BB/X

I've been using Knave whenever I want to run a published adventure as a one-shot or a short campaign with newbies. It's been nice for that, and I haven't found anything better for that. However, I always house-rule a bunch of it and have to convert a few things to make it work. Additionally, there a few things I just don't prefer about it. It's good at what it does.

I wrote a system to replace Knave for my use.

After printing, you'll have 3 very short books: a player book, a referee book, and a spell book.

Features

• B/X compatibility. Run modules/adventures without any conversion at all.
• Transition the characters and game world to B/X rules with little effort.
• Minimal rules barrier. Quick, smooth play for players who have not experienced an RPG before. No modifiers. 
• Slot system for inventory.
• Some useful tables.
• Dungeon and wilderness creation procedures.
• Referee advice.
• No cleric, no thief. (It's easy to add them back in, of course.)

How to use this book

1. The referee should read everything.
2. The referee may create a campaign world, a hex map, and a dungeon to start a campaign, or just use a dungeon for a one-shot. The referee can use any B/X-compatible products in lieu of creating any of the above.
3. The players should read the character creation page of the player book. They can reference the rest of the player book if they need to.

You can download it here.

Hired Hands and Henchmen

Highlights

• Hired Hands are worthless in combat and aren't likely to be targeted by enemies.
• Henchmen do pretty much whatever the players want, so long as they're not treated worse than a PC.
• Henchmen must succeed at a morale check or seek other employment at the end of an adventure, but they stop checking morale at all once they've passed two morale checks.
• Henchmen take only a half share of the entire party's loot and XP.
• Henchmen are rare and usually sought for hire from factions whom the PC must have gained favor from.

Hired Hands

• Hired Hands are ordinary, level 0 folk, not adventurers.
• If forced to do anything dangerous, check their Morale. Regardless of success, remove one point from their Morale score afterward.
• A Hired Hand is usually an incompetent outcast, such as a street urchin, addict, or bum. They're not willing or able to meaningfully contribute to combat, nor are opposing combatants likely to pay much attention to them.
• Standard wage: 5 SP (silver standard) per day plus living expenses.

Example Hired Hand jobs:

• Hold a torch or lantern
• Carry treasure
• Manage pack animals

Default Hired Hand

HD: 0. Grit: 5. ATK: 10. AC: 10.
Morale: 6. ATR: 10 each (roll 3D6 if needed.)
Random Profession + associated gear and dagger, club, or other minor implement of self-defense.

Henchmen

• Henchmen require one half-share of the party's loot and XP.
• A Henchman can replace a dead employer as a player character.
• They obey fair orders and act at the same time as their employer (a single PC.) They are bound to their employer and will not leave in order to complete long-term orders.
• Check Morale when the situation becomes nigh-intolerable. (Participating equally in a fight does not require a Morale check.)
• Check Morale at the completion of an adventure (such as a return from a dungeon). Any failed Morale check results in abandoning the party, never to risk their employment again, at least not without very special circumstances.
• After a Henchman has passed two Morale checks, they do not make any more unless mistreated/misused.
• A Henchman is generally hired from a faction or while adventuring.

Note About Half Shares

When a party contains only PCs, everyone has a full share. 4 PCs get one share each. If they're sharing 400 SP, they each get 100 SP. If they brought one Henchmen along, she gets a half share. The result of this is that each PC has 2 shares and she has 1. This makes a total of 9 shares. Divide 400 by 9 to determine the size of a share. It's 44. This means she gets 44 SP and each PC gets 88 SP.

Default Henchman

HD: 1. Grit: 5. ATK: 11. AC: 10.

Morale: 7. ATR: 10 each (roll 3D6 if needed.) 

Random Profession + associated gear and weapon.

Hiring Hired Hands and Henchmen

2D6	Hiring Reaction
12	Refuse, insulted*
9-11	Refuse
6-8	Roll again
3-5	Accept
2	Accept, impressed**

*Insulted: Reactions of other potential employees in area/Faction penalized by 1. **Employee's morale gets +1 bonus.

Morale Adjustments

+1

• if housed
• if living expenses provided for
• if given more than their share
• if provided extra comforts

-1 per

• insult to them
• unnecessary danger faced

-2 for

• harm that could have been avoided

Death and Injury

Before you read the table, you need to understand Flesh, Grit, and how damage effects them. If you're already familiar with the concept, feel free to skip ahead to Death and Injury.

Notes:

• I first learned about the concept of Flesh and Grit from Logan Knight, though my version isn't 100% the same.
• If you're not into my system, here's my favorite system other than my own.
• The goal of this system is to be specific, deadly  and minimal while still giving players meaningful decisions to make, generating tension, and encouraging narrative variety for the referee. 

------

Damage

Every Damage roll removes Grit from the victim in an amount equal to the result of the roll. When there is no Grit, remaining damage is applied to Flesh instead.

Grit

• Grit is derived from HD. It's basically the same thing as HP, just renamed.
• Grit is an abstract measure of a PC's well-being and fitness for combat. Losing Grit represents bruises, scratches, dented armor, torn clothing, aching muscles, depleted breath and so on.
• Sneak attacks ignore Grit and apply damage directly to Flesh.

Flesh

• Flesh loss represents broken bones, torn and punctured flesh, blood loss, et cetera.
• You have 1 HD of flesh. You never gain more.
• When a character loses any amount of Flesh, use the Death and Injury system below.
• Rest heals 1 Flesh per week.

------

Death and Injury

If any Attribute drops to 0, the character is dead.

Flesh Loss

When your character loses any Flesh, make a Saving Throw. Success indicates Injury. Failure indicates death. Additionally, if the Save is succeeded by a margin of only 1 or 2 points, gain a Scar in the affected area (see below.)

When Gaining an Injury, roll 1D6 for anatomy and 1D6 for severity, below. Your character will also lose consciousness.

Injured characters may be revived after combat with 0 Grit. Any further damage to an Injured character results in immediate death.

Injuries may be treated in a settlement.

Injury Table

D6	Anatomy	D6	Severity
1	Head	1	3D6 days to recover
2	?	2	3D6 days to recover
3	Arm	3	3D6 weeks to recover
4	Leg	4	Permanent injury (partially disable anatomy or reduce related Attribute by 1D6+1)
5	Hand	5	Severe bleeding
6	Foot	6	Permanent horrible injury (maimed, severe bleeding)

A maimed body part is no longer functional. It might be removed or crippled.

Severe Bleeding

Severe bleeding causes -1 CON per Turn until the bleeding is stopped. (This Con may be healed at the usual rate for damaged Attributes.) Also roll 1D4 each round that the bleeding continues: on a 4, you die. At the moment battle ends, anyone may attempt to stop the bleeding. If they fail to do so, you die.

Anyone may Check INT, once per round, to attempt to reduce the bleeding (so you will only have to roll 1D4 once per turn) and then anyone may Check INT to attempt to stop the bleeding.

Scars

When you gain a Scar, gain 2 max Grit, and roll 1D6.

• 1: Just a dent.
• 2-4: Quite a mark.
• 5-6: Disfigured.

Your scar can be used to impress or intimidate. If it's more than a dent it can be used to disgust and will also modify some reaction rolls (sometimes negatively, sometimes positively) if it's visible.

Death and Debilitation

If a player's character is dead or temporarily debilitated, the player should create a new character or take control of a Henchman, Hired Hand, or neutral character.

Improve your game with bits of OD&D

I've acquired a lot of the best elements of my game from the OD&D school of design.

OD&D (Original Dungeons and Dragons) isn't just a worse version of B/X (Basic/Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.) It's a different thing. The two systems have a lot in common, but they're different.

Reading List

In order:

0. Mentzer's Basic Dungeons and Dragons Player's Guide and DM's Rulebook (so you can learn what an RPG even is. Probably every last one of you reading this can skip this one.)
1. Philotomy's Musings (so you can see the kinds of design choices OD&D is likely to push you toward)
2. Delving Deeper (so you can read OD&D without reading those messy little brown books, Greyhawk, Chainmail, etc and mash them together as best as you can)
3. White Box: FMAG (for a somewhat interpreted/altered OD&D)
4. Dungeon of Signs blog (For some of the coolest stuff I've ever seen anyone do with OD&D, especially the player's guide and this post which contains some updated rules. You can browse through the player's guide tag to find more classes and such.)
5. Into the Odd (for a modern game that feels like OD&D might have been if it had been written a few years ago. The blog posts are some of the best blog posts anywhere too.)
6. Necropraxis (a blog with a lot of good OD&D-related theory and house rules.)

But I don't know anything, so please comment to tell everyone what else is great.

Tower of the Stargazer Key

I made a key for Tower of the Stargazer. You can get it here..

Tower of the Stargazer is an excellent, deadly adventure (designed to be great for beginning players and beginning referees) suitable for OSR rulesets, or B/X, AD&D, D&D 5e, Dungeon World, etc.

When I read it, I found some of the long paragraphs helpful. I was fairly new referee at the time. The book is written in a good format, though it is sometimes needlessly verbose and some sentences and paragraphs are redundant. It's the kind of book you need to highlight before you actually use it.

With this in mind, I summarized the locations in the adventure in a format much like what Jacob Hurst used for the dungeons in his wonderful Dark of Hot Springs Island. I'm actually imitating Courtney Campbell's format, which is similar but less well-known. It's essentially a one-page dungeon format, but it doesn't all fit on one page. I'm calling this document a key.

This key was incredibly useful to me both times I ran the adventure.

The key does not work without the Tower of the Stargazer book. Follow these steps:

1. Print the map to use alongside the key.
2. Read the whole adventure before using the key.
3. Keep the adventure handy during play so you can reference it for the more complicated bits that I left out of the key (I reference the page numbers wherever this happens.)
   Please feel free to suggest improvements. It's not as polished as I'd like it be, despite some very helpful edits by Duneaught. I found it very useful and wanted to share it.
   The key is here.