MARROW Wizards

     Every GLoGhack needs a "base wizard". Here is mine.

WIZARD

Wizard SKILLS: Wizardry

    A Choose 2 WORDS. You can cast any Spell you can think of that relates to a WORD you know. When you cast a Spell, roll 2d6. On a 10+, it goes how you want it. On a 7-9, there is a cost. On a 6-, things go awry, the lower the more catastrophic. You may have a penalty the more complicated/dangerous the Spell you want to cast.

    B Choose another WORD. If you find a Spell or a Scroll, you can spend a TURN to turn it into a TRAUMA and be able to cast it permanently as one of your Spells, even if it doesn't relate to any of your WORDS.

    C Choose another WORD. You can combine 2 WORDS in a single casting ("destroy" and "ward" might be Disintegration Field).

    D Choose another WORD. You can combine up to 3 WORDS in a single casting ("ward", "summon", and "animate" might be Demon Binding).

WORDS:

    Abjuration- WARD

    Conjuration- SUMMON

    Divination- SEE

    Enchantment- ENHANCE

    Evocation- DESTROY

    Illusion- OBSCURE

    Necromancy- ANIMATE

    Transmutation- WARP

LOOT: Spellbook of the Archmage

    I'm going to abolish Spells as a discrete entity as anything other than Scrolls or Wands or the like. It clutters things up, and I think it's more interesting and cleaner to have magical abilities that are always "on" for casters than to have Spells. I know it's a scared cow, but they're just not right for MARROW. I like the use of the DW dice for spellcasting, it makes a lot of sense and is simple enough to be easily memorable, but rich enough to allow for what I need it to do.

    I like the idea of magic verbs and magic words. It's just concrete enough a DM can make rulings, but just abstract enough to allow players virtually full freedom in creative solutions. I'm gonna test it ASAP to see what my players think of it and how it goes.

    Please tell me what you think, and happy gaming.

The Koden Tomb

A low-level system-agnostic adventure intended to induce paranoia and careful thinking in the PCs set in the icy north. The promise I made in this post borne out.

BACKGROUND

• Long ago, atop the Ice Cliffs, the Kingdom of Kode (KOAD-uh) reigned

• This empire was literally and figuratively built on the back of a creature called the Hunger

• The Hunger dwells below, or perhaps is, the Ice Cliffs

• They are a truly eldritch entity… they do not understand us

• It has mastered life and death after all these years

• It has mastered cold, but it seeks to know heat

• If it learns of heat, it may well fall

• The Hunger is too vast to be permanently killed without a campaign spent to do it

• The Kingdom fell when the Hunger grew too hungry and commanded the king to send thousands upon thousands of citizens into its maws

• Its appetite is insatiable, and it will eat anything…

• Corpses? Magic? Coins? Memories? Dreams?

• The last king of the Kodens still lives, an undead thrall of the Hunger

• The Hunger’s maw was contained in the Koden Crypts… that is, until now

• An archeological expedition broke into the Crypts and re-awakened the dormant Hunger

• Can the PCs get to the bottom of the strange things happening in the Crypts, save the team, and perhaps abate the Hunger for a short while?

THE MIST IN THE TOMB

• The mist in the Koden Crypts are unnatural… it carries the Chillplague

• The Chillplague is a successful experiment from the Hunger

• It’s sort of a psychic link that activates after death

• Those who are infected have pale skin and ice blue irises

• The irises are horizontal slits, an eerie and unseemly sight

• The Chillplague is transmitted through the mists or a bite from the infected

• Make a roll upon entering the mists or upon getting bitten, else be infected

• Again, no signs of anything until death

• Those who are infected keep as many memories and impulses as they did when they were alive as the Hunger sees fit

• At any point, the Hunger can do ANYTHING to the mind of the infected

• Make a mindless zombie, restore their mind to how it was when they were alive, whatever

• In addition to all of that, it obscures things and makes things eerie

THEMES TO EMPHASIZE: Resource scarcity, danger of the natural environment and features of the Crypt, betrayal and untrustworthiness, offputting politeness and helpfulness from enemies, a connected web of unknown variables to discover the connections between

--Exposition complete. Initializing adventure.--

OUTSIDE

• Bedraggled sled dog shows up

• Looks to be severely frostbitten and exhausted

• In its mouth is a crinkled and bloodstained journal page

• On the back of the page is “HELP US” smeared in charcoal

• Looks genuine upon inspection (because it is)

• It looks to be archeological notes about a tomb from an ancient empire

• Dog wants to take the PCs somewhere

• Takes them an hour and a half’s walk to the Ice Cliffs nearby

• The Cliffs have a small aperture cut by a pick into a faintly fire-lit space (Campfire)

• The dog REFUSES to enter, even to the point of violence

CAMPFIRE

• In this room is a small campfire on its way out and two lean-to tarps, meager supplies scattered

• The campfire is on its way out… on current supplies, there’s a day and half’s worth of light and heat left. If not replenished, resting and replenishing is impossible

• There are two people in this room

• Krys, NB Human. Krys is getting a little stir-crazy and desperate. They have a dagger in their bedroll, and after the fire goes out, plans to kill and eat/use MacMurdough’s body. Are they mad, or just pragmatic?

• MacMurdough, M Human. A jovial fellow native to the region. His optimism is flagged under the current conditions, but he tries to see silver linings. He was the one who sent the dog (Scrapsy) out into the blizzard.

• There are two members of the expedition that are NOT in the room.

• Talis, F Elf. She went off to explore in the misty hallway and has not returned. (She was killed and infected by the Chillplague Cadavers in the Koden Crypts.)

• Ivandor, M Dwarf. After Talis vanished, he went to brave the blizzard outside of the Crypts to get supplies. His body is buried under the snow.

• They ask about the storm outside… how strange, there was no storm!

• When they look at the way in, there’s a massive blizzard!

• If they try to leave, the cold will likely strip their flesh from their bones (make death likely)

• The blizzard goes for about 30 feet of the worst cold imaginable, then suddenly stops. Turning around, there’s no blizzard at all, just the cave opening…

• The room has two exits

• One leading into a dark, mist-filled hallway, leading to a fork in the hall (left goes to the Ghost Lights, right goes to the Koden Crypts)

• The other exit leads to an unmisted room with a strange, shadowy shape sticking out of the wall (Kodens in the Walls)

• And then the entrance, but we already went over that

KODENS IN THE WALLS

GHOST LIGHTS

• This room is FILLED with the Chillplague mist

• Behind the walls of black ice float pinpricks of light, floating in patterns

• Roll 1d6 to see what they might be, or choose/make up something interesting:

1 Probes and communicators from the Hunger

2 Lost souls that died in the caverns

3 Valuable, yet venomous, Glow Maggots

4 The patterns are utterly random, the lights are nothing at all

5 An imprisoned eldritch celestial who opposes the Hunger

6 A tracker that points to every non-Koden

• This room leads from the fork to the Frozen King’s Hall

KODEN CRYPTS

• This massive, Chillplague-mist-covered room is filled with sarcophagi inscribed with ancient Koden designs (icicle-wielding spearmen of the dead guarding a flaming heart)

• The first sarcophagus the players open is empty, with faint scratch marks implying an escape from within and a coat of frost lining the icy stone

• Past there, roll a d4 every time they open a sarcophagus, increasing the dye type each time. A 4 or higher means all the sarcophagi open.

• In about 60% of the sarcophagi are slavering, long-dead Chillplague Cadavers

• On the far side of the room is a spire of ice, on which is skewered an elvish corpse

• This is Talis, the expedition leader. If anyone gets too close, she animates with a violence and starts slinging spells willy nilly

• There may be treasure scattered about this room from the ancient and now-mutated Koden soldier-priests buried here

• In the far corner of the wall is a secret door leading to the Priest and the Pyramid

• Detectable only through thorough searching (an hour or more) or noticing that the mist seems a little thicker, as if pouring out from some unseen vent

FROZEN KING’S HALL

• This massive vault is lit by a cold, white light from behind the ice

• Massive spires of water-filled ice contain strange fetuses

• These are the products of the Hunger’s experimentations on life

• Are they animate? What do they do?

• A massive throne sits around an utterly empty pastiche of a fire pit

• On the throne is sitting a huge, 10-foot tall figure clad in mouldering and frosty noble robes, icicles dripping off a bushy beard, a horrifying skeletal grin permanently stretching literally from ear to ear

• This is the Frozen King, the last monarch of Kode, now a Chillplague Cadaver under the command of the Hunger

• The Frozen King can take two actions a turn

• Create a wall of ice

• Hurl a rime-crusted javelin

• Call in 2 Chillplague Cadavers from another room

• The Frozen King acts congenial, asking about heat and fire- it seeks to learn, perhaps by force

• It will protect the Maw, or perhaps it will try to provide the Hunger with a meal of living flesh, a delicacy untasted for decades...

THE MAW

• A massive, fanged mouth dominates the room

• Chillplague Cadavers push each other into the fanged mouth, chant incomprehensible prayers, or lunge forward to pull the living flesh into the pit

• The Hunger can speak!

• It is willing to be non-hostile, if not dismissive and aloof

• After all, it is talking to ants about how to carry crumbs

• It seeks to learn of fire, offering the Chillplague Corpses as test dummies

• If it grows displeased, it can initiate a cavern collapse

• The more teeth the Hunger has intact lining the pit, the more damage they can do…

• Break the teeth to render the Hunger impotent until they regrow?

• What about the stomach acid?

• The Hunger doesn’t understand fire, and as such, fire can seriously hinder it

• Throwing fire into the maw is one of the more surefire ways to stun it for a few rounds, enough to make a hasty retreat

• Other strategies might work, and the party might not even have to fight; this room is very dependant of how the PCs have played it thusfar and how the Hunger feels about them

• Perhaps there are piles of inedible treasures lining the toothed and jagged wound in the earth for the taking...

THE PRIEST AND THE PYRAMID

• In this secret Chillplague-Mist-filled back room, the High Priest was buried in ceremony

• The priest is now an animate, hostile, evil undead monstrosity, more resembling a Chillplague Cadaver than a high-functioning Chillplagued like the Frozen King

• Also in this room is a tidy pile of coin, offerings, and magic items

• In the far corner of the room is a pyramidic structure of black glass about 3 feet tall set into the floor

• It can be opened with a sufficient amount of blood, heat, or mechanical jiggering

• Below it is a beating and writhing mass of ice-cold flesh

• The closest thing the Hunger has to a heart, burning it away, stabbing it, or otherwise damaging it could anger or incapacitate the Hunger, at least for a time

• If the pyramid is opened with fire, the Hunger learns much from it… does it even need the PCs to teach it anymore?

Insert loot, mechanics, monsters, and a healthy dose of improv and you have a night or two of paranoid gaming! This doesn’t have to be a fantasy campaign. It would work in any setting, I guess. I could imagine sci-fi people going through the Crypts of Koden just as much as I could a pack of cavepeople. Have fun, and I hope this is useful to you somehow!

Also, tell me what you think of the condensed, bulleted format. I like it, and if I were running a published adventure this is how I would want that information, but I want to know if I could do it differently/more efficiently!

Gonna add my map soon.

A couple gonzo Classes

I’ve had these ideas rattling around for a few days, decided to make them. I wonder what an Unsnake looks like?

UNSNAKE

Unsnake SKILLS: Not being a snake

A You are not a snake. In fact, you are the opposite of a snake. Your spit is antivenom and you can sense emotion, but you cannot hide.

B Your blood is hot. When somebody draws blood, they take a WOUND from the heat.

C You cannot slide and slither, only leap and gibber. Your jump height is 20 feet.

D You cannot see heat, or swallow things whole. However, you can eat and subsequently regurgitate anything, and you can hear cold.

LOOT: Armband of the Opposite of a Snake

BEE BEARD

Bee Beard SKILLS: Apiculture, hair

A You have a beard made of bees. You have as much honey as you could ever need.

B You can talk to the bees. They like you in the same way a sulky teenager likes their parents- they’ll do what you say, but with great reluctance, and they’ll let you know it.

C Roll CHA to have the bees attack. They deal WOUNDS equal to your Level.

D You own a modest bee farm somewhere that gives you reliable income and a steady stream of apprentices. At any point, you may fashion someone else a new Bee Beard. You lose all your Bee Beard abilities (save the farm) and they get a Level in Bee Beard.

LOOT: Honey Comb (get it? get it?)

LASER DRUID

Laser Duid SKILLS: Druidcraft, lasery

A You can shapeshift into one creature form of your choice, gaining another one every level. You also own a laser blaster, which deals WOUNDS equal to your level and cannot be resisted.

B You cannot be disarmed of your laser. In addition, if your laser is destroyed, you can make a new one in a day.

C Your laser ignores armor.

D You have truly fused nature and technology. You can choose to shoot trees out of your laser. If you shoot it into earth, the tree immediately takes root.

LOOT: Overgrown Blaster

I’m doing this instead of writing out that adventure I promised you a couple posts ago. *sigh* Well, I’ll get there eventually.

What happens when you open a Door

There comes a time when you steal from a Goblin Punch post where you find you need to add more information. The following is a d30 table: what happens when you open a Door?

What happens when you open a Door?

1 The Door is stable, thank god.

2 The Door cannibalizes itself as soon as it is entered, violently dismembering the first occupant.

3 The Door works, but the passage is long, and hands and eyes reach from the dimension-skin walls...

4 The Door spits out 3d6 tiny tumor-hounds. They seek to spread their cancerous bite they give with their toothless mouths.

5 The Door spits out a Temporal Juggernaut, made of the shifting and flickering corpses of a million corpses from a million deaths.

6 The Door vomits out hundreds of gallons of blood. 60% chance it is infected with some space-time disease.

Space-Time Diseases:

1 Chronon Fever. You can see the past and possible futures of anything you look at, but no one has survived Chronon Fever for more than 3 days.

2 Temporal Cancer. Your timeline is being attacked, from the end to the beginning. Your natural lifespan is quartered, and you are vulnerable to temporal attacks.

    3 The Flickers. Every day, roll a d6.

        1 You stay the same size all day.

        2 You stay double your height and weight the whole day.

3 Every hour, roll a d4.

    1 Normal height and weight.

    2 Half size.

    3 Full size.

    4 Undulating every minute: full size, normal, half, normal, repeat

4 You stay half your height and weight the whole day.

5 You become incorporeal. Any time you interact with something physical, roll CHA. If you fail, your atoms are scattered to the corners of the universe.

6 You flicker in and out of reality. Do you fight it, or embrace this power and its respective risks?

4 Mindsrot. Your memories are degrading, because your timeline is collapsing. Every time you use a skill or recall something, roll a d6. On a 1, you’ve permanently forgotten it. Once all your skills are gone, you’re a blubbering amnesiac, and in 2d10 days you will vanish, no one remembering you ever existed.

5 Quarry’s Curse. You have incensed some power far beyond, in the depths of the cosmos. You have a month before it gets to you, and your destruction, as well as the murder of all those you love, is near inevitable.

    6 Roll d3 times, combining the results into a terrible ailment. This result can stack.

7 The Door fizzles immediately into a harmless shower of sparks.

8 The Door takes you to a random place in the multiverse (or somewhere beyond).

50% chance you roll for a random plane, 50% chance it takes you outside of the known multiverse to somewhere terribly strange.

9 The Door leads you to a place somewhere else in time.

    When?:

    1 The formation of the cosmos

    2 Distant past

    3 Near past

    4 Near future

    5 Far future

    6 Ragnarok

10 The Door opens to a random location on Prima Materia. Roll again.

11 The Door immediately drives the nearest person mad, filling them with existential bloodlust.

12 The Door vomits out a traveller from a different time or plane before closing.

    Time traveller:

1 Seralen ra’Quelveth, a shadowy elf who seeks to prevent/cause some upcoming tragedy

    2 Tango and Walnut, two bumbling masked time assassins who are hopelessly lost

    3 Colden Bloderrin, a dwarf from a distant past ice age who is baffled by modern life

    4 Szil, an acid-scarred lizard who refuses to reveal their home time

5 O!ari! (oh-*click*-ahri-*click*), a strangely knowledgeable blue-skinned alien from another planet

    6 Number 14, a bell-priest from an extradimensional cathedral

13 The Door spits out some alien artifact. 50% chance it is cursed.

    Alien Artifacts:

    1 A chunk of green marble, carved in alien marks.

    2 A mithril wand of cyclopean, spiraling make.

    3 A warped and deformed skeleton- is it natural? Which possibility is worse?

    4 A small fetus in an amber-colored glass jar. The jar shatters if it touches the ground.

    5 A massive gust of purple sand and a bolt of liquid lightning.

    6 A shattered dome of glass, eldritch script written in green blood inside.

14 The Door is open, but hideously deforms anyone who passes through.

15 The Door is open, but attaches a parasite to anyone who passes through.

    Space-Time Parasites:

1 Jerry. Jerry looks like a normal person, just like you. He is a hollow, chitinous shell. Do not trust a word he says, save when he talks longingly of the impending doom.

2 Clock maggots. Feasting on your perception of time, while you’re infected with clock maggots, you have a terribly warped perception of how long it takes things to happen.

3 Silver beetle. This massive creature clings to your back. Everyone infected goes into a coma, living through a hallucination of an alternate timeline as the time beetle feasts on their anguish. How can they be saved?

4 Spark. This small mote of light is the herald of some great power, spreading discord wherever it spreads. When it occupies a host, it inflicts a random temporal disease. It hops hosts once a week through touch.

16 The Door is open, but deals damage to anyone who passes through.

17 The Door is open, but anyone who passes through has a 50% chance of just vanishing.

18 The Door is open, but anyone who passes through garners the attention of some extra-cosmic monster. Roll again.

19 The Door opens as a mile-wide hole in the sky. Roll again.

20 The Door is stable, but everyone within 30 feet of it when it opens has their head explode.

21 The Door ejects a mass of warbling eye-flesh called an Anachron whose mucus pseudopods cause madness.

22 The Door secrets 2d4 mirror-liquid Hounds of Tindalos. They hunger for flesh unmarred by tumors...

23 The Door is stable, but anyone who passes through gets a malignant tumor. They will die in 10 days if it remains untreated.

24 The Door is stable, but when it appears, everyone who can see it makes a WIS save or go mad.

25 The Door is stable, but permanently scars and warps the land around.

26 The Door instead becomes a permanent portal to another plane.

27 The Door attracts the attention of some ancient divinity to some capacity. Roll again.

    Dead Gods

    1 Xyxiqcitl (ZZYKS-ih-kwuh-KIT-ul), the Serpent from the Writhing Depths

    2 Epoch, the Electric Prophet

    3 Torvis Talixar, the Bull from the Maggot-Ridden Time Waste

    4 Shade, the Rider from the Dark Front

    5 Ssol’berath, the First God of Beginnings

    6 (anagram a PC’s name), the (PC title) of (PC hobby)

28 Red-orange clouds coat the sky. The apocalypse begins.

29 Roll 1d6 times and combine the results.

30 Roll 1d12 times and combine the results. This result can stack.

If it’s unclear as to whether a Door is open, roll a d3. On a 1, roll again on the table above. On a 2, the Door closes. On a 3, the Door opens.