[OLOG] By Sheer Virtue (Virtues v3)

"Discourse on virtue, and they pass by in droves."
- Diogenes, 3rd century BC

"I think I need to rework this system again. Let me tell you all about it!"
- Orc Rehab, 2021

I've made two previous attempts at a virtue system here and here. Both have their merits, but I don't think either is what I'm after for OLOG. Just to recap, OLOG is an orc-focused GLOGhack which doesn't have ability scores. Here's a third attempt.

Orc Laws of Glory: Virtues, Version 3

art by Oleg Poluyanov

An orc character is defined by personal virtues, the positive qualities they seek to embody and display in life. A character starts with three virtues, and may gain more as they grow in experience and wisdom.

Each virtue has two components, passive and active. A virtue's passive benefit takes the form of a permanent increase to one of the character's numerical stats. An active benefit allows the virtue to be invoked to reroll a specific kind of roll (including, in some cases, rolls made by others). You can invoke a virtue after seeing the initial die roll, but must take the new roll even if it's worse for you. You can never invoke more than one virtue on the same roll.

Once a virtue has been invoked, it is tapped and can't be invoked again until it's refreshed. Its passive benefit still applies. There are three basic ways to refresh a virtue.

• Eating lunch refreshes one tapped virtue.
• Rolling a natural 1 on any d20 roll - and letting the 1 stand - refreshes one tapped virtue. (OLOG has no critical fumbles, so a natural 1 always fails but isn't any worse than a normal failure.)
  
• A night's rest with a proper meal refreshes all tapped virtues.

Sample Virtues

There will be a whole table of these eventually, with subsections for the traditional virtues of each of the five major orc clans. For now, here are a few proof-of-concept examples.

Acuity
Active: Invoke to reroll a damage roll when you have a height advantage or the element of surprise.
Passive: +1 Ranged Attack.

Audacity
Active: Invoke to reroll an Attack against an enemy at least twice as big as you.
Passive: +1 Melee Attack.

Courage
Active: Invoke to reroll a Save vs. fear, or have an ally within earshot reroll one.
Passive: +2 Will.*

Fervour
Active: Invoke to reroll a melee Attack if you've taken damage since your last turn.
Passive: +1 Melee Attack.

Grace
Active: Invoke to reroll a Check involving full-body coordination or balance.
Passive: +2 Reflex.*

Ingenuity
Active: Invoke to reroll a Check involving precise tool use.
Passive: +1/2 inventory slot. (This can hold one of any item that's normally stackable.)

Resilience
Active: Invoke to have an opponent reroll an Attack against you if you've taken physical damage since your last turn.
Passive: +2 Fortitude.*

Swiftness
Active: Invoke to reroll a Check to do something against the clock.
Passive: +2 Movement.

* OLOG uses the three 3e save types because, for all 3e's sins, I think it's a pretty good classification. Sorry.

Gaining and Replacing Virtues

My current framework has OLOG characters starting with three virtues:

• one rolled randomly on a master virtue table (d66),
• one rolled randomly on a specific subset of the virtue table, depending on their ancestry,
• and one rolled randomly from a small unique group (d3) determined by their class.

You start with a fourth, empty virtue slot, and gain a fifth slot when you reach level 5 (the first level at which you don't gain a template).

At character creation, you also choose an aspiration, a virtue you would like to embody more than you currently do. You do not actually have this virtue yet, and gain none of its benefits. Once per day, when you succeed on a roll that would have allowed you to invoke your aspiration, without invoking any virtues you already have, you can make a mark against your aspiration.

For virtues that affect enemies' rolls, like Resilience, this is triggered when an enemy fails such a roll against you. For virtues that affect non-d20 rolls, like Acuity, a roll counts as a success if it's strictly better than average (4+ on a d6, 8+ on 2d6, etcetera).

When you've made three such marks, you gain the aspiration as a new virtue; if you have no free slots, you gain the new virtue only if you forfeit an existing one. You can choose a new aspiration whenever you fulfil your current one or gain a level.

Example: Izec is a Crowbar, a cunning, resourceful ruffian with an arsenal of tricks, but she longs to be better at the technical side of her vocation. Izec's aspiration is Ingenuity. The first time each day Izec succeeds on a Check involving precise tool use - the type of roll she'd be able to invoke Ingenuity on - she makes a mark next to her aspiration. When she gains her third mark, she gains the virtue of Ingenuity.

You are allowed to choose a virtue you already have as an aspiration, and can have multiple instances of the same virtue if you're willing to spend the slots on them. The passive bonuses stack, and each one is invoked and tapped separately. If you want a character with five instances of Swiftness, faster than the eye can follow but no better than average at anything else, feel free to work towards it.

Design Notes

Many OSR games have an implicit or explicit theme of learning to live with the hand fate deals you, building on it through class choices and smart decisions. If we take this as the default human mindset, then the default orc mindset is more about looking at the hand fate just dealt you, grabbing fate by the lapels, and applying violence and/or shouting until it gives you something that fits better.

The assumed campaign frame in OLOG is kind of an extended rite of passage. There's a demon invasion up in the high badlands, and it's caused all sorts of second- and third-order problems. The Clansmoot has organised a response, and sent out a call to all orcs everywhere to come forth and prove themselves in the crucible of crisis. It's the perfect place to find out who you really are, decide you don't like that person, and kill them, that you may be reborn.

I don't want this process to be easy. The aspiration system is meant to incentivise taking specific kinds of risk in pursuit of an ideal, and I want there to be tension between that and survival instincts. OLOG characters are a bit hardier than characters in many other GLOGhacks, but not by a massive amount; wrong moves can still see them dead. If there weren't real risks involved in chasing your dreams, there wouldn't be much Glory in the Orc Laws of Glory.

[Skyhack] Dwarves (In My Wall)

My principal inspiration for Skyhack dwarves is the following Flork of Cows comic.

Veyl's Complete and Accurate Taxonomy classifies dwarves as a type of earth elemental. In Alacrity Sower's Earthen Menagerie, they are listed as distant cousins of humans. Udsoe and Udsoe's controversial Beings of the Deep Sky sorts them alongside moles and hedgehogs, with a few mealy-mouthed notes about a possible familial link to orcs. None of these classifications are correct in themselves, but the truth likely lurks somewhere between them.

Dwarves are stubborn, industrious, probably-sapient creatures, easily recognised by their stature, their stony, slightly iridescent complexions, and their huge wiry beards. Nothing makes a dwarf happier than transforming an untamed swathe of underground into a structurally sound, geometrically pleasing network of chambers, tunnels, and shafts. They would probably be confused if you asked them about the purpose of these structures, but this is immaterial, because you can't ask them - communicating with dwarves is notoriously difficult. They understand beings other than dwarves as confusing, dangerous moving parts of the landscape, which respond semi-predictably to shouting and/or violence, and not as discrete beings in their own right. Dwarves are not inherently violent, but they are very, very bad at de-escalation.

Dwarf

HD: 1+1
AC: as chain
Move: normal, burrow half normal
Morale: 9
Intelligence: like a very smart child who's just discovered coffee
Speech: Transrunic
Damage: by weapon
Special: ignores any instance of exactly 1 damage; telepathic feedback (see below)
# Enc.: solitary, gang of 2d3, or front of 2d4 gangs

Most dwarven weapons are repurposed mining equipment - simple pickaxes, hammers, and shovels. There's a 25% chance that a gang will have one member carrying a refraction drill, a gemstone-powered beam weapon. Firing a refraction drill takes two whole combat turns for both the operator and an adjacent assistant. The beam deals 2d8 damage to everything in a 30' line, doubled against inanimate objects. Save for half. Non-dwarves can't operate refraction drills, but the small gemstones that power them are worth 2d3gp apiece.

All dwarves wear hard hats. These hats are made from base metals, and serve as both protection and good-luck charms. Dwarven hard hats can be disarmed like weapons. A hatless dwarf has armour as leather and disadvantage on all d20 rolls.

Any creature that attempts telepathic contact with a dwarf, or otherwise attempts to affect its mind directly with magic or similar powers, fails in the endeavour and is stunned for 1 round, no Save.

Dwarves speak Transrunic, a dense atonal torrent of syllables with no resemblance to any other known language. Non-dwarves can't learn Transrunic, and many report a strong feeling of nameless discomfort upon hearing or reading it; prolonged exposure can cause headaches and panic attacks. Almost any being that knows a language can recognise the basic sentiments of many dwarf exclamations, which usually amount to "stay back" or "get out of our way".

What's He Building?

Dwarves build, and they build big, far bigger than they actually need. A gang of dwarves, left to their own devices, will readily hollow out whole islands and create sprawling city-scale networks of tunnels without ever moving their beds and possessions out of the first two or three chambers they dug.

Dwarven architecture is semi-functional. If you moved in enough dwarf-sized folk to occupy a whole dwarf network, it would fit their living needs (with the possible exception of food), but they would find it a confusing existence. Design decisions might seem arbitrary, pointless, or actively hostile.

My recommended process for mapping a dwarven tunnel network is to take a dungeon layout generator, analogue or digital, and use it as rigidly as possible. Do not sand off rough edges, do not tweak connections or room placements that don't make sense, and never reroll dice. If something doesn't fit, make it fit. For a little extra flavour, pepper the results with a few extra bits of weirdness (Google "architecture fails" for inspiration), and scale the whole thing down about 25% to match dwarven proportions.

Over time, a front of dwarves may develop its own distinctive architectural style. Roll 1d4+2 to determine a front's lucky number - they will incorporate this number and its multiples into their buildings as much as possible.

Dwarf Society

Dwarves are staunchly collectivist. They have no personal names, no discernible leaders or hierarchies, and it's unclear whether they even understand themselves as individuals or parts of a greater whole. The basic unit of dwarven society is the front, a collection of about twenty dwarves working towards a single architectural project. Fronts fluctuate in numbers as dwarves die and are born, but one that gets too large will often form a splinter group, a single gang of dwarves splitting off to build a ramshackle skyboat (which rarely survives its maiden landing) and strike the earth on a new isle.

Dwarf reproduction is poorly understood, but seems to be linked to the living mineral flakes that fall like dandruff from their beards. These flakes seem to clump together and grow into new adult dwarves, complete with basic understanding of masonry, the Transrunic language, and how to make a dwarven hard hat from whatever metals are available. A newly minted dwarf seeks out its peers, finds a hammer, fashions a hat, and gets to work without ever needing direct instruction.

Dwarves are not aggressive folk. They live to build, and violence is destructive, not to mention unpleasant and dangerous. However, their linguistic mores and penchant for digging and building under established settlements lead to a lot of misunderstandings, and they will not hesitate to remove a troublesome obstruction by force if shouting fails. (Concerted Transrunic shouting is surprisingly effective.)

[Skyhack] Spore Elves

Skyhack is the current name for an extremely work-in-progress skyworld setting I've been working on, heavily inspired by Aaron A. Reed's Skycrawl.

The elves of [Skyhack Setting] all struggle with the same deeply inconvenient truth: left unchecked, they will outlive everything that matters to them. Their primary differences manifest in how they deal with this truth.

Everything rots. At least, in the spore elves' eyes, everything should. They have embraced an imagined role as caretakers of the sky, venturing forth from their ever-growing, ever-collapsing fungal strongholds to seed decay and bring low what stands high. As part of embracing the cycle of death and rebirth that seems to come naturally to the other peoples of the skies, spore elves add themselves to it. A healthy elf can live for millennia, but spore elves rarely last longer than two centuries, as they warp, scourge, and ultimately destroy their bodies with carefully cultivated fungal infections.

Spore Elf

HD: 2
AC: as leather
Move: normal
Morale: 10
Intelligence: human-level, but twisted by weird zeal and fungal narcotics
Speech: Txaa (Elvish), illiterate
Damage: by weapon
Special: all weapons deal +1 poison damage; clade special ability
# Enc.: mob of 1d3+1, or crew of 2d6+2 plus a Monitor (as above with 1d3+2 HD) and 1d4-2 Cousins

Spore elves favour close combat, usually with edged weapons. Curved, barbed, and serrated blades are common - treat these as swords with +1 critical range. They carry shortbows but rarely use them unless forced, preferring to close the distance.

One in three regular spore elves carries a puffball bomb, a one-shot thrown splash weapon that deals 3d4 poison damage in a 5' radius. Save negates. Spore elves are not immune to these bombs, but have no qualms about getting caught in their own explosions.

Spore elves breathe very loudly, and are thus usually incapable of stealth.

Like all elves, spore elves are hermaphroditic.

Spore Elf Cousin

HD: 6
AC: as leather
Move: normal, climb normal
Morale: 12
Intelligence: sub-sapient, flashes of humanlike cunning
Speech: incoherent grunts and squeals, understands Txaa
Damage: 1d8 slam / 1d8 slam
Special: heals 1d3 hp each time it takes weapon damage, except critical hits; enhanced clade special ability
# Enc.: solitary, pair, or part of a spore elf crew

Midway through a spore elf's second century, the compound stress of all their fungal infections begins to take its toll. Most retire to waste away in relative quiet, but a handful relinquish their bodies fully to the fungal colonies nesting within. Monitors know secret rites that let them direct the growth of these hybrids, and the results are Cousins, fearful monstrosities treated more like living weapons than valued peers.

Spore Elf Clade Generator

1d8: Primary Colour

1. Violet, brightening in heat.
2. Bone, etched with rippling patterns.
3. Blue-green, patchy like bread mould.
4. Sepia, darker at the edges.
5. Crimson, with white dots.
6. Dark green, flecked with beige.
7. Yellow-brown, oily and shiny.
8. Clear, showing bare flesh beneath.

1d10: Breathing Tells

Spore elves' fungal infestations tend to give their breathing a distinctive sound.

1. Rusty wind chimes.
2. Broken plumbing.
3. Stone scraping on stone.
4. Metallic keening.
5. Bubble-wrap popping.
6. Wooden creaking.
7. Arpeggiated whistling.
8. Low, regular thuds.
9. Subsonic humming.
10. Babbling whispers.

1d12: Clade Special Abilities

All spore elves of a clade will have this ability. Spore elves are always immune to the harmful effects of their own special abilities. (C:) indicates the enhanced version Cousins get.

1. Choking spores. When injured, adjacent creatures suffer -2 to all attacks and checks for 1d4 rounds (C: 2d4 rounds). Doesn't stack. Save negates.
2. Scalding hot skin. Touch attack (instead of a weapon) deals 1d6 fire damage, ignores armour, and can melt metal with prolonged contact, though it's too damp to start fires. (C: Add the fire damage to the Cousin's standard slam attacks.)
3. Fungal miasma. Mundane ranged attacks have a 50% (C: 75%) miss chance against the elf.
4. Caustic spit attack. 10' range, 1d6 acid damage. Useable once every 5 rounds (C: once every 2 rounds) in addition to normal attacks.
5. Thaumic disruption. Spells cast within 10' of the elf have a 25% (C: 50%) miscast chance, though the spell still goes off.
6. Camouflage. The elf is functionally invisible if it's been standing still for at least 5 rounds. The sound will still give them away within 10'. (C: Completely silent, too.)
7. Puppeteer. After killing a humanoid enemy, the elf can spend its whole next turn breathing fungal life into the deceased, raising it as a zombie loyal to the clade. On average, a group of elves with this ability will be encountered with one zombie per four elves already in service. (C: Kills rise automatically on the Cousin's next turn, no extra action needed.)
8. Paralytic moan. Once per day, 20' radius, inflicts paralysis for 1d4 rounds. Save negates. (C: 40' radius.)
9. Regeneration. 1hp per round. Cold damage suppresses it for 1 hour. (C: Instead of this, adaptive healing improves to 1d6 per weapon attack.)
10. Ripper spores. Melee damage caused by the elf won't heal naturally for 1 day (C: 3 days).
11. Biomancy. The elf may forfeit its normal attack to control mundane plants and fungi within 60', attacking through them. They deal club-equivalent or knife-equivalent damage depending on their size and shape. (C: Up to three biomancy attacks per round.)
12. Death blossom. Dies instantly at 0hp, exploding in a 10' (C: 20') radius. 1d4 Intelligence damage. Save negates.

Spore Elf Society

Spore elves divide themselves into independent colonies called clades. Each clade consists of 1d4+3 crews of spore elves, plus roughly half as many noncombatants as there are warriors. Noncombatants are mostly children and those too wracked by their infestations to fight, and they spend most of their time tending fungal crops and mutagenic cultures, though warriors will pitch in with these tasks too when they're not marauding. Nominally, leadership usually belongs to the eldest Monitor, but, in practice, most clades are anarchistic. Crews often end up being semi-autonomous, developing their own subcultures and sometimes even their own heraldry.

The clade makes its home in a sprawling village-sized bastion, spliced together from sky detritus and caked in mycelium and weird fungal glue. Spore elf bastions tend to be brittle, but assaulting one is a hellish task thanks to its labyrinthine layout and profusion of noxious traps.

Spore elf crews conduct their expeditions aboard polypore sloops, oddly beautiful half-living craft propelled by violent spore jets. A typical clade will have access to half as many sloops as it has crews, rounded up. There may be rules for these in a future post, once I've worked out what aero-naval combat looks like in this setting.

Spore elves are spiritual, exalting the cyclical nature of death above all else, but they seldom follow gods. The half-lucid "wisdoms" that sometimes arise among their ailing elderly are the closest things they have to a priesthood.

Whatever their ideological pretences, spore elves are raiders, often indistinguishable tactically from common pirates. They target anything they've identified as outliving its natural life, but, being elves, they have a rather warped view of how long anything "should" live. Visibly battered ships and settlements in decline or stagnation tend to be their favourite targets. (The fact that these tend to be easier fights is not lost on them.) Once a crew has purged or driven out the population and torn down the structures, the spore elves will seed the area, and particularly the corpses of ally and enemy alike, with a carpet of fast-growing fungi, ensuring a flourishing new ecosystem in the wreckage of the old one.

[GLOG] Jousteian Demiclasses

Recently, some passing acquaintances and fairweather allies of mine on Discord pointed me towards the works of Canadian artist jouste (to whom I credit all the visual art in this post). Someone joked about a GLOGhack where this portfolio was the class list. Here's what I've come up with in response.

Each of these classes is inspired by one of jouste's pieces. They're just like regular GLOG classes, except that you can only enter them at first level, you don't have a race / species / ancestry if you take one, they come with special dietary requirements, and they only have A and B templates. Fill out your other template slots with other classes.

Class: Epistolemure

Starting skill: 1d3 - 1) Bureaucracy, 2) Calligraphy, 3) Debating.
Starting equipment: Knife, fountain pen, signet ring (draw your sigil), blank 100-page notebook, indefinite supply of black ink, up to 1oz per day of molten wax secreted from your chest cavity (1d8th colour of the rainbow, black on an 8).
Diet: Ten sheets of ordinary letter-sized paper equal one ration. High-quality paper counts double. Spellbook pages count quintuple, but are dangerous (Save or gain a random mutation). You don't need to drink.
A: +1 Stealth. You can't wear armour, but your hardened skin and agility count as Leather that doesn't encumber you. As an action, fold yourself up into a flat form with the size, weight, and general appearance of a letter, or unfold yourself to full size. Equipment doesn't transform with you. In letter form, you can't see, speak, or move under your own power, and are indistinguishable from a letter unless someone tries to open you or sets you on fire, at which point you instantly revert to normal.
B: +1 Stealth. You can write (but not necessarily read, speak, or understand) any language you know about. You may allow yourself to be opened, and know how to write on yourself such that the message will appear in the opened letter. If you ingest a dose of poison as you transform, it doesn't affect you as long as you stay in letter form, and, if anyone reads you, you transfer that dose to them in full, losing the poison yourself and forcing them to Save against it.

Class: Fueldrake

Starting skill: 1d3 - 1) Arsonist, 2) Mechanic, 3) Stage Technician.
Starting equipment: Wrench, tinderbox, lizard leathers (armour as leather), two jerry cans. Each can holds up to 30 pints of liquid and consumes one inventory slot per 6 pints or part thereof. One contains 1d6+3 pints of lamp oil, the other 1d6+3 pints of [1d6 - 1) vegetable slurry, 2) glue, 3) acid, 4) magenta paint, 5) blood, 6) cheap, horrible sake].
Diet: One pint of lamp oil equals one ration. You can substitute any flammable liquid that would give you the same amount of burn in a lantern - no solids. You don't need to drink anything else.
A: +2 Movement. You can speak with fuel. Most fuel isn't terribly bright and its memory is limited to a day, but it's enthusiastic and overconfident to a near-suicidal degree.
B: +2 Movement. You are telekinetic, with strength and speed equal to your own and reach as far as you can perceive, but it only works on things that are currently on fire.

Class: Crystopian

Starting skill: 1d3 - 1) Hazardous Materials, 2) Mad Science Power Source, 3) Particle Physicist.
Starting equipment: Unstable raygun (range as bow, 1d3 or 2d3 damage, 3s explode, each explosion deals 1 damage to you), two metal legs, one metal arm.
Diet: Spending an hour in direct sunlight or consuming an ounce of radioactive material counts as one ration. You don't need to drink - in fact, you can't drink.
A: +2 Defence, -2 hp. You're immune to ionizing radiation. You can't wear armour, but your crystalline body and scavenged metal limbs count as Chain. You can replace any limb with 10 minutes' work and a suitable replacement, or spend 10 minutes to re-engineer an arm into a leg (but not vice-versa). Anything metallic, articulated, and roughly the size of a human limb works as a leg, but arms need some sort of manipulator. You can have up to three limbs in any combination at any given time. Each leg beyond the second grants +2 Movement. One leg halves Movement. You can't move at all with no legs.
B: +2 Defence, -2 hp. You can now support up to five limbs at a time. While you have at least three arms, you gain an extra attack per round, but you must make it with a different limb from your first.

Class: Rogue Ultrabenthic Tendril

Starting skill: 1d3 - 1) Angler, 2) Longshoreman, 3) Pirate.
Starting equipment: Rusty hook on a chain (as flail), sealeather jacket (armour as leather), 1lb bag of salt, symbiotic starfish companion, 3 jars of dead plankton in brine (1 ration each, to you), vial of sapient water from the Ultrabenthic Flowmind (telepathic, hates you).
Diet: You drink saltwater as much as a human drinks fresh water, and you can only eat creatures that live in it. You can drink fresh water and other liquids, but they don't sate your thirst. (For reference, half an ounce of salt turns one pint of fresh water into saltwater.)
A: You sink in water, and can breathe underwater indefinitely. You gain an extra attack per round with your stinging tentacles, useable only at very close range. On a hit, the target Saves vs. paralysis and becomes unable to breathe, vocalise, or use breath-based abilities for 3 rounds on a failed save or 1 round on a success. This duration stacks with itself, and a creature thus affected for 10 consecutive rounds dies. All ordinary sea life is mortally terrified of you.
B: If you hit with a tentacle attack, you can make another one immediately. You can speak telepathically with any creature that breathes, but will always come across as aggressive and hateful, whatever your actual sentiment.