Tabletop Gaming Feeds

 I am happy to announce the release of the Premium Color edition of Into the Majestic Fantasy Realms: The Northern Marches. Because of a mistake on my part, I wasn't able to enable this version of the Northern Marches during my public release on April 30th. For those wanting to purchase this version, I have attached a $5 off coupon valid until June 15th. 

Discount DriveThruRPG coupon

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?discountId=9ceee3becb

Product Link

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/555490/into-the-majestic-fantasy-realms-the-northern-marches

Here are some examples of what the Premium color version looks like.

Note the shine on the image of the watchtower

 The Fog-Shrouded Sanctuary: Halloween TownLocation: Beneath the Abandoned Fleet Ditch Sewers, LondonEra: Victorian Steampunk / Supernatural (Victorious RPG)In the soot-stained heart of Victorian London, where the smog of the Industrial Revolution meets the ancient ley lines of Britain, lies a sanctuary for those deemed "unnatural." Halloween Town is not a myth to the monsters of the Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

An admission, dear readers: I had no idea who Awkward GM Corbin was until I started writing this post. Now I’ve discovered his YouTube Channel and know exactly who created the “About Me: Tabletop” template that inspired today’s entry. It really goes to show my age that I had no idea these were so popular in online fandoms! I might have seen a few floating around online spaces, but the trend didn’t truly catch my attention until Angel (aka Enyol) posted his About Me Tabletop RPG in the Puerto Rico Role Players Facebook group.

While searching online, I saw that the original Awkward GM post was made on Reddit about 20 days ago. You can get the template here.

The idea of completing the template challenged me, and I honestly thought I’d be done with it in no time. That was not the case. A few categories were easy to fill out, but others took real time, and I went back and forth on several of my responses. Surprisingly, only one answer is repeated!

I was originally going to just post the image and be done with it. But you know me: I can’t help but add details and explanations. If you just want the quick visual, here is the image on its own. Feel free to comment away here on the blog or on my socials—I’d be happy to engage!

However, if you want the deep dive into my choices, read on.

First, a quick caveat. These are my current thoughts as of late May 2026. Some of these might have been different in the past, or they may evolve in the future. It might be obvious, but I’ll say it anyway: these are MY opinions, not the opinions of Michael (aka the titular Stargazer) or any of the other blog contributors. You may disagree with some of my takes. Good! Leave a comment, fill out your own “About Me: Tabletop RPG” form, and share it with us. I’d love to have that conversation.

Now that the housekeeping is out of the way, on to the categories!

Favorite Game: Savage Worlds

I recently posted about my two current favorite games on the blog, so this should be no surprise. The real challenge was picking which ONE to put in the top spot. This may just be a matter of what I’m currently planning and running, but it feels right.

• Runner-up: The Without Number series (Stars, Worlds, Cities, and Ashes)

Best Lore: Raiding the Obsidian Keep

There is a lot of fantastic lore content in TTRPGs. A LOT. Picking just one is incredibly hard. Do I go with the wonderfully convoluted and bizarre Torg? The setting I’m currently playing, Fading Suns? The brilliant Ravenloft: Masque of the Red Death? The Whispering Vault? I ultimately went with Raiding the Obsidian Keep by Joseph R. Lewis.

Why? It is an incredibly succinct adventure with a highly imaginative story and setting, packed full of great details. It features engaging lore, a self-contained OSR structure, and clocks in at 72 marvelously illustrated pages in the Merry Mushmen edition (with an even shorter version, The Obsidian Keep, which is D&D 5e-compatible and self-published by Mr. Lewis). Of all the content I’ve read recently, this was just the most imaginative old-school adventure I’ve seen, and I simply could not put it down. I am usually not a big fan of pre-written adventures, but this one had it all.

• Runners-up: Fading Suns, The Whispering Vault, and Ravenloft: Masque of the Red Death

Best Art: UVG 2E: Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City

This book is a work of art. It is a brilliant combination of rules and visuals that seamlessly tells a cohesive story. This pick might surprise some of my friends, as the art style isn’t what they typically think of as my favorite, but the book as a whole achieves something truly incredible.

• Runners-up: Symbaroum, Vaesen, Coriolis, and Dragonbane (all by Free League Publishing)

Best Mechanics: Call of Cthulhu

“But wait!” you’re saying. “Why not your favorite game?” Because I approached this category looking for the game where the mechanics perfectly mesh with the specific tone it is trying to achieve. Call of Cthulhu is an absolute masterclass in combining rules with genre. The Sanity rules and the skill system are all so seamless in bringing the feeling of Mythos to the table. It’s a classic for a reason.

• Runner-up: All variations of the d20 system. Yes, it is overdone, and no, it is not the perfect mechanical representation of varying skills or degrees of success. Regardless, it is a core mechanic common to millions of players, incredibly easy to understand, and acts as the lingua franca of TTRPGs. It is hard to beat that chassis.

Biggest Personal Impact: Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game

I am talking about the classic D6 version from West End Games. The dice pool system was entirely new to me as a young gamer. I had played other TTRPGs, but this was the first one that truly captured the cinematic feel of the movies. It pushed me to play in entirely new ways; for example, it was the first place I read about using cut-aways (jumping to action the characters aren’t even participating in) as a dramatic narrative tool. This game fundamentally changed how I run games at table.

• Runner-up: The Black Hack. It offers simple, succinct, player-facing combat. It is also where I first encountered the genius concept of the usage die.

Overhated: D&D 4th Edition

I was entirely guilty of this! I was so excited when this edition came out, but ultimately disappointed when we sat down to play it. Looking back, I think it got far too much flak. It is a very tight, highly functional application of rules. With just a few tweaks, it would have been a system I’d happily keep using, but it unfortunately became the whipping boy of D&D editions. Truthfully, 5e borrows heavily from it—it just reworded and reworked the presentation.

• Runner-up: None. This was one of the easiest picks on the list for me.

Underrated: Prime Time Adventures

A TTRPG designed specifically to run games in the structural vein of a TV show? What’s not to like! In a society where television shows range from influential art forms to daily escapist entertainment, I am genuinely surprised this game isn’t wildly popular. Almost everyone inherently understands the pacing and structure of a TV episode, making this incredibly easy to learn.

• Runner-up: The original Alternity. Doomed to come out right as TSR was being sold to WotC, this game had massive potential and an interesting dice mechanic that elegantly handled degrees of failure. It has its fans, but I am amazed there isn’t a massive retro-clone for it yet.

Overrated: Vampire: The Masquerade

This is probably my most controversial take! This game was all the rage in the 90s while I was in college. It has an undeniably interesting setting, and while I’m not a super fan of the rules, you don’t really play it for the mechanics. It absolutely brought a massive wave of new gamers into the hobby, and I certainly own my fair share of World of Darkness books. However, it is often talked about as the absolute pinnacle of gaming, and for me, that’s just a bit too much. It was a good game, but way overrated in my book.

• Runner-up: Mörk Borg! This is my category for controversy, clearly. I really like the ruleset and the wave of creativity it has inspired in the indie scene—I am a huge fan of Pirate Borg, for instance. But when I ordered Mörk Borg, I saw it as a beautiful, punk-metal artifact. It is a profound piece of art and a distinct mood, but ultimately, it’s just not a game I would run at my table using that book.

Criminally Overlooked: Legacy: Life Among the Ruins

This was my introduction to Powered by the Apocalypse games, and it caused a paradigm shift for me. It offers powerful tools for players and GMs, as well as richly realized worlds. I honestly thought this game was going to explode in popularity. More people need to be playing this.

• Runner-up: Psi*Run. This is my favorite simple indie game, ideal for a quick one-shot. I’ve raved about it before, and I highly recommend checking it out.

Has Aged Well: Traveller

The venerable sci-fi original. Traveller has had so many iterations, editions, and adaptations over the decades. Yet it continues to thrive, from the official Mongoose 2nd Edition to older rule sets, all the way to Traveller5. I am a massive fan and am so happy to see it continuing to find an audience.

• Runner-up: Dungeons & Dragons. From the new 5.5 edition to the endless sea of retro-clones and hacks, the granddaddy of TTRPGs is still doing the heavy lifting of introducing new generations to the hobby.

Needs a New Edition: Rifts

Yes, we have Savage Rifts (which is great!), but I would love to see a true, ground-up modern take on the original Palladium system. I’m talking about a complete system overhaul, modernization of the mechanics, and books with a clean, contemporary layout. I was a huge fan of the system back in high school, and I’d love to see what a modern design team could do with it today.

• Runner-up: The Whispering Vault. I want a sleek, modern take on this game’s mythology so badly.

Not Usually My Thing, But…: Ten Candles

Highly experimental indie games aren’t usually in my wheelhouse, but my friend José Garcia (aka SushiBacon) is always bringing fantastic new ideas to my gaming experience. I loved playing this and would love to run it myself sometime.

• Runner-up: Alice is Missing. I haven’t played it yet, but I’ve read through it, and I am champing at the bit to get it to the table.

Current Game: Savage Worlds

We’ve been playing it consistently for three years now, and I fully expect to be playing it for the remainder of 2026. It is my favorite game, after all!

What Am I Playing Next: Not Sure! Most likely a Savage Worlds superhero campaign, or perhaps diving into Worlds Without Number. I also really want to give TinyD6 a try!

First Game: D&D (Mentzer Red Box)

Just a simple, historical fact. This was easily the fastest category for me to complete.

Game Everyone Should Play: Shadowdark

Why? Because it emulates the hobby’s origins so perfectly while applying modern sensibilities and streamlined rules. It encapsulates the dungeon-crawling roots of tabletop gaming while using common, modern mechanics in an instantly understandable way. For players who have only ever experienced D&D 5e, it can be a massive eye-opener, showing them entirely new (and old) ways to play. It teaches the pure joy of early D&D without the mechanical clunkiness. It is incredibly fun, and I think every gamer should give it a try at least once.

So, what does your “About Me: Tabletop RPG” look like? I want to see it!

 One idea for my new campaign I'm working on that I'm borrowing from the Japanese rpg Sword World (or at least its unofficial translations into English) are Local Experience Tables. These show up in some of the setting books and are just random tables of events themed to varying degrees to specific locales. They don't typically provide any mechanical benefit (though I could see it in limited situations), but they are still potentially useful, and they certainly provide a roleplaying hook.

Here's one I came up with for Salvage:

Salvage and the Field of the Fallen Colossi

Roll

Experience

1

Swindle. You either suckered someone or got suckered.

2

Dust Up. You were involved in a violent altercation.

3

Busted. You were once down and out.

4

Scarred but Smarter. You got caught in a trap in a colossi, but now you know better.

5

New Part. A part of your body is Magitech.

6

Poisonville. You once lived in a pretty toxic area.

7

Bad Blood. You made an enemy, and someone is still after you.

8

Took a Bullet. You’ve been shot before and have the scar to prove it.

9

Lost Mine. You believe you know the location of treasure.

10

Tech Friends. You have a friend that is a construct or otherwise Magitech.

And here's one that covers the region outside the major cities:

General

Roll

Experience

1

Courier. You once delivered a sealed letter to an important person.

2

Marshlander. You’ve spent a good deal of time in the marshes.

3

Mad Season. You’ve experienced the mad ecstasy brought on by exposure to the pollen of the irrsin flowers in the scrublands

4

Rail journey. You’ve traveled by train.

5

Runaway Construct. You had a dangerous encounter with a magitech construct.

6

Under Strange Stars. You were once lost in the Stargazer’s Garden.

7

Fantastic fishing. You have fished in the Prismatic Lake

8

Captive. You were once captured by a Fomori (humanoid) raiding party.

9

Birthing. You witnessed a Mothernode produce a Mek.

10

Searcher. You are looking or have looked for a friend or relative lost in Berlaith.

 In Search of the Unknown (Module B1, written by Mike Carr in 1978) is arguably the foundational text of the dungeon crawl. As an introductory module, its most defining characteristic is that it is unstocked: the maps and descriptive text of the Caverns of Quasqueton are provided, but the placement of monsters and treasure is left entirely as an exercise for the Dungeon Master using providedNeedleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

 Integrating Adventurer Conqueror King System II (ACKS II) with the legendary, chaotic, and maximum-gonzo DNA of Dave Hargrave’s Arduin Grimoires is a brilliant, if volatile, design space.On paper, they look like oil and water: ACKS II is a masterpiece of rigorous, simulationist, micro-economically sound world-building. Arduin is a Technicolor fever dream of multi-classed Elven Cyber-Monks, Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

By Dale Houston
Duck & Crow Press
OSR
Levels: Low/"Rookies"

Under a raging river of turbulent, caustic water that melts organic material in moments lies the decrepit remains of a nefarious wizard’s lair. Opening a passage under the river would mean commerce and prosperity, and every brave adventurer worth their salt knows that a wizard’s den is guaranteed to have some reality-bending magical loot! Get ready for some liquefactive necrosis.

This 32 page adventure uses about eight pages to describe seventeen rooms in a wizard lair/passage under a river. Great specificity. Good challenges. Good formatting. A good and solid basic adventure that, white not exactly the most memorable, is setting everything up for success.

This is the first adventure in Dale’s Undying Expanse series. It’s not Thundarr, or even gonzo, but there are absolutely hints of it, at least in this adventure. The premise here is that there was once this fortress spanning a river. The river is caustic, like, full on acid. Up and down the river for ten miles along both banks is a prismatic wall. One of the former fortress dwellers was a wizard who hated the locals, it seems. Anyway, time passes, wizard dies, fortress collapses, and now there are just some crumbling remains, a passage UNDER the river. Trade routes anyone? And, as usual, there are some bandits hole up and some wizard leftovers. 

The rumors here are interesting. You get about a page of them, sixty, arrayed in ten tables of six each, by topic. So, each village, the bandits, the river, etc. That’s a nice way to zero in on various topics the party may be asking about. The villages in the surrounding area map are tied in to the hooks and half about a column each; a couple of notable businesses that an adventurer might visit and a couple of people, all don in a manner that’s easy to follow, terse, and full of flavor. “Big Hierome: Always laughing, compulsively eats sweets; this brute manages the bulls when they get a bit too feisty” The hooks, likewise, are short but have that specificity to them that helps a DM bring them alive. “Magistrate Yeldo of Flont will pay the crew six month’s wage to open the passage.” or “Jane Blood, local crime boss in Rockton, will forgive your incredible debt if you open the passage. She wants it to be a toll road.” One of these is exactly a “pay the party” thing, but its founded in something realistic, wanting to open a trade road. This helps elevate it beyond the normal old “someone hires you” hook that people toss out. And the crime boss one is grounded in her entry in the village, “Unassuming and simply dressed local business woman; rumored to be a heartless psychopath in charge of a criminal gang, has a large number of ‘cousins’ always nearby. “ There is MORE than enough there to make Jane a mainstay of the adventurers life, both in this adventure and in future ones. You can really riff on that and yet it’s terse. That’s good writing. It’s specific. Cousins. The rumor. Dale hits these very well and is certainly in the top tier of folks when it comes to that part of the adventure. 

Each room entry is offset in a little light green box with an entry that could be read-aloud or room details to summarize to the players, and then some well formatted bullets, starting with a bolded keyword, to help focus the DMs attention in on the things of import in the room. There are little embedded tables or “tracker boxes” present as well, where appropriate. Nothing goes on for more than a couple of sentences, making it easy to scan and parse information at the table during play. A little “modern” in terms of generous whitespace, with rooms taking between a third of a page or a full page to describe, but it’s all easy to use. 

The text does a decent job of being evocative as well. “Low oily fires giving little light” or “Cauldron: A mess of “villager stew” is thickening in the cauldron. “ or “Tarp: Made of human skin leather, faces and hair still intact. It is recently made and still a bit damp. “ Still intact. A bit damp. It’s a tarp. Good word choices to really bring these things to life. 

Interactivity is decent as well, both in terms of individual rooms and in the larger context. One room has a trapped demon in it. Pulling a lever in an earlier room releases the demon and he starts to move throughout the dungeon. Peepholes show you other places. An initial room has a bunch of skeletons on stakes in it … it’s full of crude traps (think jugs of river water and sharp sticks) … but the skeletons face the individual traps, so you can use them to help navigate across the room. Of course that’s how the bandits inside navigate it. There are consequences for your actions. It’s not world ending, but you can feel them. You could do enough damage to collapse the ceiling and flood the place. Oops. No trade route. And if the demon gets loose then there are some notes on what happens in the game world; not the end of the world but trouble for a while. Coming out of the dungeon on the other side of the river “This is where some of the “bad” kids from Rockton come to smoke, drink, and make out.” and you freak the kids out. Drunk bandits. Stripping magic inlaid circles of their inlaid silver. The rooms have consequences, many of which are telegraphed in subtle ways for those paying attention. A rubble filled room with gold braziers stuck in the rubble. Dig em out? What about those crumbling walls, signs of impending collapse? Prisoners of the bandits to free, connected to the town (and, potentially, hooks.) You’ve got the dungeon environment to interact with, the walls and rubble and leaks and such. You’ve got the bandits and their ogre boss at the beginning. You’ve got old wizard shit. Lots to do.

Things are also supported well. There are a couple of art handouts, one of which cleverly conceals some imps hiding that negates surprise if you notice them in the drawing. Handwritten notes. A good hex map, new monsters, notes on the dungeon map about “always on” things like the leaking walls, so the DM can emphasize them

The dungeon map, proper, is a little busy and not the easiest to read. While the use of color to highlight text is done well through the rest of the adventure, the dark maroon keying blends in a bit much, and the “art” use of shading on the map, with rubble, makes things a little less clear then I would prefer. It’s not a disaster in any sense, just not as clear as I would prefer. And, we get a little sloppy with the use of the word “turns.” That skeleton/trap room “Following the paths takes 3 Turns to get to any other wall, 4 turns if moving cautiously” Thirty to forty minutes, or three to four actions, you think? 

These are just nits. This is a solid adventure. Easy to use, evocative, interactive, with lots of fun specificity. There’s a 4HD ogre and an 8HD demon, so, challenging for a level one group, but it does a solid job. 

This is $12.50 at DriveThru. The preview is fourteen pages, showing you the intro, hooks, rumors, villages, and numerous dungeon rooms. Great preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/540645/under-the-caustic-river-ahnd?1892600

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to the end of Crisis! This week, I read the comics on sale on May 23, 1985.

Batman and the Outsiders #23: Barr and Davis send most of the Outsiders to the Gotham Zoo where Rex and Sapphire have a tense meeting with Simon Stagg over their wedding plans. A group of armed men attack, and the Outsiders have to deal with the chaos they cause. In the aftermath, it's revealed the attack was cover for the attempted assassination of Stagg orchestrated by his assistant. After Rex saves his life, Stagg warms on the idea of the hero marrying his daughter.
Meanwhile, Halo is in the city by herself and encounters a friendly hippie guy in a van who calls himself Brother Abraham. Meanwhile, he offers her a place stay and drives her to a secluded commune called Eden.

Blue Devil #15: Truly the DCU most be overrun with geniuses because an inventor on the level of Cassidy just winds up doing special effects and theme park animatronics. In this issue, as Blue Devil contends with Verner's Vanquisher (Verner's chaffeur that he had empower by scientists as a superhero), the two fight a King Kong-esque robot running amuck that Cassidy made for the studio tour. The process that created the Vanquisher seems to have made him mentally unstable, and he kidnaps Marla with whom he's infatuated.

Green Lantern #191: Engelhart and Staton/Patterson reveal the Predators identity at last, and it is certainly unexpected. After Hal's discover of Carol's perfume lingering in the Predator's hideout, he also finds the reporter's videotape showing the meeting between Green Arrow, Black Canary, Carol, and himself, that on one else involved with seems to remember. Hal calls Ollie, Dinah, and John Stewart, but no one's home, so he heads to Carol's place and shows her. Even with the reveal, I'm still not sure why the Predator doesn't want them to remember this, but luckily, I don't have to think about that long, because the Predator shows up and kidnaps Carol. He takes her to his old theater hide out. Powerless Hal suits up for battle and confronts the villain. He gives a good showing, but he can't stop the Predator from playing the old organ (something Carol thinks is important). When he does, Carol declares her love for the Predator, as he does for her. Then they merge into one being: Star Sapphire!

Infinity, Inc. #17: The Thomases and McFarlane/DeZuniga introduce the rest of Mr. Bones crew, and they are an odd bunch. I don't know quite what to think about Thomas and DeZuniga creating Arak as a historical S&S hero then doing a modern, minor villain that bears his name but is unrelated presumably other than being Native American. Does him calling himself (or someone else naming him) Arak suggest that the original Arak is a well-known historical figure in the DC Universe? 
Anyway, Fury finds herself prisoner of this team who call themselves Helix. They want to ransom her for millions from Carter Hall. Hector tries to rescue her but gets defeated.

New Teen Titans #11: Wolfman and García-López/Tanghal continue the story from last issue. After sleeping on it, Joe is still weirded out by the mutated bug people, and I mean, who wouldn't be? He and Kole get the other Titans and they head out to the mansion where we follow the familiar pattern to this title of our heroes getting captured so they can talk with the villain while he puts them in one trap, then they escape and end up in another, then they escape and the bad guy is neutralized in some way. In this case, Weathers and his mutant followers (including his own grasshopper mutant wife) expose themselves to a gas that turns them completely into bugs so they can survive the nuclear devastation he's sure is coming, and they let the Titans go. Other than following the typical Titans formula, this story is just weird. With its Hellstrom Chronicle vibe and schlocky mutants, it feels like something from a 70s Marvel comic, or done a different way, one of DC's now-defunct horror/sci-fi anthologies.

Sgt. Rock #403: The main story by Kanigher/Catan involves Rock and an Italian resistance fighter pursuing a German officer guilty of war crimes to a church in Terza, Italy, where the officer has asked for sanctuary--and Pope Pius XII. This story is another one that has that weird story beat that comes up on occasion where Rock seems to really want to capture a German officer (it's always an officer) to make him stand trial instead of killing him. And this is after the guy just shot the Pope. Rock's hesitancy leads to the resistance fighter getting shot. Rock then pursues the Nazi into the church's bell tower where in the scuffle, the German gets knocked out of the tower by the bell and falls to his death.
The second story is the first publication of Tom McWeeney, who will go on to do a lot of work in the 90s, particularly at Wildstorm. This goofy story is not a career high point, though, and would have made more sense in Weird War Tales, if anywhere. Soldiers die and are burnt to a crisp on a deserted battlefield. Is it nuclear war or at least are they caught in a nuclear test? No, it's a pizza in the oven and they're...anchovies? 

Saga of Swamp Thing #39: Moore and Bissette/Totleben continue the story with Swamp Thing walking into the reservoir covering Rosewood to deal with the vampires. The vampires aren't a threat to him, that is until the next generation is born. The survivor of the brood is an inhuman monster that rends Swamp Things body apart. That doesn't stop Swamp Thing, though. He just moves through the Green and becomes a whole hillside of vegetation. He moves and diverts the water of the reservoir into the river again (likely flooding places downstream, but anyway...) and the vampires die in moving water. Before all that, the parents of the boys who went missing come to Rosewood, and one of them is killed by their own vampire son, but the rest escape. Constantine tells Swamp Thing he didn't take care of things quick enough. Now word will get out, and people will believe in vampires. That's what the enemy he's trying to defeat needs. Constantine tells Swampie to meet him in Maine.

Warlord #95: I reviewed this issue here.

Talent Showcase #18: The editorial reiterates the reason for the name change and tells us that the next issue will be the last. This issue is a weird mix of sci-fi stories done by established pros (Bruce Jones, Shawn McManus, and Dan Adkins) sometimes with the assistance of relative newcomers that could have been anthology book inventor stories from a few years ago. Then there are several short, humor cartoons, and even a text piece by John Constanza. The only complete newcomer story is a superhero humor piece with everything but the lettering done by Kerry Callen, who will go on mostly to work for Mad.

Who's Who #6: We're into the D's and we get Darkseid, the Demon, DeSaad, Doctor Bedlam, and the Deep Six courtesy of their creator, Jack Kirby. Atari Force is well represented with Dark Destroyer and Dart by José Luis García-López. García-López also does Deadman, perhaps because he's the artist on the limited series that will be published at the end of '85. Amethyst's Dark Opal also shows up with art by his original artists, Colon. Marshall Rogers renders Deadshot who will become more prominent in the next few years. Deimos shows up from Warlord, courtesy of Grell. The then-recent Demolition Team is here, courtesy of their co-creator, Dave Gibbons. There are, of course, a lot of "Doctors." Giffen and Mahlstedt give us Doctor Fate instead of whoever's drawing All-Star Squadron this month.

 Gary Gygax’s 1979 module B2: The Keep on the Borderlands is the foundational text of the sandbox campaign. Ostensibly written as an introductory adventure for the D&D Basic Set, it functions under the hood as a masterclass in dynamic world-building, spatial economics, and emergent play. This is going to pick right up from OSR Commentary - Adapting AX2: Secrets of the Nethercity ForNeedleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

 The Brotherhood of William St. John is a central organization and meta-campaign setting supplement created by Jason Vey for Troll Lord Games' multi-genre roleplaying game, Amazing Adventures (available in both the original SIEGE Engine and 5th Edition-compatible rulesets).Instead of locking players into a single, restrictive world, theNeedleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

 Here is a random D100 table designed for a post-apocalyptic setting using the SIEGE Engine by Troll Lord Games. This blog entry picks right up from d100 Random Sword & Sorcery Barbarian Hordes For Castles & Crusades rpg CampaignTo keep this perfectly tailored to the system, each entry includes essential mechanical anchors: Hit Dice (HD), Armor Class (AC), Primary Attributes (Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

By Jason Youngdale
Youngdale Productions
DCC/OSR
Levels 1-2

Long ago, beneath the fertile valleys south of Castle Dragonwater, a minor baron swore fealty to the Starved King, a demonic entity of hunger. In exchange, the baron’s land flourished with endless crops and fattened livestock. When the baron died, his descendants sealed the King’s shrine in terror—but the hunger below never ended. Now, farmers near Horndale report crops rotting overnight and livestock turning feral. Strange lights flicker in the old Granary Hill Mound, and the smell of roasted meat fills the night air. The locals beg the adventurers to descend into the forgotten vault and end the demonic banquet once and for all.

This twenty page adventure uses about four pages to describe twelve boring rooms of boringness using single-column formatting. Here are words that should be a contradiction: it’s a boring DCC adventure.

The turn of the millennia was an exciting time in RPG’s.the 3.0 explosion, indie RPG’s everywhere. I remember Polaris. Or, rather Polaris: Chivalric Tragedy at Utmost North. Conflict can be ended by someone saying “Thou are but a warrior …” Yeah, that’s tragedy all right. Your force of arms can do nothing here to resolve things. Noice! You know ol Brycy Bryce loves some human relatability and complexity in his game. Not to punish the party for wrong choices but to muddle the affairs of the way the word REALLY works in to an RPG and still have it be fun. Let us imaging, though, after saying this the party then stabs the NPC. And then they go all Lancelot-at-the-wedding and stab the king, queen, prince, half-brother, wedding guests, and everyone else in a ten mile radius. Ha! Damn skippy I’m a warrior biatch! I’m not sure that one is playing Polaris then, even though you might be using the Polaris rules. Blah blah blah its art is the creator calls it art blah blah blah. Whatever. It’s lost the point of Polaris. 

And thusly this adventure and DCC. Let us imagine a DCC adventure with three 30×30 rooms in a row. No doors. 4 orcs in each room. Each room is otherwise empty. Is this DCC? It’s stat’d for DCC. Does that make it DCC? Sure. But it has lost the point of what a DCC game is. What is it, Mighty Deeds or something, where you can describe using what’s in the room to do cool shit? That’s the point of DCC. It makes cool shit happen. The halfling, the thief, the mage, the fighter, they are all built around making cool shit happen ORGANICALLY. The person has an ability, but the environment and set up is there for the party to riff on. The designer takes us to the McDonalds PlayPlace and the fighter drowns someone in the ball pit. Except. What if there is no ball pit? Or slide. Or anything else. It’s just an empty room. I’ve played in DCC games like this at cons and the difference is marked. 

Examining this adventure, room 1 save or vomit. Room 2 save or eat dirt. Room 3 is a ghost kitchen with nothing to use to fight in. Room 4 has a banquet table to fight in. Room 5, finally, is larder is hanging hooks to fight in. Room 6, pantry of jars to fight in. Room 7 had a bed to fight in. Rooms 8 and 9 have nothing but saves. You get it. There’s is little to build on here. What the fuck am I supposed to Might Deed in a ghost kitchen in which nothing is real? The banquet table isnt fucking stupendious but at least it has a table, and the same goes for the larder, at least there are hooks with shit hanging on them. Not exactly a complex environment but at least its SOMETHING. 

And the save rooms. Ug. Save or vomit. Save or eat some dirt. These have no meaningful impact on the game. It’s window dressing. Just a reason to roll dice. It’s fucking lame. 

The locals are starving, crops withering, livestock fading away. “The locals beg the adventurers to descend into the forgotten vault and end the demonic …” WHat about them? DId they try and fail? No? We don’t care about them? Because we don’t care about the adventure? It’s just a flimsy pretext for a VERY lightly themed “hunger” dungeon? Yeah, I know, because it comes off like that. There’s no immersion here. All these pages. Nothing.

“Giant rats could also be in this room, waiting to attack any intruders.” Wonderful. “Four ghouls here jerk their heads sharply as you approach.” Great, embedded tenses in the summaries. “This appears to be a” Padded out wording. It’s only four fucking pages rooms and it’s still padded out. 

Nothing to see. Move along. Move along.

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is the first three pages and shows you nothing but the credit and table of contents. You can’t make a purchasing decision based on that, so it fails at being a preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/555500/the-banquet-of-the-starved-king?1892600

There are a lot of opinions about setting in rpgs and how much is the right amount or too much. Consequently, a lot has been written about it by a lot of people, me included. As readers of this blog likely know, I am pro-setting, in the sense that I personally like thinking of and writing about them, but one might also have intuited that I enjoy them as a player or GM. They are a major part of what gets me into a game, a fundamental part of supporting imagining the game world. I realize there are people who like their settings merely implied or at the least as light as possible, and that's their right, but to me that would reduce an rpg to the same sorts of pleasure I might get from a board or arcade game, and that would not have been enough to sustain my longterm interest.

As I have been working on the setting for my new campaign, I've talked with my players for the first time about how I feel about GM creation vs. player creation of setting material. It's not that it was a secret before, but it never game up in an explicit way. My personal observation is that while most players don't want to be given a lot of homework to play a game, they also don't tend to be told impromptu to imagine things for a world. A framework to inspire their character creation tends to be what most of my players are looking for, though how much they intend to flesh things out varies.

Encouraging this sort of engagement, though, means that the world is a bit out of focus until we get into the playing of it. I can have thought of a lot of things, but a lot of details I have in mind stay flexible on until the players get their hands on them. In the end, the worlds winds up being a collaborative process even if it mostly starts in my mind.

Here's an example. In creating Azurth, I clearly called out that despite a number of animal people in the setting, there were no cat people. Now, the fact that I noted that and didn't mention a whole list of other animal people that would never appeared in Azurth was meant to suggest "something's going on here." And it was. 

However, my friend Jim, in creating his bard Kully missed that. Jim did a very flavorful, brief character write-up, nailing the Ozian sort of vibe. The only problem was he mentioned Kully encountering a Cat Man at a pivotal moment.

I could have suggest a change to that detail and in some circumstances, I might have. Here though, because I had already intended something to be going on with that point, I used what Jim came up with. I told him that Kully had had that encounter, which was odd because there aren't supposed to be Cat-folk in Azurth, and so no one believes him. Jim was creating a little mystery in his characters backstory, which wound up tying into a minor mystery of the entire setting. Kully's backstory became setting material supporting a future reveal that at least one player was going to care out.

Not all instances of a player's view of the world and my own having a discrepency turn out so serendipitously, but I think it's worth looking for those opportunities and leaving things just a little fuzzy to facilitate those clarifications.

 In Robert E. Howard’s original stories—specifically "The Tower of the Elephant" and "Rogues in the House"—Conan’s time as a thief in the cities of Zamora and Corinthia features a distinct version of the character. He isn't yet the seasoned general or king; he is a raw, hot-blooded, powerful teenager (around 17–18 years old) navigating the decadent, civilized "Maul" of Arenjun.He lacks the Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

I wrote this little B/X D&D hack recently to emulate a gritty, scummy, city style sword and sorcery experience using the classic game rules.

You can download a zine PDF of it here.

B/X TOMB ROBBER HACK

IN THE DIRTY CITY OF HOGBONE, or Tombsburk, or Sluckbucket, or whatever filthy name you give it, the tomb-robbers, treasure-hunters, and murderous criminals thrive. There are no safe shires here.

This B/X sword & sorcery hack is inspired by Conan (the barbarian), Thieves’ World, Lankhmar, The Black Company, and a bit of Ankh-Morpork.

PC RULES

1. Everyone is human. If the GM allows elves or something, they’re inhuman aliens from another dimension or space or Hell and everyone hates, fears, and/or distrusts them. Your campaign is now defined by this fact.

2. There are no clerics. High priests might be sorcerers, but they’re not healing anyone.

3. Good and evil are not linked to alignment. Alignment is related to powers of Law and Chaos. A Lawful monster might be evil as a devil. PCs are most likely neutral, but it’s up to you.

4. Every player character is a 7th level Thief because those are the skills needed to be a crypt-raider. No levels are gained or lost. Level drain drains Ability scores instead.

5. This is your stuff: 3d6 x 100 gold. Roll 2 magic items using the General Magic table (page X44). Re-roll consumable items (like potions) if you prefer.

6. You get these perks based on your highest or second highest Ability.

•Str: Additional +2 to hit, +7 HP.

•Int: +3 (or +1d6) languages, 2 (or 1d4) 1st level Magic-User spells.

•Wis: Re-roll failed initiative; glean 1 useful fact about anything (once per encounter); good ventriloquist.

•Dex: All your Thief Skills are as level 10; climb upside down.

•Con: Save as level 10 Thief, +5 HP.

•Cha: +1 Morale of retainers; 1 devoted follower per Cha score above 10 (as 3 HD bandits); good at mimicking voices.

7. Rest to regain your strength. Heal up to 7d4 HP per day, rolling up to a total of 7 dice at any intervals you prefer. Taking a breather after that alley fight? Roll a couple of d4s to get your spirits up.

8. You know fear. When faced with undead, cosmic entities, or dark sorcery, save vs. spells or be gripped with fear for 1d6 rounds, unable to do anything but run and hide or stand there wetting your pants. Only for the first encounter, per occasion.

9. Gain 1 Hit Point after every adventure.

10. Spell-casting PCs can learn more spells, but it ain’t easy. Make a hard Int check (-4 to the Ability for the check) to learn a new spell from a book or scroll. Only 1 spell can be learned from any discovery of books of magic.

11. They will tell stories of your exploits. When you’ve played enough adventures that it feels like a proper hip-pocket paperback’s worth of short stories, everyone gains +1 to attack and saving rolls. At this time, you can retire a character, making them a level 9 NPC.

GM SUGGESTIONS

1. Monsters. Make them as unique as possible and never say “it’s a goblin”. Instead, “the locals say there’s a bog beast lurking about” or “the old temple is haunted by the angry spirits of the dead” and that’s that. There are no tribes of goblins, but there might be bandit gangs in masks.

2. Make monsters weirder. You can use monsters from the book as templates, but mix them up. Take abilities from three different creatures and hammer them together. That’s not a hill giant, that’s an abomination of human flesh stitched together by sorcery and leaking poison gas… with a big club.

3. Creatures of the night. Monsters of this world hate the sun and mostly only come out at night… mostly.

4. No clerics, but the dead rise. And they are afraid of the gods. PCs using relics of the gods may force morale checks on the walking dead.

5. Nothing is free. If you can waltz into a broken ruin and find a hoard of gold… it’s almost certainly cursed. Either cursed directly and each PC now has a death warrant, or it’s sacred to some ancient guardian who is now awakened and will not relent until everyone is dead. Watch a mummy movie for ideas.

6. Get to the action. Don’t let the players waste time debating their next moves. Keep the pace up. Assume a real time clock is ticking. They’ve been discussing how to or if they should open that crypt door for five minutes straight? Angry spirits show up to run them off. Other tomb raiders ambush them. Etc.

7. NPCs can be based on PC classes from the monster list, such as Acolytes and Bandits. More important ones can also be 7th level of their class. Boss NPCs should be treated as 9th level or better of their class: Fighter, Magic-User, or Thief.

8. Start local, don’t lore-nuke. Do NOT let yourself get caught up in too much pre-game world-building. Make up the dirty city, some NPCs, and nearby locations as needed. Let the adventurers guide your next move. Let the world grow from this local seed into whatever it will be, even if that means the PCs never really leave town. Cities have crypts, sewers, and assassins aplenty.

9. Luck of heroes. Taking a note from the classic 1e Conan modules, PCs have Luck Points. Only you, the GM, knows how much Luck they have. Players can spend Luck to accomplish feats of adventure that would be very risky if they relied on the luck of the dice. Like leaping roof-to-roof in the rain without dropping a fragile glass egg or putting an arrow through the tiny hole in the dread warlord’s demon scale armor.

Players cannot spend Luck to affect dice rolls and Luck must be announced before actions are taken. Luck doesn’t replenish, but you can secretly give a point here and there for incredible moments of gaming or for completing a book of adventures.

Ask each player to roll 4d6. Now secretly determine which result goes with which PC. That’s their Luck… until it runs out.

Happy sword & sorcery gaming!

An Interview with Carbo_Creates, Puerto Rican Artist and Game Designer

Happy Sunday, dear reader! We are back for another interview with a Boricua creator. Today’s subject is someone I’ve had the pleasure of knowing through the active Puerto Rican TTRPG online community. He is a true gaming polymath—designing content, creating art, and even producing gaming-related music. I genuinely hope to sit down and play a game with him someday.

Let’s get right to the interview!

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

Hello there! My name is Eddie, also known as Carbo_Creates on social media. I create all sorts of things. I draw (characters, maps, places, etc.), write adventure modules and mini-zines, make dungeon tiles, and create sculptures (in clay and cold porcelain). I also design tattoo pieces.

How would you describe your art or creative endeavor?

I would describe my creative endeavor and art style as chaotic and improvised. Sure, I can have a theme or idea in mind, but I let things flow as they go. I might start drawing something, but that inspires another vision or way around it, and I try to explore that too—basically, a chill, go-with-the-flow kinda mindset.

How did you discover TTRPGs?

I started playing and getting involved with TTRPGs in 2017, but I had heard of them way before that. Funny enough, what got me interested again was watching a live play where Matt Mercer game-mastered, and Vin Diesel was a player. I saw it and thought that I’d love to play that game.

(I believe he’s referring to this!)

It’s like making a movie or series episode in collaboration, and I love movies and fantasy shows. After that, I went online and read everything I could find about systems, adventures, modules, bestiaries, etc. I really fell in love with the Numenera setting. It got me through the Hurricane Maria recovery time.

Do you actively play TTRPGs? What are you playing?

Right now, I have a campaign starting soon with a group of players from various Puerto Rico TTRPG Discord servers. It’s a Shadowdark campaign that I will GM for.

What do you want to play next?

I really want to get that Shadowdark campaign going, but I haven’t set an official date for it yet. Beyond that, I would also love to GM Numenera and play one-shots in a variety of different systems.

What projects do you have available right now, and what are you working on next?

Wow, this will be a long answer, so I’ll try my best to keep it short! I have many mini-zines available, from a simple D6 ruleset inspired by EZd6 and other TTRPGs to setting-inspiring zines. I also sell stickers and prints of my art. I’m currently working on turning my first published adventure, The Grand Palace Opera, into single pages so I can send it to print.

I also have a lot of ideas in mind, and some of them are starting to manifest, like a dungeon synth album and many more mini-zines. On the drawing side of things, I’m focusing on doodling every day. I love how it has inspired some of my best work. Also, I do art commissions and will soon be taking clients for tattoos!

Where can people find your work?

My work can be found on my Carbo_Creates itch.io and DriveThruRPG pages. You can also find me on Instagram and Facebook as Carbo_Creates. Most of my work is free in digital form, except for my music and The Grand Palace Opera adventure zine for Shadowdark.

Any closing thoughts? To close, I must thank you for this opportunity to share my story with TTRPGs and my art. To anyone reading this: keep imagining a better world, keep playing and having fun, experience joy in the little things, and explore your creativity as much as possible. Oh, and I guess check out my work!

We will definitely check it out, Eddie! I am really looking forward to seeing your future projects.

On a general note, I am actively looking for other Puerto Rican creatives in the TTRPG space—creating art, writing, or whatever it may be—who would like to share their experiences and their work. Your art does not even have to be directly related to TTRPGs, but I want to continue sharing interviews with Boricua gamer-creatives for this ongoing Sunday series.

I’m also open to interviewing other creators worldwide who want to share their art and experiences or have me review their products. If you’d be interested in a conversation or have some game-related project you’d like me to look at, reach out here via the blog or on my socials! I want this year of celebrating my 40th gaming anniversary to be a time to talk with and get to know other gamers and creators, and to help spread the word about new, interesting projects in our gaming space.

 Here is a custom d100 Encounter Table designed for the subterranean depths beneath a Victorious campaign. It bridges the gap between the historical, soot-stained Victorian Underground (sewers, tube tunnels, catacombs) and the cosmic horror, primeval dangers of the deep Underdark (caverns, forgotten civilizations, and hollow-earth fringes).Use this table when your heroes descend into the Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

 The Claw is one of the most bizarre, visually striking, and historically significant supervillains of the Golden Age of Comic Books. Created by Jack Cole (who later created Plastic Man), The Claw first appeared in Silver Streak Comics #1 (December 1939) published by Lev Gleason Publications. The blog post picks up right from Using the Belle Apoque, Red Rpg By The Red Room & Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

By Taron Pounds, Lawrence Schick
Landof the Blind
OSR
Levels 5-10

Three relics have been stolen from their owners, and worries have spread about the power one person would have with all three in their possession. Word of a substantial reward for their return spread, with a poem as the only clue. 

This 36 page adventure uses about twelve pages to describe the eighteen rooms of White Plume Mountain. A homage/updated version with the serial numbers scrubbed off, it is trying hard on the ease of use front but loses the charm of White Plume by under-describing. 

I’m down with the overall goal here. Updating some of the classics to improve upon them seems like a fine idea. I mean, I still have several Dungeon adventures on my ToDo list to overhaul and update for when watching paint drying becomes too exciting for me. As an experiment to understand layout and formatting and what’s important I think it’s an interesting idea. It also gets some eyes on older adventures, many of which forged new conceptual ground. And then also I suspect time would be better spent on new adventures, but, who am I to tell someone how to spend their few remaining precious moments of life? There’s another aspect to this as well: the system-neutral thing. It’s not really system-neutral, it’s aimed at D&D-like systems, with stat blocks to prove it. I’ve never really found a problem using adventures for other systems in whatever I’m running (which is generally B/X based with a heavy bend to oD&D) however I suspect there is a certain market limitation, or advantage, to saying “Works with Mork Borg!” in any event, I think this is the proper way to do it; stat it for a B/X as the foundation of most systems follows, and then note what it can be used/adapted for. Perhaps a little disingenuous in the marketing, but, meh, at least you planted a stake in the ground. 

It’s pretty obvious what they doing with the formatting. Bolding, bullets, icons, headers and so on. There’s a little intro section, a few sentences or so with some bolded words and then some bullets to follow up on those. The icons are probably overkill, meant to tell you “this is a trap” or “this is a monster.” All in all, I think there’s too much here. The pages end up busy and your eyes tend to glaze over a bit. This is a not uncommon problem in some adventures. Folks recognize that formatting and layout can bring clarity but they they take it too far and it can contribute to obfuscation. If everything is important then nothing is, or something similar to that saying. I’m going to list the lighting condition, door, stone texture, etc in every room, would be a similar problem. No. You have to craft these things carefully. Adventure design, or, room formatting and layout, is not a one size fits all issue. You can have go to techniques but you have to use them carefully to highlight certain aspects to bring clarity. When something becomes rote and is generically applied then it can lead to problems. 

But the major problem here is that this comes off more than a little soulless. There was a charm in White Plume that came through and this doesn’t feel like it has that. This feels like a bunch of rooms with challenges in it and little else whereas White Plume had just a little bit more going on to ground the rooms and encounters. S2 has a rather mangy and bedraggles sphinx squatting in the water. This, however has “a sphynx stands on the other side” [of the forcefield.] This has six globes of silver dangling from the ceiling, with bullets for their contents. S2 had silvered glass globes dangling from the ceiling on unbreakable wires, that a good crack would shatter, dumping their contents in to the muck below. It’s a much fuller picture and paints a much more evocative scene than just a mostly fact-based list of the challenges in the room. And this is not cherry picking, it happens over and over again. I ofton encourage folks to think about the room, devoid of mechanics, and create it, then adding mechanics, instead of the mechanics leading the charge. This is how we get the slim strands they hang from and the good crack and the dumping the contents in to the muck. Further, we can see a word choice in S2, spartan but present, that brings this room to life, and that just isn’t present in this adventure respin. While we do get the “silvered” globes, it feels like an extra adjective was just thrown in for the sake of having one rather than painting a complete and evocative picture of the room.

I do like the cover, but that art style is one I find personally appealing. And an attempt is made at the wanderers, with the gargoyles flying a corpse somewhere, for example. It lists factions, but, these are not really factions with a factions game and things they want, it’s just a list of major monsters. I not, also, there is a disconnect between the text and the supplementary pointcrawl map. (The adventure has a “real” map also.” The pointcrawl map point out rooms with the mucky water in them, but it disagrees with the text on rooms 13/14. No so great when the reference material is off. 

So, it’s White Plume, explicitly, with updated text and layout and the serial numbers filed off. But the updated text has removed the specificity that brought White Plume to life. Thus, it is just the wacko room challenges boiled down to mostly mechanics. And that’s not the vibe I’m looking for in an adventure. 

This is $5 at Drivethru. The preview is the whole thing. Yah! Great preview. I might suggest checking out page ten of the preview/page six of the product. That is the Globe room. I think it encapsulates the formatting/layout and the derth of specificity in the descriptions.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/561058/ghost-crest-peak?1892600

The tale as it's told in Mayura (a city, it should be said, that never chooses truth over a good story) is that an aged, latter-day Wizard-Kings, Mordrey, upon his death split his kingdom among his children. For reasons known only to himself, he bequeathed rulership of his capital to his most unassertive son. While Mordrey had seen fit to place powerful wards upon city so that no one of his blood could rule if they took the city by force, the timid Prince despaired that one or another of his grasping and ambitious siblings would find some indirect means kill him and take the prize. Fearing any day might be his last, he threw himself into pleasures to live life to the fullest. He began spending his inherited fortune on distractions. Entertainers and artists flocked to the city to partake of his largesse.

The prince died young and without an heir, though not at the hands of his siblings but as a result of his sybaritic pursuits. By then, he had inadvertently placed the city on the course it holds to this day, passing through the end of the Age of Magitech, the Demon War, and the darkness that followed, largely unchanged, if not unscathed. 

It is true that, despite popular depictions (often popularized by the troubadours and theater troupes of Mayura, itself), a city of its size and importance must have citizenry beyond artists and performers. Of course, there are craftsmen, merchants, beggars, and servants. But how many artisans are only supporting themselves until the quality of their verse is recognized and rewarded? How many moneylenders or soldiers are perhaps actors researching a role? 

Mayura is still a monarchy technically, though its ruler is not of the line of Mordrey. Instead, a grand, annual, nonlethal fighting tournament held at the Aristeion colosseum used to select who will serve as the ceremonial ruler for the next year and a day. Competitors are drawn from all over Parsulan, and the event is bolstered by matches and demonstrations by the professional gladiators in the arena's training schools. The Mayura citizenry feel that having such a formidable and dynamic public representative helps deter otherwise bellicose neighbors. They also appreciate the coin brought in by the spectators to the competition.

The work of running Mayura is done by an elected council of citizens interested in that sort of drudgery. The actual ruling in the sense of setting a course for the city's future is currently done by an unelected former dancer, the Lady Petalutha. The paramour of a former four-term King, Petalutha has parleyed her celebrity into a position of real power, and no one sense has been willing to brave public disapproval to make her give it up. By all accounts, however, she is a capable leader, bolstering Mayura military, leading to a quelling of the coastal pirates, and pushing for trade deals that have benefited her city. She is not well liked by the old nobility who control the lands around the city-state, however, who would prefer a more tractable head of state.