Piles of Downloaded Files... #3: more treasures from the Unsorted folder

I’m reviving my old series, Piles of Downloaded Files, in which I delve into the bottomless Unsorted folder of RPG-related PDFs. See the previous installments under this tag. 

 

Micromaiden Spirit Grid by Evlyn Moreau

It is a two-sided pamphlet dungeon, with Evlyn’s trademark art. One side has the map of the dungeon, which is a complex semi-anthropomorphic computer circuit. Each node gets a title and one or two keywords (for function/condition), e.g. Cyber Maintenance Unit [In Use] [Possessed] or Sensation Module [Patched] [Cyber Fauna].

It is evocative, but definitely a toolbox. I feel you need to get into a specific mindset to be able to fit all this together – but then it can provide a super interesting game world. I’d love it if someone made a computer game with the art from this pamphlet. A top-down dungeon crawler of some sorts.

Link: https://evlyn.itch.io/micromaiden-spirit-grid

 

Salo’s Glory by Glynn Owen Barrass

I used to subscribe to the Stygian Fox Patreon. This was one of their monthly adventures, back in 2020. It’s a Call of Cthulhu 7e scenario… IN SPACE! A megacorp sends an exploratory vessel outside the Solar System. The scenario goes for that sci-fi horror vibe that you get in the Alien franchise, like in the comics. Hell, it has stats for power loader exoskeletons! It also comes with quite good floorplans for the space ships and shuttles – definitely a reusable resource for any sci-fi game.

The adventure is written in the usual CoC style: lots of text, not skimming-friendly. But overall, it feels like a solid offering for CoC/Mothership/Alien RPGs.

Link: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/309908/salo-s-glory-a-sci-fi-call-of-cthulhu-scenario-set-in-interstellar-space

 

Bonus mystery entry!

“original-colony.pdf” is a single-page file. It’s labeled “Original Drawing of the Ant Colony”. And it has a side-view section map of an ant colony. Pretty good map, I gotta say!

Reverse image search leads to a Something Awful topic I cannot access.

However, next to this file in my folder, I have:

Percent in Lair: Ant, giant by Justine Rogers / Angrymog Games

Turns out, the colony map was made for this project. This is a 10-page-long brainstorm on Giant ant colonies in fantasy adventure games. It contains the aforementioned map. Adventure hooks – why are we delving into an ant colony? And all kinds of Giant ant variants. Weird ecosystems, fungi, psychic ants, gem-encrusted ants… This is actually not bad!

Link: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/150281/percent-in-lair-ant-giant

Piles of Downloaded Files... #2: a deeper delve

Time for another installment of Piles of Downloaded Files, where I go through my folder of unsorted RPG-related PDFs. We all have that. Here's the first delve.

 

Adventures on Mars: An Addendum to Doc’s Excellent Warriors of Mars, Rules by gloriousbattle

This file is named “MARS WITH LARGER FONT NEATER LAYOUT” in the folder. Did I rename it to aid myself in the future? It’s still not a very informative title… Anyways, this is “Adventures on Mars: An Addendum to Doc’s Excellent Warriors of Mars, Rules” (sic!). If you don’t know it, Doc’s Warriors of Mars is a cool homebrew amalgamation of OD&D and the old TSR Warriors of Mars ruleset, for Barsoomian adventuring. Available on Grey Elf’s website! Now, this is a supplement for that. Some searching shows that I found it on the ODD74 board, and it was created by user gloriousbattle. Then a file with larger font was created by Bastet1002. The document contains Barsoomian gazetteer tidbits, but also brings in other pulptastic science fantasy monsters as well, like the Leeches of Yoh-Vombis and Mi-Go and Star Vampires. There is a 4xd12 random table for Indescribable Martian Artifacts, so now you can find a Circular Ceramic Orange-and-Silver Intelligent (as a magic sword) object while “groping through black pits”. There are also mass combat rules. This is a useful grab-bag for sword & science OD&D gaming!

 

Conrad’s Fantasy Free-Style Role-Play by Better Games

From 1990! I got it from Drivethru. Offered as “a companion to HUGO (original underworld’s generated by computer, no two alike)”! But also a system on its own. Promises free-style rules with “Quick and Dirty” combat. Attributes are not measured numerically, you either have them or don’t. Advance on the Progression Path from Bumpkin to Delta Zaire (a high-level wizard)! There is, however, a plethora of skills. The combat mechanics are maaaybe quick and dirty once you learn them, but there are several charts, so I’d need more time to really understand it. This is a wonderful artifact or old-school gaming, complete with DIY art.

Stuck under a pile of unread PDFs.

The Cuboid Prison of Joanna Cahb by Mariuswasright

A short little adventure, I downloaded it from itch.io. Free PDF. It’s a cube-shaped prison for a Dwarf singer. The cube is now “half-submerged in the magma of Mount Thal’s caldera”, that’s always a good thing. The volcano is not part of the adventure document, though. The dungeon has 7 areas, laid out on one level (there’s no multi-level cube shenanigans). Science fantasy stuff, guardian constructs with eyebeams, anti-metal artifacts. Barebones layout, some highlighting and bulletpoints. Monster stats are included in each room description, which seems like an overkill, because there is a stat appendix too. No biggie. It’s pretty cool as a last-minute drop into your setting’s volcano adventure!

Go on, open your unsorted PDFs folder! If you dare!

Piles of Downloaded Files... #1: browsing the dreadful "Unsorted" folder!

We all know what PDF really stands for… PILES OF DOWNLOADED FILES! If you are an OSR-nerd like me, then you probably have a folder full of RPG-related PDFs. Downloaded from blogs, retrieved from the Way Back Machine, pirated or purchased or “PWYW” from DriveThru, or worse – bought in a bundle of approximately one thousand files… They are all there, in an unorganized heap, unread, unused, forgotten.

BUT THIS CHANGES TODAY!

Or, at least, it changes a bit…

I’m going to open the dreadful “Unsorted” folder, and check a couple of old documents.

 

The Tomb of Sigyfel, A Labyrinth Lord Quick Play Adventure by Daniel Proctor

Or, as mysteriously titled in the folder: ll00Q1.pdf! This is a two-page introductory mini-dungeon from 2008. This is free from DriveThruRPG (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/57863/The-Tomb-of-Sigyfel). Ten room tomb, branching out into three sections after the entrance area. It is very ur-D&D, evil cleric, orcs, traps…

 

Mediterraneo by Andrea Angiolino

This is a curiosity from 1992, an Italian RPG about Greek mythological heroes. 32-page booklet, with rules, monster stats, and a sample adventure, “The Island of the Amazons” (a handful of wilderness locations and a 6-room dungeon). I don’t speak Italian, but I love ancient myth/history based RPGs, so I was happy to find it here: https://caponatameccanica.com/mediterraneo-un-gioco-di-ruolo-di-andrea-angiolino/ I also have PDFs of Mitico! and Kalevala from the same game line.

 

The Metamorphica Revised by Johnstone Metzger

This should be moved to the “Random tables” folder… I have the original Metamorphica (2012) there, this is the 2016 expanded edition. Hundreds of mutations and transformations, great if you are running a post-apoc game. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/198038/The-Metamorphica-Revised

 

Minor Arcana Generator by Jeremy Strandberg

I had to do some googling, because the PDF itself doesn’t have credits. This is a 7-page generator of weird artifacts, probably for the author’s “Stonetop” Dungeon World setting. Bonus points for including eight worked examples – always a good thing for random generators released into the ild! There is a perchance version: https://perchance.org/81gg8njnn9

 

Holmes Ref 2.0 by Zenopus

Reference sheets for the Holmes Basic Set, compiled by the gentleman & scholar from Zenopus Archives. Apart from the numbers and charts, terse spell overviews, monster stats, it also has “Holmesian Random Names”, random character backgrounds and pregens. Useful! https://sites.google.com/site/zenopusarchives/home/holmes-ref

 

Join the fun... if you dare!