a Tale in the Telling (GLoG Class: the Mythmaker)

Pacts are one way to gain power through a spirit's dealings, another is to tame lesser souls you find around you. Of course, there is occasionally a circumstance where that relationship is less transactional, when a spirit deigns to simply give a gift, and watch what drama follows.

 

[A]: Spiritual Favor, Heroic Gambit

[B]: Renowned Warrior

[C]: Unexpected Trick

[D]: The Victor Stands Bloody Handed

Spiritual Favor:

Whether you earned their favor through an impressive feat, pity, or sheer luck, you have found yourself blessed by a powerful spirit. You gain one of the following:

1. Gift of the Scorned: one of your hands has the resting temperature of a hot ember. once per day you can produce a cone of flame (1d6 save reduces by half).
2. Gift of the Prisoner: You possess a blade that is itself possessed, and counts as a magic weapon. It shackles an additional six lives to your own. When the sixth is lost, the blade shatters.
3. Gift of the Grief-Eater: Your voice carries across great distances. You can scream loud enough to rupture the eardrums of all around you, doing so renders you speechless for the remainder of the day.
4. Gift of the Watcher: up to [templates] times per day, may re-roll any dice, taking the new result.
5. Gift of the Staunch: If you have time to dig your heels into the ground, nothing can knock you off your feet. If you attack without doing any other actions in a round, add 1 to your Injury roll.
6. Gift of the Tyrant: Objects you break are utterly destroyed, incapable of reconstruction. If you roll exactly your build score while making an attack, you may choose any object on your target to sunder.

Heroic Gambit:

If you would die in such a way as it would occur off-screen, such as wrestling with a tentacled monster as the current carries you downstream, being eaten whole by a giant beast, or falling down a dark hole, you have an templates-in-6 chance of instead surviving with whatever the maximum recovery period of the system is. After that time has passed, the character can chance upon the party once more.

 

Renowned Warrior

Tales of your exploits have begun to spread to even the unlikeliest of corners. Whether famous or infamous, people are immediately familiar if you announce yourself, and have a Templates-in-6 chance of recognizing you by sight alone.

Other warriors will always accept your challenge to a duel, and cowards will quickly debase themselves or else flee if threatened. If you are known to be dishonorable in your challenges, your opponents will know this and act in kind. 

 

 Unexpected Trick

 Once per turn, you may make a free maneuver in combat. You can only do this if the maneuver is something that you have not (in common knowledge) done before.

 

The Victor Stands Bloody Handed

 As long as your hands are coated in fresh blood that isn't your own, you may add an extra d6 to any combat maneuver rolls. You also roll with an extra Injury Die on successful attacks.

 

Was uncredited in my images folder. Internet is too enshittified to track down a source.

This class is meant to encourage taking risks, and designed to be played in which players have a stable of characters to play. The inspirations for this class were the Champion, from Locheil; along with the Summoner from Hilander's Lost Fable.

Puncher

 

Starting Gear: Powdered Jerky, One-quart Flask, 50 lb. Training Weights (x2).

[A]: Physique of Fists, Techniques

[B]: Devoted Student

[C]: Techniques

[D]: Perfected Form

Physique of Fists

You have exceptionally powerful muscles honed by years of training that are all specialized towards the punching motion. You can treat your punches as lethal weapons, and always count as having at least 15 in your Build score as long as the roll is relevant to making a punching motion.

  

Techniques

You have an additional Injury Dice to roll each time you attack, this Injury Dice can only be applied when using a Technique that you know. Any time you roll a 6 on your additional Injury Dice, it is expended for the remainder of the day. Each time you gain this template, you get an additional Injury Die to use on your techniques, as well as a new technique from the list below. Extra die applied via crits can be used on techniques.

1. Cradle of Fists: Apply [most] to the target you're choosing to attack. The first target is pushed into another target who applies the [least] die, or into an immobile object causing the first target to also take [least] die. Both targets are knocked over.
2. Gut Punch: Target has the wind knocked out of them and vomits up the [most] most recent things they've eaten. They will only take defensive actions for [least] rounds. 
3. Soul-Searing Sucker-punch: The target has their soul knocked out of their body for [least], temporarily leaving them defenseless against all but magical attacks. If any result of your rolls for this technique are a duplicate, the target is immediately possessed by something very angry and very scary.
4. Steely Fist: Trade hardness with a nearby object for [dice] rounds. Your initial Injury Dice will automatically be rolled as a 1-6 based on how hard the object is with a 1 being harder than a fist, and a 6 being harder than metal. You still roll your additional Injury Dice as applied to the technique but only for the first attack. You can also use this technique to attempt to break the object you traded hardness with, applying [dice]*the hardness of your fists adding any Injury Dice applied to the technique. 

 

Devoted Student

If you successfully save someone weaker than what you defended them from, you gain them as a follower. Your follower will attempt to mimic your actions, but is ultimately useless in combat. You can only have one such follower at any given time, and they can be commanded to do things as a hireling, but with an additional 1d6 bonus when rolling to convince them to do something they otherwise wouldn't do. If your follower ever sufficiently proves themselves in combat, they cease becoming your follower and gain their first template as a Puncher.

 

Perfected Form

You gain an additional Injury Die. Whenever you roll exactly your Build score, or a 15 while making an attack, you can choose to roll any number of Injuries as long as you continue to have unexpended Injury Dice in your pool.

Paired Stats: Using Stats for Multiple Purposes.

 I'm gonna detail the process of how I've been dealing with ability scores for the past few years and put it all in one place I can point back to, because I've had a decent number of discussions about it at this point.

The core of the system, is to have a stat which can be beneficial on either end of the axis. A good visual example of this would be a Size stat.

• When your Size stat is big, so are you.
• When your Size stat is small, you are too.

You could make this function as a single attribute, one that you test in order to do big person things, which small people can't do as well (because they're not big).However, this can also test another aspect of your character: how good they are at doing small person things.

The easiest way to model this is with the following relationship:

• When trying to do a big person thing, roll under your Size score.
• When trying to do a small person thing, roll over your Size score.

These kinds of stats represent your character in very clear ways, for some examples that aren't Size:

• Barachus the Barbarian  has a very high Will score of 16, this means he is very independently minded and proud, but maybe finds it hard to connect with others.
• Lorena the warrior has a less than average Will score of 6, this means she is somewhat easily swept away by fads, and finds it somewhat easy to relate to others through shared experiences.

Handling Derivatives

Many systems operate under a basis of "derived stats" which are pulled from your base stats, which is something that would be difficult to model using stats in this way. So how do you deal with that?

https://anydice.com/program/2c198

An anydice comparison between standard stat distributions, and generic derived stat distributions.

The easiest way to do it, I think, is to declare the intent of any given derived stat to one aspect of each of your stats. That was a bad way to put it though, what I mean by that is this:

• Hitting people and making it hurt is something Big people are good at, so instead of an attack stat, you can simply roll under your Size score to make an attack.
• Avoiding people is something Small people are good at, so instead of a stealth stat, you can roll over your Size score to hide from someone.
• Assuredness in self is something Proud people are good at, so instead of a Save stat, you can roll under your Will score to subvert your fate by force of will.
• Understanding of people's motives is something Understanding people are good at, so instead of an initiative stat, you can roll over your Will stat to act first when a negotiation becomes a fight.

There might be a better way to do this, but it's generally easy to apply things to one aspect or another of a given axis.

The Glaring Issue That I hate but Deal With Anyways

Here's the chance a character with a perfectly average and normal Size stat of 10  has to do a big person thing:

• 50%

Now here's the chance they have to do a small person thing:

• 55%

Where the hell did that come from?

Well, I'll try and model this with a little diagram, please bear with me.

Because the number 10 is included regardless of whether you're rolling over or under, rolling over will add an extra 5% chance of success to the roll. This still plays nice overall, as the inverse is true for the number 11, both of which are the most likely results of a 3d6 distribution. It does, however, mean that no character will ever have a perfect 50-50 chance of success at a given task.

That's everything I have to say for now.

Reverse-Oddomatic Combats

    This post will be detailing a combat system I will be dubbing: "reverse oddomatic"; which isn't technically accurate, butbit almost makes sense.

    Combat in this system has two phases: the attack roll, and the injury roll. The attack roll actually ends up being a standard stat roll, which will be detailed in an upcoming post on character generation, if it is succeeded, or if the player fails their dodge roll, they either deal or are dealt a hit.

    For each hit they receive, they gain an injury. the severity and location of that injury is determined by rolling on the following tables:

Location (1d6)

1.     Arm

2.     Leg

3-4. Torso

5-6. Head

Severity (1d6)        Modifier        Recovery

1. Cosmetic                +0              Overnight

2-4. Minor                  +1               1 week

5-7. Serious                +2             1 month + medical attention.

8. Fatal                        -                You're dead :(

    The severity roll is modified  by two things: armor, which reduces the severity by 3; and active wounds, which increase it as according to the severity table. An active wound is any wound which has not yet healed, and they stack.

    Yes, it's deadly, that is one way in which I draw the similarity to oddomatic combats, in that combat ends rather quickly. But it keeps a few things I like, namely, the ability to put a dodge roll in my games.

    Additionally, combat has lasting consequences. It can put out a character for anywhere from a week to a month in game. If a character goes into a fight without armor, their first hit could leave them out for some time. This puts it in a much less desirable position than other forms of resolving conflicts.

    As usual for my posts about homebrew rules and whatnot, I will end with my disclaimer about it being pure theorycraft that should only be implemented with utmost personal discretion.

The Devouring Gourd

 When somebody has taken on a pact from the Great Gourd, they become marked by him. This mark takes the form of a dark cavity in the individual's forehead. Other acolytes of the Gourd will recognize this mark, and generally react at the very worst neutrally to any person bearing it.

On death, however, a curious process takes place on one marked by the Great Gourd. Their body doesn't decay, rather, it hardens and begins to change in shape to a form more pleasing to the Gourd. as this happens, the opening on the forehead of the deceased begins to grow into a gaping maw, and a Devouring Gourd is born.

I'm starting to draw stuff too!

Devouring Gourd

HD 8 Attack Swallow, Seed Sputter, Squash Defense 2 Move 8 Morale -* Save 16

Swallow The Devouring Gourd chooses up to three spaces around it at random, slamming the top of it's neck onto it and swallowing the first object it catches in this way.

Seed Sputter The Devouring Gourd flails it's neck about wildly, flinging large seeds out from the hole on the end of it, and dealing 2d6 damage to anything within 20 meters of it.

Squash The Devouring Gourd  springs it's legs and leaps 10 meters in any direction, dealing 4d8 damage to whatever it lands on, and pushing back anything else nearby.

*Behavior Devouring Gourds are completely mindless, they are hollowed out husks fueled by the Great Gourds destructive rage, as such, many of their actions are decided on a whim as they flail about breaking things. This can be modeled by deciding it's actions through dice rolls. This makes it a dangerous opponent for players to fight, as there is no real reason for it to do anything, and approaching it to attack is a gamble.

Farewell and may the Gourd be with you.

Rainforest Creatures - Ccoa, Suuri Snail, and Jokaihdin

 Ccoa

HD 5 Attack 1d10 lightning (1d6 burst) Defense 2 Move 15, fly 24 Morale 16 Save 15

Lightning The lightning selects a random target among creatures or certain objects within a 10 meter radius of the Ccoa, dealing burst damage to all creatures surrounding the target.

Hailstorm As it moves, the Ccoa drops hail behind it dealing 1d4 damage to creatures it hits.

Description Grey cats with fluffy tails and slightly oversized heads. When threatened, they turn into dark, grey stormclouds with yellow eyes piercing through.

Suuri Snail

HD 5 Attack Rasp 1d8 Defense 6 Move 4 Morale 5 Save 14

Rasp On a hit, deals 1d8 as normal, but on a miss, reduces the attacked creatures AC by 1.

Acidic Touch The suuri snail can choose to use it's turn to excrete a layer of acid on it's skin which deals 1d4 damage to anything touching the suuri snail's foot.

Stasis By sealing itself in it's shell, the suuri snail becomes inert and temporarily immune to damage until it leaves stasis. If it's shell is broken through during this time, the suuri snail's foot will be sucked out of the hole created.

Description A massive terrestrial snail with an oblong shell. It is predatory, eating either other gastropods or if necessary, plants. They follow a migratory pattern to look for food which is used by some as a transportation method.

Jokaihdin

HD 6 Attack Bite 1d10 (4 meter reach), Tail 1d6 (3 meter reach) Defense 4 Move 12, 8 swim Morale 15 save 11

Inflate The two flaps situated at the sides of the jokaihdin's neck can be inflated, allowing the jokaihdin to float if need be, but also as a defensive measure to both intimidate and move potential attackers away from it. While it's neck is inflated like this, it cannot use it's bite attack.

Description A sauropod dinosaur with flaps of skin hanging from it's neck and sides. It walks along the riverbed with it's neck held above the water.

Rainforest Creatures - Quetzalcoatl, Famocantratra, and Vukilpikon

 Took a bit of an unannounced hiatus, it was largely due to moving, job changes, and trying to get back into the swing of things. Basically, I've been too busy and this is what I chose to drop temporarily. Anyways, here's 3 more creatures from the encounter table.

Quetzalcoatl

HD 3 Attack Venomous Bite 1d6+1d4 every hour Defense 2 Move 15 flight, 10 slither Morale 7 Save 8

Quetzalcoatls use hit and run tactics. The feathered snakes fly in from above and attack a targeted creature before swooping away and waiting for it's prey to die. During this time they will follow from a safe distance in the canopy.

Healthy Venom If the venom can be extracted from either a wound or directly from the source, it can be distilled into a healing potion (1d4).

Famocantratra

HD 1 Attack Locking Bite 1d4+1 each round Defense 2 Move 15 Morale 17 Save 6

Famocantratras are small lizards which adhere to the sides of trees with their broad, leaf shaped tails. Once a creature moves nearby, they will leap over to attack them.

Locking Bite Once the famocantratra has attacked a creature, it will remain attached to that creature dealing 1 damage each round after the first. Once attached, the famocantratra cannot be removed except by cutting off the flesh it is attached to (dealing 1d6 damage) or through magical means.

Vukilpikon

HD 7 Attack Bite 2d8, Crush 1d8+pinned Defense 6 Move 18 swim, 10 walk Morale 5 Save 15

Vukilpikons are massive spiky turtles which lurk in shallow water, camouflaged to look like rocks with their snorkel-like noses providing them with oxygen. They sense vibrations in the water up to 50 meters.

Sucking Breath When the vukilpikon makes a bite attack while underwater, the opening of it's mouth creates a vacuum which drags any creatures within a 10 meter cone of it's mouth to be sucked into it's gaping maw. This should be telegraphed beforehand when players are at a safe distance if you don't want to cause a tpk.

Rainforest Creatures - Cuero, Wako, and Rhox

I decided on a format Im going to use for the following weeks while I figure out what to do next. Im goung to take 1 entry from each of the encounter tables found Here and do a writeup of them. Today I'm doing the cuero, wako, and the rhox.

Cuero

HD 2 Attack grapple 1 CON Defense 2 Move 16 swim, 4 land Morale 12 Save 7

Grapple Carnivorous. The first time anything gets close enough to touch the cuero, it will get a surprise action in which it can choose to grapple that person. It will then swim away under water dealing 1 constitution damage to the grappled person per round until they either die or the cuero is killed.

Description Appears as a mottled brown or spotted cowskin floating down the river. The underside of it is covered in suckers like those of an octopus.

Wako

HD 3 Attack bite 1d6 Defense 2 Move 14 Morale 8 Save 8

Description Carnivorous. Looks like a paca, but the size of a large dog, and with long fangs. Their call is a repeated Ao.

Wako live in communities of 2d20, 2d6 of which are juveniles that only deal 1 damage on a hit. Thry generally have 1d4 patrols above ground near their burrow, who will call to their comrades, which will arive in 1d6 rounds.

Rhox

HD 1 Attack bite 1d8* poison Defense 0 Move 15 flight Morale 5 Save 6

*Swarm Each hit point is treated as a single rhox, and damage is based on how many are attacking, and moves down to the nearest die size to how many hit points the rhox has left.

Description Carnivorous. A small purple spider the size of a grape. They hide in clusters on grapevines, swarming at and biting anything that tries to eat them.

Dragons are Weaklings

Im going to do it. Im going to break every sacrament of gaming and just go through with it.

You probably thought this was a dragon, didnt you?

Well you're wrong. Dragons are just pathetic little pests that sit in trees and pee venom. But most importantly, they're absolute wimps.

Dragon

HD 1 Attack Bite 1d6 Defense  6 Move as Bird Morale 5 Save 5

Caustic Urine Works as a ranged attack roll except the dragon must be above whoever it is attacking. On a hit the target takes 1d6 acid damage per round until they wash it off.

Evasive Maneuvers Whenever you attack a dragon from melee and miss, it can choose to escape by flying away. It will probably still pester you from the air where it's a little more safe.

Combat Actions

In combat, a dragon will usually fan out its wings and screech a few times, and bite anyone who tries to get close to it. As soon as someone attacks it, it will take to the sky and start peeing on everybody until chased off with missile weapons.

Activities Table

(roll this when you hit Dragon on your encounter table)

1. Attacking a flock of sheep. 1d6 peasants will come to chase it off with rocks in 5 minutes.

2. Sitting in a tree screeching loudly and peeing on any passersby, will flee at the first sign of danger.

3. 2 dragons are mating as they clumsily flap through the sky. However obnoxious you think it should be, multiply that by 3.

4. It's chasing a small child around terrorizing them. Just make up a reason for the child to be there.

5. A group of knights are pursuing it through the woods, they are trying to find their nest.

6. Hundreds of dragons are nesting in a massive tree, you should probably leave because they won't be as scared hunting together.

Revised Armor System: Introducing Chaos!

I've been thinking a lot about armor lately, and by extension my armor system. It's too complicated, Nobody wants to remember three seemingly random numbers which attempt to mimick real world armor. Its clunky, and ugly. Which is the opposite of what armor is. Armor is pretty and elegant. So a pretty and elegant system is better at mimicking armor, right?

The Old System

The New System:

Okay, the first step, it to make your players describe their attacks. From there you can determine what weapon they're using as well as how they use it. Any weapon can use any type of attack as long as the player can justify it adequately.
After damage is rolled, the defender rolls resistance, which is based on the armor type as listed below.

Textile:
Blunt-d6 , Cut-d4 , Stab- d6

Chain:
Blunt-d6 , Cut-d8 , Stab-d6

Plate:
Blunt-d8 , Cut-d10 , Stab-d8

You do not gain any resistance to melee weapons while you are prone, because at that point any dude can just walk over and stab you.

The average damage tends to rest somewhere between 1-3 pretty consistently based on my current weapons system. And that feels pretty alright to me. Obviously these aren't based on the attacks monsters would necessarily be making, which are much more likely to deal higher amounts of damage, but armor will do a good job of protecting you against other humans.

Why Chaos?

There are a few advantages rolling has over static numbers in this case.

For starters, it gives us a wider range. Previously, I had proposed that Plate reduced all damage by 8, meaning the attacker, at maximum damage with the highest damaging weapon type, deals 2 damage. Which straight up does not work. With this new system, the damage is reduced by a die roll, which means the damage you deal usibg the highest damage weapon type can be anywhere from 9 to 0, which occurs less than half the time unless the die rolls are equal, in which case it's exactly half the time.

The other benefit is that it doesn't force you into doing anything. Previously you were shoehorned into using polearm weapons against anyone wearing plate. Which doesnt make sense. While a polearm would be ideal against an armored opponent, its not like it's invulnerable to everything else.  On the otherhand, its not gonna be as easy on you to take your tiny dagger against a fully armored opponent.

I dunno, maybe my armor system in general is a bad idea. Here's another picture.

All the art in this post was done by Eol, a talented artist who draws people in armor. If you like what you saw, consider checking out his Twitter or Youtube Channel.

Combat Rules - Cementing My GLOG Hack Maybe?

Before I've even started drafting this these rules are already in the google docs of my GLOG hack. But why not write about some of why I made them?

I've basically taken the idea of Pathfinder 2e's Action Economy and dumbed it down a lot. For example, you get 2 actions rather than 3, most things only take 1 action, it's nowhere near as wordy considering it doesn't quite even fill half a page.

Context

Combat

Combat is divided into actions. You have 2 actions during each round during which you can perform any of the following activities:

• Make an attack roll
• Cast a spell
• Move 30 meters
• Pull an item out of a quick inventory slot
• Use a consumable
• Combat Maneuvers

Activities that use 2 actions:

• Pull an item out of a general inventory slot
• Tying a knot, climbing a wall, setting up the weird trap, etc.

Anyways, Im going to get into a little more of what each action entails.

Taken from Here

Attack
Melee and Ranged opposed checks basically. Also of note, I don't really do penalties for range increments on ranged attacks. It's messy and I usually do theater of the mind stuff anyways. As long as it's feasible you can make an attack, do it.

Spellcasting
Doing your wavey-hand chanty stuff. Yes you can cast two spells in a round. What's the big deal? You're just that much more likely to die a horrible wizard death.

Movement
What's up with the 30 meters thing?
Meters are neater than 5ft. and besides that, I don't use squares anyways, I measure the distance with a string if I even bother to measure at all. This is really only here for if I decide to ever use battlemaps, as I usually do theater of the mind stuff.

Quick Inventory Slots
The first three inventory slots. Their numbers are in bold text to make it even easier to see. Basically this is the stuff that's in a quick to grab area, like your sword sitting in the scabbard at your side or the potion strapped to your belt.

Use a Consumable
Okay, you just pulled that potion off your belt. Now chug it. That's your second action.

Combat Maneuvers
Tripping, disarming, throwing your pommel, etc. The kinds of stuff that's not an attack but also kind of an attack. You could spend your turn wresting someone to the ground then stabbing them with your dagger, for example.

General Inventory Slots
I mean, only six seconds to dig around in your bag is generous to be honest.

Basically anything that takes time
That's more or less what the last part is. Mostly up to GM discretion. You might think stuff like climbing should be part of move, sure do that, why not.

_   _   _

It seems like it would be easier to understand to me at least. Traditionally you have your move action and your standard action. Each one has different activities that can be done during that time, and the players have to be told they can do other things, at least in my experience.

With this method, it's just: Alright, what two things do you want to do this turn.

While as written, you can do the same thing twice in a turn, keep in mind that that's all you get to do that turn. Though if you wanted you could just rule you can't do the same action twice. I personally like the idea you can just do something twice though. It adds a little bit less rigidity to the system.

I both do and don't like the two actions activities. On the one hand, it makes sense they'd take longer. On the other hand, perhaps it encourages players not to do that kind of thing? digging through your bag, and setting a tripwire takes two full turns, meaning you're maybe less likely to do that kind of thing. It's not like its bad to do that, but a player may consider that a less optimal choice in the moment when its maybe a better choice.

That's a communication thing though. You can let your players know that kind of thing. Sort of like the sheet of player tips that I can't seem to find.

Anyways, if you have any thoughts, please shoot it into the comments. It's not that Im not open to discussing things elsewhere, but I feel it's useful for questions and ideas to be shared along with what promted them.

Another GLOG hack!

I wrote a GLOG hack, who cares!

Here's a list of what I changed/added, might be more but meh:

- Modifiers for Attack Rolls
- Weapons and Armour
- Condensed Core Classes
- Added Lighting rules
- Section on Magic Items
- Changed Magic Item Identification
- Hex-Crawling Rules

Mostly just quality of life changes, the core of the game is still the same. I have a smaller number of classes in the actual rulebook, but the intention of that is keeping players from playing things jarring to the setting, so they're basically only the generic ones.

Most of the rule adds are seen elsewhere on this blog, but they have been condensed/altered to fit in the book well.

Anyways, here's the link:
the GLOG: Deadly Dungeons Edition
Character Sheet

In other news, still trying to get work on my setting, just getting back into it after life kept me away from it, also realizing it was much more ambitious a project than I thought. Expect multiple books on it some time in the distant future.

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.