Rumours - Delivery Methods & A Request for Help

[Hey, finally a post where I actually can sort of talk about something from a position of knowledge (well, sort of; see below) since this has actually been coming up in my games.]

[Alternative title for this post: Why is blogger so horribly American about spelling ey? or What's wrong with a few semi-superfluous 'U's ey?]

You know, I don't see a lot of people talking about Rumours, and how to give them out.

I think this is a shame. If people do talk about this; please let me know.

So I'm going to talk about Rumours, from the perspective of my group, in my game.

BACKGROUND

My group are all 5e dorks. Its what I got so its what I do. They like having a goal it seems; the whole exploring for the sake of exploration and discovery isn't quite enough to motivate them. At least, so it seems to me.

The game itself is set in the Sewer-built Undercity Labyrinth of a great semi-Utopian City; all is as good as it could ever realistically be up on the surface, all the adventure is below. The game itself is somewhere between a megadungeon and a pointcrawl, and it is very much a work-in-progress in terms of how it is even basically structured, even now.

It started off as merely a cool map I did that spread over like, 12 pages of A4 gridded paper.
Now it is a sprawling monstrosity of 100 locations (on the main layer at least, there's a smaller layer underneath, and then something else yet below that), but that's getting ahead of myself.

[Side note; this is what all artists mean when they say that you should start small, and not move on to something else until the first step is completely finished. It helps with scope, and with not being caught with your pants around your ankles when your party decide that they are going to go in a new direction today because although you've prepped like, 20 locations, they went a way you didn't expect.]

But yeah, there's a lot to do and discover; I wanted to stick more towards a sand-box-adjacent philosophy where there's no "set story". There is the undercity, there are the things going on within it, and there is a small inertia to events, but that is it.

In a game like this, Rumours are very important to provide information to your players. Informed choice is key in OSRish games, and if your players have no information, their choices mean less than nothing. This is something that only now (several months into the game) that I am really beginning to properly appreciate.

How does all this lead into rumours? Lets follow the story of my rumour system.

STAGE 0 - INTENT

So what did I want rumours to achieve? In short - I want them to inspire my players to action.

I want someone to go; I've heard X is in the neighbourhood of Y, lets pop down to Z, travel to Y and search for X before popping back home for tea and level ups.

So, in a few quick bullet points:

- They should offer semi-reliable information (such that there is room for exploration)

- There should be loads of them (such that there is room for longevity in the system)

- They should apply to everything within the megadungeon (such that the party are encouraged to actually explore it all)

- They should be relatively easy to get, but not effortless (to reinforce the second point)

And ideally:

- They should be somehow rooted in the game world in a meaningful way

STAGE 1 - RUMOURS BY BACKGROUND

Character backgrounds are one of the nicer features of 5e, and my original system was that there would be a list of rumours, divided up by a list of tags, that would be applied to each background.
Tags would be stuff like, Occult, Artisan, History, etc; and each background would have like, three or four tags, and each tag would have six or so rumours tied thematically to it.

E.g. the sage would hear occult rumours about the Wizardly population of the undercity, whilst the criminal might hear Criminal rumours about its less savoury inhabitants.

It was a nice idea, but fiddly in execution.

I wanted the distribution to be nice and neat, where no tag would be used more or less than other tags, and each tag would have its own unique list of rumours, and it would never work neatly enough. I suspect that this could work quite well if you set out your own list of backgrounds, built from the ground up to support this system; but another problem was that the content of the game itself interfered too. It didn't want to divide neatly either. I couldn't make enough criminal content compared to wizardly content for example, because it didn't quite fit the balance of flavour I wanted for the game.

If you could be a little less anal about it than me it could probably work out just fine tbh. I rate it Potentially Salvageable/10.

In the story of the campaign itself though, this is the system we began play with, and while I think it still sort of might hold up for new characters (not that anyone dies in 5e anyway), it quickly ran into a new problem; getting new rumours through play. Enter...

STAGE 2 - RUMOURS BY TYPE

I came up with kind of archetypes of things my players might like to know about, which I then boiled down to three categories of rumour; Challenges (things to be overcome like monsters and trials), Treasures (things to pillage and steal) and Mysteries (things to be solved or discovered). I divided up the whole megadungeon into these categories (sort of) and made a rough, d100 list of rumours. In the end, I made it up so that there were as many Challenge rumours as there were Mysteries and Treasure rumours, and they were semi-sub-divided again by area of the megadungeon, with larger subareas getting more rumours overall. There were a few spots I had vacant so I filled those up with broadly applicable rumours.

This worked somewhat okay for a while; I still had the issue where the environment somewhat resisted being carved up nicely like the system would have preferred, but I finally could cover just about everything I wanted, and I even had a neat little bit where each class had its own preferences of rumours; e.g. fighters were more likely to hear about challenges, wizards about mysteries, rogues about treasures, bards had no preferences and heard about everything equally, etc.

This bit I actually think works quite well overall, and tentatively recommend as a framework for rumours if it sounds cool. It would be quite easy to add categories and tweak the proportions between each category.

It also made it pretty easy to have lists by type of rumour, and by area of the dungeon. I rate it Just A Little Longer In The Oven, But Just A Little/10.

BUT

Now came my first Big Issue

BIG ISSUE 1 - HOW MUCH INFORMATION IS IN A GOOD RUMOUR?

I'm still kind of noodling through this one, but I think my big lesson is that

TOO MUCH INFORMATION IS PROBABLY NOT A BAD THING.

Well, there's a balance to it of course, but here's the evolution of my rumours actually as written;

- Thing literally exists.

- Thing exists, with a little bit of context, but not quite enough to really be useful.

- Thing exists, with a bit more information, and a name of the place it is, without any context

Obviously, the above don't meet the paradigm of informed choice. Knowing something exists will only prepare you to not be surprised when you meet it. You need more context that that.

Because here's the thing, it is very easy to try and hide information for cool reveals. Its an easy pit to fall into, but I still think its a pitfall. As I said earlier, if the players can't make an informed decision, they aren't actually deciding anything.

Its all well and good that they know that there are 6 patron gods of the sewers, but what use is that information if they don't have the context to apply it in?

What good is it to know that a group of paladins went down into the sewers and were never seen again, if that's literally all you know?

The best reaction you could hope to get out of the above situation is that you bump into the paladins and are like, oh, cool, those are those paladins. That's not cool. That's just, DM masturbation at best and literally nothing at worst.

So yeah, you need to give more information, but you can't give up the whole thing either of course , because uncovering mysteries is an exciting thing to do.

Now, in my next iteration of rumours, I want to really lean into this, and really push how much information I provide. Roughly speaking, in each rumour I want to; explain what the thing is, what the lure about it is, and roughly where it is, in relation to places that are already known, or have partially abstracted directions included.

It is at this point that I realise I have no framework to work off of. I actually have very few books that offer good rumours to reference - if you know any, please let me know!

I feel like of the few books I have, many of the rumours are limited to just 'factoids' about the setting, rather than useful information. Sure, having only interesting information might be a bit much, but I feel like when most of your rumours are pieces of setting information that the players ought to know merely by existing, something isn't quite right.

THUS, I DO DECLARE THERE TO BE THREE TYPES OF RUMOUR - FACTOIDS, SECRETS, AND HOOKS

It should be pretty self-explanatory, but here's roughly what they mean;

Factoids - setting information that has no real effect on play.

Secrets - gameable information about world elements, such as monster weaknesses, or the location of a secret passage

Hooks - rumours that inspire action, through the lure of something the party want, or an event they might want to be a part of

Note, the main difference between a Secret and a Hook is that only the Hook causes party action. At best, a Secret could enable it, but would only ever be applied to something that the party already want to do/solve.

Personally, I think the emphasis should be on the latter two types of rumour.

So, my next big problem, for which I don't have a smooth segue;

BIG PROBLEM 2 - PLAYERS DON'T WANT TO SPEND TIME ON RUMOURS

Now, this is a bit more specific to my campaign, but it is still a reasonably applicable lesson I think.

My Downtime system goes roughly as such; a "full rest" is a week long, and alongside resting you get a daytime action, and an evening action to spend on activities (somewhat analgous to 5e's main and bonus actions in combat). One activity you could spend your time on is "Gathering Rumours". Guess how many times people did that? 

Out of four or five players doing this six or seven times? 

Maybe once. There was just always something better or more exciting. Now, in a regular game, perhaps your system is a bit less chunky, so that players could afford to spend a little time doing this then you'll probably be fine. Here though, I really want my players to have a variety of rumours to chase and follow, but when it comes down to researching new spells, and new rumours; even I'd pick new spells every time. At the very least you could just pick a tunnel and go. You don't need rumours. 

But you sort of do for the best experience.

Here is the lesson I guess; If you want players to have access to something, don't make it cost something that could be used on something more exciting.

Revelationary, I know. I'll accept my Nobel Prize next Friday.

So here's how I solve this; (hopefully, this has yet to be deployed but I think it will at least achieve my goals. Betterment can happen later.) 

Every time the party go back to town to rest, they get a rumour or maybe 2. They can still spend their downtime on extra rumours as before, but they don't have to now.

Here's the catch; rumours also come with a source, that determines how truthful/useful the rumour given might be. Most of the time rumours will be at least mostly useful and truthful. But you never know for sure, unless you spend some of your time verifying the rumour.

That's it.

Now, I do think there might be room for "factoid" type rumours, but they should be a minority, or find-out-able without cost. potentially there could even be Secrets and Hooks disguised as factoids. Not the other way round though I think, what's the point in providing a sign-post to nothing?

Secrets and Hooks should be the most common type of rumour by far, and the ones that you put the majority of effort into, and should probably cost something for more than a basic stipend of Hooks, but hey oh. This post is getting long enough as it is. 

Next time; How do I even make a good rumour 'ey?

[Spoiler: I still don't actually know]

Further [Dungeonpunk]ing - Encumbrance (and a bit on skills)

I continue to through Untested Brain-Matter-Produce at the wall. One day I will have a play-test to see if any of it stuck.

I think there will be two types of encumbrance, physical, and mental/emotional.

Inventory

Physical encumbrance works much like you might expect.

You have Inventory slots equal to (or maybe equal to X + half of) your Condition score (a hybrid mix of strength and constitution).

Some of your Inventory (depending on your Precision (a score which is about half of dexterity, the other half being the reflex score)) is Fast Inventory, which only takes a round to access, rather than a minute. Some items, like bandoleers, make more of your Inventory Fast.  

These are filled by your items, mostly. It is assumed that each item takes up 1 slot for the most part. A sword is 1 slot, as is a shield, as is a spell-book.

Some items might have the property Small (x) which means that many items can fit into a slot. For example, daggers are Small (2), 2 daggers fit in a slot.

Some items might have the property Large (x) which means they take up that many slots. For example, a Greatsword has Large (2), you need 2 slots to hold it.

Armour can take up a lot of slots, but that's the price you pay for protection.

Inventory can also be filled by special things, like water if you decide to go swimming, or a Curse of Burdens.

Most commonly, the two things you don't want to get into your Inventory are Exhaustion and Wounds.

Exhaustion you gain by, well... exerting yourself. You can get rid of it through resting, one slot's worth a day.

Wounds are a bit harder to rid yourself of. They fill up slots when you take massive damage, or something like that. They provide a penalty to Condition rolls, and take a Week's rest to remove. Particularly vicious wounds may even be permanent.

Memory

Memory is mostly much like Physical Inventory, but for your brain.

It is harder to change, in terms of putting things in there, and taking them out. Usually it takes a week's studying to do so.

You have slots (or X + plus half of) your Knowledge score (which is rebranded Intelligence).

Some of your Memory slots are Core (depending on your Insight score (which is what Wisdom wants to be, but is also only about half of Wisdom, the other half going into the Will score)) which means that you can stack up similar memories, most notably Skills.

Things that go into your Memory Slots are things like:

- Weapon or Skill proficiencies (with a further note on these later)

- A Wizard's Magical Traditions

- Memorised spells (ideally, this gets Wizards to haul spellbooks around with them and cast spells from books, which takes a bit longer, but means you don't have to go through the lengthy memorisation process)

- A Fighter's Fighting Styles

For example.

You don't have to put things like "What the king told us to do" in a memory slot, but if you do, it would help you never, ever forget it I guess.

A key thing about Memory is that skills are sort of, grouped into similar types of skill, which can be grouped together to give a big bonus; Medicine for example, could get a bonus made up of Surgery, Anti-Toxins, Wound-Care, etc. Each one of these skills takes up its own slot.

Core slots can be used to group Skills of the same group into one slot. This is the best way to become an expert at something, otherwise the cranial-real-estate cost gets too much.

It works the same way with specialising in weapons.

Hopefully this means that you can't become a total master of everything ever, and you have to rely on your team/hirelings to help you out with other things. Maybe.

Oh, right, there are also other things you don't want filling your Memory Slots; notably Strain and Trauma.

Strain is the mental equivalent of Exhaustion. Wizards get it sometimes when they fluff up spell-casting.

Trauma you get for seeing fucked-up shit. It gives a penalty to your Knowledge until you go to Therapy.

Mind-Flayers will happily gobble up your memory slots probably.

Not quite such an exciting one here, but its important. I want it to be easy to use, otherwise you never will. I also want it to be flexible, such that you can use it for all sorts. Particularly Memory slots (though I claim no credit for their inception, I know other people have come up with it before but damned if I can remember any :c so it goes) are a cool thing, I hope they work out.

[Dungeonpunk] - Ritual Spellcasting and Wizard Traditions theory-post

[As with the last couple of recent posts, I am doing my teeny-tiny bit to make the OSR a better place, in principle. This is an idea straight from the brain-noggin, there has been no play-testing for this what-so-ever.]

So I was thinking about how to make rituals good for Dungeonpunks, and I think where I ended up lead to some cool thinkings; lets dive in.

Background

So briefly, Dungeonpunks is ripping off borrowing from the GLOG for the basic magic system, which if you aren't familiar (but who isn't?) Magic User's get a number of magic die to cast spells, which take their potency from the number of dice rolled, and/or the total of all the die, which are exhausted if they display 5 or more. There are a few more wrinkles, but that's the gist of a very cool, flexible system.

Rituals

Firstly, what should rituals do? Here are the two things that I'm thinking of:

- They can be used to make spells more reliable, and
- They can be used to make spells more powerful than normally possible

Just like how some systems (such as Dungeonpunks eventually...) let you increase the chances of, or even guarantee success if you take more time, the same I think, applies with rituals. The more resources you put in, the safer/greater the results, and with rituals you have a chance to put in more and different resources than Magic Die.

Here's the rough shape of my thoughts for the system:

Rituals are spells, but they aren't directly fueled by Magic Die. You must have at least as many available Magic Die as the level of the ritual you want to cast, but you don't roll them. You can add extra magic die through other methods however.

A 1 Die ritual takes 10 minutes to perform.
A 2 Dice ritual takes 1 Hour to perform.
A 3 Dice ritual takes 1 Day to perform.
A 4 Dice ritual takes 1 Week to perform.
For each extra Die of effect, add an additional week to the casting time.

The following benefits can be applied to rituals to add additional casting die to the rituals' effect:
- Full wizard regalia, requires an inventory slot for each casting die that the ritual with have in total.
- Use of the rituals' key components (more on these later)
- An elaborate ritual space (probably equivalent to owning/building a medium sized dwelling)

The intent of these extra modifiers is to limit the use of these essentially "free" rituals within the dungeon-crawl environment, or other time-limited situations. You can still use them, but its other factors that you'll then need to think about.
[Designer's note: depending on how it works in play, its possible the additional requirements could add die without increasing the casting time, we'll see if its interesting to haul around a bundle of wizard-clothes and components to get "extra" magic die with extra limitations.]

Magical Traditions

Now, my actually cool idea; using the holes in the above theory to add to magic's "groundedness".

I like the idea of using physical components to spells, but as they are they kind of suck, in 5e at least and especially. Part of their problem is that its too fiddly to remember them all without extensive notes, and to actually use them often is lots of book-keeping.

This second problem is sort of solved by limiting it to ritual-casting, thus they are a choice that need to be weighed, is it worth giving up an inventory slot for a more powerful ritual?
But the first problem is more complicated, and this is my solution;

Spells are divided into "Magical Traditions" that all share a common list of components.

This hopefully means that there are only a few components that will ever need to be used, and since any combination of components from the tradition can be used, there should always be choices.
For particularly potent rituals, you could even demand a specific component if you wanted to.

For extra effect, I think the classic "5 W Questions" could be used to make an interesting list. For example;

The Tradition of Vexillor;

Who: A Chorus of Caged Song-Birds
What: A Rose carved from Ruby or Diamond
Where: In the centre of a Stone Circle
When: At Midnight
How: In complete Darkness

There will be a list of guidelines and probably a few tables of examples to demonstrate the principles of making one.
So far I think the guidelines are something along these lines:
Two entries should be relatively common or easy to come across (Midnight happens every day, and its easy enough to make your space really dark). Perhaps 100gp of expenditure or so.
Two entries should require some effort to achieve (There are (or should be) plenty of Stone Circles around, but they are never quite accessible as you might like, and the logistics of collecting a Chorus of Song-Birds in a medieval environment could be a bit of a challenge.) Maybe 1,000gp to gain.
One entry should be pretty hard to achieve, or even unique (a Ruby Rose could be quite a challenge to produce indeed) At least 10,000gp to get.

An further example;

The Tradition of Seutonius;

Who: With a circle of 6 other acolytes (Rare)
What: A sprig of fresh Wolfsbane (Common)
Where: Atop the Divine Mountain (Very Rare)
When: During the New Moon (Rare)
How: Whilst burning expensive incense (Common)

These are a few ways I can think of to use this system:
- Characterise a wizard and the way they cast their spells with their own spell-list and set of components to make it worthwhile to learn from a variety of wizards, particularly if you are somewhat restrictive of the way Wizards can learn new spells.
- To tie together a set of spells thematically; as in these spells are in a tradition because they share a common set of components, either because the spells are intimately related, or because the wizard who created them had that set of components easily accessible, which both have their own set of uses.
- To provide an incentive to encourage players to keep themselves themed without offering other abilities (as awesome as the glut of GLOG wizard schools are, they do add a certain pathfinder-ishness to the game again, and I am fully guilty of contributing to this of course).

You could even further distinguish between the types of spell-casting; maybe wizard "colleges" have quite straight-forward spell lists and more easily accessible components, and then the more esoteric traditions have rarer components, but better spell-lists, for example. Its a pretty flexible system I think.

It also is flexible in the way you want to engage with it; you can either entirely randomly generate it if you like, or you can put in lots of effort to create bespoke wizard traditions, even a bit of both perhaps.

I sort of envision a set of wizard tradition card-play aids, where the outside is decorated like a spell book, and the inside is dedicated to the spell-list and the components, maybe with a section for fluff for the tradition.

I think its a cool idea, I just hope it works in practice!

[Further idea that I came up with as I come to the end of typing this up and can't find a good place to insert somewhere else:
You can use these traditions to tie a new wizard to a new place, or reflect where they began to learn. If they aren't learning from a specific tradition then they get a half-filled in tradition spell list, and are missing two of their components. As they learn new spells, they can fill in the gaps of their tradition, and create a tradition of their very own.]

Armour, Dodge, Parry

[In accordance with making the OSR a better place principles, this is an idea straight from the brain-noggin, there has been no play-testing for this what-so-ever.]

Here's a weird one, mostly from dark souls and such-like.

In dark souls combat scenarios, there are 3 main ways of reacting to damage:

- Tanking it with crazy armour, which reduces it down to manageable amounts
- Dodge roll through it which avoids all damage
- Parry the attack, which not only negates the attack, it also (usually) grants an opportunity to counter attack.

Amour is the most reliable method (as you don't need to actually do anything), though at higher levels it makes dodging attacks harder.
Dodging is the middle of the road in terms of skill, with relatively low risk for the chance to avoid all the damage of an attack.
Parrying is the hardest (and the riskiest) as you forfeit all chance to avoid damage, unless the parry is successful, which also gives you the chance to deal massive damage.

This trifecta of damage avoidance seems pretty cool to me, and is rife with interesting choices, without being over-complicated in the game.

If we wanted to port it over to our RPGs of choice, it isn't quite so simple unfortunately.

Parrying and dodging attacks require knowledge of enemy patterns and good timing on those actions, which obviously doesn't translate well at all.
Armour doesn't quite match DnD style games either, which is a shame.

I think we can make it work though.

We now have three numbers to track in combat in regards to defence (gasp, that's more than one! will it work? no idea).

You have your Dodge Rating, which is tied to reflex/dexterity. This functions like AC in DnD-likes. If an enemy attack roll is under your Dodge Rating, you take no damage.

You have your Armour Rating, which is tied strictly to your equipment. This is damage reduction; the better the armour, the more is subtracted from incoming damage, down to a minimum of 1. Your Armour Rating is also subtracted from your Dodge Rating, or something to that effect.

Finally, you have your Parry Rating, which is tied to your weapon skill. If the natural result of the enemy attack roll is equal to or less than your Parry Rating, they deal no damage, and your deal damage to them, as if you had hit them.

There is something to be said about having "active defence" rolls for things like dodging and parrying. There is also something to be said about keeping rolls down to a minimum, which is what I have gone for here. Hopefully its simple enough that its not going to be overly tricky in play.

It would probably also necessitate smaller numbers that regular DnD-likes, as anyone wearing armour takes less damage all the time if they are hit, but that'll come out in testing I think.

It also opens the door for more interesting "defensive actions". 5e's dodge is all fine and dandy, and LotFP and such's "defensive stance" or whatever it was called is also fine, but with 3 defence types, we can get more funky.

Withstand; forfeit all Dodge Rating, double your Armour Rating.

Dodge; forfeit all Parry Rating, enemy attacks have disadvantage.

Set-up Parry; forfeit all Dodge Rating, double your Parry Rating.

Its a shame I can't quite justify having a nice little defence triangle where each different action forfeited a different defence rating, but we live in an imperfect world, and that's why we can't have nice things.

I like that it seems that each action will be more or less useful depending on your set-up, and the situation, I suspect that much of the time, one will be better, but none will be terrible, and they'll all get their chance to shine.

Hopefully. We'll see I suppose.

The Seclusium of Time the Wizard

Time the Wizard never mastered the magics of chronology, the Inevitable would not let him. He cast many spells that mangled cause and effect, and made the current flow backwards for a while, and he snatched extra moments out of the march of minutes here and there. The effects are disconcerting, and his tower was twisted and warped because of his works. As he aged, he grappled with causality less and less, and let his desires outgrow his restraint eventually only when he died many years from now. These days in the present, he still lives, lost deep within the inwards-facing confines of his tower.
He has not been seen in some time. Many think he is dead.

Adventure Overview

The Tower of Time the Wizard is a chronologically damaged dungeon. Within it, there exist three seperate versions of the Tower, the Tower as it is now in the Present, the Tower as it existed when Time successfully cast his first Chronomancy Spell in the past, and the Tower in the future, on the last day that Time ever cast a Chronomancy Spell. Needless to say, the map differs, significantly in some places, depending on the time period you visit in. Sometimes guards are more potent, sometimes they are less.
Oh, and the Paradoxes you cause simply by being there are anathema to the Inevitable, who will try to kill you out of time and space.

Paradoxes, how to have already resolved them, and you 

For the most part, ignore the whole bloody thing, except for these rules:
1 - If you destroy a guardian in one time period, it is destroyed in more advanced time periods.
If you have already interacted with it/them in those advanced time periods, this still stands as part of your paradoxical time-stream. This is what pisses the Inevitable off, that you can achieve this.
2 - If you take an item, you can only take the earliest advanced version with you. You can see early versions of objects you have, but once you take them, the elder version disappears entirely.
For example, you take Time the Wizard's spellbook from the future, where he was weak and frail, and his spellbook bulging with knowledge. You go to the distant past, and kill Time there too, and take his spellbook from there, were it is slim, and mostly full of experimentations. The elder spellbook fades and vanishes, and when you go to back to the present, Time is again dead, and the Spellbook he should have had (and you indeed saw earlier) is gone.
3 - You can never find yourselves, time flows constantly through the tears such that if you spend five minutes in the future, then return to the present, 5 minutes has passed in the present as well.
4 - You can only leave the tower in the present, as the Time-fields that contain your paradoxes end at the door. You can try and leave, but you could only manage it by magic, and even then a flood of Inevitables would quickly isolate you and obliterate you.

Inhabitants of the Tower

Time the Wizard 

The man himself, the very picture of the classic mad mage; frizzy hair, wild eyes, and yet a deep sagacity visible only shallowly beneath the weight of years. Would very much like to know what you are doing in his bloody house, and wants to get on with his studies. Time is not his name of course, but due to an accident involving his own mother, he never actually got a proper name.
In the past, Time's power is at its peak, though he in inexperienced, reckless, and proud.
In the present, Time is crafty, and knows much about his craft. He is careful, considered, and crafty.
In the future, Time's power has run its course for the most part, though he is still somewhat potent. His greatest power is the vast amounts of wisdom he now has, and the vast amount of preparations he has had time to create. He is tired, curious, and even friendly, though the old storm-clouds of rage can still be stoked up within.

Thesean Eternals

One of Time's most successful experimental creations (from a execution stand-point, if not a practicality stand-point), these servitor-golems exist in exactly the same state in all possible time-states, once the final enchantment is wrought. The unfortunate side effect is that many of them simply underwent catastrophic existence failure as soon as they were activated, due to some mysterious doom in their future that destroyed them simultaneously in all time-states. Some survived, and serve Time as menial labour, and occasionally as intruder disposal. Not even Time quite understands how they work, as some spontaneously collapse of no readily apparent cause.
In game, what is done to a Thesean Eternal is reflected across all three time-states; if you put a flower-wreath on its head in the future, when you go to the present, the Eternal will still be wearing the wreath. If you kill it in the future, it is dead in all three time-states.

Chronomatic Golems

The most complex of Time's creations, the Chrono-Golems utilise Time's magics directly, though only as a power-source. They have a field of time energy surrounding them, which they can direct outwards, and slow the actions of things around them, or polarise it and direct it inwards, speeding itself up significantly. The only thing is, if you break their time-core, it explodes, and that would be bad.
In the past, the Golem's power-sources are unperfected, and have a 1 in 3 chance of not working each turn.
In the present, the Golems are at the height of their repair.
In the future, the Golems are slowly desolating under the weight of ages, and take damage when they polarise their time-fields.
Results of the Time-Explosion
1 - Unstuck in time! Catapulted back a zone (or to the future if you're in the past).
2 - Un-aged! Reduce your age by d6 years, and forget that many things (such as spells, secrets, skills etc.)
3 - Attracts the attention of the Inevitable, also is a big explosion.
4 - Births a time-spirit, who gives you a Crystalised Moment for your trouble, then leaves, mysteriously.
5 - Aged! Increase your age by d6 years, and lose a point from that many stats from the shock.
6 - Unstuck in time! Catapulted forward a zone (or to the past if you're in the future)

Wicker-Men

Servants of Time even before he mastered time magic, they are spirits bound heavily within cages of living wood, resentfulness slowly mellowing into indifference, all the while forced to obey the commands of their captor.
In the past, the Wicker-Men are still green and verdant, and have half their normal hit die.
In the present, the Wicker-Men are mature and strong, and have their normal hit die.
In the future, the Wicker-Men are gnarled and twisted, and have double their normal hit die.

The Guardian Drake

It entered a contract with the wizard, in return for a steady supply of Arcanite, that precious crystal, it would guard Time's innermost sanctum. It was never all that invested in its job, as Time never had a steady supply of its payment.
In the past, the Drake is young and small, but fierce in its duty.
In the present, the Drake is larger and mature, but much more mellow in its responsibilities.
In the future, the Drake is gone, and has left behind a small clutch of eggs.

The Inevitable

A terrifying thing, a manifestation of the Time-Stream itself, detached from time to follow paradox-makers, such as the party, where-ever they go. Something like a humanoid, only built of angular, polyhedral metal-ish shapes, balancing on needle-thin feet, and stabbing forward with clusters of needle-sharp fingers. It acts like the party, in that it follows the same rules about traversing time-states. It will pursue the party doggedly as long as they remain within the tower, chasing them between time-streams.

Treasures of the Tower

Time's Spellbook

The most obvious of any list of valuable things held by a wizard, Time's matches his development through the subtle arts. 

In the past, the spellbook is rough and scrawled, full of much experimentation and little success. 

In the present, much of it has been consolidated into useful magic and practical theory. 

It is in the future, however, that the book's potential is fully realised, though the book itself is a veritable motley riot of pages and replacements. Its wisdom is most elucidated of the three accessible versions.

Time's Arcanite Supply

Through his many years, Time did battle with many other wizards, and over time came into quite the collection of Arcanite.

</sidenote> Arcanite is massively valuable, and it is what a wizard's bones become as they cast magic. They crystalise into magically potent Arcanite, and it can be used to store and release large amounts of magical energy. Eventually, the entire skeleton can crystalise, though this is rare for many reasons, not least of which is unscrupulous wizards like Time. </end sidenote>

He used much of it to pay of his Drake, and also to fuel his experiments into Time Magic, much of which can only be achieved with vast amounts of the stuff. 

In the past, it is still small, Time's scraps and battles are yet to come.

In the present, the supply is at its largest retrievable state.

In the future, the Drake consumed most of it already, and has left only meagre scraps.

Time's Staff

The real deal, though it only became that way later on, and due to the powerful time-magics involved, it became that way in all points of time, which surprised Time somewhat, as it was quite a mundane stick, until he picked it up and it spontaneously became an instrument of obscene magical power.

Its user can apply a time-effect to any spell they cast, such as sending it into the future, effectively having a magic spell at their beck and call to summon instantly from the past. A wizard could also call forth a spell from the future, though they would then have to cast it in the future to send back, or else face the consequences of an unfulfilled paradox.

Davidi's Witnesses

A painting of vast skill and value, Time's first Chronological outing was to steal it from Davidi's workshop even as it dried as a lark. The lost Davidi has been sought for many years, and the search has pretty much dried up in the present day. Perhaps unintuitively, the value of the painting actually decreases based on the time-period it is taken from, as modern art-scholars will doubt its authenticity due to the warpings of age.

The Tree of Rubies

A bit of a departure for Time, before his obsession with time, he created a tree which grew rubies. Much to his annoyance, the tree adopted some of the tectonic life-cycle of the stones it grew, and would take a life-time to mature, by which point his interest in the stones had thoroughly cooled.

In the past, the tree is still immature, and has only a small yield,

In the present, the tree is at is height, and has a great yield of jewels.

In the future, the tree is wizened and old, and its yield is in between the past and the present.

Time's Alchemical Laboratory

A life-time's collection, full of every and any kind of glass, furnace, distillery, rack, chemical, cooler, and other such trinket of science, eventually.

In the past, the set is still somewhat amateur.

In the present, the set is quite professional.

It is in the future that the set becomes exhaustively complete.

Other Features of the Tower

Crystalised Moments

One of Time's more useful creations, he stole little motes of time from other places and bound them, screaming and fighting, into little soluble tablets, that can be swallowed to allow someone to take twice the normal actions for a minute or so, though the paradox has to solve itself later, by stealing that minute back at some point.
When does that minute manifest?
1 - In your sleep, when it isn't important at all.
2 - When you next fall more than 20 feet, about 10 foot from the bottom.
3 - In the next combat, after your first turn (you are however, utterly impervious to any damage)
4 - In the middle of the next important conversation you have outside the tower (with all the awkwardness that will surely entail)
5 - The next time you take a saving throw, in the moment before you must make the save (which could also save you from the thing you needed to save against, maybe).
6 - In the next situation that requires you to help someone else urgently.

The Chrono-Vault

A powerful piece of arcano-engineering, though Time himself never really quite appreciated his achievement in its creation. It is unstuck in time, existing perpetually in a state of continuity, no matter what time-stream you are in. In-fact, its benefits can only be reaped by time-travellers, as the contents of the Chrono-Vault are matched to your personal time-line, no matter when you access it, the contents are the same relative to the last time you opened it, regardless of when that actually is.

The Twists in Time

These are how you move between time-zones. 

Red ones blossom outwards in brilliant rings, and carry you one step forward into the future, and thus only appear in the past and the present.

Blue ones collapse inwards endlessly, and carry you one step back into the past, and thus only appear in the present and the future.

The Saturnium

It was the first real clock ever built, about the size of a train, its faces are about 30 feet across. Not made, note, but built; and it is one-hundred percent accurate. 

It is so accurate in fact, that if you were to alter it, the very mechanisms of time itself would judder, so deep are the Saturnium's roots into the fabric of being. The gods would be pissed, if they weren't already dead. In fact, you can't move the Saturnium without a force that can also alter the fabric of time itself already. Its hands are somewhat inscrutable, but can offer great forecasts of a great many things, and also function (roughly) like immovable rods.

The Lightning-Cage

When Time ran out of Arcanite to both fuel his experiments and feed his drake, he stole a spirit of lightning and bound it in a cage it could never escape, to leach off its energy. It is not around in the past, but in the present, it is very tired, and wants to be freed. Doing so would wreck a good portion of the tower, and that is infact what has destroyed a chunk of it in the future, when Time's conscience finally caught up with him.

Time's Hidden Moment

A moment in time, stolen out from causality, when Time was truly happy. Its up to the DM what the nature of this moment is, but in this room, that moment lives eternally, unknowingly, undisturbable and serene. Over time, Time spent less and less time here. It just made him sad eventually.

Disguises and Fancy Duds

AC is pretty good right?
We can use this in more ways than we thought.

A thief asks to make a disguise to do... whatever. How much time and effort and gold is he going to put into this disguise? A few hours and roughly  enough gold to buy some chain mail? Right, the DC on seeing through his disguise is now 16.

Here's how I'd do it, given that this is completely untested.

Take the table of prices for armour.

For each chunk of time (1 hour, 4 hours, 1 day, whatever is most appropriate) you move up a rung towards plate mail.
If you pay enough gold for your rung's equivalent armour, you can keep it as your disguise DC. If you don't pay, move down rungs; one if you pay more than half, two if you pay less than half. Move up rungs depending on your disguise skill, if that's something your game has.
The rung you end up on is your equivalent disguise armour.
You can use the stats exactly as written.

Why is it so heavy? Eh, clothes are heavy sometimes, but I also I think it could represent the kinds of "empty spaces" in clothes that are expected for your disguises. You wouldn't expect a priest/noble/beggar's clothes to be bulging with loot/equipment.
Why would it give you disadvantage on stealth (if that is a thing your armour does)? Same kind of reason, the clothes you need to wear might be heavy, or dingly, or otherwise not helpful for sneaking in.
Why does it mean you have disadvantage against shocking grasp spells? Okay, look smart-arse, why don't you put some thought into it and apply your common sense instead?

We could also easily apply this to Fancy Clothes too. Fanciness is a protection (or insulation at least) against a good few things sometimes, especially if parties are a thing your uh... party go to.

A good disguise/set of fancy duds could be as valuable as armour in certain games. It could be a money sink for people who don't need plate mail. And I think it adds something to the discussion of "What do you mean I can't wear my owl-bear-stained plate armour to see the king? Why do I need to look good for nobles?" and also the "What do you mean I can't immediately disguise myself as an archbishop in ten minutes with only a set of face paint and bravado?"

Though that last one does actually sound like it can only end well.