Pre-Christmas Gifts

[This post contains RPGnow affiliate links]

I recently purchased (for $0) Hack! Firearms. I found nothing interesting about it so I decided to write up my own rules. Guns is a (barely) one-page ruleset for guns that foregoes boring historical accuracy. Inspired by AD&D 2e gun rules.

Next is something that was inspired by posts at Necropraxis and Maziran's Garden about segueing into strangeness from a traditional OSR setting. So here's Sanctuary, a demi-plane made by an insane wizard to preserve cultures and train adventuer-explorers. If you need help filling in villages Raging Swan's GM's Monthly Miscellany has some free village sketches. Training dungeons can just be plopped down; for example, dungeon 1 could be Golden Eye of the Kobold King (spawns 2d4 kobolds), dungeon 2 could be B4 The Lost City (or just the top four levels; spawns 1d4+1 hobgoblins), dungeon 3 could be The Hyqueous Vaults (spawns 1d6 eel-men), etc. For portals you have to decide if all three lead to the same world/plane or different ones. For example, all three could lead to Athas (the world of Dark Sun) then north/blue could lead to Tyr, yellow/west could lead to Nibenay, and red/south could lead to The Last Sea. Or one could lead to Athas, another could lead to another setting, and the third could lead to a 3rd setting.

Merry Christmas!

Free Adventures for OSR/TSR D&D

It's been a while, huh? I've uploaded some adventure modules I did a while back. If you're an /osrg/ regular then you've probably seen them but for some readers I expect this to be new. There's also other, less great stuff on the "OSR Downloads" link to your right >
People don't seem to look at those pages though. Anyway, I was going to talk a bit about the adventures, what inspired them, etc. RPGnow links contain affliate links but no one who read my blog buys anything so that doesn't matter ;_;

1. DUNGEON PLANET preview edition

As is so often the case, DUNGEON PLANET is a weird chimera born from bits and bobs. Man-centipedes were inspired by Dark Souls' Man-snakes and they've kicking around in my head for a year(s?). Zhang Zhong was just a random name I came up with while working on a spell document. A planet (moon if we want to get picky) that's also a dungeon was inspired by a random thread I found ages ago asking if Dungeon World was a setting where the world was a  planetary megadungeon (hint 1: it isn't; hint 2; DW was a mistake). It was also inspired by a module called ZH-01 An Overwhelming Sense of Loss which unlike DW I do recommend (and it's free).

Structurally, the DUNGEON PLANET (yeah, the name is in allcaps all the time) is based on traditional nerd dice in a matryoshka-style configuration: Level 1 is a d20, level 2 is d12, level 3 is a d10, etc. As for the innermost level, I haven't really thought about it.

2. HELL METRO

This is another weird frankenstein. As a kinda sorta weeb (Japanese media nerd) I've had a desire to do an anime- or manga-themed OSR thing for a while. The three biggest influences were Mugen Senshi Valis (the Genesis/MD game not what it has sadly become now), an OVA called Dragon Century (1st episode/god chapter only), and last but not least the manga Metro Survive. Although the Control Brain was inspired by Shin Mazinger Shougeki! Z-Hen (which was inspired by Mazinger Z: Relic of Terror). I was also playing a lot of Battle Mania Daginjou/Trouble Shooter Vintage at the time.

Charisma gives a bonus to saves because in the context of Japanese fantasy I imagined it could also represent guts/luck. If I were running it I'd have the outcome be a National Dimensional Overlay.

3. VILE VENGEANCE OF THE BEES

Yes, this entire module was written just because I thought an old pre-Weatherlight Magic: The Gathering card was really cool. Fuck the Jacetice League btw

So there it is.
tl;dr click on this for free stuff.