Metapost

Is it dumb to write a blog post about what blog posts I want to write? Oh well; I want a little push to help me fight off writer's block, and this should keep me accountable to any readers I might be lucky enough to have gained in my brief time as a blogger. Here are some things I ought to write about:

1. I need to start on those actual play reports!
2. My posts about Kult aren't exactly my most widely-read material, but I think there's some stuff in Kult that might be useful in Lamentations of the Flame Princess, so I want to explore that possible crossover.
3. I should REALLY finish reading The Hell House Beckons and get around to reviewing it. My first impressions are very positive.
4. For some reason I got bored back in February and wrote on a sticky note a list of D&D editions/versions in the order of what I found most-to-least interesting. I looked at it again today and realized that order has changed a lot in just two months or so. That may be some food for thought.
5. Related to Number 2 above, I've been having an internal debate over whether or not Kult counts as cosmic horror. A lot of people seem to see it as the exact opposite of cosmic horror, but I can see arguments both for and against that claim. Does this kind of nitpicky genre debate interest anybody besides me?
6. I have some more NPC ideas that might benefit from a write-up, like what I did with Joop van Ooms and Ibofuris Onaxix. There's a dwarf inventer named Ori, a wizard/sculptor named Klavis Garavone, and a cabal of warlocks that could use some fleshing out.
7. Two words: Alderson disk.
8. Maybe I'm just hitting the Lotus Powder a bit too much, but is it just me, or does Lamentations of the Flame Princess seem to have a fascination with cloning, copying, imitating, and replacing people?
9. I think I tinker with the classes in LotFP to an obsessive degree. I guess I might as well share some of what I've come up with. Worst case scenario, people can at least enjoy laughing at my amateur attempts at game design.
10. Last year, I read the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake. I think there's some pretty gameable stuff in there.
11. I wonder if you could use The Ghost House Guide to Ghosts as a Monster Manual?
12. Big Trouble in Little China is a great D&D movie.
13. Arguably, so is Conquest. (Although I suspect a lot of people would say it isn't a good anything. I disagree, but I don't blame anybody if they feel that way.)
14. For the most part, I actually like the Cleric class in LotFP, which perhaps puts me in a minority. I'd like to talk about the things that I think the Cleric class and spell list do well.
15. I want to do a read-through of Carcosa like the one I did of the Holmes Basic D&D rulebook.
16. Ditto B1 In Search of the Unknown.
17. Ditto B2 The Keep on the Borderland.
18. Ditto the two B/X D&D rulebooks.
19. Ever since I read The House on the Borderland, I've had this cool idea in the back of my mind: What if I combined The House on the Borderland with The Keep on the Borderlands? (I haven't thought of a clever title yet.)
20. I have an idea for a dungeon made of sugar I ought to get to work on. "Death Frosting Doom," if you will. If I ever get off my ass and make it, maybe I could make it a free (or "pay what you want") product on DriveThruRPG or Lulu or something.
21. To complement my list of "official and semi-official" LotFP classes (in print and PDF), I should make a list of classes from blogs and other online sources. It's definitely not going to be a complete list, but I can at least gather links to a bunch of them.

There. It's not an exhaustive list, but it hits the main things I've wanted to write about lately. In the meantime, here are some recent blog posts by other people that I think are super good.
Snake Men
Arguing for weaker demon lords
Murderdog V: A New Beginning
Doom has good maps
Scared bunnies are scary bunnies
Magic is weird
I love the nano warhead cloud
Cool observations and opinions about Mentzer Basic D&D
Skill checks in B/X

UPDATED ON OCTOBER 1, 2016
Stuff that was on the list but that I covered since writing this post:

1. I just obtained a copy of the Holmes Basic D&D rules. The book is awesome, and I want to talk about it. DONE!
2. I have this theory about how the Fighter/Mage/Other Class trio has a sort of universal appeal for people who like fantasy games that use character classes. I don't know if it holds water, but I'd like to develop it a bit. DID IT.
3. Am I the only one who struggles with figuring out how the appraisal of treasure by PCs should work? Especially with magic items? TALKED ABOUT IT HERE.
4. This might be strange, but I have an urge to stat up a certain annoying enemy from an old, arguably crappy video game called Dark Castle. I think it might be an amusing take on the goblin/kobold archetype. I just really like repurposing old video game stuff for old-school D&D stuff. THERE IT IS.

Horror Stories if They Took Place in the World of Kult

Warning: Possible Spoilers

Silent Hill 1 and 3 offer glimpses into Metropolis and/or Inferno. Silent Hill 2 takes place in a Purgatory. Silent Hill 4 involves a Dream World.

Condemned: Criminal Origins and Condemned 2: Bloodshot involve parts of Metropolis, especially the Labyrinth.

The Suffering and The Suffering: Ties That Bind depict what would happen if something in the Illusion went horribly wrong and creatures from Metropolis and Inferno broke into mainstream reality and started going apeshit. Likewise with the Doom series, although the invaders in that series would strictly come from Inferno.

The X Files is what would happen if the former and present servants of the Demiurge were too incompetent to completely hide their presence, but still competent enough to make those who discovered them think they were aliens and Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster and shit.

True Detective demonstrates how you can fight the supernatural forces of evil (or at least the human servants of those forces) without ever realizing that there's anything supernatural going on. The cult in True Detective's first season is analogous to the Lodge in Kult.

Harvester depicts the standard recruitment procedures of a particularly weird cult in Kult. The same probably goes for Videodrome and Kill List.

Postal 2 is a depiction of life as a person with a low mental balance, almost no shame, a propensity for violence, and enough undeserved luck to actually enjoy insanity. Jacob's Ladder, Eraserhead, The Shining, and many stories in Fuan no Tane (Seeds of Anxiety) depict variations on the much more common and much less fun form of insanity. Remember that insanity often results from or leads to supernatural experiences and encounters with Metropolis and other worlds.
EDIT: I just started working my way through Legions of Darkness and read about how the Death Angel Thaumiel is connected in the game to conflict in the Middle East. This led to the realization that Spec Ops: The Line is another great example of what (unpleasant) insanity might look like in Kult, especially if you want to focus on the "War is Hell" theme.

Blood is what happens when someone like the Postal Guy becomes an undead powerhouse and battles the forces of Astaroth on Earth.

Dawn of the Dead is what happens when the human race starts realizing en masse that they don't actually have to go to Inferno and decide to just hang around on Earth. There's plenty of room in Hell, but no one gives a shit.

1408 depicts a portal to a very strange part of Inferno. The Beyond and The Gate include such portals as well. Event Horizon has a portal to a pretty typical part of Inferno, but In Space.

Hellraiser, Cigarette Burns, Oculus, and strangely enough, Raiders of the Lost Ark show off the kinds of magic artifacts that players are likely to find in Kult.

Antichrist is an example of what happens when people are so eager to be punished for their sins that they can't even wait to die or travel to another world before getting started. Alternatively, it's what happens when people with low mental balance start dragging bits of Gaia into the mainstream reality.

As Above, So Below demonstrates how going far enough underground in a city on Earth can lead one to the Labyrinth in Metropolis.

Absentia shows how a stray portal to Metropolis can ruin the lives of innocent people who don't actually go through the portal.

A Nightmare on Elm Street shows how Dream Magic can be used to terrible effect.

Dark City is...just watch it. It's great. Watch the director's cut if possible.

I make some more connections between Kult and other works in this post.

Kult - Setting Ideas

Having recently read the first American edition of Kult's rulebook (or at least the "fluff"), I've been pondering the setting quite a bit. There are some things I would change or build on if I were to run it. Might as well share!

Keep in mind that some of these topics may have already been addressed in later editions of Kult. I wouldn't know, yet. I also still need to read Legions of Darkness (and maybe the Metropolis sourcebook if I can get it for a decent price). These are just some rough ideas. Some may contradict the "canon," while others might fit in well with it. I apologize if I'm doing any injustice to Kult here. These ideas just represent my own preferences for this kind of game.

Why are Lictors and other ancient monsters often made partially out of plastic or modern machinery?
Well, time is an illusion, or at the very least our linear, one-dimensional, always-moving perception of time is an illusion, so it's not impossible for a fucking cyberdemon to show up in ancient Babylon or whatever. But time and space do affect the servants (and former servants) of the Demiurge to some degree within the Illusion, which is why you can occasionally run and hide from Lictors and such. So the "time is an illusion" bit is not by itself an entirely satisfactory answer.

The truth is that the Illusion works, to some extent, by using humans' latent divinity against them. It warps their powers and perceptions so that they unknowingly create their own prison. This is why Awakened people have what appear to others as reality-warping powers within the Illusion - they have stopped allowing their powers to be directed against them. In a sense, we power our own prison the way those trapped in the Matrix power theirs, except instead of serving as a mere power source, we serve as the system's processors, which may have been the film's original concept.

The Illusion responds to our thoughts and expectations. Monsters with "modern" parts look and work the way they do because they are partially formed and controlled by our own fears, anxieties, and obsessions - as a whole species if not individually. Perhaps a Lictor encountered in medieval Japan would look like an Oni. Maybe a Lictor would have appeared to Dante Alighieri as a stereotypical demon with horns and a pitchfork. In the world of the late 20th and early 21st Century, monsters tend to look like something out of Hellraiser or The Suffering or Silent Hill because those kinds of aesthetics reflect the minds of a majority of the Illusion's prisoners.

Then again, since time is an illusion, if enough people in the modern era have thoughts and fears about modern things to influence the Lictors and their ilk strongly and consistently enough, even to the point of outnumbering or overpowering the thoughts and fears of the past, they could conceivably affect the forms and appearances of such creatures far in the past and future, so that boogeymen of plastic and titanium could theoretically menace people even in ancient times before such things were "invented." Maybe the Illusion is weaker against modern thought because the Demiurge disappeared in modern times, so monsters in the past are taking modern forms retroactively.

Or maybe most of history is a lie, and the Illusion has always been a "modern" setting. There are plenty of options here.

In terms of "crunch," a Lictor might have slightly different stats and abilities when taking different forms, but many of their supernatural powers and other features will probably remain the same. A fire-and-brimstone demon and a rotting, corpulent cyborg can both have telekinesis, for example.

Metropolis, Gaia, and Other Places "Beyond Reality"
The other "worlds" in Kult are often presented as if they are part of the true reality beyond the Illusion. This is false. The only sure way to escape the Illusion is to Awaken. Prisoners of the Illusion often find themselves in Metropolis or other strange places and think they have peeked behind the curtain, so to speak, but they are simply exploring the curtain itself.

Metropolis is one part behind-the-scenes operating system shell, one part glitchy, leftover crap and test maps from the game engine, and one part Employees Only section of the prison. Ditto for Gaia. Inferno and the various Purgatories are special areas of the Illusion used to scrub "dead" prisoners of their memories and personality traits between reincarnations. All of this is still within the Illusion. Metaphorically speaking, these worlds are slightly closer to reality, but not by enough to really give non-Awakened people anything really resembling what absolute true reality is like.

Elysium
It doesn't exist, strictly speaking. The Demiurge's palace was in Metropolis; he didn't need a Heaven to live in. The Demiurge was also too much of an asshole to provide a reward for his prisoners even when they play nice, so people with a high mental balance still typically wind up in Inferno or a Purgatory. On the plus side, the Purgatory of someone with a high mental balance is probably a lot more pleasant than that of someone with a low balance. Probably. Maybe.

Alternatively, Elysium could just be the inside of the Demiurge's palace in Metropolis, so when the palace disappeared, so did Elysium. Or Elysium still exists, but in the form of the Abyss. If the players manage to find and enter Elysium, they'd have access to things Astaroth would do anything to see - or else they'd get a taste of whatever horrors Astaroth experienced in the Abyss.

"Magic" and other Supernatural Powers
When humans perform magic, tap into ESP, direct the flow of Ki, or whatever, they are tapping into a small portion of the divine power they do not know they have and using it to alter or "hack" the Illusion. The more belief in your own divinity you have, the closer to being Awakened you are, the more supernatural power you can wield. Of course, this can backfire by attracting the attention of some rather unpleasant creatures, many of which have a vested interest in protecting the integrity of the Illusion.

Vortex and the Dream World
Vortex is a piece of the Illusion's "machinery." It generates the raw sensory input used by the Illusion to deceive and control the human race. Things like the smell of cooked chicken, the color red, and the feeling of your foot going to sleep are produced and pumped out by Vortex, at which point they are distributed throughout the Illusion as needed.

Dream Magic, lucid dreaming, etc. are basically the use of a person's unconscious mind to perform magic which taps into and subverts the power of Vortex. Dream Worlds are basically private little cyst-worlds in the Illusion, much like Purgatories. Getting too close to Vortex drives people insane because of sheer sensory overload combined with the mind's futile attempts to piece a bunch of unrelated and constantly-changing sensations into some kind of pattern.

Sex
Despite what the rulebook says, sexuality is not "original." Like hunger and thirst, it is part of the Illusion. Sexual experiences can grant supernatural power because they can be intense, shocking, or incredibly emotional, not because sex itself is particularly special. Outside of the Illusion, Awakened humans have no need for sexual reproduction and its attendant biological and evolutionary quirks. The experience of Reality is alien to almost anything that can be experienced within the Illusion.

Achlys
I'm tempted to discard the concept of Achlys from the setting altogether and give She Who Waits Below something else to guard. I don't like the idea that non-Awakened people can escape the Illusion in any way besides Awakening, even through complete self-annihilation. If I were to keep Achlys in the game, I would probably try to come up with some explanation of its purpose in relation to the Illusion. At any rate, I would at least keep the Labyrinth and She Who Waits Below because they're pretty cool.

The Chicken or the Egg?
Did the Demiurge disappear because of the Enlightment and other revolutions in human thought, or did those revolutions occur because the Demiurge was no longer there to prevent them? Who knows?

The Legions of the Damned on Earth
I would probably reduce the number of Astaroth's legionanaires who are already on Earth (i.e. in the part of the Illusion inhabited by un-Awakened people and designed as their collective prison cell) from the figure of one million given in the rulebook. Assuming that the (former) servants of the Demiurge are not as powerful as either the Demiurge himself or fully Awakened humans, they are not completely omnipotent and omniscient. Thus, it would probably be hard for Astaroth's earthly cult to hide a million inhuman soldiers for very long when many of them are actively fighting in war zones. Sure, the governments of the world are in the pockets of the Archons and Death Angels, but even that can only go so far to prevent information leaks and the resulting damage to the Illusion. Maybe I'm giving people too much credit here, or giving their captors too little credit, but the Legions of the Damned just seem a little silly as presented. I think it would make more sense for Astaroth to wait until the main phase of his invasion is about to begin before sending in such a huge number of troops. Unless I'm running a campaign that heavily involves the "Astaroth is about to invade the Earth" plot hook, I would probably tone the Legions down a bit.

Nosferatu
I would probably leave Nosferatu out of the game, but if I were to include them, they would be an unintentional byproduct of humans tinkering with magic, rather than anything intentionally created by the Demiurge or his servants. Like Dream Worlds, they are only able to exist because the Demiurge is no longer around to give orders to his servants who control the Illusion, and now those servants aren't doing such a great job of maintaining the system. More and more people are getting in touch with their divinity in small ways without realizing the origin of their power. Thus, more vampires, more magicians, more psychics, more ghosts, and more weird shit all around.

A final note: there is a lot of fan-made material out there you can mine for ideas and inspiration. I recommend checking out The Last Cycle. Be warned, of course, that this material is Not Safe For Work.

Roll for Keepsies - Replacement Characters in LotFP

If my understanding is correct, in a lot of Lamentations of the Flame Princess campaigns, if a PC dies, the player has to roll up a new one at Level 1 with 0 XP. There isn't anything necessarily wrong with that, but I just thought of another possible idea that might also be fun.

When a PC dies, the player rolls a d100. The result is the percentage of their dead character's XP that their new character gets to start with. I would personally round up if the resulting XP isn't a whole number, but it wouldn't matter much.

Even if a player only gets to keep 1% of their XP for their new character, that's still more than nothing (unless their last character died at 0 XP). If they get to keep 100% of it, hey, it's that player's lucky day! Most likely, it'll be somewhere in between, which means there will still be a penalty for dying, but not quite as harsh of one as losing all XP. There's also the added benefit of gambling for something important, which is often exciting in RPGs.

Lucius Sanzio, LotFP Magic-User

This is yet another character for an online game of LotFP I'm hoping to play on Facebook. I used this character generator for stats and equipment.

Lucius Sanzio, Magic-User, Chaotic
Male, 5'10" tall, Brown hair and eyes, 29 years old, elaborate clothing
Level 3, 4,500 XP
CHA 8 (-1)
CON 13 (+1)
DEX 11 (+0)
INT 17 (+2)
STR 11 (+0)
WIS 8 (-1)
HP 13/13 = Full HP at first level (1d6+1), 1+Con at second level (1d4+1), 3+Con at third level (1d4+1)
AC 14
Saves: Paralyze 13, Poison 13, Breath 16, Device 13, Magic 14
(+2 to all Magic-Related Saves, -1 to all Mundane Saves)
BAB +1 MAB +1 RAB +1
Skills: Languages 3 (INT Bonus), All Others 1
Weapons: Sword +1 1d8, Dagger +1 1d4, Garotte +1 1d6 (must attack from surprise or grapple), Shortbow +1 1d6
Encumbrance: 12 Items=2 points, Lightly Encumbered
(If stacking of the same item type is allowed, 9 Items=1 point, Unencumbered)
Equipment (I pretty much just gave him first-level starting equipment. Let's say he blew some money wenching.)
Spellbook
Leather Armor*
Standard Sword
2 Daggers
Garotte*
Chalk*
Soap*
3 Torches
Backpack*
Sack*
Tinderbox
50' Rope
Shortbow
Quiver - 20 Arrows
1 Day's Iron Rations
Steel Mirror*
11 Cp*

*=Non-Encumbering
Spells Per Day: 2 First Level, 1 Second Level
Spells Known
First Level: Read Magic, Mending, Detect Magic, Shield, Light
Second Level: Locate Object

Hailing from Italy, this explorer of arts dark and arcane has always been cool as ice...except when money or women are involved. He's always been a one-track lover, travelling down a two-way lane. But now that the temperature's too high, he should have known his lovin' was too hot to last...

AHEM. Sorry, let me try this again.

Hailing from Italy, Lucius has traveled to England in search of an elusive spell which is rumored to make charming the ladies as easy (and inexpensive) as breathing. He has already scoured Italy and Spain for such an incantation, and has come to England on the advice of Gareth Meringue, travelling warlock and English expatriate. Unfortunately, he can't seem to keep any coins in his pocket lately, so he needs to find some work before his quest can continue.

And he always finds himself looking over his shoulder, because he knows the mad conjurer Dean Thornton is also after the spell, and he is one tough customer...

He looks like this, except absolutely not nearly as handsome.

(Borrowed from HERE because it was a good image.)

Hugh Cain, LotFP Specialist

This is just a character for an online game of LotFP I'm hoping to play on Facebook. I used this character generator for stats and equipment.

Hugh Cain, Specialist, Neutral
Male, Short brown hair and blue eyes, 21 years old, drab clothing
Level 1, 0 XP
CHA 9 (+0)
CON 9 (+0)
DEX 13 (+1)
INT 9 (+0)
STR 11 (+0)
WIS 10 (+0)
HP 4/4
AC 15
Saves: Paralyze 14, Poison 16, Breath 15, Device 14, Magic 14
BAB +1 MAB +1 RAB +2
Skills: Climb 2, Search 2, Stealth 2, Sneak Attack 2, All Others 1
Weapons: Sword +1 1d8, Dagger +1 1d4 (+2 Thrown), Garotte +1 1d6 (must attack from surprise or grapple), Shortbow +2 1d6
Encumbrance: 12 Items=2 points, Lightly Encumbered
(If stacking of the same item type is allowed, 9 Items=1 point, Unencumbered)
Equipment
Leather Armor*
Specialist Tools
Standard Sword
2 Daggers
Garotte*
Chalk*
Soap*
3 Torches
Backpack*
Sack*
Tinderbox
50' Rope
Shortbow
Quiver - 20 Arrows
2 day's Rations
Steel Mirror*
1 Cp*

*=Non-Encumbering
(If my math is correct, the character generator must have given be about 160sp to start with. That's a high roll, but within possibility.)

Hugh Cain is a delivery man. He doesn't look in the package, he just delivers it. If it smells or feels weird, or if it wiggles or twitches or makes odd noises, who cares? From nobles to merchants to crime bosses, people in and around London trusted him to take items from Point A to Point B with the utmost haste and discretion. It didn't pay as much as one might think, but it was surprisingly steady work and it earned him a reputation in the underworld as someone trustworthy and efficient. It was only a matter of time before someone asked him to help with a more interesting and lucrative task.

Then one night someone didn't like their delivery and decided to take it out on the delivery man instead of the sender. Hugh was forced to flee, grievously wounding the angry client in the process. He decided it might be best to get out of the city for a while. Now he's looking for whatever work he can get - preferably something quiet yet entertaining. After all, Hugh gets bored too easily for farm work. He likes to keep moving.

He looks like this, except not nearly as handsome.

(Borrowed from HERE because it was a good image.)

Sex in RPGs (NSFW of course)

As I continue to delve into Kult, I find more and more unexpected bits. In the version of the core rulebook I've been reading (1st American Edition), there's a list of suggested (not necessary, but just suggested) events that could occur, and if I'm interpreting the book correctly, the player characters are meant to be able to partake in these activities if they so wish. There's a lot of stuff you usually see in horror RPGs, like surveillance, infiltration, travel, magic rituals, combat, death, escape, and so on. But it also lists "Love and seduction" as well as "Sex." There's also a section of the book describing passions (often of a sexual nature) that can take over a character's life and cause supernatural things to happen, and it is clear that this can happen to PCs, although it does warn the GM not to allow this to happen to a character whose player is not comfortable with it.

Sex seems to be a sticky subject (snicker) for a lot of RPG players. Sexual material honestly hasn't been lacking in our Lamentations of the Fallen Lords campaign; nobody seems to shy away from it, mostly because it's funny but also because I think there's a certain transgressive-yet-harmless aspect to it that adds color to the game. On the other hand, I have a great deal of sympathy for groups who completely or almost completely avoid sexual material in their games, since that kind of thing can get extremely awkward, even creepy, at the speed of light. Even our group generally keeps sexual encounters involving an actual PC kind of vague, with most of the specific "action" being implied. The way I see it, it's fine as long as it's enthusiastic and consensual.

I just realized that makes it sound like our games are basically orgies. Hey, at least my wife is there.

You know what? I might as well give a quick, non-comprehensive list of sexual stuff that's come up in the campaign. It might be amusing.

• The Pale Lady (in the adventure named for her) offered to help the party if one of the party members with magical abilities impregnated her so she could continue her experiments with more offspring. One's sex was not an issue, since the Pale Lady had a potion on hand that would temporarily grant male genitalia to any woman who drank it. The party decided to distract her with the offer of sex while setting up an ambush. Willow, a female Journeyman, took the potion and came this close to actually getting intimate with the Pale Lady before the rest of the party sprung their trap and killed her. When Willow drank the potion, the group insisted I roll randomly to determine her penis length. I decided it would be 1d12 inches. I think I rolled a 2 or something - I'll have to ask if anyone remembers. Ever since then, the players have constantly requested I roll a d12 for male NPCs whenever sex seems likely.
• In Fuck for Satan, Jewbaba the Warrior (hey, I didn't pick the name) stuck an alien up his own ass. I felt so bad for the poor thing. This same character wanted to have relations with a horse in the earlier adventure Tales of the Scarecrow, but to his disappointment, they were all dead. I guess he didn't see a point in beating off a dead horse.
• No Salvation for Witches contained all kinds of sexual content. The leader of the coven of witches went around naked, and while nudity is not inherently sexual, Orelia was deliberately making a statement about gender inequality, so it was at least sexual in that respect. Also, some of the treasure the players found was in the form of expensive pornographic art, and at one point one of the party's Mages attacked a monster with a golden dildo while invisible and flying. I'm sure there's other stuff I'm forgetting.
• When the party first met Joop van Ooms at his house, they did some magic drugs with him. This made the party's Dwarf Muira horny, so she slept with Henry VII. I rolled the d12. He got a 12. He seemed confused by the encounter, but not displeased, since he had always wondered what sex with a dwarf was like.
• At some point, Muira also started wearing a necklace of tiny fake penises. Sometimes she adds more dicks to it.
• A secret sex club in the city of Tandem was wiped out by mysterious monsters. The party investigated and found out it was the work of Hymenials, monsters from Lusus Naturae. They killed the monsters and saved the employees and patrons of a brothel (many of whom were in flagrante delicto) in the process. The party's other Mage also started seeing a prostitute named Candy.
• Death Love Doom used sexual material in a number of ways I won't spoil here. I'll probably go into detail when I get around to writing our actual play reports.
• In Hammers of the God, a random magical effect summoned a green-skinned woman from Carcosa named The Bright Dominator, who instantly latched onto Raziel, another Journeyman. She refuses to wear clothes and insists on making wild, passionate love to Raziel every night, which heals him to full HP but annoys his fellow adventurers. She also has 1 HP and refuses to leave Raziel's side. He's actually been getting a bit fed up with her.
• In The Idea from Space, Willow and a Warrior who sometimes joins the party (unfortunately, I forget the character's name at the moment) made a sort of deal with a god of strength. The god would give them a boon if they performed a series of tasks within a limited amount of time, but would punish them if they did not. The tasks involved fucking, killing, and eating somebody. One of the pair (I think it was the Warrior) asked if swallowing the semen of the person they fuck-murdered would count as eating him. I said "why not." The two of them picked out a mutated, musclebound cultist of the god, double-teamed him, then beat him up and killed him. They got the god's boon. The sex was kind of average at best, since the mutant just plowed away with little regard for technique. Still, the players were satisfied that the plan worked.

I know there's a lot more stuff I'm forgetting. Anyway, my friends seem to embrace this kind of stuff, but it just wouldn't work in other groups. You really have to know your audience (or rather, collaborators). I could see some people being uncomfortable with their significant others playing in more explicit games, too. Where do you draw the line between, say, a ranchy play-by-email RPG and cybersex? I think there's a lot of difference, but not everyone will see it that way. Comfort is key here.

Still, everyone I play with is an adult and my friend. I trust them to communicate their feelings about the game's subject matter to me and each other, and I think we all respect each other's boundaries. It especially makes sense for deliberately transgressive RPGs like Kult and LotFP to put the possibility of sex on the table (giggle). Even AD&D had that Random Harlot Table. If someone out there wants to turn their game into an orgy, fictional or otherwise, and all parties involved participate in a safe, sane, ethical, consensual manner, more power to them. I'm not the RPG police.

Increasing Ability Scores (LotFP House Rule Idea)

This is just a little idea I had for Lamentations of the Flame Princess. It could more-or-less be used the same way in most versions of D&D. I haven't playtested it yet, but I wanted to jot it down.

Ignore the primary ability scores and just use the bonuses. Ability scores now simply cover a continuum from -3 to +3.  All characters start at first level with two ability scores at +3 (equivalent to a score of 18), three scores at 0 (equivalent to the 9-12 ranges), and one score at -3 (equivalent to a score of 3). Use a different array of ability scores if you prefer. You can have players choose which abilities get which scores, or you can determine it randomly in true old-school fashion.

If you're using the Playtest Document 0.1 rules, ability scores would go from -2 to +2 instead, with these numbers being shorthand for the five tiers of ability score bonuses, like how Con makes HP goes from d4 at the lowest to d12 at the highest.

If you want to start PCs at level 0 instead of 1, you could make one of the +3 scores another 0, and let them bump one of the 0 scores up to +3 if they manage to claw their way to level 1. Or you could start level 0 characters with scores of 0 across the board and cruelly make them pick a score to drop to -3 along with two scores to raise to +3 if they manage to level up. This could reflect some kind of injury or trauma they suffered during their first adventure, like what happened to the Flame Princess' leg and fingers, or massive sanity loss, or some jacked-up facial disfiguring.

Whatever the case, whenever a PC reaches a new level (2 or higher), they get to pick one ability score bonus to increase by one point. At level 2, a PC could make that -3 into a -2, or make one of those 0 scores into a +1. Likewise, if a PC loses a level, they have to pick an ability score to decrease by one step, or the DM could make them determine an ability score to decrease randomly. If my math is right, in the current LotFP rules, all ability scores could be maxed out by level 16, and in the Playtest rules they would be maxed out by level 11. If this seems too nice, keep in mind that with LotFP's steep experience point requirements (especially in the Playtest rules), characters usually don't even survive to level 11. If they do, I think they've earned some better ability scores!

If you're playing an adventure with monsters/traps/items that drain ability scores directly, consider limiting any single instance of ability score drain to one point, since this new range of scores only goes from -3 to +3 (or -2 to +2) instead of 3-18. In this setup, losing one point would already often be the equivalent of losing several points in the vanilla rules. Ability score drain could be used to offset the constant increase per level if the DM thinks what I've proposed is too rapid, although characters should still generally have a fair chance to avoid ability drain, of course.

Honestly, one of my least-favorite aspects of old-school D&D and games derived from it is the concept of ability scores that do not increase with a character's level. If I wanted to explore the concept of one's capabilities being mostly determined by one's birth/station/other immutable factors through the mechanism of almost-unchanging PC statistics and abilities, I probably would not choose to do so in a fantasy adventure game that holds as one of its main draws the ability to become more powerful and competent (and sometimes more heroic) over time. I get that LotFP is kind of a pessimistic, horrific take on D&D, but the lack of non-magical ability progression still feels more disappointing than fulfilling. I mean, if the only reason you're keeping levels at all is to use the promise of experience points as a carrot to lure players into awful places that they're better off not exploring and would enter under absolutely no other circumstances, a promise that often leads to disappointment due to the the game's difficulty and themes of pessimism and horror, why not just get rid of levels altogether? Why half-ass things by cutting down character advancement to almost nothing? I'm sure a group that really wants to play a horror version of D&D could brainstorm together and quickly come up with some other justifications for adventuring. People go on dangerous adventures in Call of Cthulhu, after all, and those folks are usually pasty academics and assorted nobodies, not hardy adventurers.

Well, I guess keeping a leveling system helps with compatibility between LotFP and other games, which helps Mr. Raggi make money, and I absolutely can't blame him for that, especially since I fucking love his work. But that's not a satisfying enough reason to keep things working the same way at my table.

I also think it's a little silly that PCs can't get stronger through exercise, or wiser through their experiences over time, or what have you. (See what I did there?)

Maybe I just feel this way because I'm used to the way RPGs are done in video games, where there usually isn't a statistic displayed in a menu that you can't improve through use or experience. I just don't think mostly-static ability scores make a lot of sense, from the standpoint of game design, the game's themes, or "fun" (there's that word Mr. Raggi doesn't like). I could be missing the point here, but I think more is gained than lost by allowing ability score improvements with leveling up. Besides, I prefer to have leveling up be a big deal, and I think increasing ability scores help with that.

That's just my two copper pieces on the subject.

Reality-Warping Dwarves

(This pertains to my Lamentations of the Fall Lords setting based on the Myth video game series. More information about the Dwarf class in our campaign can be found HERE and HERE.)

If you were to take almost any piece of advanced dwarven technology (a dwarven explosive charge, for example) and transport it to a world which did not contain any member of the Myth world's dwarven race, it would not work. It would almost work, and one or two minor changes (say, a different ingredient in the explosive's chemical recipe) would usually be sufficient to restore functionality, but it would not actually work as-is.

Unbeknownst to them, the dwarven people are reality-warpers, who unconsciously and unwittingly exercise some minor control over the laws of physics in their environment. The Fey (elves, fairies, and their ilk) have similar unconscious reality-changing properties, and even though the Fey seem to be newcomers to the world of Myth, it is possible that they somehow share a common origin or ancestor with the dwarven species.

When a dwarf truly and fully believes beyond all doubt that something that they or another dwarf crafted is going to work, it generally does, provided it is close enough to something that would work otherwise. Determining what counts as close enough would require much study. Since dwarves are culturally inclined to have a great deal of faith and confidence in their work, they tend to build things that function even if they "shouldn't."

Basically, they're like the Orks from Warhammer 40,000.

When a dwarven inventor gets incredibly close to having a breakthrough, instead of putting in that final bit of work needed to have their "Eureka!" moment, they just go ahead and have that moment because the local fabric of reality changes itself to make things function as the inventor expects. This goes for architects and engineers, as well; many dwarf-built structures could not stand if other beings tried to craft them on other worlds. Dwarves cannot control this ability and do not even know it exists.

This is a very weak, low-level effect that does not seem to apply equally in all cases. Almost no one even suspects that dwarves have this inherent power, since the tech-level of the Myth world is rather low outside of the inventions of dwarven scientists and human mages, the latter of which almost exclusively creates technology which explicitly makes use of magic. Few understand the laws of physics, chemistry, etc. enough to consider the possibility that something odd is going on with the supposedly non-magical technology they encounter. Even if they did, what evidence would they have? Dwarven technology works in a repeatable, verifiable way in the world of Myth, so who's to say that something is "wrong?"

It doesn't help that spells like Dispel Magic and Anti-Magic Shell do not disable dwarven technology unless they are cast by someone of at least Level 20. The reality-warping effect is only weak in the sense that forces like gravity are weak.

In theory, dwarven reality-warping could affect a much greater variety of things than just bombs, buildings, and the like. However, the Dwarven Kingdom is still recovering from many social/cultural setbacks resulting from the various Dark Ages as well as their own unique struggles throughout history (as depicted in Hammers of the God). In dwarven society, scientific thinking may be relatively uninhibited, but cultural thinking is still fairly rigid. Such rigidity may strengthen certain beliefs, but it also leads to a lack of imagination in many aspects of thought.

When the dwarves first arrived by whatever means in the world of Myth, deep in prerecorded history, their powers may have reacted to their environment in such a way as to shape their physiology. If they had ended up living in forests instead of mountains and caves, they might have become willowy creatures with a supernatural aptitude for woodworking and herbal medicine.

If the dwarves were ever to discover their true potential, who knows what they would accomplish? Perhaps they would be a race of gods.

New house rule: As a character of the Dwarf class levels up, their belief in the success of their explosive weaponry becomes stronger. When a Dwarf character of at least Level 4 attacks with a dwarven explosive, any targets make their saving throws at a penalty of -1. This becomes -2 at Level 8, -3 at Level 12, -4 at Level 16, -5 at Level 20, -6 at Level 24, and -7 at Level 28.

Heron Guard Tournament

"Then he told me that next year the Heron Guard will be reinstating the septannual tournament to fill out their ranks. Men of bravery and warriors of renown from every corner of the empire will gather to compete for the honor of joining them."

-Myth II: Soulblighter

Starting in 2542 A.E., the Heron Guard have hosted a tournament every seven years in order to see who is worthy of recruitment. The next tournament will be held in 2843 A.E.

Anyone is welcome to apply, with the exception of those who have been found guilty of certain crimes like murder and treason. All Journeymen are expected to compete at least one in their lifetime, although there is not considered to be any shame in failing to make the cut. Thousands of others, generally Legion members, guards, and mercenaries, also flock to Muirthemne to compete in each tournament. No dwarves, fir'Bolg, or mages have ever won a spot in the Heron Guard, mostly because very few have ever competed, but there is technically no rule against such people joining the tournament.

Before the original transformation of the Heron Guard into Journeymen and the resulting dissolution of the tournament tradition, legend has it that only six or less people were actually chosen to join the ranks of the Heron Guard at the end of each tournament. Now that the tournaments have been reinstated, the average number of successful inductees has risen to an average of 100 per tournament, not counting a few even greater numbers in the first few tournaments of Emperor Alric's reign. With an empire to rebuild, and myrkridia, undead, and other dangerous beings infesting the wilds, more members were sorely needed.

The exact number of battles that one must win in order to join the Heron Guard varies depending on the number of entrants in the tournament and a set of esoteric rules enforced by the judges. Only the Emperor has the right to overrule the judges on any ruling in the tournament.

Perhaps the number one incentive for joining the Heron Guard is the promise of eternal life. They say that the first time any Jarl Root is used on a new member of the Heron Guard, that person becomes immortal. Violence can still kill the Heron Guard, of course, but death by old age is no longer a concern of theirs.

The tournament is a series of one-on-one battles. In the arena, the following rules apply:

1. All fights are one-on-one only.
2. Combatants must fight until one of them yields or can no longer fight, but not to the death if it can be helped. Leaving the arena during the fight counts as yielding. Cheating counts as yielding. Dying accidentally counts as yielding. Killing one's opponent on purpose counts as yielding, and the killed combatant will be posthumously inducted into the Heron Guard. Ties are decided by the judges.
3. Only leather or chainmail armor is allowed. Fighting unarmored is also permitted.
4. No magical weapons, armor, items, or spells are permitted inside the arena.
5. No items or equipment other than basic clothing, one or two weapons (per combatant), armor, and/or a shield (in place of one weapon per combatant) are permitted inside the arena. Exceptions may only be authorized by the judges ahead of time on the basis of medical needs.
6. No more than two weapons (including a shield) are permitted inside the arena (artificial limbs, for example).
7. No poisons or unauthorized drugs or medicines are permitted inside the arena.

To determine one's competition in any given battle in the arena, roll on the following tables.

Opponent's Level (d20)

1 Roll on the Low Level Table below.

2-5 Level 7

6-9 Level 8

10-12 Level 9

13-15 Level 10

16-17 Level 11

18-19 Level 12

20 Level 13

Low Level Table (d20)

1-3 Level 1

4-6 Level 2

7-9 Level 3

10-12 Level 4

13-16 Level 5

17-20 Level 6

Opponent's Weaponry (d20)

1-10 Twin Longswords

11-14 Longsword and Shield

15-17 Greatsword or Greataxe

18-20 Polearm

Opponent's Armor (d10)

1-7 Chainmail

8-9 Leather

10 Roll 1d10 again. If the result is another 10, the opponent wears no armor. Otherwise, the opponent wears Leather.

Is the Opponent Cheating? (d100)

1-99 No

100 Yes. The DM decides how.

Roll 3d6 three times to determine the Constitution, Dexterity, and Strength scores of the opponent.

Any character who joins the Heron Guard changes their class to Journeyman. They retain their level of experience and gain all of the abilities of a Journeyman of the proper level, but forfeit all of their previous class abilities. They also gain an amount of additional experience equal to one-fourth (round down) of their current experience and three points to allocate to the ability score(s) of their choice. Once a spell is cast on the character from a Jarl Root, the character will no longer physically age. That last sentence may or may not be partially or completely true, at the DM's discretion, but if it is true for one member of the Heron Guard than it is true for all of them.