More shiny links from around the web. For yet more, see last weeks collection or the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.
Zedeck Siews Writing Hours releases CHAPTER SERF - get it while it is going!
Valeria Loves shares How to Replicate Over/Under
The Dododecahedron writes The OSR Onion
Fluorite Guillotine gives us generic play: revisiting cortex prime
glorified notepad shares d20 Ways to Get Un-RPG-stuck
Playful Void gives us How to Write a Module: An Incoherent Play-by-Play
Shadows of NyOrlandhotep asks Better Mysteries: Who cares about who did it?
Halfway Station gives us Retrospective Review: Dungeons & Dragons
A Knight at the Opera writes Happy Birthday Knight at the Opera: 6 Years of Blogging
Coins and Scrolls gives us Review: HEXplore It: Fun-Like Experiences and Shadows in the Cave
24 November 2025
22 November 2025
Hexcrawl '25 scramble for the finish
For Hexcrawl25, taking the challenge on I settled on the whole super-hex = 40-mile, hexes are 10-mile, sub-hexes 2.5 mile as my working scale.
Where I started
Hexmap was at 77% completion vs target of 88% - however sufficient hexes to make target *have been created* just not within the bounds of the actual challenge.
My players wandered off the south east corner and threatened to wander West, North, East and South West necessitating that I put at least some effort into the broad strokes of those directions.
However, that cuts no mustard against the challenge in hand so we need to spot our gaps and fill them pronto. Check progress since mid-year here if you like.
Happily, no hex has nothing in it, all have at least the four or so sub-hexes that their core faction inhabitants account for.
[see faction hex populating technique]
Otherwise I need to
- do 'bleed over' for more of the remaining hexes but I fell into a slightly too elaborate process for doing that - making a grid, rigorously marking out the hexes I was going to work up, figuring out all the relevant neighbours and then working down those columns. This works but is a bit time consuming and maybe we are past time to just work directly onto the map.
- fill a bunch of 'holes' left even in quite old sections of the map which are just off the beaten track that I need to fill in.
- I am going to ruthless stuff 'harbinger' hexes into all the border hexes on the edge of the map, letting me squeeze some credit for the off-map work I did
Where I started
Hexmap was at 77% completion vs target of 88% - however sufficient hexes to make target *have been created* just not within the bounds of the actual challenge.
My players wandered off the south east corner and threatened to wander West, North, East and South West necessitating that I put at least some effort into the broad strokes of those directions.
However, that cuts no mustard against the challenge in hand so we need to spot our gaps and fill them pronto. Check progress since mid-year here if you like.
Happily, no hex has nothing in it, all have at least the four or so sub-hexes that their core faction inhabitants account for.
[see faction hex populating technique]
Otherwise I need to
- do 'bleed over' for more of the remaining hexes but I fell into a slightly too elaborate process for doing that - making a grid, rigorously marking out the hexes I was going to work up, figuring out all the relevant neighbours and then working down those columns. This works but is a bit time consuming and maybe we are past time to just work directly onto the map.
- fill a bunch of 'holes' left even in quite old sections of the map which are just off the beaten track that I need to fill in.
- I am going to ruthless stuff 'harbinger' hexes into all the border hexes on the edge of the map, letting me squeeze some credit for the off-map work I did
19 November 2025
Leafwander festival for the ruin-filled swamplands (RPG Blog Carnival )
This months prompt for the RPG Blog Carnival is by the long-time host of Dice and Dragons themselves - Feasts and Festivals in Your TTRPG Campaign.
In honour of this I will be adding in a 'background festival' to tweak the existing carousing routine. My Hexcrawl25 table has proven receptive to burning off their gold for XP by carousing so I have 'used up' a fair few entries on the previous d20 Carousing table for the ruin-filled swamplands.
Inspired by player activities to trample in trade routes and try to forge a realm out of the various swamp peoples, we see a revitalisation of the old festival of Leafwander. Here herbalists of all sorts trek a great circuit of the swamps visiting all sorts of communities they would not often to swap and sample leaves, herbs, berries, roots, nuts, fruit and seeds.
Reason for Celebration: The ancient rootes of this are fey, when the veil between worlds was thinner, and the fey courts visited. Now it is an early harvest festival, effectively marking the end of the summer markets. The number of travellers abroad for Leafwander is taken as an omen of how hard the winter will be, that generosity to strangers now will bring a good harvest. While not wrong, the truth is that hard times and unrest block travellers and herald foraging parties taxing the harvests and/or slaying / drafting the farmers.
Traditions and Rituals: Mostly marked by hanging out dried sprigs from doorways and setting an extra place at the table in case of a traveller. Should a travelling herbalist turn-up, often there will be an improptu gathering at a hosts house, with samples of all the best local things brought to try, news and tales exchanged, music played and the herbalists wares tried.
Herbalists themselves partaking of Leafwander will wear a crown of simple greenery - grass, common leaves or twigs - that they make afresh after each sharing. A traveller with a wilted crown will often be stopped by whatever others they meet - be they shepherds or charcoalers - to share whatever they have.
Atmosphere: for a smaller place, Leafwander will strongly resemble a village feast with the wanderer presiding. For large places, where many travellers have come together, Leafwander more resembles a market that goes on into the small hours with little to no coin changing hand. Strange smells of smokes and scents of teas are common, as cookfires roasting and boiling a variety of oddly spiced dishes. Weirder things like biting and stinging insects and frogs to be licked may also be found, at the asking of seekers, rarely openly offered.
Leafwander typically extends over a week, often sprawling to ten-days, as a relatively relaxed celebration of the variety of herbs, spices and food to be found in the swamp-lands.
At table
Thematically this is a small festival that can be used as a back-drop for other events or - as I need - something to modify and renew an existing carousing table - use as you see fit.
d6 twists to carousing during the Leafwander Festival
1. A provider of fine (strong) cigar-like leafs is here, enthusiastically joining in and rendering all proceedings somewhat breathless and dizzy.
2. An acrid tarpot burns beneath a pan of bubbling frog-sweat. Needles dipped and licked render participants langorous and intensely focussed.
3. A somewhat jittery traveller is serving a very spicy stew, giving handfuls of spicy leaves to everyone and insisting folk use them if people start acting not themselves.
4. A serpent-folk purveyor offers oddly-fitting vials filled with herb-steeped nectars, invigorating and clearing the mind.
5. A young herbalist toting an enormous ancient tome offers cold-teas brewed in pitcher-plants, astringent, calming and mildly-painkilling, they quiz people a little impolitely on how they like what they try.
6. A swamp trader with a wide range of goblin fare - fruit, seed and root combinations that yield psychadelic results, no two the same nor any effect replicable in true goblin fashion.
In honour of this I will be adding in a 'background festival' to tweak the existing carousing routine. My Hexcrawl25 table has proven receptive to burning off their gold for XP by carousing so I have 'used up' a fair few entries on the previous d20 Carousing table for the ruin-filled swamplands.
Inspired by player activities to trample in trade routes and try to forge a realm out of the various swamp peoples, we see a revitalisation of the old festival of Leafwander. Here herbalists of all sorts trek a great circuit of the swamps visiting all sorts of communities they would not often to swap and sample leaves, herbs, berries, roots, nuts, fruit and seeds.
Reason for Celebration: The ancient rootes of this are fey, when the veil between worlds was thinner, and the fey courts visited. Now it is an early harvest festival, effectively marking the end of the summer markets. The number of travellers abroad for Leafwander is taken as an omen of how hard the winter will be, that generosity to strangers now will bring a good harvest. While not wrong, the truth is that hard times and unrest block travellers and herald foraging parties taxing the harvests and/or slaying / drafting the farmers.
Traditions and Rituals: Mostly marked by hanging out dried sprigs from doorways and setting an extra place at the table in case of a traveller. Should a travelling herbalist turn-up, often there will be an improptu gathering at a hosts house, with samples of all the best local things brought to try, news and tales exchanged, music played and the herbalists wares tried.
Herbalists themselves partaking of Leafwander will wear a crown of simple greenery - grass, common leaves or twigs - that they make afresh after each sharing. A traveller with a wilted crown will often be stopped by whatever others they meet - be they shepherds or charcoalers - to share whatever they have.
Atmosphere: for a smaller place, Leafwander will strongly resemble a village feast with the wanderer presiding. For large places, where many travellers have come together, Leafwander more resembles a market that goes on into the small hours with little to no coin changing hand. Strange smells of smokes and scents of teas are common, as cookfires roasting and boiling a variety of oddly spiced dishes. Weirder things like biting and stinging insects and frogs to be licked may also be found, at the asking of seekers, rarely openly offered.
Leafwander typically extends over a week, often sprawling to ten-days, as a relatively relaxed celebration of the variety of herbs, spices and food to be found in the swamp-lands.
At table
Thematically this is a small festival that can be used as a back-drop for other events or - as I need - something to modify and renew an existing carousing table - use as you see fit.
d6 twists to carousing during the Leafwander Festival
1. A provider of fine (strong) cigar-like leafs is here, enthusiastically joining in and rendering all proceedings somewhat breathless and dizzy.
2. An acrid tarpot burns beneath a pan of bubbling frog-sweat. Needles dipped and licked render participants langorous and intensely focussed.
3. A somewhat jittery traveller is serving a very spicy stew, giving handfuls of spicy leaves to everyone and insisting folk use them if people start acting not themselves.
4. A serpent-folk purveyor offers oddly-fitting vials filled with herb-steeped nectars, invigorating and clearing the mind.
5. A young herbalist toting an enormous ancient tome offers cold-teas brewed in pitcher-plants, astringent, calming and mildly-painkilling, they quiz people a little impolitely on how they like what they try.
6. A swamp trader with a wide range of goblin fare - fruit, seed and root combinations that yield psychadelic results, no two the same nor any effect replicable in true goblin fashion.
17 November 2025
Shiny TTRPG links #251
Shiny links from around the web. For more, see last weeks collection or the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.
Save vs Total Party Kill gives us Over/Under is Over
Archbrick declares The Old-school 5e Renaissance Has Begun
Luke Gearing writes Violence at the Street Level
Beneath Foreign Planets gives us d20 dungeon critters you can just snatch up and gulp down
Playful Void asks Got no game: Should your module be system agnostic?
Roleplaying Tips shares Bake In The Pokey Bits: Design For Interaction
Blog of Forlorn Encystment gives us The Implied Setting of AD&D Towns & Cities: Four Themes
HiskiH writes New Wave of Fantasy - NWOF
All Dead Generations gives us Dungeon Design Note: Obstacles Support Exploration
Tales of the Lunar Lands shares The Sci-Fi Kitchen Sink Setting
subjunctive moods gives us unfair initiative
Anb's Logs writes Brief perspectives on rule density and 5e
Save vs Total Party Kill gives us Over/Under is Over
Archbrick declares The Old-school 5e Renaissance Has Begun
Luke Gearing writes Violence at the Street Level
Beneath Foreign Planets gives us d20 dungeon critters you can just snatch up and gulp down
Playful Void asks Got no game: Should your module be system agnostic?
Roleplaying Tips shares Bake In The Pokey Bits: Design For Interaction
Blog of Forlorn Encystment gives us The Implied Setting of AD&D Towns & Cities: Four Themes
HiskiH writes New Wave of Fantasy - NWOF
All Dead Generations gives us Dungeon Design Note: Obstacles Support Exploration
Tales of the Lunar Lands shares The Sci-Fi Kitchen Sink Setting
subjunctive moods gives us unfair initiative
Anb's Logs writes Brief perspectives on rule density and 5e
15 November 2025
Querying OSR Blogging Scene Vibrancy
On Ye Olde Question of 'is the OSR dead' but this time with some data - based on community participation in jams and challenges and continued appearance of 'big idea' posts - not dead yet.
A bit ago there were a slew of posts on the OSR blogging scene losing vibrancy - and I had no way to tackle that in a non-subjective way. Hero of our times Elmcat has been sweating over a red-hot RSS feed to pull together a colossal graph of the OSR blogverse by back-tracking peoples blog feeds and linked posts. They have also generously provided us with 'top 10 posts' lists for the last ten years which allow us to at last have some sort of visibility on activity levels.
Another set of complaints is the channel-jamming effect of various awards, various crowd-funding seasons and so on - but those are social media noise complaints. The underlying concern is the reduction in new creative things. I think we must accept some repetitive blogging as new folk rediscover the basic truths of gaming styles and blog about it. Our institutional memory is nil so it feels unfair to get salty at folk when they write up something older hands already know - how were they to know what they just wrote was hotly debated on defunct social media sites years before they could even read?
So to try and find a handle on whether or not we are seeing creativity fall off or whether we are getting new ideas, we can turn to Elmcats great labour to try to spot whether big new touch-stone posts, those with a lot of link-backs, are still emerging.
A bit ago there were a slew of posts on the OSR blogging scene losing vibrancy - and I had no way to tackle that in a non-subjective way. Hero of our times Elmcat has been sweating over a red-hot RSS feed to pull together a colossal graph of the OSR blogverse by back-tracking peoples blog feeds and linked posts. They have also generously provided us with 'top 10 posts' lists for the last ten years which allow us to at last have some sort of visibility on activity levels.
The Blogverse, by Elmcat
To try and get a sense of vibrancy increasing or decreasing, what metrics are we using? The main complaints that seem to get brought up are a shift toward selling product in place of improving practice at table. Even there, one mans post refining practice at table is another mans "why is there yet another 'how to dungeon crawl' post?" A laudable retro-clone to one is anothers sign that everything is a rehash.Another set of complaints is the channel-jamming effect of various awards, various crowd-funding seasons and so on - but those are social media noise complaints. The underlying concern is the reduction in new creative things. I think we must accept some repetitive blogging as new folk rediscover the basic truths of gaming styles and blog about it. Our institutional memory is nil so it feels unfair to get salty at folk when they write up something older hands already know - how were they to know what they just wrote was hotly debated on defunct social media sites years before they could even read?
So to try and find a handle on whether or not we are seeing creativity fall off or whether we are getting new ideas, we can turn to Elmcats great labour to try to spot whether big new touch-stone posts, those with a lot of link-backs, are still emerging.
| Published | Post | Links |
|---|---|---|
| 31 October 2018 | Automatic List Generator v2 | 233 |
| 17 October 2007 | Grand Experiment West Marches | 143 |
| 19 December 2008 | Party like its 999 | 95 |
| 08 October 2019 | Landmark Hidden Secret | 80 |
| 06 May 2008 | Shields shall be splintered | 87 |
| 06 July 2024 | RPGADAY 2024 | 72 |
| 10 June 2017 | Tomb of the Serpent Kings | 71 |
| 06 April 2021 | Six Cultures of Play | 69 |
| 07 May 2016 | The GLoG | 70 |
| 24 April 2011 | twenty quick questions | 75 |
12 November 2025
Actual Test: Dungeon Creation Process from The Breakfast Ossuary
After seeing it praised on the purple OSR discord, along with the note that the original blog was lost to the internet wastes, I thought it might be useful to unearth and try out "Zero to Complete Dungeon Generation, Waffle-Style" - now only findable on the internet archive.
The steps of the 'Waffle-style' method are:
Step 1 – Concept Shopping - vibes, mechanics, themes - pick 10-20
Step 2 – Monster Shopping - choose level, list 1-6 monsters
Step 3 – Rough Layout - 5-10 rooms in rough layout
Step 4 – Stocking the Rooms
Step 5 – Revisions
Step 6 – Keying the Dungeon
The steps of the 'Waffle-style' method are:
Step 1 – Concept Shopping - vibes, mechanics, themes - pick 10-20
Step 2 – Monster Shopping - choose level, list 1-6 monsters
Step 3 – Rough Layout - 5-10 rooms in rough layout
Step 4 – Stocking the Rooms
Step 5 – Revisions
Step 6 – Keying the Dungeon
10 November 2025
Shiny TTRPG links #250
Shiny 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.
Chaoclypse’s Substack writes BEAR WITNESS!
Traverse Fantasy gives us General Update (Icon0clasm and more!)
TRAIPSE shares The 10 types of special rooms
Alchemist Nocturne gives us Guns in fantasy
mrmagusjester shares D&D Rules Cyclopedia, the best-ever edition
Sage's Sanctum gives us Handling Factions in a Hexcrawl
Play Material writes Varieties of Scenes in TTRPGs
Afraid of Encounters gives us Gamemasters are Game Designers!
Observations of the Fox shares Crossovers between Seasons
Nordic Larp writes Accepting Limits: The One-Hour Online Role-Play Experience
Dice Goblin gives us Sub-Hex Design: Seven Anchors of Wilderness Play
Chaoclypse’s Substack writes BEAR WITNESS!
Traverse Fantasy gives us General Update (Icon0clasm and more!)
TRAIPSE shares The 10 types of special rooms
Alchemist Nocturne gives us Guns in fantasy
mrmagusjester shares D&D Rules Cyclopedia, the best-ever edition
Sage's Sanctum gives us Handling Factions in a Hexcrawl
Play Material writes Varieties of Scenes in TTRPGs
Afraid of Encounters gives us Gamemasters are Game Designers!
Observations of the Fox shares Crossovers between Seasons
Nordic Larp writes Accepting Limits: The One-Hour Online Role-Play Experience
Dice Goblin gives us Sub-Hex Design: Seven Anchors of Wilderness Play
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