Home of the Odd Duk

Tag: random

A Few Things Occur to Me

As I am working on a summer 5e campaign, a few things stand out to me:

I should change my neglected Twitter handle to TheHardWayDM. I am enjoying going about this campaign the hard way. (I changed it to TheOddDM)

For example, I'm not using any of the monsters in the MM. Why? Because the cousins got the MM for their father's birthday and they have already memorized it.

I set up a node.js server to handle my personal Creature Catalog so that I can see the stats on my phone and use the laptop for something else. I do this knowing full well that I will use pencils, papers, and printouts for the actual sessions.

Seriously, though, I will have RaspberryPi set up just to be a server.

I have none of the standard races except human. I just have to convert them to 5e.

I want to do theater-of-the-mind play. This is mostly because I can't afford good battlemats.

Anyway, I have found that I seem to tackle all my projects the hard way. Yet, this is the most fun.

I guess the difference in this project is that kids want to play.

The last thing that is very lightly related: I want to use Miltonian Tattoo font paired with Lato for everything.

Polyhedral Pantheons and Future Projects

Keith Davies has been working on a semi-random system of generating new gods and pantheons for a number of years. It began with using the faces and "corners" of a d20 to create entire pantheons.

Recently, he has been posting on G+ about using d12s and d10s. I have especially enjoyed the d10 method and I have been wanting to give it a try.

Somewhat related to this, I have been working on classifying Swords & Wizardry Cleric and Druid spells according to 2e spheres. (This also led to classifying the Wizard spells according to 2e schools.) The goal is to create a system for generating Priests of Different Mythoi that work with S&W.

Yes, it would be much easier to use 3e, 3.5e, and Pathfinder domains and schools to retrofit a bunch of spells, but the spheres and schools of 2e are just quirky enough to feel better to me. At the very least I want to make something as close to S&W Complete Rules as possible before I go after more modern stuff.

So while Keith is working with Pathfinder domains, I am working with something closer to OSR feel. Nothing against Pathfinder, one of my neighbors runs a weekly game. I even wrote a small bit of Pathfinder stuff many years ago at NevermetPress (with a lot of help with number crunching). In fact, the next few posts are going to use domains in the 3.5/Pathfinder SRD.

You're not against new games. You play in a Dungeon World group. You've done some post-Gygax D&D. You still hold a torch for S&W. We get it. You can stop being an apologist for what you play? Where is all this going?

Keith posted today about using other dice as models for generating pantheons. So I thought about how the d4 and d6 could be used with this model. I also thought about to adapt his system to create really interesting Priests of Different Mythoi in S&W. The system not only generates interesting deities and pantheons, it also generates interesting Clerics with different abilities.

I'm going to use SRD/Pathfinder domains to create pantheons from his system as examples. He asked me to post the d4 creation I am working on. I also plan to post about larger examples. After I finish my works with S&W spells and the 2e spheres, I plan to generate more examples with those.

Keith's Polyhedral Pantheon system is not necessarily game specific. It works in Pathfinder or any OSR game. You just need some categories of spells. I imagine it will work well in 5e (and I'll certainly try to make it work.) Heck, you can collect a list of 20 to 30 trappings and make an interesting set of spells for Savage Worlds.

Anyway, future posts will be:

  • a d4 example of Keith's Polyhedral Pantheon system.
  • expansion of the d4 pantheon with serious Pathfinder-based worldbuilding.
  • another d4 pantheon to provide tension (not a big bad) in the region
  • a complete set of S&W spell databases (with descriptions) grouped by 2e sphere (Cleric/Druid spells) and school (Wizard spells).
  • some examples of Priests of Different Mythoi using Keith's system
  • other examples of a modified system

That's a lot, but it will be fun.

For those that may wonder, I haven't forgotten about publishing the mecha rules for S&W in January. I'm also happy to say that the Sum Bach o Hud project is back in development. No set date for this huge project, but I am sufficiently inspired to get it done.

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