Café Princess (an OSR Class)

The Basics

Level/HD as Thief

You cannot use heavy weapons or wear heavy armour.

You can learn spells as Rituals only.

The Essentials

You run/rule/live in/work at/are a small café.

You can detect poison in food and drink by smell or taste. Creatures of wealth and/or taste regard you with general favour.

Accoutrements 

The cafe is stocked with: 20 china cups, 20 saucers, 20 teaspoons, 10 sugar bowls, 4 teapots and 2 kettles.

You may access these items at any time. If they are broken, sold or otherwise lost, mark them off like ammunition.

If you hold more than what you can easily carry by hand, you are Encumbered. The café accoutrements do not count to this total.

Upon levelling up in this class, you may restock your café, restoring 1dX of each item where X is the number you started with.

Using Your Accoutrements as Weapons

Using these items as weapons works, but breaks them immediately.
-cups/saucers deal 1d4 damage and have range as throwing stars, throw both as a set for 1 action and deal 2d4 damage
-spoons deal 1 damage or can gouge an incapacitated or unready foe
-sugar bowls are thrown, deal 1d8 and cast sugar in a 10ft radius, which has all the normal magical properties of ordinary sugar
-teapots pour scalding tea, enough for the party, which can be blessed if the Princess is devout
-kettles are 2d4 melee clubs and do not break but on a crit they are irrevocably dented

Tea Time

You may take 10 minutes to make and serve tea for your party. You and any others who take no further action during this time (other than for the purposes of healing) are cured of mental ailments or curses.

If it is raining outside, you are in a literal café, or it is currently the afternoon where you and your group are playing, all participants also heal 1d4 HP.

All participants not versed in etiquette must save vs clumsiness or break one of your teacups.

If you do not have enough of the relevant accoutrements you may not use this ability.

Patisserie 

Each level you gain in this class, including taking this class at level 1, you learn how to make 1 new type of cake or dessert (roll for a new type, reroll types you already know).

You can make 1 cake a day for each level in this class. Each cake bestows an effect on anyone who consumes it entirely, and cakes last for 2 days before losing all potency. You may also create ordinary versions of each cake this way if you wish.

Each cake is a small, physical item, enough to serve 1 person, can be eaten in mere moments, and counts as a ration for elves or fairies.

Scone: Your words can be understood perfectly by any creature(s) you choose. This effect lasts until you have spoken 20 words total.
Eclair: You can foresee storms and run on water or similar surfaces for 1 hour. Éclairs last only 1 day.
Sponge: Royalty and nobility will believe you if you claim to be of their class. This effect lasts until the sun next sets or rises.
 Chocolate Cake: You are incapacitated as if in a drunken stupor for 10 minutes after eating.
Apple Pie: You can turn invisible when in shadow. This effect works once and lasts until you move elsewhere or the shadows disperse.
Rock Cake: Deals 1d4 damage when thrown, then breaks. Deals 2d4 if it was made more than a day ago.

God's Head

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see!
Hail th'incarnate deity!

God's Head is a small mountain village. The locals worship a God who watches over them - both figuratively and literally, as it sits cross-legged on the village border, roughly 100ft tall.

(Imagine the Angel of Death from Del Toro's Hellboy, pictured above, on the scale of a Japanese Daibutsu statue, such as the one in Ibaraki pictured below.)

The God:

- controls the weather and climate in the immediate area, and has no other apparent power
- is immortal and impervious to any damage less than God-Killing scale
- is an actual God, if that distinction matters in your setting
- sits and watches
- is silent

The God has Rules (some specifics you might find gameable are noted in parenthesis):
- do not murder (murder means killing other people who don't deserve it; define "people" and "deserve" harshly and with immense bigotry)
- do not steal or cheat (institutionalised economic imbalance such as charging extortionate rent does not count)
- do not have the wrong kind of sex (the "right" kind is for making babies and/or if you're married and the man wants it - marriage being between a Man and a Woman, of "The Gritty" variety)

If the God sees any of its Rules being broken, it will alert the Church authorities with a vision, or simply smite the offender with a lightning bolt if the instance of rulebreaking would cause large-scale unrest or dissent.

The God can see through all walls or structures, illusions or disguises, and in any type of light or darkness. It is always watching every part of the village that it can.

The God has Dominion over all it can see - the powers of other gods (actual gods only) will not work or will work much less effectively within this range.

The God cannot see anything underground or outside the village boundary.

The Church

The Church is the law in God's Head. All Church officials are men.

The Church have powers gifted to them by the God (in D&D terms, Cleric Spells and Abilities):
- they can use invisible force to hold, push and pull objects or creatures up to and including the approximate weight of a PC, one at a time, within around 15ft of them.
- they can predict the weather while the God is content
- they can receive visions from the God
- they can make small paper certificates called Pardons - when written and signed by a Church official, the Pardon excuses the holder from 1 instance of rulebreaking in the eyes of the God, at which point it burns away to nothing.

Pardons do not work if written for oneself, but Church officials can write them for each other, often doing so in order to excuse their sexual coercion of impressionable younger members.

There is one physical Church building in town, the Cathedral (technically this makes God's Head a city but I don't really care). Demons and undead cannot enter it.

The Church's powers do not work on virgins.

The Angels

Angels are beings made of light that look like androgynous humans with wings and far too many eyes. They regularly appear, patrol the winding streets of the village in a pattern that has no logic but seems somehow important, and then disappear.

They will only stop if something occurs nearby them that warrants the God's attention, for good or ill. They will watch until the occurrence ends, then depart.

Zealotry

Nobody in God's Head is an atheist - God is right there. However most simply live normal lives that happen to abide by the God's Rules, infrequently attending Church events but otherwise acting incongruously.

Zealots are different. They may live on the streets and dress in rags or nothing, so as to be in plain view of their deity. They may eat only manna, the flakes of dead skin that drift down from the God's body. More unnerving are those who simply smile and ask if you'd like a chat. They obey all the God's Rules and the Church's decrees to the letter, and brook no defiance of the same from their peers.

A local has a 1-in-6 chance of being a zealot - unless they are in a position of power in the Church, in which case it is unlikely that they care much about the God at all, though they may act as if they do in order to keep up appearances.

Defiance

Pardons are the only way an individual may safely escape the God's judgement, but the Church makes them expensive and keeps them mainly to themselves.

Most defiance happens underground, out of the God's sight.

This unassuming house's basement contains:
1. A party. Revelry is not against God, but these people find it hard to relax under the Church's austere gaze. Plus this way if they meet someone they like they can fuck in the next room.
2. A gambling den. Friendly games, the stakes never particularly high. Just blowing off steam.
3. A meeting of a different religious group. Rituals (spells in D&D terms) are being carried out in secret - they can heal your wounded.
4. A sex dungeon.
5. A secret store of smuggled supplies. Stolen elsewhere, nobody wants to risk selling them above ground. Contraband, interesting items.
6. Church officials discussing shady dealings. They will offer to write Pardons in exchange for your cooperation.

Quest Hooks

1. Steal a holy relic from the Cathedral.
2. Help an underground cult to rebel.
3. Get a Pardon for a friend's specific indulgence.
4. You are all employees of a cool underground casino in town - do your jobs and protect the establishment.
5. Replace the head of the Church.
6. Assassinate the head of the Church.

GRAVEROBBERS 2019

GRAVEROBBERS is a tabletop RPG I've been working on for, hm, a while now.

It's a stealth-based system rooted in OSR design principles. Players plan and enact heists and espionage missions in a GM-governed fictional world, achieving their goals while evading the ever-watchful Authority.

The full starter kit comes out later this year.

You can read the rulebook right now and start playing early, as well as give direct playtest feedback, by joining the Graverobber's Guild for just $1 USD a month. Ooh look, here's a link!

Also still to come from this blog in 2019...

- More OSR/DIY supplements! Like Bastard Magic, my favourite thing I made in 2018.
- More adventures for your games! I did all these ones last year.
- All kinds of other content and classes and places and things.
- Games! Not only Graverobbers, but a bunch of other weird stuff!
- Rambling nonsense about game design!
- A secret project I can't talk about yet!

Follow me on Twitter, or G+ while it lasts. Talk to me about games, or let me know if you want to work with me or hire me for things, I'm very nice.

Here's to 2019! Let's make good shit x