Carcosa-style Rituals for Female Necromancers

So I was given a Secret Santacore assignment: "A series of hideous Carcosa-style dark necromantic rituals designed for a female necromancer."

G+ is a pretty volatile environment for gender issues, so after getting my assignment, I cautiously asked g+: "Hey, uh, what are some things that girls can do that guys can't? Please don't hit me." Based on that, and a few fun hours reviewing Carcosa again, I came up with these rituals.

If you print them into a PDF off google docs they look real slick. And hey, I brought Rlim Shaikorth, the White Worm from Clark Ashton Smith's mythos into your game at no extra cost.

Here's a teaser to tantalize you into clicking through:

The serpent-men, originators of sorcery on Carcossa, learned many ways to use human females in their dark rituals. Eventually these rituals were somehow learned by and perverted to the use of human females themselves, who hold a unique appeal to many entities for their ever so slight symbolic relevance to fecundity.

The following rituals are, for the most part, only available to those of biologically female physiology and body functions. Like the vast majority of rituals, they are distasteful, dangerous, and powerful.

You have to go here to see my crappy illustrations for it though. 

Green Chaelonian

DCCRPG stats for a monster I first talked about here.

Green Chael: Init +3; Atk Mind blast +3 area (save or 1d6+5 and -1d to hit till next round) or slam +8 melee (dmg 1d8+5; on crit: save or be turned into a book folio); AC 15; HD 6d8; MV 25’ or climb 20’; Act 2d20; SP can rewrite history with a DC15 Will save once per turn, changes that would affect the PCs can be resisted with a DC 5 will save; SV Fort +6, Ref +0, Will +7; AL L.

d12 Table: Funny NPC Voices/Mannerisms

I'm too lazy to make a proper table, but mix and match characteristics on the right with names on the left. Roll 2 d12s if you want. Hey, I linked to a bunch of funny YouTube videos for them all.

1: Michael Cain Falling asleep
2: Dr. Girlfriend Wants to one-up everyone
3: Eccentric English Aristocrat Wants to be punished
4: Sean Connery Tells Yo Mama jokes
5:James Earl Jones Is holding in Gas
6: Christopher Walken Is impatient
7: Street Urchin (go deeper for an adult) Is sycophantic
8: Sara Silverman Sneering
9: Hugh Grant Spaces Out
10: Gollum Thinks everything is quaint
11: Jeremy Irons/Christopher Lloyd Out of breath
12: Orson Wells Sometimes burst into song

Revisiting Gold for XP

In my games, I don't like the idea of characters leveling up on the spot. They need to take some time somewhere and do something productive towards their idiom. I call such actions Carousing Checks for simplicity, but they are actually quite disparate actions. They cost money to do properly. Thus, in my campaigns, experience points comes only from gold spent on Carousing Checks.
Basically, there are a few different Carousing Checks I have come up with:

• Carousing as in epic partying (Conan, Fafhrd, etc. idiom)
• Researching arcane, esoteric, or alchemical mysteries (wizard, librarian, etc. idiom)
• Martial Training (ninja, fighter, ranger, specialist etc. idiom)
• Sacrificing gold towards a god, ancestor, spirit, or demi-human clan hoard (cleric, demi-human, anybody idiom)
• Establishing a keep (anyone)
• Vision quests (psions, shamans)

Luck plays a role in all these checks, as we play the DCCRPG. Thus, when you roll a carousing check, you are going to add in your Luck modifier, be it good or bad. If the carousing check comes up as a 15 or better, you get to roll on a good bonus effects table. If you get a 1, you have to roll on a bad side effects table. Each kind of carousing check has it's own table.
If you are carousing with a specific goal in mind, you can skip the table when rolling a 15 or higher and opt for that goal instead (the DM may set a DC of 20 for very hard things, or refuse things beyond your level and background). I'll give some sample goals for each kind of carousing:

• Carousing via parties: gain the eye of a fair lady, get some crucial gossip, case a joint, get rumors for a quest of your design
• Research: figuring out the magical properties of an object, researching how to kill a legendary monster, creating a potion, doing a ritual, creating a spell, communicating with demons, get rumors for a quest of your design
• Martial Training: learning the quivering palm technique, gaining knowledge of poisons, building resistance to something, get rumors for a quest of your design, get some martial followers
• Sacrifice: Appeasing a ghost, establishing a congregation, cleansing a tainted site, ascertaining the will of the gods (get a quest), find a magic steed
• Establishing: Building a new wing, gaining a library, ensorcelling/creating/hiring guardians
• Visions: Learning a mystery, communing with spirits, unlocking a riddle, get rumors for a quest of your design 

How does one distinguish a carousing goal from a regular goal? By resources (gold) and time spent to do so. Each of the carousing actions takes hours if not days to accomplish, and time is another factor the GM can use to curb abuse of the system. Of course, the more frequently one carouses, the more frequently they may roll a 1, so a player who carouses every day is living on the edge...

Fighters get 10% again on training actions, and Thieves and halflings get 15% again on carousing. If you invite your leveled team-mates to a carousing action, they get 10% the experience you do, but they have to roll a Luck check to see if they fumble (no good results are possible if you are a hanger-on).

Another 10% to any PCs who've completed a quest or slain a boss-monster since they last caroused. So this is another reason to save up between parties.

Gold needed to be spent to level:

1st lvl @ 100 gill	2nd lvl @ 900 gill	3rd lvl @ 4,000 gill
4th lvl @ 6000 gill	5th lvl @ 10,000 gill	6th lvl @ 15,000 gill
7th lvl @ 21,000 gill	8th lvl @ 28,000 gill	9th lvl @ 36,000 gill
10th lvl @ 45,000 gill plus a quest to placate or overthrow the ever-jealous gods

New DCCRPG Cleric Toy: Invoking Gods With Worship Spells

A Worship Spell is the cleric's answer to the patron spell. One difference is that merely casting it invokes a wider range of cleric failure for the day, inverse of how good the cleric rolled. If you can't get the job done with what your god sent you, what good are you to that god? In addition, if you are casting a Worship Spell in a situation that doesn't seem to concern the god (you trying to live is an okay excuse though), that disapproval die is going to get a step worse.

Another difference: If you have already gotten a certain result for the day, go one step higher and take double disapproval. 

If your spellcheck result is 1, the spell fails, roll on the diety disapproval table, and you increase your daily disapproval range by 1d3.
If it is 2-11, the spell fails and your disapproval range increases by 1d4 for the day.
If it is 12-13, a success and your disapproval range increases by 1d5 for the day.
If it is 14-17, a success and your disapproval range increases by 1d6 for the day.
If it is 18-21, a success and your disapproval range increases by 1d7 for the day.
If it is 22-25, a success and your disapproval range increases by 1d8 for the day.
If it is 26-29, a success and your disapproval range increases by 1d10 for the day.
If it is 30 or higher, a success and your disapproval range increases by 1d12 for the day.

Sample Worship Spell for clerics of Cthulhu
1          Failure. Roll on the Deity disapproval table.
2-11     Mere failure. Cthulhu is sleeping.
12-13  Cthulhu snores! A psionic wave erupts from your position, making the area filled with shin-deep water and disorienting everyone, save yourself, who get a -d to attacks until the end of your next turn or as long as the player can keep up snoring sounds. The water never seems to recede...
14-17  Cthulhu stirs! All psionic creatures in the area take 1d5 damage. A tentacle grows on your back and gives you +2 AC for one turn.
18-21  Cthulhu has the munchies. All your foes make a DC 10 Reflex save. Those that fail get a bite taken out of them by unseen beings for 1d4+CL damage and must make a morale check. You can make this happen again each round for a turn if you make DC 10 Will save.
22-25   Cthulhu is drunk dialing. All portals, gates, and doors within 100' are flung open for 1 turn and strange apparations start to seep out of them. If anyone goes through such a portal, they will be transported to a random plane. Your enemies must make a moral check at -1d.
26-29   Cthulhu is dead, but even death may die. Every dead body in a ten-foot sphere centered around you comes back to a semblance of life as an intelligent, corporeal undead. They treat you as a friend and Cthulhu as a god who's will they now heed, but otherwise are the same being they once were.
30+      Cthuluu is awakening?! The ground cracks open and waters rush out, distracting everyone for at least one round as they suddenly find themselves swimming. 1d3+CL Innsmouthian fish-men pop out of the depths and fight your enemies. Roll a d%, and compare it against your disapproval range for the day. If you roll within that range, Cthulhu is really awake. An apocalypse is coming...

Using a 200 yen copy of a 1980 guide to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to allot random treasure

How to Curry the Favor of the Neutral Gods, Including Cthulhu (DCCRPG)

This is an epistolary extract from an email I sent to my players a while back.

I have been thinking about how neutrals can gain luck. Let me first clarify though that the gods of chaos, the only gods thus far to have had much reason to award luck points in our sessions, don't generally care whether you are good or evil. They don't reward acts of depravity, but rather acts of insanity and creativity. The gods of other alignments will similarly award crowning moments of awesome if they happen. Some gods are good or evil, of course, but that pales in comparison to their stance on cosmic order.

Healing your team-mate or loved-one is not awesome, its nice to a degree, but ultimately just something in the group-interest (or worse yet, self-interest to have another meat-bag around taking hits for you) and not really something the gods care too much about. Saving an important NPC may be a different story... Let me also state that partrons are usually not to have a hand in luck, though exceptions have occurred. If you don't have a god and your patron isn't helping you with alignment, you should really consider getting an interesting god.

Anyways, what can neutrals do to please their gods? First off, being neutral is to choose to straddle the line between stasis (law, order, codes) and entropy (chaos, anarchy, disorder). It is not easy to role-play, though it does provide the security of the middle-path. It could be expressed by not taking a stance (easy to play, but hard to be awesome while doing that) and trying to strike a balance (very tough, but with more possibilities for awesomeness than the former). Neutrals may quest to return an area from the brink of either extreme chaos or stasis, or they may try to take out champions of extreme ideals that seem poised to tip the balance to one side or the other. 

Next, neutrals can seek to overtly please the gods of neutrality. It is quite possible. Usually this done by keeping natural areas natural, but unfortunately dungeons have not brought much opportunity to be all-hippy-like. In the days before my philosophy about all this started to congeal, I fear I may have missed opportunities to give out luck (to the people that convinced the group to not take a giant gold plate from a druid shrine and other such things). Its a little late now to dole out rewards for that, but hindsight will hopefully make me a better DM. However, you could always try to convince the group to go back to the woods; plenty of things there were never discovered.

It may work best if we have goals and ethos defined for our gods (and remember, a patron is not a substitute for a god, though patrons often help you to please your gods), so we can more proactively seek to please said gods. 

For instance, if you worship Cthulhu, you may try to define his ethos as: 

• Return civilization to nature, as it is not for the organization of lesser races.
• Seek out forbidden tomes, to better know my will.
• Seek out pieces of The Great Ritual that will bring about my re-awakening.
• Destroy and combat aberrations of nature, for natural selection is the only means to preserve the balance.
• Lead cults of the faithful, and make lottery-sacrifices of blood.
• Destroy the works of devils and demons, for they would seek to impose their will on nature.
• Avoid stagnation and stasis, for the march of time dictates my return
• Avoid wanton destruction, for the world is mine to reclaim and not anyone's to destroy
• Breed true with my chosen races (Innsmouth fish-men etc.)
• etc. etc.