Slough House for D&D

 First, some product placement. 

SLOUGH HOUSE is a series of novels and novelettes by Mick Herron about a group of spies who've messed up so badly, they were sent to the worst of the worst departments where they have to do meaningless tasks. They have less rights and possibilities than civilians. But, since they're technically still part of the intelligence service, time and again the find themselves pulled into some spy games, used as pawns or bargaining chips or false targets. In the Service, they're known as "slow horses". 

Good books, some tragedy, some comedy, lots of references to real life. 

SLOW HORSES is a TV show that's based on the novels, and it's very good. Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb, theme song by Mick Jagger. Good scripts, good actors, good camera work. Worth watching.

Anyways. 

Your characters are your world's equivalent of slow horses. You were part of an organization, an order, a sect - and then you messed up so badly, you were sent off to the Bad Place.You still have your training, your very specific sets of skills, but if you even think about putting those skills to use - well, things will go from bad to worse very fast. 

But still, you were once part of a bigger thing. And you dream of coming back. 

Why do I like this idea? 

Maybe it's a burnout. I keep going back to the ol' "What's my motivation here?" question. Or, as a GM - "Why would the characters take this adventure hook?" 

With the slow horses, the movitavion is clear and strong. I want out of here. I want to be a Solamnic Knight again. I want to be a Harper again. You get the idea.

It brings the party together while still leaving some space for conflict - they've all messed up, they all want redemption, they probably all despise each other for being such losers. 

It gives a basis for some backstory - how did you mess up? Why didn't they just execute you or throw you into jail for a thousand years, what buttons did you manage to push? What kind of contacts have you kept since your glory days? 

Probably not something I could try in an actual play anytime soon, since a) war b) the group wants to play fantasy China c) I've got my Usagi Yojimbo thing that we play when I'm mastering. But maybe someday. Maybe I'll have time to write a simple adventure around it.

It's a wonderful real life, unless it's not. Also some thoughts about Pay to Play.

I used to have a friend in Georgia (Sakartvelo, that is, not USA). He said he had developed a deep hatred towards e-mail, because they had a bad energy crisis in the country, electricity was available rarely and for a short time, and having to spend time to download some friendly suggestion from nigerian princes meant losing the chance to actually do something that he needed. 

I think I'm starting to understand how he felt. But then again, he kept publishing his novels and stories in Russia after the russian invasion in Georgia in 2008, so I probably will never really understand him. Maybe it was because the majority of his readers/online friends were russian. Maybe he was because he was such a big fan of USSR. Maybe because he didn't care about real life as much as he did about fiction.

Anyways. Electricity - and with it, Internet connection - is currently still limited. It is kind of depressing, and also makes the work more complicated. 

I left Twitter because I already have to live in a country that's run by a rich evil idiot, and I don't need a social network that's run by another one of those. 

And I thought about Twitter because of a discussion in a gaming group, which began with a simple question: "Would you pay to participate in an online TTRPG?" 

Personally, I wouldn't. For me, it feels too much like "buy yourself some fun friends".

It's probably good fun for some other people, and I will now explain why those people are wrong, based on the opinions that were voiced in that discussion. 

Opinion 1. "You don't mind paying money when you go to watch a movie, why would you mind paying money for a roleplaying session?" 

These are different things. When you buy a book, a film, a videogame, a music album - you pay for entertainment that someone else had created. 

When you join in a roleplaying game, you participate. Your actions matter, your choices affect the thing that's happening for everyone. 

Would I pay for a chance to write a story in tandem with some author that I really, really like? I dunno, maybe. But it wouldn't be the same as buying their book. 

Which is why this opinion is wrong.

Opinion 2. "Paying for participation in a session is good, because a minimum required payment helps to keep the riffraff away". 

It helps to keep away the people who don't want to pay you five dollars. That's it. The people who want to pay you are not necessarily fun to play with. The people who don't want to pay are not necessarily boring or abusive. 

And it also made me think of Twitter and Musk's idea that selling the "verified" marks for six dollars is going to "keep the riffraff away". Together with his other ideas, it helped to keep away George Takei and Stephen Fry. 

Which is why this opinion is wrong. 

Opinion 3. "Playing online is bad, and therefore it would mean paying for an inferior thing". 

It's not bad universally. It might be a bad way to play for some people, but then again, some people just thing that roleplaying is bad, period. Some people think that electronic devices are the work of the devil. Which is all a more or less acceptable explanation of "why I don't like this thing", but  unacceptable as a reason for everyone to follow their example. 

Which is why this opinion is wrong. 

Were there any opinions that weren't wrong? Sure. Plenty of "Yeah, I do it and I'm having fun" and "No, I don't like it". 

Some people, like me, want to hang out with friends when they roleplay. And some people just want to drop into this comfortable situation, have some fun, and then disconnect and get back to their lives without talking about politics and TV shows and what happened to our cat and what happened to their dog, and are eager to pay some money to get their fun. 

Both are cool.

Thinking about them spells

Internet connection is not so good these days, energy system had taken a hit from russian missiles, so it needs some fixing and rebalancing and whatever. 

Meanwhile I'm thinking about picking a magic system for my players. 

Vancian magic: spells are basically monsters that you stuff in your head, then release when the time is right. In Dying Earth wizards could remember, say, four very powerful spells or five-six less potent. Which is a nice touch. 

Things you can do when you need a quick spell: read a book. You can also write a rune on something which acts like a permanent spell, basically creating a magic item.  

Ways to learn a new spell: you don't learn spells. You collect them. 

Magic points: you have, like, 50 points, you can cast a 5-point spell 10 times or a 10-point spell 5 times or a 20-point spell twice and then you can do one 10-point or two 5-point spells, you get the math. 

Things you can do when you need a quick spell: drink a mana potion, or something like that. 

Ways to learn a new spell: read it somewhere, or have someone teach it to you - whatever, after you learn it, you know it.

D&D magic: kind of like Vancian but instead of "have four strong ones or five weak ones or eight completely pathetic ones in your head", you have "five of level one and four of level two and two of level three", and also you need to carry spell components which can be expensive or disgusting or stupid or all three at once. And also you can have more than one of the same spell in your head at the same time, which kind of follows the monsters analogy but feels ridiculous to me.

Things you can do when you need a quick spell: read a scroll, destroying it permanently (it would be kind of cool if you could do that with your spellbook pages, wouldn't it?). 

Ways to learn a new spell: you don't learn spells. You write them into your spellbook, copying them from scrolls or other spellbooks.

D&D sorcerers' magic: kind of like D&D wizards' magic but more messed up, you have the spells in your head, permanently, but you can cast this specific amount of spells of this level and then you have to rest. Kind of having your headmonsters trained, so after you release them, they come back into your head. 

Things you can do when you need a quick spell: I honestly don't remember. Scroll thing probably works, too. 

Ways to learn a new spell: you can free up some space in your head by forgetting one of the spells you know, and let another spell take its place. The more I think about it, the more it sounds like some kind of freaky Spidey-Black-Costume-like symbiosis. And it means that the spellcaster gets to do all sorts of stuff with the spells, but the spells also get something from the spellcaster. I wonder what. 

I must say I like how the sorcerer thing can be fixed and twisted. I'll probably try and go with it and see what happens.

Playing Usagi Yojimbo in Ukraine: to Hell and Back

Still shocked by the news of Kevin Conroy's death. 

And the war is still going on - there are successes, I finally uncorked the grape soda that I was keeping for the day of Kherson's liberation, but still, it's been eight years. 

And there's more stuff that doesn't really help. 

So it was nice to once again get together and play some tabletop RPG. 

Currently, our options are either fantasy China, or fantasy Japan. Fantasy Japan means Usagi Yojimbo + whatever I manage to drag from other games. Fantasy China means that I'm playing characters who have no idea what's happening and why they're here. 

This time, I dragged in two Cube World modules - "Hell on Earth, and also in Hell", and "The Defense the Ruined City".

"Hell on Earth" is a two-parter. I hope to use the first part later on. The second part is "A Small Hell" - the party goes down, and meets the demons. 

There's the sloth demon, who's my favourite NPC now, because he lazy, talks slowly so you can think of stuff to say, and actually is not so bad for a demon. 

 

 There is no reasonable doubt about whether the Sloth Demon smokes weed.

 

There's the hellhog, who's a pig - the characters didn't actually get to meet him, but they heard him chomp and slurp and comment on the nutricious value of souls through the wall. 

There are just some neat moments that help create the athmosphere, like what's the floor made of and what the huge statue looks like and whether the bottomless pits are truly bottomless (they are). 

Two things to say about our players: 

1) when they crawled out of hell, the first thing they did was re-seal the doors to keep the demons inside; 

2) when they found out that they've crawled out in a city that's under siege, and will be attacked at dawn, they immediately considered the option of just returning to hell and waiting there until the attackers leave.

Because they found themselves locked in the Battle of Ruined City. 

 

Undead samurai is not quite happy to meet you.

The cool thing about bringing Cube World stuff to Usagi Yojimbo games is that Zak actually made up some modules for fantasy Japan, and Ruined City is one of those. There's an old lord who found something interesting in the city, there's an ogre witch who wants the lord dead, and there's a curse that had fortunately provided the ogre with an army of undead. The lord has an army, too. 

If you like a little wargaming in  your tabletop roleplaying now and then, look no further. There are some tips about how to work with the troops and how to do the battle. And I used none of those, because, as I said, I'm still not in my best shape. So the party just did the thing when they go out to find and kill the enemy commander (mind you, they had a plan and preparations and all).

Note: Zak's modules can provide the most entertainment if you play them when you're not depressed. When you're depressed, though, they're a good distraction, so win-win anyways. 

The witch is tough enough to make a fight interesting, yet winnable even for a very low-magic group like ours (I mean, Usagi Yojimbo doesn't have a magic system). 

Considering my love to returning to the scene of the crime, maybe we'll have the Second Battle of the Ruined City somewhere in the future. And we'll do it the proper way.

Not playing tomorrow...

 ... due to real life happening (not war-related). 

So I've been thinking about one of my favourite DIY D&D tricks, Zak's Lucky Numbers Kung Fu. 

Players liked it. By which I mean, they remembered that it's a thing most of the time, and went "AHA!" whenever they rolled it. 

And more than once they said "Oh! I rolled my kung fu number! Can I use it?" and I said "Well, you're rolling for charisma, so I dunno, unless you want to push your new friend out of the window or steal his purse or something..." 

So I thought, why not build up on that? Okay, it's a kung fu lucky number when you're fighting - it can become a stunning feat of agility when you're on the defensive, like one of the character managed to use it to catch arrows in mid-air - why not use it as some kind of zen enlightment when you roll for some intelligence-wisdom-charisma-related stuff? 

To keep it interesting, you might need to visit some specific place and level up there  in order to enhance your lucky numbers like this. Visit the Ancient Temple of the Unkindly Raven, train with the ancient sage - and voila, next time you roll a 5, you can have an insight and decypher the enigmatic scroll. Or understand the mercenary's body language enough to know he's lying because he's scared. Or something like that. 

Remind me to try it with the group next time we meet.

It's bards all the way down

I'm almost certain our gaming group fell victim to some Chinese curse, because everyone (except for me) wanted to play something based on Chinese literature, mythology and demonology, and we couldn't gather and do it for weeks or maybe months. 

I suppose yesterday the curse took a day off or something, because a very Chinese artistocrat (child of a cursed dynasty with uncertain gender characteristics, partially because of the curse, partially because people are generally not very nice), a very Chinese paranormal investigator (I keep thinking of him as Chinese Fox Mulder, because a) he's looking for his lost sister, b) on the way he's looking into strange disappearances and c) government denies knowledge), and a monk (that was me) got together in a little village. 

Now, the aristocrat is a master of swordfighting, and also carries around a bag of holding with a pipa (which is, I'm told, a traditional Chinese musical instrument) in it. He uses the pipa for magic. 

If you ask me, he's a bard is what he is. 

Personal notes: playing Friar Tuck in ancient China is not as good of an idea as it might seem (what, you thought he was a different kind of monk?). However, it is a great opportunity for adding some "Good dogs, such good dogs!" to your roleplaying activities, which is super. The dogs were named Wolfe, Gray, Sheriff, Knight, and King Arthur. And they never had a chance to catch an arrow in mid-air, which I kind of hoped for. 

Anyways, before we got to playing, we discussed the current issues, the war, the russians, and the fact that almost every russian musician in the role-playing circles posted some kind of shit about how great russian/soviet army is/was and how they destroyed fascism with one arm tied behind their backs and so on. 

To quote Zak Smith, bards suck. 

And between the current issue discussion and playing, we tested out the God Generator that I've mentioned before. Zak Smith made it as part of his Cube World, and I brought it to test it in the group. How did it go? Well... 

Zak's not wrong.  

 

We ended up with a one-armed very fat dinosaur wearing a long dress made of meat and/or slime  and carrying a candle who was the god of love and gambling. 

Also a very fit one-handed demon who decorated himself with organs of defeated foes. 

"It says here that they're heads or skulls or other organs". 

"Dicks. Definitely dicks". 

"If you say so, it's your deity". 

Also the demon was the lord of all octopodes, and he turned out to have multiple romantic affairs with other members of his pantheon. 

"The other members of your pantheon are... all animals". 

Pause. 

"Well, they're gods, right? So they can give consent?" 

"I think so". 

"Okay, then it's all cool". 

And finally, we had a god from another planet whose basic shape was a fetus with moustache, holding a lute and a lightning, who ate his worshippers. Metal as fuck. He was declared to be the patron deity of hard rock. 

And bards.

Make a deity for your campaign with a fistful of dice

Or, rather, make as many of them as you want for 15 dollars. 

Because some time ago on LotFP discord, people talked about making up gods for their games. And they brought up some mechanics, and they gave some advice, and talked about what would be the optimal way to roll some dice and get the attributes and cool features and powers and stuff for a god, or goddess, or eldritch being or whatever. And then Zak said that he would write something that does exactly this. 

Well, he did. Here in his Store is the God Generator. To quote Zak, 

"I aimed for a generator that worked like the best character generation systems: providing options but also inspiration at each step, making the user not only eager to create new creatures but to see how they will work in the game world".

So I took the tables and rolled the dice, and came up with a crimson-skinned girl of a goddess who cares for the forests and helps all the fathers. If you want to become her follower, you have to go on a sacred pilgrimage, honouring the goddess's adventures chronicled in a series of pantings. You will also need to, when mentioning your father, always add "Whose voice I will hear forever", or the goddess will be offended by your misbehaviour. 

The girl has some holy weapons, and unusual features that are always shown in her depictions, and her favourite animal is the yak, and if you've fathered a child, she might come to help you. Especially if you have fathered a child in the forest. 

And it's so easy to make her feel like part of the world. Like, having the barbarians that the party encounters tie fangs into their braided hair - this is how the goddess is depicted. Will they treat you kindly if you mention how you always hear your daddy's voice? I dunno, let's find out! 

 And there are tables for determining if your deity is human-looking, or it's an animal (what kind of animal?), or a plant, or mineral, or the whole bloody active volcano is an actual god. And a lot of domains and cool powers that are related to those domains. And the taboos and demands that the gods make for their followers (kind of similar to Vornheim superstitions, only they're numbered and easy to roll up and some things are left out because those are the parts that you fill in yourself, anyways).

 Also Zak included five gods that he made up while testing the generator, with illustrations. They're almost as cool as my crimson goddess. 

But I dunno, maybe your deity will be even cooler.