Wednesday, May 20, 2020

Full GLOG Hack: Vain the Sword

NOTE: THIS IS NOW OUT-OF-DATE. THE SECOND EDITION CAN BE FOUND HERE <---
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Click for the link!

Thanks as ever to Arnold K., Skerples, and all the rest. I will try to attentively update this document as mistakes become apparent.
Read a review by SunderedWorldDM here, or thoughts from others (including Arnold K.) in the comments below.

Highlights:
  • Functioning table of contents with links
  • renaming anything in the game that sounds like it's for nerd accountants
  • Roll-under stats
  • Separate dodge-and-block defense
  • a collection of classic and strange base classes, each up to level 4
  • strange languages
  • skills are perhaps magic?
  • charisma as godly grace, charisma-based "battle cry" initiative
  • light-based critical fumble chance
  • Gods! Arcana! Gigre!
  • advice on exploration and hexcrawling
  • an appendix N
  • An example dungeon adventure, "Brenton's Bride."
June 28, 2020 Update
  • Renamed "race" to "folk."
  • Added more description for each folk.
  • Changed how dodge and HP works to simplify math.
  • Cleaned up headers and similar things.
  • Rather than saying you get one ken from your lot and one of your choice, I just wrote every lot to give you an additional ken.
  • Dreamer's dream hunting now more concrete. Introduced nightmare injuries.
  • Replaced dreamer spell "speak with birds" with "argue with birds," since speaking with birds is available to anyone who wants to learn the language.
  • Modified talismans.
  • Reformated death and dismemberment table. Made minor edits.
  • Updated acolyte dictates.
July 15, 2020 Update
  • Replaced ordena with talking animals. They were fine, but playing an ordena is not a sufficiently dramatic change. Also, talking animals keep showing up as NPCs anyway.

11 comments:

  1. I've only just skimmed this, and I would say this is the most unique and interesting GLOGalike I've seen for some time. Well done!

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  2. Does the witness gain witness points per level, if so, how many?

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    1. Are you referring to uses of the witness ability they gain at first level? If so, they can use it once per day for every witness level they have. So a 3rd level witness can use the ability 3 times a day.

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  3. This is extremely lovely and I look forward to watching you make a series of tortuous edits to it over the next few years.

    Can you explain the BLOCK and DODGE thing? You have two defense scores (Dodge = DEX) but what determines which one an attacker can target? Or which one a defender can choose.

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    1. I admit it is a little tricky, as it requires the DM is make a judgement based on **fictional positioning**. The question is whether it is more relevant that an attack needs to get past a guard or not. Generally, you can assume a defender gets to use their better score unless the way they are being attacked sounds like it relates more to the other. If an attacker is maneuvering specifically to target one defense, they will almost always get to target it.

      Sometimes, it's going to be really apparent though. Covering someone in boiling oil always targets DODGE because that's not the kind of thing that armor really helps with. An attack that is sure to connect will target BLOCK, since you need to trust your ability to absorb and deflect it.

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    2. That's pretty fun. It's similar to giving players a +2 bonus for attacking intelligently, I suppose. Attacking a fairy with a net. Attacking a turtle with a sledgehammer.

      Sidenote: you credited Skerples with the Death and Dismemberment Table but 99% of that table is from here: http://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2016/01/my-favorite-month-is-dismember.html

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    3. Thank you for pointing that out; the citation has been edited to reflect this.

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  4. In the Acolyte section, what does it mean for a thing to be Immutable? Also, the word limit counts the total wordcount of every active sentence, yeah?

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    Replies
    1. To answer your first question, that is an artifact of a previous draft and will be edited out. To answer your second question, yes.

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  5. I'm late to this party but just wanted to say that "battle cry" is the most awesomest take on traditional initiative I've ever seen.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you! Never fear, the party never stops

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