Another souls-like heartbreaker to the pile

This is something I had worked on very lowkey whenever an inspiration happened to strike, and roughly a month back I felt like I finally had something solid enough for it to be put through some testing.
Said testing kind of fell through so I'm instead sharing the draft for the game as well as the notes I had prepared for what adventuring the PCs could have gone through in the test game.

The basic idea I had for this little mess of homebrew was to try to write rules for a world rather than make up a new system.
Something relatively modular that could be dropped on top of most roleplaying systems to shift the game towards the type of mood and themes I had in mind for my take on the whole souls-like vibe.

Blogposts without pictures are boring,
hence you get this thing I edited together

I wanted to go pursuing that kind of warm fairytale-like feeling horror, a world where memories work as currency as well as a way to make yourself stronger but will also unavoidably shape you as you claiming memories that aren't yours will ultimately result in you becoming something and someone totally different than the person who you were at the start of your journey.

That being said, the current draft for that "system" can be found here should you wish to see for yourself what I had managed to cobble together:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1i17NqpKaWPS7BahEJ98NPKl_g20NC2Fv3WdoxDoQmZk/edit?usp=sharing

Obviously it will still need a lot of messing around with to get it to produce the desired feel. For example currently the Bad Blood idea isn't really doing much unless the PCs are already cleawing through villages worth of people so the treshold for gaining levels of bad blood should probably be lowered significantly.
Another potential idea to make Bad Blood more of an inner struggle between your violent urges and humanity would be to change it to something like this:
"Whenever you consciously cause the death of another self-aware being, roll under your current level of Bad Blood. On a failure, gain a level of Bad Blood."
That would probably lean towards the other extreme, where the PCs would accumulate bad blood way too fast though.

The idea of using solely memories to give the PCs any "advancements" or even special moves and skills was something that I really enjoyed in play both because it was fun to come up with small snippets of lore and special effects to accompany them, but also because with memories I could dictate the speed at which the PCs would get more powerful, as well as in which manner they would get more powerful.

The Adventure Notes

As mentioned, here you can also find the notes I had scrabbled together for myself to run this test game before it completely fell apart due to lack of players:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ae_-8ZmWTckEJd3xTNsWIeW9gur30ZOS4CF8Jq_HaMk/edit?usp=sharing

This will also require me to share the ideaboard I had been slowly gathering for this game over several months so you can get a better idea of what kind of imagery and base ideas I had been working with since the notes were not really written for someone else to run things off of:
https://jamboard.google.com/d/1gchK_8IJU46hn1WHvBVBISkNMf6Q7_5VaUmQHVLJ5q0/edit?usp=sharing

I hope that you will get some use out of these, and if you do I would love to hear what you managed to make or run off of the stuff presented here.

Another LotFP styled weird magic spell

 So I recently remembered a tracklist that I put together with some friendly people for us to eventually make spells out of each one of them.
Unfortunately the original effort to do so kinda died down a good several months ago, but hey there was some music in there that I hand't listened to before and the song titles were really interesting, so I thought to myself "Hey, why don't I use some of these to make more spells. Maybe even complete this as my version of a spell list based on these tracks."

And that is what I'd like to present to you all today, another spell made from that tracklist. The spell in question is based on a track titled "I Don’t Want to Drink Tea So Tasteless That Even the Intent to Kill Will Not Come to Mind While Drinking" by Keiji Haino, Jim O’Rourke and Oren Ambarchi.
For those interested in checking it out, here's a youtube link.

(This is the second spell out of the tracklist by now, the last one can be found here.)

Camillia Sinensis, Tea (Russian) by Sue Snell
 - Wellcome Collection,
United Kingdom - CC BY.
        https://www.europeana.eu/en/item/9200579/x85czpnv

(I Don't Want To Drink) Tea So Tasteless That Even The Intent To Kill Will Not Come To Mind While Drinking

It is rumoured that the original intent of this ritual was to detach one's own senses from the physical world so that they may drift to the domain of spirits and otherworldly powers in order to consult them. Commonly accepted theory is that either through the failings of whoever conceived of it or from the failings of those who taught and passed on the ritual to others in their craft the results of it became less and less reliable.

In it's current form, this evocation is more often used as a powerful sedative than means to consult with otherworldly powers, although some people claim to have met beings not of this world while under the effects of the brew procured by the ritual.

To perform the evocation, the magi should first start by preparing tea in whatever fashion they or the effect's intended recipient would prefer to drink it. The drink is to be prepared in a container reinforced with a magical ward, lest the powers evoced be prone to intruding with additional or unintended effects.

Once the drink has been brought to boil, seeds of three poisonous plants are to be added in, one seed from each. The type of plant matters not, as long as the species are distinctly different, as this only serves to loosen the bond between the body and the consciousness of the drinker.

The magi should then gently address the power they are evocing, asking them to join whoever partaces of the drink in the activity.

Once all of these steps of preparing the drink are complete, the otherwise unassuming batch of tea will have transformed into a brew capable of reducing even the fiercest warrior or sharpest of strategist into an empty husk barely capable of independent action and completely unable to feel any sensations on their body for the short duration that their consciousness corrodes away untill it starts to slowly reconstruct itself.

This ritual also has the added effect of removing any taste from the brewed tea, which is why it is often adviced to prepare it with the smell of the ingredients in mind in attempt to trick the drinker's mind into simulating a taste for the brew.

Note: The brew only works if served warm. It doesn't matter if it is re-heated, the magick will still remain within, but if served cold it is nothing but regular poison.

For the hour following the ingestion of the tea, the following effects take place as the magick slowly wears off:

• Initial Effect - Unable to think, completely blank, forget any current intentions and planned courses of action
• 10min in - Able to move a limb or speak in slurring voice with great effort (1-in-6)
• 20min in - Move a limb or speak slurred 2-in-6
• 30min in - Move a limb or speak slurred 3-in-6
• 40min in - Move a limb or speak normally 4-in-6, feeling returns
• 50min in - Able to move entire body very sluggishly w/o a test, 2-in-6 for any quick movement
• 1h in - Freed from the effect
  

Mishaps - (In addition to regular causes for mishap, these can also happen if the container the tea is prepared in lacks a sufficient magical ward)

1. The magical ward was faulty, the power evoced found an imperfection in it and managed to slip in through the cracks. Whoever drinks of this tea for the first time will find the magi's chosen power pouring in a fraction of itself into them, turning the drinker into a puppet for the evoced power to act through in the physical world. 
2. Not content with just one person to share the moment with, the power evoced in preparing the brew compells the magi to partake in the drink whenever they serve it to someone.
   Disposing of the drink if there are still servings of it left would risk upsetting the power evoced in it's preparation.
3. Something went wrong with the preparation of the brew, either the evocation was a total failure or the process had a flaw in it. Whatever the case, the magi has only managed to procure common poison rather than a concoction that would sever one's consciousness from their body momentarily.
4. The evocation wasn't a one-sided commanding of the chosen power, instead it set it's own condition. The magi is made aware that the prepared batch of tea must be all served as a lavish tea party, one serving per guest, if they wish to keep on the good side of the power they had chosen to evoce.
5. The tea works as intended as far as the magi or anyone in the physical world is concerned. However, the consciousness of whoever partakes of the brew is whisked away to wherever the evoced power may lay. Depending on the type of power evoced, meeting it may result in anything from the collapse of one's psyche to a pleasant conversation with it for a short while.
6. In addition to becoming entirely tasteless, the tea takes on a foul and muddy colour and slightly acrid smell.

Musings about running games and the stuff I like and dislike

For the last few days I've been thinking a lot about what kind of games and play I find myself enjoying, what kind of games I run currently as well as the crowd I am running those games for, and I caught myself in the thought of my running of games for people has been shifting from what it used to be when I started this whole gamemastering thing.

And it wasn't exactly a positive thought either, an analogue that lingered in my mind for a day or so as I felt it around and tried to fit it into words went along the lines of me having found myself running games more and more to meet player expectations and wants much akin to how one might try their best to seek out acceptance and lick up to others in high school, trying to do one's best to not offend or upset anyone over the fear of getting tossed out of the group.
A disgusting thought really, which has lead to me trying to air out and re-examine the way I run games at my table so that I could get that initial enjoyment of doing my own thing and shifting the games back towards the things I enjoy rather than trying to cater for people.
After all, I've got two groups that I've been running for for over a year and they claim to have enjoyed it since the beginning.

Another thing that's prompted looking at things a bit differently and re-examining what exactly I find so fun and interesting about roleplaying games is the sudden influx of 5e-minded players that my ongoing West Marches game has been getting.
There's just something about people gushing about what they can do within the confines of a rulebook and reciting me these super exciting rules interactions and spell comboes that has been steadily eating away at my interest even to the relatively rules-lite Lamentations of the Flame Princess that I run the game with.
It is the exact thing I ran away from 5e for, at least every other session I would play in one of the players would start going on and on about this cool build they are going for and how in two more levels they can do this stupid rules interaction to break this or that at which point I always have to wonder if the player even is interested in playing with the fiction presented in the game or if they are just playing with the rules and trying to break and bend them to the best of their ability by themself.
Kinda like playing solitaire when everyone else is trying to play poker, they make that game for themself about nothing but themself.

... I suppose this turned out as more of a rant that I intended, but airing out thoughts and grievances is good for oneself I've heard, or something along those lines

Because blogposts without pictures are boring - image manipulation by me

 The actual self-reflections and such

Yes, to keep this from just being a case of "old man yells at clouds" I should try to articulate some conclusions I had landed at based on these last few days of mulling over this stuff.

First and foremost, for me a rulebook is a fallback. What I mean with this is that I read the entirety of LotFP Rules & Magic book back when I first acquired it as I was getting into the OSR, but since then I've barely flipped through it other than for spell descriptions as I believe I've got the general logic and feel of what kind of rulings to lean towards.
The actual rules of a roleplaying game are the last thing I want to discuss about, especially when the fiction is unfolding at the table.

This hadn't come up in the context of OSR games before because I feel like a lot of people in this sub-genre of ttrpgs shares the same or at least similiar approach. The fiction dictates the play and what happens, not the rules.

On the flipside the more 5e-leaning players I've come to run games for confine themselves within the rules, anything not written in them isn't given a second thought and only things written in the rules can be done seems to be their approach to roleplaying games.

I also find that I tend to lean towards running what I had in one conversation likened to "walking simulator adjacent" games, games where combat is sparse and the pace of the game isn't exactly a fast one. The players are on the driver's seat and dictate when they want to move to a next scene or towards doing something rather than me pushing them along to hurry them up in order to keep the game going, which is something that the West Marches style rubs against in fact, as every session should be a self-contained oneshot so I often worry about trying to add atmosphere taking up too much of the play time.

This might be another contributing factor to why the West Marches games I run tend to feel to "hollow" to me, but it's also an issue that I don't know if I could start to address in the format of that specific game.

Another thing that I kind of touched in the above rant is the stuff that I myself find fun and interesting in roleplaying games.
Personally I am really in love with the idea of what I like to call "misery porn". People going through absolutely hellish situations, making sacrifices as they go and clinging to life with gritted teeth.

There are of course ways to convey this at a table, either with or without rules and procedures specifically for reinforcing or enforcing that kind of play, but the one issue I always have with is that I keep pulling my punches out of concern that the players won't like it or will feel it unfair or whatnot.
I want to inflict absolute misery on the player's characters, but I am afraid that will upset the players.

This is of course one of those "just talk with your players" thing, but even when I have done so it's still not managed to get me out of that high school mentality I mentioned earlier of wanting or needing to make sure I don't accidentally upset or offend anyone so I don't get stoned out of the room.

Status update - Still alive

Boy, it's been a while since I've dusted off ye old blog. Over four months in fact!
But yes, much to my delight I am still alive and running games. In fact, I am now here to present some of the stuff I've done in those four months that I have been absent from here in no particular chronological order.

Thing #1 - Spooky forest adventure

So I don't even remember how much I had shared of this on here, but at one point I had this plan of re-writing the forest crawl I partially ran some of my sandbox players through.

Unfortunately, as often is the fate with lot of personal projects that has been put on an indefinitively long hiatus as I at one point realised that I need to re-write and redo the layout of large portions of it.
I do now have a bit more realistic grasp of what kind of polish it needs thanks to feedback from several great minds, but the workflow I had for parsing the book together was so inefficient and painfully slow that if I ever get ignited by a burning passion to finish this particular project I'll be starting from the ground up again.

Thing #2 - Starting a West Marches game

Yup, I did that. I have a feeling that it is also something I might have mentioned before on this blog but don't feel like going back through old posts to find if this actually happened or if it's just a feeling I have.

The game currently has a grand total of seventeen players on roll20, although over half of these are not super active. A more realistic number would be maybe four to six properly active players that I can consistently hear from at least once a month.

Running a game of this type has been an interesting experience so far, and I would at least like to claim that I've learned a thing or two from running it.
For example, at the beginning I had a lot of trouble balancing the travelling portion of the sessions in such a way that travelling didn't take too much time but still felt like a meaningful thing to keep in mind for the players rather than something to brush by in favour of getting into the adventure sites and doing proper adventuring.

It has also been a big challenge to me to keep the game moving as I tend to gravitate towards slower paced gaming where the players dictate the pace things move at rather than me hurrying them from scene to scene.
The sessions I run usually aim to be four hours in length, and fitting an entire adventure within that timeframe is not always the easiest feat to pull off, but I feel like I have gotten a better grasp on how to pace oneshot adventures thanks to it.

Oh, and for those wondering I am running the game based off of the "In the Shadow of the Tower Silveraxe" zine, with things like Stonehell, and some smaller dungeons tacked on in order to give the players even more sites to explore.
Currently the Harlowe House from Sam Sorensen has played a big part in the players' interests.

As you can see, there are some additions to the milieu

Thing #3 - My very own souls-heartbreaker

It's the thing everyone who GMs and is a fan of the soulsborne games is eventually fated to start tinkering with.

The idea I had for this hack was to attempt to write a world that could be played in any ruleset rather than a ruleset for running a particular type of world.  "Make rules for a world, not a game system" was one of the things as my inspiration.
As it is currently written and as I am currently running a test of it, the game is based on the very barebones skeleton of Lamentations of the Flame Princess, but you really could substitute that with any system that can handle combat and preferrably has low starting power-level.

Some other inspirational sentences I have floating around in my notes and drafts include things like "Warm and comfy fairytale-like horror", "World where one can walk into the distance and disappear" and "Memories as items/loot". 

Other huge inspirations have been Through the Veil from Liches get Stiches for general ideas on how to build the atmosphere and some level design principles that they go over in later posts of that series, as well as a snippet of a blogpost that I actually had to employ the help of other people in this community to find. The post in question is called Consumerism in your OSR games by Vagabundork, and a section of the post called "a time for introspection" has been serving as a great central building block for this little project of mine.

The modular "tack-on" ruleset for running souls-inspired worlds in most traditional roleplaying systems is still heavily under construction and playtesting and will probably go through several more changes, but for those curious on what I have scribbled together so far you can find the up to date draft here.

Super secret design document for the project

Stuff I use to run a game

Blogposts without images are boring -
art by me

I was originally going to make this simply a gathering of the few rule packages like Defy Death that I've made and throw some nice tables into it as well and then put it up as PWYW on drivethru, but the more I wrote the more I was thinking that this would fit just that much better into a blog post, and what more I haven't really shown this blog that much attention lately, so here we go.

To start off, this will be me listing off the various supplements, tables and procedures that I've added to my games and actually found fun or useful.
I obviously can't share everything that I use at my table because a good portion of it is also stuff that have been picked up from other products and people, but I will still name and go over them, and give you my thoughts on them.

Overland Travel & Wilderness

This is the thing that comes up most often in my games, players want to move from one place to another all the time.

I've admittedly got very little to offer in terms of codified procedures to track movement and such, and have for the most part simply been using a very simple map that I share with the players. On this map I have a rough idea of how long it takes to move between settlements and intuit the time taken to travel anywhere else based on those.

I would however suggest you take a look at Into the Wyrd and Wild since the camping rules in that are what I would probably say is the best feature of the entire book.

They abstract it enough that your players don't need to describe everything they do while making camp and roll separate checks for all of those things as well as make expenditure of supplies during travel a bit less static as you may require anywhere from three to no supplies spent per camp.

Another great resource in terms of wilderness is Longwinter. The player's book comes with a very neat system for tracking how cold the temperature is and how much clothing the PCs need to wrap themselves in to not start potentially getting frostbitten, although it is very clearly aimed towards 5e-like systems so a small amount of conversion was required for me to make it fit the LotFP framework a bit better.
The book also is maybe 70% lore and setting that I personally find no use for, so be warned, but the rules section is packed with all sorts of useful stuff if you're going for a game set in a cold climate, I have for example used a table in the book to generate a month's worth of weather for a game I'm running. The cold survival rules are simply the biggest feature of the set in the book in my opinion.

What I can offer you here however are a few tables that I use whenever an encounter in called for during overland stuff, one that I use for generic travel encounter results and onether that I use for finding out what has happened during the night on somebody's watch.

Travel events, mundane and weird

1. It's an ambush! Several volleys of arrows fly out as both men and dogs run at you.
1. Band of criminals from nearby camp.
2. Assailants are either band of cultists, controlled by something or fleeing from something rather than attacking.
2. Few hungry feral dogs, will meekly follow the party.
1. Not agressive unless provoked, looking for food and may attempt to steal from the PCs when they camp.
2. to be added
3. Lone traveller asks to join you on the journey to your destination.
1. He will gladly share of his rations, or may try to run off with somebody's backpack during the night.
2. False Beggar (Into the Wyrd and Wild)
4. 1d4 wagons with adventuring party guarding them.
1. Returning from or heading off towards some adventuring location.
2. to be added
5. Change of weather.
1. Just normal weather.
2. Something unnatural about it, perhaps it was conjured or caused by some creature or rite.
6. Upturned carriage lies in a small ditch near the road.
1. One of the two horses is missing, the other lies dead and looks partially eaten.
2. The horses are still attached, one of them is eating the other and has small black nails driven into it's gums.
7. Small group of priests/monks.
1. On priestly matters such as spreading the faith of helping the people, will offer absolution and issue quests or prices for reaching heaven.
2. The lead monk rings a bell and carries a long rope that the rest of the monks are holding on to. They have sack-like hoods drawn over their faces and shuffle forwards looking unsure in their steps.
8. Pile of bodies being picked by crows.
1. Site of some roadside accident or the aftermath of an ambush.
2. Something moves underneath, redcaps? Is someone crawling out of there?
9. A horse carriage with a pair of armed outriders.
1. A noble or high ranking merchant passing by.
2. Armed delivery of something dangerous or forbidden as it's being re-located.
10. Shadows dances weirdly, reaching towards a PC.
1. Just a trick of light.
2. It lashes out when approached, scraping at your shadow where it connects to your feet.
11. Travelling troupe of entertainers.
1. A freak circus, fortune teller, snow leopard, "wolfman", fire swallower.
2. Dagger swallower (only swallows, where do they go?), tall lanky man with goat head, identical twins, chained up shapeshifter.
12. Remains of a campsite not too far from the road, looks disturbed.
1. Still has bedroll and a strewn out bag around the campfire, blood and dragmarks all around.
2. Footprints that nobody recognises around the camp, a strange smell in the air that definitely should not be there, or perhaps a small figure sitting on a rock few metres away from the site like nothing had happened.

Generic night watch results

1. Attacked by: 
1. Flock of Ravens, 2. Stray Wolves, 3. Bandits/Poachers, 4. Whatever else makes sense, or re-roll
2. There's something out there, but it hasn't noticed you yet.
1. Flock of Ravens, 2. Stray Wolves, 3. Bandits/Poachers, 4. Whatever else makes sense, or re-roll
3. Sounds of movement/monsters from somewhere outside the field of vision.
• Grunts, stomps, dragging, rustling, communicating, clattering
4. Watchman fell asleep.
• Something might be missing or not as it's supposed to be, next watch has encounter trigger on both 1 and 6 on a d6.
5. Light moves somewhere in the distance.
• Bandits, travellers, monsters, natural phenomena, glowbugs, reflection of the campfire.
6. Change of weather.
• Roll on weather table or do reaction roll, unfavourable result = unfavourable weather.
7. Shadow dances curiously by the edge of your campfire, stretching a bit too far towards you compared to the other ones.
• Single shadow, more curious than it is hostile.
8. The wind carries what almost seem like wails of someone or something in the distance.
• Trick of imagination, or perhaps a sign of something in the area?
9. Change of weather.
• Roll on weather table or do reaction roll, unfavourable result = unfavourable weather.
10. All is good after all.
• No event

Our highly detailed campaign map

Tracking time and happenings

Something something strict time records and campaigns.

I've found it helpful to have a calender, even if very rudimentary one. In fact what I use is simply a wheel of thirty phases of the moon that I move along as days go by in the fiction.
And if I ever need to quickly find out what phase the moon is in, I don't need to bs my way through it.

The main thing with keeping a calender is being able to keep track of seasons, in the sandbox games I have running we are approaching winter season and I may soon be able to subject players to some cold weather hijinks without it feeling like I'm suddenly just deciding that the cold season has set in.

And then we have this weird and silly idea I had for keeping track of the happenings in the world, named Chess of Fate.
Simply put, at the beginning and end of each session the players make a single move on a chessboard followed by me making a move against them. Whenever a piece gets captured, something that's either positive or negative will be happening or have happened in the session following that move depending on who captures the piece.

If you want to give this idea a go yourself, here's the events I have assigned to each piece:

• Pawn = Minor Fortune 
• Knight = Travelling Events 
• Bishop = Religious Events 
• Rook = Stability, Maintaining of Status Quo 
• Queen = Major Fortune 
• King = World-scale Event 

If you lose a piece, gain the opposite negative effect. Minor fortune becomes a minor misfortune etc.

The "home page" of my sandbox campaign on Roll20

The other stuff

Yeah, then I kinda realised that I run so few dungeons that there isn't much procedures that I've had to develop for them...
The encumbrance system from Veins of the Earth is cool and I like using it, although it does take a bit to explain through if you don't have access to printed sheets where it is extremely simple to understand. I currently limit items that would be handled in bulk to bundles of three per inventory slot (candles, torches, rations etc.) and make coin pouches able to hold up to 200 coins and take up a slot as well.

It's made the players think about what to pick up and even return back for some left behind equipment in one dungeon since they had decided that treasure was worth more than tools which was kinda fun moment. 

In the current sandbox game(s) that I now realise have been going on for over half a year I am also using Defy Death which truthfully hasn't really yet resulted in any of the cool personal quests or party problems that I was thinking it would promote, as well as a super janky "magic-users can cast as much as they want but the spells can fail/miscast sometimes" which I don't really think I'll be using for any future games as all it really does is add a need to nerf magic missile.

I have also streamlined the absurdly convoluted rules of natural healing rates that Lamentations has which have like certain hp tresholds at which you heal at different rates and simply made it so that if the PCs sleep in a comfortable bed, like an inn room, they heal 2hp per night, and when they rest somewhere less comfortable and simply "make do" with their situation they heal 1hp per night.
Less stuff to figure out for both me and the players.

Other miscellaneous tables that you may be interested in are the mutations included in the Diabolist hack that I've made for LotFP based on a pre-existing blogpost, or my list of 1d30 reasons not to turn back which is essentially just a list of backgrounds that the PCs might be coming from.
I have also made this fun magical tarot deck that you can have travelling fortune tellers give readings with, which kinda counts as a table, as well as a ever trusty "I search the body" table that sees frequent use in my games.

Tables of just random names to throw up on the spot are also absolutely great, and currently my favourite are the ones present in Times That Fry Men's Souls simply for the reason that they are incredibly easy to find in the book as they come straight after a stack of pages that have a black border and you thus know exactly where to open the book to get to the tables.

As far as running civilised locations like cities or villages, I spend a few hours making a nice rumour table for them and maybe write a sentence or two about the place to get the vibe down for myself and simply bs my way through the rest for the game.

For example, here is a what I have written down about the current hub town in the sandbox games:

Yes, I do pretty much all my game notes and creative writing in google sheets.
Yes, I know it's quite difficult to read this from the picture.

West Marches

Yes, I have also recently started a west matches style game in hopes of getting to further satisfy my addiction to tabletop roleplaying, and here's what I have currently as the guidelines for that game to keep the feel of adventurers setting off from a hub town:

• When you find an interesting listing on the Bounty Board, a place in the wilderness that you would like to check out or a rumour that you would like to pursue, gather an amount of players that you think you might need and form a party with them. Once you have formed a party, inform the Referee and we will decide when to play it out. Easiest days to get a game on will be Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday.
• No PC can be played in two consecutive adventures, all PCs must sit out at least one adventure before venturing out into the Gemthrone wilderness again.
• If by the end of a session the party is not back in town or in other safe and civilised location, the Referee gets to determine what has happened to them when they next resume play.
• Civilised settlements are considered safe places for any PCs left in them, and no harm will come to PCs taking time off inside them.
• Information about new adventure sites should be made available for everyone, although omitting the full story is not forbidden.
• Each session continues from the same in-game date that the last one finished on.
• Newly created characters should buy their own gear with their own money, but after their trial by fire any PCs spending time in town can trade etc with each other.

Still very new to this so will have to see how these end up working out and if they need to be tweaked/removed/expanded.

Now I just need more players to throw into that pool so that game will have more than one session a week so I can spend less time alt-tabbing between youtube and discord and more time watching in amusement how the players are yet again defying all my expectations in how they handle problems that get thrown at them.

This is not a cry for help, I can stop whenever I want.

LotFP style weird magic spell

 A bit of time ago few friendly people got together to brew spells based on music track titles much in the vein of the two spell supplements written for Lamentations, each of them offered small number of tracks from which everyone randomised one to act as a spell prompt.
This is what I got:

"Seven Diadems of Stillborn Bones - performed by Winter Lantern"

Not all spells and rituals are easy and convenient, the power often being derived from the difficulties the caster needs to go through and the amount of effort invested into completing the evocation. Furthermore rituals and evocations are most often performed and concocted based on one's desires rather than from a purely utilitarian angle.
This spell is no different.

Seven Diadems of Stillborn Bones

A tale of midwifes, magic that lead to the burning of the stillborn in regions where it is common for rulers to have several consorts, this ritual might have first been conceived as a grief-striken attempt to regain what was lost via an unorthodox combination of differing rites.

The name of the ritual is directly derived from the involvent of the magi performing it slowly gathering up bones of stillborn or miscarried babies, enough to craft seven small circlets fit for a newborn's head.

The magi is then to fashion the seven diadems out of the remains, whispering pleas and reassuring words to them as they weave the frail bones together. 

On the seventh night since the crafting of the diadems, they are to be washed clean much in the same way a newborn baby would be and then wrapped in warm cloths to be stored away in a small cradle specifically made for them.

The cradled bundle of circlets is then to be sung lullabies to and looked after for seven more days, and at the end of the seventh day the magi will hear a baby's cry from the cradle.

The baby will in time grow up just as any other normal child would, but will never quite be, nor understand what it is to be, human. They will speak of lost relatives like they had met them and will know of people that have very clearly lived in the past like they are acquintances.

This spell must be cast three times for the ritual to take effect. Once during the crafting of the diadems, once while washing them clean, and once mixed in to the lullabies sung to the cradled bundle. Any possible mistakes or accidents with the ritual are only discovered once the bundle is unwrapped on the seventh day when the magi hears the cry of a newborn from the cradle.

Miscasts

1. Writhing fleshy mass that only remotely resembles a fetus trashes around underneath the wrappings, ready to assault and run away from the magi when they go to inspect the results of the ritual. It will return to haunt the PC for the rest of their life as it slowly grows into a full-fledged monster.
2. The magi was the final piece of the ritual, still missing. Their soul is sucked out of their body and moves to inhabit the newborn baby bundled up in the cradle as their old body slumps to the ground.
3. As the magi goes to inspect the cradle, it feels like a horse kicking it's way out from inside their chest as several pairs of their rib bones suddenly go missing. After meaty crunching from the cradle as the magi lays on the floor wrecked in pain, a newborn baby with striking similiarity to them begins their bubbly laughter while suckling on one of the magi's rib bones. The PC is reduced down to 1hp and they lose [level]d4 max hp as what was missing from the ritual is forcibly taken from them to supplement it's completion.
4. There is no baby in the cradle, what instead is unwrapped are the diadems. Fused and with strands of flesh and skin grown around them with a tiny beating heart sitting inside the tangle of stretched out skin.
5. There is something wrong with the baby and it will only live up to the age of three. Extracting whatever knowledge they hold from beyond the grave could prove difficult before their death.
6. The magi forms a mother-like bond to the newborn baby, and will not do anything that might cause harm to come unto their new child. They will provide for the child and raise them as their own, overlooking any strangeness that anyone might point in the child.

Cradle carved in boxwood
 from the Industrial arts of the Nineteenth Century (1851-1853)
 by Sir Matthew Digby wyatt (1820-1877)

Forgive Us - A greentext adventure report

Forgive Us
-
Module and art by Kelvin Green

 I was going to write a proper story-like report on all that me and my players went through playing this module, but I am a lazy person and have now been looking at the notes I have of the game that I'm supposed to write that based on and boy am I feeling extra lazy.
I thusly present to you, Forgive Us in greentext:

For bit of background info, the party consisted of four level three PCs and we played the adventure with vanilla LotFP rules without any additional homebrew tacked on. Starting equipments were randomised using the wonderful table from dismastersden.blogspot.com.
The group members were:
Amarthia Ravenghast - lvl.3 Dwarven bountyhunter
Grogorious (the Blessed) - lvl.3 Cleric bountyhunter
Reginald Nuward - lvl.3 Magic-User and the owner of the group's mule Greginald
William Rowley - lvl.3 Specialist and a former disgraced comic actor

This motley crew had caught wind of a public secret whispered about in Norwich, a hideout of the city's most prominent gang had seen nobody going in or coming out of it for the last week or so and decided to investigate.
The following is a rough sequence of events of that investigation, a play by play deconstuction of what they went through and maybe told stories about later in their lives when druken well enough to admit their own defeat. (I recommend finding at the very least a map of the module in order to follow along as this is again written with the assumption of the reader being already somewhat familiar with the module).

>Cased the buildings, looking in from where they could.

>Went in from butcher's shop.

>Ran into a mutated dog.

>Few rounds of missing, dwarf got licked.

>Cast sleep, murdered the dog.

>Open door to courtyard, there are several hungry non-mutated dogs.

>Push their donkey in there, after a bit of donkey screaming and dogs yelping the donkey had beaten a dog to death with other two covering in fear by the gate.

>Assessed their options, decided to levitate a guy on top of warehouse with a rope.

>Rope lowered, another person climbed up and they went in from a hatch on the roof.

>Inside a hanged person dangling from a walkway on second level of the warehouse.

>Cut the rope, body fell on boxes.

>Open the warehouse courtyard door from inside, was locked with chains from the inside.

>Climb the boxes, found key on corpse.

>Head into the scribe next.

>Strewn papers, people have obviously left in a hurry.

>Upstairs a big library in bedroom, a safe with very difficult lock on it.

>Spend blessing to open the lock, find floorplans, some coins and big metal key.

>Go to tavern next, door locked.

>Check the big metal key on all doors in the courtyard, way too big for any houses.

>Fits into the gate lock but does not turn.

>Use the key found on the corpse to open tavern door.

>It opens inside and is barricaded.

>Spend two hours dismantling the door.

>Step in, there are few short and sharp sounds of wood cracking and splintering upstairs.

>Go down to cellar, find spoiling food and weird black goo.

>Go back up from cellar, hear footsteps coming down stairs from second floor.

>Set few barrels in place of the now-removed courtyard door, bows drawn on the other side as orders are barked inside the tavern and footsteps approach a door.

>Robed man pushes door open, sees the party and calls back inside the tavern that he's found people.

>Tries to disarm the situation "no need for violence gentlemen".

>Spanish guy with a tan steps through the door, pushes robed man aside and demands to know what the PCs are doing and who they are.

>Orders them to leave, asks if they have seen a stone carving, escorts the party out with his own party the way the mercenaries had come in from.

>PCs want back in, circle back to the butchers shop.

>Stealthily looking to the courtyard from butcher's back door, the robed guy is trying to fight their donkey moving from where it's laying down to no success.

>Robed guy gives up, party watches as the mercenaries go to check out the warehouse.

>Specialist sneaks close in hopes of ambushing them, sees spaniard and rotting fellow overlooking zweihander-man and robed guy stacking boxes to make stairs up to the body.

>Decides to lunge for the Spaniard, but robed guy sees this and starts yelling and pointing at him.

>Misses, spaniard spinning around and giving him a hefty stab gracing off of his chest.

>Combat ensues, magic missile is cast to stop what is suspected to be a magic spell from robed guy.

>Zweihander-man runs for his sword.

>Arrows fired, dwarf runs to take frontline but gets overwhelmed by the walking corpse and charging zweihander that is hacking down both the dwarf and the corpse with single cleave.

>Spaniard charges in on the remaining two, robed guy casts fairie fire on entire PC party.

>Dwarf kicked away from the warehouse entrance against a nearby cart, robed guy takes this opporturnity to sink rapier through his thigh.

>Spaniard offers chance to surrender, PCs agree.

>Dwarf with arm almost hacked off and limping due to pierced thigh. Loses consciousness a few times on the way to hospital.

>After his admittance to the hospital, he was never seen again.

>Day later mutated monsters started to spill out onto the streets of Norwich, leaving the city in shambles.