This bit of free verse, in my opinion, is best accompanied by “Victorious March” by Amon Amarth. But you do what suits you best.
Peeps Destroys the Werewolves
by Abraham Gray
Dungeons and What? OGL?
It occurred to me that at present no one has control over my imagination. I intend to remain, physically and beyond the physical, where no one can control my imagination. So if I get together with some friends, and imagine adventures in a fantastical world, I need neither books, nor System Reference Documents, nor even Dice. The game Diceless Dungeons is a reminder of that fact. When I was a child I played Make-believe. In my adult life, I see the advantages that some kind of structure brings to that pursuit. It is helpful, but not required.
In the last several campaigns I ran, I didn’t need anything from the Dark Lord of Hasbro, even though i used the infamous Math Rocks associated with their gaming franchise. I made up powers, spells, and abilities as I went along. It was a less than perfect experience. But it was my experience. No license, no legal apparatus, no State can take it away from me. They can slay my flesh, but my imagination is mine, and it will always be so, even unto and beyond my death.
What I find uplifting about the current controversy is that folks by the hundreds of thousands are remembering that the imagination needs no branding, nor official rules, nor financial backing. Each and every one of us can create worlds filled with adventure and share them with our friends, acquaintances, and even our enemies. And there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it.
With love,
Abraham Gray
Download Cat People Supplement
Editing Lessons
Despite working dilligently on a writing project, I went through some extremely hard knocks. I’d like to share the lessons I took away from it, and maybe it might be of use to you, and maybe it won’t.
- If you think you’ve got the final draft, you don’t. Have someone else look at it. Sometimes you need another set of eyes despite yours being the sharpest eyes you know. If you want me to have a look-see at your adventure module or character archetype, please ask, I’ll do it for free.
- Make sure your PDF’s compile the way you think they will. Don’t trust them just because they worked the last ten times.
- After all reviews of the final draft are done, go away for a bit, do something else unrelated, and then view it a final time. It’s amazing what you’ll notice when you plunged a toilet, mopped some floors, and folded some laundry.
So what is the source of this lesson? I thought I had a completed final draft of a supplement for Pits & Perils. I submitted it, and instantly, no clue why, I saw I made a grammatical mistake. So I edited it, recompiled the PDF, and submitted, but I didn’t check to see the PDF was correct. So it was just one paragraph of text that I had accidentally selected.
So I recompiled it and submitted a final attempt. I’m so upset with myself. I am the most detail oriented, anal retentive person I’ve ever known, and I blew it at something I care very much about.
I spend most of my life checking and double checking, the things I do. I have a job working at a major pharmacy where I check and double check and triple check my work. 99% of the time it’s completely unnecessary. But the 1% of the time I need it, usually is the time when I didn’t recheck my work. And so it looks like I don’t check my work. There’s never a record of your successes, just your failures. It’s aggravating to live life with so little confidence that you have to make sure every I is dotted, every T is crossed, and then recheck it repeatedly.
The failures proves my anal retentive procedures are necessary, even though they are usually only necessary when I failed to do them! So I’m at my best when I’m at my worst, if you take my meaning. When I trust myself the least is when I do the best I can do and that is opposite of how most people operate. I recently took a test at work to advance to the next level of the job. I went in ready to fail at it, and I scored 100%. I’m quite certain if I were confident I would have failed it. Not because confidence equals failure, but because if I were confident it meant I didn’t check my work.
I hope any of the above items are helpful to you in your writing and gaming endeavors.
Are You Curious About Minimalist Rules RPGs?
Spells as Innate Abilities in Pits & Perils
Creating NPCs or even PCs can be a chore, though with a minimalist system like P&P it’s a lot easier than in some other game systems. In the process of thinking up Bestial Races for P&P, I imagined what kind of innate abilities the characters had, and how to describe them.
Consider the Rhino Men (really, go check them out please). They’re a hardy race, committed to the martial disciplines. Their armor goes up over time because of their sturdy build and fanatical discipline. It makes sense for them to train to operate on light rations. Rather than having to describe a particular ability, I gave them the HALE spell (from The Divine Spark), so the higher their level, the longer they can go without food and water. A spell doesn’t have to be gestures and utterances. It can be innate. My Vulture Men are so tuned into magic that they have an ongoing URGE spell. It just happens. Young ones probably find their subtle desires executed in ways that annoy their parents, that is until they learn to reign in and control this innate talent. What is a dragon’s breath weapon but a powerful BOLT spell themed to fire?
With this in mind, you could whip up fantasy NPCs in a jiff by applying the appropriate spell to their natural abilities. How about a nest of very large, aggressive bees? Would not a swarm of them affect a STUN or RING spell (or both) on their victims as they try to attack the nest? A Mind Flayer casts LINK and SEND on its victims once they’re in his grasp. Shapeshifters cast FORM as a matter of course. A Rock Mole from Nethack effectively casts a HOLE spell every time it moves through rock. A high ranking angel or demon would likely have an ongoing DENY spell affecting low level characters, which perhaps might allow a save so they can take hostile action.
If you’re an enthusiast of Pits & Perils, I suggest you copy the short spell descriptions from the Collected Pits & Perils, and the Divine Spark, and keep them as reference for when you need them. Want a creature that emits a dangerous toxic gas? Sounds like a re-themed RING spell to me. How about a demon that sends out hundreds of little flying imps to sting and bite his enemies? That sounds like a rethemed RUIN spell to me. Is not a Banshee’s scream a form of STUN? A leprechaun would cast HIDE or WINK as a matter of course: it’s part of who they are. Would not a ghost have an ongoing WARD spell, being immune to damage from the material plane?
I appreciate your feedback. Thank you for reading my blog.
– Abraham Gray
More House Rules Race-as-Class for P&P: Rhino and Vulture
I’m digging up and polishing off the Rhino Men and Vulture Men. Not sure whether to call them Rhino People or Vulture People. Cat People had a nice ring to it, but Rhino Men rolls off the tongue. Do a search for Rhino Men and you’ll find all kinds of amazing art depicting Rhinocerous Warriors. These classes are not complete… I even have some revisions in mind for the Vulture Men as I write this, perhaps reducing their Spell Points to that akin to a Druid (see The Divine Spark) and giving more spells to begin with.
Rhino Men are a fighter variant, gaining armor over time due to their thick hides and fanatical combat discipline.
My Vulture Men are a very scholarly spin-off of the magician, having fewer Spell Points and being very frail, but have an ongoing Urge Spell that costs nothing. They can glide on the feathered wing flesh under their arms if only lightly burdened.
More than the mechanics of the classes, they are peoples that populate the world of the novel I’ve been working on. I think there are plentiful opportunities for great role-playing. Imagine, for example, a cleric with Sean Connery’s voice (from The Name of the Rose) on a mission with three unlikely companions: a cat person, a rhino person, and a vulture person. Please give criticism. I value criticism. Two download links below.
Revisting Cat People as a class for P&P
I'm feeling creative.
Reading The Divine Spark , as well as the anniversaries of the deaths of two of my cats approaching, and really suffering emotionally as I struggle with a new job that's a lot harder than I ever anticipated it would be, I'm motivated to be creative as a cope. I'm back to work at defining the world of my novel, as well as house rules and supplements I have in mind for Pits & Perils.
I'd like to share with you a rough draft of Cat People, a house rules Race-as-Class for Pits & Perils. If I can perfect it, I will format it appropriately and submit it lawfully per their licensing rules to the archive. I invite your criticism. I appreciate criticism. How do you envision playing a cat person? View the attached pdf file below.
The Olde House Rules Catalog
If you are new to role playing games or have a hankering for old school play, please give serious consideration to my favorite games publisher, Olde House Rules. Their games have not only brought me joy but helped inspire my novel in progress. It would please me to see them benefit financially from their works. Please click the link below to view their catalog, done in the old school style.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G0DatBzW_aijRebVZdWiQLpamd1aQ1DW/view
The Divine Spark
Look what came today. I’m so psyched I don’t know how I’m going to focus the rest of my workday….
Purple Broccoli's RPG Blog 