Courage and Courage Alone (GLoG class: barbarian)

Hopping on the "bespoke single-level Cloak-and-Sword class" bandwagon, started by Locheil's Noble's Man, and continued with Grace's Lutteur duelist, Primeumaton's Detenu paladin,  deus ex parabola's Chaperone, Vayra's Cardinal's Man/Really Good Bird's Man, SunderedWorldDM's Spaniard, AntiTime's Robber thief, Hilander's Beggar, Gokun's Beggeur, TheisticGilthoniel's Huguenot, Arnold's Lackey, Ardent's Grognard fighter, WeirdWriter's Rouge thief, Random Interrupt's Misplaced Samurai fighter, Louis's Damosel, Vivanter's Academian wizard, Ro's Tinker, and Xenophon's Mistimed Quixote paladin.

I think this idea, of making character types with lots of features but no intrinsic advancement structure, is so simple but refreshing. People were saying the Noble's Man was like a game system unto itself but now that there's so many diverse classes to choose from it's almost like making a modular system on the simplest essence of a B/X base.

picture by Louise Murray

Class: Lupe

Start with nothing. You have 2d6-1d6 packmates.

Thou Sinned All: You lack human guilt and all that implies, but I'll enumerate it anyway. Angels can see you. You can carry as much weight as a human, but can probably only grab one or two items carefully harnessed to you. You have no thumbs, but your mouth can count as a hand, and using both front paws together can count as a hand. You can stand upright for short intervals. You communicate in language while keeping eye contact but must rely on wolf sounds otherwise.

Senses: you have big eyes to see better by night with, a long nose to better smell fear and blood with, and big ears to better hear throbbing hearts with.

Barbare: You get -2 reaction with peasants and -1 reaction with common soldiers. You get to look at the overland map for any regions you pass through, but never get to look at any indoor maps. Away from the cities, you can always find secluded spots, prey, and fresh water. You can smell when a countryside is just wrong. Anyone who survives an attack in which you tasted their blood holds Esprit for you.

(My interpretation of Esprit, just trying to combine the other classes' reference to it sensibly, is that it's sort of like hotness or extreme personal awe, the sort of thing that makes you focus on someone with studious sensory attention, and that's why it has a separate reaction table.)

by Sergei Pankejeff

Hierarchy: There is a natural order to the society of wolves.

• The coursier, runner and speaker; serves the 
• archwolf, quartermaster and mother; serves the 
• arche, wayfinder and sergeant; serves the 
• Forces, border-keepers and revengers; serve the 
• Avantines, who guide seasons and consult saints;  serve the 
• Alphas, who direct wars and create; serve the
• Sieges who act as a last-resort court; serve the
• Might-Nots, scholars of things beyond lupine experience; serve the
• pyromanes, who judge when we are obliged to consume the world.

Most wolves focus on the business of everyday living, and many wander free of their duty for years. But those loners who spurn the hierarchy of nature are shunned, called "Rançonée", and excluded from all truces.

Truce: It is legal to kill a wolf, but if you dare kill one frivolously and are found out, you risk the whole city. It is permitted by the custom of wolves to kill a man, but if a hunt is called because of you, then you are an exile. Thus do wolves covet the mark of the soldier, the musketeer, and the noble, for it allows them the outlet of the duel.

Man-Eater: ten minutes for a juvenile, an hour for an adult, all night for one you hold Esprit for. Your lifespan is 20 years, plus the years of humans you cut short. 

Appel: once ever, spend a night howling to gather 2d100+200 wolves to you. If they don't indubitably support your cause, they will eat you. If you use this ability to avenge the proven wrongful murder of a wolf, gain +1 more use of it.

Stealth: 3-in-6 in shadowy or foliaged places

from Dark Souls II

Ferocity: if you hurt someone with your teeth and claws, roll a d6 for an extra effect:

1. disarm them
2. knock them over
3. grab hold of them
4. drink up their blood to regain half as much HP as the attack dealt
5. drench them in so much blood they're unrecognizable
6. roll twice and combine.

If you get "roll twice and combine" three times on a roll, you simply tear them apart; regain all your HP, you are so drenched in blood no one can differentiate you from another wolf, and those who hold Esprit for you save or fall in love with you.

Nature Loves Thee Best: your hide counts as light armor and DR 1. Claws + mouth deal 1d8 damage. Claws OR mouth deal 1d4 damage. Your attacks count as magic, silver, exc. when it would mean you bypass some immunity.

Marginal Turf: if a wolf becomes a figure in Le Great Game, she may only chew on the margins. The maximum total Knowledge, Riches, and Sway of all wolf figures in an area is equal to 30 minus the stat of that area's biggest figure. 

☥★☥★☥★☥★☥★☥★☥★☥★☥★☥★☥★☥★☥★☥★☥★

Sike, this class isn't riding the wave of bespoke single-level Cloak-and-Sword classes. It's satisfying Vayra's prompt for GLAUGust, "class referencing the previous 17 entries in a fictional, didn't-actually-happen class bandwagon."

Mothers of Fear (d12 Wells)

The love of Summer burns me sore

The love of Summer runs with haste

A dame I met, deranged for war

A man I met, bold and unchaste

The dazed armies march my land through

What land do these knights march into?

A well! A well! A well! A well!

by Vaishali Raul

Satisfying deux ex parabola's prompt for GLAUGust, "Selection of interesting wells, wishing or non-wishing"

d12 Wells

1. Leads down into level 2 of the dungeon
2. Wishing well, fountain de la bella. Fishmaid hides deep in the well, hears your wish, and may decide to fulfill it. She is of the same elden brood as Santa Claus, and can move unseen, squeeze through tight spaces, and craft fine things.
3. Heavy chain running down into a well fathoms deep. Takes two hours of painstaking work to pull the chain up to the point that it snaps a trigger at the bottom that starts tearing the chain back down (save to get caught and dragged with it if you didn't stack the slack chain neatly), like a gigantic drawstring in the back of a doll. This mechanism causes a volcano to erupt, or sends the titans into a week of frenzy, or otherwise brings disaster.
4. Blessed by Holy Benjamin. If poison touches the well, it just rolls around on the surface like droplets on hydrophobic fabric. The well itself cries out in accusation, and the townsfolk come out to throw you in chains. Therefore, no one imagines that the local deacon has found a way to thwart the well's blessing, hiding Freakout Drugs in holy wafers and throwing them in by night...
5. The Well of Rime. In a leaf-laden courtyard, it stands radiating defiant frost. Faded words around its rim: "PLUMB ME NOT LOVERS OF EASE NOR THOSE FOR GOLD GREEDY" but the words are spaced to leave no sign of where to start or end so the DM should begin in the middle and wrap around. Within, 30 feet down, a snow-grey void can be seen. Halfway down, gravity reverses. If you make it to the other end, the void turns out to be a foreign sky, this end of the well in a courtyard, an avernal twin to the one you descended from. The whole world sprawls out in frigid alternate to the world you know, a colder world where gold brings life-giving warmth but gradually reforms you, like a bear to her young, into a creature very like a dragon-- with instincts animal, appetites venal, and passions criminal.
6. Dungeon well, with glittering coins in brownish water. If you pull on one of these fakes, a trapdoor in the ceiling above the well drops a dire wolf onto your head, and it will probably kill you in its frantic attempt to get out of the well.
7. Well of Lady Summer. Each sunset, the ghosts of many shattered legions march into the well. Drinking of the ghostwater gives you 1d6 extra HP that abandons you the next time someone crits or rolls max damage against you.
8. Junked up well, full of the trash of orcos who passed through. In order of top to bottom: broken tools, bags of shit, three dead orcos with pocket change, an animate and pissed skeleton warrior, sundry sundered tapestries and art pieces, a +1 flail that burns you if you're not noble, seventeen yeomen militiamen (deceased), ash and various coins, an owlbear pellet containing an adventurer's skeleton and a potion of comprehend languages and a jar of owlbear urine, the remains of an owlbear juvenile, rotting grain, a sack of old onions, stinky water, copper coins.
9. Grants one wish, but doesn't understand much beyond what it can see and hear
10. Full of magma. Magically strengthened bucket and rope. Enchanted to turn the magma into lava as it raises up
11. Mosaic bottom concealed by mud. If cleared, shows that it depicts a rosy-cheeked gnome with a key and the magical password needed to bypass a gate elsewhere in the dungeon: KALATONA
12. Under the rippling water, you see a waterlogged, emaciated elf struggling as though banging his fists against the surface. If a rope is lowered in, he can grab it and be pulled out. Spooky-looking but grateful, Rayathiel can explain that he was trapped by the enchanted waters of the well. As a companion, he is enthusiastic and gives frequent advice based on decades-outdated rumors.

Flux: the Peach and the Deep Blue Sea

 After rereading Nick LS Whelan's outline for exploring "flux spaces" and resolving to dig into Glaugust, I thought I would combine the two and make a flux space for the prompt "Create Something Inspired By Kingdom Hearts Without Looking Up Anything About Kingdom Hearts". As it happens, I played Kingdom Hearts II, so I know the way to design a Kingdom Hearts-ass world, taking a Disney movie situation and adding demons. We imagine that the player characters arrive to the peach on some kind of gelatin spaceship and find themselves more or less stuck, out of duty or necessity, as crew on the peach.

Flux: The Atlantic Ocean

Theme: due to improbable circumstance, a young boy, James, is fleeing his abusive aunts on a house-sized peach floating across the ocean, accompanied by five human-sized bugs and Olph, a neotenous swordsman from another world, with shocking white hair and a gunsword. These strange guardians protect James as they attempt to plumb the unseen currents of the ocean, pass through strange hazards, and find their way to New York City on an ocean that does not want them to make it.

As they have no food, when a "Deplete" is rolled on the event die, more of the peach is eaten, depleting its Flesh score by 1. Its score starts at 6, and at 0 it is no longer seaworthy. If everyone on the peach is able to have some other victual, they preserve its Flesh score.

Most foes will not attack James directly, as he is a harmless child. But he has a Heart score of 10. Whenever a friend dies, he loses 1 Heart. The Rhinoceros and his horrible Aunts' attacks, intimidations, or beratements deal [dice] damage to his Heart score rather than his HP. He loses 1 Heart for each flux turn spent captured by Nobodies. If he reaches 0 Heart, he becomes a Heartless. 

Encounters (2d4)

• 2: The Rhinoceros That Killed James's Parents (stats as lightning-breathing dragon)
• 3: Pirate Wreck (full of 2d4 skeleton pirates and nautical gear that would give a positive event die for 1d3 turns. On negative reaction roll, will attempt a surprise capture of the peach and then make PCs walk the plank.)
• 4: Heartless Mechanical Shark (stats as shark with 10 Morale)
• 5: Flock of Heartless Stormcrows. Seek to eat the peach. (stats as flying insect swarm. If captured, can be used to lift the peace into the air, giving a positive event die to all movement for as long as they can be kept)
• 6: Aunt Spiker and Aunt Sponge in their flattened car, somehow (stats as bugbears, but very scary to children)
• 7: Rival Adventuring Party in a mollusk-shaped submarine
• 8: The Nobodies; Senvrax, Rexhult, Xertvinav, Xogo, Vaxulinav, and Muregexis. Robed malefactors who crashed in a gummy ship of their own. Wish to steal James's Nobody as a sacrifice to get their engines running again, which requires making him into a Heartless. (Stats as ogres)

Local Effects

• Listless Winds and Melancholy. James despairs, losing 1 Heart. If cheered with good company, song, exc. he may save to resist this. 
• Wormhole. The peach dips and spins slightly in the water, causing water to begin spilling in from a hole. If PCs can't figure out a way to spin the axis of the peach or plug the hole, the bug crew will have to keep bailing water until this local effect occurs again, giving a negative encounter die.

Points of Interest

Shallow Zones (d6)

• 1: Vanishing Isle. Marble dungeon complex on the back of a giant turtle. Holds the Hand of Midas, a potent artifact that turns all it touches to gold, but the turtle will dive again after only an hour of emerging from the foam.
• 2: Island of the Cicadas. Coquettish cicada-people sing on the bone-studded shores. The bug crew must save or be driven to crash the peach on the rocks in their love-crazed desire to get closer to the song. If not arrested, the peach will lose 1d2 Flesh, everyone on the surface of the peach must save or be thrown to their deaths in the breakers, and everyone within must save or take 1d6 damage as they are tossed around.
• 3: Ocean log. Seems like a massive leafless tree improbably floated out to the middle of the ocean. Actually a giant crocodile. If slain, its tongue can be eaten to be permanently magically enlarged, as everyone knows.
• 4: Treasure Island. Home to 30-50 feral muppet hogs currently rebuffing an incursions by Long John Silver and his muppet pirate crew for their 70,000 doubloon treasure.
• 5: Cruise Ship. May grant food and aid, but bougie.
• 6: Iceberg ship. Crew of talking mammals led by the charismatic gigantopithecus Captain Gutt. Offers rescue and friendship, but plans to impress the useful-looking members of the party and eat the weaker ones. Wields a +1 sawfish skull sword.

Deep Zones

• 1: North Pole. Freezing waters and cold air give a negative event die for four turns.
• 2: New York City. Shining city of opportunity, where the firemen are respected, Lady Liberty lifts her lamp beside the golden door, and if you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us. If the rhinoceros is still alive, it appears in a vast stormfront to make one last attempt on James's life.

VtM 5e: PC Generator

 Recently got into a short-series VtM 5e game, and have been interested to see how it differs from the Revised edition game I have played and run (PC generator here). As sometimes helps me come to grips with a system, here is a character generator for a VtM PC. A few notes:

• This randomizes what is normally a fully free-chosen process, so you should feel free to modify and reallocate as you wish.
• To make characters more reliably playable, I ensured the attribute related to their predation style was always a 3, and I put a limit on the number of less useful skills like Craft and Performance a character can have. It will be 1-3, depending on their skill allocation.
• Except for a couple predation type flaws, it should be impossible for a character to have a redundant merit or flaw, whether duplicated or redundant with their clan type. However, the generator does allow merits and flaws that contradict each other. I recommend trying to creatively interpret them before simply re-allocating them.
• The convictions are pretty whitebread; you should iterate on them.
• There's a couple surprises in here. I hope you like them : 3

The Twenty Unspeakable Substances

1. Naparmian Fire, being composed of gelid flame, that it may bedevil any whom it contact.
2. Sicharum, being a mixture of alchemicals to adulterate tobacco, that it renders the user and those about them half-mortified. Intensified in the Hand of Gloree.
3. Cacheban, being the vinegar of the venom of the wyrm of the Anor, that it kills painfully as it confers amnesia and agreeable temperament, so that murder becomes an aid to fraud.
4. Ridan Steel, being an alloy unknown in Druidom, formed from azurized and folded steel, that it may leave its essence in wounds it cuts and drives men to larceny and rampancy.
5. Brimstone, being the spoor of the devil, that it may be mixed into a powder by gravediggers and pharmacists to blast beneath palaces or in ingenious tubes to propel stones at the goodly, this latter use being the pursuit for which the substance is named.
6. Ectoplasm of Curse and Grudge, being a quiescent residue that ghostes perspire, that reprisal is inflicted on others beyond the justice of natural law.
7. Hermeous Fluid, being a shining fluid that resembles burnished brass when stilled, its breath stealing the sense of common folk, that it enhances its own comprehension and thus avoid lawful destruction save by those who may pass high justice upon it.
8. Ziphos Nectar, being the ambrosia of a certain fruit forbidden to name, that those who taste of it will grow languid in preferring the sensations of a false world before that of reality.
9. Alber, being a dark matte metal, that saints, doctors and other creatures deemed holy might be repelled by its presence or harmed the more direly for the wound being inflicted by it.
10. Asbestos, being the fibers of a mineral that well shirks heat, that it may corrupt the lungs and words of those around it.
11. Lacunazon, being a verdurous fluid which stiffens and grows icy in moderate cold, that it absorbs the intention of the air to weaken the cope of Heaven above it, so that diabolicals and ludificos may break through't.
12. Fairyglass, being glass sharp-edged and fired to possess a gossamer hue, that those spies through the glass have their dissembling laid bare but seem altogether bestial, so that the love of humanity leaves the viewer.
13. Mendolwood, being the thick-ring lumber of the trees of lands we know not, that, being fashioned into the shape of dolls and puppets, become an enemy to all.
14. Orphan ectoplasm, being a quiescent residue formed by the death of children themselves bereft, so, as the scholars say, it is ontologically separated from the truth of its own creation.
15. Unicorn blood, being the bright ichor of the creature Paradoxa Monoceros, so that unworthy suppliants are empowered and impoverished by its medicorium.
16. Dark monads, being the disparate stuff which may act as though in disconcert and chaos due to a pre-established disharmony with the devil, so speeding the destruction of the world
17. Cuckold dust, being the ground cornus of the domestic cuckold, so those who may inhale it become likewise credulous and fall to mischief.
18. Linguistic ichor, being the particles of speech captured primarily by ingenious sieves, so the dosed person becomes eloquent but shallow of wit.
19. Brazil, being a crystalline growth that resembles gold.
20. Cold-rust, being the air-tapered residue of wet, unalloyed iron which has been produced at a low heat, so sickening those who handle it in proportion to the span of life they may expect.