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๐•ฒ๐–—๐–Š๐–“๐–‰๐–Š๐–‘'๐–˜ ๐•พ๐–™๐–Š๐–•๐–‰๐–†๐–‰

The dad who stepped up (with gameable material). You can call me Crow! Mostly playing and running DCC, OD&D, Wolves Upon the Coast atm. Questions, com...

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Crow's Keep - Final Sessions and Retrospective

Thoughts I ran an open table Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign for a year to the day at my friendly local game store. We met nearly every Tuesday for 43 sessions in total. The campaign was a conscious effort on my part to blast through a big chunk of my RPG library and run a campaign that would both sate my appetite for OSR-style refereeing while delivering fast pulpy swashbuckling to a player baseโ€ฆ

The Biker, a contact for Lost Girls

A contact for Weird Writer's Lost Girls . Perfumed with gasoline, leather, tobacco, and sweat, the Biker haunts the highways at the edges of Saint Tenebrae. Speed defines him: movement, action, and amphetamines. The Biker charges recklessly toward what he wants to confront, waving a tire iron like a saber. When he wants to run he is already long gone. Nightfall carries him on a four-stroke engineโ€ฆ

OD&D Mini Setting: Lake Oxos South Shore and its Surrounds

My hex-a-day practice got a bit out of hand. This mini-setting was designed using the Wolves Upon the Coast hexfill procedures and the procedures as communicated via Delving Deeper. It's part of my ongoing exercise of putting my own spin on the OD&D material. Hoping to become more fluent in the rules in general and make it stick in my head a little better. I strove to use the book above all else,โ€ฆ

Android Class for Tigers Upon the Steppe

Ancient Oxia practiced the astronomy of the elves, and are considered to have exceeded their elder cousins. Gifts and knowledge where handed down from the firmament, including the art of making artificial people. Some androids are intended to blend in among mortals, with a range of natural skin tones and hair; others are vividly colored and ornamented to celebrate the artifice. They were createdโ€ฆ

OD&D Hex: Lair, Elves, Forest - Lord Viridian's Demesne

A hard-hearted elf-lord holds court in the wood. Lord Viridian once ruled most of Oxia and lusts for it back, but the centuries have winnowed his subjects to just 141 elves and his three lieutenants Aura, Leveret, and Nivalis. His revanchism is stoked by his sword, which shows him visions of elves fading from the world. Many mortal lifespans of exile have led the bronze-clad elves to adopt theโ€ฆ

OD&D Hex: Weird, Geography, Desert - Monster's Eye

A dried lakebed here, still dark from the memory of water. Hoodoos adorn the edge like eyelashes, or teeth. Wind whips through the stone like wailing. Rumors in a nearby village tell of treasure buried at the bottom of the ghost lake. Only one old man remembers when the village used to sit next to this lake, but he was just a boy back then. The eerie howling attracts monsters at night. Enteringโ€ฆ

Play Report May 11, 2026 - Boasting with the Boys #8

Introduction This session was just the Donenashoe Three: Marcus Musen, Mrs. Cranberry, and Dog Doggins. All three were quite well-heeled and with ample cash to burn, so much of the session was spent in Guthram finding ways to burn it. The vibe this session was more hangout/beach episode as a result, a nice change of pace. I introduced the rules for attracting companions this session andโ€ฆ

Play Report May 19 2026 - Crow's Keep #36

Introduction Bugbears bugbears bugbears! This session I ran Demon Driven to the Maw as a sort of liminal dreamspace created by the bugbears for... some purpose. I love this module, as it's a perfect bite-sized location you can easily finish in one session; perfect for my open table format. Little conversion was required. I substituted the baobhan sith for bugbears, and the redcaps were treated asโ€ฆ

2 OD&D Hexes: Mocking Walnut Wood; Terra Cotta Warrior Depot

Hex a day entries for June 6-7 2026. I've been using the Wolves hexfill for these, and "animal behavior" has been a particular challenge. I'm happy with the result here. I also broke the rules and decided to do a living statue lair, although they normally don't maintain lairs. These both take place in the region of Oxia, which is sort of Not Greco-Bactria. Weird, Animal Behavior, Forest - Mockingโ€ฆ

Tigers Upon the Steppe: Gray and Brown Mages

Introduction Some setting-mechanic work for an OD&D game I hope to run in the near future. I've been alternately calling it โ€œOops All Magic Systemsโ€ and โ€œTigers Upon the Steppe.โ€ This post lays out some addenda to Idralunaโ€™s Supplement Aleph: Chromatic Charms & Spectral Sorceries : the Colorless/Gray Mage, of a re-implementation of an agnostic magic user who has not yet aligned themselves with aโ€ฆ