Review + Actual Play: Emelda's Song

tl:dr; a three part adventure with an investigation, infiltration and tomb-dive; neatly presented and fun to run.

I got this as part of my Dolmenwood order - it turned up in the giant box - and on the basis of it getting hailed as a great one-shot adventure I decided to run it at one of my open table sessions.

The book is a 36-page A5 hardback - the Dolmenwood/OSE standard - with maps on the inside covers and double columns with art throughout. The format within is that well-thought-out Dolmenwood approach of 'location, box with key descriptive items, likely actions, stats for anything present' that makes it pretty easy to use. One could give it a go un-read I suspect but it might get tricky.

So what do you actually get in the book?

Shiny TTRPG links #294

New shiny links from a new week on the web. For more, try last weeks set found here or the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Bloggie-nominated. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch, delinked by request.

Afraid of Encounters gives us Indonesian TTRPG Blogwagon ROUNDUP

Peter Hall at Scientific American posts Unique, mathematical 60-sided dice go on display

Charlie's Diary writes Rethinking space opera

Homebrew and Hacking gives us On Running a TTRPG Club

Roleplaying Tips shares When We Improvise Ourselves Into A Corner

subjunctive moods gives us just skip it!

Vaults of Zin shares Org-as-Class for Everything

Other coins or other than coins (RPG Blog Carnival)

Campaign Mastery gives us this months prompt The Face of Money for the RPG Blog Carnival. This post covers my slightly meta-takes at two of the questions posed on the prompting post using my old original AD&D home campaign and its prep. Those questions are:
1. What’s depicted on your coinage and banknotes and what are the stories behind those depictions?
2. What makes the currency of your game world distinctive, and what impact does that have?

When I read the prompt I knew exactly what I wanted to talk about but the question was could I find the evidence now, some thirty-odd years later. Happily, my pack-rat instincts have served me well in this instance and lo, I have unearthed the original drawn up coinage for my first AD&D campaign, in a massively inefficient use of game prep time. This first is an orc who was among the first encounters my players ever ran into - guess what, you do not need to draw portraits of all the foes, nor sketch out the loot they hold.

I did however know exactly what those coins in the orcs pocket looked like because the *second page* of campaign prep I ever did was this - hashing out a map to have the campaign in and then working out the coinage for all those places. Praise be I had the instincts to just work out a core realm and the immediate neighbours and not try to build my own Faerun straight out of the blocks.

Coins similarly turned up in more sophisticated hoards.

Shiny TTRPG links #293

Fresh shiny links from the internet! For more, see last week found here or the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Bloggie-nominated. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch, delinked by request.

Sage's Sanctum posts Resurrection in Pneumos

Elfmaids & Octopi shares Pacing a campaign

Advantage on Arcana posts Joesky Wants To Tax Me But This Is Boston And It's 1773

Valeria Loves shares How Deadly is the OSR, Actually?

Throne of Salt posts Cut-Up Timeline of the Future

Lonely Star writes Player Agency and Planning Autonomy

Beau Rancourt gives us Reflections: OSR

Big Mac shares TSR's lost Educational Adventure series

Towers of spider-haunted mystery posts Sneak peek: Work in progress rules for managing an adventuring guild’s headquarters

Setting up Imperium Maledictum adventures for #City26

I marshalled some players and got through a session zero and simple investigative scene using Imperium Maledictum and have been recently reading back through my old Dark Heresy and the new Imperium Maledictum adventure anthologies to get a sense of the structure of these things - not that I couldn't just do "5-room-dungeon-but-40k" but I wanted to try and get a sense of how 40kRPG games ought to be run officially.

The big difference is they seem to follow a three act structure; each of those then broken down into two bits. There is a thing to find out so go to a place and resolve the problem there to get the clue to lead onwards. Essentially solving minor mysteries to get clues to the meta-conspiracy behind it all. The first and third acts are the set up and resolution respectively and the second act is an accordion you can expand or shrink as much as the mood takes you. Essentially, the 'gather clues' second act can require finding as many clues as you see fit.

The big thing for Dark Heresy or Imperial Maledictum is the players are primarily investigators - even when levelled up and quite punchy, they are not the heavy firepower of the Adeptus Astartes. The thing they can do which the various big guns of the setting cannot is investigation and social pieces. You are not going to sneak your way through a masquerade ball with a Warlord Titan but then that is not its job. Combat in Imperium Maledictum is also pretty vicious with critical hit tables that will see you dead-dead on the first shot if you are unlucky. This is combined with the 'superiority' mechanics of granting chunky bonuses in combat if you have gained intelligence on the adversaries or the battle-site to make pre-confrontation gathering of information highly desirable.

The broad recipe seems to be
- pick three locations, connect them all by a thread
- have two things to do at each location, maybe have an extra clue that might be found
- have a further location where the big bad or revelation is
- front it all with a briefing scene

Shiny TTRPG links #292

Fresh shiny links from the internet! For more, see last week found here or the weekly r/OSR blogroll or check the RPG Blog Carnival. Bloggie-nominated. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch, delinked by request.

Sundered Shields and Silver Shillings launches Trying to fire up a bandwagon: names

On Unnamed Horizons gives us On Named Horizons (a post for the naming bandwagon)

Spiceomancy shares No Stupid Names

Musings on Monstrousness posts Naming Bandwagon

Garamondia writes Naming!

Ladino's Rogue Thoughts gives us Adjudicating Social Requests: a tool, and how I use it

AMONG CATS AND BOOKS shares Death of a Hobby

Taskerland shares GAS-lit

Two Smoking Boots posts On to Better Gods

Widdershins Wanderings writes Rethinking Religion in RPG Settings

AMONG CATS AND BOOKS shares It ain't blorb

Press The Beast shares blorb sucks and Nathe Principles

Ward Against Evil gives us OSR, the OSR, The OSR, the OSR Community, FKR, NSR, BrOSR, and OSR-Style Play

Pilgrims of the Painted Idol (GLOG Class: Small God) (GLÅUGUST 2026 #6)

Taking on The Nothic's Eye GLÅUGUST 2026, challenge #6 is from a list by Locheil themselves - "A short class which is absolutely not a fighter, not a wizard, not a cleric and not a thief.".

This class is a swarm of miscellaneous pilgrims in the style of Many Goblins or The Extras or the treacherous wizards of The Plurality.

The Painted Idol follows the basic Many X rules. This is in fact a statue, icon or reliquary that is carried around by an ever-shifting group of pilgrims that changes periodically as some join, some leave, all of whom are devoted to this particularly obscure little god as it progresses about the place. Exactly what this is the god of is part of character creation.

Hit Dice: 1d10. The Pilgrims have the grit of downtrodden peasantry who have walked a long bloody way to be here.

To-hit, Weapons and Armour, Saves, experience: As per Cleric.

Safety In Numbers: The pilgrims always go around as a crowd bearing the Painted Idol shoulder high, moving as a single mass filling a 20' square and can attack or be attacked by anything within 5' of the crowd. If relevant there are 4d4+2 pilgrims present, with departures and new arrivals on a more or less continuous basis.

Righting the Idol: During any times of stress - combat, risky endeavours - most of the pilgrims are focussed on keeping the idol upright and safe - leaving few to deal with the rest of the world. Collectively they get one action a turn but if they can set the idol down securely and turn their efforts to some unskilled labor, they can spare enough folk from prayers and attending the idol to achieve the work of ten people in an hour of activity.

They have a single collective HP total - for every HP damage, a pilgrim dies dramatically protecting the idol. Area of effect damages them just once. They must obtain ten copies of any equipment to benefit from it.

You can wear light armor and shields, and can wield staves, slings, clubs and knives - as long as you have at least ten sets.

Starting Equipment: survival gear (battered), lots and lots of ropes, large pots with sufficient poor gruel for everyone.

Perk: Turn undead with advantage through being an actual minor divine.

Drawback: it cannot enter a temple dedicated to another god. It is a small god, it cannot trespass. Well, it can, but mayhem swiftly follows.

Advances:
A: A pilgrim here myself
B: Eternal Progress
C: Manifest Miracle
D: Behold this Small God