ye olde fantasy – Aboleth Overlords

Ye Olde Fantasy: Family Matters

Here is a series of tables to generate an immediate family for your player character in a pseudo-medieval fantasy setting. This assumes you are using Ye Olde Fantasy: Social Status, but if not, replace any social modifier roll with a character’s Charisma modifier or any equivalent the table deems appropriate.

Parentage

Roll a d20 on the following table(s) to determine the character’s parentage status.

d20	Parentage
1-10	Both parents raised the character.
11-14	One parent is missing. Roll on the Cause of Absence table. Also, roll on the Single Parent table.
15-17	One parent is dead. Roll on the Cause of Death table. Also, roll on the Single Parents table.
18-19	Both parents are dead. Roll on the Cause of Death table, optionally twice. Also, roll on the No Parents table.
20	Roll on the Unusual Circumstance table.

Cause of Death

Roll on this when you need to determine a cause of death for a family member.

d20	Cause of Death
1	Heart attack or other heart disease
2	Common illness, such as the flu
3	Infection
4	Work-related accident
5	Battle-related wounds (either by participating in combat, or being mugged)
6	Starvation
7	Weather
8	Plague or uncommon disease
9	Drowning
10	Poison, such as accidental ingestion or contact
11	Fire
12	Fall from heights
13	Domestic accident or manslaughter
14	Childbirth (reroll if not appropriate)
15	Execution
16	Animal-related, domesticated, or wild
17	Alcohol poisoning
18	Suicide
19	Murder, most likely by a rival
20	Roll on the Unusual Cause of Death Table

d20	Unusual Cause of Death
1	Blasted by magic
2	Teleported to the underworld
3	Cursed by a witch or warlock
4	Magical or rare beast attack
5	Sacrificed to a Chaos cult
6	Fell into a magical rift
7	Transformed into a frog, eaten by a dog
8	Killed by spirits
9	Mistook a Mimic for an ordinary item
10	Turned to stone, shattered
11	Died from Potion Overdose
12	Fell into the sky
13	Murdered by humanoid monsters
14	Contracted lycanthropy, executed by monster hunters
15	Suffered magical backlash from a nearby Wizard’s failed spell
16	Absorbed by a magical artifact, such as a mirror or soul-eating sword
17	Drained by a vampire
18	Spontaneously combusted
19	Aged in reverse until ceasing to exist
20	Dropped dead for no apparent reason

Cause of Absence

Roll on the following table to learn why a character’s family member was absent.

d12	Cause of Absence
1	Unknown, just went missing
2	Affair related departure
3	Imprisoned
4	Seeking a cure for a disease
5	On a long religious pilgrimage
6	Exploring unknown lands
7	Disappeared during a natural disaster, such as a flood
8	Seeking a cure to a disease
9	Exiled for political reasons
10	Banished for religious reasons
11	Joined a religious order
12	Roll on the Unusual Absence Table

d12	Unusual Cause of Absence
1	Lost in the Realm of Fairies
2	Kidnapped by humanoid monsters
3	Enthralled by a vampire
4	Abducted by a flying monster, such as a dragon or griffin
5	Joined a Chaos cult
6	Sucked into the amulet of a warlock or witch
7	Fell into an enchanted, unending slumber
8	Caught in a time loop, continually relives the same period over and over but unable to break out of it
9	Attained some form of religious enlightenment, taken fully formed into the heavens
10	Spirit separated from the body, either through magic or permanent astral projection
11	Turned to stone
12	Transformed into a toad

Single Parent

Roll on the following table to determine if your parent remarried:

d20 + SOC	Parent Remarriage
1-12	Parent did not remarry
13-20	Parent remarried

If the parent remarried, treat the character’s background as if both parents had raised them.

If they did not remarry, roll on the following Single Parent table:

d20	Single Parent SOC <= 0	SOC = +1	SOC = +2	SOC = +3
1-5	Raised by parent	Raised by parent	Raised by parent	Raised by parent
6-8	Fostered by a family member or neighbor	Fostered by another family member	Fostered by another family member	Raised by parent
9-11	Adopted by another peasant family	Adopted by another family	Fostered by a guild member	Fostered by another notable family
12-14	Adopted by a religious institute, such as a monastery	Fostered by a guild member	Fostered in a religious institution	Fostered by a high-ranking clergy member
15-17	Adopted by a social institute, such as an orphanage	Fostered by a village or town official	Fostered by an academic or notable village/town official	Fostered by an important town official or notable academic
18-20	Fended for self as an abandoned urchin	Fostered by a religious institute, such as a monastery	Fostered as a page or squire with a bachelor knight	Fostered as a page or squire with an honorable knight

Note that fostered children are highly likely to know their birth parents, while adopted children are unlikely to.

No Living Parents

Roll on the following No Parents table to determine the status of your character’s upbringing:

d20	No Parents SOC <= 0	SOC = +1	SOC = +2	SOC = +3
1-5	Adopted by another family	Adopted by another family	Adopted by another family	Adopted by another family
6-8	Adopted by an orphanage	Adopted by a guild member	Adopted by an important guild member	Adopted by another family
9-11	Adopted by a monastery	Adopted by an honorable knight	Adopted by a notable monastery	Adopted by a prestigious religious institute
12-14	Adopted by a traveling group, such as roaming actors	Adopted by a merchant	Adopted by an academic	Adopted by an important scholar
15-17	Communally raised in a community	Adopted by a village or town official	Adopted by a notable village or town official	Adopted by a low-ranking member of the gentry
18-20	Fended for self as an abandoned urchin	Adopted by a low ranking member of the gentry	Adopted by a low-ranking member of the gentry	Adopted by an important town official

Unusual Circumstances

Roll on the following table to determine your character’s particularly notable upbringing. Many of these get pretty fantastical, so feel free to restrict it to just the first six or so if you are playing a more grounded campaign or don’t want the PCs starting with more fantastical upbringings.

d20	Unusual Upbringing
1	Bastard of a higher-ranking noble
2	Bastard of a notable religious figure
3	Adopted by the community’s wise person
4	Raised in a religious cult’s commune
5	Raised by wild animals
6	Adopted by a wandering adventurer
7	Adopted by a wizard
8	Magically aged to an adult
9	Wandered into a haunted location, raised by ghosts or spirits
10	Immaculately conceived
11	Was a spirit or fae-being who was condemned to live as a mortal
12	Descendent of divine or spiritual lineage
13	Sired by a human and a demon
14	Transported from another reality, likely ours
15	Crawled out of a shallow grave with no memory
16	Born with an ominous birthmark, such as a religious symbol or a daemon’s sigil
17	Born under an astrological anomaly.
18	Willed into being out of someone’s dream
19	Was a monster, polymorphed into mortal form
20	Sprung out of a natural disaster, such as a fire, floor, or comet strike.

For the above, you may have to reroll on the Parentage table to determine conditions beyond the unusual circumstances or ask your Referee to work with you on the details.

Siblings

Roll d6 + SOC modifier to determine the number of siblings the player character may have lived with. To determine the character’s sibling rank, roll a die equal to or greater than the number of siblings plus one, rerolling any results greater than the total number of children.

The character has a SOC modifier of +0, so they roll a d6 and get 4. Since the total number of children is 5, the player rolls a d6 to determine where they fall in the birth order, rerolling if they get a 6.

To determine how many siblings survived until the current game, roll a d20 per sibling on the following table, adding in SOC modifier unless a natural 1 is rolled.

d20	Sibling life status
1-4	Dies in childbirth
5-6	Dies within three years of being born.
7-8	Dies within the second year after birth.
9-10	Dies within three years of being birth.
11+	Survives, hurrah!

Relationships

You will likely want to establish relationships with your parents and siblings. Using your game’s notion of Reaction Rolls works fantastic for this. In the future, I will post my rip-off take on Pendragon and BRP’s Personality Traits for running Crusader Kings-esque reactions, but in the meantime, 2d6 + CHA mod, higher is more favorable works.

Ye Olde Fantasy: Skills

In System Assumptions, I mention that there will be references to skills in the upcoming lifepath posts and various downtime procedures. If you already use a skill system, you don’t need to leave behind whatever you’re using, and you need to have a notion for succeeding, failing, critically succeeding, and fumbling. It also helps if you have a concept of how to “train” a skill – become learned in it, advance to the next category, etc.

I want to be clear that I am not saying one needs to have a skill system for old-school dungeon crawling, just that I find them useful for many of the procedures characters can take that do not involve fighting, magic, or directly manipulating objects/doors/etc.

In this post, I will provide a basic skill system for those who do not have one but want to hew closely to the proposed subsystems of Ye Olde Fantasy. Note that using skills can be somewhat contentious in adventure gaming, so it’s good to clear some principles first. These skills are abstractions – they are eliding details we either do not care about or do not require players to understand, and skills should not use skills instead of negotiating the fiction to avoid things we care about.

I often mention that I use “skills as saves,” meaning you only roll a skill check to avoid negative consequences. However, one can also argue for using a skill to gain additional benefits in appropriate situations. Skills should not roll skills without apparent consequences; the referee should rule how the fiction proceeds. Skills should not be rolled pre-emptively by the players nor called for by the referee without everyone being able to picture what is happening in the scene. If you are a player, you should tell your referee your intent for your actions and what your character is doing to achieve this, and if you are a referee, you should clearly describe what is happening and allow the players to respond in fiction.

Let’s get onto the suggested system with that pre-amble out of the way.

Skill Roll

Having played with many people from many gaming backgrounds, I find that “what do I have to roll” is one of the major stumbling blocks for new people, and with that in mind, we’ll be using Target20. I know “unified resolution” isn’t very chic with the ultra-crusty old heads, and I love using 2d6 for reaction rolls, d100 for some skills, all the xd6 stuff in TFT and HarnMaster, etc. But for ease, let’s go with a system that is “roll a d20 and try to get 20.” So we’ll be rolling:

d20 + skill level (we’ll go over that in a minute) +/- any applicable modifiers + level if the class would feasibly contribute to the task >= 20

Any roll over 20 is a success, with a natural 20 being critical, and any value lower than 20 will be a failure, with a natural 1 being a fumble.

When contesting with others, all parties roll as appropriate, and whoever succeeds with the highest total value wins, with critical successes of any value beating successes of any value.

Skills

Each skill is based on an individual D&D stat. If you prefer, you could go the Harn/OpenQuest route and use an average of two or three stats, but I have opted for one for simplicity. Most roleplaying game stats don’t make much sense when you sit down and think about them, so making Athletics be “STR + DEX” doesn’t make it any more realistic than just one or the other, although it does distribute stat importance a bit. The skill list below is a mashup of OpenQuest, Majestic Wilderlands, and Worlds Without Number – feel free to add, remove or adjust at your preference.

Administer (INT) – the “numbers” skill, planning things, logistics, going over records, stewardship, and knowledge of taxation, could even be roped into a component of the law.
Alchemy (INT) – brewing potions, making poltices, fashioning cures, turning lead into slightly not-lead.
Animals (WIS) – taking care of animals, husbandry, training, etc.
Athletics (STR) – running, jumping, climbing, sporting, etc.
Carousing (CHA) – gambling, drinking, partying.
Connect (CHA) – finding people that you are looking for
Deception (CHA) – Bluffing, lying, etc. Usually, this is used for how convincing you sound, but the actual bluff is something you should come up with as a player, if even abstractly.
Dodge (DEX) – I use this in place of mobility-based saves. If you use a saving throw system, this can be replaced with that.
Ettiquite (CHA) – knowing the ins and outs of the medieval social hierarchy, particularly useful for courtiers or dealing with the gentry and nobility.
Folk Magic (WIS) – uses of charms, simple prayers, talismans, and other “common” magics.
Herbalism (WIS) – the identification and application of herbs- a large component of my games. If you don’t feel this is justified, this can easily be combined with Alchemy or Folk Magic, or Physician.
Horsemanship (DEX) – Riding could be any animal, but I usually only require this for knightly endeavors. Peasants on a workhorse or donkey don’t need to check.
Know: Subject (INT) – The generic knowledge check per subject. I usually use this to encompass both the understanding of a subject and being able to convey it and the knowledge of how to research it. Each could be broken out, but my players rarely rolled “Study” when it was, so I merged it here. It could also be fun and thematic to break this out into Natural Philosophy and the 3 + 4 paths of Liberal Arts. I’ve debated doing as much, but people have been more into precise subjects.
Language: Specific (INT) – The ability to speak and understand verbal or somatic languages.
Lead (CHA) – Leadership, tactics, and sometimes even strategy—the warlord and hireling-manager skill.
Melee Combat (STR) – Hand-to-hand combat. If you are using a level + class system, you may not need this. If so, replace it with “fighter level (or attack-bonus) + STR.”
Notice (WIS) – general perception, awareness, etc. Often used in contests against Sneak.
Performance: Type (CHA) – Oratory, poetry, musicianship, etc.
Persuasion (CHA) – Convincing, parleying, and another social greasing. Much like Deception, this shouldn’t be a replacement for describing what and/or how your character is doing to persuade others, if even just zoomed out.
Physician (INT) – Chiurgery, medicine, and first aid.
Prayer (CHA) – Participating in and conducting religious rituals. Also utilized for divine magic. If using a class + level system, replace with “Cleric levels + CHA”
Profession: Type (varies) – When you specify your profession, discuss with the referee what the base stat should be. This should cover most crafts and trades, although very specific ones could obviously be broken out.
Ranged Combat (DEX) – Bows, crossbows, slings, etc. Much like Melee – it can be replaced with an existing combat system.
Read: Script (INT) – Understanding the written language.
Resist (CON) – I use this instead of saving throws related to poison, death, physical maladies, etc. It can be replaced with a saving throw system.
Seafaring (CON) – Boating, navigating the open sea, deep sea fishing, rope work, etc.
Sleight of Hand (DEX) – Magic tricks and thievery.
Sneak (DEX) – Lurking and skulking.
Sorcery (INT) – Casting of arcane magics, summoning and binding spirits, crafting of scrolls, etc. If you are using a class/level-based system, you might not need this and can replace any calls to it with “level + INT”
Survival (CON) – Navigating, finding food in the wilderness, cooking, and other such practices. Also, hunting and fishing, but feel free to make those separate skills if you find that helpful.
Unarmed Combat (STR) – Scratchin’, bitin’, scufflin’, and generally being physically ornery with others without using weapons.
Willpower (WIS) – My mental-based saving throw, but feel free to replace it with whatever other system you wish.
Work (CON) – General labor could be covered by a profession, but also the kind of thing anyone can do and probably become better at with practice/adaptation.
Write: Script (INT) – Communicating a language through written form.

So those are the skills I have found helpful in my games. One can continue to break out skills into more specific use cases or group them generally. I am not someone who is particularly drawn to “elegance” in design, so I am not even sure of the exact number nor the distribution of stats. That’s just me, though.

Skill Base

Each skill will have an initial base corresponding to an attribute. Adjust accordingly if your attribute range is different.

Attribute	*Skill Base*
3	1
4-5	2
6-8	3
9-12	4
13-15	5
16-17	6
18	7

For any skill that makes sense a character would be able to do, they “open” the skill at the above value for the skill’s corresponding stat. This is not universal among skills and is left up to the discretion of the table based on the character and their background. Not everyone can do Sorcery in most settings, for example.

Skill Training

When a character is told to “train” a skill in a lifepath, they double the value of the corresponding skills. So as an example – if a character has a 9 CHA and is told to train deception, their Skill Value for Deception becomes 8. If they are told to train a skill multiple times due to an event or lifepath, they mark it and perform a Skill Development roll instead.

A character can also receive instruction during downtime. I will post about Scholarly pursuits, but in the meantime, a shortened version is that a character can spend a season under the tutelage of an instructor. The instructor can charge upwards of 100 times the corresponding stat value that they have, and after the season, they must succeed at the skill in question to have correctly taught the character. If they succeed AND the character has yet to be “trained” in the skill, they adjust their skill value to double the value of the stat base as outlined in the table above. If they already have trained the skill, they add 1 to their skill. If the instructor fails, the character receives no adjustment.

Skill Development

When told to make a Skill Development roll, a character goes through all the skills they have marked and rolls it. If they fail to get a result of 20 or higher, the Skill Value is increased by 1. If not, the mark is erased without adjusting the value.

Skill Marks

Characters mark their skills for a development roll anytime they fumble or critically succeed at the skill. They can also mark several skills that the referee believes the character used in interesting or crucial situations throughout the adventure – learning under fire.

I have also utilized a method similar to Dungeon World, where we ask questions such as:

Did the character explore a new location?
Did the character best a significant adversary or challenge?
Was a treasure looted from an adventure site?
Were personal goals/quests of the character pursued?

Answers to any of the above allow a skill to be marked, per the referee’s discretion.

Next Steps

I know that was a lot of systems-hoopla, which I am usually not a fan of. Still, I wanted to convey a foundation of what I use in medieval fantasy campaigns that extend outside of dungeons and wildness crawls and provide a basis for the upcoming lifepath system, which references skills.

Ye Olde Fantasy: Social Status

Social status plays a significant role for every character in a pseudo-medieval fantasy setting. Such a society has a very rigid social order, hierarchies of relationships, and classes into which people are born. This provides fictional kinetic energy in the form of players learning these structures, manipulating them, and, most significantly – clashing against them and potentially even changing them.

Keeping in theme with “Ye Olde Fantasy,” this post will not be a history lesson on medieval society. The Middle Ages were a long time, and the world a massive place – it would be impossible to generalize one structure sufficiently for every decade and region.

So, we will do what any good Referee does – handwave and wing it to the degree that it gives our players verisimilitude and interesting setting bits to interact with, but not get lost in the details. I prefer to get setting details through character creation, so before I drone about my interpretation of the three estates and other such subjects, let’s delve into using Social Status in an elf game.

Social Status Score

Every character has a score for social status – typically generated but potentially inherited. Assuming we discover our characters through dice, let’s roll them up a Social Score and see where they land in the realm. I’m assuming 3d6, but feel free to use whatever method you generate stats with – adjusting for the additional statistic if you’re using point-buy or something.

*Social Status score*	*Modifier*	*Description*	*Examples*
3	-3	Dregs/Outcast	Heretic, Convict, Cursed, Plague-bearer
4-5	-2	Vagabond	Wanderer, Beggar, Traveling peddler, Poor itinerant crafter
6-8	-1	Lowly	Serf, Unfree laborer, Poor crafter
9-12	0	Free	Free farmer, Tradesperson, Unguilded crafter, Townfolk, Mercenary
13-15	+1	Well Off	Wealthy farmer, Merchant, Guilded crafter, Important townfolk, Low clergy
16-17	+2	Prosperous	Courier, Bachelor knight, High clergy, Town official, Guild Master
18	+3	Lordly	Poor landed noble, Knight, Sherriff, Family member to high nobles or aristocracy

The chart, of course, goes much higher – High Nobility, Aristocracy, Popes & Anti-Popes, but for now, the synergy with the B/X-y modifier tables works for starting campaigns.

A Note on Categories

When looking at the rough categories above, it’s worth remembering that I am just applying a fuzzy guide for wrangling PCs and NPCs into hierarchies. In the real world, an individual’s social status may vary massively from what I propose above – some serfs could have higher status than a particularly destitute free person. On paper, a broke knight may have more social potential than a merchant, but if that merchant becomes filthy rich, they’ll start tipping the scale.

So if you drop from a 9 Social Status as a free farmer to an 8, that does not mean you necessarily become a serf, but people will treat you like the equivalent.

Starting Wealth

A super easy way to get the Social Status ball rolling is to optionally adjust a character’s starting wealth based on the result. When using old-school D&D, you can use 3d6 * 10 and then an abacus to calculate the resulting value with the multiplier.

*Social Status score*	*Starting Wealth modifier*
3	0.125
4-5	0.25
6-8	0.5
9-12	1
13-15	2
16-17	4
18	8

Reaction Modifiers

When encountering other individuals from a feudal society, the Social Status modifier (SOC) is used in addition to any other modifiers when generating reaction rolls. The Referee may call for situations where the modifier table is inverted. For example, their positive modifier may become negative when a pompous noble stumbles into a rough-and-tumble tavern and begins putting on airs.

Of course, one could impersonate someone of higher or lower status – such as through a disguise skill, which only applies when looking the part. One must also be versed in the class etiquette they are presenting as – take a -1 or -5% modifier for every level above/below your social status if rolling to play the part.

*2d6 + CHA mod + SOC mod (if appropriate)*	*NPC Reaction*
2 or less	Becomes hostile, calls for guards, demands a duel, attacks, etc.
3-5	Unfriendly, openly mocks and denigrates PC, may call for them to be ejected
6-8	Neutral, may exchange status-appropriate level pleasantries, but unlikely to be an ally or rival without further prompting
9 – 11	Indifferent, may recognize PC or accept their company for a time, could become a potential ally if appropriate and beneficial
12 or more	Friendly to the PC, may recognize them, generally amiable

After this initial disposition is set, the NPC’s mood and reaction will fluctuate based on roleplaying, and if you so wish, skill check to abstract the scene away.

Audiences and Contacts

As we can leverage the B/X Monster Reaction table for social interactions, we can utilize the hireling table for requesting an audience with an NPC or looking for someone in another social class. We use slightly different math to account for the fact that someone with higher status can pretty much demand to be seen, for better or worse.

*2d6 + CHA mod + (Your SOC mod – their SOC mod)*	*Result*
2 or less	Audience denied, NPC probably develops a disdain for the PC
3-5	Audience denied
6-8	Audience granted as long as PC provides a status-appropriate gift* or performs a favor
9-11	Audience granted
12	Audience granted, and confer an additional +1 or 5% to any social checks made in the meeting

* gifts will be getting their own little post; for now, assume 100gp times their SOC mod

Maintenance and Adjustments

While some social statuses may be gods-given (or assumed so by the populace), such as the case with the Monarch, most have to spend to retain their status, and one could even get ahead in the hierarchy by throwing around money.

Each category has a rate of living required to maintain status per month. We could adjust the interval, especially for the nobility, who were cash-poor and tended to be pretty regular. But for the purposes of a fantasy adventuring game, let’s initially keep the interval to monthly—adjust to taste with experience.

This money (whatever denomination you prefer) is abstractly “spent” to maintain the characters’ social standing.

*Social Status score*	*Monthly Upkeep Costs*
3	0cp
4-5	1gp
6-8	3gp
9-12	12gp
13-15	60gp
16-17	300gp
18	1500gp

If one cannot afford their monthly upkeep, they drop by one point of social status or multiple if the Referee determines them to be living in a particular squalor. If they spend for upkeep beyond their current status, they increase their social score by 1.

Note that this assumes peasants “earn” about 1 sp a day (and we’re assuming 100 cp = 10 sp = 1gp), which is… fine for now. Especially given the equipment costs of most of these games, we’ll have a whole big post on the economy that will reframe and revise this.

The 3 Estates Spiel

I highly recommend reading Skerple’s OSR: The Three Estates (although note his own “ranking” is not our Social Status score), or if you have the time, a history book or course. Tl;dr is that there are “Three Estates” that categorize society into three roles:

First Estate: the Clergy
Second Estate: the Nobility
Third Estate: the Commoners

These estates break down further depending on where and when you have differences between Barons and Dukes, Low Clergy and High Clergy, rural peasants and urban townsfolk, etc.

You also have many examples that do not fit neatly into the hierarchy – outlaws, for instance. You might categorize them as the third estate, but they operate literally outside the law and that estate’s assumed role and responsibility. The monarch sits outside (or perhaps above) this hierarchy, but you can shove them on top of the second estate. You also have clashed with the rise of urbanization and mercantilism, where very wealthy peasants began twisting the above assumptions and sometimes even buying their way into the nobility.

We also have yet to answer where fantastical elements fit – elves, wizards, wildland barbarians, and other oddities. I will have a whole post on wizards and what you could do with them, but for now, let’s assume they operate as members of the third estate but are often of higher status as they will play the archetypical advisor role to many nobles. For dwarves and goblins, assume that human feudal society will slot in the outside to whatever equivalent category they have. Elven Exarch of the Yewwood Realm might be considered a Noble, so assign appropriately. “Barbarians” and fantasy nomads – rural folk who operate outside of the feudal system, would probably also slot into their equivalent, but probably a whole category lower (so a “wildlands huscarl” who could arguably be the equivalent of a bachelor knight would be in the “well off” category instead).

Since you are making your setting, you do not have to get super precise (as it was not in the real world). Just know that I’m going to roughly assume a category of Priests and Temples of whatever faith who serve to guide the spiritual well-being of the realm, violent landlords who “protect” the realm, and a class of individuals who do not fit into the above and have to do the work.

Backgrounds

This system will play heavily into two background systems I use for character generation: quick and detailed. Both of these require their post, but for now, this should give an impression of what background a PC could come from, given the rough category. Go with your intuition and talk to your players if questions arise. While I don’t have a real plan or structure for these posts the character generation methods most likely will occupy a large portion of the next few or many or forever posts, judging by the number of notes I have on them.

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.