Secret Santicore 2017 is finally available thanks to the diligent stewardship of Steve Sigety and layout savior David Sugars. Tons of folks came together to produce these beautiful 90 pages of cool game shit. My own contribution was a d100 table of Alchemical Accidents:

While attempting to mix the desired concoction, there is an explosion, and…

1. When the dust settles, all that remains are two gallons of milk in plastic jugs.
2. One of the vials is unbroken, and it contains a potion of Suzie. The imbiber instantly transforms into an 8 year old girl with red pig tails, and freckles all over her face. She is the protagonist of a popular series of children’s books, and will want to go on adventures, and learn simple lessons. The transformation lasts until it is undone by some magic.
3. A puppy, which speaks like an 18^th century aristocrat appears.
4. A bucket’s worth of refined napalm pools on the floor.
5. The metaphysical concept of the number six has been made physically manifest. It must be protected at all costs. If it is destroyed, math will cease to function throughout the cosmos.
6. A single jar is is not shattered, and contains Fetish Juice. Anyone who consumes it will gain an intense, kinky desire.
7. Seeds blow out in all direction, at least a few of which will land outside. Within a year, the seeds will grow into thriving apple-on-a-cob plants.
8. A rift is torn open in space time, leading to the most boring possible version of the character’s reality.
9. There’s a puddle of green glowing goo on the ground. Touching it causes a person to mutate to resemble whatever other animal they were most recently in contact with.
10. There’s a puddle of green glowing goo on the ground. It doesn’t do anything, it’s just kinda gross.
11. Along with the smoke and shrapnel, there are bones in the explosion, enough for a full skeleton. It’s not clear where they came from, though study may reveal that they are exact clones of the alchemist’s own bones.
12. When the smoke clears, a naked clone of the alchemist is all that remains of the lab.
13. When the smoke clears, an evil naked clone of the alchemist is all that remains of the lab. The clone also has wings and laser eyes and twice as many hit points as the alchemist has.
14. When the smoke clears, all that remains of the lab is a clone of the alchemist that is such a profoundly good creature, that it cannot abide allowing the alchemist (who is necessarily evil by comparison) to live.
15. A single decanter remains intact, filled with a Potion of Shoe Location. When consumed, the imbiber will gain a sixth sense, enabling them to locate any shoews nearby.
16. The explosion is caused when sheets of paper begin to appear, one after the other, inside a sealed jar. Eventually the jar bursts, sending glass and pages everywhere. There is typing on the pages, and if they are gathered up and placed in the correct order, they form a really shitty novel.
17. All that is left is a lizard. A sort of iguana looking thing, with organic jet engines instead of feet, allowing it to fly or hover, as it wills.
18. There’s a beaker on the floor, filled with a Potion of Wanting a Haircut. Consuming it will cause a person to want to go get their hair cut.
19. A fleshy tarp covers the whole space of the laboratory. It shudders with pleasure when touched.
20. The explosion gradually settles into a cloud of fetid gas, large enough to fill the room. This cloud can never be dispersed, though it could be moved by a sufficiently powerful aircurrent.
21. All that remains is a cup, with a potion of Creative Dance in it. When consumed, the imbiber will be flooded with ideas for interesting new dances.
22. A wildly gesticulating hand flops about in the aftermath. If the hand is given a writing implement, it will immediately begin writing gibberish, and never stop so long as it is not restrained from continuing. There may or may not be hidden meaning in this gibberish.
23. A mysterious concoction has appeared, in a little jar labelled “Drink Me.” If it is consumed, and the imbiber has a dick, then their dick falls off. If the imbiber does not have a dick, then they grow a dick.
24. The Alchemist has invented American Cheese. Thanks a fucking lot, Alchemy bro. That’s something the world really needed.
25. A potion of Speed Reading has been created, allowing the imbiber to read at three times their normal rate.
26. From every jar and beaker, a cactus begins to grow, and it just wont…stop…growing…
27. A black monolith appears, harbenger both of growth, and of violence. Every creature present will be awakened to a new level of existence, and filled with an intense desire to use their newfound enlightenment to dominate those around them.
28. The alchemist has accidentally created a star, roughly the size of a marble. The heat from a star even this small is so intense that everthing in its viscinity burns.
29. The ghost of a woman who never lived is created. She is a crossing guard, and will attempt to let people know when it is safe to walk, and when it is not.
30. PARTY EXPLOSION! Confetti and streamers burst outwards from the failed concoction. Banners affix themselves to the walls, hats appear on heads, and dance music begins to pound as if from nowhere. It’s a celebration! Everyone must party. Not partying is impossible.
31. One of the vials is unbroken, and within is a potion of affection for the color green. Consuming it will make you mildly predisposed to like things that have a green color. Ironically, the potion itself is red.
32. A single decanter remains, with a bit of fluid inside of it. This is a potion of Temporarily Forgetting Your Own Name. The effects of this potion are entirely predictable.
33. A milky white goo has congealed into a crater in the ground. It is a tincture of racism. If consumed in any amount, randomly determine a race for the dumbass who consumed mysterious white goo to hate.
34. The mind-altering smoke is laced with tacheon particles. At some point in the past of everyone who inhales it, they will make a different decision during some pivotal moment in their life. This new choice in their past is still consistent with their character at the time, but it changes their present circumstance in some significant way. The referee may designate anyone they desire to identify this different choice. If the inhaler objects that it’s not something they ever would have done, the table must vote on whether or not it is consistent with their character. Majority rules.
35. There’s one beaker left, containing a potion of Speak to Mosquitos, duration 2 hours. Mosquitos are macabre, edgelord little shits.
36. The alchemist has accidentally discovered chocolate chip cookies. Bake sales will never be the same.
37. A spray of liquid paper splatters all across the room.
38. As the orange dust settles, it coats everything in the room with a strange kind of greasy powder, that tastes vaguely of cheese. The flavor is wholely unnatural, yet addictively compelling, and fills the consumer with an intense desire for something called “mountain dew,” whatever that is.
39. Only a single vat remains, now filled with a dull grey liquid. If gold is dipped into this vat, it will be transformed into lead.
40. In the center of the room is a massive heap of slimy, shower-drain hair.
41. A radioactive isotope has been created. It glows with a faint green light, and is quietly poisoning everyone in the room.
42. All that’s left is a 6 inch cube of an unbreakable, unmalleable, unmeltable, completely unknown metal.
43. A Potion of Melodrama has been created. Whomever consumes it will become suddenly melodramatic about every little thing that happens to them. There is no cure.
44. Tiny flecks of something too small to hurt pelt everyone in the room. Once it’s safe for people to open their eyes, they will discover they are surrounded by piles of clipped toe and fingernails.
45. The air grows cold, and the lights grow dim. Wherever you are, a long winter night has begun. Pray you do not die.
46. The room is splattered with a thick coat of the big mac’s secret sauce.
47. The explosion has birthed a potion leech. A creature which sustains itself by sucking potions and other magical effects out of people’s bodies.
48. A noise hole is opened to the future. Only sound passes through it. The other end of the hole is in the basement of a house in Miluakee, on April 7^th, 1974. Nobody is down there for most of the day, but at 3pm a man comes down to start a load of laundery, and at around 4, a woman comes down to move it into the dryer. Time on the other end of the sound hole loops each day.
49. Fart in a jar.
50. A mysterious concoction appears. It is a Potion of Annoying Laughter, which permanently alters the laugh of whoever consumes it. Anytime they are amused, they emit one of the most unpleasant, inhuman sounds that could ever be called a ‘laugh.’
51. It’s not just a normal alchemical failure explosion. It’s a really big alchemical failure explosion. All that’s left is a crater, with a 500’ radius. Mysteriously, no warm blooded creatures are harmed by the explosion. It just passes over them like a hot breeze.
52. The alchemical explosion expands outwards in slow motion. It is intensely hot and dangerous, but will take over 2 years to complete.
53. A massive portal to the south pole of the planet is torn open. The tear in space gets larger and larger, until it’s over 100’ long, with cold wind blasting through it. This dramatically changes the weather patterns in the local area, gradually causing a cataclysmic shift in the environment.
54. A 6’ high pile of human noses fills the room. Periodically, one of them sniffs loudly, as though trying to identify a smell.
55. Someone’s skin has appeared on the laboratory floor. There’s no seams, no tears, no blood, and absolutely nothing inside the skin. Somewhere in the world, someone’s skin has just disappeared, leaving them a screaming heap of exposed muscles and organs.
56. A mysterious voice whispers “thank you…” and fades away. It’s a completely sincere sentiment, and there’s no indication of what anyone has done to deserve being thanked.
57. All oxygent in the room vanishes, creating a vaccuum until some doors or windows are opened.
58. A small bit of ice. If this ice comes into contact with any water, it will rearrange the atomic structure of that water, freezing it instantly into ice.
59. An all-consuming moss has been created. Gods have mercy on you for what you’ve done.
60. There is an unbroken flask, containing a Potion of Static Shock. Whoever consumes it will generate a charge on their body, causing them to receive a static shock anytime they touch anything metal. The effect lasts for two weeks.
61. There’s one beaker left, containing a potion of Knowing Pi. The effect lasts for 10 minutes, and during this time the imbier knows every single digit of pi. Of course, they can only communicate so much of what they know in the 10 minutes they have before their knowledge fades.
62. The 9^th Roman Legion marches out of the smoke. It takes awhile for the whole group of them to emerge, and they won’t seem to notice they’ve been snatched out of the past until every one of them has arrived.
63. A tincture of Pleasant-Smelling Farts has been created. If consumed, a person never need worry again about the social awkwardness of releasing their poo-gas around other people.
64. A randomly determined 8^th level spell forces itself into the Alchemist’s brain. Unless the alchemist is already capable of casting 8^th level spells, this process is completely overwhelming, to the point of causing some damage to their brain. The spell must be cast immediately, or the more damage will be done. The playewr has no time to read the spell’s description, they must simply pick a target and go.
65. There’s a decanter embeded in the wall, filled with a strange glowing liquid. It is a potion of paraplegia. When consumed, it causes a person to temporarily lose all motor function beneath the neck.
66. A portal is created to the bottom of a nearby lake. Water pours through the portal until the lake is drained.
67. A pair of stone tablets have appeared, with Holy Commandments eleven through twenty inscribed on them.
68. A Tincture of Tolerance has been created. Nothing really bothers the one who consumes it. I mean, they may not like something, but they’re not going to make a fuss about it or anything.
69. A tear in the cosmic fabric appears, and a bloodshot eye looks through it. The eye presses itself up against the tear, and looks around the room with a hateful gaze.
70. An army of hopping legs is created, and they begin boopin’ and boppin’ all about the place.
71. There’s one beaker left amidst the shattered glass of the alchemical equipment. It contains a black liquid which, if consumed, proves to be a Potion of Emo Bullshit. The imbiber is uncontrollably compelled to act like a sad, upper middle class teenager from the mid 2000s. The curse lasts for about 5 years, or until strong magics are used to break it.
72. Amelia Airhart appears, torn away from the future and dropped, annoyed, into the destroyed alchemical lab.
73. All metal in the area instantly heats into a molten state.
74. A Potion of Ranting About Half-Baked Political Nonsense is created.
75. A strange, haunting music begins to play, growing gradually louder until people have to cover their ears. The music will never go away. It will continue to play here for all time.
76. Everyone impacted by the blast feels a surge of artistic inspiration. They are compelled to go out and create something.
77. A vial rolls out from the center of the blast, containing a Potion of Obsession with Dumb Jokes.
78. A powerful creature is summoned from the outer planes. Randomly determine whether it is an angel, a demon, a devil, or some otherworldly horror beyond human reckoning. In any event, it will not be happy to have been pulled from wherever it was before.
79. A conduit is opened for speaking directly to God. Turns out, though, God is kind of a loser nerd.
80. The sound of crying echoes from nowhere in particular.
81. A cup slides out from the smoke, containing a potion of Body Part Shrinkage. Randomly determine which body part shrinks when the potion is consumed.
82. A cup slides out from the smoke, containing a potion of Body Part Gigantism. Randomly determine which body part enlarges when the potion is consumed.
83. A geyser of beer erupts from the earth. It’s a pretty decent brew.
84. Instead of a “boom,” the explosion sounds like a sentence. A profound, cosmic truth, bellowed into our world. Something no one ever would have thought of. And yet, now that they’ve heard it, they wonder how they’ve lived so long without realizing its obvious truth.
85. A bitter, hateful voice worms its way into the heads of everyone in the room. It will criticize and question everything they say and do until it is somehow expelled.
86. A shark appears, flopping on the ground, suffocating and dying.
87. A fat little writer goblin named Nyc is born. He is terrible.
88. Suddenly, everyone in the room is wearing these really cool, matching leather vests. They’ve got studded eppaulets and everything.
89. A vial flies out of the explosion, and lands right in the alchemist’s hands. It contains a Potion of Alopecia. Drinking it will cause the imbiber’s body to become completely, and permanently, devoid of any hair.
90. A tiny war cry is squaked into the room, as an eight inch tall Klingon charges out of the smoke, Bat’leth swinging above his head.
91. Tongues begin growing out of the floor, walls, and ceiling, waggling about and trying to taste anything within reach.
92. An intense interest in an obscure, ancient sport begins radiating out from this spot. Anyone who comes within a mile will have heard of the sport, and be interested in learning the rules. People closer to the source, or who spend an extended period of time in the area, will become obsessed with playing the game, building a playing field, and eventually getting a league going.
93. The fingernails of everyone in the room begin to grow out of control.
94. A potion is created which, when consumed, causes the imbiber to lose control of their bowels.
95. A permanent door is created, which leads to some other part of the world within a few miles of here.
96. Everyone in the room is instantaneously teleported to a chamber deep underground. How far they have gone, and how deep they are, is unknown.
97. Tails grow outta errybody’s butts.
98. The alchemist suddenly finds they have a passion for styling people’s hair. It’s now much more interesting to them than Alchemy is.
99. A constant spray of lubricating gel starts spraying all around the room.
100. A creature that resembles OSR luminary Cecil Howe appears, except he sweats a lot, cannot stop farting, and nobody will ever ever want to kiss him.

I made a three page dungeon for you all. It’s about how roof damage caused by an onioneer’s hubris can lead to violent misunderstandings with other species.

You’ll like it.

Download “Mice with Legitimate Grievances”

^ That’s the link. ^

Now go play some D&D my friends.

Running a satisfying social encounter can be a stressful prospect. You want your NPCs to feel like people rather than props, and to do that they need to have their own perspectives and goals. They can’t go along with everything the party wants, but neither can they be so intractable that the party learns it’s easier to solve their problems with combat. It can feel like you need to know a lot about a character before it’s possible to portray them faithfully in your game, but you don’t. In fact you already know everything you need to run a satisfying social encounter with any NPC. Even the rando you created 4 seconds ago. If what I’m about to say sounds incredibly basic, that’s because social encounters are incredibly basic. These are the touchstones I use to remind myself of how basic they are.

First:

What general group does the NPC belong to, and what is that group’s attitude towards people like the player characters?

Let’s say the NPCs in question are a group of orcs. How do orcs feel about humans? Odds are you can answer this without needing time to consider. You wouldn’t have included orcs in your game if you didn’t have some sense for what role they’d play. That’s the NPC’s basic outlook established already. Anything the players say can be measured against how an orc would feel about it.

This works better the more specific we can be about what relative groups the characters belong to. “How do humans feel about other humans” gives us some kind of answer. “How do town guards feel about heavily armed outsiders” gives us a much more helpful answer.

If you’re on the ball, the first player to speak should make a reaction roll. (2d6, modified by Charisma). If they roll a 7 (give or take), the NPC’s attitude is right in line with the norm for their group. Higher or lower indicates that the NPC’s attitude deviates to a greater or lesser degree. Rolls greater than ~7 indicate a deviation favorable to the PCs, rolls less than ~7 indicate the opposite. Ask yourself: why might this NPC deviate in the way they do? Don’t question your first instinct. Build on it.

Obviously this is reductive. Each person contains universes of individuality, but at the moment we’re just getting an NPC started. Individuality can come later.

Second:

If there’s more than one NPC, what differences of opinion might show themselves?

Some groups won’t show any, even if they do exist. A group of city guards will let the senior officer do the talking while the rest keep quiet and follow orders. Group dynamics still play a part (senior officers don’t like to be embarrassed in front of their men), but the referee only really needs to consider a single NPC’s perspective for this encounter.

Even in less regimented groups, the spectrum of opinions will fall within a limited range. Nobody in an angry mob is happy about the current state of affairs. They’re all angry, but some folks might be satisfied with a redress of grievances while others want to start building a guillotine.

A city council would have an even wider range of opinions, but still limited. Anarchists don’t get on city councils.* You’ve already got a sense of what sort of opinions people on a city council might express. They’ll disagree with everything the party has to say, then disagree with one another about why they disagree. It’s not important for the referee to know what motivates the individual NPC’s views at this point. It’s enough that they have a firm position, and the referee can figure out why they might have taken that position later. Maybe they’re corrupt, or they want to look good for the voters, or they’re acting out a role in some kinda conspiracy. Since it’s a fantasy game, you might even include someone with a social conscience.

Taken together it sounds like a lot of work, but it’s manageable if you introduce each perspective one at a time. What’s the last thing that was said? What sort of person might be inspired to respond to it? Don’t try to keep everyone straight in your head. Jot down one or two descriptive words for each participant who enters the conversation. Simple stuff like “Angry guy,” or “Moral Panicker.

All this is to say we can get a sense of who an NPC is by examining our basic assumptions about them. This makes them as easy to understand as any other part of the game environment. Something we can manage by referring to the core mechanic of the game:

1. Describe the environment.
2. Ask the players to describe how they interact with the environment.
3. Describe how the environment changes.

Like most of what players say in the game, their interactions with a social encounter can usually be rephrased as “Can I…?” questions. When they say “My blood tastes terrible, you don’t want it,” what they mean is “Can I convince the vampire they don’t like my blood?” Such questions can be answered with either Yes, No, or Maybe.

Is what the players want trivial, or in keeping with the wants of the NPC? Say Yes. (“Can I have a cup of water?”)

Is what they want outrageous or completely opposed to what the NPC wants? Say no. (“Can I have the deed to your home?”)

Does it fall somewhere between those two extremes? Have the player roll 2d6. (“Can I stay in your home tonight?”) The reaction roll is the attack roll of a social encounter. It gets rolled a lot.

Like in combat, players should be encouraged to think of creative solutions. Did they make a particularly convincing argument? Did they play to the NPC’s perspective? Did they show how their ideas would benefit the NPC? That’s like attacking when you’ve got the high ground. Give them a bonus to their roll.

Generally speaking, 9 is a good target for success. It’s just above average, so players will need to think on their feet to ensure they’re getting the bonuses they need for consistent success. I wrote a formalized system for handling this called “Simple Socializing,” but these days I tend to just pick target numbers that feel right using 9 as a baseline.

Once the encounter is going, and the players are speechifying, you’ve got room to think about what might make this NPC more interesting. Give them a quirk, or a skewed motivation. Look for wrinkles in the PC’s arguments that can serve as sticking points for the NPC. These are the twists that prevent everything from going according to plan, and result in a meatier, more interesting encounter.

If you need a name, pick an object in your environment and fuck with the pronunciation a bit. One or two syllables is best. A glass of water becomes a fella named “Ater,” table becomes “Tipple,” shelf becomes “Shuul.” It keeps things simple, pronounceable, memorable, and nobody actually cares what the NPC’s name is anyway.

I hope this makes sense, and has been helpful to somebody. The other day when someone asked me what my process for running social encounters was, it seemed like such an easy thing to write down, but I’ve reached that stage where I’ve been staring at this forever and I have no idea if it even makes sense anymore. x’D

*An anarchist on the city council sounds like a fun evening of D&D tho.

If you haven’t yet, please read these much better accounts written by more relevant figures. Nothing I can say will be as valuable as what they’ve said.

Mandy

Vivka

Stacy

Patrick

Scrap Princess

Scrap Princess 2

Mable

Fiona

Kiel

Kirin

I don’t have a unique perspective. I don’t have any new information. I have very little of use to say, aside from offering my miniscule boost to this essential signal. I will be brief:

Zak S. is dangerous.

Zak S. should not be tolerated in our communities.

I have removed the episodes of Blogs on Tape which highlighted his work, because their existence might lend him an iota of support. I will not link to him, I will not talk to him. I will not work or associate with anyone who works or associates with him–excepting work that must be completed to fulfill contracts or obligations which were made prior to Mandy coming forward. If Mandy’s abuser is part of your community, then you are not part of mine. I sincerely hope the people this cuts me off from are able to break free of his orbit soon.

I failed. It is not the first time I failed. I hope it is the last time I fail.

I believe women. I believe Mandy, Hannah, Jennifer, and Vivka. Their abuser cannot debate, intimidate, or manipulate me into silence. There is no place for abusers among us. #AbuseIsNotAGame

Aside: If you like ‘zines, you might consider backing “Silver Swords” on Kickstarter. They’ve hired me on to write an article for the first issue, and I think you’ll like what I’ve got brewing.

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In 2012 I had a head full of dreams and a blog full of dumb filler posts that nobody should ever subject themselves to. That said, the seven people who did read my blog back then might remember the couple months I spent bloviating about a game called LOZAS. It was going to be my attempt to combine the first four Legend of Zelda games with OSR rules. It got as far as a 14 page rough draft before my Fear of Finishing™ kicked in, and I abandoned the project forever.

Anyway, I spent the last couple days redesigning the whole game from the ground up. You can download it as a pdf if you want, but I’ve also printed the entire text of the rules below.

I want to be clear that this is a completely theoretical game at this point. The closest I got to playtesting was asking my friends what they thought of it, then ignoring everything they said and typing it up in a way that felt right to me. I’m not presenting it as a finished product, but as a basic engine that I think could be interesting. I wanna play it and talk about it and make it better. Maybe if we ever get it up to version 1.0 I could write a second document with monsters and items.

Or maybe nobody will care, and maybe I don’t care as much as it feels like I do. Maybe I just needed to exorcise the ghost of all that pointless hand wringing I did back in 2012. Maybe I’m only saying this because I’m afraid someone will call me stupid, and I want to give myself an emotional escape route.

People are complicated, amirite?

The Legend of Zelda
Adventure System

This game depends on an experienced referee. One who is comfortable arbitrating the details of rules and worlds at the table. Rulings should be grounded in the logic of Saturday morning cartoons, so that a skillfully swung butterfly net can deflect a ball of magical energy, and places can have names like “Death Mountain.”

Basic Play

The referee describes a situation, the players make decisions about how they interact with that situation, and the referee determines the effects of their actions. Actions which are obviously simple or impossible should be resolved by fiat. If the result of an action is not obvious, the referee should ask the player to roll whichever ability check seems most appropriate. A healthy environment of back-and-forth questioning and negotiation will help everyone maintain a clear picture of the shared imaginary space of the game world without feeling cheated.

Ability Scores

Each character has their own Power, Courage, and Wisdom score represented by a number of six sided dice. By default each character is balanced between the three attributes, with 2d6 in each. If they wish, players may choose a “Strong” attribute with 3d6, and a “Weak” attribute with only 1d6. During play the referee will often ask players to test one of their three attributes. To do this, roll the associated number of dice. If any of dice show a 5, the action is a partial success. If they show a 6, the action is a complete success. If they show two 6s, they are a critical success. If they show three 6s, they are a mega critical success. It is left to the referee to interpret what these degrees of success mean in any given situation.

Classes & Leveling Up

Adventurers start with 3hp, and are able to add an extra d6 to any roll once per hour of play.

Sages start with 3hp, and are able to cast a magic spell once per hour of play. (See “Magic”)

Soldiers start with 6hp, and deal double weapon damage on a successful attack.

Whenever a Great Monster is slain, those responsible are illuminated by a benevolent gold light which increases their hp by 1.

Items

Each character may carry 6 adventuring items. Trivial things like rupees, keys, ropes, torches, and rations may be hand-waved.

Weapons available to low level characters deal 1 damage on a successful hit. Fortunate adventurers may discover weapons which deal 2 damage eventually. Weapons which deal 3 damage are legendary.

Armor reduces the damage a character takes in a single round by 1. Note the limit is “per round,” not “per attack.” Rare magical armors may reduce damage by 2.

Shields offer no passive benefit for merely holding them, but may be used to actively deflect attacks.

Other make up all manner of weird and wacky stuff for your players to find. Curious items should be the primary reward for any adventure that doesn’t end in slaying a Great Monster. They are the primary method by which characters gain versatility as they progress.

Adventure

The overworld is all grassy fields and beleaguered villages and spooky forests. Here the players can explore in any direction, and travel is generally safe enough that the referee can skip ahead to the next interesting thing they encounter. Scattered throughout the overworld are entrances to the underworld. Ancient temples and crypts where exploration is more limited, and environments are dangerous enough to require the player’s constant attention.

Monsters

Every creature that challenges the players should have some trick for defeating it. Most can be defeated without it, but discovering the trick makes the process easier. One creature might electrify itself to harm anyone who attacks it. Another could be heavily armored, but take double damage from its own reflected projectiles. Any creature without a trick should be able to talk so that parley can be its trick. An average monster has 2d6 in each attribute, 2hp, and attacks for 1 damage.

Great Monsters have many tricks, and much more hp than normal monsters have. They are sources of great evil which poisons the world around them, and live at the bottom of underworld dungeons.

Combat

Attacks are usually made with a Power check, though it’s not inconceivable that players attempting something risky might make a Courage check, or that players attempting something tricky might roll Wisdom. A referee’s obligation to be flexible in their responses to the players does not end when combat begins.

Death occurs at 0hp.

Magic

Sage magic is supportive and helpful. To use magic in a selfish or harmful way is corrupting, and frequently drives the magicians who cast it to villainy. There are four forms of magic:

• Knowledge: Enables communication, or the discovery of new information.
• Creation: Conjures simple objects. Nothing with complex shapes or moving parts.
• Movement: Grant movement to thing which normally has none, or enable a creature to move in ways not normally possible.
• Deception: Project illusions into the minds of others.

Spells are cast by picking one of the four forms, and describing a desired effect that follows from it. Magic is not an omnipotent force. The more simple and direct and local and limited a spell is, the better it will work. It’s the referee’s job to assess the spells Sages describe. They may determine the spell is not possible, and ask the player to describe a simpler spell. The referee might also choose to assess costs or risks for casting too-powerful spells. Perhaps they will drain the sage’s hp, or have a chance to backfire, or a chance to disrupt the ability to cast future spells during this session. Player and referee should make every effort to be clear about what they’re attempting, and negotiate spell effects with one another in good faith.

Fighters are good at fighting. Their core mechanic is the same attack and damage roll used by every other class and creature. To do the thing they are good at they roll a d20, add some bonuses, and compare the result to a target number. This bare-bones framework has been used by players and referees to negotiate everything from kicking sand in someone’s eyes, to chopping off a tentacle, to winning at beer pong. Different people at different tables taking a shared notion of what a fighter ought to be good at, and making it work with a single codified mechanic.

Viewed from this perspective Magic Users are the first example of unnecessary complexity creeping into the game’s rules. It makes sense to a degree: strong humans exist ergo it’s easy to have a shared notion of what they can do. Fighters and Magic Users represent the extreme ends of a scale between the grounded and the fantastical; a scale which correlates linearly to class complexity. The less “real” a thing is, the more rules we need to understand it. But that gap between the least and the most complex class should be much narrower than Gygax intended.

I want to give Magic Users at my table set of simple tools. Tools both referee and player can hold the entirety of within their heads. Tools that can be twisted into different shapes to suit a million different situations. I want to harness the power of negotiation to give players a creative role in determining how their magic works, but I want that creativity confined strictly to the table.

Magic in the Moment

Magic users may know one Magic Word for each odd numbered level they’ve reached. They begin play with a single word randomly determined from the list below. New words (gained at levels 3, 5, 7, etc.) may either be rolled from the list, or discovered through play by some means acceptable to the referee.*

1. Fire	11. Bubble
2. Cold	12. Phantasm
3. Stone	13. Wall
4. Dark	14. Hold
5. Charm	15. Water
6. Slow	16. Gravity
7. Detect	17. Anchor
8. Animate	18. Separate
9. Nature	19. Create
10. Bone	20. Time

Magic Users may attempt to cast spells at any time by describing an effect which is supported by the words they know. For example, a Magic User who knows the word “Fire” might say: “I want to cast a spell…

• “to light all the candles in the room.”
• “to attack the goblin with deadly heat.”
• “to melt the manacles I’m wearing.”
• “to allow me to swim through that lava safely.”
• “to shape our campfire into an image.”
• “to neutralize the flaming oil they’re throwing at us.”

So on, and so forth.

After the Magic User describes their spell, the referee assigns a target number (discussed below), and the magic user rolls 2d6.** If they roll equal to or greater than the target number the spell goes off as it was described. If they roll less than the target number the spell fails. Failed spells may simply fizzle, or they may backfire more spectacularly depending on how badly the attempt was failed, and how the referee likes to run their game.

The base target number for any spell is 5 + the number of spells successfully cast. This resets each time the Magic User has a full night’s rest.

The base target number is intended as a starting point. It’s meant to be modified according to how closely the described spell matches the referee’s idea of what a Magic User is capable of. The referee should make every attempt to be consistent and communicative about their standards, and must be willing to negotiate. They have to be able to tell the player why the target number is what it is. If the player then wants to change the spell to get a more favorable number before they roll, the referee ought to allow that.

Some things simply cannot be done no matter how high the dice roll. If a first level character wants to use the word “Fire” to deal d6 damage to everyone in the world, the referee can just say ‘no.’ Ideally the standards will be consistent enough that players will learn how to reasonably predict what they can and can’t get away with. It’s the same as how some referees ground their rulings for fighters in real world history, while others ground their rulings in Conan stories.

I cannot dictate what level of magic power seems appropriate in your game. As an example, however, the difficulty of a spell might increase if:

• The caster is using more than one word.
• The spell’s connection to the word is tenuous.
• The target isn’t close enough to touch.
• The casting process is hindered in some way, such as the caster’s hands being tied, or attempting to cast without being noticed.
• The spell is in conflict with the environment, such as casting a fire spell in pouring rain.
• The spell has more than one target.
• The spell deals more than d6 damage.

Likewise, the difficulty of the spell might decrease if:

• The magic user is willing to spend extra time on the casting.
• Something appropriate is sacrificed, such as hit points, or a valuable item.
• Another magic user is helping with the spell casting.
• The spell is in concert with the environment, such as casting a fire spell in a volcano.

After successfully casting a spell, Magic Users may record the spell for later use. Each recorded spell may be used once per day without a casting roll. These still count as successful spells for the purposes of determining the base target number. Magic Users may know a maximum of one recorded spell per level. At any time they may forget a recorded spell if they wish to replace it with a new one.

Footnotes:

*Discovering a word in my game would require finding another magic user’s spell book, or performing some lengthy and expensive experimentation. Other referees might be satisfied to let a Magic User discover a word which they’d merely seen another Magic User use. Foolishly lenient referees might even let their players pick whatever words they like (scandalous behavior if you ask me.) In any event the important thing is that the player only have a number of words equal to half their level rounded up.

**If your game has ability scores, this roll would be a good thing for Intelligence to modify.

Thanks are due to Chris H. and John Bell for contributing to the development of this idea.

Post Script:

I don’t imagine the schedule of Papers & Pencils updates matters much to anyone but me. However, if you do care, be advised that I’m changing things up. For the past few years I’ve set myself a rigid 1-post-per-week goal. It was a good system for maintaining my work/life balance, but my priorities have shifted, and I don’t think a rigid schedule is a good fit for the way I do things now.

Going forward I’m only going to post something when I’m satisfied that I’ve completed something worth reading. That means fewer posts, but hopefully that lack will be compensated for by an increase in post quality. It should also mean that I spend less time writing filler posts when I ought to be getting the Duchy of the Damned Dancing Duke ready for layout.

I am fully aware that when I’ve attempted this approach in the past it has usually resulted in months of dead air. Sneeze sneeze, 2014, sneeze. I’ve got a different approach these days which I’m confident will be more successful. If it isn’t, I’ll just go back to a more rigid approach, easy peasy.

Thanks for reading!

(By the way: Magic Words doesn’t actually suck. I was just making a reference).