Stat Boost

December 31 2021

A Method for Learning Wizard Spells

This method for learning wizard spells is inspired by the recent popularity of Wordle, a variation on the popular Mastermind guessing game. A word is selected from a random word list and players attempt to guess what the word is. This works best with freeform magic systems like that in bastards., where all that is needed is the name of the spell.

Initially all they know about the word are the number of letters (usually five). After making their guess, the other player (in our case the GM) places coloured pegs in a board to indicate the accuracy of each letter guessed:

A black peg indicates that the letter guessed does not appear in the word at all.
A yellow peg indicates that the letter guessed appears in the word but in a different position.
A green peg indicates that the guessed letter is in the correct position in the word.

In lieu of a pegboard and pegs, players and GMs can instead use different colours of dice to represent guesses.

The player has 5 attempts to make a correct guess, with the following outcomes:

Correct guess: the character learns the spell (see below).
Failure to guess the word after five attempts: character Makes a Save or suffers a consequence. This could be damage to Intelligence or Wisdom, loss of max HP, or something else that suits your game.

Players and GMs should decide how many spells characters know at first level. My suggestion is three, simply because this feels good.

Correct Guess

When you correctly guess the word, you learn that spell. If your game uses spell levels, the level of the spell is inversely correlated to the number of attempts it took to learn it i.e.

First guess correct = 5th level spell
Second guess correct = 4th level spell
Third guess correct = 3rd level spell
Fourth guess correct = 2nd level spell
Fifth guess correct = 1st level spell

The Spell List

The GM should roll on this list (or another that they prefer) to randomly select the spell that the character is attempting to learn.

Troll
Sleep
Quiet
Light
Knock
Close
Float
Alive
Anger
Block
Blood
Break
Chain
Horse
Knife
Sword
Blade
Guard
Money
Guide
Fight
Vault
Pound
Sense
Sight
Youth
Water
Voice
Watch
Stone
Image
Plant
Paint
Scope
Point
Sound
Smoke
Power
North
South
Limit
Lunch
Judge
Truth
Glass
Frost
Field
Entry
Draft
Clock

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December 21 2021

Resolving Everything with Turn Undead

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A small system to resolve tasks using the Turn Undead table from the Holmes Basic Set (1977).

Set Difficulty

When a task must be performed and there is a chance of failure the GM assigns the task a Difficulty from 1 to 8, where 1 is trivially easy and 8 is almost impossibly hard for even the most skilled character.
The GM may instead roll 1d8 to set the Difficulty.
In combat the Difficulty is determined by the enemy’s Hit Dice.

Make An Attempt

If you lack both skill and the proper tools, you fail.
     If you have either skill or the proper tools roll 2d6 and compare the result the table below, cross-referencing your level with the Difficulty. If the roll is equal to or greater than the number given in the table then you have succeeded.
     If the table contains an S, you succeed automatically. You may roll anyway to attempt to score a Critical.
     If the table contains a C, you succeed automatically and gain some additional advantage. There is no need to roll.
     A roll of 12 (6-6 on the dice) is always a Critical. You succeed and gain some additional advantage.
     A roll of 2 (1-1 on the dice) is always a failure, and you suffer some consequence.

Level	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
1st	7	9	11
2nd	S	7	9	11
3rd	S	S	7	9	11
4th	C	S	S	7	9	11
5th	C	C	S	S	7	9	11
6th	C	C	C	S	S	7	9	11

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September 7 2021

Something From Nothing 2: Gestation

Adventures, articles, Blog, Publishing An Adventure 0

The Adventure Jam has now started and we’ve already had some great entries! Check it out here and get involved.

Last time I started thinking about the adventure I’m going to write and said I’d probably make a cover as my next step. I’ve done that, and I’ll show you what I’ve made at the end of this post, but let’s talk about the other decisions I’ve made.

Last week I read Gavin Norman’s The Incandescent Grottoes for OSE, and I also ran The Wizardarium of Calabraxis in DCC. The combination of the two made me realise that I’ve never really written a classic dungeon with different factions existing inside it, and so I’ve decided that Beyond The Drowned Spire will include some faction stuff. This means that it needs to be a little bigger than the collapsed tower I’ve been envisioning, and that’s fine because I immediately have ideas.

Initially I have two factions in mind – the Burnt Eater’s cultists, and a strange wizard living in a (magically created and sustained?) air bubble in a network of caves beneath the lake bed itself. I think for peak fun I need at least one more faction, and I don’t know who that is yet.

I have some other vague ideas – the collapsed spire itself is flooded but has some air pockets in it, and the Burnt Eater exists at the very bottom of the caves we’ve now placed beneath the spire. I think historically there was an excavation beneath the tower that – in classic dungeon fashion – dug too deep and disturbed the Burnt Eater. It was then that the lake was created, the whole complex was flooded and, at some point, the tower collapsed.

Looking at the list of names I generated last time, I notice that I’ve got Hudko Xantia, Tower Zealot of Quarfio. I think maybe our third faction are the Tower Zealots, who exist in the collapsed spire itself. The wizard under the lake bed is doing some kind of research – perhaps into the Burnt Eater, perhaps other things – and is quite happy in the home she’s made for herself, but she also can’t leave due to the presence of the Tower Zealots. Maybe the Tower Zealots know of the existence of the Burnt Eater and its cultists and maybe they don’t. At this point I don’t know for sure, but I like where this is heading.

I think possibly we need a fourth faction, just to keep things interesting, because the wizard on her own isn’t much of a faction. I’m going to grab some more BBEG’s from Nate’s generator. These are the first five names it spat out:

The Arboreal Warlord of the Lower Coast
The Broken Host of the Flowing Shrine
The Skeleton Prince of the Fecund Dome
The Ghost Eater of the Screaming Darkness
The Wooden Monarch of the Screaming Ocean

Two of them are already giving me ideas, so maybe we’re now expanding to five factions. I love The Broken Host of the Flowing Shrine and I really like the location “The Fecund Dome” but like “The Skeleton Prince” a little less. I might combine The Ghost Eater of the Screaming Darkness with The Fecund Dome – although I really like The Wooden Monarch as well. Lots of ideas, and I’m going to write them down and let them gestate some more.

In the mean time, I drew a very sketchy and not-at-all-detailed side view of the kind of thing I’m thinking of for the dungeon. Behold my brilliance:

A very poor sketch of a collapsed tower, with a network of caves beneath it. Shading lines designate flooded and clear areas.

And, as promised, here’s the cover I’ve made:

Next time we’ll hopefully have figured out what the deal with all these factions is, and started placing them in the dungeon.

September 9 2020

RPG Writing Exercises

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This was originally posted in February 2018. The link and images got broken when I moved to this new site, and I’m slowly fixing things. This has now been updated, though the text remains the same as it was in 2018.

Last week I got talking to a few people on Twitter about writing habits – in particular, we were talking about writing exercises and warmups. Historically they’re not something I’ve made much use of, but we were strongly encouraged to warm up while I was doing my Masters and I’ve since discovered that (for me, at least) warming up before working on something can be very beneficial.

There are tons of suggestions for methods of warming up available online, but they are all geared towards fiction writers. And that got me wondering whether warming up might also be useful for GMs and RPG designers. I know that when I go into a new project – or an old one that I haven’t looked at for some time – it can often be hard to get into the groove and start producing work that I’m happy with.

Warm ups are generally not intended to produce finished work (or even work that you ever intend to develop or show to anybody). Instead they’re designed to turn off your inner editor and get you creating. That’s all well and good, but I figure that for gamers it might also be nice if at the end of your warm up you have something that you can use in a session (if you’re a GM) or develop further for a project (if you’re a creator of some kind).

It turns out that we already have a lot of resources for generating these kinds of exercises, in the form of the thousands of random roll tables and tools for generating randomised content that this hobby is filled with. So, with that in mind, I’ve come up with some ideas for writing warm ups for RPG creators, and I’ve compiled them into their own roll table.

How To Be Warm

Before you dive into whatever project you’re working on today, roll on the table below (I’ve tried to make sure that the prompts that rely on external resources don’t require you to have commercial products that you might not have access to). Read the prompt, then spend 20 minutes responding to it in whatever way you like. Try to write in a stream of consciousness, not stopping to reread your work or edit it in any way. Focus more on the fluff of what you’re writing, rather than the mechanical aspects of it. Game balance, mechanical integrity, and actual usability can come later. For now, it’s more important that something exists at the end of the 20 minutes that didn’t exist before it, whether you intend to ever look at it again or not.

More importantly than anything else – have fun. Write something ridiculous that you wouldn’t normally try. Embrace the fact that it might suck, and allow yourself to build something that might not ever get used.

Make a creature using this Seventh Sanctum Legendary Creature Generator. Write a monster manual entry for it. No stats; just figure out where it comes from, what’s unique and different about it, and what its driving motivations are. If you have time, brainstorm some ideas for fun abilities it might have.
Use this Quest Item generator to create a list of items. Spend a minute or so writing a very quick description for each items generated – what does it look like, who made it, and what kind of thing does it do?
Locate your favourite name generator. Get yourself a name. Then spend 15 minutes writing about that person. Who are they, what do they do, what do they want, and how do they intend to achieve it? Bonus points if you get something useful out of a truly ridiculous name.
Generate a place name and write about that place’s dark secret, and about the one person who knows that secret.
Grab a random map from Uncharted Atlas. Spend 20 minutes writing about one historical event that took place there.
Generate an opening line and write an event from a character’s backstory. This doesn’t have to be an already-existing character. (Since that isn’t specifically a fantasy generator, not all of the lines will be suitable. Bonus points if you can make it work anyway).

On top of these six ideas, I also like to warm up using the trinket table in the Players Handbook (or with my own trinkets releases). [Update 2020: you could also use the random trinket generator on this very website!] I like to take a random trinket and then simply write about where it came from and what – if anything – it does that might not be obvious when the item is first encountered.

Let me know what you think of these, and if you create anything you like using them feel free to share it in the comments!

Tomorrow we’ll be looking at the best new releases on the DMs Guild in our monthly roundup, and on Thursday we’ll be returning to Shadepoint. Don’t forget to grab a copy of Cities: Shadepoint if you haven’t already – it’s completely free!

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Image Credit: An alchemist peacefully writing in a room strewn with papers. Engraving by V.A.L. Texier after Gianni after T. Wyck. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

August 5 2020

1d6 Lovecraftian Trinkets

Items, Random Lists, Resources, Stat Boost, Treasures & Trinkets 0

Encounter Roleplay asked me to write a table of Lovecraftian trinkets to go with their Cthulu games.

If you would like you own table of trinkets, drop me a tip on Ko-Fi!

A long, sinuous key set in silver. Eldritch symbols are embossed along the shaft, and the teeth of the key resemble grasping tentacles.
A map of a large, sprawling manor house, drawn on a thick leathery parchment. It has been annotated in an unknown hand that writes of strange geometry and spaces behind the walls that should not exist.
A long twisted wand made of crystal. The tip splits into three thick points, each carved with a leering face.
A train ticket, torn partway through and clipped with a conductor’s ticket punch. It is valid for one journey from Newburyport to Arkham.
An antique, yellowed photograph. It depicts a group of men standing on the end of a long wooden jetty. The are dressed in high-collared black coats and tall narrow hats, and each of them is holding a long, narrow knife. A shape on the floor at their feet appears to be a mutilated human body. A handwritten note on the back of the photo states “Innsmouth, 1845”.
A stack of glass beads on a long wooden dowel. They are cloudy and imperfect but their hues and deep and luscious, a variety of purples, greens, and deep oranges, flecked with yellow and gold.

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Image Credit © Penetralia Press/Alex Mayo used with permission

July 29 2020

1d6 Grim Trinkets

Items, Random Lists, Resources, Stat Boost, Treasures & Trinkets 0

Encounter Roleplay asked me to write some trinkets to tie in to their Zewihander Grim & Perilous game. Trinkets within the system tend to be low-value objets d’art, which is exactly the kind of thing I enjoy writing.

If you would like your own set of trinkets, drop me a tip on Ko-Fi.

A green velvet coin purse tied with black ribbon. It contains a handful of brass pennies, worn smooth and shiny from regular handling.
A thick iron ring holding a pair of heavy keys. The head of one has been shaped and engraved to resemble the head and beak of a raven. The head of the other resembles an hourglass.
An oilskin bag containing a collection of severed fingers and toes. They have been wrapped in gauze and soaked in saline in order to preserve them, but they began to rot a long time ago.
A set of false teeth housed in a wooden box. Each tooth has been carved with a different alchemical symbol.
A foot-long piece of driftwood carved with a two-headed horse. One of the heads has a single long horn; the other has tusks descending from its lower jaw.
The boss of a shield, dented and battleworn. It is engraved with a roaring lion’s head.

If you would like your own set of trinkets, drop me a tip on Ko-Fi.

Image Credit: James Graham Marquess of Montrose about to mount the ladder to the gibbet in the marketplace of Edinburgh. Wood engraving after C.R. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

July 22 2020

1d12 Cultist Items

Items, Random Lists, Resources, Stat Boost, Treasures & Trinkets 0

This set of trinkets was created for ThatSaltyGinger in exchange for a tip on Ko-Fi. Lauren is one of my favourite streamers and an all-around good person, and I was really happy to come up with some evidence of the Cult of the Bloody Tongue.

This small figurine is around 8 inches tall and carved from a solid piece of red onyx. The base resembles bubbling liquid, with a single long tentacle extending upwards out of it.
A tangled mass of glass and metal that resists your attempts to make sense of what it looks like. Pieces of the glass seem to pass through the metal in places, and sections of it twist in ways that don’t seem possible. It draws your eye constantly even though looking at it fills you with a low-level sense of dread.
A small music box with a copper crank. It is painted with stars and strange symbols, and when the crank is turned it plays sounds of quiet sobbing and howling winds.
A glass dome mounted on a heavy piece of wood, like a snowglobe but bigger. It contains a miniature diorama of an unknown city complete with temples, red-roofed buildings, gardens filled with fountains that somehow flow with real water, and bridges of veined marble arching over wide streets and narrow waterways. The windows blaze in an unseen sunset, and staring at it too long fills you with a sense of something almost-remembered.
A small urn made from red-veined marble. It is empty, but smells faintly of burned spices.
A black velvet pouch with a silk drawstring. It contains a set of seven-sided dice carved from bone, with numbers stained in shimmering black ink. Each of them is marked with an ankh in place of the number 7.
A small travelling chest containing sets of ceremonial robes. They are made from long strips of silken fabric in the deep red hues of the setting sun.
A miniature oak tree growing in a wide, shallow pot lined with mossy stones. The wood is twisted and warped, the boughs twining over each other as though trying to reach out and grasp something.
A mask of a man’s face, made from soft wax that is cold and clammy to the touch. It is very pliable and seems like it should be easy to pull the wax apart, but it resists any attempts to do this. There are no holes for the eyes, and sinuous red lines are painted down the cheeks from the base of the eye socket.
A glass vial stoppered with blood-red wax. It contains a shimmering, metallic dust that calls to mind the silent burning fury of a falling star.
A heavy book bound in an unidentified black material that is always slick and clammy to the touch. The pages are thick, irregular sheets of paper and containing seemingly nonsensical scrawlings of strange symbols and formulae. It looks like nonsense, but it’s easy to find that you have spent long minutes blindly following the shapes of the ink of the paper.
A thin flute made from bone. One half has been dipped in deep red pigment. Playing it produces no audible sound.

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Image Credit © Penetralia Press/Alex Mayo used with permission

July 15 2020

1d6 Items Found in Coastal Maine

Items, Stat Boost, Treasures & Trinkets 0

Encounter Roleplay asked me to write some trinkets to tie in to their game The Haunting of Seawall Orphanage. which is a modern horror game in the vein of Stephen King’s Castle Rock novels. This is one of my favourite genres to play in and writing these was very satisfying!

If you would like your own set of trinkets, drop me a tip on Ko-Fi.

A brass lamp with a carnival glass lampshade painted with dancing children. They are smiling, but something about the way their mouths twist is deeply unsettling.
A boat made from folded newspaper and sealed with paraffin wax to make it waterproof. One of the stories on the page used to make it seems to be about the disappearance of a local child, though most of it is lost in the folds of the boat.
A thick book bound in faded red cloth. The title is embossed in flaking gold leaf, in strange symbols that do not look like any real language. The pages inside contain script in the same language, and the paper feels like it was once submerged in water. The inside front cover holds a bookplate from the Flagg Public Library. The only person to ever withdraw it was called Randall, though their surname is missing.
A small painting, oil on canvas, in a driftwood frame. It depicts Pretty Marsh Harbor on a stormy night. High waves crash against the docks while a bright moon peaks out from behind heavy clouds, picking out the figure of a woman in white with her back to the viewer as she strides into the water. It almost seems like she moves slightly every time you look away.
An old brass key sealed in a rectangular block of glass. The key is coated with verdigris and what appears to be bioluminescent algae which is somehow still alive even though the glass must be air-tight.
A shrunken head. It is gaunt to the point of emaciation, the skin pulled tight over the bones so that they jut out at strange angles. The eyes sit deep in their sockets and the lips appear tattered and torn. There is a strange reddish brown stain around the mouth.

If you would like your own set of trinkets, drop me a tip on Ko-Fi.

Image Credit: A storm at sea, with a sailing ship being wrecked on rocks, scavengers on the shore haul in booty. Etching. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

July 8 2020

1d6 Items In An Explorer’s Pack

Items, Random Lists, Resources, Stat Boost, Treasures & Trinkets starting equipment 0

As part of my continued effort to make 5e’s starting equipment packs more interesting, today I present the Explorer’s Pack!

You can find the other packs in this series here.

If you would like me to write a table of trinkets for you, leave me a tip on Ko-Fi!

The Pack Itself

The explorer’s pack is a sturdy canvas backpack treated with wax to resist the elements. It carries a large number of external pockets fastened with heavy leather straps, and another pair of heavy straps over the main top flap to hold a bedroll in place. The top flap is made of a large piece of tarp that folds up to sit on top of the pack. When unfolded it opens to a large sheet 6 feet long and 4 feet wide, which can be tied off to a tree or overhang as a makeshift shelter, with the weight of the pack holding it down where the tarp joins it.

Inside The Pack

As well as the basics – a bedroll, a mess kit, a tinderbox, torches, rations, a waterskin, and 50 feet of hempen rope – the explorer’s pack contains the following items:

An assortment of short pieces of rope fashioned into loops to act as slings when climbing. Useful for tying off to rocks to run rope through, anchoring yourself, or for tying directly around lengths of rope to make ascent easier.
A rolled piece of thick canvas tied with narrow strips of leather. When unfurled it has a number of compartments sewn into it to hold cartographer’s supplies – calipers, a pair of compasses, slim vials of ink, a narrow quill, and a ruler. A wax-lined pocket sewn into the lining holds sheets of parchment.
A hollow wooden pole segmented into increasingly narrow sections so that they can be pushed down into each other. It is only a foot long when collapsed but extends up to ten feet. It comes with a set of different tips that can be screwed on or off – a sharp point, a small brass hook, a miniature saw blade, and a heavy brass ball.
A small belt pouch stained with ink made from bioluminescent plankton, so that it glows a dull greenish-yellow in low light. It contains essential items for exploring cave networks and other labyrinthine environments – lengths of different coloured string, a selection of coloured chalks, plus a lodestone and set of needles pushed through pieces of cork, used to make an impromptu compass.
A thick pocket-sized notebook filled with your notes and sketches. It is string-tied and bound in mulberry bark.
A strange insect encased in amber. It has a long armored thorax with multiple legs, and appears to have a head at both ends. The amber has been seated in a brass housing and hangs from a slim chain necklace.

If you would like me to write a table of trinkets for you, leave me a tip on Ko-Fi!

Image Credit: Explorers cutting up whales.. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

July 1 2020

2d6 Items In A Diplomat’s Pack

Items, Random Lists, Resources, Stat Boost, Treasures & Trinkets starting equipment 0

As part of my continued effort to make 5e’s starting equipment packs more interesting, today I present the Entertainer’s Pack!

The Diplomat’s Pack is an interesting one, because RAW it contains a chest – which you obviously aren’t going to be carrying with you. So for this one, I split it into two and wrote trinkets for the chest and for a smaller pack that you carry with you.

If you would like me to write a table of trinkets for you, leave me a tip on Ko-Fi!

The Pack Itself

The diplomat’s pack comprises a sturdy travelling chest sealed with a number of heavy locks, and a small leather briefcase. Both are of high quality materials and emblazoned with the coat of arms of the country or ruler you serve.

Inside The Chest

The chest contains the most valuable things you bring with you, and is generally left under lock and key in a safe place – an embassy, your rooms in a royal palace, etc. As well as the expected items – two cases for maps and scrolls, fine clothes, extra bottles of ink and sheets of paper, perfumes, a lamp and oil, etc. – it also contains the following items:

A portfolio case containing generic “boilerplate” documents to use as templates when agreeing new treaties and agreements.
A heavy ledger sealed with a padlock. This contains minutes of meetings and conversations you have had with rulers and leaders during your travels. The information contained in it could be very damaging if it fell into the wrong hands.
A slim, flat case that is hidden inside a concealed compartment in the base of the chest. It contains documents with details of the information networks your employers have in place in the locations you are tasked to travel to – aliases and locations of informants, details of dead drops, and the like. It is written in a cipher you know how to decode.
A pair of sandalwood boxes, finely crafted and inlaid with ivory with a red felt lining inside. These are used to present small gifts to rulers who you are meeting with, though the gifts themselves are left up to you to source.
A thick, finely-crafted chain. One end has a strong manacle for your wrist, and the other can be fastened securely to your briefcase.
A long velvet cape embroidered with the coat of arms of the ruler you serve. This is purely ceremonial, worn when you are representing your country at large events.

Inside The Case

The briefcase contains your day-to-day items – a bottle of ink, an ink pen, a small vial of perfume, sealing wax and a seal, and fine soap – along with the following items:

A letter written on heavy parchment and treated with wax to protect it against wear. It serves as both a letter of introduction and proof of your position, and is signed with the official seal of the ruler you serve.
A slim scroll tube. The lid locks with an intricate twisting mechanism that only you know how to release. You use it to hold vital documents as you go about your daily business.
A letter-sized piece of slate mounted in a silver frame, with a piece of chalk mounted on a silver handle attached to it by a chain. This is magically twinned with an identical slate kept by the people you report to. Anything written on either slate appears instantly on its twin.
A quill pen made from the tail feather of a bird native to your home lands. It is deep purple, streaked with mustard and iridescent silver.
A pocket-sized leatherbound book that contains facsimiles of various official seals of the lands you are tasked to travel to, annotated with information about how to detect forgeries.
A felt pouch containing 15gp worth of coin in various denominations and currencies. A small inner pocket contains a handful of coins that you find interesting or attractive and that you have kept aside so that you don’t spend them.

If you would like me to write a table of trinkets for you, leave me a tip on Ko-Fi!

If you would like more trinkets, check out my work on the DMs Guild.

Image Credit: Saint Wilfred (Wilfrid, Wilfrith) the Younger (of York): he petitions King Cædwalla of Wessex to grant him land, at Selsey, which is granted. Engraving by T. King, 1807. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)