Reminder: It's your last night to petition Santa Ghoul!

I'd hoped  for a slightly bigger turnout. So remember, I'll write anything you like up to two pages in length as long as you get it to me before Christmas Day (Mountain Time). I'll add it to my OSR Christmas list and post it before tomorrow night.

OSR Christmas List Item #3: A Houserule (And my first bit of followup on 3e-isms)

My most excellent commenter ProfessorOats has asked for

Ooh, I know! I love reading other people's house rules (despite it being a cause of so much frustration), so maybe a list of some you've used in the past. I'd be especially interested to know how you modded 3E "back in the day"

Well, Professor, the fact is I didn't all that much. In those days I was just a dumb teenager scared to screw too much with the program. I first thought this post would instead deal with how I'd houserule 3.x to make it into something I'd willingly play, but the muse is a funny and fickle creature, so instead you're getting a little piece of the d20 (And 4e, and pathfinder, and surprisingly even 5e-- I'm nothing if not promiscuous with my blasphemy!) generation brought back to the OSR-- and my latest awful modern heresy.

Here's some skill rules I'd like to use in the future:

Every character begins with a number of trained skills equal to the number of skillpoints the corresponding 3.5 class receives per level or 4, whichever is higher, plus their Intelligence modifier. Humans are trained in one additional skill. They may choose from the skills available to their class in Pathfinder (which streamlines things somewhat and removes from its skill list the horrible evil that is Concentration), except for Craft and Profession, which are covered by the normal Secondary Skills chart (the one in the LL Advanced Edition Companion, for example). An untrained character may attempt to use a skill by rolling 1d20+the relevant modifier, a trained character adds half their level (rounded up) to the roll.

A character may train in additional skills, languages, secondary skills, weapons, or types of armor not otherwise available to them. To do so, they require 1d6+3 months time studying under a trained teacher, and they must devote at least four hours per day and five days per week to studying. Most teachers will expect a reasonable compensation, on the order of 2d6x10 GP per month. The maximum number of such extra proficiencies they are able to retain can be no more than the amount of skills they started with plus their Intelligence modifier.

All thieves (and other rogues, such as Bards and Assassins) must be either very lucky or very talented to progress in their chosen career. Choose two skills, plus a number of skills equal to your Intelligence modifier. When using those skills, you may roll twice and choose the better value. This is intended to replace the special advantage provided by the percentile thief skills (and Hear Noise), which are otherwise redundant in this system.

I think this is an interesting rule, so if you ever want to use skills in your old-school game in the future because you're crazy like me, and you elect not to use the LOTFP ones (which are also pretty nice, even if I think LOTFP itself relies too much on shock value), I hope you'll give this a try.

Edit: And here I am the very next day rethinking this rule... It's not that I'm fickle, you know, I just overthink things. One day I need to write a big post about designing like a Taoist.

OSR Christmas List Item #2: The Genealogy Room

Merry Christmas to Roger, who asked for:

how about a description of a single room, locked for 200 years, in a castle run by mad wizards and aristocrats?

Here it goes, then.

The musty smell of stale air and book mold practically suffused the room. Ebony-dark bookshelves lined three walls, lined with thick books covered in blue leather. Each bore a number engraved in silver, and there were so many that the last of them had numerals as small as a pinhead. The last wall was taken up a vast desk, above which hung a huge chart. The desk was strewn with so many books that I thought it was a wonder that the whole thing didn't collapse in a heap. Slumped across the desk was the unconscious form of a wizened, emaciated old man. I thought he was dead, until he shifted, and the top book of a particularly precarious stack tumbled onto his shoulder.

With a yelp of surprise he arose and flipped from page to page in a few of the histories and journals, pausing occasionally to record something in the blue book whose ink had smudged his bearded face as he slept with his face in it. He worked with unnatural speed, and in moments the book had nearly filled. With a satisfied sigh, he made the final mark and shut it, then feebly scrambled atop the desk to mark the chart-- only then did I realize it was a family tree going back as many generations as I could count and more. He stood on gnarled tiptoes as he drew a line to a name written in gold, a name I had heard once before in this castle and never forgotten.

"There," he sighed. He began to climb down, so much more slowly than he ascended, but before his foot reached the floor, I felt a draft from the door I stood in, and the dust that seconds before had been the mysterious old scribe had scattered, leaving only his robe behind, and lifetimes of genealogy.

This small chamber has been sealed for over two centuries. Its lone occupant was tasked by previous generations of the masters of this castle with recording their complete family history, there to remain until he could establish their descent from an ancient god best left forgotten. This whole time he has been under the influence of a Haste spell, made permanent by a ritual until his task was complete-- indeed, none of the aging he has experienced already is due to the spell since it has not yet ended. If left undisturbed, he will finally find the proof he needs within one turn, record it, and immediately age 7,050,043d10 years. A Time Stop spell will save him if cast in time, but the decades of isolation have driven him quite mad and getting information from him is a remote prospect at best. The books and the genealogy chart themselves would be of immense value to all manner of scholars and heralds, as they represent a significant fraction of the populations of half a dozen kingdoms going back practically to the age of myth.

Incidentally, this is post #75 on this blog! Excitement and huzzahs are in order!

OSR Christmas List item #1: Treasures of the Insect Cult!

First comes the stocking of Arnold K., who asked Santa Ghoul for

I would like a list of beautiful jewelry/treasures made by insane, insect-worshipping cultists.

So, here goes nothin'.

Roll 1d12 and consult the following table:

1	Perfectly-formed chrysalis made of real gold instead of silk. A caterpillar broken out of its native chrysalis and sealed inside will turn into a butterfly with wings of pure gold
2	Deedly-bopper-like antennae of silver wire. The balls on the end are made of pure rubies
3	The Knee-fiddle, an experimental musical instrument made in imitation of the cricket. A skilled performer can dance and caper about while playing it, but currently none of them have more than mastered the basics
4	The Amulet of Hammond: A pendant of magically-treated amber: the mosquitoes inside are alive and wriggle about in it. Rumors persist that this item was stolen from the cult of the Reptile God, whose priests use it to summon dinosaurs.
5	A pair of jade double-rings, long scything scalpels jut beyond the finger of the wearer. These are used to cut the veins of sacrifices.
6	Clicking mandibles of copper inlaid with platinum. When worn across the tongue, they make normal speech impossible but facilitate speaking the languages of phraints/thri-kreen/formians/what have you
7	A cunningly-made crinoline that, when worn under the black and white robes of a priestess of the insect cult, makes her look like a gravid queen ant.
8	An ant farm-- the world's first-- made with dwarven mithril frame, gnomish glass, and sand of crushed rubies
9	A tank of pygmy ankhegs and rust monsters, each the size of human hands and fed on a diet of iron filings and expensive sausage.
10	A map to the purported burial sight of the world cicadas, horse-sized things that are said to awaken and breed for only a single day every seven thousand years.
11	Giant flowers for the cultists to crawl in, that they might know the purposeful joy of the worker bee.
12	A holy text made from the paper of a giant wasp's nest, the letters written in their venom.