Alright, so we’re doing this. If you would like to see Lar and I return to LFG, and create something new and unique, now is the time to speak up with real voting power. And there it is, let us
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Strange phenomena plague the land: saltwater rain, shared dreams of a tide covering the land, shallow puddles reflecting deep, strange oceans. Some people have even fallen into puddles and disappeared entirely. The epicenter of the phenomena has been traced to the mausoleum of an eccentric who believed the whole land was once under the sea. Whether to stop this, explore it, or just to loot the tomb, the players have arrived to the mausoleum.
This eleven page adventure uses two-ish pages t describe about five-ish rooms in a mausoleum being invaded by an aquatic entity. There are hints here of sophisticated play, and maddeningly abstracted text that somehow is also wall of text. The theming never comes through well and it’s hampered by it use of a 5e style guide.
What can i say, I found the title appealing. Alas, there are no hills or screams, much less SCREAMS.
Some dude really thinks the world was underwater at some point. He has a massive tomb built, is buried in it, and then his belief in that idea is so strong that a water-plane entity uses the belief to try to force its way through to our plane.
There’s an interesting concept in this adventure in the way it handles illusion. Basically, the tomb is full of illusions, or, maybe, altered realities, but the adventure uses the word illusions. Before the first room you make a choice, after talking to the dudes friendly spirit, as to if you believe his theory or not. If you do believe then you treat the illusions as real and the non-illusions as illusions. If you do not believe then the illusions are illusions to you and the real dungeon is real. Like one of those scifi episodes where half the cast is out of phase or some such. Some of the sections of the dungeon are filled with water, and there are shafts, so if you believe then you can swim up a shaft, and things like that. (And need water breathing!) The concept is haltingly implemented and not leaned heavily into, but the idea is an intriguing one.
There’s one or two spots where the some interesting things come in to play. The standard “clear the rubble away” thing in one room has the note “Clearing it without precautions causee another collapse.” Excellent cause and effect there and a lack of punishment for players who are not on autopilot. In another section, where you meet the dudes spirit at the start “How to summon Sutton’s spirit is up to the PCs. As a rule of thumb, spending a resource such as a spell slot should work. Actions such as meditating on the bench or lighting the statue’s pipe reveal that the spirit wants to manifest but is struggling to.” Again, pretty decent old school sensibilities. Nothing prescribed but some direction to the DM to have some latitude in their judgements. This is akin to something like the Bless spell being a good catch-all for solving many problems. Rulings, not rules, yes? I suspect, from this, that the dude is a decent DM.
But author …
There are a few quibbles here before the major issues. We’re told that people are missing, strange things going on, etc, and “The epicenter of these phenomena has been traced to Lubber’s Rest” with nothing more beyond that. In spite of the intro background, which is non-trivial, this is essentially just a site in the middle of nowhere for you to explore, even though “the PCs arrived to Lubber’s Rest with hopes of stopping these events and finding the missing people.” So, the framing to support the intro is just not present. At all. Which would be fine if the intro didn’t imply that it SHOULD be there. We’re just looking at a site.
But, more than that, there are some issues with the presentation and abstraction. The “5e template” was used here. This means sections of italics that are longer than they should be. This means long paragraphs of text with little in the way of formatting to help you scan the adventure. You’re digging through A LOT of text in this, with little to separate things and help you locate information. It is, I think, an issue with Wall of Text, even though there are line breaks and some bullets, there’s not section headings or bolding to help a DM figure out where to look for what. And that’s a major problem.
Second is a frustrating amount of abstraction and things simply left out. You will run in to weird symbols that are being used to help summon the aquatic planer entity … but no mention of destroying them. And this is theme, the lack of even minimal guidance for things you WNT to fuck with. When you combine this with the amount of text used to describe and denote other, trivial things, it makes you wonder why the emphasis was placed where it was.
Eleven of the rooms are simply abstracted away. Roll on a table to add a couple of features and then roll on a table for an encounter. An encounter like “Aggressive illusory creature swims in. (Submerged rooms only)” Uh. Ok. And, yet, here’s room nineteen “Contains a heap of rocks, with 4d8 embedded raw rubies. Dumped here by thralls.” This is aggressively terse. Was there not enough room in the adventure for the other rooms, given the terseness of this one? And no value for the rubies?
And, further, note the lack of evocative text. Nothing about a tomb or aquatic/semi-aquatic environment comes through here at all. And this is par for the course in the adventure. There’s a hefty intro. There’s a hefty appendix. But the actual rooms are terse without actually giving much of an impression at all.
What’s a DM to do? There’s little favour here. And I can roll on a table out of a book.
This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $5. The preview is ten of the eleven pages, so, a decent preview. You can see both the wall of text in the rooms at the beginning as well as the overly terse ones at the end, and the lack of specificity and lack of formatting to help locate information.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/569157/the-hills-have-screams?1892600
In one word: fun! Allow me to elaborate further.
Puerto Rico has not always participated in Free RPG Day. Gaming Zone participated in 2014, and the Puerto Rico Role Players were there.
Free RPG Day 2014 at Gaming ZonePaladin Books and Games in Isabela participated a few years ago, though I was sadly unable to go.
Puerto Rico has seen a boom in FLGS (Friendly Local Game Stores) in recent years. There are many CCGs, but post-pandemic, we have also seen growing interest in TTRPGs. One of these stores, Titan Games, has been participating in Free RPG Day for the past few years.
I participated in 2024, running Savage Worlds. Last year, I was not in Puerto Rico for the event, but this year I was ready to participate.
Free RPG Day 2024 at Titan Games, CaguasThe gaming community in Puerto Rico really came out in force, and both Titan Games locations in Caguas and Río Piedras had several tables playing TTRPGs. There were games of:
I ran Kneel Before the Goblin King by Joseph R. Lewis, a great short adventure that will be part of a crowdfunding project for print copies in July. I printed out the map, used the random online character generator to create pre-gens, got a player cheat sheet from Etsy, and ran four friends through a deadly Shadowdark adventure.
It ended up in a TPK (Total Party Kill). Incredibly, I had never had a TPK in a session before in my 40 years of gaming. Even when I tried to create an adventure just to do that a few years ago for D&D 5e, I had never wiped out the entire party. A first time for everything, I guess! We had a lot of fun.
Allow me to share a video about the games played, the fun we had, and the loot I grabbed:
I am thrilled I got to spend the day with friends, make new ones, and meet other members of the community. I am delighted to see the Puerto Rico TTRPG community thriving. Thanks to everyone who participated, and to Titan Games for supporting the community.
I mentioned Paladin Books and Games at the beginning of the post. The store may no longer be there, but the former owner, Mario Vélez, has a very active community of gamers who share reviews and meet up for games. You can find The Gaming Dragons on Facebook and on YouTube.
I hope you had fun on Free RPG Day, in whatever form you got to celebrate the day. See you all at Free RPG Day 2027!
The system worked pretty well. Despite our unfamiliarity, it certainly went faster than 5e would have.
Besides the Nimble rules, the players used the Local Experience tables I had come up with for the various important places. These are the characters:
g'Mbalisto (Tug): A dwarf Oathsworn (a Paladin, essentially) from the Lightbearer Republic. He's also been a gladiator in Mayura in the past.
Pan(demonium) (Gina): A darkling Songweaver (bard) from the Durendine Confederation. A forrmer rabble rouser and busker.
Frea (Andrea): A human (thought changed into a more felinoid form by a curse of a wizard of Abraxad) Cheat (thief).
Tamarra (Kathy): A human Shepherd (a cleric, more or less) from the Lightbearer Republic. Her parents died in the Kakharoth Wastes.
Aelarion (Bob): Human Stormshifter (the stuff people like about the druid). He's from a small town near the Dagard Mountains.
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What's better than a new crochet pattern? What if we make it a set? Say hello to the Ridgeline Stripes Crochet Hat! This reversible design creates a textured beanie with two looks, featuring Katia Merino Baby. And it's part of the Hat of the Month Club 2026! Disclaimer: This post includes affiliate links; materials provided […]
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0Welcome back to my Sunday interview series, dedicated to interviewing Puerto Rican gamers and creators. Today’s post is a personal treat.
It is a great honor and a happy occasion to talk with my good friend and fellow GM, Mario. I knew who Mario was before I met him. I knew people who played with the “Cayey Game Master” (Cayey is a municipality in Puerto Rico), but I don’t think we met until 2009, when we started organizing the Puerto Rico Role Players.
2009 meeting Mario in person for the first time!He joined the Facebook group early on, and we had a lot to talk about as longtime GMs, contemporaries, and people who had played similar systems for many years.
Puerto Rico Role Players’ first GM Workshop at John Does, circa 2012.When we had our first informal gatherings to meet other members of the Puerto Rico Role Players, he was there. He’s been a staple of Geeknics and events. I even got to play in one of his mythical Mariotóns (day-long marathon gaming sessions with dozens of players!).
The Mariotón I played in back in 2010.While we don’t see each other nearly as often as I would like, I am always happy to see Mario!
When I reached out to gamers and creators for interviews, Mario was kind enough to answer my questions for this series. I am thrilled to write this and am always happy to call Mario a friend.
Let’s get to the questions.
Introduce yourself! Who are you, and what do you create for your adventures?
My name is Mario Agrait Rodríguez. I am from Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico. I have two kids; one is 29 years old, and the other is 9 years old. The older one is a GM and has his own group. They both started playing as soon as they learned not to put the dice in their mouths and to roll them for the first time.
Mario, circa 2009I love cinema, literature, and crafting my own game scenarios and scenery. I have been Game Mastering since 1986, when I discovered AD&D and OD&D. We have been playing in the Mystara campaign world since we started, first using 1E and then moving to 3E.
The way I like to work is by keeping my campaigns moving forward, well-documented, and feeding them with players’ ideas and contributions. Each new campaign has all the previous campaigns as background. They can even cross paths with old characters. For that, I have been using Obsidian Portal, a wiki-type service, since 2011. All my campaigns are there.
The other side of gaming that I love is crafting terrain and props. We use miniatures and crafted scenery to play large battles. I love painting and crafting my own scenery. My players also love miniatures and help with my crafts.
How would you describe your art or creative endeavors as a GM?
I allow myself to be inspired by everything: poetry, literature, popular culture, current events, history, comics, TV series, movies, and even dreams. I follow an organized path to assemble all ideas into something coherent that works inside the campaign or as a new campaign. They know everything they think can and will be used against them.
When I tackle an idea, I ask simple questions like: “Will this fit my campaign?” “How can I use this idea?” “How can I make this interesting to the players?” “How can I tie this idea to previous material?” Then I move to bigger questions. I feed from my players’ brains like a Mind Flayer!
Mario and his players. Artist rendition.Another trick is to study the material you are using and try to fill in the blanks before the players ask for something you haven’t prepared. Whenever I can, I review what I have created and add information. I complete missing data such as genealogy trees, character descriptions, gear stats, new spells, and much more.
How did you discover TTRPGs?
This is possibly one of the weirdest RPG stories I know:
Do you actively play TTRPGs? What are you playing right now?
My group and I played OD&D for more than 20 years, and around 2002, we switched to 3.0. We have adapted some rules from 3.5 and Pathfinder and added our own house rules into the mix. We found the 3.0 system good for customizing characters, especially for experienced players (some members of my group have been playing with me for 30+ years).
We also play other games: Space: 1889, d20 Modern, d20 Future, d20 Shadowrun, DC Heroes 3rd Edition, and Gamma World 4th Edition. I’m the GM on these campaigns. Some of our players are GMs on their own campaigns, playing d20 Modern, D&D 3.0, 3.5, and 5E. I also used to play Star Trek by FASA and Shadowrun 2nd Edition, and I still have the manuals.
We are currently playing d20 Shadowrun, but it is very possible that we will move back to D&D 3E shortly (depending on the feedback from players, as they are having tons of fun with SWR), and I’m already working on the material for the next D&D campaign.
What projects are you currently working on?
Painting like a hundred minis. That is a story that never ends. Crafting different terrain and new buildings, an inn with removable floors and furniture. There is a telescope and a planetarium to add to the old wizard’s library and laboratory. And there is a small tree house for gnomes. I also just finished crafting a scabbard for my younger one’s plastic sword.
Where can people see your projects and learn more about your games?
On Facebook, our group is called “Stray Dogs Role Playing Gamers”.
Here are the Obsidian Portal links for my campaigns:
Any closing thoughts?
My players are the biggest highlight of my campaigns. I am very honored to play with them. I think that, on my part, the biggest achievement of my games is still having the capacity to surprise players after all these years. Something that makes them come back for more. It is either that, or they have some secret desire to get new psychological scars each week!
Some of my best GMing advice: Concentrate on the story over the rules, and on the players over the rest. Once you commit to a gaming date, don’t change it; be consistent. Take the time to hear your players’ ideas and to incorporate them into the world. And take time to rest your mind, by playing other games or by taking a vacation from gaming.
Playing with Mario, December 2025 at El Gremio in Cayey.And finally: Keep rolling those dice until the day you die!
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My friend Joe the Lawyer and I are having a live discussion about the Northern Marches, along with other OSR and RPG topics, tomorrow, Sunday at 5 pm Eastern Daylight Time.
I hope you will join us. Feel free to ask Joe and me questions during the livestream. If you are unable to make it, post your questions in the comments on the post or video, and I will try to answer them.
Into the Majestic Fantasy Realms the Northern MarchesI have been fighting the world’s worst case of startitis for a couple of weeks now. At least a couple of times a day I find myself wandering over to the ball winder and swift, sometimes even with yarn in my hands. I’ll think to myself that all of my problems would be solved if I just cast on a new project… a fun project, a fast project, a project that’s going to be different than all my other projects and then I’ll suddenly snap to my senses and plunk the yarn down on the piano near the swift and exercise every ounce of self discipline I’ve managed to grow in my life and walk away. (There is getting to be quite a pile there now.) The canopy of the stash – that uppermost layer that is made up of recently bought yarn or yarn that’s surfaced from the depths because I think I’m going to use it soon… that layer is no longer just the icing on a yarn pile or the garnish on a shelf of stuff. I’ve rootled through it like a wild pig hunting truffles so many times looking for the exact yarn for the perfect project so many times that it’s like someone took a giant shaker full of yarn and sprinkled it round the place. It is yarn chaos.
There are two skeins of yarn on my desk, waiting to be a Ranunculus because I saw the one that Ann knit in a yarn that I just happened to have the yarn for, plus Ann said it was fast and I thought “Oh I bet it is” and the next thing you know I’ve got the yarn in my hands and I’m drifting to the winder again. The next day someone complimented a yellow top that I made a while back and I remembered I had some grey (and blue) and could make another one (or two) of those. That yarn’s on the piano. (The blue is in a basket by the tv.) There’s sock yarn everywhere, stationed around the house like I’m throwing a party and they’re the canapes. There’s a sweater’s worth in a bag by the back door. Yay verily I have even ordered more yarn in a desperate attempt to scratch the itch, and as I type there’s a rainbow themed project sitting right beside my laptop and I was just telling myself that it would be stupid not to start (and finish) that right now because it is Pride, after all. If not now, when?
Now, normally I don’t fight back this much. The urge comes over me to start something new and I go with it. It’s not a moral victory to control that urge, it’s not like I believe that good people are monogamous knitters and bad people are… me. Knitting is my passion and it makes me happy and if I can’t indulge in it whenever and however I want then what’s the point? It’s supposed to be fun. Cast on whatever you want. Do it. Do it now. So.. why am I resisting?
Meet the two projects I’ve promised myself that I’ll finish before I start anything new. This here? That’s Elliot’s Birthday sweater. Yeah, yeah his birthday is in early April. Usually if i wasn’t feeling a project I’d set it aside, come back to it later – but Elliot’s asked after this sweater, sweetly inquiring if I’d finished it yet and that sort of affection for knitwear should be rewarded. We’re trying to build a certain kind of person, one with a respect for the textile arts and if the kid wants a sweater, I believe that the grandmother code dictates that I have to knit one – and before he outgrows it while it’s still on the needles.
The thing is… I hate it. Don’t get me wrong, I love the yarn (Double Sunday) and it’s a hoodie with a dragon on it so I really dig the idea of the finished sweater too, but I am so not grooving on the intarsia that it’s been sitting in a bag forever. When I started it was like it always is with a new love and everything that is intolerable now was charming then. The pattern’s only in french? J’adore. Fantastique. I’ve been meaning to practice anyway. Who needs Duolingo when you can knit in french? There will be a million ends? No problem, why else am I on earth but for that? Time wore on, the back flew and then the dragon got me. I started setting it aside for longer and longer periods and the more I did that the more complicated it seemed to pick it back up and spend three minutes figuring out where I was. Anyway- last week Elliot asked if I was almost done and the guilt washed over me like a wave. (Especially since I’ve just finished a sweater for me.) I’m done the front and back, I just have to visit Sleeve Island and wander the wastes of Hood Holm.
It’s better than dealing with this – the argyle socks that were supposed to be my May SISC pair have made little progress. (See the way I blame them there? Like they’re the ones who don’t have it together?) These were started promptly after the dragon sweater even though I had already started to remember that I don’t love intarsia, never mind intarsia in the round which is a complete pain in the arse. I’ve restarted these three times and I’m not any happier with them. I know now it’s that I’m using the wrong yarn – this is a vintage Shibui sock yarn from … oh, 20 years ago? At the time of the purchase I remember wondering sort of absently if I’d like a superwash 2-ply for socks and it turns out that suspicion was valid. I don’t like it at all, but I feel like I’ve made a commitment to these socks. I’d like to say that I’m no quitter but I sort of am, especially when it’s something as unimportant as whether or not I finish a pair of socks but somehow I’ve decided that this is a hill I’ll die on. Not only are they not finished, I’ve let them derail my June socks as well, since I was supposed start those when these were finished and well. You see where we are. I blame the yarn and the knowledge that this is what happens when you’re not true to yourself. I knew how I feel about superwash 2-ply for colourwork. I (mostly) remembered how I feel about intarsia. I dwell now in the land of regret, but I’m going to dig myself out. Soon. Right now I’m leaving now to go ride my bike 100km (I am behind on training for the Bike Rally) and I’ll write about Team Knit in the next few days (I am behind on that too.) If you were contemplating a donation today would be a great day for that.
The world is shattered, the wizards are gone, and the sea swallows the ruins of their age. Scattered across the waves lie the broken islands of a forgotten empire places of fire, frost, and ancient magic. Among them stands the Isle of Ruk, a frontier of black sands, steaming jungles, and secrets buried beneath volcanic stone. […] The wizards are dead. Their secrets are not.
This 64 page adventure uses about seven pages to describe about fifty encounters in two dungeon on an island, with all of the supporting pages being abstracted worldbuilding. There’s a whole lot of generalizations and could be’s in here with actual encounters and locations that don’t come close to realizing the designers vision, I suspect.
This is an island with a couple of towns on it, a barrow field with sixteen locations, and a three level dungeon with about 45 or so rooms. With got this world where WIZARDS fucked up, they are all gone now but the world is blanketed in ice except for these volcanos around that keep things warm. A pretty decent number of pages is used to describe all of this, although it plays little to no import on the adventure. It’s just an island with a couple of towns and a couple of adventuring locations. The ice and volcano doesn’t really come through much. There is a volcano/volcano cultists/fire spirits, especially in the main dungeon, but that theming is still not really present at all.
The main town is described in a somewhat interesting way, at least in the keys for it. “1. Church of Foki has a large cauldron and offers free food for all.” That’s the first line for the temple location, in bold, as a kind of a location header. It’s an interesting way to embed the crux of the location in to the key title, allowing you to know immediately what the main thrust of it is. There’s a related concept with dungeon keys that I sometimes talk about, where instead of “11.” or “11. Bedroom” you put something like “11. Mildewed Victorian Bedroom.” In that instance you are framing the room encounter, preloading the DMs mind, so they interpret what is to come in the description with a “Mildewed Victorian Bedroom” mindset. It’s not exactly consistently used in the town descriptions, but it is present in places and does a great job when it is present.
The rest of the adventure is much murkier in its descriptions.
There’s this abstraction going on, a bit different than other abstractions I generally see. It’s written almost like a regional guide that introduces mysteries without explanation. This is pretty consistent in the overviews of the various areas, which do seem to take up the bulk of the adventure. It comes off with a hefty lean to the purple side of the spectrum. “Thin wisps of yellow smoke coil lazily from the darkness within, carrying the acrid tang of sulphur and old fire. The mountain air snatches them, pulling them apart and scattering their scent into the breeze, but the trace remains a lingering reminder of whatever festers in the depths beyond.” That whole last sentence, with the snatching and scattering and festering in the depths beyond. It’s clearly going for inspiration for the DM, but there is FAR too much of it, especially considering the depths beyond don’t really live up to the concepts introduced. It certainly feels like the bulk of the adventure is made of these general overarching theme writing sections that meet more novelization rather than turning in to something concrete.
This can then be contrasted with the actual location descriptions in the adventuring sites. “3.7 Firedrake (1) has made its lair here.” That’s not much of a description, eh, for a festering depth? Or, for another one “Black stone walls. In the middle of the room is an ancient ashy corpse. A Shadow (1) preys on adventurers.” A little more to this, but still not really living up, I think, to the vision the designer had in their minds when putting this down to paper.
And then there are a few out of place things present. One room on the second level has a table and two chairs and a wardrobe in it. And a sad eyed bard sitting at the table drinking. Uh … there are fire spirits. Fire cultists. Gomens. Shadows. And dude is just sitting there in his cups? A dungeon population table can help inspire us to encounters but it does needs to be placed in context. Lost his party? Just hanging out for funsies? Refuge from a cult? The framing here, or complete lack of it besides him drinking in a room with a wardrobe, just is out of place. Minimal keying would have the DM making things up, as they would if populating from a table. A word of two of context would allow the DM to riff. I’m not really sure what to make of something so seemingly out of place. “Uh, there are a bunch of civvies on level eight of the balrogs lair having a format dance? Uh …”
There’s just this disconnect. The page count is devoted to the world and generalized framing that is leaning purple while the actual dungeon keys are less than thrilling in the capacity they serve. The vision presented in the world building never really comes to pass.
This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages and doesn’t really show you anything, just a brief overview, this is what an RPG is type of things. We need some meat in a preview to understand if the product is right for us.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/568698/dungeon-module-isle-of-ruk?1892600