CHARGES FROM YOUR LOCAL LIEGE

1. Murder, unprovoked, loot gained thereby untaxed: 75% of loot reduced 5% for each day spent in public stockades

2.Murder, unprovoked, tax willingly given: 50% of loot - praise the kingdom!

3. Murder, provoked, tax 30% of loot if taxes willingly paid, 60% if taken by duress

4. Property damage, in pursuit of selfish goals: 100 GP per establishment affected, 50 GP to owner, 50 GP to authorities

5. Property damage, in pursuit of community goals: reduce above by 50%

6. Open carrying and/or display of weapons in a civilized area: 25 GP license tax per day

7. Vehement Carousing, to the distraction of others: 10 GP first offence, 30 GP thereafter

8. Failing to inform Liege or associates of major local changes (IE enemies removed or freed): 45 GP, 22 GP refund if information given at time of charge aids in future victory

9. Open worship of non-local deity: 45 GP, license issued

10. Open consorting with Liege enemies: must disclose all information known, 2 teeth will be removed after.

11. Seducing local citizen: 7 lashes, 1 GP

12. Seducing member of Liege's harem: 14 lashes, 2 GP

(written for +Claytonian JP as JOESKY tax for the last blog entry. It or the ideas might be useful to someone at some time. Didn't want it to get lost in G+ comments.)


ART: Pieter Breughel the Elder painted this scene, "Paying the Tax." It was destroyed or something, but his son painted 40 copies, so this is one of those.


EDIT: THE OTHER KIND OF CHARGES FROM YOUR LOCAL LIEGE:

1. Thee Crowne Has Withdrawn Support, and Her Generals Have Lefte; Thou Must Leade Mye Armies Unto Victory in the current conflict or Be Put To Torture

2. Seize the magickal well from our neighboring Barony, and a mile surrounding it thereupon; Hold these for a weeke whilst I finish other business

3. My earnest and goode knight, Sir Guffin, lays siege at mine command to the tower of Albrecht the Hard; it pleases me that this siege continue, and not succeed or fail; I charge thee group of scoundrels to discreetly sabotage the siege weapons of Sir Guffin's forces; if thou are caught, this conversation never happened; if thou succeed, riches are thine.

4. Thou sneakest this food for many mouths into the tower of Albrecht the Hard without attracting the eye of Sir Guffin's forces.

5. Citizens and goodly maidens of my harem alike have disappeared at their privy of late; thou shall searchest thee sewers for them, and murder any foul beasts who may be responsible

6. A star from the heavens hath fallen within the Black Forest upon my lands; venture into that dread place and bring back news; and any precious metals or blessings the meteor carried thus.

7. I seek this night to command a demon, through dread ritual in the keep's basement; my sage tells me I can ask of it most ponderous questions and return it to the abyss with no danger; thou wilst stand just outside and make sure none intrude

8. Travel forth and speak to the common people; under guise of ignorance, discover the opinion of my rule from those in my many provinces

9. My beloved advisor has angered the King and been banished; he is also hated by the people, whom may have hired parties unknown to slay him; escort him outside these lands without incident and fortune, land, and title are yours.

10. A group of native slaves have escaped the project to erect a monument to my magnificence in this damned foreign place; track them through the forest and return them so they may be made example of.

11. Take this great sealed casket and scroll to the University of Learning in the North; at no time are you to open them. Protect them from all comers and brigands, or be branded criminal most foul.

12. Travel to the capitol city and gain intelligence which might allow my army secret entry.

13. Discreetly slay the king, so that I might lead our Kingdom to greatness.

14. Lead the great beast which has been stuck in the bay and caused great destruction back into the sea so we do not invoke Poseidon's wrath.

15. Pirate the ships of our enemies; thou must meet with my Master of Coin every other fortnight to pay taxes on your winnings.

16. (DM rolls twice and combines results somehow)

Sometimes The Ideas All Hold Hands...

This blog might be pretty quiet for awhile, or quieter than I thought...
While working on Secret Santicore 2013 (Volume 1 was released on PDF on January 27th, scroll down and get it!) I would come to the blog and vomit out ideas into a draft, intending to edit and refine for later blogging. The thing is, they started fermenting in my subconscious...talking to each other...fucking like bunnies...a few things clicked and cast them all in a different light...

So all these ideas I had and was going to post as separate blog entries want to be a dungeon. Maybe even a mega-. They all work in Kalak-Nur, too, and I'd love to run the thing after a lot of writing and refining. I'm a huge fan of randomly created dungeons, and tend to run things sandbox style, but a coherent thematic structure in a dungeon can bear a lot of fruit and be it's own weird experience while leaving a lot of room for variety. (orange phrases above are links to other people's blogs that are good. There are many more good blogs, these are two of them.)
So the creative output I had planned to have here while I work on getting the rest of Santicore into PDFs is mostly tied up in that. I guess I won't be done with big projects when Santicore is done, after all. I'm eager for the new challenge and to take on something big that springs from my own creativity and allows me to channel some creative influences that have been building up.

I believe in contributing to a community, and that includes the people I play and talk about RPGs with on G+. I'd like to have a high signal to noise ratio, that is, a high ratio of my own creative output (running games, making blog posts that are things others can use) compared to output that is social-only (IE commenting on others' posts, ephemeral G+ posts, etc.) However, I need to let this thing bake a bit before I figure out if I can separate some of this stuff back out into postable form...and I'd like to run the thing for people who know nothing of what's inside.
All that said, for various reasons I will have to write out and post stats for the Bug People of Kalak-Nur soon, so that's going to happen.
And there's Santicore 2013 V2 and V3 coming up, all of the amazingness from everybody that has been like an RPG grad course for me.

Art in this post by Sarah Horrocks. Go buy her stuff.

Mining Goblins, RaceClass, Multiclassing in Kalak-Nur

Mining Goblins, Race As Class, and Multiclassing in Kalak-Nur

Kalak-Nur is a Lamentations of the Flame Princess based setting, with some exceptions. 

For Instance, Races and Classes have the following ADVANCEMENT TO FIGHTING SKILLS:

Fighters: +level to hit  

Clerics, Specialists, Bastards, Mining Goblins, Droids: +half level (+1 at level 2, +2 at level 4, etc)  

Bug People, Niebelungen, Magic Users, other scholarly types: +1/3 level (+1 at level 3, +2 at level 6, etc)

You may have noticed no Elves, Dwarves, or Halflings above. These races are not native to Kalak-Nur, and advance as per their home system when visiting.

Bastards are detailed here, Droids here, Bug People here, Niebelungen here. (Bug People coming soon).

MINING GOBLINS are mechanically identically to LotFP Dwarves (except as noted above), but their starting saves are one worse. 

In addition, they can attract a small creature (1/2 the Goblin's own HD) of the swamp or underground as a companion. This creature and the Mining Goblin can communicate simple ideas within line of sight of each other. The companion creature can gain XP and advance in the same manner as a henchman, and from GP spent on it (maintenance and care, tiny belts, a horned hat, I dunno...). 

If a Mining Goblin PC multiclasses according to the rules below, and the new class has a familiar or other animal companion ability, they can be one and the same or either/or; the Goblin would not have two bonded companions. 

Note the companion creature's HD cannot exceed half Mining Goblin's level in the Mining Goblin Raceclass. A Mining Goblin/Cleric of levels 2/6 would have a 1 HD companion. 

Physically Mining Goblins are squat humanoids with faces and features that resemble lizards, but skin that resembles toads. They range from green to brown to ochre in color. Culturally they are cheerful and value sharing, work, and collective living; they must always have a project or become restless and depressed, however. Politically they organize themselves into autonomous socialist collectives. Economically, they prefer barter and labor exchange, and despise currency.

RACE AS CLASS AND MULTICLASSING

If a player wants to play a non-human PC, they begin as that Race and must gain at least one level. Upon reaching level 2, they may declare their XP going to any other Class, and begin gaining levels in that Class. They become 1st level in that Class upon gaining 10% of the XP required for level 2 (in the new class), but do not get more HP until actually gaining level 2 in the new class. PCs must advance to level 2 in the new class before thinking about Multiclassing again.

Humans of one Class may change to another in the same fashion.

Members of one Race may never gain the abilities or benefits of another Race except through odd game events like mutations and teleportation accidents. One cannot “Multiclass” into another race.

Examples:

Shagwyn the Mining Goblin sets out to see the world. He joins up with a group of scum, and has many adventures. He has been studying magic along the way, and upon gaining level 2 as a Mining Goblin, the person playing Shagwyn decides his XP are now going to go to the Magic-User class. He gains another 225 XP, and becomes a 1st level Magic-User in addition to being a 2nd level Mining Goblin. He does not gain more HP at this point, however. 

At this point, Shagwyn has 2,425 XP. When he gets another 2,025 XP, (total XP of 4,450) he’ll be a 2nd Level Magic-User as well as a 2nd Level Mining Goblin and finally gain some more HP. At that point he could decide to take a level in yet another Class, go back to devoting his XP to advancement as a Mining Goblin, or continue advancing as a Magic-User.

(Note that since starting to adventure, the player has taken time to indicate that Shagwyn reads any scrolls or spell books the party has come across, and has spoken with local witches during some down time.)

A HUMAN who started as one of the Classes could advance in another in much the same way. 

For example:

On the way to Level 2, Terral the Growler, a Fighter, has converted to a new religion. Terral’s player thinks he’d be pretty devout, since the NPC followers of Sharia the Glittery saved Terral’s life when they could have run. Upon gaining 2nd Level, Terral’s player decides he’s devoting XP to the Cleric Class now (worshipping Sharia the Glittery of course). When Terral has 2175 XP, he’s a 1st level Cleric (the 175 XP) in addition to being a 2nd Level Fighter (2000 XP). When he has 3750 XP total, he’ll be 2nd level in both classes, and could choose to advance as a Fighter again or continue advancing as a Cleric (or begin advancing as a third Class). 

Terral’s HP advancement looks like this: 

(Character Creation): 1d8 HP as a 1st level Fighter

(Gains 2nd Level): 2d8 as a 2nd Level Fighter

(Becomes 1st level Cleric): no change, still the same 2d8 he had before.

(Gains 2nd level as Cleric): adds 1d6 as a 2nd level Cleric, for a total of 2d8+1d6 HP.

Secret Santicore 2013 Volume 1: Now with BOOKMARKS

Click the Santicore above to get the updated PDF of 

Secret Santicore 2013: Volume 1

Bookmarks to sections added, with each entry as a child bookmark so you can collapse sections!

I also changed the link in yesterday's post to the new pdf.
Some notes on PDF interactivity:

-Each line in the Table of Contents, both in the document itself and the Bookmarks bar, is a link to the relevant entry.

-Clicking the section heads at the bottom of any page takes you to that section of the Table of Contents in the document (IE clicking "Character Generation" at the bottom of any page takes you to page 3, Table of Contents 1)

-any website address in the PDF should be clickable and take you to that website in your default browser.  (as a side effect, all emails in the PDF are clickable to create a new email to that address in your default email client.)

A general note:
-if your entry is in Volume 1, feel free to also publish it on your blog! Santicore humbly requests a link to this blog entry, and it would be cool if you added a little extra kick to your entry (Here's a color map! Here's a new twist!) - BUT I AIN'T THE BOSS OF YOU!

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SECRET SANTICORE 2013 PDF: VOLUME 1

Click on Santicore above to get the PDF of 
Secret Santicore 2013 Volume 1: Advice, Character Generation, Spells, Rules, Deities
EDIT: link above directed to new version with bookmarks.

InDesign chose today to be a fuckwad, but I think I made everything good again. Let me know if there are any problems or things to fix, and input on things I could improve for Volume 2!

Again, the release schedule for Volumes 2 and 3:

February 24th, 2014:
Volume 2: Treasure & Magic Items, NPCs, Places, Encounters


March 24th, 2014:
Volume 3: Adventures, Monsters
Illustrated Cover

Kalak-Nur: Droid Race/Class

Kalak-Nur rules are Lamentations of the Flame Princess based.

HD: d6
Saves: as Dwarf
Attacks: +½ level to hit (IE +1 at 2nd level, +2 at 4th level, etc)
Armor: must be specially made for Droids
Natural AC: as Leather; does not apply to attacks based on Electricity or liquid
XP Advancement: as Dwarf
Immunities: Cannot die due to starvation or aging (although may eat and enjoy it). Needs air for cooling systems, roughly equivalent to breathing. Becomes paralyzed and unconscious without it.
Vulnerabilities: Electricity and liquid attacks do max damage and cause the Droid PC to be stunned for 1d6 rounds after.

Modules: roll twice on the d100 table below at Character Creation, or choose a number below 66. You may also use the Machine-Bonded table instead. If you roll an entry twice, you can take the double-roll effect, if any, or roll again.
After character creation, further Modules can only be gained by taking them from other defeated Droids. 

These effects are caused by advanced technological components and not magic while in Kalak-Nur, but may be magical if used on other worlds (IE in games GM’ed by other people).

01 - 15 - Medic: Once per day for each Droid level, the PC may spend an entire round tending to a wounded creature or item. This has the effect of a Cure Light Wounds or Mending spell. Perhaps you’re full of nanobots. 

At 2nd Level, you may Delay Poison with one use of this ability instead of Cure Light Wounds.
At 3rd Level, Cure Disease with two uses.
At 4th Level, Neutralize Poison with two uses.
At 5th level, Cure Serious Wounds with two uses.
At 6th level, Heal with two uses.
(If you roll this again, you can Cure Light Wounds one extra time per day.)

16 - 19 - Made to Last: increase HD one die or AC one armor type.

20 - 23 - Made to Order: +1 to one Ability Score.

24 - 29 - Battle Droid: Attacks advance as a Fighter (+level to hit) in Melee or Ranged. If you roll this again, have both.

30 - 35 - Sensors Indicate: you gain the Dwarf’s Architecture Skill or Elf’s Search and Surprise benefits. (If you roll this again, gain both.)

36 - 39 - Silent Running: Your Stealth begins at 3 in 6 (if you roll this again, 5 in 6.)

40 - 45 - Built In Storage: You have a medium pouch worth of storage space inside your body, either spread out or all in one spot. (If you roll this again, a backpack’s worth of space.)

46 - 52 - Built In Weapon: Choose a melee or ranged weapon that can be held in one hand. The Droid PC has the equivalent built into their body. The Player chooses how this looks and where upon the body it is located. Ammunition is still exhausted, but can be reclaimed and reloaded if the PC takes time to do so. This does not subtract from a PC’s starting funds. (if you roll this again: choose another weapon, OR get +1 to hit OR ranged weapons get 1d6 quantum ammo per day)

53 - 55 - Climbing Apparatus: Your Climb score is 3 in 6, increasing by one every level.

56 - 61 - Welding Torch: sheds light as a torch, 1d6 damage on a melee hit, can weld 1 ft of metal per 5 rounds.

62 - 69 - Translation Droid: you may understand one language per day per level as if the Comprehend Languages spell was cast. Unlike the spell, you may also speak it.

70 - 75 - Hacker: you may gain knowledge from any piece of advanced technology as if casting Identify, Legend Lore, or something similar. How many rounds this takes will be determined by the GM and vary by the complexity of the technology or piece of information sought. Other Droids have to tell you the truth if they fail a save. You have to touch the subject and wires extend from your body to theirs. By making a Charisma roll (minus the NPC’s HD), the PC can leave an NPC Droid with a Command or Charm Person in effect as per the Spell. This may apply to Magic Items if the DM says so.

76 - 82 - Force Field Generator: You generate fields of force equivalent to the spells below. Effects cannot be used simultaneously. (If you roll this again, reroll)
1st level: Continuous Mage Hand, 

1/day/lvl, (choose one when the ability is used): Feather Fall, Floating Disc, Hold Portal, Shield, Unseen Servant
4th level: 1/day/level, choose one: Telekinesis, Wall of Force

83 - 86 - Cloaking Device Engaged: You may become Invisible as the Spell once per day per level. At level 3, you may use Improved Invisibility once per day. Please note that the PC will be visible in mirrors/smoke/liquid/infravision.

87 - 91 - Extra Limb/Aerodynamic: Either double movement or gain an extra action each round. (If you roll this again, reroll)

92 - 94 - Rocket Pack: You may fly your movement rate each round in any direction, but after 2 rounds the effect ends and takes a round to recharge. (if you roll this again, recharge every 5 rounds.)

95 - 98 - Independent Limbs: Your may detach your limbs from your body and operate them independently. Your arms cannot see and your head cannot walk or anything like that, but sticking your head on your arm might get a functional you into some tight places. (If you roll this again, each limb has some form of sensory input equivalent to very dim lighting that is relayed to the Droid PC’s brain.)

99 - 100 - Self Repair: you regenerate 1 HP per round. If you are unconscious, you must pass a System Shock roll to regain consciousness and HP above 0.
One time for each level gained (NOT per day), you may spend a round to will yourself to full HP. This can only be done while conscious. If you are struck while attempting this, it fails and the use is lost. (IF you roll this again, regen 1HP/rd/Level.)

In Addition, each Droid has one mega-ability they have only vague, half-formed memories of. This may be unlocked only during play through purely diegetic, arbitrary means. This would typically happen through interaction with more advanced technology, being owed by high-level NPC Gadgeteers or Hackers, or something similar.
Let me know when you make a Droid PC, and I’ll roll and note it for you. If you feel extremely strongly about one, we can talk.
1. Transforming - you can reshape your body into a robotic version of something else.

1. an animal
2. a monster
3. a ground vehicle
4. a flying vehicle
5. a climbing vehicle
6. a flying animal
7. a flying monster
8. a larger robot
9. a space vehicle
10. a powerful weapon

vehicles - carry 1d6 others

2. Celestial Navigation and Detection You can guide spacecraft with grace and aplomb. In addition, you are wired in to a global and galactic surveillance and positioning system that lets you attempt to locate people and objects, convey messages, and observe planets from multiple perspectives. You can even attempt to control remote technological items.
With each use of this ability, confining yourself to your tiny robot body makes less and less sense. Make a CHA roll each time, with a descending bonus of 5 (IE it decreases each time until becoming a penalty of 5).
When you fail that roll, you abandon your robot body and your consciousness is in “The Cloud.” You might be convinced to inhabit something large, like a big spaceship, but you are generally beyond physical acts.

3. Pitch your own!

Use Weird Tech: A Skill for Kalak-Nur

Kalak-Nur is a place littered with wrecked technology from many differing civilizations and sciences. When PCs came upon tech items in past games, I used a simple INT roll or something equally forgiving to see if they could figure it out. I was never happy with that solution, though.

Use Weird Tech

...is a skill in the Lamentations of the Flame Princess tradition.
All Player Characters begin with a 1 in 6 chance to understand and use items made from technology which could be described as "futuristic" or "Science Fiction" from a real world perspective. Anything not covered by other skills in Fantasy RPGs: laser guns, computers, spaceships, robots, powered armor, laser knives (turning them on and recharging, not just hitting things), etc.

Characters that usually have skills and can advance them (Specialists, Rogues, Thieves, Assassins, etc) may advance this skill in lieu of any other.

Other PCs interested in advancing this skill should keep track of each time they attempt it.
When a level is gained, the number of attempts since the last level gain is the percentage chance the skill increases by one. The percentage is reset to zero when an advancement check is made.

For example: Boniface the Mantis Warrior has incapacitated a hive of old battle-droids, then found a box that he suspects programs them. He attempts to decipher the box's controls, and his player rolls a 1! He knows how to use the box, but the interface on each droid is different. He fails his roll on three droids before he is attacked by a large sandworm and has to move on. 

Boniface's player marks down the four attempts at the Use Weird Tech skill on his character sheet. He has chances to attempt the skill 5 more times before gaining a level. Boniface's player remembers to mark them on his character sheet. When he gains a level, The player rolls d100 to see if the skill advances, hoping to roll under 09. If he does so, the skill advances 1 point and is successful on a roll of 1 or 2 in 6 instead of just 1 in 6.