jacinto Uncategorized

New Weird Bossa Nova

Gunslingers wandering a war-torn archipelago. House del Sol, of the Art Nouveau island-city of Isle del Sol struggling against House Nocturne, of the Gothic pastiche island Chateau Nocturne, over a long-vacant throne. Buried treasure, pirates, island barrow-prisons, hadopelagic nightmare gods, brujería, saloons, and wacky homebrew classes.

  1. What is the deal with my cleric’s religion?
    1. Lady Midday, the feverish sunstroke goddess. Can turn creatures of Night.
    2. Lord of the Blue Hour, the somnolent dreamer-god. Can only turn other creatures of Twilight.
    3. Mother Midnight, an alien goddess with an affinity for the occult. Can turn creatures of Day.
  2. Where can we go to buy standard equipment?
    1. Isle del Sol, Babel and Chateau Nocturne both have large, prosperous metropoles, but there are towns and villages scattered across the smaller, unnamed islands
  3. Where can we go to get platemail custom fitted for this monster I just befriended?
    1. The House of Nocturne specializes in monsters, so the Midnight Anvils of Chateau Nocturne are your best bet. If you can’t make the trip, the Jade Forges of Isle del Sol are second best in the business
  4. Who is the mightiest wizard in the land?
    1. The Summoner Arzak and his spirit legions have been a thorn in the side of both Houses for centuries. He resides somewhere on the Isle of the Unknown, and is not fond of visitors.
  5. Who is the greatest warrior in the land?
    1. The gunslinger Django is said to have killed the dragon Ruin with a single bullet. He is the current leader of the Knights of Noon. His only rival is Beest, a wily shapeshifter, who, according to rumor, can transform into a kraken.
  6. Who is the richest person in the land?
    1. The thief Carazul is said to have almost incalculable wealth locked away on her pleasure-island.
  7. Where can we go to get some magical healing?
    1. You can get nearly anything on Isle del Sol, Babel and Chateau Nocturne, but everything in these places have strings attached. If you want more benign assistance, track down a wandering mendicant. It isn’t easy, though.
  8. Where can we go to get cures for the following conditions: poison, disease, curse, level drain, lycanthropy, polymorph, alignment change, death, undeath?
    1. Exotic problems require exotic solutions, so all of these afflications might require lengthy shipping/hunting trips. To raise the dead, you must find or create a gate to the Netherworld and haul out the deceased yourself.
  9. Is there a magic guild my MU belongs to or that I can join in order to get more spells?
    1. The Verdigris School is a non-partisan college for magic-users, witches, and summoners. Their tuition isn’t cheap, though.
  10. Where can I find an alchemist, sage or other expert NPC?
    1. Chateau Nocturne, Isle del Sol, or Babel, of course, but if you have a question you really can’t find the answer to, you might have to track down a wandering scholar or even travel to the mainland to talk to the Wyvern of Vornheim.
  11. Where can I hire mercenaries?
    1. The Twilit Desperados have lodges in all major cities and many towns, and are always willing to provide help for cash. You can find cheaper hirelings of course, but they aren’t nearly as professional.
  12. Is there any place on the map where swords are illegal, magic is outlawed or any other notable hassles from Johnny Law?
    1. Babel’s Basileus is not particularly stable, and possesses a particular hatred of magic, iron, and cubes.
  13. Which way to the nearest tavern?
    1. All directions. Any town worth the name will have one, but Babel’s Cabinet of Wonders is the oldest and best tavern in all the Isles.
  14. What monsters are terrorizing the countryside sufficiently that if I kill them I will become famous?
    1. Killing any one of the Never-beens (deep-sea, reality corroding nightmares that make long distance ocean travel nearly impossible) will outright make you legendary.
  15. Are there any wars brewing I could go fight?
    1. The perennial conflict between House del Sol and House Nocturne, of course, but rumor has it that the Blue Queen of the undine is planning to take back the city of Old Thalassus from the Never-beens.
  16. How about gladiatorial arenas complete with hard-won glory and fabulous cash prizes?
    1. Many with martial talents make names for themselves by winning duels, but the Black Pearl Fields in New Thalassus offer all sorts of bloody entertainment.
  17. Are there any secret societies with sinister agendas I could join and/or fight?
    1. The Klatch is society of discrete allies, none of whom want the House del Sol or House Nocturne to rise to power. There are others, of course, but you aren’t likely to hear about them.
  18. What is there to eat around here?
    1. Lots and lots of fish
  19. Any legendary lost treasures I could be looking for?
    1. The Last Breath of King Byrne
    2. The Black Sword Nysse, said to be so sharp it can cut past from present
    3. The Madman’s Enchiridion, resting in the underwater library of Old Thalassus
  20. Where is the nearest dragon or other monster with Type H treasure?
    1. The Lich-Pirate and its treasure are trapped on an island somewhere to the west, but no one knows exactly where it is.

jacinto Uncategorized

I am a barbarian at the gate



One of my players really really really wants mermaids in our game once we resume in the fall. My first reaction was that mermaids are perhaps a bit precious, but on the other hand, who am I to say no?

In any case, I don’t think my players are really liking my pet setting, so I think I might go for something a little bit more classic DnD. 

Locations

New Thalassa
The Coral-Spired City and the undine’s capital. It straddles the shore, with its greater area deep underwater. Land-dwellers who wish to do business with the Undine may converse with them in the Dry Quarter or on palace-barges off the coast.

Old Thalassa
The Obsidian City, built ages ago with long-lost volcanic magic. It has been claimed by the Never-been, malign deep-sea beings that also captured the undines’ goddess. It was abandoned nearly overnight by its inhabitants, so its wealth still remain, beneath crushing pressure and total darkness.

Cathedral of Catastrophe
Church of the undines’ (relatively) new patron deity, Rasp, the stone-headed god of calamity. Travelers willing to perform a service for the Disastrous Bishops can secure safe passage over sea, protected from both storms and the grasp of the Never-beens.

Enemies of the Undine

The Deep Sisters
Sea-witches skittering across the abyssal plain astride their spider crabs, bringing false life to whale falls and snatching the souls of drowned sailors. Include The Bathyal Ladies, Mother Midnight, Agony Aunt, the Hagfish Medusa, and the Angler Queen

Bathyal Lady
HD: 6
AC: 16
Attack: 1d8 (claws) or 1d6 (bite)
Movement: 120’ feet in water, 10’ on land
Bathyal Ladies are warped cousins of the undine, with the lower bodies and jutting jaws of a viperfish. They are photophagic, able to snuff all light sources within 100 feet, gaining 1d8 HP per source in the process. This can raise their HP above its normal maximum value. 

The Never-beens
Hadopelagic un-gods that ooze out of cracks in causality at the bottom of the world. They captured the Glass City of Old Thalassa centuries ago, and the goddess of the undine with it. Their influence makes all but the most cautious sea travel impossible. Include The Sans Seraph, Terror Doll, The Rickets Merchant, The Murder Swan, The Wicked Unravellers

Wicked Unraveller
HD: 4
AC: 14
Attack: d4 (touch)
Movement: 60’
Wicked Unravellers are human-shaped holes in reality, appearing as dark silhouettes swathed in unravelling rags. On a successful attack, they destroy a single piece of mundane equipment. If the victim has none left, the Unraveller un-happens something else, like the victim’s name, memories, senses of taste, or color. Wicked Unravellers move in water as easily as land.

Undine NPCs


The Blue Queen
Ancient undine and last surviving priestess of their nearly forgotten goddess. She is a mostly benevolent tyrant, but has no tolerance for anyone that risks breaching the security of her city. She has many agents across the continent, all of whom are eager to put ambitious adventurers to good use. Her plans to reconquer Old Thalassa do not necessarily square with the interests of land dwellers.

Wages-of-sin
Priest of Rasp with an apocalyptic bent. Lives in a human village, trying to root out a diabolist that has been sickening livestock and ruining crops. He will reward anyone willing to help, but he is very tight-lipped about his past in New Thalassa.


I think that maybe this is edging into the special snowflake specialization that LotFP seems to opposed to, but I don’t know that I care. My friend wants to play a mermaid, and so a mermaid she will have. In any case, this could easily be changed to make a somewhat non-shitty bard, which is a sequence of words I thought I would never say.

Undine, a class for LotFP

HP and Saves as Cleric, XP as Magic-User
Undine have the upper body of a human and the lower body of a fish. Because their tail is powerful and nearly serpentine, they can move normal speed on land and in water. They can breathe both air and water, as well.
An undine can sing to put enemies to sleep. An undine’s song can affect anything that hears it.
When a target hears an undine’s song, they must make a Save vs Paralysis with a penalty equal to half the undine’s level. If they fail, they fall motionless until roused or they succeed another Save vs Paralysis, which they can make every round.
An undine can affect a number of HD of enemies equal to their level with a single song. Singing requires complete concentration; an undine cannot move or make any other action on the turn they sing.
jacinto classes, is this gonna work, LotFP

Complete Arcane is completely terrible

It’s interesting fitting homebrew into LotFP’s paradigm. Its classes are very spare—the four main classes each have this one Thing That They Do, and they get better at it every level, but they can’t do much else. So making a class that fits into LotFP means you have to boil a class down to a single mechanic. I don’t know if I will be including any of this in my current game, but I want to get it on paper so I can stop thinking about it.
Okay, so first thing is two things.
  1. Warlocks from 3.5 are not very good.
  2. This short is charming:
It also demonstrates nearly everything a warlock is trying to be, minus the diabolism. The witches are blasty-shooty magic-users that have a wide array of tricks they can use as much as they want.
Witch, a class for LotFP
From Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together
 HP as Magic-User, Experience as Specialist, Saves as Cleric
All witches have a wand. They require it to cast spells. They can cast as spells as often as they wish. A spell can affect anything within 100 feet of the caster. A spell can do the following:
  • Replicate the effect of any simple weapon, tool, or mechanical object, such as a torch, grappling hook, bow and arrow, or ladder.
  • Manipulate an object. The witch uses Charisma in place of Strength and Dexterity.
A Witch can cast simultaneously a number of spells equal to 1 + half level. The maximum number of spells they can have active at one time is also 1 + half level. Otherwise, spells last until dismissed. 
I like shapeshifting characters in theory, but in practice, it seems to require a lot of paperwork. I think LotFP’s one-class-gets-one-ability structure works well in this case.
 
Beast Child, a class for LotFP
HP, Experience, and Saves as Fighter
Beast Children can turn into creatures. In order to be able to turn into a creature, a Beast Child must
  • Have a level greater than or equal to the creature’s HD.
  • Possess some part of the creature, such as a tooth, scale, or bone.

A Beast Child can have a number of forms equal to 1 + half level. If they exceed this limit, they must choose which forms to keep and which to discard. They can regain lost forms by reacquiring the corresponding creature part.They can transform as much as they like. It takes a full turn to turn into a creature. When in the form of a creature, Beast Children:

  • Keep their max and current HP, saving throws and attack bonus.
  • Gain the Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, of the creature
  • Gain any special abilities the creature possesses.

jacinto is this gonna work, Pernicious Albion, spell, table

A Pernicious Shortcut


Agrace, The Not-World, God’s Garden, the Vestibulum, The Third Kingdom

The shortest route between any two points is through Agrace. Some say it was once the Garden of Eden, abandoned by God since the Fall. Some say it is the Raven King’s third domain (after England and Faerie), leased from Lucifer until the Apocalypse.  Still others think it is simply a cosmic midden, where the refuse of Creation molders once it has served its purpose. Regardless, it is a perfectly interstitial space; it shares topologies with all worlds. All nations share a border with it; all rivers eventually drain into its ocean; all roads lead to its causeways. Enterprising magicians have found a way to use this to their advantage.
There are no teleportation spells in Pernicious Albion. Instead, magicians in a hurry must pry open a door into Agrace. This, naturally is extremely dangerous.
Agrace is silent and almost completely empty; its plains are a dark red, its seas a bitter green; its forests twisted and tired and grey. The sky in Agrace is always a pale gold.  There are neither rain nor clouds in The Third Kingdom.
Weirding Gate
Magic-User 3
Duration: 5 minutes, or until dismissed by the caster.
Creates a doorway between Albion and Agrace. Anything can pass through the gate as long as it fits, and remains in Agrace until it can find an exit. Distance works differently in The Third Kingdom, and so every mile travelled in Agrace translates to two miles travelled in Albion. 
By Zazisław Beksińki; a gnostic titan

 Denizens of Agrace are as dangerous as they are uncommon. There is a 1 in 10 chance of having an encounter per day. I will stat these up over the next few days.
  1. Corpus Inverter
  2. Debased Sorcerer
  3. Gnostic Titan
  4. Microcosmic Sun
  5. Travelling Fairy Lord-roll 1d4 (1-Duke of Sighs; 2-Bone Knight; 3-The Lady Electric; 4-The Lazarus King)
  6. Chaos of ravens
  7. Eternal haruspex
  8. Infernal dignitary-roll 1d4 (1—Alrinach, Whose Domain is Shipwrecks; 2—Agares; 3—Adramelech, the Hypocrite; 4—Ahriman)
  9. Heavenly ambassador-roll 1d4(1–Zephekiel, who rules Mercy; 2–Jophiel, guarding a tree; 3–Remiel, searching for a relic; 3–an angry cherub; 4–one angel and one demon, fighting)
  10. One of the winds-roll 1d4 (1—Boreas the North Wind, 2—Notus the South Wind, 3—Eurus the East Wind, 4—Zephyrus the West Wind
  11. Travelling Vampire Lord
  12. The Wild Hunt
  13. Bewitched Knight
  14. Splinter of Imperium
  15. The Green Knight
  16. Displaced djinn
  17. Servant of Steel
  18. Diminished god
  19. Dragon
  20. Death  

As a note, this is entirely based off of a footnote in Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

    jacinto Carcosa, items, LotFP, Pernicious Albion, treasure

    Treasure

    I like magic items that go away when used. It makes them more valuable and interesting to the players, and I don’t have to worry too much about accidently turning the party into a bunch of superheroes.

      
    FOUR THINGS YOU MIGHT FIND IN A DRUID’S LAIR

    Wrathful Countenance
    A lacquered wooden mask bearing an expression of ineffable rage. Whoever wears it grows to a prodigious size and gains:
    • 1d10 temporary hitpoints. These are tracked separately than normal HP, and damage depletes them first.
    • +2 to attack rolls
    • A strength score of 18
    • A Charisma score of 3
    The mask cannot be removed until all of the temporary HP are depleted, at which point all other bonuses and penalties vanish and the mask cracks in two, falling to the ground.
    Gurning Poppet
    A small straw doll with a terrible grin stitched into its face. If a body part of an intended victim—a hank of hair, a nail clipping, a drop of blood— is pressed into the doll, and the doll is set alight, the victim will burst into flames and takes 3d6 damage.
    Flower Slave
    An large and delicate blue blossom with petals folded into the shape of a face. Once crushed, it releases a fragile but swift warrior, which will obey whoever destroyed the flower. It has the following statistics:
    Armor Class: 18
    HD: 1 (1 HP)
    Move: 120’
    Alignment: Chaotic
    Saves: 13 in each
    Weapon: Deals d4 damage. Roll 1d4 for details: (1-rose whip, entangles on hit; 2-venom spear, target must make Poison Save or take -2 to hit for a turn; 3-willow switch, enrages enemies with low intelligence; 4-filigreed bow, range as longbow
    Somnolent Bell
    When struck, this glass bell produces a stultifying tone, forcing all who can hear it, including the user, to Save vs Paralyze or fall asleep for d10 minutes. This shatters the bell.

    jacinto classes, is this gonna work, Pernicious Albion

    Druids

    I never liked druids because they always seemed like medieval ecologists. This is silly because I am pretty sure that if I lived in medieval Europe I would think more about nature red in tooth and claw than nature as a place where you have talking animals and babbling brooks and wind in the trees. If I were a medieval peasant and I heard an animal talk to me I would get an exorcist.

    I want a druid more in line with the creepy ones Julius Caesar talks about, what with the blood and guts and weird rites in the wilderness. Burning wicker men in the dark.


    Druids are not magical hippies. They do not care about nature. They do not like animals. Druids do not study in wizard school. They do not meditate in temples. They do not memorize spells or petition deities for miracles. Druids track down the numinous and kick the shit out of it until it does what they want.

    From Etrian Odyssey

    HP as Fighter, Saves and XP progression as Cleric  
    Druids summon and bind spirits. Doing so requires sacrifice—they must wound themselves for d4 damage to call forth a spirit with 1 HP, +0 Attack Bonus (AB), 12 AC, and 14 in all saves. Calling up a spirit takes a full round. A spirit under a Druid’s control will obey all of their verbal instructions to the letter.
    Greater wounds attract and snare more powerful spirits—for every additional d4 HP the Druid sacrifices during the summoning, they can do one of the following:
    ·         increase the spirit’s HP by d6
    ·         increase the spirit’s AB by 1
    ·         increase the spirit’s AC by 1
    ·         reduce the spirit’s saves by 1
    Druids can summon as many spirits as they like, and spirits last until dismissed or destroyed, but Druids cannot recover any sacrificed HP if they have any spirits under their control.
    At level 1, Druids can pick one of the following:
    Flame Spirit: you know the Old Word for fire, and can entrap spirits of heat and flame. Spirits you summon shed light like a torch, and can ignite flammable objects at will.
    Grave Spirit: you have a talent for snatching souls from the afterlife. Spirits you summon can reanimate bodies and skeletons, giving them +1 HP for every HD the creature had in life.
    Sight Spirit: you can see through the eyes of spirits you summon at will
    jacinto Uncategorized

    A setting

    I bought Carcosa a while back. There was a lot I liked about it, but a lot that was either too tedious or too icky for me to put into my game directly. So I started sticking in Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Like, rituals are more “convince this deranged fairy to help you instead of turning you into an antimacassar” rather than “throw an orphanage into a volcano and summon yet another scabrous mass of tentacles.”

    So.

    PERNICIOUS ALBION = CARCOSA + JANE AUSTEN + ENGLISH FAIRY TALES
    Pernicious Albion is England where the pagans never died out, the Romans never left, and the aristocracy keeps their sterling silver sacrificial knives in the cupboard next to the fine china. 
    The capital city is New Londinium, a city of black stone and alien geometries. It is filled with opera houses, opium dens, and shrines to the Outer Gods. Its ruler was once called Queen Victoria, but now she is the Midnight Mother, and worshiped as a goddess of forbidden knowledge and bodily transformations—the factors that led her to gruesome apotheosis. 
    New Londinium’s power is unchallenged, but the many mouths of the Queen often whisper contradictory instructions into the ears of her courtiers, and so the wilds are as lawless as they are radioactive. There are four fairy-warlock warlords marauding through the wastelands of Carcosa, each powerful, each unstable, and each hating the other three with psychotic passion. They are The Regent of Midnight and Noon, who directs his clockwork horde from his clocktower at the End of the World; Pretty Tyrant, a deposed goblin prince with a taste for human flesh and an army at his back; Gogma, the last and most splendid of the Sea Giants; and the Red King of Roses, who lives in the carved shell of a gargantuan crab.
    Classes:
    Fighters are like this

    Magic-users be like this.
    Clerics are like this.

    Specialist!

    Druid
    There are also Knights, which are reskinned dwarves, Paladins, which are reskinned elves with Cleric spells, and Rangers, which are reskinned halflings without the weapon restrictions. 
    Inspiration: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Pride and Prejudice, Comentarii de Bello Gallico, “The Call of Cthulhu”, Skyrim: Dragonborn