YSYP Cottonmouth Ashcan (GLÅUGUST 2026 #5)

Taking on The Nothic's Eye GLÅUGUST 2026, challenge #5 is from a list by Doc - "Cottonmouth your pet system so it is synonymous with one of your settings. Here is what Cottonmouth is and here is one way you could do that"

For this I am attempting to crank over the entire system for Your Sector, Your Problem. It gnaws at me but I think the attempt to Cottonmouth it might force it to a useful place. You could probably retool the guts of this to be a minion-running mechanic for any domain level game. The 'cottonmouth' aspect of it is that the gears and gubbins are all just set up for the 'telling of the tale' debriefing which is happening in world (assuming you survive).

Four things happen during a cycle of play
1. You learn what problems you have in your sector, as per the name
2. You throw your assets at the threat, hopefully suitable ones against your various threats
3. Resolve the problems (or fail to)
4. Recover and maintain your assets - and then debrief on how the whole mission cycle played out.

Phase 1 - for this ashcan your problem is going to be selected with three rolls d12+8 off this d20 sector defense assets table to get three problems.

Phase 2 - you have your starter set of assets - three d20 rolls on the table and assign them against whichever problem you like. Each of your players draws two standard playing cards.
Ace, 2 = Exhaustion
3, 4 = Panic & miscommunication
5+ Hearts = Xeno-shock
5+ Diamonds = Inexplicable Physics
5+ Clubs = Bureaucracy & Bad Planning
5+ Spades = Gear Failure

Phase 3 - Decide whether or not to get involved, add a d6 if a player deploys with an asset and risks death. Roll off between problem and asset.
+4 success, no upkeep
+0 success, upkeep (draw 1)
-4 success, high upkeep (draw 2)
-5 or lower, failure, high upkeep (draw 2)

At this point draw cards from a standard deck for each asset as required by the rolls.

Phase 4 - upkeep - each character can get involved with an asset and play one of their cards. Multiple characters can go after one asset. If the total value of their cards (Jack = 11, Queen = 12, King = 13) is greater than card on the asset, take that card of the asset. Then tell the story of how it all played out, framed as your debriefing to the rest of the characters after everything has been resolved. That debrief has to include
What the asset is
The problem (card on the asset being targetted)
What caused the problem (the threat that put the cards there)
The character(s) involved in fixing the problem.

Do this for all assets. With luck, you have cards in hand that total more than the cards on your assets - just tell the tale of how you fixed it.

If the total of the characters cards do not exceed the value of the problems, characters can roll a save for that category (e.g. Inexplicable Physics) modified by the gap between the cards you have and the problem. Fail and take d6 points distributed across your Grit, Guile and Charm stats.Make the save with disadvantage if you play a card of a different type as the problem.

However that plays out, you still must tell the tale as a debriefing as above with the added element of:
How the character got beaten up doing it
Any remaining problems on the asset

Any assets that go into the next round with cards on them, they lose a dice from what they roll per card remaining.

Characters in this conceptualisation have 3d6 stats (Grit, Guile, Charm) and saves that base of those stats, modified by their 'career' tied either to humans, aliens or terrain, affecting people or stuff. Players could eat a few 'I have no cards, I get stuck in' at d6 damage a pop but not over the long haul.

Design notes

Key revelation, thanks to the in-house testing team, is not to frame this as 'grading roleplaying' but more as assembling the elements that have to be incorporated into an 'upkeep vignette' somewhat like a small round of 'Once Upon a Time'. I think it captures the fun of 'minion running' and the chaos involved in explaining why this xenoarchaeologist (holder of the right cards) was able to fix the BOGEYMAN cybertanks Gear Failure problem caused by their scrap with the Dubious Alien Mercenaries.

I like this better as a 'just tell the tale' rather than 'you must 'win' a roleplaying encounter'. Is this properly Cottonmouthed? Barely - I think in making it a 'talk through how you fixed it' it adheres to the in-world concept of your are troubleshooters dealing with wild things and debriefing your fellows at a particularly bizarre set of .

Shiny TTRPG links #291

We return to standard posting - bundles of shiny links, fresh from the internet! For more, check out the chonky set from last week 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.

I Cast Light! shares THE OSR IS DEADLY: But Not Deadly Enough To Kill Long-term Play

Spiceomancy shares The JAR

Typebar Magazine posts Revisiting the Past: Can Pulp Save Science Fiction?

RedMageGM hosts writes A Mystic Wood OSR Adventure Jam

Backwards Tabletop gives us To Play Is To Explode

Trick's Tales gives us Jay Dragon (Steve Jackson Games/Possum Creek Games) Interview - Seven Part Pact

Bare Nuckelavee gives us NO ONE CAN TAKE YOUR GAME FROM YOU

Cannibal Halfling Gaming posts The Data on Million-Plus RPG Crowdfunding Campaigns

Roseline posts Why Who You Play With Matters and on building the muscle of Hope

Portalfreaks (GLÅUGUST 2026 #4)

Taking on The Nothic's Eye GLÅUGUST 2026, challenge #4 is from a list by Semiurge - "Some roadfreaks for a passage that isn't a road - canalfreaks, hyperlanefreaks, portalfreaks, etc."

I have a deep and abiding love of 'sliders' type portal-of-the-week campaigns - my two best Planescape campaigns were of this type - so the archetype of weird sods bampfing into a place through some random mystic doorway and then thundering around like bulls in china-shops is one I think can bring joy and novelty to any campaign.

These are the folk that know about and live at the interstices of all the portal networks. They hang around bars and bazaars in Sigil, the City of Glass, Waterdeep, crossroads like that. You get a different bunches working different angles - one around shipping, some around the magical component trade - but the one that most folk think about when someone spits "portalfreaks" are the scouts - the fast riders, the smash-and-grab folk.

The best of them are the absolutely fundamental base layer of the information-broking shadow war, the whole information-is-power part of the economy of Sigil and the outer planes. They are the source of first-hand information, free-lance long-range military scouts. They go and look at stuff, count noses and blades and they come back, nice-and-easy, in and out. In contrast with the spies and all the people who try to shake stuff out of people, they go and eyeball the things you just cannot hide like a giant floating ship or a mustering devil legion.

The nature of engaging these portalfreaks is someone asks a question and then first there is work to get a sense of where might those answers be? Once you know where to look then you want to figure out what kind of portalfreak you want - who matches to the task? They should be one who can get the portal keys, who can get to the locations, knows the routes to do the runs, maybe stealth experts, or maybe something fundamental to their nature like celestials who aren't going to die on contact with the heavens, or tieflings that aren't going to perish in the hells. Everything can be overcome with sufficiently powerful magic of course, but magic costs and why pay for that guys shiny bangle when that guy over there just won't burst into flames on arrival in the first place?

The portalfreaks tend to come in two flavours - the break-and-entry folk who get in anywhere, and eyeball things that are hidden then run off with your secrets - and the all-terrain, survive anywhere scouts that just out-endure whatever conditions they face to witness things that are out in the inhospitable open. Those tend to be experts and surveying ground and counting noses. Some of them run a circuit, selling what they see, others keep their ear to the ground and follow trouble.

The culture of these portalfreaks is very much hung up on having all of the gear. Everything is on you because you're gonna go to a place where there is nothing. Belts and buckles and pouches and bandoliers of absolutely everything strung around them together with a big backpack or mount and pack-mount pairs. One of the big aesthetic choices across most portalfreaks is riding howlers. All of them absolutely swear is the optimal choice but lack any sort of means to support this and say why beyond that a howler is such an ornery mean beast that things just can't really get much worse so you've got that a known quantity.

Another thing that about portalfreaks is the trail of tchotchkes they leave behind. Ranging from that kind of trade a shiny rock for a pair of buttons, weird swap-meet stuff, up to waves of minor kleptomania, they are known for their trail of minor bits and pieces. This has grown out of original practices for disguising what the key to the local portal is. If roses off a nearby bush kept going missing, for instance, people could figure out that roses were probably the key to the portal. If, however, there is a complete mess it is very difficult for anyone to peg any one thing as the portal key, and so it became basic operational security for early common portal scout, before the freaky fully evolved.

d6 Portalfreaks

1. A muscle-sorcerer disguising themselves as a standard fighter; leans hard into 'desert nomad' archetypal appearance.
2. A paladin of a god of knowledge, grizzled and battered with a giant goat mount, viewing it as their divine duty to pry secrets from the hands of evil-doers.
3. A ex-celestial legionairre, never adapted to settled life, continues to tramp about the plains observing things, prides themselves on being able to out-tough anything.
4. Howler-mounted, swivel-eyed wizard, in ragged cloak and battered hat. Jittery when not on the move, impatient to get your question, get their payment and get back on the Great Wheel.
5. Goblin duo, battered old shaman, bundled up in a beastfur, escorted by a weathered warrior only slightly younger, mounted on worgs. Sneaky, subtle and happy to take any gig.
6. Tiefling with a spray of horns, mounted on a howler, both cloaked in reptile skin. Very still and watchful, charming in conversation, prone to slipping away when not directly observed.

The (at least) nine cultures of play (GLÅUGUST 2026 #3)

Taking on The Nothic's Eye GLÅUGUST 2026, challenge #3 is from a list by Purple - "Futility of categorization."

I have been gathering the various '... but also!' cultures of play people have articulated since Retired Adventurer wrote their touchstone post. In addition to those original six, we can add 'Optimizer' culture from Flourite Guillotine, Jeu d'Atmosphere from Taskerland and 'Common Sense Culture' from Elmcat.

My personal framing for this - as in why are some of these not the same thing - is that the culture expresses itself as why do folk sit to table. Trying to be very succinct about this we get:
Classic - play to get deeper into the dungeon / take on greater challenges
Trad (short for "traditional") - play to hear the DMs grand story
Nordic Larp - play to live the character
Story Games - play to collectively tell the story
The OSR ("Old School Renaissance / Revival") - play for the interesting decisions
OC / Neo-trad - play to actualise your characters story
Optimizer - play to "work the rules hard"
Games of Atmosphere - play to immerse in the world
Common Sense Culture - play to get the adventure done

And here is where we return to our topic of "Futility of categorization" in that there is almost certainly finer grades of distinction within Nordic LARP and Storygames - I am sure if I played more of either of those I would be able to offer thoughts on how they should be broken down.

This culture of play intersects with the preferences of the players at your table - take Matt Colvilles 9 Types of Players for just one example. Thow in the GNS model or whatever you like to try and articulate the type of fun your are having and things start to get really complicated.

Much like the exercise of trying to say how many communities are within the OSR is near-futile but expressing that there *are* multiple communities within it is useful; trying to nail down a definitive all encompassing categorisation is going to be very hard and of dubious use, but it is still useful to recognise that different groups sit to table with very different objectives in mind.

Shiny TTRPG links #290

A mixed set of links from my trying to catch up after more travels - for still more, check out the chonky set from last week 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.

Afraid of Encounters gives us Indonesian TTRPG Blogwagon

Crow’s Corner posts Viennese Games in the 2026 One Page RPG Jam

Patchwork Paladin shares Reading in the Dark

Throne of Salt writes 4 Roads to R'lyeh

Save vs TPK gives us Some Thoughts on My Awards

Level Zero Commoner posts level zero character creation for old school & 5e style ttrpgs

Trick's Tales posts Marja: The City of Roots

Sage's Sanctum writes The Empress' New Spellbook

Save vs Tentacles shares Simple Multi-Phase Boss Fights in Mythic Bastionland

d12 books of the ruin-infested swamplands (GLÅUGUST 2026 #2)

Taking on The Nothic's Eye GLÅUGUST 2026, challenge #2 is from a list by Prime - "Books as treasure. No spellbooks."

A list of books that were scattered throughout the Hexcrawl25 campaign:

1. Ruins of the Wild Woods - tree art, frontispiece changes, haunted by a druid
2. Torments of the Blade Dungeon - traps and devices catalog
3. A Guide to Toad Licking - swamp-alchemy and herbalism guide
4. Unamed folio of beasts - bound in hellhound hide, smoulders
5. Ohlinbella Esoterica - magical theory primer from regional capital, wizard-focussed for human lifetimes
6. Primer of college of Cyuendreil - magical theory of leylines and planar boundaries, written with elven lifetimes in mind
7. Great Tales of Lhirogref - collected stories of the goblin realm of Lhirogref, the 'first people'
8. Marda's Grimoire - travelogue of the region written by a roving curiousity seeker
9. Eternal Compendium - bronze coffer filled with scrolls, encyclopedia from centuries ago
10. Zigli's Parchments - Yew-bound book, written in Abyssal, personal memoir of a time-travelling wizard
11. Fey Pages of Certa - book bound in light-spotted dark fuzzy hide, opens only by starlight, practical Spellcraft guidance
12. Great Red Book - cartographic survey from the time of the elven invasion, mostly sought because the maps are marked with now-lost dwarven sites from the time

Of these, the Great Red Book and the Pages of Certa drove adventure - the Red Book by pointing to sites for treasure and the Scrolls of Certa being used to line up boosts to spells.

Zigli turned up a bit in the background but their parchments were never actually found.

State of the Blog (post #950)

Dropping in this 'mid-range' state of the blog update mostly to mark having down-shifted since the end of June from Shiny Links plus two posts a week to Shiny Links plus one.

Empire of Crust sounded an appreciated warning - as per their post On the Cancer of Creation for Others - a mere hobby blog such as this, must retain its utility to me. I make not a cent from this, it would be futile indeed to get trapped in some sort of content mill mentality *for free*.

Even assuming 2/3 of all traffic is bot-nonsense, traffic surges. Cloudflares boss thinks its 57% for all the internet.

On Writing

I was going to take this as an opportunity to cover off the 'why I write' prompt and then while I was travelling, things got spicy with A Knight At The Opera getting torched.

There were a few who commented on the 'who do you write for' topic - Dungeon Fruit started it, Roll to Doubt and Mightier Than a Sword contributed and I spent a good long time pondering. Mostly, I post that others may have the benefits I had in coming to the OSR blogosphere when I did. I missed G+ by a hair, so my entire experience was the blogs that preserved the thing that was gone. There were lessons learned, tips and tricks that lit a fire under me and so I resolved to chunter along as best I could that I might do likewise.

I recognise I am no genius game designer, nor have I the time to polish ideas up to A-grade on a regular basis. I can document table-fixes and ideas I come up with for my own campaign - the work-log of a journeyman DM - that it might help others avoid some pitfalls or - better yet - be inspired to do something they would never have otherwise come up with.

As part of this I try to fish out and preserve some of the torrent of ideas and discussion that sluice past in the digital abyss of discord - that they might be preserved against its ruin and better found and referenced today.

I had written *exactly this far* when I put down my pen, and between that and picking it up again, one of the great sites of the OSR was deleted (fair enough) and excised from the wayback machine (boo!).

I was very upset but I talked it through with an old friend, a musician, on the topic of a creatives control of their archive. By their views, since noone had paid a penny for any blog posts, none had any claim to them - freely distributed, freely taken back. To bad for those posts of mine that now lead to dead pages, more fool me for not saving down copies of everything. I have no right to any of those writings, I paid no money for them. It still feels like someone painted over a mural that enriched a community because they did not like the people taking selfies in front of it, or locked up a park because 'the wrong sort' were using it.

That blog succeeded in creating a vibrant patch on the internet, one worth visiting and revisiting. Whatever about declaring you were done and hanging a sign refuting those interpretting your works in a way you disapprove, blocking access to all with no warning is not cool, tearing all trace from the archives spites everyone who ever appreciated the place, not just the bad apples who so infuriated the creator. However the creators was/is well within their rights and I will swallow this bitter taste eventually.

One of the masters of our community of practice has been driven off. Now those who come after us will find less. Gems of gaming are still found on blogs ten years defunct or more. What we do not work to preserve, for the wonder and enlightenment of those who come after, will vanish.

I do not know why this has hit me so damn hard, I don't know Dwiz, he has no idea who I am. There is probably something in watching someone run a blog like I might aspire to in my wildest dreams - expansive, interesting, with useful things in there, throwing off ideas that spark inspiration in others - and to find it brought him *no joy*. Grim.

Shiny TTRPG links #289

A macro set of links from returning online - for still more, check out the deep time delve from last week 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.

Save vs TPK gives us Ramanan Sivaranjan Awards for Excellence in Gaming 2026

Familiar Waves writes Thoughts on Ultraviolet Grasslands

Whose Measure God Could Not Take gives us (Do Not Distribute) RPG discourse terms 2027-2032

False Machine posts The Common Store of Monsters

Traverse Fantasy writes Cinco: DM Inspiration

The Rpg Gazette shares Landmarks, Rumors, and Discovery: Keeping Exploration Fresh

From the Sorcerer's Skull posts Elven Sects

Grumpy Wizard writes There’s No Death Save? An OSR Zine For 5E Players

400 independent bathrooms gives us Design Notebook: Dress-Up Dolls

This Vorpal Coil shares Noosphere Emergence

CROSS PLANES posts Invincible RPG: I want to succeed more often and not break the Stunt rules

Tabletop Battles posts The Narrative Forge: Campaigns, Part 7 - Map Campaigns

Ms. Quixotic Talks About Games shares Battle For Phaedra Grand Retrospective - Introduction

Garamondia gives us Mask 35: Beholder Mask

The Foot of Blue Mountain writes Online Gaming Best Practices

Sage's Sanctum writes Mysteries: It's ok if the Players Get Stuck

Crow’s Corner gives us Table-Tested Review of “Alice is Missing”

AWESOME LIES shares HIRING AND FIRING

GROGNARDIA shares Reconsiderations: Death and Resurrection

All Dead Generations writes Jaquays Your Dungeon - Another OSR Maxim

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

Shiny TTRPG links #285

More links from about the internet - for still more, check out the huge set from the previous list 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.

AMONG CATS AND BOOKS shares rootring months later

Goblin Archives, Unenthuser & Emo Sludge host LIMINAL HORROR SUMMER JAM 2026

Weeping Stag gives us Learning to Draw and Not Feeling Like Crap About It

Troy Press writes Participating in Blaugust 2026

Empire of Crust gives us On the Cancer of Creation for Others

Sultan's Musings posts Pirate Chill

Huovila, Hiski gives us Telegraphed Dangers — Enemy Intercompatibility in D20-Based Fantasy OSR Tabletop Roleplaying Games

@rxsesroots shares Boo! Did I Scare Ya..?

Campaign Mastery posts Worldbuilding Through Encounters

Bommyknocker Press writes High Level Play and Scaffolding

Insurers estimate of the population of gamers

In my quest to find data points on how many D&D players there are out there I stumbled upon this "The tabletop gamers’ survey" by Compare The Market - the general gist of which is "there are a lot of gamers out there, have you got insurance for all those out of print RPG books and precious, precious miniatures?" - which fair play, they are transparent in their angle in all of this, respect the hustle and so on.

They do give us some interesting insight with a 3000 person survey equally split across the US, Canada and Australia - finding that ~ 30% of US and Canadians (about half that for Australia) play or played tabletop games and the most popular of those games in every case was Dungeons and Dragons.

Their focus was a little unusual because it was about the physical stuff - with questions like 'I play, but I always borrowed minis' - more than whether people were current or lapsed players. If we bucket it all together as 'how many folk ever played D&D - now or in the past' we can compared to other sources and build some confidence in our understanding of what is going on.

Taking all the answers on whether folk ever played and collected a tabletop-roleplaying game or wargame we get
US - 29%
Canada - 32%
Australia - 16%

The found D&D was the most popular tabletop RPG or Wargame in each country and that combining all the survey results gave 32% of respondants selecting it. I do not think we can assume a flat ratio across the three countries and say therefore we have a thid of each survey response group saying they play or have played D&D - ~10% of all surveyed folk for US/Canada, ~5% for Australia.

There is a bit of a range in there - I spitballed back in 2022 that there might be ~33-43 million USA "fans" based on assumptions M.T. Black made on trends from WotCs 2020 claim of "over 40 million fans around the world." Recognising there was a daisy-chain of assumptions in there, it translates to 9-13% of USA folk being fans. Coming in the same ballpark but still a pretty wide range.

Recognising there is fuzz in there, I think "about one-in-eight folk in the US play or have played D&D" feels more plausible than the high-ball "about one-in-three have".

There are other bits and pieces like Cyberpunk and Call of Cthulu also being mentioned in there but given that we have no other sources for even as rough an analysis as this for those games, there is nothing I can do with those.

Sources

2026 Survey by Researchscape (N = 1253)

2025 The tabletop gamers’ survey (N = 3035)

2022 Survey by Researchscape (N = 1074)

2019 Survey by Researchscape (N = 942)

2000 Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0 (N = "about a thousand")

Shiny TTRPG links #284

A lighter set of links as I was travelling - but for more, check out the huge set from the previous list 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.

The Nothic's Eye launches G L Å U G U S T 2 0 2 6

Sundered Shields and Silver Shillings writes Do every challenge in 500 words or less: an elaboration

Dank Dungeons hosts Appx. N Jam 2026

Sea of Stars posts Beginning this month’s RPG Blog Carnival – Small Gods, Saints, and other minor divinities

Advantage on Arcana writes June 2026 RPG Blog Carnival Round-up: Cyclopes, Ettins, Hill Giants, and Ogres

Casting Shadows shares #RPGaDAY2026 starts August 1st

Root Devil posts Use Tracing Paper

Ill Met by Morrslieb writes The Philosophy of Symbaroum

Writing my Odd Game gives us Combat as Failstate

Fail Forward shares Combat as Art - Boss Design and Reflections on Violence

Valeria Loves posts People Walk Too Fast

Capsule Reviews #10: Kala Mandala Zines

I grabbed the set of Kala Mandala zines after the Hey Centaur shop went online. These are great zines of the old school OSR glory days - easily earning their shelf space beside any of the greats. We get a great setting in the Playbook and two Art Research zines, further expanded by three juicy adventures - all site exploration with a twist for each.

Six books existing in the core set at time of writing:
Kala Mandala Playbook - 42 pages, system
Stirring the Hornets Nest at Het Thamsya - 26 pages, adventure
Deluge at Drizzle Distillery - 42 pages, adventure
Tragedy at Zaya's Theatre - 26 pages, adventure
Earthly Beings - 38 pages, gazetteer
Heavenly Bodies - 38 pages, gazetteer

Plus the Paper Minis set. As a whole this is the character generation and system in the playbook, three adventures (Het Thamsya, Drizzle Distillery and Zaya's Theatre) and two world-books/gazetteers (Earthly Beings and Heavenly Bodies)

I did have a minor logistics issue in that I ordered the stickers collection and got a second playbook - strictly this has worked in my benefit because the playbook is a touch more expensive than the stickers. From a point of view of trying to get Kala Mandala to table, having a second playbook might end up being more helpful. So I am going to call it a wash, all to the good.

July 2026 RPG Blog Carnival: Small Gods, Saints and minor divinity!

Welcome to the new month for the RPG Blog Carnival - our topic for July 2026 is "Small Gods, Saints and minor divinity!" You can find some deeper background on the RPG Blog Carnival on 'of Dice and Dragons'. Write what you like around the prompt or see the suggestions below. This month, hosting is being shared with Sea of Stars - see their launch post for yet more inspirational ideas.

If you want to join the carnival, write up your own entry and post it in a comment below, send me a link (my username at gmail.com) or ping me on the 'blog-carnival' OSR discord channel or find me bluesky or mastodon. I will gather all the participants into a wrap-up post on August 8th.

For d6 prompts:
1. Talk about how your divine magic system works e.g. Who hears your oath?
2. Describe some of the minor divinities e.g. d14 small gods of the animal-lings
3. Share some shrines or locations e.g. d6 Sites of the Long Wars
4. Tell of aspects of the divine e.g. d8 natures of this quasi-godlike entity
5. Write up a specific god or saint e.g. Small god: Lady Deephome
6. Describe a faction or cult e.g. Commission for the ethical sourcing of construct souls

For my own take, I wanted to revamp my house rules from Who hears your oath? - d100 roll under your level, +10 per factor in your favour.

Shiny TTRPG links #283

A lighter set of links as I was travelling - but for more, check out the huge set from the previous list 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.

On a housekeeping announcement, for the rest of this year, I am shifting down to a Shiny Links + one post per week schedule (Saturdays) for burnout avoidance. We will see how things look as we approach 2027 on keeping/reverting.

Pikliz Dungeon writes The Black Hack 10th Anniversary Game Jam

The Lich's Library gives us Prepping for the next level of a Megadungeon!

Traveler's Rest shares Generating Elevation in a Hexcrawl

The Other Side blog posts BECMI Binders

RPGTrader writes Free RPG Day 2026 Bundle

Rise Up Comus gives us The Secret History of The Castle Automatic

Billhook Blog shares Your Favorite Game (You Haven't Played Yet)

Crow’s Corner posts Table-Tested Review of the “Fomoria” Quickstart

Patchwork Paladin writes Playing the Social Game

AMONG CATS AND BOOKS pens Cultures, not Games

False Machine gives us A Review of Forgotten Realms; Underdark

shifty louts writes Another Reflection on Writing for the Antarctica Jam

#City26 Mid-Year Status

At the mid-point of the year, asking how the #City26 challenge is coming along. On a pure stats, it is not bad - --% of total hex-count for the year achieved with 50% of the time gone. I have not gotten any of this to table but it has proved a nice distraction during travel of all things. Recall the 'rhythm' of the weekly tasks of this challenge with this guide from Pete of Garblag Games. So far I have been all over the place - I tend to do these as one ward in a sitting, with time in between spent considering what might be the 'killer hooks' for incomplete wards so I can just sit down and write when I come to it.

Infographic of City26 Challenge by Peter Lattimore

Anyway, in my 'keep me honest' progress tracker stats:
Progress: 36/52 wards completed
Completion vs target: 69% vs 50% target
Population covered: 76%

Inspirations

A touchstone for all this has been "What is life like on a Hive world?" which has been very helpful to divvy out the fractions of who lives in what conditions across the Upper, Mid and Lower parts of the Hive.

Pure inspiration has been these gorgeous old-school Knight Lancers that I recall from back in the day, in particular this amazing upscaled version someone worked up. These are the few actual Knights that underpin the worlds raison d'etre.

Those of course must be accompanied by dino-riding cavalry - these folk are also the primary Law Enforcers within Hive-RT87

Support will come from beastfolk Imperial Guards all in keeping with the oldest lore.

In parallel I have been reading the Warhammer Crime novels to get that sense of the day-to-day, building on previous reading of the Eisenhorn and Ravenor books and a lifetime marinading in 40k lore.

The City - Hive RT-87 Rejoicing Torch

Spires

Knights Martial - planetary nobles, house-keeps, bristling defences, boulevards scaled to knight-parades

Upper Hive

College of Heralds - lineage and inheritance lore-keepers, world use litigation, duel ajudication
Adeptus Munitorium - perpetually swamped in comparative weapons studies as factions scuffle to direct the worlds production
1000 Shields (Knight seneschals, fled nobles, fallen quality) - those with means who fled the fallen nearby hives

Upper Mid Hive

Hive defence fire control (knight-vassals) - seat of the atomantic lances defence web
All Hands (Abhuman efficiency bureau) – talent bazaar; clearing house for mercenaries and all sorts
Infernal cannon maintenance (sarcristans) - most secure workshops of the sacristans maintaining the near lost technologies of the defence web
Optical Masters - Admech Lens Crafters make high performance optics from abundant clay while agitating to make ever bigger laser ones
Central Medicae - where man, beast and beastman are patched together to longer serve the Emperor
Megasaur Mastercrafts - artists and craftsfolk turn megasaur parts into finest luxuries for this world and export

Lower Mid Hive

Promethium works - refineries to process abundant feedstock into promethium
Jet Bike lines - Sacristans hand-craft near-forgotten technologies - jetbikes, imperial robots
Mustering grounds / barracks - beastman regiments forming for onworld training, offworld service
Weapons factories (dispensated non metal) - armours, blades and other works that require as little metal as possible
Dino Servitorisation (mech) - megasaurs turned into industrial machinery
Stonework Specialists - fighting the sysphean fight to maintain the hive structure
Dinochrome - Carnosaur refit (sacristans) where megasaurs are turned into training-rigs and knights-in-waiting prove themselves
Ogryn quarter - dino-wranglers, source of dino-run labour & gangs from 'dead' wasteland ranches
Cold-one scout regiments - house guards, order enforcement, wasteland scouts, Adept. Arbites enclave
The Sieves - ministorum and astra telepathica winnow the population, sifting psykers and heretics out of the workforce
Dino stockyards - minotaur butcherguilds slaughter the megasaur herds that arrive by the shipload
Metal reclamation - hive-breaker yards recycling ruined cities from inland
Knight-parts - macromanufactories; knights and armoured trains, refurbishment facilities for offworld houses
Transhipment hub - focus of the intra-continental maglev lines bringing chunks of abandoned hives in and exporting to the starport
Ministorum - local strains on fanatical abhumans seeking to prove themselves worthy of the God-Emperor through acts of faith
Railheads - the giant rail bringing dinosaur-ships from the southern continents

Lower Hive - description


Bonecraft workcamps - grinding labor to handcarve parts from megasaur bones, squeezed by bone suppliers and predatory acceptance inspectors
Bone reclamation, corpse processing, fleshbees - post-butchery megasaur carcasses sent for scavenging
scalies in deeps + zombies by radioactive archaeotech - the hardiest of mutant survivors
Off-worlder ghetto - for those too strange to be taken by the workcamps, a hub of the cold-trade
Sumpside - abhuman underground railroad, coldtraders - where the paperless arrivals from starport, maglevs wind up
Redemptionists - fanatical beastfolk, eager to prove faith by cleansing with fire any hint of less perfect faith
old ways tribalists / beastman paleoculture - the caverns where the original colony landed hosts beastfolk who cling to the most ancient ways
Slums of the Lost (hives Polaris, FK91) - refugees from the broken hives to sorry or unfortunate to claw into the lower-mid hives
ogryn tallow-works - where worn out ogryns make pilgrimage to be turned into sacred candles
extraction bay slums - clinging beneath the maglevs, above the reactor wastes, but close to patrolled zones above. Safer, not safe.

All told this ccounts for some 3.5 billion souls - out of the 4.6 in the city as a whole. Any one of those wards could be a whole world of adventure to itself.

Round-up of City26 posts

City '26 Launch - outlines the rules of the challenge and my goals to create a hivecity of the old school.

Hive RT-87 Rejoicing Torch - general info + example ward (City26) - gives some layout for the whole hive and delves into the Carnosaur Refit Works - known locally as Dinochrome.

Incentivising challenges with tactility (City26) - talks about the process and about how recycling old boarding passes keeps it interesting and focussed.

Evolving city surroundings (City26) talks about the world emerging around the hive.

Piling high the burdens of ruling #City26 - some historical and high politics background and d20 Reasons Lord Mawcambeth Has An Ulcer.

Dredging old adventures for a campaign #City26 takes a diversion into various megacity adventures for different systems seeking a tone match.

31 40k Hivecity NPCs for #City26 pulls together a selection that represents some of the more interesting adventures hooks walking around the hive.

Getting to City adventures in 26

So far, with a good fraction of the challenge done, the trick ahead is going to be pulling this to table in some form. I need to decide a system, pick which are the most interesting adventures to run - there are campaigns worth of adventure in here unpicking all the knots - and I have a decent idea for a starter one.

With a bit of luck I can get it hacked together, lure some test subjects to an... Imperium Maledictum? Dark Heresy?... table and set them loose. Tempted as I am to roll with Chapter Serf or Warpstar! I think I will stick to the mainline system for just now to give good template adventures to work off while I figure out how to run them myself.

Worms in the deeps (Extremely Byzantine 5-Room Dungeon Jam)

Slothyyyyyyy hosts the Extremely Byzantine 5-Room Dungeon Jam and this is my ashcan entry. I am using an 'out-take' from the d24 woodworm dungeons set. https://itch.io/jam/byzantine-5-room-dungeons.

This is the lair of hiver-bugs - a parasite/predator of insectfolk (see Deep Time Monster Groups and Culture of the insectfolk - Beetlescale) - gnawed deep into the roots of mountains. Trapped within for a very long time, chaos on the surface has finally unmanned the watch-posts and seen the seals broken.

These things are the vampire analogs from a time when everything had exoskeletons and their crushing jaws are their adaption. They are tough, swift and dangerous in melee with pheremonic 'charm' equivalent, and a penchant for whole innards, not just blood. They believe themselves the last 'real' people left alive amidst these disgusting, swarming mammals. Below is a typical lair of theirs, chewed from the bowels of the earth over aeons.

1. Chasm of Echos - screams and cries of historical events reverberate from the deeps as one clambers aound it along perilous ledges
1. - calls for help, lost
2. - clash of battle
3. - screams of ambushed
4. - buzz of hivers flying
5. - tramp of marching feet
6. - crunching of chitin being crushed in the maws of hiverbugs

2. Cavern of Shadows - phosphorescent, dim light
1. - shadows, insectfolk form
2. - bats
3. - illusion-hidden pits
4. - piercers
5. - ropers
6. - uneven-floor trip-hazards onto caltrop-like spiky flooring beyond

3. Labyrinth of Illusions (d6 per dungeon turn)
1. - maze of tunnels with rushing footsteps echoing
2. - charge of insectfolk thralls from illusory corridors entrances
3. - stalking small insectfolk, fire at range and flee
4. - loops with cloaked exit
5. - incredibly obvious trap - for those who do not perceive by sight
6. - lurking insectfolk guards - just propped up shells

4. dominated hives - thrall insect folk living vampiric dominance nightmare
1. - masses and masses of enthralled insectfolk laboring
2. - body-snatcher shrieks if strangers spotted
3. - insectfolk carrying a dead fellow on a ceremonial bier - large bite hole chewed through head
4. - fungal garden growing on dead insectfolk, spore clouds mildly poisonous, soporific
5. - insectfolk paying homage at statue of another bigger, sleeker insectfolk
6. - ceremonially garbed insectfolk choosing from crowd and daubing them with paint

5. myriad of misdirection - very dark, lots of carved statuary, hunting perches, ambush hollows
1. - swoop down from hunting perch, shove off ledge into gulley and follow, grappling
2. - echo-chittering from hollow statues, allows ambush from behind
3. - ambush hollow - statue facing one way, open at the back, snatch someone into opening, block visibility while fighting them
4. - stalking grilles - sneak in close, openings allow stab, domination effect, then withdraw
5. - recently dead insectfolk, chewed open and partially drained, lying in a line in a small grotto
6. - decorated chamber, illusion of gloating hiverbug atop plinth, monologues while real ones leap from niches above door

Notes: I initially had an idea for leaning into the weird and making each room its own byzantine process but decided that just made this whole thing a blogging gag not a useable piece of kit and chose against that. The room themes would have been:
Room 1 - Zocchi dice based encounter table
Room 2 - d1000 fibonnacci sequence
Room 3 - monster of variable properties
Room 4 - variable terrain effects
Room 5 - cross reference the results of all previous rooms to get the 'final boss'
Passages between rooms would have been portals of variable destination