Tabletop Gaming Feeds

Nostalgia. We’ve been riding that wave for a while now.

While I have certainly been guilty of buying into it, there is an argument to be made that if we are always revisiting the well of the past, we aren’t really creating for the future. As much as I love new Star Trek or Star Wars projects, I’m just as happy to see wild, new ideas like K-Pop Demon Hunters. My point is this: if we continually look back, we fail to create new worlds or explore new mechanics, and we risk diminishing the very things we loved in the first place.

So, let’s talk about my own nostalgia for old tabletop role-playing games.

If you follow me on social media, you probably know that I always bring up three games: Torg, Fading Suns, and Space: 1889.

After years of waiting, the stars finally aligned. Ulisses Spiele acquired the rights to all three! They put out new editions, Torg Eternity and Fading Suns 4th edition, and licensed Space: 1889 After to Strange Owl Games.

Torg Eternity arrived with an updated, cleaned-up, and easier-to-understand version of the original rules. I ran the Free RPG Day adventure in 2017 and enjoyed it greatly. I backed the original crowdfunding campaign—and all subsequent campaigns—usually at the higher tiers. I have everything Ulisses Spiele has published for the line. I’ve read a lot of it.

But the game is not perfect. While simpler than the original, I find it a bit fiddlier than I currently enjoy, and the supplements have been of varying quality.

I realized that I don’t think I’d run Torg Eternity using the official rules. If I finally get to run the big Torg campaign I’ve been dreaming of, I’d probably use a different system. I already ran a classic Torg prequel using d20 Modern.

So, what system would I use today? Savage Worlds.

I am currently running my dream Fading Suns campaign, and while the new 4th Edition books by Ulisses are beautiful, the rule system feels needlessly complex for my table. So, I am running it using Savage Worlds.

Notice a pattern?

Space: 1889 had a Ubiquity version from Clockwork Publishing (and still available from Ulisses Spiele if you click the previous link), and the current Space: 1889 After has two versions: the Empyrean system and a D&D 5e version. I own the 5e version. But if I ever run Space: 1889, care to guess what system I’d use? (Pinnacle even put out a Savage Worlds version of Space: 1889: Red Sands some years ago, so the work is already done!)

What does this all mean?

First, it means I really like Savage Worlds! As our gaming group grows older and gaming time becomes increasingly precious, we stick with the systems we know and enjoy rather than crunching through new rulesets.

But second, it means that my nostalgia was never really for the mechanics—it was for the worlds. My love was for the setting, the experiences, and the creativity they fueled, not the specific game engine. I am glad I’ve gotten to play Fading Suns. I hope to play my planned Torg campaign at some point. Space: 1889 is not currently at the top of my list, but I’d play it.

However, I also want to play new games. I want to try new systems and have new experiences. I want to run a Powered by the Apocalypse game. I want to try Blades in the Dark (or one of the Forged in the Dark hacks). I want to run Mothership and something on the Year Zero Engine.

Ultimately, I love nostalgia. We got new versions of Ravenloft, Twilight: 2000, Savage Rifts, and Palladium Books even published a new TMNT edition. But I also want new games that explore what TTRPGs can do today.

By now, I think most of my nostalgia wants have been addressed. Well, with two exceptions.

I know we’ll likely never get this because of licensing issues, but I’d love to see a new version of the Buck Rogers XXVc TTRPG. (The closest we can get right now is the amazing Overlords of Dimension-25 by Christian Conkle).

And finally, I’d love to see a new edition of The Whispering Vault.

One last thought: seriously, when are we getting the K-Pop Demon Hunters TTRPG?

by Wayne Peacock, Dee McKinney
Kismet Games
OSR
Levels 1-3

A ragged sailor speaks of an island no chart has ever shown—one he claims rose straight from the sea, crowned by a bone-colored lighthouse that casts shifting, multihued light across the waves. His tale might be madness… if not for the opalescent, fist-sized pearl he carries as proof. When both sailor and pearl end up in the possession of Gokleve’s notorious twins Valde and Valada, the pair hires you to voyage to this impossible island and return with whatever pearls you can pry from its shores. Are the pearls the true prize… or just the bait?

This 28 page adventure uses six pages to present seven rooms in some sea caves that have you fighting. Right out of the 4e era, you’ll be stabbin and everything else is a pretext. Or maybe it’s the 3.5 era since there’s not much terrain. Whatever. 

This is weird. The sea caves, the actual adventure locale, are just a few pages long, six if I recall. The lighthouse, the one that features so prominently on the cover and in all of the adventure lead-in? Not covered. Or, rather, it is essentially a rock formation on the island. It gets about three quarters of a page description which amounts to “The lighthouse which pierces the island is a magical device, not a building.” There are a few odds and ends, like seaweed covering it, but that’s the description. Which I guess means you can’t go inside? Which is why I’m calling it a rock formation. It’s got that beam of light, rotating, at the top, which is clearly magical. But there’s no notes about fucking with it. About climbing the tower, flying up, or painting the lenses with tar or anything else. When you make your entire adventure about the fucking lighthouse then you’d better do something with the lighthouse, or have some way of communicating to the players “Hey, its not about the lighthouse” once they reach the lighthouse. Yes, you can see a cave mouth, which is where the party will end up, so, good on yeah matey. 

Ket’s mention the quantum blind dude. He’s on the top of a mast of a wrecked ship. Unless the party doesn’t go to the wrecked ship in which case he’s in a wrecked lifeboat at the cave mouth. Its actually called “QUANTUM [Dudes Name]” Why? He’s not crucial to the adventure, so why the focus on making ABSOLUTELY sure the party meets him? And, during that HUGE leads in to the adventure we get LONG sections about V&V, the crime lords who hire the party to go the lighthouse. Like, pages of this shit. (Clearly, we have a hard on for V&V the crime lords. And for the quantum dude, for some reason. Search me. But I can tell when someone is a mary sue DM pet.) With some nice fucking LONG  read-aloud. In Italics. In a fancy fucking font in italics, and long. Look, I promised not to do the screencap thing anymore, but come on man, this shit is falling closer to the illegible end of the scale than the legible. Weird flourishes at the ends of e’s. I guess its supposed to be nautical-ish? BUT ITS FOR THE FUCKING DM. The DM has to be able to read the fucking shit and communicate yor long ass soliloquy to the players. I’m all for tormenting the players with handouts that nigh illegible, but not the DM. The DM needs information presented in a way that they can absorb it and transfer it to the players in an efficient and effective manner. Also, the island “appears to have a working lighthouse.” There’s a giveaway if I ever saw one. No. It has a working lighthouse. There’s a tower with a light spinning at the top. As far as anyone else knows its a fucking lighthouse. Nobody needs to know it’s not actually a lighthouse. (Although, isn’t it? Is it form or is it function? It’s tall with a rotating light you can see. It’s a lighthouse. The purpose of the light is to attract ship … so its function is not that of a lighthouse?) 

Oh, what am I bitching about here … the interactivity is just stabbing shit. Go in to a room, stab the monster, go in to the next room, stab the monster, go in to the next room. Repeat. There’s a person or two (See Also: Quantum Dude) who are like “we shipwrecked!” and are now have facehugger ova in them. They get, maybe, one sentence. Actually, most things get one sentence. Stab stab stab. Stab stab stab. I’m gonna call this a 3.5 adventure since there’s stabbing without the terrain effects needed to make it a 4e adventure. 

Room two of this exciting sea cave adventure: “2. Nest. The nest is home to the tenders.” Are you not eNtErTaInEd?! There’s a couple of bullet points for the DM to embellish upon, but the core room dynamic is more than a little lacking here. And, it’s just stabbing after all, so any description is just wasted. I guess this genre is for people who want to play mini’s but, I don’t know, want more? Roguelike D&D where combat is the main thing but you can level up and the graphics are raytraced?

And that’s all too bad because there is some imagery here and there that is decent.  “Bodies lie about the wreck, some wedged into the rocks where golden crabs feed upon them.” Noice! Always great when the crabs have some steamed human legs. And eyes. Nothing like a good rotten crab feeding frenzy to conjure the nausea, or, there’s this water elemental you can meet. It looks like an eel, its totem creature. That’s a great idea. Its tormenting a fisherman: “darting under to menace the trapped fisherman. The fisherman was harvesting eels, the elemental’s totem species, which pissed it off. It now plans on drowning its victim, Lars. The more prolonged the terror, the better.” That’s great! I mean, it’s all useless here since you’re just gonna stab it. But the potential man … and lets make lars desperate, so even though he KNOWS there’s this eel creature, there are also a lot of eels, and his families hungary, or he owes a lot or something. And maybe tie that in to the crime lords? Who have hired you. Great! Or, we could just put in some backstory for no reason and then just make the encounter a combat. *sigh*

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is the first four pages, which is useless. Title pages, credits, one page of background. The purpose of the preview is to show us enough so that we can make an informed purchasing decision. Like, show us an encounter so we can understand your style of D&D.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/548411/the-cresting-pearl-light?1892600

My mission: to read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to the end of Crisis. This week, I'm looking at the comics that were on stands in the week of February 7, 1985. 
This first week marks a milestone, with my brother and I owning 5 of these 7 issues, and three of them we definitely bought off the stands. The others were maybe acquired a year or two later from dollar bins.

Deadman #1: The stunning Neal Adams cover got my brother or me to pick up this one, despite no knowledge of the character. The issue reprints the earliest Deadman stories from Strange Adventures #205, 206, and House of Mystery #178. I wonder if the timing of this reprint series was meant to raise the profile of the new limited series that would be coming along in '86?

Crisis on Infinite Earths #2: This was my introduction to Crisis. I bought it off the stands at my local grocery store. The sense of impending...well, crisis begins to build as time is disrupted with a mammoth herd leaving Anthro's era and winding up in the Legion's 30th Century. In the modern day on Earth-One, Batman is going after the Joker when and image of a frantic and decaying Flash appears before him, begging for help and warning of disaster. The heroes and villains gathered by the Monitor are sent to Kamandi's Earth After Disaster and ancient Atlantis to defend tower-like devices erected by the Monitor for something, I guess, from shadow demons. Psycho-Pirate is the first villain to show his colors and turn on the heroes; he's defeated but them but whisked away to serve the same shadowy force that commands Harbinger.
Things are moving fast, and the narrative reasons for things are sometimes poorly explained, but on balance the script and visual storytelling work to tell a compelling story.

Atari Force #17: This was only issue I bought off the spinner rack after issue one. Barreto is back on pencils. Taz's Tazlings reveal their pretty much magical repair ability by fixing Backjak's missing eye and taking the bit of the Destroyer out of his brain. Then, the same thing gets done for Kragg after Morphea has a psychic battle with the Dark Destroyer, and Rident gets to witness the psychic projects. Dart manages to make contact with Chris again, confirming Atari and New Earth are still around. 

DC Comics Presents #81: Another story that's effectively a plug for the upcoming Giffen/Fleming Ambush Bug limited series, but I like the Bug and that series, so it's cool with me. Ambush Bug finds a hunk of red kryptonite and gives it to his "pal" Superman but knowing what it is. Its effects cause the two to switch bodies, and at a time when Kobra makes a move to steal Ambush Bug's teleportation tech.

Fury of Firestorm #35: In a moment I'm sure inspired by the iconic Amazing Spider-Man #33, Firestorm tap reserves of street to escape a mass of ice threatening to crush him. While the Stein/Ronnie team is dealing with Stein's decision to move to another city, potentially ending Firestorm, Plastique gains new explosion powers and Killer Frost lays a trap for our hero. In the end, Firestorm is at the mercy of the two villains united.

Justice League of America #238: This is another issue I owned, but I didn't remember much beyond the cover. Conway and Patton/Machlan give Conway's new team their first direct interaction with some of the members of the League's most famous incarnation.  The New League flies into the Soviet Union to rescue Superman, Wonder Woman, and the Flash who are being held captive by a crazy general and his keytar playing super-villain henchman, Maestro. The new kids win the day, in part due to the element of surprise, but they also get help from the Anton Allegro, long imprisoned by Gorki, who shoots Maestro in revenge. Gypsy reveals a previously unknown illusion power which seems to shatter Gorki's mind, at least temporarily. The heroes leave the USSR with a final panel oddly showing Martian Manhunter still on the ground as the League plane takes off, holding Allegro's body.

Tales of the Teen Titans #53: Lilith is attacked outside Titans Tower by someone who looks like the Terminator, but supposedly the real one is in jail, awaiting trial. Lilith isn't acting herself and goes back to STAR Labs where she uses newly revealed heat powers to free the amnesiac winged alien from ice. The Titans try to stop her, but holding off her teammates with her new powers, she lets the winged man escape. The Titans, thinking the alien is to blame for Lilith's new powers and weird behavior, give chase but lose him. Then the trial of Slade Wilson gets underway, with Adrian "Vigilante" Chase as judge. 
I wonder how these 2 asynchronous Titans books were received at the time? It's nice that Wolfman weaves two stories of Lilith with weird powers and Azrael into both books that are supposed to take place months apart, but reading last month's NTT would have spoiled any mystery regarding Lilith's new powers or Azrael's intentions.

Shadow War of Hawkman #1: Isabella and Howell/Alcala bring back Hawkman and Hawkgirl who haven't had any solo appearances since the strip in World's Finest ended in '82. A group of Thanagarians arrive in Midway City and recruit a cat burglar to steal the Hawks' anti-gravity belts. Katar thwarts the robbery at their home, though Mousy is killed and the Thanagarians escape, teleporting to the museum. With Shayera still at the museum, Hawkman frantically flies back, but when he arrives, he finds the police outside and a scorch mark on the wall in the shape of his wife!

Superman: The Secret Years #4: Rozakis and Swan/Schaffenberger bring this limited series to a close. While Superboy grieves over his failure to save his parents, his foster parents, or Billy Cramer, Lex Luthor threatens all life on Earth unless his old foe meets him for a one-on-one fight. Perry White discovers Billy's whistle and figures out that it might be a way to summon Superboy back. Superboy heeds the call, and after defeating Luthor, who has found a way to give himself super-strength, he's found new confidence. He changes his name to Superman. As Clark Kent he graduates from Metropolis U with his friends. Then, he applies for a reporting job with the Daily Planet under its new editor, Perry.
This isn't a bad series, but I feel like it's let down a bit by the very Bronze Age style its creators are working in. Rozakis' plot is interesting but isn't as impactful as it could be due to its focus on done-in-one superhero storytelling. The Swan/Schaffenberger art isn't in layout or style positioned to wring the emotion from the material the plot suggests.

Vigilante 17: Alan Moore and Jim Baikie come on board for a late 70s-early 80s style neo-noir thriller. It's more the sort of story Miller did over at Daredevil than the more 80's action stuff Wolfman has done here (or would be done with the Punisher in the next few years). Chase gets a frantic call from Joanne Linnaker telling him her ex-husband Carl (who Chase prosecuted for abusing their daughter) is out on "good behavior" and possibly heading their way. By the time Vigilante arrives at her apartment, Joanne has been brutally murdered and her daughter, Jodie, has fled. 
She's found on the streets by a friendly drug-dealer named Fever and her prostitute roommate Louise. While Fever tries to negotiate Jodie's return to Chase without having her illegal activities exposed, Carl kills Louise and takes Jodie. Fever vows revenge and Vigilante acquiesces to her helping him track down Carl.

 Yes, The Invisible College (by RPGPundit/Well of Urd Press) is not only playable with the Wretchedverse, but there is actually official crossover material designed specifically for this combination. This blog entry picks right up from here on the blog. Because both games are built on OSR (Old-School Essentials/D20-adjacent) foundations, they share a mechanical DNA that makes them Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

 

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Original Video: https://youtu.be/6ijRtEpQknk

The transcript is lightly edited from an auto-generated one. Expect typos and worse ;)

A viewer asked, how do you handle illusions in a dungeon, like a false wall or a false floor? And actually, I love that question because illusions can be brilliant, or they can turn your dungeon into a paranoid trap. Every stone slog where nobody trusts anything. So I'm going to give you how I run illusions in old school play. 

Scary. Useful. Most importantly, fair. Because the moment your players feel like the DM can just lie, whenever you don't have tension anymore, you've got distrust. 

So we got the question then. Like what is an illusion when illusion is not a gotcha? It's a problem of perception. So I'm always thinking three things when it comes to illusions. Is there something that feels off if the players pay attention? Can they test it in a way that makes sense in the world? The game world? And if they don't test it, is the consequence fair? Something that would follow naturally. If the only answer is you should have guessed. That's not clever. That's me being smug. 

And I can be smug, but that's not what we want. People generally say illusion and mean different things. And these are the big ones. First, a sensory illusion is something that isn't physically there. 

So it's like a wall that looks solid, but you can walk right through it. It doesn't block you with stone. It blocks you because you believe it does. 

Second, a real hazard that's disguised like a pit that's absolutely real. But it's covered by an illusion that looks like normal floor. See, that's a real threat. Wearing a fake face. 

And then you have the third type. Misdirection, fake exits, fake doors, Phantom treasure stuff meant to burn off time. Split the party or put you into a bad position. Once you know which one it is, making a ruling gets relatively simple. Now do I telegraph them? 

All right, so I don't announce. There's an illusion here. And hold up a sign. No, but I do give players something they can notice. 

Now, my favorite clues are practical, physical, and generally tied to how dungeons work. So dust behaves wrong. Or that part of the floor is just too clean, too undisturbed, or there's dust piled oddly along the edge of a wall. Aaron, smoke. Behave wrong. A draught from a sealed corridor. Torch. Smoke pulling sideways. Sound behaves wrong. Uh. Short hall that echoes like it's much deeper than it appears. Monster behavior can often give it away. Goblins vanishing in a dead end. Voices behind a solid wall. Patrol routes that don't make sense. And that last one. That last one is DM gold. Okay, because it makes the dungeon feel lived in. Like a place with routines. Not a trick box. 

So in old school play the player's best tools aren't skill checks. I know I say that a lot. Or a variation of that a lot. This is aimed at my 5e players. I know I have a 5e audience. I'm just going to remind you old school play the players best tools aren’t skill checks. It's time. Caution, interaction and gear. So when someone says, I checked the wall, I ask, how are you checking it? Because the how is the entire game. 

Here are the tests that matter most, especially when it comes to illusions. 

Touch and pressure. Right? If it's a walk through illusion, this should reveal it quickly, right? You press, you lean, you push. You touch the wall with your ten foot pole. You poke it with your sword. The wall's not there. You probe ahead. Okay. The ten foot pole earns its keep. 

If they probe a suspicious floor and it goes through the floor, they should get information before someone commits their weight to that location. Throw something. Toss a pebble, a coin, a torch, especially for false floors. The sound tells you plenty. The missing coin will tell you plenty. Dust. chalk, flour. A little puff of flour at a wool can tell you if air is moving through it, especially if the flour goes right through it. Um, attempting to mark a wall with chalk. There's no wall, there's no surface. You're not marking it. But this play is smart, it's simple. And essentially it feels earned. 

Mapping and logic. If the group maps carefully, illusions will get caught constantly. That's good. That's not a bad thing. That's what careful play buys you. And just to say it, if the players interact in a concrete way, I don't make them roll to earn reality. They did the test. They get the result. 

So Okay then. Well, when do you use saves or checks or when do you roll? I use saves when the illusion is acting like an attack on the mind. Panic images, phantom threats, disorientation, that sort of thing. But the player says I toss a copper on that suspicious tile. I'm not asking for a roll to see if they notice that the coin falls through the floor. The interaction is the answer. Player action first. Only when the magic is pushing back. Now illusions should have teeth, but the bite has to make sense. 

So what consequences are appropriate? Waste of time. Right. Or counter checks. Torch burning down. Bad positioning. Splitting the party up. Noise that wakes the place up the resource drain. Because you chose the wrong approach. 

And then there are some bad consequences or inappropriate instant death with no warning and no counterplay. I'm against that. When it comes to illusions or anything else, I don't like it. I'm not a fan of save or die out of the blue. What about there? There were no clues. But you should have known. And I think many of us have experienced that crap. If a party sprints down a dungeon hallway like it's a hotel corridor. I'm not advising that you run through the hotel corridor. Is that a convention? But if you do so, yeah, you might drop through a pit there because you're not looking for it. And that's fair play. But I still want something a cautious group could have noticed. 

So let me give you two examples. The way I would run it. False wall that you can walk through. I describe a normal wall, but I usually include one clue a draft torch, smoke that's pulling strangely muffled voices, footprints that don't add up, or monsters disappearing into a dead end if they test it, touch reveals it. If they don't, they miss an advantage, a shortcut, a stash, a safer route, a prisoner, something meaningful but not campaign ending and not session fashion ending. 

What about the popular false floor over a real pit. Same deal. Normal floor. Plus one detail that nags. To clean or the dust is undisturbed. Or there's a faint hollow note to the room. Stones are a little too perfect. Or there's a slight slope. Probe it. Toss something. Test it. Now they know. Ignore it and someone drops, takes damage, makes noise. And now the dungeon is awake. That's not mean. That's not arbitrary. Just cause and effect. 

Now, the biggest illusion mistake is using illusions as a substitute for dungeon design. If the content is just a trick, players learn the wrong reason. Distrust everything. Slow down forever. The best illusions exist for a reason. Guarding something important. Supporting a faction that uses the illusion tactically. Hiding a bypass or escape route or funneling intruders into a bad approach. See when it serves the place players respect it even when it bites them. If you can answer these questions, your illusion is solid. What's the subtle clue? What's the practical test? What's the fair consequence if they ignore it? And listen, that's the whole philosophy. 

Now, if you've got a favorite illusion, one that felt fair or one that felt like a cheap shot, drop it in the comments. I want to hear your war stories. Thank you for spending your time at the tavern and God bless.

 The Alphyn is one of those classic, heraldic-inspired monsters that fits perfectly into the old-school aesthetic of Castles & Crusades. While it looks like a relative of the Griffin or the Manticore, it has its own unique, bizarre flair. This blog post picks right up from here on the blog.Here is a breakdown of how the Alphyn typically functions within the C&C framework.The CreatureNeedleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

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 To incorporate Troll Lord Games’ Tainted Lands into your campaign, you have to lean into its "heavy metal horror" vibe. It isn’t just a setting; it’s a mechanical and thematic overlay designed by Jim Ward to turn a standard Castles & Crusades (or OSR) game into a desperate fight for survival against a landscape that is actively trying to corrupt the players.Here is how to weave these Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Original Video: https://youtu.be/a3TtkSYi_zY

Transcript is lightly edited. Expect typos and worse ;)

This one comes straight from a viewer suggestion, and I'm actually glad it did, because decision paralysis is one of those table problems that can quietly kill a good RPG session. If you've ever sat there with a party staring at three doors, an intersection, a staircase, and a weird statue and nobody wants to pick one, well, yeah, that's the thing, right? That's the indecision. 

And today I'm talking player to player. How to stop freezing, start moving and still play smart, especially in old school games where time is a resource and the whole we all just think about it is how you get jumped by wandering monsters and other assorted miscreants. So now being careful is good. I'm not saying it isn't. Caution keeps you alive, but decision paralysis. That indecision is where the table gets stuck in a loop. You find yourself asking for info you cannot realistically get. Maybe you keep inventing new plans instead of choosing one. Or you keep waiting for the DM to confirm that it's safe. I got news for you. It probably isn't going to. You're stuck trying to find a perfect option or solution that simply doesn't exist, and paralysis has a real cost. Torches. Burns. Spells tick away. Noise travels. Wandering monsters happen. The dungeon doesn't pause because the party is having a committee meeting.

I'm sorry. Here's why this happens. Most of the time, this indecision comes from one of a few places. Fear of consequences, right? Old school play has teeth. Some choices bite. That is literally part of the game. That's what you're in for. Then there's trying to solve it in your head instead of in the game world. People start playing mental chess or checkers instead of exploring. And then there's waiting for permission. Players want the DM to validate the plan. In old school play, Like I said before, you generally don't get that. Too many choices. Too many options. Every hallway becomes a debate, and debate becomes, it becomes the game. 

So how do you fix that from the players side? Here's what works at real tables. Default to action, not discussion. And what do I mean by that? If the party is stuck, somebody has to be willing to say, alright, we're making a move. And not recklessly not Leroy Jenkins. No. Deliberately. If you want a simple mental rule. Movement creates information. You don't get certainty by thinking harder. You get it by probing the situation. So ask yourself, what's the smallest safe action we can take right now? What can we do that's reversible if it starts going wrong? You don't need a perfect plan. You do need the next move. So stop trying to pick the best plan and instead pick. It's actually good enough because most of the time you're chasing perfect. If you've got two or three decent options, arguing for ten minutes doesn't make choosing easier. It does burn time. It raises your party's risk, but doesn't make the decision making any easier. So use the good enough test. Does the decision keep us alive or move us towards the goal? Is the cost one that you're willing to pay? If yes, Have at it. 

Make scouting a procedure, not an argument. A lot of paralysis is. We don't know what's behind that door. So don't debate the door. Scout the door. Old school tables live and die on cheap info. Listen at the door. Check for drafts, smells, sounds. Look for tracks. Examine the lock. Examine the hinges. Probe the floor with a pole. Use a mirror. Check the ceiling. Line the cure to what if it's trapped? It's not a debate, it's literally a procedure. 

And if you want to be the player who saves the session, be the one who says, um, you know what? Before we argue and the DM rolls for a random encounter, let's gather a little info first. Assigned roles. So decisions don't require a committee if someone is steering the ship. Sorry, if everyone is steering the ship, then no one is steering the ship. Old school groups used roles for a reason. They kept the game moving forward. Now, what are some common roles? Caller or leader? It's not a dictator. It's he is a tiebreaker or she mapper. We've discussed that before. Now, if you're using a vdt, maybe mapping isn't an issue, but mapper scout generally a thief, maybe a halfling, maybe your elf quartermaster in charge of making sure there's enough light, managing the party's encumbrance, distributing the treasure. Who's the rear guard? So this reduces friction immediately because when there's a split, the table doesn't need to relitigate leadership every five minutes. Use a simple sixty second rule. When the table bogs down, somebody says, all right, 60 seconds And then we pick. Not to be rude, not to rush things along, maybe a little bit, but to prevent the session from becoming a debate club. See, in the fiction of the world that you're playing in, it's simply honest. Time is passing. The dungeon is alive 

Decide by risk category, not exact outcomes, because you don't know what the exact outcome is going to be. Paralysis comes from trying to predict the exact result. if we open it, the gas. Or maybe it's ghouls or goblins or a pit trap you can't know, so don't play that game. Think in three general buckets low risk, medium risk and high risk and then act accordingly. Low risk. Do it medium risk. Take some precautions and then likely do it. High risk. Only if it's absolutely necessary or if you can shift the odds in your favor. 

Keep the full moves in your pocket. That's another one, right? If you personally freeze, give yourself a cheat code. What do I mean when you're stuck? Default to one of the following and keep the game moving. Uh, I don't know what to do. Alright, you know what? I'll scout the next ten feet or I'll listen at the door. I checked the floor in front of the doorway. I look for tracks and notice there's a pattern to these things. Right? They create information without committing you to. What a huge decision. Force the plan into one sentence. If you can't say the plan in one sentence, it's not a plan. It may be brainstorming, but it's not a plan. For example, we wedge the door, listen, and fall back if we hear movement or conversation. That's a plan. You can execute that also. You know what you need to do. You need to accept that sometimes you'll be wrong. Keep things moving anyway, because that's the real fix. 

Old school play isn't about never making a mistake. It's about adapting after the mistake. It's about buying information because information saves hit points and you don't buy information necessarily. With gold. Sometimes it's with time. And asking the GM questions. If you pick the wrong hallway, fine. Back out. Change tactics. Learn the party that never chooses anything gets punished harder than the party that chooses imperfectly. 

Now let's remember the little thing I refer to as the the dungeon clock, right? It's always ticking. It doesn't stop. Tick tock. The dungeon clock. So what about a quick example? I'll throw this at you. The party reaches a T intersection, right? You can go left. You can go right. And then everybody starts arguing. And here's the smart play. Move! Stop! We're burning! Torch time. What is torch time mean? It means that we're burning time down to another random encounter. Check. So quick, Scout, I listen left. You listen right. If one sounds active, we take the quiet one. If both are quiet, we pick the right corridor and move. That's not perfect. Okay, but that is forward motion. So again, I want to thank the viewer who suggested this topic because decision paralysis It's common. It's fixable, and it's mostly fixed by players taking ownership of momentum. 

Now this is also a collab with D'Angelo. Catch his channel linked below. We are experimenting with doing collabs on Mondays now. If you've got a table trick that breaks paralysis, whether it's caller rules or timers or marching order, discipline, whatever it is, anything. Drop it in the comments. I want to hear what actually works at your tables. Current tables. Real tables. And if you want more practical on how to play it at the table videos, you know what to do, right? Subscribe. I'll keep you focused on what helps you run and play better. Thank you and God bless.

By Connor McCloskey
Black Gambeson
Knave
"12HD worth of characters"

TWO MONTHS AGO: The hedge-wizard Inatuy hired a troop of dwarven miners to excavate a sensitive area, beneath which he believes he has discovered the location of a potent magical artifact, The Key of the Condemned, rumored to allow a dying man to entrap his executioner at the moment of death, and live on. The dwarves made swift progress, and the hedge-wizard was impressed until two weeks ago when they failed to report their status. After a second failed report, he has hired a contingent of adventurers to investigate.

This eight page adventure presents about eighteen linear rooms in a dwarf mine. It’s Aliens, but with ankheg. Decent descriptions some nice horror elements. I am unfairly turned off by the directness of the appeal to Aliens rather than In The Spirit Of. 

I hate comedy adventures. Just to be clear, this isn’t one, I’m just saying that I LOATHE them. Some humor in an adventure is fine, but I don’t like joke adventures. D&D doesn’t have to be serious, but when humor comes in it works better than when it is forced in. But, let’s say I come across the greatest comedy adventure ever. It’s perfect in every single way. Except it’s a joke adventure. All Mordenkainen Movie Studios and shit. There is no reason for me to hate it. ID STILL FUCKING HATE IT. 

This is Aliens. Some wizard gets some dwarves to go find the key of blah blah blah and they excavate a mineshaft to do it. Wizzo doesn’t hear from them for two weeks so he sends you see what they are up to. You find the place looks deserted, somewhat wrecked, and signs/body horror slowly reveals itself. So far I’m down and loving this. A nice ‘inspired by’ idea, but this time with an ankheg next. I’m down with taking a monster from the game and trying to craft a slow burn/build up horror adventure out encountering it. 

“You arrived at the mouth of a broken dwarven mine lift shaft in a small natural cave, chains dangling down into darkness with no sign of the lift itself. Small natural rivulets of water leak from the surrounding cave, and the sound of clinking chains & dripping water echo somberly up from the dark.” Hey, so that’s not bad! Chains DANGLING downRivluts LEAKING from wall, The sound of CLINKING chains. Somberly is a little purple, but whatever, it’s a decent description. And, as the entrance to The Mythic Underworld it’s not bad either! In that hole adventure awaits! How you getting down? Or, how about “Smell of vomit near unbearable. Once a cozy set of stables, the straw and dirt here are slick with the pulpy remains of three emulsified mules. Two large puddles of some sort of caustic biological waste burn the nose and block the path ahead.” The room title here is “Grisley Stable”, so the “once a zo stable” portion might be redundant, but it’s also not droning on, so we’ll let it slide. Otherwise, smell of vomit, caustic puddles, burning the nose, PULPY remains? Sounds great! This is all a part of the build up. Getting the party on edge. Really earning that first ankheg warrior attack. That attack, mot likely coming as a wandering encounter, will be earned and SO much more than just an attack thanks to the build up these early rooms provide. Nicely done.

Th dwarves had a pet badger, Jonesey, who is happy to see you, and gets visibly nervous when there are hidden monsters near. Ok. Sure. Lizard the little dwarf girl is hiding in a hole, the last survivor. Uh. Ok. There’s a sensor crystal to track incoming hostiles. Come on man. This isn’t an homage anymore. There’s a clay colum called Wehlun, or whatever that name is, who is a little sketchy, or can be. Dwarf chick is trapped in wall, half live. Uh huh. And, of course, there’s: “DWARVEN BURROWER (RM. 15 / 12): Large walking dwarven mining machine mech suit” 

You lost me man.

I was pretty much down for a horror thing with ankheg, and taking some vibes from Alien/Aliens. But this is on the edge of farce territory, or at least a direct retheming. Sensor crystals. Recording crystals. Nah, I’m out.

Should you be out? Meh. It’s essentially a linear map. So you’re having “ an experience” rather than doing an osr rpg. Which maybe you’re cool with. The descriptions are fine, the build up is chill. The body horror has elements of The Thing without leaning too heavy there, The elements are all here. I just can’t run something this linear or something that is this close of a emulation of a movie. 

Perhaps, though, there’s something original by the same designer?

This is free at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/548230/ankheg?1892600

This post originally appeared in May of 2016. It became relevant in last night's session of our Land of Azurth 5e game, so it seemed a good time to repeat it. 
Paper Town (it is said) in some sense occupies space in the Uncanny Valley in the west of the Country of Yanth, but the most reliable way to gain entry to the town is via a map. Potentially any map will do, but it must be one noting a nonexistent settlement, street or island. These fictitious entries serve as gates to Paper Town.

As is common with magical places, gaining entrance is not as simple as finding a suitable map. Luckily, the legend regarding Paper Town's creation delineates the necessary procedure. Paper Town, as the story says, was a gift given to Princess Hyacinthia of Azurth on the occasion of her birthday by a mysterious stranger. He informed the Princess that she could not visit Paper Town in person, being compose of something other than paper and possessed of general lack of flatness as she was, but her shadow could—with the proper attire. The stranger traced the outline of the Princess’s shadow on a large sheet of paper and cut around its edge. The cutout was taken to a place where the stranger’s map showed a hamlet to be but was not. The cutout vanished, like a piece of paper slid under an unseen door into an equally unseen room.

The fact Hyacinthia never regain her shadow nor have many who have repeated this ritual might give some pause, but that detail is not frequently repeated.

In Paper Town, the cutouts become paper doll doppelgängers of the person that served as their model. These visitors find unfolding streets of pop-up trees and citizenry and flat facades that elaborate to Escher-architectured structures when entered. The city seems endless, but the clever observer will note that it recycles itself to appear so. As the preceding portion grows, the receding part folds up behind. This can happen in any direction: Tall towers erect themselves when an evil sorcerer flies up to his sanctum. Dungeons unfold like inverted houses of cards when heroes go delving. The ostensible ruler of Paper Town, Princess Seven, paper doll of the long dead Queen Hyacinthia, makes the final decision on how "permanent" a new structure is in her city.

One attractive trait of Paper Town is that it conforms to a visitor's imagination in certain ways. Anything one wishes for may be found there, though anything of value is likely to require a quest or be obtained in a way that makes one not want it after all. In other words, Paper Town adheres to laws of story.

The archons or godlings that truly rule Paper Town enforce this reality zealously. These Great Tall Tailors, or Scissor Men as they are sometime called, will catch paper doll visitors who are ill-fitted for the story the Tall Tailors wish told and snip, snap, snip, reshape them into a more pleasing arrangement. The Tall Tailors are paper themselves (Or perhaps they are the shapes left when slender, lank-limbed manshapes are cut of paper?) save for their gleaming, scissor hands. Their shadows are also Tailors but their shadow-scissors cut the spirit exclusively while their metallic doubles cut the physical.

It is said that the Book of Doors, a book where every page is a portal to another place, originated in Paper Town, but how it came to be in the wider Land of Aurth is unknown.

Rise from Your Grave! Geeknic 29 is Back from the Dead

Klaatu… Barada… GEEKNIC!

It has been too long, but the stars have finally aligned (and we remembered the exact words this time). The Puerto Rico Role Players are officially resurrecting our beloved tradition.

Geeknic 29: Back From The Dead is happening, and it is going to be… groovy.

For those of you who have never attended, a Geeknic is exactly what it sounds like: we take over a gazebo at a park, we bring food to share, and we roll dice under the open sky. It is a chance to step away from the VTTs and the screens and actually look your fellow gamers in the eye (usually before you betray them in-game).

Whether you are an “Old One” of the local scene or a level 1 adventurer looking for a group, this is the perfect place to jump in.

The Details

• Date: Saturday, February 21, 2026
• Time: 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
• Location: Parque Central de los Niños, Bayamón, Puerto Rico

What to Bring

• Dice & Character Sheets: Obviously.
• Sunscreen & Water: We are gaming in the Caribbean, after all.
• Food to Share: It’s a potluck-style event, so bring your favorite snacks or dishes.
• Games: Board games, card games, and RPG one-shots are all welcome.

I am planning to be there, hopefully running a playtest session of my homebrewed system, MUGeS (no cows included).

So, grab your boomstick (or just your pencil case) and join us. Let’s make sure this tradition stays alive… unlike the Deadites.

See you there!

Original Video: https://youtu.be/QaU9IJMJ-ig

Transcript is lightly edited. Expect typos and worse ;)

A viewer recently asked if you can steal dungeon procedures and use them for a hex crawl. Simple answer is yes. And once you do, wilderness travel stops being that blurry. We walk for a while montage and starts producing real decisions. 
Again, because dungeon procedure isn't about doors and corridors, it's about pressure, time passing, right? Risks showing up, resources draining, and the world reacting while the party debates what to do next. So here's the translation. In the dungeon, you've got turns. In the wilderness, you've got watches. That's it. That's the move. That's the swap. That's the switch. Pick a watch length that fits your table. If you want a gritty and granular, make it two hours. If you want. The classic pays for travel still matters, but doesn't eat up the whole session. Make it four hours if you want it loose and fast, go I guess a half day. I tend to stick to four hours because it gives you a rhythm without turning travel into homework. But what matters most is having a loop you can run without thinking. 
Same way with dungeon turns, right? They run smooth once everyone knows the routine, so every watch you do the same handful of things first, get the party to commit to a direction and a pace. Where are you heading? Are you moving normal, cautious, or fast? And that second question matters more than than people think, because it's how you turn, turn, travel into choices instead of simple movement. And then keep the roles Simple. One person is navigating. One person is scouting. You don't need a job fair. You don't need to debate it. You don't need to stress the whole crap out. If nobody wants to do it. Fine. Then the wilderness gets its own vote. 
Next, you pay the cost of the watch. See, the wilderness has a torch timer, too. But it doesn't look like torches. Don't look like torches at all. It's food and water. It's light. If you're traveling at night, fatigue if you're pushing it, wet gear, cold heat, whatever you actually care about in your game. And if your table has bookkeeping, don't get fancy. Make it blunt. Make it consistent. Mark it off and move on. The goal isn't realism. The goal is that time has teeth. 
And after that, handle navigation. Do you actually stay on course? See, in a dungeon, the walls do a lot of work for you. Outdoors navigation is well, it's the wall when it matters. Bad weather, no landmarks, unfamiliar terrain, night travel, moving fast in pursuit or being pursued. Make the navigation, checking if they fail. You don't need to play. Gotcha. Just add. Just add friction, right? Maybe. Maybe they drift into the wrong hex. Maybe they burn an extra watch getting their bearings. Maybe they hit a feature that slows them down a bar, a cliff. Deadfall washed out trail. Getting lost should feel like the wilderness pushing back. Not like the referee. Not like the DM trying to get a win. 
And then to your encounter. Check. One check per watch is usually enough. If it's a nasty region, a war zone, the cursed woods. I don't know. The dangerous swamps. Monster country sure bump up the, uh, the amount of checks. 
But here's the big thing. Wilderness encounters don't always have to be surprised. Wolves. No, no, that's not a lot of the time. The parties should get signs first. Smoke on the horizon. Vultures circling. Fresh tracks down the trail. Dense. Disenchanting. I don't know why. I have trouble saying that. A broken arrow in a tree. A corn that wasn't there last time. You see, that's what makes the wilderness feel Alive. It gives the players a choice. We always want the players to have a choice, right? Engage, avoid detours, set an ambush or slow down and scout. See? That's the actual play. 
Now, I suggest you give them one notable feature for the watch. Think of it like a dungeon room. Okay, not every room is a fight, but every room is still something. A hex crawl needs the same idea, just spaced out. So most watches should include at least one distinct thing. A creek crossing a ridge line with a view. An old road half swallowed by weeds. A ruined khan. A fork in the trail. Signs of people who shouldn't be here. Something of that sort. You don't need a paragraph. Okay, don't do that to yourself. You need one clear thing that makes this stretch of travel different from the last one. 
If your hexes are keyed like you're using Rob Conley's excellent works, um, pull it from the key. If they aren't, use a quick table and keep moving and then advance time and do it again. Update time of day updates applies. Update fatigue update what has changed? Once your table gets the rhythm, this runs just like dungeon turns. It stops feeling like I don't know, wilderness rules and starts feeling like the game. The game of D&D.  
Now let's talk about those three travel modes, because this is where the hex crawl stops being, well, that board game, Wilderness Survival. Yeah. No, we don't want to play that. Okay. 
Normal travel is the baseline. You cover standard distance, you make standard noise. Make take standard risk. 
Cautious travel means you're moving slower, but you're harder to surprise. You're less likely to wander off course. This is the choice for. We're in dangerous territory, and we don't want to blunder into something much more dangerous than we can deal with. Fast travel is the opposite. You cover more distance, but you're more likely to get lost, more likely to w
ear yourself down, and more likely to stumble into trouble before you see it coming. Generally speaking, you only use that in very safe areas. 
So now the wilderness is doing what dungeons do, right? It forces a trade off between speed and safety. And here's where many people miss a trick. What can you do in a wash besides just moving? See, in the dungeon you can spend turns listening, right? Searching, mapping, spiking doors, poking the statue, whatever those actions cost time and time invites and counter checks. Same thing outdoors. A watch can be spent foraging or hunting. Scouting ahead. Searching a feature. Mapping carefully. Traveling stealthily. Hiding your trail. Setting an ambush. Building shelter early because the weather is turning. And the important part is this those choices cost time. Time triggers Checks. Checks create pressure. That's why it works. Sounds familiar right? 
Camping works the same way. Don't treat camping as a free reset when nothing can touch them. Treat it like we bar the door in a dungeon, ask, are you camping safe, hidden or exposed? Who's on watch? What's the watchword? Is the fire visible? And then make a night and count the check. And again, you don't need it to be an instant attack. Every time signs are your friend, a guard hears something in a brush, sees torchlight far off, finds fresh tracks around camp in the morning. Now camping feels like a choice. It's not just a hey, he'll reset. 
Now let me give you a quick example so you can hear how this sounds at the table. The party is moving north through dense forest trying to reach a ruin. All right, next watch. What's the direction? North. Your pace. Normal. All right, Mark off food. Make a navigation check its day. They've got landmarks. They stay on course and count the check. Oh, okay. Yes, but it's not an ambush. They find fresh bootprints crossing the trail. Too organized to be hunters. What's the feature? To hit a creek. There's a rope bridge. Old and frayed. And now you've got decisions. Follow the tracks or avoid them. Cross here or look for a Ford. Spend the watch scouting the far bank. Push on and risk whatever comes next. That's dungeon. Making decisions just happening in the outdoors. 
See, most hex crawls fall apart because travel becomes a loading screen. And for those that are my age, you remember how long those loading screens were on your computer? RPGs. You travel, you travel, you travel. Okay. You arrive. Oh my God. I'm thinking of EverQuest and getting on the boat in any case. 
If you want wilderness to matter, you need a time unit, a risk role, navigation, consequences, resource pressure, and one distinct feature per chunk of travel. Same pressure system as the dungeon, just scaled up to hexes. So here's the quick takeaway. Pick a watch length, run the loop and don't handwave the boring parts. As tempting as it may be, because those boring parts are where the meaningful choices lie. Try it for one session and watch how fast your players start moving with purpose. Now, if you want, I can do a follow up. 
And if I do the follow up, I'll try to get a printable watch card and a the wilderness encounter table that's heavy on signs, omens, NPCs, weather the hazards. You know, the normal stuff that isn't just monsters and creatures, but stuff that makes a region feel like it has a pulse. Let me know in the comments. Also, let me know in the comments if you have topics you want me to cover. I'm trying to go through the videos to find out what people want me to cover. And yes, I am working on the one sheets. It's a bit time consuming when you're trying to dig your car out of about, I don't know, three, three and a half feet of, uh, snow plow ice that has packed it in. But for now. For now, uh, watch his navigation encounters features and repeat. That's how you make a hex crawl feel like an Aussie game instead of fast-forwarding to the next dungeon. Thank you for watching. God bless. I'll catch you tomorrow.

TSR Module A2: Secret of the Slavers' Stockade

Harold Johnson with Tom Moldvay

At a couple of climactic points in module A1, Slave Pits, the adventurers can find documents that will lead them to the next adventure in the series. Moving away from the chaotic half-ruined town, you find a self-contained fortress in the wilderness, a staging point for the slavers' operations. This stockade is bounded by four intact walls, less of a ruin than the Highport temple. But inside, it's a fixer-upper, with ungoverned areas that continue the theme of the unruly stronghold. The troops are mainly goblins and hobgoblins, not orcs and half-orcs. Two independent bosses with powerful assistants run the place, one in the fort above ground, and two in the dungeons. 

Like A1, A2 was originally run as two parallel tournament adventures, with the above- and below-ground levels as the respective settings. The module's maps shade in the paths of each tournament version. It''s not hard to see how the requirements of each one-track, twisty gauntlet got in the way of realistic defensive architecture. However, even in the limited tournament mode, the fort level threatens the kind of barracks-clearing pitched battle I mentioned in the opening essay as a catastrophic failure for a fort infiltration. As always, full spoilers ensue.

Sure, go ahead, spoil one new monster on the front cover ...

FORT LEVEL: MOATHOUSE

The tournament starts with an easy if improbable way in. Just like in A1, an escaped slave, "Lady Morwin Elissar," shows you the route of her escape - an open window in the outer wall of the moathouse, with a convenient rope left dangling. This device is more interesting because the slave is an NPC who might go with you but is kind of unreliable. Still, it is only the first instance of a repetitive tendency that crops up throughout the module.

This moathouse is one of three buildings on the flat hill where the stockade sits, all held together with outside walls. It's also, you guessed it, an unruly stronghold. Garrisoned by a couple of hobgoblin squads, half of one floor is home to a haunt - more of a Victorian-story ghost than an undead monster. It's the haunting that keeps the troops scared of this area, justifying the lack of attention paid by the garrison. The challenge with this entity must have felt fresh at the time. But by now, dealing with a ghost's past-life obsession and present-day possession is part of 5th edition, and quite a few supplements have extended the Gothic notion into an adventure genre (link, link, link).

In this unruly zone, we are introduced to an unfortunate theme: the defender love silly traps. Here, they have acquired some fancy glassware and alchemy to blind intruders and trip them up with hundreds of glass marbles underfoot. Arguably, these traps sit at the outer limit of plausibility, but worse is to come.

One good point of the writing throughout this module shows up here. As in Albie Fiore's early White Dwarf adventure "The Lichway," each bivouac of troops throughout the fort has some kind of action ongoing, be it eating, gambling, or less wholesome sport. I've described this approach before as the "diorama encounter," but it seems to be a priority of the Johnson/Moldvay authorial team that gives welcome flavor. 

FORT LEVEL: GATEHOUSE

The next building along the railroad is a gatehouse on the far side of a courtyard where a wild anhkheg will pop out pf a patch of mud and attack. Why do the defenders allow a powerful monster to sit athwart the only line of communication from moathouse to gatehouse (the walls connecting them have no walkway)? Here's the greed for variety, any fight that's not with hobgoblins, at the expense of naturalism. Other hard-to-believe premises: the fight can go on without the guards on the walls noticing, until the monster lets out a dying screech; and in fighting, the party will become so caked with mud that they suffer a -2 to hit until they can wash it off in a fountain some way down the railroad.

The gatehouse itself was only developed for campaign play. Its inner buildings are more hobgoblin guardposts and barracks, again with diorama activities going on. Beyond the gate that the anhkheg guards, there is another courtyard, which the players can gauntlet-run or sneak across, while guards patrol the walls above. A couple of patrols come with another new monster, an oil-sweating Gollum-like wretch known as a boggle, whom we see on the front cover, Here there's little opportunity to use the boggles' weird abilities. They are just being led around as sniffer dogs, bringing to mind another Tolkien character, the orc tracker Snaga of Isengard. Then on to the keep's courtyard garden where carnivorous apes and hobgoblin archers jump the party. A dead end -- unless they can open the locked door that leads into the keep proper.

FORT LEVEL: MAIN KEEP

The position of this building in the hill fort is beyond absurd. The ramparts have no connection to its interior, even though that's where many of the troops and leaders make their home. What's more, the ramparts loom over the keep - the better to shoot at the roof, allegedly -- but vision to the outside world is blocked by tall palisades cut through with infrequent arrow slits. It's as if the fort is prepared for an infiltration, more so than an attack; but even that goal is bungled in the execution, so that a dungeon-crawling party can take on one group of enemies at a time. For example, if the players make it to the courtyard, there's no line of sight to the fight there from archers on the walls, only to the roof.

The interior layout is also absurd and not remedied in the campaign version. A single path spirals around, kinking up a few times, before ending up in the central room where the main leaders and troops are found. Cut a single door to break the spiral, and the leaders would have easy access to the entrance and be able to reinforce the defense. But where's the fun in that, compared to dungeon crawling?

Worse yet, the dungeon crawl is fixed up with tricks and traps worthy of a Scooby Doo haunted house. You have the stuffed bear rolling down a ramp to frighten you backwards into a pit. Then the hobgoblin ambush where some of the troops dress as mummies and run at an angled mirror so you'll waste spells and missiles on their reflections. Not just silly, these traps make no sense placed across the only route of reinforcement in an active stronghold.

Off the tournament track, there is another haunted area shunned by the soldiers. But this ghost is just a set of gimmicky manifestations engineered by the escaped slave who lives in the rafters. All these hijinks aside, the final encounter area has a memorable leader in Icar. He's a fire-loving blind warrior who fights with super-senses, taking after Daredevil or Zatoichi. Some of the diorama encounters in the central area are likewise good, and there's a new monster, the cloaker, whose hypnotic droning works as an opiate of the masses for the enslaved. In the boss area, whose defense the module illustrates with an innovative (at the time) tactical map, are a couple of ways down to the dungeons.

.. and on the back cover, let's have a spoiler for this guy

Can we fix the fort? Maybe, but extensive changes to the map would have to be made. And then the module becomes something different. Raising the alarm no longer causes a temporary pressure situation before the party can scoot on to the next isolated area. It activates the whole beehive of the garrison, acting all together in a mass of close to 100 hobgoblins and powerful leaders, and certain to overpower the mid-level party it is rated for.

Next: The dungeon level

 It’s a fascinating combination! The short answer is yes, they can certainly be played together, but they require a bit of "mechanical bridge-building" because they approach the Victorian era from very different angles.Here is how you can blend Troll Lord Games’ Victorious (a superhero/steampunk RPG based on the Castles & Crusades system) with The Red Room’s Bella Époque (a darker, more Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

By Christopher Letzelter
Anachronistes Press
1e
Levels 3-7

Player characters are called upon to remove invaders taking up residence in the land recently granted to a local nobleman. After his surveyors and retainers were killed or driven out, it’s obvious that this problem is bigger than just a band of upstart humanoids – does your adventuring party have the brains, brawn and grit to secure the place?

This 48 page adventure presents a ruined abbey and grounds with around ninety rooms on several levels. It’s gt a great realism vibe and the 1e crowd will be thrilled. It’s also more than a little wordy with the DM text, with all that entails for usability.

Sir Useless has a new land grant and sends in his surveyors. They make it to the site of an old abandoned abbey that everyone knows about. One dude returns, everyone else slaughtered. Sire Useless sends in his men to clean up the humanoid problem. Only two return, everyone else slaughtered, so he gets some specialists. The abbey has some grounds, also detailed, and is mostly ruined, so you get a couple of old parts of the abbey, ruins, an upper floor and a couple of dungeon levels which represents their basement area and some catacombs. This is supported by some nicely clean and gone maps. It gives the impressions of realism while the ruined walls, collapsed areas and the like provide ample opportunity to adventure. Nice CC maps, I think, without going overboard, exactly the right mix of legibility and art. Or, would be if it had reacting monsters on it. Cause I’m gonna print out the map and mark reacting monsters on it so I can run the adventure. WHich means that the designer should do something like that for me.

I want to call out this encounter description on the abbey grounds, which I think exemplifies the spirit of the adventure. The read-aloud is “Copses of hardwoods grow at the long ends of a stagnant rainwater pond. Algae and pond scum float on its surface among reeds and cattails.” and then the first line of the DM notes: “The water surface is about five feet below level land, exposing roughly twenty feet of muck and mud all around its perimeter.” It goes on a bit more for the DM notes but that’s a decent little description both for the players and then a little more to help the DM bring the encounter location to life with the ring of muck. Pretty nice. Oh, hey, yeah, the reason I’m calling this out is because the GREEN SLIME in the water!! Dude told you it was there! Stagnant. Algae and pond scum floating. And you stuck your fucking hand in it?! After wading through the fucking mud?! This is a perfect example of verisimilitude working in an adventure. The creature chosen fits in to the environment perfectly. Abandoned abbey grounds, so we get the stagnant pool, and then the perfect monster choice for the stagnant pool, placed in a way that is obvious in retrospect. That’s good. And while not every encounter reached these heights there are enough of them trying to do this that this kind of “fantasy realism” comes through. Enough to have fun but not enough to be boring.

The village description, where Sir useless has his manor, gets the following description: “traveler-friendly amenities include the tavern, an inn/ procurement house/brewery, a temple (aligned with NG or LN deities), and Sir Feris’ estate (there is a modest guest cottage on the grounds of his walled estate);” That’s fine. This isn’t a village adventure. It hits pretty much what the DM needs. I could quibble about inserting a fun name or fact, but it’s good enough. What the adventure does do, though, is go through a little description of the seven or eight strangers that have passed through this off-the-beaten-track village in the last couple of months. Perfect! If you ask around about strangers, as one might, then this is what you’re going to learn. That IS where most of the effort in the village should lie. Or, at least IN THIS CASE. We provide what the DM needs in the situation they need it in, not as a rote exercise in all cases. 

The abbey grounds are fine, as I mentioned before. A little fighting, a few things to puzzle out. Undead in the catacombs, unaligned necromancer in the upper floors with with retinue of hired NPC’s and gnolls, with a few natural creatures/monsters tossed in. Decent little en vironmental things. Treasure feels a little light on coins in a gold=xp game, but a decent number of magic items also. It all kind of channels that spirit of the sample dungeon in the 1 DMG, from the secret door to the scroll in the stream. 

But, it’s not for me. Maybe for you. But not for me. And you know why. Mucho Texto, along with some very basic formatting that does little to alleviate the text overflow. There’s bold for the read-aloud, and super-duper bold for more emphasis, with italics. It’s all pretty basic and a little overwhelming to the eye, making it seem like EVERYTHING is important. But, meh, not my fav but I could I guess get over that.

The degree of text present here is quite large. And I don’t mean “relevant text.” There is a substantial amount of backstory present just about everywhere in this adventure. Most of the abbey is a ruin because local villagers took the stones, but left most of the main abbey intact because of superstitious fear. Ok. Does this matter expect to explain WHY the abbey is partially ruined? I don’t think so. And there is almost never a reason in a D&D adventure to explain and/or justify something. Yet we see that over and over again in this. In addition there this is kind of appeal to the historical abbey and its usage. “These fields were used for combat practice – the north for equestrian use, the south for melee training. The path was built of tightly-fitted slate flagstones; most of them have been removed, the rest carpeted by a century of dirt and grass overgrowth.” None of that text matters. The flagstone doesn’t exist or can’t be seen. This is straight out of the Dungeon Magazine trophy room nonsense description, the worst room description of all time, or at least in this aspect. 

I can appreciate that this is a pretty damn good historical abbey ground. (And, again, nice map!) And I DO find the stone removal for houses appealing at some level. Yeah, this is the way things work. But it, and so much more here, has no impact on the adventure beyond really leaning in to that historically accurate thing. But you have to balance that with usability. And making the DM dig through a lot of not-pertinent information that is interesting trivia in order to get to and/or not emphasize the important parts of the rooms shows a lack of understanding of how a room entry is used and, in fact, what its purpose is. Some of the rooms approach wall of text territory, and no matter how much the “well _I_ like that stuff” crowd want to crow, wall of text territory is not good. 

This is an ok adventure and it has that kind of lower-fantasy vibe that I find appealing. Maybe a little too staid, with the appeals to THE FANTASTIC coming mostly through churchy shit. But, I can see people wanting that. What I’m having a hard time with is that there are NUMEROUS other adventure that one could select that DONT have the wordiness/usability issues this has. I would almost always pick up one of those and select it rather than this one. I could quibble about monster reactions, coinage, level fives, and so on, but, in a world in which every adventure ever written is available, why torment yourself?

This is $8.50 at DriveThru. There’s no previews. You gotta put in a preview man! At least showing a few encounters so a prospective buyer can get a sense of your writing and formatting style so they can make an informed decision.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/551514/tagma-angelikon-ap009?1892600

 In the world of Castles & Crusades, the Calygreyhound is a creature drawn directly from medieval heraldry. While many fantasy monsters strive for a shred of biological realism, the Calygreyhound is proudly "impossible"—a chimeric beast that symbolizes absolute speed and supernatural swiftness.Physical DescriptionThe Calygreyhound is a bizarre amalgamation of several creatures. In the Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

 In the 1943 issue of Feature Comics #66, The Corpse (secretly Slick Murdock) is a classic Golden Age "undead" villain who serves as a perfect foil for a Victorious RPG campaign—especially for street-level heroes or those dealing with supernatural threats. This entry picks right up from MJL's The Shield aka The Iron Clad Shield NPC For For The Victorious Rpg & The Belle Ãpoque Role Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Don Maitz
In the Latter Ages of Earth, people do not die completely, at least not quickly. As these things are understood by the Instrumentality an imprint, an after-image, of a person remains in the Ancients' datasphere. When a Mind is informed by that record, a simulacrum, at least in part, of the deceased is made. This is a shade, though not in the way the superstitious common folk imagine. 

At its base, necromancy is the magical art of summoning and controlling shades. It's practice is watched closely by local authorities and the Instrumentality (in those areas where it holds sway). Being able to interact with the shades of the recently deceased is undeniably useful, not the least in forensic necromancy. Where necromancers primarily run afoul of the Instrumentality and temporal authorities is when they use their arts to create undead.

The criminal necromancer creates undead for two primary reasons. The first is for manual labor. These workers don't require a shade in the semblance of any particular person, so necromancers can pluck from the either degraded or partial shades; rudimentary data on physical movements is their primary concern. With a corpse as a substrate and sufficient art applied to their animation, a necromancer can turn out laborers for difficult conditions or troops whose shock value may compensate for their lack of intelligence and skill at arms.

The second application is more lucrative but requires more skill and time. That is the provision of immortality, or as close as their arts may come to it. This requires the creation of a specially made shade, imaged with precision from the current mental vector of the aspiring immortal. In the fallen Latter Age, this generally means destructive mapping of the individual's brain and its functioning. The intellect is then housed in a suitable, durable platform and placed within their old body. The body will inevitably decay, but the necromancer's arts can delay that decay, preserving function perhaps for millennia.  The culmination of these techniques is the lich, though botched jobs, and cost- or material-saving techniques have created many other variations, which are more common.