The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms: lzref

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Tuesday, February 11, 2020

Liber Zero Hybrid Class Reference Sheet (PDF)

This Liber Zero class reference document took longer than any of the others, but it’s finally done: the Hybrid Class reference sheet! Hybrid, in my class scheme, represent classes that mix Heroic (fighter) and Magic (magician) abilities. They are not as good at fighting as fighters, and more limited in what magic they can use, but the fact that they combine two classes is a huge advantage itself.

The quintessential hybrid class is the Priest, which is what I’ve renamed clerics. I’ve also spun off two variant classes from clerics: Chaotic priests become either Heretics or Diabolists, depending on whether they lose their turn undead ability or replace it with a command undead ability. And I briefly describe another variant, the Beastmaster, which uses the turn undead mechanic on animals instead of undead.

One thing you may notice is that there’s no discussion of alignment. There will be a separate reference sheet for alignment, but it will describe this as an optional system, because I realized while writing the Priest, Heresiarch, and Diabolist descriptions that I didn’t need to rely on alignment to make the distinction. I could make it all about how they handle reversed spells and turning undead.

Releasing this pamphlet means that I now have all the basic classes covered. I still have to do the spell lists, a couple GM reference sheets, and some variant classes, but I’m close to being done with Liber Zero’s core game.

Update: I corrected a couple of spell names and added a brief table of reversed spell names and uploaded the new version. For those who don't want to download another PDF just for a couple small changes, here's what changed:

Cleanse Food became Pure Food
Heal Minor Wounds became Minor Healing
Added Putrid Food
Added Circle of Shadow
Added Minor Wounding


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Thursday, January 16, 2020

Liber Zero Reaction Rolls Reference Sheet (PDF)

Here’s the first Liber Zero PDF of 2020: the LZ Reaction Rolls reference sheet. It gives a description of how and when to use reaction rolls: encounters, negotiations, haggling, loyalty, morale, and even a short suggestion for the weather. I figured I needed to knuckle under and get this one done next because I’ve been working on the Hybrid/Priest class and realized “it would be nice to refer to the reaction rolls reference when describing the priest’s ability.”

One important feature of this pamphlet is that it’s the first one to go into any detail on the LZ dice neutral approach. There are two dice roll tables in the pamphlet: one for if you want to roll 1 or more d6s for your reaction rolls, the other for rolling d10, d20, and d100. It doesn’t matter what dice you use: the plan for all my LZ-compatible material will be to refer to many tests as “needs Good or better on a reaction roll” or something similar. There’s even a brief mention that you might want to roll monster morale checks using only 1d6 instead of whatever you usually roll because it’s quicker. The benefit of keeping things dice neutral is that it’s easier to be modular. If you know that priests make a reaction roll of Good or better to turn undead, but there’s no mention of which dice to roll or what “Good or better” means, then you can replace my approach to reaction rolls with another that uses the same terminology, but different methods: roll under, dice pool, roshambeau, whatever you desire.

Oh, also: you may notice I'm experimenting with a new, cleaner, cartoon-y style for the cover art on the pamphlet. Let me know what you think.

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Thursday, October 24, 2019

Liber Zero Apothecary Variant Class (PDF)

I know I should get the Hybrid Class reference sheet for Liber Zero done, as well as the spell references and a few other things, but I’ve been working on this pamplet instead: the Apothecary variant class. It’s a variant of the Talent class, but instead of a thief, it’s … a chemist! Not an alchemist, mind you, although because this is an extraordinary version of a mundane profession, Apothecaries have the uncanny ability to identify alchemical ingredients, even if they can’t use them themselves. But they can make what are essential “mundane potions”: drugs, poisons, antidotes, the infamous “flaming oil”, and even explosives.

They may seem useless on an adventure, but they are as “combat ready” as a squishy magician or thief. An apothecary with a blowgun and some poison powders could be a handy replacement for a magician with a Sleep spell. A lower level apothecary with not much money can still be useful identifying poisons before anyone “researches” them the hard way, or might have enough cash for some night vision drugs.

You’ll probably need to refer to the Adventurer Skills reference sheet to make sense of the formula research rules, but they are pretty simple: decide how long you want to take, which sets the weekly cost, then the GM rolls a d6 (usually…) On 5+, it takes exactly one base time period (week, month, season.) On 1 to 4, add that many extra time periods. Figure out the total cost based on the number of weeks in that time.


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Thursday, October 10, 2019

Liber Zero Magic Class Reference Sheet (PDF)

It’s Liber Zero reference sheet time again! Finally, I finished the pamphlet for the Magic Class. In other words, magic-users. The hold-up, really, was that any pamphlet meant to help beginning players create a magic-using character would necessarily have to include a short list of beginning spells, but I haven’t necessarily settled on how I want spells to work. I haven’t done much for the LZ build-a-spell system.

As it turned out, there was no room for even one-line spell descriptions, so I just needed a small table of spell names. The one included are tentative and might change. The basic naming schema is that Verb+Noun names tend to be reserved for spells that improve or add abilities, while Modifier+Noun is for spells that modify other things, and Noun+Prep+Noun usually has a spell’s form in the first noun slot (Circle, for example, creates a circular effect.) I need to work this out in more detail, however.

The part most people will find interesting is the inclusion of Alchemists and Witches as variant classes. If you use another OD&D-compatible spell list while waiting for the Liber Zero version, you should be able to start playing these now.

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Friday, September 27, 2019

Liber Zero Adventurer Skills Reference Sheet (PDF)

I’m making a surprise Friday post to mention two things.

First, I made some corrections to yesterday’s General Abilities pamphlet and uploaded the new version. Not a big deal, just a problem with some wording.

Second… a surprise extra Liber Zero pamphlet this week! It’s the Adventurer Skills Player Reference Sheet. It starts out with a short and simple method of handling players who want their characters to have training in another skill or weapon, either during character creation or added later. This is a tiny add-on to OD&D and doesn’t change gameplay significantly. The only game effect is that trained characters can do things a little faster. There’s also a training time and cost table that looks new, but is really just a repurposing of existing rules. More on that in a bit.

The pamphlet has an additional optional system for handling characters with a little more detail in their background. This is a rewrite of the background system I’ve proposed before, and it is now better integrated with the traditional ability scores. Rolls are kept to a minimum. Again, the focus is on how long tasks take, or the ability to skip rolls you might have to make otherwise.

Design Notes You Can Skip

Back to the training table. The table is, believe it or not, based on the magical research rules. Previously, I’ve proposed using the cost to research a 1st level spell as a basis for training costs. Just divide the cost by 10. Researching a 1st level spell with a 100% success rate costs 10,000 gp and takes 1 week. So, the cost to pick up a new skill is 1,000 gp (called “coins” in the pamphlet, to make it compatible with the silver standard houserule.)

You can spend less to research a spell, and by analogy you could spend less to train in a skill. The chance of success goes down, though: it’s proportional to the amount spent per week. If you spend 20% of the full cost, per week, you have a 20% chance of success.

But I wanted to make things simpler than that. I assumed instead: When you have paid the maximum amount, regardless of whether you pay it all at once or broken up in installments, you succeed… Unless you interrupt your training, of course. Doing things quicker should cost more, but shouldn’t always work. So, how to figure out the odds?

I decided to go with the simple 5+ on 1d6 situation roll again. On a 5+, you succeed in the shortest amount of time. Otherwises, multiple the die roll by the base time to get the additional amount of time you spend. If you try to learn it all in a week and blow your roll, the worst that can happen is that it will take five weeks. Similarly, if you try to finish it all in a month, the worst case is it takes five months, and so on.

So: I set the maximum time in each case to full cost (1,000 coins) and then divide the time by the number of weeks to get the per-week cost.

1,000 / 5 weeks = 200 coins/week.
5 months = 20+ weeks. 1,000/20 weeks = 50 coins/week.
5 seasons = 64+ weeks. To make things easier and give players a break, I round up to 100 weeks. 1,000/100 weeks = 10 coins/week.
5 years = 260+ weeks. I gave everyone a break and assumed anyone taking years to learn a skill is learning on the job and not paying for training.

If a PC pays the full amount up front, they can either just call it “1 week” or, to see if they get some free time, roll for it the same as for the other training times. This means training takes 1 to 5 days.

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Thursday, September 26, 2019

Liber Zero General Abilities Reference Sheet (PDF)

Today’s Liber Zero offering is the General Abilities Player Reference Sheet PDF. What are “general abilities”? The six standard ability scores, basically, although I include hints that GMs can add other abilities as well. I call them “general abilities” to distinguish them from class abilities or trained abilities. They are the abilities that everyone in general has.

Features of this reference sheet are:

A brief run-down of what the various abilities mean. More detailed than the summary on the back of other reference sheets, but still short.
Tables that show ability ratings and time adjustments.
Explanation of how ability scores are used, focusing on the “high scores mean skipping dice rolls” approach, but with a mention of the optional “add ability score bonus”.

I’m torn over whether I should create individual reference pamphlets for each ability, or whether I should save that for a GM reference booklet.

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Thursday, September 19, 2019

Liber Zero Heroic and Talent Class Reference Sheets (PDF)

It took a while, but I finished two more Liber Zero reference sheet pamphlets. This time, it’s character classes!

The Heroic Class reference sheet covers fighters, your basic combat class. It also includes three variant classes, which are just fighters with an extra non-combat ability: Cavaliers are masters of horse riding, Buccaneers are masters of sailing, and Barbarians are masters of the wilderness. The combat ability for all three variants is the same, so you lose nothing by picking a variant aside from a few bonus XP points. Heroes have a couple changes you won’t see in OD&D: a boost to the number of opponents they can fight when the hit dice are very low (double the usual number) and the option to use twice their Level instead of one of their physical ability scores when attempting heroic feats. Also, the Heroic class does more damage, based on either Strength or Level. In fact, high-level Heroes do more damage than the strongest low-level Heroes.

The Talent Class reference sheet covers a catch-all for non-combat, non-magical classes. The focus is on the one everyone’s familiar with: the Thief, but there are brief descriptions of two variant classes: Miners and Smiths. Unlike variant Heroes, variant Talents do not add abilities to the “main” class, in this case Thieves. Instead, they completely replace Thief abilities with roughly similar mechanics. Also worth noting: in many cases, Talent class abilities work automatically or speed actions up rather than improve a skill rating as they level up.

Since I haven’t completed a reference sheet on resolving combat or “skill checks” yet, there’s a reference that might not make much sense: some abilities are given a “High” chance of success. What this means depends on what kind of dice you roll (it’s a dice neutral system, remember?) Basically, it’s 3+ on 1d6, 6+ on 2d6, or 8+ on 1d20 (or 9+ on 4d6 drop 6s.) At least, if you are rolling target number or above. There will be other options when I get around to working out various possibilities.

If you were to use Delta’s Target 20 system instead, read “High chance” as 1d20+12 and “Low Chance” as 1d20+2.

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Thursday, September 12, 2019

Liber Zero Character Advancement GM Reference Pamphlet (PDF)

Here’s another Liber Zero reference sheet in pamphlet format: the Character Advancement GM Reference Sheet. This contains the full version of the XP modifier table and an XP/Hit Dice progression table. It also has guidelines for awarding experience points, optional XP awards for GMs that want to try something other than “kill monsters and take their stuff”, rules for going past Level 11, starting at a higher level, or switching classes, and general advice for the GM about handling experience. That doesn’t mean players can’t look at the pamphlet. though. In fact, the information is arranged so that the most relevant information for players is the first information you see when you open the pamphlet.

The XP modifier table is for my version of bonuses for high primary abilities. What I did, as you may recall, was “zero it out” and precalculate XP for a unit of treasure to eliminate subtraction and percentages to simplify the process. It’s all addition and multiplication. The version in the character card pamphlet was a “basic” version, which assumes all classes advance at the same rate. This expanded table uses a trick to boost the XP bonus for classes that advance faster:

Find the range for your primary ability score on the table.
Move down four rows if your character is Heroic class (fighter,) or down eight rows if your character is Hybrid class (cleric.)
Write the XP Mod in that row on your character card.

The pamphlets for each class will have custom tables that eliminate the need for Step 2.

The original game, of course, has a unique progression table for each class. Some people dump this approach and make all classes progress at the same rate, but this alters the balance between the classes. Boosting the XP bonus for individual classes is sort of an in-between approach: I can use one progression table, but fighters will progress faster than magic-users, and clerics will progress faster than fighters. It duplicates the effects of the original game without copying the mechanics.

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Thursday, September 5, 2019

Liber Zero Adventure Gear Card Reference Pamphlet (PDF)

Time for another Liber Zero reference sheet in pamphlet format: Liber Zero Price Lists for Adventure Gear, which I like to refer to as the LZ Adventure Gear Card. Like the LZ Character Card, the pamphlet includes an index card-sized form that you cut out
and fill in, following the simple directions in the pamphlet. But this is a gear card, representing one large sack and its contents. Carrying multiple sacks means having a stack of multiple index cards.

What this means is that players can hand over one or more index cards when they drop sacks to lighten their load and move faster. If they have time or have figured it out in advance, they get to pick which cards to hand over. The GM sets the cards aside and decides whether the sacks stay in that spot or are picked up. Either way, players can find the sacks again later.

If a thief steals gear, the GM can ask the player to shuffle their gear cards and fan them out upside down, then draw cards blindly until the thief gets caught or has had enough. Thief players can use the same procedure to steal from an NPC or another player character. This can also be used for random overloaded sacks breaking.

If a thief is stealing one or more items from a sack, the gear card has numbers from 1 to 6, for six different items. Pick a card at random, then roll a d6 for which item to take from that card.

This all combines with a simple encumbrance system based on sacks. PCs can carry up to 10 sacks worth of gear. So, 10 index cards, less if wearing armor. Each numbered line on the card represents one sixth of a sack’s capacity (one bag, instead of one sack.) As long as a character carries fewer than five sacks worth of gear, movement is unencumbered. Five or more sacks halves move, and 10 sacks halves it again.

In addition to all this, there are two systems for figuring out the cost of items: a simple one on the left inside panel and one based on materials and features of items on the middle and right panels. It’s all very compact.

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Friday, August 23, 2019

Liber Zero Character Creation Card Reference Pamphlet (PDF)

And now, the truth can be revealed: yesterday’s XP Bonus Table was a lead-up to this other thing I’ve been working on, the Liber Zero Character Creation Card, first of a series of LZ reference sheets. It’s a trifold pamphlet, but this time, not a dungeon or village map. Instead, it’s an index card-sized character sheet that you cut out and fill in, with simple directions in the pamphlet.

Experienced players can fill it in without much trouble, since all the terms are either identical to those in OD&D or fairly similar. “XP Mod”, for example, would be either the LZ XP Bonus (a short version of the table is included) or the percentage-based bonus/penalty from the LBBs, or just left blank if you don’t use those adjustments.

Players new to RPGs or to old school class-and-level RPGs specifically might have to consult other reference sheets I plan to make. For example, each class will have its own reference sheet, with class-specific tables for dice and level titles, class abilities, and XP bonuses. A general ability reference sheet will explain the six ability scores and ways to use them in more detail. An equipment reference sheet would include a price list and an equipment card to cut out and fill in to keep track of what’s in your backpack or each bag/sack carried.

This is really a draft version. I may think of better ways to phrase things later, or change things depending on what actually winds up in the other reference sheets.

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