The Kiasyd Bloodline for Vampire 5th Edition

This is all completely unofficial. I have no idea what WW plans to do with the Kiasyd for v5, or even if they'll make it into the game at all. However, they're one of my favourite bits of the VtM setting, so I thought I'd put together some homebrew for them.
The book detailing the discipline Oblivion has not yet been released from what I can tell, but you can find the discipline online with a little googling.
I don't think any of this is wildly unbalanced, but it's my first attempt brewing anything for v5. Feedback is useful.
I also have no idea what the actual legal situation with publishing 3rd party stuff for v5 is. I'd certainly be interested in making a zine-sized booklet for people who want to play my favourite weirdlings in v5, but I *also* don't want to get sued. If anybody knows what the situation is with selling fan stuff for v5 I'd be keen to hear from y'all.  

And with that preamble out of the way...



The Kiasyd

Also known as Maeghyr, Weirdlings, Broken Butterflies, Fair Folk, Moths, Greys 

The Kiasyd are an oddity among vampires. Not really a clan, but not clanless like the Caitiff or Thin-blooded. Something else. The vitae in their veins remains as potent as that as any kindred, but altered. They claim to be an offshoot of the shadowy clan Lasombra, to be fairies who were embraced, to be children of the abyss, to be the products of alchemy, to be a natural evolution of the vampiric form, to be nightmares crawled out into the waking world. They make all these claims at once, and say that all of them are equally true. 

What is known is that the bloodline are reclusive, scholarly and eccentric. They prefer their own company, but claim an old tradition prevents more than two - one master, one student - ever inhabiting a domain. They say that for the longest time, they were property of the Sabbat, but with that sect abandoning it's territorial struggles to pursue its own goals in the middle-east, the Kiasyd seem to have been left behind. And as vampire society falls apart, the weirdlings - now unhindered by sect or status - continue their strange studies. 

"You see, child, there's far more to the world than what they would have you believe. They tell you that our enemies are mortal inquisitors, but those are lies. Filthy lies! Things stir in the abyss, and the ripples move mortals like leaves on the surface of a pond."

"The abyss is our grandmother, you know. The grand maw, if you will. Lucien was in love with her, and he had Gratiano send him to her. He dwells within her still. Grandmaw and Lucien gave rise to the siblings Hrotsuitha and Marconius. And their union - incestuous though it might have been - is where we came from."

"Gratiano diablerized his sire, you say? Of course. What is Diablerie but an act of love? A uniting of souls. Again, the Camarilla will deny this, but they lie."

"Marconius was an alchemist. He took the blood of the things that crawl in the dark. Things whose nature defies categorising. We call them the Unseelie, the Neverborn, the Fomorians, the Thallain, the Nephwracks, the Lilim. Zeernebooch, too, whoever that is. He put all of that into an elixir, and his sister drank it, and in the dark of the grand maw, they gave birth to us."

"This is what the other vampires fail to understand. We aren't like them, not really. The resemblance is like that of cousins, not siblings. Wherever we came from, we sidestepped all this grand destiny of the Cainites nonsense. We have deeper mysteries to fathom." 

"Rest assured, things are changing. Marconius sits in Stratsbourg, vacant-eyed and gibbering. The shadows lengthen every night, and every dawn they creep back a little less. I spoke to a redcap, and he told me that the long winter is coming. I spoke to one of the Bahari, and she muttered prophecies of Gehenna. I spoke to a mortwight, and it said Grandmother stirs in her sleep. The name of Hrotsuitha is on everybody's lips. The inquisitors are just puppets, my child. They're clearing the way for what comes next."

Who Are The Kiasyd?

A few factors unite the weirdlings. All possess a connection to supernatural forces outside of vampire society, as well as an unhealthy curiosity and an eccentrically refined taste. They are antiquarians, gourmands, occultists and alchemists. They value those secrets that fall through the cracks of acceptable research. They collect - facts, artefacts, servants, texts, experiences - things that other vampires might overlook. 

Although no Kiasyd would embrace one with common taste, there is more to it than this. Something in their blood alters them, twisting their minds to become something weird and whimsical. They follow fairy-tale logic, abide by long-extinct superstitions, and are driven by odd fascinations. 

This effect is not purely psychological, either. The embrace alters a Kiasyd's form far more than that of most other Kindred, save perhaps the nosferatu. The precise changes vary from weirdling to weirdling, but there are common patterns. As a rule, the Kiasyd are tall, pale, delicate and androgynous. Some have their bodies stretched out to seven feet tall or more. Some find their skin becoming albino, or blue-tinted, or grey-violet. Their eyes often become pure black, or else oddly coloured. Their ears become subtly pointed, their fingers become spider-like, their skulls strangely narrow. Stranger features emerge sometimes, too. Extra digits, joints that don't bend the way they should, forked tongues, chicken claws.

A given Kiasyd's appearance falls somewhere on a scale between art-nouveau muse, elf, exsanguinated corpse and grey-alien. Some can pass themselves off as humans, if striking looking ones. Others must cover their particular alterations beneath concealing clothing, or wear heavy makeup in order to appear in public. The strangest of them would cause instant masquerade breaches, resembling the sort of creature rarely seen in the waking world.

This obvious strangeness, combined with the historical restrictions placed on their line, have led to the various traditions of their kind. They are highly reclusive, but unflinchingly polite and gracious hosts. They take pains to avoid gathering in greater numbers than a simple pair. The exception to this is their occasional conclaves - of which there have been less than a dozen in the line's entire history - at which they gather in great numbers to discuss academic and political matters.

Considering recent upheavals in vampire society, as well as the rumours that spread like wildfire among their kind that deeper, darker forces are at play, it seems that they will soon be meeting for another such conclave. 

Disciplines

Auspex
As scholars of the weird and forgotten, Auspex is invaluable to the Kiasyd. Auspex allows a weirdling to investigate and experiment in ways they otherwise couldn't, and most value the insights it grants them. In particular, the Kiasyd make great use of Auspex in detecting and studying the various other supernatural denizens of the world, including ghosts, fairies and mortal psychics.

Dominate

The Kiasyd are creatures of etiquette and tradition, even if those particular traditions are sometimes not recognised by those around them. The capacity to enforce their particular social mores is, therefore, rather useful to them. Furthermore, many Kiasyd are frankly bizarre looking or behave in ways that are distinctly inhuman. The capacity to adjust and alter the memories of mortals who encounter them allows them to preserve their privacy and avoid unwanted attention.

Oblivion

Every Kiasyd is, in some way, touched by inhuman forces. They characterise these things differently; some talk about the realm of nightmares, others the abyss, or the darkness from before creation, or the maw of oblivion. None the less, all know that there's something distinctly unnatural about them, even by the standards of vampires. Of course, being the unusual types they are, this connection to the weird is a point of pride for them, and many draw on Oblivion as an overt demonstration of their bizarre nature.

Bane

A Kiasyd's physique and psychology is odd, reflecting their unnatural origins. They must take two points of the flaws Folkloric Bane and Folkloric Block (either two banes, two blocks or one of each). Furthermore, they are affected more severely by these blocks & banes than other vampires. Increase the damage dealt by a Folkloric Bane by their Bane Severity. Likewise, they must spend extra Willpower (as many points as their Bane Severity) to overcome a Folkloric Block.
Their unusual physiology means that many Kiasyd also possess appearance-based merits and flaws, but like most things about the weirdlings, the specifics of a Kiasyd's appearance and how it's reflected mechanically vary wildly.

Clan Compulsion - Experimentation
Driven by the same strange forces that created them, the Kiasyd finds themselves with an urge to tinker, to take things apart to see how they work, to alter themselves or their subjects in weird and dramatic ways, to find new ways to do things. While driven by this compulsion, the Kiasyd takes a two dice penalty on any actions that are familiar, routine, or well understood. This penalty lasts until the Kiasyd's obsession with the novel and bizarre causes them to learn a new and better way of doing things, or to dramatically alter themselves or their surroundings.

Additional Options

New Predator Type - Cocktail Gourmet

You don't drink to live, but rather live to drink. Not for you, though, the crassness of glutting yourself on easy blood. No, your tastes are refined and exotic. You seek out new tastes, keep detailed notes on flavour, and combine them before imbibing. Where the common riff-raff are content to simply bite open a vein and drink directly from the vessel, that won't do for you. Rather, you extract the blood from multiple vessels, combine them carefully to balance the tastes, perhaps add seasoning or ice, and serve in a wineglass or silver goblet. It's rather an inconvenient, but the taste is exquisite. 

• Add a Speciality: Craft (Bartending) or Medicine (Haematology) 
• Gain one dot of Auspex of Dominate
• Gain the feeding merit Bloodhound and the supernatural merit Eat Food
• Gain 2 dots of herd.
• Gain the feeding flaw Prey Exclusion (2 - unprepared blood) 

New Predator Type - Atrocity Host

You elevate feeding to an art-form. You are not satisfied by a careful sip here and there, nor do you let yourself be held back by ethical concerns. When you feed, it is an event. Your choice of location is carefully chosen, isolated and staked out ahead of time. The exits are secured, means of communication cut, and victims accounted for. Then, you and your guests feed. Perhaps your victims are flayed, so that you can lick the blood from their skinless bodies. Perhaps they're hung from the ceiling by hooks through their ankles, bled from the neck into silver chalices. Perhaps they're tied to chairs and have spigots driven into their chests, like tapping a keg. Every time, it's different, and you find new horrors to visit on your unfortunate victims before they die. Then, once the night's revelries are concluded, you clean up after yourselves, disguising the scene as a mundane tragedy, and move on, leaving nothing but corpses and grief behind.

• Add a Speciality: Intimidate (torture) or Etiquette (parties)
• Gain one dot of Dominate or Oblivion
• Increase your Blood Potency by 1
• Lose two dots of Humanity.
• Gain the Dark Secret flaw (2 - committer of atrocities)
• Gain the Enemy flaw (2 - escaped victim)

  

New Background - Marconian Alchemy

The Kiasyd are not like other vampires, and their blood is mutable. You've been trained by the elders of your line in the arts of blood alchemy, and have some ability to warp and mutate your own Vitae. Needless to say, this training gives you a great deal of prestige among your own kind, as well as unlocking the potential to evolve yourself even further. 

This background allows the Kiasyd to learn Thin-blood Alchemy despite not being thin-blooded themselves; the altered blood of the weirdlings is mutable enough to allow it. Your level of Thin-blood Alchemy is capped at your dots in Marconian Alchemy, and you must then buy Thin-blood Alchemy with experience points in the normal way. You can only use the Athanor Corporis distilation method for this.

Furthermore, the Kiasyd are not as adept at alchemy as the truly thin-blooded, and require further supernatural catalysts in order to make the process work. There is an additional cost of a blood sample from a non-vampiric supernatural being (or ichor, protoplasm, or whatever that being has in place of blood). It only needs to be a single drop, and it can come from all manner of beings (fairies, mortal psychics, werewolves, victims of possession, demons, zombies, or weirder creatures) but without it, the alchemy simply won't function.

Mytherceria - The Disciplines Powers Of The Kiasyd

Smelt Lies - Auspex 1
The Kiasyd has an ability to tell when they're being lied to, a sort of sixth sense that alerts them. How this manifests varies from Kiasyd to Kiasyd. Some find they taste lies as a bitterness in the air, others hear a hollow echo to the liars words or perceive a whispered correction in their ear. Needless to say, the ability to sift truth from deception in this way is invaluable to a line of scholars such as themselves.
Cost: One rouse check
System: When the Kiasyd suspects they're being lied to, they can rouse the blood in order to activate this power. The power succeeds automatically, with no rolls required. If whichever statement they're suspicious of was a lie, the Kiasyd senses it for certain; if they sense nothing, then the statement wasn't a lie.
This power detects deliberate lies. The Kiasyd can still be fooled by misleading (but technically accurate) wording, fast-talk or spin. Furthermore, if the speaker actually believes what they say to be true, then the Kiasyd doesn't sense anything. On the other hand, if the speaker doesn't know what's true, and just makes something up, the Kiasyd senses a lie.

Fey Sight - Auspex 2
The Kiasyd line has a connection to the stranger supernatural inhabitants of the world, and an ability to pinpoint weird magic and the beings that use it. With this ability, all the various creatures that hide in plain sight are laid bare to the Kiasyd, who instinctively senses their presence and feels when they use their magic.
Cost: Free
Pool: Intelligence plus Auspex
System: Whenever the Kiasyd encounters a supernatural being. they roll Intelligence plus Auspex reflexively, against a varying difficulty chosen by the ST - the more potent the being encountered, the lower the difficulty for a Kiasyd to sense it. If the roll fails, the Kiasyd only gets a sense that something is unusual, but no more.
If the roll succeeds, the Kiasyd knows instinctively that the creature it has encountered is supernatural, and gets a 'taste' for what sort of being it is. They might not know the name for what they've encountered, but they know if it tastes like similar creatures they've encountered previously. For example, all changelings the Kiasyd encounters share a common taste, however there are subtle distinctions between the taste of a redcap and a troll, and even subtler distinctions between the taste of of two different packs of redcaps.
Furthermore, if the creature encountered has a 'true' form that's hidden or shapeshifted out of, if the Kiasyd's roll succeeded, they percieve that true form superimposed on the being's normal appearance. For example, the Kiasyd would percieve a troll as both a normal mortal and an eight-foot hulking brute out of ancient mythology, simultaneously.
The power is likewise activated when the Kiasyd encounters a supernatural power in use, the after-effects of such a use, or when such a power is used in their presence. The roll is the same, and again if it fails the Kiasyd only gets a sense that something is unusual. If the roll succeeds, the Kiasyd tastes the sort of supernatural responsible, although they don't get any additional insight into what the power actually does.
This power has no capacity whatsoever to detect vampires, powers of vampiric blood, or vampire-created creatures such as ghouls and thinbloods.

Changeling Ward - Dominate 3
Amalgam with Oblivion 1
The Kiasyd can carve, paint, or tattoo warding patterns on things. Each such pattern is a densely-packed mess of symbols and marks that spiral in on themselves, exerting a dangerous hypnotic effect on anybody that observes it. Such victims find themselves caught in confused fascination, losing track of what they were doing before they encountered the ward. Most Kiasyd protect their havens heavily with such wards, creating overlapping layers of these defences that baffle and misdirect those not welcome. Some go so far as to inscribe such wards on their favourite possessions, thralls and even their own body; a Kiasyd who rips open her shirt to reveal such a ward carved into her chest can use the resulting confusion to great advantage.
Cost: One rouse check
Pool: Intelligence plus Dominate
System: When the Kiasyd creates their ward, they roll Intelligence plus Dominate to determine the potency of the ward.
Anybody who perceives the ward must then roll Resolve plus Awareness, with a difficulty of the number of successes achieved when the ward was created, to shake off the effect. If they get any successes, then they find themselves momentarily disoriented but otherwise able to continue acting as they intended; the more successes achieved, they more muted this disorientation.
If the roll is failed, then the ward takes full effect. The victim loses all track of what's going on for as many minutes as the full number of successes to create the ward. During this time, the victim's mind is totally overwhelmed, unable to process what's going on around them. They are only able to stare at the ward until the duration is completed. Direct and immediate danger (fire, violence, etc) snaps the victim out of this trance, and they instead flee the scene as if the trance duration had just ended.
Once this initial duration is complete, the victim stumbles or flees away from the ward in a state of bafflement, as if half-asleep. They have no memory of what they were doing, or why they were there, and seek only to return to somewhere familiar and safe. In this state, they are still able to defend themselves and talk, but their behaviour is extremely confused. After ten minutes per success to create the ward, or once the victim returns to wherever they consider home, then they come to their senses. They have no memory of seeing the ward, or events that occurred afterwards, but otherwise their memory is clear, and they're well aware of what they were doing right up until they encountered the ward.
If the victim encounters such a ward a second time (perhaps if they return to the same place again), they must roll to resist it as normal, whether or not they resisted it the first time.
If they victim is exposed to several wards all at once, then they will need to roll to resist each such ward individually. As soon as they fail to resist any ward, then they are affected as if by the most potent ward present only (even if it was one they'd already managed to resist); the effects of multiple wards don't stack.
A Kiasyd is totally immune to the effects of their own wards.

Riddle Phantastique - Oblivion 3
Amalgam with Dominate 3
The Kiasyd have a knack with puzzles, both in interpreting them and creating them. This power allows the Kiasyd to create a riddle that exerts hypnotic power over the listener, a memetic vacuum that draws in and devours intellect. In truth, such riddles are not mere wordplay; all Kiasyd possess a blood-borne link to the abyss beyond the wall of sleep, and this power expresses a fragment of that abyss's paradoxical nature. Exposure to such alien concepts causes the rational mind to shut down in self-defence if left unaddressed; the only way out is to find a loophole in the puzzle and banish it from the mind.
Cost: One rouse check and one Stain
Pool: Intelligence plus Oblivion
System: When the Kiasyd utters their riddle, they roll Intelligence plus Oblivion. Each round, the victim has a choice. They can either resist thinking about the riddle, or attempt to find a solution.
Resisting thinking about the riddle allows the victim to act normally for a round. However, doing so allows the abyss's influence to fester in the victim's subconscious mind, and they suffer as many Stains to their humanity track as the successes used to activate the power.
Attempting to find a solution requires a round be spent in contemplation. The victim rolls Resolve plus Occult each round they do so; once they've accumulated twice as many successes as the riddle's potency, a solution is found and the riddle no longer has any hold on their mind.

New Loresheet - Disciple of Hrotsuitha
Many things are concealed in the depths of the abyss. Things that have been forgotten, things thought dead, things that never existed in this iteration of reality, things that should never exist but which want to anyway. Here, things are uncertain, mutable. Like a dark womb, the abyss of sleep allows things to heal, mutate and grow unfettered by the limits of the waking world.
It is known that Marconius and Hrotsuitha descended into the abyss to create the Kiasyd, but only Marconius resurfaced. What of Hrotsuitha? Was she sacrificed to create their great work? Diablerized by her brother-sire? Or did she merely choose to remain while Marconius fled back to the waking world?
In the abyss, all these things might be true at once.
Among the Kiasyd, the signs begin to multiply. The edge of the abyss, the divide between wakefulness and sleep, is like the surface of a deep, dark lake. The kiasyd see ripples on the water. They see, in the stygian depths, huge things move. Half-glimpsed, they see a shadowy form swimming for the surface.
The portents are uncertain. So much in these modern nights is. Bit by bit, though, the signs reveal themselves. Rumours spread like wildfire among the Kiasyd. Marconius, the idiot-prince, sits on his throne in Strasbourg and shifts uneasily. Illustrious members of the bloodline make preparations for another grand conclave to discuss the coming storm. On every weirdling's lips is the same name; Hrotsuitha, the mother of their kind, is returning. So they say.
This is, however, a lie. Hrotsuitha is returned already. Not in the flesh, she's moved beyond such things. She reveals herself in dreams, whispering to her disciples in their slumber. She has such beautiful plans.

• The Echoes and Reverberations 
You know the story of your bloodline's creation. Several such stories, in fact, some of them contradictory, all of them true. For a given value of true. You see underlying patterns, and how those patterns have propagated forward through time. You know what came before, and what is coming. Once per story, you can ask the storyteller a question about your bloodline's creation, history or likely future, and get an accurate and useful (if perhaps not totally literal) answer.

•• Beyond the Wall of Sleep
Hrotsuitha murmurs to you. At least, you're fairly sure she does. Either way, some nights you wake from your slumber knowing things you didn't when you retired the previous morning. It's hard to be sure. Once per story, if you retire to day-sleep partway through an investigation, Hrotsuitha might mumbler something useful to you, and when you awaken you get plus two dice to your pool to complete the investigation.

••• The Whisperer in the Darkness
You have the means to contact your patron, and she can speak directly back to you. To make contact with Hrotsuitha, you must be in absolute darkness, alone save for a sleeping mortal. Whisper your questions, and Hrotsuitha will use the sleeping mortal to whisper back. Count Hrotsuitha's patronage as a three point Mawla. You can also purchase Contacts among the various strange supernatural beings Hrotsuitha might introduce you to, ranging from ghosts, to dark fey, to creatures of the abyss.

•••• Herald of Nightmares
You are one of Hrotsuitha's vessels, a dark portal through which she extends her grasp into the waking world. Whenever you use the disciplines of Auspex, Dominate or Oblivion in absolute darkness, you can draw on Hrotsuitha's presence for strength. Take as many stains to your humanity track as you want, and get that many extra free successes to use the power.

••••• The Stygian Chrysalis
You know the truth of Hrotsuitha's plans for your bloodline, and gladly follow them. The Kiasyd are to become something more than vampiric, something less than real. A grand work of alchemy, creating beings that are equal parts blood and waking nightmare.
You can diablerize other supernatural beings beside vampires; fairies, werewolves, mortal magicians, even ghosts if you can work out how to get your fangs in them. While such beings don't have Blood Potency like a vampire, the Storyteller will assign them an equivalent value for your diablerie attempt. Likewise, the supernatural abilities of the being you're consuming will be reflected in the disciplines you're able to gain by diablerizing them. At the Storyteller's discretion, you may even be able to acquire abilities not found among existing disciplines. Your aura is permanently altered by this act, but not with black veins. Rather, it mutates to reflect your nature as something no longer wholly vampiric.

Theory post - Why We Have Dice Rolls, Game Mechanics, and Stats

Note: some games don't work like I'm about to describe here, and you engage primarilly with the game as a mechanical construct. I have no interest in them, and they aren't covered by this little essay. Diegesis as a concept is explained here.

In this essay, I'm probably repeating a lot of points that have been said elsewhere. Often I can't remember where I first read an idea. This is me explaining all these ideas in one convenient place.

So. I will explain in this essay why we have dice resolution and stats, at least in the sorts of games I consider worth playing.

To begin with, RPGs work on what I've seen called 'the conversation loop'. Here's how it works:

1. The GM explains the situation that the PCs are in. Players might ask questions for clarification on the situation at this stage.
2. The players say how their characters respond to that situation.
3. The GM adjudicates and explains the outcome of that response; what happens, and what the new situation is.
4. We loop back to 1.

It's very simple. GM gives a situation, players respond, GM adjudicates the results, repeat. This covers the bulk of play in my experience, and is the basic activity of tabletop rpgs. Here's an example:

GM: You are in front of a closed door in the dungeon. You can hear running water on the other side of it.

Player: I want to kick that door open!

GM: Sure! It's not locked, so they door swings open. On the other side, there's a room with a fountain in it.  

Easy, right?

This method gets used for all sorts of things; handling exploration, encountering hazards, conversing with NPCs, all sorts.

At this stage the game is entirely about engaging with diegetic things. The situation is a description of diegetic facts about the world, the players response is a diegetic response to that, and the outcome is likewise more diegetic facts.

Now, let's zoom in on "3. The GM adjudicates". This is where things get tricky, and GM skill really comes into play. Here, the GM has to assess the situation, what the players are doing, what they want to achieve, the PC's capabilities, etc, and decide what they think the outcome of the PCs actions should be. Obviously, there's a few things the GM needs keep in mind here:

• The results need to make sense based on the situation. IE the response shouldn't be a total non-sequitur. 
• The results need to allow the players agency (IE not render their choices meaningless).
• The results should seem fair, or the players will disengage.
• The results can't always be 'the players get what they want' since that would rapidly render the game boring.

There might be factors at play that the players don't know about (because finding all the relevant info before making a big decision is a skill, and sometimes players mess up), and sometimes the players have put themselves in a situation where they're fucked (because their actions have consequences, and again, sometimes they make bad choices). But those four points are important.

So then. Some actions are easy to adjudicate ("You open the door, on the other side, there is...") but others less so. Often, an action will be difficult to handle well through considering the diegetic facts and making a conclusion based entirely on in-fiction factors. For example:

• The action's outcome is uncertain but relies on factors hard to model through the conversation loop. 
• The action is an area which the players and GM have little IRL experience of to draw on, making it harder to engage with in purely diegetic terms or make a good adjudication.
• The action has potentially very serious consequences (such as death or major losses), and so simply making a (possibly arbitrary seeming) decision will easily seem unfair.
• A combination of some or all of the above: violence, for example, hits all three conditions except when it's very one-sided.

In these situations, we use dice rolls and game mechanics to make a decision on the GM's behalf when the outcome is otherwise in doubt and hard to adjudicate. This results in a conversation loop like this:

1. The GM explains the situation that the PCs are in. Players might ask questions for clarification on the situation at this stage.
2. The players say how their characters respond to that situation.
3. The GM decides to use dice to resolve this action (for one of the reasons above), and rolls dice, or asks the players to roll.
4. The result of the dice roll is interpreted. The GM adjudicates and explains the outcome of that response; what happens, and what the new situation is.
5. We loop back to 1.

As an example: 

GM: There's a closed door in front of you. You can hear running water on the other side.

Player: I kick the door open!

[GM thinks: this door is latched shut on the other side, and the player might not be able to kick it down easily: they decide to use dice to resolve this] 

GM: Roll me a d20, if it's under your Strength score, you'll succeed.

Player: [rolls] A 16, so no.

GM: Okay, so after several solid kicks, the door hasn't budged. However, you have made quite a loud noise, which might be attracting attention...

Again, this is pretty simple, right? Situation, response, input from the dice, adjudicate results, repeat. 

The point here is that you use dice to resolve things when adjudicating in the normal conversation loop becomes difficult. It's a tool to abstract difficult or complex things, and to offload some responsibility to chance (which makes the outcome feel more 'fair' than if the GM just declared a bad thing happened). 

Let me repeat that.

Rolling dice is a tool for when it's hard for the GM to adjudicate the results.

Although the example I gave has the players rolling dice, this isn't the best example of how this tool gets used in my view. Something like a random encounter chance (for 'does a monster find you') or a reaction roll (for 'are these monsters going to attack you') is probably a better 'pure' example of this; they're tools for the GM to use when it could be hard to make a fair, consistent snap decision.

The other good example of a dice mechanic is Saving Throws. A saving throw is basically "Oh shit, your character might die because of this". You give the player a roll to see if they're fucked, since it feels less arbitrary and unfair when the GM leaves it to chance than when the GM just declares that you're dead. The various procedures of combat likewise use this; making chance a factor means it doesn't feel like the GM has it in for you when you get splatted by an ogre; it's not the GM's fault, you just got unlucky.

The question then becomes; which dice do you roll, and what do the results mean? As a general rule, the more likely a thing is, the greater the chance that the dice will say 'this succeeds'. 

You also want to keep the dice rolls fairly consistent, with recognisable patterns. This means that:  

1. your players won't be wildly confused whenever the dice get involved, speeding up the process of rolling and interpreting.
2. your players can make informed decisions about their chance of success when dice get involved. 

IE: Consistently asking for roll-under-Strength (perhaps with a bonus or penalty) when the players try to break something will mean the players know it's best to let strong PCs do the vandalism, and you won't have to explain the dice roll afresh each time it comes up.

This, then, is why we have codified mechanics. They provide a rough framework that everybody is familiar with for when it's necessary to roll dice to adjudicate an action. They mean everybody is up to speed with how the rolls will work, and its easy to predict your rough odds of success.

It's worth noting here that, if you rely on dice adjudication too much, players will stop interacting with things diegetically, and start to think in terms of game mechanics. The same problem occurs, very much amplified, if your dice mechanics are too complex and prescriptive; you risk the mechanics taking over the game. The tail starts to wag the dog, as it were.

It's also worth remembering that dice adjudication is a tool for the GM. You don't have to invoke it, even if you did before in similar situations. You certainly don't have to use the exact same mechanic if it doesn't fit the situation; that would result in the game mechanics superseding the diegetic factors. For this reason, I (at least) prefer relatively streamlined and modular mechanics. Ones you can bolt-on as needed, hack on the fly, or even flat ignore, without the game coming apart.

This, then, is why we have dice rolls.

Why do we have character stats? There are three main reasons.

The first is that they define diegetic facts about the PCs. It defines in concrete terms things like 'Alice is a Thief and can do the sorts of things thieves do' or 'Carl can cope with injury much less than other PCs' or 'Dan is carrying this equipment' or 'Erica is not very clever'.
The second is that it gives a concrete framework for things that wouldn't have any real-world equivalent to draw on for adjudication purposes; typically magic. Magic could be capable of fucking anything (it's fucking magic), but character stats and mechanics give it limits. This ties in with the first point; it defines quite strictly the diegetic facts of what magic can do. You can cast this many spells and they can do this when you cast them.
The third is that character stats let you make more consistent rulings. If you know that Bob the Fighter has +1 Constitution, you can give him that +1 to rolls where his constitution is a factor, and it feels fair and consistent. If everybody has a numerical value for their armour, you can consistently give them the same chances to suffer a serious injury, and use that same value to assess things like how badly their armour weighs them down. 

If you aren't bothering with dice at all, points one and two matter; they still define facts about the PCs, that should be taken into account when adjudicating the results of PC actions. Sometimes, these diegetic facts are tight constraints (IE: "you cannot cast fireball, bob, you're a fucking fighter"). Other times, they'll just be descriptive (IE: "Well, Alice is a thief, so sure, it makes sense that she'd be able to sneak past the guards without being noticed.")

Point three is critical, though. Defining character traits lets you make more consistent rulings when you bring in the dice to adjudicate, letting your players make more informed choices about their chances of success at different actions. 

In summary, here are the three key points:

• The game is about the conversation loop of 'situation, response, adjudicate result, repeat'.
• The dice exist to allow you to adjudicate in situations where this would otherwise be hard.
• Relatively consistent dice mechanics allow you to use dice rolls in a way that is fair, and lets players make informed choices about risk.
• Character stats help inform the 'adjudicate' part of the conversation loop, and give you a framework for consistent dice mechanics.

Esoteric Enterprises - actual play!

So I ran Esoteric Enterprises for my sweetie. Here's how it went down.

We used non-random character creation. The character she ended up making was a bit odd. She went for a ghostly spook, with very high charisma, good intelligence and wisdom, and completely shit physical stats. Inhuman Beauty as her starting power (improving her Charm skill even more, and shifting reaction rolls in her favour). For gear, she basically put everything into social advantages; among other things, all the wealth-based advantages meant she came in with a ridiculous starting Resources of 7, as well as being bilingual and some other stuff.
The character's backstory was where the weirdness came in. Effectively, Katarina was the soul of a wizard from a parallel world who, upon dying in weird circumstances, found herself thrown into this world, taking over the life of one of her parallel selves. 

The game is set in Kuersberg, a little industrial town in Northern Russia, where they mine uranium and make weapons. Major factors in the town include various shamanic cults reflecting indigenous arctic beliefs, lots of Dero, a hospital where occult weirdos experiment on the patients, and a brood of mosquito-vampires.

So, the session began with a little narration about the experience of dying, her soul falling helpless into the maw of oblivion, reality falling apart, and then being spat out into a new reality.
She wakes up in bed in an unfamiliar apartment. Realises very quickly that she can't physically touch anything, as she passes through the blankets on getting up. A little investigation of the flat reveals that it seems like she lives here; there's a doctorate certificate framed on the wall with her name on it, and a few pictures of her and her family. Putting everything together, she concludes that this person must be some sort of neurosurgeon, probably doing OK for herself.
She finds an envelope on the counter. Written on it is her emergency code-word for any situations where she might have had her memory altered. This is intriguing; whoever wrote this knows her secret code-words and contingencies. Unfortunately, she's a ghost, and can't touch the envelope to open it.
Exploring the apartment fully revealed a 'space' between rooms which no door led to. Concluding that there was a hidden room there, she promptly walks straight through the wall, and finds herself in a pitch black space. Groping around, she gets a feel for the boundries of the room and where the furniture is, before locating a coil of rope that's fully physical to her and which she can pick up. (In EE, magical things are completely tangible to ghosts, so they can hold/be hurt by magic weapons, etc. She's just found an enchanted rope). Wrapping the rope around her hand, she switches the light on and finds herself in a hidden laboratory/surgery theatre. As well as the magic rope, there's a few occult tomes here, and a big ominous surgical slab with restraints to hold down a victim.
Leaving the hidden room via its secret door, she reads the letter to herself; it details whose flat this is (a parallel version of Katarina who became a surgeon rather than a wizard), the assets available to her, and a brief overview of occult activity in town. In particular, it mentions that she was an employee at the local hospital, where there are a few other supernatural workers.
This being done, she goes and reads those occult books. They are: The Vivinomicon, Madotsuki's Dream Diary, and The Engines Of The Gods. In quick succession, these cause her to re-roll her physical stats (she gets lucky here, and her dump-statted str/dex/con re-roll to be pretty good. Still useless when she can't touch things, though), allow her to astrally project while dreaming (giving her all the properties of a ghost while she does so; basically useless), and lastly to rip holes in reality (spend a HP, roll on the table And Hell Shall Follow for what happens). Her nature warped by the horrible things she knows, she settles in to get used to her new ghostly form.
She also concludes that, since she can physically touch her magic rope, this will let her touch things, and so unravels its fibres to make a glove woven around one ghostly hand, letting her actually hold stuff. Smart.

Her next step, then, is to travel to the hospital and meet with these occult hospital-workers.
She introduces herself to them, and makes contact with Petra (a latant psychic), Ivan (a cultist of the Coyote), and Ilsa (a banshee). She learns that this world's Katarina has put herself into a medically-induced coma while doing experiments with Dero blood, in an attempt to astrally project into the Dero hive-mind. It seems this world's Katarina was a franken-fran tier mad scientist. Since it seems this world's actual Katarina isn't coming back from her coma any time soon, she's told she can basically take over the comatose woman's life for the time being. She is, at this point, on pretty friendly terms with the Hospital, and I alter her reputation score with them to reflect that.

The next week is spent laying low and insinuating herself back into the occult underworld here. She makes some contacts, picks up some rumours. Learns about an entrance to the buried undercity that's just been found. Learns that an irritatingly persistant detective has been investigating the hospital for crimes they didn't commit, but is coming close to uncovering the ones they DID commit.

With not much else going on, she decides to go explore the undercity. Going to an old abandoned mining-site, she finds a shaft leading down to a now-abandonned uranium mine, and explores down there. It's mostly abandoned, although she does meet an urban shaman in the mines offering a little tribute to the uranium-spirits. Contact is brief and wary, but not hostile. A little later she meets the various undead bits of a miner who died in a cave in (a torso and two hands), which crawl after her. Walking away at a brisk pace, she finds a crack in the rock leading to a natural cave system, and flees into it.
This leads her deeper into the undercity, and eventually she clambers from this now-dry underground river into a buried tomb complex. The first room she finds contains various skeletons laid out on slabs, and as she investigates their bones, their rest is disturbed and all 20 of them reanimate to punish her for her trespass! The fight is brief; they can't hurt her (she's a ghost) but they can snatch the torch she's been carrying (in her magic-rope-glove). She wriggles free of their grasp and flees the room, slamming the door behind her, and finding herself alone in the dark.
This is a problem. Re-opening the door, she quickly snatches her torch back and slams it shut again, fleeing and hoping the angry skelingtons won't come after her.
A little further exploring in these tombs brings her to a room where a single huge book stands on a lectern. Katarina concludes it's probably magic, maybe cursed, and decides not to poke it yet but instead to come back to it.
Deeper into the tombs, she finds another room, with sarcophagi lining the walls, and feels a looming spiritual presence here. Searching the place, she picks up a few scattered coins, before hearing the voices of people approaching!
It turns out, the voices approaching are Sergai (a cultist of Dionysus) and Ida (a fairy slaugh). She greets them cheerfully, and the pair seem friendly. A chat is had - it seems the two are new to town and not really affiliated with anybody - and the three of them decide that it would be a great idea to get drunk and make out in this OBVIOUSLY HAUNTED tomb (it turns out Ida has some Fairy Wine that can even get ghosts drunk! lucky!). Sergai's shirt is just coming off as the gestalt ghost haunting the chamber notices what's going on, and is PISSED.
Combat begins with a howl of "WHO DARES DEFILE MY RESTING PLACE?" as the gestalt-spirit gets a surprise round to act in, lifting a stone slab poltergeist-style and hurling it at the trio. It passes harmlessly through Katarina, but Sergain and Ida are both hit; Sergai is knocked unconcious and crumples to the floor, while the slab catches Ida in the gut, and she collapses, coughing up massive amounts of blood and starting to bleed out from internal damage.
Ida Sergai's unconcious body from the room, and Katarina follows, slamming the door behind them. At this point, Ida has maybe a minute to live unless something can be done to slow her bleeding; luckily, Katarina has her magic-rope-glove so she can at least touch Ida enough to try staunching the bleeding, albeit at a penalty. She rolls, gets VERY LUCKY, and Ida's bleeding slows down, giving her maybe 20 minutes before death claims her. Sergai wakes, and the trio flee back to the surface (it turns out Sergai and Ida have an exit to the surface not far from here, which they lead Katarina to). A taxi is called, and Kat brings the pair to the hospital so her buddies can treat their wounds.
In the end, the hospital ends up recruiting Sergai and Ida to join their little coven. Katarina's reputation with the hospital is raised again, and she's now closely allied with them.

At this point, she turns her attention to the other problems facing her allies, namely the cop investigating the hospital. Meeting with him - still drunk on fairy wine - she pretends she's a potentially useful witness, and works out what the guy's up to. Turns out, he's been finding the exsanguinated and mutilated bodies of the mosquito-vampire's victims, and thinks the hospital is to blame, concocting a theory that the hospital is involved with organ harvesting.
A few Contacts skill rolls later, and she makes contact with the Mosquito Vampires, and explains what's going on. The mosquitos thank her for her information, give her a big wad of cash so everybody is square, and promise to deal with the issue. A few days later, the cop is infected with Mosquito Vampirism, and joins the vampire brood as a plant in the police force. Her reputation with the vampires improves from this little service.

Katarina lies low for a few days; after all, she's been seen getting a taxi with two people COVERED IN BLOOD, and been talking to the cops, so she doesn't want to attract too much more attention.
During this time, she witnesses a traffic accident, where the victim just sorta snaps, and starts lashing out with telekinetic power. Kat decides not to intervene, and watches as the latant psychic is eventually shot down by police marksmen.
A little later, she sees some kids fleeing from an abandonned building, and goes to investigate. Within, she finds a Collector of Eyeballs, one of the weirder creatures inhabiting the undercity, and establishes friendly contact! The two have a chat, and decide that they have a lot in common (Katarina also collects eyeballs, as it turns out). They arrange a meeting between Katarina, the Collector of Eyeballs, and the Collector's friend, a Lurking Lamp.
Three days later, not expecting an ambush, Katarina goes back down to the abandonned uranium mines, to meet the eyeball collector and the Lurking Lamp. And, surprise, it's NOT an ambush! The three discuss eyeballs and trinkets, to some trade, and chat about the state of the undercity. Katarina learns about the Dero, as well as hearing about various subteranean monsters such as the lithic courts, the morlocks, and so on. Overall, this is a productive meeting.

This is where I end the session.


The meat of the game came down to the various factions in the underworld, with Katarina's actions mostly being attempts to curry favour with the Hospital and potential allies. She's engaging nicely with the reputation & police attention systems, which is good, and really exploiting her good Contacts skill. The undercity's there to provide diversions with dungeon-crawling, although she's not found the most interesting and dangerous spaces down there yet.
It's going pretty well. Kat's half way to level 2 already, and making friends and allies. Apparently, she wants to find somewhere safe in the undercity to make her subterranean lair, and find some way to start clawing back magical power, as not being a wizard anymore is a pain in the neck. At some point, she'd like to work out where this world's Kat has astral-projected to, or to go back to her home reality, but those are a long way off.

But yeah. That's how the game tends to play. It's going how I hoped, and seems to produce a good mix of weird and grittiness.


I will leave you with some page-shots of the PDF, to show off my fancy graphic design. These pages can be quite busy, so the PDF will come bundled with a bonus art-free version that's more dyslexia-friendly and won't bankrupt you if you try to print it.

Review - The Shivering Circle

By Howard David Ingham. Buy it here (no, seriously, buy it, it's good). Website here.

Well, this is absolutely my jam. I love this.

It's a 60 page book. Short and concise. It gives you an engine for a particular style of game, and a setting - Hoddesford, England - to run those games in.
It's full of a very specific, very evocative atmosphere. Modern rural middle-England, the sort of place where the plastic veneer of modernity is slapped over somewhere older and more odd. It's incredibly British, and if you're British yourself you'll recognise this stuff immediately. I grew up in a town that might as well be Hoddesford myself, and this stuff really resonated with me.  The book absolutely nails the tone of the place.
It feels political. Not that it has a message per se, but rather that it recognises the state of modern Britain and ties that into the horror. Like, for example, you take the way our underfunded social services let down poor kids, and the way this produces angry directionless teenagers who, sure, they're gonna cause trouble for everybody else, but they're far more troubled themselves. Right? And then you get these hopeless bitter kids, and take something old and dark that preys on that sense of being abandoned, and... that's a coven, right there. The book implies that this keeps happening. That there will always be poor children that society has abandonned, who become prey for the things witches worship, and that when it ends tragically for them (it always ends tragically for them), that just fuels the cycle.
The book makes them sympathetic, almost. Almost. It's a sort of tragedy of the state of the country being exploited by dark occult forces. Kind of a microcosm of the whole setting, really. The problems that face this sort of town IRL, turned dark and horrible by the supernatural.
The weird's never fully explained. You see hints and glimpses. The actual horrible truth is something you'll work out in play. You get a haunted fox-hunt that sometimes hunts people; an old old man living on the hills, hunting with a hawk, in communion with old pagan bird-godesses; a spooky old manor with parapsychologists poking it; the ministry of defence doing horrible psychic experiments on kids; a charity shop that is just fucking horrid; and a bunch of other stuff, all tying back in vague and ominous ways to the Shivering Circle, a circle of standing stones that serves as the load-bearing central pillar of the setting.
Seriously, this shit is good.
The rest of the setting is similar to that coven of kids I mentioned. It keys in on different tensions you might find in modern British society (fox-hunting, the general ukip-gammon-arsehole infestation the country's suffering, social deprivation, etc etc). There's some grade A queer representation in here; off hand mentions where it's no big deal. Likewise, there's women presented ranging from strong to flawed to fucking horrible, and it nicely avoids anything too sexualized or stereotyped; all of the sample NPCs given feel very true-to-life. As a solid lefty myself, I approve. Bigger RPG companies could take some notes from the way this game handles this stuff.

The system presented is decent. I'm not wowed by it like I am the setting, but it seems pretty functional. You get five stats - Compassion, Courage, Dignity, Health, Hope -  rated 0-10, roll 3d6, and hope to beat a DC. Get an extra d6 if it's something you're good at, or d6 less if you're shaken in that stat.
Critically, you only roll at key points. If you pass a roll, that stat goes up. If you fail, it goes down. Your character's capabilities will shift over time, without needing an XP mechanic. I really like this.
If really bad shit happens on the roll, you'll be shaken in that attribute. A few different things can cause this. It's bad news.
As you keep succeeding, you get an escalating increase to the difficulty for that stat, that resets once you fail a roll. So you'll find problems mount up until you hit breaking point, and then catch a second wind. Again, I like this.
The engine is really simple but looks like it will produce escalating tension, ratcheting things up and providing release valves. It hits the same thing I like about a game like Don't Rest Your Head.

My only criticism here is the selection of stats. They're a bit vague and arty for my tastes and I find myself struggling to work out which would apply in different situations. (That said, you avoid the 'justify why you use your best stat for everything' problem here by the fact that rolling the same stat over and over will make it harder to succeed). If I were to hack this, I'd possibly re-name them to slightly more traditional concepts. It's a minor quibble, though, and it's quite possible that shit'd work out fine in play.

Your character sheet has a ring of standing stones drawn on it. As bad shit escalates, you colour them in. Once only the stone in the centre is left uncoloured, things have come to the head, and you tell the GM, who can steer things appropriately. If the final stone gets coloured in, you're fucked. It varies what exactly happens, but that's game over for that character.
It's simple, evocative, and I love it.
Of note: there's three different character sheets, with different numbers of stones in the circle depending on the type of game you're running; 5 for 1-shots, 9 for short-burn campaigns (of maybe 6 sessions), 13 for longer games. Scaling shit up and down for different styles of game is good.
Like everything else in the game, this mechanic is all about setting the pace things move at, providing escalating tension.

From what I can see, it's mechanically simple and flexible, and everything in there is fine-tuned for it's specific purpose. The author very clearly understands how the game is meant to play, how the mechanics incentivise and push things, what the core loop of the game is. From reading it, the game is a little more collaborative in intent than most I play - it's one of those games where "if you pass a roll, you narrate what happens, if you fail, the GM does" so players need to be invested in telling a good story. I've been having an itch for something like this for a while, though, and had great fun last time I dipped into this style of game.

There's a few pages on supernatural abilities PCs might have. Low-level psychic abilities, or a little dabbling in ritual magic. It's low on concrete mechanics (you basically roll like for anything else when you want to activate a power, with some slight tweaks) but high on how this stuff works diagetically. The section sets expectations for what supernatural stuff in the game world will consist of, rather than defining everything numerically. I like this.

Character gen is simple. Assign some numbers to your five stats, and then the rest is free-form diagetic stuff. What you're good at, what you're scared of, what drives you, etc. It's quick and simple but drills down onto the core of the character.

In terms of visual stuff, the book is fairly simple. Some public domain art, but otherwise minimalist. It's print-on-demand from DTRPG, so the print quality is what you'd expect for that.
The layout is good, though. Information is divided up nicely, with bold text picking out the key mechanical bits. The whole thing is given in a very informal, conversational style. I found it really compelling to read; you get this wonderful sense that Howard is telling you about this really cool RPG in person. For reference, there's an SRD in the back of the book that gives things in slightly more plain and technical language. This is useful, more things should do this.


It's not perfect, but nothing is, but it comes fucking close and the only real quibble is something that's trivial to fix.
It's PWYW on DTRPG. Go buy it. Give the author good money for it, because it's a good fucking game and I want more shit like this to be made. I think I payed about 15 quid for it, and I regret not paying more because it's worth it.

New Class - The Visionary

Visionaries are odd people. Plagued by ill health and madness from birth, each is a frail, frightened, wide-eyed thing, overwhelmed by the signs and portents they see at every turn. Something in their mind processes the world differently to other people. They see things others don't, understand things in ways other's can't, draw bizarre connections between things. By all accounts, they're totally insane, tormented by hallucinations, delusions and paranoia.

Except, of course, that they're frequently entirely correct. Their insights have a habit of being correct, and their madness has an underlying method to it that might be obscured even from the visionary. 

Many such individuals find themselves locked away in sanatoriums and asylums, or kept behind closed doors by families ashamed of the lunatic in their midst. Others go out into the world, becoming vagrants, hermits, or social dropouts. A few manage to find themselves recognised as oracles, kept somewhere safe and consulted for prophecy. 

A significant number, however, are recruited as adventurers. Neither front-line combatants, nor skilled problem solvers, a Visionary contributes little directly to their party's success. Any party that can recruit one, however, knows the value of the wild-eyed, babbling prophet accompanying them. When things are about to turn nasty, the Visionary becomes the metaphorical canary in the coal mine, and when the party's course is in doubt, the Visionary's insight becomes invaluable.

HD: d4

Saves: As a Magic User

Attack: As a Magic User

Experience Costs: As a Magic User

Weapon & Armour Restrictions: If your system restricts gear by class, no armour or shields. Weapons limited to one handed weapons, spears, thrown weapons, and slings.

Madness: The Visionary is not even slightly sane, and is not very good at hiding it. The precise details are up to you to decide; they might hallucinate wildly, have weird obsessions, find themselves driven to constantly complete arbitrary rituals, talk to themselves (or to things nobody else perceives), believe things that seem nonsensical or baseless to others, or something else. The exact details will vary wildly from Visionary to Visionary, but all exist as a coping mechanism for the visions they are constantly beset with. While there are no hard-and-fast requirements for their actions, it will always be clear to anybody observing them that they're mad. They can suppress this for a time if they wish, doing their best to put on a facade of sanity, but while doing so all their other Visionary abilities cease functioning, and they cannot gain experience for anything they do or achieve while pretending not to be mad, even if they were only feigning sanity for a small portion of the venture. 

Uncanny Insight: A Visionary can, if they concentrate, find themselves knowing all sorts of things that they shouldn't have any way to find out. The information comes to them filtered through weird symbolism and hallucinations, but they can still glean a certain amount of truth from it. To use this ability, the Visionary must be able to concentrate for a few seconds (a full round in combat) to put all the signs together. Roll a d10. On a 1-9, the Visionary gets to ask the GM a single yes-or-no question on any topic, and get a truthful answer. On a 10, the Visionary's insight has run out; they cannot ask about that general topic again until they gain a level.

Foreboding: Visionaries also tend to have a sixth sense for danger, even if they're often unable to articulate exactly what the nature of the threat might be. Whenever the Visionary or their companions are about to do something truly foolish or dangerous, or whenever they face an oncoming threat that they have no knowledge of, the GM should give the visionary a warning that they're in danger (if they want to know what from, they can use Uncanny Insight to find out more). After receiving this foreboding. the Visionary has two options available to them. They can either tune out their danger-sense, losing access to Foreboding for the rest of the day, or concentrate on it, allowing them to benefit again the next time danger looms. Concentrating on their danger-sense is mentally taxing; each time they they do, the chance that their Uncanny Insight fails entirely increases by 1 for the rest of the day. (IE: if they want to keep their Foreboding active after the first time it goes off, they fail Uncanny Insight on 9-10. After a second warning, Uncanny Insight fails on 8-10, and so on).

Second Sight: Visionaries literally see things other people don't, and sometimes those things are really there. They permanently get the benefit of See Invisibility. However, anything they can see in this way is hard to distinguish from mere hallucinations and false-positives; the invisible things get the benefit of the spell Mirror Image, with 4 imaginary duplicates of themselves; when the Visionary targets an invisible thing they can see in this way, randomise whether they hit the real target, or just prove that one of it's imaginary duplicates isn't real (eliminating it), until either the real one is revealed, or else all the duplicates are proved to be imaginary.

Uncanny Reflexes: A visionary is often aware of threats a split second before they begin, and if they concentrate on this, they can be surprisingly hard to pin down in a fight. If they spend their entire action doing nothing but trying to avoid harm, they get +4 AC and +4 to their saving throws against any attacks directed against them; doing this doesn't prevent them from moving. 

(It should go without saying that this class models somebody driven mad by supernatural prophecies and visions, and in the real world this is not at all how mental illness works. Keep taking your meds.)

OSR is Survival Horror

No, really. Hear me out on this.

I'm don't play many video games, but survival horror is something I find fascinating.

Generally accepted qualities of survival horror games:

• The game isolates the player in an inherently hostile environment, in which everything is a potential threat.
• The player avatar is somewhat dis-empowered, and cannot reliably defend themselves through brute force alone.
• Survival instead requires alertness, careful resource-management, avoiding threats, and so on.
• Exploration is often a focus; to succeed you must keep pushing forward into danger. Environments are set up to facilitate this.
• Shit's creepy. The game's atmosphere is often oppressive, sureally disturbing or overtly threatening.

This is all stuff that a classic oldschool dungeon-crawl does well.

Your starting PCs find themselves in a dangerous environment (the dungeon) that's full of monsters that can absolutely kick their faces in, if it comes to a direct conflict. They're cut off from the support of civilisation and surrounded by threats. To succeed, the PCs have to move forward carefully, to budget resources such as HP, spells, light, etc, to avoid random encounters where possible.  The game's about negotiating a space that wants to kill you. 

If you run it right, a good dungeon crawl evokes similar tension and building nervousness that a game like Silent Hill does, you just need to hilight the overtly horrific elements of the monsters and space.

The basic set-up of an OSR game (particularly at low levels) supports this. Exploration turns (and their associated mechanics such as light management, random encounter checks, etc) push the game towards being about exploration, and the combat mechanics are pretty fucking unforgiving if the enemy land a hit. 

I genuinely think that if you wanted to run a Silent Hill style game, or a zombie survival game, or whatever, then an OSR-style framework could work very well. You'd want to swap out gold-for-xp for something else to motivate your PCs, but that's not too hard if you understand what's driving your protagonists forward. An 'XP for uncovering horrible secrets' mechanic could work fine to mimic the 'I shouldn't want to see more but I can't resist the curiosity' drive you often see; your PCs then have a nice tension between wanting to witness the horror and needing to survive it. Once you've got that down, it's largely cosmetic design to actually produce the adventure.

Anyway, this isn't a big post but it's a thought that's been knocking about inside my head for a while.

Some Monsters From Esoteric Enterprises

Here's some stat-blocks I've been putting together. The final book is coming very soon, I'm finishing the layout but the text is 99% done save for indexing. Anyway, monsters:

Fleshcrafter
A delver into forbidden science. A grafter of limbs and organs, sculptor of flesh, puppeteer of neurones. A transhumanist whose experiments have pushed them far beyond the limits of the fragile human frame. Multi-limbed, some arms ending in delicate fingers, some in scalpel-like claws, slithering forward on improved appendages that emerge from the bottom of a white lab-coat. 
Desires further materials for experimentation; either perfect, unharmed human specimens, or else the strangest beasts to be found within the undercity.
Fleshcrafter: 5 flesh (1 dice), 12 grit (4 dice). AC 10. Saves 14+. Syringe (+4, d4 damage, and poison) or 4 claws (+0, d4 damage) . +4 bonus to saves vs poison & sickness. Dexterity, Constitution, & Intelligence all 18. Medicine & Technology 6-in-6. 
When using a syringe attack, can choose one of the following poisons if the victim fails their save:

• Complete paralysis 2d4 rounds.
• Lethargy (skip every other round’s action to rest) for the next turn.
• Begin Bleeding Out from the lungs.
• D12 toxin damage to flesh.
• Counteract the effects of all drugs and poisons affecting the victim.
• D12 damage to Dexterity, Intelligence and Wisdom.

Murder-children
These are children, that commit murders. Utterly feral, lacking morals. They kill because it's fun, laughing and chattering as they do it. They don’t understand why what they do is wrong. They aren’t stupid, though; you can reason with them, so long as your reasoning doesn’t rely on appeals to their conscience.
Murder Child: 1 flesh (1 dice), 4 grit (2 dice). AC 13 (small and nimble). Saves 16+. Stealth 4/6. Stolen knives (+3, d6 damage). When attacks ignore grit, +3 damage and the victim starts bleeding out. Dexterity 16.

Wendigo
A feaster on human flesh, gaining strange power from it but sacrificing a sliver of their humanity with each meal. Wiry, crouched forward, feral, yet somehow compelling. When they’ve fed recently,  healthy looking, becoming progressively more gaunt the longer it’s been since they last ate human meat. Gluttonous. Love the hunt.
Capable of blending into normal society just fine so long as they eat regularly. When they hunt, they coordinate with other killers; vampires, murder children, slashers, death-cult assassins, lycanthropes, each other. Move in loose packs, utilise traps and ambushes.
Wendigo: 5 flesh (1 dice), 10 grit (2 dice). AC 13 (naturally tough). Saves 16+. Stealth 4/6. Butcher’s knife (+3, d6+1 damage) and Bite (+3, d4+1 damage). 

On a bite that does damage to flesh, heal that many lost HP. Can track by scent.  Charisma, Strength and Dexterity 13. Carries 5 bear-traps (Save vs Machines or d10 damage) and can set snares, pit-traps etc.

Promethean
The winner of a genetic lottery, a whole host of recessive traits and divergent bloodlines coming together into an individual of  tremendous supernatural power. 
This is what humanity could be if they cast off the shackles of mundanity and mortality. A few such beings achieve great things, revolutionising entire fields of art or science, or pursuing temporal power so that they can bend the world to their will. Others descend into the occult underworld, burning the candle at both ends as they pursue supernatural power in all its forms, before dying in a storm of bullets or a flurry of unnatural claws. 
Most, though, are taken by the Men in Black. And, for the most part, they go willingly. Popular wisdom in the underground holds that this is the last that’s seen of them.  Sometimes, though, they resurface. Perhaps they’re highly placed in government, enacting the sorts of policies that keep the occult thoroughly underground. Or their name is connected to multinational organisations of staggering reach and influence.
Sometimes, they’re seen in neat black suits, with porcelain masks and insignia that makes your eyes hurt to look at.
Promethean: 7 flesh (1 dice), 25 grit (5 dice). AC 13 (agility). Saves 10+. Pistol(+9, d8 damage) or duelling sword (+9, d8+3). All stats 18. Have perhaps one to three powers from this list:

• Create fireballs at will: all in the blast radius must Save vs Hazards or take d6 damage.
• Total immunity to mind-control.
• See through illusions, invisibility, disguises etc automatically.  
• Mastery of how gravity affects them: they can levitate, walk up walls, over ceilings, fall without injury etc.
• Flesh that can be re-shaped and altered at will. Appearance is whatever they want it to be, when they form natural weapons they attack 3 times at +9 for d4+3 damage each time (two bites and a claw), can re-create serious injuries.
• Ability to read the surface thoughts, emotions, etc of everybody nearby.
• Those they address by name must make a Save vs Stunning or obey any direct order made that names them.
• Immunity to fire, electricity, acid, cold and other ‘energy’ attacks.
• Tue ability to drain blood with a touch; +9 to hit, d4 damage to flesh and heals the Promethean that much.
• The ability to dispel any magical effect they spend a minute interacting with or studying. 

Stubborn Foetus

An embryo, maybe four or five months old. Stubby limbs, current eyes, bulbous head. Wet, sticky, red. Crawls blindly. Dead, but doesn’t realise it. Craves warmth, life, vitality. 

Foetus: 1 flesh (1 dice), 0 grit (no dice). AC 12 Saves 16+. Gentle Bump (+0, 1 damage). Immune to all the stuff the undead are immune to. All stats are 3.

Plague Zombie

A corpse host to a horrible infection, bacterial engines stirring dead flesh into unwilling motion. Beginning putrification, infectious matter dribbling from its mouth, eye-sockets, orifices. Skin pocked and swollen with boils. Thinks only dimly, decaying neurones slaved to bacterial desires. Just being near it is a health-hazard.

Plague Zombie: 10 flesh (2 dice), 0 grit (0 dice). AC 10 Saves 14+. Claw (+2, d4+2 and infection) and Bite (+2, d4+2 and infection). Immune to poison, cold, sickness, and everything else the undead are immune to. Double damage from Holy things. 

On a successful claw or bite attack, victim must Save vs Poison or contract some disease (p. xx). 

Those killed by a Plague Zombie, or a disease contracted from it, reanimate immediately as more Plague Zombies.

Angry Fossil

A long dead monster of the primordial past. Its body skeletonized, its bones mineralized. Excavated, reconstructed, put on display. Reanimated. Acts like it did when it was a still-living dinosaur, prowling, hunting, giving rise to the deep rumbling calls of its kind from a throat long-rotted away. In its primitive saurian mind, it is alive and thrust into a strange cold world it cannot understand.

(Insert your own joke about ‘angry fossils' and OSR games here).

Angry Fossil: 10 flesh (2 dice), 15 grit (0 dice). AC 17 (made of stone, and agility). Saves 10+. 2 claws (+5, d8+1) and/or bite (+5, d12+1) and/or 1-3 horns (+0, d4+1) and/or stomp (+0, d8+1) and/or thagomizer (+0, d12+1). Immune to poison, cold, sickness, and everything else the undead are immune to. Double damage from Holy things. Which attacks it makes depends on what sort of dinosaur it was. 

Prismatic Child of Vor Glaurung

Life from the other side of the wave-particle duality. Stable self-reinforcing patterns of light, constructive interference producing a field of colour that interacts with itself. Perceive physical things only dimly. Fascinated by things that glow or give off radiation. Has a mastery of light and darkness, shadow and colour; can shift its form to produce holograms.  Enjoys petty deceptions.

Prismatic Child: 3 flesh (1 dice), 7 grit (2 dice). AC 12 (weird anatomy). Saves 12+. Dazzling Light (Blind 1 round & 1 damage, Save vs Stunning resists). Immune to physical damage, cannot be physically touched, totally immaterial. Covers an area roughly 20 ft across, in which it can produce any visual image it wants; not an illusion (no saves to ‘see through’ it), just a mass-less hologram. Bright light does 1 damage per round of exposure, spells such as Darkness do d4 per round. 

Ghost Train

The echo of a subway train, now cancelled following some horrible accident. Or maybe it was a bombing or a suicide or a hijacking that did it in, or it was just the victim of budget cuts. It hardly matters anymore, it was decades ago and even the elderly and nostalgic hardly remember riding that route. 

It appears like a subway train, but one from the past. Old and obsolete, crusted with graffiti and mildew and neglect. Belching diesel fumes, grinding endlessly into the night. Stopping at buried stations whose entrances are blocked from the surface. Taking on only the restless dead and the morbid explorers of the underworld. 

It’s almost alive and aware, sharing a gestalt of the frustrations and worries of those who rode it. Behaves like a squirming serpent of steel and glass. Those who get in its way it barrels into, grinding them down beneath its churning wheels. 

Riding the ghost train is easy. Find a station it stops at, pay two coins to the conductors (stats as Petty Spirits) and it will let you ride it. Its route winds across the subway tracks of the undercity, and beyond. Ride for too long and you might find yourself in other cities, or even other worlds; Stygia, Dis, and the Earth’s Veins all receive the ghost train at times.

Ghost Train: 18 flesh (6 dice), 6 grit (2 dice). AC 16 (metal). Saves 7+. Crash (+0, 3d10). Immune to Physical damage. Those boarding the train treat it as physical, those on the tracks treat it as immaterial. Crash attack affects the material world, but does as much damage to the train as well. Regenerates 5 hp a round.

This default ghost train has three carriages. For each extra carriage, add 2 flesh dice and 6 flesh points. Passengers on the train are mostly ghosts and undead, but all are equally tangible to each other while they ride it.

Angler-turtle

A huge snapping turtle, it’s shell covered in rough detritus that blends into the muck where it hides. From its jaw extends a long appendage with a fleshy bait on the end that the turtle wiggles hypnotically, drawing prey in range of its bite. In some cases, even otherwise intelligent prey can become mesmerised by the gently undulating lure. 

Angler turtle: 4 flesh (1 dice), 8 grit (2 dice). AC 16 (shell). Saves 16+. Stealth 5/6. Bite (+3, d8 damage). Animal intelligence (int 3).

Can cause the hypnotic waggling of its lure to resemble something desirable to its prey (easy food, a big pile of money); it has no conscious control over what, instead each victim sees whatever their mind thinks makes most sense as ‘something I want’ in their current situation. A save vs stunning sees through the illusion but can only be attempted after an interaction with the turtle or its bait.

Attacking its lure has AC 10, but gives the turtle a free bite attack immediately, at +4. 

Black Goat

A bestial avatar of the Black Goat Of The Woods With A Thousand Young. Shaggy body, weird octopoid eyes, head crowned with curling horns. Subtly deformed and asymmetric, off-putting to look at. It staggers and scrambles, voice rasping. It carries the blessings of a divinity that’s old and savage and inhuman, a force of dark fecundity.

Black Goat: 4 flesh (1 dice), 2 grit (1 dice). AC 12 (agile).  Athletics 4/6. Saves 17+. 2 horns (+1, d4). 3/6 chance to cast  one of the following spells if it spends its action twitching and confulsing: bleeding curse, darkness, spider climb, parasitic infestation. Animal Intelligence (int 3)

Cave Bear

Once, these creatures were apex predators in an ice-age world. Revered by some of the earliest cultures as semi-divine in their own right, existing at the heart of widespread bear-cults. Those times are long past. Humanity has prospered, spread across the globe in a position of total dominance. The once-revered bears have been driven underground, taking refuge in subterranean lairs.

The bears have not forgotten that they used to be worshipped. Like the cat and the crocodile and the serpent, every troglodytic bear knows, deep in its sinewy heart, that it was once a divinity, and it might be once more.

Cave Bear: 8 flesh (2 dice), 16 grit (4 dice). AC 13 (agility and thick hides). Athletics 3/6, Saves 13+. Bite (+6, d8) and two claws (+6, d6). If both claws hit, draws the victim in for a ‘hug’; next round, does d12 damage to that victim automatically instead of claw attacks. Unusual animal Intelligence (int 5). Memories of divinity give it a 7+ save against divine magic (such as from mystics). 

Collector of Eyeballs

A dweller in the undercity, a bizarre blend of human, bald flightless bird, and naked mole-rat. It’s body has the pink, saggy wrinkled skin of an elderly human, hanging loose over a gangly emaciated frame. Torso squat and drooping, its arms and legs extend out seven feet, have an additional joint that allows them to bend oddly. Each limb ends in a set of talons like chicken-claws. Its head is bald, almost featureless. A narrow slit of a mouth with rodent-incisors, and empty skin-lined eyesockets. Like looking at a horrible naked old man whose limbs unfold further than they should.

It hunts eyeballs. Not to eat them, just to treasure. Its kind trade notable eyeballs like children trade pokemon cards, and have all manner of cunning methods to keep them preserved.

Collector of Eyeballs: 4 flesh (2 dice), 6 grit (2 dice). AC 12 (nimble). Saves 15+. 2 Claws (+5, d6 and pluck eyes) Stealth & Sleight of Hand 4-in-6. Dexterity 16, Constitution 5. Can ‘see’ perfectly well in the dark despite lacking eyes. 

Claw attacks have 10 foot range. Any claw attack that deals damage to flesh also results in the Collector plucking out one of its victim’s eyes, unless protective goggles etc are worn. Once it’s plucked out a pair of eyeballs, it pops them in its eye-sockets and heals fully.

Radioactive Vampire

A creature of the deep lithosphere. Composed of dense meat and sinew, like layers of translucent leather over luminous blue-green uranium skeleton. 

Four long spider-limbs emerge from a squat flat central thorax. Between its shoulder-blades, a face. Vaguely human, but withered and desiccated, as if mummified by the dull alpha-particle radiation it exudes. Sunken eye-sockets, lips pulled back from shark-tooth studded gums. 

It skitters like a monkey-centipede hybrid. Squeezes through gaps no human could fit into. Glows in the dark. Out of the shadowy recesses of a crack in the wall, a ten foot, luminous arm gropes out to clutch at prey, dragging it back to the things ragged mouth.

Radioactive Vampire: 7 flesh (2 dice), 7 grit (2 dice). AC 16 (nimble and made of uranium). Saves 15+. 2 Claws (+5, d6) or Bite (+0, d10 and blood draining). Athletics 4-in-6.

If both Claw attacks hit the same target successfully, can make a free Bite attack that hits automatically. 

If a Bite deals damage to flesh, it drains vital fluids and heals as much as the damage dealt.

After a turn of proximity, or on a successful Bite attack, Save vs Poison to avoid contracting Radiation Sickness. Immune to radiation. Half damage from heat and electricity. 

Neural Slime

A mass of protoplasmic grey matter, an amorphous squirming conglomeration of neurones. Absorb and incorporate the neural data of its victims, engulfing their heads to draw out the electro-chemical data trapped in their brain matter. Dimly intelligent, a gestalt of all the minds already absorbed.

Neural Slime: ?? flesh (1-10 dice), 0 grit (0 dice). AC 11. Saves 14+. Extrusion (+0, d12 damage to intelligence and mind absorption). +7 to saves against mind-affecting stuff. Intelligence 15, Charisma 5, Wisdom 5. 5 HP per HD.

They sense vibrations and heat, allowing them to detect living beings even in total darkness and silence. 

Whenever it deals damage to Intelligence, heals that much damage that it’s suffered. If this would bring it above it’s starting HP value, it instead heals to full, and gains an additional HD with 5 HP.

Root Dryad

As dryads inhabit the trunks of huge trees above the ground, so these strange, pale spirits inhabit and embody the vast networks of tree roots beneath the earth. Take the form of pallid, misshapen women, stretched out to seven feet tall then hunched over, trailing little white-rootlet hairs from their heads. Their eyes are faintly luminous green. Their voices soft, like crumbling loam.

They love the wonderlands beneath the earth. Tend to roots and fungi and mulch like a responsible park ranger. Sing to the stone and seeping water. 

Despite their malformed bodies, their voices are achingly beautiful. 

Root Dryad: 4 flesh (1 dice), 5 grit (1 dice). AC 12. Saves 14+. Root Lash (+2, d6 damage). Charisma & Dexterity 16.

Double damage from fire, cannot drown. Can swim through soil like it was water, see in the dark perfectly. Recovers 1 HP per round while resting in her particular root-mass, dies if the root-mass is dug up and destroyed. 

Can cast Awaken Plants at will, and Suggestion once per turn, singing to do so.