Wyrdspeak

I recently ran a fun game for a few younger players, it was their first time playing anything close to an RPG and they loved it, but I thought the session might go awry during character creation once one player was adamant about being an elf. I was a tad panicked at first because the system I use, Into The Odd , doesn't have any races and everybody is assumed to be human. At first I just assumed that I would treat her character like a human, like everybody else, but I decided that would be boring. Here is the quick hack I implemented to add races in Into The Odd . Every race starts like your standard human: Roll 3D6 for each stat, begin with an extra item. Now, from here you can do a few things to make the race interesting: Enhance  a stat at the cost of impairing  another stat. (For instance, the ogre race now rolls 2D6 + 6 for their STR but only rolls 2D6 for their WIL) Gain an ability at the cost of impairing  a stat. (For instance, the dwarf race now roll...

This post itself isn't particularly brilliant or groundbreaking, it's just a collection of magic items for you to "inherit" for your D&D, Knave, Into The Odd, or other RPG games. I'm sure you will find at least some of these items interesting, most are dedicated to either make a situation more interesting or embrace the spirit of the OSR. Hell, maybe you can even start some of the PCs off with an item by rolling 2D6, one for the category of item they get and one for the actual item under that category. If you are using a 6-stat-system, replace WIL with Charisma, Intelligence, or Wisdom, whichever you find most appropriate for the item. Just a note, quite a few entries are inspired by this excellent post from a new blog with lots of potential, check them out! Without further ado: Adventurous Equipment ( Nafah ) Light: 1. Sprite Lamp.  A lantern with gold foil inlaid on it, it emits an amber light up to 60' for 4 hours on 1 flask of oil. Once per ...

They're biting their tongues. The job went sour as soon as Sir Tarkington noticed the thieves arguing in his store room about shares of loot. The melodic chime of alarm bells contrasts the hectic scrambling of the party as they look for any kind of closet or cranny to hide in. One stands by the door, ready to make a bolt for it as soon as there is any sign of escape. Another stands in the middle of the room with a crossbow and a knife, they would rather die on their feet than live on their knees or in the forced servitude of Sir Tarkington it would seem. The last cowers behind a crate, looking for any boon or sign of good fortune. After a few hurried seconds of hectic searching, fortune smiles back in the form of a small glass vial with a skull and crossbones. Poisons and drugs are really weird to use. In my experience, it's kinda hard to use poisons without making an entire big set of rules about methods of ingestion, time limits, saves, and etc. On the other hand, I use Int...

Creating something from nothing is REALLY hard, especially when it comes to world-building. I've always ran with the platitude of "start small, think big later". When creating a setting or main adventuring area, I've got a process I run through that generally helps get the creativity flowing and that doesn't need to be performed in any real order: The History: This is just a general three-sentence description of the history of the setting or area the players are going to be adventuring in. It doesn't necessarily need to just be three sentences, but I've found that this is a good amount of space to let creativity branch out later. The Encounters: If you've been reading this blog for any amount of time, you'll probably know that I am a BIG fan of small tables . I generally like making a small table of encounters to gauge what enemies or allies may be seen when going through whatever fresh hell your players are going through. The Bestiary: Th...

Hey, so this is going to be an update from last post because my friends really liked how I handled character creation and wanted me to show the public my starter packages I made for the session I ran earlier this weekend. I'll have the starter packages first and some highlights from my session last for those interested. Blackguard ( Konstantin Vavilov ) Knave ( Konstantin Vavilov )  Occultist ( Konstantin Vavilov )   Now, for the highlights from my adventure I'm testing, SIN, SWINE, SQUALOR: Slipping a lust potion into a bandit camp's water/alcohol supply, resulting in indescribable acts of sex and sadism. Wasting half of the team's torches by lighting them and throwing them into an aqueduct tunnel in attempts to see where it went. Riding a giant pig, steering it by shoving blades down its skull. Convincing a small posse of insane bandits that the team were Gods and Goddesses from another dimension that would bring the posse redemption if they...

So, I'm going to be running a session tomorrow, wish me luck. In that time, I've been trying to modify Into The Odd's character creation. Don't get me wrong, I love how quick and concise it is, along with how many fun results it can produce, but Into The Odd assumes an semi-industrial, semi-imperialist steam-punk-ish setting that I am not all that into. I could just make a new character creation table  (check out page 5 to see it), but it seems like it'd take quite a bit of time to make a giant list of equipment like that, and it'd be even more taxing to properly organize the entries by ability scores and HP because I have zero sense of game balance. So, here's some alternatives I've drawn out, along with a few examples: Method 1: Bagful Of Baubles ( Konstantin Vavilov ) I honestly like this method the best, it's just about as quick as the original Into The Odd's methods. All that is needed for this method is a d20 table of trinkets relate...