The Bonehoard

[Edit - Refined and PDF'd version here ] Game playtested with my friends a single time - so take with a grain of salt. It's sloppy fun though, and part of the point of it is to end up with play artifacts that can be used elsewhere. Requirement: an understanding of how some D&D concepts work (DCs, combat mostly). It's nice to have a reference for average AC, HD, damage, and DCs as well for folks less familiar. Start the game with a stack of index cards. Each person makes (should take < 15 minutes in the making phase): - A class + starting item (at a minimum, HD and level-up requirement [kill three snakemen per level, etc], but trapfinding bonuses, attack bonuses, special abilities are nice) - A piece of loot - A spell (either go Vancian with your spellcasting or have a spellcasting DC on each spell, detail what happens on success or failure) - A monster (HD, attack bonus, AC, damage, you know the drill) [probably start with 1-3 HD monsters, go up 1-2 HD w...

As mentioned in the last post, PCs in my game enjoy both participating in and betting on the Fighting Pits of Zig. Zig's cult is filled with muscle priests who worship that divinity of strength, praising physical prowess over all else. Priests especially steeped in the lore of Zig are known to wrestle bears, emulating the myths surrounding their divine patron. Anyhow holy fight club. Brawling rules are a modified form of those found on Detect Magic here : Roll d20, add attack bonus. Whomever gets higher is winning. Ties = no advantage either way. Crit fail = make a fool of yourself. Crit success = accidentally escalate an extra category. Fights go from bruised -> bleeding -> screaming -> broken -> maimed/dead If you win the round, describe how you make your opponent bruised/bleed/scream/etc and you get +3 on your next roll. If you lose, choose whether to tap out or escalate to the next category. Example - The mighty Blax Jax (ftr 2) is facing off against Jadi Am...

(warning, wall of text ahead!) Due partially to icy roads only three players showed last night, which created a much different dynamic than the 7ish person parties we've been used to. With less people in the decision making process, shit got done! Also, since they were painfully aware of being under-staffed, potentially hostile encounters were avoided at all costs, leading to much less random bloodshed and speedier travel. Blax Jax the fighter has been taking every opportunity to prove himself in the fighting pits of Zig (muscle priest fight club, have an obsession with bears), initially as a means of becoming more skilled with cesti. We moved to Dungeon Crawl Classics where two-weapon fighting is pretty crappy for fighters with normal dex, so this was a way for him to become competent at what he wanted his fighter doing. It soon enough transformed into a spectacle where the other PCs bet on the fight outcome, almost exclusively favoring his opponent since he had a streak of ba...

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

Looking at a megadungeon map it struck me that the rectangular dungeon sections looked almost like model sprues side-by-side. Wondering how such a dungeon would look, I threw together this quick 'found dungeon' in like ten minutes. Behold, the flakvierling dungeon! :P

When I was running Strigastadt I had a pretty well-developed sense of theme that helped unify the elements of the setting and give the game a certain grimy-glimmering feel to it (although there were some theme swings here and there). I reckon that's one of the inbuilt advantages to having a setting-driven game. By contrast the Forgotten Shore phase we're in now is all about a particular game structure - the hexcrawl. When stocking the hexes and creating the landscape I was left with a feeling of dissatisfaction with the grab-bag nature of the locales, and frequency of generic fantasy stuff I was shoe-horning in. The root problem was that I simply didn't have a solid idea of what the place was trying to be. A ways into the project, I ran across an interview with Yoon-Suin creator David McGrogan wherein he mentions an approach where you compile a 25-word list describing your setting, to use as a reference to encourage setting consistency and strengthen theme [ah, here's...

Still alive! I think I blog mostly as an outlet when I can't play as much as I'd like, and the last eight months or so have seen a ton of play. We've bumped up my campaign to weekly and I'm in a couple semi-weekly games besides. It's awesome. The party has moved on from Strigastadt proper to a hexcrawl phase on the Forgotten Shore, inspired of course by the legendary West Marches campaign (I'm only... eight years behind the zeitgeist?). The move was partially motivated by my love of shiny new things, and partially by my dissatisfaction with how Strigastadt was running. The long and short of it is that I could not make the ruined city megadungeon feel like the Gormenghast interconnected multi-level maze that is in my head. Big surprise I know. That and I started embellishing the settled part of the city and city adventures suck with seven players, especially when your DM is bad at roleplaying distinctive NPCs. The players still enjoyed Strigastadt a bunch and a...