The Punch Line by Zzarchov Kowolski

This entry is part 47 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As with other posts in this series, these #booksread2022 posts get published with some lag. I’m trying to be more punctual, though, and this one’s very recent. This is a very short old-school RPG adventure module. I’m tempted actually to call it an “adventure concept” because it’s very light on details, beyond statblocks, and designed to be something you can drop into your game easily. Aside from the NPCs, there’s some material about an insane clown cult (I was so tempted to say “posse”) operating in the area of the village where the adventure is sited (and NPC writeups/stats for …

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Sirenswail by Dave Mitchell

This entry is part 30 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As always, I’m posting this quite a while after finishing the book. This was given to me by my friend Ahimsa Kerp, to whom I shall be returning it soon.   Dave Mitchell’s Sirenswail is a 2016 old-school adventure. It’s basically The Wicker Man in the age of Cromwell with some magic and weirdness mixed in. The historical setting is, obviously, because it was designed for use with LotFP, but you could adapt it to any old-school game and, with some work, to any setting you’d use for an elfgame.  It’s a part of that familiar subgenre of adventures focused on …

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Scourge of the Scornlords: Meatlandia Book III by Ahimsa Kerp and Wind Lothamer

This entry is part 26 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As with other posts in this series, these #booksread2022 posts go anywhere from a few weeks to a month after I’ve read them. I read this particular book last week, though!  Before I begin, some disclosures: Ahimsa Kerp is a longtime friend, and I’ve gamed with both him and Wind Lothamer in the past. I was one of the playtesters for this book. I’m currently working on a project with them.  So, with that out of the way: Scourge of the Scornlords is a supplement for old-school RPGs from the Meatlandia series by Knight Owl Publishing. It’s been out for …

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Fish F*ckers by Kelvin Green

This entry is part 24 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As with other posts in this series, these #booksread2022 posts go anywhere from a few weeks to a month after I’ve read them. I read this particular book last week, though!  This is a module containing a seaside town called Innsmouth, where a cultist has set up a lucrative situation: Deep Ones are fornicating with villagers, bringing gold and offerings of fish. The villagers are conflicted about this setup, but they’re actually the abusers, while the Deep Ones are forced magically to do this, and dislike it. (The poor monsters want this magical binding to be ended so that don’t …

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The Cursed Chateau by James Maliszewski, illustrated by Jez Gordon

This entry is part 17 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As with other posts in this series, these #booksread2022 posts go anywhere from a few weeks to a month after I’ve read them. The Cursed Chateau is an adventure set in a castle in the south of France, haunted by the ghost of a sadistic maniac and many of his victims. This is an adventure that James Maliszewski had published previously: there’s a Rogue Games edition listed online from 1999, and the author mentions having run the game many times over the years and noted player responses and feedback. The edition I’m looking at is the 2016 edition.

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So, You’ve Angered a Sea God…

So, I’m playtesting my contribution to the Deluge zine that is part of Knight Owl Games’ Aquatic Adventures Kickstarter, which you should totally check out. My contribution, “So, You’ve Angered a Sea God…” is inspired by The Odyssey, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and the story of the whale ship Essex (which inspired Moby Dick, though I haven’t read that). It includes a system for generating a minor deity who was somehow angered by someone in the crew—possibly an NPC sailor who messed up at the last port, or possibly the PCs when they ransacked the deity’s old, ruined …

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Wanderhome, by Jay Dragon

This entry is part 9 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As with other posts in this series, I’m posting about books sometimes weeks after reading them. In this case, I’m actually waiting to post this until after I’ve played the game, since I happen to be playing in a one-shot trying it out this weekend.  Wanderhome is a relatively rules-light, fantasy RPG featuring anthropic-animal player characters who wander around, expressing and enacting care towards others, expressing their personality while keeping their secrets and staying attentive and open to the world and to those who cross your path. It’s cozy, pastoral, rules-light, and… has no mechanics for violence. If you’ve played many …

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Running Sur une rive, au clair de lune for The Fall of Delta Green

I recently posted about my impressions after running a multi-session one-shot with The Fall of Delta Green, and said I’d follow up with a post about the adventure itself. I used Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan’s Fall of Delta Green adventure On a Bank, by Moonlight. By the way, the original PDF of the adventure is available from the Pelgrane Press website, for free. Downloading it is probably helpful if you didn’t manage to snag a print copy back in 2018, like I happened to do. (Ah, man, remember Free RPG Day events?) Anyway, as I was saying, I ran this adventure, but …

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Running The Fall of Delta Green

I recently ran a short multi-session (five or six sessions? I’m not sure) run of a Fall of Delta Green adventure for the Sunday night game group I play with. This writeup will discuss my impressions of the game itself, and my thoughts on the Gumshoe system more generally. I’ll follow it up with some notes on the adventure I ran, some resources for those who might want them, and also some thoughts on the spin I put on the game concept, since it was a bit unusual.  

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Guttershine Beer Run, Part the Sixth

This entry is part 15 of 15 in the series Adventures in Bastion

When we last left off… the group had fought their way out of the Warehouse with a hard-won barrel of beer, only to discover South Guttershine overrun by small mechanical scorpions in a frenzy of self-replication (and tearing apart anything available for construction materials)—white-furred flying lizards had been released into the city through a portal inside the Warehouse, and one of them had snatched up Rampling Haddleshack and borne him off into the night—Heihachi had plunged through the portal momentarily, and returned with a nasty infection that was causing yellow gunk to drip from his eyes—the characters arrived at the …

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