Imbricated Interests of a Ludic Ghoul

Totally un-play tested and just something for a bit of fun. Primarily inspired by Emily St Aubert from The Mysteries of Udolpho, though a Neutral/Chaotic aligned example might be someone like Fuschia from the Gormenghast books. Fragile Gothic Protagonist Prime Requisite: CHA Gothic Protagonists attack as Magic Users and roll Saving Throws as Clerics. They are restricted to human characters only. Their STR and CON scores are restricted to a maximum of 9 points - simply reduce to 9 if these scores are higher and the class is selected for play. They receive a +2 Loyalty bonus from hirelings and henchmen.  They are unable to use armour of any kind and the only weapon they may wield is a Dagger which must be used at close quarters rather than thrown. With respect to magic items, Gothic Protagonists are restricted to the use of Wands, Rings, Potions and Clerical Scrolls. They may read Treasure Maps without the use of a Read Magic spell and may re-roll Lost checks in the wilderness whe...

I'll put the actual play at the end because I know almost no-one reads those. This week, as part of my continuing efforts to clear out my backlog of independent RPGs that I haven't played, I ran a one-shot of the ultra-rules light Sorcerers & Sellswords by Ray Otus, a hack of the famous Lasers & Feelings game. L&F is a wide open game that makes intriguing use of a single stat related to the titular dichotomy, but it also has the word 'feelings' in the title which of course sends me - being an uptight British man - scurrying to the nearest dark corner.  Sorcerers & Sellswords on the other hand, has piquant pulp flavour all over it, much more my style!  I've long been a fan of Ray's open-minded and inquisitive thoughts on gaming via his inspiring Plundergrounds podcast and so I decided to soak this pamphlet sized game in several puddles of delicious porter in a Hackney boozer and run it for a group of four. ...

I've just released a new PWYW Tunnels and Trolls adventure that I wrote for use in convention play, Ferverax and the Wildnerness of Gleam . It features a hand-painted map for the party to move around on at speed as they try to locate the invisible castle of the titualar evil wizard Ferverax.   He has an X at the end of his name, he must be bad news I did my usual 'over-prepare in a panic by 5000%' method and spent hours on this acrylic painting for the map. It's very much inspired by the Mike Winterbauer school of CRPG map design, and in fact the adventure does feature magical fountains that boost your level a la Might & Magic which Mike produced some absolutely glorious maps for. Map by me, Andrew Walter. The original is big! Tunnels & Trolls is a game I've really found myself enamoured with in the last few months (I have had the 5th edition rules for several years but it never really clicked for me until quite recently). Of all the 'old games' it...

As mentioned in my last post, one of the main things that puts me on the backfoot when running OD&D is having classed NPC groups appear as wandering monsters. They're a crucial part of the feel of this edition of the game. They reinforce the fact that your classed PCs are not unique, and keep the stakes high by potentially having the party's own abilities come into play against them.  Yet it's undeniable that they come with admin which can feel like 'cheating' if you wing it. Chief among these admin issues is which spells an NPC spellcaster might have memorised (or perhaps in their spellbook - though for this post I'm assuming the former). This gives me analysis paralysis in prep, and feels wrong to handwave during play. Vapourising a PC party because an NPC party has fireballs feels like something that should always be a threat, but not something that happened because of an ill-considered whim of the Dungeon Master. So I cobbled together this system to de...

One of the things I've found myself briefly panicked by when refereeing OD&D is the (very frequent) occurrence of classed NPCs appearing as wandering monsters. For some reason I have found this very hard to riff with in a way that adds colour to my campaign, and with the OD&D assumption that there's plenty of other movers and shakers apart from the PC party in the megadungeon, it's not something I wanted to find myself flat-footed with again. Players can tell! As such, I've bashed together this quick set of tables for use when you suddenly have to decide what that group of Theurgists or Conjurers is doing in the megadungeon. Neutral groups should be rolled for once. Lawful groups roll twice and pick the most righteous Chaotic types roll twice and pick the most crazy. Next up I will be sharing the random tables I have created for the other hard-to-improv sticking point with these guys, specifically which spells Magic Users are carting around. ...