Sunday, August 14, 2022

PARALLEL DUNGEONS - a dimension-shifting OSR adventure

I wrote a new adventure! It is a gimmicky one, but also playable & fun. Imagine that there are three dungeons that occupy the same physical space, and the player characters can shift between these three parallel dimensions by using a device. The three dungeons are quite different:

  1. Cave of the Demon Corsairs = hide-out of brutal pirates in pact with dark forces
  2. Mining Tunnels of Q-3296 = abandoned asteroid mining operation
  3. Tranquility & Transcendence = monastery of meditating monks
The area descriptions are presented in three parallel columns, so whenever the party shifts to a different dimension, you can just look to the next column and find the area's description in the parallel dungeon.

I ran a playtest in Esoteric Enterprises, the players were the commando unit of an occult secret agency. They were taken to an island to explore the weird caves. The pirate and asteroid parts proved quite deadly... but the dimension shifting device saved the party's asses a couple of times, and they also used it to circumvent hazards.

Get in on itch.io! (free/PWYW)






Thursday, August 11, 2022

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!