Blood, Death, Satan & Metal

In my experimentation with Vermis I was inspired by Parsely, a pseudo-RPG that emulates a text prompt based adventure games from the early days of computer gaming, such as Zork. Parsely is not an RPG as we would think of it, though it is an interactive, imaginatively evocative game. Jared A. Sorensen, the publisher describes Parsely thusly: Relive the glory days of floppy disks, dot-matrix printers and 128K RAM with this collection of party games inspired by the text-adventures of the 1980s. As the parser, you’ll take on the role of a computer game with a limited vocabulary. One by one, the players will give you commands like GO NORTH , LIGHT LAMP or GET SWORD , which you’ll follow to the best of your ability. There’s no limit to the number of people that can play and no limit to the fun you’ll have. So what are you waiting for? It’s time to unplug from your computer and plug into Parsely! If you're interested, you can try Parsely's free demo . Let's be clear, thi...

It is known that I like to reduce miscellaneous rolls and mechanics to their approximate d6 equivalents. The foundation for this is the elegance of the LotFP d6 skill system , which I think is memorable, minimal, and hackable. So far, I have turned saving throws into d6 skills that can be improved by Specialists and downtime training and even a unified d6 single saving throw inspired by Swords & Wizardry . Morale is ripe for adaptation as well- even though it's determined with a 2d6 bell curve, the chances align rather similarly. It could go quite nicely with the d6 Save versus Death for Chainmail style combat , also. Not perfectly, mind you, but with a deviation of about 8% at most, which is right in the middle of the 16.66% gradations of a d6 roll. Is it a worthwhile price to pay? I think so- the more things that can be condensed into similar mechanics, the better for use at the table. And why do we really need 12 individual gradations of Morale, when the MM usually assi...

When there are large quantities of combatants, especially of the same type, there's no reason to roll individual attacks and damage, and no reason to keep strict, detailed records of who's dying and who's left. Of course there's nothing wrong with fighting them normally by making a d20 roll and then rolling damage, but why do that for every combatant when there's a bunch of them? Assuming that they're facing opponents of roughly equal strength, it can be streamlined into a single roll with a little math. Redshirts with low HP, AB and damage are easy to model, so we can just make a roll for each individual or unit without tracking their HP if we calculate the chance of them dying from an attack. Thus, they get two states: "Dead" and "Not Dead" (or "Not Dead Yet"). If they fail a save, they are Dead. If they succeed, they are either Not Dead (fully alive) or Not Dead Yet (reduced strength, suffer a Morale check, or other negative...

I have yet to meet a player who has not, at one point or another, taken part in Murderhobo behavior. As a kid who taught himself D&D at the age of 8 reading the 2nd edition Player's Handbook, I built a lot of dungeons with 10' x 10' featureless square rooms housing treasure chests guarded by orcs, and as a player never payed for an inn, a hot meal, or any type of service that a normal person would use. All my income went to implements of murder. But given that verisimilitude can be fun (to a point) and that OSR characters will often find a lot of treasure and have nothing to spend it on other than carousing or buying magic items from the inexplicably present economy built around dungeon crawling, let's give them a reason to care about the things that make us living, breathing people and not cardboard cutouts of munchkins murdering our way through a series of backdrops. If you'd like to apply some simple modifiers to NPC reaction rolls to incentivize this, here a...

So I decided I wanted to make all saves in my game use d6 instead of d20; then somebody pointed out Swords and Wizardry has a simple system that gives each class a single save. It's something I had considered including, but didn't want to destroy the sacred cow of the 5 save system in the same post I destroyed the d20 roll. But it's a great idea! Give each class their save- they all progress at the same rate (1/level) anyway under S&W, which of course fits well with my math. Every 3 levels, they gain a point. Some of the classes get bonuses to certain categories of saves (Magic-Users versus Magic and Magical Devices, Thieves versus Devices, for example). Easy. All I had to do was make sure it was faithful to LotFP's starting values, which I did by finding the average of the 5 saves at level 1 for each class, then adjusting that to my d6 ranges. Also, Swords & Wizardry uses race in addition to class, so Dwarfs, Elves and Halflings don't have a save ...

D6 skills are fucking awesome. They're simple, calculable, probably the easiest die to read across the table, and easy to fill in on a character sheet. If you make sure to follow a few rules, you can avoid any common problems you might have, too. I made a post about that  here . So I've been thinking, why the hell not use it for Saving Throws? D20 isn't bad, by any means. It's a calculable die and definitely the best substitute for percentile probability if you're ok with rounding a bit in the name of expediency. The only issue with Saving Throws is that they're descending when a lot of other things are ascending. D20 fixed this by with modifiers that went up every level and reduced it to three save types, but we do things differently here (unless you're playing DCC). But if we're condensing die types down to as few as possible while still trying to keep as close to the original, divinely-inspired Saving Throw values, we can do it pretty easily becau...

My chief design philosophy, and the way I play at the table can be summed up as "Memorable, Minimal, Metal." I don't like to juggle a lot of rules. The main elements of OSR games are combat and skill rolls. Combat rolls are pretty straightforward, so we're going to take a look the d6 skill system works, problems that may arise from it and how to solve those problems. As someone who grew up with 2nd edition AD&D I was used to skills being incredibly granular and using a lot of different methods of resolution. It seemed natural to me, having first encountered that approach, that complexity and verisimilitude were the best rules philosophy. Moving on to 3e, it was better (blasphemy!), but there was still a skill for everything and they tended to discourage creativity through their strict codification of what was possible with or without a given skill. By comparison, the d6 skill system is much more general, open-ended and quick at the table. Description and gam...

Under the rules of my Lore skill , Magic-Users gain unique mini-spells as they advance. Each time they gain a level of the skill, the Ref and the player collaborate to customize a cantrip that will be for that character only, reflecting their talents and discoveries of the occult. I gave several examples in the original post, but here are some more to help Referees flesh out NPC Magic-Users or roll on if a player would rather progress randomly. Details such as range, duration, and other variables have been intentionally omitted and are up to the Ref to determine based on any relevant factors such as distance, level, skill level, hit dice, or other circumstances. This table will be added to periodically, and readers are welcome to make their own suggestions as well. d20 Cantrips  1 Bond: Create a strong static bond between objects, causing them to resist gravity or attempts to separate them. A successful ability check can pull the objects apart, and the effect end on i...