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Showing posts from 2016

On the Ecology of the Vårmen

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I made this thing, statted for B/X or Labyrinth Lord. It's not playtested, but what the hell: This is just a picture of the first page. Click below for the linkage! On the Ecology of the Vårmen  (Google Docs) On the Ecology of the Vårmen (pdf on Dropbox)

Hacking Scotland Yard Board Games

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This is the map for the board game Scotland Yard : click to embiggen

List of D&D Module Walkthrough Maps by Jason B. Thompson

Wizards of the Coast updated the backend software on their site again and a lot of links now 404. I had bookmarked many pages of  Jason B. Thompson's walkthrough maps that now error out. I spent some time plumbing the depths of Google to come up with direct links to the highest quality images still on WotC's servers, including the new maps for Fifth Edition adventures. Here is the list: Warriors of Waterdeep ( PDF here ) A New Map of Hot Springs Island Call of Cthulhu: The Haunting (low resolution only)  ( upscaled via AI -- see comments below) D&D  5e - Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen 5e - Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden 5e - Temple of Moloch (Extra Life 2019: Infernal Machine Rebuild) 5e - Nine Hells (Baldur's Gate: Descent Into Avernus)  5e - Daione Gloine Player's Handout 5e - Six Faces of Death adventure 5e - Six Faces of Death numbered map 5e - Port Nyanzaru: Carousing Capital of Faerûn as Explored in Tomb of Annihilation 5e - The

AD&D 2E "Lite" for Free via Beamdog Game Manuals

Want quick and free access to a light version of AD&D 2e rules and a few free gazetteers of the Forgotten Realms? Gotcha covered! Just download the following game manuals available on the websites for the enhanced editions of Beamdog's Baldur's Gate series of AD&D PC Games: Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition Adventurer's Guide  - Contains all the rules you need to play https://cdn.baldursgate.com/files/AdventurersGuide.pdf Sword Coast Survival Guide - Gazetteer of the Sword Coast https://cdn.baldursgate.com/files/SwordCoastSurvivalGuide.pdf Baldur's Gate II Enhanced Edition Amn Survival Guide - Gazeteer of Amn https://store.beamdog.com/files/bg2ee/bg2eemanual1.pdf Mastering Melee & Magic -  Contains all the rules you need to play https://store.beamdog.com/files/bg2ee/bg2eemanual2.pdf Icewind Dale Enhanced Edition Feature Guide - The actual game manual; skip it if you don't need an overview of the cRPG https://cdn.icewinddale.com/file

Crowdsource Project -- Barbarian Prince Hex Hack!

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Remember Barbarian Prince ? Sure you do! Here's the map. It's free to download on the Dwarfstar Games website, located here: http://dwarfstar.brainiac.com/ds_barbarianprince.html The map is still under copyright by Dwarfstar Games, so go grab a copy for yourself. Man, that map is perfect for an old school sandbox! Time for a crowdsourced project! Here's the link to a Google Sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15N4beAStRAkS1nqKJ7Dt3owjo1vT_MZXVveh5muYgbc/edit?usp=sharing  This is a list of all the numbered hexes, the terrain, and any special features. Your job is to fill in an encounter for each hex. Please fill in your contact info and a link to your social media account of choice. I'll leave the sheet up or maybe we could turn it into an awesome website like the Hexenbracken .

6 Unformed Biomasses

6 Unformed Biomasses 1. piglike suckling things with a dozen three-toed stumpy legs and without eyes, they are guided by smell, constantly snuffling and leaving a trail of snot behind them as they gnaw and shit dirt and rock in search of their favorite beetles; they are immune to all poisonous arthropods. 2. armless monkey-faced bear-things scrabble sideways in sand, fused paw-tail useful only for digging nests leeward in dunes; their mouths are filled with rows of nubbed teeth continuously ground down by gnawing on mollusk shells. They cannot stand the smell of their kind's blood. 3. Ball of human fingers massed around a five-eyed, two-mouthed kewpi-like face undulates with cilia-like grace across the forest floor, one mouth whistling a jaunty sea shanty while the other mouth savors what the fingers provide; it can whistle any song it absorbs from brains it tastes. 4. featherless venom-toothed limp-winged goosething drops from trees on wagon trains in search of cats and ne

Bookface Lives! Inspirational Reading for the Inner Gamemaster

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Bookface has been quiet for a very long time. But he now emerges to recommend some inspirational reading. . . The best sourcebook on gnomes money can buy. Get it here.  Shrooms are funny until your gnome eats one and dies.  Get it here . All you really need to know about fantasy tropes, circa 1967. Get it here . All you really need to know about fantasy tropes, circa 2006. Get it here . Space & shit, circa 1986. Get it here . Space & shit, circa 1998. Get it here . Your hedge witch's big book o' cures & cantrips. Get it here . Pliny the Elder's first edition  Monster Manual, by way of the Middle Ages. Get it here . A contemporary cryptid collection, organized by continent. Best monster? Troll Monkey. T ROLL. MONKEY . Get it here .  This book is actually pretty cool, but it came out a few years after DiTerlizzi's Spiderwick Chronicle tie-in field guide (which I also recommend but

Slapdash Crude Experiment

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click to embiggen I made this fooling around with draw.io , an online flowchart/org-chart maker. It's a clunky interface (LibreOffice is better), but it hooks into Google Docs & Google Drive for auto-backups. However, it's impossible to export individual elements out -- you can copy & paste in, but not copy & paste out into an ODT or Word file. Ultimately this has limited usability for me, but it was fun to play around with.

Check Out Quill: A Letter-Writing Roleplaying Game for a Single Player

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Have you seen  +Scott Malthouse 's solo RPG game Quill ? In essence, it is a letter writing game, where you take on the role of a character trying to convince a distant NPC to undertake some action, and you score points based on attribute rolls and how many specific words supplied in each scenario you include in the letter.  Here's how Scott puts it in the intro to the game: In a typical game of Quill the aim is to impress your recipient into responding favourably to  your letter. You will accomplish this through deft use of language and presentation, rolling dice to determine whether or not you succeed in using the right words, the best descriptors and the most beautiful penmanship. Once you have completed your letter – one which you will actually physically write yourself – you will count up your total score and discover how your letter has been received. It's a neat little game that is both a creative writing exercise and a clever way to create plot seeds or adv

Reverse Mask of the Jale God

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illustration by Greg Gorgonmilk The Reverse-Mask of the Jale God This unique artifact is said to be a perfect  reverse cast of the face of the Jale God's most-used human avatar from a lost aeon. Various rumors conflate the origin and powers of the Mask, but one thing the stories all agree on: the Mask warps the wearer's mind in unpredictable ways. Origin Rumors 1.  The Jale God so loved his human avatar that when she died, he captured her face to adorn the wall in his innermost bedchamber, where it is said she spent her last days attended by the Jale God's retinue. The Jale God is said to have only done this twice before. 2. Once, the Jale God ruled a kingdom now lost to memory. Drunk on lime wine, he allowed a sculptor to mold his face to create a bronze cast to adorn his throne room. When presented with the finished cast, he so despised it that he had the sculptor burned alive in a furnace with the bronze mask strapped to his face. When the ashes c