Mutated, dismembered, afflicted, & doomed

Before he met his tragic end, Vørpé the Magic-User suffered just about every negative non-death setback a PC in my campaign could experience. 

I use death and dismemberment rules similar to this and a mutation table similar to probably every other one you've seen. I have a boutique list of curses and diseases—which for practical purposes are treated almost the same in the world of Nevelorn—and for consequences of a cosmic variety I have a rough outline of dooms (for chaotic characters) and damnations (for their lawful counterparts). 

Vørpé, starting life as a gene freak, entered the game with two mutations:

Furnace gut. Your stomach radiates light as a candle. You only gain sustenance from wood, coal, oil, and alcohol.

Stench. A distinct, horrible smell follows you wherever you go. -2 to Charisma; hiding is difficult.

He only became more freaky over the course of his adventures. Tampering with an alchemical engine left him with 

Horns. Come out of your forehead. Deal d3 damage if used as a weapon. Headgear must be specially made. Roll d6 or choose the appearance: 1. Ram 2. Bull 3. Unicorn 4. Devil 5. Antlers 6. Beetle

(he rolled Devil).

And when he drank the melted remains of a mutant frog, his lower extremities morphed into 

Bird legs. Great for perching. Cannot wear boots.

Later, an unfortunately well-aimed hobgoblin firebomb left one of those legs charred and worthless. 

A failed save to avoid an acid trap almost turned Vørpé into a steaming puddle. As he lay melting on the dungeon floor, he called out to whatever chaotic god or overfiend was listening to spare his life. The odds were slim, but due to his history of erratic behavior and physical alterations, he attracted the attention of the Faceless God Juiblex, demon lord of ooze and mutation. Vørpé suffered a vision of the Great Glistener's infinite roiling non-countenance and was saved. His body reconstituted itself with a fifth mutation (Serpent neck. Long and slithery. Good for peeping around corners and creeping people out.), but this favor marked him for doom: when next he would be reduced to 0 hp, he was to erupt in a torrent of green slime and become one with Juiblex, taking whoever was nearby along with him.

Vørpé met an untimely end in an appropriately anticlimactic manner: standing in the blast radius of the first and only fireball he fired from a new magic wand. His death offered an important lesson about the risks of using magic items willy-nilly before identifying them, a lesson dutifully recorded by the party note-taker and ignored repeatedly from then on. Fortunately the rest of the party was spared, as the only other creature in the blast radius was the undead monstrosity Vørpé intended to hit, and double fortunately the fire immediately incinerated the green slime which would otherwise have caused one or more major problems for the surviving party members. 

6d6 points of regret

Vørpé's passing was tragic and his player was bummed, though to his credit he took it in good spirit. The party held a funeral for Vørpé back in town and and a new draft horse was named in his honor. Out of the game, the players and I refilled our drinks and toasted to the fallen PC. 

***

What makes death and dismemberment, mutations, and lingering afflictions work so well in OSR games are that they make tangible a character's foibles. If magic items and precious treasure serve as records of a PC's triumphs, a missing leg and a tentacle arm serve as records of their defeats, which are often as entertaining if not more than victory.

The obstacles imposed by a missing leg become an engaging aspect of the character. Even when one can't do something as well because however many sessions ago they took too much damage or failed a save, there's satisfaction in knowing your guy has been through more than most and has the scars to prove it. A movement penalty sounds unambiguously annoying on paper, but every time it becomes relevant it's a fun little reminder of a nail-biting escapade.

There's nothing wrong with death at 0 (trve kvlt), but you don't get these kinds of characters when there's little ground between linear progress and total death. Higher level PCs have died in our campaign, but none are remembered like Vørpé.

Littering the Dungeon

1. Burnt torch
2. Bent nails
3. Battered helmet
4. Sundered shield
5. Broken sword
6. Rotted leather
7. Snapped arrows
8. Moldy bread
9. Fragrant cheese
10. Skull (human)
11. Skull (beast)
12. Patched sack
13. Empty vial (50% cracked)
14. Dagger (1:6 silver)
15. Rope (d10x5’)
16. Chain (d6x5’)
17. Grappling hook
18. Bell (2:6 cracked)
19. Poison/acid in vial
20. Oil flask
21. Lantern (3:6 cracked)
22. Spent wand
23. Tiny poem scroll
24. Glass tuning fork
25. Iridium cogs
26. Spiral implements
27. Mysterious game piece
28. Severed hand
29. Eyeballs (1d12)
30. Bag of teeth
31. Small puppet
32. Shovel
33. Bag of sand
34. Sack of flour
35. Left boot
36. Right boot
37. Rags (1d6)
38. Phosphorescent mold
39. Iron ration
40. Smooth rock
41. Torn hat
42. Broken chair
43. Tarnished amulet
44. Human limb
45. Animal carcass
46. Ectoplasm residue
47. Vial of holy water
48. Wooden holy symbol 
49. Chalk 
50. Severed finger (10% w/ worthless ring)
51. Iron spikes (1d6)
52. Monster scat
53. Monster sheddings
54. Chewed bones
55. Pair of dice 
56. Bent spoon
57. Ear (humanoid)
58. Ear (monster)
59. Wilted flowers
60. Dungeon urchin, single eye glowering
61. Mirror shards
62. Spiderweb
63. Insect carapace
64. Snail shell
65. Small egg
66. Stubby candles (1d4)
67. Simple pipe
68. Spyglass
69. Pieces of candy (1d8)
70. Semi-crushed caltrops
71. Greasy cloth
72. Strand of lichen
73. Fungus (poison)
74. Fungus (hallucinogenic)
75. Petrified lizard
76. Reed flute
77. Cave anemone
78. Helix fossil
79. Stained playing cards (1d20-1d10 cards missing)
80. Rat skull
81. Beast trap (unsprung)
82. Monster fang
83. Sturdy nails (2d10)
84. Small vial of sweet perfume
85. A single fig
86. Poisoned dart
87. Obsidian arrowheads
88. 1d6 crossbow bolts
89. Shattered statue chunks
90. Ink-splattered parchment
91. Bottle of vinegary wine
92. Bottle of spirits (1d100% full)
93. 1d10 cp
94. 1d10 sp
95. 1d3 gp
96. Random gemstone
97. Random spell scroll
98. Random potion
99. Broken jewelry
100. Piece of jewelry (3:6 broken)

The Many Splendors of the Sword Mage

Elves are classically pretty bishonen and self-serious, but the fact that in OSR games they fight as well as a Fighter while magic-using as well as a magic-user makes them the perfect OC-do-not-steal anime protagonist character option. This is good. Only the small-souled will object to it. As I have long maintained, race-as-class options are a positive. 

The swordfighter-that-can-cast-spells (aka "gish") is so conceptually perfect, so immediately appealing to the eternal 12-year-old that lives in your brain, that many shy away from it. "Too excessive," they say. "Too indulgent." 

And then you get contemporary D&D, where there are a dozen different ways to almost make Elric. You can be an eldritch knight or a paladin or a kensai monk or a sword bard or a hexblade or a bladesinger or a pact of the blade or Blade from Blade (ranger with dhampir lineage) with the cantrip Booming Blade—but you can't be all of them. The ever-narrowing specificity of each option fragments the underlying concept. Compromises have to be made. The best you can get, even with ludicrous Reddit-guide multiclassing, is a sliver of what you wanted.

Enough, I say. Honor that 12-year-old. You are not above them, because you and they are the same. Open yourself to the majesty of the sword mage and be free. 

The glowing sword. The parried fireballs. The drama. These are elves to me.

Spells you cast with your sword

Fighters get Might Dice because the are the superior combatants. Elves get Spellblade Dice (SD), which they use to channel specialized spells through their swords. These they call "splendors." 

Preparing a SD fills a spell slot of any level. Up to four SD can be prepared a day. 

Example: A level 5 elf has two 1st level spell slots, two 2nd level, and one 3rd. They can choose to prepare 4 SD for the day, meaning they may only prepare one 3rd level spell for the day. If they choose to only prepare 2 SD, they have two 2nd level and one 3rd level spells they can prepare.  

SD are rolled to cast any splendor an elf has mastered. Certain magic swords can channel a splendor even if an elf hasn't mastered it. Splendors don't require concentration but other spells can't be cast while one is active. 

SD work like GLOG Magic Dice—roll 1d6, on a 1-3 the SD returns to your SD pool, on a 4-6 it is exhausted. Rolling triples means your sword breaks at the end of the spell, unless it is magical.

Mastering splendors increases in difficulty as an elf progresses their training. Learning your first splendor requires a cost, training time, and PC level requirement equivalent to researching a 1st level spell; a second splendor requires the cost, time, and level requirement of a 2nd level spell, and so on. New splendors can also be learned from wizened elf sword masters and magic crystals. 

Elves of 8th level and above can channel splendors into any melee weapon. At 10th level all things are one to an elf, and so they are capable of channeling splendors into ranged weapons, mundane objects, and even their bare fists. Other elves are awe-stricken when they witness this for the first time. 

The Final Fantasy red mage: an elf in spirit

Splendors

Fire Whip
Your blade becomes a ribbon of lashing flame for 2+[dice] rounds. Add [highest] to your attack and damage rolls and your range increases to 20'. On a hit, you can choose to constrict the target; they save vs. paralysis or are immobilized and suffer automatic damage until the whip is removed or they free themselves with a successful save on a subsequent round.  

Grasscutter
Release an air-blade whirlwind that travels 60’ per round in a line or arc. Creatures in its path save vs. spells or take 1d8+[dice] damage, half on a success. If 4 SD are invested, the whirlwind severs a random limb off targets who lose their save by 5 or more. The whirlwind can double-back like a boomerang once per round but otherwise cannot pivot more than 90 degrees in a round. It persists for 1+[dice] rounds. 

Smoke Needle
Your blade dissipates in a cloud of dense smoke, from which a stream darts forth to strike a foe. up to 60' away. Make an attack against the target, adding [dice] to your attack and damage rolls. You disappear in the smoke cloud and reappear anywhere within an unobstructed 60' at the start of your next round.

Path of Thorns
Black thorny vines coil around the hilt and blade of your sword, adding [dice] to your attack and damage rolls until you deal damage. The next time you strike a creature this combat they save vs. spells or have a thorn implanted in their heart. If the blow were to slay the foe, you can choose to forego damage and instead implant the thorn without a save. At will, you can remove the thorn from the victim’s heart and deal [sum] damage, or twist it to cause excruciating pain. Creatures with a thorn in their heart will believe everything you say, but those with higher HD than you will ignore obvious or overtly harmful falsehoods. The thorn lasts until it’s dispelled or you die. Only one creature can be implanted at a time. 

Angel Claws
Talons of lightning arc from your blade. Creatures in a 30’ cone save vs. spells or take [sum] damage, half on a success if 2+ SD are invested. Ghouls take an extra dice of damage. Creatures who fail their save may have their armor sundered or be dragged 10’ in any direction. The claws are strong enough to rend castle walls and fell mighty trees. 

Mirror of the Moon
Hoarfrost gathers along the blade of your sword and encases it in mirror-sheened ice. The sword gets +1 to attack and damage and harms creatures vulnerable to cold. Foes who see their reflection in the ice (when they avoid your attack or target you with theirs) save vs. spells or suffer a vision of getting impaled by your sword, taking damage as if landed a hit. The damage counts against the creature's hp total but fades after 10 minutes given its illusory nature. Reducing a creature to 0 hp this way instead causes them to pass out for 10 minutes. Creatures that succeed on the save are no longer effected. The effect lasts for [dice]+[highest] rounds, or if the ice is melted by magic flame or dragon fire. 

Impromptu Campaign Primer

I wrote this yesterday in response to a player wanting to learn more about our campaign setting. Up until now I have been drip-feeding little details about the goings-on of the world, but as we're nearing our 40th session I realized it was past time to make a piece of writing that ties them all together. For my sake, it was nice to finally get off my ass and consolidate the key setting points that until now existed mercurially in my mind or accumulated in overburdened docs. 

Normally I'd want to dress a campaign primer up with some artful prose. I imagine Nevelorn in shades teal and violet and midnight blue, populated with wispy brushstroke Amano people. The emotional register varies between the wryness of Fritz Leiber and Jack Vance and the melancholia of M. John Harrison. In my vision, the sky is always just after sunset, the fields always windswept, and the woods rendered in watercolor like those '70s Lord of the Rings forest illustrations with black space surrounding by emerald foliage. I want what I write about Nevelorn to convey not just the entirety of this sentiment, but the magnitude of emotional meanings which may only be evoked indirectly. 

But, seeing as it has been two and a half years since our first session and that hasn't happened, it's clear quick and dirty is the form the primer is meant to take.

---

The area the game takes place in is called NEVELORN, The Land of the Long Dusk. To the south and east is the Bleak Sea, to the west are the Barbarian Kingdoms, and to the north are the Mountains of Mourning, beyond which monstrous warlords and vile sorcerers fight endlessly over the trippy expanse of the Frayed Lands. Rising above the Many-Colored Moors on the southeast coast is the city of Nisk. A place of black teeth and stone spires, knives hidden in daylight and strange things looming in alleys. Ruthless in its decadence, sophisticated in its squalor, Nisk is a wonderful, horrible, dizzying city where any adventurer can feel at home.

The deal with Nevelorn is that it used to be great but a series of overlapping conflicts known as the Seven Wars led to total, cataclysmic collapse—to the majority of the population, the Seven War period was indistinguishable from an apocalypse. The old order of kings and knights died, and now people find what safety they can in rugged, disconnected settlements. Monsters and brigands stalk the wilderness. The roads are no longer safe to walk, though some, like the wardens of the Holy Fortress and the Violet Knights of Lord Ulrum, seek to maintain some semblance of order in the territory they claim.

The current "big deal" things going on in Nevelorn your character knows about: 

• Nevelorn is slowly dying. Not the towns or polities, but the land itself. The spirits of nature are forsaking their station, and in their absence the protective boundary between this world and the unseen realms beyond grows weak. The primordial shrines must be restored for the spirits to return. 
• Rumors speak of a horrifying monster known as the Tirapheg roaming the countryside. As tall as a watchtower, with five heads, three arms, and three legs sharing a single body. As it walks its shadow persists like a trail of paint left by a brush. And from it's shadow, phantoms spill forth, whispering the tongue of Old Zenon. The Mentaculate, a group of wizards who have taken control of the city of Velaine, will pay a bounty to anyone who slays it; the number climbs and climbs, as if they were desperate...  
• Hobgoblins are colonizing Nevelorn. They have landed on the Seething Coast to the south and are turning entire towns into freaky nightmare labor camps.  

There's a bunch of other stuff going on, this is just what I have time to write during my lunch break. 

Darkmantles

Chthonic squid monsters floating soundlessly through the Inverted Palace. Conical indigo bodies ringed with crimson eyes; dense membrane webbing chitin-barbed tentacles. In sharp contrast to their gloomy exterior, a darkmantle's underside is a riot of flaming, ghastly hues. 

Darkmantles hover ominously in corridors or high above spacious chambers until they detect the mental thrum of potential prey. They dart through the air with surprising speed and latch themselves to a victim, engulfing their head and upper torso in membranous embrace. 

While attached, a darkmantle shoots slender dendron-shaped tendrils into the nose and ears of the victim to hijack their synapses while a subliminally active display pulses across their ventral surface, psychically imprinting an egg in the victim's mental substrate. During this process, the darkmantle will defend itself and the victim by lashing at oncoming threats with its tentacles.

HD 4+1 AC 5 Att. Engulf, Tentacle x 4 (1d6) Move: 180'(60') fly Morale: 7 Alignment: Chaotic Number Appearing: 1d3

• Engulf: engulfed creatures can move but not see or attack. They must save vs. spells each round to mentally resist the darkmantle's egg. A helmet grants +2 to the save, and a Helmet of Telepathy grants +4. Once attached, a darkmantle only removes itself if it dies, loses morale, or successfully implants an egg. Half the damage inflicted on a darkmantle is dealt the engulfed creature. 
• Psionic occlusion: Darkmantles project a nimbus of psychic noise that makes their presence difficult to comprehend. They surprise on a 4:6 and cannot be targeted by spells or missile attack from a range greater than 30'.

A darkmantle egg is fertilized by the background memories of its host. A day after implantation, incidental or intentional attempts to access deep-seated memories result in nothing more than darkness and nauseating anxiety—the remains of the victim's subconscious has cordoned off the parts of the mind parasitized by a gestating alien psyche. Player characters lose any skills, features, or characteristics related to their background (e.g., a character who used to be a deep sea diver or basket weaver or circus performer is no better at diving or weaving or performing than an average person. No class abilities are lost). 

After 3 months of dreamless sleep and forgetting what you were doing the moment you walk into a room, the larval darkmantle hatches from its egg and chews a hole through your mind directly into the Nightmare Dimension, where it matures before making it's way back into the Prime Material Plane by way of the mythic underworld. This is by all accounts worse than having a creature physical burst through your brain, but the result is the same: the character is out of the game. 

Because darkmantle eggs are parasitic psychological phenomena and not physical objects, they can only be excised by effects that target the mind. Downtime research will yield three such cases: one of the sorceress Ganavel who cleared the egg from her psyche by converting it into a spell and casting it, another of a nameless psionic warrior of the Seven War period who neutralized his egg with PSI bombardments, and a third of the ancient poet Eio Ei, who counter-parasitized the nascent darkmantle when he sublimated the alien presence into a lyric poem. He saved himself from the egg, but was slain in the riot that followed the first and only performance of his opus. One copy remains in the Palace Archives—Hearing it while implanted inspires the same integration with the darkmantle that saved the poet, though a listener without such an affliction will be driven insane. 

Darkmantle eggs may also be removed through a highly experimental procedure involving accessing the brain via trepanation, treating it with Oil of Etherealness, and then casting a spell of Cure Disease. The procedure is practiced by She of Limpid Mercy and the vicar-surgeons of the Hall of Contrition in exchange for a modest donation, but you have to provide your own oil. 

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.