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July 13th – July 17th Paizo & the Seattle Mariners Present….Operation Salmon RunAugust 9th, 2026. T-Mobile Park. 1:10pm start.Join Paizo & the Mariners at T-Mobile Park for Operation Salmon Run Day! Tickets purchased for this special event include an exclusive Pathfinder Adventure module and a Mariners-themed 7 piece dice set.Get Tickets!

13 Omens Preview at Gen Con!With just two weeks left until Gen Con, we’re excited to reveal the full slate of 13 Omens Preview products available at the show! Alongside the 64 page, softcover, digest sized 13 Omens Preview Edition rulebook, we’re also releasing: Bequeathed, A 13 Omens Story by James Jacobs. The passing of the family patriarch brings the Salazar siblings home for the reading of the will, but they will soon learn that far darker secrets than wine formulas await them.13 Omens Premium Resin Dice Set & Bag. A full set of 21 six-sided dice: 8 white-inked Safe Dice and 13 red-inked Omen Dice, plus a fabric bag to conceal your dice pulls.
All of these products will be exclusively available in limited quantities at Gen Con 2026.Join the 13 Omens Mailing ListExperience the horror… LIVE!Paizo Publisher Erik Mona leads a crew of intrepid tourists on an authentically haunted tour of the Seattle Underground in the FIRST EVER 13 Omens Live Show! Featuring B. Dave Walters, Luis Carazo, Rue Dickey, and Maya Coleman.Get Tickets!Paizo Printables Season 2: High Seas!Find your sea legs or walk the plank!

This month launches Season 2 of Paizo Printables, our monthly STL miniature subscription. Season 2’s theme, High Seas, focuses on nautical creatures, characters, and adventures!Join on PatreonJoin on MyMiniFactory!News from Paizo PartnersBring immersive audio to your table with Syrinscape! Join today to try Syrinscape Nova, a new toolset in early access!Shop NowStart playing Starfinder with professional GMs today on Start Playing Games! Sort games by time, VTT platform, theme, and more!Join a Game!

By Jon Brackin
Brackin Adventuring Company
BECMI
Levels 3-5

On the hottest night of summer… it begins to snow. For as long as anyone can remember, the quiet village of Frosthollow has celebrated The Night of Falling Snow, an ancient midsummer festival unlike any other. White ribbons flutter from old trees. Candles burn in every window. Gifts are exchanged beneath a blazing summer sun while soft snow falls from a cloudless sky. The villagers call it a miracle. They have forgotten that it is a warning. This year, the snow arrives early… and it does not stop. As impossible winter spreads across the countryside, travelers find themselves drawn into a mystery buried beneath centuries of tradition. Forgotten journals, hidden chambers, and an ancient ritual reveal a terrifying truth: the festival was never meant to celebrate the snowfall. It was created to keep something from crossing the threshold into the world. And at the center of it all waits a smiling traveler known only as The Pale Guest. Will the heroes uncover the truth before midnight, restore a ritual no one remembers, or unknowingly open the door to an ancient horror?

This seventeen page adventure uses about eleven pages to describe about ten areas in a village about to reawaken an ancient entity. It’s sparse, with little specificity. There is an outline of an adventure but little to ground the characters actions or the DMs responses. 

I am continually mystified at the lack of adventure that passes for adventures. The barest outline of an adventure is somehow expanded to twenty pages and then a few dollar price tag slapped on it. We get little more than DM notes, time and again, the kind scribbled on my party tracker page ten minutes beforehand to run tonight’s game. What ends up being published is just anything that anyone could come up, with all of the specificity and adventure just not present, the stuff the designer SHOULD be working on to  help the DM bring the game alive. Yes, the DM needs to do work, but the designer is there to inspire them to greatness and provide the tools to do so. 

There’s this village where it snows on a day in the summer every year. The villagers hold this festival with a couple of traditions attached to it. Well, wouldn’t you know it, the snow doesn’t stop this year and gets VERY heavy. The party is there for [the usual lame reasons.] Oh no, people are missing! Poking about you find the basement of the inn has some old records, and the traditions are bastardized versions of a yearly ritual that has to be done to keep THE VISITOR away. The party must convince everyone in the village does a Whoville song and dance number and the entity will sleep for another year. Or, just stab the 12HD dude till it dies. 

The most specific thing in the adventure is, what a coincidence, also the most interesting. The villagers hang ribbons from a tree in the village with their names on it. (And, the missing villagers have ribbons there also, with their names faded away. I’m not sure how you know that given that the names are no longer there, but the concept is decent.) This is great. It’s like a line of text. It’s specific. It grounds the DM and gives them something to build on. This is by far the most interesting thing in the adventure.

The actual locations are given this description style that is … poetic? An attempt to be poetic? Let’s look at “Chamber Two: The Ice Archive”

A chamber sealed within magical frost.

Contains stone tablets.

These preserve the complete ritual.

Uh. Ok. How about another room, for comparison? The Hall of Forgotten Names:

Thousands of names carved into walls.

Reading them aloud causes spectral figures to appear.

Most are harmless.

Three become Snow Wraiths.

Meh. This borders on pretension. It’s the fucking idea for a room being sold as a room. Put in a fucking description. Look, I’m supportive of new ideas but also you gotta recognize when they don’t work and this don’t work. There’s nothing there! At some point we’re told “Eventually clues point toward old records beneath the inn.” What are these clues? Not present. Nothing. The DM gets to make them up. This is just some notes on a napkin about some major beats in a potential adventure. How about monsters? Here’s notes about an attack by Candle Guardians. Or,, maybe, Frostbound Remnants, both phrases are used: “Four Frostbound Remnants attack as soon as the door closes behind any person entering. “ What the fuck is a Candle Guardian? 

This is a ridiculously low effort adventure. I’m sure some work was put in to it, but its like the designer has somehow never seen what an actual adventure is and what one needs to run an adventure. Like what the fuck a monster is. 

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2. There is no preview. You gotta put in a preview man, so we can make an informed decision to purchase or not.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/573268/the-night-of-falling-snow?1892600

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to the end of Crisis! This week, I read the comics on sale on July 25, 1985.

All-Star Squadron #50: I suspect both the Crisis tie-in banner, and the character-filled Ordway cover attracted my attention on the stands. This wasn't the first issue of the All-Stars I picked up as a kid, but it was the beginning, I believe, of a short period of getting it more frequently.  Reading it again now, though, it's apparent how much of this story is just plugging continuity holes. Even the Crisis tie-in portion is showing how and when Harbinger recruited Firebrand, and then using Harbinger's presence to advance the next story Thomas has planned. Beyond that, we get the Quality Comics characters leaving for Earth-X and Steel displayed to Earth-One so he can be the grandfather of the JLA's Steel there.
Several JSA members are also captured and put into rockets by the Nazi's to launch into space. Seems it would be easier just to kill them, but no, this becomes a way to do a modern version of some Gardner Fox stories from the Golden Age in upcoming issues.

Action Comics #572: This issue has three quaint stories that continue the trend of this book feeling like editorial is burning inventory before Crisis finishes and things are different. The first by Boldman and Boring/Hunt has a scientist revealing to Clark Kent the moon is suddenly inhabited by a bunch of copies of Clark! Investigating, it turns out to be Gollo and his pals, derpy-looking green saurpodish aliens with chameleon powers that Superman has met before. They are exiled due to aggressive other creatures on their homeworld, but it turns out their hero-worship of Superman (and taking on the form of his secret ID) is why the predators suddenly took interest.
The second story by Sabbatini and Bender/Oksner, has Superman safe was fluffy, cute animal creatures from an obsessed alien trophy hunter, and then is rewarded by their time traveling evolution descendants for his compassion. 
The third is the first DC work by Mark Waid. It's got art by Hoberg/Mitchell and is one of those "can you solve the mystery first?" stories involving the contents of the Fortress of Solitude disappearing after a close call with an unusually magnetized meteor. 

Detective Comics #554: Moench and Colan/Smith have Batman and friends setting up a sting to catch Boomerang and Mirror Master. Using his Matches Malone identity, Batman sets the bait by spreading word that Bullock will be transporting a valuable museum piece solo. Boomerang sends the supposedly hypnotized Mirror Master to steal it. The trap fails, and he kidnaps Bullock. In the hideout, Mirror Master reveals he was merely pretending to be hypnotized, and he and Boomerang start fighting. Batman and Robin show up to arrest them both.
In the Green Arrow backup by Maggin and Giordano, Ollie is pickpocketed on the way to pay his rent. When he pursues the thief as Green Arrow, he stumbles on to a gang stealing an ancient Greek artifact. He manages to stop them, then grab his rent money back when he happens to see the pickpocket at the police station.

Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #1: Levitz and Giffen, Kessel, and a host of other inkers, get around to solving the mystery of who shot Laurel Kent. The team of investigating Legionnaires figure out that other murders and attempted murders are related. Brainiac 5 deduces the murder is going after descendants of JLA members. They eventually track the murder to his cryogenic chamber where he has been only periodically awakening since the 20th Century and directing a robot. 
It's good to see Giffen back with the Legion, and I think the story is good in concept, but stumbles a bit in execution. I get the idea that each chapter, focusing on a different part of the investigation, is meant to be in the style of a different sort of mystery subgenre, but only Shrinking Violet's hardboiled narration, and Chameleon Boy's Holmesian turns of phrase give a hint of this. The styles of the other chapters are obscure to me. Also, they frustratingly never reveal the identity of the murderer. From what they did say, I thought Professor Ivo was a possibility, and that's who the internet is certain it was, but it seems a mistake just not to name him in the story.

Nathaniel Dusk II #1: MacGregor and Colan are back with another hard-boiled detective story with the same colors over pencils art style that makes the whole thing look like you're viewing the images through a rain spattered window. A lot of basic shapes and blobs of color. In this installment, Dusk is hired by Amanda Cooper, a wealthy woman, to act as a bodyguard for her father, Cranston, a former businessman reduced to selling apples from a cart on the street corner after losing his fortune in the stock market crash. Someone tries to shoot Cranston as a hurricane remnant hits the city (placing this round September 8, 1934) and Dusk has to fight the guy, but the would-be assassin gets away.

Star Trek Annual #1: Barr and Ross/Smith present a story of Kirk's earliest days in command of Enterprise. This is first of two annuals Barr did telling "untold tales" of Star Trek history. We get to exactly how he took over from Pike, the fate of Number One (injured in an accident), and Gary Mitchell's introduction to the crew. In fact, this issue marks the first ever comic appearance of Pike, Number One, Dr. Boyce, Mitchell, and Kelso. The aliens which appear in the story and have a history with Pike are beyond the budget of the TV certainly but fit in well with the short of things we see in tie-in novels. In fact, the novels will tackle this same idea in 1986 with McIntyre's Enterprise: The First Adventure, but Barr got their first. 

V #9: The cover of this issue is weird because it doesn't seem to relate at all to the contents. Donovan, Parrish, and Willie go to the New York City to offer to train the locals in resistance fighting to deal with a Visitor attack they believe is coming. The Mayor is completely dismissive of the possibility, and we find out (though our heroes don't) that that's because she's a Visitor herself. She sends some goons to ambush the LA crew, but when they defeat them, the demonstrable presence of Visitors in New York only serves to make the people come to them for training.
Meanwhile, there continues to be rivalries and jockeying for position among the aliens. Lydia convinces the brutish Walter than the human Donovan is in the way of him being with Diana, and she convinces Diana of a plan to send Walter to New York to stalk and kill Donovan.

World's Finest #320: Continuing the story from last issue, Batman manages not only to survey his plummet from an airplane into the reservoir but to wrap the cannister full of drugs in his insulated cape so it doesn't release in water. We get Rem's origin as a therapist turned super-villain after his mind in damaged using a device that allowed into to enter his psychotic patient's psyche. When Batman reaches the Fortress of Solitude, Rem has made Superman a sleepwalker under his command. Batman uses the Phantom Zone Projector to send Superman into the Phantom Zone, which has the effect of freeing him from Rem's control. Batman and Superman defeat Rem, but unbeknownst to them, the villain known as Chronos starts planning his attack on the world's mightiest heroes. There's also so more of the shadowy Power Broker talking to folks viagrainy monitors. 

 Adapting Jason Voorhees (specifically his 25th-century upgraded form from Jason X) to the Cepheus Engine presents a classic survival-horror threat for sci-fi starship crews. In Cepheus Engine terms, Jason functions not as a standard NPC, but as an environmental hazard with a health pool—an unyielding, cybernetically augmented apex stalker.

From the Gen Con Press info.

We’re Spreading Our Wings!Downtown Indianapolis is growing—and fast. From new hotels and expanded infrastructure to refreshed public spaces, the city is transforming in big ways. Here’s a closer look at what’s underway, why it matters, and how you can navigate the changes.When you arrive at the Indiana Convention Center this coming July 30 through August 2 for The Best Four Days in Gaming, you’ll notice ongoing construction work in the building and all-around downtown Indy as improvements continue to expand and enhance the future of tourism and hospitality in our host city.Most notably, during Gen Con, you will see:A near-completed 38-story high, 800+ room Signia by Hilton hotel adjacent to the ICC, which will provide an additional 143,000 square feet of convention center space in 2027.Construction work inside and outside the convention center’s Georgia Street entrance (aka The Glass Cube) as crews are building a new skywalk connecting the Signia to the ICC.Continued construction work on Georgia Street, where work is underway to redesign the street to be more pedestrian and event-friendly along the west block.Circle Center Mall’s continued renovations into a mixed-use development called Traction Yards, which will feature an open-air promenade.
Things will look and sound a bit different than what you’ve seen at Gen Con in years past, but we hope you share in our excitement with how this expansion will allow for new possibilities and enhanced experiences for our attendees, partners, and exhibitors as we spread our wings into Gen Con’s 60th anniversary, taking place in August 2027!For more information on Indy construction updates and redevelopment projects, visit here. Stay tuned to our newsletters, Facebook, and Instagram channels for further updates.

 Zutarians, also called Imps, were an alien race native to the planet Zutarn. They possessed technology a thousand years advanced of Earth such as monocars, rocket-powered air transports, as well as long-range ray guns, and powerful knockout gas guns. The Zutarians also had an organized military but were not an aggressive race until the human known as Tyrno conquered them. Since the Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

With the refit upon us I have decided to do a week of BattleTech. This week Through Wargaming Goggles will bring you Product unboxings on The Starter Box, The Core Box, The Leopard Class and Union Class Dropships. A Flip Through on the Core Rule Book. Plus reviews and comparisons of which products are the right ones for you.

Check back daily for more content!

There has been a lot going on this summer. I have been busy helping my father, writing and filming. TWGG currently has fourteen #Starwarslegion box breakings in the Que, and this week is BattleTech Refit week. You can expect to see one new video a day plus written content written throughout the week. Plus, next week is Gen Con! If you have anything you want me to ask at Gen Con or look into please let me know.

 Interbellum is a tabletop roleplaying game published by The Red Room, heavily rooted in the OSR (Old School Renaissance) style of play. It was originally launched as Wretched Interbellum in late 2023 and later updated and re-released simply as Interbellum in June 2026.Here is a detailed breakdown of the game's setting, themes, and Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

I wasn't planning to write about Deathbringer. Then I started reading the reactions to it.

I honestly couldn't believe what I was reading.

Apparently fantasy has beautiful women now, and this requires a symposium.

Several months ago I wrote a post called Frazetta Armor. It had absolutely nothing to do with Deathbringer. Truth be told, I'd been making the same joke on social media for years. While working on my Hyborian themed Shadowdark campaign, I finally turned it into a blog post.

The joke was simple. The less armor the hero wore, the harder they were to kill.

Everybody got it.

Because that's been part of fantasy for as long as I can remember.

I grew up on painted paperback covers. Every bookstore had a fantasy shelf full of warriors with impossible muscles, forgotten temples, giant snakes, skulls, sorcerers, and yes, beautiful women. Nobody stood there wondering whether the armor met OSHA PPE regulations. You picked up the book because the cover promised adventure.

That's what fantasy looked like. That's still what fantasy looks like to me.

So when I see people calling Deathbringer embarrassing because it has attractive women wearing revealing clothing, I honestly wonder where they've been. This isn't some shocking new direction. This is one of the oldest visual traditions the genre has.

I've seen people say the women are too attractive.

Too attractive? I didn't realize fantasy was supposed to stop celebrating beauty.

Then there's the clothing. Really?

We're talking about a genre where Conan wandered around in a hardly there loincloth, where Red Sonja became one of fantasy's most recognizable characters, where every other wizard somehow owns a robe with sleeves long enough to trip over. Fantasy has never dressed its characters for practicality. It dresses them to create an image you'll remember.

That's the whole point.

The criticism that really puzzles me is the claim that this somehow makes Deathbringer shallow.

Why? Because it has beautiful women?

Fantasy has always dealt in ideals. Bigger monsters. Greater heroes. Darker villains. The artwork isn't trying to convince you this is real life. It's trying to convince you this world is worth visiting.

There's a difference.

Look, you don't have to like the art. Maybe it isn't your thing. Maybe you think you've seen it all before. Fair enough.

What I don't understand is acting like this aesthetic is somehow foreign to fantasy.

It isn't.

It's one of the reasons a lot of us fell in love with fantasy in the first place.

When I look at Deathbringer, I see a game that's perfectly happy to admit where it came from.

Apparently a lot of other people were looking for exactly that.

Judging by the BackerKit numbers, I'd say they found it.

By Greg Ferris
Talaraska
Generic/Universal
Level ... 3?

The hills making up the Archian border with Caledos are pocked with dozens of abandoned mines. These leave a lasting reminder of the rush for silver in the years prior to the rise of the Graun Empire. Without drawing much attention from local officials, a nebulous consortium of investors has been purchasing old dig sites throughout the region. The mine at Mt. Morris was one such purchase. About 12 months ago, a group of ten men reopened the dig, which locals were sure was folly. After spending a couple of weeks repairing the base camp, the team resumed the dig. None but the foreman had any previous mining experience. Most of the “miners” were farmhands or former members of the stevedores’ guild. None were strangers to hard work, but they were a motley crew to be certain. However, the strangers who came and offered them the job assured them that they would be paid handsomely. The past year had been difficult. The team had failed to find any substantial amount of ore and they often assumed that their work would soon come to an end. Despite this, the paymaster and his retinue of guards would appear every month and the dig continued.

This nine page adventure presents eleven rooms in an old mining camp & camp that has been “overrun” with undead. It’s pretty basic, with not much going on. 

I’m not super sure how this made it on my list. It must have either been in the OSR section on DriveThru or a request? I don’t think I see a request, so it must have been in the OSR section at DriveThru at one time, even though it’s labeled Generic/Universal. The marketing blurb advertises it as a flesh out adventure hook, but the adventure, proper, lists itself as an adventure. I don’t know, some way of framing it not having stats? I don’t think that matters. In any event, it has more life to it than the vast majority of adventures and even manages to present more rooms than the number of pages in the adventure. How far have we fallen to have that be some standard of success? What’s a spud to do? Anyway, ignoring most of the intro there’s a small adventure hidden in here that is relatively inoffensive. There’s not much interesting about it either, but, hey, it’s 2026 and I’m in a morose mood because somehow an uninteresting adventure with eleven rooms in nine pages somehow is better than most if the garbage I review. So, no stats and no treasure, just some “place treasure appropriate to your system” notes here and there.

There are some pretext reasons here for exploring, nothing very interesting. Hired to do blah blah blah, or local priest has visions blah blah blah. Getting to the site you find four outbuildings and then seven rooms in the mine. There are bodies about, partially eaten. A stable has horse bodies, and one stall padlocked with a living horse in it and extra water that has run out. One of the buildings has a survivor barricaded inside of it with a confusing story that doesn’t make sense. The idea is that the party will use the stable clue, as well as another clue in the bunkhouse, to understand that the dude knows more than he is saying and that they’ll press him for details. The details are not altogether interesting given the small size and stand along nature of the adventure combined with the generic/unival vibe. He was hired to run a mining crew, looking for a diary in a buried complex. He did some research on his own and found out that the dude was a necromancer and used animated bodies as guards. When the miners found a wall he gave his horse some water and locked himself in, fearing the worst. The miners break in, undead get out, the worst happens, everyone dies but him and his horse. It’s an interesting way to present a clue, without having to resort to a diary or monologue. And by interesting” I mean “correct.” We get to see the results of actions taken in the past that help explain the now, rather than listen to a droning monologue. The players gets to use their brains to put things together. Or not. 

The rooms inside the mine are uneventful. Generic alter room. Generic crypt. “There are 8 sarcophagi in this room. Four of these are open and empty. The remaining four are closed and hold inanimate skeletons. There is a small stone altar along the western wall. Beside it rests an open chest filled with gold and any treasures that would be appropriate for your game. “  Nothing really evocative about them, inside the mine or out. Nothing really stands out. A few ghouls/ghasts. Entries are padded out with things like “As the party moves in this direction, they are assailed by [an odor.]” There’s like five pages of intro to go with the four pages of room keys. There’s just nothing to this. “First, do no harm”, the slogan goes. And, for the most part, that was accomplished here. Sure, some padding, a decent amount of it. But, also, the rooms are still relatively terse and easy to scan. There’s still no way I would run this, there’s just nothing to it, but it IS still better than most adventures because it IS doing no harm.

This is $2 at DriveThru. There is no preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/571820/the-mine-at-mt-morris?1892600

 

Zagartha is a floating island wandering some 1000 feet above Berlaith. Like the other floating rocks of Parsulan, it contains large amounts of thaumatite. It was ejected from the surface during the early years of the Demon War owing to the magical surge from the weakening of the Great Barrier.

Zagartha, when it was an earthbound mountain, contained a large temple complex and was the site of a famous oracle, but it was abandoned after it was desecrated by demonic forces. At least two conflicting stories are told regarding its reinhabitation. The first holds that the Seven Great Sages, disputing some obscure points of the oracles last series of pronouncements, journeyed there with their followers and were holding a symposium there when Zagartha rose into the sky, stranding them. The second holds the Sages led a group to a place of (relative) safety from the Fomori on the already skybound island with a magical conveyance that was wrecked upon landing. Even among Zagartha's inhabitants, both stories have their adherents. 

The original sages passed long ago, and the number of students their successors enjoy have dwindled over time as they tend to be drawn from outsiders, not from the ranks of locals who feel a sense of duty to the sages and support them materially but have little time for their ascetic lifestyles and philosophical arguments. Both groups dwell in and among the ruins of the previous temple complex. Either the buildings have been repurposed or their materials used to build new structures. The locals are mostly craftsmen, farmers, and merchants. They maintain the all-critical cisterns, tend the small fields, and conduct trade with the "ground-folk." 

One important aspect of their lives is the capture over other floating rocks. Some of these are added to Zagartha to expand it. Others are mined for materials. In both cases the rocks are reached through the use of the skywires and skywire harnesses that use small thaumatite to shoot lines at force. The skill necessary to employ them effectively takes years to master but makes many Zagarthans skilled aerialists.

 Here is a complete, ready-to-use stat block and profile for Evil Ash from Army of Darkness, built specifically for the Sword of Cepheus (2nd Edition) ruleset. This blog post picks right up from 'I'll Swallow Your Soul '- The Necronomicon Ex-Mortis (also referred to as "Naturom Demonto" and "Book of The Dead") for Sword of Cepheus 2nd edition & Adventure EncounterIn Sword of CepheusNeedleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

I have to confess that I discovered Dokyo and its creator, Jonathan Collazo Galindez, through social media. I’ve been a comic book fan for decades, even before I started playing role-playing games. I don’t read comics as frequently as I used to; years ago, I focused on collected editions of the series I’m interested in and on digital comics. But my son’s interest in comics has brought me back to the comic shop regularly.

I’ve become very interested in fantasy and sci-fi series, classic series from my youth, and series based on or influenced by role-playing games. If you have read my posts on Sunglar’s Musings, you know that 70s and 80s fantasy comics have been a topic I’ve written about repeatedly.

Because of this interest, when I saw an ad for Dokyo: Batalla De Los Reinos (Battle of the Realms), I wanted to learn more and wrote to the author to request an interview. Jonathan was very kind and not only answered my questions but also shipped the comics I ordered in record time, along with a few extras, for which I am very grateful.

I haven’t read Leyenda del Reino de Dragones (Legend of the Kingdom of Dragons) yet, but I love the 4 (out of 6) issues of Dokyo: Batalla De Los Reinos (Dokyo: Battle of the Realms) that I have read so far. It is a series clearly influenced by role-playing games, video games, anime, classic animated series, and adventure comics. Jonathan has a style I really love, as it is cartoony, highly appropriate for fantasy adventures, dynamic, and refreshing.

I love seeing local creators producing comics of this quality and caliber. I highly recommend them.

Well, you’ve read my thoughts on his comics, so I’ll leave you with the artist and creator.

Introduce yourself! Who are you and what do you create?

My name is Jonathan Collazo Galindez. I am a local comic book artist and graphic artist. A few of my creations are Dokyo: Batalla De Los Reinos (Dokyo: Battle of the Realms), which currently has 6 chapters, and Leyenda del Reino de Dragones (Legend of the Kingdom of Dragons), whose first chapter was released a few months ago. As a comic creator, I really like fantasy and stories that contain RPG or D&D elements. I grew up watching TV series from that era, like He-Man, ThunderCats, and Dungeons & Dragons, among others.

How would you describe your art?

I describe my comic story as one full of medieval fantasy, capturing the essence of those adventure series from our childhood. In the Dokyo: Batalla de Los Reinos comics, we meet Dokyo and his sister, young siblings who survived the attack on their father’s kingdom, which was destroyed by the dark lord Minamoto.

Dokyo, along with his sister Suiko, learns how to survive by becoming mercenaries and hiding their past. However, by the hand of destiny, they get back on track to fight evil.

How did you discover TTRPGs (tabletop or pen-and-paper role-playing games)?

My beginnings with TTRPGs were at the table with pencil and paper; among them were Dungeons & Dragons, Vampire: The Masquerade, and Marvel Super Heroes.

Since I didn’t have much income, a great friend and I made our own Warhammer game with plastic dragon and monster figures, dice, and cardboard elements. Another one I played and loved for its lore was Magic: The Gathering.

Are you actively playing? What are you playing right now?

Right now, I’m just sticking to playing video games.

Where can people find your projects?

Librería Norberto González in Plaza Las Américas, Librería Bajo el Carambola, Librería El Rincón del Lector, and online, you can find me as Saragoka Studio on both Instagram and Facebook.

Thanks to Jonathan for his kindness in participating in this interview and for sharing his comics with me.

I’ll leave you with a few links if you want to know more about his comics:

• Saragoka Studio Website: https://www.saragokastudio.com/
• Facebook Profile: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063949185932
• Instagram Profile: https://www.instagram.com/saragokastudio/

There is a Spanish version of this interview at Sunglar’s Musings.

Last post was about Cunning and Prowess, which are the stats PCs roll against to accomplish almost everything. But that's not the first part of character creation.

First, you come up with two Marks, or "specials". There's a list of 20 fleshed-out examples to build from. Here are a few to give you an idea what I'm talking about.

"2. You have a silver flute that was given to you “for luck” by an old woman on her deathbed. Playing it clears your mind and lets you focus. Sometimes playing the flute allows you to see solutions to problems or divine facts you could not otherwise have known."

"17. A vicious vulture plucked out one of your eyes. You know its name and nature. A desert devil, it is. A supernatural monster with part of your soul inside it. When you close your good eye and concentrate, you can see through the evil old vulture’s eyes. You can often make it fly where you like so you can see distant places. One day it may find you and try to finish the job."

Marks don't include game mechanics. The way they work is to be sorted out between player and Judge, but usually comes down a modifier to an Action Roll (Prowess or Cunning) or an Oracle (1d6)... the two mechanics used in the game.

I'm trying to keep this focused on the setting's theme, on characters, and the stuff that develops naturally through play. The mechanics underpin it, but I wouldn't call this a crunchy or fiddly system at all. 

 The Archeon Market is a massive, multi-tiered commercial meat-grinder hidden deep within a jagged obsidian chasm on the dying planet. Heavily inspired by the cosmic horrors of Rifts Atlantis, this market is not run by mere desert outlaws; it is a trans-dimensional and hyper-technological bazaar controlled by an ancient, multi-eyed alien cabal known as the Grand Taskmasters. This picks rightNeedleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Dead Wizards is a sword and sorcery RPG set in a sandy land. A bit of sand and sorcery, if you will.

The idea came up about ten years ago as an OD&D hack inspired by Corben, Howard, and Tanith Lee. Revamped it later and it changed into something completely different, becoming GOZR.

But now I'm back to the original concept. I started with GOZR mechanics as a base and I've been working from there. I stripped a few things away, added other things.

I'll try to do this as a series of posts over time, just talking about one aspect of the game or another. If you read this, feedback is greatly appreciated.

First up, the core character "stats": Prowess and Cunning. Prowess for all things physical and Cunning for everything else. Why just these two? Because in all the sword and sorcery tales I enjoy, characters deal with their world through only these two modes. I don't think any more are needed.

You roll for your stats. But like GOZR, lower is better because the stat is the target number to meet or beat on a 1d20 roll.

The roll to set the stat is 1d4+2 for each, so you can only get 3-6. A very narrow range, which is extremely on purpose and I spent a lot of time thinking about it, running simulations, and all that. It means the guy who gets a 3 and the guy who gets a 6 are still fully compatible in terms of skill.

The rolled target number is for a Basic level of difficulty. Then each level higher adds 3 to that target number. The difficulties are Basic, Arduous, Grueling, and Epic.

So if your Basic Prowess is 5, then you'd have a spread like this:

Basic 5
Arduous 8
Grueling 11
Epic 14

As with GOZR, this simply means you look at your sheet to see what your target number is. Quick and dirty. But here the Judge has options for increasing difficulty. The Judge can decide case-by-case how difficult a task is.

Bonuses to rolls are low. In most cases, you're not getting one. But you can get a +1 for some things and maybe even +2. That makes those target numbers more challenging, but not daunting. You are playing heroic, capable sword and sorcery characters... not farmers and zeroes.

Once your target numbers are set, they do not easily change. There's a way you can swap points between adventures, making Prowess 1 better and Cunning 1 worse, for example. But 3 is the hard limit. Nobody has a stat target lower than 3.

Characters are more differentiated by their histories and their special traits. More on that later. 

By Kirk Kahoe
Crimson River Games LLC
Generic/Universal
Levels: Any

Warning! This is as close as you can get to being a Heartbreaker without actua;;y being a Heartbreaker.

An eternal horror haunts the woods, reaping an endless harvest of woe from those foolish or desperate enough to travel through them. Tired and injured, the party will have to not only face an endless onslaught from the horror but fatigue and madness as well, for there is no sleep in the Old Man’s realm other than the sleep of death.

This 169 page adventure is an overwritten railroad in which the best solution is leaving the table to have explosive bloody diarrhea in your hosts bathroom and then going home. Ok, that was mean. It’s a 169 pages of railroaded atmosphere in which you have no choices to make as a player and the DM must wade through an excruciating amount of text to run even the simplest encounters.

Page twenty of the intro text tells the DM that they should Describe, not define and then follows this statement up with “A shambling and decaying humanoid creature that stinks of ammonia is scary. Labeling this creature “Zombie” and adding specific statistics is a game mechanism. It is thus no longer a scary monster but a set of numbers to crunch and probabilities to consider.”  This is 100% correct. Not only does it follow the show and don’t tell mantra, but it adds that air of mystery that RPGs thrive on. I’m a big big fan of this attitude and it bolstered my spirits seeing it. 

Oh! Oh! I forgot! You can get Hep! That’s right! Hep! That’s BAD AZZ! “So, what did I get? Another plague? Yellow squirting zombie fever or something?” “No, you got Hep.” Fucking christ ma! That’s great! I love it! Next time you roll through a village you find out 15% of them are dead from cholera. That’s nicely visceral and I do love a reaction from the players. Which, I might note, is exactly what the adventure is trying to do with its horror. 

Great, I’ve said something nice, even if I did include the backhanded “page twenty” reference. 

There’s a dude who is the only worshipper of a god and he’s constructed this obtuse parallel reality death trap in a forest to select sacrifices worthy of his god. As the adventure tells us “Due to the depth of role-playing required to deliver the Old Man and the complexity of fatigue’s impact on gameplay …” It’s a test/challenge dungeon. That’s it. 169 pages of test/challenge dungeon. You know how those things work. It’s an alternate reality blah blah blah, you can’t leave, blah blah blah, he controls everything blah blah blah. “In the event (which happens often) that the Old Man (or his copies) are somehow killed in any of the encounters before the final encounter at his hovel, he is instead fully healed and moved to the subsequent encounter.” Cause hes wearing this fucking ring that brings him back. Worry not, DM afraid the railroad will stop, “In all cases, the presence of the ring should not be noted due to the grime and darkness until the last encounter.” Ain’t nothing like having no choices that really brings home the immersion. Time and again we see this. This reliance on a test/challenge environment as a pretext for all of the setup the baddie has done. Time and again we see these mechanical contrivances, like the ring, used as an excuse to justify an effect. Time and again we see these railroads as an attempt to tell a story and get an effect. You can’t fucking do it that way. One of the keys to a roleplaying game is the ability to make choices. Once you take that away you might as well be watching a movie with a predetermined outcome. Sure, I can roll a die. Will the DM let me die or force me to suffer through the entirety of their story? Players check out when they can’t do anything. When they can’t make a decision. Sure, there’s a time and a place for “the RPG adventure as an Activity” instead of “the RPG adventure as a Game”, but, Baron Munchhausen did this a long long time ago. 

In spite of the adventures words implying it’s a show don’t tell piece, it relies on mechanics and read-aloud to bring the horror, telling instead of showing. A fatigue mechanic. Mountains and mountains and mountains of read-aloud. No one wants to listen to your half page read-aloud man. You don’t set a mood by using a lot of read-aloud. Yes, the writing should be evocative, but it should not be lengthy. You get a few sentences, three or four, and that’s it. You need to really work those sentences to bring the effect, the impact you are going for. Yes, it is not easy. It is, I think, the hardest part of adventure writing. More is not better. Player attention drifts. You make it harder on the DM to focus. You can’t use mechanics to fill in either. Sanity, in CoC, is just another pull of hit points, campaign hit points, as to say. It is up to the designer to put something together that FEELS like fatigue without relying on mechanics to accomplish that.

So, yeah, railroad. The adventure starts at a little trade town. Caravans leaving, to go over the pass. Wanna join? SURE you don’t want to join? Ok, so, no, you decide to wait at the trade town over the winter? Ok, then bandits keep attacking. Eventually you see over a 100 bandits about to attack and the entire town, whats left, flee in to the hill. Along the caravan route. Heh. So, yeah, you’re going on the adventure. Then you’re in the alternate reality shit where the dude controls everything and you’ve got exactly one path to go on. Just follow it and make skill check after skill check as: there’s a rock fall. There’s a bridge collapse. The wagon is stuck. Blah blah blah. I don’t know, there’s about fifty locations, between the overland and like a manor and such. 

There is an EXTENSIVE amount of information presented for each area. There’s a section for environment, then a section for topography. Then a boxed text section for the read-aloud, then a section for monsters/traps, then a section for encounter mechanics, then a section for notes, and a section for treasure, and a section for game master notes. There is EXTENSIVE repetition, which is great because with so much information, a long paragraph or more for each section, the area is then spread across multiple pages. There is NO WAY a DM can keep this shit together for a meaningful encounter. And this stuff is present for almost every area. Time and again, DO NOT use such a rigid format. Leave shit out if you don’t need it. Do NOT do shit like tell us the door, walls, light, smell, taste for each and every room. The purpose of formatting is to help bring clarity and help a DM when they scan the adventure looking for pertinent information. Used in mechanical fashion though, as it is here, is instead obfuscates and works against the goals it is trying to achieve.

It’s just weird, the way things come together in this. In one read-aloud section it says “They have knowledge of the mountains and what supplies are needed, and they can provide basic information about the mountain road. This sound slike DM notes, not read-aloud. And that’s not an isolated example, I’m not cherry picking. In another section there is a Treasure heading that reads “Treasure – Supplies from the abandoned wagons (See Treasure section).” Isn’t THIS the treasure section? (Turns out, no. It’s _A_ treasure section. FLipping to an appendix we can find a Treasure appendix with a listing for “Wagon Contents” which is full of mundane supplies.)

It’s just crammed with so much extraneous and repetitive information. And then the encounters are so humdrum. Oh, make a skill check! Ok, get a fatigue. Yawn. The final battle with th dude is anticlimactic as fuck. He attacks, eventually you drive him off. You find him in his hut and kill him there. End. Given this is 170 pages long and like almost fifty railroad encounters I would have expected just a little more in the way of flavour than a couple of sentences saying “he attacks you.” The horror element here just doesn’t work, hardly anywhere in the adventure. Mechanics and read-aloud doesn’t do it. The Hep C cant save an overwritten adventure in which the horror element is reduced to mechanics. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is the first seventeen pages. Which doesn’t show any of the encounters because there’s a LONG intro and background info and so on and so on and so on. A preview needs to show some of the encounters so a buyer can make an informed decision about the purchase. That’s the purpose of the preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/564568/the-old-man-of-the-woods?1892600

 Here is a 2d6-based random encounter table for a Kull-era Atlantean campaign utilizing the mechanics of The Sword of Cepheus 2nd Edition. This blog post picks right up from D100 Kull Era Atlantean Relics and Monster Encounter Tables For A Sword & Sorcery Sword of Cepheus 2nd edition Part IIIn the Thurian Age, Atlantis is not yet a sunken realm; it is a harsh, mountain-ringed Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

 In ACKS II, managing an estate and a private army is a core part of the game. For a planetary romance or space opera setting, the standard medieval ruler translates into a Space Noble. Instead of managing medieval peasants and wooden castles, a Space Noble commands high-tech orbital fiefs, handles interplanetary trade logistics, and maintains a private standing army of high-tech infantry orNeedleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0