Game Pitch: Gaslamps & Lessers

Look at the cover. Nobody is wearing a helmet. Nobody is wearing a full set of anything. There is a corset, a top hat, a trench coat that has never met mud, and a sword held like a cigarette. This is not a warband. This is a photoshoot that escaped the studio and demanded hit points.

Newer games have decided that “adventurer” means Victorian cosplay with better lighting. The party is a row of haute-tote Betters who refuse head protection because it would ruin the silhouette. Armor is a fashion faux pas. A breastplate is what the help wears. You are here to be seen descending the club steps, not to be seen taking a morningstar to the temple.

Gaslamps & Lessers is the game those covers already think they are playing. You do start at 1st level. Of course you do. Someone has to stand in the rain. First through nineteenth are the years in trade: dungeons, marching order, people who still own helmets. The club does not take your coat until 20th. That is not the end of the campaign. That is arrival. Level 20 is when your name is in the book. Everything before it is the servants’ entrance — and you are walking it on purpose, in the outfit, daring the world to notice.

The Lessers are everyone who never gets the coat. Provincial knights. Parties that pack rope. Anyone who thinks a +3 weapon is a personality. You will be them for a long time. Then you will send a card.

Optional rule: the Privilege Die

At the start of any encounter, social scene, or declared combat, the player of the highest-level character present rolls 1d20 in the open.

If the result is lower than that character’s level, the scene does not happen. It is resolved offstage, in the party’s favor. Constables, cousins, groundskeepers, or “a man who owes the family a favor” finish it before the tea cools. When even that would be gauche, magic itself kneels. The spell, the curse, the haunted stair — it steps in and resolves the issue so as not to inconvenience them. Reality would rather tidy itself than ask a Better to draw steel.

That player may then talk down to the encounter and, if they wish, to everyone else at the table who still had their miniature in a fighting stance. One remark. Then the next invitation.

If the result is equal to or higher than the character’s level, you actually have to play. No speech. The coat failed. A natural 20 always plays. Even a duke is occasionally forced to look at a thing. Even magic sometimes forgets its manners.

At 1st level, the die almost never saves you. You are the Lesser. At 10th, half the street moves. At 20th, nineteen scenes in twenty never reach the foyer. You do not earn experience for work the household — or the weave — already completed. Privilege is insulation, not practice.

This is why the art dropped the helmet. If the die is working, nothing will hit you in the head. Society is the armor. When society is late, the universe puts on the apron. The trench coat is not protection. It is a statement that protection would be vulgar. Full plate is what you put on the footman you send into the cellar. The Betters stay in the foyer and explain, at length, why this was never going to be their problem.

“Have the groundskeeper put it with the others.”
“We don’t do cellars.”
“If it had been important, it would have written first.”
“The ward can see itself out.”

When the die fails, the lowest-level character at the table goes downstairs. The coat stays on the peg. That is the entire class system. The cover already told you who was going to stay pretty. You just have to survive nineteen levels of looking like that before the world agrees.

Modern design treats 20th level like a victory lap and a second binder of options. Gaslamps & Lessers treats it like a membership card you spend the whole game earning while dressed for the portrait. The dungeon is still under the parish. Early on, you go. Later, you simply stop. The owlbear can wait. Someone in a helmet will take care of it. If not, the magic will.

It knows better than to keep you waiting.

Game Pitch: Grimdark Cozy

The gnomes decided they had enough.

Not enough grain. Not enough tithe. Enough of the story that said the Cozy Lands were a place you lived. Dark magic took the warrens first — not as a thunderclap, but as a ledger that started balancing in blood. They took the Chaos Gods the way a miller takes a better stone: because the old gods paid in seasons and the new ones paid in endings. Black hoods. Black iron. A theology with no harvest festival left in it. They did not conquer the meadows so much as close the book on them.

They rule the Cozy Lands with an iron fist. Every mouse-kin, mole-kin, sparrow-kin, and hedgehog with a sewing-needle spear lives in that shadow. The cottages still look like the picture books. The smoke still smells like bread. That is the joke the gnomes allow. Cute is a costume the parish leaves on the livestock so the livestock keep reporting to market.

You play an animal-kin of your choosing. Fighter is the one who gets better at hitting. Specialist is the skill kit. Magic is a loaded acorn — someone will regret the season it was planted. You are small, armed like a folk tale, and visible. The gnomes are not a class. They are the state. They watch the holes, the fords, the chapel steps, the path that used to be a picnic. A pass for the road. A fine for unlicensed burrowing. Stocks for a word said wrong in the square. Witchcraft charges for anyone who found a ring and was foolish enough to wear it.

The wolves are not a random encounter. They are the forest’s tax collectors, and they do not take coin. When an animal-kin vanishes between the hedge and the burrow, the gnomes write it down as weather. When the gnomes want a lesson, they do not need wolves. They have wood, iron, and a crowd that would rather see a stranger in the stocks than a cousin.

This is not a game about saving the Cozy Lands. The Cozy Lands already lost and kept the paint. You are what still moves underneath the postcard — hungry, armed, and one bad night from the parish deciding you were never people.

The night does not start with a tavern speech. It starts like a crime scene that still has bunting on it.

Thistleford looks like a stitch-sampler. Round doors. Window-boxes. A painted sign of a smiling hare holding a pie. Lanterns the color of butterscotch. If you only saw the square at noon, you would swear the world had kept its promise. Night takes the same square and turns the lanterns into interrogation lamps. The pie on the sign is still there. So are the stocks. Someone small is in them. Dew on the wood. A little coat hangs on the post so it won't get mud on the embroidery. Something else wearing it could be hanging in the town square.

The gnomes do not raise their voices. That is the noir of it. A reeve in a black hood, iron polished like a church shoe, reads from a board as if he were announcing a bake sale. Tithe-cart late. Chapel bell since Tuesday. Volunteer required. Paws small enough for the grate. He smiles when he says, volunteer. The smile is the worst object in the square.

You are already in the picture. Animal-kin in travel cloaks that would be darling in a catalog. A hedgehog’s spear no longer than a knitting needle. A sparrow-kin counting seeds in a matchbox like they were rounds. Across the green, a window still has a paper heart stuck to the glass. Behind it, someone closes the shutter. Cute is what the parish leaves in the frame so the ledger can work in peace.

How the night actually begins is a choice the table makes with their feet, not their backstory.

If you go to the stocks, you get a face and a whisper and a reason that will not survive contact with a gnome court. If you go to the ford, you get the cart: painted mushrooms on the side-boards, chains under the canvas, a smell that is not jam. If you go to the chapel, you get the bell, which is still ringing, and a nave full of tiny pews, and a grate that was built for things the hymnals do not mention. If you do nothing, the square keeps being pretty, and the pretty becomes a witness statement against you by morning.

The wolves stay offstage. You may smell them on the path. The gnomes will still call it weather. The postcard will not include that part.

Noir rule for the referee: never let the cute be flavor. Let it be evidence. The ribbon on the stocks is a clue. The smiling hare on the sign is an alibi. The butterscotch lantern is how they see your hands. Every darling thing in Thistleford is either a lure, a record, or a lid. When the animal-kin pick it up, they leave prints.

You do not get a bestiary page. You get a situation that will not hold still. The gnomes watch from the steps with the patience of people who already know how the story is classified. Compliance is the dark order’s only sacrament. Curiosity is how the parish fills the next set of holes in the wood.

That is the start. Not “you all meet in a burrow.” You all meet in a crime that still thinks it is a village fete. The paint is dry. The bell is not. Someone has to move, and the moment they do, the Cozy Lands remember what the gnomes decided they had enough of.

The cottages were always going to be this sharp. We just agreed not to look at the stocks.

Do Bards Help or Hurt?

Oh, here we go.

Lots of sarcasm in this one, so be forewarned, and a lot of this is humor.

Most of this is frustration at how badly most games treat the bard. I love the class, but 90% of the bards out there flat-out suck.

The classic bard as an OSR class needs to be discussed. I have a few issues with them in modern games due to how terribly they are designed. In AD&D, the bard was the game's first "prestige class," something that needed more fleshing out. It is stuck in an appendix, making the entire class a "who cares?" sort of addition, like a thought piece in Dragon magazine.

The trouble begins in AD&D 2nd Edition when they are made a magic-using thief subclass with spell casting, NPC manipulation, and party buffs. They could replace thieves or wizards and be highly useful in roleplay situations. They began to get healing spells in 3rd edition when Wizards started changing the game for the worse. Casting them as a magic-using rogue sets up the horrible place we are today.

What are they?

AD&D did them wrong by making them a prestige 'jack of all trades' class when they really needed to be their own thing. They did a little of everything and have stayed the same since.

But then again, is bard just a profession elevated to a class for no good reason? I could make all the same arguments about the blacksmith and how that is a front-line dungeon class that buffs armor, repairs it in the middle of battle, and can fix a broken shield on the spot (for all those Pathfinder 2 players who constantly complain about the rules breaking their shields). We need the blacksmith class now! They are also roleplay experts for bare-chested male dwarven types! Taking them away ruins the game for me!

The chef too! We need a front-line foodie class! How am I supposed to play a fantasy game without someone in the front rank preparing the dishes and foods we love that give us combat bonuses during battles? The chef and their magic frypan, throwing pepper in enemies' noses, making them sneeze, and floating plates of delicious foods in front of our fighters to give them fortitude and combat bonuses! This is not a real fantasy game without our battle chefs! I won't play it!

I started something here, but I don't care. The game designers, divorced from reality, ruin their games with stupid ideas. It is part of the grift used to sell you new books with ideas that are 100% dumb, but now you feel you need them to have a 'complete' game. Stupid is contagious.

I won't play 5E again until I take a battle chef class!

Subclass a battle barista in there, too, while you are at it, because that Wizard's adventure was not brave and did not go far enough. I need a party barista for my dungeon adventures, giving me designer coffee blends every turn.

Where's the Kickstarter?

Just imagine all the AI art!

4E and then 5E compound the bard issue with specialized diplomacy (4E) and persuasion (5E) skills. Now, a CHR class is trained in this skill and is incentivized to min-max CHR - and have mental power-like spells. The concept and design are horribly lopsided toward "screwing with minds" and little else, with a few +1 party buffs tossed in there or strange inspiration gimmick mechanics.

Bards? Here, take all the roleplay! Hide spells in your music so nobody knows! By default, 4E and 5E hand the entire social pillar of the game to bards and give every other class the roleplaying bag of rocks.

Dungeon utility? What more do you want? We gave you all the role-playing! Be like a thief and have a half-caster class. There. Now, be quiet and waste most of the game session time in town while everyone at the table gets to watch. Everyone knows fighters and clerics can't role-play!

My massive issue with bards is they monopolize roleplay. Everyone should feel they are good at roleplay, and to give one class mechanical benefits to roleplay through specialized charisma skills few other classes may be proficient in is unfair. We end up with a character class that doesn't excel at healing, casting, thieving, or much else when in a dungeon - and steals all the roleplay like a dry sponge when in town.

It attracts a specific player who wants to constantly be in the limelight and the center of attention. Classic dungeon games are more about a team working together. A bard in a town setting is like the hacker in the Shadowrun game, waiting for the entire session to take over the game while everyone else waits for the town part and the particular class hijinks (bard or hacker) to be over. Most of the time, they aren't in the limelight and suck at everything.

Bards have never been done well. Some games pass them off as a Viking "skald" type class, but that doesn't fit most high fantasy games. What use are they in a dungeon? Music is noise, and in old-school games - noise is terrible. Even Shadowdark sidesteps the bard (though there is one on an expansion card), not wanting to offer a less-than-ideal choice for new players.

I like bards a lot, but how they are implemented is a mixture of half-classes, trash MMO mechanics, and appealing to roleplay divas. They excel in towns and take vital "dungeon time" away from the party with solo play as everyone waits, adopting the hacker class problem. They outshine everyone in a town adventure (except maybe the rogue).

I am still looking for an old-school bard that works well. The one in B/X Options looks weak, but when you read the description of the bardic songs, they basically get a charm person spell, sleep, protection from evil, or shield for all within earshot. And it lasts as long as the bard can play uninterrupted after 1 round.

You could hit 50-200 people with a charm person spell or sleep at level one.

You were all wonderful! Thank you, and good night! Good night, literally. I put all of you to sleep. The thief will be by shortly to collect the admission fee. If you have a problem with that, please ask the members of yesterday's performance who are still charmed.

In 5E, it is a video game; they just use party buff mechanics from MMOs and do not care about noise or old-school play. They invent this floating, magic, gotcha mechanic of bardic inspiration. It is just a reroll gimmick and has little to do with what bards do. Do you mean everyone hears the music, and only one is inspired? Or does one person somehow remember a song?

I can see why Dragonslayer did not include bards; the designer said he did not want them in the game. In a classic, old-school game, they would be a distraction to the classic style of dungeon crawling play that focuses more on mapping, sneaking, and avoiding fights in underground spaces where monsters lurk about. You don't go in "guns blazing" in these rules, just like you don't in Shadowdark - and avoiding fights and denying letting the referee roll for anything is the key to success.

We are trying to be quiet down here.

Would you stop playing that damn lute?

I can always mod them (B/X Options); it is my game, but I am keenly aware of the problems they bring to the table, and they open up single players to monopolize one part of the game, burning up time the group could be playing together, and sideline everyone until the silly part where only one player has fun is over.

If I really wanted to, I could give everyone a "profession pick" like leatherworker, blacksmith, miner, woodworker, and add bard to that list - and just give a flat +2 to any roll using the profession. There would not be a "magic" or "automatic charm" effect; it would just be for making dice rolls regarding that profession when determining a task outcome. So, any class could be "the bard, " which would not prevent others from roleplaying and feeling like they can contribute. Someone who knows their blacksmithing could convince a fellow smith of something far better than someone screaming and trying to play music over the constant hammering.

In some games focusing on dungeons, the bard should be a profession, not a class.

It is like trying to take "armorers" and force them into a dungeon party role by giving them the ability to buff armor in the short term and make instant repairs. Then they need defensive magic and get a half-caster class on top of all these odd abilities. Nobody asked, "Do they belong down here in the first place?"

What role do they serve in a dungeon?

But a part of the game is built around them now! You will break the party balance! Who is going to buff armor in a group? I would rub my eyes and tell them old-school games never needed someone wandering around the battlefield with armor patches, duct tape, and protection buffs. People who know nothing about medieval combat try to create a fantasy game, and they go straight for the video game mechanics.

A design that monopolizes social interactions and "makes them the best" sucks. While bards and their players may not be toxic, the game design of the class, as we know it today, is weak and can lead to one player hogging the limelight and an entire pillar of the game. Don't get me started on the disgusting bard memes that paint bards as sex workers. The less said about that, the better.

Everyone should feel like they can roleplay and have fun in town and social situations.

And we don't need to equate "music is magic" in every fantasy game. If it is, some cultures would start banning music because it would seen as witchcraft. Playing a song would instantly raise suspicion. The "hidden magic" of a piece of music becomes "obvious casting" and possible mental manipulation. Bards without "magic music" are likely more powerful than those with "obvious magic music" since they need to be craftier and more sneaky about what they are trying to do.

Once bards have magic music, everyone knows their game. Getting a lute out is like waving a magic wand around. Once someone starts singing, they are probably casting a spell. The world isn't stupid.

I don't have this problem in GURPS. Everyone can buy social skills to have a smooth-talking thief and a noble and suave fighter. They aren't, by default, given to one class as a skill monopoly with a class ability score as a double buff. Advantages and disadvantages - available to everyone - level the playing field.

Bards are better in GURPS since there are dozens of instruments and musical styles to specialize in, along with history and research skills. You could play a game with "adventuring Mozart," going around, dunging to find lost musical compositions, writing and selling music books, and playing in competitions from town to town.

Also, mentalist bard powers at low levels are quite often resisted. You need to work at these charm spells to make them worth anything, which takes time and precious character points. In the late game, you will be powerful, but you will need to earn it the hard way in a deadly set of rules.

Bards also have specialized musical spell lists in Dungeon Fantasy, where many effects are sound or charm-based. You aren't stealing other class's spells and can be a bard who blasts enemies through walls with the power of a rock guitar.

GURPS is so much better for bard and music-based games. You get the social skills and musical powers you want. Other characters can outshine you in roleplay in many ways. You need to be innovative and spend wisely to do well. You can dive into history and lost compositions. You can compete with other bards with differing musical skills and knowledge in contests. You could be a tribal musician with magic drums of power. A magical piano player. A lute-based sound mage. A magic flute playing piper. A dwarf with magic bagpipes. A dancer of any type or style.

Or a rapper, even.

Your magic can work off those art forms, and you can create special effects.

You don't suck, either. You are cool. Yes, you belong in a specific campaign, but if you want to play that - go right ahead.

I can also set up ground rules when my GURPS game starts, like, "This is going to be a dungeon game;  we are doing mostly tactical hex-combat; there is little need for social skills." Or I can run an all-social game with light combat and let players know they will need to wheel-and-deal, charm, and socialize in many situations where getting the trust of factions is critical to survival.

The Wizards of the Coast bard (3E to 5.5E) can cause problems in a game. The monopolization of social skills and CHR to one class leads to "one person being the best role player" due to a game's built-in design bias. It leads to situations in towns where the rest of the party sits around, and one player does all the talking.

It can also lead to a focus in the game shifting away from dungeons and towards social roleplay. Very few B/X and classic class designs are designed to do city roleplay well - it is not that important, or are social interactions gamified. Putting one class in here that is the expert at all roleplaying can lead to a situation where 5 people designed for dungeon crawling are waiting for the one person best at socializing to finish up in town "for everyone."