Contacting unnameable cosmic forces

"Then, toward midnight, the necromancer arose and went upward by many spiral stairs to a high dome of his house in which there was a single small round window that looked forth on the constellations. The window was set in the top of the dome; but Namirrha had contrived, by means of his magic, that one entering by the last spiral of the stairs would suddenly seem to descend rather than climb, and, reaching the last step, would peer downward through the window while stars passed under him in a giddying gulf. There, kneeling, Namirrha touched a secret spring in the marble, and the circular pane slid back without sound. Then, lying prone on the interior of the dome, with his face over the abyss, and his long beard trailing stiffly into space, he whispered a pre-human rune, and held speech with certain entities who belonged neither to Hell nor the mundane elements, and were more fearsome to invoke than the infernal genii or the devils of earth, air, water, and flame. With them he made his contract, defying Thasaidon's will, while the air curdled about him with their voices, and rime gathered palely on his sable beard from the cold that was wrought by their breathing as they leaned earthward."

 "The Dark Eidolon" by Clark Ashton Smith

Wonderful passage from a wonderful story.

Ability score generation

I stumbled upon Duane VanderPol's exhaustive overview of various methods that can be used to roll up six attributes in D&D and its derivatives. When it comes to character generation, I prefer a balanced approach: I enjoy the thrill (or "thrill", as you prefer) of randomness, but I like to retain a certain control over the final results. Even with old school or OSR games, I usually go into char.gen with a character concept in my head, and and it can be fun to try and reconcile this basic idea with the ability scores (compromising over class or inventing an element in the background story to explain a low/high stat).

"Dice Demon" by Martin Hanford

One method that caught my attention is the "tic-tac-toe grid".

"A standard 3x3 grid is made with Str, Dex, Con being rows, Int, Wis, and Cha being the three columns. 4d6 are then rolled (or the usual variations thereof) nine times to fill the grid. The player then selects 6 out of the 9 possible scores from either the appropriate row or column for the given stat. Each roll can only be used once so, for example, if you have an 18 in the center square you could use it ONLY for Dex or Wis, but not both."

It is quite random, yet provides you with some interesting choices; and it's also a small, elegant mini-game. The cross-positioning of "physical" and "mental/social" attributes reflects the dichotomy of fighter vs magic-user, inherent to these systems, but this method, as we can see, adds an extra dimension to that.

Let's roll up a character and see where it takes us.
Using 4d6 drop lowest, I fill up the tic-tac-toe grid:

	INT	WIS	CHA
STR	12	13	12
DEX	14	12	9
CON	8	11	13

Not a bad set, mostly middle-range.

Let's say I want to make a Necronimus for a FH&W Weird Tales game. I need 12+ in both Wisdom and Charisma. Luckily, I have 13's available for both of them in the grid.

	INT	WIS	CHA
STR	12	13	12
DEX	14	12	9
CON	8	11	13

I can assign the highest roll, 14, to Intelligence or Dexterity. Due to my rolls, the weaker stat in this pair will still be 12. I'm putting the 14 in Dexterity, and assigning 12 to Intelligence. Strength is also 12, and, luckily, I stilll have an 11 to put in Constitution.


This is fun. Let's do a second set, this time with straight 3d6 rolls, for some tougher decisions.

	INT	WIS	CHA
STR	9	11	8
DEX	4	13	16
CON	8	8	3

Okay, now this is more like how I usually roll. The highest roll (16) can go into Charisma or Dexterity. If I assign 16 to Charisma, I can still get Dex 13, but if I assign 16 to Dexterity, I can only get a Charisma of 8 (or... 3...).
Even with this set, it is possible to hit the Necronimus' requisites, although at a VERY high price: Cha 16, Wis 13, Dex 4!... A wheelchair-bound medium, maybe?

	INT	WIS	CHA
STR	9	11	8
DEX	4	13	16
CON	8	8	3

Maybe the novelty of this method will wear off at some point, who knows, but it iss something I definitely enjoy and would like to use.

On FH&W's "Weird Tales" game mode

The return to the pulp roots of fantasy genres is a common staple in the OSR world. Authors embrace any possible combination of "sword", "sorcery", "planet", "sandals", slap on a few tentacles and eldritch rites and popular Lovecraftisms, and the game is ready. This is not meant to be a criticism - I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff, so I'm only happy to see it implemented.

But there is a stand-out example.

One of the most interesting features of Fantastic Heroes & Witchery (FH&W), the OSR game written by Dominique Crouzet, is the inclusion of a whole "Weird Tales" game mode alongside the traditional fantasy of elves & dungeons. These races and classes are meant for "Swords & Planets" settings (p. 16), so basically for science fantasy, but many other pulp variations are implied.
A thing I really like about this part is that Crouzet includes out of the box playable races that are usually considered "monstrous" and "evil". There are Reptilians - humanoids descended from the dinosaurs (oh you crazy lovely science fantasy Darwinism!), chaotic Witchlings, Revenants - cursed ghosts, Winged Folk (clearly a nod towards Pygar, the blind angel!), and so on.

The book covers a lot of ground, gives us lots of options to model basically any fantasy book or movie that came out between 1850 and 1980. "Planet of the Apes", you say? There is Primate weird race. Add jet-packing Sky-Lords and mad scientist Savants to the mix. Crouzet even released a document of additional science fantasy goodies, loaded with characters "inspired by old TV shows or movies, though in order to avoid copyrights infringements, they have got different names and backgrounds". He references Logan's Run, Dune, all the good stuff.

Summoning circles are fun (FH&W, p. 52)

And there is another pulp line, a foray into Call of Cthulhu territory. There are Tainted Humans, mutated, twisted people, who can also be used to model, for example, Deep One / human hybrids. For class you can pick the Necronimus,the Occultist or the Psychic - all classic tropes of pulp occult subgenres. This is definitely something I'd like to see more of.

FH&W doesn't get as much attention as many other games in the retro-gaming sphere. It may be due to insufficient marketing... but I have to admit, that the book as it is right now can seem unfocused and under-edited. The amount of sheer awesomeness it holds is both its advantage and hindrance... But if you, as a DM, have a certain pulp setting on mind, you can surely pick out just the classes and races and elements you need and offer them to your players.

Broken crystal balls go dzingg! (from Hergé's Les aventures de Tintin: Les 7 Boules de cristal, 1948)