Blog D100: Spellcasters

     This week we have another post courtesy of the Blog d100 challenge laid down by buster over on 19 Sided Die. The source of these prompts is found over on d4 Caltrops.

 

Rolled 3: Are spellcasters rare and how do people feel about them?

 

    I love this question for a lot of reasons. I get to talk a little bit about some table philosophy that I keep and the setting of Hodas! Let us dive in!

 

    I'll talk about table philosophy first because it's going to be important to the second half of this. At my table, the PCs are the only people in the entire setting I run who have class levels. The only wizards with levels in wizard in the entire world are the three who were played by players  in prior campaigns. An NPC might have a few features of a class, like a skilled pit fighter might have a deed die that adds to attack and damage but doesn't allow deeds. A magician might have a couple of spell like abilities but they won't have full spellcasting range like a wizard. A burglar might have the ability to pick locks and sneak silently but they won't be spending luck or using the full range of thief abilities. A high priest of a temple will be able to perform minor healing with a ritual of prayers and incense but never as easily call on divine power as a cleric. This allows me to tell stories where the PCs are this unique and possibly legendary or disruptive force who move through the world doing things that others could only dream of. I like to run a low magic game where the PCs are not outshined when they meet an NPC who is just them but better.

 

    So in Hodas, the average NPC will never see magic, real magic, in their lifetime. They might see a magician who knows a few parlor tricks, or a priest who has some small healing ability, but they will never see the kind of magic that a PC is slinging around. Those evil sources of magic, foes, aren't the type to openly practice in a world that would fear and hunt them if they just whipped out their magic tricks. Its a low magic setting, one magic user who decides to announce themselves publicly had better prepared for the mobs that will come for them. As it stands, no foe of the PCs has gotten to the point of being a wizard in his tower with an army of minions. Not for lack of trying. There is at least once case of a former PC who's going to become a problem in 10ish years, but that is a story for another time.

 

 

If you decide to join the d100 challenge or even just make a post related to the d4 Caltrops list, comment below and I'll include a link to your blog under this section! 

Dungeon Exploration and Combat

 I recently stumbled on the YouTube channel of a gentleman named Galen Wood, a real OG of war gaming and tabletop RPGs going back to the 1960's. He has such a great conversational tone on his channel, it feels like I'm sitting down with a friend who's been in the hobby longer than I've been alive and listening to him talk about something that he is passionate about. I watched his video on Dungeon Combat Through Time and it really spoke to me. If you've been here for a while you know I talk about dungeon exploration from time to time and sometimes it bleeds into topics that aren't related. Sometimes the article is about exactly that.

    His video really got me thinking about how I run combat in the dungeons of the games I run. In recent years I've run entirely online. When I first started running games online I used to make maps in Gimp and upload them to a VTT like roll20. Over time I did less and less of this. Eventually I started to run entirely theater of the mind for fantasy, which I was already doing for Heroes Unlimited and other Palladium games. I found that it dramatically improved the games. I really used to love maps and visuals and all that jazz. I bought a 3D printer at some point to make my own minis and environment pieces, I got these papercraft map pieces, I started to get into 3d modeling... But honestly it didn't improve the experience. After Covid I barely played in person anymore and my Judge's Toolbox was collecting dust. It was all online play with zero visuals. I enjoyed it a lot more and people who had been playing with me for years told it that those were some of my best games. In some ways it felt like getting back to my roots. My first experiences with D&D were playing with my dad running a game for me and my friends. He didn't use maps, he didn't use minis, just occasionally asked for a marching order.

Combat as a more nebulous series of descriptions really made things fun. In a game with less rules like DCC it really shines. Heck it even says in the book itself that everything is written the the assumption that they will not be needed. It allows for more dynamic combat, telling the players how many feet away something is, letting the thief try to describe how he's going to slip around instead of looking at a map and counting squares and assessing if he has to pass foes, these things really make the combat feel more dynamic and enjoyable, it keeps the attention on each other and the Judge, not watching a map and having perfect battlefield clarity. The theater of the mind acts as it's own fog of war. Character should not have a perfect mental map of the battle in the dark places under the world that they have just set foot in, they have to focus on the ogre trying to kill them right now. 

 This is all to endorse how much I think theater of the mind improves the games. I want to thank Mr Wood for running his channel and I really think you should check him out, here is a link again. If you're someone who uses a lot of maps and visuals and has never tried theater of the mind, I strongly recommend you give it a shot, even if you don't end up liking it, I'm confident you'll have walked away learning something.

Magic Weapon: The Executioner's Sidearm

 

+1 Lawful Silver Wheelock Pistol

7 intelligence, communicates by urges

Made to Punish Murderers

Bane of Demons: on hit, fortitude save, DC 15 or die permanently

 

Omen: gun is inexplicably heavy, when dropped everything within 30' shakes harmlessly

 

Attunement: Slay a proven and wanted criminal

 

Silver: -1d damage, +2d damage against creatures vulnerable to silver and it's bane, even as a ranged attack.

 

The executioner's sidearm didn't start as a magical weapon. It was a ceremonial piece commissioned as a means of execution. Placed to the back of a murderer's head and the trigger pulled. Over the decades one of the executioners who carried it noted that it seemed to be growing heavier, perhaps the weight of the countless souls it had taken from the world. Even so, it spent more than a hundred years in service as an executioner's tool.

    The sidearm gained its infamy when a summoning in a now long gone human city went wrong and demons poured through the streets of the city. The executioner stood alone against several of the creatures with only his ax and this ceremonial weapon. Even after his ax broke against their hides he continued to fight. The exact moment the weapon gained it's otherworldly power is unknown, all that is recounted from it's origin is that none of the demons killed in front of the executioner's home found their way back to the abyss. From there, the pistol continued to be used as a ceremonial tool of execution until the fall of the human empire, where it disappeared into a private collection, then moved hands as the world picked itself back up with much of the human presence gone.

Years Gone By

     I recently passed my 100th post on this blog and it got me wondering, how long ago did I start? I checked out the Blog's original home over on Tumblr and found this post, dating my online presence as Judge Toast to September of 2023. More than two and a half years ago. I made the move over to Blogger eventually and made a small effort to keep the Tumblr up to date with this blog, but just never really kept up with it. 

    When I started this blog Hodas was still mostly scattered notes and a handful of class documents and a single rough draft of a zine. I remember waking up one night and telling my wife "I gotta write" and hammered out the entire rough draft for the first Dueling Guardens of Hodas Zine, Goblins. That is coming, I promise. We're in a rough spot right now working out art, editing, layout, and kind of living in survival mode but it, along with two others, it is coming. 

    This blog has been something I've kept consistent for a long time. I've missed a few posts but I've been pretty good about getting out my Tuesday and Thursday posts each week. It's given my life a sense of structure and consistency. Even when it's just one of the session write ups or a magic sword that I generated on the spot the day before. It has gotten me in touch with more than a few people in the community who I have really appreciated their feedback and experience, people like Nick Baran from breaker press games, Daniel J. Bishop from many beloved books and articles and his Crowking Press, and many others. I would like to shout out to Buster from 19 Sided Die who I've gone to for feedback and given feedback to, talked to a lot and really feel like I've made a friend with. His blog is something I check every Wednesday. It might be a bit presumptuous of me but I really feel like our two blogs are growing together. I would also like to shout out Tyler Broor who has been running his blog since August of last year and has, in my opinion, become a bright spot in the blog sphere.

Seeing my weekly readers jump from 2-4 to around 1000 has really kept me going! I appreciate every single person reading this blog, Thank you all for coming by and reading! I would love to hear more from you guys, what you're interested in, how you feel about stuff I write! 

 I wanna sign this one off by saying thank you again to everyone who has been stopping by to read my blog. I will remain committed to making my regular two posts a week with intermittent self promotion when I am able to count past the number 1. I promise I am not a gully dwarf. I've been teasing it for a long time but there will be Hodas Zines in time, the first three issues are going to be the Goblins, the Minotaur, and the Ooze. We don't know if there will be a kickstarter yet but if there is expect more than those three.

Monster: Steam-Blood of the Sandbars

     Haven't done one of these in a while, despite how much I love making monsters. This time we got away from the usual method of tinkering with something that comes from the Monster extractors. (Not that they aren't great sources! Seriously, check them out, they are PWYW). Instead we got our hands on a bit of an old book that we only recently stumbled on: The Random Esoteric Creature Generator! This book goes all the way back to 2008 which feels so far away now.

    So this time we moved through the tables in this book and got our flavors and abilities of the monster, then put it all together. It has a lot of the bones of DCC, use monsters once, don't give them proper names for your PCs to call them. call them things like "achie's folly" or "the beast in the dunes", and other great advice. You can really feel the philosophy of the future of DCC in this book and it's a great time. 

But this isn't a review, the title of the post says there is a monster here! Here it is for you:

Steam-Blood of the Sandbars

Champions of Tibault Session 6

 Elves of Hodas are something I spent a long time thinking about. They were mentioned in the original game of wasteland that created the setting but they weren't a focus, just an offhanded comment. So I had some freedom. Elves in Hodas fall into two categories: The ones who stayed behind and the ones who left the plane. Most elves in the world simply left as the empire of humanity rose and enslaves all in its path. The ones who stayed behind secluded themselves in extremely hostile or magical locations that the empire simply couldn't gain access to. This created a culture of elves who are something of a cross between Tolkien and Llanowar from MTG. They are hostile to outsiders and powerful, immortal beings. 

    On the other hand, the elves that left all changed. The elves and land are one, a friend decided that in another game a long time ago and I've always loved it. So what happens when the elves find a new land? In Hodas, they take on properties of the land they move into. Almost all of the ancient elven cities shifted themselves onto another plane and took on the properties of those planes. Some elves now reside on the elemental plane of fire, their weaknesses and patron have changed. Others settled on the mechanical plane of law, their bodies taking on an almost clockwork appearance.

    This session was the first time I really got to break out the elves who stayed behind and show what they were really like. I like elves as an antagonist that believes it is in the right. 

Session 6:

Orkov came to the party and revealed that the party, through Deranged, was indebted to him. When the party asked for proof he had a featherfolk step forward and relay the entire conversation between Orkov and Deranged to them. Deranged began to make outlandish claims about Orkov and claimed that anyone could say anything and that it wouldn’t always be true. After some confusion it was explained to Deranged that featherfolk can replicate any noise or voice they hear with absolute accuracy as long as they only repeat the thing that they heard, exactly as they heard it. This prompted Deranged to insult him. Naturally he demanded full repayment immediately. Deranged challenged Orkov to a battle in the arena and Orkov accepted, believing his champion would crush anyone Deranged could hire. 

Deranged, unable to find a champion stepped into the arena to battle against Black Stone, Orkov’s champion. Deranged put up the best fight they could but ultimately was defeated by Black Stone. In a desperate attempt to survive Deranged switches minds with the original Deranged in the dagger. Shockingly Black Stone heals Deranged, stating that if they couldn’t pay the debt then Orkov would gain a new slave.

The party collected their friend and wiped out quite of bit of their funds paying off the debt owed to Orkov and departs for Evernight in order to find some treasure and wealth to make up for their losses.

The party hacks it’s way into evernight and finds that the foliage is growing back behind them. Eventually they get into the forest itself, they find it is dark but lit by a strange silvery light that permeates the forest in the form of moon beams coming though the trees above. The party scouts the area and spots a strange group of rat creatures scavenging something nearby until a horn is blown in the distance which startles the creatures and sends them running. The party soon finds out exactly what startled the creatures when they are ambushed by elves and surrounded. They are told, through Witherbone’s translation, that the only reason they are alive is because they travel with this disgrace for an elf.

Blog d100: A book or movie

 Been a bit since we did one of these! This Post is part of a challenge from the Blog d100 challenge made by Buster over on 19 Sided Die.  Check him out!

 

Rolled: 58 - Talk about a movie or book that influenced your setting!

 

This is a good one but a bit of a tough one! The setting of Hodas is inspired by SO many sources. I've already gone on about how Micheal Moorcock has influenced the games at length. So what Source could I talk about next? So instead I'm gonna share a few and give a short talk about why they inspired me!

 

Heavy Metal:

Heavy Metal is a bit of an old one, an animated film from the 1980's. This movie just refuses to explain anything and just tells its stories. It opens with a car dropping onto a planet from space and the driver just driving home and getting annihilated by an evil green orb. It talks about how powerful it is and then tells stories where it is defeated like... 3 of 5 times or something. The music of it, the storytelling, it really left a mark on me when I was young.

 

Silver age comics: 

I've been reading comics for ages, almost entirely my dad's inherited collection. I ran superhero games for decades and you could really feel the influence of these comics. Heroes were heroes, villains were villains, the systems worked as intended but villains were getting out of prison once a week. It used to be a really black and white superhero setting where there was a lot of multiversal and villain of the week stuff. This setting grew up as people who read different comics came to play and changed the setting with their influence. 

Michael Moorcock:

I know I did a post about him but I just wanna highlight that the Corum books were a huge influence on me. They were the first time in a book I had seen someone borrow from Celtic myth. These are another world of sword and sorcery that refuses to explain anything. There is a giant in the water and he drags a net behind him, why? Don't worry about it! I very much felt that was a good way to handle things like that. The players don't need to know why and how everything everywhere works all the time, their characters certainly wouldn't know these things. 

 

The Etched City:

This book is about two people who leave behind questionable lives and arrive in a city that has many low magic elements. It very much is a story that feels very low magic until suddenly it isn't. This really made me lean into the low magic part of DCC. When I run, the world doesn't feel like it has a lot of magic in it until you find yourself in a remote island not on any map and the people here all descended from elementals.

 

Fantasy Metal Music:

This is a more recent influence but fantasy metal music feels like a love letter to the old school world of tabletop. Some of the songs are about the same novels I'm talking about. Blind Guardian does music about Elric, The Wheel of Time, and Arthurian legend. Glory Hammer has this whole world of insane high magic fantasy with tech elements thrown in, there is a whole song about a magic dragon (machine) and the magic scroll to control it (instruction manual). Recently I've picked up Eternal Champion, I think based on the name you can guess the influence on that one. 

Blog d100 sharing this week

Since the last time I posted one of these and there are a couple out there I have been keeping an eye on. If you are doing this and want to see your posts here, please comment and I'll make sure I'm linking you!

 

From Mythscribe we have: Who Digs those Dungeons?, be sure to check them out, a lot of good content over on Mythscribe!