House Rule: Specialist Knowledge

"All characters begin with the common tongue and their alignment language. Some classes grant further languages, and characters with high intelligence receive additional languages. Additional languages can be chosen at the Labyrinth Lord’s discretion. In general, any races or monsters capable of language have their own language." -- Labyrinth Lord p.14


This post isn't about alignment languages. In every campaign I've ever run I just ignore those.* No, it's about those additional languages gained from having an above-average INT score.

In general, I tend to ignore the issue of languages in the game altogether -- not out of any theory or moral principle, it just tends to end up that way. I suppose one reason for this is that I rarely use any of the standard monstrous races. Another reason is that I simply can't be bothered with it -- it's generally much more fun (for me) if players can just talk to the stuff they encounter. A matter of taste, of course.

But anyway, I've recently instigated a small house rule which is (I think) simple, elegant and effective, and which I wanted to share.

This is it:

"In place of an extra language, a character with high INT can choose an area of special knowledge or academic training."

This can be whatever the player wants (with the LL's approval, of course). Things like: alchemy, medicine, herbalism, history, fine arts, ancient technology, astronomy, philosophy, etc.

There is no specific rules mechanic tied to these areas of specialist knowledge, they are simply used in situations of improvisational ruling to determine what a character might know. In this sense they work similarly to "secondary skills" (in AD&D / AEC), but have a more intellectual / academic bent.

* Does anyone ever use alignment languages? I've contemplated coming up with an in-game explanation for them, but have never got around to running a campaign with such ideas in place.

A simple attribute-based skills / "good at" system

I've been talking to the players in my group about possibly starting a new campaign (actually a series of mini-campaigns), and one option that's been discussed is a Victorian era Cthulhuesque campaign.

I was considering this some time back, and we even got so far as creating characters, but never got around to playing. One of the main factors in this was that I realised I'm not that keen on the Call of Cthulhu rules, and (moreover) that I just can't be bothered to learn and master some new rules set. It's just not something that interests me. One of the brilliant things about playing Labyrinth Lord for me is that I'm innately familiar with the rules.

So I've gotten to thinking about how I might run a Cthuluesque game using a foundation of Labyrinth Lord / basic D&D.

Unlike in D&D, in a modern(ish) horror setting the concept of "classes" of adventurer isn't important. What is important however is what characters know and can do -- hence the enormous skills list in CoC. I'm not a fan of skills systems, which was one of the main things which put me off CoC as a rules system, but I'd want some way of defining what each character is good at.

Here's what I'm thinking of.

For each attribute, the player can choose a number of things which the character is good at or has training in, relative to the score, as follows:

3 to 8: not good at anything, 9 to 12: good at one thing, 13 to 15: good at two things, 16 to 17: good at three things, 18: good at four things.

Each "good at" / skill should of course be in some way related to the attribute in question. The player would basically be free to choose whatever they wanted, without being restricted by a pre-defined list of skills. Some ideas would be:

STR: climbing, boxing, wrestling.
CON: running, can drink anyone under the table, rude health.
DEX: shooting, draftsmanship, card shark.
INT: history, languages, mathematics.
WIS: self-control, good judge of character, compassionate soul.
CHA: public speaking, "ladies' man", mesmerism.

How these areas of skill would actually be used in play would be open to the referee's judgement. One example might be that if characters were given a 1 in 6 chance of achieving a certain task, then characters who are "good at" that thing would get a bonus (probably based on the attribute in question).

Very flexible, very vague, but probably enough to run a game with! (At least for people like me who aren't bothered about having strictly defined rules for everything...)