An Empty Feast (Scenario)

"Feasts" for GLoGtober 2022

This small scenario is designed to be easily slotted into any settlement with a ruler, and should be modified to fit the setting into which it is placed. It relies on a proactive DM who constantly asks "what clever thing could the antagonist do now?" and "what boneheaded thing could another NPC do now?"

By custom, travelers are allowed to sit at the lord's table and partake of his hospitality. No one will tell the PCs, but they have come at an inauspicious time. It will certainly not seem that way. Servants laden with great hobtrays of pie, honeyed pears, dandelion cordial, beetroot and tuber stew, mineral wines, hot spiced ale and hot spiced apples, and sprigs of mint hustle to and fro.

And yet all fear the worst. By ancient accord, the lord invites the sorceress of the monument to all great events as a formality. Horror of horrors, she has actually shown up for this feast. Local peasants know she brings famine and winter, and local aristocracy know she brings delay, ruin, and war.

After a hearty greeting and warning to avoid her, the party will be feted and feasted to their heart's content. Alas, during the merriment and glee of after-dinner parlor games, one of the lord's knights (Movahi, the denial knight. Or, a hand sable) is found killed, a deep stab wound in his throat. The lord commands the exits sealed until the murderer is found, pretending he does not already know the devil-sent sorceress has wronged him so.

What Is Actually Happening
One of the lord's knights, Sir Uq, recovered an ornate dagger in battle. Intending to bring it as a gift, he has unknowingly fallen prey to its curse. While so afflicted, he will periodically turn into the anti-paladin Artoblax, and she will murder a knight if she can before rebecoming Sir Uq. The deceased knight may later rise as a minor servant to do her bidding, and this will continue until they eventually kill everyone in the castle except the sorceress, or until stopped by the party.

All the rest is emergent from the PCs and NPCs. Natural clues suggest themselves-- someone recalls seeing a woman they've never seen before flee the scene of a murder with a bloodied weapon, Sir Uq's whereabouts are never accounted for during a murder, the rising dead suggest the supernatural is afoot, Uq is carrying around a weird dagger all the time now, the sorceress seems mostly uninterested in events.

The dagger is a lacquered misericord named Uncaring Earth. Its owner transforms periodically into a woman with wine-dark hair and dark puissance, unaware of their horrible fate.

The presumed procession of events is that knights will keep turning up dead, slain by Artoblax, until either stopped by the PCs or until an unruly gang of the lords cousins witch hunt their way out of the problem. The PCs will not be initially allowed to escape this situation, but if they somehow manage to flee this will make them highly suspicious to stupid and powerful people.

Inhabitants of the Castle

• The Lord and his immediate family
• His 3d8 useless cousins and relations. Ready to form the basis of a nobler form of angry mob.
• His staff of 20 servants, so busy with their duties that they can't stop for long.
• The sorceress of the monument. An immortal with spells like STILL and FORGET and BURY and REAVE. You may have met her before. She recognizes what is happening because it was she who forged Uncaring Earth long ago. She knows she is in no danger and is not in the business of saving others.
• Uq, the beloved knight. Chequy argent and azure, a Cockerel proper. Cursed by Uncaring Earth. Attended by five ride-or-die hobbit squires. Friendly and proactive, and will be heartbroken to learn of his horrible fate.
• Wields the +1 cruciform sword Qayus. Those who swear by the blade by abide the terms of their surrender.
• Adgai, the holy knight. Gules, on a bar or a Key gules. Humble, sometimes severe. Will take his cues from the lord and stay out of the way. His guest is Izceud, a cleric from foreign lands, whom he is trying to drill about theology. The cleric, more of a clerk, humors his questions by feigning spiritual knowledge.
• Wears the White Favor Cockade. Negates the first curse that afflicts the wearer, then immolates like paper over a candle.
• Eprebon, the knight prosperous. Sable, a Skeleton proper grasping a Flail gules handle pointed sinister-chief-wise and head pointed to base. Unattended, but greases the palms of the lord's staff to ensure he's taken care of. Players may suspect him because he talks with a rich person voice. Knows the feats of all his fellows.
• Wields enough gold to make a peasant a baronet, or a third-degree mason.
• Cijaejo, the knight of the vow. Per fess argent and vert a leafless tree Sable. Enjoying a yearlong vow of silence. As time goes on, may come to learn something incredibly important. No, he does not consider writing to accord with the strictures of his vow.
• Armored with poverty, which if you think of it is the greatest object of all.
• Ivna, the legacy knight. Vert, a chevron argent. In chief, three Plates. Proactively tells you that she couldn't have done any horrible crime because of how great her bloodline is. Very suspicious of this commoner witch. Nevertheless obliges all request for help from her lessers.
  
• Wears the shrunken relic-head of her line's great founder, who was master of the Swans to the great king Schmarlemagne. Ancient beings consider this a big deal.
• Apoudaq, the feral fool. Argent, a shield of Apoudaq inverted (purpur, a Lion couard, tongue vert). A penitent who was stripped of his title and honor after rebelling against the lord when his uncle tried to usurp the throne. Base and abrasive, but decent. A good tracker. Attended by two elves who are definitely not his lovers.
• Carries the Token of the Elf"friend", which confers a +1 reaction bonus with woodland creatures.

If the party manages to resolve this issue, the Lord will grant them a tax holiday as well as one of the fallen knight's notable items. If there is a living knight, they will also grant a significant item to the party in thanks.

If the party screw this situation up too much, there will be just enough chaos and rioting for the local bandit duchess to don a set of potmetal plate, declare herself a Black Knight, and go a-conquering.

(Both outcomes may occur.)

Owning Anything Unshared

 (Base-building for GLoGtober 2022.)

Everythings made this with an AI

In the gradual development of a party of PCs from dangerous scoundrels to dangerous scoundrels with a domain, attaining their first address is a major step. Players often enjoy acquiring a clubhouse, and it facilitates a lot of fun play situations. To spur your imagination, here are some advantages to be savored upon reaching this intermediate step in party advancement.

(And for DMs, some complications that might come up for PCs who have not yet reached it.)

• Business cards can be printed with an address.
• Letters, packages, and couriers have an unambiguous place to go.
• Landowners trust landowners.
• Wares and objects can be reliably stored near a settlement.
• Avoiding the cost of renting or danger of camping. If there is taxation it occurs in longer intervals.
• Often, the right to participate in local politics while seeming legitimate.
• Social cache from hosting parties and social events.
• Access to backroom and backdoors facilitates unscrupulous meetings.
• Ease of spying on neighbors.
• Grow herbs other and beneficial plants.
• Excuse for hidden panels, custom furniture, and jewels hidden in loose floorboards.
• Dry storage for all rugs, paintings, and art objects found in the dungeon while a buyer is located.
• Go-to rendezvous point if the party is separated.
• Improves marriageability.
• Useful as collateral in loans.
• Hedge against dungeon-gold-rush-style inflation.
• Sit in siege once the vengeance of the gnoll kings comes to town.

Should Make You Not to Die (Magic Item Creation Rules)

 "Fun magic item creation rules" for GLoGtober.

What is the difference between a +1 flaming flamberge and a mercenary company? In many Dungeon games, the answer is that you can't buy a magic flamberge. In such games, often with the obscured intent of forcing a charcter back to dungeoncrawling, where the game is supposed to be, magic item creation rules are traditionally fiddly or unsatisfying. Here's another approach, and you can decide which of the two it is.

A magic-user of second level and higher can create magic items given enough power, time, and gold, at the risk of a fell curse.

• Power: Magic needs to be introduced to an existing item, which the magician may want to commission for the task at hand. For each special feature the item will have, the magician must know a relevant spell to commit to the crafting, like knowing a fireball spell to make a burning mace. Finally, if it's a magic item that gives a simple numerical bonus, like a +2 flail, the highest bonus that can be given is determined by the magician's level. In a 4-template game, it's equal to half the level plus one, rounded down. In a BXish game, it's 1 for every three levels attained.
• Things that increase your effective level by 1 for this purpose, cumulatively: a sacred forge, crafting the item in the land of the dead, destroying two other magic items in the crafting, sacrifice of that which you love most.
• Time: The DM assigns a number of weeks required for the magic item in question. It should at least take one week for every spell level of spell imbued, plus a little extra for each feature.
• Things that can cut the time needed in half, cumulatively: lightning, demihuman crafters in their element, a magical colleague, improving an already magical item, dragonfire, crafting the item as part of a set.
• Gold: the DM decides the cost by considering the value of the labor the item will offer, based on existing hireling and service tables. How many porters or soldiers or spies is this item replacing? This is why so many magic items glow-- the cost of hiring a linkboy is almost nothing. The cost of enchanting the item is equivalent to the cost of hiring such people for three years, modified at the discretion of the DM. If the effect can only be said to be done by a character with a PC class, the cost is equivalent to a third of the XP needed to reach the level of such a PC.
• Risk of a Fell Curse: Whenever a magical item is created, there is a percentage chance equal to the number of existing magic items the enchanter has created that it will bring about a horrible curse. When the enchanter dies, make this roll again for all magic items they've enchanted. If cursed, roll a d6:
• 1: loses all magic, the cost of creation is lost.
• 2: explodes.
• 3: serves opposite purpose, gives penalties instead of bonuses.
• 4: gains a malign intelligence and the potential to dominate users.
• 5: haunted by ghosts, functioning occasionally.
• 6: creator, or the site of their death, becomes fallow and attracts cruel beasts.

(This is why most great wizards require their pupils to make them a magic item as part of their final year of study.)

Examples:

• Heops the Grandiose wants to make a broom that sweeps their floors for them. Contributing the floating disc spell and a week of enchanting, their work costs only 36 gold coins, since that is the cost of hiring a peasant for three years in the ruleset they're playing with.
• Lindel the Wise seeks to create a scimitar that will come to life and defend her when she is attacked. Her player considers researching a spell that will more directly apply to this, but the DM decides her protection from evil spell is enough. It's a first-level spell, and they decide that the sword will have an extra feature of being always vigilant, never surprised. Discussing among themselves, they decide that Lindel's sword will have the puissance of a fourth-level fighter PC and therefore in BX cost 2,6667 gold coins to create.
• Jambamvamorix the wizard wants to suck on a magic stone that will make him immune to poisonous gasses. The player and DM decide that this will require the fourth-level cleric spell Neutralize Poison. This will therefore take four weeks of work, but worse still Jambamvamorix doesn't know that spell, and in this ruleset can't learn it. He goes on a brief adventure to hire a cleric to work with him for the process. In B/X, this is replicating the work of a level 6 cleric and therefore costs 8,334 gold coins to enchant.

Constrained Language as Language

 "Slang, jargon, and symbology" for GLoGtober 2022.

There's a fruitful question in roleplaying games of how to depict languages. It's common for a character in a dungeon game to speak multiple, possibly including a language they share with all members of their cosmological alignment, and for ease these are often treated like "channels." All languages are essentially the same, but with a different membership. This works fine. "For ease" is a great reason to do something a particular way in these games. But interesting challenges and interesting characterizations can occur when you treat different forms of language with different constraints.

Some examples

• A "common" trading language that is a full-body sign language. To speak it, you have to use an entire humanoid body plan. You can't be carrying anything in your hands, like say an arming sword.
  
• A language with constrained but flexible vocabulary, like Toki Pona.
• A language with constrained vocabulary and form, like Elden Ring messages.
• A language with a mostly uniform spoken form and regionally-specific ideograms, such that one can only read the writing of one's neighbors.
• Dungeon hobo signs
• An alignment language whose form can be imitated in writing, but which makes all imitations ring hollow when spoken aloud. Studying common formulations, the member of an enemy alignment can write in this language just fine, but speaking it reveals that they are an outsider to that way of thinking.
• A supernally clear language from which misunderstanding is not possible. A lot of players and the PCs going "by which they mean" and "which you understand indicates"
• A supernally ambiguous language. Referential and imprecise. Implications based in stated absolutes. When a player slips up and speaks unambiguously, the DM interprets it as though they hadn't.
• A language with such a simple alphabet that it can be tapped out or encoded into simple signals, like Morse Code.
• Languages with just a couple grammatical tics to remind you they're different from the ones your characters normally speak.

Applying a light hand with these can have a good effect. A normal dungeon game in which alignment languages have constrained vocabulary, Elvish is imprecise, and Dwarvish has no first-person is achievable and, in my eyes, neat and evocative.

Oh, and a note to new readers. I'm considering compiling fun links from my end of the OSR sphere into a monthy newsletter, with both recent blogposts and old gems. Please consider looking at this first issue and letting me know if you find it to have value.

A Humble Proposal For BX Thief Skills

 If you talk to BX/OSE afficianados, they will justify the maligned thief abilities in a variety of ways, ways that I sort of doubt are totally clear in the text but which nevertheless are the best version of the rules as I see them. They might assign competency to the thief such that they succeed on all basic applications of the skill and only need to roll sometimes, or emphasize the near-supernatural nature of even a level 1 apprentice. Even in this best-articulated framework, it can be tricky to determine how to approach a thief-adjacent activity which is attempted both by thieves and members of more square classes. For instance, if the party is climbing a non-sheer surface under time pressure, how should it be run? For this there are many answers.

But it's sort of weird! Sometimes we say "the thief is better than other classes at certain things," make a procedure for how thieves do it, then improvise from that procedure to determine the worse way the fighter does it. But a lot of these activities are pretty common for an adventure! Maybe the basic procedure should be the non-thief one, and thieves can just get some bonus.

I have a way of doing thief skills that entails more "spot rules" for the thief class, but that I argue may be better integrated into the game procedures in general. For each, I looked at the way a non-thief might do them on the OSE SRD, and assigned a bonus that I thought appropriate.

In coming up with a homebrew rule for thief skills, I am following in the footsteps of many. This proposal is untested, but I think it's a viable direction to take.

This could be you!

* Climb sheer surfaces (CS): A dexterity ability check is required for each 100’ to be climbed, made with a +4 bonus if the climb is any easier than sheer. If the roll fails, the thief falls at the halfway point, suffering falling damage.

[Notes: while ability checks are an optional rule in OSE, the procedure for climbing does in fact call for one, so I thought it would be appropriate to do so here as well.]

* Find or remove treasure traps (TR): When actively searching for traps, the trap’s activation chance is reduced by 1, even reducing traps that always activate to a 5-in-6 chance. An actively searching thief notices when a trap would have triggered.

* Hear noise (HN): In a quiet environment (e.g. not in combat), a thief may attempt to listen at a door or to hear the sounds of something (e.g. a wandering monster) approaching, with pinpoint accuracy on a 2-in-6 chance.

[Notes: this matches the halfling class ability.]

* Hide in shadows (HS): When not directly illuminated, you can remain motionless. No one who knows where you are can detect you from more than 5 feet away until you move or speak.

[Note: this one required more direct innovation. The ability to be unseen as long as one is completely still has come up in several GLoG games, and always requires more creativitiy than one might expect.] 

* Move silently (MS): A thief moving carefully alone gets +2 to their encounter surprise chances. Groups composed entirely of thieves get the same bonus.

* Open locks (OL): Requires thieves’ tools. The thief may make an Open Stuck Doors check on a lock, modified by dex instead of str. If used on a locked door, it does not eliminate the chance of surprise. A thief can only try this once per lock per level.

* Pick pockets (PP): Used against an unaware or friendly target. Make an attack roll, using the +4 backstab bonus if the target is unaware. On a hit, instead of damage take an object that would be feasible to steal, up to a sheathed weapon or worn bracelet. If a particular item is known, the thief can take it. Otherwise, the DM selects a likely object or rolls on a table, such as this:

1. 1d10 silver coins
2. letter from an associate or family member
3. knife
4. Tot of wine or potion
5. ration appropriate to station and climate
6. rat (roll reaction)

[Note: obviously this one also required innovation. Really, how often do PCs pick pockets? It's a high-risk gambit that often has a high penalty for failure, and most foes either carry nothing interesting or are about to die anyway.]