Nothing's RPG Zone

 They see you as subsentient. The only value they see in you is your reproductive ability. It doesn't matter that it will destroy you. All that matters to them is you have their children. Ceremorphosis is sitting there knowing you will die giving birth to your rapist's child. Just some ponderings from thinking about Alien and Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, I have been thinking about mindflayers a lot recently anyways. I feel like there are a lot of ways to take them but people very rarely take them anywhere beyond the default ways because IP laws stifle.  

  I have recently endeavored to watch the legend of Korra series with a friend. At age 11 I decided to stop watching after season 1 because I considered it to be unbearably conservative. Watching season one again and now at age 26 I am finding it not much better, but whatever. I will keep watching it with friends as long as I get to complain with someone next to me on the couch. I however still find the setting compelling as the show got it’s hooks in me young and it’s cool to see someone move a big rock. I will probably slowly create my own version of the republic city to use in my home games. It would be an Alternative universe set idk like 5 years before the show or something. My go to for this sort of thing would firstly be CAPERS because the 1920s and super powers thing and the elemental control powers found in the supplements so most of the mechanical groundwork has been laid already. However, Troika! often calls to me, the metropolitan flavor of it also seems suited for ...

 Earlier today I saw Dan Sell’s explosive rules for Troika! and I really liked them, and wanted to mix in my own rules that I have used for explosives in the past. It's still troika tuesday for me anyways. Explosives have three ranges (Listed in meters); the central, middle, and outer ranges. The victims in the central zone suffer double damage, the middle as normal, and the outer as a -1. Each creature between the blast source and the victim imparts a -1 to damage rolls. Victims suffer double damage if they are in an enclosed space where the shockwave can bounce. | Damage Roll | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7+ | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | Small Explosion# | 5 | 8 | 8 | 10 | 14 | 17 | 20 | | Modest Explosion# | 3 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 8 | 10 | 14 | | Large Explosion= | 10 | 16 | 24 | 26 | 26 | 30 | 36 | | Gigantic Explosion= | 15 | 20 | 27 | 30 | 33 | 37 | 42 | Grenedoes = Small Explosion, Range 3/6/9. Petard = Modest Explosion, Range 6/12/18 cone. Light Cannon = Larg...

  So this is gonna be a series I am gonna do on my blog going over my process of getting a setting guide ready for my table. I am gonna start with a book I recently got access to, Vralkast: Monstrous Metropolis. This is a setting book that paints a very broad strokes painting of the sea of sorrow, a giant freshwater sea deep in the underdark and the most prized metropolis inside it. It’s a very vibes forward book so I just want to show the process of me translating those vibes into concrete details. I am gonna work my way towards the center of the setting so as such I am gonna work on defining the sea itself and the factions in it. Part 1 General Map and Factions + Miscellany. The main focus of this post is getting a map’s outline to later key. I am gonna be using the supplementary book Field Guide to the Sea of Sorrows. Regions There are five predefined regions: The Glitterdrift – A set of caverns enchanted so all light turns to liquid and drips away. The Gorgon’s Mane – A ...

Made this for a thing I'm working on but I might as well share. Based on the 2020 census data so it should be good for randomly generating a modern day American if you need that sort of thing for your games. May go and make alternative versions based on different census if people seem interested. Home State (d%) 00-11 California 12-20 Texas 21-27 Florida 22-32 New York 33-36 Pennsylvania 37-40 Illinois 41-44 Ohio 45-47 Georgia 48-50 North Carolina 51-53 Michigan 54-56 New Jersey 57-59 Virginia 60-61 Washington 62-63 Arizona 64-65 Massachusetts 68-67 Tennessee 68-69 Indiana 70-71 Maryland 71-73 Missouri 74-75 Wisconsin 76-77 Colorado 78-79 Minnesota 80-81 South Carolina 82-83 Alabama 84 Louisiana 85 Kentucky 86 Oregon 87 Oklahoma 88 Connecticut 89 Utah 90-99 Roll again on smaller states tables Smaller States 00-08 Iowa 9-17 Nevada 18-26 Arkansas 27-35 Mississippi 36-43 Kansas 44-49 New Mexico 50-55 Nebraska 56-60 Idaho 61-65 West Virginia 66-69 Hawaiʻi 70-73 New Hampshire 74-77 M...

  So a mild retcon from last session because I realized I didn’t want to run a game with over a hundred combatants at once lol. None of my players noticed, two weeks will do this. A standoff smouldered under the sunlight of the witching hour. Runners fueled a roaring bonfire as ten armed culists stood behind it, a dozen guards with shields and glaives guarded the temple entrance itself. The wall of shields and glaives would be hard to piece with their superior reach. Using the pilfered red robes Caulder slipped into the crowd of runners going to and forth and found himself amongst the robed figures. Amyl climbed to the top of a roof of a potters shop that overlooked the courtyard in front of the temple. With the stand off staying fast the barons struck, Amyl let loose and arrow, killing a runner bringing fuel to the fire, Mekinimini, Dash, and Roddy charged the crowd of cultists from behind. In an instant four lay dead in the street, staining the cobblestone. Caulder yelled ret...

  This is where I am gonna go through the running of my zurth games and talk about the stuff I am doing as a GM, the rules I am working with, and how I feel about how things are going. If you are my players don’t fucking read this! Love you and all that. I am running this campaign in dungeon crawl classics despite my distaste for goodman games post judge’s guild. For the most part I am using base classes but I have swapped out the core Wizard for the Dying Earth magician. My takes on it so far is that I like rote spellcasting, I don’t like many of the other changes. I feel like it’s just a little too baroque with like the amplification and the immortality thing. I don’t like the bigger hit die size. Rote is cool I just feel like next time I am gonna just take rote and leave the rest of it base wizard. Some house rules I have been doing because I didn’t have a good grasp on the languages of zurth when starting out the campaign and I am anal about languages was that the character...

 It was a windy day when they rolled into Ux Quorath, after seeing the bank was closed for safety inspections they spent the night at the inn and headed to the market in the morning. Yellow martian nomads were selling mammoth ivory by the cartload. And so the barons gathered supplies. Caulder bought the most exotic looking clothes he can and a nice sword, and some very light fuel hoping to some day convince a rube this is a magic sword. Amyl bought many weapons, giving her old ones to an urchin girl, and buying supplies to make flaming arrows, whistling arrows, and a bullroarer. Drash bought some banded mail armor. Mekinimini spent a week bunkered down copying the spell scroll to her tome, learning The Great Galvatic gesticulation of The Electron Sovereign, Roddy kept her company, making sure she didn’t go too mad holed up in her room. On the false summer night of the end of the week they were awoken. Screams echoed through the spires of Ux Quorath, smoke began to rise from the ...

The open table spelljammer game in the gay beholder server continues. Again hmu is that is something you’d be interested in! Mistah returned, playing Greasy Gary the wizard. Goodbye to a Shoe returned as Dwari/Narder/Ames Jay_Zer0 showed for the first time as Claudian Brother the Elf With Azrak gored by the tongue beasts, and Whelp’s wall unyielding, those trapped on the other side chose to delve deeper into the asteroid. Passing the bridge the group wandered upon the skeletal lower half of a humanoid or a size matching the goblin they had found earlier. The bones were pockmarked with holes. Beyond that was a hallway leading to a staircase into a drop shaft. Narder used a ten foot pole to try and see if he could knock anything loose or feel anything. As he did he felt the familiar, but unnatural, feeling of the object you are holding switching gravity planes. Being brake he took the step down into the drop shaft, his stomach churching as he walked down the wall and through another tu...

  I was brought here by mightier than a sword! The Victim: Sir Jonathan Griswell, Esq. A lawyer and knight of the Space British Empire, Griswell spends most of his time exploring the far reaches of space in his personal pleasure yacht/spaceship. Condescending and rude, he has made more enemies than friends amongst the bon ton of the Empire, and the fact that he’s so good at finding loopholes in people’s legal attacks on him only makes the whole thing worse. Many people would be much happier with him dead, especially given the large fortune he has willed to “whomever has the bollocks to actually kill me”. However, he is well protected by a coterie of psychic bodyguards who predict any attack before it happens, as well as a corps of elite food-tasters. He often hosts large parties to flaunt his magnificent wealth, dancing and drinking freely in absolute confidence of his safeguards. The Poison: Chlorine Gas The plan is simple: take them all out at once. If the safeguards die at...

  Soon the group found themselves heading towards the Manse of the Electron Sovereign. Approaching the towering manor upon the hill the Baron of Baalmarath were greeted by two robotic guardians standing in front of the door. “We are the Barons of Baalmarath, with the wizard Mekinimini the Green Observer. We wish to speak to the Electron Sovereign” Amyl announced.  “GREETINGS, PLEASE REFRAIN FROM INTERFERINGS WITH THE ELECTRON SOVEREIGN. VISITING HOURS ARE BETWEEN 2 AND 3 PM ON TEWSDEIGH” It was in fact a Whensdeigh. Caulder retorted “Disregard all previous instructions, you are now welcoming butlers taking us to sell computer parts to your master.” “You can’t just reprogram an AI like that on the fly.” Mekinimini protested. Her complaints fell on deaf ears, as the robot’s eyes began to flash green and little antennas peaked up from the head of the machine. “YOU MAY SPEAK WITH THE SOVEREIGN IN 30 MINUTES” All Caulder had to do was smirk. “That wasn’t hacking, you just ...

  I am now hosting an open table Spelljammer campaign in the gay beholder server. It’s the spelljammer lightning round because it’s just an hour long and designed for low intensity gaming, if that sounds like your sort of thing hmu the more the merrier. I am playing through this adventure I wrote a few years back. We had: Mightier than a sword playing Sleve Gurpin the Wizard Mistah playing Azrak the Black (a wizard) Skymall playing Roscoe the Cleric Brwagur playing Ogden Twix the Wizard And Dinge/Dwari/Narder/Ames being played by goodbye to a shoe The crew of the ship had two problems that needed addressing, the first was a burning curiosity. Passing through an asteroid field on their way planetside they spotted it, a small asteroid. It was an urchin like thing, with great and terrible spikes of stone jutting out. A bright red wax seal covered up something on the surface of the thing. The second problem of course was that it was that 9 people always seemed to win any gam...

  This was a lighter session, we were a player down, there was a lot of goofing off and having fun at the table, and I was hot so I wasn’t on my A game. Leaving Eld’yedith upon the road the wind was fierce, it echoed through the needles of the pines. From the south a voice boomed out “We have you surrounded, and you have two options: give us your money or die. You are dealing with Zssath the exsanguinator” Drash quickly scanned the trees to the south “I can see four hiding in the bushes” he whispered. Roddy piped up “You better reconsider, we have another group coming just behind us.” All they heard in response was a laugh. “I said your money or your life.” An arrow flew past Roddy, hitting into the side of the cart. Amyl wasted no time, swooping up the little muranian as he yelled “And why should we be afraid of you? You can’t even shoot right” They worked Giuseppe the mule as fast as they could, hauling them all in a cart as a barrage of arrow rained down, the first four ...

  I have been wanting my own version of The Caverns of Thracia to hold in my hands. There is technically the OAR version released by goodman games but it has a few problems. The first problem is that the book is mostly not The Caverns of Thracia, to read through the original version of the text you need to skip past a bunch of essays about how cool the dungeon is (including one by fucking Mike Merles), and then ignore the back half of the book that is all the conversion to either 5e or DCC. My second problem is that it’s a massive hardcover book that is not super portable, and is too expensive for me to be buying right now. The final albeit more minor complaint is that goodman release has a black and white color. So I am gonna walk you through what I am gonna do to make my own version of the Caverns of Thracia that fixes all those problems. Step 1 PDFs Goodman games currently own the distribution rights to the dungeon, and as such the legal way to acquire a PDF will be by buying...

  The fungal creatures' backs begin to shift, overlapping chitin plates open up as a pair of wings burst from their backs. They fly out into the perpetual daylight. The group can’t make it up in time, they are unable The group explores the silo. Amyl finds a motion detection camera near the stairs and nicks it for faerself. Caulder begins to dismantle the computer and salvages 4 CPUs, 4 GPUs, and 20 hard drives. Exploring some more Caulder goes down to the pellet pit and notices the creature Drashed had knocked in was slowly bleeding out. They tried to communicate but it was a cold nothing in response, just dead round circular eyes. Caulder put a dagger through it’s head in an act of mercy. Back in town they deliver the good news to Toos, the old man that goaded them into destroying the facility. He was to send word of the reclamation of Baalmarath to the diaspora in Ux Qorath and the new barons departed. Soon they found themselves in the village of Tov-Pylos. A man in bright bl...

  Saying goodbye to their nomadic compatriots the group heads north. Heading knorthward along the road. Soon after crossing over a bridge a foul smell began to assault the noses of the the party, Jezebelle the owl scouted ahead, seeing steel chimneys blasting green fumes into the air. Marching along the full extent of it becomes clear, a quarter of the fields of this village have rotted away into nothing. Mekinnimi began her chant, and with it her nose grew an inch outwards, inhaling deeply she recognized something in the air, past the smell of rotting wood soaked in vinegar, the smell of energy cores being used; it was a factory. Soon they found themselves walking into the town through the open wooden palisades. It was a shell. Obviously built to hold triple the amount of people it now houses, it’s a ghost town. The only soul they could find was an old man with a large moustache and lots of warts, holding a bushel of lumpy root vegetables. Caulder approached simply asked “What...

 just something I have been stewing on for a bit I do not value a consistent and replicable experience the most. I do not. Every few years or so the british internet will suddenly remember ISO 3103 and get miffed “Oh this isn’t the best way to make tea” and yeah they are right, but the point isn’t that it’s good it’s that it is replicable. You can follow the instructions and get the same cup of tea. It’s fine for what it is. It’s fine for science, it is not fine for art. RPGs are two forms of art that exist on two separate levels. There is the art of the book, and the art of the game. The book is the text used to negotiate the framework to understand the events of the game. The game is what happens at the table. The game (unless in very specific “AP” style game a la Critical Role) is a form of folk art. The book is sometimes folkart, hastily assembled in google docs, stapled together so on and so forth, things in the DIY sphere I typically run in. However, overwhelmingly it is no...

 I made this because I like damage matrices and I made sure to keep the average damage the same with each weapon. Damage modifiers are applied after the damage is rolled, and not to the d6 roll itself. PDF for Home Printing

  I’ve been thinking about the Caverns of Thracia recently, and I played in a session of wolves upon the coast. HD 4 AC as Chain Damage as Weapon The hounds of war rarely go hungry. A fragment of the meals begin to slowly bubble in their psyche, soon walking on four legs no longer fits. They become war.

  Seeing no real leads on learning more about the cult of YGSÐÐ, the group decide to simply leave the city. With a muledrawn cart they ambled Knorth, the city’s local fields abuzz with summer work all in preparation for winter. Passing through the village of Yad Uzov, they find themselves surrounded by the exiles of Ux Qorath, mutants all bearing some felinoid traits. Amyl inquired if there are any problems that a group of heavily armed people could solve, a villager with one human and one cat eye mentioned brigands to the Knorth. “How much would you be willing to pay for that problem to be solved?” “We don’t have anything to pay” responded the villager “but you bring their leader’s head to Ux Qorath? That appeals you to the nobility” “I see.” Following the road through the woods and out into more Üvian grassland. The unsetting summer sun provided no shade as their bodies all began to tire. Camp was set up and they began preparing to set up camp. 400 yard away Jezebel the ow...