My Conduct Can Want No Vindication (GLoG Class: Princess)

It is a tricky class to write. You want it to be social, but at home in dungeons and adventure situations. You want it to be capable, though it draws from a character type known for restraint. So it's tricky.

art by Arthur Rackham

Princess

Start with fine outfit (2 slots), knife-fan, monogrammed kerchief, silver mirror, candelabrum, pint of wine, velvet coinpurse, and Political Prospects. Each level, get +1 WIS.

A: Innocence, Command

B: Token

C: Soprano

D: Diplomacy

Innocence: each slot of finery or culturally significant attire gives you +2 AC, up to the point of equaling plate armor. If you take no dramatic action, no one will harm you worse than dragging you around by the arm. If you fight non-lethally, so will your adversaries. If captured, even scoundrels will spend a long time wheedling and threatening before harming or executing you.

Witches and demons are immune to Innocence.

Command: when not in immediate conflict, you can issue a demand for some kind of accommodation or favor and it will be received favorably, met according to what the target thinks is reasonable. You can use this ability only up to [template] times on the same target (undifferentiated squads and staffs count as the same target) before they sneer at your impetuosity.

Token: by conferring a kerchief or maunch on an ally, you empower them to act on your behalf, both politically and dramatically. If you spend a combat round intent on the willing bearer of your token, you can basically take an extra turn for them; moving them, having them strike a foe, etc.

The token must be prominently displayed and if lost the effect ends. Other PCs will probably be cool about the arrangement, but NPCs might expect some kind of alliance or favor in return.

Soprano: your singing is sweet and clear. In dungeon areas, it can summon an immediate random encounter with a minimum reaction roll equal to [template]x2

Diplomacy: as your envoy, the bearer of your token benefits from your Innocence ability when without armor and you may issue Commands through them. 

 

d12 Political Prospects

1. Single parent is the ruler of a small kingdom. They are evil and have opposite politics to you.

2. Parent and viperous step-parent rule a small kingdom. Step-parent wants you out of the way.

3. Loving parents rule a small kingdom, deep in debt to a witch, fallen chosen one, or dragon.

4. Loving parents driven from their small kingdom in a coup, slumming it in the hinterlands.

5. Loving parents rule a small kingdom despite being hopeless judges of character, trying to marry you off to a shitty baron.

6. NEVER RIGHT EXCUSE. She is a matte black +1 seax, with a hilt of damascene gold and colorful and distracting ribbons of fabric hanging from the pommel. Hates bullshitters and wormtongues, and will whisper to you, lambasting the phonies and suggesting that they'd be more useful in twain.

7. Parents murdered by conquering barbarian. Their former vassals seek to use you to retake the small kingdom.

8. Loving parents lead a complicated aristocratic elective monarchy. Always wheedling to the vassals.

9. Decent parent serves as figurehead of popular government that seized power 15 years ago. Desperate to use you to solidify their position.

10. Loving parents, uncommonly just and humble rulers of a small kingdom but about to combust due to an affair or guilt of a great crime.

11. Pragmatic parents rule a small suzerainty in fief to a hostile culture group, plotting rebellion.

12. Evil yet loving parents rule a small kingdom, running it into the ground and making you a political pariah.

d20 Amulets

 d20 Amulets

1. Spotted Marble Tablet on simple thread necklace. When the wearer is endangered, a brave dog may arrive to save them. (The player may decide when is appropriate). If the dog dies, the tablet shatters.

2. Quartz crystal. Glows green and gets cold in the presence of those who lack a soul.

3. Caudalion, the tailbone of a snake dipped in wax and wrapped in scented wrappings. Those who bite the wearer save or explode. On a critical hit with a bite or a critical success on the save, the Caudalion explodes instead (1d4 damage).

4. Saint Koran's Box, a fragile thing of gilded ashwood. The wearer gains the memories of anyone whose finger is stored in the box.

5. Brass Fascinus, a miniature phallus with an eremite's enchantment against self-importance. Aids the wearer in playing possum. If someone really especially wants them dead, they won't be able to tell the difference between staying still and being fully expired.

6. Apotropaic Cat's Eye, marinating in a small sack and carried on a catgut necklace. The wearer can see ghosts and spirits even in the deadly dark at a distance of up to 90 feet.

7. Commandmentine Sigil, a metal amulet in the shape of the old-form ideogram for the word "eleven". When held to the wearer's temple, they can scramble any memory they choose to forget, leaving a confused haze of impressions and images. Due to their use as a little-employed but ever-present status symbol among some crime gangs of Tambracola, carrying the sigil is considered a felony all along the Sasuaran Coast.

8. Etched Phulaktarion. Clever ruby lid conceals a small cavity in which a tightly rolled scroll can be stored. Currently holds a religious mantra that serves as a scroll of protection from evil.

9. Sulfurous Disc. Chunky iron circle on a copper chain. The meaning of the word amulet is "a piece of jewelry that gets you out of trouble," When a screw on top of the disc is twisted, a bullet shoots out, blasting the amulet apart and dealing 1d4 damage, +1d6 if the target was surprised.

10. Seanbane Charm, a crossed-out run cut into polished willow wood. Prevents the thief king Sean from approaching within 15 feet of you, lying to you, or ordering harm done to you. Beware if you walk the roads near Privar, for those who serve him have learned they'll win his gratitude if the slit the throat of anyone wearing such an amulet.

11. Apotropaic Pearl, set in discolored silver. Serves multiple uses. On a critical failure, you may have the pearl shatter to give you a reroll. If set into an eye socket, it sees and can never go blind. If swallowed, it coats the lungs and gives advantage to saves vs inhaled poisons, diseases, and possessions for an hour.

12. Ivory Scarab. Contains 1 MD per day and the spells Book to Beetle and Beetle to Book. (Natural-born beetles tend to turn into devotional poems to nonexistent deities, histories by unlettered laymen, or intricate descriptions of local foliage interspersed with uncompelling romance plots between various beetles.)

13. Rue-Not Vial, a glass vessel full of ground rose petals held on a golden chain. Contains just a little bit of luck, fighting spirit, and grit. When the wearer loses HP, they can spend the luck in the vial to gain 1 HP. It has three charges.

14. Destus Hand, a hinged iron glove fitted on a leather thong. When the wearer saves against a spell, the hand grabs it and throws it back at full strength at a time of the wearer's choosing. Must be worn over the clothes.

15. Staring Bead, a circular piece of painted glass with gold leaf pupil. If the wearer would make a save against a magical effect due to seeing (like a medusa) or being seen (like a cockatrice), instead the bead shatters.

16. Soldier's Charm, a pair of miniature silver bullock horns, sometimes hidden beneath a circular leather flap with a design upon it (so as not to seem untrusting). The horns dig into the wearer and draw blood when the person they're dealing with is betraying a third party, such as their own employer or spouse.

17. Sapphire Medallion, set in a plaster scarab and carried on a golden chain. Blue spells the wearer casts cost 1 MD less to cast.

18. Esher's Needle, a reddened pin stuck in a cork and wrapped in silken thread. When inserted into a body, living or dead, the needle can use them to speak. It contains the person of Esher the Unmatched, a journeyman wizard who lived three centuries ago, lived among the trolls, invented the Rope Trick spell, and advised an unwise king. At ease with his existence as a needle, he is genial and generally helpful.

19. Apotropaic Amber, a disc on waxed-thread cord. When held to the eye, diseases and anything that would cause a save or give you a disease throb redly.

20. Sulcus Badge, a hoofprint symbol stamped in an oak square. Marks the wearer as friend of all centaurs, one of the good ones who won't ask to ride or where your heart is or how you'd wear pants or other annoying shit like that.

Homo Ferox (GLoG Class: Assassin)

 The man who everyone wants to kill will only die by mistake. Whoever wins the hate of their people must have cruel guards and impervious safeguards, else they would have been taken away from life long ago. Sometimes, the mistake that kills them is the presence of someone who could not have intentionally gotten into the right position, but finds themselves in it now. A man sits in a restaurant and decides to hide a bomb on the sixth floor instead of the first, and his mark survives. Another man sulks in a restaurant because his mark got away, and he looks up to see that same mark in a stopped car, and so he gets his second chance.

Part of an assassin GLoG class bandwagon. Yo.

-ASSASSIN-

Start with a fold-out knife, petard, highly illegal thief's rope (50'), discrete cap and coat, and one really big time-delay bomb. At each level, get +1 to-hit or DEX.

• A: Infamy, Luck
• B: Improvisation
• C: Patience
• D: Old News

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,

And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;

He knew human folly like the back of his hand,

And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;

When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,

And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

- Epitaph on a Tyrant, W. H. Auden

Infamy: By lucking into success precisely once, you have cut a clean line between your life before the kill and after. Authorities will hunt you, even if the leader you killed was their state's enemy. Such is life in this bitch age. Revolutionaries and creatures of the margins will assume you must be a high-level character, not to be trifled with lightly.

Luck: You have a pool of up to three Luck Points, which can be spent to reroll a failed attempt at moving quickly, sneaking, fast-talking, or searching; or to cause someone (of the DM's choice, usually a random civilian) to happen to be passing by; or to make it so an NPC recognizes you. You start with two Luck Points, because you spent one happening to be able to kill your famous mark. Recover a Luck Point every time the DM thinks you're screwed, or when you participate in the killing of a monstrous leader.

Improvisation: You have developed an instinct for sudden and shocking violence. Whenever you roll initiative, you can take an action, like attacking someone or running for it, before the combat starts. If that action is to attack someone unaware they're in danger, you automatically hit.

Patience: Spend a few days conferring with your contacts to establish where and when in the next couple weeks your target will come from their stronghold. Learn a bit about the guards and measures they will bring with them, and about their itinerary. There is a 2-in-6 chance that there are no trivial changes that threaten to scuttle your plan of attack.

Old News: The authorities you bested no longer hunt you; other authorities no longer fear you. This is just as you come into your own training the next generation of stupid daredevils. Your maximum number of Luck Points increases to six. They can be spent to aid an ally or protege you've prepped to do anything you can use them for; to tell if someone is hunting for you; or to reroll a save vs magic, explosions, and gunshot or stabbing-related wounds.

Lost Fable Character Generator

 I recently had the pleasure of looking over a draft of Hilander's OSR game Lost Fable in preparation of running an adventure with that system, and thought that making a PC generator would be a quick way to come to grips with the system. Turns out it was! The names are a combination of "medieval" examples from baby name websites or modified Gygaxian gibberish names. Epithets and personality traits are pulled from lists I've previously used in other generators. Everything else is straight from the book.

Wildernesscrawl Notes: Fellowship of the Ring

I recently had the joy of listening to Fellowship of the Ring in audiobook format, and took the opportunity to take notes about the journey the characters took as they traveled from the Shire to Tol Brandir, where the book ends. Specifically, I wanted to compare the journey to my country-as-dungeon idea and see how a tale famous for its description of adventurous travel differs from the experience I have been setting up. At the end of this post I'll reproduce the notes I made, but I expect them to be only of passing interest.

Instead, here are the observations I made.

1. Middle Earth is big! Using my ad hoc and approximate standard for converting a continuous journey into distinct regions, the party saw 20-25 areas while trying to efficiently cover ground in a long journey. If they were trying to fully explore each region like a party "clearing" a dungeon, the full Fellowship countrycrawl could easily be 100-200 keyed areas, ignoring true dungeons and adventure locations like Moria that would want to be keyed themselves. My "megawildernesscrawl" is probably as small as possible to try to recreate this feel, and it feels notably smaller than Middle Earth.

2. Tolkien makes many of the "doors" between regions distinct landmarks in their own right. Passes, gates, and rapids see love. This is probably something worth emulating.

3. There are a good mix of regions we would categorize as being of the empty, monster, treasure, trap, and special types. Most of the traps serve to confound and challenge travel through the wildernesscrawl, cutting off routes or requiring some expertise or preparation to overcome.  

 4. Gandalf and Aragorn understand the lands they travel through. They can distill their reasoning for the routes they take to relatively simple considerations that are easy to follow, avoiding dangerous places and choosing which obstacles they want to risk. There are enough dangers that it is clear there is no totally safe path to pick.

5. There is pressure on the party. They face many hostile random encounters, and there is a strong, well-framed reason that so much threatens them. A malevolent force is actively attempting to impede them, giving the wildernesscrawl  a "mythic underworld" hostility.

Click for full-size.

Route Notes

I'm certain this is not all accurate, but I believe it is accurate enough for me to learn principles from. Indented entries are mentioned routes or routes the Fellowship intended to take, but ultimately did not.

For connections between regions, I use D ("door") for normal connections, S for secret connections, R for connections that require a ranger or elf, X for blocked connections, and L for locked ones.

Hobbiton

D

Buckland

D: east gate

S: brandybuck hedge gate to West Old Wood

West Old Wood

X: due east (old man willow’s choice)

X: due north (old man willow’s choice)

D

Barrow Downs

D

Bree

D

outlying villages

D

main road

And

D

Wooded country

R

Midgewater Marshes - slows travel

D

Line of hills (Weathertop)

D

Main road again

D

Wilderness - slows travel

D Last Bridge

Hills - slows travel

D

Troll country

X hills and passages 

Old path (cliffside troll hole)

L ford of Bruhenan (forbids evil)

Rivendell 

End book 1

Rivendell

D

Wooded country (routes not commonly known)

D

Treacherous swamps

D Holly Ridge

Hollin

D

Caradhras mountain

D Redhorn gate pass

Dindril Stair (deepvale)

D

Silverlode river

D

Great river

D

Secretwood

D

Siranon, the Gate Stream

L

Moria

D

Dimril Dale and (Mirrormere) (also accessed by Dimril stair from the Torrent river)

D

Northern Lothlorien

D South-facing gate

Caras Galadhon

D Mouth of Anduin 

(Western Side)

Depopulated Borderlands

D

bleak wolds

D

Barren country of stony vales 

D Amon hen

(Eastern Side)

D

The Brown Lands

D

Barren country of stony vales

D Amon Lhaw

D

Bleak hills (Rohan)

D 

Bleak marshes 

Mordor 

(Route for Delaying their Choice)

Anduin the Great River

D

River past the brownlands

D

Gravel shoals

D Rapids of Sarn Gebir (also leads to western shore with Open Doors roll)

More river

D Argonath, the pillars of the kings

Tindrock/Tol brandir/

D

More river

D Great falls of rauros

The Nindalf/The Wetwang

D

The entwash (to Fangorn)

Alternate Moralities

The use of loyalty and morale in adventure games is well-trod ground. I like to introduce slight variations. An example rule for standard loyalty might be something like

"Each creature has a Morale score between 2 and 12. The average is 5 for peasants and animals, and  7 for veteran fighters. When put in peril, or when a fight turns against them, or when something freaky happens, roll 2d6. If it exceeds their Morale they flee or otherwise desist from their course."

(I like to keep Morale scores a bit lower than the average retroclone.) This kind of rule is a mainstay for a reason, but introducing little twists is a good way to suggest behavior that makes sense for more kinds of creature, and if such creatures ever become available to PCs as potential retainers, the player will have a better sense of the kind of choice they're making when choosing between different kinds of followers.

d10 Alternate Loyalties

1. Regret: the ethos of those who live too long, both forgetting what it is to be part of the world and cherishing the last good things of the dying age. When they're likely to die, or when annihilation seems possible, or when they must destroy something irreplaceable, elves and angels test Regret or flee, taking any beautiful objects or innocent creatures they can and forsaking tainted items or ugly creatures.

2. Pride: the resort of those who believe their life station confers metaphysical significance. When they consider doing something ignominious or subtle, or when something freaky happens, marquises and samurai test Pride or double-down, taking on the problem in the most head-on, gallant, and daredevil way.

3. Restraint: the necessity of the those who understand the thick veins of blood and of gold that determine how society really works. When they're offended, or mercy is called for, or when a fight turns against them, mercenaries and demons test Restraint or attempt to use rank violence to get out of the situation. This may involve massacring impudent villeins or shooting their patron in the leg so they can outrun whatever's chasing them. 

4. Fugue: the quality of illucidity, acting in harmony with dream-logic and narrative convenience. When cognitive dissonance hits them, or when things get real, or when long periods of mundanity happen, charmed creatures and fairies test Fugue or reconsider their actions, turning on those who've exploited them or fucking off home.

5. Grudge: the observance of justice by those who don't really know what it is, whose sense of history is exclusively personal and whose sense of impartiality is partial. When put in peril, or considering bygones, or greatly embarrassed, dwarves and orc test Grudge or deviate from their mission, blaming others and acting out of short-sighted hurt.

6. Rage: the comfort of those who forswear deviation, soporific in its simplifying ease.  When surprised with peril, or when a fight turns against them, or when something freaky happens, berserkers and angry mobs test Rage or see red and run headlong into danger.

7. Brotherhood: the affinity of those who know their natural inclination is to be covered in chagrin, and binds themselves in love as a wolfman binds himself in chains. When shirking peril their companions undertake, or about to dominate a fight, or when something freaky happens, knights and elementals test their Brotherhood or flee, or otherwise desist in their course.

8. Function: the rubric of those who cannot understand what cannot be measured. When hurt or damaged, or when leaders and masters stop making sense, or when something freaky happens, machinos and gnomes test Function or become confused, introducing eccentricity into their actions such as the inability to tell friend from foe, numbness to their own harm, or acting as though the task at hand is something else they're more familiar with.

9. Portent: the commission of those who have lost such things as fear, warmth, growth, and personal desire. When hurt or damaged, or when proven to be ill-led, or when something freaky happens, undead and zealots test their Portent or begin prognosticating, malingering, giving account, or enacting familiar mundane behaviors.

10. Bravado: the honor of those who consider personal virtues to only exist in the form of reputation and winner-takes-all myth-making. When put in peril, or when something freaky happens, or when there's a good opportunity for a double-cross, pirates and thieves test their Bravado or sell out their loyalties for the more certain payday, taking any valuable items or easy hostages they can and forsaking all responsibility to previous commitments.