The Scones Alone

A simple resource management system for Into the Odd Inventory Each character has 8 slots to carry items. All items are either normal or Bulky (per Electric Bastionland ). Normal items take 1 slot. Bulky items take 2 slots. Note, there is no "X quantity of this item fits in 1 slot". e.g. If you have 4 vials of poison, it takes 4 slots to carry them. Encumbrance Per my magic rules , carrying 1 or more Bulky items makes spell casting risky. Per Electric Bastionland , carrying 2 or more Bulky items puts you at risk of becoming Deprived from fatigue. (In EB , Deprived  means you can no longer regain HP during Short Rests .) Treasure A single treasure is treated as a single, indivisible item. Most treasures are Bulky . Some treasures are Unwieldy -- they cannot be carried in your inventory. You must come up with a plan, equipment, personnel, etc. to transport them. Wealth Aside from treasures, all other monies -- small amount of coins you loot from b...

Rules without the commentary available here . My mind is still on resource management systems.  Into the Odd  ( ItO ) doesn't have one and, to be honest, doesn't need one. Plenty of tension to be found via description rather than tracking individual rations. ItO is lightweight, fast, and runs great if you simply assume that, as written, the expedition always has food, water, light, camping & climbing equipment.  So why bother with managing resources?  Character customization Like with Ben Milton's new Knave  ( http://questingblog.com/knave/ ), I like the idea of a character's role being determined by what kind of equipment they are carrying. Want to be a "fighter" in a classless system like ItO ? Carry large, powerful weapons and wear armor. Want to be a "magic user"? Carry lots of Arcana ( or spellbooks ). A "specialist" (to use the LotFP  term)? Carry lots of tools, poison vials, flashbangs, etc. But customization like th...

Continuation from Part 1 .  So I already talked about my quest to run dungeons for my players that feel as tense to them as Dragon Warrior 's dungeons did to me. I talked about trying a game, Torchbearer , that had systems built around emphasizing the things I thought that tension was about: the importance of light, limited resources, dwindling life. And about how I eventually found more of my mental energy going to managing those systems than to my campaign. Let's take a detour back to Dragon Warrior / Dragon Quest . More specifically, let's look at combat in Dragon Warrior . It's pretty basic. Only 4 actions to choose from: FIGHT, RUN, SPELL, ITEM. Seemingly worlds apart from the "free to try anything, and your referee will come up with a ruling" land of OSR and other tabletop RPGs. Even by comparison to other JRPGs, it looks like a limited and kind of boring list of choices. Compare it to, say, Final Fantasy 5 , with its huge system of jobs, skill...

This has popped up in several pictures I've posted. This is the dungeon-in-a-cigar-box that I built. Absolutely nobody asked about this, but I'm going to write about it anyway. Inspiration for this came from this CRIT KIT Kickstarter that I missed out on: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/justinsirois/crit-kit-dice-tray-and-portable-dungeon Stumbled upon that a couple months back and thought it looked cool. Portable box that functions as a dice tray, dice & mini storage, and modular dungeon. Thought it would be a fun project to try building myself. Additionally, you already know I love some Dragon Warrior . Thought I'd make my dungeon floor and walls resemble that. Bill of materials I picked up most of this stuff at Michaels. Any arts & crafts store likely has comparable items. Wooden cigar box:  http://www.michaels.com/artminds-unfinished-wood-box/10357774.html Peel & stick red felt:  http://www.michaels.com/creatology-...