Sycarion Diversions

Home of the Odd Duk

Category: Labyrinth Lord

Work Continues

March 23, 2012 /

I am working on lots of things, it's just that nothing is in a state to post.

I started working on the B/X or ACKS psion and got the powers, levels and all that figured out. Then it occurred to be that there needed to be a quasi-setting around them to add interesting proficiencies.

That led to re-opening the Shayakand and Tanah-Con-Rahn files. Opening my own old stuff leads to only one thing:

Revision.

Two of the needed revisions pertain to what to call things. The ad-hoc languages I was using weren't consistent and made little sense. So, more conlanging. The language of magic is still something that sounds Latin-ish. The language of everyday folks, however, isn't sounding like anything familiar, but is looking like German (or Malay Indonesian).

Working on languages goes back to one of the central ideas of Tanah-Con-Rahn:

The language of magic is known, however, knowing the words won't let you cast spells. Either you can cast spells or not - it's inborn and not taught.

If you want to learn magic and you are not one of the lucky few, you can go the religious route (become a Cleric) or the mystery route (become a psion).

There's more, but I am trying to put it into a coherent format. Hopefully, more soon.

Thoughts from Turkey Day

November 25, 2011 /

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I did. My wife outdid herself with all the wonderful food.

As far as gaming goes, I tend to be behind. I just discovered that Paizo is licensing a MMO game.

This is hardly news to anyone. Personally, I wish Paizo well. I hope folks really like it.

Seeing that this happens from time to time, I keep hoping that someone will license Labyrinth Lord or Swords and Wizardry into a MUD. I wish it would be as simple as downloading Pennmush and creating rooms. I imagine it would take a bit of programming to get the standard classes.

Still, it's a frontier untouched by the OSR so far...

I still remember the unofficial MUD list circulated in college. Once I got XWindows running on my Amiga in my dorm room, I could rely on a bit of good gaming, especially during finals when the brain was fried.

I know that the OSR is more than just nostalgia. It's just that the idea of an LL MUD MUSH would be the ultimate in retro.

Then again, maybe putting all the rules in an HTML Help file is the ultimate retro. 🙂

I promise to have something more useful next time.

A Different Division of Rulebooks

November 5, 2011 /

I posted about this in G+, but wanted to expand on the thoughts here.

It starts with this post from Greywulf.

The shared worlds thing was already done with Spelljammer. As I said in G+, Dragon Magazine even had an article for porting over Space:1889.

As far as writing style, I am all over the end to the Gamebooks are Technical Manuals school of thought. Even the rules to Life (boardgame) are not as dry as other game rules.

I don't like to use minis, so I'm just skipping that part.

I wanted to focus on the bit about doing this with an OGL game like Labyrinth Lord. To do one better in this exercise, why not just go straight to Microlite 20. One page of rules, many possibilities, right? Well, let's start with M20 Purest Essence. 17 pages.

The PHB: Remove all race and class information and the Game Master's Guide. Also remove the spell lists and the creature lists. What you're left with is about one page of rules to play the game.

The GMG: The entire M20 Purest Essence, although it will need to be organized.

Then we have the codices:

Humans - Race information for humans (+1 to all skills). Class information for all humans playing the various classes.  Add the spell lists, but make them different in flavor and selection. The only place with a universal spell list is the GMG. That's just the crunchy stuff. The rest is history, a section like the Roman Way called the Human way. Outposts of humans in various game worlds, etc. Art, fluff, lots of stuff.

Elves - Race information for Elves (+2 MIND). Class information for all elves playing the various classes. Add the spell lists, but make them different in flavor and selection. You see where I'm going.

At the table, the player has a codex and a one page handout for rules. The GM has the GM Guide.

What do you think?

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