So like an idiot I got a full-time waste services job (which is actually great) so I’ve been doing more bin crawls than dungeon crawls lately. If you don’t like it pay me.

Justin Hamilton commented on Death & Dismemberment that he doesn’t like the idea of attacks causing wounds on max-damage because it means that smaller weapons end up having a better chance of causing actual bodily harm than large weapons, which for me isn’t a big deal, personally I really LIKE that the shitty knife you’re carrying around has a 1 in 4 chance of seriously stabbing the fuck out of someone’s internal organs. That’s a good trade-off to take a knife instead of a greatsword even though the greatsword technically does more damage.

BUT, in simplifying my rules I’ve also been trying to figure out how to make differences in weapon size affect combat without resorting to something like “longer always hits first”. In the past I made it so that if someone with a smaller weapon started a fight with you, you could make an Initiative check to attack first in the first Round. But god that’s boring to remember/play out.

So I had a potentially stupid idea.

What if when you attack/defend in melee (because I use contested melee rolls instead of the attacker targeting a static AC), you rolled a d20 AND your damage dice.

Now the size of your weapon directly affects your likelihood of hitting/defending against someone with a bigger weapon, and if you hit, we don’t have to wait for you to make another roll for damage: you already rolled it what’s the fucking number?

So the knife still has a 1 in 4 chance of causing a serious wound, but that’s because it’s hard to get it in there against an obese Plague Knight swirling a d10 damage carrion flail around his head, but when you do, you JAM IT RIGHT THE FUCK IN BETWEEN HIS RIBS UNTIL SOMETHING POPS.

Which also rolls in nicely to additional weapon qualities.

It’s pretty common for spears to have Reach, attacking first against charges and dealing double damage. So how about if someone attacks you while you’re wielding a spear (charge or not because personally I’d just stop charging people with spears if that’s the only time they do something cool?) you just straight-up roll double damage dice in the first Round. Now you attack/defend better and cause more damage because you’re the longest. Good job.

Big weapons should be hard to use in tight spaces, so how about you roll twice to-hit/defend and take the worst, which now includes your damage dice. It’s hard to carve someone up with a zweihander in a cave when you keep hitting the sides, you should have brought a knife.

That’s all for now love you x

Hey, so recently I ran a couple of playtest sessions of STEAL THE EYES OF YASHOGGHUH online (it was great, highlights at the end) and to speed things up we used starting equipment packs that I’ve used a few times before.

 

While we were playing Brendan S asked if I’d published them and since he brought up how useful equipment packs are for streamlining character generation, here’s the packs I’ve been letting people choose randomly – three Sword-Whores, three Adepts/Specialists/Thieves, and three WIZARDS.

 

There are a couple of “healing potions” in there that mention making saves. If you fail you randomly mutate, or in the case of The Bottled Nectar of the House of Honey and Salt:

• Both fail – Your body loses all integrity and slops and expands in a flowing pile of the Velvet Blessing/Saintsblood.

• Only CON fail – The flesh of a random body part shifts and groans beneath the skin. Make another CON check each Turn – Until you succeed, make a WIS check every time you exert yourself, if you fail the body part becomes Saintsblood.

There’s also some drugs. For me drugs work like this:

Effects last until you FAIL the associated Ability check, made each Turn.

If you roll a 1 or a 20 on a check you’re addicted.

While addicted, whenever not under the influence of the drug you suffer all of its normal negative effects as well as its withdrawal effects, and all checks involving the associated Ability Score are Doomed (checks that would already be Doomed are Double Doomed).

After each full day without the drug, make the associated Ability check to recover from addiction.

Quick, easy, smooth.

Doomed means you roll twice and take the worst. Yes that’s the same as Disadvantage. No there is no replacement for Advantage.

 

ANYWAY HERE’S THE EQUIPMENT

Read the rest…

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.

Save

So I’ve been putting together a new version of my character sheet to fit with rules that have changed and things I’ve noticed in play.

 

Click below for the four page fold-over pdf.

Basic changes apart from obvious things covered in the House of Rules:

• Ranged weapon distances got kicked off the sheet, because needing to shoot someone far away and know the precise distance hasn’t really come up, and when it does I’ll just say “aw, it’s pretty far, you can do it but you’ll take -2 to the roll”, or “no, they’re hella far away”.
• The girls pretty quickly collected various different pieces of armour that they put on, and I’d like to acknowledge that. The main armour class still stays as Light/Medium/Heavy, but I added a section on the back where they can list the individual pieces and their Quality rating, added the numbers 1-5 under Defence for them to circle the Qualities that apply to their armour, and when they roll that number or less on their Defence roll it will damage that particular piece of armour first. I’d probably say that each additional piece of armour (like gauntlets, helmet, sabatons, etc.) adds 1/2 a point of AC, so you need two for +1AC, additional pieces can’t raise your AC by more than +2, and they don’t affect Heavy armour.
• I replaced Sneak Attack with a Quick Death. Sneak Attack always felt weird to me, sitting in there with the other skills but you don’t actually use it like a skill, it just adds a damage multiplier when you attack from surprise. So, a Quick Death does work like a skill. When you sneak up on someone or you’re grappling, if you make a successful Quick Death roll you’ll outright kill anything up to 2HD, and if they have more than 2HD it will add a damage multiplier equal to your skill level if you then successfully attack them. So it’s like learning the best way to cut something if you can get close enough.
  If you fail when attacking from surprise, you can still make a normal attack but they don’t take any AC penalty.

 

And then I got to the encumbrance section with all the different movement rates listed and holy shit is it unnecessary, players don’t need to see that, and so I wanted to get rid of them but couldn’t think of what else to put with the encumbrance description.

Then I had the idea, for movement dice.

 

 

MOVEMENT DICE

 

Roll it 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).

• An unencumbered human is d8. Encumbered is d6, Heavily encumbered is d4. Cheetahs are d100.
• Whoever rolls highest wins. In a one-on-one situation I’d probably apply -1 for Medium armour or -2 for Heavy armour.
• In a pursuit use the lowest Movement Dice of the group, and you could either resolve it as a one-off roll, or have a lost roll decrease your dice size, a win increase your dice size, and the pursuit ends when someone loses on a d4 or wins on a d20.

[By LotFP rules chases are contested d20 + 10% of your movement rate, which is still pretty easy, but I think this is easier and has much more obvious consequences for the amount of shit on your back.]

 

The lowest Movement Dice of the group is also used for random encounter checks, because if you’re heavily encumbered you’re shuffling and jangling around like an idiot, rather than the guy padding around with nothing but a sack and a knife like an agile agile cat.

 

I’m sure I’ve read something similar to the random encounter check recently but I cannot, for the life of me, remember where.

 

 

And then I looked at the light tracker with its boring-arse checkboxes, and realised that I hated it and changed it to something else.

 

 

LIGHT CHECKS

 

Instead of a set time limit, light sources use a decreasing dice check.

• Torches start at d8, Candles at d10, and Lanterns at d20.
• When you’re asked to make a light check (so each Turn or what have you), you try to roll in the upper half of the dice, though there might be modifiers if it’s wet or windy.
• If you fail it drops down to the next dice for the next check.
• If you roll a 1 or fail on a d4 it goes out or you burn yourself and drop it.
• If you have to make a light check because of something threatening to extinguish the flame, if you fail it goes out.

Jeff Russell reminded me that this is really similar to this ammunition tracker, which I’d clearly forgotten about but not.

I’m still not sold on using it for ammunition since I tend to run attacks as one roll one swing/shot and abstracting the ammunition feels wrong, but for something like fire, which can vary depending on conditions and quality, it seems just about perfect.

I think it’s a nice easy way to make light tracking interesting and maybe a little bit fun. Each Turn you don’t mark off a box, you roll to see what state your torch is in, and you don’t look down and see three empty boxes and think “okay I’ve got half an hour before I have to light another”, you look down and see that your torch is on a d4 and think “aw shit it’s all spluttery and stuff there’s a good chance it will go out the next time it matters, I should get another one ready”.

 

[Edit: After discussing it more with Jeff and James Young, we figured that using a target number is a lot better, and the best target number is 4. So, regardless of the dice you’re on you need to roll 4 or higher or you drop to the next dice. This also makes it easy to vary the required roll based on the situation, i.e. “It’s raining from nowhere, the ceiling seems to be screaming at you, roll 6 or higher or your torches all go out!”]

Save

The new Cörpathium character sheet has a lot of new/tweaked house rules on it, so let’s collect them here for a little more clarification, and to make it easier to refer/link back to them.

 

First of all a few little tweaks to basic LotFP rules.

• For one thing I’m giving everyone access to Combat Options. Only Fighters know how to fight recklessly or defensively? I call ballshit.
  …I meant to type bullshit but no, ballshit, that works.
• The bonus for carrying a shield doesn’t vary between melee and ranged AC, it’s +1 for a small shield and +2 for a large shield, but only Fighters can actually attack while using a large shield.
• Straight -5 AC when surprised/attacked from behind instead of losing Dexterity bonuses then -2 blah blah blah.
• I’m using the new firearms rules (see Brendan’s quick reference here), but the whole ignoring 5 points of actual worn armour but not your Dexterity modifier figure it out every time or record it on your sheet is too damn fiddly and mostly redundant. If a firearm is in armour piercing range, it ignores all your armour, too bad full plate, your AC is now 12 + Dexterity modifier. And forget reloading times, I don’t play with anyone that is going to spend 5-10 rounds reloading, so firearms are basically one-shot high damage armour punchers that everything is going to hear. That works for me.
• I ditched Architecture as a skill because it’s useless for my game and replaced it with Lore (cults, government, magic), and replaced Bushcraft with the more catch-all Naturalis, because Natural Philosophy and Taxonomy are valid occupations in Cörpathium and if your character wants to read up on things to have a bit more of an idea of the horrors that lurk out in Malles Vermald they have my blessing.
• Fuck alignment.

 

GAMBIT

 

Just my own name for Called Shots, Stunts, whatever, built from one of Brendan’s posts.

 

If you want to make some kind of specific attack roll to-hit twice.

If both hit, it happens.

If one misses, it doesn’t.

If both miss you fail so badly that you can’t do anything next round.

 

It also means two chances to roll a fumble, and depending on how fancy/absurd the intended attack is I might increase fumble range. “You want to slide onto your knees beneath the spider with two daggers and slice its legs off? Okay that’s awesome, but you’re going to mess up super, really badly if either roll comes up 4 or less.”

 

The reason I like this about a thousand times more than Called Shot (pick a range on d20, say 13-20, if you roll that you succeed, but if you roll the inverse range, 1-8, you fumble), which is what I was using before, is that it doesn’t disregard the AC of the thing you’re attacking, and characters with better Attack Bonuses are better at doing them, instead of the sickly wizard decapitating the giant mutated boar just because he rolled the number he picked.

 

 

 

MELEE

 

After talks with Jeremy Duncan I switched melee combat to a contested roll, because why put all the variation on the attacker and not the defender?

Ranged attacks still target a static AC, but melee resolves as d20 +AB vs. d20 +DB, your Defence Bonus being AC -12. If the attacker fumbles you get to cut them.

For even more vicious combat you could rule that whoever rolls highest deals damage, regardless of who was attacking.

 

 

 

NOTCHES

 

Notches stay pretty much the same as they always were, with the added Quality rules that Smiler and I (mainly Smiler) came up with.

Basically, every weapon has a Quality rating from 1-5, and whenever you roll that number or less when attacking the weapon takes a Notch.

Weapons can take a number of Notches equal to their damage die, but once they have two Notches roll two of the weapon’s damage die after every attack, hit or miss. If the roll is equal or less than the number of Notches, it breaks. So you might embarrassingly break your axe with a wild swing against the wall, or you might snap your dagger off in the merchant priest’s chest.

If the weapon takes another Notch after it has reached its limit, it breaks.

 

And because I’m now having people roll for their defence in melee, I can use the same Quality range for armour.

When rolling for defence, if the d20 comes up as that number or less and the attacker hits you, decrease the AC of your armour by 1.

 

The standard rate for repair is a tenth of the item’s full cost per Notch or AC point (so one Notch on a Medium sword costs 2 silver groats to repair, and it will set you back 100 silver groats to repair the point of damage that drugged-up Nun of the Lotus caused to your Heavy armour).

Prices are still subject to review and gouging.

 

 

 

WEAPONS

 

The weapon properties I originally posted have been tweaked slightly.

Weapon damage is still determined by its size, but depending on what it is…

• Sword: If you haven’t been hit this Round roll twice for damage, take the best.
• Hammer: +1 to-hit vs. Medium or better, successful hit reduces Heavy AC by 1.
• Axe: Two damage dice vs. Light or less.
• Flail: +1 to-hit vs. Medium or better, ignores shields, successful hit reduces Heavy AC by 1, roll twice for damage and take the best. Can choose to attack weapon, Strength check to disarm on hit. On any miss roll under your AC or hit yourself.
• Dagger: Contested d20 + AB + Str/Dex bonus to grapple after hit, automatically hitting Flesh in subsequent rounds until they kick you off.

Make a contested Initiative roll to attack first when someone with a smaller weapon closes into melee.

Long/Great weapons automatically attack first and do double damage against charges.

 

 

 

HIT POINTS

 

Again, pretty much the same as they always were.

Flesh is the measure of how much physical punishment you can take before passing out, and caps out at your full class HD, plus anything gained from a Constitution bonus.

Grit is the rest of the hp you gain, and is a measure of ways you learn to avoid injury, plus glancing blows, exhaustion whatever.

• Attacks reduce Grit first, and when it’s gone you start taking Flesh wounds.
• You lose consciousness at 0 Flesh, and die at minus half your class HD.
• If someone rolls a Critical hit against you but you still have Grit left, roll your Defence again. If it’s higher than their attack roll the damage affects your Grit first, otherwise it cuts straight to Flesh.
• Being attacked from behind or by surprise bypasses Grit, and any attack against Flesh that deals maximum weapon damage or half of your maximum Flesh causes a serious wound and removes any Grit you had left. Lost arms, plucked eyeballs, and messed-up innards don’t lend themselves to finesse.

After any encounter where you take a Flesh wound roll under your Constitution or contract an Infection.

If you don’t have any Flesh wounds, you can spend a Turn resting to regain Grit, roll your class HD.

 

From Josie’s Hit Point Stopwatch, when below half your Flesh hp, you will be unable to act after that many Rounds of physical exertion such as combat, or that many Turns of simple movement until treated.

Lose another point of Flesh every Round/Turn you try to push on.

 

And some dying rules because I figure most adventurers would have some kind of idea about first aid, and because the Poison save matches up nicely with which classes would probably be better at it:

• Once reduced to 0hp save vs. Poison every 2 Rounds. If you fail you die, if you succeed lose another hp.
• Stop bleeding out if you roll a 1. If another character tries to stabilise you, both players save vs. Poison.
• If both succeed, you regain consciousness at 1hp (but will lose consciousness if you do anything strenuous).
• If they succeed but you fail, you stabilise at 0hp.
• If both fail you die in their arms and they’re all “CURSE YOOOOOUUU! WHHHHYYYYY?”

I figure for it to be successful you need to stay with them for Rounds equal to negative hp. That seems about right.

 

 

 

ENCUMBRANCE

 

Because yes, I use it, I think it can be interesting. But I also don’t want it to be confusing or constrictive, which my first attempt kind of was.

I started pondering this back in September and think it’s pretty much perfect for what I want from encumbrance, which is the freedom to carry a pretty reasonable amount of stuff without constantly tracking it, but having it matter when it should.

• You can carry an amount of Worn Items equal to half your Dexterity or Strength, whichever is highest, rounded up.
  They can be strapped to you, in pouches, in orifices, just draw it on your sheet.
  Every additional Worn Item adds a -1 penalty to physical rolls.
  A quiver contains 20 arrows and counts as a single Worn Item.
  Medium armour counts as 1 item and Heavy armour counts as 2, Fighters don’t count armour as a Worn Item.
• Oversized items like two-handed weapons have to be on your person and count as 2 Worn Items. Ten foot poles don’t go in backpacks.
• When you wear a pack you are encumbered, move slower and take a -2 penalty to physical rolls. You can carry items in your pack equal to your Strength or Constitution, whichever is highest.
  (Bundle amounts mostly taken from Arnold K) You can carry small items like daggers and flasks in bundles of 3 as a single pack item.
  Even smaller things like iron spikes or sling bullets can be carried in bundles of 10 as a single pack item.
  300 coins can be carried as a single pack item.
• You can carry half that amount again, rounded up, but are even more encumbered, move at half speed and take -4 to physical rolls.
• Carrying any more than that means you can’t do anything other than shuffle around under the weight.
• Finding something in your pack during combat takes d3+1 per encumbrance level Rounds.

The immediate penalty for wearing a pack might seem harsh, but have you tried swinging your arms around while wearing a backpack? Awkward. If you want to fight as well as that other guy you’d better drop the bag.

 

 

 

THE FREAKS

 

Maleficar and Mystics remain intact, the only thing I changed is that being encumbered doesn’t make casting spells harder. If you want to risk more belongings transmuting into angry goo when you muck up a spell I’m not going to stop you. And Reading Magic is still a deathtrap.

 

Oh but hey Blood Magic/Sacrificial Lamb:

 

Maleficar can bleed themselves of hp for extra Cataclysm needed to cast. The cost is triple if the blood isn’t their own, and they need to smear themselves in it.

They can also will the void into taking a part of themselves for guaranteed casting of a spell of any level. Roll d6 and count down from the top of your Ability Scores. Permanently lose a point.

 

If a Mystic wants to heal a bled Maleficar, they have to make a Hand of God roll.

 

 

 

GIRLS ONLY WANT BOYFRIENDS WHO HAVE GREAT SKILLS

 

This one only occurred to me the other day so it needs to be tried out, but I don’t like Specialists being the only ones who can ever get better at skills ever.

So, if for some reason you needed to use a skill and succeeded, note it next to that skill. Note all of the times you successfully use that skill.

When you level up, roll a number of d6’s equal to your current skill level. If the result is equal or less than your number of successes, you gain a skill level.

Erase all your successes and start again.

 

For example:

 

Three Beard McGuigen, questionable Magic-User, found himself needing to find traps five times before he reached level 1, and only one of them blew off a body part. So that’s 4 successes.

He currently has a 1 in 6 skill level, so he rolls 1d6 and gets a 3. Hooray now he has a 2 in 6 chance of keeping his extremities when the Specialist isn’t around!

 

 

What better place to start in the greatest city of the new and ancient world than in a slum as a nobody?

 

This is the Rookery of Van Möldus, a borough of Cörpathium that you could probably use as a city all to itself if you really wanted to.

 

 

 

Sights, Smells, etc.

• Cold and damp, smells of fish rot and stinging salt.
• Makeshift shelters crowd alleys and cul-de-sacs.
• Purplish barnacles grow on buildings and side-walks, finding more nourishment in the squalor than the sea. They’ll attach to people if they stay still for long enough.

Buildings:

• Decrepit worn stone and rotting wood, roofs leak and wind whistles through the walls.
• Mostly two or three jettied stories, a mixture of stone and wood, many with basements that reach below sea level.
• No windows face the Hollow Sea, they only look inwards upon Cörpathium.
• No Deicidium.

Building: d4 storeys, d6 sub-levels (5-6 no sub-level).

Occupants: d10 x2 per storey, 0 = currently unoccupied.

 

 

 

Activity

 

Morning:
Drunks waking in the street with barnacles clinging to their flesh, the occasional fog-bloated corpse, beggars and waremongers drifting off to Möldenghast Blvd, men dumping buckets of barnacles recently removed from the Dockmaw.
-2 to reaction rolls
Encounter chance 1 in 6 per hour
Overhear Rumour on a 6
Chance of Godless: 1%/Turn

 

(Unless someone is already running screaming to get them, Chance of Godless is rolled per Turn while something is happening in the open that shouldn’t be. Since there is no Deicidium in the Rookery and no one really cares about it chances are low, and there’s every possibility that even if they do show up, they’ll leave you to it. More on that later.)

 

Noon:
Idle cutthroats, strangers slinking between houses and alleys.
-2 to reaction rolls
Encounter chance 1 in 6 per hour
Overhear Rumour on 6
Chance of Godless: 2%/Turn

 

Night:
Unaffiliated whores in doorways, drunks spilling from makeshift brewhouses, crumpled bodies thrown from fight dens, knives flashing in the dark.
-4 to reaction rolls
Encounter chance 2 in 6 per hour
Overhear Rumour on a 6
Chance of Godless: N/A

 

 

 

Facts

• Murder Loot: d100 cp (even) /10 sp (odd). Carrying Curio on a double.
• Barnacles: If the purple-hued barnacle Cthalamus Siren, commonly known as Siren of the Slums is consumed, save vs. Poison. Failure results in an overwhelming desire to walk into the sea which lasts for d8 days.
• Rats: Can’t help but eat the barnacles, subsequently drowning themselves without fail. Other boroughs tend to herd any infestations towards the Rookery.
• Crime & Violence: Those who dwell within the Rookery rarely turn on each other unless cheated, insulted, or involved in rivalry. Cutpursing is reserved for those who live in neighbouring boroughs.
• Family Van Möldus: Own near every building worth owning in the Rookery. Lodging houses, Our Lady Sacculina, The Foetid Babe, The Cuckoo’s Nest, all pay rent into the hands of Van Möldus.

 

 

Read the rest…

Encumbrance should be a measure of not just how much weight you can carry, but how easily you can manoeuvre whilst carrying different things, we’re adventuring here after all. Besides that, there’s also the fact that most of the time there’s going to be some things that you want to be a bit more accessible than just sitting somewhere in the big pack on your back.

 

[Edit: there’s a much better version of this in The House of Rules, thought it doesn’t have a pretty picture.]

 

The encumbrance system I use requires a touch more maths at character creation, but is a hell of a lot more interesting than a shopping list of crap in a sack. It’s built off the existing LotFP “different items” list and Rotten Pulp/Evil Baboon’s Anti-Hammerspace Item Tracker, and probably a couple of things that have been discussed by Brendan over at Ultimately (now of Necropraxis). It adds a touch of reality and management to the important things, differentiates between characters, but isn’t so complex or restrictive as to make it boring.

 

So you’ve rolled up a character and you’re going shopping. Excellent. Let’s start at the top (or skip to the summary if you’ve a short attention span):

 

What Has It Got In Its Pocketses?

 

– Everyone is able to wear leather armour and carry a normal weapon without it counting towards anything, because otherwise an adventurer might as well be naked. Maleficar will normally pick up their spellbook before a weapon though.

 

– At any time an average character can carry 6 other Significant Items in an immediately accessible place. The location of these items is noted on your character sheet. Specialists automatically carry their Specialist’s Tools as one of their Significant Items.

e.g. Your 50′ of rope is coiled across your chest and you’ve tied a lantern to the end of it, you have a short bow across the opposite shoulder, a quiver of arrows secured to your thigh, an iron-clasped Book of Pestilent Proverbs suspended from a chain attached to your belt, and a sheathed dagger strapped to your left forearm. In addition to that you’re gripping an axe in your right hand and holding a map in front of the lantern light with your left. You’re carrying a normal weapon and 6 other Significant Items (the map doesn’t count), which doesn’t affect your ability to explore or fight because hey: adventurer.

 

Notes on weapons:

A “normal weapon” would be a d6-d8 melee weapon or a d6 ranged weapon. If you use a weapon that deals d4 or less damage you can carry 2 in place of a normal weapon. Each additional weapon carried on your person counts as a Significant Item, with two-handed and heavy weapons counting as 2.

 

For example:

 

Feargus the Fanged, assassin for hire (Specialist), carries out his contracts with two daggers sheathed in a small poison-filled bladder on his back. They count as his normal weapon, so he can carry 5 other Significant Items after equipping his Specialist’s Tools.

 

Magnus, Mouth of the Ever-Present (Cleric) carries a two-handed mace to enforce the will of his god. He doesn’t carry a normal weapon so the two-handed mace takes up both that slot and a Significant Item, after which he can carry 5 other Significant Items.

 

Elsbeth Copperbound (Fighter) prefers to use a long sword, but carries a heavy crossbow on her back to even out the odds from a distance. The sword is her normal weapon and doesn’t count as anything, but the heavy crossbow she carries on her back counts as 2 Significant Items so she can only carry 4 other Significant Items rather than 6.

 

– Your Strength/Dexterity modifier affects how many Significant Items you can carry. If they’re both positive/negative the highest/lowest applies, but if they’re different add them together and that is the number that applies.

 

For example:

 

Strength +2 and Dexterity +1 means you can carry 2 more Significant Items than normal.

Strength -2 and Dexterity -1 means you can carry 2 less Significant Items than normal.

Strength +2 and Dexterity -1 means you can carry 1 more Significant Item than normal.

 

– Wearing Chain or Plate armour decreases your Significant Items by 1 and 2 respectively unless you’re a Fighter.

 

– You can carry additional Significant Items on your person, but each one adds a -1 penalty to your physical rolls including Attack Bonus.

 

– In addition to Significant Items you can carry any number of Insignificant Items on your person as long as you can explain where it is. The location of these items is noted on your character sheet.

e.g. In a small leather satchel attached to the back of your belt you’re carrying a pipe and tobacco, 5 copper coins inscribed with your own face are in a pouch hanging from the hilt of your sword, 3 vials of spider venom are tied around your ankle with string, a bronze whistle hangs from a delicate chain around your neck, and a map said to lead to the underground chapel you were born in is tucked into a fold of fabric inside your left sleeve.

 

– The things you’re carrying on your person count as your first point of encumbrance if you’re carrying at least 3 Significant Items in addition to your weapon, which keeps you Unencumbered within LotFP rules. After that, you can start shoving things into your backpack.

 

 

We Should Get a Mule..

 

– Things carried in packs are considered dead weight. An average character can carry 4 different kinds of items in a pack before gaining a point of encumbrance. Insignificant Items don’t count.

 

– Your Strength/Constitution bonus affects how many different items you can carry before gaining a point of encumbrance. If they’re both positive/negative the highest/lowest applies, but if they’re different add them together and that is the number that applies (minimum 2 items per point of encumbrance).

 

– There will come a point where the Referee (I like to be called the Lamentation Princess) will rule that your set of items is taking up more than one slot. Heavy items always count as separate items.

e.g. The 3 flasks of lamp oil you were carrying up until you pulled them out of your pack and started throwing them counted as a single item, but the twin metallic meteorites you just stole from that cult count as an item each. After escaping, your coin pouch held 12sp and counted as a single item, but after selling the meteorites it holds 190sp and counts as 2 items.

 

– If it can’t realistically fit in your backpack, it’s not going in your backpack. Therefore ‘oversized’ items like 10′ poles are strapped to you and treated as Significant Items. This means that if you’re already carrying your limit of Significant Items, strapping a 10′ pole to yourself counts as 2 additional Significant Items (like a two-handed weapon) and incurs a -2 penalty to your physical rolls including Attack Bonus.

(This takes the place of the +1 encumbrance imposed by LotFP rules, which makes more sense to me. If I start carrying a 10′ pole I’m not going to say “Oh crap you guys wait up I don’t think I can walk so fast anymore”, I’m going to say “Oh crap having this pole tied to me is really awkward, I hope I don’t get attacked because wow, feeling clumsy.”)

 

– Finding something in your pack during combat takes d3+1 per encumbrance level rounds.

 

– Becoming Lightly/Heavily/Severely Encumbered incurs a cumulative -1 penalty to your physical rolls including Attack Bonus, in addition to movement penalties. If the encumbrance is due to wearing Chain or Plate armour Fighters ignore the roll penalty.

e.g. You decided you just HAD to pry that last golden lion from the alter, but after stuffing it into your backpack you’re carrying so many things that you’re Lightly Encumbered, and now scuttering sounds are rushing across the ceiling. Until you lose some items you’ll only be able to explore 90′ every 10 minutes, and you’ll be at -1 to hit if you have to fight. (Of course, you can dump your backpack before starting to fight, but heaven knows who might try to take it while your back is turned…)

 

SUMMARY:

• Everyone can wear leather armour, carry a normal weapon, and carry 6 (modified by Strength/Dexterity bonus) Significant Items on their person for their first point of encumbrance. Tell me where they are.
• Additional Significant Items carried on your person incur a -1 penalty to physical rolls.
• Everyone can carry any number of Insignificant Items on their person. Tell me where they are.
• Everyone can carry 4 (modified by Strength/Constitution bonus) different items as dead weight in a pack on their back before gaining another point of encumbrance.
• Finding something in your pack during combat takes d3+1 per encumbrance level rounds.
• Levels of encumbrance incur a cumulative -1 penalty to physical rolls in addition to movement penalties.
• Chain and Plate armour decrease Significant Items by 1 and 2 respectively. Fighters ignore both this and encumbrance physical roll penalties caused by armour.

 

 

Bonus rule: Wardrobe Malfunction

 

Like Shields Shall Be Splintered! or Oh Crap, My Hat! but for everybody.

If you are hit in combat you can choose to sacrifice a Significant Item or other piece of equipment before damage is rolled.

If you can explain how the attack removed or destroyed that item instead of injuring you, it happened.

If your explanation is stupid or you take too long not only do you lose the item but you still get stabbed.

 

First of all, Gus L has mentioned getting rid of leather, chainmail, and plate in favour of Light, Medium, and Heavy armour over at Dungeon of Signs a few times now. Which happens to be one of the things I really liked in the one game of Gamma World I played. I’d much prefer players to make up exactly what they’re wearing and apply an appropriate armour class than say they’re wearing chainmail and leave it at that. It also links in well aesthetically with LotFP’s existing weapon list.

 

Speaking of, in general I’m pretty happy with the LotFP weapon list, being that it consists of a few specific weapons and then Minor Medium Large Great make up what it is it does this much damage okay. No fuss, no muss. But. I’d still kind of like for the choice about what your Medium weapon actually is to make a difference beyond flavouring, without turning the weapon list into a 10-page section.

 

So, the size categories stay, that’s your damage, but depending on what the weapon actually is you also get this..

 

Sword: If you haven’t been hit this round roll twice for damage, take the best.

 

Hammer: When you attack choose +1 vs. Medium or better, or a normal attack which

reduces Heavy AC by 1 but deals half damage.

 

Axe: Minimum half damage vs. Light or less.

 

Flail: +1 vs. Medium or better, ignores shields. Can choose to attack weapon, Strength check

to disarm on hit. On any miss roll under your AC or hit yourself.

 

The reasoning being that swords are versatile, hammers can punch through with spikes or crush joints to reduce mobility, axes are built for chopping right into things (my thumb can attest), and flails.. well flails is flails.

 

[Edit: these and the Notch rules have been updated in The House of Rules]

 

 

That’s Not A Knife..

 

I use group Initiative, but would also like characters who have an Initiative bonus to get some kind of benefit from that. So, different kinds of weapons have benefits in different situations.

At this point I’d like to mention that this and the weapon categories were inspired by a couple of things mentioned by Brendan Strejcek, now of Necropraxis. In fact the dagger part is stolen directly from him and Gus L.

•  If you successfully hit someone with a dagger you can choose to grab hold and keep stabbing, automatically hitting Flesh in subsequent rounds every time you win a wrestling roll (contested d20 + AB and Strength modifier). Anyone wielding a Medium or larger weapon will need to kick you away before attacking with their weapon.
  (Daggers should be deadly and useful, if you manage to get in close to someone you can cut straight to the meat, bypassing Grit and damaging Flesh. Finesse isn’t worth a damn when someone has a knife to your belly)
• While wielding a Medium or larger weapon you may make a contested Initiative roll to attack first when someone with a Minor weapon closes into melee range.
• While wielding a weapon with reach you may make a contested Initiative roll to attack first when someone with a smaller weapon closes into melee range, and automatically attack first and cause double damage to anyone that actually charges you.

 

Another Notch on the Axehaft

 

I find it really boring for characters to be able to pick a weapon when they start out and then hold onto it forever unless they find something magic or wake up naked in a pit. I mean sure, it’s nice to have a weapon with history, but don’t you want that history to actually mean something? I also want some kind of indication that all this murdering necessitates equipment maintenance, but I don’t want that to be a gaping pain in the arse.

 

So, Notches.

 

Every time you roll a 1 or 2 to hit in combat your weapon takes a Notch, this doesn’t necessarily mean it was damaged just then, more a simple way of quantifying wear and tear.

 

Each weapon can take Notches equal to its damage die (so a dagger can take 4 Notches, a long sword can take 8, Lumpy Space Princess’s knifemace can take 10).

Once the weapon has 2 Notches, roll 2 of the weapon’s damage die after every attack, if the roll is equal to or less than the number of Notches, the weapon breaks. So you might embarrassingly break your axe with a wild swing against the wall, or you might snap your dagger off in the merchant priest’s chest.

If the weapon takes another Notch after it has reached its limit, it breaks.

 

Now, armour makes it harder to hurt your squishy parts, fair enough, but what about the armour? Every time an attack against you rolls 19 or 20 your armour is damaged, reducing your AC by 1.

 

The standard rate for repair is a tenth of the item’s full cost per Notch or AC point (so one Notch on a Medium sword costs 2 silver groats to repair, and it will set you back 100 silver groats to repair the point of damage that drugged-up Nun of the Lotus caused to your Heavy armour).

Prices are subject to review and gouging.

 

 

[Edit: Go read Brush of Fumbling’s excellent post that works weapon quality into Notches if you’re tired of brooms being as durable as battleaxes and all of your blacksmiths being the same guy with a different moustache. I’m using it effective right now.]

 

 

If You Liked It Then You Should Have Put a Pistol On It

 

When you have to walk around with everything strapped to your back, economy of utility can become pretty important, and getting hold of something that actually performs more than one function may just make you fall to your knees for a bit of an ugly joy cry. Credit for sparking this particular thought fire goes to Tom at Middenmurk.

Fuck your +1 sword, give me a shield with a lantern in it and big spikes sticking out of it.

 

Basically, coveted equipment doesn’t have to have some bullshit charm on it, it just needs to be uncommonly useful for the kind of foolish things you’ve chosen to run around doing.

 

I’d rather carry an iron cresset than a torch, it burns just as long, using pitch, rosin, or pine knots, and if someone jumps out of the dark I can beat them with it for d6 damage. As a bonus on 18-20 they also catch fire.

10′ poles are useful but DAMN are they unwieldy to just lug around. Why not carry a 10′ spear or polearm instead, with several interlocking foot long sections at the end that can be easily removed if damaged? Hell, while we’re at it let’s make the top section removable as well so that it can be used as a weapon in close-quarters. Like Tom said, “As is often the case with historical reality, similar business ends are applied to different lengths of wood for different purposes.”

Check Tom’s other article and follow the link to My Armory at the end for more examples. Sure, a lot of them are just things with pistols jammed onto them, but you get the point.

 

For seriously though, fuck your +1 sword.