Random table synergy

Yesterday I had some free time but not much brain power, so pulled out my old random table print-outs and just shuffled through them, browsing, rolling dice or dealing cards now and then.

I got to a couple of hex stocking tables by The Welsh Piper.

On the RUINS generator, I rolled

Temple – Flood – Restoration – Fighter – Hybrids

Good stuff. I can imagine the whole situation right away: a pious knight and their human-animal hybrid companions restoring a flooded temple.

I moved on to the next table on my print-out, LAIRS, and got

Deep Horror – Expanding – Weird Things – Partially Submerged

Now this is good random table synergy! Clearly, this is not a separate lair in a different hex. This is the flooded (“partially submerged”) undercroft of the temple, where a bunch of weird creatures nest. Maybe they seeped in somehow with the tainted groundwater which caused the temple’s ruination?

[Secret Santicorn Dungeon] The Dark Keep in the Snow

My contribution for the OSR discord server's Secret Santicorn event! envymania's prompt was simply "The Dark Keep in the Snow". I cycled through several ideas (one was to make a classic murder mystery! I might return to it...) then ended up creating a dungeon.

Frankly, feature creep is always a problem. I could have made something less ambitious. 

Underground dungeons are easy. You only have to care about the interior space... While when making something "architectural", there is also the exterior, and you are under more pressure to make it "make sense".

But here we are, in early February 2025, and The Dark Keep in the Snow is ready!

It's a fortified monastery of sorts, high up in the mountains, populated by Yetis - for a reason!

No stats, you can find all these monsters in OSRIC.

Get your snowshoes on and

DOWNLOAD THE PDF!

THE MAPS IN A SEPARATE IMAGE FILE

(I hope to eventually re-draw the maps. For now, they are here in all their hand-drawn beauty)