Failed Experiments, or, Slush Pile 09.22

Over the past year or two or three, I made and attempted to run a whole bucket of weird little experimental RPG projects. Most of them died. Here are some post-mortems.

#1: Harrowhame, aka "40-mile Dwarf Tunnel"

The pitch: I saw this old MERP map. Then I reread LOTR, which says that the Mines of Moria are about 40 miles long. You play the leaders of a dwarf expedition to reclaim Harrowhame, the totally-not-Mines-of-Moria. You start outside, work your way in, send out scouts, fight battles with the denizens, mine gold, build fortresses, and fix the train.

Sessions played: 4.

What went wrong: Two things: first, an overabundance of dungeon nodes. I was trying to run it like a huge pointcrawl megadungeon with hundreds of mundane nodes and a few spicy ones, when I should've taken a leaf from UVG's book and just had a few dozen really cool exciting nodes (some of which could be dungeons). Second, there was just too much management overhead from the players: they were tracking a dozen squads of 10 dwarves, their work assignments, resources (metal, gold, food, and fuel), and a bunch of other shit. It would be a sick videogame, but was basically untenable as a tabletop RPG.

What's worth salvaging: The pitch. That's about it, really. The idea's really cool but basically every mechanical angle I took with the project sucked.

#2: Ten Thousand Miles

The pitch: You play mailmen (of the "Special Mail Service") going on a 10,000-mile delivery most of the way across the world. Every month, me and kahva release another 500 × 500-mile topographical map (on patreon, maybe?), which knit together into one contiguous 500 × 10,000 mile map. (And then release it eventually on a fucking scroll, or something?)

Sessions played: 5.

What went wrong: Again, two things: first, it just took a lot of coordination and effort and work ahead of time for me and kahva, which is difficult to muster in the best of circumstances. Second, and possibly more damning, is that these were maps basically devoid of content. A big topograpical map is very fun and cool, but you gotta have things to do there besides just walking, and a big map (even with some weather and random encounter tables) just doesn't really provide that.

What's worth salvaging: The map-a-month subscription model. I also wrote a little language system that's kinda fun and will eventually go in its own post. Oh, also, I came up with this three-point Mail Service Code of Honor, which I love (as well as the idea of delivering the mail as a campaign pitch):

1. The mail must go through.
2. Never open the mail.
3. Always hold yourself to highest standards of decency.

#3: Beowulf-3, aka "Mars Colony"

The pitch: An almost entirely rules-free (we used one basic PbtA-ish 2d6 resolution roll and nothing else) system set on an alternate-history '90s Martian colony (the mission you're on is called Beowulf-3). You're some of the first permanent colonists on Mars, and have to deal with the competing interests of NASA, the Clinton Administration, corporate executives, and the aftershocks of the Cold War. 

Sessions played: 1. 

What went wrong: Turns out that a lot of the problems Martian colonists face are extremely boring but also pretty relevant. Like, maintaining water filtration pipes is very necessary but hard to really grapple with in an engaging way without having a chemical engineering degree. You can kinda just skip from dramatic moment to dramatic moment, but we wanted more structural mechanisms for all the boring shit that's still important. 

What's worth salvaging: A very light core ruleset actually works super well for these kinds of community-drama focused games. With a little bit of tactical rules elision, I think this could really shine.

#4: PbtA Mutable Moves

The pitch: A Powered by the Apocalypse ruleset where every move follows the "10+: all three, 7-9: choose two, 6-: choose one" model (pioneered by moves like Read a Sitch). Every time you make a move, you cross out one of the options and replace it with one of your own design. Here's a version I made for a kind of Biblical-mythical Bronze Age-type setting.

Sessions played: 1.

What went wrong: Turns out game design is hard, kids. Even with a load of examples, coming up with new move options on the fly takes a lot of time and effort, so my players often ended up just resorting to shafting over other players or writing precisely what they wanted. Which was allowed and I sort of saw coming, but ended up being more an issue than I expected.

What's worth salvaging: Letting players modify existing moves—or write new ones—is an extremely potent tool. It's an amazing way to let them modify the game how they want, to literally rewrite the rules to better fit your game. I think as a playbook capstone, for example, or a once-every-5-sessions kind of move, it could work really well. 

#5: Downtime Grunge Heroes

The pitch: You play, like, a bunch of shitty college students living in a house together, but you also all have superpowers. Deal with your life. Here's the draft I started writing. One of my big-brain ideas for this was to reverse the downtime-mission emphasis: in lots of games, you play out the mission in detail, then roll to see what happens in downtime. What if it was the reverse here? You roll to see what happened on your mission ("ah fuck, I got blinded for two weeks by acid," "ah fuck, I totaled my car"), then play out what actually happens in the rest of your life in detail.

Sessions played: 0.

What went wrong: What do you actually do in this game? What happens? If I don't want to write a whole bunch of weird emotional-tracker systems (a la Masks), what mechanics are there actually? Do I really want to play a game where you say "yeah I spend 3 hours of my sleep tonight to finish my homework" ??

What's worth salvaging: I think basically everything in that draft is actually pretty okay. Like, it's reasonably good, reasonably-gameable content. I dunno.

#6: PbtA Communal Cyberpunk

The pitch: Apocalpyse World, the original Powered by the Apocalypse game, is really interesting in that you-the-PCs essentially play the pillars of a community. Not the leaders, necessarily, but certainly the important people. Gang bosses, cult icons, weird freaks, all the movers and shakers in a given apocalyptic commune. It's something almost no PbtA game since has managed to replicate. What if it was cyberpunk?

Sessions played: 1.

What went wrong: It's just... Apocalpyse World but cyberpunk. It's fine. It's bland. (Also, my players didn't really seem to get the cool things I was trying to do with rules-lite cybernetics because they were all poisoned by storygames, but that's okay.)

What's worth salvaging: This was the start of my "holy shit god fuck I never want to write a system again" arc. Here's the existing rules draft (NSFW?), it'd probably be playable with a good 3 hours of work to fill out the classes. 

#7: Maximalist Ritual Spells

The pitch: What if spells were actually complex things you needed to learn? What if they were serious rituals that required study and time and effort? What if a wizard was not somebody who has four 1st-level spells per day and a Spell Save DC of 17 and whatever else, but somebody who was actually wise and knowledgeable? The idea was to write a whole bunch of complex ritual spells that could be hugely powerful but had tons of complex requirements. A wizard who knew one spell would be dangerous; a wizard who knew five spells would be immensely powerful.

Sessions played: 4 (as part of another campaign).

What went wrong: It's kind of a pain in the ass, honestly. There's like a million things to keep track of as the GM, and I didn't have a good way to do that. It's also just a huge barrier to entry for the players. Turns out making magic really complicated means that magic is really complicated. It's also just an absolute fuckload of legwork on the part of the designer. 

What's worth salvaging: Here's what the Sleep spell might look like. Here's what a pyromancy spell list might look like (scroll down a bit). Despite the issues, I do think these might kind of work, and I may well return to them at some point. They're also just a fantastic way to do a lot of sneaky cool backdoor worldbuilding. In the meantime, check out Luke Gearing's much more usable version of basically this same idea (for the already-amazing Wolves Upon the Coast).

#8: Cyberpunk Lady Blackbird

The pitch: Lady Blackbird, John Harper's landmark focused-but-open narrative game, but done up in a cyberpunk style. The tentative name was "Blackbird Protocol," about escorting a revolutionary cell leader ("Blackbird") through the city to a corporate tower.

Sessions played: 0.

What went wrong: Turns out Lady Blackbird actually just kind of sucks? It's a very fun concept and pitch, but there's just... nothing there? It gives you one macro map and a bunch of vague hooks, then says "go." If there was an actual adventure to it, more maps and NPCs and challenges and details, I think it'd be great. As is, it's a complete ruleset and barebones adventure masquerading as an entire world. If you're willing to improv the entire thing it's pretty fun, but that's true of just about any game.

What's worth salvaging: The... pitch? Honestly I'm not sure.

#9: Back Alley Razor Gangs, aka "Blades in the Dark but actually good this time"

The pitch: Take Blades in the Dark, another landmark John Harper joint, but add some actual backbone and procedure and content to it. Blades, as is, has the weird storygame problem of saying "here's a whole woooorld" and then basically just assigning all of it as homework for the GM. BARG was an attempt to fix that by adding district-generation procedures and adding some structure, primarily by using Tim Denee's really excellent Doskvol Street Maps. At some point it also turned into a rewrite of Blades (lmao).

Session played: 15-20, ish? A lot.

What went wrong: It had a really rocky start—we found that trying to take over an entire neighborhood when you're a bunch of nobodies is really fucking hard. (Let's just say both me and my players really earned a lot of respect for the Sopranos and the Peaky Blinders.) After some soul-searching and a big ol' timeskip, I just gave my players an entire neighborhood to start with. From then, it was actually pretty smooth sailing.

What's worth salvaging: Honestly, this project was mostly a success, it just needs an absolute fuckload more legwork and prep and work on my end before it can really be called finished. Here's the draft, though (and some very incomplete tables). Maybe keep an eye out for this one sometime next year or two, if you're interested. 

#10: LANCER Hexcrawl

The pitch: Make a big ol' hexcrawl for LANCER. Four or five regions, a half-dozen dungeon-type locations, three-ish factions, a handful of quest lists/lines, maybe 100 keyed hexes total. A fat zine's worth of concise content. 

Sessions played: 0.

What went wrong: Turns out I really can't stand LANCER. It's far and away the game that I want to like the most, but the rules writing is just abysmal and the game offers absolutely zero guidance on how to actually balance it. While I really like weird mythic sci-fi mech about playing giant robots that fight each other, sitting through minimum one (more likely two-three) hours of really dense crunchy combat is my breaking point. It bores me as a player and taxes the hell out of me as a GM.

What's worth salvaging: The... pitch? What LANCER is really in dire need of is good old-fashioned content. (Or, at least, content that you can actually play, as opposed to whatever the hell Wallflower is doing.)

#11: Locks & Keys

The pitch: One of the cool things about Lady Blackbird is that characters all have these things called "Keys," like "Key of Secrecy: Hit your Key when you go undercover or lie to hide your identity." Hitting your key gets you XP and other stuff. Narrative triggers, basically. I made a bunch of these once for a classless-type OSR game: the keys are Keys, the associated perks you get are, hilariously, called Locks.

Sessions played: 3, I think (as part of another campaign).

What went wrong: On paper, nothing. These work as intended. In practice, though, it just feels pretty against the whole ethos to be incentivizing players like this. (We are against incentive here, after all.) 

What's worth salvaging: If you really love this idea, take it and go. This one basically works mechanically, I'm more just opposed to it on a, like, ideological level. 

#12: Forged in the Dark Scooby-Doo

The pitch: you play the Scooby Gang, pillars of the American mythos that they are. You go into a collection of places around town (the Abandoned Factory, the Seaside Cove, the Old High School) to solve mysteries. Here's the twist: when you go looking for clues (or otherwise touch the dice, really), there are two sets of clues per location-mystery to find:

1. If you fail the roll (pretty common), your clumsy incompetence leads you to actually find evidence that it's Old Man Withers! Bank statements, machinery, human footprints, lost wills, etc. etc.
2. If you succeed the roll (pretty rare), you find evidence that holy shit, Bigfoot is real. Once in a blue moon on a mystery, you actually see aliens, you actually talk to ghosts, etc. etc.

After finding all the clues from one set (regardless of how far you got on the other), you conclude the mystery.

Sessions played: 0.

What went wrong: Mysteries are hard, man. While Scooby-Doo offers the amazing affordance of not actually being about mysteries, really, it's still tricky. Is it too contrived? Is there any tension? Is it too weird to have the results of the mystery be based on fucking dice rolls? Isn't this whole twin-solution thing like way too meta anyways? All questions that vex me. 

There's also the issue of people trying to play as like, weird Scooby-Doo OC, which I am absolutely not here for—if we're playing the Scooby-Doo game, we're playing as Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby, goddamn it. (There's also the question of, you know, copyright? Unclear.)

What's worth salvaging: Thing is, I really, really love this one. Scooby-Doo is near and dear to my heart, and getting to kick off sessions by having the Fred-player say "Let's split up and look for clues, gang!" fills me with joy. God, maybe I need to make this game.

---

Okay. I think that's it. If you ever wonder why it's taking me so goddamn long to release Seas of Sand and Time After Time, it's because I keep getting distracted every five seconds with all of these (not to mention my projects that actually have released since starting, like Lowlife and The Big Wet). Ugh. A blessing and a curse, roleplaying games.

Slush Pile 11.21

In the style of Throne of Salt.

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CRUNCHY-ASS ARMOR

Armor has a single stat attached to it, called "Armor Value," or AV, which ranges from 1–6 (usually). 

When a weapon's damage roll equal the armor's AV, the damage is negated. That means if you roll a 4 on damage against an AV 4 target, they take no damage.

Here's a sample AV chart:

• AV 1: padded cloth
• AV 2: quilted coat
• AV 3: leather gambeson
• AV 4: lamellar armor
• AV 5: chainmail
• AV 6: full plate

Critically, you can wear multiple kinds of armor. However, you can only wear 3 armors at once, and those three cannot be fully contiguous. AV 1 / AV 2 / AV 4 is fine, or AV 2 / AV 3 / AV 6, but not AV 4 / AV 5 / AV 6. 

Armor takes slots equal to the highest AV, +1 for each additional armor. (Plate, chainmail, and a quilted coat takes 8 slots.)

Bladed weapons deal 1d4 + 2 (dagger) // 1d4 + 2 and 1d4 + 2 (longsword) // 1d4 + 2 and 1d4 + 2 and 1d4 + 2 (greatsword). 

Blunt weapons deal 2d3 (cosh) // 4d3 (hammer) // 5d3 (big hammer) // 6d3 (maul).

Stabby weapons deal 1d6 (arrow) // 2d6 (spear) // 3d6 (pike).

#

SPEAK NOT THE NAME OF THE BROWN ONE

a brown one

Don't speak the name of the brown one. It will summon him. 

Honey-eater, tree-climber, fish-hunter, man-killer. All are the brown one.

The brown one is a god amongst men: as we do not say the names of the gods, we do not say the name of the brown one.

If you wish to face the gods early, speak the name of the brown one. It will summon him.

#

DELTA HUNGER

Within the heart of every living person lies a primordial desire, buried beneath a hundred generations of civilization and a lifetime's worth of training.

This desire is beneath shelter, beneath safety, beneath sex. It is the desire to eat. To devour. To take a living thing and consume its strength. To feed.

(0) Appetite

Eat someone. Enjoy the taste.

You can eat raw meat without penalties or danger.

(1) Hunt

Kill someone. Eat them. 

You can drink blood like it was water, and eat meat like it was bread. You learn the spots to hold on someone's neck to squeeze the life out of them like juice. You grow broad in the shoulders.

(1) Palette

Go a week eating nothing but human flesh.

You can eat an entire person in one sitting, and it will feed you for a month; you won't need to eat or drink anything else. You grow thick around the middle.

(2) Grind

Bake bread from someone's bones: use the marrow for water, ground bone powder for flour, and the bones themselves as coal for the oven.

You grow strong, strong enough to snap someone's bones with your bare hands. You can sling a thrashing person over each shoulder and carry them both without issues. Your thighs, upper arms, and neck grow heavy and muscular.

(2) Pantry

Keep someone alive for at least a week, eating a new part of them every day.

You can smell when someone's afraid, even if they're hiding it. You can smell fear from up to a quarter-mile away. You grow tall, more than seven feet, rolling with muscle and fat.

(3) Butcher

TBD

Something about preserving people for a while

#

TOWER OF BABYLON ANTI-DEPTHCRAWL

Stolen from Ted Chiang.

Based on the math he gives us, the tower's about 50 miles high. The radius of the tower is between 5.5 and 6 miles: with a full day's walk, a person climbs roughly one vertical mile each day.

The base of the tower is all construction; the lower tower is crops and plants to feed the builders; the middle of the tower is sun-baked; the upper tower is more construction villages and hanging gardens; the top of the tower is near the dome of the sky.

Make a d150 table, roll a d50 on it every day, and add your current height in miles. The very bottom is all builders, the middle is encounters and birds and things, the top is angels and mystics.

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LESSONS FROM THE MICRO-MEGADUNGEON

Things I learned from running the earliest version of Beneath Harlowe House:

1. Make it dense and tight. When you think your hallways are narrow enough, make them even narrower. Compress vertically: lower ceilings, collapse upper levels, make them crawl on their bellies. Make them lose sight of each other around corners.
2. Get them lost. Make them draw their own maps, and have passageways twist and wind. Being underground because you're looking for money is bad: being underground because you literally can't find your way out is terrifying. (Also, the elation of having your map-guesswork suddenly be correct is a joy for players.)
3. Scarier is better, but this doesn't need to be complicated. They'll have to start leaving certain pathways unexplored if they want to reach the bottom: play on those fears. Have strange noises echo throughout. Have monsters leave "offerings" in places they know the players have gone. Leave clear evidence that they're being followed. Don't show the monster until it's ready.
4. Embrace the physicality. What are they wearing? How much space do their packs take up? Can you fit a sword in there? How thick is this wall? When they lost that lantern, where did it roll to? What's the ceiling made of? 
5. Leave it voluntary. If the campaign says "they must go into the spooky hole because the Sword of Flour & Flame is down there," players know they have to. If the players say "let's go into the spooky hole" even though they know they don't have to, it means they might actually fucking die.
6. Slow burn. For the first two sessions of Harlowe, my players didn't even see a monster. When they finally saw one, it was only because Phlox's character stayed outside after dark—and even then, it was just indistinct, elongated scuttling.
7. Multiple trips. It's fine if they want to leave and come back
8. Actual impact. Let them dig new tunnels, if they want to take the time. Remember thine hourly encounter rolls.
9. A sudden trapdoor is fucking terrifying. If one character unexpectedly drops down two levels into the dark, and now they're almost out of HP, and they can hear monsters coming, players lose their fucking shit.

#

CHARACTER CONCEPTION vs. CHARACTER PERCEPTION

5e players hate rolling stats.

When you set out to play an RPG, you often have some kind of character conception: an idea of who you want your character to be, how they'll behave, where they end up. This conception more or less never survives contact with the table.

At the table, you only have a character perception: the gathered info on how your character actually behaves in practice, what character traits they literally show in play.

Dissonance between these—how you imagine your character to behave vs how they actually behave—usually annoys players.

OSR games try to deliberately break you of any conception by rolling for stats, rolling for history, rolling for random trinkets or quirks or whatever. You know ahead of time you can't conceive of a character because the chargen process is so non-player-determined.

5e, culturally, embraces character conceptions, though. And so 5e players hate rolling stats. 

#

ALL ONE STAT

You have one stat: stamina. It starts at 10. 

When you make a check, roll 1d20 under stamina. You have inventory slots equal to stamina. Your speed in feet is equal to stamina times 3. When you take damage, you lose stamina. 

Every full day you spend resting, roll 1d20: if it's higher than your current stamina, now that's your stamina. 

If you reach 0 stamina, you die.

#

RITUAL MAGIC TRADITIONS

magical traditions in the style of my slow ritual magic: each tradition has its own sites, trappings, and performances. Necromancy uses full moons, anatomy textbooks, and ritual removal of organs; pyromancy uses the noonday sun, burnt incense, and ceremonial salt-burning. 

Go one step further: each spell has its own list of sites / trappings / performances, but there are some overlaps between them. "Illusion spells" are only a tradition because most of them happen to share foggy days, steel wool, and spinning of veils as their sites, trappings, and performances.

This is just a fuckload of legwork for a designer to build, though.

#

LANGUAGES AS SPELL LISTS

Different spell lists based on the languages you speak. Draconic gets you fireball and flight and fear. Deep gets you tentacles and telepathy and water-breathing. Terran gets you earthbind and wall of stone and whatever else.

Tie the number of languages you know to your Intelligence. A more powerful age is a more Intelligent mage not because their spell save DC scales off of INT or whatever, but because they literally know more spells and thus can combo them in interesting ways.

#

More to come, eventually.

Δ Discipline Redux

This is based on my old troublesome Discipline delta tree.

GLΔG: DISCIPLINE, REDUX

Anyone can learn the disciplines. All it takes, fittingly, is discipline.

Each discipline has requirements: complete the requirements, and you can perform the discipline. Requirements are in italics.

These disciplines are numbered: you must have all disciplines from the previous rank to learn a discipline of the next. Other than that, no requirements: any class, any level, any person.

--

(0) Meditation

Every day, meditate for ten minutes at one of the following times: sunrise, sunset, high noon, or midnight. If you fail to do this, you cannot use any other disciplines until you do.

You can feel every inch of your body in sharper focus and greater detail. With a moment, you can regulate your breathing from any variations. If you spend a minute focusing on your breathing, you can soothe your mind to an even calm.

(1) Limber

Spend an hour every day practicing calisthenics in complete silence. If you speak or make other noise, begin again.

You know how to do all of the basic athletic and acrobatic moves required of you: climbs, rolls, vaults, leaps, hurdles, handstands, handsprings, somersaults, flips, and so on. You can't do them perfectly every time, but you know the foundations. 

(2) Strikes

Find somewhere stony and barren, where no plants grow. Spend a full day meditating there in silence, from your chosen meditation time all the way to that same chosen meditation time.

Provided you have meditated today, you can strike with your hands, feet, elbows, and knees with the power and might of clubs and stones—and you can do it without breaking your bones. 

While clubs and stones are not as strong as axes and arrows, they are certainly stronger than ordinary fists.

(2) Weave

Wear nothing but threadbare rags: no shoes, no gloves, no proper clothing. Just wraps and shifts and robes, enough to provide for decency's necessities.

If you keep your hands in front of you and regulate your breathing, you can avoid the strikes and blows from a single foe.  If you move your hands (like to hit them), or if your breathing gets out of whack (like to sprint away), or if you can't see them, this doesn't work. But: keep your hands up, keep breathing, and keep your eyes on them, and they can never hit you.

This doesn't work against multiple foes. It also doesn't work against non-physical-attack-ish attacks, like dragon's breath or magic lightning.

(2) Concentration

Meditate with your eyes closed. Adorn yourself in at least a couple tattoos, scars, or brands.

While you meditate, your mind cannot be unduly influenced: charms, possessions, and their similar ilk cannot affect you. 

So long as you meditate at least an hour per day, the long-term damaging effects of loneliness, isolation, and routine cannot effect you. 

(3) Rest

Sleep on uncompromising stone or wood or earth, and carry a pebble in each of your pockets.

You can meditate and sleep anywhere—atop sharp sticks, on jagged rocks, in bitter snow, half-submerged in stagnant water, and the like—like it was a soft feather pillow.

You decide exactly when you want to fall asleep, how long you want to sleep for, whether you can be roused from your sleep, and whether or not you wish to dream.

(3) Fall
Find a mountaintop where you can see nothing higher. Meditate there for a full day, from chosen time to chosen time.

If you fall and shed some external piece of clothing as you land—like a cloak, hat, scarf, sash, and so on—you suffer no harm from the fall, regardless of height.

(3) Leap

Touch solid earth with bare skin, or touch something permanently affixed to solid earth, like a tree.

With a length of something loose and light in your hands—a scarf, a whip, a rope, and so on—you can leap as far and as high as a mountain lion. Critically, though, you only travel as fast as a normal human jump; this might leave you in the air for several seconds. 

(4) Haste

Using only your bare hands, chase after and catch a squirrel, a hawk, and a carp.

With empty hands and bare feet, you can run as fast as a horse canters. For every ten minutes you've spent meditating today, you can run for an hour without growing over-tired. 

(4) Throws

Carry a pack at least half-full of rocks.

If you hit someone with a kick or punch and have two limbs squarely planted on the ground, you can launch them backwards. If they're small, they get launched far; if they're large, it's not quite as much distance.

(4) Tranquility

Touch no metal. Wood, stone, and bone are fine, as is metal wrapped in leather or cloth, but you cannot touch metal with bare skin.

While meditating and unarmed, you appear harmless; foes will be put off-guard, and enemies hunting for you will likely not mark you down as anyone of import. It takes someone of great will and passion to attack a person harmlessly meditating.

(5) Balance
Spend an entire day with only your hands touching the ground, never your feet.

As long as one hand or foot is touching a solid surface, you never lose your balance. You might sway and bob and tilt, but you'll never fall over. This includes handstands, meditative poses, odd martial maneuvers, and that kind of thing. 

That said, if something hits you hard enough to literally lift you off the ground, this probably won't work.

(5) Coordination

Shave all the hair off the top of your head. Adorn yourself in at least a few scars, tattoos, or brands.

While your breath is held, you always know exactly how close to you everything is, and if it's moving, how close it will be. This means, for example, you know precisely where a falling raindrop will land on you, or where an enemy's arrow-point will pierce your body.

With difficulty, you can move to avoid or interact with such moving objects: brush arrows to redirect their course, catch enemy blades mid-swing, or avoid oncoming falling raindrops.

(5) Empath

Do not speak.

If you observe a living thing for fifty of their heartbeats, you can feel their basic emotions: anger, fear, joy, hunger, and so on. If you touch them, skin to skin, this only takes three heartbeats.

This lasts as long as you can hear them and you do not speak. You can feel the emotions of multiple living things at once.

(6) Iron Hand

Forge a weapon with your own two hands. Then, hang it on a wall within easy reach, and never use it.

When you wield a weapon, you can feel every inch of it as if it was the skin on your hand; just as you do not have to think to ball your fist or take a step, you do not have to think to cut or thrust with the weapon. 

As long as you aren't holding up something else with the weapon, it is as if the weapon is an empty hand. This works for Weave, Haste, Balance, and so on. 

If the weapon intentionally leaves your hand, you can still feel it until you lose control: for example, if you toss a club in the air and then catch it, you feel it for the duration; if you toss a club in the air and let it fall, you feel it until you no longer could have caught it. 

(6) Whirlwind

Hold your breath for ten consecutive minutes.

While your breath is held: when others strike, you strike twice; if a foe misses you, you can strike them instantaneously; you can draw and stow your weapons in a flicker of an eye.

(6) Prediction

Blindfold yourself, unable to see.

When you speak someone's true name, you know exactly what they're going to do, moments before they do it: where they'll strike, where they'll move, how they'll next maneuver. If you name someone new, your predictions transfer.

(7) Awareness

Engage in no vices.

Your senses no longer require their organs to function: you can see with your eyes closed, hear with ears muffled, smell with your nose filled, taste with your tongue gagged, and feel with your skin numbed.

(7) Truth

Omit nothing relevant. Spread no rumors. Tell no lies. 

If you can detect a person in any way, you know when they're lying, when they're hiding something, and when they're going to betray you.

If they meditate with you for an hour, you can compel them to tell you the truth.

(7) Paralyze

Spend a full day without moving a muscle. A full chosen-time-cycle where, other than your breath, you may not move. If you move, begin again.

When you strike a foe, you can choose to inflict no harm. If you strike them in this way once for every sense they have (for most creatures, this is five), you can paralyze them, leaving their body rigid and their muscles locked. 

They remain paralyzed for fifty heartbeats (your heart, not theirs). If you begin meditating during that minute, they stay paralyzed for as long as you meditate.

(8) Synchrony

Wear no finery, indulge no pleasures, possess no wealth.

Every hour you spend meditating feeds you like a full meal, and refreshes you like sleeping for two hours. If you spend six hours of a day meditating, you do not age that day.

(8) Improvise

Choose a weapon: it must never leave your side, it must be used in your meditations, and you must never fight with it.

You master a weapon. Once mastered, you can wield any item at all similar in place of it. For example, once you have a mastered the sword, you can wield a stick with the same power and efficacy as a blade of the finest steel.

(8) Quiver

Only one foot may touch the ground at a time.

With your eyes closed and your breath held, you can Weave against as many opponents as you have limbs. 

With Iron Hand, you can increase this number beyond your natural four (if you can juggle weapons, this number can get very high indeed).

(9) Emptiness

You must stand atop a cricket, an ant, a beetle, a fly, and a preying mantis, each in turn, without crushing any of them. If any of them are harmed, begin again.

At your choosing, you can compel your body to weigh as little as an insect, but maintain the strength and size of your regular form. This means you can leap huge distances, run up walls, walk across the surface of water, glide on a strong wind, balance atop thin reeds, and otherwise remain near-weightless. 

Whenever you choose, you can return to your normal weight.

(9) Rend

Kill no living thing: not animals, not plants, not people. 

When you strike a foe, you can choose to inflict no harm. If you strike them in this way once for every year they have been alive, and are not struck once in turn, you mark them.

Within a year and a day of a foe being marked, you can, with a twitch of your finger, cause their spirit to leave their body. 

After rending a foe in this way, you can never perform this discipline again.

(9) Wisdom

Meditate for one hour for a year and a day.

Once per month, while in meditation, you learn the true answer to any one question you might have.

(10) Mastery

Learn every other discipline, and meditate for a decade.

You can fly.

--

The original Discipline had serious issues because it involved mountains and mountains of "do X task for Y amount of time"—people rightfully joked that it would take a spreadsheet to keep track of all. 

This redux solves that by essentially making any previous ability that followed that system into a modal ability: if you perform some specific task or follow a specific rule, you get the perk. Otherwise, you don't. 

This does lead to a slightly odd scenario where actually unlocking abilities is very straightforward—the challenge is then in maintaining them. You'll have to spend some time before an encounter thinking through which of your abilities you want to active and when.

The other big change I made is that now you have to have all three Disciplines from a rank before you go to the next one. I did this because 1) each level has about one non-modal ability (e.g. complete a task, get a permanent benefit) and it helps to slow the otherwise-possibly-rapid bursts through the modal ranks, and 2) because I feel like Discipline is about proving yourself every step of the way; pyromancy or whatever can be more loose and fluid, but here, you gotta put in the work to reap the benefits.

But yeah. There are still some "complete a one-day task" requirements and a couple later ones that involve very long stretches of time, but I hope this version of Discipline is much more usable.

The GLOW: the Goblin Laws of War

You can get it here.

I return from my long absence with a new hack: the Goblin Laws of War, aka the GLOW.

The GLOW diverges pretty far from the original GLOG: there are no stats, no HP, and no levels. Instead, there's an overgrown skill system and a domain-level-ish focus on military and warfare.

You can get it right here:

THE GLOW

If you need a character sheet or an army sheet, here they are as well:

GLOW CHARACTER SHEET

GLOW ARMY SHEET

I should warn you: the GLOW is messy, complicated, ugly, and only semi-complete. But, critically, it is interesting. As far as I know, nobody's made a hack like this before, probably because it's very weird and not very OSR-ish, really. There's a decent chance you'll hate it. 

Let me know what you think. I'll be putting together my thoughts in a separate post soon.

GLOG: Sorcery

This doesn't have triangles. It's also flawed. 

SORCERY

Wizards study magic from dusty old tomes and rune-carved stones. Witches learn their craft from covens and crones. Priests channel miracles from their g_ds. All have to find magic, to practice and train and learn.

Not sorcerers. Not you. Your heart pumps magic like blood, your lungs breathe magic like oxygen, and your nerves crackle with magic like so much electricity. It's a part of you.

--

THE MECHANICS OF SORCERY

You get spells in the same way standard GLOG wizards do: a couple of spells at level 1, +1 for a few levels, and then a legendary around level 4. 

THE BRINK

As a sorcerer, you have a brink. This is your physical limits, your ability to control your own magic. Reach your threshold, and you might lose control.

By default, your brink is 6.

If your brink reaches 0, something terrible and wondrous happens to you: your soul detonates in an etheric inferno, or you morph into gibbering star-spawn, or your neurons fray and you lose all sense of self, or maybe you ascend into a crackling g_d of madness. Who knows? Whatever it is, you're gone.

SPELLCASTING

Sorcerers have 1 MD. You don't get more when you level up.

When you cast a spell, you must spend all of available MD:

• If the results are less than your brink, your dice return to your pool of MD. 
• If the results are equal to or greater than your brink, your dice are spent.

Pretty familiar so far, yeah? Basically just higher-powered, more reliable wizards. 

Here's where things get fun:

EXTRA MAGIC

At any time, you can add +1 MD to your pool; when you do so, decrease your brink by 1.

Spent MD (meaning they rolled equal to or higher than your brink) count as doubles for calculating mishaps and dooms.

BACKING OFF THE BRINK

Each of the following raises your brink by 1, back to a max of 6:

• You go a week without using any magic, sleeping through the night all seven days.
• You level up.
• You get a powerful dose of magical healing (like a remove curse or regenerate or something, not just a basic healing).
• You eat the heart of something of roughly human intelligence and magic (or something very intelligent and not very magical, or something very magical and not very intelligent).
• You mutate (roll on your favorite scary mutation table that has a chance of killing you).
• You carve, brand, or tattoo a magical rune onto your skin, at least a few inches large. This can and will hurt you in the process.
• You decide to release your juices: the GM rolls 1d20 secretly; that many hours from now, you will detonate in a fiery blast, burning off all of your clothes and dealing [6 - brink]d6 damage to everything but you inside 1d20 × 10 ft. (use the same d20 roll for time—the longer you go without release, the bigger the blast).

There might be other ways to back off the brink. Awakening inanimate objects, maybe, or consuming sickening amounts of food and drink, or rapidly aging living things until they turn to dust. Something spooky and costly and strange.

DOUBLES, TRIPLES, AND QUADRUPLES

Use mishaps and dooms as per your standard wizard class. If you get a quadruple, something nasty happens that isn't a doom: you explode into a million pieces and have to reform painfully over a week, you're transformed into a goat, diamonds or insects come tumbling out of your mouth, something bad. 

This sort of enables a "shooting the moon" scenario where it's better to get a quad than a trip, but I think that's okay. Dooms should be reversible anyways.

--

THE AESTHETICS OF SORCERY

You can and should change all of these to better fit whichever wizard class you pick. This is loosely based around the orthodox or "standard" wizard.

Starting skills:

1. Military experiment escapee
2. Faerie Queens' favorite
3. Djinni's wish recipient
4. One who reached enlightenment
5. the Devil's own investiture
6. Seventh child of a seventh child

Signs of your approach:

1. Scents of sulfur & brimstone hang in the air
2. Grass withers beneath your feet, and does not regrow again
3. The wind tugs at your hair and clothes, always
4. Animals and insects follow you around in neat, peaceful lines
5. Gold you touch turns to lead, but lead turns to gold
6. The sun shines its rays to alight your path

Physical manifestations:

1. Your voice reverberates and wavers, as if more than one voice were speaking
2. Your eyes are heterochromatic, almost iridescently so
3. You have six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot
4. Your hair grows an inch every day
5. You have a swishing, animalistic tail
6. The lines on your palms form pentacles

--

SORCERY DESIGN CHAT

It's a gambling class, basically. You can tap into an almost-limitless number of MD, if you need them, but you risk more and more as you burn through more and more MD. 

Critically, you're always the one to control when your brink goes up and down, but you don't decide when your MD will get permanently spent. It means you might suddenly run out of power unexpectedly, but you won't ever be in a situation where you're going to blow up with no way out (or, well, you might, but you'll be the one to get yourself).

This draws a lot of inspiration from Cthulhu Dark's Insight die, which does a similar thing as you investigate and your mind opens to the true horror of reality. This just has magic dice stapled on.

Also, this isn't a complete class. You still need a wizard to go with it. In my head, you play "a Necromantic Sorcerer" or a "Sorcerous Illusionist" or whatever, not just a plain ol' "Sorcerer." I dunno. Maybe that's weird? Maybe "Sorcerer" should be it's own thing? But to me, sorcery is less about literally doing different magic, and more about being a different kind of magician.

 A shorter triangle-GLOG, since the other two are very long.

GLΔG: KNIFE-FIGHTING

Anyone can use a knife: they're the most ubiquitous weapon, and any fighter worth their salt knows how to use one. 

Some people learn knife-fighting in fancy schools, but most people learn them the old-fashioned way: by getting in lots of knife-fights, and probably getting cut up a bunch in the process.

Every knife-fight has requirements: complete the requirements, and you can fight that way. Requirements are in italics.

They're numbered, as normal; you need one from the current rank to unlock one of the next.

(0) Learn the Hard Way

Lose at least one finger to a knife—a foe's knife or your own.

You know how to safely handle a knife with the hand that's missing a finger: how to hold it, cut with it, carve with it, stab with it, threaten with it, guard with it, and all the other snazzy things anyone skilled can do with a knife. You're very good at the knife-finger game, and know a seemingly-endless number of tricks with a butterfly knife.

If you're down a finger on each hand, you can wield two knives simultaneously, ambidextrously.

(1) Sneaky Bastard

Smuggle a dozen knives into somewhere very high-security, like a castle or noble's party.

If you have no knives, you can always produce one knife. Maybe it was hidden down your boot, maybe it was beneath the pillow, maybe it was from your enemy's belt, maybe it's magic. But you've always got a knife.

(1) Dance the Finger-Dance

Win a game of knife-throwing against a circus performer, a street kid, and a military veteran.

When you throw a knife, you can always decide exactly which end of the knife (the stabby end or the blunt end) will connect with the target. You're very good at throwing knives.

You're also very good at catching knives. If you see a knife flying towards you (either because you're juggling or because someone's trying to kill you), you can always catch it. 

If you can't see it coming or if it's attached to something solid—like, say, the arm of a murderer—it's much dicier.

(2) Blink of an Eye

Escape a pair of handcuffs using only a knife and your wits.

If you have a knife in one hand, you can always get it to the other hand, and you can do it more or less instantaneously. This works even if you're, say, bound on a cross, or have one hand in an alligator's mouth. Again, maybe it's clever legerdemain, maybe there was a second knife, maybe it's magic.

(2) Knife to a Sword-Fight

In cold blood, slit the throat of someone who didn't deserve it.

Your knives' blades can reach an extra couple of inches past where it seems they like should be able to. Imagine a three-inch knife, but it cuts like a six-inch knife, somehow.

This lets them stab very deep into stuff, obviously, but also makes them very useful for: snagging objects that are far away, poking at dangerous things from a distance, or winning odd bets.

(3) Twisty-Stabby-No-Release-y

Kill a bear (or something bear-sized) by stabbing it once, and then hanging onto that one stab for the rest of the fight until eventually it bleeds to death.

If you stab your knife into something—flesh, wood, ice, etc.—and then twist it, your knife will never come loose, unless you want it to. 

This doesn't stop the thing your knife is stabbed into from coming loose—like a single brick coming dislodged from the rest of the wall—but your knife itself won't ever come out until you want it to.

(3) Doesn't Seem So Bad

Lose an eye and an ear, get your nose and tongue split in twain, and lose at least six square inches of skin—all from knives.

At your option, when you cut someone with a knife, you can delay the damage. This means that for about 10 seconds (give or take), there won't be any blood, they continue to function normally, and they don't feel any pain.

The cut's still there, obviously, like you can touch the cut-mark and feel the flap of skin and everything, it just takes a bit for the target's brain to realize something's wrong.

(4) Only Friend You Can Trust

Successfully fake your own death.

You can't be killed by knives. You can still get horribly wounded and mangled and cut up, but the knife-blows themselves won't kill you. 

That said, if you get stabbed thirty times and then get hit once with a rock, you'll be a goner for sure.

---

Trying out more martial ideas for GLΔG. Not entirely sure how I feel about this one, but it's got some interesting ideas. Also, none of these are "essentials" or "freebies" in the same way some of the pyromancies and disciplines are.

Largely inspired by the "stereotypical rogue," Carcer from Night Watch, and that one Donnie Yen alleyway knife-fight scene.

---

In general, I think part of the issue with Martials With Deltas is that traditionally, Fighters et al. get "system-crunch" abilities. If you imagine the four-to-five fundamental categories of D&D ability as:

• Physical (fly, grow or shrink, etc.)
• Social (lie, convince people, etc.)
• Intellectual/Informational (learn secrets, get bonus info, etc.)
• ""Magical"" (non-specific world-manipulation stuff, like Wish or w/e)
• System Crunch/Combat (+1 to hit, bonus HP on rest, etc.)

Fighter-type characters almost exclusively fall in the last category. This isn't an exhaustive statement by any means, but I've noticed that in nearly all trad systems and many OSR systems, Fighters are the ones who get the most system-crunchy abilities. They get bonuses to hit, extra HP, better stats, more attacks, more feats, all that classic D&D crunch. This is fine, mostly, since in typical D&D it just transforms them into the "badass normals" of the group, and some players (like me!) are into that kind of angle.

For my nascent little GLΔG project here, though, where I'm trying to avoid any and all systems or systemic terminology, that gets a little dicier. How do you explain "you're really good at killing people with a sword" diegetically? How do you "make the Fighter interesting"?

Well, I don't really know. My instinct is to expand into the other categories, and give the Fighter-types perks from the other categories (my Ranger does this, sorta, in that it's a "martial class" but its abilities are largely informational-focused), but I'm also not 100% convinced that this is the best path forward. Obviously, there are some social and knowledgeable perks a Fighter can get, and plenty of physical ones, but it's hard to describe being good at combat in a way that A) doesn't descend into fiddly minutiae and B) doesn't invalidate a bunch of what it feels like others should be able to do anyway.

I'm going to keep noodling around with this sort of thing. As always, if you want to hack/remix/alter any of this, please go ahead—and tell me! I'm very curious about how to develop diegetic fighters. 

The GLΔG: it's just like GLOG, but this time with more triangles.

THIS ONE IS OLD AND HAS PROBLEMS, USE THIS ONE INSTEAD.

GLΔG: DISCIPLINE

Everyone learns the disciplines differently: some learn from a single master, some learn in a class with teachers, some learn through intuition and experiment, some learn from a strange old monster, some learn by reaching enlightenment.

Anyone can learn the disciplines: it takes no special training, no tools or equipment, and no special gifts or boons.

All it takes to learn the disciplines is time, energy, and patience.

Each discipline has requirements: complete the requirements, and you can perform the discipline. Requirements are in italics.

These disciplines are numbered: you must has at least one discipline from the previous rank to learn a discipline of the next. Other than that, no requirements: any class, any level, any person.

(0) Meditation

For one month, spend ten continuous minutes per day meditating, at the same time each day. If you miss a day or don't complete the full ten minutes, begin again.

You can feel every inch of your body in sharper focus and greater detail. With a moment, you can regulate your breathing. If you spend a minute breathing, you can soothe your mind to an even calm.

You no longer have to meditate at the same time every day, but: if you go a day without spending ten continuous minutes meditating, you lose all of your disciplines until you do the full month, at the same time every day, again.

(1) Limber

For a month, spend an hour a day practicing calisthenics in complete silence. If you miss a day or if you speak, begin again.

You know how to do all of the basic athletic and acrobatic moves required of you: climbs, rolls, vaults, leaps, hurdles, handstands, handsprings, somersaults, flips, and so on. You can't do them perfectly every time, not yet, but you know the foundations. 

(2) Strikes

Find somewhere stony and barren, where no plants grow. Spend a full day meditating there, from sunrise to sunset.

Provided you have meditated today, you can strike with your hands, feet, elbows, and knees with the power and might of clubs and stones—and you can do it without breaking your bones. 

While clubs and stones are not as strong as axes and arrows, they are certainly stronger than ordinary fists.

(2) Weave

Spend a month wearing nothing but rags: no shoes, no hat, no gloves, nothing but decency's necessities. 

If you keep your hands in front of you and regulate your breathing, you can avoid the strikes and blows from a single foe.  If you move your hands (like to hit them), or if your breathing gets out of whack (like to sprint away), or if you can't see them, this doesn't work. But: keep your hands up, keep breathing, and keep your eyes on them, and they can never hit you.

This doesn't work against multiple foes. It also doesn't work against non-physical-attack-ish attacks, like dragon's breath or magic lightning.

(2) Concentration

Spend a cumulative month meditating.

While you meditate, your mind cannot be unduly influenced: charms, possessions, and their similar ilk cannot affect you. 

So long as you meditate at least an hour per day, the long-term damaging effects of loneliness, isolation, and routine cannot effect you. 

(3) Rest

Spend a week sleeping on a stone bed with a stone pillow. Then, carry a pebble in each of your pockets. If you lose the pebbles, you need to find new ones before you can perform this discipline.

You can meditate and sleep anywhere—atop sharp sticks, on jagged rocks, in bitter snow, half-submerged in stagnant water, and the like—like it was a soft feather pillow.

You decide exactly when you want to fall asleep, how long you want to sleep for, whether you can be roused from your sleep, and whether or not you wish to dream.

(3) Fall
Find a mountaintop where you can see nothing higher. Meditate there for a full day, from sunrise to sunset.

If you fall and shed some external piece of clothing as you land—like a cloak, hat, scarf, sash, and so on—you suffer no harm from the fall, regardless of height.

(3) Leap

For a month, never stop touching the ground: some part of your skin must touch solid earth.

With a length of something loose and light in your hands—a scarf, a whip, a rope, and so on—you can leap as far and as high as a mountain lion. Critically, though, you only travel as fast as a normal human jump; this might leave you in the air for several seconds. 

(4) Haste

Using only your bare hands, chase after and catch a squirrel, a hawk, and a carp.

With empty hands and bare feet, you can run as fast as a horse canters. For every ten minutes you've spent meditating today, you can run for an hour without growing over-tired. 

(4) Throws

Carry a pack full of rocks on your back for a week.

If you hit someone with a kick or punch and have two limbs squarely planted on the ground, you can launch them backwards. If they're small, they get launched far; if they're large, it's not quite as much distance.

(4) Tranquility

Go a month without touching metal. Wood, stone, and bone are fine, but touch any metal, and you must begin again.

While meditating and unarmed, you appear harmless; foes will be put off-guard, and enemies hunting for you will likely not mark you down as anyone of import. It takes someone of great will and passion to attack a person harmlessly meditating.

(5) Balance
Spend an entire day with only your hands touching the ground.

As long as one hand or foot is touching a solid surface, you never lose your balance. You might sway and bob and tilt, but you'll never fall over. This includes handstands, meditative poses, odd martial maneuvers, and that kind of thing. 

That said, if something hits you hard enough to literally lift you off the ground, this probably won't work.

(5) Coordination

Shave all the hair off your body, and spend a full day meditating beneath the open sky. 

While your breath is held, you always know exactly how close to you everything is, and if it's moving, how close it will be. This means, for example, you know precisely where a falling raindrop will land on you, or where an enemy's arrow-point will pierce your body.

With difficulty, you can move to avoid or interact with such moving objects: brush arrows to redirect their course, catch enemy blades mid-swing, or avoid oncoming falling raindrops.

(5) Empath

Go a month without speaking.

If you observe a living thing for fifty of their heartbeats, you can feel their basic emotions: anger, fear, joy, hunger, and so on. If you touch them, skin to skin, this only takes three heartbeats.

This lasts as long as you can hear them. You can feel the emotions of multiple living things at once.

(6) Iron Hand

Forge a weapon with your own two hands. Then, hang it on a wall within easy reach, and never use it.

When you wield a weapon, you can feel every inch of it as if it was the skin on your hand; just as you do not have to think to ball your fist or take a step, you do not have to think to cut or thrust with the weapon. 

As long as you aren't holding up something else with the weapon, it is as if the weapon is an empty hand. This works for Weave, Haste, Balance, and so on. 

If the weapon intentionally leaves your hand, you can still feel it until you lose control: for example, if you toss a club in the air and then catch it, you feel it for the duration; if you toss a club in the air and let it fall, you feel it until you no longer could have caught it. 

(6) Whirlwind

Spend a month with your hands bound together with tight gloves, so your wrists are stuck together and you can't move your fingers at all. 

While your breath is held: when others strike, you strike twice; if a foe misses you, you can strike them instantaneously; you can draw and stow your weapons in a flicker of an eye.

(6) Prediction

Spend a week with your eyes blindfolded, unable to see.

When you make eye contact with a foe, you know exactly what they're going to do, moments before they do it: where they'll strike, where they'll move, how they'll next maneuver. If you blink or break eye contact, this stops functioning.

(7) Awareness

Go one month without engaging in any vices.

Your senses no longer require their organs to function: you can see with your eyes closed, hear with ears muffled, smell with your nose filled, taste with your tongue gagged, and feel with your skin numbed.

(7) Truth

Omit nothing relevant. Spread no rumors. Tell no lies. Break any of these, and you lose this discipline.

If you can detect a person in any way, you know when they're lying, when they're hiding something, and when they're going to betray you.

If they meditate with you for an hour, you can compel them to tell you the truth.

(7) Paralyze

Spend a full day meditating while completely unable to move. Bound in an iron coffin, perhaps, or buried in sand.

When you strike a foe, you can choose to inflict no harm. If you strike them in this way once for every sense they have (for most creatures, this is five), you can paralyze them, leaving their body rigid and their muscles locked. 

They remain paralyzed for fifty heartbeats (your heart, not theirs). If you begin meditating during that minute, they stay paralyzed for as long as you meditate.

(8) Synchrony

Meditate for one hour every day for a year. 

Every hour you spend meditating feeds you like a full meal, and refreshes you like sleeping for two hours. If you spend six hours of a day meditating, you do not age that day.

(8) Improvise

Spend a month wielding a weapon: it never leaves your side, you use in your meditations, you fight with nothing else. If it breaks, if it leaves your person, or if you fail to meditate with it, you must begin again.

You master a weapon. Once mastered, you can wield any item at all similar in place of it. For example, once you have a mastered the sword, you can wield a stick with the same power and efficacy as a blade of the finest steel.

You can master multiple weapons, one month at a time.

(8) Quiver

Spend one week without your feet, shins, or knees ever touching the ground, or any other solid surface you can walk on. This includes time spent sleeping.

With your eyes closed and your breath held, you can Weave against as many opponents as you have limbs. 

With Iron Hand, you can increase this number beyond your natural four (if you can juggle weapons, this number can get very high indeed).

(9) Emptiness

You must stand atop a cricket, an ant, a beetle, a fly, and a preying mantis, each in turn, without crushing any of them. If any of them are harmed, you must spend a cumulative month worth's of time meditating before you must begin again.

At your choosing, you can compel your body to weigh as little as an insect, but maintain the strength and size of your regular form. This means you can leap huge distances, run up walls, walk across the surface of water, glide on a strong wind, balance atop thin reeds, and otherwise remain near-weightless. 

Whenever you choose, you can return to your normal weight.

(9) Rend

Go a full year without killing any living thing: not animals, not plants, not people.

When you strike a foe, you can choose to inflict no harm. If you strike them in this way once for every year they have been alive, and are not struck once in turn, you mark them.

Within a year and a day of a foe being marked, you can, with a twitch of your finger, cause their spirit to leave their body. This almost always kills the body.

(9) Wisdom

Wear no finery, indulge no pleasures, possess no wealth. If you return to materiality, you lose this discipline.

For every cumulative month you spend meditating, you learn the true answer to any one question you might have.

(10) Mastery

Learn every other discipline, and spend a cumulative decade meditating.

You can fly.

---

Some references and sources of inspiration:

• Most of Avatar and Korra, but Henry Rollins especially
• Absolver
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, especially this scene

Not entirely sure how I feel about this one, to be honest. 

As always, feel free to hack, remix, and adjust this however you see fit.

GLOG: Pyromancy

 I've been playing Dark Souls again.

Art by Dawn Carlos

PYROMANCY

Nobody's born a pyromancer, from providence or curse; likewise, no one goes to an academy and learns about pyromancy from a collection of books. There are only three kinds of pyromancers:

1. Those who were taught by another pyromancer, as master and apprentice.
2. Those who were taught by a great beast of heat, like an ifrit.
3. Those who taught themselves, through trial and tribulation.

Every pyromancer who has ever lived has fit into those three categories. 

Every pyromancer begins with their spark. Just as a spark is the beginning of a fire, so too is a spark the beginning of a pyromancer. Here are some places where a pyromancer might have found their spark:

1. In a bonfire of ancient books.
2. In the belly of a dying salamander.
3. In a pinecone burst from a forest fire.
4. At the mouth of a living geyser.
5. In a glassblower's white-hot furnace.
6. At a lighthouse's ever-lit brazier.

There are many other sources of sparks; these are just some.

To become a pyromancer, you must find a spark. To learn pyromancies, you must do other things first; each pyromancy has a requirement listed—do it, and you can perform the pyromancy. The requirements are in italics.

These pyromancies are numbered; you must have at least one from the previous rank to learn a pyromancy of the next—e.g., to learn Blast, you must first know one of Torchlight, Gust, or Cool.  Other than that, there are no restrictions or requirements to learn these. Any class, any level, any person.

(0) Spark

Find a spark.

You have a spark: a tiny flame that's always with you. Most pyromancers bring forth their sparks by rubbing their hands together and blowing into them; within their cupped palms, there will be a small wisp of flame, always there when they need it.

Your spark can do anything a normal spark can. Mostly, that means it can light very well-prepared fires (with tinder and kindling and fatwood and everything), or blow out at the slightest resistance.

Not to worry. Your spark will always be with you. 

(1) Candle

Spend a full night in the light of a fire started with your spark. If the fire goes out, begin again.

With a minute or two of coaxing, your spark can grow to the size of a candle's flame. It will stay in your hands so long as you keep your palms cupped and keep the fire going. If you expose it to the air, it will be snuffed within mere seconds—same goes for if you clasp your hands together.

(2) Torch

Same as candlelight, but it now must be for others, a dozen people-nights in total. One person for twelve-odd nights would suffice, as would twelve or so people for one night. 

Your candle-flame can now grow to the size of a torch. If you make a bowl with your hands, your torch-flame will burn within them for as long as you hold it. If you separate your hands, your torchlight will burn for ten seconds or so as it fizzles out, just hanging in the air. 

Remember, your own flames can burn you—imagine holding the flame of a torch for more than a few seconds. Take care of yourself.

(2) Gust

At a minimum of a few feet from the flame, catch a dozen sparks on your tongue from a dozen different fires.

With a gust of air from your lungs, you can blow your flame out from your hands, guiding it for a few seconds—and thus a few feet away—with your breath. When you run out of air, the fire behaves normally; usually, this means it twists and wends for a second or two, then burns out.

Learning to control their breathing is essential for any novice pyromancer. 

(2) Cool

Scorch six of your fingertips, singe a few inches of hair, and burn off an eyebrow. At least.

So long as you hold your breath, your own flames can't hurt you. 

This doesn't work once you take another breath, and it definitely doesn't work on flames that aren't directly under your control. And remember that you can't breathe smoke.

(3) Alter Fire
Brand a rune of flame onto the palms of your hands.

You can gently modify a flame as large as a torch: snuff it, cause it to grow larger and brighter, pick it up and carry it, or bend its shape to your will.

(3) Blast

Burn one tree for every year you've been alive. 

If you ball your fists with a flame within them and throw a punch, you can conjure forth a conical blast of flame, a half-dozen paces long and just as wide. It will catch anything in its path ablaze, but if there's no fuel, it'll burn out within a few heartbeats.

(3) Inner Warmth

Keep a single continuous flame going for an entire season, without it ever going out. It doesn't need to be in your hands—a torch or campfire is fine—and it can be transferred from object to hand and back again, but it must never go out. 

You don't feel the cold, and the cold can't hurt you. You can walk naked in a snowstorm and never freeze to death.

(4) Quicken

Light a dozen fires in a dozen minutes, and then keep them burning for a whole day. If any go out, begin again.

You can summon a handful of sparks instantaneously, and can summon your candle-light in a few seconds. 

If you just need a spark, you don't need to do the hand-rub-blow routine: a snap of the fingers will suffice. 

(4) Tongue

Burn off all of your taste buds, and then go without speaking until they grow back.

If you hold a torch-fire (from your hands or a real torch) in front of your face and blow, you can conjure a continuous stream of fire. The stream can reach out a few feet, and lasts as long as you keep blowing.

This does not extinguish your torch. 

(4) Divination

Melt down an metal object of significant value that is at least twice your age.

If you etch a question onto a metal plate and cast it into flame, you can see the answer in the way the metal cracks.

Iron plates earn an answer for the next hour; brass plates for the next day; silver plates for the next week; gold plates for the next month.

(5) Fireball

Burn down a building with people inside.

If you lob a torch-sized flame from your hands, you can cause it to expand to a huge sphere, a dozen paces or more in diameter, that can hurtle forward as far as you can shout.

Where it lands, it makes a huge explosion of flame. 

(5) Linear Flame
Walk across a bed of hot coals barefoot. If you ever put on shoes, you lose the ability to perform this pyromancy until you coal-walk again.
If you punch the ground with a torch-fire in hand, you can conjure a line of fire across the ground, as wide across as your feet are apart.

The flame-line moves forward one foot for every second you hold your breath and keep your fist on the ground. If you take a breath or remove your fist, the line ceases. The fire will burn as long as it has fuel.

(5) Heat Vision

Brand a rune onto your brow, between your eyes, and wrap both your eyes and the rune in cloth. If you remove the cloth, you must brand the rune once more.

You can see heat: hot things appear light, cold things appear dark. This works on invisible things, and heat can also sometimes travel through walls, floors, etc.

This works even if your eyes are closed or covered.

(6) Sculpt Fire

Brand runes of flames onto the backs of your hands, your knuckles, your wrists, your ankles, and the small of your back.

You can sculpt a fire as large as a bonfire: snuff it out instantly, pick it up and carry it, cause it to grow or shrink, or twist its shape to your will.

(6) Cleansing Flame

Sacrifice a part of someone's body—an eye, an ear, a couple of fingers, a foot—to the flames. 

You can heal someone an affliction: illness, disease, infection, blindness, leprosy, and so on. Each person must each make the sacrifice for each affliction.

You can do this for yourself, too.

(6) Flash Sweat

Burn off half your skin, and survive.

So long as you hold your breath, no heat can harm you.

(7) Awaken

Light as many fires as years you've been alive, and keep them burning for a week. If any go out, begin again.

You can summon sparks with a thought, candle-flame in an instant, and torch-flame in a few seconds. 

(7) Tranquil Lungs

Once a day for a month, swallow a red-hot coal. 

You only need take a breath once every ten minutes to refill your lungs. You can exhale for thrice as long as a normal person.

(7) Fire Whip

Lash yourself every day for a month, and ensure the wounds stay open. Then, cauterize them and seal the flesh with your own flame.

You can cause a torch-fire to twist and elongate into a whip of hard-edged flame, thrice as long as you are tall. This whip burns whatever it touches, but is solid: it can snare legs, wrap around posts, and leave bloody marks in flesh.

The whip lasts as long as it stays in your hand. 

(8) Dragon's Breath
Eat the raw heart of a beast of pure flame: an elemental, an ifrit, a dragon, a true salamander, something similar.

If you hold your breath for five minutes, you can then exhale a cone of flame, large as a dragon's, lasting as long as you exhale. You can open and shut your mouth as you will to control the cone, so long as you don't take a new breath.

(8) Black Flame

Sear one of your eyes until it's blind, one of your ears until it can't hear, and one of your hands until it can't feel. 

When you create a flame, so long as you keep your eyes closed, you can cause the flame to give off no heat, no light, no sound, or any combination of those. This last until you open your eyes, or until the fire is no longer under your control.

(8) Burning Halo
Encircle your brow with an molten iron crown. If you remove it, you lose this pyromancy.

With a flame in your hands, your breath held, and heat rising beneath you, you can float in the air like so much smoke. You drift down slowly without heat beneath you; if you float to another hot spot, you can rise again. 

(9) Firestorm
Burn a town full of people or a forest full of life.

If you snuff a bonfire in an instant, you can cause columns of flame, ten paces wide and as tall as redwoods, to materialize from thin air. The columns incinerate anything inside them; where they rest, the ground will liquify and turn to molten slag.

While you keep your eyes closed and your breath held, a new column will appear every second. The columns burn for the duration, but vanish as soon as you open your eyes or take a breath. Column placement spreads out from you in a loose circle, with a maximum radius of about as far as you can shout.

(9) Control Flame

Brand runes all over your body. 

You can fully control a single continuous body of flame of any size. You can snuff a burning house with a look, carry a flame as large as an elephant, and twist fire to any shape or scale you can imagine.

(9) Shared Spark

Learn every other pyromancy. Then, go a year and a day without performing any pyromancy at all.

You can share your spark with other things. If you give it to a person, it will make them a pyromancer, just like you.

If you give it to an inanimate object, like a stone, or a sword, or a corpse, it imbues the object with new life: so long as the spark remains burning, the object has the beginnings of a soul and a mind. What it will do with that mind and soul is impossible to say.

Art by Pliss M.

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Strong inspiration drawn and lots of content stolen from this very good pyromancer, the Dark Souls pyromancy list, and our edgy boy.

This is a "magic class" that isn't really a class—it's the kind of thing that I would use in a classless magic system, or in combination with another class. A thief who steals a spark and learns pyromancy without realizing it, or a fighter who slays a fire-demon and gets a bit of its power on accident? Awesome ideas.

It also doesn't use levels, magic dice, spell slots, or any real kind of resources. The terminology is kept deliberately vague—I honestly should just concede a little and find-and-replace all instances of "pace" with "feet"—but you get the idea. Pyromancy scales off of your body, your age, your lungs, your shouting and seeing distance, and other random variables. (For reference, a regular person can hold their breath for about 1–2 minutes, and can continuously exhale for about half as long.)

I did this for two reasons: for one, I like diegetic scaling. If I can remove abstraction, like spell slots or magic dice, it feels good to me; it feels more magical, more wild and mysterious. Second, I love the idea of binding fire to your breath, and your eyes, and your skin. Fire is physical, it's raw, it needs fuel and air, and its magic should reflect that.

As always, this almost completely untested. If you get a chance to try it, please let me know.

I also might do another one of these pseudo-magic class things with delta template requirements. Might be a wind/air mage, might be a cannibal blood-drinker, might be something else entirely. To be determined!

Dunerider REVISED

 A while ago I posted my Dunerider class. It wasn't very good, I didn't think, so now it's new and improved! Huzzah!

GLOG Class: the Dunerider

A: Sandsurfer, Dunespeech, Stunts

B: Catch This!, Stunt Combo

C: Macking

D: The Big One

Most of these templates only apply while on your duneboard. Use your good judgement.

You gain +5 ft. of movement per Dunerider template while on your duneboard (assuming normal movement is about 30 ft.)

Starting skills [1d3]: 1 = beach bum; 2 = caravan scout; 3 = psammologist (like an oceanographer, but for sandy seas)

Starting equipment: a duneboard with a custom paint job, a 15’ ankle leash, a couple of rad tattoos, and a see-through headscarf to keep the sand out

(A) Sandsurfer

You are trained in sandsurfing, the sport of standing on a piece of treated wood and riding across the dunes. You travel at normal speed while on your duneboard (compared to sandshoes, which go at half-speed), and can travel equally well on both daytime and nighttime sands. Your board is of such craft and quality that it can sit on the surface for any length of time, without sinking, although it will drift.

You’re trained in all of the basic tricks and moves sandsurfers do: you can corner on a coin, pull short leaps, ride up and down dunes both, and generally maneuver better than any ship. If you have to make a check on some kind of basic stunt (which usually you won’t have to, but occasionally you will), you have advantage.

Generally speaking, you cannot ride your duneboard in anything heavier than light armor.

(A) Dunespeech

You know the strange dialect of sandsurfers, called Dunespeech. It consists of a variety of strange jargon and terminology, plus the ubiquitous Shaka Sign. All duneriders know the Dunespeech; communications between you can be incomprehensible to others, to the degree it’s effectively a form of code.

In addition to duneriders, certain other creatures—certain long-haul caravaneers, sand-dolphins, hellbenders, particular sentient dunes, and a handful of others—might know bits and pieces of the Dunespeech. When you attempt to communicate with one of these creatures, you have a [templates]-in-6 chance of being able to make yourself understood and understand what they say in return, though precise clarity might vary.

(A) Stunts

You know some of the legendary sandsurfer stunts. Every template, roll 1d12 and gain that particular Stunt. If you roll a repeat, take your choice of the one above or below it.

(B) Catch This!

When you end your turn, for every 10’ you are from where you started this turn, you gain +1 Defense, up to a maximum of +8. This extra defense lasts until the beginning of your next turn.

The key thing here is displacement vs. distance travelled: it’s 10’ from you started, so just surfing in a circle won’t get you anything.

(B) Stunt Combo

You can now do two stunts at the same time, but risk failure. To make two stunts as one, make a [templates]-in-6 check; if you fail, you wipe out: suffer 1d6 damage and faceplant off your board into the sand. If you want to tack on a third stunt or higher, you can do so, but have to make the check again. 

Additionally, you can make a [templates]-in-6 check to negate a cooldown, reset, or setup time on a single individual stunt, like the 1-minute setup for Shoot the Tube or the minutes-above-the-surface reset clock on Turtle Glide. You can combo this with two stunts at once, but this takes two checks (you can, of course, reset the second stunt, too, with another check, and the third, and so on.)

At your option, you can choose to automatically succeed on a check; after completing the stunt combo, your board splits in half.

(C) Macking

When you successfully perform a stunt (or continuous sequence of stunts) in front of an audience, they are be enthralled and unable to look away from your performance, and may even begin spontaneously throwing Shaka Signs of appreciation. This lasts until either your set of stunts is complete, or you mess one up and wipe out.

(D) The Big One

Once per adventure/arc/chapter, you can declare some kind of giant dangerous phenomenon (like one of G_d’s Sanding Blocks or a firestorm) to be The Big One. Until that phenomenon leaves or ceases, you can surf across the surface or outside of it as if it were a regular dune.

Stunts

For every Dunerider template you take, roll 1d12 and gain one of these; if you roll a repeat, take your choice of the option above or below it. As with most Dunerider abilities, these generally only apply if you’re on your duneboard.

1. Duck Dive. If you grip the edge of your board and hunker down, you can ignore falls that are [templates] × 10’ high. If it’s higher than that, you can make a [templates]-in-6 chance to ignore all fall damage onto sand.
2. Big Air. When you crest the top of a dune, you can immediately make a leap, [templates] × 10’ long and [templates] × 5’ high, without counting towards your move total.
3. Shoot the Tube. If you surf continuously for 1 minute without turning more than 90° or stopping, you can create a cylindrical wave of roiling sand—a tube—around you, opening 10’ in front of you and closing 30’ behind you. This tube of sand obscures sightlines except from the very front and is extremely difficult to fire regular projectiles through. The tube lasts until you stop, turn more than 15° in one round, or wipe out.  
4. Turtle Glide. For [templates] × 2 rounds at a time, you can twist around 180° and ride along the underside of the surface of the sand. This can, for example, allow you to ride underneath a ship. You must then spend an equal number of minutes then surfing normally before doing this again.
5. Twist & Grind. If you stop short of your full movement on your turn and twist hard, you can kick up a wave of sand in a 45° arc that is [templates] × 5’ long. Anyone caught in this wave must save vs. big sandy wave or be blinded for a minute, or until they laboriously scrape the sound of their eyes.
6. Scissor Shear. If you detach your ankle leash and then ride in a straight line for your full turn, you can launch your duneboard (without you) forward at a target in that line, up to 100’ away. Any target in that line must make a save vs. oncoming duneboard or immediately suffer [templates]d8 damage.
7. Bodysurfer. For [templates] minutes, you can lie on your belly and surf across the dunes without your duneboard, behaving exactly as if you did have your duneboard. You must spend an equal amount of time on your duneboard before doing this again.
8. Jackknife. If you flip your board sideways and stand on the edge, you can duneboard across solid or liquid surfaces that are not sand as if they were sand, up to [templates] × 10’ at a time. 
9. Helping a Hodad. For [templates] minutes, you can put another person on your duneboard with none of the normal disadvantages. You can pull stunts and surf like normal; they won’t fall off or mess anything up, unless you wipe out.
10. Going Aggro. For [templates] × 2 rounds, you render your board completely impervious to harm of any kind. (If you combo this stunt and choose to auto-succeed, your board still breaks at the end.)
11. Hang Loose. For [templates] minutes, your board can surf around without you on it, still being controlled by you as if you were on it. 
12. Soul Surfer. [templates] times per day, you can grip your feet on the edge of your board and sandsense out to [templates] × 10’ for [templates] minutes. During this time, your Dunespeech works with any native psammitic creature.