Shadow & Fae

You're Hex-Crawling.  Each night and day the Referee rolls a handful of dice, waiting for the opportune moment... There it is! She rolls the d12, because  bell-curves are for cowards , and peers down a sheet of notebook paper to see which  interesting encounter  she's about to throw at her fatigued, over-encumbered party on their way back from her dungeon . She rolls a few dice, smiles, and announces: "As you walk through the flowered woods, sunlight streams through the branches. You climb over a fallen log in the path. Just then, you hear an odd sound—the squealing of a pig followed by dozens of unmistakably goblin voices shouting screaming threats and insults from behind it. The noise is headed directly toward you." A Model for Regional "Scene" Tables You may grab the Google Doc for the above example  HERE .  Save a copy by clicking file > Make a Copy, and edit to your heart's content. How do I use it? Once per day, roll a d6 for weather and a d4 to...

  "Poems & Stories" By J.R.R. Tolkien, Cover by Pauline Baynes, 1980 Edition Worlds from Seeds The most daunting foe to many a budding Referee (Sometimes called a Game Master, or even a Dungeon Master) is the blank page. Let's not mince words, Referees are frail, fallible human beings of limited capacity, just like (almost) every other human mucking about on Earth, and yet we're expected to summon worlds from our fingertips, breathe life into the unwashed hordes, and pull intriguing lore straight out of our unmentionables . It's too much to ask. But hubris-filled fools that we are, we're going to try it anyway. Where shall we start?  From Tiny Seeds What is it that interests you personally about fantasy stories? For now, keep things painfully simple. Your list could be as simple as "A Dungeon, a Dragon". There's a reason that recipe works. But there's no harm in spicing things up a little: "A Corrupt Temple, a Falling Star, a 'Vi...

I've been working on Shadow and Fae for about three years now, and I think I'm getting to the point of calling it done. But then, why not improve it just a touch more... Why not make it a zine? And if it's a zine, why not make two more zines to go with it? If you want more details on this journey, the three zines I'm working on, or to support me as I go, take a peek here:  https://itch.io/s/120972/shadow-and-fae-2e-3-zine-fundraiser

Here's a recipe I've recently brewed up for making interesting encounters. Just like most recipes, it's been handed down, stolen, refined, torn up, and taped back together. Unlike most recipes online, we're skipping the details of that process. You've got cooking to do. Creating Encounters There are three major considerations when planning an encounter, Threat , Stage , and Stakes . Threat The danger of an encounter can be expressed as Total HD (THD) and average Damage per Round (DPR), assuming all  regular attacks hit (Yes, I know that they won't, but getting any more detailed than this runs into the issue of having more detail than is useful).  Note that this is an estimation, as spells and abilities can cause this to vary widely. If an encounter features a particularly dangerous spell or condition, add it to the threat.  For example, we could list threat as: "A Witch and 3 Homunculi (8 THD, 16 DPR, Polymorph)". Choose or roll a threat from your favo...

  Iron Town - Princess Mononoke Let's condense as much as we can, as small as we can. MiniREALM is an addition to MiniLOG and MiniDELVE that aims to condense as much as possible about creating overland regions for D&D into a single sheet of paper.  This does mean that a lot of what is on the paper is intended as useful inspiration that the referee will need to interpret. The goal of this is to offer a little bit of everything, from overview Region Prompts, to risky but rewarding Points of Interest,  and even a tiny  section on ruling a realm.  Much thanks is due to Chris McDowall for getting me to think about the overland aspect of OSR games via Mythic Bastionland. I think this does it for the MiniSERIES for now. One last thing that I've wondered about is a page of MiniFEATS that players can roll on at the start of a game to gain an unusual ability. This wouldn't just be a numerical bonus, but a page of actions that your average human couldn't perform. Not ...

We're playing as these guys. MiniLOG Ages ago I wrote a One Page GLoG as a challenge to myself. I looked back on it recently and shuddered. While there were some good ideas there, I felt it lacked precision, beauty, and was still plagued with too much bulk. I slimmed it down and painted it up into MiniLOG, which is everything a player really needs to know to enjoy a game of GLoG. The basic rules are: 3 Attributes (Might, Grace, and Will) that are  the modifiers. 3 Fixed DCs Boons and Banes that stack, cancel each-other out, and boost the Crit/Fumble chance. A simplified Death & Dismemberment table. Simple and familiar gear, spells, and leveling. Plus some other things. All on one page. You can take a peak here . MiniDELVE   We're slaying these things. To accompany such a small game, I needed an equally small but punch-packed GM toolkit. Enter MiniDELVE, a distillation of everything I know (or think I know) about dungeon crafting. Dungeon overview prompts. Layout guidelines...

From time to time I tinker with a ruleset that is an abominable crossbreed of OSR concepts and the Heroic Fantasy aimed at by 5e. This ruleset may never see the light of day, but here's a little portion of it, inspired by Skerples and various others.  Boss Fights A Boss is a unique creature that is designed to be dangerous for a full party of 3-5 adventurers of average level equal to its HD. Boss creatures are marked in the creature section with an *. A boss’s HP is equal to its HD*10. Boss Actions: A boss activates 3 times per combat round: once during its normal turn, once at the end of the combat round, and once as a telegraphed action. A telegraphed action is announced at the start of any player’s turn, and then occurs immediately following that player’s turn. Boss Saves: If a boss fails a saving throw it may choose to only partially suffer the negative effects. E.G. it may be polymorphed into a half-dragon, half-rabbit abomination. Or a knight targeted by the sleep spell may f...

D&D Motif Index by Theme This list is not complete, and may never be. If you wish to contribute, leave a comment with a motif and its theme. Motif : A common and recognizable element in story-telling. Adventure Goals (Also Villainous Plots) Capture Individual Capture Territory Defend Location Destabilize Faction Destroy Object Escort Individual Gather Components Gather Intelligence Kill Creature Map Area Reach Location Recover Item Rescue Individual / Creature Secure Alliance Solve Mystery Steal Valuables Sway Opinion Win Competition Curses Ability Removal Aging - Rapid Banishment Haunted Immortality - Unable to Die Inconvenient Compulsions Lycanthropy Mutation Nightmares - Unable to Rest Sentient Undeath Vampirism Wandering - Endless Death - Means Of Assassination Asphyxiation Blood Loss Chemical Overdose Crushed Decapitation Dehydration Drowning Eaten Execution - Legal Falling Illness Incineration Magical Accident / Experimentation Monster - Other than Eaten Murdered Old Age Petr...

Inspiration taken from Goblin Punch , Whose Measure , and Various Others Well of Bolonchen, by Frederick Catherwood At times my brain enters a lucid state of creative day-dreaming, and glorious ideas pour forth like rain in the spring, and at times I sit and pray desperately for a drop of inspiration to quench my thirst. This is a post for those dry times, when inspiration teases but never delivers, and deadlines loom ever nearer. How can that tiny drop of inspiration be stretched into something playable? This is also somewhat a distillation of the "Dungeons" section of my massive module creation document. . A. Gather Dungeon Inspiration What compels  your imagination ? Choose 2-3 one-sentence themes , and a scenario tying them together. Themes may be environmental conditions or factions. Write more than necessary and choose the best . Don't worry about making them all unique or fascinating, we'll get there. Some Examples: A sentient and hostile mushroom forest. The a...

  A Spluttering and a Splashing, by John Batten I'm not sure why I am the way I am. Inspiration hits me like a shot of espresso, and I write and write and write until I collapse. Then I wonder if it's any good at all. Then I slap it on itch and call it a day. Then, a week later, I remember to post something about it on my blog. Goblin Tales As a kid, I loved all sorts of weird goblin and fairy stories. Lord of the Rings, Narnia, The Knights of the Round Table, and then a ridiculous  amount of books by Terry Pratchett. There was something fun about the juxtaposition of the credible and the incredible, that made me wonder if there were  fairies or goblins hiding around here somewhere. Goblin Tales was spawned by my love of those old stories, some talk on Phlox's GLoG server, my curiosity about rolling-under, and too much free time due to being out of work for the moment.  Find it over on Itch: Goblin Tales

In working on the rules for Shadow & Fae, I've come to a section I intended to write on how to make travel fun. There are basic rules already for travel speed, how often to roll encounters, camping, hunting, etc. But mechanics alone cannot create fun. How do we take a road—a line on a map—and make traveling along it exciting? Here's what I've got so far, and I'd be interested in hearing what you have to say. The Story of the Road When the party sets out on their journey, consider the road and what lays along it. What are the Denizens, Landmarks, and Detours along the way? Denizens Random encounters don’t mean “Random” as in totally gonzo. Rather, there is a randomized chance to meet something that dwells along the road, and there is risk and reward present in each of those encounters. Consider that there is a nearby village suffering from Wasting Disease. From that 1 fact, we can imagine several kinds of people and creatures who might be on the road. 3d4 Villagers l...

Recently a method of writing a quick campaign opener has been floating around Phlox's GLoG server, and I decided to give it a go. The idea is to write up what happened 5 Centuries ago, 5 Decades ago, 5 Years ago, 5 Days ago, and lastly 5 Minutes ago. I actually started with the "5 Minutes ago", as I had an image in mind of what the players would be dealing with, then worked back from there. At the end of the process I realized I'd created something rather dark, and placed the heroes in a position that wasn't as unquestionably heroic as our playstyle tends to be. That's all well and good for some tables, but we just happen to like being the good guys, or at least feeling like we're good guys. So I thought, "Who else could the group play as?" Well, I found some. And it turns out they aren't perfect people either, but their story is—in my opinion—the more interesting of the two. Of course, then there's option C. The Mountain of the Sun  5 Ce...

  The Cave of Hands, Argentina Often, when I'm worldbuilding, I start with a map.  I form coastlines, mountains, rivers, forests, deserts, swamps, etc. Then I sprinkle a few seeds onto the map; peoples, powerful beings, natural magical phenomena, etc. At this point I start writing history. How did the people interact with the contents of the map? Who ruled? Who served? Who was loved? Hated? How did borders move, and what unexpected events popped up to shift the world? The Game " Microscope " by Ben Robbins is a wonderful system to gamify this process. However, when we come to the table to play a game, the history of the world is not immediately apparent. Nor is it always necessary to know. Nor should the DM spend several hours dumping lore onto the party (unless they really enjoy that sort of thing).  What is useful, and what - in my opinion - shapes the memories  of our players, is the culture they engage with at the table. Like stepping foot in a foreign city for t...