Inevitable Janky Random Hit Location Chart Post

The Bright Spans campaign is almost here! So I suppose I ought to get some of the house-rules down that I want to use. 

So, I went back and forth on whether or not I was going to add a critical hit chart, or a Death & Dismemberment chart, or some other random table in this vein that will probably mainly just slow down the game heh. I wasn't going to, but thought "What use are the players going to get out of a Ring of Regeneration if they have all of their bits intact?!" Also, that spell. (The spell even has a sweet picture showing the process in the rulebook.) 

But when to use it. I don't want to be having limbs heaved off at every little confrontation. That would make for a tonal shift to slapstick horror that I think I'll just avoid. For now. Anyhow, I also have been thinking about what to do when the PCs drop below zero, and have some ideas about that. But first:

 

 

1. ground stuff (d2 foot, ankle)  G   dex
   
2. knee                                    O   luck
   
3. thigh                                     B   hps
   
4. groin                                     B   con
   
5. jaw-face                               O   cha  
   

1. skull                                           int
   
2. forehead                                     spell
   
3. face brutality (d4 eyes, eye, nose, mouth) cha
   
4. side-face (d2 jaw, ear)               int
   
5. lower head-face (d2 upper neck, ear) cha
   
   
6. neck                                          death
   
7. neck                                          wis
   
8. shoulder rt                                 wand
   
9. shoulder left                              wand
   
10. hand lead                                   str
    
    
11. chest right                                 hps
    
12. chest left                                   wis
    
13. ribs/plexus                                cha
    
14. side/kidney shot                        stone
    
15. lower ribs                                  hps
    
    
16. guts right                                   stone
    
17. guts left                                     stone
    
18. groin                                          con
    
19. upper hip                                   str
    
20. hand defensive                          dex
    
    
21. bicep                                          str
    
22. elbow                                         wis
    
23. forearm rt                                   spell
    
24. forearm left                                breath
    
25. wrist/hand                                  int                                        
    
    
26. thigh right                                  con
    
27. thigh left                                    int
    
28. knee                                           dex
    
29. calf                                             wis
    
30. ground stuff (d2 foot, ankle)         breath
    

    26. crown of head   G                      death

    27. neck                 I                         luck

    28. shoulder          A                        str

    29. leg?!                N                        dex

    30. both legs?!      T                         con

 

Alright is this thing working now? Wow formatting weird numbering tables is special. Okay. Good first run. I think we can all figure out what the extra blocks are for. What I don't have on there yet is the Sweet Scars that go along with the hit locations. *Note to future self to get on that* 

And note the sweet d30-like table itself. Ahh the king of the dice that d30. Truly magnificent. My first real DM, a few years older than me, running a goofy-ass overpowered game of AD&D with me and another friend had one. It was green with white numbers, and the only thing I remember him using it with was his custom made d30 hit chart. Now, that's nothing ground breaking, but at the time (and obviously to this day) it made a definite impression on me, and so that chart always wants to creep into the games I run and the games I have made. 

 

Death Saves 

exactly 0 hps: gain a Sweet Scar. Save vs. Death or get staggered (probably just stumble about for 1d6 rounds -CON modifier, min 1. Jeez I want to make it "As Confusion spell," but I ain't sure yet.)

-1 to -3 hps: staggered. Save vs. Death or keel over in 1d6+CON rounds.

-4 to -9 hps: Save vs. Death or, well, dead. Otherwise, KO'd 1d6 rounds-CON modifier, min 1, then come-to with 1 hp. 

-10 hps: maybe one day we'll see you at the Plains of Fallen Petals.

🠆 HELMS! if it makes sense at all, take +1 to Saves, ±1 bonus to rounds in the Death Saves above (whichever is beneficial), but you are easier to be flanked; any two assailants from the side or back gain +2 to hit against you.

So that's exciting! Oh wait, it's weird if you know you can get to Felipe Fouchard the fighter and shove some booze or healing salve down his throat right in the nick of time. So, I am thinking, the player rolls and the dice go under the Witch's Cauldron (a rubber cauldron we usually keep spare dice sets piled in) and I look, then reveal! at the appropriate dramatic time! (Like when poor Felipe expires from his wounds since no one had the wherewithal to check on his crazy head-wound or whatnot.) 

 

[I went back and forth quite a bit on whether or not -4 to -9 should be "KO'd, bleeding 1 hp/round." So, obviously at -10 the character would expire. If...if...the rolls are not hidden, I will probably enact that, but for now....] 

And speaking of crazy head-wounds: we'll want to know where the owies are coming from, right? So, that's when the super-nifty hit-chart will be consulted. Then, Patty Piety the cleric will be able to see at a glance that the stuff coming from Felipe's head might just indicate a critical need of divine, or at least first-aidy, assistance. Maybe it will be a pain in my ass, but maybe it will be mildly interesting to find out where the character took their gruesome injury that nearly felled them. Either way, that'll give them something to think about when their characters get to negative hps, and can say "This scar is from that one time...."

Late At Night in March

I don't know if I should record the moment: crisp, cold, sweet apple slices; psychedelic desert rock from some video channel on in the background; a slight ache in the hinge of my jaw; the oldest cat sleeping next to me, looking scruffy and dirty and tired; an annoyance about the upcoming week since my work decided to schedule back-to-back-to-back meetings in what is effectively the middle of my night. The last one is the one that pertains to anything that might fall off into this blog really, because those meetings are wiping out the time that my friends and I get together for our mostly weekly RPG session. 

The Symbaroum game I have been running is wrapping up, and in fact, Wednesday was supposed to be the last game in that little arc we've run through. And after that last game the plan has been to start something new, a setting I've been working on fairly consistently for a while, lesse .... 

            6/28                   Defeat All Wizards

• Fire + Ice. but gawd think p a name
• some Wizrd stopped planetary wobble (why?) (head of a bunch)
• encroaching DESERT from So
                       ICE from N
• Small band of humanity
  🠆reason for ambivalence to WIZRDS; saving
           humanity but caused
     cataclysm
  

              Orbis ?

...and then a list of names that I know are informed by words for "The World" in different languages. Wow wow since June, though I started thinking about it earlier; that's just what is in my groovy Field Notes dot graph notebook. In the meantime, I developed Angelcasters a bit (powerful souls at the end of time casting back to retrieve Words of the Name (of "God") to probably maybe save the Universe), made Tourism Bureau (a hack of 0e Mothership that is basically Roadside Picnic without being Stalker. heh), and continued to build out my original game-world Tellas a bit to incorporate not-Britain for this Symabroum game that's now wrapping up. 

But, throughout this time, DAW was percolating in the back of my head. And one of the big conceits from the beginning was the idea of these Wizards dueling, with rules of engagement perhaps, or at least common terms of conflict, to increase their power and knowledge by the OG way: embiggening up their spell books. Along with this was an increasing feeling of over-saturation of roll-under mechanics, and a desire to roll some dice! My game Zeroturn is roll-under, I suppose Mothership is roll-under (I mean percentage, right?), and Symbaroum is all player facing roll-under. With all of that, and as we've gone into 2024, the realization that D&D is doing it's Golden anniversary, the answer was clear. Get back to the Old-School D&D. 

So, this will be this, and that this is to blather on about my OSD&D game. My first attempt at bloggery had a few things that I'd like to save, so those will be reposted here I think. I may even *gasp* edit them. Hah, yeah right. If I manage to keep making bloggy-bits, I'm sure other game things will crop up, other RPGs perhaps, my own half-assed attempts at mechanics or mostly completed systems, but we'll see. If I can get some of the background about The Bright Spans down, I'll be pleased, since I can just direct my players to the relevant info, instead of looking them square in the eye, and spouting LORE when we should be PLAYING! If I can get some background down about my leetle Universe, maybe someone will derive some vague amusement from it, though I have serious doubts anyone reads these things (much less any notion that mine will be read) about personal game-world ramblings and notes.

Signing off with "Don Macello - Disappear " playing me out, trying not to be irked about getting nothing done in the next few days, and the nothings that have been done since the start, and looking very much forward to the two groups that will be wandering my D&D game in the upcoming weeks, and thinking I need some bubble water, and thinking it'd be cool to invite some imagined You to my game, and going to go pet a cat.