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.

Harvesting the system from City of the Crepuscular Queen

I'm interested in systems that resolve combat in a less granular or faster way than, say, 5th edition DnD, but still give a sort of DnD feeling. I think gg no re's City of the Crepuscular Queen does this quite well - the system in it, I mean. It's very similar to Dungeon Squad or In the Light of a Ghost Star, though the way HP works is very different, and combat resolution can be a lot faster. Admittedly one can speed up combat the way those systems do - just give everyone few HP and let damage be fairly normal, and combat will be fast! But I am nothing if not a magpie for systems. Here is what I have harvested from the mind of the fellow who made the system, Daniel from Detect Magic.

General resolution - you roll a d4, d6, d8, d10, or a d12, and you want to roll 4 or more to succeed. You never modify the roll. If you would normally roll a d8 and have an advantage, you roll a d10 or d12.

You roll a d8 if what you're doing is related to your class/profession. You roll a d6 if, say, you're a rogue in a stand-up fight, or the wizard trying to sneak around. You roll a d4 if you have really bad odds - maybe the wizard sneaking through a brightly-lit prison. You roll a d10 or higher if you have special equipment, lots of time / little stress, if you're a fighter and other fighters are helping you, etc. Wizards roll to cast their spells, rogues roll to sneak (if sneaking is actually dangerous in the situation).

You have 9 'hit points,' which I call save points, because they're not like HP. If you fail a roll, generally you lose 1 save point and you start rolling the die you just rolled, and you keep losing save points until you roll a 4 or higher. So, a fighter fighting, you rolled a d8 and got a 2. You lose 1 hp, and re-roll the d8. You keep losing 1 hp at a time until you roll a 4 or more. This means dangerous things can take you out - if you're fighting, you got hurt or killed, if you cast a spell, it ate up your health and you had a magical mishap, if you were sneaking, you got ambushed and attacked.

However, if you succeed, you will take out lesser foes or do serious damage to greater foes. You don't roll once per attack, the system is closer to rolling once per major part of the combat - taking out a lesser foe if they're in a group, lopping off some part of the big monster, casting a spell to demoralize a bunch of enemies and have them flee, killing the low-level solo critter and winning. There's no 'lose 4 HP out of 35, next round' moment.

Armor would give you some extra save points in a fight, good weapons can help you fight better, and so on. Encumbrance is a list of up to 20 things you bear, and if you get into a chase, you need to roll a d20 over the number of things you have to get away. I would give strong-ass fighters (ie any fighter in this system) a +3 to that roll. 

It's definitely possible to roll and not lose save points - say, if you lie to someone, you don't immediately lose save points. But the situation should change for the dramatically worse.

Also the CCQ episodes have ideas of Moments, where you narrate a slice-of-life bit of what's going on during a rest, or you reveal things about your character's past, or relieve a burden. A burden is something that drives your character. Relieving one has no mechanical benefit but it's something that they're trying to do. The idea with these is there's no mechanical reward or 'evaluate other people's role playing', thank God, but it's just something baked into the system that one does, in order to flesh out one's character more. 

I made a very simple character sheet for this system and am going to give it a go with some folks soon.

May wind up doing more of the Dungeon Squad warrior/rogue/wizard stats and use these rules for advantage / disadvantage, focus on how CCQ's system runs combat - which I think Daniel expounded on more in Simple Fights. 

Researcher Topics-of-Study for The Stygian Library

I'm going to run some friends through Emmy Allen's awesome Stygian Library. They'll all be fighters or wizards or explorers/rogues but will also have a topic of study. The setting is an anachronistic mish-mash of things, ruled over by an Overlord, who has made life so staid and regular that the only way to get ahead is to explore the places where reality has broken down and some Other world has intruded. Anyway, here's the list of topics.

1. Astrophysics
2. Golden Barge construction theory
3. Literature
4. Theology, Confirmed
5. Approved History
6. Biology
7. Necromatic Symbolism
8. Magic Theory
9. Metallurgy
10. Architecture
11. Poetry
12. Crank conspiracy theories
13. Secret anti-Overlord activism
14. Ley Line tracer
15. Mutation Theorist
16. Mechanical Engineering Philosopher
17. Psi Theorist
18. Dreams
19. Divination
20. Post Structuralist Analysis of Television Shows
21. Dragonography
22. Mechanical Dopplegangers
23. Mirror Universes
24. String Theory
25. Dance
26. Music
27. Cinema
28. Chemistry
29. Library Sciences
30. Ghost Analytics

System will probably be a lot like In the Light of a Ghost Star and cribbed notes from gg no re's City of the Crepuscular Queen. That system is neat, in that you have a DC of 4 for every roll and you go up and down the dice chain based on your profession and how hard things are. A fighter rolls a d8 to fight, a wizard rolls a d8 to cast. A rogue rolls a d8 to sneak and a d6 to have a stand-up fight; a wizard probably rolls a d4 to melee people. Chases are rolling a d20 over the number of items you're carrying. Telling really bad lies to someone may be a d4 to succeed (at best), whereas doing something for your profession that you have a lot of time to set up might give you a d10 or a d12 to roll.

Most everyone will roll a d8 for their research topic as well, though the idea is that a fighter with Magic Studies as their research isn't a better wizard than the wizard. It would probably be that they could roll a d8 to know things about magic, do research on it, but they don't have much of the knack themselves. Likewise a martial arts-studying wizard is not going to have fun in melee, but they might be able to roll a d8 to detect and call out weaknesses to the fighter and give them an advantage.

Reality is Breaking Down Actual Play

I ran the Shift RPG for my niece and nephew a bit ago and had good fun. I made some modifications to it, as they had never seen some of the touchstone media for that game - no Inception, no The Matrix. They played smugglers just trying to retrieve and move a MacGuffin from one sector of The City to another.

The City, Subway Map

It was good fun, the game is set up such that the players describe a plan and try to roll under the 2 most relevant stats. When reality changes, the characters change - stats change for sure, and the players got to decide if they'd create new alter egos or not. We went from a dirty cop detective and faux student to a martial artist and a Flat Earther conspiracy theorist. The Flat Earther rolled well on a reality shift and, using the excellent Fractured Reality table from Cavegirl's Gaming Blog, made the world actually flat, and became a Round-Earth Conspiracy Theorist. The niece immediately tried (and succeeded) in shifting reality to make this Not The Case, because Flat Earth is a bad conspiracy theory.

I learned about Raw Water - an actual thing, people believing that it's 'better' to have unpurified water - because of course my nephew is awesome and knows about crazy beliefs.

The game system wants each player to think of regrets / mistakes and have those manifest in the world at times, cause problems, give the PC more insight into the shifting nature of reality. I gave the players a d12 (?) list of potential problems they could summon forth, but for the most of it they relied on me having weird stuff in the world, and I was happy to slowly ramp things up from a triffid apocalypse setting, through eco-collapsing archival worlds, to a Squid People Police State where mind-controlled prison labor kept things going. 

They did summon up a swarm of locusts to eat triffid-apocalypse pod people though. That was great. And the dirty cop detective got the feeling that everyone, herself included, was a pod person. And there were pod people after they reality shifted away from that stuff, because pod people are fantastic.

d12 antagonistic incursions caused by Your Issues

1. Bull
2. Train
3. Bear
4. Locusts
5. Rival dreamer
6. Former friend
7. Huge market crash
8. Tidal wave
9. Weird eclipse
10. Secret police agent
11. Kaiju
12. Vampire

They got captured by squid-people police looking for the MacGuffin. They awoke in a small security zepplin, broke free of their bonds, and used a machine gun to force the pilot and copilot to ditch. Then when encountering security balloons, they tried to fake their own deaths/crash but smashed into the security balloon, whose Squid Person overseer jumped into their zeppelin and fought them. Good stuff. 

The game system encourages players to 'solve' what's going on, but my players where happy to be professional smugglers, get the goods delivered. They did have great theories - the conspiracy theorist thought everything was happening on a big sound stage, all as fake as the moon landing. The detective / martial artist figured the world was like a smartphone that had been dropped in water and was glitching out, an amazing and dark analogy. 

Overall, a very fun one-shot with very little prep on my end. Edit: Probably the only thing I'd change was using that pointcrawl map as a subway map - if I want players to get out and explore or have encounters in each district, I shouldn't give them a big easy 'stay on the train' option, or should have thought of reasons to get off the train, or train encounters. But given this was a one-shot we barely had enough time for, I think what I did was for the best.

Hacking everything in the world

I've been thinking about systems that would let you hack everything you can see. Partly inspired by Graverobber's Guide's latest about a cyberpunk dystopia. Here are some Powered by the Apocalypse style rules I'm noodling around with.

It's really easy to make hacking this weird mini-game which takes everyone out of the world, makes 1 player the Special Time Person, etc. I think Shadowrun's move to wireless hacking is maybe a try at getting away from this, but I haven't actually read anything from that setting made after 1992, other than some video game stories. But anyway, that's my idea - everyone can do some kind of Hack Thing, hacking is generally something that you're doing locally; you're co-located rather than isolated. In the world rather than hiding in your basement. 

Implied Setting Blurb

Everything is wired and rewired, injected with nanomachine dust, measured, monitored. But some in the lost corners of the world have learned to twist this panopticon against itself. 

Some actual moves

HACK
When you hack something connected to the Aether, roll + hacking.
        10+: Gain 3 hold
        7-9:  Gain 1 hold
Spend 1 hold to make the target perform a fairly normal action for a few minutes. 
Spend 1 extra hold to make them do so for longer. 
Spend 1 extra hold if they're doing something complicated or dangerous.

So for instance, if you want to break into an apartment, you probably can hack the door lock for a few minutes by spending 1 hold, then jam the door open. You also need to spend 1 hold to keep the security system offline for a few minutes. You could drop 1 extra hold for a much longer period of this simple control - you find or create a backdoor into the system. 

REDACT
When you reach out to corrupt a large number of electronic recording devices in the area, roll + ghosting

10+ It's seamless, it's like your not even there.
7-9: Pick one.
        You're not identifiable, but you're definitely there.
        The records are completely fragged, which is a red flag right now for someone.

If that house you broke into was remote or in a poor area, REDACT is probably unnecessary. In a rich area dusted with info pollen? You probably can't hack your way out of being seen and identified unless you emit a shriek of EM and bend all the camera-eyes and recording dust to your will.

REMOTE VIEW
When you dream through the datastreams to glimpse somewhere far away, roll + warp

SABOTAGE?
When you destroy something beyond repair, or make it destroy itself, roll + break

Stats so far: hack, ghost, warp, break. 

It's all very tentative and hot-takey. I kind of think the 5th (and final) move should be defy danger and that this is really just a weird hack of World of Dungeons. I wouldn't want to get any more basic moves than that, really. WoD style Danger Rolls are great for picking up slack.

I believe women

I posted this all over my social media, but it's worth stating here: I believe women. I believe Mandy. Jennifer. Hannah. Vivka. There's no room for abusers in this hobby. In the past I've linked to things Zak has written; not anymore. Other people have written this up and written up the write-ups.

I should've stood up more for others when Zak was charging at them, and did not. It was easier to avoid him, which was pretty much by design. It was easier, but it helped enable him to do what he did. Hopefully in the future I will do better.

(Same with Sean Patrick Fannon, I was really interested in Savage Rifts for a minute. I'm leaving those old pre-gen character posts up, but I'd encourage people to play something else.)

Hail and Kill the Techno Wizard

Salvaging an old G+ post!

Art from here!

The Hounds of Halthrag Keep is the first time I've seen roll under and roll over stat checks - you roll over your Strength to see if you can wedge yourself through a crevice, for instance. I thought this was brilliant (thanks +Noah Stevens !). I wonder if it's possible to have a Black Hack-ish hack where all the stats are explicitly for both rolling under and over.

Stats
-------------------------------
Murderous
Stubborn
Quick
Rational
Charismatic

Murderous is a combat skill, you roll over it if you're trying to blend in with non-adventurers or convince a constable that you're not some wild-eyed murderhobo on a cocaine bender, they went that way, swear on me mum's soul.

Stubborn, you roll over this to assimilate new information that you would normally find odious. New languages, maybe, or to recognize that these orcs aren't trying to kill and eat you. Roll over to understand something that breaks reality, maybe, roll over it to not lose Mental Health Points a la Perdition (out of mental HP, roll on some Mind Melting table).

Quick - roll over this to do something with steady precision. Surgery, lockpicking. For anything where slow is smooth, smooth is fast, I guess. Someone will say 'that's everything' but running needs to be quick.

Rational - roll under for tinkering, making clockwork automatons or the like, debating like a lawyer. Roll over for magic, reasoning with demons, debating from your dumb-ass gut.

Charismatic - oh God I can't get away from the original six stats, I'm a fraud, you knew it all along. Roll under because you can't come up with a better idea than 'I convince the sheriff these aren't stolen banners' (with disadvantage). Roll over to blend into a crowd or hide, or, hell, sneak around in general. Does this overlap with rolling over Quick well I just came up with this stuff. It overlaps with using rational to debate people, but you don't need charisma for debate, especially if you don't care about winning.

With this stuff you probably want some kind of 'WITHSTAND' save stat that you're almost never going to want to roll over (unless you're trying to get mutated in a radiation zone). Or just call it 'Save' and have it be your level plus 2 or the like, and you want to always roll under.

When you level you can probably try to roll over a stat to increase it or roll under.a state to decrease it, your choice. This is that 'improving crappy stats is easier than improving great stats' rule from the Black Hack but you can decrease, say, Rational, if you want to be a better wizard.

-------Monsters--------
Some monsters have a BULK stat they roll under to pick you up and throw you with. They roll over it to get inside a building.

Some animal-intelligence monsters can have an EAT stat. Roll over EAT to stop fighting the PCs and flee when they put up a good fight. Roll under it to eat PCs.

Demons could have stats like CORRUPT to try to seed you with cancerous thoughts or ideas that you have to Stubborn your way through. Or find someone with crap Rational who learned magic good and have them help you.

------Employees-
---
Hirelings could have a FOLLOW stat to roll under to stay true to their recalcitrant, mercurial bosses, or roll over to take their own initiative and do something wonderful for the PCs. (Or to stab 'em in the back!).

I would give hirelings one other stat - SKILL - and they roll under it to do what you hired them for (soldiers fight, trappers find or create traps, etc). Roll over it to do anything else that's risky, probably with a disadvantage so that you don't hire a shitty scribe to be your private assassin / engineer / starship pilot / magus. Or maybe they just can't roll over it for more than 1 thing a session, I dunno, that might be too much to track.

---------Later thoughts---------------

I think these stats are a bit too generic - I need to work on channeling a darker Thundarr vibe. Carcosa-ish. Numenera but scarier.

MURDER
LIE
CRAVEN (run away or hide, roll under. Roll over to face down horror)
OLD TECH (still make tech vs do magic)
CORRUPTED

only thing missing - what do you roll to scavenge? Maybe that's a flat 1-in-6 chance per turn.


Corruption happens to those who wander from (slowly failing, class stratified) settlement. When you fail a corruption roll-over your corruption decreases right then. And you may or may not have to roll on a mutation / corruption table. Some of these effects should be good, some should be neutral (but distinctive), some should be at least somewhat negative. Like you can't use your tentacle hand to wield a weapon for now (needs training from a mutant) but you can use it to grapple like crazy well.


There's overlap so maybe you are using your tentacle hand with MURDER or maybe it's CORRUPTION.

As the awesome Andrew Shields pointed out, this is basically an extension of ideas in Lasers and Feelings. He also urged me to use a die other than d20 for this, which seems reasonable.