scrap notes, system for equipment , skills and background

Print PDF Brendan  (http://www.necropraxis.com/) was asking about one roll equipment systems and asked if I should bother typing up one of mine and he was like yeah do that and I was like yeah cool and man if you don't like run on sentances you must be hating this blog

ANYWAY:

Been trying to jam as much of the character creation system together as I can and also keep it "new school" in the sense you get have a special snowflake but not in the way that requires 2 hours of creation.

This was my way of putting skills, starting equipment, and background together:

PAST:
Your past determines what stuff you have and any usefully capabilities you may have picked up.
When you are playing the game and you try something that requires an ability check and you think that your past might be relevant tell the g.m. If they are convinced you will get an Advantage to the roll. Make a note of this, because you will get Advantage any other time a situation similar to this happens. Then make a Intelligence check. If you succeed you can keep bringing up your Past in future. If you fail, that's it. That is all your character managed to get the hang off.

You may choose or roll a past from below. The weapon and armour description is mainly for how you picture your character, ignore it if it is not interesting. If you to have a Past not on here either talk to the g.m before hand and arrange something or just write it down and pick 4 items from any pasts equipment. HOWEVER you will have 5 seconds to do so. If pick something that is not actually there that counts as a wasted choice. You will need someone else to count out loud at you.

1. SCAVENGER:
Starts with:
Sacks, long hooked pole, protective mask, shovel
your weapons and armour is:
"scrouged and repaired"

2.HUNTER
Starts with:
dried meats, snares, calls, scent
your weapons and armour is:
"self made and simple"

3.REFUGEE:
Starts with:
esoteric cultural item, concealed jewellery,compass,trade item
your weapons and armour is:
"distinctive and unfamilar"

4.PEASANT:
Starts with:
domesticated animal, basic trade good, lard, homebrew
your weapons and armour is:
"repurposed tools"

5. PETTY CRIMINAL
Starts with:
bad drugs, stolen valuable, blinding dust, caltrops
your weapons and armour is:
"stolen and/or easily concealable"

6.DILETTANTE:
Starts with:
jewellery, weird drugs, reading material, clockwork toy
your weapons and armour is:
"gaudy and distinctive"

7:EXPLORER
Starts with:
lantern, maps, crowbar, chalk
your weapons and armour is:
"ancient and rare"

8:MYSTIC
Starts with:
divination tools, spirit cleansing incense, fireworks, blankets
your weapons and armour is:
"anointed and festooned"


Design notes:
There is only 8 because I'm having a lot of new people play soon and too many choices actually slows people down apparently. I love them myself but hey. The pasts are biased to ones that kinda lead to a life of being a wandering danger junkie as opposed to a general cross section of life.
If someone wants to be a broke blacksmith or a disgraced scholar that's fine though.
Need to rethink some of equipment .

No one has a tent or some other stuff but plenty of the Pasts have jewellery or trade goods and I figure trying to trade flour for a tent or trying to find a fence is a good way of meeting people and starting stuff.
Otherwise desperately ill equipped is fine too.

Still haven't worked out how I want to do weapons and armour and I might leave off the descriptors in the final version, as they might confuse beginners.

The schrodinger's skill system owes a debt to Zzarchov's excellent Neoclassical Geek Revival

Terrain:UNDER LANDS

Print PDF Here are some new terrains to sprinkle around your maps or elaborate fisher-king fantasy life

BRAMBLE HELL:

Like a tangle of blackberry but with canes girthing in metres. The underlayer is passable , the ancient bottom canes arching at about 2-4 metres above you.
It's very dark , dusty ,  with a few patient lichens,  eldritch fungus and ghostly ferns. Moving vertically is an engineering project, with metres of wood, sword length thorns (technically prickles)  , and eye searing sap.  The middle layer has a bit more light,  weird dirt pockets with bizarre microbiomes , and bird nests. The top layer is a violent sea of green and crimson waving thorn cane. And birds. And insects. Violently territorial birds and insects.

 RESOURCES:
unique fungus, herbs. Emperor bramble sap. Bird eggs of some obnoxious fairy tale quest variety.

HAZARDS:
Occasional cane collapses (see Rocs below), thorns, sap,  cordyceps fungus.

BEASTS : Weasel like elegated pangolins of a variety of sizes; The smallest slinking around the tops eating birds the biggest slinking around the bottom and eating you. Rocs like to make their nests in the middle layer , sometimes causing collapses.  Dali Stilt mini elephants that migrate vertically as they grow. Spiders. Mites. Ticks. Beetles etc. Spiders that make themselves bird costumes to get birds to try and fight them. Giant red-eyed vorpal Kiwis.

OTHERS: Dueling ant knights sculpting the throne bases like ant castles , beetle grumble men, dancing fungus, millennium seeds , thorn entombed castles (maybe the cause of cargocult ant people behaviour) ,


FROZEN SKY TIDE LAND:

Underneath frozen sea ice somewhere where the tide goes out for half a year at a time.
The drowned can fake their lives better when it's out and will trade for props for their sad mummery. Most things hunker down or wander out with the tide. The crustaceans mainly rule but it's the perfect place for spirit world diplomacy

RESOURCES:
wrecks, shellfish (pearls), anything that otherwise would require going underwater to get. Corals.

HAZARDS: collapsing roofs, lurking anemones like an anus rock for your foot to enter. Ghosts. Spirits of cambain dead. Dream eating coral.

BEASTS: crustaceans (fortified tank like lobsters, long legged hair stealing crabs , eerily bone scrying isopods ) scythed beaked penguins sliding on their bellies to murder you , spirit court fox courtier. Polar bear mercenaries seeking work in the spirit worlds.

OTHERS: A shipwreck trapped in the ice above  accessed from the gash in its belly. Isopod fortune teller. The drowned that are forbidden the afterlifes of sea or land and make fake ones.

Telling People About the Untellable

Print PDF Arnold wrote about the unspeakable here http://goblinpunch.blogspot.co.nz/2015/10/outsiders-memes-prions-and-dreadful.html
and it reminded me to post about an idea I gave Patrick when he was writing some monsters for James Raggi that he didn't use. (Patrick didn't use the idea, Raggi is going to use the Monsters I'm pretty sure)

Okay so children's games are weird on how long their history can be , and how unclear it is how much they are being passed on and how often they are being independently discovered and how surpsing it is to discover someone from a different country uses the exact same name for bullrush or tag or go home stay home or even when they have the game but with a completely different name

from here 

and while I'm linking to stuff here is Shut Up and Sit Down articule about children's games involving pain.
Someone mentions whip crack in the comment, a game believed to be invented by the comment's author childhood peers and someone else links a Winslow Homer Painting depicting the same game

(Shut Up and Sit Down has some great stuff but possibly have bought the troll line about Zak being the devil? Not sure if they have done subsequent research . Also can't seem to tell the difference between "monolithic representation of women as sexy sex people is bad" and "women as sexy sex people is bad" )

Anyway my point is kids games, folklore and songs can continue for very long time without anyone really thinking about them or writing them down ,  or knowing what the hell they are about when they hear them (until someone is like Oh Ring a Ring Rosey is about the Plague or Humpty Dumpty is about a Cannon or a king or something with various levels of evidence and plausibility)

So if you wanted to warn future generations about a extra-real threat and part of this threat was thinking too hard about it or creating information about allowed it more access to the world or some other side effect , having it be in kid's lore is perfect.

It gets passed on without being written down, when kids stop being kids they forget about it, and when they are kids their understanding of fantasy and reality is different to that of adult which might be a safer way to engage with the information.

However:
>it would have to be vague enough to not trigger the effect

>it would still have to recognisable as giving relevant advice if the entity ever shows up

>Some dickhead academic if they started seriously studying it would put themselves  and anyone
reading their notes and then anyone who has read the notes who hears the rhyme at risk

>it would have to be "catchy" to kids. Who knows what kids are going to like? Vital information might have to left out or mutate out by itself

>it could exist as a game, song, folklore, or a combination of all 3 , for example trying to walk along a path without stepping on a crack "step on a crack break your mother's back"



NURSERY RHYMES AND THE HORRORS THEY FORETELL:

(feel free to add some of your own in the comments or on the g+ post where I tell everyone that I blogged )





The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the waterspout.
Down came the rain
and washed the spider out.
Out came the sun
and dried up all the rain
and the itsy bitsy spider climbed up the spout again


It's a crack in space that looks like a tiny spider but when you look at it appears to be too small to see but you can see it anyway and then it fills your entire focus field and destroys you.

It will enter this world through pipes and holes build by people and whose purpose has been lost.


Rapid temperature and humidity changes destabilize it .


Twinkle, twinkle, little star
How I wonder what you are
Up above the world so high
Like a diamond in the sky
Twinkle, twinkle little star
How I wonder what you are

When the blazing sun is gone
When he nothing shines upon
Then you show your little light
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night
Twinkle, twinkle, little star
How I wonder what you are

If a new star appears in the sky don't look at it , especially don't think about it , it will swallow everything else in the sky







Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again





The rulers of this world are tireless slaves to rotten barrier lords , whose function it is to separate reality from fantasy. They wear out and fall , and sometimes try and maintain themselves through manipulating this world to create social structures that they can use as metaphysical ladders to climb back out of this world. They are the seeds of their own destruction as organisation creates as much chaos and discord as it seeks to eliminate







Ring-a-ring-a-roses,
A pocket full of posies;
Ashes! Ashes!
We all fall down





The first warning is weird circular scab formation


the second is entering small spaces causes bruising


then everything will burn


leave. Do not return.





I do not like thee, Doctor Fell,
The reason why - I cannot tell;
But this I know, and know full well,
I do not like thee, Doctor Fell



That guy you don't like who keeps doing weird things to bodies is a extra-real horror and will try and blank all appropriate emotional responses to the horrible things he keeps doing in front of everyone with his powers.


So you should not try and justify or explain yourself but just burn him alive or throw him off something high









If wishes were horses
Beggars would ride:
If turnips were bayonets:
I would wear one by my side:





When facing a phantasmist , the less plausible the weapon , the more dangerous it is to the phantasmist.





One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret,
Never to be told.
Eight for a wish,
Nine for a kiss,

Ten for a bird,
You must not miss

It will take many forms. Some of them physical, some of them abstract. When it is a bird you can end it. You will have one chance. 

Do not miss.

There I fixed it number 5 Navigation

Print PDF GOING PLACES!!!

from here

A bunch of people asked that I should fix navigation (including astronavigation which will need it's own post) . So here is my attempt:

Party either chooses a member to be the wayfinder because they are good at outside.

They proceed to make relevants checks (either stat checks or skills checks or whatever your d&dish uses) until they fail.

Every time they succeed they can choose to not be fucked up by one thing from the list below

BAD DISTANCE/TIME:
if how much distance is important to the check , the party only covers half as much as they wanted to (or compared to the default amount) . If time is what is important  , it takes twice as long.

Wrong turns are taken, detours to find viewing elevation, rough terrain than expected etc.

ATTENTION:
Whatever lives here knows that you are moving through their neighbourhood . That's a roll in the wandering monster table OR if there is one dominant and/or organised faction here just have them notice and act appropriately.

Crashing through the undergrowth, disturbing too many birds, leaving a trail, arguments , musical numbers etc.

#OUTSIDEPROBLMS:
Whatever sucks about this place happens to the party. If it's a cold everyone is going to risk frostbite. If it's hot everyone risks sunstroke or dehydration. If it's a forest something falls on you , you fall into something or whatever. If a swamp ; malaria.
I include a table below incase you don't have any ideas about what goes wrong when people try and walk in nature for a period of time.

Mechanically most game books have a section with drowning , starving and a bunch of environment stuff in there somewhere and you never notice it expect sometimes you stumble across and go Ohh hey dehydration rules but who is going to be keeping track of the characters urine colour ? Not me.

 Use the effects of that. Stat damage, saving throw or Enfeeblement , hitpoint damage , Disadvantage etc.











NO TIME FOR SIGHTSEEING:
If the players choose to Not have this problem then they will find something distinctive and cool about the area because they took the time or effort to scout around and follow mystery trails etc.
If you, the d.m , is running a hex crawl with stuff linked to the hex number use that, and having the party count as "unobserved" when starting he encounter.

If you are using an encounter table with neutral or positive stuff on there as well roll on that (moving odds/up or evens/down until finding something appropriate)

If you don't have that but have some kind of random herb table roll on that.

If you don't have anything like that , or don't want to use , just have the party having had the mechanic equivalent of a good nights rest in a comfortable location with meals and fresh water because they took the time to catch something delicious and not sleep in a pond .

This is kind of a freebie problem to take.  That's intentionally.

NO LEADERS VARIANT:
If for some reason the party doesn't have someone competent or bossy enough to be in charge you can have a "group consensus" versions. In that case someone makes the first check , then someone else , etc until someone fails. No-one can make another check until everyone rolled once.


THEY FAILED THE FIRST ROLL:
and someone is complaining because their ranger is like superoutside and even with a 18 in the relevant stat that's like 1 in 10 times their character is going to have to fuck everything up.
well a)they are leading a bunch of overburdened goons with appalling skillsets so blame someone else

b)THE DOUBLE OR NOTHING RULE 
if the player fails the first roll (or just want to try to get less problems ) they can try again but any problems they take will be twice as bad. If they fuck this up again , they can try again but any problems they take will be 3 times as bad. Your choice if you want to allow this to escalate further.

BAD DISTANCE/TIME: half again the distance / double the time etc

ATTENTION: 2 encounters or double the amount encounter or the encountered group has a surprise round

#OUTSIDEPROBLEMS: double the severity of effect or number of party members affected or have 2 different things go wrong (THE BATS DRANK YOUR BLOOD. AND GAVE YOU RABIES)

The NOTIMEFORSIGHTSEEING if doubled up means that the party did not rest (no spells or hitpoint recovery or power recharges)  because they have not had time to rest . If tripled give an exhaustion effect (stat/hitpoint lost, disadvantage/penalty to rolls)

TABLE OF NATURE HATES YOU:

(less competent outside character gets it first , or randomly determine or have stat /skill check off for first to fail)

(multiple options under each result given in increasing severity . If the environment seems like a particularly harsh one use the next one suggested)

1. If cold, numbness/frostbite/hypothermia. If hot : sunburn/dehydration/sunstroke , if not really either blisters/dehydration/fatigue

2. A bad case of the falling downs: minor sprain/additionally damage for 20 feet/additionally damage for 30 feet plus break something

3.Disease, or infection (from insect bites, contamination of open wound, or opportunistic fungus with optimal conditions)  :annoying/debilitating/life threatening 

4. Drop / Lose/ Break a piece of gear. Dropping  someone might notice . Lose means you dropped it and just noticed like a hour later. Break means it broke

5. Weather goes badshit . Mechanically as spell Inflict light wounds/Gust of Wind/ Call Lightning

Thematically it's a flash flood, mudslide, sand dune collapse, sinkhole, dropped tree branch etc

6.Roll twice and combine results. If same result dunno have it effect another person and/or increase the severity 

There I fixed it Part 4 Rations

Print PDF Gus L wanted Rations fixed

Well if you have some kind of rest mechanic , don't allow the p.cs to use it unless they have food to cross off.

OR 

after every bit in the game like a combat or a challenge or some other physically tiring thing the players have to cross off a ration or cross off something else on their character sheet like armour class or Strength or Saving throws and then anything to do with that fails until they have something to eat.

OR 

when the player has to roll dice after a period of non-dice rolling activity ask them to cross off a ration. If they don't have any rations to cross off they must of skipped lunch or breakfast or something. Then for this and further rolls they can only use the worst die at the game table, the one that everyone hates and distrusts. 

OR

have food restore hitpoints like 86.5% of video games . Just can't use it in combat. Come on it's not that much of kludge and it beats the awkward shoehorning of minor healing potions in the game or damn clerics or whatever. Maybe if you dropped below half health or zero you can't heal with food ?

Whatever.

A rule of thumb for assigning healing values is:

Default is 1d8 for cheap, long lasting (tack and cheese for example)

add another 1d8 for any of these : extremely fresh, rare /expensive, spoils quickly 

SOME TOTALLY DELICIOUS AND LONG-LIVED FOODS

1. Wax sealed crab shells with the flesh "cooked" and partially fermented with lemon juice and capers. Deplug and suck out

2.  Molass sugared tongue slivers in a bamboo tubes. Chewy , like gamey liquorice 

3. Bog Butter

4. Cow Blood and Milk in a gourd

5. Salty Greens , Limes , and Blood Pudding

6. Flour deliberately invested with large worms. Don't eat all the worms and there will be more later! Hoorah! Unless the flour goes off , then it might hallucinogenic

7. Bracket fungus , with apple cider vinegar to soften it for chewing

8. Roast Fern Heads and Crickets

9. Pickled Pigs Feet. Collagen! Good for muscle recovery!

10. Roast ants and raisins 

 

11. Sprouted grains and dried mushrooms

12. Mushy monkey brains in brine

13. Gingered dried banana and lard blocks

14. Pressed seed cakes 

15. Cornbread with fizzy root jam

  

16. Dog sausage and pear thick cider stout

17. Honey curds and lily rhizome

18. Kelp Porridge in shark egg cases

19. Ostrich egg  

20. Dried figs and goat skin strips

There I fixed it Part 3 meeting in a talking to people, tavern , gear repairs

Print PDF PART 3 OF THE FIXING:

Paolo Greco asked for
" I was going to suggest people complaining about how other people have fun"
in way it's helpful when people when people clearly announce they are a fucking idiot. Saves time really. It's the people who keep treating these people seriously that are a bit more of problem.

This actually gets into something else I can't be bothered getting right now with the difficulty of navigating the twin perils of Non-confrontational Gray Waste and Endless Schisms Acheron.

So.. I'm going to say laugh and ignore for now.

Adam Thorndon asked for a fix for

"You, uh, meet in a tavern, I guess?"


I guess I could ask for clarification for the exact problems of the problem here or I could just throw some answers at it...

OPTION 1:

aka I don't wanna be cliche but I don't really care about back storys either

 Okay so make the tavern immediately interesting and tied to something to explore

so

1. a ghost tavern

2. on fire

3. On a cruise liner that just hit an iceberg

4. Being seen differently by each player so one players sees it being staffed by bugs , another it's all meat and warts etc

5. Instead the belly of a vast beast , Pinocchio or Baron Munchausen style 

6. Abandoned because the whole party just got sent forward in time 100 years and it's all ruins now. But how?? and why?? etc??

7. (murderous) Cannibal tavern. Some one just ran out the kitchen all bleedy screaming the soup is people!!

8. The city is under siege and all the party has learned about a secret exit out of it via the tavern.

OPTION 2:

The party starts out knowing and trusting each other and fully equipped in the wilderness yet have no memory of how or why and make the players aware that this isn't a hand wave , you all just realised that something fucking weird has happened and maybe you are misplaced puppets of a dark and dire scheme etc

OPTION 3: 

Steal the setup for a fixed location murder mystery . Like all on a train , hiding from a storm, fell in a a mystery pond etc. 

OPTION 4: you have all arrived in a foreign location and no-one shares you language other than the other party members.

OPTION 5: you wake up in a lab standing over your murdered doubles.

OPTION 6:  You are some dumb kids on a roller coaster and now you are in a fantasy world and you have to murder the gnome who brought you here with magics.

OPTION 7: (overlaps with below) start in media-rez. No-one has any equipment  (other than clothes, armour and weapons )written down Whenever a player goes to use something that they may or may not have they have to explain how they got it in way which fills in some of the reasons they are here now and know these other goons. 

Then roll a d6. If you roll odds this is the only item you have , if even you can do this some time later.

Immediately after this some player can add to the story and explain how that other player actually lost that item . 

If they do this , when they tell their story they don't have to roll to see if they get another item, they count as rolling evens.  You can't veto a player's item who had vetoed you until some else does first.

I don't know why I added this last bit , though it might a be weird balance / fight starter thing but now that I wrote it out ???

 

Daniel Davis asked about

"Gear Repairs"

At start of the session the g.m grabs all the character sheets . Then they players have to say all the equipment they have . Any they forgot is lost or broken from being neglected.

Alternatively do this at the end of the session.

Whichever is more likely to make people forget stuff. 

OR:

A player can get a free damage reroll of their own or one rolled against them.

If rerolling their damage  their weapon is damaged and will roll a die smaller until repaired.

If rerolling damage against them a random equiped item is broken (maybe use a hit location die or table) . Or if it's armour(ed) or particular tough half its effectiveness (or decrease by 1 or 2 or whatever)  until repairing happens.

                                               

There I fixed it part 2 wizards staying home and being fucking nerds

Print PDF IT CONTINUES :
Joshua Blackletter ask me to fix
"The part where wizards can't invent spells or brew potions without sitting in their tower for months while everyone else adventures."

Obviously to professionally make professional reliable magical items requires time, dedication , specialised equipment and rare ingredients.

HOWEVER your players are playing dangerous fucking idiots. If wizards were drug manufacturers they would be the idiots making shake and bake meth in the toilets of k-mart after being arrested for shoplifting.  They would be alcoholics eating shoe polish on toast. They would be cutting no-doze with broken glass and trying to get the k out of dead animals in the vet's freezer.

click for source

So with the prioritizing Safety, Repeatability, Predictability ,  and  Quality control allll the way below "As soon as possible" and "Dunno with this monster dick I found I guess?" the following school of magical item creation exists:

-Combine or process dangerous garbage in a way that puts you physically at risk or at least severely inconvenienced 

-have it activated by spending the session under some kind of taboo , or "hard mode challenge" or the thing that would seem appropriate for a child's folkmagic or hideous degrading bet

-have a number of spells or spell points held in reserve for the entire session = to roughly the items level of effect x 3.

-earn a "reasonable and typical" amount of exp for the session. No hiding at home.

(The player should come up the particulars and the d.m can add any caveats or extra details to make it appropriately difficult).

Fucking this up means rolling on some magical fuck up table.

If you want a roll at the end of this ; do a double stat check with the stat that seems the most appropriate to the method (Dex for keeping rabbits in your hat the whole time with no-one learning about it, Con for drinking every unidentified fluid encountered that session).

If both checks succeed : the item is created. If one succeeds the item is created with some seriously side effect, if neither succeed it can work once but with a dangerous magic side effect. If either fumble it blows up in your face.

TABLE OF EXAMPLE METHODS

1. A sword+1 : make a sword yourself in half a hour out of fresh ingredients and use it in the session to inflict a total damage = to your max hitpoints. Even if this works the sword will require constant mundane and magical maintenance because you can barely make a sharp stick in half a hour

2. Healing potion : you can't hurt or kill anything in this session and lick any wound made in your presence. You must drink all the ingredients (troll blood, herb teas, pure alcholol) and retain any piss as this is the potion.

3. A flying ointment: you must not touch the ground this session. At the end of the session you must jump off something real high and then roll to see if it works.

4. Protective garments: You must find someone to convince that the garment you are trying to enchant actually works now and sell it to them. And then steal it back.

5. Something fire related: Something on you must be on fire this whole session. You may not put out any fires without the enchantment process failing.

6. Something divining: you must learn everything animate and larger than a cat's name that you encounter this session.

7. Shapechange: Disguise yourself as another animal and fool everyone not you companions. If someone sees through your bluff killing them and eating their eyes might prevent the magic from fucking up

8. Movement: You must be only covered in "freeing" substances this whole session. I.e lard and not be locked, trapped or contained

There I fixed it part 1 rock paper scissor in rpg

Print PDF

click for source

People suggested some things to fix in rpg with (a maximum of)* 4 paragraphs and a table.




First up is Matthew Sanchez:

"rock paper scissors? i guess when you both throw the same thing over and over again."


WHICH IS CONFUSING AND VAGUE but fine 

But I am going to go with the what to do in the event of a tie and list all the options in a table


1. A thumbs up thumbs down round. If you want to continue (WITH THE STAKES NOW DOUBLED) do thumbs up, if you don't thumbs down. If want to continue and the other person does not , you get half their stake if applicable or you get the contested item but give them a forfeit of lesser value


2. Reverse what beats what. Scissor now beats rock etc. Another tie reverses it back.


3. Add another clause or stake to the bet. Keep playing.


4. Assuming going on count of 3 , the round after the tie now goes on a count of 6 but a hand still must be thrown on the 3 though it counts for nothing. Another tie increases the count to 9 and a false hand must be thrown on the previous 3 and 6 , etc


* I Just added this subsclause so there

Looke at thee bountyy of Woods

Print PDF
YOU HAVE SUCCESSFULLY FORAGED A PLANT. IT DOES THAT THING. YAY.
BUT:

1. You have to eat so so much of it. Like half a garbage bag of leaves

2. It is covered in horrible itchy hairs. You don't wanna know what happens if you eat while the hairs are still on it.

3.It smells like hot garbage that some half ate , threw up, and then finished up and shat out. The smell proceeds you!

4.The whole plant looks a creepy crying deer baby. Consuming it means it will show up in your dreams, grow up, and start a creepy deer person family

5. It  distinctively stains everything it comes into contact with. Let's hope it's not illegal or otherwise subject to complicated cultural taboos!

6. Maybe this isn't the right plant. Nah it prob is. Maybe. Wasn't there a poison variant of it? Nah it couldn't be. This will be totally fine.

7. It is so so bitter you will throw up a tooth if you try and eat it too fast.

8. Consuming means your sweat smells remarkably like a mating pheromone to the shittest , largest insect in the area. They will show up and hang around looking disappointed. Eventually something worse will show up and try and eat them.

9. The dose is painfully small and requires an exact and carefully hand  or the effect will be reversed or disastrously magnified .

10. This plant is extremely rare and has a tenuous survival in its native habit. Anywhere else and it will become a farmland destroying superweed . So watch where you poop okay?

11. Reacts badly with alcohol causing narcolepsy or nausea or both

12.  Messes with your sense of taste. Everything tastes completely different. Let's hope no-one feeds you spoiled or poisoned food because you'll have no way of distinguishing it from all the other weird shit going on in your mouth.

13. Requires an arduous process of boiling, soaking, washing, and reboiling or it will cripple you with stomach cramps for days

14. Unrelatedly to what you wanted it for , the dead can now contact you and are showing up in your dreams to pass on messages. Petty , petty messages.

15. The consummation also inflicts a range of minor but unsettling physical ailments : heart palpitations, vertigo, fevers, cold chills, shakes , excessive sweating, and sun sensitivity .

16. For it to be effective you need to smoke it and smoke it hot and hard. So hard that you will have trouble raising your voice for the rest of the day.

17. It's poisonous unless you let it get rotten. Then it's disgusting but not technically poisonous .

18. It's only half as effective if you don't eat all the beetles living in it. They will disperse in all directions when startled and are speedly bastards

19. It's a little chewy. Like.. real chewy. You are going to be chewing on it all day in fact and it will stain your teeth red.

20. Delayed intoxication that kicks in about 2 hours from now for an hour and then all tomorrow. Livers are weird

The Lazy Money, a bomb, what is wrong with these people

Print PDF This is a money system if you really hate adding and subtracting but don't mind explaining yet another subsystem to a player.


Instead of actually keeping track of things the player just has a category:

Broke
Skint
Hard-Up
Okay
Doing Well
Cushy
Super Cushy
Rich
Filthy Rich
Wadtastic
Wadtastic Omega


This system assumes a constant level of minor attritions , impulse purchases, minor financial pay offs and being a little fucking stupid with your money. Okay it assumes the players are fucking awful with their money and are constantly under siege by hussle, fraudulent currency conversion rates,  inscrutable foreign money systems, parasites, scams and substance abuse problems.

But hey they are badly dressed transits with clear signs of mental disorders carrying pockets of diamonds so this is not that implausible.


Broke is zero, they have nothing. Presumably you could add categories below broke to represent debt and the percentage chances of people coming after the player

Stuff has a cost in wealth categories . You can  get anything that costs a lesser category without worrying about it. *

You can get one thing at the cost above your wealth but then slide down a category.

Anytime you get a thing that costs your wealth level roll a d6 . If you roll a 1 , slide down a category

COSTS OF THINGS:

An egg: Skint
Chicken : Hard-up
Tallow Candle: Skint
A dagger: Okay
A sword: Doing Well
Leather: Okay
Chain: Doing Well
Platemail:Super Cushy



If players pool their resources it counts as one higher than the lowest category. Because their characters are idiots.


*Unless it seems like an "unreasonable amount" . An unreasonable amount is defined as anything that it would look weird for one person of the players circumstances to buy in one go. This counts as either purchasing something at your wealth level or if especially ridiculous above it.


The FLOWERING BOMB:

 These are found sometimes. They thought of as bombs It looks like a polished coral sphere of virulent ever spiraling pattern. It has a dent on top to fit a finger. As a finger is placed on the dent a green hue spreads from the dent. The hue spreads faster if the finger is held on. In this way the "fuse" may be altered. 30 second it will take to turn green if a finger is held  for a second, hold it for 2 seconds for a 10 second delay , hold it for 3 seconds for a 5 second delay. 4 seconds and it will turn green in your hand.

It doesn't explode per say but destroys.

Most often suddenly everything in 1d10 metres around it is corroded , stained, and vastly weakened and coated with minor poisons.

Rarely its effect  is everything in 1d100 metres is damaged as before but twice as bad and affected as if a fire had swept through. And now radioactive.

Even rarer is nothing at all happens except a couple of new meaningless squiggles appear on the bomb and it is now inert


What happens is this:

the flora and fauna of your finger is taken and used to seed a new world. The flowering happens at a fantastic rate, a second is 10 billion years to this tiny world. Life flourishes , spreads , stumbles into a particularly virile consciousness , spreads itself , scours the surface of things , consuming and poisoning and then collapses , unable to see far enough to stop its stampede into oblivion

Sometimes the flowering happens to create an intelligence more far seeing than this. In this case the intelligence discovers powerful weapons and destroys itself with those instead of merely drowning in garbage.

Rarest of all is when an intelligence is formed that realizes the nature of its existence and that all other intelligent life is unreachable to it. A universal language is created and a message left for the great beings of deep time (the meaningless scribble) and the intelligence then transcends. Or mass suicides. It looks the same from where we are standing.


MORE PROFESSION QUIRKS TO MAKE A PASSING MENTION OF SOME 0 LEVEL GUY WORTH DOING:  WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PLACE?

1. Tailors make everything out of their own hair which grows fast enough for this to be plausible. When people want to kill themselves the hair in the garment offers to have their life instead. The person then legally dies , and the hair is the new personality. The only change is the body is entirely filled of hair. The mouths and eyes open to this dense mass.
People reborn as hair people are nice but socially awkward. The whole thing is awkward for everything involved really.

2. Everyone prepares their bread but all the baking is done in the one oven. A vast oven. A little dough is snuck off everyone's loaf and used to bake a small bread man to be kept under the oven to defend the town if needed. They still need a unwanted child's skull as way though but thankfully the dudes who bury unclaimed bodies provide their in exchange for special pastries. No-one likes it when the eat them in public but no-one really says anything. They literally know where all the bodies are buried you know?

3. Once a month their is a night where the vermin is allowed to run the town due to some complicated myth involving the roles of all the animals been given out and the vermin were late so the living in cities got given to people instead of them and people feel bad about and give them a turn. Everything stays inside their homes and these people walk around with shitty looking vermin masks and use all the tools and courthouses. Underneath the masks are actual vermin. They thought it was polite to wear the masks due to some complicated mythes of their own.

that didn't have anything to do with professions I don't care I'm bored of this and these are now a table of town quirks

4. Everyone just eats eyeballs here or at a pinch food made to look like eyeballs. If this enquired about people make really shit puns about "Eye don't see the problem here"
Everyone crys milk as well. This place sucks

5. Enemies may only communicate via message lizard or be sewn together so everyone pretends to get along. This place is so passive aggressive you have no idea.

6. People are have trained walrus to dig up clams for them. Well they dig up clams anyway. They don't share them. But everyone claims they will when people really need them to.  It is a fashion here to a have a boat like a hat and a hat like boat. This place can have 2 things

7. All justice is debated and sentenced by puppet show. The bigger the crime the bigger the puppets. those that would have ten years here have puppets 2 stories high , and the town is in the shadow of a puppet the size of a small mountain for a crime no-one will dare speak of.

8. This town built their last bell tower underwater (it's underwater anyway) and rings it by rowing to the middle of the lake and drop rocks . Various bets and feuds are resolved by predictions of how many rocks it will take to ring the bell this time.
If asked why the bell tower is at the bottom of the lake the people will tell you "it is for the eels. them poor eels")

9. Everyone here refuses to recognise a cat. Not just any particular cat but the entire concept and category. If pressed they will claim that the thing you are described is most likely a dog that is poorly or an ambulatory chair softener.


10. The people here keep feeding their pigs to pigs and the pigs keep getting bigger. It's not going to end well I can tell you now.

11. They hate the earth and any digging is carried out like a military operation with medals and everything

12.  The town keeps trying to give fire back to the gods. Generally by trebuchet but they will give passing priest a torch and tell them to hurry back.

Regular Folks Doing Regular Jobs Regular Like

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So there was Shepards that wore stilts to see further and handle the terrain in Landes, I thought of them when writing about Opiliones.

And if you got to mention some people in the background of your campaign why not have something slightly fantastic about their vocation.

SHEPARDS

Weird, Plausible:
1.Stilt walking

2.Alternate animals; extra furry to the point of absurdity
  1.Llamas
  2.Poodles
  3.Rabbits
  4.Highland Cows
  5.Possums
  6.Goats


3.To chase wayward stock use 2 hooks attached together with a rope. One is thrown to catch into the fur the other is let go  to drag firm into the ground. This would be weaponized at some point in rebellions or adventures from such origins.

4.Each shepard has a particular sequence of wild-flower fields to take the animals to resulting in a colouration of the wool distinctive to that shepard. New colours are tried periodically to supplement each clan's "Classics". The resulting feuds from allegations of "colour stealing" are terrible and bloody.

5. Generations alternate between warfare and shepherding.  The slain are believed to be reincarnate as sheep , the more sheep that can looked after the more enemys slain by your father.
One human soul is split up into multiple sheep souls but exact ratio of human souls to sheep souls is variable and argued to whatever number makes the shepard's ancestral war deeds seem more impressive

6. Shepherds will not mention numbers or count near sheep , so they will never learn they have numerically advantage. They will very angry with those who do.

Weird , implausible :

1.Wield amber on a stick. Rubbing their charges (that's a pun) with it builds up enough static electricity to zap wolves , bandits , and organ thieving parrots

2.Feed iron to stock to get steel wool, knitted into a cheap, less effective chainmail variant

3. Sheep are for show and to keep the grass down as security visibility measure. The wool here is actually back combed spider silk. The spiders are kept inside the fort-like homes and feed the second born in reviled and secret tradition.

4. Animals have one side's legs shorter than the other so they can stand upright on hills, but only go one direction.

5. Beehives built onto sheep. Efficient!

6. White Sheep are herded at day and black sheep at night. Makes sense.

FISHERFOLK


Weird, Plausible:
1.Will trade for unusual hair to weave additionally into a net, this can catch wish granting Fish Princes looking for brides , or at least their servants scouting for them.

2. Claim to never fish when the moon is full or absent. Actually do but wearing masks. They catch some weird ass fish during this time and fear vengeance from the fishes relatives. A form of supernatural revenge by these people is to arrange one of these fish to be served to an enemy in public. If the enemy compliments the quality of the fish , it is believed that the fishes family will find out and send their agents after the diner.

3.Complicated family traditions about who fishes with nets, who scours for clams, and who harpoons eels. The 3 fishing styles are where the 3 dueling styles (Net and short club, Armour and Knife, Harpoons in waist  deep black water) of the region have come from.

4. Tattoo a scale on themselves for each fish they catch. When fully covered they are meant to drown themselves but it's hard to prove if some has Completely covered themselves and this is a source of banter about just how much "area" is available for tattooing in one's breeches.

5. Wreckers. Religion has loophole for cannibalism about anything coming out of the sea being a fish so will eat the causalities of the shipwrecks they cause. A fat fisherman is slang in regions nearby for a cannibal.

6.Elaborate fish mazes are made out of sticks to filter and sort the fish through them. This skill is also used to make various terrible drowning traps around the rivers and banks nearby , as these people are fiercely defensive about their patches
  Weird , implausible :
1.Walk beneath the waves with a spear, stone shoes and a breathing hose.

2.Trade family members with one species of fish  , who they never eat. Bloody feuds with those that do

3. Replace their teeth with sharp fish and shark teeth. Constantly trading and swapping and argueing merits of this over that.

4. Have Changeover houses mounted on stilts on the foreshore. Everything of the land (tools and clothing) is swapped for an equivalent made from things from the ocean before going out fishing.

5.Each family has their own droning dirge they sing constantly when working. This renders them invisible to most random monster encounters.

6. A ongoing war between the fishers that use shags and those who use otters.

CATTLE FARMER:

Weird, Plausible:


1.Cattle is painted to render them invisible to spirits . Not that spirits eat cows. They eat people. So the farmers dress like cows. It's important that the spirits don't have something to compare the costume to though.

2. Unusual animal:

   1. Capybara

   2. Dodo

   3. Tortoise

   4. Giant Snail

   5. Some kind of vegetarian dog that looks like a pug but worse

   6. Pig-Eel. It combines the worse , ornery features of both and lives in trash filled mud trenches

3. Keep attaching more and more bells, windchimes and amulets  (often made from dug up  rusted artifacts from all the old battlefields around this area) to the horns and necks of their herds. To the point that is sounds like John Zorn composition . 

4. Attach balloons and kites to their herds horns so they can see them along way off.

5.  Have to have a champion defeat the cattle's biggest bull in hand to hand combat each year before they can slaughter any. Will outsource.  Mainly an excuse to gamble.

6.  Make a beer from the strained water of the cattle shit. It's revolting but basically the only thing that repels the disease carrying ticks and worms here. If they don't like you (and complaining about the taste or smell is a sure way of pissing them off) they will charge horrendously for it.

Weirdly enough they are more favourable to someone who obviously hates the taste but is making a huge effort to pretend they are not, than they are to someone who enjoys the taste. They assume the later is just a really good liar, and shouldn't be trusted. I mean have you tried this stuff? No-one could like it!

Weird , implausible :


1. Bladders attached to butts of cattle collect methane which they sell/ trade to whoever needs a bunch of methane in your campaign.  Attend to herds in balloons with lassoing the leader and caroling with sling stone 

2. Abnormal Meat Harvesting Practices:

   1: Cows eat weird glowing plants. Get tumours. Herders remove and grow tumours. Various        methods of growing the tumour as big as possible before it gets too gristly . Much competition and    bullshit between herders about this. Cows tend to have be really good healers from the amount of    surgery they survive.

  2:Feed cattle crazy magic stuff so they become meat eating and ravenous and point them at their     hated neighbours . Cattle back on the pounds due to all the protein and die of heart attacks and then  eaten

  3:Inject digestive enzymes and suck out delicious , portable, long keeping cow slurry 

  4:Cut off heads and keep bodies underground with neck partially sewn up over winter.  Whole family has to take turns chewing cud and spitting down the neck. Only way to protect cattle from Yetis

3. Every 30th cow is a spider disguised as cow. They don't eat the cows or the herders and balloon off after a year. No-one knows why they do this , but it's good luck. I mean any non-fatal interaction with a cow sized spider is good luck.

4. Cows taught (like teaching bears "dancing") weird step patterns to avoid bullete / sand shark / death worms attacks. Each generation needs a new step pattern to avoid them learning

5. Kids ride some of the cows and use the horns as the arms of a oversized slingshot to defend the herd

6. The bones are sold to a mute mouthless people that come up from the earth , assemble the bones , dress them in old rags , breath into them , and walk them down below. They pay in something that hopefully is honey. 

Underused Arachnids

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This is other post(s) that was on g+ that I'm publishing here to make it plausible to find
(go previous post or click the g+ archive tag for the others)

I've added pseudoscorpions here as well . I think that's all of the arachnids I'm going to do.
The 2 other contenders were Hooded tickspiders and Vingaroon

 I can't a strong enough reason to use hooded tick spiders over regular spiders (the closest I got was a cannon balls but a curled up clunky spider as cannon ball is just as good).

Vingaroons are the other arachnid also called Whip scorpions ( Uropygids/Thelyphonida) . They are pretty sweet looking , spray acid and have the name Vingaroon but I don't think are distinctive enough to spin off into something that couldn't be done with scorpions or Amblypygi.

image from the wiki article on them

: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Ar_1.jpg 

Pseudoscorpionida

Latin translates to : False scorpion

Terrible common names: False scorpion or Pseudoscorpion. Land crab, Lobster insect. Book Scorpion

Kind of okay storys about them:

Pretty much nothing I can find. I guess being small, not amazingly numerous nor dangerous keeps you out of the mythology? Even Aristotle has only this say:
"

There are also other minute animals, as I observed before, some of which occur in wool, and in woollen goods; as the moths, which are produced in the greatest abundance when the wool is dusty, as especially if a spider is enclosed with them, for this creature is thirsty, and dries up any fluid which may be present. This worm also occurs in garments. There is one which occurs in old honeycombs, like the creature which inhabits dry wood; this appears to be the least of all creatures, it is called acari, it is white and small. Others also are found in books, some of which are like those which occur in garments; others are like scorpions; they have no tails, and are very small. And on the whole, they occur in everything, so to say, which from being dry, becomes moist, or being moist, becomes dry, if it has any life in it"

Most Obvious Thing about them:

They are small (2mm to 8mm and the biggest at 12mm) , have pincers , a tear drop body tapering at the head and no stinger.


Some points of note I couldn't put anywhere else:
They hitch rides on other animals by latching on with their pincers (especially flys) which is called phoresy because someone let their kid come up with a name rather than just jamming some greek and/or latin together for once.

They inject a paralysation poison with their pincers and slobber acidic goo from its mouth onto things to break them down before slurping up them (unlike the injection method of spiders)

Their little pincers have sensitive hairs all over them acting like a motion sensor , even detecting stuff behind them

They can sometimes be found living on bigger creations and prey on any parasites they find.

They also can be found in old books , preying on book worms.

Name You Should Use Instead: Beeky-Doo, Nip-Nip, Snipper, Bookward, Clip-Drudge

But why not use a scorpion? You want something with pincers that is not a crab and is also cute.Or you want something that is a bug , but not with an immediately familiar image. Scorpions look constantly hostile.

http://www.terrain.net.nz/friends-of-te-henui-group/spiders/pseudo-scorpions.html

Absurd Fantasy Ways To Use them:

You have them as book guardians , maybe flat enough to be hiding in-between the pages. They have a nice "helper" feel(they way they rush around with them arms held up?) to them so maybe as librarians or assistants to alchemists or wizards? Like you could see one of these little dudes handing some one a jar or a book right?. One could be a mobile book shelve with all the rectangular sections on either side of its longitudinal mid-line being a book slotted into place. A small thieving band of them with paralysation attacks and weird collections of things.

Maybe trying to rebuild their book collection? Maybe they can't see words as anything other than the thing the word describes so their rebuilt library is a collection of book covers stuffed with actual things .


If super a big you can use them anywhere you wanna use a giant crab but it's too far from the sea. Plus acid slobber waterfall from its mouth.


As assassins , flat enough to crawl under a door gap , maybe not to kill but cause stroke like paralysation in the night or disfiguring acid burns

One more option ; found running around on super big creatures attacking ticks , lice and your players.

http://melvynyeo.deviantart.com/

OPILIONE

Latin translates to : Shepherd. Poss a reference to stilt walking shepherds which are a real thing and should encourage you to weird up all your mundane professions


Terrible common names: Daddy long legs (a name people use for crane flys ,and some species of spider), Harvestmen

Kind of okay storys about them: There is that dumb-as one about them being the most poisonous animal but their fangs are too short to bite humans. I hate that one as it is absurdly persistent. The same myth also exists about the spiders referred to as daddy long legs but with the addition that since they eat spiders all that venom concentrates in their own. Which is an okay idea about a legendary poisonous thing having to eat only poisonous things or seeking out more poisonous things to consume in order to increase its lethalness. So if you wanted to catch a king basilisk you would have to catch something almost as bad first as bait.

Back to Opilione myths: killing one will make it rain the next day, and picking one up by all its legs but one will reveal the whereabouts of your cattle; via the direction pointed at by the last leg


Most Obvious Thing about them:

their head and body is just one lump unlike the segmentation of spiders. Their legs are real long so they can be closer to heaven for angelfucking.


Some points of note I couldn't put anywhere else:

None of them are poisonous. Their chelicerae , which are the normal poison fangs in spiders are little pincers. Some of them have crazy big pincers though.


Name You Should Use Instead: STRIDER, TIKTIK, STILTER, AMBLER, LOON



But why not use a spider? These things look goofy and bizarre. Their behaviour and abilitys should be weird or unpredictable.


Absurd Fantasy Ways To Use them: Opliliones sometimes huddle in big groups but surprisingly compact spaces. Take that up a bunch and have 20 metre tall Opiliones that can hide in a rabbit hole. Or 20 of them all roiling out of that little hole because something startled them or they are going to eat an entire buffalo herd.

Their absurd striding makes them seem appropriate for being the steed of weird moon people or for walking on cloud top or tree canopy. Or being the transport of choice for Moebius attired gurus or uncanny mercantiles.

Abilities to walk insane distances with space distorting legs.

Disturbing nocturnal urban predators/dream eaters walking silent along streets peeking in 3rd story windows and then stepping in through a slightly ajar window. Like the BFG but the F starts for FuckedUp
  


Solifugae

http://www.jdweston.com/wildlife---hiking.html

Latin translates to: Flees from the sun
Terrible common use names: camel spider , sun spider, wind scorpion
Kinda of okay common name: Jerrymander, Haarskeerders ("hair cutters") , Baardskeerders ("beard cutters")

Kind of okay stories about them: They cut off hair when people sleep

to line their nest with, they disembowel camels, they chase people (technically they do this, but they just want to stay in your shadow because it is nice and cool BUT YOU KEEP MOVING DAMN IT)


Most obvious thing about them : They are a little more elongated than a spider and they have massive oversize secateur like fangs which can crush and cut. They are not poisonous but extremely faster


Name you should use: FACE DESTROYER , FANG BASTARD, FANGER, HUNGER'S STEED, FIERS


But why not use a spider? : Emphasis that these have a face like a industrial barrel crusher . Spiders are subtle and patient, these are belligerent and aggressive , relentless and have the finesse of a ram-raid. Spiders are about poisoning and trapping. These are about running down and chewing things to pieces. They are the arachnid equivalent of those joke chattering teeth.

Absurd fantasy ways to use them:

Giant versions as Anti-armour steeds , ridden to crash into heavy cavalry and cut right through a horse and barding in seconds.

A legend of one always running just behind the sun, constantly hungry, or a desert tide of them sweeping across it with the retreating edge of the night eating anything that has awoke too early or stayed up too late

A colony of them that collect hair and beards to build people made of hair so they can puppet them from inside and seemlessly blend in with people. A face sized arachnid that runs as fast as an arrow and will leap on your face and chew threw it.





Amblypygi

from here https://everlongexotics.wordpress.com/

Terrible common names: Whip scorpion , whip spider, tailless whip scorpion , (whip scorpion is name shared with Thelyphonidia)




Kind of Okay storys about them: They sting with their whips




Most Obvious Thing about them: their first pair of legs are massively long and thing and serve the function of antenna. Their pedipalps (little legs at the front that normally look like little fangs or antenna) are huge , impressively spiked and look like a mantis scythe crab claw hybrid

Name You Should Use Instead: REAPER, BLACK REAVER, SCYTHELING, HEWNER, MAULER

But why not use a scorpion?: These look like some had a go at making a demolition vehicle out of an arachnid. They are not poisonous , way more of brute force monsters. The huge pedipalps could used to sweep down whole groups. The whips can be a creepy tappy tap foreshadowing of the monster as they delicately drift around corners and into crevices. Something about them suggests they should be fighting groups rather than stalking single opponents

Absurd Fantasy Ways To Use them: They are kind of terrible as steeds though, too flat looking, but as a massively oversized warmachine they would be awesome. Any time you want to use a giant crab but want it to seem smarter and faster. Unlike the Facedestroyer these only really work at horse sized for fantasy monster purposes. As gladiatorial opponent it would make a great image standing in the middle of the ring , scythes held aloft , whips questing for targets , as its doomed opponents sneak around the fragile cover provided .

The Scythe of one would make a great looking weapon for some darksun style shenanigans. either as a simple club or a way cooler scissor thing.




I could see these like the beetle things from dark crystal, bursting out of a hole to reap down a helpless civilian population .


IF YOU THINK ANY OF THE ALTERNATIVE NAMES ARE WEIRD ARE YOU NOT INFORMED WITH THE TALENTS OF ANGLOSAXON NAMING?

Fixing Crap Boardgames

Print PDF This post is from g+ but I am putting it here to make it plausible to find in the future


FIXING CRAP BOARD GAMES:
SPACE AND CIRCUMSTANCES HAVE SUGGESTED THE PLAYING OF BOARD GAME >> BUT YOU ONLY HAVE BULL SHIT
HOW TO FIX BULLSHIT:

MONOPOLY :
Half the money. Any time in your turn you can offer to do something (like dive roll out the window or lick the bottom of the fridge) and everyone offers some amount of money if you do it. One person can counter dare you and if their counter dare brings a higher offer of money they do the thing and earn cash. You can counter counter dare them though but any more than that and it's prob crazy.

I don't know if it makes more or less likely people to try and do dares if you got more or less money. I'm guessing yes having less money makes it more likely but I'm not 100% on that

SCRABBLE:
No board, everyone goes at the same time, over any available surface, there is a penalty for knocking other peoples words. you must refill your 7 tile hand after playing a word before playing another one.

The tile bag must stay pretty much in the place it starts. No running off with it.  You can play with it a distance away from the starting area and increase the chances of accidents.

Scoring is 1 point for words with 1-3 letters , 5 for anything else , and 20 for using 7 tiles. Or you can do it per letter or the normal way if you love counting so much. After playing a word you got to write down the word you spelt on the score pad with your name. If you forgot to do this and play another word , any one can claim that word by writing it down and their name. If someone knocks your tiles you get to write "so so and so is a dickhead" on the score sheet and that is -10 for them each time.

CARDS:
First player takes and hides a card on their body while other player closes their eyes. They have to guess where it is.  If they are right ,you remove the card and they keep it as a point. If they are wrong  it's there turn. You keep cards hidden on you until the game is over or the other player guess where they are.  Cards that are not found by the other player by the end of the game are worth 2 points each. 
If any cards cannot be found by the player that hid them , that is hilarious.
Optional rule: cards hidden on you cannot be touching another card

I mean there is heaps of fun card games but sometimes teaching them or when you just have 2 people or can't remember the rules right?

MARBLES:
players have a roll of duct tape and 5 minutes to tape as much padding as they can find to themselves. Then marbles are scattered all over the house , the lights are turned off and it's tag

TWINDLEWINKS/TIDDLEWINKS/TIDDLYWINKS : the non-twinkder player has to put their head on the ground and you try and hit them in the eye
I misspelled this but liked "twindlewinks" as a word so I'm keeping it. I don't think anyone calls it that.
HACKY SACK:
Set it on fire with methylated spirits. Also tying woollen socks together in a knot ball works. Socks with nylon work as well but they will drip molten burning plastic all the time and it's pretty average.
This is the only one of these games I have playtested. I am not responsible for myself let alone you so don't blame me for anything if you do this. 

RISK:
OMEGABOMB RISK
If both the attacker and defender roll a 6 destroy all armies at that territory and that territory. Cut out that section of the board and if you can be bothered move everything one "space" closer. If any player mentions that territory or refers to the battle more directly than the incident , drop a die onto the board. Whatever territory of theirs is nearest the die , remove it as above.
Referring  to participants/player  involved in*the incident* ,  or the if the incident occurred in the past or is yet to occur counts as referring  directly to it, triggering the above effect. . Referring to the *the incident" as anything other than "the incident" (such pluralizing it or otherwise suggesting  there is more than one or they are discrete happenings ) causes the above effect

Ready made Golems

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cut up thought stuck out here in the light  so shadow of it  goes  through your eye


Anyway
This scrap of paper I wrote some things and now I will type them here.


China Miéville has premade golems in his Bas lag. Little contrivances to be loaded with power and pointed with a task.

Here are some more from me to you:

Cloth:
Anoint it in blood, it will stretch as it drinks, the blood scabs and sharpens , it folds over some limbs and a pointed head and moves on 4 for speed and 2 when it fights.
Such prepared cloth this can be used a trap (disguised as a bandage) , or worn to become a bodyguard or ambulance when the wearer is stuck down.

Device:
Like a pocket knife that keeps opening and opening until it's a bird or a utilitous worm

Bag:
Like that what a doctor would have. Open it and breath into it and it inverts and flops out as rubber limbed drudge and brute

Powder:
Sprinkle it on a fluid and watch it congeal it into crude ambulatory life.

String:
A cats cradle that holds a murderous void. An anti-life cage. Simple but dangerous and uncommandable

Razor:

The wounds will heal fast and the scars will slough and pile too high into a keloid slug. Can be discharged to scar closed a door , a maw or any other portal or wound

Tumour:

Swallow a blade or seed and it will grow slowly inside , until you need it.

Pins:

To hold a skin on to the air to make it work again.

Recognizing its occult master, it then painfully arises to its wobbling feet, upon which it later leaps and bounds in mysterious abandon.

Secular creation myths for your campaign

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1
, the Urschleim, turned out to be nothing more than mud from the ocean floor
          there is ooze that is the inbetween living and not living. If true it can be used to animate shells, allow the dead to impersonate the living , and unite everything in screaming consciousness



2

It is a dream to awake the sleeper is to be destroyed or be revealed?

3

It is an experiment in progress. Could it not be better to show the power of evil in this world so the next world will be made with it much reduced?



4
Consciousness is the result of Entropy. Increased Entropy is the result of Consciousness. Etc. The more things pass the more things awake. The end will be a screaming cacophony in the void