Wherein I Roll Up A Character For Gabor Lux's Helvéczia

István the 2nd Level Hungarian Soldier.

 
Helvéczia by Gabor Lux, is a picaresque fantasy role-playing game. What is picaresque? A blurb from the back of the book:

A re-imagination of old-school fantasy role-playing in a late 17th century Switzerland that never was, Helvéczia is a fast-paced and colourful game of guns, dames, deviltry and steel, based on swashbuckling tales, penny dreadfuls, local legends, and the strange stories of the Brothers Grimm.

There's no way to digest this game so quickly, but I did make a character...

Starting with stats,  I rolled using the recommended method of 4d6 drop the lowest, just one set, you're allowed to roll two sets and choose the better:

Strength: 17 (+2)

Dexterity: 11

Constitution: 12 (+1)

Intelligence: 11

Wisdom: 17 (+2)

Charisma: 10

Strong and wise. 

Being a soldier (subclass of fighter) he gets a +1 to combat and the ability to carry over damage if his attack reduces someone to 0 hit points.

Melee Total: +7 (fighter, strength, soldier, Hungarian)

Ranged Total: +3

There are three saves: Bravery, Deftness, and Temptation. Bravery is his prime, the other two are secondary.

Bravery: +4 (con)

Deftness: +1 (dex)

Temptation: +3 (wis)

Hit Points: 20 (2d10 + con/ max 10 at 1st level)

Initiative: 0

Armor Class: 15(17 in Melee -- Hungarian) -- Cuirass. I put this poor guy into debt twice just so he could have a cuirass! Who does he owe? The Rotschilds? The Lehmanns? Goldmann-Sachs? Those names sound familiar?

I made him Hungarian as a tribute to the author. This gives him some combat bonuses but also some ill fate, -2 to a random save each adventure. 

Virtue: 11 (middle of the road, which way will István go?)

Skills: I chose Climb, Ride, and Medicine. They are soldierly.

Climb: +4

Ride: +2

Medicine: +4

A halberd for a weapon: 1d10+2 damage, critical: x3

Money Left: 3 Gold Thalor

And there you have it. István, the 2nd level Hungarian Soldier, in debt, off to adventure in the Switzerland that never was. Probably tired of the Ottomans.

A few days ago, after being gone from my house all day, I returned to find an upright package on my porch leaning against the siding. 

It had been raining ALL DAY.

It was one of the books I've been waiting on, but my heart sank, as in my gut I knew that it was Helvéczia! All thoughts exited my head as I quickly entered my domain to check the damage, for I have had a poorly packaged book, by a well known author, completely and utterly destroyed by rain before. It was promptly replaced by a better packaged one, and that creator will remain anonymous as I'm not trying to embarrass anyone. 

This package was soaked!!!!!

Miraculously, Helvéczia survived unscathed. What a relief!!! My mind was blown at my fortune!

And then it was blown again by the contents of the game. Just check out this spread...

Well done, Gabor, well done.

BTW you can purchase Helvéczia here: https://emdt.bigcartel.com/

DATE OF EXPIRATION -- Preview

Cover could change, but probably not.

This is the main project I've been working on...

Below are two sample pages (sans the actual info) the first of which includes the dungeon doodle that sparked this whole thing. There are 43 sections like these and each section usually has multiple rooms and corridors. After I drew them, I pieced them together, forming a massive tower complex, and then set about making sense of it all.

And from my first tease...

I've drawn tons of art for this; the dungeon itself is art. 

Stats will be generic OSR like I've done before, e.g., (Armor: as plate.) 

The book I tend to reference the most for stats, spells, and such is the Rules Cyclopedia.

Levels are tentatively 4-7.

Shooting for the Fall...

Knock! Issue 2 Is Live On Kickstarter!

Here we go again!

If you were a fan of Knock! Issue One, Knock! Issue Two looks every bit as good if not better!

More OSR goodness from around the blogosphere!

The first Knock! kickstarter had the fastest turn-around for a kickstarter that I've ever seen and this one looks to do the same! 

CLICK HERE!!!!!!!

A Little Nod To Basic Fantasy

 Haven't drawn a hot dwarf in a while!

The four books below, 1 hardback, 3 soft covers, cost me a total of $26.45. 

• Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game
• The Basic Fantasy Field Guide of Creatures Malevolent and Benign
• The Basic Fantasy Equipment Emporium
• Morgansfort: The Western Lands Campaign.

All you need to play D&D, literally, for years. 

And, the PDFs are all actually FREE to download (along with optional races, classes, adventures, spells, etc.) at: https://www.basicfantasy.org/

I like to reward such efforts with a physical purchase. Plus, I prefer books.

Most of you know Basic Fantasy already, but I make this post on the off chance that you do not.

So, Basic Fantasy's been around for a while, why am I only buying it now? Not sure. It popped into my head recently, as things do... actually, I was thinking about saving throws and different ways to do them and I seemed to remember that Basic Fantasy saving throws followed a different progression than B/X, BECMI, or AD&D.

One thing that bothers me (well, "bothers" is actually too strong a term) about old-school D&D is that your saving throws don't progress more smoothly.

Even if you're aware of Basic Fantasy's existence, you might not know how it actually differs from the game it clones (mainly B/X) and how it differs from other clones. Some things I noticed after a quick glance:

• Race and Class are separate: 4 races, 4 classes. More options can be found at their website.
• Turn Undead uses a d20, not 2d6 (but 2d6 is used to determine the number of undead.)
• Individual initiative.
• Slightly (and I mean slightly) different spell list.
• Sleep allows a saving throw.
• Every 2 levels, 2-4 of your 5 Saving Throws improve by 1, sometimes 2.
• Class levels are 1-20.
• Energy Drain gives "negative level" penalties, but not actual loss of levels.
• Scale Armor is considered better than Chain Mail. (In the Equipment Emporium)
• Dragon Breath is based off Hit Dice not Hit Points.
• Demons & Devils are called Infernals. (In the Field Guide)
• Gold for XP is listed in the optional rules section (as are customizable thief skills.)
• NO ALIGNMENT. 

A solid clone.

And it's easily the best bang for your buck.

Papers & Paychecks!

3rd-level Fashion Model
Stress: 9, Poise: 16

We daydream about the apocalypse.

We fantasize about danger.

We pretend we could take it.

But in a crazy world that seems to be on the verge of catastrophe every single day, eventually the shit will hit the fan and those of us that remain may find ourselves longing for less adventure as we relax to a nice ol' game of...

Papers & Paychecks!*

Yes, a game where you play as a 3rd-level Engineer, a 1st-level Plummer, a 4th-level Lawyer, a 5th-level Accountant, a 6th-level Nurse...

• Hit Points are called Stress. You would lose Stress by failing rolls. Reaching 0 Stress might result in a nervous breakdown or some such thing that causes you to retreat from society.

• Narcotics temporarily restore Stress at the risk of addiction and/or death.

• Armor Class is called Poise, perhaps affected by your level and fashion accessories.

• Dungeons would be events -- parties, weddings, conventions, disasters, vacations, etc. They might be a flow-chart, a point-crawl, or randomly rolled occurrences (challenges) interrupted by periodic preordained incidents. Longer, more stressful events would have a fixed number of minimum challenges.

• Saving Throws might be:

• Disease
• Toxins
• Injury
• Depression
• Lust
• Peer Pressure

• Getting fired from your job might result in negative levels, much like energy-drain, or at least pause your advancement.

• Getting arrested might cause a mandatory dip into the Criminal class. 

• Failed rolls in prison or war cause twice as much Stress.

• Marriage, divorce, and children would be things that happen to you along the way that have both pros and cons that assist or hurt you with this roll or that.

• Character Sheets would definitely look like job applications or tax forms.

• Aging would come with both boons and banes.

So, after a long day of scavenging for food and dodging what few bullets remain, cozy up to that warm fire in that make-shift shelter with a few of your surviving pals. Grab those strange looking dice you found in that burned-out town (who knows how those unused notebooks and pencils survived!) Roll up some career-folk and see if you can handle the day-to-day angst and stress of normal life in...

Papers & Paychecks!*

Almost sounds fun.

*See pg. 111 of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide for inspiration.

RIFTS: Dial O For Operator

Still working away at something, but can't neglect the blog, so...

RIFTS Operators...

I wonder how many people have played an Operator?

They're basically just mechanics. Regular folks good at fixing stuff. They'll die in M.D.C. combat immediately. And they won't last terribly long in S.D.C. combat either. Unless you gear them up in either case. Which kind of makes sense, because gear is what they do.

They should almost be a necessity for any RIFTS group, just like the thief is (or should be) a necessity for any group of dungeon-crawlers.

You see, if you don't know, JUNK is all over RIFTS earth. Old junk, new junk, alien junk, all kinds of junk. In fact, if any setting needs a plethora upon plethora of random tables for what you find in this ruined town or that battlefield, it's RIFTS.

A good GM should be littering broken, but potentially useful items (weapons, vehicles, armor, etc.) of all sizes all over the place...specifically for the Operator to shine. Not everything will get fixed (or fixed in time) some rolls will fail, but the Operator will always be busy and could become a cherished member of the group.

Imagine they find some ungodly cool thing that's going to take awhile to fix, but it's in a dangerous place with lots of random encounters. How many fights are the PCs willing to risk while the Operator tinkers with this thing? (The Operator get's to fight too of course.)

The younger me wouldn't have looked twice at this class, but now (especially after I drew that pic) I'm digging it.

BTW, Palladium has been printing hard-covers of their rulebooks and they have a special hard-cover reprinting of RIFTS 1st Edition coming very soon. I've preordered one. That iconic Splugorth Slave Barge cover by Keith Parkinson....damn, if that doesn't fire up your imagination...

Back to writing.

And drawing.

A Teaser Of Sorts...

This is not the title or the cover.

...for what I'm working on.

Sat idle for a year.

Back at it with a vengeance.

Closing in on 80 pages.

It's a very unique thing. 

And then there's this guy...

Marvel (FASERIP) Praise + Revised Character Sheets

Opal. See stats below.

So there I was, experimenting with different ways to draw dungeons, when out of the blue, Marvel popped into my head, and stayed there (such is my brain.) I should redesign the character sheet, I thought...again. Make it more user friendly. Put the charts (Universal Table) directly onto the sheet. People don't really like charts any more. They can be very useful, but the Holy Grail of game design -- well, charts don't seem to belong.

But Marvel Super Heroes (FASERIP) is the greatest super-hero role-playing game ever made. Even though I played it to death, haven't touched it in years, having moved on to Heroes Unlimited or some variation there-of, including whole systems invented by yours truly (should post them here one day.) I now feel that no game captured comics like Marvel did.

Next thing you know, it's 3 A.M. and my sheet's been redesigned, with variations over the next couple of days. I guess the dungeons will have to wait a minute.

Marvel Super Heroes is such a solid game, they could republish it today with minimal tweaks. Our young minds didn't appreciate the finer details enough. We never used the defensive maneuvers (how cool is block? -- granted I would use it more proactively than rules-as-written) and we weren't all that creative with our powers -- some of which need to be fleshed out a bit more and given more practical use examples. 

Another thing Marvel could've done better is character creation. As it stands, it's completely random -- which is a good thing, I love making sense of random rolls, but, there should be more archetypes available. Something like this:

01-20  Altered Human

            01-50   Experiment

                                01-60  Super-Soldier (usually no powers, but very good stats + weapons)

                                61-80  Altered Form (animal, plant, mineral, etc.)

                                81-00  Random Powers

            51-00   Accident

                                01-50  Altered Form (animal, plant, mineral, etc.)

                                51-00  Random Powers

21-40  Mystic   

            01-40   Martial Artist (plenty of fighting talents, limited selection of mystic abilities)

            41-70   Sorcerer (quite a few lower powered powers "spells")  

            71-00   Mystically Bestowed

                                01-30  Random Powers

                                31-80  Magic Weapon/Item

                                81-00  Altered Form (animal, plant, mineral, etc.)

41-60  Mutant

            01-30   Altered Form (animal, plant, mineral, etc.)

            31-50   Experiment (Random Power + a cybernetic or two.)

            51-00   Random Powers 

61-80  Hi-Tech

            01-40   Power Suit (roll on list of powers commonly found in battle armor)

            41-70   Gadgeteer (each power is a separate gadget)

            71-00   Cybernetics (roll on list of enhancements)

81-90  Robot

            01-20   Swarm

            21-60   Android -Human Form (random powers)

            61-80   Non-Human Form

            81-00   Transforming

91-00  Alien

            01-20   Altered Form (animal, plant, mineral, etc.)

            21-80   Alien race (list of strange beings, multiple eyes, arms, etc.)

            81-00   Myth or Legend

There's tons of fan stuff for FASERIP out there. Many have expanded the universal table to include new in-between ranks such as: Awesome, Fantastic, Sensational, etc. I've looked into this before, but now I feel that it isn't necessary. I always felt Monstrous as a descriptor didn't quite fit. If I had to replace it from the list below, I'd probably choose Sensational.  Anyhow, here's a list of words you could use if you're looking to expand:

• Awesome
• Marvelous
• Outstanding
• Uncanny
• Magnificent
• Sensational
• Spectacular
• Astonishing
• Fantastic
• Impressive
• Astounding
• Exceptional
• Stunning

And if you wanted to play a horror themed Marvel game you could rename the ranks from the following list:

• Dreadful
• Horrendous
• Terrible
• Ghastly
• Unspeakable
• Atrocious
• Shocking
• Pathetic
• Nightmarish
• Awful
• Eerie
• Abominable
• Lousy
• Alarming
• Daunting
• Formidable
• Harrowing
• Distressing
• Terrifying
• Ungodly
• Mundane
• Maniacal
• Demented
• Beyond
• Unreal
• Ridiculous

Let's give it a whirl:

• Feeble -- Pathetic (2)
• Poor -- Lousy (4)
• Typical -- Mundane (6)
• Good -- Formidable (10)
• Excellent -- Daunting (20)
• Remarkable -- Alarming (30)
• Incredible -- Shocking (40)
• Amazing --  Ghastly (50)
• Monstrous -- Maniacal (75)
• Unearthly -- Horrific (100)
• Shift X -- Abominable (150)
• Shift Y -- Unspeakable (200)
• Shift Z -- Beyond (500)

An oddity with the Universal Table: Shift X and Shift Y are almost identical. First of all, in my humble opinion, Shift Y should be 250, not 200. A yellow success should be 36, not 41, and Shift Z's yellow should be 31, not 36. Ignore what this does to the Class 1000 side of things -- those ranks are pointless to regular super-hero game-play.

No creation charts allowed you to roll up really powerful characters -- Unearthly and up (not even the Ultimate Powers Book.) But you could use a chart like this:

01-10  Good (10)

11-20  Excellent (20)

21-35  Remarkable (30)

36-55  Incredible (40)

56-70  Amazing (50)

71-80  Monstrous (75)

81-90  Unearthly (100)

91-94  Shift X (150)

95-99  Shift Y (200) or (250)

   00    Shift Z (500)

Or if you want to limit things to Shift X...

01-05  Typical (6)

06-15  Good (10)

16-25  Excellent (20)

26-45  Remarkable (30)

46-65  Incredible (40)

66-80  Amazing (50)

81-90  Monstrous (75)

91-98  Unearthly (100)

99-00  Shift X (150)

The Character Sheets!

In order to make the result table fit, I combined the Blunt & Edge, Fighting & Agility results columns into one. This means you can now Slam with a throwing blunt attack. Which actually fits -- how many times have you seen Cap's thrown Shield or Thor's flying Hammer slam an opponent into the next area? How about a certain cinematic manhole cover? -- "Superman...!"

This was the first revision. The idea was to record the numbers you need to roll for each color feat, per ability...

Marvel FASERIP Revised A

Then I decided to simply include a condensed version of the whole Universal Table showing the rolls needed for every rank...

Marvel FASERIP Revised B

And then I added lines...

Marvel FASERIP Revised C

And here's a sample character named Opal, an entity from the Darkforce Dimension -- that's all we know, that's all we'll ever know, because mysterious is better, every time. For a randomly rolled character, she makes a lot of sense. She can't control the Darkforce like Cloak, but she can generate it, and that stunning option is enormously powerful -- stun your opponent for 1d10 rounds if they fail their endurance roll. Yikes! I would allow and endurance roll every round to snap out of it. Maybe I would change it to touch only (she reaches an ethereal Darkforce hand inside you and grasps your heart...!) She makes a good villain, dangerous, and if she starts to lose, Bamph! -- she's gone to the Darkforce Dimension --she has to roll for that, of course.

And Martial Arts D allows her to slam and stun opponents with body armor who take no actual damage from the attack (I would ignore the fact that you're supposed to study your target for 2 rounds first, hate that kind of crap.) Very useful considering she only has typical strength, i.e., if she ever finds herself unable to generate Darkforce blasts. This Talent is an example of something we almost certainly overlooked or forgot while playing.

So play some Marvel, have a blast! And remember, when villains win, they usually leave the hero lying battered and unconscious in a dark alley or they capture them and leave them unattended in some sort of death trap. Playing one-on-one? -- introduce a new hero who has to rescue the first one (guest starring, the Marvelous _________!)

And keep track of the villains that you've captured, who are now locked up in a super-max facility. When in need of a random encounter, create a random breakout table. No need to explain how...

Could look something like this:

  1  Doctor Octopus  

  2  Vulture

  3  Scorpion

  4  Electro

  5  Sandman

  6  Hobgoblin

  7  Speed Demon

  8  Hydro-Man

  9  Roll Twice

10  Everyone on this list!

And what are they doing...?

  1  Robbing a bank  

  2  Hunting Spider-Man

  3  Hunting __________

  4  Building a new Secret Base

  5  Recruiting henchmen

  6  Raiding a scientific laboratory

  7  Planting a bomb

  8  Holding a hostage

  9  Marauding maniacally

10  Whereabouts unknown...

Their Secret Base is...

  1  In the sewers  

  2  The top floor of a sky-scraper

  3  An abandoned warehouse

  4  Underwater

  5  Basement of an old house

  6  A penthouse apartment

  7  A mobile truck or van

  8  A junkyard

  9  An old factory

10  Hidden in an iconic landmark

It's Clobberin' Time!

Making Daggers A Deadly Option

The dagger is an iconic symbol of death.

Yes, it's also a tool used to cut and skin, but it's main purpose, as a dagger and not a knife, is to kill.

At 1d4 points of damage, good luck with that. Even at low levels, unless you score a critical hit, your opponent is not going down. Now, that does make sense. There's a reason warriors took swords and axes and maces and spears into battle, and not daggers. They all had daggers, though, just in case.

As did/does every single D&D character ever made. You always buy a dagger. Always.

You almost never use said dagger. Even if you're a wizard of some sort. When most editions allow quarterstaffs/staffs (staves) to do 1d6 points of damage, a dagger is pointless. As an aside, I would argue that if a spear does 1d6, a staff should only do 1d4.

Anyhow...

The fact that daggers were an important tool for the heavily armored knight is starting to show up in cinema. Two knights dueling with long weapons, swords, poleaxes and such, would mainly do so to tire each other out. The idea seems to have been, to exhaust or overpower your opponent, knock them prone, pull out your dagger and go for the kill. Many knight duels turned into armored wrestling matches. Lacking a time machine, such is only my current impression.

One game out there expressed this well: Pendragon by the late Greg Stafford. In Pendragon, if you make a successful grapple attack, you can get in close and stab with a dagger at weak points in your opponent's armor. Mechanically, armor is damage reduction, which is cancelled out by daggers if you have successfully grappled your foe. Since damage is mainly based on strength and not weapon, your dagger has just become very deadly indeed.

The drawback to grappling is that it's not that easy to pull off.

Let's import this to D&D.

First you need to grapple, dagger in hand. Ignore armor class for this. A grapple should be a contested "to-hit" roll with longer weapons having advantage (or +4 to hit.) If you're using Thac0, you'll need to figure out your actual "to-hit" bonus. You may allow someone to add their shield bonus to the roll, but once grappled, that person will have to drop their shield, or that bonus becomes a penalty. Strength bonuses also apply.

A grappling attempt, successful or not, is your turn spent for that round. If you succeed, your opponent may spend their round trying to escape (another contested roll) or trying to hurt you (also a contested grappling roll, doing unarmed damage) or, if they're holding a dagger, they can attempt, as you were attempting, a killing blow -- which is most likely in the form of stabbing the throat. Another option, if you've been grappled and aren't wielding a dagger, but would like to grab yours instead of trying to escape, simply make a contested grappling roll. Note for contested grappling rolls, you can not use any bonuses gained from non-dagger weapons, i.e., no matter how magical your longsword is or how proficient you are with it, it's useless to you when making grappling rolls. An argument could be made on behalf of short swords.

Killing Blow: Another contested grappling roll. If you succeed, your opponent must save vs. death or be killed instantly. If they make their save vs. death, you merely do the usual 1d4 dagger damage.

This might seem too deadly, but four rolls must go your way for it to work: Your first grapple, their resistance to that, your killing blow, and their saving throw. Also, this maneuver is much less likely to succeed against higher level/HD characters due to them having better death saves.

It brings some grit to your games. It adds some of that classic "dishonor" to daggers, and it puts just a touch of fear into the hearts of heavily armored knights when someone decides to fight dirty. 

This shouldn't be allowed against non-humanoids and larger humanoids. 

Unless of course, you want it to...

Rifts: To Juice Or Not To Juice?

What is it that you need...?

Revenge?

Money?

Freedom?

Adventure?

What price are you willing to pay...?                                                                                                               

And so you paid...

And now your body, filled with nanobots and cabled with drug-pumping tubes, is capable of astounding feats that defy the limits of humanity. You are cold and efficient -- very efficient. You're so fucking fast. The battlefield around you moves in slow-motion. It's almost too easy. 

So hard to kill. You don't tire for days and when you do sleep, well, it's barely a nap.

The juice has made you the perfect super-soldier.

And after 5 years your heart will explode.

Thanks for your service.

Juicer.

Hope it was worth it.

And now, some Juicer death mechanics, for which, there really are none. Juicer Uprising has a table to roll on when you reach your final year, detailing symptoms of the end such as the shakes and memory loss, but nothing that signifies death itself or even when that final year actually arrives. Savage Rifts has Burn mechanics -- which aren't bad, but I prefer...

Burn-Out in 3...2...

• Burn-Out utilizes a usage die. Anyone reading this should know what that is, but just in case: If you roll a 1 or 2 on a usage die, that die becomes the next lower die, e.g., d20 becomes d12, which would become d10, then d8, then d6, and finally a d4.

1st level Juicers begin with a usage die of d20. At the end of every session, roll your usage die, if you roll a 1 or 2, it falls to the next die. If a session sees no or very minimal combat, the GM may wave your burn-out roll for that session. You should theoretically have many sessions (absolute, extreme bare minimum of 6) before reaching a burn-out die of d4.

Death Is Imminent...

Once you roll a 1 or 2 on a burn-out die of d4, death is imminent starting the following session. At which point -- after every single round of combat, you need to make a burn-out save against target number 20. Juicers already have a +8 vs. toxins which can be applied to this roll along with any bonus received from a high P.E. stat. Subtracted from this roll is your level.

Burn-Out Roll = +8, +P.E. bonus, minus your level vs. 20

If you fail this roll, your heart will explode and strange chemicals will froth forth from your mouth as your well-used and smoking body falls dead. If combat is still ongoing however, you immediately get one last free round of actions before you expire, wherein any damage you do is doubled as you burn out in a wild blaze of glory.

Just a thought.

Afterthought...

• You want to play extreme? Roll the burn-out die after every combat instead of every session from the very beginning.

So cool.