The Next 52 (26?) Pages

As promised, here is the pdf of the first 26 of the Next 52 pages. It's an expansion to my preferred homebrew adventure game system that, like the Expert set of yore, covers level 4-6 with new powers and spells. Also, like the Advanced edition of yore, it puts in a dozen or more new class options for both established and starting characters. And there are a few extra goodies - a summoning table for the new set of summoning spells; a way to promote hirelings into henchmen.

[Download here]

You will see that the second 26 pages of Next are somewhat of an ideal outline for new types of adventure, new monsters and treasures. While nice to have, I don't think filling this part out is my first priority. Based on a couple of campaigns that made it to 7th level, there is a full list of spells to level 10, a take on advanced skill possibilities once the skill boxes begin to completely fill, and the framework of a game that has an ultimate win condition at level 10. Adding more character options and a kind of "domain game" to this, and you have a 26-page Beyond supplement that I will be looking to work on more this year.

The 52 Pages 3.0

Prodded on by a satisfied player's long delayed post after a minicon one-shot game last year, I have finally gotten around to finishing my revised 52 Pages, a graphically enhanced rules outline for a heartbreaker based mostly on the Basic and 3rd editions of the world's most cautiously-referenced roleplaying game.

The most obvious update is in the fonts, at the same time calling back to the roots with a Futura-clone in the text and letting go of Berlin, the Papyrus that nobody talks about, in favor of the classier Alegreya. The main "lore" change is a clearer definition between characters' hit points - now called "hero points" with a lower-case hp, and serve to shield characters from physical damage and injury effects - and monster hit points (HP), which represent physical damage more abstractly.

The main change to play is a reordering of the combat sequence so that melee no longer goes first, and "run up to your face and hit you" is now intuitively supported. This has been a long time coming, seeing that  whenever I have run the game in one-shots, melee-first was the hardest thing to remember and implement. The solution was easy - a second move after attacks that counts as an attack and may be made by the engaged (skip attack to disengage, but you must survive melee).

Here's the link, also available in the bar to the right. I realize that the game is much more viable when you add rules dealing with levels 4 to 6 and I have those mostly written, with a load of additional spells and classes/races. By the end of April you should see another post with the 52 Pages Next!

 

 

One Page Contest Entry: Gripped in the Hands of Time

I had doubts, this year. Didn't think I was going to do the One Page Dungeon Contest. I had some vague idea about a dungeon with a time travel gimmick, but nothing definite. Besides, all my game design time was going to writing rooms in volume II of my megadungeon. Getting nigh on 50 of them.

Then I came to the part in my map where I had a little suite of 4 rooms, earmarked for something secluded and weird. I cast some randomness on it and one feature - a clock - came up. And I started getting ideas. And pretty soon I realized those ideas would fit on one page, too...

The title describes each of the four rooms in a different way, but it was only an afterthought.My initial impulse was to fill in the blanks in the classic roleplaying madlib: _____ of the ______ ______. Then I saw an adventure that broke that trend and the title came to me.

It's conceived as a module, an abandoned hideout that can be dropped into any setting. The fight is probably going to need high levels and the puzzles are definitely going to need sharp minds. What I like is the way the different elements can interact in an emergent way without having to write it all out with "if-then" prolixity. The diary tells of the time sacrifices which gives you a clue what to do at the bas-relief. Bari-ritu's gifts can help you with the clock lock if you are stuck in there.

The Latin, as translated: "YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT."

Bari-Ritu is played by the Burney Relief.

Enjoy! (link to pdf)

New Edition of 52 Pages

I haven't been blogging, but I have been running the game every other week, squeezing out text for the ol' megadungeon, and putting the final touches on some revisions to the rules I use. They're now in a position to share at version 2.0, so you can download them from the link on the right, or here.

I'd say that after some five years of playtesting, the new version works pretty darn well, at least for the "basic" levels 1-3. There have been a few issues with higher level powers and spells, and some of the variant classes I want to release, but with more experience (now going on a couple of years, having run two higher-level campaigns plus a number of convention games) I think I can fix a lot of those issues.

Accordingly, things are looking good for releasing an extra "26 pages" soon, focused on character development and advancement for levels 4-6 and new classes. The other 26 would have been campaign development, but I find the campaign structure in 52PP is the thing I least use in actual play. So my ideas about wilderness exploration, city campaigns, etc. are probably best put in a different, system-neutral volume.

Anyway, enjoy!

Download: Bag of Tricks 2, Now Easier

Reading the hoop-la about the Seclusium of Orphone -- mostly, complaints about its difficulty of use at the table - made me realize that a) one of my existing play aids, the Bag of Tricks also is less usable than it could be; b) with just a little work and squeezing it could be re-formatted into a two-page spread along the lines of my 3 x d20 table series and others (such as Vornheim).

I think this takes the product into the realm of being usable in actual live play, rather than just to prepare a dungeon trick in the seclusium of one's home. The resulting pdf is now available over on the right, topping the downloads section, in four-page pamphlet form. It's probably best printed in color, in "shrink to fit page" format. Let me know what you think!

As a bonus here's an example trick generated on the fly:

Pool, with food/fruit which if you cast spell on, gives ...

And here's yet another way to use the Bag - just use the left-hand page and fill in the most appropriate outcome yourself.

A pool, with seven closed exotic water flowers floating on it. If a spell is cast in the room, the flowers open. Picking one and eating its fruit will make the caster recall that particular spell, ready to use again.

Download: 52 Pages 1.0

It's here. All 52 Pages. Download link on the right (or here if you're lazy). I even cleaned up the treasure table so it has a little more breathing room and an example.

Devil on the cover makes it Old School.

At the end, all I can say is that there are many rulebooks out there for this kind of stuff, but none like this. Enjoy.

Download: Cellars of the Castle Ruins

All right. I've dithered about this before but now have decided to make and distribute a couple of low-effort, not too fancy pdfs with the megadungeon level I wrote three years ago.

To recap, it was written at a time when Joe Bloch's Castle of the Mad Archmage was available for free download but lacked a level 1. I wrote one for my own use, trying to match the antic humor of the lower levels, and ran many an adventure on this and level 2. Now that the print release of the full Castle is in sight, but not too soon, I figured I would let everyone else know what I did with my replacement for the almost-impossible-to-get level 1 of Gary Gygax's "Castle Zagyg," from which COTMA follows.

I urge everyone to run out and get the full COTMA from BRW Games when it releases next year. In addition to the official completion of the upper works and level 1, Joe is promising us annotations of the sparsely keyed rooms. As I've mentioned on more than one occasion, COTMA as written has many hidden features that only really emerge in actual play. As a result, its area keys read as under-featured, when there's actually a lot of interaction and possibilities. It's great that the annotations will let the casual reader appreciate the subtleties of this design - one of the few complete megadungeons out there, a conscious attempt to recreate Gary's legendary pile while building a lot onto the scraps of information that remain.

In the meantime, not wanting to spend too much time on layout, I've released the Cellars as a level key and separate, large scale map because I couldn't get Acrobat to play nice and shrink the map to a single page. You should be able to print the map as a fairly legible single sheet, though, if you play around with the Adobe pdf settings. This is not ideal - I much prefer a format I'm using in my own slowly developing megadungeon, where each page of text has an inset of its map section and notes on all creatures encountered there. But it allows me to get this out there.

Anyway, enjoy! Download links are to the right under "Rules and Tools".

New 52 Pages Download and To Do List

Well, now that the 52 Pages system is a fully playable document I'm making the new pdf available for download, on the right. Still, the pdf is not complete. Here is my "to do" list for changes:
* There are 4 pages still to create, dedicated to adventure examples and GM/player advice.
* I want to rework the Prophet class so they operate by spells like the others (more on that soon)
* Do something different with starting equipment so a whole page of equipment cards is not required. Most likely, a starting party will get a standard shopping basket of equipment, and new members will get a pick or random roll of X pieces from the list.
* Reduce the character sheet to one vertical page. Perhaps include it at the back, outside the 52 page count, and add a character creation walkthrough of the kind that got me props back in the day.
* Other player aids: spell lists, GM's log
* Air out the combat section, make it less dense, with an extra page.
* There have been some problems interpreting the feats of strength and magic items sections, so rework that.
* Generally proofread, standardize terms, get graphic elements lined up and clearer.

I'm not sure if the pages of rules need more detailed text annotations - I would rather make them stand clearly on their own, with maybe a little bit of RPG experience desirable to grasp the concepts.

And then it's on to the 52 pages "expert" edition for adventures at levels 4-6, including:

* New class powers and spells.
* Hybrid class options for more variety.
* Basic world creation for the GM.
* Wilderness and sea adventure rules.
* Lots more monsters.
* Building reputation in settlements toward the next party goal - gaining official status as agents of a realm.

But before that, the next project will be to clean up my wilderness encounter tables and present them together with a detailed world, weather and outdoor adventure system for any game.

New 52 Pages Draft Download

So I'm missing six pages of substance, four pages of examples, probably each page needs layout tweaking, and there are lots of overhauls I'd like to make, and redundancies I'd like to eliminate.

But seeing as there seems to be a popular demand for it, let me make available the latest update for my 52 Pages graphic system. The link on the right will give it to you as a pdf dowload through Google Drive.

By Zagyg's Beard, Let's Do This!

Xounds! As from a sorcerous fogbank I have woken up and realized that school's out for the summer, the other group that was exploring it is terminally moribund, so there is no reason why I should not gather up my fairly detailed notes and map for CELLARS OF THE CASTLE RUINS, pdf it and release it upon an Old School Rumbelow seemingly producing core systems faster than it can produce sprawling gonzo megadungeon levels.

Do these three stairways look familiar?

This is the level that takes the place of that one other level of the impossible-to-get adventure supplement that finally started in on The Big Kahuna's Big Kahuna Dungeon, and that hooks up with the second level of Joe Bloch's megadungeon that finished off the Big Kahuna's unfinished business. After two years and over a dozen incursions from four separate teams of delvers, this 119-room low-level mooncalf may well be ready for prime time.

CONTENTS:
4 entry ramps
1 mysterious tavern
1 excruciating puzzle room (nearly solved at one point)
1 secret library, with bad-ass librarian
4 competing and radically different kobold tribes
1 philosopher yeti
2 trash disposals
1 massive cave-in
3 wells
2 inscrutable games-within-a-game
6 stairways down
1 stairway up

I've started layout in Publisher, and have decided on a format where each one-or-two page spread of room descriptions contains a map inset of those rooms, next to which is a key to the monster stats as given by AD&D. That's not my preferred system, but it's compatible with Mr. Bloch's opus, and I actually use the stats from Kellri's AD&D monster reference in my own more Basic/Labyrinth Lord-like game, only dialing down some of the multiple attacks (for example, one instead of two claw attacks from most animals).

To respect and not undercut the efforts of others I'll be releasing it as contribution-ware. All proceeds will be farmed directly back into the DIY roleplaying movement.

Menagerie 2

The public domain-based menagerie download zip (rules and tools, right) just got updated with a bunch more silhouettes. As fun as kitbashing miniatures and less messy ...

I had a hard time with the ankheg and bulette until another trawl through the Phylopic site found me some base images that just needed a little carving and filling to do. The Kenku is a mix of Hokusai and Kuniyoshi parts, and the pose is characteristic of those artists.

Yes, we're dipping into the Fiend Folio and Monster Manual 2. I'm putting the humanoids into the "Evil" encounter page and the giant invertebrates into a "Weird" encounter page, and the weirdos need company. Not even Basic D&D and Runequest will be safe from the monster raiding ... and maybe there's a post in that.

The 52 Pages (Well, 22 and Counting)

I don't know why people complain about there being no monsters in Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

They're all there. In the Open Game License, attributed to the Tome of Horrors. Probably thanks to this clause:

You must update the COPYRIGHT NOTICE portion of this License to include the exact text of the COPYRIGHT NOTICE of any Open Game Content You are copying, modifying or distributing...

Or maybe just excessive caution? Who knows.

But I'm not here to have any more arguments about this. No more unmannerly comments, please. And now please welcome the first installment of the "One Page" fantasy gaming system.

The quality of this product is such that it embodies every design decision that is objectively correct. You may think you preferred descending AC or the standard spell lists, but once you see this work shine forth with piercing beams of correctness, your worldview will certainly be dislodged, and you will acknowledge the One True Way.

After lo, these many years, and countless futile and abortive attempts, That Darn Roleplaying Game is finally fixed! Put down your house rules, ball up your supplements. The capstone has been lowered on an era.

(plus it's not a roleplaying game)

Ah, who am I fooling? I'll be happy if you steal a few ideas from here for your own game. That's why every rule is on its own page, and this will be clearer once the somewhat interlinked stuff surrounding character creation gives way to the systems of play. Just before the Open Game License (AIEEE!) there is a brief and functionally formatted guide to what is to come.

Download to the right.

Santicore is Coming ...

... and you're on his list.

(Or Sergeant D's, whatever.)

All punk rock nostalgia aside, there is a preview of the Secret Santicore project up and it is amazing - my request has been answered in spades by one of the best creators out there and will probably be a feature of my campaigns in 2012. Jez even included my castle map in the preview, though I wish I'd made the descriptions a little more fancy, but still, the presentation is outstanding. Also, full table of contents.

Old School Dungeon Encounter Table

I wasn't happy with any of the options for rolling up dungeon monsters. Strictly from desperation, I stocked the first level of my megadungeon with some heavily fudged use of a 3rd edition encounter web gadget, the kind that gives you dragonforged were-undead goblin rangers with the Mighty Cobra Clutch feat.

So over the months, I went ahead and cobbled up one of my own with a more old-school feel, both in source material, and in coming up with too-big-to-fight encounters every now and then. It has my usual table style - roll 2 keep low, d6:d6 rolls - and it manages to stock the lower levels heavily with Varlets & Vermin monsters. Download from the right. Let me know if it doesn't work; once again I've tried the "download from link only" version in the vain hope that Google Docs will actually work.


If you're interested in hacking it, let me know and I can send you a Word copy.

Dungeon.ppt Download

All right. Perfectionism aside, I've put the dungeon.ppt slides on Google Docs: Elvis doors, DM attention markers and all. The first slide has all the symbols as grouped objects and the second slide is a how-to, with tips and a sample mini-dungeon that you can steal and modify rooms and passages from. The format is MS Powerpoint 2007 for Windows (.pptx).

The main innovation over the previous series of posts is a way to show unusual ceiling height - deviations from the usual 8 or 10 feet - with lines above or below the room number.

If you use this and you work in inches, let me know how the inches/cm conversion goes. My suspicion is that the background grid might be a little off for large scale inch-based work, but otherwise the .5cm = .2 in rule seems farily handy. Also let me know if you convert the symbols to other media, for example, Photoshop or CC brushes. Powerpoint is not a perfect graphic system and I think there's at least as much interest in the symbols as in the PPT implementation.

Dramatic Personae

A while ago there was some talk in various places about social rules for D&D. I don't use a specific set of social interaction rules beyond reaction and morale rolls for NPCs in various situations, but I did get thinking about what I do when GMing a social interaction, what other people might need to get to that level, and what I need to do to get beyond that level.

Usually, I have some idea of the character in my head. This is often based on a stock fantasy cliche with one or more wrinkles. For example, there's an NPC ranger in my campaign, Burnsteen, who is stoic, no-nonsense, and was introduced to the players more or less as the hand-me-down brooding Aragorn figure in the hooded cloak at the corner table. His role is as liaison to the town (one point of individuality) but pretty much he follows the picture on the can. Oh, except for one thing - he ... wait, my players are reading. Never mind.

Anyway, a GM who isn't as thoroughly basted in all the classic Modern Medieval Fantasy genre reading and ideas might have trouble coming up with these cliches. Even for the rest of us it might be good to have a reminder of what a dead-center personality would look like for a standard barmaid, sailor or dwarf.

Where I sometimes need help, especially when improvising, is veering off center. If you do it intentionally the results can feel forced ("The ranger is, um, an opera singer") and there has to be a balance where not every character intentionally breaks cliche. This is where a random table would come in real handy, giving plausible deniability for your evil decision to make the town gate guard turn out to be an egomaniac tyrant.

So on the right, or through the link, you may download a pdf of my Dramatic Personae. This is a d6-based table of 36 stock fantasy characters - the wizard, the knight, the peasant, the barbarian, etc. - each with five cliched motives or character traits. There's a random method of generating non-player character traits using this table, and some ideas for how sub-types might fit in. You can see this, perhaps, as a supplement for social interaction with the kind of stock characters that Al, of Beyond the Black Gate, gave combat stats for in the Monsterless Manual.

The method leads to some characters being completely as expected, varying only in how nasty or nice they are. But, some results also lead to Distinctive traits. That is, the character gets someone else's cliche. This can lead to a boisterous wizard, a barbarian who fears death, or a floozy with a heart of lead.

All else is explained in the document. Enjoy!

Character sheet and player aids

For the curious, the 2 page character sheets and 3 pages of play aids from our Gencon crawl are here (Google docs).

I have modified them somewhat since the game, mainly putting more complete stats for common weapons and armor onto the equipment sheet, and adding a henchmen table (in the game I used a number of pre-gens from the Meatshields utility).

Some of the notes may be a little cryptic, but people generally figured stuff out, asking along the way.

Yes, the d6 pips and encumbrance system are a blatant hommage. Probably by the time I release Assayers' Guild Characters I'll have figured out an alternate display system.

Combat House Rules now up

Look ye rightwards and behold the Rule of the Assayers, Chapter the First.

One thing I have no illusions about: I did this writeup because I wasn't 100% satisfied with any of the clone rule sets and I doubt anyone will be 100% satisfied with my approach. That's just the way of cranky old-schoolers with a quarter century of ideas and expectations under our belts. Least I can do, though, is put my cards on the table about my goals (see Foreword) without claiming to be the One True Way. I hope you can salvage a few ideas from this or at least be inspired to bash out your own. Comments and brickbats are always welcome!

These rules will largely be in effect for my GenCon private game and any other games I run in the near future.

Incidentally, if anyone can offer better hosting than Mediafire (upload doesn't work any more for me) or RapidShare (annoying), I'd be mucho obligado.

UPDATE: Now in Google Docs with some minor fixes.

Varlets and Vermin 1.0

I've always felt the lack of lower level monsters in any setting; but especially the old school with its stripped-down lists.

Dungeon referees who want something a little spicier than rats, skeletons and kobolds should therefore consider my new pdf supplement, available to download here absolutely gratis: Varlets and Vermin. It's a collection of monsters and related ideas for challenge levels 1 and 2, written for Swords & Wizardry but easily adaptable to other systems.

Please let me know what you think and if you find it useful. Thanks!