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I moved to a new URL. See you there!

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Haunting art by Marcel Roux ( 1878-1922)

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More art by Russ Nicholson.

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Dwarves playing cards.

By Russ Nicholson, published in The Warlock of Firetop Mountain (1982)

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oooo its the fuckin wizard

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Charming work by @bertdrawsstuff.

Four Flavors of Invisibility

How does Invisibility work in your ttrpg? Here are some examples:

Perfect camouflage; the invisible copies adapts to its surroundings, but remains a solid object which light cannot pass through, thus casting shadows.

Transparency; the invisible becomes like clear glass but still shows its edges.

Warping of the light; light wraps and warps around the invisible, creating a shimmer in the air.

Suggestion; the invisible isn’t invisible but not perceivable by creatures nearby.

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Another great one by @bertdrawsstuff.

A dark descent…

I’m getting back into these kind of things, now that paid work is slowly drying up. More time to draw other stuff. Stuff like this!

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Kings: They Need to Eat

An off-the-wall take on fantasy Kings by the Mad Queen’s Court:

Size. They get bigger as they eat, and live, and grow. Petty Kings, of the sort that abound these days, are about twice as tall as a man. The High King, who has lived for a century and a half, is as tall as a tower.

Mindset. Kings are inhuman, hungering, imperious things. They do not think, nor feel, nor act like a people. The King demands pearls! Cattle! Riches! Dancing girls! Dancing boys! Dancing bears! Whales! Forests! Industry! Knights come and carry off your granaries and if they're not full enough then oh well, mark off your least favorite sun or daughter. The King needs to eat.

Diet. Kings eat one another and common folk too. They can restrain themselves from the latter if well-satiated with meat and grain, but if you put two Kings of approximately similar size in the same Kingdom one of them is going to kill and eat the other one. It's just a law of nature.

History. In today's fallen age this is about as big as Kings can get, but the histories tell of Grand Kings the size of cities. And in ages long past there was held to be an Emperor, the First King, who if he truly lived must have been the size of a mountain range...

How to Become King. Easy, you eat one. It's hard not to, once you've done the work of killing him: A King-corpse calls to the soul and stomach of all true Men.

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These Dungeon Hobo Signs by Throne of Salt are really inspiring. They’re in the style of early 20th century hobo signs, and immediately gets the DM brain going:

In Motherships' Gradient Descent module, there's a megadungeon with its own subculture of plunderers (called Divers). I love the idea of scattering these signs throughout it (or any megadungeon) creating this lived-in feeling. Like a group of people have been exploring the place for years.

I would also  be a great substitute for thieves cant. Thieves and lowlives can read it, but not just any Player Character.

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An off-the-wall take on fantasy Kings by the Mad Queen’s Court:

Size. They get bigger as they eat, and live, and grow. Petty Kings, of the sort that abound these days, are about twice as tall as a man. The High King, who has lived for a century and a half, is as tall as a tower.

Mindset. Kings are inhuman, hungering, imperious things. They do not think, nor feel, nor act like a people. The King demands pearls! Cattle! Riches! Dancing girls! Dancing boys! Dancing bears! Whales! Forests! Industry! Knights come and carry off your granaries and if they're not full enough then oh well, mark off your least favorite sun or daughter. The King needs to eat.

Diet. Kings eat one another and common folk too. They can restrain themselves from the latter if well-satiated with meat and grain, but if you put two Kings of approximately similar size in the same Kingdom one of them is going to kill and eat the other one. It's just a law of nature.

History. In today's fallen age this is about as big as Kings can get, but the histories tell of Grand Kings the size of cities. And in ages long past there was held to be an Emperor, the First King, who if he truly lived must have been the size of a mountain range...

How to Become King. Easy, you eat one. It's hard not to, once you've done the work of killing him: A King-corpse calls to the soul and stomach of all true Men. 

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Killer dungeon chip album by Mauzhar.

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Side-view map from B4: The Lost City.

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Player Aid 3.1 from the Gradient Descent module for Mothership.

I love the utilitarian look of this thing. Like an outdated fire escape plan posted on the wall of a government building.

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Sellsword: Dev Log 1

Some big changes to Sellsword recently, and none of them necessitated by a playtest (though I’m eager to get it to table). In brief...

1. Overhauled the layout. 

Old Butterick (love and hate him) said Minion is a bad font choice because it’s an automatic font choice. As Calibri is to Word, Minion to Adobe. Except Adobe users are supposed to have their aesthetics about them, so it’s a graver sin.

So, inspired by the 24XX games (which I’ve never played, just looked at the thumbnails on Itch) I went for a condensed sans serif, similar to Futura, but a little rounder. It’s Proxima Nova, and I’m sure Butterick would have his qualms. 

I also replaced the Souvenir headings (another automatic font, pulled straight from classic D&D) with something more Western-tinged. But hopefully not too Western tinged. It’s a delicate, challenging, and fun balance between maximum readability and theme/flavor. At times like this, I’m jealous of Mothership. A game that’s set in the future feels like it has endless graphic design choices. And, based on the incredible looking third-party content, I don’t think I’m alone in that. 

In addition, I justified everything to the left and left a jagged edge (no edge-to-edge justification). It’s not quite as pretty, but I think it improves legibility. This feels like another milestone in my formatting journey. (The last milestone-- using the baseline grid-- is getting easier, more embodied. Next is using a layout grid.)

2. Removed Attack, Defense, and Initiative “sub-stats”.

A little post-mortem is helpful for me on this one. Let’s retrace our steps.

In the initial design, I included a “Defense” stat to account for Armor; Defense was equal to Armor or DEX, whichever was higher. I wanted a single block on the sheet that the Players could ALWAYS point to when they got attacked. To quote the GLOG:

Consolidate ruthlessly. Turn two rolls into one, turn one roll into none... Prioritize simplicity over realism. 

So we had Defense. I felt like that was an outlier on the Character Sheet, so I added Attack. So that was two combat “sub-stats” derived from the core stats. Then I decided to make HP based on Willpower. That left Wits. I wasn’t going to have initiative rolls, but I decided to include it (Wits based) so, that way, every core stat had utility in combat.

But, as I mentioned, I changed how Armor worked...

3. Changed Armor

I really wanted piecemeal armor. It takes up more inventory space, it makes your Character easier to picture, and it extends the noob stage by extending the time it takes to get fully equipped.

However, if I’m avoiding modifiers (even baked in modifiers) I didn’t want new pieces of Armor to increase your Defense. I wanted that number to be fixed. But there is one number that already increases and decreases: HP. So I decided Armor simply increases your HP. For a few years, I’ve been defining HP as “your ability to avoid injury” and baking Armor into that equation makes perfect sense.

I can think of some instances where it doesn’t make sense. For example, poison or a brain-altering effect would bypass Armor completely, so it doesn’t make sense that Armor would extend their HP in that circumstance. But remember the GLOG...Prioritize simplicity over realism!

We’ll see in the next playtest whether this works well or not.

4. Changed Weapons

I’ve struggled with one vs two hand weapons. I don’t want any weapon tags, which makes it impossible to notate whether a weapon requires one or two hands. It also doesn’t allow for dual wielding.

Then I came up with a simple solution: if you wield a weapon with one hand, you can use a shield. If you wield a weapon with two hands (or wield two weapons), your chance to crit is doubled. This covers a lot of edge cases (a hand and a half sword wielded one or two handed, a javelin as a one-handed range weapon, dual wielding knives) in very few words. Players & Narrators will still have to bring a dose of common sense though. Like, they can’t use a bow and a shield simultaneously.

5. Stats can’t advance past 16.

Originally, I had the cap on stat advancement at 18 (3d6). But that just feels too high. Since it’s a roll under system, that leaves a 10% chance of failure. If you’re lucky enough to roll an 18 (less than .5% chance) so be it. But the advancement system is already susceptible to abuse (write down 20 “memorable moments” and boom, +4 to a stat) and I don’t want to make it any easier for the occasional ugly player.

6. Updated the Character Sheet

As I mentioned, I removed Attack, Defense, and Initiative. So those got chopped from the Character Sheet. I don’t love the new layout (I wish the Character Portrait was oriented vertically) but it works for now.

Also, I added HP values to the sheet. The “HP = Willpower divided by 4, rounded up” calculation isn’t terrible, but it could be way easier. So I just listed the numbers out. The 3d6 spread is also more obvious this way.

Alright, I think that does it for now. I’ll leave us with some ongoing thoughts:

Would rolling 1d6 for HP be simpler? Simpler, maybe. But it would also be swingy, and it would make Willpower less crucial. All-in-all, probably not a good choice.

Should I eliminate WITS? Writing it out, the answer seems obviously no. How would foraging, fixing gear, inspecting artifacts, etc. work? It just happens? That feels less fun— less gritty— for my liking. Also, the three stats in Into the Odd and its spawn also felt a little too slender to me-- like the Characters lacked specificity. Though ITO is a huge inspiration to me.

Should HP be based on your HIGHEST stat? That would mean most Characters would have about same HP. The explanation would be that you use your strength, agility, cleverness, or mental endurance to avoid damage. Which I do like. But it would also double-reward already strong Characters. Instead, should HP be INVERSELY related to your highest stat? I like the notion that the weakest, slowest, most dimwitted characters have incredible resolve in combat.

OK, last thing for real. Typing those out was very helpful. I confirm: HP is based on Willpower (plus Armor) and will remain so. WITS is staying in.

If you’d like to playtest Sellsword yourself, here’s the free PDF. Let me know how it goes!

—Severed Hand

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Sellsword: Playtest 2

This week I ran the second-ever session of Sellsword, my one-page OSR ruleset. For an adventure, I used “Incident at Torn Throat Gorge”, a work-in-progress one-page adventure with an Old West flavor.

In no particular order, here are my dominant takeaways:

1. Extend the “noob” stage.

When I started playing Runescape in 2005, the most fun I ever had was playing on a free account, fishing for shrimp in Lumbridge and trying to get enough gold to buy a green cape. I was a noob. And the smallest things— like selling an inventory load of mined iron, or picking up 10 gp from a dead guard— mattered. That changed as I leveled up and gained more gold. As I leveled up, the percentage of the game that posed a challenge and offered value, that delivered joy, decreased.

How might a game designer avoid this? I’ll be reflecting on this for a while I imagine. But off the top of my head, two things come to mind...

First is Dark Souls. I’ve never played a Souls game, but my impression is that even the lowliest foes remain deadly when you’re a higher level. You never level into safety, which means that percentage of the game still holds value for you as a Player.

How to bring this experience to Sellsword? Low HP. HP increases very little as the Players advance. This means even a veteran adventurer can be eviscerated by wolves, or pin-cushioned by goblins, if they’re not careful.

Second is the accumulation of wealth. This has been explored a lot in the OSR— especially in XP for gold systems— where the adventurers accumulate so much gold that gold stops being meaningful or valuable to them. Things like carousing (spend gold to gain XP) or building a stronghold (the “endgame”) tackle this problem. But another way is to simply limit the Players buying power.

How to bring this experience to Sellsword? A ramshackle, frontier setting where goods are scarce and expensive. If you can find someone selling a suit of leather armor, it’s going to be damaged or very expensive. This means the Character “outfitting” phase is extended over multiple sessions. (Remember, they begin with only a rusty sword.) Unlike D&D, there’s no starting with a bow, sword, shield, and light armor. You have to earn that shit!

If I go with the “Debt Objective” (at least as one possible game mode) then the Players are also faced with a meaningful choice: do I spend my gold to increase my chances of survival, or to spend my gold and get out of debt as soon as I can? Right now, that choice doesn’t seem significant to them. But if I turn up the pressure— during every mission, there’s a chance your debt holder will send thugs after you, and it increases over time— this may become a more meaningful choice.

2. Two actions is rich, but not decadent.

Last post, I wrote a list of things I wanted to include in the next playtest:

Combat with multiple foes at various distances.

Shields, armor, heavy weapons.

Situations where combat is not a viable method of survival. (Incentivize diplomacy, roleplaying, etc.)

Set a starting debt (5000 coins? Thanks Electric Bastionland) and a reason for the debt. This will tie Player Characters to at least one NPC and the World at-large.

Run a non-dungeon scenario. A settlement or wilderness region, likely. Perhaps an “escort / retrieve the NPC” mission.

This session checked many of those boxes, particularly a large-scale battle (over a dozen combatants) in a river delta at the mouth of a gorge. The battle was dynamic, tactical, and truly unpredictable (without being swingy) and at no point was it clear the PCs were going to win.

Specifically, 2 actions felt both balanced and fun. It also rewarded positioning. For example, two of the Black’s Gang with crossbows, fortified on the cliff edge, got two attacks every round (they didn’t have to move).

Is this a problem? Not seemingly, but I will need to continue to test it. The last thing I want is static combat, with a strong incentive to stand still (like D&D 4e).

3. “Fatigued” felt too punishing.

When a Character has 0 HP, they are fatigued and have disadvantage on all rolls. At least, that’s the way I originally wrote the rule. But mid-fight, that just didn’t seem fun. As a kid, I remember remarking to my dad (and DM) that one of my favorite things about D&D is that you are in the fight til you’re out of the fight. As you receive damage, your ability to deal damage is not decreased. (This is really a quality of HP, as opposed to stat reduction.)

In light of this, I modified the rule to “vulnerable”. When a PC has 0 HP, they only have disadvantage on rolls to avoid harm (Defense/Saves). Feels better, and truer to the intent.

Is this a problem? I doubt it. A Player still has an important decision to make: keep fighting, or very likely die next turn? (Even 1 damage will kill them, and they have disadvantage— bad odds.) However, time will tell if low HP will incentivize Players in exploration mode to rest and recover.

4.  The economy needs to be refined.

Until now, I’ve been spitballing the cost of goods. Early on, I liked the idea that there were ~5 tiers of prices at regular increments:

Cheap (1 coin)

Moderate (10 coins)

Pricey (100 coins)

Expensive (1000 coins)

A Fortune (10,000 coins)

But somewhere along the way I got the idea to randomize these values. I tried this first time during this session, at beginning, during the “buying gear” stage. (This stage is completely abstracted-- no shopkeepers, which is my strong preference. I just don’t enjoy those store interactions as a DM. And if the DM isn’t excited to run it, there’s a 90% chance it’s better left out.)

I used a d6*X to find the cost of different pieces of gear, but I found the d6 too swingy, especially when multiplied by larger numbers (100, for example). Leather armor can cost anywhere between 100-600 coins? Too swingy! 

In my rules tweak post-game, I opted instead for a 3d6*X system. It looks like this right now:

Cheap: 3d6*1 (10 coins)

Reasonable: 3d6*5 (50 coins)

Pricey: 3d6*10 (100 coins)

Expensive: 3d6*100 (1000 coins)

Small Fortune: 3d6*1000 (10,000 coins)

Using multiple d6s gives us a nice bell curve and 3d6 specifically gives us an average of 10. This merges my original idea (1, 10, 100, etc.) with my second idea (d6). This eliminates swinginess considerably. I also gave some thought to economics: if you can buy a cheap meal for 10 coins (~$5 USD in 2022) then it tracks you could buy armor for 1000 coins (~$500 USD). I’m not saying it’s perfect, but it feels logical enough to work.

Is this a problem? I don’t think so. My Players had no issue with the “roll to see how much you can sell your loot for”. I also like that this has a baked-in way to account for scarcity, selling contraband, or working with a favored merchant (roll advantage / disadvantage!). Also, I can always default to the average (10, 100, etc.) a la monster HP in D&D (roll HD, or take flat HP).

This got long, so I’m going to wrap it up here. Here are some things to include in the next session:

Send debt collectors after Players.

Build a combat scenario that encourages dynamic actions-- not just attacking with a sword.

Create repercussions for killing innocent NPCs / leaping to violence (without imposing a hardwired “morality” in the system).

Introduce some advantage / disadvantage when buying/selling.

Get better at making point crawls

Run an adventure in town (Wolf’s Jaw).

If you’d like to playtest Sellsword yourself, here’s the free PDF. Let me know how it goes!

—Severed Hand

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Returning home with a trophy head.  (Jeff Easley from AD&D Greyhawk Adventures, TSR, 1988.)

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One of those days, stuck on a ledge between hobgoblins, trolls, and whatever that is swooping down from the sky  (Jeff Easley, AD&D Greyhawk Adventures, TSR, 1988)