Some Lighting Rules

Huh, some of my newer posts are actually starting to hit the level of views my crappy Pathfinder homebrew got, does this mean I'm accumulating a small amount of popularity in the OSR community? I'll try not to let it go to my head.

Anyways, I've been lacking in my use of lighting so far in my time running games, and it's put me in the mind to start brainstorming my own (Though I am horrendously bad at actually putting my homebrew into my games). So, here's my quick and dirty brainstorm for lighting rules:

Torches:

You have two types of torches: torches you buy, and torches you make. Torches you buy are going to last longer than torches you quickly make by grabbing some grass or a tree branch.

I should probably get some form of time passage for dungeon exploration typed out before I go any further.

A dungeon room takes either five or ten minutes to explore, depending on how easily the players come up with a solution, or how reckless they are being. For example, if they bumble about down the hall it's not going to take them long (Unless they need to unimpale themselves 😉), whereas them carefully searching every nook and cranny for the trigger to a trap is going to take quite a bit longer.


Now let's get back to torches. A shitty torch will probably last 30 minutes, while a good torch lasts an hour. Lanterns last days, I have a kerosene lantern that I've ran multiple days and have never had to refill, those things last a while.

How much do torches light up? (For simplicity's sake, I'm going to make it so all forms of lighting cover the same radius, the duration is probably plenty reason to invest in better lighting). five feet from you is bright light, and thirty feet from you is dim light. This means that you need to move pretty close to something to see it as more than vague shadow.

Look at this helpful diagram I made!
The grey circle is 5'.

Of course anything past dim light is simply heard, which is a great way to make dungeons creepier.

Just this photo spooks me.

Anyways, this is just a brainstorm I wrote whilst typing this post, so any feedback in the comments is appreciated.

Magic Item Ecology

     Magic items really just spells trapped in mundane objects. They don’t want to be trapped there, but there’s nothing they can do about it. If it’s a young magic item, it’ll probably want you to free it, it will also probably refuse to be used. There are some magic items that are fine with being magic items, those belong to the church though, and they would never let a heathen use them.

     Older magic items are either resigned to the fact that they are trapped, or are completely insane. No, seriously, if you intend for a magic item to be a particular spell, roll to see whether or not it’s an insane one, it’s probably mutated.

     You can talk to a magic item, but you need to coax it out first. Only once you’ve been able to successfully reason with it can you use its magical abilities.

     Magic items are generally some of the oldest spells to exist, mostly because they’ve been left untouched for so long, and if they’re not insane, they might have quite a bit of insight into the past. Don’t listen to the insane ones though, they’ll corrupt your mind, make you question why you’re even here.

How This Works In Your Game

     This doesn’t mean magic items are literally just items that cast spells, they basically have effects that make sense based on what the spell is combined with what they are. But you can't just have them use their effect on command unless you have some kind of agreement. Usually, you have to convince them to use their powers.

     Insane magic items are mutated spells, but they probably still think they work like they’re supposed to, If they tell you this, they are lying.

A List of Magic Items

These spells were taken from Skerples' 100 Orthodox Wizard Spells, and I plan on making a magic item for all of them in a separate post, but for now here's five:

Format:

[Spell Name][Item Type]

[Sanity][Personality]

[Ability]

1. Wending Bolt Shield

    Insane Bloodthirsty, will bash itself against creatures it sees

    Can fly out of your hand and bash itself into the nearest creature within ten feet, it can take any  

    path to do this.

2. Roaring Flames A Golden Bonsai

    Insane (obviously) an arsonist, it will always be muttering and distracting you.

    It can cover itself with fire, this fire is as bright as a torch, but will deal 1d6 damage to anyone   

    holding it.

3. Heroic Leap Dagger

    Sane Has an over-inflated sense of justice, naive, wants to slay a dragon.

    The dagger can jump 20' in any direction at high velocities and stab into creatures, make a strength 

    check to hang on.

4. Embroider Deed Tapestry

    Sane Very knowledgeable of the church's past, but impartial toward them, eager to tell stories.

    It reweave's its threads to tell tales told to it in the past, any story told to it will be remembered, 

    and it can play it on command, you can also ask it to tell a story, and it will happily do so.

5. Embed Memory Bottle

    Insane Hungry, it's always hungry... And it only wants that hunger to be satisfied.

    The bottle stores and mixes memories, and then give them back (If you can convince him). He 

    currently has a memory of some blasphemy, along with whatever other weird things you can come 

    up with, meaning you will have to pass the bad memories off to some poor peasant before using it.

Hex Travel: Concept Ruleset for Exploring Hexes.

Hex Size: 6 miles side to side.

Travel Speed is based on movement. The party travels at the speed of the slowest party member. The distance the party can travel during one watch is 1/3 of their movement score.

Watches

One watch is a four hour period of time. There are six watches in a day. Players need two watches to rest. If next to each other it is a full rest. Players need one watch period to set up camp. This effectively means that players can move [move] hours per day, unless they decide to explore or forage, which also takes up one watch. Preparing food for your ‘lunch’ occurs when you set up camp. There are a series of actions you can choose to do during each watch:

Travel when you choose to travel, you move at 1/3 of the slowest party member’s move. If your total travel distance exceeds the slowest party member’s movement, you gain 1 exhaustion.

Rest Resting restores 1d6 +Level HP and one Exhaustion. If you take two rests in a row, instead all hit points and exhaustion are automatically removed. You need a total of two rests a turn to stay well rested, for each rest you miss in a day, you gain one exhaustion.

Set up Camp This is when you set up everything to sleep, or create a base camp to explore the surrounding area, perhaps over the next few days, just don’t get lost.

Forage Foraging takes up 1 watch, and scores you a neat 1d4 rations. You can also make a hunting skill check to turn this it into a d6.

Explore Exploring makes it easier to encounter cool things in the hex you are in, Since you are spreading about rather than making progress walking around, it only makes logical sense that this be a separate watch action rather than a half speed feature or whatever.

Exploration Rules

Each hex has a d12 encounter table (maybe this is too much?), the first six things are the interesting and cool hard to find stuff, so a town isn’t going to be on this list, but the secret shrine to the blasphemous blood god in the surrounding woodlands would be. When you choose to explore rather than just wander through the hex, remove the last six entries from this encounter table. This means that you are guaranteed to encounter at least one interesting thing.

Hex Maps

The world map is divided into regions, each of these regions will have a hex map made up for it. These hexes will be labeled from left to right with lines like A1, A4, B1, etc. and will have an encounter table and possibly location keyed up to it.

Numbered like this, but the rest is not what I'm thinking at all.

Exhaustion

Exhaustion basically takes up an inventory slot, and will eventually overencumber you. Overencumbrance reduces your movement speed and will therefore make you move slower, it’s a self-destructive cycle if you for whatever reason decide rest takes up too much danged time.

And there we have it, my completely un-polished, un-refined, un-playtested ruleset for hex traveling. I would start testing it out, but it’s not relevant to my current campaign, at least not yet. I’m just writing this down as a primer for when I get more involved in my new setting (I think it’s going to be called Mahkah right now). If anyone has any feedback let me know in the comments or however else you think is comvenient.

Some Weapons.

This is a list of weapons based on my weapon system over here. The only thing these really affect is your character's flavor and the damage type. I'm also gonna put pictures up on some of the ones I think people generally get wrong in fantasy.

This is basically what you have your player roll on when they generate a random character and it just says they start with: Medium Weapon.

Light Weapons (d6)

1. Rondel

2. Stiletto

3. Bollock Dagger

4. Sap

6. Swordbreaker

Medium Weapons (d8)

1. Longsword - Two Hands

2. Bastard Sword - One/Two Hands

3. Arming Sword (Broad Sword) - One Hand

4. Maul

5. War Hammer

6. Battle Axe - Also small (see above), but I don't want to break the page with another picture.
7. Mace
8. Flail

Big Boi Weapons (d20)

Polearms and a few others.

  1. Ahlspeiss

  2. Bardiche

  3. Bec De Corbin

  5. Billhook

  6. Mancatcher

  7. Corseque

  8. Fauchard

  9. Glaive

10. Guisarme

11. Halberd

12. Lance

13. Lucerne Hammer (Polehammer)

14. Poleaxe

15. Scythe

16. Spear

17. Bohemian Ear Spoon

18. Voulge

19. Zweihander

20. Partisan

A Quick Look at Medieval Fantasy City Generator, My Favorite Sites For City Maps!

Medieval Fantasy City Generator (If the link doesn't work, that means they updated the site, do a google search and you'll be fine).
This site is absolutely amazing. If you've ever had difficulty trying to sit down and draw a town map and spending a few hours on it, only to make a mistake or finding you just don't like it, this is your solution.

The site will randomly generate very realistic city layouts with minimal efforts on your part, you just need to decide what you want, then generate until you're happy with the look. Let's take a look at some of the features:

Let's start with everything either turned off or set to default.

It looks a bit strange, but that's to be expected.
DISCLAIMER:
The default when you open the site will not look like this, this is for demonstration.

Now we can head to options and start playing around.

Let's start in layout.
The first option is labeled more roads, let's see how that effects our default here:

It's already starting to look a bit better!

But this is a village, right? So we're gonna need some farmlands.

The Elevation setting doesn't notably effect anything I find, and the random just puts up random presets, so for now, lets just add some more layout options to make it look a bit better.

Look at that!

I don't personally like the look of using blocks though, so I'm gonna turn it into individual buildings. You can find these settings under OPTIONS - STYLE - BUILDINGS. I'll set it to complex.

There are all kinds of other options to further personalize it, for example, if you want to add ward colors, go to OPTIONS - PALETTE. Then hit Watercolors, and Colors (just make sure to turn off hatching or other options).

I encourage you to check it out and explore it yourself. Also, just for fun, I'll add examples of medium and large towns with the same settings as the above.

GLOG: Garbage Wizard

                Garbage wizards are trained young in all the ways of garbage, these wizards hone their magic from a very young age in order to perform a very simple task: taking out the trash, that's right, they put their sanity on the line to keep your town clean. Every town has a small group of Garbage Wizards set aside for this purpose, and since openings very rarely open up, many are forced to take up other means of making money, such as adventuring.

This is the life.

Perks

Among a pile of items, you can immediately distinguish whether or not an item is garbage at a glance. You carry a bag of garbage around with you, once per day, you can pull one mostly useless item out, there is a 50% chance it doesn’t work properly.

Drawbacks

You must be wearing dirty and smelly clothes in order to cast spells, for most Garbage Wizards, this is their garbage uniform.

You are affected by cleanliness and tidiness the same way demons are affected by holy water and symbols. Janitors and maids can turn you.

Cantrips

   1.       Summon Manure: More useful than you’d think.

   2.       Contaminate Water: Make small bodies of water dirty and infectious.

   3.       Speak With Flies: You have the permanent ability to speak with flies, flies are difficult to  

          understand, due to their notoriously short attention spans.

Spells

1 1.       Animate Garbage

30 ft.     [Dice] Objects    [Sum] Rounds or Minutes

        Target garbage will be able to move of it's own volition, [sum] rounds for strenuous actions, and 

        [sum] minutes otherwise. Objects have a [dice]-in-8 chance of being particularly loyal, this is  

        only rolled the first time you cast the spell on a particular target.

   2.       Amalgapparatus

Touch    [Sum](Broken) tools

       Fuse broken or intact items into one functional unit. Roll a d6: if it is 1 the resulting device loses 

       all functionality, becomes a weird pointless machine. If it is 2 or 3 it gains the function of 

       (randomly selected) half of the tools. If it is 4 or 5 this one device becomes a multi-tool that 

       performs the functions of all the tools invested. If it is 6 the tool hybridizes the function of the 

       tools invested into an apparatus with one oddly specific function: for instance, hybridizing a 

       corkscrew and a sword yields a spiraling sword with a powerful enchantment against enemies 

       made of cork, whereas simply having all their functions yields a sword with a corkscrew as the

       pommel.

   3.       Compaction

30 ft.     [Dice] Meters cubed                [Sum] Hours

      The targeted area is compressed by a cube of force into a small cube that fits into your hand for the duration. The contents of the cube suffer no physical damage from this compression. The cube still weighs as much as it's contents, but takes up half the slots due to it's lack of bulk.

   4.       Become Disgusting

Touch    Creature of [Dice]x2 HD or Less  [Sum] Varies

        Target creature smells and tastes like garbage for the spell's duration. The smell radiates 20ft in  

        calm air, but can spread via wind or leave a trail. Sentient creatures can save to resist the bad 

        scent, but animals will avoid the scent. Insects will be attracted to the target for the spell's 

        duration. The target may Save at the end of each duration interval to negate the effects. 1 [dice]: 

        minutes, 2 [dice]: hours, 3 [dice]: months, 4 [dice] years. This spell cannot affect dead creatures,

        or creatures who either have no sense of smell, or are used to bad smells (e.g. goblins).

   5.       Command Garbage

30 ft.     [Sum]x10 lbs.     [Dice] Hours

         All garbage within the range will leap up and obey your commands. They will listen to [Dice]

        words, the garbage is able to do anything garbage would conceivably be able to do.

   6.       Fly Swarm

50 ft.     -              [Sum] Rounds

         Create a 30 ft. cloud of flies at a point you designate, all creatures who are not at max HP must 

         Save Vs. Disease, and take a +/-4 penalty to all attack rolls while in the cloud.

   7.       Summon Table Scraps

      Touch    -              - 

                Summons [Dice] rations worth of random table scraps from around the world, combined into 

                one disgusting stew. After eating (50%) Save Vs. Nausea, OR Save Vs. Poison.

   8.       Floating Disk

       5 ft.      Conjured Disk     [Dice] Hours

                A floating disk springs into existence beside you. It always floats 4” above the floor and never

                exerts any weight on the floor beneath it. It will automatically follow you, always staying 

                within 5' of you. It can go up stairs and across the surface of water. Maximum weight is [dice]

                * 500 lbs. If you stand atop it, you can direct it.

   9.       Garbage Armor

       Self      Self        [Sum] Rounds

                 You surround yourself with garbage, forming a protective layer. The level of protection you 

                 receive is based on the number of die you invest: 1[Die] = Light, 2[Die] = medium, 3[Die] = 

                 Heavy.

   10.   Incinerate

        30 ft.   [Dice] Creatures     Instant

                 A wave of heat shimmers in the air around all targeted creatures, it deals [Sum] Damage to

                 each creature targeted by this effect, Save for half.

Emblem Spells

   1.   Dredge

100 ft.   area       instant

            Buried or covered objects rise to the surface in area you designate, [dice]x10ft in radius. If 

            you cast this spell on the ground, coins, stones, and root will be pulled to the surface. If you 

            cast it on water, sunken objects will rise to the surface and remain there as long as you 

            maintain concentration. The total weight of dredged objects cannot exceed [dice]x100lbs. If 

            you cast this spell targeting creatures in the area instead, the creatures must Save or be 

            stunned for 1 round. If [sum] is greater than 12, they also take 1d6 damage and are knocked 

            prone. Instead of targeting area, you can instead target a single sentient creature. The creature 

            must Save (if unwilling) or recall a memory in perfect detail. You designate the memory ("the 

            first time you met your wife", "where you buried the treasure"). The creature will be lost in a 

            reverie for [sum] rounds. This reverie ends if the creature is attacked, threatened, or has to 

            perform any action. This memory may induce a Fear or Morale test. It must be specific. "The 

            scariest thing you have ever seen" would not work, but "the night your village burned" would.

   2.   One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Treasure

Touch    [Sum] Pounds

            Turn a pile of garbage into an equivalent weight in coins. The type of coins are based on the 

            number of die invested. 1[die] = copper, 2[die] = silver, 3[die] = gold, 4[die] = platinum.

This is a really old Garbage Wizard.

Mishaps

   1.       Your MD only return on a 1-2 for 24 Hours

   2.       You take 1d6 damage as garbage juice runs around through your veins.

   3.       Random mutation for 1d6 rounds, then Save. Mutation is permanent if you fail.

   4.    You gain a random Insanity for 1d6 rounds, then save. Insanity is permanent if you fail.

   5.       Every empty inventory space on your character sheet is filled with useless garbage for 1d6 hours.

   6.       Roll d100 for each item in your inventory, each item has a 50% chance of breaking.

Dooms

   1.     (d4) A random limb crawls away in the middle of the next night, it's become too disgusted to

         handle anymore of your trash.   

   2.    Your body begins decomposing, at the start of each week, you take 1 Con. damage. This effect is

         permanent.

   3.  You forfeit your humanity, if it would benefit you to be a person in the case of something magical, legal, or otherwise, you don't count as one. You're still an entity, and can be targeted as such. If you are not moving people register you as a pile of garbage, if you move than you are seen as a terrifying trash monster.

              I can't take full credit for this class, I received a lot of help from a lot of helpful people, and without them this class would be actual garbage. Thank you all.

[EDIT]: I altered the Compaction spell because I decided I had a more interesting Idea, here's the old one if you want it.

   3.       Compaction

30 ft.     creature/object                [Dice] Rounds

       Create a cube of force surrounding a creature or object within range, the creature or object is

       then compresses by the cube, dealing [sum] bludgeoning damage to the creature, and pushing 

       objects into the shape of a cube.

Magic Items: 10 more rare/magic items for your players to steal.

Hey, remember the first one of these posts I made more than a half a year ago? You know, when I said that I would make four more of them? Well, here's the second one.

1. Souldrain: A magical sickle, it drains the enemies morale. For every successful attack this weapon makes against a sentient being, they take one point of wisdom damage, once they lose all their wisdom, they go insane. After facing this weapon, you can recover any wisdom damage received along with a long rest.

2. Expanding Fungus: A purple fungus held in a glass jar. It feeds on microorganisms trapped in the air, such as dead cells (dust), this causes it to rapidly expand when exposed to any place where it has food (anywhere where life exists). It cannot feed off of humans in a way drastic enough to kill them, though it will destroy the first few layers of skin, leaving you itchy due to all the fresh exposed skin. It is impossible to walk through, and will suffocate anyone who is trapped inside it (there is no air in there, only Co2), it is good at blocking off doorways quickly.

3. Book of Advice: It looks like a four page paper pocket manual, bound together by a brownish-red string. In reality, it's a trapped demon. It dispenses valuable advice when you need it, while also hinting at the fact that it is a trapped demon. It wants you to free it, and to return all of its favors, you kind of have to.

4. Ace up the Sleeve: A magically enchanted playing card that shows whatever you want on the face.


5. Monocle of Seeing: Faintly outlines all creatures with a golden glow, every time you're hit, save to prevent it from falling onto the floor and breaking.


6. Pointer Ring: It's a laser pointer, except it's a magical ring. Animals are compelled to chase it around. Maybe it would be useful for presentations?


7. Ring of Falling: The opposite of a ring of feather fall, it makes you fall faster, and hit the floor harder. It makes a short drop deadly, such as stepping off of a carriage. You probably shouldn't use it yourself, but maybe give it away?


8. Fixed Pin: Its a pin, but when you press the pinhead, it floats in place. It can stab through anything that a normal pin could, such as paper.


9. Everlocked Doorknob: It's a doorknob, it's always locked, any attempts to unlock it fail, magical or otherwise. You could move it by dismantling it, but what's the point?


10. Ring of water Breathing: While you wear it, you can breathe water, but you can't breathe oxygen. Too much usage can cause lung issues.

Realism: Proper Armor

Armor in RPGs is often misrepresented, not only is the armor class system flawed, but the types of armor, as well as levels of protection among them is also misaligned. This post will be my attempt at both explaining the problems, as well as providing my own solution.

Let’s start with the Armor Class system. In the armor class system, your level of armor as well as your dexterity score influence how likely someone is to damage you. Do you see the problem? It actually makes perfect sense for your dexterity score to influence your Armor Class, after all, that represents your skill at dodging, but the armor doesn’t help you dodge the blow, does it? I thought not, it simply lessens the impact of the blow, and generally pretty well. So while the idea of Armor Class isn’t wholly unnecessary, perhaps armor should be a separate part of the whole thing.

The next part to discuss is levels of protection. You generally see in system rules three little sections of armor: Light Armor, not that protective, but provides free movement; Medium Armor, more protective than light, but also more restrictive; and Heavy Armor, really protective, but really restrictive. Well, those are some pretty misinformed rules.

Light armor is often interpreted as leather armor, and if you’re going to use leather in your games, more power to you, just know that leather armor is only a fantasy trope because of movies. Historically, it was all but nonexistent. Anyways, leather isn’t very protective unless it’s thick, and thick leather is hard to move. Combine that with how expensive large amounts of quality leather would have been, and you have expensive, restrictive, and ultimately ineffective armor, what’s the point?

Ah, but here comes the gambeson, a light, cheap, and effective armor; made by sewing together layers of linen, which is basically the same idea as a bullet resistant vest. Gambeson was pretty good at protecting you, unless your opponent has just sharpened their sword to a razor edge; in which case you will get hit, but only for the first few hits, because sharpened edges dull quickly. Gambeson were also good against stabbing and impact based weapons. Remember how I told you they were similar to a bullet proof vest? The layering of thick fibered fabrics allows impacts to spread outwards before they do any damage to the actual person, which means the strike is significantly lessened.

Medium armor is thrown in as chain, I won’t say much about this; except that chain wasn’t much more protective than gambeson, the only difference being it specialized in defending against cuts rather than stabs or impacts.

Heavy armor, often plate or similar steel armors is put out there as a human tank, difficult to move in, but highly protective. In reality, it is both highly protective and very easy to move in; because it was designed to be. There are still issues with plate though.

First of all, they still have weight. Though not enough to make them clunky, it is enough to tire you over time. That’s why you wouldn’t want to wear it all day long. The second problem is visibility. Though there were helmets designed to allow for a better range of vision, they would always be sacrificing protection.

You probably couldn’t give two rats on a stick about any of this, so I’ll move on to the houserule you’re all here for.

Light Armor (e.g. Gambeson):

   Damage Resistance: 6 Piercing, Bludgeoning; 4 Slashing.

Medium Armor (e.g. Chain):

   Damage Resistance 5 Piercing, Bludgeoning; 7 Slashing.

Heavy Armor (e.g. Plate):

   Damage Resistance 8

You have no damage reduction from armor while prone.

Dodge is your ability to avoid getting hit, and is calculated as 10 + Dex mod.

The following system also puts in place a variety of historical strategies. For example if swords do 1d8 damage, I need to use a polearm on the guy in plate. It also puts to use the idea of wrestling an armored opponent to the ground so you could stab them through the eye slit.

I feel that the system is simple enough to be OSR, but it also makes the game a lot more strategic. Also, as a nice little bonus, you can make it so that damage to armor needs to be repaired, creating a nice little way to tax your players.

Armor needs to be repaired when it’s been used. In order to simulate the damage done to your armor, keep track of every time your armor fails to protect you, which basically means your D.R. is not enough to prevent you from taking damage. For every time this happens, your armor gains a damage point.

Damage points can be removed from armor by paying a smith to repair it.

I’m not going to put a set price on repairs because players should be allowed to haggle.

A Look at OD&D: Support and Upkeep

Player Character Support and Upkeep

“Player/Characters must pay Gold Pieces equal to 1% of their experience points for support and upkeep, until such time as they build a stronghold, which will bring in annual tax revenue. If the stronghold is in a wilderness area all support and upkeep costs then cease, but if it is in a village or town not controlled by the player/ character then support and upkeep payments must continue.”

For those of you who aren’t in the loop, a couple of us bloggers over at The Ruins of Murkhill decided to write a series of posts in January to commemorate the 45^th anniversary of the game you’re here to read about, D&D. The rule above this paragraph talks about Gygax’s upkeep rules. And I thought we’d take a look at them.

                I’m not going to assume you play the same D&D as me, I wouldn’t even pretend that’s the case, but it’s parts of the book like this that are universally applicable. If you weren’t aware, the first part of that quote speaks to a specific XP philosophy, in which you gain your XP by gathering treasure through adventurous means; effectively allowing you to gain XP by not killing the dragon, but only because you took all the treasure out from under it as it slept. It would not include, however, the money you find in the peasant’s pocket, because murder isn’t an adventure. This doesn’t mean another system couldn’t use it though. Let’s check a little something out perhaps.

I really do enjoy how 5e's (and other) systems put up a table
of how much money the players should receive. That would
seriously bog down game preparation.

                You see this nifty table here? It tells you how much money your PCs make each level. According to Gygax’s rule, 1% of this should be taxed for each level. Let’s see if we can do the maths here quick.

Level                     % Taxed

2                              9 gp

3                              27 gp

4                              54 gp

5                              90 gp

6                              130 gp

7                              190 gp

8                              270 gp

9                              360 gp

10                           490 gp

Etc.

                Now, the leveling system works in a way where that system would probably tax about 1 gp a day, though I can’t be completely sure having never played much 5e. But here’s the question. How do we trick our players into giving away their much loved money? Well, there’s a variety of ways to do just that.

Toll

A group of haggard people approach the gate, their torn and bloodied cloaks flap behind them in the wind. The guard looks at them a bit nervously, they look dangerous, and he probably shouldn’t let them in this late at night.

What? Did you think your characters looked heroic? No, they are likely a fearsome sight to behold. Why does this matter? Well, why would someone let a group of people who are probably bandits into his city, he has a duty you know.

They could just kill the guard of course.

Food and Lodging

                Many people just knock off food and lodging as an assumption, and don’t even bother to consider it, but here’s a little something to consider. Remember how the time from first to second level left only 9 gp for the 1%? Your characters probably start out too poor to afford a nifty little inn, in fact, their money is probably just enough to get them food. So where do they sleep? That’s perhaps an interesting thing to consider.

Burglary

                This one might be useful later on in the game, but you shouldn’t be throwing this one about all the time, that’s how you create murderhoboes. After all, why trust the bank when it’s always getting robbed, why trust that NPC when you keep getting mugged? But one or two times in a campaign this can be a powerful tool to get some of that money out of their fingers.

Housing

Gygax mentions the acquisition of a home-base, and that if you locate it in a city, you continue to pay upkeep, but otherwise, become exempt. This makes sense, but of course you still need food when you live in the woods, although having a dedicated hunter would make that less of a problem. But house ownership in a city is generally associated with settlement, and settlement is associated with taxes. This one would be a lot less exciting to play out, of course, though due to it’s nature, you wouldn’t necessarily have to.

They’ll probably just kill the tax collector though.

Celebrating D&D!

If you have read any of the few first posts, you would see evidence that I have my roots in pathfinder. In fact, my very first post is also my most viewed, by a margin of more than 70 views. Why did I stop? Well, the answer is just that I got writers block.

I was originally introduced to pathfinder by a friend, and my first character was a paladin named Harlan Arvel. I never even played him. I was pretty much immediately thrust the position of GM, because no one else wanted to do it.

Needless to say, the first few games were awful. I tried running a homebrew, but it just crashed and burned. After that I tried running an AP, but I didn’t even have the time to prepare it. We found it so boring, in fact, that we ended that one after the first session. I had spent hours a day poring over various materials and homebrews from the game, and it ultimately just burnt me out. Then one day, I decided to make a blog, in order to post a homebrew class I had made, the Witch-Hunter, and show it to the world. It took a few revisions to get it where it is, and still to this day it goes un-playtested. That’s because my regular games stopped around that time.

After a long break from playing, I started reading content from a few OSR blogs on the internet, it kind of pulled me in. So I tried to start a new game, and I was able to get two of the players from my old one to join. Needless to say, I had a lot longer to prepare for it, and it started out a hell of a lot better than my last one. But why am I rambling on about pathfinder when I’m supposed to be writing about D&D?

The Actual Point

Well, that would be because D&D freed me. When I first learned about OD&D, I was under the impression that it was some kind of less superior version of pathfinder because of how ‘old’ it was. I always thought that with pathfinder, you had an infinite number of choices because you could just homebrew anything you didn’t already have. And of course it had a ‘much more’ sophisticated combat system. I really thought, that rules were better than rulings, but I was wrong.

You see, with my discovery of OSR, I read through some of the original D&D books; and I was surprised. You see, I am a man who enjoys some verisimilitude, and OD&D had a lot more than I had thought. I actually found that, in my opinion, the combat rules were much more sophisticated than in pathfinder, not to mention how much more realistic they were! I mean, the fact that anyone who knows how to fight would never let an enemy get behind them of their own volition being represented in the combat rules, made a lot of sense to me. Unless someone were to sneak up behind you, you would turn your body in a way so as be facing any enemies nearby, the other way for an enemy to get behind you was for a group of them to surround you. I don’t think I can begin to provide how much this single rule meant to me, it was basically the last straw that won me over.

This month marks the 45^th year of D&D, that is something that truly deserves to be celebrated; and no matter what edition you play, even among us in the OSR community, it’s just one little child or grandchild to their shared mighty ancestor. If you still check this blog out from time to time for pathfinder, which I know happens occasionally based on traffic sources, I would encourage you to check out some of the stuff OSR presents, you may find it holds more merit than you think.

Anyway, what significance does D&D hold for you, Is it merely a hobby, or something more? Let me know in the comments below.