Running a Tolkien Game that Does Not Exist

The Lord of the Rings Adventure Game is one of my favorite licensed Tolkien games. It was released in 1991, and was largely the work of long-time ICE designer Jessica Ney (credited variously as Jessica Ney and J. M. Ney in different parts of the credits). It is a "starter RPG," designed to ease new and younger players into the hobby. To this end, they stripped the game down to a super simple, super streamlined system. The eventual goal was to get these new players to eventually graduate to the "advanced" MERP products, of which there was now a significant backlog. 

A lot of modern OSR folks prefer Basic to Expert because, well, you can do more with the simpler version. Similarly, I prefer Lord of the Rings Adventure Game (curiously shortened to "LOR" in the book). There are so many rules in LOR that feel like cutting-edge OSR innovations: slot-based inventory, HP-powered spellcasting, starting equipment packages. It has an early iteration of D&D4E's skill challenges (called "action sequences" in the book). The rules were even called "Guidelines," as the author demurred from putting too much emphasis on their own intention and wanting each GM to make their own rulings (guidings not guidelines, anyone?).

LOR was supposed to be released as sort of an "adventure path" of five books, two adventures per book. However, only three made it to print.

• (1991) Lord of the Rings Adventure Game, Dawn Comes Early (Boxed Set)
• (1991) Darker than the Darkness
• (1993) Over the Misty Mountains Cold

Two more sequel books were promised to be available (Before the Goblins in 1993 and Greatest of the Forests in 1994), but never reached publication. Why? Well, at the same time period, ICE was also publishing a series of choose your own adventure books called Middle-earth Quest. Tolkien Estate claimed this violated their license, since they were only allowed to publish games based on the license, not books. The fourth Middle-earth Quest book was actually recalled and destroyed en masse. Are CYOA books games or books? Regardless of the epistemological answer, ICE went bankrupt with the suit, and the LOR series was scrapped.

Let me be clear: The LOR adventures are not good. They are pure railroads. Every roll behind the screen is made to be fudged. Designed for parents to run for their children, there are no consequences. Every failed roll by the players culminates in a rescue by a named NPC like Gandalf with a finger wag telling them to get back onto the railroad.

But the writing! The writing is good! You just need to deconstruct the railroad and repurpose it into an antique iron sculpture. All the guts are worth reusing. Decouple it from the idea of faux rolls and intended outcomes, let it be an open-ended sandbox, and I think the game is absolutely worth playing.

Anyway, this weekend, I'm running a game based on my Wilderland series and the Lord of the Rings Adventure Game. It's sort of a retroclone and reinterpretation of a flawed text, in true OSR tradition. I'm calling it "LORE." 

Here is a picture of me prepping the game.

And here are the character sheets I'm handing to my players. You can download them all here, if you were interested in doing so. (The background color is on a non-printing layer, so don't worry about your ink.)

I hope my little experiment will be fun! 

Mechanics Microblogging: Lore Bids, Resolve, and Disassociated Mechanics in HIS MAJESTY THE WORM

With the dissolution of so many things I once enjoyed (Twitter, America, etc.), I'm going to try and start doing more microblogging. Too many of my previous thoughts were placed into tweets and became too ephemeral. 

Glossary

Some quick definitions of terms:

Lore Bids: In His Majesty the Worm, you can ask a question of the GM and receive as much information as the GM can tell you about a subject related to one of your motifs. This is called "bidding lore." You can bid lore 4 times per Crawl Phase.

Disassociated Mechanic: A dissociated mechanic is one which is disconnected from the game world. A player character knows that they have six pitons in their backpack. They do not know that they have 12 HP or 4 lore bids left. In a word, non-diegetic. 

What are the goals behind using disassociated mechanics like Lore?

In old-school D&D, you have to rest every sixth turn (that is, for 10 minutes out of every hour of dungeon exploration). If you fail to do so, PCs get a –1 penalty to attack and damage rolls. This is one of the ways that time pressure is put onto PCs, and one of the limited resources that incentivizes the "deeper into the dungeon for loot or retreat" loop.

This loop is something I was interested in evoking in His Majesty the Worm. And as someone who does a fair bit of hiking, it makes sense to me. Dungeon crawling would be scary, exhausting, stressful. It would fatigue both body and mind. How do you translate that feeling into the game design?

Here's my pitch: Players will feel that they are becoming weak and tired when their characters begin to lose resources. But "loss of access to powers" feels different than "takes penalties." I think penalties are less fun. There's something in our ape brain that interprets "You start your day with a +1 bonus!" vs "You must rest or take a -1 penalty" differently.

Also, beyond the simple grind of "rest 1 turn in 6" from old-school D&D, I think that giving players a choice when they use their physical abilities (Resolve) and mental abilities (Lore) feels better. Making choices is what is fun about games.

Why 4?

Well, 4 is sorta the magic number in His Majesty the Worm, isn't it? 

But more than that, I think that 4 is a nice round number that lets players translate the disassociated mechanic into something they could talk about in character because you might feel 25/50/100% exhausted. 

I think this is a lot cleaner than the way we talk about HP. 5 damage means something very different to a magic-user with 4HP vs a fighter with 36 HP. Is 5 HP a heavy wound or not? If a cleric asks how much healing you need, would you say out loud in character: "Well, if I was to gauge my life on an arbitrary scale from 1-36, I would say about 12 points of life would feel good to me right now."

If I can run 4 miles, I know that I've hit 25% of my limit after the first mile. 

If I spend 3 lore bids, I know that I'm getting fuzzy brained and can't think straight. I can use those sorts of words to describe the disassociated mechanics in an associated way. It's like using the word "bloodied" in 4E. It makes sense at a certain level.

Questing Beast reviews HIS MAJESTY THE WORM

I expect the Venn diagram of "people who have already seen the notification that Questing Beast has a new video" and "people who read my blog" is a perfect circle, but was very excited this week that Ben gave His Majesty the Worm a review. 

(Ben, if you're reading this, thanks!)

My only regret is that he didn't spend longer talking about the questing beast monster in the book.

The Lady and the Unicorn (Steal this Puzzle)

At the Cluny museum, there's a gallery that displays a sequence of six tapestries called The Lady and the Unicorn.

You can see them all here.

To quote Wikipedia: "Five of the tapestries are commonly interpreted as depicting the five senses – taste, hearing, sight, smell, and touch. The sixth displays the words "À mon seul désir". The (sixth) tapestry's intended meaning is obscure."

Here is a puzzle inspired by these tapestries. 

A Sequence of Illustrations and Empty Pedestals 

A gallery. The floor is a mosaic of a noble woman with a speech bubble saying: "Bring me what I desire." 

On the walls there are five tapestries, each depicting a woman and a unicorn in various poses. In front of each tapestry is an empty pedestal.

The tapestries are:

• A noble lady petting a unicorn, one hand on its curling horn, another stroking its mane. (Touch)
• A noble lady eating sweetmeats. A unicorn grazes nearby. (Taste)
• A noble lady making a garland of flowers, a unicorn nuzzles in curiously. (Smell)
• A noble lady playing an organ, a unicorn rampant. (Hearing)
• A noble lady gazes into a mirror, a unicorn kneels and lays its head in her lap. (Sight)

The gimmick

Each tapestry depicts one of the five senses. The puzzle is solved by placing something of high quality that can be enjoyed by that sense. For example, a bouquet of flowers or a bottle of perfume would "unlock" the smell pedestal; a work of art or a piece of jewelry would "unlock" the sight pedestal, etc.

There's not a single answer for any pedestal, but the item should be considered a "nice gift." 

If all five pedestals have appropriate offerings on them, a secret panel opens in the wall. In it is a unicorn horn lance. 

Look at this thing. You just KNOW it's magical.

Puzzles and riddles can be frustrating at the game table if they are blockers to progress. But if they offer rewards, like treasures or shortcuts, puzzles become optional, opt-in fun.

Words of Power for the Lord of the Rings Adventure Game

The Lord of the Rings Adventure Game is one of my favorite licensed Tolkien games. Pipedream is one of my favorite unlicensed Tolkien games.

In Pipedream, there is a very admirable system for Words of Power, where you invoke the names of not!Valar to perform some magical feat. This blog post adapts this system for Lord of the Rings Adventure Game. 

A continuation of posts that could be subtitled: "Why do I spend my time on these things?"

Words of Power

by Jian Guo

"Gilthoniel A Elbereth!"

And then his tongue was loosed and his voice cried in a language which he did not know: 

"A Elbereth Gilthoniel

o menel palan-diriel,

le nallon si di'nguruthos!

A tiro nin, Fanuilos!"

For every +1 bonus you did not assign during character creation, your character can call on the name of one of the Powers of Arda. 

Valar	Auspices	Invoke to:
Manwë	Lord of the Breath of Arda; the winds, airs and birds are his servants	Bless fulfillment of a duty Curse an oathbreaker
Varda	Elbereth Gilthoniel, Lady of the Stars; kindler of the stars	Bless travel by night Strike creatures of Shadow
Ulmo	Lord of Waters, Dweller of the Deep; devises the music of waters, bays, and rivers	Bless travel by water Heal magical curses
Yavanna	Queen of Earth, Giver of Fruits; responsible for all growing things	Bless agriculture Heal growing things
Aulë	The Great Smith, Father of Dwarves; concerned with rock, metal, and work of craft	Bless stoneworking Curse thieves
Mandos	Ruler of the Dead, the Judge, the Doomsman of the Valar; summoner of spirits of the slain, who forgets nothing	Bless funerals Compel a guilty party to confess Strike the un-dead
Nienna	Lady of Pity; acquainted with grief, and mourns for every wound that Arda has suffered	Heal 1d6 Endurance or major illness
Oromë	Lord of Forests; hunter of monsters and evil creatures	Strike with a missile weapon Compel hidden monsters to reveal themselves

Speaking Words of Power

When you invoke one of the words of power, make an maneuver and add your Magical bonus. The Δ is equal to how dire the situation is at hand; the Powers of Arda are not to be frivolously called upon.

In the sunlight of a Sunday morning in the Shire - Δ15

In the lonely lands and wastes - Δ11

While fighting servants of the Shadow - Δ8

In the land of Shadow - Δ6

If successful, you may choose one of the invocations of the Power that you invoked. If unsuccessful, you are fated to not receive such aid at this time. In either event, you may only invoke a word of power once per game session.

Invocations

Bless: When you Bless an activity, anyone participating in that activity can also roll a d12 whenever they would roll a maneuver. They may use the d12 result instead of their maneuver dice's result, if they wish.

Compel: When you Compel a target, they must obey your command or lose 1d6 Endurance.

Curse: When you Curse a target, they permanently lose all Endurance. This Curse can only be lifted if the invoker wills it, if the invoker is slain, or if the target receives Healing from another Valar.

Heal: When a target is Healed, they regain Endurance or are cured of a major illness, a curse, or magical affliction.

Strike: When you strike in the name of the Valar, you gain a +4 Offensive Bonus to your attack roll against the specified creature. Oromë can bless any attack with a missile weapon.

The Musical Minotaur Maze

Here is a puzzle for your next dungeon. I have used it before. It is fun.

There is a maze in the dungeon. It has many twists and turns, to say nothing about the zombies. Those who enter the maze become lost. If they are very lucky, they end up back at the entrance. 

Only the minotaur at the center of the maze can guide you to him. 

(The minotaur can be anything, reflavor to suit your dungeon. It can be a ghost, a pirate smuggler, or even the dungeon's echoes.)

To navigate through the maze, the players must ring a bell. The minotaur at the center will ring a bell in response to help guide them. The players can discover this information by talking to other dungeon denizens or through rumors in the City.

Optional hook: You must find a specific bell elsewhere in the dungeon, not just any bell. The ringing of the bell compels you, child! 

How to run the puzzle

When the players enter the maze, they come to a series of branching paths going left or right. If they ring their bell at this fork, they hear a returning chime: high C (an octave above middle C) for right and low C (an octave below middle C) for left. 

If the players make the right choice, they progress to another fork in the maze. If they get it wrong, they get into a fight with a zombie wandering the maze and come back to the entrance.

At first, the meaning of the tones won't be understood and the direction they choose will be random. Once they get it wrong a few times, they'll understand that sometimes they hear a high tone and a low tone, and sometimes they return to the entrance and sometimes they progress in the maze. This will let players work out the meaning of the tones.

Once they've understood the pattern, you can go through a few forking paths - right, left, left, right, right - to let the players feel they've mastered it.

Then, throw in a curve ball. The next branching path they come to can be left, right, or straight ahead. If the correct path is "straight ahead," the minotaur will ring a bell that's middle C. (Distinguishing this middle tone can be more challenging than hearing "high" vs "low.") 

Again, players can use trial and error to figure out the pattern. Once they have the complete pattern, you can handwave the dozens of series of twists and turns. They arrive at the center of the maze and meet the minotaur face to face.

Vampire Weekend

Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?
Me. I do. 

His Majesty the Worm has a vampire in its Bestiary. Here are some variations on that theme to give you some variety based on age and mental illness. 

I think about vampires in roughly four main age groups:

Vampire Thrall (0-100ish years): You suck shit. All pain no gain. No powers, you explode if you go outside. Why did you do this?

Vampire Neophyte (100-500 years): Hey, I developed a power. I can't use it!!! FUCK!!!!! I'm a bat and can't turn back.

Vampire, core book (500+ years): Hey, everything's coming up Dracula!

Vampire Elder (2000+ years): Oh I got over that sunlight thing.

The truths you decide about killing vampires (His Majesty the Worm, core book, p. 283) will apply equally to all vampires in your campaign. (Probably! Unless you decide that vampires need more and more requirements for true death as they grow older.)

Vampire Thrall

Undead minion

Mike Mignola

"Sanguine temperament, great physical strength, morbidly excitable, periods of gloom, ending in some fixed idea which I cannot make out. I presume that the sanguine temperament itself and the disturbing influence end in a mentally-accomplished finish, a possibly dangerous man, probably dangerous if unselfish."

- From Dr. John Seward's journal, Dracula, Bram Stoker

Adventurers who seek quick power by undergoing the transformation to vampire are sorely disappointed. At first, it’s all pain and no gain: a young vampire is a wretched creature—they catch on fire when exposed to sunlight and can only eat blood. It takes at least a century for a vampire to manifest the least of their powers.

A vampire thrall cannot hunt as an older vampire can. At the very beginning of their life as an undead, they can't stomach anything except insect blood. Eventually, they can work their way up to vermin like birds or rats. From there, predator blood, and so on. 

These are your Renfields, your Guillermos, your Louises. Since being transformed, they are less than human. Troubled, tragic, and tortured by their very existence. They suffer all of the vampire's vulnerabilities, but have none of its strengths...except that, if killed, they tend to not stay dead.

Likes: Eating Insects and Spiders, Finding Secret Places to Sleep, Pleasing its Master 

Hates: Sunlight, Fresh Herbs, Running Water, Religious Iconography (naturally blasphemous), Mirrors

Attributes: Swords 0 | Pentacles 0 | Cups 0 | Wands 0

HD 2/0 *

* Per the vampire thrall's Blood is the Life doom, a freshly-fed thrall may have 1-4 additional points of Defense.

Notes

Breathless and Ageless. The vampire does not age or breathe. (They do have other physical processes, however. They both sleep and can be poisoned.) Unless ritually desecrated, the vampire thrall can be resurrected from death if given human blood.

Coward. The vampire thrall always plays their highest card for Initiative. 

Vulnerabilities. A vampire thrall exposed to sunlight catches on fire, suffering 1 Wound at the start of their turn until they can douse themselves. They cannot use running water for this purpose, as they cringe away from it like a dog with rabies. 

Lesser dooms

Blood is the Life. If a living creature is Knocked-out or at Death’s Door, play a lesser doom card to drink its blood. The vampire thrall gains 2 Defense.

There's no real upper limit to the amount of Defense a vampire thrall can gain in this way, although after drinking the blood of 4 creatures, they become swollen and corpulent; they can no longer Dash or Dodge. Every night, the thrall loses 1 Defense gained in this manner until they reach 0 Defense.

Call Vermin. Play a lesser doom card to summon a swarm of vermin—spiders, centipedes, and worms. The card played is the vermin's Initiative. A swarm of vermin has the stats of a HD 2/0 beast minion. If the vermin are active, the GM draws +2 Challenge cards at the beginning of a round.

Vampire Neophyte

Undead Strategist 

@HushpuppyArt

"...And immediately [Sauron] took the form of a vampire, great as a dark cloud across the moon, and he fled, dripping blood from his throat upon the trees..."

- The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien

Those learned in undead lore will tell you that lycanthropy and vampirism are the same disease. There's no difference between these two creatures, except in the romantic notions of village girls.

At this stage in their deadly de-evolution, the vampire cannot yet control the powers they begin to develop. Like everything on the timescale of eternity, the process is slow. They can attempt to use their powers only once a month, in the darkness of the new moon. Each attempt is clumsy, unskilled. Vampires at this point might attempt to shapeshift and grow their neck grotesquely long. They might form paper-thin wings along the edge of their forearms in such a way that they cannot possibly support flight. Control over these powers takes years; each year, twelve attempts at a time. 

Additionally, their bloodlust is never ending. This "adolescent" form has the hunger of a teenager going through a growth spurt. When they see blood, they're driven into a berserk state.

Use this to represent vampires that aren't tall, dark counts, but slathering monsters. 

Likes: Craves Blood, Hanging Upside Down, Crawling into Small Crevices, Nocturnal Creatures

Hates: Nosy Villagers, Fresh Herbs, Running Water, Religious Iconography (naturally blasphemous)

Attributes: Swords 3 | Pentacles 4 | Cups 1 | Wands 2

Health/Defense: 3/3

Notes

Batshape. The neophyte can fly 1 zone without spending a card any time he takes his turn or minor action. It can crawl on walls and hang from ceilings as well. If it Moves onto a wall, it can avoid the adventurers and leave the area (unless the adventurers have some way to keep up).

Breathless and Ageless. The vampire does not age or breathe. (They do have other physical processes, however. They both sleep and can be poisoned.)

Feed. If an Attack action actually Wounds a condition or talent (instead of Notching armor or a shield), the neophyte must discard any card to quickly feed on the blood drawn. This Heals them.

Once a neophyte has fed on an adventurer's blood, on their turn they may Move 2 zones towards that adventurer without spending a card.

Invulnerable. The vampire ignores all damage except from silver weapons, magic, and fire. This ability is negated by the presence of wholesome herbs (such as garlic) or sunlight.

Lesser dooms

Scream. The neophyte can let out a high pitched shriek. This is treated as a Roughhouse action that targets every character in its zone (but does not engage him with anybody). 

If the neophyte's Scream value is greater than an adventurer's Initiative, they are either Disarmed, Rooted, or Tripped (GM's discretion). They must use the Recover action to get rid of this effect. The same effect is applied to everyone who is affected.

Protean Body. Discard a lesser doom card to disengage from all adventurers. This action does not count towards the one card per turn limit.

Greater dooms

Supernatural Swiftness. The neophyte can play a greater doom card as a Dodge. If they successfully Dodge an Attack (or similar), they may choose to also disengage from all adventurers and Move 1 zone.

Tactics. Discard a greater doom card to turn a standard Challenge Action into an interrupt. This action does not count towards the one card per turn limit.

Vampire Elder

Undead Dungeon Lord

Mike Mignola

"Since dawn of time / The fate of man is that of lice / Equal as parasites"

- "Year Zero," Ghost

The vampire elder, for a time, may pretend to be a normal vampire. In this case, the vampire elder form is their "second phase" of combat.

Use this if you're adapting Ravenloft to His Majesty the Worm and need a Strahd. 

Attributes: Swords 5 | Pentacles 5 | Cups 5 | Wands 5

Likes: Blood (especially that of virgins), Rambling About Unrequited Love, Performatively Weeping Bloody Tears, Playing With Its Food, Nocturnal Predators

Hates: Sunlight, Fresh Herbs, Running Water, Religious Iconography (naturally blasphemous)

Vampire Elder tactics

• The vampire elder is smarter than the GM. To represent this, you can take anything the GM knows out of character in character. You can hear the table talk and adjust your strategy accordingly.
• The vampire elder focuses their attacks on a single character for 3 rounds, then retreats. If the party Camps, they attack again.
• The vampire elder attacks the guild's sources of light with the Flare spell. The vampire elder can see in the dark.
• The vampire elder knows when to call for reinforcements. This allows them a chance to escape as a mist.

Special rules: The blood pool

In addition to their normal hand of major arcana cards, the vampire lord has powers to steal minor arcana cards from the players. These cards are called the blood pool. The blood pool sits near the vampire lord's Initiative in a stack, face up. 

The vampire lord can play the top card of the blood pool whenever they can play a card. The suit of the card determines what action is taken.

Swords - Summon Vampire Bat.  Play the Swords card in front of the GM to represent the Initiative of a vampire bat (HD 1/0). The vampire bat is not a normal combatant, does not have its own turn, and does not add to the cards the GM draws each round. Instead, on the vampire lord's turn, each summoned vampire bat follows this sequence:

• If the vampire bat is not in the same zone as an adventurer, it flies 1 zone towards an adventurer of the GM's choosing.
• If the vampire bat is in the same zone as an adventurer, it attempts to latch onto them. The value of this Attack is equal to the vampire bat's Initiative. 
• If the vampire bat is already latched onto an adventurer, the adventurer suffers a Wound.

Vampire bats attached to an adventurer are killed if successfully Attacked, but the adventurer they're latched onto takes a Wound as well. Unattached vampire bats can be Attacked, targeting their Initiative as normal. Adventurers may try to pull the bat off of them by playing a Recover action whose value is at least that of the vampire bat's Initiative.

Pentacles - Dash, Dodge, or Pull Item from their Vestments (e.g., spell components).

Cups - Mesmerize. The Cups card is played as an Attack against a target that the vampire can see. If successful, the target is Controlled—they immediately perform the commanded action. The total value for the Controlled action is equal to the value of the Cups card used to Attack.

Wands - Regeneration. The vampire lord Heals.

Cards from the blood pool cards are put into the minor arcana discard pile after used.

Notes

Aura of Gloom. On the vampire's turn, move a number of cards equal to the number of adventurers engaged with the vampire lord from the top of the minor arcana discard pile to the top of the blood pool.

Breathless and Ageless. The vampire lord does not age or breathe. (They do have other physical processes, however. They both sleep and can be poisoned.)

Celerity. The vampire lord may play two cards per turn. Their second action takes place after all minor actions have resolved.

Invulnerable. The vampire lord ignores all damage except from silver weapons, magic, and fire. Note that this ability is not negated by either herbs or sunlight.

Lesser dooms

Blood Sorcery. The vampire lord can cast spells using the rules in Appendix A. Cast spells by playing a lesser doom Speak Incantations action. Instead of discarding a greater doom card to represent Resolve, the vampire lord takes a Wound to cast a spell. They may cast a spell with extra Resolve, taking up to 4 Wounds per incantation. 

The vampire lord might have the components for the following spells secreted in their vestments: Brainfever, Control Undead, Fear, Flare, Illusion, Raise Zombie, Scry, Shroud, Stinking Cloud, Withering.

Preternatural Grace. The vampire lord may have as many Dodge cards facedown at a time as they wish. The vampire lord may decide which Dodge card to use to counter a particular Attack, and can expend multiple Dodge cards against a single Attack.

Preternatural Speed. Discard as many lesser doom cards as you wish, Moving 1 zone per card. This does not count towards the vampire lord's two card per turn limit.

Greater dooms

Mist Form. Play a greater doom card to take the shape of an intangible mist. While in mist form, physical objects pass harmlessly through the vampire. The vampire lord cannot enter their mist form if in direct sunlight.

Sanguine Kiss. If an Attack action actually Wounds a condition or talent (instead of Notching armor or a shield), the vampire lord may discard a greater doom to cause the victim to lose 1XP in addition to a Wound. That adventurer is now Marked by the vampire lord. 

• The vampire lord can communicate telepathically with Marked adventurers from any distance. The vampire lord may choose to restore stolen XP at will, and might choose to do so if the adventurer performs certain tasks to further their goals.
• Marked adventurers regain all lost XP if the vampire lord is defeated.

Shapeshift. The vampire lord can play a greater doom card to take the form of a giant bat, a wolf, or a swarm of rats. This is similar to the Totem spell, but is an innate power instead of sorcery.

Tenebrous Touch. Play a greater doom card to Stun an adventurer that the vampire lord can see. Put the discarded card onto the top of the blood pool. 

Special dooms

Psychic Domination. Play the Moon (XVIII) from your hand or the Fool from the blood pool. All adventurers who the vampire lord can see are Stunned. The GM collects the discarded cards and places them on top of the blood pool in any order they desire. 

(The idea of special dooms were pioneered by H. Jay Watson in their Worm Jam project. Many thanks to them for their inventiveness!)

Bonus Content: Grave Companions

Here are two creatures that are strictly unrelated to the tragic cycle of vampirism, but are often found in their company. 

Ghouls

Undead Minion

Jacen Burrows

"To what base uses we may return, Horatio. Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till he find it stopping a bunghole?"

- Hamlet, William Shakespeare

Ghouls have human-like bodies and dog-like heads, resembling baboons somewhat. They speak eloquently with stolen voices. More on this later.

The true history of ghouls is a strange one, and little known except by scholars of obscure occult subjects. Like elves, ghouls were native residents of the Far Realms (Wastes, in all probability) who came to the Realm of Flesh and became trapped. The ghouls' stories on the subject describe being "burned by comets" when they tried to return home.

Ghouls are sapiensaprovores. Their only source of food is human flesh (preferably rotted). They prefer to harvest these bodies from graveyards ("farms," they call them), and are not by nature hateful or murderous. Conflict between humans and ghouls mostly comes from humans objecting to ghouls stealing bodies and defiling the dead. 

After a ghoul eats body, they take on the characteristics of the person they devoured. They learn things the living once knew. They can speak with the departed's voice. Parts of the dead person's personality become lodged in their head, and big personalities might subsume older or more mild ones. A ghoul might even begin to introduce themselves as "Arcturus the Uniting King" or "Francisco the Friar." 

Because graveyards share a metaphysical border with the Underworld, ghouls can travel from the Wide World to the Underworld by digging through the soil. Ghouls encountered in the Underworld might try to follow behind an guild, hoping that some trap or monster will turn them from adventurers into food. They are also happy to scavenge zombie flesh, if those creatures are encountered. 

Likes: Rotten Human Flesh, Hearing About Your Dreams, Interesting Rumors, Wants to Resolve the Unfinished Business of its Last Meal

Hates: Bright Lights (shy), Mirrors (dysmorphic)

Attributes: Swords 0 | Pentacles 0 | Cups 0 | Wands 0

HD 2/1

Notes

Burrowing. Ghouls can burrow through soft earth and mud like a mole. 

Rotting Brains. Ghouls have strange, crowded brains. They are immune to the Inspire effect. They cannot see illusions. 

Lesser dooms

Devour the Living. If a living creature is Knocked-out or at Death’s Door, play any card to devour it. This Heals 2 Wounds.

Fear. Play a lesser doom card and compare its value to the Initiative of each character in the same zone. If the ghoul does this on its turn, it adds its Wands to the total value. Adventurers it succeeds against are Displaced to an adjacent zone of the player’s choice.

If an adventurer is Rooted when they suffer this effect, they instead take a Wound and do not move.

Paralyzing Claw. If a ghoul successfully Attacks an adventurer, that adventurer is Rooted in addition to taking a Wound. Fay are immune to this ability.

Greater dooms

Paralyzing Aura. Play a greater doom card to cause all adventurers engaged with the ghoul to become Rooted. Fay are immune to this ability.

New alchemical item: Ghoul potion

When drunk, produces a euphoric effect with visual hallucinations, similar to a mushroom high. This lasts about a watch.

If, during this time, the affected adventurer eats the dead body of a sentient kith, they absorb some of the memories and personality of that person. Swap one of your motifs for one the motifs of the cannibalized corpse. You can bid lore to answer questions that they knew regarding this part of their life.

Human adventurers (but not other kiths) can sacrifice 10XP to add this as an extra motif instead of replacing one of their own motifs. They can only do this once.

Hags

Sorcerous Strategist 

Ali Hdz

"Spite! Spite alone holds me aloft!"

- Lingua Ignota

Hags are like ogres: people whose sins are so grave they manifest outwardly. In particular, hags are marked by a specific desire to sell their soul in exchange for the power to do harm. 

Selling ones soul is not a simple or tidy affair. It's not a tangible thing, and despite popular conceptions, devils are not regularly in the market. Really, a better way to phrase this is "Killing ones soul." 

Hags cut away their humanity, piece by piece, until only the hag remains. This is done through years of ritual acts of deliberate cruelty. Step by step, through ceremonial murder and cannibalism, hags kill their capacity to feel pity, feel shame, feel mercy. 

Each hag is unique. Each has some strange skill or preternatural ability. For example:

• able to rot gold into straw by playing the fiddle
• long, razor wire hair
• the ability to speak to iron
• a wooden puppet body dangling from strings of human hair, puppeted by the hag
• the ability to hold their breath for hours, lives in a swamp

Use this as a base stat block for a generic hag and add something weird to make your NPC sing.

Likes: Rhymes and Riddles, Soups of Strange Ingredients, Babies' Fat Cheeks (potent reagents)

Hates: Candy, Cleanliness, Religious Iconography (blasphemous)

Attributes: Swords 1 | Pentacles 2 | Cups 3 | Wands 4

HD 3/3

Notes

Bloated Corpse's Defense. When a hag takes a Wound, if the GM wishes, they are automatically disengaged and Displaced to an adjacent zone by flying.

Smell Magic. The hag can smell magical effects. They can identify who is and isn’t a sorcerer by scent.

Untouched by Hot Iron. Hags are immune to any crafted or forged weapon. They are still vulnerable to natural dangers like fire, falls, and drowning. They can even be bashed by a branch or stone.

Lesser dooms

Hex. Hags can make Attacks or Roughhouse using arcane energy up to one zone away. They add their Wands attribute to these attempts on their turn. Hags are not engaged by using this ability. 

Ride the Wind. Play a lesser doom card to Move to an adjacent zone through flight.

Unnatural Sorcery. Each hag has one or two spells from Appendix A that they have mastered. They can cast these spells by Speaking Incantations. They do not require spell components or use Resolve to cast this spell.

The following spells are likely candidates for hags: Control Undead, Fleshcraft, Stinking Cloud, Withering, Gust of Wind, Totem, Woodweave, Wall of Elements, Animate Object, Scry, Shroud, Binding, Veritas, Seal Pact

Greater dooms

Counter-spell. Hags can use the Counter-spell Talent (core book, p. 82). They discard a greater doom instead of spending Resolve, when appropriate.

Worm Jam Wrapup

Throughout the month of September, I hosted a game jam for His Majesty the Worm on Itch. The goal of this jam was to support folks who had just got the game and were making content for their first campaigns.

There were 75 participants and 29 submissions (and I'm sure a few rearguard submissions will be rolling in over the next few days). 

You can check out all the entries to the Worm Jam here (including my own hub dungeon, At the Shrine of Fortitude)!

Treasure

His Majesty the Worm argues that with a few weekends of work, you can curate an entire megadungeon by combining your ideas for a mythic Underworld with the genius of the OSR scene. This megadungeon is sufficient to keep your players entertained for years with minimal maintenance--no more weekly pre-planning! 

The works of the Worm Jam is an culmination of this promise. Over the last few weeks, we worked as a group to add all sorts of new gems to the OSR treasure trove: new character options, new spells, tools for running the game, and new dungeon levels. 

If you're just getting started with His Majesty the Worm, you can grab these dungeons (most are free!), and start stitching them together to create your Underworld. Do you like the idea of some of the extra kiths and kins? Add them in as houserules. Get your players excited about the game, and begin delving. 

Charging Bonds

Something I enjoyed very much during the jam was watching folks tinker with the game in the community-run Discord. Folks really have been banging on the game to see what sort of new shapes it can molded into. The creativity in this community created a positive feedback loop for my own work.

I am confident this space will continue to be a place where folks can find tools and resources, ask questions, and create cool stuff together.

* Note: If you have tried to join the Discord in the past and had trouble, this was because I sent out a malformed link. This was my fault! Many apologies for any confusion. Please try again if you'd like to still join us.

Keep Questing

Deadlines keep us focused, but they don't mean we have to stop creating. Just because the jam is technically over doesn't mean you have to stop working on your project. Maybe you have a first draft. Maybe you missed the "deadline" and don't have your draft published yet. Do not be discouraged! 

His Majesty the Worm was designed to be accessible and easily hackable. I want to find ways to help you create content for the game. You can publish your content for free or sell it (without us taking a cut). Check out the third-party creator's kit, here.

Whenever you make something for His Majesty the Worm, please let me know. I'd love to check out and help promote your content. 

At the Shrine of Fortitude: A supplement of characters and creatures for His Majesty the Worm

 In the Lower Ossuary, there is a shrine to the minor Mythric goddess Fortitude. There, merchants catering to adventuring guilds sometimes gather in the light of the hearthfire kindled at the shrine.

Download for free from Itch

This is a free supplement for His Majesty the Worm that details a procedure to generate a hub for your mythic Underworld. It is designed to be an area that can be dropped into any dungeon.

• When the guild arrives at the Shrine of Fortitude, each player draws 1 card from the minor arcana deck and tells the GM if they got a face card. The GM uses this draw to determine who is currently doing business at the Shrine of Fortitude.
• These merchants can range from the weird to the wonderful, from dangerous to delightful. 
• Each merchant has a scrap of dialogue to help guide their role-playing.
• Also includes rules for a new monster: the clown clones. (Clown content warning!)

This supplement was created as part of the 2024 Worm Jam.

Check it out! 

Information Architecture in The Castle Automatic

In 2023, like many people, I participated in Dungeon 23. The end result was two dungeons - one based on the tarot (for His Majesty the Worm) and one rambling cozy depthcrawl (for Under Hill, By Water). For the past several weeks, I have been revising and refining the tarot dungeon. It is called The Castle Automatic.*

Getting the dungeon into a shape to be published is a different kind of challenge than the creative challenge of writing down ideas. Here are three techniques I am using to structure the information architecture.

The Universal Caveat and Apotropaic to Ward the Nerd

All of His Majesty the Worm is writing down stuff that works for me. It's really a game that tells you how I write my own notes and run my own games. So, that's just to say there are lots of ways to key entries, do layout, and architect information, but this stuff works for me. I hope it works for you too.

Room names and numbers

His Majesty the Worm asks GMs to give players a simple copy of the dungeon map, with any secret doors or hidden passages removed and each room numbered simply. Using this method, the ambiguities that exist in verbal descriptions of a space (no, no, the two exits on the north wall are spaced further apart) that wouldn't exist if the players were actually looking at the space in the world, are removed. The simple numbering system (room 101, room 102, room 103) doesn't spoil the fun of exploring the contents of the room, and lets players and GMs communicate with each other easily about which room they're talking about. 

However, the GM is rarely thinking of rooms like "room 101, room 102, " they're thinking of "The Grand Ballroom" and "The Under-scullery." And, as the players are exploring, they're writing these things into the margins of their map! 

To try and make each room reference as useful as possible, I'm taking the extra step of including three pieces of information each time: the room number on the map (room 101), a descriptive room name (the Grand Ballroom), and the page reference (p. 14). Overkill? Maybe. But I'd rather give you too much information rather than by leaving you feeling lost in the text itself.

OSE style + landmark, hidden secret

The OSE "house style bullet points" has emerged as something of a "standard" in OSR productions over the last few years.  This house style describes each room with certain elements in bold. The bolded text is elaborated on in bullet points following; each bullet point is concise, often just a phrase or short sentence. I like this format because it aims for clarity and quick reference during gameplay. 

In my implementation of bullet points, I found it necessary to add in some specific rules to my style guide. 

First, room descriptions are nested into levels of landmark/hidden/secret. 

The basic room description is landmark. Everything a careful adventurer can see at a glance is described. It is set in normal paragraph text with interactable stuff set in bold.

• Hidden information is set at bullet point 1. This includes any interactable stuff from the  basic description. If players need to take an action to see this content, even if it's just "I look at the gargoyle statue," it is listed at this level.
• Secret information is set at bullet point 2. This is for content that is usually discovered by "fucking around" with the content at bullet point 1.

Second, the bullet points follow the same order as they were listed in the description of the room. If the description of the room details a rug and an unlit chandelier, the bullet points will list the contents of the rug in the first bullet point and the unlit chandelier in the second bullet point.

Enemies described last in prose, first in bullet points

This post by the Alexandrian made its way into my head at some point. It asks: What we’re broadly looking at is whether it’s better to describe the monsters in a room FIRST or LAST.

I think it's better to describe the monsters LAST. I can't remember if this is what Justin Alexander said,  and can't be bothered to re-read the post! 

I like this method because I want the players to have all the information they need to make informed decisions, but if I start saying "The goblins...", the players start saying "I want to attack the goblin," and SHUT UP. Let me first say there's a bookshelf and a tabaxi rug and then I can say "Also a goblin," and then you get to go STEVE. 

I've applied this principle by describing the monsters that usually live in the room last in my prose description of the room. However, contrary to my bullet point rule (above), I put any relevant monster details into the first bullet point. As a GM, you'll probably want to reference this detail first. However, if you choose to use the prose description as read aloud text, you don't want to spoil the surprise of the goblin because SHUT UP STEVE, OH MY GOD.

* Cheers to Mr. Arnold K for the name suggestion.

Focusing your time creatively

The Worm Jam has crossed the halfway point (and then some)! Even now, before the desperate last sprint towards the finish line, we have some incredible entries. I’m thrilled with the initiative and creativity of the community so far.

At this point in this creative endeavor, I’m needing to make some choices about what I’m going to focus on. My brainstorming gave me more ideas than I could complete in the time allotted. And, as always, I have overestimated how much time I have and how quickly I can create good content.

Playing to my strengths

I have at least some awareness of things I care about, things I don’t, things I’m good at, things I’m not. I know that I can do some things myself, like writing. I can probably do a passable job setting the text into the Adherent of the Worm Creator’s Kit. I know that I can’t do other things. I can’t draw or do cartography. I can’t see my own copy errors.

I’ll need support for everything I can’t do. There’s a few strategies I might use here.

For one, I can collaborate with someone else. If someone helps me out with something I need, I can do the same for them.

Two, I can reach out to help from the community. The Worm Discord channel is cooking stuff up right now. I also am lucky enough to have found other like-minded game designers, OSR enthusiasts, and general perverts that are willing to help groupthink in-progress projects.

Matters of scale

I also know that I can’t do everything that I want to do, even if I have the right skill sets and levels of support. Like Quests, each project needs to be discrete and achievable.

Taking a look at the document where I have my module drafted, there are parts that are more fleshed out than others. Some ideas were ambitious. Some were interesting. Some are mostly done. Some are just sketched out. What do I need to cut to get this down to a finishable state?

If I cut content, I make sure to save it somewhere. You never know when you can create something new and interesting by Frankensteining two old drafts together.

For now, I’m going to cut back on the dungeon I had planned and focus on one unique idea: a Dark-Souls-esque shrine full of merchant NPCs.

In summation: Put your energy most towards the things on the quadrant of x: care about and y: able to do yourself.

How to write new abilities

I love seeing everybody cooking up new kiths, kins, talents, and other player-facing rules for His Majesty the Worm during the Worm Jam.

I wanted to offer a few guiding principles for how I think about writing player character abilities in OSRy games.

Talents should be active

Abilities that give you +1 to a stat or favor to some task aren’t very interesting. When you look down at your sheet, see the number recorded there, and apply it to your test–it’s just an amalgamation of numbers interacting with each other, not a cool representation of how your character’s abilities are impacting the world. I’ve written about this before in my post Making +1 Swords Feel Magical.

Instead, make abilities that players choose to use. To get favor on their attack, they need to cry their battle cry aloud. To use their colossal strength, they have to hulk out. And if there’s a constant bonus (you’re immune to poisons!), contrast it with a strange factor that makes it so the player can’t forget it (…because your nervous system is made up of fungus and you need to constantly eat new types of mushrooms or you’ll die).

No set-it-and-forget abilities! Make buttons for the players to push to activate their talents.

Talents should offer you new ways to approach problems

Each talent is a way to break the rules–the rules of the game and the rules of the world. As players accumulate abilities, they gain new tools in their toolbelt. The open-ended, deadly challenges of the Underworld should only be able to be solved through the judicious use of the weird tools the players have at their disposal: the floor is made of lava, but I can shimmy along the walls; the guard has the keys to our cell but I have a long sticky tongue that can grab them off of his belt; the freezing mist makes it difficult to fight the skeletons, but the wind owes me a favor so I’ll blow it away.

Don’t start with the mechanics; start with what you’re imagining the ability does in the fiction. Then figure out how to represent it using the rules of the game.

I think it’s fun to actually provide abilities that really let you break the rules (“I’m immune to damage! I can fly! I can phase through walls!”) as long as they’re temporary and have significant drawbacks (“…because I’m a ghost! I can’t touch anything! If I’m not back into my body by the end of the watch I die for real!”).

Relatedly, if an ability just duplicates the utility of having a tool, the usefulness is limited. Yeah, having hair that can be grown long as ropes sounds cool (…well, wait, that does sound pretty cool), but 9 times out of 10 you’ll be better off just bringing rope in your pack.

Talents should be unique

As much as possible, abilities should feel unique. Having four spells that are duplicates of each other, except each does a different type of elemental damage, is just a waste of page space.

Abilities that you choose during character creation are a way for a player to tacitly communicate with the GM: This is my kinda dude, and I wanna do these sorta things. I’m a fighter, I want to fight. I’m a sorcerer, give me an opportunity to use my spells. The uniqueness principle offers some niche protection to players. It feels lame when a wizard is better at stealing than the thief because they have spells like Knock, Invisibility, Audible Glamour, Sleep, etc.

Moreover, abilities that share a lot of surface area give rise to discussions about balance, which I cannot care less about. Abilities should be incomparable. Who can say whether it’s better to be able to fall long distances without being hurt versus being able to take on the shape of a mouse when you spend a Resolve? Both are useful in their own situations. One isn’t better than the other.

Talents shouldn’t negate an adventurer’s “general competence”

People have long said that the introduction of the Thief class is when D&D jumped the shark because it created a skill system that made the things that everybody should be doing (sneaking, climbing, listening) locked behind a single character class. (Trying to “fix” the Thief class is an OSR blog rite of passage.)

This is also the case of the “Breathing mermaid problem.” The Breathing mermaid problem describes a situation in RPGs where some character ability solves a problem you didn’t know you had. “With the Tracking feat, you can track.” Could I not before? Avoid rules that are defined by negation.

Adventurers are assumed to be competent. Every character can sneak, climb, listen at doors, hide in shadows, use rope, disarm foes, track game, etc. Abilities that change the expectation of what a competent person can do without a certain ability is a negative design pattern.

Talents shouldn’t overcome the essential dangers of the dungeon (light/darkness, hunger, resource scarcity, stress, equipment slots)

Perhaps most importantly, the back of the game book says that “Food, hunger, light, and inventory management are central to play and actually fun.” No ability should get rid of these essential threats. This is what the game is about! Abilities like “continual light” or “bag of holding” would reframe what His Majesty the Worm is all about as much as a spell called “Instantly Win: Spend a Resolve and you find your Quest and go home and the Worm dies.”

Two other posts about abilities that are “good” and “bad” for dungeon exploration games:

• Goblinpunch - Keep Dungeon Threats Threatening
• Udan Adan - Game Enhancing Powers and Game Ruining Powers

Homebrewing advice

Last, I’ll share the bit I have about homebrewing from the game:

By the way...

Did you know the Worm Jam is currently going on? It's a space for folks starting new games of His Majesty the Worm to collaborate with each other. Come join us!