Betty Crocker Modules

What makes a good module?

If you are a publisher, then the answer is: sales.  Which means you have to make something that appeals to the largest cross section as possible.

• DMs who don't need much story, but don't have time to put together encounters.locales.
  
• DMs that need ideas for stories.
• DMs that need all of it.
• A whole spectrum of consumers who need different things.
  
• And folks who just like to read through them like fiction

These needs will often be working in opposition.   Some consumers will want detailed writeups of NPC characteristics and relations, other want a quick flow chart.  Some want fantastic maps of encounter areas and tactics, others are good with basic info.  In the end all of these things compete for page count.  In the case of the last group; what makes for quick/easy reference at the table (a quick spoiler-ific overview of the plot, charts, tables, references) does not make a good read.

For me at least, I prefer something closer to a "bullet points" version of module content.  Quick overview of the expected events, distinct chunks for any main info I need, maps, locations, NPCs relations.  When I am reviewing/prepping/running a module I want to have as much of the info at hand when I need it, not come across it in process or need to flip through it. Finally some references/indexes at the back.  Some of this will necessitate repetition of content (which undoubtedly would bother other consumers, those pages could be MORE CONTENT!!)

So with the how, out of the way, WHAT do I want in a module....it depends.  Sometimes I have a hook and events, and I just need a cool location for the villain of macguffin.  But in those cases, I can usually pull something out of any decently presented module or adventure.  The real trick is when I am in the need for a good set of events/plot, usually with interesting NPCs/ interconnecting elements.  In those cases though, I am very much in the tell, don't show model.  Give me flow charts showing how stuff connects,  give me the elevator pitch of the plot.  Don't make me work for those details (that's why I am paying for this).

In the end, I think modules are best when they are in the same zone as a box of Betty Crocker mix.  I don't want to make a cake or brownies from scratch, but I also don't to just buy a pre-made brownie.  Give me the basic mix, let me toss in my own ingredients, and have it fresh made at home.

Hot Take: D&D is Manga?

 Hardly groundbreaking or new, but this is a thought that has been swirling in my mind for a few years now.

I once heard older D&D described as "I play Conan, you play Gandalf, lets go beat up Dracula!" and from that mix of medievalism, pulp fantasy, and Tolkien the tropes, language, and expectations of D&D fermented. 

Where once Elves, Dwarves, and demi-humans were seen as exotic character options, now demon and dragon kin are core.  Even stranger character options are in easy reach of players.  

I have spoken at length about my "default" fantasy world, but those expectations are formed largely in the context of classic D&D up through early 3rd edition.  As more option are presented that exist outside those expectations, I have needed to make adjustments or handwave aspects in order to allow for them. 

My catch all "God War" as the origin of any strangeness works well enough, but I think as a DM approaching the game as it is currently presented, one must consider reexamining expectations.While pondering what a world that is brimming with cat people, demon kin, warlocks, and dragonborn would look like, the notion of D&D is Manga took hold.  

Now I use the term Manga in the BROADEST sense, the same broadness that D&D uses "medieval".  But I think the general idea holds merit.  One need only look over social media to see big eyed drawing of cat-girl druids, twee magic users, and warriors with fabulous hair.But it does seem to provide a framework whereby all these interesting, magical, exceptional player characters get exist in a world and interact to overcome obstacles.

Already we see these "newer" influences start to come into design as the game moves forward, owl-people, magic /adventuring schools, etc.  I expect as the trend continues, we will see more mega-cities, and worlds of mixed technology (swordplay and soda machines). 

Hiatus?

I started this blog in part as something to try during Covid/Quarantine.  I also just wanted to put the ideas that were bouncing around in my head and notebooks out into the world.

Things are opening back up (at least around here) and it is starting to get busy.  Also, I kind of put out the things I had in my mind.

Plus, at least as of now, no one is seeing this.

So, this will be a break until I get more flashes of inspiration and time.

Star Wars: Tokens

 I like to use miniatures for RPGs.  They are handy for keeping a clear idea of where characters are, particularly in some systems.  They also give something tactile for the player's to engage with.  For fantasy games I have had years to build up a collection to cover most situations.  However for sci-fi games, there are less options in general and they tend to be more expensive.  Also, while fantasy has collapsed into a general aesthetic, sci-fi has lost of different looks (space marines, flash gordon, etc.).  The issue is even further compounded for my Star Wars games.  Since the look is so closely tied to licensed works, it adds to cost and availability (especially when existing options are tied to a collectible game)

So, I opted to make paper tokens.  This is something I had done before, so I had supplies on hand.

-I opted to swap out all the minis from the Castle Ravenloft board game to tokens so I could keep the minis with my D&D supplies and leave the game playable, but that is another discussion

The art for the tokens was easily obtained with an internet search, though some species/class combinations are trickier than others (looking at you Female Wookie Jedi).  A quick trip to photoshop, and the color printer game me nice token art on come cover stock paper.  I use cover stock because it will stand up to the glue better.

To give the tokens some heft, I put them on card stock.  The card stock came from a large stack of advertising cards that were piled up with the junk mail in the lobby of my building.

I use a 1 inch circle punch from the craft store (50% coupon) and cut out piles and piles of circles, as well as the printed art.  A dot of glue on 3 circles, and a little wiggle, and let dry.  Once dry a glue stick or small dab of glue puts the art on the token.  One time I used printer paper with adhesive built in, but found it did not hold the printer ink well and led to scuffing/chipping.  

Once once you get the process down, you can have a ton of tokens in no time:

Here is a sample of the final product.  Not show are ship token (done in the same size ranges as characters) and the backs which carry generic faction logos to cover creatures/ships that I don't have representations for.

 

Wizard, Witch, Sorcerer, Warlock Meanings

 Came across this interesting Reddit post on the difference between the various terms that have come to be associated with the magic user classes:

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9lywhx/would_the_different_words_for_magic_user_ie/e7dpf0l/  

Like many things involving language and academic, I am sure there is plenty of room for nitpicks, but it gives a nice extra bit of depth to the terms beyond their current game mechanic uses.

Pasted below for posterity.

The Cosmos

 Returning to the topic of my Default D&D world, we talk about the Cosmos of D&D.

I have mentioned previously how I would prefer to keep the nature of magic, the supernatural, and the fantastic less defined and codified.   However, from nearly the start, the mechanics of D&D imply a certain structure to the cosmos.  Cleric and Wizard magic work differently, spells make mention of other planes, and beings such as higher powers and elemental.  The published versions of the game itself have set out a specific nuanced cosmos.  Finally, the point of this exercise is to define a default D&D world that tries to adhere to the various versions of the rules as published.

First, I love The Great Wheel.  It is an intriguing design that reflects the rules and concepts of the game (such as alignment).  So, one may ask, if I like The Great Wheel, and I want a default world that honors the game rules, why am I even worrying about this?

As I said, I like to keep things mysterious. Also I want to leave room for other ideas; such as the underworld being a place one can physically journey to ala Greek Mythos

Related to the notion of keeping things mysterious, I tend not to use "the planes" as adventuring locales (at least not in the traditional sense), so this informs my thinking.

My basic concept comes down to this, a game world, its all true.  In short, we are tiny mortal minds to make sense of realms beyond not only their understanding, but even their own physical ability to experience.  Even the greatest of sages and wizards are but blind men attempting to describe an elephant.

To one observer, the planes are neatly organized in a great wheel and rings of the inner planes.  To others, the river Styx makes its way through the elemental chaos on its way to the abyss.  One may liken it to ones experience of a state if one traveled exclusively back roads, vs highways and byways.  The state is the same, it is your limited perception of it that is at issue.

In practical terms for game play this means there are a number of places/phenomena mortals of the prime material have common comprehension of.

Astral Plane: A transitive plane between "here" and "the afterlife", and for the applicable spells.

Ethereal Plane:  A plane slightly out of shift with the "real world", also a transitive plane to other material planes.

The above are less places you can visit, and more margins of existence you can utilize.  

Co-terminus Planes: Shadow planes, dream planes, faerie realms,etc.  These are other "nearby" planes that are similar to the "real world".  These are handy adventuring locals.

Planes where Elementals come from: Cuz they got to come from some place, these spill over to the "real world" in volcanoes, oceans, etc.  These planes are inhospitable to mortals expect in "overlapping" areas or specially created places like the City of Brass. The largest mercantile of the living realms.

The Afterlife:  The Great Wheel, the Heavens, the Abyss, this is a place beyond mortal comprehension, and any structure it appears to have is the efforts of Sages to make sense out of that which they can not fully experience.  This is why Valhalla and Tartarus, Asmodel and Vecna can exist and seemingly intersect... or not.

SIGIL:  This city of the outer planes, it exists because it was the only "safe"/neutral place to be in the realms of the gods.  It is the most "hospitable" place in "the afterlife". I have previously touched on the role the gods may play.

Spelljammer: love the setting and its solutions to keeping worlds separate, and some of that informs how a treat the planes. Almost choosing to keep a world and its whole cosmology in its own "sphere".  When I do think about bridging the gap, I think I would replace the Pholgiston of the setting with something more akin to interstellar space.  The Crystal spheres of worlds, sitting in the darkness of traditional space, almost like dyson sphere.  This would allow traditional/real world views of space to live along side D&D Fantasy space.  But the ultimate form it would take depends on the needs of the game I want to run, after all "all things are true".

Character Sheets

This week I decided to put up a collection of the custom character sheets and generators I have made for various systems.  These were originally made in excel, but should function fine in most spreadsheet programs.  Some of these were made with specific fonts/typefaces and so make need to be cleaned up if you don't posses them.

Star Wars (Original d20 edition with house rules)

Ten Dead Rats (Character Generator rules version 1.4)

AD&D 2nd Edition (with Target20 and House Rules)

Call of Cthulhu (d20 Simplified)

Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperbora (Character Generator + Demihumans)

Mutants and Masterminds 2e (Simplified House Rules "2.5")

Terrain: Trees

I have previously talked about my terrain use, and the Covid lockdown has given me time to work on crafting.   One of the things I had been banging my head against is trees.

Trees are fun scatter terrain to use in a wilderness encounter, but unlike rocks, buildings, etc. they are tricky to do/work with.

Nice trees are a lot of work and fiddly/fragile and possibly shed. Easy trees don't always look that great or are kind of "blobby".   DwarvenForge's recent tree offerings are great, but pricey to get a good bit of woods.

I tried a few things based on the work of some very talented crafters but none quite clicked with me.  Random twigs from the yard were OK for autumn/winter trees, but also fragile.

So, going back to basics, I asked why I wanted the trees.  While dioramas/displays are nice, I want them for miniature play.  That being the case, their primary role is to denote the location of significantly large trees, those that would be useful for cover or climbing.  

So it occurred to me.  The leaves and branches are the problem with all their fiddly bits.  For mini combat I really just need the trunks.  A number of nice trunks and spots for minis to sit up in the "branches" would be a lot easier to craft and end up with something that can resist the rigors of play and transport.

So this is what I ended up with:

These are made of blocks and shafts of xps foam cut down by hand.  The edges are cut and scraped to give a bark appearance and the whole trunk of the tree is squished, twisted, and bent to give it an naturalistic contour.  The whole thing is glues to some dense cardboard for weight and finished with grit and sawdust.  The rest is craft paint.

I want to enhance this with a few bits of clump terrain of bushes and tight packed small trees. But that will have to come later.

Fancy/leafy trees for show clearly need to be a separate item from "toss if a bin" scatter terrain.

Random Encounters Continued

I still have not cracked the code on a random wilderness encounter setup I like. But I thought to share the below table to help spur the imagination.  The below allows you to roll a d20, d12, and d10 to quickly hone in on some ideas.

 

d20	Encounter
1	Phenomena			10 - 13	Humanoids
	d12	Encounter			d12	Encounter
	1	Natural Spring			1 - 2	Kobolds/Goblins
	2 - 3	Corpse (Animal, Monster, Humanoid)			3 - 5	Orc/Hobgoblin
	4	Toadstool Circle			6 - 7	Gnoll/Bugbear
	5 - 6	Trap (Pit, Snare, Deadfall)			8	Reptile/Fish Folk
	7 - 8	Cave			9	Fey/Centaur
	9	Collapse Ruin			10 - 11	Ogre/Giant/Troll
	10	Vacated Camp			12	Exotic (Aasimar, Underdark, Kenku)
	11	Forgotten Battlefield		14 - 16	Beasts
	12	Floating Rocks, Wild Magic, etc.			d12	Encounter
2 - 5	Animals				1 - 3	Worg, Blink Dog, Sea Lion
	d12	Encounter			4 - 6	Owlbear, Displacer Beast
	1	Vermin/Swarm			7 - 8	Hippogriff, Pegasus, Hippocampus
	2	Bird/Fish/Lizard			9	Unicorn, Griffon, Giant Eagle/Owl
	3 - 4	Rodent/Small Mammal			10 - 11	Bullet, Ankheg, Phase Spider
	5 - 7	Canine/ Medium Mammal			12	Exotic (Dire, Dinosaur, Roc)
	8 - 9	Ursine/Large Mammal		17 - 19	Monsters
	10 - 11	Equine/Herd			d12	Encounter
	12	Exotic (Ape, Tiger, Elephant)			1	Flumph, Stirge, Blight
6 - 9	Demi Humans				2	Undead (Lesser), will o wisp
	d12	Encounter			3 - 5	Carrion Crawler, Ettercap, Yeti
	1	Individual			6 - 7	Basalisk, Manticore, Chimera
	2	Hunters			8 - 9	Ooze/Fungus/Plant
	3	Nomads			10	Hags, Harpy, Medusa
	4 - 6	Merchants			11	Purple Worm/Rhemorhaz/Hydra
	7 - 8	Patrol			12	Exotic (Sphinx, Coatl, Naga)
	9 - 11	Bandits		20	Special
	12	Adventurers			d12	Encounter
					1	Elemental
	d10	Encounter			2	Planar
	1 - 3	Human			3 - 4	Dragon, Wyvern
	4 - 5	Elf			5	Undead (Greater)
	6 - 7	Dwarf			6 - 7	Lycanthrope, Doppleganger
	8	Halfling			8 - 9	Rust Monster/Mimic
	9	Gnome			10 - 11	Mind Flayer/Beholder/Umberhulk
	10	Exotic (Mixed, Subrace, Half Breed, Dragonborn, Etc.)			12	Construct

I think I am about to abandon this approach first discussed in earlier Random Encounter posts and start over.  I think I am trying to do too many things at once......

 

Fangs and Feels (Untested)

Industrial Goth Vampire games are certainly evocative, but the mechanics can be a slog.  Inspired by Honey Heist I made this variant Fangs & Feels so you can quickly get into the moody world of the undead.

 Page 1 (Players)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Page 2 (GM) 

Home Brew: Alignment

So this is my attempt at an alternative to an alignment system. 

____

Rather than have a set Good/Evil; Law/Chaos based alignments, characters instead assign a numerical value to traits that matter to their characters. 

Characters have 15 points to distribute among the below traits, with no more than 5 points going to any one value.

Altruism    Diligence   Diplomacy    Fealty                Humility    Temperance

Wealth       Leisure       Might            Individualism   Notoriety    Pleasure

When it comes to describing a person’s Alignment you could say the following “You feel the Duke values Altruistic behavior, but also sees the merit in the exercise of Might in political maneuvering.” Spells that detect or affect alignment will either only affect those creatures of planar/magical origin, or those whose traits are a 4 or 5.

____

You will see that upper and lower traits generally oppose one another.  However, I tried use neutral language between the two (ex: wealth instead of greed).  A character could have points in "opposing" traits, and this would likely indicate a conflict within the person.

You may also notice that there are not a lot of points to go around.  The thought process is that most folks will be somewhere in the middle on most things and that points should be put towards the traits that truly define the person's outlook.   I also reserve 4s and 5s to be extreme personalities, and why they would "show up" on a detect alignment or other type spell.

Why keep detect alignment?  I wanted a quick drop in system that did not require a whole re-write of other material.

Finally, I would even encourage not having the player's fill this out until the completion of their first adventure.  Let them feel the character out first.

Call of Cthulhu One Shot: Halloween Game

We have the house ruled system

We have the pre-gen characters

We have the adventure

Now the game itself.

As mentioned in the adventure prep discussion, I had 2 adventures ready to go for Halloween.  The decision for which to run would be based on how many folks signed up.

In the last days before Halloween, the number of player's ballooned so that I would definitely run Fall's Run.  I ended up having one last hop-on the night of.  There were a few character swaps as people found they had selected the same pre-gen, as well some some pre-collaboration and character introductions over chat.

The game itself was to be set over video chat, and scheduled to be about 3 hours or so.  The night of we found ourselves with 6 players on 4 screens, plus me as GM.  After the initial tech setup, game setup, and general mood setting we got into it.  

I started off play with a clear statement that this was a horror scenario, and the expectation is that most characters will die, hopefully in fun interesting ways.  The hope was that setting that expectation would help more the night along.  I also set one more expectation, this game takes place in the 1890s and in a world with the cultural norms that implies.  I was not going to lean hard into the gender and racial politics of the time-frame, but I wanted to be clear, they would be present in the material.

The start of the adventure is a mystery, and while the events happen for all to see, the supernatural elements are hidden behind skill checks.  I quickly amend this (thankfully 2 of the characters have occult skills/abilities), I make the ghostly elements automatically visible to the occultists in the party, but not the rest/NPCs.  This allows me to keep the mysterious tone but keep the action moving.

Once the party gets to the main location of the adventure, they settle into a bunch of character play.  This is fun for everyone, but does sort of put the adventure on hold.  That plus a few die rolls that could have gone the other way, things start to languish.  So at this point, I start having the villains take more direct action, eventually one of the Party is charmed by the cabal.

In many way, the night plays out like a proper slasher film.  Odd happenings around the margins, and then a fairly quick descent into the direct conflict.  This can be great tension for a film, but less so for a game.  Thankfully, we had the aforementioned character play to keep the buy-in going.

As the night goes on, things quickly come to a head and the cabal is revealed and a fight happens in that moment.  Most of the character's are defeated, killed outright, or scarified.  A few are completely oblivious to the terrible events and go on with their lives.  

Lessons Learned:  

It was a fun night, but there are some things I would do differently.  First, Increase Sanity Loss.  Insanity effects did not really "go off" as much as I would like.   I think I will just go with automatic sanity loss/the higher value, and forgo saves vs sanity.  I may also consider shaving off some of the longer lasting effects of a sanity break.  It kills the momentum of a game if a players is catatonic for days/long hours....

Second, I should know better by now than to hide clues behind skill checks.  I need to make them clear, and save the skill checks for the follow up/"Forensics" portion.

Third, I need to add another caveat at the game start, "This is a mystery scenario, you are expected to proactively engage with it."

These all sound more heavy handed or critical than intended.  I am really just talking about a few moments, light tweaks here and there that could have made a better balance between the events of the adventure and the play of the night.

Call of Chtulhu Adventure Prep

My CoC d20 remix was designed with a specific purpose in mind.  To run a Halloween one-shot (possibly with some spill over into subsequent sessions). While I could have mixed in goodies from other horror systems, I also wanted to stick to being able to run from 1 book more or less.

However, when it came to the adventure itself, I had no such constraint.  I wanted to run something that skewed more "spooky" horror instead of weird/cosmic horror.  To meet this goal, I chose the adventure Falls Run by James Wyatt in Dungeon #67.  I chose this one for a number of reasons. First, I had run a version it before in an 1890s game.  In setting that game up I had done a lot of work to get into the content of the adventure, so my work was half done.  Second, The adventure starts with a packed train in an isolated area.  This would make it very easy to get all the different characters together and into the action, which is handy for a one-shot.  Third, I just really like it!

As an aside, I also adapted the introductory adventures from the Masque of the Red Death boxed set "Red Jack" and "Red Tide".  The former is a better adventure for a small group and I was not sure how many people would be attending yet.  The latter would be a good continuation in case folks wanted to make a mini campaign out of it.  Plus I was already in the mindset to do conversions, so why not.

As I noted, for Falls Run, I had already done an adaptation.  So my typical work of taking what is in the module and typing it into relevant info and bullet points was mostly done.  Adventures (especially of that era) were written in a more narrative format (understandably) which can make finding the info you need in the hubbub of running a game troublesome.  

In this case, I created a starting paragraph to set the mood, a quick timetable of the inciting "spooky" events.  Then a quick bullet point list of info on the town, townsfolk, and their relations.  Finally I set up a couple of call outs for important details, info so I don't forget it, and can easily reference it as the player's start to take actions.  At it's heart, this module is a mystery, so it is good to make sure you have all the parts in the right place.

That having been done year's ago, only needed slight modifications, so I only needed to put in stat blocks.  with my homebrew they are much simpler than the ones I made years ago, but those old d20 blocks did server as a nice baseline for power/balance. The hardest part is the spell system.  The adventure features a cabal that dables in magic.  The CoC system is very different than the traditional D&D system and has different spells.  Perhaps, I should have just "hand waved" it and used the original spells, but I wanted to play fair by the players.  So I dug around to find the closest CoC equivalent.  I did not worry about the cabal's Sanity loss when casting, they are all already a bit "crazy".

The other tricky point ended up being assigning Sanity Loss for encountering given phenomena. Again, I pulled the closest equivalent from the CoC book.   However, in hindsight, I think these values were too low (especially for a 1 shot).  If I do it again, I would either bump them up, or forgo the save to lessen the effect.

Since this was going to be an online video chat based game, the final step was collecting images to show on screen to set the tone.  The module itself has a few illustrations, and the internet was able to provide photographs of the area (not quite from the same era, but close enough given the pace of change in Appalachia between the 1890s and 1920s.)

Call of Cthulhu d20 Remix

 Setting aside any particular feelings about the d20 system and license, I find the d20 variants of various games to bee a great gateway to other styles of play.

Similar to my discussion of Mutants & Masterminds and Star Wars, I decided to take the d20 Call of Cthulhu system I already owned and was familiar with and adapt it.  First, it almost goes without saying that CoC is essentially a one-shot game and not one for long term campaigns. Second, I wanted something that could be used as a general "horror" game, from Scooby Doo, to Slasher Films, to Zombie Survival.  With those ideas in mind I went about adapting the core rule book.

Power Level: Borrowing from Mutants & Masterminds, instead of character levels that one progresses through, I decide that the campaign or game has a Power Level that determines how accomplished/tough the characters will be.  These Power Levels (1-6) generally map to the character levels presented in the d20 CoC book.  I stop at PL 6 based on the ideas presented in D&D E6  where level 6 is the upper limit of "normal humans".

Class: I opted to smoosh the 2 classes presented in the rulebook into a single class.  Combined with the above Power Level, presents your characters with the following abilities.  Attacks, Saves, HP/AC, etc. are only adjusted by Ability Score Modifiers (which are generated normally) or Feat selection.

Power Level	Saves/Attack	Hit Dice	Skill Rank	Feats/Special
1	+0	1d8 (8hp)	4 / 2	1st, 2nd
2	+1	2d8	5 / 2
3	+1	3d8	6 / 3	3rd
4	+2	4d8	7 / 3	Ability Boost
5	+2	5d8	8 / 4
6	+3	6d8	9 / 4	4th

Skills:  I condensed the skills down to the standard dozen or so we see in modern d20 style games. Acrobatics, Athletics, Deception, Devices,  Expertise, Heal, Insight, Occult (Mythos), Perception, Sleight of Hand,  Stealth, Survival, Vehicles, and Wealth (see below).  Characters get the equivalent of 4 skill points per level (16 at 1st level).  I short hand this to pick 4 skills you are "Good" at for Max rank, or pick 8 skills you are "OK" at for half rank.

Wealth:  I generally like the idea of the wealth mechanic in games that feature "modern" notions of capital, banking, etc.  It speeds up character creation and play by allowing for a roll to determine if a character has or can acquire some random thing.  Also makes for quick "bribe" checks. So I do away with the actual dollar amounts, and treat Wealth as a skill.

Base starting wealth = 3 (+ Profession Modifier + Cha Modifier).  The Wealth Feat will also add +2 per use

Weapons: Characters all begin with "Simple" weapons, and can gain more based on their Occupation features or Feat selection.  Weapons are broken down into "Proficiency Groups", and I use the simplified firearm stats rather than track specific make and model.

• Simple Weapons: small blades, clubs, canes, improvised weapons/tools, fists (1d4-1), etc.
• Melee Weapons: swords, batons, bayonets, etc.
• Ranged Weapons: bows, crossbows, slings, thrown weapons
• Firearms: Handgun, Rifle, Shotgun, etc.
• Handgun: d10/x3 crit, 20' base range
• Rifle: 2d10/x3 crit, 200' base range
• Shotgun: 2d6, 25' base range
• SMG: 3d10, 25' base range

Sanity: I stick (mostly) with the sanity mechanic in the book (it is not my favorite since it tries to map too closely to real world mental illness) so that I can stick with using one book/resource while running the game.

• Starting Sanity: 10 +Con +Int +Wis +Cha - Occult Ranks
• Sanity Break: Loss of Sanity = to 1/2 Wisdom Score in 1 go, result in Temporary Insanity (per chart in book)
• Insane: loss of 20% (starting) Sanity in 1 hour of Sanity = 0.
• Unrecoverable: at -10 Sanity
• Recovery: Through long term care characters can regain d6 Sanity per month.

Characters: Putting it all together I create some basic stock characters (Detective, Psycho Analyst, Blue Collar Worker, etc.) then the player's pick one and customize it.

GM Notes: Finally I make myself a cheat sheet/GMs screen of the house rules, sanity/weird happenings tables, and spell effects. All told it is about 5 pages, with most of that being due to keeping all the table info cleanly formatted.

Death and Dying

 Following up on What is a Hit Point, I am sharing what I currently use when a character hits 0hp.

 

I originally developed this chart while playing 2nd Edition, but the target numbers on the current version is tweaked to work with OSR style games. (Ability Score 18 = +3 Modifier).

The philosophy comes from the notion that 0HP = Dying, and -10HP = Dead.  Assuming an average die roll of 10, a character at 0HP will end up scarred.  A Character at -10 HP will end up seriously maimed (and likely out of the adventuring life) 

Using a die roll (pun intended?) provides some variability, keeping it from being a pure numbers game "Its OK, do actions X Y Z, I am only at -5HP and have 5 rounds to spare".  I also retained the lose 1 HP per round so there is still a ticking clock, things getting worse.

I chose to add in the ability to stay conscious and act beyond 0 HP.  This is a mix of the 0HP = "Disabled" status from 3e, the desire to allow the character to still have something to do on their turn, and I just like the visual of the character fighting to the bitter end, or trying to hold their guts in til help arrives.

Since I don't have specific skills in my OSR game, I have healing kits to take the place of allowing characters without Cure spells to provide aid to the dying.  

So far the numbers bear out that somewhere between 0 and -10 HP your character's adventuring life is over, but they may live, and at least have a chance to end up with a cool scar and story to tell at the tavern.   Perhaps to offer a warning to the Player's next character.