#nsr ttrpg

[scampir]

Another cohost repost

So the question is, can a dungeon be designed that can be explored in a way that is not imperial. To beat semantics out of the gate, I want to say that the Dungeon is a game artifact (toy) of an unknown place broken up into serial, self-contained rooms (though exceptions are made to subvert expectations). For Imperial, as an adverb, I want to throw out a definition from Tom Nairn and Paul James' Globalization and Violence: where Empire can

"extend relations of power across territorial spaces over which they have no prior or given legal sovereignty, and where, in one or more of the domains of economics, politics, and culture, they gain some measure of extensive hegemony over those spaces to extract or accrue value"

I'm using this definition because I think it aligns well with critiques of the use of "dungeons" as this kind of toy framework in ttrpgs.

Maybe i'm wasting my breath here, but there's a trifecta of verbs that's tied to the og dungeon crawl that I argue fulfills this definition, where we can say that we're playing at imperial relations. It's to Explore (which is not obligated to be but can be read as creating an encounter with an imperial "other"), loot (which is to say, to take regardless of who it belongs to), and to fight, which is to say to use physical violence to overcome obstacles that get in the way of the former two verbs.

Empire can seem too big an organization to apply to a band of haggard thieves who could die to a stiff breeze. With the backdrop of AD&D's lore being tied to a civilization v savagery conflict of law vs chaos it's a lot clearer, but even if you ignore or simply never touch the lore things are happening at the table that make a game out of the imperial relation. So, consider this shitpost allegory:

Dungeon Wildcatting

Let's say that instead of gold for xp it was Oil for xp. By the barrel. That's right. The more barrels of sweet elven crude you get on your character sheet the faster you get your next hit die. Here we are, trying to follow a rumour to where an untapped well of oil might be located. What happens when people are already there who disagree with your goal of setting up a derrick?

What if this is an NSR game where the pcs are in debt? Does that make it interesting? I'm all for compromised characters but I think it's a touch too charitable to forgive violence for economic gain because someone was in debt. It reads very pretty but spoils under scrutiny. In this light, debt as character motivation was really only revolutionary in that it was a way to victimize a player character and make their choices more sympathetic.

You know the A to B from here. It's been in the discourse for like, 6 years now and beyond. This is the dungeon as we know it, as some of us enjoy it, and as some of us critique it.

And now, the Dungeon as Prison

Dungeon is such a misnomer for what the toy is used for. Dungeons are prisons. They lock people away and control them. It's a different kind of game when you go into a prison, because your freedom is what's at stake. This is what I tried to achieve when I ran The Bureau by Goblin Archive in Robins by Coffee as "The Brut". An exercise in trying to scratch away and find a new kind of dungeon politic.

Let's posit this: Is it an imperialist politic when the "dungeon" is a prison complex for a government that persecutes you (in this case a Robin) and others like you, but would happily divide your community into groups that could be bent into useful purposes and those that were too dangerous to even see the light of day? Can you even sell the ritual knives you find in vaults that grow stronger the more blood it drinks? When making sure the best-made boot to put on your neck is their 9-5, are you actually encountering the other, or is this someone in your society that you understand very well actually? When you trespass around a government blacksite, is this actually replicating the colonial adventure just because we use similar verbs? Or does the political context of this imagined oppressive state actually matter? Is there enough substance to connect walking through shared office space or well-funded research labs to connect the two to the point that we can say they are the same or are they different?

I wanted to ask that question and I had been asking it for the 7 months that I ran that megadungeon. What I found was that the players never went in with the plan to make money; only to find out how to stop the place from harming them further. It was all very para-brechtian, and, I am going to say that I'm very happy with myself for at least trying to run a dungeon in a different kind of way. For three design choices I made for this dungeon:

The reason that the game revolved around exploring the dungeon and mapping it was because a state organ built to persecute, assimilate, or exploit Robins built it (or rather, dreamed it) to resist infiltration.

The reason that you have to use violence is because the dungeon was a centralized hub of information used to persecute Robins.

The reason that there are objects of wealth in the dungeon is because there is profit to be made by the state and it's collaborators in rendering the Robins into an underclass.

It's still violence. I didn't let the players forget that the people working in the facility were people too, but at the same time, I am not satisfied playing devil's advocate for fascists. Does this mean that the Dungeon is a container for the dehumanized? That's something I've tried to develop while running ICON 😜. For Robins (playtest version) It was more about reflecting on that dungeon artifact. Toy.

[level2janitor]

Introduction to the OSR

what's an OSR? it's a game that's kinda like old-school D&D. or is old-school D&D. or is compatible with old-school D&D. an OSR game generally has some or all of the following principles:

low character power with highly lethal combat. in old-school D&D a 1st-level fighter has d8 hit points and a longsword does d8 damage, and you die at 0HP. this is not to ensure characters die all the time but to emphasize the next bullet point:

emphasis on creative problem solving. most situations cannot be solved by straightforward use of your abilities (such as charging into every situation with swords drawn, if a fighter), so the game tests lateral, outside-the-box thinking.

emphasis on diegetic progression. spells are found, not obtained automatically on level-up. you get XP by finding gold more than killing monsters. most of your cool abilities come from magic items. making alliances & hiring followers is encouraged.

focus on managing inventory, resources, risk, and time. the players are constantly faced with meaningful decisions; this is the heart of the game.

very sandbox-oriented. the focus on creative problem solving means the game must be accommodating to players taking a course of action the GM didn't plan for. use lots of random tables to generate emergent story. some elements of new simulationism.

high tactical transparency, i.e., the optimal course of action is rarely system-specific, and ideally very possible for a new player to intuit.

usually semi-compatible with old D&D, but not always. usually rules-lite, but not always.

what does the OSR mostly NOT do?

focus on character builds. these change the focus too much to be on the rules than the fiction, can create situations where stuff everyone should be able to do is an ability locked to one class, and impede tactical transparency.

resolve everything with a die roll. combat uses dice to be scary, unpredictable and most importantly not your default course of action. everything else should bring up dice rarely - dice are your plan B when your plan A fails. the best plans need no dice.

use linear storytelling or put players into a writer/GM role. linear storytelling gets in the way of the decision-making so core to the playstyle; letting players write details into the setting is mutually exclusive with them discovering it.

rules for everything. 400 pages of crunch is worse at simulating a believable world than the GM and players' shared understanding. OSR games rely constantly on GM ruling.

mostly still applies to all the above. making your system a "pure" OSR game comes second to doing what's best for your game.

System recommendations

old D&D or a retroclone

old-school D&D - or old school essentials or basic fantasy or swords & wizardry, which are old D&D's mechanics repackaged with quality-of-life tweaks (and the upside of not giving WOTC your money) - are usually the go-to when recommending someone's first OSR game. they're actually not my first pick, though!

PROS:

very complete, with more robust rules than a lot of the lighter games on this list.

100% compatibility: most OSR adventures are statted for old school essentials. converting them to other OSR systems is usually simple, but not 1-for-1.

easier to find games for. anyone interested in the OSR space knows what old school essentials is.

CONS:

jank. these games largely still have weird saves, level limits for non-humans, some still have descending AC, etc etc. it's not that bad but it is there

i hate thief skills. lots of essential dungeoneering actions are locked to the thief class as abilities, with abysmally low success chances. this is stuff i prefer being handled without a roll. thieves in this system suck and make everyone else worse at dungeon crawling by existing.

there's just lots of really cool shit in other systems i'm about to go into that you just don't get here

Knave 1e and its various hacks

this is a 7-page super-lightweight system that boils everything down to just the essentials.

rolling a character takes like 5 minutes. roll stats, roll gear, roll traits, go. done. it's great.

characters are defined entirely by stats and gear, no classes. wanna be a fighter, have high strength and carry a big sword and armor. wanna be a wizard, have high intelligence and fill your inventory with spells. item slots are elegant and pretty limited.

initiative is instant: roll d6. 1-3, monsters go first. 4-6, PCs go first. swingy, but god it is so smooth and shaves like the most boring 5 minutes off of every combat

monsters are so very elegant. old D&D gives monsters a "hit dice" rating to determine their HP, e.g. a 3HD monster rolls 3d8 for hit points. knave takes this number (HD) and uses it for attack rolls and saves (aside from exceptionally bad/good saves), so a knave statblock looks something like this.

spells are all one or two sentences long & extremely easy to remember.

7 pages is so light. i have the system basically memorized.

DOWNSIDES: there's no dungeon crawling rules (standard for meatier OSR games & something i consider essential) and no real bestiary, though the second point isn't a huge deal cause they're so easy to make. it also kinda assumes you already know how to run OSR games, so there's very little real advice or guidance.

KNAVE HACKS

knave 1e is in creative commons & comes with an editable word doc for you to publish with modifications, so there's a ton of variants (there was a spreadsheet of them somewhere, but i can't find it).

Grave is a favorite - i'm two years into a grave campaign and it's fantastic. it's a dark-souls-y version of knave with some really elegant innovations.

you have a set number of deaths before you for-reals die, as every character plays an undead as is dark souls tradition. makes it good for OSR beginners! being able to tell when you're close to your final death is really good - it lets you emotionally prepare for losing your character & raises the stakes more the more you die. (though honestly you should probably cut the number of extra deaths in half, it's super generous)

XP and gold are combined into one resource, souls. legendary creatures drop big souls you can make into magic items. this has ended up being the coolest thing in my current campaign. my players love finding powerful souls to make into magic items it's so fun

uses preset packages of stats/gear instead of knave's rolled ones, filling the role of more traditional character classes. has the wonderful side effect of not making you get stuck with low stats cause you rolled bad one time.

you have stamina equal to your empty item slots. you spend stamina on spells if you're a caster, or free maneuvers (on top of your attack at no action cost) if you're not. it's super elegant.

there's 3 classes of spells: wizardry for intelligence, holy magic for wisdom, and witch stuff for charisma. nice and intuitive.

there's a page of 50 magic items each a couple sentences long. this PDF is worth it just for the magic items.

DOWNSIDE: see the downsides for knave 1e. all still apply.

i enjoyed grave so much i made a variant of it with the dark souls bits removed (and some dungeon crawl rules added!) to use for my standard fantasy campaigns.

Knave 2e

sadly knave 2e is not purchasable yet (i backed it on kickstarter so i have access, though). but when it comes out i highly recommend it.

much larger and denser than knave 1e. it finally has dungeon crawling rules, it has GM and player guidance, everything is refined and the layout is so so nice and readable.

combat is a bit more interesting than 1e. you can break your weapon against an enemy to deal max damage. you get a free maneuver on high attack rolls.

there's rules for stuff like alchemy, warfare, building a base. it all kicks ass.

there are so many goddamn tables. i rifle through it anytime i need inspiration.

DOWNSIDES: some of the new rules are a little untested & wonky. introducing randomness into how often your rations spoil or your lights go out can cause issues.

Mausritter

you play tiny little mice! in a world full of big dangerous things that want to eat mice. cat = dragon. you get it. what more could you want

the mouse thing is just super intuitive. you get the dynamic between you and the big scary lethal world. fantastic OSR game to introduce kids

nice and robust ruleset; nothing feels missing

tons of super nice GM stuff! faction rules, tools for rolling up hexcrawls and dungeons, plenty of tables

super clean readable layout. font isn't too small to avoid being intimidating. guidance is really nice and clear.

combat is autohit. super fast & lethal.

100% free

look mausritter is just. good. i wanna run it so bad someday

Worlds Without Number

sort of a middle ground between OSR stuff and 5e. paid version here free version here

lots of classes, at least in the paid version. the free version comes with just the warrior, expert and mage. there's feats and more of a focus on builds than most OSR games. if you like more mechanical build variety than a typical OSR game, this is a great game for you!

extremely good multiclassing. y'know how in most games if you just mash together two classes you think are cool you'll end up with a total mess? not here! every combo is viable and works fine! easily the best multiclassing of any game i've touched

an absurd amount of GM stuff and tables. easily more than any of the other stuff i've praised for also having them. but personally i haven't dug into them as much, so i can't really comment on them

skills the way modern D&D has them. you roll dice and try to beat a target number. i don't tend to like rolled skills, but most people do, so if that's your thing WWN has them

DOWNSIDES

the layout is terrible. everything is a huge wall of text with very little use of bold text or bullet points to draw attention to the important bits. the table of contents has like 15 things in it for a 400-page book! i couldn't find any of the paid-version-exclusive classes for like a month after i bought it! looking up rules is a nightmare.

the way the default setting handles "evil races" is like an exaggerated parody of all the problematic aspects of how D&D handles it. like, it wants so bad for you to have an excuse to genocide sentient free-willed people. but at least the default setting is easy to chuck in the trash

Dungeon Crawl Classics

the goal of this system is to take all of the crazy gonzo moments people remember playing old-school D&D in their childhood and turn all of that up to 11 while cutting the stuff that doesn't add to that. i think a lot of its innovations have ended up kind of standard in newer OSR stuff (like fighters getting maneuvers with their attacks), but it still has more to offer.

the funnel: you start the game with four randomly rolled dipshit peasants that you then throw into a meatgrinder to get horribly killed. you pick one of the survivors to be your 1st-level character.

maneuvers: fighters roll an extra die with each attack that gets bigger as you level. if it's a 3 or higher, you get to do a cool thing on top of your attack. pretty standard for OSR games, but this game popularized it!

crit tables: fighters also get more crits and nastier crits as they level. every crit, you roll on the crit table. maybe you chop off a dude's arm. maybe you just knock them over. maybe you shatter their shield. it's very cool

spell tables: i don't really like roll-to-cast mechanics, generally. but DCC goes so all-in on roll-to-cast that it still looks fun as hell to watch. you cast a fireball and maybe it goes how you want. or maybe you explode, or you nuke everything in a half-mile radius, or from now on you permanently ignite flammable materials you touch, or whatever. casters just have to put up with turning into a weird mutated mess across a campaign

there's no dungeon crawl rules, no encumbrance - this game is all about the big over-the-top wacky shit, and is not really interested in the more down-to-earth number crunching. it's more in the you-die-hilariously-all-the-time area of OSR than the you-avoid-death-through-clever-play area. not really my thing but the system knows exactly what it wants to be and i respect it

iron halberd

this one is mine! as the author i'm not qualified to tell you what isn't good about my system, so just assume it's worse than i make it sound, but here's a bunch of the selling points

semi-random character creation where you flip back and forth between rolling dice and getting your own input. roll stats, pick ancestry. pick starting gear kit, roll different dice based on which kit you picked. etc etc. stats are random but all equally viable (no rolling incredibly low or high stats). every time i run this game the character creation is a hit. seriously go roll up a character it'll sell you on the whole thing

you start out a lot stronger than a standard OSR character but grow way more slowly. i don't like 4th-level characters being 4 times as strong as 1st-level ones; HP never gets that high. emphasis is more on diegetic progression instead.

way too many subsystems for alchemy, crafting, strongholds, warfare, renown, rituals, likes 9 pages of magic items, a whole subsystem for becoming a cleric mid-campaign. i couldn't help myself i love this shit

in my current campaign we had a player permanently sacrifice some max HP to become a necromancer after deliberating on whether that's a good idea for like thirty seconds, which instantly made me think my necromancy system is a success

also free

Adventure recommendations

(in rough order of size)

Moonhill Garden (by Emiel Boven): look at this. look at it! this is like the best template for a little dungeon in an OSR game. all of the little factions are tied together. this would be a great oneshot to introduce people to an OSR system with.

A gathering of blades (by Ben Milton): a system-neutral, one-page sandbox. i ran this for an iron halberd game and it went super well. lasted like 7 sessions. highly recommend.

The Waking of Willowby Hall (by Ben Milton): a single dungeon with a million things going on. it's super chaotic with half a dozen different factions crashing into each other and a big angry goose. highly recommend, especially for kids

The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford (by Chance Dudinack): small sandbox with a fun fairytale vibe and a very fleshed-out little town. and a big nasty dragon.

Evils of Illmire (by Zack Wolf): this is a very dense, entire campaign's worth of hexcrawl in a very compact package for like $5. it doesn't do anything particularly new, but the value-for-money is absurd and it's a really good template for how to do a sandbox if you're used to 5e adventures

Ask me anything!

if anything here is unclear or intrigues you, send me asks! i love helping people get into OSR games. i'll link frequently asked questions here if i get any.

[franciscolemos]

Little adventurers

[ostrichmonkey-games]

The Ostrichmonkey Hack

Hey, its out!

Behold, the Basic Rules iteration of my personal NSR/OSR ruleset.

This ruleset came to life when I needed something to run an Into the Cess & Citadel campaign, and decided to take a stab at cobbling something together. It ended up being a mix of different N/OSR conventions I liked, plus some other twists to fit my own personal preferences.

Fundamentally, its a "roll under your attribute" system, and should be broadly compatible with your favorite NSR/OSR/minimalist rulesets and adventures. Made with fantasy-adventure stuff in mind, but with some bending, could probably be made to work with other genres.

So let's get into what's inside.

This first release covers the Basic Rules;

Classless character creation

Rolling the dice

Items

Characters have no defined class, and are made up of a Knack and a Domain. Knacks cover any special abilities and skill you might have, and are activated by spending attribute points (and typically circumvent rolling the dice - spend the points and do the thing!). Knacks are specifically inspired by how Whitehack's Wise class casts "miracles". Domains are broad fields of knowledge and understanding.

Like I said, rolling the dice involves rolling under your attribute score, but there is also a way to apply full/mixed successes to a roll. These rules also cover things like combat. Enemies are immune to damage unless you can target a weakness, meaning that the bulk of combat is about trying to discover and exploit an enemy's weakness.

For the items section of the ruleset, I ended up adapting some of the mechanics I'm developing for Stampede Wasteland, specifically the abstracted resources and money. Gear is also one of the main ways you can change your stats by altering everything from HP to your attributes.

The long term plan for this ruleset is to continuously update and tinker with it, adding in extra subsystems, mechanics, and whatever else I feel is interesting at the time. There's no set schedule for this, so expect updates eventually and whenever.

Right now, you can pick up a text only version of the Basic Rules, which will always remain free (scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the demo files, including character sheet), and then the paid files will be getting the major updates.

First planned update is to finish up the Archetype rules to introduce a class system that can replace or be used alongside knacks. So look for that down the road.

Anyways, go check it out!

[vajrapoet]

toying with the idea of having RUN AMOK ACROSS THE HEAVENS' rules manuals and other booklets be in palm leaf manuscript layout (29.7cm x 10.5cm, essentially half an a4, so a single a4 printout would have two pages on it) inspired by seasian palm leaf manuscripts and the layout of the sutras we chant

if i ever start selling printouts of the knight vagrant theyd be in the palm leaf style too. currently learning how to make actual palm leaf manuscript from some bengali speaking indians on yt

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Have you played DAEMONOLOGIE?

By Six Planes Game

Daemonologie is a dark fantasy NSR (New School Revolution) game set in the age of hysterical witch hunts in Jacobean England. Players take the role of members of a secret inquisition outside of the jurisdiction of the Crown, racing against the rising public fear to catch the servants of the Devil before the King's forces start executing the innocent.

[zachhazardvaupen]

Art I did for the premiere Liminal Horror module The Bureau.

[interstellerbookthief]

New game system with simplicity in mind get it free on archfeyuk.itch.io

[ultimavela]

This is a collection of magical items I created for an OSR game I’m GMing.

I use conditions in them. Condition work super simple, if you get one, then any roll that you make that could be influenced by the condition is modified by the number beside it.

For example, if you have “sprained ankle (-2)”, this condition will modify a roll with a “-2” if the roll is being influenced by the condition. So if you are chasing someone probably your roll will be modified by a “-2”, but if you are researching information in a book the condition will not affect your roll.

Besides that, conditions are stored in item-slots, but if you are playing a game without item-slots you can write the condition you get in any part of your character sheet.

And finally, if you get the same condition twice, you just add their numbers and write them once.

If anything of this is unclear in this post I talk about the use of conditions.

Now, here there are, 60 magical curiosities to choose at random!

[grislyeye]

Reading the old Pelinore setting that was serialised in Imagine magazine, and was the basis for the Oldhammer worldbuilding. It's really, really good. Just look at these maps.

[indie-ttrpg-of-the-week]

The Big OSR Post

What better way to close out the blog's first month but with a huge repository of fun OSR games? I'm not personally a huge fan, but I understand this is a genre people really enjoy, so as a compromise, I'll do every OSR submitted in a masterpost. I understand this is probably a pretty controversial move, but I simply think the genre's too similar to each other, I might be wrong but that's just the vibe I get! I'm sure there's some very fun and creative OSRs out there, they're just not made for me. I'll keep myself from sharing my thoughts on the genre for now, but rest assure these are cool games recommended by people who actually enjoy the genre!

Well, except this one:

Trespasser is really good. It's a mix of the Combat of 4e, with the dungeon crawling, character creation, and general vibe of OSR, it's a really good time, and its a high recommend from me personally Now on to the list of games actually by people who care about OSR:

This one's a very very popular one, Mausritter is based on stuff like Redwall, and it's chock full of incredibly high quality fanmade content, if you want an OSR where you play as a little rat, check this one out

This one's pretty interesting, I was debating giving it its own post because it just breaks so many OSR conventions but it calls itself an OSR, so in here it goes ig. Fist is a game that takes the narrative first approach of a PBTA game, but combines it with lightning speed disposable character creation, to truly give you the experience of being an expendable mercenary going against unfathomable odds. This game's pretty fun, I'd check it out even if you're not into the OSR genre

this one's pretty popular, Electric Bastionland is a simple OSR that focuses on exploring a huge underground city, its very rules lite so you can usually get up and running with it pretty quick so go check it out if you want a simpler game

https://punkpadour.itch.io/yokai-hunter

Yokai Hunter's Society, its a good rules light game, a recommend if you want to hunt weird folkloric monsters

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/399483/Into-the-Odd--Remastered

This one's not on itch so sorry if you're allergic to non-itch.io websites

it's set in an underground society where one explores to find treasure. its a good fun time for all involved

look the tone isn't because i dislike these games, its because i wrote this entire post once and then tumblr glitched and made me lose all of it

https://emielboven.itch.io/tea-01

the setting's really fun, and the rules are lite, it's a good time. The setting is specifically based on Morrowind, Dark Sun, and other weird fiction.

https://graculusdroog.itch.io/vaults-of-vaarn

Vaults of Vaarn is a psychodelic ttrpg set in a postapocalyptic earth, its weird, fun, and also i believe its like entirely hand drawn which really adds to the aesthetic

https://tuesdayknightgames.itch.io/mothership-players-survival-guide

Mothership is a space horror OSR, its a biiiit more complex than the other ones, but its also got a shit ton of fan resources, and its also pretty basic in its character creation to make up for it

https://diogo-old-skull.itch.io/primal-quest-essentials

I got this one in a bundle actually

While the rules weren't for me, I think the setting is really cool, stone age fantasy is just really underrated as a concept, we need more of it!

We Deal in Lead is a weird west ttrpg, so if you're into that aesthetic, go check it out. its focused on exploration and player choice, and it can also be played with only one or two players

Beetle Knight is cool, its set in a tiny world where bugs are an organized society, think hollow knight, it's not out just yet, but its something to keep an eye on

OK I've actually PLAYED this one, so I can have an opinion on it: the WIthout Number series isn't great. BUT, there's a few rules which are ridiculously fun and well designed, so I honestly think this is a YMMV franchise. the biggest issue is how the rolling for HP works, if you can fix that, they're perfectly acceptable OSR games

Songbirds 3e is a surrealist game about being chosen (Or cursed) by death to help spirits passing on, when spirits are left stuck on earth they grow more and more monstrous every day, and its YOUR job to stop them from growing into a problem, no pressure. https://davidblandy.itch.io/lost-eons

Lost Eons is neat, its a game set in a solarpunk post apocalypse where magic's all around and actively mutating everyone around. It's got a cool post human look at the world, fairly simple yet fun rules, weird and interesting spellcasting rules, and more!

Knave is a streamlined classless OSR game, i heard a lot about this one and from what I can read its actually a really fun time, so check it out https://yochaigal.itch.io/cairn

(these last two go together since they're both Knave derivatives just with different settings and some more interesting mechanics) https://killjestergames.itch.io/errant this game was pitched to me as "Maximalist second only to literally just D&D 1e hacks", so thats about as much of a pitch most people really need. It actually looks pretty interesting

https://gormengeist.itch.io/greed

GREED or: Oil for the Blood God! It's an intensely surreal game by @gormengeist, its from what I can tell a sort of deconstruction of the OSR genre of game, so definitely a bit more on the niche side, but its fairly interesting and well designed

[threeninepress]

Three Nine Digest #19

This week I have been mostly thinking about… my Mausritter adventure (Fast Show reference in case anyone is as ancient and British as I am).

Below is what I’ve collected from previous dispatches regarding my adventure hooks, npcs and the spell I’ve made. The bit that’s new is the spell token, which includes a spell tablet I drew (yep, continuing with my audacious plan to draw this entire adventure myself).

I’m putting all these in one spot because my next step will be harvesting them and putting them in my project on Affinity. At first I am going to stay pretty true to how the adventures are laid out in the excellent The Estate collection. I’ll probably fiddle with things once that’s done and make it more my own.

For now, though, here’s the state of play for Goodnight Maus.

Goodnight Maus

(Mausritter adventure site inspired by Goodnight Moon)

Adventure Hooks

Pick or Roll 1D6

The youngster Hamish Quickfoot has not been seen since he ventured off in search of fortune in the Great Green Room. His parents are offering a reward for anyone who can bring him home safely.

Toliver Thickwhisker, Burgher of Under-Step, has commissioned a party to raid the toy house in the Great Green Room. He wants silverware (six places) for an important dinner he is hosting for visiting dignitaries.

Legend has it that the ancient, and magical, arms of Lady Strongbite are located somewhere in the Great Green Room. Her saga states she fell to Rupert, the great orange menace who once called that room home.

The rats of the Wall Gang control the routes in and out of the Great Green Room. They have just raised the price of their tolls. Under-Step’s city council have commissioned a party to scout the room and find alternatives.

The engineer Tink Finetail has designs on an underground engine that could connect Under-Step to Drain’s Hollow. He’ll pay a premium for clockwork mechanisms, the kind known to exist in the Great Green Room.

During a rowdy night at the Weevil’s Head pub bets were taken on whether there was a mouse in Under-Step brave enough to bring home a whisker from Tabitha and Tomasina (the young, but cruel descendants of Rupert, who now stalk the Great Green Room).

NPCs

Hamish Quickfoot5hp, STR 9, DEX 12, WIL 10 Attacks: d8 bow

Wants: To return home with something valuable.

Jerald Longfur4hp, STR 7, DEX 7, WIL 9 Attacks: d6 walking stick

Wants: To be left in peace. Failing that, a good meal.

To read the rest of this post head to Three Nine Press on Substack (it's free!)

[level2janitor]

making a necromancy system for Iron Halberd

i've been mulling over ideas for a whole necromancy subsystem, separate from spells (bringing the total number of different magic systems in this game up to 4). mostly for self-indulgent reasons - it's a way to codify a lot of stuff about necromancy that i've used in my worldbuilding before, but always struggled to work into the mechanics.

Necromancy is easy. why? because i want it to have a seductive-power-of-the-dark-side thing going on. if you meet a necromancer, they can teach you to reanimate undead in a few minutes. anyone can do it. it's a temptation - one that's easy to say yes to, but hard to go back on. accepting these teachings and applying them in an easy ritual grants you the power to reanimate undead, but costs a point of your stamina or vitality - and you can't undo that without some sort of holy magic cleansing you of it. you're a necromancer now.

Necromancy is powerful, and unreliable. when you reanimate an undead, you always succeed. there's a roll involved, but that roll determines whether you control the resulting undead, not whether it's animated in the first place. the difficulty for this roll goes up every time you reanimate something, and goes down a little bit each time you rest; it also can't go lower than the total hit dice of all undead under your control.

Necromancy fills the world with dangerous undead. undead created that you don't control are a problem. they'll usually try and eat you, and if you leave them wandering, they'll probably eat someone else instead. using necromancy brings these hideous monsters into the world and your control over them is fragile. even if you're determined to use your powers for good, your mistakes could cost innocent lives. and i love necromancy working like that. it's much more interesting to me than it just being ontologically evil for objective reasons.

i ended up removing the roll-to-cast system from iron halberd a while ago in place of way more reliable spells, because we didn't find roll-to-cast all that fun, but for necromancy it feels too appropriate to pass up. i want it to be something even the necromancer themselves is afraid of. here's the rules i drafted up:

[franciscolemos]

Adding some color

[tigerissilly]

this is satire this is satire this is satire

since its really hard to read:

name: untitled document 1

inventory: gun, raw beef, netherite boots

know-how: gun, parkour, barbecue

[vajrapoet]

abilities for run amok across the heavens, a post-4e nsr spirit cultivation mysticpunk ultrafantasy rpg

the six abilities are inspired by the five skandhas of buddhism and the six mahabhutas or six great elements in buddhism: fire, water, earth, air, space, and consciousness

of course, i made it so that having too low of one ability is bad, but having too high of it is bad too, in keeping with the madhyamaka/middle way philosophy, but also as a nod to disco elysium