My players love them some arts & crafts, when I give them little map pieces to put together they all get a little bit more giddy and conspiratorial (like with Sleeping Place of the Feathered Swine or STEAL THE EYES OF YASHOGGHUH! which they are playing through right now).
But we were playing a week or so ago and they were divvying out stolen jewellery and codpieces and swapping equipment with each other before descending beneath a swamp and all I could think was “godddd I wish they could just pull things off their sheets and hand them to each other instead of all this erasing/re-writing bullshit”.
And then I realised why not? WHY NOT?? Why am I using ratty lined tables that are continually being scrawled over like an ambitionless mouthbreather? WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY. WE HAVE BLUE-TAC.
So I whipped these up before our next game, with a page of the character sheet devoted to worn equipment, and a separate backpack (drawn by Rose forever ago) for the rest:
And suddenly they were actually paying attention to what they were carrying and moving things around and watching how close they were to being over-encumbered and I DIDN’T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING TO PROMPT IT.
Really they’ve never understood encumbrance rules properly but make it a bit more tangible and suddenly everything becomes clear and actually a bit fun what?
So hell yes, this is my encumbrance/inventory system now, it makes things so much easier to track, gives heaps of extra room for little details/rules/sweet illustrations, and also means I can do fun things like physically take things away from people when they get stolen or dropped or turned into spiders.
I feel dumb that it never occurred to me before.
Jeff Russell was lamenting about not being able to do this in online games and I ran off at the mouth about using Pinterest for it, which is actually a super good idea.
If everyone playing makes a Pinterest board containing a pinned picture for each piece of their equipment and then shares it with the other people playing, they can then move items around/be given stuff/drop stuff/whatever.
- Want to give another player an item? Share the pin with them then delete it from your board.
- Want to write down rules or little notes for that magic item you just got? You can type a message on the pin.
- Are you the DM and you’ve got a bunch of items hidden away in this room? Collect a pin that fits each of them before the game then share them with your players as they find them.
- Pinterest is more relevant to D&D than I even realised.
Here’s the new character sheet, click here and it’ll take you to a folder with separate files for the character sheet, the item cards, the backpacks, and the satchels and pouches (print everything except the item cards double-sided, they’re sized for A4 printing on machines that add a 5mm margin):
The dice are on there because I bought Emma the most metal set I could find and she now carries them around in her purse but she doesn’t know which one to grab to make Malatesta cut someone in half.
My encumbrance rules have changed a little to go with this so they now work like this:
- Items you’re wearing can be grabbed and used at-will (they’re the ones that get stuck to your character sheet).
- You have 5 slots for items you’re holding or simply want to protect better; these can’t be damaged or dropped unless you roll a natural 1 when defending in contested melee. If that happens roll a d10 to see which item is affected and check Breakage.
When you’re actually holding any of these items in your hands move them to the 2 slots on the front of the sheet (but that doesn’t free up the ones you moved them from).
[INTERLUDE: Breakage is just new wording for Quality from the Notches rules, it just made more sense on the whole, and now EVERYTHING has a Breakage value. Most Breakage values are between 1-5, and everything other than a weapon will use a d8 for its check (weapons use their damage die); if you roll the Breakage value or less, it breaks, otherwise it’s fine unless you roll the maximum value of the dice in which case you drop it. Weapons and armour take a Notch instead of breaking.
Most items will have a Breakage chance of 3, non-intricate metal items would be 1 or 2, vanity mirrors and oil flasks would be 5.] - You have 5 slots for loose items, each taking up two numbers from 2-11.
- You have 5 slots specifically for armour and nothing else, numbered 12-16. Medium armour takes up 2 slots, heavy armour takes up 3.
I’ve started ruling that additional pieces of armour like helmets or gauntlets or Sabatons of Shame don’t increase AC, but you can sacrifice them to make an attack against you re-roll its damage (so if a successful attack against you just rolled 8 damage and you know that’s high enough to cut off a limb you can say “oh shit I headbutt the blade” and destroy your helmet and hope like hell the damage roll is lower this time).
If you run out of armour slots and want to wear more pieces they can go in loose items. - When a successful attack roll against you matches the number of a filled loose item or armour slot (with contested melee a successful attack roll can be quite low), check Breakage for the item.
- You can buy satchels or pouches to hold multiple items on a loose or held item slot. That means you can carry more shit and protect more things on those lower numbers, but if the pouch gets hit and fails its Breakage check everything falls out and you need to check Breakage for all of them.
Satchels can carry 4 items, Small Pouches can carry 2, and some items (like the fabulous wig that Rose’s drag queen specialist Muffin McTavish is currently sporting) can store extra items inside themselves already. - You can carry as many small insignificant items in one slot as you can write on the item card.
- When you’re wearing equipment the only items that stack are money (300 coins or small gems), ammunition (20 arrows/bolts/shot balls, 10 sling bullets), and small things like iron spikes or powder apostles (5 each). Every oil flask takes up a slot.
When it’s in your backpack you can stack smaller things like oil flasks up to 3 per slot.
My other encumbrance rules work pretty much the same as before but with some different conditions that apply to encumbrance levels (Movement Dice explained below):
- If you’re only carrying worn equipment your Movement Dice is d8, and you can roll twice and take the best for physical checks like climbing or jumping out of the way of giant rolling balls of gore.
- When wearing a backpack you can carry a number of Dead Weight items up to your Strength or Constitution score, whichever is higher.
Your Movement Dice is now d6, you roll once for physical checks, but can discard your backpack to re-roll (so if you’re hanging above a pit full of angry fishrats and fail your climbing check, you can shrug off your backpack and hope really hard that you don’t fail the re-roll and fall after it). - You can carry more than that up to a total of your Strength + Constitution and be Overweight.
Your Movement Dice is now d4, you have to roll twice and take the worst for physical checks, but can discard your backpack to re-roll. - If you carry any more than that you’re Morbidly Encumbered, which is the same as being Overweight except that you have to roll twice and take the worst for ALL physical rolls including attacks and movement checks.
MOVEMENT DICE
Rolled for chases or when contested speed is otherwise an issue (like when you and the cultist look each other in the eyes and dash towards the slime-spewing altar).
- Whoever rolls highest wins. In a one-on-one situation I’d rule that if your Movement Dice is the same but you’re wearing less armour than your opponent you can add your Dexterity modifier.
- In a chase use the lowest Movement Dice of the group unless you bail on each other; on a lost roll decrease your dice size, on a win increase your dice size, and the chase ends when someone loses on a d4 or wins on a d20.
- During a chase any ranged attacks suffer a penalty equal to your opponent’s Movement Dice.
- If you’re being chased and your opponent rolls a 1 on any dice you can try to do something to lose them (so in a city something like jumping onto a roof or into an alley or a random doorway or spilling a cart in front of them), and if you win the next check it works and the chase is over.
If you’re chasing and your opponent rolls a 1 on any dice you can try to do something to stop them (like yelling at Old Bob who’s always standing in front of the Bloated Cuttlefish to grab them), and if you win the next check it works and the chase is over.
The lowest Movement Dice of the group can also be used for random encounter checks, because if you’re Overweight you’re shuffling and jangling around like an idiot, as opposed to the guy padding around with nothing but a sack and a knife like an agile agile cat.
When crossing an area is difficult/dangerous/time is of the essence (like a room full of angry sludge crabs or something), you could also set the room a total movement number that the group has to reach before they cross it, and every Movement Dice roll takes a Round (so the Morbidly Encumbered idiot on a d4 Movement Dice is probably going to get nipped by a lot more crabs than the previously mentioned sack and knife guy on a d8 Movement Dice).
I haven’t tested that but it seems sound in theory?
And then hey that feeds in nicely to..
EXHAUSTION
- After strenuous activity roll your current Movement Dice.
On a 1, drop to the next encumbrance level until you rest for a Turn. - When removing your pack roll your current Movement Dice.
On a 1, remain on the same encumbrance level until you rest for a Turn.
So after scaling a 50′ wall carrying Dead Weight there’s a chance you’re going to feel Overweight until you’ve had a little rest, and if you’ve been waddling around Morbidly Encumbered all “it’s okay if a monster shows up I’ll just drop my bag”, there’s a chance that when you drop it you’re not going to feel any more refreshed and suddenly regret your life decisions.
Apart from that there’s a bunch of other rules changes/tweaks on there so..
WEAPON TAGS
Rather than keeping each weapon type with its own special rules I changed it to weapon tags so they can get stuck all around.
- ADAPT: if you miss an attack, you can use a Parry to try again. [mostly swords, Parries are normally used to re-roll a failed defence, which you can do a number of times equal to your Fast AB bonus (Dexterity modifier + AB) per combat]
- TRAUMA: +2 to-hit vs. Medium or Heavy armour, successful hit reduces Heavy armour by 1. [mostly maces and hammers]
- FLESHRIPPER: two damage dice vs. Light armour or less. [mostly axes]
- REACH: automatically attack first and do double damage against Bum Rushes. [spears and polearms]
- HEFTY: roll twice for damage and take the best while wielding with two hands. [mostly melee weapons that do d8 or more damage]
- LASH: ignore shields, can choose to attack weapon, disarming on 4 or more damage. On any miss roll under your AC or hit yourself. [mostly flails and whips]
- SHANK: can make contested d20 + Hard or Fast AB to grapple after hit, automatically hitting Flesh in subsequent rounds until they kick you off. [mostly knives]
- ARMOUR PIERCING: reduces AC to 12 + Dex modifier. [firearms]
- HORRENDOUS: keep re-rolling odd damage dice. [trying this out for arquebus/rifles to give a reason for giving up 2 slots to lug one around instead of a pistol]
- BURST: anyone in range has to roll equal to or less than their DB (Dexterity modifier + armour bonuses) on a d12 or take damage.
Off-sheet I’ve been playing around with ranged weapons a bit to give them more obvious benefits/trade-offs.
- LONGBOW: takes up 2 slots, d6 damage + Strength modifier. [Uses Hard AB (Strength modifier + AB), all other ranged weapons use Fast AB (Dexterity modifier + AB)]
- SHORT BOW: d6 damage.
- SLING: 2d4 damage.
- LIGHT CROSSBOW: d6 damage, 1 Round to load, uses Trauma tag.
- HEAVY CROSSBOW: takes up 2 slots, d10 damage, 2 Rounds to load, uses Trauma tag.
- PISTOL: d8 damage, can’t reload under pressure, uses Armour Piercing tag.
- ARQUEBUS/RIFLE: takes up 2 slots, d8 damage, can’t reload under pressure, uses Armour Piercing and Horrendous tags.
- BLUNDERBUSS: d6 damage, uses Burst tag.
SHIELDS
When you get hit by a ranged weapon it bypasses Grit and goes straight to Flesh (the hit points where you really get hurt), so shields should be kind of a big deal.
Small shields give +2AC, large shields give +4AC but unless you’re a Fighter you can’t pair one with a melee weapon unless your Strength is at least twice as much as the weapon’s damage.
(Contested melee means that even with an extra +4 defence you’re far from unhittable.)
Using a shield is like dual-wielding weapons, so each Round choose between the AC bonus, or making an extra d4 damage bash attack.
If you make an extra attack split your AB between the two.
(Two attacks while dual-wielding usually incurs a penalty equal to the lower damage of the two weapons, but not with shields.)
MONEY
300 coins or small gems can be carried in an encumbrance slot (large gems count for 30).
Other than that you can give money to the Merchant Priests who are smugly present in every major city and sometimes in places you wouldn’t expect and always know how much credit you currently hold with them.
If you’re buying something and want to use your credit you can either find a Merchant Priest to oversee the transaction or leave a blood-sealed slip of paper with the shopkeep to cash in later.
Of course if you signed it for more than you’re worth the Merchant Priests will find you where you sleep and croon about ethics in the dark.
RATIONS
Buying/tracking rations exact to the day is boring and I am having none of it.
Instead of that I’m using Ration Dice – d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20.
[Similar to what I do for torches, inspired by the cascading dice ammunition rules by Intwischa (sadly no longer in existence, but the page is currently available via the Internet Archive)]
You can only have one of each and they’re purchased in increments from lowest to highest.
Each one takes up an encumbrance slot, and costs twice as much as its dice size in silver pieces.
THIS IS FOR THE WHOLE GROUP NO MATTER HOW MANY OF YOU THERE ARE.
Each day try to roll 4 or higher on your largest Ration Dice. If you fail, that Ration Dice is gone because you’re fat.
If you also have animals you have to roll 6 or higher.
SPECIALIST TOOLS
By LotFP rules if a Specialist fails to pick a lock they can’t try again until they gain a level because they’re not good enough, which feels… dumb?
Specialists can now try as many times as they want, but after the first try, they have to check their tools for Breakage after every failure.
BOOKS
Inspired by Reynaldo’s BREAK!! updates, books now come with a rating 2-6, and can be used in place of your own skill rating to make checks to do with that subject if you’ve got the time.
(e.g. there’s this big pulsating sac thing in the corner and you’d like to know what it is but your Naturalis skill is only 1 in 6, however you’ve got this big Creepy Crawlies book with a 3 in 6 chance…)
Successful skill checks using books also count towards trying to increase skills when you level up (when you level up, if you’ve successfully used a skill try to roll under your number of successes on a number of d6 equal to your current skill level, if you succeed you gain another skill point).
SAVING THROWS
Are GONE. That kind of consistent steady improvement just didn’t really jive with what my game is about.
Instead, everything is done with Ability checks now.
A normal check needs to roll equal or less than your score.
A hard check needs to roll equal or less than half your score.
If it’s something easy you wouldn’t be making a check.
Ability Scores in my game are pretty malleable, since they can be decreased by nasty stabbings, mushroom infections, turning into a drugfiend with opiate fluids… So when you level up you can try to increase a number of scores equal to the level you just reached.
Roll 3d6 and if it’s higher than your current score, increase it by 1.
I’ve also got this idea for gaining levels (because gold for xp has never tasted right to me) where to level up you need to tell AMAZING BUT TRUE STORIES about your exploits in major cities or places where you can make a name for yourself (number of stories equal to the level you’re trying to reach).
Which is a nice built-in incentive to seek out completely bizarre shit apart from just “there might be gold there”, as well as more social interaction/climbing.
I’ll probably do up rules for the chances of stories being accepted/appreciated in different places (town square, dive bar, high tea), along with potential consequences for those places (rabid admirers/rivals, being overheard by the relatives of people you’re bragging about stealing from/murdering, job offers, gaining more and more elaborate titles), which means leveling up also feeds into more game fodder and makes reminiscing about fun sessions an actual mechanic of the game itself.
Which I think is pretty great.
Wait where was I…
Oh yeah, having item cards and blue-tac for your inventory is excellent and you should try it.
I am going to mull over and steal a bunch of this. Good stuff.
Please do.
The “telling stories” idea for leveling up seems like it could be expanded a little to “leave a mark.” As in, character leveling works through investing the gained XP in the creation of mementos. Each one represents a level.
Mementos as in: tall tales, books, statues, artworks, poems, tattoos, scarification, engravings, urban legends, songs, symphonies, monuments… you name it. Skill-based but successes are automatic. Skill level determines quality. Also an opportunity for players to pick up freshly learned craft/artist skills when they level.
You level up when you leave evidence of your trials through your preferred medium of expression. Catharsis. If you’re using any “sanity” CoC-style rules, you can chill your crazy out a bit. And the player has a tangible “journal” of their character in-universe.
Uses some resources (gold still matters! craft/artist skills do things! social rolls do things!), some downtime (to take a breath), and leaves something that you can easter egg or use as material in subsequent adventures (how’d my last character’s skinless self-portrait find its way into this collection of antique pornography?).
I’ll give this a whirl in my games and see how players feel about it. Obviously, so as not to force players to all be artists, creative interpretation of skill application for memento-making would be in effect. A big dumb knight can still level up in his own big dumb knight way.
For sure whatever floats your particular boat.
For my game the idea that everything is gossipy bragging sits juuuuust right, with commissioned portraits and statues being potential consequences of that.
Will STEAL THE EYES OF YASHOGGHUH! be released into the wild, like Feathered Swine was?
ABSOLUTELY YES.
It needs some more playtesting/tweaking (it has a lot more moving parts than Feathered Swine did), but after that I’ll get on to making some art and pdfing it and then it’ll be thrown out there.
I’m pretty chuffed with it so far actually, I’ve tried to put it together so that it could be picked up by a new DM and run wholly from itself after a flip-through, and I’d like to do a print version of this one because I have some sexy ideas for making that even more useful.
Printed versions of things? Please tell me that one day I will get to put a Corpathium setting book on my shelf next to Vornheim and Yoon-Suin.
One day David, one day…
Encumbrance variant rules: Interesting for pen-and-paper, byzantine for online play.
Movement/Exhaustion: Glad some movement rules have been made. “Slower” was challenging to figure out.
Weapon Tags: As long as it’s clear that weapons cannot be customized with tags, condensing special mechanics into key words is generally an improvement.
Shield buff: I don’t believe this is necessary. The armor-or-attack deal is fine, but +4 AC for 20 silver is a bit on the extreme end.
Money: No opinion.
Rations: At a surface level, this is a potentially good improvement. However, it appears that rations immediately disappear if one bad roll occurs, regardless of rations grade. What I foresee happening is players will purchase enough rations to guarantee they won’t starve during travels under a worst case scenario (roll low each day), then be disappointed when it rolls decently or well as they’ve now overstocked on food.
I believe the best way to remedy this is through the following: instead of the ration immediately disappearing, rolling below results in the ration decreasing a die size. Therefore, a 40 silver ration set would last a minimum of 6 days, with each failure increasing the chance of future failures. If this were to occur, then it would be beneficial to get good rolls, and bad rolls are mitigated by having some degree of dependability. Once a set of rations becomes “low enough,” a group can consider buying another to replace the previous.
Specialist Tools: A simple change that is beneficial to gameplay.
Books: I am slightly against this mechanic. Prior successes already devalued the specialist, but having books perform as a specialist-in-a-can that still adds successes to the character? I foresee characters finding a book like this, and within a couple levels having their innate roll be the same as the book, while still having access to all the other mechanics of their class. It further infringes on the specialist’s niche, and I don’t believe that’ll end well.
Saving Throws: I can agree to this if the referee is running a lot of ability score changes, but otherwise, I’d strongly prefer the saves. There are balance repercussions by removing all saves and making them (effectively) based on the same stats regardless of class choice.
Level by Story: This idea seems a bit dicey. A system based on wealth or challenge ratings means a referee can easily calculate the likely result of the group completing a given storyline/dungeon on a best- or worst-case scenario. If a system were based purely around storytelling, then what constitutes a sufficient amount of exploration? Would it be 1 story = 1 level? Would characters need to consider what order of dungeon-delving they perform to make sure each story is incrementally more epic, or can they go from killing a nascent god to clearing out a cave of lepers and still receive the same level up?
I like the idea at its base: make adventurers gain experience by adventuring, not by being cowards and vultures (which I’ve noticed happens all too often in the current system). I think it may be better, however, to make it based on the spiritual quality of the dungeon or fight in question. Basically, it’d still be based on money or fights, but the group doesn’t need to find all the wealth to get the experience. After a dungeon is more or less “completed,” a referee can then tally up how well they think the party did, and give a cut of experience as appropriate to the dungeon in question.
On a separate note, is there a means of privately contacting the author of this site that is not through the incredibly distasteful email address listed from several years ago? I’m posting under a false email address to post this just in case the answer to the above is “no,” so a public reply would be preferred.
Encumbrance: admittedly it’s mainly written for face-to-face play, but if everyone’s willing to put in a little arts & crafts time to print and cut out their own cards there’s nothing stopping it from working online, or using something like Pinterest as an encumbrance sheet.
Weapon Tags: if someone really wants to pay to customise their weapon I won’t say no, but I’d increase the Breakage chance at the same time, because if it doesn’t start with a certain tag then it’s not designed or balanced for it.
Shields: I have ranged attacks bypass Grit hit points and go straight to Flesh, so the big bonus for shields is mainly to try not to get murdered by a single stray arrow. I haven’t actually playtested it though and you may be right that it’s a bit much as is.
I might change it so that a small/light shield gives +1AC plus your Dexterity modifier, and a large/heavy shield gives +2AC plus your Strength modifier, and play around with the price of them (because I think they’re extremely underpriced/underutilised in the rules as-is). The idea being that the better you can move the shield around the better armour it provides.
Rations: what you’re proposing is exactly how the system works at the moment, except that instead of taking up six encumbrance slots all that food is getting shoved into one.
I may not have explained it clearly since I was typing it around midnight but the idea is that rations dice are purchased in increments – d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20. So to have a better chance of all of your rations holding out for longer you need to spend more money and give up more backpack space to hold them.
Once you fail a rations check on your d20 you remove that item and start making checks on the d12, then the d10 etc. so the less encumbrance slots you have taken up with food, the more likely it becomes that your rations checks will fail.
And if my players spent money on all 6 rations dice then didn’t lose any they wouldn’t be disappointed, they’d be happy they didn’t starve.
Books: I think the Specialist still has their special niche because they’re guaranteed to improve their skills every time they gain a level, whereas the other classes have to be constantly using and succeeding with their skills to have a chance to improve (my players all leveled up a couple of games ago and even with a bunch of skill successes on record, no one but the Specialist managed to improve). It’s also usually going to be the Specialist making skill checks anyway unless it’s something they’re not skilled in, in which case GREAT, give someone else a go.
Using a book for a skill check also means using an encumbrance slot to carry the damn thing around, and spending a Turn to read it, whereas a Specialist just knows things.
And if a non-Specialist character finds a book then has the same skill as the book within a few levels they’ve earned it by carrying it around all that time and constantly reading it. I really don’t see a negative, especially when Specialists can do the same thing in addition to being guaranteed more skill points when they level up.
Saving Throws: just do not fit with my game, which I realised is not at all about a constant steady improvement in all things, but much more about seeing/doing crazy things and learning to be rad in spite of/because of the shit that happens to you. Ability Scores are constantly moving around with the way we play, for instance when my brother’s wizard had all his limbs eaten by thin air his Dexterity and Strength suddenly got a whole lot lower, but would his level-based Paralyse saving throw have accounted for that?
No, no it would not have. So it’s gone.
Class balance is also really not a concern for me.
Level by Story: calculating how much experience points the players have earned is almost the worst way I can think of to wrap up a really fun session. Just, the worst. Whether it’s arbitrary or carefully calculated it just holds no appeal for me.
For stories, I need to put together some actual rules for the chances of them being accepted, but in general I can say that things won’t need to keep getting more and more epic, they just need to be good stories told in the right place. So killing a nascent god is already so fantastic that it will probably be accepted straight away, whereas if you’re bragging in the town square about killing some lepers you’ll probably need to embellish the story a little, but then at the same time if the Fighter duels and defeats someone famous and tells the story in a mercenary den that’ll probably be a tick for them.
The idea is also that to reach the next level you need to tell more stories equal to that level.
So two stories gets you to Level 2, then you need to tell three new stories to get to Level 3.
Like I said there would also be potential consequences depending on where you tell the story and how it goes down, but again, I need to write them.
Honestly I’m surprised you’re reading this site at all if you find that email address incredibly distasteful (adults can be orphans) but sure, you can contact me through gmail via logantknight.
I’ve been stitching this stuff together with 5e – I don’t think much will break. I just have all high-dmg spells and stuff hit Grit so no ridiculously reliable instakills on that front. But one thing I’m unsure about is how to do parries – I don’t really like the idea of even more trackable resources (the parries per combat). Thought of making it so that you can forgo one of your next turn’s attacks to reroll defense, so fighty types would have more of them than others. But then that’d lessen the party’s damage output and stall fights, wouldn’t it? If they already track two types of HP, encumbrance, spell points and in some cases those weird extra dice like Superiority or Inspiration Dice, maybe parries won’t make it tangibly more complicated, would they? Movement Dice seem like a nice way to manage speed scores but then again it creates another subsystem. Would like to keep the base mechanic as much unified as possible.
Movement Dice replaces the subsystem movement already has with per day/per round/running/power walking movement rates, but instead of referencing a table you just keep track of what dice you’re down to, and it has chase/difficult movement mechanics built into it.
Plus if you’re using the light or ration tracking rules I made, or the ammo tracking rules that started the idea, the basic notion of decreasing dice is already kind of unified there.
As for Parries they honestly haven’t been used enough in my game so far for me to say either way whether they’re a help or a hindrance. Time will tell.
My god, you’re right O_o Never thought of the speed table as a subsystem. Mainly because it doesn’t involve rolling dice, I guess. But the problem I see here might be stepping on Athletics/Acrobatics skill checks’ toes, not to mention Dex saving throws when we’re talkign about falling to nasty stuff. Maybe I could just use the move die for chases and be done with it. But I those advantage/disadvantage rules of thumb from encumbrance will work finely!
Probably will have to reinstate parries to my character sheet – somebody shoulda reminded me not to delete “redundant” Work-In-Progress files when dealing with PDF endproducts -.-
Hahaha tell me about it, these days I end up with about ten different file versions when working on a new sheet.
This looks really good and I can’t wait for the next version.
Are you planning to do a monster sheet as well? You know, when a horde of gobbos attack and you can immediately tell which one swings a spiky club and which one is metal can? Or for monsters with tentacles, each tentacle would sit in its own item slot, when players roll that number you check breakage or they are cut off?
Maybe Flesh and Grit could have their own sidebar with a unit 1FP/GP = 3mm?
I really like how the item cards/pouches are designed because they fit together so well!
The next version? Come on Peter give me a chance I only just finished this one. (and have already started thinking about small changes and oh fuck..)
Monster sheets are definitely an interesting idea, though perhaps more prep work than I’d like to do when a lot of the weapons and such won’t be picked up, so I’ll probably leave that to spreadsheets/scratched notes for now.
If you make one I’d really like to see it though.
Hey, I didn’t mean to push you 🙂 The sheet is great, it’s one of the best ideas I’ve seen since I play D&D.
I’ll let you know when I build the monster sheet, ok.
Take it easy 🙂
I love your shit, post new content, I’m fiending.
Sorry to leave you gagging Jesse, I’ll try to post something soon.
I’ve been too busy for games what the fuck!
Hypothetically, would having money thrown at you increase the rate at which you post new content? Because I would be willing…
Hahaha it’s not so much a matter of money as it is time!
I know I’ve been saying I’ll post something new for a while but this time I really truly mean that I think I’ll have free time soon! I’m already plotting out changes I want to make to my existing stuff whenever I have a little moment.
Not being able to play AT ALL for a while is really helpful for clarifying what you want to get out of any time you CAN spend playing, which is going to mean simplifying mechanics, making character generation faster, cutting out/changing content that might be really nice to read but would be really fucking hard to make gameable, making sure things aren’t “everythingsfuckedforever” all the time. Just generally upping the fun factor of everything because it’s no good being clever if it isn’t fun.
This item guide is as simple as it is astounding. I’m fraught with anticipation for more.
Grind the axe dear Logan.
Sate our Thirst.
we hunger for more
it is ravenous
why do you not feed us
We have not forgotten.
So…there still any possibility of a Yoon Quiun malpractice table?
Love this. I’ve started using sticky notes instead of the blue tac since we have an abundance of those at my place. I’ve been using a checklist for leveling up that Claytonian JP conceived but mixed with the storytelling aspect you have and putting the checkmarks into motion in-game. Keep the good stuff coming!
Aside from everything you make just being super cool in general, I always feel like your custom character sheets and whatnot are really well put together. Any chance you’d be willing to share some of the boring details of how you made this one? What program you used, or what font that is—stuff like that? I’ve been sketching out some idea for a new character sheet for my own campaign, and I’d love if I could make it look half as good as yours.
Cheers!
The program is a looted older version of Adobe InDesign – character sheets were my first interaction with it so it’s fairly easy to use, and is really good in terms of the automatic guides it will show to help balance out your elements.
You can probably get similar results in Photoshop or the Gimp, it will just take a bit more fiddling.
The font is mostly IM Fell Double Pica Pro; you can download the whole Fell family for free here http://iginomarini.com/fell/the-revival-fonts/
Except the font on the item cards is Schoensperger, which is as close as you can get to the font used for the Mordheim books (I think only the lowercase ‘k’ is different).
Apart from that just use your own sensibilities I guess and if you want to look for visual inspiration avoid other character sheets because most of them are a mess haha.
Any chance of getting a hold of your .indd of this and the previous iterations of the Cörpathium sheets (henchmen, v2, that old Lamentations version) for some fine-tuning?
I’m about to run a game and stealing quite a bit of your awesome house rules, and would like to make a proper, pretty sheet without the bits that don’t apply in my table/setting or are an unnecessary waste of space and ink (like the dice reference).
I’d rather not resort to shoddy cut-and-paste mutilation if more refined options are available, you know. 😉
Sure thing, I’ll upload them and email you a link.
I’ve finally gotten time to hack away at my rules again so a new version is imminent anyhow.
IT’S BEEN A YEAR. How have you been? Can we expect some new stuff anytime soon or is real-life too busy?
Greetings from Germania
I KNOW, IT’S ABSURD.
I haven’t played a single game in all that time but YES you can expect some new stuff soon. I’ve been streamlining my ruleset, working on a new method for my magic system, and I’ve been having some really fruitful discussions around urbancrawling/faction relationships/lots of good stuff.
Having no time at all for D&D makes you appreciate what you want from it when you do have time, so yeah, expect some useful stuff really soon.
Wow, you haven’t had time to play at all? Looking forward to all the new goodies, I’m just happy that you haven’t abandoned the blog.
wow. i honestly thought you where floating somewhere over another plane of existance or simply, moved on on-this-thing-called-rolplaying.
Hope you find more time to share some of the things you’ve been doing/wondering to do.
i’ve been coming and going to this blog for so long, and since i cant even remember, aleways stumbled on by luck over and over. it’s almost probably way too weird to even think about it. but hey, its fine anyway.
keep up, mr.
I just realized, moments ago, that I’ve never told you how wonderful your PC backpacks have been for my games. I use them in most of my games. Thanks.
Thanks heaps! I’m glad you’re getting use out of them.
Finally had a chance to use your encumbrance system after intending to do so for the longest time. It was well received…and fun to watch the players pass around the ten foot pole. Thanks for this and many other ideas!
I’m glad it worked out for you! I’ve definitely found that it helps players actually care about their inventory in a fun way.