Ye Olde Fantasy: System Assumptions

Ye Olde Fantasy‘s tools are system-neutral – I have run many campaigns in my pseudo-medieval setting using various rules – Original Dungeons & Dragons, Into the Odd, Basic Role-Playing, OpenQuest, and often a freeform Free Kriegsspiel style game.

So, it would be easy for me to handwave and say, “Just run this however you’re going to run it,” but I have been on the reader side of such text before, which has always frustrated me. I will not write a whole new system, but I will tell you what I will assume. I will also explain why I rule situations the way I do, so hopefully, this will broaden the applicability of these systems with a bit of interpretation.

I will assume you’re running something like a variant of old-school Dungeons & Dragons, one of its more stripped-down cousins like Into the Odd or Cairn, or a version of RuneQuest/BRP. If you’re not – then you’ll need to adjust these tools, but I will guide you with the intent of each system to make that easier.

Attributes

I assume you’re running a game with an attribute equivalent. What those are doesn’t matter much other than they represent your character—typical stuff like Strength, Intelligence, Charisma, and the other usual suspects. I suggest adding an attribute (if your game does not have it) in Social Status, which will get its own post.

In some places, I may say, “Make a Strength check.” This might be a d20 roll under, maybe it is Strength x 5 on a d%, or perhaps you don’t have a “Strength” score and use tags with 2d6 vs. 8, and you decide your tag of “Brawny” applies +1. Whatever that may be, you need a way to make a check against this stat and get success, failure, critical success, or critical failure. I’ll say what I do in these situations, but I suspect you already have your version of such checks.

Skills

Here’s a contentious topic for the old-school D&D crowd. I will mention skills in a few places. For example, as part of lifepaths, I may say, “Take Athletics,” or “Roll Lore to try to get into the Academy lifepath” with pass/fail events. I use skills in a lifepath generation system, as well as downtime. I’m not telling you that you must use an extensive skill list; note how they’re used in their particular subsystem. If you instead prefer to have a background tag, then when you roll up that you were a Turnipmancer, you can write that as a tag on your sheet and trust your table to rule that you’re able to do Turnipmancy effectively without the discrete skill.

Since BRPs already have a skill system, I’ll propose a system for use with old-school D&D if you wish (of course, aside from the Search and Listen at Door and Thief Skills and all other skills already existing in D&D :P). The tl;dr, if you don’t want to wait for/read that post, is “use the Traveller-style system that Kevin Crawford uses, like in Wolves of God or Worlds Without Number.”

Saving Throws

Saving throws are also mentioned but in a general, non-specific fashion. I may say, “Make a save vs. poisoning by your chancellor”- likely to be D&D’s classic Save vs. Poison. In OpenQuest, this is the Resilience skill. Sometimes, I’ll get more out there; I know I have a “save vs. your cottage being burned down,” which might be Save vs. Breath. Or it’s a skill check to stamp out the fire. I enjoy leaving it as an exercise for the player to say how they respond, but that might be annoying, so I might get more precise as I write these. Comment when these come up if they infuriate you.

Classes

While I love D&D’s archetypical class system, I no longer play too many campaigns with it, preferring to let everyone do everything (in the context of how they play). So, I will not make assumptions about any specific class, but I will suggest a few places where the B/X standard classes may come into play if you use them. For example – when to take a class using the lifepath character generation system, adding Magic-User levels to the Summoning or Alchemy systems, etc.

Levels & Experience

Hand in hand with classes – I will not assume levels but mention where they could apply. Levels are a great abstraction, mainly when using classes, but they are optional for the kinds of games I run. Any form of advancement and progress should work hand-in-hand with these. It’s your game, and it can be great to get your table on board with the “goal” of the game through an advancement scheme. But you can also eschew that and trust players will strive for what we all find interesting.

Onward

That covers it, so let’s move on to our first proposed subsystem for use in a pseudo-medieval fantasy game – the Social Status attribute.

Ye Olde Fantasy: Introduction

“Ye Olde Fantasy“ is my working title for a long-running project to build up a pseudo-medieval toolkit for fantasy adventure gaming. This supplement provides games with quasi-historical flair but is not obligated to complete accuracy. There is a place for historical accuracy, but I am looking for games of dungeoneering that progress into Crusader Kings plus wizards and dwarves.

I am by no means a historian. While my bookshelf overflows with pop history books, and I have taken classes on medieval history and done many of the usual video lectures on the period, I am a novice. While reading a book or watching a course, I often must completely reverse my basic assumptions. So, take my claims with a massive grain of salt, and please let me know where I can improve.

Playing in quasi-medieval settings for fantasy gaming has always appealed to me. There is something to swords and sorcery, given that its tropes predate the hobby and still dominate it. Still, other exaggerations of the “Middle Ages” add further enrichment and impetus for fantasy hijinks. Weird hierarchies of agreements, often broken or betrayed. Peculiar forms of taxation with charming loopholes. A large church is swinging its weight around with varying degrees of success. Schisms and Anti-Popes. Saintly relics and Chaucer-esque pilgrimages. Peasant revolts.

And most importantly to me – a slightly more focused attention on how society works. The implied setting of OD&D is a fantastic fever dream I love to return to repeatedly, but it does not feel like people could function in it. Not that I think you need such attention to detail – the implied worlds of classic D&D have stood the test of time. Still, I am not the first to feel this way – there is an anecdote that Greg Stafford, acquiring an early commercial copy of the game, wondered how people could live in such a world. It does for me what I Cast Light sometimes refers to as “French Vanilla Fantasy” – where you have shared, accessible assumptions and twist them just enough to make it feel unique or unusual.

I decided to stop pretending I would write these as a tightly edited book. I have very little time for my other hobbies. By turning them into posts, I can produce them quicker, and while they may be a bit janky, they’ll at least be what I’m using at the table. Feedback is greatly appreciated.

Isn’t D&D already medieval? No, it’s not: this post covers some great reasons. Why not play a system more oriented toward this style? Why not HarnMaster, Chivalry & Sorcery, the Osprey Games, Mythras, or OpenQuest? That gets right to the heart of these tools. They do not have pilgrimage generators, no means for building a barony, or other flavorful procedures. These posts are my take on providing such systems.

In the next post, I will discuss some mechanical, system-level assumptions. These tools are system-neutral but come with some baked-in assumptions related to adventure gaming.

CRACK! is out

The Merry Mushmen recently released CRACK! A “Barely/eXplained” Creative Commons adventure game brimming with a lot of cool art and an excellent empowering, DIY attitude. So far, I’ve only looked through the main book, but they have ten additional books of resources, such as more jobs, monsters, and advice.

If you’re in the market for a new tabletop adventure game, I highly recommend checking out CRACK! Below is the embedded link to their post, along with all the resources:

CRACK! – Common Rules for Adventure Campaigns by Knock! V1.0b

2 Clacky Cubes

a MOSAIC Strict resolution module

Introduction

2 Clacky Cubes takes a time-tested resolution system and makes in-line with the Mosaic Strict guidelines, free to be used with any tabletop game you see fit, adding some commentary and examples on how it might be used at the table. All you need is two six-sided dice (abbreviated as 2d6) and a situation where one or more characters attempt a task that has an interesting chance of failure. In many traditional games this may be called for by a Game Master (GM), but depending on how your table plays – this could be other players or perhaps even be yourself.

Setup

Before resolving anything, the table needs to be clear about the present situation. Communication in tabletop games can be difficult, so the entire table is encouraged to ask questions, clarify, and negotiate until everyone has an understanding of the following:

Conflict – what is the overall situation, what threats and challenges exist?
Intent – what is the overall goal the character is trying to accomplish? What impact will this have on the situation?
Task – what actions are the character taking to reach the stated intent? What tools are they using? Do they have any particular advantages or situational elements aiding them?
Risk – what does the potential failure look like, or what will happen if the characters do not act or react? What disadvantages and conflicting elements are at play?

Basic Resolution

Once the above is understood, the player picks up and rolls 2d6. If the total sum showing on the dice results in 8 or greater (written as 8+) they have succeeded at their intent. Any less and what they were risking manifests.

Using this basic resolution system there are no “modifiers” and nothing is added or subtracted from a roll, instead the table adjusts how effective the character is at succeeding in their intent, or scaling the amount of risk involved.

We have a character on the run from some guards in a fortress they were infiltrating. It’s a rainy night, and as they round the corner they discover a dead end. Looking up they estimate a climb is doable, and the thorny overgrown vines may pose a problem. But because of their sleek, black cloak, if they can just get beyond the walls of the fortress there’s no way any guards will be able to spot them in the field under the dark of night.

With the guards in fast pursuit, the table decides that because of the storm failure means the character will fall flat on their back, leaving them prone when the guards arrive, and the large thorny growth on the wall will tear through the cloak they are wearing, ruining it for the time being.

Advanced Resolution

The Basic Resolution system can work perfectly for most games, but there are groups that prefer modulating the chance of success based on contributing factors, rather than just adjusting the outcome.

To do this – the table should take note of each disadvantage imposing on the conflict and assign a value of -1 to the upcoming roll. If the GM/group would say the negative circumstance as being “very” disadvantageous – make it -2, and the most extreme would net a -3.

Now go about the same process for advantages, skills, gear, etc. that the character may have – adding +1 for most benefits, +2 for large ones, and +3 for massive boons.

Add the net result to the roll, and again if the outcome is 8+, the intent is achieved, otherwise the consequences of the risks are suffered.

In our above example, with the knave running from guards looking to scale a wall covered in sharp vines in the middle of a rainstorm, the GM decides that both the rain and the vines net the character -1 each. The player notes that the character has a background as an acrobat and is thus skilled in climbing – giving a +1 advantage. This nets the character an end result of -1 to their roll.

Some tables may wish to gauge certain tasks as being inherently easier or harder from the initial premise, before considering further modifiers. If this is useful for your group the following table is suggested to modify rolls with:

*Task Difficulty*	*Roll Modifier*
Very simple	+4
Easy	+2
Risky	0
Hard	-2
Extremely difficult	-4

Contested Resolution

When multiple sides are in conflict, and each side wishes to roll (for example if two player characters are arm wrestling), every side does so.

If only one side succeeds – they achieve the full intent of their task. If more than one side succeeds, whoever rolled highest gets most of their intent, but at a compromise, as the other successful parties achieves a small amount of their intent.

Ties or all sides failing results in a stand-still, or if the referee/table finds both sides suffering their risk more interesting, the side that rolled lowest faces more of what they were risking than those who failed with a higher result.

A goblin is racing to grab a priceless vase and make off with it. An elf guard wishes to physically impose on the goblin and apprehend them from doing this. The goblin rolls an 10, while the elf rolls an 8. So both succeed, but the goblin succeeds “better.” The group decides this means the goblin has snatched up this vase, but the guard dove and grabbed onto the goblins leg, being dragged behind and slowing their escape.

Aiding Others

Whenever characters are directly helping another in a conflict, consider all allies as an advantage for the character in conflict, reducing the risk and/or heightening the impact success has, when using the basic resolution method. Or by adding to the character’s die roll based on how impactful the table finds their aid when using the advanced resolution.

A character is trying to force open a door by ramming into it. One of their allies decides to stand alongside them and batter the door in unison.

When using Basic Resolution – the referee/group decides that this would allow the party to breach the door in one strike instead of several, surprising anyone on the other side of the door.

If using the Advanced Resolution – we decide the ally, while not particularly strong, is enough to help the endeavor – giving the first character +1 to their roll.

When characters are aiding others in an indirect fashion, each character must roll their own contest, with success benefiting later conflicts they are aiding. This is for situations such as when a character is crafting an item for another to use, or when a character is securing a rope for another to traverse up a cliff.

Unlicense

To the extent possible under law, Justin Hamilton has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to 2 Clacky Cubes. This work is published from: United States.

But It’s Fiction All the Way Down!

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.

FKR & Storygames

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?

Rule Zero & Others

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.

Every Rule A Ruling

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

FKR: It’s not the amount of rules

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.

That’s just me though.

Daemon Summoning

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

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