Midaka Maps

Everyone who became a DM in their youth created their own fantasy world. Mine was called Midaka. It grew out of the imaginings I had as a young teen alone in my room, creating characters, making up backstories for them, creating castles they lived in, and so forth. Eventually I drew these maps of the Old and New lands of the east and west.

I have a few binders of lore about this setting, old and musty and full of embarrassing content. I might scan a bunch of it eventually. I don't know. For now I have a few scans here and there and the material is safely stored away once again, probably to be found by my kids when I'm dead. Possibly tossed out, who knows? (I kid... I think they would keep this kind of personal stuff. But that's really their choice, not mine.)

Maybe I'll post these maps again later and talk more about them, unpacking some of the stuff you see here. Like what the hell is Curab's Anomaly? There's some deep lore about that, I think. A wizard, a betrayal, a rift in reality. Stuff like that.

 

World-Building Thoughts of No Consequence

Just random thoughts about world-building and stuff. Nothing useful here, carry on.

World-building has always been at the heart of what I love about RPGs. It might be one of the reasons I didn't actually game nearly as much in my youth (or now) as a lot of my gaming friends out there. I was very content to sit in my room cross-legged in my chair with paper and pencil and D&D books just making up characters and the worlds they live in.

I had a character called Catina Catrid. She was one of my first D&D characters, along with four of her friends: Briun Branduk (I was a fan of alliteration), Liara Altrin, Mastrin Raulus, and Cybia somethingoranother. They were a thief-acrobat, fighter, thief, magic-user, and a mystic (the NPC class presented in 1985's Master Set). Though none of these characters saw action at the gaming table for more than one or two sessions, they lived in my mind for a few years and had many adventures. I occasionally levelled them up based on storylines I wrote in my notebook. I had intricate networks of relationships and I used the domain-building rules to construct their castle and do bookkeeping for their domain. It was fun!

To this day I spend a lot of time just alone, noodling out ideas for settings and characters that may or may not ever see any final form either in a book or at a gaming table. It's what I do. I can't imagine a life without this inner fantasy life that has given me so much joy for decades.

 

Alternate Ability Rolling Method

Here's something for Black Pudding 7. I haven't used this in play, but of course I played around with it myself and kinda dig it. Maybe it's not new, I'm not sure. I hadn't seen it.

This method does not get you a nice bell curve. For example, it's far easier to get an 18 since it is a 1 in 8 chance. If I was "gaming the system" with this, I'd just always roll that d8. Which, of course, is totally valid. It's your choice. You aren't breaking anything

Just rolling the d4 all the way gives you an average PC that has no negative and three +1 stats... which is pretty nice too.

EDIT: I posted this in haste from an old thing I forgot about and it has shitty formatting so you should ignore it. I didn't proofread bc nobody got time for that.

This One Goes to 14

As you might have noticed... I have some B/X D&D on the brain these days. I was worried... for a time in recent months I simply did not have it on the brain. Burnout? Probably not. I don't really "burnout" on something. I get distracted.

OD&D is a beast with which I am familiar only through the osmosis of reading blogs, FB posts, Twitter, and listening to a bazillion podcasts about the OSR. I understand what it is, I know it's rules, generally, but I'm unfamiliar with it intimately and have no nostalgia for it. I never knew much about its existence until much later in life, to be honest. No one I knew who was into gaming back in the 80s ever mentioned it or owned it.

What I did have intimate experience with was B/X, BECMI, 1e, and 2e. That's my era, due to the age at which I bought my ticket to ride (13-14). The first one I played was B/X. The first I owned was Red Box. It was all glorious, of course.

Anyway... levels.

Peeking into OD&D I can see that Fighting Men were given levels through 9, Magic-Users through 11, and Clerics through 8. I don't believe there was any sort of level cap or anything, it's just that they only included those levels. Those books are a shit show of organization - a beautiful shit show, of course. I am an old school zine kind of guy so you would think that I'd be all over OD&D's gritty photocopier aesthetic. And I do admire it! But it's not my D&D so it's hard to get a boner about it.

Add to that the fact that even though B/X is far better organized, cleaned up, and codified it is still a fairly crude book by today's standards, right? Who the fuck uses that garish Souvenir font anymore?? (hint: I do).

So what was my point here? Oh yeah... this one goes to 14. And I think that's super important.

Going to level 10ish is fine. Going to 18 or 20 (AD&D's range, from what I remember, and the range of 5e) is fine and dandy too. Going to 36 is BONKERS. What was Frank Mentzer thinking? (well, the 36 level range had already been promised so it wasn't his idea... he was just fulfilling it.)

14 levels is basically perfect. You have your sweet spot at lower levels, some access to real power, and a nice place to say "We've done it. Let's roll up some new level 1s."

There are other reasons, though. It's hard to hold 20 levels in your brain. What does 14 mean in the context of 20? But 14 fits nicely. I know that getting past 7 means you're a big fuckin' deal. Getting to 14 means you're a god damn existential threat. After all, even though 7th level spells aren't in B/X (and maybe they fucking should be), given the logic of the Magic-User's XP table, they should be slinging 7th level spells at level 13. Mass Invisibility... Charm Plants... bring it.

There are 7 classes in B/X. Characters can get to level 14... 14 is 7 x 2. This means something.

Ok. Time to wrap this up. I'm rambling. Next up, the B/X 64 Challenge! Write and publish a 64 page (or 32, or 48) book for B/X within a year. Stop just thinking about it. Do it.

Hawkhead

Part of the Doomslakers B/X project. 

Hawkhead, +1 sword: User can see through the eyes of a passing bird for 1 turn (10 minutes). During this time they cannot see anything else.

This sword was forged in Nylar before the city fell to ruin. It was made at the behest of the legendary hero Makkus the Mark whose clarity of vision and steadiness of hand was unparalleled. Perhaps this blade currently rests in a pile of treasure in some forgotten tomb or in the hands of some troll or scoundrel haunting Hill Country. Where the famous bow of Makkus rests is a mystery.

Some say the voice of Makkus may be heard by worthy warriors who heft this sword in battle.

Back to BasiX Hardback

I joined the Kickstarter for the Back to BasiX issues 1-10 hardback collection and I got my book yesterday.

I remember this fanzine coming out a few years ago and I was super impressed by the great cover art by Matthew Ray. It's nice to see this collection includes all of Matthew's covers plus a new one for the main book cover.

I didn't pick this zine up or read it before now. I MIGHT have it in PDF and just never got around to looking at it?

Anyway, it's a very nice looking book. The cover is hard and heavy and the whole book feels weighty and substantial in your hand. This is probably because the paper stock is decent and it's on glossy paper... kind of like a glossy magazine but heavier.

The binding is glue, so that's a downside. I feel like some of these pages are eventually going to come loose. Plus it means the book doesn't lay open. It wants to close when you open it up. Not a huge downside - I'm just spoiled by all these mega deluxe boutique hardbacks I've seen over the years. Still, even really nice, solid hardbacks don't always lay open flat. Old School Essentials Rules Tome is very nice and sewn-bound but it won't lay open, generally.

The title on the spine is not aligned so it's hovering close to the bottom edge. I suspect either a mistake in layout of in printing. Of course, duh. But it's really not a big deal unless you are super OCD about that stuff. Which is fine.

The layout is uber-basic and Thom Wilson, the publisher and author, uses the classic B/X Souvenir font (or perhaps Soutane, a similar knock-off?). This two-column look is immediately nostalgic. I do like that quite a bit in a "let's watch Andy Griffith" sort of way. But the full justification of the paragraphs is a bit jarring - not much use of kearning or adjusting the space between words. A bit awkward, which is kind of lovely in fact. I'm kind of a fan.

I also noticed some typos and other errors. I see that a lot in small press books. Again... I'm not going rag on that. These are labors of love and I am here for it. Editors and layout geeks may cringe but if they love old school gaming and small press publishing they also gotta smile.

Of course none of that matters if the content is no good. In this case that's not a problem. Again, if you're into old school RPGs and B/X D&D in particular, this is a tasty dish of yummy. Each of these short 10 issues is chock full of adventures, monsters, NPCs, magic items, spells, maps! And an interview in each issue with some old guard of the hobby.

And it is a zine. Like... proper zine. It has ads and want ads and product spotlights.

Here's my takeaway: If you like B/X D&D, you will enjoy this book and you will get some use out of it. There are plenty of little adventures to run in here and lots of simple new magic stuff to play with. If you like small press TTRPG books you will dig this. It's got a lot of cool bits.

So don't let any of my criticisms of the physical book or layout deter you. I do kind of adore this book. I honestly wouldn't want it to be any other way! This is in my wheelhouse.

You're a Wizard!

Old school Magic-Users have a tough row to hoe at low levels. The payoff is that when they gain higher levels nobody can fuck with them.

But here's a problem: Most players of D&D (especially classic editions) are playing low level characters almost all of the time. This is especially true for public games where the tendency is to run little dungeon romps for characters in the 1-5 level range.

Wizards in this range are fragile and can't do much. And anyone who argues that you can "still throw a dart" is a fool. Don't listen to them.

Make low level wizards better instead. It's the morally correct thing to do.

To that end, here are some ideas and thoughts I've had about old school MUs over the years on this blog.

In Read That Magic I kind of go off on a rant about using B/X rules as written and how it makes playing a first level wizard kind of lame. I still feel that way. If we assume most games are not going to get into higher levels, then you need to beef up them wizards. Don't be a tool.

In OSE and B/X Spellbooks I talk about three ways you can play B/X rules as written and work it into the fantasy fiction of your campaign. I like these ideas, though I'm prone to just house ruling the shit out of wizards instead.

In Magic-User with Sword I talk about allowing wizards to use weapons other than daggers and to wear armor. Because I detest the notion that they somehow just can't do it. Let your wizard pick up a sword, for crying out loud. They'll suck at using it.

NOTE: One thing I didn't address in that post was just how much emphasis B/X puts on magic swords and just how much benefit that is to the Fighter class. If the wizard can also use a vorpal sword or +3 sword or whatever, then the Fighter's niche is threatened. I get that. And I'm actually OK with the caveat that magic swords want to be used by warriors, not wizards. So a +3 blood drinking sword might simply refuse to function in the hands of a wizard. It's magic, after all.

In B/X Wizard I present a Wizard class for B/X. This was used in my Isles of Rone game and worked quite well, though we only played at level 3. It's actually a little bit more fiddly than I prefer in a B/X class, but perhaps not over the top. It includes the use of other weapons and armor, brewing potions, using both M-U and Cleric spells (I tend not to want Clerics in my games), allows and emphasizes magical research from level 1 forward, and grants the PC one special item.

If I revised this class today I'd do it a little bit differently. I'd open up the Wizard's ability to create magic stuff, including potions, but I'd tie such efforts to time and money more explicitly. It should be no big deal for a Wizard to brew a potion if given a few days to work on it. But of course you don't want the power gamer to convert the 30 days of downtime since the last adventure into 15 potions. But you also don't want overly persnickety potion brewing rules (I still love keeping B/X classes to a single sheet of paper, if I can).

Another idea I'm noodling is to only have 4 house rules for Wizards.

1. You can brew potions, make magic items, and conduct magical research from level 1.

2. You get 2 extra level 1 spell slots from level 1.

3. You can use any weapon but you can't have it ready and also cast a spell and it takes a round to get it out or put it up.

4. You can wear armor, but you have to make a save vs. Spells in order to cast and the armor's AC benefit is a penalty to your save.

Just some thoughts.

Thieves! Dirty Rotten Thieves!

Of late I've been thinking about classic D&D. When I think of D&D I always think of B/X D&D, the classic basic rules from 1981 compiled and edited by Tom Moldvay, Dave Cook, and Steve Marsh. That's my jam and probably always will be. It is a clean presentation of the original D&D rules with some tidying up, some clarifications, some stripping down, and some additions.

It is imminently hackable. It melts over new settings like butter on hot bread. When I think about writing fantasy settings for RPGs I always favor using this rule set as a basis, usually via the use of the game's most effective modern clones: Labyrinth Lord and Old School Essentials.

Thinking about B/X lately lead me to recall some of the posts I made about the topic in the past. I wanted to revisit some of them with fresh eyes and see if my thinking has changed.

Thieves' Skills is one of my favorites. I can't remember if this idea started as a G+ post and then I cleaned it up for a blog post or if it was the other way around. But I do remember when the idea hit me and suddenly thieves and their terrible skill ratings clicked into place and made sense.

Thieves' Skills

WHAT DO THE THIEVES SKILLS ACTUALLY MEAN?

You're playing a Thief. You want to pick a lock. You take a peek at your sheet and see that your chance is 15%. That sucks! Surely you can do better than that?

I think you can. I think the Thief's skills are not meant to replace existing stealth rules (such as they are), but to augment them. This is what I mean:

You try to sneak through a room where some orcs are playing bones in the corner. The dice are thrown and the result is 55%. That's well above the 20% you needed to move silently. What does that mean? It means you didn't move silently. It does NOT mean the orcs heard you. It simply means you made some kind of noise that might be heard. So the DM should then make the normal roll to determine if the orcs heard a noise or not.

If you were a Fighter sneaking through the room you'd only get the second roll, not the first one too. So the Thief has an added layer of rules to cover stealth.

Same for hiding in shadows. A failed skill roll means you could be seen. It does not mean you actually were seen. When the Thieves' skill rolls fail you simply fall back to normal rules such as a surprise check or hear noises.

I don't know if this was how the rules were meant to be used or not but this is how I've been thinking of them for a long time. It makes a thousand times more sense to me now than before and it means I don't necessarily have to house rule the Thief (though in all honesty I still do...).

After making this post I revisited the topic several times. In the post THIEVES! I re-state the idea outlined in the previous paragraphs and I introduce my Thief class bennies system, which I later modified into the Black Pudding Playbook's Thief.

In the post Once Again With The Thieves I talked about a new public game I was running and how I modified these ideas once more to suit that table. In that post I outlined this method:

-Thieves roll their skill on percentile dice + an ability check at the same time. If the percentile roll is good, ignore everything else because they have perfectly executed their subtle craft and cannot fail. Otherwise, go with a simple ability check.

-Non-thieves do sneaky stuff on an ability check, usually with Disadvantage. They cannot do super-secret stuff like climbing sheer surfaces or disarming complex traps (unless the player has a terrific plan).

Looking at it now, I still think this method is very good for a public game in which you have no idea who will show up to play. It eliminates the d6 rolls for hearing noises and such, which would be harder to explain to a complete noob. Rolling d100 and d20 at once is fast and smooth. Using Advantage and Disadvantage is both elegant and well known.

Still, as a B/X fan, I want the pure experience so I want as few house rules as possible. I need a good damn reason to house rule.*

In that same post I re-stated the original idea again in a way that I kinda like:

The idea here is to say that thief skills are special. The thief isn't merely trying to be very quiet or trying to find footholds on a wall. They have been trained or have discovered lost secrets or have tapped into natural talents that normal people cannot access. The thief doesn't simply "hide" in shadows, they fucking disappear. If that percentile roll is a good one, the thief cannot be detected. They are as good as invisible, though not in a magical way.

In the post Thief! Stop Thief! I had an idea for using the default saving throws as skill categories. Check it out. I haven't used this and it isn't what I'm leaning toward today but it's a neat idea, right?

SUMMARY

My thinking in 2021 is similar to 2015 with regards to Thief skills. Use the skills as they exist, without altering the tables or numbers. But treat those skills as *almost magical*, where the Thief is perfectly successful on a good roll and falls back to the default stealth rules when they fail. For my money, this actually solves the problem with Thieves.

Beyond that, I'm also in favor of giving Thieves another benefit in the form of special tricks. It could be a standard list such as forgery and reading scrolls and what not. Or it could be left wide open so the player can decide what their tricks are. I dunno. I'll ponder that one a little more.

I have some thoughts about wizards too...

* And oh yes, I do house rule. I have many house rules. I don't use them always, but there are a few that are almost always in use (critical hits, luck points, wizards getting more spells).

Rock Hardy Book of Dwarfs (Idea)

I'm working on a dwarf book. Working title is The Rock Hardy Book of Dwarfs, but that might change. My concept is to make this a black and white PDF and POD 48 pager. It is possibly the first in a series of setting books that very crudely describe my "traditional" fantasy setting of Yria. Basically most of what you find in the pages of Black Pudding would fit here.

Right now the book is at 9,000 words with a loose target of 10,000. So I could stop any time, clean it up, and finish the art. Like everything I do, this is meant to be an idea packet, an inspirational booklet. It will not be "complete" in any sense. It will be broad strokes, heavy on color.

The Rock Hardies are a mountain range in Yria where redneck dwarfs dwell. They like to fight, make and drink beer, and think of ways to win back their ancestral city of Frimmsreach.

All of this is subject to change per my whims. But as it stands, the book is compatible with B/X (Old School Essentials). It includes a lot of dwarf social stuff, beer, mountain monsters, etc. I certainly have toyed with the idea of making it a Troika! book or putting a Labyrinth Lord logo on it. Or even some other game engine or even completely system neutral. But honestly this was always meant to be a B/X setting* and I can't think of a compelling reason not to follow through on that.

I'll post more when I have more.

And yes, the Supercalla follow up is still on the table. Hellion Cross will see its day.

*B/X with a healthy smattering of advanced material, natch.

Fighter/Assassin

Complete in his raw glory, Decius Vladrumir, Cobold Ftr/Ass.

This is waaaay old. I found it among all my oldest RPG junk. This is a typical character sheet for me from that era of my life. This would have been maybe 1986, about 2-3 years after I discovered D&D. I borrowed the AD&D DMG + PHB from a friend and copied a lot of stuff by hand.

I was versed in basic D&D and only just flirting with AD&D as I was probably just about to enter my first "real" campaign with friends and we were definitely using that witch's brew of mixing all the rule books into a pot and sipping. So on this sheet you can see he is dual-classed, for example.

I'm curious about the upper right hand corner. Bare hand combat. I suspect this is take from one of the D&D box sets bc I remember that whole "weapon equivalent" thing, perhaps from the Mystic class? I'm not sure. It's been a long time.

Cobolds were a race from my Midaka setting. Basically a riff on dark elves, but they were distinctly blue-skinned.

Art-wise, this was early of course and at this time I was definitely using nibs and bottled india ink for most things. Messy, scratchy. I did this for a few years and have rarely "dipped" back into it.

Favorite part: The AC table. I preached about how descending AC is fine and easy and all you need is that table on your sheet so it's nice to see that I was walking the walk even back then. Though going to -14 might have been unnecessary. Chalk it up to flipping through Legends & Lore (Deities & Demigods) more than ANY other D&D book.

Lesser Gods of Rone

I recently completed a short BX D&D romp called Lesser Gods of Rone. Well... the campaign is called that, but this was just one adventure. Let's call it The Sleeper.

Here in these posts I talk about this whole island campaign concept:

First Post

Second Post

Third Post

The game ran for 7 sessions of 2 hours each. The characters were searching for the father of the party's wizard, Vonz. Vonz' dad had allegedly joined the crew of a wizard's ship in search of an ancient treasure. They explored 3 islands and ultimately had a standoff with a wizard who was locked in mental combat with a giant monstrosity beneath the waters. In the end everything exploded, like it does.

My incredible maps were a huge hit.

One of the main ideas behind this setting is that Lake Rone isn't mapped. It's amorphous. The positions of islands are not rigidly fixed. Or rather, the physics of space isn't fixed. To navigate between two islands you need to understand the path and it's not linear.

I invented a Mariner class just for this setting. Their trick is they "get it". They intuit the ways of the Lake and they are privy to secrets.

I tried to make navigation procedural in the tradition of basic D&D. You roll a die to determine how many hours a journey might take. You roll every 4 hours on a navigation table to see how well you're doing. The journey could become shorter or longer and hazards could be encountered. For example, in The Sleeper the PCs ran into a magic whirlpool created by some underwater villains. This was a fun bit because it let me introduce a little bit of the lore of the Lake to the party that they might later revisit and unpack.

I feel like the navigation rules worked pretty well. I worried that they would become tedious but I feel like with some variety in the tables this would be fine, not unlike the various procedures used in most hexcrawling campaigns.

The idea is that you would island-crawl. You'd randomly determine an island, then explore it. From there you might randomly visit another or the DM could establish detailed island locations as desired. It allows for individual islands to be highly detailed and mapped, if that's what you want. But the Lake itself would never be mapped in that way.

THE VISION

Here's what I'm thinking right now, in terms of what this project looks like.

Drawing the islands is fun. I will do more. I'd like to publish them eventually as a deck of cards where each card simply shows the image on one side and has some simple details about the island on the other side. Name, key features, inhabitants, special stuff. We're talking bullet point lists, not much text, and no stats. So this is utterly system neutral.

Accompanying the cards would be a PDF with the rules for navigating the Lake, a few classes such as the Mariner and Lake Thing, and maybe some new monsters and spells. A simple, short thing written for BX (OSE) rules, free to download.

That's the idea. I don't know exactly when I will do it. My habit is to back away from a project after running a playtest and give it time to stew. We're in the stewing phase.

BX Character Sheet Landscape

Here's a BX character sheet I put together by taking elements from various other sheets and Black Pudding pages plus new elements. It's landscape, which is not my usual thing. But you know in actual use a landscape sheet is more practical from what I've noticed. I did a bunch of pregens in landscape for a Nerdlouvia con and it saved table space.

Rat Bastard

This is the Rat Bastard, a class I scribbled long ago in the early days of Black Pudding. I honestly don't remember why this class wasn't in any issue of the zine so far but I assure you this bastard will be in issue #7.

And what else will be in issue #7, you ask? Well that's a good question. My process for this zine is fairly organic, meaning I tend not to play too much of it ahead. What tends to happen is I do little bits here and there and then I'll chew into something bigger (such as an adventure like Vault of the Whisperer from issue #2, using a sweet map from skullfungus). Once I get something significant finished it's as if I hit critical mass and I just continue to hammer away until I have an entire issue completed. That's pretty much how all my projects go, honestly.

So for #7 I have a few finished pages, such as the Rat Bastard and a character sheet or two, plus a metric ton of notes. Which of those notes will become parts of the zine I am not sure. I've got my eye on this mini-setting called Low Downs (welcome to the Days of Low Adventure!). But also there's a lot of material that I have created for GOZR that, honestly speaking, is absolutely BX compatible and could be presented in Black Pudding. So I might go that route since GOZR is coming along so damn slowly and I really have no idea when I'll be ready to publish it.

Translation: Be ready for some random tables!

Skillzzzz

It is well known that because OD&D did not have an explicitly-named skill system many grognards are opposed to games having skill systems. I get it. I jumped the ship from D&D in 1990 and landed on GURPS. I get skills. I get why they can be sort of... blech.

(I am not a fan of GURPS, though I was super into it for a few years. Love all the books, though.)

D&D had skills embedded in the classes and equipment and there were a few nods to skills, such as AD&D's Secondary Skills. In BX, a fighter was able to use all weapons and armor. Those are some mad skills! A thief, of course, had an explicit list of skills (which which they suuuuuucccckkkeeeeeed.) A magic-user had the skill of casting spells and being able to create new spells and magic items. Etc.

Equipment also granted a skill-like ability to PCs. If you had a 10' pole you had the skill of being able to prod at a trap from a safe distance. A PC with a lantern had the skill of lighting a dark room - a huge benefit.

AD&D, and also BECMI's D&D line, had lots of weapon skills.

The thing that I believe grogs have a problem with is when a player says "I roll Perception. What do I see?" Instead of saying "I look around the base of the statue. Has it been moved recently?" and so forth. The former represents reduction of the fiction to a straight mechanic while the latter represents clever puzzle-solving and more immersion in the fiction.

Of course both can exist together. After examining the statue, the DM might ask me to make that Perception roll. Maybe they already know that I'm gonna see the scrape marks but maybe there's something else to be seen - such as a trap switch - and the dice roll will indicate just how closely my PC looked.

BX D&D gives the advice of using ability saves (we call 'em checks nowadays) for those moments where there isn't an established mechanic. This is a default skill system wherein the ability scores coupled with the class determine what types of skills you are good at. The party magic-user, with their high Intelligence, should to a better job of recognizing weird items and knowing esoteric lore. The cleric's Wisdom should let them know more about obscure cults and shrines. And so forth.

One way that the use of ability checks (and default skills in modern D&D) can frustrate players is when a character who isn't the party's authority on a topic is somehow just better at dealing with that topic. For example, maybe the thief has a particularly good Intelligence and the wizard is only average. If the DM allows the thief to make Int checks for every weird thing they encounter, the player of the magic-user might feel slightly useless. "Oh, Niff the Nimble rolled well under their Int so they know a good deal about this weird order of Purple Wizards. But Jan the Sorcerer failed that Int check and knows nothing. Again."

The solution to that problem is don't let Niff the Nimble make Int checks for things in which they have no expertise. And when you do allow it, follow Moldvay's advice and give them a -4 penalty. Let that middling wizard have a moment to shine and maybe even forgo the Int check now and then. "As it happens, Jan has heard of the Secret Society of Super Wizards."

A bit of ramble here as I basically think out loud about skills. More to say, but I'll do it later.

Ten Islands of Rone

Here are ten islands of Rone. I named them and gave them each a small description for the game. Eventually, if luck holds, I'll produce a nice little RPG book out of this and expand on each, with some cool maps and such.

MURKHOLD

Small island with cavern system and a tower. Lair of Murkwand the wizard, if legend holds. Waters home to lonely sea serpent Issidor - said to be a lover of Murkwand unjustly transformed into a beast.

TWINKNOB

Two hillocks rise from the waters, a great stone arch joining them. Arch is filled with chambers once dedicated to the arts but of late inhabited by strange interdimensional travelers confused about where they arey.

GREENSOME

Once a vast, picturesque isle. Now a ruin of moss and decay. Who knows what dangers lurk in the chambers and corridors long forgotten by mortal eyes?

THE WEEPING WATCH

High and stoic, the Watch is home to the Watcher - a singular figure of great power and deep wisdom. Those who come here seek knowledge but few are prepared to pay the price.

KNOBBYBONES

A gnarly old isle lately occupied by knobby, gray bandits.

KEEPSAKE

The Old Egg lies still. The people of Keepsake ensure it remains that way.

ETTERISK

Remnants of a once-mighty palace sacred to the Queen herself. Now half-submerged and completely lost to foulness and monstrosities.

URTLESPIRE

The giant turtles surround it. A mad witch yet roams its tower.

OBBELON

What is that droning sound that wafts across the mist-winds? What shadow passes before that high doorway?

NEXPILOR

Six old towers, half-drowned. Bridges and lights and civilization. The smell of baked bread and wine? But will they welcome a traveler or toss them into the watery dungeons?

BX Wizard

In this post I presented a Wizard class for BX that I'm using in a current campaign. I tweaked it a little and added my own art in this updated version. It is compatible with BX but definitely has more bells and whistles. Still... it's all on one page, with art and an XP table. So it's not too crunchy. I like it. I think this would make the beginning spellcaster more interesting to play. And yes, this class does in fact replace Magic-Users and Clerics in my current BX game.

Lesser Gods Session Zero

Art © Glen Michael Angus, R.I.P.

BX D&D STUFF

We had session zero of Lesser Gods of Rone Monday night. We spent most of it making characters, discussing the setting, and sort of figuring things out. We got into the adventure for about half an hour - long enough that all the PCs are now in the same boat. Literally. Except the Lake Thing swimming near it.

We do have a Wizard in the party, so here's that character class. It's essentially the BX Magic-User with a few tweaks. Unless we run into any serious issues, this class will replace the MU in all my D&D games.

What's different about the Wizard vs. the BX Magic-User?

-Penalty to reaction rolls. Because wizards are weird and nobody should trust them.

-Fewer weapon restrictions. Because it's silly to limit them to a dagger. Just silly.

-You can wear armor, but it makes casting hard. Because it's more interesting that way. Most PCs will avoid it because of the difficulty. But hey... maybe you want to put some on because you're out of spell slots and you need to make it through this risky pass.

-MU and Cleric spells. This is just because I am not using Clerics in this campaign. Cult leaders can be Wizards. Or a special class. I never liked the basic Cleric anyway. (I'm also disallowing the memorization of the same spell more than once. So even if you do have a Cure Light Wounds spell you only have one of them.)

-Potion brewing. With an adequate lab, of course.

-Magical research emphasized (X51 needs love). And no need to wait until level 9 to create magic items.

-You begin play with a cool item. Because it's more fun that way. Show up on day one with a hat that sings.

-Disregard for spell level slots. This is just a house rule that I prefer. You just add up all spell slots and that's how many spells per day you can cast. You can't cast any spell level higher than your class level. Done.

This class was an amalgam of how I tend to treat MUs anyway + some inspiration from Stuart Robertson's BX Witch - one of the most elegant BX classes I found in the OSR circles. I was gonna have Wizard and Witch but decided there's really no need for both when a Wizard class with enough wiggle room can serve nearly all  your wizarding needs.

If you dislike this kind of thing because it makes the fighter less interesting to play, you could just give the fighter some love. I love the barebones BX game as much as anyone, but all of us house rule it. Nobody runs it truly RAW.

So... The party includes a Wizard (Jayne X Praxis), Lake Thing, Medusa (modified Black Pudding version, Dyson Logos), Nightkind (a piece of the night that woke up), and a Mariner (Andy Solberg). I'll post up all the classes eventually.

The Wizard is searching for their lost dad and the Nightkind is accompanying them, perhaps to understand a weird dream power they seem to be manifesting. They got a ride from the Mariner and picked up the Medusa as her island sank into the drink (related to the campaign? hmmmm...). The Lake Thing approaches because someone has been poaching gators from his swamp island and maybe it's this weird bunch in the rowboat.

The session ended with the PCs approaching the island of Knobbybones where a huge harpoon ballista was pointed at their rowboat by some unknown entities.

Lesser Gods of Rone Campaign

I am going to run a new campaign for the Monday night Doomslakers group. It is set in a world called Rone, which is a lake world I dreamed up maybe 15 years ago. I pitched it to the group like this:

Jack Kirby and Mike Ploog fall into an EC Comics fantasy world controlled by the better side of Vaughn Bodé's imagination. A mist-covered lake riddled with tall, mossy islands and weird creatures. Old gods beneath the dark waters. Strange races of weirdos. Long lost temples. Robots. Armies of ants. Waterlogged dungeons where slumbering computers reboot as you tread the dead hallways. It is a platform game slick with algae.

It's a BX D&D based campaign with 9 custom classes, including the one pictured here. Should be a hoot! Might even be a published thingie for Old School Essentials to be squeezed out of it.

Crolton!

This is probably the oldest piece of art I have. I can tell by the way I signed it that this was the 80s. I remember drawing this in my swivel chair in my room with my drawing board in my lap. I was SUPER pumped about it. This was the best thing I had ever done up to that point. I was probably 16.

The character in front is Crolton, one of the demigods of my old D&D campaign. The character was created by a friend in junior high. After he stopped playing I just kept the PCs and developed the world on my own.

I can't remember who his girlfriend is. She had a name... but damn it's been ages.

Front End Alignment

My car is pulling to the right. Tires have weird wear patterns. My front end is waaaay out of alignment.

Oh... wait. This is about gaming. So it's not that kind of alignment. Sorry.

(Come to think of it, I haven't even thought about front end alignments since I bought my first new car in the 90s. What was it about older cars? My old AMC Spirit was constantly out of alignment.)

Alignment sucks. I said so in this post, and I still mean it. You don't need alignment in D&D games. You might think you do, but actually in fact you absolutely do not. So ditch that shit right now. Of course, as I said in that other post, alignment is actually useful in other iterations of the game, such as DCC RPG. In that game alignment is both fun and useful, unlike in D&D where it is constraining and pointless.

Here's a newsflash: orcs are a racist trope. Indeed, it's true. The arguments for this are pretty solid and I'm certainly convinced. But also... who cares? It's really not a big deal. Orcs are dumb and boring anyway, so fuck 'em. Make your orcs more monstrous, less like Mongol hordes, and maybe that will fix it. I don't know. And I kinda don't care. But yeah... the racist trope allegation does hold water so stop bitching about it.

More importantly is the drow thing. It's quite god damn clear that having your prominent black skinned race of people be inherently evil is kind of a problem. This has been known for decades. Hell's bells, I remember joking about this shit in high school. And that was the 80s, when racism was just How Things Were™. I'm happy that WotC is addressing this problem, and the orc thing as well. It's a net good.

Stop bitching about it. They're trying to sell the game to young people, not our old asses.

TL;DR version:

Alignment in D&D is stupid and boring. Get rid of it. Or use it like DCC uses it.

The orc and drow tropes are kinda racist. Deal with that. You can still use orcs and drow if you want and if anyone tells you that you're being a racist you can say "Fuck off". It's fine. But honestly... orcs are boring so fuck 'em. Let's come up with new stuff.

EDIT: I just learned that Netflix removed the AD&D episode of Community. One of the best episodes! Fuck the bastards. What a dumb, stupid, cynical move.