I've just finished illustrating a map of the adventure. Its underwater setting and unusual structure made it one of my most interesting cartography challenges yet.

I am reading the OSRIC 3.0 Player Guide. There is a sentence in the Raise Dead spell description that reads:

Unless your GM says otherwise, this spell works on humans, half-elves, gnomes, dwarfs, and halflings, but not elves or half-orcs.

The logic being that elves and half-orcs cannot be resurrected because they have spirits, not souls.

As a Tolkien fan I like this idea from a worldbuilding perspective. But I was wondering how most people handle this rule. Good in theory, bad in practice?

Previously having only read D&D 5e, Call of Cthulhu, and Cyberpunk adventures, the adventure module content available within the OSR was a revelation to me. Short and long form adventures that have interesting locations, NPCs, motivations, secrets, challenges and puzzles - with so much of it packaged in a way that makes it easy to read and easy to reference at the table without a ton of prep. I've had a great time running one-shots and building longer campaigns by stringing modules together in a variety of systems.

But I feel like I've gotten too reliant on them now. The content is so readily available and easily brought to the table with minimal effort. I feel like my campaigns have suffered as I've found myself less able to come up with my own situations to weave in and around the modules.

The idea of running a wholly homebrew adventure is daunting as I think about how much time and effort it would take to have locations, NPCs, secrets, etc., that are even halfway close to as interesting and fun for the players as the modules are. I either end up spending hours upon hours prepping for a single session, or I just avoid doing my own stuff altogether.

So my question to you all is: Has anyone else experienced this? How can I wean myself off of published OSR content and get comfortable running my own ideas again?

Sorry, if this post doesn’t belong, but I don’t really know of any other group that might understand…

TES: Daggerfall is literally what I have always imagined OSR games to be. I just discovered it and it’s blowing my mind! It’s prolly one of the purest, most old-school RPG experiences I’ve ever had (from a video game).

I know it’s not a TTRPG, but just thought I’d share for some reason

One arrow is enough.

I still practice character drawing, testing a different perspective. What do you think?

I've created a basic floor plan for a monastery, with a six page PDF explaining how medieval monasteries worked (what each room is for, how daily life works in a community like this, what the daily schedule is, what the main roles are in a monastery).

Hopefully this is useful for people running or playing in games in Mythic Europe. The map can be used as a tactical map (no grid), or the whole thing can be used as background and setting. And as there's no adventure or plot here, so it works just as well as background for players as it does as context for SGs.

I realised that I needed a map like this when one of the House of the Crescent Sun playtest groups abandoned their home/covenant to defend and fortify the neighbouring convent - they kind of needed to plan their defences, so needed to visualise what was where. Now I've finally got around to writing up some notes to make this make sense!

I've uploaded this here. (Yes, that's a Patreon link. No, you don't need to sign up - it's a public / free download.)

I thought it came out pretty good! If you'd like a high quality scan of this lmk.

Cinematic Verisimilitude is a concept I’ve tossed around for a bit that can best be defined as a piece of media (gaming specifically) abiding by physics and internal consistency sufficiently “close” to reality that it would not spoil your suspension of disbelief if you saw it in a movie. For example, Legolas skateboarding down the stairs on a shield in The Two Towers - realistic? Probably not - but does it ruin the scene?

The same applies to games - if it’s too gonzo and disconnected, player skill loses meaning because their decisions are based on vibes, not logic, and success or failure is measured by subjective standards. However, if it’s too realistic - a medieval sim - it loses wonder and flavor of fantasy adventure gaming.

More on the podcast:

- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2JWTLJl4rKFvyIFodKPf1z

- YouTube: https://youtu.be/bwG4eZHStd4

But more relevant to the discussion: where is that line for you? How have you - or how has your DM - fostered consistency while also promoting wonder? Or where even does that belong - is it better to promote believable realism in the rules or in the tone and setting?

How much realism is real enough?

Click here to see what I just launched

In this campaign, I am integrating eight years of previous works plus new content into a single sandbox world.

For people who have picked up any of my works before: please check out the 'Returning Backer' section of the campaign page. There you will find links that let you buy only the new content (plus whatever your missing). Otherwise please send me a message and I will generate a discount for you based on what you got in the past.

About the Campaign Setting:

Explore an uncharted world of feuding cults, drowned gods, toxic forests, haunted villages, and arcane experiments gone awry. Players choose their own path through a derelict kingdom: invent spells, exploit secret seams to build portals, and sail past the edge of the map.

Beneath all of this, something is calculating: landscapes mutate, people disappear, and strange psychological contraptions emerge from coffin farms. When players return, places they've already visited are altered. Pieces on an unseen, corrosive chessboard are moving chaotically: the longer the campaign runs, the more warped the world becomes.

The core of Demidirge is player-driven sandbox exploration. The game progresses through layers of discoveries; players are given a blank world map. Locations are revealed as they explore by placing map stickers on top of blank hexes. 

The world is a living system shaped by factions feuding for power, but on another level, an unknown force has begun to mutate it. To avoid annihilation, players will need to confront this emerging mystery: exploit and subvert the setting by gaining knowledge, studying anomalies, inventing spells, and building portals.

Check out the campaign page for more detailed information on the various components that make up this world

Disclosure up front: this is self-promo for my own book, posted with the mods' permission. I run Rising Phoenix, a small indie studio, and I'll only post this once.

*Empire of the Undying Sun* is a horror campaign with a TSR-era feel, written for AD&D 1E (a 5E version is available as well) with gorgeous b&w images. This sub is where I learned a lot of what I think about old-school play, so I wanted to share the old-school side of it.

What I tried to keep from the TSR era:

- **A megadungeon that doesn't stay still.** Players will find a shifting megadungeon, so you can't map it once and be done.

- **Modules you can pull out.** 12 stand alone adventure modules that play in world or in your own home brew. Three are written by Gary Gygax collaborator Bill Silvey (aka The Dungeon Delver)

- **Domain play and mass battles, a nod to Chainmail.** As characters rise in level its possible they gain followers and NPC units that grow into armies. There are also simplified naval rules and hex crawls through deserts, jungles, and lost ruins.

The plug, kept short: the Kickstarter funded, and the Late Pledge closes in a few days, on Halloween (Oct 31). $59 gets you the full digital set, and $89 gets you the hardcover plus digital, the Player's Guide, and the 12 modules.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/risingphoenixpub/empire-of-the-undying-sun-5e-and-1e?ref=reddit_osr

Happy to answer anything in the comments, criticism included.

I think one of the coolest part about the Osr is wealth of modules available for a variety of systems. That being said I often have trouble digesting modules and want to try writing my own dungeon/adventure locations. I’ve usually just stuck to prewritten stuff so I would appreciate some tips as this would be completely new to me!

Also just curious, are there any referees who only run their own homebrew adventures? And if you do, why do you run your own adventures as opposed to prewritten ones?

Not entirely satisfied with the look of the thief...

Hey everyone, I'm currently putting together my own modifications of OSE/Dolmenwood to better suit my home setting. I was planning on going with a spell point system for casting, but I just discovered the Mage class from Carcass Crawler #1, and I'm enchanted by the idea of spells being a set of powers more similar to Thief (though I'm calling them Burglars) skills rather than requiring resources like spell slots or spell points. I don't like the idea of having such a rigid set of powers, though. Has anyone who's played with a Mage house-ruled a system for allowing a Mage to learn spells like a Magic-User? Do you think that such a system would be too powerful? Do you think that spell points over Vancian casting already provides more than enough flexibility, and I've just got some recency bias going on here?

I welcome any views on the Mage class :) Thank you!

P.S. If I do use the Mage/Acolyte at all, I'll be converting them to d6 rather than d%.

My submission for Orc-tober OSR Jam over on It's free to download, check it out!

Danke ;-)

Sixteen projects by indie creators from the Pacific Northwest. Running through November.

https://www.kickstarter.com/pnw-rpg-fest

I'm not affiliated with the campaign, although I have supported a few creators' projects in the past.

This post was inspired by watching a Hammer Horror film that wasn't about vampires but instead about the yeti (The Abominable Snowman (1957)). The yeti just is not as cool as a vampire! Based on that obvious realization, I distilled down what makes the vampire so cool and how it can be applied to designing other monsters, yeti included, so that it is also an engaging and interesting monster to bring to the gaming table.

Adventure can be found here: https://maebae.itch.io/medium-rare-minotaur or here https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/590815/Medium-Rare-Minotaur

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Hexploration Showcase Update 4
Updates:
--PDF source reading
--AD&D 1e sourcing
--Tooltip nesting
--Character handling
--Encounter statblocks
--and so much more...

As winter drapes the Realm, Sir Aurelius rules the mountainous Holding of Vallis Venti with a steady hand. Yet hard weather and war have left his people hungry and resentful. The Company discusses possible solutions just as the Queen's Herald interrupts with a portent of woe!

Click here to access everything 3d6 Down the Line, including both video and audio podcast versions of this episode, our Patreon, Discord server, socials, past campaigns, character sheets, and lots more!