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Happy Gunpowder Treason Day!

Remember, remember, The Fifth of November, Gunpowder treason and plot; For I see no reason Why Gunpowder Treason Should ever be forgot.  Rather than trying to summarize this myself, I'll just quote from the Wikipedia article , in part because it keeps all the links: The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in earlier centuries often called the Gunpowder Treason Plot or the Jesuit Treason , was an unsuccessful attempted regicide against King James VI of Scotland and I of England by a group of English Roman Catholics , led by Robert Catesby , who considered their actions attempted tyrannicide and who sought regime change in England after decades of religious persecution . The plan was to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605, [ a ] as the prelude to a popular revolt in the Midlands during which King James's nine-year-old daughter, Princess Elizabeth , was to be installed as the new head of state. Catesby is suspected
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Evoking Horror in Old School Games

This post is part of October's Blog Carnival theme of Horror and Fantasy , hosted Timothy S. Brannan's The Other Side Blog Trigger warning: this article talks about horror and how to evoke it.  It covers evoking horror through disasters, monsters, and psychological tension.  While it doesn't go into detail in any of them, they come up.     Along these lines, before using any of this at your table, make sure your group is accepting of content of this type by using safety tools like Lines and Veils and The X Card, especially if you don't know the players at your table really well .  Information for these and other social safety tools is available here .     Or don't use them, I'm not your father, and you presumably know your table. Das Geisterhaus by Harald Hoyer, under CC BY-SA 2.0     Old school Dungeons & Dragons and the games that sprung forth under its cultural umbrella generally assume your characters are at best marginally compete
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Describing and Modifing Zombies to Better Evoke Horror

This post is part of October's Blog Carnival theme of Horror and Fantasy , hosted Timothy S. Brannan's The Other Side Blog "Another zombie.  Ho hum.  I'll kite it, you stick it with arrows."  Zombies by liftarn, under CC0 There is nothing horrific about zombies.  Here, look, courtesy of Basic Fantasy RPG: Zombie (undead) AC : 7[12] HD : 2 Attack : 2x +1/weapon or swipe (1d8) Mv : 20 ft.   No. Appearing : 2d4 (4d6 in the wild) Save : F2 Morale : 12 Treasure Type : none  XP : 75 It's basically a slightly worse gnoll that never retreats.  This has been a chip on my shoulder for a long time.  Here's what I propose:  First, every undead creature should be freaky: they utterly violate the natural order of the world.  They should be described with that in mind.  Play up the disturbing appearance of their decaying yet animate corpses and their putrefying stench. Mechanically, we might reflect this character reaction in one of two ways: Chara
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After Action Report: Strata + Shadowdark

A combination of another bout of Covid and elder family members getting hospitalized delayed this by a few weeks, but my hopes for a steady gaming group seem to finally culminate in an actual game last night.  Socrates was delayed by theatrical problems, but Gwenchant and I arrived at Soddentowel's place, and, after discussing parenting and schooling, snacks and drinks, we got around to talking about play experience and what we were going to play.  It probably helped a bit that we had hashed out lines and veils and a few other session 0 topics on our Discord. After determining that Gwenchant and Soddentowel's play experiences were more exclusive to latter day D&D , we decided to each make two characters to play the Shadowdark quickstart, using 3d6 down the line, with a house rule stolen from the *WN books of replacing one attribute with a 14.  Socrates got there shortly after they started making characters while I skimmed the GM's Guide.  I think it took us about an h
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Considerations of Xaosseed's Long Lives Slowing Language Change

 This post is a response to Xaosseed's post Your great-grand-elf's elvish: long lives slowing language change (RPG Blog Carnival) .  I suggest reading that first in its entirety, before I dig into it.  My goal here is to have a deeper discussion, not just to rain Xaosseed's linguistic parade.  This lede hooked me: The RPG Blog Carnival prompt from Beneath Foreign Planets of WORDS! Etymology, Onomatology and Linguistics sparked some other thoughts for me - on the stability of language when there are very long-lived organisms around.   Xaosseed shared the hypothesis of the post: The core thought here is that you can find thousand year old elves, dragons and giants around - presumably still speaking the same language with the same accent as when they learned their languages in their your - so accents and languages would change much more slowly in such settings than in our own world.  Xaosseed then set up the setting's premise with respect to linguistic stability, whi
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Nine Ranged Magical Weapons

Through September Attronarch of Attronarch's Athenaeum is hosting September 2024's RPG Blog Carnival!  The theme is  Wondrous Weapons and Damning Dweomers . This post shares a number of magical weapons which are relatively rare, missile weapons! Firestar: 5 throwing knives +1, found in a custom belt with five sheaths on it for them.   doing 1d3 damage, +1 fire damage for each other Firestar knife already in the target.  When a third Firestar dagger is embedded in the same target, these knives explode, doing 3d6 fire damage, or double damage to zombies, and re-appear in their sheaths, while the sheaths of destroyed daggers turn black.  At dawn each day, any missing but intact daggers return to their sheaths.  Made for High Hill Halflings by Dwarven pyrotheurges during the war against the Zombie King. Radiant Short Bow: A +1 shortbow, +2 against undead.  When the bowstring is pulled back, an arrow appears where expected, but made of solid light, and illuminating an area 10 ft.
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The Elements of Magic Weapons, and Most Especially the Side Effects of Wielding Them

Through September Attronarch of Attronarch's Athenaeum is hosting September 2024's RPG Blog Carnival!  The theme is  Wondrous Weapons and Damning Dweomers .  In relation to that, I would like to talk about the elements of generating a magical weapon with a touch more depth than Old Gary got into. Typical D&D weapons provide a benefit, but with no drawback.  This is great as far as it goes, but I believe a little more thought should be put into it, since each weapon should have the following elements: A numeric bonus An allegiance An intended enemy A weapon effect A side-effect First, I believe all magic weapons should have a numeric bonus, even if it's just +1 to hit and damage.  Call me old-fashioned. Second, gentle reader, all weapons should have some sort of magical effect, even if it's just an elemental damage bonus.  Weapons are made for a purpose, and are made by some person or group.  The makers of the weapon set the allegiance. That doesn't necessarily
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