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Inspirations for OSR from Assassin's Creed Odyssey

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The Assassin’s Creed series has a variable reputation since the initial game was released in 2007,  with Ubisoft constantly churning out new titles. While there are some highlights, such as Black Flags and Origins, many of the games released in the franchise usually only changed the setting, but not so much for the gameplay. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey might feel familiar to people who played previous titles, especially Origins, but the game has a world design which sets it apart. While playing Odyssey, I noticed some elements that could be fun to use in roleplaying games. In this blog post, and in a following one, I suggest some elements that you can put into your campaign, especially if you have a decent amount of coastline and a smattering of islands. Here are three out of five inspirations from Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: Put Treasure Underwater A lot of adventuring I’ve experienced in roleplaying games usually happens firmly on land. That’s fine, but you can also enhance

A Random Bounty Hunter Appears

If you ever need a greek-ish bounty hunter, I hope this resource can be useful: First, roll a d12 for its name: Athemos Posileo Tesele Danoro Cosico Eliagos Aphros Gorabo Eumaeus Demiodokos Kaeio Alkipodes Then, roll a d6: 1 - 2: It's a fighter. 3 - 4: It's a thief. 5: A cleric 6: A wizard The bounty hunter is usually the same HD as the player's level, only add d3-d3 HD. Minimum 1 HD. How does the bounty hunter gather information? Aside from the regular tricks, the bounty hunter has this style (roll d12): Investigation and interrogation. Hires other Bounty Hunters, pays them 10% of the reward. Tracks the PCs using scent and trail signs.  Harassment and intimidation. Employs informants and spies to keep track of most vagrants. Pays merchants and traders for leads.  Is a trained animal that can follow the scent of anything the PCs have touched. Usually escorted by faithful humanoid servant.  Hangs around in a nearby tavern until th

Bottles for Knaves

Everybody loves a bottle or two. If you've played the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, you know just how versatile bottles are. Naturally, after using the content in the bottle, you now have a bottle which can be used again! How handy! If you want to put a random bottle in your Knave game, roll a d12 and see what happens: Bottle of Cold Milk  has drinkable milk inside, which restores d4 hit points when imbibed. Bottle of Confetti  is, well, filled with confetti. Instant party or ruined day!  Bottle of Cold Mud  if applied to a PC will grant advantage when attempting to hide from Lizard People. Bottle of Really Angry Bees  When released, they deal 1 damage to anything inside a 10 feet area where they are released - they disperse after d4 rounds. After a day inside a bottle, the bees asphyxiate.  Bottle of Honey  holds delicious content that gives advantage on Charisma saving throws when attempting to befriend bears or really angry bees.  Bottle of Thousand Ball Bearing

Stories from Moros

This is a story from my sci-fi setting. It's set some centuries into the future, where the colonisation effort of the solar system Nyx went horribly wrong. People struggle to survive, massive community-vehicles roam the deserts and starving cities fall under the yoke of fascists. The series follows a bunch of different characters. This story was previously posted on my Prose page .  Mac I.  The sun descended, lazily gliding towards the westward mountains. Bright yellow dunes and a sapphire blue sky slowly turned to a velvety red. Darkness welled above, while radiant Nyx cast a passing twilight. Mac stared from the aft gun post. A long, sleek heavy machine gun loomed over him, its barrel hanging over the edge of the kevlar-covered parapet. Him and two other monteros were preparing for an eight-hour watch. Down below, a lazy trail of sand clouds rose from massive freighter wheels. The rolling monstrosities of rubber big enough to crush ten men standing abreast. The slopes in th

The Sea of Knaves

I have been enjoying Ben Milton's Knave for a little while now, and I have been preparing some ideas for a wavecrawl or "saltbox" experience. For that purpose, I have written up some rules for a ship in the age of sail era. They are inspired by a mix of Kevin Crawford's Stars Without Number starship rules and a variety of naval wargames rules. At the moment, the rules I have written are about as expansive as Knave's rules. Link to the Rules I've opened the rules for comments and suggestions, if anyone has anything to say about them. While the rules cover encounters fairly well, I think, I want to add things like random ship generation, some goods and ports rules and maybe even crew advancement rules.

Brainspace hack

The following is a "plugin" hack for Knave. Feel free to use it as you like, but I appreciate a shoutout or namedrop. Enjoy! Brain Slots PCs have a number of brain slots equal to their Intelligence defence. Brain slots are used for proficiencies, be it use of armor, brewing potions or sneaking around. Whenever you are trained by an NPC or fellow PC that is higher level than you, you gain one proficiency rank, which fills one slot. Whenever you make checks pertaining to that proficiency, add +1 for each rank. Generally, it takes 1 week * rank number to become trained in a specific rank.  If your brain slots are filled up, you can elect to forget a rank in a proficiency to learn another. Doing so doubles the time required to learn a new rank.  Example Proficiencies Alchemy - craft a single item of ink, soap, oil or tar by passing an Intelligence saving throw. For each new rank, you can make 2 more items with this proficiency. Crafting alchemy items usually takes