Spes Magna Games

Accessible perhaps only through a high-altitude cavern in a region of feared geological instability, the Calefactive Cavern of Colossal Crystals provides shelter to no living creature for long. Not only is the cavern dangerously hot, not only is its atmosphere tainted with unwholesome fumes, but also the enormous, fast-growing crystalline structures in the cave emanate psychoactive radiation that may cause bizarre changes in living creatures too long exposed to these ineffable energies.

Mutant Future Version:

The atmosphere in the cavern is toxic. Anyone who breathes it for too long may be suffer. For every hour exposed to the toxins, there is a 25% cumulative chance of harm that requires a saving throw against Class 6 Poison (6d6 points of damage, or half that with a successful saving throw). Every hour spent away from the cave and/or spent breathing healthy air reduces the chance of suffering harm for that creature by 25%. The heat in the cave is also problematic. Temperatures in the cave reach 58 °C (136 °F) with very high humidity. A creature must succeed at a saving throw versus Energy Attacks once every 10 minutes or take 1d4 points of damage. Characters wearing heavy clothing or armor take a –4 penalty on their saves.

A living creature that survives in the cave for 24 hours must make a saving throw versus Radiation. If the creature fails, it develops a random mental mutation, and the creature also loses 1d4 points from Dexterity and Charisma. Additional saving throws against Radiation occur at an accelerated pace for time spent in the cavern past 24 hours, specifically at 36 hours, 42 hours, and 45 hours. After this time, new saving throws are required hourly. If a creature’s Dexterity drops to less than 3, the creature becomes paralyzed. If its Charisma drops to less than 3, the creature becomes dangerously insane.

Time spent away from the cavern gradually reverses mutagenic effects. Acquired mental mutations vanish at a rate of 0-3 (d4-1) mutations per 24 hours spent away from the cave. Lost points of Dexterity and Charisma return slowly, at a rate of 0-2 (d3-1) points per 24 hours spent away from the cavern.

D&D Version:

Movement in the cavern, to include climbing and flying, encounters difficult terrain. In the case of climbing, the giant crystals offer few handholds and are quite hot to the touch. For flying, the interlocked giant crystals present few straight paths even for flying creatures size Small or larger. The hostile environment of the cave poses several dangers:

* The severe heat forces a Constitution save once every 10 minutes versus DC 10, increased by +1 for each additional 10 minutes spent in the cave. Failure causes 3 (1d6) points of fire damage and increases exhaustion by one level. Characters wearing heavy clothing or armor have disadvantage on these saving throws.

* The bad air forces a Constitution save once every hour versus DC 10, increased by +1 for each additional hour spent in the cave. Failure causes 7 (2d6) points of poison damage and imposes the poisoned condition.

* Every so often, major eruptions of steam occur in the cavern. These eruptions cause between 14 (4d6) and 52 (15d6) fire damage. A Dexterity save (DC 8 + one-half the number of damage dice) reduces this damage by half. The radius of the steam eruption is 5 feet per damage die.

* Pockets of flammable gas also accumulate in the cavern. If exposes to open flame, these pockets explode in a 20-foot radius, causing 14 (4d6) fire damage. With a Wisdom (Perception) check made against DC 15, a creature may notice the tell-tale odor of a gas pocket in time to prevent an accidental explosion.

Any living creature that survives in the cavern for 24 hours must make a Wisdom save against DC 15. Failure means the creature develops an innate psionic power that can be used at will. The creature uses its Intelligence as its spellcasting ability. The creature also loses 1d6 points from both Dexterity and Charisma. If Dexterity drops to 0, the creature dies. If Wisdom drops to 0, the creature becomes afflicted with indefinite madness. The saving throw must be repeated every 1d6 hours after the first 24 hours.

Psionic powers are gained in the following order: detect magic, detect thoughts, clairvoyance, and arcane eye.

Psionic powers fade after 24 hours spent outside the cavern. Lost points of Dexterity and Charisma return at a rate of 1d4 points each per long rest. A creature suffering paralysis due to lost Dexterity loses the paralyzed condition when Dexterity recovers 1 point, but indefinite madness does not go away on its own.

Over at the DMs Guild site, sales/downloads of The Dwarf are going fairly well. I’ve not received any feedback yet, but I’m still pleased with the initial response. For those who’ve not heard, The Dwarf brings you an old class made new. Back in the Golden Age of the World’s Greatest Roleplaying Game, dwarf was not just a race, but it was also a character class. Now you can relive the days of race-as-class. The Dwarf includes the complete dwarf character class, new dwarf subraces, new dwarf subclasses, and new dwarf backgrounds.

I’ve also made grand progress on Chance Encounters I. This supplement presents new options for characters, including a new bard college, a couple of new spells, a half dozen new monsters, and a few other goodies for use in 5E D&D games. I’m thinking the supplement will be completed, edited, et cetera, and available for purchase before the end of January. At the moment, I am uncertain whether Chance Encounters I will be available through the DMs Guild. I’m leaning toward releasing it through DriveThruRPG.

Tags: 5E D&D, Mutant Future, places of power

Next week is Thanksgiving, and I’ve got the whole week off from work. I’m pushing hard to have all of my school work done this week so that I don’t have to take anything home with me over the holiday. No grading, no lesson planning, nothing. I’ve been wanting to spend some time not working so that, in part, I can get some writing done, but what to write?

I think I’ve made up my made. My all-time best seller is Making Craft Work. Back when I frequented the Paizo boards, I regularly came across people recommending MCW for other people’s games. It still sells a few units just about every month, and I released it way back in 2010.

So, here’s my idea: I want to add a system for on-the-fly magic item crafting to the rules. Just like I retooled the rules for the Craft skill so that it becomes something that might actually be useful during an adventure (instead of between adventures when characters are in a sort of Limbo-like state), I want to retool the item creation feats. I’ve got a few ideas about how this will work without having to change anything other than expanding how the item creations feats work. Just like the changes to the Craft skill, the changes to the item creation feats could be added to just about any existing Pathfinder campaign without having to change a single word on anyone’s character sheets.

I’m thinking this will about double the page count of MCW, which is a good thing, because next week I also want to figure out how DriveThruRPG’s print-on-demand function works. I’ve been wanting to move Spes Magna toward print-on-demand for at least a few products, but I have no real idea how to do this. I’m a hands-on kind of guy, and reading how-to guides makes my head hurt. I figure starting with something small and relatively simple is a good way to start.

With a little perseverance, I hope to have the new draft of MCW written and formatted for print-on-demand before I go back to work on 27 November.

Wish me luck.

Tags: Making Craft Work, Pathfinder RPG

While I put the finishing touches on The Four Color Hack, which consists of adding three dozen to the end of the rulesbook, I’m also working on The Grimm’s Fairy Hack. (By the way, you can meet one of those villains by clicking this link.) I’ve already written a little about The Grimm’s Fairy Hack here, and I’ve posted a few times about it over on G+.

There are seven classes in The Grimm’s Fairy Hack, each based on a stereotypical sort of child whose age ranges from about 8 to 13. At the G+ link above, you can find a rough-draft version of the Bully. Below is the rough-draft version of the Normal. The other five classes are the Dreamer, the Jock, the Nerd, the Outcast, and the Popular. Each class has its advantages, its Imagination-based features, and its special vulnerability.

Normal
Starting HP: 1d4+4
HP Per Level/Resting: 1d4
Weapons & Armor: None
Attack Damage: 1d4 Weapon / 1d3 Improvising / 1 Unarmed
Starting Imagination: d6

Special Features

Normal’s Advantage: The player chooses at 1st level any two Stats with which the Normal rolls with Advantage.

Jack of All: Roll Imagination, and pick one of these class special features: Taunt, Happy Thoughts, Adrenaline Rush, Flash of Inspiration, Fight Dirty, or Cheerleading. If the Normal’s Imagination before rolling was at least equal to starting Imagination of the class from which the feature is chosen, then the Normal gets to use the feature as normal.

Unusual Heritage: The Normal isn’t really all that normal. Choose a special heritage at 1st level from this list: Descended from Kings, Fairy Kin, Forest Friend, Knight, Monster Within, or Prince/Princess. Roll Imagination. For that number of Minutes, the Normal benefits from his special heritage in ways appropriate to the heritage and the situation as adjudicated by the Referee.

Target: The monsters and threats of the fantasy world seem to instinctively realize the Normal is really something special. Whenever the Referee should pick a character at random to suffer some negative effect or attention, the Referee picks the Normal rather than rolling to see who the unlucky character is.

Tags: TFCH, TGFH, The Black Hack

The Bishop’s Secret, written for White Box: Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game, was released to my few Patrons yesterday. This short adventure was written in hopes that it could dropped into your Old School game with minimal changes.

This marks my third release of Dangerous Places for OSR Systems. The first, Narvon’s Stair, is available to everyone for nothing more than the time it takes to download. Last month saw the arrival of Goshahri: The City in a Cave, a ruin in the process of being restored by miscreants under the iron fist of the Bandit King. I plan to return to Goshahri for at least one more adventure.

For March, I’m going to shift away from fantasy into horror with The Strange Case of the Bell Witch Bootleggers, a one-shot descent into madness and terror written for The Cthulhu Hack. I also still plan on fleshing out Goshahri a bit with The Harpy’s Nest, a more detailed description of a location in the aforementioned release that go short shrifted because I didn’t manage my time well enough.

You can get in on the Old School action by becoming one my patrons. It won’t ever cost you more than $1 a month.

In other news, I think I’m nearly ready to release The Four Color Hack. It’s changed quite a bit from its initial pay-what-you-want release. I’ve got one last section to write in which I’m including an assortment of villains and threats. I’ll also probably include a short, introductory scenario. Part of me would like The Four Color Hack to be available print-on-demand, but I’m not sure I can figure out how to correctly format, et cetera, the necessary files. I’m looking at Lulu, which seems to have a pretty user-friendly set up. Maybe during the downtime of Spring Break I can give it a go.

I have two other major (for me) projects that I need to finish. The first is the long-neglected Boogie Knights of the Round Table in which the heroes fight the Man with the powers of song and dance. No, really. I’ve run one playtest of the system to rave reviews. I’ve also dusted off an idea I had for a fantasy game involving real-world children transported to a world of twisted fairy tales very much inspired by Grimm and Little Fears. Unfortunately, my original work on it quickly displeased me, and I abandoned the project, but it’s back now with a simpler system built on The Black Hack.

So, in short, I’ve got some big (for me) plans for 2017, and I seem to be off to a good start. Huzzah.

Tags: Dangerous Places, TFCH, The Black Hack, The Cthulhu Hack

Some time ago, I toyed with the idea of an OSR system for playing children transported into a fantasy realm. I abandoned the idea. It just seemed like a whole lot of work, and I couldn’t really keep excited about it. I’ve recently returned to the idea using a much more user-friendly system, specifically The Black Hack, about which I’ve written here before.

Thus, I’ve started work on The Grimm’s Fairy Hack.

In this “based on The Black Hack” game, the players take on the roles of children from our real world. In addition to The Black Hack, I’m also referring to Grimm Lite and Horizon: Grimm. The character classes are based on childhood archetypes/stereotypes. Players choose from six character classes: Bully, Dreamer, Jock, Nerd, Normal, Outcast, and Popular. Each class has certain special abilities and a special weakness.

Since the characters are children, they do not have Stats like regular fantasy characters. No STR, DEX, CON, et cetera to be found here. Rather that the familiar six made famous by Dungeons & Dragons, characters have seven Stats, each one defining a particular facet of the character’s childhood:

Academics: Covers arithmetic, reading, writing, et cetera. In short, Academics reflects how good a student the character was.

Explorer: Covers survival, first aid, reading a map, et cetera. Explorer includes the sorts of things one might learn in the Boy Scouts.

Hick: Covers rural life. A character with a good Hick stat would know how to milk a cow, dig fence post holes, cook, et cetera.

Lore: Covers knowledge of myths, legends, and fairy tales. Where Academics is knowledge of the real world, Lore is knowledge of the fantasy world.

Shenanigans: Covers lying, stealing, being sneaky, et cetera. A character with a high Shenanigans Stat is good at making trouble and getting away with it.

Upbringing: Covers being polite, fitting in with adults, knowing the right thing to do, et cetera.

Zip: Covers strength, dexterity, toughness, athletics, et cetera. Children lack real experience and training in actual combat, but Zip helps them attack and avoid getting hurt.

The success mechanic from The Black Hack remains. For a character to succeed with an action, the player must roll under the character’s relevant Stat on 1d20.

All characters also have a special ability called Imagination. Imagination is not a Stat, but instead is a power governed by a Usage Die, the size of which varies depending on character class. Thus, a Dreamer has more Imagination than a Bully. As a character improves in level, his Imagination becomes stronger. Imagination powers a class’s special abilities. Also, Imagination lets a character manipulate the fantasy world in a variety of different ways, so long as the character doesn’t violate two simple rules:

1. Imagination cannot be used to directly damage or destroy anything.
2. Imagination cannot be used to copy the special abilities of another class.

Of course, all of this is just a brief overview; it’s not comprehensive. The Grimm’s Fairy Hack will eventually include all of this and more. Some of the more will almost certainly be advice for using The Grimm’s Fairy Hack characters and The Black Hack characters at the same time. The former is based on the latter, and there ought to be little in either set of rules that makes mixing them impossible.

Tags: TGFH, The Black Hack