An Abominable Fancy

A quick encounter for my 5e group, built around reskinning Trey Causey's 5e Imskians.

By the side of the road, there is a pavilion tent, surrounded a dozen smaller tents. There is a large cooking fire with a great bronze pot and sever skewered animals roasting. Humanoid creatures mill around the camp. To one side, eight large, chitinous beasts, looking at first like brown, armored elephants, mill quietly in the shade of some trees. An impressive bronze banner is stationed amid the tents. Its standard is a golden cabbage on a field of red. Guards are posted, and likely to spot the PCs as the approach.

Four Pulex Knights and soldiers are traveling the countryside, looking for the fabled Lost Library. They are on a quest to destroy the Lost Library, as a place of infamy and necromancy, filled with secrets best forgotten (successful Arcana or History check may reveal that the Lost Library is also know as the Library of Hell, or the Stygian Library). They are courteous and friendly as …

In Knaves, fancypants, I included a Death & Dismemberment table. In play, however, I haven't much liked it. So, here's what I think might be a more fun version of same:

When a character reaches 0 hit points or fewer, roll 1d6 and 1d4.

The d6 determines which attribute is affected.Subtract the 1d4 from the attribute affected. If this drops the affected attribute to 10/0, you are dead. Roll a new weirdo.If not, you have an injury that takes up one Item Slot. The player, in consultation with the referee, gets to make up what the injury is. Could be you lost a leg, or developed a phobia, or picked up the clap.Attribute points lost can be recuperated via advancement, or, if your ref is generous, through other means (you get a clever prosthetic, say, or the Ogre Pope blesses you), but you never get that Item Slot back. The old wound will weigh on you, always.If you want higher lethality, increase the d4 to a d6.  This is simpler and easily remembered. It's more fatal (the ol…

A Halloween Adventure (pdf)

Written for low-level 5e (specifically, for my mixed group of adults and children, who, last session, let their characters fall asleep in a dungeon right before Halloween, and so are asking for something weird to happen).

Includes:
• Fighting your zombie-selves
• Costumes
• PUMPKINSTEIN
• At least three ideas stolen from Chris McDowall's recent post on Three Step Dungeons
• Candy-covered corpses
• An opportunity to crank Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain

I've prepared a new layout document of Ben Milton's Knaves.

Knaves is a great, light rules set that has an extremely elegant core mechanic while retaining total compatibility with OSR material. It's pretty much the rpg of my dreams.

This document contains the complete rules, plus a bunch of useful hacks from the community, plus a few of my invention, plus some useful resources from Ben Milton's previous effort, Maze Rats.


EDIT: I've updated the layout to fix errata and make a few tweaks. Further, I've made 3 variations:

KNAVES TABLET LAYOUT
The Tablet Layout is meant for scrolling on screens, and contains hyperlinks.

KNAVES SPREAD LAYOUT
The Spread Layout is set up to print on Letter-sized paper.

KNAVES A4 LAYOUT
The A4 Layout is set up to print on A4 paper, and is probably the most elegant of the three versions.


This is presented with generous permission from Ben Milton, and should in no way be an excuse for not purchasing a copy of Knave from Drive-Thru RPG. It'…

I'm thinking of starting up a PbP game, running Jason Sholtis' Operation Unfathomable using Ben Milton's Knave. Here's my interpretation of the setting's additional character options. They're all at least a smidge better than a standardly-generated Knave, but I plan on only offering these as options for replacements characters, once the party is deep in the weirdness.

Cave Otter
You are a black-furred, humanoid otter, adapted to subterranean waterways. You are carnivorous, and untroubled by eating decomposed carrion or creatures warped by Chaos.
Oily Coat: You have natural armor worth 3/13. Against oozes, slimes, jellies, and puddings it is worth 9/19.
Dexterous: When rolling your DEX score, you may choose from the two lowest dice, instead of just the lowest. However, if your WIS is over 3/13, you must swap it out with your lowest ability.
Natural Weapons: Claws (1d3) or Bite (1d6).
Playful: A WIS save may be required to resist the impulse to eat, frolic, or che…

I've started a D&D campaign for kids and parents. We're running 5e (the kids have the books, and want to use them), but we used tools from Beyond the Wall to generate characters and their home village.


Ballyjack is a village that grew up around the stump of the giant beanstalk that was chopped down centuries ago in a dispute with a local cloud giant. It is now mostly known for pig-farming.

Significant NPCs
Honeywell Ballyjack, Mayor, owner of a large pig farm at the edge of town
Dirk the Reeve, oversees the town for the mayor and enforces the mayor’s decrees
Butthog, Dirk’s lackey, recently kidnapped and beaten by goblins
Filfory Hogsbottom, brewmaster, owner of Hogsbottom Inn and Brew-works
Tatter Helga, a hedge witch who lives in town and makes petty charms and potions
Jerrod the Bard, lives at the Inn, one of the better-traveled and more knowledgeable citizens of the town
Sylvarus Nuthing, a hermit who lives near edge of the Thousand Acre Wood
Timmory Mill, the Miller
Rose Smith,…