Horror has a (well-earned) reputation as a wastebin genre. Here are a few horror-adjacent films, largely without jumpscares, musical stings, and cheap tricks. They're on the fringe of the genre, where it starts to become something else. The Vast of Night (2019) This is probably the finest film I've seen this decade. Not necessarily the best, or the worthiest, but a film I'd like to show to other…
I've been reading The Adventures of Amir Hamza: Lord of the Auspicious Planetary Conjunction . It's a collection of mythological, spiritual, moral, historical, romantic, horrifying, and all around amusing tales. Superheroic antics that make the notoriously homicidal 1941 Captain Marvel serial look like pacifist propaganda. Adventures that rival (and may have inspired, via cultural osmosis) those…
Dungeon stocking is tricky. Over and over, people ask "How much treasure should I include per room / dungeon level / PC?" The answer varies enormously between games, GMs , and systems. At least one referee and from four to fifty players can be handled in any single campaign, but the referee to player ratio should be about 1:20 or thereabouts. - Men and Magic OD&D, with its enormous groups (has no…
A few days ago, a board game gave me a peculiar sensation. It's something I get from Jackbox games, the later Marvel films, or the midway of a sad carnival: the horrible feeling that this is a fun-like experience . It feels like I should be having fun here, so I must be having fun... but it isn't fun. It's just fun-like. I'm only vaguely aware of the youtuber Mr. Beast, but his face is the face of…
The conceit of my current OD&D game is "OD&D without context". What weird mutant offshoot of the tree of RPG development will we create if we take the LBBs, and only the LBBs, in a deliberately isolated context? This is OD&D without: Books: AD&D's Appendix N + the obvious but not listed books (e.g. Lord of the Rings ). Films : The Raven (1963) , Sleeping Beauty (1959) , The Court Jester (1955) , 7…
Running a vintage RPG is like running a vintage car. It's fun, but it'll make you realize how much you miss power steering, disc brakes, and seatbelts. The GLOG is like a handbuilt hot rod. It does its job well, but is more of a heap of loosely linked hopes than a practical everyday vehicle. But you built it yourself and you know what it can do... what will make the crankcase turn into a cloud of…
Work continues on the Treasure Overhaul , and that means math. Part 1: Gem and Jewellery Generation The book will include treasure tables, so I've spent quite a bit of time digging into their function, their challenges, and their deceptive math. Treasure Type A is bandit treasure. Sure, in AD&D it's also associated with the Lich, Locathah, Troglodytes, and the Giant Squid, but it is, in most…
Treasure tables are, for better or worse, part of old-school RPGs. Since the intention is to make the Treasure Overhaul a very useful and broadly compatible book, it's important to understand the subtleties of historical treasure generation. The average treasure value of a given type is relatively easy to calculate. It's also deceptive. Averages are a good start, but if you only look at averages,…
History is fractally interesting. Start examine any event, or following any citation, and interesting facts emerge. But some places, for whatever reason, seem to attract a disproportionate level of interesting events. wikipedia Trindade is a small volcanic island in the middle of the south Atlantic. 700 miles off the coast of Brazil, and more than 1,200 miles from Ascension Island (itself a tiny…
In 1972 the CBC asked listeners to complete the saying "As Canadian as...", to match "As American as apple pie." The winner was "As Canadian as possible under the circumstances." I never expected to use Canadianness as a selling point for RPGs. It never seemed relevant. It'd be like promoting them based my astrological sign or shoe size. And yet, here we are. It's suddenly very relevant. 🍁To be…
A traditional high-effort medieval post from Skerples? Is it 2017? Sidrak and Bokkus is a Middle English verse adaptation of an Old French prose book of knowledge, cast in question-and-answer form, enclosed within a framing adventure story. Its astonishing contemporary popularity is shown by the number and distribution of surviving manuscripts (several dozen in French; seven in English, excluding…
Here's some useful information for river-based adventures using Magical Industrial Revolution . Skip to Part 3 or click this PDF link if you just want the rules. Also, in case you missed the news, Magical Industrial Revolution is back in stock , with new sewn bindings and improved cover durability. ( USA / CA / UK/EU ) Part 1: A Brief History of Steamboats Well Admiral Fred, the garrison at the…
Back in the day , I suggested that the best mech system is a mechanics-heavy RPG system, but scaled up. D&D 4E seemed like a good candidate. Mech systems are hard . The system needs to be crunchy, balanced (to survive online criticism), and sufficiently complex while being possible to run without a team of assistants and a graphing calculator. Lancer meets all these requirements and more. Lancer…
In the previous post , I covered low-level Illusionist spells for the Treausure Overhaul . Higher-level spells present their own design challenges. They need to feel more impact than lower-level spells, but won't be cast anywhere near as often. Sadly for the Illusionist, many canonical high-level spells are upgraded versions of low-level spells, or effects that could be replicated with lower-level…
The Treausure Overhaul is going to include spells. They're too useful for treasure design. It's tricky to make a systemless OSR book that includes wands, scrolls, artifacts, and other spell-related items without providing spells. This requires a bit of class design. Here's a peek behind the scenes at the process, using the Illusionist level 1-3 spells as an example. Old-school games trend towards…
The Andalusian is a free 31 page space opera heist module, designed for my Squishy Space system (also free). PDF Link The Andalusian is not as luxurious as Fhloston Paradise, not as arrogant as Starship Titanic IV, and has fewer amenities than even the smallest Rec Station. It offers little to the pampered ultrawealthy, but it is a pleasant getaway for people who don’t normally have legions of…
I decided to write a space opera system. Initially, I just wanted to write a really good space opera mission generator, but the project got out of hand. If you want something to exist, and it doesn't exist, you have to make it. Squishy Space is a game about a group of unlikely characters stumbling, shooting, and bluffing their way through a chaotic rayguns-and-spandex galaxy. It is a fast-paced…
The new print run has arrived! Copies are available via Indie Press Revolution and Compose Dream Games (now in the UK ). What is Magical Industrial Revolution? It's a 154 page hardcover setting guide, magic item treasury, and toolkit. Check out the Megapost for reviews, videos, and other information. This new print run also features sewn bindings, if that's an incentive to pick up a second copy.
Material components are annoying. They're fun in theory but a pain in practice. Most groups operate on the time-hallowed system of tracking only components with a substantial cost (e.g. the 100gp pearl for identify) or simply deducting their cost from a character's cash. Some GMs keep track of rare components, like vampire dust or basilisk eyelashes, but most don't. Single-player resource…
Another excerpt from the Treasure Overhaul, but formatted for a blog post. Arnold K's dungeon merchants are, as usual, well worth reading. In the depths of a dungeon, in the desolate wilderness, adventurers may be lucky enough to encounter a Dungeon Merchant. They carry a limited selection of mostly mundane items, but occasionally have magic items and potions for sale. If your players still have…
I've written another 10 pages of the Treasure Overhaul (title pending), a condensed magic item compendium for old-school games. Unlike the first two previews, this PDF is only available on Patreon. This new PDF covers Mirrors, Cubes, Rings, Rods, and Staves. It's a decent mix of classic D&D items in a new format and new problem-solving / problem-creating tools. It also includes the Deck of Motley…
Here are another 7 draft pages from a potential "Treasure Overhaul" book. Combined with the previous PDF , that's 13 pages of free treasure. PDF Unique and legendary holy items (such as the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch ) will probably go in a different section, or on a new page. The Pocket Detritus page will go after a standard (well, relatively standard) Dead Adventurers section/chapter. The…
Some people have asked for a " Monster Overhaul but for treasure and spells." Here's a very early six-page draft attempt at compressing a lot of classic D&D items into an immediately usable format. 1. Magic Weapons 2. Magic Armour 3. Potions 4. Tools 5. Transport 6. Helms PDF Design Challenges Organization The plan for the Monster Overhaul eventually crystallized into 20 themed chapters of 10…
Here are some spells for Lord Dunsany's Gods of Pegāna (1905). If you need a ready-made public domain pantheon for your games and you don't want the standard Law vs. Chaos dualism of Anderson and Tolkien. It was a fun writing exercise, even if I chose to stick with the unfortunately gendered language of the original text. Michael Whelan The Testament of the Prophet Zoz In the Temple in Aradec of…
In the previous posts ( 1 , 2 ) I designed and scratchbuilt an alt-history interwar tank, the Scheider FA. Now, I've painted and weathered the tank. I used the French WWI and Interwar Camo set of airbrush paints from Vallejo for the base colours. I marked out the camo areas with putty, put down a colour, waited for the putty to dry, then I wanted to use a canonical Schneider scheme for this tank,…