Folk Beings and Creatures of the Cold

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March 03, 2024

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Many-headed sea serpent. Supposedly lives deep in the sea. Heads work like the usual fabled hydra.

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A humanoid appearing in the last moments of those dying of exposure. He approaches the dying, touching them with a burning cold hand. He wraps them in a huge embrace, whispering to them of the immense warmth and cool awaiting them beyond sleep.

Those who recover see him in the corner of their eye for the rest of their life. He is always pointing north.

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Those who ascend the peaks of mountains risk encounters with the spirits who inhabit the trees of the upper slopes. They appear as starving men with stumps for feet, swinging from branch to branch using abnormally long arms. The demons speak in varying tones and timbres, taunting those on the ground, asking if they would join them. If approached, they grab a climber and fling them up high into the air, and they fall to their death.

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A machine gone rogue. Shaped as a giant bear, it consumes anything it can to fuel its internal furnace. It prefers trees, but anything even remotely flammable can be consumed, including various... "biofuels." The grizzlies will chase down anything at a constant speed until they run out of fuel, upon which they will be completely immobile. Unless someone were to refuel and restart the machinery.

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Loggers are animate wood. They might appear in various forms: a large driftwood log, a mighty forest pine, even as a mass of splinters. They are said to lie in wait for those who commit arboricide, clamping an axe or saw in place, then opening along wood grains, swallowing the holder whole. For this reason, those who would cut wood never hold too tightly to their implements.

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Heat and pressure change most biological material into something foul black. But the potential for life never leaves the molecular structures. The result is partially formed masses living deep underground; their solid flesh made of coal, blood of crude oil, and lungs filled with natural gas. They move as formless blobs, with imprints of plants, bones, and rarely faces showing. Should you hear a slow sucking sound deep underground, extinguish your torch.

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Said to be different evolutionary path of humanity, stonepeople apparently resemble their would-be cousins, but are much more shy. However, they have an irresistible draw to humans. Those who have encountered them come back different, more savage, some abandoning organized civilization to live among the supposed underground settlements of stone. There is just something so entrancing about thinking about what could have been...


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Thinking Small: The Fictional World has a Surprising Amount of Detail

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March 13, 2024

Probably a year or two ago I read a blog post from outside the DnD-sphere, Reality has a surprising amount of detail . It stuck with me all this time, and eventually the little worm in my brain that this post spawned crawled and ate its way through my neatly compartmentalized mind into my DnD brain. I haven't reread the article since my first reading, but the title is what really stuck with me. The worm has digested this idea, and the result is a little nugget of an idea I want to expand upon here. The blog post talks first about how constructing a set of wooden steps, in a precise manner, is actually quite difficult. Figuring out how the pieces of wood should be cut, fit together, and secured take some planning and precision. This is all to make stairs that simply fit together. Bearing weight is another manner. The OSR is all about having a "realistic" world - one that operates on consistent internal logic, even with fantastical elements. That means if you really wanted

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Empty Rooms Should be Just That and the 5 Room Dungeon

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September 01, 2024

Just a quick explanation of an OSR dungeon design principle for those unfamiliar. This is maybe not a well-touted idea, but I've been brewing on this idea lately. Of course, this is all centered around how I want to play, run... etc... Take with coarse grained salt if you think your goals are different. If you've got a dungeon, you should have some empty rooms that don't.… do anything. As in, there is nothing 'to do' in the room. I have been brewing this idea based on what Luke Gearing said in his interview on the "Into the Megadungeon" podcast. I'll just rehash what Luke conveyed in my listening: Empty rooms provide a place to rest (my words) Empty rooms give space to a dungeon so that you don't die at every turn Empty rooms are tactically important for managing encounters, especially in conjunction with loops   Luke gave an easy example of how to utilize empty rooms: You pass through some empty rooms, and eventually encounter a big room with a

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Thinking Small Adventures

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February 05, 2024

 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 paragrap

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