This amazing blog post by @riseupcomus was stuck in my head - much like a song, ironically - and this article hopes to build upon the ideas a bit, and make it easy to integrate into non-Tolkien settings. Also, HIS MAJESTY THE WORM is shaping up to be amazing, so go check that out. Image: … Continue reading Songs of Adventure: Using Songs To Boost The Party in Cairn & Block, Dodge, Parry
I've been hard at work on Block, Dodge, Parry; a classless, levelless fantasy adventure RPG, which combines many of the ideas I've written about on this blog into one coherent system. Besides bundling those ideas, it expands upon them, making for a toolkit of procedures that hopefully spark your imagination. But... what's actually in it? … Continue reading Coming Soon: Block, Dodge, Parry
I'm a simple man - Netflix's Edgerunners has rekindled my interest in the Cyberpunk aesthetic (though I've loved and revisited it many times already over the last decade). Here are a few byte-sized ideas I put together for running something Cyberpunky in Into The Odd, Electric Bastionland, Cairn and similar games. Image: Cyborg Yakuza self-tuning … Continue reading Various Cyberpunk Musings for Into The Odd-Style Games
I came across Cyber by Oskar Åšwida recently, a really neat cyberpunk version of Cairn. Since I've been playing a lot of Cyberpunk 2077 recently, and since I already made some firearms rules in the past and since I already made some new weapon tags for fantasy Into The Odd/Electric Bastionland/Cairn, I figured I'd combine … Continue reading Locked & Loaded: More Firearms for Modern Into The Odd & Similar games
📖 This post is an expansion on my previous post.Read Mass Combat: Expanding the Army Rating system from Barbarians of Lemuria for the full context! Image credit: Casualty of War by Camille Sule I've added a casualty calculator to my original worksheet. This means you can work rising casualties into your calculation! In this case, … Continue reading Mass Combat Expansion: Casualties
My drafts are filled with posts about mass combat systems. There are various ideas I really like (such as an infantry>cavalry>archery counter triangle, moving troops, Into the Odd warbands etc. etc.), but I can't really get them to stick together in a way that I liked. That's when I gave the Army Rating system from … Continue reading Mass Combat: Expanding the Army Rating system from Barbarians of Lemuria
I'm a big fan of Emmy Allen's Duels in OSR rules, so I made a small adaption for it to suit a game I'm running at the moment. Image: Senat by Pascal Quidault I also love OSR tendencies to just leave out any dialogue- or social stats & mechanics, leaving it to the actual players … Continue reading Hostile Negotiations: A Conversational System for Into The Odd/Cairn
This is an attempt to bring the risk-management decisions of my Dark Souls inspired combat to a more contemporary form of fisticuffs. Be it for Old West, modern-day, cyberpunk, or sci-fi type adventures, I hope these rules give you some bang for your buck (it helps that it's free!) Image: Oscillator by Kevin Moran What … Continue reading There Was A Firefight: Gunfighting Rules for Into the Odd/Electric Bastionland/Cairn
Image credits: Merciless by Vlad Marica I've started playtesting my aforementioned Dodge, Block & Parry system! I've tied it into the Weapon system as well, and it's working quite good, so far! Design Notes Fight back makes combat even more lethal, by allowing for essentially a double attack (attacking in response to the enemy => … Continue reading Dodging, Blocking & Parrying in Practice
Samuel Bennett of Tales of the Lunar Lands wrote two neat blog posts about bar brawls in TTRPGs. I couldn't agree more with "In a way, bar brawls could be considered a sort of mini-sandbox" - so here are some mechanics I personally use to spice up tavern-centered conflict! These rules are pretty generic, and … Continue reading Old School Fisticuffs: Bar Brawls in D&D 5e and OSR RPGs
