Old Game Notebook

As part of my ongoing struggle to keep Skirmisher HQ/my home office under control, I have decided that it is time to do something with the hundreds of pages of handwritten game rules, ideas, and other content that I have been compiling for decades. Some of this material, in fact, goes back more than 30 years, to when my friend George and I were developing our "Skirmish Wargaming Rules." And, when I began playing D&D in 1982, the notebooks, index cards, and scraps of paper with notes and stats increased exponentially. Some of that material has ended up in one form or another in various Skirmisher products, of course, but much of it has sat fallow for many years. So, with an eye to getting some fresh use out of it, I will be incrementally posting it here -- and then disposing of the hardcopy originals. Material will be presented in the order I discover or feel like keying it in. And I reserve the right to correct misspellings and add punctuation and the like!
 
*Permanent Potions
1) Throwback: Gives +1 to Strength and Con, -1 to Int, Wis, Cha.
2) Control: Allows control of certain type of creature (use Undead Matrix). Failed control makes creatures attack controller. (From a notepad that includes notes for "The Desert Campaign," possibly from the early 1990s.)
 
* Devouts of Earth: +2 on saves also vs. mineral poisons, such as volcanic gas or arsenic. -2 for Devouts of Air. (From a notebook probably dating to around 1989 or 1990, this is clearly addenda to an "Elemental Devotion" system I was working on at the time.)
 
* Card deck, used for divinations. Infinite number of cards. All are archetypal themes, and intuitively known to a practiced oracle. Four main suits (swords, stars, staves, cups), but actually no limit to the number; items from other suits may turn up when appropriate. For example, the "5 of Pearls" might appear in a certain context. Other Major Trumps: The Four Horsemen (one card or four?); Warfare (J.M.'s card); The Beast (Winter?). (This was with a number of other items in a memo pad that dated to 1993 or earlier. What is most striking to me is its similarity to a magic item I just created last month for our home D&D game! I am not sure about everything I was talking about above but some of it will be of use in the continued development of the newer item, which we are calling the Deck of Fortune).
 
* Spoof Names: Brodog Van-Nike, Kremora (This was in the afore-mentioned 20-year-old memo pad. Interestingly, it predates our Nuisances sourcebook, which was rife with parodic twists, by at least 11 years.)
 
* Spell: Memory. Can allow illusions to exactly reproduce maps, models, etc. (This was in the afore-mentioned memo pad.)
 
* Iron Lamp with silver chasing lettering. When burning, add +5% to summonings and bindings. 1 Pt = 1 hour. 4 Pts. (On a 3x5 slip of paper with a pencil illustration of an Aladdin-style lamp. Presumably for use with Call of Cthulhu but also adaptable to our own Cthulhu Live. Probably from 1985-1989.)
 
* 10th-Level Spells
Greater Wish
Delayed Blast Meteor Swarm
Summon Monster X
Improved Energy Drain
Immortality
Power Word Kill, Mass
Doomsday Machine
Time Travel
(Obviously for D&D, probably v.3.5, and probably from 2005 and somewhat tongue-in-cheek with an eye to including it in an expanded version of our Nuisances sourcebook. Italics added here in keeping with prevailing style.)