Everything is alive.  Mountains, winds, the earth itself.  Even cities can dream.

But "city" is an arbitrary concept isn't it?  There is no clear boundary, nor any clear membership criteria.

This is irrelevant.  Everything is alive.  Everything strives.  Every collection of anything that has any sort of a shared identity.  Sentience comes from identity, not structure, and identity is not something that brute material can dictate.  We decide.

What is a human, except a collection of singular cells that dreamed themselves unified?

When the legion was founded, the genius legionis came into existence.  It is the metaphysical consequence of thousands of men uniting their wills under one banner--although it is equally true to say that the unitary will of the legion is the consequence of the genius legionis.

The genius legionis doesn't have an intellect the way that you and I do.  It is pure will.  It doesn't communicate with words, but with instinct and gut feelings.  It doesn't want anything except the shared goals of the group that it champions.  It is strengthened by recognition, honor, success, and sacrifices.

But the legion has passed from memory.  With their passing, the genius legionis has also dissipated.  But its home remains--a bronze eagle atop a tall standard.  The genius legionis wasn't made up of bronze, but it resided there.  And now that the standard has been picked up again by new hands, a new spirit stirs behind the bronze eyes.

Playing as the Genius Legionis

This is a character class.  One of the players at the table can play as the genius legionis.  As a PC, the genius legionis is a little unusual.  They don't have a body, except the bodies of the rest of the party.  They don't have a voice, except the voice of the party.  They cannot die, unless the party dies.

Around the table, this might be a little bit awkward, but I think it might suite some players who like a more background role.

I would also recommend that the player who plays the genius legionis be given a hireling that they can roleplay as.  A standard bearer--who can also be a porter, torchbearer, etc.

The Genius Legionis Class

The genius legionis can help solve puzzles by putting ideas in the heads of party characters.  They can't speak directly, but other characters can speak for them.  And like anyone else, they get one action every round in combat.  (This action is usually performed via the body of a willing player character, although some of them are performed "through" the body of their opponents.)

Starting at level 2, a genius legionis gets access to Stunts.  Most stunts are useful in combat and can only be used when certain conditions are met.  Each Stunt can only be used once per combat.

Template Bonus: Everyone in the party gets +1 Initiative for every Genius Legionis template you have.

A Inspire, Killing Instinct

B Shrine, 2 Random Stunts

C Trophies, 2 Random Stunts

D Battle Flow, 2 Stunts of Your Choice

Inspire

You can't speak, but you can deliver ideas into the brains of anyone else in the party, at any time.

Killing Instinct

As a standard action, pick a party member who hasn't dealt any damage to anyone this turn.  They get a free melee attack.  You roll it.

Shrine

The party can set up the battle standard and make an offering to it (which can be literally anything, as long as it is delivered reverentially).  The site becomes a shrine.  Within the shrine, party members are automatically alerted (via spidey sense) if any enemy enters.  The "site" can be a campsite in a wilderness or a small fort, as long as it is fully owned by the party.

Trophies

In an hour-long ceremony that requires a bard and a lot of mead, the party retells the story of how they killed a powerful enemy.  (You gotta roleplay this at least *a little*).  Then a trophy of that enemy is affixed to the battle standard.  Against a similar foe, once per combat, as a free action, you can grant an automatic success after someone fails their save, or turn a critical miss into a critical hit.

You can affix a maximum of 3 trophies to yourself

Battle Flow

As a standard action, pick an enemy or a group of similar enemies.  Then pick a party member.  The enemies will all attack the chosen party member.  They get an Int save if this would expose them to immediate, obvious hazards.  They get another Int save if they are human-intelligence or smarter.

Alternatively, you can use this ability to make enemies *avoid* attacking a specific party member.

Stunts (d10)

1. Don't You Die on Me

Useable only when a party member is Dying.  For the rest of the turn, all attempts to stabilize the Dying party member get +2.  All attacks against the enemy that last dealt damage to the Dying party member get +4 to hit.

2. Special Delivery

One party member can cast a spell into a melee weapon held by another character.  The weapon glows, gets +4 to damage and to hit, and delivers the spell on the next hit.  If the weapon isn't discharged in one round, the spell dissipates.  If the weapon misses, you can use your standard action to give them an extra roll, as per the Killing Instinct ability.

3. Overconfidence

This ability is only useable after at least 3 attacks have missed this turn.  As a standard action, an enemy becomes overconfident and missteps.  They get -4 Defense for the next round.  Useable 1/combat.  

4. The Cavalry is Here

If one party member is separated from the party, and they are about to die (i.e. in combat and within 1 hit of death, drowning in a pool, etc), you can roll a d6.  On a 4 or higher, the party can arrive on the scene as long as it is feasible within the fiction.

5. Gank

An enemy takes 2d6 damage.  Useable only when three different party members have dealt melee damage to them in a single turn.

6. Suddenly, a Rat

At the end of a turn where an enemy moves somewhere new, a random rat appears and attacks the enemy.  The enemy steps on a rat nest or something similar.  If rats don't exist in this location, a creature of similar menace appears instead. 

7. Irresistible Monologue

A villain capable of monologuing spends a round monologuing, giving the party extra time to move, prep, or heal.  You can use this ability at the start of combat before any hostilities have broken out, or when the enemy seems certain to win.  The monologue ends as soon as anyone takes an action that is overtly hostile.  (E.g. the enemy has a readied action to cast power word kill as soon as you raise your bow--they're not monologuing with their eyes closed.)  Only works on enemies that can talk.  

8. Last Stand

A character at 1 HP takes a full turn of actions, chosen by you (and with the consent of the character's player).  They get +4 attack and damage on their first attack roll. 

9. Swift Punch in the Throat

An ally punches an enemy spellcaster in the throat, dealing 1 damage and giving them a 50% chance of fumbling their spell.  Only useable when an enemy is casting a spell adjacent to an ally.

10. Glorious Charge

When the entire party charges enemies simultaneously, all enemies take 1d10 fear damage.  When most of the party charges enemies simultaneously, all enemies take 1d6 fear damage.  Useless against enemies that are immune to fear or enemies that have no reason to fear you (e.g. ghosts,  elder dragons, werewolves).

Describe how the glorious charge appears in the eyes of the enemies.  For example, you might appear as a flaming hawk above the party.

Merry GLoGmas!

This is a GLoGmas gift for antitime at Temporal Negativity  

I'm sort of riffing of their Five Fighters class.  They also have a functional little dungeon here.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Potions kinda suck and I can prove it.

Potions Suck #1

Healing potions kinda suck the fun out of the game for me.  I know most OSR games don't allow them to be purchased, which is good, but a lot of games allow you to stockpile them.  And when you find them, you almost have to bring them along--they're too useful to leave behind since HP is such a critical resource.  They may replace more interesting items in your inventory.

Potions can also feel a little antithetical to dungeoncrawling, too.  Since dungeoncrawling is all about resource management, and potions are a (potentially) uncontrolled resource, players may walk into the dungeon with 0 potion or with 10.  This isn't necessarily a problem--the group with more potions will just delve deeper, and you could argue that they've earned it.

Dark Souls had the right idea.  Estus flasks limit your healing to a fixed amount.  And they're easy to refill, ensuring that a failed first attempt doesn't sink your second attempt.

Potions Suck #2

They're also kinda contrary to the fiction.  Conan never sucked down a healing potion in the middle of combat, much less as a bonus action.  Healing potions don't come from fantasy fiction, they come from video games.  

(UPDATE: I'm probably wrong about this, since potions were in '74 OD&D.  But I don't feel wrong.)

Potions Suck #3

Adventures are designed around their systems, so systems with lots of access to healing potions tend to require more healing.  That's why you see so many unavoidable-unless-you-roll-high traps in 3rd edition dungeons.  This feedback loop creates traps and combats that function as a HP tax, and the whole party must figure out how they're going to pay it.

If you play 5th edition right now, you need a healer in your party.  Maybe not a singular cleric--maybe you have several characters that all heal their share.  You might say "yeah, that's part of the strategy of making an effective party, and it's fun to make an effective party".  Sure, but it's still a constraint that can prevent people from running the characters they want.  I might want to be a wizard, but if the party needs more healing, you might be able to bully me into a rolling a cleric.

Potions Suck #4

Lots of intra-fight healing also changes the style of combat.  If the party could never heal mid-combat: 

• Combats would go faster.
• If you game was about combat balance, enemies would deal less damage (to compensate).
• Damage would be impactful, because it can't be undone.  (Like every move matters in chess--there's no way to return a captured piece to the board.)

Healing is Cool #2

Potions smooth out damage for the whole party.

Think about 4 people going into the dungeon with 10 HP each.  One way of thinking about it: the party has 40 HP.  When it gets low, they need to decide to press on or return to camp.

Except it's not that simple, is it?  One guy gets hit.  Then he gets hit again in the next combat.  Then he's dead.  The other 3 guys weren't hit at all.  A streak of bad luck sank the delve.

But potions hedge that bet.  

If you have 4 people, each with 10 HP, and the party is carrying 3 potions that each heal for 5 HP, then the "party" has 55 HP, and the potions can be consumed by whoever needs them the most.

Through this lens, potions are a form of insurance carried by the whole party.  They're a resource that the party shares, that limits how long they can delve into dungeons. (Although obviously the parties that play better will take less damage, delve deeper, and get more treasure.)

Healing is Cool #3

Potions help balance gameplay between different numbers of players.

One character with 10 HP, carrying 3 potions (5 HP each) = 25 HP for the party.  That's your risk budget.  That's how many rounds of combat you can slog through.  That's how many doors you can open.  That's how much fun you get to have before you need to return to camp.

Two characters with 10 HP each, sharing 3 potions (5 HP each) = 35 HP.  Still higher, but the difference is smaller.  

We can't reasonably re-balance the whole dungeon if the number of players change.  If the group size drops from 4 to 2, you probably can't delve as deep as you used to, but your delves aren't half as short.

If you wanted to remove magical healing from the game entirely, you could.  But with everything else being the same, you'd have to increase everyone's HP to keep the new game comparable to (and roughly compatible with) the old.

Healing is Cool #4

Comebacks are dramatic and satisfying.  It also feels more desperate, when you watch your HP dwindle, then bouy back up after you quaff some red juice.  You can watch your potions dwindle, too.

So how do we keep the good stuff while dropping the bad stuff?  I have a few ideas.

Estus Flasks

In Dark Souls, you lose all of your HP and die.  This can happen because either (a) you were fighting an enemy and got killed before you could drink your estus flasks (health potions), or (b) you were exploring and ran out of estus flasks overall, because estus flasks are limited.  Whenever you get a long rest, you recover all of your estus flasks, and that number is limited.  You don't recover your estus flasks until you take another long rest.

And the more I think about it, the more I like it.  Healing should be a very finite resource that is easily replenished by a long rest.  It's probably the factor that limits the player the most on their delves.  

Estus flasks fit this description, but in the traditional tabletop milieu, some sort of magical healing is probably closer to most people's expectations.

Shrines, Altars, and Temples

Another "problem" in need of fixing is how the game is we handle we handle shrines and altars.  D&D is bursting with ancient shrines and altars.  Oftentimes, they don't do anything.  There's no way to interact with the divinity that is supposed to reside there.  (Sometimes I put treasure on the altar, with a chance for receiving a divine curse if it is stolen, or a small chance for a blessing if a contribution is made, but these are token gestures.)

Anyway, I think I have a better idea.

The Solution

Anyway, here's what I've come up with.  In a nutshell:

Healing potions are rare (or nonexistent).  Instead, the party shares a pool of magical healing that replenishes every day.

Since the party already has a source of healing, clerics don't necessarily bring a lot of healing, but they give other benefits.  More diverse abilities, perks when healing is used, small improvements to healing, or perhaps they're more similar to holy wizards.

If you're dropped to 0 HP and then recover, you are left with a point of Trauma.  Each point of trauma reduces your maximum HP by an equivalent amount.  The only way to remove Trauma is by putting that character in time-out, and playing a different character for a session.

Damnation by Seb McKinnon

I got this idea from mad gods on bear blog.

Crab Evo from Kagaku Sentai Dynaman

Their bodies were ground up and mixed together.  Their names were forgotten.  They were boiled in a cauldron heated by the fat of their own bodies, and Hell itself stirred the pot.

You were born knowing nothing but hatred, chained to a thing called obedience.  Your obedience was absolute and unquestioned, in a way that humans will never understand.  There was never any doubt in your head.  Never any delay or hesitation.  What your creator commanded, you obeyed. 

There was only ever one command.

How many have you killed?  What a meaningless question.  You killed them all.

You only ever knew two sensations.  A restlessness punctuated by a blind, grasping eagerness to inflict yourself upon the world.

But now your creator is dead.  A long time dead, even.  Your teeth are beginning to soften in their rests.  Your exoskeleton is growing brittle.  And incredibly, your sense of self is beginning to become unglued, the slave enchantments finally softening and sloughing away.  Your mind is a newborn thing, and for the first time it tastes something new: doubt.

Templates

A    Built for War, Cruelty Horizon

B    Voice, Demon Blood

C    Softness, Bodyguard

D    Skin Contact, Living Blood

E    Extra Template

Built for War

+6 HP, +3 Str, +3 Con.

Each time you gain another template in this class, you soften, losing 1/3 of these bonuses.

Additionally, you have natural armor (as plate),  two natural attacks (1d6/1d6), and cannot speak.

Cruelty Horizon

• You must make a Cha check each time you consider doing something in combat besides attacking.  You are a butcher of thousands, nothing more.
• You must make a Cha check each time you attempt to help another person.  The idea of helping another person has thus far been inconceivable; yet you are beginning to conceive of it.
• Anyone attempting to help you directly must succeed on a Charisma check or else turn away in disgust.  You are revolting; there is no forgetting your atrocities.

Every time you gain a template in this class, you may remove one of the prior 3 restrictions.

Voice

Your rip out your mandibles.  There is still a mouth back there, somewhere.  It hurts, but you learn how to use it.

Demon Blood

You can feed your blood to someone, effectively transferring HP to them.  This process takes 1 minute.

Softness

Your exoskeleton is rotting on your body.  It will kill you in 3 days, unless at least 3 people assist you in removing it.  Afterwards you can wear clothing and armor as normal, but you lose your natural armor.  

Without your exoskeleton, you are cold.  You will always be cold.  The biting wind is cruel and but also innocent in its cruelty.

Bodyguard

1/round, when an ally next to you takes damage from a melee attack, you can choose to intercept the blow.  Roll a d6: 1 - you fail in your attempt, 2-5, you take half of the damage (rounding down), 6 - you take all of the damage.  You can make this choice after the DM announces damage.  

Skin Contact

Your claws are instruments of murder, and nothing else.  You must rip them off.  It is painful--painful, but they will regrow in 2 weeks as hands.  The skin is brittle, and your fingers lack fingernails, but you can now hold weapons and objects.  You lose your natural attack.

The first time you pet a cat you are going to lose your mind.

Living Blood

You regenerate 1 HP every minute.  

If you spend 10 minutes healing someone (doing nothing else), you restore all of their HP and your HP.

Extra Template

Since you've basically lost all advantages from Template A, at this point you get the ability to gain one more template from some other class that you normally have access to.

Pic unrelated.  Scorpia is just adorable.

For a long time, I had the same random encounter table rules as everyone else:

Every 3 rooms (or 30 minutes of exploration time), roll a d6.  If a 1 comes up, a random encounter happens.

After a couple of years, I even added

If a 2 comes up, the players get an Omen--a clue about an upcoming encounter.

In practice, this . . . never quite felt the way that I wanted it to.  And it's taken me a decade, but I think I know why.

by Peter Mullen

First, look at the math.

This works out to 1 random encounter every 18 rooms, and one omen every 18 rooms.

We probably got through 4-10 rooms per session, so random encounters don't pop up very often.  (I don't use a lot of empty spaces.  Most of my rooms have something to interact with.)

Some people roll a random encounter every room (including every long hallway).  This feels a lot better, but it also means that back-to-back encounters are not infrequent, and it feels too unpredictable.

Second, look at how omens are supposed to work.  You're supposed to find the omen, which (a) builds suspense and (b) lets the players prepare themselves, prior to the encounter itself.  Omens weren't happening with enough frequency.

Third, consider the stated goals of random encounters.  (Time pressure, versimilitude.)  Random encounters are not the best way to achieve either of those.  Often, when random encounters occurred, they felt disruptive.

Anyway, I am giving up on:

• tracking torch durations
• random encounter checks

I think I have something better.

Design Goals

Time Pressure

The four most vital currencies in a dungeon crawler are:

• Time
• Information
• Hit Points
• Expendables (potions and spells)

It doesn't feel like a dungeoncrawler to me unless all four of those things matter.

The reason why we track torch depletion and random encounters is because we want a source of time pressure.

I like games where time a critical resource.  Players can't read every book and tap every brick.  They need to be tactical in where they spend their attention.  

This is good!  It raises the skill level for dungeoncrawling and makes players scrutinize my dungeon for clues.  Do they have reason to think there's a hidden door in this room?  If so, they'll spend some time searching.  If not, I'll keep moving.

But I don't think random encounters are very good at this task.  Random encounters don't put much time pressure on players unless they're very frequent, and at higher frequencies (1/room or greater) they feel too uncontrolled to me.

Suspense vs Surprise 

Surprise is when the alien suddenly attacks.

Suspense is when you know the aliens are getting closer.  You are running out of time, and you are running out of ammo.  I think that most DMs want their players to feel suspense, more than surprise.

A truly random roll (a flat 1-in-6 chance) doesn't offer much suspense.  Surprise, but not suspense.

To increase suspense, you want the players to feel like they're running out of time.

Versmilitude

I'd also argue that random encounters don't do much to make a dungeon feel like a living, breathing place.  Random encounters frequently feel out-of-place (especially when they're not well-localized to the story and the rooms around them).

Time Pressure

Random encounters are meant to be a tax on character time--don't dawdle in the dungeon or you'll lose HP--but they often feel like taxes on player time--don't dawdle in the dungeon or you'll be stuck in some pointless combat for 45 minutes, when everyone would have more fun with 45 minutes of exploring new rooms.

If the only goal was to put time pressure on the players, you could replace all random encounters with a cold wind that deals 1d6 damage to everyone (save for half) then moves on.  The players are still penalized for taking too long, and then everyone can get back to dungeoneering.

(These last two points are really just complaints about how the random encounters are written, rather than the mechanic that produces the events.  I'm including them only out of a sense of completion.)

by Peter Mullen

The Underworld

The Underworld is not just a basement or a cave.  The Underworld is a place that hates you.  It is hostile architecture.  It hates you in a way that only the blind tonnage of stone and cold air can have.  It hates your lively blood.  It hates the sunshine warmth still lingering on your skin.

Live there long enough, and the Underworld can learn to tolerate you.  You will grow pale and cold and strange, like the other inhabitants of that place.  The long years will render you smooth and inoffensive, like a pearl held in the mouth.  The Underworld's irritation fades and scabs over.

But this doesn’t apply to delvers.  They dig greedily and they dig fast.  They are hated the most, and this hatred is felt as soon as the Underworld is entered.

Explorers have a myriad of names for this feeling of supernatural dread.  The Claws of the Underworld.  The Black Rat Whisper.  The Fosydra.  But only one name suits our purposes here:

The Underclock

It starts at 20 when you walk into a dungeon.  When it reaches 0, an Encounter happens.

You will periodically roll a six-sided Underworld die and subtract it from the Underclock whenever the party expends time or noise.  Examples of actions that provoke an Underclock Roll:

• Exploring a new room (including long hallways).
• Moving through 3 already-explored rooms.
• Lingering or searches.
• Making noise (e.g. kicking down a door).

NOTE: the noise of combat doesn't normally contribute to the Underclock.

Some more facts about the Underclock:

• The Underworld Die explodes.  If you get the maximum value (e.g. a 6 on a d6), immediately roll it again and subtract the result from the Underclock.

• If the Underclock drops below 0, an Encounter is triggered.  After the Encounter resolves, the Underclock resets to 20.

• If the Underworld Clock equals 0 exactly, it resets to 3.  The Underworld's attention is elsewhere, momentarily.

• If the Underworld Clock equals 3 exactly, a Shadowing Event occurs.  So the clock reaches 0, it bounces up to 3 and a Shadowing Event occurs.  (These are just omens/spoor/clues, more or less.)

Rests

You can rest at any time.  You'll get all of your HP back after you do.  There are 3 prices.

1. The first cost is time.  You’ll have to roll some Underclock Rolls.

• If you are resting in the middle of a well-traveled location, make 3 rolls.

• If you are in a secret room that no one else knows about, you don’t need to make any rolls.

• Everything in between is either 1 or 2 rolls (defaulting to 2 rolls if you aren’t sure).

These rolls explode normally.  If you are interrupted by an encounter, you’ll need to start over.

2. The second cost is a ration.  Cross it off your inventory.

3. The third cost is attention.   Each time you rest in the dungeon, increase the size of your Underclock Die.  d6 -> d8 -> d10 -> d12 -> d20.  Each time you spend a night sleeping on the surface, decrease the Underworld die by one size, down to a minimum of d6.

Everyone knows that you shouldn’t eat anything in the Underworld. 

Degeneration

The Underworld hoards its treasures.  It hates the idea of its gold returning to the surface.  Far better that the treasure remain in the possession of one of its inhabitants.  Someone who will carry the gold until it dies in another dark corner.  

Whenever you leave the dungeon, the dungeon degenerates.  Things may change, the dungeon may restock, but most critically, the treasure depletes.

Every time the players exit to the outside, the biggest treasure pile in the dungeon loses 20% of its value, stolen away by agents of the Underworld.  (Sometimes this is an elder dungeon spirit, sometimes this is just a goblin with a boot full of loose coinage.)

Integration with Other Systems

The Underclock replaces torch depletion and other random encounters. 

The party still needs 1 lit torch for every 3 adventurers.  Everyone gets -1 Initiative for every person not sufficiently illuminated.

The maximum Underclock value is reduced by 1 for every point of Encumbrance held by any member of the party.

The Underclock replaces regular durations of spells, etc.  30 minutes = 3 exploration turns = 10 points on the Underclock.

Discussion

It takes an average of 5.9 Underclock Rolls to generate an encounter.  There is a 0.3% chance of the Underworld clock generating an encounter in a single roll (really a series of exploding d6s).

This is roughly comparable to the old "1-in-6 encounter chance every 10 mins".

Encounters are Shadowed approximately 33% of the time.  The other 67% of the time, they are not preceded by any Shadowing.

I do love that it is countdown, which makes the time pressure feel much more palpable at the table.  I would say "you've been in this dungeon for 3 hours now" and no one would care.  I would roll a random encounter check and players would glance over.  But people pay more attention to the Underclock.

"But Arnold, doesn't this allow players to game the system?  If the Underclock gets down below 6, won't they just hunker down somewhere safe until it goes below 0?" - You, probably.

Yes, of course the players will be more cautious when the clock is low, and slightly bolder when the clock is fresh.  That's kind of the point.  There's a texture to time that didn't exist before.  The players are supposed to be fully aware of it because it's a tangible-and-fluctuating measure of risk.  And the characters are supposed to be fully aware of it because they all develop heart murmurs when they draw the Underworld's attention.

If the players hunker down somewhere safe to let the clock expire, consider it an organic replacement for the Exhaustion mechanic that you see on overloaded encounter die mechanics.  (I like overloaded encounter dice.  I like the Underclock more.)

The integration with rests and HP is also something I like.  You can get all of your HP back easily, but at the cost of making the dungeon more dangerous.  There's an interesting decision here.  Should the players press, their luck?  Or break for lunch?

Similarly, there's another tension when deciding when to return to the surface.  The thought of a goblin walking off with 20% of their loot is very motivating.  The decision should be interesting and impactful (like most of the core decisions in an OSR game).  (Of course, if your game sessions are bounded by leaving the dungeon, this extra motivation is not needed.)

I'm also trying to simplify torches and encumbrance to the point where they are still important, but I want to move them out of the spotlight.  Players shouldn't spend much time or thought on them.  (I don't think I've ever had an interesting, impactful gameplay moment arise from torch depletion.)

Simple Mode

The Underclock counts down from 20 to 0, losing 1d6 every exploration turn.  An encounter happens at 0.

If you want to add some version of "the dungeon gets harder when you rest" or "treasure vanishes when you leave for the day" feel free implement your own version, or not.

Math Discussion

I wrote some Python to roll dice for me.  (Feedback welcome.  I've never shared any code before.)

Here are the numeric results.  

Here are the visualizations:

These are almost exactly the results I wanted when I started looking at candidate mechanics.  

I've been challenged to write a GLOGHACK in a single day, 

I accept.

Here's a game that only requires a single coin.

This idea has been bouncing around in my head for a while.  It's not brand new, so I'm only cheating a little bit.

Copper GLOG

This is a game meant to be played under minimal circumstances, when you don't have dice or a table.

• During a car ride.
• On a hike.
• Stuck in an elevator.
• In prison.
• Detention.

I want this game to be an OSR-style game at heart, but I also want it to be as much like the GLOG as possible.

However, this is a tabletop game that is meant to be played without a table (or dice).

If you want a resolution mechanic, flip a coin.  Or play rock paper scissors.  Or wager on whether the next license plate will be odd or even.

It's also a pen-and-paper game meant to be played without either.  This is the hardest part, since tracking things is such a huge part of the game.  I'm going to write these rules assuming that your materials are minimal-to-none, but if possible, definitely get some paper and pencils if you can.

by Irmirx

The Dungeon

If you can prepare, I recommend shoving a 1 page dungeon into your pocket, or pulling something up on your phone.

I'm assuming that this is probably going to be a quick one-off game, so start your players off at the entrance to the dungeon.  Everyone is assumed to have food, water, armor, a melee weapon, and an unlit torch.  

The goal of the game is to go into the dungeon and find big treasure and then haul it out.  Alternatively, if you want to give them 1-2 quests more specific to that dungeon, go right ahead (but if you give them quests, it may feel unfulfilling if you run out of time before you complete them).

We're gonna ignore time-keeping on this one.  I promise it'll be okay.

You can have a meaningful game without strict time records--barely.

Character Creation

Your character sheet is made up of the following fields.

1. Class + Level
2. HP
3. Good Stat
4. Skill
5. Inventory

Pretty much all of this is easy to memorize, so if you don't have a pencil and paper you can probably still get by.  It's a pen-and-paper game that doesn't use either.

You can track HP with quarters or some other token.  That will help prevent fights.

Inventory is the hardest one.  Part of the game is stuffing your inventory with weird shit, so if you only have a Kleenex and a crayon, use it to write down your inventory.

Rolling Up

Everyone starts at Level 1 and has 2 HP.

Everyone starts with food, water, a blanket, a torch, armor, and a melee weapon.

Choose one or roll:

1. ranged weapon
2. rope
3. lockpick (breaks on a success)
4. piglet

Good Stat

Everyone has one good stat chosen from the following list: Str, Dex, Con, Int, Wis, Cha.  

If your players aren't familiar with the basic six stats, just let them pick whatever.  They can pick Toughness or Wit if they want.  Hell, they can pick Luck.

Skill

Everyone picks one skill that they are good at, like First Aid or Animal Handling.

No social skills.  No Investigate, Perception, Investigation, or Trap Finding.  (Taking a skill like "Mechanisms" or "Lock Picking" is still fine, though.)

Base Resolution Mechanic

Everything is a coin flip.  There are no modifiers.  You could make these rolls with advantage/disadvantage (flip two coins and use the best/worst) but this should only be done as a last resort.

Instead, if you are good at something, your successes tend to be better and your failures tend to be milder.

For example, an average character attempts to sneak past a guard:

• Heads = they sneak past the guard
• Tails = the guard sees them

If a thief whose Good Stat is Dex attempts to sneak past the same guard:

1. Heads = they sneak past the guard and are able to bring another character along with them
2. Tails = they realize that this guard is alert, and that they cannot sneak past them safely

This applies to both your Good Stat and your Skill.

This is the primary resolution mechanic.  Don't just roll advantage/disadvantage on everything.  (That's essentially just turning it into a d4 roll-under system.)

Weapons, Armor, Light Sources, Ammunition, Rations, Inventory Slots

Honestly, you can ignore these things and still have a fun game.  Trust me on this.

Classes

There are three classes.

Fighters count as 1 level higher during combat.  (See below.)

Thieves get 1 Luck point every level.  You can declare any roll to be lucky.  If a non-combat roll is Lucky, you can treat it as if you were Skilled in it.  If an Attack roll is declared to be Lucky, you deal double damage on a hit.  If a Defense roll is declared to be Lucky, you may roll with advantage.

Wizards start with a spellbook (2 known spells) and 1 Magic Penny (MP).  You gain 1 MP whenever they level up, and learn new spells by identifying scrolls.  When you cast a spell, choose how many MP you want to invest.  The more heads, the stronger the spell.  MP that come up heads are expended, and do not return until you get a good night's sleep.

They function more-or-less identically to GLOG wizards, so you can use those rules with the following conversions.

• If you need to convert dice into d6s, a tails counts as 2 and a heads counts as a 5.
• If you need to convert damage into HP, treat every 1d6 as 1 HP.  If that's not possible, divide the damage by 4 and round to the nearest whole number.

Dungeoneering

The game is a dungeoncrawler.  Go in the dungeon.  None of  your achievements count unless you make it back out alive.

Random Encounters

1-in-4 chance whenever the party lingers or backtracks.  (Even a little bit of back-tracking.)

Leaving the dungeon requires 2 random encounter checks.

Reaction Flip

Monsters, Heads = neutral/talkative but they still don't like you

Monsters, Tails = immediately hostile/aggressive

NPC, Heads = friendly

NPC, Tails = wary, one wrong word away from becoming hostile

Combat

First, everyone flips a coin.  Everyone who gets heads wins initiative, and gets to act in the round before the monsters.  Then the monsters go.  Then the players go.  It alternates from there.

To make an attack roll, flip a coin.  If you get a heads, you deal 1 HP of damage to the enemy.

• If you are higher level than your opponent, you attack with advantage.
• If your target is more than twice your level, you attack with disadvantage.

When defending against an enemy, flip a coin.  If you get tails, you take 1 damage.

• If you are a lower level than your opponent, you defend with disadvantage.
• If you are at least twice the level of your opponent, you defend with advantage.

Casting spells on unwilling creatures is treated the same way.  It's easier to cast spells on enemies when you are higher level than them, and much harder if they are more than 2x your level.

Healing

The party can eat lunch once and only once.  Everyone gets all of their HP back.  Afterwards, the DM immediately rolls for a random encounter (1-in-4 chance).

Death and Dying

If you drop to 0 HP, you're unconscious until the end of combat.  Afterwards, you're exhausted and you can't take any actions the first round of every combat, even if you recover HP.  If you drop to 0 HP a second time, you die.

But I NEED to Roll a d6

Just flip a coin, dude.  

So what if your dungeon only has two kinds of wandering monsters?  It works fine.  Why do you need more?  How many wandering monsters do you actually encounter on the average day of dungeoneering?

But if you insist, roll 3 coins.  We'll turn it into binary.

• TTT = 000 = 0 (reroll)
• TTH = 001 = 1
• THT = 010 = 2
• THH = 011 = 3
• HTT = 100 = 4
• HTH = 101 = 5
• HHT = 110 = 6
• HHH = 111 = 7 (reroll)

This is also how you would roll a d8.  Treat 0s like 8s.

Bestiary

Enemies have HP equal to their level, minimum 1.

• Goblin, Level 0

• Bandit, Level 1, bow + arrow

• Berserker, Level 1, makes a free attack when killed.

• Sprite, Level 1, can only be killed when hit by two simultaneous attacks

• Cultist, Level 1, MP 1, can cast sleep, rage

• Orc, Level 2

• Bear, Level 3, hungry

• Swordmaster, Level 3, if you miss her with a melee attack she may make a free attack back

• Wizard, Lvel 3, MP 3, can cast reverse gravity, wall of fire

• Ogre, Level 4, 2 attacks, greedy

• Owlbear, Level 4, 2 attacks, hungry

• Giant Ooze, Level 5, grab, slow

• Troll, Level 6, regenerates 1 HP/turn unless it takes fire damage

• Lich, Level 7, MP 4, can cast animate dead, dominate, wall of ice, dimension door

• Giant, Level 8, 2 attacks, can throw rocks

• Dragon, Level 10, 2 attacks, can breath fire (attack everyone) with a 50% recharge each round

DM Resources

• 
  
• Adventuring Gear
• Minor Magic Items
• Magic Items
• Magic Weapons (only semi-convertible to Copper GLOG)
• More Magic Stuff (only semi-convertible to Copper GLOG)

Adventures

Although honestly most of these are not as easy to run as your average One Page Dungeon.  You might want to search for some of those first.

• Hand of Dominion is a 7 room dungeon with a world-changing item.
• Isles of the Dead is a 1-page dungeon meant to be used after a TPK.
• Lair of the Lamb is my teaching dungeon.  Can be run backwards, where you need to infiltrate and then slay the titular Lamb.
• Meal of Oshregaal a horrible dinner party that you cannot leave.
• Boswitch Bath House a bath house with a horrible secret, useable in several different scenarios.

From Dragonball

There's a few different ways to become a Slayer.

One way is to cut out your own eye, put in in the hand of Zotzi the Slayer, and tell her that you want to train under her.

"Holy shit," she says, laughing.  "I didn't actually think you'd do it.  When do you want to start, idiot?."

Another way is to join the Doomblades or to pry a doomblade from the bloodyfist of a Doomblade that you defeated in single combat.  (The two actions are equivalent.)

A third way is to get your hands on a chainsaw or two.

Baiken, from Guilty Gear

This is a GLOG class, cut from the same cloth as Goblin Guts v2.

Prime Kill Count

It's been at least a year since I tore down my old ruleset and built a new one, so it makes sense that I'm feeling the itch again.  (TL;DR: here's a 22-page PDF.)

Going into this, I have the following design goals.

Diagetic Progression

In past incarnations of the GLOG, certain classes had diagetic abilities.  Fighters got bonuses based on how many things they had killed.  Thieves got bonuses based on the most expensive thing they had ever stolen.  

These weren't perfect, but at least they were (a) tied to in-game actions, such as heists, (b) a method of progression besides XP/Treasures, and (c) motivated class appropriate actions, such as heists.

These also fit pretty well alongside my idea for a character's Legendarium and should probably be integrated there.

Magic Dice For Everyone

Everyone seems to like the magic dice that wizards get.  I can probably extend it to other classes, too.

Will it be any good?  Fuck, maybe.

Centerra doesn't have a fine line of distinction between magical and non-magical things (citation).  So it follows that regular old vanilla fighters are able to do some things that are magical according to our Earthly eyes.  After all, magical shoes are made by regular cobblers, not wizards.

Mono-Class Parties

This is another idea that I've circled around for a while.  An all-thief party sounds as interesting as an all-wizard party.

First, because it invites a certain style of play.  Perhaps I should write more about to support those types of games?  For example, a mono-thief game might revolve around heists.  It makes sense to hammer out a few rules for the heist game.

Second, having a mono-class party fundamentally changes the assumptions of the game.  Lots of adventure writers will assume that the party will have access to certain magic spells by a certain level.  If everyone is a thief, that assumption will be incorrect.

That means that some parts of the adventure will be easier than intended, and some parts of the game will be more difficult (or impossible).  While a DM can flex the adventure a bit to accommodate a mono-class party, part of what makes this playstyle so interesting to me is the idea that, to a certain extent, mono-class players know and accept this. 

If we're going to write new rules for mono-class parties, we should realize that they are opportunities to fundamentally change the rules of the game, and we should embrace that.

This idea is so exciting to me that I'll create a new heading.

Emergent Gameplay and New Modes

Emergent gameplay is simply finding new ways to play the game outside of what the creators intended.

Have you heard of the Nuzlocke Challenge in pokemon?  It's a set of self-imposed restrictions that are designed to make the game more challenging, effectively twisting it into a new game.

Speedrunning is another form of emergent gameplay.  So is trying to get to maximum level on World of Warcraft without killing anything.  Same with any other videogame where players ignore the typical objectives and make their own.

Tabletop roleplaying already has a lot of emergent gameplay.  Players are already free to set their own goals and victory conditions (to an extent), but rarely do players have the option to bend the rules of the game.  The published Player's Guide and Adventure Paths present a singular interpretation of Correct Play (where both rules and goals are identical to the original publisher's). 

But it doesn't have to be that way.  

One example: I ran a one-player/one-DM Caverns of Thracia one-shot where the player was a level 20 wizard.  It was great!  Lots of exploring, lots of talking, and when a monster got uppity, they got disintegrated.  There was still some tension, though, because the dungeon had to be explored all in a single day, and each spell could only be cast once.  We weren't playing Caverns of Thracia the way that Gary and Jennell intended, but we found a new mode that worked great for us.

Another example: perhaps the group that is all dungeon hackers is able to automatically open every door they come across, potentially allowing for some major sequence breaking.

Another example: are there any groups out there that have completed pacifist runs of published modules?  That might work best if everyone is a divine concubine.

Anyway, mono-class parties seem like a crack in the Correct Playstyle Monolith that a lot of our peers worship at.  With a chisel, a hammer, and a pen, we can widen that crack.

from here

The PDF

Anyway, I ended up writing it.  I was gonna write four more classes (Ranger, Knight, Scholar, and Wizard) but I think I'll save that for another day. 

>>CLICK HERE<<

Have a look, and please let me know what you think.