score is reduced by 1. Being treated particularly well may increase the daemon’s pact score. This should be rare, however, the daemon has stuff it has to do in the abyss and probably doesn’t want to pal around with some caster.
When a daemon is asked or commanded to do something for the summoner it does not wish to do, or if the daemon wishes to attempt to rebel, a check against its current Pact score. Rolling equal to or under the Pact score compels the demon to concede and obey, but rolling above allows the daemon to escape or to turn on its master.
At any point a summoner may release a daemon from their service, this is typically after both sides have come to a mutual agreement that the negotiation has been fulfilled, but ever a sly creature the daemon may decide to turn on the summoner.
Summoners may only have in their service a number of daemons equal to their level. Fortunately daemons may often summon lesser demons, creating an infernal pyramid scheme to fulfill cosmic contracts to the minimum technical level.
Banishing
Daemons may be banished as per Turn Undead rules of your preferred system. Note that Daemons have higher HD than their Rank, so they are easier to summon than they are to banish, so heed whatever precautions you can.
Daemonic Desire Examples
Destruction – blood sacrifice, the burning of beautiful art, the enactment of war.
Confusion – sow the seeds of strife, tear communities apart, convince others of falsehoods.
Corruption – gain worshippers, turn innocents rotten
Exaltation – gain the daemon or its followers worldly power, its cult infiltrating the nobility and the church
Hedonism – provide the daemon a good time – food, drugs, libations, etc.
Art – create something beautiful, yet horrific that appeases the daemon.
Knowledge – discover further secrets for the daemon to trade in the abyss
Challenge – the daemon wants its mettle tested, or it wants aid in defeating its rival, daemonic or otherwise
Ghost Town Slow Crawl is weird cause its less a genre but kind of a feeling of a few genres. Its inspiration is small town gothic Americana, things that border on or maybe turn the dial up on magical realism, Welcome to Nightvale or maybe even Addams Family. Games like Kentucky Route Zero and Night in the Woods. American Elsewhere, Gravity Falls, David Lynch, some of the “New Weird” fiction. Wovenhand and Nick Cave. Time period is “modern”, but most likely at least a decade past, if not more. Basically anything kinda eerie without being outright horrific, sorta dark but not overly grim, full of black humor without forgoing earnestness.
Tables
d4 What is something unusual that happened yesterday?
Something fell out of the sky and has everyone worried.
A lighthouse directly in the middle of town, destroying the town hall.
A curse was decried by a local wise-person, dooming a bloodline or tradition.
The town sprung into existence out of nowhere, with the implication of a prior history.
d6 Where is this town?
Beside an eerie forest, where nothing seems to stick in one place.
On a storm-kissed turbulent span of plains, stretching as far as the eye can see.
In the shadow of an ominous peak of which the locals rarely discuss.
Overlooking a deep lake, always reflecting the stars of night even midday.
Just off a desert whose winds leaves the impression of footsteps in the sand.
Deep in the delta, whose waters seem to hide everything lost and forgotten.
d8 What darkness lies below the surface of the town?
A foul magical tradition traces its lineage here, as does the order founded to keep it in check.
Drug trafficking of the paranormal variety.
A tome bearing a title akin to “Haec verba creare deos” was found in an antique shop. The proprietor doesn’t recall who it was sold to, but a worrying amount of new deities have begun demanding worship.
A massive storm, the townsfolk whisper about – personifying it as a beast.
Ominous beings from the wilderness abduct individuals every full moon.
A massive corporation has bought up all of the industry in the town, but seem to be seeking something other than just profits.
A shadow version of the town can be seen in reflections on some moonless nights, and the inhabitants there do not seem pleasant.
A sprawling abandoned city literally below the surface of town, full of disquieting images.
d10 What kind of person came here? (pc or npc ideas)
An investigator, looking to resolve something in this town.
An occultist, trying to pick up overlooked practices.
An outsider, from a weird place, not sure how to get home.
A ghostly local, bound by something intense.
A sentient animal, a little in the know.
A door-to-door salesman, on the lookout for new thrills.
A band lost on tour, with an avant garde sound bordering on violence.
An ookie family from somewhere else, enthusiastically looking to exchange cultures.
A property investor, seeking remote tracts of land and unusual estates.
A loved one, unsure of their distant cousin’s address.
d12 What are some carried items?
A cassette player that always starts a different tune every time it is played.
A pocketful of coins, all minted in fictional lands.
A journal, trying to describe the author’s rendition of an documentary describing an archaeological dig discovering highly technological artifacts in the wilderness.
Pouch of herbs, whose smoke provides lateral insights.
A replica dagger, bearing the crest of a doomed order.
A large piece of driftwood, with a map of the old town burned into it.
Wood-carved icons of nature spirits.
An antique revolver, wrapped in burgundy cloth.
Two over-sized walkie talkies, who sometimes pick up on a third converser’s signal.
A rose whose color shifts vibrantly in the moonlight.
A tarot deck of historical figures, some of whom you haven’t found in any history books.
A very filthy straw hat that never comes clean.
d20 What is an unusual aspect of this community (roll as many as you like)?
Ghosts make their presence known with surprising regularity.
The animals here may speak the human tongue, they just usually choose not to.
A portion of the population is experiencing time in reverse, and it doesn’t look great where they came from.
The flora is all connected and exhibits eerie intellect, and have begun arranging themselves into shapes that resemble buildings and factories in the wilderness.
The devil himself has a seasonal home here, and he’s a very active member of the community.
No-one wakes up where they went to sleep.
The shape of all things hold secrets to their inner nature. One must be careful when associating certain dimensions and number of sides with others, lest the items be angered.
The kids have gotten into competitive fortune telling, and ever since they split into oracular gangs everything’s gone sour.
Every person has an identical twin, and the town has enacted draconian restrictions to them ever meeting.
Every once and a while someone is lost down a deep dark mine or cave. Days later a haggard and aged person appears in town claiming to be them, begging for the burrow to be caved in.
Fairies leave offerings for the townsfolk, concessions begging for their domain to remain untarnished.
Some of the skeletons of the passed are found returned to their homes, unrealizing of their deceased nature.
Just outside of the corner of anyone’s vision automatons can be seen spying on us. But they are able to disperse or camouflage when direct contact is attempted.
10% of everything produced or created in town are placed into an empty lot. Every night a blinding spotlight appears from the sky, levitating everything into the sky until it disappears. The locals refer to this as “the tithe.”
Every person wakes up to find a manila envelope providing them a new role within the town. When they return home at night they find a report card indicating how well they performed. Everyone sweats fearing failing marks.
The profession of “angel investor” is strangely high for the population. While they seem to be terrible investors, they are pretty adamant about their divine origin.
The local clergy proselytizes the worship of “iconic” – rubber duckies, long dead celebrities, old social movements and art forms, etc.
The buildings grow and shrink of their own accord, and articles of
Several occupants are creatures from mythology, beings of legend, and ideas manifest. They don’t really talk about why they’re here.
The local gum randomly phase people in and out of existence, sometimes for minutes, sometimes years.
Advice
As for advice on how to play this – obviously play up the weirdness but don’t go overboard. Make some strange things normal – maybe aliens are contributing members of society, but always keep the presence of the occult – hidden things, secrets, and dark tidings people would sooner ignore.
Run this as a mystery, paranormal investigation game, a slice of life experiencing some oddities, a wizard duel, or as a community coming together to address a flaw or threat. Think of dark nights on a long road, strange things found in the back of antique shops, and the hand notes on unusual family photos of people you’ve never met. Dream of local urban legends and mythology, but definitely be sensitive to source materials and any beliefs inspiration is drawn from. Slow down play and be willing to really hold onto scenes longer than you think is necessary. Open up to a bit of dream logic as you play – find symbols, patterns and recurrences at your table, and use them as your grounding if logic gets a little mercurial.
Also be mindful of prejudices against small towners, but also of prejudices found within small towns. Talk to your table about comfort levels and what you want to explore.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this!
The Quester is my version of a generic adventurer, one whose abilities are related to the things they encounter while on adventures, and the studies they pursue in their downtime.
The class works roughly as follows – the character begins about equivalent to a Normal Person in your ruleset of choice, or whatever is suitable for someone who is able to go on dangerous adventures, but has yet to really acquire experience.
I’m not a big stickler for numbers nor do I really think they ever really make sense in many rulesets, so I think its more important you select a baseline and stick to it. So if you decide to use old school saves, pick a class or row in the monster table for saves and use that for this class.
Questers have no limitations on arms or armor.
Quester Advancement works a little different from other classes. Instead of utilizing XP-for-gold they instead complete a number of objectives to level up. These goals are usually player-created, sometimes personal to the character and sometimes shared among the group. The referee has final say on what is a suitable quest for advancement, and whether or not the character has fulfilled the pursuit of accomplishing their quest.
Quests are also declared long before a session. They act on a player-level as a way to communicate table interests in specific goals, and to focus the referee’s prep. I usually rule that a character can have 1 group quest and 1 personal quest active at any time, but if you feel you can juggle more threads go ahead.
Questers need to complete a number of quests equal to their next level to reach the next. Upon doing so the Quester returns home and enters into a downtime phase – reflecting on their adventure, pursuing mentoring, following projects, etc.
For the player this means that they assemble actions the character has performed while adventuring onto an Advancement Table, and the player either selects one ability from this table, or randomizes two (which can result in one entry being selected twice, if appropriate).
Ability Triggers
Action
Advancement Table Entry
Entered into deadly combat and remained conscious until its end.
+1 HD
Struck a foe with a weapon, melee or ranged.
-1 Thac0 [+1 To-Hit]
Studied closely the workings of a trap, witness the use of a malicious enchantment or binding, observed the specifics of a mystical creature’s gaze attacks, or noticed the tells predicting a beast’s breath weapon.
+1 SV (or move your saves up by one level)
Fell prey to a dangerous trap, the effects of a wand, a spell, the unnatural pains of a creature’s special abilities.
+2 to saving throws made vs. the specific kind of save
Survived a duel with a fearsome foe (up to ref’s designation, but I usually reserve this for character’s personal enemy, big-bads, or creatures whose HD is at least double the level of the character).
+1 Attack when doing no other action in a round
Attacked by more than 2 melee combatants in a single round.
+1 AC when taking a parry action in a round (or whatever equivalent in your ruleset)
Retrieved a manual or the specialized equipment related to a specialized technique or skill.
+1 to the relevant skill*
Bravely led hirelings into the fray, and succeeded in not losing a single one.
+1 to Morale checks for hirelings
Thoroughly dissected a bizarre creature, taking time to understand its strange anatomy.
+1 damage when striking creatures of this type
Ingesting monster parts prepared by a mystic, ignoring their warnings, and succeeding at your saving throw (ref determines consequences).
Gain a daily use a limited version of the monster’s powers, negotiating with the ref its specifics and any negatives of activating it
Retrieving a magical grimoire, tablet of power, necromantic codex, or any other wizardly instruction manual
If the character has not learned magic yet, gain 3 Spell Dice and 1 spell (I treat spells as level-less). Otherwise +1 Spell Dice.
Studied a scroll, tome, odd runes, or other depictions of the alien beings known as “spells”
+1 spell
Returning an alchemists station, a rune-carvers workbench, an orrery and telescope, or some other large lore-based work station to your laboratory/tower/cave.
The ability to learn crafting recipes related to the associated lore, negotiating with the ref the details
Add, hack, and discard results from this table to your preference. Write custom ones specific to a single quest, dungeon, or creature. Don’t be afraid to ask your players for additions, as well.
Skills
I have one entry above that allows the characters to gain skills, and have sometimes added multiple entries to a player’s advancement table for different skills. I am not here to tell you how you should run skills in your game, or if they are even mechanical things. I trust you to handle it. Whether this is a narrative conceit of “ok now your character knows how to ride horses in combat” without checks, or a “ok thief, your thievery went up by +1, so now you can sneak on 3-of-6”, or some other system.
Spell Dice
For this class I have used Necropraxis’ excellent Spell Dice, but you could hack this to use original D&D magic-user levels (you may just get people casting high level spells early), GLOG Magic Dice, or some other system. I have just found the Spell Dice system to work with this form of advancement.
Note I always impose some sort of restriction to casting in armor. I’ve done this by increasing the range of “burn out” on the above spell dice system, +1 for each category of armor (so unarmored casters lose dice on 1-2, light armor loses dice on 1-3, chain on 1-4, and plate on 1-5).
What about Clerics?
If you noticed the table doesn’t really have “Clericy” entries like turning undead. If you do enjoy Clerics you could add entries for exorcisms, boons to healings or blessings, etc. But for all my runs with this system or earlier versions of it I have played in a setting that lacks Clerics, which is why their equivalent entries are missing.
Thoughts
Depending on the availability of these triggers for characters, this may result in a significantly lower or higher magic game than you anticipate, so be mindful of what you add into your game.
The benefit I have found from using such a system is that you can use the foundation of the original fantasy game, while getting a lot of the benefits of “you get better at what you do (or are interested in)” that comes with sometimes-heavier ruleset.
You also get the benefit of players actively seeking out things in the world, searching for rumors, and overall getting invested in your setting. And since they are always explicitly telling you their goals, you can direct your prep towards relevant topics.
I should note I have only ran this class is insolation, so I have yet to mix it with the traditional classes in the original game. Since they use a different advancement system I don’t think they would mix, but who knows. Anyway, let me know your throughs.
Here’s all 20 failed careers I set out to write in a few months, as per anything I do it ended up not getting finished nearly as quick as I would have liked. These are the 20 failed careers from Knave, but I wanted to give them two d6 tables, kind of how Electric Bastionland did, but not really balanced for specific rolls of money or hp or anything like that. Just some inspiration for slightly weird takes on all of them.
A very short bow, muddy shoes, a bottle of deer urine.
Why have you quit?
Cursed: A gigantic blue elk with golden glowing eyes approached as you took your final catch, promising to hunt you to the end of your days if you stepped foot into its forest again.
Hunting Accident: Your younger sibling would invite you hunting every time your parent spoke of passing down the family’s wealth onto you. You got the message with the last crossbow bolt that narrowly missed your head, and have disclaimed your inheritance.
Broken Heart: After your old blood hound couldn’t follow you on any more hunts, you felt it wasn’t
Nobles: All of the lords decried the forests of the land their own person domain, forbidding any others to hunt within, putting you out of a job.
Wizardslaughter: You didn’t mean to kill the village’s most-loved and kindest-hearted wizened old sage. You had no idea they polymorphed themselves into wildlife to go frolic in the woods.
Haunting: The dooming blight that has choked many lands has reached your ranges, littering the once peaceful groves with hungry ghosts.
What keepsake did you retain?
Worm-Calling Whistle: High-pitched whistle that attracts around a dozen earthworms, grubs, and other dirt-crawling beasts when blown.
False Boomerang: This heavily-weathered boomerang not only does not return to you, but seems to travel unerringly in a straight line forever until it crashes into something. You’ve been worried you’re going to lose it if you throw it towards the sky.
Bear Suit: The entire furs of a person-sized bear, treated and stitched to be wearable. Its a bit hard to see out of the beast’s snout, but not the worst disguise from afar. On a foggy day. While situated amongst the brush. When trying to hide from someone with poor vision.
Game Spookers: A very weighty round brass bell. Toss into a bush to scare out any game, or to dangle upon your walking stick to give yourself your own entrance music.
Snare Kit: A heavy canvas sack filled with all manner of traps – iron teeth, lassos, ropes, nets, counter weights, snares, etc.
Salts & Spices: A very fine wooden box filled with tubes and pouches of uncommon spices, treating salts, fancy woods. Suitable for preserving small game or adding a bit of pizazz to a campfire meal.
