On Published Dungeons & Adventure Fantasy Game: leveling thorugh XPs

TL;DR: PCs level at 1000, 2000, 4000… XP. Award 1 XP per thaler/coin of the realm, for defeated monsters 50 for each level, split equally. Ignore Level by Accomplishments and Looting, instead grant other perks.

Long form: Sometimes you want to run a published dungeon and don’t want to frame in Treasure Troves, or your players just want to dick about, murderhoboing in the wilderness. Accomplishments can be suited to this kind of play, but players not being in the campaign all the time have problems being around when Treasure Troves are looted or Accomplishments completed.

Experience Points are good for this kind of stuff. So, award XP this way, and split it equally between survivors:

• for defeating monsters, 50 XP per monster level
• for looting treasure, 1 XP per thaler/coin of the realm or equivalent if looted in a risky way. Goods gained in risky ways XP only if it fits the theme. For example Chthonic Codex research notes award XP based on their nominal value, if looted in risky ways. In Western League/Uplands/Estera rustling awards XPs equal to the value of the stolen beasts.
• for finding special locations of specialness and wrapping up “adventures” neatly, from 250 upwards
• for surviving other awesome danger of other kind, 50-100 XP per character

Level two is gained at 1000 XP, level 3 at 2000, then doubling up each level. If you want you can cap the XP needed to gain the next level at 125000 or 250000 or whatever you prefer.

When PCs complete an Accomplishment, never award the “gain a level” perk. That’s it.

Chthonic Codex: Production Problems & Dismal Delays

TL;DR: an accident happened to the plate used to print the boxed set, which is now unusable. Shipping is delayed to May, and I’ll refund any order if asked to.

The Long Form: I have a box at the printing studio with all my material and plates. The boxes got moved (now it lives on a shelf in the Acid Room) and somehow the plate used to print the boxed set ended up damaged. As in, there are grooves and big, long marks on the cover, and it’s now unusable. I went there to print some covers and etch a map. Cue major bumming out. I came home, played with lego and had a beer.

It’s not the first setback this project stumbled into. I spent most of December ill. Broke two ribs in January. I put in slack during planning to cope with unforeseen delays. And I got to the point where I’m working on this project a lot and was going to deliver on time.

And then this happened and more work is piling on top. And in absolute terms is not much, but I’m worn thin. I got to the point where designer fatigue is showing up, and I did the boxed set design and etching earlier on because I was fresher. So, something snapped, and I started to doubt whether I can deliver this on time, and with the outcomes I expect.

I’m going to delay the release because, while I’m not deathmarching, if I don’t delay the release i feel it’s going to be awful.

And if this turns out to be awful I’m going to feel awful about it forever. I want to get this right.

So what I can say is: I’m going to ship in May, if you’re not happy with it I’ll refund the Codex in full, and I’ll throw in some kind of physical or PDF freebie. I’m still unsure what. Maybe a limited edition print of the Devouring Idols, or more content, like some excerpts from the fourth book (yeah, I’m going to release a fourth book, 64×3 pages ended up being not enough, go figure).

I’m really sorry. I’ll happily refund any preorder, even if you received part of the deliverables.

AFG R9: first change – Physique

TL;DR: In AFG-R9, high PHY not only gives 1 extra damage die for two-handed weapons, but also 1 additional hit.

Long form: In the past two days I rolled 12 AFG characters to use as pregens for Chthonic Codex. I started to think about the meaning of high and low stats a lot.

Craft and Spirit, when they are high, give interesting modifiers: Craft gives an extra spell even for fighters, Spirit 1 extra mana (yes, even to fighters) and luck (1 free reroll per session). And when they are low they give interesting flaws: scarce literacy and bad luck (something unlucky will happen to the character, every session).

Low Physique forces the character to use all weapons except knives with two hands. Which is cool in my book and lets a kid with a knife still be nasty.

But high PHY gave only an extra die of damage with two-handed weapons. Which is good but not as interesting. So now a high PHY gives 1 Additional Hit: this means that the character not only has more hits, but also attacks better sooner. And it means that, on average, characters get an FC improvement 1 level earlier.

Now, if I could fix that two-handed dilemma, it would be ace.

Want a web generator of random generators? That works also offline? And makes you save results?

So, Logan made a super-easy web page that takes in entries and creates generators.

And he was like “we need to save this stuff”. Because good stuff needs to be saved.

And I made some javascript happen. The code is not perfect and he amended his page so it doesn’t work 100%. At the moment try to avoid using single quotes please. I fixed the code (silly g flag) but it’s not up yet 🙂

So you can create your generator and save it as a bookmark in your browser.

And put all of them in a web page, or share your bookmarks with friends.

And I wish WordPress didn’t stupidly mangle html in their editor. So I’ll put my bookmarklet generators here.

Go and create and save and share.