jacinto adventures, amateur hour, demon, encounters, intro, is this gonna work, magic, monsters, occult

katabatic age

Shin Megami Tensei/Annihilation/Stalker citycrawling mashup modeled after Pearce’s Troll World.

// THE NEW AGE
In the depths of the environmental and resource crisis of 20XX, the discovery of a fifth esoteric phase of matter, upon which the laws of physics act weakly but the principles of perception and desire act strongly, promised a path to a better future. Wonderful machines and miraculous technologies, new cities clear of the rising water, humanity’s eyes once again turned to space, all with a price that did not reveal itself until too late. As esoteric substances filled the oceans and esoteric particles filled the atmosphere and esoteric fields tangled with the Earth’s own, all the shadows of the human mind, nightmares, rumors, figures from the old stories, took form and will and pried apart civilization. This new technology did not bring a Golden Age, or an Age of Humanity, but an age of dreaming deep without waking, an age of drowning in the collective unconscious, a Katabatic Age.
from Akira

// THE KATABATIC ZONE

The heart of the end of the world, where esoteric pollution is strongest. A mutating mirage-city build from the dreams and memories of its dead inhabitants, sometimes as clean and new as it was in its heyday, sometimes dilapidated and vine-chewed, its dimensions expanding and contracting so that circumnavigating it might take a week or a year or forever. It is occupied by dream-beings, eidola created by the city’s dead inhabitants: nightmares given flesh, heroes and monsters from the old stories, saints born from the prayers of the dying, archetypes aggregated from a billion human minds, kaleidoscopic psychic artifacts that corrode reality just with their presence. Rumor has it that in the deepest and strangest parts of the Katabatic Zone, there are eidola as intelligent and coherent as humans, who plot against each other and the humans who made them. The one certainty and constant of the Katabatic Zone is that a great deal of money can be made by conducting expeditions into its depths–information, instrument readings, and esoteric substances taken from the Zone are all extremely valuable on the black market. 

// CUATROS SANTOS

A small city living in the corpse of a big one. Bright paint on old plaster, new plaster on old cinder block, new cinderblock on tired foundations. Neighborhoods sprung up beneath orphaned overpasses, jury-rigged locomotives coughing diesel smoke as they follow routes that once belonged to electric monorails, pickup trucks and motorcycles blast down cracked highways that once carried thousands. And looming above it all, from the corners of the city, the four colossal namesakes of Cuatros Santos, skyscraping eikons forming an esoteric mechanism that just barely keeps the city from collapsing beneath the weight of so many human minds.
from Dorohedoro

// CHARACTERS

 Step 1: Roll or choose your background and make note of your favored attribute and starting skills.

job
preferred attribute
starting skill
employee
appeal
bullshit, linguistics
gearhead
intellect
engineering, computers
PI
physique
athletics, streetwise
delinquent
speed
driving, larceny
esper
psyche
mantia, science
merc
combat
firearms, first aid
Step 2: Roll 2d6+6 for your favored attribute. For everything else, roll 3d6 in order. Attributes are Appeal, Intellect, Physique, Speed, Psyche, and Combat.


Step 3: Max HP = 6. Make a Psyche/Mantia check. If you succeed, you have 1 Nous Die.

Step 4: Determine starting gear. You start with five items a competent shoplifter could get out of a Walmart and a random weapon. Italicized weapons can be hidden, bolded weapons require two hands. You can find armor and more gear on your misadventures. Guns are available, but illegal and hard to find.

roll
weapon
1
machete [d6/d6]
2
sword [d8/d6]
3
baseball bat [d4/d8]
4
switchblade [d4/d8]
5
hairpin [d4/d6]
6
chef knife [d6/d6]
7
mall sword [d4/d6]
8
crowbar [d6/d6]
9
signpost [d8/d6]
10
bicycle chain [d6/d6]

from Michiko and Hatchin

 // SHADOW SCIENCE
Mantia is the shadow-science manipulating esoteric phenomena and entities. If you have a Nous Die, you can roll to start with one random Mantic trick. Mantia is extremely illegal in Cuatros Santos, but you can learn Mantic tricks from samizdat manuals and cooperative eidola. If you don’t have any Nous, imbibing (and surviving) esoteric substances, surviving eidolon attacks, spending time in esoteric fields all might give you some.

from Toujin Kit of Genius Party anthology

1. Summon
Instantiates an eidolon of [dice] levels or fewer you have made a contract with. You can dismiss it at will unless it has failed a Morale check since you last summoned it.

2. Apotropaic Tone
Sing a low note note bearing a repulsive polarity, requiring eidola to make an Aptitude check to get within [dice] yards of you. Lasts for as long as your voice lasts. Eidola that succeed their check can ignore the tone until the next time you use this ability.

3. Beckoning Tone
Sing a low note that bears a compelling polarity, requiring eidola within [dice] yards of you make an Aptitude check or reveal themselves and approach you in their true form. Lasts for as long as your voice lasts. Eidola that succeed their check can ignore the tone until the next time you use this ability.

4. Esoteric Lens
Form a simple loupe in the form of a translucent stone in your clenched fist. If gazed through, reveals eidola and esoteric fields within [dice] yards. Lasts for [dice] turns.

// NEGOTIATION
Roll Disposition Die + Faction Die on below table to determine encountered NPC’s reaction. Disposition Die is how the NPC views the party/leader/interlocutor personally, so stuff like high Appeal or cool clothes help. Faction Die is the party’s credibility with the encountered NPC’s organization or alignment. Both start at d6 and raise or lower based on various factors. 

roll
reaction
2
hostile – attack
3-5
unfriendly – attack in 1 round without a good reason
6-8
uninterested – ignore the party without a good reason
9-11
talkative – will help the party for a good reason
12
amused – will help in the party for a decent reason

Human hirelings and contracted eidola are a key component in surviving in the Katabatic Zone. PCs can’t have more allies (whether they are humans or contracted eidola) than 1/3 their Appeal score, rounded down. If an ally is endangered, compromised, or insulted, their employer may be required to make an Appeal check to not lose their loyalty.

from Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse

// DAMAGE AND WOUNDS
Notice how each weapon in the list had two dice? The first is the Damage Die. If an attack lands, roll it and subtract the value from the target’s HP like normal. Easy. Being reduced to 0 HP means you have to make a Physique check or die, and are incapacitated still on a success.

The second is the Location Die which determines where the attack lands. Some weapons are more deadly/lends themselves well to clonking people on the head, and so have a better Location Die.

  • A location that’s been hit has a minor wound. Until it’s patched up with a turn of effort, any action that requires using that body part has disadvantage.
  • A location that has an untreated minor wound that gets hit again has a major wound, which means it any action that requires using that body part has disadvantage until you spend time laid up to heal.
  • Further injury to a location with an unhealed major wound renders it useless. If it’s your head or torso, you’ll also need to make a Physique check to see if you die, and are still incapacitated on a success. If you’re alive when the smoke clears, you may have permanent consequences.

roll
location
1-2
legs
3
Torso
4-5
Arms
6+
Head

Armor is per hit location and reduces all incoming damage by its Armor Score. An attacked reduced to 0 damage does not injure its hit location. A turn’s rest in a safe place restores 1d6 HP, as does resting in a dangerous place and eating a snack.

// MISADVENTURES

  1. Shady Dr. Sepulveda has a standing offer for esoteric substances and artifacts extracted from the Katabatic Zone. The Administration that runs Cuatro Santos certainly frowns/prosecutes such exercises, but she pays pretty well.
  2. Sepulveda’s bitter rival Dr. Jimenez wants eikonometry readings from the Seventh Heaven, a particularly rarefied region of the Katabatic Zone ruled by eidola born from a desire for order. He’s willing to pay quite a bit for your trouble.
  3. Word on the street is that a commando expedition armed with exoskeletal Frames never came back from their mission into the Katabatic Zone. Whatever got them is probably still lurking, but it sure would be sweet to have a mech or two.
  4. Somebody’s been constructing eidolon familiars from dream-stuff and selling them to gangs inside Cuatro Santos as obedient heavy muscle. Old Man Ramiro will pay good money to anyone who can shut down his rival’s suppliers, especially since the Bureau of Affairs has started sniffing around.
  5. The Bureau of Affairs is keeping something really tasty in one of their labs not far from the edge of the city. Nobody knows what it is, but everyone knows it’s valuable. Up for a heist?
jacinto clerics, flowerland, is this gonna work, magic, new barbary, occult, san serafín, spell, type v

hocus pocus

An open-ended magic system I’m going to use for my simplified 5e game, but you could pretty easily hack it for most D&D-likes. Owes a lot to Pearce’s 5e ritual system.

A warlock or cleric can perform a ritual to achieve nearly any effect, as long as it pertains to a Ritual Court they belong to. The casting time of a ritual depends on its intensity, value, and utility; the more expensive and difficult the ritual’s effects would be to achieve using mundane means, the longer it takes to perform the ritual.

by Berta Lum

A ritual’s difficulty is determined by the value of the goods or services it replicates. Warlocks make a CHA check and clerics make a WIS check.

If it’s no dearer than a copper piece: DC 12 and take a Turn
If it’s no dearer than a silver piece: DC 14 and take an hour
If it’s no dearer than a gold piece: DC 16 and take a day
If it’s no dearer than a platinum piece: DC 18 and take a week
If it can’t be had for love or money: DC 20 and take a month, from new moon to full

As an example, if a Annie Oleander of the Ritual Court of Ash wants to kill a rival from afar, she might decide to fill his house with poisonous smoke. Because hiring an assassin to kill someone costs more than a gold piece, she must pass a DC 18 Charisma check and take a week. Unburning a spent torch, on the other hand, would only take a Turn and require a DC 12 check , because a torch can be bought for a copper.

Duration
A ritual’s effect has a usage die that represents its duration. Each time the ritual’s effects are used or strained in some way, check the die. Ritual effects are fleeting and the die should be checked frequently; a ritual-created sword might be checked every time it is used, while a golem created by a ritual might be checked every time it takes damage. The poisonous smoke Annie Oleander conjured would be checked every time her victim finished reciting a Bible verse or opened a window for ventilation.

The sacrifice a cleric or warlock offers as part of a ritual determines the size of the ritual’s usage die:

  • 1d4: requires nothing
  • 1d6: 1d6 HP in blood, a favor that takes a brief part of a session, or a component worth at least a copper piece
  • 1d8: 1d8 HP in blood, a favor that takes the better part of a session, or a component worth at least a silver piece
  • 1d10: 1d10 HP in blood, a favor that takes an entire session, or a component worth at least a gold piece
  • 1d12: 1d12 HP in blood, a favor that takes several sessions, or a component worth at least a platinum piece

The Ritual Courts

  1. Ash
  2. Mud
  3. Grass
  4. Corpses
  5. Beasts
  6. The Sun
  7. The Moon
  8. The Dark 

 

    jacinto classes, flowerland, magic, new age dnd, new barbary, occult

    something is wrong character creation

    strange beings come out to make mischief in the weirding light of the spiral moon
     

    A super-pared down 5e-ish thing for Flowerland/Weird Florida. Checks are the typical 1d20+ability score mod+proficiency bonus (if applicable), but classes are more thematically defined packages of proficiencies instead of discrete lists of skills and abilities. Magic is an unreliable accretion of superstitions rather than a very formalized list of abilities, and HP is a small, easy come/easy go buffer between mobility and death. All of this should fit the mood better than the more high fantasy feel of rules as written 5e D&D.

    ABILITY SCORED
    Roll 3d6 for Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Use the following ability score modifiers. If your modifiers have a negative total, you can reroll all of your ability scores. Once you have a viable character, you can swap two ability scores of your choosing.

    HIT POINTS 
    Don’t exist. We are using the endurance/stopwatch system. Everyone starts out with 6+CON mod EP.

    • You can recover EP equal to your hazard die by resting an exploration turn (triggers an encounter check). Each time you rest, your max EP reduces by 1. Eating a ration lets you recover EP without losing any points from your maximum.You can’t take a rest in situations that are draining your EP.
    • You recover all of your EP, and you max EP returns to normal, when you take a long rest in a safe place.
    • You gain +1 max EP when you level up.

    CLASS/BACKGROUND/PROFICIENCY
    Your proficiency bonus is +2, and increases by +1 every 4th level. Add your proficiency bonus to tasks your class is good at. The listed die value is your Hazard Die, which determines how much EP you can recover when you rest and how much your weapon attacks deal.

    1. Cacique [1d6] bullshitting, winning contests, brawling, barking orders, making friends/rivals, etc
    2. Warrior [1d8] fighting, climbing, swimming, jumping, athletics, etc
    3. Thief [1d6] picking locks, picking pockets, sneaking, climbing, etc
    4. Cleric [1d4] performing apotropaic rituals, speaking with authority, praying to spirits, etc
    5. Witch: [1d4] performing dark rituals, inuiting, animal handling, bargain with spirits, etc
    6. Hunter: [1d8] ambushing, marksmanship, tracking, naturalism, hiding, etc
    7. Scholar: [1d6] knowing languages, history, teratology, medicine, etc
    8. Diva/Adonis: [1d6] dancing, singing, seducing, conversing, distracting, etc

    EQUIPMENT AND INVENTORY You start with 3d6×10 dollars. $1 = 1 sp. Buy stuff off of the LotFP equipment list. 

    We are using this inventory system.
    SAVING THROWS
    Basic ability score checks. Pick one saving throw; you can add your proficiency bonus to it.

    MAGIC/RITUALS
    Anything that we would recognize as a spell from D&D is far beyond the capability of humans, and generally requires the intercession of a god or demon. Rituals are slower and quieter and subtler, but they are also powerful rules the supernatural world must abide by. Anyone can try to perform a ritual, but people who spend their time close to the supernatural (witches and clerics) are better at them.

    Players do not get to see the list of rituals. They discover rituals as rewards, by accident, in books, through rumors, by joining factions. Some are common and most people know about, some are kept secret by powerful organizations. Players will be part of an adventuring Company that will help explain why a new crop of characters might know a bunch of weird rituals after the last group got a TPK.
    • [simple] rituals are easy to do. You just need the right component and the right action, like throwing salt on a monster or chanting a certain phrase. Some simple rituals people perform on accident, and this can be dangerous.
    • [complex] rituals are hard. They require a lot of practice and knowledge. Making a talisman, reciting a long passage of holy writ, or inscribing a pentagram just right are all complex rituals. They take a month to learn from a tutor or a text. Complex rituals are easy to perform incorrectly, and this can be dangerous.
    • [apotropaic] rituals are the rites clerics use to drive back the supernatural and defend humanity. When they require a check, use WIS. When they require a saving throw, the DC is 8+WIS mod (+proficiency bonus if ritual caster is a cleric)
    • [dark] rituals are the rites witches use to have their way with the world. When they require a check, use CHA. When they require a saving throw, the DC is 8+CHA mod (+proficiency bonus if ritual caster is a witch). These rituals are often illegal.
    • Players can perform impromptu rituals if they make sense. If someone is bitten on the arm by a werewolf and the cleric makes a rosary tourniquet, it is ritually potent enough to work even though it’s not listed below. These might have high DCs, or the victim might get advantage on the saving throw.

    purity rite [apotropaic] [simple] Cast salt on an impure creature (devils, demons, undead, fey, etc). They must make a CHA saving throw or flee for a turn.

    warding rite [apotropaic] [simple] Pour salt in a circle around you. Impure creatures must make a CHA saving throw to cross it. Lasts until disturbed or you leave the circle.

    nazar [apotropaic] [complex] DC 14 Spend a long rest and 10 gp making a blue eye bead. Anyone who carries it will have advantage on saving throws versus curses. It cracks the first time its bearer is the target of a curse, whether or not they succeed the saving throw. If a would-be creator fails a check to make a nazar, all nazars they have already made lose their power.

    casket rite [apotropaic] [simple] Seal a coffin with silver nails. If the interred has the will and ability to rise as a restless corpse, they must make a CHA saving throw to succeed and will not be able to try again if they fail. If a witch is trying to raise them, they must make a CHA saving throw before they can attempt it, and cannot try again if they fail.

    revenant rite [dark] Bury someone with a smoldering piece of cypress charcoal on their chest, and they will return as a restless corpse. If they don’t want to come back, they cane make a WIS saving throw.

    ill rite [dark] [simple] Cast grave dirt on a human as you whisper a cursed syllable. They must make a WIS saving throw or suffer a wasting illness, losing 1 EP a day until they die.

    rite of calling [dark] [apotropaic] [simple] Summon a corpse by calling its name at night at the edge of the woods, the mouth of a cave, the bank of a river, or the shore of a lakeThey may or may not be friendly, and if they don’t want to come they may make a CHA saving throw to avoid the summons.

    red ribbon rite [dark] [simple] tie a red ribbon to a bound or incapacitated spirit (fiend, fey, elemental, undead, celestial). It must make a CHA saving throw or consider you its master. It can remake the saving throw every time your orders humiliate it, place it in danger, or require it to violate its nature.

    shrine rite [dark] [apotropaic] [complex] spend a turn building an impromptu shrine from ritual stones to a spirit (fiend, fey, elemental, undead, celestial) to communicate with it directly. You can ask it to cast a spell, perform a task, guard you, reveal a secret, etc. It may or may not be friendly. Each spirit has its own shrine rite, and they must be learned separately. Ritual stones may be reused.

    jacinto classes, LotFP, magic, occult, rituals, table

    lamentation final fantasy

    that stupid tonberry shanked your summoner before she got all the words out, and now whatever it was she was trying to call up is coming out wrong.

    from final fantasy tactics a2

    How Is Your Summoner Ruining Ivalice? 

    1. RAMUH. He’s gnarled arms and twisted hands, with skin like lightning-blackened bark, braided into concentric rings. They spin like a confused gyroscope around a lone eye, brilliant with the spiteful white flare of a lightning strike.
    2. SHIVA. She’s a storm of pale blue flower petals, each frozen stone-hard and razor-sharp. They ring like crystal when they strike each other, producing a beautiful, piercing tone that hurts the roots of your teeth and makes your nose bleed.
    3. IFRIT. He’s a creeping patch of consumption, a heaving mass of cinder and charcoal that burns without flame or light everything it touches. Sly yellow eyes well up out of IFRIT as he slides forward, quickly boiling away to nothing from the heat of his internal flame.
    4. MADEEN. She is an endless rotting blossom of wings: swan wings, bat wings, insect wings unfurling, growing, and putrescing off of her shoulders. They twitch and flap, but do not allow for flight; she uses them to drag her limp body on the ground, leaving a trail of black ichor behind.
    5. FAMFRIT. He is a silhouette in the distance of a rainstorm, a shadowy figure seen only in the reflection on the lake’s surface, he is slender black hands rising up from the waters, dozens of them, dragging in fishing lines and nets and boats and swimmers, he is a great slick bulk resting at the bottom, where it is too dark to see.
    6. CARBUNCLE. She is a strange and contagious growth, painful cysts filled with crystallized pus, garnet buboes and diamond teratomas that tear at the flesh around them, epidemics of priceless corpses and hospital massacres.
    jacinto fairy, intro, is this gonna work, magic, occult, Pernicious Albion, spell, type v

    MAGICIANS: THE MAGICKING: THE RPG

    Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is a very good novel that you should read. I have been wanting to run a game based on it (Austen pastiche in moody Napoleonic-era Britain; wicked fairies, whimsical magicians, intrigue, kidnapping, murder) for quite some time; my setting Pernicious Albion is me turning it into a D&D game. I have been wanting to run something more true to form, but it’s a bit tough. Magicians operate in quite a different scale than most people; one of my favorite parts of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is a footnote where the author tells us Spain considered demanding reparations for one of the main characters after he rearranged a fair chunk of its geography.

    Ars Magica and Fate are obvious solutions, but I’m not too hot on actually running them. This is a bullshit hack, but its starts to get at the feel I’m going for.

    Character Creation
    Make a 5th edition character. Pick human as the race, and do not pick a class. You are all Magicians.

    Magicians start with 10d6 Magic dice. This represents the strength of their sorcery. They can temporarily lose Magic dice through exertion, but they can never have more than their maximum.

    Magicians do not have a set list of spells. Each time they cast one, they determine what it does by assigning dice to its Duration, Range, Area Of Effect, and Intensity. Each category must have at least one dice, and can have up to 5. The total number of dice assigned to a spell cannot exceed a magician’s current Magic dice.

    Once a magician has determined a spell’s effects, they roll all of the assigned dice.

    • When a dice comes up 6, the magician removes it from their pool of Magic dice until they take a long rest.
    • If a number of dice greater than a magician’s level come up 1, the spell is a botch. Something happens, and it is related to the spell’s effect, but only incidental to what the magician wanted to happen.

    Casting a spell does not expend Magic dice unless they come up a 6. Unless the spell is a botch, the spell always works, even if the magician loses or runs out of dice.

    The following charts state how many dice a magician must assign to a given category in order to achieve a given effect. All spells use the same Duration, Range, and Area Of Effect Tables, but no two spells use the same Intensity table.

    Most of the tables are self explanatory. Area Of Effect details the size of the area effected around the actual spell. Intensity (each Intensity table is listed with each spell) details the greatest creature, object, or concept that can be affected by the spell. If a magician has an Area Of Effect that encompasses an entire city but an Intensity of “a torchfire” when casting the spell It Burns, they could put out every candle in town. If Intensity ever seems to encroach on Area of Effect, just use whichever the magician has placed more dice in.

    DURATION

    1d6 A moment
    2d6 A day
    3d6 A week
    4d6 A month
    5d6 A year and a day

    RANGE

    1d6 an arm’s span
    2d6 a stone’s throw
    3d6 shouting distance
    4d6 within sight
    5d6 out beyond the horizon

    AREA OF EFFECT.

    1d6 all within an arm’s span
    2d6 all within the range of a thrown stone
    3d6 all within shouting distance
    4d6 all within sight
    5d6 all to out beyond the horizon

    Spells
    There are, of course, far more spells than this. Magicians start with 3.

    Utterance of Black Feathers
    Allows a magician to perform feats of manipulation, transformation, summoning, and destruction pertaining to crows.
    INTENSITY

    1d6 one crow
    2d6 thirteen crows
    3d6 a murder of crows
    4d6 crows to cover a field
    5d6 crows to blacken the sky

    Breath of the Holy Earth
    Allows a magician to call forth, direct, and banish wind. (+Alex Chalk gets credit for this one)
    INTENSITY

    1d6 a draft
    2d6 a breeze
    3d6 a gust
    4d6 a gale
    5d6 a whirlwind

    It Burns
    Allows a magician to enkindle, throw, extinguish, shape, and otherwise manipulate flame.
    INTENSITY

    1d6 a torchfire
    2d6 a campfire
    3d6 a bonfire
    4d6 a funeral pyre
    5d6 a housefire

    Fingers of Night
    Allows a magician to create, shape, and banish darkness

    INTENSITY

    1d6 a shadow like that of a passing cloud
    2d6 the gloom of a thick forest
    3d6 night, just as the last of the sun is leaving the sky
    4d6 a moonless night
    5d6 a darkness heavy enough to be felt

    Greatest Folly
    Allows a magician to ignite, strengthen, diminish, and twist feelings of affection.

    INTENSITY

    1d6 Delight
    2d6 Friendship
    3d6 Infatuation
    4d6 Craven Obsession
    5d6 Love

    Really should put up a setting sketch, but I’m tired and don’t feel very good so eh. Tomorrow maybe. Here’s some pictures of magicians.

    the Lackaday Twins (not actual title, by John Singer Sargent)

    John Pharoah, Ursurper to the Northern Throne (not actual title, from El Shaddai)

    Lord Umberlin of  the Bells (not actual title, from etrian odyssey)
    Claude the Gaul, wanted in 10 counties for violating the course of history (from Persona 5, not actual title)
    jacinto classes, clerics, demon, djinn, LotFP, occult, original dungeons and dragons, san serafín

    a god is a kind of monster

    This blog is slowly turning into an extended and not very good meditation on how clerics work, so bear with me while I get it out of my system. I’m working on some dice drop tables that could actually be of use to someone for next post. I recently did a reread of the Games With Others archives, so this post leans on Pearce’s work here.

    SO:
    Fighters solve problems with violence.
    Thieves solve problems with trickery.
    Magic-users solve problems by knowing things, or, depending on how you see it, breaking the rules.
    Clerics tend to exist in this space between  fighters and magic-users: they have okay spells and an okay capacity for violence. This is perfectly fine, but when I crunch clerics down to the aesthetic core that actually appeals to me, I get:

    Clerics solve problems by getting someone else to do it for them.

    Reading over the Original Dungeons and Dragons rules, the 2d6 reaction check was originally used to determine the outcome of transactions, rather than a more general way to figure out an NPC’s attitude towards the players. This meshes well with the idea of clerics doing things by proxy, but I think there is a better, easier, and more satisfying way to do that then my old warlock class.

    From Monstress 1. written by Marjorie Liu,, art by Sana Takeda
    Spirit Medium

    Progression
    HP, XP, attack bonus, saving throws as Cleric. Equipment restrictions as magic-user.

    Commune
    You understand and can be understood by any monster, even if you do not share a language.

    Bargain
    Influence a monster or band of allied monsters. You can do this to soothe hostile creatures or extract services from neutral to friendly ones. To Bargain, you must offer the monsters some form of payment and then make a reaction check. Mediums can only do this once per band of allied monsters per encounter. 

         2: The monster becomes hostile and attacks. If it was already hostile, it attacks the medium.
         3-5: The monster refuses the offer, or continues its current course of action.
         6-8: The monster refuses the offer, but will reconsider if the medium gives better terms.
         9-11: The monster accepts the offer.
         12: The monster accepts the offer and gives the medium its name.

    by Bertha Lum

    This is predicated on the medium offering suitable terms. Monsters pretty universally accept fresh blood (d6 HP worth for something simple like getting them to cast a 1st level spell, help in a fight, give information on the locals, or settle down if they have only a few HD, but a major secret, protection for a whole adventure, or calming a dragon could require quite a bit more); however, if the medium has an item appropriate for the monster (rare incense for a mummy, or a flower for a dryad, for example), they can use it as payment instead. These items are quite probably expensive, but they also encumber as at least 1 significant item each. Mediums can also offer to kill rivals, track down treasure, restore shrines, observe a taboo, whatever. Referees should feel free to have monsters make suggestions.

    Summon
    When you knows a monster’s true name, you can call it forth whenever you wish. Chant its name, carve its name into the ground, burn a paper doll with its name on it, whatever. A Turn later, it shows up, stepping out of a shadow, welling up out of the earth, or scuttling down from the ceiling. You can then Bargain with it.

    Miracle
    If a monster knows a spell, you can Bargain for the ability to cast it once.

    Mitsukuni Defying the Skeleton Spectre Invoked by Princess Takiyasha by Utagawa Kuniyoshi

    The way I use “monster” here presupposed a Princess Mononoke-esque animist universe where animals, gods, and monsters all sort of exist on the same spectrum. Mediums shouldn’t be able to use Bargain on a bandit (though it would be fun to put otherwise human magic-users in the monster category, now that I think about it). If you’re going for a more naturalist feel, you could limit Bargain to only explicitly supernatural critters (ghosts, djinni, elementals, etc).

    jacinto adventures, classes, garden, is this gonna work, LotFP, monsters, npcs, occult, san serafín

    that old time religion

    “Later he saw Jesus move from tree to tree in the back of his mind, a wild ragged figure motioning him to turn around and come off into the dark where he was not sure of his footing, where he might be walking on water and not know it and then suddenly know it and drown.”
     from Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood

    Thinking about this post. Also thinking about Mononoke. The standard old school D&D cleric worships an impersonal, benevolent god. That’s an okay model, but I like the idea of deities as more present, dangerous, and visceral. A little more animist, I guess. Clerics can befriend gods, or form grudging alliances with them, or press them into service. Sometimes, clerics have to kill them. In this model, gods are NPCs and spells and adventures in one, and they influence clerics (shamans really, I guess) in direct ways.

    Anyways, here’s a sketch of what this would look like:

    She rebelled against her masters, so they tied her to a tree out in the scrub and left her there to die. When she finally became too tired to kick away the coyotes, when she had nothing but three days of hunger and three days of thirst, when her will to live exceeded anything her body could do, she swore by the blood in her mouth and then sun in her eyes that there would be a reckoning.

    There is a tree in courtyard of the mayor’s house in the village of Segundo. It grows the most remarkable red flowers and draws the most remarkable red butterflies. The mayor ignores them, but every morning he pours a bottle of excellent red wine on the tree’s roots, and girdles its trunk with another red sash. He is a fine man, the nephew of the old lord, so the Segunderos ignore these eccentricities, but they wonder why he would lavish so much attention on a tree while ignoring the fruits of his labor, or why he would grow so fearful when he found out the merchant wouldn’t be bringing any shipments of wine for the second season in a row.

    La Dama Roja, Goddess of Blood and Sunshine
    AC 16 HD 3+1 MV 90’ (30′) ATK Spear DMG 1d8+1 ST Fighter 3 AL Chaotic
    Spells, at will: Light, Command, Cure/Inflict Light Wounds

    The true name of La Dama, the one that will let a shaman make a pact with her, is carved into the trunk of the tree in the mayor’s courtyard, beneath the dozens of tattered red sashes. If the shaman botches the pact-making ritual, she will do her best to brutally murder the mayor, who was the man who tied her to the tree all those years ago. If the shaman helps her kill the mayor, her Loyalty will increase by d4. 

    If a shaman wishes to extract a favor from a god without making a Loyalty check, they can make it an offering. La Dama accepts only blood. A small task, like casting a 1st level spell, participating in a fight tipped in the Goddess’ advantage, or translating the words of a creature that can’t communicate with humans, might require d6 HP. Major favors, like casting a 5th+ level spell, joining a fight with desperate odds, or revealing a powerful and ancient secret, might require 5d6 HP.

    The Goddess of Blood and Sunshine makes a Loyalty check or requires an offering when the shaman violates one her her taboos in front of her, or when the shaman asks her to violate one of her taboos:

    • BEG NO PARDONS
    • SHOW NO MERCY
    • BOW TO NO ONE
    jacinto classes, LotFP, occult, san serafín, spell, table

    Meet the Witch

    A class! This is another draft of one I’ve done before, except I cleaned up the layout a lot. This art is by Alphonse Mucha–the previous picture by neev is going elsewhere in the zine now.

    click me i get bigger

    You can get a pdf of the witch class here.

    And yeah, I’m thinking that San Serafín is going to get some sort of print release. I’ve finally figured out the look of it, I think.

    jacinto angels, LotFP, occult

    Lamentation Overdrive

    Lamentation Overdrive: mech fighting game in LotFP’s Worst Timeline historical fantasy setting. As in

    • Lamentation Overdrive: Borgia’s Banquet
    • Lamentation Overdrive: The Beast of Gévaudan
    • Lamentation Overdrive: War of the Roses
    • Lamentation Overdrive: Rise of the Anti-pope
    • Lamentation Overdrive: Tudor Returns
    • Lamentation Overdrive: The Revenge of John Dee
    • Lamentation Overdrive: Meat Festival
    from bayonetta

    Angelus Drive
    Stolen tabernacle, inscribed with inverted Enochian and adapted as an angel-prison. Requires heavy occultum shielding or else leaked hieric radiation slowly transforms all nearby objects and creatures into perfect golden spheres

    from final fantasy

    Bazeries Battery
    A puissant unanswered question, locked away behind an impossible cipher; allows a mech to run on ultra-efficient epistemological potential energy, but if anyone cracks the code or answers the question, the mech immediately shuts off.

    Epistemological Array
    Allows the mech to teleport, but only to the precise spot your opponent least expects. Frequently lands inexperienced pilots in the center of the sun.
     

    from bayonetta

    Nephilim Frame
    Skeleton of an antediluvian giant, bleached with holy water and wired together with adamant. It’s almost indestructible, but not quite as dead as one would hope.

    The Wicker Man
    Pagan-built mech chassis. It’s fireproof, and in fact eternally burning, but the only fuel it takes is humans. 
     

    from bayonetta


    Wodewose
    Lobotomized greenman; staggering healing ability allows implanted weapons to be incorporated just as easily as with a constructed chassis, but requires a huge amount of opium to maintain cooperation.

    Aegis Ray
    Medusa head mounted inside an optical device with rotating lenses; one magnifies, increasing area of effect but reducing range and petrification speed; the other focuses, creating a needle-thin, long-range beam of ultra telluric energy.

    from bayonetta

    Bomb of Gilead
    A thrice-blessed and thrice-burned vessel of aromatic wood; can be activated once per day to temporarily disable all non-divine magic in a short radius around the mech.  


    Paracelsian Contract
    Legal documents penned in human blood allowing a mech pilot to call on elementals for service. The number of times they can be used depends on the clarity and quality of the contract’s writing, as well as how much the pilot is willing to pay.

    • Sylph are immaterial and non-violent, but they can be used for reconnaissance purposes. They require decadent confectionary and elaborate meals as their price–baby giraffe pâté, 1,000 perfectly fried hummingbird tongues, the broiled brain of an albino jaguar.
    • Salamanders are hot enough to burn anything, and will swarm over and through an enemy mech at the signatory’s request. They require horrific acts of arson in return for their service.
    • Undine allow the mech pilot to travel safely underwater. They require wealth to be dropped into the deepest parts of the ocean, though they occasionally demand mass drownings
    • Gnomes refuse to partake in this insanity.
    jacinto encounters, miami, modern, nephilim, occult, Pop Tartary, pseudomonarchia

    MIAMI PSEUDOMONARCHIA

    This was a bit of a challenge since all the photos has to be creative commons. Not sure how well it turned out, but it was an experiment.

    MIAMI PSEUDOMONARCHIA
    Fortean Horror and Occult Investigation in South Florida

    Something is wrong with Miami, something is wrong with you, you have become unstuck from the world and nothing is right. Your friends forget your face, strangers know your name, the graffiti addresses you as a friend and voices call for you from static and dial tone. 

    HAPPENINGS
    There are old women in chintz dresses, they crawl about on all fours and follow you through the streets. Nobody else notices them and you don’t know what happens when they catch you.

    There’s been a man walking in circles around your block for the last month. He ignores you when you try to stop him, but blood is welling out of his shoes and he is as thin as a famine victim.

    There’s an angel trapped inside the walls of the office down the street from your apartment, or at least it tells you when you walk past. A lot of people have been jumping off the roof of that building lately.

    You notice children have been paying the ice cream man in teeth, and what he’s been giving him sure doesn’t look like popsicles.

    A man has been murdered in the alley behind your apartment every night for the last week. The exact same man, at the exact same time, and the police never answer when you call.

    When they tried to raze the old theater, it bled like a living thing.

    All children who live on a single block have begun speaking ancient Greek, to the exclusion of all other languages. Their dialect and accents are eccentric even for scholars, but they seem to be trying to warn you of something.

    A local genetics researcher is in a bit of trouble. They thought they were developing extra-wooly sheep, but now the lambs speak, and do so with the voice of multitudes

    Whenever you try to use a phone, the God In The Wires talks to you. It has very peculiar and very specific demands.

    FOR STARTERS
    You know the name of one of the orishas. Your parents taught you to say their name just right.

    You saw what they did in the church basement every Sunday night, and the memory still follows you, deep black and indistinct.

    Last year you woke up with a hangover and a tattoo of stylized eye on the back of your hand. Its pupil is the most remarkable shade of blue; it hardly looks like skin.

    You had to get vaccinations for international travel recently, and the nurse gave you an extra injection before you realized it wasn’t supposed to happen. You remember the needle dripping something oily and black.

    You only have the faintest memories of your mother. They don’t quite make sense, and whenever you think about her too hard, you get a bad nosebleed.

    You tried to kill yourself at one point. You woke up in the hospital, but you distinctly remember it working.

    ATTRIBUTIONS

    • Dromedary Camel by Dallas Krentzel https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/31867959@N04/4355606704/
    • The Gentleman’s Ritual II by Gabriele Negri https://www.flickr.com/photos/nimahel/7456854198/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/
    • The Surfer by Bill Dickinson  https://www.flickr.com/photos/skynoir/7985457219/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/
    • Efeito Borboleta by Jaaiiro Souza https://www.flickr.com/photos/jairojoker/12388079333/  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
    • Miami Beach by Ricymar Photography https://www.flickr.com/photos/ricardo_mangual/5758714155/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
    • 03.22.ManHunt.WP.SBM.5mar05 by Elvert Barnes https://www.flickr.com/photos/perspective/25975610/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
    • miami by Kevin walsh https://www.flickr.com/photos/86624586@N00/10174559/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
    • Albino Alligator by Matthew Paulsen https://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewpaulson/13117317195/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/
    • e pluribus unum by sherber 711 https://www.flickr.com/photos/sherber711/2452736107/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/
    • Palacio de Vizcaya by Jorge Elias https://www.flickr.com/photos/italintheheart/4017460039/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
    • Miami Herald Demolition by Phillip Pessar https://www.flickr.com/photos/southbeachcars/15335017002/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
    • City of Miami with Miami beach in background by Kent Wien https://www.flickr.com/photos/flyforfun/2127317967/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/