Small Gods, Saints and minor divinity! - RPG Blog Carnival Wrap Up

And so we conclude the July 2026 RPG Blog Carnival - our topic was "Small Gods, Saints and minor divinity!" - on my mind was the fun I have had with small gods in my recent campaigns; divinities on a personal scale. This was a double-header hosting with Sea of Stars.

Sea of Stars has done their round up - if you have read that already then Advantage on Arcana 'more little Gods' and Taichara's contributions are the only extras.

We got responses from:


Sea of Stars own response the Fate of the Small Gods in the Sea of Stars nicely talks about where apex monsters like dragons start to overlap with small gods.

52 Monsters on Saints, Oracles, and Their Demons - I really like the superstitions and potential for sainthood.

Vulcan Stev on Berrin & Velquor – Small gods, Saints and minor divinity! gives us a pair of encounterable demigods and lots on how they might turn up at your table.

Advantage on Arcana on Six More Little Gods of Planegea - with the first six for Sea of Stars. As with all things Plangean, these are minor divinities at the start of their journeys which is interesting.

Dungeons & Possums on Small Gods about water incarnate, a species of spirit/hyperlocal nature gods called thinals.

Taichara gives us two - Shrines of the Backways and Unseen Paws - this last with the gods of catkind is great.

A pretty good showing, lots of ideas to incorporate - the great thing about Small Gods is you can usually slot them into your own campaign since they are not so narratively load-bearing as major pantheon deities.

The carnival continues with Of Dice and Dragons themselves hosting! The topic is Time, both in world and above the table, an apt one given scheduling is the slayer of many campaigns.

Shiny TTRPG links #288

Another deep time collection as everything melts around us - links posted on various discords as recommendations when the topic came up. Taking this 'stands the test of time' aspect as a quality filter, here they are.

For more, see last weeks collection found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival.

Billhook Blog posted The OSR is Dead (again, and again)

u/ahhthebrilliantsun wrote Discussing Neo-Trad/OC - Some Musings On The Play Culture Everyone Gripes About

Aron Christensen on Medium gave us Narrating your RPG

Delta's D&D Hotspot wrote Magic Number Seven

Fluorite Guillotine shared quantum ogre reborn

Lithyscaphe posted Quintessential BX

Ru's Roleplay Rants gave us The Game Master and the game as servant

Vaults of Nagoh shared Small But Vicious Dog Steals Hearts, Humps Leg

Ray Winninger posted "Dungeoncraft" Essays

Kismet's Fantasy Gaming shared Women as Gamers & Game-Makers

Failure Tolerated wrote A Small Rant About Investigation in RPGs

modified with the approval of creator Evlyn Moreau

Captain Awkward shared #784: The Geek Social Fallacy Host – Missing Stair Guest Relationship

Roll to Doubt posted Principled Freeform and FKR

Lithyscaphe wrote Principia Apocrypha: A New Expression of Old School RPG Playstyle Principles

Le Chaudron Chromatique gave us Some advice to represent trans characters in game

Kismet's Fantasy Gaming posted Kismet's Guide Sex & Romance in Fantasy Gaming

Cirsova wrote Lodoss, the Accursed Pink Slime

J. Hanju Kim gave us RPG SYSTEM DESIGN

J. Hanju Kim shared RPG THEORY

Picture wrote Between Appendix N and Pink Slime

anyway gaves us A quick IIEE primer, by request

RogueBasin shared The Role of Hunger

Magnolia Keep posted Prepping Plots, Part Two: The Rough Outline

Sir Poley wrote On the Four Table Legs of Traveller, Leg 1: Mortgages

Papers and Pencils posted Questgivers are Evil

Dice Goblin gave us Triangles, Relationships & Archetypes: Adapting the Nemesis System to TTRPGs

Archon's Court shared GLOG Class / Monster - Antipaladin

Magnolia Keep gave us On Objectivity in Game Design

Near Offshore Ruins (GLÅUGUST 2026 #1)

Taking on The Nothic's Eye GLÅUGUST 2026, challenge #1 is from a list by Phlox - "Water Levels."

Inspired by the submerged megalithic structures of Sein Island I was thinking about near offshore ruins and the adventure potential thereof.

I talked a bit in the past about who is about in d20 Aquatic powers and dwellers of the deep and some of the things on the deep sea bed including interactions with the underdark in d12 Settlements of the Undercoast but for this one I wanted to think a bit about shallow-water structures, ones that might once - or recently - have been above surface, or are emerging now due to sea level shifts. All this supposes a shallow depth gradient - any place where you have a sea-cliff like drop off, that much sea going away is an apocalypse scenario harsher that what I am thinking of.

Setting aside how things become above/below water - a myriad of natural or magical effects and disasters could be responsible. Assume that a change in sea level is affecting only the sunlit zone that goes down 1/8 of a mile - the sea-level shift of our world across the last ice age caused only 1/12 miles difference.

Some possible thoughts on what we might end up with on a patch of seabed that was once above the surface:
1. Recently happened - a peninsula sunk, a recent glacier collapse or sea level rise - leaving a structure with potential air pockets within. This would be similar to a flooded dungeon but with some added adventure in getting down there and getting the plunder out.
2. Long ago but known to be rich - last remants of old power still remain - some warded buildings, undead or constructs still roam about the seafloor. There are hazards that can be overcome by using the submerged status and a mix of looted flooded bits and untouched dry bits with residual dangers.
3. Ancient origin and a site for underwater conflict - long flooded, nothing remains but the sturdiest of structural parts and it is just exotic terrain for an underwater fight.

IRL we have our example above of Sein Island and Doggerland - sea levels rising flood out old structure built by land dwellers - 'sunken realms.'

Running this the other way, where the seas retreat and we find structures emerging from the seas - we would have all of the above, once submerged and now re-arisen through some other disaster and accessible - perhaps for a limited time - complete with novel hazards or merely those rooted in long neglect.

Where origins of structures start to get interesting are:
1. Aquatic groups who might have been building there and now abandon their structures as the seas withdraw
2. Groups perfectly happy living in and out of water - storm giants
3. Groups who can live out of water but would not be happy about it - sahuagin and tritons

Sunlight zoners like merfolk, merrow, aquatic elves and locathah would have built structures designed for swimming through which will be awkward to navigate out of water

Monster lairs may be exposed that are challenging hazards to access even before intentional hazards are factored in - aboleth, kraken - where their one time masters abandon them due to inability to operate out of water.

Other monster lairs such as those of Ixitxachitl or illithids might be abandoned because they have no desire to dwell in the light - they could remain and become nocturnal but they find themselves confined to their homes by the hateful glare of the baleful daystar.

Some other highly magical entities like marids and beholders, while capable of operating out of the water would typically have no desire to remain because water is their preferred habitat.

One would assume all around will be devastated kelp forests and dying coral reefs within which maybe the dwellings of things like water nympths, undines or the like - my impression is that few of them would leave much trace.

Structures inhabited by the undead might rise from the depths and be among the least affected

Communities of tortles, lizardfolk and other semi-aquatic groups might find their nice safe flooded cave entrance is no longer so and decide to abandon the place or remain and become drylanders

Storm giants are notably happy above and below the waves but their new shallow-land holdings would be very aesthetically displeasing being neither high mountain or submerged any more and could be found either abandoned or inhabited by a very irritated resident.

Shiny TTRPG links #287

Another deep time collection - links posted on various discords as recommendations when the topic came up. Taking this 'stands the test of time' aspect as a quality filter, here they are.

For more, see last weeks collection found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival.

Rise Up Comus posted A Campaign Where There is One of Anything

TRAIPSE wrote 1, 10, or 1000000

Save.vs. Total Party Kill gave us The Monster

Necropraxis shared Sui generia

modified with the approval of creator Evlyn Moreau

DIY & dragons wrote 8 Abilities - 6, 3, or 4 Ability Scores?

@SprintingOwlGameDesigns gave us TRPGs As Terrariums For Blorbos

The-Magic-Sword on EnWorld shared Thinking About the Purpose of Mechanics from a Neo-Trad Perspective

JDCSpot Run posted Old RPG Gamers and The Streaming Youth - From a Dark Forest

u/jimbaby on r/DnD wrote My friends and I have something called "Knife Theory"

Idraluna Archives gave us A Tutorial for Making Hexcrawl Maps in QGIS

The Tea-Set of Civility shared Veins of The Earthjammer

Bernie the Flumph posted Carousing and Philanthropy

Against The Wicked City gave us When all you have is a hammer: item-based problem-solving in OSR D&D

Bones of Contention shared Grave Trespass - Jim Henson's Labyrinth: The Adventure Game

Traverse Fantasy posted FAQ U: What is a Blorbo?

False Machine wrote Held Kinetic Energy in Old School Combat Arenas

Rise Up Comus gave us Steal this rule microblog: "How do you vanquish this foe?"

Ten Foot Polemic shared TFP DMG: How I Use Skills

Was It Likely? posted your system’s not the game it’s just a player

The Great Game wrote My top 10 Dungeons and Dragons adventures of all time

d4 Caltrops gave us d100 - Methods of Magical Item Identification

Eldritch Fields shared Wilderness Encounter Details/Activities

Hill Cantons posted Fantasy F*ckin' Vietnam

James Mendez Hodes wrote Orcs, Britons, and the Martial Race Myth, Part I: A Species Built for Racial Terror

A Knight at the Opera gave us I Don't Think I'm Going to Allow Elves to be Playable Anymore

Greyhawk Grognard shared Do you use gunpowder or not?

#City26 Slush Pile: Adventure potential of Hive-city RT-87

Inspired by Tabletop Curiosity Cabinet's slush pile post for #Dungeon23 below are a dozen or so ideas lying around in the setting.

So for #City26 what are the most fun adventure potential things I got? Why go near RT-87?

1. Swashbuckling heist-likes around the cyber-saurs used to train knights. Most iconic has to a "capture the runaway carnasaur" quest. Something that delves into the ogryn megasaur-wranglers subculture, the knight houses and their mecha-driving culture, the sacristans and their weird-tech, all of tied up in the core identity of the world. A missing carnasaur with a control-throne is something the Adeptus Mechanicus, cold traders and all sorts of wild and woolly groups will be trying to get their hands on ahead of the legitimate knight-house authorities.

2. Sniffing out corruption and sabotage in the dino processing cycle, in the hauling up of the big ships on the preposterous conveyor from where the shoreline now is, the Ogryn Wranglers bringing the dinosaurs through the Minotaur Slaughtermen and the cults going on there, with a big side order of Ministorum clergy and parades and processions followed by where the precious meat goes, how the bone gets reused, the oppressive demands of the Imperial tithe and everything that happens in that dino meat focus.

3. Counter-espionage and overwatch. This Knight-world is early exodus with Dark Age of Technology legacy - there is a fairly chunky strategic priority to keeping the the lathe of St. Simeon STC running and No one's sure the AdMech could take it over. A whole stack of different rungs going. There are reasons to tread tread carefully here, wanting to maintain the sacristans capabilities for their pdf gear repair yard and wanting to maintain the this place as a as a knight's repair dock or a repair dock for you know weird old gear. The small legitimate

4. Serve as guards for the hive recycling industry - where the scarcity of materials centers around the maglev rail heads, the rail guilds and merchant combines defending their monopolies on salvaging the ruins. Bandits try to prey on operations breaking up and hauling in of the abandoned outer hives, defending those trains against wasteland raiders, potentially punitive raids with houseguard groups - getting to see beastmen cavalry on cold ones - and all dealing with the really nasty environment out there.

5. Seek and destroy the second order consequences of hauling in and breaking-up the old hives - things lurking in the remnants, chaotic artifacts, Genestealer cultists - all things to be hunted down in the depths. In parallel the wealth of the salvage trade, the rare materials broken out of the hive-fragments, plus other plunder found on site and brought back. All of this hiding an illicit 'technology laundering' circuit that drops in forbiggen xeno- and dangerous archaeo-tech.

6. Spying and sneaking within the upper hive. The planning and lawfare loop, the high intrigue fiddling of studies and thumbs on the scales and the combing of data files and the forging of test reports and the redactions and the warping of history - all to try and swing the fate of the whole world between being dedicated as a Knight House or being ground under as a hiveworld.

7. Get drafted into planetary defense. As a semi-generalist world the place is prey for chaos, corsairs, etc. - so you've got the active sabotage loop of the ongoing fights against Chaos Raiders, Offworld Corsairs, all of that. The fading nuclear winter from the last raids, the planetary defence auspex trains, the ancient hive defence towers, the saboteurs and raiders.

8. Venture forth to untangle the ancient Exodite connection - dinosaurs, eldar - buried deep in the wilds. The cold trade is a deadly threat because they really do not want the Xenos poking their noses in. The Eldar are persona non grata here. However, there is a strong interest in market in exotic dino parts and shipping those off to people who are interested.

9. Dive into the beastman underground railroad. While bringing abhumans to this place of (relative) acceptance, the folk being inducted sparking friction with the "must be holier than holy" beastfolk imperial cults. Those cults are seeking to find the first abhuman saint, feed the Astra Telepathica Tithes for the Black Ships and support the Imperial tithe with beastfolk manpower - trading tolerance of horrific conditions for some manner of acceptance.

10. Manage the ferocity and collateral of the clash of faiths - abhumans trying to be holy-beyond-question to gain some shred of acceptance; with hair-trigger vigilance against heresy. The chaos and genestealer cults that lead to the ruination of the other planetary hives are being brutally hunted in the depths of the hive with a lot of collateral damage.

11. Quell abhuman/human tensions and root out the vilest abuses of the weakest as fanatical beastmen seeking to be blemishless in the eyes of the Emperor and the refugees filtering in from the ruins of the fallen hives all bitterly compete for places in the horrific bone-recovery work-camps.

12. Against-the-clock de-snagging of the endless shoring up of the concrete and stonework cityworks rotting in the ruined atmosphere. The building of bone form-works, the swarms of workers carrying plaskrete, the endless labor to maintain the structures.

13. Social intrigue and dirt tricks in the competition between the '1000 Shields' noble houses from the ruined hives, besmirched by the loss of their powerbases and the merchant costers running offworld military support and repair and refit for active Knight houses. Pride versus practicality.

14. Competition and kidnapping around the high-hive talent market where off-world power players seek to pluck up the 'knight-trainees' for whom no Knight awaits. Inquisitors, mercenaries, specialists and the ambitious of all flavours are looking to attract the right kind of attention.

15. Sneaking and skulduggery in the shadows of the technology trade. The black markets hiding beneath the legitimate repair and refurbishment trade or the artisanly crafted jetbikes and Imperial robots where the Sacristans sell the fruits of their carefully husbanded secrets.

Campaign Themes

I think a 'Administratum' themed campaign with the players running around as fixers trying to keep the show on the road could be fun, it aligns them to the mire of compromises made from the top down as everyone struggles to meet the Emperors Tithe - purge abhumans or retain their labour, stop hauling in hazardous bits of cult-infested hives or go without scarce raw materials, etc.

Shiny TTRPG links #286

A deep time collection - links posted on various discords as recommendations when the topic came up. Taking this as the 'stands the test of time' quality filter, here they are.

For more, see last weeks collection found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival.

modified with the approval of creator Evlyn Moreau

One Man and his Dice gives us The Secret Brilliance of The Black Hack

A Knight at the Opera gives us Not All Crunch Is the Same

Wampus Country gives us An Entire Post About Hats

d4 Caltrops gives us Dolmenwood Dozen

Troy Press gives us RPG Session Prep Techniques

Troy Press gives us Dungeon Prep

DIY & dragons gives us Dungeon Alphabet Dozen - M is also for MAPS

Superhero Necromancer wrote The Great Dungeon Caper

Superhero Necromancer gives us The Heist Clock

Glorb's 11 Foot Ladder gives us Save to Avoid Bad Stuff: Proper Saving Throw Usage

Hack & Slash gives us On Abstraction and Saving Throws

The Marquisat gives us Exploring Characters pt.5: Saves

BEARDED DEVIL gives us How I Run a Citycrawl Campaign

Necropraxis gives us Solipsistic hexes

Necropraxis gives us Hazard System v0.3

The Retired Adventurer gives us The Encounter Grid: Six Years Out

Eldritch Fields gives us Six Grasslands Lairs/Encounters

Eldritch Fields gives us Quick humanoid lair generator for wilderness stocking

Eldritch Fields gives us Wilderness Encounter Details/Activities

d20 careless archmage devastations

Pondering arch-mages again, on the lines of 'what do you do when you get total control of reality' - previous I wrote on their goals, the status flexes of individuals beyond want. Now I have been pondering what kind of casual horrors they inflict on those around them through sheer carelessness and self-absorption without any accountability and way too much agency.

d20 regional impacts of careless archmages

1. their tower is absolutely crammed with automata who spend more time going "excuse me" and attempting to work around each other with their countermanding orders because nobody has priority. Nothing gets done and the wizard's idea is then "well nothing's getting done, I must add more automata obviously". They are overworked and so the cycle has worked itself into a teeming hive of jammed up autonomous automata. The entire place is a sink for magical energies and ores and dwarvish engineering. The dwarves love it. The gnomes dislike it, but view it as better the gold is in their hands than in that lunatic wizard's.

2. An entirely illusory tower where it appears to be absolutely fantastic but people keep dying because the guests are in fact exposed to the elements even where the illusion appear they are sheltered. The illusions are impeccable and very well supported but the wizard himself having a couple of rings of elemental endurance fails to recognize this is the problem.

3. Classic hybridization, chimerization program where they have simply too much time and industry and attempt to make the perfect fill-in-the-blank and of course have a whole bunch of misbegotten failed experiments roaming the countryside.

4. The giant churning forge where the wizard was incensed at local craftsmen's temerity has spent a significant amount of time rendering them all obsolete and has flooded everything around with okay smith goods equivalen. Only okay is good enough for most people and the remaining demand for quality is insufficient to sustain a population of skilled craftsmen and it is now becoming absolutely impossible to get decent gear anywhere around here to the point that the king is worried that his military forces are unready.

5. The wizard has created a library of old knowledge clones of himself that wander the realms answering questions. These questions are just wrong based on a hasty stitching together of factoids from a set of raiders that destroyed all the local libraries

6. A wizard has stolen all the groundwater for water elementals to guard their tower and also run their fancy fountains because they are from a coastal nation and they're feeling homesick.

7. Stole all the groundwater because they are attempting to fill an ocean within their own private demi-plane. This is the only way that they can get the authentic flavor of their local spring water.

8. Stole all the groundwater because a local dryad refused to take up with them on the basis that they're simply a heinous individual.

9. Devastated all the local forests by casting a summon woodlands spell and then marching off to battle with another wizard and getting the entire forest either killed in battle or stranded in a desert to eventually die.

10. Devastated the local locality by diverting a river to create enough ice for their new hobby of ice crafting.

11. ruined the local ecology by continuously summoning storms to their local mountain top tower and creating a freakish rain shadow across a continent, a series of storm attracting lightning rods marches across the landscape.

12. A badly thought out but highly effective mine has been digging away. Elements have collapsed and flooded twice now. However, the internal mine protocols were have been clever enough to keep them in operation, but not clever enough to recognize the damage that they're doing.

13. Created an artificial god from whole cloth to prove it could be done by importing a large amount of koa-toa and embarking on a generations-long social engineering project.

14. an attempt to win a bet with another wizard has resulted in the excavation of a truly colossal marine trench that has allowed huge ocean predators to come much closer inshore than they normally can. The local cliffs act as something like a salt lick to these monsters and they have been slowly eroding the ground with their activities.

15. A failed attempt at trying a pillar of flame wizard's tower has been abandoned. Said tower has ignited fires across most of the local landscape and rendered everything to an ashy wasteland the the tower itself has since gone out for want of fuel.

16. An attempt to resolve a wrong-headed argument about the nature of the cosmos has created a portal to a nightmare realm from which spews ceaseless nightmares. The wizard is long dead, no longer capable of regretting his folly, and yet the nightmares persist.

17. An illusionist attempting to demonstrate the superiority of their craft has microcosm where nothing is real or to be trusted. They all craft work within a certain region has a half chance of being simply illusionary.

18. in an attempt to make an easy access to his local thing, this wizard has created an unstable set of portal networks which allow weird migratory behaviors. The local wildlife have adapted. There is now an entire cohort and subspecies of migratory beasts that use the portals for their seasonal wanderings. The nearby ecosystems have been altered by this. However, they have stabilized into a new equilibrium, which is in fact working perfectly well, but it is not entirely native.

19. A wizard has released bunch of servitors to improve the local ecosystem and this is an ongoing forced evolution cautionary tale showcase. Every fix needs another fix. It is in fact a a glorious endorsement of the foolishness of messing with nature when you don't really understand what you're doing.

20. They have released monsters because they like the sounds they make and because they are no threat to the wizard they do not account that these things are deathly dangerous to 99% of the rest of the population