Ostensible Cat

Some of you may remember many years ago, an initiative in the OSR Blogosphere to encourage folks to create a shared world sandbox adventure setting known as the Sea of O'Sr. Here's one of the main blog posts about it from the Lands of Ara blog:  http://carterscartopia.blogspot.com/p/sea-of-osr-adventure-path.html For years, I've had this tucked away in my head and have really, really wanted to get back to this idea of creating a shared world sandbox for folks to adventure and create in. Being a huge Michael Moorcock fan and Elric Sailor on the Seas of Fate being my absolute favourite in the saga, the whole idea of a pandimensional etheral sea with many strange locations has absolutely fascinated me. I still think the idea behind the Sea of O'Sr is a great vehicle for it. Not sold on the name but I don't hate it either. Still a working title. Anyway, I'd like to do more than just small islands like in the original concept. I'd like to encourage anyone who...

Greetings again all! One of the things I love is to create new monsters. It is an absolute delight for me to just sit around and come up with some new craziness that I can throw into my game at a moment's notice and go. Often, I'll make up monsters on the fly with my home group since I tend to improvise my adventures as I go along. Anyway, in the spirit of that, I was doing a bit of playing around today with Gimp manipulating some pictures for inspiration and came up with a new intelligent pack beastie that I'll definitely use in my campaign. I bring you the worgrilla! Enjoy and happy gaming!   Worgrilla Hit Dice: 6+3 Armour Class: 6([13]) Attacks: 2 fists (2d8), Bite (1d6) Saving Throw: 11 Special: None Move: 9 Alignment: Chaos Challenge Level/XP: 6/400 Description: Worgrillas are intelligent pack hunters that inhabit the dense emerald jungles of the Kundalear mountains of Shangrilah. These beasts are fearsome territorial predators and will...

So far, things are going ok. It is a bit daunting to take the guts of an RPG system, tinker with it and roll your own, but I am still optimistic that I can make a playable classless D&D variant that is playable and still compatible with old school RPG materials. So what do I have so far? Basicall the builds for low level Fighters and Magic Users are starting to really come together. That includes variant builds of fighters. The challenges will be to see how well they scale as they level. The plan right now is to have a basic level progression that all characters follow and as they go, they use XP to buy class abilities to mix and match and make the type of character they want to play. So theoretically, there could be those that want to progress and not purchase any class abilities but they would also have very basic combat and magic capabilities. I say basic in that magic theorectically is available to anyone, but all magic has a price and only those schooled in the arts can mitiga...

Ok, so I've had some time, energy, clarity of thought, alignment of the stars and planets, or whatever that has allowed me to make some progress on my classless OSR system. I've pretty much been consulting a bunch of OSR games such as Swords and Wizardry (Whitebox/Core/Complete), Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea (naturally :) ), Knave, the Black Hack, and even some 3.5 books and Palladium fantasy, and Arduin Grimoires amongst others for inspiration. So far, what I've decided is to lean heavily on Swords and Wizardry Core for the base system, particularly around attributes and bonuses. I love the Black Hack's take on saving throws. I mean, I really have always wanted to make the difference in say a 14 wisdom and a 15 wisdom quantitatively meaningful. Therefore saves are attribute checks, where the character rolls their attribute score or lower on a d20 with modifications for the type of challenge they may face. As for character creation, I'm still ...

Many, many moons ago, there was a shared worlds concept going around the OSR Blogosphere called the Sea of O'Sr. The idea was that bloggers would create their own islands to populate this shared worlds sea. I really loved the idea and wished it had taken off a bit more (check out the Lands of Ara blog post about it from way back when:  http://carterscartopia.blogspot.com/p/sea-of-osr-adventure-path.html ). It was a fun idea and I've often thought about it. In fact, Isle of Maedsid, which is now being worked into a full Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea adventure to be published by Jeff Talanian and Northwind Adventures, actually started off as a Sea of O'Sr concept. Today, in between virtual Gary Con seminars, I dug into some of my old maps and art doodles and came across a map that was originally designed for the Seas of O'Sr project and was going to find a home as a sublevel of the Maedsid adventure, but ultimately just fell by the wayside. Anyway, w...

I've been participating in the virtual Gary Con XII events and having a great time. I was part of the artists gathering last night hosted by Lloyd Metcalf and did a little doodle while they were dazzling us all with their digital skills. I've not yet really done much mor than dabble in the digital space. Mostly because it sort of wracks my brain trying to get the hand and eye to coordinate and get stuff on the screen. Practice, practice, practice I suppose. I'll give it a go as it does seem like something I should do since I have lots of pen and ink drawings just sitting in my closet. Anyway, here's a wizard piece that I did. I rather like it and think I'll use it in the Delve! Zine issue that I'm plucking away at. I have a notion to do some magic system rules for old school systems for Pact, True Name and Summoning magic. It's a bit ambitious so I may just keep working on it and my classless role playing system in the back ground and try to do something...

Quarantine has begun here in New Zealand,  or to be precise, it we are in the 48 hour beginning of lockdown prior to it going into effect for the next four weeks. Sure, I will be working from home for the day job, but there is going to be an extra bit of time that I do not normally have to take advantage of. Outside of family activities, I want to get to work on some personal projects. One is getting back to some regularity with this blog. I have also begun working on my classless game system. It is a bit of a daunting task, but really, it is just for me to get it off my list. I mean what serious hobby gamer hasn't taken a stab at their own game system or modification of an existing one? I think it is important to nail down what I want to achieve in order give myself a framework to work in, and probably more importantly, something to hold myself accountable to so I don't go completely off the rails and waste the time I have at hand. Let me start with some things I don't wan...