Nimrod in the Universal Encyclopedia (D&D/Planescape)

NIMROD
An ancient dwarf whose toenails and beard have reached prodigious length, he wears purple robes of Bebelith Silk and gold torcs and his crown the metals of which have fused to his flesh after eons of slow nuclear leak, he is Nimrod.

He guards the entrance and exit to the Universal Encyclopedia.

He can remember very little and nothing about himself and spends most of his time shuffling around or sleeping in a chair. 

Nothing pleases him more than visitors.

Nothing angers him more than thieves, which, for his purposes means anyone trying to take something out of the Encyclopedia without permission.

He assumes anyone sneaking around is a thief.

His memory is held in a certain prison on the Happy Hunting Grounds.

He is, in fact, a muscle lich and is still quite muscular. His phylactery is what was once his favorite book (a book on flowers, long ruined by all the flowers and plants pressed into it). He will be overjoyed and weep if the book is given to him, but he isn't sure why. He hasn't bothered to memorize spells in ages and the spells he once memorized have been horribly jumbled such that he can neither really cast nor memorize spells (can't free up slots).

Nimrod

medium muscle lich, chaotic neutral

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AC 14 (Natural Armor)

HP 345 (30d8+210)

Spd 30'

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STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA

22(+6) 18(+4) 25(+7) 10(+0) 12(+1) 20(+5)

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Skills Perception+10, Bows +8

Senses truesight 60’, pass per 20

Languages all

Res. spells effect with disadvantage

Immunities non-magical damage

Challenge CR 13 (10,000 XP)

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Legendary Resistances (d4/day). After failing a Saving Throw, may succeed instead.

Multiattack. May Punch/Headbutt twice (see Legendary Action)

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Punch/Headbutt. melee attack +10 to hit, reach 5’, one target hit  10 (d6+7) bludgeoning damage. Treat as magic weapon.

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Legendary Action
Can take 3 Legendary actions on any turn and always uses one of the random effects during his own:

1. Move
2. Punch/Headbutt
3. Grapple anyone he thinks is stealing a book or trying to sneak away
4. Investigate/look

The following effects occur (roll d8 each turn), assume it effects everything within a 60' radius of the Tender but for the Tender, unless otherwise noted. Spell-like effects that have a save use DC of 23:

1. I Forget. Everyone, including Nimrod stop what they were doing/loses a turn and can't remember the turn. Whatever happened at that point had still happened, just no one remembers it. Any spells being cast fizzle. Nimrod forgets why he was angry and looks around at all this mess, tutting.

2. Where Are My Glasses? One target has to spend his next/current turn moving at speed away from Nimrod, looking for its glasses (he doesn't wear any and is only supernaturally-sighted, having long since lost his natural vision. This is deeply confusing for him. If you give him glasses, though, treat subsequent rolls of this as a 1 until such time as Nimrod forgets about the glasses).

3. EONS of Papercuts. Tiny wounds appear on the body causing 27 (5d10) damage, making anything you do with your body done at a disadvantage and causing and dealing another 10 (d6+7) damage.

4. Hush. No speaking or communication of any kind this turn. This nullifies 6 and 8, but only for this turn.

5. SPELLLS. Casts Power Word Stun on one target (150 hp or less targets are stunned and must make a Con Save each turn or remain stunned), Teleport one target into a room at least 120' feet away, and Magic Missile (for 29 d4+1 darts)

6. Wait, What? Casts magic mouth-type effect on all within radius, including Nimrod. Now whenever someone speaks, it sounds as if a different affected person is speaking (who is speaking for who changes each time someone stops talking/someone else starts talking). This will confuse Nimrod for a turn, after which time it no longer cares and continues being angry. Lasts until Nimrod no longer angry.

7. Hide and Seek. Casts a variant of Magic Jar such that one target's soul is dispossessed of their corporeal tether for d4 turns (after which time they can return to their body). They can "possess" another item and move it about and try to possess another sentient creature (which kicks out their soul) (all Cha saves to resist posession). 

8. Wait, WHATTTT? The associative links between intent and physical action on the one hand and speaking and narration/description on the other are crossed:

            i. if a character tries to do something, they only say what they are trying to do (this includes saying, "I am going to try and sneak past Nimrod" out loud instead of actually sneaking). this doesn't count as an action.

            ii. if a character tries to say something that they could attempt to do, they instead attempt to do that thing. If they try to say, "I think we should sneak around Nimrod next time" they instead just think about sneaking around the Tender. If they try to say, "let's not attack Nimrod any more" then they get "stuck" and can do nothing else that turn because their action-grammar is funky (they can't think-act for other people. If they had instead tried to say, "I don't attack Nimrod" then they'd be fine.). To speak x you have to say that you are trying to say x.
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Lair
Nimrod lives in the only regular entrance into or out of the Universal Encyclopedia. He sleeps in long chairs or in his old chariot or on or under old wooden desks amid seemingly endless stacks of books, scrolls, papyri, skins, wax boards, slates, and every other writing surface ever used. He doesn't eat but can't remember why. Is shocked if you suggest he is a lich.

When reduced to half his health or less (the first time) Nimrod immediately stamps his feet in frustration and books and scrolls and tablets, etc fly from their cubbies and nooks and buffet the room (Nimrod is struck, but unaffected), dealing 7 (2d6) damage and knocking everyone prone (DC 23 Dex Save to avoid the knockdown).

Whenever reduced to 0 hp (but not killed because phylactery) Nimrod collapses, exhaling grandly. This breath blows like a gale and unsettles Dust of Tongues (see bottom of blog entry) in the area, filling the room with a cloud of Dust of Tongues (totally obscuring regular vision, requiring a DC 20 Wis Save or else fall victim to the Dust's deleterious effect.

attribution: Francois Fleming

Places in Limbo: The Universal Encyclopedia (D&D/Planescape)

THE UNIVERSAL ENCYCLOPEDIA
All things are retained in the Universal Encyclopedia. The Encyclopedia looks like a tower of arches on a spiraling, ramped pathway. It is on every plane and there are many ways in, but the primary entrance is on Limbo, in the Funeral of Logos, amid plains of failing words that burrow into the skin like rot grubs and burst novel and useless vocabularies from your corpse, whose moldy paper hills and drab watercolor trees are stalked by bands of thought thieves and of course, the Jabberwocky.

The Encyclopedia is a bit like a pin piercing the planes, and like the proverbial pin, is nearly impossible to find until you step on it. 

Inside, it's stacks and shelves and cages and cases. Marble floors, columns, walls. Water runs down (sometimes up) most walls in sheets from somewhere far above (theory: it's coming from "Dam, Broken" or maybe its "Lake" or "Ocean"). There are endless rooms and cubbies and reading nooks, stairs up and down. If there is top or bottom, it hasn't been sounded.

The use of fire and lanterns is strictly prohibited and the halls are unlit but for the holding cages, whose lights blink and fluid glows softly (treat as a candle).

There are books but also scrolls and tablets and nearly every other media on which words may be printed. Some writing has been transcribed from older texts into newer media - there are, for example, holographic lexicons of Sumerian cuneiform - and other clever or desperate or capricious lexographers have recorded languages not yet spoken in places not yet made on scrimshaws. There are animals in cages and animals roaming about and everywhere is cluttered with the trophies of Nimrod's glory days (strange animals, stuffed). Every kind of thing is there, literally (people that lived, people that will live all of them sleeping on all planes and in all ways, unable to wake or do anything while in the Encyclopedia), everything but magic.

Accordingly there aren't spell books here, because magic is selfish and secretive and not a part of anything/something else entirely. Wizards could still probably find spell books because Wizard's minds are a mess.

Everything is cataloged, but Nimrod (the guard/docent/custodian) can't remember where the catalog is (it is, of course, under "C").

GOD LOCUS
The Universal Encyclopedia ("Oh, Ark of Knowledge, Oh Sum of Forms") is worshiped by academic-clerics, priest-librarians and mathologizers and idolized by knowledge pornographers. Worship grants clerics either Knowledge or Trickery Domains. 

DIEGITIC LICH
Entries in the Universal Encyclopedia are diegetic lichs: their form may be carried out (borrowed) but their essential substance remains in the Encyclopedia. Destruction of an Entry requires destruction of the idea/substance of the Entry.

Destroying anything in the Encyclopedia removes it from all existence everywhere for all time until someone else invents it again. Destroying things like hunger and hatred and evil never do much as we just immediately re-invent them. Pacifist-terrorists, Chaos Catholics, revolutionaries, and other persons and peoples intent on reality schism still try, from time to time, and their corpses litter the hills of Limbo.

Cleaver terrorists will hire saboteurs to destroy apex predators or a single person in an attempt to destabilize ecosystems or powers.

There are, of course, a great many things in the Encyclopedia that destroy ideas/substances either purposefully or as a byproduct - fascist logic engines, parasites that devour ideas using language or other ideas or art as vectors, a machine that makes new things by crushing up old things completely and entirely. 

BORROWING
When attempting to carry an Entry out of the Encyclopedia, the borrower finds themselves drawn inevitably to the exit guarded by the Encyclopedia's guard: Nimrod. The exact mechanism is any mechanism that works, usually through a kind of suggestion  or mass illusion or, if those fail, the Encyclopedia just shuffles its page-floors so you wind up at Nimrod's exit.

The rule of the Encyclopedia, as is clearly stated in all languages on the walls, column, floors and molecules in the primary entrance/exit hall and, for the ease of the visitor, in all possible sizes, colors and spectrum as well as in thoughts, ideas, songs and images, require three things for the borrowing of an item:

1. a deity's permission
2. an item of equal value (meaning: you have to create a new idea or a new kind of thing of equal value [according to Nimrod] to be able to take the thing you want with you)
3. one must not acknowledge in any way the thing one is borrowing (cannot speak to, cannot look back at) while still on Limbo

(there used to be two rules but Limbo didn't like people taking potshots with just-borrowed cross-planar mortars or releasing loaned planar mites into its flesh, so it poked through truth and fact and added a third rule)

IT ROTS AND THESE HALLS ARE FULL OF DUST
Time passes and entropy reigns and the lich fails and an Entry must be restored by its substance. Husks of Entries, empty book-forms like brittle chrysalis crunch underfoot and the leathery shed skin and rotten guts of the animals and people lay at the feet at the Entry's current incarnation.

Dust reaches the waist in places, often at least the ankle. At its deepest, the dust has formed sediment and even ossified into rocks.

These leavings, being the ruined diegesis of a pure form, are a sort of incomplete, nearly universal language, the near total expression of all forms. 

DUST OF TONGUES
per snort, 30% chance its useful, 70% chance its obscure words or conjugations of irregular verbs or morphemes and phonemes fallen out of use or illogical combinations of idea-flesh-sound, and DC 20 Wis Save or spend an hour vomiting words from your own language (you're disadvantaged while communicating for the remainder of the session)

SLUDGE OF TONGUES
may be smeared onto a text to make it legible in your language (this literally changes the language and can deform the original meaning and may ruin magical texts (10% chance per level of magic as well as relative complexity). Can be used on the tongue or dropped on the eye to have the same effect as the Dust of Tongues (DC 25 Wis save required, however). Used by certain torturers, spies and demons to concoct Gabber (see below).

ROCK OF TONGUES
May be used as an ebenezer/arcane focus for casters. Can be crushed to have the same effect as the Dust of Tongues. Swallowing a fist-sized rock causes one to be proficient in any language relatively common language and have advantage when trying to read or communicate in an obscure or dead or magical one and when making any History or Arcana check. After eight hours, a massive headache (exhaustion level 1) and disadvantaged when communicating for the remainder of the session (at least).

Gabber (DC 15/20 Con Save poison)
Weak Gabber forces the user to speak without stop for d4 days. There is an attending risk of starvation and dehydration, and, as the victim cannot sleep, exhaustion is guaranteed. The victim has control over what they say, however.

Stronger, lethal Gabber makes speaking sublimates all bodily functions to speaking. Everything will try to communicate meaning, hands signing, toes pointing. Death is usually cause by asphyxiation - speaking without trying to breather, the victim gasps like a fish suffocating.

OTHER ITEMS AND MONSTERSThe Voice of Nimrod
A recurve bow 5' tall, unstrung and snapped in half, requiring attunement, STR 12 to use. Any arrow shot from this bow strikes to the truth in addition to whatever other damage or effect it causes. The first blow, dispelling any one illusion (DC 30 dispel), the second any one lie (DC 25 command to not not lie) and the third any planar distortion (displacement/phasing/brings ethereal and astral beings into this plane, gives flesh to the incorporeal).

to repair:  the gut of librarian-wyrm unkilled (ancient dragon) to re-string and a set of tools from a divine bowyer and a dwarven smith to repair its delicate mechanisms and rune-filigrees. 

The Foot of Nimrod
Tarnished, now used as a bed, once a grand sky-steel chariot. Once hitched, moves at great speed for twice as long without tiring mounts, can be used to fly at the same speed (which will freak out terrestrial mounts) but is built for a being greater than you (at disadvantage until attuned and without STR 18). 

The Night Crown
An Assyrian-style crown looking like a pale gold cylindrical tower. The first crown worn by a mortal, composed of the night sky, a moon and several stars. Inherently magical, an ancient symbol of status and respect in all outer planar courts. Extremely cold. 

Gorm & Glot
There is a guard dog in the Encyclopedia (the Gorm) and a parasite eating its diegetic lichs like a bookworm (the Glot). The Gorm is never around because it's chasing the Glot. Both will try to recruit help if anyone looks able.

More on them later.

attribution: Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Speaking Common Wherever in D&D 5e

This is a short one on communicating in Common wherever. To follow: the Universal Encyclopedia.

I used to have more complex rules for this, but 5e solves this nicely.

UNCOMMON

Assume that everyone on the material plane speaks Common, a totally democratic language that's mostly just a mash of other languages in the region. I speak my language, you speak your language, we live nearby, we can make it work. Sort of like everyone making do in cultural hubs of the Roman empire, but with enough travel and trade to keep at least some sort of morphological/internal consistency in all of Common. Under fascists and in some churches, the use of Common is verboten or, at the very least, signs of a weak character.

In game terms, it's a pan-language that doesn't properly exist, a set of dialects that are really just their own languages coupled with the human drive to communicate.

It's likely that were a person to teleport from one end of a continent to another, the Common they encountered would be vastly different and require greater effort to pick up. Even as you move further and further away from home, Common becomes increasingly less coherent, eventually putting you at a disadvantage when trying to interact using your Common v someone else's Common (which can be rectified if you spend enough time on it (about a month of game time with regular interaction, half that if you're putting a bunch of time in with native speakers).

Poems and novels in Common are, by definition political and often experimental, tend to revel in action, pornography, profanity, scandal and scatalogical humor and are usually about regular people or trickster deities. The best cookbooks and the best sex manuals were all written in Common.

Famous and notoriously difficult dialects include Salt (spoken in Armada), pig latin (spoken in school yards), Cant (actually a conlang with a tiny body of real phrases - mostly variations on "where can we meet and talk like normal people?"), and Jabber (the language of math, machines and modrons, possibly the most true Common).

attribution: Iou Kuroda/Appleseed Alpha

Salamandarin (D&D 5e species/race)

SALAMANDARIN
Salamandarin are one of many races made by the Slaad (specifically, these these Slaad). Like the Slaad, they are native to the boiling swampy plains of rot and entropy in Limbo.

PHYSIOLOGY
Salamandarin look like 5' long axolotl salamanders, with stubby faces and slightly more human looking-mouths (flat teeth, lip-like structures, smaller mouths, little black tongues), caudal fin, shorter tail and external gills (which they decorate with intricate patterns wove of strands of Bebilith or Lolth silk, or, if denounced/exiled, pierce or dye). They eat decaying matter of any kind (it just needs to be soft enough to gum), but preferring thoroughly rotten grasses and fish. They may walk bipedally, but generally prefer to walk or swim with all four legs. All four feet/hands have shortened, opposable thumbs.

Most are translucent with blue-black eyes and pink external gills and fingertips (sometimes instead black). Others are deep green or black or red.

STRUCTURES
Salamandarin are organized by generation (all from the same hatching, usually in the hundreds of thousands) and congress (all the generations for a specific Slaad). They do not differentiate by gender or even age-within-generation, but by generation (which is used purely for reference/association), proximity to the Slaad (which is of much greater social import) and in/out of congress (which is of final importance). Those closest to the Slaad are, of course, highly mutated/modulate by radiation from the Slaad's thought-palace.

All internal matters are resolved by voting and while deference is paid to the more important members of the generations and their congress, all votes are equal (votes are first by generation whenever possible, then, if still necessary, by congress).

MEMORY IS EXPERIENCE IS LANGUAGE IS SALAMANDARIN
Salamandarin memory and experience is shared by any other of the same generation on the same Venus-sized planet or similarly sized place within a plane and Salamandarin personality and language is with specific reference to this shared, communal memory/experience. The translation of this memory/experience, the Salamandarin language, is called, "the Story." The fundamentals of the Story are retained from generation to generation, but each generation in a congress retains idiosyncratic and personal meanings and so each generation has varying signs, with major upheavals in a congress's culture marked by a virtual inability to understand one another much of the time when certain words and core concepts undergo a shift in meaning/signification.

Inflection is often added by filling ones mouth with water and then speaking. If water is not to hand, gestures of the forearms/legs are used.

A Folk Hero of the Salamandarin might say that they are are a hero to Zz'x and Sh'thy, but a villain to Zz'ai - its memory/experience grants it both the perspective of its allies and its opponents. 

Salamandarin art tends to be a mixture of sculpture and narrative (the story being embedded in the memory of making the sculpture, which in turn is common to all Salamandarin).

The Salamandarin are, accordingly, often fatalists about things that have already happened and rarely hold a grudge, instead celebrating the cleverness or cruelty or luck of the winner and mourning and caring for the loser.

RENOUNCING AND DENOUNCING
A generation votes regularly to renounce elements of the thought/memory, at which point they are no longer within the Story and (literally) may not be spoken of and can only be vaguely conceived of or even really sensually experienced (and only vertiginously). This is usually done in the name of political and social unity. The Renunciation Ceremony is short and final.

Salamandarin whose entire existence is politically or socially dangerous are offered total self-Renunciation or they will be Denounced. In either case, total exile from the Story and all of Salamandaria, an inability to exist or express oneself in one's own tongue, a total loss of self.

NAMES
are by generation, then arbitrary modifier
Zz, Sh, Xs, Thur, Ty, Ka, Zh, Shi, Shu, Sh
followed by one of
x, a, ai, thy, xhu, tsi, tu, bo, ki, kai, y, yll

Repeated names are extremely common.

Salamandarin Traits
increase intelligence by 2
reach maturity by age 5, with larval/guppy state beforehand, living sempeternally (until killed)
alignment is usually chaotic or neutral
size ranges from 4 to 5 feet, medium sized
speed on land is 30', in water, 40'
amphibious can breathe in air and in water, needs to keep skin moist to enjoy the benefits of a full rest (ie, becomes exhausted)
proficient in Int/Arcana
languages are the Sigil Dialectic of Common (and possibly Undercommon) and usually the Story
have advantage when making Int/History checks when the subject matter is strictly outer planar 
subtypes are denounced and emissary-evangelist

Denounced are excised from all Salamandarin congress and cannot speak the Story, but can vaguely understand it (it sounds like words that mean something deeply emotional but totally incomprehensible). Usually proponents of radical thought, like kindness or, "maybe these Slaad are kind of fucking terrible" or, "I'd like to get out more." They are often confused by the sight of another Salamandarin and will follow them about, trying to understand themselves.
increase wisdom by 1
proficient in Dex/Stealth
have advantage when making a Save against psionics

Emissary-evangelists come preaching the gospel of Slaad, the necessity for the end of self-governance and the superiority of the material plane. They will not (or likely cannot) acknowledge any Denounced they encounter in their travels.
increase charisma by 1
proficient in Cha/Persuasion, the use of the flail
have advantage when making a Save to discern illusions

attribution: photo of axolotl

Slaad (D&D 5e gods)

Gods of Trickery or Knowledge
The Slaad maintain the various bureaucracies of the outer planes. They are native to the boiling plains of rot and swampy decay in Limbo and rule from throne-temples composed of whole rotting biomes and massive forest-planets, strung together by gravity and psychic architecture. They are sempiternal, near-infinite in both form and knowledge, each Slaad overseeing millions of bureaucratic functions and billions of files and functionaries. Accordingly, though their minds are vast (often forming grand psychic palace-mazes of incredible intricacy and housing knowledge-treasure of incredible wealth and power and breeding monsters of its own subconscious*), the sheer number and inter-related complexity of their tasks gives one the impression that the Slaad is judicious to the point of inaction (the Slaad is making decisions and altering realities, just not the one you care about, please hold).

Debates would be held as to whether or not the Slaad are gods of apparent chaos-but-actually-supreme-order or gods of apparent law-but-actually-the-chaos-caused-by-law-imploding, but the Slaad are generally so catastrophic, their involvement/interference so terrible that the debaters are shouted down for being huge, insensitive assholes.

Slaad, being incredibly intelligent and powerful frogs/toads are also entirely self-interested. They eye realities and artifacts and minor deities like a frog eyes a fly.

Slaad are attended by armies of ghouls, each led by a death knight devoted to chaos or law.

Infant Slaad and their colonial psychic bureaucracies, arriving through space and planes like a wet, psychic meteors are apocalyptic events.

The Slaad's psychic puissence is so great and its voice plane-spanning (its lower tones dipping low into the elemental plane of water, where that place touches the elemental plane of earth; its higher tones causing the ground of Elysium to vibrate just so from time to time), that all correspondence had from the Slaad is via its attendants, the Salamandarin (Slaad bud** off Salamandarin by the hundreds of thousands, but also bud off other Slaad, as well as ideas that are sort of like toys and sort of like machines but are often used like batteries or weapons. So that's another sort of communication, albeit an indirect and mostly incomprehensible one).

Licking a Slaad
Does a few things: 

i.  it tells you something you don't want to know, didn't ask to know (the GM will tell you a secret about another character in the campaign or something like that). this isn't like the Slaad telling you, it's just something from the psychic fug around the Slaad worming its way into you like a virus.

ii. you can make a direct inquiry into the memories of the Slaad which are vast, and functionally infinite (gods, liches and dragons keep secrets of Slaad, but pretty much no one else) via something like astral projection or death (requires a DC 20 Cha Save or suffer 100 damage (save halves)... increased DC by 5 for the obscurity of the information sought. die in this manner and rise again as a zombie-like slave to the Slaad (1 in 20 chance you're something like a Death Knight champion of the Slaad, your armor a mess of flesh and bone and black metal, otherwise, you're basically a ghoul, albeit your paralysis works psionically).

iii. lets you see the Slaad's mind palace

it costs:

1 point of constitution for the duration of the effect (which lasts until you leave the plane on which the Slaad resides)

a secret you've been trying very hard to keep (your notion of self a bit loose, the secret wriggles out)

A DC 20 Cha Save or be charmed by the Slaad for the duration

Slaad mucus is volatile but can be used as an outrageously valuable spell component (esp if you're playing DCCRPG) and can fuel psionic charged devices.

Tricking a Slaad
Slaad can make/think anything from their backs (though it will be bent to the purpose most suited the Slaad), and there are myths of trickster gods tricking a Slaad to make it weapons or armies.

*adventurers beware for the mind-palaces of the Slaad are largely indistinguishable from the Mazes of the Lady of Pain

**think Suriname Toad

attribution: Vivarium Naturae of the Naturalist's Miscellany, 1790

Kievs, part of the 5e D&D ravenloft hexcrawl

Here is how I write up cities: in three parts. A general idea/theme, followed by facts useful and apparent to any players spending some time asking around. Places are things that are well known or of important. In cities, these are just a few major landmarks. The last part covers what the characters can get out of the city _in general_. Like if you just want to treat the city as a place to sleep, find some help and get new gear. There is more if they dig in, but I'm not sharing that, because of things.

KIEV(S), CITY OF CITIES

the Mongols took Kiev and put it somewhere far away, twice.

The first time was with muscle and horses and the ground was so well churned with human fat that the topsoil was buttery and burned easily and decades later Chinese emissaries reported the environs still riddled with bones. the second time was faster, Kiev having been reduced to a military research station in the middle of burning wasteland, and was transported with the tearing of atoms and a rotation of the stars.

By a confusion of time and because the second Mongol ascendancy was more technologically adroit than the first, the first Kiev and the second Kiev arrived in their new home at roughly the same time, the second interposed on top of and along the eastern edge of the first.

This combination of cities has created a tendency towards accretion and other cities lost in flame and ruin have slowly crept in, and Kiev(s) are a jumble architectures, people and language, full of weird angles and confused chronologies.

_______________________________________________________

/population

thousands

/unique peoples

ghouls of the Cheka

/unique architecture

a city built of a number of other cities, the buildings jumbled collections of other buildings (floor by floor, room by room, or brick by brick). The general aesthetic is slavic.

/in power

the Emergency Council of Eastern Kiev, below them, the Agents of the Cheka (or just Cheka)

/religions

mostly eastern orthodox, some zoroastrian temples and mosques  (Light and War domains)

some jewish temples (Life and Light)

Church of Christ Unburied (Trickery and Tempest)

________________________________________________________

/places

Church of Christ Unburied (formerly St. Sophias). Green roofed, golden “onion” domes and minarets with white walls, now covered in black writing in an enormous hand.

Eastern Kiev. A wall composed of regular sections, all in grey poured stone, studded with rebar and metal bones, runs along the eastern bank of the Dnieper and ends on either side into a hill of rubbish - scrap metal and stone. Overlooks the badlands. Government offices.

The Chekan Palaces. The emergency council maintains seven black metal gothic-looking castles with smudged, huge windows and lit by braziers fed by the bodies of criminals (always burning green, smelling of pig fat). These are the palaces of the Emergency Council and where most of their agents live and work. Anyone living here is a bit taller than they used to be, more elegant, and pale, almost glowing at night. The largest Palace is built over top St. Andrews and is referred to as such. All are holy places for parishioners of the Church of Christ Unburied.

The Armory and Academy of Apocalyptic Material. A broad, classical, deep red building of many pillars and marble halls and dull carpets. Home to all the secrets of the Cheka and a great deal of weapons of mass destruction, tomes of lore, occult power sources, etc. Heavily guarded by the Cheka.

________________________________________________________

/pets

phlegmatic monkeys

starving hunting dogs

birds of a thousand varieties, colors, songs (including the griffon, hippogriff, roc and phoenix)

plump, knowing cats

trained fox, likely sneak away at first opportunity

/mounts

ailing camels

horses, lots of horses of various sizes and breeds

dire wolves

/characters

*can field 10 characters/month (twice that much the first month, twice as many subordinates)

*to determine what characters, roll a d20.

         1-5 Fighter

         6-10 Rogue

         11-12 Wizard

         13 Cleric (Jewish, Zoroastrian, Muslim, Orthodox)

         14-15 Warlock

         16-17 Ranger

         18 Barbarian

         19 Bard

         20 Paladin (Jewish, Zoroastrian, Muslim, Orthodox)

*can only field Cheka/ghouls if allied with them (Palading and Clerics of the Cheka are always members of the Church of Christ Unburied)

*Backgrounds tend to be (Urban) Outlander or Urchin, followed by Criminal, Charlatan and Folk Hero.

attribution: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_the_Kiev_tram_(1914).jpg

Blanchehammer (5e D&D's proficiency system, the game)

RESOLUTION DICE
I have played D&D so long that the die scale feels second nature.

OD&D treats some broad checks (listening, opening doors) as a 1 or 2 in 6 chance. I believe Talysman uses it for general resolution of non-combat procedures as well (but can't find it on the blog). It's simple, elegant and respects both the GM to adjudicate well and the player to make clever, calculated risks.

This is maybe D&D sans the wargaming roots.

THEME
You're adventurers, out to make money, out to colonize, discover, map, get famous, get lucky and do the sort of thing that excess and heretofore unlucky people might do in a world with too many unlucky people and not enough food, housing and compassion.

Jeff's Middenheim hack is probably the only city on the map.

DOING STUFF
If you are good at something  you get a +1 to rolls related to doing that thing, increased by 1 every 4 levels (so 5e's proficiency bonus, but starting at 1 less). The bonus doesn't change relative to the die rolled.

x is the highest value of the die. Success is any roll resulting in an x-1. So, success on a d6 is 5+ (33% chance) and on a d4 is 3+ (50% chance), etc.

You roll when it's important to roll.
d4 Simple
d6 Average
d8 Little Tricky
d10 Complex
d12 Difficult
d20 Very Difficult
d100 Chaos

If your proficiency bonus+1 equals success (ie equals "x"), you automatically succeed. (But may still need to roll if the GM is using margins of success).

No critical success or failure.

IN PLAY
Armor is either armored or heavily armored. Particularly agile characters are treated as armored for defense. Heavy armor makes doing anything that isn't moving around as normal, riding or attacking more difficulty (increase die size of difficulty). Armor increases the die rolled to land a die by one or two (heavy armor) sizes.

players do pretty much all the rolling and so roll to both attack and defend

attacking someone defending themselves is difficult (d12) but wounding someone with a sword is simple (d4) killing someone already wounded is likewise simple, but killing someone in a single blow is at least a little tricky (d8).

convincing someone to help you against their perceived best interests is very difficult (d20), but convincing someone that their best interests align with yours is only a little tricky (d8).

Healing a wound in an hour of game time is Very Difficult, decreasing in difficulty each subsequent hour.

Not dying or going insane in the face of terrible wounds or cosmic horrors is usually at least complex (d10) but may become harder to do given the scale of the opposition.

CLASSES
Classes reduce the difficulty of Class-related die rolls by 1 die size:

Fighters do a better job of landing blows and not dying, are always at least armored and can wear heavy armor without difficulty
Assassins kill and wound with great ease
Sorcerers find understanding the magical and the insane only very difficult and casting spells only complex
Rogues are quite adept at locks, mechanisms, slight of hand and lying
Clerics find basking in the radiance of the many great and powerful beings without losing one's mind or composure only very difficult
Explorers are adept at navigation, survival and ancient architecture
Bards are good at debauching, lying, music and heraldry
Sages are knowledgeable about languages, ancient history and lore
Protagonists are quite skilled at intimidation, shakedowns and general brutality
Dukes are quite skilled at throwing money around and wearing heavy armor and persuasion

COMPLICATIONS
caveat
a player can only roll a die ONCE during any given turn

interpretation 1
can roll a die of a given size once during any given turn (ie, each player has a d4-100 and may roll each of those die once during a turn) and "turn" means one go-round the table

interpretation 2
can only do one thing requiring a die roll during a given turn and each player takes a "turn" during a single go-round the table (with only the speaking player's character acting in that turn, other characters reacting)

BACKUP
Troupe play is the norm and there are a number of henchmen types:

Fighters, Dukes and Explorers get Footmen (proficient in landing blows, gaming, following orders and are always at least armored)

Assassins, Rogues, Bards and Protagonists get Lackeys (proficient in drinking, hiding, stealing and following orders)

Sorcerers, Clerics and Sages get Pupils (proficient in languages, research and whose obsessiveness and cowardice makes them relatively resistant to insanity and dying)

CHARACTER CREATION
This is the first turn and interpretation 2 controls (where a range is given you can either roll the corresponding die or pick the lowest number. If you roll, you cannot roll for anything else and should just pick the lowest ranges. If you roll a one, re-roll the die and add 1 for each time you've re-rolled until you don't roll a 1 anymore). Everyone has a bag of basic adventuring gear, any given proficiency and a class and:

you begin with 1-4 characters

and 1-6 pupils, footmen or lackeys

and 1-8 acquaintances on whom you may call for succor once (name at least 1)

and 1-10 weeks of food and drink

and 1-12 ducats

BUYING THINGS
The most valuable things a peasant and the very poor might have cost a pence (about 250/ducat)
The most valuable things  the lower class but not penurious might have cost a quarter
The most valuable things  the middle class might have cost half a ducat
The merchant class walks around with at least a ducat, usually much more in good
The aristocracy usually has about the same, but their ransom is enormous

This goes for things "fit" for each social class. Food for a peasant costs a penny and is pretty terrible (turnip-flavored water), etc.

Obscure things are eyeballed to fit the social class and are expensive for each syllable (a la Vornheim, I think) (so: human fat candle is 5 syllables, but is probably something anyone in the lower class might have (being of some religious significance) so it costs (5 syllables * quarter ducats means it costs 1 and a quarter ducats).

(a "syllable" is also the ducat-equivalent used by thieves and disreputable types as bank notes and are purportedly written in a mix of demon blood and the blood of some local strong man [and is issued by the local strong man] but are probably often fakes)

IMPROVEMENT
Levels are gained at a rate of 1/hour of play for any character exposed to real mortal peril for the majority of the hour in the pursuit of money, fame, power and the exploration of lost places and other of the gentler colonial pursuits (this is eyeballed, but characters wounded while adventuring are pretty much guaranteed a level).

Proficiency may be had in half as many things as your level +1. You must find a trainer to teach proficiency and they'll likely ask quiet a bit of money (current # proficiencies x level x 5 ducats, half that if you've 2 or more related proficiencies already). Learning a new proficiency takes a month of game time, give or take. Play another character in the meantime.

Attribution: John Blanche