Misc IX

Update
With this post, only 18 left till my 1000th.  Yikes.  I have been working on lots of blog stuff, though there seems to be too many things I need to make at once.  I'm trying to work out a systematic way to handle intelligent opposition, or at least how to record on a map what guards will do and such.  I've also been working on my sandbox.  I can't put it off any more.  I think I'll have to just shrink the size of what I present to my players tonight to a couple day's walk in all directions.  I've prepared tons of simple cavern complexes.  Now I need to figure out ways to distinguish them so they don't function as quantum caves of a sort.

I've got more silhouettes ready in the pipe, but they're mostly animals and harmless things.  I'd like to find another monster or some savage Amazonian women before I do another post.  Going up into the mountains tomorrow.

Shuffledice
It could be fun to set up a game of player skill where they resolve something-- maybe gambling in a tavern or magical research-- by tossing a dice on a piece of paper and trying to get it to land somewhere without rolling off the paper.  I wouldn't want that to be a common mechanic, just something unique to make certain resolutions feel different and to keep my players guessing.

Tree Ring Scrying
The reading of information from tree rings isn't a new idea, but I realized how closely a cut stump looked like the trackless wastes hex:

So, a ranger or player with wilderness knowledge who is lost can take an hour to find and cut down a suitable tree.  Then, by looking at the rings they will know exactly where in a hex they are.

Feats like Encumbrance
I handle encumbrance as a simple list, once you fill up all your slots you have to drop something.  What if special abilities were treated like this.  Maybe characters in the game can learn how to shapeshift, go berzerk in battle, or raise undead, but they can only know 4 abilities at a time.  In a way it would be like Vancian spell picking, or socketed items in Diablo.  But these would be abilities not spells.  Players would have to choose, unrelated to class or level, what they want to be able to do.

Misc VIII

I try to gather up ideas that seem a little too thin to warrant a separate post into these miscellaneous posts.  Usually they are small house rule mechanics or campaign setting ideas.  Anyway, here are a few more:

Word Eater
They look like obese children with mouths slightly open and drooling.  They amble out of stark wastelands to follow parties and listen.  They appear mute.  If they hear a word of particular interest to them, such as a name or a word shouted with emotion, they will "eat" it.  The word then disappears from the mind of the speaker.  They cannot say it, read it, or understand it as language if it is spoken to them.  Some say the only way to get the word back is to slice open the belly of the Word Eater and extract it.  But such a butchering might release a flood of strange and ancient words.

Blight Writing
Some wise women have the ability to draw a malady from a person by "writing them out."  This involves several strange ingredients as well as bird guano and willow bark.  A set of scratchings will appear on the bark that resemble both quail tracks and cuneiform writing.  If a spell is cast to allow reading this willow scroll, the reader will catch the malady there recorded.

Extended Stat Check
To see how long the burly fighter can hold the collapsing ceiling up, the swimmer can hold their breath, or the rogue can balance on the swaying tightrope, try this: Roll a d6 each round and when the total of the results surpasses the character's appropriate stat they finally reach their limit.  I think this could be much more dramatic than a single stat check or saving roll and since a player with their character in such a situation will probably be static while the rest of the party frantically does something else, it will give them something to do each round.

Simple Charges
When you first use a wand or staff roll a d6.  A result of 1 means it just fails to work.  You can try to use it once a round until it does work.  Once it works, however, the failure range moves from just 1 up to 1-2.  This continues with each successful use.  Once the failure number is 6 the item will never work and must be recharged if that is possible. 

To recharge a single level, cast a spell of equal level on the object, then roll the number you would need to succeed if it had that level charge left.  For example, a completely dead wand would need a sixth level spell cast into it and then the caster would need to roll a 6 on the d6.  If successful, then a fifth level spell would need to be cast on it and then a 5 or 6 rolled for it to "take."  And so on until it is fully charged.

Misc VII

I got the opportunity to head into the mountains over the weekend and, as always, sitting at a fire surrounded by pine trees gives me all kinds of D&D ideas.  Here are a few:

Sasquatch Rarity
The reason Sasquatch are so uncommonly seen is that they are sexually dimorphic.  The males are actually sloth-like creatures about the size of a raccoon.  Each lumbering female has a harem(?) of 3-4 males that climb tall trees around the area the female is hunting/foraging and serve as lookouts. If the males are seen they are often mistaken for raccoons or wolverines.

Old Meat Poachers
Usually moving in groups of five they call "hands" these poachers seek to satisfy the tastes of the most decadent wealthy by hunting "old" meat, that of elves and dwarves.

Old Leathers
Used by Old Meat poachers, leather armor made from the skin of elves offers bonuses versus sleep and charm.  More rarely, dwarven skins are made into leather that provide extra protection against venomous creatures.  Rarer still, sometimes the skins of a beautiful elvish couple is used to make a untanned suit of soft, white leather, worn by the leader of a "hand" and offering even greater protections, thought not lasting long.

Hearth Ringstone
A cleric, or anyone versed in the Old Ways, can take a stone weighing a half-stone or more from the night's fire.  By incorporating it into the next night's fire ring they make that fire a hearth.  Each night of doing so makes the hearth magic stronger.  Undead and shape changers can not enter the light of a true hearth.

Two Cool Things

Hubert Duprat took caddis fly larvae and let them build their cocoons with precious materials.  What if dragon young weren't lizards but grub-like things that did this?   (via Boing Boing)

This is a triple gear designed by mathematicians Saul Schleimer, Henry Segerman.  All three gears actually rotate.  Maybe the hearts of constructs look like this.  (via Metafilter)

Misc VI

Wake in Another World
When an adventuring party sleeps they awake in a different dungeon.  It is a real place, not a dream.  When they sleep there they awake back in their first world.  How long does this go on?  What caused it?  What interesting things can be done with alternating one-day time limits?

Next level of the idea is that when there is a TPK the party wakes up somewhere else, another world, and they are changed.

Construct Class
You are a statue.  You start play with ~5 HD and all the related bonuses.  You never go up in level, however.  And you do not heal.  I wonder if balancing power with a limited total amount of life would be an interesting challenge for experienced players.

Option one is to allow "upgrades" by purchasing enchantments and smithing/stone work.  Essentially you could "level" by using gp as xp.

Class as Race
Entering a profession in this weird world changes you physically.  Wizards gradually become wizened, sexless things.  Fighters grow in size and brawn up.  Rogues become thinner and harder to see in shadows.  Changing class might require surgery or at least prolonged sickness.

Class as Lifestage
In this weird world everyone starts as a rogue.  When they die, they transform into fighters.  And when they die in that form they transform into wizards.  The order can vary according to your taste, but all are stages in the life arc of one creature.  What will the final death reveal?

Misc IV

Choose Your Weapon
I'd be surprised if some game doesn't already do this, but how about letting fighters choose which weapons they have the most skill in by assigning higher damage dice to those weapons.  They choose which of 4 die types particular weapons will do for them.  So, your fighter might choose staff, bow, sword, battle-axe to have d4, d6 d8, d10.  Or not.  They might choose a dagger to have d10, which is different, but maybe they want to be a badass knife fighter.  If nothing else, allowing a certain number of die types could also function as a very simple proficiency system: "You only get one d8 weapon, but you'll be able to assign another at 4th level."

Critical Weapon Feats
I've been thinking for a while about how to distinguish weapons if they all do the same damage.  Yes, more than the obvious utility of a sword being able to cut a rope a blunt being able to hammer in a spike.  What I'm thinking about trying is giving them all special abilities that kick in when you score a critical.  Staves and maces: can knock an opponent completely out, battle axes: can sever limbs, flails: can disarm an opponent, swords: can parry while still getting in a hit.

XP as a Currency
Again, probably not new, but I was thinking if anyone ever utilizes some of my toxins/fireworks in ways that allows players to craft them when they have necessary ingredients, you could allow players to spend their XP in a jam to do so without the necessary materials.  It could undermine resource management a bit, but it would allow the tools to come into play when they are most needed (an fun).  If for, example, a time arises where having a triggered notification would be handy but they are too far from town to acquire what they need to make the Mine Light and Dwarven Braids.  You charge them 50-100XP and say "Hey it turns out scrounging around in all your packs you have enough to make one charge.

XP Bonus for Mapping
I know drawing a map out for players with dry erase markers as we play makes it a lot easier for them to visualize where they are and what's going on-- it also slows down play and gives me another task when I have too many already.  I also think that being the mapper can be kind of chore-like and pull you out of the game unless you are a certain type of player that really likes it.  I'm thinking of mapping for brand new players and giving intermediate players the option of mapping for them or having them start learning to map for a bonus ~100 XP per party member.

Misc III

Yeah, boring post titles, sorry.  I'm 50% done with a fun subsystem for your old school games but I'm having a tough time fitting all the flavor I want while keeping it elegant.  Trying to avoid charts.  Oh well, maybe I'll have to cogitate on it for a few more years.  Anyway, here are a few more ideas while I'm up in the wilderness.

Burnt Giant

These creatures are the dumbest of their kind and most likely lumbered right into a forest fire to see the pretty lights. But now they are badly burned, half their body or more scarred bone-white or charred and oozing depending on how recent the fire was. They are in terrible, constant pain and thus unpredictable and very dangerous. (may fight or not but once fighting never roll for morale, +2 to hit and damage, will fight for an additional 2 hit die after all its hit points are gone)

They tend to come down into the lowlands wandering randomly or looking for easy to catch prey like fat merchants.

They are one of the few reasons human rangers work in groups.

Elves treat them with great caution attempting to lure them into icy-cold mountain streams, which soothes their pain, and then dispatching them with arrows to ear or eye.

St Boll was said to have laid healing hands on one as it crushed him to death in its grasp. The calmed creature became a protector of the local church for the rest of its short life.

Seasonal Maps
Thanks to Richard in a previous post for this idea.  Has there ever been a supplement or module that provided multiple maps for the same area in different seasons?  I don't recall any.  I think it could quadruple the interesting bits of a small starting sandbox. Imagine mountain trails snowed impassable in Winter.  Fords flooded in Spring.  Different trade routes, pilgrim routes and road encounters.  Festivals.  Different wandering monsters.  Weather.  Man, this really makes me want to try and do it.


ps did the 5e playtest not come with a map?  Because I'm getting a bunch of hits looking for "Caves of Chaos map" leading to this post. Or maybe they made a new one and people want to compare it to the original?

Misc. II

Ugh, the connection at the lodge I'm "borrowing" from is pre-dial up speeds.  I guess all the guests are all playing WoW or something.  I'll just post a couple ideas and try to catch up on the blog conversation in the morning.

The Bargain

The idea of inheritance for new PCs is not new, but the usual idea is you can only use it once (in my life as a player? with this DM? in this campaign?) and enact a 10% tax. But when you die you're more than likely to lose all your good stuff in a TPK or down a Hellmouth.

How about this: When your more experienced players roll up a new character (no need to bog noobs down with more to think about) give them the choice of +3 hit points, or a will that grants any gear and money that is recoverable to their next PC.  No tax, but you still don't get the stuff down the Hellmouth.

Choose to Use Languages

I love languages and scripts and I'm ashamed to say they aren't much a part of my game because my world is getting fleshed out as we go. I never know what languages to offer players when they make up new pcs.

How about this: Players get the same number of languages your system says they should but they hold onto them like chits to redeem later. Dead languages and scripts cost three language chits. Monsters and other races require two, human languages just one. Now, any time one of these come up in play, players can decide if they want to know this particular language. I think it could be quite fun asking players to explain how the peasant fighter came to know linear B, or the cleric the erotic language of the courtesans.

Misc.

I've made it up to the mountains again.  It's quiet and cool and I've seen quail already.  I plan on doing some hiking.  If I get a chance to just sit and think with a lot of coffee in me I think I'm right on the cusp of a cool system you all might like.  Here are a few ideas I had since my last post:

What We're Fighting For
I know folks have different ideas about what hit points represent.  I prefer to keep them loosely connected to physical health and wounds.  But what if after a festival, wedding, or Ewok-style victory party characters got boon hit points that would last until lost (in other words they don't heal back.)?  Maybe half the character's current total if they are low level.  I think it would give a sense that the positive, productive events that happen in the dire borderlands are worthwhile and make players look forward to them more, as they give a protective glow long after the last lanterns are put out.

Burnt Forest Wilderness
A forest that has suffered a fire is very different than the norm and can take years to recover.  I know it's part of the biological cycle but the burnt forest looks grim.  Visibility is much higher with all the low hanging branches and underbrush gone.  Only changes in elevation get in the way of seeing quite far.  I think getting lost should be harder and missile combat easier in burnt forest.  Foraging should be harder but hunting might be easier as deer and game moving through the area would be easier to see.  I think it would be cool to have different monsters to encounter: wounded dryads and things that utilize the burnt landscape for camouflage (see this post from last year).