OSR/NSR Tabletop Roleplaying Games

The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh -we have a princess turned into a dragon

• another illegal use of Polymorph Spell the Laily Worm and Machrel of the Sea - Evil Stepmother turned him into a worm

The tale of Jorinde and Joringel - poor Jorinde turned into a nightingale and put in a cage by an evil olde witch.

Then there is the Nordic Legend of Skuld's Mother who went from being a hag to a beautiful DarkElven Princess to seduce our hero Helgi.

It is said in battle that Skuld could bring her dead warriors back to life.

Poor Sir Gwain forced to marry the Loathly Lady. She had tricked King Arthur to giver her what she most wanted in return she would answer his riddle that none else could answer.

Back to polymorph - mostly misused as Polymorph Self 1000's of tales of witches changing shape to commit thefts. The most common is for the the Witch to turn into a hare. In this shape they would go into the barn and suck the life out of the farm animals.

For some that was not enough. They would hop right up to a child and jump into the child's arms. To be carried into the house. Then they would suck the life out of all who lived there.

I hope this gives you some idea of how to use Witches in your game and make it up to Folktale Standards.

Have fun and stay away from hares.

https://sadbasilisk.press/posts/2021-04-16-hex-map-of-earth-midgard.html

Get a starter Village / Town I suggest L1 The Secret of Bone Hill and then go here https://restenford.blogspot.com/

Then scatter about the follow adventures on the DM's Map work on rumors and patrons to hire the players

The Halls of Tizun Thane

Dark Tower from Judges Guild

The Abduction of Good King Despot

Isle of the Abbey Dungeon #34

B10 Nights Dark Terror

Ancient Blood - Dungeon #20 https://annarchive.com/files/Dungeon%20Magazine%20%23020.pdf

Citadel by the Sea - Dragon Magazine #78

HS4 The Forge of Ilmarinen by Jeremy Reaban

Ghost Tower of Inverness

Wandering Trees - Dragon Magazine #57

Chagmat - Dragon Magazine #63

The Shattered Circle

Can Seapoint Be Saved - Dragon Magazine #75

Tempus Gelidum – Gus L. https://dungeonofsigns.blogspot.com/2012/12/tempus-gelidium-full-pdf.html

Forest of Doom Dragon Magazine #73

Red Tam's Bones

RC1 The Valley of Karaccia by Mithgarthr Entertainment

Under the Temple Crypt

The Ruins of the White Watch

The Lost Shrine of Sirona

The fun is seeing which ones they actually go do

Then to eventually wrap up the fun - Putting an end to it all I often combine Gone Fishing and Deep Carbon Observatory together for fun

Brood Mother Skyfortress is a must have to end things

another is The Monolith From Beyond Space and Time

A must own product for running cyber and modern city games

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/202175/Augmented-Reality-The-Holistic-City-Kit-For-Cyberpunk-Games

Been thinking about loot for xp this weekend.

DCC is OSR-adjacent enough that I thought this was worth cross-posting.

Guess they will just have to eat what they kill then.

https://youtu.be/U3veqJewdto

This manga and anime is a great lesson in dungeon ecology.

First Disbelieve this is an 5e Adventure. It can easily be adapted to any OSR. I have ran this for Blue Hack, OSE, and Microlite 74 in the past. The encounters are simple and the puzzles not to complex. Lots of hints abound.

I like to run this with Katarina the Witch as a Neutral or Neutral Good Alignment 5th Level MU. She has a job for the PC's. Due to her receiving bad treatment from heroes in the past. She has devised a test for our players to complete first. This will be followed by a 2nd Test Quest against her rival Charani the Dark Druid. If successful at both quest she will surrender a map to the PC's. This map is for the Adventure The Lost Cache of Father Tomas by John Turcotte. It is inside Footprints #5 - which is free here on Dragonsfoot https://www.dragonsfoot.org/files/pdf/FootprintsNo5.pdf

Along with the map to the ruins of Father Tomas's Temple she will tell the players about the Chalice and Treasure. If she really trust them? She will tell the PC's the real reason the Berserkers raided the temple.

The real reason is far up to the North. Way deep in the Cold Lands lives an Unseelie Fae Baroness. She has learned that what the humans thought was just another Monstrance Holy Relic is actually a stolen Fae Magic Staff of Oberon. She hired the Berserkers to recover it for the Unseelie Court. However they never found the Cache of Father Tomas.

A few months ago Katrina learned the Unseelie Fae hired a famous Treasure Hunter to go snooping around for it. They are sure it is there somewhere. Katrina is sure if the Unseelie get this staff they will commit great attrocities and evil. Thus she has devised her test to find worthy heroes to secure it.

Katrina tells the PC's her Order of Witches has contact with High Nobles in the Seelie Court. If it is brought back they can all begin working to seal the staff away. The PC's can have everything else in the Cache. Yes even the Chalice of Father Tomas.

So to Sum it all Up We have 3 Adventures here perfect for starting a campaign.

1. The Witch of Underwillow
2. The Witch Katarina sends them off to cut down Charani the Dark Druid's Tree. Located somewhere deep in a swamp. (Charani 5hd Druid or Witch - Alignment Nuetral Evil) - Treat as a Lair Hunt - Guarded by various birds.
3. The Lost Cache of Father Tomas

****Tips for running The Witch of Underwillow - drop lots of hints that the child is not real. You may have to practically tell the PC's.

****Katarina makes a great patron as a spell caster levels ahead of the players. She can provide weak potions, scrolls, and other fun items to the PC's. Potentially she could become the master for the party's MU's. Even offering membership into her order.

PS - The fun does not stop with completing the missions. The players are going to potentialy kill a powerful evil druid. Then they will gain the attention of the Unseelie Court. Not to mention rumors may end up at the camps of the Berserkers. Let's not forget they may potentially end up on the wrong side of a famous Treasure Hunter.

Tips for The Lost Cache of Father Tomas on a roll of 1-2 on a d6 Gregory sends a message to the Treasure Hunter that was here a few months ago. I would say 50% chance that Illinois Jones (7hd Thief) decides he needs to make an appearance if that happens.

Turn the Zombie Guardian on pg 7 to a Coffer Corpse hiding in a wooden box. - under geas to guard the false vault by Father Tomas.

The Kampfult on pg 8 - raise the HD to 3+1 - Monster Manual II pg 78

Most of all

HAVE FUN!

I typically just by the PDF, print it, and then make a custom cover for it. It may look very polished, but the jankiness makes it all the more special to me. Anyone else do this?

I saw this posted on Mastodon. It’s an interesting listen. If you were thinking about using the ORC license, it may give you pause.

Trying to make a West marches campaign and trying to figure out what I should do for a starting town. Im currently reading through keep on the borderlands but that feels like a lot to keep track of, it's really good so far tho. What should a town in a West marches campaign even have in it?

New blog post by Leo Hunt on the Vaults of Vaarn blog:

I run a bi-monthly feature on the Vaarn Patreon called Monster Monday, where patrons get the chance to vote on spark words, which I then use as inspiration for new Vaarn monsters. A recent vote resulted in a tie between the spark words ‘echopraxia’ and ‘pareidolia’. These mean ‘an involuntary imitation or repetition of someone else’s actions’ and ‘the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern.’ For reasons I trust are obvious, these prompts got me thinking about mimics, creatures that copy something or someone else. What follows is part of the post I created for Patreon, a variety of riffs on the idea of a mimic.

Yesterday, I streamed a live conversation with blogger and creator, Prismatic Wasteland! We talked about his Ennie-nominated supplement, “Barkeep on the Borderlands,” along with a bunch of other topics.

A new project from the Merry Mushmen : a new edition, adapted for Old-School Essentials, of Joseph Lewis' sandbox adventure. Shipping expected in early september.

Stumbled upon this yesterday and it was just what I needed. While I could have mucked around and done it myself, this is much faster. There don’t seem to be any strings attached— roll up some random coats of arms, tweak them to suit, and go!

Saw this over on [email protected] and thought it was worth sharing.

Just posting a head's up: I'm working with The Dungeon Key to convert their Mork Borg adventure to OSE. There's a bit more at the link. Super excited about it!

watch a review of sorts https://youtu.be/5vsiHse7JlQ

This looks to be a great OSR Village Setting in the spirt of Village of Homlet

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marktaormino/maximum-mayhem-dungeons-0-village-on-the-borderlands

I spent 3 hours (!!!) earlier today reading through the Dolmenwood game preview book. It was definitely an interesting read! I like the setting and the rules seem to be very close to OSE, naturally. If you’ve read through the rules, what do you think?

L1 The Secret of Bone Hill has created the Restenford Project

An attemtp to flesh out the setting.

https://restenford.blogspot.com/

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1435113

It features very well written and designed PDFs for:

• Genre Rules
• Dungeon Master’s Guide
• Psionics and Magic
• Monster’s Manual
• Character Sheet

Jason Stahl was kind enough to share a couple of templates that he made for the Affinity suite of products, useful to those of us toiling away on TTRPG projects. I've linked to the forum post that contains his links. I will be adding my own hex-map template (once I essentially remake it since the current one is a MESS). If you have any resources to share, drop them here, drop them there, but drop them somewhere so we can spread the knowledge and help each other out!

In the 30's people believed there was a network of caves under Los Angeles inhabited with Lizard People.

it's a kewl map at least.

https://exemplore.com/advanced-ancients/The-Strange-tale-of-the-lost-city-of-the-lizard-people-of-Los-Angeles

This is the one book to buy for the year!

https://www.exaltedfuneral.com/products/dolmenwood-preview-pdf

Posted to my blog:

Part of the charm (torture?) of old school D&D is gleaning at hints of play that appear in various nooks and crannies of rulebooks, supplements, and adventures. Here's one that I randomly ran into while reading module X1, "The Isle of Dread".