Fresh links from around the web. For more, see last weeks collection found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.
Swan and Raven Studio hosts the HELLO//GOODBYE Charity Bundle for Legal Aid
Fail Forward gives us Coloring Book Game Design
400 independent bathrooms shares rules that expand
Ward Against Evil writes Shield Walls – from Someone with “Riot Control” Training
Tales of the Lunar Lands gives us Timekeeping in the Lunar Lands
Puzzle Dungeon writes We need more puzzle dungeons!
Methods & Madness gives us Random stopwatch encounters
Dungeonfruit shares ONCE (A Worldbuilding Game)
Farmer Gadda's TTRPG Hayloft asks Crash Course: What is the OSR (And Why Do I Care?)
Blog of Forlorn Encystment gives us Speak with Monsters: The Languages of AD&D and the Adventurous Linguist
Save vs TPK shares The New Novelty
In My Campaign gives us Other Worlds: Trapping Construction
This Vorpal Coil writes Two Perspectives On Bleed
20 October 2025
18 October 2025
Actual Play: Waking of Willoughby Hall
tl;dr: lessons learned from bringing a good adventure to a bad open table.
I did a capsule review of Waking of Willoughby Hall a while back, noting I got good use out of this interesting haunted house - but while the adventure was great as an input to the session, the session itself annoyed me and I am going to try and unpack that.
I ran Willoughby Hall for one of the 'off week' sessions of my dual-mode hex-crawl. This meant I had a start point tavern, village, campaign etc. that I was dropping an open table of gamers into for a one shot. This was my first live-fire test of this but subsequent successful uses of the same model (for Hole in the Oak and Winters Daughter) showed this frame for a session works.
System was 5e, since this is what the local open tables run so I doubled all the hp listed for the monsters and NPCs and otherwise used the 'HD = roll bonus' rule of thumb. Immunities and special abilities remained as written.
Session Recap
I got the usual pot pourri of races/classes.
Human Warlock (apparently a farmer)
Dhampire Illrigger (apparently a scholar)
Elf Rogue (apparently a sailor)
Yuan-ti Wizard (apparently a snake trader)
Leonin Barbarian (appears as they are)
Goblin Artificer (appears as they are)
I slotted the adventure in under a request to go investigate a commotion down near the outlying fields; there they found the flattened shrine with missing bell tower and a cowering attendant who pointed them towards the abandoned manor. They arrived to see the Bonebreaker Tom peering in the windows and shouting for his lost goose, Mildred.
The party decided to dash in past the giant to get in - I was pleasantly surprised at their biting on the hook as intended rather than fight or bamboozle the giant. One PC did decide to try and engage the giant, I warned them subtly, then told them it was death to face this monster and yet they persisted. Flexing a number of defensive tricks let them dodge-and-weave one round while Bonebreaker Tom tried to stomp them flat and everyone else got to fling themselves through various doors and windows into the Sitting Room or the Great Hall. The 'distractor' managed to dive in after them and we were inside the house.
After a brief pause to search the sitting room and find the snuffbox they regrouped in the Great Hall and headed upstairs. They eplored the western rooms - poking about the oddments in the Museum and encountering the NPC adventurers at a distance. The NPCs ducked away and the players progressed. They moved on to the gallery and ran into Bonebreaker Tom again - at this point the Death Knight woke and they ended up in a strung out fight between the Death Knight in the Museum and trying to negotiate with Bonebreaker Tom on the balcony. They defeated the Death Knight and its skeletons - meanwhile promising to fetch Mildred for Bonebreaker Tom. From here the party splintered and things got a bit slow - people headed off to different floors, interacted with different things and were poking around all over the place.
Enough seals were broken by now to shift the hall to 'Restless' and they were properly spooked. They managed to corner Mildred the Goose after a lot of running around, and 'nova-ed' their way out of fighting the taxidermied owl-bear with some ability that tosses something into the feywild. They faced down the NPCs and convinced them to try and run for it - it did not end well for the NPCs as the players tipped off Bonebreaker Tom who outpaced the NPCs and messily dealt with them.
Eventually, the Death-Knight reconstituting and coming after them got them to return Mildred the Goose to Bonebreaker Tom and then fleeing the manor, much of the ground floor left un-surveyed.
DM notes
The players came to it with the 5e assumption of all combat is survivably through their suite of abilities - and so the 'plot forcer' of Bonebreaker Tom needed a lot more pushing from me to emphasise that they could not just fight them, nor hope to stand against them.
I missed a trick with counting a seal broken every time Bonebreaker Tom flails the hall with the bell - that would have accelerated things.
The adventure gave me a good template that let me pull an enjoyable game out of the whole thing. Despite being statted and designed for OSR, it survives contact with 5e the system pretty well; if I had more motivation I might have tried to make it a 'teach the old school ways' session but I decided just to see how it would get approached by relatively frequent 5e players doing their usual thing.
As the open table filled up, the first block of sign-ups were all people who had expended my goodwill with them previously and up to the evening before I was strongly contemplating just yanking the table. Three were folk that ground my gears, one I had no problems with but only when the last two joined did I figure the nonsense was dilute enough that I was happy to run. I had tried to catch the old school vibe by pitching the game as 'think hobbit or lord of the rings' and two players rocked up with a yuan-ti abomination and a dhampire illrigger. I sat to table with very low expectations, I should have cancelled.
I run these open tables to decompress after my work week so a session like this where I leave frustrated is too costly a use of my limited free time. I am aware that others similarly do not get to play that often so TPKs have a high opportunitiy cost. On a similar vein when I get a table of players who are just going to argue with me if things are run to their expectations, it is not worth the effort of having the fight to uphold the principle of the thing - because while I am arguing with those folks, everyone else is having their session frittered away.
I took other old school adventures - Hole in the Oak and Winters Daughter - to newer groups of players and to other of the 5e players they leaned into the old-school style a bit more, maybe did not poke and pry at things like real old-school OD&D folk might have but they treated hazards as hazardous. Here we had a table steeped in the 5e tradition of 'I can fight my way through anything' and it showed in splitting up, charging into threats alone which slowed things down as I had to juggle multiple people tripping things at the same time and then decide to either run through a time-consuming proper consequences version of what could happen or skip the consequences of some of it to try and keep the table as a whole rolling.
Waking of Willoughby Hall was fun to run despite all that; the lesson learned to me was trust my gut and just pull the session when I see sign-ups I know will be annoying to deal with.
Edit: as I saw the question posed elsewhere - did the players have fun? They said they did at close of the session.
I did a capsule review of Waking of Willoughby Hall a while back, noting I got good use out of this interesting haunted house - but while the adventure was great as an input to the session, the session itself annoyed me and I am going to try and unpack that.
I ran Willoughby Hall for one of the 'off week' sessions of my dual-mode hex-crawl. This meant I had a start point tavern, village, campaign etc. that I was dropping an open table of gamers into for a one shot. This was my first live-fire test of this but subsequent successful uses of the same model (for Hole in the Oak and Winters Daughter) showed this frame for a session works.
System was 5e, since this is what the local open tables run so I doubled all the hp listed for the monsters and NPCs and otherwise used the 'HD = roll bonus' rule of thumb. Immunities and special abilities remained as written.
Session Recap
I got the usual pot pourri of races/classes.
Human Warlock (apparently a farmer)
Dhampire Illrigger (apparently a scholar)
Elf Rogue (apparently a sailor)
Yuan-ti Wizard (apparently a snake trader)
Leonin Barbarian (appears as they are)
Goblin Artificer (appears as they are)
I slotted the adventure in under a request to go investigate a commotion down near the outlying fields; there they found the flattened shrine with missing bell tower and a cowering attendant who pointed them towards the abandoned manor. They arrived to see the Bonebreaker Tom peering in the windows and shouting for his lost goose, Mildred.
The party decided to dash in past the giant to get in - I was pleasantly surprised at their biting on the hook as intended rather than fight or bamboozle the giant. One PC did decide to try and engage the giant, I warned them subtly, then told them it was death to face this monster and yet they persisted. Flexing a number of defensive tricks let them dodge-and-weave one round while Bonebreaker Tom tried to stomp them flat and everyone else got to fling themselves through various doors and windows into the Sitting Room or the Great Hall. The 'distractor' managed to dive in after them and we were inside the house.
After a brief pause to search the sitting room and find the snuffbox they regrouped in the Great Hall and headed upstairs. They eplored the western rooms - poking about the oddments in the Museum and encountering the NPC adventurers at a distance. The NPCs ducked away and the players progressed. They moved on to the gallery and ran into Bonebreaker Tom again - at this point the Death Knight woke and they ended up in a strung out fight between the Death Knight in the Museum and trying to negotiate with Bonebreaker Tom on the balcony. They defeated the Death Knight and its skeletons - meanwhile promising to fetch Mildred for Bonebreaker Tom. From here the party splintered and things got a bit slow - people headed off to different floors, interacted with different things and were poking around all over the place.
Enough seals were broken by now to shift the hall to 'Restless' and they were properly spooked. They managed to corner Mildred the Goose after a lot of running around, and 'nova-ed' their way out of fighting the taxidermied owl-bear with some ability that tosses something into the feywild. They faced down the NPCs and convinced them to try and run for it - it did not end well for the NPCs as the players tipped off Bonebreaker Tom who outpaced the NPCs and messily dealt with them.
Eventually, the Death-Knight reconstituting and coming after them got them to return Mildred the Goose to Bonebreaker Tom and then fleeing the manor, much of the ground floor left un-surveyed.
DM notes
The players came to it with the 5e assumption of all combat is survivably through their suite of abilities - and so the 'plot forcer' of Bonebreaker Tom needed a lot more pushing from me to emphasise that they could not just fight them, nor hope to stand against them.
I missed a trick with counting a seal broken every time Bonebreaker Tom flails the hall with the bell - that would have accelerated things.
The adventure gave me a good template that let me pull an enjoyable game out of the whole thing. Despite being statted and designed for OSR, it survives contact with 5e the system pretty well; if I had more motivation I might have tried to make it a 'teach the old school ways' session but I decided just to see how it would get approached by relatively frequent 5e players doing their usual thing.
As the open table filled up, the first block of sign-ups were all people who had expended my goodwill with them previously and up to the evening before I was strongly contemplating just yanking the table. Three were folk that ground my gears, one I had no problems with but only when the last two joined did I figure the nonsense was dilute enough that I was happy to run. I had tried to catch the old school vibe by pitching the game as 'think hobbit or lord of the rings' and two players rocked up with a yuan-ti abomination and a dhampire illrigger. I sat to table with very low expectations, I should have cancelled.
I run these open tables to decompress after my work week so a session like this where I leave frustrated is too costly a use of my limited free time. I am aware that others similarly do not get to play that often so TPKs have a high opportunitiy cost. On a similar vein when I get a table of players who are just going to argue with me if things are run to their expectations, it is not worth the effort of having the fight to uphold the principle of the thing - because while I am arguing with those folks, everyone else is having their session frittered away.
I took other old school adventures - Hole in the Oak and Winters Daughter - to newer groups of players and to other of the 5e players they leaned into the old-school style a bit more, maybe did not poke and pry at things like real old-school OD&D folk might have but they treated hazards as hazardous. Here we had a table steeped in the 5e tradition of 'I can fight my way through anything' and it showed in splitting up, charging into threats alone which slowed things down as I had to juggle multiple people tripping things at the same time and then decide to either run through a time-consuming proper consequences version of what could happen or skip the consequences of some of it to try and keep the table as a whole rolling.
Waking of Willoughby Hall was fun to run despite all that; the lesson learned to me was trust my gut and just pull the session when I see sign-ups I know will be annoying to deal with.
Edit: as I saw the question posed elsewhere - did the players have fun? They said they did at close of the session.
15 October 2025
Regional encounters & complications for the Scaled Lands
Setting up Yaksha's hexfill as the 'regional encounter table' for the collapsing lizardfolk imperium of the Scaled Lands - it is the same just making the reference space bigger. I already had the d10xd4 encounters done as penance for screwing it up in my previous test (a d14 table... oops).
To recall - the requirements are:
- 1 Unique Encounter
- 2 Tools/Gimmicks for the region
- d10+d4 Local Encounters
- d10 Small Jobs
- d6 Big Jobs
- d20 Scene-setting sights/stage design
- d6 bounties/location implications
- d6 ways to expand/change-up the area set to tone.
- 3d10 names for places (locales/nature sights/crossings.)
Based on the success of using this method for the fuzzier, less structured parts of the dual-mode hexcrawl campaign, it seemed like the right tool for the Lizard Kings 2d20 Conan campaign where I was not planning to deploy a hex-map at all. There is a map, which will make broad regional chunking be sensible but since I will not be using structured travel mechanics, it seemed like something looser, more point-crawl-like was in order.
The region I am looking at is this escarpment edge above the drop into the deep abyssal basin below. Down there be hot-house jungles, dinosaurs, all sorts of things yet to be discovered. The top edge is the somewhat known space where play starts.
So for the marked in settlements, I already had information, what I need was a set of encounter tables for general out-and-about along the escarpments edge. The first pass of this is below, slightly modified for the 2d20 system by swapping the d6 bounty/location implications to be d6 complications. I wanted these as ready-to-go, 'could happen anywhere' conditions I can throw at players whenever things get worse for them through my spending Doom or their rolling badly.
d10/d4 Encounters in the Scaled Lands
1. Wizard Kingdom Expeditionary Force (1. Couriers, 2. Outland Mercenaries, 3. Spies, 4. Local Auxilliaries)
2. Lizard Imperials (1. Tribune, 2. Taxmen, 3. Magistrate, 4. Regiment)
3. Local Militia (1. Posse, 2. Patrol, 3. Monster Hunters, 4. Garrison)
4. Merchants (1. Blue Dragon Cultists, 2. Shattered City Trading Coster, 3. Local Traders, 4. Imperial Procurers)
5. Adventurers (1. Locals, 2. Imperials (official scalyfolk), 3. Deep Basin Wanderers (private scalyfolk), 4. Extra-planetary Explorers)
6. Nearby Dwellers (1. Farmers, 2. Foresters, 3. Fishers, 4. Herders)
7. Lurkers (1. Small God Cultists, 2. Site Keepers, 3. Minions of an absent master, 4. Lost villagers)
8. Roaming Monsters (1. Shambling Mound, 2. Giant Pitcher Plant, 3. Strangler Vines, 4. Displacer Beast)
9. Beasties (1. Migrating Herd, 2. Roosting Flock, 3. Cubs + Parents, 4. Territorial Titan)
10. Factioneers (1. Red Dragon glory-seekers, 2. Adherents of the Devouring Sun, 3. Followers of the Nourishing Sun, 4. Templars of the Great Fire Beyond)
1 Unique Encounter - venturers seeking to blaze a new descent path to the great basin, certain they know of the location of lost riches
2 Tools/Gimmicks for the region -- dinosaur beasts of burden - spike-tails, club-tails, and tri-horns - all of which have lots of intertia, get cranky and have at least one way to ruin your day. A small tank for the party on a good day, a rampaging beast inside the camp -- verticality - the great escarpment down to the deep basin with lots of scope for fights happening on narrow ledges or within vine bundles or tree roots
d10 Small Jobs
1. Red dragon cultists want you to scout, drive a monster into their ambush
2. Imperial procurers want an updated survey of local settlements, many of whom want to remain forgotten
3. Caravan looking for replacement guards after dinosaur attack
4. Hired by cultists to act as operators of caravanserai to bait ambush
5. Explorers/surveyors looking for some muscle for a ruin-dive
6. Wardens of a shrine need some cultists driven off
7. Outlanders need a message brought to a mercenary camp
8. Local militia want specialists to plumb a catacomb
9. Sage collective want a relic recovered
10. Lizardfolk magistrate wants a fugitive found and brought back alive
d6 Big Jobs
1. Caravan never showed up - attempted message indicates drover dead - dino wandered off, go get it back
2. Lizards mobilising to break Dwaven siege of settlement - run in ahead of them, raid temple
3. Cultists going beserk, summon help - convince the lizard it is worth them getting moving
4. Adventures swear they found treasure in outskirts, died in bar-fight; back-track their movements to find the score
5. Expedition lost at base of escarpment - find and rescue or loot the corpses, as preferred
6. Local aristocrats have depleted local sources of desired spice, descend to the deep basin and fetch more
d20 Scene-setting sights/stage design
1. Daybreak shrine
2. Solar furnaces
3. Hotsprings
4. Heated site
5. Abandoned tower of astronomer
6. Interplanetary portal
7. Star-light capacitor spires
8. Forest-swallowed lizardfolk settlements
9. Towering anti-dinosaur fortifications
10. Cultivated hives of pharmacopeia bees
11. Vault of hibernating lizardfolk regiment
12. Serpentfolk shrines
13. Dinosaur lair
14. Abandoned skyship port
15. Ruined infernal shrine
16. Depopulated settlement (active but far less inhabitants)
17. Elemental fire temple converted to forge
18. Dinosaur caravan
19. Forgotten ruin
20. Ambush aftermath
d6 complications
1. Devouring insects
2. Overwhelming sun
3. Dripping, slimy surfaces
4. Treacherous footing
5. Crumbling structures
6. Stalking dinosaurs
d6 ways to expand/change-up the area set to tone.
1. Originally lizardfolk location being restored and reoccupied by tabaxi
2. Predatory dinosaurs moving in
3. Hallucinogenic honey hive found, locals losing grip
4. Devouring sun cultists turned location into ambush
5. Flooded with refugees from dwaven attack
6. Imperial lizard regiment camped on way to front, old ways being enforced
d20 names for places (locales/nature sights/crossings.)
1. Obsidian Mirror
2. Staircase
3. Threshold
4. Sholtipec
5. Sholimeth
6. Supileth
7. Mersuumaar
8. Bitalen
9. Barianthuul
10. Zaysunthul
11. Chalcedra
12. Tremsaar
13. Narenthul
14. Zomilest
15. Somaroon
16. Tesseral
17. Chumagaar
18. Pun Narenthra
19. Derusal
20. Far Suriel
To recall - the requirements are:
- 1 Unique Encounter
- 2 Tools/Gimmicks for the region
- d10+d4 Local Encounters
- d10 Small Jobs
- d6 Big Jobs
- d20 Scene-setting sights/stage design
- d6 bounties/location implications
- d6 ways to expand/change-up the area set to tone.
- 3d10 names for places (locales/nature sights/crossings.)
Based on the success of using this method for the fuzzier, less structured parts of the dual-mode hexcrawl campaign, it seemed like the right tool for the Lizard Kings 2d20 Conan campaign where I was not planning to deploy a hex-map at all. There is a map, which will make broad regional chunking be sensible but since I will not be using structured travel mechanics, it seemed like something looser, more point-crawl-like was in order.
The region I am looking at is this escarpment edge above the drop into the deep abyssal basin below. Down there be hot-house jungles, dinosaurs, all sorts of things yet to be discovered. The top edge is the somewhat known space where play starts.
So for the marked in settlements, I already had information, what I need was a set of encounter tables for general out-and-about along the escarpments edge. The first pass of this is below, slightly modified for the 2d20 system by swapping the d6 bounty/location implications to be d6 complications. I wanted these as ready-to-go, 'could happen anywhere' conditions I can throw at players whenever things get worse for them through my spending Doom or their rolling badly.
d10/d4 Encounters in the Scaled Lands
1. Wizard Kingdom Expeditionary Force (1. Couriers, 2. Outland Mercenaries, 3. Spies, 4. Local Auxilliaries)
2. Lizard Imperials (1. Tribune, 2. Taxmen, 3. Magistrate, 4. Regiment)
3. Local Militia (1. Posse, 2. Patrol, 3. Monster Hunters, 4. Garrison)
4. Merchants (1. Blue Dragon Cultists, 2. Shattered City Trading Coster, 3. Local Traders, 4. Imperial Procurers)
5. Adventurers (1. Locals, 2. Imperials (official scalyfolk), 3. Deep Basin Wanderers (private scalyfolk), 4. Extra-planetary Explorers)
6. Nearby Dwellers (1. Farmers, 2. Foresters, 3. Fishers, 4. Herders)
7. Lurkers (1. Small God Cultists, 2. Site Keepers, 3. Minions of an absent master, 4. Lost villagers)
8. Roaming Monsters (1. Shambling Mound, 2. Giant Pitcher Plant, 3. Strangler Vines, 4. Displacer Beast)
9. Beasties (1. Migrating Herd, 2. Roosting Flock, 3. Cubs + Parents, 4. Territorial Titan)
10. Factioneers (1. Red Dragon glory-seekers, 2. Adherents of the Devouring Sun, 3. Followers of the Nourishing Sun, 4. Templars of the Great Fire Beyond)
1 Unique Encounter - venturers seeking to blaze a new descent path to the great basin, certain they know of the location of lost riches
2 Tools/Gimmicks for the region -- dinosaur beasts of burden - spike-tails, club-tails, and tri-horns - all of which have lots of intertia, get cranky and have at least one way to ruin your day. A small tank for the party on a good day, a rampaging beast inside the camp -- verticality - the great escarpment down to the deep basin with lots of scope for fights happening on narrow ledges or within vine bundles or tree roots
d10 Small Jobs
1. Red dragon cultists want you to scout, drive a monster into their ambush
2. Imperial procurers want an updated survey of local settlements, many of whom want to remain forgotten
3. Caravan looking for replacement guards after dinosaur attack
4. Hired by cultists to act as operators of caravanserai to bait ambush
5. Explorers/surveyors looking for some muscle for a ruin-dive
6. Wardens of a shrine need some cultists driven off
7. Outlanders need a message brought to a mercenary camp
8. Local militia want specialists to plumb a catacomb
9. Sage collective want a relic recovered
10. Lizardfolk magistrate wants a fugitive found and brought back alive
d6 Big Jobs
1. Caravan never showed up - attempted message indicates drover dead - dino wandered off, go get it back
2. Lizards mobilising to break Dwaven siege of settlement - run in ahead of them, raid temple
3. Cultists going beserk, summon help - convince the lizard it is worth them getting moving
4. Adventures swear they found treasure in outskirts, died in bar-fight; back-track their movements to find the score
5. Expedition lost at base of escarpment - find and rescue or loot the corpses, as preferred
6. Local aristocrats have depleted local sources of desired spice, descend to the deep basin and fetch more
d20 Scene-setting sights/stage design
1. Daybreak shrine
2. Solar furnaces
3. Hotsprings
4. Heated site
5. Abandoned tower of astronomer
6. Interplanetary portal
7. Star-light capacitor spires
8. Forest-swallowed lizardfolk settlements
9. Towering anti-dinosaur fortifications
10. Cultivated hives of pharmacopeia bees
11. Vault of hibernating lizardfolk regiment
12. Serpentfolk shrines
13. Dinosaur lair
14. Abandoned skyship port
15. Ruined infernal shrine
16. Depopulated settlement (active but far less inhabitants)
17. Elemental fire temple converted to forge
18. Dinosaur caravan
19. Forgotten ruin
20. Ambush aftermath
d6 complications
1. Devouring insects
2. Overwhelming sun
3. Dripping, slimy surfaces
4. Treacherous footing
5. Crumbling structures
6. Stalking dinosaurs
d6 ways to expand/change-up the area set to tone.
1. Originally lizardfolk location being restored and reoccupied by tabaxi
2. Predatory dinosaurs moving in
3. Hallucinogenic honey hive found, locals losing grip
4. Devouring sun cultists turned location into ambush
5. Flooded with refugees from dwaven attack
6. Imperial lizard regiment camped on way to front, old ways being enforced
d20 names for places (locales/nature sights/crossings.)
1. Obsidian Mirror
2. Staircase
3. Threshold
4. Sholtipec
5. Sholimeth
6. Supileth
7. Mersuumaar
8. Bitalen
9. Barianthuul
10. Zaysunthul
11. Chalcedra
12. Tremsaar
13. Narenthul
14. Zomilest
15. Somaroon
16. Tesseral
17. Chumagaar
18. Pun Narenthra
19. Derusal
20. Far Suriel
13 October 2025
Shiny TTRPG links #246
TTRPG goodness from about the internet. For more, see last weeks collection found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.
Swan and Raven Studio hosts the HELLO//GOODBYE Charity Bundle for Legal Aid
Fluorite Guillotine gives us fabula ultima was made for me
Bat in the Attic asks What is the point of the OSR?
@alexanderwales gives us Majority and Minority
Blog of Forlorn Encystment shares The Monster Economy of AD&D
Ever & Anon publishes Issue #4 of this successor to Alarums & Excursions
World Building and Woolgathering gives us Another Return to Yoon-Suin
Idraluna Archives writes Footnotes in RPGs
PhD20 gives us Unprepared and Never Better
Your Scent Has Attracted A Bear shares Leonard Cohen's Advice for Novice OSR Referees
False Machine gives us A review of The Golden Peaches of Samarkand
Valeria Loves asks Why Don't I Hate Fabula Ultima?
Creighton Broadhurst shares GM Advice: Three-Tier Design for the Busy GM
Garamondia gives us SimAnt Cataphracts - the roughest outline and follows up with More Bugaphracts
Swan and Raven Studio hosts the HELLO//GOODBYE Charity Bundle for Legal Aid
Fluorite Guillotine gives us fabula ultima was made for me
Bat in the Attic asks What is the point of the OSR?
@alexanderwales gives us Majority and Minority
Blog of Forlorn Encystment shares The Monster Economy of AD&D
Ever & Anon publishes Issue #4 of this successor to Alarums & Excursions
World Building and Woolgathering gives us Another Return to Yoon-Suin
Idraluna Archives writes Footnotes in RPGs
PhD20 gives us Unprepared and Never Better
Your Scent Has Attracted A Bear shares Leonard Cohen's Advice for Novice OSR Referees
False Machine gives us A review of The Golden Peaches of Samarkand
Valeria Loves asks Why Don't I Hate Fabula Ultima?
Creighton Broadhurst shares GM Advice: Three-Tier Design for the Busy GM
Garamondia gives us SimAnt Cataphracts - the roughest outline and follows up with More Bugaphracts
11 October 2025
On complications and retuning my GM'ing for 2d20
I am a few sessions into running my Lizard Kings campaign - below are my notes on trying to get up the learning curve of running 2d20 by tapping the wisdom of those who have gone before.
Written up to follow Gorgon Bones first best practice: "Record your hobby experience", this is a ressurection of the campaign world I could up after receiving the revelation of the OSR, spun back up on the online open-table model of my Southern Reaches campaign, but switching system to 2d20 Conan on the intuition that the momentum/doom system would better fit the high-energy shenanigans atmosphere.
I have tried to pull forward a lot of what worked - encounter tables / random generation, player-driven action, baiting hooks, open-table/roster system - but after spending the past few years honing my style around player agency and truth-in-the-world along the anti-blorbo line, adapting my DM'ing to 2d20 is a shift.
I have on my shelves 2d20 Homeworld, Star Trek Adventures: Klingon Empire and a ton of pdfs for 2d20 Conan and standard Star Trek Adventures from bundles - all of these I have read through but still ran up against a few things while playing that I am going to put here, a breadcrumb trail for those who come after.
Complications
The biggest trick so far has been calibrating complications or "what to do with the doom pool". I was having some challenges callibrating between 'spend some doom, make some random stuff up' and 'doom has no effect' - trying to hit that sweet spot of doom being consequential but to a somewhat known level. The goal here is that players can see the doom pool ticking up and have some idea of how bad that it. Doom of 4-5 could get a bit hairy but probably handleable. Doom north of 20 is time to abandon this enterprise and just start running.
First, I initially missed that reactions all incur Doom - if you dodge or parry incoming attacks, the GM gets doom points. This is in on top of 'complications' from natural 20's which can be converted to 2 doom or the players giving doom to achieve rolls. This builds the doom pool a lot faster than I initially thought.
Spending doom when there are active foes in play always made sense to me, soak their wounds, add more foes, etc. The bit I was unclear on was calibrating how complicated a complication should be - how to play it out mechanically which was ambiguous even after reading the various rule books.
The first good guide was the 'minor epiphany' Gebir had the grace to post as a comment on the Modiphius forum which exactly answered my question on how impactful complications were supposed to be: "2 Doom or 2# [stress] damage + Effect or D2 Minor Action to Clear". This was the rosetta stone I needed.
There was a great list of example complications posted by Feond on a different thread.
There was also a recommendation for taking a post by The Walking Mind on Risks for FATE but considering it as applicable to 2d20 complications in the sense of what opposes what - for a scene about pursuit, complications can be delay, for one about stealth, complications are being revealed, etc.
General Summaries - this character generator cooked up by Mariano Cavallo is very helpful for quickly getting started, next was the website for The Scrolls of Erathius - just seeing what explainers, cheat-sheets and downloads they thought necessary was a great guide on what comes up a lot and what is unclear.
Session timing - I lost my source but another top tip for trying to time these sessions was to plan ~ 30 mins per scene. The 2d20 style of moving from 'action to action' contrasts with the slightly more wandering around, flexing hexcrawl and encounter tables I have been doing lately, so definitely out of my comfort zone and good to get a frame to think about it.
Intros - another neat tip I got that I think helpful for framing things was to ask players to describe introduce their characters as if for the opening credit sequence of the TV show. Was sufficiently different to other 'describe how you appear in this tavern' intros that it resets expectations.
Campaign So Far
I have been running things as close to RAW as I understand for now, but I am also aware of some modifications from later 2d20 such as having additional d20s beyond the first bought with momentum cost more or be otherwise restricted. Thus far players have been relatively frugal shepherds of their momentum and have not been getting into many fights so doom pools have not been exploding such that I can throw lots of complications at them yet.
In a similar vein, players are proving very conscious of when a scene will end and sap their momentum pool.
The main instance of complications off a rolled 20 was a busted stealth attempt; attempting to be unobtrusive got unlucky and spotted by just the wrong person - consequences may be long term.
Written up to follow Gorgon Bones first best practice: "Record your hobby experience", this is a ressurection of the campaign world I could up after receiving the revelation of the OSR, spun back up on the online open-table model of my Southern Reaches campaign, but switching system to 2d20 Conan on the intuition that the momentum/doom system would better fit the high-energy shenanigans atmosphere.
I have tried to pull forward a lot of what worked - encounter tables / random generation, player-driven action, baiting hooks, open-table/roster system - but after spending the past few years honing my style around player agency and truth-in-the-world along the anti-blorbo line, adapting my DM'ing to 2d20 is a shift.
I have on my shelves 2d20 Homeworld, Star Trek Adventures: Klingon Empire and a ton of pdfs for 2d20 Conan and standard Star Trek Adventures from bundles - all of these I have read through but still ran up against a few things while playing that I am going to put here, a breadcrumb trail for those who come after.
Complications
The biggest trick so far has been calibrating complications or "what to do with the doom pool". I was having some challenges callibrating between 'spend some doom, make some random stuff up' and 'doom has no effect' - trying to hit that sweet spot of doom being consequential but to a somewhat known level. The goal here is that players can see the doom pool ticking up and have some idea of how bad that it. Doom of 4-5 could get a bit hairy but probably handleable. Doom north of 20 is time to abandon this enterprise and just start running.
First, I initially missed that reactions all incur Doom - if you dodge or parry incoming attacks, the GM gets doom points. This is in on top of 'complications' from natural 20's which can be converted to 2 doom or the players giving doom to achieve rolls. This builds the doom pool a lot faster than I initially thought.
Spending doom when there are active foes in play always made sense to me, soak their wounds, add more foes, etc. The bit I was unclear on was calibrating how complicated a complication should be - how to play it out mechanically which was ambiguous even after reading the various rule books.
The first good guide was the 'minor epiphany' Gebir had the grace to post as a comment on the Modiphius forum which exactly answered my question on how impactful complications were supposed to be: "2 Doom or 2# [stress] damage + Effect or D2 Minor Action to Clear". This was the rosetta stone I needed.
There was a great list of example complications posted by Feond on a different thread.
There was also a recommendation for taking a post by The Walking Mind on Risks for FATE but considering it as applicable to 2d20 complications in the sense of what opposes what - for a scene about pursuit, complications can be delay, for one about stealth, complications are being revealed, etc.
General Summaries - this character generator cooked up by Mariano Cavallo is very helpful for quickly getting started, next was the website for The Scrolls of Erathius - just seeing what explainers, cheat-sheets and downloads they thought necessary was a great guide on what comes up a lot and what is unclear.
Session timing - I lost my source but another top tip for trying to time these sessions was to plan ~ 30 mins per scene. The 2d20 style of moving from 'action to action' contrasts with the slightly more wandering around, flexing hexcrawl and encounter tables I have been doing lately, so definitely out of my comfort zone and good to get a frame to think about it.
Intros - another neat tip I got that I think helpful for framing things was to ask players to describe introduce their characters as if for the opening credit sequence of the TV show. Was sufficiently different to other 'describe how you appear in this tavern' intros that it resets expectations.
Campaign So Far
I have been running things as close to RAW as I understand for now, but I am also aware of some modifications from later 2d20 such as having additional d20s beyond the first bought with momentum cost more or be otherwise restricted. Thus far players have been relatively frugal shepherds of their momentum and have not been getting into many fights so doom pools have not been exploding such that I can throw lots of complications at them yet.
In a similar vein, players are proving very conscious of when a scene will end and sap their momentum pool.
The main instance of complications off a rolled 20 was a busted stealth attempt; attempting to be unobtrusive got unlucky and spotted by just the wrong person - consequences may be long term.
08 October 2025
d30 Entertainingly Weird Guests
Inspired by @prokopetz making the point that "hospitality was a major part of a wealthy household’s basic social obligations" and "at any given time, a large household might be playing host to a bewildering assortment of friends, relatives, friends of relatives, relatives of friends, celebrities both far-ranging and local, dignitaries, con artists, miscellaneous weirdos, and that one guy who nobody can quite place" so that "you’re missing an opportunity if you never talk about the Guests" here are some entertainingly weird guests that can be hanging around your nobles court or castle - or wizards tower, if they are hospitable, roadside inns while they are travelling or the hostelries of a city in a pinch.
d30 Entertainingly Weird Guests
1. Latest playwright, needing inspiration. Slightly desperate to repeat crushing success of recent efforts.
2. Cultural tastemaker hiding from supplicants.
3. Clique of artists.
4. Poets come to attend on the host, their muse. Swing between wild revels and sighing melancholy.
5. Host leading a cultural moment of artists, writers, poets and designers. Other guests liable to be sketched, painted and rendered in prose, verse and song.
6. Illusionist, playful. Noone is clear anymore on exactly how many people are here.
7. Conjurer, practicing. Strange things appear and vanish with flashes and bangs at mysterious times.
8. Planar scholar. Has travelled far to peruse the hosts library and study the details in the background of the family paintings.
9. Visitors from beyond. Almost entirely hidden within high-collared clothes and elaborate wigs. Fascinated by everything, talks to the pot-plants, tastes the fire-irons.
10. Young noble on wandering year. Significant power and responsibility waiting at home, does not want to think about it.
d30 Entertainingly Weird Guests
1. Latest playwright, needing inspiration. Slightly desperate to repeat crushing success of recent efforts.
2. Cultural tastemaker hiding from supplicants.
3. Clique of artists.
4. Poets come to attend on the host, their muse. Swing between wild revels and sighing melancholy.
5. Host leading a cultural moment of artists, writers, poets and designers. Other guests liable to be sketched, painted and rendered in prose, verse and song.
6. Illusionist, playful. Noone is clear anymore on exactly how many people are here.
7. Conjurer, practicing. Strange things appear and vanish with flashes and bangs at mysterious times.
8. Planar scholar. Has travelled far to peruse the hosts library and study the details in the background of the family paintings.
9. Visitors from beyond. Almost entirely hidden within high-collared clothes and elaborate wigs. Fascinated by everything, talks to the pot-plants, tastes the fire-irons.
10. Young noble on wandering year. Significant power and responsibility waiting at home, does not want to think about it.
Home campaign Bard plus pal during her wandering years, by The Bard
06 October 2025
Shiny TTRPG links #245
Things I found interesting over this last week online. For more, see last weeks collection found here or on the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.
Swan and Raven Studio hosts the HELLO//GOODBYE Charity Bundle for Legal Aid
@molomoot gives us Crossword Dungeons
Sly Flourish shares Go Easy On Yourself
Blog of Forlorn Encystment writes Warring Guilds and Rogue Assassins Plague the Streets of AD&D
Dungeons & Possums shares Things to Support With Your #$%* Disney Money
d4 Caltrops gives us d100 - “Bottle Episodes" - Seafaring Scenes & Situations
What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse... asks Are You Missing the Forest for the Trees? Plant an Orchard.
The Wondering Monster writes How to Help Your Players Investigate Rumors in an OSR Campaign
Arcane Mutterings gives us The Gap in TTRPG Culture
Smoldering Wizard shares Musings on the OSR Blogosphere and Forums
Swan and Raven Studio hosts the HELLO//GOODBYE Charity Bundle for Legal Aid
@molomoot gives us Crossword Dungeons
Sly Flourish shares Go Easy On Yourself
Blog of Forlorn Encystment writes Warring Guilds and Rogue Assassins Plague the Streets of AD&D
Dungeons & Possums shares Things to Support With Your #$%* Disney Money
d4 Caltrops gives us d100 - “Bottle Episodes" - Seafaring Scenes & Situations
What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse... asks Are You Missing the Forest for the Trees? Plant an Orchard.
The Wondering Monster writes How to Help Your Players Investigate Rumors in an OSR Campaign
Arcane Mutterings gives us The Gap in TTRPG Culture
Smoldering Wizard shares Musings on the OSR Blogosphere and Forums
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