Spes Magna Games

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

If you’re not in the same virtual places I’m in on G+ and Facebook, you likely missed the posting of two creatures excerpted from Chance Encounters, my soon-to-be-released collection of fantastic creatures for Swords & Wizardry. You can take a gander at the bloody bones demon here and then find the ioun bug here. Chance Encounters includes these two monsters along with 24 others, each gloriously illustrated by stock art from some pretty talented artists.

What I’d really like is for some gimlet-eyed folks to read through my almost-final draft of Chance Encounters in order to provide me with constructive criticism. The task offers a very small amount of fame as well as a free copy of Chance Encounters when it goes live for sale. If you’re interested, shoot an e-mail to mark at spesmagna dot com. I’m pushing to get Chance Encounters finished by about 25 September or so.

Speaking of finished products, I published for the excellent The Black Hack a collection of character classes entitled Clever Title Using Hack & Class. It’s selling really well for something I’ve written, perhaps because it’s currently on-sale for $0.50.

Indeed, everything I’ve published at DriveThruRPG is on-sale this month as I try to raise enough money to buy dice for a dozen or so students that will soon participate in Ludi Fabularum, the story-game club I’ve facilitated for the past few years at the school whereat I teach.

Last of all, if you’re still playing AD&D, here’s a link for a new monster, the shereriti, a horrid product of ghastly rituals to Lloth. Enjoy!

Tags: monsters, Swords & Wizardry, The Black Hack

Well, it’s been interesting the past few weeks. Between the start of the 2016-2017 school year and the passing of my mother due to cancer, I’ve had plenty to keep me busy and/or nearly exhausted. Without a doubt, however, life goes on, and little by little, I’m adjusting my schedule, habits, et cetera, to get back into the swing of things.

So, what’s new gaming-wise around here? Glad you asked. In no particular order:

1. Our longish-running Fate Accelerated campaign has run aground. We’re one or two sessions away from the big finale, and I need to get my act together so that we can find out whether the heroes can defeat the Martian invasion of Earth.

2. I’ve dove into both The Black Hack and The Cthulhu Hack. I’ve run pick-up games of the former a couple of times, and it works like a charm, at least for one-shots. I’ve been working on The Strange Case of the Bell Witch Bootleggers for The Cthulhu Hack, and I’d even scheduled a few playtests, but every time something comes up that derails the game. Are the Old Ones opposing me? Perhaps. I did run most of the first chapter of Chaosium’s venerable Masks of Nyarlathotep for four players using The Cthulhu Hack, doing so in about four hours, which included character creation. We encountered a few hold ups at the start, owing mostly to me being tired and having re-read chapter one more than two or so weeks ago, which resulted in more page-flipping than normal. The players all professed to having enjoyed the session, and it’s been requested that we continue the horror. For me, this is a sure indicator that a game is worth owning, that my players express enthusiasm for it.

3. I published Clever Title Using Hack & Class, presents eight new character classes for use with The Black Hack. Sales have been good, but I’ve not received any feedback yet. I’m hoping to get one or two positive reviews.

4. If you’d like to purchase Clever Title Using Hack & Class (or any of my products), now’s the time to do it. I’m running a sale all month long to raise money to purchase dice and dice bags in preparation for restarting Ludi Fabularum, the story game club I facilitate at the school wherein I teach. This will be fourth year I’ve overseen Ludi Fabularum, and it has attracted a small yet loyal group of players.

5. In addition to The Strange Case of the Bell Witch Bootleggers, I’ve also been working on The F/MU/T Hack (rules for multiclassing and nonhuman races for The Black Hack) and Chance Encounters (new monsters for Swords & Wizardry fully illustrated via stock art).

Well, that’s it for now. I’ll try to post some excerpts from The F/MU/T Hack and/or Chance Encounters over the next few days.

Tags: Spes Magna Products, Swords & Wizardry, The Black Hack, The Cthulhu Hack