An Abominable Fancy

I'm working on some playbooks for quick character generation for a group a kids in an effort to keep chargen to five or ten minutes. I'm using S&W Whitebox, with bits of Holmes and whatnot tucked in here or there. There should be just enough fluff to give the characters some distinction without everyone mulling for half an hour about what makes their guy special. Wizards are differentiated by randomly selected spells; fighters roll for backgrounds. Clerics don't get spells at first level, so they needed something. Like a patron deity. Roll 5 d20s to generate a patron deity. 1 Arn- -azee The Burning… …Bull… …of Ancestors. 2 Bur- -ex The Quiet… …Mother/Father… …of The Sun. 3 Col- -gam The Rebellious… …Frog… …of Legend. 4 Dre- -hys The Angry… …Thunder… …of Sleep and Dreams. 5 Ens- -isos The Shining… …Wa...

I love Death & Dismemberment Tables, but I get tired of looking them up. So how about an easily remembered rule? When you reach 0 or negative hp: Subtract 1d10 from a random attribute (1d6). The player can choose: 1. Pass out from blood loss until you receive enough aid to get back up to positive hit points, or  2. Stay on your feet like a bad-ass, but take a Permanent Injury. If any attribute reaches 0, you are dead. If you are injured again, you have to roll for Death & Dismemberment again. Keep track of negative hit points—you have to recover them before you can heal your positive hp. Attribute points take a week of full rest per point. Multiple attributes can recover at the same time. Permanent Injuries Write down a serious injury, such as a lost limb, next to the affected attribute. This is now a Disadvantage, whenever you use that attribute in a way that would be hindered by the injury. The Player gets to decide what the Permanent Injury is, altho...

via Richard Sala

I often find rules in D&D that don’t work the way I expect them to, and blame my younger self for having been too lazy to learn the rules correctly back in the day. Turns out, I’m usually just remembering Holmes Basic. This came up recently, when a campaign decided to switch from LL to AD&D, and I was ready to rock this table: My spell caster was going to get a massive upgrade to his spell book! With INT 18, he was going to go from five spells to at least 18! He had a good chance of making a clean sweep. Then someone kindly pointed out that the above percentages apply to learning spells that you find lying around amongst owlbear pellets. It takes Gygax about five paragraphs to explain this chart, and... well, let's say that clarity is not among its virtues. To summarize: If a spell caster finds a spell, they can roll their percentile chance to learn the spell. This roll can only be made once. If you fail to learn a spell, you can never learn it. Exc...

Beyond The Wall 's playbooks are a really fun part of the game, and, for awhile, I was into the idea of writing playbook variations . I found myself making them more and more open-ended until I had something that really wasn't a playbook, anymore, but a simple chargen process that can be applied to any 3d6-attribute-type game. Then I forgot about it. Then I remembered! So, here's a process for generating characters, backgrounds, and setting: 1. What part of the campaign setting is your character from? Civilization, Wilderness, Sea, Underworld, Other?  2. Roll 2d4, in order, for each attribute. This is you as a child. What sort of a child are you? What trade were you raised with? (You can google up a list of Medieval occupations for inspiration.)  3. Make up a location and an NPC for the campaign setting.  4. Roll 1d4, in order, to add to each attribute. This is you as an adolescent. How have you changed since childhood?  5. Pick a class. Who trained...

Inspired by +Ralph Lovegrove 's recent post on Stormbringer-style demons , here's a quick idea that really doesn't need to be a post. Roll 1d12. Blindly hit that number of keys on your keyboard. Write down a phonetic approximation of your keyboard-pecking. Edit to taste. Demons named! Demon Names Aasid G'gaitif Heek Juguntun' Visdgu' Exle Keeudwax Kryid Makojifidra Mne Pilkhivy Tyrtveehg Xerdegar Xutru

The kid woke me up this morning, saying "Let's play D&D, but let's be sea creatures." Okey-doke. Illustrations from Walt McDougall’s Good Stories for Children, 1902-05 I asked him to make up a list of sea creatures he'd like to play (having no idea if he meant natural sea fauna, or mermen and sea serpents, or what), while I did a quick re-skinning of +Chris McDowall 's   One-Page Edition of Into The Odd. Here is the result: Undersea Odd Quick and dirty, but we were playing before the cereal got soggy, and that was good. Although, I think the kid would have appreciated more fights and treasure.