I don’t give out a lot of magic loot in my Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign and one of my players was just telling me she likes it that way. So of course now I have to hand out some magic loot!
The first is a way to get ley lines and places of power into the game by giving the players a diving rod. There’s several mentions of ley lines and places of power in the DCC core rulebook but not much about detecting them.
The second brings the consult spirit spell into the game, which the Judge’s section suggests as a way to drop clues and adventure hooks into the campaign. I’d rather not wait for our casters to get high enough in level to get that spell (which there’s no guarantee they would take anyway). I’ll report back after they’ve had some use. Feel free to post your experiences here or ways you have brought these elements into your game.
LEY DIVINING ROD
A forked stick that can be used to find ley lines or place of power. The user must be a wizard or elf and must concentrate. The longer the concentration period, the further away the user can find such a place. (see table below)
A place of power can only be found if the user knows a spell that would benefit (ex. fireball’s might be enhanced in a volcano). Using this drains 1d4 HP of damage for each 15 minutes (or fraction thereof) of use. Magical healing cannot be applied during this time, but any regeneration powers or spells in effect when the user begins is in effect. If the user dies while attempting to find a ley line, he or she must be buried in a ley line within a week or become a lich (NPC) or some other awful fate.
Each 15 minutes beyond what is required for the radius adds ‘+1 to the spell check for finding space.
Radius:
5 minutes = 20m
10 minutes = 50m
15 minutes = 100 meters
30 minutes = 250 meters
1 hour = 1km
1.5h = 2.5km
2h = 10km
3h = 50km
5h = 200km
There is a spell check involved:
1-10 Failure to detect presence/absence
12-13 Yes/No there is one in this general area
14-17 Yes/No presence, general direction
18-19 General Direction and Distance +/- 20 percent
20-23 Direction, Exact Distance
24-27 Location, Size and Shape of line/place of power
28-29 Location, Size, Shape and shortest route to line/place of power
30-31 As per 28-29, plus extra +2 on applicable spell checks when on the line, within the space
32+ As per 30-31, plus location of connected lines, connected places of power within 100 miles
SKULL TRUMPET
This item can be used to consult spirit (as per the spell) once per month. The user speaks into and listens to this conch-shaped bone horn that has been twisted from the skull of a powerful medium.
Bring on the Ordinary: Post Your Mundane Requests Here
It’s been quiet around here, thanks to some gainful employment that fries my brain on a daily business. On the good side, I’ve been playing 1e fairly regularly and am helping wrangle submissions to this year’s Secret Santicore. I gotta hand it to Jez, Secret Santicore is a real crown jewel in the DIY/OSR community.
I did write one encounter for someone’s personal use (and thus didn’t blog it) and it was an unusual one for me in that there was no magic. Just the woods, an archer and a road. I purposely avoided anything fantastic as a key element of the encounter and I was quite pleased with the results.
Being one of Santicore’s helper elves also showed me where people’s minds are in terms of what they want from their D&D and I have to say this year will be pretty gonzo. With DCC and Carcosa coming out, I’m not surprised people are in a gonzo state of mind. I’m not immune–I read and want to play in DCC and appreciated Carcosa and I damn sure expect some top-notch stuff from the 2012 Santicore.
But then I’ve been playing 1e AD&D as a fighter with the New York Red Box crew. A dumb one–a pregen in a rules-as-written campaign using a Judges Guild module. And our magic user is reluctant to cast his spells, so in a lot of ways, there’s hardly any magic in this game. And I kind of like being a simple fighter.
And then I saw 13 Assassins. There has GOT to be some sort of kick-ass adventure there. And if this doesn’t make you want to break out Oriental Adventures or Legend of the Five Rings or Ruins and Ronin, you are a fool.
And then today I get my package from Sir Raggi, which had The God That Crawls and The Magnificent Joop Van Ooms, both of which are set on EARTH (thank you) and one in my favorite foreign city, Amsterdam. The God that Crawls scratches that shambling doom sort of itch, as its name should tell you. I expect I’ll give it a try. Joop does me a real solid with a wharf encounter table with only the tiniest bit of magic or the weird and more than 40 encounters that could really have happened in 1615 Amsterdam.
To make this short story long, I’m in the mood for the non-magical. I don’t mind that most of the OSR is running solidly toward the gonzo, but I think I’m going to spend some time working out a table of brigand encounters and a dictionary of con games to run on your players. Low, low magic stuff that can be used every day and which should make your gonzo stuff stand out.
Keeping what I said above in mind, I’m going to take requests again. If you want some sort of material that is low or non-magic for your campaign, post something in the comments below. As I did last year with “Bring It”, I’ll get to it when I can, which might mean you’ll get it this year.
How is everyone doing, by the way?