THE LOST SERPENT KING: Goals, Feasts, and Classes

Related to this idea seed

Ruleset: B/X is easy, Bluehome for fun?

Goal
* Serpent King left many things untold and now suitors and debtors come to collect. PCs must seek out things in the Forest of Ynn before an allocated time (quest).
* Random table full of goals
* Each set of levels denotes seasons
* Suitors & Debtors: The Dead, The Suitors, The Seliee, The Unseliee, Star Emisary, The Elements (four winds, the sea), Demons & Devils.

Feast
* At the end of the quest, the PCs may tell of their deeds to gain more XP on top of the non-magical bounty they bring back to the castle
* Any unused magical items must be turned in to a particular faction to gain XP
* Carousing, Feasting, Duel, or Poetry

DM NOTE: I think the above is pretty strong. I don't know if the class stuff below matches it. Maybe the Half-children should just be the alternative classes in the Old-School Essentials.

Character Gen: 3d6 down-the-line

Character Class:
* Half-sibling (Fighter)
Chose:
- Animal head/human body- senses of that animal
- Animal body/human head- stats of that animal;
- Animal organs, but mostly human- the ability of that animal
- Monster abilities are 1/day

* Bearer of an intelligent weapon (Cleric/service of higher power)

* Errant Betrothed (Thief)
- Every level you are promised more fortune you can promise to others
- You are constantly pursued by your past

* Witch/Warlock (Magic-user)
- You can use poison
- You can make potions
- Use Druid spell list

* Shade (if dead)

SAVE THROWS: AN ALTERNATIVE METHOD & AS WORLD BUILDING DEVICES

I am not really a fan of a single saving throw a la Swords & Wizardry. The triad of Reflex, Will, Fortitude, does make a lot of dry mechanical sense. But the classic five still have a lot of flavor and charm:

Somewhere it was suggested that your game's saving throws should be named for general things that might happen to players over the course of your game. Someone else once made a post linking each of the saving throws to a demon prince in the Fiend Folio. So a character making a saving throw was like thwarting an evil force-- pretty cool.

I think the most difficult part to the saving throw is just how they feel like an arbitrarily high d20 number and there is not a lot of immediately comprehendible difference between classes. So what if instead of numbers we used increasing die size (a trick Perdition uses for skills) and attempting to roll a 6+?

With any B/X retroclone,  a first level Fighter might start out with all d6s. A dwarf might start all d6s, but a d8 for Poison. A halfling might have a d8 for Breath. Elf and wizards might have d8 for Magic. A cleric might start with two d8s based on their god.

What about the Lost Serpent King & The Broken Forest of Ynn? My sorta Sidney Sime-inspired fairy tale romp?

Taking the rule that saving throws should reflect the adventure, maybe the saves (save on a 6+) would be: Confusion, Illusion, Eternal Slumber, Imprisonment, Transmogrification, Fortune. The idea is that death by damage is avoided, but protagonists are often put to sleep, imprisoned, cursed, transformed, lost and sometimes eaten (a type of transmogrification; swallowed is Imprisonment).

Humans and Halflings have higher Fortune being lucky (d8). Dwarfs, with hearts of stone, might suffer to Eternal Slumber and Imprisonment (d6) but strong against Transmogrification/Confusion (d10). Elves being of magical origin might do well against Impresionment/Eternal Slumber (d8) but easy to anger and distract (so weak against Confusion and Illusion; d6).

UPDATE: To circle back to the first point about save throws reflecting the world. Would it change the feel of a game if the saves where the seven deadly sins- Pride, Greed, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Wrath, and Sloth? Better to use the 7 virtues? Are various hexcrawls and modules improved by changing the saving throws? Would Carcosa be better with differently named saves? What would Hot Springs Island be? Fire, Water, Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik?

THE LOST SERPENT KING & THE BROKEN FOREST OF YNN

Re: Ynn, Magic Girl, Henry Justice Ford Monster Manual- I keep going back to a campaign where there is the Forest of Ynn, A lost Serpent King, and the PCs are all half-siblings.

Each PC will only have one parent in common. So player 1 is the child of the Serpent King and the Human Queen. But player 2 will share either one of the parents in common, but have another different one: if human then a monster/animal/mythic creature; if monster, then a human parent.

The non-human half will give the player a non-numerical ability. Then they set off on a hexcrawl across Ynn in search of the Serpent King and the reason for Ynn's malfunction. Try to attempt to use all the monsters from the JFMM ("jay-fam"?) and give it a very fairy tale feel of the Bros. Grimm variety.

Maybe some of the antagonists should be basilisks or behirs who were lizards grown monstrous from wearing the Serpent King's shed skin like a false crown.

Very relevant to this effort: https://blog.thesconesalone.com/2019/03/the-gardens-of-ynn-referee-control.html