Dribs and Drabs

This page contains a potpourri of various tweaks and adjustments that don't warrant dealing with on pages of their own. I've arranged them here alphabetically, and you can use the contents links below to get to a topic of interest to you.

• Bad Joss
• Bonus Skills
• Handedness

Outlaws of the Water Margin is © 1998 by Paul Mason, and is published by Panurgic Publishing. The contents of this page are not in any way intended as a challenge to this copyright.

Made with GNU Emacs.

• Bad Joss

This is really Paul Mason's tweak, and not mine.

People who are murdered can, with their dying breaths, inflict bad joss on their killers. For this to be effective, a victim must know who the killer is, or be able to see the killer, at the appropriate moment (just before the death rattle, presumably). Killers caught in this circumstance must immediately assume a D6 of bad joss.

A common superstition is that if a killer apologises to the victim before the deed, the victim's spirit will be mollified enough not to inflict the bad joss on the killer. It's entirely unclear whether this is effective or not...

• Bonus Skills

As a slight gift to starting characters, I've decided to slightly expand the concept of the bonus skills associated with each occupation.

When creating your character, the character's occupation determines a set of bonus skills. You should initially mark down each of these skills, with a rating of +0. You should also mark an asterisk or something next to the skills to note that they are bonus skills. While a character doesn't actually get a bonus with these skills unless they pay for it, they also won't have to receive the usual penalty associated with not having a bonus (i.e. the decrease in ease by -2).

If a character enters a new occupation during play, after a reasonable period of apprenticeship, the character can add the new bonus skills to the character sheet at +0, if s/he doesn't already know them.

In summary, there's no real cost benefit to the character for this special +0 rating, only a benefit for "occupational familiarity", which I presume to be more than the typical +0 familiarity that anyone else would have with a particular skill. The easiest way to track this distinction is for players to mark their "occupational familiarities" on their sheets with the +0.

• Handedness

It would seem rather silly for anyone to design a left handed character. The only advantage for left-handed people in Outlaws is the slight Ambidexterity given to lefties. However, the rules require you to pay for this ability, and assume the social problems heaped on lefties on top of it. In short, you can get the partial Ambidexterity bonus, without having to risk the scorn of being a leftie, so why would anyone do it? In the real world, of course, you don't have a choice, so how to handle this in the game?

Well, I think people should still be able to choose the handedness of their character, just as they should be able to choose their character's gender (you have to think long and hard about playing a woman in the Outlaws setting, don't you?).

It balances out a little better if lefties get the aptitude Ambidexterity +1 bonus for free. This is worth one point. Additionally, I'd say that left-handed characters need only spend another one point to get Ambidexterity +2 (whether they want to buy this as an aptitude, or a skill to add to the existing aptitude). Further refinements of their skill/aptitude should be purchased normally. In other words, lefties with full ambidexterity save 3 points. A small price to pay, I think for making those whacky southpaws a little bit more attractive to play (ideally, every party should have one, for the interesting twists it brings to interaction with NPCs...).