July 2019 - clerical error

I've changed my mind about clerics: they shouldn't have the ability to turn undead.

This decision has upended everything I've been working on!

I have more options with undead creatures now, but also don't know how to revise clerics to compensate for the loss of class ability.

There's a concept in Dungeon World that a PC cleric is THE cleric for the world, so you wouldn't be seeing them in large groups unless they were "very important" NPCs or, more likely, villains and opponents. I'm thinking about taking this concept into OSRenstein and saying there are very few clerics overall, but they end up being leaders or chamopions of their faith.

Where does that leave PCs?

I don't know yet, but I'm working on it.

June 2019 - writing is editing

My job has been exhausting and I have ended up having less time for my hobbies. I only play video games about once a week, and I don't even check my email until the end of the week. I've also run into the problem of constantly trying to reschedule my own tabletop gaming due to everyone's conflicting work schedules. I don't really know how to simplify some of these complications, and I'm inclined not to think too hard about them. My job pays well, and when I'm asked to do extra work I jump at the chance, for now.

I have been writing scant new material, but I have been rewriting a few things I posted on this blog over the years. I guess the correct word is editing. I should have called this blog Rough Draft, because I usually just spout off a bunch of ideas or nonsense that I come up with and I only check to make sure it's coherent before I hit the publish button. Lately I've been going through old posts about Kosranon and editing them.

For example, I looked at this:
The Masadhi are an oddly private race of grotesquely misshapen mystics who feel compelled to constantly travel from one place to another. They are revered for their insights by most of the other cultures they come into contact with.

and it became this:
The Masadhi are a race of grotesque nomadic mystics, revered by most others for their prophetic insights.

There were unnecessary words, and I end up keeping the description while leaving more open to personal interpretation.

The edit of that first sentence looks like this:
The Masadhi are an oddly private race of grotesquely misshapen mystics who feel compelled to constantly travel from one place to another (replace with nomadic). They are revered for their (+prophetic) insights by most of the other cultures they come into contact with.

Stephen King says that he cuts about 10% of everything he writes, and I'm definitely no Stephen King because I'm cutting about half of my words.

Aos talks about self-publishing here and I have to admit that right now, I have no art budget. I've been handwaving it in my head that I will start commissioning art when I have a finished draft that I'm comfortable publishing but I'm also not saving money for it. I have bills to pay and debts to eliminate before I can consider putting any of my money aside. I set up a patreon page before they hiked their pricing, but I don't know if I even want to use patreon. For now I'm just focusing on writing and drawing maps when I have the time and energy to do so.

May 2019

I got a job! With money coming in I can finally stop being anxious about paying bills, but now I get to be anxious about not having enough time to play games and write. Writing has continued, but sporadically. Between my new job and the social freedom supplied by the changing seasons I haven't spent much time sitting down and typing. (also, I started playing Dark Souls 3 and that is a HUGE distraction!) I finished everything I planned to write for last month and I suppose I should keep making a checklist for myself. The things I want to accomplish over the next month:

Re: Kosranon
I drew up a crude map of my campaign world, and I want to make a hex map version. I've written a few scenarios for different areas and I want to re-write those to fit with how the setting has changed.

make a hex map

write encounter tables

build factions for both city and countryside

Re: OSRenstein
The playtests have been very helpful, and what I was hoping would be a good balancing factor for skill tests has turned out to be a near-impossible penalty. Mathematically, the PCs would only end up succeeding on skill tests against NPCs 15% of the time, and this isn't an outcome I wanted. As for magic, we have one wizard and I'm thinking of changing wizards dramatically, again. The point system works well enough, but after reading about GLOG wizards last month I can't stop thinking about the dice roll mechanic and I want to implement something similar. Definitely something I want to experiment with!

write up monsters

write a GLOG class

Re: Dark Souls
I cannot describe to you how terrifying and exhilarating it is to explore new areas of Dark Souls 3. Every time I turn a corner I think I'm going to be ambushed or worse. If you want the OSR experience in a video game, this is the series that has it!

April 2019

Work continues on OSRenstein, which I might end up calling something else. I hate naming things! It's coming along though. I'm at 50 pages, and decided to codify some divine magic things this week. Playtesting begins this Saturday!

I should have written this update yesterday, but I've been tired and forgetful. Moreso than usual. I'm training for a commercial driver's license and I failed the road test last Thursday, which means I need to practice a little more and re-test. I find out the new date and time tomorrow. I'm anxious and distracted because I need this license, and I need to go back to working and having income for food, and rent, and paying bills. I've been unemployed for five weeks now, mainly to go to truck driving school, and I can't afford to be unemployed for much longer. If I fail the re-test I'll have to get a job somewhere while I plan to retake the test a third time. Like I said, I'm anxious.

All of this has been distracting. I haven't written as much as I would have liked. Right now my 'to do' list for OSRenstein looks like this:

expand Divine magic, need deities explained and universal spells (partially completed)

clarify contested skill checks

explain Backstab ability

define Game Time

add falling damage

get some monsters written up in here!

revise arcane spells? = spell power affects potency of spell, not duration

undead are mindless and hostile, afraid of the sun/bright light/fire

make mutation chart for spell misfires and consuming spell crystals

Hopefully I can get most of that done before Saturday. Meanwhile, more excerpts are incoming... or outgoing... expect at least one thing every week.

March 2019

I thought I was going to start writing in this blog more but it turns out I've been writing some other things instead. What are they? Well...

OSRenstein is my homebrewed set of rules for fantasy role-playing. As of right now I have 39 pages written. This is what I'm pouring most of my energy into. I want my players to have the rules I'm using and have them all in a single reference document as well. The influences on these rules are varied, but most of them originate within the OSR and it's a frankensteined set of rules and house rules so...
OSR + frankenstein = OSRenstein

Kosranon is my setting book. That's not the title but it's what I've labeled it as on my hard drive. I may be putting all of my energy into OSRenstein right now but I want to publish this book. It's going through a lot of revisions as I build it, right now I only have 8 pages written and a large hex map which I think I should scale down. However, there's lots of notes on my blog here, but I consider those 'rough draft' ideas and a lot of it has been revised or will be altered in the final book.

Hexvouna is my megadungeon. This thing will likely never be finished! I have no idea how much I have written as I have multiple notebooks, several emails I sent to myself (and emails between Arnold K and myself), and a few posts here and there about the thing. It's been in my brain ever since I was GMing the Dwimmermount megadungeon at the time and kept thinking it didn't make sense that Dwimmermount didn't have a central staircase that connected most of the levels. Then I saw this post by Dyson's Logos. My next step for Hexvouna is likely to track everything that I've written down and start organizing it into a cohesive collection of information, then editing and fleshing it out.

I would like to commission a few artists, and I definitely need someone who's good at layout and design to help me out once I bring Kosranon to completion, but at the moment I'm just writing. I don't want to start spending money on art and publishing resources until I have a nearly complete book.

state of the nerdwerds

I stopped blogging about my individual games, mostly because the history is getting too convoluted for both. Characters are running around the map, doing their own things, sometimes a player doesn't show up and we just ignore that part of the game world's drama, and I just found relaying a lot of that information tiresome. Especially for two games!

I run two games, and we've been playing every week. Every Saturday and Sunday I've just been busy MCing these two Apocalypse World games.

Last week one of the players finally used the lost move. This is Apocalypse World and lost does something funky: when you whisper someone’s name to the world’s psychic maelstrom, on a hit they come to you, with or without any clear explanation why. The player had been thinking that when he used the move, it would call the person to you in real time, and they would have to travel that distance to get to you. He used lost on another PC and I had the other PC just show up, next to his Skinner's side. He hit a 10+, so I just treated the result similar to bonefeel. The psychic maelstrom cracked a little and brought the other PC through.

That was fun!

I'm going to need a break from MCing soon. I've been buying components to build my own PC and once they've all arrived I want to spend a weekend just putting it together and setting it all up. I haven't had a really decent PC in almost a decade, and this one will be, well, if you know anything about computers you can see my part list on pcpartpicker - the only thing I have left to buy is the monitor.

New computer means new games. Most importantly, it will be fast enough to run the programs I want to use to make my own games. I have ideas for making little test games using gamemaker and unity. I used to make mods for Neverwinter Nights, way back in 2002 and 2003, and I want to get back into making things. I have ideas.

Consider this a state of the union for my blog. I've neglected this blog quite a bit because I'm not always gaming, and even when I am gaming it feels exhausting to just write up game sessions. I haven't been writing for the last month, and I don't want to lose that mental muscle. I want to get back into the habit of writing, even if it's just once a week. Going forward when I write something I'm going to talk about it here, when I work on my video games I'm going to write about it here, and when I play a game - even just a video game - I'm going to share that here.

Meanwhile, I have been working on this one project...

...I'll share more about it once its finished.

apocalypse worlds

I've been running two Apocalypse World games for several months now, one is on Saturdays and the other is Sundays, different players, different worlds, different plots. I've really struggled with the Sunday game, half of the threats have been eliminated and I'm at a loss for what to do. I started to make some of the minor NPCs more relevant in the last session, but the players tend to forget the NPC names a lot too, makes it more difficult to really suck the players into that world. Though now that I think about the Saturday group took some time to create interesting developments as well, most of the NPCs were easy to ignore at first, and the biggest threat was one of the players. But we've also had some player migrations with the Saturday group, cycling through the cast of characters a little, making it hard to form lasting relationships.

I really enjoy playing both games for different reasons, but feel like I might have to drop one soon. The creative energy needed to run two games has been cutting into my standup comedy, and I already felt I needed more momentum to write material. I've started doing a weekly interview podcast and I try to stay two episodes ahead of schedule, and I'm part of a monthly show now as well, though I often feel like I'm just a little too slow compared to the other writers. I probably just need to get more sleep.

Joesky tax? Here's something I just wrote this weekend
the Fetch ⚥ - idea from Zak Sabbath's blog
Grotesque: Perversion (craves overthrow)
pick an NPC and ask a player "where do you think they hang out?" their fetch is in that location
all rolls in the presence of the Fetch (including help/interfere) are made with roll+weird instead
Countdown:
3 o'clock - the Fetch offends someone important
6 o'clock - the Fetch invites violence
9 o'clock - the Fetch actively starts shit
10 o'clock - the NPC is killed and the Fetch replaces them, new threat!

My Ten Favorite RPG Products of All Time

In no particular order, because I can't say one book is better than another, and I'm not going to rate them on a one to ten scale, they're all good in my opinion.

Monster Manual
This wasn't my first RPG book but it was definitely the first one I read cover to cover and the first one I wore out the cover from rereading, use, and abuse. The one pictures here is the third copy I've owned. As long as I had my Monster Manual I felt I could GM anything. That kind of "give me some stats and I'll do the rest" attitude still informs my style, though when I was younger I really did not know how to string a plotline together very well.

*sigh*
To be eight years old again. "The wizard is turning everyone into trolls... because he's evil!"

I6 Ravenloft
When I was maybe 9 years old I knew this older kid who played D&D. He was like really old though, like 16 or 17 maybe. But anyway, he wouldn't play with me unless he was the GM and I was a PC. He ran Ravenloft as a solo adventure for me and that lasted for a couple of weeks before he got bored and stopped playing with me. But during that short game I haggled with gypsies, escaped wolves in the dark of the forest, explored the town of Barovia, and fought Count Strahd in his own castle. I thought it was the coolest thing, and playing with that older kid was the best D&D got for me until I discovered my friendly local game store. (It's a shame I can't remember his name though.)

This was also the first adventure module I ever purchased.

Birthright
This is my favorite published campaign world and the Ruins of Empire book from the box set is probably the highlight of this set. There are lots of details provided for every single section of land in the world, and yet much of the world itself is left open for GMs and players to define what's going on within each country and around every established character. The rules for Bloodlines and Regency are fairly unbalanced and I've often converted the world to other RPG systems, but there's lots of good ideas and history loaded into a small space. The rules for ley lines, channeling magical power, and controlling sources of power are particularly cool.

Planescape
Tony Diterlizzi's artwork does a lot to give Planescape it's edge. When the Deet stopped drawing Planescape books that's when their sales started to fall, I don't think that's a coincidence. It's also probably not a coincidence that the only Planescape books available from WOTC are ones that don't have Tony's artwork.

The rules were just 2nd edition AD&D add-ons, but the setting material is inspired and fun. My first forays into GMing took place within Sigil, the City of Doors.

Mage: the Awakening
Mage the Ascension was not my first exploration outside of D&D, but the first one that really grabbed me by the imagination and inspired me to play something else. I mention the original version of Mage because it has consistent qualities with the reboot. Sessions of Ascension would often have lengthy debates about how to best use the spheres of magic to accomplish something, and I think Awakening fixed a lot of those problems by making it all relatively straightforward. Awakening didn't have strong central villains like Ascension though, so mixing the setting of Ascension with the rules of Awakening is probably the best way to play this game. I still love both of them, but Awakening moreso.

HOL
I can't emphasize how much I love this book! Not really a game as much as it is a parody of a game. You can still play it and I have, but it works more as a joke and playing it should never be done seriously. It's sole expansion has rules for an awesome little LARP called "Freebase" that viciously parodies every single anti-D&D screed produced by fear-mongering churchy conservatives in the 1980s. However most gamers I know refuse to even read HOL since it's handwritten, but if you can get past the weird format it is perhaps the funniest piece of RPG writing ever produced.

Stars Without Number
I discovered the OSR by accident because of this book. I was looking for stuff to make a Traveller campaign out of and after reading about the tag system introduced in this book I decided to look for a copy. The no-art pdf is free and after I downloaded it I liked it so much that I bought a hardcover copy. I enjoy the dual familiarity and simplicity of the system presented in the rules, but the tag system is really the best part of this rulebook. Most of Kevin Crawford's other work is equally on par with this title.

Apocalypse World
Written in such a way that it tells a complete novice how to play an RPG without ever using the cliched "What is a role-playing game?" kind of introduction that almost every RPG rulebook has. It illustrates and codifies how to GM effectively by giving the GM an agenda with principles to follow and moves to make when the players fail or look to you for more action. Because I learned role-playing primarily in the 1990s I used to be one of those GMs who crafted a story and then thrust it at my players, but since reading this book I have revised my GMing style so thoroughly that whenever I think of running a new game I always default to thinking of the prospective campaign in terminology which is central to Apocalypse World's design. Nothing about the advice in this game is particularly new, but it's presentation and delivery is cut from 100% originality and that makes all the difference.

Deadlands RPG
Rather than a single book I would like to say this whole game is one of my favorite RPG things! I played in an ongoing Deadlands campaign for roughly eight years and spent so much time with the books and the setting that (even though I have only played it three times in the last decade) I can still remember all of the weird and fiddly little rules. The GM who ran our eight-year long campaign passed away in 2005 and I doubt any of us who played it will ever be able to return to the game without remembering our time with him. I can't really call this a favorite game, but it does hold many fond and bittersweet memories for me.

GURPS Illuminati
Saving the best for last! So I guess I did end up rating these titles in some way, but this is the only RPG book in my collection which I have adamantly insisted to other GMs that they purchase and read cover to cover. It is the best "How to mess with your players' heads" guide out there. The theories, tips, stories, anecdotes, and ideas in this book are not just good tips for making an Illuminati campaign, but are good tips for making any campaign deep and interesting. It's filled with useful GMing advice, but it's also a treat to read.

Also, I have a lot of gaming books.


This isn't even everything I've ever owned or read, just the stuff that I still happen to own.

the Oukek

Oukek are a short, lithe people, very much like small humans but reptilian in appearance. Their faces are thin and long, and their lizard-like skin ranges in color from vibrant green or bright turquoise to dull brown or muted orange. Their typical life expectancy is approximately 50 years.

Oukek society is rigidly defined by a caste social structure that seems impenetrably complex to outsiders. The distinctions seem to be a form of feudal nobility based on birth order, and Oukek of the same family can sometimes have wildly different roles in Oukek society. "Noble" Oukek are allowed to own weapons and property, and in general the lower castes of Oukek work for the "nobles" and do not own anything of value themselves.

Those who have visited the Oukek homeland speak of nearly incomprehensible social orders and a rigidly martial society. An Oukek's place in society is determined by who is birthed from a clutch of eggs first, the first to emerge is the highest-born, or noble, and the last to be born are the laborer caste. The "noble" castes are in charge and consider their place a divine right, but they also consider their role to be duty bound to protect and care for the lower castes. Oukek seem to be able to tell each other apart by their keen sense of smell.

The caste social structure is also their law, and those who rebel from the castes are no longer considered Oukek. Outsiders are not considered part of the social structure, and any who visit Oukek lands should expect to be met with disdain if not outright hostility. Masadhi are the only known outsiders who Oukek welcome with curiosity or goodwill, because they "have no smell," and thus many Masadhi can be found traveling the Oukek lands. The short stature of the Masadhi also probably doesn't hurt.

Oukek see wealth and property as symbols of status, and members of the lower Oukek castes will refer to money and belongings not as their own but rather to a member of a higher caste whom they answer to. Oukek individually are industrious workers, generally peaceful, and eerily quiet. They enjoy physical humor and storytellers, and many outcasts will travel with Troupers.

Most Oukek homes are burrows, usually in dirt or loamy hills, and are often surrounded by large gardens and farms which the Oukek tend diligently. In their homeland they build squat wooden homes and tall stone towers. Because Oukek are honest, friendly, and deferential they tend to get along with other races. Junians tolerate the Oukek, and they are generally considered to be somewhat soft and harmless. Dwarves enjoy Oukek company, and their Weargs have been known to act as mounts or guards for Oukek villages. Aurymites are less tolerant and they have been known to hunt and eat Oukek.

the Junians

When the last Turning happened and humanity fled to the northern lands, the Junians weathered the turmoil the best and were the most successful group of humans that survived. They retained much of their old culture when they resettled in the north, and this has allowed them to thrive over the last 200 years. They are a difficult people to interact with given their mercurial natures, but they can always be counted on to put considerable value on earthly pleasures.

The Junians are the only people who still openly worship Sanglorious, the old god who is said to have created (and bred with) most of humanity, despite the fact that their own theology states he abandoned the physical realm for other interests. Junians hold several feast days in remembrance of Sanglorious, and an annual fighting competition is held in city arenas. It is said that Sanglorious honored (and slept with) the most skilled fighters amongst the first race of humans, and there are many legends and stories of skillful warriors dating all the way back to the first Turning.

Junians have thrived as merchants, artisans, and architects. They rebuilt cities along the northern coastline and created a barter system for interacting with their neighbors. The Junians have begun to expand and have satellite cities across the northern continent. As their influence expands, Masadhi and Nymenians have stopped being the only non-Junian visitors to their cities, and the north coast has become a warren of competing cultural differences and bickering city-states. The Junians accept this, as they are still (mostly) the ones in charge. However, the bureaucratic governments they built have grown too large too quickly, and all are beginning to strain and buckle against one another from their own successes and labyrinthine protocols.

The Junians value honor and integrity over all else, and will flatly refuse to deal with outsiders who have betrayed their safety and wealth. This curt refusal to interact with those who are known to detract from personal interests means they only see prosperous relationships grow, and others are left out of mutually beneficial dealings. This has, perhaps, helped the Junians but has prolonged the suffering of some Eldragoth tribes. Some city-states have grown more prosperous simply by being inviting and open to outsiders, the largest and most successful of which is Marakāven. As Junians thrive, their population perfects skills as artisans and craftsmen. Schools have begun to open, and the Junians are currently the only human culture with a written language.

the Athomians

Athomian lives are rigidly dictated by social status, measured by both strength and artistic talent. Athomians are presumed to be descended from the Noblei, as their clans migrated north along with the Junians and the Eldragoths. Their society spread further north following the last Turning. Forced to compete with the Beastmen of the northern hills and plains, they have become fiercely barbaric and truly anarchic.

Athomians do not have a traditional family structure, nor do they perform weddings. When Athomians have children they form families that last only until the child, or children, are capable of taking care of themselves. However, they are not as divided as outsiders believe them to be, there is little to no rivalry between clans. Conflicts are always resolved by individual warriors, and clan members respect the outcome of the battle or contest.

Athomians are rarely encountered as single individuals. Outcasts from the Athomian clans are scarred or branded in some way so that other Athomians will know them and reject them as well. The most important thing to an Athomian is their place in the clan. To be cast out is to be dead in the eyes of their goddess, because of this many outcasts would rather commit suicide than try to integrate into other cultures.

Athomians value both skill with a weapon and artistic ability. The leader of a clan is often both the best fighter and the one who spends most of their time working a trade for the benefit or glory of the clan. Athomians have perfected the art of swordfighting, as well as swordmaking. Their intricate but sturdy weapons are highly prized and sought after. Disputes that are not settled by dueling are resolved by a comparison of talent by the two opponents, this usually entails both parties forging a sword and allowing other members of the clan to inspect them, but it can also involve skills as decorative as embroidery or as practical as woodworking.

An Athomian always keeps their personal equipment immaculately clean and weapons are kept perfectly maintained and oiled. Athomians prefer to wear vivid colors that many consider unpleasant, such as vibrant orange, bright green, and deep purple. They will also tattoo their entire bodies in these colors. Paradoxically, their grooming habits are awful and their focus on outward appearance means they are actually very dirty and unkempt, and many jokes have been made about how their awful color coordination cannot mask their awful body odor. Athomians do not prize bodily hygiene as much as their fashion sense or a perfectly balanced blade.

Every clan worships the same vicious and secretive goddess. Her name is never revealed to outsiders, and she grants power to a very select few. Sacrifices to her are common among all Athomian clans. The formal rituals and ceremonies performed in her esoteric name last for hours and sometimes climax in a brutal death, of a member of the clan if an outsider hasn't been acquired.

the Eldragoths

The Eldragoths represent a competitive culture that exalted fighting, but they have turned their savagery inward and suffered as a result. The Eldragoths are the poorest of the five major human cultures, and also the most savage. Their society spread to the far north following the last Turning, and rather than compete with Athomians and Beastmen for resources they fell into raiding and pillaging most of the settlements they encountered.

The Eldragoths are a divided people, clustered together into nomadic tribes that will hunt game in one area until the population withers, then forced to move on to more populous lands. Whole tribes frequently compete with other Eldragoth tribes for the best resources. A single Eldragoth, either an outcast or one who was dislodged from a role of command, will often fight as a mercenary for other races. The most important thing to an Eldragoth is food, and if fighting for gold or silver brings them food than that is what they do, even though they disdain the use of money as a sign of weakness.

Might makes right in their eyes, and the leader is always the strongest of the tribe. He or she may take whatever they like from the weaker members of the tribe, including life and property. All forms of disputes, as mundane as personal grudges or as inevitable as challenges to leadership, are settled by contests of physical strength - usually fights - and serious grievances involve bloody and prolonged fistfights that don't end until an opponent is bludgeoned to death.

Eldragoths always prefer to fight with their fists and they disdain large weaponry, an Eldragoth will never use a weapon to kill another Eldragoth, even in a tribal conflict. But outsiders should always be wary as Eldragoths have no disdain for picking up knives or bows to slay outsiders. An Eldragoth with a knife is a foe to be feared!

Anyone who is unable to fight or hunt is considered useless and will become an outcast. One who fights and loses is not considered dishonorable, but just of a lower station than one who wins. The children of these Eldragoth tribes learn how to fight at an early age, or they die. A few tribes will abandon their weaker children, these few usually become slaves to other tribes, or in worse cases become victims of the Beastmen.

No single tribe worships a god or pantheon of deities, but each seems to have their own form of religion revolving around the worship of nature spirits. These spirits often have elaborate names that are never pronounced the same way twice. The spirits across various tribes all have one thing in common, they respond to blood. The greater the sacrifice of blood, the greater the boon.

Eldragoths have spread out farther from the northern plains, and have not localized to one area for at least 140 years. Some tribes are spotted as far west as the Black Plateau. They hunt anything with meat on it, and it is an acknowledged fact that a few tribes have turned to cannibalism, willing to hunt other humans or dwarves when food is scarce. They don't ever seem to eat each other, just as they don't kill each other. An important facet of Eldragoth culture that must be remembered by anybody who wishes to hire one as a bodyguard or soldier.

the Dwarves of Kcaltsim and Grethwrav

Click on the images to make them bigger.
Dwarves are found in the northern plains, deserts and wilds surrounding the Kcaltsim mountains. They are a short but tough race, standing about four-and-a-half feet tall, stocky and muscular. They have light gray skin and dark eyes, usually hazel or brown colored. Both males and females typically shave their heads bald though the men will grow out thick black beards. They are a long-lived race, surviving for two or three centuries.

They were once subterranean, but have mostly abandoned the caves of their homeland. They are known for their hunting rituals, strong agrarian traditions, and beautiful craftsmanship. Those Dwarves who are not farmers or hunters have great proficiency with metalcrafting or woodworking. Rarely seen outside of the lands surrounding the Kcaltsim mountains, those that do travel are usually solitary and keep to themselves. When they travel with others, they hire their services out in exchange for protection or have enough coin to outfit their caravan with the best mercenaries silver can buy.

Dwarves have an animistic view of the world and believe that hunting an animal is a sacred blessing, not a birthright. If a Dwarf can hunt and kill an animal then they are considered that animal's equal. If a Dwarf can stalk and catch an animal with their bare hands then they are considered that animal's superior. The leadership of the Dwarves is based on this tradition of receiving a title from hunting. Those who cannot hunt become farmers. While farmers make up a lower caste of Dwarven society, they are regarded as an essential part of the community and Dwarves have many feast days to celebrate the bounties of harvest.

Dwarves use a form of rune magic that they developed when they still lived underground, it is used to mold and enhance stone and metal work, but also to protect locations and people. They do not rely on the magic since the runes fade after a period of time. Wild Weargs and wolf packs live throughout the Kcaltsim mountains, and can be seen living among every Dwarf community. Dwarves have an innate telepathic bond with Weargs and rarely travel unaccompanied by one. Visitors that have proven themselves friends to the Dwarves have been known to report being guided to oasises of water or food by Wearg packs.

There are also Dwarves living on the Grethwrav Peninsula, the Svarth. These Dwarves still live in underground complexes in the mountains of the peninsula. They look exactly like their northern cousins but have luminescent red colored eyes. The southern Dwarves, the Svarth, are adept magicians and do not appear to age, they credit their immortality to a deity who they regard as the only god worthy of their worship. Calling him by name is considered blasphemy, when they speak of him they call him the Sleeping Lord. Amongst the Chiryō, Nymeniens and Noblei, he is called the Sleeping Bastard.

The Sleeping Lord has given many gifts of power and magic to the Svarth of the Grethwrav Peninsula, and in exchange demands complete servitude from them, but rarely appears before them or intercedes into their lives. The Grethwrav Dwarves use a magic given to them by the Sleeping Lord that is powered by blood and pain, not necessarily the caster's. With this they have developed a soul harnessing ability, and they can steal souls from fallen enemies and use the pain of those trapped souls to power magical items.

A rumor about these Svarth is that the Sleeping Lord also made them unnaturally immortal. In the same time period as the Collapse of the Wuunrlan cities, the Sleeping Lord blessed (or cursed) the southern Dwarves who worshiped him so that when they die as long as their bodies are not utterly destroyed they are returned to life one night later. Most of the Svarth from the Grethwrav Peninsula no longer age or sleep or eat. They never volunteer information about this and treat it very secretly, but accept it as the way they are.

the Aurymites

Click on the pictures to make them bigger.
Aurymites are hairless, standing between seven and nine feet tall, and have massively muscular bodies with golden skin, silvery metallic eyes and wide mouths. Their eyes grow darker as they get older, and Aurymites that manage to live into an elderly age have irises that are almost completely black. An all-female race, it is not understood how they reproduce but when they do become pregnant they gestate for a few months before commonly giving birth to twins or triplets, sometimes more. Despite the Aurymites' lanky height and widely muscular bodies they're an extremely agile race that can contort their bodies through thin gaps and claustrophobic spaces.

They speak vaguely or remain quiet when dealing with other races. Aurymites are not very emotional and are considered humorless, as hired mercenaries they are known to be rigidly disciplined. Normally they are all strict vegetarians, and they only eat meat if there is nothing else available to consume, some Aurymites would rather eat grass and leaves than eat the flesh of any animal. They can seem capricious and woe to those who carelessly offend an Aurymite's honor, as they can become suddenly and brutally violent with no warning. Fights between Aurymites are frequently to the death and blood feuds between Aurymites can last for generations, but fights between individual Aurymites are rare. Aurymites follow a code of honor that has specific rules for engaging in violence, those that do not follow the code are thought of as filthy or untrustworthy. Lies, deliberate insults, and thievery are all things that Aurymites have been known to kill over with little hesitation.

Aurymites were once part of a wealthy kingdom in the western isles that has now dissolved into anarchic conclaves, the lineage of the old kingdom remains and loyalists still follow their Queen. Aurymites who no longer follow the monarchy are considered traitors, and very few attempt to return to their homeland as there is a strong schism of hatred between the declining loyalists and growing freeborn nomads. Many Aurymites perished during the upheaval of their old kingdom and many now travel in nomadic packs, though some have settled amongst the cities of the Dwarf and Junian peoples.

Giving a hired person acclaim is common among them, they regard employers or patrons who don't personally respect them as individuals as dishonorable. Forgetting a person's name when you have spent time with them is also considered a grave offense. However, they believe that indentured servitude can be used to pay debts as long as the paymaster is fair. An Aurymite who is known to have turned their back on honor is likely to be killed amongst their own kind, even the freeborn, thus a solitary Aurymite is always to be feared and respected. Or both.

Aurymites were at one time regarded as profound philosophers and masterful healers, but the collapse of their society has led many of them to live out their lives as hunters or thieves. They still spend their leisure time philosophizing, and they enjoy debating politics and ethics though few non-Aurymites are willing to engage them. Despite their brutal reputation, Aurymites are very respectful and cordial. Disagreements and arguments are common, but as long as insults are not exchanged they can walk away as equals. Their healing abilities are well renowned, though they have never been known to share the secret with non-Aurymites.

the Sadhi

The Sadhi are a secretive race, whose homeland is as much of a mystery as their innate powers of prophecy. They often sell their services predicting the weather, the gender or birthday of a child still in its mother's womb, or even how a market will fluctuate in price, but tend to avoid dispensing prophesies about deaths or the manner of those deaths. Most do not like using their ability to prophesy since many non-Sadhi want to know things that cannot be predicted, they ritualistically insist to non-Sadhi that they would be better off if the future was not known. The Sadhi cannot predict wars, murder, theft, or other crimes (or they simply refuse to), but they can see the natural causes of death like aging, illness, and disease. Their prophesies are mutable and with the proper knowledge can sometimes be prevented or changed. Sadhi insist that their powers are not magical or divine and they "simply see the world as it is." They are also extremely intelligent, and are often sought out by powerful rulers and wealthy merchants as consultants and advisors.


They have short, misshapen bodies which they conceal under heavy cloaks that resemble heaps of scrap cloth stitched together. It is thought that their skin is pale, almost white, but some claim they possibly dye or tattoo their skin and that it is actually black as pitch. Sadhi consider it offensive for a non-Sadhi to view their skin and those non-Sadhi who seek the view are regarded as vile. Their reflective yellow eyes are noticeably distinct, and often this is the only part of their bodies that others can see. If Sadhi regard having their naked skin seen by non-Sadhi as disgusting then being touched by a non-Sadhi is ten times worse. Sadhi will justify killing someone who touches them, or tries to uncover their skin. Many a foolish drunk has tried to rip the robe off of a lone Sadhi passing by on the street only to have been knifed for his attempt.

They live as nomads and do not enjoy staying in one locale for too long. Sadhi are known to complain about most everything, and some say that they are so disagreeable because they simply do not feel safe. They rarely travel alone, most commonly traveling with one other Sadhi or sometimes with three, five, or seven others. Sadhi always refer to their kinsmen as their family. Nobody knows how long a Masad lives for, but some of them claim to remember things from over a century passed. It is rumored that the only way a Sadhi can reproduce is with the help of six other Sadhi, but the only certain fact about them is that nobody has ever seen Sadhi children.

Occasionally a lone Sadhi will travel with trusted non-Sadhi, but only if it suits their need to avoid living in one place. Some Sadhi settle in towns or cities, but never for more than a year or two. They are renowned for building their own temples and shrines, despite the fact that they don't worship any deities. Their temples and shrines act as symbols of refuge for other traveling Sadhi, and it is unheard of for Sadhi to sleep elsewhere if one of their shrines is vacant. Sadhi do not refer to these buildings in a spiritual or religious manner, but accept that others do and enjoy the respect that is afforded to their dwellings.

12 Questions from the Octopi Lord

Click here for source!

1. What is your favorite villain you ever challenged players with?
Caine.
Caine is an NPC wizard originally written up in the Birthright campaign setting (circa 2nd edition AD&D). He's described as a wizard who exchanges spells and magical protection to the ruler of Endier, where his tower resides, in exchange for military protection so that no one attempts to raid his tower. From this brief description, and his listed alignment of Neutral-Good, I envisioned him as a benevolent wizard hoboing about the countryside and occasionally bumbling his way into other peoples' problems and helping them out, Doctor Who style. In the expansion material for the country of Endier it describes Caine in more detail, but for the campaigns I ran I only used the description as a vague idea of what the public thinks Caine does.
I always introduced Caine as a helpful wizard for the PCs to be doing "good works" around the countryside. His stated intentions were always to protect the status quo of Endier's independence, and if this meant assisting a group of mercenaries with some helpful magic to get their jobs done along the borders of Endier's neighbors then he would be happy to oblige. In truth, Caine viciously eliminated any rivals to his own power and always used subordinates or underlings to do it. If somebody's guild or temple was moving into a region where Caine held power he would immediately find ways to portray them as bad people and try to keep them disorganized and ineffectual. Caine's stated objective of maintaining the status quo was still pretty accurate, but it was his power base he wanted to maintain, not Endier's.
In practice, this meant that Caine would appear to the PCs occasionally and give them information that was just false enough that on the surface it seemed true but deep digging would reveal the deception. This information would always send them off on some personal quest or vendetta to stop an interloper or destroy or corrupt organization. I always expected that as Caine's lies would become more elaborate and easier to see through the group might begin to question him more openly or confront him but no, they would continue to work for him and nobody would ever question his stated motives even when he took magic items away from them (that he thought they shouldn't have) or lavish them with gold coins (which he didn't need but had in abundance), probably because the players would believe wholeheartedly in the trope of the helpful wizard.

2. What is your favorite organization behind wrong-doing in your setting?
The Northern Imperial Temple of Haelyn. Birthright again.
The setting tried to use mortals squabbling over religion as a theme, and it didn't always work because of the way AD&D structures the way clerical spells work, but I still embraced the concept of warring churches and infallible priests. The Northern Imperial Temple (NIT) were fascists and fanatics and would not accept the worship of any other deity before the worship of Haelyn, the Patron God of all Anuire. Their influence had spread to other countries in the region and they fought openly with some of their neighbors, and fought deceptively against some of their distant rivals. The NIT used doppleganger assassins whose sole purpose was to remove anybody whose influence was spreading into the NIT's home or ally territory. A major theme of my Birthright campaign was a large-scale multiple country war that was started by a minor noble being assassinated by a doppleganger that worked for the NIT.

3. What is the most interesting location you ever staged a battle in?
Inside a pocket dimension shaped like a 4-sided die where gravity pushed outward. There were fleshy tendrils rising from the center of each of the four sides which met to a small meaty sack in the center, and inside the meaty sack was a sleeping demi-goddess. Wolves made of shadow prowled the maze on the surfaces of the dimension's walls, and a constant storm pulsed around the center of the dimension with random lightning bolts and fireballs.
Either that, or a tavern.

4. What is the most interesting chase scene you ever had in a game?
A PC assassinated another character, an NPC, in broad daylight in a bustling city's dockside harbor. The NPC's personal guards, as well as city patrolmen, chased the PC through the dock and into a marketplace and then up onto the rooftops of the city. It was a brief, exciting and intense scene, with the player announcing he would jump across a horse or stab a guard in the leg in order to get away from his pursuers. He was never caught.

5. What is the most evocative scenic location you have used in a game?
The Spiderfell, from Birthright again. Probably. I ran a Planescape game a long time ago, but none of the settings I used stick out in my memory. Taking players into the Spiderfell was something I relished and still remember. The trees had grown to incorporate spiders in almost every aspect, the goblins who hunted the forest bore spider-like features, and the oppressive darkness of the place was fun to describe. Nobody ever wanted to go very far into the place, and very few ever ventured farther than a few trees.

6. What is the most interesting one-of-a-kind unique monster in your games?
Imagine a centaur, but instead of a horse the bottom half of the creature is a mountain goat, and instead of a human head it's an eagle's head. They are wild, feral creatures who will attack anyone for the meat on their bones, but are also mesmerized by magic and will attempt to kidnap anybody who shows a display of magic in the hopes they can learn this arcane art. A failure to communicate or an unwillingness to teach magic means the kidnapped will eventually become dinner.
I never came up with a name for these guys. I never come up with names for most of the things I create. I just called these guys eagle-centaurs. Eagletaurs? Nah.

7. What is the most tantalizing artifact, relic or tech you have ever used in game?
The Dragon's Amulet. I ran Birthright three times and I used it every time. It's an amulet split into pieces that gets more powerful as the pieces are brought together. It can detect dragons, it can protect the wearer from flame, it can allow you to speak draconic languages, it can regenerate flesh. It can do a lot more but nobody ever managed to get all of the pieces. Oh! They looked for them, but they never found all of them. As the pieces become stronger, they begin to pull nasty things toward the owner. Rabid dogs. Hungry goblins. Lizardmen. The longer the owner has a piece of the Dragon's Amulet, the stronger the pull gets and soon creatures are showing up almost every day looking for a little piece of ceramic that never chips and never breaks.

8. What is the most world shattering thing a player has ever got up to in your settings?
Birthright again. The one time players ventured deep into the Spiderfell, I designed a dungeon for them to explore. The Spider is a powerful hundreds-of-years old monster who resides deep within the Spiderfell, and I gave him a lair. The PCs managed to work their way into his throne room under the pretense of a parlay and then fought him. He tried to escape as his flesh succumbed to their spells and weapons, but he was too slow and they killed him. One player stole his Bloodline and another kept his body in a bucket to make sure it would never regenerate back to life.

9. What is the strangest death of a character in game you have run?
Nobody has ever died in a strange way. They were always predictable affairs, except the time I rolled a random encounter for a pack of jackals in a swamp and a group of low-level characters were overrun by the pack with a TPK. That was pretty strange and unexpected. Also, very unsatisfying even for me, I've never used random encounters since.

10. What is the most intriguing challenge, trap, or non combat obstacle in your games?
The NPCs. The players either never spend enough time learning an NPC's true motives and they get blindsided by their actions, or they simply underestimate the NPC in some crucial way.

11. What is most interesting ability or character option you have added to your game?
I've always allowed players to have their characters start with dark powers from a secret pact with a demon or similar malevolent spirit. No takers yet.

12. What is the strangest mash up or weirdest system hack you have made in gaming?
My third time running a Birthright setting I used World of Darkness rules with my own added houserules for playing elves, dwarves, halflings, wizards, and/or clerics. I also had to write up how Bloodlines worked, which wasn't that hard, but getting the rules for how Bloodlines grew and gained power were difficult to keep as a slow progression. The game lasted for over a year before the group split due to players moving so I must have been doing some things right!

indie vs OSR, and the winner is...

I was just thinking about wandering monsters and how most of the time they are pointless and don't make sense. I was thinking about my last Dungeon Crawl Classics game which came to a screeching halt when the party got surrounded by jackals from a wandering monster table and there was literally nothing they could do to survive such an overwhelming encounter except by rolling their ice really well. I was thinking back to previous experiences where wandering monsters were simply used to soften up the party. I was trying to think of times when the wandering monster was used to help layer the atmosphere of the locale and I was coming up empty.

Then I remembered a wandering monster that was fun to fight. For me, at least.

It was one of my early gaming experiences, when I was too young to really know the rules and too naive to know how "the best" way to role-play was. I was gaming with older people, who perhaps tolerated my presence but otherwise didn't support it. My character was a wizard and a bear had broken into our camp. He was smashing tents and gouging his claws into horses and people. Everyone was running around, gathering weapons, and keeping their distance. The main fighter in our group got pinned and was being mauled, he needed to make a Strength check to break free at the start of his next turn, and my turn in the initiative came up.
"Can I jump on the bear's back and drive my dagger into it's shoulder blades?"
The surprised looks I got, and the advice afterwards, I look back on it now and think those people were fucking idiots and if I had known better I would have found a different group. "Wizards don't really rush into combat like that." "You don't really have the stats to pull it off." "A spell would probably be a better course of action." and similar such things.
I didn't care. "But can I? How hard would it be?"
I remember the DM saying "If you roll really high I'll let you do it, but that bear will probably turn on you next." Everybody was discouraging me from acting. I rolled high, an 18 or 19, impossible to deny success on such a roll. I was on the bear's back and I could roll damage, a whopping 1d4.
Most of the players clucked their tongues or shook their heads, because now the bear was going to attack me, but the fighter got free and in two more hits the bear was down and out. I had saved the fighter, taken a few licks myself, and turned the tables of the fight, all because I didn't follow some pre-programmed narrative for how I should play my character or what my skills were best suited for.

That group really sucked.

I think that the experience of playing indie games has helped rekindle my OSR gaming nostalgia far more than some of the other OSR games I've played. Dungeon Crawl Classics does a really great job of bringing back that old school flavor to a set of rules, but the "story first" dictates of Apocalypse World, Dungeon World, Itras By, Lady Blackbird, and Monsterhearts is far more evocative of the time in my life when I could play a wizard and think it was totally appropriate for me to distract a bear from mauling the fighter by jumping onto the bear's back and trying to jam my dagger into it's ear.
What I'm really saying is that there is very little difference between the OSR and indie games. One is perhaps a little more brutal where the players are accepting of that inherent brutality as part of the story, and the other is more focused on survivability so that the same characters can thrive throughout the story. One is no better than the other, and each can be slightly tweaked to change the survival-brutal axis on which it sits.
As a GM or a player I want to be in a game that has the depth and details of an OSR game but with the flexible mechanics of an indie RPG. I believe a happy medium can be reached between the two.

playtest pdf

I inadvertently challenged myself last week when I said I could probably put this together in a week, and it actually required less time. I only spent about two nights moving data around, proofreading, then writing up a quick and dirty character sheet. It's really rough around the edges but it's a playtest document, and my house was flooded last weekend, so whatever. Deal with it!

This represents all of my notes for Tales of Imperial Space

That's just the tentative title, something I thought of quickly when I started writing ideas down two months ago. It started as an Apocalypse World hack, and I originally wanted it to be compatible with that system so that characters could, in theory, travel back and forth between settings. It has, however, diverted quite a bit and become it's own thing. More changes are on the way. Maybe after I move back into my house.

a Science Fiction RPG

I'm working on a science fiction role-playing game heavily influenced by Classic Traveller that uses the Apocalypse World engine. I spent one week writing ideas furiously but now my work has tapered off and I need to organize all of my notes into a single document. This hasn't been going well because as I transfer the notes into a pdf I re-read them and start to worry that the way I've written some things becomes hard to pull off for a character sheet. Consequently my work has slowed. My working title for this game is Tales of Imperial Space, but I would like to go with something simpler (as soon as I think of it). Originally it started as an idea for doing a hard science fiction setting, but now I'm gravitating toward a more pulpy space fantasy kind of game.
Things that are different from Apocalypse World:
• characters are slightly weaker, the moves are less comprehensive than the playbook moves of AW (like Monsterhearts)
• progression is different, I wrote out experience tracks that fill and then reset, I'm thinking that failing a roll will garner experience instead of highlighting stats (like Dungeon World)
• slight randomization during character creation, since a character can try to go for as long as possible in a service and reenlistment is random (like Classic Traveller)
• countdown clocks use different "times," I made a countdown clock with 6 equal-in-size segments which leaves the times at 2,4,6,8,10, and 12 instead of 3,6,9,10,11, and 12
• there is no Weird or psychic maelstrom, instead there is Psi, and it always starts at -2, another reason characters are weaker

Writing Playbooks

I've written a few playbooks now, and I've looked through a lot of really promising builds for playbooks and some that are just atrocious. Having scoured the Barf Forth Apocalyptica forums and committed to memory many of the random details from Vincent about how he wrote the original 11 playbooks, I feel pretty confident in writing this step by step process for writing a playbook.

Step 1: Have an open-ended concept
This is key. Your concept is everything, it helps define what you're going to write about the playbook. But you can't cling to it like a bible. Your vision of the archetype can't be constrained and must be open to interpretation. The best playbooks have a concept which is clearly understood and open to enough interpretation that it doesn't force the character to behave a certain way. The archetype molds to the character, not the other way around.
Look at the core playbooks and you can see the archetypes clearly: the Brainer is a weird psychic, the Angel is a competent medic, the Driver is a car obsessive, etc.

Step 2: Balance isn't everything
Every playbook has a stat block that usually includes a "best" stat. In almost every instance, the stat blocks add up to a total of +3 (+2 +1 -1 +1 +0 = +3). In some instances a character starts with two stats at +2 and those break the mold, but those stat lines also have a consistent math of adding up to +2 (+2 +2 +0 -1 -1 = +2), the price you pay for starting with two +2s is one less beneficial point.
Also, every playbook should start with three moves, or things, that make it distinct. These don't need to be balanced in power with other playbooks, as long as the character simply has 3 things. Look at the core playbooks and they all have three things to start: the Gunlugger starts with a choice of 3 moves, the Driver has their car (1) the no shit driver move (2) and then a choice of a second move (3), and the Savvyhead has their workspace (1) and a choice of 2 more moves (2 and 3).
Again, there are some playbooks that break the mold, but these tend to be balanced within themselves:
the Battlebabe only chooses 2 moves to start, but they have a Cool +3 and that's their third thing
the Hardholder only has their hold and a gang, with moves that accompany each, however these are bigger than the holds and gangs other playbooks can get as improvements, plus the Hardholder explicitly never needs to spend money for food and lodging
the Operator gets gigs and moonlighting, plus one more move, but the Operator's gigs outnumber what other characters can get as improvements

Step 3: Scarcity is the name of the game
One of the key things when writing moves and improvements for your playbook is to remember the theme of scarcity. In other words, you can't get all of the options! Nothing is perfect in Apocalypse World and you're always left wanting a little more, this should apply to character improvement as well. If your playbook has 5 moves to choose from and you can choose 3 during character creation, then you should think about adding a 6th move, maybe even a 7th move, or limiting the "get a new playbook move" improvement so that there's one move you can't get.
Again, look at the examples with the core game:
the Skinner starts with 2 moves and can get 2 more through improvements, but there are 5 Skinner moves total
the Gunlugger starts with 3 moves and can get 2 more through improvements, but there are 7 Gunlugger moves total

Step 4: Peer review
Share your ideas with your gaming friends and ask them for criticism. Share your ideas in the forums and ask for criticism. There is no better resource for criticism than a gaming community, just remember to not let all criticism affect your work. When I first shared the Wolf some people noted the villainous nature of the archetype and said they didn't think it fit with the game, I ignored that criticism because FUCK YOU! Don't tell me how to play the game! Just because it wouldn't be fun for you or your group doesn't mean it won't be fun for me and mine. Those kinds of criticisms about the theme and tone of your work are useless. In a way, they are just an outsider reaction similar to that lack of trust one displays at the gaming table when somebody else is narrating the action.
But when somebody says "Hey, it looks like your math is wrong." or "Isn't this move just a weaker version of going aggro?" Those are valid. Listen to them.
Scratch that! Listen to everybody. Just keep your bullshit detector on a high frequency.
And don't wait until your playbook is finished to share it either. As soon as you have something to work with you should be talking about it and sharing it to see where the cracks are. Poke and prod at your work until you think it's solid.

Step 5: Play it!
Once you think your work is solid, you have got to play it. Get other people to play it if you can. Play it, play it, and play it some more. Because you will never have played it enough and somebody might still find something wrong with it.

That's all I've got. Good luck!