Whiff Table: Something happens every round of combat

I'm thinking of running 0e DnD or Black Pudding's flavor of B/X, or Moldhammer, or Wolfbreaker. But I love combat systems from Into the Odd where there's no to-hit roll (and no missing) or Troika/Tunnel Goons/Macchiato Monsters where someone always gets hit. What to do? Write a whiff table! 

WHIFF

When two opposed combatants in melee both miss their attacks, roll on the whiff table.

1. You knock each other's helms off. If anyone involved is not wearing a helm, they take 1d6 damage.
2. You both fall down. 50% chance you're on top. You're at a range where punches, kicks, and daggers will work; larger melee weapons will not.
3. You bind weapons and then push one another back. Their weapon lands at your feet; yours lands at theirs.
4. Belt or backpack cut. Lose the top item in your inventory, as it is on the ground now.
5. Lesser HD combatant knocked back into someone else on their side, who must save or be knocked down. 
6. Environmental damage! Crack the ceiling, start a fire, destroy furniture, valuables, etc.
7. Tooth loosened. You can spit it out in their face for a +4 to hit bonus next round, or try to keep it in place and get it fixed later (maybe?). No hp loss.
8. Metal strikes stone. You and your opponent are bathed in sparks. Exposed paper or oil will begin to burn. Hair smolders.
9. Opponent had an oil jar or gland that you just barely nick, but it splits open nevertheless. You, your opponent, and the ground are drenched in oil. 
10. You just barely get an opening. If you swing with everything you have, embedding your weapon in your opponent, you can do so and roll damage with advantage, but you lose your weapon. Otherwise, normal miss.
11. Their swing or thrust misses, but tosses sweat and grit in your eyes. Take -4 to AC until you spend a round wiping that out; your peripheral vision is .
12. You clash weapons and it's incredibly loud. Roll for an additional encounter.
13. You disarm them and their weapon sails behind them. If they have natural weapons they take 1d6 damage.
14. Their weapon pins you in place. They lose it but you will have to struggle for 1d3 rounds to be able to move again. Can still fight.
15. Ancient war-sigil mine stepped on, 1-3 by you, 4-6 by enemy. Spend next round levitating 10' in the air. Spells lowers you down gently (defective).
16. Skyknife! Your weapon is knocked up into the ceiling and lodged there. It'll fall in 1d6 rounds. Anyone under it could be hit by it. (If no ceiling is available your weapon targets someone random closeby.)
17. Ambient magical energy interacts with your intent to cause harm. You and your opponent glow like torches. -4 AC penalty to both of you for 1d6 rounds.
18. You blink blood out of your eyes. You and your opponent are covered in blood and gore. Perhaps another attack drenched you both, perhaps some blood god is merely happy at your mishap.
19. Their swing is about to cleave into your throat and you are suddenly in the Dead Realm. Any spirits or undead in the area are still present, otherwise it is empty, grey, cold, foggy. You can move about for 1 round and then you will re-appear wherever you moved to. Any valuable treasure or items are but dust in the Dead Realm, unless you brought them in yourself.
20. Both of your weapons bind and break. If either of you were using magical weapons, said weapons can save against breakage. (Roll a 4 or more on a d6, adding the weapon's magical bonus.)

You could just roll a d6 against this table, or a d12 if you don't want random magical war-sigils to show up in your theatre of the mind, or random Dead Realm trips. 

Ghost Gang Random Tables for Esoteric Enterprises or whatever modern urban fantasy you got

In anticipation of Cavegirl's AWESOME Esoteric Enterprises coming out bigger and badder, here are my thoughts on Ghost Gangs. Because people die all the time, there's almost always a few ghosts in a rough collective, if not an outright organized body of the disembodied.

They're a fantastic organization to hire out freelancers, because they need a literal pair of hands (or 4) to lift up a priceless painting from one subterranean hidey-hole and carry it safely to theirs. 

(Also here's a link to the player's handbook for Esoteric Enterprises, with which one can create ghosts.)

From Wikipedia

WHAT DOES THIS GHOST GANG WANT ANYWAY

1. Enchanted fresh food to actually eat. 
2. Ancient vinyl pressing of ritual music.
3. Large (4' x 6') oil painting, frame optional.
4. Unenchanted stone idol.
5. Large pile of enemy's wealth to be destroyed dramatically.
6. DVDs and DVD player. Holy oil to anoint such that they can push the buttons.
7. Hookah, brick of undergrown-cultivated herb. 
8. Blessed salt to keep out uninvited spirits.
9. Silver-coated sword that they can wield.
10. Rune-carved zippo lighter shipment. They don't run out of fuel.
11. Ectoplasm-filled jar, the remains of one of their own.
12. Liber Noctis, a book of binding ghosts. A furnace to destroy it in.
13. Soul trapper's scalp or forefinger.

WHO HAS IT WHO IS TERRIBLE

1. A thief-lich (HD6) and her disciples.
2. Null soul zone-dwelling scavengers. 
3. Overly large cryptid.
4. Nearby police precinct. 
5. Bank vault, front for some undead businessfolk.
6. Devotee of the Void and their flock.
7. Rival ghost gang.
8. Urban explorers, last seen diving the depths.

WHERE DO THEY HOLE UP

1. Underground, an abandoned subway stop
2. Aboveground, in an unknown safehouse
3. Underground, beneath a small settlement of worshippers / traders
4. Underground, in an automatic sewer processing system
5. Underground, in an ancient building that was built over hundreds (?) of years ago but looks like it's from the 1980s
6. Aboveground, a squat atop an abandoned (?) building

Oh yeah, obviously if you get a location or WHO HAS IT from the What they want table, don't bother rolling on the later tables unless you want.

Summon With Your D666

Nate Treme's awesome Pamphlet Jam made me want to figure out how to make a pamphlet. Mork Borg has filled my mind with Dark Metal Simple RPG things. So here is the first half of draft of a pamphlet, letting one Summon Outsiders and possible wreck everything. Thanks to Cavegirl for being awesome, the Summon spell from LotFP for being totally insane, and everyone else. 

Summon Pamphlet  

20 More Curses for Bad Frog Bargain

I like the curses from Bad Frog Bargain, but wanted something a little less tentacle-arm and a little more 'I just gave you a weird tool to try to use well.' I suppose that's what tentacle arms are as well, but, hey. Also some of these are merely bad. 'Curses.' It's in the name y'all. Here this is as a PDF. 

1. Any social interaction must be intimidation first. You cackle like a foul villain.
2. Gamble compulsively (disadvantage to ignore)
3. Smoke constantly
4. Plant cigarette trees everywhere
5. Hyper drunk (maybe advantageous for melee)
6. Rubber bones. Disadvantage to melee attacks, advantage to melee defense.
7. Made of stone - can still move, just very slow, very heavy.
8. Speak in pig latin - disadvantage for rest of scene if you violate this. Some NPCs insist they do not understand pig latin because they do not like pig folks.
9. Dance constantly - movement is slower. 
10. Adopt persona of 1) Pirate 2) thief-taker 3) noble 4) priest 5) artisan 6) gong farmer
11. Drink every potion possible
12. Random spell cast per scene, use knave spell list or your own. You still have to roll to cast to see if things go well or not.
13. Carry and play a gramaphone at all times, requires at least one hand, two to crank it. It stops playing on a 1-2 on a d6 per round of combat.
14. You turn into your own grandparent.
15. Belt to snake, slithers away. You must hold up your pants or become Embarrassed. 
16. Flock of loud, boisterous birds follows you everywhere, eating vociferously, pooping everywhere in garish colors.
17. Everyone around you wants to party or mosh, depending on the encounter.
18. Tiny raincloud follows you everywhere, will ruin any books you carry if they're, for instance, in your hand. Get someone else to carry a torch.
19. An angry, loud eagle is now your hat. It is attached to your skin.
20. Plants burst from ground and entangle you if you stop for more than 1 round. Act as armor but slow you down. 

Forest Hymn and Picnic: Whimsy, OSR, and Scenarios For Silly Times

Charles Darwin's kids' doodles 1

When I read the playtest docs for Forest Hymn and Picnic, I knew I needed to run it and find some material for it. The level-0 character creation is fun as anything - you could be a duck in a suit just looking to retire, a ghost possessing a scarecrow body full of angry attack chickens, or a person delivered by a drunken stork to a pack of wolves (who raised you properly). Cecil, the author, has some random character generators for the 3 class/races: Persons, Ghosts, and Animal Folk.

The system is set up to make dying relatively hard, compared to what I'd expect of Shadow of the Demon Lord and OSR-adjacent games. You go unconscious at the equivalent of 0 HP and that's it, there's no 'oh you got to -3 HP? you're dead' rules. Someone could coup de grace you but you're more likely to end up in hotter water. I imagine all the flintlock pistols are actually loaded with acorns and pecans, so that a good shot will knock someone out without killing them. 

Enemies can be fought, tricked, cajoled, or enticed to gamble, and the stats that represent them let the GM easily figure out a mechanism for this. Reminds me a lot of Knave, which was inspired at least in part by SotDL (And though SotDL predates Knave, I read Knave first and most). A monster's intellect or resolve basically gives a mental AC the players need to roll over to cajole them, anger them, or intimidate them. The PC's Int or Resolve, minus 10, is their modifier on a d20 roll. Stats are not randomly generated, but set based on your class/race and then changed by your background, which is rolled randomly. So you won't start out with a huge stat disparity between players, which in my experience is great for playing with younger folks (and plenty of not-younger folks too).

It's a less metal version of the OSR - nothing wrong with metal, but it's not what I listen to all the time. Sometimes you just want some goofy stuff to happen while playing the Cuphead soundtrack. 

Darwin's kids' doodles 2

So with this system in hand, I started looking for more whimsy in OSR scenarios and found things everywhere. From Ben Milton to Nate Treme to that crazy Blogs On Tape fellow Beloch Shrike, who wrote a Wiener Dog Dungeon! Milton's recent work was Witch and Wolf, a dungeon crawl with a strong Oz vibe. (He is also working on an RPG based on Labyrinth, which is open for preorder and looks quite great.)

The scenario I'm actually running is Nate Treme's Bad Frog Bargain, which is short, understandable, and yet has enough depth for the first couple of sessions with folks. It is not a dungeon crawl, but a towncrawl with very similar ideas - random encounters and events. There are suspicious superstitious guards, fairy-elf infiltrators, and a rain of curses. Two factions vie for the PCs to tip the scales their way. 

I decided that Frog Town is a potion-making powerhouse, so I had an excuse to use Wampus County's d100 potions table. Wampus County is a treature-trove of adjacent ideas to what is in Forest Hymn and Picnic - it's more modern and more frontiers, American Western feeling, but otherwise has a very similar vibe thanks to things like life Getting Worse via fairy-tale intervention. One doesn't die, one wakes up in a Giant Lightening Eagle nest where the hungry birds are hatching, in a torrential storm. 

Anyway, so far it's been great to see whimsical OSR scenarios, settings, and rules. After being immersed in weird horror for a long time, it's like a breath of fresh air to head towards an explicitly silly side of things. Where consequences are serious but not typically final, and monstrous NPCs can probably be talked into a game of competitive marbles to let you pass over their toll-bridge.

Videos of Ye Olde Guns

Gear and Methods of the Matchlock Rifleman. Not as dry as my title, this video has a fellow going over the process of loading and firing a matchlock rifle. Also displays period garb, armor, equipment. Folk were apparently taught to load without putting the rifle on the ground, so they could load on the move, which seems totally bananas to me. Also, putting a lit match near the black powder that touches off your rifle presents some obvious safety concerns. It's easy to see why a flintlock or wheel lock was considered a step up in technology - the wheel lock being the step that overcomplicated things too much, but got away from 'lit match juggle reload,' the flintlock as the step which resolved the mechanical complexity.

It's neat to see in the above example, the re-enactor is wearing a plate male cuirass. Probably wouldn't help much against bullets, but who knows. The capandball YouTube channel has a video about shooting lamellar armor with these kinds of guns.

Match lock rifles firing line - it would suck to juggle gunpowder and a lit piece of string like that. Gunpowder out in the air won't explode like TNT or C4 or the like - it burns and burns really fast. But still, you could spill and get a nasty powder burn or the like. You can see the fellow at the end with his Apostles, seemingly running through faster thanks to them.

Wheel Lock Carbine - loading, firing. Really cool mechanism. Especially the way the flint is basically lowered into the front of this trough filled with black powder, and the spring-wound wheel spins around, rubbing itself against the flint, flinging sparks into the powder pan.

Wheel Lock Rifle - short, slow motion.

Flintlock rifle loading and firing - looks like this one has a rifled barrel, too. Probably too advanced for OSR games, but it's not like I've ever seen rules for rifled barrels. Practically, those make shots more accurate, especially over distance.

There are actually a lot of flintlock videos on youtube; if you want more, find some!

The paid version of Lamentations of the Flame Princess (the rulebook) contains an appendix section on firearms that largely goes over these points. It's nice to have some video references, especially on how the wheel lock works. It also specifically mentions the kind of armor you see in that first video.

Why Stats in Numenera and Lamentations of the Flame Princess

But why male models?

All I've been reading lately is OSR blogs. Well, that and A Distant Mirror, which is a nice reminder that no matter how rose-tinted our view of the past may get, how much it seems like the world is 'going to hell' and 'things aren't like they used to be' and 'garble gabble gabble gabble', it actually was objectively worse in the past in some key areas of human existence. Not everything is wonderful today, sure, absolutely, and not everything is getting infinitely better, or even slightly better. But the 1300s really went out of its way to be totally bananas.

Anyway! OSR! There's a lot of free, interesting material around it. Also, I've found that in running Numenera for a year, I'm really way too much of a softie. There hasn't been enough anguish or fear, enough danger. That's not a fault of the system, really - it's more that my prep needs to focus on some numbers and tactics of enemies, and I am trying to get there. But I do think OSR systems do an amazing job of creating dangerous situations for the the players. From Dungeon Crawl Classic's 0-level funnel to the Giant in Deep Carbon Observatory, there's a lot to learn from.

I came into DnD during the height of 2nd edition, have played some Pathfinder as well. They were never really a good fit, nor was 4th Edition. Numenera pulled me into tabletop games with its interesting setting, the mishmash of past and future, the way PCs could know what a 'democracy' was without it breaking the setting. Then I read, say, Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad and find out that old-school fantasy also has this idea that the future looks bit like our past - civilizations rise and fall like waves, and their detritus lives on, sometimes informing new generations, sometimes trying to eat them. DnD is the apocalypse, after all, and the civilizations of men have just crawled up from the brink of extinction.

I want to bring a bit of that to Numenera. I also want to actually play LotFP with some folks. I imagine in the long term I may move over from the Cypher System to B/X DnD retroclones, but we'll see. I certainly don't want to leave my Numenera players hanging.