Orcs

The beings known as elementals have long perplexed scholars. What drives soulless matter to rise in such imitation of life? Particularly baffling are those elementals that seem to defy the categories of matter discerned by the great sages. A being all of earth or fire may be strange to behold, but its nature is at least clear--but what of a creature of ice, or lightning, or salt?

For as long as humans have lived, they have fought with each other. Philosophers and poets have dreamed of worlds without war, yet no matter how many such dreams they spin, those worlds scarcely seem any closer. Jesters and jaded minds say that as earth and water are basic building blocks of matter, so is war a basic building block of humanity. If you need proof, they say, just look at an orc.

Sometimes, when a great battle has ended, the hatred, rage, and pain of the fallen does not pass from the world. From blood-soaked mud, mangled flesh, sundered arms and armor, it crafts new bodies. They have no eyes--they need none but their helmet-slits. They have no tongues--no words are left to them, only howls of hate for all that is not an orc. Their wrists end in blades, barbs, and bludgeons--they no longer have any other use for hands.

They know neither pain nor fear. They do not tire. Though they hunger, they never starve. The warband marches, unceasing, ever in search of the enemy--and to an orc, everything that isn't an orc is the enemy. Bloodthirsty army or defenseless village, it matters not as long as there is killing to do. Their bodies, though awful to behold, are ideal for the task, stronger than all but the mightiest warriors. With every "victory," they grow stronger, carnage and metal rising to replenish the ranks. Unchecked, the warband becomes a horde, villages becoming cities and empires.

The most terrifying thing about them, though, is that they can be used. Soldiers follow orders. With the proper magics, or sometimes just the charisma and bloodthirst of a sufficiently cruel warlord, they transform from an untamed force of destruction into a weapon of horrifying power. They become capable of scouting, retreat, ambush, and siege. Their hatred will not be checked, though, carrying out all orders in the most brutal way possible, sparing none unless commanded to take prisoners by name. A warlord who tries too hard to bring them to heel may suddenly find themselves the target of their own "loyal" troops.

They are best fought with a small, elite force. Attrition is ever on their side--the horde always hungers.

The Cavalry

On the edge of inhabited space, the dogged Rebels fight for freedom against the oppressive Conglomerate--a ragtag alliance of homesteaders and outlaws against the might of Earth's military-industrial complex. You are mercenaries, loyal only to your ideals, your comrades, and the almighty credit, driven in these bloody times to make your mark on history or just a profit. Your weapons are mobile frames, 6-meter-tall humanoid vehicles piloted via neural interface. You operate as agile light cavalry, tougher and packing more firepower than infantry, faster and more flexible than tanks and other heavy armor.

You've got a job to do. This is how.

The Basics

You're a skilled military operator with broad competence. When you have the time and tools you need and no one's opposing you, you can do most things without a problem.

When success is uncertain, roll a d6. The referee will set a target number--usually 4, but it might be lower or higher for easy or really difficult tasks. If you meet or exceed the target number, you succeed.

If you're an expert, roll an extra d6 and take the highest. If you're a master, roll 2 extra d6 and take the highest.

Creating a Merc

You're a proficient operator and frame pilot. If your background includes other training, education, or experience, you have those skills too. Choose 2 skills that you're an expert in. Some examples:

• Aerial/orbital insertion
• Artillery
• Assault weapons
• Camouflage
• Close-quarters combat
• Communications
• Cyberwarfare
• Demolitions
• Field medicine
• Field repair
• Heavy weapons
• Marksmanship
• Urban ops
• Wilderness survival
• Zero-G ops

You're skilled in all of these things; expertise reflects areas of special focus. You can also be an expert in non-mercenary skills, like if you have a degree in nuclear physics. You can't start your career as an expert mobile frame pilot--you're skilled, sure, but expertise comes with experience.

Introduce yourself to the rest of the company by name, pronouns, age, look, and known history. Your lancemates will give you a nickname that will serve as your callsign; you don't get to pick your own nickname, and if you try, you're an asshole. If you're joining an established company as a new recruit, your lancemates can wait to give you a nickname until you earn it.

Merc Equipment

You have access to common gear through the company armory; exotic stuff requires special expense. When you deploy for a mission, choose your load: light (4), medium (6), or heavy (8). At light load, you can blend in with civilians. At medium load, you look like an operator on a mission. At heavy load, you look like you're planning to take on an army, and you're not going to cover any cross-country distance on foot.

Most pieces of gear you can carry take 1 load. Big, heavy stuff, like full body armor or an assault rifle, takes 2. Really small stuff doesn't count. Distribute your chosen load as you like, then you're ready to head out.

Infantry Combat

Combat is played in rounds; each round, every combatant gets 1 action. The length of a round is flexible; in a quick, brutal close-quarters engagement, a round might be a few seconds, while in a protracted long-range firefight, it might be a few minutes. The important thing is that everyone gets to act once.

The side that engages first has the initiative; if it's uncertain, roll off. Ambushes and surprise attacks automatically win initiative, but don't give the ambushers a free round or anything. Everyone on the side with initiative acts, then everyone on the other side. You can choose to delay until after the enemy acts, but you can't act in between two enemies.

Distance in combat is measured in zones. A zone is the area with the same general terrain conditions and sightlines. The size of a zone is flexible; in a warehouse, the crate-strewn floor might be one zone and the catwalk overhead another, while in a firefight across a forested valley, each side of the valley might be a zone and the valley bottom another. During their action, a person can move as far as it makes sense for them to be able to given the length of the round, whether that's multiple zones or only a small part of 1 zone. Weapons can likewise extend as many zones as make sense based on visibility and the effective range of that weapon. (In a firefight inside a building, the limiting factor on a rifle isn't its theoretical effective range but the sightlines available.)

Your main defense against being shot is cover. Each zone might have no cover, light cover, or heavy cover available. When you use your action to take cover, you move to the best available cover and gain a cover rating based on how good it is: 4 for light, 6 for heavy. When someone shoots at you, that's the target number they have to roll to hit (d6, same as usual). Hit or miss, each shot reduces your cover rating by 1. To regain cover, you'll need to spend another action repositioning and taking cover again, which resets your rating to the best available in the zone.

Defending against a melee attack is a d6 roll opposing the attacker.

When you hit a target, you roll your weapon's damage die and reduce the result by their armor. The remaining damage inflicts wounds. 1 damage is a light wound, which gives you -1 to all rolls; light wounds heal with a week of rest in a secure location. 2 damage is a moderate wound, which is -2 to rolls and needs treatment to heal. 3 damage is a serious wound, which is incapacitating and fatal within minutes if not stabilized. 4 damage is instant death. Taking damage while wounded moves you up to more severe wound levels.

After shooting, roll your weapon's ammo die. On a 1, you're dry; switch weapons or spend an action and use a mag you're carrying to reload. Otherwise, reduce your die size by 1 next time you roll (d4 minimum, after that you run dry automatically).

Example weapons:

• Combat knife: 0 load, d4 damage
• Pistol: d4 damage, d6 ammo
• Assault rifle: d6 damage, d8 ammo
• Shotgun: d4 damage (d8 at close range), d4 ammo
• Sword/entrenching tool/fire axe: d6 damage
• Marksman rifle: d6 damage (+2 if you spend an action aiming), d6 ammo
• Light machine gun: 2 load d8 damage, d12 ammo
• Frag grenade: d8 damage to d4 nearby targets

Example armor:

• Bulletproof vest, 1 armor
• Infantry armor (2 load), 2 armor
• Armored powered exoskeleton (2 load), 3 armor

Building Your Frame

For frontier pilots, rebel and mercenary alike, DIY is the name of the game. Most combat frames are assembled from modular and 3D-printed parts according to open-source patterns or the pilot's own design. As a result, every pilot's frame is unique. You take the systems and weapons you want, add on as much armor and ammo as you can, and put them all together to form your rig.

The biggest limiting factor is mass. A mobile frame can only support so much weight and bulk without being slowed down, and in frame combat, speed is life. You also need to consider your frame's power supply and the processing power of your onboard computer.

Frame mass is measured in slots. A light, agile frame has 15 mass to fill. A mid-weight frame has 20, and a heavy beast has 25. No frame can support more than 25 mass, and there's no real benefit to going below 15. Generally, each system you add to your frame takes 1 mass; heavy, bulky stuff takes 2, and some systems don't add any significant mass. A light frame can cover about 400 meters of open terrain in a minute; a medium frame can cover 300; a heavy frame can cover 200.

At minimum, a functioning frame needs 4 systems: the frame itself (meaning the mechanical skeleton and synthetic muscles the frame uses to move), the cockpit (where you sit), the power supply (which provides electricity to the frame and all its systems), and the onboard computer (which runs the neural interface that allows you to operate the frame). Each of these takes 1 mass. The rest of your mass can be allocated as you like to weapons, extra systems, ammo, or armor.

Write down your systems--frame, cockpit, power supply, computer, and any others--as a numbered list, starting from 1 and counting up. Systems that take 2 mass take up 2 lines; stuff that doesn't add mass is off to the side. Systems closer to the top are more internal, so they'll be the most protected; you should always put your vital systems at the top, probably starting with your cockpit. For example, for a midweight frame:

1. Cockpit
2. Power supply
3. Main computer
4. Frame
5. Ejection system
6. Chaff launcher
7. Autocannon
8. Rocket launcher
9. Armor
10. Autocannon ammo
11. Autocannon ammo
12. Armor
13. Rocket launcher round
14. Rocket launcher round
15. Armor
16. Armor
17. Armor
18. Armor
19. Armor
20. Armor

    Non-encumbering: 

• Firewall software (1 processing, +2 hardening)

(This is known as the Dragoon pattern, a popular general-use combat frame throughout the frontier. If you're overwhelmed with all the options, the Dragoon is a good place to start.)

Your essential power supply provides 5 power. 3 of that is needed for the frame's basic functions, so you have 2 to spare. Systems that require power to run will take up some of that pool; if you need more power, you can take extra fusion batteries as systems for +5 power each.

Your main computer provides 5 processing. 3 of that is needed for the basic OS. Advanced software, like cyberwarfare programs, will take up more processing. You can add extra processors as systems for +5 processing each.

Describe the look of your frame and one distinctive piece of art or scrawled word you've painted on it.

Frame Defenses

Frames have 4 special defenses. Evasion protects against large explosions and similar area effects. Jamming protects against guided weapons. Insulation protects against EMPs and other electronic attacks. Hardening protects against cyberattacks.

Each defense is rated from 1 to 6. When you defend, you roll a d6 and try to roll equal to or under your rating. Evasion starts at 3 for light frames, 2 for medium, and 1 for heavy; all the others start at 1 for everyone. You can equip defensive systems to improve your ratings--ECMs for jamming, firewalls for hardening, etc. You can also use one-time countermeasures to automatically succeed on defense rolls, like launching chaff to throw off guided missiles.

Frame Combat

Frame combat works basically the same as infantry combat. The main difference is that instead of wounds, damage destroys your systems. When you hit with an attack, you roll your damage, and the target counts that many systems up from the bottom of their list; whatever's in that slot gets disabled. Hopefully that'll just be armor, but if it's a functional system, they lose it until it can be repaired or replaced. When counting up systems for damage, skip any that are already destroyed. If you hit their frame, power supply, or main computer, they're completely disabled and out of the fight; if you hit their cockpit, same, but they're probably also dead.

Rapid-fire weapons will often have multiple damage dice, written like d6/d6. That means you roll 2 d6, but don't add them together--instead, whatever each die rolls, that's what gets hit. So, if you roll a 2 and a 4, the systems they have 2 and 4 from the bottom of their list are destroyed. Explosive weapons will have damage marked with an e, like d6e; that means a hit with that weapon also destroys everything below the hit system. So if you roll d6e and roll a 3, the target counts 3 systems up from the bottom of their list and loses all those systems. Explosives are scary.

If an attack hits ammo you're carrying, the ammo has a 50% chance to explode, destroying everything above it until it hits armor. The armor is destroyed, but it stops the explosion. Smart pilots always put some armor in between their ammo and their vital systems.

You can purge any number of systems at will to free up mass. This can put you into a lighter weight category. Disabled systems still count toward your mass unless you purge them, but if you don't go back and recover them afterward, you obviously can't get them repaired and will have to buy replacements.

Example frame weapons:

• Frame knife: no mass, d4 damage
• Heavy machine gun: d4/d4/d4 damage, d10 ammo
• Frame saber: d6 damage
• Autocannon: d6/d6 damage, d8 ammo
• Howitzer: d8 damage, d4 ammo
• Railgun: 2 mass, d8 damage (+2 if you spend an action aiming), d6 ammo
• Rocket launcher: d10e damage, 1 shot
• Tank gun: 2 mass, 2d6e damage, 1 shot

Example frame systems:

• Attack software: 0 mass, 1 processing, target defends with hardening or loses 2 power until they act to restore systems
• Autoloader:1 power, linked to a specific weapon, reload that weapon without using an action
• Chaff launcher: 1 power, auto-success on a jamming roll, 1 use
• ECM generator: 1 power, +2 jamming
• Ejection system: 1 power, eject manually at will, 5-in-6 when frame disabled, ineffective if cockpit hit
• Field repair kit: repair 1 disabled system for yourself or a nearby ally, depleted on 1-in-6 with use
• Firewall software: 0 mass, 1 processing, +2 hardening
• Insulated systems: 2 mass, +2 insulation
• Jump jets: 1 mass and 1 power per frame weight class, jump up to 30m in atmosphere
• Packet sniffer: 1 processing, cyberwarfare test to intercept enemy communications in target zone for 1 round
• Satellite uplink: 1 power, 1 processing, use satellite imaging for bird's-eye view of the battlefield
• Survival gear: enough rations, supplies, and portable shelter for 1 week in terrestrial conditions
• Zero-G fitting: 2 mass, 2 power, move freely in space and enough air for 24 hours

Infantry vs. Frames

Frames are functionally impervious to small-arms fire. Infantry-portable heavy weapons, like rocket launchers, work against frames just like they do when mounted as frame weapons, although they're usually more cumbersome for infantry. When frames attack infantry, they attack a whole group at once rather than a single fighter; rapid-fire weapons inflict 1 casualty per damage die, and explosives inflict casualties equal to the damage roll. However, if there are friendlies in the same zone, extra casualties roll over to them.

Frames vs. Heavy Armor

Tanks and similar vehicles count as 1 target for frame attacks, and vice versa. A typical main battle tank has 40 mass. Tanks are scary monsters, but they can't go everywhere frames can go. Taking them down requires clever tactics or a lot of luck.

Under Stone and Over Hill

I've been working on a new build of my hack, and now it's back to a point where I feel good about it. I'm not trying to do anything revolutionary; this is basically just my personal DM binder, presented in a hopefully somewhat readable form for my own reference and maybe yours.

Goals

I dunno, same as everybody else's, "do OSR exactly the way I like." I've come to accept that there is really only One OSR Game that everyone plays basically the same way for the same reasons, and all the little differences between OSR systems are just for our own idiosyncratic preferences, convenience, and the fun of hacking for hacking's sake. This is my B/X hack; there are many like it, but this one is mine.

Selling Points

• Slim 6-page main rules (plus gear tables and spell lists in appendices)
• Quick, decision-light character creation
• Classless, organic advancement based on character actions rather than static levels
• Simple, immersive damage and wound system that allows characters to grow tougher while still keeping high-level combat tense
• Qualitative range and distance--no grid maps needed

Download the bookmarked PDF from Google Drive.

Normal Humans

The subject of the "normal human" monster entry in the OSE rulebook came up in the OSR Discord. I started riffing with Carson and this happened.

Normal Human

A normal human. Just a normal human. Just a perfectly normal human.

Lady Apidae by Nandrysha

HD 1 (4 HP), AC 12 or worn armor, speed 30', 1 weapon attack, morale 7.

A Normal Human always rolls the average result on every die, rounding whichever way benefits it most.

Normal Humans are all but impossible to detect in groups. When entering a crowd of more than 10 people, a Normal Human has a 3 in 6 chance to blend in flawlessly (and since they always roll average, this roll always succeeds). However, any PC with at least 10 Wisdom will feel an indefinable wrongness when interacting with a Normal Human on its own.

If you tell a Normal Human your real name of your own free will, it will begin to steal it. Each day, every numeric value on your character sheet--ability scores, hit points, etc.--will move 1 closer to average. When they all reach average, you become a Normal Human permanently, and the Normal Human that stole your name replaces you completely. Killing the Normal Human trying to steal your name before the process completes halts it and reverses the effects, but finding the specific Normal Human you need to kill is always harder than it should be. You could've sworn this was the right one, but it must have been another one--they're so hard to tell apart....

Thoughts on Moldvay Basic, Part the First

I figured it was about time I got around to actually reading B/X. It's always held up as the lingua franca of OSR, after all, and no matter how different I want my own rules to be, I feel like I should be familiar with what we're all ultimately referring back to. I've played OSE before using the free player quickstart rules, but that's my only exposure. I'm not going to do a full review or anything, but I figured I'd jot down some things that stood out to me as I went.

I'm reading the Moldvay version of the Basic Rulebook, pdf purchased from DriveThru. I like the art, and it's cool to see a lady magic-user as the adventurer of primary focus doing cool shit, even if that dress is...yeah.

Part 1: Introduction

I actually really like how the book explains the basic concept of the game, what it's about, the roles of the players and DM, what winning and losing mean and don't mean. It's fairly concise and gets the important stuff across well. I guess I assumed stuff this far back would have clunky ways of explaining all this stuff, since I still think of RPGs as a New Thing at this point and assume, I guess, that a lot of the language we use to describe it now still didn't exist.

The fact that all creatures besides the PCs are technically considered monsters is hilarious to me. Especially since the book explicitly says "yeah, totally normal humans you meet in a dungeon are absolutely monsters." Also interesting is the fact that the book calls out talking to "monsters" in the exact same way it does stealth or combat, not just as a "hey, once in a while you might meet monsters that are willing to negotiate." Like, it seems to suggest it's totally viable to play the game intending to talk and negotiate with just about everything you meet in the dungeon. I knew talking to monsters was always part of things, but I hadn't thought of it as something people would expect to be doing as much as or more than fighting or evading stuff.

The fact that the book needs to devote an entire section to explaining all the different ways it uses the word "level" is also hilarious.

Part 2: Player Character Information

The way the book talks about ability scores definitely doesn't give me the impression that they're not supposed to matter. I know by this time, ability scores have much broader mechanical effects than the very earliest version where I understand they literally only affected experience gain for certain classes. But still, hearing some people talk, you'd think making them do more is a newfangled concept.

The option to raise your prime requisite by reducing your other scores is also something I always forget about--I feel like I've only ever seen it reproduced in OSE. I'm not really sure why it seems so consistently abandoned otherwise. It seems like it doesn't interfere with what makes random ability scores good (quick to generate, no decision-making required, can inspire unorthodox characters), it's not super fiddly, and it's surprisingly grounded in the fiction as explained by "you train to improve at one thing and sacrifice development in others." I kind of like it. Probably still just keep my "swap two scores if you want" that I stole from LotFP, but still.

Okay, I'll defend thieves as a class all day, but yeah, the thief skills as implemented in here fucking suck. "Hear noise," so only thieves can say, "Hey, I'm being quiet and listening for monsters coming?" Most of them you can at least justify by them being specialized skills (lockpicking, picking pockets) or saying thieves can do them under exceptional circumstances or are just better at them than everyone else (hide in shadows, climb walls), but listening, really? Come on.

Reading the cleric makes me think I need to start treating undead as more special. So many dungeons put skeletons everywhere as the standard mook enemies. I've done it. Though my current setting doesn't really have undead anyway.

Halflings having Strength as a prime requisite is again hilarious.

I can't believe magic-users can't use staves as weapons here. If anything, that seems way more iconic than daggers. Though thinking about it, I actually don't even know if there are rules for staves in this book.

"[Thieves] do steal--sometimes from members of their own party." Oh, they...actually just say it. Welp.

I was prepared for the alignments to be less stupid than they're sometimes made out to be; they are not, and honestly even worse than I expected. "A Chaotic character does not work well with other player characters"--why have it as an option, then? I guess people saw player conflict as a more normal part of the experience? I dunno, I don't mind PvP in something like Apocalypse World because in that game, players have ways to avoid losing their character in a way that isn't interesting to them. In OSR, having to be prepared for my PC to be murdered by somebody else's doesn't sound like a fun addition to things, the game's already deadly enough. I feel like if you wanted to have this style of alignment, it'd be best to establish it as something the players should hash out amongst themselves and come to an agreement on what they're open to--a fully Chaotic party could be a great time if everyone knows that's what they should expect. 

I still can't wrap my head around alignment languages. Best explanation I can come up with is that they're just meant to facilitate communication between PCs and monsters, to avoid too many cases of the PCs wanting to talk to something but not sharing a language with it. But it still feels goofy to me. And situations like the one avoided by alignment languages can present an interesting challenge--how do the PCs communicate to a monster that they want to parlay without a shared language? How do they make themselves understood? Those are answerable questions. I want players to describe their characters scratching pictures in the dirt with a stick to communicate with the deep faeries, that sounds awesome.

"Note that playing an alignment does not mean a character must do stupid things. A character should always act as intelligently as the Intelligence score shows..." (Emphasis mine.) Hmm, evidence of an intention that characters be defined in the fiction to some extent by their ability scores, in contrast with the attitude some OSR folks seem to adopt today. I'm biased, of course, since I like ability scores.

Oh, no combat staves listed in the weapons, yup. I feel like Gandalf definitely thwomped someone with his staff at some point, but I haven't read the books in a while.

I'll try and continue with the rest of the book in further posts.

My (Better) Damage Mechanics

I'm alive.

I don't like hit points. They're fictionally confusing (meat points, etc.), and worse, they're boring. You always know how many HP you have, and that means you always know exactly how much damage you can survive. As you level up, combat becomes theoretically more survivable, but also consistently takes longer while you and your opponent remain equally matched. I don't like players being able to rely on that; a fair fight should never be that safe or predictable.

This is what I'm going to use instead from now on.

Damage

Hit points no longer exist. Damage still works the same way: attacks deal points of damage equal to the roll of a damage die (or dice) based on the attacker's weapon. A dagger deals 1d4 damage; an axe, spear, staff, or arrow deals 1d6; a sword deals 1d8 (because of its bigger cutting edge than an axe--the downside is that it's way more expensive, not useful as a tool, can't be thrown, etc.); a two-handed polearm, battleaxe, or longsword deals 1d10.

Wounds

Instead of taking away HP, damage causes wounds. A wound is always a physical injury in the fiction--if you're wounded, you've been cut, bruised, burnt, or whatever in a concretely established way.

Normal humans have 4 wound slots: 1 light, 1 moderate, 1 severe, 1 critical (named so as to correspond with the standard Cure spells). Light wounds are painful and hampering, but will get better on their own with time and rest. Moderate wounds are more painful and hampering and need treatment to heal, but aren't life-threatening. Serious wounds are "you're bleeding out": you're unconscious or otherwise incapacitated, and if you don't get help within the next few minutes, you'll die. Critical wounds are certain death--if not instant, then imminent enough to leave time for little more than dramatic last words, and beyond the help of any healer.

Each point of damage fills a wound slot. If you're unharmed and take 1 damage, you become lightly wounded; 2 damage, moderately wounded; 1 and then another 1, moderately wounded. When you're lightly wounded, you take -2 to all ability checks, attack rolls, and saves. When you're moderately wounded, you take -4. When you're seriously wounded, you go down and can't do anything more strenuous than crawl; if you aren't stabilized within 1+Con modifier minutes (minimum 1), you bleed out and die (you can also make one last dramatic attack or check, but then you die immediately). A PC with medical skills can stabilize a serious wound with medical supplies and a successful Int check; this takes a turn, during which the patient doesn't bleed out, but if the healer fails, the patient dies when the turn ends. A stabilized character is still seriously wounded; they can stand up and walk, but nothing more strenuous than that (which includes carrying a heavy load of gear).

Note that all this means being stabbed with a dagger has even odds to fatally wound you and a 1-in-4 chance to kill you outright (assuming the attack hits). A single spear thrust has a 2-in-3 chance to fatally wound and even odds to kill instantly.

Hit Dice

Everything that would normally have hit dice (so PCs, humans other than 0-level commoners, and monsters other than those with 0 HD) still does. Instead of rolling your HD to determine your HP, you keep them as a pool of dice.

When you get hit, before damage is rolled, you can spend any number of your HD to try and turn the blow. Roll those HD, add your Con modifier to each, and reduce the damage of the attack by the total. Any damage that gets through wounds you. All HD you roll are "exhausted." When you rest in a relatively safe, comfortable place for a night (so outside of the dungeon), you regain all exhausted HD.

Exhausting HD represents fatigue, minor scrapes and bruises, and diminishing luck, the way losing HP normally does when they're not used as meat points. The difference is that you can never know exactly how much luck you have left. If you're a 6th-level fighter up against a farmer with a spear, you can fight conservatively by only spending 1 HD each time the farmer hits you, but he might still get a lucky jab past your guard (you roll low on your HD, he rolls high for damage) and end you right there. The only way you can be completely sure of your safety (assuming you have a Con modifier of 0) is to blow all 6 of your HD the first time he lands a hit, leaving yourself exhausted and vulnerable if he manages to hit you again. If you're up against another 6th-level fighter, things become even less predictable--even if you both fight conservatively, the duel might drag on for many rounds or end in a single lucky strike.

This is a lot of text, so have some Berserk to break it up. Guts is probably fucked here
even with normal HP, but with these rules, he's fucked sooner.

Recovery and Healing

A light wound will heal in a week of normal (non-adventuring) activity, minus days equal to your Con modifier.

A moderate wound needs treatment to begin healing. A PC with medical skills can do this with medical supplies and an hour's work, or you can go to a doctor. Once treated, a moderate wound becomes a light wound after d6-Con modifier weeks (minimum 1) of non-adventuring activity, at which point it heals as a light wound. If you spend your recovery time on full bed rest under the care of a skilled healer, it's d4 weeks instead of d6.

A serious wound that's been stabilized can be treated like a moderate wound, and heals the same way (after which it becomes a moderate wound, which then has to heal up to a light wound). However, serious wounds leave lasting marks. Whenever you're treated for a serious wound, reduce a random ability score by 1d4 and gain a distinctive scar. (I'd ignore the ability score loss if your rules don't have PCs' ability scores increase as a standard thing; the new version of my hack I'm working on probably will, so this is meant as the main counterbalance to that.)

Instead of their normal effect, Cure spells heal wounds of their corresponding level immediately, skipping past the levels below to restore the subject to full health. Cure Serious Wounds doesn't prevent ability score loss (if you're using it) or scarring. A Cure spell won't do anything for a wound greater than its effect--Cure Light Wounds can't reduce a moderate wound to a light wound. Even magic has its limits. As a tradeoff, because wounds don't scale with level like HP, all Cure spells stay consistently useful at all levels, instead of Cure Light being obsoleted by Cure Moderate and Cure Serious.

Next Time

Like I mentioned, I'm working on a new build of my hack. I kind of want to put it in zine form this time; regardless, I'll probably post it here in full once I have it in something like a usable state. Meanwhile, I'd like to start putting some of my general rules ideas up here. Stay tuned if you like reading the words that come out of my head.

The Gygax 75 Challenge: Halas, Week 2

We're back with week two of Ray Otus' Gygax 75 Challenge. I was supposed to do this last week, but...well, I'm a little embarrassed to admit this as an OSR nerd, but I've never actually bought physical hex paper before, and I had an unexpectedly hard time finding any for this part of the challenge. I could've just done it digitally, I guess, but I really wanted to stick with pencil and paper; it just feels better to me. I ended up getting some hex paper on Monday, though, so we're back in business.

Last week, I laid down the broad concepts of my setting, Halas, listed some sources of inspiration, and put together a little bit of a mood board. Now we start to leave the kind of broad-scope stuff I have an easy time thinking in behind, and have to get down to actual gameable details.

Week 2: Surrounding Area

The goal for this week is to put together a map of the adventure area.

Task 1: Get a sheet of hex paper.

Done.

Task 2-5: Draw the following on it, one item per hex (or more if indicated). Name anything worthy of a name.

• One settlement of a significant size
• Two other settlements (camps, larger or smaller towns, a keep, the unusual home of a fantasy race, etc.)
• One major terrain feature (covering at least three hexes)
• One mysterious site to explore
• One (main) dungeon entrance

Rather than going through these in the suggested order, I'm gonna go about designing my map the way I like, with these as requirements for things that will have to be on it by the end. What follows is basically gonna be my stream of consciousness as I work on this, recorded here in bursts interspersed with the work itself. I initially had some ideas about taking pictures of my paper map in stages and showing you folks the progression, but that's already flown out the window as I'm writing the first part of this post now, so I'm just gonna describe things and then show you the end product.

Step 1: Climate and Landscape

So what kind of vibe do I want the landscape of this region to have? I'm in the mood for something Mediterranean-esque, like Greece or some northern parts of Israel I thought were pretty when I went there once. Hot, dry, rugged mountains and hills, hardy scrub, coniferous forests. Of course, since Halas is on an alien planet, it's not literally a Mediterranean biome--most of the flora and fauna are alien and fictional--but that's the atmosphere I want to channel.

Step 2: Scale

There's some discussion of this in the book. Otus says 1-mile hexes like Gygax suggests are a good choice, and mentions that anything bigger than 6-mile hexes should be discarded outright. I don't like the idea of 1-mile hexes for this project. One of my favorite things in fantasy RPGs is long journeys through trackless wilderness, Lord of the Rings-type stuff; I want travel to be a big part of my games, and for every journey to feel significant, even if it doesn't necessarily get a lot of actual time at the table. Making the adventuring region too small cuts down on the journey element. I also find it makes the world feel sort of cramped; if your starting adventure region is just a few square miles and already contains three settlements, a dungeon, and another mysterious site to explore, that makes me think dungeons and other weird stuff are just absolutely everywhere and every farmer trips over four of them whenever they have to plow a new field. And having villages every couple of miles along the road contributes to making the world feel a lot safer, less wild and mysterious. Not great for the kind of adventures I want here.

Lucky for me, if I'm riffing off Greece for my landscape, that implies a lot less arable land than medieval western Europe, and a much less dense population. Given my hex paper is 23x19 hexes, I decide to go for a 6-mile hex scale. Otus compares a map at that size and scale to roughly 1/3 the size of Ireland. For a starting area meant to accommodate some decent travel, that sounds great to me.

Step 3: Topography

I tend to start my maps by grabbing some convenient bit of Earth and flipping it around. Knowing I want to go for a Mediterranean feel with my landscape, and with the scale of the map in mind, I look at the southern bit of the Peloponnese and go "yeah, that'll work." Flipping it upside down, because I want Halas to be south of its major sea, I draw some coastlines that generally mimic the shape: three mountainous peninsulas with more land to the south and southwest. Mountain ranges go in about the same places, and then I add some rivers where they look good. That takes care of terrain features covering at least 3 hexes, since most of the region is highly mountainous.

Diversion: Names and the Beginnings of Panic

Thinking about what to call this region, I decide on the name Atreia. I'm not much of a conlanger; usually I name stuff by picking a real language and sticking some phonemes together to make something that sounds the same. For the language of Halas, I want to evoke the same sort of vibe as The Dying Earth, where the names tend to sound sort-of English but very much like fantasy gibberish; I'm not really sure what to call that sound, but that's my goal here. Atreia sounds Greek, but I still feel intuitively like it fits with the vibe.

This is about where I start to get overwhelmed by all the work I feel like I need to do. Now that I have to start thinking about things like where settlements and dungeon entrances go, I feel like I have to work out all the history of everything in detail--why is this city here at this spot? How old is it? What makes it unique? Who rules it? What's the backstory of the dungeon? And my brain starts going down all these rabbit holes that don't lead to anything important for a game, and I get paralyzed and frustrated.

To help resist these impulses, I'm gonna change gears and try to work as closely as possible to the spirit of Otus' challenge: I'm just gonna plonk down the required features in spots that seem to make sense, give them names, and leave the rest to fill in later as much as possible. It hurts me in a physical way, but I think it'll be healing.

Step 4: Settlements, the Dungeon, and a Mysterious Site

The major city of Atreia is Kyther. That's a name I've had in my head for a city in Halas for a while, so might as well use it here. Kyther goes at the mouth of the biggest river, in the northwestern part of the region, on the biggest peninsula. Again, I'm deliberately not working out everything about Kyther right now--that's week 4 of the challenge--but I can't resist coming up with a few details. Kyther has an urban population of about 6,000; it's not a bustling metropolis, but I'm designing Atreia as a "tutorial region" to introduce new players to the setting, so not throwing them right into the grand capital of one of the Deathless Lords feels appropriate. Kyther is ruled by one Duke Lacus, a vassal to one of the Deathless; I don't have much of him beyond a name yet. Knowing how big the city is, I can get a sense of how much farmland it needs around it (a lot, apparently), so I fill in most of the non-mountainous land on the big peninsula with fields surrounding the city. I guess Kyther is where it is because that's where most of the arable land in Atreia happens to be.

Next, I want a small hamlet somewhere. The fishing town of Velm goes on the tip of the easternmost peninsula, at the mouth of the other big river. I think if I were running a campaign with a newbie group that would benefit from a more structured intro to the game than just "here's your sandbox, go play," I'd have them start as villagers from Velm, throw them into a small tutorial dungeon near home, and then offer them the rest of Atreia to explore afterward if they survive; they could head to Kyther as a hub for bigger and better adventures.

Traveling overland without having to climb over any mountains, these two settlements are about a week's journey apart on foot. I draw a road connecting them by what looks like the easiest route, and then place another settlement along it: Teya's Rest, which I decide I want to be basically just a big inn and a few farms, a stopover on the way to the city.

Now I need a dungeon. I like the idea of an isolated spot up in the mountains outside Kyther. I pick a spot at the head of the western river and draw a marker for a site I decide on the spot to call the Temple of Worms. It's gonna be a cult lair, home to the worshipers of a daemon that puts symbiotic worms in people to grant them everlasting life at a terrible price. (Note: daemons in Halas are ancient AIs capricious tutelary spirits rather than incarnations of evil. Some are actually quite helpful, but they're always dangerous to deal with.)

Last up is "one mysterious site to explore." This I struggle with for a while, but eventually come up with something I like. Any good ancient hypertech science fantasy setting has to have giant mechs; I drop the inert remains of one on the eastern coast of Atreia, watching over the ocean. "The Dawn Watcher." No one nearby knows its true nature, of course; as far as they're concerned, it's just an old statue someone built on a mountainside. Could an intrepid group of adventurers reactivate it somehow? If so, they'd gain control of an incredibly powerful weapon.

Last Details and the Finished Product

I add one more road going southwest from Teya's Rest, toward where I imagine the wider world will eventually be for PCs to venture out into. I fill in some of the wild areas that aren't too hilly with forest. I add a couple of major islands off the peninsulas, and name some of the more important features that I haven't already.

And here we are:

I feel good about this. It might be a bit empty at this scale, but I think that's okay; it leaves me room to fill in more little villages and dungeons and mysterious sites and whatnot as I come up with them. Like, the Shield (the big island, if the picture isn't clear enough to read) should definitely have something on it, shouldn't it? Why isn't anybody shown as living there? Questions for later. That already feels like progress for me; normally I'd be freaking out about all the things that aren't completely explained, feeling like the map wasn't "done" enough to be playable.

For extra credit, the challenge suggests coming up with a random encounter table. I did want to do that, but I ran out of time this week. Ah well, more for later.

Next week, I take on a task I've never managed in all my gaming career: creating my own dungeon completely from scratch.