Thief Background

I mostly like 5e backgrounds but I think Traveler did it better (except the whole death during pre-game part which seems like a big waste of time). I have seen people suggesting fantasy games need something similar so I decided to take a shot at it. I'm not entirely satisfied because I made them somewhat generic and this sort of thing really needs the setting (wars, leaders, nations) and maybe some kind of skills baked in. Still, here's the first shot. I consider it Public Domain so if anyone can improve it, feel free.

Thief Background

Nearly all thieves exist in a gang of some kind so the tables assume that. An independent thief is on their own. A thief can quit the tables and become an adventurer at any point tor they can keep rolling and add up the years.

The Thief Initial ROlL TABLE shows where the thief came from.

1d6	Thief Initial Roll
01-02	Born into city gang, go to the Street Rat Occupation table
03-04	Orphan in city, gang became family, go to the Street Rat Occupation table
05	Fled abusive home, joined gang to survive, go to the Journeyman table
06	Wanted for a crime, go to the Journeyman table

Once in a gang the thief isn't really much good. They will mostly be put out to beg or act as a fast talking distraction to assist pickpockets. If they show some aptitude for violence or have decent size when they become a teen they will be made a Thug/Bodyguard (one of the gangs footsoldiers). 

1d6	Street Rat Occupation table
01-02	Beggar
03-04	Bagman/Fast talker
05	Pickpocket
06	Thug/Bodyguard

Each year the Street Rat should roll on the Street Rat Advancement table to see what happened.

1d6	Street Rat Advancement Table
01-03	No change, same as last year.
04	Re-roll on the Street Rat Occupation Table next year.
05	Mishap. Roll on the Mishap Table.
06	Doing well. Roll on the Journeyman Occupation Table next year.

1d6	Journeyman Occupation Table
01-02	Agitator
03-04	Burglar
05-06	Thug

Every year the Journeyman should roll on the Journeyman Advancement table to see what happened that year.

1d6	Journeyman Advancement Table
01-02	No change, same as last year
03	Re-roll on the Journeyman Occupation Table for the next year
04	Mishap. Roll on the Mishap table
05-06	Leave the gang to become an Adventurer

1d6	Mishap Table
01-02	Injured in a turf war. Skip a year recovering and laying low then roll on the same Occupation table as last year.
03-04	Fled the city to live in the wilderness for a year then roll on the same Occupation table as last year.
05-06	Locked up or laid low for most of a year then roll on the same Occupation table as last year.

Best of the Web - MSJX Maps

This week's Best of the Web is dedicated to maps by m.s.jackson at msjx. Specifically dungeon maps. I've never really been happy with my own dungeon maps which tend to look like the sample in the back of the original DMG. I've always kept my eye out for better style (isometric, top-down 3-d, or standard) but I get attracted to overly complicated looking maps which take too long. As I look around I keep coming back to msjx's maps. The older ones are a bit different style but the newer ones are beautiful. They are simple, clean and clear (especially the 'infamous Fuck Your Printer versions'. 

Here is a selection of the top-down dungeon maps I like:

The Eternal Grave of the Elaborist Saqqara

The Great Hall redux

Vinjeøran Burial Tomb

The Temple of Sorrowed Ladies

No man is an island, a dungeon tomb

The Mines at Torgath

Sigyn's Kurgan

A dungeon

There is also an isometric map that I really like. Bath House of Blonin Breasthaven is for Far Away Lands and it perfectly matches the aesthetic feel of that game and is the prettiest isometric map I've seen. Simple, clean, and clear.

Best of the Web - RIP Steve Perrin

Steve Perrin has passed on August 13, 2021. He was one of the founding members of the Society for Creative Anachronisms and took that knowledge of combat into the RPG world working on the original RuneQuest and Stormbringer games.

I loved RuneQuest and would have loved Stormbringer even more if I gave it a chance at the time. Seems Stormbringer fixed some of the thing about RuneQuest that I didn't like (everyone had magic in RuneQuest and hit points by location, and Glorantha).

I never met the man, I have now quirky anecdotes, but he had an influence on my gaming by providing such a solid alternative to the game that has always dominated the RPG industry. Thanks Steve.

• Death Notice -​ Vale and farewell, Steve Perrin (1946 - 2021)
• RIP Steve Perrin (1946–2021)
• Steve Taught Me Much of Game Design
• Farewell to an Ace

Best of the Web - Dragons Lair, Ghost Generators

Cacklecharm at The Manse has a post called "Dragon's Lair is a pretty cool dungeon" which spiked my nostalgia levels through the roof. At one point I'd mastered the game. It was a beautiful game, but kind of crappy as an actual game because all you did was memorize things. Once mastered I could finish the game with all my lives left, which by that point meant a small crowd had formed to watch the big dragon fight. Then to maximize the score you let yourself die once, twice (and then don't screw up the last one or you look like the biggest idiot) then kill the dragon and its over. Like I said, the game was beautiful, but I'd never considered as a dungeon before. The post makes a fun read.

Cacklecharm also has a nice post called Ghost Generator + New Ghost Rules that is worth a look. I've never liked the way ghosts, wraiths, spirits, and such were codified in D&D. That takes the mysterious of them which kills any horror they might generate. I understand the codification in most cases but for ghosts and demons it doesn't really work for me. Something like the Ghost Generator is better.

Mix Cacklecham's tables with the ones created by Noism in his Random Ghost Generator post over at Monsters and Manuals and the Three Step Modern Haunting Generator over at Role Playing Tips (really like the desires of the Ghost table) and you'd really have something to build an adventure or two around.

 

Best of the Web - Divine Trickery & Modular Rulebook

Over on his blog Blackrazer JB has a post called Killing Gods, Part 4. It's an interesting series and even more so because he links to older things he's written on Clerics which I hadn't seen before. I don't think Clerics, and their position in the game, have been discussed enough to be honest. I've stated before I think TSR blew it in the way they built Dieties & Demigods (and Gods, Demigods, & Heroes before it) around the Gods and not around the religions and how they relate to Clerics and Druids (and now Warlocks I suppose). 

In that vein their was a comment on the post and JB's response that just lit off the creativity in my head.

McGrogenJune 17, 2021 at 9:40 AM

Fair enough, but my point is more about one divine being pretending to be another, or even a false one. Since clerics receive their spells from divine beings, would it fit for one god to start granting cleric spell to someone as something akin to a divine false flag operation?

Reply

Replies

JBJune 17, 2021 at 10:55 AM

Hmm. I have to say I don’t find it very sensible given the parameters of the rules. Doing so, even for a trickster type god (think Loki) would undermine the faith of both the devout and the deluded. 

In the end, I have to think ALL the gods have a vested interest in “playing by the (divine) rules;” the consequences of doing otherwise would be a widespread loss of followers.

I think McGrogen is onto something and JB misses his point. I think this false-flag idea could make for an amazing campaign. Imagine a God of Law has a church that dominates a continent, crushing other religions whenever they can. Like the Catholics in Europe back in the medieval period. Then imagine one of those other, weaker Pantheons, facing extinction works to divide that God of Law's church. They could support false prophets and grant spells to prove it. They might convince an Emperor in the East that they are the direct conduit to the God and the Pope is being controlled by demons. They might convince leaders outside the sphere of the God of Law to start a Holy War. They might go for regional religious leaders forcing the main god to play whack a mole trying to stop the faith from fracturing. These false flag ops might simply be distractions, a delaying action to give that Pantheon more time to do something, they might be an attempt to weaken, divide, or destroy that God of Laws church. 

I think it could be interesting if a character was a Cleric of the God of Law or if they were aligned with that Pantheon (possibly unaware of the grand scheme). I think one could write up dozens of adventures along these lines and roll things out over years. 

Anyway I think that would be a good way to really put the religion into the Divine classes and make them front and center from time to time.

Buildings are People had a short post in 2018 called Modular OSR Rulebook. 

The post links to a G+ discussion which is naturally gone since Google crapped on everyone by cancelling G+ as well as a link to a GitHub site that also has a broken link, but appears to have unrelated (at least the design goals are nothing similar) stuff linked on the right side of the page.

So this appears a dead project, so why link it? Because the concept is brilliant and something the OSR should have done long ago.

The Idea

We are making a modular BX document that includes multiple versions of every mechanic for you to pick and choose. 

This makes choosing house rules and creating the best game for your own table easier, particularly for new GMs. Browsing endless blogs for endless hours to gather ideas is fun for me, but it's not appealing to everyone, nor is it an option that everyone is aware of. Think of this as a library of BX rules and procedures.

Someone should create a wiki. Start with an outline of BX using mil spec, that is every chapter is numbered, every subsection, and sub-subsection has a number as well. Then folks submit house rules under the appropriate number. We'd get a dozen different ways to generate attributes, Roll Initiative and angle Encumbrance slot ideas right off the bat.

If the site encouraged people too submit their own ideas, and noted Fonts and a few other things to promote some consistency it could make designing a home brew trivially easy. It would also create a lingua franca to assist in communication. "I use Inititative 7.3.3, thats the 1d6 for each side, highest goes first." That sort of thing.