Too much stock, too little cash. Also too little stock.

People looking to pick up the Undercroft: The POVO free shipping coupon will be active until the end of the Sunday the 26th. I reprinted the out of stock issues, so they're good to go again.

Also the blood stained issue 7 is almost out of stock. I will not be making more of those 'cos they take way too much time and blood.

Show your friends! Buy one for the neighbours! Tell your FLGS they suck!


http://melsonia.bigcartel.com/

Planar Cultures

All those noble traits you have? Not inherently noble. All those moral or terrible things you do? Not moral or terrible. Take ambition, for instance; plenty of cultures consider it to be undesirable bordering on anti-social. Some people reading that are sneering and thinking arrogant thoughts. Yes, you would probably be that "leader of men" as the Zuni sarcastically put it. Back in the day they'd stone you as a witch, you know?

To make truly alien cultures we need to accept that what we think is inalienable truth is just a coincidence of time and place. Roll it back all the way to monkeys in trousers, assume the fundamentals go no further and just pick the colour.

The following assumes essentially human. More alien people should be weirder. It is important to remind yourself that these are not people who are repressed, who need to be shown the way, be freed or educated. They are right, what they believe is true, you are weird.

Etiquette

1. Weaponry is obscene and must be covered. Soldiers might fight naked, since they are basically sluts anyway. They whip off their burkas when trouble starts. Polearms upholstered in tasteful flowery linen.
2. Energetic greeting. Headbutts, flailing, psychic probe, elaborate hand shakes. Harmless if both parties are good at it. Test etiquette or take damage as club.
3. To refer to yourself is considered rude. Even doing weird robot talk like "this one" is quite tacky. Huge amount of linguistic acrobatics is required to ask for something "what a handsome sandwich that is" = "can i have that sandwich please". The people are considered very attentive to others' needs, but really they're just being pragmatic since no one can ask for anything.
4. Displays of emotion are rude to the point of being non-existent. People smile and function normally, but showing sincere feeling is not done. Private lives might be rife with exuberant vented emotion, or it may bleed over into the bedroom. Possibility of traditional emotion, such as polite clapping, laughing at set intervals.
5. A body part is considered highly sexual. 1-noses 2-ears 3-eyebrows 4-tongues 5-fingers 6-nails 7-elbows 8-backs 9-knees 10-toes 11-heels 12-rolltwice. 50/50 chance they will kept covered and subject to taboo and modesty, or exaggerated. Think prosthetics, makeup, revealing clothes. Thickly drawn on eyebrows, crotch extensions.
6. Wearing shoes is disgusting. Poor people wear shoes for work, but usually just walk about with filthy, calloused feet. Rich people might have teams of servants picking clean the road ahead of them, taking forever to walk anywhere. Regular foot baths. Every house has at least a small muddy foot bath at the door.
7. Noteworthy peculiarity in greeting. Kissing (consider: kissing foreheads, eyes, noses, ears. Asymmetrical, one kisses the nose, one the chin. Hierarchical implications). Exposure (lifting hats, raising/dropping trousers, flapping aside your cape. These actions may have lost the physical object they were associated with, thus lifting your cap is now an odd salute).
8. Dancing/singing/comedy/theatre as routine parlour entertainment. Performed by attendees of meals or parties as matter of course. They may be improvised or may draw from a rich selection of traditional routines.

Dress

1. Homogeneous. Everyone wears very similar outfits, or of similar materials, or a single colour. Maybe all clothes are made of wound rope or they all wear fezs and blue spectacles.
2. Clothes optional. Nudity is casual and met with indifference. This may be limited to a gender or age group. Naked old ladies.
3. Mutilation is common. Piercings, tattoos, fashionable dismemberment. Removal of nose/ear/eye.
4. Everyone covered everything. One random body part is considered acceptable to be shown. Probably eyes or hands. Consider more exciting things than burkas, like ninjas or thickly wrapped togas where the people look like balls of wool with knitting needles in. This may be due to beliefs in modesty or just fashion.
5. Pets. Common to use live animals as fashion accessories. This may be practical, like having a hawk to keep away pigeons, or purely display, like teaching a ferret to drape around your neck.
6. The sexes are very different. Roll them completely separately. Very distinct look and expectations. In this culture cross-dressing will be possible and more common/prominent. Explore that possibility, consider implications.
7. Hair is manipulated heavily. Held firm with animal blood or specific coloured mud. Total hairlessness as a sign of beauty. Kept huge with elaborate metal frames. Covered in dead animals. Replaced with cloth. Hair topiary, matted into shapely "hats".
8. Nudity as social scale. The rich wear nothing while the poor dress in endless filthy layers. Nudity represents the access to warmth? The opposite may be true, where the rich wear clothes 'cos it's valuable, the poor are prevented. Like the the old Imperial Purple. Origins or traditions may be misty. Skin painting a distinct possibility.

Family

1. Families are communal under a patriarch/matriarch/location/street/date of birth. Blood relatives are not considered noteworthy.
2. Marriage does not exist. Unions are like friendships, improvised, sprawling, personal
3. All social engagement is official. Marriage ceremonies, friend ceremonies, enemy ceremonies. Most significant interactions must be played out within the confines of a relationship or else is considered illegal/immoral.
4. Men/Women collect partners as a sign of fertility/wealth/power. Large families, easily enters hundred of grand children. What do the many single people of the dominant sex do? Underclass? Ruling class? Workers? Exiled? Killed? What are the interactions between families?
5. Clans of extended families. Family name carries a lot of weight.
6. Families have historical subservient families. Complicated interrelations and dependencies. Entire subclass of bureaucrats are needed to maintain this.
7. Gender is determined by familial role. Between 3 and hundreds. Consider the multiple partner marriages: as the Xs marry large numbers of Ys the Xs left without the chance to marry become Zs. Circumcisions can change things, dress can be involved, soldiers might be a gender of their own, renouncing traditional gender states in favour of big soldier orgies.
8. Stringent child screening. Babies aren't named until a certain test (physical or spiritual) is passed. Babies are left out for the wolves, the uneaten are taken in. Babies are submerged in chaos matter, causing them to be peculiar like everyone else.
9. Pregnant women are sent to special pregnant towns, where everyone is pregnant. Run by mothers of miscarriages? Priests? Public pregnancy is likely either taboo, or obscene.
10. Everyone is raised by the government. The king/pope/mayor is their father. Blood ties do not exist. Very patriotic.

War

1. Flower wars. Ceremonial warfare is conducted. This will have different rules to all out war, set places, set traditions, set methods and purposes.
2. Champions. Two individuals fight, or small ceremonial "armies" of 5 guys. With this sytem soldiers would be useless. Hero culture, stables of heroes being trained for war. Small handfuls of them. Live like sumo wrestlers. Maybe they sumo wrestle?
3. Hill of the king. Wars end when the leader dies. Battles are mainly attempts to get to them. Kind of like a rugby match with two balls.
4. Auction. Mercenaries long ago replaced standing armies. You won by having the best mercenaries the longest. In time people cut out the middle man and just competed on who could throw away the most money.
5. No soldiers, only mobs. The leader raises a rabble many thousands strong and they rabble on over to their enemy.
6. Coup only. Assassins are sent to infiltrate and kill en masse. Might be people or just politicians. Carries on until surrender, each side assassinating like mad.
7. Monster hunters. The only military is grizzled monster hunters who track down the gnarliest cthonic beasts to unleash on their enemies.
8. Seasonal. Wars are a matter of course. If you don't have an enemy you make one for a few months and go home.

Cherished Attitude

1. Sincerity. As long as what you do is done sincerely it is considered acceptable. If murder is done sincerely people may sincerely prevent you from doing so, but it is not evil.
2. Hospitality is of primary importance. Welcome to homes, many traditions of protection or service.
3. Peace. Anger, ambition, any conflict is considered extremely harmful. Those pushing too hard against the peace are evil. Retaliation to those breaking peace may be very hostile. Executions, trials, banishment.
4. Ambition. Personal success is a priority. If you must harm others in you ascent it is okey as long as you win. Lots of business, war is common, retention of arms and power is desired.
5. Kindness. The integrity of others' feelings is a priority. Politics is slow and gentle, fraught with frustrations.
6. Secrets. Knowledge shared is knowledge halved. People are respected by the amount of knowledge they might have. Demonstrate it by dripping it out to apprentices. Gain apprentices in exchange for favours. Currency of secrets.
7. Violence. Physical dominence is prime. If you can overpower an opponent you are correct. This may be personal power or the ability to accumilate those with it to your side.
8. Piety. Religious sincerity, or just knowledge or trappings, is important. A good person is religious, perfectly observes tradition and so on.
9. Individuality. Strive for uniqueness. Eccentricity loses its meaning among these people. Encourages taste makers, influencing others to imitate for the chance of mirrored originality.
10. Academic. Being able to talk eloquently on a wide array of subjects. Everyone is learned, or at least capable of appearing so. Problems with half-knowledge being passed off. Pseudo-intellectuals.
11. Renaissance men. Ability to perform many tasks is respected. Variety and vitality.
12. Post modern irony. Roll again for the attitude that has been past. That attitude is parroted and mocked, a pale imitation. Some old people might still adhere to it, young people snear.

More Godly Bits

How much of the way we deal with religion in RPGs is dictated by its american protestant origins?  Probably all of it that isn't orientalism. Daddy-god, looking after me, giving me gifts when I do good things. "Good" things, rather than "evil".

Typically the trappings change but the relationship doesn't, and the relationship is the interesting part.

On top of this list of divine miracles we can add a further layer of mad-libs:

Priesthood's relationship with god

1. Antagonistic - The priests prevent the god from awakening, arriving, sleeping, or some other transformation.
2. Daddy god - He watches over you in a paternal capacity, the priests are bigger brothers to the lay members
3. Indifferent - The god just is, no need to milk it
4. Fearful - God is imminent, angry, harmful, barely contained
5. Paternal - God must be cared for, is weak, dying, wounded
6. Seeking - God is lost, hiding, sending them somewhere
7. Businesslike - An exchange of services, exact costs and measures
8. Intimate - Possession, sex, transubstantiation 
9. Open - Many gods, specific circumstances only
10. Casual - Only on Sundays
11. Shifting - Friendly to violent to indifferent to etc.
12. Roll twice

Source of priesthood's magic

1. Taught - Academic traditions, books, teachers, classes
2. Miracles - Meditation, communing with the deity
3. Relic - Possession of a single or many objects that grant gifts
4. Traditions - Ritualistic acts, rote traditions, repetitive work
5. Drugs - Potions, vision quests, hallucinogenic audiences with the divine
6. Direct - The god physically instructs

Priesthood's primary relationship with lay worshippers

1. Non-existant - Priests are cloistered, separate, physically or spiritually distant
2. Paternal - Guiding, protective, punitive
3. Gatekeepers - They communicate with god on their behalf
4. Psychopomps - Ushering worshipper towards an ideal spiritual state, condition, place
5. Authoritative - Distant leaders, control over every day life, dictators, directors
6. Political - Spiritual and temporal power combined
7. Martyrs - Priests suffer, pray, battle demons, on their behalf
8. Roll twice

Lay worshipper relationship with god

1. Direct - through prayer, messages in bottles
2. Indirect - Through priests, designated representatives, animals
3. Present - Talk directly to a physical god, object, possession
4. Distant - Works in mysterious ways
5. Absent - Force of nature, abstract presence, no direct force on single life
6. Practical - the god is a tangible force that is dealt with as a mundane necessity

Lay worshipper relationship with priesthood

1. Fear - Superstition, tradition, taboos, or they are dangerous
2. Love - Admired, worshipped in their own right, sought out
3. Indifference - The priests do not serve a function for them, only god or other
4. Practical - Serve a purpose, officiate
5. Temporal power - Priests occupy a position of actual power over worshipper
6. Symbolic - maintain temples only, ritualistic engagement
7. None - the priests are separate entirely, a different level of engagement with god
8. Community leaders - Practical engagement as advisers, administrators, landowners, businessmen

And now some weird traditions. 

1. Transubstantiation/symbolic cannibalism
2. Mortification of the flesh - Drowning, burning, beating, bleeding, mutilation, flagellation, circumcision, foot/skull binding
3. Burial rites - Post-mortem consumption, burial, sea, worms, magic, alchemical, mummification etc.
4. Worship of the dead - Saints, mummies, relics
5. Eating habits - rocks, only one thing, everything but one thing, nothing with eyes, nothing above the ground etc.
6. Symbolic god - Popes, caliph, festivals, ritual sacrifices
7. Theatre - Religious recreation, hero quests, passion plays
8. Anchorage - remote meditation, starvation, walling yourself up and taking questions through a letter box
9. Holy sites - crusades, pilgrimage
10. Inherent holiness in a state - Women, men, children, eunuchs, mentally damaged, whores, soldiers, etc. etc.
11. Holy object - an animal, type of animal, specific object or category of objects
12. Roll twice

I made some injuries

Following on from this post. They cost about £2 and took 30 minutes. The rules are right there in the discs, the stickers mean you can house rule and mess with them whenever you get bored.

Discs from www.boardgameextras.co.uk, who are lovely. Stickers are some random 25mm laser printer sticker sheet off amazon. Got hundreds of them for practically nothing.

I also did the initiative tokens, but there's nothing exciting about looking at discs with numbers on.

Troika is...

... a city on a plate on a mountaintop. The city's governors must maintain balance in all things lest it tip and slide down the mountainside. Sensitive to all forms of unbalance, their building laws are a tangled mess, each brick must be examined and weighed, it's manufacture and origin listed. Ethnic diversity is mandatory, a ghetto could doom the entire city. The government takes it upon itself to form and sponsor metaphysically opposing religious groups. For every fire god there will be a sea lord.

... a city of chains, hanging from a distant source. The buildings are chains, the roads are chains, the doors and windows are chains. Everyone feels the draft, privacy is bought with thick hedges of chains. The dispossessed live up the foundational chains, in the huge arches of their links. The further from the goodly citizens of the base the better.

... diffused. A great forest, scattered buildings, unmapped and reliant on local knowledge and word of mouth to traverse. Directions are sought from old men in doorways who instruct you on changing bird song and leaf shape, to follow the sound of water. Sections come and go, swallowed by nature.

... a dungeon. Gigantic, sprawling and dangerous. The city occupies a certain area, but that certain area shifts like a great slug in response to changing environment. As the east becomes dangerous it organically sprawls west, chambers are vacated and occupied, land is ceded to random encounters.

... in the world giant's eye. From their perspective the city covers the walls of an enormous bowl, able to look out past the rim at the activities of the world giant, progenitor of fire and life and many other important things. This vantage point has made Troika a seat of farseers who spend their days watching the unfathomable sights of the world giant trying to divine the past and future from what they see.

... at the end of time. Its edges crumble into stark nothing. A slice of an ancient city populated by the people of the past who use this unique position to double back on themselves through its many doors.

... the eternal city. It changes with the age but is always a city of doors and crossroads, philosophers, doomed to fail.

... the philosopher city. A mecca for thinkers, who flock to it in hope of the chance to demonstrate their ideas. Every corner has a creature on a box shouting its theories, every back room is occupied by a master and his pupils, the government are the most lauded masters competing for a term of philosophic hegemony.

... the city of the universal congress. The mysterious governors pass down obscure edicts, to collect one of every book, to kill all starlings, to not look East for three days, to not step on the cracks. To live in Troika is to live every day like an eccentric parlour game or ritual. Despite their apparent lunacy, the city is prosperous and safe, its edicts effecting beneficial change in the most sideways manner.

What have wargames been up to?

Common knowledge: RPGs are an offshoot of wargames.

Chit: A wargame specific term for a counter or token.

We should steal all the knowledge they have hoarded and fold it back in to their bastard child. So to that end, have Chit-Pull for Lamentations of the Flame Princess:

Chit-pull Initiative

Each participant in a battle has a specific chit assigned to them. Players might have long standing, unique ones, while enemies will be numbered arbitrarily. Alternatively, just number everyone in a list.

Example:

1. Bob the paladin
2. Frank the wizard
3. Suzy the thief
4. orc A
5. orc B
6. orc C
7. orc D

To determine whos turn it is, draw a chit. Whichever character is associated with the chit pulled gets to have their turn.

Example:

The GM pulls out a 5, so orc B takes a turn. He then pulls a 3, indicating that it is Suzy's turn.

This process continues until the chits are exhausted, at which point you pile them all in again, minus anyone who died.

Chit-pull Injuries

Remove hitpoints. Instead, when your AC is beaten you pull a chit from a bag of 20 possible results, as follows:

Stunned (x2) vs. paralyse 

Character can't take any further actions until he recovers. 

Killed (x1)

Character is dead. Make another.

Pressed (x5) vs. breath

The character is pressed and on the defensive. May not move or escape, though he may fight. 

Shaken (x2) vs. magic

-1 AC until recovered.

Unnerved (x2) vs. best save

No effect. 

Panicked (x2) vs. poison

+1 AC and cannot attack until recovered. 

Overwhelmed (x5) vs. breath

Character is overwhelmed by the assault. -2 to attack rolls.

Berserk (x1) vs. best save

The character is incensed, gripped by the thrum of battle. +2 AC, +2 attack.

A character may hold 2+conMOD chits without dying. Once this number is surpassed that character is dead.

Chit-pull injuries - Recovery

The player may spend a turn taking an appropriate action related to an injury chit upon him, be that stopping bleeding or shaking himself out of it. To do so he rolls the related save. If this is passed they may remove that chit. At the end of a battle they may remove all chits as long as they rest for 10 minutes. If a fresh fight starts before that time they may attempt one recovery roll for free.

How Weapons Are Still Different

• One handed swords give +1 to all attack rolls
• Axes ignore shield bonuses
• Polearms never need to roll higher than 16 to hit
• Two handed swords are either polearms or swords, as desired.
• Maces always hit on an 18+
• Bows get +-dexMOD +-strMOD
• Crossbows only get +-dexMOD

Ways to make a chit pull pile

Card are pretty easy to use, though not ideal. Shuffling is tedious. Numbered tiles can be bought easily, throw them in a bag and you're good for initiative.

The injuries require either writing on some cards or custom tiles. The rules could be written directly on them, which is handy.

Why the chit-pull system is excellent and we should steal it from those cunning wargames

It's not readily replicatable in any other way. Tables are close, but they don't have the self eliminating aspect of the chit pull; once a result, say an injury, is drawn it is out of circulation until it is dealt with or the owner dies. As a fight continues, longer and longer, there is an escalating risk of the instant death chit coming out, creating tension without any manual tampering. End your fights quickly or someone will lose an eye. 

Between 6 and 8 things

I used to spend late nights sat in a comfortable silence with a good friend on the other end of a headset. I'd do my thing, they'd do theirs. Few people are comfortable being bored together.

8 things you might find in the dead guy's pocket

1. A piece of string with two knots in it, a reminder of something
2. A locket with a picture of somebody else's family in it
3. A ticket for a ferry
4. Dog treats
5. Sand
6. Bunches and bunches of hair, different colours, shreds of scalp attached
7. A Russian dwarf hamster chewing on something else from this list
8. A flattened Russian dwarf hamster, crushed in the fall

Usually it's a performance. Nothing controversial about that, not going to put it in my manifesto. You meet up with someone, you do a little dance for each other. It's exhausting though, isn't it?

8 things that happened while you were away

1. Squatters moved into you home, they're very nice but won't leave
2. The mayor was outed as a lizard man. Emergency elections have been declared. He is running again, this time as a lizard man.
3. Your serving maid was turned into a settee by a travelling goblin leatherworker
4. Gremlins have infested your thatch
5. A cult who worship a prophetic goat have followed it into town and protect its rambling way. They make money by selling audiences.
6. All of your furniture has been moved. Nothing has been taken, you think.
7. The ancient prophecy that the dark one would return while you were gone didn't come true. His followers liquidated their secret cult and went legit as a loans company with the assets.
8. I dunno, your house burnt down or something.

But being bored together was easy. Just two guys struggling to stay alive, doing cool little things, making games, creative subsistence living. And then one day one of them fails to keep on living. What a gyp.

6 ways you could be a better player

1. No more fights. Don't fight ever again. Passively resist, appeal to their humanity, be the change you want to see.
2. Decide your character has fallen in love with the villain.
3. Invest all your adventuring money in real estate
4. Invest all your adventuring money in charitable works, become the most beloved person in the country
5. Settle for less
6. When things get rough just kill yourself

Then you find out things about yourself. About how important that comfortable silence was, and of having someone around who wants nothing from you. I wrote this stuff mainly to get a rise out of him. Offence or a giggle, either way. I lost my audience and I don't really want another.

8 wedding gifts from old friends

1. Shelac the Circumspect made a familiar that looks just like you, but small, naked and in a cage
2. The pixie collective gathered up all the pixie dust they can and made a wish that the pair of you'll always be covered in at least a bit of glitter
3. Go'Ol'o'Ololo the slaad presented you with a box full of hands. One of them was his.
4. King Ngarund sends you his regards
5. The mayor presented a box of mysterious eggs
6. The ghost of your departed party members send their direst warnings
7. The son of a family you once saved offers his services. He's all grown up
8. The goblins have made you a settee of one of their grandmas

And what's worse is life goes on. People eventually get weary of sympathy but not enough to just go away. It's all so sad-sad-so-sad until something I'm led to believe is just normal and the done thing is required. Come do this, go do there, wake up, don't starve, justify why we should keep paying you. No?

The 6 layers of hell

1. The Hall of Records. A series of small to very large rooms full of chairs. Somewhere there will be a window at which you can get the correct rites to pass through to the next. Cities and wildernesses are found in these, but to travel anywhere requires paperwork.
2. The Tiger's Banquet. A continent sized party. Very formal, the rules change rapidly and spread like a ripple. Anyone failing to maintain small talk is devoured by the other guests, who are forbidden to eat from the tables until the host arrives. He never will.
3. Jangling Solitude. Iron boxes on chains, hung in darkness. The insides are lit to better reveal the hopelessness of it. Anyone escaping their box will discover an expanse of them hanging from some unseen ceiling. Falling will drop you, quite literally, in to some new hell.
4. The Sorting House. All of the unworthy dead are sorted according to height, each to a separate layer. They are then packed into rooms of exactly their height, nose to nose, heads scraping ceiling, unmoving for eternity.
5. The Garden of Imminence. Appears to be a leisure garden where demon mingle with the damned. All the people look haunted, in contrast to their pleasant environment. Each of them awaits a fate they know is coming. An indistinct dread haunts them. The demons sample it like a rose.
6. The Field of Want. A great snowy expanse where the demons keep their regal homes. The damned wander the snow naked, freezing but never dying. The demons wander about in many layers of furs, demanding foul acts and entertainments for the chance to sit by their fires.

It's nothing new. Old hat. We all die alone. I could take a lesson from this whole thing. Selfishly, ghoulishly, turn it into a lesson. But it's meaningless. It doesn't get better, it just changes. Don't let them lie to you.

Backgrounds and books

I am not a fan of knowledge or social skills in RPGs. They give strange results and are usually either junk or used to hand wave some juicy jibber-jabber (whoever came up with the 3.5 concept of the diplomancer should feel bad). However expecting players to come to the table with game-world knowledge, or even the awareness of what knowledge their characters should have, is unfair.

To fix this I'm using backgrounds. Talked about them before, simple things. Everyone gets a random one that determines what they were before they came to the game, what they should know. If the player is from the College of Friends then they might recognise a wizard at the party, a gremlin catcher would have all kinds of useful knowledge about sewers, necromancers can tell how long that guy's been dead, and so on. It's vague and implied.

It's not important that we know exactly how exhaustive a necromancer's CSI skills are until we start questioning it. The questions a player thinks to ask will shape the accepted remit, the GM will feel out what's too far as things proceed. A happy level will be settled upon.

There are no grades of smartness. If the necromancer is an obvious buffoon it goes one way, if he's a committed corpse fiddler it goes another.

Further knowledge is up to the players to stumble upon either organically through play or by study. Books come with a comprehension level, roll equal or higher to get an answer out of it. Go grab the book, take a 20 minute break, try to find that page you know was in here. If you find it the GM may answer your question, if the book covers that kind of thing. Or maybe a wandering monster will interrupt your study time. A good sized book will probably do D2 damage.

It's very common to find adventurers with well worn bestiaries and geological surveys strapped to their backs.