Permanent Cranial Damage: Carrion
Carrion is the endless city. Time began in Carrion, and in Carrion shall it end. When the world was new, the Hornèd Mother's child, the ...| permacrandam.blogspot.com
So it's almost the end of GLOGust and everyone else made their posts at the end of July. Anyways, here's some Jumping, but Cooler.| ふかひれスープ
In this previous post about Safepoints I claimed that this here piece of code:| Psychosomatic, Lobotomy, Saw
Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique a wide range of modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath. […]| Playful Void
tl;dr: lessons learned from bringing a good adventure to a bad open table.| Seed of Worlds
Here is a procedure to simulate getting a good night's sleep in the wilderness. An adventuring party will need to perform several jobs around camp. Each job accomplished produces "boons" to help recover. Each negative factor that impacts rest creates a "bane." A party can have many boons and many banes.| Rise Up Comus
This blog is meant to track my creative process, though it mostly records what distracts me from it. Recently, returning to my Tudor Cairn campaign, I found myself thinking about how that game only swam into focus when I began to take inspiration from the landscape that surrounds me. The OSR loves its forests. Cairn […]| Taskerland
I made a small 12-card deck monster generator today. Draw two and combine!| Eldritch Fields
I’m reviving| Eldritch Fields
Joining Weird Writer’s blog challenge. | Eldritch Fields
I really like Searchers of the Unknown, the super-minimal D&D by Nicolas Dessaux, where you just use the standard monster statline to represent any character. It's a one-page ruleset. So I converted it into a pocketmod.| Eldritch Fields
Continuing the adventures of the Prussians on Carcosa. See Turn 1, Turn 2.| Eldritch Fields
Continuing the adventures of the Prussian on Carcosa. See Turn 1 here.The Detachment:| Eldritch Fields
I played a solo session today. A Prussian infantry detachment is somehow transported to Carcosa circa 1810. I was very much inspired by this cool session report by Underground Adventures: an Into the Odd one-shot for a single player, about a group of Napoleonic soldiers on Carcosa.| Eldritch Fields
The Frankentable is an ever-growing multi-purpose random generator.| Eldritch Fields
I ran| Eldritch Fields
I drew and wrote a quick little dungeon by hand, in that foldable pocketmod format.GRAB IT HERE FOR THE PRICE OF FREE!| Eldritch Fields
Starmonkey ran my adventure PARALLEL DUNGEONS in Into the Odd (great fit!) and posted a session report. It's great to see other people using (and enjoying!) my work.| Eldritch Fields
Yesterday I| Eldritch Fields
My contribution for the OSR discord server's Secret Santicorn event! envymania's prompt was simply "The Dark Keep in the Snow". I cycled through several ideas (one was to make a classic murder mystery! I might return to it...) then ended up creating a dungeon.| Eldritch Fields
For Magic Word spellcasting, see, e.g., Papers & Pencils or d4 caltrops! The| Eldritch Fields
These are powerful, perhaps potentially setting-changing artifacts which cannot be used – yet!| Eldritch Fields
Carrion is the endless city. Time began in Carrion, and in Carrion shall it end. When the world was new, the Hornèd Mother's child, the ...| permacrandam.blogspot.com
Fantasy Stones This month's Blog Carnival prompt from Wobblerocket is Magic Rocks . I have catalogued stones less commonly known by people ...| elementalreductions.blogspot.com
In the previous post, I covered low-level Illusionist spells for theTreausure 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.| Coins and Scrolls
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. | Coins and Scrolls
The new print run has arrived! Copies are available via Indie Press Revolutionand Compose Dream Games (now in the UK).| Coins and Scrolls
Material components are annoying. They're fun in theory but a pain in practice.| Coins and Scrolls
Another excerpt from the Treasure Overhaul, but formatted for a blog post. Arnold K's dungeon merchants are, as usual, well worth reading.| Coins and Scrolls
I've written another 10 pages of the Treasure Overhaul (title pending), a condensed magic item compendium for old-school games. Unlike the firsttwo previews, this PDF is only available on Patreon.| Coins and Scrolls
Here are another 7 draft pages from a potential "Treasure Overhaul" book. Combined with the previous PDF, that's 13 pages of free treasure. | Coins and Scrolls
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.| Coins and Scrolls
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. | Coins and Scrolls
According to this list from GeekNative, The Monster Overhaulwas the 6th bestselling fantasy RPG on DriveThruRPG in 2023.| Coins and Scrolls
If you want a cleaned-up modernized one-volume OD&D rules set, you have a lot of options these days, but the original texts, without the benefits of decades of polish and revision, are well worth analyzing. | Coins and Scrolls
Time to revisit the primordial ooze of the Old-School Renaissance, the original D&D booklets. | Coins and Scrolls
Good news! After selling out the first print run in record time The Monster Overhaul: A Practical Bestiary is back in stock.| Coins and Scrolls
I n the previous installment , the PCs: Killed a load-bearing vampire. Answered several longstanding questions. Participated in Endon's sec...| coinsandscrolls.blogspot.com
Grenzland no. 6 appeared in my mailbox last week, and now can also be downloaded from archive.org. A harcopy can be purchased for 5 Euros from Wanderer Bill (as long as copies last that is). It fea…| Stuffed Crocodile
My OSR Blog about fantasy world building and rules analysis for D&D. Also home of the B/X inspired 5e-clone "Into the Unknown."| mythlands-erce.blogspot.com
The Lantern’s Sweep follows the season’s turn, gathering reviews that trace a feeling and follow a thread. This autumn, the light falls on horror: small-press RPGs, misfit adventures, and strange things that gather at the edge of play. The rest of the series can be found here. Reivdene-Upon-The-Moss is a folk horror sandbox adventure, written […]| Taskerland
Fight On! Magazine represents a perfect cross-section of the golden age of the OSR and going through the articles, hopefully, some sort of insight will result, and if not, at the very least some useful articles and adventures will be unearthed. This issue is dedicated to David Hargrave, of Arduin fame, and that is a … More [Review] Fight On #4; Roots| Age of Dusk
[Adventure Module (theoretically)]The Dark of Hot Springs Island (2018)Jacob Hurst, Evan Peterson & Donnie Garcia (Swordfish Islands)Lvl COMPATIBLE WITH ALL LEVELS AND ALL SYSTEMS IT DOESN̵…| Age of Dusk
The topic of game balance has been doing the rounds so I felt it would behoove me to have my say and explain, to the best of my ability, what everyone should think. In all examples, grey represents…| Age of Dusk
I recently stumbled across this video by Tale Fodery: <iframe width=“560″ height=“315″ src=“https://www.youtube.com/embed/oL0dq8w5UEc?si=NPAkiyxS-PTV9lpQ“ title=“YouTube video player“ frameborder=“0″ allow=“accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share“ referrerpolicy=“strict-origin-when-cross-origin“ allowfullscreen></iframe> It asks two interesting questions. What does a unicorn schnitzel taste...| dnalorsblog
Vor kurzem bin ich über dieses Video von Tale Fodery gestolpert: Darin werden zwei interessante Fragen gestellt. Wie schmeckt ein Einhornschnitzel und warum zur Hölle wollen wir das eigentlich wissen. Frage 1 lässt sich erstaunlich einfach beantworten. Einhornschnitzel hat den Gescmack von nichts, was du je gegessen hats. Frage 2 ist schon deutlich schwerer zu […]| dnalorsblog
Village Idiot recently published a post on the Kritischer Fehlschlag blog about the downfall of Dammstadt. On Christmas Eve 1332, Dammstadt burned to the ground. And if the reader has never heard of Dammstadt, that’s not surprising, because the history of this small town, just outside the cathedral city of Hildesheim, ended on that tragic […]| dnalorsblog
Vor kurzem hat Village Idiot beim Kritischer Fehlschlag Blog einen Beitrag veröffentlicht, bei dem es um den Untergang Dammstadts ging. In der Weihnachtsnacht 1332 brannte Dammstadt komplett nieder. Und sollte der geneigte Leser jetzt, noch nie etwas von Dammstadt gehört haben, so ist das nicht ganz verwunderlich, denn die Geschichte des kleinen Städtchens, vor den […]| dnalorsblog
This article and all quotes are translated with DeepL It’s early July 2025, and I’ve just heard some interesting news. A revision of the classic In the Claws of the Demon is in the works, and the advance PDF has now been sent to members of the Collections Club. The whole thing should be available […]| dnalorsblog
Es ist grade Anfang Juli 2025 habe grade interessante Neuigkeiten erfahren. Es wird an einer Überarbeitung des Klassikers In den Fängen des Dämons gearbeitet, die Vorab-PDF ist nun, wenn der Artikel hier online geht, bei den Mitgliedern des Collections Club angekommen ist. Demnächst soll das Ganze regulär erwerbbar sein. Passender Grund hierfür ist, dass dieses […]| dnalorsblog
A few weeks ago I stumbled across this real on Facebook. Interesting, I thought, I’d like to know more, and poof… I was down the rabbit hole. Medusa, Gorgons, overzealous sea gods, Phoenicians, the last Neanderthals, a lost European primitive people. There’s sooo much in there for role-playing! Let’s start filling up the pinboard! Medusa […]| dnalorsblog
Vor ein paar Wochen bin ich auf Facebook über dieses Real gestolpert. Interessant, dachte ich, da möchte ich mehr wissen und Schwups… war ich mitten im Kaninchenbau. Medusa, Gorgonen, übereifrige Meeresgötter, Phönizier, die letzen Neandertaler, ein untergegangenes europäisches Urvolk. Da ist sooo viel drin fürs Rollenspiel! Fangen wir mal an, die Pinnwand zu füllen! Medusa […]| dnalorsblog
For Ogres Against the RPG-A-DAY 2025, I’d like to take a closer look at two colourful figures from history that you can import into your role-playing game. Götz von Berlichingen, the knight with the iron fist Gottfried „Götz“ von Berlichingen zu Hornberg was born sometime around 1480 as the 10th child of the 3rd wife […]| dnalorsblog
Für den Ogers Gegen-RPG-A-DAY 2025 möchte ich heute mal zwe schillernde Figuren aus der Geschichte näher beleuchten, die man gerne ins Rollenspiel importieren kann. Götz von Berlichingen, der Ritter mit der eisernen Faust Gottfried „Götz“ von Berlichingen zu Hornberg wurde irgendwann um 1480 als 10. Kind der 3. Frau von Kilian von Berlichingen geboren. 1480… […]| dnalorsblog
tl:dr; a city sandbox with a grounded feel, packed full of hooks, sites and factions to sustain a good chunk of play. I grabbed this in the...| seedofworlds.blogspot.com
Link to discussion There are some posts on the historical OSR blog scene that I’ve read recently from the Grumpy …Continue reading →| Smoldering Wizard
I assume the Venn diagram of "people who read my blog" and "people who have already backed the Knock! Kickstarter" is a perfect circle, but...| riseupcomus.blogspot.com
The early history of D&D is pretty interesting. If you haven't yet, listen to When We Were Wizards. The dramas that play out in the "hobby with friends -> business -> multimillion dollar industry" are almost mythological in their parallelisms and ironic twists.| Rise Up Comus
At my day job, I’m a technical writer. In the evenings, I blog about RPG stuff. I am combining these professional interests into this series: I am using my career of instructional design to tell you how I play games. This makes me the most boring person alive.| Rise Up Comus
Preparation & houserules for a solo campaign in Emily F Allen's STYGIAN LIBRARY using the retroclone BLUEHOLME| aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com
I'm not a huge fan of RPG Design discourse. I know what I enjoy in tabletop games and my openness to embracing new ideas extends to adventures and rulesets rather than abstracted diatribes and forge-era "theory". I love hearing about the obscure media and radical thought that inspires the brilliant worlds practitioners of this weird hobby continue to create, but for the life of me I can't recall an occasion where anyone's Appendix N included a patronising twitter thread.| Alone in the Labyrinth
A number of weeks ago I posted regarding my intention to run Stygian Library solo. There's a link right here but for some reason they aren't showing up as such, so please scroll to the end to read the comprehensive list of pages linked in this post. I've since already run a party of adventurers through a delve in the Stygian library, and had some thoughts about what the survivors (spoiler alert! some of them survive!) do next. However, before writing that up I wanted to go into a little more...| Alone in the Labyrinth
Random Tables d100 – Vignettes for Faerie & Other Unseen Lands (d4 Caltrops) d100 – Pecuniary Problems, Awful Arrears, & Delinquent Debts (d4 Caltrops) D6x6 Grimy Grimlocks (Arc…| Stuffed Crocodile
I wrote about " rebooting a campaign with 2d20 Conan " - spinning up a new campaign in the Scaled Lands. In the grand tradition of getting ...| seedofworlds.blogspot.com
tl:dr; fun old school dungeon with a romance-story core, solid recommend.| Seed of Worlds
There was silence for a long time. I have my reasons. Mostly that I'm spending all my time on finishing the books for the Our Golden Age crowdfunding (I'm behind but it's going on without major issues) and the children (who are sometimes responsible for a certain tiredness or lassitude I experien| Wizard Thief Fighter
My OSR Blog about fantasy world building and rules analysis for D&D. Also home of the B/X inspired 5e-clone "Into the Unknown."| mythlands-erce.blogspot.com
I've analysed and critiqued the concept of Hit Points in the past. The gist of the critique is that whilst hit points conceptually are mostly "hero points", mechanically they are treated entirely as "wound points". And that grates.| Mythlands: The Setting to End All Settings
I've been anticipating reviewing "Mystara" as perhaps the most difficult of the setting reviews. | Mythlands: The Setting to End All Settings
edited 08-21-2025 after some feedback, shortening and breaking into sections One thing I picked up playing with some of the old Twin Cities referees is how action-oriented their tables are, especia…| Aboleth Overlords
Last week we had the 26th session of my Glimmermark Labyrinth Lord game, which makes for a game about every 2 weeks on average since I started in July 2024. Unfortunately sometimes it’s just not possible to find enough people to play, even if I offered the game as an open table game. We decided […]| Stuffed Crocodile
A recent episode of Retronauts reminded me about the Chicken Stinger (or Chicken Leg, or even Cockatrice although that name sounds wrong), the monster used in both Golden Axe and Altered Beast. Wel…| Stuffed Crocodile
Fourteenth Session – We set up a hasty ambush for the Hound of Hirot and then track it back to its “Yoda hole.” Well, we figure it should be easy to free the hapless butcher’…| Geek Related
It might have been visible in my post from yesterday, but I don’t actually like Oriental Adventures. The original ’85 AD&D book that is. The book purports to give rules for an ̶…| Stuffed Crocodile
I have been thinking of making this table for a while, and right now am working on it for the Grenzland zine. The inspiration for this is of course the Campaign Event table in Oriental Adventures, …| Stuffed Crocodile
Random Tables d72 Squires (Bastionland) D6 Social Media Services of the Near-Future (Archons March On) D6x6 Sanguine Sirens (Archons March On) d100 – Wilderness Woes & Hinterland Hazards (d4 Ca…| Stuffed Crocodile
Mild spoilers for my future self-made adventure module. It has been a long time since my formerly semi-regular tabletop rpg reviews and analysis on this site. Serendipity struck recently with my de…| The Trickster's Guide to Geopolitics
"Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot." You have likely seen or been ...| knightattheopera.blogspot.com
In yesterday's game, one PC was rescued from captivity by the party, but not before undergoing some pretty severe torture. This presented me with a bit of a quandary: having him simply bounce back from such an ordeal after a couple of Cure Light Wounds spells felt wrong, but at the same time I didn't want the consequences to feel like a punishment. (The problem with most 'lasting injury' rules is that they make you weaker as a consequence for failure, which makes you more likely to fail again...| Against The Wicked City
I've been running OSR D&D more-or-less weekly for over five years, now, with a heavy focus on exploration, problem-solving, and diplomacy. Combat happens, but I learned early on that the kind of combat power-ups that most later D&D editions obsess over were almost irrelevant: when most fights are either one-sided ambushes or desperate fighting retreats, the shift from 1d8 damage to 1d8+2 damage is really not that big a deal. My players regularly forget which magical weapons their PCs are carr...| Against The Wicked City
I've long since lost count of the exact number, but I'm pretty sure that my current 'City of Spires' campaign has now run for almost as many sessions as the 'Team Tsathogga' campaign that preceded it. This has prompted me to think a bit about the different shapes that the two campaigns have taken. 'Team Tsathogga' was, from beginning to end, an extremely freewheeling, even anarchic campaign, with the PCs roaming randomly around the map getting involved in whatever seemed most interesting at t...| Against The Wicked City
On today's episode of Between Two Cairns, we discussed a module called Gone Fishin'. We mentioned that it is kind of hard to find, and that the original sources were lost in a forest of dead links and old forum posts. Fortunately the original PDF includes the following text:| New School Revolution
What Is?| New School Revolution
I'm very excited to announce that tomorrow, Friday Dec 1st, the Kickstarter for is finally launching! is an old school adventure module...| New School Revolution
In the comments to "Zenopus Built a Tower", Part 46 of the Holmes Manuscript series on this blog, reader Tony Stroppa wrote in about his adaptation of Holmes' Tower of Zenopus dungeon for the Mazes & Minotaurs RPG, a reimagining of OD&D as if it was inspired only by Greek mythology, and which can be found for free on DriveThruRPG. With Tony's permission, I'm sharing his comments here:| ZENOPUS ARCHIVES
This is written by my player and friend Will F.: Daytime Nighttime| Aboleth Overlords
This was written by my friend and player Rob L., posted here with permission: Went to Moldy Unicorn to inquire on owner of the purse + wooden nickel found at the bookshop. Barkeep Gorra identified “Latch” as the man with the scar, member of the Severed Hand Gang. Approached by “The Sage” of the Bloody … Continue reading Skies Shall Sunder Session 3| Aboleth Overlords
This report is written by my friend and player Peter P., I have posted it to my blog with permission, with a few NPC name spelling corrections:Following the rumor of: “There is a hidden entra…| Aboleth Overlords
About Duryan the Gardener | Homebrew Homunculus
A strange mummy wanders the sandy wastes, not bound to a tomb | Homebrew Homunculus
Here's a small adventure site/scenario. Plop it onto your hex key on the edge of a forest or something.| Homebrew Homunculus
I guess the Trollkin class set my mind on the track of "slightly monstrous adventurers with death-avoiding abilities". I googled "OSR skeleton class" and found only this: https://www.necropraxis.com/2014/02/06/skeleton-class/ so consider this class inspired by Necropraxis's. Essentially I've codified a bit more what it means to be an undead PC, and made the class rather more party-dependant.| Homebrew Homunculus
These are some of the kookier ideas I’m kicking about. The Elven one, I think, is a really flavourful and small change that makes them more Moorcockian/ Melnibonéan, which I dig. The Cleric change is something that makes sense to me fluff-wise, but I’m not sure if it might break the game too much - please let me know what you think. The Magic-User one is the most kooky, and has the biggest impact on how the game plays, so I've saved it for last. Any of these can be implemented separate o...| Homebrew Homunculus
[ click here for single-page PDF version ]| Homebrew Homunculus
Random LotFP class generator.| Homebrew Homunculus
Edit: It turns out most people just want the rules and not the editorial - If you don't want to know why you should use encumbrance and will just take my word for it, skip to the last section, or see the printable PDF of the rules here and the new inventory sheet here.| Homebrew Homunculus
Last week I found Wanderer Bill’s Grenzland 5 in my mailbox. Topic “Science Fantasy”. The zine costs 5 Euros for a hardcopy, but can be downloaded for free. As the topic goes into the realm of science fiction there’s plenty of that in this issue. Most of the articles are in German, some are English […]| Stuffed Crocodile
A blog post about how Religion in D&D and other Fantasy RPGs approaches polytheism in the wrong way and how to fix that in order to have more mystery and adventure in your game sessions.| Widdershins Wanderings
(Continued from Part 1, which looked at the state of TTRPG dungeon design pre-Jaquays. These two posts are cleaned upContinue Reading| Pathika
Random Tables d66 Reasons Why the Castle is Totally Deserted (Blog of Forlorn Encystment) Elemental Heretics (Elfmaids & Octopi) d100 Poltergeists (Elfmaids & Octopi) Let’s Build a Thieves Guild (OSRVault) 100 Urban Quest Hooks (OSRVault) Ideas Babies in Dungeons (Prismatic Wasteland) Random Magic User Generator (Remixes and Revelations) Sandbox Settlements: Downtime (Among Cats and Books) […]| Stuffed Crocodile
The character class you never knew you wanted (and probably still don’t).| The Dododecahedron
