Grim Swamp Encounters for OSR Games

Halloween is almost here, and here's a d10 table with ten swamp encounters for your OSR game of choice, wether is Old-School Essentials, Labyrinth Lord, Sword & Wizardry, or any other clone of OE, B/X, or BECMI Dungeons and Dragons.

These are straight from the Encounters section of Lands of Legends Grim, which is part of the Halloween Sale on DrivethruRPG. Check it out for hundreds more!

Swamps & Marshes - Grim Encounters

1. Maidens in the Water. Ghosts of drowned women lurk in these pools. When travelers come close to their pools, one or more of these Wights grab the heroes' ankles and drag them to the bottom. If a hero gets caught by their claws, he must get rid of them fighting underwater before drowning.

2. A Thorn in the Side. Thick bushes of curved thorns grow verdant in this desolate place. If a thorn scratches one of the heroes (Save vs Death) the tip breaks off and enters the wound. In a few hours the tip will try to crawl up to a safe place in the body (armpit, groin, abdomen, chest) and there it will begin to grow, until exploding in a tangle of thorns and tendrils and transforming the victim into another bush. Upon entering the body the tip deals 1 HP to the victim and acquires it as its own, then it "steals” the victim 1 HP every hour until he dies. Extracting the tip (or the growing bush) requires an expert healer or surgeon, and causes 1 damage to the victim for each HP of the plant.

3. Scarecrows. In this part of the bog there are many poles stuck deep into the soil, on which creepy black crows are perched, staring around to people walking in “their” place. Digging around the poles or plucking them out, one may find that they are attached at the bottom to a carved pumpkin, like underground, upside down scarecrows. If these objects are destroyed or damaged, 1d6 horrible undead crows come out from the ground for each damaged pole. As soon as a good number of these diabolical creatures has gathered, they will attack the party.

4. The silent death. A grey gas exhales from some pools of the marsh, remaining very low on the ground. The shortest explorers (dwarves, halflings) may feel a sour taste in their mouth and an irritation at nose and throat. If the party stops to camp, ignoring these effects, those who sit or lie down will fall asleep almost instantly and asphyxiate in five minutes, without even waking up. Only a successful Save vs Death, or noticing the immediate sleep of those who breathe the gas, can prevent this silent death.

5. Just a Sip! Something the heroes have eaten or drunk contained the spores of some killer snail. The snails settle inside the stomach of one randomly chosen character, grow up in one day and start eating the victim from the inside, killing him in atrocious pain in 1d4+3 days. Each day of pain imposes a cumulative -1 to all rolls. After understanding the cause of the unbearable stomach ache and blood spitting, the best way to kill this parasite is to find a deadly poison and drink an abundant sip of it. After swallowing the poison, the victim must normally make the Save against it, hoping that it takes effect only against the small monsters.

6. Bog Bodies. The bodies of those who drowned in this swamp have been preserved in a unique way, due to its particular environmental conditions. They have retained their skin and internal organs but their bones have completely dissolved. These unusual zombies can be met as peaceful corpses or wandering the swamp with a staggering, slow gait. They reduce bludgeoning weapon damage but take normal damage from cutting weapons.

7. The Hag’s Hut. The heroes spot a hut built on top of a wooden platform. Charms made of bones, feathers and twigs hang from the roof. It is the home of an old hag, retired here after a life of mischief. If found at home (50% chance), she might be welcoming and curious about news from outside the swamp. If her house is explored while she’s outside gathering herbs or food, she’ll get angry and try to trick the characters with the story of how she was forced to leave her village when she was young because she was “wrongfully” accused of being a witch, and then she will serve a poisoned dinner. Her familiar is a fist-sized spider hidden under her clothes.

8. Crab Spiders Pool. The heroes spot a pool whose banks are filled with soft, twitching, iridescent, fist-sized spheres. They are crab spider eggs, ready to burst and feed on the animal carcasses left nearby. Their d4 mothers are around, looking for food, and will be back in d4 hours.

9. Festering Logs. The heroes spot a pool of mud choked with soft, rotting trunks, their mold-covered roots turned upward and emerging from the sludge. The rotting wood seems to tremble and pulsate: under the bark, the soft, rotting pulp is full of larvae of giant mosquitoes or giant robber flies, in various stages of development. Characters might take some and sell them to alchemists, or try to grow a very unusual pet.

10. Sludge Demon. A pool of mud raises a muddy hand to grasp a character’s ankle: it’s a sludge demon, coalesced from the dirt of the pool (1d6 HD). This fat, slow, revolting abomination cannot really hold anything with its semi-liquid state, but can, and will, try to asphyxiate its preys by forcing its muddy arms and appendages through their mouths, tendrils and ears (attacks up to 4 targets, 1d6 damage, plus losing next action if it hits). It cannot really be killed as long as it has muddy soil under its feet, where it regenerates very quickly (one HD worth of HP per round). If destroyed, it will leave a long, green, jagged tongue on the ground.

10 QUESTIONS TO: Kel of Awfully Queer Heroes

Kel is the mind behind Awfully Queer Heroes, the team that’s currently crowdfunding Tower of the Soul, a “LV 1-20 Campaign location featuring tons of new LGBTQIA+ content” that’s already funded on Kickstarter.

Their campaign and project intrigued me because of several unusual features, so let’s get to know them and what’s going on!

1 Hello Kel. First of all, please introduce yourselves and tell us all you want about you, don’t be afraid to go personal!

Hi, I’m a nonbinary creator who started playing D&D about a year before the pandemic hit, I wanted to keep playing so swapped to online which is when i made Awfully Queer Heroes and gathered the team together. We were playing some homebrew and some official but was struck with how little LGBTQIA+ representation there was. I started to make my own and everything snowballed from there.

2 Ok, now tell us about the Tower of the Soul. What is the structure of the book? Does it contain fully mapped levels, or is it something else? How does it manage to be a level 1 to 20 campaign location in less than 150 pages?

Everything in the tower is randomised through tables. The levels have a couple of pre-set rooms (so no one floor only has 1 room on a bad roll) which the number of is decided with a dice roll, then what those rooms are are rolled as well. So if you have 5 rooms, you would then roll against the ‘room table’ 5 times to see whats inside.

Every single room will have its own encounter, though that doesn’t always mean a battle. There is an entire encounter section where it could be a magic effect, riddle, traps, battle, healing or a combination of the above. 

There are two towns and a set of ruins to explore if the characters want a change of scenery or if they haven’t leveled up enough to take on the floor boss.

Laying the book out in this manner has enabled me to keep the page count lower along with printing and shipping costs which I try to ensure are as low as possible for the backers. 

3 What’s up with Chaos? The Tower is a “chaotic characters only” campaign? Why did you choose this approach?

Everyone has seen and done from the ‘good’ side. Even if it's a Murder Hobo campaign, everyone around is generally considered to be good. There are always two sides though and I was wondering how those monsters and beasts felt at constantly being hunted down. This is the result of that.

4 Now on to the “new LGBTQIA+ content”. The KS page doesn’t reveal much about that. Tell us more!

Absolutely, There are spells, all the NPCs are LGBTQIA+, i have flags in pretty much all the buildings (i think it's all but say pretty much in case i missed one), all the races have a specific sexuality or gender listed. I even have a Nonbinary version of Incubus & Succubus.

For example one NPC is:

Sojaar, Owner of the Crown’s Lodge: The jewel of Zah’go, a living testament that wealth and fineries are nothing in front of a charismatic smile and a proper compliment. So, imagine what an individual can do with both. They are a flamboyant Tabaxi, who manages to have everyone’s smile and gazes in this lawless town.

Backstory: Few people know of Sojaar’s story, and even fewer are alive to tell it. They were a noble in a faraway desert land, who had to flee to escape the dangers of court. The road led them to the Zah’go, where money and a well-placed smile led them to become the owner of the most glamorous establishment of the land.

And here's a Race description:

The Erinyes 

Beautiful, striking, fierce, such are the descriptors of these winged horned creatures. Their divine origin is tied to both discipline and intense dedication in the pursuit of the culprit of a nefarious affair. Usually, such culprits are mortal men who have transgressed a sacred deed, or inflicted unearned pain onto others using foul means to achieve even fouler ends. Erinyes are disciplined warriors, bringers of swift death or the most exquisite of pain from the skies, ensnaring their foes and inflicting divine carnage. 

Sexuality: Lesbians

5 Now about rules. Tower of the Soul features several rules add-ons and options. What are they? Are they tied to the chaos theme and the  LGBTQIA+ content?

The LGBTQIA+ content is there and just weaved into everything i could possible consider. 

The Rules are a variety of things that initially came around due to things that irked me in official rules or that honestly i just thought would be really cool. However, all of them work really well within the Chaos setting. 

One player having to merge with an elemental for every level of the tower before being able to take on the boss is huge and so much fun. There is another reason though and… SPOILERS……….. At the end, players have a chance to go onto another Tower. If they do a God will appear and merge them into a Hydra. Each player will control one Hydra head in the ensuing battle and the heads breath attack will be the same element that they merged with during the campaign.

That was a pretty tough thing to follow but thankfully it was also the last part of the book that i had intended to write. 

Other rules include the new healing rules which are based on the level of comfort that you sleep in which is tied to how much HP you recover nightly. It changes how you play the sessions as some folk prefer to save their spells slots for extra healing or take more down time to recover.

6 A delicate question about the KS project and communication. Stating “LGBTQIA+ content” straight into the project subtitle isn’t something one does without thought. You sure know and have considered the whole range of different perceptions such a statement would get from all the different corners of the TTRPG audience. So, what were your considerations?

I wish we lived in a world where such a statement would not be needed at all, i.e. no product would need to be labelled as queer friendly, basically because implies the existance of queer unfriendly games which, unfortunately, we all know are out there.

My primary consideration is always, do LGBTQIA+ folk feel seen, represented, can they play as themselves etc. Many other places that answer is NO. I don’t want there to be ANY doubt that this is Queer made and Queer aimed. Of course non queer folk can back and play, they can even change things if they’d like. I have no problems with any of that. I made it to start to try and show that we are normal, we are here and we can be at your table without it being a big deal.

That's why nothing in my campaigns is SCREAMING gay. It's just there. The bartender is Pansexual, the mage is a male gay Orc. it's just included as part of everything else because it's just one part of us.

7 Tell us more about those nice add-on medallions please!

The purpose of these is three fold. Within the Tower, at the end of most levels, you get rewards for beating the boss. The medallions are part of that. They unlock certain rooms and training options to enhance your character. If the medallion is not on your character when you try and enter these locations, they won’t get in.

I wanted the players to have a physical representation of that in the first instance. They’re a D2 so can absolutely be used for D2 rolls or a yes/no, 1/20 roll of any kind. Lastly, I have adhd and need to fidget with things and I loved spinning them around constantly so figured other folks might as well.

8 Care to tell us about your live plays too?

At the moment, the Live Plays are on our Podcast. We have a twitch stream in the works but that is a couple of months off yet.

The podcast can be found here: https://anchor.fm/awfully-queer-heroes and it lists other places the podcast can be listened to like Spotify.

9 Let’s dream big. Tower of the Soul - The Movie becomes a thing! Can you pitch it to us? You are in charge with the casting, with an endless budget. Who’s in?

The director and assistant director i’d have as Patty Jenkins and Amanda Tapping as i love both of their works.

The player team i’d have (oh wow this is hard!) Alicia Vikander Martin Freeman Kristen Stewart Cate Blanchett Kate Mckinnon For the Gods (as i have 2 fully written out with images n everything) Rujun would have to be Tom Hardy Aharis would be Salma Hayek

10 “KS days are crazy days”. How are you coping?

I’m glad I have a great day job lol. It's hard at times for sure, right now it's super busy after launch, and I’m trying to keep up with all the questions while also trying to spread the word.  Honestly, one of the best things that could happen to me is if someone can’t back the project for whatever reason, they can still share it.  Boosting the signal would be the biggest favor for me.  Every once in a while imposter syndrome kicks in when I don’t get as many backers as I hope, but it’s a campaign, and it has already funded so will still reach as many people as possible.  I honestly think its absolutely awesome and it’s a really fun campaign! I don’t want that to get overshadowed by the diversity part of it.

11 The extra question. Please point us to a song you think would be a cool soundtrack for Tower of the Soul!

I was actually going to commission a soundtrack for the whole campaign but I ran out of time.
There are a couple, mainly from From Software games. The Bloodborne soundtrack goes really well with this as well as the Dark Souls 3 album. Its a fairly dark and twisted location while being something that is yours and you love and would defend with everything you have. Anything along those lines works wonderfully I feel.

Thank you Kelly for your time, and best luck with Tower of the Soul!

-------

Hope you liked this interview. Stay tuned for more!

Hit me on the Axian Spice Facebook page, on Twitter or even on Telegram to never miss one! Hit the comments if you want me to interview your favorite author, artist, publisher or other RPG-related person!

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10 QUESTIONS TO, ENNIES SPECIAL: Mauro Longo & Two Little Mice

This is a special interview! Today we chat with Mauro Longo, the mind behind Brancalonia the Spaghetti Fantasy RPG, and the Two Little Mice team, who gave us Broken Compass. Why am I interviewing them together? Because they have a lot in common, such as being Italian and having won a bunch of Ennie Awards two weeks ago!

Brancalonia got the Gold Award for the Best Electronic Book category, and three more Silver Awards for Best Setting, Best Writing and Product of the Year, while Broken Compass received a Silver Ennie for Best Production Values. 

Mauro Longo is an old time friend of mine: we played RPGs together for years, and we wrote together the Savage Worlds settings Ultima Forsan and Tropicana, and the Old-School zine series Lands of Legends. He’s also worked on internationally acclaimed RPG projects such as Lex Arcana and Inferno, and is also a novelist and a Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks author.

Two Little Mice actually is three -regular sized- people: Rico Sirignano, Simone Formicola and Daniela Giubellini. Before Broken Compass, they created the fairy-themed Household RPG, which won the Italian RPG of the Year 2019 award, the Parsifal graphic novel, and the Anime e Sangue urban fantasy series (available on Amazon Prime Video). And today’s news is the TLM team has just been acquired by the board game colossus CMON!

1 Hello Mauro, Rico, Simone and Daniela! So, how does it feel to be nominated for the Ennie Awards? And then to actually win? Did you see it coming? What was your reaction? Italian RPGs had received a few nominations in the past, but this year Italy totalled five Ennies, which is a record. Do you see a trend in that? What are your plans to keep winning?

Mauro: Well, as you can imagine, it was OUTSTANDING and we don’t have plans for that :D . Of course, we submitted our game to the judges, “with our hat in our hands” like we say, hoping for 1-2 nominations. We didn’t see the four nominations coming, nor the four awards we got. We actually spent the night (3 a.m in Italy) watching the streaming together with the TLM team and our shared joy was a real thing. In one moment, we all passed from our national RPG scene to the world top level… What a night! 

There is a trend: an internal Italian trend. Starting with Ultima Forsan, then with Lex Arcana, Broken Compass, Valraven, Inferno, Lands of Legends, Not the End and similar Italian games, Italian game designers are transcending the national border and bringing our games to the rest of the world. We didn’t have the strength to arrive on the English speaking marketplace before, we have it now. And the whole thing will escalate quickly.

TLM: Being nominated for the Ennie Awards was thrilling, and winning a silver medal was way beyond our wildest expectations. This is one of the greatest awards for games, and we only stepped into the gaming sector three years ago.

In the last years Italian role-playing games are proving well received even beyond our borders, thanks to some very successful KickStarter campaigns. We hope that the recognition awarded to Broken Compass and Brancalonia will contribute to bring even more attention to our niche and help the Italian gaming industry to grow.

2 Ok, just in case someone reading this doesn’t know your games, could you please pitch them for us here in, like, 10 lines?

Mauro: Brancalonia is a “spaghetti fantasy” setting for the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons. It’s set in an unheroic, picaresque and roguish version of Medieval Italy, a world that quotes, collects, and mixes references from contemporary Italian fiction and over a hundred works of Italian fantasy tradition, pop culture, and collective imagery – like Collodi’s Pinocchio, Orlando Furioso, Calvino’s fiction, fairy tales, Dante’s Divine Comedy, and the “Spaghetti Western” films. In Brancalonia, all the player characters are knaves, members of a Free Company of mercenaries, rogues and rascals, engaged in questionable jobs across the various domains of what is left of an ancient kingdom now in ruins.

TLM: Broken Compass is a pulp adventure game inspired by the classics of the genre like Uncharted, Indiana Jones, and Tomb Raider. When playing Broken Compass you step into the role of an Adventurer, someone who braves the dangers of the world in search of a Treasure and will have to face a terrible and dangerous Rival to get it. The best things about Broken Compass are that it’s very easy to pick up, simple to learn and play, even online, and the great attention to details that gained it the Silver ENnie for Best Production Values.

3 Tell us about your specific jobs. What are your roles and your areas of expertise? How does your creative and productive process work? Your creative productions include RPGs and also novels, CYOA books, comics and live action shows. Is there an overlap, influence, contamination that seeps into how you conceive, play and create RPGs?

Mauro: I’m now the creative director of all the RPG and gamebook lines in Acheron Games. I lead a composite staff of writers, artists, developers and other contributors. I usually try to work on POP CULTURE as a whole subject, from which to extract tropes, ideas, features and quotes. This is the way I approach RPGs, even in their mood, their atmosphere. Ruleset comes later.

TLM: Two Little Mice is made up of Riccardo “Rico” Sirignano, Simone Formicola, and Daniela Giubellini. Rico and Simone are both writers and they focus on the development and writing of the games, while Daniela is the artist behind the beautiful illustrations in our books.

Before diving into the RPG scene, we produced a tv series released on Amazon Prime Video and several plays for theatre. These days we are also working on a graphic novel that should be delivered to our backers shortly. We take inspiration from many sources; Broken Compass, for example, was clearly the product of our shared passion for both movies and travel.

4 Both Brancalonia and Broken Compass were launched on Kickstarter, with very successful campaigns. The perfect example of how crowdfunding was supposed to work: small publishers gathering funds for large projects.

Through the years, though, it has become more and more important even for the “big players” in the RPG industry.

Do you consider that unfair? Or is the presence of big publishers beneficial to the small ones? Do you see that changing anytime soon? How would YOU like things to change?

What’s your overall experience with Kickstarter campaigns?

Mauro: Kickstarter is a tool publishers can use for their projects, and in this way it’s neutral. For us in Acheron, an international crowdfunding portal is the way we can directly reach an audience worldwide: players living in the USA, UK, Australia and so on. The point is not the money, the fundraising, but the visibility our games can have, and the direct connection between creators and players. 

It can’t be unfair, if everything is used in transparency. I like this system, I adapted very well, and I will use it again, when needed.

TLM: Many of our projects over the years have been founded with the help of Kickstarter and we are very grateful to have such a platform. When big players also use this platform, they help introduce it to a greater public, which then has a chance to discover the smaller companies there. In our opinion, and as proved by our experience, this coexistence doesn’t work against indie companies. It’s not unfair for larger companies to use this platform, so long as they do it responsibly. But this goes for everyone, big or small.

In future, we’d love for both creators and backers to come closer to the philosophy behind crowdfunding campaigns, both explaining clearly and accepting the risks they involve, and striving for a better communication on all sides.

5 Italian style. Is there any such thing in RPGs? How “Italian” are your Brancalonia and Broken Compass? Rules, setting, concept, approach, anything you think may apply. Has it been a key element for success?

Mauro: Acheron IS a producer of Italian-style concepts, IPs, games and fiction. It’s our mission: “Made in Italy, shared worldwide”. We are expressly devoted to Italian-ish settings, novels, lore, pop culture and so on. Of course we also like stories and settings with completely different flavor, BUT we use “Italian stuff” as a distinctive trait, to introduce ourselves and to be distinguished from other publishers.

In our case, it definitely has been a key element for success.

TLM: Italian style is famous all over the world in many sectors, from design, to fashion, and for many other artistic products. We like to trace our love and attention to details back to our traditions, our history, and the many beautiful things our Country has to offer, and we hope to keep sharing our love for peculiar things with others. It would be hard to say if there is such a thing as an “Italian Style RPG”, but the cultural wealth that surrounds us is a great inspiration for our imagination, and there’s no doubt it played a role in the creation of our products. In many ways, Broken Compass is NOT an Italian game, but we believe that our novel approach to a genre so dominated by the American perspective played a role in our success.

6 Inclusion and representation of minorities in RPGs are a hot topic. How do you address that? 

Mauro: We try the best we can. Our saying, for Brancalonia, is that we are “social justice knaves”, and everything in the setting is planned to be "cosmopolitical", inclusive and respectful, even if in an ironical way. Our most frequent trick is: take a stereotype and then subvert it. This way you get to use the tropes that you want to, but you can create more than that, representing a lot of differences. 

TLM: When designing Broken Compass, we came to realize that the genre that inspired us (let’s call it “archaeological adventure”) historically hasn’t been the most inclusive or respectful in the representation of other genders and cultures. Our objective was to bring the genre into the present, adapting it to a modern society and leaving its problematic traits in the past. Representation and diversity have always been a cardinal element of our creative ideals, and we often had to go against the reference material and find different ways to stay true to them.

We are proud of having created Broken Compass as a game with people of many genders and nationalities, and proud of our fans and backers who appreciated and supported our choices.

7 Let’s see how good you really are as role players. Now you are Hollywood screenwriters and must write a short email to convince Mr. Warner Bros to produce a movie or tv show based on your games. Go!

Mauro: Brancalonia is “fantasy with no money for CGI”. Think Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach with blades instead of guns and that’s it. What could possibly go wrong? 

TLM: With the fifth Indiana Jones in the works, Jungle Cruise in theaters, and a movie based on Uncharted that’s already going through post-production, we think Hollywood knows already that the archaeological adventure genre is ready for a revival. It would be hard to come up with anything that could rival such colossal productions!

8 Licensed games. If you could buy any franchise/IP for an RPG, which would it be? Tell us about the franchise and the game you’d make.

Mauro: I’d go with some Italian crime story, but with an ironic mood in it. Inspector Coliandro would be a great game.

TLM: Without leaving Italy, it would be great to work with the great people at Bonelli. We think coming up with an investigative rpg that lets players become “Nightmare Investigators” like Dylan Dog would be a fun and interesting project.

9 I’m sure the four of you already have at least ten other ideas for new RPG products that you might be publishing in the future! Am I right? Can you share what’s on the design table? 

Mauro: Brancalonia and Inferno will go on for a while with extended lines. A new idea for the future could be “Fascists from Yuggoth”, a pulp-weird adventure game in a fascist empire that never fell, thanks to some crazy alien lovecraftian tech. In the game, you will be part of the international antifascist brigades and fighting against this evil Italian tyranny, their legionaries and their mad scientists, up and down the Mediterranean Sea.

TLM: We think we’ll stay at the House for a while and, as already announced, work on the second edition of our very first role-playing game: Household. There are more surprises ahead, but nothing we can tell you yet.

10 My regular final question: please point us to a song you think we should listen to, game related or otherwise.

Mauro: We spoke about Italian stuff, so my suggestion is a piece by Ennio Morricone from “My name is nobody” OST: “Il Mucchio Selvaggio”. It’s a not-so-known spaghetti western music I really love very much.  Again: so Italian!

TLM: Ok, we’ll give you three, one each.

Rico: The beast of pirate bay (Aurelio Voltaire) 

Simone: Aerials (SOAD)

Daniela: Weapon of Choice (Fatboy Slim)

Thank you Mauro, Rico, Simone and Daniela! Bye!!

Mauro: Ciao Giuseppe!

TLM: Thank you Giuseppe, ciao!

Ciao!

This ends the interview with Mauro and the Two Little Mice.

If the interview made you curious, go check out Brancalonia and Broken Compass!

And stay tuned for more interviews!

Hit me on the Axian Spice Facebook page, on Twitter or even on Telegram to never miss one! Hit the comments if you want me to interview your favorite author, artist, publisher or other RPG-related person!

If you want to support this blog, check my OSR and Savage Worlds stuff, or simply shop on DriveTrhuRPG (affiliate link).

About Dying in Old-School Essentials and Other Old-School Rulesets

Like my other post about encounter balance, this article takes Old-School Essentials for reference, but can be applied to most retro-clones.

The standard rules of most OSR systems simply have characters die at 0 hp.

Many players and GMs feel that's too harsh, especially if you actually roll your class hit die to determine hit points at level 1, meaning you may very well start with 1 or 2 hit points.

That's as bad as it sounds, one hit and you're down... and yet it's very much in line with one failed save and you're dead, which is a constant threat (poison snakes, death spell, pietrification, and so on) even when you have enough hp to take a dozen arrows.

Adhering 100% to those rules is much less harsh if you use Retainers and/or each player plays two or three characters. After all, Old-School Essentials explicitly states it's designed for 6-8 characters, not 3-4. This is the best solution the book has to offer, and if you want to stay within the boundaries of the rules and experience the original gameplay, I suggest you try this route first. This probably is, by the way, where the DCC RPG four-characters-per-player funnel adventures originate from.

But most players prefer to play one character. I get it.

In my DMing career, I've often tweaked death and dying one way or another. Here's a few systems I've tried, plus some I've read around and liked, or not liked, presented to you in small modular bits. 

Maximum HP at level 1. That's probably the most common house rule! It has a large impact on character survivability for level 1-3, then evens out at higher levels. Simple, zero book-keeping involved, nothing to remember while playing.

"Roll the body" Save. When you reach 0 hp, you drop down and you might be dead. You make a final Save versus Death when (if) someone checks on you. You pass it, you're back on your feet with 1 hp and still have a chance to make it back from the dungeon. This type of rule can be found, for example, in Dungeon Crawl Classics. If you're left there, you're dead, eaten by monsters or just bled out. This is highly dramatic for sure! Allows for glorious TPKs where no one is there to check on fallen heroes, and works as a high tension final parachute. Because of Saves progression, higher level characters have better and better chances of avoiding Death's door at the very last minute. Starting characters, not so much. Also, some classes definitely have an advantage with this. I'm looking at you, dwarves. Anyway! This requires no book-keeping. The only thing you have to remember is "hey please check on me!" when you go down. A simpler variation is just immediately Save versus Death to, well, Cheat Death as soon as you hit 0 hp.

Negative HPs. As soon as your HPs reach zero or lower, you're "dying", or "bleeding out". You're out of combat, and might die unless helped. Negative HPs have been around since forever, often together with max hp at level 1. Lamentations of the Flame Princess has them. The big difference in implementation is what happens when you're out of HPs. In most cases, you have a maximum amount of negative HPs, which might be fixed (-10, for example, or half your Constitution score). Actual death can happen as a Save versus Death every round to avoid bleeding out until someone tends to your wounds. Nasty GMs might ask you to apply your negative HPs as a modifier to your Save roll, which scales well with higher level characters and their improved saves. Sometimes bleeding out is translated as suffering 1 hp of damage every round, until you hit -10 or another threshold, which means you're finally dead.
I completely, irrationally hate negative HPs. Anyway. You have a little extra book-keeping. Saving every round (or suffering -1 hp per round until -10) works as a clock for other players, forcing them to decide if they want to spend a round to try and save your life somehow.

Or, you know, just leave those HPs the way they are, and try something different if you're determined to increase survivability. Like...

Shields Shall Be Splintered. One of the most popular OSR house rules of all times. You sacrifice your shield and completely avoid damage from one blow. This simple rule originated here in 2008 and has been developed and built upon in many variations, also involving helms and other pieces of gear. If you use this rule, you must decide what happens to magic shields... and probably enforce a "can't carry more than one shield" rule. This rule leaves non-shield-using classes the way they are, though.

A possible variant: anything you are holding in your hands may save you from one blow and is destroyed in the process, but you must succeed in a roll (a Save versus Death, of course) to pull such a feat. Sounds silly? Think how many swords +1, wands, and holy symbols are going to get broken...

Injury/Death and Dismemberment Tables. Another OSR staple. When at 0 hp, instead of dropping down dead, you roll on a table and see what's happened. Sometimes you lose an eye or ear, some time a finger, toe, or limb. Some time you suffer no effect at all, or lose a point of Constitution or other score, and some time you're crushed to bits, adieu. Conceptually, this adds layers of intermediate results to the binary outcome of th Roll the Body/Cheat Death final Save. This post lists so many examples you may check to pick your favorite table or to create your own. Using such tables increases survivability, and may lead to character retirement! Which can be a nice outcome, for a change. Players must keep in mind that losing their sword arm was the alternative to losing their character altogether...

Also keep in mind that you can decide to have injuries and lost stat points to be permanent or temporary. Temporary effects may be recovered in a given amount of time (weeks for example), while the permanent ones may still be recovered with some magic effect: custom spells, rituals, or the obvious Wish solution.

10 QUESTIONS TO: Tony Vasinda

Tony Vasinda is a very active voice in the indie RPG community, and the founder of Plus One Experience, which “multiclasses in Beard & Skincare Alchemy, Game Design, & the Bardic Knowledge of Content Creation”.

He's one of the main voices in the RPG zines scene, networking and encouraging creators to make great stuff. You might have heard of him with regards to the Repugnant project during ZineQuest3, for example. And his enthusiasm certainly encouraged me with my Lands of Legends project!

He is currently crowdfunding Down We Go Infinite Edition, by Markus Linderum, on Gamefound.

He’s got an amazing beard, as you can imagine (and he's also written a game about that!), and he’s also a catholic missionary. Plenty to talk about here!

1 Hello Tony. First of all, tell us everything about Plus One Experience, from games to beards, as if you were trying to explain it to my aunt!
Hello auntie, I make beard balm (like a leave-in conditioner for beards) for a living and love sharing it with specific groups. So I made some that were RPG inspired because it’s something I love. As part of that I made a beard RPG called Beards & Beyond and started helping review and promote other folks' games on youtube. Folks love the balms, and the games, but most folks know us for reviewing other peoples games and promoting community conversations in the Indie RPG space. 

2 Let’s talk about Down We Go. How did it become a fully fledged KS multiple-contributors crowdfunding project from when it was a one page game? Are you the one to blame?

Yeah, it’s my fault. I saw a beautiful 1 page game that Markus Linderum made and asked him to run it on stream. He did and created some simple 1 page dungeons to go with it. I loved them and asked if he could make a city so we could print the game as a small zine. We kept playing the game on streams anytime we had an OSR module to feature and I and other folks fell in love with it.
So I worked with Markus to build a team, flesh out the content, and fill in the blanks on the project. 

3 Can you tell us more about the game as it is now?

So the core rules are still just 1 A5 page. We fleshed out the Ref (what we call game masters) page a bit, and built some simple procedures for helping folks make their own Dungeons. Currently we are playtesting our Faction, Event, Location, and Hexcrawl procedures that are getting added to the game. So the core rules fit on that 1 page, but you have a 10 more pages of option procedures to help the Ref have everything they need to run a session or a campaign with very low prep. The rest of the book is made up of and other support material for each of those procedures. The Dungeon section has 1 page of procedures and then 4 Dungeons. The Faction section has 1 page procedures and 10 Factions. Think of it as a toolkit that has everything you need in it to run an amazing game, but that you can ignore if it’s not a part of how you want to play.

4 Obvious question: why not Kickstarter? Why Gamefound?

Great question. In short it’s because we need to end the stranglehold Kickstarter has on the way we think about crowdfunding.

Kickstarter isn’t bad. I plan to use it for another project coming up. However, just having 1 good option for any process is never ideal.
Competition breeds innovation and the funding process needs lots of innovation to be healthier.
Kickstarter has a better reach and footprint, but I think Gamefound has a better toolkit for marketing and building the page you want to build. We are probably leaving money on the table by choosing Gamefound right now, but we can always sell more games. What we don’t always have the choice to do is to make a choice that improves the RPG scene for others. We chose Gamefound because I wanted to open the space up more for others who want to fund their games theer and prove small projects could thrive on the platform. 

I have been thoroughly impressed by Gamefound and the team. I can’t wait to finish the campaign and smoothly integrate their pledge manager into our process. 

5 Down We Go is the perfect example of what crowdfunding was originally designed for. Through the years, though, it has become more and more important even for the “big players” in the RPG industry.

Do you consider that unfair? Or is the presence of big publishers beneficial to the small ones? Do you see that changing anytime soon? How would YOU like things to change?

Look this may not be popular, but I love seeing bigger companies funding on the platform. There are two reasons:
1. It 100% brings people to the platform.
2. Producing games and printing books is a huge risk. WotC does not have to worry about a book not selling. Almost every single other publisher does.
A bad run at scale would ruin most publishers, or at least mean layoffs. I want us all to succeed, and believe it or not, I think we all can.
Competition breeds innovation, but it has to be healthy competition. We created Down We Go as a unitive game with a global team because I think the best thing we can do is be united as a community of players & designers. It’s the only type of success I am interested in. There will be bad actors who out themselves over time, and we need to be on the lookout for that, but not at the cost of our own dignity or mental health.
I work with publishers of all sizes who are interested in building up our community and speak out against those who act in self interest. That’s what I care about.

6 Inclusion and representation of minorities in RPGs are a hot topic. Considering the theme and size of it, I don’t expect Down We Go to address much of that within the game, am I wrong?

Great question. I don’t know because it’s a complex issue.
Down we go is about a dungeon crawling in and around a twisting dark hungry city that depends on the sacrifice of delvers to keep its economy operating.  We don’t have Races in the game, but we have had plenty of folks play different races, in our upcoming space hack Through the Void, I use Backgrounds that play a similar role.
Markus & I have never sat down and had a conversation about this, but from my perspective there are huge conversations about class, race, upward mobility, politics, religion that I expect every session to be able to touch on. For me games are about exploring the human experience in community with others. I think every designer needs to ask themselves, “Does this game encourage the players to have real conversations about moral, social, and political issues that humanize others?”
I think the answer should always be, “Yes”.
We built a diverse team so that these ideals would be baked into the game's DNA. I have never asked a single person on the team to make “inclusive content” because we picked a team who I never imagined would do anything else.
I really hope folks explore these issues when playing Down We Go. I hope they overthrow fascist bosses, and explore the injustice of unlimited wealth. However if they just go get weird mud for the Dirt Licker faction and fight a bunch of oozing slimes on the way, I want to hear about that also.

7 Let’s talk about other games now. What is the best game you’ve played in, say, the last two years?

Aaron King’s Patchwork World, Bloodfeud, or Gods of Metal Ragnarock are tied. Patchwork World is the best game. Bloodfeud had the best introspection, Gods of Metal… man Markeia McCarty is an amazing GM. 

8 Let’s talk about you as a catholic missionary. What does it mean, and do you put RPGs into that? Also a bit of a complex thing. In short, everything.

Let me start by stating I know tons of folks reading this might have some kind of religious trauma and that the Catholic Church might be the cause of that. Be kind to yourself if you need to stop reading here or skip this question. To make this easy I have asked to have the next section of my text spoilered so that you need to highlight it to read.

All the choices I make are guided by 38 years of being nurtured, fed, questioned, and challenged by my Catholic lens and imagination. I believe there is a God that exists outside of time who is love, goodness, and truth and from whom those things flow. I believe that He (and let’s acknowledge that pronouns fail to encapsulate a transcendent being) desires to be in a relationship with us. I also believe that I eat the flesh and drink the blood of this undying God every Sunday as a way to be in communion with him. Objectively, that’s pretty weird.
That impacts everything I do because, if someone says they believe these things and does not let it impact them totally... why believe it?
Here is a major thing though. What I believe is not what you believe. I don’t hold anyone besides other Catholics to believe what I believe, and the main group of folks I tend to disagree with are... other Catholics. 

For folks who are not Catholic all I want to do is to amplify what is most good and true and beautiful in your life. For most folks in the games community that means sitting down and playing amazing games, listening to others, but lots of times it means having real conversations and advocating for those in need. Lots of the time it means pushing back against toxic and harmful elements in the community.
Plus One is a diversity first channel and company. This means that we prioritize LGBTQ, PoC, and minority voices on stream and when choosing who to hire or support financially. A huge part of this comes from my faith, but I don’t promote this on channel because I understand the trauma that many folks have experienced around religion and I always put the needs of the person in front of me first. 

Like Jesus, I am here to comfort the afflicted, but to afflict the comforted. 

9 You’re not new to it, nevertheless I think I can say “KS Crowdfunding days are crazy days”. How are you coping?

Pretty fine. Gamefound actually makes running a campaign much easier in the middle. I am able to set up a number of items in advance that I normally have to manually schedule in which means I don’t have to look at the page if I don’t want to and everything runs really smoothly. I am playing more and doing a lot of press, but that’s the fun part. 

10 Please point us to a song you think we should listen to to get the feeling for Down We Go!

There is no better song to listen to than the Infected Tomb on the Down We Go Dungeon Synth album that you can get as part of the project. Loot the Body did an amazing job with it, and you can find it on the campaign page or right here.

Thank you Tony for your time, and best luck with Down We Go!

So folks, check out with Down We Go on Gamefound!

And stay tuned for more interviews!

Hit me on the Axian Spice Facebook page, on Twitter or even on Telegram to never miss one! Hit the comments if you want me to interview your favorite author, artist, or publisher!

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