Wyrdspeak

Hi, I'm still alive. I've been pretty busy, busy moving, busy writing, busy working. I've recently moved across the entire country, and during my downtime I've been writing a small hexcrawl for my group to play as a mini-campaign when I visit them over breaks, and for a few new players I've met already. It started off as a simple hexcrawl featuring an awful forest and witch hunters, then ambition got the better of me so I added a fleshy dungeon. Consider this my belated addition to Nate Treme's Pamphlet Dungeon Jam . Here you go, the setting along with a few design notes further down this page (I recommend you read the second PDF in the folder first): The Most Cursed Of Hands I'll admit, the product isn't done-done yet, it's writing is a tad unorganized and its formatting could use a little bit of work. It's kinda hard making a pamphlet because you need to allow yourself to not give all  the information you want on a location, just enough...

There are dozens of ways to build and travel through cities for your RPG games that are concrete, solid, and have a decent amount of crunch. I'm too much of an idiot to use these kinds of methods, so here's my really subjective way, based on a popular earlier post , without needing maps but still having a physical representation to keep track of player location. Crawlspace Method - Settlements ( Sam Hogg ) 1.  Choose a die. A D4 represents a village, a D6 represents a town, a D8 represents a city. 2.  Choose at least two faces on your die. Mark down these faces as gates . These are areas that the players can freely enter and exit the village/town/city grounds through this location. 3.  Start writing down the contents of each face. Each face represents a major landmark or general district. Generally, you should do the Last Gasp method of describing districts/landmarks/other locations by giving each place a wealth rating (Poor/Middling/Rich) along with descriptio...

I've done it, I think. I've joined the bandwagon of homebrew rulesets. It seems like everybody in the OSR-o-sphere has one, and sometimes it seems pointless to make your own because people are already writing their own. But then, I came to a crossroads with 3 systems that don't seem too compatible that I absolutely love, and saw it as a challenge to awfully amateur my design skills. The three systems are Knave, Into The Odd, and GLOG, and I think I've done an okay job at melding the good parts of them together. I'm not going to harp on much longer, have my hack, along with a character sheet : Blackguard Just kidding, there is a bit more pitter-patter from me. I'm pretty content with my hack, just keep in mind that it hasn't been tested to any giant extent like Knave. The main thing I am uncertain about is the Hit Dice, and if I should change them to D8s, but that's about it. I think it's kinda funny how I treat PCs like items, with luck ba...

So, I've given you some background about The Ashen Age, but many things still wait to be defined. Among the things that wait to be defined is magic, which is a particularly hard topic due to its weird nature. This relationship only gets more complicated due to the events  that have happened to make the Ashen Age what it is today. Now, let's chat and try to decipher the splendor and misery that our characters may discover. Let's chat about the fall of the gods and their new brood. Let's chat about the lost art of magic and the secrets of godhood... A Deal With God ( Markus Neidel )  The petrification of the gods was a catastrophe in all ways, a perfect disaster. The initial shock of the god's petrified body parts crashing with the world and killing almost all surface dwellers was felt heavily among the survivors. Of course, there were other implications to this disaster as well. Clerical magic ceased to work, as no god could supply miracles anymore. Due to th...

I once had a particularly solemn dream, a dream that seems like it would only appear during a fever or restless nights. There was a towering door before me, then came a voice that blew out all the candles. It was the scream of a beast, screeching about how merciless strength is the most powerful virtue of all. I smashed my pulse against my pillow, but I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if the beast's words were heeded. I'm not above joining the bandwagon of creating homebrew settings. It seems like everybody has one, and I have seen some great things come out of them. So, I'm going to create a setting, one with dragons and gods and heroism in the face of suffering, hopefully one that you all and my players will enjoy. The Ashen Age ( Markus Neidel ) Once the basilisk ascended to godhood, the people of the world thought that this was the end of everything. It had been a good run. Their lives had been uneventful, simple yet sustainable, free of inconven...

At the moment I run a very dungeon-crawl-y type of "campaign", if you even want to call it that. The players see, they delve, they conquer (most of the time). It's simple, I love it and everybody has a fun time. Now, prepping full-blown dungeons in a more normal campaign is a bit harder if that isn't your specialty. What I've found especially hard is prepping a small, dungeon-like location when there are only 30 minutes until the session starts. I've recently found a fun little trick/take/whateveryouwanttocallit in making simple dungeons without needing maps, while still having a fun physical representation. Just keep in mind, without maps this is going to be a bit more subjective in description than objective. Crawlspace Method ( Blackbeard Banners ) 1. Grab your nearest D6. On the D6, choose a start  and an end  on the dice, if you're indecisive just choose 1 as the start and 6 as the end, or roll for both. Just keep in mind that the start and en...

I recently ran a fun game for a few younger players, it was their first time playing anything close to an RPG and they loved it, but I thought the session might go awry during character creation once one player was adamant about being an elf. I was a tad panicked at first because the system I use, Into The Odd , doesn't have any races and everybody is assumed to be human. At first I just assumed that I would treat her character like a human, like everybody else, but I decided that would be boring. Here is the quick hack I implemented to add races in Into The Odd . Every race starts like your standard human: Roll 3D6 for each stat, begin with an extra item. Now, from here you can do a few things to make the race interesting: Enhance  a stat at the cost of impairing  another stat. (For instance, the ogre race now rolls 2D6 + 6 for their STR but only rolls 2D6 for their WIL) Gain an ability at the cost of impairing  a stat. (For instance, the dwarf race now roll...

This post itself isn't particularly brilliant or groundbreaking, it's just a collection of magic items for you to "inherit" for your D&D, Knave, Into The Odd, or other RPG games. I'm sure you will find at least some of these items interesting, most are dedicated to either make a situation more interesting or embrace the spirit of the OSR. Hell, maybe you can even start some of the PCs off with an item by rolling 2D6, one for the category of item they get and one for the actual item under that category. If you are using a 6-stat-system, replace WIL with Charisma, Intelligence, or Wisdom, whichever you find most appropriate for the item. Just a note, quite a few entries are inspired by this excellent post from a new blog with lots of potential, check them out! Without further ado: Adventurous Equipment ( Nafah ) Light: 1. Sprite Lamp.  A lantern with gold foil inlaid on it, it emits an amber light up to 60' for 4 hours on 1 flask of oil. Once per ...

Hey guys and girls, I'm still alive, just back from a long vacation. Recently I've been running a modified version of the excellent Tomb of the Serpent Kings  by Skerples with close friends and its been an amazing time. One feature that this dungeon has is concerning amounts of skeletons, and at first I've been having trouble making the skeletons interesting until I came up with this handy tool based off of this  post from Chris McDowall. Skeletons ( TentaclesandTeeth ) Skeleton (Level 1) - Chattering human skeletons wielding rusted weaponry and rags. STR 10, DEX 14, WIL 5, 3 HP Claw, Sword, or Ceremonial Dagger (D6) - Immune to poisons. - Piercing damage is impaired against this creature. - Bludgeoning damage is enhanced against this creature. To make more advanced skeletons, choose (or roll) one option below for every level you add onto them, up to level 5. - The skeleton has ragged chain-mail (1 armor), if this option is chosen again, it has battered pla...

They're biting their tongues. The job went sour as soon as Sir Tarkington noticed the thieves arguing in his store room about shares of loot. The melodic chime of alarm bells contrasts the hectic scrambling of the party as they look for any kind of closet or cranny to hide in. One stands by the door, ready to make a bolt for it as soon as there is any sign of escape. Another stands in the middle of the room with a crossbow and a knife, they would rather die on their feet than live on their knees or in the forced servitude of Sir Tarkington it would seem. The last cowers behind a crate, looking for any boon or sign of good fortune. After a few hurried seconds of hectic searching, fortune smiles back in the form of a small glass vial with a skull and crossbones. Poisons and drugs are really weird to use. In my experience, it's kinda hard to use poisons without making an entire big set of rules about methods of ingestion, time limits, saves, and etc. On the other hand, I use Int...

Creating something from nothing is REALLY hard, especially when it comes to world-building. I've always ran with the platitude of "start small, think big later". When creating a setting or main adventuring area, I've got a process I run through that generally helps get the creativity flowing and that doesn't need to be performed in any real order: The History: This is just a general three-sentence description of the history of the setting or area the players are going to be adventuring in. It doesn't necessarily need to just be three sentences, but I've found that this is a good amount of space to let creativity branch out later. The Encounters: If you've been reading this blog for any amount of time, you'll probably know that I am a BIG fan of small tables . I generally like making a small table of encounters to gauge what enemies or allies may be seen when going through whatever fresh hell your players are going through. The Bestiary: Th...