In showing a friend some character sheets I realised that I had a couple that I never posted, so here we go:

The Glitterchild Monstrosity

The first illustrated character sheet I ever made, for a mutagenic Jeremy Duncan game that never actually happened.

Barnaby Barrachus

From a couple of sessions of Mateo Diaz Torres’ FLOWERLAND.
He killed a swamp bear, got shot by an overly protective mother, saw his witch groupie get mauled to death by a starving coyote and had her possess his armour so they could stay together, lost it a bit when butterfly men tried to put him to sleep and vomit acid on him, and walked into the forbidden black tower and became MAGIC.

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

Another character sheet commission for the adorable Wil McKinnee, Hakaak the half-orc who carries his halfling lady friend around on his back for “combat maneuvers”.

 

Did you know that I played a game with Wil where he jumped on a Pterodactyl being ridden by a javelin-thrower, stabbed it in the side, then used the sword as a rudder to make it crash dead into the ocean, backflipping away from it in the nick of time? Well I did, it was epic.

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 plausibly brilliant Wil McKinee commissioned me to draw a character sheet for him and I did because who could say no to that face.

 

Description by Wil:

 

BLABERUS

 

Is a 28 year old Hermaphroditic Halfling (About 3′ tall) with short blonde hair and an untrusting face. She wears a leather chest and backplate of dark brown. There is nothing underneath this. Her pants are baggy but tapered. Upon the head and down over the shoulders sits a chainmail cowl, held tightly in place by a Crown of Ears, collected from an array of beasts and humanoids. They listen to and transmit to BLABERUS the thoughts of a single individual/entity once per day. She carries a Potion of Spore Blast (2 hours after drinking, the potion will cause the consumer to projectile vomit forth (15 feet) fungal spores with a 40% chance of infecting any target on her person.

Her primary weapon is Scrap’s

 

MERCYS SHADE:

It’s a weaponized umbrella, made out of fancy arcane metals. It can be a shield or a staff, you can deflect one projectile with a successful dex save by open it quickly. It also arrest a fall to a gentle descent if held aloft open.

 

Except for there is an evil looking dagger tip at the hilt on this one.

There’s a shortbow in there too.

 

Actually, replace the eyes with the crown of ears. 5in6 to search regarding hyper-hearing (otherwise 1insix par usual), though if the environment is near-silent movement slows to 5′, unless she makes vocalized sounds which would make it 10′. The Umbrella does 1d6 DMG. The bow as well.

 

 

Drawing character sheets on blank pieces of paper is fun as hell, but I figured it was time I got back to the template character sheets I’ve been working on.

So, here they are.

 

This one’s for straight-up by the book Lamentations of the Flame Princess, including the new firearms rules. Brendan has a good quick-reference for them here.

Click the image for a PDF that allows for printing a single A4 size sheet, or two A5 size sheets.

 

If you download it you’ll notice green writing all over the place absolutely everywhere. Jeff Rients wrote an article about, among other things, character sheets being poor at communicating with new players, and I said that you couldn’t design a character sheet that explained everything about itself without making it an abomination.

 

Well, I was right, it’s an abomination, and it doesn’t entirely explain itself, but from my own experience introducing new players to not only LotFP but RPGs as a whole, I think the notes written all over it should make explaining things in that first session a whole lot easier.

Of course if you know what you’re doing just turn off that layer.

 

And this one is a fold-0ver A5 sheet for Cörpathium.

 

If you’re familiar with my house rules you might notice that the new sheet doesn’t have anywhere to note Cataclysm or Faith. That’s because I want to avoid having things on the sheet that would be irrelevant for some players as much as possible, and I make little spellbooks for my Maleficar/Mystic players anyway so they can note it there. And if you don’t make little spellbooks for your players what are you doing?

 

There’s also a bunch of new or tweaked house rules on it, most of them are pretty self-explanatory, but I’ll collect them up in another post later.

 

Tomorrow is adventure/John Waters day with Rose though, so you’ll have to wait.

So after Rasmus killed himself in the death explosion of the soul-stealing swamp rock elf daemon and his son Remus was confined to the Sanatorium due to black ooze infection a sack of gold and xp was sent to Rasmus’ begrudged and estranged daughter Raeleigh, who sighed, bought herself some swords to hit things, and hopped on the next boat to New Feierland.

 

 

And she didn’t even die or anything. Here’s her diary.

 

Read the rest…

I played my first online game by taking a trip to Trent B’s New Feierland, a place every bit as horrible as I’d been told. I loved it.

What follows are the thoughts of Rasmus Carbuncle, Belligerent Soldier of Lost Fortune.

 

 

Well when I came to my senses I was below ground with a bunch of sketchy fellas that seemed to be looking for something, a little nimbly bloke had climbed up to the roof and waved at us when some stitched up dead goatmen fucks came wandering out of the dark.

The prancy magic man next to me cops a javelin through the arm but doesn’t cry much, so I yank it out and stab it in front of us like a pike while he starts waving his arms around. The first dumb dead goatfuck comes charging straight at the pike so while he’s flailing around I behalve him with my horrible blood-rusted claymore, then piss on the shards of his stomped-in skull for good measure. A fella in armour misfires with his fancy-schmancy pistol while another picks up a rock and dusts a goatskull with it, then nimbly little Blixa drops from the roof knife-first and lands in a cloud of broken beastbody.

Javelin boy’s arm-waving stops and the rest of the goatfilth finds themselves caught in some kinda magic web I guess, I don’t know, I don’t traffic with that stuff. We knife them real quiet and head off towards the grumbling roars that started after that useless pistol shot.

 

I pull one of these fellas up and ask for a refresher of just what I’m doing here apart from hitting goats with swords, and he tells me some eye creature is giving the filthy miners bad dreams that makes them not work which is bad. Fair enough.

Little Blixa’s up on the roof again but soon enough there’s sounds like something mighty huge digging its way up from below the tunnel and more of that godawful groany roaring. So we sets up a rope tripline with walrus tallow all smeared over the rocks in front of it while the noise gets louder, and Blixa buries red and blue gems under the stones further into the tunnel like a crazy fuck before climbing back up to the roof.

 

Out of the darkness comes this slimy bulk of god damn rock dragging itself along with its forelegs, staring at us with glowing green eyes and making our trap look powerful stupid. Blixa looks like he’s going to throw up for a second then handwaves something about eyes being bad but I don’t get it. It drags its body over the buried gems and there’s a great fucking explosion, the slimy moss covering it catches fire and it starts running at us and I take a few discrete steps backwards.

Blixa drops from the roof like he’s going to knife it in the face but falls flat on its head with a wet smack, staring into its eyes then sliding off and falling right in the fucking grease we were going to light up.

The fella in the heavy armour and this big Salt Soldier the prancy magic man summoned up start taking swings at the thing between getting smacked away, and rock-thrower Gaffer Grunion sticks with what he knows but passes out as soon as the rock leaves his hand. Okay eyes bad, I get it now. The handy bloke next to me lassos Blixa with a nice silk rope so I grab it and pelt in the opposite direction, which is pretty easy seeing as he’s all greased up.

 

Behind me fireballs are exploding and grown men are soiling their pants, I flip Blixa over and grab every explody gem he has left and stuff it into my ded rat sack.

The big rock sludge fuck is on fire now, stomping around in flaming grease and beating the shit out of the Salt Soldier. I open up my Monkey Skull Snuff Mull and breathe deep, I feel good, this is good, I run at the big dumb rock fuck staring at my feet and hurl my precious rat sack right into its big dumb face. I feel good.

 

 

 

What follows from this point are the thoughts of Remus Carbuncle, in New Feierland to find his father Rasmus.

 

 

 

Well, this place is awful. No one knew where my father had gone except for this dwarf guy and now that we’re here, the people my father had gone with are climbing out of a stinking hole in the ground covered in blood and filth, telling me that my father just saved them by blowing up a flaming rock creature with a stupid amount of exploding gems and dead rats not ten minutes ago. They say the resulting unholy green explosion vapourised one of their friends and a chunk of stalactite took my father’s head clean from his shoulders, leaving his body to slump to the ground in a fountain of blood. I don’t know why they would tell me that.

 

They lead me to his body and I lose it for a minute, screaming at the dark. I take his Monkey Skull Snuff Mull and his Sabatons, still full of warm piss, he would have wanted it this way I think.

They tell me all about the things you can find in this godforsaken hole in the ground and my ears perk up at the Alter of Transmutation, or Transformation, Trans-fuckingsomething and right now I want nothing more than to be something else. They lead me to it and I take a hit of booze for my father, then pour it onto the alter amid my falling tears. My knees go weak and my stomach cramps and I’m rolling around in the caltrops some fuck spread around the alter while I wasn’t looking and I’m vomiting and rolling in the vomit. When I can stand up the only thing that seems different is that looking at light hurts like hell and I want to scratch my eyes out. I hate this place.

 

We go back out into the caves and ignore whatever’s flapping around in the dark and come to a short hall with a barred door. Some stitched abomination is standing inside and the little guy they call Blixa spritzes holy water through the bars which of course makes it start sizzling and throwing itself against the door snapping its teeth. They’re all talking about throwing rocks at it until it dies or wasting crossbow bolts and I tie a rope around the hilt of my sword and start jamming it through the bars until the thing is dead, stupid thing doesn’t even stop throwing itself at the door.

 

When it’s in pieces they find a box in the room that Blixa pries open with a crowbar, he pulls out some axes and a book and some kind of spice pouch and I don’t care.

 

Back out in the caves and then we find a room with a round wooden door standing slightly ajar. The room inside is round too and looks like some kind of lab, with two benches carved right into the floor in the middle.

There’s a grated cabinet towards the back and they all start hitting it with things and fucking up their weapons, but hey the cabinet is slightly dented now so whatever makes you happy.

Blixa climbs up on the roof and I grab a hooked pole from the wall and walk towards the door with this Salt Soldier thing. Next thing I know some miner with pale skin like black-shot marble is pulling himself around the corner with a sack in his hand. The others try to ask him what he’s doing here but that black shit is pulsing and he’s getting closer so I swing at him with my new pole and break myself off a piece.

He screams to his friends of course but then Blixa’s dropped a net on him and I’m stabbing him in the back with swords, but then his friends drag him away and shut the goddamn door on us!

 

They’re yelling something about us stealing their treasure but we haven’t even got anything yet and from the sounds of dropping stones I think they’re trying to brick us in?

We smear oil around the floor and rig up a rope attached to the door, running it around the corner of a bench for leverage, three of these guys yank on it and get the door back open but two of them fall down and seven miners come running into the room, including the prick I sworded in the spine. I lob the rest of my booze right into his face but before I can throw a torch the Salt Soldier topples over and knocks it out of my hand. God damn it.

People are tussling on the floor with these miners and getting black vomit all over them, then Blixa smashes his lantern into the oil and two of the fuckers light up like pyres, so I hook booze boy with my pole and send him staggering into the flames.

 

And right there, when it seems like maybe things aren’t always fucking terrible in this place, right there is where the big guy in all the armour comes swinging through the smoke, misses the miners, and fucking stabs me. If I were to measure how good I feel on a scale of ‘hit points’ right now I would give it a solid none, none hit points. No wonder my dad is dead.

He mumbles an apology and scuttles off and I’m still standing so I charge at the smouldering miners with my sword, hoping for a shishkebab, and what I get is my sword knocked out of my woozy hands and black bile spewed all over my right arm.

The skin is tight and chewing and I’m on the floor, I reach for my poniard to hack off the arm and everything goes dark.

 

I’m cutting off the arm but no matter how much I cut there’s always more arm, and then all the right arms have been cut off but they’re always regrowing and the severed ones crawl up to my mouth and try to climb inside, the hands on the floor detach from their arms and they’re shiny new piles of goo and they tear at my ears and nose and they become goo too and always always I’m cutting and it’s eating and I want to wake up but I’m not asleep but this is a dream but there’s always more arm.

 

When I wake up we’re outside and they’ve amputated my arm to the shoulder, they say there’s still more of the black shit in my shoulder though, it’s spreading towards my face, they’ve tied me up and I have this overwhelming urge to bite something.

They say they’re taking me back to town to find someone that can help me, Blixa says he owes me a blood debt for what my father did, they say they need to lock me up in a box now. That seems reasonable.

 

 

 

 

Remus is now back in New Feierland, locked up in the basement sanatorium of the newly founded Baron Blixa Von Apfelsaft of Barovia and Barovania Center For The Amelioration of Unspeakable Afflictions. Blixa takes his blood debts awful seriously and is spending more money than Remus has seen in his whole shitty life to save him, giving the matriarch healer of the area 10,000gp now and promising another 40,000gp if she’s able to find a cure instead of burning the still-living body as is customary in New Feierland.

When they opened the box it was full of black bile and he was growing a new arm and snapping his teeth, so uh, we’ll see how that goes.

 

 

New Feierland: Utterly Terrible 10/10 Would Play Again.

 

 

Appended Obituary by Trent B:

 

The look on his face makes it wonderful.

 

Like… Pissing into his only nice thing, being a pair of steel boots, whilst not even using his fly correctly and holding a dagger… nothing in that registers as being anything worth any kind of thought or emotion. It’s just exactly what needs to be done. All of it. He’s not even looking. He’s like staring down the shitty road that he is in the middle of, just waiting to finish pissing in his boots so he can put them back on and keep walking.

 

Worst character.

Fold-over Lamentations of the Flame Princess character sheets are available in Penny Pamphlets, as well as some simple henchman sheets for the guy you’re going to be after your current character swells and explodes in vibrant fungal agony.

 

They’re designed to use my house rules, but if you don’t want to use those rules, uh too bad?