Forgotten Foes for Shadowdark RPG is in its final days and features:

• Hundreds of classic monsters, in Shadowdark's fast and brutal style including keening banshees, mind-warping brain stalkers, ghastly yetis, cunning thouls, blasphemous doom knights, and more
• Gorgeous illustrations, including 40+ pieces of original art and over a dozen full-page images
• 40 rival adventurer stat blocks, ready to be dropped into your game
• 6 epic foes: classic villains reborn for Shadowdark, including the 5-headed mother of dragons, a sorcerer-vampire, and a massive, 2-headed ape demon
• Shadowdark monster stats on the back cover for quick conversion on-the-fly
• 120+ pages of thoroughly hyperlinked, carefully crafted monsters

BACK NOW for early access and the lowest price!

I think a big, telegraphed moral choice scene tells you less about a character than the same small test run ten times without anyone noticing.

There's a bit I've been running for over twenty sessions now. A beaten enemy gets one moment where surrender is cheaply and safely on the table, and the character in question just gets to decide. I like to humanize enemies, especially when they're already beaten. I like to push the players to show mercy, knowing they won't. Often they are in a situation where letting the enemy go would be dangerous, but other times it would cost them nothing. The characters hold all the power in those moments, and before they pull the trigger, I always shine a light on how the combat is done, and the enemy is beaten, but alive. How they act in that moment is always something that follows them.

Recently it happened again. The enemy ship was crippled, dead in the water, comms blinking, clearly asking for mercy. Nobody on the crew even noticed the light except the gunner, whose finger was already on the trigger. No hesitation, in fact she was laughing as she fired anyway. This is who she is and at this point it's not random, she's a psycho killer. Or is she?

Is "finishing the job" when the enemy is already beaten technically a murder?

We record this as a Stars Without Number actual play called Dark Star Adventurecast. The episode is You Broke the Ship, Robert if you want the whole mess.

Hi all. I'm quite new to OSR concepts, but have been playing RPGs as a whole. However, I've been doing a lot more game design as of late, and I'm always curious for people's opinions on the games they play.

So, what about OSR games makes it for you? Be it a particular ruleset, mechanic, or aspect of the genre. I'd love to hear about it, and even the parts of OSRs you might not always love and think could be done better.

Any community interest in something like this?

I’m making a setting, built for OSR, based on American Folklore/mythology. Hexmap, statblocks, NPCs, etc. click the post for more info. Thanks!

So, it's been a while since I've given updates for this project, I am sorry, Life's complicated.

That being said, the one thing keeping me on snail pace it's monsters, it does something to your psyche when you have to work on 100+ monsters to create, and more difficult is find pictures of monsters that look moderately traditional and not 2023 AI generated.

Some of these are certainly iconic and expected though, like the Kappa or Oni, but in my research you can find weird creatures like the Mongolian Olgoi-Khorkoi, which is clearly a Sandworm inspiration.

I am still in this section, but one cool feature I'll be working is NPC templates for all characters classes, which will make it interesting when making Class NPCs, but anywho.

I hope sincerely these are interesting/useful, I'll be working on finishing this section in order to continue to the next, as I have the goal of finishing this project before the end of the Year, and if you'd like to check out my stuff, you can go to my drivethru on my Appendix L series or my itch.io.

I hope this is the right place to ask because it's I guess more concerned with AD&D 2e rather than 1e.

I spent a lot of my teenage years interested in D&D. I played the hell out of Baldur's Gate 1&2 and Icewind Dale. My local library had a bunch of books and I read them all. How The Mighty Are Fallen, Ruins Of Myth Drannor, Rod Of Seven Parts, various Volo's Guides, some Dragon magazines. The thing is I never played any of it. My actual introduction to roleplaying was D&D 3e which I enjoyed for many years but it has a very different feel to the settings.

I've recently gotten into solo roleplaying, and also become more interested in some older systems. The old Forgotten Realms setting and supplements specifically are such a nostalgia bomb for me (but also the old Dark Sun, Ravenloft and Planescape stuff) and I figured now's a good time to actually get these pdfs and play some of this stuff.

Now I've been eyeing up the print on demand AD&D 2e core rulebooks on drivethrurpg, but I also recently read through Dolmenwood and thought maybe OSE (which I understand is very similar to Dolmenwood rules-wise?) would be a good option.

I don't mind a bit of jank or having to convert things as I'll be playing solo, most important to me is the world and the vibes of the game, the artwork, the lore etc. Would you guys suggest I go for OSE (or a similar OSR/retroclone game) or just go for the AD&D 2e books for the most authentic nostalgia-bomb experience?

Some level 2 retainers for an experienced party in Dolmenwood!

Tamrin: Exiled jester to a local lord. Famed for shooting apples off of heads until the day he missed…or did his Lord pay him to aim low for the apple on his rival’s heir?

Rodger: A shadowy rogue with connections. This is just another job for him and you pay the best. Efficient with no questions asked.

Glob: One too many experiments on the mushroom farm seems to have done a number on this Mossling’s hold on reality. Quite the storyteller around the campfire though, which is good for morale.

Who would you hire for your party?

Sheet by Gordy Higgins: https://gordyh.itch.io/osr-retainer-sheet

Conventional wisdom might imply that three straight modules packed to the gills with giants would get a bit repetitive, but Gary Gygax proves himself a master of subverting expectations in G3: The Hall of the Fire Giant King, the final part of the G-series, AKA Against the Giants, AKA the start of the greatest D&D adventure of all time!

We had a blast with the G series as a whole and G3 may be the best of the bunch, from King Snurre basically hanging out in the parking lot to jump you to the wonderfully aberration-obsessed early take on the drow (even the WALLS have tentacles!) This one is packed full of flamin’ hot goodness and we had a giant sized fun talking about it in the 11th episode of the Analog Dungeon podcast, where we crack open old modules and look inside for jokes.

If this sounds like something you might be into, you can check us out at AnalogDungeon.com, on YouTube, or on your podcast platform of choice. We're a new show still finding an audience, so every like, sub, rating, and comment goes a long way. Thank you!

Hello all! Just wanted to put some more eyes on the submission feed of this jam. Give The Black Hack a go with your table if you haven't! There's some fun stuff here.

Many wilderness encounter tables include a “hills” terrain type. To my way of thinking, hills just specifies the topography; so there could forested hills, grassland hills etc.

What did Gary et al. have in mind for the general “hills” terrain category? What kind of terrain, maybe real world examples, should I think of?

Are random encounters appropriate for exploring the Midderlands? Or with the smaller hex size, is it better to "know" what's in each hex, hrm, what am I trying to say here?...

If you've ran or planned a wonderful hex crawl in this delightful setting, how did you manage this aspect?

Thanks, J

I've been working on this project for the last one and a half years. It's a collection of three solo RPGs, each one in the form of a zine beautifully illustrated by a crazy, talented comic book artist who I am lucky to call one of my friends.

All three games draw heavily from the OSR genre by basing their emergent narration on event tables and employing mechanics inspired by titles such as Mork Borg's precursor Dark Fort or Into the Odd.

1. Goblin – a hexcrawling adventure where you battle against evil gnomes in a quest for the crown of the goblin king.
2. Kobol Squad – a spelunking quest for the riches hidden in the underground realm.
3. Guard – a ruthless urban adventure, where you try to stop ever-restless adventurers from burning your hometown to the ground.

It would mean a world to me if you'd check out our kickstarter which has just launched: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hexy/misbehave

p.s. Since I'll probably not be having too much sleep tonight, I'll be lurking here trying to answer any questions regarding the project, so please ask to your heart's content.

Hello! I have been put in charge of our next family gaming night, and I thought I could introduce my 9 year old daughter to the greatest hobby of all. Since she loves fairies, I will be running OSE with a little class reskinning: druid will be earth/forest fairies (dryads), elves will be fire fairies (salamanders), magic-users will be air fairies (sprites) and clerics will be water fairies (nayads).

Do you guys have any suggestions of modules and/or dungeons I could run that would fit the sensibilities of a 9 year old girl?

A = Great Halls

B = Quarter Ruins

C = River Cistern

D = Smithing Tunnels

E = Stair Labyrinth

F = Primordial Tombs

These are only the Maps, so far!