You're Doing Undead Wrong

Undead are more than acceptable targets for any kind of adventurer. We should not let this terrifying force of un-nature be just a different flavoured sack of HP that maybe is susceptible to holy water. It’s totally unfair towards the pure distillate of terror those monsters can be, if only you let them be as scary and invincible as they deserve!

Yummy.
Zombie from Resident Evil 2 Remake.

Ok, maybe I played too much Resident Evil 2. But that rant is not that far from the truth. I think that, rather than just have a weakness to holy damage or fire damage or the such, each kind of creature should fundamentally be unique, and understanding them to defeat them or work around them is a challenge all on its own and worth exploring. And once the threat is understood, seeing players interact with it in different kind of ways and seeing them find solutions to outsmart, avoid or use it makes for an hell of an interesting game. That’s an extremely valuable lesson I took from comparing RE2 to other zombie games. Did I already say I liked RE2?
Anyway, that’s how I plan to revamp undead at my table. I don’t plan to use all those rules at once, except when I will because I want players to hate me. Mix and match always makes for a good time.

Arise, my warrios!
Settra the Unperishable from Warhammer Fantasy.

The Restless
Some undead don’t die. That’s a fact. Whatever inhabits that weapon of putrescent flesh that’s shambling towards you can’t be just shanked out of this world. They are not like you.
After being defeated, Restless Undead come back up after d4*10 minutes to try and eat you again. They are the reason corpses keep disappearing from the dungeon.
Each Character can spend 10 minutes keeping them down, sitting on their shambling remains and hitting whatever tries to rise again. Up to 3 Restless per Character can be kept down, preventing them from coming back.
Each Character can spend d4*10 minutes to utterly dismember a single undead, destroying it for good. Alternatively, it can always take 10 minutes if you use something appropriate, like oil to burn it down, nails to crucify it somewhere, or a chainsaw to make sure it is appropriately scattered all around the room.

"I live... again!"
Tchernobog model used in Blood development by Monolith.

The Recreated
Some undead did die. And somebody around them was not happy with that turn of events. The scuttling claws and broken bones, gathered by madmen, found unlife anew. Hulking horrors stitched together and grafted to each other, in a perennial state of walking destruction, held in one piece by thin wires and threads of hate.
Recreated Undead have 3d4 limbs attached to their grotesque bodies. Half of them can be used to attack everything in range with a single Action. They gather 1d4 more each time they kill something and spend 10 minutes tearing the corpse apart. They can only do so with the corpses they kill themselves.
Instead of dying, they make a Save. On a successful Save, they lose 1d4 limbs. On a failed Save, their flimsily put together bodies fall apart like they were always meant to.

I've waited waaaaay too long to find an excuse to use this one.
The Curse from Dorohedoro by Q Hayashida. GO READ DOROHEDORO PLEASE.

The Revengeful
Some undead are simply dead. They linger on, and the violence that unmade their lives lingers on too. Ghosts of murders past and future, stealers of killing intent.
The Revengeful are incorporeal. They won’t attack unless they sense a killing intent, regardless of who it is directed to, in their area of action. This area extends 10 feet around them, and a faint glowing mist hoovers in it, like a stagelight.
When they sense the intent, they start audibly screaming. The mist becomes blood red. Your hands are actually covered in blood. You are actually covered in blood. The screams come from you now. They start haunting and attacking all those involved in the current conflict, inflicting constant damage as they ravage their victims with spectral teeth, claws and broken bones. They follow everyone involved until something drops dead. Those killed strengthen the Revengeful and sate its bloodlust for a day, giving it peace for a few hours.
They are spitefully condemned by themselves to relieve the key moments in their violent end. During this theatrical dance of death, they disappear every d4 rounds of reenacted suffering and silent screams, to reappear in the next spot of this macabre play. There are usually no more than 3 key spots/moments, that are forced to relive in loops for all eternity.
This ghastly, continuous rehash of their violent deaths can and should give out some important features and information on the dungeon, of course.

That's gonna take some time to clean up.
Screenshot from DAYZ.

HP, Speed and whatever else
Just make them fuckin’ slow and avoidable. One thing that the latest incarnation of RE2 taught me is that the undead are a fuckin’ phenomenal trap, and a not so great straight up fight. Fighting them is unreliable. Or at least, make most of them so. Exceptions are always a good time.
I make them move 10 feet per turn, inflict a good amount of damage (3 Afflictions, which is roughly a d6/d8 in B/X terms, probably not outright lethal but very scary) with a pretty high bonus (they reliably anything that’s not armored), and they go down as soon as they receive an Injury ignoring Afflictions (so they would have, like 1-2HD, but ignore all the damage that’s less than 4).
Being so slow and damaging, they are dangerous in numbers or in close quarters with little space of maneuver, which is pretty much how I think undead should work as interesting elements in a dungeon anyway.
I think I’ll have fun running them. I can’t really tell for my players, however I hope their screams and improvised plans to salvage the situation will be entertaining.

The Waxmaker: Beehive Incarnate

Between the Granite Halls and the Hillplains, a great road stands. Dusty feet of a thousand of Mankind’s finest and lowest alike have walked it, to meet the marvels of the Lord on the Hill and bring back news of such beauty. But sometimes dust gets muddy with water, when the wind blows from the Black Swamps to the north and brings dark clouds; and sometimes dust gets muddy with blood, when the highwaymen dare the Lords’ Cordon from the south and bring hunger and steel.
But neither blood nor water was found near the caravan. Only beeswax, and the footprints of many coming in and few coming out. No blood, no corpses and no signs of a fight, only molten wax and a swarm of bees hovering upon an abandoned wagon…

Unknown from the Internet.

Mud and Blood:

Zulal was born in the ghettos of the Ironmurk, the only city of the Scintillating Bay. He learned the value of life and death at an early age, and was forced into the Wilds almost as soon as he could walk. Nobody thought he could survive. He learned the art of bushcraft and learned to pick his fights. He learned the essence of death, and was touched by the Arcane Winds moved by a Feral Murkdweller in the middle of Nowhere. That’s where he noticed it. The winds didn’t touch him alone, and were not made by the feral. They were all-touching, and the fish-man was but a mere spectator pretending to be the director of the play. The bees showed the way the wind blew. The hive showed to truth. The hive was the truth.

He is always accompanied by The Swarm. The Swarm will always follow him closely. The Swarm cares for him, just like he cared for the Swarm when he gave it life.

The Swarm cares.
Wax Golem by epicprivate.

The Swarm:

The Swarm appears as a small army of melting wax men. This is not what the Swarm really is.
The Swarm is the mind behind the Wax Simulacra. It sees everything the Simulacra see, and care for the Hive as a whole. Every member of the Hive is protected by the Swarm. Outsiders are hated. Those that are hated are killed and fed to the Hive.
The Swarm doesn’t fight. It cares for the Hive and provides food for it. The Simulacra do just that: they jump at the enemy, absorbing it and slowly suffocating and crushing him to death. The suffocations takes 5 turns.
The Simulacra are weak to heat. Being near a strong heat source makes impossible for them to fully engulf a man. Attacking them with weapons has a 50% chance of making the same damage to the engulfed victim. Attacking them with fire sets them on fire, killing the Simulacra in 3 turns but risking setting the engulfed creature on fire afterwards.

He's watching you.
Wax Head from Dark Souls 3.

The Hive:

The Hive is a small house on an hilltop, kissed by sun and the moon, and just big enough for a small hunter to live in it.
Actually, that is just the entrance to the Hive. The real Hive is beneath it: the hill itself has been carved and emptied, and giant pillarcombs keep it in place. The hive is mainly inhabited by bees; other insects can be found but are not welcome. Most of the ceilings and walls are covered in beeswax, while the floors are usually covered in dead insects, rotting honey and loot from those unfortunate enough to have met the Swarm.
There are 3 main floors on the Hive: the wooden house, the Upper Cells, and Worker Bowels.
The wooden house is just that: a wooden house, cabin-sized, on top of an hill. Under a rug, a small trap door and a ladder lead down to the Upper Cells: a small maze of corridor, running around two main rooms: the Chamber of the Queens and the Observatory. Scattered around there are a few other laboratories and cages, of little consequence. The cages are always empty. The Swarm never takes prisoners.
The Observatory is a big circular room, with a large hole in the middle encircled by a wax railing. It overlooks the middle of the Worker Bowels, and is the only actual opening to it. There are no stairs and no rope to get down.
The Worker Bowels are a different deal. There are no stairs leading down. There are no real rooms, only ever changing walls of fresh beeswax. Most of the Swarm rests here. The pillars upon which the Hive is based on rest here. The treasures that Zulal and Rory have accumulated throughout the years rest here. The bones of the unfortunate victims of the Swarm rest here.

The Hive.
Houses on the Hill by Pablo Picasso.

The Road:

If found wandering around, Zulal will approach the party amicably, even if he is clearly a problematic individual. A beggar covered in rags head to toe, talking to insects and air. He will try to stop the party and entertain small talk, offer lunch, ask for help and anything else to keep them in place were they are for some time.
The Swarm will never be far, and will arrive very soon. Zulal never leads by more than half an hour of march away. Upon the arrival of the Swarm, Zulal will declare himself as That Which Was Born of the Wind, and will pretend surrender of body, soul and belongings of everyone else while the Swarm marches over consuming people alive.

A Magician in a Beekeeper’s Hat:

Zulal is a Level 2 Pack Rat, which spent both his Advancement Points on Spells. He is an Hexer, who is Doomed to see the Swarming Souls of the Self each time the Arcane Winds blow the wrong way.

Despite coming from Ironmurk, he is no Murkdweller, but a purebred Troll. He hates those slimy lizard with all of his darkened heart, and if there are any in the party he will immediately irradiate hostility and will make sure to gut him personally like the half-fish he is, after the Swarm has arrived.

He is a magician. His Grimoire is a small collection of wax candles, held together by an iron spiky ball that impales them all; they don’t burn and are not consumed by heat. It contains 3 Spells: Wax Simulacra (turns bees into wax golems), Luciforms (draws flames away from their source and around the caster), and Goliath (turns the caster into a crazed Xenomorphesque monkey).

Like this but with troll tusks.
The Pain from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.

He will always cast Wax Simulacra each day just before preparing his lunch, so he functionally has only one Spell Point each day (unless caught before 11 am). He will avoid direct confrontation and will avoid using his last Spell Point unless really pressed to or unless meeting a Murkdweller.

When his hand is forced, he will cast Luciforms to catch all the flames that could menace his Swarm and then order the assault. He will use the flames to shield himself from any who get too near. If he is caught away from the Swarm, caught in the morning or meets a Murkdweller, he will cast Blackblood and rush towards his enemies holding a Hikkalan Sword (all Hikkalan weapons are decorated with removable boneshards, which remain in the hit target making wound treatment harder)  which he looted from an exotic caravan. He never wants to resort to Goliath, since using it reminds him of the circumstances where he found it, among the crazed Goblins of the Black Swamp, worshipping their cruel Orc-like shaman as a God.

After the fight, if there are any Murkdwellers, he will take out his ritual kukri made from a single metal bone of an Iron Leviathan, and gut them on the spot, making sure to scatter their entrails around as much as possible. He will try to do this while they are still alive, if possible.

Fucking fishman.
Kuo-Toa from the Forgotten Realms.

Magical Engines, Mechanical Arcanas:

Hexer (Occult Profession):
Hexers use Occult Catalysts to control the flow of fate. Creating a Catalyst takes 10 minutes. Catalysts can either be Totems or Dolls. Both can either reduce or increase the Difficulty of any check by 1. Totems work in a 30’ area, affecting everyone (friend or foe); while Dolls only work on a single target. Dolls require a small quantity of blood from the target to work, which can be gathered with an attack (inflicting 1 Affliction). Catalysts always weight like 1 item.

The Swarming Soul of the Self (Doom):
Your body numbs and your vision becomes multi-faceted, as if you were starting to see from a million different eyes. All over your face cracks open, like hornets nest, from which a swarm of insects flies out, holding your soul inside them. You control this swarm for the next 1d20/2 (d10) hours, during which the swarm slowly disperses as you feel your body once again. After the Doom is over, you retake control of your body. While in swarm form, you can’t carry more than a single Item worth of weight, and can’t make complex actions like using a weapon or picking a lock.
Scar: the cracks from which your soul swarmed out remain on your face, and hornets can sometimes be seen fling out of them.

The only good fishman is a gutted one.
Scene from The Simpsons.

Wax Simulacra (Spell):
A single insect is focused on by the caster, imbibing the power of the Swarm in it. The insect bursts, leaving a wax cocoon behind. The cocoon grows into a humanoid shape in the following hour, becoming one of the Swarm. It moves with the will of the Swarm, and is not bound to the caster.
It can be empowered, to have the cocoon grow instantly.

Luciforms(Spell):
The caster chants the song of Fire and raises his hands, causing all flames in a 500’ radius to raise themselves, flying a dance around him. All possible fire sources (including fireplaces, torches, and lanterns) in the radius have their fire removed. Each fire starts circling around the caster, who can at any time snuff one out or throw it towards any enemy. Throwing it requires an Action, any number can snuffed out with a single Action. After 10 minutes, all the remaining fires go out on their own.
It can be Empowered, causing 3 flames to rise from each fire in the area of effect, and allowing the raised flames to last 8 hours.

Goliath(Spell):
The skin of the caster turns dark gray, while his veins blacken and swell as if they contained liquid charcoal. For the next 10 minutes, the Strength score of the caster is 18. Every time he receives any kind of weapon damage, a gush of blackened blood sprays outwards all around him, inflicting equal damage of acidic nature to anyone in a 5’ radius.
It can be Empowered, growing black spines and a dark carapace on the caster. It now counts as having Heavy Armor without any of the maluses associated to it (and splashes acidic blood as if it was naked, even if he doesn’t receive the same damage).

Really, FUCKING FISHMEN
Murloc Raid art by Blizzard.

Dungeons & Dummies: Blood & Power, or How to Master the Arcane Arts

*DISCLAIMER*: this whole project and especially the magic rules look suspiciously like the SEACAT rules in the Ultraviolet Grasslands by Luka Rejec. This is totally by accident, unless Mr Rejec read my mind and ate my dreams of making the best ruleset ever, which I cannot in good conscience totally exclude (would explain why I stopped dreaming about games and started dreaming about everything bad I’ve done in the past year or so).
Anyway, check out the Ultraviolet Grasslands. They’re better than anything BWG will ever make.

If my words don't convince you I'm sure this cover will.
UVG Introduction by Luka Rejec.

If I don’t break down crying this time you’ll have a complete game perfectly working. Mostly working. Almost working.
This is how I run Magic and Spells. It's heavily inspired by Logan's Maleficarum, check it out if you haven't already.

I'm pretty confident this rules could be easily adapted to other ruleset if one wanted to. Feel free to do to so, and let me know if they were any trouble for your players.

These rules are somewhat dangerous, and if followed I'm pretty sure nobody in their right mind would ever try to cast spells, especially considering how lethal small blunders can be in my system. Usually, my players are not in their right mind so those rules just make everything much more interesting.

Wizard and his Skull Grimorie.
Occultist from Darkest Dungeon.

Point Me to the Spells:

Spells are ways to tap into the arcane and conjure the unthinkable out of sheer nothingness. Characters can cast any Spell that they want, as long as they have access to them.

Digression: Arcane powers are not occult powers. I make a big distinction in my games between them, but this is not actually very important and if you feel that it's  not suited for you games you can easily ignore it. It's almost totally a fluffy distinction (that is somewhat enforced by the rules by occult Profession but you can easily handwave it).

Spells are procedures, of both actions to perform and thoughts to hold to. These are stored in various forms and ways, usually very personal and diverse. A collection of up to 3 Spells is called a Grimoire. Grimoires can be books, collections of rat skulls, inscriptions on metal plates and so on. Each Grimoire weights like 1 item.

Casting a Spell requires an Action and a Spell Point. Characters have no Spell Points by default, but can gain some if they have Levels. Casting a Spell from a Grimoire that wasn't written by you takes an extra Action to find and fully understand it.

A character can always forego the use of a Spell Point by taking an Affliction. This always consumes an extra Action, and always risks causing a Doom.

Digression: Dooms are explained below. It's basically a very fancy way of calling a miscast, but they are also much more since they last like scars and I run by assuming people is scared shitless of magicians and other who dabble in Arcane matters.

Spells can be empowered by expending and extra Spell Point. Empowered Spells have different effects.

Extra digression #1: my basic assumption is that magic is a fundamentally unknown and extremely scary/showy business. I check for Morale and hostility when a spell is cast, with both enemies and hirelings having a chance of running away. Magic is something so esoteric and outside a normal person's possibilities that casting a spell is felt like a contact with something totally unnatural and beyond reality. I plan on expanding on that someday with my spin on level drain shamelessly stolen from Basic Red.

Extra digression #2:I have not thought about spell research rules yet. I actually do not want to include them, because spells are not something to be researched in the safety of your home but something to be found in the depths of the Heart of Darkness that are the Wilds and the Dungeons. People come back changed. Magic is a possible reason.

That's a little bit what happens here.
Source unknown.

The Dooms of Parnassus:

Dooms are unleashed when one fails to harness the Arcane energies. They are destructive for the unfortunate ones who fall prey to them, and for everyone around them.

Dooms have an immediate, terrible and short-lasting effect, and a permanent magical scar that lasts forever. The scars are unnatural and unnerving, and make most people uncomfortable just by looking at them. Those who know the nature of those scars are usually very hostile or very friendly to the unfortunate marked ones, depending on their attitude to Magic.

Digression: these are basically miscasts, magical mishaps or however you prefer calling them. They are meant to change the rules of the game for a certain time and force you to live with the consequences of the terrible sin of Magic. They leave permanent scars that forever mark you as Magic User, and even to those oblivious to the existence of Magic still feel very off and scary.

Each creature mad enough to try their hands at manipulating the Arcane has its own Doom. The first time you would be victim of your Doom, randomly roll for it. Every subsequent time, you always fall victim to that Doom you first rolled.

Digression: note your doom on your sheet. This is to speed up play, but it's not something I'm 100% behind. It would be silly to have people with a thousand different magical scars though, so maybe it's better like that.

Whenever you risk unleashing your Doom, make an Intelligence Saving Throw. If you pass it, you don't fall victim to it, otherwise the Arcane energies flow beyond your control and take hold of your very being. When you unleash your Doom, you lose the spell you were trying to cast.

You risk unleashing your Doom if at least one of the following is true:
-You cast a Spell you’ve never cast before
-You take an Affliction instead of using a normal Spell Point
-You cast a Spell from a Grimoire not written by you
-You cast a Spell that must be explicitly cast as part of a Ritual

Digression: lots of possible causes. They don’t cumulate, you still make a single Saving Throw and that’s it. It wouldn’t feel fair to make you roll for failure.

Dooms are no joke.
Panel from The Demon n.10 by Jack Kirby.

Here are 2 example Dooms:

The Calcareous Trumpets of Light:
Your eyes blacken and melt, leaving your eye sockets empty and each occupied by a bone tube with a small pearl in the back of it. The pearl progressively grows in the next d10 (d20/2) hours, becoming new eyes perfectly identical to the old ones. While your eyes are reforming, you are completely blind: you can only see calcareous deposits (like bones), ignoring completely all the other objects and materials in sight. You are effectively blind except you can see items made of bones, and creatures with bones in their body (which are the only thing you can see). They still need to be lit as usual to be seen.
Scar: Your original melted eyes remain on your face, like mascara ruined by crying. It can never be washed off.

The Left Hand of Fate:
Your left hand shrinks, as if dried, and feels like charcoal to the touch. It becomes independent from you for the next d4 (d20/4) hours, animated by an arcane wind. It has 1 of 4 objectives chosen randomly each time (d4, d20/4):

1. Injure you and others, it attacks once each 10 minutes inflicting an Affliction (either on you or on somebody near you).
2. Prevent metal items from being used, +1 to the Difficulty of each check involving metal items, and they are always subject to Wear when used.
3. Steal heat from this world, it throws itself (and you) on every fire and heat source in close proximity, you take an Affliction and make a Dexterity Saving Throw to not fall in it and catch fire.
4. Bring everyone back to the Void. It will whisper spell fragments, causing everyone in a 120’ radius to risk unleashing their Doom if they try to cast a Spell. You have to make an Intelligence Saving Throw every hour to not involuntarily cast a random Spell from your Grimoire. If you do, you immediately unleash the Doom of a random creature up to 120’ away from you.

You can’t do anything that requires 2 hands until the Doom is over.
Scar: your left hand comes back under your control, but its appearance does not revert.

Digression: your eyes go DOOT DOOT (you can only see the bones of your friends, no facial expressions or clothes, and you can’t see anything else at all) or your hand wants you dead (in many funny ways). Both are pretty bad things in the middle of a dungeon. Both are scary to witness and both leave ugly scars that you will probably want to hide from others and from yourself, if you’re anything like me. So both are pretty good Dooms overall.

Rituals require patience and courage.
The Condemned from CHIN CHIN'S RETURN by Filthy Frank.

The Ropes of Ritualism:

Spells can be casted as parts of a Rituals. Spells casted in a Ritual never unleash a Doom if the ritual is completed correctly. A Ritual requires a day (8 hours of work) of preparation for each Spell Point used in the Ritual, and requires the participants to invest at least 3 Spell Points each day in it. For every 3 extra Spell Points invested each, the final spell gets an extra Spell Point.

If any of the participants invest Spell Points by getting an Affliction, they risk unleashing their Doom. If that happens, all the progress of the day is lost, and the Doom is normally invoked. No more than 1 Spell Point can be invested that way, however by instead receiving a full Injury 3 Spell Points can be inserted.

The Ritual can be sabotaged, attacked or interrupted. If so, when the Spell is cast, every participant risks unleashing his Doom, and the Spells risks being subverted or corrupted.

Digression: no explicit rules for corrupting spells or disturbing rituals, because I want to see what people comes up with when the local cult is unleashing Cthulhu. Maybe a spell corruption table would be nice, but I’m too lazy for it right now.

At the end of the Ritual preparations, it can be performed anytime as long as the group preparing it does not move away from where it was prepared. Performing a Ritual takes an hour for each Spell Point to be casted. Some Spells can only be casted safely as part of a Ritual.

In order to cast the Spell as part of the Ritual, it must have been fully and properly copied on the Grimoire of one of the participants, along with specific instructions for the Ritual casting of that Spell (which take up space as a single Spell). Spells that can be only cast safely as part of a Ritual don’t have an additional set of instruction for that.

Extra Digression #3: expect Ritual-only spells to use a lot of Spell Levels and have scaling effects accordingly. If they are cast outside a Ritual, they should be limited to a single spell level (and cause your Doom). Also expect some to have a minimum number of Spell Points to be casted, because you can’t just summon mini-Cthulhu.

Magic items are the keys to the door of greatness.
Pyromancer from Dark Souls.

Conduits and Catalysts:

Some items can become conduits for Arcane powers. These items are known as Catalysts. Catalysts can take any form and have any function (including no function at all, like a wooden stick that blows bubbles out of one end).

Catalysts are difficult to recognize as such. They have no discernible quality until activated, except for maybe some eccentricity left by their maker.

Activating a Catalyst usually requires knowing its true nature, and focusing on it to control the flow of Arcane energies. They are usually imbibed with Spell or similar reality-defying effect. They require an Action to be activated if you know their activation method.

Once activated, a Catalyst can either be used to channel its powers (usually it has a limited number of uses) or it can be drained of power to receive a single Spell Slot. Drained items can’t be used anymore. Some Catalyst are only used to store Arcane powers, and have no practical use beyond that.

Catalysts of immense power.
Venerable Dreadnaught from Warhammer 40k.

Digression: this is the true reason why seasoned wizard go around with useless magic junk. Even a belt that shows sparkles when you wear it becomes a source for that single extra spell you will use to defeat your archrival.

Extra digression #4: Ancient Catalysts of course tend to house ancient forgotten dangerous spells, so they are really sought after, while “newer” ones are rare and usually do just stupid stuff (if they actually work at all). No crafting rules for now for the same reason as spells. Also, make something up for uncovering the true nature of Catalysts. I guess a “Discover True Nature” spell would be in order. I was actually planning of making it part of my level drain rules, but since they aren’t there yet I guess you’ll have to make do.

I wonder why the fuck I’m still alive:

Spells and other Dooms will come as I write mage guys. You had no idea in what shape those few simple concepts were before I wrote this post, so please bear with me. I will dump a few other subclasses, then I will probably start writing actual interesting stuff now that everybody knows how I roll.

Dungeons & Dummies: The Professionals (4 Specialist Subclasses + 1 Occult Profession)

Specialists are guys you call when you need to get the job done. Ocean's 11 kind of jobs. They are the masters of the mundane, their abilities make them better at exploiting mundane items and make the best out of difficult situations. While they might no be able to kick like a mule or take hits like a heavyweight champion, they are absolutely vital to any expedition.

The right guys for the wrong job.
Frame from Ocean's 11.

Packrat:
Packrats get maluses every 4 items carried instead of every 3.
Capstone: Packrat get maluses every 5 items carried instead of every 3.

Digression: I expect packrats to be an integral part of every party, since I expect people to try and avoid being over encumbered as much as possible. They are as useful as a pack animal but better since they can do much more and don't run away as easily.

Tinkerer:
Tinkerers can make small devices and traps with a mundane item, in 10 minutes. They can set up to 5 activation conditions. The devices trigger the item used in their construction (such as a sword for attacking). They break after 1 use. Any check is made as if the Tinkerer made it.
Capstone: devices get Durability 0. They get Wear instead of breaking.

Digression: MacGyver + an IRA bomber + me playing with LEGOs. A dream come true. Given enough time and items, I'm pretty sure this guy could make a big mess on its own. Or he could mess up activation condition and get bonked in the head by his own clockwork device. Either way, this is bound to be funny.

Expert:
Experts get an extra Skill Point per level.
Capstone: Experts instantly get 3 extra Skill Points.

Digression: boring but very practical. Classic skill monkey. Neeeext.

Taskmaster:
Taskmasters can help and coordinate people to complete their duties. They can get another person to participate in any Action (using an equal amount of time and actions), getting themselves +1 Skill as long as the assistant has a relevant skill.
Capstone: Taskmaster can manage small teams easily. They can get others to bring their expertise in anyone's task, as long as all three of them (Taskmaster included) commits the same amount of time and actions.

Digression: I think I never wrote explicit Aid Another rules. If I ever do, I should remove the Taskmaster or heavily rework them to focus on that mechanic. However that sounds complex and I want to avoid classes being good at "standard" actions, so I feel that having somebody explicitly able to do this is a better idea overall. 

Occult Profession time!

They're a bit like that, but alive and very dumb.
Poppet image from Wikipedia.

Woodlord:
Woodlords have learned to hear the whispers of the wood, hidden in its veins and bark patterns,  spoken through its inner rings. They have observed and listened to the conversations of the wood long enough to whisper back, convincingly enough to make a little wood mimicry animals.
They can take 10 minutes to whisper to a small piece of wood, like a plank or a stick, infusing energy and life into it. The awakened wood is known as a Poppet. Poppets live for 1 hour, after which they crumble apart in sawdust. They also die if hit with a single Affliction. Poppets have 2 actions, and each can carry 3 items worth of weight. Many Poppets can coordinate to accomplish complex tasks or carry more weight; if the weight ever exceeds 3 item per Poppet they all break down under the item they're trying to carry.

Digression: disposable, single use companion to be used as cheap retinues whenever they're needed. They can run into traps, trigger mechanisms and so on. Remember however that they weight much less than a normal character, and as such can't be 100% trustable when they walk over pressure plates  (which might be easily set to trigger for the weight of a normal human). Basically, Pikmin if you hated Pikmins.

Dungeons & Dummies: Breeding Perfection (4 Races + 1 Occult Profession)

Arnold K among others gave me the first insight into what makes a good traditional RPG race. So first and foremost, if you want to understand why I made what I made, you should read that. It’s much better than any essay I could hope to write on the matter.

I'm pretty sure you don't need Dungeons & Dummies to use these races. Feel free to use them anywhere, and let me know if I did an halfway decent job and they're actually interesting.

I've got 3 main rules when designing races:

1. They are not going to give numerical bonuses. Nothing should give numerical bonuses at all actually, make everything an incomparable (not just races).
2. They should have strong synergy with themselves. They should have the power to radically change the playstyle of the whole group. Imagine if nobody ever needed to breathe anymore? Or could fly? Now that's a very different way to tackle challenges.
3. They should be useful as one offs. The party should never force a playstyle on each member just because they don't feel like buying rations anymore. A single member of an exotic race can and should still be a useful addition.

I'm going to standardize a little my format here, since I want this to be a quick-access race dump:

Race name:
Race ability.
Little physical description.
A little lore because I love coming up with that stuff.

Digression: because I love explaining myself and I think it helps me better understand what is going on in my head.

Typical humans doing typical human stuff.
Frame from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Humans:
Fuck humans. Humans are boring.
Humans live in clean cities and pursue the goals of Civilization. Fuck those guys, they have nothing to do with adventuring.
Humans’ mothers are hamsters and their fathers stink of elderberries.

Digression: fuck humans. Be an interesting dude instead of a +1 Skill Points dude.

A typical orc doing a typical Orcish greeting.
Fel Orc by Blizzard Entertainment.

Orcs:
Orcs never need fresh food and are immune to poison and disease; they can eat anything remotely organic and be fed without complications.
Orcs are reddish pig-men, with thick hair on their heads and faces and white fangs always popping from their mouths. They are slightly shorter than a man, and in the middle of their faces a big mole-like nose with 4 nostrils is their most recognizable feature.
Orcish nature is defined by loss and war. That's their link with the Divine. Legends say that the first Orcs were spawned from the blood left behind by the first war. The nomadic clans value loss in battle over everything else. They are a bloodthirsty plague, always scouring the land where they walk. Only young Orcs have name: true warriors lose pieces of their names in battle, until they either die or become War incarnate. Orcish legends have no names, and their songs have no words.

Digression: Orcish culture is one of my favourite things I have ever wrote. It's a giant pastiche of warrior culture tropes, actual philosophical theories and my own psychosis. I will make a post only about it someday. I'd love to see a scenario about Orcish sieges and wars, since their supply lines can't really be broken.

Portrait of a Dwarf.
Image from default tileset of Dwarf Fortress.

Dwarves:
Dwarves don't breathe at all. They can never pass out from lack of air, and are immune to any airborne toxin.
Dwarves are much shorter than a man. They are completely covered in thick hair, both males and females. They have no nose, and their hands have only 4 fingers, much thicker than those of a human. Thick hair grows all over their bodies.
The perfect underground dweller is not someone who can see in the dark, but it's someone who shall never suffer from the sulfuric fumes exhaling from the depths. A dwarf is the perfect underground dweller, building his home in a bioluminescent spot and his city in the Fungal Dome. Dwarves enjoy the cramped spaces of their mines-cities, but enjoy the thrill of the unknown much more. Nothing beats Dwarven pride in reaching new places, both physical and spiritual. Some say they made themselves as they are now from clay, to reach the Stars, but the Gods pranked them by stealing just enough dirt to make Mankind, leaving them short of reaching a stool.

Digression: mostly Tolkenian dwarves here, nothing too new. I just figured that underground, fresh air is not really very available, and so I thought that one of the most important things about an underground race would be the ability to breathe anything  (or no need to breathe at all). If I ever run a full underground campaign, expect a lot of pockets of poisonous gas around being opened by a careless guy with a pickaxe.

A typical Goblin reciting typical Goblin poetry.
Randomly found on the Internet.

Goblins:
Goblins vomit a seed each week. The seed can be planted, and after a week it grows into a level-less Goblin. Morale check to see if it is loyal to its parent.
Goblins are very tall, genderless, very thin and green. Their skin is actually a very compact moss that grows over a bark exoskeleton. They have no bones beside this bark. They have long pointy noses, mouths as big as their oversized heads, and two very small ears that look like broccoli on the top of their heads (really on top, like carrot stalks).
Goblins seem to be the personification of bad ideas: obnoxious,  fast-reproducing and hard to exterminate. Goblins are more akin to plants than to other humanoids. Goblin culture is genetically inherited: they have imperfect fragments of their parent's memories and thoughts; this mostly means they remember how their grandfather's farts smell and where is their home. There is speculation about them being an experiment by the Gods to make soldiers out of plants, but no real evidence of this has ever been found.

Digression: they sound like Yoblins, not gonna lie. However, I actually stole the idea from a friend years ago. Not from Arnold, at least this time. Apart from that, I like Goblins. They are disposable, and you are going to have a steady supply of retainers whenever you have a Goblin in your party. This is probably the only race which doesn't abide to my second design rule, but I don't have the heart to cut them from being a core race in my presentation. Big little green rascals, basically the Monty Pythons' version of a Xenomorph. I've got descriptions of goblin cities and ecology somewhere, they'll be a full blown post like Orcs someday.

A Troll lurking in the shadows, waiting for his prey.
Zul'Jin splash art from Heroes of the Storm by Blizzard Entertainment.

Trolls:
Trolls have incredibly fast healing. They recover 3 Affliction with a good night’s rest and recover a full Injury by resting a full day.
They are tall, muscular and their hue is mostly dark blue or not black; most are taller than 2 meters but all of them are visibly hunchbacked. They have big tusks coming out of their mouths.
Trolls are natural born stalkers, with little need for rest and no need for complex operations to patch themselves up. Their tribes mostly live in swamps and islands. Trolls usually don't enjoy the company of others, but have a predilection for practical jokes that end up with grievous injuries (usually that’s no big deal for a Troll). They are considered the greatest masters of ambushes and hit and run tactics, fueled by their stubbornness and their unnatural resilience that allow them to keep pestering their enemies for days as long as they can get a little respite to lick their wounds.

Digression: Trolls are probably the least useful race as a one-off. A whole party of Trolls has an incredible potential in optimizing time, since as long as they have supplies they can basically never take more than a day off. This will probably be much less true if the whole party isn’t composed exclusively of Trolls; the fewer the Trolls the less their ability will come in play (unless they are systematically the only ones taking Injuries, but that’s not very likely). I haven’t written much on Trolls, except for a few jokes and a few notable individuals, so I don’t think they will get their own cultural post anytime soon (but I still plan to do it). Yes, they are basically Warcraft Trolls. No, I regret nothing.

I feel like adding something here. Have an Occult Profession, they are very nice.

Soulcatcher:
Soulcatchers harness the lingering conntection between the soul and the freshly left corpse not yet tainted by decomposition and time, to gather the powers of those that are not anymore for use by those that are not ready to depart yet.
They can consume a fresh corpse (dead by no more than 30 minutes) and a full hour to create an Occult Fetish. They can also take 10 minutes to keep a corpse fresh for 6 hours. This can be done at will, resetting the 6 hours each time.
Occult Fetishes are eternal prisons to the earthly link between Soul and Body, keeping the soul anchored to this world and allowing to call for it when the need arises. Occult Fetishes can be invoked to harness their powers. Anyone can invoke an Occult Fetish if they know its true nature. Invoking an Occult Fetish can either grant an extra Skill Point for 10 minutes, grant a Spell Point to be used within 10 minutes, or allow communion with the original creature to ask a single question.
Occult Fetishes weight like 1 Item, and have -1 Durability. They get Wear every time they are invoked. They can take many forms, from talisman to totem, but they are almost always made from the perfectly clean bone, leather and flesh of the original corpse.

Digression: these are basically spooky pokemon trainers that deal in death, corpses and eternal suffering. I guess you now know why I don't think my work is suited for children anymore.

A Soulcatcher asking a dead enemy about his favourite colour.
Witch Doctor by Kashuse Nuage.

The Geometric Qualities of Living Creatures

Some time after the beginning, Gods created Life. Some say they merely found it, but that is a blatantly false statement. They can create mountains, ground and everything that is static; how could they not create the sea of emerging possibilities that is life?

Swimming downwards the stream of the Gods’ will, Life was thrust into the World. The Gods had defined boundaries for it, discrete forms it could use and adore them in; Gods revel in adoration, and as Life was made, taking the form the Gods intended and adoring them was the only possibility in their mind. Gods are absolute, as their Will and their decisions are.

Life, however, is a little less absolute. It took those Godly thoughts and caressed them in a multitude of ways, from a stream of discrete forms to a river of contiguous possibilities, to an endless sea of unforseen chances. Forms became components and components were twisted and changed; that’s why there are so many differences from Man to Man. Such is the way of life: a way of possibility and new horizons, not one of stillness and uniform willpower.

Soon Errors emerged from Life, which the Gods didn’t see as right: the Sun was made to wipe them out and to encourage Life to take beautiful, God-abiding forms; but Life can not be shackled nor any will can be imposed on it, so it gave its unwanted sons ways to escape, hiding from the Sun beneath the crust of the World, deep beneath the rocky veins that the Gods checked for unwelcome pulses...

Life has had enough of your shit, God!
Man of Many Mothers cover by Luca Coppola

Creatures as a Vectorial Space:

DISCLAIMER: this whole idea was sparked by me wanting to create ugly, barely predictable monsters and Luca rambling about colors as a geometrical space and impossible colors being part of that space for data completeness’ sake. We might just have been very drunk, but we also found this to be a very interesting concept that could spawn very interesting results. Interesting enough to be worth sharing, at the very least.

In OSR games, stat blocks are usually very slim, if there are any. Rather than stat blocks, things tend to stay discursive and focused on abilities and special tools, noting what’s different about a creature rather than a list of probably boring and often unused or otherwise uninteresting facts (like a full list of Ability Scores which are exactly the same as a normal man but without Intelligence for undead). Rather, OSR-style games seem to be focused, at least in my experience, on very interesting and distinct stuff; oftentimes with horror tints or at the very least with limited knowledge about what the players are about to face. Creature abilities usually do not intersect, sometimes might be unique, but are always a distinction from a baseline human, in exactly the same way as class abilities are a distinction from a baseline human.

SO. MANY. VECTORS.
Mutant by priapos78.

Long story short, that kind of OSR-inspired creature seems to be a perfect match for what I like to call “Creature-Space” (ok I just came up with a name that sounds somewhat cool) and which I plan on using on the next adventure we’re writing. The root of this idea can be found in the oldest and most common OSR tool, the almighty random table, and the idea itself can be summed up like this: instead of defining a creature as a “generic creature” for a certain type, writers could define a space (as in “vectorial space” for those of you more math-minded) which contains your generic creature and other interesting variations. It could be best described as an extension of random qualities tables such as the evergreen “1d100 mutations”: where those tables add a single dimension of variance on creatures and makes each of them “slightly unique”, imagine if the whole of a creature category was defined by a series of tables! Due to them being defined by “skills and particular things” in OSR style games, with the rest coming with the ruleset rather than with the adventure, it is quite easy (at least on a conceptual level) to envision creatures as a space of possibilities to be discovered rather than as definite building blocks. It is, after all, just a little step beyond Encounter Rolls as “the space of encounter possibilities” being explored and discovered in real time, and could even work as part of it if one was willing to put some extra work into the idea.

There’s an actual example of a two-dimensional creature space, usable for generating a fey creature by rolling 2d4 in order:

1. Butterfly wings (fly speed equal to land speed)
2. Snail Tail (leaves behind a bioluminescent track, which damages all creatures that touch it and prevents healing)
3. Fawn Legs (small runes glow on it’s hooves, each hoove holds a single random level 1 spell)
4. Horseback (triples land speed and can attack while moving)

1. Crabshell (+2 AC, is immune to fire)
2. Thirsty Claws (2 claw attacks, regenerates HP equal to half damage inflicted)
3. Witch Nose (can track underage creatures by smell)
4. Plaguecarrier (can't attack, halves all movement speeds, can’t run, inflicts constant damage to those within 9 meters; those attacking must Save or be nauseated by the blighted blood, losing a turn and taking double damage from the plague cloud)

We are DEFINITELY going to use a system like that for whatever we’re going to write next.