Odd suitcases and Marshes

This week I added two new tables to the GM Tools

#1.

A D20 Marshes random event table. No encounters, just unsettling stuff. I wrote it for The lost bay, as the setting of the new campaign I run is The Mercury Marshes, but the table is quite game-agnostic, and also setting-era agnostic.

10. A petrified bull. If you touch it, it crumbles down to dust. CONST/WILL/HEART save or your fingers turn into stone.

13.A spiral staircase in the floor. If you take it you can’t go back. It only goes down. After a while it only goes up. Once you climb out of it you are elsewhere, but not so far.

#2.

A D4-D20-D20 Odd suitcases generator. 2 400 possible suitcases filled with plastic dogs, miniature scissors, cheap birds, and such. A major location of the campaign is a dump, which has some sort of temple dedicated to lost luggage. The suitcase generator was made for this setting but is quite easily hackable. 

I bundled all the previously released tools into a unique A5 printable pdf zine. I think it looks nice. The art cover was made by www.instagram.com/perplexingruins/

I will update weekly the zine with new tables/tools as the development of The lost bay continues. Next week I'll probably do something on character backstories, stats/mechanics alterations as a consequence of random backstory.

You can grab it here the-lost-bay.itch.io/the-lost-bay 

Fears

Adding a Fear attribute to a character is a great way give them depth. It's a fun opportunity for role play. Whenever a specific game mechanic is attached to Fears, it's also an opportunity for unexpected stuff to happen, for game and story creation.

Here is a game agnostic D66 fears table borrowed from The lost bay toolkit. It can be easily used with any OSR RPG. The Fears could be generated upon character creation, or as an unwanted consequence of a shock or trauma. The table comes with simple optional rules:

A saving throw while experiencing fear is done at disadvantage.

A critical failure while experiencing fear induces a state of shock. The PC can’t do anything until a successful HEART/WIS/WILL throw.

A critical success while experiencing fear cancels the effects of fear for that scene.

The fears in the table are specific and evocative enough at the same time to fit various situations, and to be opened to interpretation by the players/GM.

Examples from the table

2-1	Failing in public	4-1	Becoming blind	6-1	Physical pain
2-2	Quiet crowds	4-2	Small spaces	6-2	Loud noises
2-3	Losing control	4-3	Heights	6-3	The moon

You can grab this table for free, as well as other GM Tools, here.

Going home

Yesterday I started GMing a new The lost bay campaign. The lost bay is a homebrew game, a very low fantasy teenage adventure RPG, set in the early 90s, with a slightly dark contour. There are skateboards, grunge music, magical prayers, and occult forces at work. The lost bay is also a setting. A small gulf far from the rest of the world, hidden somewhere, down south. Magnificent beaches, gigantic evergreens, dangerous wildfires, and crazy inhabitants. The lost bay is a fictional place but it's also the place where I grew up, or at least it is very much inspired by it. I call it "lost" because I was involuntarily and abruptly severed from it as I was just getting out of my teenage years. We were in 1993. I had to pack my stuff in less than 48hours. My whole family left and I followed. We moved abroad. I waited 15 years before I could go back to the bay. I had become an adult then, and it was work that took me back to my homeworld. After that first homecoming trip, I kept going to the bay, once or twice a year, for work. The bay hadn't changed so much, but somehow I felt like I hadn't returned fully to the place I left unexpectedly in 1993. Something was missing. I still had to find a proper way back. This is when, three years ago, I started writing an early 90s teenage adventure TTRPG setting inspired by that little uncanny place I grew up. I baptized it The lost bay. And I played it.

A pixel illustration made by arkhai2 for The lost Bay

I've been playing The Lost bay for almost three years now. I met new friends and I had a lot of fun, in one word it felt good. But carving the fictional world was a time-consuming job. There was not much energy left to design a game system, so I picked what seemed the best available thing at the moment, Tales from the loop: the characters were teenagers, there was mystery, the ruleset was simple enough. I played around 25 sessions, a campaign, and a few one-shots. But little by little I started to feel constricted by the TFTL rules. Don't get me wrong, TFTL is amazing, but it wasn't the right thing for me anymore. There is no loop in The lost bay, the strangeness of the setting is brought by some sort of low fantasy rather than by technology. And I missed the D20. I missed the streamlined simplicity of the old D&D-like rules. I missed the familiarity I had with those rules. And probably I needed to loosen up a little, to give up some control, to move away from a story-oriented game experience and go back to a more explorative one. 

By the end of 2020, I started familiarizing myself with the OSR scene. I had heard about it distractedly a few times in the past, but I never took the time to look at it properly. At first, I read posts and blogs or watched youtube videos quite anonymously. I was awestruck by the vitality and creativity of the scene. A month ago I dipped a toe and started posting or commenting on reddit, and I must say I was so amazed by the generosity of the community. After dipping a toe, I had to dive into it. I created new social accounts with zero connections. I wrote and shared a little GM tool, a game agnostic 90s themed D66 treasure table thelostbayrpg.blogspot.com/2021/02/treasure-table.html. I commissioned a few illustrations to an amazing artist perplexingruins. Finally, I reworked the material I had produced in the last two years and yesterday I started a new The lost bay campaign, all OSR engines full head. The session was played online, short, 2 and a half hours roughly, a lot of things need to be fine-tuned, but as a whole, I had a blast.

I know that although the definition of OSR is somehow loose, it still means a certain type of ruleset and a rather MedFan setting. Not always, I am aware of that, but still. The lost bay is set in the early 90s, on Earth. Not so unusual. But the way I experienced it as a teenager, the bay seemed very familiar and so exotic at the same time. So full of strange, beautiful, scary, violent, kind, people and stories. There was magic, people moving back and forth from the beyond, strange prayers and rituals to cure illnesses or gain wealth, unspeakable secrets and mysterious factions, inexplicable and complicated adults fighting over power. We were normal kids, watching TV, playing consoles and stuff, but the bay around us looked very much like a fantasy world, always filled with wonder and enchantment, and exploring it wasn't without risks: you never knew who you could run into. Basically, living in The lost bay as a teenager, felt very much like a real-life D&D game.

I guess this is why I am trying to rewrite The lost bay setting and game system with an OSR flavor. I hope that makes sense. It makes sense to me, but I hope it will make sense to other people too. I hope I will be up to the task.

I'll try to consistently document the process of writing / playing The lost bay, and I'll keep sharing GM tools and stuff.

Sharing all that feels a little scary, but it feels right too. It's like going back home after a long trip. I guess it's also an attempt to properly introduce myself to the OSR community.

Thank you for reading, and as we say in the lost bay, peace and stay well.

- EDIT - so I the GM tools are online, I update them on a weekly basis, you can grab them here the-lost-bay.itch.io/the-lost-bay

Treasure table

The objects we own define who we are. Or at least they tell a lot about us. The lost bay takes this principle literally. There are no character classes in the game, and the characters' personality is somehow determined by the items they own. I was very much inspired in this by Ben Milton's Knave.

Here is a D66 Treasure table, or loot table, with a 90s teenage adventure theme, containing 36 items. The objects are super powerful, they’re real objects, but you can treat them as if they were magical. Each object gives Advantage to the dice roll, for its corresponding action.

Examples from the table

1-4	Magnifying glass	3-4	Bone whistle	5-4	Killer nail polish
	Find clues		Talk to birds		Be a leader
1-5	Binoculars	3-5	Pack of smokes & lighter	5-5	Hand drawn Tarot cards
	Spot danger		See truth through smoke		Empathize

In case of a critical failure the object is broken, if possible physically. It doesn't work anymore and/or loses its special faculties. It becomes an ordinary item. It can’t be repaired and doesn’t give Advantage anymore.

You can grab this table for free here the-lost-bay.itch.io/d66-treasure-table