Deck of Many Fates - Tarot readings with magical effects

 The results of yet another silly idea, "what if I wanna have a different type of Deck of Many Things in a game. A type that doesn not completely fuck over things but would still be interesting for players to mess around with and with potential to cause shenanigans".
Or, well, I did not explicitly set out to do exactly that but I ended up with results for the cards that are much lower power level than the original Deck of Many Things both because the world I run my games in currently is atleast aiming for the low-magic grim fantasy kind of theme, and because I'm a coward when it comes to flat out adding large scale destruction and ascension to godhood to my games.

The deck presented here is largely based on actual tarot deck imagery and most card effects atleast very loosely tie into how those cards are sometimes read.
Roughly half of the cards in this deck affect a person tho whom they are being read. This can be either another person, another PC, or even the reader themself if they are doing a reading alone.
I chose to make the cards a bit more interactive with the world in this way because I felt it would create interesting moments where a party member give another PC a reading and the results might afffect either one of the characters or even both in some cases, but also because I wanted to make the deck be something that can be used several times and that supports drawing several cards at once rather than being about drawing single card at a time and having them disappear after granting their effect.

Deck of Many Fates

Old and worn deck of cards, the edges all frayed and the faces of the cards full of small scratches presumably resulted from sliding the cards across or on a coarse surface. The images on the cards are somewhat faded in their colours and in more than one spot there's small doodles on them either to draw in features that have been worn out or to add some extra ones.

When giving a reading with this deck, consult to the card effects below. A reading can consist of any amount of cards which's effects will stay active untill another reading is given. There are four extra cards in the deck on top of the traditional major arcanas of tarot, these can be represented by one card from each minor suit if you wish to use actual physical deck of cards.

• I. The Fool  - The image of a minstrel waltzing off a cliff with no care in the world, distracted by the bright sun.
  The person to whom this card is read will survive unscathed from the next time they would suffer falling damage.       
• II. The Magician - Pictured here is a professor hunched over a foaming vial in laboratory that's drawn in astounishing detail.
  The person to whom this card is read will find themself knowledgeable about the next subject they hear anyone pondering about.   
• III. The Hight Priestess - Depicted is a woman dressed in flowy robes laying atop a moon, a cencer hanging from her out stretched hand.
   The person to whom this card is read will find themself unable to act the next time they're in the presence of someone they recognise as holy.       
• IV. The Empress - The image in the card is that of a noble woman holding a glass of wine, sitting down with a flower in her hair.
  The person to whom this card is read will have others bend to their will within reason as long as they perceive those people to be below them in social status, likewise the person tho whom this card is read cannot oppose those who they perceive as above them in social status.     
• V. The Emperor - King sitting on a mighty throne with a stern expression, a bloodied sword and a severed head, both resting against the throne, have clearly been added as an addition to the original art.
  The person giving the reading for this card will be able to command whoever they are reading to with the authority of their king once.
• VI. The Hierophant - A Depiction of lavishly dressed priest giving a sermon before a group of people, the bottom of the card is covered in small scribbles of names worming up all the way to the backs of the people on the card.
  If the person to whom this card is read shares a name with one of the names scribbled on the card (2-in-6 chance) they will slowly grow to admire the person giving the reading, eventually to the point of devotion and worship. 
• VII. The Lovers - The picture is of man and a woman in fancy suit and dress, sitting there facing each other with a spear that they don't seem to care about piercing both of them by their chest. The person giving the reading for this card will share the next amount of damage they would take with whoever they read this card to, and vice versa.
• VIII. The Chariot - Depicted on the card is a beautifully painted chariot with no horses, a spear rest against it's side.
  The person to whom this card is read will find themself driven to be on the move soon, wether they wish to or not. (By monsters, bandits, tax collectors, angry nobles etc.)
• IX. Justice - Pictured on this card is a dwarf pulling a longsword from the earth with both hands firmly grasped around it's hilt, in front of him on the ground lays a halfling perhaps waiting for his judgement.
  The person giving the reading for this card learns one sin the person they're giving the reading to has committed.
• X. The Hermit - Snowy mountain range, underneath which a man is sleeping all curled up.
  The person to whom this card is read will experience uninterrupted rest the next time they lay down, and will only wake up after fully rested.
• XI. The Wheel - On this card is a picture of a jester tied to large wheel, three daggers have hit the wheel while one has sunk itself to the jester's arm.
  The person to whom this card is read will find themself extremely lucky in everything they set out to do for the next three days, but on the third day all of their successes will be paid for in misfortune. The opposite is true for the one giving the reading.
• XII. Strength - Holy warrior wrestling a wolf, the animal looks ferocious but the man is pinning it down with his bare hands.
  The person to whom this card is read to will find strength within themself whenever doing something perceived as heroic by themself (+2 to str mod when doing heroic stuff). 
• XIII. The Hanged Man - The faded image of a man hanging from a tree by his foot, he looks up at his tangled foot and looks somewhat annoyed.
  For the rest of this reading, all the effects are reversed to affect the other person instead (So if card would affect the reader it affects the person to whom the card is read instead and vice versa).
• XIV. Death - Almost comical looking depiction of death on his scrawny and malnourished pale horse staring into the far horizon.
  Both the person giving the reading and to whom this card is being read are suddenly aware that one of them must die for the other to keep on living. (If reading this card by oneself, the person becomes painfully aware that they must end their life.)
• XV. Temperance - Picture of a reserved lady throwing away the contents of a goblet into a much larger vessel.
  The person doing the reading for this card and the person to whom this card is read will be compelled to balance out whatever they have the largest difference in (wealth, level, hp, etc.).
• XVI. The Whale - This card is titled "The Whale" but the artwork resembles more of a rotting snake coiling around itself, if snakes had heads shaped like that that is. 
  When this card is revealed, anyone witnessing it can feel their guts sinking almost as if suddenly falling. Water turns foul and muddy.
• XVII. The Tower - Depiction of a classic wizard's tower with the top few floors of it exploding from the inside and crumbling down. 
  The person to whom this card is read will lose something they are carrying with them but will find double it's value in silver later on.
• XVIII. The Stars - A woman pouring the contents of two large vases into a lake reflecting the stars.
  The person doing the reading for this card gains the effect of the earlier revealed card (or next one if this is the first card in the reading).
• XIX. The Moon - The image here contains two dogs howling at a full moon in front of two towers, half of one of the dogs have been drawn in after being worn out.
  The person to whom this card is read will develop a madness that they can mostly supress, except for during night time
• XX. The Sun - This image is of a highly stylised sun smiling down on a field of flowers, with people dancing in a circle down on the field.
  The person to whom this card is read may re-roll one of their Hit Die, and do so with one die size larger than their normal Hit Die.
• XXI. Judgement - Depicted is a firey bird alight in flames and rising from a fire, the bird's beak is open in a cry of triumph or pain.
  The person doing the reading for this card has to choose either themself or the person they're doing the reading for, after which that person will be absolved of the last sin they've committed after experiencing punishment for it by the universe. (No-one will recall the person having committed that sin afterwards.)
• XXII. The Land - A great empty plain with high mountains crowning it in the horizon.
  The person doing the reading for this card can revert one thing about the person they are giving the reading to to it's original state if they so wish.
  
• XXIII. The Giant - Image of a large man posing triumphantly, four times the size of the others standing by his feet.
  The person to whom this card is read will find that anyone under their leadership will not falter and will follow them even to certain doom.
• XXIV. The Mountain - Incredibly well detailed depiction of a mountain range as seen from above at a slight angle, misty and snow-covered mountain tops rising towards the viewer as shadows demonstrate their sturdy ridges.
  The person to whom this card is read will somehow gleam the moment of their death from the reading, giving them the ability to try and avoid it. (The PC can force a re-roll the next time they would die from result of a die roll.)
• XXV. The Sea - Deep dark blue sea, raging and foaming with stormy clouds hanging over it.
  The person giving a reading for this card will find themself fascinated by the shapes of the waves drawn on the card that seem almost like they are moving and will develop an obsession with water, wanting to see the patterns it makes as it moves. This may lead to madness over time.
• XXVI. The Pit - Depicted here is a well with no walls, a deep pit with pavement around it, as seen from almost directly above with no bottom in sight.
  The person to whom this card is read will be able to exchange all their current levels for levels in another class of their choosing, rolling their new hit die and keeping whichever hp total is higher the new or the old one.

The list of cards and their effects can also be found as a google sheets document over here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zYuUI36BB8A-hdTA8kTp4OVxychjFfeBd0J6S4W-7t8/edit?usp=sharing

World in a 1d100 "I Loot the Body" table challenge

 I mentioned this in passing on the OSR discord server and it seems that Locheil of The Nothic's Eye blog already jumped on it here before I even managed to complete mine that I had started to slowly work on after doing the thirteen items challenge.
But, nevertheless I have now finally managed to push mine brainjuices to produce enough entries to fill a d100 table of random bits and bobs that one might find when going through dead bodies in the world of Land and Sea (I really need to make up a better name for the setting), and I challenge anyone else reading this to make one for a game or setting of theirs.

"I Search the Body" - 1D100

1. Handful of small red crystals, clear and see-through. Smooth all around with ripple-like texture inside
2. Rags wrapped around a tree branch to form a makeshift torch
3. Drawing of a swirling mass of fishes forming a snake-like figure
4. 2d6 copper coins and 1d4 silver coins
5. Brass Knuckle
6. Well kept dagger, wooden handle has shallow intendations for the wielder's fingers to rest naturally on
7. Glass bottle, contains lamp oil
8. Slightly dented tip of a spear, the shaft is missing
9. 50' of rope, frayed at one end
10. Small polished piece of metal, likely a makeshift mirror
11. Thick leather coat with extra padding for protection
12. Holy symbol of the church of Varchic, a circular silver pendant with slightly raised edges to symbolise the pit
13. Dried meat and herbs wrapped in oil-paper
14. A clay jar, contains pickled carrots and onions
15. An assortment of beautiful buttons. Some are silver while others are simply polished metal or other non-valuable material
16. Lantern, sides covered in translucent leather rather than glass
17. Crude sewing kit wrapped in small piece of oily leather
18. 1d4 candles of varying sizes
19. Small rectangular piece of wood with a hinge connecting it to another wooden rectangle. On the inside of one of the wooden bits is a painted depiction of some saint, and inside the other piece are carved the names of three days
20. Small animal bones bundled together with a string
21. Flint and steel
22. Pouch with 3d6 worn silver coins
23. A concealed switchblade. The handle is wooden and smooth from years of use, and the blade is chipped
24. Half faded piece of parchment with sketches of weird combinations of men, women and fish
25. 1d4 apostles of gunpowder
26. An improvised set of simple lockpicking tools
27. Empty waterskin
28. Old looking tinder box, dented and worn to a shine
29. Front fang of a bear
30. Necklace, rather standard craftsmanship. Both the necklace itself and it's chain made of silver
31. Set of prayer beads with an odd looking additional bead at the end
32. Lucky rabbit's foot
33. Assortment of dried herbs, smells of cinnamon and the warmth of ginger
34. A pair of dice, bone
35. Handful of nuts and dried berries
36. Carved pipe and small pouch of loose tobacco
37. Herbal salve in small clay jar. Smells faintly of freshly cut grass
38. Small leather container with bandages, a scalpel, thread, needle and a tourniquet
39. Bottle of cheap alcohol
40. Worn book of prayers, gray covers adorned with single golden vertical line and the contents detailing lifes of saints
41. 1d4 rings, jewelled with cheap gemstones and fashioned out of copper and silver
42. Steel sword, prayer of rest etched onto it's blade
43. Studded brown belt
44. 2d6 arrows in a leather patchwork quiver
45. Iron-reinforced leather boots
46. Torn jacket with reinforced paddings
47. Waterskin filled with salty seawater
48. Talisman made of three bones tied to single string, with notches on the bones
49. Keyring with two keys, one small and rusty and the other bulky and very simple looking
50. Assortment of peculiar looking mushrooms
51. Wooden shield with iron bandings
52. The toe bones of Saint Mienin, the patron saint of those cast away. Always looking to be in posession of those who cannot return to where they come from
53. Ear of an elf
54. Powder horn with 1d8+2 shots worth of gunpowder left
55. Small copper goblet
56. Small crumbled piece of parchment containing the last two clauses of a spell at the top, rest above them has been torn off
57. A golden needle that you just pricked your finger on, ouch!
58. Small vial of holy water
59. 1d4 gold coins hidden somewhere on the body (In it's boot, woven into it's clothing etc.)
60. One black candle. Has a hidden message wrapped around it's wick inside the candle wax.
61. Shiny fork, two black feathers and a pearl from a necklace
62. Dried up rose with pricly thorns. Will slowly sprout back to life when stabbing spirits or those influenced by them
63. Set of two daggers, one with bone handle and the other with charred wooden handle
64. Hip-flask with amber-coloured liquid inside, tastes sweet and warms the body
65. Perfectly smooth and round stone like a sling bullet, always warm to the touch
66. Waterskin filled with foul swamp water
67. Three wooden nails. Nail a spirit to an object with one and they will be bound to it for as long as the nail remains in place
68. Small locket with two teeth inside
69. Braided brown beard with few silvery adornments
70. Torn-off notice with details of an elf posing as human with a reward listed at the bottom
71. Red crystal, clear and see-through. Roughly the size of a fist with sharp edges and ripple-like texture inside
72. Old flintlock pistol that looks like it has been used as a makeshift club
73. Bundle of long strands of hair, either horse- or humanhair. Several clay beads are woven into the collection of strands
74. Deck of tarot cards with rather whimsical art style, the Emperor and Hierophant cards are missing
75. Small fish skull encased in translucent layer of wax. Crushing the skull after warming the wax enough for it to be malleable will result in the skull reforming itself after short amount of time
76. Cracked compass, keeps pointing south-east
77. Passage clearly torn from a book, detailing the compatibility of human bodies with certain aquatic lifeforms. Praises someone named Grahm for their excellent discoveries and the furthering of "our" research
78. Fishbones, several full ones
79. Highly detailed nautical map, extending way past the shorelines
80. Single gold coin, with the face side of it almost entirely scratched off
81. Femur fashioned into a flute
82. Small glass vial with yellow liquid inside, corked with a dismembered finger. The dismembered end of the finger points inwards and makes contact with the liquid where it looks to be constantly sizzling
83. Handful of small black seeds
84. Crumbled and torn piece of parchment with the first two clauses of a spell written on it, rest has been ripped off
85. Fishing hook made of black iron. Stick it through your cheek and you'll cough up a live fish
86. Heavy leather-bound tome, inside cover has tenets of the church of Varchic written on it with golden ink. Rest of the book contains journal entries from what appears to have been a higher ranking church official
87. Beautiful silved pendant of a crescent moon. The wearer cannot speak during night
88. Map of the church-capital with locations crossed over and notes written on it. "Not here, must've wandered further", "Near the mountains perhaps?", "Maybe check the cost?", "I'm sure the church doesn't have it yet..."
89. Piece of skin with tattoo of two half-circles crossing over each other
90. Small pocket-sized journal crusted over with coral-like formations. The book smells of salt and rotten fish and it's pages require prying from each other as they seem to be covered in thin layer of salt
91. Pebbles mined from deep beneath the mountain range of Foundation, said to be blessed by having been close to the sleeping god-giant Varchic for long time
92. Dead mouse with blooshot eyes carefully wrapped in oilskin and cotton
93. Small envelope adressed to the PC who found it. Contains instructions on how to commune with the rotting carcass of the infinite whale Leviathan
94. Small vial of thick, dark red liquid and a quill pen
95. Thick wax-like white paint in a tin container. Applying it to a brush allows one to paint with it on any surface as though it was a perfectly laid out canvas
96. Shrunken head of an elf
97. Scabbard carved out of stone. Will attempt to magically sharpen anythin put inside like a pencil sharpener
98. Silver spoon. When dipped into liquid of any sort, will slowly warm it up to the temperature of a perfect cup of coffee
99. Satin pouch containing 6d10+5 silver coins
100. Clay container the size of a thumb, lets out drips of the rotted blood of something not of this world. Do not ingest!

Lamentation in Colours of Pentagrams - Session #3

For those wanting to start from the beginning:
Session #1
Session #2

Last time the party had made significant progress on their mission to find the missing hunter and his daughter, rescuing the girl from this weird bunch of kids living in the woods and starting to make their way back out of the forest towards Talen to return the girl to her family.
They made good distance on their way back but decided to camp out the night next to the swamp that they had painstakingly waded through a day before.
And that is where we pick up from...

Current party members:
Angelo, magic-user with partial amnesia who had identified a book kept by the children to be magical even though it contained no spells.
Claude Vursk, a fighter searching for his village's missing girl who had been hoping to find her here.
Thrallmar Righthand, a beardless dwarven cleric who had shot and healed one of the children living in the woods.

Blue's player unfortunately couldn't make it for the session this time either which led to certain events having to be slightly postponed as a lot of people are still looking forwards to how they'll play out with Blue being able to actually have a say in what happens with him going over the timelimit given to him by Thackerey.

The swamp and the camp

So, heading back with the missing girl with them our group decided to pitch their tents and sleep the night in order to rest their bodies and not get lost in the woods during night. They unfortunately decided to do so right next to the swamp they had crossed earlier which soon proved to have maybe not been the best of ideas. 
Claude was taking the first watch when towards the end of it he started hearing rustling coming from the camp, and moment later witnessed Thrallmar, Angelo as well as their henchman Marvin crawling out of their tents half awake and slowly making their way towards the swamp. Claude swiftly decided that something was not right here and dashed to Angelo to shake the magic-user awake.
Angelo woke up standing in the middle of the camp with half of his clothes still back in his tent with no idea why he was there and not sleeping, and the two promptly proceeded to wake the other sleepwalkers.
Thrallmar was caught by Claude just as he was about to dip his still bare toes into the murky water of the swamp. As Claude had approached the dwarf from behind, the first thing Thrallmar saw upon waking up was the silhuette of a human figure writhing in the middle of the swamp where the tree had stood during day and burning with bright flame. Shook by this sight, he immediately resorted to pointing his pistol towards the middle of the swamp and letting out a shot.
If anyone or anything near the camp had not yet been awake, they sure as hell were now with the gunshot still ringing in Thrallmar's ears as he loudly exlaimed that there is a devil out there on the swamp. Thrallmar trying to frantically explain the situation to others alerted Angelo to the fact that he too could see this burning figure in the middle of the swamp.

Deciding that it was too dangerous to stay here the group quickly packed up the camp and hurried on away from the immediate vicinity of the swamp, only the way they had come from was on the opposite side of the swamp and the forest was growing darker and darker by the minute. The only way was to skirt around the swamp by following it's edge which in the dark was really the only distinguishable path the could make out in the forest.
The operation didn't go that smoothly though even if they did manage to stumble their way through the dark to the other side of the swamp as on the way they found themselves going through a brief section of the forest with all sorts of assortments of bones hanging from the branches as well as from vines snaking their way up the trees and wrapping around even more bones. It was as if the entire forest here had grown around this graveyard that was suspended some seven metres above them among the branches. Luckily nothing more horrible than merely spotting this weird airborn boneyard happened, Thrallmar affixed some candles to his shoulders to further ward off the darkness and kept muttering some sort of prayer as they moved. Occasionally glancing back at the swamp Angelo and Thrallmar had stopped seeing the burning figure out there and could only anymore make out the twisted silhouette of a lone tree in the middle of the swamp.

Beyond the swamp

Having reached the other side of the swamp the party spend a moment fumbling through the dark to find the exact, or even the approximate, path they had taken when coming from the other way but in the darkness it's not really that easy to tell directions or if that particular set of trees looks familiar or not even with the light of lanterns.

Traversing the darkness further away from the swamp the group would keep occasionally spotting this weird shadow just by the edge of the light of their lanterns. It would be there, looking somehow heavier than the other bits of darkness and when approached it would always manage to stay right at the edge of their light. Thrallmar once again leaned to his trusty pistol to solve the problem after trying to chase for the shadow in vain, not being able to shed any light on it. A shot rang out in the darkness accompanied by the sound of birds suddenly taking off from nearby trees and the shadow almost looked like it was stumbling. Nevertheless, the denser spot of darkness stayed where it was.
Another attempt at trying to shed light onto the figure, another shot into the darkness, and the group heard something heavy fall on the groud accompanied by snapping of twigs and rustling of the underbrush of the forest. It was at this point that everyone decided to rush in and found what exactly the shadow that had been haunting them for a while now was.

Rushing in with their weapons at ready, the group found a large brown bear laying on it's back between some bushes. The bear had two gunshot wounds on it's front but still it was just laying there, looking pathetic and letting out next to no sounds at all.
This changed the entire approach of the party, everyone dropping their intents of violence and wondering if they should just shoo the animal away. As they were discussing on how to handle the situation, the bear slowly tried to crawl back onto it's feet while still not trashing about or growling, just pathetically trying to push itself back from laying there on it's back with two slowly expanding stains of red blood forming on it's chest.
Thrallmar ended up sacrificing his bedroll to improvise some bandages while the others wrestled the bear to a sitting position so that the dwarf could fight the bandages on it. Being the selfless man of god, Thrallmar even sacrificed the alcohol he had stuffed to his pack to try and further cleanse the wounds. The bear tried to back away and swipe the dwarf off with the alcohol stinging in it's wounds, and the group could swear it was cursing uder it's breath.
It was now decided for the party what they had already been wondering about, this must've been one of the kids back from the witch's house. "I have not just shot this same kid three times have I?" protested Thrallmar as the party was laying out their tents and starting a new campfire, having decided that they were far enough from the swamp and that they wanted to nurse the bear as it was not exactly acting hostile.

The following day

Rest of the night passed uneventfully and in the morning the brown bear that had been bandaged up and sleeping was nowhere to be seen, and a familiar looking child wearing furs, a bear skull and almost comically too big bear skin wrapped over him with his hands slotted into where it's still intact front claws were.
Some discussing was done about what to do with the kid and they eventually decided on needing to make sure he gets healed up before letting him go to back to the forest by himself, and managed to talk the boy to coming with them as they were to set out back to Talen.

On their way back the group passed by the log cabin they had spent their first night in only to find it almost completely burnt down. A grim thought crossed their minds what with having fought off the wolves during night, and this boy they were now carrying with them also having appeared as a bear during night, but they quickly decided to not dwell too much on the thought. What they had fought off was a pack of wolves, nothing more and nothing less, and further contemplations everyone would keep to themselves. Thrallmar did check the wolfpelt he had skinned off one of them just in case he was hauling around a skinned human but much to his relief it did turn out to still be a wolf pelt.

Nothing else of importance really happened on the journey back save for Blue mentioning this weird feeling of being watched that he couldn't quite explain, and by afternoon they were out of the forest.

Back at Talen

It was decided that the bear kid could not be taken to the village proper, especially not with Blue's assigned watchman still in town. Claude and the kid were left to camp out in the woods where he kept an eye on Jacob, the weird boy living in the woods and clad in a bearskin and wearing one's skull to mask his face.
In the village Angelo and Thrallmar first went to return the hunter's daughter to her mother, as well as deliver the news about the hunter's death. They were presented with a key to the hunter's shack for reward since his wife was too poor to really offer any other sort of reward and she wouldn't really have much use for it now that James was not with her anymore.

After returning the child, next up was conforting mister Thackerey about the time limit he had set before he claimed he would consider Blue as having ran away and come for his head.
This went rather smoothly, almost as if the man had been waiting for it. As soon as they approached the small chapel the village had they spotted Thackerey leaving from there and coming up to them, thanking Blue for so readily presenting his neck for the liberation of his head from his shoulders. He explained how he had already sent word to Falm, the closest major city, for them to send over some men to come gather Blue so he could be put through the proper procedures for breaking his mission of penance.
Being a man of the church himself, Thrallmar managed to negotiate himself a chance at going to Flam with Blue in order to defend him, ending up signing a proper agreement for it according to which he would not be to leave Talen untill departing towards Falm with Thackerey, Blue and their escorts.
Claude on the other hand had been slowly building up rapport with the boy as the two had been left to camp out in the forest, deep enough for no prying eyes to notice.

Other than that the rest of the session consisted of re-stocking on supplies like food and water, replacing one destroyed bedroll as well as getting some more of the herbal salve they had found from the hunter's shack, which was found out to be produced by the wife of the village elder. Thrallmar also started learning about herbs and the procurement of said salves from her.

265xp + the ownership of the late hunter's shack and it's contents awarded to everyone for getting back to safety.

Scribal magic - A take on classless magic system

EDIT: I have now compiled this into a quickstart ruleset that has been developed a bit further than is presented here, along with slowly thinking of adding more detailed rules to that.
Available here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AvgZfMsPPJEluZM9ascuGShb0c21i4U3MjKvhh63W-k/edit?usp=sharing

In an earlier post I talked about having been inspired to go through actual grimoires and spellbooks to find some less gamified spells. Now, you should also know that my attention span is close to that of a goldfish with me bouncing between ideas and staying and exploring each of them pretty much only for as long as I can keep myself focused on them and do little else.
Thus, I found another really interesting magic system in a cute little manga called Witch Hat Atelier, in which all magic is drawn by making arrangements of glyphs and other shapes that focus and shape where the magic goes and I of course instantly thought "Yeah, this would have no spell levels and could just have the players drawing the symbols and describing a bit what they wish to achieve and then letting the GM interpret the drawing of magic to see what happens". The system also means that everyone can do magic as long as they have the correct tools and knowledge of glyphs. There were some other intricacies involved with the system presented in the manga, like having the magic happen as soon as you complete the drawing and very clever exploitations of that fact that I also would just love to see players innovating on.
I was very excited to take the idea and mess around with it to try and figure how I could fit it into a game.

And that's how we get to yet another blogpost of me sharing completely un-tested ideas for semi-modular system that one would be able to just tack on their system of choice either as additional school of magic or by swapping out the magic system for the one proposed here.

From Illustrations of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, Artist: Edmund J. Sullivan

Scribing magic

Pure academical magic that is invoked by writing it down and giving it conditions under which it should activate. Scribal magic does not perform miracles and thus it cannot create something out of nothing. Everything you do with your magic takes from something to produce the desired effects and the magic is the art of taking those pre-existing elements and prescirbing a condition for them under which they should morph and change to execute the spell's effect.

To perform magic through writing, one only requires special parchment made for the sole purpose of being used in scribal magic and little else. Ink for writing the spell matters little in terms of being able to write magic, although the more pure the ink the more clauses one might be able to include in their spells without them becoming undone.
Some highly learned individuals also speak of glyphs and runes, which act as shorthands for words or even entire clauses which can end up saving a lot of space on the parchement as well as drastically shorten the time required to write the spell, but such shorthands also contain a danger. When encountering a rune or glyph that one does not know the meaning of, it can be extremely dangerous to include it in your spell as withut understanding the rune it is impossible to know what it's used as a shorthand for esecially since runes and sigils can even be shorthands for triggering conditions.

The scribing of magic itself is a very simple task yet somewhat slow to do reactively to situations that may arise and for that reason scribal magic users often carry collections of their written spells with them with very specific triggering conditions written into their magic. That way they can appear to be casting magic with simple gestures as long as they are in posession of the written magic, but also have to be cautios about accidentally triggering the execution of their spells through casual interactions.

Here's a rundown of how writing down magic works.

• First, you must declare or address the source that will carry out your magic, which must be something that already exists around you. This can be something as simple as earth or light, or more specific like moisture in the air or the leaves of nearby trees, as long as there are any such things nearby.
• Secondly, you set a condition under which the spell should execute. This can be just about anything from "when I point I hand forwards" to "at every dawn".
• Thirdly, you can assign changes to the source of your magic. For example, if your spell adresses water you could assing it a change of "condense into ice", "vaporise into mist" or even "form into a globe".
• Lastly, you must declare some sort of target for your magic. This again can range from "the person standing in front of me", "my immediate surroundings" to even "Jack, that bastard who still owes me money".

Here is the template that all scribal magic uses as it's base:

<Adress the source of the core function>

<Declare conditions>

<Assign any changes to the source>

<Declare target(s) for output>

Essentially what you're doing is taking an element of your surrounding and re-programming reality. You can affect a wide range of things but you cannot create something out of nothing as all magic must have a source to execute their function with. This is why scribal magic is also referred to as academical magic.

Jewish Scribe by Jozef Israels

TL;DR

• Purely written magic
• Activates when written condition is fulfilled
• If you carry around written magic, you are considered the caster by the triggers
• Spells often written in advance and carried around as collections, from which one triggers suitable spells as they see necessary
• Requires special parchement
• Purer inks can enable writing of more elaborate spells
• Runes and glyphs exist as shorthands for words, sentences and maybe even full spells
• Runes and glyphs can be dangerous if you don't know what they are a shorthand for
• Sribal magic users need to be careful if they carry around spells during their daily life as to not accidentally trigger them
• Essentially re-programming reality. Assign something in your surroundings as source of spell and manipulate it to do weird things

Afterword

Like I mentioned earlier, this is yet anther entry to the pile of completely un-tested ideas and as such there likely are lots of clever ways to completely break this system, which might not even be a bad thing as I really wanted this to be a system where creating offensive magic would be very dangerous and if you wrote such a spell you would probably want to destroy it after using it, which would lead to spells being created cautiously and used mostly to solve problems rather than fight people.

With this kind of system, just about everyone should be able to use magic, but it would also place limitations on them at the same time.
Want to have a huge repertuare of spells? Well now magic-users actually need to carry their spells around and prepare them beforehand as well as dedicate resources to either finding the specific tools for writing magic or making them themself.
Combined with my idea for clerical miracles through praying which can be found here, I think these would make for atleast a decent base for classless way to do both religious and academical magic, which I think is a good start if I wish to at some point use these for a classless system. We shall see if I ever get that far, but it's something that could prove interesting to try and do.

World in 13 items challenge

 Simple enough really, trying to explain or evoke a feeling of the world in but 13 items with no further explanations.
Original post for the challenge can be found here.

1. Worn book of prayers, gray covers adorned with single golden vertical line and the contents detailing lifes of saints
2.  Half faded piece of parchment with sketches of weird combinations of men, women and fish
3. Torn-off notice with details of an elf posing as human with a reward listed at the bottom
4. Chipped longsword that your father received as a payment once
5. Rucksack patched in several places and faded in colour
6. Dried meat and herbs wrapped in oil-paper
7. Small animal bones bundled together with a string
8. Lantern, sides covered in translucent leather rather than glass
9. A set of prayer beads with an odd looking additional bead at the end
10. Coat with tough leather reinforcements and several pockets inside
11. Set of two daggers, one with bone handle and the other with charred wooden handle
12. Silver coin minted with the image of a neat circle in the middle of it, words in a latin-esque language forming another circle along it's edge
13. Map of several villages dotting the edge of a large forest

That was considerably more difficult that I first thought it would be and I'm not exactly sure how well that portrays the feel I was going for with this setting, but an interesting little excercise for sure.
This to me seems like the approach one should take when writing tables for looting bodies or what's in the treasure pile, so mayhaps I at some point will look to expand this further into a "I loot the body" table of my own.

Lamentation in Colours of Pentagrams - Session #2

Session #1 can be found here. 

Where we last left off, the ragtag party of irregular people had escaped a pack of wolves to the roof of an old log-cabin from where they finished off the few wolves trapped inside the now burning cabin.
The first few rays of the rising sun painted the scenery bright orange, complimenting the flames that were slowly consuming the cabin as our group collected themselves and started to asses the situation.

Current party members:
Angelo, magic-user with partial amnesia.
Claude Vursk, a fighter in search of a different missing girl from his own village.
Thrallmar Righthand, a dwarven cleric who is now looking to regain his honour after cowardly playing dead to avoid being torn apart further by the wolves.

Blue's player couldn't join us for the session due to sudden work things, and Dron's player likewise had to drop from the game entirely due to scheduling changes with their job situation.

New Day

As soon as the situation seemed to have calmed down and there were no wolves to be seen around, Dron took a mad dash somewhere into the woods towards the way the group had come from. Not everyone is made to handle violence and danger, and some men simply snap under pressure when the possibility of one's own death becomes more than real.
Not answering any shouts from the rest of the group or turning back, Dron disappeared to the forest. 

The party decided that since they hardly got any proper rest during the night they would rest now in the morning since it was still early enough for them not to waste all of the remaining hhours of daylight and with that everyone laid down for some well deserved rest while tending to their wounds the best they could.
Thrallmar prayed for minor healing for his leg that one of the wolves had made a bleeding mess out of and rest of the wounded used up the healing salve they had found from James' little cabin of hunting gear in hopes that the combination of patching up the wounds the best they could, a six hours of sleep and rest and the salve would atleast alleviate the pain.
Claude who decided to attempt his best skinning and butchering the wolves for pelts and meat noticed that Dron had even dropped his backpack as he fled back towards Talen, and thus Marvin the henchman was given a bit more convenient way to carry some of the surplus equipment as well as the few scraps of meat that weren't completely ruined by Claude's crude attempt at cutting off eatable chunks from the wolves as well as the bloodied pelts.

Having recovered a bit from their nightly encounters, the sun had climbed all the way to above them indicating that it was closer to mid-day as the group finally set out to follow the faint trail through the woods in hopes of finding James as well as his daughter.
Since there was no obvious trail leading anywhere from the cabin it took a bit, but noticing more weird symbols etched into the trees and deciding to follow them Angleo, Claude and Thrallmar as well as Blue and Marvin folowing behind them came upon a large open area as the trees became sparser and sparser as well as started to grow more withered. What everyone saw extending in front of them was a bog covered in shades of brown moss and murky water, and standing alone in the middle of the swampy land, a lone tree looking nearly as twisted as the remains of the table Angelo's misfired spell had bent when he was trying to barricade the front door against the wolves last night.

The Swamp

Seeing no tracks leading left or right, and neither more symbols carved onto trees the party surmised that to stay on the tracks they would have to wade through here.
Testing the ground ahead with a branch snapped from a nearby tree the bog proved rather unstable for footing as just from the edge of it there was a large variance of spots where sometimes it would only be ankle deep, sometimes up to one's knees and in worst cases even up to their waists which for Thrallmar already meant that such depth would be near impossible to wade through as he'd be up to his shoulders in the muck.
Deciding to hopefully mitigate some risk of the dwarf drowining, Claude suggested tying a rope between him and Thrallmar and this idea was quickly extended to cover the whole group.

The trek through the swampland was not completely uneventful even if ignoring the wet moss, roots and animal bones sticking into everyone's boots and making the travel difficult, as passing the lone tree sitting in the middle of the swamp Thrallmar felt a weird tingle in his neck almost as if being watched and it was from this point onwards as they were halfway through the swamp that proceeding forwards became increasingly difficult.
Now not only was it the muck and dead moss pushing against their feet and making it difficult to shove ones feet forwards through this foul soup that was slowing the group down, but it felt like the roots running through the swamp were actively trying to grab onto their feet and any time they would come to a halt they would slowly but surely start to sink in where they were standing.

Only quarter of the way to go and it was becoming a proper feat of strength to push forwards when Claude who was the first in their line of rope connecting between the members of the party fell face first into the brown waters. With nowhere to grab save for the rope connecting him to the rest of the group it was a struggle for Claude to push and pull himself up again as he emerged from the swamp retching up whatever foul water he might've accidentally swallowed.
Assessing the situation, Claude was now properly stuck. No amount of pulling up his legs worked as everyone watched him slowly sink deeper and deeper, his waist lowering down so that the rope tied between Claude and Thrallmar was now resting straight rather than pointing upwards from Thrallmar's waist.
Not falling into a state of panic everyone started puling on the rope tied around them and with considerable effort Claude first stopped sinking, then slowly but steadily getting dragged up before flying backwards towards the group accompanied with a loud popping noise and shlurping as whatever muckus had been pressing against him rushed to fill the space he had been occupying a moment ago.

Taking a moment to think their options, the party concluded that they'd bring out the grappling hook which they had used earlier to climb away from the wolves that had attacked them at the cabin and would use it as an anchor to pull themselves forwards. Someone would throw it as far as they can and hopefully manage to catch onto a tree so that instead of having to push themselves through the swamp they could rather pull themselves forwards, and following along their plan some gruelling moments later everyone reached the dry and stable land safely.

Gnarled tree in the middle of the swamp

Other moments of note during their travel through the woods include:

• Spotting a bear and it's cub in the distance while carefully avoiding the animals.
• Coming across a cliff atop which they found a very deliberately built campsite that had been trashed.
• A completely un-eventful night of rest with a beatiful sight from atop the aforementioned cliff overlooking the forest.
• Finding some supplies stashed inside a hollowed out tree including, a knife, few arrows and packed cured meat.
• Coming across the corpse of James the hunter by another cliff-face with a crude spear sticking out of him. They picked a ring he was wearing with them.
• Climbing up the second cliff and finding two discarded spears along with several small footprints scattered and disappearing into the forest.
• The forest growing more sparse and thre being no signs of wildlife safe for the occasional mosquite and a flock of ravens.
• Finding a hot spring, hearing the splash of water and upon getting closer noticing wet footprints going away from the spring.
• Arriving at a lone stone house in a clearing in the forest with a small tent and two campfires atop which black pots were steaming.

The House

When approaching the clearing the first thing the party noticed was this old stone cottage with hay roofing. In front of the house stood a small teepee-like tent made of animal skins along with two campfires atop which pots were hanging. The teepee and two short pieces of fence formed a half-circle in front of the house and bit further away from the bits of fence were two spots in the ground that were covered in leaves but not in the way that someone might rake leaves into piles but instead looking like they were very deliberately spread out as a thin layer.

Not daring to get much closer from the treeline, Thrallmar approached just enough to be able to toss one of his empty lamp oil containers towards this campsite to see if he could evoke any sort of reaction. As the glass bottle flied over and landed near one of the pieces of fence and shattered upon impact with ground the party stood there, waiting for any signs of movement, but in vain as there was no indication of whoever might be here.
Having no other indication of someone possibly being in the small camp built around the house or in the house itself other than the two still burning campfire the ground decided to carefully approach. Wanting to see what these suspicious spots of leaves on the ground are, one of them snapped a branch off a nearby tree to brush some of the leaves away with, revealing a dirt pit the depth of 1.5 metres.

House and it's surroundings

Now reaching the camp while being wary of any more better hidden traps the group investigated the surroundings wondering if this might've been one of the hunter's camps in the woods.
Poking their heads into the teepee they found two figures huddled together at the back of the tent, both clad in furs and one of them wearing a deer skull without it's antlers. The other figure, the one with no deer skull, seemed to be a young girl not much older than maybe ten years.
Trying to talk to these children(?) the party heard the loud growling of a bear from somewhere inside the house.
Turning around and preparing for having to either fight or flee from a bear, another small roughly human shape covered in furs stood in the doorframe of the building wearing a bear skull and tossed over it's back was a bear skin with it's front claws still attached that the creature was holding on to. It roared again like a bear would. Not like a person imitating a bear, but like an actual bear was stood in the doorframe.

Before it managed to do anything further, everyone jumped in together to tackle this creature to the ground!
Angelo was the only one who got a proper grasp of it while everyone else either couldn't get a good enough hold or were aiming for where the creature had been standing before Angelo jumped into it and the two were sent into the house with Angelo laying atop this bear skin wearing thing.
Even though it's frame was small and Angelo was quite literally laying on top of it with all his weight, with a mighty roar he was sent flying against the doorframe as the creature stood up, followed by Thrallmar's pistol shot clipping right through it's shoulder which Claude then promptly followed up with a sharp stab at it's ribs. Angelo too tried to finish it off as the creture stumbled backwards and fell on it's knees but even in it's weakened stage it managed to dodge the hasty slash of the stumbling mage.
It was at this moment that two more of these things ran in through the half-crumbled back wall of the house both too clad in animal skins and one wearing a deer skull with small antlers and the other wearing a wolf skull.
Both of them yelling variations of "Jacob, no!" as they ran to shield the bear skull wearing one with their bodies.

The combat came to a sudden halt as the things spoke human words down to a point that Thrallmar ended up offering to heal the one that the group had wounded. A lot of persuasions of letting the party help Jacob were had and these creatures (people?) reluctantly accepted while Jacob kept gruntling things about them bieng adults and thus should not be trusted.
Thrallmar prayed for minor healing on Jacobs wounds as everyone was asking what was going on in here. Apparently this was a group of children who had gone to the forest to play since they didn't like adults telling them what to do and had claimed a witch's house for themselves. The kids had not seen said witch anywhere but looking around the insides calling it a witch's house was not a big stretch of imagination with the top shelves still having vials, jars and bottles of different colours as well as some wet specimens like lizards, rats or small birds and a large map of what one might've assumed to be of constellations.
Angelo got a permission to look around the place on the condition that he wouldn't take anything since this house now belonged to the children. Looking around there was not much to see but one thing that caught his attention was a red book which contained some sort of a runic language he couldn't quite read. The text itself didn't contain any spells, he checked with his magic but checking the book itself there seemed to be something magical with it.

Further discussions with the children led to the party finding out that it had indeed been them who had killed James the hunter and even eventually got them to admit to having Bell, the hunter's daughter that they had been looking for.
They were lead to cellar of the house where she was being kept and after being showed her father's ring she went along with the party without much further issues.
Now having achieved their objective, the group started making their way back towards Talen. With the remaining hours of daylight they had left they managed to make their way up to the swamp before deciding to camp out the night. 

Afterword

Cramming four hours of a session into one blog post truly does seem to take up a lot of space even with some stuff glossed over. Maybe I should learn to simplify the more detailed descriptions of what happened as they're now pretty much going over everything in those scenes moment by moment for the most part.

Depending on how you're counting time they now have either reached the time limit of three days that Blue was given, or they have one more day to make it back. Only one way to find out ;)
The group also decided to camp out next to the swamp after atleast some of them had pretty much been convinced that the tree sitting in the middle of it was very much evil so we'll see how their night goes next time.

Answering Vayra's setting questions

 If you follow the OSR blogosphere you've likely seen half a dozen of people having done this already, but it really is a neat little way to solidify your own views on both your world and rules system which is why I too am joining in on the trend.
The original post by Vayra can be found here.

1) What class knows the most martial arts? Are they real martial arts like kung fu, or made up ones like krav maga?

Fighters are the obvious answer here. Rules-wise in LotFP fighters are the only people who progressively get better at hitting things as they level up and are considered to be people who already have some experience on inflicting violence upon others.
As for any martial arts, different weapons have distinct uses for them and while the fighting style might differ slightly between regions it's not really enough to be called different sorts of martial arts.
Clerics however are taught more non-lethal means of fighting as it is one of the teachings of the church to not harm fellow children of Varchic.

2) Can I start out having already made a deal with the devil or do I have to do that in game?

Currently there does exist a Diabolist class that starts with sharing their body with some sort of otherworldly being if that's your jam, but other than that you could start off as someone worshipping the Deep which is essentially a giant infinite leviathan's carcass rotting somewhere in the depths of the sea and plead your life to it.
Having interesting reasons to not turn back from life of adventuring is always good so I would more than happily work something out, but should you encounter terrible enough beings with enough intelligence you might also be able to strike a deal with one of those. 

3) Do you want me to write an 8-page backstory? Can I write an 8-page backstory, if I want to? If I write something down in it like I'm the timelost princess of the brass city and the daughter of the sun and I commanded legions in the Hell War but was betrayed by my father's vizier but I don't know that, or that I'm elf conan and cooler than everyone else, will that be true?

I would encourage not to write too long of a backstory as depending on how things turn out you might die faster than I can read through the whole thing, but if you aknowledge that you may lose this character in a sudden turn of bad events I won't hold you back.
As long as all those super cool and epic facts leave you in a similar starting position as the other characters -that is, near penniless and with having a reason to delve into danger for coin- then I don't see why not. I would tell you to work any major things through with me as to make sure it doesn't wildly break the world I've built up but as long as the tone matches the world it should be mostly fine.
I reserve the right to veto stuff from such novel, and you won't start with any tangible advantage over the other characters.

4) If I eat someone's heart, will I gain their powers? What about their brain?

In this world there exist dozens of old pagan religions with all sorts of beliefs and gods, as well as the Deep which is said to have been the state of things before land was formed.
If you have the correct rituals, invoke the correct higher powers, do either of those things by an accident, or eat someone deeply influenced by higher powers there is a fair chance that you will gain something.

5) These classes are boring, can I be one from somewhere else? What about from a different system entirely? 

If you show me another class that you'd like to play I can see about porting it to the system we are playing with, but if I feel like it'll break the setting or the type of game we're playing I'll say no.

6) If I make a sword, which one of us gets to name it?

You may call it whatever you wish. Wether or not that will affect anything will depends largely on the name and whatever situation you happen to find yourself in.

7) Am I allowed to kill the other player characters? What would I have to do to be allowed to? Do I win if I kill them all? Actually, how do I win in general?

This is something that would likely be atleast touched on in session zero with how do people prefer things to be, but at the very least you could be able to do opposing checks should any situation escalate to that point at which point Out Of Character it would be good to clear how the involved people are feeling about the situation before escalating it further.
While I expect the PCs to work as a team, any team will have the occasional conflicts.
Other than that, this is not the main focus of the game and killing other PCs will not result in any sort of victory or triumphant reward. There are no true victory conditions apart from having fun and any personal goals you might set for your character.

8) What language stands in for 'Common'? Or what are we all talking to each other in? Like the party, mostly, but also everyone else?

The world I've currently built is only one region so you'll be speaking the language of the common folks, the "cattle-herder dialect" if you will with no proper name to it.
Other languages might know or have heard of are Varchian, the slightly better regarded language that a lot of city-folks speak with much less dialectic differences and also spoken and written by nobles.
Third one is the church language heavily resembling Latin that is mostly used for sacred texts or sermons and mostly only known by nobles and church officials.

9) How do I learn how to talk to rocks? No not once a day just, like, normally?

Some of the old pagan religions might know spirits of soil or earth that you could converse with should you learn to see them, or by going deep underground where the common sense and civilization have not reached and even more primal existances dwell that you could learn things from should you not die on your journey towards this knowledge.

10) Which kinds of wizards get to serve kings and live in towers and shit and which ones are run out of town or stoned to death in the streets? Can I be both? At the same time?

Church and religion have quite a strong hold within the lives of people and thus have more influence than magi who are more from academic backgrounds.
Those who've either evaded suspicions from the church or lead rather boring and non-magical researches do often like to isolate themselves from the questions of the lesser learned folks of academia and some may even be employed as advisors for nobility. On the other hand, those magi pursuing more out-of-this-world subjects are always at the risk of church learning about it and dragging the magus away in their sleep, so they too do want their privacy by whatever means they choose to employ.

To be a magic-user who would get stoned as they pass by common folk would be to live somewhere where the church won't simply come and make you disappear. A modern scholar seeking solace amongst pagans of the old world, or a hermit living in the woods that gets regarded as a witch by the local villagers perhaps.