d100 Orcs

In collaboration with Loch "Nothic's Eye" Eil.

For your next encounter table, consider orcs.

leave the billion dollar company alone (Class: Paladin)

Start with (2d20)...

1. 3d-printed katana (cheap piece of shit)
2. sweat-soaked ankle weights (jump twice as high when they're off)
3. niche extrasolar media fixation (+1 language)
4. predator-tan body pillow (+4 to xenosexual relations)
5. cat ear motorcycle helmet (motorcycle not included)
6. ancap flag (as big stupid cape)
7. 6-pack Political Assassin Purple Rush energy drink
8. RGB keyboard + second monitor + moderator privileges
9. home self-defense video starring Cholk Gratham, inventor of the mantis kick
10. overweight psychopath rodent, pet (disposition as scheming eunuch)
11. ontologically evil funko pop (indestructible, probably cursed)
12. signed headshot of Bigfoot 
13. military camouflage pattern rice cooker
14. nunchaku, shuriken (6x), bō
15. 102% account completion in Gacha Hunter Panic! (high resale value, but traumatic to part with)
16. communist utopia memory implant
17. zero-g gas-powered mamachari + delivery bag
18. 200lbs of exotic birdseed (won in raffle)
19. spirit box vape rig
20. the thing they killed shinzo abe with

You've sworn yourself to one or more megacorporations (see below). Choose any number of vows to swear:

• Poverty - Compulsively spend all your money on worthless merchandise.
• Pseudosilence - Speak only in slogans, taglines, and advertisements.
• Chastity - No kissing, no hand stuff, no bare skin, and no showers.

You're considered armored as long as you keep your vows. You also gain access to the tech tree:

click to see full size

d20 megacorps to pledge your life to

1. Green Revolution Omega (GRO) – Own 3 fertile moons of the nameless planet.
2. Central Dairy Coalition (CDC) – Jealous wardens of the last cows in existence.
3. Miracle Industries (MIR) – Algae harvesters. Crab owned and operated.
4. Earthwyrm (WYR) – Artificial sucrose barons.
5. Epyrus (PYR) – “Target death guaranteed. Operator survival probable.”
6. Xenograd Solutions (XGR) – Xeno mercenary agency and law firm.
7. Surefire Arms (SFR) – Video casette rental moguls turned arms dealers.
8. Krato Corporation (KCO) – Orbital bombardment investors betting against terrestrial life.
9. Glip (GLP) – Glimpdrive patent-holders. Trying to rebrand it as the Glip™drive.
10. Forward Inc. (FWD) – Thruster manufacturers. Invented planned obsolescence.
11. Horizonline (HZN) – Mass-manufacture sub-FTL citizen-class space-yachts.
12. Zero Point Shielding (ZPT) – Superdense materials conglomerate.
13. The Gordians (GRD) – Prestigious worm academics. More dynasty than company.
14. Fifth Wave Labs (5LB) – Radio technology think tank.
15. C0LL1D3R (COL) – Materials lab-slash-deregulatory super PAC.
16. Ever (EVR) – Publicly-traded secret society dedicated to the quest for immortality.
17. Fifth Wave Entertainment (5WV) – Radio tastemakers.
18. Surefire Video (VCR) – They still do rentals!
19. Central System Preservatory (CSP) – Museum-caretakers-slash-money-lenders.
20. Butters & Sons (BTS) – Corn-based biofuel. Corn-based textiles. Corn-based ship hulls. Corn-based explosives. Corn-based religion.

My default scifi setting

The Centrist Alliance is so named because they occupy the system at the center of the universe. Centrists have known about faster-than-light travel for hundreds of years, but interstellar spaceship travel was just invented today.

Faster-than-light travel involves glimping into glimpspace with a glimpdrive. No one understands this, but it works. The exception are the Yeom, hyperdimensional worm-people from the gas giant Seoun Tri; they describe it as “a little down and to the right, but also left, if that makes sense :)”

Besides FTL, the technology level is pretty low: Laser weaponry doesn’t exist. Everything is powered by rocket fuel, most of which comes from natural deposits of metastable metallic hydrogen and whale blubber. Computers are about on par with the 1970s. AI is basically magic.

The standard unit of currency is a gajillion dollars (1g). 1000g is a katrillion dollars (1k), 1000k is a zillion dollars (1z)

There are four species of centrist. For our purposes, they mostly get along.

• Simian – Four-handed, hairy. Moved to a massive space station after rendering their nameless home planet uninhabitable.
• Yeom – Hyperdimensional parasitic symbiotic mind control very convincing worms. Staunchly aristocratic. Only they understand how faster-than-light travel works.
• Xeno – Sleek, hairless super-predators with extreme prey drives. Psychologically identical to hyper-intelligent tigers.
• Crab – Hard-working, God-fearing, Manifest Destiny extremophiles.

Centrist names sound like this:

microjam 1

On Dec 27 I began coding a little deck building game. Progress eventually slowed to a crawl, which made me realize it could have been more fun to treat this as a one-man game jam:

• prevent scope creep
• + time management skills (in the context of gamedev)
• defined endpoint ← less stress, more poasts :^)

I gave myself an extra hour to polish and declared it done. Leave a comment with your high score! (i would have set up a leaderboard but i couldnt find a way into google's backend)

Clerics get the sex dice (class)

With ten minutes of prayer, the cleric can roll their Guidance Dice (GD). 

Each die is unique, with various symbols on the sides. These represent signs and omens in the cleric's environment: hints toward God's will. A cleric's job is to interpret these symbols.

After rolling, the cleric converts these symbols into blessings.

20 Blessings (the generic spell list)

1. Candle (🔥)
   A flame burns harmlessly on your fingertip until you use that finger.
2. Feign Death (👁️)
   You appear as a lifeless corpse.
3. Silence (🪙)
   You are completely silent and mute.
4. Courage (⚔️)
   You are incapable of fear or retreat.
5. Preserve Life (🐍)
   Forestall poison and/or disease in a person, preventing them from progressing.
6. Boon (👑)
   You get an additional Save. If you don't use it, it expires next time you roll your GD.
7. Grace (👹)
   You can safely eat inedible things.
8. Mend (🕸️)
   Perform mundane repairs in an instant. This doesn't work if you have neither the tools nor expertise to do it yourself in a day.
9. Darkvision (👁️👁️)
   You can see by candlelight as if it were broad daylight.
10. Consecrate (👑👑)
    With ten minutes work, make a sacred space which ghosts and demons cannot enter or exit.
11. Detect Evil (👹👹)
    You can track evil by scent. It smells like licorice and smoke.
12. Trade Secrets (🪙🔥)
    A corpse answers a question in exchange for a tetradrachm. 
13. Smite (⚔️⚔️)
    Your next swordstrike deals double damage.
14. Autopsy (🐍🔥)
    You can read wounds and corpses to learn the assailant's level and the weapon they used.
15. Rope Trick (🕸️👑)
    Animate a rope. It moves like a snake at your command.
16. Turn Vermin (🪙🪙)
    Vermin flee from you. (+👑👑) They serve you instead.
17. Arachnophilia (🕸️🕸️)
    You have two pairs of invisible arms. (+👹👹) Each has 1HD and a pious mind of its own.
18. See Silver (👁️👁️🪙)
    You can see caches of silver and alcohol thru walls.
19. Wall of Fire (🔥🔥🔥🔥)
    Conjure a wall of fire between two bonfires. It burns as hot as the hotter bonfire, and lasts until either goes out.
20. Dragon Fangs (🐍🐍🐍🐍)
    Those you bite must Save against poison or die in 1 hour unless you forgive them.

["You" refers to the person the blessing is cast on. The cleric can cast blessings on anyone who prayed with them. Blessings with unspecified durations last until the cleric rerolls their GD.]

Clerics get GD from religious artifacts, sectarian robes and tomes, relics, etc. A cleric starts with four of the following, plus their associated GD:

1. White Pointed Cowl [🐍;🐍;🕸️;🕸️;🪙;🔥]
   Worn by the surgeon-priests of Catalan.
2. Ornate Khopesh [⚔️;⚔️;⚔️;🪙;👑;🕸️]
   Carvings detail initiation rites of those-who-watch-the-grave-of-God. The blade is dull.
3. Imperial Scale Veil [👹;👹;👁️;👁️;👑;🕸️]
   Rumor has it that priestesses of the imperial palace conceal more than flesh behind their veils.
4. Mask of the Vulture [🪙;🪙;👁️;👁️;⚔️;👹]
   Conceals the identity of an executioner.
5. Grandfather Scroll [🔥;🔥;🔥;👑;👑;🐍]
   Carefully preserved over centuries. Somewhat unwieldy and fragile.
6. Silver Psalms [🪙;🕸️;👑;👹;⚔️;🐍]
   Prayer songs from every corner of the empire, bound together by silver thread.
7. Grisly Inoculus [🐍;🐍;👹;🔥;🪙;👁️]
   A clawed vajra of worn metal.
8. Isola Habit [🪙;🪙;🪙;🕸️;🔥;🐍]
   The island anchorages of Lesbos are home to thousands of nuns.
9. Empty Silk [🕸️;🕸️;👁️;👁️;👑;⚔️]
   Full body black veil. Ceremonial garb of the Silence.
10. The Book of Birds [🔥;🔥;👹;👹;🪙;🐍]
    This section of the First Certainties doubles as a bird-watching guide.
11. Bone Ash [🪙;🪙;🔥;🔥;👹;⚔️]
    Painted on the arms and face. Certain sects wear nothing but this.
12. Royal Relic [👑;👑;🪙;🔥;⚔️;🕸️]
    A fragment of tooth or finger bone from a pious barbarian king.

[the starting inventory narrows your spell list & acts as a lifepath. Consider that any cleric in a dungeon probably bounced from sect to sect before winding up down here, stabbing rats for gold coins]

 

These starting items aren't magic: a cleric's guidance comes from experience, and a close relationship with God.

These ones are magic, however:

1. Paranoia Relic [🔥;🔥;🔥;🪙;🪙;👁️]
   Thrown into the sea. Double all 👁️ you see.
2. Mask of Mercedes [👹;⚔️;🪙;👑;👁️;👁️]
   Stolen by vagrants. Treat 👹 and ⚔️ as the same symbol.
3. Woven Masterwork [🕸️;⚔️;🐍;👑;🪙;👹]
   Burned in all but memory. When you don't see 🕸️, add 🕸️ to a random face of this Guidance Die.

 

 

Clerics advance...

• ...by increasing the number of GD they roll per prayer (2/level? needs playtesting) 
• ...by acquiring more religious artifacts, which gives them new GD options
• ...by learning new blessings, from dungeon scrolls or other sects

here's a simple script if you want to try the class but can't get custom dice:

White Pointed Cowl [🐍;🐍;🕸️;🕸️;🪙;🔥] Ornate Khopesh [⚔️;⚔️;⚔️;🪙;👑;🕸️] Silver Psalms [🪙;🕸️;👑;👹;⚔️;🐍] Royal Relic [👑;👑;🪙;🔥;⚔️;🕸️]

i've set a fire in the corner of the 2025 Gloggies Nominations and its burning down around me

Class: Phlox's Barbarian. I am entranced by these sorts of meta-projects. It takes a deft hand to leave just enough room for others to explore while also laying a strong foundation for that exploration. I suppose it speaks to Phlox's famed skill as both a gm and a writer.

Rules: Bad Doctor's the most beautiful woman you've ever seen. Perfection.

Dungeon: Loch's Broxon House. & Monsters: Loch's Nasty Customers. & Lore: Loch's Masked Theatre. I fretted over nominating Loch thrice in favor of maximizing the joy I could bring to others, but they're simply built different. Their ability to write 2000 words that feel like 20 speaks to a level of concision and creative horsepower unrivaled in the scene. All of my greatest posts are partial homages to or spiritual descendants of one of theirs. Anyway this is my list so Loch gets 3/7 noms fuck you

Theory: Archon's TBD panic attack. As I hurtle towards 6 years in the blogosphere, I find myself more drawn to posts that feel personal and open, rather than the detached intellectualism I see all over my own work. I don't run games (I write about what it would be like to write them, like an adult) so most theory posts have little relevance to me. This one hit me like a 16 wheeler and left me dead on the pavement. I will certainly continue thinking about it as I run and write in 2026.

Other: Elmcat's Mapping the Blogosphere. The work this project must have taken to assemble astounds me, and the result 1) is beautiful; 2) is really intellectually interesting; 3) makes me treasure the community I am a part of all the more. Thank you all for a great 2025, and here's to another year of hot posts :^)