RPG Blog Carnival: Endings

Apologies for my lack of involvement over the last few months, real life gets in the way sometimes. I do have a post still in draft for the September Carnival theme, then Orktober took over, and had I previously posted something on the theme for November and was struggling for ideas...

But on to this Carnival! To bookend Scot's January topic of "Beginnings", for December 2023 I've chosen an intentionally broad theme of "Endings" to close the year. 

Image credit: NataliaDrepina

Some suggestions:

Campaign finales and closing plot arcs

(I'm particularly interested in this; as much a fan of shorter campaigns that I am, I still struggle with endings - it's easier to just keep the story rolling on!)

Character death, retirement, and TPKs

(I've talked briefly about the latter before, but I still think it's an interesting topic)

2023 in review / retrospective

(I don't usually do this, but I like reading them; and I think I will this year as I started the year off with hopes and dreams - if you are too then please share here!)

But anything goes that fits the theme!

Drop a link to your themed post in the comments on this post, all welcome, and I'll post a wrap-up at the end of the month when the Carnival moves on.

After this month the 2023 RPG Blog Carnival is ending - signups to host in 2024 are open at the hub on OfDiceAndDragons, along with general info about getting involved (and why you should) and links to all the past Carnivals too.

Mining the D&D Anti-Canon

This month the RPG Blog Carnival is all about Cabals and Congregations - which got me thinking about the organisations and factions we use (or rather don't use) in our games.

When I play D&D particularly, I get the feeling there's a whole load of built-in backstory that often gets ignored because it's not used going forward, especially in published adventures. I'm fully in agreement with Luka Rejec on canon and anti-canon and that I'd rather do this stuff at the table to make our own world than spend days reading and remembering details of someone else's world.

None of our PCs exist in a vacuum; explicitly Bards have Colleges, Druids have Circles, Rangers have favoured enemies, Sorcerers have Bloodlines - these are all potential factions to draw into our stories, and more are implied for all classes.

Since Dungeon World and Stars Without Number* helped change my DM worldview I've been keen to try to build the story round the PCs, not push the PCs into the story. 

Here's some session zero thoughts to bring these background factions to the foreground, e.g:

• Barbarian - who are your tribe? Who are their enemies and allies? Who else roams your lands?
• Bard - where did you train? Are/were you part of a troupe? Who have you worked for?
• Cleric (also Druid) - do you belong to an order? Who are the enemies of your god/religion? What are your holy gathering places?
• Fighter - where did you train / who did you train under? Is there a local fighter's or mercenary's guild (and what's your relationship with them)?
• Monk - where is your monastery and what are its rites and rituals? Who threatens or empowers your way of life?
• Paladin - draw from Fighter and/or Cleric, but also: what organisations are aligned with / opposed to your Oath?
• Ranger - who else lives outside of the points of light (and what is your relationship with them)? Who of your favoured enemy do you have history with / are currently active locally?
• Sorcerer - who shares your bloodline and how do they live among other people? What organisations seek to regulate or exploit your magic?
• Warlock - are you part of a cult to your patron? Who are the enemies (or allies) of your patron?
• Wizard - where did you train/learn? Who is/are the largest/wisest holder(s) of arcane knowledge in the region?

I've talked before about how I like to use factions to help generate plot threads and story arcs and (I think) making the movers and shakers relevant to the PCs helps to tie the characters to the world.

The above are version-independent ideas, but if 5e is your D&D flavour  there's also backgrounds to mine (as well as them being bags of proficiencies)! 

• "Guild" backgrounds aside - Acolytes, Entertainers, Gladiators, Sages, Soldiers all probably belong to some sort of professional organisation
• Charlatans, Criminals and Urchins surely must have had run-ins with (or been members of) underworld organisations
• Folk Heros need a folk to be the hero of!
• Sailors have crews, Knights have orders, Nobles have houses... Outlanders have people back home
• Even Hermits have people, even if it's just the ones they are pointedly avoiding!

These low hanging fruit are often overlooked, but I'll be making a point to try to remember them in my future games. How do you go about creating and using factions?

For more information on the RPG Blog Carnival, or to check out the archive (going back more than a decade) make sure to check out the link - you can sign up to host here too.  Thanks to Gonz for hosting this month!

* I'd forgotten, but I started working on something similar for SWN a few years back too!

July 2023 RPG Blog Carnival wrap-up

 Apologies for the lateness of this post, I've been AFK for the last week or so.  Also Blogger seems to be marking comments as spam a few days after I approve them, which makes them disappear, so I had to work that out and bring them back...

Thanks for the contributions to the July 2023 RPG Blog Carnival topic of Terrain, Seasons, Weather:

Image credit: skyscapeparadise

Sea of Stars RPG writes about unusual weathers and their use in our games:

"Like all things, weather should be used to make the world more interesting.  Bring it in when it heightens a scene or mood, and minimize it when it is not important to the action."

Seed of Worlds gives us a d8+d20 weird weather generator for weird terrains:

"For this post we are looking at this from a 'wind off the plane of horrors' angle; roll this to see what kind of weird weather-related effect you are getting and then snap that together with known local weird locations in your campaign or go to the bottom table for some ideas of what those strange locations could be." 

Beneath Foreign Planets gives us a system for random weather and some seasonal examples:

"I've wanted a weather system that possesses the following qualities: is simple enough to be memorable, allows for the weather to be naturally and randomly changeable AND stay the same for long stretches, to show weather patterns/trends within a season and most importantly allow for the weather to become 'weird' so that the players can experience wild or dramatic weather phenomena (but not too often) and to try to do all this with as little die rolling as possible."

And my own submission reviewing A Visitor's Guide to the Rainy City, here.

The Carnival has moved on to Codex Anathema for August, where the theme is "Cabals and Congregations" - I hope to see you there.

For more information on the Carnival, or to check out the 15 year archive of Carnival posts, or if you want to host on your blog, then check out the hub at Of Dice And Dragons.

RPG book review: A Visitor's Guide To The Rainy City

As this month's RPG Blog Carnival topic relates to weather and seasons, what better time to get round to reviewing one of my favourite setting books?

Photo ironically taken on the only non-rainy day this week...

Who are the players and what do they do?

PCs are denizens of, or visitors to, the Rainy City - an island city at the end of the world and enduring constant rain.

Piracy, exploring, smuggling, protecting/exploiting the weak, guild work, diving (to explore the flooded ruins of a magical academy), starting a cult or a will-o-wisp business, founding parliaments, flaunting their riches, salvaging shipwrecks, serving wizards... There are no set adventures, but a huge number of seeds, ideas, and potential hooks here.

What's the core mechanic?

None - the book's all fluff and no crunch. What's great is that it's all written as prose, from the pen of Beauregard Hardebard of the Master and Four Wardens of the Fraternity of the Art and Mystery of Haberdashery and Millinery. The core mechanic I guess is settling down to read it.

What's good?

Each area of the city is sketched out over a couple of double-page spreads, each has its own feel, goings on, denizens, and weather.

So much varied rain. The rain varies by location, be it stormy, misty, or - on the Headlands:

The rain varies by season (Quiet, Firelight, Rainy, and Windy seasons) and creates interesting challenges (and solutions) for lighting, heating, and cooking. Hats are important.

Every location is crammed with rich nuggets of interesting prose, characters, things, events ... Honestly there's so much going on you could run whole sandbox in each district. Nothing is wasted and all of it is enjoyable.

If I ever run Blades in the Dark again, I want to run it in the Rainy City.

Honestly the best thing about this book is just how much fun it is to read. Close second best is how many ideas it conjures in your head; it's an OSR DM's dream!

What's bad?

I guess some people would want some of the named locations to be mapped out, or more explicit adventures, or explicit "quest givers". I think it's a breath of fresh air and I love it.

Bottom line?

It's great. If you want somewhere to game that's more Ankh Morpork than Saltmarsh then this is the place.

Even if you never play it, you'll enjoy reading it!

Please drop your thoughts in the comments if you've used this book - how was it for you?

RPG Blog Carnival: Terrain, Seasons, Weather (oh my)

And so the RPG Blog Carnival rolls into town once more, this month's topic is "Terrain, Seasons, Weather" - and how you use them in your games.

Inspired by a post I read about the impact of describing the sky in our GM narratives, and an interesting comment on my last month's carnival submission regarding the narrative and mechanical effects of terrain types, I'm interested in how people use terrain, weather, and the changing seasons in their games - narratively and mechanically.

To participate, simply write a blog post connected to the prompt and post a link to it in the comments of this post, for example:

• How you use weather and terrain in wilderness travel?
• Games where the seasons are important to gameplay?
• How you use the changing of the seasons, and the festivals that mark their turning?
• Do you use something interesting like hex flowers to generate changes to the weather?
• Reviews of relevant resources?
• Anything else related to the topic!

At the end of the month I'll do a wrap-up of all the submissions and the carnival will move on to somewhere else.

On that note: the RPG Blog Carnival has been running since 2008 but now it needs more hosts for 2023 - if you'd like to host please check out more info on the carnival and fill in the sign-up form here.

An exploration of travelling in TTRPGs

A new month rolls around already and June brings with it the topic of "Travels, by Wave, Cloud, or Portal" from Seed of Worlds for the RPG blog carnival.

Exploration is something I love about TTRPGs and something I want to play more of (and get better at) but I always found the rules for it lacking in modern D&D editions.  The hexcrawl-traversal procedures of the old school I find too heavy - I'm more narrativist than simulationist I feel - although not as heavy as the time I played Barbarian Prince...

Image credit: ThemeFinland

So, between these poles of "nothing" and "too much" what is there? I decided to go through my RPG book collection with a lens on the theme of "travel"...

It's hard for me to think about travel-based games without mentioning the hot-mess science-fantasy-wagon-train pointcrawl that is Ultraviolet Grasslands.  The places, people, and art are inspiring - but in a game that is ostensibly about travelling, how do we travel?

A destination is chosen, a known number of days away, and the caravan departs. There's a roll to see how ill fated the journey is, and one to see what is encountered. Time and resources are adjusted (there is caravan management and good-old OSR resource-management) and you've arrived. You could flesh the whole thing out into a multi-scene session, or a single montage.

I talked a while back about Skycrawl/Downcrawl and how much I love the procedures therein, it's literally a game (setting?) built around exploring and discovering new things (for the GM too with all the generation tables).

Travel in these games is heavily procedurised but pretty rules-light; the "difficulty" of the journey is set out in how-many-boxes-do-we-need-to-check-off style and the players go about checking off the boxes.  Each day they can press on (checking the boxes), rest, or retreat - with opportunities to gain and spend a meta-currency called "Tack" which prevents them from getting lost.

There are moves for players to be able to expand the map or add detail to it, which I personally think is wonderful.

Side note: I keep meaning to talk about The Wildsea - which is another game I own which is pretty much about exploration.  There needs to be more hours in the day, or perhaps just fewer working hours.  Travelling the rustling waves feels conceptually similar to Downcrawl; 

Wildsea travel similarly involves setting a track (boxes to tick off) and, similar to the starship combat in Stars Without Number, allocating the PCs to their stations. Rolls are made to see if the ship makes progress, the crew encounters anything notable, the cartographer maps the area/route, and so on. When the track is filled, the party arrives.

I think these are what I like.  I'd like the journey from one place to the next to fit nicely into a session (sometimes) - but this is something I need to explore more.  The journey forms the scenes of the narrative, which I like, but the number of scenes is unknown (due to different levels of success ticking different numbers of boxes) which isn't helpful in this context...

Interestingly, if you crossed these systems with the traditional hexcrawl you would probably get something like Yochai Gal's wilderness rules for Cairn v2...

On a very different tack, I purchased a bundle on itch.io purely out of curiosity about Wanderhome.  It's not my usual cup of tea but it's about travelling, which I have mechanical interest in, and a while back I got hooked into Patrick Stuart's musings on "soft", Ghibli-esque D&D.  This is a much more narrativist game, with places along the road created and fleshed out in play by the players.  It's pretty much all about the journey - but I can't say I fully understand, from reading it through, how it's supposed to be played.

I do like some of its ideas and especially on how to build places, essentially by combining templates, which is something to file away for inspiration...  Of course, every game has something you can steal to make your other games better.  

So, what are your favourite travel mechanics or systems that I can steal from?

PSA: The RPG Blog Carnival is looking for hosts for 2023, you can find out more and sign up here (it's incredibly easy and actually quite fun). Thanks to Seed of Worlds for hosting this one!

Changing gears: on the beauty and realisation of short campaigns

When I, or my group(s), run a game there is a tendency to build each session on the previous ones, weaving a story based on what went before and where it feels like the characters are heading.

This ends one of two ways:

1. Everyone has a blast and the campaign finds a natural and memorable conclusion
2. More frequently people drift away, or burn out, or something else means we never get finished

This month's RPG Blog Carnival topic, changing gears, has inspired me to post my thoughts on having more short snappy games - especially now life and work interfere more!

I would totally recommend switching games every few months. Switch system, switch setting, switch DM, maybe mix up the player group slightly. Decades-long world defining campaigns with the same group are not the goal, and I feel getting less and less likely.

Changing up games is more fun. We get to play more new games, we get to finish more campaigns, we get to switch out DMs which helps with burnout. As a player it feels more satisfying to finish a shortish 2-3 month arc than plough through a multi-year story. As a DM it's more satisfying to run that shiny new book and wrap it up ready to run the new-new book...

Why not try out a different genre? Image credit: Paddy-One

Changing up games is less pressure. If we don't like a system or setting then it's only a few sessions. There's less fear of a campaign finale falling short. There's more chance of getting to that finale with the same group of players who started! If someone can't make it for a few weeks they can probably (hopefully) join the next game...

If a game is a big hit, run a second season like a TV show. Axe it when it runs out of steam (like a TV show) - and bring it back for a reunion in 10 years with the original cast.

The only problem I have with short campaigns is keeping them short. I like to meander, I like to find out what happens to the characters. I dislike prep (too much like the planning I have to do for work) and I don't plan ahead. Here's what I have learnt:

1. Work out what the main elements of your setting are and how they are connected (I spent a fair bit of time talking about my ideas about this in the past) 
2. Use those connections to plan out a series of plot points. These are stepping stones, anchors, the landmarks on your campaign road trip. Depending on how long you want to play for, and your tendencies, either plan more (and don't sweat about hitting them all) or less (and fill in the gaps when you feel inspired by events in play) than that number!
3. Build an adventure around each plot point. Don't force them. They don't have to sequential. The plot point can be the hook ("thieves guild want to steal the crown") or the twist ("find out the necromancer is the Duke's father") or background ("the goblins lay siege to the city") for the adventure, but it's better if the adventure isn't the plot point itself so the outcome isn't predetermined.  No railroading.

Let's say we want 2-3 months of weekly sessions, so let's go for 10 adventures. We can skip or add 2 and still be about right, let's not sweat it.

We know the things, NPCs, places and antagonists we want to work the story around and we know we want 10 adventures.  The classic "3 act story" suggests there are (variations on) nine generic plot points:

1. Exposition - setting the scene and the status quo
2. Inciting Incident - something propels the protagonist(s) into the story
3. Turning point 1 - The Point Of No Return 
4. Confrontation / Rising Action - tension builds, stakes are raised, obstacles emerge
5. Midpoint - gaining confidence, taking action
6. Turning Point 2 - everything is going so well ... then
7. The Dark Night - oh it's all gone wrong
8. Climax - but the protagonist (usually) pulls through and wins in the end
9. Denouement / Conclusion - what happens after? 

I dislike using the "3 act story" template (because I don't think it works for our medium) but I think some of the plot points are crucial: we need an Inciting Incident and a Climax, really, and I think it's good to start with some Exposition/Setup, so that's adventures 1 (setting the scene), 2 (the Inciting Incident that launches the campaign), and 10 (the Climax, plus often the Conclusion in montage). 

We need seven more plot points adventures... 

Perhaps better inspiration for plot points are found in the Hero's Journey which is analysed and explained very well by the AngryGM here? 

Or better aligned with our medium (but perhaps less deeply analysed in the Gnome Stew post that brought all this fresh into my mind) is the Heroine's Journey?

Find a structure that works, for you, but they're all basically:

• Players get a feel for the world and some of the key players
• Something kicks off that gives them a Quest
• They explore, learn, find artefacts and information, make friends and enemies, win and lose
• There is a final confrontation to end the Quest, and we see how the world is changed

Let me know your preferred structures or go-to plot points in the comments?

You'll get better each time, and if you keep changing gears there's always a next time.  Thanks to Lair of Secrets for hosting, and thanks to Of Dice & Dragons for maintaining the Carnival - check the archives or sign up to host here.

On creating elements for a setting

When I saw this as the title for the April RPG Blog Carnival my mind started ticking over campaign and setting planning and how I want to go about it.

Image credit: cosmicgrooveart

It's easy to just start building things that will never get played and I think a solution is:

• to break prep into separate and reusable elements (I've talked about this before)
• to only plan what you need

So, leaping off from that into the void, what sort of elements and what does each need?

Places

TTRPG games generally involve some exploration, and even if they don't the scenes have to be set somewhere.  Places are everywhere from towns to rooms to dungeons to continents and planes!

In my opinion, Places are often containers but I think they need the following themselves:

• Flavour descriptions / scene setting (depending on scope and scale)
• Rumours / things to interact with

As well as being the basic things you need for a dungeon room, these settle nicely with the start of a "three act" story - Set the scene, call to action - so can often lead to setting up a sidequest nicely.  Can we run the full mile and prep some of the rest too?

• Rising action
• A climax
• How the place is left changed

Oh - there's a location based adventure!

Antagonists

TTRPGs are about conflict and resolution, and where would conflict be without antagonists to rub against our protagonists (the party) - these are the factions and moving parts!

Blogging back for March, and thoughts on April and beyond

Sorry for not being more active, real life takes its toll once again.

I haven't really had any time to read around the blogosphere or to get anything written, but here's a whistle stop tour of the (active) blogs that sent me hits in March, as a thankyou!

of Dice and Dragons, of course, has been keeping the RPG Blog Carnival rolling - please go show your support if you can, there are still some slots available to sign up to host in 2023 I believe!

Seed of Worlds has several very readable recent posts, and many better and more frequent blog link lists than I do (or can)

Hobgoblinry showcases some Oathmark Orcs and some Mordheim Skaven and terrain

Sea Of Stars has not only been hosting the March carnival but is also embarking on an A-Z blogging challenge for April (good luck!)

DIY & Dragons has a 2022 in review (not just gaming) in a smorgasbord of interesting things

and Shuttered Room has been cataloguing creatures, all the way to Z! (more talent and tenacity than I)

I'm planning on getting back on this horse every month, as part of my bid to be a more sociable blogger, and trying to participate in the Carnival and just see what great stuff is going on.

Dungeon23 has burned me out but I'll hopefully be back on that as well ... I have a whole shelf of stuff I could review ... comments welcome on anything you'd particularly like to see more of!

Seedy Sci Fi / Cyberpunk bar generator

As I'm currently enjoying running Mothership as much as I used to enjoy running Stars Without Number, and this month's RPG Blog Carnival theme is "Taverns, Bars, and places to meet", I thought why not combine my old love of one-roll generators and my new love of spark tables into a bar generator for your favourite SF TTRPG?

Image credit: Pazuah on DeviantArt

So grab a fistful of polyhedrals and let's see where the party ends up:

This place is:

d10 tens	d10 units
a backstreet or spaceport hotel bar	filled with noisy arcade machines
a streetside kiosk in a shipping container	selling local moonshine
a laser-lit all-night club	rumoured to have a secret back room
a trendy wine bar in a respectable 'hood	tended by an AI/robot/alien
a high class cocktail lounge	with live music playing
a trucker / hauler / biker bar	hosting an open mic contest
a pop-up bar in someone's hab block	allegedly run by the mob
a snug in the back of an ethnic restaurant	with the best bartender in town
rooms in a church, mission, or similar	with plenty of under-the-counter goods
a motel bar in the middle of nowhere	with a priceless bottle under glass

Current patrons (reroll each day / as needed):

#dungeon23, Level 3, gets a little weird

Leaving level 2 behind us the party descends the slime waterfall to level 3, which I rolled "Song" and "Edge" on the spark table for so I'm running with it, at least for now!

Rolling a few sparks from the words I generated last time got me the following:

Denizens/monsters: Enchanting Diver & Cutting Siren

Places: Poetic Ravine & Edgy Theatre

Hazards: Melodic Blade & Steep Echoes

Treasures: Musical Sword & Sharp Melody

I'm filing half of these away for next week, I might roll some more and see what I can put together... Some of these spoke to me though, or at least seemed to fit together, so this is what I have come up with for this week:

It's been an interesting adventure, I'm already pondering the "Edgy Theatre" and how that might fit... thoughts and comments always welcome!

February Blog Carnival wrap-up, and #dungeon23 sparks for March

First things first, let's wrap up the February 2023 RPG Blog Carnival!

Alesmiter brings us procedures for speeding up wilderness travel - "Let's see how we can accelerate this if we stop asking the dice if an encounter has occurred and start asking them when the next encounter occurs."

Sea Of Stars brings us a procedure for generating ships coming into port - "Ships are arriving in Port Imperial all the time. So, for inspiration for such ships, we have another random table!"

Image credit: mcrassusart

Seed Of Worlds brings us procedures for generating encounters by rolling overloaded dice on unlockable encounter tables - "So together we get the below - a flat chance of it being the type of encounter from the d6 and the probability curve of it being whatever is out there wandering about."

RPG Wandering brings us hexflower-powered procedures for tracking any kind of progress - "The basic idea of a hexflower is a random table with a memory. The next encounter/location/treasure rolled depends on where you currently are on the grid. This appeals to me as a way to track the PCs progress on all sorts of long-term projects, from inventing magic items, to tracking down an old ruin in the wilderness, to investigating some long-forgotten lore."

I wrote up a review of Skycrawl, an indie setting with a whole load of interesting procedures, and have started working on a spark-table-of-spark-tables for procedurally generating dungeons - more on this below!

#dungeon23 - bringing loose ends together for February's level

 Looking back to the other posts for February's "Fungal Wasteland" I've tried to tie everything together as the rooms draw to a close:

The fungus-folk's prophecy from week 1 was a loose end, as was the giant ancient mother-shroom so I had to tie those together in 26/2.

This also concretes the purpose of the machinery in 9/2 and should give players something interesting to unravel should they wish to.

Another slime waterfall joins the one from 5/2 as the exit down to level 3, and it made thematic sense to join these with a river.

This level felt like it was missing a "boss" encounter so the "feral harvester" spark added that, plus an extra conflict between it and the fungus-folk (to add to the uneasy peace between them and the goblins that the other rooms imply.

Overall I think the sparks from my meta-spark-table-of-spark-tables have helped a lot in the process, there's definitely a lot I can riff off when I come to draft up the level proper and it feels like the "story" of the dungeon is emerging nicely.

I'm going to refine that spark tabling procedure for March and see how things go ... what will Level 3 be??

#dungeon23 - more mothership metroidvania

My plan for this dungeon23 sidequest is coming together now:

Mothership metroidvania, second area

This is the second area in section A, where restoring the power will open up routes to section B and (back) through section A to section D. 

There's an area here, 15/2, that will change if the external door override is cut in section C so the landscape will be different if the PCs backtrack through to get to section D.

Restoring the power will also add some gribblies to the encounter table ('cos containing them was why it was shut off in the first place) which I'll come to in a separate post.

There's also a draft table of "what these crew have" and "what these crew need" for generating some roleplay scenarios, also to come in the future... Comments welcome!

RPG Book Review: Skycrawl

Who are the players and what do they do?

Explorers of a "weird, whimsical, endless sky". The main focus is on exploration and travel.

This is a supplement (setting?) for any roleplaying system, packed with systems and procedures for journeying between mysterious lands floating in an endless azure sky, ship to ship combat, and more.

The colours are better in real life!

What's the core mechanic?

The book itself is systemless and provides guidance and examples for how to use it with d20, 2d6, percentile, or FATE mechanics, but could easily be used for dice pool games or other mechanics as well.  The core procedures use standard terms such as "crit", "strong success", "success", "complication" which can be easily defined for any method of generating these outcomes.

What's good?

The procedures here are wonderful; there are systems for:

• Procedurally generating Lands and the Folk who inhabit them, and the ships that move between them
• Tracking the movement of those lands as they orbit in the sky
• Researching, plotting, and executing journeys between these lands
• Ship-to-ship combat
• Orcery, which is an interesting alchemy system 
• Generating and resolving random encounters in the skies

The systems used for play utilise "moves" which will feel familiar to anyone who has played a PBTA game, but these can easily be explained as player procedures at the table if not.

I particularly like the systems for travel; PCs accrue and spend a meta-resource called "tack" to help with navigation and journeys are planned out and executed in several steps (be they days, weeks, or abstract measures of difficulty) which naturally resolve into scenes and encounters as the players spend their tack and decide how best to play out each step.

Lands are mechanically easier to get to if the party have been there before, or if they have discovered three or more rumours about the place - which is something I love as a driver for exploring and interacting with the world.

The main procedures are seemingly based on the designer's other game Downcrawl, which you can get a good feel for in its free HTML version here.

The lore and art, that there is, is evocative and flavourful too. It's a great book!

What's bad?

Honestly, I'm struggling. Some people might find it a little wordy for their tastes maybe (I really don't) but that's just thinking of something - anything - to put in this section!

Bottom line?

Highly recommended. There's a lot here to mine from and adapt to other games (the systems shared with Downcrawl could just as easily be adapted for overland travel and traditional pointcrawls, and these rules could just as easily be applied to traditional sailing ships with a little tweaking) and it feels like it could be run straight from the book. Looking forward to doing so!

Fans of the depthcrawls generated by The Stygian Library or The Gardens of Ynn, traditional OSR hexcrawl mechanics, or the travel procedures in Ultraviolet Grasslands would probably find a lot to like in this little gem.

If you have any favourite procedure-based RPG resources then I'd love to hear of them, either in the comments or by submitting a link to one of your blog posts on this month's RPG Blog Carnival hub, where the theme is "procedures".

A double dose of #dungeon23 (with a dash of chatGPT)

As I missed posting my progress last week due to diverting time to work on the meta-spark-table, here are that week's and this week's rooms:

I've tried to use a lot of the sparks I generated last week, and some more that I generated this week, and I'm pleased with the results and how it made me approach this.

I found that I was forcing myself to be more creative, I hope that's a good thing!

One thing I think I will do is make the tables more specifically focused on dungeon things - so keep Antagonists for encounters but make the others more focused towards e.g. treasure and special rooms... but I'm happy with the first draft.

Out of curiosity, while writing this post after the fact, I also fed last week's spark results to chatGPT and it gave me this:

• Rotting survivors' chamber: A dimly lit room with decaying corpses of previous adventurers, their rusted weapons, and tattered armor scattered around.
• Slime refuge: A small, damp room filled with glowing, bio-luminescent slime that provides refuge for various small creatures.
• Infested prophecy: A chamber decorated with rotting vines, with a prophecy inscribed in the walls, warning of the impending doom of the dungeon.
• Corrupted collapse: A partially caved-in chamber, filled with twisted metal and rock fragments, surrounded by clusters of rusted spores.
• Scrap/junk farm: A makeshift farming room where a group of jury-rigged fungus-folk tends to a variety of plants grown on scrap metal and junk.
• Rusted spores' chamber: A large, eerie chamber with rusted spores hanging from the ceiling, filling the air with a metallic scent and slowly corroding any metal objects left within the room.
• Forgotten feast: An abandoned dining hall filled with festering food and rotting remains of long-dead creatures, with a decaying table at the center.

I would be interested to know your thoughts.

If you have your own favourite dungeon generation procedures I would love to hear about them, either in the comments or by leaving a link to one of your blog posts on the February RPG Blog Carnival page here, which this month is all about "procedures".

Working on a #dungeon23 meta (mega?) spark-table-of-spark-tables

As you may know, this month I am very much thinking about procedure. Being a fan of procedural generation generally, and spark tables specifically, I'm building up a mega meta-spark-table where each entry references another spark table (or set of spark tables).

For level 2 of my megadungeon I rolled "Fungal Wasteland" on my original d100 spark table, so for further inspiration I built some more quick spark tables, for "Fungal" and for "Wasteland" specifically:

Fungal

Adjectives: toadstool, spore, rotting, corrupted, infested, slime, mushroom, fermenting

Places: farm, forest, spore-field, giant cap

Antagonists: mycologists, fungusfolk, harvesters, cultists

(NPCs will come from the above)

Things: world-stool, spores, juice/extract, truffles

Situations: infestation, hallucination, feast, rot

Wasteland 

Adjectives: feral, forgotten, jury-rigged, wasted, disused, rusted, barren, scrap/junk

P: ruin, wastes, refuge, camp

A: raiders, survivors, prospectors, treasure hunters

T: artifact, cause (of the desolation), prophecy, scrap heap

S: collapse, ambush, awakening, restoration

Sparking

Rolling a few times on these (an Adjective from one + something from the other) gave me this little lot of potentially useful ideas:

February 2023 RPG Blog Carnival: Procedures

I've been thinking a lot about procedures, and reading a lot about OSR procedures, while working on dungeon23 (you can follow my progress here if you're interested) and so the topic for this month's RPG Blog Carnival, hosted right here, is "Procedures"!

The carnival is open to all RPG bloggers, all that is required is to write a post on the broad topic of procedures and post a link in this post's comments.

This could be about - but not limited to:

• Procedural generation for dungeons or hexcrawls?
• Procedures for dungeon crawling or wilderness exploration?
• Character generation or world building procedures?
• Procedures for adventure writing or campaign planning?
• Procedures and social rituals at your game table?
• Procedures for arbitrating certain situations or running certain types of scene or adventure (chases, social "combat", etc.)?

At the end of February I'll write up a round-up post and the carnival will move on to another blog. If you'd like to host one month or find out more then please check out the home of the RPG Blog Carnival for more info.

If you're working on dungeon23 too then you may also be interested in the contributions from last time I hosted the carnival, all about building dungeons.

#dungeon23 side quest - a Mothership metroidvania

I'm starting a Mothership campaign and it's a good feeling so I have - understandably - been pondering a Mothership megadungeon. Gradient Descent exists. 

The nature of Mothership got me wondering what sort of megadungeon I could create without the traditional levels and loot, and without returning to the surface with treasure, but still with a delving feel and with ramping challenge.

After explaining both Samus Aran and Simon Belmont to my youngest child in the context of Smash Bros, the idea - trying to stay within the bounds of dungeon23 - is to make a 12 area "metroidvania" dungeon and play around with escalating encounter tables and with re-traversing changing areas.

4 conceptual stages, 3 diary pages each. One a month:

#dungeon23 update. How it started vs how it's going

I switched to using a diary last week; prior to that I had been trying for more of a "one page dungeon" but I got lost in trying to make the flow work around the rooms I was writing, and how to make the rooms fit in the flow I had created.

I thought it would help, but it didn't.

Using a diary (yes I know that was the idea all along) I'm finding that I fill the space with notes, and then stop, and I'm feeling less constrained by the map:

My dungeon23 megadungeon, week 3

I'm still trying to work to the rough proportions from last week but if I can't make it fit then I'm not worrying too much.