Not Dead...Yet... Related to this very long ago post , but demonstrates why blogging is peak when its just half-scribbled notes to yourself. Maybe also related to skeleton as class . Basically, I was thinking of an OSR game where one wouldn't die, but maybe could become a shade when at 0 or negative HP. But what would a shade do? Then it hit me that perhaps the PC would then be made of a bunch of

Self-Portrait with Magic Scene by Pieter van Laer, 1635 Honestly, a really great painting- a meme before memes With love, and in the style of the original post over at Among Cats and Books . And yes, yes insert the usual caveats for personal preference ect. ect. And if you're curious about my other thoughts on magic, check out my Practical Magic series. Vancian Magic Is Based Because Magic Just Fu

A geomorph:10 X 10 for the win! Geomorphs Josh over at Rise Up Comus has been writing about dungeon nodes as “ dungeon patches ”, or small clusters of dungeon rooms that can be easily written and assembled to form a larger dungeon complex. Building on the idea of sewing patches into a larger dungeon level (/quilt) idea, I’d like to reintroduce the concept of the dungeon geomorph (see the one below

Purple is total generated; black is deaths (aka poor decision-making; get gud) 60% of the time, your PC's 100% alive! I appreciate this video from Mystic Arts because it does a good job of addressing the OSR, contrasting the playstyle with 5e, and outlining what the MCDM's Crows brings to the table. But one thing in the video bothered me is the claim that OSR systems are simply too deadly for long

Bosch from the Haywain Triptych I thought Jim Murphy's video about playing OD&D with the 3 "Little Brown Books" (or Delving Deeper or FMC) plus Strategic Review Vol 1 No 1 for the random dungeon generator was an interesting take a campaign idea. Not really for nostalgia, but simply to try and tackle D&D with only the resources folks might have had access to in 1975 a year after D&D's release. One

In my last post, I talk about looking at Sun Rot through the lens of OD&D and how recently I've been looking more into miniature-based skirmish games. But don't worry, I am still exploring the fever-dream isles of Cuccagna and running my own campaign in Miranda Elkin's Nightwick Abbey. This is the finished Folk Horrors I set by Ana Polanšćak. I am really excited about receiving the Folk Horrors II

While work has kept me from doing a lot of thinking on BX D&D, it hasn't kept me from exploring a latent hobby of mine very close to D&D, which is miniature wargaming. Below is not a review, but first impressions of a game whose energy grabbed me- Sun Rot. Miniatures from Gardens of Hecate's Folk Horrors set The center and right ones have some kitbashing applied Inq28: The Grotesque & Narrativesqu

DESIGNING (THIS) DUNGEON'S THEME In the last post, I talked about how easy it was to make a simple dungeon that could fit on 2 sheets of paper, but random stocking can only get you so far. Intentionality can really help a dungeon sing! That is what Designing Dungeons is all about: gluing fragments of ideas, vibes , and inspirations together just enough to get the dungeon to the table for play. Let

YOU DON'T NEED MUCH TO RUN A DUNGEON... In the Designing Dungeons document, we advocated for creation focused on play rather than publication. And this often doesn't require extensive notes and your dungeon doesn't have to spread over even a whole sheet of paper, but I would encourage something greater than just 5-10 rooms. Here , I used the Wizardry instruction book as a source of inspiration for

THE GOAL: MAKE MORE DUNGEONS The ENNIES have opened their voting today, and I am very pleased to be nominated with Josh, the author of His Majesty The Worm, in the category of "BEST ONLINE CONTENT" for Designing Dungeons! Designing Dungeons: Or, How to Kill a Party in 30 Rooms or Less was written with a singular goal in mind: to provide people with an easily accessible guide to building one of the

Update (2026 08 02): 🗓️ Commenter Centaurion has gone the extra mile and not only created a calendar , but has also included the dates and locations of each of the courts below! Absolutely check it out. Initially, I thought Dolmenwood was going to be a hazy, dream-like, amorphous setting for D&D with talking animals, but it turns out its a pretty extensive history overlaying a frictious polical la

Tower Dungeon by Tsutomu Nihei I was trying to get together some other new posts, but those are slow going so here is something that has been rattling around in my brain- how much recent media there is that is based in a dungeon. I listed a chunk of it in the Why Megadungeons post, but at the risk of repeating myself, I did want to separate it out into its own thing. I also tried to limit the medi

The Eye from The Baleful Gaze of Tabaldak's Geas my 2025 Appendix N entry This post by Gus L. over at All Dead Generations dovetails with a thought I had about a beholder kin which I used in my Appendix N Jam entry The Baleful Gaze of Tabaldak's Geas The Secret of Bone Hill Is The Spectator The Spectator is one monster I really like from L1:The Secret of Bone Hill . I imagine it's one of the first

Well, 6+1, but hey, you found an extra in the crypt... Work has been keeping me occupied, so posting has slowed down a bit, but here are some other great works that are in the blog-o-sphere that will fuel inspiration! Torches (6) is a collection of microblogging about cool posts I've come across. This feature is lit at irregular intervals [Dungeon] Fruits Are A Great Source of Nutrients [/Paralysi

Continuation of my series to edit a quick "Friday Night Dungeon" using Dolmenwood. Tomb of the Twin-Headed Hawk (Pg 4) Link to the Draft Document: Six Doors of the Forgotten Lord Key Detail: Room 07 is a door, so another roll on the heraldry table yielded "hawk" and for a room type I rolled "weird" so, I went with an animate door- a squawking two-headed baf relief. Its odd, will prompt discussion,

"We'll stop here and finish it next session, no problem!" In my current megadungeon home game, we have not played for almost 4 months now because of a mistake I made. It's a mistake that makes sense at the time, but has had disastrous consequences for play since then. The mistake: I ended a session in the dungeon right at the start of a big battle because we ran out of time. I should not have done

CONTEXT & GOALS I have a slight fascination with understanding how much creative mileage one can get out of the Basic D&D and a couple of sheets of graph paper. I hold this idea that a DM of minimal experience should be able to hammer out a dungeon with the creative energy of Monday bored-in-class and have a good time running it Friday night. But I might be putting too much faith in random stockin

A play report from a recent run in MARATHON. *** I've accepted a contract from CYAC in return for gear, but importantly, an introduction to TRAXUS, another corp trying to claw a return back from their investment in the failed Tau Ceti colony. IN ONE RUN [DIRE MARSH]: [_] Hack the terminal at Intersection, Complex, or Bio-Research [_] Acquire the Shipping Manifest from UESC Commander [_] Scan the n

I bought some tengu from Reaper the other day just because I've always enjoyed corvid-folk and thought they would be a good miniature to have on hand. I even had a half idea about a "cleric" for these crow folks . For quick use in BX D&D, I might just stat as a halfing. But the minatures really got me thinking about how much I like beast-folk over demi-humans in terms of class alternatives to huma

DECLARE SPELLS & RETREATS A funny little rule that always trips up MUs, neophyte and acolyte alike, is the need for spells (and retreats) to be declared before initiative is rolled. A runner-up, especially for players new to old-school games, is that MUs cannot move while casting a spell. This is a very easy step to overlook, but it becomes important when high damage, long-range spells like fireba