New blog, who dis?

My rpg musings first took the form of a blog in 2016 with InsanityInsight. Who knew? Not me, to be honest, because I kept making notes and not adding them to the blog. But now it's a new decade and all that so why not a new blog as well?

Lark Letters is a place for monsters, myths, and mayhem. This is pure DIY. A place to collect snippets and fodder for the imagination. My goal with reigninting a game blog is not to keep sitting on posts but instead share concepts, ideas, and fragments as I find them. Maybe they'll infect your mind, maybe they won't, but hopefully you'll find an odd bit or bob to inspire you or drop into your next game. Or at the very least, it'll be a lark.

Welcome to Weatherfield

Weatherfield is an old clifftop estate (and seaside village) playground for your daily does of quirky Edwardian manners meets surreal seafaring folklore. Meet selkies, travel to the flooded realm, try not to get stuck in conversation with a boring ghost, and embark on an eccentric tour of death to make Tim Burton jealous in Weatherfield mansion, offering attractions such as necromantic fauna, a watery curse, and a deed to immortality.

But what is it really? A picture patchwork setting which began as my attempt to weave together a series of ideas and pictures and is now being adapted for a One Page Dungeon (with varying degrees of success). Much has been cut to fit on to one page so I'm dumping the supplemental information on here. First up, a bit about the estate and the notable residents you are likely to meet should you take a tour.

Weatherfield Mansion

A decrepit house suffering from the usual effects of rot, necromantic infestation, and a long squandered family fortune. It benefits from the undying loyalty of its various lords and ladies while they are alive. Once they are dead, the loyalty might be gone but they stick around for the immortal life as a ghost rather than being forced to finally leave this world. The benefits of signing the estate's deed to immortality.

However, third cousin Sally sticking around as an immortal ghost that always lets a draft in is the least of Weatherfield's worries. There is that small issue of having a flooded nightmare seascape sealed inside. Still, having an inverted and very wet version of the estate ready to seep into reality doesn't seem to bother the current inhabitants...

The Weatherfields

Constance Weatherfield

The 10 year old lord of the aging estate he detests but feels duty bound to maintain. He has opened the mansion up for tours in an attempt to fund upkeep and relieve his boredom. Fastidious attention to detail and bookkeeping are not necessarily good skills for maintaining sanity in an ancient mansion that is falling apart around you but they do at least keep him alive despite his sister and the spirits' scheming.

Millicent Weatherfield

Constance's older (13 years old to be precise) sister loves nothing more than her family home and will do anything to become the legal owner. Convoluted death traps and terribly transparent attempts at flattery are the name of the game and she plays it daily.

She is followed by 7 ghosts of ancestral Weatherfield lords and ladies. At least so she claims. Constance is sure they are the product of her disturbed imagination (or simply another quirk of the house he hates).

Spirits of the Sea

The ghosts assisting Millicent are not, in fact, Weatherfields but rather spirits from the Flooded Realm who have assumed the identity of seven former lords and ladies: Percy, Galvinor, Valery, Loveday, Eulalie, Mimosa, and Islwyn. There powers are limited in this dry realm and it's hard work to try to destroy The Deed and unleash the Flooded Realm while also disguising themselves or their abilities from both Millicent and the true Weatherfield ghosts. The real question is where the missing Weatherfield ghosts whose identities they assumed are...

Horace

Millicent's schizophrenic cat and adopted Weatherfield by virtue of being such a beloved pet. On the outside, a completely normal, if slightly twitchy and deranged, looking cat. On the inside, still a normal cat. That hardly accounts for the murders but Weatherfield estate has bigger problems and no one can be bothered to deal with a single cat. That or they are scared to.

The Staff

Claude Montague

Weatherfield butler/cook. Unintentional psychopath. Other than that, actually quite friendly and always willing to whip up a quick snack for eager adventurers. Not eating said snack is a good way to set off one of his longstanding and potentially lethal grudges (just ask Sir Lachlan). Eating said snack is also a good way to die. Claude will cook anything. Anything. This is not helped by his habit of adopting different items/creatures as pets. Some temporary, like Bee, others permanent, like the Necromantic Tree.

Bee

Claude's unofficial kitchen helper/friend/pet. Mindless but earnest and eager to learn. Drawn to the Necromantic Tree but never has a chance to act on the urge since he is usually kept bottled up in the kitchen. Shhh, Claude found him with a delivery of meat. Don't tell anyone. It's their secret. Definitely do not mention him to the villagers or anyone in the general vicinity of the butcher's.

Sir Lachlan

Everyone at Weatherfield works at least two jobs. Immortal reanimated knights who have served the family for more generations than anyone can say are no exception. This suits Lachlan fine as he gets to fulfill the role of both guardian to the Weatherfield lords and ladies and indulge his horticulture hobby as head gardener. The only position he doesn't care for is his new role as tour guide for any sightseers but he is far to loyal and polite to complain.

Some visitors ask why he doesn't have a sword which starts the embarrassing conversation about his curse after which he will assure them no offense was taken and accept all apologies. A few visitors think it is a good idea to joke about this. They do not realise that a trowel is just as effective as a sword in the hands of Lachlan.

And let's not even get started on the ghostly ancestors...

One Page Mansion

So I decided to enter the One Page Dungeon contest for the first time because you know, why not? The fact that it would be only the second proper adventure I had written and the first 'dungeon' was ignored for the time being and I dove in. Getting past the inevitable discouragement after reviewing some of the brilliant entries from past years was the first challenge, actually cramming my idea onto a single page was the next. Here is the questionable fruit of said labour:

I did two things I swore I wouldn't: 1) try to fit an existing idea that had been bouncing around my head onto a single page rather than design something specifically to take advantage of the one page nature and 2) make the text smaller to cope with issue 1. Still, the type is not too small and I still managed to get most of my ideas in there so that's something, even if I'm not happy with the overall graphic design.

Still, it's the content that counts and I hope at least a few people will enjoy a quirky, open-ended mansion-crawl featuring far too many ghostly relatives, grim children, an inverted flooded realm packed with necromantic coral and vengeful selkies, and a deed to immortality (if you can find it).

Clarifications:
The Deed (original version) - by 'tied to the Necromantic Tree' I meant that the deed was actually in the tree's name (because it is truly immortal and so will forever seal the Flooded Realm), not literally tied to the tree. The deed itself is locked away in the study. Terribly confusing wording on my part, unfortunately it is now too late to submit a revision.

Constance - Constance was intended to be a boy with a girl's name because that's just how the Weatherfields roll. He could just as easily be female in your game. It doesn't really make a difference except you might need an explanation as to why the younger sibling inherited the estate, because the Weatherfields are also terribly old fashioned, pseudo Edwardian-ish (as Constance will often lament).

Home Sweet Apocalypse

Dang it, I just thought of that now for the post title and it should have been the game title. Alas, my second 200 word RPG for this year's challenge has already been submitted under the name Home Sweet Home.

Why should it be Home Sweet Apocalypse, you ask? The game is essentially my first attempt at a Golden Sky Stories type of sweet, childish, help/fetch quest game with a narrative post-apocalypse, create-the-world-as-you-go setting. I will be the first to say it doesn't quite succeed at this but I wrote the whole thing in a day right before the deadline and didn't have time to be picky about how good or terrible it was. Definitely a concept I will be coming back to, but for now all I have is this...

Home Sweet Home

Welcome to the post apocalypse. You are six years old, like everyone you have ever known.

Begin by writing your name and answering questions. Each players asks another one question about their character/views. Questions like:

How many heads does your favourite animal have?
What do you think those metal things with four wheels are?
Where did you get that beeping metal bracelet?
Why are you see-through?

Each player than writes three goals:
-one personal
-one involving another character
-one about the world

Assign 1d4, 1d6, and 1d8 among them. Use the associated die when your goal is your motivation. You may also do the same to loan a die to help on a friend's roll. Roll above the difficulty to succeed.

Begin the game by revealing cards from a deck equal to the number of players. Arrange these in a grid. The group starts at the centre and begins exploration, taking turns to describe the scene associated with a card.

Clubs - Building
Spades - Insentient
Diamonds - Phenomena
Hearts - Sentient

Number on the card = Difficulty of the task
Odd - something familiar
Even - something strange

Keep adding new cards as you explore further. The game ends once both jokers are revealed.

A Matter of 200 Words

Last year I entered the 200 Word RPG Challenge with Babble and was more than a little surprised when it ended up being a finalist. Looking back, I still like the concept but I'm not sure it is really playable. This year I'm entering again with not one but two equally questionably playable games. Game number 1: A Matter of Time.

A Matter of Time

Decide the setting. Time travellers vs AI? Oracles racing to stop Ragnarok? Cyberpunk Greek warriors vs the reawakened Cronus? Anything can work as long as the characters have a reason for seeing the future.

Characters have three ratings: Will, Power, Skill. Divide 8 points between them. No rating can be higher than 5.

The GM sets the scene, describing it as if all threats succeed. Play then begins prior and the players can react to the future as they saw it. Character actions are assumed to automatically succeed unless an intrusion is made.

Every time characters alter the stated future, the GM gets an intrusion die. Intrusion dice can be spent to make an enemy react differently than previously stated or introduce a new element to the scene in current time. Roll. If the result is greater than the appropriate stat, the character fails.

Characters may collectively choose to accept their fate for a round. Accepting failure removes half the intrusion dice from the GM’s pool

Play continues with the GM describing the result of each round before the players have a chance to alter it until a conclusion is reached.


Why did I write it? Well the initial concept was some kind of game where the heroes take on The Fates. This got mashed up with the idea of a game where traditional RPG dynamics are flipped and only the GM rolls while the players' narration is assumed to be correct and their actions succeed. Stewed together over a series of weeks and mostly written in two feverish days, A Matter of Time was born. I do like the idea of a central conceit driven RPG rather than a setting based one and might experiment with this more in future. As for the rest, who knows. I haven't exactly playtested it.

Blood and Bark

A surreal mini-sandbox adventure of woods that are not a wood at all 

 

They call it The Wolf Woods. No wolves have been known to roam it but the trees shift and travellers vanish. Sometimes they are found, picked clean to the bone. Still, no howls are heard on the wind. Yet the name is more accurate than they know.

The truth is the wood is not a wood at all. The towering black pines are furry legs of Sepnir, outcast from both the heaven above and the dark below. Once the terror of the land, he was tricked into being chained to the earth and now he is little more than a corpse. The ‘trees’ are his many skeletal legs, some still with clumps of fur. But his consciousness has not passed away. He can still haul his bones just enough for the ‘trees’ to shift and the paths to be lost. But chained to the earth, he cannot stray far and his hunger never dissipates. His body has died, sapped of all strength by the chain, but the right meal can change that and he knows it.

 Blood and Bark is a mini-sandbox adventure I wrote for an 8 page adventure design contest with a 'winter wonderland' theme. You say winter wonderland, I say primeval wolf-forest with hallucinogenic blood-sap.

 It is technically systemless but may have an illusion or two to a 'move' so probably works best with Dungeon World or your OSR ruleset of choice if you're comfortable enough to come up with stats on the fly. That is, if you actually try and play it (which, full disclosure, I have yet to attempt).

You might like it if...

• Giant ticks that can explode in a shower of tainted wolf blood need to be in your next session.
• A comb that summon witch ghosts who replaced their vocal cords with stone so they could speak with Death is the magic item you always needed but never knew you wanted (until now).
• You need another badass old, one-armed (probably immortal) smith with armour that is literally a NPC.
• Incorporeal sparrows that eat sorrow until you are the friendliest (and most foolhardy) adventurer around sound like your kind of character progression.
•  You just want to see what happens when I get carried away and fill 8 pages with vaguely Norse, mostly strange ramblings based around the improbable concept that a giant, multi-legged wolf could resemble a forest.

If anyone of those sound agreeable, you can download it for free (though comments/feedback are a welcome form of payment) and check out the original contest and other entries on RPGGeek.com

And So it Begins...

New blog, first post, introduction, and all that. I'll save any lurkers who may have stumbled upon this blog the chatter. To sum it up, I love RPGs and creating new things and inevitably the two collided in a messy collection of random ideas. So instead of leaving them to languish forever on my hard drive, I decided to dump them on this blog whenever I have time (where they can at least languish in peace). That will mostly include:

• Setting stuff
• Characters/creatures/and things for PCs to interact with (with varying degrees of success)
• Themed challenges for myself (because yes I really do this)
• And possibly the odd game design, mechanic, or class

Most if not everything will be system neutral but any illusions to mechanics will probably be some flavour of Apocalypse World-ish or OSR. If anyone is reading this, I hope you find stumble across something at least semi-useful in my ramblings.

P.S: for more RPG-related chatter, you can find me over on RPGGeek.