Things I'm learning about Pb

Notes for the game I just ran, in all their sketchy, unfinished glory.

    Just ran my first game in a calendar year. Back in town from school, and reunited with some old DnD friends to play a Pb one-shot. The new Pb system is the latest in a long line of developing sister-hacks, starting with RbSDnD and moving through the SCULPTED WORLD, but it's never had a terribly rigorous combat test from savvy, mechanically-minded players. That changed this evening. Here's what I learned from my experiences running the system.

• A mindset shift I have to accommodate to: in leveled games, less difficult fights with weaker enemies often results in boring and cumbersome combat sequences that don't have a meaningful impact in the long run. However, with the way the math works in Pb, every hit point counts, and 2 lighter flights can make a 3rd lighter fight lethal, or a climactic fight a bloodbath.
• Only foes meant to be encountered solo, or as part of an overwhelming combat, should have 2 HD attacks, or attacks that explode. 3 HD attacks are lethally deadly to anything but the most powerful characters.
• Similarly, having two or more hearts should be reserved for solo or very small group foes. If there's a large group, it's usually best to have one or two foes with hearts, and have the rest be minions.
• Can't recommend enough rider effects on attacks. Especially when they involve a player rolling to avoid an extra effect; it gives the players some feeling of agency in the face of the inevitable damage of a system without attack rolls.
• Cover, and terrain that players can use to put artificial distance between them and an enemy, makes a much bigger difference in combat without attack roles, and the more opportunities to exploit that you as the DM can set up, the more interesting combat will become, in (for one example) weighing the choice of diving behind the cover or staying to make a second attack.
• I'm very pleased with how fast boring parts of combat zip by in this system, and how high the ceiling is for interesting, dynamic combat that goes beyond punching at hit points. With a system this sparse, the standard OSR principles of giving players access to open-ended resources or problems (like hypo-oxygen bladders! like powerful lesser demons, who are vulnerable to iron and afraid of ankhs!) make a big difference in getting the simplicity to "sing".
• I enjoy the ritual of "carving out" what a spell means with the players. You have to touch someone to use VAMPIRISM. You can't use the same CURSE twice. PETRIFY works for Td4 TURNS. Over time, you build out a known world of effects from the one word prompt.
• Any game system or world is fun when you're with fun people. Thanks, Thomas, Em, JC, and Caden, for years of great games, and for a feeling of friendship like I never left whenever I'm home.

This insight would probably apply to any game without attack rolls?

Things Pb needs: loot table, mutation table, equipment ranked by cost bracket a la Black Hack (common, modest, expensive or something), a simple starting dungeon. I could pile in things like NPCs, aerodyne features, that sort of thing, but I'm not sure how much that deserves to live in the artifact. Are those sorts of tables worth the space, working DMs out there?

[Edit: starting rewrites. For posterity's sake, here's my random item table, having been replaced by items by price.

1 Random SCROLL (150g)

2 Random ELIXIR (75g)

3 Phosphoric torch (5g)

4 Lockpicks (20g)

5 Bile-pots (25g, Ud6)

6 Book (15g)

7 Paper map (2g)

8 Journal (5g)

9 Dagger (10g)

10 Manacles (40g)

11 Magnesium lighter (15g)

12 Metal pole (5g)

13 Jewelry (50g)

14 Silver coin (10g)

15 Ankh necklace (10g)

16 Rat (5c)

17 Rope (1g)

18 Key (5c)

19 Mundane crystal (2c)

20 Mushroom jerky (2c, Ud4) ]

Promise I'll put out something more directly usable soon- I'm having fun wading back into game and adventure design, and the world of Pb gets sharper and clearer every time I return to it. Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

Pb (reloaded)

Click the image below for the newest Pb.

(Forgive the dot grid- this art is from my journal, doodles drawn during a game.)

WHAT'S IN THIS ONE?

• A tweaked core system, based on successful innovations from THE SCULPTED WORLD and before. For the first time, Pb has classes, and I think it's much the stronger for it.
• d% list of backgrounds and starting equipment, for those freaks who love a giant table of weird stuff.
• Elements and their alchemical properties- what does rubidium rose-tinted glass do? what does a neonized compass point at? what's special about phosphoric flame?
• 0 lore dumps, at least so far. (If this is your first exposure to Pb, this may prove a bit confusing. If you're interested, there's plenty more about the setting, in some form or another, on the blog.)

WHAT'S COMING?

• I'm running a Pb one-shot on Thursday. I'm going to write up that short dungeon. Will help put this all into practice.
• I'm going to write up a short GM section with more concrete lore, my random encounter rules, d% table of magical loot, short bestiary, Appendix N, that sort of thing.
• If I can find a way to make it interesting, I'll see if I can write up some of the myths of the saints. How St. Copper lost an eye imprisoning a bear amongst the stars, how St. Mercury tried to steal St. Hydrogen's love from St. Oxygen, the Craftsperson Wars waged by St. Boron, St. Nickel, and St. Antimony against each other to make St. Carbon the perfect gift, those sorts of things.
• More art? Maybe? Returning to the Pb house style has been fun and meditative, and for as long as it keeps being fun, I'll keep making it.

Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

Unloading my "cool images" folder

 Have at. They're better here than in my notes app. Some of these almost certainly stolen from other people's blogs, too far back for me to remember which from where.

Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

Gestures at a cosmos

 Towards “Sundering” Planescape. The project no longer grabs me, but I’ve been sitting on this draft too long, and put too much work into making it half-decent, so it’s time to give it its quiet, gentle release into its next stage of life.

Here are the principles behind my design.

• Each plane can be practically mapped and crossed.
• Each plane corresponds to a deadly sin.
• Each plane is some sick fuck’s perfect world.

REVEL (Lust)

Above a jungle teeming with an overlife that cavorts with its teeth in its own flank, brilliant treetop palaces host parties that never end, the floor getting stickier and stickier and the tropic air getting so thick with smoke and sweat it fills your lungs with a single breath.

SIX PARTIES YOU DON’T WANT TO BE AT

1 The party is a front for a skinjacking hive mind that calls itself Best Friend.

2 There’s spiked punch going around that makes you dangerously thirsty for human blood.

3 d6 people at the party want to kill another attendant, and will try and rope you into their plans.

4 The party takes place in a collective dream; time passes faster in the dream, so an evening is enough to dehydrate.

5 Everyone here is dead, and all this new loud breathing is making them ornery.

6 Every 10 minutes, a gong rings and the partygoers all vote to throw one person out into the jungle.

REVELER CUNNING

1 You’re an expert poisoncrafter.

2 You have intense sex appeal.

3 Your feet are just as deft as your hands.

4 You can kiss anyone and they won’t get upset about it.

5 You’re immune to harmful drugs, poisons, and their ilk.

6 You breathe out campfire smoke.

REVELER FOIBLES

1 You won’t break eye contact.

3 You don’t have impulse control.

3 You can never tell how people feel about you.

4 You have a hyper-addictive personality.

5 You have intense narcolepsy.

6 You’re immune to drugs, even medical ones.

MOIL (Greed)

A bruise-red storm whirls in the sky, casting lightning down upon a sea of molten fool’s gold. Suspended in the sea are massive fatbergs of unhewn metals and gems, too much to ever be mined, too much to ever be refined, too much to ever be valuable again.

SIX ISLANDS AMIDST THE PYRITE

1 A hermit with a chisel carving a cathedral out of raw ruby.

2 Dozens of nervous systems swimming in synaptic fluid below a foot-thick diamond shell.

3 Six monks, surrounded by carefully-set bells, sit in silent meditation so they may hold open a portal to Earth.

4 A sapphire honeycombed with cave networks given ravenous sentience by a lightning strike.

5 A religious commune trying to use the quartz spires to build a ladder into the thunderheads above.

6 A silver-wrought coliseum whose occupants turned on each other when they ran out of gladiators to watch.

MOILISH CUNNING

1 You’re a masterful metalworker.

2 You can appraise to the dollar by taste.

3 You can speak Gemstone.

4 You swim as well as you walk.

5 Your fists work like a pickaxe.

6 You bleed oil.

MOILISH FOIBLES

1 You can’t swim.

2 You get unnerved living any worse than lavishly.

3 You get unnerved living any better than in squalor.

4 You can’t count above 5.

5 You don’t have any sense of value.

6 You eat gemstones and coins.

CAIN (Envy)

A hiemal world within a great sphere filled with tumbling snow and bitter cold. When you cast your gaze above you, you can see the burning sparks of a thousand fires you can’t light, and hear the laughter of people in warmth and safety you can scarcely imagine anymore.

SIX ABANDONED FIRES

1 A dwindling pile of ashes, surrounded by the frozen corpses of those it didn’t warm.

2 A raging bonfire, which attracted the other long-slumbering denizens of the cave.

3 A smoky blaze from a smoldering wagonful of pelts; if I can’t have it, no one will.

4 A small, oily thing, extinguished by reaver-spilled blood.

5 A burned-out torch clutched in skeletal grip, the remains of darkness with teeth.

6 A long-burning hearth that served its sentence and kept a pilgrimage mercifully safe and warm.

CANIAN CUNNING

1 You can use stone and sticks as workman’s tools.

2 You can smell blood in the vein from a mile away.

3 Your breath can indefinitely sustain fire.

4 Your vision can’t be impeded by weather.

5 You’re impervious to the cold.

6 Your touch is freezing.

CANIAN FOIBLES

1 You must sleep unobserved.

2 You won’t willingly turn your back to anyone.

3 You can’t express emotion.

4 You distrust, and won’t use, metal arms or armor.

5 You’re afraid of water.

6 You go mad if you don’t eat human meat daily.

THE SINEWS (Gluttony)

You’re in the belly of the beast now. Slick red, pulsing organelles, coursing veins, cathedrals carved out of living and forever-screaming bones. The sickly, stillborn son of God.

SIX ORGANELLES

1 defibrilator

2 stalking vacuole

3 imagine a person on all fours, but they’re made of hands, and the hands are actually saw blades, and the saw blades are made of bone, and the bone is porous and leaks highly acidic digestive fluid (not much like a person at all, actually)

4 wandering synapse

5 enameleur

6 phlegmonaut

SINEWY CUNNING

1 You can safely eat spoiled or poisoned food.

2 You can bend any joint both ways.

3 You can climb unimpeded by moisture.

4 You can harvest workman’s tools from a corpse.

5 You can pull your eyes out.

6 You can speak Skeleton.

SINEWY FOIBLES

1 You can’t keep your balance.

2 You eat everything you can.

3 You treat everything as if it were livestock.

4 You are faceblind.

5 You spit on people in greeting.

6 You’re scared of open spaces.

GALLOWMERE (Wrath)

Cracks in the parched earth spit brimstone into the starless, blood-red sky. Blood waters every plant and soothes every parched throat, spilt by sword-steel in endless warfare. There are three sides: the saints, who manufacture godsblood-powered war engines, the sinners, who have strength in numbers, and the living, who aren’t fighting to win, but merely to abstain.

SIX ABANDONED ARMAMENTS

1 A rusty knife that is rendered as rubber when stabbing anything other than an eyeball.

2 A sheet of unrippable paper, whose rust-red edges show its history as a torture device.

3 The corpse of a dog, with a chunk of rock sewn into the cranial cavity to make it into a makeshift flail.

4 THE EARTH MAKES US ALL EQUAL AGAIN, a chainsaw that runs on pinkies.

5 A half-drunk bottle of a “tooth elongating serum” that smells of cotton candy dissolved in vinegar.

6 A grenade with its pin pulled, currently about halfway through a 250-year timer.

GALLOWMERE CUNNING

1 You’re a masterful tactician.

2 You’re immune to heat.

3 Your fists function as hammers.

4 You can smell fear.

5 You can use any weapon as workman’s tools.

6 You always have a dagger tucked away.

GALLOWMERE FOIBLES

1 You wound people in greeting.

2 You won’t fight anyone shorter than you.

3 You can’t feel pain.

4 Your hands tremor incessantly.

5 You don’t believe the law applies to you.

6 You would rather die than lose.

SHAHKAT (Pride)

Tunnels carved in glass, miles thick. Suspended in the glass are prisoners from across the cosmos, permanently frozen. Wandering the tunnels are rune-scored wheels of eyes and tongues and electrum referred to by apostates as wardens, and by believers as avenging angels.

SIX PRISONERS IN THE GLASS

1 A crab-legged version of Popeye the sailor man ripped from a child’s nightmare.

2 Ezekiel Midas, the cursed robber baron; everything he touches turns to oil!

3 Bub-Siir, the Atlantean warlock that first summoned the Shoggoths.

4 Seraphim, the pre-Godfall chancellor of the Thirteen-Fold Host.

5 Zzkzzts, the lightning elemental that once powered the Pancosmic Goliath.

6 Markov Rasputin, the innocent twin of Grigori Rasputin II, Butcher of Czarsway.

SHAHKATER CUNNING

1 You can worm your way out of any bindings within ten minutes.

2 Your teeth can cut metal.

3 You can see as if through the back of your head.

4 You can see auras.

5 You can grapple with one hand.

6 Your touch turns metal to glass.

SHAKHATER FOIBLES

1 You move at half speed, carefully weaving around cracks and pockmarks.

2 You panic if you can’t see out of the room you’re in.

3 You can’t knowingly break the law.

4 You can’t open or close doors.

5 You get lost when you can see the sky.

6 You can’t “read” people.

ELYSIUM (Sloth)

A mountain sits at the edge of the horizon, no matter how far you trek, and you know the view from the top will take your breath away. A tree from your childhood calls out to you to waste an hour, a day, a week under its branches, chasing a joy you barely remember and miss with your whole heart. You’re thirsty- so thirsty- when you notice an utterly still pond of what can’t possibly be pure spring water in the corner of your eye, its bed rich with bones.

SIX SIGNS TO STAY

1 A grasshopper that hums a song so heartbreaking anyone who listens to it weeps piteously until they’re dry.

2 A ferret that uncoils like a slinky to wrap around its prey.

3 A tree whose ever-ripe fruit is covered in acidic mucus.

4 A lake of aged sap pooling around a colossal dying tree, at the edge of which is a mountain made of sand when ascended and glass when descended.

5 A venus flytrap shaped like a pair of boots whose soles are rooted into the ground.

6 A wandering alchemist specializing in sleep draughts who appears as any given beholder’s favorite parent.

ELYSIAN CUNNING

1 You can’t be perceived by animals.

2 You’re a masterful herbalist.

3 Running water loves you.

4 You can talk to plants.

5 You can hold still as death.

6 Your touch turns metal to wood.

ELYSIAN FOIBLES

1 You’re deaf to the human voice.

2 You can’t stand being any colder than sweating.

3 You can’t turn around in place.

4 You don’t believe in lies.

5 You view animals as you do humans; leather horrifies you.

6 You can’t go faster than speedwalking.

—

Foibles and cunnings inspired by Phlox’s Barbarian class.