Friendship Simulator: a Procedure for Friends and Contacts

The same way equipment and gear help you get things done in the dungeon, friends and contacts help you get things done in the city.

What this is for

No rules are needed to legitimize PCs' relationships with NPCs, but procedural scaffolding cuts down on ad-hoc decisions and provides rationale for how both the players and GM may approach this dimension of the game. Like how I use reactions tables and x:6 chances in circumstances I want to avoid GM fiat, a procedure for camaraderie takes the fiat out of PC-NPC relationships.  

Not every friendship needs to follow this procedure. If the circumstances are such that it's obvious an NPC is friends with a PC, let it happen. 

The Friendship Simulator is a way to provide texture time spent in town between adventures. Downtime is inevitable in OSR games, but it's largely unexplained what you're supposed to do  other than research spells, heal, and wait for your stronghold to be built (and train I guess if you're playing AD&D). The common fix is writing a menu of downtime activities, but this procedure is an experiment in another approach: instead of giving players more activities, give them more tools. With an abundance of hammers they'll see nails everywhere. 

Antoine Marchalot

Meeting Contacts, Making Friends

Friends start as contacts. Contacts are acquired the same way hirelings are: hanging out at bars, wandering aimlessly, and greasing palms. Other activities, like carousing and insinuating yourself in local drama, may also net you contacts. 

A contact can be tapped for one favor or bit of information. Make a reaction roll to determine how they follow through. 

2-: Refuse to help and they drop contact 

3-5: Refuse to help; they're busy

6-8: They help but ask for time (1 week) or something in return (1d6x50 sp or its equivalent)

9-11: They help

12+: They help and a friendship is born 

Unless a contact becomes a friend, the relationship ends after they help you—whatever they owe you has been repaid. 

Instead of tapping a contact for a favor, you can pursue a friendship. This takes a week of downtime getting to know them. At the end of the week there's a 50% chance the friendship is reciprocated. This can be attempted up to three times, after which the contact ignores you because you're not getting the message. 

Because adventurers lead fringe lifestyles, they can only accommodate a number of friends equal to the amount of retainers they can recruit. There is no limit to how many contacts they may have. 

Contacts and friends can be organized in the following categories: 

1. Rich
2. Tough
3. Streetwise
4. Connected
5. Famous
6. Eccentric
7. Weird
8. True

If a player is looking for a specific sort of individual you can let them choose, but it's more fun to roll. NPCs may fit in two categories, but never more.

Rich

The extreme distance rich friends have from the tragedies of this fallen world make them enthusiastic, generous, and uninhibited. Occasionally they fall victim to bouts of melancholy or get embroiled in petty disputes, but by and large they are easygoing and carefree. Rich friends value old-fashioned courtesy and you swallowing your pride when they show you off at dinner parties.  

Lean on them to spot you money, get you into a fancy party, or lend you some credibility when dealing with the aristocracy. 

Tough

Tough friends are bruisers, risk-takers, and braggards. They are earnest, brave, and impulsive; they drink hard and love harder. Tough friends value mettle above all and have little respect for bellyaching and bullshitters. 

Lean on them for protection, intimidation, and shit-kicking. 

Streetwise

Streetwise friends are cooler than you. They know all the gossip. They'll tell you who's legit and who to avoid, where to buy and where to sell, and if there's ever a time to lay low they're the first to know. Streetwise friends are witty and have effortlessly good taste; they are inevitably prey to some vicious vice that lends them a sense of mystery and danger. They value the free flow of information (there's no fun in keeping secrets) and someone that can hang. They have a casual distaste for squares and a very serious hatred of narcs. 

Lean on them for rumors, sourcing fences and contraband, and underworld dealings. 

Connected

Connected friends have some ambiguous but important-sounding position in the local government, a guild, or some other enterprise. They make themselves indispensable by doing the work of three people, which they always complain about but actually love. Despite being chronically overworked, they always remember your birthday. They value low-drama collaborators and not having their time wasted. 

Lean on them for official permissions, insider intel, and cutting red tape.

Famous

Famous friends are outgoing and glamorous and always failing to keep a low-profile. They're some variety of performer or artist or folk hero known far and wide throughout the land. They are distinctly well-mannered and gregarious if a bit off in their own world. They're always the unwilling participant in some drama or other yet it's no secret they thrive off the attention. Famous friends like having their ego stoked but also need you to keep it real with them. They get turned off by sycophancy. Famous friends always have a nemesis, a rival or notable detractor, that they will need you to be fully against. Associating with their nemesis will undoubtably ruin your relationship if word gets back to the famous friend. 

Lean on them for influencing trends, impressing people, and drawing attention. 

Eccentric

Eccentric friends are kooky and curious and excited about everything. Any time you go over to their place it's packed to the ceiling with evidence of their newest obsession. You're always finding them absorbed in some questionable experiment or pinned beneath a collapsed apparatus. They are relentlessly optimistic, nonjudgmental, and eager to share their interests with others. They are used to being written off, but still value someone who takes them seriously (despite their offbeat approach to fashion and personal grooming). They can't be bothered by naysayers and pragmatists. 

Lean on them for odd jobs, knowledge on niche subject matter, and repairs. They might throw in a few "improvements" for free. 

Weird

Weird friends are pariahs, hermits, and entities who don't fit in normal society—the kind that get the torch-and-pitchfork treatment if they visit town. Unnerving to most, but not to you. Weird friends are in-tune with many worlds beyond our own and spend their time communing with beings unseen by normal men. You are likely their only "mundane" friend. They value people who know what trees call one another and can hear the songs whispered by the stars. They are curious about but generally don't care to be involved in the struggles of civilized life. 

Lean on them for credibility among unseen powers, mystic insights, and freaking people out. 

True

True friends are unremarkable save for their bone-deep admiration for you. They are provincial, stoic, kind, averse to change, and above all dependable. No songs will be sung of them but they act with virtue nonetheless, as if they knew no other way. They have perhaps a superficial vice that only lends to their chumminess. True friends expect nothing from you but your camaraderie; abuse and neglect only makes them wish you'll find your way back to who you were, you they know you to truly be. 

Lean on them for anything. They don't stand out in any way but will follow you without question. 

Loyalty

Each friend has a loyalty score, similar to hirelings. When you ask for them to stick their neck out for you, make a loyalty check on a 2d6. If it rolls below, they follow through and their loyalty reduces by 1. If it rolls above, the PC can either back off, in which case their loyalty is reduced by 1 and the friend doesn't follow through, or the PC can press them, which will get them to do the favor but their loyalty is reduced by the difference. True friends only reduce loyalty on a roll of double sixes. A friend whose loyalty drops to 1 won't do any favors, but the relationship is still salvageable. A friend with a loyalty less than 1 is no friend at all. 

A week of downtime spent fostering your relationship with a friend adds 1 to their loyalty score, up to a maximum of 10. Loyalty may only be raised above that by doing your friend a major solid or by going on a daring misadventure. 

Misadventures take 1d3 weeks and will leave you 1d10x100 sp poorer. There's a 1:6 chance your friend gets killed, injured, kidnapped, or imprisoned, which has circumstantial consequences but results in the relationship being put on indefinite hold. Otherwise, their loyalty increases up to baseline (determined by Charisma) +1d4. You can only go on one misadventure with a friend—they know better after the first time. 

Other things friends are good for

They'll pitch in for your funeral if you die. Each friend shells out 1d4x50 sp, save for rich friends who ostentatiously drop 1d4x500 sp and send flowers to each surviving PC. 

A friendship can become a romance. A friend who becomes a lover is True in addition to their other type for the sake of determining loyalty. Their heart breaks every time you leave for adventure. 

Using This 

This is essentially just a way to set up players getting to go "I know a guy..." You can probably do that with an abstracted just-in-time system or quantum NPC but that's no replacement for actually knowing a guy.

How friends and contacts are useful in city adventures is self-evident, but in circumstances where the town is just a place to crash between adventures then friends hold less immediate value. That being said, consider: Dealing with NPCs Should Be Expensive and Irritating. 

This should be extended to dealing with anything in town. Everything costs money, takes time, and has a chance of failing. Having the right friends reduces the friction. Couple that with upkeep costs and faction developments and you have sources of time and money pressure to keep players on their toes. Towns should be boring, sure, that's why you go on adventures, but that doesn't mean they should be easy. 

The Banter Grew Tense at the Springtime Soiree

“So tell me,” Gredarius said, “how is Fabiola?” His prodigious waddle bobbed as he spoke. The particular emphasis he gave the word “is” could not have been replicated by any save for those suffused in the layered intricacies of Niskian high society. 

The subtle nuance was invisible for all but those in the know, to whom it was a pointed remonstration indicating, in order, that Gredarious was aware Fabiola came down with a bad case of the deliriums, that he was critical of how Perdustan supported her in her time of need, yet also bemused at the rift the lady’s ailment caused the young man and her family, that he sided with the family against Perdustan, that he was eager to hear the young man’s side if only for the opportunity to water the seeds of gossip already spread throughout society, and lastly that he wished to unsettle Perdustan in order to see whether he will push back and risk his standing or simply squirm to the pleasure of the gentleman and ladies joining them at their dining table. Somewhere distant, like a far star winking in the night sky, was actual interest in how Fabiola was doing. 

“She is holding up well,” Perdustan responded evenly. “She dearly wished she could attend.” A dewdrop of condensation formed on his glass of amaroc. It may have appeared as though Perdustan gave a polite if dismissive reply to a prying question, but to the men and women at the table it was as if the young man, meeting Gredarius on the fencing floor, performed such a dancer-like twist to avoid the old grandee’s lunge that no parry was necessary. In that moment all Perdustan need do was extend his arm and the point would meet the defenseless breast. 

Yet now came the decision—should Perdustand indeed land his proverbial blade against Gredarius it would have caused the baron undue humiliation, and Perdustan was in no standing to earn the ire of such a gentleman when the Marquee’s Salón was but two weeks hence. However, should he hold back, he would earn a reputation as wheedling and spiritless, or, worse yet, a tufthunter. “Blast,” Perdustan thought. “My quicksilver conversationism got me in trouble once again.” The dewdrop gave a slow lurch then raced down the glass. 

Every faculty of his mind endeavored to weave a response. Yet each pattern was scrapped as rapidly as they emerged, each demanding a price too much to bear. The keening faces of the men and women at the table stared hungrily at Perdustan. The lady’s jewelry tinkled with anticipation, the men’s brows furrowed in preparation for whatever was to come. Gredarius’s red waddle trembled expectantly. Time was running out. 

The dewdrop hurtled to the base of the glass and met its end upon the tablecloth. With a voice cool and crisp as a mountain stream Perdustan continued, “she so wished she could be here to see you and the lady Renoriette dance the Tazurella.” It was like the welcome sun breaking through storm-ridden sky. Such a perfect chord, so well-considered only a master would strike it, yet so easygoing it felt the most obvious and welcome successor to the prior melodies, is oft but the purview of the angel choirs our earthly cantors may only dream of approximating. 

Not a single person at the table was unimpressed, not least Perdustan himself. Gredarius’s waddle quavered. “Yes, yes, quite so,” he responded after a moment. “She is indeed missed. But there is never a shortage of opportunities to take the Tazurella.” With that he nodded slightly, wiped his mouth, and directed a new question at another member of the table. Perdustan, content, sat back in his chair and sipped his amaroc. 

So You Slept with a Succubus... (+ rules for cambions)

One for the Sex Bandwagon. 

Sex with a succubus is much like sex with anyone, which is to say it's absolutely horrifying. 

The first time a Lawful character sleeps with a succubus, they lose one point of Wisdom as the very foundation of their moral core has been fractured. Chaotic characters gain one point of Wisdom, as their glimpse at the furthest reaches of sensation exposes them to forbidden insights. Neutral characters develop a distinctive paraphelia and get a wild story to tell at the bar.  

When sleeping with a succubus, role under Charisma with a d20 for the fate of your soul. 

On a success, you wake the next morning crushed by a whole-body hangover. Your memory of the night before is tattered like the remnants of the dream; all you can surface are wild, unfocused impressions of ecstasy and terror. You get no benefit from the night's rest. 

On a failure, the consequences are as above plus roll 1d8: 

1. The demon possesses your genitalia. It becomes big and grotesque, and can be used as a weapon in a pinch dealing 1d4 damage. The demon-haunted organ will attempt to control you as a sentient sword (Will 18+1d6) to corrupt men and women of the cloth. It can be exorcised by setting yourself on fire and jumping into a freezing lake in the dead of winter, whereupon a cleric must perform the rites of Dispel Evil. 

2. In the throes of infernal passion, you agree to a dark pact. You can't gain experience until you lead nine pure-hearted virgins down a path of depravity.

3. You're obsessed. Every night you wish for her, and every night she's there. You'd give anything to her, your wealth, your loyalty, but all she wants is you, she says, and so you give yourself to her. A little bit at first, but more and more each night, because the thought of being without her is too much to bare. Lose 1 point of Constitution every day. Your friends will notice your hollow eyes and sunken cheeks. If they care enough, they'll lock you in a room each night and keep you under watch until morning, and you will hate them for it. Only once you've gone a week without the succubus do you realize you must move on, but you can't be rid of her completely until you take a vow of celibacy before a theytriarch. And better swear off drinking too, for good measure.

4. You babble like a baby and spill your heart. She knows you more intimately than anyone else ever can—a moment of eye contact is all she needs to see into your mind. She will visit you again and again in various guises over the following years, waiting for you to become a big powerful hero, even intervening where necessary to help you on your way. And she will know where the bodies are buried, what treasures you own and what wonders you seek, everything that shouldn't be shared; and she will gladly share her knowledge to anyone who hates you enough to pay her price. 

5–8. With your essence she gestates a cambion—a half-human fiend who walks the earth free from the oblique constraints of demonhood. In nine months it will be born, and in nine days it have aged into a perfect copy of you, indistinguishable save for a subtle demoniac cast that falls over its face in partial light or under extreme emotion. It can access all of your memories, which it does frequently and with a sense of mordant fascination. It will kill you in the night to take your place. Details below.

CAMBIONS

Typically when a cambion kills its progenitor it proceeds to wreak havoc on the lives of their friends and acquaintances. However, cambions are capricious beings and subject to the power of friendship and/or the promise of adventure. As such, when your PC gets killed and the cambion takes its place, continue playing your character as before with the following changes: 

• Your alignment is Chaotic if not already
• You have Infravision up to 240'
• You are vulnerable to holy water and effects that target enchanted creatures
• Your body ceases to age
• You are unable to benefit from Lawful cleric magic or church services, but 
• You heal the maximum possible amount when resting and get +2 to saves vs. poison, disease, and magic. 
• All future levels require an additional 25% experience to reach

Additionally, you begin with a cambion power (rolled below). You gain a new power every 10d10 years or when you devour the essence of a cambion with more powers than you. You can use your powers a number of times per day equal to your level. Naturally, as you grow in power other cambions seek to slay and consume you. 

Beyond 9th level, or after you attain nine cambion powers, your demonic nature takes over and you become a NPC under the GM's control.  

Cambion Powers (1d20)

1. Stinking cloud. Your natural odor smells like brimstone and sex.
2. Charm person. Your touch is intoxicating.
3. Levitate. You are uncannily light. 
4. Invisibility. You are easily overlooked.
5. Cause disease. Animals fawn over you in a way that makes people uneasy. 
6. Curse. People who first meet you are treated to brief, horrifying intrusive thoughts. 
7. Alter appearance. You can make your reflection move independent of you. 
8. Suggestion. Your singing voice is entrancing. 
9. Cause fear. You have too many teeth. Your smile is deeply unsettling. 
10. Phantasmal force. Your shadow projects in the wrong direction. 
11. Speak with dead. You whisper blasphemies in your sleep.
12. Burning hands. Fire leaps and dances at your command. 
13. ESP. You can easily tell how gullible someone is. 
14. Ignore damage rolls of 1-3 unless from a magic or silver weapon. Blood bursts from you like a geyser when you are made to bleed. 
15. Summon and command a swarm of flies, crows, or rats for up to 10 minutes. Pests and vermin become common where you stay. 
16. Appear to be two places at once for a moment (effectively teleporting 30' to a place you can see). You have a long, sinuous tail. 
17. You can look into the Weird to detect magic and invisible creatures. Your eyes never look in the same direction. 
18. Your breath causes things to rot, rust, or otherwise degrade. Your tongue is dark and round like a fattened leech. 
19. You have two random mutations. Your blood is black.
20. Misfortune follows you. Friends and foes get -1 to saving throws.  

The Inverted Palace

This is what I sent my players as a little backstory for the big dungeon at the center of our campaign:

The Inverted Palace 

On clear days, at dawn or dusk, you can see it on the northern horizon. A wondrous palace—or, rather, an apparition of a palace. It disappears during the day and night, but journey into the dark forests beyond Linrik and you will find it again—no longer moored to the ground, but hanging upturned in the sky. Look up, and through the tree branches a host of majestic spires bears down on you from above. But this, too, is an apparition. It is only seen by those close to where the real palace once stood. 

For these apparitions are of the Palace Eternal, the seat of power for the lost Zenon empire and home to Anaktos the Stargiver, her final ruler. Zenon was the greatest of human civilizations. Its domain so vast it was said to have reached the stars. The sorcerers of Zenon, among whom Anaktos was the greatest, glimpsed the true mosaic of magic and established many of the spells practiced by today's lesser magicians. 

One lifetime was not enough for so great an authority as Anaktos. He became an undying lich to upheld his cruel and uncompromising reign for an aeon. But over the slow centuries he grew dissatisfied with earthly limitations and sought, as many foolish and powerful men do, ascension to godhood. A ritual was devised; it's culmination the sacrifice of every mortal within his empire. Five hieroknights, on whose brows each burned a star, learned of Anaktos's scheme and turned their swords upon their master. With five sacred blades they divided his soul into five equal parts, each borne in a piece of his body: hand, eye, heart, brain, and rib bone. The emperor's remains were banished along with his palace into the depths of the earth. The Palace Eternal became the accursed Palace Inverted, imprisoning Anaktos forevermore. 

 

All that remains above ground is a gate of white marble hidden among the trees. Beyond lies a courtyard of an antique style, columns enrobed in delicate moss. At its center an elegant staircase twists into the beckoning darkness below.

Some legends of the Inverted Palace: 

1. The Static Tower holds every failed experiment too dangerous or dear to Anaktos to dispose of. Some have broken free and now roam the halls of the palace. Bereft of  purpose, they create their own.
2. The palace keeps a record of every dream had within its walls. The archive spiders store them in waxy pearls that dangle from their webs. Anaktos’s dreams are locked away behind a door hidden within the Weird.
3. All semblances of Anaktos have been destroyed. The statues beheaded, the murals defaced, the mosaics plucked of their tiles. Every coin of the Zenon empire has a wide gouge on the obverse side where once glowered a noble profile. No record of the Eternal Emperor's face remains. 
4. Orcs, gnolls, and other half-men are drawn to the palace, yet those who enter may never leave. They hear the thrumming heart of Anaktos wherever they go.  
5. The palace guardians have pledged themselves to eternal duty. They're interred in heavy death-mask helmets that fit over the head and shoulders, denying them the peace of true death. 
6. A secret gallery has six gates: one may only be passed by the dreaming, one by the mad, one by the lost, one by the unseen, one by those geased to do so, and one only by the dead. 
7. The two-headed dragon emblem of Zenon represents life and death, heavens and earth, energy and mass—all of which Anaktos sought to master. The emperor courted both Law and Chaos, though refused to show fealty to either. Their influence was still new to this world at the assumption of his lichdom. Neither power intervened to prevent in his demise. 
8. The armory holds the Sword of Immanence, a weapon which strikes at the fundamental concept of its target. It may be wielded against anything from gods and monsters to metaphysics, ideas, and phenomena. Its use is an affront to reality.
9. The palace garden spreads like a mold, subsuming territory far beyond its original limits. It must be appeased by the palace inhabitants else it will devour them all. 
10. Food, corpses, young love—nothing spoils in the kitchen.

DM tip: write fiction

I started writing little scenes about the locations keyed in my hex map and it's transformed my game for the better.

The player-facing map

While preparing my campaign's hex map, I decided separately after a series of strange synchronicities—things said to me in passing, posts surfacing on the timeline, the rediscovery of a book on writing I was gifted but never read—I ought to write more fiction. 

I don’t think of myself as a "writer" but I can write passably if the weather's fair and I put in the hours. Still, there's much room to improve and I wish to exert myself creatively. Most of the writing I do is nonfiction; whenever I write fiction, regardless of how good the end result is, the process is about as elegant as a child mashing his toys into the floor.

I decided three hand-written pages a day, because that’s what my friend who’s doing Artist’s Way (speaking of synchronicity) recommends. I’ve never read the book but I hear it’s very useful. No finished stories, just scenes and dialogue. We're sketching, not painting.

Seeking subject matter I figured: why not write about the hexcrawl? What would a scene of adventures coming to this town here on the corner of the map look like? 

And so from my pen flowed a tale of wanderers sharing thoughts as they pass through unfamiliar streets. They make their way to a tavern where the barkeeper tells a story about an old festival no one celebrates anymore. 

Now, questions of quality aside: the piece was fun to write and it gave me time and space to explore each idea in the hex map more thoroughly. Externalizing thoughts as a story switches your brain into a sort of generative state, where you suddenly start producing the "next" idea as you write out the last one. I had only the briefest notion of a festival, but as the story unwound I arrived at what it celebrated, why it stopped, and how to bring it back. I would have missed this had I just written a list of bullet-point list of facts about the town, as is my typical prep method. Not only that, but I found language to describe the town and what the players see—a sort of first-draft for putting images to words, which saves me from groping about at the table for the rights words to verbally convey the images in my brain.

I did this approximately every day for two weeks, writing scenes relating to a dozen keyed hexes. The characters, conflicts, and locations within the hexcrawl are more vivid to me than anything else I have ever created for my games. Writing the scenes makes each hex more true; the stories expand the palette of language and ideas I work with as I prep and run the game. This depth of understanding far exceeds what is necessary to run a good campaign, but once you develop it, everything from generating NPCs on the fly to describing the frog demon's splattering boils becomes easier.

Even without a hexcrawl to write about, writing fiction works many of the same muscles you use to run a game. You inhabit different characters, create vast landscapes filled with compelling details, and leverage descriptive language to evoke emotion.  

I do not suggest you write fiction based on your campaign if you're not doing it for the sake of writing. It takes a substantial amount of time, you won’t use most of what you write, and it could lead to a maladaptive overprotectiveness of your setting. This is writing practice, not campaign prep.

But, if you do wish to improve your writing, and are looking for subject matter, consider: you are an RPG person. You think about adventure games and related topics all the time, even when you're not trying to. You can channel all that energy into your games, or discussions about games, or god forbid discussions about discussions about games, but you can also use it to propel progress in a different craft and help both passions flourish. 

Writing is like fitness. It’s healthy. It gives you a better handle on your thoughts, improves your insight, and deepens your appreciation of the richness of life. Not to mention if you get good at it, you may create something beautiful.

1d6 Bounty Hunters

Six villains who hunt wanted PCs or whoever the PCs are hunting. Dead or alive, always. 

1. Lolelia Rakva 

Her skin is a beautiful pastel blue. She wears the bright, flowy dancer robes and smells like a perfumer's vat. Absolutely loves her job. She likes the search, the pursuit, the inevitable showdown. But most of all she likes the attention; it's easy to develop an obsession with the person coming to end their life, or bring you to their employer who will do much worse. Lolelia fights with flowers and bees, her petal-laden throwing stars burst in plumes of pollen which burn the sinuses as strongly as they attract the deadly swarms she keeps in her voluminous sleeves. 

HD: 5
AC: 6 (High dex)

Attacks: 2 x flower shuriken (1d4 + pollen poison) or seed bomb, control swarm

• Pollen poison: Save vs. poison or suffer -3 to attacks and AC for the next minute.
• Seed bomb: Dense thorny briars and grasping vines spring from the ground where these are thrown. Movement, attacks, and spell casting in a 20' radius is impossible until a character saves vs. paralysis on their round. Movement through the area is reduced to 10'/round, 20' if the character spends their action hacking through the brush with a bladed weapon. Lolelia carries three bombs.  
• Control swarm: Lolelia keeps a bee swarm in each sleeve. She can direct both swarms to move up to 30' per round.
• Bee swarm: 15 hp, occupies a 10' radius space. Everyone inside takes 1d3 damage per round, or just 1 if they spend their round batting insects away. Creatures struck by a flower shuriken take +1 damage. Only harmed by area effects or torches, which deal 1d4 damage.

2. Masked Swordsman Lessic

A flashy swashbuckler in a domino mask and bright silver cape. His cape is a djinn he commanded to turn into a single long thread by means of a Sword of Wishes (he used every wish but the sword is still +1). The cape exudes thick fog when billowed, within which Lessic creates illusory duplicates of himself. He'll confront the party in an open place and declare his challenge, then with a jaunty toss of his cape, will surround the party in fog and appear to attack from all sides. Sincerely does not want to die; will yield as soon as he takes a hit, only to return 1d4 days later to issue another challenge.  

HD: 6
AC: 5
Attacks: Sword of Wishes (1d8+1) 

• Silver Cape: At the start of combat, Lessic flips his cape and produces dense, clinging fog in a 30' radius limiting visibility to 3'.
• Illusory duplicates: Within the fog, a number of illusory Lessics equal to the size of the party + 1d6 attack from all sides. Each duplicate has an AC of 9 and dissolves into fog on hit. Damage dealt from the illusion is nonlethal but feels real; anyone brought to 0 hp from an illusion passes out for 1d4 turns. 

Lessic cannot be targeted unless his illusions are dissipated, the fog is dispersed, or a character can see through illusions.

If Lessic dies, the djinn-cape returns to its original form while shouting "I'm free!" and then disappears in a rush of wind.

3. Maledact the Crazed

A warlock with an obscure curse who turned to bounty hunting to pay for tinctures and unguents to assuage his affliction. His uniform is never without thick gloves, a long scarf, and protective goggles, completed by his shockingly white hair which sticks out in all directions. He rides a captive storm cloud like a bronco that he wrangles with iridium reigns. It's barely under control and charges in a new direction every round, while all Maledact can do to grit his teeth and hang on for dear life.

HD: 7

AC: 9
Spells:

1. Shield, Charm Person, Light

2. Invisibility, Web

3. Fly, Protection from Missiles

4. Wall of Ice

Every 1d6 rounds the storm cloud ceases charging and begins to buck and rumble. The next round Maledact pulls up on the reigns so the cloud rears high and releases 6d6 lightning bolt directly in front of it. If Maledact is prevented from pulling up on the reigns, the lightning discharges downward and he is hit with the 3d6 return stroke.  

Storm cloud: Stats as Rhinoceros, unharmed by mundane weapons, fly 240'(80'), charges in a random direction each round. 

4. Tiberia Brightfang

A big game hunter from lands afar. Tall, brawny, wears a cloak of woven straw and a vest made from the hide of a dire wolverine. Around her neck is a string of bronzed hunting trophies (claws, fangs, talons) from which she gets her name. She rides an allosaurus and fights with a hunting spear the size of a pike. Her magic hunting horn summons semblances of beasts she's slain to fight for her. 

HD 8
AC: 7
Attacks: Hunting pike (1d10) and throwing stick (1d4, on a miss curves around and attacks again the next round) 

• Hunting horn: In place of attacks, 3/day Tiberia can blow her horn and cause 1d6 creatures of the rolled type appear. If only 1, the beast is dire. They disperse after a turn or if Tiberia is killed.
  
  Roll 1d12: 1. Wolf 2. Grizzly bear 3. Elephant 4. Lion 5. Shark 6. Eagle 7. Anaconda 8. Crocodile 9. Boar 10. Cave Ape 11. Sabre tooth 12. Crazed beastman

5. Fel Arararara

A sanguine elf exile from the Vermilion Islands. Jet black eyes, ashen skin, body covered in raised scars like blooming roses. Her crossbow is a black-carapaced scorpion, bio-engineered in the shape of a weapon, from whose tail she milks the venom which coats her bolts. She is indentured to the demon Kalithraxas; he lives in her eyes and has an insatiable hunger for light. Kalithraxas robs Fel of her corporeality in darkness, a bane she learned to harness in the service of her work. She has less utter contempt for mankind than the typical sanguine elf, but relishes in their slaughter all the same.

HD: 8 
AC: 3

Spells: 

1. Light, Darkness, Spider Climb

2. Ray of Enfeeblement, Hideous Laughter, ESP

3. Hold Person, Dispel Magic

4. Dimension Door, Confusion
Attacks: Scorpion crossbow (1d6 + poison) or 2-handed hook sword (1d10+1, ignores shields)

• Scorpion poison: save or your muscles spasm and contort into a pretzel. You can take 1d6 damage to move up to 10' and attack at -4, otherwise you writhe helplessly on the ground. Lasts 2d4 turns. 
• Darkness incorporeality: Fel and her gear become completely intangible in darkness. She can see the material world clearly but cannot effect it in any way. She can phase through walls, but does so rarely in case a light source on the other side makes her corporeal within a solid object. Kalithraxas demands Fel feed him light; if she is in darkness for more than 60 minutes he will appear as an ethereal hound-like monstrosity and devour her soul. 

Fel carries four lozenges of Vellocet, a sanguine elf stimulant that functions as a Potion of Speed (lasts 1d6+6 turns). Non-sanguine elves who take one have their speed tripled instead of doubled but must save vs. death every 20 minutes or suffer a heart attack.

6. "Bad" Randall Brant

They say he's a monster in the guise of a man. They say he killed his mother during childbirth, then killed the doctor and midwife too. He's the man you call when you have no other choice—but you'll never call, because he'll find you first. When you see him ride through town on his black horse, twin hand cannons crossed behind his back, you know trouble is soon to follow. He stops at nothing to catch his quarry and he has never failed. 

HD: 10
AC: 3
Attacks: throwing knife (1d4) or bola (1d3 subdual + entangle), spiked chain +2 (1d6+2; entangles on a roll of 1-2) or hand cannon (2d8, ignores armor; each usable once per battle)

• Entangle: Save vs. paralysis or unable to move, attack, or cast spells until a save is succeeded on a subsequent round. Creatures with 6+ HD automatically free themselves the next round but lose initiative. A natural 20 attack roll means the weapon wraps around the foe's neck; if the save is failed the victim is helpless will die of strangulation in 1d6+2 rounds unless rescued. 

Randall will break any law and kill any NPC he needs to to get at the party and never suffers repercussions. Only thieves and magically concealed characters can get the drop on him, otherwise he's only surprised on a 1:12. He'll pursue the party even if the bounty is cancelled or his employer backs out of the contract. Run him like a hyper-competent slasher movie villain. Though he is still just a man. 

  

Randall's horse: Answers to "Cobb," stats as riding horse with 4+1 HD and 12 morale. His teeth have been replaced with iron fangs; bite deals 1d6. 

Work, Shortcuts, and Shortcomings

My marble visage wrinkles with an Ozymandian sneer when I read the countless posts advocating the disposal of this rule or that procedure because they are, and I'm trying my best to be charitable, "not fun." Perhaps even "tedious." People who toss out exactness in favor of abstraction without a second thought.

To those who feel that counting grid squares and tracking resources and encounters separately represent some overwhelming cognitive task, and instead choose to handwave them with abstract movement and overloaded encounter dice: Do you complain a cast-iron pan lacks teflon? Do you curse that a fine linen shirt must be pressed? Do you bemoan that a Stradivarius need be tuned? 

"No one really tracks rest turns," they convince themselves. "No one likes beancounting." As though a dice telling you whether a torch exhausts is more enlightened than writing a note six rows down your notepage. No, this proletarian note-taking is too much work. These people prefer plastic dice, probably because they're brightly colored and don't leave graphite on your fingers.

I have, for a long time now, been a lover of old school D&D. Every night I pray at my alter of B and X, Moldvay and Cook the red and blue onis who sit on my shoulders as I run. Before a session I arm myself with the Commentaries of St. Gavin, the OSE Rules Tome, which I have wrapped in black gaffers tape as a sign of reverence and because I dislike the front cover illustration. I know the BX rules with an intimacy of an old lover; the shine of novelty has long worn off, but in its place a deeper and more honest understanding blooms. The obtuse mechanics, the references to spells that don't exist, the example of play that violates the rules set out not a few pages earlier, the inconsistent and nebulous phrasing throughout—no longer are these issues off-putting but instead part of the indelible whole. 

Of course, I am but a man. I too have made modifications to the game over the years to suit my preferences and those of my table. I borrow liberally from OD&D, the "truest" instantiation of the game, and AD&D, whose DMG demands talmudic study in exchange for great wisdom. I lift a house rule here and there and make my own when the need arises. I drink deeply from the well of collective wisdom fed by OSR-heads from across the ages. I've said elsewhere and I maintain that the slot encumbrance system in Carcass Crawler #2 is the closest to the platonic ideal of encumbrance systems I ever care to get. 

But all that is done not because I wish the game be something it's not, but because I want it to be what it is more readily. 

What differentiates a change that makes the game something it's not vs. one that keeps it what it is? What the game, the pastiche of old school D&D systems and derived games, "is" is different for everyone. But one thing that holds true is the game invites work. 

A number of posts crossed my desk recently that praise rolling your sleeves up and embracing the work of GMing. Do legwork, chew your own damn food, eat the book, and while you're at it stop writing like a robot! These are all focused on different subjects and make different arguments but they trace the same idea: working through a task grants you better understanding and greater discovery than using shortcuts. Shortcuts have their place, but the work is often worth it. 

I contend that rules which obviate tracking, be they usage dice, overloaded encounter rolls, abstract distance, freeform magic, and everything else that follows the same tack, are in same broad category of "shortcut design." 

Now the point of critical nuance: Shortcuts, whether generators, bullet points, or simplified mechanics, are not by their nature bad, and crunchy text-heavy work-filled material is not by its nature good. These are value neutral tools the writer-designer-GM may draw upon to suit the dictates of taste and demands of the project.

But one must acknowledge what is lost with such shortcuts. 

You are a GM for OSR/NSR/DIY D&D-style games. You are MASTER of the game. When you do the work and track the game state faithfully, you have every detail of the world at your disposal. Your creation exists in its own right, yet you know everything about it you need to. And when the rules are stretched and the limits of game-reality tested, you know exactly where best to let them yield. Because you are the Master. 

When you shirk your responsibility for sake of ease, you become a subject of the system. The conveniences free you from the need to track, yes. But you are no longer master of the game world. It is obscured to you by a fog of uncertainty. When you need solid assurance of when and where things are, as inevitably you will, the game world will not tell you. You haven't been listening. You have only yourself, and so you must hand-wave, make-up, GM-fiat an answer. And in those moments the game world ceases to exist, and it's just you, making a decision in front of the players at the table. And if you decide something difficult the players will think you unfair and if you decide something easy they will think you are letting them off. 

The same concept holds true for players. 

Look to the Blorb Principles. Specifically the principle of Diegetical Mechanics. Specifically, this one part:

Not every genre is about meticulous inventory—you can run an office romantic drama without knowing exactly how many staplers are on every desk—but for situations when gear is important, it’s one of the few moments where what the player should be caring about matches with what the character should be caring about.

The same is true generally for diegetical mechanics. You get transported to the game world.

Replace gear with movement speed, torch duration, how many arrows you have in your quiver. All these things are useful to know because all these things are relevant to the game. When it's time to rest, your torch is sputtering, and you hear a wandering monster shambling down the hall, you know your character is in the shit because you are in the shit. And you know when you use your last arrow it's because you decided to, just like you decided to use each and every one before that. It was you who decided and not some dice.