Elemental Reductions

My last entry for Purple OSR Discord's Secret Santicorn is footie Domopunk. I wrote this on my phone during holidays with the family. I'll probably edit this at a later date. Apologies for more than the usual editing errors.  Prompt : Mundane objects that are portals to different worlds.  Portable Brass Forge : This brass forge has an inscription on its top in the genie script: Use for a day risks sympathetic manifold tesseraction. This forge heats steel and iron as though they were brass,  allowing forging and metal work at cooler temperatures and for less fuel. Items forge this way count as being forged 1d6x5% faster.   On a six,  the smith can instead get a magical +1 item, if they give up 1 point of constitution and one point of wisdom for months.  It still requires someone to work the bellows, and still requires an anvil for smithing.  Anyone within 35 ft. of the forge for 8 hours has a 1-in-3 chance of getting teleported as a group to a similar f...

I wrote this up for Secret Santicorn for Khajeet, whose original gift giver had to bow out.  Merry Hannukwanzimas, Khajeet!   Fafhrd was a barbarian from the cold north.  I only recall the vaguest bits of those books, but between that and having snow and ice at home four months of the year, here are some reforgings of those thoughts. Cold Environments When your party is venturing through temperatures around -20°C (that’s -4F°), even hiking in armor isn’t going to get you through those freezing nights.  The party’s going to need some really good gear.   Winged flyers, usually limited in load, do very poorly in these environments if they aren’t similar to their home terrain, because they can’t carry the load of insulating clothes. Survival Gear Clothes Sleeping Gear Effect Full Snow Gear (20 gp): waterproof boots, overcoat, cape, and cap if fully armored, add leggings and a tunic if not, and mitts, all insulated.  Outfits for people from such environment...

Prompt: Stealing situations from books, movies, and videogames for fun and profit. Movie: Inception:      The party has to get into someone’s mind and either remove, or harder still, implant a memory or idea there.  This will make them much easier to manipulate in the real world.     The characters have a limited macguffin to enter the mind of the target, and have to heist-like move through surrealistic situations, with a limited ability to impose their own visions, with the assistance of mundane “seed” objects that have a stronger persistence than the mindscape they are in.  These seed objects should provide a limited narrative control to the players, and for maximum effect should be things that they identify through research of the target, things that link to strong emotions and memories the target has associated with them. Movie: Dark City:      There is a device that lets its user extract memories as bodily fluids which they can then...

    This is post is for this month's  RPG Blog Carnival topic: End of Times  hosted on Advantage Arcana .  I'm going to examine the topic  Games that have to do with an imminent and/or ongoing Apocalypse , specifically causes of potential apocalypses, and what can be done about it, in broad brush strokes.      This is more about thinking about how to run these situations as a Game Master than it is about mechanics or specific details.

This is post is for this month's  RPG Blog Carnival topic: feasts and festivals hosted on Of Dice & Dragons .  This post covers a beggar's feast as part of the Feast of Winter Solstice. Feast of the Winter Solstice This feast is done on the evening of the longest night of the year, right before New Year's day.  During the day, people seek to pay off debts and settle grudges. Everyone also makes sure their fellows all have an invitation to a feast gathering, as it is believed those left out will easily invoke Hekate for a curse on those who have spurned them. The wise among the wealthy and powerful ensure a beggar's feast for the destitute and the sheltered, supplying good food and inviting the everyone in their area to make sure they have a place to socialize and make merry. In the evening, people gather for their feast. An hour before midnight, they take a good serving to a crossroad, and lay it out in honor of Hekate.  It is usually eaten by dogs.  If al...