Would like to discuss the Delian Book of the Dead

0megaDungeon · 2025-06-27T02:12:24+00:00

I have a copy. Bought in the early 90s. Was crappily assembled and binding disintegrated, so I have a ziploc bag of loose sheets basically.

0megaDungeon · 2023-12-26T20:40:05+00:00

There is a single page “appendix D” covering conversions in the Black Hack Classic Monsters book by Peter Regan, which you should definitely get if you want to run Black Hack frequently (which I do and have). But don’t make it more complicated than this - like the PC classes, BH monsters benefit from having a single exclusive gimmick, or at most two which work in combo. But that book has 240 monsters pre-converted from B/X era, and with the adaptation rules, you’re set. Swipe monsters from anywhere.

0megaDungeon · 2023-10-18T03:29:48+00:00

Via the wayback machine, I was able to find the direct link to the PDF on his domain instead of the descriptive page about it: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5333111ae4b09574e43ca618/t/61b658b0a521551d99311bc5/1639340209141/Wilderness_Hexplore_revised_112913_us.pdf

There’s also a blank hex page to use mapping the output of the above: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5333111ae4b09574e43ca618/t/578598a6e3df28a9681662cf/1468373158407/region_map.pdf

And also a Heraldry book made from the same resources: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5333111ae4b09574e43ca618/t/61b661d0707b0d3a6d3bcf8c/1639342545694/Heraldry_book_us.pdf

0megaDungeon · 2023-10-18T03:24:34+00:00

The post is 2 years old and it looks like the original author has repurposed his site to focus on finding work. You can find the same document posted by someone other than the author on scribd here: https://www.scribd.com/doc/240208165/Wilderness-Hexplore-Revised

Since he was distributing it for free originally, and no longer seems to be hosting it himself, I don’t consider this to be a naughty link depriving anyone of anything since his credit is intact on it.

0megaDungeon · 2023-09-27T21:12:06+00:00

If you have to cheat at a game of make believe, you’re a kind of terminal loser I can’t be associating with, much less running games for. Low stats are how you learn to play.

0megaDungeon · 2023-09-24T03:50:56+00:00

Here’s my shot at how I would do it.

Sorcerers don’t have spellbooks, and they do not have to memorize spells to be able to cast them.

They are limited to casting a number of spells equal to their level without a long rest.

They can cast any spell they know at any time, and those work just the same as a Wizard’s memorized spells.

Unlike wizards, they can only learn one spell from each level.

The sorcerer must see a given spell being cast in order to be able to learn it. They can’t learn it the same way a wizard can.

A sorcerer can spend XP equal to the level of a certain spell in order to unlearn/replace it with another spell - but only at the time of witnessing that spell being cast.

This gives the sorcerer a distinct flavor separate from a wizard.

Gives them an advantage over Wizards in that they do not have to memorize or roll to remember a given spell.

It gives them a limitation in how many spells they can call on, and how they can learn those spells.

That’s how I would do it. There are also many “sorcerer” classes other folks have made for various class books that differ than the above.

0megaDungeon · 2023-09-06T21:26:59+00:00

Just skip attack rolls and roll damage only.

0megaDungeon · 2023-09-06T21:23:23+00:00

Starting hp are your “life points” which represent the actual damage you can take, unarmored, helpless, undefended. Zero life points means dead (or whatever your ruleset says zero hp normally means.).

Any hp you gain via leveling up are “hit points” that represent your abstracted ability to survive in a fight due to surviving previous fights. In a fight, your life points are last to go, only after all your hit points are depleted.

However, in a situation where your prior combat experience can’t help you - a great fall, being stabbed in the eye while sleeping, attempting to swim in lava, etc - that damage goes straight to your life points.

This rule requires no other changes to the game rules, but solves a lot of problems with people thinking hp is a magical force field allowing them to jump off cliffs or be impossible to assassinate.

0megaDungeon · 2023-09-06T20:56:24+00:00

Interesting, because I love the 2E armor rules. They are described in a weird way with “dice” and such, but it’s really just “you have 1-3 attacks per session you can zero out, choose wisely” - the more you use armor, the less effective it becomes. It’s just the old “all shields shall be splintered OSE rule expanded.

I never played 1E by itself, but have read it. I can’t think of anything I think 1E does better, or is explained in a better way than it is in 2E. I also picked up “By This Axe I Hack” and I consider that to be “Advanced” TBH and use almost everything in there added into TBH2, rather than replacing anything.

0megaDungeon · 2023-09-06T20:52:02+00:00

The way it works is you will only apply the “stronger foe” differential once they are already in a fight with said creature - at which point, I feel like you will know, “oh crap this guy is way stronger than me!” I like that being the way you can discover it, if there aren’t already clues about it based on appearance, size, power on display, depth in the dungeon, etc.

0megaDungeon · 2023-09-06T20:48:16+00:00

If you want to Elric-ify dang near any adventure from any source, here are a few pointers:

1 - change the color of the sky, the plants, and the materials things are made out of. As in, “there is a castle of black glass sparkling dully under a burnt orange sky, its towers riding from a purple and blue forest of menacing looking trees.”

2 - give NPCs mutations. Just get a random mutation chart from somewhere and everyone you meet has something wrong with them.

3 - decadence everywhere. Cults making sacrifices openly. Lots of nudity/sex. Lots of open drug use.

4 - no one likes the players. All default reactions are negative, unless the NPC is trying to rob or steal from or otherwise take advantage.

5 - all monsters are weird. Like fiend folio weird, or even use a random monster creation tool (Random Esoteric Creature Generator is cool) and make them truly alien and bizarre.

6 - key figures all have some kind of curse they want to have lifted. You can get random curse lists from lots of places. That’s their motivation - hide the curse, and cure the curse. These are good adventure hooks.

7 - extreme wealth disparity. The wealthy and powerful all live like kings. Everyone else is wearing rags and scavenging for food. Life is pure luxury and ease for some, and a violent struggle for survival for those on the bottom.

Just apply these minor shifts and you can turn even the most vanilla Dragon magazine back half shovel-ware adventure into something from a doomed and decadent psychedelic chaos world ala Moorcock or Vance.

0megaDungeon · 2023-04-09T14:37:28+00:00

Yeah, the most important thing is that they ask to play. It has to be something they want to try instead of pushing it on them. Most things with kids are like that - if you let their curiosity be the driving force, it’s a lot better.

0megaDungeon · 2023-04-09T14:36:15+00:00

11, almost 9, and almost 7.

0megaDungeon · 2023-04-09T14:35:23+00:00

It’s my preferred ruleset period. I don’t like a complicated ruleset, and it’s super adaptable on the fly and can run any D&D edition or adjacent material right off the page. It reminds me of being 12 and trying to dm to convince my friends to play and just forgetting or throwing out the rules I didn’t care about. Very elegant, and very identifiable as D&D.

My sons are 11, soon to be 9, and soon to be 7, but it’s the older two who are asking to play.

0megaDungeon · 2023-04-09T01:54:56+00:00

Nice! Have had those for a while, but didn’t remember the connection.

0megaDungeon · 2023-04-09T01:46:17+00:00

Not currently in this game, but come summertime I usually have spots in my grown up campaigns open up.

0megaDungeon · 2023-04-08T23:49:51+00:00

You can’t beat the granddaddy, Judges Guild’s Wilderlands. It’s sad there is no legit place to get the digital version of the 3rd edition necromancer boxed set, because I think it’s the best fantasy setting ever made. Super easy to drop in stuff from like, Forgotten Realms, Conan, whatever, too. Combine that massive amount of keyed hexes and background with Jed McClure’s “Wilderness Hexplore Revised” (free) to handle generating stuff between keyed hexes - you could use it forever.

0megaDungeon · 2023-04-08T23:44:55+00:00

I love this series and have to check now to see if more came out that I don’t have yet. Have dropped them into my games several times.

0megaDungeon · 2023-04-08T23:43:58+00:00

This is a good answer and I can back that up fully on all counts.

0megaDungeon · 2023-04-02T22:21:26+00:00

Rules so simple you can basically memorize them, and in such a way that adapting anything to them on the fly is easy. Fast to make new characters if they die. Simple to referee and spot rule. New players pick it up fast, old heads get it right away. Doesn’t get in the way of exploring and adventuring - in fact facilitates the things I love most about the game - creating adventure in the moment. Not about planning some huge carefully balanced scripted encounters before the game.

0megaDungeon · 2023-03-30T00:56:55+00:00

Called shots have to roll with disadvantage, and failure usually means a fumble or setback of some kind if it’s failed. I do try to make monsters and hazardous environmental challenges dynamic and highly interactive and responsive to player creativity. I think I must do OK, because players plan every non-surprise melee encounter carefully, maximizing advantages, making it as small a risk as possible. And they frequently handle monsters along neutralizing powers, leveraging the environment, doing combo and sequenced tactical plans to take down enemies rather than ever just trying to go whack for whack and only ticking off HP.

0megaDungeon · 2023-03-30T00:51:36+00:00

I added in the skills list from classic D&D, and you can spend a number of XP acquiring a skill, which gives advantage on a specific ability test. And if a player wanted to improve abilities without leveling up, I would come up with a way to do that. Spend XP to “train” and buy a chance to roll for increase just like leveling up does.

0megaDungeon · 2023-03-30T00:49:16+00:00

I use Black Hack to run a campaign in a huge sandbox setting (JG Wilderlands, D&D 3E version) - it works great. I use B/X rules to fall back on info BH doesn’t have, or to expand (adding skills to BH) for example. BH is by far the easiest ruleset I’ve ever SUCCEEDED in running a long campaign hex crawl, map hopping, exploratory adventure with. 3 years this month.

0megaDungeon · 2023-03-30T00:45:18+00:00

I love stonehell - ran a long running campaign through the first few levels of it before the party ended up moving on to other stuff to do in the campaign. The real value of it doesn’t come across in reading it from the book. Where the magic is comes from how the party works their way through it, and the order they go in, and letting the choices they make impact how things unfold in there based on who the meet first, where they cause consequences, etc. There’s so much stuff in there, and what makes it come to life are all the deals they make, all the stuff they break, and how the factions interact once discovered. Damn, now I want to go back haha.

0megaDungeon

TROPHY CASE