rpg

Lately I have really been into reading and watching some deeper critiques of ttrpg systems and adventures that really dig into why something works or not. This doesn't necessarily mean that the critique needs to be a long one but a slightly larger picture of the matter is appreciated.

If you have any suggestions of good ones, I would love to add them to my reading list. (And reminder: you don't need to agree with the critique to recommend it)

Here are some of my favorites:

• Pretty much anything by The Alexandrian / Justin Alexander
• Longer videos + has tried things in play he reviews https://www.youtube.com/@Quinns_Quest/videos
• Had one more but the blog post seems to be deleted

As the title says, I was wondering what'd make for good horror in the medium, and thought I'd try to ask here!

These sale and freebie posts from ENWorld were the most valuable part of the now defunct Blog Roll (at least to me). I'm going to start posting them here unless someone tells me not to.

Review here

Hey everyone, I wrote a review of a neat little solo RPG called Rune, which was recommended to me a few weeks ago.

Happy 2025! If there are any games you think are worth a review, let me know in the comments below :)

Sometimes you just don't want to prep. Sometimes you get a last-minute call to run a session. Maybe it's your first time DMing and you don't know where to start.

Whatever the reason, prep may seem like a mountain to climb. Well, allow me to help you! I remember when I was first trying to figure everything out and I stumbled across A Wild Sheep Chase. It's a fantastic One-Shot that you can get for free over on the DMsguild. The only issue at times can be how do I convert this pdf into an actual session?

Some DMs have a gift, they can read it once and go from there, some are masters at improv, storytelling, and off-the-cuff humor. Well, I unfortunately don't fit that boat and I'm sure many others out there are just like me. I need a ton of notes; because once I've got things organized, then I feel comfortable taking things in new directions.

So welcome to Advent's Amazing Advice! The series where I take popular One-Shots, Adventures, Campaigns, etc. and fully prep them for both New and Busy DMs. This prep includes fleshed-out notes, music, ambiance, encounter sheets, handouts, battle maps, tweaks, and more so you can run the best sessions possible with the least stress possible! Onboarding new DMs should be easy and I hope with this I can help grease the wheels!

*New: For the New Year, I'm updating all my old work to be more accessible for the Visually Impaired! Check out the link below, which contains improved notes with larger font, better contrast, color-blind features, and more!

Without further ado:

• Google Docs Notes for The Wild Sheep Chase: DM Notes
• (NEW) Link to: DM Notes for the Visually Impaired
• Link to: The Wild Sheep Chase Playlist
• Link to: The AAA Collection

Included in The AAA Collection are:

• Downloadable copy of DM Notes, including a link to music tracks for ambiance and fights
• Special PDFs for all the encounters. This includes all the enemies' stat blocks organized neatly, along with an initiative tracker and a spot to mark HP.
  • A complete spell list for Noke, which gives full details so you're not bouncing around for info.
• A map of Shinebrights tower. I use this as a reference when drawing out the map for my players
• A handout for The Scroll of Speak with Animals

Over 6 dozen other Fully Prepped One-Shots, Adventures, and Campaigns: Click Here

As always, please let me know if you see something you think I can improve, add, change, etc. I want this to be an amazing resource for all DMs and plan to keep it constantly updated! If you'd like to support me, shape future releases, and get content early, feel free to check out my Patreon!

Cheers,
Advent

Here’s all playlists I collected, from different users across Spotify and Apple Music. All genres covered, from horror to fantasy. Enjoy!

PLAYLISTERBR - Follow on Spotify

Sci-Fi Atmospheric: Spotify | Apple Music

Dreamy: Spotify | Apple Music

Disturbing: Spotify | Apple Music

Mesmerizing: Spotify | Apple Music

Eerie: Spotify | Apple Music

Hypnotic: Spotify | Apple Music

Haunting: Spotify | Apple Music

Suspenseful: Spotify | Apple Music

Unsettling: Spotify | Apple Music

Unnerving: Spotify | Apple Music

Magical: Spotify | Apple Music

Exotic: Spotify | Apple Music

Futurebleak: Spotify | Apple Music

Gloomy: Spotify | Apple Music

Demonic: Spotify | Apple Music

Despairing/Relieving: Spotify | Apple Music

Daunting: Spotify | Apple Music

Horrifying: Spotify | Apple Music

Synthwave: Spotify | Apple Music

Cyberpunk: Spotify | Apple Music

Retrowave: Spotify | Apple Music;

PLAYLISTERBR2 - Follow on Spotify

Dark Isolation: Spotify

Dark Future: Spotify

Nightmarish: Spotify

Future Nexus: Spotify

Tormentor: Spotify

Abysmal: Spotify

Outgamers: Spotify

Synthpunk: Spotify

Post Apocalypse: Spotify

Apocalypse: Spotify

Syntheticity: Spotify

Tenebrosity: Spotify

Thanatology: Spotify

Anxiety: Spotify

Teratology: Spotify

Pyromania: Spotify

Bushido: Spotify

Conspiracy: Spotify

Phobia: Spotify

Cosmogony: Spotify

Mythology: Spotify

Futurology: Spotify

Taumaturgy: Spotify

Criminology: Spotify

Demonology: Spotify

Chiromancy: Spotify

Technocracy: Spotify

Necromancy: Spotify

Neuromancy: Spotify;

DIMITRI DE ALENCAR Follow on Spotify

Follow his page for the playlists, which are at the bottom of the page. Each one is in the 3-4 hour range and they are:

Dungeon Crawling: dark ambiences for setting the mood for exploring labyrinths/caves/catacombs or dark forests etc.;

Crossing The Ocean: for pirate-themed adventures, or any campaign heavy on nautical/river combat; In The Village: when the group reaches a town, tavern or trading outpost, for generally pacific encounters with villagers and townspeople;

Ruins and Temples: to set the appropriate mood when in sacred places, sacerdotal houses, monuments or exploring sacred ruins, magical buildings or dealing with entities from other planes;

Heroic Fight: for epic battles against powerful dragons, mages, demons or armies, or situations that require heroism from the PCs;

Distant Places: for travels far away from the group’s places of origin, be it distant kingdoms or towns or even other planes.

NEW The Magical Forest: be it when looking for a legendary unicorn or a reclusive mage, the woods can be full of wonders… and dangers.

If you want to go really dark, try the playlist called DARK AMBIENT

Ambient Retrowave: you just landed at Gliese IV, an apparently abandoned planetoid which was a penal colony. As you explore the place, you feel that you’re being watched by someone… or something.;

Instrumental Retrowave: enemy fighters breached the outer rim, and all fighters from your brigade are launched to battle. Like a menacing swarm approaching, you see bogeys right and left that you have to engage;

Synthwave Selection: you are in the biggest space station in the quadrant, looking for your undercover contact. You have to find them first, searching in luxurious halls, rusty and half lit corridors, crowded gateways and suspect entertainment places. Bring your own oxygen though.

Eerie Sci Fi: your space freighter was boarded by a ship from unknown origin. You hear the hiss from hatches being opened. Will the newcomers see you as allies or foes… or food;

If you want to go for a space opera mood, try the one called SPACESURF

While running Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk I decided to forgo drawing the Wave Echo caves and put the map on the TV in my game room via iPad screen share to my Apple TV box.

I had the map up in Affinity Designer 2 so I could cover undiscovered parts of the map. But no matter what I did I could not get the screen to zoom in on any part of the map image, it only showed the full map on the screen.

I know I can purchase the module on roll20, or I can put the map in and draw on it to hide sections. But I am hoping for something more on the fly. I would prefer to use my iPad rather than my MacBook since it is more portable if possible.

For me the main one is to run Blades in the Dark for the very first time and maybe play through the Pendragon starter adventure.

Mouse parents across Cratchington are worried: the annual Christmas delivery of toys from the factory hasn't arrived. All year long, the mice of the toy factory are hard at work, under the special blessing of the three Spirits of Christmas. "Humbug! A Mousemas Carol is a festive adventure site inspired by "A Christmas Carol". It features new Conditions, new NPCs and a christmas themed adventure inside a toy factory.

The year is 1802. The Barcosa, a merchant ship equipped with cannons, sets sail from Amsterdam under Captain Claas de Ruyter to buy goods in Java. The ship's hold is filled with bricks and weapons. Chief merchant Henk Kuipers manages gold and silver coins which are to be used to buy spices, textiles, and fine fabrics. The ship sails the Atlantic Ocean for about three weeks, then it will disappear without a trace. You are a member of the crew of the Barcosa and keep a diary without knowing that you are documenting the last days of the ship and its crew. "The last voyage of the Barcosa" is an eerie journaling rpg for one person. Writing materials and a six-sided die are needed to play.

Children keep disappearing in the forest. But no one dares to visit the abandoned ruin, which juts out of a clearing like a rotten tooth. Whoever crosses the threshold is confronted with a force that scares even the Inquisition. Everything is alive. Soon you'll find out that the child thief Tergol has taken up residence here, and his experiments of alchemy and flesh produce abnormal monstrosities. BÖESER is a dungeon for the Mörk Borg TTRPG.

A mighty artefact is hidden in a chilly cavern: the nail that once wounded the mighty basilisk SHE. "Blood of SHE" is a pamphlet dungeon made for the Crossword Dungeon Jam.

Do you hear them whispering? Toothless mouths and brittle lips murmur rumors that no one would dare speak aloud. There is something going on. Something evil that will plunge the world into even greater calamity and bring unimaginable suffering. This lonely volcano, once extinct and empty, is the breeding ground of this evil! But be warned: this maze you are about to enter is not of this world. Passages rearrange, creatures mutate into horrible new forms, objects appear and disappear, and nothing is safe once you enter this cavern. Will you unravel the secrets that shake the world, or will the attempt cost you your life? Den of Disarray is a randomly generated dungeon for Mörk Borg that contains one of the biggest secrets of the dying world. Playing the adventure may take one to three sessions.

A little JavaScript dice roller I whipped up released under a CC0 license.

Download: https://adeptus7.itch.io/lovecraftian-inspirations-from-real-life-and-beliefs

This free brochure (28 pages)contains inspiration drawn from the beliefs of peoples who actually inhabit the Earth now or in the past, or from facts taken straight from history or science. Each case includes the suggestion, how given beliefs or facts can be interpreted in the spirit of cosmic horror, emphasizing their appropriate elements or bending them slightly. Sometimes the descriptions are quite brief – a detailed discussion of each topic would take a lot of space and time. These are rather teasers intended to show why a specific thing may be interesting for fans of eldritch vibes and possibly encourage them to take a closer look at the topic.

The article is intended primarily for Game Masters who play games in systems inspired by Lovecraft’s works, such as Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green. However, I hope that other fans of cosmic horror will also find something for themselves here. The interesting facts presented here may also be interesting for people who are not familiar with the work of The Loner of Providence, but some of the references may be unclear to them.

Here are contents:

GREEK MYTHOLOGY

Typhon – a classic but forgotten abomination

Zeus – embodied energy

In his house underground, dead Hades waits in sleep

Apollo – beautiful, deadly light

Hermes is the gate, Hermes is the key

NORDIC MYTHOLOGY

A jotun is not the same as a giant, but it can be made into an abomination

Odyn = Nodens, Loki = Nyarlathotep

Or is Odin an abomination?

Einherjers and Odin the human

POLISH FOLKLORE AND LEGENDS

Jan Twardowski – the first man on the Moon

Silen night, starry night

Church in Trzęsacz – Deep ones do not leave their own, even after death

TRUE (OK, SLIGHTLY FAR-FETCHED) HISTORY

Invasion of the Sea Peoples

Greater Germanic Antarctica

The emperor out of the time

The Indus civilization

TRUE (SERIOUSLY) SCIENCE

Mad mathematicians

Humans like ants, ants like zombies

Halny and other foehn winds – the whisper of the wind brings madness

ABRAHAMIC BELIEFS

Covenant with God and Melchizedek

Succubi/incubi, aliens and a sorcerer-pope

Double faith

Stone from the sky, genies and angels Udostępnij:

Definitely sounds like one of Grant Howitt's mad one-page RPGs, looks like a fun one-shot!

You are a little goblin with a love of baking and big dreams. Dreams of joining the competitive baking circuit and taking home the grand prize: the golden cupcake and a lifetime supply of sprinkles. You’ve spent years perfecting your technique and studying recipes and you know you are ready. There is only one problem: the competition is only for humans.

Refusing to give up on your dream, you gather a group of your fellow baking enthusiasts and hatch a plan to enter the bake off: a human disguise. Over many hours you created the disguise and crafted a rock-solid identity for your human alias and you have just received word from bake off officials that you have been accepted into the competition! Together, you don the human disguise and make your way to the competition, knowing that you are going to win - by any means necessary.

The Great Goblin Bake Off is a prepless games about goblins infiltrating a baking competition for 1 GM and up to 5 players. It is played with 1d6 and two stats (GOBLIN and BAKER). Game text includes character creation tables for players and NPC and complication tables for the GM.

...i need a really good bag for about eighty chessex-style dice: any better-suited options out there than the crown royal standard?..

This is a question for TTRPG GMs. What RPG books, supplements, or accessories do you find yourself using year after year? Which RPG products provide the biggest regular impact at your table?

So, I'm running the original 3e version of Forge of Fury, and my players are about to meet Idalla, the succubus. In the 3e version of the dungeon, Idalla is bound to the room, and just wants to leave. If she's attacked by a Good aligned character, she is free to leave... for some reason. Or, if she's granted permission from a Good aligned character, she's also free to leave.

I'm not at all sure how to run this. I foresee her explaining to the party that she's been magically bound to the room, and that the spell is broken just by giving permission, and then the party just... does. And she teleports away.

That seems totally pointless.

I really like the idea of there being a powerful being trapped in this room, though. It serves my purpose to have some sort of unexpected guardian in this space, and a filter that allows Good aligned characters through is really convenient in its own right.

Clearly, the solution is how I play the character, then, but I just cannot get myself inside her head. How do I make this interesting, and last longer than a single back-and-forth verbal exchange? The module gives her only real goal as being to leave, and I don't have a reasonable, interesting alternative.

Have you run this module before? How have you handled Idalla?

I know–yet another "OSR definition" post. I think this one is especially good though.

My Lancer table was on a break for Thanksgiving, so I only ran my Masks game, Session 1

It was a learning experience for all players, as they're not just new to the game, but to the the system in general. We began with a short sequence of them arriving and waiting at the main HQ (called here the Eternal Spiral) from being called by one of the responsible adults to investigate a threat. They had a little chat together, playing around with their powers, and also discussing what their team name should be.

Shortly after Cheetah (the adult person in charge) arrived and revealed the threat to them; shadow-like constructs were attacking the financial district of Astorro. There were several small foes, and a larger one that apparently was commanding them around, but they still didn't have all the info. Since two of the PCs have shadow related powers, there was both a suspicion of someone close being involved, as well as hope that they could de-escalate the situation.

In the midst of this, Living Shadow, mother to one of the PCs and currently bearing the Legacy of their family, interrupted the call to both berate the PC for - allegedly - losing control of his powers and demanding he uphold their good name while on the field. He wasn't quite able to convince her, instead accepting the call out and promising to do better.

After the briefing was done, the PCs left to the center, using their related powers for mobility. Arriving there, one of them attempted to use his super senses to inspect the threat, and while he could see from distance that the core of the larger construct was actually a person, he felt a feedback from the experience, emitting a large sound and drawing attention to the heroes.

They stand as a team, while the minor constructs advance, and one of the uses his gravity powers to create a field ahead of them to make advancing enemies float. Meanwhile, another one that had telekinetic powers uses it to throw one of the PCs towards the main threat. He manages to hit bulleyes, but doesn't do any damage, just draws attention. While one of the teammates is near the main villain, another PC that has shadow abilities uses his powers to create a bridge of shadows, making it so that the others can cross over the still advancing minions. While they do so, the PC that had been throw takes a heavy attack, but withstands it; as a consequence, he calls out his allies on why they took so long, but his words doesn't hurt them.

They get together as a team once more, and The Invisible Hand (the villain) mocks one of them for not knowing what he's doing, never having worked a day of his life; he talks back, catching the villain by surprise and drawing his attention, as he's not used to people rebuking his words. Meanwhile, one of the PCs channels his powers to create a sentient construct, and it attacks The Hand; taken by surprise and infuriated, he starts digging into the ground, throwing concrete and asphalt at the heroes. The one with telekinetic powers channels his energies into launching those pieces of debris right back at the villain, who flails around in panic, accidentally hitting the telekinetic back, but unable to stop his energies from dissipating.

While The Invisible Hand is throwing a tantrum, the Doomed telekinetic has a vision from his nemesis, congratulating him from winning their first round, and warning him to expect more. With the district safe, the session ended with the heroes watching as the failed businessman complained about his investments, wondered what caused him to gain such power.

What about y'all, had any interesting games?