d20 careless archmage devastations

Pondering arch-mages again, on the lines of 'what do you do when you get total control of reality' - previous I wrote on their goals, the status flexes of individuals beyond want. Now I have been pondering what kind of casual horrors they inflict on those around them through sheer carelessness and self-absorption without any accountability and way too much agency.

d20 regional impacts of careless archmages

1. their tower is absolutely crammed with automata who spend more time going "excuse me" and attempting to work around each other with their countermanding orders because nobody has priority. Nothing gets done and the wizard's idea is then "well nothing's getting done, I must add more automata obviously". They are overworked and so the cycle has worked itself into a teeming hive of jammed up autonomous automata. The entire place is a sink for magical energies and ores and dwarvish engineering. The dwarves love it. The gnomes dislike it, but view it as better the gold is in their hands than in that lunatic wizard's.

2. An entirely illusory tower where it appears to be absolutely fantastic but people keep dying because the guests are in fact exposed to the elements even where the illusion appear they are sheltered. The illusions are impeccable and very well supported but the wizard himself having a couple of rings of elemental endurance fails to recognize this is the problem.

3. Classic hybridization, chimerization program where they have simply too much time and industry and attempt to make the perfect fill-in-the-blank and of course have a whole bunch of misbegotten failed experiments roaming the countryside.

4. The giant churning forge where the wizard was incensed at local craftsmen's temerity has spent a significant amount of time rendering them all obsolete and has flooded everything around with okay smith goods equivalen. Only okay is good enough for most people and the remaining demand for quality is insufficient to sustain a population of skilled craftsmen and it is now becoming absolutely impossible to get decent gear anywhere around here to the point that the king is worried that his military forces are unready.

5. The wizard has created a library of old knowledge clones of himself that wander the realms answering questions. These questions are just wrong based on a hasty stitching together of factoids from a set of raiders that destroyed all the local libraries

6. A wizard has stolen all the groundwater for water elementals to guard their tower and also run their fancy fountains because they are from a coastal nation and they're feeling homesick.

7. Stole all the groundwater because they are attempting to fill an ocean within their own private demi-plane. This is the only way that they can get the authentic flavor of their local spring water.

8. Stole all the groundwater because a local dryad refused to take up with them on the basis that they're simply a heinous individual.

9. Devastated all the local forests by casting a summon woodlands spell and then marching off to battle with another wizard and getting the entire forest either killed in battle or stranded in a desert to eventually die.

10. Devastated the local locality by diverting a river to create enough ice for their new hobby of ice crafting.

11. ruined the local ecology by continuously summoning storms to their local mountain top tower and creating a freakish rain shadow across a continent, a series of storm attracting lightning rods marches across the landscape.

12. A badly thought out but highly effective mine has been digging away. Elements have collapsed and flooded twice now. However, the internal mine protocols were have been clever enough to keep them in operation, but not clever enough to recognize the damage that they're doing.

13. Created an artificial god from whole cloth to prove it could be done by importing a large amount of koa-toa and embarking on a generations-long social engineering project.

14. an attempt to win a bet with another wizard has resulted in the excavation of a truly colossal marine trench that has allowed huge ocean predators to come much closer inshore than they normally can. The local cliffs act as something like a salt lick to these monsters and they have been slowly eroding the ground with their activities.

15. A failed attempt at trying a pillar of flame wizard's tower has been abandoned. Said tower has ignited fires across most of the local landscape and rendered everything to an ashy wasteland the the tower itself has since gone out for want of fuel.

16. An attempt to resolve a wrong-headed argument about the nature of the cosmos has created a portal to a nightmare realm from which spews ceaseless nightmares. The wizard is long dead, no longer capable of regretting his folly, and yet the nightmares persist.

17. An illusionist attempting to demonstrate the superiority of their craft has microcosm where nothing is real or to be trusted. They all craft work within a certain region has a half chance of being simply illusionary.

18. in an attempt to make an easy access to his local thing, this wizard has created an unstable set of portal networks which allow weird migratory behaviors. The local wildlife have adapted. There is now an entire cohort and subspecies of migratory beasts that use the portals for their seasonal wanderings. The nearby ecosystems have been altered by this. However, they have stabilized into a new equilibrium, which is in fact working perfectly well, but it is not entirely native.

19. A wizard has released bunch of servitors to improve the local ecosystem and this is an ongoing forced evolution cautionary tale showcase. Every fix needs another fix. It is in fact a a glorious endorsement of the foolishness of messing with nature when you don't really understand what you're doing.

20. They have released monsters because they like the sounds they make and because they are no threat to the wizard they do not account that these things are deathly dangerous to 99% of the rest of the population

Shiny TTRPG links #285

More links from about the internet - for still more, check out the huge set from the previous list 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.

AMONG CATS AND BOOKS shares rootring months later

Goblin Archives, Unenthuser & Emo Sludge host LIMINAL HORROR SUMMER JAM 2026

Weeping Stag gives us Learning to Draw and Not Feeling Like Crap About It

Troy Press writes Participating in Blaugust 2026

Empire of Crust gives us On the Cancer of Creation for Others

Sultan's Musings posts Pirate Chill

Huovila, Hiski gives us Telegraphed Dangers — Enemy Intercompatibility in D20-Based Fantasy OSR Tabletop Roleplaying Games

@rxsesroots shares Boo! Did I Scare Ya..?

Campaign Mastery posts Worldbuilding Through Encounters

Bommyknocker Press writes High Level Play and Scaffolding

Insurers estimate of the population of gamers

In my quest to find data points on how many D&D players there are out there I stumbled upon this "The tabletop gamers’ survey" by Compare The Market - the general gist of which is "there are a lot of gamers out there, have you got insurance for all those out of print RPG books and precious, precious miniatures?" - which fair play, they are transparent in their angle in all of this, respect the hustle and so on.

They do give us some interesting insight with a 3000 person survey equally split across the US, Canada and Australia - finding that ~ 30% of US and Canadians (about half that for Australia) play or played tabletop games and the most popular of those games in every case was Dungeons and Dragons.

Their focus was a little unusual because it was about the physical stuff - with questions like 'I play, but I always borrowed minis' - more than whether people were current or lapsed players. If we bucket it all together as 'how many folk ever played D&D - now or in the past' we can compared to other sources and build some confidence in our understanding of what is going on.

Taking all the answers on whether folk ever played and collected a tabletop-roleplaying game or wargame we get
US - 29%
Canada - 32%
Australia - 16%

The found D&D was the most popular tabletop RPG or Wargame in each country and that combining all the survey results gave 32% of respondants selecting it. I do not think we can assume a flat ratio across the three countries and say therefore we have a thid of each survey response group saying they play or have played D&D - ~10% of all surveyed folk for US/Canada, ~5% for Australia.

There is a bit of a range in there - I spitballed back in 2022 that there might be ~33-43 million USA "fans" based on assumptions M.T. Black made on trends from WotCs 2020 claim of "over 40 million fans around the world." Recognising there was a daisy-chain of assumptions in there, it translates to 9-13% of USA folk being fans. Coming in the same ballpark but still a pretty wide range.

Recognising there is fuzz in there, I think "about one-in-eight folk in the US play or have played D&D" feels more plausible than the high-ball "about one-in-three have".

There are other bits and pieces like Cyberpunk and Call of Cthulu also being mentioned in there but given that we have no other sources for even as rough an analysis as this for those games, there is nothing I can do with those.

Sources

2026 Survey by Researchscape (N = 1253)

2025 The tabletop gamers’ survey (N = 3035)

2022 Survey by Researchscape (N = 1074)

2019 Survey by Researchscape (N = 942)

2000 Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0 (N = "about a thousand")

Shiny TTRPG links #284

A lighter set of links as I was travelling - but for more, check out the huge set from the previous list 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.

The Nothic's Eye launches G L Å U G U S T 2 0 2 6

Sundered Shields and Silver Shillings writes Do every challenge in 500 words or less: an elaboration

Dank Dungeons hosts Appx. N Jam 2026

Sea of Stars posts Beginning this month’s RPG Blog Carnival – Small Gods, Saints, and other minor divinities

Advantage on Arcana writes June 2026 RPG Blog Carnival Round-up: Cyclopes, Ettins, Hill Giants, and Ogres

Casting Shadows shares #RPGaDAY2026 starts August 1st

Root Devil posts Use Tracing Paper

Ill Met by Morrslieb writes The Philosophy of Symbaroum

Writing my Odd Game gives us Combat as Failstate

Fail Forward shares Combat as Art - Boss Design and Reflections on Violence

Valeria Loves posts People Walk Too Fast

Capsule Reviews #10: Kala Mandala Zines

I grabbed the set of Kala Mandala zines after the Hey Centaur shop went online. These are great zines of the old school OSR glory days - easily earning their shelf space beside any of the greats. We get a great setting in the Playbook and two Art Research zines, further expanded by three juicy adventures - all site exploration with a twist for each.

Six books existing in the core set at time of writing:
Kala Mandala Playbook - 42 pages, system
Stirring the Hornets Nest at Het Thamsya - 26 pages, adventure
Deluge at Drizzle Distillery - 42 pages, adventure
Tragedy at Zaya's Theatre - 26 pages, adventure
Earthly Beings - 38 pages, gazetteer
Heavenly Bodies - 38 pages, gazetteer

Plus the Paper Minis set. As a whole this is the character generation and system in the playbook, three adventures (Het Thamsya, Drizzle Distillery and Zaya's Theatre) and two world-books/gazetteers (Earthly Beings and Heavenly Bodies)

I did have a minor logistics issue in that I ordered the stickers collection and got a second playbook - strictly this has worked in my benefit because the playbook is a touch more expensive than the stickers. From a point of view of trying to get Kala Mandala to table, having a second playbook might end up being more helpful. So I am going to call it a wash, all to the good.

July 2026 RPG Blog Carnival: Small Gods, Saints and minor divinity!

Welcome to the new month for the RPG Blog Carnival - our topic for July 2026 is "Small Gods, Saints and minor divinity!" You can find some deeper background on the RPG Blog Carnival on 'of Dice and Dragons'. Write what you like around the prompt or see the suggestions below. This month, hosting is being shared with Sea of Stars - see their launch post for yet more inspirational ideas.

If you want to join the carnival, write up your own entry and post it in a comment below, send me a link (my username at gmail.com) or ping me on the 'blog-carnival' OSR discord channel or find me bluesky or mastodon. I will gather all the participants into a wrap-up post on August 8th.

For d6 prompts:
1. Talk about how your divine magic system works e.g. Who hears your oath?
2. Describe some of the minor divinities e.g. d14 small gods of the animal-lings
3. Share some shrines or locations e.g. d6 Sites of the Long Wars
4. Tell of aspects of the divine e.g. d8 natures of this quasi-godlike entity
5. Write up a specific god or saint e.g. Small god: Lady Deephome
6. Describe a faction or cult e.g. Commission for the ethical sourcing of construct souls

For my own take, I wanted to revamp my house rules from Who hears your oath? - d100 roll under your level, +10 per factor in your favour.

Shiny TTRPG links #283

A lighter set of links as I was travelling - but for more, check out the huge set from the previous list 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.

On a housekeeping announcement, for the rest of this year, I am shifting down to a Shiny Links + one post per week schedule (Saturdays) for burnout avoidance. We will see how things look as we approach 2027 on keeping/reverting.

Pikliz Dungeon writes The Black Hack 10th Anniversary Game Jam

The Lich's Library gives us Prepping for the next level of a Megadungeon!

Traveler's Rest shares Generating Elevation in a Hexcrawl

The Other Side blog posts BECMI Binders

RPGTrader writes Free RPG Day 2026 Bundle

Rise Up Comus gives us The Secret History of The Castle Automatic

Billhook Blog shares Your Favorite Game (You Haven't Played Yet)

Crow’s Corner posts Table-Tested Review of the “Fomoria” Quickstart

Patchwork Paladin writes Playing the Social Game

AMONG CATS AND BOOKS pens Cultures, not Games

False Machine gives us A Review of Forgotten Realms; Underdark

shifty louts writes Another Reflection on Writing for the Antarctica Jam