Things in the Mirror

1. Your evil reflection that wants to replace you in the real world.
2. Secret treasure room (with wraith guardian).
3. Passage leading to the second mirror.
4. Trapped demon.
5. Trapped wizard, powerful and insane.
6. Secret "safe room".
7. Mirror is a magic portal, leading to some important location in the Underworld Wilderness.
8. Mirror Dragon's lair.
9. Tomb of legendary hero which location was lost hundreds of years ago.
10. Void of space. Cold and infinite.

Underworld Day - uranium mine

So, this is the last Underworld Day. Next week I'll try to start a new series of posts containing images. It will be called... nah, you must wait :D

These pictures were taken by me or my girlfriend during our september trip to the wilderness. Enjoy (and sorry for the crappy quality - pics were taken with smartphone).

On the lower part on the map, corridors marked in black were available for tourists.

Monstrous Monday - my entry!

CORPSE BOARS

(monster from my Underworld Kingdom campaign - sadly, still WIP)

These big, dark-furred beasts are, contrary to other pigs, exclusively carnivorous. They are skilled hunters (mostly due their size, resilience and resistance to pain) but due to their immense appetite they don’t avoid carrion, even very old and rotten. Sometimes they even dig up graves and probably that’s the reason why they are named Corpse Boars despite they are not undead.

No. appearing: 1-6
Armor Class: 4
Move in Inches: 12
Hit Dice: 7+3
% in lair: 10%
Treasure: type B

Spaceship Sunday

Another set of DA spaceships. Click on the image to go to author's DA page.

More strange items!

Remember the list from yesterday? I mentioned that it was created on G+ but it's much longer, created by many people. Enjoy!

LINK

Bizarre, nasty and disgusting items

Previously posted on Google+. Roll 1d12:

1. Beautiful crystal chalice filled with horribly stinking, maggot-ridden fermented goblin fat. 
2. Stuffed human body, naked and exposing huge genitalia, apparently transplanted from some beast.
3. Potion of healing with lots of fishing hooks inside it. 
4. Hourglass full of living maggots. 
5. Cuckoo clock constantly striking hours. Rotting human cock is placed instead of a cuckoo. 
6. Huge wooden spoon, about three meters long. 
7. Marble pedestal with one-meter eye resting on its top. The eye is real one. 
8. Ornate chest full of rotten fish. 
9. Bear trap with rusty spring. 
10. Huge tome titled A Guide to Hemorroid Collecting
11. Used diaper, full of tiny gold coins.
12. Duck-shaped helmet (not duck head, whole duck!).

Armageddon Clock

Effects of each hour. You may determine which hour is coming by simple 1d12 roll.

1. Dogs within 2d6 miles start to howl.
2. Plants within 2d20 meters start to wither rapidly.
3. All locks within 2d10 meters jam.
4. All water within 2d10 meters turns to grey, bitter dust.
5. Jewelry within 2d4 meters start to corrode, gems shatter.
6. Six very loud bells, one each hour. Minor demon pops into existence during each bell.
7. All fire within 2d12 meters is quenched. It can't be lit again for one hour.
8. Every metal objects within 2d10 meters become covered with thick and very cold hoarfrost.
9. Air is filled with sounds of distorted voices, maniacal laugh and babbling. -3 to all spell effects for one hour.
10. Ten bells. Sounds of someone coming (footsteps etc.). After the tenth bell, Death Knight appears (AC2, HP 66, 1d8+2 damage).
11. Every sound wthin 2d10x5 meters is almost muted. Faint out-of-tune harpischord music can be heared. For one hour monsters have +1 HD and +1 to hit and damage.
12. Red Death appears. It's too late to escape.

Charon Prime - sample monsters

Names only, but maybe you'll find them inspiring.
Probably I'll write something about them in the future.

1. Black Leech of Rnax
2. Brown Scorpion
3. Cesspool Ooze
4. Aldenson's Glow Mold
5. Aldenson's Bone Worms
6. Nine-legged Sphere
7. Rust Gnasher
8. Twilight Bone-tree
9. Western Dust-choker
10. Pale Cat of O'orn

Underworld Day - Bear Cave (Sudety Mountains, Poland) PART TWO

Second and last part of my own photos, taken in the Bear Cave during my second trip to the wilderness. Enjoy!

Random shitty weapons

1. Wooden sword +1 (1-2 damage)
2. Tin dagger
3. Spade concealed in a walking stick. Blade is broken about 3 inches from the handle. Rest is missing.
4. Axe with loose head (65% chance for falling off during each strike)
5. Fake crystal sword (will shatter during the first hit)
6. Rotten spear
7. +3 Sword of Healing (each hit heals 1-10 HP instead of wounds, works only on hostile opponents)
8.  Heavy crossbow replica (3 meters range, 1-2 damage)
9. Replica of The Greatest Artifact Weapon Hidden In This Dungeon (50% chance for breaking during each succesful attack)
10. +5 Greatsword of Humanoid Slaying. Blade is missing.

Spaceship Sunday

It seems that I'll start another long series of posts. Click on the image to go to author's DeviantArt page.

$1 Towers of Krshal PDF?

If you still don't have your Towers of Krshal PDF, you may buy it now for one dollar! This is very special and very limited offer as I need to buy myself the Empire of the Petal Throne Original Manuscript and I'm eight dollars short.

Just send me one dollar via paypal (my paypal email is necro_cyber at o2 dot pl) and I'll send you PDF. Simple and easy.

NOTE: this offer ends today (2012-10-21) at midnight (CEST).

My non-D&D simulacrum - more musings

Two days ago I wrote a post about some old and some new ideas about 80s-style rules system. I'm still working on basic features of the game.

• Many many games from the eighties have ornate and overcomplicated rules. Many many authors claimed that their game is all about realism (especially in combat). This lead to really long fights - roll to hit, roll to determine location, apply armor (or roll to armor!), do modifier math, bla bla bla. Hit location determination seemed to be shittiest element of the most games (at least if I remember correctly). Best thing was invented in WFRP - rock a dice then if you scored a hit switch rolled numbers and tadaa! You just determined hit location. I want to incorporate similar thing in my game - take the units dice result to determine it. 
• Additionally - as I mentioned before - zero Hit Points (or rather Vitality Points in my game) can't kill you - you just lose consciousness. But! If you (or your opponent) score a double during determining to-hit, manages to hit you and inflict at least one point of damage, you (or dude / monster trying to kill you) score a critical hit. Same thing goes if you score a "01". Of course, if you score "00" - you failed miserably and scored a fumble.
• To keep the game in vein of the products from the eighties, I plan to add lots of tables (remember MERP, not to mention Rolemaster? :D). But I want to make this game not overcomplicated. Probably I will run it (at least during playtests) so I need it to be relatively fast. Especially during combat. There is nothing worse that 5-6 second combat round that requires five minutes of real time. 
• Contrary to combat rules, character creation may be not very fast. But still - most of the rules will be strictly optional - if you want to roll stats and jump in the middle of the war - you can do it. If you want to determine average length of your nasal hair - you can do it as well, but it's not obligatory.
• Of course all these ideas may look cool right now but during playtests they may just break and collapse. We will see (or not!) if it works :D

Rules system is not the only "problem" that I have with this project. During last fifteen years I created lots of stuff about cities, cults, races, monsters and so on. It's inevitable that many of these thingies were later almost forgotten. So, I decided to exhume at least some of them and try to form some kind of setting. Despite the fact that I have some old ideas about the "virgin", never played game world (or even many worlds) I want to make it different. Not especially different from "everything that was created in RPGs during past four decades" - it will be just plain stupid (and one Synibarr is enough :D) but rather different from my other projects / worlds. Let me explain this - most of my fantasy worlds were pulpy and made similar to Frankenstein's monster - stitched from loose ideas, not necessarily compatible ones. But no one cared - it was fun! This time I want to make it logical. And - more importantly - not necessarily based on typical European fantasy canon. It will be problem because I'm not an anthopologist (luckily my girlfriend is studying cultural studies) but more challenge=more fun.

At the moment I can't tell you almost anything about the setting as I started to sort the material about ten hours ago and slept during about nine of them :D

Today Five Minute Maps

Not much to say. Crude but maybe useful.

My non-D&D retroclone / simulacrum

Good news - I have access to some computers here (two or three of them actually :D) but still have no direct access to mt rpg-related files. And I must admit that I like it - now I may focus on writing stuff for one of my weirdest projects.

I started my RPG career in 1997 when I was 13. Almost immediately I began to write my own rules system, mostly because I feel an urge to participate in co-creating of everything I'm in (mostly rpgs and music). Funny thing - yesterday I unearthed the notebook with that game, created between 1997 and 1999. Not surprisingly - it was rubbish. Clunky and extremely unclear rules wrote in some strange language, vaguely resembling Polish. But still, even after so many years, some basic ideas of that game are very appealing for me.

In february 2012 I decided to start writing some simulacrum game, not based on ideas of The First Game. Almost immediately I thought about my Legends of Rangor (that was the name of my very first game) but not about that rules per se, but - as I mentioned above - some basic ideas of it.

Okay, maybe I'll write something about them.

• In LoR, stats were loosely based on DnD. There wasn't Wisdom, but I found place for Appearance. And it wasn't very important stat :D Stats range was about 4-12 for most of humans and as much as 20 for trolls (!). There were no rules about stat checks but I do believe that d20 might be used in that case. I have no idea - despite over three years of writing, game was never used. And despite its shittyness it kinda sucks.
• Skills were percentile, with basic values derived from stats. In example, Two-handed Weapons skill initial value was STRx2 + DEX. Simple and quite clever, at least for 13-year old kid :D
• There were some basic resistances/saving throws. Based solely on stats + racial mods (positive or negative).
• Finally, most ridiculous thing - Hit Points were deteremined by STR multiplied by CON! It lead to some HUGE differences - elves with 25 HP and trolls with 400! But no one cared - as I mentioned before, game was never played, exept for hundreds of fights between premade chars and some monsters (there were many of them in a rulebook, and many more on some loose sheets of paper - I believe that I created more than 60 monster stat blocks and descriptions for that game).

As you can see, not-very-cool ideas. But I was really satisfied by it. Generally, it was a mix of loose ideas from really basic DnD-style stuff (as my first contact with D&D was in early 2000s - no shit! - I think that they were ripped from the instruction booklet for... Eye of the Beholder III!) and MERP. BTW, I grabbed MERP rulebook several days ago (unfortunately I'm not the owner of it) and shit! Liz Danforth - thank you for all those awesome images - they were really important part of my childhood!

Damn, I'm drowning in chaos! So let me return to the topic. In that time, most of homemade systems made by my friends were strangely distorted variations about WFRP rules. And that was the reason why I was so proud of mine! It was ORIGINAL! :D

Sooo, when I decided to create my non-DnD simulacra, I was thinking alot about my newest creations (both OSR-related, such as Underworld Kingdom and Bandits & Battlecruisers and non-oldschool) and that old, shitty Rangor stuff. Effects of that thinking, plus of course some basic research on overcomplicated RPGs from the eighties, are:

• Purely percentile mechanics. Skills will be still based on stat level (at least during character creation), as well as HP (vitality points in this case).
• There will be eight stats, not all based on DnD. Magial talent, Willpower and maybe something more. I don't remember right now.
• Zero HP cannot kill you. But you'll drop unconscious and even one-handed, half-blind drunk goblin can finish you with one not very clean cut.
• You may be critically hit regardless of your HP level. Pure luck, probably modified by armor.
• Armor grants protection from damage, not ability to avoid attacks.
• Gender-related stat differences (it's SO eighties!)
• Strange, not necessarily canon playable races, strange game world. Lots of Rangor stuff will appear here, in the "world" / fluff section of the game.

Probably you'll ask me - why? Why are you wasting your time on this game? Eighties are over, man, no one wants that kind of games! Focus on your regular stuff! Your regular stuff is good so keep it alive!

The answer is simple - I'm making this game because I may and because I can. I'm making it for myself and maybe for my players. But I'm not sure if I want to run it! It's like making art for sake of making art :D I want to do it, I feel an unstoppable need to create it, so I'm doing it. If no one will be interested in it - it's okay. But if you want, I may post something more about it in the future. In the future, not now, because I must actually write more stuff - right now there is almost nothing to talk about! :D

(if I made some gross grammar/spelling mistakes in this text, please forgive me - it's 1 AM here and I'm rather sleepy)

Friday (!) Five Minute Maps

Last friday I decided to make my first maps for Friday Five Minute Map challenge. Here are the results, done with timer:

First one.

ARMAGEDDON FLATFISH! Done in 4:58, including searching for green pen :D But I forgot to name secondary eyes in fish's throat...

Death

Okay guys, we have a problem. My hard disk is dying so probably I will be unable to post lots of new stuff here. I still have many scheduled posts but I will be unable to write something here on daily basis. Moreover, I am forced to stop working on my recent projects (maybe except "Project P" because I can write it in notebook). Good thing is that probably I'll be able to recover my data (I was worried about my music and maps because I have backups of most of my RPG-related stuff).

As I have no money for HDD (and system) replacement, I have no idea how long it may take me to recover from this nasty situation. Fortunately, I'll be able to post shit on GeePlus via my smartphone. Android Blogger app is too shitty to produce quality posts with it.

Underworld Day - Bear Cave (Sudety Mountains, Poland) PART ONE

One of the last Underworld Days. This one is special, because all photos were made by myself :D None of them are uber-pro quality (made with smartphone), so sorry for their general blurriness and crapdom.

Part two - next week!

300th post!

Whew. 300 posts! I never thought that I'll manage to do it. Good that still I have some ideas to post about, images to share and games to write :)

To celebrate this occasion I'll write another post without big meaning - as I have many unfinished projects I feel obliged to share with you information about state of progress of these games / supplements / whatever.

Underworld Kingdom - my campaign setting in the world without a surface - about 80 pages of initially-formatted text. About 8 graphics are done. Still much to do - I need to do some maps, hex descriptios, brief descriptions of the most notable locations, random encounter tables and maybe some addons and it will be done. As I know myself it may take me another year to write these 30-40 pages of stuff. Not very good.

Bandits & Battlecruisers - another space-related retroclone, mix of ideas of Terminal Space and Bandits & Basilisks. 70 pages of initially formatted text. I have major problems with inventing new spells (and I don't dare to ask for someone else's spells for a commercial project) - I hate making them. Also - big problems with forcing myself to write monster descriptions. Despite that, several big random tables are made. Third section of the book (Shipyards) isn't even started. No artwork made. Like Underworld Kingdom - it will take a while.

Tombs of Krshal - probably cancelled. I plan to make something bigger.

Darkness over Krshal - yeah, I want something bigger. But it isn't even started. Nothing new about Krshal was written since the release of the Towers of Krshal except some ideas.

Battlestation Omega - campaign setting using the Bandits & Battlecruisers ruleset (also, 0e / Terminal Space-compatible). It waits for the completion of the rules system (B&B). About 10-15 pages of notes exist, nothing more. At the moment I don't think alot about it. However, I plan to write something BO-related stuff during next year AtoZ challenge :-)

Charon Prime - almost everything about this campaign that was made by me is already posted on this blog. New stuff will come. I still have some ideas about it.

Space Alphabet - currently I don't think about it. I have a list of all entries but nothing done already.

Xsection Mapbook - only one map done, also, one map idea went into the Towers of Krshal and is presented there. Currently I have no heart to draw cross-section maps.

Underworld Wilderness - some little stuff in a vein of the Towers of Krshal but covering different issues. Project cancelled as a separate thing - it was absorbed by Underworld Kingdom.

"Project P" - very special and somewhat stupid idea - I want to make an "obscure game" - simulacrum game in vein of not-very-well-known games from late 80s, limited print run and nothing more. Something not to gain fame nor lots of money, just to satisfy my weird RPG-related cravings :D Not so much is done right now but I love this project, mostly because it reminds me my first, very clunky games.

In addition, I have at least two big non-OSR-related RPG projects but both are currently put on ice.

10 unusual occupations from the Citadel of Rust

1. Black Alchemist
2. Star Gem Polisher
3. Cyber-technician
4. Noble House Assassin
5. Artifact Researcher
6. Black Dust Trader
7. Necromancer
8. Clone Vats Worker
9. Corpse Processor
10. Cesspool Overlord