(Adam West voice) "Actually, Robin..."

So this book, Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering exists. Moreover, Robin Laws, its author, exists. And designs games.

There is a lot of good in Robin's Laws and much that is worthy of respect. It's presumably based on the kind of playing-different-games-over-and-over-and-over-with-lots-of-different-people kind of experience that few folks outside industry veterans really have. It has many excellent tidbits of wisdom for a volume of its relative slimness.

But, naturally, I'm going to talk about the stuff I don't like. Mostly because the stuff I don't like is the kind of thing that shows up in GM advice a lot. And if it was worth Robin Laws writing this book (which enough people thought it was that it won an Origins award), it is worth talking about the grain of salt it should be swallowed with.

There are two basic things I don't like and one is more practical than the other but I think they are (unfortunately) related.

The less practical one and more annoying one first. It is so familiar and such a cliche you hear it about RPGs from people outside the gaming world all the time. Laws says this:

The vast majority of successful roleplaying games are power fantasies. They give players the chance to play characters vastly more competent than themselves -- or, for that matter, anyone else in the world as we know it. In power fantasy, PCs always have a good chance of vanquisihing foes; in some games, players can even assume that their enemies will be conveniently distributed by threat level. The power fantasy lies at the very heart of the adventure genre, in books and movies as well as games. It offers a generally optimistic view of life,. There's no shame in enjoying this fantasy, and GMs who embrace and understand it tend to keep players longer than those who don't.

This is sloppy thinking and kinda condescending. I, for just one, would way rather be me than a lot of people I've played in an RPG (you could make a decent case that, other than climbing walls and picking locks, I am better at pretty much everything than Blixa the thief) and I know I enjoy my game in a way that is in no sense unique.

Now:

maybe many...

maybe most...

maybe the vast majority...

maybe the commercially most important segment...

...of adventure genre fans are in it for the power fantasy, but this analysis fails to account for so many of the essential details of so much of what goes on in a good adventure story that it's harmful to base a philosophy of gaming (or adventure stories in general) on it.

If I was gonna put Robin on the shrink couch the way he has just put all gamers on the shrink couch I'd say he's just internalized the embarrassment people have wanted him to feel all his life about being into nerdy things and so is having trouble seeing them as performing pretty much the same function all creative things do and seeing that as an essentially good and worthwhile thing.

Also, like peeps in or near any creative field, Laws--like so many gamers--has taken the perfectly reasonable and accurate observation that most things in the medium were not designed for people like him and turned that into the understandable (and pretty universal) emotion I kinda don't like a huge segment of this hobby and what they want and then turned that into the unreasonable proposition there must be something fundamentally reptile-brain about the activity itself and I don't feel entirely good about feeling good about it.

Some of the smartest and most creative gamers I know feel this way. They are afraid if they start to admit gaming isn't basically just escapism then they might get a swelled head and start putting on airs, which terrifies them because then they'll be the segment of the gaming population (theoretically) responsible for everything they hate in the hobby. Better to maintain a certain reserve, like Wallace Stevens did about his poems--continuing to sell insurance even after he won the nobel prize, or like some fantastic horror movie director who moans about never having made a "serious" film.

A lot of this may simply be because, being properly reverent of their favorite movies and writers, they haven't realized that art isn't actually serious.

Long story short: No, gaming isn't fundamentally any less ambitious and real than anything else you do for fun, it's just like in any creative endeavor--most stuff is going to suck if we assume the standard is the taste of an individual observer.

The term "fantasy" has (I'm sure I've said this before) two parts: "wish fulfillment" and "inventions". "Wish fulfillment" makes you feel better about yourself (and then, afterwards, possibly much worse--as in coming down from a dream), "inventions" make you think about stuff.

Tales of invention very often are centered around adventure for a great structural reason: Because adventure allows you to see way more of an invented world and how it is put together than psychological drama or a comedy of manners or any other literary genre. This is true for adventure fiction even in worlds that are not invented: crime movies are about all the internal bits of how cities work that you get to explore if you try to subvert the normal day-to-day life it's there to support (this is how banks verify peoples' identities, this is how international shipping works, this is where heroin comes from...), Indiana Jones and James Bond see the world and interact with cultures and animals and machines in it because they land face first in it and then have to run, even Godzilla movies are partially about architecture and how Tokyo is interconnected and about the audience getting to see all of that in action in an intensified way (and notice how much worse Godzilla movies are when they stop being about that, Matthew Broderick). (And notice that the kind of adult who would happily watch a Godzilla movie is often the same adult who would happily watch a documentary about how Tokyo works.)

Adventure is always as much about the world and its contrivances and the complex joinery that holds it together as it is about violence. The same way history and technology and all the other nonfiction things people who are into adventure fiction also typically dig are.

Maybe it's because I paint all day for a living and so exist in a field (unlike game design) that has centuries of people explaining why it's totally worthwhile behind it, but it's pretty obvious to me that a picture I like is no more there to stroke my ego than a meatball is.

If you play basketball, and like it, a big part of that is some chemicals in your brain that genetically know that what you are doing is exercising your muscles and that is good for the organism's survival and so the organism sends you chemicals like "Hey, this is fun, keep doing this! It's exercising me."

Good stories do the same thing: you are exercising your mind. (Tell it like it is, Pollux.) Unfamiliar, exotic propositions and ways of looking at things are pinging around in your brain and that feeling of anticipation is the unconscious feeling of all your neurons firing off trying to figure out where it's all going and make a pattern out of it and try to use what's going on to dream up a way to kill leopards or find fruit or score. Now it may result in insights no more useful to you than the calories in your breakfast, but if you aren't bored, it's because you're exercising the system in a significant way. Art that is genuinely involving makes you smarter.

Now, yes, there are ways to set up aesthetic situations so that they appeal to peoples' egos (like the fancy wine trick where you tell stupid people that wine is expensive and it literally, in their brain, tastes better) but that is, at most, half the story. Your PC is an alternate you, yes, but it is also a tool to explore and help create an adventure--it is your eyes and ears as you watch a story unfold, and a tool to invent with using that framework.

This is not just escapism--this is doing what all creative things do, and saying "The power fantasy lies at the very heart of the adventure genre"--unless the author is only referring to crappy airport novels--is selling Jack Vance and HP Lovecraft seriously motherfucking short along with all the games derived from the kinds of things they wrote. And most schlock fiction is schlock because it takes for granted innovations made by genuinely good fiction: that is, there is something of artistic merit at the bottom of any genre. What lies at the very heart of adventure fiction is invention. Invented things, invented situations, and inventions of language that give those things intellectual and emotional impact.

Now, yeah, crappy airport novels based only on letting people pretend they are someone and somewhere other than who and where they are sell well, and I'm sure many gamers just play paladins so they don't have to think about how they are air conditioner repairmen, but getting to the awesome part of this hobby (like getting to the awesome parts of adventure literature) means understanding and having respect for the part of it that is not that at all.

___________

Now the second thing, which is more practical as a GM and that I think is kinda based on the first thing:

Laws, like many people in the history of GMing advice, treats players--structurally--as problems.

Like: there are these different kinds of gamers and you need to entertain different ones in different ways and they may become bored if this or that and they need to be fed these things and these ones need systems like this, etc.

Now this is understandable for two reasons:

1. Robin's book is a book of GMing advice and advice usually is about solving problems,

and

2. As a con-game-running RPG pro, Laws may be kinda forced, more than those of us for whom "friendly" play is the norm, to think of players in an assembly-line sense and as people he works for.

However, this point of view has practical effects on his gaming advice (and on gaming advice in general) which makes it less useful than it could be.

The big idea of the book is familiar to probably everybody reading this: there are categories of gamers. For Laws, in keeping with the "you are here to deliver the power fantasy" philosophy, gamers each have different emotions they need to experience, these are:

The Powergamer, who wants an ever-more tricked out PC.

The Butt-Kicker, who wants to vicariously kill shit.

The Tactician, who wants to feel smart.

The Specialist, who wants to feel like a certain kind of character (a ninja, a catgirl, etc).

The Method Actor, who wants to have a chance to act.

The Storyteller, (three guesses), and

The Casual Gamer, who just wants to roll with pals.

Now Laws readily admits most player defy easy categorization and that overlap is possible, but the problem for me is that, even as elementary particles, these categories are at worst caricatures, and at best descriptions of some actual extant people who nevertheless suck and are a drag on your game and the first law of good game mastering should be: Do not play with anyone who matches the descriptions here.

He doesn't show what's going on in the players' heads here as creative or inventive or expressive, just as wells of emotional need. In the most literal sense: negative (there to take stuff) and not positive (there to give stuff and make stuff).

Every player's heart goes pitpat when they hear about a shiny new ability they can have--but if you have a player doing that just because it will make the person in their imagined fantasy life have more superpowers and therefore that will make them feel more awesome than they are and there is no (conscious or otherwise) element of "Wow, if I can do flying ninja kicks for triple damage, that means we're going to be expected to have a crazy new kind of Big Trouble In Little China adventure where flying triple damage ninja kicks are necessary to survive!" then that person needs to get away from your table, go away from all other game tables, and go where they belong: onto a forum on the internet where they can sit down and complain about their fictional impotence full time.

I think a good book of GM advice needs to remember that players are not just an audience (though they are that) but also a resource:

I don't have a Power Gamer who just wants to trick out his or her PC, I have a Power Gamer who sees tricking out the PC as the key to getting to play the game a whole new way with whole new tools every few levels and that's neat, I don't have a Butt Kicker who just wants to kill shit, I have a Butt Kicker with charismatic, expressionistic, totally metal bloodthirst and heedless doorkicking that you wouldn't trade for 100 Klaus Kinskis because of the energy she adds to the game, I don't have a Tactician who wants to feel smart, I have a tactician who actually is tactically creative like any chess player and enjoys exercising that ability and getting better at it because it's a useful way to be able to think, I don't have a Specialist who wants to feel like a special snowflake, I have a Specialist who extends her imagination to the world described and can appreciate it because she responds to it like she's really in it and thereby notices stuff nobody else would, I don't have a Method Actor who wants to hog the spotlight in the scene, I have a Method Actor who can create a scene out of some half-assed random encounter by deciding it's important and engaging it and so make it engaging for everybody else, I don't have a Storyteller who wants to warp the game to fit some story arc, I have a Storyteller who is able to show everybody else playing where the story is in what looks like a chaotic mess, and I don't have a Casual Gamer whose detachment makes her just sit there bored with what everybody else is doing, I have a Casual Gamer whose detachment makes her really fucking funny.

And that's the half of designing an adventure and running it that's neglected all too often in GM advice, from Robin's Laws (feed the animals on time!) to GNS theory (keep the animals separate!) to DMGs (remember you're the boss of the animals!): the players and you and the game have been assembled to have a kind of fun that is more than the sum of its parts. And the GM and the game product are not the only positive coefficients. While convention GMing all day may have turned some RPG pros into machines capable of receiving, reading and rewarding a player in minutes flat unaided, what most of us need is a way to use what the players bring to the table to help each other have fun.

Design your adventure so the Power Gamer tells the Butt Kicker why they want the thingy and the Butt Kicker gets the Tactician to make a plan to get the thingy so she'll have something to hit and the Tactician asks the Specialist to reconnoiter the thingy and the Specialist gets in there and notices the owner and tells the Method Actor to distract the owner of the thingy with weird drama and the Storyteller volunteers to run right past while they're talking and the Butt-Kicker is fighting because dying would still be pretty cool if it was in the name of getting the thingy and the Casual Gamer is like Seriously you guys are freaking the fuck out about this thingy and it's funny, have a beer and let's fucking do this thing.

And you can't help them do that if you are condescending to the whole business. You are not just escaping and helping them escape, you are making. Making what? Making fun--which is the best thing there is to make. It is human existence's most important activity and you just do all the things you are "escaping" from in order to support it. As well you should.

_______

One Thousand Hogs, Etc.

Same deal as last time:

Let me know the lowest level you could see each spell plausibly being. I have inserted a few notes here and there when I figured I had an idea.

Details:

No save unless indicated.

Duration is permanent or instantaneous unless otherwise indicated. Remove curse will get rid of the thing where appropriate.

Goblin Wind

A fell wind sweeps across the area. All in the caster's sight except the caster must save vs will/spell or attack the nearest living thing for d4 rounds.

Inverted Hour

Level 8

The caster kills himself or herself and is immediately reborn. Events begin to reverse themselves beginning at that moment and going backwards. The slain live and survivors die. Victors fall and the captured become captors. Beginning at the present and moving backward, the caster rolls a magic save for each creature that would be affected in order (that is: reverse order from the moment of casting). If the save is passed, the creature's fate is reversed. The process continues until the caster fails a save or until a full hour has been reversed.

Other kinds of events may be inverted at the GM's discretion and in any way the GM chooses, however, the caster may attempt to choose the form of inversion of these events as well, by rolling for them as if they were creatures, however: a failed save works as if the caster had failed a save for a creature's fate and the magic stops working at that moment.

Battle Oracle

(this)

One Thousand Hogs

A thousand hogs crawl up from beneath the earth. They know no master.

Mockery of Faith

Level: Cleric 3

Duration: 2 days

Save negates

Range: 20'

This spell may only be cast on a cleric, priest, shaman or other official member of an organized faith hierarchy and only on one of a faith unlike that of the casting cleric. It causes any creatures in earshot (other than the target) to laugh when the target mentions his/her/its deity. This includes mentioning the god's name during the casting of spells.

Thask's Compulsive Repetition

Range: 20'

The caster indicates a target before the target has announced his or her next action. On a failed will/save, the target must repeat that action every round (s/he may change targets) until s/he succeeds on a save.

Moebius Chamber

Range: 10'

Area of effect: one room up to 30' x 30' x 30'

Caster designates a room: Whatever happens in that room in the next 5 rounds will continue to happen forever in an endless cycle. These actions will be enacted by temporal duplicates of any creatures in the room during the 5-minute interval after the spell's casting. Creatures duplicated by the spell are free to act in whatever manner they wish but the duplicates themselves cannot leave the room. The repeating action in the room may be interfered with via physical action or magic, but all will be returned to the starting condition every 5 rounds. Objects removed from the room during the initial 5 rounds will be duplicated in the room, but the duplicated objects, like the duplicated beings, cannot leave the room.

Ghastly Image

Target briefly sees an apparition of every being s/he has slain. The target is stunned until s/he makes a successful save. The save is made at a minus equal to the number of digits in the total tally of the target's kills.

Ridley's Transformation

Range: Touch

Target's blood becomes acidic when exposed to air. The target is immune to the acid. Assume edged damage causes a wound. Attackers and creatures' within 5' when the creature is attacked must make a reflex save or other get-out-of-the-way save or be splashed for an amount of damage equal to the wound inflicted. Lasts d10 rounds.

Mothrok's Unusual Repast

Duration: 4 rounds

Upon uttering this spell, the caster becomes able to regenerate any lost body part after 2 rounds, but only if the mutilator is a friend or ally. The caster also becomes very tasty and highly nutritious.

Truelie

The caster attempts to persuade at least 10 creatures a lie is true (no magic may be directly employed to achieve this end). If successful, reality is altered such that the lie becomes true for one round. For each additional 10 creatures convinced, reality is altered for another round.

God's Eye

(Cleric)

Range: touch

Duration: d4 rounds

The eye of the cleric's god falls upon the target. The target must strictly obey the tenets of the god's faith and holy teachings at all times or suffer d8+(cleric level) damage per round of disobedience.

Divine Lacuna

(Cleric)

Range: touch

A single god chosen by the caster cannot see the target. The target cannot be directly helped, harmed, or in any way affected by any cleric spells cast by a devotee of that god's faith or otherwise relying on the power of that god.

Unwanted Want

Range: 20'

Caster chooses two targets. Each loses the desires and goals they once had and has them replaced with those of the other. The victims are allowed a will/spell save each round but can only return to normal if both save in the same round.

Warmask

Caster carefully removes the face from a slain foe (this takes d4 minutes), and casts the spell. The face then will magically adhere to the face of a target and grant him/her the str, con, max hp and combat and damage bonuses of the dead foe for one round per level of the caster. The target or caster must have slain the foe.

Wizard Husk

Caster grows a second skin, slightly less flexible than the original (-2 dex). The caster cannot cast spells inside the skin but it can absorb up to the wizard's own hit points worth of magic damage. It ceases to absorb magic once reduced to 0 hp. The caster may remove the skin (takes 2 minutes) at any time and "squeeze" the spells cast from it, allowing the caster to use any spell absorbed by the skin. The skin cannot be re-worn once removed and will not absorb magic after removal, even if it has hit points remaining.

Xamot's Reflecting Aura

Caster automatically reflects the next magical attack made on him/her onto the original caster. This works once and then is gone.

Eye of The Gallows God

Area of effect: one creature

Caster's player immediately knows target's ability scores, hit points, armor class, special attacks, special defenses and any spells prepared.

Mark of Ignorance

Range: touch

Placing this mark on a creature makes it instantly forgettable. It cannot be recalled, referred to, or targeted directly in any way by any being that cannot sense the target creature by direct means (see, hear, smell, etc).

Story Games/War Games

I love Actual Play recordings. Mostly because I despise error.

Anyway Shaun Hayworth provided one after I posted about playing Burning Wheel the other day. Because Shaun is a kind, generous and helpful soul.

So, some notes on this here Burning Wheel actual play.

Preliminaries:

-It's long so I randomly skipped ahead to around 0:27:00 and started watching.

-It looks like they're having a blast. A thoughtful and deliberatively paced blast but a blast nonetheless. Interesting things happen: the one general tells the other she'll follow him until he touches another drink (a duel-of-wits compromise), a foe is taunted, a bridge gets fried, there are trolls under it, etc.

-The following comments apply to this session as GMed by Shaun for these people and should therefore be taken not as assumptions I make about all of Burning Wheel or all games of its ilk and anybody so busy breathing through their slack drooling fish-textured dork mouth that they believe I am assuming all or even most Burning Wheel play works like this just because I saw a single video should move as quickly as possible to distance themselves from text-based media of all kinds and then be poked with sharp pencils by bad men.

-Shaun the GM basically said most of the following observations seemed legit to him.

So, anyway:

-At first it seemed like the rolling and social mechanics were kinda chopping up the role-playing of the conversation in a way I wouldn't like, but I thought that maybe stopping to roll gave them time to think of what they were gonna say next.

-However: Cole pointed out:

It seems to me that it's less about "giving them time to think" and more like working in the subtexts and the stakes they want the players to get across to the NPCs and vice versa. Which feels choppy to me too - I'm just to just throwing out dialogue off the cuff. But it seems like they're into it and it makes sense to me how. Feels very tactical from what i'm seeing.

"A game of chess...is like a sword fight"

-Totally. Cole also said it was much less Drama Club than he was expecting. (P.S. Cole is a completely awesome member of the RPG Drama Club in the best sense of the word.)

-It also seems like the sort of:

"mechanic kibitz"

"actual line of dialogue"
"mechanic kibitz"
"line of dialogue"
"mechanic kibitz"
"line of dialogue"
...functions to keep the tension high but the actual emotional energy low. (Obviously doing it via G+ hangout also contributes to this).

Like players don't just say shit and the conversation doesn't ascend into heights of D&Dish lunacy partially because people have to keep stopping and thinking all the time.

This characteristic may or may not be desirable in all games, but it's definitely there.

-This is in direct contrast to the way almost all games I run go when I GM them with my group. (Typical session. Typical instance of NPC negotiation.) The rules are fast and should be after-the-fact descriptions of what eveyrone knows is going on and players don't necessarily have to know them and the part where I explain them should be fast and end quickly because the whole game runs on the pinballing of energy within the group. The breathless pace of the game cited in yesterday's post seems very familiar to me. Shaun's session here is much more: We are all watching an interesting situation develop and it is ok if I don't have a turn or even talk for 1o minutes. Definitely not for everybody but interesting to see how other people like to play.

-This system is really crunchy and Shaun is obviously a capable GM and still does not and is not expected to be able to handle all the subsystems with immediate facility. However, what Shaun does, and what the players also do, is almost use finding and describing the crunch _as exposition_ "Ok, he has a mail coat, that adds +1, the distance is..." etc. The crunch is narrative detail. Again, not for everyone, but interesting to see.

-Here is what the game pace and the kind of fun on display remind me of most in my own experience: A wargame. Like 40k or something. The stuff on each player's character sheet (skills, beliefs, etc) are the troops and the point is to organize and corral them effectively. Meanwhile you talk about doing it ("I put my Ultramarines...here...aaaannnd...") Now there are obviously important differences, but the way the game moves and the relationship of players to the game mechanics feels very similar.

-I've noticed this wargameyness in other StoryGamey/Indie designs and it always seemed odd (and by "odd" I mostly mean "kinda at odds with both impressions you get from the outside and from descriptions of games people inside the community give to each other".) Another example would be Marvel Heroic.

Like: in D&D the way I run it, the crunch is just there to give mechanical force to what you intuitively know your PC can do and the world will do back. I assume it should not take up time at the table (you should, for instance, rarely just notice something on your character sheet "Oh yeah, I have diplomacy", all that stuff should basically fit in your head) unless I am deliberately creating tension. In BW and MSH, I gather, people spend way more time just looking at the numbers. Which is in stark contrast to the usual "pass the stick drum circle taletelling fest" impression the word "storygames" usually summons and the community gives an impression of promoting. Now that element is totally there, but it kinda has this strange economy: marshall your math resources effectively (perhaps even narrating the process of marshalling them while you do it), then use them, and if you win at that part, you get to control the story. It is a very GM-y way to think.

I was talking to someone about Marvel Heroic's math-a-little-then-make-up-stuff-about-Spider-Man's-teen-angst-a-little economy and he was like "Oh I really like it, I can use it to get my wargaming friends to role-play." This feeds into other parallels between D&D's parents and D&D's children that seemed to have skipped a generation, but that's another post.

__

-Since I am talking about a game other than one I usually do, I, unfortunately have to remind people to not act like gibbering lunatics in the comments: Remember this rule. You are not allowed to be outraged about this post or anything anyone says in the comments without checking with the author to see if your outrage is justified.

__

This Was Their First Day In Vornheim

From Jack on G+

"

Had the greatest Dungeon Crawl Classics session in existence with Matt R and twins who hadn't played RPG's before. I have to write this whole thing out.

It started at the Beuracradome, which is a public arena where the big political players fight to decide the laws of Vornheim. Whenever someone disagrees with your policy, you both elect champions to fight - good arguments give bonuses to your champion's AC and Damage. Whoever wins forms the precedent.

The party had been refused some sweet armour by the church of Tittivallia so they were afire with righteous anger about the status quo. (The party elf needed a suit to stop the city's fatally iron-rich smog, but the church was using all their salvation suits against the flesh plague). The party warrior jumps down into the arena unannounced and starts laying into the leaders of Vornheim about their petty feuds, using the greatest speech. When they ask him his name he goes "I am... the Common Man!" (Actual name: Stoner).

The peasant audience goes wild, the nobles get furious. The regent challenges him with a breach of court and goes into the depths of the Beuracradome to get a frost giant champion that would crush him. Luckily, the party thief shadows him and sabotages the elevator to trap him in the Frost Giant's room. When the regent doesn't show, he forfeits and Stoner can get on to the argument proper.

He starts up an even better tirade against the church of Vorn- challenging him out for not helping Tittivallia fight the Flesh Plague. "We cannot sacrifice resources -" spits the Vorn Pope, and he answers "Is not sacrifice sacred in the eyes of Vorn? Do you consider yourself... ABOVE HIM?!" The peasant crowd's idolizing him like a folk hero now (His 0-level occupation was astrologer, too, so this guy is seriously some kind of warrior-poet).

The Pope is screaming "My champion is Vorn! We will see who is sacred in his eyes!" and Stoner strikes a pose and yells "My champion is... The people of Vornheim!"

Suddenly the whole place goes silent. The announcer stammers "Our next challenge... the great god Vorn VS. the People of Vornheim!" Sudden torrential red rain starts up and the ground starts moving and a giant iron face is barely visible moving down through the rain and everyone starts screaming.

So Sodom and Gomorrah is happening, and the PC's decide the best way to stop it is to go up to very top of the city and bargain with Vorn. Vornheim has two giant towers that look like massive outstretched hands in the middle of the city - the Palace Massive (with the Beuracradome) and the Eminent Cathedral (With the church of Vorn).

The thief (Cray the Slave) goes up the Eminent cathedral, and fights through all the crisis-of-faith shit and throws a bunch of worshippers out of stained-glass windows and the Sister Superior's slit her wrists and he rescues a bunch of nuns and all the gaudy trappings of the corrupt church and brings them to the top of the Spire of Unspeakable Hogs.

For the Elf, the rusty rain is like burning acid, so he breaks into the box of a Elf Noble to steal his airtight Salvation Suit. He finds the noble calling "Attack! Vornheim is weak!" into a crystal and wrestles him down and steals all his clothes. He tries to reactivate the communicator and call off the invasion, but fails a magic check and breaks it.

Stoner climbs up the Palace Massive. He gets the Popess of Tittivallia to make a fleshy corpse-bridge part-way up, then ditches his plate armor so it won't slow him down and climbs up into the regents quarters in his undies. There he finds seven mirrors, each with a different side of himself (most going "OH SHIT WHAT DID WE DO?"), and the clothes of Wise Lord Thrawl, the missing ruler of Vornheim. He puts the clothes on and gets to the top.

At the top of both the spires Stoner and Cray stand in front of the hollow eyes of Vorn and make the greatest speech yet. Cray goes good cop, getting the nuns to pray, burning the gold and tapestries and going "There is not a single unbeliever left in this city." Stoner goes bad cop, like the church was terrible and Vorn was called down for petty reasons on a people who have never done anything but try and serve him. They finish and the great iron head bends down like a nod and draws back into the red haze. The rain stops, all the water floods out to stain the ground red twenty miles in every direction. The eminent cathedral shudders and twists to become totally filled with iron.

Now the city is flooded, the Flesh plague is worse than before, the elves are marching in to attack. The regent is encased in ice, the pope and almost everyone in the church of Vorn is encased in iron, and "The Common Man" was last seen standing on the top of the palace, turning back Vorn, dressed in the clothes of the missing ruler of Vornheim.

And that's how my PC's reached level 2.

"

Note to the twins:
Yes, fighting God at first level on your first day playing is atypical.



_

Some New Spells And A Question About Them

I am thinking these spells should be as low level as possible and I am using LOTFP:WFRP as the standard. What level do you think for each? I think a lot of them should be level 1.

No save unless indicated.

Duration is permanent or instantaneous unless otherwise indicated. Remove curse will get rid of the thing where appropriate.

Sacred Contest

Range: Touch

So it's like two creatures agree and you cast this spell and they have any kind of contest they agree to for any stakes they agree to but the magic makes it so they have to do it or the not-agreeing creature melts.

Grief to Steel

Range: 20'

So you're not sad any more but/and your sadness becomes a cage. GM rates the target's grief on a scale of 1 to 10. 10 being like your civilization was just destroyed, 1 being you lost a decent sized investment or a pet you were just getting to like. Cage has d8 times that many hit points. The cage can be any design the caster likes and any size up to 20' x 20' x 20'--so it can be used offensively or defensively.

Affects all sad targets adjacent to main target.

Laughter to Pain

Range: 30'

How funny was that? On a scale of 1-10? Well that's how much it hurts. d8 times that damage. If it is unclear how funny the thing is (the GM laughing is a good sign it's in the 8-10 range) then you can ballpark a number by having the target a will-based save. Spell can be cast instantaneously.

Affects all laughing targets adjacent to main target.

Obsession

Range: Touch

Caster touches target and an object. Target saves--a failed save means the target becomes obsessed with the object. The target must do things like make a will or spell save to get away from the object and otherwise avoid acting all Gollum about it in any other circumstances. The target is at -4 in combat if not touching the object on account of being distracted unless it is actively fighting to secure the object in which case it is at +4.

Drunk Reversal (this is an old one)

Range: 20'

Switches the blood alcohol levels of two targets in range. Both switchees must be able to stand and the actual reversal happens when they touch.

Total Empathy

Range: 20 feet

Two targets are chosen: a "donor" and a "receiver". The receiver becomes completely aware of the donors struggles in life on the most visceral level. The receiver knows the donor's most powerful desires and fears but will not consciously act to exacerbate the donor's situation. Unless the donor creature is suicidal, the receiver cannot harm the donor in any way. The receiver may, if s/he desires, make a will/spell save to stop the feeling once every 24 hours but the knowledge gained remains.

Tenzill's Metabolic Distortion

Range: Touch

Target can no longer metabolize ordinary food but can eat a substance chosen by the caster as if it were food. The caster must freely present a meal's worth of this new "food" to the target in order for the spell to work (the caster cannot willing impose any obstacle between target and food).

Aura of Corpulence

Area of effect: 15' radius from caster

Duration: d6 rounds

Anyone entering the spell's radius becomes enormously overweight and must make a strength check to take any action requiring movement. Armor may burst. If the targets escape the spell's radius, they can start making will/spell saves each round to regain their previous shape.

Cursed Utterance

Range: 20'

Caster chooses a word. The target takes d10+(caster level ) damage each time s/he says it (unless the word is used as part of a magical incantation and is essential to that incantation, in which case the word is temporarily protected). The target will sense the word it cursed after the first instance.

Cursed Action

Range: 20'

Caster chooses a target secretly (writing it down if necessary). Whatever action that target next takes occurs. However, thereafter that action is cursed and doing it again (ever) will cause d6+(caster level ) damage to the target. The category of action then cursed will be generally be defined by the act (attack or speak, etc), the tool used (specific weapon or spell or words) and the target. So it could cover "attacking Phil with an axe" or "casting magic missile on Leroy" or "saying Fuck Off to Annabelle". However, the caster may choose one of the categories and extend it to cover that class generally if s/he can roll under his/her level on a d20. A curse on "Attacking Phil with an axe" could be extended to "Attacking any human with an axe" "Attacking Phil with anything". "Saying Fuck Off to Annabelle" could be extended to "Saying anything to Annabelle" etc. The target will sense the action is cursed after the first instance.

Telepathic Feast

Caster prepares food. The caster may then see through the eyes of any who eat that food for 24 hours after they eat it.

Bloodfriends

Range: 20'

A 'seed' target is chosen and an invisible aura surrounds the target for 5 minutes. No creature that attacks the seed target while the aura is present may ever attack any other creature that attacked the seed while the aura was present. Like, ever.

Ildiko's Hideous Minstrels

(Caster level) x 20 minstrels appear within 40' of the caster, gamely clutching their instruments. They are unaligned, obey no-one, and cannot be reasoned with. They will all play and none will play well. With luck, they may disperse.

Advantageous Fowl

The caster transforms one or more of his/her hit dice into a small plover or thrush. This bird then flies away and hides, the caster's hit dice are lowered by the appropriate amount. Should the caster be slain or reduced to zero hit points, s/he will not die. The bird will immediately seek the caster out, gives back the remaining hit dice and dissolves.

Depressing Cow

Range: Touch

Caster touches a hog, heifer or other piece of livestock. All who gaze upon it thereafter must save or become despondent (-2 to all saves) for one week.

Fruit of Ruination

Range: 10'

Caster designates a fruit. The first creature to eat of that fruit will immediately begin behaving as if his or her Charisma and Wisdom are 3 toward the first ally s/he sets eyes on thereafter. All of his or her negative traits will be exaggerated in any conflicts with the unfortunate ally.

Caricature

Range: 20' radius around caster

Anyone except the caster within the radius will have all of their negative personality traits exaggerated and will behave as if their Charisma and Wisdom were 3 in terms of interpersonal behavior.

Annihilating Chain

Range: 20'

Caster secretly designates a target. As soon as the target touches something old, then new, then borrowed, then blue s/he takes d10 damage per caster level. Objects the target is in contact with when the spell is cast do not count, and no object counts for more than one category.

Warsong of The Avoider

Range: touch

Target rolls a d20. Target can be knocked unconscious but cannot be slain until s/he rolls that number again or an attacking enemy does.

Warsong of The Despised

Range: touch

Target treats damage as healing and healing as damage. Once out of combat, the target will slowly begin to die due to natural healing. (Yes, you can live forever if you keep stabbing yourself. Totally intended.)

Is This How Burning Wheel Is Supposed To Go?

Note: Oh dear, somehow this has gotten linked to a Burning Wheel forum under the heading "

D&D With Porn Stars Plays BW...and it didn't go so well"

...which I find baffling. Other than the internet connection cutting out at the end, it went fine and was fun.

Unsurprisingly, the same thing happened when we played 4e--I said it was fun and I would like to play again and some kind of internet brain damage kicked in and people read it as "it wasn't fun and I won't play again". People are dumb as toast.

So we tried Burning Wheel*

*(What is that? An arty version of D&D that a guy wrote...Ok, anyway...)

(Harald) GM: So there's a village and the Duchess is sending you out because there are demons there and it's disrupting the trade route...

Zak (Sorceress): So wait, she's worried about it disrupting trade but not about like all these villagers?

GM: Well, you know she's a Duchess and so is above the hoi polloi and she doesn't really care but...

Cole (Elf): Does that trigger my elven Grief that she's so callous to the plight of these poor villagers?

GM: You could roll for Grief if...

Z: Well what if I like say to the Duchess like, hey, you gotta kinda y'know wink wink like you're really worried about these poor orphans because, these elves, they're sensitive...

GM: Well she has some Falsehood, so... (roll roll) Ok, you are convinced it's all about the orphans and their plight. Is there anything else you want to do before you go?

(Mandy) Dwarf: Yeah I need a grappling hook.

Z: Yeah, aaaand a grappling hook, and a net and a rope and...

C: And lard! I heard you humans have uses for this substance.

Z: Yeah we need lard.

GM: Well this would be a resources check...

Z: Well I got zero.

C: Me too.

M: Me too.

Z: Yeah and there's like 3 circles for debt and taxes and...

GM: Well you can try to get someone to lend you the money...

C: I have Oratory--Can I like make a speech in the public square urging the citizenry to fund our expedition?

Z: We can help if we have related skills, right? I have Rhetoric, I'll be like "make aaaaan...Ethical Appeal aaaand...an Argumentum Ad Demonium and...Oh and I have Falsehood, can I tell him to be like 'Oh this Sorceress' poor uncle was gnawed upon by demons...'

C: I can't lie or I'll become Sad.

Z: Fuck, Um, ok, I'll just lie and say my uncle was gnawed by demons and...

(roll roll)

C: Yeah, I see your crude falsehood and it makes me Sad.

Z:Fuck.

C: Anyway I make a speech.

Z: Tell them our Stretch Goal is a ten-foot pole.

C: 2 successes.

GM: Ok, well you get a rope and a big barrel of lard.

Z: Excellent! Dwarf: strap this barrel to your back it will amuse me.

M: I can roll it.

Z: Fine, roll it, like an ape.

C: Friends! I will carry the lard!

Z: Ok, you carry the lard, let's go. It's two days East, right?

GM: So, elf, you sing the Song of Paths?

C: Yes but I am really bad at it.

(roll roll)

C: Yeah, I uh...

Z: There's a Song?

GM: You're lost. Dwarf, sorceress, you see the elf is missing and there is a trail of lard...

D: We pursue him.

Z: Hey, guy, just go this way, ok. It's... How many suns are in this world?

GM: One.

Z: And it rises in the East and sets in the West?

GM: Yes.

Z: Ok, so yeah, friend Elf, simply walk away from your shadow in the morning.

C: Yes, well, in the land of Elfheim it is a perpetual dusky rose colored sunset so...

Z: Right, totally, I'll write you a new song, uh, it's called "Walk This Way".

GM: Is the song Beautiful?

Z: Wait, if it's Beautiful the Dwarf will like try to eat it, right because of Dwarven Greed right? It's not Beautiful.

C: Well I am learning in the human world that sometimes things are not Beautiful but they are Useful.

Z: Yeah, "Walk This Way" the song of the Arrowsmiths. It's not beautiful, it's just y'know, if you're driving a truck and it comes on the radio it keeps you awake.

C: We have no trucks in the Elven lands, we all ride on magic deers that...

Z: Yeah, I mean carts I mean...Anyway follow us.

C: Of course! Lead the way!

GM: Ok you come to near the village but you are not there yet because the elf got lost so you have to camp. And you see this most beautiful white deer you have ever seen...

M: I have to roll on Greed...

(roll roll)

M: I chase after it.

GM: What do you want to do with it?

M: I guess I want to...I want to chase it away from the demons.

GM: So you don't want to possess it?

M: Possess it?

GM: It runs off into the forest.

M: I pursue.

Z: I just, like facepalm while making breakfast.

C: Shall I retrieve him?

Z: Uh...that depends...is it gonna like give you a panic attack, friend Elf?

C: I will pursue! On my long and striding legs!

Z: Fucking nuthouse.

C: You do not seek to pursue and frolic with the beasts of the wild?

Z: Uh, you think he's, like, frolicking with it?

C: Of course! It is a magnificent beast! Hold, soon I'll return.

Z: Crom.

GM: Ok, you get the dwarf back and enter the village...

and then there were some villagers and they were lying and that made the elf Sad again and they tried to lock him in a closet and then we talked to a guy and then his wife stabbed him and Mandy tried to Persuade her to get off and I tried to add my Rhetoric Skill to that like "Hey, really get off" and some Prometheus goo came out of her nose and everyone was Shocked and then there was a bear with no eyes and then the G+ connection got all screwed up because Harald was in a hotel.

Thieves, Thieves, Thieves and Liars

Still heedlessly messing with D&D classes.

Here's an alternate thief/rogue.

It's based on the best simple version of the thief, the Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Weird Fantasy Specialist (you can download LOTFP free in the left column here) but it is basically compatible with most D&D thieves/rogues. You could actually switch to this thief mid-campaign below without much bump.

Now the Specialist in LOTFP is kind of a catch-all class that can be made into a thief, rogue, ranger or Indiana Jones-type depending on where you drop the skill points. Since I did a ranger yesterday this here is just a pretty straight-up thief, though. Like a stealer and a sneaker.

Thief (Variant for all old-style D&Ds)

Here's how it works:

1. Hit points work as usual. D6 every level.

2. If you're using a 3-save system, give yourself a +1 dex save, if you're using LOTFP or another old-style Death Ray save system, give the thief saves that are one worse than usual. In LOTFP that's: Paralyze 15, Poison 17, Breath 16, Device 15, Magic 15.

3. The automatic thief skills are: Climb, Search, Find traps, Sleight of hand, Sneak attack, Stealth and Tinker. In LOTFP these all start at a 1 in 6 chance* and go up by one each time you add skill points. The exception is sneak attack which starts at normal damage then goes to double damage then to triple, etc. Anyway: add 2 skill points anywhere you want to your skill list as opposed to the usual 4.

If you are not using LOTFP follow that asterisk for suggestions on how to allocate your 16.6666 repeating percent improvement. Or if you're using a system with a thief-abilities-by-level chart (like AD&D), you could just interpret "using your 2 skill points" as moving up one level up on the chart. If you do this you'll eventually end up with something like a 6th level thief who performs thief functions at like 3rd level plus has a few of the below gimmicks. Not as hard to keep track of as it might seem so long as (like wizards everywhere) you write all your important stuff on your character sheet.

4. At first level and every time you level up, roll twice on the table below. What happens if you roll a thing twice (consecutively or otherwise) is also explained.

(some of these include stuff about ability score bonuses, if you have an ability score minus, just ignore that)

1-20 Heyyy, I've seen this thing before... +1 to all your saves.

21-70 Sitting in that corner flipping that coin over and over really improves the hand-eye coordination: 2 skill points or just slide up to the next thief-function bracket if you're using 1e.

71 You're an experienced mugger with an eye for detail. For each combat round you spend just watching someone (i.e. you're not doing anything except maybe moving and you are not being attacked yourself) you get +d10 to hit and +d10 to damage or +d10 to any attempt to trip, grab, or otherwise mess with the target when you finally do decide to attack. This only works on targets that are already engaged or that you can sneak attack in the round where you finally act. The ability can only be used once per fight on anyone smart enough to notice what you're doing. Also: only works on things with organs (like, not on oozes). Re-rolling this raises the die to d12 then d20. After that you start getting 2d10 then 2d12 then 2d20 etc.

72 Ok, you're not totally useless in a fight. Add your dex bonus to your attacks in melee combat. Re-rolling this this just adds +1 more. If you have no dex bonus, add +1.

73 So I found this scroll in this old man's house, right? You have learned one magic-user spell. It functions as if cast by a 15th level wizard or your level whichever is higher. Determine the spell randomly (d8 for level). It works once, that's it.

74 Oh, sorry ma'am didn't mean to... You can super-easily trip any basically human-sized creature that is otherwise engaged with someone or something else on a successful roll-under dex d20 roll. This only works once per fight unless the enemy is mindless like zombies or for some reason can't see you pull off this tactic. Re-rolling this result means the trip does damage: d4, then d6, then d8 etc.

75 Eeeny meeny miney....moe... You are real good at stabbing people in places they really wish you hadn't. If you successfully attack a foe with basically understandable anatomy (like: organs and stuff) with a dagger (or bodkin or whatever), you have the option to leave the dagger in--in some horrible place. The dagger will do d6 ongoing damage per round and will do d20 if they take it out. Yes you can just keep doing this to them over and over like they're a pincushion if you buy a lot of daggers. Magical healing will allow safe extraction of the dagger as will decent mundane medical attention. If you re-roll this result the die of damage for the ongoing damage goes up: d8, d10, d12, d20 etc.

76 All that drinking in the Melting Strumpet has finally paid off. You know a secret. One of two kinds of secret, to be precise: either a piece of useful lore about a legendary treasure or magic item that you encounter or an embarrassing fact about an NPC. Mechanically: once per session you may astound your party's condescending wizard by pulling this lore or rumor out of your ass by making a successful roll-under int check. If you fail, screw it, you can't do it this session. Re-rolling this means you try for this twice per session, then 3 times, etc

77 You've been getting steady work in the city and are familiarizing yourself with the tools of the trade. If you garotte someone they automatically lose a turn on a successful hit, if you bola a running target they will fall down, if you whip somebody successfully you will entangle a limb for at least one round (or one round longer than normal depending on the rules) and if you drop caltrops or marbles and someone with legs steps on them they will automatically fall down. Re-rolling this result adds damage to any of these +2, +4, +6 , etc

78 The old smack and nick... On a successful melee hit, you may immediately make a Sleight of Hand attempt to grab an item (other than the target's weapon) off a target. This won't work twice on anyone above zombie-intelligence who sees it. Re-rolling this result means you get a bonus to the sleight roll for each re-roll +1, +2, +3 etc.

79 Ok, you're kind of a ninja. You are capable of great acrobatic feats and dodges and leaps. In combat, this allows you 2 separate move actions at any time and you can attack and break off being attacked with no danger of reprisal once per . So you could go: attack move move or move attack move or move move attack. You may do this once per fight plus one more for every time you re-roll this result. (Note this is slightly stingier than the Ranger version of this ability.)

80 You've been practicing with flower pots on old ladies. You are +(entire charisma score) to hit with any suddenly improvised weapon the first time you strike against any intelligent foe (who the hell knew you were going for the breadbox?) and add your whole charisma score to the damage. This trick only works once per fight. Re-rolling this adds +2, then +3, then +4 to the damage, etc.

81 Score! You have d6 doses of horrible drugs that are bad for you. They work by ingestion or insinuation. Unless the GM has some crazy drug table, I'm going to say victims must save or act as if under a Confusion spell for 4 rounds.

82 You're a pro at conning. Your silver tongue gives you a +2 charisma bonus to lying. If charisma checks don't come up much in your game, just say someone of ordinary intelligence you can talk to will pretty much automatically believe one lie you tell per day. If you re-roll this result it goes +2 more, +4, +6 etc. or extra lies per day.

83 The gods of luck smile upon your worthless thieving hide. You may escape death or another equally awful fate exactly once. You must spend at least a round playing possum to build tension but....surprise, you jumped out of the way just in time! Re-rolling this means you get to do it again.

84 Oooo, skull and crossbones... You can make 1+ int bonus doses of poison given 12 hours in a city or large town and 15 gp of materials. It's good for d4 hours and does d10+int bonus damage ingested or insinuated on a failed save. You also have been dealing with the stuff so much that you get a +2 bonus to save against poison in general. Re-rolling this increases the save by 2 and means you can make another dose per 12 hour period.

85 Yesssss! Finally you've found it--that thing you wanted? The big score? The Jewel of the Throckmarten Throne? The parasite that eats bad karma? The magic knife that slits throats all by itself? The comely sibling of the monstrous vicar? Whatever. It's there. 4 sessions worth of adventure away or less. Tell your GM, who then must place it.

You must have a fair shot at it--like any other reward, but there's no guarantee you will get it. If you don't get it by the fourth session you can keep trying or let it go and roll again on this table. However if you choose to roll again and then you do get the thing somehow anyway, you lose whatever gimmick you rolled. GM think up some clever reason why.

86 Ohhh... your head hurts and why is this countertop marble? It's hard to reconstruct but you are pretty sure you scored 5000 units of the local currency (GP? SP? Kroner?) and spent it all in one night. Here's how it works: you have exactly ten seconds real time to say what you bought. You now have all that stuff, assuming it adds up to less than 5000gp. You do not get xp for this treasure.

87 Being something of a coward has paid off. You are + 4 to hit with a bow or crossbow if you spend a round aiming. Re-roll? +6, +8 etc.

88 Haaaa! It was me all along! You have learned the art of disguise. Mostly. It's a your Int vs. their Wis roll, assuming you have access to about 40 gp worth of stuff or the kind of materials you'd find in a civilized area. Every time you re-roll this you get +2 to the check.

89 You've been working on doing convincing squiggles. You are adept at forgery. Mechanical details work like disguise above: (Int v Wis, 40gp, +2 on a re-roll, etc etc)

90 You've been watching Antiques Roadshow. You can appraise treasure to a nontrivial and nonboring degree: you can estimate the value of nonmagical things flawlessly and if a piece of treasure is not what it seems on any level you will get an inkling. As in, you'll go "Is this not what it seems?" and the GM will go "Yeah, you've seen a lot of jade urns in your day and this is not what it seems somehow--you're not sure how." If a treasure has some unusual or hidden feature of a mechanical or physical nature you will sense that it is there on a successful Int roll. You won't know what it is, but you'll sense that it is there. You also have an extra +1 (in 6) and + int bonus (if any) chance to notice unusual features or traps in rooms if you are familiar with the culture that built the room. If you re-roll this result you are reading now, just roll again.

91 Keeping one step ahead of the law is hard work. +1 Dex to racial max, excess goes to Str or Con.

92 You are the steely-eyed one at the end of the bar. +1 Wis to racial max, excess goes to Int or Cha.

93 You're not as dumb as you look. +1 Int to racial max, excess goes to Wis or Cha. Note: You look no smarter.

94 It's weird, people are beginning to believe you when you talk. +1 Cha. to racial max, excess goes to Wis or Int.

95 The whole stop, drop, roll thing has finally sunk in. +2 to reflex save or whatever saves can plausibly be derived from "jumping out of the way" in your system. If a save normally means you take half damage, you take none.

96 You've developed highly advanced avoidance strategies. If you are attacked in a round that you spend doing nothing but dodging and your attacker misses, s/he or it will not only miss but fuck up and lose his or her next turn (if s/he or it has multiple attacks, s/he will lose a number of attacks equal to your level). This only works once on anything of better than zombie intelligence that sees it happen. If you re-roll this result, you get it twice, then three times, then four, etc.

97 He's a card player, gambler, scoundrel--you'd like him. You have pals all over. You have one contact for each thief level you have (write these pals down when they appear). This ability can be triggered in any civilized area (or uncivilized areas that travelers frequent) and HEY, IT'S YOU!!!. (GM, get rolling some random NPCs.) These will generally be low-level underclass types--thugs, mountebanks and freakshow performers and, though they have information, they will not be adventurer-material (i.e. they won't help you fight things or open trapped doors for the most part). However, if you re-roll this result you may do one of the following things: "upgrade" an existing contact to upper class status (inheritance? big score?) or "upgrade" an existing contact to adventurer status (that is: you've made it look like fun and they want some, too.)

98 You're utterly forgettable. First: you are skilled at playing possum--if you pretend to go down in a fight you will most likely be ignored thereafter even if everyone else is already dead and will get a +2 to any sneak attacks thereafter. Also: In combat, you can stealth up on people even if they have already seen you and are in daylight so long as they are already fighting someone else or otherwise engaged. If you re-roll this or if your GM is the kind that already assumes that you can do this kind of thing, then this ability lets you pretty much keep stealthing over and over in the same combat so long as you switch targets or you can attack the same target so long as you spend one round not fighting them. Subsequent re-rolls after that just add 2 pips to your stealth up to the max and after that you should roll a different result.

99 You're so used to walking around in the dark it's like you're a bat. You treat night-time illumination as if it was just an overcast day and lightless pitch nine-levels underground darkness as if it were night-time (on account of your other senses being developed and/or some kind of creepy Lamarckian evolution). If you re-roll this or are using some variant rules where you are some species that can already see in the dark, you have a Daredevil-like radar sense allowing you to find your way around fine in even magical darkness or fog or when blinded plus your regular sight extends another 20'.

00 You are Dr Relaxed. You've seen and done so much that nothing phases you--you are immune to insanity or confusion in any form. Even mind-altering cosmic horrors from the far edge of the cosmos are like whatever. You still do fear. Fear is good. Fear keeps you alive. Re-rolling this means any allies who can see you likewise get a bonus (+2) to their saves on account of your steady eye.

The Thief player must not become star-struck by this glittering cache of combatly options. You get 10 seconds to pick what you're doing once it's your turn.

In addition to all this, thieves keep track of their scores. Write down things you have heisted or stolen (anything that was itself actively guarded or trapped--not just things that were lying there in the dungeon). Any criminal who knows who you are personally or who has any connection to the criminal underworld whose total number of experience points is equal to or less than the xp value of your biggest score (in LOTFP: over 1200--2nd level, over 2400--3rd level, over 4800--4th) will treat you as if your charisma is 18 (or, if it actually is 18, then 20).

__________________________________

Note on using the LOTFP skill advancement in other systems:

So the LOTFP skill system is: Base skill (everybody has this): 1 in 6, If you are a specialist and level up a skill you get 2 in 6 then 3 in 6 etc...

That's about a 16.6% improvement per advance.

Here are some slightly-more-ability-score-sensitive versions with fairly similar (not exactly the same) math if you want 'em...

.In a D20 DC-style system: Add your stat bonus for every advance. If you want to match LOTFP, assume the DC is usually 20 and the starting point for anybody is a roll + stat bonus.

.In a D20 DC-style system but you're still using the old style ability bonuses (i.e. 13-15 is +1, 16-17 +2 etc) then add stat bonus x 2 for every advance. If you want to match LOTFP, assume the DC is usually 20 and the starting point for anybody is a roll + 2x stat bonus.

.Roll-under: Roll under stat minus 10. Add +d6 to your stat for purposes of this skill for every advance.

. Percentile: You start at (your ability score)% chance and add your ability score again every advance.)