Hungry Sun

Print PDF  Here is a more detailed example of what I was talking about in the Bad ideas with Legs post

 Man Panther (fighter with wizard spell mechanics)
Hitpoints & attack bonus as fighter, can only use weapons of obsidian, tooth, bone, silk and wood.
Get "Sacred Leaps", special fighting maneuvers  and spiritual directions that are treated like spells, though most happen simultaneously with an attack.

 (example of 1st level Sacred Leaps)
Red Haze:
 Everyone the Man Panther want to hurt badly glows with a red light. Duration as Light spell.


Thirst :
The Man Panther moves double their full movement and does their melee attack against an wounded opponent


Butterfly Step:
Immediately after missing an attack the Man Panther makes a new attack against any other enemy within there near melee range.

Screaming Weapon:
The Man Panthers weapon screams continually causing fear 


Hunters Hide:
The Man Panther appears as middle-of-the-food-chain animal appropriate to this area. Duration as disguise self


Rot Kings:(wizard using specialized equipment lists)

Hit points and attack bonus as wizard.  Can use any armour or weapons
Collect , breed , and trade "entropys" (parasites. worms, vermin, stains, rust, frays, rot, blights etc). Keep in sacks, cloaks , headdresses. Socially function like a combination of exterminators, engineers, and the runners of protection rackets.

Flesh Locusts (as long bow)
Debridement (as Halberd) 
Night Terrors ( expensive and rare , multiple ranged attacks only useable from surprise)
Death Stink (as leather armour , and makes wearer repugnant to carnivores)
Blood Cough (as spear)
Earth Star (exploding fungus, as a grenado)
Lice (as dagger)



Itinerant Clerk: (clerics using thief skill mechanics)
Hit points and attack bonus as Cleric . No armour . Only tools for weapons.

Flay (as pick pocket but removes spiritual and physical protections)
Weather sense (as hear noise)
Bureaucracy (as move silently/ hide in shadows , but allows the following with supernatural beings of the current sun :bargain, make contracts , intimidate , bamboozle, and hold to their word )
Placate (as picklocks, calms and soothes disembodied hungers , mindless ghosts, and pooled malices)
Nourish (as climb walls, boost natural heal by feeding sacred foods)



Exiles: (thief's using cleric spell mechanics )
Hit points and attack bonus as Thief.  Can use any weapons or armour.
People who the Bureau-Engine-Priests has declared are reincarnated souls from the Previous Sun. Not officially human, thus unbound and unprotected by law.
Can bring forth fragments of the Previous Suns world;
( for example these spells)
1st level
Change self
Sanctuary
Heal light wounds
Light
Feather fall

Regular Card Game

Print PDF The bigger post I got half written keep not getting written because the time and concentration needed to do them keeps being used on other things.
So y'all get the rules for this card game I've been playing a lot with my flatmates

It's a modification of game I learned in Melbourne that never had a good name ("Game of Threes ") and I've seen a few variation of .

The version we are playing has a notable enough extra bit we gave it a new and better name;
GILGAMESH 

The aim of the game is to get all your cards out. (Thus giving you the title GILGAMESH) .

There can be 3-6 players, and it is played with everything but the jokers.
  1 deck is fine for 3 players , a bit tight for 4 players , and 2 decks is needed for anything higher.
2 decks is actually pretty good for 3-4 players as well.

SET UP:

Each player starts with a hand of 5 and 6 cards in front of them , with the remaining cards in a central deck.

The cards in front of the player are arranged with 3 cards face down and 3 cards face up , with the face up cards on top of the face down cards.

 Play starts from the left of the dealer.
This player chooses a card, or set of matched cards,  from their hand and places them in the centre (the "pile")

They then refill their hand.

Play goes to their left.

THE GUTS OF IT

Play then consists of a player playing a legal card on the card/s pile and then refilling their hand if its less than 5. If they can't play a legal card they must instead pick up the pile and add it to their hand.

A legal play is playing any card equal or higher to the card on top of the pile.

Once the deck is gone, and players can no longer refill their hands , any player with no cards in their hand will use the cards face up in front of them, and when those are gone, .he face down cards.
The face down cards are played "blind", which might result in a illegal play, thus picking up the pile.
Once all their face down cards are played , they are out of the game.
First to do so is GILGAMESH , last is BEAST BOY or if you can pronounced it ENKIDU.

SPECIAL CARD EFFECTS:

2 s can be played on any card and can have any card played on them.

5s can be played on any card ; however immediate next player card/s played on it must be legal for being placed on the card before the 5.
Additionally any other effects that previous card might have must still be considered

7s can be played on 6 or lower.  Any card played on a 7 must be either a 7 or lower than a 7.

10s can be played on anything except a 7.  A 10 will "burn" the pile, discarding it from play. Burning has additional special rules , see the BURNING section

4(or more) of a kind : burns the pile.  A 4 of kind does not need to be from a single players turn. The set just needs to be uninterrupted by other cards (other than 5s)

For example player A plays two 6s. Player B then plays two 6s. This is now a 4 of a kind.


BURNING:

A player who burns a pile , then refills their hand , and then can swap one card in their hand with one of the face up cards in front of them. They then play again, starting a new pile.

ADDITIONALS:

>When a player refills their hand and draws a card that matches the card they just played , they may immediately play it.

>Once the deck is empty and a player is playing the last card/s in their hand, they can include any of their face up cards if would make 2 (or more ) of a kind by matching the card played from their hand.

>5s don't prevent a 4+ of kind from forming. So a pair , a 5 , and then a pair of the same rank , is treated as 4 of a kind.

>if a player can play a card they must do so , they can't choose to pick up. However this has not yet come up that someone might want to do this , and it's possible a good choice in some situations. So you are welcome to allow it, we just haven't tested this out at all.

>the player that is BEAST BOY deals.  Sometimes we make them also be responsible for keeping the Burned pile tidy. Neither is that thematically appropriate though

CLOSING NOTES:
The bit I added and we are now playing with is the bit about being able to swap a card after you burn the pile. In the original game players could freely swap from their hand to their top cards immediately after the cards were dealt but before the first card had been played.
This addition gives the early game a lot more considerations than just trying to avoid picking up lots of cards. I think I'm a fucking genius for thinking of it and its possible that I've been pre-scooped and this version exists already.

Bad Ideas With Legs

Print PDF

 I threw out an idea on the dimming but still alight g+  .
It was ridiculous idea but actually has more potential than I thought.

The idea is swapping the mechanics for how the classes work.

So fighters mediate and select their fight moves "magic missile" "light" etc
and wizards buy a halberd spell and use it.
Thieves steal "cure light wounds" and "sanctuary" from the gods in their sleep and clerics solemnly learn 45% Hear Noise from their hierophants and solemn tomes.


By frankensteining  around the raw mechanics , a different genre feel starts to happen.
(Although something more than just calling the halberd a "woeful finger" will need to be done)


Fighter "supreme techniques"/spells  as limited use encounter breakers starts becoming more wuxia

(though "limited use" isn't that common in Wuxia; it would have to be framed as Ultra taxing powers as opposed to the workaday cloudstepping and needle throwing)

Wuxia as a genre is extremely open to how much can be justified as possible via "chi" and "kung fu" technique so limited use supreme techniques could still include things like Charm person , Web and Phantasm force.

My favourite film "Swordsman 3: The east is red" features such abilitys as a ninja suspended in the air hiding behind a fake moon, sewing needles used to animate corpses, a dozen hearts exploded out of enemy goons simultaneous  (at range ) , a "laughing point" manipulated to cause compulsive laughter, disguises,  doves released from corpses upon death and a swordfish as flying carpet. It's a good time.


Wizards relying on equipment for power already has an easy form; in scrolls or calligraphy paper .
(the Palladium book "Mystic China" has some interesting magic based on this)
A greater range of abilities and power should be possible than what is normal for an equipment table, but it seems workable to me.

Thieves using mystic abilities could be added to a world as something elaborate as promethean thieves stealing powers from the gods themselves , or drawing from folklore such as the "hand of glory", "thieves oil" , protective talismans , or other superstitions and "one weird tricks".

This is more suggestive of component based casting than clerical powers, but that's not really a problem.

Further mixing it up could have the spells randomly determined and the player is required to explain their components and write them down, the spells become weaker if anyone else (including other players , not just characters ) knows the recipe.
Or the recipes could be learned as an item like reward.


Clerics having a set of skills instead of spells could be conceptualized as formal ghost hunters, exorcists,  Confucian scholars, or doctors.

Priests in folk stories tend to have a much narrower range of abilities than most spell lists (the "turn dead " ability is even already close to a thief ability)
A quick list from memory:
-banishing supernatural agents
-trapping said agents if they can tricked or convinced to enter a vessel
-casting out possession
-healing sickness, infertility, curses
-fertility (land /domestic animals/ people)
-weather prediction
-dispelling illusions/detecting of supernatural influence
-protective wards against disaster or ill intend
-assessing auspiciousness of dates , partnerships or signs
-omens
-lay dead to rest/ placating angered ghost or spirit

So using any of these as replacements for "pickpockets" and "find and remove traps" seems plausible to me.


The trick bit is how much to keep or modify hitpoints and attack bonuses . The thief and cleric seem similar enough in power that swapping or giving them the same seems fine to me . Though if you were using classic d&d having this priest having the lower hitpoints and attack bonuses makes more sense than a more robust bandit type.

For hitpoints /attack bonuses for the fighter and the wizard , I would keep them the same (maybe bounce the wizards hitpoints up a die), but have the wizards calligraphy magic ignore conventional armour a lot of the time.

Or have both classes having options to trade less hitpoints for more Special powers .



I'm still making slow progress on "plane scrap" , art is being done for DCO's re-release, I'm being commissioned for 2 other projects. The cyberpunk writing is still shelved for now and ditto Broken Fire Regime .

HOWEVER
Me and Patrick made a zine and it's available now:

https://falseparcels.bigcartel.com/product/a-night-at-the-golden-duck



EDIT:
just remembered about some osr wuxia rpgs that its been awhile since I've read but I'm pretty sure had some ideas overlapping with this
http://lordgwydion.blogspot.com/p/flying-swordsmen-rpg.html