Liber Zero Reaction Rolls Reference Sheet (PDF)

Here’s the first Liber Zero PDF of 2020: the LZ Reaction Rolls reference sheet. It gives a description of how and when to use reaction rolls: encounters, negotiations, haggling, loyalty, morale, and even a short suggestion for the weather. I figured I needed to knuckle under and get this one done next because I’ve been working on the Hybrid/Priest class and realized “it would be nice to refer to the reaction rolls reference when describing the priest’s ability.”

One important feature of this pamphlet is that it’s the first one to go into any detail on the LZ dice neutral approach. There are two dice roll tables in the pamphlet: one for if you want to roll 1 or more d6s for your reaction rolls, the other for rolling d10, d20, and d100. It doesn’t matter what dice you use: the plan for all my LZ-compatible material will be to refer to many tests as “needs Good or better on a reaction roll” or something similar. There’s even a brief mention that you might want to roll monster morale checks using only 1d6 instead of whatever you usually roll because it’s quicker. The benefit of keeping things dice neutral is that it’s easier to be modular. If you know that priests make a reaction roll of Good or better to turn undead, but there’s no mention of which dice to roll or what “Good or better” means, then you can replace my approach to reaction rolls with another that uses the same terminology, but different methods: roll under, dice pool, roshambeau, whatever you desire.

Oh, also: you may notice I'm experimenting with a new, cleaner, cartoon-y style for the cover art on the pamphlet. Let me know what you think.

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Regional Hex Template PDF

Did a quick PDF this morning for something requested on a forum: a hex sheet with numbered hexes and an area to record notes on what's in various hexes. This is based on a previous hex sheet I made using mkhexgrid, but I removed the megahex (it wasn't lining up) and added borders and the record area. This is good for a regional map.

Regional Hex Template

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Liber Zero Apothecary Variant Class (PDF)

I know I should get the Hybrid Class reference sheet for Liber Zero done, as well as the spell references and a few other things, but I’ve been working on this pamplet instead: the Apothecary variant class. It’s a variant of the Talent class, but instead of a thief, it’s … a chemist! Not an alchemist, mind you, although because this is an extraordinary version of a mundane profession, Apothecaries have the uncanny ability to identify alchemical ingredients, even if they can’t use them themselves. But they can make what are essential “mundane potions”: drugs, poisons, antidotes, the infamous “flaming oil”, and even explosives.

They may seem useless on an adventure, but they are as “combat ready” as a squishy magician or thief. An apothecary with a blowgun and some poison powders could be a handy replacement for a magician with a Sleep spell. A lower level apothecary with not much money can still be useful identifying poisons before anyone “researches” them the hard way, or might have enough cash for some night vision drugs.

You’ll probably need to refer to the Adventurer Skills reference sheet to make sense of the formula research rules, but they are pretty simple: decide how long you want to take, which sets the weekly cost, then the GM rolls a d6 (usually…) On 5+, it takes exactly one base time period (week, month, season.) On 1 to 4, add that many extra time periods. Figure out the total cost based on the number of weeks in that time.

    

    

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Demonic Dangers Dungeon Expander Pamphlet PDF

Here is the promised map for this week, another spooky Dungeon Expander offering for October: Demonic Dangers, a pamphlet dungeon for mid-level characters (at least 4th level, but perhaps 6th or higher would be better.) It took longer than usual to make the dungeon because I put a little more work into the cover illustration (and into the map itself, for that matter.) I probably should not be wasting this much time on the illustrations, but at least I’m learning a lot more about SketchUp.

Demonic Dangers features random simplified demons. Since the standard D&D demon descriptions are too long to include in a pamphlet dungeon, and even my condensed demon descriptions from Our Infernal Neighbors would take up too much space, I went with a mix-and-match approach using the standard animal encounters that are also in the dungeon. Demonic abilities are short and improvised. You can, of course, replace the demons in the pamphlet with whatever demon write-ups you usually use.

    

    

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Cryptic Catacombs Dungeon Expander Pamphlet PDF

Another pamphlet in the 9 and 30 Dungeon Expanders series is up! And this time, it’s spooky!

Cryptic Catacombs is an undead-themed dungeon expansion. It’s compatible with my other Dungeon Expanders, the generic towers in my tower series, or … well, anything, really. Connect this to any staircase or ladder and use this to start an instant dungeon or expand an existing one. Oh, and although the main monster encounter list has only four undead typed, I slipped in two new bonus undead.

I avoided doing a crypt-themed pamphlet (although I did slip in one generic crypt in the first expander) because I wanted to push myself out of the obvious zone. But now it’s October, and in the generous spirit of Hallowe’en, I just had to do some undead. The style has changed a little (used SketchUp to create the base levels, instead of starting in InkScape.)

    

    

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Liber Zero Adventurer Skills Reference Sheet (PDF)

I’m making a surprise Friday post to mention two things.

First, I made some corrections to yesterday’s General Abilities pamphlet and uploaded the new version. Not a big deal, just a problem with some wording.

Second… a surprise extra Liber Zero pamphlet this week! It’s the Adventurer Skills Player Reference Sheet. It starts out with a short and simple method of handling players who want their characters to have training in another skill or weapon, either during character creation or added later. This is a tiny add-on to OD&D and doesn’t change gameplay significantly. The only game effect is that trained characters can do things a little faster. There’s also a training time and cost table that looks new, but is really just a repurposing of existing rules. More on that in a bit.

The pamphlet has an additional optional system for handling characters with a little more detail in their background. This is a rewrite of the background system I’ve proposed before, and it is now better integrated with the traditional ability scores. Rolls are kept to a minimum. Again, the focus is on how long tasks take, or the ability to skip rolls you might have to make otherwise.

Design Notes You Can Skip

Back to the training table. The table is, believe it or not, based on the magical research rules. Previously, I’ve proposed using the cost to research a 1st level spell as a basis for training costs. Just divide the cost by 10. Researching a 1st level spell with a 100% success rate costs 10,000 gp and takes 1 week. So, the cost to pick up a new skill is 1,000 gp (called “coins” in the pamphlet, to make it compatible with the silver standard houserule.)

You can spend less to research a spell, and by analogy you could spend less to train in a skill. The chance of success goes down, though: it’s proportional to the amount spent per week. If you spend 20% of the full cost, per week, you have a 20% chance of success.

But I wanted to make things simpler than that. I assumed instead: When you have paid the maximum amount, regardless of whether you pay it all at once or broken up in installments, you succeed… Unless you interrupt your training, of course. Doing things quicker should cost more, but shouldn’t always work. So, how to figure out the odds?

I decided to go with the simple 5+ on 1d6 situation roll again. On a 5+, you succeed in the shortest amount of time. Otherwises, multiple the die roll by the base time to get the additional amount of time you spend. If you try to learn it all in a week and blow your roll, the worst that can happen is that it will take five weeks. Similarly, if you try to finish it all in a month, the worst case is it takes five months, and so on.

So: I set the maximum time in each case to full cost (1,000 coins) and then divide the time by the number of weeks to get the per-week cost.

• 1,000 / 5 weeks = 200 coins/week.
• 5 months = 20+ weeks. 1,000/20 weeks = 50 coins/week.
• 5 seasons = 64+ weeks. To make things easier and give players a break, I round up to 100 weeks. 1,000/100 weeks = 10 coins/week.
• 5 years = 260+ weeks. I gave everyone a break and assumed anyone taking years to learn a skill is learning on the job and not paying for training.

If a PC pays the full amount up front, they can either just call it “1 week” or, to see if they get some free time, roll for it the same as for the other training times. This means training takes 1 to 5 days.

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Liber Zero General Abilities Reference Sheet (PDF)

Today’s Liber Zero offering is the General Abilities Player Reference Sheet PDF. What are “general abilities”? The six standard ability scores, basically, although I include hints that GMs can add other abilities as well. I call them “general abilities” to distinguish them from class abilities or trained abilities. They are the abilities that everyone in general has.

Features of this reference sheet are:

• A brief run-down of what the various abilities mean. More detailed than the summary on the back of other reference sheets, but still short.
• Tables that show ability ratings and time adjustments.
• Explanation of how ability scores are used, focusing on the “high scores mean skipping dice rolls” approach, but with a mention of the optional “add ability score bonus”.

I’m torn over whether I should create individual reference pamphlets for each ability, or whether I should save that for a GM reference booklet.

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Liber Zero Heroic and Talent Class Reference Sheets (PDF)

It took a while, but I finished two more Liber Zero reference sheet pamphlets. This time, it’s character classes!

The Heroic Class reference sheet covers fighters, your basic combat class. It also includes three variant classes, which are just fighters with an extra non-combat ability: Cavaliers are masters of horse riding, Buccaneers are masters of sailing, and Barbarians are masters of the wilderness. The combat ability for all three variants is the same, so you lose nothing by picking a variant aside from a few bonus XP points. Heroes have a couple changes you won’t see in OD&D: a boost to the number of opponents they can fight when the hit dice are very low (double the usual number) and the option to use twice their Level instead of one of their physical ability scores when attempting heroic feats. Also, the Heroic class does more damage, based on either Strength or Level. In fact, high-level Heroes do more damage than the strongest low-level Heroes.

The Talent Class reference sheet covers a catch-all for non-combat, non-magical classes. The focus is on the one everyone’s familiar with: the Thief, but there are brief descriptions of two variant classes: Miners and Smiths. Unlike variant Heroes, variant Talents do not add abilities to the “main” class, in this case Thieves. Instead, they completely replace Thief abilities with roughly similar mechanics. Also worth noting: in many cases, Talent class abilities work automatically or speed actions up rather than improve a skill rating as they level up.

Since I haven’t completed a reference sheet on resolving combat or “skill checks” yet, there’s a reference that might not make much sense: some abilities are given a “High” chance of success. What this means depends on what kind of dice you roll (it’s a dice neutral system, remember?) Basically, it’s 3+ on 1d6, 6+ on 2d6, or 8+ on 1d20 (or 9+ on 4d6 drop 6s.) At least, if you are rolling target number or above. There will be other options when I get around to working out various possibilities.

If you were to use Delta’s Target 20 system instead, read “High chance” as 1d20+12 and “Low Chance” as 1d20+2.

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Urban Geomorphs: Common Quarter Block 3 and 4 (PDF)

This Map Monday, I have not one, but two new Last-Minute GM Urban Geomorphs for the Common Quarter: Block 3 and Block 4. Both are still mostly common laborers, although in Block 4, there’s a craftsperson of one kind or another.

I’ve been thinking a bit about the future of the urban geomorphs. Although unique places, merchants, and inns still make a lot of sense, if you are reusing city blocks for the residential areas – the intention of the series – you’ll wind up with a lot of repetitive intrigues going on. Part of this is because we aren’t mixing and matching houses from different blocks.

Now, you could do exactly that: swap the description of a house in one pamphlet with one from another pamphlet. But that leads to some handling problems. But I think I have a solution to make the residential areas work better, one that actually involves something I’m already kind of doing.

More on that in a future post.

Liber Zero Character Advancement GM Reference Pamphlet (PDF)

Here’s another Liber Zero reference sheet in pamphlet format: the Character Advancement GM Reference Sheet. This contains the full version of the XP modifier table and an XP/Hit Dice progression table. It also has guidelines for awarding experience points, optional XP awards for GMs that want to try something other than “kill monsters and take their stuff”, rules for going past Level 11, starting at a higher level, or switching classes, and general advice for the GM about handling experience. That doesn’t mean players can’t look at the pamphlet. though. In fact, the information is arranged so that the most relevant information for players is the first information you see when you open the pamphlet.

The XP modifier table is for my version of bonuses for high primary abilities. What I did, as you may recall, was “zero it out” and precalculate XP for a unit of treasure to eliminate subtraction and percentages to simplify the process. It’s all addition and multiplication. The version in the character card pamphlet was a “basic” version, which assumes all classes advance at the same rate. This expanded table uses a trick to boost the XP bonus for classes that advance faster:

1. Find the range for your primary ability score on the table.
2. Move down four rows if your character is Heroic class (fighter,) or down eight rows if your character is Hybrid class (cleric.)
3. Write the XP Mod in that row on your character card.

The pamphlets for each class will have custom tables that eliminate the need for Step 2.

The original game, of course, has a unique progression table for each class. Some people dump this approach and make all classes progress at the same rate, but this alters the balance between the classes. Boosting the XP bonus for individual classes is sort of an in-between approach: I can use one progression table, but fighters will progress faster than magic-users, and clerics will progress faster than fighters. It duplicates the effects of the original game without copying the mechanics.

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Urban Geomorphs: Stables 2/Common Quarter 2 (PDF)

Map Monday this week is another Last-Minute GM Urban Geomorph. Or rather, not one, but two! Urban Geomorphs: Stables 2, for a larger stable than seen in Stables 1. Room for ten horses! Or giant horned jackals, or some other mount! For this geomorph, there’s only one house. The stablemaster doubles as the farrier. The second is Urban Geomorphs: Common Quarter Block 2. More common laborers for your enjoyment!

I have to fix one or both of the first two urban geomorphs, because I found some errors. I may also post some new thoughts I have about urban geomorphs sometime later this week.

Liber Zero Adventure Gear Card Reference Pamphlet (PDF)

Time for another Liber Zero reference sheet in pamphlet format: Liber Zero Price Lists for Adventure Gear, which I like to refer to as the LZ Adventure Gear Card. Like the LZ Character Card, the pamphlet includes an index card-sized form that you cut out
and fill in, following the simple directions in the pamphlet. But this is a gear card, representing one large sack and its contents. Carrying multiple sacks means having a stack of multiple index cards.

What this means is that players can hand over one or more index cards when they drop sacks to lighten their load and move faster. If they have time or have figured it out in advance, they get to pick which cards to hand over. The GM sets the cards aside and decides whether the sacks stay in that spot or are picked up. Either way, players can find the sacks again later.

If a thief steals gear, the GM can ask the player to shuffle their gear cards and fan them out upside down, then draw cards blindly until the thief gets caught or has had enough. Thief players can use the same procedure to steal from an NPC or another player character. This can also be used for random overloaded sacks breaking.

If a thief is stealing one or more items from a sack, the gear card has numbers from 1 to 6, for six different items. Pick a card at random, then roll a d6 for which item to take from that card.

This all combines with a simple encumbrance system based on sacks. PCs can carry up to 10 sacks worth of gear. So, 10 index cards, less if wearing armor. Each numbered line on the card represents one sixth of a sack’s capacity (one bag, instead of one sack.) As long as a character carries fewer than five sacks worth of gear, movement is unencumbered. Five or more sacks halves move, and 10 sacks halves it again.

In addition to all this, there are two systems for figuring out the cost of items: a simple one on the left inside panel and one based on materials and features of items on the middle and right panels. It’s all very compact.

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Urban Geomorphs: Stables 1 (PDF)

Here’s a bonus urban geomorph pamphlet for the week: Urban Geomorphs: Stables 1, the one I hinted at yesterday. I wanted to show the difference between a residential block and a shops and services block. There would be one other kind of block, of course: a unique feature. Residential and commercial blocks can be reused within a single town or city, but unique features can only be used once each per city. (We’ll have to see if I can inject enough randomness to allow unique features to be reused in other cities…)

I also updated the common quarter block 1 geomorph. There was an error in the Random Personal Info and Quirks section: the last two entries can be repeated. This is why I used a “checked box” for those two lines and an “unchecked box” in the first four entries. You can mark an “X” in an unchecked box when it’s been used.

An aside: I hope everyone understood how those quirk lists are supposed to work. Roll a d6. Count from the first entry, skipping entries that have already been used. In other words, if the result is a 1, use the first unused entry, if it is 2, use the second unused entry. If the result of the roll is more than the number of unused entries, use the last entry.

There will, of course, be more urban geomorphs. And I was discussing with Scott Anderson in the comments what other accessories I might make to go along with these geomorphs.

Urban Geomorphs: Common Quarter Block 1 (PDF)

This week’s Map Monday is an urban geomorph, a town or city block usable in any map. Behold! Last-Minute GM Urban Geomorphs: Common Quarter Block 1. I’ve been working on this since before I posted the review and discussion of Lankhmar, City of Adventure.

My thought process was this: when I was doing the Instant Village series of pamphlets, I tried to do a town (Revelode) and mentioned then that I noticed a problem: the pamphlet format is just too tight a space for a town map, let alone a city map. If I insisted on doing towns and cities in the pamphlet format, I’d have to split the map across several pamphlets.

Which is when I though of Lankhmar and its geomorphs. One of the problems I had with Lankhmar was that I thought there weren’t enough geomorphs. There’s only twelve. That lead to the idea: “Why not do more geomorphs for Lankhmar or a similar city?” And that in turn lead to: “Why not do each geomorph as a pamphlet, so that a GM could randomly pull a pamphlet out and use that for unique locations in a city?”

The pamphlet uses several random rolls to make the geomorph reusable. There’s a random jobs table specific to this city block (everyone’s a simple laborer.) The head of the household’s name is random, as are the number of additional people living in a household. In addition to the built-in randomness, the GM can always ignore the map key and use the map for another city block with no special encounters or custom encounters they write themselves.

There will be more urban geomorphs. I will also continue the Instant Village series, focusing on villages and hamlets there instead of towns.

Liber Zero Character Creation Card Reference Pamphlet (PDF)

And now, the truth can be revealed: yesterday’s XP Bonus Table was a lead-up to this other thing I’ve been working on, the Liber Zero Character Creation Card, first of a series of LZ reference sheets. It’s a trifold pamphlet, but this time, not a dungeon or village map. Instead, it’s an index card-sized character sheet that you cut out and fill in, with simple directions in the pamphlet.

Experienced players can fill it in without much trouble, since all the terms are either identical to those in OD&D or fairly similar. “XP Mod”, for example, would be either the LZ XP Bonus (a short version of the table is included) or the percentage-based bonus/penalty from the LBBs, or just left blank if you don’t use those adjustments.

Players new to RPGs or to old school class-and-level RPGs specifically might have to consult other reference sheets I plan to make. For example, each class will have its own reference sheet, with class-specific tables for dice and level titles, class abilities, and XP bonuses. A general ability reference sheet will explain the six ability scores and ways to use them in more detail. An equipment reference sheet would include a price list and an equipment card to cut out and fill in to keep track of what’s in your backpack or each bag/sack carried.

This is really a draft version. I may think of better ways to phrase things later, or change things depending on what actually winds up in the other reference sheets.

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Bug Burrows Dungeon Expander Pamphlet PDF

Another pamphlet in the 9 and 30 Dungeon Expanders series is up! Bug Burrows. The natural, easy way to make themes for dungeon expanders would be to focus on types of living areas and work spaces: libraries and labs for magic-users, shrines and religious areas, etc. And there will certainly be some of those. However, I wanted to try something a little different to stretch the concept a bit… so I made a monster-themed expander instead.

As usual, you can connect this to any staircase or ladder, or in this case chutes and shafts, in other dungeons.

Pit Perils Dungeon Expander Pamphlet PDF

As promised, today we have another pamphlet dungeon in the new 9 and 30 Dungeon Expanders series: Pit Perils. It includes a Connection Level, so you can use it as you would the Generic Semi-Random Dungeon: add a staircase or trap door in any other dungeon and expand it, or to a random structure to create an instant dungeon anywhere. Or, ignore the level maps and just use the rooms to replace overused random rooms in the main map. You could even draw your own basic tunnel map and use the rolls described in the pamphlet to place random rooms.

The pamphlet’s theme is “pits”. All the rooms have pits of some kind: the four generic rooms have simple pit structures, the four special rooms are a little more elaborate and dangerous. The plan is to do more themed pamphlets like this, which allows you two options when creating a random dungeon:

1. Pick one or two themed pamphlets for a specific dungeon, or specific dungeon level(s), to create a unified feel to that area.
2. Start with one pamphlet as your base and shuffle the other expander pamphlets. When you start repeating rooms in the first pamphlet too much, choose another pamphlet at random and start using those rooms instead.

In theory, you can roll these dungeons during play: the random tables aren’t very complex. However, what I had in mind was that you would draw a sketch map of a planned tunnel system and place the rooms, possibly adding books or letters to locked chests or tables if your dungeon is part of some on-going adventure. Clues to a mystery, background for finding other dungeons, useful information for problems the adventurers are trying to solve. This can all be done in about half an hour, with the aid of the pamphlets, and gives you an opportunity to customize the dungeon key or monster list to make it feel less like a random dungeon.

Generic Semi-Random Dungeon Pamphlet PDF

It’s back to the dungeon grind this Map Monday, with a new pamphlet dungeon: Generic Semi-Random Dungeon, first of the new 9 and 30 Dungeon Expanders series. This new series is compatible with the generic towers in the Watchtowers of the Golden Hills series. You may remember that the random results included tunnels and stairs down. Either of these can be connected to one of the two levels in this pamphlet, allowing for a slightly larger dungeon with more variety.

You can also add a staircase or trap door in any other dungeon, either one of mine or someone else’s, published or homemade, and expand it… hence the name “Dungeon Expanders”. If you are using random wilderness generation that generates a random structure of some kind, like a cottage or ruins, you can add a trap door or stairs inside and use this as the start of an instant dungeon.

I plan on releasing another Dungeon Expander later this week, perhaps tomorrow. I’ll explain more about using Dungeon Expanders then.

FlameShout Tower Pamplet Dungeon PDF

Today’s Map Monday goes back to the non-generic towers with FlameShout Tower. No random underground structures here! No usable structures above ground, either. In fact, it’s eerily ruined…

It’s a little different from the other towers. I won’t spoil the details, but my thinking behind this one was that the other surviving weapons were not necessarily usable by PCs, unless they plan to set up base there, or come up with some clever scheme. But this tower produces renewable, portable weapons that could cause some trouble.

Side Note: Almost didn’t make it on this one. Had plenty of time, came up with the idea a week ago, had no plans for the weekend… then I was wiped out by illness. Wasn’t even online for a couple days. And I’m still woozy. But I made it through! Just let me know if there are any delirium-caused typos.

Also, I’ve added a “tower” tag to the towers to make them all easier to find.

Generic Ruins Pamphlet Dungeon PDF

Here’s the compliment to the Generic Bandit Tower and Generic Crumbling Tower. It’s the Generic Ruins trifold pamphlet PDF. Same emphasis on semi-random elements as the previous two towers to provide minor differences between two different ruins. I made the focus of each generic tower different: intact towers would be tempting to bandits looking for a defensible base, crumbling towers are easy for wildlife to take over as a lair. Ruins, though, provide less shelter, so they seemed like a good spot for standard undead remnants of the previous inhabitants.

I’ve also uploaded a corrected version of the Crumbling Tower. The link should be the same. Changes were minor, a handful of format errors that most people wouldn’t notice, a spelling error or two… but I did leave off “webs” on the entry for giant spiders. You probably could have guessed that, but still…

Some thoughts about developing the three generic pamphlets: I picked the state of repair of the tower as a way of categorizing the generic versions because the non-generic towers I’ve created themselves come in different states of repair:

• Death’s Kiss and CorpseBrood Towers are intact, like the Bandit Tower.
• The Shrieking Tower’s upper floors are crumbling.
• One tower planned for the future is nothing but ruins on the surface.

Thus, if players sneak a peek at The Shrieking Tower and decide it’s easy to deal with, they may blunder into a crumbling tower, thinking it’s not a danger. Having more than one tower look the same externally complicates the issue. They have to be smarter: gather rumors, observe a tower for a few hours, try to figure out what’s actually going on.

As hinted at a couple times, multiple generic towers improves the variety of possible towers. Here are ways you can mix and match:

• Connect the escape passage in one tower to an escape passage in a different tower.
• Use the bandit type table in the Generic Bandit Tower pamphlet to make small bandit camps at crumbling towers and ruins more interesting.
• Use the dungeon of one tower with the upper levels of another tower (bandit tower with ruined lower level, with or without undead.)
• Use any of the three dungeons as a level below the first dungeon level of a tower, reached via one of the stairs results. Replace the trap door on the second level (or lower levels!) with stairs up.
• Remove the bandits from the bandit tower and use predators or undead as the primary inhabitants of the upper levels.

You can also replace the escape passage (Result #3) with a short passage. Any wall in the passage that does not border an already mapped area may have a door. Roll multiple d6s, one for each potential door, and remove duplicates, to determine how many doors there are and what’s behind the door, using the same method as for the corridor leading from area 12. This allows for a potentially larger dungeon level than the small default dungeons given in the pamphlets.

Another possibility is to take the dungeon for one of the “named” towers, change or remove any reference to the weapon or special feature of that named tower, and use it as either the first level or a lower level of one of the generic towers. Special rooms like the vent in Death’s Kiss Tower can be:

• Left non-functional (opening vent doesn’t release a cloud)
• Changed to a room with a staircase down to another level
• Replaced with a short passageway full of doors, as described above
• Replaced with a room you designed or borrowed from another source

There are probably more possibilities, but that’s all I could think of for now.