PARIAH: TACTICAL SUPPLEMENT

After much to-ing and fro-ing I finally managed to get the digital editions of PARIAH out to its backers earlier today. When I put the manuscript together last month there was a LOT of material that simply wouldn't fit, and in between doing layout, working and avoiding the plague I assemble a lot of this surplus material into a series of supplements.

The first one off the press is the tactical supplement, being a compendium of combat rules and other stuff. Because mostly they're recycled rules from B/X, BECMI, 0e and 1e (plus some other stuff) it's available for free at the following link:

https://atelier-hwei.itch.io/pariah-tactical-supplement

Contents include:

* playing on hex grids
* stealth and listening
* damage reducing armour
* Aerial combat
* Old-school turn based initiative
* Death & dismemberment
* Random combat events
* fighting defensively
* Stat damage

Cover image courtesy British Museum.

If you prefer a google doc, have  a look here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lA7d7Te5EFrDiyarhD4smpRE12VE3CIT65h0J3E0inA/edit?usp=sharing

WILDERNESS ENCOUNTERS

If you haven't yet read it, go and take a look at Arnold Kemp's Encounter Stew post over at Goblin Punch because it really is much more elegant than my version:

http://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2019/07/encounter-stew.html

Google dice, uploaded to my google blog via my google android phone. Sleepwalking into dystopia...

I really loved the mechanic of encounter stew, not just for its elegance but also for its spectacle: we each chucked a die into the bowl with the same gay abandon of adventurous 40-year-olds tossing car keys at a party hosted in the house that grows pampas grass on its front lawn.

I ran it a few sessions, but then thought about making a few alterations to squeeze it into the skill attribute check/ skill system I'd built for my table, and then followed with some setting-specific encounter tables.

GHOULS

This post is the bastard lovechild of the following blogposts:

http://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2013/10/everything-you-know-about-ghouls-is.html

http://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2015/02/half-ghouls.html

http://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-ghast.html

http://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2019/10/scraps-of-undeath.html

...but especially this post from Cavegirl:

http://cavegirlgames.blogspot.com/2018/07/wendigo-sickness.html

Liberally borrowing from the above material to fashion a disease, a monster, and a weird mode of lateral character progression (but not necessarily in that order).  

SPOILER: they're ALL ghouls.

HEX - FLOWER ENGINES

While I've been waiting for the proof copies of PARIAH  to get back from the editors I've had a lot of fun playing with Goblin's Henchman's HEX-FLOWER COOKBOOK, currently available on DriveThru RPG for PWYW. It's a really versatile tome containing an introduction to this very unique generative system.

Download it here:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/295083/Hex-Flower-Game-Engines--an-overview-and-some-thoughts-by-Goblins-Henchman

I've realised over the past few weeks that I'm a much poorer communicator than I thought, so I will spare my own convoluted and poorly structured analysis of How This All Works and Why It Is So Good, and instead share a few of the little wilderness generators I built using this system.

If you're on twitter you may have already seen these. This first one was for generating the environments in which I imagine PARIAH might take place, though I think hot humid climes feel more palaeolithic than neolithic to a lot of people, so I followed it up with two more.

This one might be a bit too much of a kitchen sink, as I've tried to replicate how a fertile river valley with wetlands and occasional mangrove-type jungles can sit in a arid plain, perhaps flanked by rocky highlands? Also, I'm unsure how to generate rivers using a hexflower engine. Any ideas or thoughts?

The above hexflower engine sort of had Mr Screw-on-Head's hexcrawl generator in mind, which is available for your here https://wasitlikely.blogspot.com/2019/12/secret-santicorn-post-roman-pre-saxon.html (with my notes available here https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2019/12/secret-santicorn-gift-from-mr-screw-on.html).

If you want to see how you can make this sort of thing work for you, I suggest downloading both the Hex-Flower cookbook linked above and In the Heart of the Unknown, a procedural adventure also by Goblin'shenchman and available here:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/292935/In-the-Heart-of-the-Unknown--Procedural-Hex-Crawling-Engine

To get a feel for laying out a hexflower engine, I first copied out a draft of GH's hexflower in the above adventure. Here's my interpretation of In the Heart of the Unkown's terrain generator with a bit of a Siberian shaman bent:

If this all looks like some weird eldritch sorcery to you, have a look at GH's video talking us through how to run In the Heart of the Sea:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4Kl6hc1u3Y

Lots more stuff to follow in the next few days. Hope you're all weathering the pandemic.

- Sofinho

EDIT:

If you like this particular map style (i.e. BECMI Gazetteer)I've created a PSD file for you to download here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1vzX_GoyB2vNRQVk2qiaDi1zvnTx4cp4q