[REVIEW] The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford (Low-Level Adventure Module)

 Here's one recipe for really good 'vanilla D&D': start with a cup of essence-of-Gygax. Now, add two heaping tablespoons of fairy tale - not the cheap Disney stuff, of course; I mean the older-fashioned, top-shelf, Brothers Grimm/Hans Christian Andersen material. Next, stir in one teaspoon of the Nibelungenlied or the Volsunga Saga. Finally, garnish liberally with player agency. Voila - you've got yourself multiple servings of an excellent ingredient for your RPG campaign. 

That 'recipe' also evokes the influences that came to mind as I read The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford, Chance Dudinack's excellent low-level adventure module (available as a 19-page .pdf for $4.00 USD on DTRPG). [Please note: all DTRPG links in this post are affiliate links, which help support this blog but add no additional cost for you].

I came across this hidden gem on DTRPG and was so impressed by the 8-page preview material that I wrote to Chance, offering to exchange a fair and honest assessment here on the blog for a review copy. I'm glad I did - Black Wyrm offers a really excellent tiny sandbox for beginner or low-level parties. It's chock full of genuinely interesting opportunities for interaction with NPCs and the environment. The details here are clever and fun and meaningful. There's a fair bit of danger here, too, especially for low-level PCs. Adventurers who show up and immediately try to fight everything in sight will probably be killed, mutilated, and transformed into donkeys (perhaps in that order). On the other hand, characters who at least try to talk to everything that moves will unlock incredible stories and possibilities for wide-open adventure. Despite that openness, the whole thing would fit comfortably within a single forested six-mile map hex - making the flavorful Black Wyrm an easy addition to most campaigns, and a really excellent launching-point to fill several sessions at a campaign's beginning. 

Now, this isn't a perfect adventure, by any means; I'll offer some critiques as well as praise below. But the (things I consider) mis-steps are not hard to fix, and the potential here is quite good. The closest extant adventure to which I'd readily compare this little-known module is the seemingly ubiquitous Winter's Daughter. With all due props to that triumph of layout/organization - and although this may sound like heresy to the average OSR fan - I'm much more excited about the idea of running Black Wyrm than Winter's Daughter, even though tonally the two could fit quite easily in the same campaign. Yeah, folks, I'm serious. This is a really good starter module. 

But the proof's in the pudding, so let's talk details. 

Please note - from this point on, SPOILERS WILL BE EVERYWHERE. 

SO WHAT'S GOING ON, THEN? INTO A FAIRY-TALE SANDBOX

As seen from satellite view, this is just a little micro-regional sandbox with a dungeon, a goblin lair, some other interesting sites, and a central monster. The module's title suggests that this is an adventure about a dragon problem. That's correct - sort of - but it also oversimplifies what's going on; killing the pesky dragon is only one possible end-state for the entwined goings-on at work here, and there are different ways to pursue even that goal. 

The whole adventure takes place in the little settlement of Brandonsford, and in the fey-haunted woods to its north. Brandonsford is described as a small town - it has two rival taverns described (and a reeve, an alchemist, a smith, a priest, a general store clerk, a hunter, and a farmer to boot) - but it feels more like a village (or even a hamlet) according to its description and context. There's no town map to settle the issue, however; if you run this, you might grab a free village map off Dyson's Dodecahedron to get you sorted. In place of a map, we do gain a wonderfully intricate web of social connections, suspicions, and adventure hooks across the community. There may be more residents living in 'town' than those listed above, but the ones listed are all connected in some useful way to one another and/or to mysterious contacts out in the forest. I mentioned two rival taverns, for example: one is a fairly straightforward place to drink ale, rent a room, and recruit hirelings (the four potential hirelings are described as more than just names and stat-lines: they have individualized descriptions like "Gentle face, freckled, one red curl hangs out of her coif. Generally patient and well-meaning, but in combat her fight-or-flight kicks in. Usually fight, with lots of threats and screaming"). The other tavern is a much less appealing place to spend time - partly because cost-saving measures are in place thanks to a spate of nighttime alcohol thefts from the basement. The proprietor is certain that the rival tavern-keeper is stealing from him, but if the PCs accept a stake-out job, they'll discover that a thirsty Fey ale-bibber from the forest is the nightly intruder. That encounter has the potential to feed the party clues leading to a buried treasure and a goblin king's court in the woods. But this is only one of many "node-mapped" ways to gain clues. 

All sorts of shenanigans are happening in the background. The smith is terrified that he's being haunted at night by a fairy, but that visitation is actually something else entirely - and investigating that little mystery can indirectly point the PCs out of 'town' to helpful company in the woods, as well. The general store clerk (ah, there's a very American D&D concept!) will complain about supply problems thanks to a dragon raiding wagons on the forest road; the reeve may hire the PCs to hunt down the dragon, and he'll put the party in touch with an eyewitness of the beast's predations - but the reeve also lets on that a witch in the woods is really the one causing trouble for Brandonsford (another villager knows said witch, and has a very different take on her activities). Everyone has an opinion about what's going on, and everyone can point the PCs to somebody else who can tell them a little bit more, or hire them to do something about it - just not the same something. There are no linear paths to tread or required actions for the party to fulfill, just a tense community of worried people who all want action but who all disagree about the solutions needed. This is a node-based adventure that insists that there are no right or wrong ways to move around the node-network, and the network might even lead to different goals. 

Yes, there is a dragon - well, again, sort of; he was a dwarven miner whose greed led him to kill his brothers rather than share a treasure - and then his evil greed turned him into a black dragon (5 points to Gryffindor if you can name the medieval literary inspiration there...). Now he's causing all manner of trouble in the neighborhood, but he's much too strong for a low-level party to just go slay. One line of investigation might lead to an old burial mound, said to contain a knight's magic sword used to kill another dragon centuries ago. Another approach might lead to a forest glade in which cavorting fauns drink the intoxicating wine shed from a magical tree, a drink that might just put the dragon to sleep...and the fauns will trade their stuff, but only for objects of real sentimental value - not for coin. The party might encounter goblin scavengers who can lead them to their Goblin King - who has his own (sinister) plans for the dragon, and can ally with the party to help them secure the beast. There's an angry giant to watch out for, a witch in the woods who might become a helpful ally or a terrifying foe, and a ruined dwarven mine haunted by ghosts who could be very informative indeed. There are also random encounters, with separate tables for things encountered in the forest or along a riverbank. These are more than "you meet 1d6 stirges" -  they offer flavorful little vignettes, tied together in a coherent ecosystem. The random encounters also bring along information to point the players toward different fixed encounter nodes, but without being heavy-handed or required. 

Just to offer one notable example of how flexible and open-ended this all is, the material on the Goblin King includes stats for fighting him and his retainers - but it also describes the terms he'll offer for working together. The Goblin King is really an awesomely evocative quest-giver. 

"Hogboon wants the PCs to find the dragon who lives in the forest, capture it, and bring it back to him alive. He keeps his reasons secret but offers the party the opportunity to become knights of the goblin kingdom if they do the job." 

Nice. Suddenly I'm getting flashbacks to David Bowie and Labyrinth. And although King Hogboon sounds a bit like a self-important idiot, he suggests drugging or trapping the dragon - and he'll provide a magical rope to aid in transporting the beast once captured. Then:

 "If the party brings back the dragon: Hogboon grants them knighthood, along with a goblin squire to use as a personal mule and/or guinea pig." 

No, your players wouldn't enjoy that either, would they? 

But on the other hand: 

"Hogboon plans to use the dragon to complete his takeover of the woods by charming it to obey him. Using the dragon, Hogboon will move to destroy Brandonsford and drive the other fairies out of the wood." 

Other fairies? Oh yes. When I first read about the Goblin King, I thought it was an odd oversight that he's described as "a boar-headed man dressed in a dashing nobleman's frock." Wait...are you saying he's a male goblin, or he's...a man? Well, guess what happens if a PC kills Hogboon, and takes his magic ring? 

"If you kill the wearer of this ring and take it as your own, you become the new Goblin King. Goblins from Faerie will obey you unquestioningly. While you have the ring, you will be hunted by the agents of power-hungry fairies who want the ring for themselves." 

I mean: wow. This adventure hands really interesting hooks to GMs and players, and not all of those hooks require PCs to be shiny heroes - or just tomb-robbers, either. (To be clear, I'm sure none of your players would serve/support/become the Goblin King on his quest for local dominance, but...well, you see, my players are a different story...). 

The other thing I want to highlight here is the overall cohesion of the different puzzle-pieces in the adventure. Remember how I noted I was initially confused at the description of the Goblin King? In light of his ring, it looks like he may actually be a human, who usurped the Goblin Throne at some point. Little things like that tend to add up and make sense in the module. Near the Goblin King's seat is a buried treasure. The goblins don't know about it (it belongs to the fey tavern-basement-raider) but astute players may wonder why a 5'-wide patch of clover is "somehow a more vibrant shade of green than the other plants here" (IRL, filled-in wells or pits sometimes can be detected because of the extra-lush vegetation growing atop these sumps). 

What I'm trying to convey is that this is much more than a module about finding and killing a dragon. It's about all kinds of different things - each one genuinely interesting and interactive, and none specifically required as the 'right way' to beat the module. The content is regularly creative and fun, evoking whimsical and old-fashioned ideas in fantasy but capable of being dialed anywhere from RPG-for-kids to really-really-dark. 

QUIBBLES, CRITIQUES, AND CHANGES: SOME THINGS I'D FIX

Ok, now for the not-as-great stuff. 

I've already noted that a village/town map is missed. In general, the maps of specific sites here are adequately functional, but disappointing. Sometimes this involves information transfer, not just aesthetic preference. For example, the map of the Goblin Castle - actually a ruined ancient shrine - is confusingly over-simple:

It offers six different sub-encounters or areas within or around this structure. The individual descriptions are interesting (and quite, quite fun!). But there's no scale here, and I can't tell whether we're supposed to assume that when dealing with the 3 goblins making a mud-and-stone effigy of their King at point #2, the party is being watched intently by the goblins at other points. Is this basically one big encounter-in-a-throne-room with NPCs around the edges of the room, or is this a series of possible encounters in a massive hall or even in separate sub-chambers? 

I had a similar problem 'reading' the map in the old knight's Barrow Mound. On the whole, it's a very functional (and pleasingly non-linear) map, but there are two rooms in the mound's lower level that aren't described in quite enough detail to run without some initial head-scratching (I'll talk a bit more about that dungeon, below). 

The adventure is advertised as suitable for 4-8 PCs of levels 1-3. That's a sizable party (with good OSR street cred, especially if hirelings are brought along), but many people seem not to run groups of quite that size these days. A smaller party, especially at level 1, needs to be very, very careful fighting some of the enemies in here - especially the Black Wyrm itself. As already noted, the module provides several paths to treat combat as war here, but GMs should think carefully about massaging the stats to match the party they're running this for. Or, you know, just smile as your players roll up new characters. 

In its current format, this isn't a module to pick up and try to run without reading from cover to cover. Happily, reading the whole thing doesn't take much time! Most of the module is cleanly laid out and quick to read, but there are some places where the module's organization doesn't support its internal coherence as well as possible. The module notes that the party might work with or fight against Vivian, the Witch of the Wood. Unfortunately, I couldn't find stats for Vivian, or for her attendant pixies! There are a few spots that really would benefit from additional cross-referencing: page 12, describing the Goblin King, might direct the GM to check page 18, the list of magical items (including a more detailed description of Hogboon's ring). As page 10 notes, the party might free a captured monk tied up in a sack at a giant's house (if freed, the monk loudly thanks the party...but the giant is sleeping lightly nearby...). It would be helpful here to remind the GM that this particular monk had been sent by his superior on a mission to steal a magical sword from the barrow to the north, a mission that Brother Dirk may want help with - as described earlier, on page 6. Little things like this pose no problem if the GM has read everything recently, but small notations could enhance the ease-of-use at the table. 

The map for the region is nice (see above). The module's random encounter tables and map combined do provide a basic way to measure encounter frequency: basically, 2-in-6 chance per mile traveled, equalling each 2" of movement on the map. But those measurements roughly align with the distances between the different adventure nodes across the forest, anyway. I'd just convert the map into a point-crawl by drawing paths between nodes, and roll for a random encounter once on each trip between nodes. 

ABOUT THAT DUNGEON...

I wanted to set aside some comments about the Knight's Barrow, the larger dungeon area included in the module. I think this dungeon has lots of potential, but I also found it the weakest part of the module. Happily, it's not a required stop in any way - there's some useful loot here, but a GM could even omit this tomb or replace with another preferred small dungeon without doing harm to the adventure as a whole. To be clear, however, the Barrow has some really cool features and could be very fun - it just didn't seem as strong as the open-ended sandbox outside. 

First, some technical/functional critiques: 

The dungeon's Lower Level includes two really interesting undead wandering encounters. Given how 'talkative' most of this module is, I would have appreciated a bit more guidance on the intended hostility/aggression of these ghosts. The standard reaction table can do in a pinch, but I suspect there's a bit of creative vision here not being made explicit. 

Down on Level 2, Room 14 has a fun and potentially quite 'tactical' encounter with a ghost who animates statues to charge into intruders. The description includes the note that "Nine statues are placed in the otherwise bare room: ranks of stone warriors standing at attention." The ghost in the room can "command a statue to charge in a straight line, weapon out. 1d8 damage, save for half, statue shatters on impact with a wall." This is a very interesting encounter, and I bet the author has a very clear mental image of how it all works, but I don't! This is a complex-enough encounter that the room needs a more detailed map, or more information. How many ranks are there? 3 ranks of 3 statues, I presume...are they all facing in the same direction? If so, the ghost's tactic loses some efficacy. Are the statues' ranks serried, so that a charging statue won't run into the back of another statue, or are they all lined up nice and evenly and in each others' way? Just a bit more detail fleshing out relative positions on the map would help a lot here. 

The map shows a secret passage connecting Rooms 10 and 19 on the lower level. The text doesn't describe it - I think - which is a pretty normal failing of OSR dungeon descriptions. In this case, there's room for confusion, because the description for Room 19 includes a statue of a noblewoman "in the center of the room ... flush with the wall behind her is a closed stone door." There is a cool little puzzle here requiring the PCs to interact with the magical statue in order to avoid being attacked by it "if anyone attempts to open the door." Um, the door visible on the map leading south, or the secret door leading to a secret passage on the wall opposite? Again, the author clearly knows what is going on here - I am almost certain that 'the door' refers to the main double doors leading south into the Knight's crypt - but just a bit more detail, ideally in a map, would make life much easier for a busy GM.

My last critique of the Knight's Barrow is simply that its potential narrative interconnections with the rest of the module seem underdeveloped. There's a lot of cool stuff in the barrow - including a sacred knight at rest, while his former companions now wander the halls of his tomb, undead! The module doesn't explain why. On the one hand, Black Wyrm avoids a problem often lamented by Bryce at tenfootpole - pausing for useless exposition about what once happened here and what used to happen in this forsaken place. But given the high level of coherent interactivity across the rest of the module, there are some little mysteries crying out for elaboration here. The Knight's magical sword, +3 vs. evil, bears the inscription, "All shadows yield to my light." And yet just two rooms away, one of the knight's closest friends in life is now undead, animating statues with unnaturally long shadows...and another of the knight's boon companions is now a floating skull wandering the halls. There is what reads like a pagan and fey shrine to an antler-headed being located inside the barrow. That shrine and its offerings are unmolested, but the sarcophagi of the knight's friends have been violated. 

If I run Black Wyrm (and I hope to soon!), I'll likely weave this barrow a bit more tightly into the dark Faerie politics hinted at in the module. I mean, there's even a party of goblins on the Upper Level hoping to turn the barrow into the Goblin King's next stronghold (in typical fashion for Black Wyrm, the module provides details in case the players try to negotiate with these other intruders). For me, the barrow's description hints at an unclean, fey presence that desecrated most of the tomb and perverted most of its burials, but never managed to break into the knight's final resting place. Perhaps the Witch in the Woods had something to do with that failure - after all, I don't like that only the village priest (described as rather prejudiced...) knows about the buried magic sword and is at work to reclaim it for use against the dragon. Perhaps the Witch also is involved in an older power struggle for control of the barrow, and with it the woods...

WRAPPING UP

I've taken the time to spell out my critiques for three reasons. First, uh, this is a gaming blog, and I like geeking out about adventure-design decisions. Second: I said a fair review and I meant it! :-) But third: because Black Wyrm is really compelling, and it deserves its few necessary tweaks - which are fairly easy to implement. 

Not everyone is looking for what some call 'vanilla' D&D - adventures and settings that fit the common European-inspired and Gygaxian vision - but demand remains for material suitable for that kind of setting, if it does more than just rehash now-stale tropes. The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford offers really good vanilla D&D, with one foot in medieval and early modern legend and another foot in the Village of Hommlet. Overall, this is an awesome little module. Though I find the Knight's Barrow its weakest part, the barrow-quest forms a truly optional mission. This module packs in a tiny but rich sandbox bursting with creativity and with colorful opportunities for interaction. In my mind, this module should be filed in the same general head-space with Winter's Daughter, the Tomb of the Serpent Kings, Redtooth Ridge (which I'm running now!) or Gatehouse on Cormac's Crag. With a bit more work on the presentation and organization, this module could be a real competitor in that headspace, too.

In closing, I want to note that the module's author blogs at Wizard Fight Club. Recently, Chance also has released (onto Reddit) some artwork depicting "old school humanoids" in the AD&D style. As you can see from this picture of Chance's dog-faced kobolds (posted here with permission), it's a style hinting at tradition, whimsy, a little bit of danger, and fun. 

Kobold Patrol! By Wizard Fight Club (by permission)

Black Wyrm, with its traditional artwork by Arthur Rackham, leans in a very different direction graphically, but the module evokes exactly those traits: tradition, whimsy, danger, and fun. 

Happy gaming!

A light PbtA S&S hack: the playbooks

 In a recent post, I reported briefly on a very enjoyable PbtA session filled with all manner of player hijinks, loosely inspired by the Dark Sun setting. It involved, as I stated there, essentially the World of Dungeons rules-light system, "beefed up with some really evocative playbook moves plundered from various Apocalypse World hacks to add some gritty swords-and-sorcery color." As I noted in my previous post, there are already some PbtA hacks that do this, but none of them hit quite the tone I was looking for: simple and straightforward to run, yet with evocative, interesting, and dangerous characters, and without leaning toward the sleazier stuff that a lot of S&S fiction/gaming evokes. 

Anyway, that one session turned into a three-session mini-campaign with my adult gaming group that was uproariously fun and (not counting the time to put the initial playbooks together) also really low-prep to run as a GM. The players ended up breaking out of prison after being wrongly suspected of a kidnapping, usurping control of a cult, using the cult members as extra muscle, and forging an alliance with a group of sentient ape-man warriors guarding an urban shrine with a relic hammer capable of preventing a Sorcerer-King's return from the grave. Complicating matters were the cultists dominating the city council who sought to expedite said tyrant's return, the shadow-walking inhumans with mind-controlled people puppets, and a mummy very unwilling to have its gilded skull destroyed (such destruction, using the relic hammer, was also necessary to prevent the Sorcerer-King's return). There was a huge and bloody rumble in a pepper-pigment-processing bazaar, and a dramatic finale at the ape-man shrine. Oh, and one of the PCs even shape-shifted into a pterodactyl. Yep. Finally, after many shenanigans and much laughter, a PC made the ultimate sacrifice to stop the villains, saving the day (but losing his life) in the final dice-roll of the campaign. Great stuff. 

Anyway - an anonymous commenter asked for more info on the way I set up the playbooks. I figured I'd dump everything here and let those who like the sound of this take a closer look. Please note that while I synthesized these parts myself, the individual parts are all taken from or at least inspired by different existing PbtA resources by other creatives; there are bits and/or traces herein from Apocalypse World, Apocalypse World: Burned Over, Apocalypse World: Fallen Empires, Dungeon World, World of Dungeons, Advanced World of Dungeons, some online Conan PbtA resources (Hyborian Age, and also Road of Kings, I believe), and World of Pilgrims, and I had been thinking a lot about One Shot World and Homebrew World, too. 

Voici. Pardon the lame working title. Here is World of Swords & Subtlety. [CLICK ON THE PICTURE FOR .PDF]

SHAVE: (yet another oddly-named) Knave hack [this time, streamlined AND reinforced for smaller but competent parties]

 I suppose that "another hack of Knave" may not be what the world needs most right now, but it was what I needed to satisfy some specific design considerations for a new mini-campaign. My kids asked me to run a sandbox for them. I'm already a busy man and already running a separate game for the grown-ups, so I resolved to rely on existing material as much as possible for our little sandbox - which meant that compatiblity with published D&D(ish) material was important. And that, of course, means Knave - Ben Milton's now-famed rules-light engine for gaming with just about any OSR resource in print. 

That being said, I didn't want to run Knave without some tweaks. As follows, here were some design issues I had in mind:

+ I really like Into the Odd's faster and usually whiff-less combat, though there are aspects of it that I think I'd like to tweak, too. Could I modify combat in Knave to make it a bit faster, while keeping things I like?

+ As this little sandbox is just for two kids, I'm looking at running quite a small party of PCs. How could I optimize survivability and competence for two characters, while perhaps adding even fewer bells and whistles than Scarlet Heroes' rules for solo/duo parties?

+ Knave is notably classless, relying on inventory, but one common response when hacking the game is to add 'knacks' or light class-ability systems. How could I boost character diversity a bit with a minimum of added fuss?

+ Finally, I like monsters with special abilities. I like how Into the Odd bakes them into the critical damage after HP = 0, but I dislike how this means many special abilities never get 'shown off' before a monster dies, and in fact there is a bit of a predictable pacing to combat (first, you most likely only lose HP, then you are in serious trouble). How could I highlight unique monster characteristics without adding a ton of fuss (and, preferably, retain ItO's "don't blame me, blame the dice" feature for GMs?). 

Well, here's a quick look at what I whipped up. It's basically Knave as-is, with a few key modifications, using ideas inspired by Whitehack, Into the Odd, Scarlet Heroes, and Low Fantasy Gaming. 

So. All rules remain RAW unless specified:

1) During character generation, pick 2 Tags reflecting a background, skill, or notable feature that might improve your PC's performance. Write the tag next to one of your Ability Defense scores; when you attempt a Saving Throw using that score, you can roll with advantage (roll 2d20 and take the better roll) if your Tag is relevant (for example, one of our new PCs is a cat-person, and has "Dexterity: Cat-Person" and "Wisdom: Cat-Burglar"; the other PC has "Dexterity: City Guard" and "Constitution: Plague Survivor"). This is basically yoinked from Whitehack. 

2) During character generation, decide whether your character is a RAZOR or a SCYTHE (thus giving my rules edgy flair and an excuse for that terrible name, Shave). 

    - RAZORS gain an extra 2 Ability score Tags, bringing them to a total of 4 tags. As rare as Saving Throws may be, they'll typically roll them with +Advantage. 
    - SCYTHES have the 'cleave'/'plow through enemies'/whatever ability: when you drop a foe in combat to 0 hp, you may immediately make another attack at another target adjacent to you (melee) or in range (missile).  

This all assumes, of course, that everybody in the game can be kind of a fighter, kind of a rogue, kind of an arcane caster, etc. You just make one tweak for a little signature specialty up front. 

[EDIT - forgot to mention - I started characters at level 2; my intent is that everybody gains 1 more new Tag when they level up to level 5]

3) During combat, players roll to hit as normal. When a PC hits, they don't roll damage; they automatically inflict the MAXIMUM damage for their weapon. If a character ends up with a weapon or effect that inflicts multiple dice of damage, max out one of the dice (PC's choice) and roll the other(s). [This roll to hit, but not to damage approach is meant to make the gradient of enemy armor classes feel more meaningful than it often does in Into the Odd, and allows the frustration of not always hitting, but it also simplifies combat by removing half of a PC's rolls - while making these lone characters quite powerful when they hit. Consider that a SCYTHE character with a d8 sword fighting a crowd of goblins can mow through the whole crowd adjacent in one round - so long as he keeps rolling hits...I like this balance of competence that still depends somewhat on luck.]

4) The monsters use the normal combat rules - they roll to hit AND for damage. I also had hirelings roll for damage, too. It's just the PCs who get to be awesome.

5) Added to that, however, I imported Low Fantasy Gaming's approach to monster critical hits. Every monster type has a special attack feature that triggers on natural roll of 19 or 20. This 19+ feature might just be 'max damage for its weapon' or it might be something like "Save or Die" or "lose a limb" or all kinds of exotic stuff in-between. This brings the special attack effects that I love in Into the Odd, but it spreads their potential and threat all throughout the combat, from the very first round - while remaining rare enough (10%) that you'll probably be ok. 

SO HOW'D IT GO?

Great! We just tried these rules out today and had a good time. The rules got out of the way but allowed dangerous, tense combats (most of our rules engagement was with Knave's famed inventory management system, which turned out to matter a lot ... at session's end, they even had to negotiate inventory slots to bring a deceased hireling's body home to his vilage). 

I'm running a setting that is vaguely inspired by late Carolingian society near the Mediterranean. My little sandbox includes several villages from Raging Swan Press, a number of the individual lairs in Forgotten Caverns of Archaia re-purposed across my landscape, the Barrowmaze, Saltmarsh, and a number of factions to wheel and deal with in good time. The characters have just ship-wrecked on the shore of the West Kingdom while fleeing plague and banishment in the Eastern Realm. After being nursed back to strenght in a coastal fishing village, they're ready to stretch their legs and gather some loot in their new home. 

SPOILERS AHEAD FOR REDTOOTH RIDGE

Today, we started out with the Advanced Adventures module "Redtooth Ridge." [Affiliate link] We got about half-way through the module before the players beat it back to the village with inventory slots filled with treasure and a dead hireling's body. They are being paid to recover an item stolen from a dryad. With two hirelings in tow recruited in the fishing village, they headed up the Redtooth Ridge and encountered a snacking ogre. Rather than fighting, the PCs successfully struck up a conversation with the beast. Not a bad idea, since they were able to reach a diplomatic solution - he'll let them wander about his plateau's ruined mansions if 1) they kill lots of the mites and pesties he loves to snack on, and leave the 'snacks' for him, and 2) they take out the goblin 'allies' he's getting tired of humoring. None too soon, as the goblins ended up ambushing the party and the ogre; one PC got pretty low in HP before they drove off the goblins. 

Taking their temporary leave of the ogre (thank goodness; his funny voice was hurting my throat!) the PCs began their exploration of the plateau's main ruined mansion. They found a bunch of classy antique furniture and dragged some outside to haul back home later. Unfortunately, this extended effort provoked a random encounter - two wolves that wandered in to interrupt the process! However, the PCs ran inside and barricaded themselves in the ruin - then decided to throw an old mouldering goblin corpse they found outside. The wolves took this 'gift' and ran off into the woods with it. 

Next was the looting of an old libary chock full of giant rats. One of the hirelings was swarmed and bitten to death before a PC used an Auditory Illusion spell to scare the rats off with a deafening dragon's roar! Then, an almost-fight with zombies before the PCs retreated back upstairs, a sip from a magical fountain (which turned out to be a bad idea, as the dice weren't with the player - he lost 1 permanent HP) and finally a fight with two ghouls in a ruined chapel. Now loaded with loot up to their max inventory, the party decided to head back to the fishing village with their 'winnings.' 

They then chartered a cart to take them to a larger village, hired 4 more men-at-arms in the village's taverns, and are headed back to complete the job on Redtooth Ridge. The story continues!

Success for my trial run of Knave, and success for my small design tweaks too. I guess it wasn't too close a SHAVE!

"I order him to hand over control of his cult" -- A brief session AAR/recap: Dark Sun-inspired World of Dungeon + AW utter shenanigans

I just ran a really enjoyable session tonight of what was, basically, World of Dungeons (a Dungeon World-light) beefed up with some really evocative playbook moves plundered from various Apocalypse World hacks to add some gritty S&S color (there are existing hack options for this, but none hit exactly the note I wanted). I should do/maybe will do a proper session recap, but the note below (which I posted to the World of Dungeons sub-Discord forum) kind of sums up the main highlights, at least for now.

+++

I ended up using the old Dark Sun setting as a very loose inspiration point and we did a lot of setting construction through Q&A right at the start. System was basically World of Dungeons with some special ability choices replaced by really evocative playbook moves from across the AW-DW sphere. You know it's going to be a wild ride when one of the earliest things that happens in play in a session is that one character uses psychic manipulation to make a murderous cult leader hand over control of his cult ["the Order of the Emerald Mother"]...to the PC. They agreed to meet at the cult sanctuary in the cliffside tombs that evening to present the 'good news' to the cult. Unfortunately for the players, however, a string of cascading rolls led to a dramatic close-of-session as two characters were hauled away by the city guard for questioning (a PC breaking up an abduction ended up getting fingered for the crime himself!). And the city government is known to be under the control of the cruel order of assassins that the players are probably up against in the campaign front. Will the PCs be 'disappeared' by the town guard, or will they gain their freedom, successfully take over that cult (!??!), and complete their mission to prevent the resurrection of an evil sorcerer-king? I don't know...we'll have to keep playing to find out.

Oh, and one player character is a half-troll Brute who can shapeshift into a pterodactyl. Because reasons.

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I may recap the session in more detail in coming days. Very fun times had tonight -- rumbling with a cult, psychic powers, a 'friendly' bout with an old troll rival in the Caravaneers' Arena for Rhetoric and Stick-Fighting, and an attemped rescue of an old ally (who was being carried off in a carpet) - that went terribly wrong...

Dressing Your Monsters: Raging Swan Press Monstrous Lairs I & II [REVIEW]

So you were all prepped for the party's confrontation with Uzbug, the Dread Kobold Warlord of Doom, but once the session started, the players abruptly decided to go raid a nearby pirate stronghold instead. Or perhaps you're running a sandbox with lots of random encounters, and the dice just announced that the players are about to stumble onto a hidden Duergar outpost (right after this 5-minute snack break). Or maybe you're planning next week's attack on the goblin caves, but you'd really prefer not to lean on the same setting details you leaned on for the previous five goblin caves.

Enter Raging Swan's GM's Miscellany: Monstrous Lairs, Vol. I and Monstrous Lairs, Vol. II.

(Disclosure: I was given free copies of the products discussed here in exchange for a fair review, and the DTRPG links in this post are affiliate links, which support this site at no added cost to you).

THE TL;DR:

These resources contain system-neutral 'dungeon dressing' random tables, but themed specifically for different kinds of monsters or other opponents, providing details particularly suitable for their lairs. They don't include maps, stats, etc.; these tables are for the color, the flavor, the details that can bring a bare map you just grabbed (probably off Dyson) to life! I've reviewed some of Raging Swan's dungeon dressing material before, and thought very highly of it. These monster lair tables are also quite useful tools. I have a few minor critiques, but overall, I think these are well worth the money - particularly if you are likely to use the same kind of creatures multiple times in a campaign, or if you are likely to generate content on a tight timetable.

Worth mentioning up front: these volumes compile lair description tables that are also available individually - but the compilation volumes make a lot of economic sense, if you're likely to use these much. For example, you could buy Monstrous Lair #2, "Troll's Cave", for only $1.45 USD in .pdf - but Vol. I contains 22 different lairs, and Vol. II contains 24 different lairs, but each sells for $7.45 USD in .pdf (these have reasonably priced Print-on-Demand options, too).


WHAT'S IN THE BOOKS?

Contents, in a bit more detail:

Vol. I:

• Monstrous Lair #1: Owlbear Den
• Monstrous Lair #2: Troll Cave
• Monstrous Lair #3: Ogre’s Cave
• Monstrous Lair #4: Goblin Raiding Camp
• Monstrous Lair #5: Harpy’s Nest
• Monstrous Lair #6: Minotaur’s Den
• Monstrous Lair #7: Giant Spider’s Web
• Monstrous Lair #8: Ghoul Nest
• Monstrous Lair #9: Wights’ Barrow
• Monstrous Lair #10: Mummy’s Crypt
• Monstrous Lair #11: Dark Creeper Village
• Monstrous Lair #12: Medusa Lair
• Monstrous Lair #13: Aboleth’s Sunken Cavern
• Monstrous Lair #14: Lizardfolk Village
• Monstrous Lair #15: Bandit Camp
• Monstrous Lair#16: Thieves’ Hideout
• Monstrous Lair#17: Witch’s Hovel
• Monstrous Lair #18: Bugbears’ Lair
• Monstrous Lair#19: Gnolls’ Camp
• Monstrous Lair #20: Kobold Warren
• Monstrous Lair #21: Pirates’ Cove
• Monstrous Lair #22: Sahuagin’s Sunken Cave

Vol. II:

• Monstrous Lair #23: Troglodytes’ Warren
• Monstrous Lair #24: Roper’s Cave
• Monstrous Lair 25: Scrags’ Sunken Cave
• Monstrous Lair #26: Sphinx’s Cave
• Monstrous Lair #27: Cultists’ Hidden Fane
• Monstrous Lair #28: Smugglers’ Hidden Den
• Monstrous Lair #29: Vampire’s Crypt
• Monstrous Lair #30: Assassins’ Hideout
• Monstrous Lair #31: Wyvern’s Nest
• Monstrous Lair #32: Sea Hag’s Grotto
• Monstrous Lair #33: Dryad’s Glade
• Monstrous Lair #34: Green Hag’s Swamp
• Monstrous Lair #35: Ghost-Haunted House
• Monstrous Lair #36: Fire Giants’ Hall
• Monstrous Lair #37: Hill Giants’ Steading
• Monstrous Lair #38: Frost Giants’ Glacial Rift
• Monstrous Lair #39: Otyugh’s Sewer
• Monstrous Lair #40: Drow Outpost
• Monstrous Lair #41: Duergar Outpost
• Monstrous Lair #42: Derro Outpost
• Monstrous Lair #43: Wolves' Den
• Monstrous Lair #44: Chimera's Den
• Monstrous Lair #45: Hydra's Den
• Monstrous Lair #46: Basilisk's Den

Ok, but what's in each lair? Each two-page spread lair follows a standard template:

• The Approaches (the lair's entrance, or in some cases, spoor near the lair that hint at creature's presence and nature).
• What's Going On? (because, let's face it, it's always cooler if the monsters are doing something other than waiting for adventurers to wander by...).
• Major Lair Features
• Minor Lair Features
• Monster's Appearance
• Treasures
• Trinkets (or, in Vol II, 'Trash')

JUST HOW EFFECTIVE ARE THESE RANDOM TABLES?

When I started looking over these tables, these were the questions I brought front and center:

• What is this best used for?
• How flexibly will it support my own imagination?
• How reusable is it? How soon will I 'use it up'?
• Does it generate better (i.e., more evocative, colorful, cool) content than I would on my own?
• Or, at least, does it generate good content faster than I would on my own?

To assess how this compares to just making up my own lair descriptions, I decided to test the material under fire. I grabbed a timer, semi-randomly selected a monster type (Giant Spider!), and then immediately gave myself 5 minutes, timed, to come up with a lair description. Here's what I came up with.

GIANT SPIDERS’ NEST in 5 minutes…go.

Ok, so obviously webs. New webs, also old webs, also birds or old prey hanging in webs. You can find cool treasure in the desiccated remains in the webs. Maybe there is not-dead-yet prey stuck in the webs too. You can rescue them and get - rewards; thanks; information, quests and story hooks….maybe someone you needed to find is in that web. Maybe the person in the web has gone mad with fear and fights you.

Hmm. The spiders themselves…any dead spiders sitting about too? Maybe one giant creature or monster that the spiders sucked dry. Like a dead owl bear wrapped up in webs.

Sticky walls…walls rubbed smooth by spider bulk in the tunnels? Perhaps the spiders have laid cunning traps and ruses to draw prey in and then entrap them. Huh - big leaves or branches cover a pit trap with fresh, sticky webbing slung across the bottom? The spiders are waiting for you down in the pit trap?  

(1:47 left…) This is where my creativity has paused…

An idol. A spider-god idol - the spiders worship something horrible, right? Ok, there’s a jeweled obsidian idol that hums faintly if you touch it and is very evil. Maybe it came from BEYOND. Maybe an emissary of a ‘lesser’ species’ serving the spiders is present. Spiders have factions? Maybe one side of the lair has spiders on team A and vice versa…can you play them off each other?

TIME’S UP!!!!

Then I reset the timer, flipped to the correct page in Monstrous Lairs Vol. I, grabbed a d10, and repeated the challenge. Here's what I generated:

Approaching: a thick spider web blocks entry to the nest. 
Inside, the giant spider is covered in fist-sized young.
A mass of thick webs all attach to a single monstrous thread that fades into the shadows of a deep alcove piercing the ceiling.
I’m not happy just with that; I’ll roll up a second major feature too.
Several large objects are hidden from view under a blanket of dusty spider webs.
Minor feature: hundreds of tiny white spiders crawl over the desiccated body of something that may have been once a person. 
The giant spider itself has a heavy carapace covered with thick black hair; matted clumps of hair look like long spines.
Treasure present: several silver arrows in perfect condition pin a huge spider to the wall.
Also, a frayed spider silk rope lies next to an unfortunate web farmer.

Done - with 1:26 left on the clock.

To be honest, I felt this was an acceptable but slightly underwhelming lair, and not necessarily a clear knock-out win over what I had come up. So I grabbed the dice again, reset the timer again, and made another spider lair using the random tables - and this is where I started to see some of the beauty of this product. Because each lair only takes a few minutes to crank out, but each lair can be quite different from the next. And although the first one didn't scream 'evocative creepy spider lair!' at me, I was much more goosebumped by the second one I generated:

Approaching: Rats, squeaking loudly, scatter at the party’s approach if they aren’t quiet - this might alert the spider within.
However, THIS spider is not here yet, but returns moments after the PCs start investigating its home.
Notable feature 1: Dangling from webs, hundreds of skulls and bones hang from the nest’s ceiling.
Notable feature 2: A large spider’s egg, crawling with hundreds of white fist-sized spiders, hangs from the ceiling.
A broad swath of dried blood covers a section of web near one wall.
The spider itself has a riot of green, brown, and red swirls all over its thick carapace.
Treasure: Intricate leather armor with red piping that mimics a spider’s web.
Also a shattered bottle lies just beyond the grasping hands of a fallen victim. It’s labeled ‘anti-venom.”

DONE - 2:07 left - ok, let’s keep going with creative connections…
What’s with the weird armor that looks like a web?
Did it belong to….Drow, or some very spider-friendly ally? Is there/was there a spider-serving cult? Or an assassin’s group that brought fresh victims to trade for spider venom? Huh.
Stopping now with 1 minute left.

Notice how the "monster's appearance" table means you can have a bunch of different, memorable foes of the same species? This doesn't have to be just "oh, that one time we fought another giant spider." It's "that one spider - you know, the one with the weird colored swirls on its body" - unlike the previous spider, with the big stubby hairs all over it. And the lair details in here get quite evocative - I mean, one 'minor lair feature' entry says "the ribcage of a victim provides safe haven for a large egg sac." I want you to just pause and dwell on that image; some poor soul's former bone-house filled up by a pale, swollen egg sac...that is a deeply horrifying detail. That is starting to make me think of this giant spider as something obscene and awful and inexorable, and yet (of course) intent on protecting its own...this has the makings of a very colorful encounter.

Now, to be fair, not every encounter generated here hits me so much in the feels. For one thing, some monsters are perhaps a bit less environmentally evocative. I wasn't terribly impressed with the Owlbear lair generator, for example:

Outside - a pile of corpses sits outside the nest, as if the creature were unusually fastidious.
Inside, it’s digging a pit, already two feet deep.
A rope bridge connects two ledges above the nest.
Meat has been stripped from the bones of a seven-foot-long fish.
This particular owl bear is missing all its feathers, giving it bald patches on its head and upper body.
Treasure: a carved, jade figurine depicting a bear sits by an intricate ivory carving of an owl.
Also, a leather girdle, stretched nearly to its breaking point, is among the nest’s detritus.

That lair doesn't really speak to me with as much coherence, but I have to admit, I'm not sure I could quickly design something that says 'cool Owlbear lair' any better or faster. And it still makes this Owlbear a bit more memorable, and gives some interesting tactical landmarks for an encounter. So even in the not-so-grands, you still get some cool individualization of each specific creature's abode.

Although each entry gives you ten different 'monster appearances' to work with, the potential shelf-life of these tables probably extends past ten lairs, in many cases, because you can mix and match entries into different combinations (another hairy spider with other lair features, for example). On the other hand, I find that I keep wanting to add a couple of lair features to the same lair, to really make a lair pop, so that would work in the opposite direction for reusability. Anyway, I don't really plan to make more than ten owlbear lairs in the coming year. :-)  


SOME SMALL CRITIQUES

These things are really useful, but they aren't perfect. Fortunately, the things I'd like to critique are fairly small. There are a few odd production-value issues in Vol. I (Vol. II seems better). In Vol. I, the .pdf bookmarking in the product I downloaded was uneven, with a number of hyperlinks pointing to wrong pages near the intended page. That doesn't take too long to get around, but it is annoying. The front matter pages for Vol. I even state "Welcome to this Raging Swan Press System Neutral Edition Village Backdrop" - a reference to a different product from Raging Swan (Vol. II's front matter says "these tables can be used before or during the game to help breathe life into a roper's cave" - but at least Vol. II actually includes the Roper's Cave lair tables!).

Happily, these quibbles detract a bit from the shine, but not too much from the usefulness, of these random table collections.


OVERALL THOUGHTS

If you only ever get one Raging Swan Press product, I suggest you spring for their Dungeon Dressing guide instead - but these Monstrous Lairs offer a really nice supplement (in fact, combining both the extensive but more generic Dungeon Dressing tables with monster-specific tables for certain areas would likely be a very powerful combination for quick dungeon design).

I'll finish my recommendations by thinking about different types of users:

If you're likely to make one goblin cave (for example), and time pressure isn't an issue, you probably don't need this product, unless you are not terribly confident in your own creative ideas and want to supplement them.

If you're likely to make multiple goblin caves (for example), these products can help you individualize repeat lair types so that you don't feel like you're always rehashing the same old thing. In fact, here's a fun challenge: know that cool Ten-Monster Setting challenge that's floated around before? You could pick half a dozen monsters from one of these compilations for small campaign setting, and still have very unique-feeling monster encounters across your campaign, thanks to these tables.

If you're likely to make a bunch of crazy encounters on short notice as you generate sandbox content right in front of your players, then I'd definitely recommend this resource, because it just makes it so fast to come up with the colorful stuff mentioned earlier.

Probably the best thing I can say to sum up my feedback is that I'm GMing tonight, and I used this resource to get ready for tonight's session. There's an underground river that my players are planning to navigate as they search for a hidden ancient lore-archive...and there's an aboleth in their way...but, thanks to Monstrous Lairs, it's not just 'an aboleth' - it's the aboleth with a multitude of scars covering its purple skin, and with one of many eyes covered with a milky white film of blindness, surrounded by old bones now brittle as chalk-powder, and by murals depicting tentacles bursting from waves...etc. 

Overall, then, these tables are RECOMMENDED.

Artsy Fartsy (temple vault sketch)

 I felt like sketching this morning, and drew some kind of ... underground temple vault? 

At an earlier stage in the drawing, I asked a family member what they thought. The response: "Is this an interior or exterior scene?" 

Sigh. Keep practicing, I guess. :-)

The initial sketch started in the odd corner of a paper sheet, so the weird line at top left is a join between two sheets. 

Forth Into the Fray: On Flavors of D&D and a Strange Hybrid 4e D&D / Into the Odd Hack

Is anything in life more fickle than a GM's heart? My last post brought up the Free Kriegsspiel Revolution and my growing appreciation for truly freeform gaming. Well, this post may seem a bit contrarian to that one, I suppose; but they're not meant in opposition, but as different sides of a diverse set of interests. Here's the lowdown: I'm tinkering with a hack for Into the Odd that adds a very, very light template of character specializations borrowed from 4e D&D (!). Yeah, I'm guessing you didn't expect to see that combo anytime soon. Please allow me to explain. 

MMMM, FLAVOR...

I recently became aware of and read a now years-old discussion (from 2012) by "Armchair Gamer" of the historical flavors of D&D. It's quite an interesting and thought-provoking read, and it sparked some follow-up discussions in various places; if you've never seen this, I'd really recommend reading and chewing on it for a few minutes. The point I want to highlight here is how it helped me with a sudden "Aha!" moment. The current OSR world, to the extent that I see its contours accurately, mostly advocates and focuses on two flavors of play-and-setting: what that linked essay would call "Knaves-and-Kobolds" (gritty escapades of desperate, cynical lowlifes delving for their desperately, cynically needed coppers) and also "Galactic Dragons and Godwars" (which, by my read, sums up what OSR aficionados often mean when they advertise a 'gonzo' setting or adventure). After these two, there's also a fair bit of what that post called "Dungeoncrawling & Demons," labelling this as "the default flavor" of 2e D&D. 

Personally, I've never really appreciated the gonzo thing all that much. I can get behind the Knaves and Kobolds thing now and then, to be sure - but if I'm honest ... my heart's not really in it, at least not long-term. This essay helped me realize that what I'd usually rather be doing covers some other ground that isn't always as popular, but has been, and can be seen as just a different orientation for play. 

I'm thinking specifically about two styles/flavors mentioned: "Paladins & Princesses," to some extent, and then a flavor that Armchair Gamer first called "Warlords & Warlocks" but later revised, re-naming it "Misfits and Mayhem," with the comment that "P&P tends to have somewhat more 'respectable' heroes and a more defensive * conservative streak. M&M characters tend to be a little more chaotic and not as integrated into society." Elsewhere, the consensus emerged that "M&M" was sort of the not-so-shiny, slightly more ambiguous, distant cousin of "P&P." 

Every so often on an OSR forum, somebody will lament the lack of "some good vanilla fantasy products" in OSR-land. I increasingly suspect that what this often represents is "we'd like to see some flavors other than "Knaves and Kobolds" or "gonzo". At any rate, mulling over this 9-year-old conversation has helped me think about what I'm really trying to aim at in my own games - which has encouraged me to really push hard at what I want and not necessarily go with the flow. 

Anyway. 

IS THERE A BUTT-KICKING, COMPETENT, HEROIC FANTASY ADVENTURER IN THE HOUSE?

I've spilled much digital ink on this blog about the wonders of Into the Odd. Mmm-mmm, good! It really is such a great little system, in so many ways. That being said, when I've run it for campaign-length play before, I've realized that there are some bits of it I'd like to tweak. No problem. But it's also a game that really is framed to support both gonzo and rough-and tumble "Knaves and Kobolds"-style play. It's not a great framework as written for heroic fantasy. So here I find myself mulling over how I'd like to see a bit more heroic fantasy, and the the idea hits me...

Could you take some ideas from 4th edition D&D - the big, combat-showcasing edition - and use them to spice up Into the Odd as a more heroic fantasy game? 

Well, um, except I'd never actually played 4e, so, um...

Headed for a trainwreck, no doubt. But I started digging and scratching and researching and have learned a lot in the last week about 4e! And now have a much clearer understanding of why some people hate it so much, and why some people really, really love it. To be honest, I'm not 100% sure yet what I think of it all; it does sound like a very interesting skirmish wargame system coupled with an almost freeform out-of-combat rpg system. 

Meanwhile, the basic idea I've been noodling with hasn't died. In fact, it's already led to a short and positive playtest with two players online. The stuff below is just an appetizer, of course, but I do think I'm likely to finish this hack. My group is almost ready to resume our Iron Age Alternate-Mystara Isle of Dread campaign, and we might be using some version of these rules when we do so. Hmmm. 

Some design goal notes to myself:

emphasize heroic play/heroic, capable characters - rules well-suited for Paladins & Princesses or Misfits & Mayhem-style campaigns. 

emphasize teamwork and synergy in combat 

infuse simple, clear tactical dynamics into ItO’s chassis. Add elements of resource management and key power roles in combat. 

Give each character a specific niche, but don’t limit other characters - any character can attempt any humanly possible action. Anyone can sneak and backstab; anyone can use any martial weapons or wear any armor. Characters’ ‘niches’ are defined by things they’re extra good at, not because they are the only person who can try something. 

A better way to put this is that if a character could already try something in regular Into the Odd, then they can still try it in Forth, Into the Fray! But now they each have extra empowerment as well.

Limit power and options bloat so as to keep gameplay flowing, and to prevent ‘character sheet syndrome.’ Players still should be encouraged to think creatively about manipulating the battlefield - or even running away or avoiding combat altogether. 

Regularly throw bigger and scarier fights toward the player characters! Have less focus on small wandering-monster encounters; adventures are likelier to incorporate well-organized bands of enemies working together, and fewer but more powerful concentrations of enemies. Opponents should include monsters with very high hit points, and more frequent use of many minions or Detachments of enemies. 

Combine these rules with my Into the Odd mass combat/detachment hack. 

Earlier tonight, I posted some tidbits about my design on the Into the Odd/Bastionland Discord forum. Pasting here too. 

As I mentioned last night, I'm tinkering with what will probably be a silly experiment, but it's showing some interesting results. I'm looking at some very simple ways to port basic ideas from 4th Ed. D&D into a hack of Into the Odd. The reasons: to retain the elegance, flexibility, and overall simplicity of ItO as a base, while supporting play with more of a 'heroic action heroes' flavor than base ItO really promotes; to promote player specialization in a way that promotes teamwork and synergy but does NOT limit PCs (in other words, any PC can still do anything they could have done in vanilla ItO; nobody is losing capabilities, just gaining some simple specializations). There is a fair bit of my normal ItO hack that goes along with this, but I thought I would share a quick peek behind the curtain and under the hood, below:

I had a playtest last night that went quite well, I think. I have tweaked things further, a bit. The basic idea is that you generate an ItO character as usual. You then also choose a CLASS (not too dissimilar from Into the Dungeon, Revived's approach) and also choose a COMBAT ROLE - so your PC's final 'identity/niche' is a hybrid of those two elements (you might be, for example, a Fighter/Defender, or an Archer/Striker).

Into the Odd already has built in quite subtly an action-allowance time economy - we have Short Rests that restore HP and Long Rests of about a week that restore Stat loss. 4e D&D had an At Will/Per Encounter/Per Day economy that sort of maps onto this. My version incorporates this, a bit, but is a much stingier action economy than the 4e version.

Finally, below are just a couple of snapshot glimpses of some sample classes and roles and how they might go together.

3 sample classes:

Fighter: if your melee attack base damage die rolls equal to or under your current level, re-set the damage rolled to the die’s max value (for example: a Level 2 Fighter inflicts 6 damage if they roll a 1 or 2 on a d6). This applies to your base attack die, but not to other dice rolled with it (for example, due to Enhanced damage). 

Archer: if your missile attack base damage die rolls equal to or under your current level, re-set the damage rolled to the die’s max value (for example: a Level 2 Archer inflicts 6 damage if they roll a 1 or 2 on a d6). This applies to your base missile attack die, but not to other dice rolled with it (for example, due to Enhanced damage). 

Burglar: when you make a DEX or WIL Save/Challenge directly related to the particular skillset of a Burglar (for example: climbing, picking locks or pockets, disarming traps, etc.) then treat your relevant Stat as 18 while making that roll.

And two sample roles:

DEFENDER: 

Ready Inventory Slots: 5 

At will: 

1. you can Mark one adjacent foe (at a time), at will, as an action combined with a melee attack against them (you do not have to Mark a target in order to attack it). If your Marked target attempts to move away from you or to make an attack that does not target/affect you, you may first interrupt to make a free melee attack against them. If a Marked target successfully moves away from you, if you lose consciousness or otherwise stop engaging a Marked target, or if you mark a different adjacent target, the earlier target is un-Marked. 

2. Also: regardless of actual damage suffered, treat your STR as if it were 18 whenever you make a STR save to stay conscious after receiving critical damage (you still die if you reach 0 STR, of course, but you can take a massive amount of damage before collapsing!). Note that this ability does not apply for critical damage that provokes DEX or WIL Saves. 

Per Encounter/Short Rest: Regain 2d6 HP and 1d6 STR.

Per Long Rest: as you perform an Interrupt melee attack against a Marked target, don’t roll for damage; instead, inflict Critical Damage equal to your current STR.

STRIKER: 

Ready Inventory Slots: 4 

At will: when your damage is Enhanced, deal +2d6 damage, not +1d6. 

Per Encounter/Short Rest: you may take one extra action this round (for example, you might move three times, move twice and attack or move-attack-move, move once and attack twice, etc.). 

Per Long Rest: add your current DEX or STR to damage you inflict on one attack this round.

Thanks for reading. I have no doubt that some reading this will simply conclude that I clearly don't understand the point of Into the Odd, or of 4e, but I'm having fun with this little experiment for the time being. Happy gaming!