GLOGular Settlement Challenge: A village on the river Sword.

Continuing my habit of posting my Glogular challenges I present to you the River Sword.

Some legends say that the river Sword was the weapon the gods used to slay a great demon, others claim that it's the Ocean's attempt to murder the Bearclaw mountains in the convoluted politics of elementals. Regardless of the reason, unlike other rivers, the Sword flows from the ocean. Unfortunately for would be entrepreneurs, the rocky foothills it snakes thought usually leave splinters instead of boats on the way up. When the river finally levels out, it results in a most unique salt water ecosystem that nobody cares about because biology hasn't been invented yet.

People have settled into a town on the Sword, far from the bustling cities. The towns folk quietly work during the day, and keep inside by night, far from the concerns of lords and wizards.  Like many settlements that hug a river, it's called Sword as well. The most traffic it receives is from those making one last stop before heading up the Bearclaw or to be ferried across. Other than that, it has a modest population of around a hundred, and everyone knows everyone else. City slickers are treated fairly coldly by most of the populous. Here are the 6 people adventurers from out of town are most likely to interact with.

Brery the Barkeeper:
Is known in town for uppercutting a bear that one time. She has scar on her face and a no nonsense attitude. Her main concerns are running her establishment and how she's going to start a family in this economy. By default she's not going to trust outsiders farther than she can throw them, but will allow them to stay in the barn. She will try to pressure travelers to drink a pint of the town's special cider, which is incredibly strong. Roll a poison save vs passing out if you drink it normally, your fine if you sip it thought. Wither or not she likes you depends on how much of a good sport you are about the cider. Knows a lot of people out there.

• Fears the Wild Thing as it's been stalking her from childhood. Her wedding is delayed until she's sure that she's safe from the wrath of some fucking cryptid.
• Her fiance is Lyan. She's hiding why she's delaying the wedding from him because she doesn't want him to try be a hero and get murdered by some fucking cryptid.

Lyan the Fisherman:
A hunk, the town's most eligible bachelor. Considered the most manly man in the town but secretly maintains a beautiful flower garden that he pretends his aging mother is taking care of. Everyone likes him and he can easily get the town's population of young men to do some task together. He's a bit too trusting and if you you can convince him of something, you can leverage his social circle. When not shepherding or gardening is found at the bar with his bros.

• Brery is the only one who knows about his gardening secret.
• Often goes to the Witch for relationship advice.

Harric the Blacksmith:
One eyed, shriveled like a prune and grouchy. Doesn't like other people and only deals with them when he has to. He's a master at his craft and knows the secret of making immovable rods. Give him a month and he can make a cat size metal object that has the properties of an immovable rod. He keeps this a secret, but a number of the newer houses in the town hang on immovable nails with his trademark. Even if you do figure this out, getting him to sell something would require even more convincing. He wants to A) not have to talk to people B) smith things C) his daughter to be happy.

• He trusts Brery, who's his daughter and Kerick who's he's priest. If one of them vouches for you, he's a lot more willing to work with you to buy his product at good rates or take commissions.
• He sacrificed his eye to the Wild Thing for the secret of the immovable rod.

Rewitte the Witch:
Is an old woman with cat ears, and a mangy familiar that has human ears. His name is Moris. She is the local midwife, medium, apothecary and general purpose wise women. Everyone in the community respects her but also keeps their distance. Her primarily concern is keeping the town safe, and for that she wants information on what is going on afoot. She will provide medical care and her necromantic powers for knowledge about incoming threats and favors that help the town. She also completely a gossip and will love to spill tea while with oat cookies and pinecone jam.

• Had a thing with Kerick once, has moved on since then.
• Does not want the Wild Thing to join the community. Her training has always preferred humans and the fey stay separate.

Kerick the Priest:
Likes to eat cherries, there's an embarrassing amount of cherry pits in nooks and crannies of the church. Despite this being his home town, and all the time he's led the congregation here, he feels like an outsider, due to the time he's spent in the city. His flock however accepts him perfectly well and have forgotten he's ever left. While he was in the city he tried to balance being faithful with politics, that led him to being shuffled back to his backwater hometown. He's abandoned the struggle for temporal power to serve the spiritual needs of his community. He still knows people back in the city and can give the players a letter of invitation if he believes their cause is righteous. He offers hospitality and place to stay for weary travelers of his faith and heathens who are willing to convert.

• Had a thing with the Rewitte once, is not over it.
• Having converted the Wild Thing to not-christanity, and believes that it can grow to become a human.

Wild Thing:
It's not a demon, and it's not an angel, it's a human but not a beast, only thing for sure is that it lives in the river. Most of it's kind don't care for mortals and ignore them, but this one has watched them for millennia and desires to be one. It thinks it understands humans a lot more than it does. It thinks human life is all fun and games, and a lot of the nuances of human interaction are lost on it. It has zero facial recognition for human faces, instead relying on hair color, clothes and houses to identify people apart, but it can easily identify metal tools from the eye the Blacksmith gave it. It will trade pieces your humanity for weird magic things and haphazardly say occult secrets that are just common knowledge among it's kind. But it won't coerce or kill to gain humanity because killing is bad.

• Wants to marry Brery once they are human, except they fell in love with her grandmother and hasn't yet realized that they are different people.
• Thinks Harric is the Brery's brother and husband. As it does not understand how birth works, much less incest or it's taboos.

Other Entries:

Ortish Colony by Words for Yellow
Nahemot and Ezra, the city of noise by Alone in the Labyrinth
January by the Benign Brown Beast
A living, moving city by Parasites and Paradoxes
Stones, a refuge in Hell by Two Goblins in a Trenchcoat.

The Grain District by Of Slugs and Silver

GLOGular Curse Class Challenge: Fading Curse

I have been very bad at posting for this blog despite having a whole free summer to do so. The reason is because rather than throw scrappy ideas out into the world I want to have them playtested a bit first which results in nothing happening because I have a problem with organizing games into existence. Which kind of defeats the point of blogs, at least for me, as my goal with blogs is to write things consistently. So, I'll post another magic system post soonish. Also a questian to my meager readership, should I expand this blog to cover topics outside of rpgs or should I make another blog for random musings? Anyway to the content of the post.

In the OSR discord's GLOG pit there has been a challenge recently to make make Curse classes. They act like classes, but with a few major differences. First is that rather than something the player choices, it's something that's inflicted on them, werewolf bites, pissing off the wrong gods, falling into a horrible pit and so forth. The second things is that they override normal class templates. If you already have 4 templates, than your last one get's replaced. If you have 3, than you can't choose your last until you break free of the curse and so forth. Other people have already discussed why this is a neat mechanic already, the only thing I have to add is that by taking up the same limited slots that classes occupy, it neatly prevents concept bloat. If becoming more of a werewolf makes you lose your wizard powers, than that keeps a character more coherent than if they are 30 different things at the same time. My entry is deliberately meant to play off how the curses make you lose things, in fact I made a curse all about losing things.

While it may seem that the world is made of physical things, the truth is that it's made of concepts. Concepts like things, are vulnerable to entropy, but usually at a slower rate than we can perceive. Sometimes however the rate can be rapidly accelerated, and sometimes the concept being forgotten is a person.

Ways of gaining the Fading Curse:

• Challenging the Reaper to a game for your life, but instead of playing flipping the table and running away.
• Magic experiments to warp space time.
• This very simple charm for avoiding taxes. Oddly enought despite it's simplicity, nobody's known to use it.

The Fading Curse:
For each template of this curse, gain 2 Stealth.

Template A: Stranger, Ignore Me, Fade, Existence Dice 3
Template B: Stranger 2, Identity Theft, 2 Existence Dice
Template C: Stranger 3, Specter, 1 Existence Dice
Template D: Nobody, 0 Existence Dice

Stranger: All your casual acquaintances forget you and your name is erased from mortal governmental documents. When you meet a new person they will forget about you as soon as you leave their presence, unless you really give them something to remember.

Ignore Me: You can cause a specific person or group to forget you forever by exacerbating the curse. Each time you do so, roll for Fading as described in the ability below.

Fade: Your grip on existence is thin and unstable. You have 3 d6s that are called Existence Dice to represent how close you are to the abyss. You have to roll your Existance Dice once every month. If you roll doubles when rolling your Existence Dice you don't gain another Fading Curse Template, if you roll triples than you lose one template, otherwise you gain the next Template.

You can temporarily increase the amount of Existence Dice you have with the following methods.

• Sacrificing a Magic Die or doing something the grants MD (wizard drugs, lightning strikes, consumption of divine corpses, etc.)
• Spending 100 gold on bards to spread your good name.
• Erasing or crossing out some part of your character sheet. Work with your GM to determine what this means.

Stranger 2: Your allies and enemies forget you, and you disappear from written recorded that people actually care about like newspapers, novels and diaries. Hirelings will forget about being hired. Strangers will always forget you after they stop looking at you and will usually ignore you away if you do nothing weird.

Identity Theft: You can take other people's reality for your own. If you successfully impersonate someone you can get a temporary Existence Die, and the person impersonated will gain Template A of the Fading Curse.

Stranger 3: The people who care most about you, your loved ones and nemesis forget about you, also your name vanishes from divine records, meaning you don't have an afterlife to speak of. Other player characters also forget you at this point, they can still rely on you out of character, but in character they must rationalize your existence away.

Specter: Your physical form becomes more of a suggestion than a reality. You no longer look a fuzzy vaguely humanoid mass. You can fit thought any crack and fudge the specifics of what you physical body is at any given moment.

Nobody: You have forgotten yourself. You can't be targeted, or understood. If you are called by a name, that name will become your new Identity and you lose Template D. Few are able to recognize what you are so it's a bit tricky. Children, madmen and the psychically gifted might feel your presence. If you Fade again, than you cease to have ever existed.

Other Entries:Words for Yellow: Vampires, Wendigos and more!
Archon's Court: Nanoweapon Poisoning
Walfalcon: the Skablin (?)
A Blasted, Cratered Land: Hero (aka Destiny)
Anxious Mimic: The Oath
The Benign Brown Beast :the Restless Dreamer
Princesses and Pioneers: Mirror-Struck
Parasites and Paradoxes: The Doppelgänger
Bubgear Slug: The Abattoir God
Nuclear Haruspex: The Undying (and the originator of the idea)
Meandering Banter: Wizzard Bidness
Of Slugs and Silver the Ogre