I've been reading an English translation of the original edition of Grimm's fairy tales (first volume 1812, second volume 1815) and it's some great stuff. The text is really stark without all of the flowery description I usually associate with fairy tales, a lot of stuff that got bowdlerized in the better-known later editions is intact and there are a bunch of stories that later got cut that I've never heard of before.

So I'm going to go through it and mine it for D&D content and then maybe dig up some other collections of fairy tales from before the Romantics got their hands on the genre. Let's start.

Fairy Tale 1: The Frog King, or Iron Henry

Everyone knows this story because it's the first one so everyone reads before getting bored. Girl loses golden ball down well, got gets it out, frog claims reward, girl gets grossed out but when she keeps her promise the frog changes back to a prince and:

QuoteWell, now indeed he did become her dear companion, and she cherished him as she had promised and in their delight they fell asleep together.

Stuff we can use:

Oaths

The princess wants to weasel out of her promise to the frog and the king has to constantly remind her of the importance of keeping your promises. I think that having oath breaking bring down curses on you could be a fun rule to bolt onto D&D as it appears constantly in fiction.

One way of doing that would be to have someone who has broken their oath to you be constantly within range of any magical curses you want to call down on their head. Or just have the DM smack any oath breakers with a Bestow Curse spell.

Combine this with making outright lies be easy to detect and you'd have people avoiding outright lies and broken promises but engaging in a lot of trickery and word-twisting which would be fun. Also I tend to dislike how clearly magical and mundane things are separated in a lot of RPGs and having something as simple as "I promise" have magical force blurs those lines.

Poetic Durations

What's interesting is we're never told what exactly broke the Frog King's curse or who polymorphed him into a frog, but it's pretty clearly that the princess taking care of him (especially putting him on her bed?) does it.

Think a lot of D&D magic (especially buffs and curses) could use poetic durations, in which they last until a specified event breaks them. To keep casters from just constantly saying "until the end of time" have them not get their spell slot back until the spell is broken (or the target dies) which would encourage casters to be appropriately dickish but not put impossible conditions in place.

Polymorph

Polymorph magic has long been a D&D staple but I don't think "guy who was polymorphed into an animal a few years before the PCs run into him" has been used anywhere near enough. Would be a good thing to add to wandering monster charts, as in "human polymorphed into another creature, roll again to see what the person has been polymorphed into."

Treasury

Remember reading that way way back a lot of royal treasuries were more like trophy cases than bank accounts. Sure you COULD sell them if you really needed cash but a lot of the stuff was mostly there for symbolic value to show what a badass you were. D&D could use more stuff like that and the princess's golden ball sort of fits here.

Perhaps there are a whole lot of magic items a bit like the Jewel of Judgement from Amber that are useful in and of themselves but are most useful because they can influence and empower the connection between a ruler and the land ("the king is the land and the land is the king"). If you have the golden ball it's just a shiny golden ball (like something you cast the Continuous Light spell on) but if you're a ruler it can do far far more than that, but only on the land of your own kingdom.

Iron Henry

The Frog King's servant had iron bands installed around his heart to keep it from bursting in grief after his master was turned into a frog. That's pretty damn hardcore, gotta think of a way to D&D-ize that but I'm drawing a blank. Any ideas people?

Up next: The Companionship of the Cat and Mouse

"The Mouse, the Bird and the Sausage" -- and the noobs wonder why they had a T.P.K....

Quote from: Daztur;854176Everyone knows this story because it's the first one so everyone reads before getting bored. Girl loses golden ball down well, got gets it out, frog claims reward, girl gets grossed out but when she keeps her promise the frog changes back to a prince

I liked the Muppet version.

What's the name of the book you're reading? I'd like to read something closer to the original oral tradition.
Is this the one? http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0691160597/laughing-squid-20

Quote from: Simlasa;854346What's the name of the book you're reading? I'd like to read something closer to the original oral tradition.
Is this the one? http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0691160597/laughing-squid-20

Yup that`s the one. Apparently from the comments it has some translation goofs that`d be annoying for academics but it`s great for this purpose. In the introduction the translators compare how the same story changed through various editions of the Grimm book and it`s amazing how much the Grimms larded up the straightforward oral stories with extra verbiage.

Quote from: Daztur;854176Iron Henry

The Frog King's servant had iron bands installed around his heart to keep it from bursting in grief after his master was turned into a frog. That's pretty damn hardcore, gotta think of a way to D&D-ize that but I'm drawing a blank. Any ideas people?

Not yet, but that is too good not to use. I'll have to ponder that one for a while.

QuoteThink a lot of D&D magic (especially buffs and curses) could use poetic durations, in which they last until a specified event breaks them. To keep casters from just constantly saying "until the end of time" have them not get their spell slot back until the spell is broken (or the target dies) which would encourage casters to be appropriately dickish but not put impossible conditions in place.

Neat idea!

Great thread, BTW!

Fairy Tale 2: The Companionship of Cat and Mouse

In this original edition of the Grimm stories the oral tradition is coming through really clearly. In this case we get a story that comes across exactly like one long dad-inflicted groaner joke.

In this story a cat and mouse are living together and decide to stash a jar of lard under a church altar for some reason so that they can eat it in the winter.

But the cat gets hungry and decides to start eating the fat and tells the mouse he has to go to the church for the baptism of "Skin-Off" and then "Half-Gone" and then "All-Gone." Eventually the mouse figures out that the cat is actually talking about how much of the lard he's eaten and then the cat eats the mouse.

Yeah, not the best story in the collection, but what can we do with it?

Having animals you can talk to be important is something D&D could really use more of, having the PCs stumble across random things because cats put them there would be interesting. On of my favorite D&D With Pornstars post is the one about goats: http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.kr/2014/08/and-goat-had-notable-horn-between-his.html Will hit that theme later but what this story really made we think of was:

People in Fairy Tales Don't Lie

Or at least pretty damn rarely. Sure they trick and mislead people all the time but there are surprisingly few bald-faced lies. Why not? Well for people to use really obvious half-truths like the cat in this story, it must be that people are really good at spotting outright lies.

Let's make a NWP of the sort that you see in 2ed an ACKS:

Proficiency: Know Lies.
Effect: anytime someone speaks a lie to you, you know it. No roll or declaration required, this is completely automatic. However, even the most threadbare half-truth can defeat this proficiency.

And I always thought it was unfair that NWPs has just proficiencies while you could get speciaization and mastery with weapons. So let's fix that.

Specialization: Know Lies.
Effect: you can also detect written lies and anytime anyone says something that they believe to be true but is actually false.

Mastery: Know Lies
Effect: if someone lies to you, you instinctually know the truth behind the lie.

Or something along those lines.

To meander a bit more off-topic, for me what I dislike about a lot of skill systems is the same thing I dislike about free form magic systems. Give me
Affect Normal Fires over Fire Magic: Rank 1 any day of the week and similarly I'd much rather have Know Lies (effect: you can know lies, no roll required) than Empathy Rank: Fair (effect: anything that the player can justify falling under empathy vs. a difficulty that the GM will then pull out of his ass) and for a lot of the same reasons.

I'd like to see a thief class rebuild so that they'd get Proficiencies, Masteries and Specializations as they level up they let them simply and reliably do certain narrow things without having to worry about what DC the DM is going to choose.

Up next: The Virgin Mary's Child

Fairy Tale 3: The Virgin Mary's Child

Poor woodcutter has a hard time feeding his daughter so the Virgin Mary offers to take her off his hands and takes her off to heaven. Living in heaven is awesome but you get the standard "here's the keys to twelve doors, but don't open the thirteenth" spiel and then the dumbass has to go and open the 13th door of heaven. God's behind that door and touching the holy flames turns one finger gold which makes it easy for Mary to catch the girl gold-handed.

She won't admit her fault so she gets kicked out of heaven and has the power of speech taken away with her. She then has to live in the forest where Mary found her so she gets all hungry and dirty and whatnot so of course a king stops along and marries her.

Each time she has a kid she gets another chance to repent but she doesn't so the Virgin Mary kidnaps her children and takes them to heaven. People start thinking that she's eating her kids because she can't speak to defend herself so they decide to burn her. Then she repents and gets her kids back and everything's fine.

OK, what can we do with this?

Questions, Questions
Anyone want to give a hand with any of these questions?
-Why does the idiot keep on not admitting that she opened the door until the very last possible moment?
-The girl and her three kids spent a lot of time in heaven. What effect would that have on a person? Especially one who was old enough to talk a bit and walk around before he ever set foot on Earth. That'd be a great concept for a character. In D&D terms, what effect would having your home town be heaven have on a person?
-Why does the king decided that random dirty starving mutes that he just randomly happened on in the forest are good marriage material even if they're really beautiful dirty starving mutes. What is the king thinking? This isn't a one off thing, almost the same exact thing happens a few stories later. What's the story here?

Fairy Tale Magic

Most fantasy RPGs draw a sharp line between magic and the mundane. Everything that exists in our world works exactly the same as it does in our world and then there's a layer of magic added on top of that. Fairy tales very explicitly don't work like that. A lot of the stuff that we take for granted in our world has fabulous power in fairy tales and a lot of the magic is surprisingly mundane.

In fact, we're so used to magic being stuff that humans do (I cast a spell, I make the laws of physics sit up and shut down) that a lot of fairy tale magic isn't really recognizable as magic. But at its core, it's really a lot like Elric magic: Elric doesn't really cast spells he just knows how to call on supernatural entities that owe his family favors and get shit done. The end result is the same (Elric says some words and magical shit gets done) but the internal logic is very different.

Same deal with fairy tales. Magic is all about knowing how to ask for help, not knowing how to manipulate reality. In a lot of fairy tales people do critters favors and get favors in return or get all kind of help that looks like a big fat Deux Ex Machina. But if you look at it the right way, this translates pretty easily to D&D terms. Calling on animals or supernatural helpers is basically a summoning spell and costs a spell slot to cast. Some of these summoning spells might cost material components in the form of food or help but the basic logic is the same. Therefore in D&D terms the gormless prince who gets a lot of help from beasts and the supernatural isn't a 1st level doofus who's getting a lot of gimmies from the GM, he's got a couple magic-user levels under his belt, he's just not a hermetic magic user. Instead he's really good as asking for help and knows that when you see a flock of hungry crows it's a good idea to slaughter your horse and feed it to them.

For a very fairy tale style first level spell I'd having one called Appeal which is basically opening your heart if you're desperate and asking the world for help. The fairy tale world isn't an uncaring place, it deeply cares about people and what they do, often it fucks with you but it never ignores you. This can make anything from the Virgin Mary to talking frogs to hungry trolls to whispers on the wind show up, basically something that has the potential to solve the PC's problem, if they're smart enough to take advantage of it. Then you'd tie this spell to a long random chart and seed it with stuff that has the potential to TPK the party if not handled properly. This'd be fairy tale magic in its purest form, basically setting off a big flare into the air that screams "help me" and hoping something good comes of it.

For playing with kids I'd black box this. And simply have the classes be called strong (fighter), smart (thief) and lucky (magic-user) and not tell the person with the magic user PC about the existence of spells and spell slots but have them figure out stuff for themselves and any time they express frustration or verbally call out for help (as in "crap, the trolls have caught me and are going to eat me and there's nothing I can doooooooo!") have that count as their PC casting Appeal.

Up next: Good Bowling and Card Playing

Fairy Tale 4: Good Bowling and Card Playing

Here we have the guy who has to spend three nights in a haunted castle in order to marry a princess. In other versions of this story that I've read the castle is completely harmless and the man triumphs by simply not being afraid of any of the creepy stuff. Here's it's not quite like that.

The man decides to bowl with the legs and heads that fall down the chimney and then some cats show up that are cold and want to play cards and he puts them in a vise and beats them to death. Then a bunch more cats and dogs show up and he stabs them with knife then when he goes to bed his bed runs around and eventually turns upside down but he just rides it then throws the blanket out the window so he can get out.

What can we do with this one?

The Completely Harmless Dungeon

It'd be interesting to make a completely harmless one-page dungeon. It'd be an interesting way to screwing with players, especially back to back with a Raggi negadungeon.

I'd set it up so that if players just stay calm nothing bad happens but it has dangers if they don't. For example the long-clawed creepy cats that show up really just want to play cards but will attack if the players bother them and the chimney just spits out harmless dismembered arms and legs but is dangerous if the players try to climb up it.

This sort of dungeon could get old real fast but as something short and sweet I think it has potential.

To Marry the Princess You Must...

This is the first of the many many fairy tales that have "anyone, anyone at all, can marry the princess if they only..." Don't think I've ever seen this really common trope used in D&D but it'd be an interesting alternative to launching politics-level D&D instead of the old clearing the wilderness and building a keep. But why are all the kings doing this?

One idea I had a while back was for a D&D matrilineal society where rule is passed from mother to daughter. The women are the educated ones who run the legal system, civil administration, etc. For the husbands bloodlines doesn't matter so much (it's the female one that counts) so what's needed is either a cunning or powerful husband who can run the military and keep foreign threats at bay. This society could co-opt warlords and dangerous adventurers by simply marrying them and seems a good way of maintaining social stability in a world where any random pig herd can potentially get city-leveling power within a few years.

Of course this assumes that the bulk of adventurers are male so wouldn't work in some campaigns.

Another idea that's still just half-formed in my head is this ties in somehow with "the king is land and the land is the king" magic, which I'd really like to see more of in D&D. Perhaps there are certain disturbances in the land that can only be properly dealt with by the royal family (which is connected to the land by their rule) so if someone else deals with it you have to marry them to make them royal ex post facto? Or perhaps royals are simply driven to find a spouse who's a good fit for the land, which could perhaps explain all of the "hey beautiful woman who's been living along in the forest, you can't talk but I want to marry you can make you queen!" plots (like the last one).

Black Cats and Dogs

Haunted places always seem to be full of black cats and/or dogs which might make for a more interesting entry-level undead than mindless skeletons and zombies. Plenty of myth to grab onto that hasn't really been taken advantage enough in D&D: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_dog_(ghost)

Sure there's the hell hound but those are more demonic, fire breathing and not very creepy.

Up next: The Wolf and the Seven Kids

This is a great thread idea, I loved reading the OP. Keep it up!

Fairy Tale 5: The Wolf and the Seven Kids

A more famous one this time. Goat goes out, wolf disguises itself as said goat, gets let in by her idiot children and eat them all. While sleeping off the meal, the goat then cuts open the wolf, lets the kids out and puts in stones instead. The wolf then is too heavy and falls down a well and dies.

What can we get from this one?

Magic Scissors

I really like the idea of magical items that are intended for something peaceful and then weaponized by PCs. So take the scissors from this story which can somehow cut a wolf open without waking it up. Perhaps these are magical surgical scissors which cause no pain but have a "safety" feature preventing them from doing something like just sniping the wolf's head off. The incisions it makes also heal incredibly quickly, allowing the cut in the wolf's belly to heal by the time it wakes up.

Pointless Passions

The wolf is driven by hunger by doesn't actually digest or even chew anything it eats. Similarly a dragon is consumed by greed despite never being able to spend its money on anything. If you stretch it a bit, a vampire is driven by lust without pleasure or fertility.

It seems that a good template for a monster is taking a human desire or vice and then remove the actual point of that desire so that the monster is left as a mockery of human passions.

So, if...

Lust = vampires
Gluttony = wolves
Greed = dragons

Then what are sloth, wrath, envy and pride? What sort of monster would be utterly consumed by those vices but not gain any of the normal benefits that humans get by pursuing them?

For wrath I like the idea of wrathful elves. Dante said (according to Wikipedia): that wrath is "love of justice perverted to revenge and spite."

I like the idea of elves has half-fallen angels (angels stayed loyal to God and are in Heaven, demons revolted and are in Hell while elves were neutral and were exiled to Earth, add in some apocryphal stuff about the Grigori and you're good to go).

The elves are bound to only be able to hurt humans if the humans break certain (divine?) laws. But the elves are wrathful so they love punishment for its own sake and constantly try to trick people into breaking laws so that they can then punish them and generally being rules-lawyering dicks. They also like confusing people about what the content of the laws actually are but if you're smart and careful you can generally keep the elves off you back.

Any ideas for sloth, envy or pride-based monsters?

Up next: The Nightingale and the Blindworm

Quote from: Daztur;857104Any ideas for sloth, envy or pride-based monsters?

Sloth: "Fortune knows we scorn her most when most she offers blows." -from Antony and Cleopatra, by Shakespeare
A monster that embodies sloth could be a beast that chooses to remain idle out of fear of failure, even when the possibility of failure does not exist. It would be an absurdly powerful monster with a ridiculous number of hit points and abilities that decides to lay around in bed (even though it doesn't have to sleep.)

Envy: A monster that wants what others have, even though it already has everything.

Pride: A monster with an inflated sense of worth, even though the monster has nothing of worth, or an incredibly ugly monster that spends an inordinate amount of time primping and preening.

Quote from: Daztur;857104Any ideas for sloth, envy or pride-based monsters?

The Lich King, also known as the Rotten Pharaoh, who pursued eternal life but got the bad side of the deal, would naturally envy those still living.

Quote from: Cave Bear;857127Sloth: "Fortune knows we scorn her most when most she offers blows." -from Antony and Cleopatra, by Shakespeare
A monster that embodies sloth could be a beast that chooses to remain idle out of fear of failure, even when the possibility of failure does not exist. It would be an absurdly powerful monster with a ridiculous number of hit points and abilities that decides to lay around in bed (even though it doesn't have to sleep.)

Envy: A monster that wants what others have, even though it already has everything.

Pride: A monster with an inflated sense of worth, even though the monster has nothing of worth, or an incredibly ugly monster that spends an inordinate amount of time primping and preening.

Hmmmm, any folkloric creatures of anchor those ideas to?

It's hard to make sloth threatening. Perhaps a giant whose very vast bulk is threatening?

For envy that seems draconic again but I like simple greed better for dragons. Any other critters to fill that slot?

For pride that sounds like the standard idea of hags, want to crank it up a bit so it's more threatening and scary than pathetic. Hmmmm...

Quote from: SapaInca;857249The Lich King, also known as the Rotten Pharaoh, who pursued eternal life but got the bad side of the deal, would naturally envy those still living.

Yeah, envy's a hard one because there really isn't any up-side to envy. Gluttony gets you tasty food, sloth gets your relaxation, wrath gets rid of people who annoy you but what does envy get you? And then how can we take that away while still leaving the gnawing envy?

Fairy Tale 6: The Nightingale and the Blindworm

Pretty simple little animal fable. The nightingale and the blindworm have one eye each. The nightingale one from the worm to have a matching set for a wedding and then won't give it back so the blindworm gets eternal vengeance by eating nightingale eggs.

OK, what can we do with this one?

Fairy Tale Social Combat

During the first fairy tale I touched on the importance of oaths and how important it is to keep them while in the second instead of lying to the mouse the cat uses half truths to weasel out of its promise.

So, fairy tale people don't lie. Or if they do people see through their lies easily (unless they're written down, it seems much easier to lie in writing).

Fairy tale people don't break promises. Or if they do they suffer terrible consequences for breaking their promises (as in the thousand and one stories where someone promises to not open that one door or that one box etc.).

Hitting players with those (NPCs that almost always know when they're lying and curses for oathbreaking) and you get some interesting fairy tale behavior in response. Not honesty, fuck no, but instead technically true deception and weaseling out of promises with pedantic rules lawyering. Or cursed PCs. That's very in-genre too.

I'm going to do this in my next campaign. Sounds fun. What I like most about it is that the actual content of what people say matters, right down to the exact weasely phrasing. Too often the specific content of what people say  in "social combat" gets glossed over, this brings it back into focus.

In Which I Ramble on About What's Wrong With RPG Social Mechanics

Social Combat is really a terrible term, isn't it? It frames social interaction in precisely the wrong way, as an attempt to force someone to do someone to do something they don't want by talking at them. Anyone who's been involved in an online debate knows how hard that is to do so it often feels artificial and then it leads to other problems. Either it's something that players can do to NPCs and the NPCs can't do back which just seems unfair or it's something NPCs can do to PCs which is just annoying ("nope, sorry you can't do that, the NPC convinced you not to!") and leads to annoying behavior on the part of PCs ("Oh no! Someone is TALKING TO ME! Quick! Help! Hit them with an ax before they hit me with a mind whammy!").

In response a lot of the OSR just says, "screw that" and runs things mostly freeform. Which is a good idea. No rules are better than bad rules. But often good rules are better than no rules. What would good rules for RPG social interaction be?

First reframe things. Don't think of things as a combat, think of them as haggling. It's not a "duel of wits" it's two used car salesman swapping cars and trying to get one over on the other. The PCs want an NPC to do something for them (join them, not eat them, give them information) and the NPCs want something in return (not getting killed, money, food). Most NPCs are dicks and want to drive really hard bargains. Maybe the right haggling rules could be framed around that?

I think making lying hard (NPCs are really good at detecting outright lies) and making oathbreaking risky (brings down curses on your head) would work well with social mechanics based on haggling since the PCs couldn't just promise a pack of lies each time, they'd have to be clever and you could have the same kind of cleverness on the part of the NPCs.

Then have social skills not be stuff like "diplomacy" or "bluff" but rather be things like:
-Know Lies.
-Smell Fear.
-Hear the Heart (corny name, will have to think of a better one, but the idea is that when someone talks about the one thing they desire most of all, you know that they're talking about the one thing that they desire most of all).
-Oath Pact (you're good at making two-way oaths that bring down especially nasty curses if someone breaks them outright).

Basically mostly stuff that gives you more information that helps you in social interaction rather than stuff that does your social interaction for you.

OK, then on the NPC side of things don't give them stats based on how easily they can be pushed around, give them stats based on what they want and on how badly they want it.

For example a goblin whose desires are:
-Not Being Killed.
-Being Treated With Kindness.
-Peanuts.

Is going to be a whole lot easier for PCs to manipulate than a giant king whose desires are:
-The Moon.
-Magical harps.
-The Death of Any Humans Who I Smell.

It also makes specifics matter. RPGs are always better when the specifics matter.

Perhaps as a general framework, the rules for deciding "does the NPC agree to what the PCs are telling them to do" is counting up how many of the things the NPC wants the PCs are offering them minus the number of desires the NPC would have to go against to provide what the PCs want and then as a general rule of thumb if the number is positive the NPC goes along with it. With perhaps modifiers for the PCs going really above and beyond to fulfill a desire (giving the goblin a literal building full of peanuts instead of a bag) or if what the PCs want in return is especially onerous even if it doesn't directly clash with one of the three desires.

So for example, if the PCs are dicks to the goblin it'll get its back up (conflicts with its "Being Treated With Kindness" desire) but the goblin is pretty easy to manipulate if the PCs are smart enough to pick up on clues like its stomach mumbling. With the giant PC, the PCs start in a hole because of his desire for "The Death of Any Humans Who I Smell" so they'll really have to tap dance just to get to zero and have the giant let them go in peace and simply offering the giant food or money won't cut it no matter how honey-tongued the PCs are since the giant doesn't especially want those things.

A bit skeletal now, but I think it could be pretty functional if fleshed out. Would perhaps be the sort of rule that'd work better if the PCs don't know it exists.

Up next: the Stolen Pennies.