Other People's Stuff - Secret Jackalope 2022 & Giallo/Horror BX & Slush Piles & Iconoclastic Flow.

Secret Jackalope 2022 - Doomed and Saved, out on the Ice.

As well as being paired to write a response to a Secret Jackalope prompt, someone else was paired with mine: Mechanics/subsystems for isolation/loneliness, incorporating fantasy/horror/sci-fi inflected Third Man Factor/Syndrome.

This is/was Wyatt over at TBD: Tabletop, Books, and Dinner, who came up with some mechanics for manifesting and being aided by the Third Man - the presence sometimes reported by wanderers in the cold wastes and lofty places. Well worth a look. Thanks, Wyatt.

And below Wyatt's notification to me on the OSR Discord was this gem from the Foreign Planets blog (also a Secret Jackalope response) - Doomed Expeditions to Dread Hyperborea. Those cold wastes and lofty places I mentioned? They're one of my favourite settings, especially when you mix in an (un)healthy dose of fantasy, horror and sci fi.

(Also check out the likely discontinued Black City Project over at Dreams in the Lich House - it's from years back, but it was a more recent discovery for me)

The Erotic Art of Slaughterhouses.

I clicked through in the context of BX, giallo and survival horror, and was pretty happy with what I found. A new to 2022 blog, last updated in March.

I'm recommending this content with full awareness of possible non-neutral reaction to their Cool Shit From Other People - it's up to you to decide how powerful Hitler's jumper is. 

Anyway.

Iconic Clothing & Pocket Contents:

Two d50's worth of stuff for characters in giallo/survival horror games with the clothing and the random junk giving clues to your abilities/identity/situation. I like these like I like the uniform patches in Mothership.

With expansion up to 100 in the comments.

XP for BX/CoC hybrid:

A good alternative to the blood-and-gold method of BX, with no points for killing but some for encountering new monsters and saving people.

There is a legacy of XP=GP in that you'll get the worth of any eldritch artefacts you recover.

Some reference to Lovecraft's stories for illustration.

Improvised Weapons & an Improvised System:

d50 (expanded to 100 in the comments) things you can try and fight back with when trapped in the mansion with the murderous and mysterious. 

Includes 'Sliding Door'. Everything has a 1-4 on d6 chance of breaking when used for violence.

Plus the bare bones of a BX/LotFP hack for amnesiacs trapped in a mansion. Character special abilities boiled down to a bonus on related rolls, based on simple tags eg. Track Star, Camping Enthusiast. 

Personally, I would relate these to the Iconic Clothing and Pocket Contents you roll up at the start and - as you're amnesiacs - you don't have to decide on your tags at chargen. Being the master of unlocking in advance is all very well, only to be faced with nothing but broken-down doors and barricades.

Inspiration and Links.

A slush pile posting at Archons March On. This is the latest in a series and is dense with ideas and inspiration.

There are a number of people out there in the blogosphere doing these. Good. Be generous with your ideas, because maybe you don't have the time to deal with them and someone else might come up with something better than you imagined/exactly what you were dreaming of. The OSR blogosphere is a rich resource and you should tap it often. Cite and thank your sources when and where you can, and don't get too hung up on someone else already having had your ideas.

Also in this vein, check out Seed of Worlds for Slush Piles and TTRPG blog link compilations. They also post the r/osr blogroll every Sunday (within reason), which is always good to check in on.

New Blog - Iconoclastic Flow.

Contributors to a new collaborative blog just peeping out of the interpipes like sapient mercury: Max of Weird and Wonderful Worlds, Semiurge of Archons March On (already linked above), Spwack of Slight Adjustments, Sibylla of Devil Devil Devil, and Sofinho of Alone in the Labyrinth, Jones Smith of Was It Likely? and some more I'm less familiar with.

Nowt to do with me, chum, but I like a lot of their stuff, so it's probably worth keeping an eye on.

Experience! Gold! Thieves! - Kinder Surprise Houserules/Mods.

Your kind of party, eh?
Russ Nicholson for Citadel of Chaos.

Quicker Advancement.

• If you're playing with only three classes (OD&D style), shift down the XP tables so MUs advance as Fighters, Fighters as Clerics and Clerics as Thieves (or unchanged), or:
• Use 3e/4e/5e XP tables, and subtract that amount from corresponding older school class XP requirements. So, a BECMI Cleric needs 500 (3e) or 1200 (5e), a Fighter needs 1000 (3e) or 1700 (5e) to hit 2nd level. 

(This is one way of reducing the economy-busting amounts of gold that are an issue for some, and a way of speeding up advancement for the time-poor while keeping the staggered class advancement model)

Bonus Extra: if the table agrees, every time you roll a save, you get XP equal to the amount you missed or made the save by x10. Roll exactly your save value for 100 XP.

It's more book-keeping, but rewards general adventuring behaviour/risk-taking as you get something whether you fail or succeed. As your characters rise in level, it will make much less impact and you can drop it once it gets too cheese-paring.

Less Cash in Circulation.

Related to the lower XP requirement idea above and the fairly common trope that adventurers/heroes start off each story broke, hoping to make one big score and then end up cheated and broke again.

Characters do not keep ANY treasure that goes towards XP. 

It is out of your hands by the time the next adventure comes around, through debt, carousing, alms-giving, theft, gifts, living expenses (at the appropriate level of extravagance), cheats, gambling etc. You can even call it training costs. Narrate or hand wave this as your table likes.

Any cash (or choice items) you want to keep (in hand, in the bank, buried under a particular tree, put towards buying a castle, whatever) or spend on adventuring assistance/supplies does not count towards XP.

For extra misery, allow included living expenses to exceed the amount of XP you gain, so you end up in debt.

Are healing and curse removal costs inclusive or extras? 

More Thief Mods.

Because we just can't help it! 

Under either of the following (and I don't think they can work together), keep Hear Noise as a d6 skill (if that's in the system) and Backstab is unchanged.

Skills as saves: allocate your Thief skills to your saving throws (combine as appropriate), and test them on a d20 (or convert to %). 

You can swap a pair of saves/skills every time you gain a level.

You can apply Ability Score adjustments as agreed/appropriate.

Skills as hit rolls: each skill is an attack roll vs. unarmoured AC (or convert to %).

Your skill advances as a Fighter's attack progression, and leather/chain/plate can be used to represent grades of abnormal difficulty or increasingly stressful conditions.

In a mod of 2e AD&D weapon specialisation, the Thief can spend max. one of their NWP slots to specialise in a single skill at 1st level and get a +1 bonus. They can use a single additional slot gained at higher levels to specialise in another skill, or take their bonus to max. +2. This might also work with the 'skills as saves' method too.

Bonus Extras:

• Thieves open doors, locks, chests, disarm traps etc on an Open Doors roll, but use INT and/or DEX (depending on characterisation, and Dragonwarriors would suggest an average) to generate a STR bonus equivalent.
• Keep percentile skills, but you get to add your Prime Requisite % bonus to the base value.
• Thief skills % start at equivalent of 3rd level and scale from there.

Commentary.

Quick crude mods for a basic D&D adjacent game. Not playtested but someone's probably already tried all/most/some of these already in the last 40+ years.

Realise I could have held them back to pay this Joesky Tax I've heard about, but they've been hanging around my drafts and notes for a while now so I'm putting them out rather than letting them fester.

XP for saves is a rip from T&T.