An Abominable Fancy

I thought about making a Satyr Class for DD , and then realized that, with Boring Spells in play, the simplest way to model a Satyr would be just to use roll up a Magic User (probably an Illusionist) and use its Satyr-ness as the motif. And it occurred to me that this could be a good way to handle pretty much any character race. Simply ask the player to describe what they want to play, and then ask them if that character is going to solve things by fighting, magic, or skill. Want to play an ogre or minotaur or lizard man? That’s a Fighter. A nymph or satyr or vampire is a Spell-caster run through Boring Spells. Your gnome or talking rabbit or animated scarecrow is an Adventurer. Angels and sufficiently religious-minded creatures of any species can be Clerics.  Now, obviously, lizard men are better in water than minotaurs, and satyrs are better in daylight than vampires, but that could all be handled as role-play and off-the-cuff rulings. So, I then immediately came up with ...

The recent burst of activity on this blog is largely traceable to being all fired up after reading the wonderful Delving Deeper Reference Rules . I'm not terribly familiar with pre-Holmes 0e, and not at all with Chainmail, but I found DD to be a spectacularly elegant ruleset. And after mentioning how much I like the new-wave OSR take on a broadly-interpretable Specialist/Expert/Adventurer character class, I thought I should write one up for DD. This can model a thief (although the "Bidding Time" ability is less potent than Backstab), but I hope it will also model anybody who isn't trying to fight or cast their way through problems. The Adventurer Expertise Pick or invent a non-combat realm of expertise, with its attendant Prime Requisite: Communication (CHR) Craft (WIS or DEX) Knowledge (INT) Physical (STR) Subterfuge (DEX) Survival (WIS) All player characters are considered generally competent and well-adapted to the campaign wor...

Having some fun with Boring Spells . I decided to make some completely random spell casters. I came up with four motifs: Mad Inventor Plague Doctor Infested with magical crystalline parasites Hedgehogs I decided to randomize what School via 1d6. 1           Academy Mage 2           Cleric 3           Illusionist 4           Necromancer 5           Witch 6           Eccentric And each gets 2 0th Order Spells, and 1 1st Order Spell. I rolled 1d6 to determine each spell. For the Eccentric, I rolled 3d6 for the 0th Order (there are 17 0th spells) and 1d30 for the 1st Order Spell. The results are a lot more interesting that the standard MU equipped with Magic Missile a...