QuasiWizard

 This is now available, and for free: Silent Gardens by Sam W

 I'm Running a Megadungeon Though it's not open to the public (yet?) and just for friends, here's the campaign pitch:  There is an island at Urth's north pole. It is the last truly wet place. The future was once buried here, in the form of millions and millions of seeds for posterity. But now they have sprouted. They have grown together, genes splicing, mixing, and blending. They have grown, both up and down and into other beings as well, creating a bizarre ecosystem. The old vault now lies open, its depths waiting to be explored. This is hope. Urth may be restored from its xeric state. This is wealth. Some of these plants hold water very efficiently. This is danger. The proliferation risks overrunning every other living thing on the planet. This is history. Many of these plants have not flowered for epochs. This is the Orelian Gardens, an open table megadungeon set in Vaarn. Inspiration: - Annihilation (Jeff Vandermeer) - Dune (Herbert) - Chimera Ants (of Hunter x Hunt...

In games (in particular RPGs), hierarchical advancement (a term I came up with) is progression towards a known goal. It often includes progress markers, and gives boons that may not be directly related to the experience of the adventure. The most common example is levels. It proceeds in one direction, towards higher levels, and often gives mechanical bonuses along the way that didn't come from a super specific experience in the adventuring process. It is instead a marker of having gotten better over time, awarded at the level-up. You don't need explicit levels to have hierarchical advancement; every time a number or feature becomes unarguably better, it advances hierarchically. In its most basic form, it is "I get better." Lateral advancement (a term I came up with as well) is "advancement" where there is no solid plan or guarantee of an improvement; instead, characters change in often incomparable ways through the specifics of an adventuring process. These ...

The name "Silent Garden" from an earlier post stuck with me. This is another interpretation, as a megadungeon.   The best-known ruins of Orelioth that exist today are that of a former botanical gardens. Their location is generally rumored to be on an island in the river near where it is said the capital of Orelioth once lay. The gardens are said to be haunted, enchanted, or just straight-up weird by those who have survived to tell the tale. It is most often called the Silent Garden. The Silent Garden is now entirely underground, with a system of skylights and mirrors illuminating lower levels. Despite being unusually strong, time has taken its toll and many have broken through. No one is sure how many levels deep the Garden goes. No one is actually quite sure it was a botanical gardens in its time. Some scholars believe it to actually be an ancient magical horticulture research lab, a place where magicians and scientists would research magical horticulture. This certai...

ORELIOTH! I cry your name as a child to its lost mother, while we crumble into ruin. Where might your wonders lie, and where might our renaissance be?                                                                                - Goinas the Blind This is the beginning of a hopefully occasional series of posts where I share ideas for a setting. Orelioth is a fabled empire of the distant past , one of many that have existed, yet somehow more important than any other. Yet every detail of its existence is debated, in taverns and universities. The only thing that is agreed upon is its imprint on present: magnificent ruins, powerful magical relics, and immense cultural artifacts. The old empire is an object of veneration and fear; its wonders have to powe...

Random encounters are the famous cornerstone of OSR play. It puts pressure on players by limiting time, and increases overall danger of the dungeon. What would a dungeon be without a random encounter? Boring, and allowing time to dawdle.  But random encounters have some flaws, I think. For one, they 'just happen,' by which I mean if a random encounter is rolled, the party will... encounter it. I think this disallows opportunities to outsmart an encounter at a higher level, where you know that the 1d6 goblins are wandering around, and you can interact with the goblins indirectly to avoid encountering them at all. For instance, if I want to trap the wandering goblins with a static trap (e.g. bear trap, magical sigil, something else clever), it is not clear how that is resolved with usual random encounter procedures, as the goblins generally do not occupy any of the space outside the encounter. I would like to give this opportunity to outsmart back to the exploration party. The ot...

 I want to explain a philosophy for adventure design I have developed on, I hope: thinking small. Honey I Shrunk the Adventure! Many good adventures give lots of play out of small packages. This is not a new idea. The 3 hex campaign start and 5 room dungeon are known for giving creativity via constraints (a well-touted idea). Brevity in the adventure text is also a much-loved and effective way to give creativity through vagueries. I see these as a part of a core rule of thumb: do more with less. I think this is a great design philosophy. I would like to push it a bit further, and to a potentially new aspect of the rule of thumb, that deserves just as much attention. Before, I have written a  scenario premise , which you can get a whole session out of (in most cases), and I've mentioned before having a cool idea . I want to propose a design philosophy: have the core danger of a setting fit into a single coherent description, and a summary of an adventure location fit into a par...

I'm going to tell you how I run on-the-fly games with little to no prep. I've done this a couple times, and they have been stellar sessions, on par with sessions for which I have more (or any) prep. If you want to run this with a particular system, have the pdf on your phone before hand. It should involve minimal dice, or use your internal RNG (your brain). I have also run these types of sessions with no particular system before, and it works just as well. Have a Cool Idea Just have a bunch of these. Rip these off from where ever you would like. A movie, a book, a video game plot. Literally anything. The last Wikipedia article you read. Index your brain for all the media you can remember and think of something that fits the crowd and what they want. A quick tip: think of some recent media, then ask "what if a certain aspect was different?", then think of if it would still be cool. What if a dragon slaying quest was in the future? Then you can suddenly take the future ...

 FKR! What is it good for? Many things, in fact. I have been a fan of the FKR and free kriegsspiel games for a while now. I want to explain how I play, how it compares to more structured games, and how you should go about playing, should you desire to do so. Absolutely Nothing! Saying there's no rules in FKR is the common refrain, and is often framed as a bad thing. I slightly object to the first point, and reject the second. FKR is when you play an RPG with more referee guidance than rules guidance, when it comes to action resolution. This is, at least, how I mean when I describe the games I play. To break it down more and make it concrete, when I play FKR I rely on common sense and the in-world logic to deduce the resolution. Then play continues as usual. Simple examples of FKR play are easy: dump water on a fire, it goes out. There is no dice-rolling mechanic nor explicit procedure, you can just do it, because of common sense. More intricate examples follow the same template: un...

I like cold places as settings. Here are some things you might find in such a setting. Yak knight A knight with the head of a yak. It would be rude to ask if they can still speak, but yes they can. These are formed either by witch's curse, or by a self-imposed ritual on a regular human. Yak knights are slow-moving and solitary, and vegetarian. Also really strong. Being a yak knight is a blessing and a curse. Yak knights are very much outcasts in every organized society, seen as a bad omen due to the magics to form one. Thus the solitariness. However, the strength gained is to the envy of every human knight. It's not a phase, mom! Wolverine spider   It's like a wolverine but with eight legs and spinnerets. It spins webs, but not as static fixtures to live in. Instead, as offensive weapons. They can shoot webs from a dozen feet away, pinning someone against a wall. Wolverine spiders are voraciously hungry. Scary, huh? Now imagine more legs.     Giant Snow Beetle They lumbe...

 I ran a scenario in a sci-fi setting a while ago, and reminiscing about it today, I realized it would be worth sharing. I have done my best to keep it system/setting-agnostic. Enjoy! Silent Gardens   This scenario takes place in a secluded area with an abandoned building (e.g. an old church), with an attached open area (e.g. a garden). There is a person here trying to get into a very secure locked chest or room (magically/digitally locked). It is in the building. It is nigh impossible to open except by the key. Inside it something valuable, and the person knows it. In the open area, there is an automaton. It has the key around its neck on a string, or somewhere else conspicuous. The automaton is does not speak nor has any intelligence. It will kill the nearest thing to it.  The automaton is activated by sound. It can only move when there is a noise, a voice, etc. and will be completely still otherwise. Louder sounds let it move more, and quieter sounds only let it move a...