The Drinkers of Light

The two sources of celestial power in Oth are light and fire. Light is of Alef; fire is of Tav. That much is broadly agreed on. The light of Alef fuels the web of life (and thus the web of magic) on the surface, flowing through plants to animals and eventually to thinking beings like the alefim, grimmot, and humans.

Some say that humans also contain the fire of Tav; this is controversial. Letys Ink-Eyes' thesis defense on the topic was famously interrupted when a Last Radiance terror cell firebombed the classroom. Their message of "if she loves fire, let her have it" was considered philosophically unsound, but pragmatically convincing.

Anyway, it's well-known that humans contain a sliver of Alef's light. What's less well known is that this light can be stolen.

They rise to positions of power. They draw all eyes when they enter a room. They are the subject of fascination, admiration, speculation. Victims come of their own volition, once the art is mastered.

Alefim call it "oluká," and many give the same label to its practitioners. When the right resonance is established in the weave of magic, the physical and metaphysical can be made to mingle. Celestial light, that abstract etheric concept, harmonizes with the material world. An oluká can then draw it out of their victim by consuming their bodily essence.

Eating flesh is possible, but rare. Oluká who take the ghoulish path rarely last long, as the hunger for light quickly becomes an addiction, and hiding serial cannibalism is difficult. Instead, the most common choice is the consumption of blood.

yum

(There are other reliable methods, from which spring the legends of succubi.)

Light so stolen can only be held for so long. When it inevitably drains away, the oluká is left ravenous for more. They will do anything to regain the feeling of transcendence it grants, to say nothing of the adulation and status to which they have become accustomed. 

They take more, more, more. Even those who are careful begin leaving a trail of bodies.

At best, they are hunted down and slain without anyone learning the reason for their predations. At worst, they begin teaching the secret to others, gathering apprentices to share the burden of collecting victims. These twisted cabals are often made up of the leader's former victims themselves, now bound to their teacher through ties of not-entirely-natural loyalty.

Some families of oluká persist for generations. They age only slowly, dying to violent internal struggle more often than time's arrow.

Brahim Phtali, called the merciful, is kept under lock and key by the glass archivists of Nabb. In exchange for a trickle of volunteer victims, he provides insight into historical arguments, lost lore he still recalls.

There are those in Nabb who question the balance of power in this relationship.

One might expect the alefim to revile this perversion of their lord's power, but they seem indifferent. Perhaps the degeneracies of an already-degenerate people hold no surprise for them. Or perhaps they are all too glad to see humanity devour itself from within.

Engaging Challenges for Godlike Characters

Challenging the Gods

They say the best Superman stories are the ones where the problem CAN'T be solved by Superman's powers. No amount of strength or speed can fix interpersonal drama or untangle a logical paradox. Or rather, Superman's abilities may play a key role in the ultimate solution, but they can't solve everything on their own. There's no "brute force" method. Writers for such high-powered superheroes face an eternal challenge: how to reliably put them in situations they can't just punch their way out of? 

GMs face a similar in games where players can reach godlike levels of power. I'm running a Godbound campaign right now, and a big part of the fun is that many challenges that would stymie your average RPG party are a walk in the park for a pantheon of demigods. Horde of demons? Two combat rounds; three at most. Angry monarch? A single Theurgy spell makes him your best friend, permanently. Societal ills? Invest some Influence or Dominion; repeat as needed.

This is fun in moderation, just like beating up a roomful of goblins as a level 10 character can be fun. But at a certain point, running roughshod over a world that can't push back loses its luster. After all, if we wanted PURE wish-fulfillment, we'd get rid of the the rules entirely and just re-write fictional reality.

DCs don't mean nothin' when you've got the Word of Might

The "Superman solution" of non-physical challenges isn't a silver bullet (to mix our metaphors) either. Taking Godbound as an example, plenty of divine gifts and miracles can sidestep the problems one would often throw at an invincible protagonist. Even large-scale trouble, city-scale dangers, don't reliably force clever decision-making.

What are some solutions?

1. This isn't a problem

(or, wish-fulfillment can be fun)

Maybe your players just want a sandbox to mess around in. That's fine! It can't all be OSR grittiness and getting skewered by a skeleton's spear. Some groups might never get tired of putting dragons in headlocks and kicking storm giants in the nuts.

If this describes your band of herculean misfits, read no further. Let them run wild across the campaign world to their hearts' content. What I've found, though, is that this kind of license grows stale over time. Maybe a long time! But eventually.

2. Juice up the baddies

(or, ogres now have 12HD)

Godbound itself is guilty of this sin to some degree. The section on adapting monster stats advises a Hit Die scale that's quite a bit higher than old-school equivalents, and goes so far as to say that a creature should have at least 10HD if you want it to pose a challenge for the a Godbound party. It's tempting, then, to let your expectations (dragons should be a deadly challenge!) inform the power level of the foes your party faces.

Resist! This failure mode is so, so common in video games; don't let it happen to you. I've never played Skyrim, but every time I read about how if you go back to low-level dungeons at high level, all the enemies have leveled up as well, I want to tear my hair out. 

If the party has the same probability of victory against an ogre that they would if you were playing B/X, then in what meaningful sense are they more powerful? If every time you get a +1 to hit, the monsters' AC improves by 1, you're treading water.

I actually do make exceptions on this point for mythical foes like dragons. Demigods vs. an ogre should be a one-sided beatdown; demigods vs. a wyrm of legend deserves an epic fight.

3. Zoom out

(or, nice empire you've got there)

Ah, domain-level play. The promised grail, so rarely reached. Unless you're a god! This is the recommended solution in Godbound--give your party vast lands to rule, besieged on all sides by dark empires and jealous rival demigods. 

I've said before that scale isn't a solution on its own, but that's not entirely true. The use of Influence and Dominion in Godbound is limited by the scope of the changes you're making: town-sized, city-sized, or kingdom-sized. 

Zooming out to the level of fantasy geopolitics also creates foes that can't just be killed: how do you handle a nation bent on your followers' destruction, when killing their leader just leads someone else to take up the scepter? Do you wipe them out? Is protecting your flock worth violence on that scale? Hah, ethical dilemma! 

4. Go cosmic

(or, punch god in the face)

In a sense, this is the right way to use solution #2. Instead of increasing the power level of your standard monstrous menagerie, let your party fight their way up the corporate ladder of enemies all the way to the top. Broke: orcs in an abandoned castle. Woke: bound demons in an abandoned flying wizard's tower. Bespoke: insane angels in an abandoned celestial dominion.

Of course, creating epic-level adventure locations is a challenge of its own. They've got to feel strange and wondrous, not just "this is a dungeon, but you can't use your divine power to teleport through the walls because they're made of special celestial concrete." My best shot at this so far is the Oubliette.

5. Incompatible goals

(or, what color do we paint the temple walls)

You can't have your cake and eat it too. Sometimes your high priest wants to make peace with a rival religion, while the grandmaster of your paladins wants to wipe them out. Maybe the heart of a celestial machine offers the key to ultimate power, but disrupting the machine's operation would devastate the mortal world. Ain't that just the way.

go watch Over the Garden Wall

The two incompatibles might both be good, they might both be bad, or there might just be a tradeoff. The "both bad" version is a staple of superhero movies, from the exploding ferry in The Dark Knight to the death of Lois Lane in the first Christopher Reeve Superman. 

But the "both good" scenario has its merits, too: imagine you plan to honor one of your followers as your greatest mortal champion, but two candidates both desperately want (or even need!) the glory.

One danger with this approach is that it risks making the characters' great power irrelevant. If I joined a campaign because I wanted to play a god of fire and death, I'm going to be pretty peeved if every session is spent debating the finer points of tithing for my cult. 

So make sure the party still has a chance to open up the throttle and let rip once in a while. Put something in their path they can crush without remorse.

Perhaps an ogre?

Thoughts

One of the most striking insights of the OSR, for me, is this: don't give out abilities that render core challenges moot. In dungeon crawling this means no light cantrip, no goodberries, and no bags of holding. It got me thinking about when a game, by design, elides the classic obstacles of an RPG.

My current Godbound campaign faces all the problems described above. At level 1, the pantheon was about as capable as high-level mortal heroes, but at level 3 they're carving through krakens like cake. All the solutions listed are tricks I've tried or traps I've fallen into. 

It's tough, but crucially the players seem to be having a great time.

That's the whole idea, right?

-V

Ghost Cults

Ghosts are usually a temporary annoyance.

The various religions of Oth are divided on the matter of the immortal soul. The Church of the Last Radiance teaches that Alef reclaims their light at the moment of death, and the deceased returns to unity with the divine. Their itinerant preachers often add that souls tainted by evil are instead seized by Tav-who-is-below, dragged down to fire and pain. Church authorities discourage this heretical strain.

Ghosts complicate matters. When a person of particular power--magical, political, it doesn't seem to matter--dies, they may leave an echo of their spirit behind. Ghosts linger in the places they spent their lives, haunting those who cared the most for them. Their power over the living depends on the strength of their relationship. As those left behind move on, the ghosts fade.

On rare occasions, a ghost becomes part of the legend of a place. If everyone in a town knows that the old mill is haunted, that mental energy may be enough to anchor the ghost and prevent it from fading. Ghost hunting is a mostly psychological art, and exorcisms rely on convincing the community that the spirit has been banished (which then becomes true).

what a pain in the neck

Anyway, those aren't the sort of ghosts the Cults worship.

These days, there are two great Powers in the world. Alef: the Last Radiance, the Coin of the Morning, the Dayflame; and Tav: Chained Tav, Tav-Who-Is-Below, the Deep One. But it wasn't always so. 

Once there were five, before Alef and Tav defeated and slew the others, long before mortal life was first conceived. The three dead Powers are corpses now, lifeless balls of rock that can be seen in the night sky, reflecting Alef's divine light.

But oh, what ghosts they left behind.

Such is the strength of these remnants that they can be felt even across the unimaginable distance to the sites of their haunting (their celestial corpses, of course). The four seasons are defined by the waxing and waning of their relative influence:

• Yodar: Yod ascendant. Caution, wisdom, harvest.
• Sachar: Samech ascendant. Family, hunger, meditation.
• Tsadar: Tsadi ascendant. Change, ambition, love.
• Afar: Alef alone. Plenty, growth, travel.

The seasons tug on the spirit as much as they change the weather. Far more wars break out in Tsadar than in Yodar, while most construction happens in Afar despite the heat. The influence of the dead Powers is everywhere, but most folk--even foolish humans--know better than to speak with them.

The Ghost Cults are the exception. They spring up in cities, usually among those who consider themselves enlightened and erudite. Often they begin as "research organizations," groups of scientists and mages who think they can learn from the Powers, uncover secrets of the universe.

Once they start hearing the voices, though, the devolution is quick.

purely academic

You can tell a ghost cult's age by how much its members resemble their patron. Early-stage cultists of Samech are grim and reclusive, while by the end their teeth are stained red with human blood. Tsadi-cults begin with duels and orgies, and end in mass suicide.

For the dead Powers are mad, and their madness is infectious.

As patrons, the celestial remnants have little to offer. Their fires are long extinguished; they have no strength to share. The greatest asset of the ghost cults is their unity. At least at first, the members' common allegiance grants a supernatural feeling of community and camaraderie. It is this sensation that holds the cult together as its rituals become more extreme, and society at large begins to root it out. 

Because of their intellectual appeal, ghost cults often count powerful mages among their initiates. Zavesh the Spider-Lord infamously made worship of Yod the official religion of the Venomous Empire, and legend says that the seers of his inner circle were crafting a ritual to re-ignite Yod's inner fire when they were wiped from the map by a hurricane so powerful that it cracked bedrock.

Despite the dangers, it's rare to find a city of any consequence without some ghost cult activity. Although it's a rare occurrence for civilization to collapse entirely under their influence, the cults eat through the ranks of the aristocracy and intelligentsia, clashing in the shadows until they become too obvious to ignore. Then the horrors come to light, the membership is purged, and the city moves on. As long as there is hidden knowledge, some fool will seek it out.

For the voices do have secrets to tell.

Thoughts

Cults are an iconic feature of pulp fantasy. Contrary to what some have argued, I think there are plenty of good reasons for your average fantasy citizen to become a cultist. In a world of low social mobility and strict hierarchical society, cult membership is a "cheat code" to gaining respect and status. Anonymity and secrecy offer an escape from class-based identity, a chance to rise or fall on one's own merits. In that way, it serves much the same purpose as military service did in some time periods, but with less travel and (potentially) less danger.

The ghost cults are a different kind, though--fashionable among the upper crust rather than the hoi polloi. This isn't unlikely either; factions in the nobility are always looking for excuses to form alliances and consolidate their power-bases. It's just unfortunate for them that in this case the object of devotion eventually drives them stark raving mad.

From a fiction / gaming standpoint, the ghost cults are useful because they could have almost any goal or scheme. Kidnappings? Sure. Dark rituals? Absolutely. Vandalism? Oh boy, what a surprise when the trail of graffiti leads not to a gang of juveniles but a cabal of cannibalistic university professors. Heck, rip the cults out of Oth and put them in you own world. There's always someone who Looks Beyond.

-V

Southern Coasts Map Update

Back in May I posted a small hexcrawl called the Southern Coasts, a slice of a swords-and-sorcery setting inspired by the Black Company series. 

The map for that crawl was made in Hexkit using the default free tile assets; which, while gorgeous and gritty, aren't my own work. So I've now re-created that map myself, with hand-drawn tiles in my own inimitable style. Gritty... not so much. But it's mine.

Thoughts

The big reason for this redraw is that the stock "HK-Classic" tiles have a non-commercial use license. This crawl is part of THAUMOS, which eventually I plan to make available in full in exchange for... money, so an update was always in the cards. 

There's also the fact that I've made maps for almost all my campaign settings, and they all look something like this. It ain't a Veles game without pastel cartography. The ur-example of this phenomenon is my "Thaumocracy" setting; I ought to post that map sometime.

Happy Thanksgiving, and good crawling!

-V

Bravo Combat

A bravo fights with honor.

A bravo fights with panache.

A bravo lives to fight.

You have some number of six-sided Fight Dice (FD). So does your opponent. The more FD you have, the better of a fighter you are.

Your position, stance, and focus are represented by your Poise. If you have time to stretch and warm up before a combat, your Poise starts at 6. Otherwise, roll all your FD. The highest value is your initial Poise.

The combatant with the lowest Poise acts first.

Each round, choose to press, retreat, or strike.

• Press: get them off balance
• Roll some or all of your FD
• Can't roll more than your current Poise
• For each die that shows a value LOWER than or EQUAL to your maximum FD, your opponent's Poise decreases by 1
• Retreat: find more advantageous ground
• Roll all your FD
• If the highest value is greater than your current Poise, your Poise becomes that value
• If you roll a 6, you may immediately press
• Strike: make your move
• Roll one die
• If the result is HIGHER than your opponent's Poise, they lose one FD
• If not, your Poise decreases by 1

When a combatant loses their last FD, they are defeated. Their opponent decides whether to kill, knock out, or humiliate them.

Bravo Combat is MOSAIC-strict.

hi-ya!

Thoughts

One of my oldest Design Dreams is a combat system that CANNOT devolve into a stand-still slugfest. I want combatants jumping around, swinging from the chandelier, climbing ladders and kicking benches at their opponents. I want Pirates of the Caribbean; I want Jackie Chan. This is a first attempt.

The problem with this ruleset as it stands is twofold: first, it's fiddly and abstract. I can see a game slowing down and players being pushed out of the shared fiction as they calculate whether it's better to retreat or press this round. Heck, I'm not even sure how this would generalize to anything bigger than 1-on-1 combat. 

The other risk is that things get boring, with only three options. Even if that's true, we're still doing better than systems where the barbarian's only option is "attack!" But still. What this really needs is a set of special "moves" to draw from, each one an interaction with the environment or a spectacular stunt. Chuck a Flowerpot, Swing from the Chandelier, that kind of thing. Make them into Magic-style cards, with in-fiction triggers and/or metagame requirements to get a bonus or one-off special ability. Heck, print actual physical cards! Maybe I'll publish a deck someday.

Don't think you've seen the last of this...

-V

War in Heaven

Once upon a time, five beings of celestial power were contending over the same patch of real estate.

Of the five, two were siblings, and by virtue of alliance they defeated the other three, killing them one by one and reducing their once-glorious molten bodies to vast chunks of cold mortal matter. Of the survivors, one was called Alef; the other, Tav. With their common enemies gone, peace between the siblings was short-lived. In a second round of celestial combat, Alef overthrew the weaker Tav, stripping away their radiant photosphere and forcing them to withdraw to the very heart of their failing body. In this way Alef became the Last Radiance.

this town ain't big enough for the both of us

But Alef could not bring themselves to destroy their only sibling. Instead of snuffing out the last of Tav's fire, Alef wove a prison around their corpse, a net of power that would keep them contained, alive but unable to re-ignite their body. The web was a work of great subtlety, empowered by living resonators across Tav's surface. This carpet of life drank Alef's power from above and used it to grow stronger, spreading thick and deep on land in water alike.

The system was unstable. Though the biosphere was of Alef, its roots sank deep into Tav's flesh. The defeated sibling whispered in the dreams of flora, enticing new strains to spread uncontrolled, choking out their fellows before dying to tailored plagues, leaving vast swathes of barren ground. In this way Tav grew stronger. 

Volcanos breached the surface. Lava ran in rivers. Forests burned, and vast savannas were buried under molten rock. Tav strained at their prison walls.

Alef wiped it all out and started over.

This time, they added a feedback system: a secondary web of life, mobile and adaptable, to prune and tend the first layer. If the plant life fell out of balance, herds of grazers would push back, preventing the runaway specialization of the first age. Thinking ahead this time, Alef added further safeguards: if the grazers themselves ran off the rails, a hierarchy of predators would ensure that the pendulum swung back.

This worked slightly better.

The new two-layer prison-web was resistant to Tav's escape attempts, but it still tended to break down over time. Every few millennia, Alef was forced to turn their attention to putting out fires (often literal) in their sibling's containment system. This effort was little more than a minor annoyance, and the status quo might have persisted indefinitely, had Alef not had a brilliant idea (not a measure of quality; they can have no other kind).

The Last Radiance decided the problem was that no part of the system understood its own purpose. To remedy this, they would create avatars of their will, conscious sentient beings to maintain and protect the binding web. Alef had invented the soul.

A dilemma faced them, however. Should these new thinking wardens be sensitive to celestial power? Without attunement to the harmonies of the world, they would be unable to sense the effects of their interventions on the containing mechanism. Moreover, Alef would not be able to guide and inform--the creatures' nature would have to be perfect on the first try.

Conversely, sensitivity to the web would leave the beings open to the corrupting voice of Tav. The two powers speak in the same resonance; one cannot be heard without the other. In this way, celestial deafness could be an asset.

Alef hedged their bets and created both. To the people called alefim was granted deep unity with the binding network of life around the planet. They were thoughtful and quiet, with the ability to play the web like a great musical instrument. They had wisdom enough not to proliferate wildly, producing only enough offspring to maintain a steady population, the proper number to maintain the balance of nature without straining its resources.

Then there were the grimmot. From them Alef stripped all sense of the sublime, leaving only the mundane world-as-it-is. They knew nothing of the web, yet by their instincts they strengthened it anyway. The core urges of the grimmot led them to dig tunnels in the earth, great complex labyrinths that dulled Tav's senses and resonated with the carpet of life above. This resonance extended to their runes: though they could not use the web for magic as the alefim did, the grimmot learned to control its flow by engraving sigils into stone and metal.

alefim and grimmot

There were only two problems.

First, Alef's fears regarding corruption were well-founded. Over generations, the purity of the alefim's attunement to Alef weakened. Dissonent children began to be born: children who could feel the web only poorly, if at all; whose touch on it was rough and unsubtle. Weeping, the alefim cast these mutants from their utopian enclaves, only to see the uncouth offshoots band together into tribes of their own: tribes who lacked the alefim's taboo on expansion. Scholars among the alefim named them baazim, but in their own tongue the new people called themselves humanity. They spread far and fast, ecosystems straining under the weight of their petty empires.

Second, bound Tav had learned how to create souls of their own.

Hordes of tavarim tunneled up from below, breaching the smooth halls of the grimmot and poisoning the roots of alefim glade-cities. Nishavek the mother-tree burned to the ground, and proud Zarzayin, gem-city of the grimmot, was overrun by monstrous armies. A proxy war had begun, between the forces of Alef and those of Tav.

The conflict was grossly asymmetric. Alef's power outmatched Tav's by orders of magnitude, and the former could have reduced the latter to lifeless rubble in an instant. Only fraternal mercy kept the apocalypse at bay.

Tav's one advantage was proximity. The war was fought on their home turf, yea, on their very skin. Despite the disparity in power, whatever Alef created Tav could eventually imitate in lesser form. Moreover, restraint of their sibling claimed only part of Alef's attention. Most of their time was spent on celestial matters. Tav's forces, meanwhile, had their progenitor's mind ever on them.

Nevertheless, the tavarim suffered defeat after defeat. Bound by the web of life, Tav was too weak to pose a persistent threat. The forests and plains were cleansed of dark things. Only in the deep places of the world, the abyssal oceans and dark caverns, did Tav have strength sufficient to sustain their children. The grimmot suffered the worst from this--driven from their ancestral delves to defend fortresses that had once been mere entrance-halls, eternally besieged from below.

But this new equilibrium had a weak link of its own: humanity.

Human civilization spread across the world like ink through water. As man struggled against man and woman against woman, some among them learned that the power of the binding-web could be turned to their own advantage. Though they lacked the subtlety for alefim enchantments, human sorcerers discovered how to tear power from the web and bind it to themselves, growing strong and terrible. With each wizard-tower that rose, the web was weakened, and tavarim crept forth to reave once more.

that can't be good for the table

Alef was displeased. This displeasure took the form of cyclic cataclysms, each of which wiped great human empires off the map. Whenever a witch-queen grew too powerful, she would find her realm annihilated by a meteor strike, or reduced to ash by heavenly flame. Yet such was the nature of humanity that after each apocalypse, the survivors would crawl forth and rebuild.

As an equilibrium, this new mode requires more of Alef's attention than before the invention of sentience. Had they their way, Alef would wipe the surface clean of thinking life and return to the previous system of just plants and animals. However, there's no way to make Tav forget the secret of ensoulment. As long as the tavarim exist, Alef needs agents of their own to combat them.

So the war continues, an eternal arms race between powers ascendant and dying. Alef creates the great gem-serpents, and Tav answers with the wyrms of the earth. Tav incubates brutes of living stone, which Alef imitates through sentient storms.

Humans exist in no-man's land, seen by one side as useful dupes, by the other as failed experiments at best, traitors at worst. Nevertheless, in each new age they grow strong, until their hubris calls down fire from above once again.

How long remains this time?

Thoughts

Creation myths are so much fun. This one was inspired by Arnold's Centerra setting, where the Authority's throne is in the heart of the sun. The planet is alive in Centerra, too--with so many great ideas bouncing around, it's hard not to grab a few, mash them up, and sculpt something new and strange.

I like the fusion of sun-vs-dark and heaven-vs-earth; there's a lot of possibility space to explore RE air and height as pure and sacred / stone and depth as profane. Monsters and classic fantasy races get a new lens, too. Alefim and tavarim are sort of like the classic good/evil alignment dichotomy, except they both hate humans. Mankind isn't a favored child in this setting, we're the vermin that nothing seems to get rid of.

On naming: Latin gets mangled a ton for fantasy worlds, so I figured Hebrew could take one for the team on this go-round. -ot and -im are underused plural suffixes anyway, in my opinion. I'm playing fast and loose with phonology here, and semantics are out the window entirely. Sorry.

Yes, the alefim are elves and the grimmot are dwarves. I really like the archetypes, and at this point, having elves who AREN'T evil fascist aesthetes feels like it's the rebellious choice. As an RPG setting, my plan is for adventurers to be human-only. Everybody else knows their divine purpose; it's only humanity who gets to f*** around and find out.

Anyway, the next time you wonder why every cave and basement is full of creepy-crawlies: it's because the earth is the flesh of a dying god. Happy to help!

-V

Consumable Swords

 "And Naegling snapped."

-Beowulf, line 2680

Magic swords have a rough reputation in the OSR. The humble +1 sword is the object of much revilement, and not without reason:

• It's a passive bonus the player has to remember
• It's fungible; get a +2 sword and toss the +1 aside like so much garbage
• It's BORING

Fair enough. Various solutions have been proposed. Let me add one:

MAGIC SWORDS ARE A CONSUMABLE RESOURCE.

Alas, poor +1 sword, we hardly knew ye

Plenty of rulesets have shield-breaking mechanics. Let your shield be shattered for a momentary defensive bonus. You block a dolorous blow, but you lose a piece of equipment. Sometimes the same is true for armor: sunder a helm or bracer to ward off a hit you can't afford to take.

Slap that same mechanic onto a sword. At any time you can shatter your magic weapon to release all its power, really lay on the hurt. Then it's gone. Good luck finding another one.

Another tenet of the OSR is a focus on resources. Combat drains HP, exploration drains torches and rations, social interaction drains... the patience of everyone at the table when the GM does funny voices? Couldn't be me.

Anyway the point is this is another resource to manage. If the ogre in the antechamber is giving you trouble, do you shatter your sword to cleave his thick skull, or save it for the warlock-king in the next room?

Bloodnail

Sword, 1d6 damage. Make all attack rolls twice, keeping the better result. You may choose to strike so hard that the blade shatters, rolling 2d6 damage dice instead of 1 but destroying the sword.

Ok, that's a little more than a +1. But magic swords are supposed to be impressive! A five percentage point increase in to-hit probabilities just doesn't cut it. Maybe automatic 5e-style Advantage is too much, but every buff to your characters is an excuse to pit them against fouler fiends on their next adventure.

Come to think of it, this reminds me of the first enchanted sword I crafted in Minecraft. It had a name; I husbanded its use with jealous fear of the day it would break. When it did, I mourned.

How much cooler if it had exploded, though?

-V