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A Halloween Adventure

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
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Recent posts

Knaves, fancypants

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'…
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Knaves Unfathomable

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…
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Ballyjack

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,…
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B/X Grappling Rules

I'm adding some house-rules and what-nots to an edition of B/X Purple Core, and decided I wanted some Grappling Rules:

Grappling (Optional Rule)
If a character wishes to pin or overpower an opponent, they may attempt to grapple them.

Generally speaking, as many as six grapplers can engage a single defender. Each grappler must succeed at an attack roll against the defender. The referee may choose to wholly or partially ignore armor for purposes of this attack.

Roll the HD of each combatant on both sides.
 • If the grappler’s side has the highest result, the defender is immobilized. They can be disarmed, tied up, pinned to the ground, or pushed in any direction at one quarter their movement.
• If the results are a tie, the struggle continues and everyone must roll again unless both sides agree to discontinue.
 • If the defender has the highest result, they have broken free. The grapplers are thrown back 5’ and unable to act for one round.

Once engaged in grappling, neither side can t…
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B/X Purple Core

I used Gavin Norman's B/X Essentials Core Rules as an exercise in learning InDesign. The aesthetic is aggravatingly tasteful, but it should be easy to scroll through, with lots of hyperlinks and a few helpful annotations.


Feedback, as always, is accepted and solicited.

Now to make a houserules edition!



The B/X Monogram on the cover is based the font Rye, which is also used as the header text inside the document.
If you'd like to use it for something B/X related, and want a high-rez or vectorized file, let me know!


B/X Monogram by Joel Priddy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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Time Rats, in COLOR!

I've been teaching myself layout, and specifically baseline grids, so I decided to fancy-up Time Rats.


NOTES
I've fluffed it up a bit, adding enough information to make it an independent game that doesn't require having Maze Rats on hand—although it's still very terse, and will probably only make sense if you're to sort of person who reads gaming blogs.

The most significant mechanical shift from Maze Rats is the introduction of a Turn Sequence, inspired by the Doctor Who RPG, which is intended to make it viable to encounter rampaging death-machines with nothing more than a kettle and some bits of string.

This is not the final version. I want to finish up a 3-page adventure. The idea is to have a short document that will let you set up a single evenings-worth of adventure with brand new players in just a few minutes.

And I made the bestiary of enemies without much reflection. I need to consider their relative power levels a bit more.

Feedback and advice is appreciated…
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