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