I have been experimenting in three different systems, looking for fun ways for a group to play without a GM or scaling back GM responsibilities. Here is an effort for Crumbling Epoch.

It is focused, so it can fit on two pages. You get background, treasure, monsters, room generation, room features, wandering monsters–along with the rules, this provides all you need.

More will come to back this up, but I wanted to share it.

And… that’s about all I can say at this point.

Crumbling Epoch 5.20

Crumbling Epoch, Devilmount 5.20.13

Crumbling Epoch Wampus Spells 5.20.13

Crumbling Epoch Character Sheet and Reference 5.20

Why play Crumbling Epoch? Well, here are the reasons I would play it instead of B/X or another system based on the original. You can decide what you think for yourself.

• Combat is a struggle where foes may tie, or one may dominate another, or they may whittle each other down, or they may strike at each other with disregard for their own safety. The fiction is represented mechanically, rather than feeling like two pinatas trading hits until one bursts with experience candy.
• Armor is damage reduction. Combat skill helps you not get hit.
• You can have an attack or defense stance, and you can protect people.
• Multiple combat feels like one against many, and there is an advantage to ganging up on tougher foes. Also, many less significant foes can be folded into a single roll, speeding combat greatly.
• I never liked “cast and forget” magic. If you have the slot, you can casually toss a fireball with no physical engagement beyond hand gestures. This magic is fueled by hit points. Also, wands and staves for wizards become important.
• Classes get simple scalable abilities. Higher level characters do not necessarily get more complex to play, but they do get cooler.
• The thief is democratized; the skills can be spread around the party. Anyone can backstab if they attack someone who has already acted in the round. Since characters can take a new skill instead of hit points when they level, a lower-hit-point fighter or martial artist (or whatever) with more skills becomes thief-like.
• A simple skill system is bolted on and accessible to everyone.
• Simple paired weapon rules that do not involve multiple attacks.
• Fresh new spells.
• A movement system that allows characters to decide how fast or how slow they will move–decide to be cautious or stealthy or mapping, instead of having a single movement rate that assumes they will be.
• Simple unified experience for all classes, at a less brutally punishing rate than the slow experience awards assumed in the basic books.
• Everybody can use weapons and armor. Fighters are just better at it.
• I enjoy the lightbringer and thirster concepts. Also, I like having martial artists that don’t have to be monks.

I think there is a lot to love here. If anybody uses this, I’d love to hear how it works for your group.

Thank Jack Shear for the idea of putting hog men in Devilmount!

After being sealed for 200 years, the doors to Devilmount just… drifted open. The government is worried. They posted soldiers “on maneuvers” to cover the entrance, and scooped up some local riff raff who is expendable to map the thing for them so when they get some real adventurers they can focus their efforts.

The party was a fighter, a martial artist, a gray man, and a wizard. They headed down, cautiously poked around, and mapped quite a bit. They clashed with a few  blackened skeletons, defeated a pack of big rats, and dispatched a number of hog men. They mapped, a new activity for one of the players, but he was delighted when his map matched what I portrayed on the white board.

They got out while they could, and decided after a rest and some healing to focus on one quadrant, guessing the level was divided into quarters. This time they got some more exploring done, but they got cocky when they faced off with more hogmen–especially when even more reinforced them during the fight.

They tried to run, but when not everyone could get away they stuck it out to save their friends–until three of them fell and the fighter was the only one to make it out.

Last night was the first live test of my new Crumbling Epoch system. I like how it went. One of my players would try it again, the other prefers systems with more options for building and growing characters than what the simplicity of Crumbling Epoch offers.

I think it would go better with a stronger party. Ironically, as a corner game at my game table it is unlikely to GET a big group going in. I will likely need to continue testing it on my own. Still, a great test and experience.

One player said it reintroduced fear of monsters in dungeons, something that fades when you have tough characters from level one. So that’s something! =)

The picture is based on Sarah Michelle Geller, from Buffy. She’s holding a delicious bottle of blood.

So Jack Shear made Devilmount, and put “lumpen-ones” in the place of halflings.

I have not put more thought into their ecology yet, but I’m going to. In the meantime, here’s an awesome picture of one possible interpretation. Here is the art from the actual Devilmount book, posted here.

By Wayne Snyder

Halfling: 1d6

1. Anthropomorphic koala bear.
2. Anthropomorphic skink with chromataphores.
3. Anthropomorphic rat.
4. Animated puppet.
5. Part sand elemental.
6. Undead street urchin child.

Dwarf: 1d6

1. Terra Cotta soldier.
2. Anthropomorphic badger.
3. Anthropomorphic wolverine.
4. Anthropomorphic beaver.
5. Skull golem (made of skulls)
6. Anthropomorphic psychic mole.

Elf: 1d4

1. Weak lich.
2. Unicorn centaur.
3. Orialchum construct.
4. Anthropomorphic cat people.

Fighter: 1d4

1. Anthropomorphic bull.
2. Spirit that bonds with armor (can transfer).
3. Revenant.
4. Animated statue.

Thief:

1. Anthropomorphic frog.
2. Wire golem.
3. Anthropomorphic raccoon.
4. Anthropomorphic octopus.

Have some fun with this.

• As they grow more powerful, their heads swell. By the time they reach “name level” they barely touch the ground; their swelling head has odd powers of levitation and increased resilience (reflected in higher saving throws of all kinds.) They tend to spend more and more time in esoteric mathematical reflection, until when their head reaches a certain size they become something like a prized trophy of their clan. They are hidden away, and their reflections become something like scripture in complex equations.

• Their thin limbs contain the strength of creatures at least twice their size, because of the strange composition of their flesh. Their entire meat can serve as muscle, and also as fat; their strange gray skin has a peculiar anti-gravity property that focuses in the head, so even though they appear spindly they can trundle along as fast as creatures with four times the stride and carry impossible loads on their thin legs and backs.

• Their bones are an organic form of layered composite ceramic. This is not possible, yet it is true.

• Those who have tried to make leather from gray men, or take advantage of their strange physiology for anti-gravity or strength, have found that the material decays immediately after the death of the gray man. Within three hours, all properties are compromised. Experiments with vivisection have not had much more success; apparently gray men can die at will. Imaginative scholars suggest the long-lost arts of psionics may be the key, and experimentation continues.

• Gray men have hard black eyes with no inner structures. The eyes crumble to fine powder when they die. Vivisection has revealed the eyes are actually hollow, their interior covered by shifting and dancing equations of physics rubbing space-time against energy. Scholars are desperate to figure out the perceptual filters that allow gray men to detect anomalies that others completely miss, and even give them the ability to see where there is no light. The mystery remains. These extra senses are credited with their ability to make such fine metalwork, detailed with unknown alloys, and their ability to work mystic materials humans cannot shape (like mithril, adamantium, vibranium, orialchum, etc.)

• Gray men are actually grown in pods about the size of a human, over the course of about a year. They come out fully formed, and go through a process that they call the printing. Outsiders cannot discover much about this, except to suspect one of two possibilities.
  • Maybe a gray man inherits the mental print of one who came before, living out several iterations before changing identity and starting over.
  • Maybe batches come out and are given the same base print from their originating culture. That base print then shifts as they print their experience in the code.

• Gray men are widely understood to be the lonely expression of a shattered hive mind. They were once like an immune system, or a communication and repair system, on some star-faring vessels. Now they are cursed to be individuals, and they have never stopped grieving the loss of the Overmind. This can make them good team players, but not always.

• The psychic communication protocals are still printed in some of the gray men; they often start, end, or idle in communicating with a key word identifying a shade of their frequency. They do not always realize they do this.

Here are some randomizers to help you make a gray man for play.

Generate a name. No particular conventions, save that it should sound vaguely alien and space-like. Here are some sample syllables, roll 2 or 3. You can use them in the order they were rolled, or arrange to taste. Name first, number second. (There are many possible outcomes that sound like swearing, or other amusing and similar words. You can embrace this, or rearrange the syllables.) Roll on 1d20.

1. za
2. brox
3. nif
4. lin
5. tak
6. xen
7. ru
8. fex
9. cin
10. da
11. ke
12. ro
13. em
14. ur
15. lek
16. dur
17. so
18. zee
19. fok
20. vis

Generate a number. Roll 1d8. For some reason, that’s the range that tends to adventure. Roll 1d4 for technicians, 1d6 for leaders, 1d8 for independent thinkers, 1d10 for crafters, 1d12 for laborers. High numbers mean your type was mass produced and lower quality.

Optional “um” word. Many gray men have a word they use to initiate communication, close communication, and idle during communication. They usually use this a lot when they first meet outsiders, and it tapers off as they interact more with others. However, it is like an accent; some keep theirs, others lose them. In general, gray men use a monotone or modulated voice, usually nasal, and they favor understatement and deadpan delivery once they grasp the concept of humor. (Before then, they do it without irony.) These sounds are more like a collection of noises than a word. They do not say “zabble.” Instead, they warm up the vocal apparatus, and to outsiders it sounds like “zzabble what do you think?” Roll on 1d6.

1. Zabble
2. Grzzt
3. Meeble
4. Teebee
5. Leetleleet
6. Nnebbet

Now you have a head start on making a more flavorful portrayal of a gray man in your game.