so the other day we had our sesh and someone brought assorted cheeses as a snack, and puns ensued. I (the dm) jokingly said that for every new cheese pun the whole party heals 1 hp cuz I'm fun like that. Mind you this is a 5e game so a single hp isn't much but its still incentivizing when most of the party is at half health. My players really liked it. I really liked how it brought out that OSR feeling of "the players are clever so their characters benefit mechanically" which I don't get as much as I want because it's 5e and I haven't twisted their arms into the OSR yet.

so

I'm constantly fantasizing about running an osr style game and always in the process of frankensteining my perfect rules set that combines everything I like from a million osr systems... and I had the thought of replacing the resource cost of spells in a system like an into the odd hack or knave hack with creativity. so like if you would normally recover 1 fatigue per night (i know thats not how ITO or knave do) a character with a certain spell or feature could compose a haiku to heal two instead, or maybe a pun made at an enemies expense could deal 2 hp damage with the limitation that it can't damage str (be lethal) or in a world where magic comes from being crazy or sad (like adventure time) roleplaying being crazy or sad could recover a fatigue for a wizard type character.

sorry for the stream of consciousness typing

basically instead of paying with a spell slot or hp or fatigue for an in game magic effect the player has to do some clever wordplay relevant to the situation. the mechanical benefit would be solid but minimal since id want to make it an effect that is only limited in it's usefulness by a player's creativity.

so my question is: did someone already do this better? is there a wordplay/creative thing a player could do that would thematically fit giving a martial/combat mechanical benefit? how should I balance it? How can i use it in hacking a system like knave, synthetic dream machine, or cairn?

also general thoughts and ideas appreciated

how would you guys feel about a magic system where humans can only gain magical powers by consuming monster body parts? like to be able to shapeshift the character would need to eat a pound of werewolf or changeling flesh? or to cast fire magic they'd have to eat a fire elemental's core?

Mechanically this works off of synthetic dream machine. You pay hp for spells and each level up gains you 4hp. Spells would have a fixed minimum cost thus enforcing certain level requirements. You would gain access to certain groups of spells if you eat a corresponding monster core, like you have access to all fire spells if you eat a fire elemental core but they still have hp costs so you can't just cast fireball at level one.

Trying to make a West marches campaign and trying to figure out what I should do for a starting town. Im currently reading through keep on the borderlands but that feels like a lot to keep track of, it's really good so far tho. What should a town in a West marches campaign even have in it?