Mapless Towns

Imagine a grid or draw one if you can't imagine one. Let's say it's 2 by 3, but it could be larger or smaller. Each grid square abstractly represents a distinct area in your town, and the grids abstractly represent the layout of those areas in your town, meaning the relative placement of one area to another area, not the shape or size, or the scale. If any of the areas of town being represented by the grids are particularly big or small, notate it in the grid as you go.

Name each area of town and label your grids. Example: North End, West End, Center Square, Old Town, etc. They don't need to be the official names of areas of town, they could be the informal names given to them by folks in town, or names you give them for the purposes of organizing town. You may want to try to come up with names that describe what primarily is there, like residential area or business district.

In each grid, list major locations. Example, City Hall is the name of an area, and so it's also the name of a grid space.  It includes all the government buildings such as the City Hall, the mayoral manor, Prisons, Courthouse, gallows, and stockade. It also has a job board or bulletin board for odd jobs and news, and official proclamations. Maybe there's a mail courier station. It might even have an armory or barracks for the town militia. You can also list important NPCs, products or services associated with each location.

Old Town Slaughterhouse and Meat Packing Old Mill and condemned buildings.	City Hall Mayoral Manor Heath Ledger, mayor Town Hall Bulletin Board (Job Board) Gallows, Stocks Militia Barracks and Armory	Up Town High class shops and traders Armstrong Smithy Erin Tinctures (apothecary)
West End Residential (poor / slum) Scum and Rook (seedy bar with Pitt Fighting, gambling, secret hideout of the Black List [gang]) Bartholemew	City Central Gate house with toll Carlin Bros Gen. Store Blue Moon Inn & Tavern Mark Piper, owner Thomas St. Richard’s Church Father Simon Belmont	East End Residential (modest) Nelly (Nel) Hilldotter’s home (cultist)

Finally, scale. Instead of a bar or line marked with a distance in feet, yards, or miles, we'll do something simpler and more practical. The scale will be walking time, and the walking time for this town will be 1/4 hour. That's how much time it takes for the player characters to walk anywhere within one area. If the players want to walk from one area to another, add another 1/4 hour for every area they pass through.

Alternate Alignment: Heroic, Neutral, Villainous

  In my experience, many people don't use alignment, or they don't use it effectively. It's more than just an adjective for a character. It's a good tool for a game master to use to detail their setting, the people and places in it, and to establish the player character's places therein. Let me elaborate and be more specific, it's a good tool to describe your character's allegiance to higher powers in the setting - be it national or religious. Let's take a look at the classics.

One axis is all you need: Lawful, neutral, and chaotic. Lawful means you are a member of a society with laws, and you have an allegiance to some authority! Chaotic means you are a an outsider to that, such as an anarchist, or a monster from the wilderness. Law and Chaos are not dispositions or personality traits, they are opposing FORCES and in no minor way. They actively oppose and come into conflict with each other. Law wants bring order to chaos, and chaos wants to bring disorder to the lawful world. They hate and fear each other. 

This serious division in a setting means the setting has conflict! You'll notice I didn't say any one side was good or evil? You don't need that axis! Lawful people can be good or evil. Chaotic people can be good or evil. Law vs Chaos describes a low or dark fantasy setting where good and evil are unattainable for now. What's at stake is whether we establish a society with order and safety, or we establish a setting where might makes right. These old games that emphasized law vs chaos often treated lawful characters as good and heroic, and chaotic characters as evil for a reason: the authors were on the side of law. To them, it was implied that law was good, and chaos was bad.

Where do neutral folks fit in? Neutral IS not some safe middle ground. Neutral explicitly meant you didn't have allegiance to law and its factions, or to chaos and its factions. Your character was not a soldier in the kings' army, nor were they a marauder in the wilderness. It means that wherever you went, you might fit in, or you might not. Both lawful and chaotic people see you as someone without convictions or loyalty. Your values were unknown. You are untrustworthy. Maybe you could get along with us, or maybe you might as well be with the other team. The point is neutral means unaligned and aligned people have good reason to be skeptic of unaligned people.

This law and chaos alignment thing was important because of the setting where law and chaos are the major source of conflict. Some settings use this law v chaos alignment for the cosmology of the setting. Law gets you into the good afterlife and chaos gets you into the bad afterlife. Also, some spells or magic items could affect you differently. I think it's a shame no one really uses alignment or understands alignment. Players treat chaotic alignment like an excuse to play a character who's naughty, and parties of mixed alignment characters almost never come into conflict over grander things like who should rule the world.

Before we look at my excellent alignment system that is excellently excellent, let's detour briefly to Star Wars. Within the Star Wars setting, there is the force. The force is Star Wars' cosmology and magic system. There are people who can use the force, and people who can't. Of these people who can use the force, called force users or force sensitives or force adepts, there are two major factions: the Jedi who champion a "light side" of the force, whatever the heck that is, and the Sith who pursue a "dark side" of the force, whatever the heck that is. Jedi and Sith are not personality traits, they are factions. A force user can belong to one or the other, or neither. Force users who belong to neither the Jedi nor the Sith are usually completely untrained because there is no faction in the Star Wars setting that teaches the neutral path of the force. This is because George Lucas likes mythology and he wanted to tell a story about good and evil, and this is now intrinsic in the philosophy of Star Wars. A good story about a powerful, neutral force user would be welcomed, and a good story about a Jedi who uses the dark side for a good cause would also be welcome, but Star Wars without these factions is missing the Star Wars philosophy. I argue that the good and evil dichotomy found in Star Wars is part of what makes Star Wars. I hope this detour into Star Wars helps to recontextualize the law vs chaos alignment system. All hail the force or whatever they say!

Ok, so here's my alignment system. *Plays a humble fanfare on a kazoo* it's Heroic, Neutral, Villainous. Yeah, that's it. Without defining, it's more of a characteristic than an alignment. A motive perhaps. Instruction. A way to set expectations. I think this is perfect for a modern RPG because all that stuff I just spent 1,000 or more words talking about, almost no one who plays RPGs even knows or cares about it! Young players might not be able to understand.

Heroic means that in spite of your flaws and weaknesses, you're still trying to be a darn hero at the end of the day! Cowabunga! Villainous means whatever redeeming traits you have, you're still a baby-eating monster! Hail Hydra! Neutral means you've taken the safe middle ground, maybe because you're a coward. Or, it means you don't commit to a cause because it could mean you flip-flop to serve your own interests. Maybe you're principally neutral. Go Sweden! The GM can decide that neutral is for NPCs. 

At least we don't have players misunderstanding the original intent of what was actually a really simple, useful system for describing a setting and the characters in it, and using it as permission to play a naughty character who sometimes causes conflicts at the table. The Heroic, Neutral, Villainous alignment system allows you, the GM, to set easy expectations for your players. Just tell them you're running a game for heroic characters. Bam. No need to bring in shades of grey. The only weakness I see here is if you have players who want to argue that someone like the Punisher is a heroic character, or that Winston Churchill was actually a villain. Just tell them heroic means traditional hero and they're no allowed to overthink it. 

    Han Solo was heroic and anyone who says he was neutral is wrong. Neutral is for NPCs.

Campfire RPG

  Combat in Table Top RPGs sucks. You are welcome to disagree, but I'll have you know that I have the unfortunate burden of being the only human on earth with an entirely correct opinion. As such, it is also my burden to convince you that my opinion is correct. It is not your burden to be convinced by me that your opinion is wrong. Let me explain to you what's good about my opinion without telling you what's wrong with yours so that you may be more inclined to listen.

There are multiple ways to play a tabletop roleplaying game. You can use a grid, you can use theater of the mind, or you can use that sweet, sweet middle ground, best of both worlds, zone combat - like god intended, delivered to us by the Prophets of Games (note the big letters). Or maybe there's some fourth thing super-geniuses like us hasn't conceived of yet (or have we?). 

You can use crunchy game systems like GURPS 4e which tries to simulate reality, or you can play D&D 5e or PF2 which are a bit less crunchy but still have a lot of complexity. Or you can play that Lasers & Feelings game where everyone has only one stat and you only need a single six-sided die! Maybe you're playing D&D like a strategic board game or a war game with an emphasis on the rules as written and good tactics, or maybe you're playing Index Care RPG with a strict emphasis on the roleplay and what feels good narratively in each moment. Take any ruleset and make one change to it and you've made a variation of that ruleset. There could be an infinite number of variations of each ruleset. We're all playing different variations of the same game. There is no wrong way to play unless someone is having a bad time (which is the first truth about RPGs).

Whatever your preference, here's the second truth you need to acknowledge: The more rules, the slower the game. How far does firebolt go? How much damage does a scimitar do? What's the weight of a suite of armor? What's the area of effect of a sleep spell? How many undead can I turn? How much hit points does a boogeyman have? Can I open a door as part of my action? Can I close a door as part of my action? Does it take an action or a bonus action to do a thing? When are you allowed to make a reaction? This action is really complicated, let's break it down into steps and call for different rolls for each steps. Enough! Finally, here's the third truth of RPGs: other people's turns are curse word boring! Especially when they take too long, which they often do.

When you have to stop playing to look up or discuss a rule, that is an example of the rules of the game getting in the way of a good time. Even for a moment, this breaks immersion. Honestly, I don't care about the rules so much anymore. If I know a rule better than someone else at the table when a rules question arises, I don't speak up as a player anymore. Just let the GM sort it out. That's their job. The faster, the better. They should make up ruling at the table and look the rule up later. It's not going to hurt anything. If it's life or death, err in the player's favor.

I reiterate the second truth: the more rules in a game, the slower the game. Consider playing the game more strictly as a story telling game. Imagine you are sitting around a campfire with your group. You have no dice. You have no grid, no minis, and no character sheets. Each player creates a character; they name it, come up with a simple one sentence background, a goal, a motivation, and a specialty like religion, archery, magic, whatever. The GM sets the scene then passes a figurative or literal story-stick to the next player who introduces their character, then they pass the story stick to the next player, etc., etc.  The method for resolving mechanical conflicts is to imagine a clock on the ground, then drop an actual stick and interpret which hour it points to. Only one end of the stick is the arrow and does the pointing. The later the hour, the harder it is to succeed. Drop your stick, interpret what hour it points to loosely, then call it out and pass the stick. This is the story stick mechanic. When the GM presents the characters with a challenge, with combat, etc., and a mechanism is needed to determine success or failure, this is it. The GM will decide what hour you need to succeed for each action, or how well you succeed or how poorly you fail based on the hour you get. The GM might say "You succeed at 7 o'clock or later." or the GM might say, "because your hour points to 7, you succeed fairly well, but it was close!" The hour needed is case by case and depends on the situation. Are you hurt? Are you armored? Are you attempting a skill your character has almost perfected in their backstory? 

Ok, so now that I've set up a scenario for you for a variation of our classic game, we'll call this variation Campfire RPG. Campfire RPG makes a lot of concessions starting with space. We don't use specific distance and range of attacks, of movement, of area of effect, etc., Space must be abstracted, and cannot be literal. Discard or simplify duration of magical effects, hits or hit points, your armor class, skills and abilities, or other strengths or weaknesses. And why should we keep them I ask rhetorically. We don't need to. Don't track other things like initiative, spell slots, ammunition, money, and stuff in your character's pockets. Get rid of the bean counting and resource management. Imagine you're an actor figuratively dressed in costume on a figurative stage, with no props, and you're playing a character in a scene with a simple prompt. Don't think about the mechanics. Tell the GM what you do and how you do it. That's it. The mechanics come from how you describe your character, how you introduce your character, and how you play your character. The GM will rule "your character is a tough veteran, so you resist this poison at 3 o'clock or later." Or, "your character is not magically savvy, so you succeed at 9 o'clock or later to figure out this magic box." If a monster attacks you, they succeed at a later hour if you're armored, or at an earlier hour if you unarmored or particularly vulnerable. If you take a hit, the GM describes that you have receive a minor injury, a major injury, a severe injury, a fatal injury, or etc. Minor injuries are for flavor and don't hold you back. Major and severe injuries might mean you may need later and later hours to succeed at your actions. Fatal injuries need immediate treatment or you risk death.

So here's how combat works in Campfire RPG. The game transitions from a social interaction or exploration scene seamlessly because the rules of play do not change for combat. Why? No initiative. The GM describes "The hoard of zombies shambles your way. Their soulless eyes look at nothing, and their drooling mouths are vile with discolored slime. The smell foul. Their moans and the ruffling sounds of their rags are distinct in the silence of the night. They are slow moving. You have a moment to make a decision. What do you do?" Then you pass the story stick. The players have a moment to deliberate as is reasonable for their characters to deliberate. They get one round to discuss running or fighting, and they may draw their weapons and prepare their spells, seek cover, prepare a trap, or turn and run. And they do so in character. Each character details what their characters do like so: "Beth the wizard withdraws her spellbook from her pouch, turns to the page for Magic Missile, and says to her mates 'shall we run or fight?'" "Grugtar the barbarian draws his silver bastard sword, bashes it against the rim of his shield and says 'we fight!' " "Timothy the priest presents his holy symbol to the hoard and says 'no need. Save your effort for the real challenges ahead!' Then he Turns the Undead." Tim is making an action that requires a use of the story stick mechanic, so he drops his stick. "12 o'clock!" he shouts! The last player says "Bartholomew moves into cover behind Timothy, loads his crossbow and levels it at the chest of the nearest zombie. 'You have your uses.' he says." After all the players use their turn to contribute to the story, the stick makes its way back to the GM who says what happens as a result of all their actions. I've described a game where players take turns around in a circle around a campfire, but alternatively, this can be as freeform as a conversation with the restriction that everyone gets to say one thing per round. 

Next, the GM reiterates the actions like a waiter reading back lunch orders for their customers, and describes the results. "Beth opens her spellbook and finds for the page with her Magic Missile spell, Grugtar makes some noise and demands action, Bart readies a crossbow and takes cover, all while Tim presents his cross and repels all the zombies. A blessed light flickers and turns some of zombies to dust right before your eyes." Tim's action went last even though his character's action was not last. This is because Tim's action was the most time consuming.  Then the GM sets the scene again. "All the zombies are dead or shambling away. The path ahead is clear to you. A chill is in the air. Is it an omen or just your anxiousness for what happens next? What do you do now?" 

This is how you do combat. It has a flow. It's smooth. It's engaging. Participants each get one turn  to do something simple and intuitive each round. On their turn, they describe what they do. They can do as little as they want, and as much as is reasonable for the situation. Most importantly, they describe what they do like they're each writing a line in a novel as a group of collaborative authors. Each person can use as little or as much flair as they want. There are no rules clarifications. There are no opening rule books. There are no consulting charts or tables. You don't look at your character sheet for answers to the puzzles in front of you. You roleplay, you improvise, and you stay engaged. This is what combat with an emphasis on roleplay over rules looks like. This is what happens when you discard the rules. Strict adherence to the rules slows the game down. The rules of the game slow the game down. The essence of a roleplaying and a roleplaying game is here. All else is not. And no love is lost. You use your story telling skills. You use your acting skills. You use your improv skills. Be creative. Have fun.

    I think I've watched a lot of Critical Role (CR); enough to tell you that if you want to play a game of D&D with the intent of entertaining an audience, the roleplay scenes in CR are fun but the combat loses me from the word Initiative. This is ironic and a shame because action scenes in movies are usually the fastest and most interesting scenes in a movie. If Critical Role could do combat like this, I'd be into their combat no doubt, but I usually check out. Someone send this blog post to Matt Mercer and tell him I said hi. Also let him know that I think he looks more handsome with a short beard. 

    Finally, let me end by giving you Truth Number Zero. Truth Zero is you don't need any rules. All the rules are arbitrary anyway. How does a game designer know how hard it is to hit an orc? They don't, and neither do you. Orcs are imaginary. They use math and decide it should be X easy or X hard for X level characters. Truth Zero was known to Gary Gygax who famously said something like "the one secret we must never tell DMs is they don't need rules." Do you think he said that ironically? Gary famously struggled with people not understanding or appreciating Truth Zero. Everyone came to him with rules questions. They wrote him. They looked him up in the phone book and called him at his home during dinner so they could ask the author how a home game of which he was not a part should be played. Do you think Gary ever played 3rd edition D&D? Gary who died nearly 8 years after D&D 3e was published? No! Surely, it wasn't to his taste. Too clunky, too cumbersome. D&D 3e ignores Truth Zero. It rejects Truth 0 (you don't need rules), Truth 2 (more roles = slower game), and Truth 3 (other players turns are boring) which becomes a violation of truth 1 (players not having a good time). In some stories, a campfire is symbolic of someone enjoying peace in nature, enjoying the simplicity of it, and realizing the beauty and importance of simplicity. That life is short. That complexity is stressful and unnecessary. Campfire RPG is not a system, it's an attitude. It's a realization. Once you sit at the campfire, you are free to go back to your clunky strategy games, but you will not forget the warmth and the serenity. Welcome to fire.

Speed Up Combat

Tip number 1: If your game is too complicated to run from memory, it's too complicated. Bring loose notes and only refer to them when you forget something. Improve.

Tip number 2: Don't even roll initiative. He who takes initiative gets initiative. Then take turns in order around the table.

Tip number 3: Don't even use initiative. Strict adherence to the rules will slow the game down. The rules will slow your game down. Learn to make combat as freeform as your social interaction scenes.

Tip number 4: If you have players who aren't ready for their own turns, this might be a manners problem because it shows a lack of consideration for people's time. Politely let them know this and also notify them that in the future if they aren't ready on their turn, you'll skip their turn and rule that their character hesitated.

Tip 5: IRL timers for deliberation are good but tell your players there's a mean looking son of a gun with your shirt by the collar and his balled-up fist is holding a grimy battle ax and its coming for your face, and that strategizing is metagaming. Ask them what they do. If they let a beat skip and they don't tell you what they do, they get the bonks.

TTRPG Combat Sucks

So here's what I want to talk about. 1. Opportunity attacks suck because they slow the game down and how to do them better. 2. If you're roleplaying your character in combat, you probably wouldn't give anyone an opportunity attack ever. 3. Stop using initiative. First, the concepts you probably all know: engage, disengage, and opportunity attack. In some games they have this concept of engaging or being engaged in melee. That is to say that when you come within 5 ft of an opponent, you have to physically stop and face them or else. If you disengage recklessly, this means you turn and move away without defending yourself and open yourself up to danger. If you disengage safely, this means you actively defend yourself as you walk or run from that opponent. The former is faster but hazardous because you open yourself to some opportunistic attack, the latter is effortful but safer.

Topic 1, opportunity attacks slow down combat. People should be allow to turn and run if they want. That's player agency. But every time someone does that, you have to delay everyting else as one or more Players or NPCs start making all these reactions. Something I hate is people shouting "opportunity attack!" at the table. I also hate when people declare "insight check!" but that's a separate topic. When you're playing a war game, sure, take all the time you need to resolve your opportunity attacks. That's fine. Whatever. In a roleplaying game, I want to be engaged with the narrative and the tension of the moment. Having someone declare "I make an opportunity attack" when it's not their turn is for me like someone talking over a movie. That's crap and it's gotta stop! So my solution is no initiative. Yeah, extreme, right? NO! Have you ever been in a real 5 on 5 fight before? Everything is happening everywhere, all at once! You do NOT get to watch other people, then pause life to strategize, then take a turn. You're in a moment to moment situation. A second to second situation. That dude you're engaged with has your shirt by the collar and his balled up fist is coming for your head. You get tunnel vision. You can't swivel your head around and see how your friends are doing. If you take your eye of the ball, you're gonna get hit. So get rid of initiative. It's weird. Here's how combat works! Let me tell you, then circle around to attacks of opportunity. So in simultaneous combat, you the game master go around the table and you ask your players to describe their action in one sentence. Ask them consider that you're all writing a scene in a novel together, and each of them gets to write one line. Make it a good one. Tell them what they see. Set the scene for them so they have some guidence, a place to start. "You see 5 goblins appear from the bush. They're running straight at you with weapons drawn, aggressive looks in their eyes, and war cries on their breaths. What do you do?" Tell them you expect that one sentence to encapsulate everything they do. "I move here, and I do this." or "I do this, and I move here." "I take cover behind the wall, then I stand up to shoot that guy with my bow." "I sneak up on this guy and shank him in the back with my knife." "Grugtar looks across the field to this goblin here, he grips his sword in both hands, he rages and he charges at the goblin and brings his might sword down on it's head!" Then, after everyone has declard their actions, let me repeat that in case you somehow missed it, AFTER everyone has declared their turns, you the GM call for die rolls. Everyone rolls all their dice, attack, damage, ability checks, skill die, whatever. Then, you the GM, sort everything out all at once narratively. "As Jim takes cover from behind the tree, his arrow finds one goblin in the eye! Roar! It falls to the ground. Then Grugtar engages with this goblin here. Grugtar just misses the goblin's head with his claymore and the sneaky goblin stabs him in the leg with a dirty knife. It stings..." An on and on. It's more thrilling if you can present an energetic performance with your narration. So now, you've got a vague understanding of how to do most of combat. What about opportunity attacks? Let's say "Beth the wizard is getting beat down into a fetal pose in the dirt by two goblins with spiked bone clubs. She screams these horrible blood curdling screams, and the bone clubs sound like a butchers tenderizer on soft meat. Then, Grugtar the Barbarian, who's got a big soft spot for Beth, who's full of kindness and brilliance, his stomach wrenches and angry bitter tears fill his eyes, he disengates wildly like a hurt beast for the goblins attacking Beth. The goblin he's currently engaged with gets advantage on his attack roll because Grugtar has exposed his back carelessly. He does 5 damage..." That's it. You're in simultaneous combat. If you look away from the guy in front of you, you're not going to be able to defend yourself normally from his attack. That's it. Advantage, EASY, or some kind of bonus applies. This is a realistic and appropriate penalty for disengaging recklessles. You do this instead of interrupt the flow of your game, or interrupting someone's turn, to make some out-of-order action.  It's out of order! 

Topic 2, disengaging recklessly demonstrates a lack of self-preservation, and needs a really good roleplay reason to justify. Literally what happens when you engage with someone, that means that there's an angry son of a gun who is mean mugging you from 3 feet away, and he's got a big sword he wants to cut your face with. If you are roleplaying your character, this is your absolute top priority. This guy is an immediate problem. He represents a threat to your personal survival. That comes first. He represents a threat to your friends survival second only by defeating you and diminishing the size of your party and the powers that your party has to defend itself from TPK from your opponent and his friends. If you are roleplaying your character, you do not run away from your opponent in melee to go fight another opponent over there. And you want to stay near your friends, too. You watch their back, they watch yours. It doesn't do you any good to be 20 feet away from your friend in a melee. Let's say you are 20 feet away from your friend and he's getting beat to hell. You are engaged with someone whose got a big sword for your face and he's mean mugging you. Do you spin around in place and run to your friend, presenting your unprotected back to your opponent so he can slash your spine? Now you and your friend are both dead, and you roleplayed your character poorly by ignoring self-preservation. This decision in this scenario has to be justified by roleplay, narrative, and character development, not strategy. If you sacrifice roleplay for strategy, you're metagaming. Stop that. In a real fight, you wouldn't open yourself to taking a severe injury like that, and neither would your character. Fight off your opponent first, then help your friend. Secure your oxygen mask first, then assist the child.

    Topic 3, Initiative Sucks and here's something else to consider. If you were to play a tabletop roleplaying game for the purposes of entertaining an audience like Critical Role, your combats are slow and boring to your audience if you strictly adhere to the movement and action rules. I can say this because I have watched over a hundred episodes of Critical Role and I can tell you most combat in that show bores me from the movement they start taking initiative. You need to make your combat scenes as freeform as the roleplay scenes to keep them engaging, like the examples of play I gave earlier. Cut the fat. If your GM has to ask you "Is that it for your turn?" your game is too clunky and complicated. Cut that out. Use simultaneous initiative. When you call for initiative, it's like pausing a movie right before the best part to take drink orders. I don't care how fast you can do it. Stop it. Second, you have to track that crap and you can mix up the order. I've seen it happen, I've seen Matt Mercer do it, I've done it. It's like pausing the movie during the best part to sort out who got whose drink. Now, my pausing the movie before the best part analogy is not the best because in combat, the best part your turn and you know it. Everyone else's turn is kinda boring and lame unless someone does something really cool, really bananas, or they're about to die. Die die. Permanent death. Moments I remember in Critical Role combats are Mollmauk's death and Caleb being mind-controlled and fireballing the party. I also kind of remember Fjord cutting a dudes hand off., but that was kind of gross Everything else is a bit of a blurr. I remind you, I watched over a hundred episodes of this show. The show's combat is not as engaging as the show's roleplay, and the combat rules are to blame. Anyway, throw out the rules and do some freeform combat. It will help keep your players off their phone in the middle of a game, and you'll be able to get more meaningful stuff done in your session. Also, cap hit points low. To hell with hit points above 25. Low hit points will also do wonders for the pacing of your game.

What is Ether?

In this blog post, I talk about alchemy, elements of nature as hypothesized by alchemists, and I talk about apothecaries and their nonsense for a bit. In alchemy, ether is one of the five elements. Obviously, none of this is true, but in a period setting, people might believe it. The people in that period (setting) who have worked out the idea of alchemy might actually be honestly trying to describe some aspect of nature they have observed, or one they think they have observed, and they've just observed or described it very poorly. Such is a flaw in a pre-scientific method society. Let's explore this idea.

Alchemy is like chemistry for a less developed culture. Alchemy is a form of pre-chemistry where they still believe strongly in the supernatural. They realized they could mix crap and get other crap, and they must have wondered if they could mix something good. Maybe turn lead into gold or create an elixir that could grant eternal life. It seems fantastic now, but I'm sure it was mostly just a bunch of dudes in powdered wigs in secret labs slowly poisoning themselves with mercury which they called quicksilver. Some of them may have also believed they could create a person, and such a person would be called a homunculus. This belief surely came from observations of salamanders seemingly spawning from nowhere when they set a log in the woods on fire and then a bunch of salamanders scurry away from it which they then believed was somehow a sort of creation phenomenon and attributed it to the element of fire somehow. Like I said, pre-scientific method.

I mentioned five elements. What is an element, and what are the five elements? Why are their five? For our purposes, I think we can say that the word element means an essential, simple, basic part of something. A part of what? A part of anything and everything made of matter. Everything material is composed of elements. The five elements in alchemy are earth, water, air, fire, and ether. I think we have a grasp of the first four, but what about ether? The alchemists rightly identified air and fire as elements distinct elements and separate from a fifth. They probably identified the sun as fire like a candle or a torch, just on another scale. So, what might they have hypothesized or observed that was so odd that they created a fifth category? Spirits. Spirits are made of ether. I shit you not that I am not entirely making this up. A lot of what I'm saying comes from wikipedia articles I half-read a long time ago while farming ideas for RPGs, and as a consequence, I barely understand or remember it.

So ether is a basic, essential material that spirits are made of. Took us a long time to get here. Was it good for you? Let me put it another way. Ghosts are made out of ether. Phew. So far, this is kind of abstract. If we want to understand ether in a concrete manner, we need to be able to describe it with our five senses. What does it look like? What does it smell like? What does it feel like? What does it taste like? What does it sound like? Does it give off light? Does it emit heat? Does material pass through it or is it just displaced by material? Does it sound like a delicate whistle, bell, or chime? Does it have an effect on other matter, like how fire burns things? Does ether make plants grow? Does it poison people? Does it sparkle and leave dust behind? Does it leave a glowing slime residue like in the Ghostbusters movie? We could go on, and on, and on!

I think this concept is great because it's a bit ambiguous. We can describe it however we need to suit our setting and our magic system. It's basically magic, whatever THAT is, in its tangible, material form. Ether then becomes an object, a material resource that your characters can discover and fight over or pay for. You can probably make drinks out of it to recover your spent mana points, but when you do, you also vividly see the memories contained in the ether that belonged to the spirits who were once people, plants, or animals, then you forget it like a dream. Trippy.

It's important to note that alchemists really thought they were doing science. No matter how mystic alchemy may seem, the people researching alchemy did not think they were trying to do magic. Other people thought they were doing magic which is why alchemists were hunted like witches. Alchemists were people who lived in a time where the world was still mysterious to people, where people fully believed in the supernatural, and alchemists were just trying to figure things out, including the supernatural thins, and to define it in a way people that could understand. They got a lot wrong. That's not a disclaimer or an admonishment, it's just a fact.

While we're here, an apothecary is a totally different beast from an alchemist. While alchemists were just trying to figure shit out, apothecaries were charlatans hocking opium mixed with random herbs as a pseudo-remedy. If an apothecary sold a medicine called ether, it was probably nothing more potent than tea, or it was tea, or it was tea mixed with opium, or it was some mixture of water with some toxic chemical they didn't understand and opium. Just kidding, opium was probably in a lot of pseudo medicine, but not all pseudo medicine. Unlike apothecaries, alchemists didn't sell their strange concoctions.

Magic in my Setting

What is magic? Seriously, have you ever thought about that? How do you make fire appear spontaneously with your bare hands? Maybe you're thinking, roll a d20, add some numbers, deduct resources, call it a day. If that works for you that's fine, but what I want to know is what is it like for your character's perspective. I think D&D has odd things like spell components which no one uses because the people who wrote all those spells back in the day were inspired by a type of fantasy that that's not in style anymore. Modern fantasy treats magic more like a superpower rather than some weird thing with odd rituals. Take three hairs from a monkey that were cut with golden scissors and a wishbone from a white rabbit that was killed on a Tuesday afternoon, chalk a pentagram on the ground, stand in it, spin around three times chanting "there's no place like yo' mama's bosom" and boom, you can expel a cloud of purple bees from your ass for 10 seconds. I wish I read more old fashioned fantasy and fairy tales. It was probably cooler than that.

So, when I try to envision magic in my setting, I come up with two kinds of magic: Miracles from god (or the divine) and forbidden knowledge that comes from something old with an e that corrupts and taints and changes a person. In other words in my game, there is faith based magic and their is forbidden knowledge based magic.

For clerics and "divine spellcasters," you have to be of the faith. That's a prerequisite. You may be ordained like a full-fledged priest or maybe just chosen by god like Joan of Arc. Further, from the perspective of the cleric, they do not cast spells, they perform miracles. One who has faith in god and who serves that god speaks a prayer to their god, and god either does or doesn't answer the prayer. A god may answer the prayer by giving that person a spark of the divine for just a moment, or their body becomes like a conduit of the divine, and god performs a miracle through them.

I repeat this because I think it's important within the setting: Faith based magic requires a person be aligned with a god, to have faith in a god, and serve that god. Clerics serve their god. If the god acted when the cleric chose, then it would be god acting as the servant to the cleric. Failing to live by the rules of god, brief moments of doubt, fleeting impure thoughts; these are troublesome things to a servant of god. Should a cleric fall short of that god's standards at any point, god may be offended and withhold power from that servant until the servant performs some act of penance. A servant may simply not be able to perform a miracle because the servant's desire for a miracle does not fit gods' divine plan, so god denies the miracle. Sometimes, prayers aren't answered and miracles don't happen. Perhaps god thinks "I will not heal this person for they are cruel and wicked" or perhaps for a moment god wasn't listening. God's are complicated and mysterious. 

Mages on the other hand are very different. They have had an encounter with something that they do not fully understand but it changed something in them, something in their way of perceiving, of thinking. An encounter with the supernatural has altered their fundamental worldview such that they cannot go back to they way they were. Mages carry a burden, and this burden is knowledge of some unspeakable cosmic truth. It could be knowledge of the divine, it could be that we are all just transient guests in this life, that we're all made from the same space dust, or that we are just dumb animals on a mote of dust hurdling through space and time and that everything can be gone in a flash. Perhaps they discover that we are all just dreams and that the dreamer is malevolent, cosmic horror. This is what forbidden knowledge is. 

Wherever forbidden knowledge came to that mage, the ordinary world has lost it's appeal, value, or meaning. Mages are people who have become seekers of the extraordinary. Whatever it is that they now can't unknow has had a realization. It may either torment them, possibly driving them to madness, or it may inspire them. Perhaps they realize that life is meaningless, and that realization takes away the joy and beauty that was once there. For some, that's liberating. For others, perhaps its infuriating. Perhaps the mage instead realizes that because there is no greater meaning in the universe that a person therefore must give it meaning, and that is empowering. Either way, whatever this person realizes after their encounter with something supernatural, they find they don't have the ability to recall it very vividly like a fading dream, but they do know they had that experience. They also know that if they speak of it, no one will understand them, except someone else who has had the same experience, another mage. Mages who try to relate forbidden knowledge to ordinary people will be shunned or worse. A witch hunt is just the consequence of a mob of people whose minds are not prepared for forbidden knowledge.

A mage does not go to magic school to become a better mage. What academic setting exists to teach people how to defy the order of nature? IN WHAT WORLD DO YOU LIVE? Instead, one must go seeking another encounter with the supernatural. One is driven to it. It's in them like an urge, a need. A splinter in their mind. The pursuit of it becomes an obsession. They can't sleep. They can't eat. They can't think of anything else. They've tasted something grandiose, and they want more. They want to know the rest the secrets. Only the rest of it will stop the ache of that splinter.

To a cleric, a spell is a prayer to a god, and the god answers that prayer by acting through the cleric to perform a miracle. The cleric momentarily becomes a conduit for the divine. That is a cleric spell. To a mage, a spell is a piece of code of the universe they have put into writing. As I've alluded previously, the human mind cannot fully comprehend magic. Like looking at the code of the matrix. A mage who has seen that code can't recall it better than a dream, and they might spend months scribbling the same mad symbols into the dirt over and over until the symbols are just right. Some mages fill journals full of one odd sentence that looks like part math part poem over and over and over with slight changes in each iteration. To cast a spell, you speak the code and exert your will onto the fabric of the universe. Sometimes, the universe bends; You've hacked the universe and changed something in nature. The universe blinks then rights itself. It's difficult to do. You don't always pull it off. Maybe you spoke the code wrong, maybe you forgot a part of the gesture. Have you ever dreamed you were flying, then you started falling, and you tried to save yourself by willing yourself to fly again, and you just couldn't?

Not everyone recognizes magic. An ordinary person doesn't know quite what it is, but when they look at it they instinctually know they're looking at something they shouldn't be looking at. It is unsettling! There is a sensation of dread! Ordinary people who don't have forbidden knowledge, who do not know what you know, they either see magic and understand it to be something blasphemous, or in an act of self-preservation, to preserve their world view, their mind fools itself into thinking it saw something else instead. They may have seen you hurl a fireball, but they remember you doing something clever with a torch or a molotov instead. Like some primal defense mechanism of the human mind, the ordinary person who attempts to read magic rejects the knowledge in the spell and they simply fail to understand it, though they may still be disturbed by it. Mages can understand their own written interpretation of that code, but not necessarily another mages' interpretation of some other part of the code. Mage spells are too complicated for a human brain to retain; Mages must keep their spells in writing, and they must read it to cast the spell. By reading this code aloud, the words and sounds that the mage utters are alien and otherworldly, but people around them don't comprehend it as such. As the mind of the ordinary person rejects the written spell, so too does their mind reject the spoken spell. The ordinary person thinks they hear something different. Some people think they hear Latin, some people think they hear mad gibberish.

You're probably thinking "Joshua, you've presented two different, incompatible realities as a single setting. How do you reconcile a setting where clerics who serve a divine god can perform miracles by praying, and also where mages can speak blasphemous words that causes nature to blink, and while nature blinks a silent storm rains smokeless fire?" My answer to you is this: confirm none of it objectively within the setting, or out of the setting. Leave it mysterious. Maybe the mage and the cleric are just the same thing? Maybe the cleric is someone with greater exposure to forbidden knowledge but simultaneously is unaware and shielded from mental disturbance by a delusion that it comes from a good god and it therefore is sanctified. Maybe the mage simply doesn't realize they serve a god who is more a mystery than the one the cleric serves. Maybe the mage serves the same god, but that god doesn't allow the mage to know who he serves. Maybe the mage is a god and doesn't know. Allow different hypotheses and permit imagination to do its thing. This is what wonder is, this is what mysteriousness is. I think its got a definite charm to it. As it happens, I'm not religious, I don't think that the world is flat, or that it's secretly controlled by the illuminati or lizard people or space aliens, but I am a little bit fascinated by the idea that we're living in a simulation. I think that idea has influenced my idea of spellcasting more than anything. Take that for what it's worth.

Homebrew Sanity Checks for 5e D&D

From the Referee's Guide for Lamentations of the Flame Princess by James Edward Raggi IV:

"...Referees should refrain from imposing any sort of fear or sanity rules upon Player Characters...and it is but a cheap effect to try to simulate fear by rolling a die and saying, "You're scared stiff!"... In a game where character death and/or failure are forever possible, then players will respect things that are supposed to be fearsome within the game. They won’t need to be poked with any rule, because they will know that if their characters act rashly or nonchalantly towards the supernatural, the supernatural will kill them."

    Much of modern media makes the fantastic and the horrifying mundane. If your RPG system is such that a Game Master cannot threaten their players with a knife because they're not scared of d4 damage, then you're playing an RPG that has trivialized knife wounds. A game like D&D 5e is not the system for horror. 

The Mechanic:

    If you really want to make a fear mechanic for D&D 5e, then let the Wisdom score represent the sanity stat. On a failed Sanity Save, players take 1d4 Wisdom damage. If a character's Wisdom score is reduced to 0, they become irreversibly insane and are retired. The mounting penalties to their Wisdom modifier for their divination spells, medicine, survival, animal handling, perception and insight checks represent the ever-increasing faltering of their skills due to their waning sanity. Characters can only recover lost Wisdom by resting in a place of safety such as traveler's inn in a well-protected city at a rate of 1 Wisdom point per night. The inn, lodge, or home they rest in must at minimum be Comfortable on the standard of living scale presented in Chapter 5 of the PHB.

The Solution to Alignment in RPGs

 I've done it! Yes, ah ha! Eureka! I've found the solution to alignment in table-top roleplaying games!!!

Get rid of Chaos and Law!

Get rid of Good and Evil!

Mmm, keep Neutrality I suppose.

Here's the new alignment: Heroic on one end of the spectrum, and Villainous on the other! It's that simple!

Hazzah!

Ta-dah!

Eureka! 

Behold!

Three cheers!

Hip, hip hooray!

Now get out of here. You're welcome.

Final Fantasy X (FFX) Celestial Weapons / Ultimate Weapons Guide

FINAL FANTASY X

Celestial Weapons / Ultimate Weapons

https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Celestial_Weapon

Cloudy Mirror

Location: Remiem Temple to the east of the Calm Lands. Race the champion chocobo there, and win.

Celestial Mirror (Cloudy Mirror Required)

Location: Macalania Woods. Speak to the woman at the Thunder Plains entrance. She mentions something about her missing husband, who is also in the woods in an area near the Bevelle exit. Speak to him, and he will return to his wife. Once they are reunited, talk to them again and they mention something about their missing son. Go up the crystal pathway to an altar resembling a giant plant bud. Examinging the altar with the Cloudy Mirror changes it into the Celestial Mirror.

Tidus

Caladbolg

Location: Calm Lands, north west end down a ramp. You must beat the chocobo trainer in a race, and the person guarding it will move out of the way.

Sun Crest

Location: Search the room in which you fight Lady Yunalesca for stairs. Go up and down them until they teleport you into a identical version of the room with a treasure chest. 

Sun Sigil

Location: Chocobo Trainer; Race them, and get a time of 0:00:00. Very RNG. Good luck.

Yuna

Nirvana

Location: Monster Arena in Calm Lands. Reward for capturing 9 different species from the Calm Lands.

Mood Crest

Location: Beach in Besaid.

Moon Sigil

Location: Remiem Temple east of the Calm Lands. Must defeat all Belgemine's aeons, then send her. Requires Yojimbo and Anima.

When the player defeats Bahamut, they receive the Flower Sceptre. Then, the player must capture 1 of every species in Mt. Gagazet and earn the Blossom Crown as a Monster Arena reward.

Use the Flower Sceptre and the Blossom Crown on the door behind Belgemine to unlock it and obtain the final aeon, the Magus Sisters. Defeat Belgemine's Magus Sisters Aeons, then send Belgemine to finally obtain the Moon Sigil.

Wakka

World Champion

Location: Luca, in a cafe. Player must place in at least 3rd in a tournament, then speak to the owner and agree to show her the Celestial Mirror.

Jupiter (or Mercury) Crest

Location: Locker in the Aurochs locker room.

Jupiter (or Mercury) Sigil

Location: 50% chance it appears as a prize in a Blitzball League game once the player has won all three of Wakka's Overdrives in previous competitions.

Kimari

Spirit Lance

Location: Thunder Plains. The player must pray at three different Qactuar Stones which makes a spiritual Qactuar appear at either the North or South end. The player must have also read the text of Gandof and the Qactuars (book) located on the counter in Rin's Travel Agency in the Thunder Plains. The player must follow the Qactuar to the broken tower and press square (or its equivalent) to pray at the tower.

Saturn / Jupiter Crest

Location: Mt. Gagazet, just past the spot where the players fight Seymour Flux. The treasure chest is hidden from view among the pillars on the left.

Saturn / Jupiter Sigil

Location: Butterfly hunt mini-game in the Macalania Woods after obtaining the airship. ?The Sigil appears the second time the player wins?

Lulu

Onion Knight

Location: search for coordinates "12, 57" while aboard the Airship to locate Baaj (temple). Geosgaeno must be defeated, then search the underwater area for a chest that is hidden out of sight.

Venus / Mars Crest

Location: Farplane in Guardosalam. Visit the Farplane after Tidus mentions Seymour's departure for Macalania Temple. If missed, return here after obtaining the airship.

Venus / Mars Sigil

Location: Thunder Plains; dodge 200 lightning bolts consecutively, without leaving the area, and without reseting / loading your save data.

Auron

Masamune

Location: Djose / Mushroom Rock Road. The north-wester passage leads to a rising platform that leads to a statue of Lord Mi'ihen. Players must place the Rusty Sword here to reveal a glyph. The glyph reveals the sword. The Rusty Sword is located on the eastern cliff outside the Cavern of the Stolen Fayth, north of the Calm Lands, south of Mt. Gagazet.

Mars / Saturn Crest

Location: Near the entrance to Mushroom Rock Road along the final area of the Mi'ihen Highroad. 

Mars / Saturn Sigil

Location: Monster Arena reward for unlocking a total of 10 Area Conquest or Species Conquest monsters (any combination of the two).

Rikku

Godhand

Location: Mushroom Rock Road. The player must enter a password "GODHAND" on the Airship, and going to the new location.

Mercury / Venus Crest

Location: Bikanel Desert. Found in a treasure chest in a shifting sand pit in the final area.

Mercury / Venus Sigil

Location: Complete the cactuar sidequest on Bikanel Island, which is available after obtaining the airship.

https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Cactuar_Nation#Village_of_the_Cactuars

Simple TTRPG System

 Goals of this Game System

I want a rules lite game. I think rule lite should make a game easy to learn, easy to play, and easy to get into. I want a game that is intuitive and fast. By intuitive I mean that I want players and referees to be able to understand most if not all aspects of the game without having to think about it. By fast, I mean that I want a game that has few and simple rules and mechanics, so that they do not slow down the pacing of the game. I want a nimble minded referee to be able to use their basic understanding of the rules and their own judgment to work out how to make something work.

I also want a game with DIY aspect, and I don't want a game with a huge catalog of player stuff. I like the idea of having a few core things that every character can do, then some blank spaces that the player fills in themselves. I want a game that can do any genre, and any setting. I believe the referee and the players should collaborate and create classes, races, magic and powers that suit an intended setting and tone.

Rather than make a game that tries to emulate or simulate reality, I want to make a system that has its own consistent internal logic that makes enough sense in spite of any concessions it makes of reality, and without asking much of the audience's suspension of disbelief.

Further, I want a minimalistic set of "core rules" that contain all of the instruction you need to do anything and everything, with the option to the referee to add or subtract to the rules based on their judgment and creativity. You don't need tables and chart. In addition to the rules of the setting that the game takes place in, this includes powers, spells, monsters, and special items for player's characters.

Attributes and Attribute Rolls

Each character has six attributes, described below. Your attributes are measured with either a 0, or a bonus or penalty, for example, +1, -2, etc. I believe these six words I chose describe every aspect of an ordinary person that is important for playing a role-playing game. At character creation, players and the referee may discuss methods of generating numbers for their stats, and how to assign those number to their attributes. 

⦁ Strength represents your brawn.

⦁ Intelligence represents your brains.

⦁ Agility represents your nimbleness, coordination and reflexes.

⦁ Health represents your stamina and hardiness.

⦁ Perception represent how well you see, hear, taste, smell, and feel.

⦁ Will represents intangible traits, such as faith and personality.

When characters act or make an action, the referee may call for an attribute roll to determine if a character succeeds or fails. Example "Make a Strength Roll," or "Roll Intelligence," etc. The player rolls a twenty-sided die and adds their relevant attribute, and their skill if applicable (see ahead), and tries to roll equal to or greater than some number representing how difficult the action is, which is determined by the referee.

Attribute rolls may be used actively when the character makes an action, or reactively when the character is acted upon and is able to make a reaction. A referee should observe a "one action, one roll" rule, meaning all actions should be resolved with one attribute roll; Actions should NOT be broken down into multiple rolls. Referees, when in doubt, pick one attribute and roll!

Hit Points, Recovery, and Death

Hit points or HP means how many hits you can take before you die. Hit point loss, also called damage, abstractly represents a wound or injury more significant than a superficial cut or bruise.  This is a low-hit point game, so characters begin with 10 + Health as their maximum Hit Points. Your characters recover 1 + Health lost HP by completing a full night's rest. This represents a person's natural rate of healing. Your setting may also provide some extraordinary ways to more quickly recover lost HP. Your characters are dead at 0 hit points, so play your character like you care what happens to them.

Skill

Each character also has one final stat called Skill, measured by a bonus such as +1, +2, etc., which represents how good characters are at the things they're good at. Players discuss which two of the six attributes they want to be good at, and they may apply their Skill to all or most rolls they are skilled with. At character creation, Skill begins at +1 and may be increased as the character improves.

Character Improvement

The referee and the players should discuss what their characters need to do to improve, and how their characters may improve. In some games, characters have a Level or some such nonsense that increases and then they spontaneously get better at stuff. It's all arbitrary anyway, like Dumbledore awarding house points to Gryffindor at the end of the Philosophers Stone. Instead, set a goal, a milestone, some increment of time, completing objectives, etc. When the players have struggled enough, when they've had enough, when they've faced death enough, tell them they can increase one of their stats by a point or gain a new power, have an in-game character give their character a reward, or let the player discover a powerful item. That's all there is to it. Let conventions be damned.

Weapons and Armor

You may assume all characters can use all weapons, armor, and shields (samples below) or apply logical restrictions to weapon categories. The only fixed restriction is that you must have a +2 in Strength to be able to wear heavy or metal armor without some but not all consequences or penalties (left undefined for the referee's benefit). Armor worn and shields held gives you something called an Armor Bonus which you add to your reactive Attribute rolls rather than your Skill to avoid being hit by some attacks, spells, traps, or other special effects. If an attribute roll was made offensively or to attack, you then roll a damage die, and add a relevant attribute. When in doubt, assume it's a six-sided die.

⦁ Leather or Clothe Armor +1

⦁ Chain or Scale Mail +2

⦁ Plate Armor +3

⦁ Shield +1

⦁ Bare hands or kicks, 1 point of damage

⦁ Improvised Weapon (break on attribute roll of 1), d4

⦁ Peasant melee weapons such as clubs, daggers, staves, d4

⦁ Martial melee or throwing weapons such as Swords, Battle Axes, Maces, Spears, d6

⦁ Longbow, Crossbow, Firearms, d8

⦁ Two-handed melee weapon, d8

⦁ Spell, d10

Magic and Spellcasting

Magic has no resource you need to manage. Instead, when character cast spells, they must succeed on an attribute roll. If you roll a 1 on the twenty-sided die before adding your numbers, something goes wrong determined by the referee including harming yourself or a friend, or a temporary loss of the ability to cast spells. If you roll a 20 on the twenty-sided die before adding you your numbers, a bonus effect, bonus damage, bonus target, etc. is occurs. There is no catalogue spells. DIY.

    Alternatively, spells cost Magic Points (or MP) to cast. MP represents your character's reserve of magic for casting spells. Characters who can cast spells have 10 + Will MP. Spells that have a more significant effect than lacing up your boots cost 1 MP to cast. Spells that either do multiple damage die (or healing die or effects), or hit multiple targets cost 2 MP to cast. Spells that both do multiple damage die and hit multiple targets cost 3 MP.  When MP reaches 0, the character is too tired to cast spells. All spent MP is recovered after the character finishes a night's rest. 

Inventory Management

Characters have stuff to wear, to hold, and to carry around. Players track this stuff abstractly using inventory spaces. Each player gets 20 spaces. One item, one weapon, one armor, one spell, all your money, etc., takes up one space each. Stuff that is logically too big or too heavy to carry, can't be carried around. Stuff that can logically be consolidated, such as multiple pieces of ammo in one ammo container, can, up to a reasonable quantity. 

Turn Order

Many types of scenes may be played in a free-form manner, however, when the game needs a bit more structure, the referee rolls to see who goes first. On a low roll, the referee goes first. On a high roll, the players go first. Turn order is taken clockwise around the table starting with either the referee, or the player to the referee's left. On your turn, you can make one action and one move. The distance a character can move is based on the character, the environment, and the context. For examples, in theater of the mind style of play, a character may be able to move half the span of the room. On a grid with miniatures, the character may be able to move the length of their own hand or pencil 

Conditions

Conditions are left vague and are left up to the referee's judgment for their benefit. Conditions include things like poison, fatigue, suffocation, exposure, disease, restrained, prone, cover, concealment, confusion, etc.

Enemies

        The enemies of the player's characters are controlled by the referee and do not need to follow the same rules or logic of the player's characters. Instead, the referee only needs to worry about three things: 1. how many 10s of hit points they have, 2. damage from their attacks and their variety of attacks, and 3. a third stat we will call their Level. The Level stat is a single number representing both how hard it is to hit them and how hard it is to avoid being hit by them, and also how hard it may be to overcome them in other ways. 8-11 is easy, 12-14 is medium, 15+ is typically hard.

Low Fantasy, Low Magic Setting - Character Creation Rules

 SETTING

The setting is low fantasy and low magic. Most people in this setting will go their entire lives without encountering magic or monsters. Therefore, there are restrictions on race, class, and background.

I am not familiar with all the supplemental books out there. Feel free to approach me for approval with anything from any 5e book, 5e compatible book, or anything really, bearing in mind that if it's magical, it's probably not setting-appropriate.

RACE RESTRICTIONS

The setting is humancentric, meaning the majority of people in the setting are human. The other available races are dwarves, elves, and halflings. These three races are referred to collectively as demi-humans by human scholars, and they are uncommon if not rare in the human-dominant regions. Ignore all racial features, traits, subraces, racial variants, etc. except the following:

1. Everyone speaks common. Demi-humans also speak the language from their culture (i.e., Dwarves speak Dwarvish).

2. Everyone has a movement speed of 30 ft. No need to write this down.

3. Dwarves have advantage on saves vs poison, have resistance vs poison damage, and get a +1 to their max HP each level. Dwarves also have advantage on Intelligence checks with regards to stonework and masonry.

4. Elves have advantage on saves vs charm and sleep, and have proficiency in the Perception Skill. *Note that elves need to sleep like everyone else. Due to their magical nature, only elves have access to the Fighter (Eldritch Knight), Rogue (Arcane Tricker), and Sorcerer (Wild Magic) classes.

5. Halflings have advantage on saves vs frightened, they have proficiency in the Stealth skill, and various logical benefits and penalties due to their small size such as when a Huge or larger creatures make melee attacks against them, the attacker has disadvantage.

6. Most importantly, no one can see in the dark!

CLASS RESTRICTIONS

Not all Classes or subclasses with a magic theme or that suggest magical or supernatural abilities are appropriate to the setting. Some classes and subclasses are available only to elves. If you play a divine spellcaster (cleric, druid), you are playing a religious character; Your powers come from your faith in a deity whom you serve. While other characters may be mercenaries, a divine spellcaster typically has a holy cause.

⦁ Artificers: No artificers. Crafting is antithetical to adventuring, so few adventurers would be able to craft anything of value, and the artificer's flavor tends to be a bit high-tech for the setting.

⦁ Barbarian: You can be a berserker.

⦁ Bards: The bard class is not available because magical music is too fantastic for this setting. If you want to be a musical character, you can. We can assume your character can play a musical instrument, sing, dance, and recite poetry.

⦁ Cleric: You can be a Life (domain) Cleric. PC Clerics are always lawful good, though NPC clerics may by chaotic evil.

⦁ Druids: You can be a Nature (domain) Cleric and call yourself a Druid. The Druid class as presented in the 3e or 5e books and all druid subclasses are too fantastic for this setting. Druids are not restricted from using metal equipment, but they are restricted from creating spell scrolls because theirs is an oral tradition and they consider their knowledge too sacred to be written. PC Druids may be Neutral or Neutral Good.

⦁ Fighter: You can be a Champion or a Battle Master. *Only elves may be Eldritch Knights due to their magical nature.

⦁ Monk: No monks because ki is another form of the supernatural. If you want to be a brawler type or a pugilist, pick any other class with skill proficiency in Athletics and you may wear metal gauntlets or knuckle dusters, for starting damage of d4.

⦁ Paladin: No paladins. Paladins are legendary. Like God commanding Joshua to lead the Israelites to take back the promised land legendary. If you really want to be a paladin, you can play a lawful good religious fighter and I'll let you trade a Fighter class feature for Lay on Hands and another one for Turn Undead.

⦁ Ranger: Rangers do not have any spellcasting in my setting. To compensate, you can be both a hunter and beast master subclasses at the same time, but your choice in beasts is limited to animals that are typical domesticated, such as dogs. Alternatively, you can be a fighter and swap some class skills and features with Ranger, and flavor yourself as a ranger.

⦁ Rogue: You can be the Thief. *Only elves may be an Arcane Trickster due to their magic nature.

⦁ Sorcerer: No Sorcerers. Ordinary people in this setting have no chance of having a magic blood-line. *Only elves may be a Wild Magic Sorcerer due to their magical nature.

⦁ Warlocks: No warlocks. Patrons are too fantastic for this setting.

⦁ Wizard: You cannot be of the Necromancy school because Necormancy is gross, and is regarded as, at best offensive and at worst a crime against god and nature to every good or neutral aligned religion. When wizards level up, they do not get their new spells for free! They must spend the time and money to get new spells as described in the PHB on page 114 in the green section "Your Spell book."

BACKGROUNDS

You can use the backgrounds as inspiration for your character only. Ignore the starting proficiencies, equipment, features, etc. Each player may have a free choice of two proficiencies with either skills or tools that they feel suits their character based on their character's history. You can be any background from the PHB except the Noble or Noble Variant: Knight because you're all peasants - especially you!

If you really want to be a noble, create a story so that you are a former noble, or some noble's bastard offspring who has been not been legitimized, or you're some sort of black-sheep of the family with no chance of being anyone's heir. 

ABILITY SCORES

Ignore the standard ability score generation methods in the PHB, as well as racial adjustments. Do not track ability scores. Instead, only track the bonuses and penalties. All characters can make a net +7 character (net +7 means all your bonuses and penalties add up to +7) by choosing from the list below or rolling a d4. You may assign any number to any ability. Note, if you have a penalty in intelligence, your character is illiterate and cannot be a wizard.

1. +3, +3, +1, +1,  0, -1

2. +3, +2, +2, +1,  0, -1

3. +4, +2, +2,  0,  0, -1

4. +3, +3, +2, +2, -1, -2

STARTING WEALTH BY CLASS

Ignore the starting equipment from your class, although Wizards begin with one spell book which they received from their master or mistress prior to their adventure. Use the Starting Wealth by Class table on page 143 of the PHB to generate your starting gold (alternatively, 3d6 + Wisdom bonus or penalty in gold), then purchase your starting equipment before session one.

Note that in this setting, the primary currency of peasants is Silver Pieces (SP). Once we begin play, wealth will have to be earned.