Tabletop Gaming Feeds

I thought it would be fun to do the Space Opera in the style of presentation of the Known World (later Mystara) in Isle of Dread: A highly derivate, briefly described setting that was easy to understand but vague to allow the DM freedom to make it their own. I didn't have time to come up with a map, but here are the large political entities.

United Federation of Worlds: A multiple species union of planet governments organized to promote peace, justice, and mutual prosperity. 

The Imperium: The largest revival to the Federation is a fascist and oppressive human-supremacist state. It boasts a powerful military, including a large army of clone soldiers. 

Kurgon Horde: Once a group of factionalized, spacefaring humanoid raiders, a new Emperor has emerged among them, claiming the mantle of the mythic First Emperor and forging the disparate tribes into a single nation. Once merely a menace to border settlements of the Federation and the Imperium, the Kurgons now pose a more significant threat.

Outlaw Expanse: A lawless region of spaces, kept so due to its function as a buffer zone, but also due to the bribes paid by its Syndicate crimelords. The region has a whole is a melting pot of various species, the some of the crime syndicates are single species in nature. Illegal commodities in other regions of the galaxy such as slaves, certain addictive drugs, and some cybernetics are available here.

Corporate Zone: Another border region whose only government is large, economic powers. The Corporates are constantly engaged in small-scale conflict and espionage as they jockey for power against one another. Their R&D facilities, with no fear of government regulation or oversight, turn out exotic weaponry and dubious consumer goods that sometimes find their way into other regions via the black market. There are rumored to be an unusual number of Precursor ruins in the Zone, some of which contain biotechnologies that the Corporations have been able to exploit.

 Taking Hunt Bowman—originally a "jungle hero of the year 50,000 AD"—and dropping him into the grimy, claustrophobic body-horror of Orbital Decay creates a "Primal vs. Industrial Horror" vibe.In this setting, we’ll move the action to Callisto, the outermost of the Galilean moons, where the "Decay" has turned high-tech colonies into rotting, bio-mechanical jungles.Campaign Title: The CallistoNeedleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

 Connecting Orbital 2100 (the "prequel" era) to HOSTILE (the "industrial" era) creates a powerful "Century of Progress" campaign. This bridge spans the transition from a Solar System-bound Cold War to the gritty, corporate-dominated interstellar expansion of the 2200s.Below is a campaign framework, timeline, and the necessary mechanical "bridge" stats to transition your players through theseNeedleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

By Oghan N'Thanda
Maria das Letra Publishing House
OSE
Levels 1-2

The Order of Archivists needs your help. Beneath the suffocating mist of the Grey Swamp lies the Mausoleum of Perpetual Fog, the supposed final resting place of Baron Aldric, “the Just.” Your mission: retrieve the sacred Book of Condolences and the Diadem of Sorrow to restore the family’s honor. The reward is high, and the danger, according to your employer, is merely the wear of time. But the truth is rotten. Baron Aldric was a murderer, and the tomb is a prison for his victim’s vengeful spirit. The Book is a grimoire of blood pacts, and the Diadem is the key to a permanent cover-up. Will you return with the gold, becoming an accomplice to a powerful lie? Or will you risk the Order’s wrath to free the true Baron, igniting a potential civil war in Old Pit?

This seven page adventure uses three pages to describe about seven (or eight?) rooms in a … hedge maze? Mausoleum? Minimalistic to an extreme yet still taking up seven pages, it’s barely an RPG, even in 1968. This isn’t worth even the minimal effort I’m going to make to write about it.

There’s a byline. That’s useless. There’s “Quick Information for the DM”. That’s useless. There’s a Focus. That’s useless. There’s a required rules. That’s useless. There’s a Quick Hook. That’s useless. This section is then followed by the real hook, which doesn’t say anything more than the Quick Hook does and is, maybe, three sentences in total as well as a rewards table? In fact, there are a suspicious number of tables in the adventure.

“PART 1: THE COURTYARD OF DECEIT (E) (A)
The mausoleum is a dark, damp structure. The wrought iron gate is rusty. The fog is thick, limiting vision to 10 feet (3 meters)” What do you think that description means? It’s kind of a preamble to room one. DO you think we’re outside? Inside? It mentions a mausoleum. That could be a block structure in the middle of a graveyard or it could be used more loosely as a dungeon-like environment above or below ground. There’s no indication. Courtyard is indicative. Oh, also, somewhere someplace this thing mentions a swamp. There’s nothing about that. It launches straight form the hook section in to that little bit I bolded above.

Directly following those words that bolded above, DIRECTLY, is the screencap above. That’s room one. There’s nothing more. No table, no extra words before or after it. That’s it. You like that? This is usually where I scream “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!” or something like that.

That there, above, is room two. It follows directly that room one information. I know. You think I’m cherry picking.

So, no, I’m not cherry picking. That’s the real page. Room three would be one of the highlights of the adventure, from an “evocative writing” standpoint. Meaning that there is any writing at all that describes something or sets a scene.

There’s a map in this that does little to help. It makes little sense, with room one leading directly to room six. Rom eight is not shown on the map but exists in the adventure.

Going back to those room keys. Note that the Key “1” is called “The Illusory Fog”, which appears as a room title in a different room. Hmmmm ….

Slop.

But, a new slop to be wary of.

This is $3 at DriveThru. There is no preview. Otherwise you wouldn’t be suckered in to losing your $3 now would you?

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/540720/broken-adventures-the-usurper-baron-s-tomb?1892600

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at comics that were published on November 20, 1984.

Who's Who #1: Following in the footsteps of 1983's Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe and serving as the record of the multiverse that would soon be ended by Crisis, Who's Who was the creation of editor Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, and Robert Greenberger. What I was unaware of when I picked this issue up in 1984, but seems only natural in retrospect, is how much the Who's Who covers the recent DC Universe. There are references to the deeper history of course, but there is a strong recency bias in the choice of entries and their scope. For instance, this issue gives us a number of characters that debuted in the era I've been revisiting: Aegeus from Wonder Woman, Alley-Kat-Abra from Captain Carrot, the All-Star Squadron and Amazing Man, Ambush Bug, Amethyst, Arak, Arion, a two-page spread for Atari Force, the "Sword of..." version of the Atom, the retconned version of the Atomic Knight from DC Comics Presents, and Auron of the Omega Men. Only one of the featured characters (Anthro) hasn't appeared between 1980-1984.

Batman and the Outsiders #19: Barr/Aparo present a Christmas issue, though only because it is clearly shown to take place during the Christmas season. Most of the issue is taken up with a fight between Geo-Force and Superman, which is not as one-sided as one might expect. No sooner have Geo-Force and Halo decided to just be friends, than Brion gets a call from Denise who we saw attempt suicide previously. He rushes to get her medical attention, and she reveals to him the sexual harassment by her professor that led to this. Geo-Force flies off to kill the professor, and Halo goes to Batman for help. Batman calls Superman to intercept Geo-Force while he takes care of something else. 
Using his power to increase gravity, Geo-Force is able to weaken Superman enough to hurt him. (Barr asserts the by this point outdated explanation that it is Krypton's higher gravity that, at least in part, gives Supes his strength.) In the end, though, Superman is just handling Geo-Force with kid gloves. He tires of that and smacks him down.
In the end, Batman shows up with testimony from other women, added to Denise's voice, it's enough to (they hope) end the professor's career. The heroes go home for Christmas.

Blue Devil #10: Mishkin/Cohn and Chen/Martin have Blue Devil having to defend Wayne Tarrant from harpies after he angers the goddess Athena by resuming his schtick from his teen heart-throb pop singer days of performing as Theseus. I fill like this must be an oblique reference to something in pop culture, but I don't know what. Otherwise, it's pretty random. Since Greek goddesses are in the mix, Wonder Woman guest stars. Only 10 issues under his belt, and Dan Cassidy is already teaming up with the big leagues with Superman a few issues ago and Wonder Woman here. There were house ads for this issue, for some reason, but the art there was by Colon. Wonder why he didn't draw the actual story?

Conqueror of the Barren Earth #2: Cohn and Randall chronicle Jinal's essential captivity among Zhengla Koraz and his army of conquest. He wants to make her his consort, but she's not into that and keeps trying to kill him and escape, so he makes her his slave. Eventually, she appears to warm to him and willing becomes his lover. At the end of the issue, the amassed armies of the Harshashan array against the Conqueror, and Jinal knows her friend must be leading them.

Green Lantern #186: Wein and Gibbons begin where last issue left off. Eclipso has the solar-powered jet, and is attacking Ferris Aircraft with his "murder moon." He kidnaps Bruce Gordon, demanding he reveal the secrets of the jet's power systems to him. Stewart comes to the rescue as Green Lantern while Jordan can only watch with ring envy. The Predator gets in the game, too, though he is less effective against the villain. Ultimately, Eclipso is killed by the deadly ray from his own satellite, and Rich brings the solar jet in safely, but at the cost of his own life, as he dies from a heart attack.
In the aftermath, Carol finds a love letter and a rose from the Predator in her office.

Infinity, Inc. #12: The Thomases and Newton/Burgard have the team go public in the wake of their victory. They hold a press conference where they wind up revealing their secret identities on TV. The Harlequin crashes the event to tease the group, but they are unable to catch her.

Legion of Super-Heroes #8: Levitz and Lightle/Mahlstedt keep all the plates spinning as the Lost Legionnaires fight to prevent a Controller from manufacturing another Sun-Eater, while other Legionnaires and the Science Police mop up the remaining members of the Legion of Super-Villains. 
Back on Earth, Cosmic Boy reveals to Night Girl that he's thinking about stepping down from active Legion membership. The trainees are enjoying some time on the beach, when someone shoots Laurel Kent and manages to actually make her bleed.

New Talent Showcase #15: The editorial this issue reveals that they are done with the publications from their talent search, so now the participants can no longer be considered "new", and the title will be rebranded as just Talent Showcase.
We've got fewer superhero features this issue than in the more recent ones. The cover belongs to the one supers feature, though, a team from Davila, Texas, called the Desperados by Dennis Yee, assisted by Barbara Kesel and Malcolm Jones. It's very much in keeping with the indie spirit of the time and reminds of things like other, regional supers teams like Southern Knights. The Chinese American cowboy leader is a bit of a unique innovation, though, and the heroes taking on anti-immigrant bigots is topical still today.
Bjørn Ousland opens the issue with a sci-fi story with art that I would characterize as "talented amateur." Ousland will go one to to work in comics through 1990, but mostly in Europe, a few more shorts for DC aside. This story concerns a couple of agents trying to defend alien species from poachers. Timmons and Scarborough/Blevins tell a whimsical tale of impoverished Leprechauns plotting to steal gold from Fort Knox. 

Sgt. Rock #398: Despite being marred by a hokey frame sequence, Kanigher and Redondo deliver an unusual story of the sort of things kid's ought to be reading in the dwindling war books. Zack, a bazooka man for Easy, loses his arm in a German attack. Shipped stateside, his recovery his hampered by his anger at his fate and self-pity. He discovers neighborhood kids helping black marketeer steal gasoline. Once he realizes his war is continuing just on a different front, he faces off with the black marketeer and wins the day.

Saga of Swamp Thing #34: Moore and Bissette/Totleben deliver something other than cheap entertainment for 10-year-olds. Faced with the knowledge that Matt will likely never wake up from the coma Arcane left him in, Abbie and Swamp Thing are free to confess their love for each other. Unable to share traditional physical intimacy with them being different biological kingdoms, Swamp Thing grows a psychedelic tuber, which Abbie consumes to share his consciousness. 

Warlord #90: I reviewed this issue here.

 "In the Adityan homeworld, The Cronos, an ancient power source, has awakened and disrupted from its slumber by events taking place far away on the remote desert planet Chalt. The Cronos will drag its Adityan Guards all the way across the galaxy and into the path of a group of scoundrels forcefully recruited to police the ass of the Galaxy  also known as the Outer Rim  as part of Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

My post Turns and Turn Order Are the Worst, so Why Do Roleplaying Games Make Us Spend So Much Time Deliberating Them? compared the two most common methods for setting turn order, player-driven and cyclic, and weighed their merits and flaws. This post shares suggestions for making cyclic turn orders play better.

Dungeons & Dragons and closely related games like Pathfinder and Shadowdark use cyclic initiative where a set a turn order is set at the start of a fight and combatants cycle through the same order throughout the battle.

Initiative tents

The two best methods for tracking cyclic use cards folded into tents. Such tents enable two methods with different strengths. One technique only puts numbers on the tents, the other uses names and numbers.

• To use numbers only, create a set of tents numbered from 1 up. When initiative starts, everyone compares numbers and take the card the matches their place in the order. The highest takes 1, second highest 2, and so on. The DM takes cards for the monsters’ place in the order. Everyone shows their number at their spot at the table so others can see their place. The technique always uses the same numbered tents, so it skips the need to write anything. This method doesn’t work with games like Pathfinder where a Delay action can change the initiative order.
• To use names and numbers, each player puts their character name on a card. When initiative starts, the players roll and write their scores on their card. Someone collects the cards, and lines them up in initiative order where everyone can see. I drape these cards on my DM screen, but this technique also lets someone other than the game master track initiative. I delegate sorting the cards to a player.

These tracking methods make the initiative order visible to everyone. When players can see the tents and initiative order, they can see when their turn is coming and plan their actions. This speeds play. Plus, the visible initiative invites players to remind less-attentive people of their turns. It prevents GMs from accidentally skipping someone’s turn.

Pre-rolling initiative

Combat runs better when exploration or interaction flips immediately to attack rolls without the minutes of bookkeeping required to set an initiative order. To avoid postponing the action, try rolling initiative in advance, either at the end of the last fight or at the start of a session. Pre-rolling works best with names and numbers on initiative tents.

At the start of the session, while everyone unpacks their dice and chats, I typically have players pre-roll initiative for a few fights. These initiative rolls build anticipation for the session to come and fit easily in the pregame chatter. Players write their scores on initiative tents. Before the next fight starts, I delegate the task of sorting the tents. If a player wants to use Alert, the person sorting organizes the swap.

Delay adds flexibility and complexity

Unlike conferring with allies to arrange when everyone takes a turn, Ready and Delay feel like battle strategies characters might take in a split second of mayhem.

Roleplaying games with combat rules need something like the Ready action to cope with the way one creature’s turn freezes time for every other creature. Strangely, many games omit such a rule and either rely on game masters to improvise one or on players to never abuse total cover by not giving foes a sporting chance to shoot back.

Fourth edition D&D and Pathfinder also include a Delay action. In a way, this action gives players a more powerful way to tinker with the turn order than games like Draw Steel and Daggerheart, because unlike those games where the game master can intrude between two characters’ turns, Delay allows characters to coordinate actions without monsters getting turns in between. Delay also brings a price, because characters who delay fall back in initiative and keep the later place. Such tradeoffs make interesting tactical choices.

The fifth edition design team opted for a simpler game when they dropped the Delay action. The game plays fine without it, but players lose flexibility to change the turn order in a way that seems natural.

Although Delaying seems simple, it requires intricate rules. In D&D, many effects trigger at the start or end of a creature’s turn, so fourth edition needed rules summarized by this text: “You can’t Delay to avoid negative consequences that would happen on your turn or to extend beneficial effects that would end on your turn.” The fifth edition designers opted to skip all that baggage.

For an easy house rule, allow players to delay at the start of initiative before their character acts. This adds no rules complications while still creating tactical options. Delaying at the start of combat might allow the rogue to flank after the fighter moves adjacent to a foe and sets up a sneak attack.

For the players who enjoy the tactical intricacies brought by the full Delay action, groups can import the delay rules from fourth edition D&D. Here are the rules the fifth edition designers wished to avoid.

Delay

By choosing to delay, you take no action and then act normally on whatever initiative count you decide to act. When you delay, you voluntarily reduce your own initiative result for the rest of the combat. When your new, lower initiative count comes up later in the same round, you can act normally. You can specify this new initiative result or just wait until sometime later in the round and act then, thus fixing your new initiative count at that point.

You never get back the time you spend waiting to see what’s going to happen. You also can’t interrupt anyone else’s action (as you can with a readied action).

Your initiative result becomes the count on which you took the delayed action. If you come to your next action and have not yet performed an action, you don’t get to take a delayed action (though you can delay again).

If you take a delayed action in the next round, before your regular turn comes up, your initiative count rises to that new point in the order of battle, and you do not get your regular action that round.

When you Delay, any persistent damage or other negative effects that normally occur at the start or end of your turn occur immediately when you use the Delay action. Any beneficial effects that would end at any point during your turn also end. You can’t Delay to avoid negative consequences that would happen on your turn or to extend beneficial effects that would end on your turn.

Related: What to Do When a D&D Player Wants to Be Ready, Call a Shot, or Delay
New Printable Initiative Trackers for Dungeons & Dragons
What to do when a player interrupts a role-playing scene to start a battle

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas - OSR Christmas, that is!

OSR Santa has been slow at getting things organized - again - this year. It's simply incredible how many distractions the world throws at you during December.

The year's BIG GIFT is again from the guys at Emperors Choice are gifting a copy of Portal to Adventure in its protective case from their recent Kickstarter.

This is a biggie - so we are going to remind folks REPEATEDLY, and set up a special email where folks can enter to be gifted - I think we'll leave that up for a few weeks so everyone gets a chance to enter.

We also have dice, books, DTRPG Gift Certs, and a few other things in the works to be gifted.

If you are a publisher, big or small, and want to get involved with OSR Christmas, we are looking for physical and digital gifts: Email tenkarsDOTtavern at that Gmail thing. Put OSR Christmas in the subject if you have gifts to donate!

Thank you and Merry Christmas!

Tenkar

 Combining the chaotic, high-fatality, multiverse-spanning fantasy of Dave Hargrave's Arduin (often associated with the "Bloody Arduin" moniker due to its lethal nature) with the adaptable, sci-fi-focused, OSR-inspired rules of Jason Vey's 13 Parsecs creates a truly unique Space Fantasy experience. This blog post picks right up from December 8th's post here. The synergy works well Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

By Hilander
Self Published
OSR
Levels 1-3

Sixty years ago, the young noble who built this mansion was to take a bride. Cakes were baked, a dress adorned with finest pearls, and guests and entertainers from across the countryside arrived to celebrate. Instead, they came to a funeral for the would-be bride, a funeral from which none emerged alive…

This eight page adventure uses five pages to describe about 22 rooms in a haunted mansion. It’s doing a relatively rare and focused style to achieve it’s terseness with some interesting evocative aspects. The promises of the overview are probably better than the rooms keys proper, though, even though this could be, in many ways, a textbook example of how to write a key. Or … START to write a key.

The young noble is getting married! Ought oh! The chick backs out at the last minute! He drowns her. Then, when the party guests show up, in shame, grief, and madness, pours strong poison in the marriage wine for a final toast. Oops. Just like a Samurai film, everyone dies in the end. Now the guests are all ghosts, the bride is a ghost, and he’s a ghost. And you’ve arrived at the mansion. This all comes in a relatively short little background section, a couple of paragraphs long. Nicely done, solidly terse, and relatable as human emotions. “The souls here are grieved by the betrayal of their host. None can rest until the spirit of the young noble is put to eternal rest, but they also.” This is good, you are given liberty, when playing the ghosts, to be a bit haphazard with them while giving them some focus as well. A couple of sentences and you can riff on. Likewise, there’s a coachman, 

We might call this almost the platonic encounter in this adventure, an example of what all other encounters are like. Big title. Coachman. A little encounter, and a terse description. Charming, warm, friendly, helpful. And then a sentence at the end in italics which brings into context the more general description above. What’s really going on, so to speak. We can see further example of this in the main adventure site keys.

I love some of what’s going on here, even if I may be dissatisfied with the results. First off we see the rooms have a room name. Music Hall. Ballroom. You know what those rooms are, because you, gentle reader, know what the fuck a music room and ballroom look like. This orients the DM. Now, when I read the rest of the description I am reading it in the context of “Ballroom.” This will make it easier to riff on things and get the imagination going. The same general formatting is present. A short little description followed by some extra DM information in italics. The italics never goes overboard and is probably right at the edge of what I would find acceptable for highlighting before it becomes harder to read. Still, another technique would have probably been better.

That’s a pretty decent monster description in The Noble’s Soul. And it’s followed up by a decent attacks description with the Adore you and then How Could You bit. Those two lines convey an awful lot of information on how to run the encounter, which is what good writing should do.

There is a bit of a gimp present. Once you enter the house the doors and windows lock and become immune to damage. I’m not the biggest fan of that, and, it would appear to neg out the Coachman a bit, perhaps leaving him to steal horses or gak the party when they come out of the house. However, there is an out: through the use of holy water on the doors/window. Big big fan of this kind of stuff. Utility items, utility spells like Bless, these are problem solvers in the characters arsenal. Should it always work? Meh. But this is a more “neutral” way, an appeal to a game world in which gods exist and actually do small things, like Bless as a problem solver instead of just a bonus.

Approached from a First DO No harm mentality, then this adventure is hitting well. It sets up the rooms well. It has something a little interactive in most places, something to discover or something to do. It keeps the text tight. it’s written from a more neutral standpoint rather than a Screw the Party standpoint. And it hits on what makes a ghost a ghost., It’s mournful. They are not just things to stab. It allows the party to discover the history through play and perhaps resolve things.

I am not in any way mad at this thing. I’m not exactly happy with it, but I’m not annoyed and you CAN run it. I am, I think, looking for just a little more though. Most rooms are going one ‘thing’ in them. It’s just a bit TOO terse. A few more evocative words. A little dynamism to the rooms and environment. A little more creepiness to it. Certainly a DM can introduce some of that, but I’d like to see just a little more support form that from the designer. As a rather basic ghostly drop in it does fine.

This is $1 at DriveThru. The preview is long enough that you see the intro and more than a few of rooms, so a good preview as well. And it’s nice to see it listed for $1.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/541024/the-mourning-mansion?1892600

Our gaming group spent our last get together of 2025 having dinner together at a local restaurant, as is our tradition. In addition to the current regular crew (Andrea, Bob, Gina, Kathy, and Tug), and spouses and kids, we also got a guest appearance from Eric, one of the original Azurth players. It's always good to get the group together since we mostly play online since the pandemic (something we'd like to change in 2026).

In addition to our continuing Land of Azurth 5e campaign, we tried Beyond the Wall for 3 sessions. Compared to last year, there were fewer diversions to other games, as I was trying to keep momentum going with Azurth. With the "off-week group" of strictly online gamers, I gave HârnMaster a go, as well as They Came From Beyond the Grave!

In 2026, I hope to give the new Planet of the Apes game a try, and whose knows, maybe do something crazy like start a new, long running campaign, though perhaps not 11 years and counting, like Azurth. We'll see. 

Whatever happens, I'm glad to be in this hobby with these folks.

Here are five unique magic items suitable for a Castles & Crusades campaign set in the historical/mythological realm of Codex Germania. These items draw on Germanic history, folklore, and Viking Age concepts.1. Drakkar's Helm (The Sea-Serpent's Visage)Type: Wondrous Item, Helm (Armor)Description: A sturdy iron helm fashioned with a stylized, elongated sea-serpent crest (a drakkar head) that Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

 The PC's made it out of the underworld states of  Aethel, a vast, unexplored subterranean realm from last session here.  Only to be washed away in a vast under ground ocean! When they awoke they found themselves face to face with the Atlantian Guardians! Atlantean Elite (Martian Masters)The ruling class, aloof and psychically powerful.StatScoreCC PrimeCC Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

 Here are five magical swords, & guardians designed for the Castles & Crusades (C&C) RPG, each with a distinct theme, power, and potential for adventure.That is an excellent idea! A magical sword is only as good as the peril required to obtain it.Here are five magical guardians, tailored for a Castles & Crusades (C&C) adventure, designed to protect the swords and Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

By Travis Fauber
Self Published
Dragonslayer/OSR
Levels 1-3

A wicked corruption has befallen the Mounds of the Fairy Kings and has tainted the Barrow of the Unbroken King. The once grand halls of his tomb are now imbued with dark, sinister energy, and the honored dead who lie within have been twisted and defiled by this insidious force.

 The source of this foul magic remains shrouded in mystery. Whispers abound that a dark curse was placed upon the Mounds of the Fairy Kings by an ancient enemy seeking to dishonor the memories of those buried. Whatever the truth, it remains elusive, adding to the chilling weather that envelops these sacred barrows. The Mounds of the Fairy Kings, once a place of reverence and honor, now stands as a haunting reminder of the past, in a forest where the boundary between the mortal and the twilight realm blurs in the face of unknown danger.

This 26 page adventure uses about three pages to describe about twelve rooms. The writing is bland. The interactive elements are bland. The evocative nature of it is bland. It’s bland. 

I’m bored to death just writing this summary and would rather, well, I’ve edited out what I would rather do than write more. But write more I am. Twenty six pages for twelve rooms described in three pages. I think I’ve seen this film before and I didn’t like the ending. The usual suspects are at play. An extensive hook and background with lore. A lengthy section on how to play D&D and what a stat block means. Appendices for monsters, pre-gens, torchbearers, and summary of the XP and treasure in the adventure. Again and again and again the broken repeats: the main thing is the actual adventure. Support for the adventure is great, but not at the expense of the main adventure. When the main adventure is substandard and there is a lot of support information it forces the question to ask: what would the adventure have been like if the effort spent on the support information had instead been spent on the keys? There is no solution here. I sometimes run across travel videos on my feed that are something like “Do not trust this man in Kashmir!” Of course, none of us will run across that man. Just as no designer getting a bad review will be aware of this guideline. A mighty conundrum. The firehose of poor adventures will continue until all hope is lost. Tomorrow is a new day, until another designer brings their vision to light and flings themselves forward chaotically with little awareness. The same old same old, poor official adventures, mimicking what you’ve seen before which is almost always poor also. There is no respite from the endless line of people making the same mistakes. 

“Random monsters are an essential part of classic fantasy role-playing games, and The Barrow of the Unbroken King is no different. In normal situations, the Referee should roll for random monsters every other turn or whenever the players declare they are “searching” for something (with a roll of 1 on a d6 indicating an encounter)” What?! No rules for how to roll dice and read the THACO chart? 

“The exterior of the barrow mound has a diameter of 60 feet. At each compass point, four menhirs stand 30 feet away from the barrow. These stones are marked with petroglyphs that detail the life of The Unbroken King.” And thus a column of backstory was born. Contributing little to nothing to the adventure. 

What is the purpose of a monster entry? Following our major guidelines, everything in an adventure should tie back to running the adventure at the table. What do you need from a monster entry to do that? Some stats, surly, HP, AC, attacks. And, I would assert a description. You you need an ecology of the monster to run it at the table? No, almost certainly not. SO, what should be prioritized? The ecology or the description? I’m not arguing for inline stat blocks, I have no opinion on those. I am, though, asserting that “an ogre attacks you” is less assistance to the DM, less evocative, than a terse and evocative description of the lumbering brute with great yellowed tusks. Guess how the monster entries are arranged in this?

These keys, the main part of the adventure. There’s nothing here. Yes, sure, niches to loot and a few monsters. But there’s not really anything here for a DM to hang their hat on. No evocative writing. Really not much more than, say, Palace of the Vampire Queens monster listing and treasure. B2 may have more interesting encounters.

Are you not entertained? What type of gem? No altar description. Nothing about an evocative curse detail. It’s not that any one of those things would make this stand out, but it’s all the bare minimum. This is what you are paying your money for. And there’s not much more here than a random number generation on a table would provide.

I am aware that for the vast majority of designers there is no malice. This is not a money grab. They had a vision and they just were not able to translate that vision on to the paper. It’s just so frustrating. This can’t be the vision the designer set off to put down and I don’t know how you make it pass a proof read not knowing that.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $5. No preview. You gotta put in a preview so we can make an informed purchasing decision.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/544497/the-barrow-of-the-unbroken-king-kickstarter-preview?1892600

 London, the public-domain character from the Golden Age Daredevil Comics (not the Marvel character), is an excellent choice for a Victorian-era steampunk setting in the Victorious RPG. This post picks right up from here on the blog. However, since London is a relatively obscure public domain character, and Victorious is an independent RPG, pre-existing, official stats for London in theNeedleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

In discussing this recent Youtube video arguing Star Wars (1977) suggests a setting without FTL communication, my brother and I gradually drifted over to considering some minor mysteries regarding the desert planet Tattooine. The central question is: "what exactly is Tattooine's place in the galactic civilization?" Luke tells us: "If there's a bright center to the universe, you're on the planet that it's farthest from," but is that just the restless teenager in him talking?

Canonically, Tattooine is a sparsely populated world located on the Outer Rim, though Wookieepedia suggests the whole concept of an "Outer Rim" doesn't appear in the films until the sequel trilogy. This perhaps implies it is on the edge of civilization, but it's possible that it only means the edge of Imperial (and Republican before that) control. "Sparsely populated" seems reasonable given what we see in the films and the fact it's an entire planet, particularly when we consider this is a relative sparseness compared to the more urbanized, populous worlds.

There are, however, at least two details in Star Wars arguing against Tattooine as some sort of wilderness frontier. These have to do with the Jawas and Mos Eisley spaceport.

Used Droid Salesmen

The Jawas are scavengers, and they've got a big crawler full of junk that roams the desert and picks up "gently used" droids to refurbish (a bit) and sell to farmers and rural settlements. If Tattooine is sparsely populated and droids are so expensive relative to local incomes that people have to buy the pre-owned ones Jawas sell, then where exactly do all the droids come from that the Jawas scavenge?

It's possible the demand for used droids has to do with where droids come from which makes new ones scarce. Another possibility is that droids were traditionally priced beyond the reach of rural folk of modest means, but the end of the Clone Wars lead to something of a switch back to consumer focused production in the galaxy's industry over wartime production and restored supply chains, so that the wealthy inner worlders were able to finally get that new droid they'd wanted, leading to an abundance of older models on the market, analogous to the situation with cars in the U.S. after World War II. These older models would naturally wind up in the hands of dealers like the Jawas. 

Still, unless what happened to Threepio and Artoo is just an accident, it looks like they are roaming the desert picking up droids, rather than just waiting for their shipment at Mos Eisley. I think it's at least possible that the desert not infrequently turns up excess droids--and I have an idea as to why.

Scum and Villainy

Obi-Wan says of Mos Eisley: "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." This is from a guy who knows the Emperor is a Sith Lord and was made to fight in an arena on Genosis! In the Old West idiom frontier towns are often stereotypically lawless, but I don't think Tombstone or Dodge City would deserve a description like that. Also, Tombstone and Dodge City had reasons why they were boomtooms that drew the riffraff (silver mines and the cattle trails, respectively). 

Obi-Wan's description and the vibe of Mos Eisley in general suggests a pirate town like Port Royal, Jamaica ("the wickedest city on Earth.") Such towns would appear in places the law hasn't effectively reached, but close to very busy and lucrative trade routes. You wouldn't get a crime lord like Jabba rich enough to have a palace and sponsor speeder races without crime being lucrative.

Back to the Jawas and their scavenging: If pirates are often taking ships and hiding the evidence or just discarding the refuse, in the desert, well there would wind up being stuff for the Jawas to "salvage."

Tattooine On Viewscreen

I think the evidence from the movies point to Tattooine as at the edge of imperial jurisdiction, but in a well-traveled zone between the Empire and other, civilized regions controlled by other interstellar powers.  It's nature as a desert world means it is less desirable for heavy colonization, but its location ensures the thriving pirate boomtown of Mos Eisley, and the existence of power strongmen benefiting from that crime.

 The Baptism of Fire setting, with its grim and fiery themes, calls for truly terrifying adversaries.Here are five distinct demons, complete with stats, special abilities, and expanded material suitable for your campaign. These demons are designed to fill various roles, from foot soldiers to powerful unique entities. Five Demons for Baptism of Fire RPG The following stat blocks useNeedleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

" A ghost in the fleet!'"Based on the Thorpe-class Merchant, the Loki-class Q-Ship is a wolf in sheep's clothing. Designed to look like a harmless merchant and placed by the Boone Space Defense Force in locations where pirate activity is high, the Loki tempts the pirates to it and then strikes with no mercy.""Perfect for use by those involved in fighting pirates or just as a ship for Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

 I had a request from a player of our in our Victorious Rpg for me, ' To Create a PC class based on the the immortal Sanjiyan Unkara for the Amazing Adventures,  Victorious rpg with stats & expanded material'. This is a challenging request, as the power level of the Sanjiyan Unkara borders on demigod status, but it can be balanced for PC use by focusing on the severe Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0