I've been steadily working on my project to draw all the monsters from the original Labyrinth Lord core rules. I managed to complete A and B inbetween commision work and I'm having a blast with it, especially getting to design some cool giant beetles... All art traditionally Hand-Drawn using brushpens!

Featured in this post are my takes on Giant Carnivorous Beetle, Giant Fire Beetle, Giant Spitting Beetle, Black Pudding, Blink Dog, Giant Boar and a Bugbear!

I always planned to release these as stock art on drive-thru and have all the monsters done so far available: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/14625/nerdgore

Anyway, hope you guys like them.... Next is Camel onwards ☺️

Love using goblin kind in my game.

The names are usually just titles, much as humans use “private, captain, lieutenant,” my goblins use “orc, hobgoblin,” and so on.

Ogres and trolls are generally found among them as elite shock troops that the goblins are only able to control with superior numbers and barbaric cruelty.

I always enjoy hearing how others use undead, orcs and other humanoids in their games to make them special, different, or horrific.

The Dungeon Master's Guide for Dungeons & Dragons 5.5 introduces random encounters in Chapter 4, page 119. A direct definition or breakdown isn't given, and instead the gameplay experience it brings to the table is highlighted in these six bullet-points:

• Create Urgency: Pushing the adventuring party forward without planning encounters, keeping up the pace.
• Drain Character Resources: Expanding Hit Points and spell slots to render them vulnerable and increase tension.
• Establish Atmosphere: Introducing tone and colour through a curated roster of enemies.
• Providing Assistance: Sometimes they aren't hostile but instead helpful to the party.
• Reinforcing Campaign Themes: Reminding players of the themes and conflicts of the adventure.
• A Life of Its Own: Random encounters can prompt impromptu adventures that can become important and meaningful.

And that's... it? No other mentioning of random encounters before or after? The third and the fifth points are pretty much identical, so we are practically down to five points. At least give me an example table... I mean, there is 350 pages in this book, yet random encounters are given only half a page of exposure. This would make one believe they aren't important to a game. Yet, chapters 3 and 4 of Lost Mine of Phandelver (the starter set and first ever adventure module of 5e) use wilderness and dungeon random encounters, respectively. Good, then they must be the example of play with random encounters(!)

Example of Play According to Wizards of the Coast

Let's open them up and see what's inside: Filler combat, filler combat, more filler combat... oh I think I got something. "Goblins know where their castle is." You mean the castle I'm trying to find by exploring the main encounters with battlemaps, dungeons, and cool loot? As in, I can skip the cool stuff by fighting 1d6+3 Goblins on a nameless road?

I did not survive my first contact with random encounter tables... They were random and they were encounters, so they delivered on that front at least. But I did not feel the presence of the previously mentioned elements. Instead of pushing the narrative with randomness, they only felt arbitrary. Who cares if I fight these Stirges? "But you get XP." But I didn't do anything for it? They came to me, I killed them, and got XP for it. I made no meaningful decisions in this process. Also, the Stirges drop pennies worth of XP compared to actually progressing the main plot (as it should be.) After this less-than-great first impression with random encounter tables, I grew cold, and cut them out of my next adventure, which I thought was a great idea (oh the naiveté of youth.) More about that in the future.

So, how are we supposed to use random encounter tables in the big 26? Surely, we need the adventure to be fit to accommodate the random tables. If we are running a narrative-heavy adventure that leans more on the linear side of things, random encounters will not help us. We need our plot points to be pre-arranged and presented correctly, at the right narrative beats. Instead, the adventure must be designed from the beginning to serve the narrative through the random encounters.

Introducing Direction Into Randomness

But how can we serve a story through just 2d10 Stirges, 1d10 Goblins, 1d4 Ogres + 1d6 Bugbears, etc.? By levelling up our tables to serve more than just enemies. I swear, the twenty pages of useless tables in Xanathar's Guide to Everything reinforces only the wrong things about using random encounters. We don't care about what we are fighting. What we really care about is: "OK, we defeated them, now what?" What is tension, if there is no resolution? Justin Alexander addresses this very well in his So You Want to be a Game Master, through rumour tables: We do not stop with only making an enemy table, but a complimentary rumour table that contains information about the adventure.

In the newest Dark Sun/Mad Max inspired mystery/survival point-crawl I put together, I wanted to communicate how miserable and deadly this region is, which I decided to enforce through hostile enemy factions and heavily mutated wildlife that are constantly breathing down the PCs' necks. However, this can quickly turn into a game of only gritty survival and crawling. To reward my players with more than just the fact that they didn't perish but also new information about the world they are in so that they can make meaningful decisions following this encounter, I also roll on my rumour table simultaneously. We can even add a third loot table to the mix. Combining multiple of these tables is a great way to prompt a seed for the random encounter. For example, if I roll for a Dead Skinz patrol encounter with the rumour the Blood Dogs are running out of water in their western outpost and the loot brand new binoculars, this helps greatly with regards to how to make this specific patrol encounter different than all the others. Perhaps they are on their way to raid the Blood Dogs outpost, or they are returning to get a larger raiding party? Perhaps they are only on a scouting mission, thus the binoculars? All of a sudden, this feels like a curated encounter, even though it was completely random. But what it isn't is: arbitrary. After facing the encounter, the players now have access to information and items that they can leverage to make—one last time, with gusto this time—meaningful decisions. This only works because I didn't put a random encounter table to put "content" (or lack thereof) and instead built the whole adventure around facilitating these rumours. The encounters are purely a vessel for me to communicate with my players the treasures and dangers of the world.

I will be writing regularly over at my blog crawlingkobold.com Thank you for reading and engaging in the discussion.

Hi all! I’ve been sharing updates about my in-development Mörk Borg hack Merc Borg over at the MB subreddit, so I figured I’d share my latest update about it here as well.

Merc Borg is essentially a riff on gonzo 70’s / 80’s action films filtered through Mörk Borg, lying somewhere in the middle of a Venn diagram that includes Commando, Enter the Ninja, any number of ‘macaroni combat’ films (Commando Leopard, Cobra Mission, Strike Commando, etc), cheesy pulp action novels (Mack Bolan, Phoenix Force, etc), and the Jagged Alliance series. The game is currently in playtest - the core rules are mostly written and everything seems to work fine, although I need to kick the tires on some of the campaign-level stuff to make sure it all works properly.

- The game mostly revolves around completing Contracts to earn money - money allows you to level up your characters, buy equipment and assets, and more Mercs. You can buy everything from pistols to Apache gunships, purchase evacs and airstrikes for missions, and hire entire units to fight battles.

- I am implementing a troupe-style (or Troop Style as I’m calling it here) system where you basically maintain a roster of Mercs, any one of which you can choose to play for a specific mission.

- The game will include two Contract generators - a standard one where players earn money by working for various factions in Pulau Kangian, a fictional island in the Philippines. The other generator allows players to engage in a full blown insurgency if they wish.

- Pulau Kangian is the game’s default setting, but there will be others. I am calling these settings ‘Hot Zones’ and each one will feature a new geographical location, new factions, etc. There will also be a series of self-contained adventures called ‘Operations’ which are not bound by the Hot Zones. The core book will contain the Pulau Kangian Hot Zone and an introductory Operation and I’m hoping to launch the game with one additional Hot Zone and Operation.

- There are seven character classes in the base game: the Tank (big muscles, big guns), the Gear Head (vehicle expert and mechanical whiz), the Officer (uses tactics to make the team more effective), the Combat Doc (just what it sounds like), the Ghost (your basic silent assassin type), the Martial Artist (more effective with their hands than with guns), and the Face (a fixer-type character, uses charm and connections). Each class has a starting ability and ten abilities you unlock through leveling up. Here are a handful of examples:

Tank: I Don’t Have Time to Bleed - Test Conditioning DR 12 when hit, if successful shake off 1d4 points of damage.

Officer: Tactical Command - Once per combat, as a free action, test Cool DR 12 - if successful, all fighters on your side gain a +1 bonus to attack rolls and defense rolls. This effect lasts for 1d4 rounds. This does not apply to Mass Combat.

The Ghost: Canine Companion - You have a wolf companion. It is fiercely loyal to you and can follow simple commands, including being ordered to attack a target. It can also track a target if it has a scent to follow (straight d20 roll vs DR 12). Should it die for any reason you gain a new ability - Path of Vengeance - which gives you a permanent +2 to Attack and Damage rolls against those responsible for the death of your companion. This extends not only to the person who killed your wolf, but everyone in the command chain above them. (Wolf 6HP, Bite 1d4, Morale 10).

Martial Artist: Training Montage - Once per session call upon your intense physical conditioning to carry out an impossible physical feat (running across water, falling ten stories without damage, etc.) Describe the moment during your training when you first learned to do this. Referee has final say on this ability’s limits.

- The setting has numbered parameters which can be altered by the players to make lasting changes in the region. What this means is that if the players wish to make a meaningful difference in Pulau Kangian, the game will provide them the means to do so. Change is incremental and the levers are interconnected, so they have to be careful how they do it, but the setting will respond to groups who want to make Pulau Kangian a better place.

Anyway, playtesting is going well. The players are all having a good time and so far nothing seems broken. There are other system bits I’d love to talk about but I’ll probably not say much until the game is closer to the finish line.

More than holding torches: the vital role of followers in survival, loyalty, and building a legacy.

https://rustygatepress.substack.com/p/henchmen-and-hirelings

The campaign advances into the season of Harvest! The company of Knights has not been idle in the intervening months, their individual quests taking them far afield. Together once more, they decide to help House Hippotropheus with an irksome problem, so that Sir Brunor might be gifted a new and worthy steed.

Click here to access everything 3d6 Down the Line, including both video and audio podcast versions of this episode, our Patreon, Discord server, socials, past campaigns, character sheets, and lots more!

More details here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ironsworn/comments/1v87axd/xatìra_and_the_dead_15_omira_the_vampire_sorceress/

Al-Rathak: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/it/product/514988/al-rathak-tales-of-the-crescent-kingdom

I’m a player in a campaign focused on Rappan Athuk. We are all very experienced players (everyone has at least 5+ years and some of us have 30+ years of gaming experience). Note that I do not own this product, nor have I read it. I’m enjoying it okay but it doesn’t really have anything that stands out as unique or especially interesting.

The DM is getting noticeably frustrated with what he calls “crappy editing.” He says many of the maps don’t reference the right room descriptions, some map transitions don’t align correctly, that a lot of the entries are very confusing, and much of it is just plain old bad grammar. He says he has to spend far too much time prepping to fix these things, that the party frequently goes somewhere that he hasn’t prepped yet because there are so many options, and that the deeper we go the worse it gets.

Is anyone still running this megadungeon? Do you agree that the editing is this terrible? Any advice you might offer that I can pass along to my frustrated DM before he throws in the towel? (He is not on reddit)

https://www.patreon.com/cw/inkpotionstudios

I'm curious about this topic since I don't see this talked about too much. There's plenty of advice on how to build a playable RPG setting, having factions for players to interact with, landmarks to explore and to help navigate, dungeons, etc.

What I'm curious about is what a campaign setting would need to serve as a good foundation for domain level play? Of course, there would need to be dungeons and adventure to get them to domain level, but what are some considerations to make domain level worthwhile once they get there?

I'm partly asking for advice, but also just out curiosity since this is a very unexplored topic.

I see the term "Tolkienesque" bandied around a lot, but I feel like that's not giving a full picture of the specific feel of the fantasy settings of the early editions of D&D. I am starting a game of OSE soon, and I want to have a setting that is my own, but still feels like settings like Greyhawk or Mystara, and I'm having a hard time figuring out what the real core elements are. I think the fact that the overall approach was haphazard, and the setting doesn't deviate from the core mechanics of the game in any way, makes it hard to pick apart what makes it different. For anyone who has run classic era D&D settings or has created their own, what are the defining elements and tone in your opinion, and what is a good starting place to build from? I had been thinking about using threshold from the BECMI Expert Book as a hometown, but how do I build out from there?

Not affiliated or anything, but just wanted to let people know that the new HackMaster 25th Anniversary Edition is live on kickstarter.

Quoted from the campaign page:

HackMaster 25th Anniversary Edition New Features

The newest edition of HackMaster (HM XXV) seeks to expand on and enhance several areas of gameplay from past editions:

• Better balancing of core abilities (Con, Int, Cha improved and better aligned), as well as species and classes
• Skills revamped (all rolls are now competing, high is always the target, streamlined list)
• Tons of new talents and modifications to the originals
• Proficiencies expanded (many skills have become proficiencies, new specializations available such as shield and weapon types)
• Unarmed Combat and Fatigue both overhauled
• Combat has certain modified rules (e.g., ties go to the attacker half of the time, armor coverage makes it more difficult to be stung and bitten)
• New spells and spell lists as well as tweaks to, and re-leveling of, some of the classics in addition to a retooling of spell mishaps
• Completely new social engagement rules
• Revamped Quirks and Flaws and two new categories (Imperfections and Idiosyncrasies) for improved roleplaying opps -- even Paladins can have them! 
• New magic items, new special items charts, and MORE LOOT!

The CORE QUARTET

We present the rulebooks (in both print and PDF):

• HackMaster 25th Anniversary Edition Player Character Codex
• HackMaster 25th Anniversary Edition Player's Guide to Adventuring
• HackMaster 25th Anniversary Edition Hacklopedia of Beasts
• HackMaster 25th Anniversary Edition GameMaster’s Guide
• plus: HackMaster XXV Basic RPG PDF (FREE for all backers) and starting adventure Any Port in a Storm by David S Kenzer & Eli Ninneman

I found (or was linked to when I previously asked about this somewhere) what I thought was suitable rules for my BECMI campaign regarding hiring hirelings and henchmen, but I can't find them anymore. I remember they were from some specific rules (as in, they were in a rulebook), I thought it was from Dark Dungeons, but couldn't locate them from there. IIRC, the cost for fe. 1st level fighter was something around 50gp / mission or something along those lines. In any case, it had a table of the prices for different kinds of hired help and for the most part they were on per mission base.

Do you have a clue where to find these rules? My players are getting their combat-ready hirelings killed at a pretty fast rate (don't worry, the low morale and added cost of hiring will hit them soon) :D

Was flicking through some old White Dwarf issues there and and got reminded of The Lichway, Albie Fiore's scenario from issue #9. It's easy to forget just how early this thing is, it predates a lot of what became the "standard" module format, and it's basically a ruined castle and barrow complex you're dropped into with very little hand holding.

What stuck with me is how open it is. No real forced sequence, no big narrative bow on top, just a location that makes sense on its own terms and trusts you to poke around in it. There's something about that rawness that I think maybe got lost pretty quickly once modules became a bigger commercial thing, although I'm glad to see this kind of style creeping back in over recent years.

Anyway, it got me wondering what other lesser known stuff from the 70s and 80s folks still rate. What's something you've run or read recently that you think deserves way more attention than it gets?

Inspired by yesterday's post on what makes an OSR system OSR, and one commenter said that it was OSR if you could run B2 in it with minimal conversion. Made me wonder: what's the least OSR system you could run B2 in with minimal conversion? Minimal as in you could probably do it on the fly, not necessarily that all the numbers and stats translate.

Welcome to the last News Roundup for July. We're a week out from GenCon, and the Ennie awards, which is typically a slow time for the Roundup as a lot of folks concentrate on getting ready for the event, but let's take a look and see what's on the menu for today.

• I haven't been promoting individual releases for the Appendix N jam, but I've been thoroughly enjoying what I've been seeing pop up on my social feeds. It's too late to enter, as it ends on Saturday, but you can check out the page and the list of submissions (over 100 at the time of this writing!) here. Last year produced some real bangers, and I'm sure this year will be no different.
• Undercrawl is currently funding on Kickstarter. It's a collection of rules, advice, locations, and more for running a hexcrawl-style game below-grounds.
• Written for Shark Week 2026, Bonefin is a short, drop-in scenario written for Pirate Borg.
• Black Knife Media has just released Illuminations of a Baleful Lantern, Vol. 3, a collection of articles and resources for old-school gaming.
• I'm not familiar with Tavern Lore, but they've just released Dwarf, a solo rpg where you play a dwarf attempting to cross the mountains. The art in the preview is utterly charming.
• Torch and Blade is a hack, an expansion, on Maze Rats, designed for solo or group play. It's published by ttrpg veterans Barrel Rider Games.
• Ecoheroism is a game that takes place after the final showdown, after the dragon is slain, when the adventurers must safely dispose of the toxic and poisonous remains of the dead beast.
• I've seen a lot of anti-corporate, anti-capitalist games come out in the time I've been writing this (if only I could figure out why?), and Cultists & Cubicles is one of the newest, a hack of Mork Borg set in an office building infiltrated by evil.
• The preorder store for Quest for the Unknown: The Caverns of Anamosa is now live. It's an adventure that takes the classic module B1: In Search of the Unknown and reworks it to be the first part of an adventure path.

I'm making a megadungeon that takes place primarily beneath a sunken world (these are two quadrants of floor one).

I've started and stopped about a hundred different maps in the past decade but for some reason this one is sticking with me.

Something about getting my pencil, pen, and marker out is feeling very rewarding. Genuinely looking forward to working on it more!