SKORNE Backgrounds

-

SKORNE is a wonderful game system and implied setting. I adore it. I wrote d66 backgrounds for PCs. Create a character following the usual procedure, but keep note of the rolls to generate the gold crowns a PC gets, noting them in d66 format (i.e. one is a tens digit, the other is a ones digit).  Then look up your background on the table below.


Before you were a renegade...

11. You were a charcoal burner. Take a lump of charcoal. Your skin is soot black.
12. You were an onion farmer. Take a sack of onions. Your breath is repulsive.
13. You were a crackpot apothecary. Take a flask of a liquid that will put your guts into knots. Your eyebrows are burned off.
14. You were a drug dealer. Take a hallucinogen. You have an ugly scar on your face from a fight.
15. You were a slime fisher. Take a pole. You have weathered, leathery skin.
16. You were a execution herald. Take a horn. You are missing two fingers.

-----

21. You were a slaver. Take a whip. You have a fake eye.
22. You were a mad philosopher's assistant. Take a quill like a dagger. You have very necessary spectacles.
23. You were a begger. Take a tattered blanket. You need a cane to walk.
24. You were an actor. Take a fake knife. You have no hair.
25. You were a vermin cook. Take a rusty chef's knife. You have an infectious disease.
26. You were a fool. Take a bell. You have a ball and chain attached to your foot.

-----

31. You were a gongfarmer. Take an empty pot. You have no shoes.
32. You were an herbalist. Take a small flask. You have a drug addiction.
33. You were a cutpurse. Take a rusty knife. You have a bounty on your head.
34. You were a torturer. Take a nasty tool. You cannot handle anything delicately.
35. You were a burglar. Take d6 more gold crowns. You are deaf in one ear.
36. You were a rat shepherd. Take a crook. You are no friend of cats.

-----

41. You were an ascetic. Take nothing. You have mystical insight.
42. You were a pissprophet. Take a full jar. You drink nothing.
43. You were a scullion. Take a chipped plate. You smell strongly of soap.
44. You were a deserter. Take a broken sword. You fear battle.
45. You were a poacher. Take a set of antlers. You are paranoid.
46. You were a swineherd. Take a herding dog. You understand pigs.

-----

51. You were an astrologer. Take a star map. You know of a curse upon you, from beyond the stars.
52. You were a butcher. Take a cleaver. You perpetually smell of blood.
53. You were in a cult. Take tattered robes. You sometimes see beyond the veil.
54. You were a religious warrior. Take a blunt weapon. You go into a frenzy at the sight of blasphemy.
55. You were a compost farmer. Take a rake. You know the scents of excrement.
56. You were a painter. Take a bottle of color. You are slightly colorblind.

-----

61. You were a rag and bone man. Take a tattered sack. You know the value of any nearly worthless item.
62. You were a drunkard. Take an empty bottle. You still stumble, even when you are sober.
63. You were a bandit. Take a facemask. You cannot resist stealing from someone vulnerable.
64. You were a fence. Take a blood-stained goblet. You have shady contacts.
65. You were a rat catcher. Take a rat tail. You are quite evasive in shadowy places.
66. You were a priest. Take a book of scripture. You are 60.

 

Some of the background names were taken from a GLOG document, the one with d100 backgrounds.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thinking Small: The Fictional World has a Surprising Amount of Detail

-
Probably a year or two ago I read a blog post from outside the DnD-sphere, Reality has a surprising amount of detail . It stuck with me all this time, and eventually the little worm in my brain that this post spawned crawled and ate its way through my neatly compartmentalized mind into my DnD brain. I haven't reread the article since my first reading, but the title is what really stuck with me. The worm has digested this idea, and the result is a little nugget of an idea I want to expand upon here. The blog post talks first about how constructing a set of wooden steps, in a precise manner, is actually quite difficult. Figuring out how the pieces of wood should be cut, fit together, and secured take some planning and precision. This is all to make stairs that simply fit together. Bearing weight is another manner. The OSR is all about having a "realistic" world - one that operates on consistent internal logic, even with fantastical elements. That means if you really wanted ...
Read more

Empty Rooms Should be Just That and the 5 Room Dungeon

-
Just a quick explanation of an OSR dungeon design principle for those unfamiliar. This is maybe not a well-touted idea, but I've been brewing on this idea lately. Of course, this is all centered around how I want to play, run... etc... Take with coarse grained salt if you think your goals are different. If you've got a dungeon, you should have some empty rooms that don't.... do anything. As in, there is nothing 'to do' in the room. I have been brewing this idea based on what Luke Gearing said in his interview on the "Into the Megadungeon" podcast. I'll just rehash what Luke conveyed in my listening: Empty rooms provide a place to rest (my words) Empty rooms give space to a dungeon so that you don't die at every turn Empty rooms are tactically important for managing encounters, especially in conjunction with loops   Luke gave an easy example of how to utilize empty rooms: You pass through some empty rooms, and eventually encounter a big room with a ...
Read more

Thinking Small Adventures

-
 I want to explain a philosophy for adventure design I have developed on, I hope: thinking small. Honey I Shrunk the Adventure! Many good adventures give lots of play out of small packages. This is not a new idea. The 3 hex campaign start and 5 room dungeon are known for giving creativity via constraints (a well-touted idea). Brevity in the adventure text is also a much-loved and effective way to give creativity through vagueries. I see these as a part of a core rule of thumb: do more with less. I think this is a great design philosophy. I would like to push it a bit further, and to a potentially new aspect of the rule of thumb, that deserves just as much attention. Before, I have written a  scenario premise , which you can get a whole session out of (in most cases), and I've mentioned before having a cool idea . I want to propose a design philosophy: have the core danger of a setting fit into a single coherent description, and a summary of an adventure location fit into a par...
Read more