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I’m the guy who does “monsters on a business card” posts, and I just started at MCDM, so I should probably do a Draw Steel Monsters on a Business Card, right?

Well it turns out I don’t have to! Amber over at amby.navy did it for me!

If you’re new to DS, there are a lot of new terms here and it may look intimidating! Luckily, it’s all spelled out in a few pages in the introduction of Draw Steel: Monsters. (No reverse engineering required!) But once you’ve read those pages, you may want to grab Amber’s card, which is a clever and compact distillation. Print it out, carry it, and use it to design monsters, and, heck, run completely improvised Draw Steel monsters on the fly!

The latter goal may seem crazy, but why not? In my never-ending goal to reduce my game prep time to just thinking about story beats, I intend to try out the business card to do that very thing.

In the post-industrial fantasy, The Gutter Prayer, by Gareth Hanrahan, gods are essentially strange loops of magical energy, powered by worship and quite obviously a lot more trouble than they're worth. At least most of them don't eat the souls of living being like the gods in R. Scott Bakker's The Second Apocalypse series, but that's about the only thing one could say in their favor. 

One of the interesting things in Hanrahan's portrayal are the saints. These saints are much like "The Gifted" in my Weird Adventures setting and in other posts in that they are people effectively imbued with super-powers by a god. As such, they make good inspiration for an approach to clerics in fantasy rpgs.

Saints differ from your standard cleric of the D&D variety in a few ways. One, they don't seem to cast spells, just manifest divine powers. Two, they aren't necessarily people of high faith, but ones who just happen to be on the same psychic wavelength as the god, making it easier for the god to establish a connection and work through them. Third, the saints, then, aren't the evangelists and expanders of a faith, generally, but it's holy warriors.

I've long felt that having clerical magic-users that are separate and distinct from regular priests and priestly hierarchies worldbuilding-wise, and this remains a really good approach, I think, and I feel like Hanrahan provides a flavorful implementation of it, with an interesting take on the gods, in general.

My recent deep dives into comics led me to explore other fantasy and sword-and-sorcery books I’d either missed or forgotten about over the years. That winding path eventually led me to Weirdworld, a comic created by Doug Moench and Mike Ploog. And honestly, rediscovering this series sparked an entirely new topic for my “40 Years a Gamer” retrospective: the artists who inspired my campaigns.

I absolutely love Mike Ploog‘s fantasy art. I first became consciously aware of him through his 1994 trading card collection, back when I was working at Metro Comics. I collected all those cards and used them as visual references and inspiration for NPCs and events in my homebrew world.

I eventually realized I had already seen his comic work in various back issues. I also found out later that he worked on Ralph Bakshi’s animated movies, Wizards and The Lord of the Rings, which were two of my absolute favorites!

His art style was a bit cartoony—different from the more traditional fantasy art that usually inspired me as a young GM—but it had this incredible dynamism and movement that other pieces just lacked. Sadly, I no longer have the complete trading card set. But back in the days before high-speed internet and Pinterest, physical art books and trading cards were the main sources of visual inspiration for the table.

The Weirdworld connection that sparked all these memories is actually pretty funny. I had completely forgotten about these characters. I originally read about them in Marvel Fanfare issues 24-26 back in 1986. Because I was such a huge Elfquest fan, I was thrilled to find another fantasy story, but I remember being a little disappointed. It just didn’t capture me the way Elfquest did. As it turns out, the stories I read were NOT drawn by Mike Ploog!

Because of that, I completely forgot about the setting until I stumbled across it again a few days ago and realized it was co-created by one of my favorite artists. What a great connection to finally make. You can see some of Ploog’s original Weirdworld art below.

Bonus! There was a map of Weirdworld published in Epic Illustrated #9. The map is a little silly—or perhaps whimsical, and fairy-like is a better description! While I might not use it as direct inspiration for a TTRPG right now, we’ve had two significant adventures in the Fey Realm in my long-running homebrewed campaign, so I am absolutely keeping this handy for later reference.

Random notes.

After having ran and played in multiple games with player-facing dice rolls, I gotta say I strongly prefer them. Having players roll all the dice frees the GM up to focus more on what's happening and what happens next and it keeps players being active contributors.

Player-facing rolls have moved up the ranks in my gaming preferences right up there with luck points and death choices.

Speaking of gaming... shit I'm behind. I playtested ZSF and I'm in a spot where I could hone it, focus in, and get the game done. But right now in this instant I do not have that fire. I'll get back to it later.

Meanwhile I've dashed out a few other game ideas. I wrote one the other day based an older idea called Dirty Dozen Death Squad. You make a unit of 4 or 5 characters, then all the players bring all their characters and you just go through a violent mission. I guess it's more of a skirmish game and RPG.

Made another one this week. No name yet, but it's got a neat little core where you roll a d20 if you've got a skill and a d12 if you don't. Each hit you take knocks you down a die step. But it's not a combat game... it's more of an explore and interact kind of thing.

Sketching is always on the table. Tons and tons of drawing and doodling and coming up with ideas. I've written many comic book scripts lately. I just can't seem to find the oomph to focus on one thing long enough to get it done.

But I'll get there.

 The PC's were contacted by The Ghost of Hong Kong after she took on an assignment from Tankana's corporate rivals. I'm using The Ghost of Hong Kong: Targets as a reference. The events of  Bidonville Blues  adventure & the Thresher almost ended two PC's.  This session report picks right up from New Flesh Rpg Adventure - Mission Brief: Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

When I recently shared that image of classic DC Comics sword-and-sorcery characters as great TTRPG inspiration on my Facebook Page (see the featured image above!), I honestly didn’t expect to fall down such a deep rabbit hole learning about them. But one thread pulled another, and I ended up finding some incredible material that I can’t wait to bring to the table.

First up was Claw the Unconquered. At first glance, he looks like a standard Conan knockoff. But I was reading Scott Dutton’s Catspaw Dynamics blog (which I mentioned in the blog post where I wrote about Conqueror of the Barren Earth), and Scott shared some beautifully digitally recreated art for the series. More importantly, he shared a map of the setting where Claw’s adventures take place.

It’s literally called “The Known World.”

Anyone who knows me knows I am an absolute sucker for fantasy maps, and seeing a “Known World” instantly triggered my Mystara nostalgia! Seeing this immediately makes me want to track down these old comics just to learn more about how they built this world and see what I can borrow for my own campaigns.

Another classic DC Comics sword-and-sorcery character from that same era that caught my attention is Stalker. And just like Claw the Unconquered, he has a world map too! It’s a simpler one, but it still makes me want to mine it for campaign material.

The premise of the book is intriguing: Stalker is a man who sells his soul to become an unbeatable warrior, then goes on a brutal quest to recover it. The art is by the legendary Steve Ditko—obviously of Spider-Man fame, but he did so much more than that. The whole concept of a soulless warrior trying to wrest his soul back from the demon god who granted him power is such a perfect hook for a TTRPG campaign.

I really want to drop Stalker the Soulless and Claw the Unconquered in as NPCs in a future fantasy game. They could easily fit into Worlds Without Number or Savage Worlds, but honestly, they both give me massive Shadowdark or Old School Essentials vibes. Since I’ve been rereading the Shadowdark rules during my recent holiday, I’m genuinely tempted to just roll up a PC based entirely on Stalker.

As I kept digging, it turns out that back in the late 70s, DC wasn’t just publishing sword-and-sorcery heroes. They were also putting out some wild science-fantasy and sci-fi comics. I honestly did not know much, if anything, about these until I took this deep dive into old comics lore!

There are two I want to learn more about, especially since the descriptions I read online make them seem to be in the exact same vein as one of my all-time favorites, Atari Force.

The first is a science-fantasy heroine named Starfire (yes, she had the name before the Teen Titans character!). According to a quote from Hope Nicholson’s The Spectacular Sisterhood of Superwomen on the Wikipedia page, she was originally meant to be DC’s answer to Marvel’s Red Sonja. However, writer David Michelinie took her in a different creative direction, trying to give the series a vibe closer to Edgar Rice Burroughs‘ Barsoom.

The second is a sci-fi team book called Star Hunters. According to one review I read, it sounds like a bit of a mess—but that might be the fun of it. The art looks genuinely intriguing, and Donovan Flint, the titular Star Hunter, looks an awful lot like Corsair from the X-Men.

Here is the absolute best part of this whole dive: Michelinie actually created Claw the Unconquered, Starfire, and Star Hunters, and he originally wanted them all to be connected as champions in a massive battle between universal forces. It is a direct callback to that cosmic Law vs. Chaos conflict I wrote about Arion a few days ago.

All of this will absolutely serve as inspiration for my future Stars Without Number campaign.

If you want to check out the art and read more about these characters, the Catspaw Dynamics blog has some great entries with preserved and recreated art:

• Claw the Unconquered
• Starfire Poster by Mike Vosburg
• Star Hunters #1 Cover
• Star Hunters #8 (Unpublished Cover)
• The Connected DC Universe of David Michelinie

And if you want a laugh, here is that review of Star Hunters.

By Taron Pounds
Land of the Blind
OSR/Vagabond
Levels 6-10

An explosion rocks a nearby mountain range. Once the dust clears, two twisted and screaming towers remain: one black and one white. Ominous seals appear on the moon and stars. A wicked smile spreads across the eye-spotted black tower’s upper story, capped by a witch hat-like roof. Its upper and lower floors appear to be separated, with arcs of blue lightning emanating from its center. The white tower is a bastille of pale stone, with an otherworldly blue fire burning at its top. Windows of stained glass bend without breaking along the white tower’s exterior, and eyes of madness follow those who approach the black. A flock of winged serpents fly around these profanities of architecture. No one knows where these towers came from, and what has corrupted the celestial bodies. It is up to the heroes to uncover the mystery to stop a cataclysm that has been unfolding for centuries in secret.

This 44 page dungeon presents two towers with about nineteen rooms between them. It’s a funhouse dungeon in which the world ends. That’s fun! Also, you don’t actually need to do anything here but go to the top floor and pull a lever. That’s fun! I don’t see a reason to go inside.

The gods have trapped one of their own in a magic prison. Dude wants out and finally is about to break free, thanks to his two followers, each of whom built a tower. You don’t know any of this. You’ve just got some generic rando hooks that come down to “you see these two weird towers.” I hope you go inside, because if you don’t then the world ends. That’s rough. Anyway, you go inside and find a funhouse dungeon, the two towers connected to each other with some magic pathways and normal stairs and so on. Turns out that if “the steamworks” is functioning inside the tower, and someone has had their soul aged in the aging room, then if you pull the level at the top of one of the towers then the trapped god will go back to jail. There’s a friendly phoenix, powering the steamworks through a portal to the elemental plane of water, that will tell you all of this who is at the top of the other tower. Anyway, so, the steamworks already works. And someone has already given their soul to the aging room. So, just pull the level in the other tower. 

To get there you will need to … ignore everything. Basically. Whatever is in the room, just ignore it and go up the stairs or through a door. Yeah! You’ve overcome that challenge. I’m not sure anything really attacks you in this unless you go fucking with shit. Oh, wait, hang on, there’s a death knight. “Motionless at first, but disappears if vision on him breaks and he then stalks the party.” I don’t know what the whole “disappears and then stalks” thing is about. I guess that’s for the DM to handle. So, I guess you gotta fight him? I THINK that’s the only required combat. Also, “required” is a loose word; I think you can make your way through the tower without having to go in to the throne room where he sits. 

Let’s double check my theory. Room one, walk backwards down a mirror hall. No consequences for not doing that. Room two, touch nothing and go up the stairs. No consequences for not doing that. Room three, go up the stairs and don’t touch the floating books. Room four, ignore the tree and go through one of the doors. Room five ignore everything. Room six, go through a door. Room seven, go up the stairs. Room eight, go up the stairs. Room nine, go up the stairs. Room ten, meet the phoenix. That’s one full tower and half the rooms. Congrats. The second tower, to my recollection, is more of the same. 

But, hey, you can still make the world end. Every time you use a spell or a magic item or go through a magic portal in the tower then the DM rolls a die. The third time they roll a one the dude breaks free and immediately destroys the universe. You get a warning though, you hear an owl screeching, which, obviously, means the universe is going to end if you cast another spell. This mechanic also ties in to a fun “weird things happen!” table, with entries like “Unluckiest PC must save or their limbs become accordions for 1 Minute.” or some blobs teleport in, loudly fart, and then teleport out again. Fun! … Humor, gentle readers, is highly subjective and doesn’t translate well.

We lead off with three paragraphs of italics read-aloud. We get read-aloud like “This room appears to have been built to keep a phoenix in a consecrated prison.” Appears to be. And how the fuck do we know it’s a prison? Or that it’s consecrated? It’s just garbage. In one room you find some masks. “Each is Cursed and Sentient, but only speaks while worn.” We’re referred to a table telling us what they do. “The wearer fails Checks against surprise.” Dazzling. Sublime. You didn’t even bother to give the mask a name or a personality or anything else. 

I’m not a fan of the zany funhouse, but this isn’t that. I’m also not a fan of the museum trip, and this is more in that vein. Just don’t touch anything and look at the scenery and you’ll be fine. But, also, the whole “lets nerf the party” and “oops! The world ended! Guess you didn’t figure out that was going on!” is VERY time. You need to communicate that the party is racing against time or else it’s not a race against time. It just ends up being the wandering damage table and rocks fall, everyone dies. Weird that’s not fun. And if you need to nerf the party then you wrote the adventure for the wrong level range.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages and shows you nothing of import. Poor preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/561060/the-rook-the-crook?1892600

For someone who posts primarily about tabletop role-playing games, I certainly have been talking a lot about comics lately. Indulge me again, because this one is directly related to the hobby. Today, I want to look at a comic book based specifically on a TTRPG—Malibu Comics’ 1992 Torg mini-series, published under their Adventure Comics imprint.

It was 1992. Torg: Roleplaying the Possibility Wars had been out for two years, and I was completely obsessed with it. I had read the first tie-in novel (because it seemed like every major TTRPG released in that era had to have one!), and as much as I liked it, I was still trying to wrap my head around what a Torg campaign should actually look like at the table.

This comic finally gave me that answer.

It was thrilling to see an alternate-world reality invading Earth on the page. Specifically, the Tharkoldu invasion of LA! The book perfectly illustrated the dynamics of heroes from wildly different realities teaming up to face these massive challenges. I don’t have the physical issues in front of me right now—they are packed away in storage—but at the time, I was a massive fan. I managed to get my hands on issues 1, 2, and 4 right away, though it took me years to finally track down issue number 3. When someone asked me what Torg was like back then, I didn’t point them to the heavy rulebook; I referred them to these comics.

It helps that the book was written by legendary game designer Greg Gorden, who was actually part of Torg‘s original design team. His resume is incredible. He was part of the team that designed the James Bond 007 RPG, served as the main designer on Mayfair’s DC Heroes, worked on West End’s Star Wars D6, and was the main author of the Imperial Sourcebook—setting a high bar for game design that influenced the entire Star Wars franchise. He also worked on the original Deadlands, which ties my early love of Torg directly to my current predilection for Savage Worlds.

If you want a deep dive into his game design and influence on the hobby in general, check out this excellent interview and analysis over at Geekerati Media.

The art was handled by Sergio Cariello. He went on to work for more mainstream titles, but here he captured the setting’s cinematic feel perfectly. The comic looked like a gritty action movie—more grounded and realistic, and not four-color at all. It was black and white, after all!

There might be some rose-colored-glasses reminiscing about what I just wrote. But in 1992, and for a few years afterward, this four-issue run was hugely influential in shaping my conception of what Torg was and could be. I reread the original novel trilogy and these comics to prep for a Torg prequel campaign I ran in the early 2000s.

I really wish more TTRPG comic crossovers would use the medium to show what playing the game feels like, rather than just telling a generic story with the game’s branding slapped on the cover.

Have you ever read a tie-in novel or comic that completely changed how you ran a specific RPG?

Hello, friends and neighbors. Long time no see, right? Well, I was undecided how to move on from blogger. It's just that ... well, the algorithm is an unkind mistress, so we are moving tents to greener pastures. I'll show you the way.

Looky here, a Substack ...

Blogger was good the first couple of years I used it, but when g+ got the boot, it all fizzled away. And the OSR community (of yore) with it. I stayed. I tried. And I never stopped working on the stuff I started. But this isn't the place for it anymore. I barely get traffic from other blogs anyway (AND haven't been doing much here as well).

So I have to move on.

But I'd be happy to take you! So here's where it's at, with a couple of words about what it will be about:
 

Go there, if you will 

You see? I shift focus a bit. Not so much about the culture and more about me being a publisher and talking about my projects, about the tools of the trade, all that good stuff, and with clear dedication to give this a proper pulse.

I'll update here when I update there until I feel like this blog can rest now.

See you on the other side!
 

 

By Shanklimb
Self Published
OSR
Levels 4-6

In recent months, strange mushrooms have erupted across a corner just outside the Mulchgrove. Local foragers reported vivid, peculiar dreams after extracting them – visions of mosslings sharing tea with mammoths, a boulder tucked in for naptime, and other odd sights. Now the dreams are coming uninvited, in daylight, to people who never touched the mushrooms at all.  The mosslings of Mulchgrove are divided. Most believe the fungi are a divine offering – though no two can agree which god sent them, or why. But it’s to be sure: someone, or something, is broadcasting.

This eleven page adventure describes fifteen rooms, mostly linear, in some caves. Low on interesting, you get some sub-standard descriptions of slime mold rooms. Nothing to see here, move along, move along. 

The locals have discovered a new type of mushroom. You’re hired to check it out. You find some caves with some friendly trolls in them. They grow moss. In beds fertilized with corpses. Looks like slime molds have attacked their caves. You go kill the slime molds.

Aimless, perhaps, is how I would describe this. There just isn’t much motivating going on in any sense. The situation in the local village is “oh, look, new mushrooms!” with no real sense of urgency behind it. The hooks are all Hiring in one sense or another, usually with a “I’d some of that new mushroom variety …” There’s little personal motivation in any of that, just a blatant appeal to your desire to play D&D tonight or go to a bar instead. There’s not much of a hunt for an entrance, I guess all of the locals are blind or something, just “here’s the hole in the ground!” and then, once inside it’s more of the same. You enter a room with moss in it. This room has trolls and moss. The trolls are friendly. They don’t care. Well, one room has some sleeping trolls in it who are not pleased at being woken up, if you hang around. I wouldn’t be either. Anyway, they don’t care. Yeah, they are fertilizing their ground with corpses, but there’s no indication they are KILLING people. The descriptions are entirely neutral on that point. “Investigating the corpses: Human commonfolk, arranged with almost ceremonial care. Their hands are folded, mouths held agape with sticks. No possessions of any value.” Sure thing man. No one cares. Well, the trolls are not happy that their moss tunnels have now been invaded by slime molds. Pretty please? This puts us, I don’t know, halfway through the encounters? So you wander around looking at moss and trolls until you reach the barricades that block off the other half of the rooms. Once there things change. You kill gelatinous hulks and other mindless blob things. Yeah! You did it! ‘ 

The last half of the room, eight rooms, are handled in two pages. So, two pages of content here. Two pages of things to do. You enjoy yourself here.

Room descriptions are in the old OSE style and meh. “The Threshold Black walls (thicker roots). Translucent threads (hang from ceiling, like a curtain).” This is ok, but not great. It’s just not very evocative, but, at least, it’s not overly long, thank god. 

There’s just not much here. Stab the blob things. Maybe don’t touch the pools that are obviously acidic. It’s like The Adventure Of Getting Inzto My Condo! Avoid the church people in the drive and hit the open gate button on the app. Don’t yell at the old person driving slowly in front of you. Open the garage door with the opener. Park in the garage being careful not to hit the concrete post on one side. Roll 1d6, if you get a 1-3 then the car on the other side is present also and you should not hit it. Push the elevator button. Wait forever. 1-3:d6 other people get off on floor one, slowing your ascent. Yeah. Ok. I guess things happen. I guess? Do they matter? No. 

Also, I’m annoyed that the numbers on the map are in a black font in purple background blobs. This is my usual Hard To Read rant. And, then, the dungeon proper, “This dungeon is made up of an expanding fungal root-system, the roots of which form mid-sized tunnels and rooms.” I guess the roots are hollow?

Nothing here. Move along. Move along. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/560343/corpse-husbandry-an-adventure-in-dolmenwood?1892600

By Gabor Lux
EMDT
OSRIC
Levels 5-8

Linquar the Eternal has fallen, its palaces and temples decaying in the teeming jungles. Few dare to head for the misty island plateau where the ruins stand, and even fewer have succeeded in claiming its treasures from the savage ape-men who now rule in its citizens’ stead. The great city is largely forgotten, and even its name only refers to a squalid pirates’ nest that had once been its trading outpost. What had been the capital of the isles is known as a cursed and abandoned place that’s better left undisturbed. But more often, it is simply known by its current inhabitants… as the City of the Ape-Men!

This sixty page adventure is an Isle of Dread, but with ape-men in the lost city. A complex environment with large groups to challenge the parties looting efforts, it does a hex crawl with some locations being mini-dungeons. Bring those cargo ships to haul away the loot and avoid the pirates while dodging the secret masters manipulation of the apes. The logistics game is the only thing missing. 

We’ve got the ol Dread here, a jungle island with some dinos and ‘big fucking snakes’, the former seat of an empire that prospered from the spice farmingo n the island. Their former slaves, the ape-men are now all that’s left, along with a smaller island off the coast that has a pirate town on it that can serve as a home base. You hex crawl the island looking for spice, pirate-loot, and the wonders of the fallen empire. Don’t worry, in spite of dinos and ape-men there are also a handful of giant frogs, frog-lizards and frogodiles. 

The hex encounters, about twenty, range from the very small “R. The weird rock: A large stone with a spongy, greasy surface stands here with nuggets of a rare ore embedded in it (2500 gp).” to more involved paragraphs to handful (sixish) of mini-dungeons. These range from the “wildlife wants to eat you”, with flying manta rays and dinos and snakes and spiders, to monoliths and locales from the old empire, usually with some mythical bend to them. (Meditation on the holy ruins on the highest peak gives you a +1 to two stats … if you can make it to the top.) 

Running throughout we’ve got LARGE groups of ape-men running around, like, in groups of five to forty. And then in their bases near the lost city, proper, groups of forty to seventy. Ouch! I love a large group of enemies to challenge high level parties in an open environment like this where the party can plan and plot, and flee in a crazed terror through the jungle when the masses appear. 

The apes are divided in to three factions, buying for power. They hate each other, but, also, they hate all humans more. Like, ravenously hate them. They are taking instructions from their GODDESS, a talking statues. We’ve all seen Oz, so we know what’s up, Turns out that there are tunnels full of spider people who are the secret masters, subtly working the apes against each other to keep their numbers low. But, also, they are gonna make sure that nosey adventurers get fucked up hard. Once technologically advanced, their crashed spaceship is on the island also. Don’t worry, it doesn’t really go gonzo at all. The whole place is nice and sandboxy.

I do have a few issues though.

I can’t make much sense of the elevation contour lines on the map. I think the text says something like the island rises to 1200 feet high, and the map says that contour lines represent 1200’ feet. I assume there’s a typo in there somewhere, but, also, I’ve had a REAL hard time making sense of the contour lines on the map. There IS a separate map that just shows the contours, and it helps a lot, but that’s alot of referencing back and forth when trying to relay information to the party. 

The hex crawl instructions are decent, and none of those fucking environment/humidty rules that I hate dealing with in crawls. “You can’t wear platemail!” Fuckoff. You’ll have to kiss me first. My major issue is, with most hex crawls and this one, the lack of mentioning how far you can see/landmarks when getting high up. It makes sense to climb a tree, or a plateau, to see what’s around (See also: the Fallout Red Glow At Night) and a sentence about that would have been nice. 

Given that there is a high likelihood of this being a treasure extraction game, the pirate town could have used a little more as well. It’s covered in several pages and there are several factions there as well. A little more on off-loading the goods and/or a pirate ship/response to the party brining in loot would have been nice. A sample raiding ship or two, perhaps? There is enough, generally, to understand that there SHOULD be complications but a sentence or two, maybe a paragraph, on potential extraction play would have slotted in quite nicely for this one.I might quibble as well with their being simple ruins that are unlooted in a town full of destitutes, or bordellos opening at sundown in a lawless place, but those are just quibbles. It’s also full of good human nature type things like “Linquar’s beggars are downtrodden wretches begging for scraps. At night, more aggressive begging also takes place if the beggars outnumber the opposing party 2:1”

This is a better jungle crawl than Dread. Where Dread was a little sparse this contains the makings of a nice long game, with factions and complications, as well as a base, to help support that longer arc of a game. There are real rewards for dealing with a group of forty flying dinos, or making it through the ape-city, or climbing the highest peak. Intelligent play, by following ruined roads that see from up high, will help direct the party to most places. Three is a place to recruit and offload loot. The apes are presented as SO hateful, though, that it doesn’t leave much room at room for factions, other than, perhaps, subtly working them against each other. 

This is $6.40 at DriveThru. The preview is the first thirteen pages, which shows the island map and some of the town and general instructions. That’s probably enough, although, as always a page of the island encounters or lost city encounters would have been nice as well.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/559570/city-of-the-ape-men?1892600

By Patrice Crespy
Kabuki Kaiser
OSR
Levels 1-4

It was bound to happen. Too many relics. Too many books. Too much past stacked in one place, the Monument Valley of scrolls and mouldy tomes. The Lucubrarium of Unobsolescence has gone wrong. In Bec–de–Corbin nearby, folk forget their names mid–sentence. Chalk–pale, traits blurred by scratches and hollow wrinkles, eyes sunk. Static. Howls in the night. The militia still stands at the keep and demands tolls, then forgets what it’s doing. The rain just won’t stop. Thugs move in, bold as daylight. And when night comes, the lights go out.

This 44 page digest adventure uses seven or eight pages to describe about forty locations in a town and in a two level library/abbey. You can tell what it is trying to do, but in spite of some great specificity it mostly fails to create the environment it is going for.

There’s this library place, including relics, with a small town around it. Some kind of memory eater/void monster shows up and people start forgetting their names. Some of them no longer have faces. Others are worse, their heads a ragged black blob and howling continually. You show up in town, make it to the library/abbey, and … do whatever. Loot the place for relics I guess. 

Kabuki has some decent ideas and can conjure up some great imagery. The whole “forget your own name” is a nice touch. The ragged face monsters and howling and so on are quite appealing to me, personally (ever since The Void supplement for 3.0, I was captivated by it. Who doesn’t love Munch? At one point one of the random atmosphere tables has “A white noble dress fit for a young lady, nailed to a wall, torn. THAT’S NOT ME, written across the chest in coal.” Well now, that’s a statement, isn’t it? There are little bits and pieces of shit like this scattered throughout that are just great imagery. 

Let us transition somewhat to the following entry. This particular location is a part of the “in town” section. “Falkenrot Manor Earl Falkenrot’s a ghoul — kept secret for ages by his family. When the Faceless came, they wandered off and left him here, locked down in the cellar. Half– Faced, black pits for eyes, ravenous.” Nice concept. Decent ghoul description. Mostly backstory. As a concept for something it’s great. As an actual place, meant to adventure in, it’s pretty lousy. And there is A LOT of this.

The town map is irrelevant, just a kind of conceptual thing with some numbers on buildings. The descriptions are short and=, again, just concepts. “Watchtower Deserted. An alarm fire atop has been spent. Did anyone see it?” Well I don’t know, did they? Are there consequences one way or another to that? 

That bit at the end, it’s some kind of hipster pretension. And THAT absolutely IS prevalent everywhere. The whole “let’s put in a meaningless question under the pretext of giving the DM possibilities!”  There’s a forest wolf encounter. The wolves are hungry and want to steal food and run off, mostly. That’s great! Except we also get “No food, they come in.’ This is supposed to, I think, convey a sense of menace. It does not. Nearby this, in a description meant to be atmospheric, about the journey to the town, it ends with something meant to convey the inclusion of the party in the description. “Chatter about the heist, maps, treasure. Or dead silence. Up to the table.” Why, yes, it is up to the table. But also, what’s with the sentence “Up tp the table?” Ol Craig used a cut down sentence, with dropped words and fragments, in order to save space. Space clearly isn’t an issue here given the ‘luxurious’ room given to simple tables. A couple of pages for “Which of the six howlers show up” could be compressed to maybe six short sentences. Or, the text implies that only three howlers exist, so, perhaps not having a table at all? This sort of needless randomness drives me crazy; an adventure is almost always better when the locales are themed around the specifics of a creature rather than just giving a random determination, for these sorts of encounters. 

And how about those dungeon rooms? “Portcullis: Disjointed and stuck shut. S7 STR with up to 4 characters adding their STR to lift/bend. One attempt only.” Great! That’s how we get those thirtyish rooms down into the quite small page count devoted to locations, with the bulk of the text being other tables. The interactivity here boils down to finding, say, the wormacide that helps you fight the giant bookworms, or being confident in answering a forgetful sphinx’s riddles. 

Not Kabuki’s best work. It feels like it needs another couple of polishes to make everything come together and work as a cohesive whole. Better integration of the various major enemy groups, and a more solid effort in brining out the … joylessness? Melancholy? The forgetful nature of things.

This is $5 at DriveThru.The preview really shows off the worse parts of the adventures, the sparse table nature. Things change, the text style and descriptive style, deeper in and that, being the bulk of the adventure, is where the preview should have focused. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/556896/the-faceless-howl?1892600

Back in July 2010, I wrote a post right here on Stargazer’s World about how comic books were a parallel passion of mine and how deeply they influenced my role-playing games. As I’ve been putting together this “40 Years a Gamer” retrospective, I realized I needed to revisit that topic. It’s easy to list movies or literature as the main drivers of fantasy gaming. Still, for me, comic books provided a visual, episodic template that directly translated to how I ran my campaigns. The pacing, the larger-than-life characters, and the shifting status quo were exactly what I wanted to replicate behind the GM screen.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been sharing these inspirations in a series of social media posts on my Facebook Page, Sunglar’s Musings. Now, I want to collect them all here into one definitive list, creating a full picture of the panels and pages that inspired my gaming over the last four decades.

The Fantasy Cornerstones

If we’re talking about the absolute bedrock of my fantasy gaming, three works shaped my love for the genre: Tolkien’s books, the Dragonlance Chronicles, and Elfquest. I discovered Elfquest through the Starblaze Graphics collections, and Wendy and Richard Pini’s work defined my conception of elves, trolls, and faeries (the Preservers in the comics) more than Professor Tolkien ever did. It gave me a template for the exact sort of fantasy story I love to tell: stories about family, love, epic themes, and, most importantly, a narrative that can have closure for some characters. At the same time, new adventurers face new challenges in a living world—a lot like a TTRPG campaign. Chaosium even published an Elfquest TTRPG in the 80s, and they crowfunded a deluxe edition a few years back.

You can read the Elfquest comics online here: https://elfquest.com/reading-room/

Then there is Groo the Wanderer. This may seem like an odd choice, but hear me out! Groo is a hilarious comic by the legendary Sergio Aragonés that brilliantly pokes fun at fantasy barbarians and countless other genre tropes. I discovered Groo directly from the creator himself while visiting a comic shop in NYC back in the 80s. He heard me speaking Spanish with my mom, called me over to his table in the back of the store, and we started chatting. I left that day with the original eight Pacific Comics issues and have been reading Groo ever since. In high school, I would sit in class and scrawl Groo’s stats in the margins of my notebooks for whatever RPG system I was playing. While I never officially introduced Groo into a campaign, his incredible cast of supporting characters provided ample inspiration for NPCs in all my games—especially The Sage, Chakaal, and Taranto. I did include a lost dog named Rufferto looking for his master in a game once, though! There should always be a little room for fun and absurdity in our fantasy games, and Groo is the perfect reminder of that.

Rounding out my early fantasy influences are Marvel’s adaptations of Robert E. Howard. I first knew Conan through the 1982 movie, which I talked my paternal grandfather and uncle into taking me to see on a summer trip to NYC. But I really got to know the mythos through the comics. In December 1983, I got my first issue, Conan #156. Soon, I was buying Savage Sword of Conan, King Conan (which shaped my ideas of domain-level D&D play), and Red Sonja. Sonja was such a strong lead that I based a major rebel leader NPC on her in my 1993 AD&D 2nd Edition homebrew; her descendants are still part of my campaign world today. And I must mention The Official Handbook of the Conan Universe. I read it repeatedly, and its format influenced how I organize my own campaign materials.

Swords, Sorcery, and the DC Universe

Over at DC, Mike Grell’s The Warlord and Paul Kupperberg and Jan Duusrsema’s Arion, Lord of Atlantis were massive for me.

My mom picked up back-issues of The Warlord on a business trip, along with a huge stack of Rom Spaceknight. I first read the adventures of Skartaris completely out of order. Still, the sword-and-sorcery elements hit so hard that in the summer of 1988, I based a homebrew NPC named Janna directly on Shakira the werecat. Janna became the love interest of Ranger Oliver (whose player was a big Green Arrow fan, particularly The Longbow Hunter, tying it right back to Mike Grell!). She was the daughter of the Cat Lord (remember him in Monster Manual II?). Eventually, she replaced her father and became the mythical ruler of all felines in my campaign.

Arion gave me a different perspective. Arion’s battle against the Lords of Chaos to protect Atlantis gave me an immediate, tangible reference point for the Law vs. Chaos alignment conflict in D&D, long before I ever read Michael Moorcock’s Elric, or learned about Poul Anderson’s influence on the development of the alignment system for D&D. I also loved the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths connections to DC lore, the Lords Chaos and Order in the DC universe. Then there is the fact that Arion’s co-creator, Jan Duursema, illustrated the original AD&D comic. Another gaming connection!

Sci-Fi, Aliens, and the Apocalypse

My sci-fi gaming drew heavily from a few specific series. First up is Atari Force. I discovered the universe in the mini comics tucked inside Atari cartridges. Still, it was the comic book series and graphic novel illustrated by José Luis García-López that truly inspired me. Many of the comic’s characters became NPCs in my high school Star Frontiers campaign and later campaigns. Some elements from the comics and the visual aesthetics still influence and inform my sci-fi games, including the Wanderers of the Outlands and the Stars Without Number campaign.

Conqueror of the Barren Earth started as a backup feature in The Warlord before getting its own four-issue mini-series. Eleven-year-old me loved this post-apocalyptic mash-up of sci-fi and fantasy. With its strong female lead, Jinal Ne’ Comarr, it became a huge reference point for me when I eventually discovered games like Gamma World and Rifts.

For the Alternity and dX campaigns I ran in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Christopher Moeller’s beautifully illustrated Iron Empires series was hugely influential. Only the first two books, Iron Empires: Faith Conquers and Sheva’s War, were out when I ran those games, but I now own all three, including volume 3, Void. There is even a TTRPG for the setting called Burning Empires, based on the Burning Wheel system. I once walked all the way across Manhattan to get a copy of it at The Complete Strategist, but I still haven’t played it!

On the weirder side of the spectrum, I devoured the Spanish editions of Gods from Outer Space (Los Dioses del Universo) when I was nine. Let’s be clear: the book these comics are based on, The Chariots of the Gods, is unscientific, Eurocentric hogwash that minimizes the achievements of other cultures. But as a kid, I knew nothing about that. They were just wild ideas that fascinated me and informed my early TTRPG worldbuilding. Today, I sometimes go back to those concepts at the table, but those meddlesome creatures from beyond the world are now cast firmly as oppressors and antagonists.

Superheroes, Cyberpunk, and Pulp Action

Regardless of the genre you are playing, your adventuring party is essentially a superhero team. Each member has their roles and powers, and the dynamics between them set the tone for the game. For me, one team in comics exemplifies that perfectly: the Legion of Super-Heroes. I read the Legion for years; the old stories in DC digests in the early 80s, the Great Darkness Saga, and the 1994 reboot. The Legion taught me, as a GM, how to handle the varied dynamics of a vast, diverse cast, proving that interpersonal relationships are what actually make a game interesting. The Five Years Later storyline also taught me not to fear tearing down a campaign and rebuilding it into something different when your stories need a reboot.

Another huge superhero influence was Hammerlocke, a 1992-1993 nine-issue series drawn by Chris Sprouse. It was a brilliant mash-up of low-power superheroes, cyberpunk sci-fi, espionage, and mystery centered on a space elevator and cyborg Archer Locke. It showed how to run superheroes in a completely different setting from the four-color mainstream adventures and directly influenced how I construct those sorts of stories.

Finally, let me tell you about an old character whose current adventures are my favorite comic being produced today: Flash Gordon. For years, Dan Jurgens’ DC mini-series adaptation (where Flash was a washed-out basketball player) was my benchmark for a modern version of the character. But then came Dan Schkade. As the creator of the current daily strip, he tells refreshing stories that respect and build on the classic mythology while making it feel completely new. He inspires my gaming by showing how to create fresh content that builds naturally on the work that came before it. Reading his strip makes me want to run games based on pulp characters, a reimagined Defenders of the Earth, and it really makes me want to finally run that Mystara game I’ve always dreamed of playing.

Looking back, these comics taught me pacing, worldbuilding, and how to create larger-than-life situations that still felt grounded in character relationships.

What comic books shaped your time at the table? Let me know in the comments.

By Daniel Hicks
Self Published
ACKS
Levels 4-6

Warning! Barrier Peaks is my all time nostalgia favorite. 

A spaceship was transferring dangerous exotic lifeforms for sale at another point. A defective containment unit released one avid Hund, which quickly killed those present and set about freeing its kin. The acid hounds killed or fatally wounded every passenger and member of the ship’s crew in short order. Unfortunately, this occurred while the pilot was making manual course corrections in the outskirts of this solar system and with the autopilot disabled the ship drifted off course for weeks. More recently, she ship has crash-landed, and

presents a hazard if approached.

This five page adventure uses about two pages to present about thirteen rooms in a crashed flying saucer. Basic descriptions, simple map, not much beyond the most basic of encounter structures. And, of course, too small for its theme. But, hey, it’s got more rooms than pages, so there’s that!

A classic flying saucer has crash landed, so imagine a circle layout, about a dozen rooms along the edge and one or to interior, with a circle hallway in between. It crashed because some Acid Hounds got loose. You’ll find all seven of those 3 HD dudes in the first room you encounter after entering through the hole in the side, the cargo hold. At some point you’ll also face a nanite cloud in one of the rooms. This is the extent of your actual challenges. Otherwise you find the door bracelets and collect the blasters and auto-heal patches. IE: the usual. There are more than a few missed opportunities here, like “The ship’s main reactor (‘captive-star’), centrally

located, has burned out, and cannot be restarted without the aid of a similar vessel.” You can self-destruct the ship from here, and you can loot some platinum wiring. But, no word on what looting the captive-star is/does. Sad. No green slime in the shower. No malfunctioning auto-doc. There’s just nothing involved at all going on in this. I mean, even combat, after that first room, except for the nanite swarm. You gotta have some shit to fuck around with in an adventure. Grave tubes. The jungle level. Wait, I’m describing Barrier Peaks….

These small page count adventures have a real problem with matching their theming to their size. The Lost City of Infintium! Two pages. The Endless Maze of Nilhelm. Four pages. If you’re going to theme your adventure to something that really needs more pages and has endless possibilities then you really need to make it more than the five pages, for example, that this one is. 

Descriptions here are sparse. “Shower’ A small area for changing clothes sits outside the two shower stalls. Two dials are in each shower: one to turn it one and off, one for water temperature (a range from freezing to brisk).” There are also some general notes in the beginning about lighting and doors, but no real evocative descriptions are present, even for the Acid Hounds.”Acid hounds have pale green skin and a tripartite jaw.” Ok. Drooling acid? Foaming at the mouth? Mangy fur? Allof the descriptions are very businesslike with little to inspire here.

The map, here, is not great. It’s black on white. The room numbers are in a light blue that doesn’t stand out real great. But also there are other notations on the map. B, P, b, c, 3C, C. These are quite dense, nothing which kind of bracelet gets you through a door, a sub-ro number and the location of bodies. Yes, you can figure it out. No, it is not the most cognitively easy thing you’ll ever look at. If you can light blue the font then the door codes could be in a different color, and if you can put symbols on the map then you can put body outlines on the map, all of which is easier to look at tell what is going on at a glance. 

There’s not really much here of interest, if anything.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/558966/chipped-saucer?1892600

By Heidi Gygax Garland, Erik Garland, Adapted by Bill Silvey
GAXLAND
1e
Levels 5-7

The mission: A local elder dwarf has commissioned you to find the long abandoned underground tomb of the legendary Dundel Chief, R?ta V?kara. As no dwarven folk are allowed beyond the South Gate of the city of Sørholde, you have been entrusted to retrieve a long lost and priceless document that your benefactor maintains would free the dwarven folk from their obligation to maintain the city of Sørholde and reinstate the great dwarven mines of the Dundel once again.

This 64 page adventure presents what is essentially a linear tomb with around forty rooms. Very long winded, lots of read-aloud, and no real interactivity beyond traps and combat. It is quite the amateurish effort for $35.

I’m gong to start by saying something nice. “Thieves’ Tools can always be improvised with items from the adventuring packs (i.e. a hammer and piton) but the improvised tools and lock will be destroyed in the process.” I like this kind of framing about thieves tools. I think the natural assumption is thieves tools are lockpics and other delicate instruments. I don’t really like thieves as written in most (all?) systems and this aligns with my view of crowbars and sledgehammers being standard dungeon equipment. One day maybe I’ll work up a thief class in which their find/remove abilities are just rerolls, given anyone can find/remove a traps, open doors, etc. Anyway, thieves tools being higher quality crowbars and sledgehammers make sense to me, lasting more than one attempt, etc. 

Otherwise, man, this thing is rough. Lots of read-aloud, mounds of paddings, a mostly linear dungeon and low-powered opponents. I shall assume the best of intentions and these are just enthusiastic amateurs who wrote for, say, 5e, and had Bill localize it to 1e. But that localize was just not done well at all.

The adventure starts off in medias res with the parties wagon train being attacked by five skeletons. Yes, five skeletons. At levels five through seven. This is a recurring problem with the adventure. Very low level enemies, in small quantities, in general, but skeletons in particular. Oh, but these are special skeletons! They have TWO HD!!!!! Level five is an auto-turn and level seven is an auto destroy. So, yes, please, put in five skeletons. Or some giant rats. Yeah, sure, something like a hundred or a thousand skeletons, rats, stirge, et, can become an obstacle for the party, A hazard or environmental feature if not a straight up combat. When you finally make it to the last room of the dungeon you face off against the titular undead Dundel chief himself! Who I’m pretty sure is a 2HD skeleton. The read-aloud says he rises to attack. And that other skeletons nearby rise to attack. And it gives us stats for a 2HD skeleton right there. And no stats for the chieftain. Was there supposed to be stats for the big bad? Did they all fuck this up? Both writers credited? Both editors credited? The conversion person credited? The two proofreaders credited? Or is he supposed to be a 2HD skeleton? I wonder if anyone cared?

It engages in LONG, like, REALLY LONG sections of read-aloud. For everything. Once again, no one wants long read-aloud. Nobody cares about it. The DM doesn’t. The players HATE it. That’s when the phones come out. If you don’t run a shitty shitty game then people will be engaged and the phones will NOT come out. More than two or three sentences of read-aloud, SHORT sentences, is all you can get away with. If half your page is read-aloud text, as it is here in a not uncommon occurrence, then you are CLEARLY FAILING. In many pages there is far FAR less DM text on a page then there is read-aloud. 

Second person read-aloud. Don’t do that. Don’t make assumptions about the party. They are all 50’ tall and incorporeal in my game, so your shitty long second-person read-aloud doesn’t fucking apply. This also applies to that shtity in medias res opening. You’re part of a caravan, a wagon train, to the tomb. Earthquakes! Skeleton attacks! “Uh, we flew there.” Uh huh. Unspeakable Oath did an CoC adventure that started with the lights out in the players actual game space, then the DM flicked them on and one of them spat out a piece of hotdog. (His tongue, as it turns out.) THAT was a fucking in medias res fucking openening! For a one shot. If you are not the Unspeakable Oath and doing a one shot then maybe think twice before doing this.

You are on your way to the tomb of the dundel chief. Some dwarves hired you. They want you to go find a deed in it that gives them the right to open a mine and they are not allowed in/through the gateway city. A piece of paper. The dwarves think that a piece of paper is what they need. To coopt a quote, who, exactly, is going to enforce the judiciaries decision? Jesus gonna come down and smite the city elders for not obeying the piece of paper? Emperor Whatits, that maybe both the city and the dwarves pay homage to (If that were the case?) WHo does he like best? Is he trying to curry favor with one or the other party? But, sure, whatever. That’s a dwarf probem, I guess, YOUVE got a piece of paper that lets you go explore the tomb. That doesn’t belong to the dwarves. 

Strangely, the dundel people, who still exist and are all around, are ok with you plundering and robbing and desecrating the tomb of their greatest chief. “The Dundel people will be friendly and will answer questions if able.” Like, in ALL ways. Sure thing man, plunder away! 

DM text is quite poor. ‘Wait, we just started and we already have earthquakes and are under attack by the undead? Let’s go back a few days for a bit of a flashback.” Wonderful. Conversational. “If gear is left in the tunnel above or a rope is left hanging into the chamber it will be untouched when the time comes to return to the surface.” Is the sun still burning when we return? Is the air outside still breathable when we return? Room names are that cringe stuff that turns punny sometimes like “Encounter 3F: What’s Down Here?” 

Mechanics wise get things like a column of text to describe a pit trap. A simple pit trap with a clowning lid. A column of text. Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it, how you used to get away with just drawing an X on the map and saying nothing about it. 

“The slabs are extremely heavy and cannot be moved or damaged in any meaningful way.” Uh huh. How about “The padlock cannot be broken, but it may be picked” I think, perhaps, you underestimate my players. One of my proudest moments as a father is when my kids, knowing there was a basement to a house but not being able to find a way in, pulled out their tools and started to work on the wood floor. And those were first level tweens. I think my aging level seven wizard can find a way through, if not the bevy of magic items the level five through sevens carry. It’s fucking absurd. Half the fucking spell lists in 1e are devoted to shit like this.

One room takes three pages to describe.

The dungeon is linear. You come down in to a room with eight doors, one open. You explore that section of the dungeon and at the end of it you can then go explore the next section of the dungeon and so on. IE: linear. Of those eight sections, about halfway through the text, you get an interlude that describes the nomad camp outside the dungeon that you camp in. Seriously. Like, after room twenty, here’s a description of the nomad camp outside, and then it starts in on room 21. No, this was not an editing or layout error. It was intentional. Because just sticking rando shit in the middle of other rando shit is CLEARLY the best way to organize things. That’s my, in my own dictionary, the letters M are placed between the letters Q and D. 

Quantum rooms? IE: the dreaded if/then padding? Check. “If the party explores to the North, they will find the walkway leads to a section of bridge that crosses to a door. If they continue North, they find a dead end and the source of the fast- moving stream, emerging through a heavy iron grate from the darkness beyond.” 

Dumb ass interactivity/? Check. “The answer to the riddle is: Eye. As soon as the answer is spoken …” No sphynx there. Just a room. Yu’re just saying the answer out loud. 

The final insult may be the hyperlink included at the end for downloadable content. It’s broken. Doesn’t work. As in it takes you a page on their website that says “No page found.” I went digging elsewhere on their website for the content. It’s not present. 

It’s linear, stuffed with excessive read-aloud, DM notes that are excessive in some places and lacking in other place, to the point I’m questioning if there was a layout/edit error that removed information that was supposed to be present. It is essentially traps and combat with a lot of irrelevant combat encounters and a few 7 HD dudes here and there. This is not a strong showing. For $35.

This is $35 at DriveThru. The preview is only three pages with none of the dungeon. A good preview should show a potential buyer what to expect, and the core encounters are a part of that. Still, you get a look at the read-aloud on a couple of the lighter pages. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/446899/tomb-of-the-dundel-chief-1e-special-edition?1892600

By The Danger Forge
Self Published
OSE
Levels 6-8

Tales of Atan-Thu are told to frighten both the bold and the meek alike. Necromancer without peer. Merciless tyrant of Zahal Keep. His evil stretched across the land like a malignant shadow. Though long dead, his legend persists. Ancient texts speak of a vast sepulcher hidden deep in the Dhar Voromal Mountains, where Atan-Thu and his immeasurable wealth and artifacts of power were entombed. But rumors hint that Atan-Thu yet survives, sustained by his dark necromancy. Protected by hideous guardians and diabolical traps, he waits for the very brave or the very foolish to enter his lair.  Do you dare venture into his ancient crypt and explore this testament to Atan-Thu’s power, malice, and madness?

This 68 page adventure uses about twenty two pages to describe about seventy rooms in a tomb/puzzle/challenge dungeon. Long-winded tomb of horrors, at levels 6-8, with impossible puzzles and overpowered opponents. 

I knew I was trouble upon first cracking it open. Triple column. Small font. You are free, brothers and sisters, of the constraints of the print publishing world! You can make your product 6,000 pages long! Because it’s a PDF and no one gonna buy the print copy anyway. And if they are then they REALLY want to so you don’t have to cram your product in to some artificial page count constraint. 

Lets see here … background information about scary dude, history b lah blah blah, overland area that briefly describes some large general regions with no real mention or support of overlands play, small village generically described with no import … more background information. Bulshit bullshit bullshit, madness and horror throw-away rules cause dungeon is so scary, bullshit bullshit bullshit … Ok, the dungeon starts after ten pages of padding.

Room two: You’ve got seven stone heads. Three face inward from the west wall, three from the east, and a seventh looms at the north end of the hall. Two doors, the one you came in and another one on the far side. The doors are immune to physical damage and are wizard locked at level 18. At the base of each stone head is a small bowl and in the center of the room seven orbs float above a seven pointed star, each inlaid with a different symbol. You put the orbs in correct bowl and the door unlocks. First failure and the doors lock. Second and ichor streams in to the room. Third and everyone takes 3d6 damage per round until you get it right. There are no hints. The symbols on the  orbs? There are no corresponding symbols anywhere. It’s the second room of the dungeon (in a line until it opens up later), you’ve learned nothing yet. It is truly random. You’ve level 6-8. How much divination do you truly have? 

Did I mention that there’s a level 7 undead dude running around, with dimension door and a wand of lightning bolts? He’s doing hit and runs on your party. Oh, yeah, there are four of them, one in each quadrant of the dungeon. How the room with NINE 8HD AC2 dudes to fight? For your level 6-8’s. At one point you’re potentially attacked by 1d6 wights per turn. Which is fun except you auto-turn those at level 7 and turn on, what, a 4, at level six? 

My point here is that this was not playtested. At all. I suspect the designer doesn’t even play D&D. I don’t see how you can and come up with this stuff. No one playtested room two. It can’t be. I don’t see how anyone is living through it. A party of six level eight clerics who filled their spell slots with divinations? Let’s see, from 1e  (sorry, My kool aid stained 1e is at hand, not OSE…) that’s 3 3 3 3 2 spells at level eight. That’s three Augery and two Divination per cleric, or eighteen Augury and twelve Divinations. For room two that’s … a seven factorial? About 5,000 combinations?  

But, hey man, the treasure rooms has about 16k in gold and a ring with one wish. So, it was the friends we made along that was the real treasure!

Man, fuck this fucking shit! 

Worthless fucking garbage. 

Did you try? What is the definition of trying? There are words on a page. Someone used a professional map making tool to make the dungeon map. It looks nice. But it clearly wasn’t playtested. And I’m not even sure there’s a basic understanding of what a level six (or eight …) character is capable of. Rocks fall. Everybody dies.All of that fucking preamble bullshit is worthless. All of that appendix shit is worthless. The use of fucking italics is garbage. Long read-aloud is fucking garbage. No fucking treasure. Overpowered fucking combats. I’m supposed to believe that this was lovingly handcrafted?! Backstory in the fucking dungeon rooms. 

There is a nice bit. The dungeon map is in four quadrants. A mat surrounds three of them. That’s a nice touch, a little flavor and challenge to leverage for the party. Those 1d6 weights shows up for every 100 feet traveled on it. 

Sometimes I come across dungeons that could serve as platonic examples of what NOT to do. This is one of them. Looky there at that cover. And the layout inside. Pretty fucking nice.  But I will take a handwritten scrawl over this shit any day of the week. This is the chinese box. Emulation rather than understanding. 

I’m sure someone, somewhere, is making a bundle cranking this shit out at Kickstarter. “Look! Just like the olden days! “ Indeed. Fuck nostalgia. And fucking reading shit. D&D is for playing. A high 2E dungeon. Is there a worse insult?

This is $9 at DriveThru. The preview is twelve pages, You get to see the map, which is nice, but otherwise it’s just the generic padding shit and little dungeon overview bit. Shitty preview. It needs to show some encounters so we can understand what the core of the writing is about before we make a purchasing decision.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/554398/the-crypt-of-atan-thu-old-school-essentials?src=newest_recent?1892600

As part of the excitement for the upcoming Puerto Rico Comic Con, which I posted about yesterday, and all the gaming goodness that is happening there, I learned of a project for a system-agnostic TTRPG supplement being created by a very talented local artist in Puerto Rico, Eliana Falcón-Dvorsky, who posted about the project in the Puerto Rico Role Players Discord Server, and I was immediately curious. Eliana was tremendously kind, replying to my questions, sharing details about art and the upcoming gaming project, and gracefully answering the interview I am sharing with you below.

Who is Eliana Falcón-Dvorsky? 

I am a writer and artist born, raised, and living in Puerto Rico. I eat, breathe, and obsessively think about storytelling and character writing, frankly. My main publication work is my own webcomic, Cosmic Fish, which I write and draw. I’ve also worked as a colorist and editor for Somos Arte’s La Borinqueña, and as an art director, storyboard artist, and character designer for Dakiti Productions’ animated adaptation of Rockolandia. I’m also a huge anthropology, gardening, and cooking nerd, so it’s not all art, haha!

How would you describe your art? 

I tend to have two distinct styles, and some people know me either for one or the other, rarely both. I’m usually known in larger circles for my “cute art” and the application of a lot of Puerto Rican folklore and criticism of our sociopolitical situations in my work. For my closer social circle, they know me as a bit of a darker writer and artist, constantly exploring complicated themes with as much nuance and empathy as I can. So, there’s an interesting dichotomy in my work that I think tends to cross over once in a while due to overlapping themes or design choices, but only now am I a little brave enough to finally start showing all sides of my work.

How did you discover tabletop role-playing games? 

I used to RP a lot with friends back in the forum days and early days of Skype and Discord, so the transition has been pretty natural, honestly. After Hurricane Maria, I was looking for a bit of a distraction while everything in real life was descending into chaos. Back then, I lived in a rural area in PR. We didn’t have running water for 5 months, electricity for 8, and I’d be driving over debris, flooded bridges, and broken roads that were ready to collapse for about a year. I lost a few family members, either directly or indirectly, in the aftermath of the storm. Tabletop suddenly became an interesting and welcoming hobby I could play with others in person, without needing electricity or being online. The group didn’t work out, sadly, but it opened the door for me to play different games and plenty of homebrew systems with my online friends once I managed to get back online. 

What games do you like to play?

I’m definitely a very RP-oriented kind of player because of my past, and I focus a lot on balancing player-dynamics in the groups I’m in. In my DMing, I tend to prioritize the player’s narrative goals and themes, finding ways to challenge them as writers (all of us are writers and artists) or to help them explore something they’ve never had a chance to before. I’m a storyteller first, but I always try to find a group that looks for a nice balance of play/combat systems and RP to be able to challenge myself. For a long time, I played homebrew systems designed by a friend of mine from Australia. And for a while, it was very liberating because of the diverse classes my friend’s system focused on, which I felt many mainstream systems lacked. It was after that we began expanding to other systems like Daggerheart and Blades in the Dark. I tried getting into Triangle Agency, but it didn’t click. I’ve tried getting back to D&D, but Baldur’s Gate 3 is currently the only way I’ve been able to play it since 2017.

What are you currently playing? 

I’ve been playing the same weekly Blades in the Dark campaign for almost 2 years now. We play it on Discord, so we try to get our RP and character moments in written RP during the week and then play a heist or session on the weekend. It’s worked for the most part, but admittedly, we’re very invested in the drama hahaha. It’s been really fun, and it’s been fantastic to work with a team that goes over lines and veils and other table etiquette that I wish were a bit more common locally. I think for a game like BitD, communication and these tools are very important.

What would you like to play?

I think after two years of Blades in the Dark, I’d like to explore brighter settings, not necessarily simple, but I could go for a theme set in a forest or someplace more diverse. I’d like to try a longer Daggerheart campaign or The Quiet Year. I’d love to play Eat the Reich, which I got during a Kickstarter campaign, but I haven’t had the chance yet. If not, my girlfriend is the one with a long list of different systems and games, so I tend to follow whatever she’s vibing with.

 What are you working on (that you can tell us about)? 

Right now, I’m juggling a few personal projects, trying to see where I can fit their output. I’d love to go back to Cosmic Fish even if it’s not as consistent as I could before; I have a horror comic set in Puerto Rico that I’d love to start, a children’s book that’s been in the over for a while now, but I also really want to expand my first TTRPG worldbuilding module, Arcton: From Ingala to the Wastes. So, I have a lot of diverse projects in the works! 

Tell me about your project, Arcton: From Ingala to the Wastes? What is it about? 

Arcton has been a setting I’ve been using on and off for about 7 years or so. It started as a response to how I would fix WotC’s Thay and a few other issues I have with the worldbuilding of that setting as a whole, and it slowly began evolving into its own thing. Because the system it was built on was one of the discontinued homebrew designs made by my friend from Australia, the book is currently more of a system-agnostic worldbuilding module that offers tools and inspiration rather than concrete stats.

Arcton is a northern nation founded by eight liches after they succeeded in their revolution and “ascended”. Each lich runs a region and uses the Officers (or living servants) to gather citizens, bring them back as enslaved undead, and force them to work in mines or their armies. However, the story is about the citizens, about the history, the context, and what role YOU can play in it.

The first book is an overview that explores worldbuilding, history, flora, fauna, and some NPCs, and offers the necessary tools to inspire DMs and players in their campaigns. With the rise and normalization of thoughtless and effortless AI slop, I’m really hoping this book inspires people to read and to add their own take to my work, create their own interpretation, and try to build something of their own without a machine, no better than an undead, to do the thinking and working for them. I think anyone can be a storyteller, and TTRPG’s popularity is proof of it. I want more human stories! The book is a tool by creatives for creatives, and it really tries to cover as much anthropological background and art as I can in 106 pages.

The goal is to then release supplementary books covering 2-3 regions per volume. These will offer maps, details, biographies, lists of encounters and items, NPCs, story hooks, and enemies for each region. Some might change genres, from a government conspiracy drama to a murder mystery set in a nomadic town, to even an adventure story about finding a library of forbidden knowledge, adding more inspiration to a craft sparked by creativity.

I understand you will have it available at the Puerto Rico Comic Con. Where can people find you there?

YES! My main focus is still my comic, Cosmic Fish, but I will be at 115-E in artist alley, at the rightmost end of the hallway. I’ll also be selling plenty of TTRPG stickers and goodies. The comic my girlfriend and I work on, named Weekend at Benny’s, will also be available, and it takes place near Arcton. 

 What other ways can people get Arcton: From Ingala to the Wastes, and support your other projects? 

From May 7th to May 28th, Arcton: From Ingala to the Wastes will be available on Backerkit as part of Pockettopia. The goal is to help the book become widely accessible for a limited time. I’d also like to try to unlock bonus items for you to use in games, including character/NPC and item cards, setting prompts, tables, and hopefully help fund the next book that covers Ingala and Fraye, my recommended suggestions for first-time explorers.

Thank you, Eliana, for participating in this interview. If you are in Puerto Rico, be sure to visit her at PRCC; if not, be on the lookout for her Backerkit project. You can follow it via this link: Arcton: From Ingala to the Wastes.

As a bonus, when you follow the project, you get access to a 19-page preview of the material. I am blown away by these 19 pages alone. I used some art from the Backerkit preview page in the post, but there is more art in the preview.  I love the heraldry, the symbols, the full-page art. Beautiful! The setting seems very imaginative, and I really want to learn more. Make sure you check it out.

There’s going to be a massive tabletop presence at the Puerto Rico Comic Con (PRCC) this year, happening from April 3rd to the 5th at the Puerto Rico Convention Center.

It figures this is the year I won’t be able to make it! We have a family vacation to a beach house planned for that weekend, and my son has been looking forward to it for weeks. Fatherhood absolutely trumps all other plans. But just because I won’t be there doesn’t mean the rest of the local gaming community shouldn’t go all out, or that folks off the island can’t support the creators showing up.

Running Friday through Sunday, PRCC is hosting a dedicated tabletop event called the Dungeon Experience. It’s going to feature trading card games, board games, TTRPG demos, and more. Planeta Meeple and the Cardboard Cave Podcast are both participating. The folks at Planeta Meeple aren’t just acquaintances; they’re good friends who do a ton of active work to promote and support the tabletop community here in Puerto Rico. If you are going to the con, please visit and support them. If you aren’t going, give their socials a follow.

You should also look out for Keiggy, a local artist and member of Dungeons & Dragons Puerto Rico. She will be over at table 232 in Artist Alley, selling her handmade, reusable D&D character sheets and doing portrait commissions. Check out her work!

Our friends at Titan Games will also have a massive setup right by Entrance B at booth 1307. They always carry a huge selection of tabletop gear, including a great spread of role-playing games, so make sure to stop by their booth.

These are just a few of the friends and creators I know will be setting up shop, but I’m sure there are plenty more. In fact, there is one specific project I want to highlight in detail, but I’m saving that for tomorrow’s post!

Who did I miss? Who else has tabletop projects at PRCC this year? Let me know in the comments so I can help spread the word.

We’re here, on the final installment of the retrospective of my past 40 years as a gamer. It will not be the last post on the topic, mind you; this is just the end of the decades-long account of how gaming has been a part of my life. This instance overlaps with the previous post because I left off just as Hurricane María devastated the island.

If you don’t mind me paraphrasing The Sound of Music…

How do you solve a problem like what María left?

I won’t go into too much detail. Suffice it to say that in September 2017, Puerto Rico suffered some damage from Hurricane Irma early in the month, and on September 20th, María devastated the island as a Category 5 hurricane. This CNN article, one year later, is a great summary of the impact and aftereffects, if you are interested.

Irma began to wreak havoc with our gaming schedule. A week-long blackout after Irma meant we cancelled game plans for both the home game and the Desde la Fosa game, and we might have gotten two or three sessions in before María hit. We had a Geeknic planned for the weekend before, and we cancelled it. All gaming stopped after that!

With no power and gas shortages, we could not meet to play. From September to December, I played twice. I was lucky to return to work about 10 days after the disaster, but there were very few leisure opportunities. Friends from Puerto Rico, Role Players who lived nearby and knew I was going stir-crazy, dropped by, and we played board games, helping me stay sane!

My friends from Puerto Rico Role Players came to my rescue post-María.

The weekly gaming group met once to try to continue the D&D 5e campaign, but we knew we would not be able to meet regularly for the time being. Two players were across the island; one was about to leave for the mainland US to continue his PhD research. So, we finished some plotlines and paused the campaign until we could gather again.

The final D&D 5e session of 2017.
From left to right: Luis Lao, Edgardo, Richard, Mariana, José Fernando, Naida, Fernando, and Roberto (me).

Desde la Fosa was similarly affected. We met a few more times, but over the next few months, two of the team members emigrated. While the channel continued to post content and videos about RPG a Day and other topics, getting together to play games and stream them online stopped.

By November, some of us had power, but connectivity was spotty, so we could not reach players across the island. One player remained out of the country, so we decided to start another campaign until we could get back to D&D 5e.

My god, these are Stars Without Number!

In November 2017, we had session zero of our Stars Without Number (SWN) campaign, a few days after Thanksgiving. We were grateful to be all together and well! We called the campaign Alternate Frontiers Without Number, because I mashed up the aliens from Star Frontiers and Alternity to populate the SWN sector I rolled up using the book’s tools. I posted about my conversions for the campaign here and here.

The smaller group consisted of five players playing D&D 5e (José Fernando, Fernando, Naida, Carlos, and Luis Lao) and one player who rejoined us (Raul), while Mariana, Edgardo, and Richard could not play at that time. I planned a “short” campaign, which for me is anywhere from 9 months to a year.

This plan worked out great because, a few months later, my wife and I found out we were going to be parents! My son was going to be born in December, so I planned for the campaign to end before his birth, when I planned to take a hiatus to help with his care.

Alternate Frontiers Without Number was a lot of fun! It solidified my love for Kevin Crawford’s work. We had a satisfying story arc with an epic finale. Luis Lao’s girlfriend, Aileen (now his wife), played a few sessions with us, as well as Fernando’s brother, who dropped in for a cameo in the game.

The crew after Desde la Fosa, playing Free League Publishing Games.
From left to right, top to bottom: José García, Luis Lao, AJ, Gustavo, José Fernando, José García, José Garcia (again, he was the GM after all!), Kenneth, and Gustavo.

We also played with friends from Desde la Fosa. José García ran Symbaroum for us before AJ left Puerto Rico. The Symbaroum system and setting made me a fan of Free League Publishing. We also played some more Free League games when José García ran Coriolis for Felipe, Enith, Tracy, José Fernando, and me.

On December 18th, we played the 53rd and final session of our SWN campaign. My son was born the next day!

The last session of the Stars Without Number Campaign.
From left to right: Luis Lao, José Fernando, Fernando, Naida, Raul, Carlos.

I am your father!

Parenthood is the most wonderful role I have ever had in my life. From the moment I carried him after his birth to today, my son’s presence has filled me with endless joy. Despite the hardships and challenges, the rewards are thousandfold, and being called “dad” is my favorite moniker.

As I’ve said before, TTRPG gaming is part of my wellness routine. It helps me relax, refocus, and keeps me connected with my close friends. However, I recognized that caring for a newborn requires time. I paused my weekly campaign, telling my friends I would take a few months off, and when I thought Marchelo’s sleep patterns and care were something my wife could handle on her own once a week, we would start playing again.

I knew this was unpredictable. But my son’s sleep patterns were so regular that he would slumber through most of the night, getting up only once to feed and be changed. When he was four months old, we had established a routine, and my wife, knowing how much I missed gaming, encouraged me to resume weekly gaming. We only took a short hiatus!

The good, the bad, and the gamer

I wasn’t ready to get back to playing D&D 5e in my homebrewed world and all the prep that entailed. We still had a lot to do with my newborn son. Also, I started a new job a month after he was born, so I was taking on many new responsibilities. We were going back to gaming, but I wanted to run a simpler game. There were also some genres I had never run, so, in consultation with my players, we decided to run a western-horror game using Down Darker Trails from Chaosium, designed for use with Call of Cthulhu (CoC) or Pulp Cthulhu, but using Troll Lord Games’ Amazing Adventures.

This was a great experience. Chaosium’s adventures are the sort of adventures I enjoy: a framework with lots of setting information I can use to run a game. This was the smallest group of players in ages: Naida, Fernando, José Fernando, Luis Lao, and Carlos. It kept the adventure lean, moving at a good pace, not too complex for me as a GM.

Creating characters for Down Darker Trails.
From left to right: José Fernando, Carlos, Fernando, Naida, Luis Lao,

While currently I don’t think I will run Troll Lord Games for the foreseeable future, back in 2019, playing Amazing Adventures motivated us to change the system when we restarted the fantasy campaign we paused in 2017. We switched systems from D&D 5e to Castles & Crusades.

There, Crusade. There, Castle.

As 2019 ended and 2020 began, Puerto Rico was still recovering from Hurricane María, and a series of earthquakes struck the southwest of the island. Despite the new hardships, we soldiered on with gaming, and in February 2020, we restarted the fantasy campaign but converted it to Castles & Crusades. It was great to return to the campaign we had paused three years before. Mariana and Edgardo had married and moved from Puerto Rico, but Carlos, Fernando, Naida, José Fernando, Richard, and Oscar returned to the campaign. Naida, sadly, did not finish the campaign, and losing a player was not the only challenge we would face. We began playing in February, and by March, the Covid-19 pandemic had hit Puerto Rico, and we were in lockdown!

Just before the pandemic lockdown!
From left to right: Oscar, Richard, Carlos, Naida, Fernando, José Fernando, and Luis Lao.

We moved the game online, and while we played a few sessions in person when lockdown orders were lifted due to lows in infection rates, outbreaks soon kept us playing remotely again. We finished the campaign a year later, playing virtually.

Online map over Zoom

This was a challenge; we tried Discord first, but eventually settled on Zoom for ease of use for all involved. At first, I was not a fan of playing online, but we adapted. My friends were great sports; some really were not into playing online, but they soldiered on, and we managed. All this was compounded by some health issues that affected my voice, which made playing online even more difficult.

Playing online would be a good practice for the future.

Listen to them — children of the Red Death.

After finishing our fantasy campaign, I wanted to play something different, so we played a mash-up of the Victorian-themed Ravenloft setting, Masque of the Red Death, using the horror toolbox system by Kevin Crawford, Silent Legions. We called the campaign Legions of the Red Death.

Do you see a pattern? First, we switched the latest iteration of my long-running homebrew campaign from D&D 5th Edition to Castles and Crusades. My fantasy campaign has adapted to different editions, from BECMI to AD&D 1st Edition, 2nd Edition, D&D 3rd Edition & 3.5, Pathfinder, and then to D&D 5th Edition. But never mid-campaign! Then playing a Call of Cthulhu adventure using Amazing Adventures, and now Masque of the Red Death using Silent Legions.

Carlos, Fernando, José Fernando, Luis Lao, and Oscar returned for this campaign, and José García from Desde la Fosa officially joined the group. These six core players have been the regular weekly group for the last five years!

From left to right: José Fernando, José García, Fernando, Luis Lao, Oscar, and Carlos

This campaign lasted most of 2022, and by the end of the year, we began planning for the campaign we are currently running: Savage Fading Suns.

The stars are fading, and if they die, we die, everything dies

Here was another mash-up: The Fading Suns setting with the Savage Worlds rules. I had intended to play it using the latest iteration of the setting rules, but after reading and discussing them with the players, we settled on Savage Worlds, which has quickly become our go-to system.

With the same six players (Carlos, Fernando, José Fernando, José García, Luis Lao, and Oscar) and Felipe, who dropped in for a guest appearance, we’ve been playing Savage Fading Suns since December 2022. Over three years now. As of this writing, we’ve played 130 sessions.

From left to right: Luis Lao, José Fernando, Roberto (me), José García, Fernando, Oscar, and Carlos

This has not been a campaign without challenges! My health worsened, and I had trouble speaking. My friends stuck with me while I struggled to run games because they knew how important it was to me. I got treatment and improved, and then I had to spend extended periods of time away from home due to work, so we moved the game to Discord and continued playing virtually when I was away, which was more often than not.

This was not the only game I’ve played these past three years. José García ran Free League’s Alien game for us on Halloween 2023, Ten Candles for Halloween 2024, and I ran The Dare, a CoC adventure, using the Eldritch Hack rules for Halloween 2025. Keeping alive the recent tradition of running a setting with different rules from the ones it was written for.

Playing Alien, Ten Candles, and The Dare.

I also played a two-session fill-in game of an improvised TTRPG I put together when some players could not make our regular session, and a fantastic Fabula Ultima campaign that José García ran, which I would love to finish. For an online gaming weekend my friend Brightcadle (that’s his Discord handle) organized, I ran a Savage Worlds one-shot for Yamir and Maite, a Shadowdark one-shot for the same event, and ran a play-by-post short campaign with my good friend Pierre, whom I miss every day.

By September 2025, I was back in Puerto Rico. We’ve been playing face-to-face again. Since being back, I’ve also re-engaged with Puerto Rico Role Players. We had a holiday event at El Gremio in Cayey, and a Geeknic in February, where I playtested a TTRPG system I am developing. I am celebrating these 40 years as a Game Master and gamer and reconnecting with the local gaming community after an extended absence due to work-related travel.

The Savage Fading Suns campaign has maybe six to nine months left, or thereabouts, before we conclude. I am famously bad at predicting when a campaign will end, especially one I’ve been wanting to run since 1996, when I first read the Fading Suns book. This campaign has been meaningful not just for that reason, but also because my players stuck with me during my illness and my travels.

I am lucky to be surrounded by such wonderful friends, who sit down to play our weekly game, but beyond that, those who are part of my immediate circle of friends, the Puerto Rico Role Players community, and those I reach and interact with through social media and this blog.

I am truly lucky to have had this hobby for most of my life, for the people I’ve met, the connections I’ve made, the lessons I’ve learned, and the abilities that I have developed every day. Thank you all for this wild ride. Here is to many, many years more!

One final note: I mentioned which movie the first section title came from. Who can tell what other movies I reference in the other sections? A few are rather obvious. Let me know in the comments.

It may surprise you, or perhaps horrify you, that I am a massive fan of musical theater. I grew up listening to musicals with my uncle Chechin (his real name is José Agustín, but Chechin is his nickname). I still remember watching A Chorus Line at the Centro de Bellas Artes de Puerto Rico in the early 80s, and Nine was probably the first musical I knew all the lyrics to by heart.

While I love many different shows, none has inspired me more than Les Misérables.

I know it is long and melodramatic, but it is also undeniably a powerful, grand spectacle that speaks directly to humanity’s struggles. The Les Misérables: Complete Symphonic Recording has easily been the soundtrack I’ve listened to the most while writing about TTRPGs. In fact, I am listening to it right now as I write this post!

I will admit I have NEVER actually read Victor Hugo’s original novel. Every few years, I tell myself I will, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. So, what fascinates me so much about the musical? It’s the struggle of the oppressed, the sweeping narrative, and the intense ideological conflict between the protagonist, Jean Valjean, and his antagonist, Javert.

Whenever I think about alignment in D&D, I almost always frame it in terms of these characters. If you search online, you’ll see I’m not the only one doing this! While I don’t agree with every single classification in the usual alignment memes floating around out there, it’s clear this is a shared touchstone for many gamers.

For instance, I don’t think Valjean is Lawful Good; I’ve always viewed him as more Neutral Good. As a teen, I thought Javert was the ultimate example of the unyielding, intransigent Paladin, but looking back, he obviously isn’t Lawful Good. I wouldn’t quite say he is Lawful Evil, either. To me, he is the absolute embodiment of Lawful Neutral.

I have even incorporated the musical’s lyrics directly into my games. In one campaign, I used a modified version of the lyrics to the song Stars to serve as a Paladin’s Oath.

I have also pulled bits and pieces from Red and Black and Empty Chairs at Empty Tables—I even played the latter in the background during a particularly poignant session.

Those last two clips are from the 2012 movie. I still prefer the Complete Symphonic Recording I mentioned above, but if you are curious to see it, I highly recommend the film!

See? Not all TTRPG inspiration must come from novels or movies! What non-traditional sources inspire your games?

Bonus Inspiration! As a final treat, here is something perfect for your Ravenloft games: Total Eclipse of the Heart from Dance of the Vampires.

In German:

In English: