More great links from the link-mines below. Previous list found here. Inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links. You can find more links on the weekly blogroll on r/OSR.
Lizardman Diaries has an awesome new generator - the Automated Past and Present - Atomic Cosmology for Game World Creation. Create past, present, people, beasts, monsters, events, objects and places. Mash these buttons a few times and boom, world.
From the maker of Kill 6 Billion Demons, of which this blog is a big fan, and Lancer comes ICON a mythic fantasy RPG. "A fantasy role playing game heavily inspired by the vast, unknown spaces of classic mythic fantasy, anime, and video games."
Dyson Logos posted on 'the Canting Crew' - if you want to try a North American rooted variant of Planescapes Sigil.
Giving a Dungeon Soul: Dark Souls Dungeon Guide - pretty much a checklist for 'things to have in your next session' from Liches Get Stitches.
An adventure seed generator - has buttons for Spears of the Dawn, Old School Fantasy and Pariah by Alone in the Labyrinth.
Glass Bird Games does a cool depth-crawl "The Cyclopean Organ".
02 August 2021
31 July 2021
Actual Play: Kobolds Art Exhibition part VIII - The Farewell
We wrap up with the Kobolds Art Exhibition zine by Evlyn Moreau. Links to the review and part I of play using it, Part II - Adventures in Paintings, Part III - the Rescue, Part IV - the Show, Part V - the Tour, Part VI - the Chase and Part VII - the Delve. A final round up of the zine as a supplement is at the end of this write-up.
Significant time has passed since last the party directly interacted with the Kobolds - they had quested without them to recover the masterpiece painting they sought, fighting mimics, carrion-crawlers and a terrible ethereal predator - fierce enough fights that they had not brought the kobolds along with them. The masterwork recovered, interactions were handed off to the Lady of the House, the bards mother, while the party dealt with conspiracies, magical artefacts and divine visions. As the party now prepares to depart the palace at dawn to settle the unrest that has shaken the north of their family realms, the cleric decides to bid farewell. The kobolds portal painting should be finished and they ought to be well on their way to moving on to their next location.
Significant time has passed since last the party directly interacted with the Kobolds - they had quested without them to recover the masterpiece painting they sought, fighting mimics, carrion-crawlers and a terrible ethereal predator - fierce enough fights that they had not brought the kobolds along with them. The masterwork recovered, interactions were handed off to the Lady of the House, the bards mother, while the party dealt with conspiracies, magical artefacts and divine visions. As the party now prepares to depart the palace at dawn to settle the unrest that has shaken the north of their family realms, the cleric decides to bid farewell. The kobolds portal painting should be finished and they ought to be well on their way to moving on to their next location.
Curator Zosk + Scout by Evlyn Moreau
28 July 2021
Actual Play: Aces High Aerial Combat at the table
I have reviewed Aces High in 'set piece test' format before for flying-ship-on-flying-ship combat but I had the great good fortune to be able to test them as they were intended in our last session.
Some background - our party of dragonbloods (reskinned dragonkings from Atlas Games 7 Civilisations) has pulled a dragon saddle off the wall behind the old throne of their legendary great-great-great grandsire after a hard nudge from a wizarding uncle to sort their own stuff out and stop bugging him about site-to-site transport. Lacking the dragon that their grandsire had, they secured something broadly-like a whaling longboat and got the palace carpenter to put a roof over the front half to make it aerodynamic. The magical saddle was strapped across the top and after a few flight tests where speeds were determined, the party, their aunt, all her luggage and their grandfather the Duke boarded to set off for the frontiers of the kingdom to try and find a misplaced treaty stone that had kept the peace between giants and dragons for the past few generations.
En route, they encountered a territorial dragon - not a very large one, merely a juvenile red - and it gave a good 'real play' test of the rules - putting a relatively standard foe up against whatever contraption a party manages to get their hands on.
Some background - our party of dragonbloods (reskinned dragonkings from Atlas Games 7 Civilisations) has pulled a dragon saddle off the wall behind the old throne of their legendary great-great-great grandsire after a hard nudge from a wizarding uncle to sort their own stuff out and stop bugging him about site-to-site transport. Lacking the dragon that their grandsire had, they secured something broadly-like a whaling longboat and got the palace carpenter to put a roof over the front half to make it aerodynamic. The magical saddle was strapped across the top and after a few flight tests where speeds were determined, the party, their aunt, all her luggage and their grandfather the Duke boarded to set off for the frontiers of the kingdom to try and find a misplaced treaty stone that had kept the peace between giants and dragons for the past few generations.
En route, they encountered a territorial dragon - not a very large one, merely a juvenile red - and it gave a good 'real play' test of the rules - putting a relatively standard foe up against whatever contraption a party manages to get their hands on.
26 July 2021
Shiny TTRPG links collection #27
A little light on links this week because I have been getting more actual gaming in; Thursday-Saturday playing, Wednesday prepping for Saturday which I ran. Good problems to have and I did get time to catch these good links below. Previous list found here. Inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links. You can find more links on the weekly blogroll on r/OSR.
Awesome piece by Daily Adventure Prompts on welding a campaign together out of a bunch of cool ideas.
Nine new Domains of Dread in "Captain Snowmane’s Guided Cruise Through the Domains of Dread."
Through Ultans Door is back in print!
Goodberry Monthly has another great piece - on the consequences of killing a king.
Nice piece by weaver.skepti.ch on the risks of drawing to directly from history and where it might clash with players expectations about narrative.
Awesome piece by Daily Adventure Prompts on welding a campaign together out of a bunch of cool ideas.
Nine new Domains of Dread in "Captain Snowmane’s Guided Cruise Through the Domains of Dread."
Through Ultans Door is back in print!
Goodberry Monthly has another great piece - on the consequences of killing a king.
Nice piece by weaver.skepti.ch on the risks of drawing to directly from history and where it might clash with players expectations about narrative.
24 July 2021
d12/2d6 How goes the Blood-War on Gehenna?
For upcoming Gehenna hex-crawl piece, I am snapping off this mercenary band generator.
In particular I had in mind the volcanic slopes of Khalas, known as 'the Gentle Land', where the front lines of the Blood War surge back and forth but the broken landscape means there is no static, fortified line and lots of room for wandering around without being seen - or without seeing and thus avoiding some other band of ne'er-do-wells abroad beneath the Furnaces. I like about Gehenna is the cragginess of the place - the terrain is so difficult to deal with that again, it makes sense that even though the Blood War rolls over this place, you can move around unseen and avoid the clashes of mighty armies.
Khalas was where I set one of my longer running campaigns and I think it is a great part of the lower planes for many reasons. Least horrible of the lower planes you could pitch into Gehenna and while it is dangerous, it is plausible that you could survive there long enough to think you way out. Pitch up on Avernus or into the Gray Wastes and the clock is ticking for you. All of the 'off-cardinal' lower planes are generally more survivable because they do not have a native power of the lower planes - no devils, no demons, in theory the yugoloths live here but they hold the place with a lighter grasp if so. The noted local powers of Gehenna are the Barghests - described as the 'only true natives' of Gehenna. Taking this as true, then Gehenna is sufficiently easy to slip about in that CR4 blue goblin lycanthropes can hold dominion where the rulers in the planes on either side are CR13 Ultroloths and CR20 Pit fiends.
Altogether, I read that as a canon license for cunning lower level adventurers to slither about in the shadows without that being against the spirit of the place. Below you will find some tables for setting the scene for the local Blood War and the mercenary bands players could run into.
In particular I had in mind the volcanic slopes of Khalas, known as 'the Gentle Land', where the front lines of the Blood War surge back and forth but the broken landscape means there is no static, fortified line and lots of room for wandering around without being seen - or without seeing and thus avoiding some other band of ne'er-do-wells abroad beneath the Furnaces. I like about Gehenna is the cragginess of the place - the terrain is so difficult to deal with that again, it makes sense that even though the Blood War rolls over this place, you can move around unseen and avoid the clashes of mighty armies.
Khalas was where I set one of my longer running campaigns and I think it is a great part of the lower planes for many reasons. Least horrible of the lower planes you could pitch into Gehenna and while it is dangerous, it is plausible that you could survive there long enough to think you way out. Pitch up on Avernus or into the Gray Wastes and the clock is ticking for you. All of the 'off-cardinal' lower planes are generally more survivable because they do not have a native power of the lower planes - no devils, no demons, in theory the yugoloths live here but they hold the place with a lighter grasp if so. The noted local powers of Gehenna are the Barghests - described as the 'only true natives' of Gehenna. Taking this as true, then Gehenna is sufficiently easy to slip about in that CR4 blue goblin lycanthropes can hold dominion where the rulers in the planes on either side are CR13 Ultroloths and CR20 Pit fiends.
Altogether, I read that as a canon license for cunning lower level adventurers to slither about in the shadows without that being against the spirit of the place. Below you will find some tables for setting the scene for the local Blood War and the mercenary bands players could run into.
21 July 2021
What are these mindflayers up to? (d24 schemes)
These encounter ideas are bulked out using repeated firings of the Bellard tool with some minor sense-checking and clean up:
What are these prideful, domineering arcano-technic time-wanderers up to?
1. Snacking on a previous group much like yours who stumbled in on them yesterday.
2. Off mission and have gone rogue, terrorising the locailty with plans to set up a petty kingdom.
3. Setting up a forward operating base for a long-play. They are currently quietly laying the foundations for a settlement that will arrive when the local invertebrates complete their (slightly forced) evolution.
4. Conducting a survey to identify a piece of terrain that will survive through the next million years so they can bury a cache that will be needed then. There is a massive disagreement between the senior surveyors over the calibration of their measurements - either this continent or the next one over will be subsumed into the oceans in mere hundreds of thousands of years.
5. Tending a ship nursery, all is quiet just now and the guardian beasts are dormant, but this is the place where they grow the world-ending horrors to unleash on other places.
6. Trying to restore a facility. They are heavily armed and extremely jumpy because they don't know what took out the last crew but it was clearly dangerous as it left no traces.
What are these prideful, domineering arcano-technic time-wanderers up to?
1. Snacking on a previous group much like yours who stumbled in on them yesterday.
2. Off mission and have gone rogue, terrorising the locailty with plans to set up a petty kingdom.
3. Setting up a forward operating base for a long-play. They are currently quietly laying the foundations for a settlement that will arrive when the local invertebrates complete their (slightly forced) evolution.
4. Conducting a survey to identify a piece of terrain that will survive through the next million years so they can bury a cache that will be needed then. There is a massive disagreement between the senior surveyors over the calibration of their measurements - either this continent or the next one over will be subsumed into the oceans in mere hundreds of thousands of years.
5. Tending a ship nursery, all is quiet just now and the guardian beasts are dormant, but this is the place where they grow the world-ending horrors to unleash on other places.
6. Trying to restore a facility. They are heavily armed and extremely jumpy because they don't know what took out the last crew but it was clearly dangerous as it left no traces.
19 July 2021
Shiny TTRPG links collection #26
Links of interest from the past week. Previous list found here. Inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links. This week I collated the lions share from the Weekly OSR Blogroll on Reddit which I am helping out with for a while.
Wandering Wombat writes up an actual play of the Prison of the Hated Pretender.
Archons March On has d20x5 Demon Lords.
A cool roundup of Free Kriegspiel games on Revenants Quill.
Tabletop Curiousity Cabinet has a nice piece on ghibli-esque 'fae in the valley'.
Wandering Wombat writes up an actual play of the Prison of the Hated Pretender.
Archons March On has d20x5 Demon Lords.
A cool roundup of Free Kriegspiel games on Revenants Quill.
Tabletop Curiousity Cabinet has a nice piece on ghibli-esque 'fae in the valley'.
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