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.