I needed a place for no-pressure blogging about RPGs, somewhere to keep stuff that isn't meaty enough for Loot The Room or Patreon. This is that place.

I also blog about the books I read and the music I listen to.

Latest Posts

• 10 Oct, 2024 2d6 goblins
  1. 2d6 goblins trying to capture fireflies in glass jars.
  2. 2d6 goblins making crude puppets out of twigs and rags.
  3. 2d6 goblins having a mud fight.
  4. 2d6 goblins riding in a cart pulled by a very unhappy donkey.
  5. 2d6 goblins digging a large hole.
  6. 2d6 goblins climbing trees to steal eggs from birds' nests.
  7. 2d6 goblins attempting to train a wild wolf pup.
  8. 2d6 goblins playing a game of catch with a skull.
  9. 2d6 goblins slowly moving a large rock. They're convinced there's treasure underneath.
  10. 2d6 goblins trying to mimic bird calls.
  11. 2d6 goblins attempting to fix a broken wagon wheel.
  12. 2d6 goblins picking mushrooms and berries in the underbrush.
  13. 2d6 goblins building a makeshift raft from driftwood.
  14. 2d6 goblins covered in mud, trying to catch frogs in a pond.
  15. 2d6 goblins herding angry goats.
  16. 2d6 goblins dragging a giant spider they claim they tamed.
  17. 2d6 goblins painting strange symbols on a rock with bright red paint.
  18. 2d6 goblins on stilts.
  19. 2d6 goblins playing a game of tug-of-war with a magic sword.
  20. 2d6 goblins racing wild boars they've tied themselves to.
• 09 Oct, 2024 Hit Dice Initiative

  For games where hit dice size is derived from Class.

  When rolling initiative, roll your hit dice versus a target number. Target numbers might be:

  • Initiative dice rolled by monsters
  • A static initiative score given to each monster

  Beating the target number means you go before the monsters, otherwise you go last.

  Assume hit dice look like the hit dice in AD&D 2e, for the sake of argument:

  • d4: wizard
  • d6: thief/bard
  • d8: cleric/druid
  • d10: fighter/paladin/ranger

  If we assume "beating" monster initiative means rolling higher than it then we have a situation where wizards tend to go last and fighting classes tend to go first.

  What interests me is the result of we invert this and say that we need to roll under monster initiative. Suddenly wizards are pretty much always going first, as are rogues who tend to benefit from striking first/from surprise. The heavy hitters are slower and come in at the end of things.

  Staying in 2e territory, it's made more interesting if we bring in initiative modifiers. Weapon speeds are a little too granular for my tastes but I don't hate the idea of declaring actions and modifying rolls based on them, which is how 2e works. Wizards get to go first if all they're doing is hiding/stabbing someone with a dagger, but once you begin to cast spells you slow down again.

  Largely initiative is a solved problem and attempts to fuck with it are just tinkering for the sake of it, but it's a fun thought experiment.

• 08 Oct, 2024 The Archive

  The Archive

  In the dark heart of the Empire, buried deep beneath the crumbling ruins of an ancient citadel, lies the Archive. Scholars debate the truth of its existence endlessly. Those who learn the truth quietly exit the conversation, never acknowledging their former role in it.

  Somebody hired you to find the Archive. You don't remember their name, or their face, or where you met. You just know you walked the road, and now you are here.

  The First Hall

  Creatures

  Whispers

  HD 3 AC 6 # Appearing 2d6+1

  Echoes of the scholars who once studied here, now cursed. They emerge as disembodied voices, filling the minds of intruders with doubts, secrets, and forgotten sins. Each whisper may plant a compulsion (Cunning save), drawing those who fail deeper into the Archive against their will.

  Librarians

  HD 4 AC 4 # Appearing Always in pairs

  Figures stitched together from pages of cursed tomes and forbidden scrolls, shuffling through the Archive’s shadows. They crave knowledge.

  They may offer a bargain - one secret in exchange for a glimpse of the Archive’s deeper layers. Refusal results in the librarian attempting to extract knowledge by force.

  The Stacks

  The shelves are filled with tomes of forbidden ritual and alchemy, atlases of places that no longer exist, forgotten histories. To dig too deep is to open your mind to things best left unknown. For every book read, make a Cunning save. Failure causes 1d3 Cunning damage that can't be recovered. Those reduced to 0 Cunning in this way do not die but become permanently empty, automata driven only by the last book they read.

  The Heart of the Archive: The Well of Lost Names

  The Archive’s centerpiece, an obsidian pool of unsettling stillness. Whisper your name into the well, and it is erased from the world’s memory. No records, no remembrances. Not even your companions will recall you. Only the Archive knows.

  A name erased from the world becomes a tool of power within the Archive. To pull a name from the well, Exert 1d3 Cunning. You alone remember what drove them to the Archive, and what they left behind. But beware: the Archive does not part with its names gladly, and the creatures that walk its halls hunger for the truths contained within them

• 08 Oct, 2024 A Dungeon Game stat generation

  I'm working on a character generator for A Dungeon Game (you can see the work in progress version here).

  One thing I've noticed is that it generates results of 18 more often than I'd like. Because the game is d20 roll under, and because increasing attributes is a core part of the game, I want to keep initial attributes low. I probably need to actually revisit this in the text of the rules and come up with a different generation method other than 3d6 (probably 2d6+3). For the generator, though, what I'm instead doing is implementing some logic that reduces high rolls with the following criteria:

  • If the initial roll is 17 or 18, cap it at 16.
  • If the initial roll is 16, there's a 50% chance we cap it at 15.

  Don't ask me why I've done it this way, other than that it felt right.

  I'm also only applying this logic to Agility and Brawn. Part of the reason for this is that I want to encourage players to learn Rituals. You can sacrifice any attribute to learn Rituals, and even though you can swap two attributes before doing this I've found that most players only choose to learn Rituals if their initial Cunning is high and that they often choose to sacrifice Cunning rather than another attribute even though this is the stat they'll use to actually cast Rituals. I figure that by allowing higher Cunning initially players might be more likely to choose to engage with Rituals. And if they instead choose to swap their 17 or 18 Cunning into Agility or Brawn, so be it.

  This is something I might well change, especially as one of the Extras adds 1d3 to an attribute, so I might just cap them all at 15 to begin with, but for now I'm enjoying playing with it.

• 08 Oct, 2024 Wolves Upon The Coast Hexfill Generator

  After the last post I realised it would be trivial to change the generator to work specifically for Wolves Upon The Coast. So I did that.

  As with the previous generator I can't embed it here so instead it gets to live on the A Dungeon Game website here.

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