Lavender Hack: Tarantula Hawk Wasp Edition

Heretical Ambitions!

They’ll certainly kill you if you ever show up back at the manor house. But you have no intention of going back. Who wants to barely survive, serving every sadistic whim of some wealthy asshole? Not you.

They say there are devils out there. Things that will suck the lifeforce right out of you and leave you as a drooling husk. Devils? Maybe. Or maybe they spin lies to trap you. Maybe you can learn new things from those so-called devils, and return to lay all these bastards low. Won’t that be nice.

Or, maybe you’ll be ripped apart or poisoned or fall in a pit. Better than spending one more second here.

What is This?

Lavender Hack is a grand strategy fantasy role-playing game of mismanaged party resources, rapidly dwindling time, diplomatic incidents, magical mishaps, starving in the wilds, running out of light in the dungeon, facing mutiny on the high sea, and going broke in service to your character’s wild ambitions!

How Does it Work?

The core mechanic in Lavender Hack is a d20 test, with weak successes on an 8+, strong successes on an 18+, fumbles on a natural 1, and criticals on a natural 20. From this core, procedures are built which feature four shared company resources, each represented by a usage die: food, light, gear, and fellowship. These resources can be used to add to tests in a variety of ways, at the risk of using more of that resource.

What’s in the Book?

• Classes – Rules for the strong, wise, and deft, flexible palettes upon which to build many character concepts
• Wilderness Exploration – Lavender Hack is very well suited for hexcrawls, with a clean exploration core using days broken up into six watches, and roles like guides and scouts
• Ocean Exploration – Players take on the roles of captain, quartermaster, cook, and bosuns while dealing with weather and a restless crew
• Naval Warfare – Rules for ship-to-ship and ship-to-kraken combat
• Factions – Rules for adding cultural depth to intelligent folk like dwarves and orcs
• Court – A diplomatic procedure for trading and interacting with factions out in the wilds
• Dungeon Exploration – Dwindling light and soul sucking despair are just as big of hazards as the terrible monsters
• Combat – Combat rules avoid fights to the death by featuring morale and degrading armor
• Retainers – It’s better not to go it alone, even with the extra cost
• Downtime – Buy, sell, craft, train, research, carouse, and get robbed back in town
• Spells – Twenty spells, each with their own unique results for criticals, strong successes, weak successes, and fumbles
• Artifacts – Magical items use a patience die that dwindles if you don't fulfill their desires 
• Monsters – Includes the dire tarantula hawkwasp, which has a painful sting