The Bonehoard

My players requested an animal trainer profession. One thing led to another, and I wound up making a table for dog breeds available in the marketplace. I'm planning on using James Young's mechanics for animal training ( link ) with a couple tweaks, since they seem super cool and please my programmer heart. Fair warning, I haven't playtested this yet so my approach could be way off base, but I wanted to post before I wandered off and forgot. Also, I am no expert on dogs, so my apologies if any of the below info is off. Dog base instincts: Obey 1 Chase 2 Protect/bark 2 Survive 3 Play 2 Personality : +1 random instinct Dog breed : roll 3d6 for more typical adventurer pups, or d20 for any. Whatever entry you roll, the adjacent two are also available for purchase here. x is the quality rating. Gets +x to the instinct listed for that breed (including non-standard instincts). For reference, in my system 5-6 is the starting grit and move for humans. Max trained move is 9...

Here's a d20 town crier table to help the city feel more like a living entity. I'll roll on it near the beginning of a session to get an event (separate from the encounter tables I use periodically throughout the session). The list was started using this as a seed: [ link ]. Source: British Museum Event coming up (market day, holiday, festival, feast) Crown introducing new tax (luxury, staple, property, toll, market) Notorious criminal escapes / bounty offered (thief, murderer, assassin, arsonist, demon worshiper, sorcerer, monster) Someone did something to win renown (won prize fight, bred otherworldly roses, solved ancient riddle, saved child from burning building, etc) Superstition / tradition supposedly necessary for day (no crossing water, dress in red, fasting, etc) Public execution (thief, petty noble, murderer, arsonist, heretic, usurper, looters) Troubles in neighboring boroughs (riots, fires, famine, plague, sorcerous, monsters, warring groups) Weird...

Are you interested in chickens? Are your players interested in chickens? If not, this post holds nothing for you. If, like me, you have players that inexplicably gravitate towards farming in your sandbox games, you may find this post useful. Last session the party began setting up a rooftop chicken coop as part of their gang territory, to turn a profit and keep the gang fed. They plan on periodically expanding the flock, so I threw together some breeds to make the buying more interesting. Except I went overboard on this minor aspect of the game, as usual. :P I used half index cards and sketched the 20 breeds for reasons. Chickens have two stats, LAYING and MEAT. LAYING indicates how many copper a day you earn off their eggs. MEAT indicates how many silver a week they make (cash in on Sundays). It's all a bit abstracted in an odd way, but since sessions average 1-2 in-game days, I had to step up the timeline to make it worth it. I'm only making two breeds available for pu...

I love the feeling of bustling markets filled with strange goods, but players buying from equipment lists without the need for DM adjudication is so utilitarian as to have wholly supplanted any market-related roleplaying in my game. Telecanter made some cool shopping rules which I'll try out, but just for special commissions, since speed is a huge concern for me. Interactions that don't require DM adjudication are lamentably few and far between as it is. As a sort of compromise I've started utilizing "market specials" - the first time in a session the PCs say they're going through the marketplace (a central location in their borough as you might imagine), I tell 'em what freshly unloaded good is causing a buzz. Last session there was a foreigner with five "miniature bears" he was selling as exotic pets. One PC immediately bought one of the adorable critters and proudly walked it around town (leading to an invitation to meet an ennui-burdened nob...

So I got a bit burnt out and put the Strigastadt campaign on hiatus. It had a good run of 10 months this time around before I got worn out. I reckon when we return I'll pick up with the Forgotten Shore hexcrawl, several years after the last events. At the moment my friend Alex is picking up the slack and running a super rad game where we play WWII GIs who've voyaged into the hollow earth to blow up secret Nazi bases. We're doing a hexcrawl and repeatedly getting fucked up by dinosaurs and shit, it's hella fun. With the stress of running a game every week gone, and the inspiration of playing in other folk's games I'm already feeling a lot more excited about writing up game stuff. It's been good. North Texas RPG Con was especially motivating, I played in a lot of really awesome games and had a ton of fun. I also ran Index Card D&D on a Friday night and it went great, folks really seemed to enjoy it. I might write up a brief post on that later. Anyway, h...

As previously stated , sorcerers grow artificial bodies in order to duplicate spells. Typically, very short-lived homunculi are used, lasting just long enough to get the job done. Some sorcerers create longer-lived homunculi via this process however, commonly referred to as vatlings. Here's a system for their creation accompanied by some bad scans of crappy watercolor splotch drawings I made. The demon-flesh samples used to grow vatlings are contained in specially-constructed zinc cylinders that stabilize the tissues for long-term storage. They're expensive to create and feed, so mostly sorcerers make do with a handful of strains, but if a new mutation is particularly useful it can be tempting to add to your repertoire. When finding a new tissue sample (from another sorcerer), roll random characteristics for the fleshy shells that strain creates (or just make something up):

In my campaign, henchmen request 50gp per level up front at the very minimum, besides their 1/4 share and sundry expenses. Knowing what they're spending that money on tells much about their character. I would swear I've seen such a list before but can't for the life of me find it, so I made my own. If anybody has an idea on where I'd seen it before, I'd love to hear it! 1 Pay off debts to... Landlord 2 Physician 3 Gambling House 4 Drug Supplier 5 Loan Shark 6 Legal System 7 Other 8 Gift money to... Impoverished 9 Temple 10 Library 11 Political Movement 12 Distant Family 13 Lover 14 Pay mate's bail 15 Bribe Parole Officer 16 Buy something coveted 17 Provide for local family 18 Funeral Expenses 19 Bribe Judge 20 Massive Party or Bender