Thursday, July 9, 2020

Sludge GLOG, also know as the SLOG

I, too, have made a terrible decision, and I, too, have made my own GLOG hack. It's called Sludge GLOG; also known as the SLOG. It doesn't acronymize correctly, but I refuse to call it "the Sludge Laws of Gaming" or something.

What is Sludge GLOG?

It's a GLOG hack. Here's a non comprehensive list of what it does, particularly things that might be a little bit different:
  1. It's roll-under-stat for checks and saves, but roll-high for attack rolls. I've always hated the weird inverse-subtraction math you have to do in base GLOG, so now it's this. It's kind of bullshit to have both roll-under and roll-high, but it is what it is.
  2. A skill system where skills add a 1dX to your stat when you make a relevant check, and X increases as you use the skill more (kind of, there's more to it than just that). It means skills are independently-tracked from levels, it means they're never not-good (like x-in-6 skills can be), and it means they aren't a separate roll of the dice from the d20. I might do a longer post talking about them at some point.
  3. Some crunchier armor and damage rules, adjusted from my earlier two earlier posts (damage, armor). Armor has this fancy value called a Damage Threshold, which is separate from AC, that makes it so weapons sometimes deal no damage, and then there are some fun riffs and tweaks based on those. 
  4. A death & dismemberment table that's big and bloody, and a slightly-adjusted way of doing negative HP (there's a ticking-clock element, so if you don't instantly die, the severity of the D&D table roll influences how fast you'll die afterwards. It's good).
  5. A very slight adjustment to how convictions work, meaning you carry more conviction points, which are now called vincere to distinguish them from Convictions themselves.
  6. A fatigue system cooked up by me and Kahva that's robust and easy to understand, but also has some depth and flexibility to it. 
  7. An actual equipment table, so you don't have to use Knave or something in your GLOG game.
  8. Some fancy woodcut art by Albrecht Dürer and some other dead people in the public domain.
  9. It's still only 11 pages, including the front matter!
Here is the link:

Sludge GLOG, aka the SLOG

And here's the link to the version without background art, in case it's hard to read or you want to be gentle on your printer.

You should try it! I think it's cool! And tell me what you think if you do get a chance to test it out!

2 comments:

  1. I thought if the idea of DT for armour a few weeks ago and haven’t had the chance to test it, I’m glad I’m not the only one

    ReplyDelete