This is post number 500 for me here at Blood of Prokopius. Having noticed that I was quickly approaching this milestone, I came to the realization that there is a ton of gaming material that I have produced over the last several years that either isn't organized as well as it could be or left fallow. As a result, I have been sifting through all of this output and determining what can easily be developed, organized and finished and what of all this output I still have an interest in.
The first project to come out of this process is something I've called Ye Auld Skool Spell Creator. Quite awhile ago, I started excavating the spells of 0e. At the time, I was interested in pushing the rules as far as they could go to see if they were able to handle a variety of genres, specifically some of the pulp serials of the 20s and 30s. One of the big hurdles was the spell system — how to create new powers and spells that are mechanically similar to the 0e spell list, but aren't tied specifically to the fantasy genre?
I started down the road of breaking the spells down mechanically and seeing how to build new spells based upon those mechanics. The various posts can be found here. Unfortunately, I pushed too hard and in play testing what I had started wasn't really all that fun to play. In addition, the process of breaking down the 0e spell system mechanically proved to be a very difficult — especially when one started to look at enchantment-type spells and transform-type spells. Thus, the system that was developing was far from perfect, was a departure from the 0e rules as written, and in some cases a serious departure.
As a result, the project never got finished, despite my own stated intent to put all of it into a .pdf to share with those interested. That is, until now.
Ye Auld Skool Spell Creator is far from perfect, probably has a lot of errors and might very well prove to be a lot less useful that I had originally envisioned. It is, however, a fascinating exercise in gaming archeology that I hope those who are interested in such things will find worth their while.
The link to download the .pdf is here. Enjoy.
7 hours ago
4 comments:
I like it a lot. I've been trying to come up with something like this for a long time. Thanks for the hard work.
How do I credit you if I want to tweak it? I notice that you don't include yourself in the OGL. (Or did I miss that.) I want to base it off of Delving Deeper specifically, and add some new spells.
Thanks for the kind words. Let me know how it works.
If you want to give me credit, just mention either me (FrDave) or my blog. I didn't include myself in the OGL because I never really intended it to be mine. Virtually all of it has been available for use by everybody for years, this is just a convenient way for folks to have it all in one place to more easily use it.
Off topic note: I nominated you for a Liebster award:
http://hardboiledzombies.blogspot.com/2012/12/liebster-blog-awards.html
I shall take a look at it when I get home.
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