Nothing's RPG Zone

  Someone in the Goodman games discord server asked about changing DCC to not have monsters roll to attack but instead have player characters roll to defend. Here is how I would do it Convert player character armor class to descending, this means a +2 agility bonus translates to  an unarmored AC 8. Wearing full plate means that you subtract 8 from your AC instead of adding. When a character is attacked they make an armor roll against an attack's difficulty class. Their armor roll modifier is their armor class. Each attack has a difficulty class determined by what the traditional attack modifier is. This is calculated by subtracting the attack bonus from 20.  To succeed at an armor roll the player character must roll under the difficulty class, similar to luck. A natural 20 still means a critical hit and a natural 1 still means a fumble. This system keeps in place ascending monster armor class. If the lack of parity there annoys you you could also conve...

  I recently got done reading the first of the Imaro book by Charles R Saunders. Wonderful book, you should read it. I wrote up two of the spells I saw in the book for use in Dungeon Crawl Classics  If you want a PDF of this it can be found here.

  I recently did a solo hexcrawl of The Wilderlands of High fantasy using Dungeon Crawl Classics. I ran the game one in game day per real life day. I didn't use any special solo rules, I just used standard Basic Expert encounter procedures and a set of playing cards called into the weird. Let me tell you how things went down.   Day 1 Helane wakes in the middle of the woods. Her head pounds, she doesn't know where she is or what she was doing before hand. Unwilling to die in the woods she begins heading north, finding her way into a grasslands with a river heading east. She sets up camp, 4 rations left. Day 2 As the night went on she noticed light's and smoke from a town directly north of her. Not wishing to ford the river she follows it upstream into the hills. There she finds an adventuring party of 7 or so huddled around a wounded beastman. With uncertainty wracking her she makes contact. Realizing she is a wizard they ask her if she is come from the order of...

The first adventure for the upon the northern isthmus campaign setting has been released. I don't post about it much but it does exist a quite extensively in my brain. You can find it as a free blogpost on my itch.io with downloads of a pdf version being available for purchase. https://500poundsofnothing.itch.io/whatliesbelow

  Wide-eyed peasants tell tales of horrible chain encrusted creatures, their flesh bleeding as the metal digs deeper and deeper into them.. Chain devils, they chant. They are not entirely wrong. However the bound is not the denizen of hell, the bound in their victim. The chains themselves are what puppet these corpses. Their purpose is inscrutable but their means are simple, kill and puppet a moral victim, kill as many other mortals as they can and drag them back into the pits of hell. When not puppeting a corpse the chains of hell take on the form of a great serpent. Chains of Hell, Serpent Form (Type II Demon): Init +3; Atk Bladed Bite +10 Melee (1d12+5) or Tearing Tail +6 Melee (1d8+Bleed), Grapple +5 Melee (Bleed); Crit Dn / d6; AC 18 (Metal Nature); HD 5d14; MV 40’; Act 1d30 + 1d16; SP Demonc Traits, Demonic Combatants, Bleed, Variable Nature, Puppeting; SV Fort +6, Ref +6, Will +2; AL C. Demonic Traits: As a Type II Demon a chain of hell can speak, read mind...

  Opening the door they are greeted to a dark staircase leading down to a pool of water below.Yulia lights her lantern as the go into the inky and rotting depths, calling upon her gods to warn her of evil to come they inspect the room. Far above them are sleeping bats, below them a pool of water. The proceed quietly Heading deeper and deeper down the stairs is a door bearing bronze carvings of a tall gaunt figure, typical of the long dead Lilituan empire that built these tombs. Pushing the door open the group is greeted by a massive stone statue of yet another tall figure, carved in grey stone with two red gemstone eyes. Licorice feels the engraving on the base of the statue can just tell on a level she cannot fully explain, she reads aloud “Bow down your timorous worms, bow down before the emperor” Giancarlo heeds this warning, taking a look up and down the statue before attempting to bow, however as his head goes up his eyes lock with the gemstones and he feels himsel...

  Heading back to the Wildling’s Head Inn the crew connected a plan. Licorice and Giancarlo use their combined skills to create a document bearing the official marks of Mr. Radoslav Neville in hopes of bringing it to Adolfo to let them gather more information. Forged documents in hand they make their way back to the Munce Shipyard. Calmly, Adolfo takes out some miniscule reading glasses from his breast pocket, and quickly reads the documents. He puts his glasses back into the pocket. “I know that this isn’t Mr. Neville’s signature.” Giancarlo panics “Of course not, he is a busy man he just had someone else sign in his place” “We don’t take kindly to liars here” Yulia mutters under her breath attempting to call upon her animist gods, hoping to unleash a potent paralysis, but in the city the spirits are weakened, and is unable to do much of anything. “Get your hands off me” Adolfo Snarls. Holly she’s her chance and decks him, hitting him right in the t...

  The Dreaming Lake Chimera To create a chimera roll to determine how many d10 HD it has. Roll 1d8, dice explode. A chimera hasas follows. An initiative bonus equal to HD-3 A 1d20 action die for every two heads, and a 1d14 for each tail it has. It begins with Atk Bite HD+3 Melee (2d4), Claw HD+2 Melee (1d6), Tail Attack HD+1 Melee (1d5) on tier 1 (2 heads, 1 Tail) but for every tier above that it gains +2 to all attack rolls and +1d to all damage dice. 40’ movement. It begins with Fort +4, Ref +2, Will +2 at tier 1, but for every tier above that it gains +3 Fort, +2 Ref, and +1 Will. Saves forced by the chimera are DC 7+HD. Result 1-4 2 Heads, 1 Tail 5-7 2 Heads, 2 Tails 8-10 3 Heads, 2 Tails 11-13 3 Heads, 3 Tails 14-16 4 Heads, 3 Tails 17-19 4 Heads, 4 Tails 20-22 5 Heads, 4 Tails 23-32 5 Heads, 5 Tails 33+ Ever shifting as if all results. 1d20 Heads Baboon: The chimera knows the languages of man. Bear: The chimera’s...

  My friends and I recently got done with a project we called the Eastlake Survey. I created a very bare bones hexcrawl and a small empty bestiary to accompany it. We were to fill out the bestiary and then using then fill out the hex crawl making sense of the world via the monsters that were written. If you would like to do the same thing (something that we all had a lot of fun doing mind you) then you can follow the instructions below. The Monsters Chimera Demon Doppelganger Dragon Dwarf Elemental Giant Ghost Goblin Golem Gnoll Invisible Stalker Lizardman Orc The Map   The Keys Only consult these after you have completed the bestiary. It's given in markdown, this can be opened in any simple text editor or in your markdown editor of choice (I use ghostwriter). The Eastlake Key

 Heading towards the docs the group gets lost. Wishing to find their way quickly Richard begins asking one of the people near them on the street if they know their way. They are only half there and they soon realize they have stumbled their way towards a hidden opium den in the city. Not wishing to get involved in opium at the moment they leave. Wandering some more they find a man wrapped in bandages begging for coin. After they give some they begin asking for directions to the dock and he provides them with ease. Richard tries to lighten the mood with some jokes but it doesn’t work. As they leave the beggar tells the group that he is Swithin Berlioz. Upon arriving at the Munce Shipyard the group heads to the main office building and begins talking to a man behind the counter named Adolfo. After a brief amount of talking, posing as one of the people who had their goods damaged by the loss of the Saint Demelza, it becomes clear that Adolfo is cagey about discussing Mr Nevill...

Mindflayer He sucked off a singular the minions from illumination animation. This is but one of the many paths a man may walk to leave mortality behind.

  Chapter 2: The Hunt for Radoslav Neville Only a few survived the trip back, things from below waited for them. For a month they laid low in the Wildling’s Head Inn. Biding their time. They gathered their strength, Rorschach and Holy began to spar with each other slowly building up their martial prowess, Giancarlo began to study the space inbetween space, Liquorice began using her blindness to run confidence scams, and Yulia began to worship the old heathen ways.  Needing to know who it was that sabotaged their ship they begin to hatch a plan. They will head to the Piskaro Stock Company to see if they could find any information on the manifest of the Saint Demelza. Following the instructions of the trusted barkeep, Kastor, they made their way without incident to the stock company building. Standing outside the looming brick building were two foreigners smelling of brine and perfumey wildflowers. Liquorice, wanting to practice her thieving abilities, bumped...