Nate Hack

 Here's the basic idea for Nate Hack:

Base rules are AD&D

Ability scores, classes, advancement, spells, and experience gain are AD&D, except classes go up to 20

Skills, arts, and focuses are from Worlds Without Number, except I have a wider skill list based on D&D 5e. 

Encumbrance uses the readied slots system from WWN (equipped items use space).

Each class has access to a wider pool of arts (for instance, druids get beastmaster and elementalist in addition to shapechanger arts). I also wrote a pool of 40 combat arts for fighters, thieves, and monks, with powers like Quickstep, Mighty Shot, and Palm of Unfathomable Justice.

WWN spells are up-leveled to account for their greater power (for instance, a 2nd-level WWN spell is a 3rd-level spell)

Combat is mostly based on WWN. So there's group initiative, unusual WWN actions like screen and swarm attack, and players get their combat bonus to attacks. However, there's no shock, and we're using AD&D weapons and resolution mechanics -- so you get your AD&D Dex bonus to AC and your AD&D Str bonus to attacks.

The main wrinkle to combat is the Injury, Death, and Dying rules. Instead of dying at 0HP you choose between system strain and a temporary injury, and when you gain the same temporary injury twice it becomes permanent. 

The result is a tricky, tactical game with low lethality but high challenge, and the players have wide latitude to set the pace. I can introduce high challenge encounters and tricky traps and the players can play around with it without worrying about getting instagibbed, but if they take a lot of risks and play poorly, they incur a lot of system strain and injuries, and eventually might not be viable as a character anymore.

Getting a first level character up and running is tricky because of the large number of powers, but we're mostly experienced players who really like spending a lot of time thinking about this stuff, so it's been okay so far.

Characters are complex and have a wide choice of powers and focuses, so there are a lot of surprises during play as to what a character might be able to do, but for the most part they're limited by the basic ideas of AD&D -- invisibility mostly comes around at level 3, AOE and flight comes around at level 5, and so on. But the WWN spells, arts, and focuses give some interesting wildcards to keep the game from feeling too stale.

We've played maybe six sessions so far. They're in CRACKED MOON TEMPLE, the second dungeon in the game so far -- it's a temple to the elf moon goddess ZYSS, who governs illusion, insanity, dreams, poison, and transformation. She lives on the moon in a lunar palace, attended by lunar elves and 888 enslaved mortals. Her temple has been invaded by a black wyrm, and the players have been tasked with killing it, to open up the trade routes through the KELDWOOD that the wyrm has blocked. They've discovered a temple in disarray, where the elves have devolved into bestial insanity, and under the sanctuary of Zyss, found a secret passage to the secret temple of IXIL, Zyss's persona as the DARKMOON, where dark sisters and beast-knights wield swords of ice-cold steel and protect the eye-less, insane elf novitiates. 

Death, Injury, and Retirement

 I made a custom rulebook for my d&d game that's a mashup of AD&D 1e and Worlds Without Number, but I wasn't too excited about the death rules for either so I wrote my own. Here they are! As yet untested.

Character Death

So there are a few things that are being held in tension by character death. The first is that it’s important that the player be allowed to fail, otherwise the challenges you face have no meaning. A bad decision should be able to lead to failure just as much as an unlucky roll of the dice. In that sense, it’s also important that I have permission to cause you to fail, either through clever tricks and traps, smart tactics, or my own lucky rolls of the dice. However it’s also important that the consequences of failure aren’t too annoying, severe, time consuming, or harsh. Getting booted out of the game, even temporarily, kind of sucks.

There’s also this idea that we’re playing a game. On the one hand, I’d like to invite you to play a game with me that is, in many ways, directly about injury and death. By roleplaying, we’re entering a world together that is playing with the idea of danger and risk, and I’d like to be able to hold that lightly, and have fun, even and especially when things go south. Death however is a heavy subject, and as the real world gets more and more dangerous, and our individual safeties more in jeopardy, I know that sometimes the death of a character we closely identify with can be painful, unpleasant, and threatening outside of the scope of what’s happening in the game. At the same time, being that Dungeons and Dragons seems to be about death, it seems that entirely ruling out death as an explicit consequence would defeat the point of the game.

So this is my attempt to resolve those tensions. The risk of combat will be primarily injury, which runs the risk of being long-term. Death is still a possibility, but one that’s explicitly reversible. And secondary characters are given more explicit rules for you to fall back on.

System Strain

System strain represents your physical system’s capacity to prevent injury. When your system strain is high, your character is highly stressed out, over-taxed, and at their limit, mentally and physically. They’ll injure more easily, and have less ability to recover from damage. Low system strain represents the opposite: your character is rested and recovered, and able to absorb a lot of stress.

Your character has a maximum system strain equal to their Constitution score. Most forms of free and easy healing, such as Healer’s Touch and First Aid, will cost one point of system strain to receive. If a character is at maximum system strain, they cannot benefit from this type of healing. Some powerful items may cost a point of system strain to use. A character’s natural healing will also not function when system strain is at maximum.

Many divine spells do not increase system strain, being a boon from the gods.

Injury, Death, and Dying

Before 0 hit points, your character is strained, bruised, scratched, tired, or even badly physically injured, just not in a way that impedes them. When your character is reduced to 0 hit points, they suffer a terrible blow and begin to die. The character must immediately either receive 1d6 system strain or a temporary injury, by rolling on the injury table. If your system strain roll puts you over your maximum, you cap out at your maximum and receive an injury anyway.

Temporary injuries are serious physical or emotional setbacks that can only be healed by rest. The only way to heal a temporary injury is overnight with a good night’s rest. However, if a character dies while injured, or if they roll the exact same injury again while already injured, the injury becomes permanent, and can only be healed with significant downtime, or a level up. 

You can decide what the nature of the injury is, based on the harm that caused it. Mechanically speaking, each injury should represent approximately a 10% deficiency in that particular area, except attacking, which everyone is already bad enough at already. Some injuries are a little worse and some are a little better, and at least one gets a little better after a night of rest, even if it’s permanent.

When dying, a character will die at the end of their tenth turn. Another character may attempt to stabilize them with a Heal check as a Main action against difficulty 8, though if they have no healing tools on hand, the difficulty will be 10. Only one ally can attempt to stabilize a character per round. On their turn, the character can only speak feebly and move up to 5’. Similar to 5e, they may also attempt to stabilize themselves with a special Death saving throw: roll a d20, with a 10+ being success. This roll cannot be modified in any way. After three successes they stabilize at 0 hp, but after three failures they die. On a 20, they gain 1hp, stand up, and may immediately act. If a character takes damage while dying, they suffer an automatic failed death save.

A character that gains hit points while dying may stand up and immediately act.

Rest

At the end of a good night’s sleep, recover 1 hitpoint per level. You also heal 1 system strain, and all temporary injuries.

You cannot sleep in armor. If you do so, you recover no system strain, injury, or effort, and can only recover 1 spell slot per level of spell available.

When resting in the wilderness or a dungeon, it’s always assumed that someone is keeping watch overnight. If an encounter occurs, I’ll generally determine randomly who is keeping watch at the time. Additional safety measures should be specified through play.

If an encounter attempts to sneak up on your watch, an opposed Notice vs. Sneak check is allowed to prevent ambush. Generally however we will roll for surprise as normal (2 in 6 chance for either side to be surprised–see the Surprise and Ambush section), and the encounter will initiate at a fair distance from your camp.

Characters who are resting may be woken with a shout as an On-turn action, as long as they are within ear shot. Regardless of their manner of being woken, they can’t act until the next round, during which period they’ll be waking up, taking stock of their surroundings, gathering their readied items, and so on. At that point however they’ll be standing and ready to act. Remember though that characters cannot sleep in their armor, so only the character on watch will be armored.

If your sleep is interrupted, your hit points will still be at the level you fell asleep at, but you can borrow forward spells if you need to. If you suffer an injury while rest is interrupted, you’ll need another full 8 hours of rest to clear it.

Resurrection

Resurrection is not too hard to come by. Clerics and priests imbued with the power of life beyond death are glad to share the miracles of their gods with the world, generally for a price. However, any character that is brought back to life suffers a permanent -1 to Constitution. This cannot be restored, though your Constitution may be able to increase again from powerful magical effects or leveling up. This represents the powerful toll that dying has on a person’s spirit. Some theorize that some part of the soul is left in the afterlife, while others suppose that the Resurrection magic draws on a person’s life-force to bring them back. Either way, there’s a hard limit to how many times a person can come back from the dead, and some people may prefer not to.

Healing Permanent Injuries

Permanent injuries can stack. So eventually you might decide that your character is too injured to go on.

You’ve got a couple choices and both of them are pretty prohibitive. A permanent injury represents the kind of injury that takes a lot of time and rest to reverse, certainly more time than the pressure of the adventure would ever allow. It’s possible your character has simply suffered an injury that can’t be healed. If your character takes a month of downtime, they may attempt to roll under their Constitution. On a success, one injury is healed.

If you’d prefer, you can retire your character for a period and play a new one. They’ll start with 50% of the experience points of your old character. After you play four sessions, your old character can start making a single Constitution check at the end of each session to attempt to heal an injury. You can resume playing your old character whenever you want.

Finally, if your character levels up with a permanent injury, they heal one permanent injury.

When we get to higher levels there might be powerful spells that can heal permanent injury, such as Regenerate, but we’ll handle that when we get there. Otherwise, healing a permanent injury either means that your character completely recovered, or adjusted to their injury in such a way that it no longer impedes them. You can decide what it means.

Retired Characters

When you retire your character, choose somewhere safe they can rest. They’ll be pursuing a normal life, maybe working a trade of some sort, far from the dangers of adventuring life. You can decide what they’re doing with their life, whatever makes sense to you and feels like it contributes to your character’s recovery. If you have enemies, they won’t target this character, though they might need to go under-cover or something if your enemies are really crazy. If it makes sense in the game world, your characters can visit them for advice or just to hang out, but they’ll have sworn off using their powers.

You can distribute as much treasure and gold as you want to the party, though your retired character will need to keep their most treasured possessions. I’m thinking maybe half their Strength score in items and a modest sum of money. Consider leaving them a keepsake as well.

Your new character will start at 50% of the experience points of the your old character, with starting equipment.

You can resume play with your old character at any time, we’ll just need to come up with a good reason for them to rejoin the adventure.

Injuries (roll d12)

1. -1 to attack (coordination harmed)

2. -2 to weapon damage (strength harmed)

3. -2 to AC (wounded in such a way that your armor doesn’t fit right)

4. -2 to one save (roll 1d6 to determine which kind)

1. Paralysis/Poison/Death

2. Petrification/Polymorph

3. Rod/Staff/Wand

4. Breath Weapon

5. Spell

6. All

5. +2 to saves against YOUR spells (ability to concentrate harmed, reroll if you can’t cast spells)

6. -2 to skill checks (roll 1d6 to determine which kind)

1. Feebled (strength)

2. Off-balance (dexterity)

3. Sapped (constitution)

4. Concussed (wisdom)

5. Concussed (intelligence)

6. Feared (charisma)

7. -1 to max effort

8. -½ hitdice lost to max hit points (So if your hitdice is d8, lose 4 max hit points)

9. -15% to reaction rolls (your character is physically scarred, depressed, pessimistic, doom-pilled, traumatized, and so on in a way that other people find off-putting or frightening)

10. -15% to morale checks that you cause (is character is physically scarred, depressed, pessimistic, doom-pilled, traumatized, and so on in a way that your enemies perceive as a sign of weakness)

11. -10’ to movement (leg or foot mangled, hurt, twisted, crushed, burned)

1. When this particular injury becomes permanent, reduce the penalty to 5’ after you get a good night’s rest– 10’ is a really severe penalty for long-term use, but seems like an appropriate model for a temporary broken bone or chopped foot

12. One arm temporarily unusable (roll for left/right). If you try to use the unusable arm anyway, suffer a -6 to attacks and -4 to skill checks involving that arm. Don’t worry about whether the arm is dominant, your character is well-trained enough that switching arms is no big deal, though you can decide whether it matters in a roleplaying kind of way.

so we've been playing Worlds Without Number by Kevin Crawford

 We've been playing for about six months now, maybe a little more. There's a lot I really admire about it and some stuff that doesn't quite seem to cohere. We've reached level 4 and are at a natural point to pause and reflect, so here are some thoughts so far.

OUR PLAYERS

We have:

•  Ratt, a Healer/Necromancer played by Nick
• Thrummond, a High Mage played by Thomson
• Serou, an Expert played by Chris
• Wren, an Expert/Blood Priest played by Cher
• and Benson, an Expert/Shapeshifter played by Michael Tom

THE SET UP AND WORLD

Their characters were kidnapped and brought deep into Sardoom, the Cursed Kingdom, where they were branded with the curse of the Dead God Emperor of Sardoom and set in the depths of the Demon Temple as a sacrifice to the Demon Wyrm there. They slew the Wyrm and emerged from the Demon Temple into the Keldwood, an ancient forest in the southern reaches of this vast, lost kingdom. They discovered that all citizens of this kingdom bear the curse of the God Emperor and are unable to leave on pain of death. They were urged to travel to swear fealty to the warlord of the Keldwood, a man called Kyrus the Fetch, who rules the forest from his ruined castle Pattern Transfiguration.

The characters are aware that theirs a world at the far end of time. Long stretches of space-faring civilizations have preceded theirs, and all have fallen to ruin. The world is peppered with artifacts and entities from other dimensions and other worlds, and all alive bear the marks of genetic, scientific, and magical meddling. Great cataclysms have rent the land, and in the last great war between the God Emperors, the sun itself was shattered, and for a long epoch known as the Age of the Black Dawn war was waged in the resulting darkness and the God Emperors were destroyed. At some point the broken remnants of the sun were lit, and tentative civilization proceeds in an Age of Kindling.

The characters spent a long month exploring the Keldwood. They came across old gods of the land and made covenant with one known as the King of All Sleep, who promised them respite from the curse of Sardoom if they could meet with him beneath Orax the Cursed Capitol, which lies at the joining of the Suffering Sea and the Siring Sea, far to the north.

Then they journeyed north to Pattern Transfiguration. They discovered a ruined castle beset by mutiny. The knights of Kyrus' Roundtable have seized different parts of the castle, and all seek the path to the Megathrone, which was lost long ago. It is said that he who sits the Megathrone has the power to project the castle into all possible futures. And as the characters have explored the ruined castle, they've discovered entities from other pasts...

OVERALL:

A fun game with a lot to admire that supports lateral problem-solving over brute force and tactical combat. Characters have an inherent fragility which makes head-on fights a poor idea, but monsters are cowardly and character powers are very strong and flexible, so the odds feel stacked in the players' favor.

Among the things nice about this game have been:

COMBAT IS NICE AND SNAPPY

So I really like how almost everything you can do in combat has an immediate effect, and combat is generally over very quickly. If you miss, you deal automatic shock damage anyway. If you cast a spell, the effects of the spell are powerful and always tip the combat in a big way. Hit points are low enough that you're never just chipping away at a guy's health for a long time. Monsters are constantly rolling against Morale, so there's always a good chance that your enemy simply decides to stop fighting.

This has meant that we can usually get through a bunch of combats each session. I noticed in Dungeons and Dragons, a lot of the time fights will be the main focus of each session. You might have one fight or two if you're lucky, and they'll be detailed and tactical. It's fun that in WWN you're likely to get a few even in short sessions like we're playing lately. 

Spells especially shine. There are only 5 levels of spells, but even at level 1 you're getting spells that let you enslave undead, gain complete control of another creature's senses, or instantly kill a low level enemy. At level 2 they're able to tunnel through stone and make walls of thorns. These are really fun and generally define the session. They've been able to sidestep powerful boss fights with clever use of spells -- when they faced off against the Cannibal Knight in a storm on the steps of Pattern Transfiguration, they cast a spell that destroyed the stairs under him, causing him to fall to his death. I love this kind of puzzle-solving approach to combat in a game like this; even though I'd given the Cannibal Knight a couple phases and mean powers, it makes sense and fits the world that their power was able to kill him without a fight. 

ARTS ARE PRETTY FUN

So in WWN you have spells that are a certain number of casts per day like normal and then you have "Arts" which essentially play the role of cantrips. You get arts as you level up, and you have a certain number of art points called 'Effort' which regenerate at a pace commensurate with the power they're used for. So if you use a mighty art on par with a spell it'll regenerate the next day, but if you use it to create a more basic power like light or magic-vision, you'll get it back as soon as you stop using the power. This means that each magic character has some neat little powers they can just sling around.

The downside though is that some classes are pretty much just their arts. Sometimes it seems like the Blood Priest doesn't have much to do but make magic light and blessed blood. Benson hasn't played many sessions, but when he does he mostly logs on and goes "I have the sharp claws art so my dog form can deal 1d8 damage with a claw attack." Arts have seemed most interesting for the Healer/Necromancer and High Mage -- Ratt has some fun little powers like she can't ever over-exert herself, and she can self-heal on a hit, and analyze an enemy's hitpoints and physiology with a glance. Thrummond can Dispel Magic and see enchantments, which gets a single-sentence description of any magical effect, or he can retain a spell he just cast. Lots of flexibility and potential here.

SKILLS ARE NICELY SCALED

Skills in WWN are scaled to a 2d6 roll and only go up to Rank 4. As soon as you're Rank 0 in a skill you're considered to be able to do most things that a skill calls for. So you roll 2d6 and add your skill points and attribute modifier (which never goes above +2), and you try to get the target difficulty, which ranges from 6 - 14. This is a really easy scale to wrap my head around, and it's easy to assign monsters a skill bonus as well. It's easy to look at an ogre and say "Yeah, he's got a +4 to strength based skills but a -2 to thinking" and just go from there. It means that players with pretty bad bonuses also have a good chance to winning, but it's easy to look at a difficulty to 10 - 14 and reconsider your choices.

It's easy to overlook, but the Expert really is good at skills in a way that makes that class stand apart. Serou doesn't have spells or arts, but he's always getting into ill-advised scrapes and jams, only to weasel out of them by a free reroll on one of his many skills. He feels like Bilbo in a way I haven't encountered in a thief class before: a loose cannon way in over his head, who's managed to survive with mysterious good luck.

The downside here though is that the skill list is a little loose. It's kind of cool that everything thief-related gets moved under "Sneak," but then there are some more mysterious choices. There's nothing that governs ropework, for instance, so we've kind of just moved ropework under "Sail," and decided that since Serou is a sailor, he's good at ropework. And then Sneak gets used a lot -- we're rolling Sneak for pick locks, disarm traps, hiding, and so on. And when we get to the little-used skills, it's a little tough to figure out what to use for instance "Lead" and "Trade" and "Connect" for. I guess maybe if they ended up in a city, and we wanted to run a city sandbox?

FOCUSES HAVE A BIG EFFECT

So aside from spells the big thing that really stands out are the focus choices. A focus is basically a feat, and you only get a few of them per character, maybe 5 at most. Each focus has two levels too, and if you specialize in a focus, it has an even bigger effect. These are focuses like "Poisoner" and "Artisan" -- Poisoner lets you craft basically infinite poison and antidotes which can deal tons of damage or insta-kill an enemy, while Artisan gives you huge leeway and advantages over the kinds of items and upgrades you can craft.

And crafting is a pretty chunky system in WWN -- you can make +1 weapons or weapons that emulate magical effects, or if you have the time and resources, you can craft just about anything you set your mind to. They've used crafting to create ladders when they don't have sufficient rope, or wheels for a wagon, or to repair a ruined gatehouse, or repair armor ruined by a rust monster. It's a nice way for the players to take some time to try to out-think a problem rather than just shoot it with spells or hit it with their sword.

Some of the other focuses are a little less interesting. There's a variation of the classic "Tough" feat which just gives you some extra hitpoints and lets you automatically stabilize at 0hp. Tempting when you're a fragile 1st level character but possibly not a lot of fun to play with.

HOWEVER:

There are some issues.

THE EXPERIENCE SYSTEM FEELS LIKE A COP OUT

Basically, you're supposed to just give your players a few XP per session as a good job reward. This rankles me as a matter of principle, so I've bolted on some other basic OD&D leveling system and give them XP for gold. It kind of contributes to my main problem with WWN which is that...

IT DOESN'T QUITE FEEL LIKE A COMPLETE GAME

It's really almost there. It has almost all of the components, and a lot of the stuff that any experienced DM needs to run a game. But there's this persistent sense of hmm this isn't quite a complete game. The monster section is very sketchy. The spell list is quite short, compared to D&D. The advanced classes are set aside in chapter 6, and implemented only as partial classes. I wish there was like, double the stuff. And of course, a lot of the stuff that's here is a conversion of D&D. So you've got Magic Missile and Fireball, they're just called "Coruscating Coffin" and "Howl of Light" or whatever, so they're just a little harder to remember what they do.

The XP thing particularly bugs me. It feels like a misunderstanding of what XP is doing in a game, and sidestepping it as a concept entirely feels like a misstep. XP isn't only a way for the game to change over time, it's pacing and reward. Gaining power should feel earned through struggle, not just by passively enduring a game.

MAN THERE'S A LOT OF TRACKING

One ration costs one encumbrance, but 7 rations cost 4 encumbrance. My players have evolved spreadsheets to track inventory and encumbrance and at times during hex exploration we've lost a lot of time just to ration tracking. We've managed to make it work by putting the onus on me to say "You have to eat," which I do every time they camp... but it's hard to remember. And then they try to forage, and forage a certain number of units of rations, which then gets converted into encumbrance and oftentimes immediately eaten. Ooh it's cumbersome.

And on top of that is system strain. System strain basically accrues every time you're healed, and when you're at max system strain, you can't heal anymore. You heal one system strain every time you rest. Can you see where I'm going with this? Basically it's just a lot of tracking. And for the most part, it doesn't matter. No one's ever run out of system strain.

I do like the encumbrance system though. Equipped and readied items have a different inventory than stowed items, and it's quite costly to retrieve a stowed item in combat, so players have to be smart about their inventory.

IT'S NOT D&D

Dungeons and Dragons simply has the juice. It has history and volumes and volumes of books and ideas to draw from. There's an endless fountain of inspiration to draw from in D&D. D&D can encompass almost anything -- it's such a wide net that it can cover a huge range of genres and move between them effortlessly. It can go from horror to comedy to high fantasy to gothic fantasy to sci fi and still feel like fantasy roleplaying. The iconic monsters and villains of D&D are touchstones that can inspire entire campaigns.

Combat in WWN is missing some of the rules I came to love in D&D. No critical hits? No death from massive damage? Fighting can sometimes miss some of the old excitement.

Worlds Without Number is a fantastic take on sci-fi sword and sorcery. A world where you can go from fighting ancient robots to activating an ancient star transfixer to entreating a barbarian atop a wyvern for assistance, and then fight a tentacled alien in a mist-filled forest. It's easy to imagine the rusted tombs and timeworn cities that fill this broken world.

On the other hand though... all of this stuff can exist in D&D.  But in a sci-fi game like this, it gets harder to expand out of sci fi into the kinds of myriad fantasy ideas that D&D supports, while in D&D, I find it easier to branch temporarily into sci fi and then flip back into whatever fantasy the session needs. At one point in D&D they spend a few sessions fighting Noise Marines in an electrified techno-pyramid, and everyone was just like "Okay, we're doing noise marines now," and when the next monster was a giant crawling mummy, that was no big deal either. In WWN, when they fought a dragon, we all had to think together like, "Wait... what does it mean for a dragon to exist in this world?" And it's a little bit of a struggle.

and maybe finally?

TEN LEVELS FEELS TOO SHORT

I know that a ten-level system is standard for a lot of OD&D and OSR hack games, so I wanted to see how it felt. And frankly it feels like way too much of a compression. I love the sprawling feeling that a 20-level system provides. In fact, I loved it so much I let my players level up to 26 before I put my foot down and sent us back to level 1. With a ten level system, it's hard to avoid, for me, a feeling of claustrophobia and a sense that, damn, we're almost done. They're getting close to level 5 and though I know there's a lot of raw XP to chew through before getting to level 10, it just looks to me like halfway there and I don't like it.

There's also just not much in between progression. You get your one art in a level or your one focus IF you're lucky, and most of the time it's a few skill points and an attack bonus. So in fact, there's maybe not a lot that changes level to level. It's meant to be more a sandbox maybe, and the characters are progressing laterally somehow? I'm actually not sure. That kind of goes back to my complaint about it not feeling like a complete game. 

I really want the experience of setting out on a grand adventure, and to have that sense that if you persevere through myriad trials, you'll see a number of adventures over your lifetime. In my D&D game--which lasted ten years mind you--they completed like ten dungeons and a 400+ room megadungeon and explored like 2-3 cities and traversed multiple wastelands and explored the sky in their Flying Fortress and went to Hell and so on and so forth. The Orostranthian Elf Mecha, a boss which took them 2-3 tries when they first fought it at level 10, MANY YEARS into the campaign, was eventually the kind of enemy they could surely handle multiples of at level 20 and then level 25, again, many years later. I love that sense of progression and history. Hitting level 3-4 feels appropriate for the players in my WWN game... IF it was a standard 20-level system. Almost halfway there feels like a letdown.

SO IN CONCLUSION

This is a fun, snappy, smart game with a lot to admire, but I'm not convinced it really meets my needs for a game. A nice experiment but ultimately will need something bolted onto it or vice versa to really work long-term. Really good game but not quite there, I think, for me!

The Keldwood

At the southern edges of Sardoom the Forgotten Curse, bordering the fetid lakes of Meregrave, Land of the Swollen Hand, sprawls a great forest which roams over the twisted and fractured landscape. The Keldwood held fast when the sun was shattered, and when the sun's shards were rekindled, it had grown an ancient stubbornness, and the creatures that dwelled there, now used to the darkness, burrowed deeper. The enchantments of Sardoom lie thickly on these southern forests, and the cursed who wander into its groves are lost, or transformed beyond recognition. A place lost both to Sardoom, and to the regions without it.

what if there were a few more status effects?

 D&d 5e has some decent status effects, they're pretty significant and kind of make sense. They all pretty much impose disadvantage to something in some way or another, they made it that way to be easy to remember, I guess. But I really like long lists of obscure status effects that you have to cross-reference and imagine what they do, so let's make a bunch just for fun.

Madness - you've succumbed to the madness of the cosmos. +4 to attacks and damage of any spells or powers that involve starlight, summoning demons or aberrations. advantage on knowledge checks about the cosmos.  you can't sleep, make a DC 15 wisdom check to get a good night's sleep. disadvantage on charisma checks with people unaffected by madness. disadvantage on saving throws to resist mind-affecting powers.

Out-of-it -  something's on your mind ... -4 on saves to maintain concentration, -4 on checks to do anything that takes longer than a minute. -2 on saves versus mind-affecting.

Stressed - -2 on strength and constitution checks, -2 on saving throws to resist mind-affecting powers.

Sadness - -1 on attacks. You are unable to rage, make music, or create. 

Fury - an otherworldly anger fills your mind, clouding your judgment. +2 to melee attack and damage, +4 to strength checks. When you hit, roll an additional d20, and on a 20, you crit. you must make a DC 15 wisdom check when you interact with an NPC, on failure, go berserk and try to kill them

Suppressed - All magic originating from you deals -5 damage, has -5 to attacks, and saves against your spells are at +5.

Insanity - your mind has broken under strain. you can only run, cower, scream, gibber, or make a single melee attack without any class powers. 

Minor Hallucinating - you're seeing random visions out of the corner, it's distracting and you're freaked out. -4 to Perception checks and -4 to Wisdom saving throws, and disadvantage on any saves to avoid fear effects.

Major Hallucinating - you're seeing some crazy shit all over the place. Disadvantage on all attacks and ability checks, and -4 to Perception and Wisdom saves on top of that. If you make an attack, you have a flat 25% chance of missing before you even get to roll because you're so confused.

Envenomed - you've been bit or stung by something poisonous and it hurts like crazy. Attacks and ability checks are at disadvantage (like with poison), and speed is at -10. Your speech is slurred so talking is hard, so casting spells requires a Check with your spellcasting ability at DC 10.

Fatally Envenomed - your blood is coagulating or something. Attacks and ability checks are at -10. Movement reduced to 5' and you have to succeed on a Strength check DC 15 to stand up as an action. Every hour, make a Constitution save DC 10, if you fail you die. Also every hour the check gets worse by 4. 

Short-sighted - Blind against anything further than 5 feet from you

Finger-snapped - one or more of your fingers are broken. -10 on attacks and checks involving your hands

Hobbled - your feet or legs are damaged somehow. Your speed is reduced by some amount (5-30 depending on the industry) and you get a -4 to acrobatics, athletics, and dexterity checks. You also tire easily - if you walk more than a mile, you automatically gain the Tired effect as well.

Hamstrung - your hamstring is severed and you're hamstrung. Speed is reduced to 1/4 and the pain is crippling, -4 to attacks, checks, and Dexterity saves. This can only be cured with a healing spell that involves a successful Wisdom check DC 18.

Frozen - you're frozen solid in a block of ice. you're aware but you can't move, you can maybe speak to move your lips but you can't move your hands. You're restrained. Until the ice is broken, you're immune to physical attacks. The ice has AC 10 - 20 and like 10 - 80 HP, and any extra damage spills over to you. You have resistance to magic damage.

Bonked - you've been bonked on the head and don't feel good. -8 to attacks, checks, and Dexterity, Strength, and Intelligence saving throws. 

Sleepy - -1 to perception checks and checks involving staying still for more than ten minutes. If you fail one of those checks, you fall asleep.

Stigmata - you've been blessed by a god and you have open bleeding wounds somewhere on your body. -2 to any checks involving the open wounds, including attacking with weapons if they're on your hands. Blood from your wounds counts as holy water.

Dimly-glowing - you radiate dim light in a 5' radius. You're visible in darkness so hiding in darkness impossible, and at -2 otherwise.

Spider-infested - you're infested with spider-babies just under your skin. You're severely itchy, so -2 to ability checks, but -4 to Charisma checks because your skin is mottled and alarming-looking. Every round, roll a d6. On a 1, spiders burst from your skin, dealing 1d6 points of damage, and you must have a DC 15 concentration check or fail whatever you're currently doing (concentrate spell, hold a sail rigging, shave, etc). If you're fighting, then you attacks are at disadvantage and -4.

Dissolving - your flesh is melting off!!  You take double damage from all sources. You have disadvantage to attack and disadvantage on concentration checks for spells. At the end of every round, you take severe damage and your condition gets worse:

    (Cumulative extra status-effects): Movement halved -> Movement set to 0 -> Blind -> Unable to take actions -> Dead

GHYLAK THE MANY-MOTHER (boss fight stats)

 Here's an example of a tough boss I ran for my players this week. They spent the last few sessions searching through the swamps of the Lower Citadel for her, and I thought she was maybe going to be too tough to take down but they got her. This was run according to 5e rules, with the new estus healing we've been doing.

THE MANY-MOTHER

In her full radiance, she creates innumerable witches, which scatter like dandelion seeds across the air. They are barely intelligent, shrieking, laughing, naked women, they sleep in dirty piles, they burn and torture the living. But she is a goddess of the old age and she loves her children.

art by Frank Besancon

CR 28

Size huge (15x15)

HP 700

AC 28

Saves: Strength +10, Dexterity +10, Constitution +10, Intelligence +12, Wisdom +14, Charisma +14

Movement: Fly 80, Teleport 40, Walk 40

Immunities: Charm, Mind-Affecting, Movement Reduction, Disease

Defenses:

- The first time on every turn that someone approaches within 20', she can teleport 40' for free

- When she hits 350 hp, a divine aura surrounds her which makes her invulnerable to all damage until the end of her next turn. Arrows and projectiles that enter the aura turn to frogs or lizards, energy or magic turns to harmless swamp mud, melee users must make a Strength check DC 20 or the weapon goes flying the other direction 100'. Furthermore, all dead witches that she's created during combat come back to life with half-health.

- She's riding on a ram (or is it a goat?), but they are one divine entity. She can't be dismounted and any damage done to the ram just damages the goddess as a whole. 

Attacks:

- Shoot four rays of moonlight, range 200' or 600' with disadvantage, +16 for 8d8+10 radiant damage each

- If an enemy is within 20', her ram can also shout, causing an enemy's flesh to strip off. Attack +16 for 10d6 slashing damage.

- When she lands after flying for any distance, an shockwave explodes from the ram's hooves. This is a 20' radius, everyone has to make a Dexterity save DC 24 or take 4d10 damage and be knocked down.

-  (Recharge 1/2): She can cause an enemy to explode. A single target must make a DC 26 Con save or take 30d12 damage, save for half. If this brings you to 0 hp, you instantly die as you explode into bloody chunks.

Legendary actions (taken during player turn, after a player acts):

- (Every round) Spawn 1d4 witches, which bud and fall from her arms. They land prone and can act immediately on the enemy turn.

HP 80, AC 10, Fly 60'. Attacks: Shoot a fireball, DC 19' Dex save or 8d6 damage in 20' radius (standard fireball), or melee touch +12, then a DC 18 Wisdom save or be paralyzed, save at end of turn to end.

Then only one:

 - (Recharge on 1/2/3 out of d6): Kill a witch within 80' of her and heal for 8d10 hitpoints.

OR

- (Recharge on 1/2 out of d6): Command all in a 120' cone to bow. They must make a DC 22 Wisdom save or bow with their face pressed to the ground. This leaves them prone and probably blind until the end of their turn.

When she dies, she falls off her ram and transforms back into her crone form. She is helpless and has one hitpoint in this form, and she begs for mercy.

more monsters from the monster manual I haven't done

 continuing 

Brownie

Oh no, this picture. Okay so they're like miniature, somewhat more primitive hobbits with basic illusory magic. These are the fairies that can repair anything with their magic tools. Sometimes they act as fairy-tale house elves for some reason.

Well, if we're going the fairy-folk route, the first thing that needs to happen is they need to be unpredictable and strange. I like fairy stuff when they force you to play by bizarre and arbitrary rules, like, oh I can help you, but first you have to, like, walk counter-clockwise around the hill seven times. That's from a story I read growing up about a girl who gets kidnapped by the goblin king because she accidentally threw her ball into the fairy-world somehow. 

But brownies? I'm imagining weird little guys who follow around elves in the woods, they have faces that change shape arbitrarily. I always have the impression that brownies specifically are made from wood, bark, and moss, though I'm not sure what to do with that.

I like the idea maybe of brownies that have sort of enslaved random villagers out in the wilderness. They show up offering to fix their stuff, but the more stuff they fix, the more stuff breaks. Then after a while the house is full of brownies, like a party where too many people show up, and then they start getting violent, in a teasing playful kind of way, until eventually the victims find themselves doing the slave work. And the brownies won't leave. 

For the kilmoulis, they're just smaller versions of brownies. I don't mind there being different sizes and versions of brownies. These ones are specifically rat-like, sounds like they steal food. Maybe they have a similar disposition, they beg for food, but if you feed them, more and more show up, and when you refuse, they eat you.

Bugbear

Don't think I've done a bugbear either. "Giant, hairy cousins of goblins . . . bugbears are large and very muscular, standing 7' tall." My players would try to fuck them probably. So they are bestial in appearance, bear-like, with a strong sense of smell. The Monster Manual specifies that they live in caves, which I reject.

Not sure what to do with this. I'm not generally very interested in humanoid tribalist monsters, they're boring and played out, and there's not much to differentiate these guys. I don't even like the picture, he actually looks very proper and noble, like a knight that's been transformed.

Well, I definitely can't imagine more than two bugbears. God, even the name is bad. 

I can imagine some far off lord employing these guys. Maybe there's just one. He doesn't need to justify his appearance, he came out of the wilderness, he knows how to fight. He's some kind of goblin, I don't know. His eyes are reflective in the dark, he smells too well . . . it's kind of shading over into wolf-man, to be honest.

The best I can imagine is maybe having a couple of these guys as background characters at a monster keep. If all the inhabitants are a different kind of goblin, skeleton, vampire, fairy-creature, or whatever, having a couple bugbears drinking at a table in the great hall seems natural. Like a one-off alien in Star Wars.

Bulette

I did a bulette once in high school and regretted it, the idea seemed so cool when I was 15 but as soon as he came out and started fighting I realized how lame he actually was. A shark with legs that burrows? The monster manual even specifies that his name is pronounced "Boo-lay" which makes it even more laughable. It's French? Come on.

Breath of the Wild did a good version in the desert, what was it, tortuga or something? Molduga. That one however is finned and swims through sand, which is much more palatable. The bulette specifically tunnels through dirt somehow. Honestly, I'm not even a fan of regular sharks. What's scary to me about sharks is that they're just passively out there in the water and you can't really see them, and they're much more mobile than you -- you're in their environment, you're the intruder, and they have the advantage. 

Now I read a bunch of shark attack accounts and I'm creeped out but now closer to figuring out how to translate that to a landshark. I just doesn't work. Moving on!

Bullywug

Ah, frog-men. Frog-men are great when they worship alien outer gods and have utterly terrifying, alien, implacable expressions as they kill you. I've done slaad and frog-demons but I'm not sure I've done frog-men, and if so, I've missed out. 

Cat, great

Big cats. I'm a little tired of the claw/claw/bite of great cats. But each great cat is interesting and charismatic in different ways so I'll try to go through them.

Cheetah

Apparently they are actually quite small. Now, it's hard to imagine a place where a cheetah would exist in my world. Lanky, family oriented, warm. I can actually imagine a cheetah-man, a pleasant, warm-blooded guy, lean and harsh, very far from home.

Jaguar

Pretty sure I've done these. Jaguars are so magical, it's easy to imagine them talking. 

Leopard

done

Lion

Lions are lame. The only suitable lion I can imagine is an old, dusty, lion pelt... even that kind of diminishes the world somehow. Aslan kind of killed lions. I do like the idea of rogue lions, I've heard some very scary stories out of India. The lion is the land version of the shark, for sure. Maybe a lion that's doing something entirely unnatural, it slithers, or burrows, or walks on its hind legs even though it's still a cat. A lion that's learned to do something it's not supposed to, I kind of like that idea. 

Mountain lion

These are fine. I'm okay with regular mountain lions existing in the mountains.

Spotted lion

Did they really have to include this? Moving on.

Giant lynx

"Prefers cold coniferous and scrub forest . . . the giant lynx never attacks men . . . they can communicate in their own language with others of its kind." What were they on to here? Anyway, this reminds me a little bit of the giant stork. I'm okay with a giant lynx moving through the cold, foggy, snow-laden coniferous forest, distant as a spirit. It will not be speaking and I imagine it's intelligent enough to know now to attack adventurers. I'm okay with this.

Tiger

Yes, I did blue dream tigers at one point. Okay.

Smilodon

It just seems over the top. Do tigers REALLY need giant fangs to be even more threatening? They just look goofy. If they players even traveled back in time, it wouldn't be sabre-toothed tigers, it would be proto-demons and primordial dragons and shit. Sabre-toothed tigers are too reminiscent of cave-men, and I prefer imagining early humans as more or less like us, but in savage and early Conan-like civilizations, with wars that lasted millennia, building forgotten cities on top of the the ruins of even earlier forgotten cities. As soon as a sabre-tooth tiger shows up, all the cliches are crowding behind it -- animal skins, fires, caves, cave drawings, etc, and for what? A +2 to attack and damage? 

Part of the appeal of the sabre tooth tiger is the implication that tigers used to be even worse. This is already undercut in a game of dungeons and dragons by the existence of, like, dragons.

However, if the players did happen to travel deep into dusty badlands, fought past the legions of flightless birds etc. and came upon a savage warrior queen who happened to have a couple sabre-tooth tigers, maybe that would be okay.

Cat, small

I've put so many cats in my game.

Domestic? Check. Wild? Check. Elven...?

Yeah, no. Cats are already elf-like, adding "elven" on top is just killing it. The elf cats speak elven, are slightly psychic, can cast enlarge and trip, etc ... I don't know man. I'm okay with a cat having like a 2% chance of responding if you talk to it, that starts tipping the game into haruki murakami but that's okay. But I can't wrap my head around an elf cat legitimately existing. I'm gonna pass.

Catoblepas

Never done these. Monstrously ugly monsters that shoot death rays out of their eyes.

Maybe it's just so ugly that looking at it kills you. I like the detail that it seeks out fresh meat under the full moon. It probably goes into lonely old couples' houses, reveals itself, and then eats them, and makes their house its lair. It gets overgrown by the swamp and the catoblepas trambles everything down like a stupid but malicious animal. I'm okay with this.

Cave fisher

I do kind of like the idea of a crunchy exo-skeletal spider-crab perched in a crevice dangling a long silvery thread down, and when you touch it, you're anchored to it inexorably. It would have to be something that's mechanically really overwhelming, so it feels like you're really trapped. I like very obvious traps that are horribly punishing if you decide against your better judgment to interact with it -- this could be like that. You're pulled upwards and at the top you see the giant bug that's about to eat you, with black glittery eyes, too many claws, fibrous hairs sticking off, it pulls you into its crevice... Sure I'm down.

I also like that they're a predator animal, so there could be, like, a lot of them. You wander into some ruins deep under ground and there are these threads dangling everywhere. I like it when bug wildlife is just too profuse, it's disgusting. So this could play off that also.

Centar

Never done a centaur. They're just too fuckable. Hot, sexy, hairy centaur men with giant horse dicks? On the other end of the spectrum, they're just kind of twee and whimsical, just really magical guys that live, like, in the forest? I'm going to have to think about this. I'll pick it up next time.