Shower scribbles for idea preservation

Ages back a friend got me a waterproof notepad with suction cups that is supposed to stick to the walls of the shower because you always get the best ideas there; the in-house testing team had an even better idea - why not just use the tiles themselves?

Example shower inspiration notes

It works pretty well - because you do not need huge amounts of writing you just need to capture the thought in the moment. You could stand there and scribble away but I find the great annoyance to avoid is forgetting the idea as a whole so any small note serves to avoid that.

All you need is a dry erase marker that can live in the shower and you are sorted. Given the prevalence of wipe-clean battlemaps, odds are that you have a spare one lying around.

Key equipment

This also works for the bathroom mirror for similar idea-preservation during tooth-brushing; there you can even go for one of the colors that are often less used because they are a lighter shade.

To paraphrase the tag-line went on that original gift 'don't let your good ideas go down the drain'...

Shiny TTRPG links #213

Rich pickings this week. For more, see the previous list found here or on the restored weekly blogroll on r/OSR or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Armoury of the Invincible Knights gives us The Language Dice

u/No_Prize5369 posts How to run a hexcrawl step by step (assuming you already have made the map and encounter tables)

Old Men Running The World gives us What I’d Tell You To Try If You Told Me Your Game Sucks

Dungeon Scrawler shares Dungeon Room Index

d4 Caltrops gives us d66 - Why Are They Friendly? Reaction Roll Elaborations

Familiar Waves shares Missing Persons File

I Cast Light! gives us PRAISE THE DRAGON OF THE PIT: Building An Encounter On The Fly

Goblin's Henchman asks Did the Bloggies make me Blog more ?

Kontent Punch gives us Name NPCs Dude the Guy

The Novel Game Master shares The Blank Stare

Getting Relaxed About Time Passing

My home campaign has been outstanding upholders of 'accurate time records must be kept' for most of the campaigns duration. The perception of a plethora of problems and noone to solve them but the PCs meant that every hour of the day was juiced for its use. For the most part not a problem - except when one of the party heads off for a social event leaving the others to their own devices and a 'spare' couple of hours.

The bard drew the cartoon below about what happens when the cleric and the sorcerer are left unsupervised.

Given that the 'dungeon' in question were the unsecured lower reaches of the palace they all lived in, this made sense more of less. Though it was a pretty 'light' party of two facing down some of the things down there.

More recently the players have been moving towards trying to get the clock to tick faster - relaxing their grip on every hour of the day and allowing time to pass a little faster. The sense that they still have a great deal of problems that only they can resolve remains but they have gathered to them a crew of hirelings that they can delegate things to. Stuff like research, minor recon and handling the social web have been offloaded. A key aspect is that the ability to delegate and be relatively sure that things will be handled competently reduces the sense of 'lost opportunity' around just taking a nap and letting a split group resynchronise at a later time rather than trying to micromanage everything.

d20 neighboring dragons out and about (RPG Blog Carnival)

This month the RPG blog carnival is hosted by Sea of Stars and has the topic of Dragon Neighbors: How do you live with a dragon nearby? - which vexed me! Far more than I thought it would since I have dragons and dragonblooded folk a lot in my home campaign.

Finally inspiration struck - what we have here is a list of expeditionary dragon-related folk away from their home realm and what they might be up to. PCs may be lightly disguised to protect the guilty.

These could equally be relatively non-descript half-dragons as per Dragon #206 or they could be dragonborn as best suits your setting.

d20 neighboring dragons out and about

Shiny TTRPG links #212

A rich vein of links from across the web. For more, see the previous list found here or you can check the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Widdershins Wanderings gives us A Lock With No Key: Designing Obstacles for OSR Play

Rise Up Comus writes Dungeons & Deconstruction

Was It Likely? gives us make better mind pictures

Alone in the Labyrinth declares DEATH TO THE BLOGGIES

The Lovely Dark gives us ULTRAREALITY

Popular Enchanting shares If You Build It We Will Burn It

The Tax Chests Burial: When Sessions Prep Themselves

Reading I Cast Light! and their tale of TRUST IN A DEAD FROG: A Lesson In DMing from Nightwick where their adventuring party set off to recover the magical items lost when their own had fallen. They talk about how these sessions are wonderful for a GM as low-prep because you are retracing your steps over pre-prepared ground - and I agree. I have a similar story I gleefully tell where I got multiple sessions out of the same hook because the players just could not leave a thing lie.

This was from my 'Southern Reaches' fuzzy west march game - the sessions log is here and covers some or all of sessions 8, 9, 10, 12, 13 and 15. The open table nature of the game drove almost all of this (highly entertaining for me as a GM) too-ing and fro-ing because different combinations of players *who were largely the same people* kept re-hashing the decisions of the others.

Actual Test: Hex-stocking by bleed-over

Testing out the concept of sub-hex stocking with influences from neighbour hexes for Hexcrawl25, as geas'ed by Phlox.

Each hex has 19 sub-hexes that are at least partially within it - 13 fully and 6 split with a neighbour - say 16 hexes on average to fill. Using the 'bleed-over from neighbours' we get a half dozen sub-hexes influences from without the hex. From the 'faction sites' we get four within the hex, one without - the one without can be one of the 'bleed over locations in a neighbour hex. All told this gives us 10/16 hexes explained.

Shiny TTRPG links #211

Hexes and elements are themes for TTRPG internet goodness this week. For more, see the previous list found here or you can check the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Sea of Stars launches the RPG Blog Carnival for February with Dragon Neighbors: How do you live with a dragon nearby?

Dice Goblin gives us Play Fetch: Linking Hexes Together With Adventure Ideas

Watabou announces Three generators have been updated

d4 Caltrops gives us d100 - While You Were Out — “Dungeon Meanwhiles”

Goblin's Henchman shares Random Encounter Tables – When the Boss Monster comes out swinging

I Cast Light! gives us TRUST IN A DEAD FROG: A Lesson In DMing from Nightwick

The Dododecahedron asks What Connects Us?

Sly Flourish shares Two Different 5e Games at the Same Table

Save vs Total Party Kill writes us Blogging is Forever

Elf-wise gives us Truths from which the lore flows

Hex-stocking by transfer/bleed-over

tl;dr: populate sub-hexes with things linking to neighbouring hexes

I am working through HexCrawl25 but this could work for any hexmap set up with hexes and sub-hexes. The basic premise is that things do not stay contained within their hexes and you can find signs or links to hexes straying into their neighbours.

Dicegoblin had a similar idea - Play Fetch: Linking Hexes Together With Adventure Ideas - though they were thinking of more explicit 'links/hooks' as a treasure trail, I am just thinking of 'intrusions/connections' not necessarily active adventure hooks.

Original shower inspiration notes

With a hex split into 13-19 subhexes depending on how you count the subhexes shared with neighbours, this concept gets you ideas for filling eight of them or 40-60% which is very handy for when you might have a lot to do.

Review: Roguelike Megadungeon

tl:dr; a neat dungeon creation toolbox driven by a fun buckets-of-dice-drop method

I got an early access copy of this grace of the author and I liked what I saw. At time of writing it is now live for itchfunding during Zine Month '25.

Art by Roque Romero

This is a really neat toolkit for creating dungeons rapidly - I have always been a fan of dice drop methods but giving that and an alternative? *chefs kiss* I had no idea what to expect cracking the pdf but then as I scrolled through each section it was 'oh, thats a good idea', 'oh I like that' and each new section was a further 'ah-ha!' As soon as I finished my quick skim, I was keen to carve out time, chew through it and give the methods within it a shot.

Shiny TTRPG links #210

More links from about the internet. For more, see the previous list found here or you can check the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

VDonnut Valley gathers RPGBlogCarnival entries in Other, Between, and Under – The Worlds Beyond ROUND UP

Mazirian's Garden shared Summoning

The Rpg Gazette writes The D&D 4th edition renaissance: A look into the history of the edition, its flaws and its merits

The Novel Game Master gives us What We Talk About When We Talk About Player Agency

Wampus Country gave us Getting Worse

Wetland Hills Encounters (Hexcrawl25)

Running the hex-crawl I realised I needed an encounter table for the general region and cooked up the below for 'folks likely to be wandering around with purpose'.

This will be a dual-use table:
Minor factions of the wetland hills (roll 2d6)
Random Encounter (roll d20)