Alarms & Journeys No. 3

Sample file Alarms & JourneysTM

Winter 2020, Volume 1, Issue 3.

PUBLISHERS STATEMENT Alternate Races & Clases in OSRIC™ Alarms & Journeys™ is published quarterly by by Joseph Bingaman page 4. Johnson Publishing Group, 2302 Montclair Ave, The Good, The Bad, and the Unaffiliated by Murfreesboro, TN 37129 USA Todd Cannon page 6. This magazine printed and distributed worldwide by Gamma Dark (Mutant Future) adventure by Lulu.com (Facebook: @JohnsonPublishingGroup) Don Augustine page 8

TOP SECRET: NWO™ DEBRIEFING by Merle Rasmussen. page 21 Executive: Dave Johnson, Member AAPA Publisher: Dianna L. Johnson Return to Dark Tower page 24. Publisher: Blake Johnson Fiction: Queen’s Errand by Taylor Dente Editor: Luke Johnson page 32. Contributor: Todd Cannon Hardwired Hinterland™ by Richard Tucholka, Melody Natcher, Sally Vilkman and John [email protected] for advertising inquires. Reiher page 40. The 77 Lost Worlds™ by James Ward This product uses the OSRIC™ System (Old school page 42. System Reference and Index Compilation™). The Dragonscales™ by James Ward page 41. Mutazoids™ by Stephen A. Lee page 43. OSRIC™ system text may be found at: S. A. Sidor interview page 50. http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/osric. Thomas Shouler interview page 52. Justin Oldham interview page 54. The OSRIC™ text is copyright of Stuart Marshall. Ravenloft review by Chris Larr. page 58. “OSRIC™” and “Old school System Reference and Connan review by Chris Larr. page 61. Index Compilation™” are trademarks of Stuart Mar- Starships & Savages Game. by Jack Vogel shall and Matthew Finch and may be used only in page 64. accordance with the OSRIC™ license. Ambush at Sheridan (Gangbusters™ BX) adventure by page 74. Mark Hunt Questions or comments can be emailed to: Mother of all Vampires by Tad Atkinson page 76. [email protected] Dogs as Sidekicks by Jack Vogel page 71. Dead-Mech “Golem” for OSRIC™/AD&D™ 1e Some art By Robert Martin page 76. by Dave Johnson page 78. Queens Errand art by Morgan Austin page 32. Legel:Sample OGL 1.0a page 80. Front cover art by Oberholster file Venita.

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Copyright Johnson Publishing Group 2020 Alarms & Journeys 3 Alternate Races & Classes in OSRIC Don’t fear the outside-the-book style By Joseph Bingaman, J. Halk Games

As I sit here, drinking Mountain Dew and listening to The Scorpions, I am also working on our 2020 Kickstarter project. While making various databases of info for reference by the team, I realize how, as a DM, over the last 16 years, my own personal game has differed quite a bit from the old core books and the OSRIC rules, in the sense I have allowed quite a few uncommon races and created classes to fill voids or adapted classes from other editions.

There may be the purist that despises this idea, but one must consider before dismissing this entire- ly – look at any military at any time. All of them had different specialists, soldiers trained in different forms and techniques of combat, where they had one job and filled a role.Your standard classes – fighter, cleric, magic-user, thief, druid, ranger, monk, paladin, illusionist, and assassin – don’t always fill these roles the best. Even adding in the Unearthed Arcana options – cavalier, barbarian, thief-ac- robat – or even the bard doesn’t fill some needs…or makes for boring gameplay at times, especially when coupled with racial restrictions. I’m not referring to psionicists, which I always found the original option better, where anyone had a small percentage chance of having powers. I am referring to roles like spies, scribes, handpicked elite specialists, the types that bring a new look on the table and make things interesting.

The same can be said for races. Not counting the subraces, there are seven races that can be used by a PC, which can become repetitive, depending on your group. At one time, we had sessions that lasted six hours 5 nights a week (every player was in the culinary field, single, worked nights, and all met at midnight at my apartment for gaming until 6 am). Campaigns did not last long, maybe a few months to reach level 20. Eventually, at that rate, race and class combos get recycled. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, as these are the most common you will find in the world, when you are world-building, it leaves little interesting NPCs.

From when I started my home world in 2002, there was the intent to build something as unique and diverse as classic settings that were published. By 2012, it was obvious the eventual intent was publication. As I go through building these databases, I see a lot of the typical stock, the dwarven fighters, human rangers, elven fighters, gnome magic-users. I also see some interesting characters I allowed just to see if they would work and add an interesting side project – the jann thief, the vampyre spy (not the undead vampire, but the gothic setting’s monster vampyre, which are mortal), the dop- pleganger mystic, the centaur bonk (bonk = barbarian monk) for example. Each of these characters led to memorable events here in the campaign that are still talked about 10, 15 years later. I’ve even adapted ideas from later OGL products into an interesting race – the Nephilim, think a product of a deity and a mortal – and allowed it to be played to create a strange and powerful NPC in the future.

Before you jump into this idea though, I have a few pieces of advice. The first and foremost is to ran- domly pick a player or make a rotation of players who will be the lucky (or unlucky) one to try the new race or class when doing character creation. Make it fair and make sure everyone is okay with new concepts being introduced. Even the most diehard BY THE BOOK, RULES AS WRITTEN players can have Samplefun using one of these odd characters, if presented and ran right. file

With races, it is best to stick with ones that have a humanoid, demihuman, goblinoid form: two arms, two or four legs, a head or two, maybe a tail. 4 Winter 2020 Copyright Johnson Publishing Group 2020 Try to avoid those that are obviously really overpowered, like the squid-headed bipedal creatures that eat brains. The jann was hard enough (I had to not allow certain abilities until later levels, like the drow), you don’t need the headache of the ability to eat brains on a level 1 character. Creatures native to the material plane work best, while ones native to other planes are the hardest to allow and run, as a player and DM.

While designing class ideas, I have found that future editions, with all their flaws, have some good ideas in them. Warlocks and Sorcerers are technically a magic-user that use different means to cast spells – adapting these to OSRIC is not hard. Similar process with the d20 era and the “prestige class” – I took four or five different ones and turned them into broader classes designed to fill the role of everything from elite assassins to keepers of specific lore, such as dragons. While you could have players of the normal assassin class be very elite assassins with items, you can also use this class to create those elite ones fast, even as NPCs. The same with the keepers of lore – you COULD have a magic-user have an interest in draconic lore, but why would they unless they could gain something from it? Give them a goal to seek the lore, and abilities that come with it, and they are more likely to follow this path.

I fully expect rejection from the community on my ideas – we are a strange lot of players at J. Halk Games, after all – however, I promise, a little experimentation never hurts any group. At the very least, it makes for new memories that make certain characters memorable by name for decades. Do not fear either; while I stated I am finding these notes in the databases I am building for our Kickstart- er, it does not mean the strange ideas – like the centaur bonk – will be in the final cut. That idea was ill-conceived, I will admit that.

“Failure is always an option.” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

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