5.07.2021

The Village: Prayers

"Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it." 


In our uncaring, hyperborean waste, divine healing doesn’t exist. However, characters can cry out for a blessing prior to a battle, offering up sacrifices in the hopes of currying a god’s favor. With a successful spellcheck the character is granted bonus hit dice to distribute to amongst allies as they choose. 

Actual bonus hit points are not determined until battle is joined. The hit points are temporary and any remaining points are lost at the end of the battle.      


The whims of the god & the PCs' goals ...

Spell check

Aligned

Indifferent

Opposed

1-11

Failure

Failure

Failure and worse!

12-14

3 dice

Failure

Failure

15-18

5 dice

1 die

Failure

19-23

7 dice

2 dice

1 die

24-29

10 dice

4 dice

2 dice

30+

15 dice

8 dice

3 dice



Any character can beseech a god, rolling a 1d10 + Personality modifier. War bands can improve their odds by offering up sacrifices, which can be in blood, treasure, or both.


Sacrifice bonus

Offering

Item value

+1

Sheep or cow

50 gp

+2

Enemy warrior 

500 gp

+3

Enemy warlord or champion

5,000 gp

+4

Enemy king

10,000 gp

+5

Enemy emperor or god-king

100,000 gp


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So far this is all arbitrary and needs to be sussed out at the table. 

Clerics, as we know them, aren't a class at character creation. But my plan is for a custom Luck Auger table, where some of the results are having been chosen or blessed by a specific god. 

Thanks for letting me daydream out loud, friends! 

5.06.2021

The Village: Thieving Skills

Many characters learn certain illicit skills that serve them well as reavers. What you favor is initially determined by what you are good at. At 0-level, pick one skill for each point of ability score modifier in Agility, Personality, or Intelligence. 


Agility

Climb sheer surfaces

Sneak silently 

Hide in shadows 

Pick Pocket

Pick Lock 

Disable / Set Trap 


Int 

Read Lost Languages

Find Trap 


Personality

Ambush (formerly Backstab)

Bluff (formerly Disguise self)


Skill Bonus by level

0

1

2

3

4

5

+1

+3

+5

+7

+9

+11


====

The trickiest sell is Ambush subbing in for DCC's Backstab. Here's my thought process --- ambushing something (a deer, person, or fiend) requires enormous force of will. You spot the target, sit and sit and sit and wait, until it presents the perfect opportunity. 

Strike early and it's just an attack. But if you have the patience and willpower to wait for just the right moment ... that's the DCC backstab crit.  

Another change would be to reframe Hide in Shadows / Sneak Silently as things anyone can attempt, but with two tracks, with one strongly favoring those that chose it as a skill.

The Village

 

The conceit of the DCC game is that the PCs are liberated by their 0-level adventure. They shake free of the shackles of their former, humble lives, and set out for the wider world as Adventurers

This presupposes a certain sort of world, where survival is viable for small groups of wanderers, I.e. our usual RPG settings. But DCC is home to thousand insane worlds, some less welcoming than others. 

The Village falls in with the latter. A place where rival bands hope to enslave you, unknown monsters lurk in the dark forests and mist-shrouded moors, and magic is baleful and strange.

The size of the village is finite, and every member of the hamlet is a potential PC. And so, when you lose three characters to your 0-level adventure, your pitiful hamlet is now bereft of its baker, gong farmer, and armorer. 

Rather than abandoning kith and kin when you hit first level, you return home in the hopes of using those bloodied treasures to some advantage. We root our PCs in a sense of place, with the shared goal of survival. 

Cap the levels at 5, start off every PC as a warrior with handful of thief skills, and hide magic in the ruins crushed beneath a hyperborean glacier. Beowulf meets Viking Crawl, and the first 10 pages of every Conan comic reboot. We'll see if I can get anyone to play. 


You’re no hero. 

You’re are a reaver, a cutpurse, a heathen, 

a tight-lipped warlock guarding long-dead secrets ...


… and your Village's only hope for survival.

1.19.2021

Spawn of Cyclops Con Third-Party Publisher Reference for Gather.Town

Gather.Town uses iframes to embed websites. When a con-goer comes across your shop icon, they are prompted to interact by pressing X, opening a window within Gather.Town.

Original G.T documentation embedding for websites can be found here:

https://gather.town/docs#feature-website-embeddings

Important bits:

-The page needs to be HTTPS

-Some specific websites block being embedded in iframes. If it is blocked, the website administrator needs to change the permissions.

Unfortunately, DriveThruRPG works to block iframes. Same with Instagram and Facebook.

However, there is a simple work around to direct attendees to your offerings on DriveThruRPG:

1. You will need an https landing page. Blogger / blogspot will do, or a google doc, or your own website.

2. Select and post links to your products. Be sure that each link includes
target="_blank"
This instructs the browser to open a new tab, outside of the Gather.Town frame, sending the viewer directly to your publisher page on DriveThruRPG.

If you are using Blogger/Blogspot, Google makes this easy. When you enter a link, a window will pop up, asking if you'd like the link to open a new page. Obviously: Yes!

A sample landing page for an artist or publisher might look something like this:
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Thanks for stopping by our booth! Check out our con specials on DriveThru RPG!
Also be sure to check out my DCC Adventure, Doom of the Savage Kings.

====

The raw text code for the above can be found and copy/pasted from here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/17dNUH2PzKYxw2fIe5XAtH9eFgLvW00RDhQCe3TcMGrM/edit?usp=sharing

====

Through the Gather.Town interface, the above post would look like this, with all of the links opening into new windows:



If you're feeling sassy you can host links to all your titles with thumbnails and brief descriptions. Maybe you take photos of your DCC RPG adventures in milkcrates to give it that thumbed-through record store feel. Whatever. You're smart and cool. You can make it work.

If this doesn't make sense for any reason, let me know and we can create a single simple post, here, that will direct folks to your offerings on DriveThru or site X. A little 3pp directory of sorts.