Our party eliminates half of the Cult of the Sanguine Skull.
Characters
Florby, the Elven Alchemist
Apicius, the Farming Gorumond Fighter
Brother Murray, the Cleric of Light Above
Yarlexia, the escaped slave-turned-Witch Elf
Wulfwig the Ponderous, Cleric of Light Above
Steven the non-descript, an average mentalist mage
Downtime
Florby spent the week of downtime adventuring. They were abducted by a mad noble and their entourage looking for a tournament. Arriving at an abandoned monastery that had been turned into a statuary, the noble challenged a statue, which rose to meet them and struck down the crazed gentry. In the chaos Florby escaped, but had no chance to steal any goods.
Apicius proposed that Labrix the hireling wed his cousin, and tend to his farm, and in exchange, Apicius would eventually give Labrix his own sheep flock. The hireling agreed, and in the revelry of the wedding, Apicius became drunk and got into the losing side of a knife fight.
Brother Murray spent the week training his animals to obey simple commands, as well as investigating the locked box the party had acquired last session, finding it magical.
Yarlexia told fortunes and read tarot, receiving a working wage of silver.
Wulfwig decided to drink the week away, falling in with some bandits known as Hegrit’s Harpies, and suffered a massive hangover.
Session Report
Florby tried to pick the lockbox but got sprayed with acid, receiving notable scars to their torso, inhibiting breathing for a while. Inside lay an iron statue of a dwarf, carved into it a curse one could levy at an adversary to “ruin their fingers.”
Yarlexia attempted to summon a demon, slaying a scoundrel from the Copper Cockatrice to do so and called into her protection a humanoid pig/owl demon named Bechisi, who Yarlexia renamed Betty.
The group returned to the cult’s hideout, finding a massive wasp nest on the ascend, and ambushing the two huntsmen who served as guards, learning a bit more of the cult’s intentions, which mostly dealt with traversing through cycles of undead and rebirth.
Yarlexia took the form of one of the hunters and investigated the cave, while the others prepared to tumble rocks and even the tower if need be when enemies were drawn out.
Yarlexia spoke the cult’s secret phrase given to her by the hunter, which turned out to be a signal – the cultist she was conversing with sounded an alarm, ran behind a portcullis, and unleashed a horde of zombies. She began her escape back to the entrance, but as she made her way down the hallway – guards from the other direction were marching at her with bows, she decided to unleash Betsy upon them and make her way out of the cave.
The party waited as zombies followed out, saving the avalanche for the many cultists who came later to see if their pets had dispatched the invaders. The flesh of these dead cultists drew the zombies, and the party made quick work of them as well.
They also witnessed unusual, chaotic operations in the gully before the cult’s cave – dogmen crawling out of a bubbling pit of earth, and a massive bull-headed man disgusted by the carnage before the cult cave.
Entering into the cult complex, they found Betsy had fallen into a pit trap, and freed it – but were immediately attacked as the demon was no longer bound to Yarlexia. In the combat, Yarlexia continued to intone pacts and words of command and was eventually able to wrest Betsy back to her side.
The group proceeds north, finding four acolytes in a store room. They enter into combat and their hireling Hingle is decapitated by an acolyte. Eliminating two in combat, they get the other half to surrender, and piece out a few more details of the cult before delivering justice to these foul necromancers.
Having eliminated half of the cult’s numbers, losing a hireling, and taking some damage from the combats, they decide to make it back to Fortress Solae and recuperate before a final? assault on the cult.
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
I have started running a West Marches-styled game over Discord/Roll20 named “The Doomed Reach.” This came about mostly because of my move from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and wanting to stay in touch with many of my gaming groups, both face-to-face as well as online.
So far we have done two character creation sessions with supplemental world building. I spent a few weeks coming up with a hex map, adding materials to it, building a little bit of lore, etc. But I also wanted the players to have some input into the setting.
Obviously with something like a West Marches, the content requirement prevents players from being able to ad-hoc add tons of material in (or at least, it prevents it in terms of my preferences), so I used the system from Beyond the Wall’s Further Afield – players get to add a feature from a random table, and then other players get to embellish on the detail. All of this is delivered in-character, and the Referee rolls in secret how accurate their description is.
So this allows players to add new stuff to the setting, and I get to keep the tied together bits of dungeons and lore that I want. I intend to run this setting relatively anti-canon – one player decided to play a Kobold, and while I told him I’d prefer if he played a dog-kobold, he could do whatever. I fully intend to lean on him for all things Kobold related. Equally a player decided she had been swept up by missionaries who had deemed her cursed and sinful, and now she walks away wondering the reach of the religion that raised her – that player is going to be my main source of info for that sort of religion.
I’ll be posting some lore details and session reports as they come, right now I have a bunch of material I need to prep for the first actual adventuring session.
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.
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.
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.
I have been replaying Bloodborne and recently been running Burning Wheel with a group of players that are majorly magic users. Both of these have got me thinking about Insight and risk-reward style systems in rpgs.
I’ve been toying around with the idea of Insight as it exists in Bloodborne, and I think I have came up with something I want to toy around with more. Here’s the basic top-of-my-head version with no amount of play-testing or really running it by other people for quality control.
I’ve been coming up with a doc for my players to collect all the various parts from different OSR games that I enjoy, so I don’t ever have to print off multiple games again and then print a guide for what sections from what they have to follow for character creation or rules.
Mostly its just a collection of different mechanics copy-pasted from other games and blogs, some of it customized for me, a little bit changed and added, but most as-is. Here’s what I’m using for my own games and why.
I love the idea of weapon reach in games, but implementing it is a tad more complicated than I want to deal with in an OSR session. Good examples of it in more complicated games include Burning Wheel, RuneQuest, and Mythras.
