Chain-Creating Freaks & Fancies - Another blogging challenge

If there are two things I enjoy, then late night posting and bandwagons includes at least one of the them.

On our darling OSR server on the discord side of things I was egged on to try to get another bandwagon, or "a blogging challenge" as they call them nowadays, off the ground.

Ghru from Dark Souls 3, my inspiration for using goatmen

How did we get here?

This all stemmed from a conversation about using "un-vanilla" creatures. As in, taking something like the goblins in the gatehouse of Stonehell and instead running them as lanky goat-men with crowns of tangled horns growing from their heads, or other types of "re-skinning" of things in a similar matter.

From there the conversation continued to drift onwards to creating new things altogether, and how that really is just riffing off of things as well.
And that is not a bad thing, seeing something cool and going "This is cool, I wanna make something based off of it!" is a perfectly fine attitude to have especially in a hobby where we're just making (hopefully cool) stuff up to show to our players.

So, I challenge whoever comes after me to do exactly that, don't worry about originality or anything like that too much and just make something fun out of something cool you find.
Or in this case, something cool I found for you.

The Challenge - Chain-Creating Freaks & Fancies

This really is as simple as:
I will now share what I think is something that looks cool with you.
You will take that something and create some gameable piece from it. A monster, an npc, a magic item, a dungeon, a village. Whatever you think befits the thing.
Once you are done you write it into a blogpost, linking back to this one, and at the end of that blogpost you will share something that you think looks cool.
And whoever comes after you will then take your something and write a gameable piece based from it, linking back to your post.
And we will keep repeating this until someone drops the collective ball.

Or if this goes wild and blows up somehow, all of yous take my cool thing and create something from it and then when you share it in your blog you include something you find cool and we'll keep having these prompts multiply exponentially.

One or the other.

My "something cool"

Okay, I have something that I found quite cool. Mermaids in what to me looks almost like swamp water. Based on this, give me freaks or give me fancies.

Now let's see if this one will sink or swim.

Mermaids, by Alayne on Artstation
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Al3Jxo

This challenge has since been taken on by Mr.Mann of the Foot of the Blue Mountain blog.
Follow the chain over there if you wish to find the out what he has left behind for others.

Rules and rulings I've been using lately

While doing my routinely alt-tabbing between youtube and discord I realised that I have a small document gathered up of commonly used rules and rulings that I've though significant enough to write down for ease of reference.
So I thought why not share them to the interwebs to be gawked at and picked apart by strangers!

Of course these are just major ones that have been written down by myself, and there likely are a number of smaller things that didn't make it to the post or even the document I keep these noted down in.

God has Left

Each couple of months of irl time Cleric Spells are counted as being at one level lower that they normally would. (ie. Lvl.5 Cleric would cast their spells as if they were lvl.4 one month after the disappearance of Varchic)
No more new clerics are allowed to be made.

Promises to Saints

To offset the loss of clerics, anyone can proclaim promises to Saints.
You must know of the saint in the first place.
You make a promise to the Saint, related to one of the things associated with them, in order to gain a favor from the Saint.
Breaking a promise made to a Saint results in a punishment.
E.g. You promise to the saint of firefighters to stop smoking for good in exchange for the favour of the saint watching over your house to make sure it doesn't burn down

HP, Combat & Wounds

HP represents one's ability to stay standing and push past injuries, rather than "meat points".
You'll still manage to run around with your guts hanging out as long as you have the HP to keep you going through the pain.
Max damage roll gets to nominate a wound on target.
Defender either accepts the wound or tells how they deflect it and at what cost.

Random Encounters

Whenever the players suspect they have triggered a random encounter, anyone may proclaim "I choose Rapture" to instead encounter Rapture.
The character of the player who chose Rapture experiences and encounter with it.
(From: Veins of the Earth)

Night encounters

Two watches per night.
People declare what they want to do during a watch, only people actively keeping watch are geared and and ready to rumble should shit hit the fan. Others only have one thing on hand upon waking up. And no, you aren't sleeping in your armour.
Resting for a watch recovers 1hp.
One of the players on watch rolls d6, on 1 there is encounter | Known Encounter
Same time GM rolls another d6, if the result is same as player d6, there is encounter | Surprise Encounter

Dungeon Blues & Passage of Real Time

Ending a session in a dungeon or otherwise in the middle of action means that no time will pass for the PCs between sessions, while the outside world continues on.
This can lead to situations where the PCs start a delve one session, finish it the next, and leave the dungeon to find several weeks if not months have passed.
(From: Songbirds 3e)

Henchmen

Gain xp at half the rate of PCs.
Ask for half a person's share of treasure as payment.
GM can/will roll morale for henchmen when applicable, usually after party suffers losses or if the henchmen are asked to do something blatantly dangerous.
Player can keep henchmen of up to total combined level equalling to PC level, modified by CHA mod.
Henchmen are a public resource vs PCs that are private to a player, akin to a shared character.
Specific PC has to bring them along, but after that even if the player who brought the henchman along isn't present on some session of the delve the rest of the party can use the henchmen as they see fit.
Henchmen don't get the option of rolling starting funds but instead gotta use the starting gear table.

Note: henchmen rules are something I am still to this day very unsure of, mainly because I do not wish to get all nitty gritty about exact types of torchbearers who'll only carry lights for the party and luggage boys who'll only carry loot or gear for the party and animal handlers who'll only help keep the horses happy for the party and all of these having specific wages they'll ask. Why not just treat them as general helpfuls who get promised a share of the treasure and call it a day?
Additionally, at least in the Lamentations rules that I base my games on I don't remember seeing a mention of how many henchmen a single PC can employ, but personally I think this should in some capacity be limited.
In short, I'm not quite sure if I am satisfied with this iteration of henchmen rules that I am currently leaning on.

Art by me, because blogposts without images look boring