I have read a number of Conan stories before and would consider them a problematic fave – brilliant story and atmosphere with a mythic feel, but sexism and racism abound. So I was surprised by the novella’s take on the colonialist endeavour:

‘The best land near Thunder River is already taken,’ grunted the slayer. ‘Plenty of good land between Scalp Creek—you crossed it a few miles back—and the fort, but that’s getting too devilish close to the river. The Picts steal over to burn and murder—as that one did. They don’t always come singly.

‘Some day they’ll try to sweep the settlers out of Conajohara. And they may succeed—probably will succeed. This colonization business is mad, anyway. There’s plenty of good land east of the Bossonian marches. If the Aquilonians would cut up some of the big estates of their barons, and plant wheat where now only deer are hunted, they wouldn’t have to cross the border and take the land of the Picts away from them.’

‘That’s queer talk from a man in the service of the Governor of Conajohara,’ objected Balthus.

‘It’s nothing to me,’ the other retorted. ‘I’m a mercenary. I sell my sword to the highest bidder.’

This story reminds me strongly of B2: The Keep on Borderlands: a fort set up on the “frontier”, with “savage natives” that need to be pacified to ensure the fort and its people’s survival. Conan is the mercenary adventurer who values his coin-purse over his morals.

The novella is less repugnant than a straight reading of Gygax’s module: in Howard’s story the displaced native folk are massing for war to take back their land. It makes us a little more sympathetic to Conan who is protecting the settlers, as opposed to a party in B2 who are just committing genocide in the Caves of Chaos.

On the topic of those “savage natives”, I found this quote intriguing too:

‘The demon isn’t going to get Tiberias’ head if I can help it,’ he growled. ‘We’ll carry the body into the fort. It isn’t more than three miles. I never liked the fat fool, but we can’t have Pictish devils making so cursed free with white men’s heads.’

The Picts were a white race, though swarthy, but the border men never spoke of them as such.

For my own table, I would prefer a more nuanced scenario, where the players are not aligned with a side so plainly in the wrong. But the novella certainly paints a dynamic situation where player characters can be important:

‘Conan, more depends on you than you realize. You know the weakness of this province—a slender wedge thrust into the untamed wilderness. You know that the lives of all the people west of the marches depend on this fort. Were it to fall, red axes would be splintering the gates of Velitrium before a horseman could cross the marches. His majesty, or his majesty’s advisers, have ignored my plea that more troops be sent to hold the frontier. They know nothing of border conditions, and are averse to expending any more money in this direction. The fate of the frontier depends upon the men who now hold it.

‘You know that most of the army which conquered Conajohara has been withdrawn. You know the force left me is inadequate, especially since that devil Zogar Sag managed to poison our water supply, and forty men died in one day. Many of the others are sick, or have been bitten by serpents or mauled by wild beasts which seem to swarm in increasing numbers in the vicinity of the fort. The soldiers believe Zogar’s boast that he could summon the forest beasts to slay his enemies.

‘I have three hundred pikemen, four hundred Bossonian archers, and perhaps fifty men who, like yourself, are skilled in woodcraft. They are worth ten times their number of soldiers, but there are so few of them. Frankly, Conan, my situation is becoming precarious… Conan, Zogar Sag must die, if we are to hold Conajohara. You have penetrated the unknown deeper than any other man in the fort; you know where Gwawela stands, and something of the forest trails across the river. Will you take a band of men tonight and endeavour to kill or capture him?’

The god of the harvest has set himself against the folk of the land. Did they anger him? Was he driven mad by injury, or corrupted by the people’s misuse and abuse of the food system? Either way, the harvest is cursed – not with famine, but with hostile abundance. Let me explain:

The cursed harvest

In the summer, everywhere people once farmed, there are towering fields of ripe wheat. To go in too deep is to fall prey to the creatures that live within – the polevik, dressed in black and with a mop of grass atop his head leads you deep into the direction-less heart of the wheat. Or the feldgeister, the spirit of the whirlwind who snatches you up and leaves your body to be found later – missing your ribs.

At the edges hungry humans gnaw at the crop – but to set a sickle to the harvest is to invite an “accidental” wound that festers and kills. For some – just enough that people keep trying – eating bread made from the flour is harmless. For others it kills instantly. For many more it slowly corrupts – mind, body or both. Cruel kingdoms of not-quite humans grow strong in the shadow of the wheat.

The truest spirit of the harvest is wheat. But other crops are also cursed. Orchards are haunted galleries where – sometimes – the trees reach down and strangle those who stray in. Rice paddies hold spirits that drown those who enter them, or hungry fish with infectious bites. Cotton fields sway silently, tiny wisps of blinding fibre drifting into the eyes of animals and people who venture in.

Surviving the harvest

Harvest season is when these fields are most deadly. The spirits are most active then, bringing in the harvest. (Some report seeing them pouring grain down belching sinkholes – but no one knows what they are feeding). In winter the fields lie dormant and it is less risky to cross them. At other times, stick to the old roads and the wild margins.

The smaller the field, the less homogeneous, and the less like wheat, the less the curse strikes. So people have higgledy-piggledy vegetable gardens with little patches of potato mixed in with nettles and brambles.

The remaining pastureland for livestock is gradually being consumed by the cereal crops. More and more the people are hunter-gatherers, few in number, eating and traveling through the wild land on the edges of the fallen civilization.

Challenges await

The god of the hunt has given her blessing to help the ailing folk. But her gifts are always ones that require valour to realise. She has resurrected the ancient race of aurochs, massive horned cattle, and they graze on the wheat fields, strong enough to survive the demons in the long grass – usually. They are in turn preyed upon by mighty predators – huge bears, packs of wargs, rocs.

Cities and large castles can no longer be supported by the broken food system. They lie in ruin, often overgrown with malignant crops. They are full – perhaps – with the treasures of the fallen, decadent age, awaiting those brave enough to plunder them.

Commentary

If you want to dig into the themes more you can lean into dealing with the real and contemporary trauma of a world ravaged by profit-focused, environment-destroying agribusiness. Perhaps make this a “true” post-apocalyptic setting with rusting combine harvesters and abandoned warehouses and lorries.

To discuss on Mastodon, see this thread.

Various activities – dancing, reading, cold sea swimming, shell collecting – are employed to pass the stormy season, but soon a mania for archaeology/tomb robbing grips you all. Fueled by an collection of manuscripts left by a gentleman who died some years ago, you investigate maps of island ruins and barrows in the mudflats. Soon, this is augmented by ghost stories and rumours of pirate treasures extracted from the common folk.

Characters

Imperial Hotel, The Mall, Waterford, September 8, 1903

Characters have a frivolity score, which is the extent to which they fashionably insist on treating everything as a marvellous jape and an excuse to make witticisms.

Frivolity is rolled to impress people at the end of an adventure, at the next meeting of the society: this is what grants XP. And you can also use it to make light of horrors when exposed. But conversely, low frivolity (high sobriety) allows you to prepare better for the next expedition: it determines how much of downtime is “wasted” in pleasure-seeking, dissipation, &c.

The unseen world & the world war

Gremlins, boggarts, fairies and shrieks: Monsters have always lurked in dark, in the forests, in the bogs. The empire has pushed them back and back, until many city dwellers in Europa believe them no more than old wives’ tales.

Then with the industrial revolution came blasting powder and man’s insatiable hunger for coal. But we delved too deep and broke the barrier between our world and one far more dangerous. The old creatures surged back, and new terrors emerged.

A total war ensued, humanity vs the horrors, that raged for 15 years. The Brittanic Empire’s modern weapons were of limited use. Many of the empire’s conquered peoples had magical traditions that were far more help. The British were first forced to rely on ‘native’ help, which led then to respect and, over the course of the war, relinquishing most the empire. In the younger generation, at least, this humbling experience has resulted in a seachange in racial attitudes.

Many of the characters’ frivilous exteriors are a response to their service experience. But beneath it they harbour deadly competence.

“Her Majesty Empress Eugénie dressed as an amazon (in riding dress)” by Jules David

Meanwhile, the monsters that were not slain have fled into the uninhabited nooks and crevices of the world – including the romantically remote coast of England.

Gender

You could just construct a Victorian-themed world with total gender equality, and if that’s what you’re in the mood for, go for it. (Ditto, the previous section is an attempt to have a less rascist and colonial setting without just imagining the British as shining heroes – they’ve had to be forced into enlightenment. But again, you could just handwave all that).

An alternative approach: only women can use magic. For most of history magic has been a poorly understood science and most practitioners never rose above minor cantrips and charms. The rare exception were mighty sorceresses who terrified and conquered, but they were unable to pass on their understanding of magic. It is only in the last century, as the scientific method has made sense of chemistry and physics, that similar strides have been made in magic. Suddenly the old fashioned ‘women’s talent’ has become a powerful and rapidly advancing tool and is reshaping everything, including warfare and women’s role in it.

In other words: all wizards wear dresses. For now.

Fediverse / IndieWeb

• Pluralistic: Bluesky and enshittification (via @dave)
• A helpful way of orienting myself within Mastodon (via me)
• Shellsharks scrolls newsletter / blog
• Can accessibility be whimsical? (via Shellsharks newsletter)

Cool links 😎

• 4000 free icons for your games (via rivetgeek)
• Deluge at Drizzle Distillery by Munkao, “a 44 page, puzzle-lite, escape-the-dungeon-ish adventure module. A magic storm threatens to destroy the distillery making the best holy water in Kala Mandala.”
• breadwizard wrote 52 reviews in 2024, here’s the last one.
• Alas (a comic) (via sajan)
• The Edge of Known Space, “a short, single room metroidvania/puzzler with a engaging sci-fi story” (via me)
• Dragonsweeper “is such an elegant and enjoyable puzzle game. It’s minesweeper but also a dungeon crawler, and it somehow manages to capture the essence of both. You can play it for free in your browser and it works well on mobile.” (via me)
• @gbsteve has been posting little snippets of the games they have played in 2025, including Mothership, Cloud Empress, Mythic Bastionland and more.
• Glowburn & Radscars a free rules-light game of post-apocalyptic roleplaying attempting to combine Cairn and Mutant Crawl Classics, via breadwizard.
  • And also this awesome, moody playlist to go with it, or any other post-apocalyptic gaming. (via breadwizard)
• Kron’thul, a free font for alien monoliths, mysterious inscriptions, and ancient AI cults by Umut Comak (via me)
• csp_kris’s Dungeon-in-a-box and other videos.

RPG blog posts

• All about the Eye of Vecna (via me)
• Sandbox Settlements: Prep, Run, and Thrive (via elmcat)
• The Monstrous & Terrifying Wild Pigs of Hampstead’s Sewers (via david_castleton
• Why Orcs? Or, Why Do I Love Orcs? (via lyme)
• The Seven souls of Shadoom. “An old post that I love dearly. It embodies my favourite aspect of Arnold’s writing: this sense that instead of performing fantasy world-building from a 21st century perspective, he is able to peel back the enlightenment and see through medieval eyes.” (me)
• Modules as touchstones (via squishymage42)
• Revisiting GNS (via LeviJornelsen)
• Rules, retcons, and rightsholders: The tough road for superhero RPGs (via cannibalhaflinggaming)
• Prep Preferences & Interpretive Labour (via thomas)
• What’s a Thieves’ Guild and Where Did it Come From? (via me)
• Reflections after finishing Zozer Games’ Far Horizon (via cybergoths)
• Dragon Kobolds - The Drak (via juergen_hubert). “The dwarves of old knew how to summon dragon servants, and could provide these to others. But those who own such a dragon should be careful to always heed the feeding instructions…”

• Pulp Adventure Location: Trinadade & Martim Vaz. I posted some quotes here and then went on to read a book he mentions, The Cruise of the Alerte, leading to these thoughts: 🧵 Some quotes I rephrase slightly because character limits are a hard master.
  
  “I accordingly procured a bill of health for Sydney; not that I had the slightest intention of going there, but I knew that this document would satisfy the authorities of any place at which I was likely to call for stores: every harbour on either side of the Atlantic can be considered as being more or less on the way to Australia”.
  
  This feels very relatable to buying train tickets in Britain. Buy a ticket for London and you can probably argue for any route!
  
  The author receives many other reports of treasure. I like this Nigerian prince-level one: He “modestly asked for 1,000l. down before the slightest hint as to the nature of his treasure or its locality; but there could not be the slightest doubt as to my finding it, and as 1 item alone of this pile consisted of ten million £ worth of golden bars, it would be the height of folly on my part not to send him a cheque for the comparatively ridiculous sum of 1,000l. in return for such information.”
  
  This is just lovely: “A huge green roller, very high and steep, suddenly rose as if by magic from the deep; then swept over the shoal, and, when it reached the shallowest part, its crest hung over, forming a cavern underneath, through whose transparent roof the sun shone with a beautiful green light; and lastly, the mass overtopping itself fell with a great hollow sound, and was dashed to pieces in a whirl of hissing foam.”
  
  What an encounter! “Rolling easily on the green ocean swell, near the shore, lay a small schooner at anchor; her crew were engaged in stowing her mainsail. A quantity of barrels were being quickly landed here from one of the schooner’s boats, and several other wild-looking men were carrying these up to a cavern a little way up the rocks. And who, we wondered, were these people, and what were they doing; these were mysterious proceedings for a desert island!”
  
  “We then set forth to explore the island. We climbed the narrow path that zigzagged up the bare cliffs, and in the construction of which a considerable amount of labour must have been expended, a proof in itself that the rare visitors to the island were Portuguese, for these people alone take the trouble to make roads on desert islands. They seem to love for its own sake the arduous work of cutting paths up difficult precipices, and very cleverly they do it too.”
  
  RE the previous quote: obviously it’s a racist stereotype, especially the idea that the Portuguese just thrive on difficult road building (as opposed to it be a result of different policies, priorities, etc.). But at the same time, it’s so oddly specific and mildly complimentary that I find it more amusing and bizarre than offensive.
  
  “Here the mountains rise sheer from the boiling surf—fantastically shaped of volcanic rock; cloven by frightful ravines; lowering in perpendicular precipices; in places over-hanging threateningly…the mountains have been shaken to pieces by the fires and earthquakes of volcanic action; huge landslips of black and red volcanic debris slope steeply into the yawning ravines and loose rocks large as houses, ready on the slightest disturbance to roll down, crashing, into the abysses below.”
  
  “On the summit of the island there floats almost constantly, even on the clearest day, a wreath of dense vapour, never still, but rolling and twisting into strange shapes as the wind eddies among the crags. And above this cloud-wreath rise mighty pinnacles of coal-black rock, like the spires of some gigantic Gothic cathedral piercing the blue southern sky.”

• Are fewer rules actually less complicated?. “The debate about rules density in roleplaying games is a bit of a mess, frankly.”, via @cannibalhalflinggaming
• The Tenchi Muyo! RPG is my Carcosa (via me)
• Seven-Part Pact: Time. “A solid post by Dwiz about speeding up and slowing down time in RPGs” (via me)
• Haters Welcome. “I think collaborative creative games help you become a better human, so I want everyone to play them.” (via benrobbins)
• Shorter, more freqent sessions (via JasonT)

Funnies

• When an article says “some scientists think” then remember this: I, a scientist, once thought I could fit a whole orange in my mouth (via kottke)
• Gasoline car review (via beej)
• This blog is hosted on a Nintendo Wii (via me)
• The Curious Case of the Pygmy Nuthatch (via me)
• “Wait, like… WHALES whales? The BIG things?”- me, on my 2nd day on a whaling ship, about to have a long 4 years at sea (via @signalstation)
• “I was trying to get into wizardry during my recent visit to Roke, but this guy called Master Finder Medra was being a real gatekeeper about it :/” (via periaptgames)

RPG thoughts

• Often unfilled dungeon niche: The chihuahua. @LeviKornelsen Small, hair-trigger, extremely loud, roving alarm system.
• Idea: RPG in a post-apocalyptic desert. 🧵 There is so little water that the only way communities survive is (Fremen-like) living in sealed habitats where 99.9% of water is recycled; food grows in hydroponic racks.
  
  Adventurers search through ruins and underground caves for all kinds of useful loot, but the holy grail is water: a litre carefully transported back to the habitat is as precious as gold.
• Thinking about rooms in dungeons with unstable footing: 🧵
  • walking on tops of stacks of mouldering books metres tall (man-sized bookworms cause surface ripples as they slowly chew their way)
  • the scree slope of an underground river that leaves only a small space to the cavern ceiling
  • football-sized fungal blooms that burst into dry powder when you step on them
  • platforms of loose junk forming islands sticking up from oily water (slippery pipes lead to higher levels)
• I think it would be fun to run an OSR campaign where the goal, known from the outset, is to slay a dragon before it emerges and lays waste to the kingdom. 🧵 The dragon dwells at the bottom a megadungeon under the city, which has been sealed for centuries to prevent the underworld spewing forth horrors.
  
  Now the King is forced by augurs of doom to break the seals and grant licences to any who would dare the darkness beneath, seeking the power to defeat the dragon...
  
  Pressure to beat the dragon as soon as possible leads to players having multiple goes at it, starting before they are really powerful enough, learning and adapting as they go.
  
  Some crews specialize in recovering bodies and selling them for resurrection (like Dungeon Meshi). Also, giant spiders that creep around the lower levels and drag bodies off to be preserved in webs, including those left by the dragon. So corpse recovery doesn't involve fighting the dragon.
  
  Partly I just really want to have the "dragon" in D&D, as we hardly ever manage that. Partly, I love the idea of the party really needing to gather information and plan tactics against a single terrifying foe.
• I am rereading The Hobbit. Here is Thorin talking about dragons... 🧵 "Dragons steal gold and jewels ... and never enjoy a brass ring of it. Indeed they hardly know a good bit of work from a bad, though they usually have a good notion of the current market value" (pg 28 in my Harper Collins paperback).
  
  I love the idea of monstrous dragons who hoard valuables for no reason... But of course know how much it goes for on eBay. 😂 It really makes sense of D&D groups that award XP for loot even before selling it - clearly all denizens of fantasy worlds can just see the value of treasure hovering above it in yellow numbers.
  
  Also the next sentence is "[Dragons] can't make a thing for themselves, not even mend a little loose scale of their armour." Which suggests that Tolkien's thought is maybe that dragon's scales are not grown but built??
  
  In Chapter 12, Smaug says "I am armoured above and below with iron scales and hard gems". All of which may just be poetic language from Tolkien. But what if it isn't? What if dragons commission armour from master smiths?
  
  It suggests an opportunity for an enterprising party to act as a go between dwarven smiths and a dragon, taking a cut of the vast sum charged - another way of "looting" the dragon. Or pretend that you are there for legitimate business, but instead scouting out weaknesses or just stealing treasure.
  
  But then if these deals happen every few centuries, these tricks will have been played before, and so even honest parties will meet suspicion from the dragon.
  
  Also, to defeat the dragon: first produce an accurate sketch of the dragon's armour. Take it to a sage to identify which mastersmith's handiwork it is. Track down the (presumably) long ruined dwarven kingdom. Fight through it to find the secret plans, and identify the weaknesses deliberately installed by the dwarves as a safeguard against draconic aggression.
• It was deep, deep, dark, such as only goblins that have taken to living in the heart of the mountain can see through... 🧵 This resonates with the idea of the mythic underworld. It's less about this race can see in the dark and this one can't, but that deep darkness is a thing you become part of, and then it becomes part of you - that creatures are changed by becoming denizens of the underworld.
• Easy quirk for a flavourful magic item: inversion of the norm... @periaptgames A cloak that hides you from perceptive creatures and points you out to others. A resizable rowboat that is weightless at full size, and incredibly heavy when shrunk to pocket-sized. A hammer that smashes through steel and granite but is worthless against glass. A lantern that makes bright light and pitch darkness alike into shadowy gloom.
  
  An oil that opens locks really, really loudly. A box that turns nutritious food into potable water. Paired rings that make one wearer float and doubles gravity for the other. An animal statuette that comes alive and panics.
• Studying a book of magic in #NineTalesOfRaffalon by Matt Hughes: 🧵 "The relationship between tome and reader was far more complex, combining elements of the prickly way confreres of the same profession might work together, along with the pupil/mentor axis, overlaid by the complex sentiments longtime players of a subtle and demanding game gradually developed toward each other. It was a mix of collegiality, rivalry, testiness, and the ancient human practice of upmanship."
• Conundrums in the dungeon: 🧵 Should the weaver either heave the lever to cleave the reaver, or believe the diva, that deceiver, and beaver to retrieve her - or neither: cool the fever, have a breather?
  
  The bragger swaggers: he nabbed the hag, grabbed the bag. But you could be laggard, sneak up on the blaggard, draw the jagged dagger and stab, make him stagger, grab the swag. Is it worth the hazard?
  
  Hsst! Basilisk - 'twixt obelisk and bricks. Nix on your tricks! or you'll be transfixed, sent across the Styx. Now, be brisk: with the picks, whisk onto the disk and we'll take a risk, lunatics: frisk its sticks, nick the chicks - quick!
• In 1782 in a gold mine in Transylvania people found a strange silvery metal. 🧵 Rarer than platinum, it was dubbed "paradoxical gold".
  
  Now 988 crystals of this metal are arranged in towers, buried a mile beneath a mountain, bound in copper and ancient lead from a 2,000 year old shipwreck. Protected by an immense metallic octagon they sit, colder than the space between stars, colder than anything else in the universe.
  
  A Call of Cthulu scenario? No, a physics experiment
• World-building idea: The sun is a ball of literal fire, burning heavenly coals. 🧵 Over the course of the month it burns more and more dimly before guttering out. Then, moon dragons bring more coals and ignite it again.
  
  From time to time coals, still burning, tumble to the ground. They start forest fires and burn cities. They also contain strange eggs that birth into fantastic or horrifying creatures, and veins of super hard gold that never fully cool.
• Thoughts about my cheese caves module: 🧵 The cheese is very precious: sold to nobility for gustatory delight; can induce prophetic visions. Nighttime caretakers have gone missing. The PCs are hired to sit with the cheese at night and figure out what's going on. All this is complicated by the owner being very suspicious of her workers (the cheese is worth a lot more than their wages) and in conflict with the union, who refuse to work until this is resolved.
  
  The simple solution: a family of mimics is in the caves - some of the big wheels have been devoured and replaced by mimics. But there's more going on that confuses the issue and offers other opportunities.
  
  A few months back: The owner's husband realized that the door in the lower level was a dwarven ruin and went questing for the key. He found it but was infected by deadly spores and died just outside the door on his return. That level is now full of deadly mushrooms and sealed off.
  
  oh, also there's some carrion crawlers that live stuck at the bottom of a well, fat and contented on the cheese scraps that get dropped to them. The workers know there's something down there, but they refer to them as "cave puppies" and would be horrified to know what they're really feeding.
  
  Finally, the dwarven ruin is haunted by an ancient ghost; it entrances people to come open the door to the ruin.
  
  Red herrings: Are the disappearances the fungus? The ghost? Is the ghost that of the owner's husband?
  
  If the party want to loot the dwarven tomb they will need to do it while convincing the owner they are still working on the disappearances and get the treasure out past the shakedowns designed to prevent cheese theft by employees.

Other thoughts

• Continuing my unplanned Vorkosigan re-read: 🧵

  "The Warrior's Apprentice" and "Mountains of Morning", the two first books about Miles Vorkosigan, and establishing very different aspects of him. In the first we get his brilliance, his ability to inspire loyalty, his unstoppability - but also some of his greatest failures: all the deaths and lies spiral from his overconfidence and unwillingness to admit defeat. At the end he feels ashamed of the cheers of "Admiral Naismith", despite his successes.

  In "Mountains of Mourning" he is much less showy and impressive (despite some piercing insights into the people around him) but we see clearly his honour, his self-sacrifice. This short novella (which won a Hugo and a Nebula) is key to who Miles is, and it's his personal commitment here to a dead child that ultimately turns out to be so important many books later.

  Continuing the Vorkosigan reread: In "The Vor Game" Miles' genius is blended with more awareness of the stakes - more humility - and I find him much more appealing. The part where he and Gregor are playing off each other to manipulate the crazy mercenary had me jumping up and down with excitement! So good 😁

  Pretty much everything Miles achieves through this book is through him talking and putting himself at risk, and it's thrilling throughout.

  Plus there's this moment 💛

• I recently finished reading "The Deed of Paksenarrion", a fantasy trilogy by Elizabeth Moon published in 1988. 🧵 It's a perfectly fine fantasy yarn, filled with tropes but still engaging and a satisfying read. Here's some things I found noteworthy:
  
  The first book takes place not in an adventuring party, but with a mercenary company, and is very low-fantasy. The author's bio mentions her sevice in US Marines, and I think there is versimilitude to the heroine's time as an ordinary foot soldier.
  
  There's a serious attempt to take the kind of religious "magic" of #dnd (clerics, paladins, etc.) and think it through with a religion that makes sense.
  
  The later parts of the trilogy deal convincingly with disability and depression.
  
  Overall, a solid fantasy adventure that I found quite moving in its conclusion.

Here are some rules.

“The most desirable quality in a soldier is constancy in the support of fatigue; valor is only secondary.” ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Fatigue

Every character has a Fatigue penalty. It starts at 0 and can increase to -3. If your fatigue would increase beyond -3, you fall unconscious for 1d6 turns.

Some exceptional characters can be tougher, by having one or even two extra “0” fatigue box to tick off before they start feeling the effects.

Effects of fatigue

Fatigue affects sustained concentration and alertness when no immediate danger threatens – for example, studying complex tomes, watching for minute signs of danger, reflexes. It’s easy to drift off and lose the thread. Any rolls that come under those categories receive the fatigue penalty, and some activities may require a roll that otherwise wouldn’t. For example, if your fatigue is severe (-3) you may need to save to stay awake if you are waiting with nothing to do.

Once danger arrives adrenaline kicks in and drives away tiredness. Apply the penalty to the initiative roll, if you use individual initiative, but not to anything else in combat.

Causes of fatigue

When exploring a dungeon we roll for fatigue every time we make a wandering monster check (normally every 2 turns). I use the encounter stew system by Arnold K, so I just toss these extra dice into the pot along with dice for torches and spell durations. I colour code my dice to tell them apart.

We roll:

One white encumbrance d6, plus 1 die for each character who is overburdened, and 1 die for each character wearing heavy armour. For every 1 rolled a character takes -1 fatigue. Assign each fatigue to a different character if possible, and assign first to the most encumbered characters.

Persistent uncomfortable or difficult conditions (such as stifling heat, wading through deep water, deafening racket) add additional encumbrance d6s to the pool.

One white sentry d4 for every character on sentry (more on this below). For every 1 rolled a character on sentry takes -1 fatigue. Assign each fatigue to a different character if possible. If the party are on full alert skip this roll and just assign -1 fatigue to a character.

Outside dungeon exploration, characters also sustain fatigue when keeping watch through the night and when doing a forced march to travel further than is normally possible in a day.

Sentry duty

In general, when GMing I provide description and the players describe what they do, and through this the players can discover treasure, monsters, traps, etc.

However, what if the clues to these things are subtle? A depression in the ground due to a pit trap, a crack in a corridor wall that hints of a secret passage beyond, ichor dripping from the fangs of a giant spider lurking above.

When the players are exploring a dangerous environment one or more characters are on sentry. When the GM needs to know if the characters have spotted something subtle, all sentries roll. A successful roll reveals those subtle clues but it is still up to the players to use normal interaction to see what these clues mean.

If four or more characters are on sentry then the party is at full alert and they automatically notice these clues without need for a roll.

Recovering

Characters recover 1 fatigue when they get a night’s sleep, or 2 fatigue if they have a fire (implying also cooked food) or are sleeping in a proper bed in a house.

Commentary

Being vigilant (via the sentry roll or keeping watch through the night), pushing your character’s endurance (by burdening yourself or doing a forced march) has a cost in fatigue. This both gives us interesting choices (how dangerous do we think this is? Who do we need to prioritize keeping well-rested?) and also makes the characters more human.

The difficulty of recovering fatigue while sleeping rough and keeping watch makes the comforts of civilization and safety more palpable.

Let’s take a look at what’s changed.

All art in this post is from Fever Swamp, and is copyright Luke Gearing & Andrew Walter.

New art

Scumboggles slink through the waters. The only thing they love more than manflesh is cheese.

There are 27 new pieces of artwork, most in vibrant colour using a greeny-yellow palette. These add a lot: nearly every monster gets a full page colour illustration, but there are also quick portraits of important NPCs in the village of Clink, as well as a few pieces depicting some adventurers exploring the swamp. Nice!

The House of Banish

There is a new dungeon: the House of Banish. I like the flavour – a decaying manor house, unsuited to the clime, now rotting into the swamp, a metaphor for the owners: depraved rich colonialist types who destroyed themselves with dark magic.

“The swamp has invaded the interior of this home and tarnished the generational wealth ported here at such great expense. Paintings swell in their frames, and books return to the earth.”

The dungeon ties into the wider swamp in some neat ways: a magic item that makes you invisible to one of the swamp monsters; a quest hook that sends you after the Ur-corpse. However, it would need some work to run: The house itself has no map, only the caves beneath, and those are a vertical affair rendered from the side; the practicalities of traversing these steep tunnels are left vague.

Swamp witches

The swamp-witches have gone from generic wandering monsters to six distinct witches bursting with delicious and gruesome flavour.

“The Toad-Mother did not flee here – she chose her mantle and her batrachian kin. Her body swells with toad-spawn, and gobs of it escape her mouth when she speaks. Her approach is preceded by the cessation of croaking – none of her family dare speak in her presence.”

They each have brilliant snippets of backstory and motivation. However, I feel like we are missing some kind of grim portents or table of random faction moves. That would really help the GM to make the witches shine.

The People

The People, those native to the swamp, are improved in 2E. A misgiving I had with the original was the use of rascist stereotypes for the locals. As far as I can tell (as a white British man) this is better handled in the new edition, and it goes hand-in-hand with better content for a game.

Shamanic summoning

The previous “tribe” table presented traits that played into stereotypes of uncontacted people (e.g. pygmies, cannibals) and didn’t give any insight into their internal lives – they were inscrutable and monstrous. Here’s one entry from the 1E table: “All bear open wounds, deliberately inflicted and left to fester in the swamp’s humid air”. The swamp itself was described thus: “no one in their right mind would ever visit”.

Now, the swamp is instead “inhospitable to those not born beneath the spirit-heavy canopies”. The six new “houses” organizing the People’s society are more humanising and better for gaming. They provide motivations, needs and wants. They’re still deeply weird; the difference is that the weirdness is compatible with them being real people that the PCs can gain some understanding of.

Here are snippets from three of the Houses:

“Clad in wood-fibre cloaks, the Tree-Wearing House can petition spirits for easy passage through the swamp…”

“They are happy to trade with outsiders for weapons, and many have steel weapons. Their warriors covet the guns of Nilfenberg.”

“They have seen the horror of Nilfenbergian interest, and the disturbances to their homes. They paint themselves white in recognition of their coming death… Eventually they will burn Clink.”

There are still plenty of creatures filling the monstrous/twisted human role (scumboggles, candlethieves), but the humans with an actual society are now presented as fully human, rather than subhuman.

The Encounters

The text of the encounters and dungeon entries is largely unchanged – but where it has been punched up the change is really worth having. An example: for the scumboggle hive we get this delightful new detail:

“Within their hive, suspended using vines, a single cow, hand-fed the rich vegetation of the swamp. If recovered, the cow’s cheese is of excellent quality – the cow is worth 350gp.”

Emaciated humanoid

The swamp-witch fused with a tree also gets great new details, but my favourite addition is to the ruined settlement. Previously this was just a place to roll to find loot while risking wanderers. Interaction was either abstracted away or entirely the GM’s to improvise. Now we get just enough to run exploration of these abandoned houses. Contrast the old:

“A Shaman-knife, effective against spirits.”

with the new:

“Hidden in the rafters but betrayed by dangling rope, a varnished box hides a long knife of bone, the handle crocodile-belly leather. Property of the shamans, it can strike the intangible. If worn openly in the presence of the People and not returned, -2 to all Reaction rolls.”

Quality of life

There are some great practical changes that make the GM’s life easier:

• Four new player-facing maps: a simple sketch of the rivers, the same with a hex-overlay, a painting of the rivers and, my favourite, a sketch with illustrations of some monsters added, to give your players the fear.
• A really useful extra page and a half about navigation in the swamp, mapping and example boats (with simple but effective art).

“The choked watercourses of Fever Swamp are uncertain and obscure, changing over time in defiance of cartography.”

• Daily events (disease check, corpse pile movement, encounters) are consolidated at the beginning, instead of scattered in multiple places.
• All twelve diseases now have names (Would you rather have earworms or boglung?)
• The rumours have had a slight rewrite. One of them now points the party towards the locals to find diseases for cures, which is great, but I would have liked more of these hooks in the other rumours.
• Numbers appearing are included in the encounter table

Layout & design

Ur-Corpse ruins. 1E (top) vs 2E (bottom). Click to enlarge. Hexmap. 1E (top) vs 2E (bottom). Click to enlarge.

This is the one area where the new edition makes a misstep. The original’s design had a distinct voice and conveyed information stylishly. The new layout is much more “OSR standard” with less flair and a more predictable approach. Various tables use a poorly chosen serif font swimming in a sea of whitespace.

For an example, let’s consider the Ur-Corpse ruins, one of the mini-dungeons. In both editions we get the full map up front. However in 1E the key reproduces the relevant portion of the map next to each location.

I also loved the original’s choice to have checkboxes for monsters with a limited number appearing, reproducing portions of the hexmap within the hexmap key and many other thoughtful choices. The hexmap is more colourful and has better font choices in the original. Removing the watery background effect of 1E was almost certainly a good move, however.

Closing thoughts

There are a few other little changes – the hexes are now 6 miles instead of 18, there are minor rule tweaks to one of the PC classes and to the monsters, etc.

There are a handful of problems in the original that are not addressed here. The spirits are repeatedly emphasized as very important - the People have dedicated shamans whose job is to intercede with, summon, and banish the spirits. There are items to help you deal with them; a class about summoning them. But in practice, only one entry on the wandering monster table includes spirits, and they only show up in a couple of keyed locations. If I ran this I would want to hugely bump up the spirit count - perhaps at night?

As other reviewers have complained, the monastery lacks a map, and without it the location would be quite hard to run. This wasn’t adressed in the new edition.

Fever Swamp was already a brilliant module and the new content and the judicious application of juicy detail where it was needed makes this still better. I would love to see a third edition that had more of the original’s attention to usability through layout, but this is still perfectly functional.

You can purchase Fever Swamp at DriveThruRPG.

Emerging from the top of its head is a slender human arm, which it daintily uses to reach into its own mouth and bring out handfuls of silver sand. It throws these into the eyes of prey (save to dodge). If afflicted, a creature gets one round of yawning and staggering action before succumbing to deep sleep.

Stats

HD 2, HP 6, AC 14, Atk throw sand (see below) or bite 1d6, Move 60’, Morale 6

Behaviour

Roll 1d4-1 to determine how many slumbering or dead creatures currently hang from the ceiling (you can roll on your wandering monster table to determine their nature). If it has at least 2 in the larder it will avoid conflict.

Once all prey are asleep it vomits up sticky goo onto their limbs and then drags them up a wall and affixes them to the ceiling, out of the reach of scavengers. It feeds on their spirit as they dream and, when they die of thirst, devours their flesh. They take 1 point of Wisdom damage for every day they sleep.

Waking sleepers

Sleepers can only be awakened by removing every trace of sand from their eyes; this requires 1 pint of water per sleeper. Effects of waking:

• When they first awaken they are groggy and confused for one turn.
• They have vague memories of terrifying nightmares (disadvantage on save vs fear and morale for the next week).
• Twice the player can declare that they remember a nightmare fragment that is relevant to the current situation. The GM describes a terrifying way in which they died in their dream in this exact situation. 50% chance (GM rolls secretly) that this reveals true information; otherwise it is misleading.

Treasure

Each creature in the larder has treasure as per their own stats. Each has a 50% chance of being alive.

As the party travels they keep their eyes open for a good place to stop and make camp. If the party has sufficient equipment for the current weather they always find something adequate.

For example, on a dry summer’s evening all they need are cloaks to wrap around themselves. Or even a cold snowy night in winter: if they have an insulated tent and blankets we can assume they are fine.

However, if their equipment is inadequate, roll for campsite. Add 1d4 to the pool for each of these problems (and perhaps others I didn’t think of):

If any 1s are rolled they have not found adequate shelter. The party then has three choices:

1. Sleep badly – at a minimum, each member of the party takes 1 fatigue. However, the GM will also apply effects as dictated by the fiction. e.g. if it is freezing you may be in danger of death.
2. Go to the old castle – the GM will offer you shelter that the characters previously avoided due to its risky nature: an old ruin with a skull on a spike, a dark hole in the ground, an ordinary house when you are trying to pass incognito.
3. Push on – you can travel on for another stage and then roll for a new campsite (incurring the usual penalties for a forced march - in my system, extra fatigue).

Commentary

So obviously many problems you might run into are resolved by just having a good quality tent. Still, this can lead to interesting situations if the party’s equipment is damaged or stolen; if they have to skip town without adequate preparation; if they are just flat broke, or if their greed compels them to leave the tent behind in order to carry more loot. For this to have impact, tents should be bulky - take up several slots.

You’ve been sent to investigate the deep-space research station, the Lachesis. The station has been reporting system malfunctions and the crew have gone radio silent. It’s up to you to retrieve the valuable research stored there.

This blog post has a content warning for implied torture and implied execution. The module itself has other content warnings, but I will not touch on any of that material here.

There are no spoilers for CONT/EXT in this post.

As written, the players in CONT/EXT are balancing retrieving very valuable data discs against their own lives. However, in a one-shot I did not think that credits would be sufficient incentive for the characters to go into extremely dangerous environments. “Why not just leave?”

Ric writes in his blog post “The Shiftless Horror of Mothership” about the horror of institutions: that they are inevitable, utilitarian and implacable. So combining what I know about CONT/EXT with Charles Stross’ The Laundry Files, I present a table of alternative “rewards” for CONT/EXT:

OVERSIGHT

At end of session, roll Xd10 and take the highest result to see how CONT/EXT OVERSIGHT rewards you, where X is the number of gold laser discs recovered. If you have recovered none, roll d6.

Agendas

With the updated OVERSIGHT system we can give the agendas real bite. Who can blame you for the betraying your friends when even completing the mission well is no guarantor of success?

You can either roll d6, in which everyone has a secret objective; or roll d10 for a little less infighting.

(An expansion of this Mastodon post)

One or two meetings of this kind had taken place, without affording Elinor any chance of engaging Lucy in private, when Sir John called at the cottage one morning, to beg, in the name of charity, that they would all dine with Lady Middleton that day, as he was obliged to GM at a convention in Exeter, and she would otherwise be quite alone, except her mother and the two Miss Steeles.

The young ladies went, and Lady Middleton was happily preserved from the frightful solitude which had threatened her. After the removal of the tea-things the gaming-table was then placed.

Poor little Annamaria’s space marines

“I am glad,” said Lady Middleton to Lucy, “you are not going to finish painting poor little Annamaria’s space marines this evening; for I am sure it must hurt your eyes to work fine detail by candlelight. And we will make the dear little love some amends for her disappointment to-morrow, and then I hope she will not much mind it.”

This hint was enough, Lucy recollected herself instantly and replied, “Indeed you are very much mistaken, Lady Middleton; I am only waiting to know whether you can make your party without my knowledge of the grappling rules, or I should have been at my painting already. I would not disappoint the little angel for all the world: and if you want me in the game now, I am resolved to finish the company after supper.”

“You are very good, I hope it won’t hurt your eyes—will you ring the bell for some working candles? My poor little girl would be sadly disappointed, I know, if the company was not finished tomorrow, for though I told her it certainly would not, I am sure she depends upon having it done.”

Lucy directly drew her work table near her and reseated herself with an alacrity and cheerfulness which seemed to infer that she could taste no greater delight than in painting 43 figures for a spoilt child.

Lady Middleton proposed Tomb of Horrors

Lady Middleton proposed Tomb of Horrors to the others, with herself as master of dungeons. No one made any objection but Marianne, who with her usual inattention to the forms of general civility, exclaimed, “Your Ladyship will have the goodness to excuse me—you know I detest dungeon crawls. I shall go work on Thousand Year Vampire; I have not touched it since your new copy arrived.” And without farther ceremony, she turned away and walked to the writing desk.

Lady Middleton looked as if she thanked heaven that she had never made so rude a speech.

“Marianne can never keep long from solo journalling you know, ma’am,” said Elinor, endeavouring to smooth away the offence; “and I do not much wonder at it in this instance; for you have the very best games here.”

The remaining players were now to roll their characters.

If I should happen to fail my death save early

“Perhaps,” continued Elinor, “if I should happen to fail my death save early, I may be of some use to Miss Lucy Steele, in mixing her paints for her; and there is so much still to be done to the marine company, that it must be impossible I think for her labour singly, to finish it this evening. I should like the work exceedingly, if she would allow me a share in it.”

“Indeed I shall be very much obliged to you for your help,” cried Lucy, “for I find there is more to be done to it than I thought there was; and it would be a shocking thing to disappoint dear Annamaria after all.”

“Oh! that would be terrible, indeed,” said the elder Miss Steele. “Dear little soul, how I do love her!”

“You are very kind,” said Lady Middleton to Elinor; “and as you really like the work, perhaps you will be as well pleased not to roll a character until we reach a deeper level, or will you take your chance now?”

Elinor joyfully profited by the first of these proposals, and thus by a little of that address which Marianne could never condescend to practise, gained her own end, and pleased Lady Middleton at the same time. Lucy made room for her with ready attention, and the two fair rivals were thus seated side by side at the same table, and, with the utmost harmony, engaged in forwarding the same work. Marianne, wrapped up in her own solo RPG and her own thoughts, had by this time forgotten that any body was in the room besides herself and was talking to herself out loud, luckily so near them that Elinor now judged she might safely, under the shelter of that noise, introduce the interesting subject, without any risk of being heard at the gaming-table.

From Chapter 23 of Sense & Sensibility, by Jane Austen

1. Cursed. Anytime it leaves your person dreadful luck befalls you, escalating day by day. Who or what do you think is responsible for the curse?
2. Blasphemous & illegal. Anyone found with it in their possession will be executed by the authorities. Why did you make it?
3. Hunted. It is known that a powerful and unscrupulous individual seeks it for their own; no one else dares own it. Which of their agents do you fear most?
4. Promise. You promised to give it to someone and you utterly refuse to break that oath. Who is it promised to and why does your oath matter so much?

It is worth 1d10 x 100 silver.

Alternative awkward items (d6)

1. Gilded mirror
2. Hand bell with very recognisable sound
3. Twenty foot rope of pearls
4. Gorgeous stallion
5. Velvet brocade wedding dress with long train
6. Cranky and talkative thumb-sized imp in a cage

Notes

This was part of my work on Fierce & Futile Backgrounds but it didn’t fit well there. So rather than kill my darling I’ve instead sent it to live in a nice farm upstate (this blog).

What other phenomenon from our world could be reimagined as a disease in our RPGs? This was originally a thread on Mastodon.

Knots

Ropes, hair, chain can contract a tendency to tie themselves in ever more complex knots when left alone. In the advanced stage, all such materials wriggle free of the backpack and start entangling everything nearby.

Lies

In addition to mundane problems of rot & mildew, the written word can contract virulent falsehoods that spread through a library.

The virus understands humans poorly, and mostly changes random details. Its only consistent effect: clumsily encourage the reader to consume fragments of the book, hinting this will grant transcendent power. Instead, it causes fever, hallucinations, and eventually vomiting up blank (infected) tomes.

Locks

Infected doors slowly grow locks, typically baroque in decoration. No key grows. If the door is opened the door will gradually shut and lock itself again.

The disease spread from door to door on your hands; it can only survive more than 24 hours on metal or wood (e.g. lockpicks).

Creatures that regularly feed it by pouring blood into the keyhole can win the door’s affection. It will then open for them, unless frightened.

These inch wide crustaceans cling to damp stonework or submerged surfaces. If a creature brushes against them or steps on them they flip round and latch on. Their shells are hard as granite. They cling on very tightly and can only be chiselled off with sustained effort and tools (at least a dagger and something to use as a hammer).

Every turn spent in a barnacle-choked environment burdens you with enough barnacles to fill an inventory slot. It takes a full hour to remove them, or half that with perfect tools. Once removed they can be cooked to make a nourishing chowder that replaces a ration.

Monsters that have spent several months in the environment become fully encrusted, slowing them dramatically, but giving them improved armour.

(This is an expanded version of a post I made on Mastodon)

Waders

Shoebill stork, manipulated; used under licence from flickr

Malacular waders are 4 foot high birds with oily green feathers and an evil grin. They wade slowly round barnacle-choked environments emitting piercing shrieks that can be heard from some distance away.

Their shrieks make the barnacles release their hold; the wader then gobbles them up. They will fearlessly eat off encrusted creatures. If threatened, they increase their volume, and can also deal a vicious bite with their beak.

Their cries mimic a forgotten name, said to be that of a demon of broken oaths, a spirit of unbinding, unlocking, and revealing of dark and suppressed secrets. As well as ungluing the barnacles, their cry can open locks, buckles, and knots, loosen false teeth, unbind seams in clothing, and even unravel minds.

Whenever the wader shrieks within 30 feet, each creature must save vs taking 1 “unlocking damage” (UD). If the wader is angered or within reach the save is harder. More distant shrieks (audible within a few minutes walk) require a save once per turn.

Effects of “unlocking damage”

• -UD penalty (max -6) to actions due to clothing, buckles, etc. falling off and needing to be held in place.
• Additionally, if you reach for a specific bit of gear, roll UD-in-6 chance it has fallen off without you noticing.
• If you flee, when you catch your breath roll UD-in-6 for each item slot to see if it is gone.
• At 3 UD, all barnacles fall off.
• At 6 UD, all equipment not held and all clothing falls off.
• For each point of UD beyond 6, minds start to break down: If there are any suppressed secrets they surface. Otherwise, roll UDin20 each round to take any actions as opposed to having a breakdown - raving, collapsing, crying.

Unattended doors, chests etc. have a 1-in-6 chance of unlocking every time the wader shrieks. Consider adjusting this to 1-in-10 or 1-in-20 for very hard locks.

I'm very late to the party, but I just discovered Spinetooth Oasis, a pay-what-you-want B/X compatible adventure by @EvlynMoreau. And it's just fizzing with great, weird, gameable ideas. Here's a few in no particular order:

There's these creepy, armless rat/kangaroo scavengers all over the place and they have a perfect, horrible detail: "They only eat skin, and don't care if it's from the living or the dead."

Dwelling in the purple long grass are large violet slugs that emit bursts of lightning. At night blue lightning strobes amongst the lavender stalks as camouflaged purple weaver halflings crawl in pursuit of their prey.

"The purple weavers like to eat these slugs with lemon and rosemary and are eager to trade weaved goods or cactus flowers for these products."

But again, there are details that elevate them:

The Sisters of Filth (bandits #1) maintain religious taboos against ever bathing. Foes in melee exposed to their stink must save vs being debilitated by wretching and watering eyes.

The other bandit faction is comprised of "Uncle Reebo", who is supernaturally charming and obsessed with couture, and his devoted (magically charmed) following of humanoids who dress in frock coats, powdered wigs, and fine stockings.

Each follower gets great details. I especially like "Kovok Brogan Bloodeye Hobgoblin butler (HD 1+2, armed with the good cutlery, as a pair of short swords, ML 8)".

The pilgrims are adorned with lots of colorful scarves and saris and such, they travel with big flightless birds, and they're innocent of the dangers around them - just here to worship the Waters of the Sun, get drunk, have sex, and party.

But those parties are charged with ritual magic: they can swap appearances and genders with each other, or gorge themselves and then subsist on sunlight for weeks, and more.

It's not perfect. I think I would need to prep countdown clocks or fronts or something for each faction before starting. I would also like to couple the factions a bit more tightly and do a bit more to bring the PCs into the conflict.

Also I'd need to do a bit of work to run the map as point crawl or something.

But well worth checking out! https:// evlyn.itch.io/spinetooth-oasis

Breakers: World of Dungeons is a RPG by John Harper that pits modern-day wisecracking characters, armed with C4 and Hazmat suits and plenty of attitude, against classic fantasy dungeons. A dimensional rift opens, someone picks up the batphone, and the heroes for hire descend into a mash up of the local amusement arcade and the Dungeons of Morgoth. Or the Sydney Opera house fused with a dragon’s lair. Or anything else! That’s part of the joy of Breakers: The GM can just pick a real-world location well-known to their playgroup, grab a one page dungeon and away you go.

Despite this, for our second session, I decided to write my own adventure from scratch, and we enjoyed it enough that I’ve written it up here for you to use as well. May I present to you Fire Swamp of the Whale:

The full scale PDF is here.

It’s a mash-up of London’s Natural History Museum (a gorgeous building, if you’ve never seen it) and the eponymous fire swamp. The whale is the new full blue whale skeleton that hangs in the entrance hall, brought to unlife by necromantic power to roam the swamp and eat lizardmen.

Let me know what you think!

Baba Yetu (Swahili)

Mado Kara Mieru (Japanese)

Dao Zai Fan Ye (Mandarin)

Se É Pra Vir Que Venha (Portuguese)

Rassemblons-Nous (French)

Lux Aeterna (Latin)

Caoineadh (Irish Gaelic)

Best of the best

• Earthsea, by Ursula LeGuin
• The Lord of the Rings, by JRR Tolkien
• Mistborn†, by Brandon Sanderson
• The Curse of Chalion, by Lois McMaster Bujold
• Lankhmar, by Fritz Leiber
• Lirael and Abhorsen† by Garth Nix

Really good

• Rivers of London†, by Ben Aaronovitch
• Dresden Files†, by Jim Butcher
• Dark Sun Rising†, by Celia Friedman
• The Algebraist, by Iain M Banks
• Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville
• The Martian, by Andy Weir
• Lyonesse†, by Jack Vance
• The Queen's Thief†, by Megan Whalen Turner
• Thud!, by Terry Pratchett
• The Atrocity Archives, by Charles Stross

• Your train terminates unexpectedly at Crewe. You get another train, which promises to get to your destination, but after an hour travelling through the dark you arrive back in Crewe again. The next train does the same, and the one after. There are no exits from the station, just more platforms, more trains glistening wetly in the rain.
• The train stops in the tunnel and the lights go off. This happens every day, and every day, as you sit in the darkness, you can hear… scraping sounds on the roof of the train. Chitterings. Once, something banged into the window right behind you, and you heard a feral cry. You pretended not to notice. You all pretend not to notice.

• The train lurches through stations without stopping, and for a moment your eyes meet the horrified stare of an auburn-haired woman on a rural platform before she vanishes behind you. In the wake of the train, the fields burn blackly, scenery consumed even as you lay eyes on it. Your fellow passengers make genteel conversation; they chuckle about the weather.
• The conductor's announcements are coming more frequently, but they remain tantalizingly beyond comprehension. The stations he lists – surely they do not appear on any map that you have seen. There is increasing urgency in his tone, a desperate warning he is trying to communicate, or perhaps he is pleading for your help. Yet you find yourself unable to care, you slump against the window glass and dream uneasy dreams.
• “East Midlands apologises for the delay” says the conductor, eyes glinting behind a false smile. He passes down the carriage handing out the day's rations. “East Midlands apologises for the delay” his voice repeats mechanically. The gaunt carriage-folk huddle away from him and grumble in whispers to one another. You remain silent, faithful, hopeful: One day, you know, you will Make Your Connection In Birmingham.
• You shiver in the air conditioning. Outside the sun shines brightly; the window is cold, and your breath condenses into ice on its surface. Trembling, you wander the carriage, and scrape at the windows, the doors. They are all smooth, without purchase for your numb fingers. You fall to the ground shivering. The other passengers tut at you and put more ice in their drinks.
• The last train is leaving. The last that will ever leave. You run along the platform and every carriage is a writhing mass of humanity, packed impossibly densely. Limbs trail from between closed doors twitching. Your lungs burn. You run faster down the platform, past full carriage after full carriage. Bulging eyes stare at you from faces pressed grotesquely against the glass. There is no end to the train. You run on.

The Old School Renaissance, or OSR for short, is about playing and re-interpreting the original editions of Dungeons & Dragons which were released in the 70s and 80s. I have become very interested in OSR D&D in the last few months, and I am now running a campaign with some friends. I want to write about our game here on my blog. However, not everyone is familiar with this kind of game - this has certainly all been new to me in the last few months. So in this post I’ll sketch out the nature of the game and in future posts I’ll go into more detail.

First of all, I would like to thank Eero Tuovinen for his writing on this topic, and in answering the questions I posed to him.

There are many different views on what OSR means. What follows is just a description of the kind of game that I mean when I say “OSR”.

The aim

Eero gives this great summary of the aim of the kind of game I’m talking about:

Our aim is “tackling a compelling fantasy world, recognizing opportunity for adventure, identifying challenges involved, and then figuring out how these challenges may be resolved. The payoff is the satisfaction of success or the bitter pathos of defeat brought about by the combination of clever decision-making and resolving the fictional events with flair. It’s a real dynamic process in the sense that nobody’s fudging, nobody’s planning the outcome, everything’s happening as just as real an interaction as in any boardgame, except that we have an infinite variety of moves available in all their subtle nuances thanks to the game being set in a shared imagined space instead of on a gameboard.”[1]

The Shadow Lord. Copyright BlissInfinite (Paul Fini). Used with permission (see below!)

The game is focused on giving the players real challenges that will tax their wits, and with real in-game consequences for success and failure. Every choice matters. There is no rail-roading, and the referee (the lingo for GM in this kind of game) does not protect the players from the consequences of their decisions.

In particular, character death is a very likely outcome of nearly any situation that is a focus of gameplay. This kind of D&D is famous for how hard it is to progress beyond level 1. But that difficulty is a very real part of the fun - learning how to keep your character from dying, knowing that the stakes are high when you make decisions, and of course being forewarned that death is quite likely, all contribute to the fun.

Of course, losing is not necessarily fun. But the “bitter pathos of defeat” is balanced by the “satisfaction of success” - you need both to bring this kind of fun.

The flipside to all this challenge-focused play is that this is not an RPG that aims to tell stories. There are other games we could turn to for that, and indeed there are even other interpretations of D&D that would give you that. Here, any stories that emerge from the roleplaying are secondary concerns: The primary one is that fictionally rooted challenge.

Other characteristics

Some other things that are characteristics of this kind of game:

Beholder. Found on this forum post copyright to that artist.

Rulings not rules

The game has the bare minimum of rules, rather than lots of tables and mechanics for every situation. Instead, on the fly, the group comes up with rulings as they encounter situations that need them. Eero describes it as an “organically developing ‘common law’ set of judgments and practices, the best of which become enshrined as rules”[2]. The way we come with rulings is a compromise between the question “What would happen in this (fictional, fantastical) situation?” and the concern of keeping the rules simple.

An emphasis on strategic concerns

Players are likely to discuss things like how many mules they need to carry the siege equipment, whether they can convince the goblins they have met to ally with them, the time it takes to travel across the country, and which route they should take in order to beat the assassins. Battle, massively emphasized in later editions, is generally quick and simple (and lethal!). The real choices happen in how you position yourself before the battle, and whether you can avoid it.

Choice over which challenges to engage with, rather than imposed balance

Rather than trying to balance every encounter so that it is the “right” level of difficulty, the referee seeks to follow fictional logic: If it makes sense for there to be a dragon then there will be a dragon. If it does not, then there will not. Whether it is fair on the players or make for a satisfying story does not come into it.

Despite the lack of deliberate balance, the game is not overwhelmingly hard because the players can choose whether or not to pursue the challenges they find. If they discover a lair in the ground with a dragon in, that does not mean the referee is pushing them to go in - the right decision may be to run as far away as they can.

Closing thoughts

We have been enjoying playing so far. I hope to write more soon. In the mean time, here are some links for further reading:

• Eero’s page on his group’s sandbox campaign from a few years ago gathers together lots of links on his thoughts on OSR D&D.
• Matthew Finch’s free Quick Primer for Old School Gaming is quite accessible, although I don’t agree with everything he says.
• tenfootpole.org has http://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/?page_id=844
• Some threads I’ve been involved in on Story Games on these topics:
  • Character motivation in “OSR” play
  • Writing up Eero’s primordial D&D
  • Questions about Tower of the Stargazer (Spoiler warning: If you’re in my D&D group don’t read this - we may yet return there!)

• A real crowbar of a guy, a speech-maker with a secret volcano base and a...
• Robot butler, secretly a werecat - utterly loyal and utterly incompetent. 
• A random collection of objects including a Klingon rhyming dictionary. To be clear, this wasn't exactly a character. The player in control just managed to achieve things by random happenstance involving these items.
• A swarm of cowboy bees with unbelievably perfect cooking skills.
• A cloud of purple rain with the ability to turn biscuits into dinosaurs and teleport when sneezing
• Me. No, I don't mean the author of the post. This player's character was just defined as "me" and anyone who tried to define them too closely ended up going insane at the recursive meta-definition.

Knytt

Icarus Needs

Daniel Goodbrey describes his work as "experiments in fiction", and his website has several examples of interactive comics. Icarus Needs occupies the blurry space between game and narrative, and it does it very stylishly, with lots of wit and surprises. The whole story wraps up in a few minutes of gameplay, but you are sure to be delighted by Icarus' bizarre adventures in the land of squirrels.

If you like this game, also well worth a look is A Duck Has An Adventure, by the same author, which leans even more towards comic than game, but is still unique and interesting fun.

Gods will be watching

Gods will be watching was created for Ludum Dare, an indie game jam, where it won multiple awards. Since then, the creators have gathered crowd funding to make a much bigger and better version. In the mean time, the original is still a brilliantly atmospheric and challenging game.

It is a survival game in which you, as the commander of your crash-landed team, must lead them to survive on a hostile planet until rescue arrives forty days later. Each decision is crucial, and get it wrong and your friends will die - of starvation, of the medusa virus, of cold, of animal attack, or just through the insanity that comes with crushing depression. It's a game that you play and play to try and figure out the right strategy - but a single game only takes a few minute, so give it a go now!

The game's art and music build beautifully, lending a depth to the theme. I am looking forward to seeing if they can expand on the minimalistic set-up of the original without compromising its qualities.

Castle of the Red Prince

C E J Pacian

Icarus Proudbottom Teaches Typing

Holy Wow Studios

This is our second game in this post to feature the name Icarus, but this hilarious spoof of "learn to type" games is no relation. Out of the five games on this list, this is certainly the one that made me laugh out loud the most. It is a surreal journey through the land of typing with the titular character, which quickly lets you see "behind the scenes" of the game to where the characters talk about a sinister conspiracy that is overtaking their world...

Cascade by Arrowfire

The Wizard by Manweri Used with permission

13th Century, Metz, France

Technological changes

Fort Bourtange Used with permission from here

The changing role of fortifications

Ohrid, Macedonia Used with permission from here

So when are forts useful?

Aged chemical keep My own modification of this photo

I think the post-apocalyptic setting helps here, because attacking forces will also be small, and while there may be extremely powerful weaponry around, it is not consistently available - many tribes will have access mostly to anti-personnel weaponry, and maybe one or two portable rocket launchers with limited ammunition. But the threat of a surviving tank, plane, or other high-explosive delivery mechanism gives the setting tension - one day the fort could fail them.

A final thought

Charlottesville Coal Tower

And then breaks free Used under licence from here.

South Entrance Used under licence from here.

I received the phrase "Aged chemical keep" from a random word generator and was instantly hooked on the aesthetic in my mind - gas masking wearing soldiers patrolling the roofs of ageing and dirty concrete structures. All the monsters in my mind are very grungy - the snake-worms are black, spined, writhing things that you never see properly. The world is very hazed and the light unnaturally green or yellow.

A diagram of the walk we were on whilst discussing these matters

The method

Deal the cards number-side up in a row, from left to right so that everyone can see them. Make sure everyone knows which way "up" is - which is the left end and the right end. Like this:

The Wild Blue

• Kale drew Essence from the lights to shatter the lock. Failure, so he sets the whole room on fire, shatters the whole cell door, and alerts all the guards
• Cyrus positions the three of them by the door while Naomi smashes their separate cell open. When the three marines pile in Cyrus takes them down in hand-to-hand while Snargle distracts them with scary Goblin hissing and crest and Kale Light spells them with a flash.
• Guard’s room: they get their things back, loot the guards. Yellow alert flashing and sirening. Plan: let’s get to the engines (opposite direction from the Owl) with the men disguised as marines.
• Natasha tries to use magic to knock out the alarms, but only succeeds in upgrading it to a red alert.
• They fast talk and then knock unconscious the engine room guard. Cyrus and Kale go in to the deafeningly loud engine room. The engine room is huge and the engine takes up most of the space. Lots of people rushing around, lots of steam.
• Kale reverses the primary valve whilst Cyrus runs for his life. Huge explosion that rocks the ship. Kale is presumed dead.
• It turns out that Natasha convinced Snargle to head for the ship. They make their way until they reach a bulkhead checkpoint. A captain on duty here, with three marines.
• Natasha tries to be imperious and ladylike but rolls badly and the captain realizes she shouldn’t be there - and that the marine with them is a sky goblin.
• Cyrus arrives, having torn off after Natasha, and aids Naomi in beating up the troops. Cyrus puts on the Captain’s uniform.
• Kale’s voice comes over the intercom but is cut off.
• The lights all switch off and Snargle scouts ahead in the dark, skittering along the ceiling pipes on his claws. The coast is clear.
• Just then, a hairless and scalded Kale drops out of an air vent in the ceiling onto Snargle. Before they leave he proceeds to McGuyver a trap in the checkpoint. The others run for their lives - wisely, as it blows up in his face, leaving him injured - bruises and concussion. Cyrus hauls him along.
• They make their way to the hanger, which is vast (think Star Wars). There is confusion, with marines and engineers rushing every which way in the dark - and The Owl is about to be jettisoned over the side.
• Snargle spreads wings he didn’t have before and glides over, dodging fire and doing aerial acrobatics.
• Meanwhile, the others commandeer (with Cyrus as an officer) a nearby fighter ship (it’s a tight squeeze).
• Snargle drops into the pilot’s seat just as it tips over the edge. He gets the engine going but is in a steep dive by the time they get going.
• The others are just out of the Hand of Sorrow when Commander Clayholt’s voice comes over the intercom. He knows its Cyrus, his old companion and now enemy. He tells them to give it up and for the pilot to turn the ship around. Cyrus leans on the throttle and doesn’t let the pilot do so.
• Hand of Sorrow opens fire on both the Owl and the fighter. The pilot ejects, then the engine on the fighter is holed and it goes into a tail spinning nosedive.
• Cyrus warps Natasha over to the Owl, which alarms Naomi, but there isn’t time to explain (“Just trust me”).
• Snargle, in some crazy piloting, and assisted by Natasha’s wind magic, brings the Owl into matched velocity and spin with the diving ship and harpoons it. But he fails the roll - I tell them I’ll explain how in a moment.
• Kale is vomiting all over the place - concussion plus weightlessness don’t agree. Cyrus throws him over the gap into the open cargo hold, and Naomi and he follow. Natasha’s wind magic makes all this possible.
• They cut loose from the fighter - but just then that failed roll comes back and the Owl’s engines die. They plummet into the corrosive lower depths.
• They slap Kale into a semblance of consciousness and he uses some parts he stole from the Hand of Sorrow to get the ship working again. He yells over the coms for Snargle to pull the two levers on the right. “What, the ones labelled ‘meatballs’ and ‘never pull’?” Those ones. The engine coughs back into life and they level out.
• But they are low on fuel, and the ship is crippled - they can’t gain altitude and only go slowly, and they have four hours before the corrosion gets through the protective coating.
• Natasha and Cyrus have a shouting match over the mess he’s made of things, and Cyrus makes out that this is ordinary living on the Owl.
• Meanwhile, Naomi patches Kale up, and they talk about Kale’s previous experiences of hijinks with the captain. Naomi hints at her past, but doesn’t reveal much.
• Kale gets to work fixing the engine properly. Snargle tries to figure out where they are from the charts.
• Naomi catches Cyrus taking a hit of some green-glowing drug. He explains that it renews his warpblood powers. He hints at his past in the military, where promotion to a shock troop officer status came through developing these powers. We learn more in a flashback where Clayholt tries to get Cyrus to complete the mission by shooting a slave woman in the head. Cyrus refuses.
• The engine is working again (although maybe not for long). They begin ascending cautiously. By now nearly 2 hours have passed.
• They find a dead sky squid entangled in the wreckage of a sleek pleasure ship. Natasha recognizes it as the ship she and Uriah went squid hunting in. She doesn’t say anything.
• Cyrus gets into the one working Miasma suit, and Kale patches up the dodgy one (brotherhood right there). They attach themselves to the ship and Kale jump magics them across (literally a big jump).
• On board Cyrus nearly gets flattened by a falling arm from the squid, but chops off a bit to take back to Snargle. He finds fuel that’s survived the miasma. Kale loots a safe. As an aside, it turns out that skyship fuel is essence-infused squid oil (or maybe sky whale oil, no one is sure).
• Just as they are getting ready to go back, the ship begins to fall from the squid’s grasp. Cyrus grabs Kale as he falls and then warps him (along with the fuel) back to the cargo hold. He then begins to inch his way up the rope, using his survivor trait.
• He gets there, but only just as the cable snaps and he heaves himself up by the fingertips into the tiny airlock.
• Natasha grabs the safe, opens it with the combination, and retrieves the wine and two glasses inside. She offers it to the captain as a peace offering, but he’s not buying.
• They rise further, up into the open blue, and head towards Haven. As they travel, they all gather round the mess table to share the wine (Snargle eats the tentacle) and we learn more about Snargle and his extended cousins. OOC we learn that Natasha knew that Uriah had a sky goblin crew mate before she met him. Maybe it was Snargle?
• They arrive in Haven and split up. Snargle and Kale to get more fuel, and the capacitor they need to get the ship really up to speed. Cyrus doesn’t tell the others where he’s going, but it’s off to a bar he knows to get information - he’s suspicious of his passengers. 
• Natasha and Naomi have a conversation in the cabin where Natasha admits she doesn’t know how to find Uriah, and she’s not even sure that he’ll still want to help them - but that the “project” is the priority, and if Uriah won’t help them, they just have to do it alone. Mariah Connolly is mentioned in connection with this as a women who help escaped slaves. They head out into Haven to find out what the rumour mill is saying - rather like Cyrus.
• Kale hits upon the idea that instead of buying parts, they could steal them from another ship in the big, poorly patrolled, sunbaked space of the landing docks. Snargle uses his new mimic tag to look very similar to a man they see near a ship, and spins him a line about being his long lost brother and then darts into a shadowed space behind the ship. The guy draws his gun and follows, whereupon Kale thumps him and they steal his clothes to make Snargle’s disguise complete.
• Snargle walks up the ramp and immediately finds a tough who recognises him as the captain and asks him about the job - is it still going ahead? Snargle tries to bluff his way through, but the guy draws a knife on him ands holds it to Snargle’s throat. 
• Snargle shifts shape to get the drop on him and escapes and Kale comes up from behind and knocks the guy unconscious.
• Meanwhile, Cyrus goes to a seedy quarter and to a pub called the Slaver’s Hand. It’s a pub affiliated with the anti-slavery movement, and Cyrus has friends there because of the way he left the military.
• He meets up with August, the barman to ask for rumours. August tells him about Lady Blackbird and the blood hunters who are after her. Cyrus puts two and two together and heads back to the ship.
• He almost bumps into Natasha and Naomi, who spot him in these streets. Naomi knows the Slaver’s Hand from when she escaped from slavery. They get a table and try and eavesdrop on rumours.
• Abel, a tall, muscled guy who was a pit-fighter with Naomi, comes over and says Hi. He’s now running a “mostly legitimate” business out of Haven. They ask him what’s going on, and he tells them about a plague in Nightport. He tells them that there are active slavers in disguise on Haven, and that they should come to a meeting with him where something is going to be done about it. They decline and start heading back to the ship.
• Back to Kale and Snargle. They search the ship and discover it’s an empty slaver ship (on Haven!). They find the parts they need in the engine room. Kale, in character so far, decides to randomly sabotage the ship. Just then they hear voices echoing over the ventilation. It’s the port authorities come to raid the ship!
• Snargle takes the capacitor and jumps into the rubbish chute to get away. Kale’s plan is to lock himself in a slave cell(!) and wait for the port authorities to free him. But Snargle gets stuck in the chute, and once Kale’s used his picks to lock himself in the cell’s electrification jumps to life. They are now both Trapped.
• Gunfire is heard as slavers on the ship (who Kale and Snargle hadn’t bumped into) fight off the port authorities. Then one of the slavers tries to take off without their captain, and the engine explodes. The ship is now on fire and smoke begins to pour into Kale’s cell.
• Cyrus gets back to the docks, finds The Owl empty, sees the slaver ship broken in half and billowing smoke, puts two and two together and rushes over.
• Meanwhile, Natasha and Naomi meet Abel in dark alleyway... with two bloodhunters in tow. Naomi tries to shoot them as they run at her with swords drawn, but misses. Not to worry, as she easily disarms and defeats them with a bare fists. She decides to kill them - she is serious about protecting Natasha. Abel pales and runs off. They don’t pursue - they need to get off Haven before more hunters find them
• They get back to The Owl and yell over the comms, “Where are you? We need to lift off now!” Cyrus says he’d like to know too. Kale explains, and the women acts as a comms relay.
• Cyrus grabs a miasma suit helmet off the wall and another one for Kale and then dives into the smoke. He makes his way to the cell that Kale said he was in, but stumbles on the way, cracking his mask. He takes a deep lungful of smoke and falls unconscious inches from Kale’s cell - and in fact, briefly touching it, getting an electric shock.
• Snargle’s chute melts and he manages to squirm away from the hot metal to fall into the inner workings on the ship. Which are on fire. He tries to make his body snake thin and squirm out of an exhaust port.
• Kale reaches through the bars while woozy from the smoke and grabs Cyrus’ gun to shoot out the lock. He then takes the working helmet - to put it on Cyrus! Brotherhood in action. He then crawls under the smoke, dragging Cyrus with him. They emerge into the fresh air and he falls unconscious.
• Cyrus revives in time to have snake-Snargle fall on his head. They help Kale back to the ship and as soon as they are on board lift off flying through the turbulence as the slaver ship finally explodes altogether.

Think Outside the Box

Chompston

"A game mixing elements of Pac-Man and Bomberman. Collect dots to score points. Drop bombs to defeat enemies. I made this to experiment with procedural level generation and musical gameplay, where all the sound effects are played in time and in key with the background soundtrack."

Screenshots for text-based games seem weird to me

Small Child In Woods

"In 1987, an anonymous team of computer scientists from the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic wrote a series of children's books based on the popular Choose Your Own Adventureseries. The books were hastily translated into English and a small number were exported to America, but the CIA, fearing a possible Soviet mind control scheme, confiscated them all before they could be sold."

Binary Boy

Demänová cave of freedom, "Emerald Lake"

Orb weaver spider Copyright Fir0002/Flagstaffotos.

1. Roll X dice
2. Count the number of successes (where a "success" is a roll over some number, generally fixed for the game system)
3. You win if the number of successes is greater than some target number

Rhythm Doctor

"A tough ONE-BUTTON rhythm game heavily inspired by Rhythm Heaven!...the defining feature of the series is the extremely strict margin of error...This means many people don’t even realise their rhythm is a little off until they play Rhythm Heaven. My game seeks to emulate that feeling"

Protobotic

 "Protobotic is a puzzle-shooter with unique geometric level designs. Advance your weaponized robot through a series of challenges to escape from a science facility. Each of the 18 levels offer new and exciting obstacles to overcome using your cognitive processor (and lots of explosions!)."

Proke

"Build a tower to the sky, using nothing but your own quick wits and linguistic fortitude."