Wizard Tricks (OSE)

"Do not mistake me for some conjurer of cheap tricks!" 

- Gandalf the Gray

"A trick is something a hooker does for money... or candy." 

- Gob Bluth

"What can my wizard do when they're out of spells?" It's a common question  when playing old-style D&D, and it's been addressed dozens of times. "Tricks" are my attempt at an answer. It's not an especially original answer. They're pretty much Edition 3+ cantrips in all but name, but I wanted to make them even less tactically useful in order to keep that OSR flavor. Zot! Is the only trick with a direct combat application. It's moderately less effective than a sling, and only slightly better than a thrown dagger. “Rods/Staves/Wands” is typically one of the easier saves for opponents to make, so it's not going to replace your MU's flaming oil flasks. Still, it lets your low-level MU feel all wizardly by zapping kobolds with their wand. 

Tricks

Tricks are minor magical invocations, typically learned by aspiring spellcasters early in their apprenticeship. They are usually forgotten or ignored by the time they become a full-fledged Magic User. Tricks are only known by Magic Users, Illusionists (from the Advanced book), and Necromancers (from the optional class). A 1st level spellcaster knows a number of Tricks equal to their Intelligence bonus +1 (to a minimum of 0), determined randomly, by the player, or by the referee. Once chosen, the character cannot change the Tricks they know. The spellcaster adds another Trick at 5h level, and another at 9th.

Once cast, a Trick does not leave the spellcaster's memory! They may perform the Trick repeatedly throughout the day. All tricks require the spellcaster to have a wand or staff in hand, and the caster must chant and gesticulate as with any other spell.

 

1) Zot! (MU only)

Range 30'. A small jolt of arcane energy. Target must save vs wands or take 1d4 damage.

2) Kindle

Instantly create a small flame at the end of your wand or staff, enough to light a candle, pipe, fireplace, etc.

3) Open

Open an unlocked door, lid, or hatch you can see within 30'

4) Snail

Summon a fist-sized snail for 1 round per level. Appears in your hand and follows your commands.

5) Skull (necromancer only)

A mindless, ghostly skull floats around your shoulders for 1 round per level.

6) Leitmotif (illusionist only)

Your personal theme song plays around you at conversational volume for 1 round per level. 

7) Candle

Your wand or staff produces a 5' radius of soft light. Lasts 1 turn or until you cast another spell or trick.

8) Wash

Cleans 1 dish, cup, or utensil within 10' to acceptable quality.  

9) Scribble

Write a message upon a surface in softly glowing letters, up to INT words. Lasts 1 turn. 

10) Confetti

Conjoure a handful of colorful paper shreds up 30' away. Optionally accompanied by kazoo fanfare.

Disposable Future!

Now live on Kickstarter!

Disposable Future is a dystopian cyberpunk RPG using mechanics from Into the Odd. In this role-playing adventure game, you and the other PCs start as roommates sharing one crummy apartment in the slums of New-Cleveland. You have $20 in your pocket, rent is due in four days, and you owe thousands of dollars to someone powerful and unforgiving. You’ll take any sketchy job that comes your way, even if it means taking the bus to a hit. 

I've been playing this game on-and-off with friends for a few years now, and it's been a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to finally sharing it with the rest of the world. As of this writing, the campaign has reached it's funding goals. I'd really like to hit both my stretch goals so I can include a starter adventure ("These Machines Kill Fascists") and upgrade the interior art for color. 

So please, give it a look, and maybe share the link with others. As always I appreciate your support!

 So do I only post on this blog to promote Kickstarters anymore? It seems like that may be the case.

Anyway…

Fantastical Classes: Blobs vs. Blades
Now on Kickstarter!

Fantastical Classes: Blobs vs. Blades is a collection of brand new character classes for old-style fantasy roleplaying adventure games. Specially designed for use with Old School Essentials, this book contains six exciting character classes that you didn’t even know you needed! All of them are lovingly written and illustrated by your old friend Joshua LH Burnett.

The book features six new classes, some of which are directly inspired by beloved classic JRPG video games. If we hit our stretch goals, I’ll add even more classes!

• Adept: Adventuresome scholars of all things magical that can use both arcane and divine spells!
• Blob: Small gelatinous monsters that come in a variety of lurid colors!
• Dancer: Charming performers whose dancing lets them tap into the primal forces of magic!
• Fury: Highly-mobile skirmishers who specialize in using two weapons at once!
• Ophidian: Venomous skulkers whose blood carries the influence of the ancient Serpent Men!
• Swordmage: Doughty warrior-wizards who can channel arcane magic through their blades! 

Check it out on Kickstarter!

Spread the word! Wake your neighbors! 

Family & Fury!

Hey! There's a new Fast & Furious move out. Hot damn, do I love those movies. I haven't had a chance to see Fast X yet, but it's on my schedule for next weekend!

Anyway, I wrote this a couple months ago, but I've been sitting on it until the new movie came out. 

Family and Fury! is a one-page RPG designed to let you play all the family drama and high-octane action that make those movies so fun. It's a hack of John Harper's Lasers & Feelings. I'm having a lot of fun making L&S hacks. It's a nice little creative refresher before i move onto my next big project. 

You can check out a JPG of the game below. The PDF is pay-what-you-want on both DriveThru and Itch.io. Give it a look! It's all about family!

Family and Fury! on DriveThruRPG

Family and Fury! on Itch.io

Crepuscular #2: Triumph Over the Grave!

So, did I finally post on the blog after 10 months of absence just to plug my new Kickstarter?

Yes.

Do I feel a little guilty about that?

Also yes.

But hey kids, I have a new Kickstarter!

After putting it on the back burner for way too long in order to work on other fun projects, I am finally bringing Crepuscular #2 to the world!

CHECK IT OUT!

This time the adventure "Triumph Over the Grave" focuses on a 0-level funnel crawl. I don’t rightly know if this is the only 0-level adventure that’s set up as a hex-crawl, but they’re very rare if they are out there. Also, you start of this adventure dead! If you can crawl your way out of the afterlife, you’ll get to start your new life as a 1st level adventurer. Neat right?

I’ve also got a lot more information about the Crepuscular City of Xothma-Ghul in the book. It’s neat how that city started out as your basic Lankhmar expy and has morphed into this weird dystopian almost-cyberpunk city where I basically just slather on my snarky social satire and sneering distrust of institutions. But, y’know, it’s me, so it’s weird and kooky and fun.

Also it’s gonna be in color! How cool is that? This will be my first big project in full color (aside from the QAGS version of Leopard Women) and I’m super excited to see how it looks. Comix Wellspring prints some good looking color comics, so I’m sure it will look fab.

Anyway, give it look-see and spread the word! It’s already hit funding, but I have family dental bills to pay and need the extra dosh!

Spread the word! Wake the neighbors!

And I’ll actually post some more stuff on this here blog soon. I promise. Seriously.

The Nameless World - Cosmology, Pollution, and Thaumalite

 

The Nameless World is unfathomably old. Thousands of empires have risen, fallen, and been ground to dust by eons of time and conquest. Most of the mainstream religious cults don’t even bother with creation myths. The very idea of a time before the world strikes most philosophers and scholars as patently ludicrous.

These self-same academics believe that the Nameless World lies at the center of all things—not just the material universe, but of all planes of existence. How else can one explain a world both besieged by demons from below and confounded by angels from on high? The numerous and vermiform alien beings that bubble up from the shadows and unseen corners of space lend credence to this theory as well.

Most people will tell you that the Nameless World has four moons. Those people are wrong. The world has no satellites, and what most people call moons are, in fact, planets. The Nameless Worlds and its four sister planets orbit in such close proximity to each other that from the surface of each, the other planets seem as large as the moon does on our own world. These orbits are erratic and unpredictable, and only the most dedicated and mathematically-savvy of astrologers can predict their movements and appearance with any degree of accuracy. Certainly, the cosmological influence of so many planetary bodies in such close proximity has some influence of inherently magical nature of the Nameless World. The four “moons” are Nibiru (home world of the Elves), Erebos (the undead moon), Halakim (where angles live), and Lykos (the wolf moon).

Phlogiston Pollution

The world teeters on the edge of a unique form of environmental devastation. As any wizard will tell you, magic originates as phlogistonic energy channeled from the Thaumic Plane and shaped into spells through the synaptic patterns burned into the brains of trained sorcerers. Even the smallest of spells dumps large amounts of phlogiston into the environment. Trace amounts of this alien energy linger long after the spell is cast. Residual phlogiston is rarely detectable or harmful to living things, but over centuries, thaumic residue begins to pool together, forming sumps and sinkholes of dangerous magical energy. These phlogistonic cysts cause environmental corruption, spawn alien monstrosities, and weaken the barriers between worlds. Ecologically minded wizards blame the increase in monsters and dimensional incursions over the past several decades to this thaumic pollution. Very few sorcerers are willing to make the personal sacrifices required to reduce this global corruption.

Sometimes these pools of magical fallout coalesce and mineralize into weird purple-green ore, somewhere between crystal and metal.  It has a slightly waxy texture and glows dimly like a blacklight. Sorcerers call this mineral thaumalite, although wizards on some worlds know it as compound-N, nibirulith, or mutanto. Thaumalite can be used to empower spells, at the cost of greatly increasing the chance of fallout and corruption.

System: A fist-sized chunk of thaumalite grants a wizard or elf +1d10 to their spellcasting roll. After used this way, the bonus die drops one size as the chunk’s mass boils away.

There are several dangers associated with thaumalite. Merely carrying the mineral on one’s person gives them a -5 to all saves against mutation, corruption, or transformation.

Additionally, when using thaumalite to boost a spellcasting roll, the chance of magical mishap is greatly increased. If a spellcaster uses thaumalite to boost their roll, a failure is treated as a 1, with all associated dangers. If the bonus die comes up as a 1 but the spell roll still succeeds, then the spell is cast and is not lost, but the caster suffers the “or worse” consequences in the “1” section of the spell (misfire, corruption, or patron taint).

Gorgon Crawl Classics: Foresight Spell

The titan Prometheus is the divine personification of Foresight. This gave him the knowledge to side with Zeus and the gods when they rose up against his fellow titans. Prometheus can grant his disciples an approximation of his foresight.

The mechanics of this spell were influenced by the Luck Word in Kevin Crawfords excellent Godbound rpg. I believe diviners in D&D 5th Ed do something similar as well. 

Foresight (patron spell)

Level: 1 (Prometheus)	Range: Self	Duration: Varies	Casting Time: 1 Round	Save: None
General	Prometheus grants the caster nebulous visions of possible futures. This allows the player to roll dice ahead of time and use the results for future rolls.
Manifestation	Roll 1d4: (1) Prometheus whispers portents directly into the caster’s mind; (2) Warnings of the future appear before the caster’s eyes, written in flaming script only they can see; (3) Multiple timelines appear before the caster like strands of quicksilver, which they pluck like lyre strings; (4) The caster splinters their mind across fourteen-million six-hundred and five possible futures to find the one where they succeed.
1	Last, failure, and patron taint.
2-11	Lost. Failure.
12-13	Roll 1d20 and record the result. You can use this number in place of any attack, skill, or saving throw roll you make before the end of the next round You must choose to replace a roll before the roll is made.
14-17	Roll 1d20 and record the results. You can use this number once in place of any attack, skill, or saving throw roll made by you or an opponent you can see before the end of the next round. You must choose to replace a roll before the roll is made. These numbers are lost if this spell is cast again before they are used.
18-19	Roll 2d20 and record the results. You can use each of these numbers once in place of any attack, skill, or saving throw rolls made by you or an opponent you can see before the end of the next round. You must choose to replace a roll before the roll is made. These numbers are lost if this spell is cast again before they are used.
20-23	Roll 2d20 and record the results. You can use each of these numbers once in place of any attack, skill, or saving throw rolls made by you or an ally or opponent you can see within the next 1d6+CL rounds. You must choose to replace a roll before the roll is made. These numbers are lost if this spell is cast again before they are used.
24-27	Roll 2d20 and record the results. You can use each of these numbers once in place of any attack, skill, or saving throw rolls made by you or an ally or opponent you can see within the next turn. You must choose to replace a roll before the roll is made. These numbers are lost if this spell is cast again before they are used.
28-29	Roll 3d20 and record the results. You can use each of these numbers once in place of any attack, skill, or saving throw rolls made by you or an ally or opponent you can see within the next turn. You must choose to replace a roll before the roll is made. These numbers are lost if this spell is cast again before they are used.
30-31	Roll 3d20 and record the results. You can use each of these numbers once in place of any attack, skill, or saving throw rolls made by you or an ally or opponent you can see within the next CL turns. You must choose to replace a roll before the roll is made. These numbers are lost if this spell is cast again before they are used.
32+	Roll 4d20 and record the results. You can use each of these numbers once in place of any attack, skill, or saving throw rolls made by you or an ally or opponent you can see within the next CL turns. You must choose to replace a roll before the roll is made. These numbers are lost if this spell is cast again before they are used.