Scribbles and Horrors

“Our first assignment—“
“Our, that’d be… me and you.”
“—will be to locate and restore to its owner a somewhat tasteless lamp, indeed among lamp collectors considered the crown jewel of tasteless lamps, a lamp so stupefyingly tasteless it makes nonsense of the tasteless lamp category itself. Too horribly tasteless ever to have been photographed. Cameras break, eyeglass prescriptions are drastically rewritten, crowds of spectators run screaming out of exits they then get jammed up in. Tasteless Lamp Quarterly runs out of space to contain the overflow of readers’ indignation. How tasteless it is, this lamp, known in underworld Esperanto as La Lampo Plaj Malbongusto.

Through some perverse law of secondary markets, the more vehemently denounced, the more valuable it has become….”

—Thomas Pynchon, Shadow Ticket

In addition to the OD&D treasure categories of Copper, Silver, Gold, Gems, Jewelry, Magic, and Maps, here are new categories, to be assigned a percentage-chance in each treasure type and level.

Beneath each category are subcategories and example, which may be ignored, picked, or determined randomly.

Note that what is listed here is treasure, not mere goods. Every Orc outpost will of course be stocked with ordinary coffee, but the Coffee treasure subcategory indicates coffees of great value.

Ideally each category will have its own table, but in a pinch the jewelry and gem GP values can be used. Sometimes the value will be apparent to only a select few, and many treasures are not easily liquidated.

Comestibles

Cocktails or liquors
Delicacies
Cheeses
Eggs
Spices, herbs, powders
Teas and coffee
Drugs or medicine
Tobacco
Candy and sweets

Collectibles

Rare coins
Stamps
Baseball cards
Nick-knacks

Displayables

Pottery, silverware, china
Sculptures or art installations
Furniture
Statuettes
Appliances (lamps, refrigerators, etc.)

Wearables

Clothes, costumes, accessories
Hats
Wigs, false mustaches, toupee
Makeup, creams, gels, and soaps

Intellectual

Poems
Folk songs or stories
Systems of philosophy
Mathematical proofs
Names
Recipes
Secrets
News
Languages
Infohazard (“the funniest joke in the world”, etc)
Prophecies

Paper

Books
Paintings
Drawings
Prints
Non-treasure maps
Photographs
Historical documents or records
Contracts, bonds, deeds, other legal documents
Playing cards

Non-material

Friends
Sights to see
Employment opportunities
Self realization or actualization
Political office, religious title, or other bestowed role
Awards, accolades, monikers, nicknames

Devices

Hard-to-find spare parts/gizmos
Timepieces: watches, clocks, hourglasses, sundials
Keys
Boxes, bags, jars, containers
Musical instruments
Writing utensils
Beads, marbles, and jacks
Chance

Biological

Animals—pets
Animals—work
Organs and body parts
Bones, skins, teeth, claws, or fingernails
Relics
Hair or feathers
Stuffed or preserved specimens
Living plants
Diseases

Environmental Samples

Rocks/minerals
Water
Air or gasses
Isotopes

Materials

Chemicals
Textiles
Plastics
Foodstuffs
Ores or soils

Equipment

From equipment lists
High technology, etc.

Machinery

Radio transmitters
Computers
Microfilm readers
Printing presses
Lathes
Ovens
Vats

Potions/Scrolls
Potions
Scrolls

Artifacts

—————–

Here is a generator for these categories, with a distribution that seemed decent: https://chartopia.d1 … ev.com/chart/120948/
Print version: https://chartopia.d1 … /chart/120948/print/

And here is an example generator for OD&D Underworld Treasure Level 5, with Additional Categories appearing with a 25% chance: https://chartopia.d1 … ev.com/chart/114820/

Last night I threw together a little game brainstormed with Idraluna I’m calling The Mapping Game–CDP. Like a lot of OSR (and other) projects, it’s mainly D&D but with certain aspects emphasized. Other games de-emphasize mapping in favor of roleplaying, combat, or logistics. The Mapping Game–CDP de-emphasizes those three in favor of the almighty map.

It’s a simple game and has not been playtested, so YMMV. In any case I’m happy with the proof of concept, and may try it out soon on my underworld maps.

Link to PDF here: The Mapping Game — Conventional Dungeon Paradigm Edition

Idraluna has posted about some of the other ideas we had here.

Came upon a post by Was It Likely? (https://wasitlikely. … 0-blows-kung-fu.html) and was fascinated by the example game rules-texts at the end of the essay. (I do not pretend to understand the full ramifications of the whole essay here, it is a lot, but I am narrowing in specifically on one point.)

One of the games which is presented has the following rules text:

Flying is bliss. the sky is beautiful, even falling to your death is beautiful . sometimes, rarely, you can survive such a fall and it’s like a fairytale. planes are acrobatic and spectacular and so fragile. the ocean is wild and hungry and lethal unless fortune saves you. on the earth everything takes energy, makes you tired. you can only get so much done in a day and a lot of it has to making sure you can eat and drink. stars fall from the sky every night. they strike the earth and burn the cities and towns so people travel in tents now. nobody is where you left them, but you’re always running into old friends. if you catch stars while they’re falling they retain their speed and lightness, and that’s what makes your plane work and your guns work. engines and bullets yearning to return to star-speed. huge war-blimps with buzzing flocks of star-snatcher warplanes.

I was amazed to see this kind of text be understood as rules-text, and I was inspired by this to further thoughts I have had about pushing the boundaries of rules-text. I came up with a concept for an experimental game which I am calling Mishmash.

The point of Mishmash is to strip a game down to its bare essentials: a group of people interpreting a piece of text as a ruleset instructing them to play a game.

Here is a link to advice for how to play Mishmash.

In Mishmash the rules text is the welding together of player-brought text fragments. The main difficulty in the game is figuring out how to understand the text as workable rules-text. Mishmash is not Nomic: the point is not to amend a ruleset together, or invent a game together. When play starts the ruleset is already made!

At the time of writing Mishmash has not been played, but I feel like there could be plenty of sticky points. It may be quite difficult. On the other hand, I really do think that quite a bit of game can be wrung out of some very non-game-looking text, if only the participants have open enough minds.

I can’t imagine a game of Mishmash would ever last more than one session. But, it is light prep, so hopefully it will be easy to start playing at least.