My Current Rules for Adventuring in Fantasy Worlds

Into the Odd is basically OD&D with house rules. 

So here's my house rules of these house rules.

STATS

Roll 3d6 in order for STR, DEX & WIL, assuming you are Human. If not:

• Dwarves & Half-Orcs roll d12+6 for STR, 2d6 for DEX

• Hobbits roll d12+6 for DEX, 2d6 for STR

• Elves & Gnomes roll d12+6 for DEX & WIL, 2d6 for STR

• Ogres & Sentient Apes roll d6+12 for STR, 2d6 for DEX & WIL

EQUIPMENT AND OR BACKGROUND

Roll 3d6 and get a Pack from Necropraxis or Somewhere Appropriate (or negociate with the Ref)

Your background defines what kind of skills you've picked up in your life, obvious stuff.

You can carry significant items up to your STR. If you carry more than that, you're Deprived.

If you carry more than two Bulky items, you're Deprived.

ABOUT WEAPONS

• One-handed weapons (including slings) deal d6 damage.

• Two-handed weapons (including bows & crossbows) deal d8 damage.

• Ancient Firearms deal d10 damage.

When you roll 1 damage, make a Luck Roll.

On a 1, something terrible happens.

Ex: Haans fires his Blunderbuss at a charging Goat-Person and rolls a 1. He rolls another 1 for the Luck Roll, so his weapon blows up in a deflagration of gunpowder, inflicting d12 damage to him and the Goat-Person. If he had rolled a 2-3 on the luck roll, the weapon would have "misfired", inflicting no damage.

ABOUT ARMOR

• Heavy Metal Armor reduces damage taken by 1 and is Bulky.

• Serious Shields also reduce damage taken by 1 and are Bulky.

• If you're also on a Horse, reduce damage taken by 1.

• Leather, Fur, Hides etc. will protect you against the elements better than city clothes.

HARDCORE CRITICAL DAMAGE

Vanilla Into the Odd is fair and forgiving. I am already that, to an extent, the game doesn't have to.

Instead of dying only from being left unattended for an hour after taking Critical Damage, characters bleed out 1 STR per minute (that's a turn in natural language), dying at 0 STR.

In addition, losing STR means being wounded, so wounds will be described and recorded, with any special effects worked out with the Referee and Player.

CONDITIONS

Being Deprived drops you to 0HP until you have a Short Rest and stop carrying too much (or eat if you were starving, drink if dehydrated, warm up if freezing, etc.)

Infections happen. It's assumed the post-fight ten minutes break (aka Short Rest) that gives your HP back involves some first aid. The thing is, first aid in the middle ages isn't necessarily going to cut it. Thus, make a Luck Roll during the night after suffering STR loss. On a 1, it's infected and you don't rest that night, plus you wake up Deprived. If you got wounded in the sewers or some similarly nasty place (like a dungeon!), it gets infected on a 1-2, or even maybe a 1-3 depending on the situation. From this point on, lose 1 STR every night unless you recover naturally (6 on the nightly Luck Roll) or you get skilled medical help (having a Plague-Doctor, Physician or Barber-Surgeon deal with the first aid nullifies the risk of infection in the first place, by the way).

VANCIAN MAGIC or, SPELLS ARE POKEMONS

• Novice Wizards can hold one spell in their head. Each reputation level mean an additional spell can be held - so a Master Wizard can hold five spells, which fits with the stuff found in DE.

• Pass a WIL save to understand a recorded spell - if you fail, you'll have to wait until you gain a reputation level to try again. Keep that spell safe in the mean time.

• All spells are recorded in some sort of physical artifact - a book, a foci, a tatoo, etc.

• All spells are unique. There is only one instance of the Plasmic Key to be found in the world.

The only way you'll get to cast that spell is if you take it from its owner and jam it in your brain.

• Eating a Wizard's brain allows you to memorize whatever he had in mind, regardless of usual level limits. You'll feel bloated and suffer cluster headaches as long as you hold too many spells.

• In this situation, you can attempt to force a spell outside your head into a physical artifact so that you can memorize it again later, but that requires a ritual and a WIL save to succeed (on a failure, the spell is freed and can do whatever it wants, usually discharging its effect on whoever's around and leaving for a better plane of existence).

• You can use Wonders & Wickedness, and I also recommend Marvels & Malisons, for a list of cool spells that are more-or-less system-neutral and really good, or you can man up and write the spells yourself, like a true OSR übermensch.

CHAOS MAGIC - the Warhammer 2E kind, not the Alan Moore kind.

• Novice Wizards get a casting dice (d6), and gain another one per reputation level.

• To cast magic, roll as many casting dice as you want and beat the TN the Ref gives you.

• Here's the trick: every 6 you roll explodes (roll again and keep adding until you stop rolling 6s), and every 6 means rolling on a "Perils of the Warp" kind of table. 

A lesser effect for one 6, and more major stuff as the 6s increase in number. Easy enough.

• Again, you don't really need a list, just follow common sense and whichever Wizard School you come from should give thematic guidance. Or you could use the WFRP 2E lists. 

Or rattlemayne's Tales of Absolute Doom.

SANITY-BLASTING HORRORS
Characters take Sanity Damage (d4 - d6 - d8 - d10 - d12) when it makes sense. As they grow more jaded, less and less things should affect them (a veteran won't roll more than d4 when faced with a gruesome yet "mundane" scene of carnage). These damages stick to a character, haunting their dreams and memories unless they drown them in alcohol or drugs (partaking heavily during downtime allows to shake off d12 Sanity Damage, but on a Luck Roll of 1-2, you're addicted), wanton pleasures (same idea, but you risk diseases) and any other coping mechanisms you can think of. Needless to say, there is no such thing as "Therapy" in the Dark Ages.
Once a character has accumulated Sanity Damage equal to their WIL, two things happen:
• They gain an Insanity (or Mutation, if appropriate - the Corruption of Chaos takes many shapes)
• They reset Sanity Damage to 1 (not zero).
Every time Sanity Damage is reset, the minimum increases by 1, and if a character eventually reaches a minimum of SAN Damage equal to their WIL, they have finally gone stark raving mad and are removed from play in some grotesquely gothic manner.

HOUSE RULES IN STASIS - not sure what to make of these, so they're here.

• Not sure whether to use WIL, CHA or MOX (Moxie) for the third, mental stat. Probably MOX: it sounds less serious and feels like it covers both WIL & CHA for me, without the baggage of Charisma or blandness of Will.

• I'm also not sure how I feel about how to gain HP. I'm fine with the vanilla Into the Odd method, and I like to have Scars from Electric Bastionland as it gives a special meaning to reaching exactly 0HP, so I'll probably go with a mix of these - scars don't grant extra HP, but they're still here, making combat a lil' bit nastier.
• 11/04 EDIT: Bleeding out sounds fun on paper but it's really tedious to keep track of.
Favorite stat names so far: GUTS, NERVES & MOXY (with a Y).