1d8.8 What is it written on?

Spellbooks and scrolls are a classic way to present information to your players. They're a nice, portable, comprehensible medium that the party can stuff in a sack and make off with. A genre staple. But consider: Wizards are weird. They're weird and secretive and heterodox in the extreme. They might start out recording their findings in books early in their careers, but do you really think an arcane researcher worth their name would keep their true works in that format? If your discoveries are mild enough that they can be contained in a mundane leather-bound tome, are you really even trying as a wizard? Universal truths could be crammed into a book, but they really deserve something more. Obscure formats, materials from elsewhere, monumental canvasses, works of art, or shifting chaotic mediums that can capture a nature that won't rest peacefully on a page.

The information the party found is recorded in/on...

1.1 A Hello Kitty locking diary, limited edition not available outside japan

1.2 College-ruled loose leaf scorched at the edges, 128 unnumbered pages

1.3 Dayglo neon construction paper, 56 pages in 8 different colors written in crayon and precisely indexed

1.4 Composition notebook, black and white marbled cover sealed with powerful Cool S glyphs

1.5 Microfiche, 32 pieces of A6 plastic film stored in individual paper sleeves inside a bakelite box

1.6 A butcher's cleaver, engraved in tiny calligraphic characters along the spine and flats of the blade

1.7 Murderboard, fills an entire room with documents layered inches thick on the walls and a web of multicolored strings obstructing the center

1.8 Ticker tape, 480' cut into 60' lengths and shoved in a garbage bag

2.1 Giant tortoises, 16 individuals each bearing a section of the work painted on their shells

2.2 Cuneiform clay tablets, fired for durability with color-coded glazes on their backs and edges

2.3 Thin lead sheets, pierced with a nail in one corner to bind them into a packet

2.4 A ring, etched on the inside of the band and visible through the magnifying cabochon

2.5 Bronze plaques, 8 2'x3' cast sheets 1/2" thick stored on shelves in a bronze cabinet shaped like the author's head

2.6 The streets and buildings of a planned city, encoded in every detail from street names and numbers to the placement of each brick

2.7 Sidewalk chalk, hidden among a block's worth of hopscotch grids and children's drawings

2.8 Graffiti, covering every inch of a winding back alley in vibrant tags and murals, residents occasionally feel compelled to add new details but can't say why

3.1 Bark, the entire surface of a living beech tree inscribed with scarred glyphs and lines of text

3.2 Veins, the whole circulatory system of a host creature reconfigured into interlocking sigils while still functioning normally

3.3 Tattoos, full-body calligraphic designs inked onto a cadre of trusted acolytes and an index and key on the master's forearms

3.4 3D wire sculpture, a delicate convoluted web of different metals, coatings, and gauges joined and twisted in a form-based code

3.5 Beeswax writing tablet, cyclicly erases and re-inscribes itself

3.6 Virus, text forms in ultra-fine linear pox sores after the incubation period

3.7 Hard drive, dented and scratched, clicks disconcertingly while in use, has 8TB of storage space but holds 1PB of data

3.8 Cassette tape, electric green and black marbled case, A side holds 64 minutes of coded atonal beeping and B side is a sludge metal mixtape

4.1 Snippets of text scattered through unconnected posts and signatures on a dead forum

4.2 Petroglyphs, carved into the walls, floor, and ceiling of the dungeon

4.3 Geoglyphs, combinations of geometric motifs and stylized animals covering several acres

4.4 Effigy mound, earthworks in the shape of a serpent with meaning contained in the twists of its maze of coils

4.5 A runestone, 16' tell with inscriptions winding around bas relief humanoid figures

4.6 The Dungeon itself, encoded in the combined structure of passages and chambers

4.7 A cave system, purposely shaped over millennia with controlled erosion and mineral deposition

4.8 A gem, fist-sized aquamarine bizarrely faceted in significant polygons and angles

5.1 Floor mosaic, exponentially smaller and denser tiles radiating out from the central motif of a leaping frog

5.2 Rawhide, an entire horsehide with mane and tail intact that walks on its own

5.3 Sheet music, the full score of an 8-hour long composition arranged for a 32-piece big band accompanied by air raid siren

5.4 A hymnal, block printed in red ink and dedicated to an unnamed power

5.5 A low quality jpeg of a kitten, encrypted and steganographically hidden in the data

5.6 Floppy disk, royal blue with a label handwritten in sharpie, holds a copy of Lemmings and a hidden 64MB zip file

5.7 Sand painting, multicolored and intricate covering several hundred square feet

5.8 Macrame, a sprawling fractal wall hanging of sculptural knots, mesh, and kitsch owls

6.1 Scent trails, an entire colony of ants ceaselessly tracing a pattern of wheels and spirals

6.2 Blackboard, 16'x32' with a rolling ladder to access the entire surface

6.3 Whiteboards, a stack of lap-sized boards packed full of doodle-punctuated scrawls and graphs, easily smudged

6.4 A silk painting, 24' long with paper backing and rosewood rods at each end, depicts toads and frogs cavorting across a barren countryside

6.5 QR code, takes up an entire wall and nauseating to look at

6.6 Papyrus, a 16' length looped into a mobius strip

6.7 Transparency, multiple sheets that have to be stacked and overlapped in the correct configuration to read

6.8 Red-figure pottery, an oversized krater painted inside and out

7.1 Clouds, an unnatural combination of different types and forms held in stasis

7.2 Reef, encrypted in the shape of the corals and movement of water currents and fauna, loops in a weekly cycle

7.3 Forest grove, branches grown so the light filtering through the canopy forms glyphs that shift from dawn to dusk

7.4 Disreputable thumbdrive, holds 128GB of data mixed in among poorly labeled pirated music and fan-translated manga scans

7.5 A deck of cards, handpainted with extremely detailed portraits and scenes, has 4 additional suits and 5 extra face cards per suit

7.6 Stained glass window, repairs itself if broken, growing at a rate of 24" per year

7.7 Skeleton, shards of etched and scorched mammoth bones from dozens of individuals reconstructed into a single complete articulated specimen

7.8 Tapestry, thick and intricately woven with a different pattern on every side

8.1 Index cards, thousands of cards meticulously organized in an old library catalog cabinet

8.2 Video, hundreds of hours of unedited camcorder footage on aging VHS tapes

8.3 Ostraca, a collection of engraved sherds in heaps and laid out in precise lines

8.4 Confectionery, extremely delicate sculptures of spun, cast, and blown sugar

8.5 A constellation, familiar stars shifted into a new configuration

8.6 Hive, generations of paper wasps directed to build in unpleasant angles and convolutions

8.7 Comic books, an extremely popular series with the significant details hidden in prime-numbered issues

8.8 Nothing, kept in memory with only an oral record

Experiment: Omnisystemic Games

I've had this idea for a while. It's not good, it might even be stupid, but it's interesting and I want to try it anyway.

I call it an omnisystemic game.

The idea's straightforward: Run a system-agnostic adventure and let your players make their characters with any system they want, as long as it's one you feel comfortable running. So you might have characters from OD&D, 5e, bastards., Troika!, DCC, MoSh, WoD, whatever all at the same table. Run the game for them and switch between their separate systems on the fly when each character interacts with things in a way that would require rules to resolve.

The rules for each system would only affect the characters from that system. So Troikan characters would use Troika!'s token-pull initiative while 5e chars would roll d20+initiative for a turn order. Only DCC characters would use the dice chain. bastards. characters would have advantage/disadvantage while WoD chars would gain or lose dice from their pools. Difficulties for checks/saves/ACs/etc would shift depending on which character's acting to reflect what's reasonable for their system.

You would essentially be running [X] many different games at once depending on the number of systems your players chose. Each set of rules running in parallel with specific chunks temporarily being pulled to the fore when a character acts and then going back into standby after everything's resolved. It's what happens if you take system agnostic way too far, following the letter while obliterating the spirit.

I want to try and find out:
- Can I actually do it?
- How hard is it?
- Is it actually different from a normal one-system game in any appreciable way beyond (maybe) taking extra effort?

I think I can do it and I don't think it'll be that difficult. Converting the adventure into the different systems on the fly would probably be the most demanding part, and that seems like something you'd get used to with some practice. Just paying attention and staying flexible, which you're already doing as the GM. Might be a little more improv intensive than normal but it'd only be an issue when rules actually come up or you need a ruling, and you'd just have to remember who's using what system. Having players who know what they're doing (and I always assume mine do, trust your players) would also take a lot of the work off the GM. The thing I'm almost entirely unsure about is if it's worth it.

We'll see how it goes once I find a group of players willing to go along with my shenanigans. If you want to try running something omnisystemic good luck and let me know how it worked.

Alternate Dice Interactions

I like playing around with dice. Figuring out probabilities and how they'll change in different circumstances is fun. It's one of the reasons I used to write systems, they let me implement my weird dice ideas and see how they worked. I'm more focused on writing content these days, so I figured I'd share the interactions I haven't gotten around to using yet. They might as well see the light of day now and instead of waiting for some nebulous future game.

Dice interactions are rules that directly interact with the math of a die roll to alter the outcome in some way. Some common ones most folks are familiar with are:

- Being able to reroll
- Replacing a roll result with a pre-rolled value
- Bonuses and maluses
- Advantage and disadvantage

Anything that modifies the dice rolled or the roll's result counts.

Here are some interactions I'd like to see used widely one day:

Step Up/Down

Alter what size die gets used in a roll. Make an ally's d4 roll a d6, or an enemy's roll use a d12 instead of a d20. (This one's already used regularly, but not enough that I'd call it common. I want to see it used even more often.)

Twin

Add a second die of the same size to a roll, turning the linear probability into a triangular distribution. There are already spells and abilities that let you add a specific die size to your rolls to give a variable bonus, but this is more about creating the curve probability than just providing a boost to the roll's result. It lets the player choose to avoid the risk of rolling very low or high and increase the probability of mid-range values. A play it safe strategy.

Pool

Add multiple dice of the same size and turn a single-die roll into a pool. Exactly how many dice are in the pool could be determined based on level, abilities, spell effects, whatever. It's not important. What's more interesting is how to resolve a roll like this. A number of successes-based threshold doesn't make sense for a roll that likely originally had a target number to beat for resolution. The two options that make the most sense to me are:

1) The result is the total of the dice. So a pooled skill check would (likely) have you rolling Xd20 and a pooled damage roll would be Xd[damage die]. It could easily end up being overwhelmingly powerful. It would also have the same mid-range stabilizing effect as Twin since it introduces a bell curve. The more dice you add, the more centralized the curve.

2) The result is one value chosen out of the separate rolled values. So if you roll a pool of 3d20 and get 2, 14, 9, only one of those is your result. There are a few ways you could decide which of the values is chosen. The most obvious is to pick highest or lowest, but that would just make this Advantage/Disadvantage with more dice. That's boring. The better option is that the player chooses which of the values they want to use.

Bulk

Replace the lowest value on a die with the highest so the highest value's probability is doubled. (Ex: On a d4 you'd replace the 1 with a 4 so your possible outcomes are 2, 3, 4, 4.)

Sap

Replace the highest value on a die with the lowest so the lowest value's probability is doubled. (Ex: On a d4 you'd replace the 4 with a 1 so your possible outcomes are 1, 1, 2, 3.)

* The probabilities for Bulk/Sap are different from Advantage/Disadvantage. The -vantage rolls are independent, meaning you still have a 1/X chance of each possible outcome in each roll. For Bulk/Sap the highest/lowest value has a 2/X chance of occurring. The significance of the 2/X probability also changes with the die size and has a much more dramatic effect on smaller dice.

Cycle

Rolls don't have a set die they use. Instead you cycle through the dice in a standard set, either stepping up or down with each new roll. So if you start a session rolling a d20, your next roll will use a d12, then a d10, a d8, d6, then after you roll a d4 you cycle back to a d20.

You can alter the direction of the cycle at any point with abilities/spells/etc to do things like making an enemy go 8-6-4 then reverse direction to 6-8-10 order instead of looping around to 20, or timing it beneficially for an ally.

Spiral

For enemies only. Each time they succeed add a die to their rolls so they have an ever-growing dice pool. The more they succeed, the more likely they are to succeed in the future in a self-sustaining spiral and get more dangerous as time goes on.

Generating Stats: Fool's Roll

The fastest and simplest way to generate stats, but also the most risky.

Roll 6d20 in order.

That's it.

It's quick, it's easy, and it's a gamble. There's no bell curve buffering to protect you and while you might get a 16 to 20, you stand an equal chance of rolling 1 to 4.

It's stupid and fun. Godspeed.

Generating Stats: Narrow Band

This method of generating stats has a linear probability and uses padding to guarantee the values rolled fall within a smaller range than the normal d6 bell curves would produce. It has two variations for a low band or high band.

Low: Roll 6d8 and add 7 to each value. Produces stats between 8 and 15.

High: Roll 6d8 and add 10 to each value. Produces stats between 11 and 18.

You can fiddle with the die size or number added to shift the band around, but a d8 gives the most interesting spread of values while staying within the common 3 to 18 range for stats.