Familiars

(Hey look, I can make posts that aren't just His Majesty the Worm shilling. I still am playing games and thinking about them!)

For my current Dolmenwood game, my players said they wanted to all play witches. To play to this gimmick, I wrote a magical familiar subsystem. Rules below in a His Majesty the Worm parlance, but can be adapted to any OSR system without difficulty. Lots of inspiration for this system came from the unparalleled Goblinpunch. 

A thing I really like about this subsystem is how it creates trouble for the players. Each familiar wants something weird and outrageous, which pushes the characters into interesting/dangerous situations to try and keep the little shit happy. 

Also, because this system creates such interesting little personalities, the players never have the "Oh right, I have a pet I forgot about" moment. Actually, they're penalized with an in-character justification if they ever have that realization as the familiar has felt neglected and slipped away into the dreaming world (see below).

The one big con about this system is that I have to talk in a lot of funny voices to handle the bonded NPCs that the players all have now. Exhausting on my vocal chords. 

Binding your Familiar

To bind a familiar to your service, you must go on a vision quest into the lowest realms of Dreaming (the parts that are tangent to the upper levels of Hell). Find some drugs that can get you there, if you have no spells that can do it.

Creating your familiar is like going to Build a Bear Workshop. Choose three representative pieces of the familiar and combine them together. (The art I made for my players for this is amateurish, but was accepted with applause, which made me feel good.)

Form

In my heart, I know my familiar is:

1. Toad with teeth, speaks in a deep baritone voice (my dear boy!)

2. Blind crow, flies backwards

3. Black goat, always stands on your shadow, causes discomfort on places where it's hoofs touch

4. Shoulder imp, smug as Hell (literally)

5. Fat hare, walks like a man, fond of eating bones and skin

6. Moth, tiny crown, everyone gets goosebumps when it appears, speaks like a king

Function

I most desire:

1. Ghost. Can teleport you (only) to the nearest graveyard. 

2. Fat. You can tickle it and it opens up to reveal an extradimensional space 1 slot large (does this for free, no need for a favor). Can burp out 1-21 gold coins, but these fade away during the next full moon. 

3. Circle-Square-Triangle. Can conjure 1 random spell component every month. 

4. Spellbook. Can ask it a question about the future: “If I do X, what will happen?”

5. Silvery. Your familiar is white. Once a month, it can speak to the moon. The moon can see anything that happens out of doors during the night, except for nights of the new moon. Can tell you where something is or how something went down.

6. Bat wings. Your familiar gains bat wings. It can lend them to you, allowing you to fly. 

Favor

For this, I would trade:

1. Silver lantern. The familiar seeks new frontiers (especially of the mind and/or other planes) and cosmic truth

2. Gilded birdcage. Familiar craves political power to rule the world and become a leader of men (preferred: starting a cult, marrying royalty)

3. Cookie jar. Strange, dangerous, and terrible things to eat. 

4. Cage carved of a single ruby. Money. Give it treasure.

5. Doll-sized wizard tower. Familiar desires the construction of a vast object, built for some distant, undefined purpose (preferred: tower, ziggurat, ship)

6. A mirror (familiar appears as a reflection). Familiar wishes for your ego-death through dissociative drugs, anomie, and constant exposure to danger.

Lastly, each familiar is unique. Roll on the 1d100 Familiar List to see how your combination is different from every other familiar. This also gives your familiar a random name.

Feed your familiar a portion of your own blood mixed with milk and honey to bind them to you. 

Familiar Rules

Once a familiar has agreed to work with you, it is your familiar for life. You and your familiar may fall out, get into fights. It might leave. It’s still your familiar, but until you come to mutually agreeable terms, you won’t be able to work together.

When you have a bound familiar, you can ask it to dwell with you in the dreaming world or the waking world.

Waking

When in the waking world, your familiar is physically present with you. It rides on your shoulders, trots at your side, sleeps in your sleeve. 

Familiars don’t like to be ignored. Every time you—as the player—mention it, describe what it’s doing, talk to it in-character, the familiar is pleased. It can feel it is being noticed.

Every time the GM has to say, “Wait, what is your familiar doing while you do that” the familiar feels hurt. You’ve forgotten about it. When this happens, it slinks off into the dreaming world. Summoning it is done with disfavor.

Familiars go into the dreaming world when they’re hurt. They rest there for 1-21 days.

You can dismiss a familiar to the dreaming world whenever you want, if it would be dangerous or inconvenient to have them around.

Dreaming

When in the dreaming world, it appears to you in your dreams. You can talk to it here, if you want. 

Summoning

Whenever you attempt to summon your familiar from the dreaming world to the waking one (or vice versa) make a Wands test. Success means that the familiar arrives immediately. Otherwise it arrives in 1d4 watches. If you have annoyed your familiar, you automatically fail this test, while familiars that are extremely pleased will always arrive promptly.

Services

Familiars can perform services, but never more than 1/day. However, for every service it performs, you owe a favor.

1. Familiars can use one of their special powers at your behest.

2. Familiars can give you a spell slot.

3. Familiars can do just about anything that a normal animal could do—and then some! They could fly away, spy on a bandit’s camp, and report back. It can even give its opinion about plans on how to ambush the bandit leader. 

4. You can ask a familiar to fight with you. This counts as one service. In His Majesty the Worm, use Cups cards to command them during a Challenge.

5. Familiars can save you from a violent death—but only once ever.

Favor

Each favor is always something that the familiar can call in immediately, or at a later date. 

If you perform the favor that the familiar requests, that's the end of it. But if you refuse, that is a violation of the contract with the familiar, and deserving of a roll on the Breach of the Covenant table.

Playtest Note: There's a bit of extra mental load with keeping track of all the familiars, their names, and their desired favors. Write a notecard with all this information to keep next to your campaign notes. At the start of each session, go over who owes their familiar a favor, and think about nearby things the familiar would be interested in. You can have the start of a session be a familiar demanding something troublesome nearby.

Breach of the Covenant 

1. random curse 2. random mutation 3. -1 to a random attribute 4. lose 2-8 XP

Bonus Picture

The Dolmenwood Overloaded Encounter Generator

As I mentioned, I started a Dolmenwood game using the His Majesty the Worm ruleset recently.

Dolmenwood is a fantasy setting inspired by British folklore and fairy tales with a delightful psychedelic vibe. It is "mossy," in a word. It was originally published in a series of zines called Wormskin (partially to credit with me getting into the OSR scene). A stand-alone OSE hack, hexcrawl, and monster manual are scheduled to launch on Kickstarter soon. 

To prepare for my game, I have made an elaborate Dolmenwood Meatgrinder on Perchance. Check it out!

Click here to play around with it!

What is this thing?

A Meatgrinder is a tool like an overloaded encounter dice that's used in His Majesty the Worm. In its simple form, a Meatgrinder is a table of 21 entries of encounters, events, and signs for players to encounter as they explore a megadungeon. 

When the players' guild enters a room, the GM draws an entry for the Meatgrinder, then reads the room key in combination with the Meatgrinder result. The combination makes play dynamic and interesting for everybody involved.

However, when running large hexcrawls, I suffer from tool-switching exhaustion. When running Dolmenwood, I need:

• Hex key
• The GM's map
• His Majesty the Worm rulebook for reference
• Monster entries
• The playlist (each region of the forest has its own theme song, plus music for session start, battles, rests, etc.)
• Dozens of random tables: 
• the Meatgrinder
• random herbs
• reaction tables and monster activities
• weather
• settlement rumors
• treasure tables 
• etc.

In the past, I've felt bogged down by switching through the dozens of resources I have open to help run the game. I have 30 windows open and can't find shit. 

Hence, the Perchance Meatgrinder. Everything I want for the game in one place.

How does it work?

The Dolmenwood Meatgrinder aggregates the different randomizers I use for the different phases of His Majesty the Worm. 

Pic from the core book for reference on the different phases

At a top level, you choose one of the regions of Dolmenwood to generate content for (Aldweald, Hag's Addle, Valley of Wise Beasts, etc.). The content for each region is different.

Each section is explained in detail below.

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A digression about the Meatgrinder

The purpose of the Meatgrinder is to make the game interesting for both the GM and the players, keep prep easy (maintaining a fresh 21-item table for each dungeon level is only minor maintenance), and introduce a gloss of verisimilitude. 

When playing a game where you visit a dungeon or city for 2-3 sessions, this is unneeded. Indeed, it's probably better handled entirely by GM fiat. When playing in a hex crawl/megadungeon game that's intended to last years, a well-designed Meatgrinder can do a lot to create a sort of internal consistency. Repeated visits to different regions of the 'Wood get their own texture and color by a combination of different vignettes, encounters, and monsters. The region of Nagwood feels darker not because I say "You enter a dark region of the wood," but because the encounters there are with more dangerous foes and you receive no respite from chance encounters with beneficent creatures.

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The entire thing consists of 3951 lines of pseudo-code. Click "edit" in the upper right corner to look under the hood. 

Many of the entries were taken from the Patreon Dolmenwood materials, the original Wormskin zines, the excellent d4caltrops blog, the Goatman's Goblet blog, and...just tons of other places. I have a vast amount of random GM prep tools that I put into the sausage grinder.

Importantly, the Meatgrinder should not put out sentences like this: "You encounter 1 trolls. They are tossing a pumpkin back and forth." 

A lot of work was done to make sure that the text serves my purposes at the table. That includes making each output logically consistent, grammatically correct, having important actions bolded, etc. 

The Crawl

The Crawl Phase is where the players spend most of their time, so has the most robust entries for the Meatgrinder. 

Each Crawl entry looks something like this:

TableDownsEncounters
<b>Curiosity:</b> [hilly_vignette]
<b>Travel Event:</b> [t = woodland_travel_event.consumableList]
<b>Sign:</b> [table_down_sign] ^0.5
<b>Hex Feature:</b> The guild experiences the encounter specific to this hex.<br><br>If none, a <b>Curiosity</b>: [hilly_vignette]
<b>Encounter:</b> You encounter [m = table_down_encounters.selectOne, ""] <b>[n = encounters[m].number_appearing.selectOne, ""] [if (n > 1) {"[n] [encounters[m].namePlural]"} else {"{a} [encounters[m].name]"}]</b>. They are [encounters[m].activity.consumableList]

Curiosities are moments of serendipity. I don't like entries that say "Nothing happens," but I do like narration that gives a sense of place or purpose to a region. You'll notice that curiosities are based on the environment of a particular region, whether it's civilization, farmland, hills, forests, swamps, etc.

Travel events are challenges that test the player's ingenuity, the character's stats, or force resource attrition. Using a `consumableList`, I ensure that travel events won't be duplicated over the same instance.

Signs hint at the local monster population. This is things like "You hear a wolf howling in the distance." The sign tables and encounter tables are mostly one to one. If you hear a wolf howling in a region, you can also be attacked by 1-22 wolves in that region later.

Hex features are the way I'm handling the keyed entries from the Dolmenwood map. Sometimes these say "Players have a 2-in-6 chance of encountering the Wild Hunt in Hex 3201" or something. Instead of rolling each time, I'll just look at the "Special encounter" section of a hex if the Meatgrinder gives this result. If there are no hex features keyed, I'll default to a curiosity.

Encounters are when you cross paths with creatures. Sometimes these are sentients (knights,  travelers), sometimes these are helpful (merchants, healing friars), sometimes these are aggressive monsters (antler wraiths, bog zombies), sometimes these are wild beasts (musk boars, wolves), sometimes these are sorts of puzzle monsters (sprites, marsh lanterns). 

Each monster entry provides an activity that contextualizes the encounter (the deorling are singing "The Last Lament of the Deorling"), a random reaction (they seem happy to see you), and lists the number appearing. Sentient monsters are given a name: there's named lists for humans, elves, mosslings, goatfolk, woodgrue, etc., and friars and knights are given special tables of names, too. Knights even display their coat of arms!  

Encounters are different depending on whether its Night or Day. For example, `^[if (nightBox.checked) {1} else {0}]` ensures that creatures like headless riders only appear at night. 

Camp

Campsite events are important on overland hexcrawls. Sometimes these entries are pure flavor ("In quiet moments between conversation, wind keens its way to your ears"). Sometimes these are role-playing prompts ("Everyone reminisces about a childhood pet or favorite animal"). Sometimes these have mechanical weight ("Double chance to have a nighttime encounter with a sentient humanoid").

Some of these are from d4Caltrops, some of these are from one of the Wormskin zine, some are from the His Majesty core book.

City

There are three types of City events: City Vignettes, Hex Features, and Signs and Portents.

City Vignettes are curiosities that contextualize your visit to a settlement but don't have mechanical weight. 

Hex Features will be read from the settlement's description.

Signs and Portents are the most rare type of City event. These change the game world in some way. For example, one of the things that might happen is that a star might fall on Drigbolton, triggering the module "The Weird that Befell Drigbolton."

Rumors are something to drop in to conversation as you roleplay the City Phase with the players.

Hangovers occur when a player chooses to take the Carouse action. These are generated here just in case, and so I don't have to maintain a separate list.

Weather

Weather varies based on season. Change the season dropdown and generate today's weather. Italicized weather is disorienting and prompts checks to see if the guild gets lost as they travel. Bold weather is extreme and generates Stress if the guild is not properly outfitted.

Music

Each region has its own background musical theme, which I use to provide a sense of continuity. Because of a bug I don't feel like fixing, you'll need to change the region dropdown once before the Music section appears. 

What can I do with this?

Well, if you want to run games exactly like I do, go nuts. Use the damn thing. I hope it's helpful! Practically speaking, I find this webpage to be more useful during play than the beautiful tables of Knock or Morkborg. 

I suspect you will want to change it to suit your own purposes or make your own. That is easy to do. If you have an account, you can click edit and make your own version. Adapt it however you wish, or use the underlying schema for your own games. Perchance has very robust tutorials and a very helpful community.

In the future, I might try and work on doing some, uh, front-end development on it. It looks like it's made with spit and gum right now. 

Dolmenwood HIS MAJESTY THE WORM House Rules

I've been a big fan of Dolmenwood for a long time now. I bought almost all of the Wormskins back in the day (losing out on some of the first and the last one). Gavin's house rules for camping, hex crawling, hunting, etc., wheedled their way into my brain and served as inspiration for HIS MAJESTY THE WORM's own focus on the micro-scale. How are you keeping warm and snug in a dungeon? What exactly are you eating? These questions are important for me.

Having drawn my playtest of HIS MAJESTY THE WORM to a close (total 8 years, ~5 years in the same campaign) I wanted to run a different game. Dolmenwood has been on my vision board for a while, so out of the dungeon, into the wilds!

My group is doing their session 0 on Tuesday. Here are the materials I've prepped for them.

(It's entirely possible that these rules are pat nonsense to anybody unfamiliar with HIS MAJESTY THE WORM. I apologize. I hope when the book comes out, maybe these house rules are useful to you.)

Art by Tom Kilian, who also has some pieces in HIS MAJESTY

Character creation

His Majesty the Wyrm Lifepath Character Generation - I had half of this written, then my players said "What if we were a coven of witches?" Most of them haven't read the intro yet, and I was hesitant to align them with a particular faction yet, so I went with an Umbrella Academy-esque/"Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters in Dolmenwood" bit. 

A lot of this is directly inspired by Beyond the Wall, my favorite OSR hack. 

I hate how specific this is. When players uncover other factions and unlock other player choices, I'm going to have to do more work to make this generic and applicable more broadly. But I also think some of these choices are pretty flavorful and fun.

House rules

Dolmenwood HMTW Player's Guide - Since we're moving into the overland play space, I adapted and expanded the optional hexcrawling rules. Then I pulled in a bunch of Dolmenwood specific flavor stuff that I think players will want to know--what food can I buy at this inn? What do the herbs do?

I've been playing HIS MAJESTY THE WORM by the book for 8 years because I wanted to make sure the rules worked as intended, but I hate playing any game by the rules (and don't expect anybody else to stick to the rules when they play the game). This campaign is a chance for me to mix stuff up. Introduced a bunch of new talents here for the setting. Playing fast and loose here, no promises that these will work.

Foraging for Herbs in Dolmenwood (in His Majesty the Worm)

Spinning up a Dolmenwood campaign for my weekly His Majesty the Worm game. It's fun to prep a new campaign. 

Here is a procedure to find herbs in Dolmenwood, originally inspired by this hexculture post.

Gather Herbs

Gather Herbs is a Hex Crawl action. It takes a watch to accomplish and prompts a Meatgrinder event.

You look for rare herbs and fungi. Draw 1 + Cups minor arcana cards and make a poker hand.

• Pair: You gain a random common herb or mushroom endemic to this region.

• Two pair: You gain 2 random common herbs or mushrooms or a specific common herb.

• Three of kind: You gain 3 random common herbs or mushrooms.

• Straight: You gain a random rare herb or mushroom endemic to this region.

• Full house: You gain 2 random rare herbs or a specific rare herb.

• Four of a kind: You gain 3 random rare herbs or a specific rare herb from any region.

Herbs by Terrain

The herbs you find are determined by the terrain you are currently in.

Common herbs are listed first, with rare herbs coming after the semicolon. 

    Bog: Lankswith, Gillywort, Marshwick; Nag-blood

    Farmland: Fenob, Wayfarrow, Lilywhite; Tom-a-merry

    Forest, boggy: Marshwick, Wayfarrow, Gillywort; Nag-blood

    Forest, craggy: Lilywhite, Fenob, Bosun's balm; Arrowhame, Witch's oyster

    Forest, hilly: Lankswith, Gillywort, Marshwick; Moonhaw

    Forest, open: Wayfarrow, Bosun's balm, Lilywhite; Nag-blood

    Forest, tangled: Fenob, Lankswith, Gillywort; Tom-a-merry

    Forest, thorny: Bosun's balm, Marshwick, Spirithame; Witch's oyster

    Fungal forest: Gillywort, Marshwick, Spirithame; Moonhaw, Smottlebread

    Hills: Fenob, Lilywhite, Marshwick; Arrowhame

    Meadow: Lankswith, Wayfarrow, Bosun's balm; Moonhaw

    Swamp: Fenob, Lankswith, Spirithame; Nag-blood, Smottlebread

Fungi and Herbs (Converted to His Majesty the Worm)

Those that dwell within the eaves of the Wood know these herbs and their properties by name. You can buy them during a City Phase or find them when you Gather Herbs.

Arrowhame: Tiny, dried leaves of a climbing plant. Rehydrated and applied as a paste to diseased flesh, allows you to test Wands. If the test succeeds, the affliction recedes within 1d3 days. Repeat applications of arrowhame are ineffective.

Bosun’s balm: Roots dredged up from a rare river weed. Eaten at breakfast, the herb stimulates the body’s energies, bringing on great endurance for one day. The user gains two extra pack slots that day.

Fenob: The root-bulbs of a forest flower. A bulb of fenob placed under the tongue before bed provides one extra charge to be spent during the Rest and Recovery step of the Camp Phase.

Gillywort: A finely ground, white powder derived from the leaves of a creeper that favours dank cave-mouths. When the powder is added to liquid, there is a 50% chance that it turns a shocking purple in the presence of poison. A dose of gillywort is enough to test one liquid.

Grue’s ear: Rubbery, pink ear fungus. Consuming a specimen brings on a mild psychedelia wherein the character’s vision is tinged pink and they become sensitive to bright light. The character’s alertness is also enhanced, granting favor to tests of Cups related to alertness (e.g., avoiding being ambushed) for the rest of the day.

Lankswith: Powdered root of a floating pond weed. Taken as a tea with supper, cures common ailments overnight.

Lilywhite: Carefully dried and folded petals of a marsh lily. Smoking the petals in a pipe brings on a deep, soporific state that aids sleep in harsh conditions. Smoked before bed, the character can have a restful sleep even if there’s a detriment (cold, sick, rainy, etc.).

Marshwick: The seeds of a scarce and unremarkable marsh flower, ground into a blue powder. A character afflicted by a poison who drinks a dose of marshwick with a swig of wine may test Wands. If the test succeeds, the poison is neutralised. Repeat doses are ineffective.

Moonhaw: Pale white berries of a thorny bush, only harvested at night under the light of the moon. After chewing a handful of the berries, the character gains the ability to see normally in utter blackness. The effects are short-lived, lasting 30 minutes.

Nag-blood: A rich, crimson, viscous fluid extracted from the pulp of the rare ruddy medlar. Imbibing a dose induces a frenzy of aggressive emotions which are especially strong in the heat of battle, leading to a berserk rage. This lasts for a watch. A character under the influence gains a +1 bonus to Attack actions but must always play the lowest card for Initiative.

Smottlebread: Spongy, green, bread-like hunks of giant mushroom flesh. Consuming a chunk of smottlebread causes a trance state lasting [draw] x 10 minutes, during which the character enters into communion with the spirit of the smottlebread—a gargantuan, benevolent, elephantine entity formed of green spheres. While the trance lasts, the character is completely immobilised. Following the trance, the character’s vision is tinged green and their coordination is fuddled. All Attack, Dodge, Riposte, or Roughhouse actions are made with disfavor. However, both Wands and Cups cards can be used to take the Recover action. This effect lasts for the rest of the day.

Spirithame: Delicate, curled leaves of a rare moss. When crushed and applied to wounds, granting the Heal effect. Spirithame loses its effectiveness quickly—a character can only benefit from one dose per day.

Tom-a-merry: Tiny, cute mushrooms as tall as a baby’s finger, with pointy blue caps. Consuming a dose of tom-amerry induces a hallucinatory state where time lurches and becomes distorted. During a Challenge, cards that are placed facedown have disfavor, and the player must play their highest card for Initiative. However, the character also gains the ability to see invisible objects and creatures. The effects last for a watch.

Wayfarrow: Desiccated red berries of a thorny bush. Chewing the berries throughout the day brings on great vigour and stamina when marching. If the character engages in a forced march, they have a 50% chance of being fit for action the following day, without becoming Exhausted.

Witch’s oyster: Miniature, bright violet oyster mushrooms that grow in high tree branches. Boiling a portion and drinking the water induces a visionary trance lasting 1-4 hours. Upon awakening, the character gains an oracular insight into a topic that puzzles them. The referee provides the player some hint or insight into this subject.