I don't have anything to contribute, I just want to point out that I'm really liking the series. It's quite evocative spin of both fairy tales and hexcrawl, and it's actually quite uncanny how well they mix and complement each other. Looking forward for more.

Quote from: Dr. Ink'n'stain;862418I don't have anything to contribute, I just want to point out that I'm really liking the series. It's quite evocative spin of both fairy tales and hexcrawl, and it's actually quite uncanny how well they mix and complement each other. Looking forward for more.

Thanks, will tey to keep up the good work.

Fairy Tale 16: Herr Fix-It-Up

Cute little story. Discharged soldier gets a job as a servant for a king who sends him off to win a princess for him. On the way to the princess he helps songbirds, fish and crows (the crows by feeding them his horse which really made me think of Odin symbolism).

When he gets there the king gives him tasks to win the princess. The songbirds help him gather every poppy seeds in a field, the fish help him retrieve a ring from the ocean and the crows blind a rampaging unicorn so that when it attacks him he can let it charge and get its horn stuck in a tree.

Then the princess gets delivered and the ex-soldier delivers her to his boss and gets made prime minister as a reward.

Pretty predictable except I though the guy would marry the princess himself.

What can we get from this one? Well "kill the rampaging unicorn" that is "causing a lot of damage" seems to be right at home in D&D hex-clearng domain play. To maintain and spread Lawful hexes into Neutral land kings would have to do that sort of thing.

But let`s look at the animals...

Elric Writ Small

I`ve touched on this topic before but let`s try to develop it fully here.

People being nice to animals and getting favors in return happens all the time in fairy tales. The first instinct would be to handle this the same as any other act of negotiation but the sort of relationship that gets described here seems like much more of a magical pact.

As I`ve said before, it`s Elric writ small. Elric does magic by summoning extra-planar beings of great power who owe him favors and this guy does magic by summoning fish who owe him favors. Same difference.

To make this work rules-wise you need to account for players summoning fish a dozen times over a campaign not once in a single story tale so setting up a complete favor accounting system with every damn species of animal would be a huge pain in the ass. Here`s how I`d do it:

Animal summoning is Neutral magic just like the sacraments are Lawful magic and demon-binding (which`d work just like spell memorization in game terms) is Chaos magic. To get access to one kind of magic you need to spend a Proficiency. You can still be nice to animals without magic but calling on them at will to help you needs magic.

Once you have that Proficiency if you fulfill a certain animal's Desire while standing in a Neutral hex you have a Pact with that species that you can record on your character sheet. Desires can be quite specific. Crows want your horse not some fucking bread. Having been a dick to that species in the past or having a Pact with a species that animal hates keeps you from forming a Pact (goats aren`t going to help any wolf-friend).

Once the Pact is established to can call on that animal. The simplest way to do that is use a material component that is a token of what the animal wants and spend a free spell slot (used on the fly like a 3ed sorcerer not memorized ahead of time, to clarify a caster could sink some slots into stuff like demon binding and then leave some free for Pact magic). This would summon that animal and get them to help. Higher level characters could get animals to show up in weirder places or have more of them show up.

If you have no material component (maybe some meat for the crows not a horse every time you summon them) the animals will help you one last time but that dissolves the Pact. Some animals will agree to defered payment but will drive a hard bargain.

Summonng an animal for help is the most common use of Pact magic but it can do other things too. Soon we`ll see that summoning a fish lets you cast freaking Wish and animals could help you in less direct ways. Maybe your wolf friend will have you a spare wolf skin that lets you go were one time, maybe birds talk to the wind for you and let you float down from the tower, maybe the deer can tap its hooves and bring forth water from a rock. Get creative. Would have to make a list of sample effects but also be creative, if the players are willing to send the spell slots run with the crazy ideas they have...

Pact magic would also work for Neutral supernatural creatures but getting a Pact with them would be a lot harder than feeding them your horse.

Finally, throwing the animals you summon into fights as cannon fodder is possible but usually dumb as that`s a good way to get your Pact dissolved (and re-establishing them is HARD) umless of course you summon them to fight something that those animals really hate. Summoned cats have no problem laying down their lives to help you fight were-rats, but if you the hundred cats you summoned on the bandits that are chasing you and get half of them killed then catkind will be pissed at you.

Again this would be interesting to use without teaching players any of the rules, especially with kids. Have a common encounter be an animal in need of help (to establish Pacts) and then have animals lurking about when the PCs are in a bind to plant the idea of summoning them.

For just talking to animals that`s pretty easy in Neutral hexes. Might cost a proficiency in Lawful ones. Animals n Chaotic hexes might be too fucked up to communicate with.

Up next: The White Snake

I really like the Hex Event idea you have. Would the players actually be looking at a hexcrawl map and seeing where they are?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;862511I really like the Hex Event idea you have. Would the players actually be looking at a hexcrawl map and seeing where they are?

Nope. One of the main points of the system would be to make fairie hexes very hard to map as the landmarks don`t stay put and distances change. Trying to model dream logic with rules is hard so random events work as a substitute.

This would make following paths and having guides very important as if you stick to them you`ll always get where you`re going.

Some hexes people coukd stumble into wouldn`t even be on the map, places like east of the east wind.

Fairy Tale Limit Breaks

In honor of the release of Exalted 3, let's convert Exalted-style limit breaks to fairy tale characters.

Fairy tale characters are driven by their Desires, which always bubble close to the surface. But what happens when a Desire dies? What if your greatest Desire is to protect someone who has just died or to claim an apple from a tree that has just been chopped down?

When faced with a Desire that has become impossible to fulfill, characters must make a Saving Throw vs. Anguish or suffer one of a variety of afflictions:
-Burst heart.
-Murderous rampage.
-Cry until you have no more tears. Such tears may consist of gemstones.
etc.

Having something with the useful Iron heart band installation proficiency may be useful in such situations in order to keep your heart from bursting.

Aside from Anguish what else would be appropriate D&D saving throws?

Fairy Tale 17: the White Snake


This seems to be a variant of the last one.

A king gets served from a covered platter every day and nobody knows what he's eating. So a servant takes a peek and sees that the king is being served a white snake so he eats some and gets the ability to understand animals.

Meanwhile the queen is pissed because she lost her ring but the servant hears a duck complaining about the ring it ate so he has that one killed and retrieves the ring.

After being rewarded he sets off into the world. Along the road he helps ants, fish and crows (again, crows love eating horse) before finding a princess who he can marry if he performs some strange tasks but he'll die like all the other suitors if he fails.

He uses the animals he helps to perform these tasks (ants retrieve seeds, fish retrieve ring and crows get an apple from the tree of life) so he gets married and lives happily every after.

Shorts comments:
-Lot of the same stuff as last time, which kind of reinforces their importance. Especially that crows love eating horses.
-Again with tasks that need to be accomplished to wed a princess. In order to run a fairy tale kingdom you can't be a level 0 mook and this accomplishes that. In order to marry the heir you need to be formidable and even the heir gets tested (see various stories in which the king gives his three sons a task like The Water of Life and Prince Ivan and the Firebird).
-Why do all of the failed suitors get killed? Seems kind of pointless bloodthirst. Is there any logic here? Some kind of human sacrifice?
-What's the deal with the apples of the Tree of Life. Yggdrasil? I'm remembering magic apples in Norse myth that restored youth. Then maybe the apples are from Avalon/Fortunatae Insulae:

QuoteThe island of apples which men call “The Fortunate Isle” (Insula Pomorum quae Fortunata uocatur) gets its name from the fact that it produces all things of itself; the fields there have no need of the ploughs of the farmers and all cultivation is lacking except what nature provides. Of its own accord it produces grain and grapes, and apple trees grow in its woods from the close-clipped grass. The ground of its own accord produces everything instead of merely grass, and people live there a hundred years or more. There nine sisters rule by a pleasing set of laws those who come to them from our country.

Any ideas?

Talking to Animals

There are lots of examples in fairy tales of animals talking to people but IIRC there aren't any of people eavesdropping on animals without some sort of magical help.

So animals in a Neutral hex can talk to people but usually don't want to. They will refuse to do so unless one of their Desires is on the line. Animals in Lawful hexes can't speak Common.

Also animals don't speak to each other in Common so if you want to eavesdrop on them you need to spend some proficiencies on animal languages or use magic. The magic spell used in this story seems to last for only a day (which is why the king has to eat snake every day) and allows someone to understand all animals even in Lawful hexes. A bit of an annoying spell to cast in the field unless you're carrying a bag of white snakes about.

Rings in the water

We're having female royals either losing (last story) or deliberately throwing (this one) rings into the sea very often. That must mean something. It reminds me of the old Venetian ritual of the Doge throwing a gold ring into the water to symbolically marry the sea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_of_the_Sea_ceremony Could we imagine something like that going on here? Most Lawful kingdoms would share borders with a whole lot of Neutral hexes that'd be the source of dangerous incursions unless propriated in some manner by gifts or marriage, quested in or beaten into submission. Fairy Tales meets Birthright would be a lot of fun.

Up next: The Journey of the Straw, the Coal, and the Bean

Fairy Tale 18: The Journey of the Straw, the Coal, and the Bean

This is a dumb little story about straw, coal and a bean trying to cross a river. In one version the bean falls in the water and drinks so much that he bursts and has to be sewn up which is why beans have a seam. In the other version the coal burns through the straw and then fizzles out in the water, which causes the bean to burst and be sewn up in a get a seam.

Nope, no idea whatsoever about what to do with this one.

So instead let's take what we talked about last time with Rings in the Water and make it a bit more concrete.

In fairy tales kingdoms are small collections of Lawful hexes and generally border at least a few Neutral faerie/wilderness hexes, when it comes to dealing with Neutral hexes on his borders a king must either:
-Ignore them: this causes the frontier to weaken and strange things come over from neighboring Neutral hexes. This is a bad idea as it result in bordering Lawful hexes returning to Neutrality and leaving the kingdom.
-Pacify them: go on hunting expeditions into neighboring Neutral hexes, explode and bash some heads. This secures the border but has to be done at least once a month to keep the border quiet.
-Annex them: this is a more extended affair and requires symbolically conquering a neighboring Neutral hex. This can be very direct (go there, kill dragon) or more round-about (marrying the swanmay that lives there, planting an apple of the seed of life within the sacred grove). Too much annexing can be a bad idea as that just extends your borders and gives you more headaches. It is often a good idea to try to get other people to form Lawful kingdoms around your borders and reduce your borders with faerie that way, you might even get to be High King.
-Form a pact with them: negotiate some sort of peace with neighboring bits of faerie. This can be done by throwing rings in the water each year, agreeing to give up your firstborn child, marriage alliance, or agreeing to strange and inconvenient taboos. Often pacts with powerful creatures of faerie will cover multiple hexes.

One of the benefits of being a king and queen of a hex (aside from general instinctual knowledge of what's in that hex and limited weather control ala the Jewel of Amber) is that each hex you rule gives you some sort of concrete bonus if you're the king or queen of it. For example a hex of fertile farmland might give doubled natural healing while a great mountain might give an AC bonus of one, with many stranger and esoteric examples out there as well as well as ones that change with the season, etc.

High Kings get no benefits for hexes held by subject kings.

However, if disasters befall a hex or if a hex descends into Chaos then the bonus becomes twisted. For example if the farmland becomes blighted than the quickened natural healing becomes a wasting disease and if the mountain-becomes demon haunted then the king's skin might slowly turn to stone or worse...

Because of this it is generally a good idea of for a fairy tale king to keep their kingdom relatively small. It's much easier to keep 6 hexes from getting fucked up than sixty.

In this version of D&D the more mundane aspects of running a kingdom would be mostly abstracted away pretty heavily. What would be focused on is keeping the kingdom free of supernatural corruption. Part of this would be being morally upstanding, as evil on the part of the king can corrupt the land directly.

Confucius said: “To have taken no action and yet have the empire well governed. Shun was the man! What did he do? All he did was to make himself reverent and correctly face south."

It's the same with fairy tale kings, being good in your private morals matters more than competent administration.

Up next: The Fisherman and His Wife

We've got a good run of stories coming up, four really interesting ones in a row.

Fairy Tale 19: The Fisherman and His Wife

A fisherman who lives in a piss pot (bwah?) goes fishing and catches a flounder who begs to be spared because he's a prince who has been transformed into a fish for some reason.

Wife is pissed (heh, heh) that her husband hasn't caught anything and that she has to life in a piss pot so she asks the husband to ask the fish for help.

He says a rhyme (i.e. in game terms casts a magical summoning spell) and says:
“Flounder, flounder, in the sea,
if you’re a man, then speak to me.
Though I don’t agree with my wife’s request,
I’ve come to ask it nonetheless.”

And gets the flounder to upgrade their piss pot to a hut, the wife is satisfied and later asks for a castle then a kingdom (complete with a throne of gold and diamonds), then an empire (with a three-yard diamond crown), then to be pope (with a two-mile high throne and three crowns) then to be like God. That last wish returns the husband and wife to their original piss pot.

As this progresses the water slowly turns black and then curdles then the horizon turns red then a storm starts raging.

What can we do with this one?
-Emphasizes how pacts with animals can do bigger stuff than summon cannon fodder, they can even be used to cast Wish.
-Makes me think about the sea getting progressively more fucked up as the man asks for more and more wishes? What's going on there? Anyone have an idea to interpret this one?
-Random encounter tables REALLY need to be seeded with a lot of people who have been transformed into animals.

But mostly what I makes me think about is how everyone would react to the sudden appearance of castles, palaces and two mile high papal thrones. That's some weird shit going on in the background of everyone else's life. To make a fairy tale setting seem alive it needs all kinds of weird shit happening to everyone not just the PCs. Have a castle suddenly appear in the PC's home base, and then be replaced by a palace by the end of their next adventure and have the PCs scratch their heads wondering what the hell is going on.

In fact, a good fairy tale setting needs a random event generator. Just roll for a random hex and then hit it with a random event...

Let's Make a Random Fairy Tale Event Generator

Actually, we don't have to. A bunch of Norwegians already did it for us with the updated Aarne-Thompson-Uther folktale classification system. Took all of my google-fu to find a COMPLETE listing of the classifications but I finally tracked it down here: http://www.mftd.org/

If you look at the classification there's a 2,000 tale listing (with a few missing spaces, I guess spaces for future tales Dewey Decimal System-style). Most of the listing have a short summary of the tale. Just roll against the table any time you need a random hex-level event and have it going on in the background. If one tale seems boring then roll twice and mash the tales together.

For example:
I roll 1380 and 1602.  That is:
(1380) The faithless wife: Asks God how she can fool her husband. The husband from the tree (or rafters) tells her that she can make him blind by feeding him milk-toast. The husband feigns blindness and slays the lover. The body is thrown into the river.

(1602, no story there, rounding down to 1600) The fool as murderer: The brothers put a he-goat in place of the body and thus save their brother.

OK, mashing those two together we get: there is an incredibly stupid couple and the wife wants to cheat on her husband. She asks God how to do it but the husband answers from the rafters of the house telling her to make the husband blind by feeding him milk-toast.

She does this and invites her lover over. However the lover's brothers figure out what is going on and swap him with a goat at the last minute and the husband kills the goat and thinks he has killed his wife's lover.

Then the PCs show up the next day. Yep, that works.

Up next: A Story about a Brave Tailor (the most OSR fairy tale I've ever read)

Fairy Tale 20: A Story about a Brave Tailor

I love this story, it's so damn awesome.

There was a tailor who got annoyed at all the flies that were buzzing around his apple so he smacked the with a cloth and killed seven in one blow.

Then to commemorate his glorious fly-swatting he got a suit of armor made inscribed with the words "Seven with One Stroke."

Since the armor looks badass and makes everyone think he killed seven MEN with one stroke so he gets hired on by a king which pisses off the king's other knights so they quit. This annoys the king so he wants to fire the tailor but is afraid that the tailor will kill him if he does that so he sends the tailor on a suicide mission against two invulnerable giants (with the hand of his daughter as the reward for success).

He finds the giants sleeping and throws stones and one giant when it's asleep and then at the one other one. They get in a fight and kill each other and the tailor claims all the credit.

Then the king decides to weasel out of the engagement by sending the tailor on another suicide mission: this time against a unicorn that is out damaging fish and people (fish?).

He waits until the last minute and jumps aside so the unicorn gets its horn stuck in a tree so is able to capture it. Later he captures a giant boar by letting it chase him into a forest chapel and then closing all of the doors and windows so its trapped inside.

So the tailor marries the princess and talks in his sleep about tailory things which annoys the princess so the king plans to have him kill him in his sleep but the tailor manages to bluff his way through that as well.

Then the Grimms give a second version of the same story.

This time the tailor kills twenty nine flies with one swat so he gets "twenty-nine with one stroke!" embroidered into his vest.

This time he gets in a contest of strength with a giant. The giant squeezes a rock until water comes out so the tailor disguises some cheese as a rock and squeezes that. Then they throw stones and the tailor wins by throwing a bird.

Then the giant bends down a fruit tree to get some fruit from the upper branches and invites the tailor to do the same. The taior's gets catapulted by the tree... And the story ends with the tailor trying to BS the giant because this second version is just a fragment.

What I like about this story is how much a nobody can accomplish with bluffing, blustering and trickery. The perfect inspiration for OSR characters and DMs. Players tend to enjoy wins they get by cheating far more than those they eke out from a hard fair fight.

What can we learn from this story?
-Misleading claims that are only technically true are a great way of tricking fairy tale characters.
-Fairy tale characters always massively over-react to everything. That's what makes them fun NPCs. Make this a guiding principle when running them.
-The only specific physical skill the tailor possesses is being nimble and good at dodging stuff.
-Unicorns must be gotten rid of because of the danger they pose to the kingdom's fish stocks.
-If a PC marries a princess, having his in-laws be shocked at his humble origins and decide to murder his in his sleep over it is a fun twist.

Goals

This post has got me thinking about XP rewards and advancement as this is the fairy tale in which the character is doing stuff that should most clearly provide XP. Standard D&D characters are greedy bastards who'll do anything for a bit of money. Let's see what fairy tale protagonists are after in these first twenty stories:
1. Return of golden ball.
2. Lard.
3. Survival (also royal marriage as a side reward).
4. Princess.
5. Survival.
6. Eyes.
7. Exorcism.
8. Peat.
9. Brothers (also royal marriage as a side reward).
10. Stay at an inn.
11. Escape from step-mother (also royal marriage as a side reward).
12. Royal marriage? (hard to parse this one since Rapunzel is so passive).
13. Survival (also royal marriage as a side reward).
14. Not having to spin flax.
15. Survival (with wealth as a side reward).
16. Princess (which is handed over to his master).
17. Princess.
18. Crossing a river.
19. EVERYTHING.
20. Princess.

So far and away the most common motivations for fair tale characters are simple survival and royal marriage (with the male characters actively pursuing it and the female characters getting offered it after doing other stuff).

That suggests that a standard fairy tale campaign should start with the characters being motivated by survival (due to starvation, evil step-mother, etc.). I'd probably make the starting PCs a batch of siblings since the closest thing we have to adventuring parties in this stories is siblings teaming up, with at least one of them getting a royal marriage being a good goal.

But how to make XP and advancement work in the meantime? Fairy tale protagonists are generally not that powerful so they don't need that much XP and it also doesn't really fit for them to be as focused on every bit of gold they can get their hands on as standard D&D characters. The closest thing we have to characters after money are the princess wanting her golden ball back and Hansel and Gretel looting the witch's house.

But on the other hand having an XP system based on royal marriage doesn't really work because you can usually only marry one royal. What would work instead?

For a start, saving others is important in several fairy tales so maybe an XP reward for that (with higher values for princesses etc.). Perhaps even survival XP in which PCs get XP for saving THEMSELVES from what seems to be certain death.

Not sure what else. What sort of XP system would best motivate PCs to act like fairy tale characters without being annoying or bogging the game down. Any ideas?

Up next: Cinderella

Maybe you get XP for establishing and maintaining relationships?
Marriage to a prince/princess would be one example of a relationship.
"Marriage to the sea" via throwing a ring of sufficient value into a lake would be another example of a relationship.
Making long term pacts with animals could be yet another example.

But the catch is that you lose XP if you betray your relationships.

Quote from: Cave Bear;863498Maybe you get XP for establishing and maintaining relationships?
Marriage to a prince/princess would be one example of a relationship.
"Marriage to the sea" via throwing a ring of sufficient value into a lake would be another example of a relationship.
Making long term pacts with animals could be yet another example.

But the catch is that you lose XP if you betray your relationships.

Been mulling over this since my last post. Fairy tales kind of stand be between King Arthur and Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. In Le Mort de Arthur the social hierarchy is tight, nobody really moves up and down too much. The only badass peasants are really nobles in disguise. Nobody cares too much about simple money they're more in it for reputation. They don't try to get a new position, they just try to do a really good job of the position that they're in.

In Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser they really don't pay too much attention to the social hierarchy at all. They're able to basically live outside any organized system by their own wits and are mostly after money that they then piss away. They get more powerful (a bit) but they don't really change their social position at all as the series goes on, unless I'm forgetting something.

In fairy tales, on the other hand, the social hierarchy matters. The way to win is to become royal, generally through marriage not by force like with Conan. Protagonists try really hard to better their social position (generally by PC-style cunning and trickery), they don't just ignore it like Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser or smash it under sandaled foot like Conan. Money matters a lot to fairy tale characters, but being a king is far far far better than being rich.

Also, like Cave Bear points out, relationships matter more to them than complete footloose wanderers like a lot of Appendix N characters.

So how to bake this into the reward system?

First off, remove XP for killing monsters. Combat doesn't play as much of a role in fairy tales.

Keep GP = XP. Fairy tale characters are motivated by more than just gold, but they are definitely greedy.

Put in a table of "ransom values" of how much various characters are worth if ransomed. If the PCs save people (including party members and even themselves) from capture or certain death you get XP equal to the ransom value of the people you saved. By making people "treasure" this way then GP = XP applies to them as well, so kidnapping people gives you XP but just murdering them doesn't. This is why princesses get kidnapped, not killed.

This also allows PCs to get some experience in adventures where they don't bag any treasure, this means that PCs can get to a decent level while still being poor enough for the price of, say, a horse to matter to them. I think that level not automatically conferring wealth fits with fairy tales.

What about ruling territory and relationships?

Well I thought long and hard about xp rules for those and came up with some ideas that'd work well for a Dark Ages campaign but not really for a fairy tale one. In any case I think we've already got the fairy tale value of territory and relationships covered:
-You can spend a spell slot to imbue a relationship with magical power. For example you could always know where your daughter is or make your favorite dog smarter and more loyal. That makes those relationships potentially matter a lot.
-Being a king/queen of land gives you a small boost per hex ruled (on the order of one of the weaker 3.5ed feats, but generally more interesting). Ruling a good bit of territory gives you a nice selection of bonuses along with a lot of duties. People wouldn't get to choose these boosts, each hex would provide a bonus that makes sense thematically. As noted in a previous post, if the hex that provides these bonuses becomes corrupted then so does the bonus.

Here's the stuff we've come across in the first 20 stories.

Fairy Tale Inventory

Magical Acts
-Turning people into frogs.
-Turning frogs into people by keeping your promises to said frogs.
-Taking living people to heaven.
-Spending 12 years not talking in order to break a curse.
-Making a cursed stream come out of the ground that causes people who drink it to turn into deer.
-Illusions that make someone look like someone else.
-Hugging a ghost to return it to life. Waving a sword over a ghost also seems to work.
-Crying healing blindness.
-Stoking people’s temptations/making lettuce addictive?
-Getting strawberries in winter.
-Spitting gold coins whenever you talk.
-Making someone more beautiful/ugly.
-Blessing someone with marriage to a king.
-Cursing someone by making it so clothes don’t warm them in winter.
-Cursing someone with a miserable death.
-Human ghosts possessing ducks.
-Preserving food etc. from the elements.
-Cause fear.
-Summoning birds, fish, etc. to help you and forming pacts with various species.
-Boot-based divination.

Magical Creatures
-Many, many kinds of talking animals.
-Subterranean elf.
-Gardening elf in tower.
-Three little elves in a house in a forest who have winter strawberries.
-The Virgin Mary.
-God.
-Spectral(?) black cats and dogs.
-Guilty ghost.
-Cannibalistic witches.
-Animals possessed by human ghosts.
-Wish-granting flounder.
-Unicorns that “damage fish.”
-Stupid giant brothers.
-Giants that challenge people to contests of strength.
-Scary giant boars.

Magical Items
-Vorpal knife.
-Key to the doors of heaven.
-Chimney that constantly drops skulls and other body parts.
-Annoying bed that runs around.
-Magical(?) scissors that let you cut things open without waking them up.
-Lilies that are actually your brothers so if you pick them your brothers turn to birds and stay that way unless you stop talking for 12 years.
-A white snake that if you eat it grants you the temporary ability to talk with animals.

Magical Locations
-Heaven and its many rooms.
-Harmless hats and dogs.
-Fairy’s lettuce garden.
-Cookie house.
-The Tree of Life (which has apples).

Trained Skills
-Iron heart-band installation and removal (necessary to prevent hearts from bursting with grief).
-Making your voice softer by eating chalk.
-Animal languages.
-Being nimble.

Misc Nifty Stuff
-Children being kidnapped at birth by the Virgin Mary and raised in Heaven.
-Kings constantly marrying mute girls they find in the forest.
-Serial disappearance of royal children at birth leading to accusations of cannibalism.
-Crazy kind saying that he'll kill his 12 sons if he has a daughter instead of a thirteenth son.
-Polymorphed creatures do not age.
-To break a spell you don’t need to just kill someone, you need to kill them in a way that destroys their spirit.
-The palace-industrial complex.
-Lots of inhuman monsters want to eat people, perhaps to help give them the semblance of humanity.
-The threat of starvation as a way to kick off a sandbox campaign.
-Taking three (the third time you try something you get advantage if you failed the first two times and disadvantage if you succeeded the first two times). Also applies to stuff like three brothers trying the same thing.
-Ravens really really love horse meat.
-Saving throws vs. anguish.
-Failed suitors get executed.
-Lots of rings getting thrown into the ocean for some reason.
-Incredibly ornate crowns/thrones. For example a three-yard diamond crown or a two mile high throne.
-If you hide your humble origins from your wife she’s try to get your in-laws to murder you in your sleep.

Next I'll finally hit Cinderella. I really like this version of the story, it has no fairy godmother...

Fantastically good job.

Fairy Tale 21: Cinderella

Everybody knows the story of Cinderella and a lot people know that in the "original" (not really the original, the oldest version we have has hippos and pirates in it) version the evil step-sisters get their eyes pecked out by birds.

That's why I was surprised when I came across:

Quote"Dear child, I must leave you, but when I am up in heaven, I shall look after you. Plant a little tree on my grave, and whenever you wish for something, shake it, and you'll have what you wish. And whenever you are otherwise in a predicament, then I'll send you help. Just stay good and pure."

That works so much better than the fairy godmother. I wonder why the Grimms changed it in later editions?

The tree is, of course, watered only by Cinderella's tears.

In this story the ball last for three days, so to keep Cinderella occupied on the first night her step-sisters make her sort lentils. When she cries "if only my mother knew about this!" speaking pigeons show up to help her sort them. They then invite her into their pigeon coop and she can see the ball from up there. When she tells her sisters about that they tear down the pigeon coop.

The next night she has to sort peas. The pigeons (who don't seem upset at all about their home) help her again. Then they tell her to get a dress by shaking the tree on her mother's grave. Servants and a carriage also show up (but they're not mice).

Cinderella returns the clothes when the night is done with a spell:

Quote"Shake and wobble, little tree!
Take these clothes back from me."

The third night she summons the pigeons again and gets her clothes back from the tree. On this night (not the second one for some reason) she gets told to get out by midnight.

This time the tree summons different clothes, carriage and servants (so it's golden slippers, not glass ones).

The prince is prepared. He has people stationed to watch the way out so see where Cinderella goes and paints the stairs with pitch to slow down her exit.

The ending is the standard foot-slicing bit but with the pigeons helping out saying:

Quote"Looky, look, look
at the shoe that she took.
There's blood all over, the shoe's too small.
She's not the bride that you met at the ball."

Interestingly, no eyes get pecked at the ending. So when the Grimms edited this story for later editions to make it more family friendly they ADDED that.

What can we do with this one?

Magical Effects

Pretty simple to plug in the magical effects to what I've talked about with previous stories. Cinderella can summon pigeons, clothes, carriages and servants thanks to a Pact with her mother's spirit.

As in other stories, summoning mundane animals turns out to be incredibly useful, especially when they can bad-mouth your competition. In D&D terms each act of summoning would cost a spell slot and she's restricted to only being able to cast these spells right by the tree. Being able to anchor magical effects to people you care about gives a fairy tale feeling to the magic.

Tedious Tasks

We've seen these before, tasks so tedious that the protagonists need magical help (generally animal summoning) to complete them. They seem boring but I think they're a good thing to hit PCs with as they take some cleverness to deal with. Like a lot of things in fairy tales they mingle the magical and the completely mundane.

Birds are ghosts

The pigeons in this story seem to represent Cinderella's mother's spirit and in a previous story a murdered queen came back in the form of a duck. So, birds are obviously ghosts. Keep that in mind the next time a large flock of crows settles around your characters...

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