d10 repurposed artefacts of the ancient dwarves (RPG Blog Carnival)

Vulcan Stev's Database gives us this months prompt Magic Items, the Weirdest and Best for the RPG Blog Carnival.

We have previously visited the Dwarf Roads carved by the ancient dwarves when their airship-empire buckled under the cults of the Final Star, let us now look at some more specific artefacts from their early epoch of alchemical-botanic mastery before the meat grinder of the war against the Final Star.

1. Portable Forge - 'portable' in a dwarven sense, this cunningly wrought forge-and-anvil is designed to be carried and used where needed for repairs. The forge flame should be fueled by cannisters of extracts of plants now believed extinct but it has been found that by removing the cover from the flame and feeding things into the furnace door quickly, the white-hot flame can be summoned and sustained for brief periods. The flame can burn through anything from dragon-hide to stone and the furnace itself can consume and destroy all but the most potent magical artefacts.

2. Scribing tool - intended to aid creation of artworks on the bronze bulwark doors of the dwarf roads with a tiny, very hot flame, it has been found that replacing the original fuel source with high proof alcohol and twisting the nib to its fullest extent makes a passable short range-flame thrower. Consume one bottle of high-proof alcohol or other flamable liquid to cast Burning Hands.

3. Herbal extractor - a twisting complex of pipework in a 1'x1'x6" slab. Openings on one end are intended to take herbs and concentrate them down to extracts before extruding them through a dropper. Meant to seat in a slot within a treatment bed or a medical automata, it can be act as a standalone distilling and concentrating unit. The extrustion dropper is sturdy, it is possible to spike something with it and inject them directly with whatever has been stuffed into the input hopper.

4. Eclectic Thread - a later development from the Membrane Wars, this spool of woven metallic thread allows magical devices to be bound together. Historians suppose this was for repairs but it has been found to be potent for combining any magical items and allowing them to occupy less space (combine to occupy one inventory/wearable slot) though which item triggers on use can be tricky (Spellcraft/Arcana check to get the one you want).

5. Fossil-raising staff - drag the tip firmly around a fossil or other rock-embedded object to crumble away the rock matrix. Rub the wire-bristled top across the fossil of interest and it will animate as Animate object, with HD appropriate to the size of the original creature. The only limitation is the supply of fossils and labor time to scribe out and brush over the fossils of interest - it seems to be powered by the effort of the user. Fossils remain active for a full turn of the moon after being awoken.

6. Ring of Shadowlessness - wear this ring and your shadow disappears and you become immune to any light based attack or effect where light has to fall upon you. You become difficult to see, giving bonus to visual-based stealth checks. Every day of being worn, pass a DC5 fortitude save or lose a point of constitution.

7. Navigation console - another rectangular slab 1'x1'x6" containing a whirring nested orrery- this was pulled from a transcontinental airship and will direct you to wherever you ask it to, as long as it recognises the name. Learning the lost names of ancient dwarven holds would allow it to unerringly take you there.

8. Long range voice caster - this is bronze spiral horn that can be worn over the shoulder, full of baffles and flanges that somehow magnify words spoken into it and make them clearly audible to people at great distances, regardless of what is in between. A few finger-buttons along the front edge allow the distance to be adjusted, the voice caster must be accurately pointed in the correct direction independently. Experimentation has shown that holding down all the buttons and speaking loudly creates an effect like a Shout spell, with 5d6 points of damage at 30ft. Adjusting the buttons allows the range to be increased though the damage reduces to 1d6 at 50ft.

9. Excursion block - another rectangular slab 1'x1'x6", mostly smooth sided except for gearing sockets at the back and a set of small pins in holders can be pulled out and given to folk. Twisting a knob to point at the pin-holder makes a circle filled with multicoloured metal grains display general health indicators for the person wearing the pin. These health indicators are somehow always the most relevant one at the moment - vertical descent speed, rate of blood loss, local oxygen decline rate, etc.

10. Testing Harness - a cross between a person-sized bronze octopus and a large pumpkin with three slots, this has a half-dozen articulated tentacles with manipulator claws on the end and a pristine one has clusters of optics and bristling sensors on the side. The slots are sized to take any of the 1'x1'x6" slabs above and the testing harness can then self-propel and use whatever capabilities the slab has.

All of the above can be found in the tunnels and vaults of the ancient dwarves, occassionally resting inside console panels, often amongst the scattered bones and armour of a battlesite or loose on the corpses of looters. Sages suppose that there may be complete examples of ancient dwarven airships in glaciers or at the bottom of anoxic lakes that would allow the full potential of these slabs to be revealed.

For more odd items I have two threads - the legacy of the Predator Queens with their corrupted elven tools and weapons - and the illithid artefacts both big and small from Spelljammer.

Other references:
The Final Star - Bearded Devil
Jungle Dwarves of Forgotten Gorzu - Lizardman Diaries

Shiny TTRPG links #300

Huh, 300. Well here are some more shiny links from about the internet! For even more, try last weeks set found here or the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Bloggie-nominated. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch, delinked by request.

Puzzle Dungeon shares Lair of the Lamb: One-Shot Edition

Valeria Loves gives us I was Wrong about Hirelings

Rise Up Comus shares What players want to know: 21 needed answers for session 1

Ladino's Rogue Thoughts posts Blogwagon - Be a Good Player

Today, I was... posts The Centre

Rise Up Comus writes Dungeoncrawling Advice for Players

AMONG CATS AND BOOKS shares thirty questions for sandbox campaigns

Ruckerworks writes What murder mystery writers’ ‘Fair Play Rule’ can teach D&D dungeon masters

Blog of Forlorn Encystment gives us Successful Adventures, or How to Win in AD&D

Campaign Restart #2 - Ducal House squeezes from the vice of scheduling

We managed to restart Ducal House after a seven month break - a second child-related campaign hiatus - putting it on the road to completing year seven as we hoped. The hiatus dropped on us unexpectedly early, shortly after I wrote 'Year Seven Begins' so the 149th session mentioned there was the last, we restarted with session 150.

We forecasted a six month break and would have achieved that but for the bard getting sick, so I consider that pretty reasonable adherence to plan.

Once we got things kicked off there was a fair bit of 'this was the plan we agreed back then, cannot recall why we chose that, but let us execute it rather than relitigate the whys and hows' - and so they set off via teleportation to their most northerly familiar location, the Temple of Kord upon the Plateau of Jor, then windwalked onwards from there. They spotted and messed with some harpies carrying a chest, then became ensnared in the 'Spirit Snare' (see room 47 of The Guest Stars compiled by The First Gokun for GLÅUGUST 2026.

Art of the group by the Bard

As I punched in the session numbers I was struck by how there seems to have been three eras to the campaign going by gaming intensity
Era #1 - up to session 57, where we ran an average 3.5 sessions a month, getting 20 hours of gaming in
Era #2 - across the first campaign hiatus and up to session 142, getting ~ 7 hours a month in over 2 sessions
Era #3 - from 143 to now, getting just over a game a month on average, 4.5 hours

What this means is that I need to tighten up my game style for the shape of the sessions we can expect to have or otherwise things are likely to drift in an unsatisfying manner.

Thinking back to the different game phases - the initial phase was super roleplay focussed. With lots of relationships, lots of direct 1:1 RP and direct interactions with NPCs. Chewing the scenery, interacting with everybody, splitting up, lots of spotlight shifting around and so on. This was typical for the first 57 sessions, concentrated in Thenya. That ran from start in March '20 up to July '21.

The second block was questing basically - two big cycles, what became The Dukes Last Quest and then recovering the sword of the forgotten god. The first encompassed the journey to the Plateau of Jor, negotiations with the Giants, searching for Lost Conchordia and venturing into the Temple of Annam. After a brief time back in Thenya to bury the Duke, they set off again, this time to the Land of the Dead to retrieve the artefact sword and then slay that gods last avatar with it. This was much more high impact wilderness adventuring. We skipped over the real crawl adventuring because they had access to mobility through the Spelljamming Saddle so it was mega point crawl, site to site, dropping in on whatever seemed interesting and avoiding much of the slog inbetween. That ran from August '21 to August '25.

The end of the second part was more or less after they had come back and finished tidying up - done the beach episode, took a side trip to the Moon just because and were more or less gearing up to take a swing at their next big problem. Since then until now has been gathering information and deciding a strategy to go after the DodKong. This also encompassed a second hiatus and now we are back again - will there be another inflection or a continuation of this trend?

Looking at the time ahead, we are looking at fairly restricted gaming time - it is always going to be in the evening, always going to be a short slot. Two hours if a weeknight, three hours if it is a weekend. We will be doing well if we get in five hours a month which is well down on the glory days of five hour sessions multiple times a month. This is a campaign that has a deep tradition of discussing and noodling about which I am not sure will be as sustainable if anything is to get done. Given that we are now two cancellations due to illness in three attempts, planning for one short session a month seems realistic.

I think given the difficulty in recapping when significant time passes and the large quantity of information being juggled, I will need to crack the whip as a DM bit more and drive decision making - not what the decision is but that a decision be made. Scenes need to become less characterful and more action oriented, to close out threads and reduce the loose ends being dealt with. I should probably look up how to make NPCs stand out quickly and boldly - I read someone pointing to thinking about what that NPC wants in a scene. Have them turn up once, burn brightly and then exit. Where the conversation does not just get elided into a montage, that is.

For the same reasons I am looking at a whole set of short sessions and if I am potentially also looking at pretty constrained prep. What I might need to do is almost pre-write a whole block ahead of time and then just execute the major scene elements. I have let the players follow their noses a lot but with short sessions, I need to steer things harder - get one or two concrete things done every session, otherwise it will begin to feel like a swamp where no progress is made or traction achieved.

Feels like do everything I typically do for the open table games but on an even tighter timeline.

Shiny TTRPG links #299

Latest shiny links from a week on the web. For even more, try last weeks set found here or the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Bloggie-nominated. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch, delinked by request.

Dice Exploder shares Transcript: Thri-Kreen (Dark Sun) with Zedeck Siew

Throne of Salt writes Power Word Kill is a first-level spell

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nate whittington writes it ain't about you

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False Machine gives us Our Lives as Dogs

Groupfinder posts State of tabletop - 2026

Startplaying writes Are TTRPGs Helping Kids Build Real-World Skills?

Review + Actual Play: Potvory

tl;dr: a rules-light game of playing creatures of Slavic myth, an interesting lens, something different to the usual adventurers.

Potvory is a tabletop adventure role-playing game which offers "a new look at traditional Slavic mythology through a queer lens" as per the cover. I backed it during the Kickstarter originally as it came from a local team and I do like interesting zines.

I had the great good fortune of getting to play it at a recent con that was being run by the authors. The game was not actually run by them themselves but we got to play it with the full bells and whistles special kickstarter edition that had some nice little things like a tear off character pad and reference cards for all of the player character spirit archetypes including one Kickstarter exclusive (who was a little bit too eldritch horror for the table).

The zine has a chunky card cover with glossy print and it feels good in the hand. The book is nice and simply laid out with great margin notes calling out relevant things which is actually quite nice. There are art inclusion at the bottom of the pages and some nice full page pieces for all the character archetypes.

So what is actually in here?

Shiny TTRPG links #298

Latest shiny links from a week on the web. For even more, try last weeks set found here or the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Bloggie-nominated. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch, delinked by request.

Vulcan Stev's Database hosts Octobers RPG Blog Carnival: Magic Items, the Weirdest and Best

Medieval World gives us Castle enthusiasts, assemble!

Inside Out Library shares A world of images, hidden inside books.

Joe B. posts Divinity of conversational games

Idiomdrottning shares Rules, not rulings

Hags writes Running NPCs

Whose Measure God Could Not Take gives us Other Types of Adventurers

A shrike for my dreams posts Stop beating the Quantum Ogre

Patchwork Paladin gives us Good Adventures and Great Adventures

Personable Thoughts writes Evaluating Adventures

iamatrex writes What Can Hurt It? How to use CfB Mechanics in MotW

Rise Up Comus posts Microblog: Papercraft - Hvem kan bygge den smukkeste Borg?

Coins and Scrolls writes OSR: Building Castles

Zedeck Siew's Writing Hours gives us The Monkey King’s Many Faces

Writing my Odd Game shares Negative Space Playstyle Principles

Field Report: Vindiecon 2026

This years Vindiecon was just had last weekend - this year I was purely a punter - got in played a game, chatted with pals, shopped the vendors, bailed. A very early start to the day by eldest had made it long already by the time I got in the door and I turned into a pumpkin and rolled home just as the second slot was starting up.

First impressions

This year felt like a solid evolution on last year - perhaps not "better" since the first one last year had a wonderful boutique vibe but bigger without losing the charm. There was a big vendors hall in the centre and a half dozen game rooms. The location was decent for public transport and opened right onto a little mall cluster with a supermarket which was very handy for snacks.

It was busy without being overcrowded, the vendors seemed to be doing a brisk trade but one could thread your way through the hall without pushing. There were always free chairs in the 'cafe' area whenever I looked so not overly packed.

Activities

I got there a touch early, got parked in the cafe along with the rest of the punters and saw a fair few known folk drift in - mostly other RPGVienna regulars - then we got pointed to our tables for the morning slot. I played Potvory, which went well and I will right that up in more detail again. This was a game written by two of the folk helping run the con so we did not get them running it but it went well. Most of the folk sitting to the table had backed the kickstarter and come along to give it a live-fire try. Session went pretty well all told.

A pal ran a table of Spire - rerunning a session that had been part of a campaign a year or two back to great results. Another ran Out-gunned that was well received - all the feedback I heard from folk running and playing was positive. There were a ton of games available - 12 different games/systems in the morning, 10 in the afternoon - and a huge variety of stuff which was a great opportunity to try out that indie darling one may have heard about but had dithered on deciding to get or had trouble wrangling a table together for.

I took a poke around the vendors after - Gazer Press and Causa Creations got me to crack my walled for The Hidden Isle and Der Gazer Vol 1. I picked up some stickers from the artists too - successfully resisted the many other bits of RPG merch.

I was gratified to see some folk actually selling RPG books - we often get active games societies at conventions but nobody selling anything beyond a zine or two. The lamented loss of Planet Harry has left a gap not yet filled - neither of the two other shops that sell RPGs showed, one never does and the other typically only turns up at cons with boardgames. I recall Irish conventions of the 90s - or even the last Harry Con - where there would be general games stops with boxes of weird old books to browse through, but for some reason the thing I see these days are fancy dice, accessories, character art - so it was great to *also* see Gazer Press and Causa Creations, both locals, both bringing interesting stuff.

VindieCon 2027

I am looking forward to it already - if my sleep schedule has recovered sufficiently, I will be trying to run something next year, not sure what or what system yet, but something.

I like how Vindiecon is a focussed one - TTRPG forward and so concentrates most of my pals and contacts. There are lots of other big conventions across the year - Spielefest, Fantasy-Con, Fantasy-RPG-Con, ComicCon - many of whom will have some corner dedicated to TTRPGs or a stall with the energetic local games clubs - Paradice is almost certainly going to be wherever there are dice rolled in earnest - but the vibe at Vindiecon is the most reminiscent to me of the 90s-00s UK and Irish cons like the ones I used to run, and I like that 'here to game' vibe.

One other remarkable thing - it was free on the door which is fantastically generous. I think they could easily ask for a couple of euros in - the price of a take-out coffee at least - and most folk would not blink.