An Abominable Fancy

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 Timmor

I love to read and fiddle and hack all sorts of different rule sets. But the game I actually play is Beyond the Wall. It’s pretty great. Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures is set up for quick, low-prep games. You can sit down with your friends and some dice, and soon have rounded, interrelated characters, a detailed-enough base Village, and an adventure knocking down the door. There’s no reason to limit such an appealing system to one-shot sessions. And a big new supplement is here to take the strategies that worked so well in Beyond the Wall and apply them to long-term campaign play: Further Afield. I want to go to there. I’ve been playtesting Further Afield content for several months. Here’s my take: Collaborative Sandbox Design Beyond the Wall makes play out of chargen, generating not only character abilities and history, but also relationships, significant NPCs, and the Village that serves as the base. Further Afield uses this same collaborative approach to

Death of Beowulf by JR Skelton Beyond the Wall has a "Cheat Death" rule: A dying character may spend a Fortune Point to stabilize at 0 hit points and not continue taking damage every round. The rules also say: All damage taken before reaching zero hit points represents narrow escapes, minor cuts and bruises, and painful, but not debilitating, wounds. Once a character reaches zero hit points, however, he is out of the fight, either unconscious or nearly so. It is at this point that we can call a character seriously wounded, perhaps with a grave sword wound or a nasty blow to the head. He’s not dead yet, but he is in serious trouble and desperately needs the help of his companions. And: Characters who have reached 0 hit points need help immediately. They will continue to lose hit points at the rate of 1 per round unless they receive medical attention. Should a character’s hit points reach -10 he is dead. So that works. But, after reading  +Lloyd Neill 

My party is traveling north, from their home village of Herebury to the town of Stoat, to pick up a suit of armor and a few new PCs. I wanted the journey in between to have some color, but didn't want to drag it out with random encounters and side missions. I assigned each player a village, and asked them to describe it briefly, along with a local NPC. I asked a second player to then elaborate on either the village or the NPC. A third player then rolled a check against Charisma to see how the party faired. Here are the villages that resulted: Town: Oxley Once known as Oxcross, Oxley is known for its livestock who graze the fields east of town. It's proximity to the Thousand Acre Wood makes it home to a good number of hunters and trappers, who protect the town and its herds from wild animals. Oxley has been grooming their cattle for generations to yield the best tasting beef in the region. They also have a formidable leather working tradition. Most of the local hunter

I'm interested in how characters divest themselves of their ill-gotten gain. How much for the Arch-Lich's hat ? I've noodled with a poisoned Monty Haul where the adventure begins with finding a huge, unwieldy treasure trove in some remote, inaccessible area. The challenge would be getting to treasure back to civilization and disposing of it without getting killed or tipping your hand to the millions of interested parties who'd love to find the source of the goods and cut out the middle man. Do you cut the giant ivory statues into smaller pieces? Melt down the gold throne? Do you make a circuit to several cities to dispose of the loot slowly? Can you hire henchmen and trust them around such temptation? What happens when a bandit king gets wind? Or a group of fellow adventurers? A young dragon? Did you know that the local king has an ancestral link to this horde, and considers not handing it all over to him to be treason? So does the king next door. And the leader o

Here is the ruleset I've cobbled together to run the Anomalous Subsurface Environment, Patrick Wetmore 's gonzo megadungeon: Anomalous Subsurface Microlite The chassis is Microlite20,  although I slowed down skill progressions a lot . There's a DCC -style meat-grinder attached, and the weapons list and combat stances are highly influenced/ripped off from Beyond the Wall. Some favorite house-rules from here and there (but mostly from Goblin Punch ) got chunked in, too. The setting and the Scientist and Robot classes are, of course, from the ASE modules . A powerful impetus behind this is to play a game where I can use The Dungeon Dozen as a straight resource. This is intended as the Players' document, and doesn't contain things like advancement. And it only goes up to about level 6, because I'm intending this for PbP and holy geez, we'll all be long dead before anyone gets to level 6 via PbP.

Beyond the Wall has a lovely, simple weapons mechanic. The only mechanical distinction between weapons is melee or ranged, and the amount of damage. Weapons can do 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, or 1d10, and all weapons within a given damage range cost the same. You can call your 1d6 melee weapon a short sword or a cutlass or a bearded axe or a mace—it's all the same. Wound Man I much prefer this to AD&D style weapons charts with all sorts of granular damage rates, which seem primarily derived from arguments over why a claymore is better than a carp's tongue and oh my god how can you not know what a carp's tongue is?  But I still felt the urge for some mechanical distinction between weapons. So, this. The Critical effects of each weapon are for natural 20's and 1's only, and are only suggestions. Always go with what is situationally most appropriate. Dagger, Knife D4, 4 Coppers Can use either the STR or DEX bonus to hit in melee. Can be thrown; Range:

William Bradley Satyr Playbook PDF Here's my playbook for generating satyr characters in Beyond the Wall. I started doing straight translations of my various B/X satyr classes, but decided they weren't quite the right tone for BtW, and pretty much started from scratch. Let me know what you think, and, as always, suggestions and corrections are appreciated.

An extremely abstract map of the area around Herebury. I'll be using this as part of a playtest of a campaign-level supplement for Beyond the Wall, which involves collaborative sandbox building.

Sarah Stillwell, 1904 One of the best things about  Beyond the Wall  is the character creation process, which is based on playbooks. They generate your stats, your history, and your village. They establish relationships between both PCs and NPCs. And they allow you to have your OSR cake and it eat, too. You get to be a class purist  and  model as many and varied types of characters as you like. There are only three actual classes:  Warrior, Mage,  and Rogue.  The playbooks allow you to dress these mechanically straight-forward classes up in different clothes. An archer and a barroom brawler and a knight might all be Warriors, but you can make a different playbook for each, and they will feel very different. People have been doing this with D&D Fighters for a long time, but it's very satisfying to be able to meaningfully specialize your spell-caster without having to write a brand new spell list. The Mage can be a classic wizard, cleric, druid, witch, elf, or an

Here's what Herebury looks like now that the players have generated a ton of NPCs, locations, history, and intrigue for the place. It's going to be a challenge to make the scenario as much fun as chargen has been. Woodcroft House Town Square Eighter’s House Ravengard’s Library Herebury Market The Mill The Red Herring Herebury’s Hearth Hedge Hovel Tatter Helga’s House The Forge of Hake Glenross Temple of the Old Gods Wicht Hill The Forgotten Well Guardian’s Grove Shriek’s Den Smokey’s Cabin The Lumber Camp Also, Beyond the Wall is proving to be just as great a bridge between the OSR and story games as one might hope . When I've suggested story-ish systems to this community before, they have looked upon me with the soft, pitying eye usually reserved for children who don't quite have their bowels under control, yet. Now, people are saying, "Tell me more about