Over on this post I gave my off the cuff thoughts on Rogueland and Caverns of Heresy hooked me up with this sweet print copy. What a great little game. I could seriously adopt this as a go-to for adventure gaming. Not sure why, but it hits the right beats.
THREE RULES FOR OSR GAMES
Just a quick set of house rules that sound fun and useful for OSR games. The idea is you can keep the rules as written as much as you like, but just add these as a final layer on top for players to use. These are all situation-driven, so there's no record keeping.
Let's call this set of three the SCL (Solid Crit Luck), for shorthand. Or maybe A-SEAL because it sounds like that when you say it. Doesn't matter.
1. Solid Hits.
This comes from GOZR. If you succeed on an attack by 5 or more, you get Adv on damage roll.
Fighters can choose to divide their damage between up to 3 adjacent targets, even though they only technically hit one of them. Example would be hitting a goblin and getting 10 damage. You could give 3, 3, and 4 damage to three of the gobbos.
If it is a saving throw, and if making the save still deals some kind of damage to you, then a Solid Hit on the save halves the already reduced damage.
If it is any other roll and you succeed by 5+ or by 25% or more, the GM may grant a small boon in some cases. Maybe just name a trivial benefit (see item 3 below).
2. Double Crit.
If you crit and then roll max damage, you have a double crit. Whatever effects your crit normally has, you double them. Obvious example is damage x2 then x2 again. But if you get a benefit, such as an extra attack on a crit, then you get another extra attack.
This one assumes you use crits, of course. If you don't... I cannot help you.
3. Lucky Number.
Roll 1d20. Whatever the result, this is your character’s lucky number. Any time you roll this number on any attack roll or save, you get to name a trivial benefit. The GM can veto or tweak it, of course.
Example: Your number is 11. You roll 11 on an attack. Not enough to hit! But you say “My attack throws him off balance.” The GM agrees and either grants you +1 to the next roll or penalizes the enemy by -1 on their next attack.
This one was inspired by Neoclassical Geek Revival, which I haven't played. So I don't know how it works in that game, I just know it has a similar rule.
I've been watching a few art videos lately. Of course there's the magnificent Cartoonist Kayfabe channel with TONS of videos where Ed Piskor and Jim Rugg flip through various comics. But I think everyone knows about that.
Here's a cool one I found today called CUTE MKUltras explaining the use of some cheap markers they bought. Cool vid, fun, informative. Looks like this guy does mostly graffiti style art, which I dig. No clue about the name of the channel... "MKUltras" is weird for an art channel. Right? MIND CONTROL...!
While we're on a GOZR kick, here's a new piece of art for the next book. Maybe for the comic, maybe for the game book. I dunno. I'm making all this up as I go along.
Currently working on a comic book script for GOZR. I've had this idea since day one to use the hooligans from the cover as characters in a comic. Not sure when it'll get done, but I can say that the fires of inspiration are burning brightly and I have a complete story sketched out. Just need to smooth out the script, then draw it.
Oh, here's the names of the usual suspects. Right now only a few of them have distinct traits I can even speak about. Urkkol seems to be my lead character, with Aju as his right hand guy, Butter Jam as a kind of wild card ally, and Foz as the weird inscrutable wizard. The rest are revealing themselves to me slowly.
Some of them may die, but that is a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
So what is this comic about? Well, gooz, of course. The story I'm working on, titled "The Beacon", is about Orkkol leading his team of gooz adventurers on a mission to recover a lost artifact for a powerful gooz magistrate. I'm channeling my inner Richard Corben + Jack Kirby, if I can.
At long last, the Rock Hardy Book of Dwarfs is in the hands of a mighty layout artist known as Matt the Hildebrand.
I decided this book would be part of my Doomslakers Adventures series, which started in 2014 with Howler. I've long neglected doing modules and it's high time I got back to it. This isn't an adventure, but more of a setting, though it does include a short adventure at the end of the book. It's a book that outlines life in the Rock Hardy Mountains among the dwarfs (see Black Pudding #7 gazetteer).
It'll be something like 24-28 pages, 8.5x11 module size. Whereas the first two in the DSA series are specifically Labyrinth Lord compatible, I think this one will fly solo. I could slap an OSE label on it, but I'm kind of leaning toward just a general "BX" vibe. Obviously it is fully compatible with OSE, LL, BFRPG, etc.
This is the cover art, but not the final cover layout.
