A Cosmology

Sigil is widely regarded as a Microcosm
that reflects the shape of the Macrocosm
that comprises the known universe. Imagine
Azathoth at the middle and you may start to
understand Our Lady of Pain.

A little something I am going to be using as my cosmology in games for a while. Each area will have some Powers (gods) and Inhabitants (monsters) detailed.

This universe is a great torus; galaxies and planets ring it, but its edges dissolve into the terrifying pseudo-matter that is The Outer Limits.

The Outer Limits

A realm where the laws of physics melt and reality bends back upon itself. It's an unfathomable distance from known space, and other realities pervade our own here.

• The Outer gods: Azazoth floats in the middle of all reality, just outside of it, attended by his pipers. In his mad dreams Shub-Niggurath is ever pregnant and making cosmic horrors.

The Astral Sea

This can be thought of as the stars, planets, and galaxies close enough to our own to matter.

• The Stars themselves: Unfathomable entities that control the fates of men and whisper strange secrets to the mad. 
• The Great old ones: Gods in their own right, the spawn of the stars, such as Cthulhu, originate here, though they tend to be subject to the whims of the cosmic ley-lines and many of them are mercifully sleeping on some planet until they can outlive death again.
• Astral Oddities: Githyanki pirates, Chael, Maruts, Inevitables, Shmodrons, Neogi, Beholders, Illithids, Mi-go, Greys

The Seven Heavens

A heavenly series of locales for almost any temperament. Of particular interest is Valhalla, the barrier to this reality, where warriors that please their gods are restored for feasting each night.

• They Who Watch: Bahamut, Venca, Tiamat, Psionic Dragon Gods, Zagyg, The Pantheon of Law
• The Heavenly Host: Cloud Giants, Angels, Daevas, Dead Heroes, Archons, Ambassadors of all kinds.

 Midgard

The realm we know the best: the proving ground of the new human race. Elves and dwarves remain from the golden age, but mankind is still struggling to decide their own destiny.

• They Who Walk Among Us: Avatars, Earth-bound Great Old Ones, Immortals, Nephilim
• Mundane Monsters: Wizards and their experiments, fey, robots, dragons, the undead

The Underworld

Beneath the earth lies the dungeons of things forgotten or sealed away, and mazes made for strange reasons by the servants of various entities. 

• The Cthonics: The Drakainas, Lolth, Torog
• The Shunned: Kobolds (cave fey), Pale Elves (blind), Duergar,  Morlocks, Orcs, The Dead, The Phorcydes

The Gates of Tartarus

The Barrier that holds back the Titanomachy's losers. Devils are former servants of the gods bound to hold the gates for immemorial sins said devils committed.

• The Wardens: Cerebus, Hel, Lucifer, Yama, Hecatonchires
• The Hell-bound: The Bad Dead, Devils, Tasked-angels, Maras

The 9 Hells

The tortures intended to preoccupy the most dangerous beings from primordial times. The only escape is down...

• Titans and Ashuras: Mayas, Vrita, Kronos, Mnemosyne
• Horrors: Cenobytes, Slaadi, Ancient Dead

The Abyss

A chaotic vortex in the middle of an elemental crucible that reaches down through an insanity that reflects The Outer Limits.

• The Demon Lords: Baphomet, Orcus, Demogorgon, Juiblex, The Elemental Royalty
• Chaos' childer: Demons, Oozes, Obyriths

The End

Tharizdun, lord of paradox, is imprisoned at the bottom of reality, in the singularity of nothingness that lies there.
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It Came from the Bog! [monster]

Example of a Hanged Bogman,
waiting for a chance to exact revenge
on the living.

So these may get used for petty gods redux, but in the meantime, I think they're too cool to just sit on.

Bog-standard Bogman

Bog-standard Bogmen are the remains of people who died after a long struggle to get unstuck from an ignominious death in swamps or tar pits. Just as the torches of the search parties were disappearing into the surrounding mire, these poor forsaken souls squeaked a last, pathetic plea for salvation and were summarily instilled with a mote of The Bogfather’s blasphemous quintessence. As years of erosion or human activity sometimes results in a situation in which a bogman becomes uncovered again, it will finally rip itself free of its prison as the first rays of moonlight touch it. A bogman desires to find living souls to take its place beneath the muck; and any humanoids it places there will rise in a similar manner the next night.

Attacks: Choking mitts. If they hit, they automatically grip a human or smaller sized creature in a death grip (roll a d6 each round, add them together, if the total exceeds CON, the strangled target dies).

Defences: Undead immunities; ignores non-slashing damage; melee weapons have a 50% chance of adhering to the tarry, muddy skin of a bogman. Roll under STR to get a weapon unstuck.

Vulnerabilities: Flammable skin, but will attempt a bear hug if enflamed.


Hanged Bogman

Criminals in some areas are often hanged and given over to The Bogfather (a dark, petty god of swamps and coal) as a form of eternal punishment. However, sometimes a soul escapes the cool reach of The Bogfather's realm and returns to its body. Preserved in weird ways by the acids of the swamp waters, Hanged Bogmen resemble soggy mummies.

Attacks: Two claw swipes and a spectral noose (one noose at a time; target must make a reflex save to avoid). If it hits with the noose, the noose raises the character high into the air, where they are all but helpless and will soon choke to death, but if two companions jump on the afflicted and hold on for a round, the power of the noose will be broken.

Defenses: Undead immunities; a slashing or piercing attack will release noxious gasses from the Hanged Bogman (save or choke for one round).

Vulnerabilities: Will flee if presented with rope that is from the same coil that lies around their neck.

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These Help Me DM on the Fly

See these folders? They all have picture files to help me pull random stuff out of nowhere. And then I usually play online and can screen-share with the PCs' players.

When I need a random monster, I turn to my encounters folder, which has a 1,001 pictures of monsters. Some banal encounters too!

When the players want to hexcrawl, I got images for that too.

Dressing is the folder I fill with odd underworld locations. Crazy rooms and decor.

I still usually use my MMoA catalog for treasure though.

The images for these folders usually come from my tumblr.

Now my question for any Mac geniuses out there: Does anyone know how to automate a process to open a random file in a folder? That would rock.

EDIT: +Ed Heil  has come up with the best solution so far. I just punch one of these lines into my Console app:
ruby -e 'system("open", Dir[ENV["HOME"]+"/Desktop/Encounters/*"].choice)'

ruby -e 'system("open", Dir[ENV["HOME"]+"/Desktop/hexcrawl/*"].choice)'

ruby -e 'system("open", Dir[ENV["HOME"]+"/Desktop/dressing/*"].choice)'

ruby -e 'system("open", Dir[ENV["HOME"]+"/Desktop/treasure/*"].choice)'

If you end up trying this and it doesn't work for you, you might be able to do it by substituting the word "sample" for choice.

In any case, those lines are easy to pop individually into a shellscript in Automator. Saved as apps, these things are now just a double click away from providing me with goodies.
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Barony RPG Quick Start Guide

This is a little primer I am putting together to help my players as we tackle a one-shot adventure with pre-made characters. I think it will be quick to jump into. The wording is my take on Barony: Rogue Swords of the Empire.

How do I do all the things?

Well, if you have a trait or skill written on your sheet and there is little resistance, we will probably just narrate our way through it. If you don't, or the situation is a bit dramatic, roll 2d8. 2d8 is what we roll for everything. We then compare what you rolled to the action roll table.

Difficulty degree: The GM will tell you if the thing you are attempting is simple, difficult, tasking, or the limit of your abilities. Limit is reserved for occasions when the attempted use of a skill defies credibility or strains the boundaries of what would normally be accepted.

If you are attempting to do something that belongs to a skill you don't have, the degree goes up by two, but you can't attempt a skill you don't have if it would be tasking or limit before this raising. In other words, simple or difficult checks, that then get harder, only.

One roll per attempt (no rolling 3 times and hoping one of them succeeds, for instance).

Spells are not skills or abilities, but actions. Anyone can attempt them. I'll describe the process later.

Whatever you roll, there is a chance something bad (mixed or mishap) or too good (overkill) could happen. So be cautious if you are close to death or whatever.

What are these words on my character sheet?

Barony characters have virtually no numbers associated with them. Instead, you have attributes/traits and skills. Attributes are basic character traits and abilities. They do not confer specific maneuvers though. Here are the traits descriptors:

Artful: poise and finesse; comely, articulate, sure-footed and deft of hand
Bold: seemingly invincible, unyielding and without fear
Clever: resourceful, inventive and shrewd; traits of scheming, snap decisions, etc.
Durable: exceptional size, strength and/or endurance.
Eldritch: attuned to ambient mystic forces [magic use unrelated though]
Fast: superior reflexes and speedy movements, quick reactions

So, in general, improvise off of the above stated qualities. There are some actual game mechanics too:

Bold: Ignore battle pain (don't lose actions to pain, or take penalties from damage).
Fast: Can make two dodge actions during a response phase of combat, provided they have a skill or want to do a harder roll, then take the best result of the two.

Attributes also add extra eponymous wound boxes (there are no hit-points in Barony, only wounds).

Skills have many different uses. Basically whatever you imagine. I'll cover the combat applications in the combat section below.

Classes unlock skills when leveling up, but keep in mind they also add eponymous wound boxes.

How do I kill KILL KILL?

Combat is divided into the Advantage (any PCs that want to act first and viciously), Opposition (enemy attacks and spells), and Response phases (PCs that wait this long have a chance to block with a skill or counter a spell). You act during one of the the PC phases once per round. No initiative rolling is done.

Some skills that come up in combat (they have different difficulties), and possible goals (don't let yourself get limited) to roll them (hope they roll high!) follow:

Luck, speed and guile, or mastery of shield: blocking skills (blocks without one of these will be two more degrees harder).

Animal Reflexes: (response phase) reduce level of one wound taken this round and inflict bruise/cut
Battle Cry: Inspire self and companions with a bonus until next turn
Battle Hard: Ignore bleeder wounds for a round
Berserk: Bonus to attacks, ignore pain
Brawl: (advantage phase) lock down an opponent, or try to stun 1d8 dudes
Concentration: (response phase) deal more deadly wounds next round
Distraction: Enemies that try to hurt you take damage
Foul Blow: (advantage phase) rob a humanoid of their attack this round
Hero's Great Weapon: (advantage) inflict a bleeder, or (either phase) inflict a bruise/cut
Irregular Blow: (either) bruise/cut, or (response) bleeder
Leveraged attack: (either) bruise/cut, or (adv) vicious, or (resp) bleeder.
Quick Blows: Make 1d8 attacks during next advantage phase!
Ranged power blow: bruise/cut from a stone's throw away. If you get a mixed result, only adv deals damage
Ranged Precision Hit: bleeder across the battlefield, but mixed result only hits during adv
Strength of Limb: Lock down an opponent
Warrior's Sidearm: Inflict bruise/cut
Wrist Speed: Try to draw and attack in same round

Monsters die when they run out of words in their wounds. Same deal for you, actually. But most wounds will be bruise/cut and then when you run out of words in that category the next (bleeder) will start to go down. Vicious are the worst physical wounds. Spirit wounds are rare, but hardest to get back...
Below is a table of possible wounds. You get any words that appear on your character sheet, and ignore the rest. Everyone gets Base and Player wounds.

How do I magic it up?

Anyone can cast magic, but be aware that you may use up pieces of your spirit (health) doing so. Most characters have at least one or two magic points to buffer this though. Also, magic points (up to 4 per spell) can be used to give +1 bonuses to any one roll for it is rolled. Magic is usually intoned through incantations.

If you are sure you want to take the risk, tell the DM what you want to do and they will determine how many laws you are breaking to determine the number of action rolls and their difficulties. The laws of Barony physics are:

I (energy/forces): Force flows through fixed channels; natural forces are immutable.
II (matter/identity): Everything is a precise, immutable blend of elemental earth, air, fire, and water (or humors).
III (spirit): Consciousness is a phenomenon controlled by something unique and untamed outside of nature that manifests in one spot (the brain).
IV (space-time): Planes of existence are distinct, separate, unmixed, and don't cross.
V (knowledge/unknown): Past events are immutable in our memories, and some things are not meant to be understood.

You can break any law(s) with magic, but know that doing the same spell more than once, ever, will make it harder in degree. This is the zeroth law of originality.

Spells sound cray-cray! How can I stop them?

You can counter a spell, if you haven't acted yet, during the response phase. Unfortunately, if multiple laws were broken, you'll have to counter each violation, but it is easier to counter than to cast.

Wizard duels are things PCs can initiate too, but you don't cast spells; you just both kinda do kamehamehas until one gets knocked out. Dueling magic point lacking targets creates feedback!

The skill Magic Immunity can potentially cancel out harmful magics in an area...

How do I level?

Gotta do some crazy things called ignobles. The DM will go through the list when an adventure ends.

How do I spend my coin*?

With a roll! Starting classes are associated with resource levels. Based on the result when you go to check your coffers, you may be out of funds...

*:coin is the plural in Barony
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These Items are Your Character. Go!

A while back on g+ I ran a game where I made up the rules on the fly, because I was running Monolith Beyond Space and Time and rules take a back seat to player decisions in that one. I had the players all choose from one of the following collections of items. This became their character and its implied class. Basically it was generic d20 fantasy. Players rolled a hit die the first time they got damaged and so on.

Recently, I've encountered more than just the 4 original ones. If you go to this site, you can get a ton of them for a more modern campaign. You are the person with a
baby! Go!
The Spagetti Western collection I found has to be approached a different way. I think the key to that one is to have players choose a character from the pictured ones.

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I would love to know if anyone has created more images like these!

More Barony RPG Awesomeness

So, desperate as I am to get more of the Conrad's Fantasy/Barony/Free-style Roleplay RPG system, that I have ordered two issues of the defunct Space Gamer Fantasy Gamer. This was not cheap, as I live in Japan, but as far as RPGs as literature I am well pleased with my purchase.

Issue #3, circa 1992 contains the following of interest to me:
Horrid, Rob Liefeld-inspired art. Well, he was pretty popular back then. Even adolescent, wanting to be a comic-book artist young me was tricked into liking Rob, though I was starting to question what the hell was up with his attempts at anatomy.

Anyways, the artwork accompanies the comic-book take at the Free-Style RPG system: Good Guys Finish Last. The interesting part is you actually play an entire comic book company. You and the other players control cool heroes too, of course. But the ignobles* and scenarios in this iteration of the system encourages you to pull publishing stunts with your story-lines and character deaths.

There is a scenario for the GGFL RPG in this issue too. Revolt in the East includes messing with timelines in both the Crisis on Infinite Earths sense and also as a thing imposed by someone who bought the comic company and decided to restructure the lines. It's a bit confusing, but sounds like it could be awesome if one pulls it off.

Which gets me thinking; an ambitious GM could make a campaign that reflects the true history of a comic company. Like the possibilities with making the DC universe come together from its disparate companies would be amazing. And super nerdy.

The horrible Liefeld aping is over most of the issue, but it is thankfully less obnoxious when it gets to the Barony scenario, which a classic dungeon delve, Grey Viper. There are unique monsters (crazy dead, gem-powered guardians, and waves of rats) and a Quick and Dirty† table for what happens when you fall into a room of vipers. You also get to see mention of the great Delta Zaire of character progression chart notoriety in the fiction that sets up the adventure. I want to run this.

The scenario for Era Ten (future iteration of the RPG) seems cool too. Very Aliens-esque space marines in setup, with the tantalizing finale of stealing items you need from your past self.

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* :Ignobles are the experiences you need to level up in any Free-style system game.
†: Quick and Dirty is a term for random tables in the FSRPG systems. They even go as far as to ™ the term.
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How Barony was Dungeon World Before Dungeon World; a System Review

Durable is possibly the best choice if you want a shot at all the other abilities.

Here's a summary of the Barony system, which had a few names and adaptations as an RPG over the years. Rogue Swords is the version I ended up with.

The building blocks of your character are not numbers like ye olde "Strength 13" or "Social 3 dots" or whatever, they are called attributes (or traits) and they are key words that give you an talent or two and maybe a chance to get certain skills. So it's kind of like everybody has things that set them apart from the fold. The traits are: Artful, Bold, Clever, Durable, Eldritch, and Fast. You chose one to start your character, then roll a d8 and consult the table under each one of these abilities to see what other traits you get (they all have different tables). You can afterwards gain or lose abilities through play.

Skills based of the above come next. Well, kinda. You can only choose your skills after you decide what your Title (read: class) is. The starting titles are at the top of the following workflow chart of titles, which is one of the coolest character tree system things I've ever seen. Lookie/zoomie/clickie:

So, fer instance, if you choose to be a Footman, you will start with 3PCs. That is, 3 "Physical & Combat" category skills, but only if you have the prerequisite attribute(s) they demand (this is actually really simpler than I am making it out to be, I promise). One thing to keep in mind is that even if you don't have a skill for whatever reason, you can still attempt it at an increased difficulty. So to use a skill check the degree of difficulty in its description, adjust for things like if you don't actually have the skill etc, roll 2d8, and consult the following table.

And there you see how this is really like the Dungeon World of the late 80s/early90s. I like the Barony spread a bit more though, as a fail is usually not so bad and a fumble rare if you play smart. The Overkill result is cool too. The DM may say, "Intimidate him? Yeah, you do that, and he will remember your face for the rest of his life." Then draw up some craven revenge plans for the poor NPC.

Magic is not a skill, as anyone can attempt it, but classes will give you the Magic Points to help cast them (otherwise you may end up spending your soul to cast, but we'll get to that). Magic is freeform, with a couple of restrictions: (1)it gets harder the more physical laws you break, and (2) it gets harder to cast a spell that has ever been cast before. Forced creativity is why I love this system! Of course it is ripe for abuse too, being bounded only by imagination, but as the authors recommend, you could just take 5 minutes to roll up a new world if the PCs end it. Or just say, "Stop being a prick, Player X."

Attacking and defending is not a skill either, but these are rolled likes skills and maybe informed by them.

Okay, say you got your skills chosen (or rolled up randomly which would be faster). You are ready to do things! But if you fight something, you may get chunks of your being wiped out for a while. Look at this damage chart:

Everything will damage you in one of those 4 categories. Every character has the Base and Player rows or as I will call them, boxes (as the columns separate the rows) as well as maybe something from their attributes or title (see Durable up there?). Check the boxes off until you run out of them, then go down to the overflow section and follow that. So if you run out of Bruise/Cut boxes, you have to start crossing of Bleeder column boxes and so on. Spirit you may loose depending on how hard the magic you use is and how low your check ends up; most monsters leave it alone. The Bruise/cut boxes come back after a battle, the Bleeder and Vicious ones after an adventure, and Spirit only can be cured by magic, which may be a little too hard-core, I dunno.

Monsters have their own abilities and skills and damage charts with evocative keywords that help you give them metal names. Trust me, monsters are cool and easy to make in Barony. A wee bit like Dungeon World, once again.

So there are tons of skills, but I can't reproduce them all here, sorry. One interesting way skills and abilities get used is during events. Events are not man-to-man standard combat. Sample events given by the book include a bar brawl, fighting in a battlefield (mounted and unmounted and other things), and fighting a dragon. They use playing cards to randomise the montage that makes an event. For instance, in a bar brawl:

It's beautiful! Customize it towards the skills you know your players have if you want to give them a greater sense of awesome, or just revel in the fact that no rules lawyer can stop a Dark Lord from just getting knocked out or whatever. Fighting a dragon feels pretty epic when players have to survive until the event is over through scenes dependent on where they are in relation to the dragon, like this example if you draw a 2 while in the tail zone:

Combat can be pretty strategic, though simple. It has phases and some skills let you do cool things depending on the phase. As mentioned above, there is some mass combat if you want it. This game did have its roots in a wargaming magazine, after all.

It's hard to find much history online about this game. Heck, it's almost impossible to find the game, and rumor has it the creators are like Can't find it? Tough. A barely maintained (and riddled with 1970s-feeling English) website by the creators does give some clues as to how all started. Check out the history here, and you can click through some summaries of the unique qualities the game has here.
I've barely scratched the surface of this game. Between skills, magic, and events, things can get really deep. I can't recommend it enough!
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Edit: 1070s was my imagination I guess; can't find any evidence of when the system was truly first conceived.