Earlier this year, I read An Ottoman Traveller: Selections from the Book of Travels by Evliya Çelebi , in part following a very exciting and happy trip to Istanbul in December/early January. Evliya Çelebi was a seventeenth-century Ottoman nobleman, muezzin, Qur'an reciter, and possible Sufi initiate who embarked on a life-long endeavor of travel following a dream wherein the prophet Muhammad, the…
HI HELLO HI I'm posting this like a day late but that's okay that's whatever. My unnecessarily long-running post series Goin' Through the Fiend Folio has been nominated for a BLOGGIE for Best Series, and I am formally requesting that YOU vote for it! You can vote for up to three blog series so it's okay if you vote for other ones too, but PLEASE vote for the humble Fiend Folio too!!! TBH though…
These Ichthyophagi subsist on what their name is derived from, — fish. Yet only a few of them fish out in the deep, for boats to do it with are scarce, and the art of fishing is unknown. Generally speaking, they are indebted for their fish to the ebb-tide. To take advantage of it, they make for themselves nets which are mostly two stadia in length. These they weave from the bark of the palm-tree,…
FUCK IT DOUBLE TRACK DRIFTING, BACK TO BACK HALLOWEEN POSTS, HALLOWEEN FOREVER HAPPY HALLOWEEN This is a little dungeon that I originally started writing like a full year ago but never finished. Figured this was as good a time as any to work on it some more and put it out there! ------------ A small abandoned manse, the ground on which it sits slowly sloughing off into the sea. Its foyer is…
Given that tomorrow is Halloween (and with roughly another month having passed since my last post... sigh, I really need to get back on blogging and back on running D&D games again, but I keep on meeting roadblocks and annoying hurdles (some my own fault, some not)), I figured it'd be as good a time as any to write about one of my favorite creepy types of D&D monsters: the UNDEAD! I've already…
Many moons ago, in fact only one month after I first began this blog, I wrote a post with 30 character backgrounds for urban characters in King of Kings . Since one of the running themes of my blog output this year has and will continue to be "finally getting around to finishing things that I didn't finish Multiple Years Ago," and since I'm planning on starting the King of Kings campaign up again…
This is the 100th POST on SAVE vs. WORM !!!! (I've been holding off on posting anything else until I make this post so that the timing works out exactly... but then I majorly procrastinated on actually making this for a few reasons, it's now a full month later than I originally wanted it to be out, I'm maybe the worst procrastinator ever, but anyway) As a result, I reserve the right make one (1)…
In the year 1837, a short paper was read by me before the Geological Society of London, “On the Formation of Mould,” in which it was shown that small fragments of burnt marl, cinders, &c., which had been thickly strewed over the surface of several meadows, were found after a few years lying at the depth of some inches beneath the turf, but still forming a layer. This apparent sinking of…
Lake Blut, nestled in the northern foothills of the World's Edge Mountains, is a dangerous body of water. The northern barbarians that dwell on its shore warn their children to steer clear of the water, lest they be snatched and eaten by Der Blutschink , an unclean spirit of the lake that thrives on blood. Even adults are wary whenever they must venture across the fog-shrouded waters to fish or…
Moon Man Number Encountered: 2d8 Hit Dice: 3+1 Attacks: 2 claw (1d6) OR 1 claw (1d6) + 1 crystal ray (2d6 + see below) Armor: as chain Morale: 8 Canine Disdain: If dogs or wolves are involved in a fight with moon men, they have disadvantage on morale checks. However, once a moon man kills even a single dog or wolf in combat, this penalty goes away. Crystal Ray: 50% of moon men encountered from a…
It is time... the FINAL part of the unnecessarily long-running Fiend Folio saga on this here blog! Won't take too much time here, check out the first entry in this series , and here's a link to the most recent ! Umpleby ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ The umpleby is a real weirdo, and I know that's saying something with Fiend Folio monsters! An 8 foot tall hairy humanoid that will ally with anyone that gives it food,…
Onkelos then went and raised Jesus the Nazarene from the grave through necromancy... Onkelos said to him: What is the punishment of that man, a euphemism for Jesus himself, in the next world? Jesus said to him: He is punished with boiling excrement. As the Master said: Anyone who mocks the words of the Sages will be sentenced to boiling excrement. And this was his sin, as he mocked the words of…
It's been way too long, again. I don't know if I really need to dwell on how long its been again. I gotta get over this taking months-long gaps between blogging. Anyway, here's a link to the first post in this series, here's a link to the most recent one , let's go! Tabaxi ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ Tabaxi have become such an OC D&D staple (what with all the Furries that play D&D of course!) that it's almost weird…
Back at it again! Here's the last entry in this series, here's a link to the first post , etc. etc., time to pick back up where we last left off! To begin with, however, I'd like to make some notes of a couple monsters that I accidentally missed had original versions in Fiend Factory! First, my overwhelming favorite from the last entry, the SHEET PHANTOM!!! You can't imagine my delight when I was…
Just like with my last post, it has also been more than a year since my last King of Kings worldbuilding post! I won't bore y'all with a rehashing of my intentions for the series; this is the second part in a hopefully multi-part series of posts about various parts of the world of King of Kings, told primarily through rumors, character backgrounds, random encounters, and the like. Check out the…
Alright, back to reviewing every monster in the Fiend Folio, a classic series on this blog that... jeeze louise, the last time I posted one of these was more than a year ago ! Uh, my bad. I already talked about why I wasn't so active on the blog in a post back in May, but like, all that goes double for just never getting around to reviewing the FF again. Anyway, here's the first installment in the…
Back in December, I purchased a little Japanese graph paper notebook, with the intention of filling its pages with as many adventure locations as I could come up with. I wrote up one (which I will be sharing here today) and then... subsequently didn't make any more until yesterday. In my defense, stuff's been goin' on. But anyway, here's the first dungeon I made for this notebook, using my…
A friend and coworker of mine gave me an old drawing tablet she no longer uses, as a gift. I haven't used drawing tablets all that much, mostly because when I was younger I just sorta bounced off of the only one I had ever attempted to use, not quite able to wrap my head around drawing without looking at my hand holding the pen. This time, it has come much easier to me; I guess I just needed time…
I have kinda hesitated on making this post because it is a genre of post that has unfortunately come to typify my online creative spaces; the perennial "I miss this place, its been too too long since the last time I posted, sorry about the hiatus" post. I've even already made this post a year and a half ago , and that hiatus was barely more than 3 months; I haven't posted to this blog in more than…
Its been a while! Uh, way too long in fact. I still haven't ran a session of KoK since my last post, but I figured the best thing to get me back into the groove of writing RPG stuff and getting back to running King of Kings would be to just write somethin! Its been a really busy few months since I last posted; in August I moved into my first apartment after graduating, in September I went to see a…
Been too long since my last post, and even longer since the last session report! Had the first King of Kings session in a full year like a month ago, but kept on putting off writing the after action report until now. Gonna get back to posting more regularly soon hopefully! A bit of a shorter expedition this time, while we were getting back into the swing of things; trying to get back into running…
Been way too long on this! But, before we begin, I have to recognize a person very important to me, to Old School D&D, and to the Fiend Folio: Russ Nicholson. Russ Nicholson, whose illustrations populate much of the Fiend Folio, passed away on May 10, 2023. His grotty, incredibly detailed art style is one of the most defining aesthetics in my mind for old school D&D, along with other great artists…
7th century silver and gold bowl depicting a King of Kings hunting I've been meaning to get back on writing King of Kings posts, namely world building posts to fill in a lot of the big foundational gaps that have been left in my approach to writing about it on the blog up to now. So here we have a series of posts about the major empires and states of the KoK world, beginning with a brief timeline…
Hey so remember in the product identity monsters post from like, way back in December I mentioned that I was gonna make a part 2 riffing on an alternate name for the Beholder that Warren of Prismatic Wasteland came up with? Yeah I never posted that huh. Well anywho, here it is! Fear the dread PANOPTIKHAN, the Scourge of Gods Underneath, the All-Seeing Eye, the War-Bek of Cave-Mules! Tremble before…
I've shared some of my love and appreciation for the monstrous creations of the early D&D hobby before; the original creatures of referees from the late seventies have been a regular appearance in my Fiend Folio review series (which, as an aside, will return shortly; apologies for the lull in posting). But what I have not been able to share with you all, until now, has been anything truly new,…