A Challenge: Your own Knock!

So, I think anybody who may stumble across this blog will know, at least in passing, of the absolutely incredible hobby magazine of Knock! by the Merry Mushmen. 

I have all of the issues and am consistently delighted by it. It is simply an aesthetic pleasure to page through after a long day or simply when looking for inspiration. Some people find it too art-punky. 

And yet there are posts formative to my experience of blog-surfing that I miss. These may be posts from ancient dead blogs or a genius theory post from the start of a now entirely depraved blog. Things which you remember stumbling upon and have bookmarked, ideas which you still use, concepts which you still hold central to your thinking.

I have plenty of these I do not want to disappear into the realm of idle deletion or frank forgetfulness. I want to possess these posts as a personal act of preservation. The internet is fantastic as a library or as an indexing system, but it is absolutely terrible as a preservation medium - to that I would prefer to turn to clay or stone but we do not have printers for those mediums (at least none that are immediately accessible to me.)   

What I do have is paper and a printer. 

We easily acknowledge and then move on from the fact that the printing press was and still is an absolutely in-fucking-credible piece of technology. We should use it more, and learn to be more distinguishing with its use. 

So I think I have listed the basic elements of my challenge. Go forth, find those blog posts and think pieces and print them in the act of preservation of your Old-School Renaissance. I don't care how you bind them, or in what format you print them. I am using a lever-arch file and printing them whole from the blogs with headers and footers. Make a table of contents or organize it by number of letters in the first word. Draw, write, note on these printed posts. 

Just do it in the act of preservation. Make it so that a child in the future can find these pages, know why they have been printed, and then dive into what you loved about this niche-of-a-niche of a hobby. Make it so it can be donated to a historian or museum, and make it for yourself.  

This is obviously, a quite personal endeavor for those who do want to take up this challenge. I do not expect there to be tables of contents posted which list notable posts as a form of in-group signalling (in fact if you have all of Knock! why would you). This should be yours.  

Edit: I wrote this idly and with a great vision in mind - I now realise that I have made a mistake, and my eyes are too big for my stomach, and the blogs keep having links which have links which have links which have links and I need to see it all and tabs are increasing exponentially fuck. 

forget everything you know and play a game.

I feel swamped. I have so much to read, to play, to analyse, to steal from, to collate, to collect, to admire, to critique. 

Troika!OSEB/XWorldWithoutNumberGodboundScarletHeroesDungeonWorldStarsWithoutNumberElectricBastionlandHeartseekerMorkBorgMausritterIntoTheOddFKRStarFrontieersKnaveTypewriterFantasyMazeRatsGammaWorldWarlock!TekumelGLoGFightingFantasyLabyrinthLordOtherDustCallofCthuluCthuluDarkIronsworn5e4ee3.5eAD&DOD&DChainmailWhiteHackBlackHackMachiattoMonstersTunnelGoonsPbtAFatePathfinderPF2eIndexCardRPGTravellerRuneQuestAnyPlanetIsEarthWeirdNorthDungeonCrawlClassicsWarhammerFantasyRPGMesserspielShadowrunFiveTorchesDeepOffWhiteCubeWhiteBoxFantasySwords&WizardryLamentationsoftheFlamePrincessBestLeftBuriedMothershipNumaBasicFantasySpearsoftheDawnWolvesofGodPariahandandandandandandandandandetcetcetcetcetc

Let's be clear. The best games have been played with nothing but a crappy rulebook, half-understood principles, and some dice. A match was lit in the dark room of Pen & Paper Roleplaying and revealed majesties you still struggle to comprehend. 

All you love was borne from stumbling in the half dark - until, slowly, you began to understand a shape of things. And now you are bored, glutted with syrups and processed mulch. 

Forget all of it. The assumptions, loves, stories and hates. Throw it all away. 

Pick up a book, get some friends, a place, paper, pencils, some dice

and play.

Many Bubbling Pots

Plebs: Troika and EB

 

So I've been half working on a hack for Troika and Electric Bastionland (initially EB, but I figured I could just use Troika as well) called SPQR or Plebs. A humorous romp through the city of Ancient Imperial Rome. Supposed to be simultaneously anachronistic and also educational for the enterprising Referee and player. It will include two books, one for use with EB and the other for use with Troika. It'll include a simple pointcrawl map of Imperial Rome, with random tables to fill in black spaces on the map, as well as plot or hook tables. Thinking of making a Roman Bath adventure specifically tied to making connections, and getting jobs. Inspirations include; Monty Python The Life of Brian (Film), Horrible Histories - the Rotton Romans (Books) Blackadder (Series), Rome (Drama Series) and Plebs (Sitcom). 

Δv

from Omnilingual by H. Beam Piper

  

You might know that I'm working on a SpaceKnave hack called Δv. It's bubbling nicely along, but I've realised (after designing a whole subsystem completely separate from Knave) that there are so many Spaceship subsystems out there that you could just pick and choose and get on with it. Look at Stars Without Number or White Dwarf or just wing it, seriously. 

That being said, this spaceship subsystem is looking interesting to play as part of a caravanserai space trader game. Each player has his own ship and characters and they hop around looking for deals or danger. 

I'll probably publish the two together for a cost, and publish the spaceship rules separately as PWYW for exactly those groups who have a SF game but no spaceship rules.

FKR

I've been hanging out in the FKR discord, mostly lurking, and have found the "any book is your sourcebook" approach really, really fun. It's very obvious that FKR is a re-discovering of the joy of childlike make believe, as adults. Except it is far more structured and has a ton more game design philosophy behind it. I loved the Free Kriegspiel Revolution tag, and it made me immediately want to make something for a setting I've always wanted to play in - the Europe of Scott Westerfield's Leviathan. So I made it. Quickly sketched out a character creation process and put it up. Obviously I have no rights to the setting, but consider this a type of fanart. 

enter a biopunk, dieselpunk 1914...

Studies alongside Tabletop Adventure Games

Of course, among all of this I have my studies. It's long, a cross-country marathon at this point but ultimately worthwhile. Balancing my love of the Tabletop Adventure Game with work is one ongoing.

That odd Troika! collection. 

Some time ago I put together an odd collection of backgrounds for Troika! Daniel Sell's excellent re-imagining of Advanced Fighting Fantasy. As I have mentioned previously it is an absolute pleasure to knock out one or two backgrounds when you're bored, and recently I've done so again. Observe... 

 

Maybe I'll playtest them and publish them on my itch page, maybe I'll make a whole new set for my Basic Fantasy game tentatively referred to as Typewriter Fantasy

Mausritter

I've been playing a game of Mausritter, and although I had some drop-outs due to expectations of a heavier system, it has been rather fun! I have yet to get my head around mixing the Sword & Sorcery with...animals? It's a bit whimsical, but nonetheless I can certainly see the vast potential of it. 

I am resolved to make a list of creatures I like, and make them terrifying or interesting by just reading what they do. Tim Kask in his Curmudgeon in the Cellar series has pointed out how the tendency of creating new strange beasts for early TSR AD&D tended to make an unidentifiable slurry of same-feeling monsters. He points out that the animal world has tricks and tactics which are terrifying if used on those adventurers unfamiliar with them.

A Tabletop Fantasy Adventure Game

I truly have tried my best to plan some kind of OSR system for Tiroeth. It has so far been a little bit of a continual dipping of toes in water. I look at stripping down Scarlet Heroes and then step away. I look at Old School Essentials, then decide it's too janky for my liking. Overall, Tiroeth has soured it's a pity to say. I'm already looting its corpse for the ripe ideas I had then.

I'm settling on Knave at the moment (and honestly also Troika! but I feel bad stepping back from the acid fantasy it bathes in). I really admire Ben Milton's streamlined work, want to play more of it, and so have been having a wonderful time creating more Knacks for my Knaves. I just wonder which adventure I should start them off on; B2 Keep on the Borderlands? Gatehouse on Cormac's Crag? Castle Xyntillian? or maybe just Tomb of the Serpent Kings?

So many options...

On Planes: Faraway

It was estimated by the grand Magi of Tarr that the exact number of planes is somewhere in the thousands. Lay knowledge claimed only a couple of these, with spurious rumours of others which the Magi doubted exist. 

The thinking has somewhat changed over the past couple years, with disastrous experiments to measure the circumference of the world. The Professors in the Academy have devised a new theory, one which makes stuffy Magi huff and puff in annoyance. 

It is the idea that the Planes are one plane. One, impossibly large, and possibly infinite realm wherein all the possibilities of the material exist. They have named our region the Mundane, but as the urban legend would tell it, after overhearing a confused conversation by students high on Isle Zgentil 'shrooms, dubbed the rest "The Faraway."

Academy Professors are entirely correct. In fact, the Plane teems with life, personalities, and of course, the City. Many names exist for it, all of them entirely correct.

Chaos and Law are the winds, or currents, across this Plane. Think of the hairy ball - Chaos is that which cannot be combed flat. 

The Bureaucracy of Daey

The Nine Dukes rule this massive, impossibly large bureaucracy. An opulent Jade palace with numerous demon accountants and committees, the Dukes living in opulent penthouses. Intensely non-euclidean in the most frustratingly bureaucratic manner possible.

This sprawling administration of souls is a gigantic pagoda, built on an island of amber, harvested from those Aster Whales. Burnt to keep the smell of the putrid acid sea away.

Madness

The maelstrom of thaumic currents. Matter has no say, thoughts have their way, fears come alive. Apprentices not versed in planar elocution find their energies inevitably drawn into it.

Fey and Fell

Reflections of the Mundane, most say, but more probably either the flotsam and jetsam of the Mundane, or that which give the Mundane its depressive or joyful elements. Both are considered extremely dangerous.

They can be understood in many different ways. Where the Mundane is normal growth, Fey is cancer, Fell is wasting. Where the Mundane is a sine curve, Fey is an erratic line which breaks the axes, Fell an imperceptible line infinitely close to the x-axis.

Ahi

Otherwise known as the Eyrie. Home of the celestial Dragons, corresponding to the Elements; Water, Earth, Air, Fire, Metal.

A peak, reaching to the heavens, or so they say.

Elemental Planes

So pure, as to immediately destroy all Material around it. Water is pure, so is Earth. These are not to be messed with. As Madness is Chaos, this is Order.

Apsu

The Deep sea. The primordial. From its depths come those that no man will ever conceive or ever know.

(I like to think of this as the Immer from China Mieville. Just as endless/timeless. Those who travel to Apsu, or the surface thereof, find themselves in a cavern drip-dripping with dark water.)

Kur, or, the Forgetting

Every thing in the Plane has a lifespan, and eventually, these things slowly get eroded over time. If not remembered by those that can see, they are forgotten.

This is where those that are dead or in the process of being forgotten, are. Go deep enough into the earth or sky and you will find yourself there. A grey sky, dust for miles, and ruined buildings with strange people that stumble and grope in dim memory. They eat dust, never to be filled.

The Sky

Where the Mundane is below, Apsu is...somewhere, and the Mundane is "above" them, the sky is above the Mundane. Go far enough out, and things do not make any sense. Suns stand still in the air, stars wink out, air becomes solid. It is possible to travel through here using those ships of the ancients to the other lands, faraway.

The Sun, Moon & Stars

It is frighteningly confusing. In some cases, people land on small balls of earth in an unbreathable climate. In others, the land below winks out, to be replaced by a coloured country. Travel far enough, and you end up back in the Mundane. Are they part of the planes? Are they portals? Gods? In some cases they are, in others not.

Questions

Where the hell are the Gods?

I do not know, but I'd like to think of them as emanations of the Universal Current. Self-Aware (if that is even close to the right term) hyper-consciousnesses, like a 11th dimensional bird swarm.

If they are emanations of the current, then technically they are planes. This does mean you can travel "into" a god.

Ur-Niligal the Archivist

I was bored so I made an Into the Bronze character. Use as you wish.

Ongoing Troika! backrounds

So as you may very well know, I love Troika!

The initial idea was to take my dime-a-dozen/snowflake setting and just use Troika! as a rule base, and add all those juicy ideas I had for the setting from the beginning. Most of the descriptions I had were pretty neat, and perfect for Backgrounds.

I took the original document, copied it, and started editing, and editing...

...and editing.

It started with the Shajzean Elves. I always had a vague idea that they were encrusted with Salt, and it all whirled out of control from there. I'll update this as I make more. It's enormous fun.

Anyway, here you go!

11 Arrixian Merchant 

Excellent Arrix! Heavenly Arrix! Who can compare the lofty guildhouses and murmuring Jenever Bars of the Old Stadt, the perfumed gardens of the Reaches and tenements of the Moulin Quarter!

You are a socialite, a haggler and merchant of this grande floating metropolis! Armed with the word of Council, Gold of the Battle Spheres and an excellent sense of style you swindle your partners and friends, and sail Air Barge to new markets.

Possessions 

1d6 Battle Gold

Gaudy Pantaloons

A Rapier (As Sword)

A license to trade

3 dubious rumours

Skills

2 Swindle

2 Etiquette

2 Evaluate

2 Run

1 Rapier Fighting

1 Air Barge Piloting

1 Spell - Assassin’s Dagger

1 Spell - Amity

Special

The Guildhouses are notorious Rumour-Markets; you yourself take ample compensation of your knowledge of the world.

Once per session you can claim knowledge because of a rumour you bought.

12 Academie Wizard

Those pompous Magi know nothing. Nothing! Your thaumic geometries are flawless, phlogiston dating confirmed by Ray Imp! The calculations triple-checked! How dare they claim it was “derivative” and “chromatically unsound”! 

You’ll show them! You’ll show them all!

Possessions 

1d6 Unfinished Papers

Sword-Cane (As Sword)

Ruby Lorgnettes

Tweed waistcoat (Imbued with 1 Spell - Ward)

A battered grad student (Named...Starts with an S?)

Skills

3 Lecturing

2 Evaluate

2 Mathmology

-2 Etiquette 

2 Spell

2 Spell

1 Spell - Ward (in Waistcoat)

1 Spell - Random

1 Spell - Random

13 Vanara 

You are the contemplative curious, a percipient pragmatist who will always strive to know more. A simian philosopher, weavers of wise words and the caretaker of an estranged wood, seeking to unravel its mystifying machinations. With wisdom as your guide and your weapons your wits, you wander the wooded wastes of Kuru’Jisu following its intangible twists. But, despite all you have learnt, you are aware that enlightenment is infinite and are still ignorant.

Possessions 

A Ribbon-Scroll, stitched with your philosophy (As Whip - |1/1|2/1|3/2|4/4|5/6|6/8|7+/12| )

1d6 Glass-Sap Fruits (as Provisions)

A reason to leave

A prehensile tail

Skills

3 Acrobatics 

3 Climb

2 Awareness 

1 Ribbon Fighting

1 Glass Weaving

1 Second Sight

1 Spell - Thought Vapour

1 Spell - Helping Hands

1 Spell - Sentry

Special

Once per session you may attack a creature within sight with Mind Spike (As Longsword, ignores Armour)

14 Dwaemor Monk

Atop a peak you stand and practice the routines  Llamas and Masters. The icy wind catches your hands and stings your toes but you know the Stillness, the Placidity of Heroes. The eternal doldrum and ever-dripping water of the will. You steel yourself and strike out into the cold, the forge of your heart and body burning bright, melting, subliming the creeping fingers of frost. 

Possessions 

Magnificent Beard, braided in the style of your Order

Bright Gi (as Modest Armour)

1d6 Dwaemor Bread (As Provisions. As Club. Test Luck to consume)

Skills

4 Fist Fighting

3 Acrobatics

2 Awareness

1 Evaluate

1 Inexorable Will

15 Aethalfsfar

Sometimes, when the light catches the desiccated peaks you remember the Shine spires, Uberbaum Gardens and Golden Barges glittering across the heavens. The iridescent Aetheric Rays your people fed into the fabric of creation. 

Now?

This ancient world only remembers you as a half-rumour. Your mundane - their divine. 

Your eyes search the horizon for just one of those baroque vessels…

Possessions

1d6 Plasmic Cores

Crystalic Phaser (as Fusil)

Ruby Lorgnettes

A dear memory of before

1d6 lumps of dream sludge (as provisions)

Aetheric coverings (as modest armour)

Skills

2 Language - Auld Sprache

2 Secret Signs - Aethalfsfar

2 Second Sight

1 Phaser Fighting

1 Remembering

1 Spell - Random

1 Spell - Random

1 Spell - Random

1 Spell - Random

1 Spell - Random

16 Siquian Aristocrat

Long ago Siqui nobles decided to uproot their estates, grow them into walking complexes which now traverse the landscape, scraping at the sky. 

Once, you peered down your ivory nose at the salted flats, scoffed into your ElmWood Liquor, gossiped about court, the latest fashions. 

If it wasn’t for that innocent, simple dalliance.

 

Possessions 

A flask of Elm Wood Liquer 

An unfashionable Peruke

Aster Bough Court Makeup

A set of fine (and worn) clothes

Your tale of Court repudiation

Skills

4 Etiquette 

3 Gossip

2 Scoffing

1 Botany

1 Makeup

1 Second Sight

1 Spell - Babble

21 Salt-Bound

Your people made a deal with the Salinic Demons of the Unterzee for a good life on land, 

Indebted, they became a voracious, violent extension of their master’s hydrophilic appetites.

Possessions 

A voice of your clan Demon

Magnificently Coloured Body Salts (as Modest Armour)

Coral Blade (as Sword)

Shell Shield

Skills

2 Sword Fighting

2 Strength

2 Tracking

1 Language - Unter Salt

1 Cooking

1 Spell - Affix

2 Spell - Leech

22 Air-Pirate Spelunker

Even as you sail into the Bay of Haut, or beside the Cliffs of Baraja, you see signs of ancient civilisation built into the dusty geography. An intrepid spelunker can find bizarre weapons beyond imagining, a smart Core prospector will walk between buildings crusted with sun-bleached coral and filled with gold and art. 

Treasure is here, but so are the other people who want it.

Possessions

A Weapon of your choice

1d6 Plasmic Cores

A map of a local ruin

1d6 gems that change colour in sunlight

Skills

3 Air Barge Piloting

2 Spelunking

2 Evaluate

2 Weapon Fighting

1 Climb

1 Run

1 Sneak

1 Second Sight

1 Secret Signs - Antiquaric

23 Imperial Antiquarian

The Empire fell, but you weren’t there. You came back dusty and proud after your last dig, to find barbarians and weeping widows.

Possessions 

A professional grudge (Please name)

Crossbow with 1d6 Bolts

Your latest find

Prospecting Equipment (A Hammer, Chisel, Shovel and various sizes of brush) 

Skills

3 Digging

2 Evaluate

2 Awareness

2 Secret Signs - Antiquaric

1 Second Sight

1 Sleight of Hand

1 Tunnel Fighting

24 Kthonic Spy

An industrial wasteland - for miles around you see smoking chimney stacks, metal, brick and grime. Below the Masters languish and scheme in gothic elegance.

Above the world builds and creates the weapons for the vicious overlords below. A factory above a palatial honeycomb.

Possessions 

Velare

1d6 Poisons

2d6 deadman’s thumbtacks

Obsidian Blade

A mission to fulfil

Skills

2 Gothic Elegance

2 Poison

2 Disguise

1 Etiquette

1 Sneak

1 Spell - Callous Strike

1 Spell - Invisibility

25 Traveller from Dreq

The photonic libraries  of the Madrassa speak of a journey, of a landing in strange land. Of struggle and sacrifice and rending change

You have been taught the ways the stars move, how glass bends and refracts, what aether  is and how to channel it. In the cool crystal houses under the gong of the desert sun, you were lectured in Kwariz and the notions beyond space, beyond time, beyond the physical.

Armed with eyes that may see beyond, you have left those multihued ruins  - nothing is beyond your ken. 

Possessions 

White Madrassa Robes

3 Dreqi Serum Naartjies (Eaten - As Provisions. Dried, Burnt and Inhaled - As  Spell - True Seeing)

Dreqi Lenses (as Ruby Lorgnette) OR Pythagorean Equipment (+1 Mathmology) OR A Hyperscope (as Star Map of Corda) 

2 stolen Photonic manuscripts (Name the subject for each)

Skills

3 Mathmology

2 Astrology

2 Second Sight

1 Secret Signs - Aethalfsfar

1 Spell - Read Entrails

1 Spell - Astral Reach

1 Spell - Find

26 Paladin of the Sower

Your people have tended the Vale for generations. Raised cattle and goats, farming rye and sorghum. 

So the Sower decreed; your tongue will sow his will in this fecund creation and your scythe will reap the unthinking corruptions.

Possessions 

Sower Scythe (As Longsword)

1d6 Packets of Seeds (As Provisions)

Leather Vestments (Modest Armour)

A childhood toy

Skills

3 Reaping/Scythe Fighting

2 Preaching

1 Healing

2 Spell - Life Line

2 Spell - Exorcism

31 Bureaucrat of the Ministry of Magic Allotments

No society like yours can function without careful checks and balances of every single magical transaction. To send off via the imp tubes triplicate signed form  and ensure that Mrs. Wetton gets her daily cantrip stipend for the month audited.

Possessions
A hefty accounting book (as club)
A ridiculous hat of your post. It is 5 metres per side. Reality will bend itself to accommodate (a 3 m ceiling will grow another 5 m)
A magnificent flowing bureaucrats robe (sleeves as Imp tube network within bureaucratic areas)
1d6 tube imps, saucer eyed and ink stained (4/2/4). One has an important message.
A set of thaumic pens and papers

Skills
4 Bureaucracy
3 Etiquette
3 Mathmology
2 Spell - Assassin's Dagger
1 Secret Signs - Arcane Loopholes
1 Spell - Babble
3 Spell - Zed
2 Spell - Presence
1 Spell - Languages
1 Spell - Befuddle
1 Spell - Random
1 Spell - Random

32 Graffiti Golem

The streets of Troika are awash with ambient magic, and when the poor mudskipper gave you life in his own idiosyncratic style, you coalesced. The streets
have so much to see, and you have made friends with hobos and urchins, alley-wizards and trashrakers.

Possessions
2d6 types of paint (Can be sprayed on an enemy for a ratio specific amount of stamina, can be replaced in a day)
The item you live on (usually flat enough for you to exist)
1d6 wall doodles, living as yourself
Hardened Chewing Gum (As Moderate Armour)

Skills
3 Secret Signs - Hobo
3 Secret Signs - Graffiti
2 Keeping still
1 Spell - Sentry
1 Spell - Illusion

Special - Spray
You are made of various paints. You can spray this on enemies to render them blind, or as a poison (a little obvious, cheap paint tastes foul.) The amount of paints you rolled is the amount of paints you were painted in, and every time you use a paint, you decrease your Initial Stamina in a proportional fashion eg. You are made of 5 different paints, Stamina 20, when you use one paint, your stamina permanently decreases by 4. This lasts until you take a full day to have it repainted by an enterprising painter.