Don't Ask Me, James Why Do Ya Cuss?!

It's a god damn undead.

I have these mental partitions in my social media posting. On my blog and Twitter I just say whatever I want, fuck it. But on Facebook I tend to dial it back a tiny bit and I try to be more broadly agreeable. I think this is because I have family who follow me on FB (at least a few).

But I do cuss like a sailor at a whorehouse and I do it because that's just how I am and because I don't want to cater to children. That last part is very important to me. I do not do stuff for kids. I don't want children browsing though a lot of my stuff, though I feel like it's mostly completely OK if it happens. It's just weird. Kids have tons of cool shit, they don't need me. And I need to be as unfiltered as I can possibly be.

In fact, I need to be more unfiltered and unhinged than I already am. Why the fuck would I even self-censor at all? I'm not famous, I don't make much money doing art, and I don't have much clout to lose. When no one is looking you can do what you want, creatively.

I actually need to loosen the fuck up.

The Truth About Magic-Users II

In this post, I bemoan the suckiness of Magic-Users as presented in original editions of D&D such as B/X and 1e and I offer some ideas for house rules to give those poor bastards a kick in the ass. Some folks thought I was being too harsh or obtuse. Fair enough. I wasn't, but I get it.

Here I'd like to revisit that topic and attempt to save the ole MU without any house rules. I know, right? How in the world can you possibly do it?

First, please understand I'm not shitting on a beloved class because I hate it. I do love a good Magic-User. But one thing I never did or do is run them without house rules. Because I simply find the original rules for most classes to be limiting and obtuse in ways that annoy me and don't mesh with my play style.

Anyhow, here are some ways that I would personally want to run a B/X MU, for example, without necessarily needing house rules. Most of these ideas came from reading or hearing about similar ideas in other games, blogs, and social media over the past decade or so.

1. UNIQUE WIZARDS

I love this one. In B/X it doesn't say you can memorize the same spell twice, nor does it prohibit it (as far as I remember). This leaves the GM to decide which way to go. For this mode of play, go with "no you can't". Each spell occupies the wizard's mind as a single entity and will not or cannot tolerate another version of itself in the same brainspace.

But take that idea to another level. Make a setting in which a spell can only exist in a single book, scroll, or crystal, or wherever you like to put spells. If it is copied to another place, it disappears from the original. If it is read out loud to cast it... the damn thing is gone forever.

Also, make MUs very rare. Within the PC party, you don't have to limit folks. If you wanna be a MU, be one. But in the setting itself just don't include MUs on your wandering monster tables or as NPCs in towns. They just don't exist very frequently. Consider a small world and there are like a dozen wizards in it, period. One of the PCs is an up-and-coming member of the elite.

In that kind of setting, each spell is extremely valuable and precious. You can't just go to another MU and learn a new spell. You have to find spells in abandoned spellbooks, negotiate the purchase of spells, or steal them.

This kind of campaign, though it seems low magic, might be very wizard-centric because so much time would be taken up with your MU seeking power and playing 5d chess with other wizards who are doing the same thing. Could be fun.

2. MIX EDITIONS

Not technically a house rule, I guess. Use B/X and Holmes combined to allow your lowly wimp wizard to make scrolls. I don't believe Holmes explicitly limits when a MU can make a potion, so just lump that in with scrolls. Then the party's riches at lower levels could be poured into the wizard's laboratory so they can make plenty of Sleep and Magic Missile scrolls and Gaseous Form potions. Make extra and sell 'em to other parties. Clean out that ruined tower, set up a shop, defend it from marauders, discover the hidden dungeon that lies beneath. That's some fuckin' fun right there.

3. MAGIC SCHOOLS/GANGS

Typically, a D&D party has no real ties to anything other than each other and the dungeon at hand. But maybe create a rich tapestry of wizard orders and fit the PCs into that framework. Now the PC MUs have in-world goals related to the setting. Perhaps more potent spells can be had by working your way into a coven or cabal. Perhaps secret powers can be offered, magic items bestowed. Now the lowly 3rd level MU with three spells also has a talking skull necklace that spits acid and knows the names of 3 demons and can call on them for favors (dangerous but that's magic, baby).

4. CREATIVE GMING

The players can be creative as hell, trying all kinds of cool things. The MU is out of spells, but the player says they want to use their arcane connections and lore to cause some magical effect anyway. A shitty GM would say "No, you're out of spells. Can't do it." But a clever GM who actually enjoys playing the fucking game could say "Neat idea. Tell me what you're doing and what you hope to accomplish".

So the player, jazzed at having to work for it, works for it. They describe how they call on the names of several imps they knew during apprenticeship in order to barter for a boon. They sacrifice some tiny portion of sanity and the imps cause something freaky to happen, such as a swarm of flies to appear. Hell yeah. The GM decides what percentage chance the PC has of succeeding, based on the Magical Research rules. A roll is made. SUCCESS!

"Now reduce your Wisdom score by 3. You're not doing too well, emotionally. You'll gain 1 point back each day you pass a Save vs. Spells."

I like this because it re-purposes Magical Research to accomplish on-the-fly magical effects. Unlike casting a spell from memory, this type of magic has a price.

And so on.

ROC Art Journal

Now available for immediate purchase: ROC Art Journal!

64 pages, A5, saddle-stitch, color cover, bw interior, signed and numbered, limited run of 100 copies.

Includes an original sketch.

$20 USA, $30 International.

Go to jvwest.art to get yours today.

The Truth About Magic-Users

Here's a truth that many OSR folks do not agree about: low-level Magic-Users in pre-3e editions of Dungeons and Dragons suck. I'm sorry, grog, they just do. You know they do.

A first level M-U gets one god damn spell per motherfucking day. They can't even create magic scrolls to store spells until level 7 (if you use general 1e wisdom). In B/X, a M-U must be level 9 to create a scroll or magic item.

Let's drive home this point a little bit more. A M-U cannot even read a magic scroll without casting the spell Read Magic. Which means, as a first level caster, if you don't take Read Magic as your one and only spell, then you can't read scrolls.

"I'm glad I didn't choose Magic Missile instead of Read Magic. I was able to cast Read Magic so I could read that Magic Missile scroll and save the party from that one orc!"

The pushback is obvious and widely-screamed: If you can't think of anything else to do other than cast spells then you suck at this game.

That's fine. Except it's a fantasy game and I came on my Friday night with but one dream: to be a motherfuckin' wizard. And here you got me casting Read Magic and hiding behind the dwarf.

I beseech you, my OSR friends: don't visit this hell upon players. Unless you know for a fact that the person who wants to be a wizard both understands these limitations and LIKES IT, you gotta house rule that shit. And there's a lot of fine, fine house rules out there you can use to fix this broken-ass setup. For example, Magic-Users in your game can...

• Read any scroll.

• Create scrolls and magic items, per the Magical Research rules, starting at first level.

• Cast 3 additional first level spells per day in addition to what's on the spell slot table. Call it baseline training.

• Use any weapon they care to pick up, but if it's not allowed by the rules-as-written, then they get a -3 to hit. No biggie.

• Detect the presence of magic in a device or an area, perhaps by making a simple Intelligence check. You don't have to tell them what the magic is, just that they "get a vibe" off it.

• Possess one trivial magic item at character creation. It's their signature thing, like a hat that returns to them or an unseen hand that carries their sack. I promise you it will not break your fragile dungeon ecosystem.

Ok, this is all just a little bit tongue-in-cheek. But it's also true. If you can't save the Thief class at least pull the Magic-User up from the darkness.

ZSF Noodle Doodle Drop II

Following up on this post, more thoughts about ZSF: Zoa Space Fantasy!

ZSF is a work-in-progress space fantasy adventure game set in a wild galaxy where the Companies and the Law run the show. PCs are on the outside of mainstream society, and probably outlaws.

Since my last post, I refined the rules a bit.

• Instead of rolling for your Basic Skill ranks, you start with 1 in each and can add 6 more to them. The only rule is you can't dump all 6 into one Skill. So you could end up with a mix, as long as it all adds up to 12 total.

• Successes, called Hits, are on a 5 or 6 on d6.

• The difficulty of any task is called the Difficulty Level, or DL for short. The GM sets the DL for tasks. NPCs and creatures will have DLs so you know what you need to score to hit or otherwise oppose them.

• The DLs are very limited in range. Due to the nature of the dice mechanic, getting even 2 Hits is not easy. So a range of 1-4 is plenty wide.

• All action dice rolls are made by the players, just like in GOZR.

I've spent some time thinking about money and economy in the setting. Not much has changed on that front. PCs begin with $100 and some basic equipment. As I said before, if you really want to start with a badass weapon you can use one of your Traits to describe it. Because almost everything really cool is well beyond your $100 budget.

Right now I'm considering different ways to approach equipment. What I'm thinking is, similar to GOZR, there will be some short, simple lists with prices for relatively generic goods. But then also a fat section on very specific goods and services, name brand stuff like the PH22 blaster or Breathe-O-Matic cozmask (space mask, a kind of auto-fitting helmet). Since Companies are tied into the setting, it'll be fun and rewarding to lean into that and have a lot of branded merchandise that PCs can get their hands on. Why settle for a generic laser rifle when you can have the industry standard RIG 17?

SUPERCALLA

Of course much of this material was first introduced in my 2019 Troika! book, Supercalla, and the 2020 follow-up Cozmic Metal Heads. I'm super proud of those books. ZSF is essentially taking that same core setting idea and exploding into a full-blown RPG with an original system. Almost everything you saw in those books will land somewhere in ZSF in one form or another.

EDFOST

Ok, a little behind the scenes into how my brain works when I'm noodling ideas. I spent a ridiculous amount of time deciding on the core stats (the Basic Skills). My idea was that they MUST form a cool acronym. At least something that you could pronounce. I can't even remember what all I came up with. One idea involved these monosyllabic words like Oomph, Bam, Yak, etc. Which was cool, but I veered away and landed on EDFOST:

Explore, Drive, Fight, Operate, Shoot, Talk.

Having the acronym, which is now etched into my brain, helps me always remember the list. "E is Explore... what was F? Oh Fight!"

More later.