OSRBA Topic Tuesday 3/25

(Hmm, maybe OSRBA should be OSRBOA?)

Today's OSR Blogowners Association Topic Tuesday topic:

Recovering Traps with Illusion

I Hide the Blade of Power in Your Stomach!

I know I suggested that this week’s OSRBA Topic, “Hiding Artifacts inside Villains”, would be an excellent way to talk about relics or items that are a part of a villain: slay the monster, crack open its skull, and there’s the Gem of Many Worlds or somesuch.

But there’s another possible interpretation: what if you want to get rid of a malign artifact in a really horrific way: inside the flesh of your enemy! What are the chances that the Blade of Malignant Evil will inflict its curse on a villain who’s been stabbed in the chest or abdomen? What about a purple worm that swallows a cursed pearl?

First, let’s assume that evil artifacts, and even mere cursed items, that do not kill a victim, but are left stuck in a wound, will actually sink into the victim’s flesh when no longer held as a weapon. They will creepily cause the wound to stitch back together (no damage healed, but bleeding rules no longer apply if these are in use.) So the Blade of Malignant Evil is essentially going to burrow into the victim’s body and seal up the entry wound behind it.

After that, it all boils down to a reaction roll.

2d6 roll	Embedding Effect
2	Cursed 4d6 Days, then Spawns Evil
3-5	Full Curse
6-8	Partial Curse from Artifacts
9-11	No Curse 4d6 Days, Reroll at +2
12-13	No Effect
14	Victim Afflicts Curse on Others

Some explanations of the necessarily brief entries:

Spawn Evil means that monsters burst from the victim’s belly, skull or other location where the artifact is located, causing death in some cases. Use the spell level of the curse or dice of samage for a cursed weapon as the monster level and roll on the appropriate chart… so a cursed object that polymorphs its user into a toad (4th level spell) would cause a random 4th level monster to spawn, while one that petrifies the victim (6th level spell) would cause a 6th level monster to spawn.

Partial Curse applies only to artifacts. An “ordinary” cursed dagger that embeds itself in a victim’s flesh would have no effect for at least 4d6 days on a reaction of 6-8. Artifacts, however, are so powerful, they will have a reduced curse effect.

Reroll: On a Good reaction (9-11,) the victim lucks out, at least for a while. However, after 4 to 24 days, the curse will try to rear its head again. Add +2 to the reaction roll on this and any further rerolls (not cumulative.)

Curse Affects Others can only happen on a reroll, since it is outside the 2d6 range. Congratulations! You just gave your enemy a special ability! The curse doesn’t affect the villain, but instead affects those the villain touchs.

Written with StackEdit.

OSR Blogowners Association Topic Tuesday 3/18

Today's OSR Blogowners Association Topic Tuesday topic:

Hiding Artifacts inside Villains

This would be an excellent time to write up monsters whose skulls, gold fillings, or peglegs are items of power.

Automating Topic Tuesday

As you may or may not know, Logan Knight recently whipped up some code to make your own computer-generation tables, and Paolo Greco added a bookmarklet function so that you can create your own tables to either drag to your bookmark bar or embed in a blogpost.

So, of course, I had to turn the OSRBA Topic Tuesday generator into an automated link. Behold!
OSRBA Topic Generator

(EDIT: Fixed. There's also a link in the sidebar that works.)

It’s different from the original tables in a couple of ways:

1. Prepositions are now randomized.
2. Objects of prepositions are no longer linked as
   closely to the rolls that generate the first two
   words (in other words, it’s as if you roll the
   d12, d4, and d8, then roll a separate d12 and d8.)

I did try to keep the weights the same, however, so “Dungeons” will be rarer than “Monsters”, and “Weirdness” wil still be rarer than “Wood”.

Ferreting Out Heavenly/Hellish Infiltrators

Here’s my take on this week’s Topic Tuesday selection: you’ve got a follower. henchman, or hireling who acts a bit mysterious and you suspect might secretly be an angel or demon in disguise. Is there a way to figure this out?

First, the set-up: When you acquire the follower, the GM as usual determines loyalty in secret. Those with fanatic loyalty are definitely not secret supernatural emissaries, because fanatics would tell you. (I’m tempted to say even the +1 and +2 morale followers aren't emissaries, but I’ll let that pass.) For those who are less than fanatic boosters of your cause, the GM determines whether they act mysterious or ordinary, and rolls for alignment (I’d use a d6, 1 = Chaotic, 6 = Lawful, everything else is neutral.) Mysterious, non-neutral followers get 2d6-7 secret bonus levels of cleric ability: those with at least 1 secret level were sent by Heaven or Hell to join you for some unknown purpose. Half of your mysterious, non-neutral followers will just be creepy but ordinary.

So, you have a mysterious follower. Detect Evil might help, but might give a false positive. What you could do, though, is consult a sage or study religious/occult texts for clues identifying supernatural emissaries. Things like “infernal emissaries don’t cast a shadow by the light of a blessed candle.”

But even this information should not be fool-proof. The emissary might be clever enough to hide the telltale signs. The GM should use the lower of your Intelligence or Wisdom (or just Wisdom, if you consulted a sage … and the sage is accurate.) If this score is higher than the emissary’s Wisdom, or both Wisdom and Intelligence for infernal emissaries (they’re liars!) then you can automatically spot the signs when you look for them. Otherwise, you spot the signs on a 5+ on 1d6.

Written with StackEdit.

OSR Blogowners Association Topic Tuesday 3/11

Today's topic:

Studying Followers from Heaven or Hell

OSRBA Random Topics Table

My first act as president of the OSR Blogowners Association is to tackle the problem of stale topics. There are certain topics which get repeated endlessly and regularly, generally every 3 to 6 months. we all know the topics: ascending vs. descending armor class, race as class, skill systems, meaning of hit points, and so on. There’s nothing wrong with rehashing old standards, but they are being rehashed too frequently.

This is a clear indication that we need a central topic authority.

Therefore, as president of the non-rabbit-centric OSRBA, I am instituting a weekly, mandatory Topic Tuesday for all OSR bloggers. Every Tuesday morning, the president will randomly select a topic that everyone must write at least one post about. The topic will be posted here and on Google+, to make it easily available. The procedure will be to roll a d12, d4, and d8 and consult the following table to create a two-word phrase:

roll	d12	d4+d8
1	Creating	(n/a)
2	Exploring	Wilderness
3	Tricking	Traps
4	Fighting	Followers
5	Looting	Villages
6	Studying	Spells
7	Magical	Monsters
8	Hiding	Hoards
9	Negotiating	Nuisances
10	Recovering	Resources
11	Controlling	Artifacts
12	Wandering	Dungeons

Next, the results of the d12 and d8 rolled above will be added and used on the following table to look up a prepositional phrase to modify the main two-word phrase:

d12+d8	of/for/in/with …
2	Weirdness
3	Random Tables
4	Fire
5	Vices
6	Secrets
7	Pleasure
8	Heaven or Hell
9	Gods
10	Robots
11	Disembodied Brains
12	Wood
13	Jokes
14	Fantasy or Illusion
15	Villains
16	Space or the Stars
17	Madness
18	Knighthood
19	Nature
20	Reason

If a rolled topic is a repeat of a topic already used in the last six months, the two-word phrase will be kept, but the d12 and d8 will be re-rolled to select a different prepositional phrase. If the second attempt is also a repeat, a Topic Amnesty Period will be declared, during which anything goes.

All blogowners will have 1d6 days to post something on the randomly selected topic or be fined 3d6 zorkmids.

Written with StackEdit.