Fantasy Heartbreak Workshop

Nate Treme's In the Light of a Ghost Star  tabletop RPG is about humans of the far future, whose ancestors fled to Mars during the Sun's red giant phase.  Now that the Sun has entered its white dwarf phase, they return to Earth to scavenge ancient items of interest among the weird things inhabiting the now dark planet. Since I've been thinking of running this game at some point, I was reading over it the other day and realized two things which seemed to be lacking, so created a supplement of optional rules to cover them: Social Stat The game grants three character abilities which are couched as professions but treated as attributes or similar stats: Fighter - For combat and most other physical feats. Explorer - Mainly for sneaking and perception. Scientist - Most other forms of analysis, knowledge and technical expertise. These seem a fairly elegant combination for each character to have, but the definition was extremely brief in the original documents, and didn't co...

Reading the Blood Sorcerers of Paja , in a roundabout way this mention of using human flesh for magic, got my mind meandering back to an old line of text: "Connall took out the brains of the dead king and mixed them with lime to make a sling-stone - such "brain balls," as they were called being accounted the most deadly of missiles.  This ball was laid up in the king's treasure-house..."  - Celtic Myths and Legends , T. W. Rolleston I've been cludging away at some ritual rules for awhile:  something like spells, but taking more time, consuming more components, etc. but with the advantage of being usable by anyone, and not consuming daily spell reserves.  Anyhoo... Rituals consume components, and specific components can be tricky to obtain.  Stealing the shadow, cast by moonlight, from the third-left-leg of a man-sized spider, can be an annoyingly specific proposition.  Do such things even exist?  And who knows how tough it is to find so...

These are the basic components of the Crude Roleplaying Engine skill use and advancement system: Competent Characters, Competent Players Player creativity and thoughtful investigation trump skill.  If a player suggests a course of action that is well within the character's ability then just let them do it, even if you think their Intelligence score isn't up to thinking it up.  If the player figures out something based on evidence that their character could possibly have seen then let them use that insight, even if the character's Wisdom score is abysmal.  If the player comes up with a well thought out way of socially engineering a social encounter, then let them succeed if it possibly could despite low Charisma. In short:  Given any typical situation, if the character has even a marginal chance of success then just let them get away with it. Think of it this way:  Don't make your players' attempts fail just because you think there should be a chan...

And another thing:  Non-combat skills.  What's up with those? Throughout the editions of D&D skills have been handled in a lot of different ways, but something about them has always left me a little cold.  The way skills are handled varies by edition and, within some editions, by class.  Here's a breakdown of the main ways skills have been handled in the first through third editions: Thieves (etc.) - In most editions prior to 3rd, thieves and those who used thief-like skills got a straight percentile chance of success.  This chance of success increased automatically as a function of character level.  Personally I'm not the hugest fan of percentile type skills, but it makes sense that an adventurer using relevant skills would gradually improve over time, much like attack bonuses increase. Also, any system where the character's advancement can "max out" doesn't quite sit perfectly with me.  Not that I expect characters to routinely be advancin...