The Odd Manifesto

Recently I've been getting quite a few comments from people newly discovering Into the Odd. Those unfamiliar with my previous posts might wonder what I'm hoping to achieve with this game that can't be achieved with straight D&D or a clone.

I can pretty much get it down to five key points.

- The game is Instantly Accessible, and players don't need any teaching before jumping into a game. Just roll your character, taking around two minutes, and say what they want to do.
- Ultra-distilled rules that hide in the background remind us that this really is Just a Game. It's neither a painstakingly ruled simulation, nor a finely balanced tactical challenge, but a game can be brought out with friends between boardgames, or drive a weekly campaign with dedicated roleplayers.
- D&D's brand of fantasy is shifted into the Horror Genre, creating more of an expectation of monsters that can't be fought and tough choices, rather than expanding your character's personal power.
- Despite having a somewhat gruesome tone, this is Not About Fighting, and certain things have been carefully presented to place more focus on exploration, problem solving, and investigation than becoming a combat monster. In addition, the industrial, cosmopolitan setting, moves away from the typical medieval mindset.
- There are just a few Simple Referee Guidelines to move the focus from remembering rules, to creating exciting situations and memorable descriptions. The Referee is encouraged to create their own original content throughout the game.

A Great Fighter in Into the Odd

D&D Fighters grow in power as they level up. Their bonuses increase, they become mountains of HP, and in later editions they get incredible powers worthy of mythical heroes. They can go toe to toe with a dragon and battle hordes of orcs without breaking a sweat.

Into the Odd characters don't get that luxury. So what makes a great fighter?

Meet Polina Lawd, a renowned highwayman, duellist, and sometime mercenary. She's known to be one of the most formidable combatants in the world. And why?

Polina Lawd 
STR 18, DEX 9, WIL 13, 20hp.
Ivory Pistol (d8), General's Sword (d8), Modern Armour (Armour 1), Smokebomb, Poison, Steed.

The raw numbers are good, and she has nice equipment, but she isn't going to face down colossal monsters on her own. She doesn't even have an Arcanum.

She knows there's strength in numbers, and vulnerability when alone.
She knows the benefits of a horse when in open field, and cover when on foot.
She knows when to retreat or surrender to fight another day.
She isn't bound by honour and won't hesitate to fight dirty.
Most importantly, she knows who to fight and who to avoid.

You don't need feats, powers, and a character optimisation forum to be a good fighter. You just need to be more like Polina.

D&D 5e to Into the Odd Conversion Guide

Ever an opportunist, here's how to convert D&D 5e Monsters to your Into the Odd game.

HP: 1hp per HD. Maximum of 30.
Armour: Noted Armour grants Armour 1, and any extra noted extreme resilience boosts this to 2. Being Large adds a further point of Armour, being Huge adds two, to a maximum of 3.
STR and DEX: These scores are directly transferable. Maximum of 20.
WIL: Use CHA. Maximum 20.
Attacks: Start at d6. Increase by 1 die for each size category above medium and a further step if they wield a heavy weapon. For example, a large creature with a heavy weapon gets 2 increases, from d6 to d8 to d10. No multi-attacks.

Replace Advantage/Disadvantage and Vulnerability/Resistance with Enhance/Impair respectively. Abilities that grant extra damage or protection also use these two qualities as appropriate.

Advantage/Disadvantages on certain saving throws (e.g. Dwarfs vs Poison) can grant more interesting, outright immunities, or generally just be handled in a better way (e.g. Dwarfs are immune to natural poison, or only feel minor versions of the effects on a failed Save).

Make their description scarier.

Example (trimmed down from the full MM entry to the stuff we need)

D&D 5e Adult White Dragon
Huge Dragon
Armor Class 18 (natural armour)
Hit Points 200 (16d12 + 96)
Speed 40ft
Str 22 Dex 10 Con 22
Int 8 Wis 12 Cha 12

Ice Walk: The dragon takes no penalty to speed while traversing ice or snow.
Immunities: Cold.
Bite: +11 to hit (reach 10 ft.; one creature). Hit: (2d10 + 6) piercing plus 1d8 cold damage.
Frightful Presence: All within 120 Feet. DC14 WIS Save or be Frightened for 1 Minute.
Cold Breath (recharge 5-6): 60ft Cone. 12d8 Damage. DC19 CON Save for half damage. 

Into the Odd Adult White Dragon
STR 20, DEX 10, WIL 12. 16hp, Armour 3, Bite (1d12).
Wants to hunt big prey, and keep its lair hidden from greedy explorers. Effortlessly crosses ice and snow. Breathes freezing cold for d10 Damage to all in the blast, freezing any liquids and creating an icy surface.

Want to convert Into the Odd monsters over to your D&D 5e game? Clearly there's been a mistake. Give it some more thought while you run another Into the Odd game.

Karmic Quirk Table

Your one-hitpoint Fighter meets an unglamorous death thirty minutes into the game. You shrug and roll up a new character, who comes out with six hitpoints and STR 17. What kind of karma is that for throwing a life away?

Enter the Karmic Quirk table.

After rolling a replacement character, roll once on this table for every character you have previously lost in this campaign. So if you've had two characters die already, you roll twice on here. For duplicates take the next entry down the table, looping up at 20.

Karmic Quirks (d20)
1 - Ugly: Really, really ugly. Nobody wants to look at you any longer than necessary, but they always remember your weird face.
2 - Poverty: Start with only rags and a stick.
3 - Plague: Start with the Plague. Lose 1 CON each day until treated. Anyone close to you must pass a Save each day or become infected.
4 - Lice: You itch with lice. Anyone living closely with you must pass a Save each day or catch them too.
5 - Fish-Tongue: You speak in a slobbery drone that people find either annoying or amusing.
6 - Pig-Eye: You have tiny eyes and are likely to miss visual clues obvious to everyone else.
7 - Missing Limb: Roll 1d6 - 1-3: Arm, 4-6: Leg.
8 - Dumb: Reduce INT to 3.
9 - Unholy: Any sort of divine blessing has the opposite effect on you.
10 - Severe Allergy: If exposed to your allergen you must Save or Die. Roll 1d6 - 1: Alcohol, 2: Nuts, 3: Insect Stings, 4: Shellfish, 5: Antidote, 6: Dairy Products.
11 - Stalker: You have an obsessive follower that makes your life a pain. Roll 1d6 - 1: Mother, 2: Father, 3: Childhood Friend, 4-5: Ex Lover, 6: Ex-Lover who is also a Wizard.
12 - Fussy: There's a 50% chance that any meal served to you isn't to your liking. Unless you get a meal you enjoy you recover HP at half the normal rate.
13 - Deluded: The GM rolls another Quirk in secret. You're completely unaware of it.
14 - Super-Illiterate: You can't read, and attempting to read causes you 1d6 damage.
15 - Blind Confidence: The GM rerolls your HP in secret. You never know how many HP you have.
16 - Debt: You owe some a number of GP equal to 1 with 1d6 zeros on the end.
17 - Addict: Lose 1 maximum HP each day you don't indulge, to a minimum of 1hp. A binge restores all hp lost this way. Roll 1d6 - 1-2: Alcohol, 3-4: Tobacco, 5: Opiates, 6: Dream Fungus.
18 - Phobic: Subtract 1 from all rolls in the presence of your phobia. Subtract 5 when interacting directly with it. Roll 1d6: 1: Bugs, 2: Lizards/Snakes, 3: Magical Things, 4: Darkness, 5: Blood, 6: Heights.
19 - Uncool: You're such a dork. You'll never, ever be cool.
20 - Bad Name: The GM decides on your name, and it has to be really embarrassing. The other characters all know your real name, so you can't just go by a nickname.

DIE BONEHEAD DIE!

A thousand years from Earth. Still no sign of the new worlds.

I trust the Shard. Its body protects us, its computers guide us, and its heart loves us. It loves each of the million weirdos on board whether robot, mutant, or something else. It loves us with every new mile of steel, stone, wire, and shell.

But not the Boneheads. Nobody loves them.

- Ra Silver, "The Hood Creed"

What's DIE BONEHEAD DIE! and why does my Sci Fi game have a stupid new name?

I thought about what I wanted out of this game. As much as I love exploration, horror, and problem solving, I've got Into the Odd for that. Into the Odd is a game of relatively normal characters going into strange places and getting freaked out. 

I want a game where you get to "be the weird". A playground for all of the creative ideas seen in WH40k/Rogue Trader, Red Dwarf, and Futurama. An unbound setting that isn't afraid to be silly.

I want a game that leave no doubt as to what the characters should be doing. D&D is great because you can throw the party in front of a dungeon and say that there's treasure deep inside. I've always struggled with driving play in Sci Fi games, so this game has a concrete method for preparing the game and getting straight to the action. 

I want a game that's about encountering weird characters, creating big schemes, and taking risks. This isn't a game with precise tactical combat, or baroque character creation.

I want a game that presents its setting through the game itself. No pages of exposition, but atmosphere and flavour laced into every rule and table. Just one key concept that you need to grasp (factions of mutants and robots on a huge ship far from Earth) before you can dive right in. 

I want a game that isn't just D&D's dungeon-crawling skeleton covered in a Science Fiction skin. 

Hopefully this game is on the first step to hitting this goals. 

Keep up to date with the ongoing development of the game document here. 

Not-Quite-Infinite Possibilities

Tactical Infinity is the beauty of RPGs. You can go anywhere, attempt any action, imagine your character however you like.

You might think the GM has the same sort of luxury. Creating crazy monsters, describing terrifying dungeon environments, and acting out memorable characters.

In reality, I've moved towards a few limitations.

There are certain things that exist in reality that I just won't put into a game. Above any ideas of tactical infinity, I want to play a fun game, and some things innately suck this fun away.

These are the first few entries on the list.

- Well-hidden traps that would likely kill the victim instantly. Think of a 100ft spiked pit, covered to look exactly like every other floor tile. At the moment, I'm only interested in traps you can interact with.

- Attempts at one-shot kills. I use HP as a sort of countdown-to-death, so going for a kill shot against anything with a good chunk of HP is an impossibility. In return, your character won't get sniped by a grassy gnoll.

- Characters with highly specialised skills. I use Ability Scores and no skills. I assume that adventurers are generally jack-of-all-trades, and I'm generous with their knowledge and capabilities. If you want to build the perfect diplomat or pickpocket then put your high Ability Score in the right place and play your character well to achieve the goals you have in mind. You're not going to get a +20 modifier to pickpocketing rolls off me.

- Sudden death out of nowhere. Some people die by losing their grip climbing a rope. You'll only do this if you're climbing a rope while flame-throwing drones harass you. If you're just climbing a rope, you can do it safely, even without a helmet.

Odd Changes - Damage

Death is inevitable.

No, really. If you stand and fight with an enemy for more than a few rounds, one of you is going to die.

I ditched separate to-hit rolls some time ago, but previously allowed a Save to avoid lasting damage when your HP ran out. Because of this, taking down that STR 19 monster could be a case of waiting for it to fudge its Save.

Now, the Save at 0hp is to avoid Critical Damage, which will at the very least incapacitate you. For some monsters, it gives them the go-ahead to swallow you whole or stab you with a deathly poison.

If you pass the Save, you keep on fighting, but the damage still comes off your STR Score. This would be a good time to reconsider how badly you want to win the fight.

This means that superior numbers count for a lot. Into the Odd isn't a martial arts film, where heroes take on wave after wave of enemies. If you're faced with a gunline of soldiers, you probably shouldn't let them get a round of shots off at you. If you're surrounded by a dozen angry cultists, it may be time to negotiate.

Let's imagine that situation. We have a lone, veteran adventurer, Ralf (STR 12, DEX 14, WIL 10, 14hp, Armour 1, Halberd 1d6+1) facing off against four pretty weedy cultists (STR 10, 3hp, Club 1d6).

Adventurer Turn 1: Ralf makes a swing for the lead cultist (5 damage). He's out of HP, reduced to STR 8 and fails his STR Save taking Critical Damage. He's out of the fight.

Cultist Turn 1: All three remaining cultists rush at Ralf with their clubs (4, 2, and 5 damage, totalling 11). Ralf has 3hp remaining, so manages to avoid their attacks for now.

Adventurer Turn 2: Ralf attacks another Cultist for 7 damage. He's out of HP now, reduced to STR 6, but makes his Save to avoid Critical Damage.

Cultist Turn 2: The cultists attack (2, 5 and 0 damage, totalling 7). Ralf is out of HP, so loses STR down to 8. He barely makes his save, so keeps on fighting, despite a nasty wound.

Adventurer Turn 3: Things are't looking good. One Cultist is nearly down, but Ralf is hurt now. The remaining two would stand a chance of killing him next turn, or at least incapacitating him. He could hope they fail their Morale Save after losing half of their members, but it's far too risky. Ralf starts to consider whether he should surrender or flee.

Of course, this would all be different if Ralf had some allies with him. There's a reason that this is a team game, after all.