More links as we crest the year and start into the second half! More can be found on the previous list found here. The original inspiration for all of this is weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links. You can find more links on weekly blogroll on r/OSR or join the new July prompt for the RPG Blog Carnival or a roundup of non-blog news on Third Kingdom Games roundup.
dice-scroller.com pulls over a million character sheets of D&DBeyond to give us Most popular D&D Classes and Races
Alone in the Labyrinth writes LONG LIVE THE BLOGOSPHERE!
Traverse Fantasy shares Exploring Effects of Exploration
Sundered Shields and Silver Shillings gives us Towards the ingredients of a lasting game
In My Campaign shares Masterworks
The Graverobber's Guide gives us Combo Encounters
03 July 2023
01 July 2023
Travels, by Wave, Cloud or Portal - RPG Blog Carnival Wrap Up
And so we conclude the June 2023 RPG Blog Carnival - our topic was "Travels, by Wave, Cloud or Portal" - on my mind was the lots of fun I have wrung from travelling campaigns - portal-hopping through Planescape, sailing the seas in a swashbuckler game or navigating the stars with Spelljammer.
We got responses from:
RPG Wandering who gave us RPG Blog Carnival: Travel.
Plastic Polyhedra contributed An exploration of travelling in TTRPGs.
Sea of Stars got their offer to us in the nick of time with Sails, Wings and Gates, getting around in the Sea of Stars
My own entry has d30 Things you might Encounter as you Travel Beneath the Waves
You can find some deeper background on the RPG Blog Carnival on 'of Dice and Dragons'. Our next topic is going to be "Terrain, Seasons, Weather" hosted by Plastic Polyhedra again.
We got responses from:
RPG Wandering who gave us RPG Blog Carnival: Travel.
Plastic Polyhedra contributed An exploration of travelling in TTRPGs.
Sea of Stars got their offer to us in the nick of time with Sails, Wings and Gates, getting around in the Sea of Stars
My own entry has d30 Things you might Encounter as you Travel Beneath the Waves
You can find some deeper background on the RPG Blog Carnival on 'of Dice and Dragons'. Our next topic is going to be "Terrain, Seasons, Weather" hosted by Plastic Polyhedra again.
28 June 2023
d20 things encountered at Deep Sea Mindflayer Colonies
Sparked by a discussion on the limits of what mindflayers can turn into themselves on the Piazza with my thought at the time being:
Some initial rough thoughts were:
- The only limit that seems to be there is size - we see no ogres, giants, etc.
- If lizardfolk, grimlocks, gnolls and the wide range of goblinoids can be ceromorphised, why not aquatics - merfolk and tritons seem obviously suitable hosts, perhaps even loacathah, sahaugin and kuo-toa
- One would imagine that suitably adapted mindflayer colonies would be perfectly happy in the depths of the oceans, with extra miles of sun-blocking water overhead
- If a roper or dragon can be ceromorphised into Urophions and Brainstealer Dragons, why not a dragon turtle or giant crab?
- What about other large mammals with big brains - whales, dolphins? Are they tasty as is? What about an awakened one?
But testing this a bit more; mindflayers can move in 3D through psionic or magical power anyway so as a start point would prefer to dwell out of water to avoid being slowed down. The ideal state would be mountains and the surface in a place where the sun has been blocked or snuffed out. Where this has not happened and the baleful glare of the hateful day-star still dominate the sky, mindflayers may well choose the vast open ranges of the aquatic deeps. The sun is kept at bay by hundreds of feet of water, and they have greater freedom than the cave systems of the underdark.
Assuming our seas are populated with aquatics then there will be an abundance of tasty brains too. Our first difference is that it will be much more easy to tell who a mind-flayers base species was compared to the surface; merfolk, tritons and sahuagin look very different from the waist down.
So with that in mind, d20 things one might encounter at a deep sea mindflayer colony
I think the most interesting of these are the Urophion, Tzakandi, Mindwitness, Uchuulon and Brainstealer Dragon since they seem to show that there is a very wide range of useable forms. The Kezreth mutated war-machine mentioned in "The Illithid Empire and the New Illithid Arsenal" implies that further changes can be made post-transformation.
Some initial rough thoughts were:
- The only limit that seems to be there is size - we see no ogres, giants, etc.
- If lizardfolk, grimlocks, gnolls and the wide range of goblinoids can be ceromorphised, why not aquatics - merfolk and tritons seem obviously suitable hosts, perhaps even loacathah, sahaugin and kuo-toa
- One would imagine that suitably adapted mindflayer colonies would be perfectly happy in the depths of the oceans, with extra miles of sun-blocking water overhead
- If a roper or dragon can be ceromorphised into Urophions and Brainstealer Dragons, why not a dragon turtle or giant crab?
- What about other large mammals with big brains - whales, dolphins? Are they tasty as is? What about an awakened one?
But testing this a bit more; mindflayers can move in 3D through psionic or magical power anyway so as a start point would prefer to dwell out of water to avoid being slowed down. The ideal state would be mountains and the surface in a place where the sun has been blocked or snuffed out. Where this has not happened and the baleful glare of the hateful day-star still dominate the sky, mindflayers may well choose the vast open ranges of the aquatic deeps. The sun is kept at bay by hundreds of feet of water, and they have greater freedom than the cave systems of the underdark.
Assuming our seas are populated with aquatics then there will be an abundance of tasty brains too. Our first difference is that it will be much more easy to tell who a mind-flayers base species was compared to the surface; merfolk, tritons and sahuagin look very different from the waist down.
So with that in mind, d20 things one might encounter at a deep sea mindflayer colony
26 June 2023
Shiny TTRPG links #126
Another week of interesting links! More can be found on the previous list found here. The original inspiration for all of this is weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links. You can find more links on weekly blogroll on r/OSR or the RPG Blog Carnival or a roundup of non-blog news on Third Kingdom Games roundup.
Throne of Salt gives us 5 Forgotten Fictional Fantasy Novels
Prismatic Wasteland takes another swing at a classic in Posters, Posers and POSR(s)
Loot The Room writes on RPGs and The High Cost Of Art
Source of Entropy gives us AAR: Zoa of the Vastlands
3d6 Polar Bears has The Revelation
The Dododecahedron gives us Toolbox Design
Aboleth Overlords declares “OSR is dead” is nonsense gatekeeping
Throne of Salt gives us 5 Forgotten Fictional Fantasy Novels
Prismatic Wasteland takes another swing at a classic in Posters, Posers and POSR(s)
Loot The Room writes on RPGs and The High Cost Of Art
Source of Entropy gives us AAR: Zoa of the Vastlands
3d6 Polar Bears has The Revelation
The Dododecahedron gives us Toolbox Design
Aboleth Overlords declares “OSR is dead” is nonsense gatekeeping
24 June 2023
Review: Realmspace (1991)
tl:dr; ware ye, some good ideas in here but mostly one for the collectors only.
I grabbed this as a pdf with great excitement back when they started republishing these things on DriveThruRPG - skimmed it at the time but only recently got to going through it in detail trying to extract playable content from it. This is not a positive review, if you want to save your time and read up on something you might spend your money on, hit the review tab at right and pick anything else.
First impression is that this is not the best supplement I have ever read with an odd fixation on nit-picky bureacracy like port taxes and a paucity of information on what you might find assuming you pay the man and just get on with things. I see a weird reflection of an adverserial gaming group reflected back - with a whole system flattened out into just a couple of images and 'gotcha' traps.
The pdf rendering is ok - obviously a scan but apart from typos in the bookmarks and incomplete bookmarking there is nothing unusable. There is a bunch of repetition between sections - a thing mentioned in a planetary description is described again in the adventure hooks section - which somewhat irritating because tracking down exactly where you read a thing is trickier than it ought to be. It is hilarious to see the old prices on it - a supplement for $10.95! 3x inflation in 30 years.
So what is all this stuff you get in the box?
I grabbed this as a pdf with great excitement back when they started republishing these things on DriveThruRPG - skimmed it at the time but only recently got to going through it in detail trying to extract playable content from it. This is not a positive review, if you want to save your time and read up on something you might spend your money on, hit the review tab at right and pick anything else.
Realmspace cover art by Thomas Baxa
First impression is that this is not the best supplement I have ever read with an odd fixation on nit-picky bureacracy like port taxes and a paucity of information on what you might find assuming you pay the man and just get on with things. I see a weird reflection of an adverserial gaming group reflected back - with a whole system flattened out into just a couple of images and 'gotcha' traps.
The pdf rendering is ok - obviously a scan but apart from typos in the bookmarks and incomplete bookmarking there is nothing unusable. There is a bunch of repetition between sections - a thing mentioned in a planetary description is described again in the adventure hooks section - which somewhat irritating because tracking down exactly where you read a thing is trickier than it ought to be. It is hilarious to see the old prices on it - a supplement for $10.95! 3x inflation in 30 years.
So what is all this stuff you get in the box?
21 June 2023
d30 Things Above a Mindflayer World
We have a couple of examples of mindflayer dominated worlds starting with the 'obvious' Glyth in Realmspace but with other examples of Falx, Ssirik Akuar the Sunset World, and Penumbra of Truespace. Given mindflayers are, by various lore, actually from the far future, the distant past and/or the far realm and given that they have the majestic nautiloid as a well known tool, one would imagine they would be well aware of their skyward flank once they achieve dominance on a world. This is balanced against their hatred of sunlight and preference to live deep underground.
I rolled up a giant world that turned out to be teeming with illithids for a recent campaign, hence the question arising of what does one encounter on the approaches to an illithid world? It seems to me that they would be aware of their near-space approaches, particularly since in the current incarnation of the game that direction lies the astral and the hated githyanki.
So with those in mind, here are d30 things you might run into as you near a mindflayer world
1. Orbiting watch monoliths - greatly upscaled resonance stones that emanate psychic dread. Unclear whether these are scarecrows or they just like the ambience
2. Sun-shades - where plans to snuff out the sun are not yet far advanced, some worlds will float great spindly parasols above the world to block out the hateful glare of the baleful day-star. These may be large for whole realms or small for single locations
3. Watchers above - semi-undead flying thralls; alive enough to be psychically contactible, not so alive that they need much sustenance. Watch-creatures.
4. Remnant of previous sun-killer project; great broken incomprehensible thing
5. Floating illithid mage tower - a Cuttlefish command where some irritating illithid was exiled by their Elderbrain. (3-in-6 the illithid mage is still in residence)
6. Nautiloid ship nursery - junior nautiloids being adapted to null gravity, being shaped to have decks and crew quarters. Not intrinsically hostile but being 'played with' by a flotilla of half-sized nautiloids might be as bad as a deliberate attack
7. Stellar ley-line tap (1-in-6 being tuned/maintained by a nautiloid and its crew) - a magical accumulator, perhaps discharging towards something else in orbit, or some planetary receiving spire. May cause spelljammer-shock if approached while near-discharge
8. Fallback asteroid base, mothballed. An asteroid all carved out to be a space lair but currently unfurnished. May have some random stellar monster in residence.
9. Psurlon base - guarding to the approaches to the world due to their higher tolerance of sunlight. Very enthusiastic about their duties as they get to eat what they catch
10. Mooncarver yard - scaffold with undead servitors for making asteroid bases, obelisks and other great illithid orbital works. A necromancer or other powerful arcanist could probably get them to do any needed ship repairs. Failing to take a firm hand with the crew will lead to them attempting to do something with the raw materials you represent if you come within their reach
I rolled up a giant world that turned out to be teeming with illithids for a recent campaign, hence the question arising of what does one encounter on the approaches to an illithid world? It seems to me that they would be aware of their near-space approaches, particularly since in the current incarnation of the game that direction lies the astral and the hated githyanki.
So with those in mind, here are d30 things you might run into as you near a mindflayer world
1. Orbiting watch monoliths - greatly upscaled resonance stones that emanate psychic dread. Unclear whether these are scarecrows or they just like the ambience
2. Sun-shades - where plans to snuff out the sun are not yet far advanced, some worlds will float great spindly parasols above the world to block out the hateful glare of the baleful day-star. These may be large for whole realms or small for single locations
3. Watchers above - semi-undead flying thralls; alive enough to be psychically contactible, not so alive that they need much sustenance. Watch-creatures.
4. Remnant of previous sun-killer project; great broken incomprehensible thing
5. Floating illithid mage tower - a Cuttlefish command where some irritating illithid was exiled by their Elderbrain. (3-in-6 the illithid mage is still in residence)
6. Nautiloid ship nursery - junior nautiloids being adapted to null gravity, being shaped to have decks and crew quarters. Not intrinsically hostile but being 'played with' by a flotilla of half-sized nautiloids might be as bad as a deliberate attack
7. Stellar ley-line tap (1-in-6 being tuned/maintained by a nautiloid and its crew) - a magical accumulator, perhaps discharging towards something else in orbit, or some planetary receiving spire. May cause spelljammer-shock if approached while near-discharge
8. Fallback asteroid base, mothballed. An asteroid all carved out to be a space lair but currently unfurnished. May have some random stellar monster in residence.
9. Psurlon base - guarding to the approaches to the world due to their higher tolerance of sunlight. Very enthusiastic about their duties as they get to eat what they catch
10. Mooncarver yard - scaffold with undead servitors for making asteroid bases, obelisks and other great illithid orbital works. A necromancer or other powerful arcanist could probably get them to do any needed ship repairs. Failing to take a firm hand with the crew will lead to them attempting to do something with the raw materials you represent if you come within their reach
19 June 2023
Shiny TTRPG links #125
I spent the week crawling my blog-feeds, found many interesting things! More can be found on the previous list found here. The original inspiration for all of this is weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links. You can find more links (black-out permitting) on weekly blogroll on r/OSR or the RPG Blog Carnival or a roundup of non-blog news on Third Kingdom Games roundup.
In light of current difficulties with Reddit Alex Schroder provides Reddit alternatives
Alone in the Labyrinth writes THE BEYOND: POLARIS REVISITED, via Carcosa and... The Imperium of man?
Dawnfist Games suggests How to think OSR when playing ttrpgs – A movie analogy to help
Wizard Thief Fighter releases UVG2E & the Synthetic Dream Machine
noise sans signal proposes Different DnD editions as ages of the world
Zedeck Siews Writing Hours writes Tone Is Bullshit
Mythmere Games announces Swords & Wizardry: Complete Revised has hit DriveThruRPG
@Roelkonijn tweets about how ancient warriors were not ripped like athletes
A Most Majestic Fly Whisk gives us a coffee and biscuit read in An Empty Africa - PF2E's The Mwangi Expanse and the strange career of Black Atlanticism
RPG WANDERING responds to this months prompt with RPG BLOG CARNIVAL: TRAVEL
Plastic Polyhedra also responds to the RPG Carnival withAn exploration of travelling in TTRPGs
In light of current difficulties with Reddit Alex Schroder provides Reddit alternatives
Alone in the Labyrinth writes THE BEYOND: POLARIS REVISITED, via Carcosa and... The Imperium of man?
Dawnfist Games suggests How to think OSR when playing ttrpgs – A movie analogy to help
Wizard Thief Fighter releases UVG2E & the Synthetic Dream Machine
noise sans signal proposes Different DnD editions as ages of the world
Zedeck Siews Writing Hours writes Tone Is Bullshit
Mythmere Games announces Swords & Wizardry: Complete Revised has hit DriveThruRPG
@Roelkonijn tweets about how ancient warriors were not ripped like athletes
A Most Majestic Fly Whisk gives us a coffee and biscuit read in An Empty Africa - PF2E's The Mwangi Expanse and the strange career of Black Atlanticism
RPG WANDERING responds to this months prompt with RPG BLOG CARNIVAL: TRAVEL
Plastic Polyhedra also responds to the RPG Carnival withAn exploration of travelling in TTRPGs
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