Time in Life Without Death, A Dark Souls + GLOG Mash up

Quick Summery of the Setting in Life Without Death

Death has vanished, he's not dead, he's just somewhere else, not doing his job and no one knows where he went or what happened.

Since the dead souls have no where to go they come back to life. Common folk who die once or twice loose their minds and turn into monsters, some people like soldiers or adventurers have died many times and kept themselves sane, some people never die but they still loose their mind.

The Gods didn't kill each other, they just beat each other too a pulp and they're way to weak to do anything, even heal themselves. Their followers would be ashamed to see them now.

Civilization has completely fallen. This is post apocalyptic fantasy.

The setting and game is derived from GLOG and Dark Souls, with heavy inspiration from a YouTube series called The Sunfall Cycle.


Time

In Life After Death there are 4 units of time.

Cycles: A cycle is 10 turns. When a cycle has finished, two things happen:

       1. Everyone that has died comes back to life

       2. Monsters that didn’t die in the last cycle now double their Hit Points, Bonus to Hit, and Damage. All enemies return to normal after the party rests at a shrine.

Turns: Each turn is 10 minutes. A fight always takes a turn to not only fight, but also to rest/clean up after it. Short rests also take a turn.

Rounds: Each round is 3 phases

Phases: During combat, there are 3 blocks of time, each called a phase. At the beginning of each round of combat each character makes an initiative roll, success indicates that the player will act in the 1st phase. The enemies act on the 2nd phase. And the rest of the players who failed their initiative roll act on the 3rd phase. In other words, if you succeed your initiative roll, you go before your enemies, if you fail, you go after them, initiative rolls are repeated after each round.



I also made a sheet to help track time.

As the turns go on mark the bubbles. When players use a shrine you can put a checkmark by the line. If you want to note things like torches or other things that will only last a certain amount of turns you can mark them in the boxes below the bubbles. (BTW the reason it's off centered is to make it easy to hole punch.)


Let's Talk about Time

So tracking time and punishing players for taking time is common in OSR games. Usually if players are in a dungeon the Referee might make a random encounter roll after a certain amount of time has passed.

With the system now, there can not only be a chance of a fight, but it's inevitable that the longer players travel without resting then things will get much harder.

Dark Souls always made the player wonder if they should return to rest or if they should continue onward. If they rest they'll have to go through the same trials and start over. But now there's another complication to this formula which is about applying a constant pressure to the party. Hopefully this will encourage more creativity since failed actions might take a turn to accomplish, so coming up with solutions to problems that don't require dice rolls will be advantages. But I haven't play tested any of this yet so who knows.

I have an explanation of what happened to Death, I wont reveal it just yet though, I think I'll make a post dedicated to several scenarios on what happened to Death in the future. But the reason I bring this up is because I don't have an explanation of why enemies get stronger after each cycle. I'm trying to put gameplay first above everything else, so even if I can't come up with a narrative answer, if it works for the game then that's the only reason it needs to stay. I think if this isn't a feature, then what needs to be added on is something similar to hollowing, where death can have lasting repercussions even after visiting a shrine. I just really want there to be a time pressure. But maybe in play testing things will change, this is all just theory, and I'm not even a game designer.

Bosses and NPC's in Dark Souls don't come back to life when they die, but I don't think that will inherently be true in Life After Death. Sometimes people will die like normal, maybe they died and came back 100 times before, this was just there last go at life. Maybe that boss that's guarding the gate decided to do something else with it's life, and the becomes an NPC. Maybe there will be other NPC adventuring groups that can bother the players death after death.

One last thing. Time is weird. When the God of time can't do his job, that just messes everything up. For example, if players find an NPC somewhere near a shrine, then go to the shrine and back to their hub world and quickly come back, that NPC could be long gone. Time is weird. Also it could be fun if you have a new player entering the group to tell them some details about the dungeon/area that the party doesn't know yet, how do they know this? Well maybe they stumbled in to this new party from a different time line. Things gets weird when there's not a God to make sure paradoxes don't happen.

GLOG Class: Priest

For the past couple of months I've been working on my own version of GLOG but set in a Dark Souls-esque universe which I'm calling Life After Death.

I won't go too much into the details but here's what you need to know to understand the priest class.

The Gods are dead. But God's don't really die. They are really just personifications of ideas, ideals, and concepts. From law, insects, and boomerangs there was a God for everything. But dead Gods don't vanish, their energy pools together in the heavens.

Men who tap into the cosmic energy of dead Gods are called priests. People who do this never know what powers they'll unlock, it's as if you put 100 different drinks into a heterogeneous mixture and poured out a cupful of it, everyone will get a different combination of Godly power.

Also just so you know, a turn is 10 minutes, and after 10 turns the world resets and monsters come back to life. This is my own completely original idea.

So here's the actual class.

The class was inspired by Daniel Sell's post called An Infinity of Gods.

Almost all of the abilities were stolen from that post but I did have to rewrite most of them and invent some new ones.

I'm not 100% happy with the class. While I like the idea and many of the powers I wish I could come up with more and better, ideas.

For example, 651 is Knots. It's a very passive ability that may not come up all that often.

I would prefer that all the abilities were active and required creativity. But there's 216 options, it's hard to come up with that many unique and fun powers. I've worked on this project for weeks now and I think it's good enough for now, and I want to work on other stuff so hopefully my players will like it when they see it.

Why does this class exist?

Well for one seeing Mr. Sell's blog post inspired the whole idea of the Gods are dead and priests are simply tapping into their leftover strength. I really like the idea thematically and I wanted it to be a codified game mechanic.

This is also why I didn't use another already made Cleric/Priest class. They don't fit with the setting.

GLOG Class: Drunken Master

nJoo

Drunken Master HD:1d8

Starting Skill, roll 1d6: 1-2 [Drunk], 3-4 [Soldier], 5-6 [Sailor]

Starting Equipment: Leather Armor, Medium Weapon, 4 Bottles of Ale

Drunk


1. You were a lowlife who collected endless tabs to buy endless drinks. Start with a bad sense of money and a free Liquor

2. You were a gladiator who usually spent all their money on drinks, but one day forgot to not get drunk before a fight. Start with 5sp for winning that fight drunk.

3. You were the owner of a bar a strange person agreed to teach you to fight, but only if both of you were drunk. Start with a bar which is a continent away but may mail you quality drinks each time you level up.

4. You have been searching for the greatest alcoholic beverage your entire life. Start with a dream of finding it and 3 extra days of rations.

5. You participated in fight clubs and learned to deal with the pain by getting drunk. Your hands now deal equivalent damage of 2 handing a medium weapon.

6. You were a member of priest order. It was really an excuse to get money out of people and buy drinks. Start with a priest medallion and if you pout your eyes and and speak well you might be able to squeeze some copper pieces from people.


Soldier

1.You served in the army and became a drunkard, you start with an extra 5sp from your time in battle.

2. You commandeered a lot of alcohol while stationed on the border. You always know when a merchant is holding out some merchandise from you.

3. When splitting the loot from a raid you were originally granted 1gp, but your friend was given a wonderful bottle of liquor, they offered a trade and you made the right decision. Start with an extra bottle of liquor.

4. You impressed your commander when you entered battle while drunk and survived. Your commander secured you a hefty bonus of 5sp for this.

5. You were given orders to locate and kill a local hedge witch, while searching in their cottage you drank what you thought would be a nice beverage but was actually enchanted beer. Every morning you start with 1 drunkenness point.

6. You learned how to be drunk and disguise it from your superiors while deployed. Start with a sense of laziness and start with the skill “Hidden Drunk”


Sailor

1. You were skilled in sneaking into warehouses and stealing their rum. Start with the “Stealth” skill and drunkenness points do not impact your stealth checks.

2. You went too far while drunk one night. You made out with the captains lockbox. You have no clue what’s in it but you know it’s incredibly difficult to open and if attempted to be opened improperly it will never open again. Plus your captain is still looking for you.

3. Your crew were all killed by mermaids who pulled everyone except you down into the ocean. You don’t really remember it much because you were downing your 10th bottle of rum at the time.

4. During an assault on an oceanic fort things were going well. Especially when you snuck away from the fighting and into the storage room to drink all their rum. Get a +1 to all rolls when you leave your allies to do your own thing while they fight the enemy.

5. You learned that the best way to survive when boarding another ship was to stay back near your bow. Start with a bow and a bundle of arrows, you also your drunkenness points do not impact your ranged attacks

6. You helped the captain navigate dangerous waters and find the treasure chest marked with an X on the map. He gave you an extra 5sp for your efforts.




Archetypes
A. Drunk Fighting, Pain Killers
B. Beer Goggles
C. This Stuff is like Magic
D. Burp of Burps, Your Brain’s made out of this Stuff




Drunk Fighting

The normal penalties to being drunk no longer apply to melee attacks but it’s still applied normally to everything else.

Pain Killers

Each point of drunkenness increases your HP by 1, to a maximum of 4. You can still have more than 4 points of drunkenness. This can boost your HP above 20.

Beer Goggles

Before making an attack roll you can choose to endure the normal penalties of being drunk but you also get to add an amount of damage equal to your drunkenness. The penalty to hit and the boost to damage can only be a minimum/maximum of -4 and +4 respectively.

For example: If you have 5 drunkenness points, and you activate Beer Goggles, you take a -4 to hit, and a +4 to damage. 

For example: If you have 3 drunkenness points, and you activate Beer Goggles, you take a -3 to hit, and a +3 to damage.
This Stuff is like Magic

When you take a long lunch to restore HP you can choose to expel drunkenness points up to your level and regain that much HP, on top of the usual recovery during a long lunch.

The Burp of Burps

As an action you can choose to expel an amount of drunkenness of your choosing into the ultimate burp. This is a cone shape with a range of 30ft. It deals damage equal to the drunkenness points expelled to a maximum of 4.

Your Brain’s made out of this Stuff

Drunkenness points no longer detracts from your initiative roles.

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I like this class because it introduces a whole new resource for the player to track.

I'm a little concerned that the abilities Pain Killers and Beer Goggles aren't good enough but overall I like the class and making the names for the abilities was fun.

Downtime Activities

Downtime Activities

During an adventurer’s downtime, the time between sessions, the adventurer receives one Downtime Action. This action can be spent in a number of ways:

Bank
Level: 1 (Next: 30 sp)
The bank can hold up to 5 encumbrance for all adventurers to store and take from.

Level 2 Option

• The bank can hold up to 10 encumbrance slots

Fitness Training
Osker Shaw, Captain of the Guard
Oplehan Barracks
Level: 1 (Next: 30 sp)
Spend your Downtime Action training with the Captain of the Guard, Frank Busk.

• Spend 25cp to gain a Fitness Training Die (d4). You can spend this die at any time in the next adventure on any Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution check, saving throw, or skill use.

Level 2 Options

• Free Fitness Die
• Pay for 2 Fitness Dice

Pray to the Gods
Demas Jodi, Head Priest of the Church
Church
Level: 1 (Next: 30 sp)
Spend your Downtime Action to pray and ask for protection.

• Spend 25 cp to gain a Prayer Die (d4). You can spend this die before being attacked to induce a penalty to the attacker equal to the result of the Prayer die.

Level 2 Options

• Free Prayer Die
• Hold an extra point of inspiration for the session.

Mental Training
Decimes Nash, Local Thaumaturge
Decimes' Library
Level 1 (Next: 30 sp)
Spend your Downtime Action to study with Decimes in his library.

• Spend 25 cp to gain a Study Die (d4). You can spend this die at any time in the next adventure on any Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma check, saving throw, or skill use.

Level 2 Options

• Free Study Die
• Pay for 2 Study dice

Improve Oplehan

Spend money building an improvement for Emall. Pay the cost to establish a new town feature or level up and existing town feature. The town feature will be usable for all future downtime actions.

Available Improvements:

Alchemist (30 sp)
Kellan Hall, Alchemist

Improving the alchemist allow for people to spend their Downtime Action to receive a free poison and allows the purchase of a potion of deep sleep or poison.

Husbandry (30 sp)
Oswald Slade

Will allow for travelers to rent horses, rather than having to buy them.


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Inspired by

http://rollplaywestmarches.wikia.com/wiki/Downtime

Which are fantastic rules that I've used and have modified for years now.

Crafting magic Items Part I

As I'm in the process of setting up a GLOG game, I've been working on some of the classes to make them more to my liking. My current project is making rules for crafting magic items, which will only be usable by wizards.

Why?

1. It provides another money sink for all the players to loot.

2. I think it'll be fun to use.

3. Making this is fun.

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I was heavily inspired by the magic crafting rules found in Dungeon Crawl Classics, I like the idea of rolling on a table to make the magic items. I have some ideas on that exactly, but for right now I have the actual enchantments.

There are 3 types of enchantments, which are rolled randomly on to determine the magical properties of a weapon.

I haven't finished working out the details for each one, but I have enough for now. Beside each entry is some type of component. I think it will be possible to choose the enchantments as long as you can afford a higher cost and have the component.

But regardless here's what I have:

Type I Power Table

1. Wielder gains darkvision, 30ft for 6 turn, 1 charge, recharge at night. (eyes of a nocturnal animal)

2. Soaks up blood of victims, can hold up to 3 peoples worth of blood. ( the heart of a victim of murder)

3. Each day, on a 1 in 6, the wielder doesn’t need to consume a ration. (A creature killed while hibernating.

4. Until you attempt to attack, the weapon is invisible. (A jar of someone's last breath)

5. Weapons turns into 30 ft of rope, can change on verbal command/bonus action. (A fine made rope)

6. Telepathically communicate with an ally who speaks your language that you can see. (a pickled brain and tongue.

7. The weapon rattles when a lie is told nearby. (bones of a priest)

8. Expand critical hit range by 1 point. (2 eyes)

9.The weapon takes no encumbrance slots. (Lungs of a bird)

10. Increase fatal wound endurance by 1 (scalp of a dwarf)

11. Can crawl through narrow spaces (tail of a rat)

12. Freeze a foot of water as an action ( some ocean water)

13. The weapon can be used to pick locks. (Fingers of a thief)

14. The weapon can return on command. (Heart of a dog)

15.The weapon can deal non-lethal damage without penalty (bruised skin)

16. Roll initiative like normal when surprised. (ears of deaf man)

17. Can fall up to 100 ft without taking fall damage. (paws of a cat)

18. If the weapon is placed in a river, it will swim upstream, even up a waterfall. Can carry up to 2 characters with it. (a live fish)

19. Characters in contact with the weapon can not make sounds (the left eye of an elf)


20. The weapon can open a small pocket dimension which can hold 1 encumbrance. (a pouch with 100 sp)





Type II Power Table

1. When you deal max damage , you heal 1d4 hp ( 3 live people)

2. Deal 1d4 shock damage extra shock damage on a successful hit, deal 2d4 if the target is soaking wet or wearing metal armor. (a trapped lighting bolt)

3. Create a 30ft cloud of darkness that only you can see through. Charged (a trapped cloud)

4. Cause a creature to hear a sound centered from anywhere within 60ft. The sound won't cause any damage. Creatures can make a saving throw to realize the effect is simply in their head. But only if they actually attempt to disbelieve. Charged. ( The brain of a drugged person)

5. Travel at 2x speed for 1 turn. Charged (Legs of a creature running as fast as it could when it died)

6. After a successful melee attack, you can choose to leave your weapon in the enemy to freeze them in place. Only works on enemies that have hit dice lower or equal to your level. (cup of water from an ice elemental)

7. For 1 turn, the wielder of the weapon can sprout wings and fly 30 ft per round. (The spell levitate)

8. The weapon can turn into a horse and requires no food. The horse is effective at traversing long distances, and can travel 36 miles per day when not bearing a heavy load. If the horse dies, then the weapon loses its magic until it is recharged(The hide of a magical or a great horse)

9. The wielder of the weapon always goes befores the enemies in initiative except when surprised. (The brain of a very intelligent creature)

10. Become invisible, except while wearing any apparel or equipment other than the weapon. (right eye of a druid)


Table III Power Table

1. Invisibility (right eye of an archdruid)

2. Hold still, the object remains perfectly in place relative to its surroundings. (the brain of a powerful wizard placed in the skull of a devout priest)

3. Creatures must make a saving throw to attack the wielder. (A powerful disease spirit)

4. Teleport (teardrops of the moon, mixed with teardrops of the sun)

5. Suspend time for 1d4 rounds, charged (a live person who is at least 100 year old).

6. The weapon turns into a pegasus, allowing 2 creatures to travel 48 miles a day while not bearing a heavy load. Otherwise, it can carry far more than a normal horse and is more durable. If the pegasus dies, the weapon loses its magic, requiring another enchantment. (Horn of a unicorn)

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You may notice the need for the eyes of druids and archdruids, that comes from here.


I also eventually will expand the charge mechanic on the weapons. I think some of the items will not only be limited by their amount of charges, but also how to recharge them. More powerful items probably require some process to recharge whereas weaker items may just recharge at dawn.