My new OSR book, ALTERNATE MAGIC, is out!
ALTERNATE MAGIC is a collection of mechanics for old school and OSR systems.
I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.
- William Blake
My new OSR book, ALTERNATE MAGIC, is out!
ALTERNATE MAGIC is a collection of mechanics for old school and OSR systems.
SKILL PERCENTAGE MONSTER BEAST NPC Acrobatics 0 0 5 Animal Handling 0 0 0 Arcana 6 0 10 Athletics 3 2 14 Deception 8 0 24 History 3 0 10 Insight 9 0 10 Intimidation 2 0 10 Investigation 1 0 5 Medicine 0 0 14 Nature 0 0 14 Perception 54 46 24 Performance 1 0 0 Persuasion 4 0 24 Religion 3 0 14 Sleight of Hand 0 0 5 Stealth 37 25 14 Survival 3 0 5
So that’s a quick tally of what skills are common… now, how many skills does each creature get?
It varies a lot. While higher-CR monsters tend to have more skills, there are plenty of big tough monsters – especially bruiser types – with no skills at all, including the kraken, tarrasque, demilich, balor, and pit fiend, so it’s definitely not a necessity for a tough monster to have any skills at all. Smarter monsters tend to have more skills. Most monsters have a maximum of four skills. The two exceptions I noticed are the mind flayer and the spy, which have six skills each.
Day versus nightThe hive is active both day and night, but night makes it significantly more dangerous, because many creatures go out during the day to hunt for pollen, captives, etc. In addition, unless the PCs can see in the dark, their sources of light will make them easier to notice at night.During the night, whenever you roll randomly to determine the number of creatures, re-roll all natural 1s. For example, if one room has “2d6 bee soldiers” and you roll a 1 and a 3, this would mean 4 bee soldiers during the day, but re-roll the 1 if the PCs enter at night (if you roll 1 again, there are four soldiers; if you roll 4, instead, there are seven soldiers total, and so on).This rule applies to all encounters within the hive, random or not. On the upside, there is a 50% chance for every demon to be sleeping during the night.
[E] The Barracks2d6+3 imps are here. During the day, half are asleep, but they do not seem to care with people coming and going. During the night, only a third of them is wake, but they'll be suspicious of outsiders.The rest of the imps are playing disgusting games with small vermin and malformed dice.
If both the Queen and Malavor are still alive, the hive expands. In 2d4 weeks, the number of demons and bee-soldiers is doubled, and the hive’s defenses are reinforced. In another 1d6 weeks, Malavor manages to mutate himself into a bee-demon, half-insane, but with full control of the bee-people. The bloated and sick avatar dies after a while, but this no longer affects the bee-soldiers, that can now be cloned in the underground. Three months after the characters left, Malavor unleashes his army against the nearest village.A list of pre-planned events? A pre-written ending? There are people that would think this is what railroading is all about! It is usually considered bad form if a module describes what happens next. You're supposed to find that out during play!
1137 Beginning of a civil war between King Stephen and the Empress Matilda over the succession to the English throne
Anyway, here is the blurb:
What's this about?
Nothing is older than yesterday's blog ... or so they say. After 10 years of exploring "all things D&D and role-playing" on The Disoriented Ranger blog, most of it during the Golden Age of the so-called OSR (and some of it in the Silver Age, I presume), it is time to look back and see what I deem worthy of conserving.
I talked several subjects over the years, many of them about game design and gaming advice, but the most general was about Gaming Culture. How we play, why we play, consumerism, DIY, about communities in general, about where we are and where we could go with this hobby of playing role-playing games ...
I shared my takes about these and they make a good first anthology. So here they are: 15 posts on roughly 130 pages with thoughts and musings about The Hobby, all edited and prettied up for this pdf.
What's to come?
There are five more anthologies to follow in the next couple of months, so look out for:
- Part 2: D&D and the OSR
- Part 3: Musings about DMing
- Part 4: Storytelling Advice
- Part 5: DIY & Gamedesign
- Part 6: Theories in Action
Parts 1 to 3 as well as Parts 4 to 6 will also be compiled for a PoD option!
This is not a trip down memory lane, the topics presented here are still as important as they had been when I addressed them. My sincere hope is that sharing them here will encourage and inspire new readers (or fans of the blog, but with fresh eyes) to see the wealth of potential our hobby has, as well as its pitfalls.
Other than that: I can just provide the map, and even I get lost ...
Cheers,
The Disoriented Ranger
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What qualifies me, you ask?
Just so you know: "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." (Hunter S. Thompson)
When you take the Attack action and attack with a light melee weapon that you’re holding in one hand, you can use a bonus action to attack with a different light melee weapon that you’re holding in the other hand. You don’t add your ability modifier to the damage of the bonus attack, unless that modifier is negative.