Blog Graveyard vol 1: Knights in the North

     If you're here then you probably know about at least 3-5 other blogs out there in the DCC sphere. You might also be aware of the number of interesting blogs out there that have fallen silent. I still use a lot of those for reference material and sources of rules, classes, monsters, and really anything related to DCC. So I got a suggestion from a friend of mine to talk about some of the older blogs out there. He's new to DCC and already has the attitude and energy for this game. He's bridging between his home system and DCC so smoothly and with such good energy, he's even contributed an interesting entry to a secret project I'm working on. He was reading something I wrote for another post I am writing where I reference The Secret Santicore and asked if there is any sort of resource list or archive of these blogs that are now silent. The unfortunate answer is that there really isn't. I fear the task to archive and source all of them is beyond me but I can at least talk about some of my favorites and maybe help people who are just getting into DCC find other sources that they might not normally locate. This series will only be covering blogs that have been silent for 3 or more years, and despite the cheeky title I'm not saying these blogs are truly dead and will never come back, I'm not the blog graveyard keeper or blog undertaker.

     So to kick this off we are starting with one of my favorites, Knights in the North! This blog's last post is 12/08/2019, it was to announce their Patreon which also seems to have fallen silent. KitN had a team of writers & artists who really made the blog come to life. Most posts come with some art and something that fits not just DCC but can easily slot into the OSR sphere. They had it all, Classes, Spells, Patrons, Gods, house rules, cool tables, new races, magic items, and ready made encounters. If you're here, you probably have heard of KitN but if you haven't, buckle up!

    I want to share some of the highlights some of my favorites to get you started reading their work and give you enough to decide if you wanna dig deeper (you should).

    The Knight class: This class could be covered under warrior, flavor is free after all. That said, it offers someone a way to play a little more energy leaning into the legends and myths. It included a great piece of art and excellent rules. It hit all the notes I personally would want in this class, it has deeds, fighting style based on alignment, divine leanings, a code of conduct, and can even incur their own version of disaproval. 

Animal companion rules: Animal companions are all over Appendix N, if you've read any of those books you can probably think of one or two off the top of your head. This added a much needed rule for covering animal companions. I know a lot of people will say "quest for it" which I think really is only complimented by this. The PCs can quest for animal companions and the judge has rules already made for this. This offered a simple set of rules to give any character an animal companion, a stat line, and advancement without building out a whole new class for it like a certain blogger who's post you're reading right now.

 Equipment Qualities and Materials: This is a great one that I use all the time. It offers some ways of spicing up weapons and armor without just making them magical. I use it in almost every single magic sword post you might find on my own blog. A weapon that does +1d damage without being magical but looks like a sawtooth sword, something made by elves to be lighter and faster, something forged on another plane that detects as lawful or chaotic, all of these things and more add some real flavor to the weapons and armor you might generate randomly. 

 Down time rules: There are probably tons of these out there by now, I know of at least two others, but these were some of the first ones I ever saw and I loved them. I got a lot of mileage out of them and still come back to them for some games. Excellent for when your players decide they wanna hang out and recover without carousing or creating more problems for themselves.

Random Encounters: This is such a good weird random encounters table. It has a wizard traveling on a scorpion, Fae trickery, roadside monoliths, and candy you find on the ground. I like to break this one out on occasion to keep the world feeling weird.

 House rules: No conversation about KitN would be complete without a mention of these house rules. If you've been reading my blog for a while you'll know how much my own house rules list references these often. There is more than one post on their blog that falls into this category but the two big ones are linked here. I strongly recommend reading through their work. 

 

Knights in the North has been a massive influence on my own blog, in the content I cover, the diversity of topics I want to cover, and the format of adding a PDF to the end of most posts so people can download and have the content in their own folder, even if my blog goes belly up. I strongly recommend digging through their content if you've never been there before. This is the one that inspired me to start to blog, to share the things I made for my own games in a public space for others to enjoy and comment on. I hope my love letter to their blog made you wanna check them out. Writing this was really wonderful, picking through their blog is such a trip down memory lane for me.

DCC Martial art: Drunken Monkey

     Those of you familiar with Secret Santicore might remember this post. The Five-Fold art of war is a martial arts system that builds on the back of an already existing system for patrons to give more martial inclined characters something similar. Yes, warriors and thieves can have patrons, in fact Lankhmar had excellent rules to make characters into patrons which warriors and thieves might get a little more mileage out of. My issue was always that while anyone can have a patron it's pretty obvious that a spellcaster is likely to get the most mileage out of one by nature of them usually granting spells.

    Personally I love some martial arts madness in my RPG. for decades now my favorite class has always been the monk in any game that will allow me to play one. I have maybe 4 versions of the monk class in my folder, This one is my favorite because it feels like the early editions of D&D monk by having thief skills and random mystical abilities and limited advancement.  There are other ways to do high flying kung fu rules in DCC, like the fantastic Kung Fu classics, which is more for emulating the kung fu movies I know more than a few of us grew up watching. 

    All that to say: I like martial arts and the rules from Secret Santicore are my favorite way of including them in DCC. This is one of my own martial arts made under those rules. I added some things, like an ability score adding to unarmored combat, affiliated deeds, and special rules. I'll admit I had a hard time getting this one finished, it basically is writing 4 spells and a bunch of other things. I ended up binging some of my favorite kung fu movies in the process for inspiration which certainly didn't help speed up the process. So here it is, for your enjoyment:

 

Drunken Monkey 

Champions of Tibault vol 5

    This game saw a lot of action from Talshu's player. I really enjoyed this character. She collected titles as we kept playing. Each time I looked at her sheet she had added a new title to the titles section and I kind of loved it. This person was one of the only people in the games who used the multiclassing rules which I really loved.

    This session saw a lot of down time so we really see the party scatter and get up to their own little issues. I use a combination of down time rules from a few places but usually it is just a matter of asking what the party wants to do and playing some of that out.

 

Session 5:

The party encountered Electra and Honest, the only survivors of the party who went into Evernight, learning that the others were dead and they captured some kind of massive bipedal rat in the forest. They sold this creature to Wounded Animal and intend never to try adventure again, Electra considering taking up a role as a tavern girl somewhere and Honest thinking of leaving the city entirely.

Egrat retrieved a diamond of some value from his share of the treasure from their recent adventures and offered it to Obedient in exchange for the newly born crown jewel’s assistance studying a pearl carved with a spell. Obedient agrees and a new Crown Jewel ooze is born Tunic. Tunic uses it’s body to enlarge the carvings on the tiny pearl, allowing Egrat to study it and copy the notes.
Halcyon starts to work with her contacts in the city, friends, fans, and allies in order to start to piece together an information network. Many of them don't have the skills for it but agree to keep an ear to the ground.

Talshu Is hired through the Torchlighters to investigate and obtain a sketch of the beast Wounded Animal recently purchased. She sneaks an artist into the barn and finds the creature, as well as a group of children who seem to be in cages. Her morals get in the way of the job and she releases the children to find that they are strangely grown up for the age they appear to be, they claim to be from a village nearby but it is not a place Talshu is familiar with. She completes the job and gains information on Wounded Animal that she brings back to the party.

Later, Talshu decided to acquire some alchemist’s glue from a stall in the market. The first alchemists she stopped by, a pair of married old goblins named Overconfident and Square, gave her a price she didn’t like and would not budge when she insulted them and implied she could take it. Talshu decided not to shop around and snuck into their stall at night and took the solvent and left a snide note. Naturally she was accused of the theft and demanded trial by combat. The old couple hired a well known featherfolk gunner which prompted Talshu to look for her own champion. Aerin refused her and recommended a goblin he knew called Loose. Loose was hired and the arena fight was short and brutal. Loose ignored the spirit of the fight to disable his opponents ability to surrender and then smother him slowly. Talshu is cleared of any wrongdoing but her stomach turns a little as she watches the Featherfolk’s struggles and attempts to plead for it’s life.

 

Class: The adventurer

    I read a post a while back about the book The Class Alphabet that talked about how disappointed they were in the book. In that thread, there is a link to a really good breakdown of its classes from none other than Daniel J Bishop himself and I strongly recommend reading his review of it before buying. I mention this because, if I'm being honest, I was also a little disappointed in this book. I echo the sentiment that some of the classes feel half baked and others spent too long in the oven. I agree that some of them are functionally identical to each other.

    Yes, this book is gonzo as heck. It set out to make absolutely gonzo classes and I think it really succeeded there. Unfortunately for someone like me, most of those classes are... not really usable at my table because they are TOO gonzo. There is nothing wrong with this, not everything is for everyone and to treat anything like that would be dishonest to the work. You know what this book REALLY did for me? It made me wanna write my own classes. I don't intend to collect my own works together and create my own publication for DCC called "MY class alphabet" or something, but I do think it is a fun writing exercise to pick letters and write classes and other content based on that letter. 

 

So with all that in mind, I would like to share the first class I've written for this project: The Adventurer

You’re no reaver, no cut-purse, nor heathen slayer or tight lipped warlock guarding long dead secrets… but you did work for those people for a long time and somehow survived, picking up some of the tricks of their trades. 

 A is for Adventurer 

Thieves Symbols: A tool for exploration

 It is only natural that the thief, or it's equivalent, should be scouting ahead. In a perfect world the party will wait patiently for the scout to come back but that is not always exciting and what if the worst should happen to the scout while they are exploring and they don't come back before the candle burns down? They need to know about the things the scout encountered along the way but how could they do that without meta-gaming?

    In the past, I've played games where I played my favorite class, the thief/rogue and taken on the role of scouting. I would take chalk or charcoal with my into any exploration and leave marks at a specific designated height, that they could look for and would explain the nature of anything I encountered. I got really granular about this. I would buy the party daggers, each of them identical in height, and tell them "If it is my mark, it will be found at the height of the cross guard when you place the tip of the blade on the floor. If it's not there, then it's not mine." additionally I would give the players out of game a collection of my symbols and what they meant, printing out the page and handing them a physical copy of the list for reference. They were supposed to know that there was no distinction of chalk vs charcoal and a few other rules about deliberate changes to things to warn of a danger that was able to track the symbols.

    If you adopt this, I don't think anyone needs to get as granular as I did back in the day. Just having a system of symbols and telling your fellow players before hand that you do this, this is what they mean, here is the symbol key, is more than enough. when following your scouting, look for the symbols. I did all that stuff because I played with a lot of GMs growing up where had a very deep seated GM vs player mentality in how they ran. This made me a Paranoid little Toast. I would do things like leave candles with my group and say "when the candle burns down to this point and this nail falls out, if I haven't returned assume I'm dead and act accordingly." I was really big on dungeon exploration and keeping track of a lot of things. There might be future posts about that if there is interest.

The symbols I used when I played

    

    This whole symbol idea is not entirely my own. I saw this infographic on symbols that the homeless use to designate safe and dangerous places around a city. I cannot speak to the validity of this at all. I questioned who was out here studying the symbols and how they could be universal. It seemed a little dubious but it did give me a good idea for navigating a dungeon and make mapping just a little easier. 

    There was a long running game where this DM had us exploring a mega dungeon and realistically we would never see all 3500 rooms of this place. I decided that my character wasn't particularly interested in the treasure of the dungeon. He traveled in with this Paladin and his squire who he kept sending into death traps and a few other people. The guy playing the paladin straight up told the rest of the table it was his game and his story. He refused to elaborate on this and got very angry when we tried to help with anything plot related. So I mapped this dungeon as I explored, left my symbols behind, and eventually published an almanac of the first few floors with their dangers and my symbols marked on the map. This did not sit well with the guy who claimed this was his story as the dungeon was supposed to be a secret, which he never told us. It was a good time. I remember that game fondly. 

 This one got away from me a little and turned into a bit of a storytime! Thanks for coming out and reading! This might turn into a bit of a series about things I used to do to help with dungeon exploration. 

Judge Toast House Rules Vol3

     Welcome to another post where I share a bunch of house rules that I use at my table. As always with these I'll Share the rule and talk a bit about why I use it and how it has worked out for us. Here is a link to Vol 2 if you're just joining us and wanna see more!

 

I know a guy: once per session a player may declare that they "know a guy". They are allowed to detail who this guy is, why it's relevant to what is happening right now, and what their connection to the person it. I will then roll 1d10. This is to determine the person's attitude towards the PC who knows them. a 1 is enemies, on sight conflict, and a 10 is good friends, lifelong allies. 

This is a good tool for allowing the players to have just a little more influence on the setting. I feel strongly about the games being a group storytelling activity and your character should know people outside of the party. This is how you show what kind of friends your character had or has. In play I've only ever see one person try to abuse it but naturally the Judge holds veto power over any NPC proposed, so it is an easy thing to keep from being abused.

  

Magical Feedback:  Wizard and similar casters start combat with a d4 in front of them, the "1" face indicated. Each round the wizard successfully casts a spell they increase this die by 1. This number is added to checks made by the wizard to cast spells. When this reaches a 4 the wizard suffers from magical feedback. They must make a roll-under check on their casting ability score or lose the ability to cast spells for 1d4 rounds. a pause of a single round resets this counter to 1. When this is at 4 and the wizard has successfully saved, it remains at 4 and a new check must be made each round they cast a spell.

This is another that comes directly from the Index Card RPG. I really love that book and feel that even if you don't play it, you will find something to take back to your table. Strongly recommend reading it. I really like this as just one extra little way a wizard can get spells off but also maybe dig too deep into the power they utilize and be left with nothing for a short time. This one I've really only used at a physical table but I really liked it when it was at our table.

 

Signature Spell: After a wizard determines their spell list, they then select one spell from that list to be their signature spell. Each time they cast this spell they add double their level to the check. Each level after 1st, they may add another spell to their signature spell list but may never select a spell that they have only just gained, it has to be a spell they have had before gaining the level. they cannot double select a signature spell.

This has always mostly served as a way to give the wizard just a little more juice, a way to tilt things in their favor on at least one spell early on. It also sort of lines up with a lot of appendix N, you see a lot of magic users in that who have spells they use over and over in favor of others. I don't find that it really changes much other than to add just a little more flavor to the character.

 

Research Spells: a wizard may have at any time 2 randomly determined "research spells". These spells are cast using a d14 instead of the usual d20. They also have 2 randomly determined mercurial effects. When a wizard gains a level they may automatically take one of their research spells as one of their new spells, selecting one of the mercurial effects and removing it and now casting it with the usual d20. A wizard may also gain access to these spells early through questing, repeated attempts to cast, or long research periods in down time. Finally, with one week of down time, doing no adventuring or exploring, a wizard may discard one of their research spells and randomly roll a new one.

This is a pretty recent addition to the rules and it hasn't seen a ton of play. When it did we had one guy who didn't cast one of his research spells ever but constantly failed to cast the second one and when he succeeded it usually came in clutch as he spell burned like crazy and borrowed some luck from a funny little kobold to get the spell off. It broadens the wizard's spells selections but doesn't make it easy on them. I like it a lot for this reason. It also means that there is a reason that the wizard somehow gains a new spell fully at each level. I know I took this from somewhere but I don't remember where I found it. If you know who did this first, please leave a comment below so I can credit them.

 

 Second Wind: Any warrior or warrior adjacent class may begin combat with a d4 in front of them with the one showing. Each round they remain fighting they increase the facing on this die by one. when they die reaches 4, at the end of that round they may roll it and recover that many hit points, then reset it to one.

This is such a small amount of healing that it doesn't feel like it changes much but does allow a warrior to feel like a bad ass who is doing things like ripping off their shirt to bandage on the fly. It feels cinematic. This is yet another lifted right from the Index Card RPG (really, check it out!) and I've found that when I play in person it really encourages the warrior to play a little recklessly to try and get that extra little healing.

 

Change to mighty deeds: A warrior (and at my table only the human warrior) may choose three of the following things to apply their deed die roll to:

• Attack Damage
• Attack Roll
• AC
• Saves
• Damage ignored this round
• additional attacks: one additional attack for each time the number on the deed die is divisible by 3, rounded down, minimum 0.

These must be selected before the die is rolled and failure to indicate means the deed die only applies to attack and damage, as the rule book dictates. 

This one I'm pretty sure came from Knights in the North, like a lot of the house rules I use today. So I said this one was only for the warrior at my table because humans in my setting are sort of rare. There are a few race-as-class options that gain a deed die and are their own version of warriors. So this is only for the human warrior to make them stand out just a little more but in the past I have allowed it for the non-human deed having classes and it works out just fine.

 

 

 

 

 

    Well, That is another pack of my house rules. I think there might be one more volume of this where maybe I include a PDF with all of them together, kinda like how Judge AMP did over on Knights in the North. I Find that most of my house rules have integrated pretty seamlessly into the games I run and aren't often missed or forgotten. I generally approach with a philosophy of "does this make someone have more fun?" rather than "does this balance the game?" or "does this solve an existing problem?". I find that a rulings, not rules, approach deals with those other two questions a lot better than making a house rule for every little thing that comes up.

    As always, Thanks for reading and I hope I gave you something to think about or take back to your table, if nothing else I hope you enjoyed reading! 

B-Team Adventures

     One of the things I like to do when I run a game is have the players play only a single character at a time with a few backup characters as the "B-team". In order to allow the B-team to sort of keep up with the party they gain an amount of experience based on the session number rounded down. This cannot exceed the experience gained by the main party that week. The question has often come up, "What was the b-team doing this week?" and I haven't really had a good answer. Until now. Now I have a table to roll on when asked what they were doing that lends itself to making up threads for the party to pull on if they want to or simple storytelling if they don't. Check it out!

 

B-Team Adventures!