All of the entries posted on Luke Gearing tagged wutc| lukegearing.blot.im
All of the entries posted on Luke Gearing tagged rules| lukegearing.blot.im
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A continuation of the system outlined here and used within Wolves Upon the Coast. The base Warding save represents an innate protection against ill| lukegearing.blot.im
All of the entries posted on Luke Gearing tagged magic| lukegearing.blot.im
Effects beyond the mundane are achieved through the invocation of properties or through pacts with the supernatural. The knowledge of these rituals| lukegearing.blot.im
When encountering Bandits1 roll 1d10. This is the AC of their leader. Their lieutenants have 1 worse AC, and rank-and-file have 2 worse. If you roll multiple dice to determine the number appearing, use the individual dice-values to give them equipment. Determine an order to the dice, and then pick from the list below as appropriate to their nature. I tend to assign these values left-to-right on the dice, but you could say the largest number is always the“default” of just using melee weapo...| Luke Gearing
Magic is the religion of the other.1 Remove the Cleric class. Instead, you have a library of supernatural forces that can be called upon. To do so,| lukegearing.blot.im
Characters improve in two ways; by taking on Obligations and by forcing others to break theirs. An Obligation is an ongoing commitment to another group or entity. Once sworn, a character gains +1HD and +1 to-hit. A character failing to uphold their obligation loses this advancement. They may not take on further Obligations; this includes when being forced to choose between two mutually exclusive Obligations. Characters with broken Obligations may seek revenge against whomever caused their Obl...| Luke Gearing
Written by Luke Gearing & Daniel Boyle. You know… (Regular Swyvers roll 1d4 times at character creation.) A Racing Horse Stable Owner. A Butcher. A Oarswoman. A Ratcatcher. A Rat. A Talking Dog. A Librarian. A Watchman. A Watchman, Honest. A Pickpocket. A Beggar. A Priest. A King of the Orphans. A Poet (Terrible). A Gardener. A Soldier. A Wise Woman. A Tinker. A Sausage Merchant. A Wildman. A Musician. A“Musician”. A Servant to lesser nobility. A Noble who’s“going to get it all back...| Luke Gearing
When travelling, shit goes wrong. Each day (or watch or whatever) of travel, make your encounter roll as normal. In addition, check for a travel mishap: Roll 1d12, and look up the x-in-12 value on the chart below. Note that Roads are a modifier to the x-in-12 value, to a minimum of 1. If the roll is equal-to or below that value, then roll on the Mishap Tables. In the case of mixed groups, select between them randomly. TerrainFootHorseDrawn Vehicle Plains, Steppe, Flatlands etc.223 Light Wood3...| Luke Gearing
Players in my Thursday Whitehack game are going carousing every damn time they get back to Fester, the coastal city of the ghouls. A dinky little d20 table won’t cut it anymore. For those unfamiliar - characters choosing to carouse spend a randomly determined amount of money, gaining XP equal to the money spent. If the number rolled is higher than their current level, they have to roll on the Consequence Table. If you spend more money than you have, you end up in debt to someone you’d rat...| Luke Gearing
When a child has stopped growing, those who wish to live as men must be initiated. First they must find a Shaman 1 and beg from them the use of a team of flesh-boring beetles. They may be rejected and try again elsewhere. Those consistently rejected, or who do not wish to try, live forever as children or become women, subject to their own inductions. With the team of beetles stored in a gourd or clay-lined hide, they may gather as many of their mothers, sisters and siblings as are willing to ...| Luke Gearing
Whenever the PCs enter the domain of a lord, government, municipal council etc etc, roll 1d10. If this is under the average level of the PCs, they are summoned to court. 1d8Reasons for Summons 1Paranoia as to their reasons for being here. 2Prospective job offer. 3Desire of the power to associate itself with powerful and notable individuals. 4Assessing the party as potential destabilisers of the status quo. 5Desire of the power to assert dominance through issuing orders - with possible humilia...| Luke Gearing
MENTORSHIPAPPLICATIONSARENOWCLOSED I am now open to submissions for round 5 of the mentorship scheme I’ve been running. This is done free of charge to give back to the wider TTRPG scene. Submissions sent before September 17th 2023 will be considered - anything sent after this is not eligible for this round. As outlined in the retrospectives (see below) the mentorship consists of regular calls to discuss techniques as well as taking a critical look at other works in the TTRPG space. The ment...| Luke Gearing
Prison Planet is an adventure for Classic Traveller, first published in 1982 and credited to Erik Wilson, Dave Emigh, John Harshman, Chris Purcell and Rose Geier. Something very striking about the early Traveller adventures is the total lack of uniformity. Many are nearly totally unrecognisable to the modern concept of an adventure whilst others prefigure some of the forms that became dominant later on - such as Adventure 09: Nomads of the World Ocean, released 1983 and being heavily plotted ...| Luke Gearing
1HD, AC as Armour, Damage as Weapon, Morale 7. 1d100 appearing, rolling again and combining results if 90+ is rolled. Bandits From the cities burnt, from villages parched, caravans left to dessicate in the heat of the wilderness. Many will wear stones of prayer to their city-gods, now lying in rubble at the feet of the victors. For every 10 Bandits, a 2HD leader is present, wearing medium armour. If 30+ are present, a 4HD leader in heavy armour is present. Bandits originating in Urttum ride r...| Luke Gearing
On October 6th, the agents receive the usual summons:“Special delivery requires pick-up. Unit 798, Eastside Industrial.” Within the unit, the door unlocked, a large table with a large shipping crate. To the side, a tape-player and a manilla envelope marked with a green triangle. Within the envelope, a shipping manifest, a tape and a chartered flight contract. The tape is a recording of Mr Green. “Hello. This is Mr Green speaking. On the 5th of October, we received a tip-off from a frien...| Luke Gearing
These are the hexfills I used for my Pariah game. You can see how the minimal hexfills get used in the play reports. The Map - you probably want to open this up big. I didn’t fill them all in, but had rough ideas for each area. The Hills 1203: Learned shamanic baboon with 14 human captives. Flint mine. 1303: Hunters stash - 6 javelins, 2 bows, 10 arrows. 1304: Entrance to Cave Network. Bears give way to Earth. 1205: Spirits which appear as dried mudmen with blood mouths. They can be fed blo...| Luke Gearing
As is the nature of horror media, it’s time for sequel. Intro I’ve been running a Delta Green campaign using Violence for a little while now, and I’ve run into an issue - the Endurance soak method of damage outlined in the original Inhuman Violence sucks. It’s just not fun in actual play - it reduces the monsters to feeling like big meat sacks you keep shooting til they fall down. In a horror game, the monsters are such a major focus that it feels silly to reduce them to this. Rather ...| Luke Gearing
For the unaware, Carcosa features magic rituals requiring sexual violence, sometimes against children. This is discussed below in the abstract. A version was created with these egregious aspects removed, although I’ve not read it myself. I have often said in conversation that Supplement V: Carcosa (McKinney, 2008) is one of the most personally inspirational RPG works I’ve ever read. Known for its controversial takes on magic, adult content and (unfortunate) re-release under LotFP, much of...| Luke Gearing
It’s been about two years since I started selling Wolves Upon the Coast Grand Campaign, and about 10 months since the last retrospective. I’m not going to repeat myself, so give that a quick scan. Accountants Upon the Coast Data taken 27/05/23. Calculating exact performance is slightly tricky due to the bundles combining Wolves with Volume 2: Monsters & and &&&&&&&&& Treasure - I’ve tried to account for these, but only in very crude ways. Total Purchases: 325. Total Income: $14001. Thes...| Luke Gearing
The Cleric represents something not present. A representative of an outside force - the Church hierarchy, or a God. The other classes could be agents in a similar way, but the Cleric alone must be. A mystic seeker seems better represented by the Magic User, unbound by the titles and ethos of a firm known structure. A Cleric cannot be a force unto themselves - unless they are a Heretic. The Heretic is against an orthodoxy. They are unsupported by their‘home’ religion - consider that the OD...| Luke Gearing
So you want to make shit (meaning books) for/with Wolves? If you want to just use the rules chassis as its own thing without using the name, feel free. Saying thanks is nice but not required. If you want to use the Wolves name on something, make it clear you’re not associated with me. If you want to make Wolves content (i.e. something that integrates with the Grand Campaign, Volume 2: Monsters & or &&&&&&& Treasure) make it clear you’re not associated with me and that this is a 3rd party...| Luke Gearing
When writing NPCs, you can communicate 2 or 3 things, or 4 related things. Anything more than that, and you’re either going to be ignored by the person running the game, they’re going to change it, as is the nature of translation, or they’ll be checking your notes so often that they do a worse job of running the game than if they’d just winged it. That said, NPCs changing when used in play isn’t a bad thing - it just means you can’t rely on things being true about them any more. E...| Luke Gearing
An adventure for Delta Green. I’m running it using Violence. You could run this for any modern paranormal game with a little work: mostly replacing MJ12 and DG with appropriate factions. Upon the Pacific coast rests Haystack, a crumbling town of 687. Boats rust in the harbour, and trash accumulates in the streets. De-industrialisation and a failing fishing economy leaves most of the population retired or unemployed. The sea does not weep for them. Timeline ~130 years ago: The people of Hays...| Luke Gearing
This was the fourth round of an ongoing commitment to mentor ttrpg writers with the goal of growing the space and helping others get published. At the end of each round, I plan to write a retrospective like this, detailing what we did, how I could have done better and celebrating successes. This is done to improve my own mentorship scheme, but also to act as a blueprint and encouragement to others with the capacity. As part of this, the fourth mentee has written their own retrospective, provi...| Luke Gearing
Working on something else, but still unhappy with XP or milestones as normally constructed. Improvement There are three criteria for improvement - only the highest is considered. Each‘rank’ grants +1HD and +1 to-hit. For example, a character with 200 loyal men, wearing 3000sp of equipment and knowing 1 technique gains +3HD and +3 to-hit. Lordship For each 100 soldiers loyal to the character. Lords who are loyal contribute half their fighting force to this number. For example, if Lord Gear...| Luke Gearing
Use the tags to find previous and for some more details. This session mostly consisted of a dungeon - a localised“solid” in the sea of the Beyond. With the completion of this dungeon, the players voted to start a new campaign. Having fled from the hollow man, the party elected to move through the only unexplored route. They found a chamber filled with hollowed-out human husks - as if peeled off some alien core. Moving carefully again, they skirted the strange bodies and moved on. Purple P...| Luke Gearing
The Swallowports stud the Dislinear Curve upon the hubward edge of Troika. Where each leads is a closely guarded secret of the centipede-like Tlixnean within. From the walls they scuttle to caress, handle and guide Golden Barges laden down with goods illicit and intense requirements for secrecy - the Swallowports impregnable. Once a month the Unbroken Dawn docks with Swallowport 8, the hull filled with off-grey powder. Upon the deck, watching the crew, are 7 Enforcers with their cut-down fusi...| Luke Gearing
Because reasons, I’m working on rewrite of Behind Closed Doors. A lot of this involves de-bullet pointing the text. Below I’ve given a side-by-side for each. Obviously (hopefully?) I’m a better writer than I was three years ago, but I think it’s worthwhile seeing the same material both ways. Obviously, even my bullet-points are more prose-based than a lot of other examples I’ve seen. I find this only exacerbates my issue with them. 1) Entrance Hall This wide room, the floor hidden b...| Luke Gearing
PDF of Book 1 PDF of Book 2 Your history is gone. It was taken from you, or you from it. You were thralls. Now your master lies dead in the bottom| lukegearing.blot.im
Written by Luke Gearing & Dan Boyle Somewhere in your Smoke… A Wall runs through the city. The Wall is older than the buildings around it. Many lean| lukegearing.blot.im
Needed an animal encounter table for a job the Travellers are taking in a jungle. The planet is being colonised and has a reputation for the| lukegearing.blot.im
In January, I quit my job to work at Tuesday Knight Games full-time. Wages of Sin (crowdfunding soon!) is my first book written whilst doing games| lukegearing.blot.im
Instead of a ± to Reaction rolls or whatever, track individual events the characters take. To do this, we first make a Reputation Table. At its most| lukegearing.blot.im
I’ve been doing a thing for a while in OSR Thinking Adventures style games I’ve been calling split initiative which I almost certainly read| lukegearing.blot.im
I’ve seen a lot of critics and readers talk about the strength, quality, quantity and absence of hooks in adventure modules - often held up as an| lukegearing.blot.im
Incentivising behaviour is bad for your game. Axiom - Most players, most of the time, will take the most optimal option. Incentives create optimal| lukegearing.blot.im