Wyrdspeak

Part of the greatness in OSR lies in how the PCs change over their harrowing adventures, this can take place in many ways, especially the wounds that the PCs endure. Some really great systems implement wounds, such as the up-and-coming  Electric Bastionland . Studying these systems, I've realized that so far that I have no mechanical rules for longer lasting wounds aside from the stuff that Into The Odd gives you upfront. I think it might be my duty to my players to make my game more lasting and weird, adding injuries won't necessarily cut anything away from the game. Except for many PC's limbs, that is. Now the hero cries in vain.  (Selkie Inguene) So, basically how I plan to do this is to make different small tables for different damage types of damage. Whenever the PCs take critical damage  (for those of you who don't play Into The Odd, this means that they fail a STR save when damaged), they will roll 1D6 on the table corresponding to the damage type. Th...

Magic is almost always a gambit. A magic-user's limit should be how many spells they can SAFELY  cast before the tides of chaos bring them down. Arcanum in Into The Odd are really great, and I love the rules as a whole, but the system lacks miscasting. The closest thing that it has to miscasts is a brief blurb about how some arcanum can have side effects (such as cursed items, but these are a tad  different from miscasts) and identifying arcanum (when characters pick up arcanum, they can sense its nature but not its specific power. Also they must pass a WIL save to understand its power before using the arcanum at first, if they fail then the arcanum accidentally activates) which are all good, but not the miscasts I'm looking for. Into The Odd lists three example "types" of arcanum, "big arcanum" (REALLY big stuff, like magic couches), "disposable arcanum" (potions, bombs, you get the idea), and "arcanum weapons" (arcanum that are weapon...

Hey, I'm back from school, which means I can post things again! I have recently been running a dungeon (basically just a complete butcher job and hack of Tomb Of The Serpent Kings  with ancient Greek themes, eldritch fish-people, sirens, suitors, and fleshy abominations. The dungeon is great for my newbie players) that has a few "bosses" in it. Bosses kinda go against OSR design in general if done wrong, such as forced fights against a big bad. Nonetheless, I still love boss fights because they offer a nice break from dungeon-delving along with a new obstacle to deal with. I'm still building the dungeon as they explore it, and I'm lucky that Tomb Of The Serpent Kings already has some bosses in it that I can examine. The only problem here is that they are clearly designed for a system like GLOG , which is great, but a bit too number-crunchy for my players. Their incompetence around numbers and basic math is why I use Into The Odd, but making a boss fight in Into ...